Any Other Way

[valerie_vause]

After leaving the bathroom to see that Madeleine had already gone Valerie let out a sigh and left too. It wasn’t until she’d walked three blocks that she realised her feet were instinctively taking her to Brian’s place. The conversation should have happened with him first, but the brunette had asked the questions and she hadn’t been prepared to lie. They were choices both of them had made. Though she wasn’t ashamed of how she felt she understood the importance of sharing it. Not doing so would feel like a lie in and of itself. Whatever Brian thought of her, she hoped it would never be as a liar.

It wasn’t until she reached to knock on his door that she realised her hands were shaking. Societies views were as much a cage to her free will as the Council was to her life. The idea would be more than frowned upon despite the radical changes that had occurred over the past decade and truth be told she was afraid. Afraid of the way he’d look at her like she’d turned into some sort of monster. Afraid that being honest would ruin everything. That she’d lose him before actually having him. Properly having him but then, she feared his intensity too. How could she live up to his expectations? She wasn’t perfect, she wished she was, sometimes, for him. Normal just wasn’t a word that would ever be used to describe her, in any sense of her life.

Valerie knocked on the door before the urge to contemplate how much money she had in the bank sent her fleeing to another country to escape the situation. She didn’t want to hurt him. She wanted more than anything to protect him, but she had to be honest. He deserved that.

Comments

[brian_campo]

“Wait a minute, slow down, what are you— what are you talking about?”

Brian wasn’t being deliberately obtuse. He was trying to make sense of what Valerie was saying without having had the courage to say it yet. The gyst of it, though – between the stammered apology and certainty she wasn’t good enough for him (a kind of strange assertion, since she was an actual, real life superhero) – didn’t sound good. Definitely not like the kind of conversation he wanted to have with his door wide open to prying neighbors’ eyes.

“Uhh.” He put up a finger. “Hang on, sit down.”

He gestured vaguely at the couch and closed the door. The telekinetic faced the latches.

He was hesitant to turn around and look at Valerie. Instead he stared at the metal dial and length of chain for a few seconds, contemplating whether to turn them or not in an act of procrastination. His arms hung at his sides. The deadbolt squeaked and rotated the slightest bit as he stared at it. Then it clicked back into the unlocked position.

“Okay.” He took a breath. There was a weird sort of feeling in his body. A buzzing, right at the base of his skull. As he took a seat on the coffee table and faced the couch, he tried not to do what felt natural: worry. “So you haven’t done anything, but you’re attracted to someone?” He pushed his hair back and grabbed onto the denim thighs of his jeans.

‘Easy, buddy. Just hear her out.’

[valerie_vause]

Mutely the blonde obeyed the request and sank onto the edge of the couch like a sack of cement. A dead weight. Blurred vision stung but not as much as her heart ached. It felt right. Punishment. “Maybe I’m just having a moment of madness, a mid life crisis because in chosen years I’m near the end anyway. If I were a horse they’d probably shoot me.” It was mumbled softly as she sniffed, “I was actually going to come to tell you really great news when I bumped into…” She swallowed, the next word was whispered more from fear of his reaction than anything else. “Her.”

Valerie’s hands were at her tie again, in a distraught fit of anger directed at herself she ripped it off her neck without intent then stared at the flimsy remains as they hung limp and useless in her fingers. Why did she always ruin good things? “You know I honestly don’t even know if she’s who I would want really, but feeling it, the attraction, I guess I got caught up in it and in that moment I thought so and that’s… That’s the issue, isn’t it? Because it… It made me realise that I haven’t… I mean I might have touched a few people through the years, more like fumbling, but never… Like what you and me did…”

She slumped forward, held her head in her hands and let a few drips of salt water absorb into her shoes silently. “I’ve spent my whole life being told how to live it, what to do, what to think but what I want doesn’t…” Valerie took a shaky breath, sat up and tried to face him. “Less than an hour ago what I thought I wanted was to try and date you and… And a girl too but, yesterday I hadn’t even considered it, and now…” Her voice hitched, she searched the floor as if it were a map to her feelings and swallowed a strangled sounding sob. “Now I’m thinking I’m a complete idiot for wanting to experience and experiment, but now, seeing you... Maybe I just want to have the experience without the… The dating… Maybe we… I-If you still want to be a we… Could… Could do something together with a... A girl, a stranger, we both like... One night to see if… If it’s… If that’s…”

Emotions were never really her strong point. Clearly, considering how they’d flip-flopped all over the place, but the one constant was him. Her feelings never wavered. Valerie tried to pull herself together. Took a long moment to calm her breathing, gather her thoughts, and then said something she’d never said before to anyone.

“I’m a Slayer and I’m so afraid of dying that I’m trying to cram sixty years worth of experiences into a single one but I don’t want to do that without you. Maybe that makes me a coward, or a bitch, or just selfish but it’s who I am and I can’t be any other way.”

[brian_campo]

Sometime in the duration of Valerie’s speech, he had steepled his hands in front of his face and commenced with staring her over the fingertips, trying so hard, trying so fucking hard, not to emote, not to react, not to do anything that would stop her from saying what was on her mind. More than anything, Brian wanted to hear her out and get a full understanding of what brought her to his apartment in this kind of state.

When she finished, the noise Brian made wasn’t quite human.

“Ehhhummm…”

He stuck his tongue in his cheek and looked away.

“Yeah, I need a minute.” He stood up. “Sorry. Just… wait here. Please.”

On uncertain legs, Brian went to the kitchen, where he stood underneath the faintly buzzing light and looked around. This was surreal. It was the kind of conversation people had in porn, or the kind that dudes daydreamed about. A beautiful girlfriend comes home one day and says she’s feeling experimental, and would you mind very much if the two of you found a pretty girl to touch together?

Only this had people’s feelings attached to it. It wasn’t a joke, it was life, it was Valerie, and she was crying on his couch.

Brian opened the refrigerator on autopilot and stared at its contents. A tub of butter. A jar of mayonnaise. A few vegetables he tossed in the drawer without washing. He opened the freezer instead and reached past the mounds of frozen hamburger for the bottle of vodka he kept in the back. The cap was cold, so he used his shirttail to unscrew it. He took a burning sip out of the neck before going back to the living room, where he held it out in offering to Valerie. “Here.”

He sat down on the table again.

“Before I— ”

He broke off and second-guessed himself. Then tried again.

“Before I get to… that… I want you to know I’m not, I mean I don’t have a problem with… I mean I’m not anti-gay.” Fuck this was not poetic, but it wasn’t a conversation he found himself having often so it was rough around the edges. “I’m not mad that you think about this stuff. About girls. I’m not mad, period. But I don’t know if I could do that.”

Brian’s eyes zoned out on her shirt, not really seeing it. He squeezed them shut.

“If I didn’t know you, maybe. Six months ago, if I was backstage and I was popping pills and two girls came up to me, who knows? I know that makes me sound like an asshole. Like if it was just sex, it’d be okay, but since it’s more than sex, it’s not. I never used to think of myself as a romantic but I don’t know if I could stand to watch you be with someone else. Even if I was there. It might hurt too much. And I don’t think I’d want you to watch me be with someone else.”

He rubbed his forehead and sighed.

“I’m not trying to be a fucking prude, I swear, I’m just… That’s not what I wanted with you. I wanted—” He chewed on his lip and now he was in danger of doing the same thing Valerie was doing: crying into his shoes. “Ugh, fuck.”

[valerie_vause]

In the back of her mind Valerie waited to hear the sounds of something exploding. Emotional things tended to set Brian’s power off, but there was nothing. Which could either be good or very bad, depending on how you looked at it. In the silence of the room her stuttered breath sounded foreign. Were there demons out there that could reverse time? Back to when she first stepped out of the bank. Where she could stop herself from doing what she did by crossing the street. Walk off like a normal person, the opposite way.

The vodka was barely noticed when he walked back in because like a child that had done wrong she lowered her head and pressed her lips together to stop the sniffling. Then it was there, being offered, and she felt compelled to take it because he cared enough to want to hand it to her. Alcohol perhaps wasn’t the best solution but she gulped at it a few times before handing it back. Oh it scorched going down but she’d needed it.

Valerie listened even though her gaze was firmly on the edge of the table. Not mad was… Was a good thing, right? Better than an argument, because at least they were trying to communicate and that had to count for something, didn’t it? She wasn’t heartless, she just struggled with restraints, be they physical, mental, or socially constructed. Invisible cages. The blonde was so sick of being stuck in them. She didn’t think it made her a freak or anything nasty. If you couldn’t be true to yourself what was the point?

“I don’t.” Valerie blurted, then cringed. “Not really.” She sighed, frowned and amended, “Not consciously.” The words were hushed, a ghost of a whisper as she admitted, “There are occasional dreams but I can’t control them.” Instantly she thought of Elfleda or rather, her Beth persona, and cringed again. No, she couldn’t explain them even to herself. Would quite like them to stop, actually, because they just left her restless and unsettled in her own skin. Sort of how she felt right now. Actually now that she thought about it, the restless feeling had only started after that encounter with her. Perplexing.

Sex.

It was such a confusing topic.

Two people today had shared the view that casual sex, the kind that somehow meant nothing, was alright. Valerie couldn’t wrap her mind around that. Literally couldn’t understand how you could be so utterly physically intimate with someone and feel nothing for them. Which actually poked a hole in her own compromised suggestion but still. How did two, or more, people get naked, get inside one another and not have an emotional connection? It seemed so… Devoid. Soulless. Valerie didn’t judge those who could, she just couldn’t comprehend how they did it. For her, she needed the emotions, the connection, the build up to the act so that when it happened it would be incredibly personal, which, she considered all sex was. Incredibly personal. How could it not be? How could you detach your feelings from such a vulnerable, personal, thing? You couldn’t get more intimate than that.

“You’re right, I don’t think…” Valerie wasn’t a naturally jealous person but now that Brian had said it she had to agree. Imagining seeing him enjoy himself with someone other than her would be like ripping her own heart out just to see if it would still beat. Silent tears leaked down her cheeks and she ignored them. “I couldn’t watch you with… I… That’s not… Something I think I’d handle very well.”

It was also why she never dwelled long on his past encounters. In part, they may have been a reason as to why they hadn’t slept together yet. What if she wasn’t as good as all those other girls? What if they did things she didn’t even know how to spell? Insecurities joined the mix of emotions and she let out a choked sob before she realised it. Her inexperience felt like it was drowning her while mocking her in the process.

Which meant, any kind of compromise would have to be from her. Brian couldn’t meet her halfway, and after the picture he’d painted she clearly couldn’t expect him too without being a hypocrite. There was no halfway. It hurt too much to consider it now that it was all out in the open like she’d flayed herself and him in the process. While she didn’t feel ashamed, she did feel so very foolish. So that left them both with one option each. He could break things off, or…

“I choose you.”

The words were soft, the tremble in her voice was matched by her hands as she sank to her knees in front of him to cup his face. Thumbs brushed the side of his cheeks, coaxed him to look at her as she pleaded with her gaze. “I want you.” She whispered fiercely, the tone vindicated. “More than I ever want to experience anything else. I know that now. I feel it. Or this wouldn’t hurt so much. I’m yours. If you…” She blinked back tears, fought the lump in her throat, “If you still want me.”

[brian_campo]

“Valerie, I will probably want you when I’m eighty.” He laughed, but he wasn’t smiling. “If I get to be eighty.”

He let out a strained breath. She was close to him. Touching him. He wanted to pull her onto his lap and hold her and breathe in the scent of her hair, but he restrained himself to just touching a lock of it, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.

“But I don’t know if it’s that simple. I mean… trust me, I know that it’s a big deal to choose somebody and to sacrifice other things you want in order to be with that person. It’s like what I said before, about falling for you? That was huge to me because I haven’t felt like that before, like ever. And this,” he gestured between them, “You putting aside what you’re curious about, what you want to explore, that’s a huge deal to you. But I’m not sure it’s fair.”

He ran his fingers through her hair again. It was easier to look at that than those big, green eyes. He swallowed. The vodka was hot in his stomach. “I don’t want you to say that right now because you’re afraid of losing me. It’s like when the floor drops out, and you just grab on tight because you’re afraid of the landing, but… Just… just think about it. Take time and think about it.”

It was a conscious choice to put the emphasis on Valerie. To talk about how she felt. The truth was, Brian was hurting, down deep in a place he didn’t want to examine yet. He felt like a kid who had fallen off a bike just after the training wheels were taken off, and he was too scared too look at the wound. No, the house wasn’t exploding because he was stifling anything past a surface response. But there was a faint taste of tears at the back of his throat. His eyes burned. He knew hurt was coming.

Hurt that he had loved her so fast, maybe since he laid eyes on her. Hurt that she had actively wanted someone in addition to him, when Brian hadn’t even gotten to properly be with her yet.

He sniffed and looked at the room over the top of her head, where he pressed a kiss. “You and me, we’re meant to be in each others’ lives, Valerie. I just want us to figure out how. It’s better if we slow down and get it right before I, heh, before I,” he rubbed the inner corners of his eyes, “Before I get my heart broken.”

[valerie_vause]

Sacrifice. Valerie actually choked back a burst of laughter that sounded hollow, devoid of feeling. All she did was sacrifice for the sake of others. He had no idea how much. In the moment she thought it counted most to be honest, it still wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough. If she wanted more it wasn’t fair, and if she only wanted him, it wasn’t fair. The blonde couldn’t win. Either way she lost him. Hope was a curious thing. Even in her darkest days she’d clung to it. Nestled it within herself like it was a dying ember that needed to be sheltered. Not once had she lost it.

Tears stopped. Some switch inside clicked to numb her emotions. No, not numb them, override them.

“Look on the bright side Brian, you’ll live a lot longer than me.”

Eighty. She’d be lucky if she made it to twenty three. She’d be delusional to think she’d reach thirty.

“You say that like I’ve felt like this way before but I haven’t. You were the first person I’ve ever opened up too, about everything, I even told a Watcher just so that I could protect you better. You were the first person I ever… I ever…” She shook her head. “That night on the roof, what we did, what I let you do, that was special. That was a huge deal to me. You’re the only person who has been… a part of me, like that. Do you understand? It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t feel the way I do about you. Which I haven’t felt for anyone else, either.”

The urge to think it over from him was what did it. Extinguished the hope that she’d always carried. Whether he wanted to put it on her shoulders or not she’d told him the truth. It wasn’t a reflex. The fact that she ached so much validated that her feelings were true for him. Misguided desires aside, she had no intention of pursuing anyone. Desires be damned. Evidently they were hell in disguise.

“If we slow down any further... we’d go backwards.” Valerie’s words felt thick as she stood up. Put distance between them because she couldn’t bear him touching her when he didn’t even think she wanted to be with him. Like she’d just clung to him as a safety net. Valerie would rather plummet to the ground. She had exposed herself. Opened up about things that had clearly confused her. Desires were apparently alright for people who slept around and felt nothing for the other person. “I get it, it’s the gentle way to break up with me. I accept that. It’s only fair.” She wasn’t being sarcastic, she was being utterly serious.

Fingers twitched, her chest burned and she had to see the irony that while he was protecting his heart, she’d just handed hers to him and watched it break in half. She felt detached from herself. An outer body experience as it hit her. All this time she’d spent trying to convince herself that she was only in the process of falling for him when clearly she already had. She just hadn’t realised it until now. And she couldn’t say it because it would sound exactly as how he imagined her choosing him had. Some sort of verbal safety net. Well, she’d rather bite off her own tongue than have him think that.

“I can’t…” Valerie took a slow, regretfully stuttered, breath in and held it for a moment. “Do that.” The blonde couldn’t look at him, her head was spinning. “Be around you without being with you. I’ve shared too much of myself… I’d be vulnerable because of that, a constant reminder that you know me like nobody else does. Intimate details of my life…”

Valerie used her shirt to wipe her face. It didn’t matter how it looked. Nothing really mattered. “I’m not saying that to hurt you... or to force you into anything.” She blinked a few times, until her vision was clear, though her cheeks burned and her eyes still stung from earlier. When she spoke again her voice cracked and she hated herself for it. “I’ll always try and protect you but that… Would kill me inside, to act like friends, to pretend I’ve forgotten how I feel, what we’ve done. I couldn’t…”

[brian_campo]

“So… let me make sure I understand,” Brian hedged. He frowned his confusion. “You come here to admit that you wanted someone else, and then you ask me if I’m interested in a threesome. I’m… I try to be decent about it. To get what you’re going through because it can’t be easy on you. I actually suggest you take time out to make sure you really want to be in a monogamous relationship with me… but that’s not good enough. Instead I have to decide right now if we’re still in a relationship or not because otherwise, it’d be too hard. For you. And if I can’t, then you’re not willing to be my friend.”

Brian stood up. He picked up the vodka by the neck of the bottle and let it dangle between his fingers.

“Okay.” He smiled a little brokenly and wiped a hand over his face. “I guess it didn’t occur to you that I might need more than ten minutes to process this. Or maybe it doesn’t matter what I need because what you feel right now is so urgent that you can’t stand to live with it for another minute, well…” He shook his head.

There was nothing left to say. If Valerie wasn’t willing to let these admittedly fluid thoughts she’d had today settle down, there was nothing he could do to change her mind.

He wiped his eye against his shoulder and laughed, a hoarse and humorless sound. “Ah, god, Valerie.” He set the bottle on the floor and walked away from it, in the direction of his bedroom.

The bottle vibrated, cracked, and began to leak its contents on the rug.