lookinside (lookinside) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-03-14 09:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, clint, clint x sebastian, sebastian |
Who: Sebastian and Clint (NPC)
Where: Locker Room
When: Post basketball game, Wednesday, Dec 6th
Status: Complete
It had been a rough week and it was only Wednesday. Sebastian had never been good friends with the guys that had been picking on Ophelia, but he’d been friendly. They ran in the same circle, sometimes ate lunch together, and played both football and basketball together. Now he was downright cold towards them, close to snapping every time they were forced to interact. Phee had asked him to drop it, to please not start any more fights, and he was doing as she’d asked, but that didn’t mean things were back to normal and probably wouldn’t be for a while. Sebastian was fine with not talking to a pack of assholes, but it did make playing basketball together a bit difficult.
With both him and Greg on the team, it wasn’t a huge surprise that they’d lost the game. Despite their best efforts, it was almost impossible to act as a cohesive team when they would rather throw punches than passes. Sebastian told himself that it shouldn’t matter, that what happened off the court shouldn’t impact the way he played, so far that wasn’t true for him or anyone else. There would be no celebratory parties after tonight’s game, or even shakes at Moxie’s, and with the way things were going there might not be for a while. Sebastian sighed as he shut his locker, wishing for at least some way to let off a little steam. With things still tense at home, it felt like he rarely got a break.
Clint had been vaguely aware of some of the dudes on the team being assholes to some junior girl because she was dating Greg Wheeler. He’d heard talk about it, and even chuckled over some of the stuff they’d done because it was funny, but he hadn’t participated. It was only after the fight at his party that he’d made the connection that the girl was Sebastian McCarthy’s little sister. Which A) made him pretty slow on the uptake, and B) was a little weird because Sebastian and Greg had been best friends since time immemorial. But whatever, that changed things. You weren’t supposed to fuck with your buddies’ sisters.
The game had been a disaster, and everybody knew why. Nobody could play well with the team picking sides. Some guys thought it had been bullshit, others thought everybody was overreacting, blah blah, drama. Clint wasn’t good at drama, really, and since what they’d ultimately done had been really mean, he was more on Bash’s side of things. Clint just wasn’t sure if he knew that. So when he walked out of the showers with a towel around his waist and spotted Sebastian, Clint headed his way. “Hey man,” he greeted with an upnod. “Tough game, huh?”
One thing Sebastian had noticed since coming out was that no one teased him anymore about taking the fastest showers on the team. He was in and out of there before he could make anyone uncomfortable, something he’d done for his own sanity even before everyone else knew about it. Guys in towels would always be hot, but at least he was able to talk to them without going crazy, and that included Clint. Sebastian nodded in response, a moment of hesitation before he spoke up. “Things have just been shit lately. We need to… get our act together.” It was more than that and everyone knew it, but he was trying not to point fingers at this point. There were enough people on his shit list without adding others to it.
After the initial ‘huh, okay’ thought process that Clint had gone through when he heard about Sebastian being gay, he hadn’t dwelled on it any further. Clint knew some gay people, and he didn’t care, as long as Bash didn’t try to grab his junk or anything ... and that would just make him an asshole. But Bash wasn’t an asshole, and he’d never made Clint uncomfortable, so he didn’t give a shit. He walked in close enough and tossed a glance around them. Nobody was within earshot, so it seemed safe. “Yeah, no shit. But hey uh ... for the record, I just wanna say I’m on your side in all this. They were righteous dicks to your sister,” Clint said, looking regretful even though he’d had nothing to do with it.
Sebastian knew the original group that had been messing with Phee, but he didn’t know how far that stretched. It was easy to assume it was anyone in their vicinity, even if that wasn’t fair to most people. Clint was one of those guys that Sebastian wasn’t sure about, so it was really nice to hear he shouldn’t be lumped in with the assholes who’d picked on Phee. “Yeah, they were,” he sighed. “I’d ‘ve gone after ‘em myself, except that’d only make me feel better. Phee wants us to leave it alone.” Sebastian glanced towards the showers, then back to Clint. “You think they’ll drop it?” It was his first chance to ask someone outside the situation, who might actually know what they were saying amongst themselves. He was hoping it was over, but they wouldn’t come back together quite so easily. Nothing broken ever did.
Nobody had really confided in Clint about why it was going on or anything, so he couldn’t be positive. He knew that Justin was pretty butthurt pissed about Greg punching him, but nobody else was very impressed with that. He’d definitely had it coming. Clint nodded a bit. “Yeah I think so,” he said. “Besides bein’ pissy about Greg, sounds like whatever it was is out of their system now. Plus like, you know now, so it would be stupid of them to keep doing it.” He didn’t think -- he hoped -- there would be any more fights about it. Now whether the team could recover to actually be cohesive and effective again, Clint wasn’t so sure. He ambled over to his nearby locker to open it and pull his bag out so he could get dressed. “You even know why they were picking on her?” he asked curiously.
Sebastian might know now, but he and Greg couldn’t just keep punching the people that upset them, even when it was justified. It was the timing that bothered him the most, how this happened right after he’d come out, and it made him wonder if they saw him as more vulnerable now— somehow less of a man and less likely to protect his sister because of his sexuality. If that was the case, maybe he should have punched them too, just to prove them wrong. Except he knew, deep down, that wouldn’t prove anything except that he couldn’t control his temper. “I don’t know for sure, but Phee thinks Victoria started it. Greg called her out on being bitchy to Ophelia and then the teasing started shortly after. Justin’s close with Todd, so… I dunno. Maybe it’s just their time of the month to be assholes.” He was trying not to be bitter, but he really hated people picking on his sister, no matter what the reason.
As soon as Sebastian said Victoria’s name, the pieces fell together for Clint. They’d dated for a while the year before, and while it hadn’t gotten emotionally serious, Clint got to see up close and personal how Victoria dealt with problems. And sometimes how she created them out of nowhere. Her pride was a big thing, and if Greg had insulted her, even unwittingly, of course she would take it out on his girlfriend. “Nah, that’s got Victoria written all over it,” Clint said with an eyeroll. He pulled a pair of sweatpants out of his bag and let the towel around him drop so he could step into them. “Going after Greg direct isn’t good social politics, everybody loves that dude. So I bet she wanted to punish him through his girlfriend. It’s such a girl thing to insult another girl’s weight anyway, you know?”
The logic was there in a twisted sort of way. Ophelia was an easier target than Greg and attacking her would likely hurt him worse. If he was into those mean girl games, he might have been impressed. Instead, he wondered who he needed to recruit that could knock her down a peg without having worse come right back at them or those close to them. “She’s thick skinned, but that’s so personal, you know? It’s not like teasing her for being a band geek,” Sebastian said. “I talked to Jules about it, just to see if she could help, but I think it might just fizzle out on its own so long as Greg doesn’t go after Victoria again.” He was likely put a stop to it by going after Justin, who wasn’t going to stick his neck out for Victoria’s sake.
It had all sounded less like teasing and more like harassment to Clint, but he didn’t bother to make that distinction. It was kind of bullshit that Victoria wasn’t going to receive any direct blowback for all of it, but that was just how it worked when you were a queen bee type chick, Clint supposed. Making dudes do her bidding and take the licks that came with it. Clint pulled his pants up and started to tug a t-shirt on. “Yeah, hopefully it’s all over now,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure that would mean the team would stop sucking, but they could hope. The guys still in the showers laughed loudly about something, the sound echoey in the big tiled room. “Hey uh ... different subject, but ... you know anything about Ruby Fox?” Clint asked Sebastian, arching a brow at him.
Sebastian’s eyes flicked back towards the showers at the sound of laughter, then quickly away. God, he hated the locker room. It was a constant game of trying to keep his eyes somewhere appropriate. At least when he was talking to Clint he could focus on his face, though even this was made easier when he had pants on. “Ruby?” he asked as he took a seat on the bench to pull on his socks. “I don’t know know her well, but she’s cool. She—she knew about Hunter and I weeks ago and kept her mouth shut.” Which won her major points in his book. Most of the girls in their circle loved to gossip and would’ve jumped at the chance to spread that information around, but she’d kept his secret for him. “She works at Moxie’s and rides a pink bike?” he offered with a smile, aware that the latter was pretty well known. “Why?”
Clint wasn’t too surprised that Sebastian didn’t know a lot about Ruby, they didn’t exactly run in the same social circles. He vaguely remembered that she used to be friends with Jules Cooper, but who could keep track of girl-friendships? Still, it was nice to hear that she’d kept a secret for somebody who wasn’t a close friend. That was nice. Clint sat down to do his socks too, a little smile crossing his face. “Just wonderin’,” he said, though it was obviously more than that. He hadn’t called her or talked to her at school yet, more by timing than design, but he wanted to. “Me and her kinda, uh, got to know each other at my party. Just curious about her, like ... situation, I guess.”
“Ah. Gotcha,” Sebastian grinned. He didn’t need Clint to spell it out to draw conclusions there. It had been his party, his house, and if anyone was going to hookup there, it was Clint. It was hard to picture Ruby with a guy like Clint, but only because she definitely ran with a different crowd. “I’m trying to remember if she was with anyone at the bonfire a couple weekends ago. I know she was there, but I was kinda distracted. Um… she’s friends with Jasper Lucas and… That’s all I’ve got,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Jules might know her through Jasper, but they weren’t friends while we were together.” He felt like they used to be friends at some point in the past, but he didn’t know how far back that went. If he was remembering correctly, that pre-dated high school.
Clint couldn’t help but make a bit of a face at the name ‘Jasper Lucas.’ God, that dude was a punk. Everyone was still baffled about why Jules Cooper was dating him, but nobody really had the stones to bother her about it. It kind of fit that Ruby was friends with them, since they were both That Kind of kid. Ruby seemed way cooler than Jasper though, so that was something. He flashed Sebastian a grin, knowing he wasn’t being super subtle about what happened, but it wasn’t like Ruby had told him not to tell anyone. He wondered vaguely if she had, or if she regretted it or anything like that. “Thanks anyway,” he told Bash, bracing one foot against the lockers in front of them to tie his sneaker. “She’s cool, I just don’t wanna like, get caught up in drama, you know? If there’s a Thing with somebody else.”
Sebastian felt the same way about Jasper, to be honest, but the guy made Jules happy and that scored him a lot of points in Sebastian’s book. There had to be something redeeming about him since Ruby liked him too and she was cool, so maybe they just couldn’t see it themselves. That didn’t really provide a lot more information about Ruby though. “If there’s something going on with someone else, I haven’t heard about it,” he said. That didn’t necessarily mean anything though, since the overlap between their friend groups was so small. “You could always talk to her,” he teased lightly. “You might be able to tell more when you’re not plastered.” He didn’t recall seeing Clint and Ruby together at the party, but he had seen Clint and he’d been nowhere near sober. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if the same could be said for Ruby.
Clint nodded at the first part -- he hadn’t heard about her being with anybody either. But he didn’t hear everything, and it wasn’t like she was a part of their usual social group. Which was fine, really. Clint had already dated most of those girls, and a lot of them were boring as hell. And bitchy. Ruby might be either one of those too, but they’d at least already had fun once together. It was worth finding out. He laughed out loud at Sebastian’s tease, grinning sheepishly and she stuffed his feet into sneakers. “I did plan on that, I swear,” he replied lightly. “Talking to her, I mean. Just uh, doing some ... I dunno, pre-scouting.” He stood up again once he was fully dressed to stuff his dirty uniform into his bag and get his hoodie out of his locker. “So thanks for all the help, McCarthy,” Clint added jokingly, glancing back at Bash.
“Anytime, Parker,” Sebastian said with a laugh. “I probably shouldn’t be dishing out advice on how to talk to girls.” Even though he’d dated his fair share, the dynamic had always been different on his end— You didn’t worry that much about talking to girls when you weren’t into them in the first place. He knew he hadn’t been all that much help, but he’d offered all he could. Ruby was just a little too far outside his circle of friends to provide much information. With the rest of the team starting to trickle in around them, hair still wet and towels slung low on their hips, Sebastian finished tying his shoes and grabbed his bag, hefting it onto his shoulder. “I’m gonna run. See ya later?”
Clint waved a dismissive hand to that first part -- Sebastian had done fine with girls when he’d been in the closet, as far as Clint had always seen. Gay or not, the concepts had to be the same anyway. People were people. And he hadn’t expected to learn much about Ruby from Bash, but it had been worth a shot. Sebastian wasn’t one of those guys who would judge too harsh about ‘types’ and social circles and all that shit. Clint gave Bash a nod and a smile as he got ready to leave. “Yeah dude, catch you later,” he said, sounding genuinely glad to have talked to him. He was. “Take it easy.” Hopefully, given a little time, things would even out with the team now and they could finish their season strong.