Work Text:
The kettle is on.
The brewing sound of the boiling water is comforting, it breaks the silence of the sad small room.
The curtains are closed, messily, and entangled into each other, letting a space between the fabric that lets in the colors of the lights outside.
Her pencil taps against the stained wood of her desk as she reads the notebook on top of all the papers she has spread on top.
She’s never been messy, there’s always control over everything she does, but after a few months of summer and autumn, of bright colors that let her pretend once winter arrived, it left her dry. There’s no energy nor interest in keeping everything neat, and as much as that used to bother her on those past months, now the mess is comforting.
It gives a little ray of life to the room, and to her life.
They are all her things, but it makes her feel less alone, and that it is relieving.
She’s always been alone, Marianne knows this, have always known this, but it never struck such a rampage in her heart. Not until she met him. No, not when she met him, but when she got to know him.
She got to know Connell so well; deeply, madly, perfectly, and yet not completely. There is always a little piece that she is missing and every time she reaches and grabs something, that’s not the piece she aimed for, but another one, and it helps her realize that there are many more hidden somewhere in his heart.
This has never been a problem, she likes puzzles, she likes to solve them, to twist them, to make them her own, and to solve them, of course. She is smart, so this isn’t hard. She is smart, so she is usually right.
Not with Connell.
That doesn’t bother her anymore. Not knowing Connell is not frustrating as other unsolved puzzles would be for her. Not knowing Connell is captivating, because of all those pieces she gets to collect, all those pieces that don’t help her put him together, but they do help her to get to know herself.
And when he is around, it is so funny to poke and attack, to go looking for the missing parts, and to figure out that some of them are inside her, and that Connell did not know of their existence either.
It is a see-saw game that keeps her awake but in the best of ways.
Or at least it was. It all has changed with him moving away.
But he had to go.
She had to let him go.
The kettle chirps and it is as high pitched and raw as the scream inside Marianne’s heart.
It’s been six months and she still feels as if it was the day after she left him at the airport.
It is like she has been gone away with him.
She hasn’t changed, not more than any person changes in the span of six months, but she doesn’t feel the same.
She wonders if Connell feels that way too. He doesn’t show it on his emails, but Marianne thinks he must feel it, because how can someone not be different if a part of them has been ripped away?
But… is she still a piece of him, or someone else has patched the hole she left and embroidered colorful patterns on him, colors she would never manage to create herself.
She walks to the stove and takes out the kettle, settling aside as she throws a bag of tea on her mug.
Marianne sighs, tired, and frustrated at her own thoughts. Nothing on his emails suggests any of the sorts, he only talks about what he is writing, what he is seeing, and then wonders and poetically speaks about her in the most simple ways a man can speak. That is what makes Connell’s writing so good, it’s simple, it’s not over the top, it doesn’t try to impress you, it just… is. That’s what makes it beautiful, that’s what makes it wonderful. And she can tell that it has only gotten better.
She pours water into her mug and stirs the tea with a little spoon before putting sugar on it.
These thoughts… these thoughts that don’t belong to Connell but only to her, these thoughts that distort the reality she knows and has grown to love… she wants to get rid of them, but it is impossible, it is what her brain has chosen to fill the hole inside her own heart.
They’re strong, they’re loud, they strangle her and-
There’s a knock on the door.
Marianne furrows a brow and looks into its direction. She takes a sip of her tea and walks towards it.
She opens the door with her free hand and right there, he stands.
Her thoughts are weak, low, and melt with the heat of his glance.
And there’s not a hole in her heart.
And there’s no doubt.
And there’s no wonder.
There’s only him and the crazy realization that this isn’t a dream.