[fic post] Exact and Perfect Order
This one is looong. o3o;; 3000+ words, and that was after some editing. xD;; I guess I got a little carried away, lol. And the really annoying thing is, I pretty much cheated the theme this time. I try not to do that, but this was started without a specific theme in mind, so I just had to attach one. Oh well.
These one-shots are now up on fanfiction.net as well, over here.
Fandom: Harvest Moon: Rune Factory
Pairing: Russell/Tori
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I do not own Harvest Moon, or these characters, as they belong to Yoshifumi Hashimoto.
Exact and Perfect Order
Russell blinked warily, regarding the young man before him in a tense silence.
Raguna was a warrior, like he had been all those years ago, which was mostly why the two had become friends so fast while the rest of the Kardia was more cautious about welcoming the amnesiac into their lives. Neither made a point to mention it, but Russell got the impression that Raguna looked to him as an elder brother of sorts. Which was understandable, given he couldn't remember if he'd actually had a brother before coming here. And he'd be lying if he said he wasn't honored. The young Earthmate was a formidable warrior and a good man, and that he sought Russell's advice and wisdom for many things made him feel like the two were kin.
But he had never expected to be or actually been confronted like this before - by anyone, really, but least of all Raguna - and he didn't particularly like or understand where it was coming from.
Unpleased with the silence, as Raguna had a tendency to be a tad impatient, the younger warrior leaned further over the front desk, pressing a finger into the librarian's chest with increasing menace.
“What did you say to her, Russell?” Raguna grilled, his tone revealing his growing exasperation.
“S-Say?” Russell replied, his look of confusion earning him no sympathy.
“Yes, dammit. What did you say?!” He was answered with more silence as Russell thought. This was not what he wanted, however, so he proceeded to jab him a few times with his finger to make sure he still had his attention. “What did you say? I've never heard her cry like that. Hell, I've never heard anyone cry that hard!”
Russell continued to look on in bewilderment and mild annoyance at the accusations being thrust at him, his mind stewing in silent thought, before overcoming the initial surprise and finally regaining full use of his vocal chords.
“I think a charged man deserves enough to know who he is claimed to have wronged and a clearer explanation of what he is claimed to have done,” he frowned, patiently removing the menacing finger from his chest to prevent anymore annoying pokes. He straightened his glasses and stood up from his chair, his height making him look down slightly at Raguna. The reaction he got was a curious one - the boy seemed more confused than himself for a moment before recovering.
“You can't be serious.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Russell felt compelled to answer anyway.
“Of course I'm serious.”
Russell never joked about being serious. Some found it a rather off-putting, as it often resulted in miscommunication when he wasn't being serious because no one could tell the difference. He was starting to believe that may be the case here.
“Then you don't remember at all? What you said to Tori yesterday? I was talking to Lucas at the inn when she burst in crying. Lady Ann pretty much kicked me out, and when I went to ask if she was okay this morning, she said that something at work had upset her. Now, either she got a really bad papercut, or you said something awful. So, do you remember now?”
Raguna finished with a raised eyebrow. His posture shouted 'Are you really the person I look up to and respect?', but Russell missed it completely. His eyes had widened, but he wasn't really looking at anything as his mind was currently replaying and going over yesterday's events.
---
Russell was trying hard to concentrate on his task. He had put it off for quite a while, and was a bit irritated at himself for letting things get this bad. As this was a public library, everyone in Kardia had access to the books resting on the shelves before him. That was not to say that they all respected and understood that he was particularly picky about everything being in the exact and proper order he had established for his precious books the same way he did. This often left books in precarious places, where he could simply sense they did not belong, but others seemed to find perfectly acceptable spots to return them.
So that afternoon, after spending three hours already, he estimated he was only about a third done with his task. Luckily, though, while this task would normally take him at least a day and a half, he had a lovely young woman helping him, which had already sped up the project tremendously. As he paused in his task, he 'casually' glanced over at said woman, and noticed - not for the first time that day - with a flutter of his heart that she looked nothing short of beautiful, even though she was wearing more casual clothes than normal, and she was carrying rather large piles of books in front of her. Realizing he was gawking, he silently reprimanded himself for getting distracted again, and returned to rearranging books.
Unsurprisingly, Russell was finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. He was currently in the fiction section, which was arranged alphabetically by author, but when his eyes weren't deviating from the spines in front of him, he was finding non-fiction works about cooking resting between a book of poems and a compilation of myths. Now that was just upsetting.
After another hour, he was steadily growing more and more nervous. He wasn't sure that was the right word for the feeling he felt, but he certainly wasn't calm. Tori had caught him a couple times looking over at her, and the feeling he got was a mix of embarrassment and giddiness, which only proved to make him even more nervous. Neither spoke about these silent exchanges - not that they had been speaking much otherwise - though Russell noted that Tori's cheeks had been stained a light pink for the last ten minutes, which introduced a familiar fluttery sensation into his stomach.
Russell was now almost done with the entire row of shelves, save for the rather short 'J' section at the bottom of the last shelf. His eyes lazily glanced over the spines in front of him, and had Tori not disappeared behind one of the shelves across the way, he might have missed the out of place book. However, he did spot it, and quickly pulled it out from between a pair of books about fairytale stones that were fairly popular with the young women of Kardia. Normally, he would have taken one quick glance at the author's name and tossed the book into the appropriate sorted pile behind him, but he realized that this was not a book he had seen before. In fact, it lacked a title or author completely. Growing curious, he flipped it open and scanned the first couple pages, quickly realizing it was a diary of some sort. He did not read it long enough to identify it, and felt rather uncomfortable about continuing to do so.
So, naturally, he called for Tori to do it.
“Y-Yes?” she asked timidly, peeking around the edge of the bookshelf.
“Some girl seems to have left her diary among our books. I feel a bit... awkward reading further to determine the author. Would you mind doing so and returning it to... the proper... Are you alright?” Russell interrupted himself, noticing she looked a bit pale.
“N-No! I mean, y-yes! I-I'm fine!” she stuttered rather unconvincingly. He raised an eyebrow, but didn't press her.
“Yes... Well, when you find the girl, please tell her not to use the library as a hiding place for her silly notebook. I'm sure she wouldn't want anyone reading her private scribbles anyway, no matter how pointless.”
He found himself rambling to try and hide his embarrassment at having invaded a young woman's privacy, and quickly handed the book off with no further thoughts about it as he returned to checking the shelf.
From what he'd read on the first few pages, all that had really been there were schedules of shops around Kardia, a couple lyrics to the songs played at festivals, and some doodles of dolphins. He figured anyone would have found such things trivial and not all that damning, were one to come across that diary, but he did not know what the rest of the pages contained - and he was too embarrassed to find out himself.
However, Russell did not see Tori's expression to his comments, as she had run out the door. When he looked up after a moment, he realized she was no longer around. He assumed she knew the author and had quickly gone to return it. He had been a bit concerned when she did not return, and even stopped by the inn to ask Ann if she had seen her daughter. She said Tori had returned but was not feeling well at the moment, and with a particularly searing expression, effectively shooed him out of her home.
---
Russell remained silent for a few more minutes before the sudden shock of understanding, fear, guilt and embarrassment jolted through his body, returning his mind to the present, where he was currently standing with his concerned, if a bit rash, friend.
“Oh... Oh no. It belonged to her,” he mumbled quietly. Raguna raised his other eyebrow, recognizing the dawning comprehension and horror on Russell's face, and slapped a palm to his forehead.
“Dammit, Russell, what did you say?!”
“I think... I seem to have implied that her innermost thoughts and secrets were 'silly' and 'pointless',” he ground out, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. Raguna seemed to find his reaction lacked remorse, and took it upon himself to grab the older man's shoulders and shake him vigorously.
“YOU IDIOT!” he shouted. After another few moments worth of shaking, he released Russell's shoulders and returned his palm to his forehead. Despite the shaking, Russell remained silent and still until Raguna spoke again. “... Well? Are you just going to stand there?”
“... Hmm?”
Russell was surprisingly more despondent than he'd ever seen him. For a moment, Raguna was pleased that the man - who was so clearly an idiot in the workings of women despite his being several years older - understood his own stupidity, and was acting accordingly. The only other time he'd seen the man so obviously upset was when the library roof leaked and nearly destroyed an entire sections' worth of books. But even then, he didn't look this troubled.
Letting out a sigh and shaking his head, he grabbed Russell's arm once more, dragging him towards the door.
“Wha--” Russell began, fumbling to put his glasses back on, but was promptly cut off by a forceful shove outside.
“Talk to her. And this time, don't insult her.” Even though it was Russell's home, as well as his workplace, Raguna effectively locked him out and left him with no choice other than to track down the young blonde he realized he had insulted far worse than he had ever insulted a woman before. On his rather slow walk towards the inn, he continued to verbally abuse himself silently, shocked that he had done such a thing without realizing it.
Of course Tori had run off. It was her diary, and he had mouthed off about it not having anything worthwhile within its pages. She was a timid, sensitive girl, and he knew that. He thought he was careful, too, not to make her uncomfortable or worried when they were together. After all, he liked her much more than the other young women in Kardia. She was smart, even if it took a while for her to warm up to you enough to start actually showing you how smart she was. She respected his privacy, and did not press him for information about his previous war experiences - unlike almost everyone else in the village. And she was beautiful; not that the other girls weren't, though. But she could look more stunning in a pair of overalls and her big, clumsy-looking glasses, beneath a pile of books, than any of the girls when they dressed up for those romantic holidays held throughout the year.
But most importantly, she understood and adhered to the exact and proper order he had established for his precious books. Something he had accepted a long time ago that no one else could do, particularly not his own daughter Cecilia.
These weren't new realizations however, and he felt like an even bigger fool - if that was possible at that point and time - to have not told her before pretty much ruining any chance he had with her.
All of his thinking, however, had taken surprisingly less time than he expected, and no sooner had he finished his last thought than he was standing in the doorway of Lady Ann's inn. She looked up and spotted him, and immediately the look in her eyes changed from one of 'Welcome dear customer!' to 'If you've hurt my baby girl, I will end you.', though her placating smile remained.
“Um... Is Tori--”
“She's not feeling very well, I'm afraid, so if you'd like to return some other time...”
Lady Ann was a very intimidating woman, it has to be said. She had lost her husband several years ago, was currently raising two teenagers alone, ran her own business, and still managed to have enough energy left to make a man, who had seen terrors worse than anyone save maybe Doctor Edward, struggle to stop from shaking in his boots the way she stared at him.
But Russell was more determined than she was frightening, and she relented after a few minutes of tense staring in silence.
“She's upstairs in the kitchen”
“Thank you, Lady Ann.”
He reached the kitchen in short order, and felt his courage almost immediately leave him.
Tori wasn't wearing her glasses, her face was red and swollen from a day spent crying, her hair wasn't in braids for the first time in a long time, and the table before her was littered with tissues and uneaten snacks her mother must have prepared for her throughout the day. Her chin was resting in her hands, while her elbows rested on the diary that had started this whole mess. She hadn't seemed to notice him, but he was filled with sight of her. So distraught and saddened by his careless words, and he was more angry with himself than he remembered ever being before. But he knew what he had to do, despite the steadily growing urge to rush back down the stairs, run back to the library, and thoroughly beat himself to death on his own desk.
“U-Um, Tori?” he began shakily. He hadn't heard himself sound so afraid since he was a boy, he noted.
Her eyes immediately met with his, and while yesterday their shared looks made his heart flutter, their locked gaze now only made his heart sink. More tears welled in her eyes, and he saw her eyes glance several times across the hall at the door to their left that he assumed was her bedroom. All the words he wanted to say seemed determined to leave him, and as she put on her glasses and slowly stood, the panic in him began to increase.
“W-Wait--” he started again, even more unsure than before, and he took a step forward that seemed to freeze her in place. He tried to speak again, but realized he had been holding his breath, and promptly sucked in as much air as he could before letting it out again. His nerves were still just as jittery, but his mind realized what needed to be done.
Another step forward, and another timid jerk. She wasn't crying, and she wasn't running - both he took to be good signs - but he had yet to properly fix anything. Taking one more deep breath, he closed his eyes and spoke in a voice weaker than he'd ever heard himself use before.
“I-I think I've properly gone and insulted the one woman I've ever felt this way for in the worst possible way.” He didn't dare open his eyes, but he noted her sharp intake of breath. Was he saying the right thing? But he couldn't stop now. He had already started. “In your diary, all I saw was the first couple pages. The dolphin drawings - which are pretty impressive, by the way,” he chuckled before scolding himself and continuing, “the words to a couple songs, and a few shop schedules. I've never had a diary, so I don't know what goes into them, but I guess I always assumed it was deep, dark secrets or something, and that's why when I only saw that stuff I called it silly and pointless, because I thought that kind of stuff could go into any notebook, and if I had known it was your diary I wouldn't have said anything at all, and none of this would have happened, and I wouldn't have made such an enormous ass of myself, and... I'm rambling. Anyway, I just... I hope you understand that I would never think of you as 'silly' or 'pointless'.”
He dared to open his eyes at that point, and he was quite distraught to see her fighting back tears again.
“O-Oh no! Oh, damn, I'm sorry! Uh, h-here!” he scrambled awkwardly, picking up one of the few unused tissues he could see on the table and quickly walking over to offer it to her. He was startled when Tori grabbed her diary off the table, flipped it open to a certain page, and shoved it into his face before he could take any more steps forward, blushing wildly. His eyes lingered on her - while her gaze was trained solely on the suddenly fascinating floor tiles - before trailing over the pages presented to him. His eyes widened in sudden understanding, and he was once again floored by his own idiocy.
“So... this is what you thought I was referring to?”
A quick nod.
“You thought I had rejected you?”
More rapid nodding, and a single tear she couldn't hold back. He couldn't stop the grin that was quickly spreading over his face, and before he could stop himself, he had pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head, her diary falling to the floor with a dull thud. Russell was a tall man, and though he hadn't hugged anyone other than Cecilia since he was a little boy, he thought Tori fit just right in his arms, beneath his chin.
“I love you, too,” he sighed into her hair, and he smiled as he felt her wrap her arms around him and squeeze him tight.
Beside their feet, the diary lay open, revealing the page he had just seen. “I love you Russell,” was written in her neat cursive.
These one-shots are now up on fanfiction.net as well, over here.
Fandom: Harvest Moon: Rune Factory
Pairing: Russell/Tori
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I do not own Harvest Moon, or these characters, as they belong to Yoshifumi Hashimoto.
Exact and Perfect Order
Russell blinked warily, regarding the young man before him in a tense silence.
Raguna was a warrior, like he had been all those years ago, which was mostly why the two had become friends so fast while the rest of the Kardia was more cautious about welcoming the amnesiac into their lives. Neither made a point to mention it, but Russell got the impression that Raguna looked to him as an elder brother of sorts. Which was understandable, given he couldn't remember if he'd actually had a brother before coming here. And he'd be lying if he said he wasn't honored. The young Earthmate was a formidable warrior and a good man, and that he sought Russell's advice and wisdom for many things made him feel like the two were kin.
But he had never expected to be or actually been confronted like this before - by anyone, really, but least of all Raguna - and he didn't particularly like or understand where it was coming from.
Unpleased with the silence, as Raguna had a tendency to be a tad impatient, the younger warrior leaned further over the front desk, pressing a finger into the librarian's chest with increasing menace.
“What did you say to her, Russell?” Raguna grilled, his tone revealing his growing exasperation.
“S-Say?” Russell replied, his look of confusion earning him no sympathy.
“Yes, dammit. What did you say?!” He was answered with more silence as Russell thought. This was not what he wanted, however, so he proceeded to jab him a few times with his finger to make sure he still had his attention. “What did you say? I've never heard her cry like that. Hell, I've never heard anyone cry that hard!”
Russell continued to look on in bewilderment and mild annoyance at the accusations being thrust at him, his mind stewing in silent thought, before overcoming the initial surprise and finally regaining full use of his vocal chords.
“I think a charged man deserves enough to know who he is claimed to have wronged and a clearer explanation of what he is claimed to have done,” he frowned, patiently removing the menacing finger from his chest to prevent anymore annoying pokes. He straightened his glasses and stood up from his chair, his height making him look down slightly at Raguna. The reaction he got was a curious one - the boy seemed more confused than himself for a moment before recovering.
“You can't be serious.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Russell felt compelled to answer anyway.
“Of course I'm serious.”
Russell never joked about being serious. Some found it a rather off-putting, as it often resulted in miscommunication when he wasn't being serious because no one could tell the difference. He was starting to believe that may be the case here.
“Then you don't remember at all? What you said to Tori yesterday? I was talking to Lucas at the inn when she burst in crying. Lady Ann pretty much kicked me out, and when I went to ask if she was okay this morning, she said that something at work had upset her. Now, either she got a really bad papercut, or you said something awful. So, do you remember now?”
Raguna finished with a raised eyebrow. His posture shouted 'Are you really the person I look up to and respect?', but Russell missed it completely. His eyes had widened, but he wasn't really looking at anything as his mind was currently replaying and going over yesterday's events.
---
Russell was trying hard to concentrate on his task. He had put it off for quite a while, and was a bit irritated at himself for letting things get this bad. As this was a public library, everyone in Kardia had access to the books resting on the shelves before him. That was not to say that they all respected and understood that he was particularly picky about everything being in the exact and proper order he had established for his precious books the same way he did. This often left books in precarious places, where he could simply sense they did not belong, but others seemed to find perfectly acceptable spots to return them.
So that afternoon, after spending three hours already, he estimated he was only about a third done with his task. Luckily, though, while this task would normally take him at least a day and a half, he had a lovely young woman helping him, which had already sped up the project tremendously. As he paused in his task, he 'casually' glanced over at said woman, and noticed - not for the first time that day - with a flutter of his heart that she looked nothing short of beautiful, even though she was wearing more casual clothes than normal, and she was carrying rather large piles of books in front of her. Realizing he was gawking, he silently reprimanded himself for getting distracted again, and returned to rearranging books.
Unsurprisingly, Russell was finding it more and more difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. He was currently in the fiction section, which was arranged alphabetically by author, but when his eyes weren't deviating from the spines in front of him, he was finding non-fiction works about cooking resting between a book of poems and a compilation of myths. Now that was just upsetting.
After another hour, he was steadily growing more and more nervous. He wasn't sure that was the right word for the feeling he felt, but he certainly wasn't calm. Tori had caught him a couple times looking over at her, and the feeling he got was a mix of embarrassment and giddiness, which only proved to make him even more nervous. Neither spoke about these silent exchanges - not that they had been speaking much otherwise - though Russell noted that Tori's cheeks had been stained a light pink for the last ten minutes, which introduced a familiar fluttery sensation into his stomach.
Russell was now almost done with the entire row of shelves, save for the rather short 'J' section at the bottom of the last shelf. His eyes lazily glanced over the spines in front of him, and had Tori not disappeared behind one of the shelves across the way, he might have missed the out of place book. However, he did spot it, and quickly pulled it out from between a pair of books about fairytale stones that were fairly popular with the young women of Kardia. Normally, he would have taken one quick glance at the author's name and tossed the book into the appropriate sorted pile behind him, but he realized that this was not a book he had seen before. In fact, it lacked a title or author completely. Growing curious, he flipped it open and scanned the first couple pages, quickly realizing it was a diary of some sort. He did not read it long enough to identify it, and felt rather uncomfortable about continuing to do so.
So, naturally, he called for Tori to do it.
“Y-Yes?” she asked timidly, peeking around the edge of the bookshelf.
“Some girl seems to have left her diary among our books. I feel a bit... awkward reading further to determine the author. Would you mind doing so and returning it to... the proper... Are you alright?” Russell interrupted himself, noticing she looked a bit pale.
“N-No! I mean, y-yes! I-I'm fine!” she stuttered rather unconvincingly. He raised an eyebrow, but didn't press her.
“Yes... Well, when you find the girl, please tell her not to use the library as a hiding place for her silly notebook. I'm sure she wouldn't want anyone reading her private scribbles anyway, no matter how pointless.”
He found himself rambling to try and hide his embarrassment at having invaded a young woman's privacy, and quickly handed the book off with no further thoughts about it as he returned to checking the shelf.
From what he'd read on the first few pages, all that had really been there were schedules of shops around Kardia, a couple lyrics to the songs played at festivals, and some doodles of dolphins. He figured anyone would have found such things trivial and not all that damning, were one to come across that diary, but he did not know what the rest of the pages contained - and he was too embarrassed to find out himself.
However, Russell did not see Tori's expression to his comments, as she had run out the door. When he looked up after a moment, he realized she was no longer around. He assumed she knew the author and had quickly gone to return it. He had been a bit concerned when she did not return, and even stopped by the inn to ask Ann if she had seen her daughter. She said Tori had returned but was not feeling well at the moment, and with a particularly searing expression, effectively shooed him out of her home.
---
Russell remained silent for a few more minutes before the sudden shock of understanding, fear, guilt and embarrassment jolted through his body, returning his mind to the present, where he was currently standing with his concerned, if a bit rash, friend.
“Oh... Oh no. It belonged to her,” he mumbled quietly. Raguna raised his other eyebrow, recognizing the dawning comprehension and horror on Russell's face, and slapped a palm to his forehead.
“Dammit, Russell, what did you say?!”
“I think... I seem to have implied that her innermost thoughts and secrets were 'silly' and 'pointless',” he ground out, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. Raguna seemed to find his reaction lacked remorse, and took it upon himself to grab the older man's shoulders and shake him vigorously.
“YOU IDIOT!” he shouted. After another few moments worth of shaking, he released Russell's shoulders and returned his palm to his forehead. Despite the shaking, Russell remained silent and still until Raguna spoke again. “... Well? Are you just going to stand there?”
“... Hmm?”
Russell was surprisingly more despondent than he'd ever seen him. For a moment, Raguna was pleased that the man - who was so clearly an idiot in the workings of women despite his being several years older - understood his own stupidity, and was acting accordingly. The only other time he'd seen the man so obviously upset was when the library roof leaked and nearly destroyed an entire sections' worth of books. But even then, he didn't look this troubled.
Letting out a sigh and shaking his head, he grabbed Russell's arm once more, dragging him towards the door.
“Wha--” Russell began, fumbling to put his glasses back on, but was promptly cut off by a forceful shove outside.
“Talk to her. And this time, don't insult her.” Even though it was Russell's home, as well as his workplace, Raguna effectively locked him out and left him with no choice other than to track down the young blonde he realized he had insulted far worse than he had ever insulted a woman before. On his rather slow walk towards the inn, he continued to verbally abuse himself silently, shocked that he had done such a thing without realizing it.
Of course Tori had run off. It was her diary, and he had mouthed off about it not having anything worthwhile within its pages. She was a timid, sensitive girl, and he knew that. He thought he was careful, too, not to make her uncomfortable or worried when they were together. After all, he liked her much more than the other young women in Kardia. She was smart, even if it took a while for her to warm up to you enough to start actually showing you how smart she was. She respected his privacy, and did not press him for information about his previous war experiences - unlike almost everyone else in the village. And she was beautiful; not that the other girls weren't, though. But she could look more stunning in a pair of overalls and her big, clumsy-looking glasses, beneath a pile of books, than any of the girls when they dressed up for those romantic holidays held throughout the year.
But most importantly, she understood and adhered to the exact and proper order he had established for his precious books. Something he had accepted a long time ago that no one else could do, particularly not his own daughter Cecilia.
These weren't new realizations however, and he felt like an even bigger fool - if that was possible at that point and time - to have not told her before pretty much ruining any chance he had with her.
All of his thinking, however, had taken surprisingly less time than he expected, and no sooner had he finished his last thought than he was standing in the doorway of Lady Ann's inn. She looked up and spotted him, and immediately the look in her eyes changed from one of 'Welcome dear customer!' to 'If you've hurt my baby girl, I will end you.', though her placating smile remained.
“Um... Is Tori--”
“She's not feeling very well, I'm afraid, so if you'd like to return some other time...”
Lady Ann was a very intimidating woman, it has to be said. She had lost her husband several years ago, was currently raising two teenagers alone, ran her own business, and still managed to have enough energy left to make a man, who had seen terrors worse than anyone save maybe Doctor Edward, struggle to stop from shaking in his boots the way she stared at him.
But Russell was more determined than she was frightening, and she relented after a few minutes of tense staring in silence.
“She's upstairs in the kitchen”
“Thank you, Lady Ann.”
He reached the kitchen in short order, and felt his courage almost immediately leave him.
Tori wasn't wearing her glasses, her face was red and swollen from a day spent crying, her hair wasn't in braids for the first time in a long time, and the table before her was littered with tissues and uneaten snacks her mother must have prepared for her throughout the day. Her chin was resting in her hands, while her elbows rested on the diary that had started this whole mess. She hadn't seemed to notice him, but he was filled with sight of her. So distraught and saddened by his careless words, and he was more angry with himself than he remembered ever being before. But he knew what he had to do, despite the steadily growing urge to rush back down the stairs, run back to the library, and thoroughly beat himself to death on his own desk.
“U-Um, Tori?” he began shakily. He hadn't heard himself sound so afraid since he was a boy, he noted.
Her eyes immediately met with his, and while yesterday their shared looks made his heart flutter, their locked gaze now only made his heart sink. More tears welled in her eyes, and he saw her eyes glance several times across the hall at the door to their left that he assumed was her bedroom. All the words he wanted to say seemed determined to leave him, and as she put on her glasses and slowly stood, the panic in him began to increase.
“W-Wait--” he started again, even more unsure than before, and he took a step forward that seemed to freeze her in place. He tried to speak again, but realized he had been holding his breath, and promptly sucked in as much air as he could before letting it out again. His nerves were still just as jittery, but his mind realized what needed to be done.
Another step forward, and another timid jerk. She wasn't crying, and she wasn't running - both he took to be good signs - but he had yet to properly fix anything. Taking one more deep breath, he closed his eyes and spoke in a voice weaker than he'd ever heard himself use before.
“I-I think I've properly gone and insulted the one woman I've ever felt this way for in the worst possible way.” He didn't dare open his eyes, but he noted her sharp intake of breath. Was he saying the right thing? But he couldn't stop now. He had already started. “In your diary, all I saw was the first couple pages. The dolphin drawings - which are pretty impressive, by the way,” he chuckled before scolding himself and continuing, “the words to a couple songs, and a few shop schedules. I've never had a diary, so I don't know what goes into them, but I guess I always assumed it was deep, dark secrets or something, and that's why when I only saw that stuff I called it silly and pointless, because I thought that kind of stuff could go into any notebook, and if I had known it was your diary I wouldn't have said anything at all, and none of this would have happened, and I wouldn't have made such an enormous ass of myself, and... I'm rambling. Anyway, I just... I hope you understand that I would never think of you as 'silly' or 'pointless'.”
He dared to open his eyes at that point, and he was quite distraught to see her fighting back tears again.
“O-Oh no! Oh, damn, I'm sorry! Uh, h-here!” he scrambled awkwardly, picking up one of the few unused tissues he could see on the table and quickly walking over to offer it to her. He was startled when Tori grabbed her diary off the table, flipped it open to a certain page, and shoved it into his face before he could take any more steps forward, blushing wildly. His eyes lingered on her - while her gaze was trained solely on the suddenly fascinating floor tiles - before trailing over the pages presented to him. His eyes widened in sudden understanding, and he was once again floored by his own idiocy.
“So... this is what you thought I was referring to?”
A quick nod.
“You thought I had rejected you?”
More rapid nodding, and a single tear she couldn't hold back. He couldn't stop the grin that was quickly spreading over his face, and before he could stop himself, he had pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head, her diary falling to the floor with a dull thud. Russell was a tall man, and though he hadn't hugged anyone other than Cecilia since he was a little boy, he thought Tori fit just right in his arms, beneath his chin.
“I love you, too,” he sighed into her hair, and he smiled as he felt her wrap her arms around him and squeeze him tight.
Beside their feet, the diary lay open, revealing the page he had just seen. “I love you Russell,” was written in her neat cursive.