o-blessed-king-of-longing:

anghraine:

one of my absolute favourite, id-candy tropes is quasi-narcissistic love

you’ve got these people, not identical but there are a lot of similarities, there’s this bedrock of commonality that their relationship is built on. affinity is the lifeblood of the relationship, feeds it and powers it and pulls them together. 

they look at each other and see shifting reflections of themselves, perhaps warped, perhaps brightened up, perhaps just tilted a bit. they naturally fall together, understand each other through that sameness, there may or may not be sparks but there’s this easy quick understanding. there are pieces of myself in you, like an enemy saying not so different are you, you’re just like me here but for the grace of god go you–but without enmity wedged between them. they love their reflections in each other, that sense they have, we’re the same, you and I, underneath. 

there’s a strange fascination to it. they love themselves by loving one another. or they can’t love themselves at all, but all the things they condemn in themselves are elevated, transformed, transcended in the other person, their opposite-same counterpart. I am sanctified in you. 

or perhaps it’s the other way around. they look at the other and see darkness, a long hard fall, corruption, monstrosity of some kind. they look and see and understand. if we are the same, and you are a monster, then I…

or they can go one further. they know their imperfections, fault lines running through them like flaws in a sapphire. but they know too that they cannot be reduced down to those, they feel an essential goodness beating away inside, a light that fills them. if we are the same, my light is also in you. 

there are differences, of course. but those only throw the fundamental affinity into sharper relief, love that is love for the self and another rolled up together, caught in mirrors.