[Reaction.]
The bag is packed, but Shiloh hasn't yet left. He's waiting, because he assumes one will come, and then there surely be a lull. Better to leave during the lull, when there should be space to breathe. He has no notion of where he's going to, but he's not staying here. This place is a graveyard, memories buried everywhere, and he hasn't found anything useful. So he's going, and his bag is packed, but he waits.
When this memory floods, there's familiarity in it. There's the knowledge of being a disappointment to one's family. There's the knowledge that he doesn't matter, that he never will, and that all he wants is going to be denied him. Oh, not the wealth, not the prestige, but the things that matter. He is that boy whose father did not come to the performance, and parental gender matters not a jot; the feeling is the same, and the words of consolation and pride fall short. And he almost laughs, he, himself, his own head and mind and thoughts, because how wrong he'd been about everything.
But Shiloh knows this feeling. This memory, sans the theater, might as well be his own. The hugs, for him, had come from Father, but it was all the same.
The boy, the one who is taller and and older, the one who brings a thrill, he's a nice distraction.
And then it's over, and while the sentiments expressed are ones Shiloh can understand, he as himself, would've dragged that taller boy somewhere dark and somewhere distraction came with a slant of lips.
But at least no one bled here, or died here, and the bad feeling Shiloh is left with was always there to begin with.
"Poor bastard," he says, and he hoists the bag onto his shoulder and considers whether he should be polite and leave a note behind.