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June 6, 2015
Baela
To be quite honest, Baela wasn’t sure what she had done for the universe to play such a sick joke on her, but she was going to find out and she was never, never going to do it again.
There were nearly six thousand colleges in the United States and a plentiful choice of weekends to decide to tour said colleges. Therefore, if her math was right, there should be absolutely no way that Jacaerys Velayron was standing in front of her right now by coicidence. Though, the look on his face that she was sure matched her own told her that it was, in fact, a coincidence. A terrible, wretched, awful coincidence.
Last she’d seen him was six months earlier, sitting on his mother’s couch holding Vis. The baby had thrown up on him, Baela had laughed, Jace had glared, and her father, who had given up trying to mediate a happy household whenever her and Jace were in the same room, had simply pretended that nothing was happening but the football game on the TV in front of him. Then, after an awkward run in while she was trying to take her plate to the sink, they had spent the rest of the visit not making eye contact. She’d felt him watching her though, and it’d taken Rhaena’s interference to keep her from starting a fight.
Rhaena wasn’t here today to serve as a buffer, only a handful of disheveled parents and their stressed children on this school tour, and something told her that wasn’t going to be enough.
“I can come back another day for a tour.” He took a step back from her approaching figure as he spoke.
Baela raised an eyebrow, finally stopping in front of him.
“What? You don’t want to be seen with me in public?”
“Don’t do that, that’s not fair and it’s not what I meant.
Good, he was angry too. She wasn’t about to be alone in being annoyed about this.
“Whatever, let’s just make it through the day.”
They stood next to each other in awkward silence and she quickly realized that the longer it took for the tour to start, the worse this was going to be. They were five minutes early, which at the moment was about four minutes too many for her. Jace had always had a chronic case of small talk when he was nervous and the only way to keep control of the situation and not awkwardly stand in the hot sun and talk about the weather was to lead the conversation herself.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have many pleasant conversation topics she felt like getting into with him after nearly two years of glaring and very, very careful scrolling through his instagram in the middle of the night.
“Did you really not know I’d be here?”
He looked almost surprised that she was speaking to him again.
“I didn’t, I promise. I was going to tour it with a friend of mine but he called out this morning with the stomach flu and since he’s already toured it once and I haven’t, he didn’t mind me going without him.”
“I’m surprised your girlfriend isn’t here keeping you company.”
They’d broken up already, she knew that for sure. Not from watching all the pics of her being deleted off of his instagram, of course, because she definitely wasn’t a creep who looked at it when she felt sad sometimes. Rhaena had told her, obviously, because Luke had told her and Jace had told Luke. The joys of living with a bunch of gossips.
“We broke up actually, a couple weeks ago.”
“Why?” Not that she cared, of course, “Did she run screaming from our family?”
His neck suddenly bloomed with the brightest, reddest blush she’d ever seen in her entire life and he cleared his throat as it spread like wildfire to his ears and collarbone.
“No, I uh, accidentally said your name while we were together.”
Her brain screeched to a halt.
What?
Baela wanted to hit him. If there had not been a sweaty family of three to their right trying and failing to be subtle in enjoying the entertainment that this conversation was quickly becoming, she would have. She stood in stunned silence for a moment before she started shouting.
“Why would you tell me that? What’s wrong with you?”
Jace frantically hushed her and it made her want to hit him more, even as all the families waiting for the tour to begin curiously glanced in their direction. Looking borderline sunburned, he gave them all a strained smile and raised his hand to wave before turning back to her in hushed whispers.
“What was I supposed to say? If I lied you would have noticed immediately.”
“Maybe I don’t care enough to notice if you’re lying or not anymore.”
“You might not care but I know for a fact you still hate when people try to lie to your face. It’s an inherent part of your personality.”
“An inherent part of my personality? At least I have one.”
“Oh come off it, Baela! Is this really what you want to do for the entire tour?”
“What would you like me to do? Be normal with you?” Her eyes were burning, which was humilating and just made her angrier, “You hurt me, at least grant me some dignity and act like you care.”
Then again, if he hadn’t acted like he cared about her in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this situation. Maybe it was better for him to be his true self, the one that showed up that night in the gazebo.
“I do care, I miss you. I accidentally said your name into my girlfriend’s neck and you think I don’t care about you?”
“When you care about someone, you don’t kiss them and follow that up immediately by telling them that you can’t do this because they’re the opposite of what you want.”
For the first time since her mother had died, Baela had felt truly happy. They’d had the ranch to themselves all summer since Alicent had taken Aemond with her to her father’s summer home in the Hamptons and the rest of them had made good use of it. Late nights jumping off the dock to swim in the pond, riding horses along the gravel trails in the woods that had been around longer than Jace’s mother had been alive, watching movies on whatever TV they wanted in the sprawling country house. Uncle Laenor had been home from deployment and had told her and Rhaena countless childhood stories that made them laugh, stories about the spirited little girl who had grown up into their mother. The little girl who had hopped up on Daemon’s father’s horse after his death, the one that bit just about anyone who walked within three feet of her, and rode away on Vhagar’s broad back unharmed.
Jace kissing her had been the cherry on top, making it truly the most incredible summer of her life.
And then he'd opened his mouth and made it the worst.
“I shouldn’t have said it, okay? I’m sorry, I am, I have beat myself up over saying it and hurting you every day for two years. I texted you an apology the next day but you already had me blocked and when I tried to talk to you, you left for the Velaryon’s place. Rhaena told me to leave you alone when I tried to get her to help me and I did because I thought that was what you wanted.”
He lowered his voice even further, glancing around at the people that were now turning to listen to the beginning of the tour guide’s speech.
“You dont know what it was like, growing up there. You got to stay away from the worst of it, I didn’t. It’s not an excuse for what I said, but it’s why I am the way I am. Every single day hearing my mom be called a freak and a whore, and that was if it was a good day, they called her other things on the other days and it only got worse when she married your dad.” His eyes were wet, she wondered if it made him angrier too, “For the first time in my life I got away from it. I got to walk into a school and no one said a thing about my family or about me. And then I fell in love with you and it threatened everything because I thought loving you meant that they were right and that I was just like my mom.”
And then I fell in love with you.
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. They stood there in horrible silence until he started to back away, his eyes full of hurt, and that’s when she managed to speak again.
“You were in love with me?”
. . .
June 6, 2015
Jace
“You were in love with me?”
Of course he was in love with her. It was both the best thing to ever happen to him and his own personal hell. A summer in her light, in the warmth of her voice, and he was gone. Done for. Friendly affection had grown into something distinctly less friendly, something he tried to deny, something he tried to pretend wasn’t there. He wasn’t meant to have her no matter how much he wanted to, that was simply the way of things. She was meant to be family, she wasn’t meant to be a wife.
Maybe if he’d never escaped in the first place, he could have made it work. Maybe he could have borne the weight of being even more of a pariah as long as she was with him in the thick of it. But at the same time, he couldn’t do that to her, he ruined everything he touched. From birth he’d been a beaming neon sign that his mother had strayed from a marriage the town understood nothing about.
“Yeah.” His vision was blurry and the embarrassment of it all made him want to walk away.
Around them, the group began to move in the direction of the tour guide. The tour was starting but she didn’t move, just staring at him with a face of mixed surprise and hurt. It wasn’t that different from the look in her eyes in the moment before he’d destroyed his life, when he’d kissed her and pulled away and spiraled down into a horrible place in his soul that he thought he’d gotten away from. The place he’d gone to when he’d broken that boy’s ribs, when he’d broken someone else’s nose, when he’d gone after a grown man at the grocery store and had been pulled back by his mother before he could start a well-deserved fight, her nails biting into her skin through his sleeve.
He’d fallen down into that place where all those ugly things they’d said about his family remained like scars. What they’d said about his mother from the moment he was old enough to remember, what they'd said about Laenor after everyone found out, what they’d said about his mother and Daemon, what they’d said about Jace and Luke and what they probably did at home with their sisters.
Baela wasn’t his sister. She’d never been his sister in any way, shape, or form. Not even legally, because his mother was still technically married to Laenor and had to have his name removed from both Aegon and Viserys’ birth certificates so they could put Daemon’s there instead. Even if she divorced Laenor, it wasn’t like they could actually get married, even Ohio had its limits.
Rhaena was his sister, Baela was anything but that, but that hadn’t stopped that ugly voice in his mind from rearing its head and leading him to destroy his life. He’d been so afraid of being exactly what they’d accused him of that he’d done something far worse in hurting her and running away from what he’d done.
“We should,” He cleared his throat, rubbing the sweat off his hands onto his jeans, “We should follow the tour.”
Baela nodded slowly, almost hesitantly, and he couldn’t figure out what it was in her voice when she finally spoke, “Yeah, we should.”
They were nearly caught up to the group when he saw her look at him out of the corner of his eye.
“How long?” She asked.
“For what?”
She shook her head, silver curls practically glowing in the sun, “Nothing. Forget I asked.”
. . .
June 6, 2015
Luke
A single line text from Jace was never a good sign.
Luke’s brother was a rambler, a lover of commas and paragraphs and excessive punctuation, the only exception being when he was only able to type one-handed while holding an icepack to his face or when he was upset.
The odds of him holding an icepack to his face following a college tour were low, but never zero.
Jace: Headed back to Dad’s, weird day
Luke frowned as he read it again.
Luke: weird day?
The typing indicator bubble popped up, then disappeared, then appeared again. Strange.
There was a scraping sound at his window and he glanced over as Rhaena lifted the sash and crawled in, her phone to her ear and her eyes wide. She turned to him as she shut the window behind her.
“Have you heard from Jace?” She mouthed to him before her voice raised back to a normal volume, “I’m still here, Baela.”
Luke nodded and Rhaena’s eyes went wide, a smile brightening her face before she climbed onto the bed with him. His free arm went around her shoulders to pull her into his side as his phone buzzed again.
Jace: Baela was at the tour.
Luke froze. Rhaena turned on speakerphone, “So you’re telling me that you and Jace are talking now?”
“Well, not now now. He already left. But we went to dinner after the tour was over."
He gasped and Rhaena’s hand darted up and clamped over his mouth, “You went to dinner willingly with Jace? Of your own choice?”
He fumbled for his phone.
Luke: WHAT
Luke: you’re scaring me with these one sentence texts rn
Jace: I dont know what to say im freaking out. I dont think she hates me anymore
“I did. Rhae,” She hesitated, “he said he still loves me.”
Rhaena rolled out of Luke’s arms immediately to sit on the end of the bed as he sat in stunned surprise, not just at her leaving, but at everything going on.
Luke: what are you going to do?
Luke: Jace????
Luke: Jace you told her you still love her????
He frantically deleted the last one, wincing. Maybe he didn’t see it. He hoped he didn't see it.
“Rhae, he’s calling. I’m gonna go and I’ll call you back later tonight, okay?”
Oh gods he probably saw it.
“No worries, take your time. Call me back in the morning if you have to.”
How is she so calm right now? Luke wanted to scream. Were they dreaming? They had to be dreaming.
Rhaena’s phone screen flashed with the end of the call and she turned to him wide-eyed.
“Am I dreaming?”
Luke shook his head, “I don’t think we are.”
She tossed her phone down on the end of the bed and returned to his arms, grabbing his own phone off of his chest to look at it, “He barely said anything.”
“He’s probably mentally spiralling on the subway.”
“While on the phone with Baela.”
Luke winced, “He's doomed. Well, uh. We should celebrate while we can?”
Rhaena laughed, bright and sweet and beautiful, “Celebrate?”
He sent her a cheeky grin, running his hands up and down her back.
“C’mon, Rhae. Imagine it, the possibility of us never having to play referee again. Sounds worth celebrating to me.”
Rhaena hummed in agreement, smiling as he rolled them and leaned down to kiss her, phone tossed to the floor next to the bed. Her arms looped around his neck, pulling him down and working their way into his hair.
Yes, Rhaena thought, that does sound worth celebrating, doesn't it?