On the Twelfth Day of Christmas PV Elsi ReOpen

Once upon a time Elsian hadn’t loved Dorion…

It felt like each step echoed in the silence of the cold night.

He breathed, breath curling in a cold mist in the form of a nervous sigh as he walked. The soft tap of his shoes against the stairs his only company. It made him nervous. The way everything was so still tonight. Days of gifts and careful planning had led up to this, years of knowing each other, weeks of stolen glances, months of trying to put a name to the feelings he’d tried burying…and it was like the world had simply froze.

A blanket of snow. A winter sky filled with millions of stars. And a castle that felt so empty now.

He clutched at one edge of his sweater, black fabric and tiny silver stars twisting between his hands from his spot at the entrance of the staircase.


It was odd to think about.

It really was but-

Elsian swallowed, grip loosening with a forced air of calm as he walked into the large room. It was hard not to grasp at the pendant around his neck, like it held the answers, rings he wore cold against his skin. Perhaps the proof of them was enough… But the heavy silence that hung in the air made it hard to think, made him hesitant to break the peace as he scanned the area for Dori, footsteps quiet as they could be with the click of his boots against the hard floor. He couldn’t help but think of how they’d started as he looked around, thoughts trailing off in a distant, nervous way. There and gone like fog fading into nothing.



They’d known each other for so long.

And yet so little.

Yet it was the truth.

They were strangers first…

They’d been strangers once… just a pair of 1st years with a new and shaky first impression looped around their first meeting like a paper thin string just waiting to be cut. He hadn’t liked them then. They’d both been stupid and young, younger than they were now, and quick to anger the moment they both found something they disagreed on. That paper thin string…

He imagined if fate was real the strings would have been ready to break.

Pulled tight and fraying at the edges tied around their wrists. Tight, tight, tight, ready to break apart like a rubber band pulled too far with the distance between them. Aged and worn; you could practically hear it snap-

only to be saved from being broken apart by Dori.

A different Dori.

One that was more carefully planted garden beds than wild overgrown groves. That wouldn’t come till much later. After more shaky promises and a long stretch of time that should have, might’ve, just as easily killed the path they’d ended up making had guilt, and the smallest bit of worry, not lead him back to them, like a fragile game of hide and seek. The paths they made overlapped, somehow, and in some odd way, was never quite able to separate for long. Tied by silly summer games and gifts wrapped in twine.

But even so, he hadn’t known Dorion yet. Not enough to love. He wouldn’t for a few more years, when they slowly grew into someone new that didn’t quite fit in the tiny garden bed they’d made for themselves. Crying and fighting and dusting themselves off as they kept moving forward, even when it terrified them.


Looking around, it wasn’t hard to find the person in question. It’d been that way for a long time.

They always found each other. And there-

Standing on the observation deck alone, was Dori.

Stepping forwards he felt the familiar content that being near them always seemed to inspire, even when tinted with something he couldn’t quite place. Brittle and skittish, but…almost excited despite it. Even now, amidst everything, he was drawn to them in a way that had him moving before he could truly think.

They weren’t looking at him. But he could bits and pieces of their outfit as he drew closer, a small smile playing on his lips as he went to surprise them, ready to wrap his arms around them with a hug and merry wishes for the holiday on the tip of his tongue before it all faded like snow against his skin; eyes wide and filled with something like wonder as their eyes met and Elsian truly saw them for the 1st time that night. His feet faltered, stopping in his tracks a bit of ways before them because Dorion looked like something out of a storybook.


Handsome.


Ethereal.



Dorion had stardust in their blood . Spreading like wildflowers to everything that surrounded them. They glowed the same way the stars did on perfect nights, leaving a spot of silvery light to cast away the dark. They wore it well, moonlight and a backdrop of snow a perfect match to the dangerous blue of winter you could sometimes see in them, held at bay by memories of ivy and blades of grass woven together like flower crowns hidden under the snow.

He could hardly breathe past the quiet gasp lodged in his throat. The deep seated fear and doubts he had rattling apart with the force of the pure wonder he felt around them. And wasn’t it a thought, how far they’d come from the sunny, 1st year. The one that’d reminded him of sunflowers and sharp rocks hidden in the grass… to someone he hardly had the words to describe.

“You look magical.” He breathed, simply because it was the truth.


Standing in front of Dori like this, under a sea of stars and the cold bite of the wind…it was hard to imagine. Hard to believe. But it was the truth.

Strangers, to something like odd acquaintances and eventually…Friends.

Here in the cold. Air freezing his lungs; on the edge of falling through some invisible divide…he couldn’t tell you when that had truly changed.

But there was no answer right away. Only that tense, peaceful sort of quiet that had long hung around the pair since the 1st gift was given. He lost against his nerves, unable to take the silence he usually welcomed as he played with the branch ring wrapped around his finger.

“Dori-?” He faltered, the rest of the words lost with the weight of icy blue staring at him. Frozen with the way Dorion looked at him once they finally began to speak.

He could only nod as they spoke, pushing down the need to smile and laugh and talk away the oddness between them. What Dorion was about to say, he could tell was important. Something that he could listen to but not interrupt, something they had to do on their own because it involved him. Elsian knew that. He’d…probably known for longer than he ever wanted to admit. But nothing. Nothing in the world could have prepared his heart for the words Dori was about to say.





He almost wanted to laugh, a small watery thing that left his throat tight with the urge to cry. He didn’t think…wasn’t sure how he’d ever be worthy of the love he saw in Dorions eyes…

…

People spoke about falling in love like it was something large and life changing.


Seeing that sheepish smile aimed at him, Elsian was hit with the realization that falling in love was too plain a term for the things he felt.





It was there in old story books, between the once upon a time and happily ever after, things like true love's kiss or love at first sight. Romantic and magical and neatly tied together in invisible red string people liked to pretend was fate.

They said it was larger than life but they never said in what way. Said in the same way adults liked to say the things you did now would change your path, knowingly and sometimes with something like regret. Falling in love was something grand. Something painful. Just like growing up; you’d understand when you were older.

People liked to think the moment they first felt it, they understood it. From childhood crushes to love at first sight, it didn’t matter who you were, most made the same mistakes. Thinking that feeling would always stay the same.

There were plenty of stories and people that would say the same things. They said that love was something earned. They said love was something freely given.

Elsian was slowly finding out that maybe people were as wrong as they were right.


He imagined that maybe, love was something that grew.



That maybe… it grew the same way a person might, whether they wished it to or not. Love couldn’t be earned, not like a prize or a job, but it could be nurtured, growing or changing or shriveling up like a dead flower in winter. Things could die or they could thrive. Because this type of love hadn’t simply appeared one day. 5 years ago, a silly argument had planted a seed. But it hadn’t meant it would grow into love.

No. It grew and shriveled the same way a wild flower might have, uncaring for the world around it. Nor for whether you may want it or not. They’d been strangers and then friends with every day that they’d spent together. It was the letters sent and tucked away, and the small moments they’d shared under their tree. He imagined every stolen glance and shy brush of the hands like a drop of rain in a storm. Every victory and silly, exciting adventure a warm sunny day. Those happy, mundane hours stitching together the good and bad into roots that made up everything they’d shared over the years.

This kind of happily ever after, didn’t fit with anyone besides Dorion. Because it’d changed with them, with every single little happy second they shared, the long bitter life changing moments, for the grand and painfully normal times where they’d stood beside him.

Love grew like people.

You could see it if you looked closely. It wasn’t as invisible as people thought.

It was there in the smallest actions. Hidden between brushing fingers and the ache you felt afterwards. Tucked between stolen glances you made when you thought no one was looking, the fluttery laugh and shaky legs. No matter where you looked, love was there; it shifted like river stones pressed to your palms like wishes skipping against the watery stars, pressed tight in the hope people tried to tuck away. If shifted and grew, changing between days and months like the long summer nights spent under the stars and the flowers people liked to admire.

Love was sometimes the grand but short lived moments, large and loud and bigger than life like fireworks in the sky, leaving an echo of something wonderful behind. It was sometimes the small things, a flower tucked behind your ear or mundane as sharing an umbrella on a rainy day.

It could change. Between one day and the next without you ever realizing it happened until it was there, pressed between your ribs and tangled tight around your heart like ivy.

For Elsian, if love was a tangible thing, it would be the smiles people made, the ones pressed tight against fingertips trying to hide, the sad watery that left tears like shooting stars, the bright sunny ones that felt like warm content, a silly type of love mixed with laughter and shaking breaths.

…

…

Once upon a time Elsian hadn’t loved Dori. If asked he wouldn’t be able to tell you when that changed. Couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment friendship had turned into these feelings he’d tried to bury deep, stumbling out in the small moments between them as they got tangled in all his doubts.

But Somewhere along the way everything had changed. This love had grown. Something that wonderfully, terrifyingly, Elsian knew, deep down, had changed him.


Paper flowers pressed against his fingers. Cold and delicate. He could hardly force the small shaky breath past his throat as he fought down a shiver, faltering in the wake of the way they looked at him.
Carefully he reached out, but he didn’t take the bouquet. Not quite. Instead, almost shyly he slowly linked their fingers together, meeting Dorions eyes with a small blush. The bouquet lightly cradled between both their hands.

“Dori I…”


Words had never been something he was good at. He deflected. Joked. Stumbling over words that could never hope to match what he felt. Because he felt so deeply. Enough that sometimes it felt like he could choke on the things he never stood a chance against, sitting on his throat like a warning. Even now he was weak with the feeling, fingers shaking against the bundle of flowers pressed against his skin.

He wasn’t like Dori. Couldn’t seem to ever cross that final step in anything he did. Even now when faced with something he hadn’t even dared dream he could have. He loved them. Loved them so deeply sometimes it felt like he knew nothing else, couldn’t comprehend an existence where they didn’t exist, because people could spend lifetimes searching for the type of wonder he’d found in them…and still he struggled.

And yet…they made him want to try.



“...Did you know,” he began quietly, “when I asked you to the ball back then…”

He shivered and his fingers shook. It wasn’t the cold.

Closing his eyes Elsian took a soft, stuttering breath. Fingers tightening where their fingers linked before loosening. Blush fading with the cold air he opened his eyes, green catching on blue before darting down to look at the flowers between them, one hand falling away to gently trace along one of the flowers.




“That the flowers were supposed to be red?” The real ones. The ones he’d plucked and knew would die. Living over paper…

Gaze locked on the flowers, he trailed a finger over one paper petal seeing flashes of gold and yellow. It was a distant sort of look, unfocused, like he was seeing something else. Elsi imagined a different time. A different them. And real flowers the wrong color. “Back then… All I could think about was the minutes between the next time I saw you. The next time I’d be able to hear you laugh…How long could I get away with holding your hand if I asked you to the dance…”

It felt like a lifetime had passed since then. It felt like it was just yesterday he’d asked. Something in him ached with the thought. “Gold and yellow paper for friendship…and new beginnings. But I always imagined the real roses as vibrant red-”

He swallowed past the feelings caught in his throat.

“It was stupid.” He shook his head with a laugh, black hair hiding his eyes for a moment as he ducked his head to blink at the note with misty eyes, embarrassment tinting his voice. “Really stupid…being afraid of giving you real red roses, as if it would have changed anything but I thought- I guess I was afraid of what might happen if I actually...” He huffed past a small, brittle laugh. The words lost in the cold.

It was still all he could think about and his heart ached with the memories.

“I was really selfish when I asked you out, y’know…you’re always on my mind Dori, it was driving me crazy every time I saw you during dinner laughing with your friends. During classes when you’d be so focused and make that ridiculous face you do, the looks you used to always give me when I begged to borrow your notes…and how you just started pulling out a copy for me at the end of class like it was nothing!” A laugh broke through the words, something so painfully fond and almost sad. “You’re just…so wonderful to me.” His gaze trailed away, struggling between their hands and the words on the note. “All I wanted was to be close to you.” He’d been a coward then. He was still a coward, or maybe, just complacent. “But I was too afraid I guess. Of ruining things. Chasing you away…”



Elsian stopped, lost in thought. “But not anymore.”

He looked up, a painfully soft look in his eyes the moment he met Dorions gaze. “No matter what I did, what I do… I always somehow find myself drawn back to you. It’s always you Dorion it’s always been you. You’re amazing at everything you do, and breathtaking even when you fail. Every moment I’m with you I feel more alive, more content than I’ve ever been.” He admitted, watching Dorion like he couldn’t believe they were real. “5 years later you still amaze me after all this time. You’re still spectacular.”

Slowly he pulled away one hand from Dori’s and the flowers, gently brushing Dori’s cheek. “I don’t think… I ever could have become this version of myself if I hadn’t met you…and I guess what I'm trying to say is…” He leaned close, closing the scarce space between them as he cupped their cheek. “I love you Dorion.” Said so simply in the silence, voice warm and sure even as his heart rattled against his chest so loudly he wondered if Dorion could hear it.

And as if like a promise, he leaned in, sealing the words with a kiss.

As if it was such a simple thing. And not something he’d ached to do for months.

Now, any thoughts of those wishes disappeared with the first brush of their lips together. Distantly, as he drew up his other hand to hold the other's face, he thought he heard the sound of the flowers dropping to the ground between them, but the thought was lost as he held Dori’s face between both hands. A smile, tucked into the corner of his own lips, happy and warm, and soft as he pressed just that much closer to the other.



A small breathless laugh left him as they broke apart, unable to stop the pure love in his tone. “I love you.” He said again. One hand falling from the other's face to grasp at Dorions hand tightly. He’d never let them go if he could help it.

“I’m madly in love with you...” repeated quietly, lips brushing the corner of Dori’s mouth in another kiss, something sweet and soft and just shy of teasing in his tone. “I’d be a fool to say no.”

Pulling back, foreheads pressed together as he watched them with a slowly growing grin, his eyes squinted in a smile and sparkling with love.“So yes…I’ll happily be your boyfriend Creampuff.” Curling their pinkies together he couldn’t resist bringing Dorion’s right hand up to his lips, pressing a small kiss to their fingers. “Sealed with a kiss and everything.”

“No take backs, right?” He whispered.

☽⦙ Date | 25 December, 2023 ⦙☾
☽⦙ Interacting | @Elsian Cox ⦙☾
☽⦙ Hex Code | #810B2D ⦙☾

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Quiet seemed to stretch for hours between them. A feeling that Dori knew that Elsi hated. Dori couldn't help but do anything but admire him in this moment. His dedication and patience to the 12 days was obvious. Dori's eyes quickly caught the silver rings, the necklaces, the friendship bracelet.

They swore they could hear the paper shuddering under their shaky hands.

It took more strength than they realized to hold it together when he called them magical. This boy, could destroy them and build them worlds with single words. But he had never used this power over them to destroy, only to try and make Dori see what he saw in them.

What Dori saw of Elsi's admiration of them never came in words, it came in the way he was with them, the things he did for them. It came in making signs every duel that comforted them for losing or cheering them on for winning, every time without fail. When Dori would fall asleep on a textbook in the library, Elsi pulling out the pillow he had on him at all times somehow and slipping it under their head until they needed to leave. In forcing them to relax when they felt like they couldn't, in comforting them during panic attacks and making them feel safe again, in being there when Dori thought they didn't need anyone.

Elsi was the sun- no, the moon- no, the stars? He was- he was everything to them. Even the vast infinite reality that was space, the amount that they loved him could not be described or contained adequately. They wanted to throw everything they had worked on away, this build-up too intense, too much, they just wanted to launch at him and tell him how much they loved him, cherished him, to beg him to be theirs. But they didn't have to beg, they know they didn't. At the end of this, they knew what the result was going to be. Despite all of the fear of rejection and being thrown off the Astronomy Tower emotionally, they knew they would be walking out hand-in-hand.

“Dori-?”
Dori's name posed as a question, and Elsi would always be the answer.

Another act of kindness, of love. Of patience and listening when Dori knew Elsi wanted to comfort them, to answer them. But he waited. Gods- he always waited for them. For years, by their side, when they changed names and pronouns, and they cut their hair in the goddamn abandoned bathroom one day. He never looked at them differently, never judged them. He was always there.

Dori knew they would never have to play the part of Orpheus, that no matter the distance and the hardship, Elsi would always be there. They were not a Greek tragedy being told over and over. They were Dorion and Elsian. Cream Puff and Brownie Bite.

There would be no world where they weren't side by side, hand in hand.

They couldn't help the small hitch in their breath as Elsi's hand wrapped around theirs. Cold hands shaking over paper flowers. Both so fragile, all of them ready to float away at a moment's notice. But they stayed, grounded, in whatever had brought them to this after 5 years. Had it really been 5 years? Twelve days of lead-up had felt like more than all of the time they had known each other.

And now it was Dori's time to listen, hanging on to every word he was saying. Waiting for him to just say, yes. But this was something that he wouldn't be joking away, one of the only things he wouldn't try to break the tension of. For once, Dori hated him for it, but simultaneously loved him even more for sitting in the discomfort of leaping towards each other after holding back for so long.

But had they? Been holding back? Dori knew to ask Elsi it had to be a grand gesture, not because he expected it but because he deserved it. He deserved to be seen and cared about in the way that he cared about everyone else. His joking was a guard against people seeing the softness in him. It even took Dori time to break through it, and really that was on them because the entirety of this relationship was built off of Dori yelling at him in the small hall in 2019. A holier-than-thou 11-year-old arrogant Gryffindor slowly melted over the years to be the soft, silly, sensitive boy that Dori knew now. If you had told 1st year Dori that they would dream of marrying this boy someday, they would've laughed in your face.

Then again, they didn't even know they were bi-sexual or non-binary so what did 11-year-old Dori really know.

They couldn't have imagined this happiness entangled with trepidation as Elsi spoke softly to them, making them shuffle lightly to get closer to listen. At the feeling of his hand shaking over theirs, Dori moved their thumb to gently brush against his fingers. To comfort him in the fear that Dori had already come to terms with and expelled over twelve days. They gave him the same reverence he had given them, silent and hanging onto every word, every breath, every heartbeat. Was that their heartbeat or his? The quiet between them made the blood rushing through their veins sound so loud.

Red roses. Dori blinked, in surprise, that he had felt this for as long as they had. What stupid teens they had been holding out on each other for fear of ruining everything they had, rather than the release of freeing these feelings and holding each other with everything that they had.

It seemed like their heart still had the capacity to speed up, because it did. Tears, silently, dropping one by one from their eye's. They hadn't even realized their tear ducts were at capacity until one of their tears fell cold onto their hand shaking under Elsi's. Their voice, a whisper in the night, in a mixture of disbelief and awe that Elsi saw them like this. "Elsi..." It quickly faded out, their voice croaking it more than anything.

Instinctually, their face leaned into the touch of his hand, closing their eyes and breathing in the picture-perfect moment that was a confession beneath the stars. Their eyes snapped open when he said the words. The words. The ones they had felt, that they wanted to say, but didn't know if it was too soon. If it'd be the thing to send him over the edge and make him run away. But no, Dori had never been too much for him. Why would that start now?

They barely had time time close their eyes again right as Elsi kissed them. As he held their face in his hands. The soft swoosh of the flowers falling to the ground as Dori wrapped their arms around his neck, moving to be slightly tip-toed because Gods this boy was tall.

It wasn't fireworks. The butterflies were in their stomach but settled, content with the turn of events. It just felt like how it was always supposed to be. It was the feeling of sitting in front of a hearth in the winter after playing in the snow for too long. The feeling of coming home after a year of avoiding home because you had no idea who you were. The feeling that everything was as it should be.

In that moment, Dori had no questions about who they were, if they mattered, if they deserved love and what that question even meant.

In that moment, in that perfect pristine cold night... Dori was Dori, and Elsi was Elsi, and they had finally come home to each other in the way that they were always meant to.

When he pulled away the words tumbled out before Dori could even think to say anything, "I love you, Elsian." With their foreheads pressed together they took a deep breath like it was the first one they had ever taken. "You would be a fool, I'm like the whole package." Their giggle was small, bubbling out as he kissed the linked pinkies. They pulled the pinkies towards them, since the seal obviously had to be double-y approved and kissed them. "I wouldn't dream of taking this back."

Nervous adrenaline turned into pure joy as they pulled back for a moment and then launched at him, like the little firecracker they were. "I love you, I love you, I love you! I get to kiss you now! And you're my best friend! This is the best thing ever!" Luckily, Elsi was quite used to Dori full tackling him at this point and caught them as practiced. Which gave Dori the equal height footing to lavish him in tiny kisses between exuberant giggles of joy.

"I missed you so much, but I knew if we hung out when I was doing all the things I would've broke, so I hope you'll forgive me for the mystery and abandonment issues I might've given you over the past twelve days. But I think it was worth it." They laid their head in the crook of Elsi's neck, holding him tightly, never wanting to let go. But eventually, they would break and slowly lower themselves back down to the ground. "I stashed some blankets if we just wanted to hang out under the stars for a little bit? Spend the last little bit of Christmas together, if you'd want to boyfriend."

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