six years ago | art donaldson x reader
a/n: i'm probably going to delete this soon because i wasn't even sure i was going to actually write it, but this a poorly written little thing inspired by @ellaynaonsaturn's girl next door art donaldson bot. it's not my best work and i did not intend for it to be, i just had to get the idea out because it was making me itch.
warnings: i think alcohol mention? just kind of sad, hastily written, not proofread, reader has actual personality details that are important to the plot beyond the generic stuff in my usual x reader fics.
The screen door groans like it remembers him.
Art steps into the kitchen, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, curls damp with cold, and cheeks still kissed pink by the wind outside. The smell hits him first—something cinnamon-sweet and memory-soaked. Then, the warmth. The kind that only lives in your grandmother’s house. The kind that feels like time never moved at all.
He opens his mouth to call out.
He doesn’t get the chance.
Your voice doesn’t hit him all at once. It filters in slow, like honey down the back of his throat. Familiar. Unmistakable. Impossible.
Standing by the counter, fingers wrapped around a mug that probably still has his name etched on the side in fading Sharpie, wearing a too-big sweatshirt and that same damn look in your eyes—like you know everything about him. Like you never stopped knowing. Like you're looking straight through the boy who left and into the man who came back with years of unsaid things wedged behind his ribs.
His heart stutters. Stops. Starts again, off-beat.
His grandma is suddenly behind him, patting his shoulder like she hasn’t just detonated a nuclear memory in his childhood kitchen. “Told you I had a surprise!”
You smile, a little nervously, like you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be there anymore. Like your feet aren't quite steady on this floor anymore, but you're still trying to remember where to place them.
You say hi. Like this is just a thing people do after six years of silence and splintered childhoods and a first kiss that never got a sequel.
Art doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He doesn’t know what to do with his lungs, either.
“You cut your hair,” you say, like you need to say something, anything, to fill the static.
“You didn’t,” he manages, voice rough.
And just like that, you laugh.
He hadn’t realized how badly he missed that sound until he heard it again.
The kitchen is small, the table still cluttered with yesterday’s newspaper and a crossword puzzle halfway filled in by his grandma’s looping cursive. The window above the sink is fogged over, the winter outside clawing at the glass. She leaves you two alone with a knowing smile and the scent of banana bread clinging to the air.
It’s quiet. And then it isn’t.
“You still drink Swiss Miss?” he asks, gesturing at your mug.
You shrug. “Some things don’t change.”
He nods. “Yeah. I guess they don’t.”
You remember something then—a winter night when you were ten, the two of you curled up under an old quilt in this very kitchen, passing a thermos back and forth, talking about your favorite planets. You’d told him Pluto was the loneliest, and he’d said he’d make sure you never felt like that.
The backyard hasn’t changed much, either. There’s still that one swing that creaks like a ghost when the wind hits it right. The old fort you built from plywood and stubbornness leans slightly now, but it’s still there.
You used to sneak out every other night as kids, starting sometime when you were both around seven years old, all the way until he left. Flashlight tucked in your hoodie pocket. Your Lisa Frank diary hidden in the waistband of your pajama pants. You’d meet him right where both of your backyards met, lie back in the cold grass, and count the stars while cassette recordings of Blink-182 played softly on his Walkman. Art would name constellations like they were secrets only for you.
You sit again in that same spot. Eighteen now, but suddenly seven again.
“I used to think those nights were just dreams,” he says.
“They were. But they were also real.”
He doesn’t speak for a while. Neither do you. Your pinkies graze in the space between, and all of a sudden, you’re 12 years old, laying under the sun in the backyard again.
You remember it like it was yesterday. You couldn’t forget it even if you scrubbed your brain clean with a toothbrush. It was one of those heavy July nights where the air stuck to your skin like honey, and the crickets were louder than your thoughts.
You were lying on your stomach, next to him, in the backyard, a fleece blanket spread beneath you and the remnants of his birthday cake still sticky on your fingers, the faint smell of wax from the 12 candles that had circled the top of it lingering. He smelled like sunscreen and bug spray and chocolate frosting. The kind of smell that would linger on a t-shirt you’d refuse to wash for days.
“I have to tell you something,” he said suddenly.
You turned your head to look at him, setting down your fuzzy-top gel pen in your diary so that you can prop yourself up on one elbow. “What?”
He didn’t answer at first. Just kept staring at the sky like the stars might say it for him.
“My mom got a call from a tennis coach,” he said finally. “From Florida.”
“They want me to come train. At this... academy thing. Year-round.”
The words hit you like the first cold breath of winter. Even though it was July.
Silence bloomed between you like a bruise. He wasn’t looking at you.
You turn your head back to your diary, vision swimming.
“I thought I’d be excited,” he added. “But I’m not. Not really.”
He swallowed hard. “Because of you.”
The world spun quietly around you. Fireflies blinked in and out of existence. Somewhere far away, someone was playing a Spice Girls CD too loud.
“I don’t want you to go,” you whispered.
He reached for your hand, pinky hooking with yours like it was muscle memory.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
But he did. Two weeks after you sobbed alone in your room at the thought of losing him, the tears were streaming down your cheeks once again, this time silently.
You stood at the edge of his driveway, arms crossed tightly over your chest, watching as his mom loaded the last of the suitcases into the trunk.
He was wearing his favorite navy hoodie, the sleeves too long for his arms, and clutching a tennis racket like it was some kind of shield.
You had written him a note. Folded it into quarters. Stuffed it into the side pocket of his duffel bag when no one was looking. You didn’t sign your name. You knew he’d know.
“I burned you a CD,” you said, holding it out. The title was scrawled in Sharpie: “For the Nights You Miss Home.”
He took it, turning it over in his hands. “I’ll play it every night.”
You nodded, throat tight.
“I left you my purple Game Boy,” he added suddenly. “Under the swing set.”
“So you won’t forget me.”
His mom called out that it was time. He looked like he might cry, but didn’t.
You wanted to say something else—something important, something final—but all that came out was: “Goodbye, Art.”
He turned to you one last time.
And then he got in the car.
And you didn’t see him again for six years.
The following days of winter break are a blur of unspoken nostalgia. Christmas passes. You burn CDs for each other again, like it’s 2003 and iPods haven’t taken over yet. You fight over what to watch at Blockbuster. He makes fun of your AIM away message (“Reading, don’t msg unless it’s life or death lol”). You tell him he still smells like that cinnamon bun shampoo he always pretended he didn’t use.
You don’t talk about what’s next.
You don’t talk about what you lost.
But you talk about what you loved. Every night, as the sun casts its final glow, the two of you share body heat on the steps of his back porch. Every memory flows out, the conversation between you so animated you may as well be creating the images of your adolescent selves in thin air. You talk about nights stargazing, the way he’d pretend he didn’t love the way you’d braid all of his curls into tiny little braids, the night that he tried to braid yours and screwed up so bad you had to cut some of it out. You talk about sitting in the old plywood fort, hitting him every time he tried to read your diary over your shoulder. You talk about today, about Stanford, about his looming career, about what things are like all the way out on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
You can’t talk about what you lost. But you feel it. In every lingering look. Every time your hand almost reaches for his but pulls back too late. Beneath ever blade of grass that tickles your skin, whispering the memories they hold back into your bloodstream.
They're almost the same blades of grass that were there 7 years ago.
You were sitting beneath the willow tree between your houses, your favorite place, the one with roots like steps and branches like arms. The cicadas were screaming into the dusk. He had his knees drawn up, resting his chin on them, and you were plucking petals off a dandelion.
“I heard Amanda Friedman kissed Ryan behind the art building after school,” you said casually, like it wasn’t a bomb you were dropping.
Art looked over at you, eyes wide. “No way.”
He made a face. “That’s gross.”
“It’s not gross,” you argued. “It’s romantic.”
He wrinkled his nose. “You think kissing’s romantic?”
You shrugged. “I guess. I’ve never done it. But I think I want to. Eventually.”
He was quiet for a moment. You could feel him thinking beside you, the way his sneakers scraped the dirt, how his fingers curled around a blade of grass like it was something to hold onto.
Then, softly: “You’ve never kissed anyone?”
You shook your head. “Have you?”
He hesitated just long enough for you to know. “No.”
Another pause. The air smelled like honeysuckle and sidewalk chalk.
You dropped your chin to your knees. “I don’t want it to be with someone random. I want it to be with someone I... trust. Someone who already knows me.”
He turned to face you. “Like me?”
You looked up. Met his eyes.
“Yeah,” you said. “Like you.”
Then he leaned forward, slowly. You didn’t move.
And in the golden hush of a 2000 summer, with your hair tangled from wind and his lips barely brushing yours—he kissed you.
It was soft. Shy. Barely there.
And yet, it was everything.
When he pulled back, he whispered, “Now we both have.”
And you whispered, “Yeah.”
And neither of you spoke again for a long time.
A few days later, somewhere in your neighborhood, the new year’s party you’re at is too loud. Too many people in too small a space. Kelly Clarkson blares from the stereo. Someone’s cousin spilled Pepsi on the couch.
Art stands at the edge of it all like he’s underwater.
You watch him from across the room, your hands sweaty around a red plastic cup. You’re not drinking. Just holding.
When you finally cross the room, he doesn’t look surprised.
He’s never said yes to anything faster.
The air is sharp. 2006 is dying slowly under a bruised purple sky. The streetlights hum. The ice trying to disguise itself as snow crunches under your footsteps. You walk in silence, like every step forward might erase a part of the past.
You end up on his back porch.
“I used to think I’d grow out of it,” he says softly.
“I thought college, and tennis, and California, and time would fix it. But it didn’t. I kept trying to find pieces of you in other people. They never fit right.”
Your voice is a whisper. “I thought I was the only one who felt that way.”
“I’ve been in love with you since I was eleven.” He breathes the words out like they’ve been gripping his throat closed for the last 7 years. They have, honestly.
You run next door, through the back door of your house. Your room smells like dust and peppermint lotion. You dig under your bed. The diary is there. Pink, sparkly, ridiculous.
When you get back to him, he’s glaring. Not from a place of anger, but you just ran away after he confessed his love for you. “Why would you—”
You cut him off, eyes already streaming tears as you shove your diary, open to a specific page, in his hands.
“You’re telling me to read your diary? The one you always said was too sophisticated for me?” He’s scoffing at you. The situation would be comical if you weren’t so nauseous.
He glances down to the worn page, a physical manifestation of your 11-year-old self’s thoughts, dated 4 days before his 12th birthday:
Today the book I read had a scene where the mother told her child about the love story between her and her dad. Something about them being each other’s new year’s kisses. I tried to ask Mom about her and Dad's love story. It sucked.
I don't know that I’ve ever experienced love, or that I ever will, if I’m destined to follow in the boring footsteps of my parents. If I do get so lucky, though, I hope it comes from nobody other than Art Donaldson. We say we love each other, and I do! I really think I love him. At least, I think I do, based on my warped understanding of the concept of love in the first place.
I hope, one day, that I get to experience the type of love with Art that I’ve read about in all the books. The shiny one. The one that feels like fireworks and home. The New Year's kiss, kind of love.
He kissed me the other day. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Hopefully we get to do that again, like, a lot. I don’t think I can live without him. He’s my best friend.
Even if I never get lucky enough to experience a romantic love with Art Donaldson, I will be happy and satisfied as his best friend. Just being in his life is a gift. He is a gift. (I just lied SO hard. I'll update tomorrow with wedding plans after his birthday party.)
I have to go to sleep now, since I have a long day of wedding planning school and stuff tomorrow. Goodnight, diary.
“We’re going to be 3,800 miles apart again in a few days,” you say, your voice almost swallowed by the fireworks behind you, the sound like a world cracking open. You keep talking before he can fully process what he just read, the tears falling from his eyes staining the meticulously kept pages of your middle-school soul.
“I’m not asking you to wait. I’m not asking you to stay.”
“But just for tonight... will you be my New Year’s kiss?”
You look at him, really look at him—like you’re trying to memorize the way the porch light hits his lashes, the way the cold colors the tip of his nose.
“If not for us today, then for us six years ago?”
The sky ignites. Red, gold, green.
Just closes the space between you like he was always meant to.
He lets out the tiniest puff of air, visible in the chill, and then his hands are on your face and his lips are pressing directly on top of yours. It’s hard to classify it as a kiss, honestly, because it feels more like he’s screaming everything he’s ever felt for you down your throat, praying to anyone in charge that his feelings for you will attach themselves to your insides like fresh Velcro. It's a confession. A goodbye. A thousand different apologies that he probably doesn't even need to make.
Words are futile, at this point. There’s none that could accurately convey every emotion your lips are sharing, anyway. Love. Grief. Pure, unadulterated pain.
And when you finally pull apart, your forehead still pressed to his, he whispers the same thing he did six years ago.
tagging: @kimmyneutron @kharwreck @babyspiderling @queensunshinee @hanneh69 @jamespotteraliveversion @glennussy @awaywithtime @artstennisracket @artdonaldsonbabygirl
