Note for Swedish readers: This is the English translation. You can also find the original Swedish version called Parkbänken on this site.
This piece of fan fiction is based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel Låt den rätte komma in. Features that have been fetched from the novel are his work, however, he is in no way responsible for the work below.
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He was sitting on his balcony, it was a warm May evening, he was looking over the balcony railing towards a park bench some distance away. He had observed them for an hour, all the time they had been there on the bench in the park. He did not know if they talked, the distance was too great so he still wouldn’t hear them if they did speak. But they might not need to speak, their body language spoke. In any case, they spoke to him that way. He saw them, and he felt depressed. It was painful to watch them. They had what he wanted most, and that they were there made the emptiness of his life so obvious. Yet he could not tear himself away, he wanted them to remain there forever, so he could continue to watch them. He saw in them that it was possible that one could find someone, that he needn’t not be so lonely. That gave him hope, but it was still a hopeless hope, his own loneliness was not lessened by watching them.
They were sitting so close, they kissed sometimes, they held hands. Long moments they just sat next to each other, then they touched, let their hands stroke the other's skin. They took the other's hands in their own, they held them to their lips, felt them. Then they stroked each other's heads, they made paths through the other's hair, they followed the lines of the face, round and round. They let their fingers run along the convolutions of the ear, went around the eyes, down the nose, across the lips. Then they switched, the other one laid his head in his friend's lap and closed his eyes, while he got his face outlined by the fingers of his friend. Or perhaps it was her, he could not be sure, they were so young, their gender had yet to form their bodies, and they probably didn’t care. That was what had caught his attention the most, that they were so young. Other couples would appear on the bench, teenagers and older, with a clear sexual identity, and their vows of love were coloured by it. But the couple who were there now had no such appearance, they were plain and simple people, without any preconditions.
He wanted to go out there, to them, and be with them, be them. But no such possibility existed, he could not join them, they had each other, he was excluded.