Work Text:
Nathaniel Hawthorne had always believed that words, if studied long enough, would yield their secrets.
It was a comforting belief—orderly, predictable, safe.
Love, however, refused to cooperate.
It began as an academic curiosity. That was how he justified it, at least. One evening, tucked into the far corner of the library where the lamps cast warm halos over worn wooden tables, Nathaniel sat with three dictionaries, two philosophy books, and a notebook filled with increasingly frantic handwriting.
Love (noun): an intense feeling of deep affection.
He frowned.
“That’s useless,” he muttered under his breath, tapping his pen against the page. “Affection is just a softer word for attachment. That doesn’t explain anything.”
Across from him, Margaret Mitchell snorted without looking up from her own book.
“You’ve been arguing with that definition for ten minutes,” she said. “At this point, I think the dictionary might win.”
Nathaniel glanced up, irritation flickering—then fading almost instantly.
Margaret was leaning back in her chair, one leg tucked beneath her, her hair slipping loose from the ribbon she’d tied it with hours ago. There was ink on her fingers, smudged like she’d forgotten it was there. She always forgot things like that—ink, bookmarks, the time.
Nathaniel never forgot anything.
“Love,” he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “is too significant a concept to be reduced to something so… vague.”
Margaret turned a page lazily. “Or maybe it’s too big to be pinned down by a definition.”
“That’s a contradiction.”
“That’s life.”
Nathaniel huffed, but there was no real bite in it. There rarely was, not with her.
They had been best friends for years—since their first term at university, when Margaret had loudly declared his meticulously colour-coded notes “a crime against creativity” and proceeded to borrow them anyway. Since then, she had become a constant presence in his life, as steady and unquestioned as the sunrise.
Which was, perhaps, why he didn’t notice when things began to change.
His research deepened.
If dictionaries failed him, then philosophy would not. That was his next conclusion.
“Plato suggests love is the pursuit of beauty,” Nathaniel explained one afternoon, pacing as Margaret sprawled across his bed, listening with half-lidded eyes. “A kind of longing for something beyond oneself.”
Margaret hummed. “So basically, you see something pretty and go ‘I want that.’”
“That is an oversimplification.”
“But not inaccurate.”
Nathaniel paused mid-step, considering.
“…No,” he admitted reluctantly. “Not entirely inaccurate.”
Margaret grinned, satisfied, and rolled onto her stomach, chin propped in her hands. “So what are you going to do with all this?”
“I’m trying to understand it.”
“Why?”
The question caught him off guard.
He stopped pacing.
“I don’t like not understanding things,” he said after a moment.
Margaret studied him quietly. There was something softer in her expression now, something he didn’t quite know how to interpret.
“You don’t have to understand everything, Nate,” she said gently.
“I do,” he insisted. “Or at least—I should try.”
She didn’t argue further. She rarely did when he got like that—stubborn, focused, just a little too intense.
Instead, she smiled.
“Alright, professor,” she said. “Then figure it out.”
He tried.
He observed couples in cafés, noting how they leaned toward each other unconsciously, how their conversations dipped into quiet laughter that didn’t need explanation. He read poetry—reluctantly at first, then with growing fascination. He studied psychology, biology, even neuroscience.
Love, according to science, was chemical.
Love, according to literature, was transcendent.
Love, according to philosophy, was a paradox.
None of it fit together.
None of it felt complete.
And all the while, Margaret remained at the centre of his days.
“Do you ever think about it?” he asked her once, as they walked home under a sky streaked with orange and violet.
“Think about what?”
“Love.”
Margaret shrugged, kicking a pebble along the pavement. “Sometimes.”
“And?”
She glanced at him, a small smile tugging at her lips. “I think it’s probably simpler than you’re making it.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“It’s not some grand equation you have to solve,” she said. “It’s just… how you feel about someone.”
Nathaniel frowned. “But feelings are unreliable. They fluctuate.”
“Not all of them.”
He opened his mouth to argue—then stopped.
“…What do you mean?”
Margaret hesitated.
For just a second.
“Some feelings stick,” she said quietly. “Even when you don’t want them to.”
Nathaniel considered that long after she’d changed the subject.
The realisation did not come all at once.
It came in fragments.
In the way he began to notice the exact cadence of her laugh—and how different it sounded when it was genuine versus forced.
In how he started bringing an extra coffee without asking, already knowing what she’d want.
In the strange, unfamiliar tightness in his chest when she mentioned someone else—some passing acquaintance, nothing serious, nothing important.
At least, it shouldn’t have been important.
“Why does that bother me?” he murmured one night, staring at his notes.
There was no logical answer.
So he kept searching.
The answer, when it came, was devastatingly simple.
They were in the library again—the same corner, the same warm light.
Margaret was talking.
Nathaniel wasn’t listening.
Or rather, he was—but not to the words.
He was watching the way her eyes lit up as she spoke, the way her hands moved, expressive and unrestrained. He was noticing details he had seen a thousand times before, but now they felt… different. Sharper. More significant.
Important.
Important to him.
“…Nathaniel?”
He blinked.
“You’re staring,” Margaret said, raising an eyebrow.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I was thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Because something had shifted, and he couldn’t ignore it anymore.
“Margaret,” he said slowly, “can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
He hesitated.
For once—for once—he didn’t know how to phrase it.
“What does it mean,” he said carefully, “if a particular person occupies a disproportionate amount of your thoughts?”
Margaret tilted her head. “Define ‘disproportionate.’”
“They are the first thing you think of in the morning,” he said. “And the last at night. Their opinions influence your decisions. Their presence alters your mood. Their absence—”
He stopped.
Margaret was watching him very closely now.
“Their absence what?” she asked softly.
“…Feels wrong,” he finished.
Silence stretched between them.
Nathaniel’s heart was beating too fast. He noted it distantly, like an observer recording data.
Margaret didn’t speak.
Didn’t joke.
Didn’t deflect.
She just looked at him.
And then—very gently—she smiled.
“Nathaniel,” she said, “I think you already know the answer.”
He did.
That was the problem.
“I wanted to be certain,” he admitted.
“Of course you did.”
“I don’t like uncertainty.”
“I know.”
He swallowed.
“This feeling,” he said, voice quieter now, “it doesn’t align with any single definition I’ve studied. It’s… contradictory. Illogical.”
Margaret’s smile softened.
“Yeah,” she said. “That sounds about right.”
He let out a breath—something between a laugh and surrender.
“…I believe,” he said slowly, “that I am in love with you.”
There it was.
Clear. Precise. Undeniable.
For once, words had not failed him.
Margaret didn’t react immediately.
For a moment, she just held his gaze, something warm and unreadable flickering in her eyes.
And then she leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
Nathaniel blinked.
“…I beg your pardon?”
She laughed—soft, familiar, hers.
“I’ve been in love with you for years, Nate.”
Everything in his mind—every theory, every carefully constructed framework—collapsed in an instant.
“You—what?”
“I thought you’d figure it out eventually,” she said. “You figure everything out eventually.”
“I was conducting a systematic analysis—”
“Of your own feelings?”
“Yes.”
Margaret shook her head, still smiling.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“And yet,” he said faintly, “apparently loved.”
Her expression softened again.
“Yeah,” she said. “Apparently.”
Nathaniel exhaled slowly, the tension he hadn’t realised he was carrying finally easing.
“…I think,” he said, “that I may need to revise my research.”
Margaret grinned.
“Or,” she suggested, “you could stop researching and just… feel it.”
He considered that.
For a long moment.
And then, cautiously—like stepping into something unknown—he reached across the table and took her hand.
It was warm.
Steady.
Real.
“…This,” he said quietly, “is far more informative than any book.”
Margaret squeezed his hand.
“Good,” she said. “Because there’s no textbook for this.”
For once, Nathaniel didn’t mind.
Because for the first time, he understood.
Love wasn’t something to be defined.
It was something to be lived.