Work Text:
It’s winter days like this that remind Tao of the way things used to be. When the world was more simple, not so suffocating. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel that way again, but every night before he gets into bed he closes his eyes and mouths the word Please, murmurs it around his toothbrush as he’s brushing his teeth, minty foam gathering at the corner of his lips, repeats it like a mantra as he peels his duvet back, stares at the faded old glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to his bedroom ceiling as he tucks his cold feet into the recesses of his covers and thinks: Just grant me this one thing.
The sun shines low in the sky like a beacon of hope that is always on the verge of coming to fruition, but just never quite does. It should make sense, but it doesn’t, not in the slightest. There’s this thing, there, always, curled up at the bottom of his ribcage that refuses to budge, a dark spot that never fails to turn sour at the slightest touch. Sometimes he pokes at it just because he can, just to see what happens, and then regrets it instantly when anxiety clutches at his heart, a tight vice that won’t let go, no matter how long he spends trying to pry it open, so forcefully that he’s sure if it were something physical and real to the touch his fingers would split open from trying, bleed, profusely spill red all over his bedsheets and turn them a spotty dark brown, stains never able to come out.
Here, now, it hurts the least it ever has. Maybe it’s something to do with the notches of the tree and his fingers pressed to the carved letters tucked away beneath one of them. T + E. Those same letters are echoed inside of him, etched onto his heart, a permanent wound that isn’t really a wound at all: it has never bled, never ached, never caused a jolt of phantom pain that lingers for days afterwards.
He bites his lip, gnaws at it as he mulls over the possibility, before giving in to the desire and pulling his phone out of his back pocket and snapping a quick picture, about to forward it to Elle with the attached message Do you remember this? before he stops, thumb hovering over the send button. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe it would make it all worse. But they’re already at the point where he thinks it may be broken beyond repair, so what can it hurt? They broke up, thought better of it, got back together, and realised that they may have been right in the first place, that long distance would be too hard, so broke up again. They lost sight of themselves, each other, and now Tao is twenty years old and halfway through university and still hasn’t caught sight of it again. He hasn't seen Elle through anything but Instagram for over two years.
He presses send. He doesn't really expect her to reply, even. It's more to assuage something inside of him, something that he can't put a name to, has long given up trying. He's sliding his phone back into his pocket, fully set to turn on his heels and walk away, back home to his mum's cooking and the warmth of his childhood bedroom and the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree propped up in the lounge, when he feels his phone vibrate in his hand. And then again. It keeps on vibrating.
Belatedly, he realises it's his phone ringing. He’s sure it’s just a coincidence, nothing more than his hopes getting up, and it’s just his mum calling to ask when he’ll be back. It’s not Elle. It can’t be Elle.
He resolutely doesn’t look at the name at the top of the screen, just swipes the green button across and holds it up to his ear. That’s how sure he is.
But, instead of his mum’s soft, sweet tones, he hears a voice saying, “I remember.”
It’s a voice he hasn’t heard in two years, even if he’s dreamt it every night, the careful melody of it wrapping a tight knot around his heart that leaves him breathless in the early morning light. It’s a voice he thought he might never hear again, at least not in any lasting way.
He half thinks it should feel more pivotal than it does, but it just feels—right. Her voice down the line, tinny and weak and nothing at all like the comfortable weight of it in real life, but close enough. Close enough, when he’s gone so long without it. When he thinks that he would slip in through the doors of a church at a time it would be empty, devoid of community, to get on his knees in a back pew, just to pray to a god he has never once quite believed in, that has always proved elusive, all to ask for one more possibility of that voice. That touch. That love.
It’s not romantic, and he’s not trying to be. It’s just the truth, hidden and locked away inside of him, because showing it to the world hurts too much, would portray something that he isn’t ready to air. If he did, it might break him, split him in two, a cracking of his soul and self like the cracking of the ground in an earthquake. It’s a fault line always on the precipice of going off.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. For calling. For not calling. For trying. For not trying hard enough. For a multitude of things that he’d take all his life to apologise for, and what would be the point in that? Every second spent without her already feels like enough of a waste; spending the rest of it rehashing old, scarred wounds would be doubly so.
She must know that, though, because she just says, “I’m sorry too,” like he wouldn’t forgive her for anything in a heartbeat, like she has something to apologise for when even he doesn’t know what he’s apologising for.
It could go like this: I’m sorry. I love you. Let’s get back together. Fucking elope like two idiotic kids in their twenties who think they know everything, run into the sunset like we’re in some romantic drama film that I abhor. I love you. I’m sorry.
For all he knows, it might be simpler that way. Might make more sense, if anything is ever capable of making sense. The older he gets, the less he feels like it does. He remembers being younger, sitting at a desk in school, learning how to add and multiply and how to shape his letters, write the sequence of his own name, and seeing the evolution of humans from the simplest lifeform, and he thought, Yes, I get it. Now, he’s not sure if he actually did, if he wasn’t just nodding along because he thought that’s what he had to do, because he was too young to ponder the big question of does anything ever actually make sense?
Now, he thinks, no, it doesn’t. Nothing ever does. Least of all this. His fingers tracing the shape of his initial with the catch of his fingernail, ghosting over the plus in between, reverently hovering over the letter that ends it all off, the first letter of the name that is a closing to his story too. He was born alone but he began and he will end with her. He’s touching the marks of clumsy teenagers who thought they had the entire world cupped in the palms of their hands, silly enough to think such an innocuous rite of passage would matter at all, her voice drifting through the crappy speakers of his phone, saying his name, asking how he is, what he’s been up to, and all he can think is: I don’t know how to exist in this world without you. I think that’s unhealthy but I’m not sure I care. Say you hate me and I’ll go. Say you want me and I’ll stay. Forever. Eternally. Whatever word you like best.
But he knows it wouldn’t help any. If there was ever such a thing as putting back together the jagged edges of two broken pieces, it wouldn’t be that easy. It would take time, care, everything that they don’t have, at least not right now. In five years, maybe. Ten, twenty, thirty, it could work. But she’s one end of the country and he’s the other and even if it’s not as long of a distance as it would be if they were in, say, the US or China or even fucking Russia, it feels a million miles longer, than all of those combined. They’re too young for such things. Maturity hasn’t quite yet settled into them, hasn’t become second nature that they can pluck out of themselves to know that things will always get better, that it doesn’t stay bad the entire time, and there’s things to look forward to. Minuscule things. Some bigger things. Even if the universe never opens up wide for them, the littler parts of life will always be enough, if they make sure to view it that way.
They just need time. He gets that now. He might’ve before, somewhere deep down, but not cognitively. They need time, and he would wait until his last, rattling breath if he had to, would wait even beyond that if he could, if there’s some semblance of afterlife out there, if that’s somewhere they could be happy too.
I love you, he thinks, as he tells Elle bye and she laughs and says he can ring her whenever, that she’ll always answer his call. I love you, he thinks, as he spares one last glance at that tree, at that carving, those letters, and walks back home under the darkening sky. Lamplight casts shadows on his face and his shoes strike the pavement in a staccato rhythm, heart pulsing in time with it, beating out the words over and over.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I’ll come back to you. One day. It just takes time.