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artificialqueens · 5 years

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things you didn't say at all [things you say part 4] (Ninex) - meggie

A/N: It’s been 84 years… But seriously, school has been insane. Sorry for the delay. HFIG is not abandoned. Mia is still my favorite human (because she always reads my things and tells me that they’re good. Get yourself a friend like that). So really, nothing’s changed except I’m busy af now. Come bother me.

Summary: They have “communication issues,” but that’s not what Monét says to anyone who asks why they’re taking a break.

Word Count: 2,571

They have “communication issues,” but that’s not what Monét says to anyone who asks why they’re taking a break.

“It’s hard being apart so much.” (Said to Bob the night of said breakup. Bob had subsequently told him he was a “stupid, goddamn idiot” and needed to figure his shit out because now he was sad and stupid instead of just stupid.)

“We thought some emotional distance might be a good idea.” (Said to Cracker, who hadn’t said anything, but had instead narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and cocked her head in that silent Cracker way that communicated all her feelings without a word.)

“Brooke and Vanjie took a break and it seemed to have worked out okay for them!” (That one he says to Kameron at the Branjie engagement party while he avoids Nina like the plague. Probably he shouldn’t have even come, but how do you miss a Branjie wedding event and not get clocked for it? Especially when your (ex) boyfriend is the party planner and the two of you aren’t exactly telling everybody that you’re taking a break because of your “communication issues?” Especially when you’re in the goddamn wedding party.)

So he keeps making excuses, but really it’s their “communication issues,” which Monét always has to put in quotation marks because he feels like an idiot even thinking about it like that.

There are quite possibly a million people (so what if he picked up speaking in hyperbole from Nina?) wandering around on the grass of the country club at the party, a fact for which Monét is incredibly grateful because it allows him to blend in. Nina’s running around like crazy, bustling from table to table, playing the perfect party host he is. Monét wonders if he even realizes he’s there. It’s probably best if he doesn’t, though logically they are both in the wedding party, so it makes sense if you stop to think about it. (He knows Nina’s stopped to think about it.) But they haven’t spoken since… Well.

Nina’s thrown a hell of a party, but that’s no surprise because he always does, Monét notes with a smile. There’s a sense of peace that settles over the lawn of the country club as night falls, a sense that everything will be all right, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Fairy lights twinkle in the trees, paper lanterns cast a gentle glow on the tables and dance floor. And everyone looks so… Peaceful. It’s the opposite of how Monét feels.

Vanjie and Brooke are beaming; they’re never more than two feet apart, though they turn and speak in all directions. Brooke’s hand rests lightly on Vanessa’s hip, Vanjie tiptoes up to press a kiss to Brooke’s cheek. They’re so happy, dressed in bridal white and glowing, radiating happiness and contentment. Monét is happy for them. Really. Truly. They deserve it after everything they’ve gone through to get to this point.

Monét chats on and off with his Drag Race sisters. Trixie and Katya are there, of course. No one’s kidding themselves about that wedding happening any time soon, but they’re in a good place (finally), and they both look more in love with each other every time Monét sees them, and he gathers that’s enough for them for now. They’ve always operated on their own schedule. He guesses they’ll continue to do so, and it will be perfect and so very them if (and when) it does happen. Trixie usually gets her way as far as Katya is concerned.

Scarlet and Yvie just passed their two-year anniversary. Yvie’s body seems to pain her less when Scarlet is around, so no one is surprised that they spend the majority of their time on the dance floor, swaying back and forth, wrapped around each other, still just as infatuated as the day they met in the Werk Room (now they’re just worse at hiding it). Yvie’s thin fingers tangle in Scarlet’s long curls and a smile plays at the corners of her mouth as they move to the rhythm of the music, whispering lyrics or secrets or both.

From his vantage point on the fringe of the party, Monét watches Nina. He shouldn’t, he knows this, has no right to do so after it was his idea that they take an indefinite break from their relationship. But he misses him. It’s been a month, and Monét knows that while logically it might have been the best decision, he hasn’t stopped hurting since he left Columbus.

It probably shouldn’t have been such a big deal. Monét probably blew the entire thing out of proportion. In the year they’d been together (and Monét does count those three months where they were just sleeping together even if Nina doesn’t because it’s not like there was anybody else for either one of them), Monét knew that Nina wasn’t the greatest communicator. He had a tendency to get in his head, to withdraw, to take things way too personally and internalize them.

It was a personality trait, a quirk, something Monét could deal with and work around because he knew unequivocally that he was in love with that man, Disney obsession and Hawaiian shirt collection and all; good, bad, ugly. He knew that he and Nina were absolutely meant to be together. So he accepted it, accepted Nina, said they’d work on it together.

Try as he might, Monét couldn’t break Nina of the habit. Couldn’t seem to convince him that the time they spent apart traveling around the world was just as difficult for him as it was for Nina. Couldn’t love him deeply enough to prove that Nina was more than enough, just as he was, for Monét.

They talked about it. Tried to, anyway. Nina would say he understood and things would be better for a day or three or however long they got to be together, but then one of them would inevitably leave, and a few days later, Nina’s texts would come further and further apart. They’d be shorter and more coded. Less full of exclamation points and “I love you’s!” and more riddled with lower case letters, Emojis, and acronyms that weren’t “lol.”

It had taken Monét a while, but he’d gradually taught himself to pick up on these subtle changes that signaled when Nina was spiraling again. He’d call or FaceTime (that was usually better). It might take fifteen minutes or two hours, but eventually they’d work through it. Nina would be back to his bubbly, cheerful self, and Monét would breathe a sigh of relief.

And then, one day, they hadn’t been able to work through it.

Nina took (almost) a whole week off and came to New York to visit Monét. They scheduled one gig together at the end of the week; a double-billed Miss Congeniality thing; none of that branding their portmanteau and selling it online like Brooke and Vanjie had). They were still private, at least as far as the world was concerned.

There were a few things Monét refused to compromise on, the biggest of which was his desire to keep his relationship off Instagram. His fans knew he had a boyfriend, the shrewder ones had figured out that it was probably Nina, but he wasn’t going to confirm a thing. They’d all learned a lesson watching Brooke and Vanessa fracture and haphazardly glue themselves back together, and it was obvious they’d lost a few pieces in the reconstruction. Nothing major, surface damage only, but still. There were visible chips.

So he and Nina never posted any photos together. They rarely performed in the same cities. They’d done a few shows together, but had policed their hands and eyes and comments, and there was usually at least one other person there. It became a rule with them–nothing public, nothing online. And it was working.

Until it wasn’t.

Nina pulled away, stopped texting, stopped FaceTiming, and Monét… internalized it. Took it personally. Convinced himself that Nina had decided he was too old to entertain Monét’s affections anymore.

So they’d existed in radio silence for about a week before Monét finally flown to Columbus and Ubered to Nina’s apartment (practicing his speech the entire way) where he laid bare his grievances.

“I can’t handle you constantly pulling away and never telling me what’s wrong,” he said. “I’m not a fucking mind reader.”

“It’s not about you,” Nina replied with a sigh. “It’s… I’m working on some stuff—through some stuff, and I—”

“Then let me help you! That’s how this works.”

Nina shook his head. Shut his eyes. Closed himself off. That’s when Monét knew. “I love you so much, Andrew, but I think we need a break.”

He’d been bluffing. He’d completely expected Nina to call him on it, grab for his hands across the table and tell him they could work through whatever his issues were together.

Instead, Nina presses his lips into a thin line, nodded, swallowed hard. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

It wasn’t, Monét wanted to scream. It wasn’t what he wanted at all. But something had to change. And all he could hope was that sooner or later, Nina would work out whatever his problems were. Monét tried not to let the weight of the unknown crush him as he rode back to the airport, unshed tears hot in his eyes as he deleted the red heart emoji from beside Nina’s name in his phone.

“Anyway…” Brooke and Vanjie have been passing the microphone for the last few minutes, and Monét has been paying just enough attention to look like the interested groomsman.

“There’s just a couple of people we really want to recognize because they’re very, extremely special to us,” Brooke says, extending a long arm. “None of this would be possible without my best man and dearest friend, Nina West, and I know how she gets during party planning, so we have to commend Monét as well for putting up with her.”

Monét starts at the mention of his name. He’d just assumed that Nina would tell Brooke and Vanessa about the end of their relationship. He isn’t sure how to proceed.

But then Brooke is gesturing for him to join them in the middle of the dance floor, and Vanjie is asking people how much they want to bet on Monét and Nina being the next two to get married (it opens a hole in the center of Monét’s chest, right there under his breastbone).

Monét drags himself to the center of the dance floor and hugs both Brooke and Vanessa quickly. Then he’s staring down Nina for the first time since they ended things and he’s frozen.

Nina blinks a few times, lets out a shuddering sigh, embraces him with shaky arms.

Brooke and Vanessa wouldn’t notice if a sinkhole opened in the middle of their reception, Monét is fairly certain, but he doesn’t want to make things awkward. So he hugs Nina back, breathes in his too-familiar scent that he’s missed so much, squeezes his biceps through his suit jacket.

Then there’s music, the mellow chords of a pop ballad playing in the background and Brooke and Vanessa are swaying on the dance floor, and motioning for them to do the same, before getting lost in each other once again.

Nina pulls out of their hug, clears his throat, and turns to head back to the buffet table, but Monét reaches down and grabs for his hand.

“Do you wanna…” Monét shrugs, nods toward the dance floor, and he expects Nina to decline, to tell him to go fuck himself because there are taking a break because it was something he wanted… “I mean, no pressure, but I think they wanted us to… So…”

Nina pauses, bites his lip, but then nods once and squeezes Monét’s hand as he steps into his arms.

They’re quiet for a moment and fall effortlessly into the rhythm that always came naturally to them, but Nina still won’t look him in the eye.

“How have you been?” Monét finally asks, forcing Nina’s gaze to him.

Nina shrugs. “Busy. I’ve had an engagement party to put together.”

“It’s beautiful,” Monét says honestly, and that draws the tiniest smile from Nina’s pretty mouth that Monét is desperate to see again.

“It’s what they deserve,” Nina responds quietly. “They went through a lot to get to this point. It’s… It’s the least I can do.”

They fall quiet again, spinning together on the dance floor amidst all their friends.

“I didn’t tell them,” Nina says after a long minute of silence, “because I didn’t want them to focus on us instead of them, and you know how Vanjie is. He wouldn’t have left it alone.”

“I get it.” Monét does. Really. Vanessa has always been too romantic for her own damn good, and Brooke is just as bad ever since they got engaged.

The music fades out. Monét stops moving (although he doesn’t want to) and turns loose of Nina’s hands. “Well.”

“Well.”

“Thanks for the dance, Nina West,” he says with a wink and turns to leave.

“I miss you,” Nina says quickly, quietly. “Can we… Could we talk? It doesn’t have to be tonight or anything, but… I want to talk about things. About us.”

Monét tries in vain to swallow around his heart, which has leapt into his throat and started beating double-time, pushing blood to his ears, his extremities, his mouth. It’s numb as he forces his lips to form around the words.

I’ve missed you I want you I love you so goddamn much this was a terrible idea why are we doing this again?

“Sure.”

“When?”

“Now’s good,” Monét says with a grin and extends his hand to Nina who takes it and follows him back to his table on the edge of the dance floor.

*****

“Looks like it worked,” Brooke whispers into Vanessa’s ear as he watches Monét lead Nina to a table on the outskirts of the party.

“Spin me.” They maneuver themselves so Vanjie can get a look at their friends bent low over drinks and hors d'oeuvres, faces lit by paper lanterns and twinkle lights. It’s a blink-and-you’d-miss-it detail. But their hands are interlaced under the table. Vanessa notices. He always notices those sorts of things.

Vanessa snorts. “‘Bout damn time those fools sat down and worked their shit out.” He smirks up at Brooke. “I told you it would work, baby.”

Brooke nods. “You did. Though I still don’t know how you worked out that they broke up anyway.”

Vanjie shrugs. “I’m observant. You’d be surprised what you learn about people just by paying attention to them.”

Brooke hums in agreement. “They can’t know,” he warns his fiance. “They worked so hard to keep it a secret from us.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Vanessa sees Monét place a gentle kiss on the corner of Nina’s mouth. He’ll let them think they worked it out on their own because it’s what they need. It’s what’s best, and Vanjie only wants what’s best for his friends. So this one? He’d love to take credit for it, love to hold it over their heads and use it in his speech at their engagement party someday… But he’ll let it slide. For the greater good.

He smiles and tiptoes up to receive a kiss from Brooke. “I know.”

#rpdr fanfiction #monet x change #nina west #ninex #angst #canon compliant #things you say #meggie #concrit welcome #submission

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