Three Sentence Ficathon

“I hate you,” she insists, sulking petulant as a child, turning her back on him; he imagines her stomping one delicate foot and nearly smiles.

“Hate me all you like, Alina,” he says, turning her in his arms, gentle but inexorable as the flow of time, “and no matter how you do, one day you will still wake to find I am the only familiar thing in your world.”

“That’s why I hate you,” she says, but she says it muffled, quiet, buried as she presses herself against him; says it to his heart, where he keeps it lodged with all the other blades she’s stuck in him, time after time.