Re: Driveway, Side Door: 7/J
Jamie wasn't feeling rage so much as suspension. That fragility, eggshell thin that came with understanding core-cracks meant the whole wasn't up to shit in staying whole, easily cracked further until the whole thing fucking broke. It wasn't broken, but it wasn't whole, the stuff with Amy, with Si. Too many jokes that felt kinda like they landed where they fell, instead of bounced like a ball between people. It wasn't unusual, hey, it wasn't even unexpected? It was better than that, maybe. Jamie had hope, when it came to his siblings. It wasn't the most like, substantial thing in the world to bet on, but seeing Si look a little taller, a little more substantial, present kinda meant hope wasn't entirely out of proof of investment.
He'd bailed predictably through the crowds. Not for Aud, who lbr, was doing fine in this party somewhere. She'd baked, everyone had eaten literally everything, they were going to die in a sugar-coma, crumbs of peanut-butter and mint-chocolate clinging to fingers, the house was lit up and the compression of people into a three bed place was like, warm. He looked instead, for Seven. It was a small place, the party was made up of people Aud and Amy thought of as friends, and yeah, okay, the vague drumbeat of anxiety played out against his rib-cage had everything to do with layered assumption passed over kitchen counters. Like, of all the places to try and hang a couple months out from hell? Family, twined and complex and thorny wasn't the place to do it.
So yeah, he'd looked. Glimpsed Mars's coppery hair and a lady at her side who she was chatty with: Jamie, narrowed focus on specific end-goal had like, zero inclination to pause and say hi, his sister would be back at the apartment eventually, even if theirs was a sibling relationship built on shared sarcasm, bitter as acid and fragile connections found in the gulf of space that a decade plus created. He'd looked for Seven, looked for someone who would even know what the guy looked like, saw Holly and Noah but totally entrenched in one another and finally, after a second circuit through the house - even the bedrooms, okay, Si? - he headed outside. Disappointment was climbing up the back of Jamie's throat, and he wasn't even pretending, at this point, that it wasn't.
The front door caught, harder than it was meant to, maybe but Jamie stopped there on the porch, looking at the neighborhood that was by now, inherent and familiar and old news, kinda ill-fitting now like a pair of shoes that pinched. And yeah, he saw the guy. Recognized him in spite of the brown suit, from the length of Seven's back and the tension in his shoulders, the glow of the lighter.
"Hey," Jamie cut across grass, over onto asphalt. "Hey."