houseofcards_rp | [ota] shake me, break me....

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[ota] shake me, break me....

There was always a chance of injury when sparring. Particularly when sparring with someone that you were particularly competitive with (like ones brother). Hadyn didn't even remember how it happened, other than a series of complicated moves, and progressively annoyed Jordan. He'd lost his knife, but thanks to Elisha's training over the past year, losing his knife was no longer the most worrisome thing in a match.

He'd blocked a slashing motion from Jordan, and had moved to step in and disarm his brother when Jordan suddenly (and unexpectedly) changed tactics. He let go have his knife and latched on to Hadyn's arm before he was able to adjust and scramble back- and then, between his own twisting, and Jordan's- he felt the searing, hot pain rip through is shoulder as he came crashing down on it, Jordan having flipped him, almost without his notice, onto the training mat.

Surely people would forgive him for looking pained as he gets his shoulder iced and wrapped before heading to the theatre to work.

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"Henry can kiss my ass at this point." He said, looking up at Alasdair in the most unamused manner he could manage (which was rather good at the moment.)

"I already took about five." He assured the man though, as he leaned back and held out his hand for Bond to crawl over to him. In a rather unceremonious manner, the puppy just sort of flopped down next to him, his head pillowed on paws that rested over Hadyn's hand.

The world might be better off if more people told Henry that - but Alasdair was, of course, entirely unbiased. It's not like Henry had laughed the last time he'd brought him something.

Oh, wait.

"And you've got a live-in nurse, I see," he said, though, with a slight smile. He didn't think either Novak had been the type for pets, especially adorable puppy types of pets. "He's probably got it in hand, anyway. What is it? Dislocation?"

"He's happy to help, I suppose." Hadyn said, wiggling a finger as Bond tried to catch in. "I need to get him some chew toys, I think." Stuff to keep a growing puppy occupied.

"Dislocated," he said with a mild shrug. "Not the first time, won't be the last. It sort of...happens." It was the nature of training.

"Rope was a favorite of my dog, growing up." Harper had passed a few years back, though, and Alasdair hadn't grown up to be the kind of man who wanted a golden retriever underfoot. "Something he can tug. He looks like he's got shepherd in him. He'll probably want to herd you and everyone else in sight."

He shifted the box to his other arm and winced a little. "Sucks. I dislocated mine a couple of years back in copoeira practice. At least it's only a few days of recovery?" He won't ask if Henry will give him time off. They both know there's no way in hell.

"I'll see what I can find then." Which was a start, really, before he barked out a sharp enough laugh that Bond looked up at him in a startled manner and barked a little at him while trying to climb into his lap.

"As if. We've a play opening on Friday. Come hell or high water, I will be well enough to perform."

Alasdair shook his head with a bit of a smirk as he set the box on the table and flopped into one of the chairs. He was only really at the apartment to cajole Freddy into helping with boxes, anyway, since the house he'd ended up with wasn't far.

"The ranting over Hanukkah was loud enough that I heard it." Or rather, one of his seniors was an understudy and had whispered all about the drama queen fits in class. "I think he might have a voodoo doll of King Elisha, somewhere."

"He pretty much hates the king of Clubs," He said with a shrug, and then a wince before shuddering. "Fuck, I need to not do that."

Or something.

"Whatever Henry wants, Henry gets. Or something to that effect." He sighed, though. It was, going to be a fun argument to be sure.

"I just bet," Alasdair said with a snort before wincing and getting up to fix Hadyn fresh ice.

"Is that your opinion or His Majesty's?" He asked after a moment. He and Hadyn weren't particularly close - unlike most of the Hearts Hadyn's age, Alasdair hadn't taught him in school - but he'd never particularly disliked the Novaks. Maybe in part it was because of his job, but he saw enough kids in every Suit that he didn't make judgments about the two boys who'd switched to the Hearts when he'd been fifteen.

"That Henry gets what he wants?" Hadyn asked, raising a brow curiously for a moment before tilting his head to the side and blinking a little.

"I don't know. Elisha probably does think that, if not something worse. I do know he isn't a fan of Henry's." Though some of that, he imagined, was because Henry interrupted the chances of sex at times.

"Who is?" But there was a faint curve to Alasdair's lips as he handed Hadyn the ice. Henry wasn't a bad man, just...single-minded. A workaholic, too, and expected everyone else to be.

"Maybe you should point out to Elisha that he probably would expeect 130 percent or so out of someone working for him." The P.A. before Pete had been one of his youngest sister's friends, and he'd heard stories.

"You'd be surprised how many people are fans, you know." He said with a vague smirk. And no, Henry wasn't a bad man- he was just a demanding man. A very demanding man.

"I don't think Elisha would agree it was quite the same." But for reasons he didn't feel inclined to explain to Alasdair. It was just one of those things that people needed to understand...as complicated as it was.

"The people who haven't gotten enough rejection letters to fuel the bonfire, no doubt." He said it with a self-deprecating shrug, though - vintage Alasdair DeWitt, always good-natured about the piles of rejection - as he sank back in his chair.

"Maybe he wouldn't," he agreed. He wouldn't want to see it that way, after all, because the King had a personal stake in this. "But it is the same, at the core of it. They both demand excellence, and excellence doesn't just come."

"You really never had a chance, you know." And thus did it to himself. It wasn't as if Alasdair didn't know that every time he'd brought a script to Henry, he was going to be told no. Henry had too much love of the classics and not enough faith in the new to try it at all. Perhaps when Henry had been younger...but that was nearly thirty years past now.

"They aren't the only ones to demand it." Which was the root of the problem- Hadyn demanded it of himself. More so than Henry demanded it of him by a long shot.

"I'm well-aware of that by now," Alasdair said, flicking Hadyn a look. "Henry hasn't had to stick anything of mine in the circular file for a few years now. It's a waste of effort, really. Probably a better idea just to write for myself and tuck it away. Someone can discover my genius in the attic in a hundred years and wonder why it's never been published." At least in the best case scenario. In reality, though, part of the reason Henry didn't get plays anymore is Alasdair didn't have the time. The marketable pursuits had taken over.

"No," he said, though, giving Hadyn a long look. "We tend to demand it from ourselves the most. Unless we're completely lazy brats like, say, Riley."

"It is a shame." Except that even Hadyn had hesitated at doing one of Alasdair's plays once. It was just sort of the nature of things- the stage was about taking risk, yes. But calculated ones. One failure could ruin entire careers- which was not something anyone wanted, even people not overly invested in a theatrical future.

"I don't think Riley's completely lazy." But, well...there were moments he wondered.

Better, Alasdair supposed, to do Shakespeare and the like four times a year. It probably wasn't fair to the Bard to hold a grudge because of one theatre director, but at least it guaranteed that his students got a broader base. Since he refused to teach more than one Shakespearean play a year.

And he supposed most people would say he was better off not wasting his time writing plays that owed more to Eugene O'Neill, considering his own strengths. But he still hadn't entirely accepted that success as a writer of potboilers was the most success he'd ever get.

"Not completely, no," he said with a shrug. "But she did have to get threatened with termination to write final exams this year. I heard the dean muttering about teenagers, and for once he wasn't talking about the student body."

"She teaches....gym. What on earth could she possibly need a final exam for?" He asked, snorting a little as he shook his head. Not that he ever attended the public school, but he just imagined there wasn't just to gym.

Ever.

"Have to test on the rules of the sports she teaches," Alasdair pointed out. "And then there's physical competencies; it's not exactly the most organized school system, but everyone who goes through it has to exhibit a certain degree of physical fitness. That takes a test."

All the things that got drilled into their heads during faculty meetings.

"They're not as complicated as, say, the essays I just graded on the prevailing themes of Transcendentalist poetry in the nineteenth century, but it still has to be done."

"Riight. Whatever you say." He said with a shrug as he pulled himself up and scooped up the puppy. "You really just...keep thinking all of that." He was just not going to worry about it.

"But sometimes the test isn't telling you anything. Some people are not going to be fast runners, or skilled...anything. Like Mitchell. Mitchell is just..." Well, Mitchell. There wasn't anything else he could say about that.

"Mitchell got As in my class, actually. At least if he was engaged with the material." Which, admittedly, had been for one solitary unit: Beowulf. He probably would have been on cloud nine if Alasdair had taught Game of Thrones then, but he'd only come up with that idea this year. "He can be smart enough if he figures out that he needs to think about something other than his games and his fantasy world." Which Alasdair could sympathize with, honestly, though his fantasy world had been a different kind.

Still, he'd hope that Mitchell Moore had less of a cynical awakening.

"Tests are flawed, though," he said. "But sometimes there isn't a good way of measuring otherwise. And if we don't have any way of measuring performance, and how students are doing, then I can't change my curriculum to try to actually manage to teach them." He shrugged. It was different than one on one, which he'd also done. "Exams are only part of the grade, anyway," he added, raising a brow. "You can't just show up, pass the test, and skip the rest of the year. Participation is the majority of my rubric."

"Mitchell is still Mitchell." And more than admitted he was a fair to middling student when it came to school. Nothing Alasdair said would ever change that. "But if it makes you feel better. I am not saying exams are worthless- but exams on physical education is a bit....ridiculous. Either people can run, or they can't. Are you going to punish them for not being as fast or as fit as someone else?"

"I don't punish anyone for not doing well on an exam, no matter what it's on. And I failed most of the ones we had in physical education, when I was in school." He'd never been much good at anything that wasn't dancing - or part of dancing. "It's not my area, but the idea, I think, is to make sure the teacher isn't designing the class in such a way that the least skilled student has no chance of keeping up."

Well, that and making sure they actually remembered the rules of volleyball.

"A failing grade is still a failing grade," Hadyn pointed out, but shrugged. "Whatever, though. Your lot will do what you want- I'm no teacher, I haven't the patience for it." He wasn't sure he could even teach someone else to fight. Train with them, yes; give them tips? Probably. Actually teach them? He wouldn't know where to start.

"I have to get back." It was just not as exciting as it might otherwise seem.

Alasdair shrugged his shoulders. He hadn't really wanted to be a teacher - he'd just fallen into it - and he imagined Hadyn Novak would learn more patience as he grew up. That's what usually happened.

"Have fun," he said as he stretched to his feet and picked up his box again and headed for the door. Freddy was probably waiting by now, anyway. "Maybe take more ibuprofen for the preemptive headache," he called over his shoulder.

He was just always going to hate Henry.

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[ota] shake me, break me....

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