[ota] aggressive normalcy

[thepupthatmatters]

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.

Comments

[wilderhearts]

Jake wasn't so sure his full dexterity would come back in that particular arm. The reason he usually wore long sleeves, even in the summer, wasn't because he was afraid of sunburn, but rather to hide the long ropy scars that ran from the back of his upper arm, over the inside of his elbow and down across the inside of his lower arm. As it was, he'd been lucky to even keep it, to say nothing of regaining most of its use.

It wasn't something he talked about freely, however; practically no one around the Deck knew, save for King Theo, as he'd examined Jake's arm when the pain became too much for the boy to deal with, as happened every so often. So the horseboy just shrugged and picked up a random rock, gingerly rolling it in his fingers.

"...never been really good at it, anyway," he confessed, flicking his wrist and watching the small stone plunk right down into the depths.

Apologies for the wrong account; forgot the password for the other (stored on the other computer) o9

[whathappenedinbudapest]

It wasn't something Aleksei had picked up on, certainly. It wasn't something that would have been guessed--or, really, thought overly much of beyond the initial telling. Scars had been a fact of life back in Hungary as well, after all. Things which weren't spoken about or commented on had been a large piece of his grandparents' generation, instilled on him from a young age.

It wasn't, in his experience, as if everyone didn't have something that wasn't freely shared.

But all that was far away, now. Now was a time for shrugging and sending a stone skimming briefly along the top of the water. "Point, I think, is less to do it well as to-- spend time in practice. And with-- friends."

lol, no worries!

[wilderhearts]

Jake nodded. Friends were good. Practice was okay, provided one wanted to. But friends were definitely good. "Friends are good," he reiterated his thought with a smile. "'specially on a good day." Like this one.

So he picked up a few more rocks, prodding through them in his palm until he found one which looked promising. It only half-skipped though, when he tried again. But it made him grin, although lopsidedly. "Does that count?"

[thepupthatmatters]

Friends certainly were good. And good days, particularly in the midst of not good days or even simply all right days, were just as good.

He paused just a moment to watch the throw, and absolutely let out a pleased little whoop for his friend.

"Very much. See? Already it comes back."