houseofcards_rp | [ota] aggressive normalcy

There's still a lot to learn.

But that's okay. He's starting to feel properly that it's okay. It's okay that he's still getting used to walking with a knife in his boot. It's okay that he's adjusting to which Fives to call by their name and which will all but slap him if he doesn't say 'sir.' It's okay that his greatest visible skill is an incredibly efficient knack for getting paperwork filed and delivered, and that the skill he's been progressing best at is classical piano.

Yes, the man he came here to find is an overwhelming force of nature. Yes, watching his father Challenge to Ten had absolutely sent him, briefly, through half a crisis. But that's okay too.

Because he's here. He's here, and here is the right place to be.

It's the right place to be while he works at filing cabinets. It's the right place to be while he steals mouthfuls in the kitchen and whispers in more comfortable languages than English with other former Outsiders. It's the right place to be while he gets his ass handed to him in the training fields and forces himself back up onto his feet.

And it's the right place to be while he steals out on an afternoon off to just skip rocks over the newly thawed lake. Because it's really nice to know that skipping rocks and throwing knives are both starting to feel equally normal.

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He chuckled as he plucked the stone from Aleksei's hand.

"I'll take that as a compliment." Even though practically no one was under the illusion that he wasn't dangerous, despite all appearances. Still, he wasn't really a threat to anyone. An older Spade could hope.

"Why'd you come here?" he asked as he played with the stone and let it roll over the backs of his fingers not unlike a seasoned poker player might do with a plastic chip.

Danger is such a relative thing. He'd learned that at a very young age, watching the family dog--almost a nursemaid to him, infinitely patient and kind and more than half the reason Aleksei had learned to walk as quickly as he had--turn vicious on an intruder to their little home. It's just a matter of making certain to either be endeared to the dangerous ones, or else dangerous enough oneself.

Both angles were being worked on, generally. Not at the moment, perhaps--not actively. But enough.

"What, to the lake? I don't think Mister Chives would take kindly to be throwing stones in his halls."

"It's not as if Chives has anything better to do," Michael sighed. He'd long ago given up trying to get the butler out of the castle. Having the space of what felt like half the Decklands between them did wonders for both their blood pressures.

"I meant here in general. Why did you come to the Deck? Did something happen at home"

It felt easier to sidle into the real question this way. True, Michael wasn't someone who made him feel overly suspicious--or someone who seemed likely to have bad intentions in asking for more information.

It still felt easier to slide into talking (even just thinking) about the home of being here and the home he'd known before it.

He ducked to lift another stone from the pebbles of the shore. "When my grandmother passed away, they took the house. It-- was time to start somewhere."

"I see," he said with a tight-lipped smile. And in the meantime, Michael had a perfectly good estate 45 minutes drive away and it was just rotting away along with all the old furniture and ghosts in the hallway. Maybe he didn't see - couldn't understand that kind of predicament at all.

Ultimately, that didn't explain why Aleksei chose the Deck, but that was enough for now.

"I hope this place is what you've been looking for."

Getting comfortable, for the most part, was a good thing. Maybe it was less so in moments of letting his comfort rule his tongue.

"It is." His attention goes back to the rocks, weighing two between each of his hands. "A-- friend of my father said I'd be happy here. It's better than-- trying to make it out there."

"It's not really different, here and 'out there'." He had had a bit of a bitter taste of both - bitter and bittersweet - and the grass had been equally dull on either side.

"People here have a lot of strange ideas about what's 'out there', but I think we know better than to think that it's easier on one side of the door." Because the truth was, if it was better on one side, there'd be no one living on the other side.

"But I'm glad you like it here, nonetheless."

It was impossible to say 'there's family here'--for more than a few reasons. It was still the foundation of coming here at all.

"If it's-- not so different, why do people find it-- surprising that I'd want to come here?"

He grinned and then shrugged. He wasn't about to bring up the on-again, off-again tensions between those that thought they were somehow the only ones entitled to be here and others who weren't all that different, all things considered. Despite everything, the Deck wasn't a terrible place to be.

"Maybe they think you're a little young to be out on your own."

His snort was far from restrained. A little masked by the throw of his current stone along the top of the water for a good six skips, but not intentionally held back in the slightest.

"How am I on my own?"

"Didn't you come here by yourself?" From what he'd said, it seemed like the only family had been grandparents, and at least one of them had already passed away.

"Mind you, the young men that drift in here alone tend to be trouble," he teased with a wink.

"I might be." His heart wasn't quite in the attempted return of the volley. His eyes stayed, for the moment, out over the water. "It just-- feels less alone here. Maybe just smaller, but... even if I went back to Karcag, it--"

His brow furrowed slightly, attention downcast as he turned back toward the older man.

"It just feels, if I died here? Someone would find me. And bury me. You know that feeling?"

There was a joke there about the meticulous butler and how he'd take care of everything if that were to happen on castle grounds, but he wasn't sure how well dark humour in a second language would go over with an impressionable young man so he let it slip.

"Yes." He knew the feeling. That feeling was precisely why, for many years, he'd entertain fantasies of dying Outside and nobody would give a damn or even know that he'd lived and and cried and laughed and loved and died, all in what felt like a span of a breath.

"We'll take care of you. Dead or alive."

It was a good joke to pass by, for now. In a few more months, maybe, things will start to click in the humour department. For now, it was best not.

But it also was, apparently, the best thing to hear at a moment like this. The smile was brief, but briefly genuine.

"It's-- important. To know that." He moved to steal another ball of dough from the box rather than dropping to the stones again. "To know where-- people are. Yes?"

Michael offered a reassuring smile and nodded. It wasn't necessarily something that everyone found important - but many could take comfort in all these seemingly inconsequential things.

"Speaking of knowing where people are, I think I should head back to work," he said with a sigh as he stood. Unfortunately he wasn't lazy enough to completely give up on doing any work for the rest of the day.

"I'll see you next week?"

Smiles were collected and bottled. Fried dough was consumed but the memory of being brought the box stored. Really, Michael tended to be a trove of things which fortified.

His nod was sharp, his own smile chipper enough.

"And every week after that."

[ota] aggressive normalcy

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