Alternate Reality Ramble 010

Intro

I've been MIA for a while and honestly, even though I've been writing and looking around...I haven't been free enough to put something up.
Rom coms and things like The Intern made me wonder about happy endings. How many of us think beyond the point where a couple reaches 'happily ever after'? Do you ever think about the future?
While in a relationship, should one discuss the future or does that mess up the dynamics of the entire relationship?
Honestly, I know very few couples who like to sit down and think about where they're heading...out loud and to each other. Recently, a friend of mine told me she suffered a break up because her boyfriend had decided he wasn't coming back to this country and her years of law school are almost over, meaning she can't practice outside this country. Needless to say, despite calling the guy a jackass, I admit that this is a tricky one. One that could have been avoided had they discussed their respective futures a few years before? Who knows.

To be completely fair, I ought to tell you now that I don't believe in love. But if I did...well. The world would be a much better, happier, and magical place.

In the spirit of happily ever afters, I present to you an incident that happened in to a couple while they were still in the alleged 'honeymoon stage' but I re-imagined it (obviously) and thought about how wonderful it would be if it had happened much MUCH later.

The Story

"I've never asked you about this. It kind of suddenly hit me...when did you know that you loved me?" he asked her, curiously.

"You've never asked before and it's been years! How do you expect me to remember?" she laughed at him while drinking her coffee cautiously so as not to burn her tongue. Back then, she reflected, she would have tried to gulp it down in one go and would have burnt her tongue most certainly. He had always been a tea person, however. But he would have had the caffeine if she had asked so she never did, anymore.

"I don't know. It seems significant. All of this -us- boils down to that moment, you know? I know when I-"

"Yes, it's fine. I know-you've told me many times," she interrupted him with her secret smile, the one that only he could bring out in her.

"SO, how come you've never told me about when it was that you fell in love with me? Wait a second-this is ridiculous! You're very good at avoiding topics and being vague so I'm going to insist on this. Tell me!" His stubborn tendencies suddenly kicked in and she hid another smile. Many things had changed but the spark that would always be him had a tendency to resurface at the oddest times.

"I don't know, honestly. What do you want me to say? I didn't fall in love with you the first few times we spoke, and I certainly couldn't have looked across the room and known who you were going to be to me- could I have?" she shook her head softly and put the coffee down. She walked to him and pulled him to the armchairs that faced each other in front of the electric fireplace. They both valued aesthetics and central heating, both.

"This is so frustrating. Honestly, you have no idea when? You know...that you knew? Come on, luv, give me something-anything!" He pulled her into his lap and she laughed at him, almost as if she was that young again.

"Feeling frisky, are we? Fine. How about this, I'll explain it because I don't know when exactly it happened. Only that it did and I kept denying my feelings and it only led to-well, this. So," she stroked his cheek as he watched and waited for her to continue with a patience she knew he didn't have,

"I didn't want to love you-it crept up like one of those things that you feel happening that you think you can divert but you can't. You want to stop it but the heat or the cold, it just creeps into your system and invades you and then one day...you realize you like it and you open yourself up to it and you realize that it's always been there and you can barely remember a time when you thought you had to fight it. It's a mixture of many many tiny little things, you know? Nothing big. No big epic moment," she sniggered, he had always been a great fan of the movies and the books...more so than her, since she preferred the swashbuckling adventures, the vegetarian dark elves, the power coursing through and all those things that crept in the dark. His eyes, his beautiful eyes that he had never appreciated until she couldn't stop looking into them; they implored her to continue and to make him understand.

"I liked how adorable and nervous you were all the time. How you were a gentleman until you weren't. I liked you with all your insecurities and your demons and the darkness you thought you had but was nothing compared to the one I hid inside of me. I liked that you could trust me enough to tell me the things you did because you and I both know now that I'm not very good at that. I loved how your eyes crinkled when you tried to come up with a good comeback and how you never made me feel bad about the things that other people normally shove at me. I liked how I knew all your expressions and you still didn't know most of mine. I liked how-" she was rudely cut off by him.

"Liked?" he asked, trying to keep a poker face on.

She leaned in, wrapped her left arm around his waist and whispered in his left ear, "And still do."

"Still?" he stroked her bare arms.

"Always," she smirked as she had successfully eluded his original question once again.

-x-