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It does not take you long in your partnership to realize Harry does not love you the way you love him. A fact that you don't like to think about because the idea terrifies you.
But thats just the nature of love isn't it? In friendships, relationships—even partnerships such as yours—one will always love more than the other. One will always give more than the other.
Which means, inevitably, that one will also always take more.
Even when two lovers might bicker that "No, I love YOU more!" only one is ever actually right. Love is an inherently unbalanced affair.
You were always terrified of being on the other side of the equation. Of being the one who didn't love as intensely as the other did. Of shared moments of affection where you might guiltily think "This person loves me far more than I could ever love them. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with them?" Because why would anyone ever love you more than you love yourself? What could they possibly gain from it?
You never figured that out, but you always liked to imagine that if you got into a relationship, it would be with someone who was smart enough to find a reason to love you that you had somehow missed.
The closest you ever got was with Rada. And she had loved you, maybe. You're not actually sure. You're starting to think maybe you misjudged this whole romance thing entirely. You met her mom, she lived with you. You were a unit. She was someone you could bring up in social situations, at work, so as not to be hounded. You tried to be someone she could show her mom—Lieutenant Berdyayeva—that didn't disappoint her. You're not sure you ever succeeded. You two were close, fond even, but not in love.
She complained about there being a closed offness about you that shouldn't be between lovers. She said, somewhat abashedly, that you'd both been too distant, and she wanted to fix that. You hadn't noticed anything was wrong, but she was so earnest. She wanted there to be more between the two of you. She really wanted it to work out.
It didn't. You knew instantly it was your fault; you didn't love her like that. You're not sure you're capable of loving anyone like that. Maybe you were born incapable of it.
But it's not that you are incapable of love. In fact it is the opposite; you love quite deeply. You love more than should be humanly possible, so much that you are drowning in it, your lungs overflowing. You smoke in the hopes that it might one day destroy your lungs and any love they hold.
Because you do love Harry. You love him as much as a brother, far more than you love yourself. Perhaps more than anyone else loves Harry Du Bois, because Harry Du Bois does not even love himself.
Because even Harry knows loving him is a losing affair. Has known as much since Dora left him. He is incapable of love much like you, but not for the same reason. His ability to love was broken by life; yours was broken from birth.
This is why it is more terrifying than you could have ever imagined to realize that you love him more than he loves you. Now you are the one who cares so intensely about what happens to that miserable drunk that you cannot even justify it. You cover for him. You don't want him to lose his job. You want him to get better, to want to be better. To be someone worth loving, so that others might love him again as well, so that you don't feel so fucking stupid for loving him at all, so that you can stop resenting him for it.
But he doesn't want to get better, and he doesn't care what you think. You wonder if he even really cares about you at all. You're not his first or even third partner. You're not his equal and he will be the first to tell you that. You're just his satellite. Someone made to orbit him. It's a role made for someone like you. Never getting too close or too far, lest you fall out of orbit, but always there. Reliable, dependable. A companion in misery.
You love him and you hate him for it. He likes you, relies on you, but he does not let himself love you because he also hates himself. Because all love and happiness bled out of him when that damn blonde bitch left him and he thinks he is undeserving of anything more. You want to roll your eyes at his self-importance. But here you are, trying and failing to save him from himself anyways, so maybe he was right in a way.
You chew hard enough on the end of a pen that the plastic creaks dangerously. It's midday and he hasn't shown up to work again. Lately your love takes the form of a swift kick to his slumped, drunk, body before you hoist him off the floor of some dive bar that he never went home from. It's unhealthy, even you recognize this. It will destroy you.
But you can't give up on him. He's a brilliant detective, and despite the numerous years on the job he still cares immensely. He cares about Revachol and her people as much as you do. You think that before he stopped being capable of love, that he was drowning in it too. That he loved as much as an innocent could love.
And sometimes, when it's just the two of you, he has this bizarre moment of lucidity where he looks at you as if he knows your every secret, and gently puts a hand on your shoulder as if to say I understand and also I'm sorry.
You want him to get better but you also want to be needed by him. You want him to love himself and for him to love you, but you're also a hypocrite who still hasn't figured out what there is to even love about you.
You can't stop loving him, even when that love takes the form of bloodied noses and bruised knuckles. Even when it takes the form of loud arguments and agressive mocking, of pouring salt in each other's wounds only to turn around and offer to lick them. Even when he tries to push you and everyone else away, to drown in his sorrows until they choke him. Even if loving him is like loving a blackhole.
(Nevermind that loving you is worse than loving a blackhole, because at least the blackhole does not berate you for it)
Your life must be a tragedy because even though you are incapable of love you cannot stop loving a man who can no longer love in any capacity. You lash out because he is unstable and you know that loving him is a reflection of just how unstable you are. That if he could just get himself together the both of you could suddenly pass as normal, and you would not care that you are broken because he would love you even still and you could believe then that, to someone, you matter.
But that is not the case, and you know that it will never be the case, because you are not Harry Du Bois' first partner and you know, with unflinching certainty, that you will not be his last.