#hnnnnnHHHhHnnnNNNn

[dontdowhatisayandnobodygetshurt]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @myriadimagines!!! Sam!!! Another trip around the sun!!! FUCKIN SUPERB U FUNKY LI’L ANGEL!!!! :D I love you so, so much and I hope today (and everyday) is as lovely as you are, and I hope current events and mental health improve going into the new year, bc yikes!! Thank you for your continued presence in this crazy messed-up world, because rest assured you brighten it just by existing and I speak for everyone when I say I am so, so grateful for that!! 💕🌷✨💕🌷✨💕🌷✨💕🌷✨

(Uhhh note: I have been trying to write this since I watched TOG but for some reason it just?? refused to come out right?? and I’m writing this now @ 2AM?? and it still hasn’t come out right?? and you deserve so much better than this but?? it’s all my dumbass brain has got?? and I hope I post this at an okay time for the time zone difference?? and I’m so sorry???? :’) asdfghjkl I love you so much I hope you like it ahhHHHHHUUhhHH)

Booker + Sam

Death clung to him. It waited, patient, filled every footprint he left on this earth and the shadows over his bed at night. It was strange that death stalked him this relentlessly, for a man who couldn’t die. Maybe it wasn’t waiting for him. Maybe it was waiting for him to love again, to take its recompense for his long evasion of it once more.

Never again, he thought. He had all he needed; his family, who hated him, and his guilt, which rotted through every crack in his soul.

Never again.

He didn’t realize he had failed his one rule till it was too late.

You were a neighbour, like the millions of others he’d had over his lifetime. He only knew you by your voice at first, and through it, he knew you. You sang in the shower, and you weren’t half bad. You were exuberant when you had friends over, but not loud enough to be irritating when he was trying to sleep off a hangover (and when your friend was crying, your voice dropped to a soothing murmur. He almost wanted to hear what advice you had to give.) You laughed so hard at what sounded like stupid romance movies that he almost worried you were choking. And when the smell of burning toast wafted from under your flat’s door, your panicked curses were very loud.

That was the day he put a face to your voice. He had dragged himself off the bed and went to knock on your door, just in case you were in danger of burning alive. The only thing that was on fire, though, was your face when you saw that the person standing outside your door with eyebrows raised in concern was the neighbour you’d been admiring from afar for so long. The aforementioned neighbour would have been content to leave your relationship at that: smiles and half-nods in the hall, if you hadn’t been drawn together like gravity afterward. The moment your eyes had met, something had changed, and you fell together like you had just been waiting to meet.

He couldn’t remember exactly when he realized he loved you. Was it a quiet night made for quiet questions, a bottle of wine between you? Or the night of traded music played through the wall, after he had heard you playing a song from a band he liked as well, and replied with his favourite from the album, the first time he had smiled genuinely in what felt like centuries? A thousand little moments made falling in love easier than falling asleep, a thousand brush strokes forming a picture of a new life. Questions blurring the evening into the night, the wonder in your eyes when he showed you his library and your hesitancy with the older books that looked like they would fall apart under your eyes, the night you fell asleep on his bed beside him because you locked yourself out of your flat… and the day you saw him die.

He would never forget the look on your face. He held your shaking hands in his, blood smearing from his fingers onto yours. “I’m okay. Sam, look at me. I’m okay.”

“How?” The word was breathless. He could still hear you pleading for him to hold on.

“It’s…”

Despite everything, your voice was stronger when you said, “Don’t say it’s complicated, Booker.”

That got a half-smile out of him. “Alright. That’s fair. Do you want me to explain now, or after I shower?”

Your face had paled from just the mention of the blood congealing on your floor, your shirt, his chest, and you had just nodded. He had left the room quickly then.

It had taken all night to explain. Once you had exhausted your questions you hugged him fiercely, refusing to let him move further away. The emotions tying you together beneath the silence were unspoken, but his answer came in his arms around you. Even when your breathing softened, he refused to move, barely even breathing in fear of the moment shattering. In fear of fucking it up. Your hand rested where the bullet had bored through his chest only hours ago, and the shame came for him – came for him, and left.

He had been attracted to you, and you to him, not by looks or personality, but by something deeper. Of course, he could be wrong, he had been before, and he would rather suffer a real eternity than prove it, but… You were special. You were one of them, he was sure.

The words came for him in the early morning, vicious in their simple honesty:

“Till then, you’re alone.”

“Not so alone anymore, Andy,” he murmured to himself. With a smile, brand new and fragile, he kissed your forehead to wake you. Who knows, one day you might meet her, might meet all of them.