Logs:Kindness

Kindness
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Steve
In Absentia Sera	christmas eve "Joy. Comfort. Hope. Throw another couple positive words in there I could be a greeting card."
Location <PRV> Tessier Residence - Greenwich Village
Understated opulence claims this spacious and well-kept townhome, the decor throughout the whole of it of the highest quality and carefully chosen. The front door opens onto the entrance hall, a closet close at hand to receive coats and shoes -- the pale hardwood floors gleam underfoot, unsullied by tracked-in mess from outside. The living room beyond the entrance is all dark woods and pale earth tones, comfortable couches and armchairs and a thick soft rug laid down beneath. Two large and painstakingly aquascaped aquariums flank the entrance to the dining room, with several brightly coloured species of fish within. Most of the rest of the wall space, notably, is taken up with shelves -- shelves crammed with books of every subject and genre. A study branching off of the main hall is cozy, small, done in pale blues and lined with books as well around the large computer desk and smaller futon, though these rarer books are cased behind glass. Another securely locked door leads to the basement, and another to the full bathroom downstairs. The kitchen connects to the living room; in contrast, it is sleek and modern and well-appointed, stocked by someone who takes their cooking seriously. And takes their alcohol equally seriously -- to one side of the kitchen there is a fully-stocked bar. The back door to the kitchen looks out on a small well-kept garden. It's quite late, but it's still bright inside Chez Tessier, white string lights hung through the red cedar roping that's been strung across the lintels, the tree twinkling merrily in the living room, spillover from the intricate light display outside washing through the windows. The scents of mulled cider and gingerbread mix with the cedar and pine. Lucien's room would be one small plain nook away from all the Festive Cheer, woefully undecorated and lacking in the holiday spirit that has settled over the rest of the house, except that at this moment it is host to a sizable pile of presents -- mostly, by now, fastidiously neatly wrapped and ornately bowed. Tucked at his desk with a mug of cider, a roll of satin tape and several rolls of gift wrap, he's currently measuring a box (a woodworking kit, for making a fountain pen) against the velvety gold and crimson paper before folding it carefully, cutting it carefully. "If we must be subjected to it they really," he's saying critically, "ought to play that music instead, I think people find it less objectionable than a seven thousandth rendition of "Wonderful Christmastime"." He's still mostly dressed from Mass in a charcoal suit with white pinstripes in classic lines, carefully tailored to downplay the bulk he'd put on for his role, white broadcloth spread-collar shirt, red and white diagonal striped tie in a neat full Windsor knot, though he's shed his shoes and jacket, the latter folded neat and draped over the back of his chair. There's no Christmas music playing currently, just Hozier quietly singing from his computer, "Angel Of Small Death And The Codeine Scene". Steve seems content sharing the futon with a shockingly neat mountain of wrapped gifts, nursing his own cider. "The older carols are comforting to me, but I admit even my favorites get a bit old...hah! Tiresome after weeks and weeks of hearing them everywhere." He's also in his Midnight Mass best, a sharp black suit -- the jacket draped over the back of the futon -- in sleek modern lines that highlight his impressive physique, a pale blue dress shirt, a royal blue tie covered with silver snowflakes, the eight-pointed Star of Bethlehem at the center of his shield completing the look. He watches Lucien's meticulous wrapping. "I have to say I have never seen a pagan go to bat for Christmas as wholeheartedly as you have this year. I know it's also for Yule, but ah..." He tips his mug at the door as to indicate the entire house beyond it. "That's pretty intense. Lovely! But intense. Guessing it's not just the unexpected extra time on your hands." "It has filled the time." Lucien is just tucking the last fold on his wrapping paper, slipping a small piece of tape unobtrusively beneath the last fold. He sets it aside, goes to pen the label in elegant calligraphed hand: To: Sera. From: Santa Claus. before tying an ostentatiously looping bow to the present and tucking the label in among it. It joins the rest of the presents ("Santa" has quite a mound for everyone in the family) as Lucien swivels his chair around, wheels it the short distance to the futon. "Besides, holidays ought to feel like --" He hesitates, his mouth briefly pulling to one side as he looks at the present he just wrapped. He quiets, pushing himself back to his desk. "-- what does this holiday feel like, to you?" Steve considers the question, taking an unhurried sip of cider. "Joy. Comfort. Hope. Throw another couple positive words in there I could be a greeting card." He leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees and cupping the mug between his hands. "Felt kind of magical -- when I was a kid, sure, but it never went away completely." He glances back at the box Lucien had just added to the growing heap. "You figure all this might help make it feel more like home to her?" "I'm startled you are not already. Would you like to be a greeting card? I'm sure we could make that happen." Lucien sounds quite in earnest about this, at least. His expression does not change from his intent focus on the slim video game box he is now wrapping. "I think being displaced from your entire world could use whatever magic you can find to soften that landing." "I would pay you to ensure I do not become a greeting card." Steve considers for a moment, then amends, "Pay you more." He watches Lucien closely, then pulls his gaze away to roam the tidy bookshelves that line to opposite wall. "I can say from personal experience you're pretty amazing at that. Softening landings I mean, not saving me from Hallmark, though you are also pretty amazing at that." His lips press thin. "Granted, I had some advantages she didn't. And I doubt taking me in was as difficult for you, either." Lucien's mouth twists in a brief displeasure that probably has little to do with the small fiddly corners of the slender box he is wrapping. "I cannot say a bonus would not be timely." He takes his time picking out ribbon for this, penning the neat label, adding it with a sense of finality to the tower of gifts. There is just a moment of temptation to slouch back in his seat when he is done, sagging briefly back into the comfortable leather before he collects himself upright and plucks his cider off its coaster. "Taking you in was a kindness. I've often been unsure if we are doing her one." "I'll Venmo you." Steve glances at the wrapped gifts taking up -- most of the futon, really. "Think you might need a sleigh even for the ones that aren't going any farther than the living room." He turns back to Lucien, then looks back down at the mug between his hands. "Calling what you did for me a kindness is an understatement even by your chronically understated standards." He straightens up again. "The other you seemed pretty sure where she should be. Maybe that was bravado. Or desperation. Suspect you and he talked more extensively in any case, but..." His brows furrow. "How about her?" "The other me --" Lucien's eyes lower, his nailbeds pressing white where he grips his mug. "Only knew the world she was leaving. Not the one she would be coming to." He turns the mug around in his hands, his eyes fixed down on it. "She and I talk, sometimes. My other siblings --" His lips compress again. "It has been a difficult adjustment, and I expect it does not make it easier to feel like home." He's slightly wry when he adds, "Even if our dysfunction long predated her, I expect it is hard -- under the circumstances -- not to second guess their excuses to be out of the house or uncomfortable silences while here." Steve's eyes flick to his friend's hand. Back up to his face. "I gather you two didn't have much pleasant to discuss. He was so insistent -- if he were you I'd have read that as abject terror, but even so I can't really fathom..." His head shakes. "Well. She's here, for better or worse. Don't expect there's much I can do to help any of you adjust, but if there is..." He turns one palm up and lifts both eyebrows. "Even if there isn't, it's long past time I figure out where, if anywhere, I stand with her. I know I'm not --" He bows his head. "{You are dear to me and she is your family, now. But as close as we are, I know almost nothing about -- the sister you lost. It's not that I think you owe me your pain, just...}" Makes himself look back up again. "I never asked." Lucien turns the mug around again. "It seems he had reason enough to be, non?" His eyes remain fixed downward, his fingers still clenched hard. He starts to look up, then drops his eyes back to fix on the cider where the tremors of the mug send faint ripples across its surface. "What is there to say? She died. If things had been different --" His eyes flick to the presents briefly. Then away, back to his cup. "I think, perhaps, we could have done more for her. But things were not different, and she is gone." He lifts his cup, downs a large swallow. "Apologies. I think I have pulled the mood a few degrees from magical." "It seems he had. Gosh, the poor girl..." Steve shakes his head again. "She's got you, and that's quite a lot. But it's also a lot on you, to make a home for a traumatized child with disconcerting powers who looks like a dearly departed sister -- more or less on your own." He follows Lucien's line of sight, his own lingering on the presents. "She had a life, even if it was brutally short. I imagine that left as much of a mark on your lives as her death. Maybe more, if those can even be separated." He takes a gulp of his own cider. "Probably both have to do with why it's been so difficult to accept this Sera. Even if she isn't much like her alter ego was, and I'd guess there's more than a passing resemblance." To the last he musters a rueful smile. "If we're laying blame for dampening comfort and joy, I'm no less responsible. But what's not magical about having a drink with Santa Claus on Christmas Eve? I don't need you to -- perform jollity." "She is very -- very much like our Sera was. It is hard not to look at her and wonder --" Lucien's voice is soft. He takes another drink of his cider, then sets it carefully aside. "Jolly has never exactly been at the top of my repertoire." He wheels back toward the futon, unerringly working a pair of presents Jenga-style from the pile without toppling it down around Steve. "You are, of course, welcome to eat with us tomorrow as well, but I've no idea what your day looks like then. In case it would be an imposition, I think perhaps Santa can visit early." One of the presents, admittedly, large and boxy, is labelled from Lucien, but the other, smaller box, does in fact read from Santa Claus (in Lucien's flourishing calligraphed hand.) "I'm sorry. Can't imagine how painful that must be." Steve's brows furrow faintly. "What do you wonder, looking at her?" He sets his cider aside, too, arching one eyebrow slightly at Lucien as he wheels back to the gifts. "I've a pretty full day, but that gala in the evening got cancelled -- thank God -- and I'd love to join you." Though he accepts the boxes, stacking the smaller on top of the larger in his lap for a considerably less impressive stack than the one beside him, he does not immediately open either. "Anticipation won't kill me, but I will gladly open these now, if it would please Santa, or..." He studies the label of the larger box, then enunciates, correctly, "...Lucien." "What her life might have looked like, if we had straightened ours out sooner." Lucien leans back in his chair, a small upward twitch at the corner of his mouth. "Santa is a patient man, I'm sure. It will be nice to have you with us tomorrow."