Growing Pains
an EctoImplosion2023 fic! Check out @this-is-z-art-blog's incredible associated art here!
Valerie is still seething when she leaves campus, anger burning warm in her chest. The fall chill soothes, but it burns nonetheless, and other pedestrians move from her path as she makes her way to the bus stop. It’s half a block away; then she has a ten minute ride back home. Fifteen if the intersection near the Starbucks is backed up.
The bus stop is crowded, and Val has to push past a group of freshmen in order to sit on the cold metal bench. Her knee aches when she stretches it out, but it relaxes once it’s straight, and Val lets out a deep breath. Her breath billows out in clouds in front of her, and she focuses on the pattern instead of lingering on her frustration. Her midterm presentation was good, informative and entertaining and she was going to ace it, frat boys in the third row be damned. They could try to trip her up and talk over her all they wanted. Val could yell, and she did, until finally her professor did something.
She digs her phone out of her pocket, putting one of her old earbuds in her ear. It takes a couple tries to get the plug in at just the right angle, but soon enough music is blocking out the chatter of the people around her. Val grins at the eleven messages waiting for her in the group chat. Sam, Danny, and Jazz had all wished her luck; Tucker had sent her a truly incomprehensible meme that she assumed was a show of support. Elle had sent her a kissing emoji. The remaining messages were Sam and Tucker admonishing Elle for being so risqué.
(At the end of freshman year of high school, Danny had approached her. He said, “Val, I need your help.”
She said, “With what? We took the chem final already,” because she had always been better at chemistry than him.
He shook his head, looking more like forty than fourteen, and said “Val, come on. I know you know what this is about.”
Icy panic gripped her, squeezing the breath from her lungs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Danny,” she pleaded.
“Yes you do,” he said, and he told her about a ghost hunting team and where he wanted the headquarters to be. And he said “You know I’m Phantom,” and she shook her head silently, because of course he was but he couldn’t be, because he was here in front of her. “There was an accident with my parent’s portal,” he explains. “It didn’t hurt much.”
Within a couple months, they were like superheroes. Val and Danny and Elle were on the front lines; Sam and Tucker and Jazz were their women and man in the chair. It was easier when they worked together. Everyone got enough sleep. Nobody got too beat up. Elle was there. It was good.)
The bus comes to an abrupt stop in front of her. Val stands and takes a last deep breath in. She lets the fire leave with it when she breathes out. She settles on the bus between an older woman with a small dog and two gentlemen deep in conversation in a language she doesn’t recognize. The street passes by the window; the coffee shop she goes to on Wednesdays, the Thai place Dani took her last year for her birthday, the diner with the good bacon and real maple syrup.
Val watches them pass, and the embers of her frustration flare. Deep breaths. She’d wanted to go back to them so many times, run her fingers along the menu and order what she got last time anyway, sit in the same spot. Be a regular. Become part of the community, know the servers’ names. Be the person she’d appreciated at the Nasty Burger. Dani always wanted to go somewhere new instead, and Val humored her. She was a regular at her Wednesday morning coffee shop, anyway, since Dani wasn’t with her between her classes.
The bus jerks to halt at the next stop, sighing as the doors open. Val breathes her anger out into the cold drafts. She has a paper to write for sociology, a lab report for chemistry, and ten questions out of her calculus textbook. She needs to study for her biology midterm. Thursday she has therapy and dinner with her Dad. Friday is laundry day and she’ll need more quarters.
She’s one stop from home when it happens. It’s a crow, high up, diving down towards a building. But Valerie is standing, backpack on the ground, heart pounding. Icy panic clutches her heart. She grabs her bag, practically falls out of the bus in her desperation to get off. She takes deep breaths. In, out. She sits on a cold metal bench and watches her breath billow out in front of her.
(At the end of junior year, Vlad had fucked it all up. He always did. Part of her was still glad he hadn’t picked prom night.
They’d managed to stop the world from imploding. Partway through the process, Danny had left, chasing Vlad away from them. Buying them time. Yelling a stupid quip as he flew away. Valerie had to trust him to handle it, because she was in the Fentons’ basement, doing everything she could to get the portal to stabilize. To get Elle back on this side of it.
Danny wasn’t back when the world returned to normal. Elle promised to take care of the last part of the process, as long as they went after Danny, didn’t let Vlad beat him too badly, took care of him. She trusted them to do that, so they better deliver, she yelled, and Val beat Tucker and Sam up the stairs.
She beat them outside. That’s why she saw it happen. A well-placed hit. Hard enough to hurt.
Hard enough to start Danny hurtling out of the sky, human before he hit the ground. She’d caught him before he became a corpse on the concrete, landing awkwardly with his weight. Tucker was beside her when she landed, collapsing onto the road with Danny in his arms. He was screaming. She couldn’t hear him past the ringing in her ears, because Vlad wasn’t the only threat here. Jack and Maddie were standing in the doorway, eyes wide and full of fear. Val faced them. Vlad was doing a fucking villain monologue in the sky, and the Fentons weren’t taking their eyes off of their son. Sam rose from where she had knelt next to Tucker. Her hand was cold in Val’s, but Valerie was glad for it. She could do this on her own, but she didn’t want to. She could take on both Fentons easily; she didn’t want to hurt Danny’s parents.
In the end, she didn’t have to. Maddie reached for her blaster and Val tensed for the attack, but Maddie shot Vlad out of the sky, and nobody reached for him as he fell.)
Valerie stands. She has to get home. It’s been a long day, and she wants to watch Elle make them dinner, see her grin and laugh from the couch. She dreams of it on the walk to her apartment, as a cold drizzle starts up and her coat begins soaking through. She will go inside and it will be warm and dry, and Dani will be at the stove as she so often is this time of day. Music will be blasting, and Dani will be dancing, and Valerie will call to her as she takes off her shoes. Dani will turn the music down but not off, and meet her at the door. It was a near-daily routine, and Val couldn’t wait.
She gets the mail from their mailbox, exchanges pleasantries with Doug from downstairs, and then stands outside the apartment, listening to Dani moving around inside. Val opens the door, greeted first by Dani’s loud music. She closes the door and begins unbundling, setting her hat and scarf down on the table they keep by the door.
She tries to, anyway. The table is gone, and as she looks around, she realizes that the entire living room has been rearranged, including the pictures and paintings they had hanging up on the wall. A container of caulk sits forgotten on the coffee table, which is across the room from where it was this morning, and the couch is facing the wrong direction.
Dani’s head appears from behind the tall wooden bookshelf they’d gotten from the secondhand store nearby. Her eyes brighten when they reach Val. “Great, you’re home!” Val doesn’t respond, trying to focus on getting her shoes off. “I redecorated, hope you don’t mind. Totally lost track of time, sorry about not having dinner ready! Could you help me with some stuff? I gotta move the bookshelf over there, and finish sealing up the old nail holes.”
Valerie takes a deep breath in, then lets it out. She wasn’t prepared for their space to be in disarray, and to have to help clean it all up. She wanted a relaxing evening after a long day. She was tired. “Val?” Dani asks, eyebrows pinched up in concern.
Val takes a deep breath in. She lets it out. “I just- our house is different,” Val says. “I had such a long day and now I have to help with a remodel because you can’t just let things stay! You’re always changing things and our home is never the same for more than a month and we can’t ever go anywhere twice and I’m so sick of it!”
Dani’s eyes are wide, hurt clear on her face. “What are you talking about? You’re always fine with me changing around the furniture.” Dani moves closer to Val, stepping out from behind the bookshelf. “Where is this coming from? You’re always excited to go to new places with me!”
“Well maybe if you paid more attention to me, you’d know. I always just go along with what you want and you never try to do the same for me! I always have to be the one giving things up!”
“You have always said you want to do those things, why are you yelling at me for listening to you! Am I supposed to stop believing you when you tell me things? I’m supposed to read your mind and magically know you’re upset but not upset enough to tell me?”
“I’m not- I can’t- I can’t do this right now,” Val says. “I don’t want to do this.” She hears Dani protesting, but moves towards their bedroom anyway. She doesn’t want to fight; she doesn’t have the energy for it. She’s so tired, and that’s why she isn’t paying enough attention to the new layout of the room. That’s why she trips on the corner of their rug and starts to fall, slamming into the coffee table and landing on her bad knee, the old rug scraping her through her jeans.
Dani is with her in an instant, lifting her up off the floor. Val feels hot tears on her cheeks, and lets herself be held. Dani brings her to their bedroom, setting her gently on their bed. Val reaches for the tissues, and focuses on getting her breathing back under control. Dani returns to their room with the first aid kit in hand, and sits on the bed next to her. Val leans into Dani, and they sit together in silence, both searching for something to say.
Dani starts first. “I’m sorry that I upset you,” she says into Val’s shoulder. “I never want to upset you. I just wish you’d talk to me about what’s upsetting instead of shoving it down. Even at my best I won’t know everything you’re thinking. I want you to feel like you can talk to me.”
“I know I should but… How could you not have noticed that we never do what I want to do? It feels like you don’t pay any attention to how I’m feeling beyond me just saying it. And what is up with you and moving the furniture? I feel like you’re constantly changing our space without talking to me about it.”
“I never realized I don’t tell you first, I always just get the impulse to change it up and refresh the area. It gets boring if it’s the same for too long. It’s the - what does Maddie call it? - the Ghost Obsession or whatever. I love to go new places and do new things. I want adventure and change and excitement! Keep it different, change it up.”
“What, so you’re obsessed with change and I just have to deal with it?”
Dani turns to look at her, brows furrowed. “That’s not what I said at all.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I don’t get it though,” Val replies, stretching her good leg out and crossing it over Danielle’s.
“I’m not obsessed with change,” Dani starts. She speaks slowly and thoughtfully, placing down each word with care. “It’s more like… salmon.”
“Salmon?” Val repeats.
“I’m not obsessed with change any more than a salmon is obsessed with swimming. That’s just what it does. Is a salmon swimming upstream because it wants to? It’s compelled to? Is it just instincts? Does a bird fly south for the winter because it’s run the math on survival or because something deep inside it tells it to go? Obsession isn’t a good word for it. It’s something I need and something I am. It’s hard to explain, but does that make any sense?”
“I guess it makes sense,” Val replies. She sets her next words down gently. Carefully. “It still seems like you’re wanting me to just do what you want all the time. Like, because you can’t control it I just have to deal with it.”
“I get why you feel that way, but that’s not what I meant. I just wanted you to understand where I’m coming from, I guess.”
“Okay. That makes me feel better.” Val pauses, gathering her thoughts. She stands and changes into loose pajama pants, Dani hovering anxiously as she moves on an unsteady leg. She sits back down gingerly, thoughts collected and voice steady. “I’m frustrated because it feels like you aren’t paying enough attention to me to know I’m upset. I know that it’s silly, that I should just tell you I’m upset, but I want you to be able to know without me telling you. So that I know you care enough to notice little things about me.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Dani asks quietly. “I always thought we were good at talking about stuff, so it just feels weird that you don’t want to talk to me about what you’re feeling.”
“It’s just hard,” Val says. She takes a deep breath. “My Mom died and everything changed. And then later, when my Dad lost his job… They all just dropped me, like I was nothing and we weren’t ever friends, like they never even cared. And my Dad did his best but I had to get a job so we had enough to eat. We didn’t know if we’d be able to make rent or if Dad’s car would die and we’d be fucked. I just never knew if we’d be alright day to day and month to month and now I just - I have to know,” Val said, choking on a sob. “I have to know what’s happening when, because if I don’t know then it could all be gone.”
Dani goes quiet for a while, starting to patch up Val’s knee. “That makes a lot of sense,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it before, Val. I promise I’ll do my best to notice any hesitancy you may have, and pay more attention to how you’re feeling. But I need you to try and be honest with me about how you’re feeling and what you want. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’ll always be here. I just need you to talk to me.”
Val nods. “I can do that. But can we also… make more solid plans? Maybe you could text me before you rearrange the whole apartment. Or maybe we could do it together? Make a weekend of it next time?”
Dani grins. “I would love that,” she replies. “What about the not going places? If you want to go back to places more often, maybe we could alternate? Either we alternate choosing where we go or maybe we could alternate new places and old places?”
“Something like that would be nice,” Val sighs. “I’m hungry now.”
“I bet you are, you had a long day.” Val nods, a little shaken by the realization that this has all been just one very long day. “Val? I love you so much. You know that, right?”
Val grins at her tiredly. “Of course I do. I love you too.”
“Good,” Dani says, standing up and beginning to pack up the first aid kit. “Surgery’s done, your knee’s all set. What do you want for dinner? We could try that new Chinese place up the street.”
“No,” Val says. “I want to get pizza from that place with the really good garlic knots.”
“Absolutely,” Dani says, warmth bleeding from her voice. Val takes a breath, in and out, to ground herself in this moment.
“It was easier when we were kids,” Val says. “We just had ghosts to worry about. We could just punch our problems and they’d go away.”
Dani laughs. “It wasn’t easier at all. I have a shit shoulder and your knee bothers you all the time. We were constantly fighting for our lives. It was good, though.”
Val smiles with her. “It was good.”
Dani rests their foreheads together. “It was us.”
