Re: [Lakeside Manor: Hugh & Atticus]
"I'd love to have you cook for me sometime," Hugh gave Atticus a quick grin. "Pretty sure the best food is always shared with friends, you know?"
Hugh nodded his head towards the lake. "I don't know, and I didn't see all of it, because I was asleep, but there were definitely reports that it was all choppy, and red ground and I don't know a winged creature? And the next morning there was something around the lake that I don't know what it was, but I kept Heart on a leash," he shrugged. "I've lived here long enough to be leary of anything too strange."
He reached for the brownie and listened, imagining the shop and the way that Atticus might take something that would have been a space Hugh might have at one time inhabited and turning it into something that Atticus would love and delight in, and there was a smile at this notion, pleased at his friend having something like that to pour his heart into, as he took a bite of the brownie. "I want to see it, and I think if it's a place like that, you'd best have a good theatre section, all the playwrights. Otherwise you might end up with theatre ghosts," he teased gently. "I don't think I've been to Second City though - where is it?"
"Thanks," Hugh responded to the brownie compliment by taking a second bite of his own, and for a moment he was quiet, thoughtful, because he still didn't feel like he had anything settled, and it was easier sometimes to just throw himself back into work, but Atticus had listened and hadn't made Hugh feel shamed or judged that night they'd first talked, and Hugh hadn't forgotten that.
"I know there isn't," he finally said. "And I don't think it's a bad thing, but for me right now, maybe it isn't a good thing either? … I don't know," he admitted, reaching for the milk. "I'm tired of being hurt, and tired of hurting people. I'm not really sure if I can combine the intimacy of friendship with the intimacy of sex and not have it fall apart. I have more friends right now than I've had for a long time, and I'm not really willing to press that barrier I guess. Plus… traditionally I've been really bad at even wanting something steady with anyone? I think I'm still a fucking mess, Atticus, but I'm content enough for once. It's not that I don't like the idea, but, I don't trust myself to like someone who will stay, honestly."