Grant
The cabin, you know, is a beautiful place.
It was a place that was nice and wooded and quiet and really set up to be a getaway. There isn't any internet access, though. Or at least there aren't any computers or anything more high tech than a book about physics or a stapler. The floors are wood, the place smells like pine trees and fresh air. It's a nice place.
Not that the young man inside would know anything about that. He has had mostly free reign of the place and all he has done since he got here was stay inside. Occasionally look out the window, occasionally read, but for the most part the lanky young man with the messy hair and the bright blue eyes has done his level best to not leave the cabin or even acknowledge that there was an outside world.
There's a backpack by the couch when Nick comes by. There's a couple bottles of cranberry juice and some Mountain Dew and a pot of coffee brewing. He'd been expecting company. Grant came prepared.
Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas has been to this cabin before. It was several months ago: he'd finally come up into the mountains to go bouldering with Sera, and it is in fact what will give him the idea to return a little while from now. (He'll climb up barefoot then, his feet will be raw and bloody and he will be lightheaded with hunger, and he will have only begun.)
Today, though: he has arrived in a black Honda Civic with the windows rolled down and the bright sound of guitars plucking over the gentle noise of the engine (it's quiet, it's a hybrid.) Then the sound abruptly cuts, and around the cabin there is only wind rustling through the pines and the occasional bird.
Nick arrives on the doorstep a haunt, slim and dark, his feet utterly soundless on the floorboards as though he were only partially a creature of this world. His curls are tamer today only because they have been freshly cut, and his skin has darkened to a light brown from time outside. He is wearing light brown shorts and a short sleeve pale blue buttondown: it's unimposing.
He knocks. And when Grant comes to answer this is who he'll find at the door: Nick, all of the above, offering him a smile. "Hello. I'm a friend of Sera's."
Grant
He's not done growing yet and he's already 5'9". The kid has an angular jaw and delicate features- a thin nose and bright, bright blue eyes. He looks like he doesn't get out much, or at all really. Pale. He's got a hoodie on and a pair of jeans and a tee shirt that is olive drab has some band name on it that's obscure and has since been washed away. Looks like he'd picked it up at a thrift store.
Nick is unimposing, but he gets a bit of space. The air is filled with apprehension, but that seems to be the kid's default. Nicholas Hyde has a smile that is disarming, though. He has a smile that coaxes one out of the teenager in front of him.
There's a hint of Something Else. Small and fledgling and confusing and uncertain. Something immaterial and ethereal and fey. Like there is some hint of a tenuous balance or a world made of spidersilk.
"Hey," he stands awkward for a second before offering his hand like he remembered he needs to do that, "I'm Grant, c'mon in. I... uh... made coffee."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick takes Grant's hand once it is offered, and rather than shaking it he only clasps it warmly for a moment. Nick's day job is in a hospital, working with people who are receiving hospice care: many of them are elderly and even when they aren't elderly they are often frail, the skin of their hands like tissue paper stretched over a framework of bird bones, too delicate. Many of them don't need a handshake as much as they need only to be held.
So he does that.
He is assessing, too, as he steps past the threshold and breathes in the scent of coffee. "Thanks," he says. "I'll have some." Old laws, old ways: he knows them well enough to at least put a little faith that they confer protection, if he needs protection. Sera was vague. She only knew so much herself, didn't she? Still.
"How are you liking the cabin? Are you bored all the way out here yet?"
Grant
"It's really quiet," he replies. Some tenor voice before he heads off to the kitchen. Grant skews towards androgyny- he doesn't have a voice that really skews too heavily towards masculine or feminine, but rather, it just skews towards bewildered.
"I read a lot, though. There's a lot of poetry out here... I asked Dan to bring me ome history books and stuff. It's... uh... really weird to not be figuring stuff out through Wikipedia."
He meandered towards the kitchen with a sort of distractable gait, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself or he wasn't quite sure what to do now that he had a physical person in front of him that he was entertaining. Grant pours coffee into a mug proclaiming something about keeping calm and caffeinated. Pours a little coffee of his own into a tea cup.
The kid comes back and offers him a cup.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's generation was the last (in the United States, at least) to grow up in a world that was partially analog. They were the last that were taught, at least in elementary school, to do research by looking things up in the encyclopedia, by trawling through libraries and massive library systems for books that they needed. He is reminded of this, whenever he speaks to people only ten years younger than he is. "Do you like this way of figuring things out more, or less?"
A beat, and another smile as he follows Grant back toward the kitchen. "Or are you undecided still?"
He accepts the cup once Grant extends it, bringing it up and closer to his mouth so that he can take a whiff of steam. "My wife enjoys poetry. She could probably recommend some good volumes for me to bring up here to you."
Grant
"It seems more reliable. Anybody can edit Wikipedia. It's harder to publish a book, I think. I just... uh... never really had a lot of books, so... I mean, this is really cool. It's weird holding stuff and reading."
So, it would appear the answer was yes, yes I do like this more than Wikipedia.
Nick goes on to talk about his wife, how she likes poetry and his brows shoot up in surprise, the kid sits down and puts his tea cup down on the table. Grant adjusts himself in the chair, sits a little awkwardly but comfortably. He half straddles the chair and sits more on a corner than right on the chair proper.
"That sounds awesome, I'd-" realizes he's showing way too much enthusiasm and clears his throat. You can't show too much excitement, don't want to seem desperate, "I mean... uh.. that would be cool."
He waits.
"So... uh... is it just going to be you and Sera and Dan?"
Nicholas Hyde
"I suppose it depends on who you ask," Nick says, and his voice is dry-touched as Grant talks about the ease of publishing. "My sister would say anybody can get anything published, these days."
Nick holds his coffee cup in both hands, leans one of his hips back against the nearby counter. He watches how Grant sets his cup down, adjusts himself in the chair, speaks a little too quickly. Nick reads between the lines. (That is why Sera brought him up here, isn't it?)
"I don't know," he says. "Sera didn't tell me a whole lot about you, to be honest. If you feel like giving me the long version, it would help me wrap my head around it a little. She said that someone from the Chorus found you."
Grant
[WP: I'm totally cool right now]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grant
Does he want to talk about it?
He seems retiscent at the moment. Looks back outside the window at the world outside, seems wary for a second before he looks back. Sera said some Chorister found him, "yeah, Isolde and... uh... I think her name was Angela. I thought it was a police raid because she and her partner are cops."
"I lived with my dad in Montana and, uh... just sorta woke up one day, I guess. That's what Jubilee said it was- she called it awakening... but... uh... So, I lived in Montana, and I'm-uh- I kinda grew up on the internet? I mean, I was home schooled and stuff, this is all pretty weird- my dad's a film maker."
That's what you could call it.
Grant seems to shut up after that.
"Yeah, uh... so, yeah. We used to live in California, my dad met my mom there and he made movies and stuff. She died, he started working for kinda skeezeball places, then we moved to Montana and he split time in California and Montana and I stayed in Montana with the crew."
Nicholas Hyde
He seems reticent; this is not lost on Nicholas. His reticence is understandable when a person knows what Nicholas knows: it is reassuring, even.
So he watches Grant, and steam wreathes the lower half of his face, curls around his chin. Grant finishes speaking and then he lowers the cup, but only to around the level of his chest. "So all of this must feel pretty normal to you, then. Not seeing a lot of people. Not having Wikipedia around aside."
There is this, a vague gesture around to the rest of the cabin. "So you were just helping your dad out, from the sound of it?"
Grant
It must all feel pretty normal, the not seeing a lot of people that is. The kid nods, takes his eyes off the window and he looks back at Nicholas. There's the curve of steam, the feeling of hallowed sacredness coupled with that sort of separateness that follows the young man in front of him (not yet a man, not with that kind of proving. Was barely into adulthood and certainly not out of his teenaged years yet.)
"Yeah, I... uh... wouldn't know what to do with a lot of people anyway," he laughs, though it is more of a release valve than one of humor, "pixels and text are a lot easier to deal with."
Nicholas continues, and there is silence again. Stillness. An economy of movement.
"It's... uh... kind of a pay your way or get out thing. He did a lot for me, he gave up a lot, I needed to. I... like... wait, how much has Sera told you?"
Nicholas Hyde
"People are more complex," Nick agrees (or is he agreeing, or countering, or who knows? Nick allows other people to insert what they will, more often than not. This is one of the things that makes counseling effective.)
He is listening, though, whatever else he is doing. He has been looking over at Grant, seated awkwardly in his chair, and in a few strides he crosses over to the chair opposite him. He sets his coffee on the table and in a few careful movements pulls the chair free and seats himself before he takes his cup back into his hands.
"Sera told me what your dad was doing," he says. "But not much more than that. It doesn't tell me a lot about you, or how you feel about what was going on."
Grant
"People don't selectively present as easily. You get everything-it's too much," he elaborates. Nick was listening and says that Sera told him what his dad had been doing and the already pale kid goes near ghostly.
Nick continues, says that he doesn't know a lot about him, or what there was about him, or really anything about Grant as a human being instead of Grant as an accessory. Blue eyes fall on the coffee mug at Nick's chest.
"I should have just played dumb. Dad doesn't get computer stuff, he doesn't. If I'd just played dumb or acted like I didn't know what to do or done literally anything other than sit on-" he looks a little exasperated. Disgusted, scared and ashamed, "-it doesn't matter. I shouldn't have done anything, if I hadn't helped none of this would have been real. None of it would have ever happened, no outlet. No audience. This was my fault."
[-1wp to hold it together]
Nicholas Hyde
[Empathy? Are you a serial killer with Wikipedia brain? Spending WP.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grant
This kid is most assuredly not a serial killer. Sure, he does have a Wikipedia brain- the kid is awkward in the way that many intelligent computer geeks are awkward, but when it comes down to the truth of the matter he genuinely believes that what happened was his fault and that this was the worst thing he could have ever done. Grant doesn't have it in him to lie, he's convinced that if he's not two hundred percent honest it will end very badly for him.
Nicholas Hyde
The shifts in Nick's expression are subtle. There is sunlight filtering in through the cabin windows, striking his eyes just so and they are a deep amber, burning coals. He's looking see because he knows other people well enough to know, often, what shame looks like: what remorse looks like.
Nicholas understands fear. He understands its subtleties and the masks it can wear.
Whatever he was looking for, he finds it; he slides his coffee away from him and leans an elbow on the table, leans forward and allows his hand to rest there on the wood somewhere between himself and the young man. "You trusted your dad, Grant. I think that's a pretty normal thing to do. Especially when you don't know a lot of other people."
Grant
"I could have just shut the whole thing down, I just-" there's a hitch, like he's trying to remember how to breathe "- he's not all bad. It wasn't all bad, it wasn't always like this."
He insists, he desperately insists because he wants to convince someone and, perhaps, the person he wants to convince isnt' the one sitting across the table.
"It doesn't matter how bad things were at home because it's worse out there-" he gestures to the window. The the outside, to everything that exists beyond the confines of the walls here.
Nicholas Hyde
"It sounds like you thought about shutting all of it down," Nick says, and his eyes linger: on his throat at the hitch, on his hands, on the gesture out toward the cabin and beyond. "What kept you from doing that?"
Grant
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, adjusts in his chair and his gaze goes back to taking Nick in. The kid shakes his head to get his hair back out of his face, "because I-I didn't want it tohappen to me. I'd be gone and nobody would know to miss me, I... I don't exist. I'm dead."
Nicholas Hyde
"It sounds like you've been living with a lot of fear for a very long time," Nick says, and there is a little furrow in his brow now as he watches Grant, a point that has appeared between them. This is a more thoughtful thing, more schooled, than moments before when it had first flickered across his face: it had been closer to pain. A grimace.
"If you're dead, then you get to choose how you want to begin again. What do you hope happens?"
Grant
"I want to have friends and-and go to schooland have a girlfriend and make stupid dippy little documentaries and send them to film festivals with my name on them instead of asking someone else to do it. I want to drive-"
Which was when something broke and he wiped his eyes quickly, which didn't do him much good because you're not supposed to cry. He knows you're not supposed ot cry, but he does so quietly like he's well aware that he can't be loud or that he can't be anything that might be obtrusive.
Nicholas Hyde
"You can cry here, if you want to. It's okay." Nick's voice is soothing, and his words have the warmth and ease of someone who has witnessed this struggle in other people before, who recognizes where it springs from.
He allows silence.
Then, "It's going to take a lot of work to get all those things, but I think we can get there."
Grant
It takes a little while, because someone is actually listening and maybe it's hitting him how incredibly off all of this has been, maybe he's just shocked in the face of something normal that he doesn't know how ot process. Maybe Nicholas Hyde is just really good at this.
"Cool," wipes his face with the heel of his hand and the sleeve of his hoodie, "so... you're coming back, right? We can, like, actually hang out and stuff?"
Nicholas Hyde
"Of course," he says. His hand is still on the table between them, and now he uses it to push himself up and away from the table. "How about we go out on a walk before I go? You can tell me all the stuff you've been learning, Mr. Wikipedia."
He offers a hand down to the kid, and should Grant take it he pulls him to his feet and, with a hand gently placed between his shoulderblades, steers him out the door and into the waiting forest.
Grant
[Fuck you, outside world! I can totally do this! Wp]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grant
He looks at the door, at the forest outside and wonders, and it's clear on his face, that he's not sure what's out there. That he's not sure if he's going to actually get to come back or if this is all going to be something very, very bad that is going to be a disaster. Grant takes his hand anyway and smiles, pulls up and heads for the door.
"What do you know about Baudelaire?"
Smiles, grins, looks a little excited at the prospect. Maybe normal is a thing that can happen.
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