Who: Virgil and Hazel When: Late January Where: Starts that the Ranch What: Talking about what happened around Christmas Rating/Warning: Low/none
Virgil hadn’t been able to get his and Richie’s kiss out of his head for the last few weeks. He knew that it was probably because of that weird flying mistletoe he’d caught sight of, but it had stirred something not quite explainable in him. He had suspected for a while that Richie might not be entirely interested in women, though he wasn’t sure if Richie suspected the same. But he’d never thought the same for himself. He’d had girlfriends in high school. Well, a girlfriend, until Daisy had gone to MIT for University. Virgil had been accepted, but he hadn’t qualified for enough scholarships and he knew better than to ask his family to help pay. His parents had saved for college for both their children, but they didn’t have much in the way of extra cash and they probably would have broken their backs trying to get the money together. Instead, Virgil had decided that he’d do just as well at Wayne State, and he and Daisy had decided that neither one of them had wanted a long distance relationship.
Besides, it wasn’t like he could be interested in Richie. Richie was his best friend. His confidant. His brother, really. People didn’t just suddenly become interested in their best friend just because they’d kissed or something.
He and Richie hadn’t talked about it. In fact, they had so far avoided the whole subject. Richie seemed more distant than usual, which was probably why Virgil was giving it so much thought in the first place. Richie had obviously been weirded out by it all, and Virgil didn’t know how to make things better.
He had just finished his shift at the Ranch and was getting ready to go home, head bowed in thought as he walked through the building. If the person in front of him called to him, he didn’t hear them. In fact, he was so lost in thought that he didn’t even notice them until it was too late to stop himself from walking right into them. “Oh, sorry,” he said, glancing up in startlement.
Hazel had, in fact, been trying to get Virgil’s attention. She’d been finishing up with a few things and had noticed him walking. Only he hadn’t replied to her, so she figured there was something going on. In her surprise, a couple jewels popped up next to her foot, but she didn’t fall. She could be happy about that at the very least. Only Virgil seemed even more distracted up close, which she hadn’t noticed as the norm for him.
“It’s fine. I’m not hurt or anything.” She gave him a small smile. “I was trying to say hi, but you seemed a little lost in thought, so I thought if I came closer, you’d see me or hear me or something.” She shrugged. “So it’s my fault a little, too.” Her hair was pulled back into a simple braid for the day. She also had her purple Camp Jupiter t-shirt on under her riding jacket. It didn’t actually fit in with the rest of her riding outfit, but she didn’t really care about that too much.
“You okay? You seem...a little distracted.”
“Yeah, I’m a’ight,” Virgil said, shooting Hazel a bit of a wan smile. “I just have some stuff on my mind,” he said. His gaze was drawn by something glittering at Hazel’s foot, and then he blinked in surprise, bending down to scoop them up. “I uh, think you dropped something?” he said, a little confused. He couldn’t understand why anyone would just be carrying around random gemstones with them, though he tried not to jump to the immediate ‘jewel thief’ conclusion. He knew that Hazel, and if he thought she was the thieving type, they wouldn’t have been friends.
Hazel glanced down and then to his hands, a hint of concern in her eyes before she took them back. “No. Not mine.” She forced herself to remain calm to keep more from popping up. She moved to put them back on the ground and let them sink back into the ground. “Just a...sometimes my emotions affect my powers.” She waved it off, hoping he wouldn’t question her about it too much. “What’s going on with you?” A pause. “If you want to talk about it, I mean.”
Virgil opened his mouth to ask what exactly Hazel’s powers were, but then decided that this probably wasn’t the time or the place to have a private conversation along those lines. They were alone for now, but he knew that at any moment one of the kids could come barrelling around the corner, so he contented himself with simply watching the stones sink back into the dirt and tried not to think about how much rent he could pay with even one of those.
“Yeah, I think I do” he said after a moment. Talking about things always helped him get his thoughts back in order, but it had always been Richie he turned to when he needed a friendly ear. Even if things weren’t so weird between he and Richie now, he couldn’t very well talk about this with him. “You finished here? Want to get some grub? Treat you to IHOP.”
Powers were a weird thing for Hazel, honestly. She didn’t know how to talk about them without really getting into her history and the things with her mom. It was...complicated. That was the easy way to put it. She couldn’t have let him keep them anyway. Not when she knew that it could kill him or put him in danger of getting injured. She couldn’t be the cause of that. Not here, not to her friends. Just the thought of it made her stomach turn.
“I’m done. IHOP is the only place worth going to when you have things to talk about.” She gave him a quick smile before going to put things away so that she was ready to go.
“Nothing better than chatting over pancakes and strawberry syrup,” Virgil agreed, and started to walk toward the restaurant. It took him a moment to get his thoughts into order, or how to even introduce the topic. He wondered if Richie would be angry if he found out Virgil had talked to Hazel. “Have you talked Richie lately?” he asked after a moment.
Hazel tilted her head slightly so she could look up at Virgil. Had she talked to Richie lately? In fact she had. So she nodded. “Yeah. We’ve talked recently. I went to check on him the other day and introduced him to Arion.” She didn’t mention the other part of the conversation, but she had a feeling she was going to be revisiting that conversation again. She’d let him get around to it and then probably try to figure out what to do with both conversations later. She had to wonder a little bit what Virgil’s feelings were on the matter. She hoped it wouldn’t be anything near as complicated as having feelings for a dream boy who didn’t even exist as far as she was aware of, but it was probably complicated in a very different sort of way.
“Oh yeah?” he asked. He managed, barely, to resist the temptation to ask what they talked about. He wouldn’t want someone going around talking about his private conversations, and he was sure that Richie felt the same way. “He’s been a little distant since he got shot,” Virgil said tentatively. Probably it was more realistic to say after their kiss. “It’s kinda wigging me out. We always used to talk about everything together.”
She nodded. “Yep.” She wanted to say something about what they’d talked about, but it was a little...well, she wasn’t really sure what she should say or if she should say anything. “Oh.” It was the least helpful thing she’d said to date. “Have you tried dropping by to see him or anything? I don’t mean to assume you haven’t tried to talk to him recently, but…” She frowned. If she’d have been more of a conniving person, she might have set up something and had them meet up with each other. “Are you…” She tried to think about how to phrase what she wanted to say. “Did anything else happen that might have made him distant? Outside of getting shot?”
“Well, we live together,” Virgil said awkward. “But I have been pretty busy with work and school and volunteering,” both at the Ranch and at his superhero gig. Of course, he always had time for his friends if they wanted or needed it, especially Richie, but he was more than willing to take the bulk of the blame himself.
He cleared his throat uneasily at Hazel’s next question though, trying to think of the best way to put it. “Well, there was this weird thing that happened around Christmas,” he said tentatively.
That explained a few things. The living together thing. You’d think it was difficult to live in the same place and not talked to someone about something that might need to be talked about, but it wasn't. She hadn't talked to Nico about things when he was back from school. She wanted to tell him that she dreamt that he was the one to save her from the Underworld, but she couldn't bring herself to and she wasn't sure if she should in the end. Only this was a different sort of talk.
“Weird thing that happened around Christmas?” Eventually she'd reveal she knew, but not just now.
“Well,” Virgil said, haltingly once more before he decided to take the plunge. Maybe Richie would be weird about Virgil talking about it with other people, but he trusted Hazel and he needed to talk to someone or he’d go insane. “We kissed. I think it was some Orange County thing, but Moms walked in and I think it made Rich uncomfortable. His pops isn’t exactly… down with that kind of thing and I think he’s a little shook.”
Hazel nodded. She knew about that, of course, but...she didn’t want to make things weird for him by just ~knowing things~. “Orange County has a habit of doing things like that. From what I’ve heard.” She studied him for a moment before asking, “Did you...like it? Or was it just some weird Orange County thing that’s made things awkward for you two?” A pause. “Also if his dad tries anything, I’ll be there. I have Arion and my spatha. But also I’m pretty sure I’m good at hugs and glaring from a distance. If he needs either of those things.”
“His dad won’t try anything,” Virgil said, able to say that with confidence. That was much easier to respond to than Hazel’s earlier question. “Richie’s pops takes a bit of encouragement, but he loves Richie enough that he’ll get over it,” at least, Virgil was pretty sure that he would. Richie’s pops had hated Virgil because of his skin colour when they first met, but he’d come around for Richie’s sake and now the Hawkins family and the Foley family frequently got together.
But now he had nothing else to put off the question, and he swallowed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never thought of Richie like that before. He’s like my brother, you know?” A pause. “But I can’t get it out of my head, you know. It didn’t feel weird. It felt kinda like… I dunno. It was supposeta happen.”
Hazel would still have her spatha if she needed it. But she hoped that Virgil was right about his dad. Richie deserved people that were supportive around him. Hazel would be there to be supportive...and kick asses if she needed to. It was possible that her dreams were influencing her just a little bit. A little bit. “Okay. I can be encouraging.” She did her best not to make that sound more like a threat than anything else.
The answer to her question started off with her heart clenching a little for Richie, but ended on a higher note. Maybe he wouldn’t be trapped in an endless loop of feelings. “Yeah. I sort of get that. I mean, sort of.” Not really so much with the brother-like feelings, but when she’d kissed Sammy, it felt right. She didn’t really have anything else to compare it to. “You should talk to him. Nothing’s going to happen if no one makes the first move. You know?”
Virgil nodded, already feeling a lightness lifting off his chest after getting that particular confession off his shoulders. “You’re right. I guess I’ll just have to figure out how to do it.” That should be easy. He’d asked other people out. But despite the fact that Richie was the guy Virgil knew best in the world, he couldn’t think of a single way to do it.
“Thanks for listening to me, Haze,” he said, turning all his attention to her. “I definitely owe you one.”
She could have clapped, she was so happy. She didn’t, however. “Good. Definitely do that.” She reached over to put a hand on his arm. “You’re welcome. I hope that it helped. And I’ll try to keep my super serious discussions out of the serious discussion pool until I really need them. But come on. We have pancakes to eat.”