And Miles To Go
Wallflower Blush
Sunlight in spring has a cold quality of light to it that I like. It’s not so much a matter of temperature as it is clarity. Like really good, clean ice dropped into a glass of unsweetened tea.
I coil the pullcord of the window blinds in my hand and draw them up, letting the light spill into the room along with a crisp breeze that picks up without warning. I freeze as the air crashes over me like a down pillow of bracing wind, and take a long, slow breath.
The air is frigid with the cold waters of Lake Canter and for a moment the pressure in my head lightens just a little, interspersed with the breeze.
I nudge the daffodils a little more into the light and tip some of the water from the cup I’d brought over into the pot. I set the bluebells next to them, and beside those go the violets, and I tip a little water into each of those, too.
Their colours are bright and their perfume is just starting to reach the point where you can smell it the moment you get close.
“Peonies,” I mutter quietly as I set the glass down and set my hand between the daffodils and the bluebells. “Here, maybe? Or… forget-me-nots?”
There’s not much room on the window sill anymore since I added the violets, but they were too pretty to pass up when Sunset pointed them out while she and I were shopping the other day.
I wonder if Sunset would be okay with adding a little shelf below the window, then I could stagger the arrangement and spread it out a little.
“Daffodils, then peonies below and to the right,” I count off with my fingers, picturing the set up in my head as I did. “Then up to forget-me-nots, down to the bluebells, then up to the violets?”
It was a nice arrangement, theoretically, and they were all good companions. I’d have to find the Peonies and Forget-Me-Nots, but the grocery down the street has a nice selection.
Pointless unless I have a shelf for them, though.
I gather up the cup of water and the towels that I’d been using to clean up after myself and walk back to the kitchen. The counter has a little row of five succulents I picked out last month, and one of them has started to flower. It’s a tiny, stubborn little thing, but I think it will manage. The air in Sunset’s apartment is good. So long as I give it a little extra water every now and then it should give a little bloom.
“Hmm…” I look over the apartment, frowning.
The rows of flowers were yesterday, I got the daffodils a week ago though. The succulents were last month. The fern in the corner near the door was the month before that, which reminds me, I need to sweep up around it. It’s lost a few leaves.
“One, two, three,” I count quietly, looking around. “Four.”
The bromeliad on the coffee table was gotten before the fern, I think. Yeah, it was the month before that, and— Oh! that’s right, can’t forget that.
I wipe up the counter and walk over to the table, sit down and spritz the bromeliad twice. The breeze is good for it, and the sharp, red colour is wonderful. I know Sunset likes it.
“Wallie?”
The spray bottle falls out of my grip, hits the floor with a clatter, and rolls under the coffee table.
Sunset has a hand out on my shoulder, her warm smile chasing a few degrees of chill out of the air as I start chuckling weakly and bend down to grab the bottle.
“Sorry,” Sunset says quietly. “I called out a few times.”
I shake my head. “No, it’s, uhm… it was my fault.”
I fish the bottle out from under the table and set it down, then scoot to the side so there’s room for Sunset to join me, which she does.
She’s dressed, I note. She’s wearing jeans and a black top that has snippets of song lyrics all over it, and her shoes are on. I know she doesn’t work today which means she’s going out. If she’s going to see her friends then she’ll ask me to come too, and I’ll just…
“I’m going to the store,” Sunset says as she drapes an arm over my shoulders and draws me in as I stifle a relieved sigh. I let her, and I rest my head comfortably on her shoulder. “Wanna come?”
That’s not so bad. I don’t feel nearly as bad turning down a run to the store. I went yesterday, and it was nice, but it was also a lot.
A lot of people.
A lot of talking.
“It’s okay if not,” Sunset says with a small laugh as she brushes her lips over my head. “I’ll be gone like… an hour tops.”
I put a hand over hers, twining our fingers together, and take a long, deep breath as I hold tight. There’s the difference between us. It’s that little needle in my heart that reminds me that I’m holding onto her because I feel like, if I don’t, I might fall away somewhere and the knowledge that Sunset holds onto me for that exact same reason.
Because she’s afraid that, if she doesn’t, I might fall away somewhere.
In other words: without me, she would still be right here.
She would be fine.
Sunset Shimmer can step outside the apartment, walk to the store, and pick among the shelves to take what she needs. She won’t have a brief panic attack because she can’t remember if it’s the quick oats or the minute oats that she likes to make oatmeal with.
I once stared at three brands of Prench dressing for fifteen minutes. I had run out because I like to put it on hash browns, and I really wanted some for the next morning. In the end, I left without picking any up because staring at three different types made my dumb brain short-circuit because it was easier to not make a decision at all than to decide.
I can’t even imagine that happening to Sunset.
It happens to me all the time.
My head fills with static and cotton balls, and I just… don’t.
“If it’s okay, I think I’ll stay h… here.” I almost said ‘home’.
Sunset smiles and nods. She heard the word I stopped on, just like I did, but she’s still smiling at me. She was expecting that reply, I think. I almost never go out two days in a row. Not if I can help it.
“I figured,” she says with a smile, then wraps me in a hug and squeezes tight. “I love you, Wallie.”
I wrap my arms around her and nod against her shoulder.
“I love you, too.”
Then she gets up, gives my hand a quick squeeze, and makes her way over to the door. As she does my eyes trace over the plants in the house. Daffodils, bluebells, and violets. Succulents on the counter and the fern by the door. The bromeliad on the table, and…
Upstairs, in the loft, there’s a hibiscus that lost it’s blooms a few days ago but looks like it will be blooming again pretty soon. We got that just a little while after I starting staying here for a while… but-?
Six.
One, two, three, four, five, and six.
The peace lily next to the television set. I picked that one out for her because I thought her apartment was a little drab. It was just a couple of days after that autumn night. The one where she…
Six.
“Sunset?”
“Hm?” Sunset turns to face me as, raising an eyebrow as she pulls her jacket on and knocks her heel on the floor to get her shoe fitting right.
One plant for every month since that day. One plant for every month that I’ve… I never actually moved in. Not officially. It wasn’t a situation where she asked (a fifteenth time, I think it would have been) and I said yes. I just stopped leaving for any length of time. I haven’t slept in my own bed for better than four months now.
And Sunset hasn’t asked me to move in since. She’s just been quietly marking the time while filling her (our) apartment with colour.
I stand up, brush the wrinkles in my pajama pants flat, and walk over to Sunset as she tugs her jacket straight and pulls on her bright orange beanie to keep her hair tame in the Spring winds.
“Change your mind?” She asks. “I can wait.”
“Mm-m.” I shake my head. “Just… come home safe, okay?”
Her cheek is warm when I go up on my toes to kiss it, and when I pull back she’s staring down at me in surprise. Her eyes are wide and as blue as the skies of a Canterlot spring morning, and for a minute I think she might be about to cry. She doesn’t though… she just smiles, glass-fragile and happy, and nods.
“Okay.” She nods, then leans down to nuzzle my nose.
And then she’s out the door, down the hall, and gone.
As I close the door I can’t help but wonder if that was the right thing to do. It was worth it to say, I think. I don’t know if I feel it, but I think… I think I might actually want to feel it.
The door closes with a muted click that sounds far too loud in the empty apartment.
Do I want to feel that?
Home?
What does that even feel like?
My breath is getting short and my vision is warming up for a borderline Olympic swim routine. I try to cut it off mentally but I can’t. My heart is hammering in my chest. It’s all I can hear, and my vision is starting to grey out.
“Oh.”
The soft squeak of noise escapes my lips as I stagger, then sprint for the bathroom, almost knocking over the Peace Lily as my stomach goes into a triple backflip routine, flubs the pirouette, and breaks both legs on the mat, sending me to my knees in front of the toilet.
Panic rips through me. Raw and terrifying panic that sends clenches through my gut and chest as I dry heave over the basin. Tears and snot leak reflexively from my face as I let out a ragged sob.
Home.
Sunset wants this to be home. It’s her home, but she wants it to be mine too, but how can I manage that? I don’t know what home is! I’ve never known what a home is, and if I did it wasn’t the kind of place I’d want to be!
I can’t do this. I… I want to do this. But I can’t.
She wants me to do this, and I want to.
If you’d let me, I’d marry you right now.
My jaw clenches and a low, wordless groan spills out of me from between my teeth. I dig my fingers into my hair and hold onto my head like I’m afraid it will split apart, and I force myself to take long, slow breaths until the panic starts to drain out of me, leaving my limbs numb and my eyelids heavy.
Did she actually say that because she meant it? It sounds exactly like something Sunset would say to keep me around. To make me feel better. I love Sunset with every inch of my heart. From my nose to my toes, I love Sunset Shimmer.
But I know that she throws herself into the fire. She dives deep, holds on tight. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. She’s brave, borderline fearless, and definitely crazy. So would I put it past Sunset to make a grand declaration of love and affection just to make me feel better about myself?
I hate that my answer to that is a shifty, sheepish, but ultimately definite ‘no’.
Except… I’m almost positive she thought I was asleep. Honestly, I pretty much was asleep until she started talking, and I started to drift back into the waking world.
I came to just in time to hear those words.
If you’d let me, I’d marry you right now.
And she didn’t sound strong and firm, like usual. Usually when she says stuff like that it’s with that devil-may-care smirk she wears when she sets her shoulders like she’s about to take the weight of the world on her back and just called Atlas a loser for needing a breather.
Would she say it? Yes. Would she say it just to make me feel better? Probably.
But at that moment, on that night, while she was staring at me like her heart was breaking clean in half, and when she actually said it… did she mean it?
I… I don’t know.
That’s the really terrifying part.
I don’t know.
Unlike everything else Sunset has done. Unlike every great gesture and promise of love. That time there wasn’t an ounce of the brash confidence that coloured everything else she did.
There was no romance in Sunset’s voice that night. There was nothing pleading or uplifting like all the other times she's complimented me. She didn’t even sound happy.
She sounded grim and hard, and utterly determined.
Unyielding.
Now things are changing, I think. They’ve been changing ever since that night, I know that much. I stayed, for one. I didn’t say ‘I’ll move in’ or ‘I’ve decided’. I just… stayed, and she let me. Sunset hasn’t asked again.
She hasn’t and I think she’s desperately hoping that she won’t have to.
I brace both hands against the rim of the toilet and force myself to my feet. My breath is short and heavy, and my limbs feel like lead, but I drag myself to the sink anyway. I wash up, tidy up, and then dry off before trudging back out to the couch and collapsing onto it on my side.
There’s a clock in Sunset’s… in our apartment. It's in the loft and it ticks softly but audibly. I never told Sunset, but I like it a lot. It’s sometimes hard for me to keep track of time. There have been days I’ve laid on the couch and let whole hours, or a day, or sometimes more when things have been bad, just vanish.
The ticking helps.
I breathe, slow and deep, as I stare at the television set despite nothing being on it. There’s just a blank screen and my muted reflection staring back at me. There comes a point where my will is just exhausted, some days. Like, I’ve tried to do something and failed, or I’ve had a… a bad moment, and I just can’t anymore.
It feels like that right now.
Only it’s not that I have failed.
It’s that I will.
I really can’t decide if I’m hoping that Sunset was serious, or if I desperately want her not to have been.
Tick, tick, tick.
I count down over half an hour of delirium spent fading in and out like a radio broadcast on a long, empty stretch of interstate between cities before I finally work up the strength to sit up.
I’m tired, and I feel a little hollow. I think I’ve decided that I hope she didn’t mean it. I think a part of me is still pretty sure she didn’t. She couldn’t have.
No one in their right mind would want to be with me forever. Not even Sunset Shimmer is that crazy.
That thought makes me smile a little, actually. Sunset Shimmer, minimally sane. Good for her. I take a deep breath and draw in the scent of daffodils and bluebells and violets from the window sill, and lean back on the couch.
A few loud thumps sound from the hallway, and I frown, sit up straighter, and turn as the sounds get louder and louder until finally, something makes a quiet thud against the door. A moment later the lock rattles as a key slides in and the deadbolt lets go with a dull thunk. The door opens to admit a slightly sweaty-looking Sunset Shimmer breathing hard and standing on the threshold with a sheepish grin on her face.
“Sorry about that.” She hefts two small bags and walks over to the counter to set them down by the succulents before turning to go back to the door.
“Sunset?” I get up on my knees on the couch to lean against it, then clamber off of it as she opens the door again and bends down to pick something up. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she grunts as she shuffles around and then lifts something, “just had to carry this bastard back to the apartment, and for once I think I may have overestimated myself.”
That makes me chuckle. Whatever she’d gotten must’ve been heavy if she was actually admitting to that.
“Can I help?” I offer, stepping back as I do though, so she has room to back up.
“Nah, I got it,” Sunset says, standing with another muffled grunt as she gets something slung partially over her shoulder, hip-checks the door wider, and steps in. “Kind of a one-woman job, anyway, see?”
My mouth dries and my vision narrows to a grey tunnel as I stare at what she’s holding.
It’s wood. It's dark wood a slightly lighter colour than the faux wood floors of the apartment, and it’s short, maybe two and a half feet tall and five feet across, with two stout legs and long plank joining them at the top and bottom.
“Wallie?” Sunset says after a moment, her face growing worried as she walks over to the windowsill and kneels to set it down.
She never looks away from me. Not when she puts the piece down, or when she slides the small shelf underneath the window and presses it flush to the wall.
“What… what’s that?” I have to swallow a few times to get enough moisture into my mouth to get the words out.
Sunset looks between me and the window a few times, looking confused and a little scared. “I… It’s… a shelf? I didn’t… I just thought since we got the violets, that you’d run out of room in front of the window, y’know?”
She stands and wrings her hands before crossing the room and wrapping her arms around my waist.
“Wallie? Are you okay?” She asks again. “Did I do something wrong?”
Her eyes are wide and I can hear the clear worry underpinning her words as she settles her hands on my waist shakily. I think she wants to pull me closer, but I also think she’s scared I’ll pull away if she does.
“Wallie?”
She got a shelf.
It’s stupid.
This is stupid!
Why should that matter so much?! She… she just wants to get more flowers right? She wants me to… to pick out more flowers. Because she’s marking the months. The days and months because… because…
Because if there’s more room for more flowers. There will be more time.
More months.
For a brief, terrifying, and beautiful moment, I have this snap vision of a home that’s filled with flowers. Petunias and peonies and violets and roses. A home with every unwalked or unneeded inch packed with little ferns and small succulents and no matter where I turn the smell of blooms is all around me and…
And… my cheeks are wet.
“WALLIE?!”
My breath comes in short gulps, then the oddest, cracking noise comes out of me that turns into a long, high, keening wail. The dam behind my eyes crumbles and falls to dust, and tears flow hot and fast as I reach out and seize Sunset by the front of her shirt, drag myself forward to bury my face against her chest and start to cry for all I’m worth.