i haven't gotten any such impulse with you. his pride takes a hit. one that shows on his face...
..."like a slapped arse" comes to mind. something his uncle used to say. crestfallen would be a better descriptor, a taste of rejection for the man who has never cared enough about much else to have faced the feeling more than a handful of times.
she doesn't want him. at least not as he is, not yet. hugo doesn't know how not to take that a little personally.
valentina continues on with her reasoning - and he does listen, he does. he just can't get the melody of her distance out of his head. he needs to prove himself in some unknowable and cosmic way, or perhaps show a vulnerability he swears even to himself he does not possess.
he's never felt like such a disappointment.
"i can only imagine a goalpost with legs." he says bluntly. the anger is not in his voice, nor in the air. just a stale trace of entitlement being wrung out of him. "what about me isn't fully formed enough for you?"
          “I’m not sure.”     Valentina speaks slowly, staring at him from across the table.     “Maybe it’s everything.”
She takes a sip of her drink, smiles at him. It’s difficult to articulate these things to human beings, especially the young and arrogant. But her opacity is, in a way, rewarded: his dissatisfaction, however diluted, has a wonderful scent—dry wine, a hint of berry, dark roast coffee.
          “I asked Lazarus to turn me over and over. I begged for it. It was embarrassing; I never beg for anything, not then and not now. And you know what? He denied me every single time, without fail and without falter, for five years. It was the most excruciating five years of my life, especially during the times he was gone, and I wasn’t sure if he’d ever come back, if I lost my chance… And then one day—just before I was to be executed, actually—he agreed. I didn’t know why then and I still don’t know why now. It wasn’t impulsive, either, the way Zero does it; he didn’t turn me because I was going to die anyway—he’d known, and denied me, every single day of my incarceration, my trial, all of it. But afterward he told me it’s because something in me had made itself known to him. No further explanation. Now, I’m not telling you this to bore you with ancient history—I just want you to know that I understand where you’re coming from, and I’m not doing this to toy with you.”Â












