This is petrifying. It’s my first foray into fanfiction and…
it’s very brief, I’m not in love with it and I’m REAL scared about putting this out there. It’s just that these two have been racing around in my mind for weeks and I had to do something about it.
Here we go.
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“You’ve always called me Mrs. Durrell.”
If he’d been thinking straight, if his mind hadn’t been preoccupied with working out the quickest way to close the gap between his mouth and hers while simultaneously chastising his desire to do so, he would have wondered at how this beautiful, intelligent, kind, witty, insightful woman seemed utterly unaware as to why she had been, until this moment, Mrs. Durrell to him.
He’s not entirely sure when it happened himself, but at some point, ‘Mrs. Durrell’ became an exercise in discipline.
Maybe it was when she took his car and her Aunt for an ill-fated ride that ended perilously close to the edge of a cliff, and he felt as though his heart was in his throat until his hands were wrapped around her wrists and she was apologizing - though he can’t quite recall if that was the moment, because at the time, his only thought was that, if the scent of his steering wheel lingered on her skin, then perhaps her scent still lingered on his steering wheel, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than for that to be true.
It’s possible the turning point was when he admitted to himself that the intense relief he felt when she called off her wedding to Sven was not entirely rooted in his concern for her well-being, but instead born of his selfish desire to be the only man she looked to and leaned on in time of need. He can’t be certain though, if that was when it happened, because at that moment, he became profoundly aware of a need to distract her from her pain and declared that she ought to find a Greek man to marry, and hey! his cousin was available! It was with this faulty logic he reasoned with himself that, if she couldn’t be his, then at least she could have his family name and he’d be justified in spending all of his free time with her, because that is how family works, right?
He was sure of one thing; it definitely wasn’t when he held her in his arms while she cried her heart out after ending things with Hugh, and felt his heart break with hers, even if she was breaking it over another man, because he knew by then that, at the center of who he was, he loved her, and that love included wanting her to be happy, even if it wasn’t with him. Because he knew that it couldn’t be with him, no matter how passionately he wished it could.
It’s feasible that the change didn’t take place at once, but instead built steadily with each of the moments he’d shared with her since she’d brought her family to his island.
He just couldn’t pinpoint exactly when all of their moments together culminated into the moment that changed his life irrevocably.
When she stopped being Mrs. Durrell, and instead became Dear Louisa.
Darling Louisa.
His Louisa.
That?
That would not do.
And so, while she had been something infinitely more dear to him in his heart for some time, as far as the world was concerned, she remained Mrs. Durrell.
Until now.
“I know.”
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We need something beautiful today ❤❤
