Fic: Substitution

[dolevalan]

Title: Substitution
Fandom/original: original
Rating: G
A/N: 10 minute flash fic. Prompt from rougen.



It wasn't as if she could be replaced. He knew that. Someone who knew him so well... but still. He could not deny that it felt as if there was some... mild comfort in some of the women he spent his time seeing. Cold, witty, cutting women. But this one, of course, was too coarse. This one was bitter, with no sense of humor. This one was nowhere near intelligent enough. This one would talk of nothing but fashion. Still. He could spend time with each of them and it was...

...well, it was nowhere near as good, but a man had to do something.

–

She would never, of course, admit to missing him. She had chosen to leave. It had been the right choice. But still, it was hard to break the habit of collecting observations to write to him. To stop herself from thinking “Ah, he'd enjoy this.” It was not as if he'd died, she knew. But he may as well have, for all that she could speak with him these days.

She attempted, once, to strike up an intimacy with another person, of the sort they'd shared. It would, of course, never be precisely the same. But after a long dinner full of pretending to be interested in inanity, she gave up. It simply couldn't be done. Some things had no proper substitution.

Comments

[rougen.livejournal.com]

Mm... love. How it hurts.