Showing up was half the battle, right? Date: 25 August 2015. Time: Late afternoon. Location: Azoth Manor: the Foyer Characters: Mateo Vargas and you Description: The man behind the monster Status/Rating: Public, open, PG-13 for gratuitous language
Mateo Vargas would admit to liking very few things in this world, but he was quite vocal about the many things he disliked. It wasn't just that he enjoyed complaining (though he did), and it wasn't just that he was picky (though he was). In the end, the reason Mateo didn't like a lot of things is because affection and appreciation only led to disappointment, all but inevitably.
He had liked his apartment and the neighborhood it was in, and his car, and his kitchen. Lo and behold, he now had none of those things, and it was vanishingly unlikely he'd be seeing them again for more than a visit for quite some time. Mateo had finally dared feel comfortable and happy with portions of his day to day life, and look: now he was obligated to live in fucking Seattle.
Seattle and the entire pacific northwest could die in a fire, and as far as Mateo was concerned. He didn't like the climate, the weather, the people, nor the food and drink. Crap beer, crap fish, and he hated Rainier cherries. Same with the entire United States and most of Canada, to be frank. He'd been dragging his heels about the move for as long as he could for this move, but Desiderio had finally put his foot down and called the middle Vargas son to heel.
If it turned out their parents had disappeared willingly and for no good goddamn reason, someone would pay.
Mateo had rented a car, some late model piece of American shit and they only had automatic, what the fuck was this entire backwards continent? The car was inconvenient; someone would need to take the damn thing back to the airport, but he hadn't felt like dragging his luggage however many blocks through Azoth Manor's wards and veils, so no taxicabs, and no metro. Car it had been.
He debated firing off a text to his family, but after spending entirely too long getting his new phone dealt with, because of course the US's mobile system had to be as big a cluster fuck as everything else, right, he'd then proceeded to shove the damn thing into his pocket, ringer off. He hated all the default sounds the piece of shit came with but hadn't felt like dealing with finding a new one until he was over the jetlag. Fuck it, he decided. He'd be seeing a lot of his family now that he was back living with them, why rush the reunion?
Mateo loved his family, really he did, but that didn't mean he didn't also have days where he didn't like them very much. The illusion of distance his own place provided had done wonders for his toleration of the various Vargas quirks and misadventures.
He was here; that was enough effort for one day. For one week, honestly, or even more; with the tan of a Spanish summer and presently ill-kept, dark facial hair, he was enough of a red flag for the fucking racists they called international security in this craphole of a country. Granted, there were half-way legitimate reasons for the NSA and Interpol to grill any member of his family at any given moment, but he was Spanish, for fuck's sake.
Dufflebag over one shoulder and wheeled trunk noisily pulled behind, Mateo made his way into the conspicuous piece of bland architectural hell that was Azoth Manor. Through the goddamn grand foyer, because he didn't remember which side entrances led somewhere useful and which just led to servants quarters, or something. He needed to put his shit down somewhere safe (he didn't trust anybody with his stuff, not even especially not his own flesh and blood, who enjoyed listening to him bitch about misplaced objects, he was sure) and get some alcohol or at least some caffeine in his system. He wanted nothing more than to strip off his button-down shirt and black dress slacks and give into his body's insistence, but the longer he kept his sleep schedule of local time, the more miserable he'd end up being.
May as well minimize the misery now, he grimly decided, and shouldered through the foyer doors.