#happy new yeat | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

padfootagain · 4 months ago

Text

Love in Verses (IV)

Chapter 4 : ‘For he gave all his heart and lost’

Hi, everyone!!! Chapter 4 is here! Lots of angst in these first chapters, but we need to get the plot fully plotting!

I hope you like this series! Tell me what you think!

****

Pairing: Hozier x fem!reader (professor!AU)

Warnings: slow burn, angst, hurt, hurt/comfort, tooth-rotting fluff in later chapters, some scenes in later chapters will have heavy sexual themes even if it’s not explicit nsfw description, so minors here

Summary: Your life seems perfect. You're engaged, your career is thriving as you become an assistant professor at Trinity College, and this Andrew Hozier-Byrne you're sharing an office with seems to be a nice guy you hope to call a friend soon. Life seems to be smiling at you... until everything goes sour. When your fiancé breaks up with you, your perfect world shatters. And when your colleague also gets his heart broken soon after, your shared office seems to be a curse rather than a blessing. But Andrew seems determined to mend your broken hearts... Will things finally go according to plan?

Word Count: 2888

Masterlist for the series – Hozier’s masterlist – Main masterlist

Never Give All the Heart

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.

W.B. Yeats

You decided to meet in a pub. Frank was staying with his brother for now, you were keeping the flat you used to share. It felt empty without him, filled with blank spaces. Clothes missing in the dresser, a shelf unused in the bathroom, empty spaces on the bookshelves. Every time you looked up while you ate, you expected to see his face and found nothing but a wooden chair instead. And it was killing you slowly, how much you missed him, how much you missed your lives tangled together, sharing space and habits and everything in between.

Frank’s brother’s place wasn’t an option to meet up, and the home he left seemed unfitting, you reckoned that it had witnessed enough farewells already. So, a neutral land it was, a pub you knew but had spent few nights at. Laughter had been shared, along with kisses and drinks, but only a few times, nothing worth crying over.

Only, when you stepped into the pub, easily spotted Frank sitting there, on a chair at a small table with one spot left empty for you opposite him, you could feel the tears rising to your eyes…

It had been two weeks, since Frank had left, and you were still in shock. Reality had started sinking in, you were beginning to understand what it truly meant to lose him. You were beginning to realise that he was truly gone. And what a terrifying thought that was…

He smiled when he saw you approaching, welcoming, like he was genuinely happy to see you. Was he though? Then why did he leave?

You had broken up your engagement, you had to announce the news to your family, had broken down on the phone with them as you did so. You had warned all the people you had invited that this was over, that you and Frank were breaking up, that there would be no wedding, after all. The humiliation was almost as painful as seeing him again. Almost as dreadful as the knowledge that you would not hesitate to take him back, you were hoping to make him change his mind still… that was how desperate you were to get your life back on track, to set it how it should be again.

You said your hellos, you smiled to each other, he seemed emotional to see you as well. You sat down and took off your jacket like you were on autopilot. Something happening outside your own mind, your own chest, your own body. You expected him to tell you about his day, to say something about sport and any of his interests, to order some drinks for you both and to ask you what you wanted to eat tonight after you got home together. Instead, he smiled, asked you if you wanted a drink, and then he looked at you in silence for a moment.

“You look well,” he said, and you congratulated yourself for the efforts you had put in earlier that evening to look somewhat presentable.

“Thanks. You too.”

It was true, he looked surprisingly well, considering he had shattered the last six years merely a couple of weeks ago.

“Thank you for meeting me tonight, it means a lot.”

“Sure, I… I’m glad you called to ask for this. I… I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

There was so much hope within this stupid, lovesick heart of yours after those words…

You gave him a weak smile, imagined him apologising and asking for forgiveness and begging you to take him back after this crazy mistake of his…

Instead, he asked you about work, you asked him about his day, you chatted for a while, dragging the moment along as if you knew already that things weren’t meant to last anyway, that he was about to break your world again, that you were wrong to hope…

… and eventually, you got to the reason behind his call, to what he wanted to get out of this conversation.

“Look, Y/N… you know you’re important to me. So important… I’m sorry about the wedding. And I’m sorry to have ended things the way I did. I reckon that I should have handled this better, ease you through it better so you wouldn’t hurt so much.”

Every word was a slide from hope to pain, a slope that got steeper and steeper, that pushed you towards the edge of a cliff, to a pit you knew you would fall into because you loved him too much not to.

“I really hope you won’t hate me. I… I know that it was sudden, I know that it might have looked like a shocking decision, and it was, even to me. I really meant to marry you when I proposed, but then, I… I just realised that we weren’t meant for each other. We weren’t meant to spend our entire lives together. And I think that’s okay, really. I still have so much love for you, it’s just… it’s just not strong enough for us to go through with this wedding. Do you understand?”

Slowly, you nodded, trying hard not to cry.

He didn’t love you enough…?

“It’s just… Sometimes, it’s a lot to be with you, to take care of you. It’s not that you’re too much to handle, that’s not what I’m saying. You’re grand, Y/N, you really are. But your career takes a lot of space, you’re moving regularly, and you just… I don’t know. I just want something else, I think. I want… I want someone else.”

He heaved a sigh, rubbing at his forehead like he was the one breaking, like he was the tired one, like it was he who suffered when you struggled not to cry, when you felt the pain of rejection and heartbreak wash over you all over again.

“I still care about you, Y/N. It doesn’t mean that all of my love for you is gone, it only means that… I… I can’t be with you romantically anymore. Do you understand? But I… Y/N, I don’t want you out of my life. I care about you too much, you are too important to me. So, would you… What would you say if I asked for us to remain friends?”

Friends… the word echoed in a mixture of horror, pain and disappointment.

Friends… you should have been about to get married, engaged, in love… and instead he wanted friendship?

It was such a blow to your pride, your self-esteem. But then you thought about it, and a glimmer of hope was alit again, foolish and sickeningly in denial.

But if you remained friends, you would keep in touch, you would keep on seeing him.

And if you remained friends, perhaps you could make him see reason, show him that you were the one he belonged with. You wouldn’t be able to do that if you didn’t talk or see each other.

Friends…

He reached for your hand across the table, sneaking his arm between his drink and yours, hand warm against your cold fingers.

“I don’t want to lose you, Y/N. You’re so important to me. I just… don’t think that it would work out for us if we keep on having a romantic relationship, that’s all. It doesn’t change the fact that I care about you. So much, Y/N…”

You stared at his blue eyes, the blond hair you used to run your fingers through. He was making a mistake, and that was all there was to say about it.

“Okay,” you breathed out, the word escaping without you even noticing its passing of your lips.

He raised a surprised eyebrow, and yet he had a relieved expression painted over his features.

“Really?”

“Yeah, okay. We can still be friends.”

“Oh, Y/N! You can’t imagine how happy I am to hear you say that!”

Happy…

You swallowed back the lump in your throat, forced a smile.

You would make him see reason, he was making a mistake, nothing more…

Things would get back to normal, and you would have your life back. You would have your life back…

She wanted to come over, Andrew wanted to refuse at first. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his partner, of course he longed for her company. Except, tonight, he was busy. Busy sorting out his thoughts, busy worrying about the sadness that surrounded his colleague, busy worrying about his father, whose medication had been slightly changed, busy trying to write and coming with nothing but a blank page.

It used to be easier, to fill up blank spaces. When he was younger, in his late teens to early twenties, he filled notebooks after notebooks with song lyrics and poems. When Sam and Andrew had met, it was so easy for him to write about love. He was awestruck by her all the time, and he still was, in a way. But then they had grown out of the naïve phase of youth, into proper adults; ones that thought about rent, about food, about taxes, about sacrifices, about laundry and grocery lists and the work to be done the next day. She had turned him down when he had offered for them to move in together, had always refused to speak about marriage. And Andrew tried hard to hide how much her reaction saddened him. It turned off a switch in him, the words were harder to find these days. Growing up, or rather, starting to grow older, that was tough work, tricky work. The kind that left all poetry behind.

He still wrote, the two books he had published were proof, as well as the poems he published regularly in journals. But these days, he couldn’t get a word down, and how was he supposed to communicate and let his feelings out when he struggled so much saying them out loud? Speeches had never been his strong suit, it was through the mask of metaphors, the rhythm of rimes, the cadence of alliterations that he managed to express himself. It was therapeutic, in a way.

But in the past few weeks, Andrew had not written a word. He was too worried for that. There was something off with Sam, and he didn’t know what it could be. It made him anxious. He tiptoed around her a lot these days, worried about what would happen if they started fighting over anything, no matter how small the issue. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t write, he wasn’t sure… No matter the reason, his sudden inability to produce anything even vaguely decent made him spiral into doubts and anxiety. He didn’t need that to second-guess his decisions, to doubt his own worth…

He heaved a sigh, closing his laptop, checking the time. Almost 9 p.m, Sam would soon be there. As if on cue, Elwood barked twice when a knock on the door broke the silence of Andrew’s flat.

She was early, as per usual, when he was always late to everything. It annoyed her to no end.

Andrew went to open the door, welcomed Sam with a forced smile, but she seemed not to notice. She merely hummed a hello, let him kiss her cheek, before walking inside the flat. Elwood approached, unhurried, looked up in hope to be petted. Sam granted him a few scratches, before turning away. The dog merely huffed, and walked over to Andrew, rubbing his side against his human’s leg, looking for the attention he craved for. Andrew granted it to him easily.

“How was your day, baby?” he asked Sam in a sweet tone, but she shrugged, waiting for Andrew to move out of the hallway and into the living room.

“Not much. You?”

“I’m fine, yeah.”

He wanted to talk about his research, and how he wanted to start writing a new article, how he was almost done planning out his class for Yeats’s poetry, how sad you looked still, how worried he was for his family these days. Instead, Sam claimed the conversation, and he didn’t try to fight against it so he could speak again.

“I wanted to talk to you, Andy.”

“Sure, what’s up?” he asked back, standing straighter, quitting Elwood’s petting and following Sam to sit on his sofa.

She seemed nervous, in a way she rarely was around him. He was nervous too now, had a bad feeling about all of this.

“I don’t know how to say this,” she spoke in a weak voice, he reached for her hand to reassure her.

“Straightforwardly,” he answered with a smile.

He pushed back a strand of hair behind his ear, tiredly adjusted his glasses. Slowly, she nodded, took a deep breath before speaking.

“Andy… you know how important you are to me. You’re… you’re the first man I ever truly loved, the first person I could see myself with on the long run. And I care about you, about your happiness… I care so much. And this is very hard for me to do this to you, to us, but…”

She took another deep, slow breath, and Andrew could see the tears in her eyes, the way she struggled to hold them back. He knew what was coming, didn’t want to think it true, but it was.

He knew his world was about to get shattered before she spoke the words he dreaded.

“I’ve been happy with you, genuinely happy. But this… I’m so sorry, Andy, but I think we need to break up.”

Andrew blinked at her, his brain refusing to understand her words, refusing to work now. He forced himself back to the present, forced himself to repeat her words.

Break up…

“What… What do you mean? What do you mean ‘break up’? You… you want us to take a break?”

“No, Andy. I want us to break up. For good. I’m so sorry.”

“But, I… I love you. We’re… we’re good together, we… we belong together.”

“I’m sorry, Andy. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

“What triggered this? Did I do something wrong? Are you angry at me? I… I can change for you. I can make things better. I can make you happy, do whatever you want me to do…”

“I’m sorry… there’s nothing to do. It’s not… it’s not you. I just feel like… we’re not on the same page, anymore. We were so young when we got together, we’ve grown into different people. I… I’m sorry.”

“Why now? What happened?”

“Nothing…”

“I know you, Sam. I know you better than anyone. I know you’re lying. What happened? What triggered this?”

“Andy…”

“I don’t want you to leave… we can make things work!”

“We can’t…”

“We can make efforts, we can…”

“I don’t want to, Andy. I’m sorry. I just… I love you, but… not enough, anymore.”

These were the words that made him break, that turned his desperate tone into silence, his begging eyes into teary ones. He started crying.

She didn’t love him anymore…

Not enough…

“But I love you…”

“I’m sorry, Andy.”

He let tears overcome him, drown him into silence. Sam was crying as well, but not as violently.

“Why? Why now?”

“I just… nothing, I just…”

But she fell silent, and Andrew wasn’t a fool.

“Is there someone else?”

She looked away, looking guilty.

This couldn’t be happening…

“We met just about two months ago. I just… I think I’m falling in love with him. And if I can love him, it means I don’t love you the way I should anymore…”

He buried his face in his hands.

This could not be happening…

He refused to ask her if she had been having an affair, Andrew knew he didn’t have the strength to hear her answer.

He was falling; falling into an endless pit and he would die once she would have left with the ground in her care.

They fought after that, he tried to hold her back. And perhaps she didn’t deserve it, but Andrew was in love, and he had thought for years that she was the one, that them, their couple, was the constant element in his life. He fought for her, there was nothing he could do. When she said she would only be happy with someone else, he let her go.

He cried all night, called in sick the next day. He answered your worried email, explaining what had happened in a clear, concise way that left out any detail. You said you were sorry. It didn’t make him feel better at all. In the evening he got so drunk he had no memory left of that night in the morning. For a moment he thought none of this had happened, the pain through his skull was too vivid for that. But then reality came back, and when he hurried to the bathroom to throw up, he wasn’t sure whether he was sick because of the remnants of alcohol in his system or because of the pain of losing her.

When she texted a few days later asking if they could still stay in touch, Andrew was too heartbroken to see the red flags. He answered yes, dreamt of having Sam back in his bed, thought about ways to win her over again, and fell asleep that night out of exhaustion and too many tears.

#hozier #andrew hozier byrne #the hoziest #hozier x reader #hozier x you #hozier x y/n #hozier fanfiction #hozier x fem!reader #hozier fanfic #hozier series #hozier professor au #hozier au #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #series

152 notes · View notes