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La Douleur Exquise — The state of heart wrenching pain of wanting someone or something you cannot have.
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I. fell in love with a lightning storm
When Nico di Angelo is six, he experiences his first true lightning storm. One with howling winds and rain that batters and tears at windows; one with storm clouds darker than shadows that hid them; one with cracks of thunder in shattering applause, and of course, one with streaking lightning, flashing and powerful, sharper than knives, deadlier than poison.
When Nico di Angelo is six, he experiences his first true lightning storm, and Nico di Angelo falls in love. He remembers standing in his room, with his windows flung open, body leaning past battered wooden frames, and laughing along with thunder as the wind wailed melodies in his ears. His heart is racing and dancing in his chest, with the strong pitter-patter of rain as its rhythm, and he is happy and exhilarated and full of love. (He catches a cold that lasts a week, but he knows it’s worth it and he never forgets how he felt).
When Nico di Angelo is seven, he understands lightning storms aren’t lightning bugs, and can’t be caught and kept in jars to be held when he’s scared at night. He understands that lightning storms cannot feel hurt or pain or happiness or love. It seems obvious that lightning and rain, made up of dust and tricks of light and water, could never love him back. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel hurt.
II. I fell in love with raging oceans blue
Nico is rescued by an ocean. Maybe he is not rescued by an ocean, but they re put beside one, him and Bianca that is. On a tall, towering cliff, with the ocean below them, hacking and spitting and eating at rock. It would frighten him, Nico thinks, if his saviour wasn’t full of the ocean himself.
His saviour is full of the ocean, from his salt-dried hair to his sea-green eyes, to the laugh that tumbles out of his mouth and into the air, like sea foam lapping at sand. Nico di Angelo is young, and he wonders briefly if his saviour is an angel, sent from the heavens, but he decides against it, for angels are from the sky, and he is certainly of the sea.
Nico di Angelo falls in love with the ocean, and he should have known, really, how that would turn out. Oceans were ruthless, pretty as they looked, blue and blue and blue until waves dragged you under and suddenly it’s black and you can’t breathe. He should have known, from the very first day, he was rescued by an ocean that could drown him at any moment.
But even when he realises, it hurts. And perhaps oceans hurt even more than lightning storms, because this time, the ocean was really a person, and this person could have loved him, maybe, in some other world where everything was normal and everyone was happy. But maybe it hurts more because he knows he could never have the ocean anyways.
III. I fell in love with golden skies (and you)
Nico decides in his fifteenth year (give or take seventy years) that he has a bad habit of falling in love with people and things that will never, ever love him back. But as bad as it is, habits are habits, and he can’t get rid of them, as hard as he tries.
When Nico di Angelo is fifteen, he falls in love with the sky. It’s different this time (he swears it is), he’s not as young anymore, and his heart has grown tattered and wary, but it’s love all the same (no matter how much he’ll deny it).
He swears the sky has never been so beautiful, or maybe he’s just been blind, all of these years. The way golden streaks of sunlight dance and bend and shimmer at dusk and dawn mesmerise him (his hair is golden, too). Nico likes it all: the sky when it’s dark and gloomy, the sky when it’s clouded, the sky when it’s purple and pink, but he likes it most of all when the sky is bright, clear blue (because his eyes are the same colour).
Maybe, Nico thinks, he’s not really in love with the sky — it’s just that he’s been underground for so long, he’s forgotten what it looks like. Sooner or later, he’ll forget about it. Maybe, Nico thinks, he’s not really in love with the sky, but the sky reminds him of the one he loves. (He tends to ignore this thought the most).
Nico di Angelo’s afraid of love, probably. He’s wary of lightning storms, and he’s wary of oceans, and if he predicts correctly, soon, he’ll be wary of the sky, and that means he’ll have nowhere to run but underground again, and he’s really tired of the musky smell of death.
It takes Nico di Angelo the better part of the year to realise and come to terms with the fact that he’s not falling out of love with the sky anytime soon. He likes it all, still. He likes the way his hair is golden, bathed in sunlight at dawn and dusk. He likes the way storm clouds crowd in his eyes when he’s troubled and thinking. And most of all, he likes it when he smiles, cloud-white teeth and shimmering blue eyes just the colour of the sky. Nico di Angelo likes it all — every single little thing about Jason Grace. (And he hates how much he loves him).
He hasn’t much to give anymore, what with giving away his heart so many times and receiving nothing in return, but he decides that if he has nothing to lose (and everything to lose) he might as well take his turn at love once more. After all, he’s tried his hardest not to love for five years.
Nico di Angelo throws what’s little left of his heart at Jason Grace in a pathetic attempt to convey his feelings, and Jason Grace still manages to catch it, and hold it, safe and warm. Nico’s almost surprised by the lack of disgust in the sky. Nico’s almost surprised by the warm delight that fills the sky, golden and blue and beautiful. Nico’s surprised, to say the least, that his heart isn’t thrown back at his feet, torn apart and hurting more than ever.
When Nico di Angelo is fifteen, he falls in love with the sky — and the thing is, the sky falls in love with him, too.