grapefruit and cookies 'n' cream with double malt
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: How It Was
Rating: G
Challenge: Grapefruit #18: by a thread, Cookies ‘n’ Cream #5: catch
Toppings/Extras: malt (x2)
Wordcount: 562
Summary: Victor Blackledge hurts and Robyn Walshe does all that she can.
Notes: Not quite as fluffy as usual... Grapefruit PFAH: Robyn : I’m not listening when you say ‘goodbye’. Chinese New Year Wish: May you find comfort in the arms of a friend.
Sometimes Victor hurt in ways that Robyn didn’t understand. She knew that. She accepted that it was probable she would never understand. Fingers raking through his hair, forehead pressed to the wall, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, he would tell her in a strangled voice it was probably better if she went away because he wasn’t in the right mind.
Robyn wasn’t sure what ‘the right mind’ was, but her friendship wasn’t a conditional one, and Victor was hard to read but-she never got the feeling he really wanted her to leave. Occasionally she felt it, a bad feeling, like she was intruding. But this wasn’t one of those times.
Bent over, back curled, breaths fast-it was like demons were forcing themselves out of his body. Perhaps that was why there had been a bit of religious fallout after the Blackledge Project had been disbanded-only the extremists, generally, but there had been people nonetheless who had said some awful things. Done some awful things.
He would say things, mutter things, breathe things: sometimes like he was praying, sometimes like he was grieving, sometimes like he was in just so much pain. It didn’t usually make sense. It didn’t matter.
There wasn’t much Robyn could do aside from wrap her arms around his waist and rest her cheek against his back, knowing that an irremovable tattoo was burned into his skin just beneath where she pressed against him: VC-11. But he was more than that.
“You’re OK,” she would say like a mantra when she felt him slipping, felt him hurting. “You’re OK, you’re OK.” A soft hum like the murmur of a calm ocean, and who knew why, but it seemed to work.
Bent like that with her hair itching on her neck and her legs awkwardly tucked to one side, Victor’s terribly thin and vibrating body clasped tight, she didn’t let herself feel anything but love and comfort because Victor… had some sort of intuition when it came to emotions. She forced any fear she had out of her mind, pushed herself to love him as much as she could, which was a lot. The first few times she’d encountered Victor snapping she’d panicked, and he’d known she was panicking, and then Victor had broken down.
She knew better now. She could handle him better. He was calmer during his phases, soothed, just about keeping his head above the endless cold ocean of his memories.
It would come in minutes or in hours, but it always came-a deep breath that washed the worries from the room and then he would relax, he would wake up, be reborn from whatever terrifying world he had become lost in and back to theirs. His shoulders lost their tension first and the rest of him would follow; he would turn from a block of ice to a slab of butter and melt back against her.
Robyn wished she could hold him for longer but Victor didn’t really like being held, normally. He was polite about it, never pushed her away, but she knew it made him uncomfortable to be touched once he was back to his usual self. When he needed it, though, she would hold him for a long as it took. She knew he would do the same for her.
And that was how it was.
Title: How It Was
Rating: G
Challenge: Grapefruit #18: by a thread, Cookies ‘n’ Cream #5: catch
Toppings/Extras: malt (x2)
Wordcount: 562
Summary: Victor Blackledge hurts and Robyn Walshe does all that she can.
Notes: Not quite as fluffy as usual... Grapefruit PFAH: Robyn : I’m not listening when you say ‘goodbye’. Chinese New Year Wish: May you find comfort in the arms of a friend.
Sometimes Victor hurt in ways that Robyn didn’t understand. She knew that. She accepted that it was probable she would never understand. Fingers raking through his hair, forehead pressed to the wall, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, he would tell her in a strangled voice it was probably better if she went away because he wasn’t in the right mind.
Robyn wasn’t sure what ‘the right mind’ was, but her friendship wasn’t a conditional one, and Victor was hard to read but-she never got the feeling he really wanted her to leave. Occasionally she felt it, a bad feeling, like she was intruding. But this wasn’t one of those times.
Bent over, back curled, breaths fast-it was like demons were forcing themselves out of his body. Perhaps that was why there had been a bit of religious fallout after the Blackledge Project had been disbanded-only the extremists, generally, but there had been people nonetheless who had said some awful things. Done some awful things.
He would say things, mutter things, breathe things: sometimes like he was praying, sometimes like he was grieving, sometimes like he was in just so much pain. It didn’t usually make sense. It didn’t matter.
There wasn’t much Robyn could do aside from wrap her arms around his waist and rest her cheek against his back, knowing that an irremovable tattoo was burned into his skin just beneath where she pressed against him: VC-11. But he was more than that.
“You’re OK,” she would say like a mantra when she felt him slipping, felt him hurting. “You’re OK, you’re OK.” A soft hum like the murmur of a calm ocean, and who knew why, but it seemed to work.
Bent like that with her hair itching on her neck and her legs awkwardly tucked to one side, Victor’s terribly thin and vibrating body clasped tight, she didn’t let herself feel anything but love and comfort because Victor… had some sort of intuition when it came to emotions. She forced any fear she had out of her mind, pushed herself to love him as much as she could, which was a lot. The first few times she’d encountered Victor snapping she’d panicked, and he’d known she was panicking, and then Victor had broken down.
She knew better now. She could handle him better. He was calmer during his phases, soothed, just about keeping his head above the endless cold ocean of his memories.
It would come in minutes or in hours, but it always came-a deep breath that washed the worries from the room and then he would relax, he would wake up, be reborn from whatever terrifying world he had become lost in and back to theirs. His shoulders lost their tension first and the rest of him would follow; he would turn from a block of ice to a slab of butter and melt back against her.
Robyn wished she could hold him for longer but Victor didn’t really like being held, normally. He was polite about it, never pushed her away, but she knew it made him uncomfortable to be touched once he was back to his usual self. When he needed it, though, she would hold him for a long as it took. She knew he would do the same for her.
And that was how it was.