(An original long piece mostly for my own reminder. Of no chars in particular, really.)
She beamed at him with an armor of divine acceptance and healing power that shed light at him, leading him out of his own self-destructing manners. He in return listened to the one who protected others, yet who had no one to protect her. They snuggled into the other's gap, and eventually, they became two best friends who couldn't live without each other.
He loved her for her simplicity. He adored the way she gushed over the way he wore his hair in the morning (which, most of the time was in bed head fashion style), the way she grinned with a crooked teeth three inches in from her left canine (she refused to pull it off, and he thought it added a little charm), the way she licked all corners of the stamp before pressing it on the envelope with a hammer (she still preferred snail mail). She was a person of work, and he had always preferred the family life. He loved the way her voice raised and trembled when she talked about her life-time goal of becoming a researcher of mental illnesses. (She was the one who kindled his will of becoming a geneticist, but a dream remained a dream.)
She told him that if they had their own house, she would build it like in those pictures she saw on the Internet (Tumblr? Was that what she called it?): A one-room house with compact bright green stairs leading up to a pink hexagon space, the two sides of the stairs guarded by striped glass windows. The interior would consist of what she assumed "the most normal things of normal things": a foldable bed, a desk both he and she could work on, a chair, a plasma television slapped against the pink to preserve space, a desktop, a Wi-Fi router, and perhaps some still-life pictures hanging on the wall. He looked forward to it.
In one of their 'let's-get-to-know-each-other' sessions, she told him that she simply adored cabbages. This, to him, was surprising because she was never a vegetable lover. (He had to nag her on a day-by-day basis, so she would eat some greens.) He had made it a permanent mental note, in order to prepare the meals for her when she arrived home. She would be standing at the wooden doorstep, a shoulder drooped from the weight of the groceries bag she carried, exhausted after hours of working and responding to her clients. (On some days, some of them were particularly nasty, she would tell him with a scrunched up nose and a wiggled ear. When she was mad, the tip of her right ear would redden and wiggle, and he would laugh before pinching it, just to see her childish tantrum.) Upon hearing the clacking of her shoes, he, donning the apron with an alarming shade of sunny yellow, sprinted to her place by the door, scooping the bag from her hold not without planting a kiss on her cheek. "Welcome home," he would whisper in her ear, and she would smile, flashing that tooth.
On the dinner table greeting her, always with heated smoke coming out from the broth, would be a bowl of cabbage soup. She would lace her fingers together, her cheeks flushing a charming shade of rose -- and she would close her eyes (he could just do nothing but watch the way her long, lush eyelashes fell as she shut her eyes) to inhale in the tangy smell of the boiling water. She gave him a speech, once, about how she adored the way the aroma of the soup filled her nose, the way he made the cabbage leaves curled into the pork cooked enough to retain its juice and tenderness, the way the leaves were just crunchy enough for her that she could just listen to every bite she made, the way how they left a fresh tart taste after being engulfed down her esophagus. Head resting on his hand, he would watch her swallowing down each gulp of the soup with lionized eyes. Perhaps they would have the house. Perhaps they would live together. Right now, he was living the moment.
She was never a cook, so she only knew how to make reheated cabbages. After a minute resting in the radioactive microwave, the once fresh leaves became soggy in her mouth, and she could feel them soaking in the salt.
He wanted to talk to her. She avoided him for several days, and her tone was flat. She was always the one to call him first, but now she couldn't handle his voice anymore. She choked up whenever she reread the texts from him recorded in her phone; she never deleted any. Her work, she knew, was getting in the way, and though he accepted the role of a house husband, she understood that it was eating at his traditional view - not only from him, but from his family as well - of being the family's pillar. But selfishness took over her; stubbornness was a trait that was meant to stay. Selfishness swept her away from accepting his hand in marriage. And, perhaps, it was better that she cut the string.
Before he met her, he was a self-destructing locked up book; after she left, the book only closed tighter, chains binding to ensure that no one could break him apart. He told her, in a call, that it was because of her he grew distrustful, and she couldn't go to sleep that night. He grew to be even more suspicious of others, and the second day after, she regretted the decision. From afar, she watched him interacting with others in a crippled manner; the debonair charisma that he always carried turned into cryptic words and bitter, snarky comebacks. The purple, plump lips that she adored now were carved into a permanent frown; husky voice always accompanied abrasive words. There was something lost about how he wore his hair now, how the charm was lost from the randomness of his motions-- and the core of unkemptness remained.
"Let's go back," she whispered, panting, a hand clutching onto his sleeve. After a few months without talking to each other, she learned that she could not live without him. His foggy eyes behind scratched glasses blinked once, twice, and he bit his lips before he pulled her in an embrace. Arms pressing tightly against each other's back, they wept. Perhaps, maybe, they could fix this.
But it started back up from the end, because that was where they left off. It was cyclical, cancerous -- the way they fell in and out, the way her jealousy showed even in just his briefest interaction with another person of the opposite gender, the way his anger fell out of his control. She knew he was slipping away from him now, and he found her even more of an enigma than he would like to admit before. They had never argued, not even once - which was a trait of their previous relationship - but they found their hands drifted farther apart. She commented snidely that perhaps they better talked with crashed dishes and rock music, and he only answered her with his lips pressed in a thin line. He told her that he wanted to build a family, to have darling children and make them lunchboxes for classes and teach them how to play soccer, but she, even then, was still too stubborn in letting her own career go. They grew to be less tolerant of each other's flaws, the flaws that managed to escape their vision flared up like an ugly disease. Their heartbeats raced when they see each other, but not from holding the other's hand.
Eventually, it didn't matter whether it was he or she who shook their head. They stopped bringing up the question.
They met at his place on what was supposed to be their third anniversary, and he made her favorite cabbage soup. Her eyes lit up, and she crashed onto him by the doorstep, holding him tightly with gratitude. He stopped her from kissing his cheek; she grinned at him, childishly attempting to lean in, stealing what was once hers. But she knew she found solace that he had opened up to someone else who was not her, and he still remembered her favorite food. After they both settled in the kitchen, he asked her mischievously about a guy she talked to him about. She swatted her hand with a hearty laugh, saying that it was never serious.
They were two best friends, and they had both learned how to smile.
Cavoli Riscaldati: Italian. Lit. "Reheated Cabbages" - An attempt to revive a long-finished love affair.
