Milou [1/3]
anonymous
December 31 2009, 07:50:19 UTC
I'm not exactly sure where this came from. Probably the result of eating too many chocolates during the holidays and listening to "Norwegian Wood" one too many times.
This little AU features stuck-in-a-rut-both-professionally-and-emotionally Belgium as an out of work chocolatier and very-recently-widowed England as a mourning writer. Like with the name Anaïs, most of Belgium's personality or tone is entirely my fabrication since she has yet to be featured in the webcomics. Abuse of artistic license I call it.
Also, this is unforgivably confusing and depressing.
To be honest nothing romantic happened, not in the least. But we were both too desperate to notice or care, too busy being wrapped in our own respective deaths-- you over the only person who ever really loved you and me over myself. Like the ice-encrusted glass in the left corner of my decrepit apartment. Cracking at the edges. I think once, when you were sober but just barely, you mentioned that you'd fix that for me. “I’m alright, but it’s too bloody chilly for a lady.”
You never seemed to mind my apartment, or maybe it was because you were always drunk-- I'll always remember you as a drunk, for all your redeeming intelligence-- when you visited so that the dust gathering on the floors or the paint cracking at the edges were all a heavy blur to your spinning, alcoholic world. Even as we rolled on it you never seemed to mind or notice and just went on your merry way strolling down the narrow lane on my collar bone with your dry lips pressed on my shivering skin-- it was always so cold in there, do you remember?-- as if we were making love on a five-star hotel bed, or even just a normal one.
Laughing when you heard about the fate of my poor bed, you held me close. Ale was in your very soul. You mentioned that you liked it bitter now-- “Funny because I like my tea sweet”-- as you sampled my leftover chocolates. You lingered over the truffles but didn’t dare touch them: always the bittersweets.
"What are you doing here?" I think I asked you the first time, and after the first time I only asked "Why are you here?" though maybe that was a more important question. Licking cocoa off my fingers, you'd answer the same way the entire time "Why did you let me in, Anne?" like you were trying to be sober-- you were in no way sober, because you were either drowning in alcohol or drowning in your own sorrow. I never answered you because I didn't really know myself: I wanted you to think I'd picked up promiscuity from 'that damned frog' so that you wouldn't think of me as the 'good woman' from year ago when everything went wrong. You wouldn’t regret anything from back then, nothing from now.
I remember years ago I was the catch you missed. You were too busy pouring over the words of dead poets to hold me, and I didn’t care for the words of dead men. I wanted life and good food; you wanted elegiac fancies for your four walls. “I think you’re mistaken,” but I don’t think I was. Tragedies were fascinating because you were happy than, or as happy as a lonely genius could be. You lived in a terrible warped fantasy. Even frogs knew more on love than you.
“Sempiternal,” you’d told me, cigarette dangling from your writer’s hands. “She is eternal.” And I didn’t question it. Love made you say silly things, no matter how late you discovered it. Silly things in purple prose. “I love her.” I agreed, you must have. She loved you too, I could see it-- your lucid eyes still searching for her light. “She loves me. Loved.” You took a drag on the cigarette, holding your breath ‘til your eyes watered. I pretended not to know that they were there even before the smoke began to burn your lungs-- emotion was one thing you couldn’t do, even if your writing cried you would not have a single tear in your eye but waste inside instead. “She wasn’t supposed to die.” I agreed to this too, because my heart was not supposed to die either.
Milou [2/3]
anonymous
December 31 2009, 07:52:47 UTC
We didn’t exchange full stories, only volumes of truth. I was alone and broke, you were alone and broken: the only things we knew for sure because anything else would never be touched. I would never tell you who left me alone, though you knew deep inside. I’d sing epics instead about why I was broke. And you, you were alone your whole life so you did not speak of it. But you never told me why she died, even as we passed the coffin makers (I never knew why they decided to set up there. It was off-putting, the whole place. No one liked it.)
"Awful here, isn't it?" You had said one time, not even looking at me with your deep, sad eyes-- that's another thing I'll remember, your sad green eyes set below your dark brows-- as you gestured at the streets we walked. "Why don't you move? There was another apartment not too far from here. Much better neighbourhood." I shrugged and stole a cigarette from your pocket, fishing for a lighter while I was at it. "Too expensive. And I'm unemployed right now." Though what I really meant was ‘I like it here, I grew up here.’ In your way, you still knew what I had meant and responded with a small 'oh'-- you and your manners, it'd come at the strangest times-- as you burrowed deeper into your clean-cut jacket. It was evening, the sun had already finished setting. You excused yourself, mumbling into your scarf ‘I’m sorry, take care’ as we stopped in front of my apartment. I should have invited you in but I was so cold. Colder than I ever was inside. “Good night. Take care.” And you’d smiled slowly “I’ll try, Anaïs.” But you were gone before I could ever correct your pronunciation.
I was convinced you wouldn't come back. ‘Anaïs’ seemed to be the end of our-- I wouldn’t call it ‘affair’. But you did, just as drunk as before with a stack of poems packed inside your jacket.
You arrived with rum on your breath and a name on your lips. I let you in just like the last time, accepting all your drunken mumbling as I offered my dusty floor in return. You spoke without end, without sense, and didn't touch me (kiss me, tell me that you were sorry) like the first time. I sat next to you to watch you in your slow, drunken stupor call a name I hated ('Anne', though you could hardly say ‘Anaïs’), and a name I didn't know ('Elizabeth', you never told me how she died). When I laid my blanket over you, you twisted and turned as if to try to choke yourself on it and I was probably right since we'd both wanted to die at that time. I took it away so that your bones would feel the chill I felt every night, shushed you so that I could kiss you on your feverish forehead below your messy head of blonde. In the morning, the sunlight pouring all over your face, you'd awoken and stayed for a while.
I wonder if you knew that when you recited your poetry at the sun, you’d already stolen my heart. And I remember back then, before you were an intelligent, hopeless drunk that you were effortless as if you breathed the very language of the artists. You were more than brilliant: you were a genius. In your loneliness you spited your fellows with Donne then turned around to love with Shakespeare. As surreal as the words you spoke. I hated that. But I loved it too because it was so very you, even if back then I cherished life more than anything.
The last line was spoken and you started to dress again as if nothing ever happened. I stopped you and said ‘why don’t you stay?’ to which you responded ‘I can’t’. Then I asked ‘what happened to her’ you blubbered out ‘she died’ and I knew now for sure that you were not the same person from those lyrical days. You should have said ‘she passed on like the Lady of Shalott’.
But after that I had proof: our hearts were damaged goods. Is that how you found me, Arthur? Because we were both hurt?
Milou [3/3]
anonymous
December 31 2009, 07:53:31 UTC
Sipping on wine you’d bought on your way over, you’d told me again that Elizabeth was a golden immortal. Never to die, ever to shine. Transcending beauty. Outlasting everything. She drove you mad, didn’t she? You never told-- you kept too many secrets-- but she showered you with love you never had and you loved her for it. And I, your mistress in her deserted apartment, must have been a poor substitute as all my love had already been spent on the one who got away.
“He didn’t know what he had.” You’d said, cigarette caught between lean fingers. I whisked it away to my own lips than, the only protest being your slow reluctance. “Damn ungrateful as always, that frog. He must not have loved you.” And I shrugged since I knew he had loved me: more than yesterday, less than tomorrow. It just happened to be yesterday now.
“He loves something else more now, that’s all. He loved me.” The look you gave me was one you gave a mad woman. I looked at you like someone would look at a drunkard. At least in that, we were even.
We walked the streets like that one night. Sharing cigarettes, side by side, talking of things that made each other flinch. We showed off our battle scars like frat boys. “Which one am I?” I asked you. You didn’t miss a beat in your frozen body “Ophelia.” And I frowned, let go of your hand bringing nothing but small warmth to my body. I don’t think you ever knew what I was afraid of-- the fear I felt for myself. “You think I’m crazy.” He was right though, I was insane. The man who was everything left and now I slept with his rival. But you shook your head “No.” Because you were insane too, that time. “You both drowned.”
And nodding, I added. “You too.”
We were both crazy-- crazy and drunk we knew it all along, from the dead sad eyes to the empty dusty rooms. We were Francis and Elizabeth; Arthur and Anaïs had already drowned. “Should I go now?” You’d said, hesitating by the street. I didn’t let go of the other arm-- it smelt of ale I think, bitter ale. “I’ve never gone out with a corpse before.” Smirking with your sad green eyes-- so drunk, you were-- you’d said “I wouldn’t mind if you were her corpse--” “Stop playing because you wouldn’t.” Then you’d slipped out from my hands to say “I might.” And that was the last I saw of you, sad eyes and all.
This little AU features stuck-in-a-rut-both-professionally-and-emotionally Belgium as an out of work chocolatier and very-recently-widowed England as a mourning writer. Like with the name Anaïs, most of Belgium's personality or tone is entirely my fabrication since she has yet to be featured in the webcomics. Abuse of artistic license I call it.
Also, this is unforgivably confusing and depressing.
To be honest nothing romantic happened, not in the least. But we were both too desperate to notice or care, too busy being wrapped in our own respective deaths-- you over the only person who ever really loved you and me over myself. Like the ice-encrusted glass in the left corner of my decrepit apartment. Cracking at the edges. I think once, when you were sober but just barely, you mentioned that you'd fix that for me. “I’m alright, but it’s too bloody chilly for a lady.”
You never seemed to mind my apartment, or maybe it was because you were always drunk-- I'll always remember you as a drunk, for all your redeeming intelligence-- when you visited so that the dust gathering on the floors or the paint cracking at the edges were all a heavy blur to your spinning, alcoholic world. Even as we rolled on it you never seemed to mind or notice and just went on your merry way strolling down the narrow lane on my collar bone with your dry lips pressed on my shivering skin-- it was always so cold in there, do you remember?-- as if we were making love on a five-star hotel bed, or even just a normal one.
Laughing when you heard about the fate of my poor bed, you held me close. Ale was in your very soul. You mentioned that you liked it bitter now-- “Funny because I like my tea sweet”-- as you sampled my leftover chocolates. You lingered over the truffles but didn’t dare touch them: always the bittersweets.
"What are you doing here?" I think I asked you the first time, and after the first time I only asked "Why are you here?" though maybe that was a more important question. Licking cocoa off my fingers, you'd answer the same way the entire time "Why did you let me in, Anne?" like you were trying to be sober-- you were in no way sober, because you were either drowning in alcohol or drowning in your own sorrow. I never answered you because I didn't really know myself: I wanted you to think I'd picked up promiscuity from 'that damned frog' so that you wouldn't think of me as the 'good woman' from year ago when everything went wrong. You wouldn’t regret anything from back then, nothing from now.
I remember years ago I was the catch you missed. You were too busy pouring over the words of dead poets to hold me, and I didn’t care for the words of dead men. I wanted life and good food; you wanted elegiac fancies for your four walls. “I think you’re mistaken,” but I don’t think I was. Tragedies were fascinating because you were happy than, or as happy as a lonely genius could be. You lived in a terrible warped fantasy. Even frogs knew more on love than you.
“Sempiternal,” you’d told me, cigarette dangling from your writer’s hands. “She is eternal.” And I didn’t question it. Love made you say silly things, no matter how late you discovered it. Silly things in purple prose. “I love her.” I agreed, you must have. She loved you too, I could see it-- your lucid eyes still searching for her light. “She loves me. Loved.” You took a drag on the cigarette, holding your breath ‘til your eyes watered. I pretended not to know that they were there even before the smoke began to burn your lungs-- emotion was one thing you couldn’t do, even if your writing cried you would not have a single tear in your eye but waste inside instead. “She wasn’t supposed to die.” I agreed to this too, because my heart was not supposed to die either.
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"Awful here, isn't it?" You had said one time, not even looking at me with your deep, sad eyes-- that's another thing I'll remember, your sad green eyes set below your dark brows-- as you gestured at the streets we walked. "Why don't you move? There was another apartment not too far from here. Much better neighbourhood." I shrugged and stole a cigarette from your pocket, fishing for a lighter while I was at it. "Too expensive. And I'm unemployed right now." Though what I really meant was ‘I like it here, I grew up here.’ In your way, you still knew what I had meant and responded with a small 'oh'-- you and your manners, it'd come at the strangest times-- as you burrowed deeper into your clean-cut jacket. It was evening, the sun had already finished setting. You excused yourself, mumbling into your scarf ‘I’m sorry, take care’ as we stopped in front of my apartment. I should have invited you in but I was so cold. Colder than I ever was inside. “Good night. Take care.” And you’d smiled slowly “I’ll try, Anaïs.” But you were gone before I could ever correct your pronunciation.
I was convinced you wouldn't come back. ‘Anaïs’ seemed to be the end of our-- I wouldn’t call it ‘affair’. But you did, just as drunk as before with a stack of poems packed inside your jacket.
You arrived with rum on your breath and a name on your lips. I let you in just like the last time, accepting all your drunken mumbling as I offered my dusty floor in return. You spoke without end, without sense, and didn't touch me (kiss me, tell me that you were sorry) like the first time. I sat next to you to watch you in your slow, drunken stupor call a name I hated ('Anne', though you could hardly say ‘Anaïs’), and a name I didn't know ('Elizabeth', you never told me how she died). When I laid my blanket over you, you twisted and turned as if to try to choke yourself on it and I was probably right since we'd both wanted to die at that time. I took it away so that your bones would feel the chill I felt every night, shushed you so that I could kiss you on your feverish forehead below your messy head of blonde. In the morning, the sunlight pouring all over your face, you'd awoken and stayed for a while.
I wonder if you knew that when you recited your poetry at the sun, you’d already stolen my heart. And I remember back then, before you were an intelligent, hopeless drunk that you were effortless as if you breathed the very language of the artists. You were more than brilliant: you were a genius. In your loneliness you spited your fellows with Donne then turned around to love with Shakespeare. As surreal as the words you spoke. I hated that. But I loved it too because it was so very you, even if back then I cherished life more than anything.
The last line was spoken and you started to dress again as if nothing ever happened. I stopped you and said ‘why don’t you stay?’ to which you responded ‘I can’t’. Then I asked ‘what happened to her’ you blubbered out ‘she died’ and I knew now for sure that you were not the same person from those lyrical days. You should have said ‘she passed on like the Lady of Shalott’.
But after that I had proof: our hearts were damaged goods. Is that how you found me, Arthur? Because we were both hurt?
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“He didn’t know what he had.” You’d said, cigarette caught between lean fingers. I whisked it away to my own lips than, the only protest being your slow reluctance. “Damn ungrateful as always, that frog. He must not have loved you.” And I shrugged since I knew he had loved me: more than yesterday, less than tomorrow. It just happened to be yesterday now.
“He loves something else more now, that’s all. He loved me.” The look you gave me was one you gave a mad woman. I looked at you like someone would look at a drunkard. At least in that, we were even.
We walked the streets like that one night. Sharing cigarettes, side by side, talking of things that made each other flinch. We showed off our battle scars like frat boys. “Which one am I?” I asked you. You didn’t miss a beat in your frozen body “Ophelia.” And I frowned, let go of your hand bringing nothing but small warmth to my body. I don’t think you ever knew what I was afraid of-- the fear I felt for myself. “You think I’m crazy.” He was right though, I was insane. The man who was everything left and now I slept with his rival. But you shook your head “No.” Because you were insane too, that time. “You both drowned.”
And nodding, I added. “You too.”
We were both crazy-- crazy and drunk we knew it all along, from the dead sad eyes to the empty dusty rooms. We were Francis and Elizabeth; Arthur and Anaïs had already drowned. “Should I go now?” You’d said, hesitating by the street. I didn’t let go of the other arm-- it smelt of ale I think, bitter ale. “I’ve never gone out with a corpse before.” Smirking with your sad green eyes-- so drunk, you were-- you’d said “I wouldn’t mind if you were her corpse--” “Stop playing because you wouldn’t.” Then you’d slipped out from my hands to say “I might.” And that was the last I saw of you, sad eyes and all.
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Thank you very much, AnonWriter!
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