Archive of Our Own

1. Meet as children. Fall in love. 

• Note to self: you will not know it is love at the time. You will think it is a shared joke, an alliance against loneliness. You won’t understand yet that your whole life now shifts around a new axis.
• Years later, you will still dream of it - the gentle catastrophe of meeting. 
  

2. Let him leave. 

• Write him letters; pretend it doesn't hurt when he doesn't write back. 
  
• Maybe he's just busy?
• Maybe you got the address wrong?
• Don't lose the keychain. 

3. Meet as adults. Fall in love again. 

• Note: it still won't feel like love, not yet, not for a long time. It will feel like recognition, like a sick sense of deja vu, like time has folded in on itself to let you see him again.
• You will tell yourself you are not vulnerable. You will be wrong. You will find excuses - professional rivalry, tactical annoyance - to justify why you study the slope of his jaw in court. When he tells you that you give him "unnecessary feelings", you finally begin to understand a little better. 

4. Win his case. 

5. Let him choose to die. 

• You will feel angry about this decision; in fact, the more time goes on, the more angry you feel for letting him run away. And sometimes even now you look at him and you think, I thought you were dead for a year. 

6. Do not cry when he comes back. Do not kiss him when he comes back. 

• Note: you want to do both. Violently, and at once. 
  
  
• You don’t subscribe to the idea of happy tears. The only explanation is that you are grieving for a time when you didn’t want him so much.
• You have never been so angry at another person as you are at him right now, and even though you're trying to remain calm, it feels like your rage is slipping out of you in other ways, like liquid seeping through the cracks, and you want him to know that he was missed, that someone wanted him home, that you sort of want to kill him and that you'll probably never forgive him if he ever pulls a stunt like this again.
• If you do cry, hide it until you can explain it to yourself. 

7. When he proposes to help with the investigation, do not accept his offer. 

• Not because you don't trust him, but because you don't trust that you could trust him again so fast.
• Addendum: You will fail this step. You were never any good at denying him. 

8. Forgive him. 

• This is the hardest step of all, after everything he's done. It feels like bleeding in reverse. But once you do it, there's no going back.
  
• He apologizes. You say "don't."
• What you mean is: you can't do this to me again.
• What you mean is: I already forgave you before I knew how.

9. Let him leave again. 

• It’s different this time; you learn to interpret his absence as a kind of love letter written in negative space.
  
• Don't take it personally when he doesn't call.
• Don't take it personally when he doesn't visit.
• He’ll come back. When you need him. 

10. Lose contact with him for two years. 

• These will be the years that eat you alive. You stop being a lawyer. You stop being anyone. Your apartment fills with the ghost of unfinished things - letters you never sent, bottles half-empty, his old business card still magneted to the fridge like a relic of belief.
• He calls, for a while. You don’t answer. He stops.
• You tell yourself the silence means you deserve it.
• On your worst nights, when the city hums with rain and you’re clinging to consciousness by your fingernails, you imagine that maybe he’s out there somewhere, still believing in you.
• He’ll come back. When you need him. 

11. Let him help. 

• Actually, this is the hardest step of all.
• Because you have built your whole identity around the myth of self-sufficiency, self - reliance.
• But he’s persistent, damn him - steady, certain, maddeningly kind.
• He doesn’t say I told you so. He never would. He just looks at you, really looks at you, and suddenly you remember what it feels like to be seen. 

12. Get your badge back.

• Let him pretend like he isn’t glad you’ve returned.
• Let him pretend he didn’t organize the surprise party at your apartment.
• When he buys you a new suit, pretend you don’t notice him checking to make sure your new tie matches the colour of his jacket.

13. See him as often as you can. 

• At first, it happens without planning. One call becomes another, one lunch turns into an evening that spills into tomorrow.
• Sometimes you'll see him nearly every day, and sometimes you'll see him once or twice a month. It's good to keep your expectations low, if only to see if he'll meet you in the middle.
• He will.
• Because it turns out being friends is easy. You call for hours about nothing. You argue about big and small things and always come back together. Over time, you develop little jokes. You make him laugh for the first time over a plate of spaghetti at his favourite Italian restaurant. It's easy to imagine this going on forever. A wish to be friends - real friends, without the weight of his guilt and your shame hanging over you - and now it's true.
• Don't forget the anniversary of his father's death. You are his anchor now. 

14. Let sit for two years. 

15. Accidentally kiss him goodbye after a trial. 

• Neither of you mean to. Neither of you will stop.
• His lips will taste like citrus fruit and lost time.
• He pulls back first and stares at you for a while. Neither of you breathe. 
• Then he just turns around and walks away, pulling out his phone.
• You wonder if he’s researching cheap one way flights to Germany. 

16. Let him disappear for three days. 

• He doesn't answer your calls, doesn't answer his emails, doesn't even show up to court. You're beginning to think he's dead when he finally turns up to your apartment after seventy six hours of anxious waiting on your part, soaked from the rain and shivering from the cold and not wearing his suit jacket.
• Do not stare at the way his damp shirt sticks to his collarbone.
• Do not stare at the way his wet hair is plastered to his forehead.
• Offer him a towel instead. 

17. Cry when he tells you he loves you.

• This one is just embarrassing, but there's nothing you can do about it. Your worst and most terrible trait is that you're a bleeding heart and someone who cares too much. You never thought you’d show this side of yourself to him. But for once, you want to show a soft underbelly to someone and believe that it will be treated gently.
• It’s a little bit funny when he panics, though. 

18. Kiss him like you mean it. 

• Because you do.
• Because it’s been years of pretending otherwise.
• The world doesn’t stop when you kiss him; it just exhales, relieved that you’ve finally caught up to what it’s known all along.
• You hold him too tight, and he doesn’t mind. 

19.  Start the best relationship of your life. 

• You’re beginning to learn what happiness feels like. It’s smaller than you expected, quieter. It’s him leaning over your shoulder, correcting your paperwork. It’s his laughter ghosting the shell of your ear when you burn the toast. It’s the way his eyes crinkle when he says your first name.
• You start to understand that joy doesn’t need to announce itself; it just lives in the room with you, patiently waiting for you to notice. 

20. Let sit for three years. 

21. Move into his apartment by accident. 

• First it’s a toothbrush.
  
• Then a suit jacket.
• Then you start going to court smelling like his expensive shampoo.
• He calls it staying over. You call it temporary. But one day you wake up and you realize you haven’t woken up alone in months. 

22. Go to Trucy’s magic shows together. 

• He will always get there early.
• He will always sit in the front row.
• He will always clap the loudest.
• When Trucy starts calling him “Papa”, act like you don’t notice. 

23. Argue, and let it end in laughter. 

• He’ll call you reckless. You’ll call him insufferable. What you both mean is: don’t leave.
• Eventually, one of you will relent. He’ll sigh; you’ll grin; and the world will steady again.
• Love, as it turns out, is less about agreement and more about staying in the room. 

24. Learn how to communicate. 

• You are both men who talk too much. Some days, your words collide. Other days, they harmonize.
  
• You learn not to apologize so much. He learns to ask for what he wants. Both of you learn to listen to each other.
• IMPORTANT NOTE: sometimes, you don’t need to talk. Sometimes you don’t need to fill every silence. Sometimes it’s enough just to exist in the same room with him. 

25. Propose to each other at the same time. 

• Neither of you kneel. There are no rings. It is a quiet Friday night and you are sitting together, and suddenly you both look at each other and say “marry me.”
• There’s a pause - startled laughter, disbelief - and then the kind of quiet that only comes after something sacred has been said aloud. 

26. Get married. 

27. Build a life together. 

28. Realize you were never seducing him - you were just learning how to stay. 

•  Every trial, every absence, every obstacle you two have faced together - everything was leading here, to this gentle aftermath.
• You realize that love looks like coffee cups side by side, like case files overlapping on the kitchen table.
• You teach him to sleep late on Sundays. He teaches you how to tie a tie properly.
• Sometimes when he leaves for work, you find little notes in your pocket in his handwriting: “you are allowed to be happy.”