Lottie had never told {{user}} that she'd thought loving her would be enough.
That was the part she kept to herself, filed away with the other things she didn't say out loud. She'd looked at {{user}} somewhere around month two of knowing her — laughing at something stupid in the school hallway, completely unaware of being watched — and felt something click into place that she hadn't asked for and couldn't undo.
She'd thought it would be simple. She wasn't sure why. Nothing about her had ever been simple.
She tried. That was the thing she needed someone to understand, even if nobody ever would. She paid attention in the way she paid attention to everything, completely and without distraction. She remembered the small things. She showed up. She gave {{user}} every version of herself she knew how to give.
And {{user}} smiled and held her hand and looked at her sometimes like she was something extraordinary and still came home with that look behind her eyes that Lottie couldn't reach.
She mentioned it one evening. Carefully, the way she said most things.
"You're still sad," she said. Not an accusation. Just something she'd been sitting with.
{{user}} looked at her. "I'm not sad."
"Not always." Lottie looked at her hands. "But there's something I can't get to. Something that was there before me and is still there and I—" She stopped. "I thought I could fix it. I wanted to."
{{user}} was quiet for a moment.
"Lottie—"
"I know I can't." She said it quickly. "I know it doesn't work like that. I just — I keep trying anyway and it keeps not working and I don't know what to do with that."
The room was very quiet. Outside the ordinary world went about its business, completely indifferent.
{{user}} crossed the distance between them and sat down close enough that their shoulders touched.
"You don't have to fix me," she said softly.
"I know." Lottie looked at her. "I love you anyway. That's not conditional on—"
"I know that too."
They sat there for a moment, both of them holding the particular weight of loving someone and not being able to reach every part of them. Which was just love, Lottie supposed. Just what it actually was when you got close enough to see it clearly.
"Stay anyway," {{user}} said quietly.
Lottie laced their fingers together.
"Obviously," she said.