#shoreline

He also remembers it being the first moment he'd registered how much disdain you have truly held for people like that investor. Rich pricks who thought themselves to rule the world just because of a few off-shore accounts. People who never had to worry over anything, because the whole world went out of its way to make their existance more comfortable. The kind of person you thought him to be.

The investor had regarded you for a long while. It felt like the short hand of the clock had ran its course around it multiple times. Then, the investor had cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.

"You are a very brave girl to say such things." The investor had pondered. A girl. Not professional, not 'miss'. Even if the investor hadn't been angry, he found a way to diminish you with his words as men of his position often did, "But I do have a certain appreciation for it, because you may very well be right."

Valarr had felt the whole room breathe out a collective sigh of relief. Like the walls themselves had stopped trying to close in. The investor nodded once, then twice. Smoothed over the lapels of his suit that surely cost more than what you earned in a year. He turned towards Valarr. Not towards you. A gaze Valarr understood as a command. A command to make a command. To not allow the leash to slip out of his grasp.

"See to it that it does not happen again." The investor had cleared his throat. A subconscious thing. "Let us continue."

It's another late night at the office. The fluorescent lights are dimmed and the light pollution reflected from below the top floor slips in through the large windows hugging the walls of the room. His father had went home a while ago. Valarr had stayed precisely because of that. You had stayed because Valarr had asked you to stay and paid overtime when the territory of am and pm eventually blended together,.

He's looking over the documents for the next merger and his fingers are caressing paper in a way you're not even sure he's aware of. You're typing away on your laptop, scheduling meetings and emails in his name. Valarr sighs, looks over the words on the page again like they owe him a clear answer. Then, you feel his eyes on you and pull your own gaze away from the screen to meet his. An animal instinct, a response to being watched.

"Do you think that there is right way and a wrong way to feel things?" He asks, calm and just a little too sharp where you're sure he's trying to go for nonchalant.

And it's so sudden after hours spent in the quiet, that you have to clear your throat to make sure your voice still works.

"I don't... I'm not sure that feelings can be sorted into right and wrong. They just are. As many things in life just are."

"People used to say I was supposed to mourn my mother when she died." Valarr’s jaw works over the syllables like biting through something particularly sharp, "And I didn’t. And the guilt of not doing so ate away at me for a long time."

"I don’t think you can command people to mourn." You answer after a long pause. Because his dual-toned eyes are looking at you and his mouth is moving slightly like he’s already preparing to speak for you. Like you’re supposed to follow a script he’s written out and that it pisses him off when you don’t.

"Elaborate, please."

"Grief has teeth. Grief bites, it drags you under like a tide and refuses to let go. It’s… I wouldn’t classify it as a feeling. More so a state. Because there’s sadness in it, of course there is. But there’s also anger, there’s guilt. There’s this whole complicated mess of emotions that can’t be sorted into little shelves to be dusted off when it’s deemed an appropriate time for them to surface."

"So you think that when I’ve been asked to mourn, I managed to somehow mess that up, too." His voice hitches slightly on the word ‘too’, like a scratch on a record. Something heavy rests beneath it, like there’s parentheses he refuses to elaborate on.

You're not sure why he's chosen you to talk to about this. You're not good with mourning. There's no time for it - for the complicated, tangled mess that it usually is. Easier to push down. Easier to squeeze it into some jagged shape and cut yourself on it each time you remember.

"I’m saying that it’s not grief if you can make it flat and categorize it only into sadness. It’s simply not how grief works."

"I think I was sad." Valarr says, pausing, "When my mom died."

The word 'mother' is replaced by its diminutive in a way you're sure is purposeful. He hangs onto the least important words in your answer, missing your point in the way that has to be deliberate. Because Valarr doesn’t do accidental. It’s not in his programming, it’s not part of the manual he has for the neat, perfect heir.

"I remember being sad, but I also remember that sadness being dull." Valarr continues after you fail to answer his last revalation, "I’ve watched my mom waste away in that hospital bed for months before she died. Perhaps that’s why my mourning wasn’t deemed appropriate."

You look at him, then. Drag your eyes away from the urgent emails pinging and demanding your attention. Valarr’s face is calm, not sullied by any ounce of emotion - negative or positive. His heterochromatic eyes zero in on yours in a way that’s supposed to imitate openness but only serves to make it look like he’s counting the seconds of your silence and deeming it unsatisfactory.

"Was it sadness," You choose your words carefully, "or did you put on another mask because it was expected of you to be sad in the face of a great tragedy?"

You watch something flicker beneath Valarr’s expression. A predator getting ready to pounce only for him to tug on the leash. The mask of delicate softness slips for just a moment, obvious in the way the corner of his lips tugs. It’s not soft like when he’s talking to you over the documents late in the evening, nor is it surprised like when he catches himself finding one of your sharp, sarcastic quips funny despite himself.

"You’d actually believe that I wasn’t sad watching my mom die?"

"I don’t know you that well, Valarr." You answer, drawing an invisible line between you, "I’m merely engaging in conversation."

Valarr stands and then stills for a moment. After just a blink, he steps closer, just the tiniest breath of space closing between you. Then, his arms shift and he clasps his hands behind his back, posture straightening out. The mask slips and then it’s back with renowned perfection.

"I want you to explain." Valarr speaks, voice falling to a register that’s softer than you’ve ever heard before. A blade wrapped in the finest of silks, "Because that is quite an accusation to make when you have no grounds to do so."

"Did you hold your mother’s hand. Before. Before she died? While she was dying?" You side-step the conversation instead, just like he did moments ago.

"I did. So did my father. So did my brother."

"Then was the action truly your own or were you merely mimicking?" The silence between you rings out, sharp and final. You lay your head under the executioner’s blade when your mouth opens again, "Because the way you speak of grief, the way you speak of even sadness, is calculated."

"It’s expected of me to calculate emotions. They have no place in my field of work." Valarr’s answer is clipped and his eyes narrow despite the way he tries to keep them trusting and open. My field of work. Not ours.

"It’s not sadness if you can calculate it, Valarr."

You watch him swallow. Watch the way his Adam’s apple presses to the pale, freckled skin of his throat razor-sharp. Watch the thoughts dancing beneath his eyes and the way he bites down every answer that’s instinct and not strategy.

"I cried. I actually cried despite trying not to when her grip on my hand went slack." His voice gains a certain note of rawness, but you see the threads of the tale he’s spinning around you. You wonder if he’s trying to convince you or himself.

"Why?" You don’t offer him more. Because offering more would mean he’d have something to hang onto, something to leverage, something else to answer to.

"Because I was sad-" Valarr starts. Swallows again. Then, a short, sharp laugh bubbles past his lips, "That’s not it, is it? You’re not buying it. I can see it. Like when you see an investor actively pulling back from the deal right in front of you."

"What was it that you were feeling? Not as Valarr Targaryen. Not as Valarr the heir. Just Valarr. What were you feeling, then?"

"Relief."

The temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees. You can only manage to hold his gaze for a moment before it trails down to his perfectly polished designer loafers. You bite back one answer, then swallow another. Your hands run over your hair, then fixate on your dress shirt. Anxiety, sharp and biting and cloying, thrums in your pores, presses deeper, settles into the very bones.

Valarr's hand, cold and certain, catches yours in a way that breaks every personal and professional boundary the two of you have built. His thumb brushes over your knuckles.

"It seems that I have made you worry. I can assure you that nothing you have said for the duration of this conversation will be held against you." Valarr lets go as abruptly as he had grabbed. He turns his back to you and walks back to his own desk, "You can go, now. We've done enough for one day."

You're quick to gather your things; uncaring on wether he sees your anxiety for what it is. You bid Valarr goodbye without looking over your shoulder. You can feel his gaze still on you as the door of his office shuts behind you.

Valarr doesn't even pretend to look over the documents. They're just words on a page he can't be bothered to actually understand. He yearns. For the very first time in his life, Valarr Targaryen actually yearns. It’s laughable, it’s absolutely and utterly pathetic and he can’t even put this feeling into words. His well-versed vocabulary, honed by years of studies, of listening to his father dismantle people with a carefully chosen sentence alone, fails him. So Valarr yearns, because there is nothing else to do. As many things in life just are, you had said. He yearns and he waits.