There are moments in your life where you're unstoppable. Brave to a fault, doing what needs to be done and willing to get hurt over it. You make life worth living, one impulsive choice after another, and never seem to regret it because each decision teaches you something about yourself. Something valuable that you would have never known otherwise, that you'll surely use later. You know, for the plot.
And then there are times where you take the coward's way out.
You're lying on your bed with William sprawled across your stomach like an arched bridge, occasionally digging his pointy little elbows into your ribs and making grunts of annoyance as if you're just purposefully not being soft enough for him. Hours have passed and you're still not any closer to figuring things out than when you started. Every time you try to untangle the mess, ideas and memories and things Victor has said just come at you from all sides, random and unhelpful, and you just end up exhausting yourself in an anxious loop.
Worried that Victor would be back soon and looking for you, you sent him a text saying that you were taking a nap with William. If you were the sort of woman with a strong backbone and sense of justice, you would have simply waited outside his door to demand an explanation, but as it is you merely hide there in your room like a useless lump.
But you do jolt in surprise when you finally hear Victor's door open and close. William gives you a judgemental stare and then settles his head back down with a huff. You don't dare say anything or make a sound, because the last thing you want is Victor knowing you're awake and avoiding him. God, you can't believe the two of you are doing this again. When will it end? Surely at some point the catastrophic revelations will trickle off, and you can actually live your fucking lives.
The shower on the other side of the wall turns on, and you find that odd because he showered before breakfast, which you know because you are an incurable snoop who pays attention to everything he does. What kind of 'dick drag' would get him dirty or sweaty enough to clean up immediately after? Was he actually injured, as he insinuated he might be? Part of you wants to say fuck it, and go check on him, secrets or no. But you wrestle with yourself long enough that he's done with his shower, and shortly after you get a text:
VC: Finished. Wake up already
It flashes silently across your screen as a banner, and you don't open it on the off chance that it will display as read. You know he's sitting on his bed in a towel, probably hoping you'll expedite your little meetup and try his door now. Your eyes swing to your own doorknob, checking for the hundredth time that it's definitely locked. You don't want to see him, or speak to him, or have to eat dinner next to him while you still don't know what to do. He's going to pick the inner struggle out of your head the second he sees you, and you're not ready to explain yourself.
Enough time goes by that he must believe you're still asleep. You hear his door close again, and eventually your stomach settles back out of your throat when you're sure he's not going to knock on your door. He's going to go kill time until you're up, and you have got to just… never be up. But the thought of staying here in this stuffy room literally all afternoon and all evening and all night, just to delay the inevitable, is absolutely unbearable. You need air. A peaceful place where you can just arrange your thoughts and think logically about everything without the back of your throat threatening tears.
You peel William off of you and crack your door to scan the hall, and mercifully Victor is nowhere in sight. You quickly don your shoes and jacket and with a mumbled apology to William, you shove your phone in your pocket and start to step out of your room.
Your phone. You pull it out again, looking down at Victor's text once more. Can he trace your phone? Find out the exact moment that you leave your room and follow you with it? You can't take that risk. Quickly you text him:
Feeling sick, going back to sleep and not coming to dinner. Don't worry about me, I'll probably be fine in the morning.
Cowardly, but it should buy you a few hours at the very least. You leave your phone in the room and walk as quickly as you dare down the hall and towards the elevator. It takes some doing, getting out of the mansion without running into Victor. A lot of peeking around corners and avoiding the main areas, but finally you're free.
It's late September so the air has lost its summer heat and gained a little breeze, and it's heaven. There are only a few people outside and they don't give you a second look, so you just stroll as casually as you can across the grounds. It's an eternity of holding yourself back and looking over your shoulder to make sure, but finally you're out of sight of the mansion.
You run. Full tilt, sucking that perfect air into your lungs and racing away from responsibility like you're a kid again. It doesn't last as long as you'd like before your chest is hurting with the uncommon strain, but you've made it to the treeline where you and William explored that morning. A quick look back across the grass shows a definite lack of Mr. Scrapey Claws and confirms that you got away clean.
You're your own woman for a few hours, and you're determined to make the most of it. You set an impressive pace into the woods, through the brush and thorns and trees, and you're not sure exactly what spot you're looking for, only that you'll know it when you see it. The sun is pretty close to setting but for some reason that doesn't bother you. Maybe in the back of your mind you know Victor will come for you if you get lost, or maybe you just want to put yourself in the position where you'll be happy to see him. Regardless, the sky is a beautiful pink dusk when you finally find what you were looking for.
There's a pretty little clearing somewhere deep in those woods where a pond sits. The ground has been roughed up on one of the banks as if students come here occasionally to swim, but it's not trampled enough to make you believe it's a regular thing, and with the cool air you doubt anyone will be making the trip out here tonight.
At first you just sit there on the bank, trying to find enough peace to think, but the racing thoughts are back and preventing any headway. Maybe you should run again. Something physical and shocking to exhaust yourself and give you a reset. Agitated, you get back to your feet and eye the water warily.
After removing your shoes and socks and folding up the hem of your jeans, you're able to wade out a few inches and verify that, yes, the pond is pretty fucking cold. Rocky and slimy and probably full of crawdads and water spiders. Still paranoid, you glance over your shoulder to scan the trees, but you don't see anything. The light is fading and the frogs begin to sing because you've been still long enough, and you make the impulse decision to chase that reset after all.
Your clothes land in a pile on a clean patch of grass and you begin to wade in. It's pretty easy going and you've just about convinced yourself that you can do it, until the water gets to about hip height and your body begins to really protest the exposure. You take a step back and then stop, considering. If you go back, you'll be comfortable but you won't have gained anything. If you keep stepping forward, it will just be a slow torture of icky water and you know you're going to give up. The only way you're going to get your reset is if you dive in.
It takes a few tries, false starts where you chicken out at the last second and heave yourself back to standing. But finally you just do it. Go all in, in a stupid sideways flop that definitely does the job. You meant to keep your eyes closed because you don't want some kind of infection, but the frigid bite of water closing in on you has them snapping open automatically.
Immediately you realize you've lost your grasp on which way is up. The water stings your eyes and there's not enough light left to see through the muck you're churning up. Disoriented, your feet find the bottom, but then a dropoff or something makes you slip and you've lost it again. You're flailing around for a few terrifying seconds before your hands finally find a wall of slippery rock, and you shove your feet underneath you and push off as hard as you can.
Air hits your face, a heavenly burst of warmth that you eagerly suck into your lungs, and you doggy paddle back the embarrassingly few feet to where you can stand up again. Soon you're a puddle on a soft patch of grass near the bank, panting and shivering and blinking up at the couple of stars that have come into view.
It worked. Your mind is fucking empty, totally cleansed of the downward spiral. You search around a little for what you'll need to do, and the answer comes almost instantly. The rocking chair.
You're Victor, smoking after a job one night on your porch. A girl is walking past, stupidly looking around at the stars, oblivious, the type of person who will never understand the cruelty of the world. Somehow she spots you there and it's obvious by the way her shoulders tense that she's unsettled by the feeling of your gaze. Whatever, it's your porch, you can fucking smoke here if you want.
But then the wind shifts, and her scent is cast in your direction. It's such a shock that you nearly drop your cigarette. Could it be… Amelia? Impossible, she died in a freak logging accident all those years ago. But perhaps… a relative? You watch her back while she walks away, until her scent is gone and you start to wonder if you somehow imagined it.
You follow her home, sneakily, because Amelia was everything to you. The love of your life who you will never get over and will always compare to every other woman you care about. Yes, it's definitely the same smell. You're obsessed with this woman, must have her for your own, for no reason other than nostalgia. So you… don't see her… for another year?
That doesn't seem right. Now that you think about it, the very obvious gaps in your early contact with Victor don't exactly scream, 'kinky ex girlfriend smell enthusiast.' If anything it would almost suggest he was repelled by it. Could that be an option? Because if you saw someone who looked exactly like your ex, who you yourself loved very much at one time, it would be a massive turnoff for you. Okay, start over.
Sitting in your chair, woman walking by, blah blah blah. The wind shifts and you smell… Amelia. The girl who broke your heart and cheated on you a hundred times and made your life a living hell. How is this possible? She died all those years ago during a bank robbery in France. But no, it's definitely her smell.
How awful. You gag in the darkness and make a mental note to take jobs elsewhere or sell this house. You don't see the woman for another year, but simply because you've forgotten the encounter it happens again one night. She walks by and the scent is the same. Gross. You wish she would die in a car wreck and rid the earth of that smell forever.
So then two nights in a row, the next month, you see her walking outside the confines of the neighborhood, and you… tell her not to? Why the fuck would you care? Okay, skip to the next one. She invites you in, and her whole house smells like putrid heartache and you… kiss her. Get close and come up to bed with her.
What the fuck. Neither of those perspectives work logistically. But you can only think of three options, either he was compelled by your scent, hated your scent, or… it didn't really matter that much.
You're sitting there smoking, woman and dog, blah blah blah. Her scent floats over to you, and it's identical to Amelia's. How strange. It doesn't inspire any particular longing or hatred within you, because… you're over her. It's just an oddity that you soon forget about because it really doesn't matter that much to your life. A year later it happens again, and again you just brush it off as the strangest coincidence.
And then one night you see her doing something dangerous, and for some reason that bothers you. It shouldn't bother you, because she's not Amelia, but something compels you to pretend to go for a jog just to make sure she's safe. And when you get near you smell that familiar smell, and it's just whatever to you, so you start to run past, and she says, "No, baby."
You think for an insane second that she's talking to you, because of the long ago memories from her smell that makes you feel as though she knows you already. But just as you're about to turn and figure out why she's telling you not to leave, you remember she has a dog, and she's definitely not talking to you. She has no reason to talk to you. You monitor the rest of her walk and make sure she can't see your face, and you head home. Onto the next job in the morning.
But you're sitting there, feeling not particularly compelled towards love or hate of this woman, yet somehow bothered by her taking unnecessary risks. There isn't much in your life that's unusual any more. Nothing really gives you pause or has you confused, but this is such a strange little puzzle that for some reason it makes you change your plans. You'll just scare her into behaving, and then you can wash your hands of it, your one good deed for the decade.
Except it doesn't work. She engages with you and seems to have no sense of self preservation. It's so annoying that you install a camera just to make sure she hasn't died while you're gone. And then she starts being an idiot and flipping you off every day, and for some reason you like it.
That's the one. You could go on and on and you just know it would fit. The conflict and the hot and cold and trying to stay away, because Victor didn't want to develop feelings for you, but he did. Your scent is just a random peculiarity that he accepted and moved on from, as partners do. As you will have to do, in regards to Amelia.
You look up and focus on the stars again. There are more there than before because it's fully night now. You're low enough here on the ground that the wind isn't too bad, and most of your skin has dried off so it's pretty bearable. The crickets are chirping again. They had stopped for a few minutes just a little bit ago, you suddenly realize. Stopped even though you haven't moved.
"Victor?" you call hesitantly. You feel like an idiot doing this, but on the off chance that he's actually—
"Yeah, baby."
It comes from somewhere above you, in one of the trees, but you can't see a thing up there.
"What are you doing?" you ask curiously, heart picking up.
There's a hint of amusement in his voice now as he replies, "Respecting your boundaries."
Oh yeah, you're naked. You should immediately get up and yank your clothes on because he's got to be annoyed at you for lying, but instead you just lay there and gaze up into the dark leaves.
Your heart knows he's forgiven. At this point it would be stupid to even tell him about your afternoon of suffering, because you've already worked everything out, and solved the problem before he even knew there was one. You might as well erase the whole day from existence, from the time he told you that he's been crazy about you.
You try to think back to the morning, and what you wanted to say and do tonight. You were concerned over kissing him right. Making him feel special and wanted. It would have been easy because you would still be in your room with a belly full of dinner, and his door would be unlocked, and you wouldn't have pond scum dried to every inch of you.
You would have slept together, you know it for an absolute fact. Regardless of what the X-men would think, you'd have done it, more than once if Victor wasn't too tired. You've been lapping up his affection drop by drop, and now, faced with a running faucet of it, and you would have drank your fill.
But instead you're here, naked on the grass, and Victor is somewhere above, watching you.
"Do you want to fuck me?" you whisper up at him.
There's a long pause. You can imagine him shifting, trying to figure out if you're serious or not. "Out here in the woods like an animal?"
You stretch out on the soft grass, shoving your arms above your head and pushing your chest forward a little as you wiggle and let out a dreamy sigh. "...Yeah."
"Fuck yeah, I do."
Goosebumps scatter across your skin and you grin at the sensation. If you were in a vindictive mood you would spread your legs open right now and touch yourself. Make him watch and suffer for everything he's put you through, until you're satisfied that he's earned some pussy. But you're not in that sort of mood. You're in the sort of mood to fuck him in his nice soft bed and kiss him exactly how you want.
Feeling awfully like a dried up salamander, you peel yourself off the grass and set about putting your clothes back on. The back of you is still damp and it makes everything an enormous pain because you have to attempt to do it pretty since Victor is here, as if there's some way to put underwear on pretty when your legs are like the underside of a dirty sticker.
Finally you're dressed and peering through the trees, trying to figure out which direction leads you back to the mansion. You got yourself into this, you might as well get yourself out.
