Borrowed Time | Porco Galliard

(I Cant't) Despise you

"She knows that i'm a shitty person.
But she smiles at me anyways."

HE HAD ALWAYS hated her.

He hated her smile and the pounding of his heart in his chest that always came too soon after witnessing it to be a coincidence. Hated the captivating honeyed brown of her eyes that seemed to perfectly convey the affection she felt for him. The same affection that he so stubbornly refused to admit he returned.

A fool is what he was for allowing this to happen. The attraction had led to only the decision a coward would make. That decision to hide a part of himself from the world. It weighed on him particularly hard as he had always been a blunt person at heart.

The feeling was like denying himself a necessity when he tried to ignore her and the that effect she had on him. It was weird. It was scary. He had been trying to steadily ignore his attachment to the girl with tightly coiled brown hair and mahogany skin since they were kids.

The same adult woman with glowing mahogany skin and angular honey brown eyes that made his feelings even harder to ignore. The succulent tone of her voice that his ears always seemed to seek out first when he walked into a room was infuriating. It made him mad that she unknowingly held such power over him. Then, it made him cautious because as long as it remained unknown, he couldn't be used for his status or rejected for his feelings.

Not that he could see either of those options coming from her. The day he heard words of betrayal left permanently plumped lips would be the day where trees all uprooted from the ground and grew legs. She didn't seem to have a single mean bone in her body. Hell, he's teased her enough about how she flinched violently from any flies buzzing around her. Her justification was always that the buzzing reminded her of bees. Since she was allergic to them, she had learned to be cautious of buzzing sounds.

The nickname 'Honeybee' came out of him learned that about her. It wasn't meant to be a pet name but rather a spiteful name call. Because she clearly didn't like bees but surprisingly, she loved the nickname. He had heard those words from Pieck too many times to count and could deduce as much himself from the ear splitting grin that her browned face would adopt when he alternated between 'Bee' and 'Honey.'

Sometimes, he would pretend he didn't like saying the whole nickname. Just like he would pretend he didn't like that ecstatic smile on her face. Like he would pretend his heart didn't simultaneously stutter and fill with pride at the same time.

He adored her skin. It suited her so well.

It was one of the only things about her that he could never trick himself into even thinking he hated. No matter how hard he tried. He loved the glow of her skin under the sun and the way her hair smelt like expensive oils after her 'wash days.'

Watching in on one of those days when they were kids was when he learned that taking care of hair that thick and curly was a battle in itself. The fact that the curls were much longer now probably didn't help her sore arms in the slightest. Suddenly, he made the effort to appreciate just how much easier it was to manage his own hair.

She was unique in that way. In the way that her hairstyle would seem to change every two weeks or sometimes even daily. The ramblings about why she did that were always listened to even though he pretended that he didn't really care. He hated how he hung onto her every word like she was the god and he was the begging sinner. But even more than that, he hated when she was quiet.