Promises To Keep

by I-A-M

Rating: everyone
Tags: Romance, Equestria Girls, Wallflower Blush, Sunset Shimmer, Slice of Life
Length: 6277

Six months after a certain autumn evening, Wallflower waters plants, and Sunset goes shopping.

It's been six months since Wallflower found herself on the doorstep of her girlfriend during a torrential downpour, and stayed the night. The night when things changed in the slow and sudden manner of the inexorable.

Now, faced with a choice, Wallflower finds herself lost.

Written for, and with, Scampy.
Featured on 08/16/2020
Find the collected works for the SunFlower Saga here.

Published 2020-08-16 08:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-08-16 08:10:01 UTC

And Miles To Go

Wallflower Blush

Sunlight in spring has a cold quality of light to it that I like. It’s not so much a matter of temperature as it is clarity. Like really good, clean ice dropped into a glass of unsweetened tea.

I coil the pullcord of the window blinds in my hand and draw them up, letting the light spill into the room along with a crisp breeze that picks up without warning. I freeze as the air crashes over me like a down pillow of bracing wind, and take a long, slow breath.

The air is frigid with the cold waters of Lake Canter and for a moment the pressure in my head lightens just a little, interspersed with the breeze.

I nudge the daffodils a little more into the light and tip some of the water from the cup I’d brought over into the pot. I set the bluebells next to them, and beside those go the violets, and I tip a little water into each of those, too.

Their colours are bright and their perfume is just starting to reach the point where you can smell it the moment you get close.

“Peonies,” I mutter quietly as I set the glass down and set my hand between the daffodils and the bluebells. “Here, maybe? Or… forget-me-nots?”

There’s not much room on the window sill anymore since I added the violets, but they were too pretty to pass up when Sunset pointed them out while she and I were shopping the other day.

I wonder if Sunset would be okay with adding a little shelf below the window, then I could stagger the arrangement and spread it out a little.

“Daffodils, then peonies below and to the right,” I count off with my fingers, picturing the set up in my head as I did. “Then up to forget-me-nots, down to the bluebells, then up to the violets?”

It was a nice arrangement, theoretically, and they were all good companions. I’d have to find the Peonies and Forget-Me-Nots, but the grocery down the street has a nice selection.

Pointless unless I have a shelf for them, though.

I gather up the cup of water and the towels that I’d been using to clean up after myself and walk back to the kitchen. The counter has a little row of five succulents I picked out last month, and one of them has started to flower. It’s a tiny, stubborn little thing, but I think it will manage. The air in Sunset’s apartment is good. So long as I give it a little extra water every now and then it should give a little bloom.

“Hmm…” I look over the apartment, frowning.

The rows of flowers were yesterday, I got the daffodils a week ago though. The succulents were last month. The fern in the corner near the door was the month before that, which reminds me, I need to sweep up around it. It’s lost a few leaves.

“One, two, three,” I count quietly, looking around. “Four.”

The bromeliad on the coffee table was gotten before the fern, I think. Yeah, it was the month before that, and— Oh! that’s right, can’t forget that.

I wipe up the counter and walk over to the table, sit down and spritz the bromeliad twice. The breeze is good for it, and the sharp, red colour is wonderful. I know Sunset likes it.

“Wallie?”

The spray bottle falls out of my grip, hits the floor with a clatter, and rolls under the coffee table.

Sunset has a hand out on my shoulder, her warm smile chasing a few degrees of chill out of the air as I start chuckling weakly and bend down to grab the bottle.

“Sorry,” Sunset says quietly. “I called out a few times.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s, uhm… it was my fault.”

I fish the bottle out from under the table and set it down, then scoot to the side so there’s room for Sunset to join me, which she does.

She’s dressed, I note. She’s wearing jeans and a black top that has snippets of song lyrics all over it, and her shoes are on. I know she doesn’t work today which means she’s going out. If she’s going to see her friends then she’ll ask me to come too, and I’ll just…

“I’m going to the store,” Sunset says as she drapes an arm over my shoulders and draws me in as I stifle a relieved sigh. I let her, and I rest my head comfortably on her shoulder. “Wanna come?”

That’s not so bad. I don’t feel nearly as bad turning down a run to the store. I went yesterday, and it was nice, but it was also a lot.

A lot of people.

A lot of talking.

“It’s okay if not,” Sunset says with a small laugh as she brushes her lips over my head. “I’ll be gone like… an hour tops.”

I put a hand over hers, twining our fingers together, and take a long, deep breath as I hold tight. There’s the difference between us. It’s that little needle in my heart that reminds me that I’m holding onto her because I feel like, if I don’t, I might fall away somewhere and the knowledge that Sunset holds onto me for that exact same reason.

Because she’s afraid that, if she doesn’t, I might fall away somewhere.

In other words: without me, she would still be right here.

She would be fine.

Sunset Shimmer can step outside the apartment, walk to the store, and pick among the shelves to take what she needs. She won’t have a brief panic attack because she can’t remember if it’s the quick oats or the minute oats that she likes to make oatmeal with.

I once stared at three brands of Prench dressing for fifteen minutes. I had run out because I like to put it on hash browns, and I really wanted some for the next morning. In the end, I left without picking any up because staring at three different types made my dumb brain short-circuit because it was easier to not make a decision at all than to decide.

I can’t even imagine that happening to Sunset.

It happens to me all the time.

My head fills with static and cotton balls, and I just… don’t.

“If it’s okay, I think I’ll stay h… here.” I almost said ‘home’.

Sunset smiles and nods. She heard the word I stopped on, just like I did, but she’s still smiling at me. She was expecting that reply, I think. I almost never go out two days in a row. Not if I can help it.

“I figured,” she says with a smile, then wraps me in a hug and squeezes tight. “I love you, Wallie.”

I wrap my arms around her and nod against her shoulder.

“I love you, too.”

Then she gets up, gives my hand a quick squeeze, and makes her way over to the door. As she does my eyes trace over the plants in the house. Daffodils, bluebells, and violets. Succulents on the counter and the fern by the door. The bromeliad on the table, and…

Upstairs, in the loft, there’s a hibiscus that lost it’s blooms a few days ago but looks like it will be blooming again pretty soon. We got that just a little while after I starting staying here for a while… but-?

Six.

One, two, three, four, five, and six.

The peace lily next to the television set. I picked that one out for her because I thought her apartment was a little drab. It was just a couple of days after that autumn night. The one where she…

Six.

“Sunset?”

“Hm?” Sunset turns to face me as, raising an eyebrow as she pulls her jacket on and knocks her heel on the floor to get her shoe fitting right.

One plant for every month since that day. One plant for every month that I’ve… I never actually moved in. Not officially. It wasn’t a situation where she asked (a fifteenth time, I think it would have been) and I said yes. I just stopped leaving for any length of time. I haven’t slept in my own bed for better than four months now.

And Sunset hasn’t asked me to move in since. She’s just been quietly marking the time while filling her (our) apartment with colour.

I stand up, brush the wrinkles in my pajama pants flat, and walk over to Sunset as she tugs her jacket straight and pulls on her bright orange beanie to keep her hair tame in the Spring winds.

“Change your mind?” She asks. “I can wait.”

“Mm-m.” I shake my head. “Just… come home safe, okay?”

Her cheek is warm when I go up on my toes to kiss it, and when I pull back she’s staring down at me in surprise. Her eyes are wide and as blue as the skies of a Canterlot spring morning, and for a minute I think she might be about to cry. She doesn’t though… she just smiles, glass-fragile and happy, and nods.

“Okay.” She nods, then leans down to nuzzle my nose.

And then she’s out the door, down the hall, and gone.

As I close the door I can’t help but wonder if that was the right thing to do. It was worth it to say, I think. I don’t know if I feel it, but I think… I think I might actually want to feel it.

The door closes with a muted click that sounds far too loud in the empty apartment.

Do I want to feel that?

Home?

What does that even feel like?

My breath is getting short and my vision is warming up for a borderline Olympic swim routine. I try to cut it off mentally but I can’t. My heart is hammering in my chest. It’s all I can hear, and my vision is starting to grey out.

“Oh.”

The soft squeak of noise escapes my lips as I stagger, then sprint for the bathroom, almost knocking over the Peace Lily as my stomach goes into a triple backflip routine, flubs the pirouette, and breaks both legs on the mat, sending me to my knees in front of the toilet.

Panic rips through me. Raw and terrifying panic that sends clenches through my gut and chest as I dry heave over the basin. Tears and snot leak reflexively from my face as I let out a ragged sob.

Home.

Sunset wants this to be home. It’s her home, but she wants it to be mine too, but how can I manage that? I don’t know what home is! I’ve never known what a home is, and if I did it wasn’t the kind of place I’d want to be!

I can’t do this. I… I want to do this. But I can’t.

She wants me to do this, and I want to.

If you’d let me, I’d marry you right now.

My jaw clenches and a low, wordless groan spills out of me from between my teeth. I dig my fingers into my hair and hold onto my head like I’m afraid it will split apart, and I force myself to take long, slow breaths until the panic starts to drain out of me, leaving my limbs numb and my eyelids heavy.

Did she actually say that because she meant it? It sounds exactly like something Sunset would say to keep me around. To make me feel better. I love Sunset with every inch of my heart. From my nose to my toes, I love Sunset Shimmer.

But I know that she throws herself into the fire. She dives deep, holds on tight. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. She’s brave, borderline fearless, and definitely crazy. So would I put it past Sunset to make a grand declaration of love and affection just to make me feel better about myself?

I hate that my answer to that is a shifty, sheepish, but ultimately definite ‘no’.

Except… I’m almost positive she thought I was asleep. Honestly, I pretty much was asleep until she started talking, and I started to drift back into the waking world.

I came to just in time to hear those words.

If you’d let me, I’d marry you right now.

And she didn’t sound strong and firm, like usual. Usually when she says stuff like that it’s with that devil-may-care smirk she wears when she sets her shoulders like she’s about to take the weight of the world on her back and just called Atlas a loser for needing a breather.

Would she say it? Yes. Would she say it just to make me feel better? Probably.

But at that moment, on that night, while she was staring at me like her heart was breaking clean in half, and when she actually said it… did she mean it?

I… I don’t know.

That’s the really terrifying part.

I don’t know.

Unlike everything else Sunset has done. Unlike every great gesture and promise of love. That time there wasn’t an ounce of the brash confidence that coloured everything else she did.

There was no romance in Sunset’s voice that night. There was nothing pleading or uplifting like all the other times she's complimented me. She didn’t even sound happy.

She sounded grim and hard, and utterly determined.

Unyielding.

Now things are changing, I think. They’ve been changing ever since that night, I know that much. I stayed, for one. I didn’t say ‘I’ll move in’ or ‘I’ve decided’. I just… stayed, and she let me. Sunset hasn’t asked again.

She hasn’t and I think she’s desperately hoping that she won’t have to.

I brace both hands against the rim of the toilet and force myself to my feet. My breath is short and heavy, and my limbs feel like lead, but I drag myself to the sink anyway. I wash up, tidy up, and then dry off before trudging back out to the couch and collapsing onto it on my side.

There’s a clock in Sunset’s… in our apartment. It's in the loft and it ticks softly but audibly. I never told Sunset, but I like it a lot. It’s sometimes hard for me to keep track of time. There have been days I’ve laid on the couch and let whole hours, or a day, or sometimes more when things have been bad, just vanish.

The ticking helps.

I breathe, slow and deep, as I stare at the television set despite nothing being on it. There’s just a blank screen and my muted reflection staring back at me. There comes a point where my will is just exhausted, some days. Like, I’ve tried to do something and failed, or I’ve had a… a bad moment, and I just can’t anymore.

It feels like that right now.

Only it’s not that I have failed.

It’s that I will.

I really can’t decide if I’m hoping that Sunset was serious, or if I desperately want her not to have been.

Tick, tick, tick.

I count down over half an hour of delirium spent fading in and out like a radio broadcast on a long, empty stretch of interstate between cities before I finally work up the strength to sit up.

I’m tired, and I feel a little hollow. I think I’ve decided that I hope she didn’t mean it. I think a part of me is still pretty sure she didn’t. She couldn’t have.

No one in their right mind would want to be with me forever. Not even Sunset Shimmer is that crazy.

That thought makes me smile a little, actually. Sunset Shimmer, minimally sane. Good for her. I take a deep breath and draw in the scent of daffodils and bluebells and violets from the window sill, and lean back on the couch.

A few loud thumps sound from the hallway, and I frown, sit up straighter, and turn as the sounds get louder and louder until finally, something makes a quiet thud against the door. A moment later the lock rattles as a key slides in and the deadbolt lets go with a dull thunk. The door opens to admit a slightly sweaty-looking Sunset Shimmer breathing hard and standing on the threshold with a sheepish grin on her face.

“Sorry about that.” She hefts two small bags and walks over to the counter to set them down by the succulents before turning to go back to the door.

“Sunset?” I get up on my knees on the couch to lean against it, then clamber off of it as she opens the door again and bends down to pick something up. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she grunts as she shuffles around and then lifts something, “just had to carry this bastard back to the apartment, and for once I think I may have overestimated myself.”

That makes me chuckle. Whatever she’d gotten must’ve been heavy if she was actually admitting to that.

“Can I help?” I offer, stepping back as I do though, so she has room to back up.

“Nah, I got it,” Sunset says, standing with another muffled grunt as she gets something slung partially over her shoulder, hip-checks the door wider, and steps in. “Kind of a one-woman job, anyway, see?”

My mouth dries and my vision narrows to a grey tunnel as I stare at what she’s holding.

It’s wood. It's dark wood a slightly lighter colour than the faux wood floors of the apartment, and it’s short, maybe two and a half feet tall and five feet across, with two stout legs and long plank joining them at the top and bottom.

“Wallie?” Sunset says after a moment, her face growing worried as she walks over to the windowsill and kneels to set it down.

She never looks away from me. Not when she puts the piece down, or when she slides the small shelf underneath the window and presses it flush to the wall.

“What… what’s that?” I have to swallow a few times to get enough moisture into my mouth to get the words out.

Sunset looks between me and the window a few times, looking confused and a little scared. “I… It’s… a shelf? I didn’t… I just thought since we got the violets, that you’d run out of room in front of the window, y’know?”

She stands and wrings her hands before crossing the room and wrapping her arms around my waist.

“Wallie? Are you okay?” She asks again. “Did I do something wrong?”

Her eyes are wide and I can hear the clear worry underpinning her words as she settles her hands on my waist shakily. I think she wants to pull me closer, but I also think she’s scared I’ll pull away if she does.

“Wallie?”

She got a shelf.

It’s stupid.

This is stupid!

Why should that matter so much?! She… she just wants to get more flowers right? She wants me to… to pick out more flowers. Because she’s marking the months. The days and months because… because…

Because if there’s more room for more flowers. There will be more time.

More months.

For a brief, terrifying, and beautiful moment, I have this snap vision of a home that’s filled with flowers. Petunias and peonies and violets and roses. A home with every unwalked or unneeded inch packed with little ferns and small succulents and no matter where I turn the smell of blooms is all around me and…

And… my cheeks are wet.

“WALLIE?!”

My breath comes in short gulps, then the oddest, cracking noise comes out of me that turns into a long, high, keening wail. The dam behind my eyes crumbles and falls to dust, and tears flow hot and fast as I reach out and seize Sunset by the front of her shirt, drag myself forward to bury my face against her chest and start to cry for all I’m worth.

Before I Sleep

Sunset Shimmer

I’ve never, in all the time I’ve known her, ever seen Wallflower Blush really cry. Prior to this, I’d have called that a good thing. Now I’m not so sure, because I have no idea what to do and I think I would have liked a little practice.

“Wallie?!” I clutch onto her as she hangs from me, sobbing her eyes out with the most heart-wrenching cries I’ve ever heard from anyone. “Baby?! What’s wrong?!”

She doesn’t answer, she just blubbers incoherently while burying her face against my chest.

Despite having faced down mad sorceresses, animated rhododendrons, realm-shattering wild magic, a pissed off campground owner with godlike powers, and one seriously hacked-off film major, I have literally never been more scared in my entire life.

I look around in a panic, scanning my apartment for anything that might clue me in on what I’m supposed to do. I missed a trick. I had to have done or my girlfriend wouldn’t be bawling her eyes out!

“Wallflower? I uh… Okay, uhm, we’re… we’re going to the couch, okay?” I stammer, wrapping my arms around her as best I can. She gives me something approximating a nod, which I take as a good sign.

Without much leverage to speak of, I half-drag-half-carry Wallflower to the couch to set her down. I drop into the seat beside her and brace myself as she curls up against me, sobbing long and loud against my shirt as I doff my jacket and toss it onto the coffee table before getting up onto the couch as much as possible.

I pull Wallflower into my lap, wrapping myself around her as much as possible as she curls into a ball to cry. Lacking any other plan, I just rock her back and forth while I mutter a silent prayer to Written Word.

‘Written Word, Scribe of Creation, bestow upon my dumb ass the clarity to know what the hell I did wrong that resulted in this!’

If I’m being honest, I forgot the cadence of the actual prayer ages ago, and even if I did remember, I still haven’t prayed to the Scribe in better than a decade. At this point, though, I’m willing to swallow some pride and take any help up to and including divine intervention if it stops whatever is happening right now.

I blow out a slow breath as I reel back my memories and try to track what happened… I came back home… I dropped off the stuff from the hardware store on the counter… then I… brought in the shelf.

And now Wallflower is crying.

Well, that didn’t help.

“Wallie?” I whisper, running my hand over her head and carding my fingers through her hair as calmingly as I can. “Hey, are… are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay, baby.”

Wallflower sobs incoherently, but she gives a few firm nods by way of answer. I let out a relieved sigh that at least she’s not injured or something. That doesn’t answer any other questions, but I’ll take what I can get.

“Okay, uhm, I… I guess we'll stay here for a bit?” I say.

Another nod. I bend and flail a bit to grab a blanket, and I put a crick in my neck in the process, but I manage to scoop one up and drape it over her, and then around me. Once we’re swaddled up, I pull both of us back until I’m leaning against the arm of the couch and can sprawl out more comfortably with Wallflower firmly wrapped in my arms.

She cries for several more minutes, and they're some of the most terrifying minutes of my life. Nothing feels worse than seeing someone you care about in pain and having no idea what to do, except maybe seeing it, and knowing there’s nothing you can do.

So I wait. I control my breathing and rock her gently in my arms. I don’t shush her, or try to talk to her. I don’t even know what I would say.

No, that’s not true. There’s only one thing I can think of to say.

“I love you,” I say quietly, my lips pressed against her soft, morning-glory hair as I rock her back and forth. “I love you so much, Wallie.”

Tears start to leak from my eyes as I cradle her. I know there’s nothing I can do, but hearing her cry is breaking my heart. The sound is so broken, so lost, and so, so lonely.

It’s the tears of someone who has nothing and no one in all the world.

She has me, though. She will always have me.

I’m willing to endure a little heartbreak if it means being the one who gets to hold her like this.

Wallflower is worth it.

She’ll always be worth it, to me.

By the time the tears subside, it’s almost like there’s nothing left in her afterward. Like floodwaters have swept through her soul and cleaned her out of everything leaving her, sodden and exhausted, to pull herself back together.

She’s breathing slowly and deeply, and the only reason I know she’s not asleep is because that little wheezy snore she makes is nowhere to be heard.

I stroke my fingers through the tangled locks of hair around her cheeks, tracing the shell of her ear as I do, and nuzzling against the crown of her head. I don’t know what else to do to remind her that I’m still here.

That I’ll always be here.

Her tears have soaked my top, mine have dripped into her hair. Neither of us cares. I certainly don’t.

“Wallflower?” I call her name softly after almost an hour, I don’t want to disturb her if she really is drifting off to sleep, but…

She nods vaguely, and I let out a quiet sigh of relief.

“Do you—? No, nevermind, it’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it.” I want to know. Maybe this time I’ll press the matter, but not now. Later. “Do you want me to take you up to bed?”

She shakes her head.

“Okay.” I lean in and kiss her cheek. It tastes like salt.

Her arms close around me with more strength than before, and she hugs me tight. I return the embrace, drawing her up a little more so her head is by mine and she can rest in her favorite place in the crook of my neck. I brush my fingers over her face again, clearing the strands of her hair from her mouth and nose, and away from her eyes, and as I do my heart hitches.

Wallflower’s eyes are open and staring up at me. Two warm pools of soft brown are fixed firmly on my face, and after a moment she raises a hand to trace a finger down and along my cheek, then up to trace around my eye, then down the curve of my nose.

I can barely breathe. I’m almost scared to.

Wallflower loves me. I know that. I don’t even need her to say it, but it always makes my heart skip a beat when she does.

But she’s never just… just touched me like this. Small, casual touches have always been a little beyond her, and I understand why. I don’t blame her or resent her for it in the slightest. She’s always happy for me to hold her and curl up beside her at night, and that has and would always have been enough for me, so long as it was her.

To have her touching me like this though is almost as alien as her crying.

“Sunset?” Wallflower’s voice is ethereal, not weak, just… very far away.

“Yeah?”

“Say it again?” She phrases it like a question, and I wrack my brain for a moment before taking an educated guess.

“I… I love you?” I say, and her tired face softens into a gentle smile, and I say it once more, with feeling. “I love you, Wallie.”

“I love you, too.” The words come out trailing a sob, and few small tears leak out. “I really, really do.”

“I know,” I assure her, smiling. “It’s… I know you do, Wallie, it’s alright!”

She shakes her head wordlessly and lets out a weak, strained sob as she buries her face against my shoulder again.

“Did you mean it?”

Wallflower’s voice is so muffled by my shirt and her own sobs that I almost miss her words. They’re pleading. She’s begging me for something, but what I’m not entirely sure.

“Did I mean what?”

She shakes her head again, and starts crying again. There isn’t much left in her anymore, though. Her cries are dry, painful-sounding things. I lean back against the arm of the couch again and pull her close.

When she finally masters herself again, the sun has passed its zenith by a fair degree and the faint orange spill of dusk is starting to edge across the cold city of Canterlot. Dusk in spring is a beautiful time of year, and I watch the colours wash across the little array of flowers that Wallflower has been cultivating by the window.

Daffodils, bluebells, and violets. I helped her pick them out but I wonder if she knows why. She never said anything about it, and I’ve never mentioned it either. I don’t think she knows that I know anything about flowers, and when it comes to caring for them, that’s pretty much true.

But weird esoteric details are my stock and trade. Knowledge that has little to no use in day to day life has always appealed to me in various ways. Knowledge like the language of flowers.

Daffodils, bluebells, and violets.

Love Without Equal, Constancy, and Faithful Devotion.

She’s been nurturing them. Watering them carefully, and giving each one enough light with a mindful hand and an expert eye. Wallflower really does have a green thumb, her complexion notwithstanding. I love watching her tend to the plants around the apartment, she’s so focused when she does it.

And she looks happy.

Sometimes she even hums while she works.

I love that sound most of all.

If I had my way I would buy a house big enough that we could fill every window with flowers. We’d have a garden that stretches around the whole yard, and it would have every colour and season of flower in the world. We would have great bay windows to let in the light, and my days would be spent hearing her hum quietly as she went from plant to plant, delighting in keeping them flourishing, and she would.

Wallflower is talented like that.

I don’t have that kind of money though. I don’t know if I ever will. The most I can afford is a few little houseplants and a new shelf to add a few more down the line. I want it to be enough. Enough that she’ll stay with me. But I’m not sure it is.

I’m so, so scared that it isn’t, and that one day I’ll wake up and we’ll have gone back to the way it was six months ago when she only came over now and again.

I hate the idea of waking up alone anymore.

I’m not sure I can go back to it.

But she’s here with me now. She’s stayed with me for months on end, only occasionally going back to her little one-room in the East End to pick something up. Slowly but surely, more and more of her clothes have ended up in my dresser, some of her toiletries have joined mine in the bathroom, and her favorite tea mug is in the cupboard above the electric kettle.

Maybe it’s overly optimistic of me, but I’ve let myself hope this means that she’s moved in.

“Hey,” Wallflower croaks weakly, her she chuckles on the edges of her words.

“Hey yourself.”

She takes a deep breath and squeezes me like a plushie for a moment before relaxing into my arms again.

“You okay?” I ask.

Wallflower nods silently, rubs at her eyes, and yawns. She squeaks a little when she yawns. Every single time. My heart just about pops every time I hear it. She smacks her lips as she works her way through a few more yawns, then nestles against me and sighs quietly.

“Ask me again.”

I raise an eyebrow and look down at Wallflower. She’s said the words with more strength than I expected, especially given she’d just finished crying her eyes out.

“Cryptic today, huh?” I ask with a small laugh. “Ask you…?”

I trail off as I bead on to what I’d just been thinking of before, and my heart leaps into my throat and lodges there. It takes me a moment to get it back into my ribcage where it belongs, and I swallow hard as I work the words out around a suddenly dry mouth.

“Stay… Stay tonight?”

Wallflower nods. I take a deep breath, feeling a cold weight of panic and dread clench in my chest and seizing up the next words. I force them through anyway.

“Stay forever?”

She shifts around in my arms, freeing herself from them and levering herself up so she can look me in the eyes. Wallflower’s cheeks are red and her eyes are a little bloodshot and a bit puffy from tears, and she sniffles a little before finally saying:

“Okay.”

Now it’s my turn to cry for real.

I start to sob quietly as I wrap my arms around her again and pull in her close. I bury my face against her neck this time, and my tears are soaking her sweater. I know she doesn’t care about it any more than I care about my top.

She’s staying. She’s really staying.

Then I’m laughing. I’m laughing and clinging to her and sitting up to pull her into my lap and hug her tight. She giggles softly as I lavish her with kisses over her cheeks and neck and face, and she pushes at me playfully. In the chaos, we tangle up with the blanket and—

“AH!”

We hit the ground between the couch and the table, and I’m laughing harder than I’ve laughed in a year, and even better than that is that she’s laughing.

Wallflower Blush is laughing.

When we finally catch our breath, we’re both red in the face and sprawled on the floor, and I’m staring up at the ceiling with a heady rush of adrenaline and bubbly flutters clogging up my head.

It takes a little effort, but Wallflower kicks at the blanket until she finally frees herself, and sits up in my lap. I sit up with her, working my fingers through my hair as I do, trying to get a few of the knots out that had tangled up in our impromptu, lovey-dovey wrestling match.

“Sunset?” Wallflower says softly, and I look up with a raised eyebrow. “Did you mean it?”

I shake my head to loosen up my hair and wrap my arms around her waist to pull her closer as I smile.

“Mean what?” I ask. “Asking you to stay?”

“Mm-m,” Wallflower shakes her head. “That night last autumn, and what you said… did you mean it?”

“Did I—”

If you’d let me, I’d marry you right now.

“I…” I trail off, then press my lips to a thin line, and steel myself as I look up at her.

At Wallflower Blush.

“Every single word,” I say finally. “I meant every single word.”

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t gasp or cry or look terrified like I expected her to. Thankfully, she also doesn’t bolt, because if she had I think it would have actually killed me.

Instead, she drapes her arms around my shoulders, wiggles her hips a little to let my hands settle on them, and then leans in and presses her lips to mine.

My heart is burning and shining like a main-sequence star.

When she pulls back from me, her cheeks are flushed to her namesake, and… Written’s Quill… has her smile always been that beautiful? I think it has but it’s hard to be sure. All I know is that she’s smiling and so am I.

“Wallflower Blush, if you’d let me, I’d marry you right now,” I say with the broadest, and possibly dampest, grin I’ve ever given.

She wipes at her eyes, then turns and reaches for the Bromeliad on the coffee table. With careful fingers she plucks one, then another, of the long leaves. Ones that are softer and darker, and starting to wilt a little. Working with dextrous slowness, Wallflower takes one and twists it gently, turning it in on itself until it’s a thin, woven thread.

Then she ties two tips together, sets it aside, and does it again.

“There,” she says quietly, holding one of them out to me. “So uhm… it’s not much but…”

I sniffle, laugh, and shake my head. “It’s perfect.”

I take her right hand with my left and slide the little woven ring of green onto her finger. Then she takes mine and does the same.

We’ll have real ones one day. Maybe not soon, but we’ll have them.

“I love you, Sunset,” Wallflower says, as she links her fingers with mine, drawing my hands up and pressing a kiss to our joined hands across the knuckles.

Laughing, I nod, lean in, and do the same.

“I love you, too.”