houseofcards_rp | [ota] blood or water, it's all the same

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[ota] blood or water, it's all the same

It's been going on for months. The quakes are over and don't seem to be starting up again any time soon, and there's no sign of any other disaster. Iggy just wants to move out of Heart Castle and go home. Unfortunately, as the rest of the family is adamant that the kids remain at the castle, he cannot. Or, well, he's not allowed to. Because poor little kids, even teenagers old enough to babysit their own siblings and cousins, need to be supervised. Even if some of them are already adults by the standards of the Deck.

Which is, of course, piffle. So he's put his foot down and packed his things and gone back to the Xiu house.

The Xiu house will not have him. So, alas, he is wandering the streets of the Town, box of belongings on one shoulder and dragging a monstrous suitcase behind him. Or maybe he's sitting down on a bench somewhere. Take pity on him, folk of the Deck.

[ooc: he will ultimately wind up at Alasdair's place, so offers of a home are welcome but will not be accepted for varying reasons.]

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His hair gets a frustrated ruffle before he gets up, dragging the suitcase in behind him. It's barely slim enough to fit through the door.

"Well. Y'know how the kids've been living in the castle, and I got shipped off with them? Apparently just because there's nothing going on now doesn't mean there won't be anything in future." There's an aborted, exasperated gesture before he returns his hand to the task of pulling. "Which, okay, it's fair enough. But the older ones can take care of themselves and their sibs. They shouldn't need me."

Alasdair's brows go up a bit at that, and he heads down the hall to the spare bedroom - the one he hadn't turned into a library. "Yeah, okay," he says. "But you aren't their parents. If they're so worried about that, shouldn't they consider moving to the Castle themselves?" Instead of shoving it all on Iggy. Filial duty was one thing, but sometimes he felt like Iggy went way above and beyond.

He sets the box on the floor. "I've got plenty of room," he says, "if you need to stay a while."

"They're too busy revelling in the months-long novelty of a child-free house to bother. It's pretty much- wow, you're the ones who decided to procreate, so take some fucking responsibility." He runs his hand through his hair again, leaning in the doorway.

"Uh- thanks for letting me stay. I just realised, I didn't even ask."

"Seriously. Did you try putting it that way?" Not that he thought it would get a good initial reaction, but maybe it would kick all of the brothers and sisters in the ass, something that seemed a little bit necessary.

"It's not a problem. Elani doesn't stay over all that often what with the Jack-duties, so..." Though he should probably send her a text message warning her. "It'll be fun or something. Want a drink?"

"Wish I had. It woulda been a shitton more coherent than all the yelling. And one against eight or nine, I couldn't even get a word in." The Xius were particularly adept at yelling when there needed to be, and even when there didn't need to be, with all the languages they were fluent in. He'd eventually just picked up his things and left before they realised he wasn't there to yell at any more.

The offer has rather more fervent a look than necessary. "Yes, please."

"We aren't yellers, really, in the DeWitt family. Mom always makes calm and reasonable pronouncements about what will or will not be, right before asking you if you want some shortbread." She was getting back in the swing of Calm and Reasonable Pronouncements, which relieved Alasdair, even if the current Pronouncement was about where his relationship with Elani McCartney was going.

He leads Iggy to the kitchen and opens the fridge. It would be appropriate and writerly for Alasdair's drink of choice to be something hard, preferably whiskey, but he never developed a taste for it. "We've got beer, hard cider, and half a bottle of white wine that I'm pretty sure Bea left behind." He's going with a Yeungling. "They're in for a shock when they realize you didn't go back to the Castle. It might be good for them."

He leans in, reaching for a beer. "Ha- I'm betting they won't figure it out for a while yet. Not until one of them gathers their offspring in for tea and asks about Uncle Iggy, and the oldest tries to shush the youngest from blurting that Uncle Iggy hasn't been living with them a while. Probably Tabby. Don't think that kid's learnt the meaning of 'secret' yet."

Still. Maybe he ought to check in on the older kids tomorrow, just for the sake of having their support.

Alasdair snorts a little bit at that. "The faces will be epic," he tells Iggy. "Might be the only thing that gets it through their heads." It's not that the older Xius were bad people, honestly. But Iggy had been sort of a yes man all his life. As a former yes man, Alasdair knew it was hard to get out of the habit of that from either side.

He took another drink of his beer. "I think you might've mixed up some of the files when they had you on delivery, by the way. I got some spreadsheets." Which led him to believe that someone else had gotten Eve's editing notes - but maybe they wouldn't read it.

That has him bumping his head on the fridge ceiling as he moves too fast to look at the other man. "Spreadsheets? Where'd you put them?" And then, standing up properly to rub his head, "Crap, someone else must've gotten your last rejection then."

Beat.

"Uh, sorry."

"They're in my messenger, don't worry," Alasdair says easily. He's not that great a liar, except about this. It's probably all the practice he's had.

That's why he can shrug a little laconically. "It's just there's a missing spot on my collage of rejection, you know?" In actuality, he needs to get those edits done by the end of next week.

This big a sigh of relief warrants that beer, right? Right. "There weren't that many people on my route that day- shouldn't be hard to find it. Your collage can survive a little longer."

And given that no one had yet called him to ask why they had a rejection letter, he figured they hadn't made it that far in his delivery yet. Good news all round, surely.

"I'm in no rush." Which was a bald-faced lie, but what can you do. "Just remind me in the morning to give it to you. It'll probably be a day or two before I manage to clear it out of all the end of the school year stuff."

"Gotcha. Should I find a shovel for you to excavate with?" He rather doubts it would take any less to get through what Alasdair has to remove from his classroom.

"A small one should do the trick." He rolls his eyes. "They're waxing the floors this summer, so we had to all get pretty much everything out. Fun times."

"Ouch. It's too bad you can't fit a bulldozer in the corridors to help that go faster." Granted, there would probably be some damage to the items themselves. But what was public school without a little incidental mysterious damage, anyway?

"I think the elementary school teachers are seriously considering that. You think I have a lot? You've seen nothing until you've seen the contents of the second grade classroom." They had toys. And laminated Disney wrapping paper.

He can't help the gagging. That much, at least, isn't fake. "Oh, geez. I hope they disinfect the room first. How much stuff did they find hidden behind closets and in corners?"

"Shit, they disinfect the lower elementary rooms once a week." He grins and toasts Iggy with his beer. "I did hear they found someone's secret stash of Easter eggs. That was...stinky."

"Oh, god." He wrinkles his nose and takes a healthy swig. "I don't know who to pity more, the teachers for enduring that or the kid for losing that."

"Pity the teachers, trust me." His expression goes a little solemn. "A dozen of them, Iggy. You know how that smells?"

"...I don't wanna take you up on that challenge, dude. You have a better vocabulary of smells in your lifetime than I could ever have." Mad science. Chemicals. Somewhere in that must match the smell of months-old Easter eggs.

"That is so very true," Alasdair says. "It was harrowing, though, I'll say that much."

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[ota] blood or water, it's all the same

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