Michael Alton (affect) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-11-29 23:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | #group scene, #november 2017, alex, mike |
Who: Alex, Mike, Rebecca and Terry (NPC)
aWhere: Overlook
When: Afternoon, Thursday 11/23
Status: Complete
Mike should be used to how friendly and generous his dad was but there still came times when he was absolutely surprised by his actions. Like when he decided to invite Alex to Thanksgiving dinner because - as Terry had put it - it was unacceptable to spend Thanksgiving all alone. Mike didn't protest, not even when Alex asked him if he was sure it was cool. Why the hell not? There'd only be the three of them anyway and Mike wasn't big on Thanksgiving, especially now when he didn't feel like he had a lot of things to be thankful for. It was Terry's holiday anyway. He always cooked and made a fuss about it whereas Mike and Rebecca just enjoyed the fruits of his labor.
It was almost four PM, the time when Terry told Alex to be there, and Mike had dressed up somewhat casually but nice. He did want to make his dad happy, even when he felt sulky and weird. Terry was so supportive and it wasn't like they'd have a whole lot of these kinds of holidays together. So he dressed up nice and hung around the kitchen, keeping Terry company and helping out with carrying things out to the dining room.
Thanksgiving was never a big holiday to Alex but it had been important to his mom. It had always been just the two of them but the tradition had meant enough to her that he'd been dreading doing the holiday without her. She'd always gone through the motions of cooking a big enough meal that they lived on turkey sandwiches and the other leftovers for a good week. Somehow a frozen meal in front of the TV didn't come close. He had pretended he was fine with his plans to anybody who had asked but he couldn't deny he was relieved when Terry had insisted he join their celebrations. He'd only double checked with Mike the once in case the family realised their mistake and took it back.
The problem with arriving on time, Alex realised as he sat in his car in front of the Alton home at exactly 3.55pm, was that one could look too eager. He knew that was the point of giving a time in the first place but he wondered if it made him look too desperate and what the rest of the family would make of that. Especially the mysterious doctor mother he hadn't met yet but if she was anything like the rest of the family, she wouldn't care and he knew he was overthinking it. He'd dressed neatly in a blue-grey button up shirt but kept it casual with his best pair of jeans. He'd tried to tame his hair back too but the wilder ends were already breaking free of the gel in loose wisps. Oh well, he'd tried. He watched the clock on his car tick over another minute closer to four before he got out of the car, headed to the front door and knocked.
Holidays meant little to Rebecca, but she had grown accustomed over the years to the importance Terrence placed in them, particularly Thanksgiving, especially after Michael rounded out their family. In the scheme of things, it was a relatively simple way to make Terrence happy, which often left him content to leave her alone at other times so that she could pour her attention into her work. Still, she was little use in the kitchen and Michael was there to keep his father company, so she had moved to the living room in the time leading up to dinner. She was dressed in gray slacks and a black turtleneck, hair pulled back into a neat bun, a glass of wine next to her as she read a book one of her colleagues had recently published.
This left her nearest when the knock came. Terrence had mentioned inviting an additional guest, named Alex, whom Terrence had jokingly prefaced as being Michael's doppelganger and a barista at Joyland, neither of which was particularly elucidating, not that she expected it to matter. Rebecca put down her book, heading to the entryway. She pulled the door open, gaze sweeping over the young man in front of her. Terrence had certainly not been exaggerating and there was the possibility he was closer to the mark than she would have liked. Surprise was a barely visible register, though, beyond a momentary purse of her lips that shifted into a practiced, polite smile, and she said, "You must be Alex. Terry mentioned we should be expecting you. Come in." Stepping back, she gave him room to do so. "I'm Rebecca, by the way, as I don't believe we've met."
Mike knew damn well that being left alone with a friend's relative could bee awkward as hell, even more so with his mother than his father. He wasn't cruel enough to leave Alex all by himself with Rebecca so he headed out of the kitchen when he heard the knock, joining his mother and Alex in the hallway. "Hey!" he said with a little smirk. "I see you met my mom. Mom, this is Alex, your new adopted son if dad has his way." Turning to Alex again he looked him over with an approving nod. He was certainly better dressed than Mike was in his black jeans and black shirt. "Dad's still cooking so we have some time to kill."
Alex hadn’t met Mike’s mom before but if somebody had asked him what he expected, it definitely wasn’t the woman who answered the door. He knew she wouldn’t look anything like Mike but he always forgot that and had pictured her as a brunette anyway. He’d also wondered why he’d never heard her referred to with nicknames when the other two in her family used them but seeing her there, he understood. He couldn’t picture anybody calling her a Bec. “We haven’t, I’m Alex,” he said and reached out to shake her hand as he walked in the door. She seemed nice enough but he was still relieved when he heard Mike. He turned to him with a smile. “Don’t I don’t get a say in this? Who said I’d want you as a brother? We’re both only children, it’d go terribly.” He laughed and turned back to Rebecca. “Thank you for letting me join you today,” he said, fully aware that it had been Terry’s idea.
Rebecca regarded Alex with polite interest, outwardly at least. She had long gotten used to managing her emotions; glancing at Mike, she arched an eyebrow, lips quirking. "Then I suppose it's good I'm meeting him before the adoption papers are finalized," she said wryly. "Since I hardly think you're in need of a brother by this point in your life." The smile on her face didn't quite reach her eyes as she turned her attention to Alex, closing the door behind and taking his hand to shake it briefly when offered it. "And of course. No one should be alone around the holidays." Which was a sentiment that Terrence certainly believed enough for the both of them. Her gaze flickered back to Mike. "Do the two of you want to take over the living room? I can take my reading elsewhere."
Mike wasn't so sure. He wouldn't mind having a brother, though maybe Alex wasn't it. "Hey, you could do with another son, this one's defective," he said and it was the sort of joke he felt like he could say to his mom but not Terry. Terry always got sad when Mike talked about being sick or dying young no matter how true it was. He was going to be a wreck when Mike died and that was one of those things that made it suck all the more. "No worries though, we can go to my room." He glanced at Alex. "Unless you wanna come help Terry some in the kitchen."
Alex wasn't sure if he had offended Rebecca in some way but he got the distinct impression she didn't like him. After Terry’s warmth, he’d expected it immediately from his wife too but there could have been any number of reasons for her polite coolness. Maybe it was simply that she didn’t want to share her Thanksgiving dinner with a strange. Maybe she was just uncomfortable around strangers and would warm to him over time. He studied her for a moment too long then turned towards Mike instead, his smile returning as he did. "Whichever you prefer. Does he need any help?" He glanced back at Rebecca again. “Either way, I’d hate to kick you out of your reading spot so we won’t bother you in there.”
Rebecca gave a slight roll of her eyes with a quiet laugh from Mike's joke. That sort of thing that only came out when Terrence wasn't around but it struck with her own sense of humor, limited as that might be. "If we had wanted a backup, we would have pursued that sooner," she returned drily. "You're the son we've always wanted." There wasn't anything particularly different in her attitude toward Alex than to any of Mike's other friends, at least on a surface level; beyond that, she was trying to assess if he was any kind of liability. It seemed unlikely Alex would end up in Point Pleasant by chance, but jumping to conclusions was senseless. Her gaze was impassive once she realized Alex was studying her. "It's quite alright, whichever you choose. I'm sure Terry would enjoy the company, but by this point, you're most likely to be enlisted as a taste tester or to set things out."
Mike opted for his room for now. They could help Terry out later, it would take a while to get things ready and he didn't want Alex to feel bored or anything. Eventually they headed back downstairs to help set the table and do the taste-testing that Rebecca had warned them about and shortly after that, dinner was served.
Both Mike and Terry were oblivious to Rebecca's scrutiny of their guest, too focused on the food and idle conversation and even then, Mike's mother had always been hard to read. If anything, Mike thought she looked a little bored when they started talking about things she had no real interest in - that he knew of. Terry had grown up in Point Pleasant whereas Rebecca hadn't and so when Mike started asking questions, it was Terry who did all the talking.
"Yeah I remember Laura," he said after Mike asked him about Alex's mom. "She's your mom, huh? Everyone remembers Laura, there were search parties and everyone's parents was terrified their kids would be next. She was a lot younger than me but yeah, yeah I remember her name."
The first holiday without his mother was never going to be easy but thanks to Terry, it had ended up being more bearable than Alex had expected. He found he was actually enjoying Mike and Terry’s company which was something he hadn't really expected to happen. As for Rebecca, he still wasn’t sure what to make of her but Mike and Terry didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He decided it was probably just her way. She was a doctor after all, they were supposed to be clinical.
“Yeah, I didn’t hear about any of that until after she died though. I’ve been trying to piece things together since but I mostly moved here to feel closer to her after everything…” Alex shrugged. He glanced across the table to Rebecca and tried to remember if anybody had told him where she was born. If they had, he’d forgotten it. “Were you living here when all that happened or was that before you moved here?”
In the intervening time until dinner, Rebecca retreated to her study, surfacing again once Terrence had come to let her know it was ready with a smile and kiss to her cheek. The idle conversation that passed between he, Mike, and Alex, held enough of her attention for her to offer the occasional comment, though she let Terrence carry the talking when it came to Point Pleasant, idly studying Alex.
She had long been difficult to fluster with as low as her emotional response to a situation tended to be, but his presence grated at the edge of her nerves. The answer he gave as to wanting to feel closer to a dead woman was sentimental in a way that Rebecca didn't truly comprehend, even if she understood it to be an empathetic mechanism in other people. Perhaps that was all there was to it; she wouldn't jump to conclusions, but nor could she take that at face value.
"That would have been before I moved here, I believe, so I'm afraid I cannot speak to anything about her." She had read the file on Laura Woodard, both her original abduction and the surveillance upon her in Portland during her pregnancy, but she had never had contact with the subject personally, so that much was true. "Did she not tell you much about her life here?"
"Not too much," Alex said with a shake of his head. He'd known the basics like where she lived, where she went to school, even the names of some of her friends but they were snippets of facts, repeated as if by rote more than experience. It was only after she'd gone that he realised how much she must have blocked out. Or, rather, had blocked out. He wondered if she'd even known how much she'd missed. "I don't know if she liked it here, it's a bit small... I grew up in Portland so I'm used to a lot busier. The music is okay though." He cast a glance across to Mike and grinned.
Mike almost told him the music here was dead but it was morbid - too morbid - and so he just smirked back though it was a little listless. Luckily Terry grabbed the comment and went with it as he started praising Mike's abilities in music and of course jokingly attributing some of that to his excellent parenting skills. He might not be able to claim genetics there but he had encouraged Mike to learn to play and it had paid off if you asked him. Mike just tittered softly at him and shook his head. "It's fun, that's what matters," he muttered. "Alex here's a writer. Not that he's let me read anything by him yet though, what's that about, Alex?"
Content to let Terrence take over the conversation when it turned to the matter of music, Rebecca sipped her wine. The type of music Mike was fond of didn't particularly interest her, and while she was aware of what had happened with Mike's bandmate, it was the sort of thing she let Terrence handle. Meanwhile, she idly split her attention between observing the three of them, so as to not cast any overt scrutiny toward Alex; possibly he wouldn't be a liability, if he couldn't find out anything. "There are a few more things to life than fun, but I know it's what you enjoy," Rebecca said to Mike, out of habit. "What type of writing do you do, Alex? Fiction?"
Alex was surprised to hear Mike bring up his own creative outlet, especially as it was mostly a cover for being able to look into his mother’s past, but he forced a thin smile and shrugged. “It’s nothing special and I write for me so I don’t show people.” He cast a mock glare at Mike and stuck his tongue out at him before he turned back to Rebecca. “But I’ve got an idea to write about my family’s history. I’m kind of the last one, well, there’s probably a few really distant relatives but I guess that’s kind of what I’ve got to track down yet.” He poked around at the food on his plate. It was good but he’d eaten a bit of everything and was wondering if there was even room left for dessert. “I’m not even sure what I’ll do with anything I uncover yet, if I do some local history thing or see if there’s a good story in it.”
Mike had to laugh at the way Alex stuck his tongue out at him. It was cute so he stuck his tongue out back at him. He could see how mortified Terry looked when Alex said he was the last of his family and so he quickly spoke before his dad could make moves to actually try and adopt Alex. "Yeah he's doing this whole investigative journalism thing. Do you guys know anything about the old research facility that burned down? The uh, American Research... No, American Institute of Research. AIR?"
Rebecca listened with polite, though not overly attentive, interest as Alex relayed the topic of his research into his family’s history, poise not slipping as she ate, even when Michael brought up that particular topic. “Yes, I’m familiar with it, since I worked there for a time when I first moved here with Terry,” she said evenly, since it wasn’t exactly a secret, and Terrence would have likely remembered if nothing else. “It primarily focused on social science studies and some behavioral assessment, from what I recall, nothing that I imagine you’d find terribly interesting.” Her gaze flickered from Michael to Alex, as she directed the next toward him. “Has it come up during your research into local history?”
Alex’s heart quickened and he cast a look at Mike, asking if he knew about that. He had to have known, how could he not? Then again, it would have been years ago and what kid really paid attention to their parent’s resume? Unless he had known and had lured him here for a reason… He took a breath and forced a smile as he turned back to Rebecca. “Oh, really?” he said, trying to feign a vague interest. “Were you there for long? You own your own clinic now, don’t you?” He gave Mike another quick glance but he was too focused on his own cover story to read his reaction. Mike trusted her but Alex couldn’t trust anybody who had worked there.
"Wait," Mike said, his brows inching up toward his hairline. "You worked at AIR?" Had he known this? Past-jobs of parents weren't exactly interesting topics and her work at AIR hadn't come up - that he remembered. Alex's paranoia about the place seemed even more laughable now and he shot him an amused grin. "What did you do there?" Kidnap kids and conduct weird conspiracy-level experiments on them probably hadn't been in her job description. Could something like that have happened without her knowing? The plot was definitely thickening - or thinning out as Alex's theory started making a little less sense.
“I do. I have a small practice here, but I travel for conferences and on special consultation.” Rebecca idly studied Alex’s reaction, expression turned thoughtful for a moment, as though trying to recall the time, though really trying to formulate a response that held some truth while stripping it of any over interest. “I was at AIR for a few years in the 90s. It was my first job after my residency.” The details of her CV weren’t anything of a secret, though she didn’t expect Mike to know it by any means. Her lips quirked in a drily amused smile as she glanced at him, her tone set to match. “I hardly see how it’s that revelatory of a statement--it was a respected research institute, even if remotely located here, though nothing terribly exciting. Mostly I assisted with some behavioral research projects on things like neurological impacts to stress responses for improving worker productivity. Terry’s job is much more practically engaging.”
The conversation had taken a turn Alex wasn’t prepared for but he managed to return a small smile back at Mike before he turned back to listen to Rebecca with what he hoped looked like vague interest. He was dying to ask her more but there wasn't any good way to do it without arousing suspicion. If, in fact, she was somebody in the know anyway. In that moment, he desperately wanted to be wrong. For his friend's sake, for his own, but he'd spent too long convinced of the bigger conspiracy to truly believe it. He was stuck; he couldn't take her at her word but he couldn't call her out on it without proof either. Best case scenario, he'd ruin the Thanksgiving of the people kind enough to take in a stray and at the worst option, he'd draw his own target. Both sucked.
“That's cool,” he said slowly. He was careful to choose his words before he spoke. “I studied a bit of that in my college psych class, the facility came up once or twice so…” He shrugged but he knew it was a weak excuse. Rather than dwell, he turned to Terry with a more genuine smile than the one he'd offered Mike. ”I'm sorry. I'm sure you've told me before but what is it you do again?”
Oblivious, Terry was happy to reply to that, telling him all about his job as a chef. Mike didn't try to steer the conversation back to Alex's research, it wasn't that hard to read the room - unless you were Terry, apparently - and he didn't want to put anyone on the spot again. So he let his dad ramble a bit to save the dinner party. They could talk about something a little more lighthearted from here.