Journey || Erik Durm

♂

ERIK:

(Guys, please play the song that I attached as you read!)

                 AS the sun rose the morning of our long awaited journey to Russia, it brought with it more than just light; there was a newfound radiance in the soft chirping of the birds and whistling of the winds as if a rainfall had recently subsided and the flora and fauna cheered again.

Lotte and I sat intertwined on the rooftop of the diner, our backs pressed against the concrete of the pavement while the sunbeams whispered incantations of warmth onto our exposed skins.

"I never really thought that I would feel so whole with you, Erik," she murmured, her voice so starkly akin to a serenade; it made me plunge headfirst down a cliff of ceaseless infatuation with no end in sight.

"Those things happen sometimes," I told her.

"It's kind of funny, isn't it?"

I glanced upward at the ambrosia conjured by the forces of the universe's expanse, nodding firmly in agreement. "Yeah, it is," and it genuinely was. The simple notion of hatred—an emotion so inexplicable—transposing into the infinitely magnifying love that it wound up developing into within the two of us numbed my mind with perplexity. "Fuck, I just had a big thought," I added, chuckling.

"What is it?"

"I'll sound repetitive."

She slowly trailed her arms in an ascending pattern up her stomach, saying, "Are you going to profess your love for me again?"

"Something like that."

"Oh, that is getting pretty repetitive," Lotte teased, and when I said nothing, merely continued glancing at the early summer skies, leaden with cyan, she added in a tone of mystifyingly soft nature, "Erik?"

"Hm?"

"Thank you for picking me."

My eyebrows arching in curiosity, I asked her, "Picking you?"

"You know, for wanting to be with me."

I resisted an overwhelmingly uncanny urge to protract a stream of baffled laughter because after all this time, it was difficult to believe that Lotte had thought I had chosen her. There were a lot of things that you could choose, but to plummet as precariously in love was beyond my capability.

You can choose to love, but you have no viable grasp over falling in love, and I was involuntarily doomed with the latter.

"Lotte," I murmured in what may have been a mere breath. "I am not here with you because I want to be with you."

Her face fell.

I delicately curled the tips of my fingers on her chin and leaned into her, saying in secrecy, "I am here because I cannot imagine myself being anywhere else, and because I am tethered to you even when I am not with you, no matter where I go."

Her eyes regained their vibrancy, gathering seams of profound vigor, and I was overwhelmed by the perplexing question of why it had taken us so long to get here, to this conscious moment wherein every plot in the universe seemed to conspire in our favor. Even those theoretical ones that didn't—the defiant ones—slowly caved in as Lotte stirred, her fingertips brushing my arm.

Then and there, I saw the universe, brooding and glistening.

I wondered when the sun had submerged into the darkness of the night—if it even had—and even so, when I had turned my head toward the sky, but then I discerned the meticulously dotted flecks of hazel circling around a pupil, and it dawned on me that I was looking into her eyes.