MCA #0: Tuesday Evening

[needsaparrot]

Xander's cooking. Real cooking, not even pasta. Cooking with meat and veggies and something that passes for gravy. It's not really taking his mind off what he learned today, but it's letting him concentrate on something with set steps, instructions he has to follow. It's almost like work in that respect but he's less familiar with the process, and that helps today. Lets him only dwell on it in slow minutes while he's waiting for the potatoes to boil, how easy it is to take it for granted, even now. What he got back, the chance to spend time with with people he cares about, people he thought he'd lost. People - or at least one person - that he really needs to talk to, now.
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[OOC: For Bridge. SP'd for great work-and-cleaning-parents'-house-ness]

Comments

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

And that person is knocking on Xander's door right this moment, right on time for a dinner date, bouncing just a little because both his workshops had been pretty fun, even if he hadn't had time to stop by construction today. But that was okay because he was here *now*.

[needsaparrot]

It had possibly been unfair not to call him, Xander thinks as he opens the door and catches the bounce. But Anakin had been right; some things are better - if you can use that word - in person.

"Hey," he says with a very small smile, tucking the dish-towel he'd been using in lieu of a potholder into the pocket of his jeans.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"He-" Bridge starts to reply, then stops, blinks. "What's wrong?"

[needsaparrot]

"You should probably come in." Which counts as an invitation, but it's not like he can't see Bridge breathing.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that doesn't sound good. Bridge enters the apartment, shutting the door behind him, and then looks at Xander with a worried expression. "Something happened. Something bad. Right?"

[needsaparrot]

Xander nods. "To Hamlet. A couple of days ago, after he went home."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Is he hurt?" Bridge asks. There's another possibility, a much more likely one given Xander's mood, and he knows this. But for some reason he doesn't want to voice it.

[needsaparrot]

"He's dead." The bluntness feels hard and heavy in Xander's mouth, but nothing else would be right, either.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

And yeah, that would be it. Bridge goes absolutely still for a few moments, and then finds his voice. "How?" he manages.

[needsaparrot]

"He was... fencing, I guess?" Which makes sense; that'd been his thing when he was here, too, Xander remembers. "His opponent's blade was poisoned."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

And Bridge remembers the things Hamlet has mentioned about life back home- which hasn't been much- and that first Parents Weekend, when the ghost of Hamlet's father had shown up, very insistent on having his murder avenged. "His uncle, I think. Must have been." And as he's managed to wander in to the living room and made his way over to the couch, he sits down.

[needsaparrot]

"Okay, remind me never to complain about my family again." Xander walks over to sit down next to him, having turned the stove down to warm before he answered the door. "...As much."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"So noted." And then there is clinging.

[needsaparrot]

Xander slides his arm around Bridge's shoulders, leaning his head back. "It sucks." It hasn't stopped sucking yet, no matter how many friends he's had to say it about.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I hate it," Bridge says, and that pretty much sums up his feelings on the matter.

[needsaparrot]

"Not a big fan myself." Xander runs a thumb along the back of Bridge's neck. "Of dying, not Hamlet. Hamlet was pretty cool."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"He was one of the first friends I made here," Bridge says quietly.

[needsaparrot]

If Xander's hazy radio memories are right, Hamlet had probably been along on more of Bridge's trips up to the sixth floor than Xander had. Including that first one that...yeah.

Which makes him realize. "He was...um. The first guy I ever kissed, actually."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Spin the bottle, right?" Bridge asks. Because he would have remembered if it had been one of the attempts to free them from that room on the sixth floor unlike certain players la la la.

[needsaparrot]

"Yeah." Xander nods. Then gives a short laugh. "I hated it."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I kissed him too, remember?" Bridge says. "In that room up on the sixth floor."

[needsaparrot]

"You did?" Xander rubs the bridge of his nose for a second, thinking. "You did, yeah. That wasn't the one that stuck in my memory, for some strange reason."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Well, there's a reason we instituted the no-kissing-Marty rule," Bridge says, attempting a joke.

[needsaparrot]

"At least I have the memories of our brief moment together..." Xander snorts, then says more seriously, "I didn't hate the other thing because Hamlet was a bad kisser or anything. More like I was."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Hamlet was a guy, which if I remember correctly, you did not *want* to be kissing guys, back then. So," he shrugs. "It's understandable."

[needsaparrot]

"He didn't laugh at me, anyway," Xander answers with a small grin. "At least not out loud."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Very understanding of him," Bridge says. "Or maybe it was just the way he seemed to take pretty much everything very seriously."

[needsaparrot]

"He had a pink klepto bunny that held people's stuff hostage for pie, and he helped blow up a volcano at Prom," Xander points out. "Though maybe that was just a sign that he took having fun very seriously too."