love languages
a/n: Crossposted on AO3 (where my username is skyling). Written for the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Valentine exchange for cori_the_bloody, shipsafetoshore, cherrycheesecake, imunbreakabledude, Pandora_Imperatrix, and clemdhoffryn. The prompt was love languages, Gurl Group, and Heather/Valencia love kernels.
i. Valencia: Touch
Someone who doesn't really get Valencia might assume her love language is gifts.
And a lot of people don't get Valencia. She likes material things, sure; she finds pleasure in fashion and interior decorating, and who wouldn't kill for tickets to Vampire Weekend (okay, those retreats are kind of creepy, but they're also very chic at the moment, and Gwyneth endorsed their paranormal healing powers) – but it's not like that's all there is to her. High school boyfriends had attempted to impress her with jewelry and roses; Rebecca, when they first met, tried to win her affections with very fancy water. Fifteen years into their relationship, Josh had somehow got it in his head that she'd want a table.
But the fact is, Valencia has very particular taste. She knows what she likes – high threadcount sheets, feminine-yet-professional silk shirts, homemade candles because the storebought ones never get the sweetness-to-spice ratio right – and she'd rather choose it herself. She likes that: being in control. Filling up her life exactly how she wants.
No; gifts have never meant that much to her.
Every year on Christmas, one of the few times they can all find a break in their schedules, Valencia visits her mom and stepdad's cramped apartment and unwraps the gifts they've bought her – clothing, usually. She's not sure whether she cringes harder at the ungodly patterns or at how painfully out her parents' price range she recognizes the garments to be.
Every year, although Valencia forces a smile, she's cursed with resting honest face. And every year, her mom sees through it, an apologetic grimace crinkling the dark eyes she shares with her daughter. "There's a gift receipt in the box, mija."
After a moment's hesitation, Valencia pulls her into a hug, neither of them totally sure what to do with her arms during their annually scheduled moment of physical contact. "It's great. Thanks, mom."
And though this year's pineapple-patterned blazer is most certainly not great, as the warmth of the embrace moves through Valencia's body, she doesn't feel like she's told a lie.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Valencia hates to be touched.
Only that's not quite right. Or at least, it's a complicated dislike.
She's grown familiar with the acidic twinge of jealousy; when she watches teenagers dance at grad parties she organizes, or the women outside her yoga studio chatting and laughing and grazing one another's arms. The couples she marries, their easy touches and dazed, happy eyes.
It's as though it comes naturally to them (to everyone but her), being close to other people. Like they're not constantly caught up in worries about whether it will be a good angle for Instagram, whether the lighting is flattering enough to rack up likes on shared selfies. Other people seem to instinctively know how to just… be together. Like they don't see it all as a performance they're constantly on the verge of messing up.
They never seem to stop and wonder if they're good enough to deserve this – caring for other people and being cared for. She feels like she's looking at everyone else through a sheet of glass: like they're another species, animals in the zoo. Or like she is.
If she admits how much she wants to be close to someone, she'd be admitting how faraway she feels.
It would be sad. And her brand doesn't do sad.
Admitting the enormity of her need could result in her losing the closeness she has found – losing Rebecca, Heather, Paula. The first friends she's had in years. Maybe the first real friends she's had ever.
So if she's going to feel distant from others, it might as well be a distance she chooses. If she's always performing, she'll give the performance of a lifetime.
Besides, she doesn't like people in her personal space, getting in her way, disrupting her painstakingly choreographed routine of self-improvement – morning yoga in the California sunrise, meticulously balanced meals, a full day of client meetings, finishing up with the affirming mantra meditations she's been practicing since breaking up with Josh: You are lovable. You are enough. She sits in the dark of their – her – bedroom, telling herself that.
When they were dating, she rarely let Josh touch her. He was sweet, careless, unselfconscious… everything she couldn't be. He didn't get what it was like to feel like all you'd worked for was perpetually on the verge of toppling down. He didn't know what it was like to work for anything. Goofy Josh with his doting mom and surgeon father, happiness just falling into his lap.
He acted like you could just reach out and hug the people you cared about, like there wasn't anything embarrassing about that. Like it was no big deal to need another person.
When they were dating, sometimes Josh would hold her when she was upset, and she would cuddle into him. But she always felt self-conscious afterwards; she didn't like him – or anyone – seeing her that way. That feeling, like she would collapse without someone to hold her up – it wasn't her.
Or maybe it was. Maybe it was the truest part of her. But it was also the part she was determined to exorcise.
She's Valencia Maria Perez. Self-made down to her name.
She packs the pineapple blazer into a bag with the gift receipt, sets it in her car. Several times in the weeks that follow, she pencils it into her schedule to return it. But she always finds reasons to procrastinate.
Eventually, she shoves the bag to bottom of her dresser, out of sight and out of mind except for the occasional vague nagging that there's something she's forgotten.
In a self-help book she's been reading (okay, a self-help journal, but one with inspirational quotes at the bottom of each page, so a book, basically), she comes across the idea of love languages: that people have different ways of communicating affection, like gift-giving or words of affirmation or quality time. The way you show love, says the quote, is also the way you recognize it when others show it to you.
She Googles the concept, intrigued. Maybe it will help her business – a good jumping-off point for personalized wedding activities. She buries the possibility that the relevance could be anything more personal.
Your love language is based on what you lacked as a child, one online article reads. She shuts her laptop, suddenly annoyed in a way she can't articulate, which makes it even more irritating.
It's kind of… well, to use Rebecca's terminology, kind of privileged to be able to focus so much on what your childhood lacked – isn't it? Like, her upbringing was far from luxurious, but she keeps that private because… well, because it's embarrassing, but also because it's been hammered into her to focus on the good, to work hard, to strive. Anything is possible if you put in the work. That's why her parents moved to America. It's how she's always planned to get out of West Covina, to leave her uncultured townie roots behind.
The past doesn't matter – she can be anyone she wants to be. It's just a matter of trying hard enough.
As a kid, while her parents worked late, she'd pored over fashion magazines and dreamed of the life she'd one day have. But she didn't just dream – she studied media like gospel, practiced walking in her mom's high heels and flicking her straightened hair over her shoulder. She microwaved Lean Cuisines and plotted out a life of milestones and upward mobility.
She could be anyone.
She really had loved Josh. Maybe not romantically, at least not by the end. But their relationship always meant something to her. Knowing that someone had, out of everyone in the world, chosen her. Gradually, though, it stopped feeling like Josh had chosen her. She was the absence of a choice. Another way for him to procrastinate on growing up.
Weirdly, it was Rebecca who made her feel like she deserved better. Rebecca who hugged her and told her she smelled like roasted corn, who stayed up with her all night laughing together. Rebecca who, even after all their fights and rivalries, still wanted to… hang out, for some reason that Valencia totally didn't understand, except that she wanted it too.
She could talk to Rebecca in a way she'd never been able to do with Josh. With Rebecca, she felt like a person. That sense that something was flawed inside herself didn't exactly go away; but Rebecca was flawed, too, and it didn't make Valencia stop caring about her. For the first time in years, Valencia felt like a real person and not a(n impeccably) curated series of social media posts.
Even after seeing Valencia with sweatpants and unwashed hair, Rebecca liked her. It wasn't information Valencia knew how to process.
And through Rebecca, Valencia had begun spending time Heather.
She'd learned that she actually liked spending time with friends, not as part of checklist for a life plan, but for fun. She hadn't realized she cared about fun. Or that she could be funny.
Sometimes, Valencia would say something and Heather would laugh, and even though Valencia didn't know why it was funny, she knew she felt warm and glowing inside knowing that she was the reason Heather had made that sound.
Somehow, even she and Paula had become friends, the older woman's judgemental tendencies softening as they discovered a shared love of paranormal romance movies.
That core of icy loneliness she had held as close as her sense of self began, gradually, to thaw.
As the Gurl Group discussed Roxanne Gay over boba, high-fiving at each other's accomplishments, hugging goodbye before they went back off to their various lives, Valencia felt warm inside. Full.
She hadn't realized she'd been starving.
And then Rebecca almost dies.
Valencia didn't know it was possible to feel so scared. She thought she'd been heartbroken over Josh, but she didn't know it was possible to feel like her heart was literally breaking, the pain in her chest a physical, inescapable presence.
So she does what she knows how to do and doubles down on livestreaming. She'll make this a story, find a way to make it inspiring, beautiful. A narrative she can understand.
Because she doesn't understand this: how a person you love can be torn apart from you and you're powerless to stop it. How her chest hurts and her throat clenches, and no matter how much meditation or affirmations or journaling she does, she can't get out of it.
If she lets herself cry, she won't be able to stop it. Ever. The black hole of need inside her will tear open and scare away the people she loves the most.
She doesn't understand how nothing she can do can fix what Rebecca has been feeling.
She doesn't understand why, when Heather brings Hector to the hospital, jealousy rises in her throat like bile.
Nothing makes sense anymore. She doesn't understand what plan to make, what rules to follow, how to fix it when everything in the world feels so profoundly wrong.
That night, she, Heather, and Paula spend the night in a heap outside Rebecca's door, listening to the sound of each other's breathing. The hard floor and the tangle of limbs cricks her spine, and everyone's too overwhelmed to sleep much.
But as uncomfortable as it is, there's nowhere else she'd rather be during this time. The people she loves are here. And though she's still terrified, that counts for something.
When Valencia does talk to Rebecca, she can't stop crying. The black hole inside her opens up, and she breaks down. I was so scared, Rebecca. She's mortified, nakedly needy, unable to stop pouring.
Rebecca hugs her, reassures her that she'll get better. That she won't go.
They hold onto each other.
ii. Rebecca: Words of Affirmation
The words are always running through Rebecca's mind. Not good enough. You ruin everything. Lose some weight. And on top of that, you're too self-critical.
It's a constant undertow in the ocean of her mind, always lurking beneath the surface. Threatening to pull out her life from under her.
And in some ways, it's comforting. The words have always been there for her, something she understands. When the voices circle her mind like well-worn tapes, she knows all the words. She sings along. It's a world she can understand: bad things happen to her because she inevitably ruins everything.
And she is so often baffled by the rest of the world out there. If she's just objectively The Worst… well, at least that's straightforward.
She's seen enough therapists and read enough feminist theory to know the situation is a lot more nuanced than that. But sometimes she doesn't have the energy for nuance. Sometimes she just wants all of the confusion to stop.
Before she gets on the plane, she spits venom at her friends, and its like all the awfulness inside her is finally outside too. Like finally she's not deceiving anyone.
Maybe at that point, she already knew. If she was going to implode her life, it's better if no one missed her.
Maybe, deep down, she always knew how this story would end.
But it's the part after the plane ride, after waking up in a hospital bed, that she doesn't understand. The part where she ruined everything, and then the world continued. She continued.
It's a weird sequel to a story she thought had already ended. It's a blank page in an unknown genre. It's terrifying and exciting and, above all, incomprehensible.
Her friends have seen her for all that she is, and they are still her friends. The things inside her that she thought would make everyone leave her forever have come to light, but her friends are still here. And so is she.
Valencia cries in her kitchen, and it really hits Rebecca, that her actions have an effect on others. She's always felt like a nonentity – it's hard to process that anyone would care about her enough to be hurt by her.
In the kitchen, she promises she'll get better, and although she's certain of very few things in her life at this point, she knows she means this.
We care about you, Rebecca, her friends say. We're here for you.
And although they're unfamiliar, she risks believing these words.
It's not a story she understands. But it's one she wants to be a part of.
iii. Heather: Acts of Service
In the months that follow Rebecca's return to West Covina, Heather does most of the roommate chores. Okay, that isn't really a change; the only difference is that now Rebecca pores over therapy workbooks rather than legal documents while Heather does all the usual work of sweeping the floors and washing the dishes and feeding Estrella and taking out the garbage.
"Hey," she says at one point, trying to broach the topic gently despite her preference for directness, "your books recommend doing little daily chores, right? Like, don't they call taking out the trash a way to practice mastery?"
"Yeah," says Rebecca enthusiastically. "And doing dishes, and sweeping, and walking your animals, and doing favours for loved ones, and –"
"Right," says Heather, interrupting what seems like an answer for an oral exam, "so do you think you'd like to… do… some of those things?"
Rebecca pauses. "Hm. Yeah, I think so. After I've focused a bit more on my self-care, you know? Dr. Shin says not to rush through my recovery."
"Right. Uh, okay."
Heather sprinkles in flakes of fishfood for Estrella, mentally composing an autoethnographic paper on the pros and cons of sublimating interpersonal frustration into basic tasks.
Rebecca has never been the easiest roommate. She leaves take-out boxes on the sofa and doesn't seem to, like, get the concept of doing the dishes. Often Heather feels relegated to the background, cleaning up her roommate's literal and metaphorical messes.
Since moving out of her parents' place, Heather's learned that she's actually quite pragmatic and responsible. Who knew? But sometimes it also kind of sucks, to have to be the responsible one. Especially when Heather feels her emotional coolness flattening into apathy, the deep, cold, sluggishness that for years had kept her too demotivated to move out of her parents' place.
As graduation approaches, she can feel a depressive episode settling into her, sinking its cold into her bones. She doesn't want to bring it up – god knows Rebecca has enough to deal with, and besides, Heather has always been good at managing. The structure of school gives her a safety net, external motivation to get up and do stuff when she isn't feeling particularly enthused about getting out of bed.
But now school is almost over, so what on earth is she supposed to do now? Like, how do you be an adult when sometimes you can't even function?
Sometimes it feels like Rebecca's emotions leave no space for her own. And also like Rebecca's Panda Express containers leave no space for Heather to study.
She turns the key in the lock, exhausted and already cringing at the mess that will await her. Not only does she have an essay due tomorrow morning, but Rebecca had gotten all hyped up last night and tried to make lasagna at 3 a.m., an experiment that somehow ended up with tomato sauce splotching all over the ceiling. Heather knows she won't be able to focus on her paper until she gets that damn spot out. She's like the lady Macbeth of ceiling lasagna.
But as she steps into the house, she's surprised to see that it's actually… clean. Well, reasonably. The throw-pillows have been arranged slightly lopsidedly, and Rebecca's therapy books totter in a precarious pile, but the sink is no longer a biohazardous skyscraper. The table appears to have been wiped down – a perfect study space.
"Hey," Rebecca emerges from her room.
"You cleaned."
"Yeah, I, um, wanted to apologize. We're talking about responsibility in therapy, and although I pride myself on good hygiene, I realize I kind of let things slip. So… peace offering?"
"Peace accepted," says Heather, deciding not to mention that Rebecca's self-image possibly has some blind spots re: hygiene tendencies.
"Great. Also, I'm heating up some lasagna, if you want some. I wanted to make it for you last night, 'cause I know school's been hectic, but then I got all overwhelmed and… you know. Stuff ends up on the ceiling. So please – help yourself to emotionally dysregulated lasagna."
"Aw, you remembered my favourite form of emotionally dysregulated pasta."
"Hey, what are roommates for?"
Heather serves herself some lasagna and sits down with her laptop at the table, finally feeling ready. Checking her email, she sees a message from Valencia:
Hi H. You mentioned you were job hunting, so I put together a doc of places I've worked with that are looking for managers. And you'd be a kickass manager, so if you're interested in any of the positions, let me know and I'll put in a good word for you. You know how intimidating I can be.
xo V
[Insert supportive girl thing here]
Heather laughs.
Rebecca smiles back at her. "Hey, I think that's the first time I've heard you laugh in, like, two weeks."
"Oh," says Heather, caught speechless that Rebecca had noticed. Partly because she's good at hiding, and also because Rebecca isn't famed for noticing things.
Rebecca sits down across from her. "You're doing… alright?"
"Yeah," says Heather. "Yeah, I think so."
She begins to work on her paper, the last one she'll write before graduating. She'll take Valencia up on her offer, fill out some job applications, maybe poke around for grad schools to apply to in the future – for now, it's time for a break from being a student. She doesn't know what she wants to do, but hey, Valencia's right – she would be a kickass manager.
It's freaky, but maybe she can do this grown-up thing.
Heather picks up a forkful of slightly-exploded lasagna, notices a few pebbly white specks at the top.
"Hey, is this… spackle?"
Rebecca grimaces, peering closely at the pebbles. "That is a distinct possibility."
"I'll just pick them off." Rebecca's making an effort, and what's a few ceiling particles between friends.
She types her first sentence. A second.
It's a start.
iv. Paula: Quality Time
For years, Paula had taken it for granted that adult life just wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It was like Friends said – no one tells you life will be this was. Except she also didn't have a glamorous job or a pricey New York apartment or spend all her time in a coffee shop with her sharp-tongued-but-supportive group of close-knit friends discussing their turbulent yet glamorous romantic lives.
She was a paralegal in the West Covina suburbs, engaged in a Sisyphean struggle with the leaky dishwasher and with Darryl's improperly filled out paperwork. The most consistent social interaction she got was meet with the principal when Brandon cut class or Tommy bit another kid. And when Scott bothered showing up for the meetings too, that was the closest she got to romance.
Friends was right about one thing, at least: her love life certainly was DOA.
When Rebecca came into her life, Paula relished the chance to live vicariously through this younger woman – the type of girl who would move across the country to be with her true love. Paula had played her own life too safe; it was too late for her to have any grand romance. But she would do everything in her power to make sure Rebeca didn't lose her chance. If Paula couldn't get out of her own dead end, she could at least make sure Rebecca didn't end up in the same place.
But as their friendship evolved, Paula realized it wasn't the grand schemes she got excited about – it was seeing Rebecca, sitting together and chatting, be it over donuts or spy gear. The way Rebecca really believed that Paula could be a lawyer, the first time anyone believed in her.
Well, maybe Scott had believed in her, once. She didn't know what he believed now.
When Rebecca came into her life, it was like Paula was… awake. She'd been running on autopilot for years, fueled by coffee and an underlying current of irritability. But with Rebecca, she could express herself. And she realized she had a lot of things to say.
Paula never imagined she'd find herself in a girl group – excuse her, a Gurl Group. Mrs. Hernandez was always busy with mysterious hobbies, and although Karen wasn't necessarily more intense than Rebecca, she was intense in a distinctly more unnerving way (though she, Karen, and Darryl did once spend a surprisingly enjoyable coffee break discussing Breaking Dawn, a day they all agreed to never speak of again).
But before Rebecca came into her life, it had been years since Paula had had close friends. Hell, it felt like years since she'd had a close family, despite also feeling somehow smothered by them.
As a girl, she'd imagined love would save her, an escape from her dad's simultaneous distance and neediness. And at first, things with Scott had been like that – exciting. Romantic. Even if it was just making pasta together in his student apartment, her heart had sped up, and the stars, as he walked her home, shone as though she'd never really looked at the sky before. It felt like her life was about to start.
But then the kids had come, and of course she loved them, but as the years went by, that detached exhaustion she'd felt while living with her dad crept back into her. She went to work, and Scott went to work, and their parallel lives were an endless, blurry creep through days that only varied in terms of what the boys were in trouble for this time.
But as she saw Rebecca change, Paula began to feel that it was possible for her to change, too. She could go to law school.
She could leave Scott.
She considered it. And as leaving became a real choice, staying became a choice, too – her choice, rather than an inevitability. She wasn't trapped in this life. She had chosen it. She could choose again.
It was like that sense of seeing the stars and, for the first time, really seeing them. She could see Scott.
Waking up, she looked over at her husband, his eyes closed and head on the pillow, snoring softly through his nasal strip. One hand holding onto hers in his sleep.
A confusing, unglamorous rush of love pulsed through her, and she gave his hand a gently squeeze.
His eyelashes twitched and he smiled in his sleep, dreaming.
For Valentine's day, Scott makes her and the kids chocolate chip banana pancakes, and she's sitting in her nightgown in the morning light, talking with the kids about what movie to see together this weekend, and she realizes she's happy.
Scott spatulas two of the pancakes onto the plate in front of her, sets out the whipped cream and maple syrup with a "ta-da," then cringes. "Sorry, they're kind of charred."
"They're perfect."
"I tried to make them hearts," says Scott. "See? Ventricles."
Paula squints at the mass of batter, which has no discernable shape. "Well, luckily I married you for your stunning good looks and not for your knowledge of anatomy."
Paula kisses him and the kids ew.
From the outside, nothing's really changed. And yet it has.
She says her goodbyes to Scott and the kids as she heads out to Galentine's Day brunch with the Gurl Group before Valentine's dinner with Scott. Though this year, Galentine's Day brunch is more Galentine's study group – she's swamped with law homework, Heather has an exam, Valencia's doing party planning research, and Rebecca procrastinated on her therapy homework due this evening.
But as Paula kisses Scott goodbye, she's excited. It's a bigger workload than she ever thought she could handle – but she can handle it. Her brief case feels filled with bricks, but there's a lightness in her steps that hasn't been there for years.
At Rebecca and Heather's house, the three gather with coffee and Rebecca's noodle kugel.
"Family recipe?" asks Paula.
Rebecca smiles sheepishly. "Trent recipe."
"Hey, at least something good came out of that relationship."
"Yeah. Who says it's a bad idea to date a turtlenecked sociopath?"
"Definitely not anyone who's tried these noodles."
Valencia shows up bearing Chinese donuts and a laptop, and the four settle into a routine, taking breaks to laugh about Rebecca's workbook's confusing acronyms ("treat PhysicaL illness" stands for both the 'P' and 'L' in 'PLEASE'?) as well as about Valencia's confusing party theme requests.
"Dinosaur prom?" says Valencia, "is that a dinosaur-themed prom event, or a prom-themes dinosaur event?"
"Is 'dinosaur event' seriously a category you offer?" interjects Rebecca.
"Sign me up," says Heather.
It's not the grand, romantic adventure Paula had plotted out when she met Rebecca. But it's unfamiliar and exciting all the same. Rebecca helps her go over the minutiae of legal language, and she holds the stopwatch to time Rebecca's mindfulness exercises. Valencia occasionally leans her head on Heather's shoulder and Heather fails to fully play it cool and hide her grin.
No one had told any of them life would be this way. But it's still a pretty good story.
"Hey, you're smiling," says Rebecca to Paula. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing in particular, Cookie. Just a good day."
"Yeah, you know what? It is."
Paula squeezes Rebecca's shoulder and then turns back at her textbook, ready for the next chapter.