Tripping Over Themselves

[brian_campo]

The moment the final note of music faded from the sound system, Brian tugged his earphones off his head and dropped them carelessly on the synthesizer. For once, he was grateful that his band wasn’t popular enough for an encore. On many nights, he had gotten the short end of the stick when one of his band mates ditched after the show and left Brian to pack up their gear. Time to turn the tables. In fact, it was long overdue. “Mads...” He pulled a mic off its stand, swung it by the cord, and sent it sailing in an arc toward the brunette’s personal space.

She caught it. “Watch it!”

“Later, I’m out.”

‘Wait, what--?’

Too late, Brian thought. He shouldered past Seth like a shoplifter making a break for it and hit the ramp at a jog. Thump, thump, thump. He nudged through a throng of other musicians and regulars to creep up behind the petite blonde with the incredible body. He snaked his arms around her waist and raised her off the ground. “Hey, beautiful,” was muffled against her neck, and they were turning, turning, the room going ‘round and ‘round, the lights streaking purple and blue and neon orange. Brian’s shirt was drenched in sweat. He felt as rubbery and loose as a piece of stretched taffy.

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[brian_campo]

Brian folded her up in his arms. “It’s okay,” he said. He kissed her hair and found himself rocking foot to foot as he hugged her back. “I’m scared, too.” A second kiss. The things he feared differed sharply from Valerie’s; yeah, there was fear of loss, but also fear of letting her see the depth of what he felt on a daily basis and thinking he was some kind of freak, and fear of being depended on and letting her down, and fear of being measured and found wanting. But it was something he’d do because he liked the punch to his gut whenever he saw her smile, the lurching of his heart when she said the word ‘Brian’, all of it. He was all in, or not it all, and the latter wasn’t an option.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said. “Is that what you think?”

Now that they were standing up, he felt the mild damage Valerie had done to his back as the wind touched it. Ouch. That was definitely going to leave a mark. He reminded himself not to take off his shirt at practice.

[valerie_vause]

The embrace lasted for a long moment before he asked a question that made Valerie laugh. Arms were taken back so that the blonde could put a small amount of distance between them. Enough to grab two beers, one she handed to him, the other she opened for herself. Rather than answer straight away the petite girl tipped the bottle up to her mouth and in five or so swallows, emptied it entirely. “No that’s not what I think.” Even if Brian did hurt her, it wouldn’t be physically, she’d heal just the same. Nothing lasted forever, not the stars that sparkled above, not the building they stood on, if they parted they parted. Such was the way of life.

Valerie tilted her head, really looked at Brian then nodded as if deciding something internally.

“If we’re jumping down this rabbit hole together then you need to know everything. You might not like it, you might not understand, but if you’re choosing to be with me you need to know exactly who I am.”

The blonde waved the hand with the empty bottle in front of herself then set it aside to pick up another. Right then she wished she’d brought more than just a few beers, preferably something stronger, but it would do for the time being. She flicked the cap off with her thumb and took a sip.

“There’s a name for what I am, a name I’ve never said out loud, and I’ll get to that later. The point is I have a literal duty to battle the darkness that plagues the earth to maintain the balance. Before I turned fifteen I was called, not by a phone, into action. Taken to England actually. During those years with The Watchers Council I was trained in various martial arts, fighting techniques, strategies unbelievable amounts of knowledge of demons, Hellmouths, supernatural entities…”

She trailed off with a shake of her head and took a gulp of beer. “Anyway, at any given time there are only nine of us in the world at the same time. Nine girls, all separate, with no knowledge of the ones who were before us. No Watchers with us, either, expect there is a yearly check up and I just had mine about a month ago by a woman named Julianna who naturally happens to have recently started work at UNLV, because coincidences in my life never really are. You see in order for another chosen one to be called into duty, one of the existing nine must die. I’ve never heard of anyone who managed to make it to thirty. Most don’t make it to mid twenties.”

She paused again, gazed up at the stars then back to Brian, voice calm and clear as she continued.

“There are girls who have gone rogue, and who could blame them, really? The Council, the Watchers, they get paid to do their job. To train us and set us loose on the world, to sit comfortably behind desks and never get their hands dirty with the mess of death, and we the lucky few get nothing in return because it’s our destiny to fund ourselves and die for the cause. If you go rouge, which doesn’t mean off the scales crazy, just that if you stop patrolling at night, go off somewhere for a month and try to live like a normal person, let yourself slip mentally or physically, then they treat you like a horse that needs to be shot. Except The Council doesn’t kill you. They strip the very essence of your power from you by magic then lock you up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of your natural life because they can’t have you running around knowing what you know. Personally I’d rather die than that ever happen, and I do believe in saving people, but I don’t exactly trust The Council either.”

Valerie finished off her beer with a heavy sigh and shrugged.

“The bottom line is, either way, my life isn’t completely my own. I’m not the girl you can have a future with, I don’t have a future. You need to understand that. There are things out there that look at hunting the chosen nine as sport. They might go through you to get to me, which… Remember you found me in the Skylark elevator? There were four of us. The one that pointed you out to me was Rhiannon, she’s… Like me, first time I ever met another chosen one. The other two were vampires. The red head though, she saw you, she knows your face. You need to be careful, Brian. You can’t tell anyone any of this either, it could get me or you killed. Information is vital to my survival, and if you feel like you can’t keep any of this secret you need to tell me.”

Yes it was a lot of information. Crucial information. If Brian was going to love her then she wanted to make sure he wasn’t blind to the truth of the situation.

[brian_campo]

It wasn’t a lot of information. It was too much information, thrown down at his feet like a verbal gauntlet. What was he supposed to respond to first? The idea that his girlfriend was likely to be killed in the next couple of years? The fact that she’d rather die than give up her calling a few years down the line and build a normal life, if not with him, then with someone like him? Or the realization that a redheaded vampire might be on the lookout for him, even as they spoke, just because he waved at Valerie in public?

He sat down on a low wall, his back to the city. The beer, he placed between his feet.

Brian rubbed his face. He snorted. “Trust me. The last thing you need to worry about is whether I can keep a secret. Withholding information is kind of a specialty.” He dropped his hands between his knees. His shoulders seemed to weigh a ton.

So what was he supposed to do? Leave because they probably wouldn’t last? That was every relationship he knew of. Give up because Valerie was destined to die? Nobody got out of things alive, anyway. The bad part, the thing Valerie was really getting at, was dread. A knot in his guts every night.

“Who needs convincing here, me or you?” he finally asked. The music downstairs had stopped, he didn’t know when, but it changed the atmosphere on the roof. Brian picked up the beer. He twisted the cap and took a sip.

[valerie_vause]

Trust him. Didn’t he realise she already did? That had been the entire point of telling him everything. Valerie took a moment, finished the beer, and set the bottle down as she looked over the City behind him. When his question hit the blonde looked directly at him, suppressed the frown, and lifted her chin slightly. If he didn’t get it then he didn’t get it, there was nothing she could do about that.

“That’s what you took from that. That I might need convincing.”

One hand lifted to rub her thumb against the corner of her mouth then she shook her head. Honesty felt entirely over-rated in that moment, and with nothing else to add she shrugged and cast her gaze towards the ruined door. “I’m hungry, so I’m going to find somewhere to eat.”

[brian_campo]

So she wanted to leave the roof.

Okay, he couldn't blame her for wanting to get out of an uncomfortable moment. It was a lot to take in, from his declaration of love to all the new information Valerie had put the table. He couldn't pretend to understand where the slayer was coming from, hers being an insanely unique situation, but she also needed time to understand where he was coming from in wanting to be with her anyway, no matter the odds.

Brian knew it was an atypical response. Most guys Brian's age didn't want the responsibility of a girl with a stomach flu, forget about an early expiration date. But he had been through that kind of grief already, and he had never regretted spending that time with his dad before he died. Grief didn't work like that. He just wished he could go back and spend more.

"There's this thing my dad used to say," he offered, still sitting in his spot on the roof. "It was relationship advice, so it didn't make sense to me before, but it's starting to now. He said one day I would find myself in a tough conversation or an argument, but no matter what, I should never, ever offer my girlfriend an easy way out unless I meant it. Never point at the door. Because once I put that in the air, it started to be an option, and sooner or later, somebody would to get mad enough to walk through it."

Brian scratched the back of his head and stood up.

"So you don't have to tell me where the door is, or say how hard things might get for me if I stay here with you, even if you think it's for my own good. As far as I'm concerned, there is no door, not unless you put it there. And you're probably thinking, what the hell is this guy talking about? That's not what I meant." Brian laughed dryly, although it wasn't all that funny. "But that's what it sounded like... Like you were giving me a list of reasons why you're not the right girl. But you are."

[valerie_vause]

Valerie held more secrets inside than she did memories of a normal life. It didn’t bother her, it was simply a fact. She could count on one hand the people she loved. The people that touched her life and remained a part of her. The intent hadn’t been to push Brian away. It was the blonde’s way of trying to let him into her life fully. That could never happen if he didn’t know everything about what she was. Any kind of love they could have would crumble if the relationship had been formed from deceit, no matter how innocent, or how much she wanted to protect him from the dark side of her life. Shield him so he wouldn’t become tainted by it the way she was. Numb perhaps to the horror that she’d felt all those years ago. Valerie was just wired that way.

So she stood, and she listened, albeit mildly confused at first but by the end she’d got the gist of it. The blonde took in a deep slow breath through her nose and threw her head back to exhale up at the stars. They twinkled back, bright ever changing colours thanks to the chemicals that flowed through her system. Why did it have to fall on her, down the line, about pointing at the door? No pressure. She thought, somewhat sarcastically, but not in a mean way. Obviously it was meant to come across as something sweet, because there was stating she was the right girl for him.

“I wasn’t listing reasons to make you leave.” Valerie said softly, directing her gaze back to him. “If we’re really going to give our relationship a shot you needed to know who you were getting involved with. Truly know, because anything less would be like a lie, and I don’t want that. I want to be able to tell you my day without cutting chunks out, or show up tussled and know you’re not worrying that I’ve been off with someone else when really I’ve just been patrolling. I don’t want to have to hide parts of me from you. It wouldn’t feel right.”

Valerie tilted her head, looked off to the side then shrugged haphazardly. “While I’m being honest I want to teach you proper self defense and knowledge of what’s out there because… It’s important.”

[brian_campo]

“Okay.”

So maybe this was going to be the real challenge for the two of them: Valerie looking vulnerable, and Brian actually being it. How had he gone from avoiding commitment like the plague to being the guy who said things like ‘there is no door’? He sounded like he was about to get on his knee and present her with a ring, which wasn’t what he meant. He just meant he didn’t usually cop out of things once he signed on.

Maybe he ought to apologize and blame being high. Or being a Pisces. Or a dude who played the piano. Whatever worked.

At any rate, he was glad she told him, even if there were parts of it he didn’t understand, and things about her psyche that he couldn’t figure out.

He swallowed. Don’t backtrack. Just keep going. “We can do that. The self-defense. I don’t want to be a liability, and if you’re right about that vampire, I need to know anyway.” He nudged the base of his beer bottle with his shoe. “C’mon, let’s get some food. If you want, you can start filling me in. Or we can just talk about whatever.”