Chapter Text
But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings
no matter how the stars might wish it so.
-”The Starless Sea”, Erin Morgenstern
Like a reversal of fate, everything else goes according to plan afterwards: much to Theo’s delight.
After the expectedly but also overwhelmingly successful two-week long exhibit at the gallery, Vincent—after years of indecision—finalizes his documents and portfolio, submits a stack of photos and a long, written document detailing the exhibit to the graduation approval panel. The following month is the longest of the brothers’ lives, but the committee approves Vincent’s submission, and a few weeks later he’s finally marching down the aisle to claim his diploma. (It was a beautiful affair, Theo would always say about it, but in truth he was unable to see anything more than a few smudges of color, due to how hard he was crying. Thank god for photographs.)
Freshly-graduated Vincent takes on various jobs while submitting to various institutions both locally and abroad, and finally persuades Theo to finish his bachelor’s degree, promising that he’ll always be facing forward into the future. The following semester, Theo enrolls for a final time at the university, taking his last units to write up his thesis.
Theo doesn’t quit his job at the bookshop, but eventually as things get busier he can only take so many hours until he’s barely there at all. They get a new employee named William—Theo doesn’t really like him. Arthur gives a little show of crying when Theo reveals he can only work weekends now, treats him to dinner and some alcohol at the end of it, so maybe it isn’t that bad. Theo, of course, still forwards all his book requests to the bookstore, and, much to his disgust, continues to spend Saturdays or Sundays (or both, if he’s unlucky) as “quality time” with Arthur, as the latter has called it. It’s not much, but more than enough for his “begrudging” best friend.
As Theo is working on his thesis, Vincent finally receives an offer for apprenticeship at a rather renowned fine arts gallery a few hours away, and Theo feels all his dreams are coming true.
And it’s time to get a new one.
He’s finishing a degree, bracing himself to enter a field he’s always long wanted to be in, to help support his brother but also to begin the long journey of a little hope he’d long kept in his heart, the one he hadn’t ever dared to say, fearing he wasn’t good enough for it—of being the director of a museum.
He might even be able to take a master’s on the side, if he finds a company that’s willing to get him trained both on the company floor and in an institution—and his grades and a few recommendation letters will get him there, he’s damn sure.
And next to him, or well, miles away, his brother is getting steadier and steadier on his feet, nearsprint towards a future with art he’s always dreamt of as well, this time with no one putting him down. Theo’s going to make sure that stays the same for all the years to come, too.
It feels like the beginning of everything good, and Theo walks around the town with a smile on his face.
All that’s left to do is wait.
He has faith that everything will settle into their proper places, like they always have.
And they do, because just as she always does, it’s 2:00pm on a Sunday, and she comes, in a long, plain cream coat over a sweater, a short plaid skirt over dark leggings, high black boots, because it’s fall now, starting to become cold. She’s looking around her with stars in her eyes, like she hasn’t been here in a long time. And she hasn’t.
Theo spots her first, and then, like she feels the touch of his eyes on her skin, she turns to him. Her face brightens with a grin that makes Theo’s heart stop.
And then she runs with a speed unexpected for the shoes she’s wearing. Theo braces himself as she jumps into his arms, but they still topple towards the ground.
THUNK!
“Oh my god, I could have killed you!” she says, but every word is stuck in between fits of laughter. Curls of hair hang over the sides of her face as she pulls herself up on the palms of her hands and her knees. Guiltless, as she always is.
Theo crinkles his nose, raises a hand to brush off the curtain of hair. “You have an accent,” he says. It’s not derisive, not an insult, just an observation, the same way he’d say something about a work of art.
And, just because she doesn’t run out of ways to take his breath away, she laughs and presses a kiss on his lips, her mouth warm, his face suddenly hot. She smells like strawberries and sour things and home.
She pulls away and breathes against his trembling lips, “I missed you so much.”
“Talk’s for later,” he half-growls, pulling himself up into a seated position before taking her lips in his once more—his fingers in her hair, her hand on his shoulder, seated on his lap. The kiss doesn’t deepen like she expects it to: instead it’s just a series of small kisses exchanged between the two of them, passed back and forth to each other like a shared breath. His hand squeezes her waist and—
“GET A ROOM!” someone shouts from across the street, followed by a burst of laughter, random onlookers to a long-awaited reunion.
“God, I sure miss being home,” she chuckles, making light of the call-out, chewing on her lower lip in embarrassment, turning her eyes away from him.
The word home hangs heavy between the both; but a good kind of heavy.
But for now, he’s not having that, not when they’ve been waiting for this for the longest time; he reaches out to cup her cheek in his hand, only to feel the damp trail of a tear slipping down.
It’s his turn to snort, rubbing a thumb up underneath her eye. “Don’t cry, liefje.”
She pouts. “…‘I missed you too, baby,’” she says mockingly, but wipes the tears that fall out with the back of her hand anyway. The two of them stare at each other for a long moment, like confirming each other’s existence, like making sure the other is really there.
Then, she breaks the silence with a laugh, like she always does.
His heart feels more than just full. It’s always more than with her around.
“I kept all your letters,” she says softly.
“And I kept all your postcards.”
That makes her laugh. A sound he wishes he could listen to forever. “Ah, we sound like some kind of rom-com protagonists. So silly.”
“That’s not so bad though,” Theo says, taking her hand in his the way he’s always wanted to but has always been afraid to do.
“No,” she says, leaning against his warmth. Pressing their foreheads together. “Not at all.”
And because her friend’s been bugging her throughout her entire first year at the university while she was gone, said friend decides to get back at her by holding a little surprise party to match the little surprise arrival she had made for Theo. She, Theo, her friend, Dazai, Arthur, and a shifty-feeling Isaac—she will have to figure out the details for that later—end up having dinner together at a place that opened while she was gone, talking about all that she’d missed, stories that may as well have already been told but feel different when they’re told face-to-face.
They all go home flushed, half with drunk and half with joy. She hasn’t really checked into her apartment complex quite yet, but Theo shoots down her friend’s offer for her to be driven back to the city in exchange for getting her to sleep at his place. The van Gogh residence has been home to one for quite a bit now and Theo… well, he’d like some company.
The two of them are walking home side by side, swaying a little as they pass through flickering streetlights. There is so much to talk about, to catch up on, so many things hidden in between the lines of letters and messages that are better sorted out in person, and Theo feels each question rising up his throat clawing their way out.
Was coming back worth it?
Won’t you regret it?
Did you find what you were looking for out there?
But they have time—they have so much time now, so instead, he settles for the gentle quiet they’ve always known each other for. Instead, he bumps the back of her hand with his, and because everything is more than with her, she takes it as an opportunity to intertwine their fingers together.
There’s mischief in her voice.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Say ‘I love you.’”
Theo stops in his tracks. “What?”
The shock makes her laugh. Pulling at his hand to get him to start walking again, she explains,
“You’ve never told me you loved me, you know.”
“I have.”
“Not in person!” she argues. “Not even in call. You wrote it, but that’s different.”
Theo can feel the words on his tongue already anyway, but he continues to prolong the inevitable.
“What’s all this all of a sudden?”
“Nothing! I just haven’t heard it, and well, I wanted to hear it? Please?”
“No.”
“C’mon, you’re not fair. Tell me.”
“No,” he says, pulling her by her hand and pressing a kiss on the back of it. Chaste, and yet so deep with hunger it makes her knees wobble just a bit. “I’ll tell you later.” She flushes a deep red.
After all this, their friends will not stop joking about how they’ve had one of the most intense courtships in the history of their friend group—and likely their university—but the two of them both rigorously deny that, saying that there are likely to be more complicated ones they just don’t know. Besides, at this point, it doesn’t really matter how long it had taken them to get here— Just that they had gotten here.
And what a good story that journey was.
Just fit for a literature major.
But stories are stories because they flow into each other, and so even if that chapter has ended, that just means another one has begun and—there is so much plot to be done. She and Theo have a talk about their relationship—this time in person, and this time for real—somewhere in between their last semesters in university. Their friends are, well, still their friends, ever so patient even now that they’re together, especially after all that happened before they got to this. And the future is wide and the world is out there waiting and— They can’t wait to see it together.
Like flower facing upward to the sun daring itself to see what the world has for it out there before deciding it wants to stay, deciding to grow its roots, deciding… Right here is okay.
Like blossoming in reverse.
When she and Theo move in together to their own little apartment, away from the university, long after shared books at the rooftop of the physics department and Dragon’s Hoard and Little Owl, Vincent sends to them a moving-in gift: a series of three canvases, a triptych depicting the two of them at that most vulnerable part of their romance. The start of the most beautiful part of it. On the opposite panels, she and Theo; sitting in front of their respective windows, looking out at different cities, different times of the day. And in the middle, a humble little paper airplane made of envelopes, with their blue and red marking, the stamps, the smudged ink, crossing the landscape without care for distance.
They hang the paintings in their living room, above the sofa, the first thing they see when they enter their little shared home.
Just another one of many shared things that will continue to grow.
And today, they’re not yet done unpacking and they’ve only gotten out two sets of dinnerware just enough to be able to eat—but there is so much time. So it’s two in the afternoon on a Sunday, music playing lowly from cheap Bluetooth speakers, and their next-door neighbors are hammering something in the wall but it is still beautiful. Standing in the middle of the living room on the carpet, the TV and the books still in their neatly labeled boxes stacked against the wall—they hold each other close to the slow beat of the music.
Sure, they may have been idiots about this but—they have the rest of their lives to make up for lost time
And so Theo presses his forehead against hers, smiling when the gesture makes her laugh. Nothing makes him feel as warm as she does, and no metaphor, no literary reference will be able to truly put into words how he feels about having found her at just the right moment.
How they crossed that near-miss.
And how lucky he is to get to keep her.
Arm wrapped reverently around the small of her back, one hand on her waist, the other with its fingers interlocked with hers—he presses a small kiss on her knuckles, eyes sliding shut. Everything goes dark: the music shushes into silence, the room collapses, the only thing is him, and her, and the long eternity.
“…And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart,” he whispers, quoting a poem from a poet from a book from a bookstore from what seems like a million years ago, sighing when she squeezes his shoulder, “I carry your heart—”
Tilts his head upward with her finger, oh, she has him wrapped around her finger, always has.
He looks back at her and her heart dips into the deep blue of his eyes. She kisses the words onto his lips, “I carry it in my heart.”