This is the rest of the eighth story. It contains the first kiss scene ever in this story--be warned that it's a kiss between two guys, so if you're offended by that kind of thing, don't read further.
This story is dearly wanting some reviews, so I'd love forever anyone who takes the time to review any of the Vicissitudes stories.
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“Please,” I said, sighing softly. “Please move.”
“I won’t.” He drew his lips tightly together, in a thin line of disapproval. “I won’t move until we talk.”
“About what?” I hung my head, pretending disinterest, scuffing the ground with my shoe.
“About you.” Vance’s voice was sharp, acrid. “Or rather, your extremely foolhardy actions earlier. What the hell was that about?”
“My sister,” I said. I didn’t need to say anything else, because this was the truth. I had been ready to kill Laurence Flannery. I really, truly, would have done it. He’d crossed the line so many times before but this was the final straw, and heaven be damned if I let him—
“That’s no reason to risk your life!” cried Vance, his voice rising and then cracking on the final syllable. He coughed to clear his throat—I was a bit concerned by how wet his cough sounded—and shook his head before continuing. “Damn it you. He could have killed you, did you think about that? He would have! I know Laurence. I know—I know how hard he hits.” His voice trembled, but he plowed on. “I know—he wouldn’t hesitate to kill you!”
“Oh, but this is rich.” I couldn’t help the sarcastic tone that entered my voice. “You’re finally showing some concern for me. That’s touching, Vance, it really is.”
Vance took a step back, looking like he’d just been slapped. “That’s not—that isn’t—” For a moment he struggled valiantly to speak. “It’s not—”
I waited patiently for Vance to get over his sputtered bursts and regain his usual gift with words. It took him some time. He swallowed more than once and cleared his throat before speaking again, his words so soft I had to strain to hear them.
“It’s not…listen. I just don’t—if you died, I would feel responsible. And I do not particularly like feeling guilty for things.”
With that, he looked away from me, casting his eyes on a crack in the ground. He seemed embarrassed, like he’d spilled too many of his feelings for his liking. I watched him, for the longest time, watching the way his white-blonde hair swung when he moved his head ever-so-slightly, watching the delicate curve of his pale neck.
“I see,” I said long after he’d finished talking. “I see. I really do.”
“As if,” he mumbled, again so softly I almost didn’t hear. I took a step forward, then two, until I was only inches away from him. He looked up at me, real surprise shining in his dark eyes. I smiled at him, and then, not knowing what I was doing yet feeling like I knew exactly what I was going to do, I reached out and touched the side of his face, with a cautious gentleness.
Confusion, now, joined the surprise on his face. My smile widened, and I said, “Look, Vance. You don’t have to worry about me.”
His response was acid. “If you weren’t so high-maintenance, I wouldn’t have to.”
“Don’t be like that,” I said, pressing harder on his cheek. He hissed, but didn’t pull away from me. “Don’t be so stubborn, Vance. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Despite what you might think.”
“Perhaps…but I just wish I—I wish…” He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, real pain on his face. “I wish I didn’t have to…it was easier, before, when you were—”
I didn’t give him the chance to finish. I gently slipped my hand from his face, removing every finger until only my index finger was pressed lightly over his lips, and said, “Shh. Don’t say anything else.”
He opened one eye, looking reproachful. I sensed he wanted to speak, but I didn’t give him a chance to.
“I love you,” I said, and with that I removed my finger from his lips, bent down, and kissed him.
It was a gentle kiss, a delicate one, meant to reassure more than excite. I pressed against his mouth, taking in the softness of his lips, the cool metallic taste of his lip ring. When he parted his lips, ever-so-slightly, I dove in, letting my tongue into the warmth of his mouth. He tasted nice—kind of like vanilla, but a little more bitter. I was conscious of him wrapping his hands around mine, and I drew him closer, pulling him deeper into the kiss, savoring his sweet warmth until I finally pulled away, more because I needed oxygen than because I really wanted to.
“Is this what you call ‘reassurance’?” he said, cracking open his eyes and giving me his familiar sardonic smile. “Fine way to deflect from the subject, I must say.”
“Aww, shut up. And I meant what I said back there, you know,” I said, flicking him on the nose. He took a step back, letting out an annoyed hiss.
“What—about killing Laurence?”
“No. About loving you.”
His only response was a bitter smile. “Pretty lies are pretty, but they are also lies.”
“What’s that? Shakespeare?” I said.
“No. That would be my father.”
“I see.” I unwound one of my hands from his, only to wrap it around his waist. He jerked a little bit but didn’t try to pull away. “Don’t worry about me, Vance. I mean it.”
“A kiss is not going to convince me to not worry about you,” he said, his tone reproachful.
“What, you want more?” I said, a teasing smile on my face. His only response was to glare at me.
“No! You know what I mean,” he snapped. “And you…you should really get your injuries tended to.” He reached up, and pressed on the side of my face—where Laurence had slugged me. I took a step back, hissing as pain flared from the blossoming bruise there.
“Ouch! Watch it,” I said, trying to pull away, but he still refused to extract his hand from mine.
“Come inside, you moron,” said Vance, shaking his head as he stuck the key in the door and turned. “A little tea might benefit you too. Honestly. I don’t know why you’re so damn suicidal, Tyler.”
“I’m not suicidal,” I protested.
“Yes, you are.” Vance shot me his oh-so-familiar “what a fucking idiot you are Tyler Daniels” look. “You picked a fight with Laurence Flannery. I call that suicidal if nothing.”
“I was defending my sister’s honor,” I said.
“You should be the last person in the world to care about ‘honor’,” said Vance brusquely. He opened the door, and led me in after him.
“I do, though. I mean—don’t you think there’s something wrong about the situation?” I said, following him inside, taking care to sidestep a bundle of clothes right at the door. Whoops. I couldn’t remember when I’d last cleaned out our dorm.
“What? That you tried to pick a fight with Laurence—”
“No! I mean about Pearl. She’s sixteen; he’s twenty! And he’s Laurence,” I said. Again, that old rage flickered within me—but it was more manageable than before. It wasn’t the mindless monster it had been earlier. I could contain it easier. “I mean, I know you don’t have siblings, but if you did, you wouldn’t let your little sister date Laurence, would you?”
“I wouldn’t let anyone I knew within ten feet of him, unless I hated them enough,” was Vance’s cold answer. He’d taken to the kitchen and was brewing a pot of Ludwig’s chamomile tea—I recognized its scent immediately, and it made our dorm smell a lot like Ludwig’s store.
“Yeah! That’s just what I mean!” I shouted, flopping on the bed with a loud whump. “It pissed me off so much…I talked to Pearl yesterday and the worst thing was she couldn’t even see how awful he was!”
“I couldn’t see at first, either,” said Vance, entering the bedroom. He held a bottle of antiseptic in one hand and a roll of bandages in the other. “I’m sure he’s being a perfect and charming prince to your sister. What do you know, she probably even thinks his being forward is romantic. Plenty of young girls have odd ideas like that.”
“No!” I cried, leaping to Pearl’s defense. “Pearl’s not like that. She’s a reasonable girl. She should see Laurence for what he is.”
“You never know,” said Vance lightly, settling down on the bed beside me. “Infatuation makes fools of us all. Now, turn around—face me.”
“I can take care of myself, you know,” I said, but didn’t feel any of the annoyance I pretended. I was actually touched that Vance was concerned enough to fix me up.
“I can do it better than you,” he snapped back, taking me by the shoulder and turning me so I was meeting his eyes. “I have plenty of experience, you know. Admittedly not on anyone besides myself, but…I figure that’s a small detail.”
I sighed, remembering all too well those nightmarish days in high school, when I confronted—and then comforted—Vance about his multiple injuries. I remembered seeing Laurence slamming Vance into the wall once, tightening his hands around Vance’s throat…of course. Laurence wouldn’t have patched up Vance’s injuries. Vance had to do it himself.
I sat in silence while he bandaged my bruises. His thin fingers positioned the bandages on my face with an expert precision—but why shouldn’t he be an expert at this? He’d probably done it far too many times to count. After Vance finished fixing me up, the teapot whistle-shrieked just on time, and he went and poured us two mugs of steaming chamomile tea. We sat together, perched on the edge of the bed, sipping tea, silent.
Finally, I broke the silence, saying, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Hmm?” He turned to cast me a sidelong, disinterested glance. The steam from the tea obscured his face, but I could see enough of him. “That’s no surprise.”
I ignored his barb, and went on. “I mean it, Vance. I don’t know…what should I do about Pearl? I want to tell her to leave Laurence, but I don’t…oh, God, I don’t know. She won’t listen to me. What should I do?”
I stared down at my lap, my words trailing off. Figured. Once again, I’d lost the words to really say what I meant. Vance, though, didn’t get mad at me or make fun of me. Instead, he slowly lifted one arm, and draped it over my shoulders. I turned to meet his eyes, surprised. He stared back, expressionless, giving only a vague jerk of his head to acknowledge me.
“You can’t do anything, Tyler.”
“No!” The instant the words left him, I jerked away from him, throwing his arm off my shoulder and leaping off the bed. Half the tea sloshed out of my mug onto my shirt, but I didn’t care. I just stood where I was, shivering, hating Vance but hating myself more, because I knew what he said was true—
“I won’t accept that!” I yelled at him, shaking my head. More tea sloshed out of my mug. “I have to—I have to protect Pearl from Laurence—”
“Listen! Listen, you fucking moron!” Vance’s sharp words cut through the cloud of anger in my mind—whenever he dropped the f-bomb, he was serious. I fixed him with a long, piercing look, which he returned, anger smoldering in his dark eyes.
“You can’t change anything, Tyler. The sooner you accept that, the happier I suspect you will be,” he said, his voice like ice. I didn’t want to listen, but I stood where I was anyway, letting his words capture me, enslave me. They were true.
“I don’t want to believe that,” I half-whimpered, half-groaned.
“What you want or don’t want is irrelevant,” said Vance, pressing cruelly on. “You think you can convince Laurence to abandon your sister just like that? When he wants something, he gets it. You know that as well as I do.”
“That’s not always true,” I said, my voice weak and tiny. “I mean—look at you. If Laurence had his way you’d still be his…”
“You could have never done it on your own,” he said, a quiet judgment in his voice. “Only when I started realizing what he was doing was wrong, and I didn’t have to follow him anymore—only then did I start wanting to leave him. You couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t started wanting to defy him.”
“But…” I whispered, feeling sick with dread. “But it took you two and a half years! Vance, I’m not willing to let Pearl go through that much torture!”
“Good luck convincing her or killing Laurence,” said Vance coldly. “Right now you haven’t got much of a choice.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?” I cried, my voice rising with frustration. I started pacing back and forth, back and forth. “I can’t just sit there and go with the flow, not when my sister—”
“Bring it up to your parents. They can stop your sister from seeing Laurence, if that’s what you want,” he said.
“No,” I said instantly.
“Why not?” he pressed. He seemed really into this idea, which surprised me. As far as I knew, Vance didn’t think much of parents (not surprising, given what his own parents were like), and certainly didn’t think they held any power. And even when they did, he didn’t like it when they used that power.
“She’d hate me forever,” I said. “It would be the last straw if I got Mom and Dad to stop her from seeing Laurence. She’d never talk to me again in twenty years—hell, maybe more.”
“So?” Vance arched a dark eyebrow, looking genuinely surprised. “I can’t see how that’s such a bad thing, if it gets her away from him.”
I resisted the urge to grab Vance by the neck and—no, I didn’t want to think about it. I wasn’t Laurence. I had to understand Vance, even if I didn’t like his viewpoint. To Vance, family wasn’t important. It was something that could be broken into itty bitty pieces just like one two three. He’d witnessed his mother walking away, had been disowned by his father. He probably didn’t think it was a big deal to be cut off from his family forever. Hell, as far as I knew he liked it!
But me…I couldn’t think like that. I wasn’t willing to put a chasm between me and Pearl just because I wanted to protect her from Laurence. No, I had to make her see…
But Vance was right. There was no fucking way.
“Please, help me, Vance. I don’t know…” I trailed off, my voice low and miserable, and lowered my head. I stared at the floor so hard I almost thought I would set it on fire from the force of my glower. I just wanted it to swallow me up, carry me somewhere safe where I didn’t have to worry about Laurence and Pearl and my family. “Please…”
“Tyler.” Then, to my surprise, Vance strode right up to me and took my hands in his. I stared into his eyes, my heart beating violently, wondering what he was going to do: he rarely ever took the initiative in our relationship. His eyes were dark, and serious, glittering with a cold resolve.
“Don’t worry, Tyler,” he said, and he even smiled—his usual sardonic half-smile, half-smirk. Left unsaid was what he really meant: Trust me, Tyler. “I—I will deal with Laurence. Believe me. I will.”
“No—wait—” I began, cold dread flooding through me when I realized what he meant by deal with Laurence. “Wait a sec! You can’t!”
“Tyler, you are not the best negotiator in the world, as that—incident—very clearly shows,” said Vance. He was still meeting my eyes, that quiet seriousness still burning in them. “I can negotiate for you.”
Of course, he knew exactly what he meant by negotiate, and I knew it too. And it burned. It twisted me inside, made me want to cry out, rebel—forbid him. I could. I knew I could. I had the power to. But I saw the resolve on his face, and I knew he would not let me.
“Do you love your sister, Tyler?” he said, his voice soft.
“Of course I do!” I shouted before I could stop myself. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Then you won’t mind if I do this,” he said, and gave me a thin smile. Before I knew it, Vance had released my hands, and turned and began to walk towards the door, not even sparing me a backwards glance. I had half a mind to leap in front of the door and shout No, I forbid you! but I didn’t move. I just remained frozen to the spot, watching him twist open the knob, push the creaking door open.
“Please—don’t. You don’t have to. I mean—for me?” Much to my shame, my voice rose to a squeak at the end.
Vance didn’t seem to be listening. He was halfway out the door, in fact, all ready to go his own way, before he suddenly turned around and faced me again. He wasn’t smiling anymore, just gazing at me with no emotion on his face.
“You said you loved me, Tyler,” he said.
“I do,” I said, my throat dry, my words coming out cracked. “I love you.”
“I don’t love you,” he said, his words cold, slashing through my heart. I took a step back, feeling like I’d been—oh, hell, I don’t know, simultaneously punched in the stomach and dunked into a pool of freezing water.
“Vance—” I groaned, stretching my hand out to him, but he was too far away, and I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot, still reeling from his harsh words.
“But that’s not to say that I don’t feel anything about you,” he said, turning away from me. “I care enough to—to worry about you when you fought with Laurence. And I’m worried that if this continues…you will fight with him more. And I do not want that. Like I said, I’m not good at feeling guilty.”
With that note, he slipped out of the door, not even sparing me a backwards glance. For the longest time, I watched the door flap on its hinges, emitting little forlorn creaks as it swung back and forth. I didn’t know why I stared so long at the door—after all, Vance was long gone, off to “persuade” Laurence to do something that he by all means shouldn’t even give a damn about. Pearl wasn’t his sister.
But he was still doing this for me. For me. And because of that, I knew I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself when—no, if!—something happened to him.
I didn’t want to face it. So instead I stood, rooted to the floor like a tree to the earth, my arms dangling limp by my sides, watching the door squeak open and shut, open and shut. I think I convinced myself that if I didn’t move, that if I just kept watching the door, I could make him come back. I could make him return through that door, and I could pretend this all hadn’t happened.
I like regretting things just about as much as Vance does. That’s why I told myself that if I didn’t move, the world outside wouldn’t move either. I wasn’t yet ready to face my mistake.
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So...yeah. I really don't have much to say on this story except that it ended up being exceedingly long. Tyler and Vance's relationship is really a headache to write; I hope their interactions here aren't too weird or whatnot. That kiss scene is also giving me tons of spasms. On a positive note, I do quite like some of Vance's lines, I feel they're very emblematic of his character as a whole.
I like the next story better (the Vance and Laurence confrontation) especially since I think I've found my stride with Vance's voice in that one. Still, I'd love reviews for this story. And the entire collection of stories, really.
I'm putting a lot of effort into this project, so I'd really appreciate seeing what other people think on it.
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