Chapter 50

Valerie swallowed, watching Lucca’s back for the few seconds it took them to cross the kitchen, heading toward the basement.

Her mind felt like it had been thrown into a blender. Lust and desire spiraled around and through, and competed with, all of her anxiety and heartache around Lucca. The hurt she felt had grown, mushroom-like, in her, feeding on and corrupting the hope that they had inspired weeks before, and then again with their offer of work.

She wanted to follow them downstairs, to receive her punishment, to try and earn her reward. Her body screamed out its need for this, as clear as her need for air or water. She felt, however, that doing so would deny the validity of her pain. She would once again be sacrificing whatever pride she felt, whatever sense of self-worth, and laying it all at the feet of someone that demanded it, tacitly if not explicitly.

What harm would it be to do so one more time, after what felt like a lifetime of meekly accepting the scraps handed to her by the people in her life?

The seconds ticked by as though in slow motion; and her feet felt frozen in place. One more time, she knew, would beget one more time after that.

Lucca paused, turning to look back at her with a raised eyebrow, their expression cool and imperious; Valerie could not tell whether the look was feigned or genuine. She was not sure if it mattered.

She shook her head no, wordlessly.

Speech seemed beyond her reach.

Lucca’s face passed rapidly through several emotions, almost too quick for Valerie to register, particularly in her addled state. Their eyelids widened in surprise, and then for a split second narrowed, jaw tense, in a flash of anger. They settled on a slight smile, eyes narrowed and glinting: pleased and predatory.

“Bratting, my pet?” Their voice was just shy of a growl.

Valerie drew in a shaky breath, and closed her eyes. She did not think herself strong enough to meet Lucca’s gaze.

“Red light,” she replied, her voice small. She reopened her eyes, but still avoided eye contact.

Anger flickered across Lucca’s face again, and Valerie instinctively took a step back, into the doorway leading from the kitchen to the hallway. Their anger did not dissipate immediately, this time.

Over the span of seconds, Valerie watched Lucca slowly assemble a neutral expression, a careful mask in front of their emotions. All Valerie could think about, while she watched this, was how physically strong Lucca was; and how she was in their house, on their land, in the middle of the desert.

“Okay. Heard,” Lucca replied, after a few moments of silence. Their tone was studiously neutral.

Some of Valerie’s tension relaxed as they accepted the safe word without pushing back; she did not think she would have been entirely able to hold out against even the slightest coercion.

“I… I just…” Valerie replied, her cheeks coloring slightly. “Can we talk?”

Lucca gestured with an open hand, an expansive motion that seemed to say is that not what we’re doing?

The gesture read, to Valerie, as sarcasm; and it set something in her panicking. Valerie had a sinking feeling, like she was fucking everything up, and she did not know any other course.

She stared at Lucca for a few moments, chewing on her lower lip. She barely knew what she wanted to say, anyway, and trying to clumsily articulate it in her agitated state was too daunting to contemplate.

“I’m… I need a shower.”

They muttered something Valerie could not quite make out, but which might have been the word tedious.

“Sure, okay. Be quick. I’ll get breakfast started.”

Valerie ran the shower as cold as she could stand; it helped calm her nervous system, and quiet her libido. It was so deeply unpleasant, almost painful, that it distracted her from the spiraling chaos of her mind. Shivering from cold, she could not dwell too much on her anxiety around Lucca, nor get too lost in the blissful dissociation of a hot shower.

Her teeth chattered as she toweled off, and dressed in her own, somewhat worn jeans, a black tank top, and a cheap pink hoodie that was already starting to pill inside.

Lucca had set breakfast out on their kitchen island, the closest thing they had to a dining room table. They stood on the kitchen side, and a solitary bar stool on the opposite side offered Valerie a place to perch. It wobbled slightly, its feet uneven, but it was stable enough as long as she did not make any sudden moves.

They had made enough bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee for three or four people; Valerie served herself toast and jam, and idly nudged a few spoonfuls of egg around on her plate in an effort to not seem too ungrateful.

She watched Lucca add enough cream and sugar to their coffee that she doubted it really counted as coffee anymore. She took hers black, and after the first bitter, burnt sip, started to reconsider her decision not to dilute it. Dana and Lucca had very different definitions of coffee.

“So… talk,” Lucca suggested, after a few minutes spent eating in relative silence.

Lucca had finished off half of the eggs and most of the bacon and was quite visibly eyeing another helping.

“I’m good,” Valerie murmured, gesturing toward the food.

She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. She could not figure out a way to back out of the conversation.

“I just… it hurt.”

Lucca re-filled their plate, halfway paying attention. They raised an eyebrow inquisitively at Valerie’s incomplete statement.

“When you disappeared, after… you know, when you were visiting.”

“Disappeared?” Lucca asked, in between bites.

“I thought…” she felt foolish even saying the words, but she still hurt, and despite her efforts, she had not been able to let that pain go. “I thought you wanted to be my… a friend, at least? Someone on my side?”

Valerie stared down at her plate, and rearranged the cooling eggs with her fork. The toast, too, had grown cold and tough, but she took another bite of it anyway, chewing on it to help distract her from Lucca’s silence.

“I thought it was something like that,” Lucca replied after an uncomfortable pause. “Val…”

She winced at the shortened, degendered version of her name. She didn’t really think Lucca meant it that way, but she hated it regardless. They didn’t seem to notice.

“…I am on your side,” they continued, without pause. “But I’ve got a lot going on here, with work, my projects. I have to prioritize that. I can’t really have… relationships.”

“Can’t?”

“It’s a long story,” their tone and the vexed sigh that came with it clearly signaled that it was a long story that they did not intend to tell.

Valerie looked up at Lucca, trying to mask the disappointment she felt. The conversation was going slightly better, if anything, than her worst imaginings, but not by much.

“What about you and Dana?”

“We’ve known each other for a long time. It’s… complicated.”

Lucca looked away, then; with annoyance, Valerie thought, but annoyance at themselves more than at her.

“Complicated how?”

“I don’t want to get into it with you.”

Their voice grew more annoyed, and their eyes narrowed slightly as they looked back at Valerie. She was less confident that their growing upset was not directed her way.

“You went out for drinks, spent the night together…”

“She told you- never mind. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“She was supposed to come home. I… didn’t know what happened. I was worried she…”

She had genuinely, at the time, feared that Dana was dying by the side of the road, and she felt stupid for it in retrospect. She found it hard to not blame Lucca for the resulting tension, the subsequent drama over the next few days, and what felt like Dana’s dismissal of her.

Lucca looked uncomfortable, and unsure how to respond; which Valerie supposed was fair.

“Shouldn’t have… why?” Valerie asked, after a brief pause and a few deep breaths, trying to steer the conversation away from her own anxieties.

“It was… risky.”

Their responses were increasingly terse and Valerie got the sense that they were starting to get actually angry at her questioning.

“What does that mean?”

Rationally, she knew she should give up trying to get Lucca to answer, but she was frustrated and hurt and she could not help herself from pushing.

“That’s enough.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Stop,” they snapped.

“Lucca… Goddess knows I can’t make you do anything, but the least you could do is tell me why. Explain it to me, don’t just get angry at me. You owe me that.”

In a burst of anger and fury, Lucca swept the dishes off the island, scattering them on the floor. The serving plate, holding the last few morsels of scrambled egg, shattered on the hard tile.

“I fucking said that’s enough!” they shouted, turning away and storming outside, through the back door.

Valerie, scared and surprised by the violent outburst, tried to scramble away, and only managed to send the unstable bar stool toppling backward, with her on it. Her head hit the tile with the kind of dull thwack that promised a vicious headache was soon to follow.

Dazed but conscious, Valerie watched the door, left standing open, swinging gently on its hinges. She rested on the floor for a few moments, trembling with her nervous system locked in a freeze response. Her breathing settled slowly as pain blossomed in the back of her head.

She pushed herself up to a sitting position, and rested there, letting a wave of dizziness pass. Gingerly, she felt the back of her head where it had hit the tile, fearing the damp stickiness of blood, but it was merely tender, and her fingers came away dry.

She found a broom and dustpan and sat about cleaning up the shards of tableware and scattered bits of food. She looked out the back door, half-expecting to see Lucca still raging just outside it, but they were nowhere in sight. She closed the door and made her way back to Lucca’s guest room. Her movements were calm, even detached, but inside her mind was a constant scream of panic.