the words

SAMUEL i am the ocean, crawling madly at your moon. and with one wanton whoop — The question Remi posed was one that Sam found he could not quickly answer. He could agree with the first thing his friend said, but none of it helped him to work out the correct response to the question. Did he need it to be love? In many ways, yes. He had grown up escaping into books when his life was descending into hellish torment and in those tales love had always been the be all and end all, the thing to save the day, the thing the heroes fought for. He'd spent years dreaming that he might get to experience the magical thing he'd read about for so long. It felt like what he needed to transform himself, to make his past not matter, to end his story. But...on the other hand...he had learnt in the last year he was more than capable of improving himself. The work was slow and had setbacks, but it was happening. Without romantic love he had gained confidence, reconsidered his assumptions of himself, built friendships. He no longer needed love quite as intensely as he once had - not as much as he had when he had tried to force it with Remi. He realised he had not answered and had just been quietly considering. "I...Don't think I need it to be, no. But I would quite like it to be." Admitting this with a shy smile, he looked up at Remi. "Everybody wants to be loved, don't they?" — i melt into a sycophantic soup, & all that's left to do, is giggle, fawn, and swoon.