We Are the Makers and the Breakers [Closed]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Maximus and Venus
WHAT| Some holiday mourning for a relationship that barely was and a relationship that wasn't.
WHEN| Before the wedding.
WHERE| District 3 Suite
WARNINGS| Mentions of psychiatric medication and family death. Probably drinking, at some point.

People try at Christmas. Venus appreciates that, she supposes.

Still, it's a holiday filled with the void of where her family isn't, a day stuffed with memories of assembly-stuffed stockings at Xavier's with her name misspelled, with her saying thank you but no thank you, she's much too old for that now. Of relatives who couldn't bear to see her in any other way sending Christmas cards summing up the year. Your cousins are getting so big, they ask about you all the time, but of course you understand why they can't see you in the state you're in... Of candy canes with her therapist's business card taped to them.

Teleporting to some beach in Bermuda to pretend it's June. Taking enough of her sleeping medication to spend eighteen hours of the twenty-fifth in bed. Missing, missing, missing her mother and father and the sound of her brothers fighting over who got to open their presents first.

The chill that's fallen in District Five - not a bitterness like last time, but a sort of awkwardness of unspoken thoughts and assumptions between her and Enjolras - hasn't helped. So she turns to District Three, instead. The lights on the tree sparkle to the beat of a glitch-hop Christmas carol. A little robot snowman greets her as she enters. She walks on by.

She knocks on Maximus' door, looking cheerful and flawless and unruffled, as she always does. As she's made such a career out of being that it is no longer even tangentially related to her inner state. She holds a piece of jerky in her hand to throw for the tiger.

"Hey." She bites the corner of her tongue. "Figured you'd be spending this holly jolly day alone too. Wanna see if there's a Starbucks or something wringing holiday pay out of its employees?"

Comments

[gluteus]

He shook his head. "Taking my own life is not an option. If I did, I would never meet them in the afterlife." Only heroes went to Elysium.

He sighed, and rubbed at his temple.

"Of course, I owe many of them. I certainly owe Wyatt my life, many times over. But what is that life worth if it is wholly without honour?"

[celebrityskinned]

"Constructing a situation to get yourself killed is exactly the same thing, though. Believe me, I know. I'm real good at it."

She stretches her legs out and points her toes like a dancer.

"Honor isn't the only worthwhile thing. Someone likes you and, from the rumors, loves you pretty deep. I saw your last death on TV." She finishes her cup. "Maybe you should count your blessings."

[gluteus]

"Not if I made it worth something." It's a petty argument and his heart isn't in it. If he was so sure, he'd have been dead months ago.

His lips thinned as he stared into the black pit of his cup, electing to take a drink instead of immediately reply.

"He deserves better," He said finally, eventually. Miserably. "He deserves someone who isn't torn, with a foot in the afterlife."

[celebrityskinned]

"Maybe. But that's not who he wants."

Venus tilts her head up and calls for the barista. "Hey, can you play something that isn't Christmassy? Like, anything? Can't you see we're in here to escape the holidays?"

[gluteus]

"Who he wanted," Maximus corrected, a little sullenly. Forget anything happened.

The Barista sniffed but changed the music to something exceedingly depressing and slow, and then started to wash mugs way too vigorously.

It only seemed to hit Maximus' mood lower.

"Before he realised."

[celebrityskinned]

"Did you miss the memo?" Venus yells over her shoulder at the barista. "God, turn on some Katy Perry or something."

She turns back, glowering at the emptiness of her mug. "You think he changed his mind that fast? Goddamn, watch the Arena tapes if you have to. You don't just stop wanting someone like that after you get hurt once."

[gluteus]

The barista slams down a mug just a little too hard and in a moment the melancholic soundtrack was replaced with something sickeningly upbeat. Maximus didn't even seem to notice, though he reached across the table to offer Venus his still mostly-full cup.

"I cannot ask him to forgive me for something I cannot change," He said, a little brokenly. "He asked me to forget what had happened between us, and I cannot even manage that simple command."

[celebrityskinned]

Barista is so not getting a tip. Venus signals for another drink and gives Max a wry, dry smirk.

"Do you take everything people say during breakups that literally?"

[gluteus]

Yes, was the simple answer, though Maximus didn't know it, and his cup hovered in her direction before he realized that she'd simply ordered another for herself and he brought it back to his lips.

"Wyatt is a man of his word," Maximus said firmly, and perhaps a little defensively. "I've never known him to speak anything other than plainly. I've never been given reason to doubt his convictions."

He frowned, lowering his gaze. The slang might not be something he totally understood, but the meaning was obvious. "... I've not a lot of experience in the subject. My wife was everything to me. Before her, I'd only ever known one other woman with any seriousness, and she married my best friend and was better for it."

[celebrityskinned]

The barista, looking frustrated, pours Venus another drink. Venus doesn't spike this one, deciding that the warm feeling at the pit of her stomach is enough for her. She's a lightweight, and feels no need to exacerbate that.

"People say all sorts of things when they're angry, double so if they're angry at themselves, double that if it's because they're hurting. Even honest people." She wraps one hand around the other. "Look, I'm not a marriage counselor or whatever. But I made a living off of making people feel like studs and romantics. I know a little bit about relationships."

Not that it helps her with Enjolras.

"I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually mean 'forget it'."

[gluteus]

Maximus, on the other hand, was no lightweight - though as he finished off his second coffee he began to feel his mind grow a little sluggish if he turned his head too quickly.

He ordered a third and the barista slammed it onto the table as if she just wished that they would leave already.

"Whether or not he truly means it, he still asked it of me." His shoulders slump because his protests sound weak even to his ears, but it still comes down to the same thing. He wanted to honour his family. He did. But he could not think of a way how. And the more that the warmth of the coffee twisted inside him, the worse it hurt to even think of Wyatt's face.

(He could deny himself all he liked, but it didn't strip the longing away.)

He sighed, and looked up at Venus apologetically. "I am sure this is exactly what you wished to speak of, when you brought me here."

[celebrityskinned]

"Listen to yourself. Listen to all the excuses you're finding to justify making yourself feel bad." She blows on her coffee again. "My therapist told me that once. Well, my second therapist. The first one was a dick."

She shrugs and pours some more sugar into her drink. "Anyway, I was hoping more to talk about, I don't know, the art of sabre-tooth tiger care, but it's better than talking about my love life, so."

[gluteus]

"That bad?" He asked, all too happy to take an out where he saw it. The fact that she was right wasn't sitting well with him.

However, a very wry and very small slipped to his lips.

"I could lend you said saber-tooth tiger, if you require him."

[celebrityskinned]

Venus pauses, then explodes into snickering she can't contain. "Don't. Don't tempt me with that. He's just..."

She shakes her head. "Did you know he gave me a note to invite me to the wedding? We literally live next door but he acts like I'm the sabre-tooth tiger ever since we kissed."

[gluteus]

"Who?" Maximus asked, frowning.

"Though I doubt Ferox would understand a note, but-- I admit curiosity to who would be so impersonal."

[celebrityskinned]

Venus laughs again, then takes a deep breath that puffs her whole chest out and back in before leaning back. "Well, you should be spending more time with him soon anyway. He's our latest Victor."

[gluteus]

He raises his eyebrow. "Enjolras? He has a - ah - very detailed interest in Rome," He said carefully. To put it mildly.

"I was not aware that the two of you were... romantically engaged."

[celebrityskinned]

"We're not." Venus shakes her head. "Like you said, he has a really detailed interest in Rome, and politics, and his ideals, and so on, and if you ask him to talk to a girl he takes all that eloquence and promptly chokes on it."

[gluteus]

"Ah," Maximus said, offering her a sympathetic smile of understanding. "Well, it is no small thing, to distract a man with such a mind. That you make him tongue-tied may well be a good sign, if you're seeking his affections."

[celebrityskinned]

"I don't really see the point of seeking them anymore." She sighs and stirs her coffee-vodka with her spoon. "He's made it pretty clear he's 'not looking for a wife'."

[gluteus]

Maximus choked, having never quite considered that angle, and then desperately wondered if affairs in the future were all meant to end in marriage. (He was, for a Roman, quite a prude in regards to his extra marital affairs. It was quite normal to keep lovers.)

"... A wife. Is that what you wanted to be?" He asked cautiously. He couldn't help but think of what Wyatt must have thought of their relationship if that was the expected path.

[celebrityskinned]

"No." Venus pouts. Outright pouts. "I don't expect to live long enough for that to become an issue. He's just French."

As if that explains everything.

[gluteus]

It explains absolutely nothing, as Maximus has no idea what the word means and the bemused confusion on his face clearly reads that way.

"Then he must think you want something more than you do. It isn't uncommon for a man to balk at marriage if he thinks that's what on offer."

[celebrityskinned]

"Well it's not like I want to- you know what, whatever. It doesn't matter." She shakes her head and finishes her cup of coffee. "He can sip from his cup of victory on his own."

[gluteus]

He gives her a bemused smile, and indeed feels somewhat cheered despite their conversational topic. (Perhaps the company, perhaps the alcohol.)

"If he does not earn you, he does not deserve you," He said, soundly.