Kindly Calm Me Down
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Author's Note: I am surprised at how quickly Travis and Victoria have just about stolen my heart. Instant sparks flew from the minute Victoria walked into Hank's by pure accident. I quite like Travis all by himself already. This is just from Victoria's POV because I am sure she had to have some thought process before she decided to be "Tori". That angle is so super intriguing and really was the inspiration behind this piece. It helps that Michael and Amelia have all the chemistry in the world.
This is my first Tricky piece and I dedicate it to the ones like me who are enthralled by them, excited for them and ready for whatever journey they will go on.
This is just being done for entertainment purposes, not for profit. I own nothing. Title comes from Meghan Trainor's song, "Kindly Calm Me Down," off her latest album, Thank You.
Feedback would be appreciated. Thank you! Forgive any typos.
-Erika
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Summary: Tori is so ordinary she doesn't even have a last name. / Or, Victoria finding quiet solace above the noise.
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Seven billion live on Earth and Victoria Newman is just one of them.
She's the daughter of a billionaire father placed in jail for unspeakable crimes, a man who, she realizes the longer he is away, loves her for a price no matter how steep and downright impossible. She's the daughter of an alcoholic socialite and if honestly is the goal, Victoria is torn between loving and resenting her.
The name Newman follows her like a black storm cloud. Abby loses her daughter, while she watches Nick slowly enter that long closed dark space in his head – the space that is only opened by pain. She's holding onto him so he can't fall over the ledge into the full abyss of his grief but sometimes, it's tiring and scary.
Victoria Newman is the CEO of a company she determined to lead despite the division heads offended that they have to answer to a woman. It's 2016, not 1956, you idiots in suits, she wants to yell. In between meetings, Victoria discovers she may have semi homicidal tendencies – urges, anyway – with Luca Santori being around because of that saying of how to kill a snake and such.
As for the section of her life labelled Abbott, William Foster, Victoria will leave that alone and for a little bit of time, pretend that it never happens.
Instead, Victoria looks into the blue eyes of a bartender who is perceptive – refreshing or alarming, she can't decipher it quite yet. And frankly, she doesn't want to. She wants to sit here and blend into this quaint little bar on the farthest end of town. No one knows her and the best thing is they are too drunk or into their games of pool to care.
Here, she laughs. Here, she finds herself smiling. Sometimes, she even finds herself mildly stunned with the tiniest of reassurance. Victoria's been trying to define what the word okay means lately. It's still a quest for her – an emotional, downright frustrating one.
The bartender – his name is Travis, he introduces – extends a hand towards her, and Victoria makes a split second decision.
Victoria Newman doesn't exist here.
She's just like everyone else. Not like that semi-drunk businessman, broken and battered as he hunches over his drink until the weight breaks him. Travis says it's the embodiment of emptiness. He does looks dead inside and his suit hangs on his body. That's not her. It will never be.
Victoria can feel the first syllable of her name form and then wither away.
She's a new person. She can be anything. She can be everything and absolutely nothing to anyone. Victoria is a blank white canvas able to add her paint, mix her own colours and use any brushstroke she pleases.
She pauses, mentally paints the name Tori on that blank canvas in her mind and then slips her hand into the one extended to her.
"Tori."
::
Travis says her eyes carry a lot of strength in them.
Strength.
Forza, in Italian, her mind speaks.
Her first instinct is to question that since Victoria seems to question most things these days lately. Then she remembers the mental canvas with Tori painted in dark black paint, stark and loud against the white backdrop.
In this moment, she will erase the main things about herself, only allowing the shades of it to stay around. Victoria nurses her tequila –with no salt, by the way – and truly wonders if this man could be clairvoyant. The question of the crystal ball stays very fresh in her mind and her Type A personality begs to know.
What shade of blue are his eyes, and how does one get eyes that reassuring and kind? It's a question Victoria wants answered to and it's the same answer that has Tori feel as she could stay here and lose track of time. Tori floats, isn't held to any time or space. She sighs, remembering a Thoreau quote. Perhaps, the motive as to why Victoria wants to blend in to this place. "Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify."
Tori the Average Receptionist, however, is content with the atmosphere and the company. It's been a while.
Victoria is too complex to be, too detailed.
Tori is simple, all two syllables of a name that is hers. Sort of.
::
She lets the tequila marinate on her tongue while the jukebox plays some song that isn't familiar to her and for that she is grateful. That song of scandalous love and shiny things is fade to slowly, albeit painfully, erase its musical tattoo from her mind and her heart. It's like the spot on the small of her back that no longer bears his name. Painful to remove at first as the laser is focused on breaking down the black ink etched into her skin. Now, it's barely there. Not even noticeable.
Victoria thinks she might get another tattoo. Something small. Something meaningful. Maybe something that makes her feel content and peaceful like Hank's does for a couple of hours. After all, the difficult world awaits her outside.
Travis cleans a shot glass as Victoria opens her mouth to say something and then closes it. She sighs, and laughs a little to herself.
"It's weird," Victoria admits, softly, for so many reasons she pushes in the back of her mind for now. Tori is just a girl with the struggles of the day to day grind. It's easier than way. "I don't want to leave here. I like it here."
Here is a relative term. Tori is just a girl who is held to the daily grind of life, and work when twenty four hours a day never seems enough. Here, superficially in this fragile Tori Bubble, means the boss is a bitch and the suits makes her feel so small and inconsequential. What does here mean? Here means Tori is just another extension of Victoria and she doesn't want to leave the confines of this bar.
Victoria walks the halls of Newman Enterprises infinite times, knows this company inside and out from the mailroom she starts in to the CEO chair she now occupies. She loves the adrenaline and she'll damn well succeed, no matter who is in her way or kicks down on her way upwards. In the long term, Victoria's determined. Determined to make herself be seen as someone the division heads can respect and never, ever be intimidated by an old boys' club. Determined to fight harder against the grain so Reed and Johnny know their mother never quits so they shouldn't either and Katherine knows that a girl can do anything a boy can.
Ultimately, Victoria is determined to keep her head above water and not drown.
But she looks at Hank's – the calm vibe, the realization that she's laughing more in ten minutes than she smiles in a whole day, the jukebox that fills her with a faraway sense of nostalgia, the pool table that looks fun even though she will be terrible at it and how simple it is to come in and just relax.
Victoria feels the day's weight come loose in her heart, hears the noise that sounds thread unspooling rapidly dull to a near silence and lets herself float.
Where she is allowing the current in this bar taking her, she doesn't mind.
In fact, Victoria Newman lets herself sink, allows herself to be enveloped by the rough waters of her life. When she breaks through the surface and can breathe, there's just Tori. Victoria Newman the CEO Heiress is below the surface of her. She's resting near her sternum and making her brain rattle. It's a reminder. Victoria Newman is me. I am her. But Tori can be apart of me too and I will hold on to her for dear life.
But here, it's Tori. Tori the Working Girl. Tori the Ordinary Secretary.
Tori is so ordinary she doesn't even have a last name.
"Glad to hear it, Tori," he replies, and a little stab of guilt pierces her. Then something like adrenaline rushes through her and it emboldens her. It's not all at once – it's like the slow drip of morphine. It's sane insanity. This is madness that makes all the sense in the world. Travis smiles and Victoria thinks there is something about his smile. He gestures the empty tumbler. "I'll refill this so you have an excuse to stay."
"Maybe I like the company and the drinks are a bonus," Victoria says, playfully, a coy smile on her lips. Travis sets her refilled drink down in front of her. She rests an elbow on the bar, cupping her cheek in a hand. She studies him. "But I do have a question for you."
"Okay. Shoot."
"It's kind of brazen," Victoria warns with mock seriousness, taking a sip of her tequila before letting the palms curve around the glass. The glass feels cool and soothing against Victoria's skin. "I'm warning you beforehand."
"Brazen, huh?" Travis pauses, pondering it and then absentmindedly nods. "I think I've seen and heard my share of brazen things. I'm pretty much prepared. Ask."
"Okay," and then Victoria takes a deep breath, and asks, "Do you really under a crystal ball under the bar somewhere?"
He pretends to be stunned and then admits, "Nobody's asked me that before. Really high up there on the list of brazen questions. Yes, Tori. But I left it at home. So, I'm left to cope with my Bartender's Intuition instead." There's a spark, a twinkle of amusement in Travis' eyes.
Then the humorous banter is broken by laughter.
Hers, and then his.
Travis says her eyes have strength behind them.
Victoria sees just a little bit of intuitiveness in his. She doesn't tell him though.
That's a Victoria Newman thought, however. Tori merely stays silent, but stares into his eyes, taking in their azure colour longer than she should.
She breaks the gaze first, forcing her glance downward.
"This was nice," Victoria admits, because it is – the truth when everything she carries into this bar is a lie, a fairytale, a fabrication of being a free member of the commonfolk when she's a queen locked up in an ivory tower. Victoria smiles, fully, and lets it reach her eyes. "I had a good time. Thank you, Travis," she adds, softly. "Goodnight."
This time it is she who extends her hand, and when Travis takes it, there's the tiniest spark in her fingertips. An unexpected jolt from a pure act of serendipity. For hands that are strong and work hard, they are soft.
Travis let go and answers, politely, "Goodnight, Tori. See you around?"
"Yes. Absolutely."
It's the surest thing Victoria says as herself.
::
Victoria's smile is a hidden one this time but Travis sees it, just like he sees her without really knowing her at all. She turns and walks out of the bar into the cool spring night as Victoria Newman again when she misses Tori already.
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fin.