Collide
A/N: Not everything in this fic is completely explained, so you can decide how to interpret it. Also, for the record, it doesn't have anything to do with the song of the same name. I just like the word collide and decided to write a fic with it as the main theme. As this fic isn't set in a specific year, it doesn't have DH spoilers, so no need to worry.

On one hand, they were very different. One, having never loved or been loved himself, thought it a foolish business that only the weak and stupid got themselves caught up in. The other had been raised in a world filled only with love, and, having loved and been loved by so many people, had no doubt in her mind that it was real and true. On the other hand, they were very alike. They were both very popular. They were both very attractive, and they both knew it, although one was a little more conceited about it than the other. And perhaps most importantly at all, both longed for love, one of them secretly and shamefully, and the other completely accepting of the feeling.

Both made mistakes. Both got themselves caught up in the wrong people and at the wrong time, which in time led to both becoming unhappy and, in one’s case, ready to give up on what he thought he should have known was a sham from the start.

Both became absorbed solely in what they alone thought and felt. They became oblivious to everyone else as well as oblivious to each other, and it was amidst their blind and detached daily living that they managed to collide.

Although both were unsteadied by the collision, neither of them fell as a result of it. They balanced themselves quite quickly and, once they did, neither was at all hesitant. It was as though they had been waiting for this to happen all along but hadn’t been aware of it.

It just seemed so right, the two of them. Like two halves of a whole. Ever since they had collided, they seemed to be holding each other up, as if each of their daily lives without the presence of the other in it would surely cause them to collapse. They pondered in wonder how they had ever managed in the past to live without this sense of trust and comfort and stability.

And so it continued, whatever it was. It couldn’t be called dating, and not because it was too deep for such a vague word (although that was true), but because it was a completely secret, underground relationship. Meeting in the middle of the night, and always whispering, as though afraid someone would hear them even when they were alone.

Eventually realization came; realization that as much as they wanted it to, this couldn’t go on. It couldn’t work. That it was better to end it now, rather than be pulled apart by the spite that their families had for each other. And so they agreed that it was the end, swore never to forget but to move on, and went their seperate ways.

Neither could have foreseen how hard it would be. A chronic hopelessness filled both of them, not unlike what they had felt before, except worse, much worse. Years seemed to pass in the weeks that followed, until at last neither of them could take it anymore.

And so they met up one evening, in a darkened unused corridor. It was silent for a moment, as each had so much to say and no idea how to. They stared straight at each other, thinking, until one of them broke the silence by saying softly but clearly: “I can’t live like this, I can’t live without you.” At that moment, he, by the tone of her voice, and she, by the look in his eyes as he wiped a tear off her check, knew that something had changed; knew that the unspeakable relationship that they had cut off had evolved. And they were afraid, afraid of the future, afraid that what it would bring would try once again to tear them apart.

She rested her head on his chest as the tears continued to come, and he ran his fingers through her hair with one hand, and held her tightly around the waist with the other, afraid to let go ever again for fear that she would be blown away from him.

“I’m scared,” he admitted.

She half laughed. “I’m going to bet you’ve never said that before in your whole life,” she said.

“And you’d be right,” he replied. Silence fell between them, he holding her, both content to sway slowly back and forth in each others arms, both wanting the moment to stretch for a lifetime, and contemplating this change, this new feeling residing in both of them.

Their initial collision had been imminent, they knew that now. They had both stumbled into the person they needed the most, the person that could open their eyes again. Now they could both see the big picture, they could both see that there was nothing that could rip them apart. They fit together, and however crazy or unheard it would seem to everyone else, they knew they were in love. And at this moment in time, as they cried and clung to each other, that was what mattered.