We All Move in Circles
Counter-Clockwise, Chapter 4
"Art? What are you doing up so late?"
"Couldn't sleep," He shrugged, dragging tired fingers over tired eyes. It was a pity, because he wanted nothing more than to sleep right now, but he couldn't seem to keep his eyes closed. So instead, he had been sitting at Valerie's kitchen table for the last hour, half trying to bore himself to sleep with a magazine she'd had laying around, half trying to kill time until she was awake and he could make coffee without worrying about the noise. Whichever happened first.
"You've been having that problem a lot lately," She noted, and he could read the mild concern in her eyes. He must have looked awful. She crossed the room to sit in the chair next to him, her hands on her knees.
"Mm. Sorry if I woke you. I can turn the light off."
"No, it's okay. Do you want to take something? I think all I've got is some Tylenol PM, but that should help."
"No. I really don't think I want any more chemicals than necessary in my system."
"It's because of the Dreaming compounds?" Concern darkened her eyes just a fraction more. He realized how that must have sounded now, how that had probably made him sound like an addict, or at least, an over-user.
"Technically, yes."
"Technically?" She repeated, eyes never leaving his. "Technically, how?"
"As in…We've been inducing sleep too much, and it will take me awhile to start sleeping naturally again."
"Did something…happen?"
"No. Nothing bad anyway. Why do you ask?"
"Because I can tell. Something went wrong, didn't it?"
"No. It just took longer than we thought, that's all." Which wasn't completely a lie. It was even mostly true. Just missing one very big, major, important detail. The reason it had taken longer than expected was because yet again, Dom had started following the Shade that was his messed-up representation of his wife. Mal had nearly managed to drag him under. Nearly. If it had been anyone besides Dom that was risking their neck on a job the way he had, Arthur honestly would have just left them to their own devices. He wasn't keen on getting caught because someone else screwed up; after all, he had someone who missed him, someone to come back to. He couldn't allow himself to get caught now. Though he had never informed Dom of the matter, the two of them were really in the same rapidly-sinking boat. Though it was easier for Arthur to come back to Valerie than it was for Dom to ever feasibly get back to his children. That was probably why he continued to follow Dom on his Kamikaze-style jobs, it was a kindred feeling they had, and Arthur may have felt a little guilty that he had an easier time of soothing his loneliness. Though, he was also nothing if not reliable to stick to the team he picked.
Valerie's hand on his arm brought him out of his reminiscence. "Sorry. Day dreaming for a minute there."
"Day dreaming in the middle of the night? Kind of a funny concept, isn't it?" Valerie said with a little half-smile.
"Suppose so." They were silent for a minute, then Valerie let out a breath in a slight hiss.
"Come on. You look like you could use a little air," She informed. She grabbed a nearly threadbare sweater off the back one of the chairs. He didn't move, a little stunned by the sudden change in the direction of the conversation. "Well, come on. It's not like I'm going to try and throw you out a window Arthur," She grinned coyly, sliding her arms through the sleeves. "You wouldn't fit through any of them."
"You don't plan to go walking at this time of night, do you?"
"Not far anyway." When he still didn't move, she pranced her way back across the kitchen to him, grabbing his arms and pulling. "You can't just sit here all night. You should get up and move around, try to tire yourself out. Grab a blanket."
Not sure why she was suddenly so motivated, but figuring he would just listen to her, Arthur scooped up one of the throws always laying around her living room, and followed along behind Valerie, who was shuffling to the door in her favorite Nightmare Before Christmas slippers. She lead him to the elevator, taking it all the way to the top floor, and then to a set of stairs at the end of the hall. The heavy metal barricade was locked, a padlock and iron bar holding it secure. Valerie didn't seem fazed, standing on her toes and pulling a key down from the top of the doorframe, where it had apparently been precariously hidden.
"Tenants aren't exactly supposed to be up here," She informed him of the obvious in a whisper, "-but the landlady doesn't really care. It's all the people on this floor who complain that it's too loud if people are on the roof. If we're quiet, they won't notice." A gush of chilled air rushed into the hallway as Valerie pulled the door open, stepping brazenly into the dark stairwell, as if she did this everyday. Then again, as well as he knew her at this point, he'd say she probably did. Valerie wasn't a rule breaker per say, but she definitely wasn't afraid of getting in trouble. At least, not if she thought she could talk her way out of it again. Arthur just hoped she knew what she was doing, and followed her.
She was at the edge when he emerged from the dark hall, onto the brightly lit rooftop. She was bracing her arms on the wall around the perimeter, leaning out slightly, smiling widely.
"The only place in Seattle with two skies."
"What?"
"This is the only place with two skies. See?" She gestured grandly at the scenery before her. Arthur walked to her side, staring out as well. "The lights in the city look like their own stars. It's like standing on the edge of two universes, one's just a reflection of the other."
It was a stretch for him. But for her… it came easily. She saw things like this in everyday life. Valerie could find beauty in anything. Just one of the things on a very long list of reasons why he felt the way he did about her.
"Is there a reason you like rooftops so much you're willing to risk angry neighbors for them?" Carrying the blanket under his arm, he traced her footsteps to the edge of the building, leaning his elbows on the railing. From here, he could almost believe what she'd said, about there being two skies. It seemed that one would swallow you from above, the other drown you from below.
"Not really. But I guess, when I was a kid, at my parents house, the house I grew up in, you could climb out the window in my room to get on the roof. I would always go out there when I needed some me time, because both my sisters are afraid of heights, and my parents never thought to look for me there. I spent hours on my roof at home, just hiding from everybody. I guess now, it's just sort of a habit I've made."
"Well, if you need room to think, you've sure got it up here."
"What about you?" She asked, turning to lean her lower-back on the plaster wall, staring over at him.
"What about me?"
"What were you like as a kid? What were your parents like? You never talk about things like that."
"I don't really know. Probably obnoxious. I never thought to ask my parents," Arthur shrugged. He was beginning to feel the familiar sensation of his heart abruptly scabbing over. 'Parents' was not exactly a tender word for him.
"Do you not get along with them?" Valerie asked softly.
"I…haven't spoken to my parents in over ten years. The day I dropped out and became a thief, they decided they wanted nothing to do with me anymore. I can understand it though, don't get me wrong, I'm not upset about it at all. They were good people, honest to a fault, and they worked hard to get me into school. And there I went, and threw it away for a life of crime."
"I don't think that's true. I don't think you threw it away so casually. And I also think you're lying when you say you're not upset," Valerie said, crossing her arms around her stomach.
"You're a psychiatrist now?" The words came out more crossly than he'd intended.
"No. I'm not. Sorry," She shrugged it off, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear. Her shoulders were shaking.
"You ought to be," He told her, unfurling the blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders, pulling it closed over her chest. She wasn't really mad, she very rarely was, but he felt he should be nicer after his little snap. "You can read me like book."
"Well, as mysterious as you are, I know enough about you to know the face you were making wasn't a good one."
"You know more than you think," Arthur said, relinquishing the blanket when her skinny fingers appeared around the seam, holding it close to her body.
"Oh really?" She questioned with a small laugh. "You're like dating a ghost Arthur. A really sweet, sexy ghost."
"I wish it didn't have to be that way." The mumbled words were something he had not dared to speak for several months. Wishing only gave way to longing, and before he knew it, he might not be able to leave, to go back to things he needed to do. He might just end up disappearing long enough to lead someone right to her. "My parents…" He started, trying to finish the bridge she had started building between them. But it had been so long since he'd thought about them, let alone talked about them, he found the idea of discussing his practically forgotten past strange, maybe even surreal. No one had asked him about it in a long time, and everything about the conversation seemed rusty. "My Father wasn't exactly…supportive. He was the kind of person who was never proud of what you accomplished, no matter how much work went into it," Valerie nodded, her eyes passive, absorbing the words he said to her like they were the holy scriptures. "To try and make up for it, my Mother coddled me my whole life. In the end, it just made me act out. I knew I could do whatever the hell I wanted, because if it made my Father mad, my Mother would let me get away with something twice as bad, convinced I was just going through a phase, and that I'd end up hating them if they punished me too harshly. It took her until my first arrest to realize that her phase theory was completely off."
"How old were you?" Valerie asked gently.
"Sixteen. Some accomplices and I decided that instead of summer jobs, we were going to make some quick cash robbing some rich guy's house. I wasn't…as good as I am now, totally missed the security system. They left me to take the fall, and next thing I knew, I was the bad influence in the neighborhood. My parents sent me to College out of state, probably hoping I would shape up, but also probably so their friends would forget about their troublemaking son. Needless to say it made me worse, and, well, here I am." He finished the story with a grand gesture at himself.
"They loved you," Valerie said quietly. "They did. Some parents just don't know how to handle-"
"A bad egg," He inserted for her.
"You're not a bad egg. You're just…not as good a rule-follower as the rest of us."
"Why do you always have to make me sound like such a good person?"
"Because you are. Even if your job is a little less than noble, that doesn't mean you aren't. You let me see the good parts anyway."
"Maybe you just want to believe that," Arthur shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets. "You said so yourself, you have a tendency to go for the bad guys." The blanket looked like wings sprouting from her shoulders as she opened her arms to loop them around his shoulders, their body heat mingling in the confines of the fleece blanket.
"I'm going to keep believing it, you're not a bad guy. You've been nothing but good to me Art. And you've never given me any reason not to trust you."
"I think you're the one who's too good to me." Arthur remarked with a light laugh, ruffling her hair. She'd been growing it out the last two and half years, and it was getting quite long for her efforts. She often remarked that her hair was her best feature when it was long. He'd always thought it was her soul, but, well, that was also just him being hopelessly romantic.
"Can I ask you something Art?"
"Like what?" He asked, settling his arm around her shoulders, while they stared out at the lights together. Arthur suddenly realized that this was something it had never occurred to him to want in life. Someone to stand on a rooftop and have deep, meaningful conversations with. He'd seen it in movies often enough, something akin to the relationship he and Valerie had, in everything from his favorite classics to the new blockbusters. He knew well enough that it was something everyone should want, but he couldn't say it had ever occurred to him personally to desire that kind of bond in his own real life. Now that he had Valerie though, and she gave him that feeling, gave him that connection, he didn't know how he had survived so long without it. It seemed the most basic of human needs now, right up there with breathing and eating.
"Why did you get into Extraction?"
"Honestly?" She nodded her head against his shoulder. "It was because it got me what I wanted."
"What did you want?"
"Just the basics. Money, mostly, I can admit that. The possibility of endless creation is one thing, but without a practical application, Dream Sharing is just another chemical addiction. I'm not saying what I do is worth a Nobel prize, but at least I'm using it for something other than escaping a life that's completely worth living, so long as you're willing to put a little effort into it anyway." Arthur shrugged as he spoke, jostling her head on his shoulder, which he quickly attempted to remedy by going very still again. She cuddled him absently, as though she had barely noticed his movement, looking like she was thinking very deeply. "What I wanted, was a life that I was satisfied with. And that's what I get, most of the time anyway. Besides, I can't say that nothing good ever came of Extraction. If it weren't for that, I never would have been fortunate enough to stumble into your life."
"But…weren't you running from someone that day? So it's more like…we should thank whatever little screw-up happened."
Arthur bit back a some-what snarky reply. There was no way he was going to stop cursing Dom every time he dragged Mal into a dream. They may be in the same boat, they may even be friends, but Dom was still a ticking time bomb, and sooner or later, Arthur figured he would have to pull the plug on their ventures. Or at least, on his end of things. It may seem cold of him, but he would only put himself so far in danger before his good sense reminded him it was there. "I'm not ever going to regret it, but let's just say I'm not in a hurry to say thanks for nearly getting shot."
"It's okay. I understand," Valerie laughed, "The kiss probably wasn't worth dying for."
"It was worth several days of torture, at least."
"If you say so," She smiled, and nuzzled up closer to him. "Though I'm not sure whether that was creepy or romantic."
"Yeah, I don't know either," He agreed, glancing at his watch through her hair. "You should probably go in and try to get some more sleep."
"I think…I want to stay out here with you. I've always wanted to watch the sunrise with someone special."
"Don't you have work?"
"I can always call in for a day. Even I can get away with breaking the rules once in awhile."
"Guess I really am a bad influence," Arthur observed neutrally.
"Not to worry dollface, you won't have to bail me out of jail anytime soon."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Arthur wondered if he really was a bad influence. Was he bad for Valerie? She could have easily found herself someone who could always be there for her, who didn't keep secrets from her the way he had to. She could have found herself someone who wasn't, as she so accurately put it, a ghost. It didn't matter that they spent every second they could together as long as he was in Seattle, it didn't matter that they spent every night dreaming about each other. It didn't even matter that what he felt for her was indescribably passionate love. The fact remained that he couldn't tell her that, no matter how he tried. Arthur had an underlying paranoia, a gnawing little feeling, that maybe Valerie didn't feel the same. For all he knew, he was just something fun to do on weekends. But that didn't stop the annoying little butterflies that got into his stomach whenever he thought of her, whenever he was on his way to see her, and it would absolutely kill him, if he just so happened to let it slip that he was in love with her, when all she wanted was someone to cuddle, and he ended up scaring her off. Or he supposed, really, he'd be scaring himself off, but it was a moot point, as either way, it would ruin his single normal relationship. On the other hand, if she didn't at least feel something like what he did, would she be doing this to him?
Arthur had always believed that love went both ways, that to be in love, you had to feel love. He'd never thought that unrequited feelings were worth dealing with, and while he hoped and prayed that his weren't going totally unnoticed, he would let Valerie move on, look for someone else if she ever so desired. It was a confused set of feelings he had, part of him never wanted to let her go, and was jealous every time another man so much as looked at her, while a more sensible part of him wanted her to be content, whether it was with him or not, this part realized that he was, in as nice of words as he could find, not really a part of her everyday life.
"Valerie…" He found himself mumbling against her hair.
"Hmm?" She responded sleepily, leaning into him heavily.
"Are you happy…when I'm here?"
"I'm sort of a happy gal, Art. But when you're here, I'm absolutely euphoric." She smiled widely up at him. He smiled back. For a moment, the tug-of-war between his two desires faded. So long as she could be happy, he would keep coming back. Although, the cloud still hung over him, just a little. She waited and worried when he was gone, unable to contact her. But, for the time being, she was able to take all of this, along with all his flaws, perfectly in stride.
But Arthur knew there was only so much any woman could take at the hands of any man, before she started trying to find salvation in the bottom of a bottle. Or, in their case, maybe it would be somewhere between silver case and Limbo.
"Don't worry so much," Valerie interrupted his thoughts, as though she had known exactly the moment his mind drifted back to negative thoughts. "Art, you said once that we were going to make it work. And we will. You don't need to worry about me, I'm happy. Really, all the time. When you're not here, I just think of things we did together, or sometimes I sleep in your shirt, and I don't miss you as much, it makes things easier on me, because you leave me nice little memories. And I promise, on my honor as girl scout, and a once-good little churchgoer, I have not, and will not, ever cheat on you."
"You were a girl scout?" He asked, looking down at her skeptically.
"Well, yeah. I mean, my mom forced me too. I only made it on the Brownie level though, because I punched this other little girl in the eye when she pulled my hair. I wasn't…a very good girl scout, but I was one at one point, and took the oath nevertheless, so I am allowed to swear on it."
"I get the feeling you weren't very good in church either."
"Yeah, well, I didn't say I was going to swear on the bible. My mama raised me better than to use the Lord's name in vain." She said it in a tone that was one step down from laughter.
"Right, and I've never heard you yelling 'Jesus fucking Christ' when you drive downtown."
"Smart ass," She grumbled with a smile, bumping him lightly in the stomach with her fist.
"I know. Part of my charm though, isn't it?"
"Yeah, right up there with your irresistible hubris."
"Don't you ever use simple words? It's too early for me to translate 'hubris'." Arthur groaned as convincingly as he could.
"That's what you get for dating a writer, Art," She pointed out in a sing-song.
"Yeah well-"
"What the hell are you doing up here at five in the fucking morning?" Demanded a shrill voice from the direction of the stairwell.
They both turned, now tangled in the blanket, to stare at the Building Manager, Leslie, Arthur believed Valerie had once told him her names was, in a ratty blue house-coat, even more worn purple slippers, with curlers in her blonde hair to complete the look.
"Uhm…we were just-"
"I've been called by every tenant on the top floor, saying they could hear you talking for the last half an hour. You know better," she jabbed a finger at Valerie, and then, as if suddenly just realizing she'd never actually seen him before, she redirected the finger to Arthur. "And who the hell are you? Don't you have any good sense to not disturb other people's sleep-"
Whilst Leslie continued raving, Valerie leaned her lips towards Arthur's ear. He inclined his head, so as to hear whatever she was about to say over the other woman's shrieking.
"Does it seem odd to you that she's making more noise than we were?"
"A little. We could always go back to your room and be even louder."
"You, Arthur, are an absolute dog." She grinned devilishly as she said it, and to prove she knew exactly what he had meant, she made sure to brush up against him in just the right way to send a spark of awareness through his entire body as she slid out of their blanket cocoon. "Let's go see just how loud we'll have to be to drown her out." She grabbed his hand, and took off at, for lack of a better way to say it, a brisk walk.
"Where the hell-" Leslie's voice faded away as they vanished back into the hallway, Valerie laughing in elation.
All his dark thoughts faded away, and his mind filled instead with desire, a want to make her happy, to show her how he felt, even if it was only for a few hours of sheer bliss.
Author's Note: Well well, there's the last of the CounterClockwise Chapters. I'm actually a little disappointed that I only got four in there, but, well, there could only be so many flashbacks before the story lines intersected. So there you go. And I suppose this all went a little differently than I had planned anyway. The original of the entire story was once called "There's something to be said..." and revolved strictly around Val and Art not saying they loved each other (And, funny thing, I planned to end it with a chapter similar to this). But you'd be amazed how quick it got out of hand. This story really had a mind of it's own, it felt a lot like it was writing itself sometimes. Anyway, this is a little shorter than usual, but I figured the last one was a little long, so I could get away with it. :) Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion (I just watched a bunch of old cartoons, what can I say), as we'll be tying up everything in the next Clockwise. I bid you adieu, and as always, hope you enjoy.
