Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-10-25 06:48 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2002-10-25 06:48 pm
The Rose
...Before graduation, I saw the table with the people selling roses. I debated. Should I?
Would he accept it? After he accepted it, would he hold it and be good with it, or would he bonk me over the head with it?
I shared my debate with the ladies at the rose table. "He'll love it!" they assured me. "He won't bonk you over the head with it."
They don't know him, I thought to myself. I broke down and got one. Long-stemmed, single, red, rose. For Darkside. From me.
I took my question to Dawn. She had, truthfully, no idea as to whether he'd do that or not. I held the rose behind my back, and beckoned her over to whisper. Darkside was curious as to what we were talking about. She didn't tell him.
He told me, after we came together in the crowd after the graduation, that giving him the rose had been a dirty trick. (He still held it, though.) I told him about the debate, and he walloped me over the head. Roses can be surprisingly heavy, when used as a blunt object. They're at the end of that long stem, I guess, which gives them the speed when whapped through the air to the head. I dodged out of the prescribed flight plan towards the Sundome doors to let the ladies at the flower table know, "He hit me over the head with it!"
Would he accept it? After he accepted it, would he hold it and be good with it, or would he bonk me over the head with it?
I shared my debate with the ladies at the rose table. "He'll love it!" they assured me. "He won't bonk you over the head with it."
They don't know him, I thought to myself. I broke down and got one. Long-stemmed, single, red, rose. For Darkside. From me.
I took my question to Dawn. She had, truthfully, no idea as to whether he'd do that or not. I held the rose behind my back, and beckoned her over to whisper. Darkside was curious as to what we were talking about. She didn't tell him.
He told me, after we came together in the crowd after the graduation, that giving him the rose had been a dirty trick. (He still held it, though.) I told him about the debate, and he walloped me over the head. Roses can be surprisingly heavy, when used as a blunt object. They're at the end of that long stem, I guess, which gives them the speed when whapped through the air to the head. I dodged out of the prescribed flight plan towards the Sundome doors to let the ladies at the flower table know, "He hit me over the head with it!"
no subject
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He accepted the rose when I held it out to him when he walked off the stage, and he held it all throughout the rest of the ceremony. He -- well, I wouldn't call it "smiled", but he got the look in his eyes that meant that he was overflowing with emotion and had no way to express it. Someone else might have been grinning ear to ear with tears pouring out of their eyes. That's not the way Darkside reacts, though.
I don't know if he's ever been given flowers before. This may well have been the first time that someone has. I was the one who had to let him know (a few days before Valentine's Day) that an ideal way of expressing the emotions he had on that day would be to get one's girlfriend roses. It's just not a thought that would have occurred to him on his own. So he did, and she loved them, and happy communication was achieved. I seriously doubt that anyone has given him a rose before.
Darkside only hits me over the head as a sign of affection. We have a very elementary-school relationship. Jumping back a year in my journal, Darkside and I clobbered each other, nerve-pinched each other, hit each other over the head, played Mercy without mercy, arm-wrestled, slugged each other in the arm or stomach casually... People at school tend to get alarmed with us, if we're playing like we normally do, if they don't know us or the way we relate to each other. One amusing morning, when he and I were playing Mercy, strangling each other, and practicing nerve grabs, someone commented on us trying to kill each other. We simultaneously said that no, if we had been trying to kill each other, one or both of us would be seriously dead or hurt. It's a delight beyond words to be able to play like that with someone, knowing that if ever I'm uncomfortable with something, or he's uncomfortable, that we'll immediately stop and make sure everything is all right. He would never, ever harm me, so scrapes and bruises gathered by accident playing are nothing to worry over. Soccer practice and theatre left me with worse.
Darkside's not comfortable with hugging as a casual show of affection. He's told me this many times. He only ever touches me gently or tenderly if I appear to be hurt in some way. Otherwise, if he wants to touch me, he hits me: not hard enough to seriously hurt or injure, but hard enough to be felt, noticed, and appreciated, maybe sting a little for a few moments. He does tap me on the arm to get my attention, these days; we're calming down from the earlier violence, but when nothing else will serve to express something, he still whacks me over the head.
He was grinning ear-to-ear when he whacked me on the head with the rose, and I was grinning just as hard. The rose, being still mostly a bud, was uninjured. (I may have to be sneaky and ask his mom what did happen to the rose after he got home, at some point. I suspect that it's either on display in a central location of the house, or that it's tucked away in his room somewhere visible, safe, or both.) It was a confirmation. He accepted the rose, and he acknowledged that yes, I knew him, and how he reacts to these things.
If he'd refused to take the rose from my hands, it would have crushed me, but he would have been perfectly within the bounds of our friendship for him not to. If he'd taken the rose, and not clobbered me over the head with it when I told him about the debate over whether he would clobber me with it or not, it would have been a sign of not caring, or denying that I knew him as well as I do. But he took the rose, accepting what I was giving him even though it was perhaps too romantic a gesture for our friendship as it stands, and bonked me on the head with it after I told him about the debate over it, thus giving him implicit permission to show his appreciation for it and the love and caring that it symbolized through the usual channels, ie, bonking me on the head.