f!tremere with trust issues trying to confess her feelings (romantic or platonic) to Beckett? Maybe it can take place a couple years after the ending of vtmb. Please <3 and i'm sorry for my poor english :(
i’m drawn to beckett and i’m all you’ve got right now so i’m gonna put my grubby little hands all over this prompt. ~ mod malkavian
Gehenna, that terror of the mind, the horror not to be spoken of aloud, the misericordiae of providence all that keeps it at bay…
Well, it doesn’t look a thing like the signs predicted.
No lakes of fire, no antediluvians rising to consume their childer, no earthquakes and world-shattering calamities thrusting kine and kindred alike into a pit of despair.
She remembers a movie, some 20 years old now, which featured a pit more desperate, in fact. A fairy tale. Nothing at all like the dark nights in which she now walks.
But the point remains: if this is Gehenna, it’s a poor one.
“I don’t mean to say I told you so-”
“Don’t-”
“-but I told you so.”
She rolls her eyes, an expression so seamless she seems born to it, and one so frequent as to be utterly impotent to him by now. In fact, he seems amused, which is one of his most frequent, and thus most annoying, expressions.
“You don’t have to be so smug about it.”
“Of course I do. Don’t they teach you anything in those chantries anymore? The older you are, the smugger you have to become.” He chuckles, a short, quiet sound.
“You’re an asshole,” she mutters.
“Indeed.”
He adjusts the collar of his coat, looks over the edge of the cliff. Mount Lee is as kitschy as ever, but the cliche seems to suit them both. Clinging to old glamour, ignoring the mud-filled slushie cups and used condoms that litter the grass. The glowing letters blaze down on the city, the two of them hidden behind its light.
She crosses her arms, taps her fingers on her elbow, worries the loose thread at the seam. It needs attention.
“I must admit, I didn’t think I would see you out of those walls anytime soon. Did Strauss let you out on a night pass?”
She can feel his amused smirk on the side of her face. A muscle in her cheek twitches.
“No…” he answers for her, moving to stand beside her in the dry, flattened grass, his hands in his coat pockets. “A solo venture, then.” He pauses. “What would your master say if he knew you were associating with doggerel kindred like me?”
“He’s not my master,” she barks.
Silence passes between them.
“There was something I wanted to say,” she finally admits.
“Oh?” His eyebrows raise, just slightly, his eyes cutting sideways toward her from behind his sunglasses. “What was it?”
She returns the glance, then looks back out over the busy, glittering halo of Los Angeles nightlife. Self-assured, intelligent, free of outside demands and obligations. If she lives long enough, she might claim the same, one of these nights. Might even feel safe enough to give voice to the feeling she doesn’t quite trust inside herself yet.
“Never mind,” she says, content enough to stand at his side. “I forget.”
