This past week i found out i made the dean's list for my first semester of uni!! I couldn't believe it
THAT’S FANTASTIC! I wish you the best of luck the rest of the year as well :)
Compliment: First of all, I love your icon! Eva is so adorable and I especially love how the background matches her scarf. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL, then that color matches your updates tab and your type on mobile (plus Isak’s hat in the sidebar gif). It’s such a pretty color and it’s so pleasant to see it all throughout your theme.
this....... is probably half the song but i love it
i don't want your bodybut i hate to think about you with somebody elseour love has gone coldyou're intertwining your soul with somebody else
i'm looking through you while you're looking through your phoneand then leaving with somebody elseno, i don't want your bodybut i'm picturing your body with somebody else
come on babythis ain't the last time that i'll see your facecome on baby
you said you'd find someone to take my place
somebody else - the 1975
Put a “∞” in my Ask Box and I’ll shuffle my itunes and give you my favorite lyric(s) from the song that comes up.
kara: stray wisps of hair, large scarves, craving your favourite food, 90′s music, sunlight on water, shouting in celebration, fist bumps, twirling in a dress, watching the clouds, air kisses, looking up in wonder at the night sky, strawberry lip balm, blushing at compliments, stuttering around your crush, tracing patterns on skin with your fingertips; jubilant
Happy Holidays @freckledrebelking! - From your Secret Santa.
It starts like this.
The One Where They Meet.
The Christmas party in his dorm is in full swing by the time Bellamy rolls in from the library. He’s not entirely surprised he managed to forget about the whole thing altogether, he’s been ignoring his hyped-up-on-candy-canes RA since the day after Thanksgiving when he woke up to the communal spaces of the dorm looking like a bunch of Christmas elves threw up glitter everywhere. Surrounded by writhing bodies dancing to a Mariah Carey song, Bellamy admits defeat, lets a random passerby pluck some antlers on top of his head and makes his way to the kitchen to get a drink.
He’s over by the bar nursing a beer (and definitely not bopping along to the beat of the saccharine song that follows) when a loud crash sounds from behind him, followed by a startled shout and the sound of glass breaking. He turns and there’s a person trapped underneath the giant plastic Christmas tree in the far corner of the room. Most of the party-goers pay the accident no mind except for two girls who are carefully trying to free the person by lifting the tree slightly and pulling them out from underneath it. By the time he reaches them one of the girls has almost managed to get the tree back upright so he goes to help the other girl lift the tree’s victim up from off the floor and maneuver around the shards of broken ornaments on the ground.
If he’d made the decision to help the girl with the tree instead things might have gone very differently. As it is, he’s too distracted by the gorgeous brunette that’s suddenly right in front of him, after tree person mumbles a quick thanks and saunters off without a care. She’s all long legs and bright eyes and she’s smirking at him in a way that screams trouble so she’s definitely his type. She gives him a once over with obvious interest and he smiles shyly, ducking his head and rubbing at the back of his neck. He’s not shy — he definitely knows what he looks like, has written more than a few impassioned blog posts about the objectification of his person as a biracial and bisexual man, but the way the most attractive brunette he’s ever seen is biting her lip has reduced him to a bumbling teenager. (Seriously, that lip thing should not be legal.)
After some more intense eye contact (her) and blushing (him) the other girl directs their attention to her with a pointed cough. She’s blonde, has a tiny freckle above her lip that’s more than a little distracting, and a glint in her eyes that makes him think she can see right through him. She bumps her shoulder against her friend and the two manage to have a discussion with just their eyes that’s eventually settled by a curt nod (the blonde) and a fond smile (the brunette). The blonde then gives him a once over, one that’s not entirely different from the one her friend gave him earlier but also much much more dangerous.
“That brace doesn’t mean she can’t kick your ass if you step out of line,” she says and it’s not a threat that he hears in her voice, it’s pride. Then she turns to her friend and says, “And you, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
It’s some sort of inside joke, judging by the way their shoulders are shaking with barely suppressed laughter, but Bellamy’s too busy trying to figure out if it’s supposed to encourage or discourage her friend from doing anything to worry about being the butt of a joke. He is a worried that his perceptual filter is kind of an asshole — he hadn’t even noticed the knee brace supporting her leg.
After her friend leaves, she holds out her hand in a move that’s oddly formal for the setting they’re in. “I’m Raven.”
He grins and shakes her hand, his smile widening when she doesn’t let go. “Bellamy.”
“Bellamy,” she repeats slowly, as if she’s considering the effect of his name on the potential of whatever happens next. “Let’s have a drink.”
It’s clear by the way she walks ahead of him to the bar and doesn’t look back, her ponytail swishing across her shoulders, that it’s not a question and Bellamy wisely chooses to follow her lead. They’re three drinks in when he notices that one of his hands is firmly planted on her waist and her fingers are curled around his upper arm. They’re close enough for their noses to touch. The air between them is charged and she nods, mostly to herself Bellamy thinks, and when they’re alone he’ll ask her if this is really what she wants but now he uses the hand on her waist to turn her into his chest before walking them towards his room.
(It’s just a one time thing. It’s very clear Raven is not ready for more when she wakes up in his bed the next morning with a frown on her face and tears in her eyes. She tells him about Finn, her ex-boyfriend, and Clarke (the blonde from the party), her ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, and how neither of them knew about the other until Raven caught them in a restaurant in town. She tells him that Clarke broke a knuckle when she broke Finn’s nose and how she didn’t hesitate to punch him in a room full of people. She tells him how upset she is with herself, even now, three months later, for being too upset to even say anything when it all happened, and angrily declares that getting over someone by getting under someone else is bullshit — no offence to him — and fuck, why is Christmas filled with so many feelings? Bellamy lets her talk until she runs out of steam and shares some things about his own sob story of a life when he sees that she’s embarrassed. Deadbeat dad, dead mom, a spitfire of a half-sister that’s been his responsibility since the day she was born, how guilty he feels for being here while she is still back at home and living with the sister of the father she never had. (And just like that, they’re friends.) He makes them breakfast and she filches one of his hoodies to wear over her clothes back to her dorm. The next day he finds a note slipped under his door thanking him for being one of the good ones, there’s a little doodle of a snowman on the bottom and it’s signed C.)
Raven gives him a knit hat for Christmas that year and after a couple of glasses of eggnog she admits to making it herself, having taken up knitting years ago to keep her hands occupied when her mind runs in overdrive. (Well the hat and the gift of being friends with a certified member of Mensa, as stated on the gift tag.) He thanks her for both gifts, unaware of the fact that years later he’ll be wearing the hat as he thanks her for bringing Clarke into his life.
The One Where They’re Friends.
It’s definitely not all sunshine and roses between Bellamy and Clarke. For a good while the only thing that they have in common is Raven. Bellamy mostly thinks that Clarke is an overeager, prissy nightmare and there’s that one time during a straight up crazy bitch fight where he flat out calls her a princess, his voice hard and full of misplaced venom as he unfairly takes out his anger at the world on her. Clarke has taken to calling him an asshole multiple times a day every day, always more fond than biting no matter what is being said, and it’s when she gets quiet that he knows he fucked up. Badly. Raven stills comes over to study that evening but she whacks him upside the head with one of her books and tells him to apologise to Clarke in no unclear terms before sitting on his bed, her legs stretched out in front of her, and stealing one of his pencils to put her hair up in a bun.
(They try to hate each other for awhile, they really really do, but it just won’t work. They trade barbs back and forth and snipe at each other more often than not, there’s yelling and there’s eye rolling but they smile at each other whenever they argue and they love Raven, and when Bellamy’s friend Miller starts dating Clarke’s friend Monty they just give up on the whole thing and deal with the fact that they’re not getting rid of each other any time soon. It’s — nice, comforting. She’s his person the same way he’s her person, in that special way where at the end of the night, surrounded by all of their friends, they’ll look at each other from across the room and sigh or shake their heads and everything goes a little quiet despite how loud Jasper is yelling about something or other.)
He apologises the next day by bringing her a mocha, batting his eyelashes, and pleading his case in a longwinded speech and he somehow gets her to smile at him again; it’s as bright as always and just like that they’re fine. She’s still the one he calls after he has a fight with Octavia and she goes to him first when she’s thinking of changing her major from pre-med to Fine Arts (she makes him pretend to be her mother so that she can practice telling her). She takes care of him when he gets sick, borrowing her friend’s car to drive him to the doctor and then home so that he can be sick in his own room and gets his sister to teach her how to make the soup he likes. He walks her home after a night of serious drinking when it’s the anniversary of her best friend’s death and stays up with her all night to make sure she’s okay. She draws him pictures all the time and he makes sure she eats enough vegetables.
It’s not too long before she’s taken to studying in the library during his shifts and they get dinner together after. She starts texting Octavia after the soup thing, trading recipes and ridiculous anecdotes about him, and while Clarke is still not speaking to her mother, Bellamy suddenly finds himself dodging calls from the hospital where her mother works. It also doesn’t take long for their friends to notice exactly how close the two have gotten over the passings months. Deep down Bellamy knows that it’s something more with Clarke; more than just friendship, more than just a crush, just more.
Raven likes to elbow him in the ribs when he and Clarke have ‘a Moment’ and it’s not like he doesn’t notice it himself, he’s just — emotionally inarticulate. His first girlfriend (Roma, very cute, very not ready to deal with the clusterfuck that was his life back in high school) said as much when she dumped him three months and one too many visits from CPS into the relationship. His second girlfriend (Echo, also very cute, taught him important life lessons like not to trust mainstream media) was emotionally inarticulate too and they fizzled out when they could no longer use each other to exorcise their demons.
There have been a handful of people in his life and in his bed since Echo but none of them have stuck and when he allows himself to think about why it boils down to something to do with him or something to do with Clarke. What trips him up is that it’s practically the same (the most recent example being Gina, total badass, too good for him, may have elbowed him in ribs once or twice and thus got along swimmingly with Raven) and he just doesn’t know how to deal with that right now. Not when he’s got a sister to get through two more years of high school while working two jobs, worrying about his grades and scholarship, trying not to kill his roommate so that he doesn’t wind up in jail and by default fucks up all of the other things he’s supposed to be doing, and having some sort of functioning social life which, admittedly at present, is 90% sustained by Clarke and Raven, therefore making this thing between them entirely too fragile to fuck with.
So he just plops down next to her on the couch during movie night, stays reasonably cool when she settles in a little closer to him as she gets comfortable, pretends to ignore the look Miller shoots him over Monty’s shoulder, actively ignores Jasper’s cooing, and instead engages in a conversation with Harper. Halfway through the movie Monty knocks his head back against Clarke’s knee to draw her attention to what’s happening on the screen and just like that they’re off trying to sort everyone in attendance into a Hogwarts House. (Ravenclaw for Raven and Monty, obviously. Clarke’s a pureblood Slytherin, Miller and Jasper are Gryffindors, Murphy’s a Slytherin, Mel and Maya are Hufflepuffs, Harper defects to Beauxbatons and Fox just wants to be Hagrid, which is a valid lifestyle choice.)
He’s not sure how they go from arguing about his house (Clarke says Gryffindor, Raven and Miller vote Hufflepuff, and Monty makes a case for Ravenclaw) to deciding on organising a Secret Santa gift exchange this year but Jasper gets excited by the first snow starting to fall outside and well. He’s both relieved and disappointed when he draws Miller’s name from the hat. Part of him thinks that he could’ve turned this into a Big Romantic Gesture for Clarke (which he’s pretty good at; see girlfriends one and three for reference, he definitely knew how to gesture his way out of living-on-borrowed time territory) but if he’s emotionally stunted then Clarke is emotionally drained (see boyfriend one and girlfriend two, add a healthy dose of mommy-issues, and the death of her best friend on top of that and you get a specific type of emotional constipation that Bellamy’s very familiar with) and the last thing he wants to do is put her on the spot like that. And either way, he gets to buy a present for Miller, who’s definitely his fourth favourite person in the world, and he’s learned that the process of buying gifts for the people you care about is significantly more enjoyable when you have actual money to your name.
Still, he can’t help getting Clarke a gift. He anticipates the wrapping paper she throws back in his face before she even does it and knows he’s probably earned it when she calls him an asshole but. She runs her fingers over the cover of the Disney Princess colouring book — one that includes Tiana because he’s not that much of an asshole — like it’s something precious and even though she tells him she’s “a goddamn adult, thank you very much,” she spends the rest of the evening curled up against him using the new coloured pencils she got from Maya to colour a picture of The Little Mermaid while humming Under the Sea under her breath.
Raven looks at him like he’s the world’s biggest idiot and he probably is a little but, but he’s the idiot with a room full of his friends with a happy sister who remembered to check in with him before she left for her sleepover earlier, and there’s a cute girl with her head perched on his shoulder. He hasn’t gotten everything figured out yet, but he’s getting there.
The One They Spend Apart.
For all of his optimism just last year, his prospects are a little bleaker the next time December rolls around. And it’s not because his life is not still great (sometimes he still has to pinch himself to remind himself that this is actually his life, he’s in school, has friends who love him, an adult in his life who prioritises him and his sister, and his sister is comfortable and thriving; it’s everything his mother ever wanted but was unable to provide for him and he’s not taking any of it for granted) or that the opportunities he’s given are less valuable just because he has the worst timing when it comes to the girl he likes.
Two things happen on the same day sometime in June. He finds out that he gets to go on an internship abroad to work on an excavation site in mainland Greece during the fall semester. Clarke finds out that she’s approved for a cultural exchange program with the University of Rome and will be getting her fill of gelato and frescos in the spring.
He doesn’t spend his time abroad wallowing or pining. (He does for like a day but then he gets to work.) He wants to enjoy his time abroad and he wants the same for Clarke so he doesn’t tell her, can’t think of anything worse than an awkward feelings-filled dark cloud to follow them around when they’re not even on the same continent to hash things out. He’s more aware of and in touch with his feelings though so he purposefully steers clear of romantic entanglements during his time away — he doesn’t have to be careless with someone else just because he’s not with the person he wants. He keeps up a steady rapport with Clarke most days, he’s about eight hours ahead of her so they’re almost always playing phone tag but there are a couple of hours in the day where they catch each other if they’re lucky. A couple of weeks in he thinks he may be laying it on a little thick and deliberately doesn’t check his phone all days only to find a dozen messages from her waiting for him and she seems increasingly put out by his lack of response. It’s a Saturday and it’s almost midnight so he feels pretty good about his chances of getting her on Skype so he types out a quick message before changing into his pyjamas. (She’s pouting when the video call connects and it’s adorable so he teases her until she gets huffy and threatens to hang up.)
—
Christmas comes and goes and before he knows it he’s packing his suitcase to go back home. (The interns organise a potluck dinner and play a game of White Elephant with silly gifts that weren’t allowed to cost more than five euros and Bellamy walks away with a snow globe of the Acropolis. He takes a picture to send to Clarke and she sends him back a selfie from her mother’s fancy Christmas brunch. She’s smiling brilliantly at the camera and the caption reads: My gift this year is a room full of privileged, middle-aged, narrow-minded Republicans to confuse with my sexuality #santaknowswhatsup #butasnowglobeiscooltoo.) Clarke insists on picking him up from the airport. She’s only got a couple of days before she’s supposed to leave for Europe with her parents so that they can spend New Years together in Rome, but she says she wants to see him, even if it’s just for the two hours it’ll take to drive him home a couple of towns over where he’ll spend the rest of the holiday, and it’s not like he’s going to tell her no; he missed her too.
(It’s — yeah, clammy hands, heart beating a mile a minute, a constant urge to find a mirror and check what his hair is doing after a whole day of travelling, it’s not pretty.)
He spots her as soon as he gets on the escalator meant to take him down to Arrivals. Her golden hair is like a honing beacon in the flurry of airport activity. She’s got it braided up in a crown around her face and his chest feels warm now when she reminds him of a princess. She cocks an eyebrow at him when they make eye contact like she’s daring him to say it (but then he’s always thought she was able to see right through him). As he gets closer to her, her expression changes from challenging to something softer, the glow in her eyes a familiar mix of fondness and mischief but it’s also different, there’s awe mixed in with something decidedly more.
It’s all instinct and muscle memory when she jumps into his arms from just a few feet away and winds her arms around his neck. There’s no prelude to the kiss, it just is — her lips are on his, soft and insistent, and it’s precious and urgent at the same time. His response is instant, he kisses her back eagerly and moves his hand from her waist up her back to rub his thumb soothingly between her shoulder blades. When they need to break apart to breathe her cheeks are flushed and her lips kiss-bitten but she looks too pensive for his liking, a deep frown between her brows.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t — that was really selfish. I really didn’t mean to kiss you right before I have to leave but I also didn’t want to leave without kissing you and I’m so — God, this isn’t at all how I wanted this to go.”
He can’t help it, he laughs and buries his face in her neck, pressing kisses to her pulse in between the chuckles shaking through his body. She sags against him, the embarrassment slowly seeping out of her frame until he’s supporting most of her weight, and rakes her nails across his scalp where her fingers are still buried in his hair, the blunt pressure lighting a fire underneath his skin. His whole heart must be showing on his face because when he lifts his head to tell her everything that’s been on his mind for more than a year now, her eyes darken and she swallows, licking her lips and drawing his attention to that little freckle. The words die on his lips and he leans in to kiss her again, hard, letting the world narrow down to the feel of her under his hands and the little sounds she’s making in the back of her throat.
When they break apart this time it’s Clarke again who speaks first. “I want to talk about this — us — before I leave, but right now I just want — I mean, do I have to take you home straight away?”
She’s leaving in two days and he won’t see her for five months so yeah, they need to sit down and work this out in a way that will keep them both sane but he’s confident so he just shakes his head and slots his fingers in the spaces between hers. “I’ve got time.”
(Two days later he’s driving her to the airport where they’ll meet her parents for coffee and Clarke is teasing him about being nervous.
“That’s because it’s only been two days.”
“No it hasn’t.”
“Your parents think that it’s only been two days,” he amends.
Clarke laughs and flicks an empty gum wrapper at him and he feels warm all over. “No they don’t.”
He reaches over to twine their fingers together. It’s a small gesture but it still feels Big, reaching out, Clarke meeting him halfway with a squeeze to his fingers and a gentle smile.)
The One With the Boring Couples.
His sister calls them boring a couple of days before Christmas. She started her first year at a college nearby in the fall so she’s been over a lot and spending a lot of time around her brother and his girlfriend. Clarke moved into a place off-campus over the summer. She’s subletting the room from one of her classmates who has taken a year off and the girl he shares the apartment with is hardly ever home so on most days it feels like they have the place all to themselves and Bellamy sometimes gets a little overwhelmed having his two favourite girls in the same room. It’s a pretty spacious apartment in a quaint neighbourhood so it’s not uncommon for their friends to hang out their either on lazy evenings — particularly the couples of the group: Raven and Luna, Monty and Miller, and as of late Jasper and Maya. (Raven’s not exactly a new member of the Tired Bisexuals Club™ that Bellamy and Clarke founded some night two years ago but she’s a card carrying member now and they’re planning on giving her a title soon, Secretary of Something or Other. Clarke is President because she won the coin toss but Bellamy has full naming-of-the-club-credits in addition to being Vice-President. Monty joined last year as Treasurer.)
One afternoon Harper, Fox and Monroe join them at the apartment for a drink just as they’re all heckling a random ice hockey game on TV. (Miller’s the only one who knows how ice hockey works so the rest just starts yelling whenever he does and pays the game no mind the rest of the time.) Murphy, who dropped out of school last year and seemingly fell off the face of the earth, has apparently opened his own bar (called Murphy’s, of course) and ran into Monroe who has been instructed to invite “everyone and their mother” to his grand-opening-slash-Christmas-rager on the 25th. Bellamy can actually feel himself starting to get tired just thinking about it.
He’s successfully avoided any and all Christmas parties since his freshman year and figures he suffered enough wearing antlers on his head for a full hour (though despite the antlers he still got laid).
“Actually,” Monty (bless him) starts. “We were just thinking of staying in this year. We’re going to dress up and cook a fancy three-course meal and buy each other gifts from the dollar store so that we can actually pay for the food, and then watch old time-y Christmas movies in our pyjamas.”
“You’re welcome to join, we’ve got plenty of space here but it’s BYOC — bring your own chair,” Clarke adds.
When Harper tries to answer Monroe quickly slaps her hand over her mouth before she can get a word out. “We’ll um — think about it. Thanks.”
Fox tries but her smile comes out more like a grimace and Bellamy has to hide his smirk against Clarke’s shoulder as an awkward silence fills the room. A couple of minutes later the three girls leave with plans to meet up soon and a wave to Octavia who’s reading an article for class at the dining table.
“You guys are so boring,” she mumbles softly, so softly that Bellamy wonders if they were even supposed to hear her but the game has ended and her voice carries over the sad PSA for a local animal shelter.
“You know, you don’t have to stay here Octavia. You have a perfectly good dorm room with a perfectly nice roommate waiting for you. I’m sure she’d be more than happy to include you in her holiday plans,” Bellamy volleys back. (That’s a lie, by the way, he doesn’t think the girl — Ontari — even knows what happy means.)
Octavia experiences a full body shiver at the mention of her roommate and goes back to her reading. Quietly. (Bellamy 1 — Octavia 0.)
—
Bellamy wakes up on Christmas morning with a lazy smile on his face and stretches out on the rumpled sheets. He can hear Clarke padding around in the kitchen making them breakfast. In his mind’s eye he sees her with her hair up and wearing one of his shirts and the image is enough to lure him out of the bedroom. She’s got some Christmas playlist on and she’s humming along while flipping pancakes on the griddle. The kitchen is bathed in sunlight and it catches on Clarke’s unruly curls. Bellamy thinks that he’d like to paint the picture she makes right now, unkempt and golden, if he could. This is the second year in the four years that he’s known her that Clarke has stayed in town for the holidays — this time not because she had a fight with her mother but because it’s their first Christmas together as a couple. It’s not the big deal Bellamy expected it to be when he pictured it two years ago when they were huddled together on the small couch in Raven’s dorm. The previous Christmases have been pretty significant for them in terms of how they became Them but this year — he can’t really explain it; it’s not the fireworks and giddy excitement he thought he would feel, it’s more of a comfortable quiet that settles deep in his stomach. But then looking at her now, dwarfed by one of his sweatshirts, waving a spatula in the air with a swing in her hips, he thinks about making time for some fireworks.
(His sister cleared out last night, he suspects to get out of helping them with the preparations, their friends won’t be arriving for some hours, Clarke’s legs are on full display — yeah, he fully intends to make the most of an empty apartment.)
He wraps his arms around her from behind, one hand slides around her hip while the other moves to turn the stove off, his intent to derail breakfast obvious in the way he presses against her. She turns in his arms and deftly hops onto the counter behind her, her legs coming up to cradle his hips. A heady moment passes and then she’s pulling the shirt she’s wearing up and off, flinging it across the room without care. His hands find purchase in her hair and then he’s kissing her — her lips, her jaw, her neck, the sensitive part of her skin between her shoulder and collarbone, and then down, down, down; his lips leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. A part of him wants to finish what he’s started exactly where he is, drop to his knees until she can’t see straight and build her up all over again, but the part of him that’s big on self-preservation knows that he won’t make it through a whole day of bustling in the kitchen with his friends with those images burned into his brain.
He picks her up with the full intention of taking her up to her bedroom but Clarke’s hands get grabby and he actually has to put her down because his legs are shaking. He gets like that sometimes, just completely and utterly overwhelmed by her and by the fact that they want all the same things, that they’re in this together. They’re about a foot apart at this point, Clarke is leaning against the wall just looking at him, her pupils blown and dark, her chest is heaving and goddamn she’s a vision and he can’t believe she’s all his. He crowds her against the wall and presses desperate kisses against her lips. She’s whimpering with every stroke of his tongue and it’s wrecking him in all the best ways and he suddenly finds himself completely out of patience. Everything boils down to right here, right now, and the softness of the skin underneath his hands.
Afterwards they’re lying besides each other on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, sweaty and sated and a little out of breath still. Clarke is curled into his side with her arm slung across his chest and her face buried in the crook of his neck. He’s running a finger from her shoulder down her arm when a glint of light catches his eye from the corner of the room. He turns his head to get a better look and a deep laugh bubbles up from his throat when he sees the upended Christmas tree in the living room.
“Clarke, look.”
She lifts her head a little drowsily, rolling on top of him so that she can proper her chin on his chest to see what’s so funny. “Huh. Full circle.”
“Do you remember knocking into the tree?”
She reaches up with her hand and shakes some pine out of his hair. “No, but it explains this.”
“Oh god,” he groans. “We should probably do something about that.”
Clarke hums and presses a kiss to the dimple in his chin before closing her eyes again. “Soon. Just wanna stay here with you a little longer.”
Bellamy thinks he could stay like this forever. (One of these days he’s going to tell her.)
