Peter Kelly (nylonghorn) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-02-10 18:04:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | jonathan harker, mina harker |
Who: Peter and Helena
What: Um. Awkward. Ever since that night when, you know, everyone forced him to admit what he already thought he was doing a good job of ignoring. He's decided he wants to talk about it.
Where: Their apartment
When: BACKDATED to Friday 2/5
Warnings: Pete's a nice guy, he's not even a yeller, it should be fairly mild.
He didn't want to be angry, he hated being angry it was his least favorite emotion, even moreso if the anger was directed at his wife. He loved her, despite their arguments and their complete lack of common ground, he loved her. He'd always loved her, and marrying her had been less about doing the "proper" thing (he was from Texas, things weren't always proper there!), and more about the next logical step for someone he honestly wanted to spend his life with. Things were not easy for them, ever. They fought and they argued, but when it was good it was great, at least for him.
She took care of him, and he did his best to take care of her. He knew that there was no possible way that he was her ideal husband. He doubted that when she imagined who she'd be married to it would be a comic book junkie with a law degree from Houston. He tried to make up for what he lacked in different ways, he did his best to love her and give her what she needed. He did his best to make her laugh, and he did his best to make her happy.
Lately, he'd noticed that things were changing, not just with their marriage but with their whole lives. Everything around them was changing and the wedge that had always been a bit of a road hazard was now a full on road block and he didn't know how to get over it. The anger wasn't coming from what she did (or didn't do), the anger was coming from the fact that as much as he tried to ignore that something was amiss, everyone else saw fit to notice it and throw it in his face. It was one thing if he noticed a look here or there, he could ignore it, play it off as nothing. As much as he enjoyed the company of others, dirty laundry was supposed to stay in the house. Here everyone seemed perfectly fine with calling out his wife (which angered him on a more protective level) and letting everyone know what an idiot he was turning out to be.
He would have been more than happy to talk it out, but he felt like anything she said would be nothing more than damage control, and would she admit it even if there was something wrong? Would he trust her? He wanted to, if anyone asked who he trusted more his wife or anonymous people in his building he'd say his wife without hesitation. She'd been quick to defend herself, and that is what had originally set him off. She'd been quick to assure him that nothing was wrong, and people were idiots who were just up to starting trouble. It all seemed empty to him, but to avoid the fighting he'd assured her he was fine. More than fine, in fact he was so fine he'd dragged her to work with him for the last two days whether she wanted to or not.
He maintained the utmost respect with his boss, he didn't confront him about it, and he certainly didn't question him. Ignoring it was all he could do to get through the days. He was a bit quieter perhaps, and definitely more focused on his work than casual conversation, but he wanted to be fine.
Friday evening had rolled around and they were sitting at the dinner table eating in silence. Mostly he was just pushing food around his plate and his bottle of beer went untouched next to his plate. He had two choices here, he could start the conversation by proclaiming that he wanted to work all weekend, or he could start the conversation by saying he wanted to talk things over and avoid an awkward weekend of the two of them forced to be in each other's company.
He set his fork down and cleared his throat softly before he looked up at his wife. "I don't know how I'm supposed to be acting, Lena," he admitted sounding slightly defeated.
Helena had spent days in near complete and miserable silence. The night of the Incident she had tried to talk. Tried and failed and eventually started yelling (although screaming was always out of the question). All it did was force him into further silence, further anger, until she left to walk off her frustration. Hours later she came back and he was still upset and she laid in bed all night. Not sleeping, not relaxing, just waiting. When the sun came up she assumed he would forbid her to go to work with him and Vlad. Instead he insisted that she go still, not making any mention of her lack of enthusiasm or lack fo sleep.
The day passed slowly, only a few words passing between them when they absolutely had to speak to one another. For the most part, Lena kept her thoughts to herself, never touching, never looking, never saying anything to anyone at all.
Friday passed in much the same manner for her.
Now at dinner she was exhausted, two days of near constant guilt and defeat weighing heavily on her. When he spoke she almost laughed. On Wednesday night she had wanted so much for him to say something, do something. Be angry, be sad, be upset. Something. Anything. But two days later she wasn't even sure what could be said. The moment had passed her by and all her retorts and defenses had left her.
"I don't know, Pete. You're supposed to act... however you want to act." A completely unhelpful, uninformative answer, so she spoke again. "I would like for you talk to me about it. To tell me how you feel. But I know how you feel on talking." She wasn't looking at him, eyes trained down at the salt shaker on the side of the table. There was a slight smirk at the side of her lips, another time it would have been a full grown smile and a joke, but that seemed like a lifetime ago.
Peter didn't know how he felt, she wanted him to express as much, and act how he wanted, and what he really wanted to do was go back to before this happened when he could still pretend like she was as interested in this marriage as he was. "I feel embarrassed, Lena," he said finally. "I feel embarrassed for you," he added.
He didn't know what was true and what wasn't, and he didn't even know if she trusted him enough to be honest with him. It was a sad state of affairs for him to be in, and he didn't quite know how to deal with it. "He's my boss," he said after another moment of silence. "I'm aware that I'm not exactly husband of the year here, but now people all around us are speculating about my wife and my boss. I want to believe that it's just a bunch of bored people with nothing better to do, but I'm not an idiot, I have eyes and as much as I want to ignore everything like I did before, now other people are starting to notice! I just want you to tell me the truth no matter how bad it is," he admitted. "I don't want a frenzied moment of damage control with you trying to feed me pizza rolls and say over and over and over again how stupid some people are. It's patronizing and just makes me question it even more. I just want the truth."
He was embarassed for her, and Helena's face just fell even more. There was one injured party here and that was Peter. The fact that he was still worried over her just made her ache.
"The truth," she repeated and set her fork down. She couldn't. She couldn't tell him the truth, or at least not all of it. She couldn't hurt him when he did nothing to deserve it. And she knew that it could very well be the last of her seeing Vlad, in any capacity. As much and as often she talked about and was commended for putting others first, when it came down to it, Helena had her selfish moments.
"I'm not running away with Vlad," she said softly. "He doesn't have a thing for married women. You are quite the beefcake." She another little smirk but still she didn't look up at him. "I think that's all the rumors that keep coming up every other week."
Peter wanted to believe her, more than anything he wanted to believe her, so he pushed down any and all questions he had on the subject and forced himself to believe what she was saying. He was trying to imagine if the situations were reversed, would he tell her the truth? He knew he would only because the guilt would eat him up inside. He didn't know if she had the same issue or not. He didn't know anything about how to deal with this at all.
He leaned back in his chair and nodded, he wasn't really feeling any better but he could fake it. He would fake it. That's what she wanted from him, and he would give her anything she wanted. He didn't really think it was the time for beefcake jokes, or her smirking, but he smiled back at her nonetheless. "Well, as usual, you were right then. Probably just people being stupid. I'm sorry that I got so mad over nothing, I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions, and I shouldn't have been so impossible with you. You're my wife and I love you and I trust you, and you deserve the benefit of the doubt over our anonymous neighbors."
The fact was that she was either lying or she wasn't. He didn't think that anything he said to her would make her tell the truth, but he didn't have any proof that she was lying either. He couldn't very well just beat a dead horse, and the last thing he wanted to do was push her away. He had no choice in the matter but to take her at her word, and even if it left him with an empty feeling in his gut, he would do just that. If she said there was nothing going on then he had to believe her, he was her husband and he owed it to her to trust her. Continuously accusing her of lying, despite his knee jerk reaction, wasn't going to do anything but push her away.
That was it? Really? She was expecting more questions, more demands, more than just defeat. This didn't feel like a win. Guilt was eating her up inside, slowly but surely. But complete admission was something she would only do if she had to. And it wasn't looking like she had to. It didn't feel like it was something to be thankful for.
"You have nothing to be sorry about. Absolutely nothing. People have been talking. You got upset. You can feel however you want to feel." More half truths kept spilling from her lips but it was all she could give him. She couldn't outright lie, but the absolute truth was not an option. At least now she could look up at him. "I'm sorry our neighbors like to gossip. They're bored. They're nosy. But I love you too and they don't know the first thing about us." That was the truth. No matter what anyone said, she did. Whatever her reason for marrying Peter, she was with him in the first place because she loved him. How or how much or in what way wasn't anyone's business.
"I had no reason to behave that way, it's just people talking, Lena. I should have been ready to defend you and not mad at you."
She was right, they didn't know the first thing about them. He could agree with that, people never did. But Peter was either doing a good job of convincing himself, or it was a sick kind of coping mechanism, but he believed he knew his wife. He knew that she loved him, and maybe she didn't love him the way that he loved her, but he knew her heart. He knew that she would never want to hurt him, or see him hurt. He knew she was a good person with good values, and that anyone accusing her of what they were suggesting was an attack on her more than it was an attack on him.
"It's okay, Pete. I don't need any defending." In her mind, she didn't. The post had upset her but that wasn't her focus. It wasn't her reputation that she saw being attacked but Peter's. It was his world that was being threatened, his life that was being picked apart. She couldn't have that.
"Those people will say anything. Everyone's sleeping with everyone. Everyone's dead. Everyone's a murderer." Even if some, perhaps even half, of the things that came out during the anonymous post were true, Peter didn't know it. At first glance, second, even third glance, everything looked like a bunch of melodramatic nonsense.
He looked at her incredulously, "You're my wife, and I should defend you," he said seriously. "It doesn't matter if they will say anything, they've got no business saying anything about you, Lena."
Lena’s shoulders just slumped slightly, any fight or anxiety slipping out of her now that she saw where the conversation was going. She could try to insist that he had nothing to apologize for but that would get her nowhere she wanted to be. She should just let the entire thing drop. Even if it just strengthened the guilty feelings in her stomach.
“Or we can just ignore it? I mean, people are going to run their mouths regardless if you defend me or not. They’ve been nonstop gossiping about that man on the roof since we moved here. I can barely remember one of these post things passing by without some horrible comment about the redheaded girl who lives here. Maybe if we just let it go, they’ll get bored and stop saying things completely?”
Peter chuckled, "We can just ignore it too, next week we'll all be involved in some weird three way relationship," he said winking at her a bit. "I doubt they'll ever get bored, but it's a nice thought."
She laughed, so incredibly glad that he was starting to come back to a joking mood. "I wouldn't be too surprised. They seem to be equally preoccupied with your prowress." She took a moment to waggle her eyebrows at him. "Maybe I shouldn't let those comments go by unreplied to anymore. I wouldn't want them to forget what a stud Peter Kelly is."
He laughed and rubbed his forehead a bit before taking a drink of his beer, "Yeah well, I'm your stud, so they can talk all they like," he said setting the bottle back down on the table. "I'm sure you could set them straight on the beefcake front, tell them how sick I get when I mix beer and vodka, or tell them about my mario pjs."
"Oh, you never know. Maybe your Mario pajamas will just spur them on." The laugh hadn't left her yet but her smile took a more serious turn as she reached over and brushed her fingers across the back of his head. "Are we going okay now?"
He turned his hand a bit so he could hold hers and he squeezed it gently, 'Of course we're going okay. I just needed to have a pout," he assured her.