Overlap

Eponine

🌼May 2020🦊

"Its Nina's birthday, its Nina's birthday and we'd like to wish her all the very best..." Van sang in a grinning low and gravelly morning voice, his hair still a mess flopping across his eyes as he pushed himself up, propped up on one elbow, his fingers poking and tickling at me until I opened my eyes and gave in. Waking up and accepting that it was here, the day I turned 24.

"No go away its not true its not true let me hold onto my youth," I mumbled, smirking and giggling as I tried to move away, though I was getting bigger by the day and that struggle seemed harder every time Van woke me like this.

"Nina love you're still a baby at 24, you've barely learnt to walk,"

"Yeah you would say that," I simpered up at him with a pout on my lips which only curved the second before I spoke, mischevious and twinkling, "you're ancient,"

"Give over," he grinned, "you wanna watch it or I won't come to your party, you'll be all by yourself,"

"I don't even want a party," I smirked shaking my head at him as I struggled to push myself up, pulling the covers up over me as I did.

The summer heat was already stiflingly upon us, the air so thick at night that the two of us wound up sleeping without the sheets on, so used to one another that we didn't mind sleeping in only our underwear, so used to one another that when I shifted in the night struggling to get comfortable, Van would shift to make room for me, let me cocoon around him, legs tangled.

We were everything together except together. I couldn't have been closer to him if I'd tried, he couldn't have known me better than he did, and yet he didn't know how I felt about him, not how I really felt, and he never would.

But it wasn't agony anymore, it didn't hurt, except for in the moments our eyes locked and lingered, except for in the moments I felt we were lingering in a quiet waiting for one another to speak, not saying any of the things we really meant. Lost in translation eyes flickering over one another's expressions. Soft and serene and hard to read.

It didn't hurt the way it used to because I'd accepted it.

We weren't meant to be, no matter how easily we seemed to fit together, no matter how happy I felt when I was with him.

Perhaps in another life, if my life hadn't panned out the way it had. Perhaps if he wasn't quite so famous, perhaps if we'd met under different circumstances. Perhaps even if we hadn't, even if only the last two or so years had happened differently.

We were just one of those almosts that break your heart for awhile and then settle.

And I was settled now, settled with having him as just a friend. The best friend I could ever have asked for.
One of those friends that feels like home, and he had been over the last couple of months. Even if I berated him for it, even if I took the piss out of him constantly because it embarrassed me to have him fuss the way he did.

"Well that's disappointing," he smirked watching me with those familiar warm eyes, still quietly teasing me. Holding my gaze until I became uncertain, my smile hesitant and oh so slightly suspicious.

"Why?" I asked slowly, nervously, trying to read his mind but I couldn't.

Usually I could tell what he was thinking, vaguely, but right now all I could see was the mischief in his eyes and a rush of different worries hit me.

"Van whatve you..." I started eyes going wide but before I could finish my sentence he was laughing at me, giggling away seemingly ecstatic with how I had fallen for his wind up merchant schemes again. The way I always did.