WHO: Bertram Aubrey and Bianca Vaisey
WHAT: A fight about their future?
WHERE: Her & Mira's flat!
WHEN: Tonight!
The time since the end of Voldemort’s reign had been … difficult, to say the least. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t happy - Bianca’s job had gotten a little less risky, and that was for the best with the baby on the way. It was just that … well,
parts of his family had certainly been allied with the Dark Lord, whether they were going to admit it or not. That meant that he’d been spending more time with Bianca at her place, and that also meant that she’d been pressuring him to … you know, get his own place.
He furrowed his brows and pushed around the food on his plate. “Do we really have to talk about this right now? I mean,
right now?” He hadn’t brought up the problem of his family with Bianca because it wasn’t something he wanted her to know too much about. She’d
judge him.
Bianca blanched, waving her fork around, “When are we supposed to talk about it, then?”
Why was talking about a flat so stressful? He was twenty years old, he had a child and another on the
way, and---well, he
was jobless. She supposed that could cause someone issues with finding a flat, but it wasn’t even that! Bertram simply refused to think about it, let alone talk about it. She’d been on her own (well, with Mira) since they’d left Hogwarts, it was just---it was what you
did. You graduated from Hogwarts as a fully fledged, legal wizard. You were supposed to start your life. Bianca understood Bertram’s situation, she knew that it was easier for him to stay with his mother to help raise Amissa, but..she didn’t want to have to deal with other people’s schedules when she wanted to be alone with her boyfriend and their family. She hated asking Mira if she was going to be home, and she
really hated that incredibly awkward feeling of knowing your boyfriend’s mother was in the next room when you were trying to snog.
She put down her fork to put her hand to her head. Bianca barely felt pregnant. Now that the morning sickness was gone, it was mostly just being tired all the time. Being a pregnant hitwizard meant you couldn’t do much, and now with You-Know-Who gone, Bianca had been designated to boring, dumb, desk work. She despised it, but had taken up an extra shift to help save some money. One thing that had always been important to her was being able to support herself, so even though she knew her parents and Bertram’s mother would be there for them, she needed to know that she could do this herself. That
they could do it themselves.
Because that’s what this was, right? It wasn’t the traditional way to start a family, but Bertram was way past that point so he should understand, “I’m not asking you to sign a lease
right now, but hell! We need to think about it!”
Bertram frowned again, glancing up as Bianca began to raise her voice. He really
couldn’t share the things that were bothering him right now with her, especially in the position that she was in. It was incredibly frustrating to not be able to tell her what was really on his mind, and it was starting to affect their relationship. This was another one of those reasons that he tried to keep from getting girls too close to him -- everything was so much more complicated when you had to think about other peoples’ reactions.
His mother had always been the one person who’d been there for him and genuinely
not judged him. He knew that it was immature to still be attached to her, but he knew that she couldn’t take care of herself anymore after so long taking care of him (and more recently, taking care of Amissa). He clenched his fist under the table and took in a long, slow breath. It was much easier to have her think he was just being blatantly irresponsible.
“Just --- not
now!” Everything was up in the air as far as he was concerned, and tossing a new house into the situation just seemed unnecessary. He wasn’t equipped to have his own job, honestly, and the idea of making a big lifestyle change like that was something he’d have to build himself up to.
...she should have suggested they buy some sort of potted plant together or something.
“I’m
thinking about it, okay! I don’t know what you want me to do to prove that. It’s not like I can show you what I’m
thinking, damnit.”
She bit the inside of her cheeks, unhappy with how he was speaking to her. Okay, maybe she
did get a bit loud, a bit quickly sometimes, but she was never
irrational! Bianca, as fast as she seemed to get angry and rage,
did think about the arguments she had, making sure she had valid reasons and evidence for her case before daring to get loud about it. She had a
point, and now he’d awoken her debater, who was suffering from an overdose of estrogen.
“It’s a bit insulting, you know.” Her tone was low and cold, and she crossed her arms over her chest. She pushed back into her chair, her jaw set, glaring at Bertram. “We’ve known about this baby for nearly two months and we’ve done absolutely nothing. Things
are going to change, Bertram, whether you want them to or not.”
Bianca had been the perfect bloody girlfriend, any bloke would be deliriously happy with how she was dealing with all of this. She hadn’t forced him to propose, she hadn’t
insisted that he move in with her to help her throughout the pregnancy, for fuck----she hadn’t even expressed how disappointed she was in the fact that he still hadn’t been able to tell her that he loved her. Not that---Bianca didn’t think that getting pregnant would automatically cause him to say it, that would be strange, but---it did upset her, she couldn’t deny that. It made her question things too, which made everything a bit more difficult to swallow.
Bertram was beginning to think that this whole thing had been a terrible idea. Since he was young he’d promised himself he wouldn’t get seriously involved with any girls because -- well, whether he liked it or not, he’d probably turn out to be like his father. Their family didn’t talk about him for good reason -- even though his father’s side of the family barely spoke to them, they didn’t cut him and his mother out of their lives completely. If the
secret ever got out that their son had been less-than-perfect a father and a pureblood, Bertram was sure that their tiny little pretentious heads would pop right off.
He didn’t take well to girls yelling at him at any stage of his life, but right now -- trying to think of a way to keep his mother happy and keep from losing Bianca -- he was too upset not to overreact. He pushed up from his seat, ignoring the ball of self-loathing that was slowly building up inside his stomach. Sure, he was going to leave the mother of his child alone in her flat with her roommate because he didn’t want to talk about his family. That definitely didn’t seem like something his
father would have done.
“Yes, well. It’s a bit bloody insulting that you think you can force anything about me to change,
Bianca. Did it ever occur to you that there might be
other factors besides you? Besides the
baby? I know that you like to think everyone should bend to your whims, especially since you’re all hormonal and shit … but sometimes that just can’t be the case.” Yes, he definitely needed to leave now -- if he didn’t, there were going to be even bigger problems. He’d stopped himself from telling her that he loved her for just this reason - something had been
bound to happen to ruin how well things had been going. He could no longer ignore his family problems when compounded with these new ones that Bianca was forcing him to confront right this minute.
Bianca was stunned. She gaped across the table at Bertram, completely shocked and bewildered by his words. Did he really think that---no, she didn’t want to change
him, she wanted to---for the
baby, she wanted to make things right for the
baby, it wasn’t---she didn’t---did he really? She’d cried a lot during these past few months over stupid things like kittens and sappy wireless commercials, but as her eyes pricked with tears Bianca was sure that she would’ve ended up in this state even if she wasn’t four months pregnant.
“I--” What other factors? What could
that mean? Bianca’s heart plummeted into her stomach as her quick mind began to race at full speed. Oh, God. He didn’t want to do this again. He didn’t want to be tied down with another kid, he’d just been playing the nice guy for the past few weeks because---she didn’t know, but now Bianca’s chin began to shake because
now she had more than enough reasons to cry and give in to the hormones that Bertram was using against her.
That wasn’t
fair. She hadn’t done
anything to hurt his feelings, all she wanted was a plan, she wanted a
plan! She wanted to plan a bloody life with this man and he was taking it as a death sentence. Bianca finally dropped her arms from their vice like grip across her chest and she clenched the seat of her chair with her hands. She needed to breathe, because everything was going straight to hell in a matter of seconds.
“You can leave,” she croaked, unsure if it was issued as a command or an escape route for Bertram.
It was far easier for him to take it as a command than to think of reasons to stick around. If she --
wanted him to leave it wasn’t so bad, right? He just couldn’t handle this right now. Sure, he’d been expecting her to bring up the house thing again, but he hadn’t expected it so soon and he wasn’t sure what he had been
thinking about saying about it, but he didn’t have anything prepared when she’d asked him. He swallowed, pulling on his cloak and looking over to Bianca.
Ah, hell. She was crying - he couldn’t see her like this for long. “It’s just -- it’s not what you think it is, okay? Whatever it is, it’s … not. I’ll … I’ll owl you.” And maybe he could convince himself to do so without feeling
too terrible about it. Bertram wasn’t normally acutely aware of his fuck-ups, but this was one of the rare times where he was - and he wasn’t sure what he could do to fix it without leaving to get some air first. He headed to the door without looking back at her.
“I’m
sorry. Again.” He had a feeling he’d be saying that a lot more often in the near future.
He was really leaving! Bianca watched with what felt like terror as he actually got his cloak and went to the door to
leave. Bianca had half a mind to pull out her wand and knock his fucking head off, but she was frozen to her seat in shock. What had just happened? They’d been arguing, okay, they’d
argued before, but now he was angry at her for wanting to do something with their lives.
“You can’t just
leave when you get upset!” she let out, hand immediately going to cover her mouth. She’d been so close to calling him a coward but she’d caught herself; Bianca knew that this was not the Bertram she’d grown to care for, that something was wrong. Bianca stood up, not leaving the table but wanting to desperately go and grab him to stop him from going. “
I’m not just going to---up and leave! You’re stuck with me, Bertram---whether you like it or not and---and if you
leave---”
If he
left right now, if he left her sitting alone in her kitchen, crying her eyes out, that would mean that he didn’t have the gall to deal with their problems so---he needed to
stay, because if he left she’d never be able to let him back into her life again. Bianca didn’t know if they were meant to get married and grow old together, but she sure as hell was willing to fight for their relationship until he said otherwise.
Bertram could tell that she’d refrained from calling him some sort of nasty name -enough girls had called him enough names that he knew when one was trying to cover it up. He tugged his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders and sighed, hand on the doorknob. He was trying to leave because he couldn’t stand to see her upset like this, but he also couldn’t just up and tell her exactly what was going on.
It was too much to explain and it would take too
long, would involve him telling her too many things at once. He didn’t want to end up as overemotional as
she was right now, after all. But … maybe she was right. Leaving now
would make him just like his father, and he did have the opportunity to
not be like him.
“Fine.” He tugged off his cloak again and hung it up, turning to face her with an expression that was almost …
lost. “I can’t talk about finding a place right now, all right?” Hopefully she could at least accept
that. “I can honestly bloody say that it’s been pretty much the biggest problem on my mind lately, whether you believe me or not.”
Bianca wiped at her face, feeling like a fool for crying (and still not being able to stop, but it was more of a teary eyed thing--). She crossed her arms over her chest again and finally came around the table, glad that he’d stayed, but still wary, frustrated, and confused about his explosion from just moments ago.
She stepped close to Bertram, thinking that maybe if
she kept calm and collected, then it would be easier for him to as well. He looked so upset; she’d never seen him this way before and it was almost scary. Bianca had no idea what was going on with him, but wouldn’t she be the person for him to go to in these kind of situations? Maybe she needed to step up to the plate just as much as she wanted Bertram to.
Her head was ducked as she stopped less than arms length apart from him, involuntarily using some hitwizard techniques in cornering your opponent. Bertram had stayed, and now she was going to make sure that he didn’t leave again.
“You know that I love you,” she said, blinking and looking up at Bertram. She hadn’t repeated the words since the first time she’d told him, but it was easy to say, “I do. And I want what’s best for us, I don’t want to change you. If--if you don’t want to talk to me about whatever it is, then---fine, I can accept that,” she was going to have to go straight to Mira to try and figure out what the hell it
was, but, “but I’m here for when you’re ready.”
At least she hadn’t taken a swing at him. That was something he had almost been expecting, given her profession and the sort of anger she was capable of sometimes. He supposed that part of what was stopping her was probably the fact that she knew he would leave if
that happened. He was all for a little kinky slapping around in the bedroom, but outside of the bedroom was
not acceptable from either party.
“I know that,” He said with a frown, shifting so that he could reach out for her hand and rub his thumb awkwardly over the top. “And I also know that you’re looking a little like you’re going to tackle me for shoplifting at Ollivander’s or something,” he pointed out, trying to manage a half-smile.
Now that they weren’t talking about it -- well, at least he could
try to think about what to do. He couldn’t just stop seeing her after all of this just because it was going to get hard, but he still had no idea how to bring any of it up and -- augh.
“All right. I just -- It’s going to take some time. And I don’t mean like when I say it’s going to take some time in the bedroom, I mean
real time.” At least his sense of humor was returning, though.
