Re: Log, the B&B: Jack & Newt P
Jack could not help his face. He'd been through the burst of anger that accompanied seeing it, in photographs or in the mirror and the resemblance to one he disliked rather more than he appreciated the angles of it being attractive to women. He didn't like looking like his father and even less being reminded of it. But he wasn't really thinking about the fingerprints of history, the smudged portrait that he was stood there. His eyes were clearer, they lacked the bloodshot quality of their father's strong and level stare. And he was, to his annoyance and embarrassment, a little ...shy? He looked without looking at Newt. He could smell the loam and the green, the faint air of garden that suited the boy-Newt enough that he could see him easily in the collection of objects and snatches of the outside world. The door open that bit wider, he could take in the lot, as Newt's gaze glanced off the soft wool of his shoulder and sharded, like a crystal held up to the window pane to dance.
"It's a bit weird with you older," he confessed, untangling the scarf from his neck and moving into the space of the room, to the rumble of the kettle as it began. The sound was familiar and of home and it might have been a little maudlin to attach feeling and sentiment to a sound, but there it was, attached. Already done and dusted, impossible to detach.
"But it's really nice to see you, Newt," Jack spoke with a thoughtlessness that wasn't detachment of years, but youthful lack of disillusionment. Because it was, and Newt's face was objectively familiar, a little different but still fundamentally the same, the same expression. He sat, pushing back toward the wall, his feet dangling to keep his shoes clear of the fuss of the spread.
"I don't know," and it was candid, as he leaned back against the wall and studied the cracked-open window and the array of jars and bottles and things that made the place somehow Newt's own despite the decor that clearly belonged elsewhere. It was not at all like the room he had a key to, and wasn't Newt meant to have arrived long after him? "I know a lot of people, all of whom have opinions." He smiled, a brief glancing look that didn't belong to age.
"I think I'd probably like it, if I hadn't been here before. What about you?"