vax'ildan (deathwalker) wrote in noexits, @ 2022-04-03 16:58:00 |
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"Nobody's high school dances are really like this," Hugh remarked casually, reaching for the decanter he'd picked up the previous week. It seemed to him that it changed every day he drank from it, so it was obviously magical in more than one way. The last time it had dispensed a red wine, this time, it was an ale - although not a very good one. "Of course that's pretty much every high school movie for you - impossibly elaborate dances in locations that in no way resemble the high school gym most of us experienced." He leaned back in the theater seat, doing the horrific deed of putting his feet on the seat in front of him, and glanced over to Vax with a grin. He'd set up his laptop, figured out how to project to the theater stage, and then set them both up with front seats along with some quick fruit and oat bars he'd thrown together, and some drinks. It wasn't quite the same as it would have been in his downtown studio in Seattle, or in the Loft he'd been living in with Marce, or even he living space that he'd decorated up nicely with IKEA furniture before Butler had been destroyed, but it was good enough, and hey, at least Vax was getting a semi-big screen experience in the process. "Also, our band was not this good - and I was at a private school in Bellevue." For his part, Vax had spent the first half hour or so of the movie absolutely enthralled with the very concept of what he was watching. Like Hugh had already told him, it was like a play but not live - not in any sense of the word, and he’d taken a good few minutes dividing his attention between the projection and Hugh’s laptop while he tried to figure out what sort of magic was making it possible. Ultimately he made peace yet again that he was never going to understand it and settled into simply watching. By the hour mark he remembered he had a drink at his disposal and was full of enough questions that they started to spill out practically unbidden. Locations. Cars? Why were they cutting up frogs in a room? Having your shoes thrown up on, so inconvenient. By the time they got to the dance, Vax was slouched down in his seat with his knees hooked over the back of the seat in front of him, his mostly empty drink balanced on his chest alongside a picked at oat bar. It made it easy to move as little as possible when he looked between the movie and Hugh, his attention flickering that way every time one of them spoke. “So no impossibly elaborate dances and bad bands? Was there at least this much drama at your… high school dances? And is everyone big on Shakespeare where you’re from?” Vax flashed a grin before tipping back the last of his drink and dragging the pad of his thumb against his chin to chase a spilled drop. He glanced briefly back at the movie before returning most of his focus to Hugh, an eyebrow raised. “Private sounds like it means fancy.” Hugh glanced over and gave Vax a quick quirk up of his eyebrow. "My dances, or high school dances generally?" He turned his attention to the screen for a minute. "So, in my junior year I spent at least six months madly in love with this senior named Andrew. He was gorgeous, and also completely out of my league - or so I thought, but somehow although I did not come to prom with him, I did leave prom with him, and then we dated for most of that summer, before he went off to UCLA the next year." Hugh laughed, and shook his head. "Senior year was completely unremarkable though, so I think that's fifty/fifty on my high school proms at least." He took another sip of the decanter, and then nodded. "I guess, fancy is probably a good word for it. They had a good theater program, which I liked, and they had a good college prep program, which my Dad liked. But not fancy like this," he grinned, with a head tilt at the screen. "And I could say everyone loves Shakespeare, but it's mostly just me. Well, less true at the school I went to, but it's a little unusual in high school even so." Vax laughed, and with most of his attention on the conversation now he was glad to realize when he glanced back at the screen that the story seemed to be starting to come to a close so there wasn’t much to be missed by his focus being drawn away from it. “So the drama at that particular dance was you? Stealing someone else’s date? Cad.” He grinned again and shook his head, the word sounding more just a tease than anything that carried some kind of accusatory weight. He’d watched closely enough to know that this UCLA was probably along the same lines as Kat’s Sarah Lawrence in the movie - more school after this school, and something most people from Hugh’s world did. Without much more movie to watch Vax slouched even lower in his chair, his shoulders almost resting on the seat itself. “So after your average fancy high school, you went to… “ He trailed off and waved a hand in the general direction of the screen until he conjured the word. “College?” He focused momentarily on watching the tip of his index finger trace around the rim of his now empty glass, then cut his gaze back in Hugh’s direction. “It sounds like you knew what it was you wanted to do when you were awfully young. What had your mind made up like that?” "Yes, date-stealing cad, that's me, for sure." Hugh grinned over at Vax. "I was told that he just came with one of his friends, and I think that was true." Of course even if it hadn't been, would he have left with Andrew? The conclusion that Hugh had to come down to was probably, because Andrew had been one of the more attractive seniors, and getting to leave the dance with him, had felt like Hugh had succeeded somehow. And he'd been just romantic enough at the time to think it might actually last beyond the summer, and then it hadn't and Hugh had decided that trying for long lasting romance just wasn't worth it, so he'd just have fun. "UW," Hugh responded, then realized that wouldn't mean anything to Vax. "University of Washington, which is in Seattle. Complicated story, but it was a sort of compromise between what I wanted and what my Dad wanted, and it wasn't all bad. Even if I had my heart set on NYU. But yeah, I've known for a really long time it's what I wanted to do." He paused, for a moment letting the scene play before continuing. "I don't know how I knew, I just knew. Like, Gene Kelly, in Singing in the Rain? I also have that one on here, but I watched that when I was five or six, and I wanted to do that. I wanted to dance, and make people laugh, and tell stories, and I just knew that. And I was lucky enough to have a mom who was willing to help me make it happen. I pretty much owe everything I've been able to accomplish to her willingness to drive me places and fight for me to have experiences." While the details of this particular aspect of Hugh’s life might’ve been a literal jumble of unintelligible letters to Vax, there was at least a common throughline that he figured had to connect all of them in some way - family, more specifically parents, and how they served to shape choices and paths for each of them. And without even knowing specifics, Hugh’s story felt like it was cutting a little too close to the heart of his own experience. So at first all he could do was nod, suddenly solemn, and flick at a few crumbs sticking to his shirt. “It sounds like she’s lovely.” Breaking the quiet with one of the more upbeat threads of the conversation seemed infinitely nicer than asking questions about rifts between Hugh and his father or Vax offering up his own experience with it. “And knowing for that long what you want to do with yourself… “ Vax trailed off with a quiet, wry moment of laughter and shook his head, finally shifting to sit up straight - feet on the floor and all. “It must be nice, being that sure. And then getting to do it, one way or another.” He glanced up at the screen again, now a scroll of names he squinted at trying to figure out what it might mean to him. When he decided the answer was ‘nothing’, he shrugged to himself and turned just slightly in his seat, his focus now firmly on the conversation rather than the screen. “I don’t mind a complicated story, you know. Unless it’s one you don’t care to share, which… you know. Fair.” He grinned and draped an arm over the back of his seat, fingertips drumming on the arm of the chair in the row behind them. “Who am I to be asking, after all?” "My Mom's incredible," Hugh said softly, along with a sudden tug of missing home. It had been nice watching the film. It felt so normal in so many ways, but Marce wasn't here, nor his mom. Nor his Dad, nor his biological father, whom he'd just begun to forge a relationship with. He took another swig of the ale, and stood himself, using the opportunity to raise a leg up, ankle on the back of the chair and then leaning down to drape himself over it, simply stretching. He hadn't danced enough recently. He stood, repeated it with the other and then he pulled his arms up over his shoulder, before he sat down again, this time pulling his legs up, and resting them on the arm, turning so his back was against the other arm and he could actually look at Vax. "Dad wanted me to go into the family business - which is software - like, say printing books? It's not that at all, but probably the closest to what you might know? Detail work, and all that - I would be really bad at it. Ezra, that's my older brother - he's really good at it." And without filling in a lot of details, Hugh suspected that said a lot. "I mean, I think we covered the friends thing earlier. It's nice to… have people who know things I guess." A beat. "Truth is, he's not my Dad. Which I didn't even realize until this year. Thirty years of feeling like I could never live up to what he wanted, and turns out my Mom had an affair. And that's me. And suddenly everything makes more sense." Of all the directions Vax might’ve expected Hugh’s story would go, the ending was still one that surprised him. At first it was obvious he wasn’t sure what to say - even though he figured Hugh was right, it did make things make a little more sense if his father had always held him to impossible standards or at arm’s length, horrible as that sense was. After a few silent moments he shook his head, wishing he had the benefit of a drink in his hand so at least he’d have something to fidget with. “My mother was incredible too. But when we were ten, my father showed up and told her to send us with him because he could give us a better life, and… and I suppose she agreed, because off we went. He never wanted better for us, though. He wanted to use us, but it backfired because he didn’t like us and neither did most of the people in the city. Half-elves, you know.” Vax paused, then smiled wryly when he realized that no, Hugh probably didn’t know. “Not to be trusted, too muddied to be equal to full-blooded elves. We were ultimately just evidence of my father’s indiscretions and he ended up resenting us for it, I think. So we ran away.” He frowned at the arm of the seat, focusing his attention on picking at the grain of the wood with his fingernail so he didn’t have to look up. “By the time we made it home, the dragon had destroyed the town we grew up in and my mother was dead. I know it’s not really anything like your story, but I’m telling you all of that because I’ve got that man’s blood in my veins and it makes me angry all the fucking time. At least you know you haven’t got to be like he is unless you want to be, you know? None of the bad parts of him are in you because he’s none of you at all.” He looked up again without moving his head much, offering a smaller but more genuine smile this time. “I doubt that helps much, but at least I understand the shitty father part of it all. Have you ever met him, your real dad?” Hugh glanced over at this. He… realized he should have known that Vax was half-elf after his own week in that body but he hadn't. Of course he and Vax hadn't spent a lot of time interacting the week before, so that was probably part of it. He nodded. "I was half-elf last week. Didn't really realize that initially, but I played in the wrong tavern, and definitely realized it after that, so I guess I kind of do know, although not to the whole lived-in body extent. From where I'm standing though, it wasn't bad. I'd do it again," he shrugged, with a smile over at Vax. Hugh didn't know why he was talking about this, exactly. He'd talked about it with a handful of people at home, and that was it, but he supposed maybe that was part of it. They weren't at home and Vax was easy to talk to. "I'm really sorry about your Mom. I think I'd possibly go on a murderous rampage if that happened to me. Well, maybe not cause I'm not really much of a fighter, but in my head? There'd be all sorts of revenge." Hugh laughed, "yeah, oddly enough. And that's a story worthy of a Shakespeare twist probably. He's got his flaws, but… well, they're a lot more like my flaws, to be honest, so it at least makes sense." Vax returned the smile and waved a hand dismissively, coupling the gesture with a shrug. “It really isn’t so bad most of the time. I’d be perfectly happy with it if I hadn’t ever had to meet my father and go live with him. Sorry you ran into it in an otherwise lovely city.” As far as he could tell, anyhow; most of his experience had been drinking with a unicorn, learning he could fly, and delving into the ruins. Which was a lovely experience to him. The mention of revenge drew another smile, small and a little more tight-lipped than the last. “I was working on revenge when I got pulled here, but it was going to be a long road. I suppose it’s still waiting right where I left it, but… “ He frowned down at the arm of the chair in front of him again, tracing a fingertip along the grain of the wood before giving his head a quick shake and squaring his shoulders as he looked up again. “But there’s nothing I can do about it here, so it isn’t worth thinking about or boring you with.” He bent a leg up until his foot was flat on the seat and he could wrap his arms around his knee to pull himself forward enough to rest his chin on top of it. It wasn’t the most comfortable of positions overall, but it was a nice stretch for his back after sitting slouched down for most of the movie. “A bigger twist than finding out who you thought was your father really wasn’t?” Vax tilted his head so it was more his cheek resting against his knee than his chin, making his smile lopsided. “Go on then, if I’d known your story was so interesting we never would’ve made it through the movie. Or even started it.” "It's not boring me, for the record," Hugh pointed out. Because it was nice to know something about the other man, and it was very different from his own life. Granted the week previous felt as if it had given Hugh some reference points that maybe Vax didn't have for his life - but then that was what watching the film was intended to help with. It had been winding towards the end anyway, and Hugh considered his story. "I'm not sure it's that interesting… I mean, it's…" He'd lived it. At the time that he'd lived it -- it hadn't felt that interesting. It had been overwhelming. He'd spent one night completely drunk, he and Marce had fought, which had probably been his fault, he'd ended up spending the night in his parents driveway in his car, and his non-biological father had found him, and taken him for breakfast the next morning without really asking any questions at all about why Hugh had been there. But when he thought about trying to explain it… it felt surreal, the sort of thing that if he would try to sell it as a story, would likely get marked out for being unrealistic. "I spent the last summer at home filming a true crime story about a little girl who died. It was filmed in a town near Seattle, so I lived there for most of the summer. It was… a fantastic opportunity, and the first film that I'd done with a director and actors that were actually big names. That's where I met my biological father, who was the Uncle of the little girl the film was about. Except I didn't know he was, at first. That came later. Along with finding out that he was my Father, I also later found out that he was hers, the girl the film was about. He financed the film, hoping they would figure out who started the fire that killed her. She was my half sister - we would have been almost the same age. So… yeah, basically I met my biological father, while playing one of the possible murderers of my half-sister, in a film that he financed, hoping to figure out who the real murderer was." Hugh pulled a breath in and then let it out, pulling his knees up and resting his chin on them. "March family secrets." Vax’s head came off of his knee at the mention of true crime simply because it was a term he’d recently become familiar with thanks to Kate. That instant of oh I know about this! faded as quickly as it sparked, however; there was no way Vax was about to interject any of his own thoughts into this telling until he was sure it was over because he wasn’t entirely sure there would be another chance at hearing it. Not that there seemed to be anything special about this moment, just… in the quiet of the theater, sharing strange life experiences? It wasn’t necessarily a scenario that would happen every day. Not here when things tended to slide sideways on a whim. By the end of the story Vax was hugging his knee closer to his chest, eyebrows climbing upward over eyes wide with rapt attention. Family secrets indeed. The quiet lingered in the space for longer than Vax would’ve liked, but he very much needed the time to process the turns they’d taken between ‘not sure it’s that interesting’ and ‘family secrets.’ The first noise he made to break the quiet wasn’t a word, but a huff of almost soundless, incredulous laughter through his nose before he loosened his hold on his leg to instead reach and give Hugh’s arm a brief squeeze. “When you tell me something isn’t interesting, I expect it to not be interesting. And that… I don’t know, there’s got to be a better word than interesting so I don’t say it again. But it’s more than, trust me.” He laughed again, this time at his own inability to articulate, and shook his head slightly. “Did he know you were his son the whole time?” A pause, then a quieter, more solemn question he couldn’t help but ask. “...did you find out who it was?” Hugh scoffed, and then gave Vax a quick smile as he shook his head. “Trust me, when I was living it? It was mostly just a lot and too interesting I guess. I said it was a really crazy year, right?” He fell silent for a moment. It felt like he ought to feel too exposed talking about all of this. He wasn’t prone to talking about this sort of thing. He wanted to be an actor, and there were so many things that could blow up, potentially, there. While Hugh knew it was possible things could still break in the trial - he thought fleetingly of the other him and the arrest he had apparently experienced - so far none of it had leaked in the wrong way and Hugh had intentionally kept quiet about those family secrets so that they wouldn’t. “Not until this past year,” Hugh considered this. “Mom told him. She told me that when I went to question her about the whole thing. I think she thought it was easiest if everyone thought that - well, that nobody knew. It wasn’t a relationship with my biological Dad — Just a flirtation. It’s funny cause I never think of my parents as being unhappy, but maybe you don’t need to be. I’m hardly one to talk anyways. I sleep around a lot. Or I used to.” He shrugged. “On the one hand I’m not sure she was wrong. Maybe I would have done the same. But I’m also glad I learned the truth. “Unfortunately, though, not about Alice. I think that mystery might just be buried. Anyway,” he looked over and gave a flash of a smile before sobering. “I haven’t really talked to anyone about this stuff.” Vax once again hesitated before he spoke, this time to consider his words rather than process all he’d been told. He knew that lately he’d become a little intense about certain things that tied well into their conversation so he didn’t want to be the one to get too heavy… but he also knew himself and figured that might be inevitable. He suddenly wished, not very seriously, that he’d brought a dagger along just so he could fidget with it. Which probably wouldn’t be much comfort to Hugh, so better it stay in his room. “I don’t think she was wrong,” he began slowly, his brow still furrowed in thought. “Whatever her reason for it, it’s the reason you’re here, isn’t it? Well, not here here, who knows that reason… but you know what I mean.” He wrinkled his nose and wound some hair around an index finger, then tucked it behind his ear before it could fall into his face. “This sort of thing is something I get wrapped up in a lot lately, since - ah, it’s just been on my mind. How even small choices can circle back to you later. How they affect other people. The ones you know, maybe even more you never will… “ Trailing off, Vax’s gaze went a little unfocused as his train of thought threatened to spiral. After a moment he gave his head another quick, clearing shake and though his smile was a little slow in coming - like he had to talk himself into good enough spirits again for it to be believable - it still came. “Anyhow. I’m glad to know it all, for what little it may be worth. So thank you for the movie and trust both. Promise I won’t go telling anyone what we’ve talked about, not that I expect anyone would think to come to me to ask any more than I’d run to them to tell.” That was true. Although Hugh had wondered at times, imagined even, what it might have been like if he'd met Henry earlier - known about him, and grown up knowing about it all - he couldn't really say for certain. For better for worse everything that he was had grown out of that. And it wasn't all bad. His mom had helped him with dance and acting, and Hugh had a drive that he didn't know if he would have had if he didn't constantly feel like he needed to prove himself to his Father. He needed acting to work, and he needed it so Isaac would take him seriously. Yeah, therapy did help with self-awareness. And choices, well, Hugh understood something about those too. His mind drifted to Rhett. To the night at the party, and the whole thing there. He just nodded though, that was more than the evening needed, and honestly - he didn't want to talk about it at all. He didn't want anyone to know about that. It was bad enough that other him had talked about it as freely as he did. "I don't suppose it matters as much here, but I appreciate you keeping the confidence anyway," Hugh glanced over. "Here's to friends in this place. People to watch movies with and whine about family bullshit with?" “Here’s to that,” Vax agreed with a chuckle as he lifted his empty cup in a semblance of a toast. “I’d drink to it if I had anything left. And as much as keeping confidence probably doesn’t really matter here, I will still keep it. Not knowing how we ended up here means anyone you know could in theory drop in at any time, so I figure secrets staying secret is probably the best play. Just in case, you know?” He shot Hugh a grin and then brushed his shirt and trousers off, knowing himself well enough to assume that while he was engrossed in the movie he probably managed to get crumbs somewhere. “Next time, though? I’ll take you up on another movie, but we probably ought to do less whining. I still want the good stories about your wife and I’m not going to forget.” His grin persisted through a wink before he bent to start gathering what little he’d brought into a pile at his feet. “And we’ve still got work to do if you want me to teach you how to really use that sword. Just tell me when, I’ve obviously got nothing but time.” Without a clock or any windows to help him figure out what time it was - not that time mattered a whole lot here, in the grand scheme of things - Vax could only guess given how long it felt like they’d been sitting in the theater. He was certainly getting stiff enough from all the contortion in questionably comfortable seats, at least. “I suppose I’ve kept you cooped up in here with me long enough, we probably ought to see the outside a bit before it gets too late. But let me know, yeah? About the whole training thing. You know I’m happy to.” Hugh reached forward and switched off the film, and looked over at Vax with a smile. "I'd like that. I liked knowing what I was doing last week, you know. So. I think that'd be good. Maybe, tomorrow if nothing explodes?" And he straightened up and then stood up, stretching from side to side as he did so - a slow movement that was frequently the prelude to a dancing practice. It occurred to Hugh that he should probably do one of those sometime soon too -- he'd lose his touch. But that was for a future time, not today. As Vax said, they ought to see the outside before it got too late. |