forget-me-not (incomplete)

[sideways]

Title: Forget-Me-Not

Rating: PG

Series: The Feasting Years

Wordcount: 1,216

Summary: It's up to Andrew to keep the lights on.

Remarks: A speculative backstory bit for an old character in an updated setting.

The townhouse was a blotch of shadow spoiling the symmetry of the street, like a blown bulb breaking a linked chain of fairy lights. One neighbouring house had left their blinds open, and inside the brightly lit living room a pair of children chased each other around a table, cracking orange foam darts back and forth between the chairs in silent movie dramatics.

Andrew blew rain off his nose and watched the game escalate to borderline fratricide from where he stood across the road. The grey clouds that had hunted him back and forth from the train station covered any glimmer of stars overhead, and the intermittent drizzle had finally broken the shield of his curls, matting his hair down and trickling the occasional cold trail down his neck.

Just before it came to plastic pistol-whipping, pulled hair, and death at dawn, a woman stormed in on the battle, arms waving in energetic exasperation. Andrew laughed under his breath and swiped his hair messily off his forehead, hitching his bag higher on one shoulder as he crossed the street for his front gate.

The security light blinked on as he skipped up the brick steps and he shared a grin with it in appreciation. Though it was bright enough to freeze a possum in its tracks at twenty paces and so more than bright enough to see by, he didn't bother fumbling around in his satchel for wherever his keys had wedged themselves. Instead he braced one hand against the door to jump up and feel around under the rim of the awning, hanging there an extra second or two until his fingers found the spare.

He shucked his damp shoes onto the mat once inside, shaking his head in a dog-like shedding of some of the wet weight and nearly dislodging the pods tucked in his ears, sending the music tinny and wavering for a second. It fit well with the dark tunnel of the hallway stretching away ahead of him.

Can't untangle the past, the future is wired, suggested the singer in his ear; Andrew slapped the hall light on a downbeat as he kicked off across the tiles on socked feet, carolling, "Guess who has two thumbs and just got fired!"

The second before his toes stubbed against the stairs and sent him toppling halfway up to the first floor, he hooked a right into the living room, dangling off his arm as he examined the space. As more or less expected, there was a man's shape on the couch in the same place it had been when he left in the morning, head bent over the only light remaining in the room - a tablet on his lap, its white screen turning the lenses of his glasses opaque.

Andrew plucked the pods from his ears, the sudden quiet crowding into their place like cotton wool; they buzzed in his hands until he stuck them in his pockets.

"Actually, a slight exaggeration," he admitted. "Not the thumbs part, though, don't worry, I still have two of those."

He smacked an elbow into the living room light, immediately washing everything out in cheery yellow. The bowed head lifted slightly as Andrew breezed past, beelining for dinner.

Boop went the kitchen light, bouncing a second layer of brightness up from the white benchtops. Boop went the electric kettle, red light on the handle confirming it was plugged in and heating fast. The microwave was next to join the chorus, last night's pasta bake humming a slow circle inside it.

"I am, however, unemployed! That part's true." He rattled in a cupboard, found the salt and pepper. "Turns out I maybe misheard Audrey when she said they were looking to replace her cousin. Or I just wasn't listening, that's always a possibility. Anyway, he's back, and he needs his job back, and also I sort of made out with Audrey and apparently this is likely to end in shouting and wailing and the serious misuse of a coffee grinder if he finds out." He paused in the middle of scraping reheated pasta into a bowl, pursing his lips. "Which could put limited currency on the whole 'I still have two thumbs' statement."

Once two bowls were full and in hand, Andrew scooted over to the couch and opted for an airborne entry, twisting to land strategically on his back with his knees hooked over the back of the couch, and stretched out to slide both bowls onto the coffee table. It had taken long childhood practice to perfect that move without spilling anything. His audience and couch partner rewarded his success with silent incuriosity.

"It's fine," Andrew assured his father. "I like to think of this whole thing as an opportunity. Just think of all the coffee shops I wouldn't have the chance to get fired from if I married Audrey and joined her caffeine mafia." A pause for breath, and a squinting assessment. "Your neck seriously has to be sore."

He eased the tablet out of his father's hands, the grip unresisting though a faint crease came and went between the thin eyebrows as the weight slipped away. Andrew's own eyebrows jumped to see a spidery stretch of lines across the screen that hadn't been there in the morning.

"Oh! What! This looks awesome," he said in delight, tilting his head in one direction and the tablet in the other. "You do know there's a mezzanine in this, though? Was that on purpose? Are mezzanines allowed now? It's because I nearly had the rant memorised isn't it. I promise I don't bring it out at parties anymore."

A tug at his hair drew his gaze away from the sketched blueprints, smile stuttering. Quiescent brown eyes had drifted to his bright locks, fluffed out worse than usual after air-drying in the kitchen heat.

"I like this," the man murmured absently, pulling one curl between his fingers like a softly unstrung spring. Then he blinked, slowly.

It was always such a minute change: the firming of slack muscles, the flicker of eyelids over gaze starting to move with purpose, a hitch in the breathing. Like a house slowly filling with noise. Like one last light flicking on.

Andrew grinned, wide and crooked. "Hey, dad."

David blinked again, then bent his lips in a faint echo of the sentiment.

"I still like this," he corrected himself, new surety of history in the declaration, and ruffled fingers deeper through Andrew's hair in a fleeting, hesitant caress. The dampness seemed to puzzle him, and he rubbed his fingers together before glancing vaguely at the front window, speckled with rain. "Cornflower blue. Like…"

"Nanny's old milk jug," Andrew finished, and steepled his fingers solemnly. "I should warn you though, I think I have to change it up for spring. I'm pretty sure there were flocks of pigeons giving me come hither looks today. And, worse, art students."

David's brow crinkled in bemusement as he looked down again. "Andrew, you are an art student."

"Hey, respect my past tense status." He untangled his fingers to better brandish them. "I am an art school dropout, thank you very much, there's an entirely different subgenre of movies dedicated to my experience. We get better soundtracks for one thing. Less French."