Lets Ruin Things Between Us

Valli usually didn't believe in liquid courage. He barely drank--he dealt with enough patients to know the risks of alcohol--and didn't keep any around the house. Even so, liquid courage was what he needed. Something to be his mental excuse, to tip him over into just do it already.

Because he did need to do it. He'd spent too long not doing it. Maybe he should have said it at the start, only Gask had still been adapting then. Six months on, he wasn't really adapting any more. He was just learning, just like anyone else would have learned, rather than struggling to remember what human touch felt like, or having to remind himself that stabbing someone was no longer a quick and easy solution.

Valli took a shot of the whiskey he'd bought, making a face at the disgusting taste. Pointless. A pointless gesture, as he'd point out to a client. He wasn't going to get drunk off a single shot. He wasn't even going to be tipsy. It was the placebo effect in action, trying to push himself along as he put the bottle away, settling in on the couch and waiting for Gask to get home.

Tonight. No more putting it off.

Valli jerked awake at the sound of Gask's voice. He hadn't made a noise coming in--old habits and all that--but the sound was clear enough to wake him up from where he'd dozed off.

"I'm here," Valli said, pushing himself up. No, definitely not drunk, much to his disappointment. There was no sway in his movement, no signs of the alcohol he'd ingested, and he gave Gask a brief wave before plopping right back down. No point in getting up, although he was twisted around to watch Gask as he let himself in.

"How was class?" Valli asked. He'd learned to avoid asking how was school, because that was a parent thing. Even in sessions he didn't, because asking about school in general had become loaded language.

Being attentive and observant were almost always good things, right up until they were used against you. Anyone else might have glossed it over, but not Gask. He'd sniffed it out right away, no doubt spotting Valli's change of routine from a mile off.

"Nothing's happened," Valli said, entirely truthfully. "Come sit."

He patted the spot beside him on the couch, and then reconsidered. Maybe it would be better if he was on the other side of the table.

He supposed it didn't matter.

"I wanted to talk, and my genius thought process was that some alcohol would help, only I forgot I hate the taste so I barely managed a single shot." Which was his way of making it entirely clear that he wasn't drunk, avoiding the possibility entirely.

He didn't want to get it done with, and then have Gask think he didn't remember or something.

He had written things down. His thoughts and feelings. He'd started months ago, putting it off and destroying the drafts over and over again. Trying to get his thoughts in order. Trying to decide what to say and how to say it.

Did he need to tell Gask? No, probably not. He could have kept quiet until the end of his days, but it would eat at him. It would bother him, not just that it had been unspoken, but that he had not been truthful. He felt like he was deceiving Gask, even if he was fairly sure that most people wouldn't feel the same way.

So he was a bit more careful, when he answered. He didn't start with I've been lying to you or anything like that. He was more picky with his works, working off long-ago written drafts he'd revised a thousand times.

"I was alone, before the simulation. I lived a normal life, but it was by myself. I saw and helped dozens of people each week, but my circle of friends was nonexistent. I had associates from work, but no one I visited or spoke to about anything other than work. My work was my life, and it consumed me. I was fine, or would have said I was fine, right up until the simulation."

Valli paused for a moment, his face twisting. The simulation was so many memories. Memories that were his, but also not his at all. A stranger who was also him.

"In the simulation, I was alone as well. I had no companions. I wandered, and preached, and helped where I could, but I didn't have anyone with me. And when I met you in the simulation, it was... strange. All of a sudden there was someone who I admired, who was good and brave. Who I could talk to about anything, lying under blankets talking about books and how things were. I wanted to stay. I no longer wanted to wander, I wanted to stay there with the settlement because of you."

That had been easy to understand, looking back. It had made the real world clearer, when he stacked it against his experiences in the simulation, he had understood.

"And then I woke up. I was alone again, with no one I wanted to stay with. I think I threw up, actually, at the realization of it."

Valli felt ill, and he was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the alcohol he'd ingested. He paused for a long moment, glancing up to try and watch Gask's face. He wasn't sure if Gask understood, or if he should be more blatant, but he was rather desperate to not have to say it, his courage already starting to waver around the edges.

He didn't understand it. He knew it all, knew the details, but he didn't know.

Which meant he was going to have to be specific.

"Yes, I know," Valli said. "I became... obsessed with the idea of how your face would look when you saw the library. How you'd react to it. To the possibilities. That you deserved better than your world, surrounded by cannibals and monsters in the wasteland. I wanted you to be happy, to get all those opportunities you didn't get to have."

He knew all those things, and yet they were all off-topic. They'd talked about that all before, and Valli's fingers wound together and then unwound, nervous energy bubbling up.

He had to just say it. Had to cough it up.

"I have feelings for you," Valli said. "Beyond the feelings of just friendship. Even though the way you came to be here is... unusual. And I felt like trying to act like like I didn't is just going to... to be bad. So I wanted to say it."

It took too much effort to not just close his eyes and wait for it to be over.