#Love Note | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beyondthebackup · 8 months

Text

[Submitted]: The Red Note

The note and the indented description of its location was submitted by an anonymous author.

Everything dies.

Normally, though, Backup sees it coming.

This is the grave of his childhood.

B gazes up at the crown of the mighty tree that used to make him feel so incredibly small, now frail and withering as it towers above him. Scarce sunlight slips through the yew’s crooked fingers like liquid gold.

A kaleidoscope of shadows flicker across B’s face as he passes beneath the glittering canopy and crushes its leaves underfoot.

The old yew looms over moss freckled lichen, arching branches like phoenix wings drawing it up from the ground in one last demonstration of life’s defiance, an evergreen’s final breath drawn from pallid-gray-green to malignant gold. Surrounded by sightless spectators, there is no witness when it is unjustly slain. In death, it remains as silent as the secrets it’s kept for all the lovers who carved their names into its flesh, all the dabblers in death who stole its carmine heirs from its branches. But the untimely cascade of coniferous needles reveals a hidden missive;

—a scarlet envelope left nailed beneath a skeletal branch.

B can still make out the wounds he inflicted year after year on red-brown bark, a tradition stolen from the English children. Not letters but tally marks, counting down to the day A would finally look up at him, brow furrowed with thinly-veiled rancor as he realized B was taller than him now and always would be. A never said anything, of course he didn’t, but he didn’t have to. B knew each time A returned to this tree he’d see the evidence: a gash that sits perfectly atop B’s head when he leans against the trunk, '182' carved proudly beside it. While A's gradually stammered to just above 172, Backup's growth sailed smoothly beyond what A would ever reach. The last two marks, 172 and 167, were made without Alternative's participation.

Risking splinters, Backup drags his hand down the years notch by notch and wonders exactly when the ancient thing died; in his memories, in that photo, it is emerald, lush and verdant as evergreens should be, unless…

He comes upon a hole that must have been drilled into the trunk; he absentmindedly sticks his finger inside, noting it to be about 1-2 inches deep. Backup quickly realizes that there are several identical holes around the circumference of the tree, along with multiple cuts exposing its vulnerable white flesh. Even the grass and foliage at the base are dying.

B can make out the massive thing from an impressive distance and recalls a few moments from the past year or so — flashes of yellow in the corner of his eye during football games and smoke breaks. He didn’t think much of it at the time. It’s just a tree, after all. Like everything else from those days, it faded into the background.

But this is death by a thousand cuts. These injuries are precise, deep and deliberate. This was a murder, carried out over days, weeks, months…

Whoever killed this tree did so slowly and left it to rot from the inside…as if hoping the poor thing could feel pain. But…why? Why this tree…?

It feels ridiculous to care about what killed a tree, but it’s even more ridiculous to care enough about a tree to kill it…

Something catches his eye

—red like a fresh incision.

B recognizes the glint of a nail and his body responds in an instant. The wounds from that day Alternative hunted him like an animal in these woods have only recently healed.

Memories of steel biting into his shoulder, the ice-tipped fang tearing through his thigh, the searing ache as he dug pseudo-bullets out of his skin and the grim reality that he nearly lost an eye haunt him like a vengeful ghost.

The last time he found something interesting nailed to a tree,

A was there.

Waiting.

As if it were an ambush.

B’s pulse quickens and he scans the treeline for movement, taking the time to become fully aware of his surroundings. Alternative still has that damned crossbow; despite his best efforts, he hasn’t been able to find it. Still, A is unlikely to make the same move twice in a row. That would make things too easy.

This place has always been still and quiet, and now is no exception. Eventually, B relaxes into the nostalgia.

He is alone.

There is no mistaking it; another hidden note, but this time, placed well out of his — or anyone else’s — reach. He’d have to climb the tree to retrieve it.

It appears he’ll have to put in some work this time.

B is confident when he begins his climb. He’s scaled this tree a dozen times before, although not since his youth.

It’s no trouble for him at all to jump and grab the first branch but, it lets out an unfamiliar groan, protesting his weight…he is stronger than he used to be, but heavier too, and these branches aren’t as wide as they once were.

He will have to be careful.

The next branch is the same, creaking under him like cheap furniture as he pulls himself up to straddle it. This tree is dying and making a fuss of it, bark crumbling under his fingers as he swings his leg up and tries to scale the third branch quickly.

Nothing feels stable enough to rest for long, especially not this last branch, high enough for a perfect view but not so high you can’t get back down. Years ago he and A would sit on it for hours, but B suspects that even grabbing it might be too dangerous now.

But he wants that letter.

He doesn’t have a choice.

B takes a deep breath and for a moment feels like a child again, grasping at the limb with blind faith. His scuffed fingertips straining at the edges as it moans, B reaches further, stretching his grasp into the open air. The limb begins to tenderly pop, but he won’t make it if he gives up now. He pulls with the full force of his strength, bringing his face into the sun’s unobscured light; he squeezes his eyes shut as it blinds him just before he hears the loud crack beneath his fingers, the next moment he is in free fall.

He shouts and birds scatter, there is no time to think before he

hits

the

ground.

"Nnnnngh…"

B groans out in pain, his head is throbbing so hard he almost regrets regaining consciousness. His back and limbs are sparking with a sharp agony and it takes some time before he dares to even move them.

Nothing is broken, and he doesn’t feel too disoriented. He struggles, slowly, into a sitting position and realizes he landed in a nest of expired needles. He should consider himself lucky. The jagged remains of that old branch glare back at him, a big gap like a question left unanswered.

Looking to his side, there is the letter — and the limb. He frowns. There’s still some green left at it’s core, and the red note defiantly isn’t even torn.

The note reads: I am enamored. Scintillating sparks on the surface of my skin trickle the path of your fingers like lambent dust caught in concentrated sunlight, like earth bound stars curling on your breath. It’s silent and ethereal, the mark of your fingers lingering where they stole my warmth greedily, still there, invisible and unquenched. Do you know I am left famished even when you are pitiless? My living-ember love, you are as inhospitable as the vampirous summer sun, bleeding the ground dry, scorching all tenderness that could wriggle out of reach of your blistering indignation— I hold my withered affection close and brace for the lick of your ire… You mistake my inaction for apathy but I think if I let you, you would scorch it all to cinders, just to prove how intensely your acrimony burns, just so I would know how uncompromising your ego has become for my dignity. I think of how you threaten to discard everything we have been to each other and I want to meet your ferocity with the cold-blooded recompense that everyone tells me is due… But, how can I do that when I look into your eyes and I see someone that once saw me when no one else would? How can I when I’ve known your heart —and it is not empty? How can I kill a fledgling hope I know is still within you, the trust that I would never leave you even if life made you thorny and bleak? How can I do it when the most untamed parts of you are home to all the untamed parts of me? How can I do that when it wouldn’t matter how unsparingly you loathed me, some part of me would still love you? I cannot reason with feral rage, there is no antivenom for enmity, but my heart cannot yield to the truth; that I want you to choose to love me back. Even in spite of all you’ve done to desecrate our bond… How pathetically I want you to look at me in the way others would long to be seen, how miserably I want you to speak to me from the places that sighed so softly when you rested your head next to mine, how cravenly I want you to love me in the way my heart would understand. Oh, savage love, how little fear your sanguine threats inspire when I am already consumed with a dread with which nothing else can contend… I do not fear the pain you could inflict anymore. I am not afraid of degradation or debasement. I am not even afraid of death. But, I am terrified that we will not live long enough to finish all those unloved sketches you’ve left in the drawer, or that I might die having not written all that longs to be read by your eyes and dies waiting for a home in your heart —I’m terrified that I won’t live long enough for all that is still within me to be born.

B presses his thumbs into the envelope, caressing the frayed edge left behind when he ripped it free from the nail. He pictures the other four notes hidden away in his room; secret treasures B keeps pressed between the pages of a thick, unassuming book. They are in perfect condition, Backup made certain of that, but this one…is damaged.

The symbolism is not lost on him.

This note is different.

While the others were marked by their playful lust, pretty fantasies signed off with hearts…this one is pointedly somber. Intimate beyond the physical. The author knows the subject of these letters, or at least claims to…in a way that B has never been known, cannot ever be known.

What the hell is this…? This isn’t about him.

Talk of hope and trust and home and seeing their heart — if someone said these things to his face, he’s not sure he could stop himself from laughing. It wouldn’t just be presumptuous, but ridiculous, borderline delusional…

But B isn’t laughing. There is a growing knot in the center of his chest.

He wants this ridiculous letter to be about him.

It’s been fun so, of course he does…but it’s something more than that. There is a bitter familiarity in the author’s tone of voice that cuts through B’s impulse to write them off.

There is not just nebulous talk of ‘love’ but resentment, strife, and death. No, B would be lying if he said that nothing in this note could apply to him, but still…

——— Obelus Yoriko Umbral A ———

Yoriko, perhaps, would be willing to project such far-fetched hopes onto him…but she has the least to complain about out of all the suspects. This is simply because B senses she has the self-respect to stop tolerating him if he pushes her too far — he can’t have that, not when things are just now getting good.

Umbral might yearn for B to be more affectionate with him outside of his rewards for good performance…but he takes what he is given, and this note is almost defiant in what it’s asking for.

Was B wrong to eliminate Obelus just because he’s sure he’d never write about wearing a dress? Doesn’t he know better after studying B like a bug under a microscope for all these years? Isn’t that why he keeps his mouth shut even though his romantic feelings for B are so painfully obvious?

And why does he even keep A on this mental list?

A despises him.

Yet, he doesn’t want to eliminate the possibility from his mind.

Because he likes the idea.

It’s impossible, and that’s what makes the thought amusing. A would have to be truly out of his mind to write like this about B.

No one is crueler to Alternative than Backup.

And why wouldn't he be?

If it weren't for Backup's persistent reminders that their precious figurehead is indeed fallible, their drooling peers and instructors would inflate A's ego to the point of no return. B can just picture his look of smug superiority, that air of stern self-importance that makes B want to turn him inside out. The humiliation, the torment, the cruelty is all necessary. Left unchecked, A might grow a spine and pursue relationships with others, grow foolish enough to believe in something other than his inexorable defeat at Backup's hands.

But he does more for Alternative than just make him miserable. Their rivalry is give-and-take.

B knows the truth, even if no one else does — that for all his faux innocence and doe-eyed victimhood, the degradation gets A off.

But he won't ever admit it. A’s image is perhaps the most important thing in the world to him, and he takes great pains to convince everyone that he gets nothing out of their twisted dynamic.

One of his many lies.

No, there is just no motive for A to author these notes (god forbid with any shred of sincerity). If he had, this would be nothing short of a mixed fucking message.

It is absurd, the idea that A secretly yearns for him to drop all pretense and seriously treat him like his fucking boyfriend, right?

There is barely a moment of consideration before the answer emerges from his memory.

"They think too highly of me to suffer delusions of your adequacy~

Do you think you’d even know how to be my boyfriend if you tried?"

That is what Abel said to him, before B promptly trapped him in the bathroom and made him miss their next class.

When he said it, he meant it. When B retaliated, he meant it. After everything A has done to him, he should be grateful for B’s restraint up till now.

Even after everything he’s put him through, even after … after 'everything you’ve done to desecrate our bond’…

B scowls. Right.

A had only ever categorically denied 'everything we’ve ever been to each other’, his capacity for shame being perhaps one of the starkest differences between him and B.

In spite of the impossibility that this trepid confession could represent Abel’s genuine feelings, the notion crashes into B like water on hot stones and his agitation splinters into a disorienting fog.

Every day he and A address each other with taunts and insults, overt threats and whispered coquetry, the fistfights and arguments a theater they put on for the house while they commit attempted murder and carnal sins in private.

The one thing they do not do is speak to each other like this.

It’s against the rules.

It would be an easy enough pill to swallow if A wrote these letters to get inside B’s head, to escalate the cruelty of their game.

But, if he is this good at it, then B has so severely underestimated his abilities that he’s become unrecognizable as an opponent.

It was improbable, even if A was capable of it. These notes were not merely diversions conceived in an hour's time. Their author wrote with palpably poignant ardor, with carefully constructed allusions penned in ink. Their methodical strokes were elegant but bold enough to be written without the possibility of erasure, suggesting that every step of their creation was arduously intentional, practiced.

No… it wouldn’t be worth the farce of simply luring him into A’s crosshairs...

But, if this could be felt for Backup by anyone, if A could feel anything like this, anything to this degree, if he could even conceive of the thought and mean it — B’s train of thought comes to a grinding, screeching halt.

He doesn’t even notice his racing heartbeat, the tension crawling up his shoulders and back, teeth digging into tongue.

Why would he ever say he’d never leave me?

Of course, he won’t.

Not ever.

It’s not up to A and it never was; it is fate that he won’t survive long enough to have a life outside of this place, outside of B’s reach — but he can’t possibly know that.

B would never leave something so important up to trust.

The absolute futility of it all has not left Backup complacent.

He respects Alternative far too much to accept victory by default.

A spends each day running, trying to put as much distance between them as he can; but he can’t do it forever. He will tire. He will fall.

B chases him and blocks the exits even if he doesn’t have to, he keeps a hand on his back ready to drag him down-

Down to his level.

Dirt, graves, and hell.

They grew beside one another like trees, blocking each other’s sun, tangling their roots. B looks all the more warped standing next to A, but the rot is in both of them.

The rot defines them.

Why can’t he just let it define them?

Why can’t he stop wanting more than to rot and strangle and suffocate him until its done?

How can I do that when it wouldn’t matter how unsparingly you loathed me,

some part of me would still love you?

Backup grits his teeth, his throat filling up with something utterly intangible yet almost too thick to breathe around, he is suddenly too hot and the chittering insects are too loud. The world around him slows to an absolute crawl and when B decides he is not doing this, he is not going to waste his time thinking about this when A did not write this, A would never think this, A would never make these promises, A did not love him,

He stuffs the letter back into its envelope and tries to shake it from his mind.

But he cannot bring himself to leave it. For some agonizing reason, he cannot leave it to be bleached by the sun and consumed by insects eating through the yew’s fallen leaves.

…Why does it even matter to him?

A would have thrown it away.

A would have left it to be forgotten. If he had given it to A, he would have torn it up in front of him—

"… They say that boys often go their entire lives without receiving flowers until their funerals, I suppose now that cannot be said of either of us…"

The words spoken when A gave the flower back to him returned, it still lacked all the malice he had expected to be there. A had not disposed of it, he had not torn it apart, that’s not what happened…

The contradiction, the flaw in A’s thick veneer of antagonism, the possibility pounding at the inside of his skull, something boiling deep inside of him and threatening to burst. He wants to reject this discomfort, he wants to be excited again like he was when he thought something fun was finally happening that didn’t involve his persistent

fucking

obsession.

A dangerous idea reoccurs to him after sitting in the back of his mind for days. It consumes his every fiber, reverberates on every cell like the cicadas in the forest at dusk and he sees the opportunity in front of him with new eyes— the only way he’d get any answers is if he played the game.

If he wrote a response to these letters, but left it for A to find…

Could it affect him? Would it reach through Alternative’s facade? —Would he see a flicker of A’s desire to be truly known…even loved?

… Is A capable of wanting more than the mask of perfection? … Is he capable of wanting — tenderness?

Enough to accept it, even from someone else…?

A voice brushes his mind with unwanted advice, “Maybe—if I was just a little bit kinder to him than you’re capable of being, he might want it more than he wants to be fucked ~” C’s provocation reemerges to taunt him, and as quickly as it breaches the surface, B buries the creeping sense that he could have a point… but not before it introduces him to a new prospect:

He might receive a response from the parts of A that never spoke to him aloud —the parts that wouldn’t throw away the flower left on his nightstand…

B’s guard against ill-fated fantasy rises immediately, he wouldn’t put it past A to be vicious just to spite him.

But what if he didn’t know who they were from? What if he left them for A to make of what he would, for them to twist and pluck at his inner workings, to keep him awake at night— to let him deny ownership of if it all proved fruitless~

If nothing came of it, he could at least enjoy toying with A until his experimentation with tenderness honed him into a more skillful handler of his admirer’s sensitive heart…if this was truly his admirer.

Backup tucks the note away carefully, determined to return to his room and begin drafting his reply, but he feels a pull to the fallen limb discarded on the ground.

The yew is dead.

Nothing can be done about that.

But this limb isn’t…at least, not entirely.

B picks it up, and for a moment, contemplates its weight in his hands.

It’s easy enough to discard a flower. But if something could grow from this branch…if the progeny of that old tree could sprout from its discarded bones, and A saw such a gesture of sentimentality from B…would it rattle him?

This yew is not just the grave of B’s childhood after all, but A’s, too.

Fine.

If C wants to lecture him about playing nice, he can make himself useful.

He will bring it to the greenhouse to see what can be done.

[Lavender Note]

[Pink Note]

[Blue Note]

[Red Note]

[Tag: Love Note]

#submission #rp #plot #love note #beyond birthday #thank you anon for your beautiful submission!!!

13 notes · View notes