Re: lakeside mansions: Dietre A. & Hugh C.
Hugh made a bit of a face at the revelation that the man had turned out to be a monster. "If it helps, I'm pretty certain I'd have done exactly the same," he offered without any embarrassment. Flirtation was something that he knew he did almost without thinking, but if a man offered to help him escape a maze, and was handsome to boot? Definitely would have flirted. "Repose though, am I right? You think something is completely normal, and then it turns out not to be remotely normal."
Sometimes that had been alright, and in some ways Hugh felt like he was learning to roll with those punches, but still.
"It's alright," Hugh said, an automatic dismissal that came all too easily. He didn't do very well at taking the time to go deeply into emotion on the best of days and with people he knew well, much less new friends. It occurred to him a split second after the words had left his mouth, that he'd dismissed, and he pulled a breath in, and turned to look at Dietre. "Actually, it was shit. But I um..." he swallowed. "I think I might have finally come to the point where I'm willing to accept that I learned some things, and that it wasn't just me. For a really long time I thought it was just me, you know, like I fucked it up. And I did. But I recently sort of realized that by pulling all that responsibility onto me, I was kind of wallowing? And it wasn't all me. She kinda fucked up some stuff too. I don't know if that makes sense."