NEW WAYS OF LIVING
( We've got the life you want. Or, the predicted futures of the Victorious gang. )
NOTE. Nostalgia scoured my cold, black heart, and I discovered how much I missed writing for this fandom. This is an incredibly loose (and far happier) revamp of a really, really old fanfic called "maybe next time" — title actually written in all lowercase because I was edgy in 2010, or something — but . . . I promise this one is better. Five–years–worth–of–learning–to–write better. In fact, the only reason I'd even suggest checking the other one out would be to laugh at the atrociousness, but maybe you'll be doing that here already. Regardless, I'm happy to have written once again for a show so near and dear to my heart, so here's hoping you'll be happy to read it.
EDIT. Did another read–through and made some minor changes. You probably won't even notice.
Tori Vega's got dreams. That's what everyone says — that she dreams outside her body, unrestrained. That she's got heart.
Oh, Tori Vega's got heart. She's got a volatile heart that resonates like a bass when she's onstage — her stage — a heart that keeps rhythm better than percussion, a heart that she can sing right out her throat when she's really feeling it. If the tabloids ask who owns it — her heart — Tori Vega rips a lyric from a Brazilian rock band called CSS, tells them: music is my boyfriend. She, of course, credits the band for the feelings that she couldn't put into words before.
Tori Vega goes through her early twenty–somethings in a perpetual state of motion, all for her career. Her heart bleeds for it. She claws her way out of the Hollywood Arts graduates, nails puckered with red fruit of her labors, and makes a name for herself. See that billboard? That's her airbrushed face. Three hit records. Commercials for L'oreal. Guest spots on cable shows. Madison Square Garden, baby. She's just that likable.
Tori Vega, from the first time she sings with Trina in their church's choir at three years old, has always been a star. She's got stardust in her blood, in her name. When she's onstage, the lights make her eyes glow like parts of a whole constellation; they make her hair shine like a comet's tale; they make her teeth burn like porcelain suns. She's a star that keeps exploding, and she sparkles and shines, sparkles and shines, sparkles and shines for lightyears. Fucking lightyears.
A boy today kisses a picture of her in a magazine. Jade West crumples the same picture up. Cat Valentine and André Harris both give her a call, separately. Trina Vega leeches and thrives off her publicity. Robbie Shapiro smiles, nostalgically, at his acoustic guitar she autographed, per his request. Beck Oliver snorts a line from the back of her CD case.
A decade from now, a teenage girl will keep her poster of twenty–something Tori Vega on her wall. That's her, she'll say. That's the girl I want to be.
Tori Vega's got the life you want. We all knew she'd make it.
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Jade West lands a lead in a Tim Burton film at nineteen, and it's all about tumbling down the rabbit hole from there. She's weird, but it's a good weird. A pretty weird. There are rumors that she's Johnny Depp's mistress for a time, that their business meetings are less business and more meat. You know, meat. Like — his dick, her pussy, they're screwing? All lies, but Jade knows how to feed the hungry press. She fixes Johnny's tie on the red carpet. Scandalous.
More importantly, Jade West is versatile. Need a girl for your musical–turned–film? She's got the voice Anna Kendrick doesn't, and a prettier face to boot. She's the perfect guest star on Ellen. She has a short–lived stint on Broadway with — who else but? — Cat Valentine. Mid–twenties, she starts directing smalltime films with strange subject matter. Disemboweled woodland creatures surrounding a girl made up like cracked porcelain, animal intestines strung around garden gnomes like christmas lights. The improved Snow White. Jade West is fucked in the head, but it's good. Everything she does is good.
Jade West comes out at twenty–seven; now, everyone knows for sure that she was nice to Tori Vega in high school for a reason. Jade's got string of lovers that could put Tiger Woods to shame. She likes to show them off, whether they're plain or pretty women. She fucks Miley Cyrus once. Okay, twice. Okay. She fucks Miley a lot. Miley's a good fuck and a dirty little secret. It's hotter because the press can't sink their teeth into it.
Everything's good if it belongs to her. Jade West can spin the world on her black fingernail like a basketball.
When Jade West is on Broadway, she learns how to hang and aim a spotlight. Learns that controlling the light and lens is better than being at its mercy.
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André Harris loses his grandmother to cancer, and it's the best and worst thing that ever happens to him. He doesn't let her die in vain; instead, André lets her death send shockwaves of inspiration up and down his veins, lets his grief write his songs for him, lets his fingers play his keyboard until they're as raw as his throat gets from singing with the windows down. If Tori Vega's got heart, then André Harris has got soul. He's got a soul pure as heroin. Beck Oliver tells him that.
Pure as heroin, he insists, clapping André's shoulder. That's about the time André notices the track marks in the crease of Beck's elbow and doesn't do anything about it.
André Harris is tired of taking care of people. He decides it's high time he starts looking out for himself, pun not intended. Too soon, André. Too goddamn soon.
By his late twenties, André Harris is a coveted producer. R&B, hip–hop, rap, pop — those are his genres, the game he plays. He can turn shit to silver, piss to platinum. He's got the Midas Touch. Records turn solid gold beneath his clever fingers. He gets it. He listens to the song Tori Vega quotes in her interview: Music is My Hot Hot Sex. CSS may be onto something, but André still gets around. Thinks of himself as smart because he keeps his professional and personal life mostly separate. Mostly is a key word. He marries his secretary, Irene, when he's thirty–one, and still thinks he's smart because he loves her to fucking Venus and back.
André Harris keeps a picture of his grandmother on the mantle: a framed reminder not to forget his roots, his future.
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Cat Valentine gets her first Broadway lead because she sucks the director's dick better than the other girl does. She doesn't consider herself taken advantage of, but someone capable of taking advantage. She knew — just knew — that he'd like it if she mewled like a kitten, and now she's the one with the leading role tucked in her bra like a dollar bill. Naïve isn't the word for Cat Valentine, no siree bob.
Cat Valentine is multifaceted, hard to pin. A little two–faced, maybe, and successful because of it. She's dim, but shines brighter than any star (cue a passive–aggressive glance at Tori Vega), lights up a stage and doesn't let the stage light her. She's a fire hazard with that mane of red hair. She's Cat Valentine and she's a lioness. Cat Valentine is a machine and a sensitive heart. Cat Valentine takes Symbyax for self–portraits she paints with oxymorons. Oxymorons, she decides, come in the prettiest colors. Cat Valentine wants to be more than Cat Valentine; she wants to be a rainbow.
Cat Valentine is a glittering rainbow.
It takes one role won to snatch the others. By twenty–two, Cat Valentine is the face of Broadway. She performs with Jade West. She sees André Harris and Tori Vega in the front row on one of many opening nights, Robbie Shapiro on closing. Cat Valentine wishes she could do something surprising for them, like pull her heart out of her stomach and bite into it like an apple. She would do that and anything for them, because Cat Valentine is not just the rainbow, but the pot of gold. She's got the plated heart to prove it, the records André produced, the sparkle Tori shares.
Cat Valentine is not naïve; she is victory. The word is victory.
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Beck Oliver flushes his future down a grimy, gas station toilet, an empty heroin baggy with it.
The addiction begins when Beck Oliver lands a minor role in a movie with Russell Brand, who takes a liking to him. You can imagine the downfall begins there. Beck can act it all out in the low–budget film that is his life, one that gets traction from Russell Brand appearing early, then fading into the background. Most things, for Beck, fade nowadays. Faces, friendships, fucks. Heroin is the only thing that makes him feel like somebody. It puts him in the moment.
By twenty–five, Beck Oliver's life has become a blur. Sometimes he sees André Harris and Robbie Shapiro, faces vivid in the whir of the world. André helps by pretending not to notice. Robbie is the one who holds his hair back when he spends three days in front of a toilet, a flimsy promise to quit cold–turkey dangling over their heads like a wattle. Once, Beck Oliver shits himself in front of Robbie, and Robbie, without complaint, strips him, leads his faulty body into the shower, and turns the knob. When the frigid water warms, Beck Oliver half–realizes that Robbie may be the only friend he's ever had.
It's not until he overdoses and dies for three whole minutes that he figures out, hey, maybe this isn't what he wants his legacy to be.
Beck Oliver makes a comeback two years shy of thirty, landing a recurring role on a TNT show, then small parts in movies, then leading roles. He's better sobered up. Things are clearer, sharp in his vision. The Tori–Vega's–cheekbones kind of sharp. He laughs about it, now — the fact he never got over her — but if can one–up his worst habit, he can do anything.
Beck Oliver likes to think of himself as a glass–half–full kind of guy.
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Trina Vega is, is essence, a knock–off Kardashian, with half the booty and twice the attitude. There's also the pesky matter of having about a fourth the publicity, but as long as there are cameras, Trina is satisfied. She likes to pin herself to Tori like a badge on a Girl Scout sash, as if she's the prize Tori won. For Tori, Trina is a patch she'd like to rip off and toss in the trashcan like some used band–aid. Trina is too busy practicing her I–Don't–Give–A–Fuck–Face in the mirror to really notice, though.
According to Trina, she has one flaw: a lack of empathy. She'll tell you as much on her show.
Trina Vega marries young and marries rich, snags the guy with her big tits and flirty smile. He's almost twenty years older than her, with salt and pepper hair, but Trina will tell you that she likes maturity in a man. He plays golf on the weekends with his colleagues, leaves Trina his credit card and a note that says: my treat to my sweet. Trina thanks God every day she inherited the boobs from her dad's side of the family.
If there's anything else Trina Vega is grateful for, it's that she doesn't have to do anything to be in the limelight. There's a reason she wanted a little sister growing up.
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Robbie Shapiro ditches Rex in a dumpster once, then finds him propped up in a chair in his apartment three days later, staring at him with painted, accusing eyes. Robbie, as any sane person would do, screams like a girl, thoroughly convinced that Rex is possessed — and comes to find out that Cat Valentine picked Rex up and brought him back in secret the night before. It's okay to need him, Robbie, Cat promises.
Robbie Shapiro is not independent or ballsy enough to tell Cat Valentine that she is dead wrong. She turns out not to be, anyway, because Robbie resigns himself to sticking his hand up Rex's back and running his motor mouth once again only a week later.
Rex turns out to be Robbie Shapiro's golden ticket. Ventriloquism is out until Robbie starts performing. They sing, they dance, they do that weird trick with the water glass. Robbie learns how to stop being so hard on himself. Rex calls him names and they wash off Robbie in gentle waves; Rex says he's useless and Robbie reminds him: without me, you couldn't even talk. Robbie is the brains. Rex is plastic.
Beck Oliver is plastic, once, and Robbie Shapiro takes care of him. Robbie knows how to take care of things, now. He's never been like his mother, giving love and taking it back just as quickly. Robbie Shapiro loves with everything he is. He can't help it.
Rex calls him a wuss and Robbie Shapiro's talkative hand stops mouthing words. Robbie takes charge, and thrives.