bea prewett ☆ tris prior. (stiff) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2017-10-08 12:00:00 |
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As Bea sat at the edge of the dock, her legs dangling over the side but toes not quite touching the water, she decided that she was glad that she wasn’t the type of girl who enjoyed things like homecoming dances. Instead, she got to spend the evening with Tobias who, despite how confusing and complicated her dreams and inexplicable feelings of familiarity were, was turning out to be one of the few people in her life--in Dunhaven or otherwise--who didn’t feel very complicated to her, at all. An individual sized cheese pizza, or what remained of it, sat to her right and Bea casually picked off the cheese to eat by itself. Leaning back on one hand, she let out a long sigh and, as much as she’d been enjoying the comfortable silence between them, she said, “Thanks for meeting me tonight. It’s been fun.” She glanced over at Tobias and smiled. “And blissfully devoid of overpriced dresses and obnoxious group dances.” Tobias snorted at the notion of a school dance--it sounded tortuous. “I’m kind of glad that sort of thing wasn’t allowed growing up. That’s one mainstream experience I really don’t feel sorry about missing out on,” he said unthinkingly. Tobias didn’t even realize that he’d let something slip--in fact, his posture was still relaxed as he leaned back on the dock, as if he thought Bea should already know what he meant. “Yeah?” Bea asked, her tone maintaining a note of nonchalance. She wanted know more about Tobias, had thought too much about his implied promise of wanting to tell her more, but didn’t want to spook him into clamming up. “I was always allowed to attend school dances but I never actually have,” she admitted. Part of her had wanted to when she was younger, if only because she’d still wanted to fit in then and pretend like everything was totally normal. She supposed she still felt that way to an extent, else she wouldn’t go through all of the trouble to create such elaborate lies about a family that didn’t exist. Dance, however, were not something she missed now. If anything, she was glad for an excuse not to have to pretend to enjoy that sort of thing. Tobias remembered then that Bea actually didn’t know much about him yet, since it wasn’t exactly that it was just him who wasn’t allowed to go to dances. He didn’t know why he kept forgetting that all she really knew about him was that he was from Chicago--Tobias never really relished the idea of talking about life back home, never really did, but for some reason, it felt unnatural for Bea not to know more. “Personally, I don’t think you were missing out,” he said, then paused for a beat before continuing, “But it’s not really just that I wasn’t allowed to go--I was raised orthodox, actually, so no one was allowed. Boys and girls couldn’t actually be alone together until they were married,” Tobias said, then snorted a bit, surprised at how something once so normal now sounded so ridiculous when he said it outloud. “Like, before marriage even? When it’s all being arranged? You go on dates with your parents.” Bea’s brow raised in surprise. “Really?” she asked, genuinely surprised by the information. She liked to think she was pretty well-rounded in her knowledge of various subjects thanks to how much time she’d spent in libraries over the years. She knew next to nothing about the culture Tobias had grown up in, though, and the thought of arranged marriages or segregation based on one’s sex was an unfamiliar one. “I suppose the most important question I have about this, then,” she said, tone serious, as though she were thinking hard about Tobias’ upbringing, “is whether I am corrupting you with this pre-marital nearness, or whether you’re to blame for pulling me, an innocent bystander, into your co-ed sins.” She grinned, nudging him with her shoulder. “Kidding. I’ve never been an innocent bystander.” Tobias laughed casually, though he was, in fact, hyper-aware of that shoulder bump. “Nah, dont worry,” he assured her. “I’ve already been thoroughly corrupted after a year at a secular college,” Tobias explained. “Oh, really?” Bea asked, a teasing glint in her eyes. Tobias rolled his eyes, though his expression was still one of amusement, “Trust me, it’s nothing exciting, unless you consider getting drunk every now and again especially risque,” he said. “My community had a very low bar for what was considered corruption, so most things are totally damnable from their perspective.” Looking back out at the water, Bea sat forward, her fingers curling over the edge of the dock. “I can’t even imagine what that was like, growing up like that.” Just from what little he’d given her, it sounded so structured, so disciplined. Bea couldn’t remember having anything even remotely like that in her life. Even when her mom was around, she’d been distinctly absent and discipline hadn’t been a priority. She supposed whatever discipline she had had been self-taught. “Then again, I’ve never actually been to church, either. And isn’t that kind of the basis of the way of life you’re describing? Religion or god, or whatever you want to call it?” She didn’t mean to be dismissive. God was as foreign to her as a disciplined and structured childhood. Tobias frowned a bit, a muscle tensing in his cheek--the culture was rigid, no doubt, and he did prefer having greater freedom to live his life as he pleased. Still, it hadn’t really been the rules and the customs that had been the main problem--if it was just that, Tobias actually thought he’d probably still be there. “God is kind of a big component, yes,” Tobias said, his expression easing again somewhat. “All of the customs, traditions, rules, they’re all believed to be God’s law.” Bea, always aware of Tobias when he was near, caught the way he tensed, the way the corners of his mouth curved downward. “I didn’t mean that as a criticism,” she said, reaching out and touching his hand. “I just meant that I don’t have enough experience with any of that to be able to imagine it. Honestly, the structure of it sounds kind of nice, even if I’m not sure about the whole arranged marriage and parental dating thing,” she said. The last part was added with a small chuckle, but she meant the rest of it. She realized she’d touched his hand and pulled her own away, hoping the dusk would hide her blush. “My childhood has been the exact opposite, is all. For as long as I can remember, there have been no rules, or traditions, or expectations. I wouldn’t have minded having a few of those.” When Bea pulled her hand back, Tobias ardently wished that she hadn’t, “I didn’t take it as that,” he assured her. “What was it like for you?” Tobias asked her, mostly out of genuine curiosity, but he also didn’t hate having the focus shift off his life for a bit. Bea sucked in a breath, having known that asking questions about him would inevitably lead to questions about her but not knowing how to answer his questions any more than she had before. The wood of the dock dug into her bare heels as she pulled her legs up to her chest. Wrapping her arms around them, she rested her chin on her knees. “Lonely,” she answered. The lies always came so easily to her. She’d become an expert at explaining away everything she was ever caught doing or saying. It was just another piece of ammunition in her survival toolkit and she’d long since gotten over feeling bad about it. The problem here, now, was that there was no part of her that wanted to lie to Tobias. Maybe it was that strange pull between them, or the fact that he was trusting her enough to open up about himself when she suspected he rarely did so. All she knew was that her usual elaborate stories about her amazing family and amazing childhood and amazing home life were silent. Turning her head so that it was her cheek that now rested on her knees, she looked at Tobias, trying to decide what else to say, if anything. Finally, she said, “Let’s just say that there’s never been an adult in my life who cared enough to insert themselves into my dating life, or to dictate when and with whom I spend my time.” She smiled, then, and was silently glad she could still pull her smile up on the spot. “Grass is always greener on the other side, though, right?” Tobias tensed at the assumption that his father had acted the way he had out of caring. Of course, Bea wouldn’t know better, and he could easily let her believe that and avoid all the ugliness if he didn’t say anything--but this time, he felt compelled to be candid not only out of a desire to be honest with Bea, but because the idea of casting his father as some stern but devoted paternal figure made his stomach turn. He didn’t deserve that much credit. “I don’t know about that,” Tobias muttered, “I was lonely, too,” he told her, staring fixedly across the harbor--he felt his heartbeat pick up suddenly, because he knew he was on the verge of telling her everything, and he had never told anyone this. Inhaling sharply, still not looking at Bea, Tobias continued, “He didn’t care about my dating life or my future for my own sake, he cared about it in so much as it affected his own reputation, and there are a lot of expectations for the only son of a man of my father’s statue,” he said, biting the inside of his cheek as he contemplated leaving it at that, but that wasn’t all, after all. “He was extremely abusive,” Tobias concluded. “So I left.” With the last seven words, Bea was suddenly in her own head imagining an older man, multiples of him circling around her and Tobias, arm raised and ready to strike. And then she was back on the dock and biting back the pure anger and hatred she felt for the man. She was sure those were both warranted emotions, but she wasn’t sure they were warranted for her. Part of her wanted to ask where his mom was when his father was abusive--surely she wouldn’t have just stood by and watched it happen--but she thought about about the fact that she didn’t even know who her own father was, so there had been no one to intervene when her mother spent days not moving from the hotel bed. Maybe his mother had been absent in the ways her father had. “I definitely don’t blame you for leaving, then. I wish it had been under better circumstances, but I’m glad that, at the very least, your leaving brought you to Dunhaven,” she said. She couldn’t find words to express how much she hated the idea of his father laying hands on him, wasn’t even sure she had a right to be angry on his behalf. And so she left it at that because, when it came down to it, she couldn’t change his past anymore than she could change her own. All she could do was be grateful that their pasts had led them here. She swallowed once, hard, and then reached out a hand, pressing the backs of her fingers against the skin of his cheek where she’d noticed him worrying at the inside of it. Voice quiet, she said, “If you put two lonely people together, are they lonely anymore?” Tobias felt his heart race again when Bea touched his face, but this time in a not at all unpleasant way. Tentatively, he placed his hand atop of hers, holding it there. His brows knit together in concentration as he searched Bea’s face for a trace of the look he dreaded enough to keep this part of himself hidden even from those closest to him--but he didn’t see anything like pity there, she looked at him in much the same way as she always did. He felt a rush of relief. “I guess not,” he answered faintly, distracted and slightly overwhelmed by their proximity. Tobias was normally one to withdraw as soon as he felt even remotely uncomfortable, but this time, he let go of her hand and pulled in closer until his lips brushed her cheek and he was embracing her. Tobias buried his face in her collarbone, feeling more relaxed and at ease than he could ever remember. Bea’s arms went automatically around Tobias’ shoulders and, in that moment, every part of her felt more alive than she had in a long time. Being embraced by him felt so much like coming home that it made her eyes sting with relieved tears that she didn’t let fall. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the side of his head. “Good,” she said, the word floating out on an exhale. She hadn’t realized just how much she hadn’t wanted to be lonely anymore. She hadn’t realized just how much she had wanted to be not lonely with him. |