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Small talks are incredibly frustrating to Tori.
Like when you intentionally meet an old friend and you two try to catch up on all of the recent boring stuff that has happened in your lives, you always gotta start with something big, right? Something catchy, something that will have your attention for at least half an hour before it all blows over and only the awkwardness and the lack of words make their way to stay in the room with you. You make plans to meet them, you actively seek out and make a reservation at a restaurant, each one of you orders what they find the most interesting dish on the menu (something not too expensive or very expensive? You don’t want to make a fool of yourself, so order something nice, don’t make your old pal look at you with disgust on their face, even though they have the exact same question running through their mind), and after you finish your little gossip session, comes...What?
After that comes a very long period of time where you just try to come up with some stupid topic to cover up the silence in place. Like, “the weather today is nice, isn’t it? What’s the forecast for tomorrow, by the way?” You fucking pig, as if you can’t just look it up on your phone after this, she isn’t some TV correspondent. Or, “So, how is your modeling career going? I’ve seen your latest show, you looked exceptionally good there.” Would you have gotten this chance to go to a nice restaurant with her if she wasn’t rich enough to afford it? Of course it’s going well, amazing even, thank you for asking. If she wasn’t pretty, she wouldn’t have gone for this job in the first place.
Or, say, you stumbled into this friend at a supermarket of all places. Yes, believe her, this has happened before. And not once either. What makes you think she would want to catch up when she’s in the middle of grabbing a box of her favorite cereal of all things? Or maybe a deodorant she just ran out of, why would she want to have a small talk at that moment exactly. “Oh wow, you use that brand? I wouldn’t recommend using it, it gave me an allergy, you should try this one instead, it’s sweat-proof and hypoallergenic.” Who asked you which brand of a deodorant someone should get? Is this your way of making up for the worst way you could’ve approached someone? While they’re trying to look for something in the basic hygiene section in the back of the store? Must be one genius way.
Oh no, that’s not the worst way to meet someone you know, actually. Maybe in the bathroom while you’re washing your hands. Yes, she wants to hug you after you just took a big fat piss in one of the stalls without washing your filthy hands first. Like you can’t just hold your excitement in and allow yourself to come up to the sink and wash the damn hands. She has to feel your germs all over her back now, on her shoulders, maybe even her neck. Why bother showering at all then, if you get nasty later on anyway? And what are you gonna after? “How have you been?” Like shit. Literally, I just took a dump in there, you might not wanna enter that stall for a while.
A meetup with a fan can also exhaust her to no end. “Oh my god, do you remember that vogue magazine you signed up for, can you tell me what it was like?” Exhausting. Stuffy. Intrusive. Next question.
Or the interviews at the Gala parties or some important dinners? “Tori, how was it, dropping your previous faculty for modeling? Must be hard, you’re so strong for going through it all!” Bitch, she makes a living off this, she knows this would pay well with the right assets, where's the sympathy even coming from? The only sympathy you should feel for her is that she’s stuck with you throughout the whole evening, wasting her precious time and temper.
Back when they were in college, Tori remembers Matilda setting her up with blind dates because she felt as if “Tori was left out of the dating pool from her lack of experience, she should get out more”. And she did listen to her. College was the only time she ever went on dates, and they were the worst. Apparently, a man can’t come up with a simple question on how to ask a girl about her interests without making it about himself and his “disgust to anime”. You asked her, she wouldn’t have said shit if you weren’t the one to come up with that excuse for a small talk, asshole.
A date always leads to sex, and sex creates more small talk, or better yet, they can also be addressed as “pillow talk”.
A failed hookup can count as a perfect opportunity for an annoying small talk attempt. She can even recognize all the ways they try to commence this thing.
Right after you finish having sex, the guy always starts gloating on about how good you were, that he hasn’t had someone as tight as you are in forever, wondering where all the “good” women had gone off to. Yeah, you’ve been thinking the same thing throughout the whole process, only about guys like him. Where have all the good guys gone? He’s just bad at what he’s bragging on and on about before you two get in bed and he proves you otherwise. And then you say you don’t do relationships.
That’s the part that usually hurts their egos the most. Some try to hide it in the best way they can, pretending they weren’t looking for anything serious in the first place anyway, yet you already know by their look that they’re lying. They only say that to seem like they’re better and more mature than they actually are, which, to be honest, it may be more mature to say you’re in for a long run rather than just sleeping around, but who was Tori to say anything to that? She’s the one bringing that fact up. They sure love sputtering and stuttering while they lie right through their teeth, though.
Some (not very smart) gentlemen pull off their act perfectly well, even swooning you off your feet in hopes of pursuing some messed up Disney dream where they’ll find their one and only true love through sleeping with her and she’ll immediately say yes after such a wonderful night with them, no questions asked. Yet their dreams get crushed by the weight of the reality when the same “dreamy and such pretty girl” says she’s not there to stick around, that she just wants to keep it casual. Suddenly you’re called a massive heartbreaker, a whore, or a predator of some sort who just preys upon poor guys like them, lures them into bedroom with her and then drops them like they’re toys. So, what talk is born out of this incident? The maddened murmurs of “bitch” and “you’re the worst. I can’t believe I fell for this, you were so good, too” being passed around through the room as they lay with their arms crossed behind their head, and Tori just gathers her clothes off the floor followed by the slam of the door behind her. She really couldn’t give two fucks about these situations.
Sleeping with women has got to be both a blessing and a curse. Tori is not into women, but what girl hasn’t experimented at least once in her life?
When they realize there’s nothing more to this, they always burst into tears, and then you’re forced to comfort them about the thing you've just told them yourself. Like, sorry I can’t be your super clingy popular girlfriend who wants to run away with you and live with a million cats happily ever after, I’m just not gay, no harsh feelings, bitch.
And the next time you see any of them? They try to make it all sound so special, as if they can magically change your mind on your stance on casualty. They’re too busy going on to the third paragraph of their love confession and how wrong you were for not giving them a chance, that your relationship could’ve been something more, weren’t you, oh you monster, so ignorant about it all, and you’re holding yourself from accidentally blurting out “who are you again?”.
Actually, that doesn’t count as small talk, it’s just a monologue at this point. A very sad, pathetic pity party they like throwing for themselves after getting “left behind” by the likes of you.
And then, there is no talk at all. It’s not even small talk, it’s the lack of any talk at all that kills her the most. It makes her head buzz the worst out of them all. Actions suddenly scream in her face, looks taking the place of any words.
She could be standing next to her or just simply existing in the same room as her, and the air would already be heavy with two uncomfortably overwhelming feelings. Annoyance and uncertainty. Was one of them present in each of the listed examples? Of course, but the other one belonged to these situations only. She’s not even sure how to react.
You can’t even say “How is the weather today?”, you’ll just get a confused look in return. Because they don’t do the talking. If “a little to the left, no, more to the right now, stand still, don’t move” could be considered small talk, Tori would be surprised they even spoke at all. It’s not like she has anything to say either.
She’s quick to set her back in her place. Too quick, so suddenly. Without saying much, only her hardening gaze (how was that even possible?) on the otherwise emotionless face makes her breath hitch. She forgets how to act like a normal human being, something primal is being awoken in her core. She can’t stop this feeling, not able to hold back.
It's too much, too soon. They were just standing there, in presence of everyone else, and now they're left alone, talking. Which never leads to good things. It's not the small talk that stirs something up, it's the normal talk that makes it worse. Tori may just be unable to talk like a decent person, or it's just like that during these moments, she chooses whatever she wants to believe at the moment.
Her frustration ends up with her fervently pulling her face up close to hers and she firmly presses her lips up to the other’s chapped lips. But then she gets pushed away all of a sudden and it becomes extremely fucking awkward. She touches her lips lightly, understanding that no amount of small talk will save them from the disaster this has just caused. One look in her eyes already speaks for itself: “Are you out of your mind?” She just backs away and turns her back to her. Walking away. Leaving her burning and on the brink of tears.
She may like small talks just a little, after all.