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 Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:18 pm
In the winter, it got dark too fast. Jude was back at Barny's house at a reasonable hour, but with a lack of light from anything not a lamp posts, it felt a lot later than it was. He knew it was stupid, and his timing was fine, but he couldn't help feeling guilty knocking on the door--once, twice, three times.
As observant as he could be taking in the outside world, he lacked insight as to his own actions unless he took the time to sit and think about it. That's what he planned to do; drop off the phone he borrowed, drop off the cat, take off and just think about all his problems for once.
Alright, fine. Maybe not all of them. Just the ones that were haunting him to the point he couldn't avoid them any longer.
The real reason he felt guilty was because in an attempt to finally confront his problems, he was running away from them first. Again. Why did he always do this?
Because life hated him no matter what, Jude thought. If it didn't, he wouldn't be standing face-to-face with someone he'd done his very best to avoid for weeks.
"Hello, Mrs. Price. Is Barnaby here?""
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:32 pm
"Ah, I'm afraid you just missed him." Evelyn glanced over the boy's shoulder as if just speaking about her son would make him appear. It was stupid, really. He'd left no more than fifteen minutes ago with Minnie, and he wouldn't be back so soon, no matter how cold or dark it was. When a boy wanted to spend time with his dog, it was best to just let him get it out of his system so he could spend the rest of his night safe and sound in his house. Or at least, that was what Evelyn Price thought.
But that didn't mean she should leave said boy's friend on the doorstep, waiting for him to come home like some kind of lovesick puppy.
"Why don't you come in? He'll have to come back sometime tonight, and you might as well be warm while you wait." The woman didn't wait long for Jude's answer, ushering him inside and closing the door behind him. "Don't worry about your shoes, just kick them off over there, and I can take your coat." She held out her hands for it expectantly.
The little entrance way had a few other obviously female pair of shoes, but there was a noticeable lack of male shoes besides a large pair of Velcro running shoes. Barnaby's father, it seemed, was not home this weekend either.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:49 pm
"Oh, well I'll just--" Just wait in the truck, he was going to say, but then she was cutting him off like a true mother hen. He didn't even have the chance to tell her outside would be an alright place for him to linger before she was ushering him inside like he'd come to her door freezing and starving.
He had.
"Alright, thank you, ma'am." She was and always had been 'ma'am', and Jude said it in the respectful way; not the you're-really-old-oh-my-God way he remembered his sister using. His own mother had a long way to go before she could compete with Barnaby's, but if there was one thing she had done right, it was always making sure her kin behaved at their friend's houses.
Jude removed his shoes and carefully, slowly set them beside a pair he had seen her son wear before. The other set was hers, and...
No trace of Mr. Price yet again.
Giving her his coat was an awkward motion at best. They could go through this a thousand times, and he'd still never get used to it. "Thank you," he repeated, and once again: "Ma'am."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 4:58 pm
The woman gave a gentle chuckle as she took his coat, hanging it up in the closet with the others. Perhaps it was a good thing that Barnaby had no siblings. It meant there was ample closet space for his friends, should they decide to come over (which was a rarity at best). Evelyn, however, liked to think that her son just hadn't found a good group of boys to hang around, which was why he spent more time with his dog and his bike than he did with anything else. Clearly having Jude over was a Big Deal.
"It's no trouble at all, don't worry about it," Evelyn called over her shoulder as she beckoned Jude to follow her into the kitchen. "I was just putting in some hot chocolate for when Barnaby comes back. Would you like marshmallows with yours?" On the little table was a large container of Nesquik and a bag of small marshmallows. Barnaby's mother busied herself with the measuring cup and the microwave before moving to take out another mug from the cupboard.
"If I'd have known you were coming over I would have told him to make his walk shorter."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:09 pm
Jude suddenly knew what it must feel like to be a youma in the jungle. This was a place he didn't know, and one of the few he didn't want to know. The extent of his familiarity with Barny's house consisted of knocking on the basement window and using his phone once. The total number of words he'd said to Mrs. Price couldn't have been more than twenty, and if you counted the words individually, less than that.
"Thank you, Ma'am."
"Hello, Mrs. Price."
"Take care, Mrs. Price."
"Is Barnaby here?"
Variations of those polite, formal discussions was all he could recall speaking to his woman, and that had felt like it was bordering too much. Yet here he was, being asked how many marshmallows he wanted without being given the chance to deny the drink she wanted to put them in.
"Oh, no. I don't need any, thank you." Jude drummed his fingers mutely against his side. The joys of twitching around to keep yourself more at ease. "It's alright. I'm sorry I showed up so unexpectedly. I just needed to talk to him for a minute."
Awkwardawkwardawkward.
Had this been anyone else, he'd have been chatting it up already. But it wasn't anyone else. This was the mother of someone he was in an unwritten contract with. The new Sagittarius.
The new Sagittarius he preferred to think of as lacking these types of connections. You really couldn't when one of them was standing there shoving hot chocolate in your hands.
"You have a very nice house, Mrs. Price."
That's what his mother would have wanted to hear.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:21 pm
Evelyn seemed surprised when Jude dismissed the marshmallows, but her expression returned to a comfortable smile almost instantly. "Well, if you're sure then. I'm sure Barnaby eats more marshmallows than he drinks hot chocolate, so he'll probably be pleased you left him more." The microwave beeped and she opened it briefly to stir the contents of the measuring cup. She tested it with a finger and, deeming it a good temperature, poured some into the mug that she had taken out for Jude. Her smile was still in place as she placed it in front of him.
"You're no trouble at all, Jude. It's nice to see you in here rather than outside. If you ever drop by again, you can always park the car in the driveway. It's getting too snowy for Barnaby to use his bike, so you won't be in anybody's way." She gave the bluenette a pat on the shoulder as she passed him and went back to the microwave.
"And I'm glad you like it. You should stop by more often. I'm sure Barnaby would enjoy the company on the days that I'm working nights." Evelyn put the measuring cup back in the microwave and turned it back on, pausing only to glance at her watch. Judging by the weather, he should be back soon. Minnie may be able to tolerate the cold, but Barnaby wasn't quite so furry.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:33 pm
"I'll remember that." The look he gave the mug could have been equivalent to someone witnessing the discovery of a holy chalice. He took it as if it were diamond, not ceramic, and sipped so slowly it should have been part of his last meal. Warm food not in hamburger form didn't come too often these days. Dollar menu salads and assorted fast foods were most of his diet, and it wasn't doing him much good physically.
Then again, smoking wasn't either, and he was ready to go light up the night right about now.
Hero wouldn't like it, but Hero also wasn't there. (Thinking about her again. Sigh.)
Jude nodded and stared down at his hot chocolate, pondering. "I'll ask him about it when he gets back."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:42 pm
Thankfully - at least, for Jude's sake- Evelyn didn't have to play happy hostess much longer.
"WE'RE HOME!" bellowed a voice from the entrance way as Minnie and Barnaby arrived home. The redhead kicked off his shoes as the mastiff inspected the newest addition to the shoe pile. It was her snuffling that alerted him to the presence of someone new in his household, and with a small frown he made his way towards the kitchen, still talking as if he thought his mother was downstairs in the laundry room. That, or perhaps several miles away, upwind.
"WHOSE SHOES ARE- oh hey Jude." He'd rounded the corner of the kitchen to find his friend seated with a hot chocolate. Barnaby broke out into a bright grin as Minnie bounded over to inspect the bluenette. "Fancy meeting you here."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:47 pm
In his plentiful free time, Jude had once wondered if Barnaby was as loud at home as he was at work.
Answer: No. He was louder.
"Hey, Barnaby," he greeted with somewhat of a forced smile. His arrival was a relief, sparing him from the one-on-one chat session with his mother, but on the other hand Jude wanted to hit him upside the head with his hand for that little stunt. How did he not recognized his shoes by now?! For Gods' sake, he only owned one pair!
"Yeah, go figure."
From there he let Barnaby go--talk to his mother, get his hot chocolate, whatever else he wanted to do. The walk to his room in the basement felt like walking away from one storm and right into another.
"So..." Jude made sure his mother wasn't behind them when they made their way down the stairs. Knowing his luck, it was smart to check. "I need you to watch my cat for a couple days, but also I need to talk to you."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:53 pm
In Barnaby's defence, shoes were hard to recognize when they had a large dog nose in them. Besides, it wasn't like he looked at Jude's shoes. Only gay guys actually looked at what other guys were wearing.
It was Minnie who followed Jude downstairs first, clearly very interested in the fact that he smelled like truck, a woman, and a cat (among other things). Barnaby, however, chatted idly with his mother until the microwave was finished with his hot chocolate, before she shooed him off to go "hang out with his friend" in his basement bedroom. He made sure to grab the bag of marshmallows as he passed them on his way down stairs.
He wasted no time in putting his hot chocolate on the table and flopping down on the squishy brown couch, leaving enough room at the end for Jude. "Cat, got it, can do. Just leave me whatever you give her for like, food and bedding and all that stuff, and I'll look after the rest." Minnie would be positively thrilled. Too bad she was too busy staring at his bag of marshmallows to be paying attention. "And talking's cool too. What's up?" He tossed a marshmallow up in the air and caught it in his mouth.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 6:05 pm
"I... okay." Not that he'd anticipated Barnaby making a huge deal about it, but he had expected something more than what he'd been given. He wasn't going to whine? Ask him why? Nothing? Just 'got it, can do'?
The question Jude had wanted to ask would feel like the most stupid thing he could possibly say after that: Barnaby, are we friends?
Slightly unnerved, and somehow confused as to why that was, Jude stayed standing. Recognition dawned on him in a way that not only made the question a dumb one, but made him a dumb man.
First Grayson, now Barnaby? When had he started making friends again?
And his mother...
"We skipped a stage with your training." The nearest surface Jude found, he set the cup on, and his hand ran through his hair. More and more than was becoming a tell of his. What did it tell? An unspoken story about something he'd done wrong. "The part where I give you details I might have made seem more appealing than they actually are, and then tell you this was probably a bad idea."
Pause.
Wait for it.
"And I'm sorry."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 6:13 pm
The first rule (or is it second?) of Barnaby Price is that he doesn't whine to anyone or anything but one person, and that person isn't even really a person, she's a dog. Even if he had minded – which he didn't – Jude certainly wasn't going to hear about it. And Minnie's lips were sealed.
Always a fan of short, straight to the point answers, the redhead couldn't help but be confused by Jude's choice of words. When he had said that talking was 'cool' he hadn't meant that his friend could just randomly apologize for something and start talking about training. Talking was supposed to be about communication, right? Admittedly, male communication wasn't exactly top notch, but Barnaby did like to at least pretend he could follow what was going on. Right now, he didn't even know whether it was better to say "no problem" or "what?"
"Look, I know I'm slow and all, so you're going to have to explain this really simply for me, okay? I don't know what you're apologizing for, and even if I did know I'd tell you not to."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 6:34 pm
Any dramatic edge this moment would have had was ruined by Jude smacking his palm against his forehead. Was this what talking to him was like? Was karma coming back to get him?
"Okay, Barnaby, you're not slow." He was just a guy who sucked at understanding some things--Jude could empathize with that. "Just listen to me, okay? I haven't lied to you about all this, but I haven't been... as honest as I should have. Does that make sense?" No, it made no sense. Damn it. "Alright."
Alright what?
Jude took three paces left, three right. Back and forth. Back and forth. He bit the end of his thumb and drew his brows together. This shouldn't be so hard for him to understand, and it definitely shouldn't be this hard to say. The problem was Jude was speaking of things he'd never sat down and thought of before, if only because he avoided it until now.
"You don't have any siblings, you and your mom live here alone--and the dog," he added hurriedly, as if denying her access into his ramblings would offend the animal in question. "Your mom is a nice lady, and I know you--" This was so, so lame. "...care about her, which is good. The Zodiac are..."
He finally stopped, looked at him--then kept going again. Back and forth. "The Zodiac are an amazing thing in some ways. You get to have magic powers and fight monsters and in a way live forever. But immortality sucks, Barnaby. It really sucks from what I can remember, which isn't much yet, but it's enough. I haven't been saying things like that because they're my opinion, but that's the thing. I don't think it's just my opinion now. I only recently took the time to find out that I'm not the only one of us who thinks that way."
Hero being so upset she'd let all of them die. How had he missed that?
"How do I explain this? --Alright. Barren Pines. The school I told you about." At long last, Jude sat down. His feet shuffled around anxiously and his hands twitched on his knees, but if he was going to stop to think he first had to just stop. Period. "My best friend--no, my only friend--was a guy named Marcel. All the Zodiac exploded about six months before he actually died, from what I can tell, but at Barren Pines none of us knew we were dead. I didn't know he was dead dead until after that mess was over, and to find out, I had to call his mother and make her cry over her son again."
Sighing heavily, Jude leaned forward. Hand through his hair. Guilt. "The thing is, Barnaby, had it been me who died instead of Marcel... I'd be born again, probably, as someone else. Marcel could whine and cry for me all he wanted, and I'd be off somewhere, growing up as someone else, completely unaware of this hurt I'm causing this person. I will die, and I'll probably die young." Was this Hero or Jude speaking now? "Most of the Zodiac will probably die young. So, yes, you'll get to live on after you die as another person, but while you're doing that, people you can't even remember--people you care about like your mother--will be here at a loss because you're gone. That's the joy and the pain of being a Zodiac. It isn't worth it."
The opportunity to get a word in was too fast for the speedy Barnaby Price, but his time would come after Jude looked over at him and announced: "I'm withdrawing my mentoring of you. It was a disgrace that I attempted to pass along something that is way, way more of a curse than a blessing to someone who doesn't deserve to have and doesn't have to keep it. I expect you to be mad, but I hope you'll forgive me one day."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 6:58 pm
Not slow. Psh. Barnaby didn't need sympathy from Jude, especially not about something that was as true as the fact that the sky was blue. But he did his best to humour him nonetheless, resting an arm on the back of the couch and watching Jude move. He really shouldn't wander so much when he was talking. It was epic levels of distracting.
Even so, the redhead did his very best to try and understand the gist of what Jude was trying to explain to him. It was obviously something very serious, and he owed it to his friend to at the very least care about what was being said. But Jude wasn't exactly making his life any easier, talking about the Zodiac and immortality and then about losing his friend. It was very hard to make sense of, though whether that was because the bluenette couldn't explain things or he was trying to explain things that were beyond Barnaby's comprehension was unknown. Either way, by the time Jude was finished, the redhead couldn't help but feeling that he'd failed to comprehend some sort of great celestial mystery. It wasn't a very nice feeling.
With a small sigh, Barnaby ran his fingers through his hair spikes, trying to think of what to say. Serious conversations were definitely not his forte. "I... understand, I guess, that what you're trying to tell me is something I should know and should have known before I made my decision, but at the same time it's not something I can say I'd have thought about then. I'm afraid I sort of learn things the hard way, if you know what I mean." Experience was the best teacher, after all. "I don't blame you or anything, for wanting out or wanting... I dunno, whatever was going to be gained from all of this."
There was a pause for a moment, before the redhead broke the three second rule and fixed Jude with a sort of crooked grin. "I guess what I mean is, I don't need to be anything like an heir or a sidekick or whatever, as long as I still get to be your friend. So there's nothing to forgive."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:11 pm
By the end of this conversation it was hard to tell if Jude had taken steps forward or steps back. The issue of if he could ever allow himself friends again was mended in the best way it could have been, but at the same time, he felt like he'd been hit across the face. After all that, he just made it sound so simple.
It wasn't simple. Barnaby didn't understand it. He couldn't have.
It was not that simple.
Knowing that didn't keep Jude from gawking at this foreign ability to make the world okay by just shrugging your shoulders and using some idealist logic. That's how Barnaby Price acted, and how he remembered acting once.
How could he have ever tried to rob someone of that just because it had been taken from him?
"Barnaby..." Jude tried not to, he really did, but he couldn't stop himself from bursting into laughter. "That was so gay." One headlock later, he was messing up the spiky hair in what would have been a picture perfect little brother vs. big brother squabble had Jude not been the youngest among them. It's how old you feel, he'd always thought, and he felt much older than Barnaby Price.
"I can't believe you actually said that! Let's go get my cat before you turn us both into girls."
Yes, Barny. Go get Jude's pregnant cat he spent thirty minutes brushing dead hair off of prior to calling the woman who owns him like a piece of land. Hurry, before his masculinity gets put up for debate. Wouldn't want that.
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