[user hyvcklvr is also terribly in love. this is based on real life experiences of mine. Except I'm not Mark and I'm a girl. Quote at the beginning is from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman. Send in requests pls. Lmk what you think. Ty.]
“There is a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughly smitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be smitten as well.
Amor ch'a null'amato amar perdona
Love, which exempts no one who's loved from loving.”
Mark lay in his bed, arms and legs sprawled out as he blankly stared into the ceiling. Beside him lay his copy of “Call Me By Your Name”, with one of the pages fluttering back and forth due to the wind coming from the air conditioner, as if it were trying to choose a direction to go where it could finally rest upon the page below it. Quite like Mark's heart, he thought. Fluttering and fluttering, trying to do something, make a decision, a choice, anything, but alas, he had no say in this.
For Mark's heart at the moment had already been stolen by someone else. It was the heart of a person so purely and entirely in love.
It's been a week, Mark thought. A week since he'd seen her. The one he dedicated hours of walking to school and pages of his journal to.
Mark knew that falling wouldn't be easy. It never is. Not for him. Not for anyone. But one look into her brown eyes and Mark knew, he just knew, she was worth it.
Mark thought that he had fallen in love with her the day he saw her sitting alone in the bus, with the sun setting and the light falling on her face, illuminating and painting her features with shades of orange, red and pink. Shades of the sunset. Mark was mesmerized. Everything happening around him was suddenly a blur to him, and all he could focus on was her soft smile as she waved her friend goodbye from the window.
Her smile? It was to die for. Yeah, Mark had seen pretty smiles before. He had liked girls before with pretty smiles.
But her smile wasn't just pretty. It was comforting. Somehow, seeing her heart shaped lips curl up into a smile, her usually gloomy and resting face brighten and her big, brown eyes which were quiet, but always wide open in curiosity turn into pretty crescents, felt like a hug to Mark. Watching her tilt her head back and laugh was like looking at a painting and Mark wanted to click a picture and save it forever.
Mark had not just fallen for her this time, he had literally tumbled down a hill for her. His notebook was filled with lyrics for her, his sketchbook filled with desperate attempts of capturing her face on paper.
She claimed she wasn't a quiet person. “I'm not quiet.” She told Mark one day. “It's just that the people aren't the right people.”
And oh, Mark was ready to give away everything just to be the right person. Was he? He thought to himself sometimes. He was a pretty talkative person, but for her, he'd shut up and listen to her talk all day long. He loved it when she talked to him on their way back home. She'd always be so excited, with big bright eyes itching to reveal something or the other everyday. Usually their conversations would start with her saying "You know what happened today?”
“No. No I don't. But please, tell me. I wanna know everything that has happened in your life.” Mark thought.
And she did tell him everything, the excitement in her voice getting evident as the story gets more and more interesting. Making big hand gestures and jumping about in her seat. She was an author, he thought, because she always had a story to tell. Mark? Well. He was just a fan. A fan who'd listen to every story with detail. Almost as if he were a critique, a poor one, for he had nothing to criticize in her stories. No, to him, she was perfect.
Some moments with her were simply. Simply intimate. Intimate in the most non-intimate way possible. It could be one of the riskier moves Mark had pulled, like when he slid in next to her on a seat one day, asking if she wanted to listen to music. They had the same taste in music, and then onwards, they'd sit next to each other almost everyday, his black earphones connecting them as they say there next to each other, bopping their heads to the music. So close but so far.
It could be something simple, like her resting her chin on the backrest of Mark's seat, while Mark is sitting with his arms over the sam backrest, hand so close to her soft brown hair, palm itching to just stroke it while they say there in silence. She quite enjoyed sitting in silence. He was never a fan of it, but silence wasn't as scary as it seemed when he was with her. She enjoyed his presence, he hoped, because she had told him one day, when he was whining about how none of his friends were present, “I like quiet days. Besides, it's more peaceful right now with just the two of us, don't you think?”
Yes, yes and a thousand times, yes.
And Mark lay there, on his bed, at 1 a.m., with his copy of “Call Me By Your Name” in his hands. He was hopeful. Love, which exempts no one who's loved from loving. He remembered how she had flushed tomato red when he had hugged her on his birthday. He remembered the feeling of having her in his arms, even if it was for a moment. The warmth she radiated, how she was home in itself. It made him wonder, that maybe deep inside those shy glances, that small smile, that eagerness when she talked to him, maybe, just maybe, she reciprocated his feelings?
Mark cracked a smile at that. “I'm delusional.” He thought, as he buried his face in his pillow and kicked his feet in the air as if he had come straight out of a teen girl movie.
“amor ch'a null'amato amar perdona”