I'm super sorry this took so long to come out, guys. My laptop had a meltdown, so I lost three completed chapters of this fic. On the plus side, I've written this new one, and honestly it's not as fluffy as what I had, but it does move the story along a lot faster. Anyway, without further ado…
"Really, sunglasses at night?"
Robbie's kidding, expecting a laugh or maybe a smile from Tori. Her gentle disposition and easy sense of humour have historically made wrestling a laugh from her a relatively easy task. This time though, she just looks grim, eyes wandering down the street. Robbie follows her line of sight, it's frozen on the neon sign at the front of the line that they're sort of in. Tori sighs, deep and heavy with dread. Robbie doesn't feel any more at ease.
"I'm just – if you have a thing with your eyes where you need the glasses, I'm just kidding." Robbie stutters, feeling the awkward moment between them beginning to congeal.
Blinking, Tori takes a deep breath. "Sorry, Rob." She says, smile tight. Her eyes don't quite remain on him, flitting restlessly along the street again. Tori's apology isn't insincere, maybe just a little stilted by the circumstances.
"So uh, where are we going?" Robbie tries again. The dull buzz of the loosely defined line in front of them barely drowns out the silence between Tori and himself. Tori lifts one side of her mouth, a badly constructed attempt at a confident smirk. Robbie's not sure if it's the bass in the distance, or his heart, but there's a pounding rhythm in his ears. The weak smile on Tori's face, the tension in the air and the oppressive neon above them, none of it gives him a good feeling.
"Was it just me or did uh, did it sound like I wanted tonight be a date?" The question comes out of the blue, just as the line takes its three mechanical steps forward. The tone in Tori's voice isn't spiteful, nor is it scathing. It's just genuine curiosity, which might be just as disastrous.
"Y-yeah, a little bit." The reply eeks through Robbie's mouth. His jaw snaps shut immediately after, too late to stifle it. Gritting his teeth, Robbie screws his eyes shut, attempting to disassociate himself from the catastrophe coming to life beside him. He's certain that his reply will mean nothing but bad things. Tori doesn't speak straight away and Robbie's dread is palpable. Like a fool though, he opens his eyes eventually, twisting his head in her direction.
"Good. Robbie Shapiro, I do want to date you." She says, lips flinching in a sad way that makes Robbie think things aren't all that simple.
"W-what?" Is Robbie's response, charm bleeding all over the sidewalk as he stupidly gives Tori a reason to doubt her previous statement.
"You're special." Tori says, a little bit sadly as she pushes her glasses high onto the bridge of her nose. Armour, Robbie guesses. "I'm just – You need to know a couple of things about me. Maybe we can, if you still want to that is, go and do something later."
"Tori –"
"Robbie." As she cuts through Robbie's protests, there's a warning tone in Tori's voice. "Please…just let me do this, okay?"
In spite of her request, or maybe because of it, Tori doesn't say anything for a long while after that. Once in a while she glances sidelong at Robbie, though. He trembles, feeling uncomfortably out in the open as Tori hides behind her glasses. Each step they take forward is terrifying in it's own right as well. Robbie feels no more at ease when the name above the door they're edging towards is vague and unassuming. 'TigerBox' it says in flashy neon script. Robbie's not really sure what it could be, a night club maybe. Turning his eyes to the patrons around Tori and himself, Robbie has no doubt that whatever lies inside, TigerBox will be an establishment where he'll feel wildly out of place.
When they're three people from the bouncer and the music is almost deafening, Tori reaches out, presses her palm to Robbie's, and pulls herself closer to him. If Robbie strains, he thinks he can hear her heartbeat over the music when they're at the front of the line. Perverse as it is, that's what finally gives Robbie solace, the knowledge that he's not the only one freaking out slightly.
When they're at the head of the line, the bouncer eyes Robbie critically, his expression verging on incredulity that such an uncool boy would dare attempt to pass him.
"No way." The bouncer, a wall of a man says, casting a discerning look over Robbie. Tori and himself haven't even stepped up to the red velvet rope and already they're being denied. Robbie's shoulders drop in defeat, but Tori's demeanour swings in a wildly different direction. The nervous anxiety she'd been sharing with Robbie mutates into wild determination. Releasing her grip on Robbie, she walks right up to the behemoth blocking their path. Glaring – well maybe glaring, Robbie can't quite see – she pulls her glasses low. The bouncer's attitude jolts too. At the sight of Tori's eyes, he's mumbling a hurried apology and ushering her through.
"Tori, how did you – you're a bad ass!" Robbie exclaims, being led inside by the hand. As they careen past the bouncer, who may or may not be pouting, Tori allows herself a miniscule smile. Careful not to stay still for too long, she drags Robbie through a barrage of blinding lights. Writhing female forms surround them, but Robbie can't make out the details. It's all a blur as Tori yanks him into a room marked VIP only.
Presumably little more gruffly then she'd intended, Tori shoves Robbie through the doorway. Once he's inside, she swings the door shut behind them and slumps against it. Taking a deep, jittery breath, Tori shuts her eyes. Robbie can't quite manage that though, spinning around, he takes in his surroundings. The wallpaper is animal print. Predictably enough it's tiger stripes, a subtle white and silver shade. The furnishings are all golden and Robbie's overcome with the uncomfortable feeling that he's wandered into the home of a Columbian drug lord, mountains of cocaine hidden under the floorboards.
"Tori, Tori I'm not sure we should be here. I know you said I'm special, but I don't think I'm a very important person. I think that -"
"Robbie," Tori hisses sharply. "You're important to me and that's why we're here."
"Okay." Robbie says diplomatically, realising that disagreeing with Tori while her heckles are up like this wouldn't be wise. Tori steps past him, dropping into a couch sitting beneath an oil painting of a fairly voluptuous woman. Tentatively, Robbie eases himself into the space beside her. Not for the first time, they sit in silence after that. Tori organising her thoughts, Robbie waiting anxiously.
"Rob, I'm sorry. This is – it's hard." Tori says after a while, voice softer this time. "You probably remember how I – how at Hollywood Arts everything used to work out okay if I sung a song and shook my hips a little so -" She's barely begun the story, and already Tori's voice is failing her. Robbie can tell this isn't going to be an easy conversation. "I guess that's what Mason liked about me anyway. Even after he signed me, he always said it was my best talent." It has all of the characteristics of a laugh, but the sound that leaves Tori lips after that comment is anything but joyful. She drags the glasses from her face and the eyes behind them nothing if not rueful.
"But then, I guess I was never really bad enough for him either." Tori sighs, simmering anger cooled by regret. Robbie swallows the lump in his throat as Tori's lips begin to part. What she's about to say – this slither of information she's about to deliver, he already knows what she's about to tell him. He'd read about it on the internet at the time and sadly texted her last known phone number. "In the end he dropped me from the label. Just after I saw the artwork for my first single actually. It was going to me called Forever." Tori laughs again, because man, there isn't anything funnier then your own tragedy. Robbie winces at the coarse sound.
"Are you – Tori, you don't have to tell me this." Robbie tells her, a frown hanging from the corners of his mouth as he attempts to defuse the turmoil in Tori's face. She shakes her head, he'd sort of been expecting that.
"I have to. I -" Tori says solemnly, pausing, exhaling violently. "When I got dropped, Mason was - that douche - he was kind enough to leave me with a massive loan. Photoshoots and apartments aren't cheap, Miss Vega." The last part leaves Tori's mouth with a British accent, a direct quote, Robbie guesses. In the wake of it, Robbie sits silently, processing the information.
"Okay." Tori says, impatient or maybe just anxious to begin again. Vague as it is, Robbie guesses the word is meant more for herself than him, reassurance that this is the right thing to be doing. "So I don't know what I expected next, if I thought Mason was just going to keep footing the bill for my tuition or my apartment or whatever…" Tori trails off, scowling at nothing in particular, maybe the memory of her naivety. "I ended up bartending at this place, a hole in the wall about three blocks from my apartment. That's where I met Laurie."
"She was your?" Robbie's not really sure how to finish the sentence. A myriad of adjectives flocking to his tongue, buy none of them seem quite right. Peering first at his spasming mouth, and then to the hand that's gesticulating between them, Tori's expression briefly shifts from grim to vaguely amused.
"We weren't that close." She says, shoulders rising and falling with a gentle shrug. "Laurie was, she was a dancer." Tori hooks air quotes into the air alongside this word. "We used to work Thursday nights together. She was nice you know, the first friendly face I'd seen in a long time. When I couldn't keep up the rent at the apartment Mason put in me, she let me crash on her couch. A few days later, she had this huge fight with her boyfriend and he moved out. I sort of upgraded myself up to full roommate status, just because – she had bills, I had nowhere to go." Again, Tori yanks her shoulders up and down. The movement is jerky this time, less refined.
"Nowhere to go but up?" Robbie asks, trying to sound hopeful. He just sounds apprehensive, no less tentative than a storm chaser walking headlong into their first hurricane. He's seen the wreckage from a mile away, anxious to examine it. Now that the details are coming into focus though, he's starting to wonder if it was such a good idea.
"Not so much." Tori's words are soft, flung from her lips as if she'd rather say anything else. She doesn't speak for a while, but when she does, her voice is stronger. "Things were like – when my Platinum Artist Education Grant got pulled, that was the worst. It happened, I think two weeks before the start of the semester. I don't qualify financial aid, so I thought I'd have to drop out." With that statement out in the open, Tori takes a slow, jittery inhale. "That's when Laurie – I don't know if she saved me, exactly – but that's when she managed to keep me in school." From the way Tori sighs, and the way she drops her head into her lap, Robbie is beginning to get an idea of how Tori had cobbled together an entire semester's tuition money in two weeks. He swallows; it feels like shards of glass in his throat.
"Laurie got me a job dancing – fucking stripping like a sad cliché - to pay for the next semester."
Tori's eyes flick back to him, glassed over and anguished. Her lips are pressed tightly together, trembling slightly. He knows how hard it was to say that. Robbie's also aware that he'll never see the Tori that he should have graduated high school with again; the past few years have taken too much from her. Hunching forward, he tentatively wraps an arm around Tori, searching, searching for a way to hold what's left together.
"Yeah, but you're studying back in California now, right? You're here with me and things are going to be better." Again, Robbie aims for hopeful, determination edging into his voice as well. Maybe he's a little more successful this time, Tori straightens, eyes clearing.
"Why do you believe in me so much?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Robbie counters, half of his mouth edging toward a bedraggled smile. Something crosses Tori's lips in response. It's curved like a smile, but so hollow that Robbie couldn't name it as such.
"The whispers around campus aren't exactly subtle." Her hands bunch up in her lap and her eyebrows screw together. Where sadness had been, bitterness flares into anger. Tori's eyes, often mistrustful, sometimes bottomless, have sharpened. They're dangerous, wild like a cornered lioness or something equally as capable of ripping a man limb from limb. Robbie thinks the look had been honed in New York.
"Tori, wh -"
"Which ones are true?" She hisses, eyes narrowing, limbs tensing. It's well hidden, but Robbie can tell she's apprehensive. The agitated question rests on shaky foundations. "They aren't all true, but –"
This time it's Robbie's voice cutting through hers. "Tori, I don't care what the Greeks say, I don't care what bar flies in New York might tell me." He says, fingers straying to Tori's hands, gently encircling her wrists like they might shatter. "I used to get so wrapped up in what the rest of the world was saying. Believe me, I know – I know how it feels to hear people say you're nothing and you're no good. I just – the past will always find you, it's forever. Just don't let it destroy the present." Jade would say that he sounds like a fucking after school special or a Disney movie. Robbie tells himself he doesn't care. Didn't those movies and show all have happy endings, anyway? That wouldn't be so bad.
"And if that past is written down?" Tori asks, quietly this time, voice just barely rising above the music seeping underneath the door. Robbie sucks in a breath, aware now that of all the wounds crossing Tori's heart, the ones about her and the notes apparently spilled across every dorm on the campus are the freshest. Remaining silent for a moment, Robbie slips his hands from Tori's wrists and laces his fingers through hers.
"Then it's no more or no less true than if it wasn't. Tori, everything is documented in some for of another if it's happened. I still – that note you gave me is still in my drawers. I'm not," Robbie pauses, takes a deep breath. If he's going to spell out the truth, it may as well be cracked and bleeding. Raw, just as Tori's presented it to him. "Tori, that note is what made me realize I couldn't give up on you. Not every word that you leave behind is an anchor."
Robbie wants to say more, he wants to articulate his point better, but Tori takes a shaky breath, derailing his thoughts. From the way it rattles around in her chest, she may be beginning to cry. His arm twitches, eager to wind around Tori and hold her together. Tori's clutching to his hands though, locking them in place. She's holding on so hard that her nails are cutting into his palms. Maybe she's aware of him tensing with the pain, maybe it's something else. Tori looks down at their joined hands, swallowing sadly, glassy eyes apologetic as she loosens her grip.
"Robbie," She says, throat clogged with emotion. "You're so cheesy."
It's a little bit like a let off, the pressure valve being released. Robbie's sure he should be disappointed that Tori is apparently finished with discussing her past and his intentions. There are still so many blind spots and missing facts, he should be intent on exploring them. He can't quite manage the willpower though, not when Tori's gently extricating her hands from his, cupping his cheeks in them. She lurches forward and the resulting kiss is wet and salty. When Tori kisses him again and again, viciously affectionate, Robbie feels like his heart is going to explode. Eventually, Tori relents and pulls away. Predictably enough, the makeup is smeared, running down her perfect cheekbones.
Robbie's heart takes up residence in his throat as he regards Tori. She's delicately wiping the stains from her face, lips curled upwards. There's an element of tiredness to her posture and her eyes are slightly weary. With her lips creased that way, she doesn't look as downtrodden as she did when they sat down though. Gently, for he is a nerd, Robbie tucks a wisp of hair behind Tori's ear as she daps at her face with a napkin. She twitches a slight more certain smile at the contact. Eyes wandering to the napkin Tori's produced from her bag, Robbie wonders if she's been expecting to cry. He asks her this, chewing nervously at the inside of his lip.
"I was expecting to go home alone. Though all of this might be too much." Tori replies, eyes closing, arms gesturing vaguely. When they open again, she's struggling desperately to look impassive. It just come across as heartbreaking.
"Want to – we could hang out in my dorm? Like – not like because I want that or anything, I just – there's popcorn and Aiden took Jade to a party?" Robbie fumbles his words, not quite used to inviting girls to do things with him, let along asking girls with tragic pasts and pretty faces to come back to his room. Tori's expression smooths out at his jumbled offer though, a smile seemingly fitting more naturally onto her lips this time.
"Yeah, yeah we could do that." Is all that she says, looking happy.
"So we can – we can leave here?" Robbie asks hopefully. Tori's shoulders shake with a laugh. Fondly, she runs a finger across his cheek. She's seen hell and she's seen sin, but Robbie is sure there is still a little of the girl he'd seen trotting through the halls of Hollywood Arts left in Tori.
"So eager to leave a strip club." Tori muses, eyes heavily lidded. "I knew you were special." Robbie smiles weakly, not quite sure how to take Tori's comment. He doesn't think it's malignant, but he's not entirely sure. He wonders if as something that's worked in the industry, Tori's taken his eagerness to leave as a slight. She's clearly brought him here for a reason, maybe to paint her confession with the starkness of reality.
"I'm – uh, not that there is anything wrong with this place. The decor is – it's fantastic really – I just, I would like to have some alone time with the most beautiful girl that's ever spoken to me." Apparently he's said the right thing. Tori's cheeks ripen, a slight blush darkening her bronzed skin. Biting back a smile, she regards Robbie through her eyelashes.
"I've only been working behind the bar here for the past month."
Tori phrases it like it's nothing, which on the surface, Robbie supposes it is. With all that's passed between them in this room, the implication isn't lost on Robbie. He's counted the days, so he knows his assumption is at least somewhat correct. It's been just about a month since Tori had left a note on his bedside drawer. It's been about a month since he began his pursuit of Tori Vega, maybe it's been about a month since maybe heart kicked back into gear, too. She's still got her secrets, he still has some of his own. As they leave TigerBox, things aren't so murky anymore.
He's increasingly hopefully that it's all going to work out.
Okay, goddamn. That was a really hard chapter to write. It's not the full story, but it's a little about why Tori's so screwed up in his universe. Some of the things she's skipped over will be covered in future chapters, like how Tori found her way back to California, but others will be left up to you guys to fill in the blanks. That is, unless you have specific things you'd like answered
As always, I do enjoy the reviews. Leave me some because losing a bunch of chapters was pretty soul crushing haha.