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“I don’t dance,” you say, looking at his outstretched hand.
It’s the truth. You don’t dance, you’re not even sure of the last time that you did, and you’re both rather underdressed.
“Come now, my dear,” he replies, giving you an encouraging smile. “For me?”
The two of you lock eyes, and you wonder if he knows what that phrase does to you. You wonder if he’s known how you feel longer than you have.
You and Otto were just friends at this point. Well, friends that happened to be sleeping together, but friends nonetheless. You had both agreed to be exclusive after the first few weeks, but that was as far as the two of you had gone in discussing any sort of commitment to one another. But now it’s been six months, and you’ve only recently discovered that your feelings run deeper than a personal admiration and sexual attraction towards him.
You smile when you finally take his hand. “For you. But you owe me one.”
He chuckles and pulls you close, sliding his other arm around your waist. “Later,” he agrees.
It’s already incredibly late as is, but you don’t argue with him. You lean against him and begin swaying to the music. So many thoughts bounce around in your head as you dance with Otto. He must be able to hear the gears turning in your brain, because he lets go of your hand to place his own under your chin, tipping your head up for a kiss. When he pulls away, you can’t stop looking at him. You kiss him before he can comment on it.
You break the kiss, and suddenly the entirety of the situation dawns on you, and you laugh.
“What?” he asks, seemingly infected by your good humor as he begins to laugh himself. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” you say, wrapping both arms around his neck. “I just realized that it’s two in the morning, on a fucking Monday of all days, and I’m slow dancing with a man in my underwear to some love songs on vinyl.” You lean your head against his chest again. “Feels like I’m in some sort of modern fairy tale.”
“Oh yeah? What does that make you and me, then?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” you reply, playing with the curls at the base of his neck. Ever since you expressed interest in pulling it, he started growing it back out. “You’re the genius here, Dr. Octavius. What do you think?”
“Well,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of your head, “I’ve never been one for fairy tales, I’ll admit, and there’s a reason I chose science over literature in my studies.” He hums. “However, if I had to make an honest guess, I think I’d say you’re the main character. You have your own struggles to overcome, your own adventures to take, your own allies and enemies to meet along the way, but eventually…” One of his hands slides down your arm, his fingers lacing with yours as he says, “You find somebody who serves as your love interest.” He brings your hand up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “I suppose I fit that position as good as any in this scenario.”
You stare at him wide-eyed, unsure of what to say.
Instead of allowing the silence to extend past the point of awkwardness, he continues. “Of course, for that to work, you’d have to love me.”
You swallow, nervousness overtaking you, and you laugh awkwardly. “You’d have to love me, too.”
“Who says I don’t?”
The room falls dead silent. You can’t even hear the music anymore, the sheer loudness of the implication of Otto’s question ringing in your mind and drowning out the rest of the world.
Then, Otto begins to pull away, and the spell is broken.
“I’m sorry if I misunderstood—”
In lieu of an explanation, you kiss him again, cutting off what would surely have been a misplaced apology, because of course you love him. Of course he understood you. He always does.
“I love you,” you say between kisses.
He picks you up with ease, hooking your legs around his waist, and kisses back. “I love you, too,” he whispers, cradling your head in one hand. “I love you so much.”
He carried you back to bed as the music continued playing, and you thought it was the perfect conclusion to your fairy tale.
If only it had lasted.
Six months later, you were on the opposite side of the country, nursing a broken heart. The research Otto had been conducting during your relationship with him led to a terrible accident, one that you barely escaped alive. You felt all but dead at this point, and Otto might as well have been if the news was anything to go by. He certainly wasn’t the man he used to be.
You lay in your bed, curled up in a blanket you snatched from his apartment before you skipped town, and an old t-shirt he’d given you. You scroll through pictures of him on your phone and force yourself not to cry. It takes you a month before you can finally bring yourself to delete them, along with your shared text thread.
After another month, you impulsively trash your phone and get a new one, along with another new number. You’d changed it once already, a couple of days after the accident and his first… rampage. But you couldn’t be too careful. You weren’t sure if you could take being contacted by him. Part of you thought about leaving the country altogether, but you already felt too far away. You wonder if you always will— if the invisible pull in your chest that screams at you to return to New York will always be there.
Not a day has gone by that you haven’t thought of him.
Yours and Otto’s story was certainly a fairy tale. Just not one with a happy ending.