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Gigi only ever wanted to be loved—but apparently, even that was asking too much of the universe. It wasn’t about grand gestures or perfect moments. Just a hand to hold. A reason to stay. A place that felt like hers.
And maybe… someone who chose her. Freely. Quietly. Consistently.
Now she stood outside Cecilia’s bedroom, staring at the chipped white doorframe like it might offer her a clue, a crack in the wall of silence. She could picture her behind it—sitting by the window, arms crossed, posture too upright. Fingers pressed to her temple in that way she did when she was trying not to feel. Like pressure could drown emotion if applied just right.
Gigi hated that she knew that.
She hated that she knew how Cecilia took her tea—barely steeped, barely sweet. That her quietest affection came in offhand moments, easy to miss if you weren’t looking.
“Cute,” Cecilia had murmured once when Gigi showed her chipped, freshly painted nails. She’d held Gigi’s hand without hesitation, fingers cool and careful, tracing the pinky nail like it mattered. Just for a second. Then she let go, as if even tenderness came with a timer.
Another time, they’d sat on the stairwell in silence. Cecilia had leaned her head on Gigi’s shoulder—not quite asleep, not quite present. And when Gigi ran her fingers lightly along the shape of her jaw, Cecilia didn’t flinch. She let her. Let Gigi trace her face like a map, as if she understood the need to memorise something fleeting.
But there were other days.
The colder ones. The ones that made Gigi question if she’d imagined the softness.
Days when she’d reach for Cecilia’s hand and feel it go stiff beneath hers—then slowly, methodically, be pulled away.
“Don’t,” Cecilia would whisper, her voice barely carrying. “Not today.” She’d never explain what ‘today’ meant. Whether it was pain. Or fear. Or guilt. Only that it was enough to keep her at a distance.
Once, when Gigi tried to cup her face again—same touch, same intention—Cecilia had turned away like she couldn’t bear it.
“You make it too easy to forget,” she said tightly.
“Forget what?”
Cecilia hadn’t answered.
Gigi had clung to those soft moments like lifelines. But the cold ones stayed longer. Echoed louder. Built walls around whatever she thought they were building.
And still, she kept showing up. Maybe that was the most fragile kind of hope—the kind that kept walking toward someone who didn’t always open the door. The kind that mistook silence for patience and mixed uncertainty with almosts.
Now, outside that chipped white door, she felt all of it—every warmth, every recoil—pressed like a weight across her chest.
She leaned closer, ear hovering near the door, and then caught herself.
She wasn’t going to eavesdrop.
She wasn’t going to knock.
She wasn’t going to beg.
Instead, she stood there—still, uncertain—paralysed by the weight of three minutes and the quiet hum of almost-love stretching too thin. Wondering if this ache in her chest was proof she was asking for too much. Again.
It wasn’t like the world was ending.
But it did feel like it was shrinking—inch by inch, minute by minute—with every second she stood there thinking of everything they weren’t.
Three minutes.
Then she turned. Not out of strength, but surrender.
She didn’t make it back to her room.
Somewhere between her door and the stairwell, she stopped. Her chest was too tight. Her breath, too shallow. The not-knowing had finally begun to rot.
So she pivoted.
Not with drama, not with some grand resolve—just… quietly. Like an afterthought. Like maybe if she walked casually enough, she could fool herself into believing it wasn’t a big deal.
She took the long way. Through the hallway, past the kitchen, around the common room like it meant nothing. Her steps felt light and heavy at the same time. Her chest felt tighter with each one.
And when she reached Cecilia’s door again—she didn’t knock.
She opened it.
When soft yellow lamplight greeted her. Gentle, familiar. Lying through its teeth. Gigi had completely forgotten why she’d even come here.
Maybe she wanted to ask if Cecilia thought Gigi was worthy of her affections. But that thought quickly drifted, further from the gremlin’s lips, but not further than she could reach. If Gigi were braver, maybe she would’ve caught it and placed it back to say.
Cecilia stood by the window, arms folded like she was keeping herself stitched together. The rain tapped against the glass behind her, soft and rhythmic, like a ticking clock she was trying to outlast.
She turned when she saw Gigi. Not startled. Just... surprised.
She didn’t say anything.
So Gigi filled the air. Maybe it was an attempt to smooth over the awkwardness of having no reason to be there. I had a reason.
“Wow,” she said, stepping in lightly. “Is that a new rug?”
It wasn’t. It was that same green rug Cecilia always had.
Cecilia blinked once. Didn’t answer.
Gigi shuffled her feet, looking down at the faded pattern. “I mean, it’s not new, is it? I guess I’m just distracted… Or maybe the light’s playing tricks.”
The silence thickened again.
Gigi’s voice softened, like she was trying to catch a slipping thought. “I thought maybe… maybe I could say something here. Something important.” Her eyes flicked up, meeting Cecilia’s for a heartbeat. Then quickly away.
“But it’s like that feeling just slipped through my fingers,” she said, voice rough around the edges. “Like it didn’t want to be said after all.”
Cecilia’s gaze softened, but she remained still, arms loosely hugging herself.
Gigi took a small step closer. I guess I wanted to ask if you think… if I’m worth it. Worth your time. Your affection.
But she couldn’t hold the question. It floated just out of reach, swallowed by the quiet room and the steady rain.
So instead, she sighed and said, “The rug’s still the same.”
Cecilia’s lips curved into a small, knowing smile.
“The rug’s still the same.”
And that was enough for the moment.
…
Until it wasn’t.
Because even if Gigi didn’t say any of it, the questions were still there—crowding the back of her throat, folding themselves into the spaces between her ribs.
Do you want me?
Am I allowed to be wanted?
Do I make things harder for you? Or easier? Or nothing at all?
She stepped closer. Not intentionally. Her body just moved that way, slowly, like her heart was walking her forward in pieces.
Cecilia didn’t move. But her eyes shifted—flicked to Gigi’s hands, then back to the window. Like she could feel the question hanging in the air too.
Gigi tried to swallow the ache. It didn’t go down easy.
There’d been days where this closeness—this exact distance—had meant something. Not dramatic, not loud. Just a breath shared across the quiet. The slope of a shoulder leaned into. The weight of a hand resting just long enough to say I’m here.
But there were other days, too. Ones that left fingerprints in reverse—ghosts of touches withheld.
Not today, Cecilia would say.
And Gigi had never asked what that meant. She only knew what it felt like: standing too close to something that kept pulling away.
She was next to her now. Not touching, but close enough to see the tired edge to Cecilia’s posture. The tightness in her jaw she always had when she was trying not to say something.
And maybe this was why Gigi kept stepping closer anyway—because some part of her was still convinced that love, even bruised and inconsistent, might be coaxed back if she stayed long enough. If she didn’t leave first.
Gigi blinked. Wet lashes. Dry eyes.
Her fingers curled into her sleeves. A protective habit she thought she’d unlearned.
She tilted her head slightly, searching Cecilia’s expression for any sign of softness. Any flicker of yes. Of stay. Of you’re not wrong for wanting this.
But Cecilia was hard to read. She always had been. Not cold. Just… unreadable. Like she lived three thoughts ahead and never brought anyone with her.
Is today one of them? Gigi wondered.
The question didn’t land like a crack this time. It just hovered there. Soft. Hesitant. Like maybe—just maybe—she could still wait to find out.
Gigi shifted, gathering breath in her lungs like she might finally say it. Something true. Something naked.
But just before her mouth could form the shape of it—
Cecilia turned.
Not sharply. Not cruelly.
But with that quiet, practised detachment of someone who’d learned too well how to self-protect. Her gaze dropped to the floor, then drifted toward the window, as if the rain might offer her an escape.
Her arms folded tighter around herself. Like she was bracing for impact. Or sealing something in.
And without looking at Gigi, she said—softly, almost apologetically—
“Gigi… please, not today either.”
Not today.
So today is that kind of day.
Gigi doesn’t cry. Doesn’t feel her heart breaking, exactly. It’s quieter than that. Like a muscle going still. Like forgetting the shape of something by force.
She takes a full step back. Grasps her sleeves tighter.
And in the way only she would—she smiles. Wide. Too wide. Wide enough that maybe, if she looked at herself in a mirror, she’d believe it.
“Okay,” she says. Airy. Careful. “Okay.”
If not today, then another day.
She could wait. She’d done it before.
She glances toward the rain-slick window, pretending there’s something out there worth seeing. Maybe the way the lamplight softens through the glass. Maybe the vague blur of headlights skating across the far wall. Anything to look at that isn’t Cecilia.
Silence, again.
But this one feels different. Not thick. Not charged. Just… hollow. Like something has already left the room.
Gigi tugs her sleeves down over her hands, fidgeting with the seam. She almost turns to go. Almost gives Cecilia the quiet she asked for.
But instead, she says—so softly it barely exists:
“You know, I rehearse it. What I’d say. Every time.”
She doesn’t look at her. Keeps her eyes fixed on her own shoes, like even glancing up might make the words run and hide.
“I change it every time, too. Just in case this time you’re softer. Or more tired. Or more ready.”
She lets out a half-laugh, thin and dry. “I don’t even know what I think I’m waiting for. You to catch me mid-sentence and say it back? That you want me too?”
She lifts her chin—just slightly—and finally meets Cecilia’s eyes.
“And I know you do. In your way. But sometimes it’s hard to breathe in your way.”
There’s a beat of nothing.
Cecilia opens her mouth like she might say something—but then closes it. Her hand curls tighter over her forearm. Her jaw works, once. Twice. The silence settles back in, familiar as an old bruise.
Gigi almost apologises for speaking. Like her wanting was rude. But instead, she nods. Just once. It’s so small it might not even register.
Then she steps back again, toward the door.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be today.”
She thinks about adding I’ll still be here tomorrow, but swallows it down before it can surface.
Because she doesn’t know that. And she’s tired of making promises her chest can’t cash.
Instead, she gives Cecilia a version of a smile. It’s quieter this time. Smaller. More honest, maybe.
And then she walks out.
The rug’s still the same beneath her feet. But everything else feels different.
She walked.
Past her bedroom. Past the stairwell where they'd once sat in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Past the kitchen where Cecilia had once, absentmindedly, placed a hand at the small of her back just to reach something high on the shelf.
Up.
Higher and higher until the building ran out of hallway and only the sky remained.
The rooftop door gave under her hand with a reluctant creak.
It’s raining.
Not in a cinematic way. Not a storm, not a flood. Just a steady curtain of water, soft and constant. The kind that asked nothing of you except to let it fall.
She stepped into it without hesitation. The cold caught her instantly, threading into her sleeves, her hair, the spaces behind her knees. It soaked her socks. Her eyelashes. Her lungs.
She didn’t care.
The city blurred in front of her—just shapes and smears of light, all grey and silver and too-far-down. The kind of view that made you feel small, and not in a freeing way. In the way that reminded you: even now, nothing stops for your pain.
The world hadn’t ended.
But something in her had. Quietly. Irrevocably.
And still—no tears. Only stillness. A breath caught somewhere too deep to find.
She stood there, motionless, letting the rain soak her through like it might do the impossible: soften the ache, strip her bare of hope, rinse her clean of the what-ifs.
Because it’s raining today. And somehow, that was the only thing that made sense.
The door clicked shut behind Gigi, and silence filled the room like a weight Cecilia wasn’t calibrated to bear.
She stayed by the window, arms folding across her chest like a circuit trying to contain a surge—an ache that pulsed beneath her synthetic ribs, part static, part something achingly human.
It was easier to hold Gigi close in those fleeting moments, when the world fell away and all that mattered was the warmth of her skin against Cecilia’s own—soft flesh brushing against porcelain and wire. Easier to lean her head on Gigi’s shoulder, to let the quiet hum of a single breath steady the storm inside her—if only she didn’t calculate the cost.
Because behind every touch was the dilemma she couldn’t erase: the knowledge this wouldn’t last. That softness would always short-circuit into distance, closeness would fracture into absence, and one day—
One day, Gigi wouldn’t be there to catch her, to hold her hand, to remind her what it meant to be alive.
That was the real terror.
An endless stretch of tomorrows ahead for Cecilia—a timeline she was built to follow—without the person she loved most.
So she withdrew. Softness replaced by distant words.
A push, then a retreat.
She was selfish for wanting Gigi, and selfish for not daring to stay.
It was easier to be brave in fragments—to offer moments of tenderness without promising forever.
But to stick around long enough to miss that touch—to watch Gigi slip away—that was a fault Cecilia wasn’t sure she could withstand.
Her mind raced three steps ahead, always running algorithms of loss waiting to execute.
And so she kept everyone at arm’s length—even Gigi—because maybe that was the only way for a mechanical heart to survive a love that wasn’t meant to last.
She hated herself for it. But the fear ran too deep, deeper than any power cell could shield. She didn’t know if she could be brave enough to stay.
Stay and risk breaking when Gigi finally slipped through her fingers.
Stay and face the ache of knowing that love for her would always be borrowed time.
She thought back—unbidden, unwelcome, but impossible to silence—to gentler days.
Days when Gigi had fallen asleep beside her, peaceful and unaware, and Cecilia traced gentle circles along her cheek with fingers that didn’t tire, whispering about some late-night project she’d been tinkering with too long.
The way Gigi’s eyelashes fluttered in dreams, how she never pulled away when Cecilia’s hand lingered like a promise.
And rainy afternoons, when Gigi would carefully shield her from the relentless drizzle, knowing too well the painstaking maintenance required to purge water from her synthetic frame.
“I hate that part,” Cecilia had said once, voice low, more confession than complaint. “But you make it easier.”
Even now, the memory sat behind her frame like a ghost touch—warmth and ache, layered.
The room smelled faintly of tea and singed circuitry. Silence settled over everything like dust, thick and unyielding.
She flexed her fingers, hearing the soft mechanical whirr beneath the skin. A quiet reminder: her heart wasn’t there.
But still—somehow—it ached.
I wish I could be simpler.
I wish I could just be human enough to stay without thinking about how it ends.
But she wasn’t. She was circuitry and silence, wire and want. A body built to last forever, carrying a soul that trembled at the thought of holding anything temporary too tightly.
And somewhere deep inside—where programming blurred with prayer—Cecilia wondered if love was a code she’d never quite learn to debug.
A slow breath escaped her, shaky and long, as if she’d been holding it since Gigi left. The quiet in the room pressed against her skin, heavier now.
Still, she stood. Still, she moved. Not to fix things. Not to undo the ache. Just—maybe—to see her. Just for now.
Her feet took her down the hall in small, unsure steps. She paused outside Gigi’s door, hand raised midair like a question.
A soft knock. No answer.
She tried again, this time with a little more hope tucked inside her knuckles.
Still nothing.
Her fingers hovered over the doorknob for a breath too long before she pushed it open.
Empty.
No gremlin. Just the faint scent of dust and disuse—like warmth had once lingered here, and the ghost of someone trying not to be missed.
The rooftop was quiet, except for the soft, insistent rhythm of rain against concrete.
Gigi didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The ache in her chest wasn’t sharp—it was dull and deep, the kind that made it hard to tell where the pain ended and she began.
She stood in it, soaked and still, her hair sticking to her face, her sleeves heavy with water.
She had nothing left to offer the silence but her presence. And maybe even that was too much.
She tried not to replay it. The way Cecilia had turned away. The sound of her voice, soft but certain—not today either.
Gigi’s ribs curled around it like they always did, trying to protect something already too bruised to salvage.
It had to be her. Of course it was.
Too much. Too open. Too everything. She always ruined it by asking for more than she deserved.
Maybe Cecilia had been waiting for the right moment to pull away. Maybe Gigi had just given her the perfect one.
She swallowed, barely. The weight of her own thoughts was enough to drown her.
And then—
the rooftop door creaked behind her.
She didn’t turn. Didn’t dare. Just breathed, barely, and braced.
It was worse to hope than to hurt.
But the footsteps—quiet, familiar—still came. She didn’t need to look to know who they belonged to.
Cecilia.
Of course. She came to stand beside her—not close, not touching, just enough to be there.
And despite Cecilia never liking the rain, never wanting to get soaked or deal with the annoyance of soggy clothes and the inevitable maintenance that followed—she still chose to stand here, beside Gigi, in the heavy fall of it all.
To say it didn’t bring that hope crawling back would be a lie.
Cecilia was kind. Maybe that was why she kept Gigi so close, allowed her things she didn’t deserve.
Gigi waited for the soft crush of apology. Or the edge of explanation. Or the impossible kindness of something like clarity.
None came. Just silence. Just rain. Just two bodies pretending this didn’t ache.
Then Cecilia’s voice—low, unsure:
“It’s colder than I thought it would be.”
Gigi blinked once. Rain or not, it stung.
A pause. Then Cecilia added, “But… it’s nice. From up here.”
As if they were just two people sharing weather. As if nothing had been lost in the room downstairs.
Gigi’s fingers curled into the damp hem of her sleeves. She didn’t know how to respond to this. Didn’t know what this moment was supposed to be.
An offering? A comfort?
A performance?
No.
She could feel it in the space between them—whatever this was, it wasn’t meant to change anything.
Still, even now, Gigi’s heart leaned toward her like it always did. Like it didn’t know how not to.
She spoke quietly. Not bitter. Just tired. “You didn’t have to console me.”
Cecilia didn’t answer. Just kept looking outward, like the skyline might excuse her silence. A breath escaped Gigi. Thin. Unsteady.
“I know I talk too much. Push too hard. I know I get in your space. I’m sorry.”
No reply. Not even a twitch.
Gigi waited for the thing she wanted most.
It’s not you.
You’re not too much.
I want you still.
But it didn’t come. So she nodded, eyes on her shoes.
“I just…” Her voice cracked around the words. “I thought maybe if I loved you gently enough, you wouldn’t mind.”
Still nothing.
The wind shifted. The rain carried on. And Cecilia said nothing.
Gigi didn’t expect her to. So she took a step away. And stayed.
Because even now—even with her heart full of splinters—she couldn’t walk away from the one person who’d chosen, even wordlessly, to follow her here.
Even if it meant nothing.
Cecilia stands still, her eyes flickering to Gigi’s with a weight that speaks louder than words. In them, Gigi sees every doubt she’s ever carried—the question circling endlessly in her mind: Do you think I’m worthy of your affections? She doesn’t know the answer. Not really.
But right now, looking at Cecilia—at the subtle twisting of her features, the quiet guilt shadowing her gaze—Gigi feels like she doesn’t need the answer today.
She would wait forever.
She would rise from the grave or fall from heaven—anything—so long as Cecilia’s softness remained, even if only in fragments.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe she loves too much.
Her voice cracks, barely above a whisper. “Cecilia,” she starts, the weight of the words nearly collapsing her. “I think… I love you. And I want to be worthy. Worthy to stand beside you.”
She swallows, the silence thick and waiting. “Maybe… maybe I have to learn how to be alone first. Before I can stand beside anyone else.”
Cecilia’s eyes soften, but there’s a shadow behind them—something like guilt, or regret. She shifts slightly, voice low, almost hesitant, as if afraid to break the fragile quiet.
“I think I need to learn something too.” She says it softly, like she half hopes it doesn’t reach Gigi’s ears.
There’s a pause, the rain tapping softly outside, filling the space between them.
“I think… I want to be able to love you, Gigi.” There’s almost a stutter in her voice. “I really do.”
She doesn’t say more. Doesn’t promise she can, only that she wants to try—if that’s enough, for now.
And in that moment, Gigi understood—Cecilia wasn’t just holding back from her, she was holding back from herself. From a love that terrified her with its fragility. Maybe Cecilia needed to learn to stand alone too, to be whole enough to give love without breaking apart.
That didn’t make the ache any easier. But it meant they weren’t alone in this—both fractured, both scared, both reaching toward something they couldn’t quite touch yet.
Gigi takes a slow breath, the moment hanging between them—unspoken, unresolved, but somehow somewhere.