"Where have you been?" Dominik's gruff voice asks the minute she walks through the door of the run-down, Brooklyn apartment they both share.
One look at him alone tells Victoria he's been drinking. He tries his best to hide it, leaning up against the kitchen counter so as to steady himself, but his slurred words and bloodshot eyes give him away. Victoria sighs. They've been through this scene a dozen times.
"I was with a friend," she replies, ignoring his current state in the hopes of avoiding another argument. This is the third time this week she's come home to find him hopelessly inebriated and out of sorts.
"What friend?" he inquires curiously.
"Just someone I used to go to school with," she answers, refusing to offer up any more details.
Dominik cocks an eyebrow at her in mild amusement, "Care to elaborate on that?" He follows the question with a carelessly vulgar swig of liquor- straight from the bottle, as usual.
Victoria represses the urge to scrunch up her nose in disgust, "As a matter of fact, I don't."
Her voice is calm… too calm. It's the same distant, soft-spoken tone she always uses whenever she's irritated, and Dominik, despite his intoxication, recognizes it immediately.
"And why is that?"
"Because," Victoria begins to explain as she crosses over to the kitchen to fetch herself an aspirin, "I'm exhausted and you're drunk."
"So that's how it's gonna be, huh? We're just gonna go to bed like strangers?"
Victoria washes down the pills with some water and disdainfully meets Dominik's eyes over the glass pressed against her lips.
"I'm in no mood," she warns.
Dominik scoffs, reaching for another drink from his bottle and spilling half of its remaining contents all over his shirt. "You're never in the mood lately," he derides, "for anything."
"That's not fair and you know it."
"We haven't touched each other in three days," Dominik says, raising his voice, "You can't even stand to look at me."
"Do you honestly think I want to be around you, much less have you on top of me, when your breath stinks of whiskey and you can barely manage to form a coherent sentence?"
The venom in her voice takes Dominik by surprise. In the three months they've been together, he has never seen her lose her temper or narrow her eyes at him the way she is now.
"That's just low, Vic," he says, unbuttoning his soiled shirt and casting it aside angrily, "Not everyone can go through life completely unaffected the way you do; some of us actually feel things."
"How dare you," Victoria hisses through gritted teeth. Tears begin to form in her eyes, but her voice fails to betray her, "You don't know the first thing about me."
Dominik laughs bitterly, "You're right, Vic, I don't. I don't know the first thing about you. Hell, I don't know anything about you. Not where you come from, why you stopped painting, what your family's like… you haven't told me a goddam thing since I met you. I don't even know what your favorite color is."
"What does it matter to you anyway?" she snaps back at him angrily, "The only reason we live together is because neither one of us can afford to pay rent on a decent apartment. I'm your roommate, not your girlfriend. The fact that you find me desirable enough to fuck every now and then doesn't change that."
"Now you're just being spiteful."
Victoria shrugs her shoulders in feigned indifference, "Must be a byproduct of my inability to feel things." Her voice remains steady, but her words are laced with hurt and Dominik can tell she's fighting hard not to let her emotions get the best of her.
"I didn't mean that."
Victoria scoffs, "You could have fooled me."
"We both said things we shouldn't have," Dominik admits as he rounds the corner of the kitchen countertop in order to face her, "I'm sorry if I hurt you."
He knows Victoria is just as guilty as he is for their argument, but he also knows she will never be the first one to apologize. With her, it isn't a matter of pride so much as it is one of deep insecurity. Her fear of rejection simply won't allow her to take that step.
"I'm sorry too," she returns after a while. "I never should have made light of your drinking problem, that was callous me, I just… I just wish I knew how to help you," a sad smile forms on Victoria's lips as a tear makes it's way down her cheek. "Sometimes I think being with me has only made things more difficult for you."
"Why is that?" Dominik asks, furrowing his brow in confusion.
"Because," Victoria falters, "I can't give myself to you the way you've given yourself to me. You're so honest and open, and you wear your heart on your sleeve and I…"
Dominik lifts up a hand and gently wipes away what's left of her tear with the pad of his thumb, "We both have our demons, Vic," he says before pausing to meet her eyes, "we just have different ways of living with them."
With nothing left to say, Victoria wearily wraps her arms around Dominik's neck and closes the space between them. It isn't until her head is resting comfortably on his shoulder and he pulls her closer by her waist that she realizes how warm his skin feels under hers.
A few minutes pass and neither one of them makes an effort to pull away. Then, suddenly, Victoria breaks their silence-
"White," she says.
Her voice is faint, barely above a whisper, but Dominik is able to make out the word nevertheless.
"White?" he repeats.
"Mhm," she nods, "It's my favorite color."
And at that, he smiles.