Verity Burns & br0-Harry: A Love Story
In Autumn 2010, I was writing my first Sherlock story, The Road Less Traveled when I received a message from the artist br0-Harry sending me an illustration. I think I would have been blown away however experienced a writer I was, but with ‘Road’ being my first story I was utterly overwhelmed. To see my words brought to life, and in such a brilliant way… it was an incredible feeling.
Over the next couple of years I was blessed with more art from several wonderful artists, but Harry was always special. He did some further illustrations for my stories, and I wrote poems / ficlets to go with some of his artworks.
Eventually, we exchanged real names and addresses; I sent him some locally famous sweets, and he completely outclassed me by sending an incredible water-colour of Cabin Pressure’s Martin Crieff.
In 2013 he announced that he was coming to the UK with some friends, and would I like to meet up? He told me his dates, and I found that I would miss him in London by a few days… I offered my apologies. But his group decided to tour the country during their visit, spending a couple of days in my area, and a rendezvous was arranged.
We sat opposite each other over a meal in a local pub… and the table was too wide.
That was it. Nothing happened. We spent the entire evening each feeling that the table between us was stupidly wide, and then we parted. He flew home a few days later and we didn’t see each other again until the following year. But we talked every day.
Officially, we were still ‘just friends’. But as time went by the elephant in the chat room became too big to ignore, and after a couple of months there was an inevitable spilling of heartfelt beans.
Harry admitted that he had been half in love with me for years. ‘Love at first chapter’ was how he later described it. His feelings for me were what had given him the final impetus he needed to transition, against tremendous social and family resistance, after a lifetime of gender dysphoria. But he knew I was married, he assumed happily, so just to meet me was enough – when I couldn’t manage London, it was he who had persuaded his friends to travel further.
For myself, I had been deeply unhappy in my marriage for over a decade. But I was raised that divorce is not an option when there are children involved, and I had two boys. I’d long planned to leave once my youngest reached 18, but that was still seven years away… Harry said he would wait.
As it happened, things didn’t work out that way. Once feelings had been acknowledged, what had been a dreaded obligation for the last ten years became completely intolerable. I could no longer sleep with my husband.
Subsequent months were difficult, and messy. But at the end of them, I was free. Free to follow my heart, which had no doubt of its home.
Our first year as a proper ‘couple’, Harry and I were seldom physically together, living many hundreds of miles apart. But Skype was our friend and we were in each other’s company virtually all of the time. We woke, showered, cooked and ate together; we brushed our teeth at the same time and more often than not fell asleep with the Skype call still going.
Then, a little over a year ago, his ongoing health issues were diagnosed as cancer, and we cut through remaining obstacles with a determination based on the need to squeeze the maximum amount of ‘right’ into a lifetime of ‘wrong’.
Since early last December, we were rarely apart for more than an occasional hour or two. We got married, we had adventures, we made the most of every moment of ‘perfect’ that we had found with each other.
Two weeks ago, I buried him in his favourite fandom tee, under the shirt he’d been wearing the night we met.
My heart is breaking as I write this. He loved me so completely, I breathed it in every time he exhaled. The air seems too thin now, as if it can barely sustain me.
But I cannot feel sorry for myself. Or regret a single one of the choices he led me to make. He often said that I was his angel; especially as I took over more and more of his personal care. But he saved me.
I had given up on love. I wrote about it, but it was a fictional thing to me.
