✨Aira✨ SomethingDrawTo

He was always a failure in his father's eyes, a disappointment in his mother's, and something more than a placeholder but less than worthy family in his brothers'. Too sensible, too soft, too stubborn and foolish. He was sent away and disowned, guilty of a sin that was nothing but being in love, and he had to learn how to let the looks of pity and disgust of outsiders melt away into the streets, let them merge with the harsh concrete while he slept wherever the city let him.

And now Robby cups his cheek in front of everybody, calls him sweetheart, baby, love in the crowds, kisses his lips and orbits around him as if Dennis were the sun itself. He doesn't slap his hand away, doesn't demand he stifles his annoying giggles, doesn't berate him for being himself — no, if anything he praises him for it. As if Dennis were doing him a favour by simply existing. Robby loves Dennis, and he doesn't treat him or their relationship as something to be ashamed of.

Robby, because he has never considered himself worthy and deserving of pure and deep affection, because he has never seen himself as someone other than a fucked up man and a burden in the long run.

All of him is too much. Too much to bear, to deal with, to carry on one's shoulder. He doesn't stand himself most of the time, so he understands why nobody else would ever put up with him, and he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. He tries, he really tries, but even if he attempts to pretend not to, he knows that deep down there is something fundamentally wrong with him. Something dark and heavy and painful that lives with him, that has planted its seed one day long ago, and that has grown into poisonous branches and sick ivy between his ribs, in his heart, around his throat.

Yet Dennis looks at him as if he hung the stars and the moon — which he would, for him, if he asked, he would do anything — and he intertwines their arms while they walk aimlessly in the park, he calls him out on his bullshit and holds him as he breaks down, and then he stays. He has seen the worst parts of him, the bloody and scared ones he can't even face himself, and never left. He feels like someone unworthy of grace, and then Dennis laughs and kisses him on the sidewalk because he is happy to be with him. Because he knows him and his flaws, and he doesn't pretend they don't exist, and he loves him.

They like the attention and the affections because it's a reminder that they constantly choose each other, over and over, chosen for who they are. That someone knows them, heart and skin and soul, and in front of everybody holds them as if saying, look at this person, at this wonderful person.

Look and know that I see them, I want them, and I'm completely and utterly in love.

Look.

(fuck I love them so much)