Malachi A. Lane (atonement) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-02-24 15:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, * kit, * terri, c: malachi lane, c: zora steele |
WHO: Malachi Lane and Zora Steele
WHEN: BACKDATED ; Sunday, February 11, 2018
WHERE: Java Chip
SUMMARY: Mal and Zora have a confrontation that leaves them both a little worse for wear.
WARNINGS: Mentions of abuse, blackmail, and general bad feelings. Heartbreak.
Zora had been using every ounce of effort she possessed to be happy for Remington. Only she and her sister really knew what it was like being raised by Harrison Steele and so she understood the reasons why having someone to talk to about it could be a relief. Maybe one day, Malachi could have been that person for her, too. Maybe if he’d told her he’d known. Maybe if he’d stayed. But as happy as she wanted to be for her sister, she was in equal sums devastated by what she perceived as Malachi’s betrayal. Her greatest fear was that someone would find out her darkest secret, that they would see her as she really was--broken, beaten, and not nearly as strong as she let others believe--and they would only see what Harrison Steele had spent so many years creating: a girl not worth loving. Malachi had known, to some extent, her darkest secret and he had left. He’d looked her in the eye and told her that he didn’t love her, and then he’d dropped everything to get as far away from her as possible. That reality hurt more, even, than Malachi leaving her in the first place and that had been utterly devastating. Of course, Zora’s struggle was not helped by the fact that she still lived with her parents and that she’d made it her personal mission to make sure her father kept his attention away from Remington and her love life. Now that Zora knew Remington could have something good and that it wasn’t going to look the way Harrison Steele would want it to look, all Zora wanted was to protect that. Maybe she couldn’t be happy herself, but Remington could and that mattered more than anything else. Even so, her father’s moods had been as volatile as ever and, despite her expertise with covering up the particularly bad days with makeup and expertly chosen clothing, Zora now felt like a walking billboard for his abuse. If Malachi had guessed it, and Waverly knew it, what had others seen in her, as well? Determined not to give anyone any additional reason to think anything was less than normal, Zora had maintained her daily routines. Wake up, grab coffee, go to school if it was a weekday, spend time at the library working on editorials. The coffee had had to wait until the afternoon today, though, thanks to Harrison’s insistence that they all attend church together. After the service was done, however, she had been excused until dinner and made a beeline for the Java Chip. Her coffee normally came from the campus coffee stand but the prospect of a latte from the Java Chip was just as much a comfort as her other routine. Zora didn’t generally like things to go against her routine. Change exacerbated her anxiety. Which was why it was more than a little bit of a shock, though she’d run into him once already since his return, that she looked up from her phone to order to see Malachi at the register. Her lips pressed together and, instead of saying hello like a normal person, she tried desperately to stop her heart from racing. Since returning to Dunhaven, some parts of Malachi’s life had settled into a similar pattern. He had Dartmouth send his transcripts and he had just resumed classes at Dunhaven University. He was back to living with his family, helping out the best that he could while his father was still recovering from the injuries he had sustained on the job. His family felt whole again, even if they still knew that he was keeping secrets...even if he wasn’t whole. Malachi had only spoken to Zora one time since he returned to Dunhaven, and he still couldn’t scrub the memory out of his mind of her date returning to find her with that stupidly charming smile. Mal knew that he didn’t deserve her. Even if he once had, Harrison Steele had ripped that away from him the moment that Mal had crumbled under his blackmail. Working at Java Chip wasn’t exactly a glamorous job, but he had flexible hours, they would work around school, and it didn’t require a great deal of brain capacity. He could even sit behind the counter and catch up on his class readings if the shop didn’t have an abundance of people loitering about and all of the cleaning and restocking was caught up. He could almost turn his mind off, going through the motions of ringing orders and writing names on cups. One scoop of this, two pumps of that flavor, a drizzle of chocolate...it was repetition and as long as Mal kept a smile plastered on his lips, people didn’t even notice if he wasn’t talkative. He had on an apron and a visor with a cheery name tag plastered on his chest. Not that the next person in line needed that to know who he was. He schooled his expression into something more neutral. He wasn’t supposed to be in love with her still. She wasn’t supposed to be able to see that just her presence cut him bone deep. Even still, he tried a small smile, the marker pinned between his fingers shaking a little as he asked softly, “Skinny Vanilla Latte? Or...is that still your drink?” Zora weighed her options. She could stand here and try to ignore the way her her heart pounded painfully in her chest, wait for her drink, and leave. Or she could leave now and, for once in her life, spare herself some of the hurt. Unfortunately, even if leaving meant protecting herself even a little, it also meant drawing attention to herself and drawing attention to herself wasn’t allowed. “I...yeah,” she said, her voice catching on the words. Zora reached up and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she did her best to look anywhere but at him. Maybe she could pretend this wasn’t Malachi in front of her. Maybe she could pretend that this wasn’t incredibly awkward. It didn’t help that he still knew her drink, even if she knew that her drink of choice was unoriginal enough to be easily remembered. She knew it wouldn’t be difficult to memorize, but Malachi had been the only one in her life that had at least pretended enough to care. “Iced, though,” she added as an afterthought in a effort to feel like he didn’t know her as well as he did. She just wanted to get through this so that she could go outside where she could breathe again. Seeing him continued to be like a sharp knife twisting just between her shoulder blades. But, now, there was something else there, too, something that hurt as much as that feeling of betrayal but was hotter, meaner, uglier. She was angry now, as well as hurt, and that was such a new feeling for Zora that she didn’t know how to process it. Instead, she tried to match his cool, collected expression, though she knew she wasn’t as good at it as he was because, unlike Malachi she thought, she didn’t mean it. Though he wrote her name on the cup that he picked up, plastic instead of a regular coffee cup, he scrawled the letters quickly as though some amount of sloppiness might disguise that his hand was shaking. He marked the boxes, even if he was the one making the coffee, and he set about putting it together. Malachi reminded himself to turn off his mind...this was as much routine as anything else if he could turn off the parts of him that mattered. Coffee, skim milk, vanilla syrup....the list went on, ingredients added to the cup, mixed together, the lid snapped tightly on top. He pushed it across the counter with a still-wrapped straw. His fingers hovered over the register for a moment, a heartbeat or two passing before he cleared his throat, “It’s on the house.” He would pay for it out of his own wallet. He didn’t really have the authority to give away free drinks, but he would buy her a hundred thousand iced skinny vanilla lattes over the course of the rest of their lives if it made up - just a fraction - for what he had done. Even if his choices had been made purely - horribly - out of a place of love, it did nothing to erase his guilt and the always-lingering pain. Somehow, those four words did nothing to make Zora feel better. On the contrary, it just made her feel worse. Not only had he known her secret and kept that knowledge from her before abruptly leaving her and breaking her heart in the process and showed up months later as if everything was fine, but now he also thought that he had the right to pretend like he was a nice guy by giving her free coffee. She’d seen it before. Harrison Steele was the master of pretending to be a nice guy while he secretly terrorized his own family. Maybe Malachi wasn’t even close to being Harrison Steele, but the fact that he would offer free coffee after everything they’d been through incensed her. “How much is it?” she asked, her words sharp. She pulled out her wallet--a little red and blue design that she’d had for years because something about it resonated with her--and reached inside for a five dollar bill. “Is it more than five?” He hadn’t expected her to turn own the small kindness he tried to offer. He hadn’t meant it to be something that he could lord over her...that he could remind her later that she owed him or anything of the sort. She sounded cold, an edge to her tone as she pulled out a five dollar bill. He had known that she could pay for it. She wouldn’t have come into the shop if she hadn’t, and she’d always had far more money than he had by association with her father. It probably wasn’t worth it, he thought. All the money in the world couldn’t make up for having a father with lofty expectations and a capacity for being a Grade-A Asshole. “It’s not...it’s $4.15, but it’s still not necessary,” he insisted, trying to pull his eyes off of that familiar wallet that he’d seen so many times over the years. It was the one she’d always carried...nearly for as long as he’d known her. He knew her well...which meant no matter how much he insisted, she was going to pay. He tried to suppress his sigh, reaching out to take the bill. That bracelet that she had gotten him a few years ago was still there on his wrist. He hadn’t taken it off when he left, and he hadn’t removed it since he had gotten back either...not even after seeing her with someone else on New Years. “Just take it,” Zora replied just before he reached for the bill and her voice sounded hysterical in her own ears. She should have left the moment she’d seen him because she knew that, even without this new feeling burning inside of her, seeing him was never going to be healthy for her. She hadn’t been able to let go and move on even when he’d been gone and seeing him now wasn’t going to help, either. Top that off with how angry it made her knowing that he’d known and left her the way he had, anyway, and it was a recipe for disaster. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, again, red blotches popping up around her neck and spreading to her cheeks. What she really needed right now was to get her change and leave. And then he took the bill and she spotted the bracelet and it was like her world started crumbling just that much more in haste. “I mean, you took everything else,” she said, barely audible and before she even knew the words were coming. Her eyes stayed locked on the bracelet and, if the words hadn’t caught her so off guard, she’d have had the sense to grab the drink and leave before this got worse. It broke his heart a little bit more to hear her sound so...unnerved. She obviously didn’t want what he had offered, and he made a mental note that...maybe being nice to her wasn’t what she needed. Maybe what she needed was for him to be indifferent or as unforgiving as he had made himself be when he had left those months ago, insisting that things had changed and he couldn’t pretend anymore that they hadn’t...that he wanted a new life somewhere far away from Dunhaven. Yet, here he was...right back again standing in a coffee shop and unsuccessfully attempting to not make things worse. He punched in the order to the register so that the drawer would pop open and he could get her change, but that didn’t stop him from hearing the words that she said. He froze, and for a second it felt like absolutely everything had stopped around him except for his own heartbeat. He didn’t even breathe for those long few seconds, “I never wanted to hurt you.” This was decidedly not something that they should be hashing out at his place of employment, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying the words. He had told himself over and over again that he’d never had a real choice. He’d had the illusion of one...he could have told Harrison no, and then the Senator would have ruined his entire family’s reputations and Zora’s credibility as a reporter before her career had even started. He could have said no and lost her anyway...but either way she ended up taking the brunt of the damage with him because they were both at the heart of the problem. A short, derisive laugh bubbled up and out of Zora’s mouth. Never wanted to hurt her. And yet he’d stood right there in front of her and hurt her in ways she hadn’t even known until now. If he’d cared at all about her wellbeing, he’d have taken her with him. She’d never asked for anything from him other than what she’d thought he wanted to give her. If he hadn’t been in love with her anymore, she could have learned to be his friend--hadn’t they been friends at the root of their relationship? He’d have taken her with him just because they were friends. But she was struck again by how cold he’d been that day, as if the years they’d been together and the experiences they had shared hadn’t mattered. And she was struck by the realization that her first mistake had been expecting anyone to save her. She couldn’t count on the person she thought she’d love for the rest of her life. She could only count on herself and a fat lot of good that was doing right now. She was still in the same position she’d been in when Malachi had left. “You’re a liar,” she said, this time more confidently, other customers fading to nonexistence in her peripheral. “You say you never wanted to hurt me, but the last thing you wanted to do was keep me safe.” They definitely didn’t need to be having this conversation in the middle of Java Chip, and yet now that it was happening, Mal didn’t even really care if he got to keep this job. There were other jobs. There was only one Zora, and this might be the only time he really got to talk to her. Her laugh was harsh, and her words were even moreso. A liar...well, he couldn’t deny that. He was a goddamn liar. He lied every time that he had told her that he didn’t love her the day that he left. He had liked telling her that his feelings had changed and that he wanted to leave and that he was suffocated by this town. He had delivered the best performance of his life, and it had only hollowed him out inside. Her words didn’t quite make sense to him, but they dredged up something other than the guilt and heartache that he normally felt. It was anger...though not at her. It was at her father. Even still, he couldn’t help the way that his eyes flashed with some concoction of hurt and vehemence, “Everything I did was to keep you safe. You and my family. Everything, Zora.” The coins of her change felt hot in his palm where he had gathered them, but never handed them over, having closed a fist around them, “You don’t know.” His chest felt like it was going to explode, the weight of all of his secrets threatening to crush him. He pushed the drawer in with a cheery little ring and placed the coins flat down on the counter, pushing them towards her even as they seemed to burn his hand. It was still dangerous for her to know the truth, he thought, but what strength he momentarily had seemed to have left him altogether. It left a boy with empty eyes and sagging shoulders staring at eighty-five cents instead of looking at the girl he still so desperately loved. Zora flinched unbiddenly at the sound of the drawer closing and she hated that tiny reaction. She hated how afraid she always was, how vulnerable. She hated that she felt powerless to make anything better, to save herself and her sister. And she hated that she was standing in front of this man that she had loved with every ounce of her being and felt like she didn’t know him at all. “I know more than you think I do. We’ve that in common, at least,” she said, shouldering her purse and taking a protective step away from him. “You can thank your sister for that.” Even now, for as much as she wanted to be as far away from here and from him as she possibly could, there was still that smallest part of her that wanted to stay, needed to be near him. She could add that gravitational pull to the list of things she supposedly hated. “I have to go,” she said, mostly to convince herself to move. And so she did move. She grabbed the drink and, just as she opened the door to go, she dropped it in the trash can by the door. She couldn’t stomach it now anyway. |