Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hello, 

I used to live in your house. I’m drunk in Staten Island and this is the only address I know. The one I can remember that is not my current one. 

I’m also really sad, person who is reading this. 

I’m sad and alone and I think this will be my state till the day I die. I think I am destined to be this way forever and I cannot do anything about it. Isn’t that      sad? Isn’t it sad that I was brought into this world just to be unlovable? 

I think it is. And thinking about it makes me really sad. It made me so sad that instead of going home after I got my heart crushed, I chose to drink my sorrows away and write this equally sad letter.

Did you know I am writing this while sitting on the curb beside a USPS mailbox? Pathetic isn’t it?

I don’t want to tell my housemates what happened. One of them already warned me this would happen countless times before and yet I still went and did it because I love her. 

Fuck I love her. And I was so stupid to think she loved me too.

Do people who do not love you tell you that your clothes smell nice? Do people who do not love you hold your face with such gentle hands? Do people who do not love you kiss you softly and say “you really know me better than anyone else” after you provide her favorite yogurt? 

Do people who do not love you tell you that, maybe, they would love you in the future but just not now? Then once time passes and the future comes, they actively look for you, have sex with you, kiss you… do all those things people who love you do just to tell you the same thing? 

If that is what people who do not love you do, then she really didn’t love me like I thoght thought she did. 

I proposed to her earlier. I should not have done it. It is the third time I did and I don’t know why I expected anything different. I thought maybe that since she actually looked for me this time, it meant she wanted me. 

But she rejected me. Said that marriage is not for her. Said “maybe next year I’ll want it, who knows?” 

She said that las_____t ime last time.

It made me start thinking that I was (that is a W I swear) the problem. That maybe I am really just unlovable. No one will stay because it is impossible to stay with me. Me who is just too hard to love and stay with. 

What about you? Judging from this letter, do you think you would love me, guy who I do not know and currently lives in the house I used to live in? 

Oh happy holidays by the way. Sorry about this. It just felt better than crying very hard on this shitty curb :(

I still cried

Still am

- Nan

Chapter Text

Hi, Nan!

I honestly didn’t need to write a letter back, but I assumed you wanted me to because you gave me a question to answer as well as your address. (I had such a difficult time figuring out your address because your handwriting got so much worse by then. It also didn’t help that your tears(?) ruined the ink.) 

(Also, your drunk ass is insane for giving away your address to a stranger. You’re really lucky that I wouldn’t doxx you.)

Look, I don’t know you personally enough to say I would love you. I also highly doubt that I can know you enough from a rant you drunkenly wrote. However, I managed to pick out a few things from it that helped me know a bit about you. 

Let us start with the obvious. You live in Staten Island now but used to live here in Queens. Nothing really about your character, I guess, yet still a neat fact to take note of! It makes me come up with reasons why you decided to move. Here is my biggest bet using the hint of you saying you have multiple housemates: one of them is a friend of yours and they needed someone to share rent with. It was just the two of you at first but then they ended up dating someone who now lives there as well. Now you can’t move out because a.) it’s too much of a hassle, and b.) it just makes you feel shitty and unsupportive towards your friend. 

Am I right? I am known for usually being right with these things. Comes with watching too many telenovelas and an obsession for fiction. 

Anyways, the second thing I picked up from your letter is that you fell in love. It takes up like 90% of the letter’s contents so I guess this is another obvious one. 

I do not blame you for falling in love. She obviously likes bringing your hopes up for her own benefit without even caring about what you feel once she’s done with you. The fact she’s done this multiple times already really pisses me off because what the fuck? She clearly knows that you’ll let her do whatever she wants and uses it to her advantage. It irritates me to think there are people like her playing with people’s emotions; GOOD people’s emotions. 

Which brings me to the third fact about you that I found in the letter: you are a good person, Nan, and you are not unlovable.

You are just a bit of a hopeless romantic who wants to love and be loved in return! Nothing wrong with that! Everyone wants the same thing, whether they choose to admit it or not. You just really need to find the right person. 

Cheesy, I know, but it’s true. I mean, this lady is obviously not the right one considering how she’s making you cry during the holidays. 

People who love you do not do that. 

So find someone who will make you smile during the holidays instead, okay? 

Anyways, this has gotten embarrassingly long for a letter that is from and for a stranger. 

I hope when you receive this, you feel much better already. Happy holidays! 

- Memo

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Hello, Memo! 

I am going to be honest with you right now but I actually forgot all about the letter I had sent you that caused you to send this one. How embarrassing for me! You would not believe the shock I had upon reading this! I was literally looking at it with such a confused expression that one of my housemates asked me if I was reading something that was actually meant for him. (For context: his wife left for a business trip to London and has been sending letters instead of texting him like a person of this day and age. They can get quite graphic in those letters, I will tell you that much.)

Speaking of my housemates... you are only semi-correct with your theory as to why I moved! Yes, it was a friend who did ask me to move in with him BUT he was already married when he did so. I had expressed to him how lonely I was back in Queens and I suppose he and his wife pitied me enough to ask if I wanted to just stay with them in Staten Island. They already had a guy, Colin Robinson, who came with the house so they thought: what was one more? You know? 

It is an odd arrangement to most people, but it did make me feel less alone. Having people to eat breakfast with every morning is actually what drives me to get through the day most of the time. 

You almost got it! So close! Though I must say, it is pretty impressive that you can weave a story like that from your head. Are you a writer by any chance? 

As for the rest of your letter… I cannot bring myself to respond to every point you made because if I did, I might explode into itty bitty flustered pieces. I not only wrote about Gail, I also wrote about my crippling self-doubt! About being unlovable! How embarrassing of me again! 

I am really sorry that you had to read all that from someone you do not even know. Must have been quite a surprise to receive in the mail out of nowhere.

Fuck, I feel like such an idiot... I do not even remember everything I had written. I'm just trying to piece everything together from what you have given me. (You even had the audacity to call me a hopeless romantic… What the fuck did I write?!?!)

With that being said, I cannot respond to this properly since I lack the memory, the words, and the fucking balls to fully face the consequences of my own big dumb actions… but thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you had said to me and about me.

And for also not doxxing me. (I googled what this means and I am VERY thankful, please know this.) 

I am not fully healed from what happened since it was quite recent, but I can tell you this: I already have a person who made me smile during the holidays.

And I hope they get to smile a lot too. 

(Please tell me you are smiling as you read this.)

(Or don't.)

(You actually do not need to write to me ever again considering how humiliating this all is.)

(Okay, I will stop now. Bye bye.)

- Nan