Post by Cannonball on Nov 2, 2006 16:13:07 GMT -5
The restaurant Paige had selected was Italian - Sam's favourite - although he was, of course, partial to a good, rare steak as well. "Just send the heifer by the table," he always used to say. "I'll grab a hunk as she passes." He sat with his glass of Coke (he was driving) and waited for Paige to return from 'powdering her nose'.
He'd never understood that expression. None of the women he knew actually powdered their noses when they went to the bathroom. It was the weirdest euphemism going.
He toyed with the ice in the glass, played with the cruet and fiddled with the napkins and generall fidgeted. It was the first time he'd been out to eat like this since Brenda had left. Not that she'd ever gone out for meals with him, she had always been too busy worrying about how many calories she was taking on board.
Popping back into her chair, her blonde ponytail bounced a bit as she greeted her brother with one of her sunshine-bright smiles.
“Gosh Sammy. I’m –starving-. I hope are too! Bet I can still best ya at Jenny’s Steakhouse.” The ‘fancy’ restaurant in their town had an all you can eat prime rib night now and then, and it had been a Guthrie family tradition to fully exploit said event whenever it came around. Paige had eaten her brother under the table more than once- a fact she never let him live down.
“So how ya doin’ anyway? Didn’t really get a chance to talk yesterday, you gotta forgive me, but then, that’s what you get for surprising me!” She grinned.
He matched her grin with one of his own and their relationship to one another was more than apparent to anybody looking. He was as handsome as she was beautiful, although in a slightly more…well, to put it kindly, untidy way. “I’m not bad, Chubs,” he said. “Been off work for a coupla weeks – doc reckoned I needed a rest. Workin’ too hard.”
Not a complete lie. He’d been so stressed and miserable over the separation that he’d stopped sleeping. The doctor had signed him off work for three weeks.
“Momma sends her love,” he said. “I called her yesterday when I got to the Institute so she knew I’d got here OK – ya know what she can be like.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t call and ruin the surprise,” she nodded, sipping her soda. “And what’s this about workin’ yourself to death? Sammy Z you know better than that.” Her eyes betrayed real concern, though the expression on her face was more cute than anything.
“So you’re not goin’ back… right.” Paige eyed him. “You’re gonna stay at the mansion and be an X-Man with me. Right?” It was fully in her nature to be demanding of him- being the oldest daughter and the apple of Daddy’s eye had made being spoiled par for the course. After their father died, that privilege had passed fully and unrelentingly to her big brother.
He looked surprised at the suggestion. “I can’t do that, Paige. I mean, I’ve got a job, responsibilities…ya know, a mortgage, a..a..a wife, those sorts of things.” It was his opening. His opportunity to tell her about Brenda.
And he couldn’t do it.
“So tell me about this Warren guy,” he said, changing the subject.
Paige looked momentarily disappointed, but wasn’t really surprised. Though she had to wonder what in the hell he was doing there… maybe just checking up, likely for Momma.
“Warren?” Her smile lingered, her cheeks flushed a bit. She ran her hand along the back of her neck, clearing her throat. “He’s a friend. I met him shortly after I showed up.” Paige giggled. “Great guy.”
He almost physically winced. She’d said that about all her boyfriends in the past. “Great guy.” Sam had been forced to Have A Quiet Word with most of them. “Yeah, I had a bit of a talk with him. He seems pretty decent.”
Sam pushed an ice cube down and watched it float back up again.
“I guess y’all are…ya know. Being careful and everythin’?”
Paige’s face was a blank face of innocence as she laughed. What was he talking about? Careful in the Danger Room?
“Well we haven’t really had a chance to- OH my gosh!” she almost squealed, looking around as people stared at them, then covering her mouth and laughing.
“Oh jeez. No Sammy, Warren and I aren’t together. He’s my…. Well… I’m seeing someone else. Warren’s good friend, actually.” She laughed softly, blushing even pinker. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of Warren that way, but it just wasn’t the way it worked. She loved Bobby. Warren was just… a friend.
“No… Warren’s a friend and nothing else Sam.” She gestured over her chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Why’d you think we were together? Cause we ran off together like that?” Paige shook her head. “He was just helping me with pictures.”
If Paige was blushing, Sam’s shade of red made her look merely baby pink. He mumbled something, then coughed. “Ya both looked pretty eager to be away with each other an’, I mean, y’all were wearin’ somethin’ that wouldn’t cover a twig’s decency an’…oh, God, I done gone dropped myself right in it, ain’t I?”
As if to save Sam from Death By Embarrassment, the waitress came over to take their order. Sam barely managed to stammer out his request for his choice from the menu (something heavy on the cream and the kind of thing that meant you’d hear your own arteries clanging shut).
After she’d gone away, he stared at the tablecloth. “Momma said to me once, Sammy Zachery Guthrie, ya realize, don’tcha, that now ya the man of the house, y’all gonna have to talk to the chilluns about…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Sex.”
Something seemed to register.
“Pictures?” he said, his brow feathering in confusion. “What pictures?”
Paige watched her brother with a mixture of confusion and amusement. Did Momma send her big brother here to lecture her about the dangers of being a pretty girl out in the world on her own? Was that what they were worried about- her laying down with every boy in the mansion before they could throw a box of prophylactics at her?
Oh brother.
“Pictures for my boyfriend,” she said plainly, feeling a little cornered. “Nothin’ you’d… well okay you might disapprove, but nothin’ a nineteen year old girl shouldn’t do for a boy she can’t get near, that’s for sure.” She smirked.
“Why can’t ya get near him? He in the Navy or some such? Hey, he ain’t one of those weird guys I done heard tell about, them ones who sit in internet chat rooms and lure girls to places they got no right to be?” His anxiety was endearing, but reminded her of how cloistered he really was. For all Sam had got out of Cumberland and traveled, he was still a country bumpkin at heart. “I read about them in the papers,” he added, as though affirming what he knew.
He took a slug of his Coke.
“I just worry ‘bout ya, Paige, is all. An’ I reckon as ya gonna be suspectin’ I just drove all the way up here to talk with ya, but…that ain’t it. Not at all. I just…when I saw you with Feath…uh…Warren, I…”
He continued to stare at the table, the blush still on his cheeks.
“It’s okay Sammy.” She patted his hand with hers, smiling sweetly. “I know ya’only do it cause you love me. Same as Momma.”
Paige turned her ice cubes with her straw, biting her bottom lip.
“You heard about what happened in Baltimore right? Well… I’m kinda… seein’ an X-Man. One of the big boys, he’s been in magazines.” Pride laced through her words and she couldn’t help a shy little smile. “But he ended up in a little trouble after Baltimore. He’s… well Sam, he’s been arrested for murdering an officer.”
Seeing the look on his face, she quickly amended her explanation. “But he didn’t do it, Sam, some girl from the Brotherhood controlled his mind. And they’re gonna figure that out, and he’ll come home.”
Paige nodded. That tone in her voice was classic Paige, the one that absolutely refused to surrender in the face of adversity. Which meant if she was using it, there was definitely something she was fighting against. Maybe it was just her brother… maybe it was something else.
“I see,” said Sam, in his own classic tone of voice that meant “I don’t see at all, and I’m really not happy about this, but I’m not the brightest button in the box, so I need time to formulate my reaction.”
He looked up at her, at the earnest expression on her face. And not for the first time in the nineteen years since his sister had come into the world (screaming, apparently, according to Momma Guthrie, and she ain’t done shut up since), he could feel all the resolve, all the determination to do what was best for her melt away into a need to see her smile, to make her happy.
“Paige, honey…dammit, girl, why d’ya have to go do this to me again? Don’t ya remember what happened last time ya got involved with a delinquent? How d’ya want me to react, kid, ‘cos I really ain’t got a clue. I mean, with him it was bustin’ up cars an’ people’s faces. But murder? Paige, what the hell are ya thinkin’?”
He massaged his temples and decided he didn’t like where his train of thought was taking him. So he got off and boarded another one.
He continued before she could speak and interrupt.
“I’m hearin’ what ya say, ‘bout him bein’ innocent an’ all, but have ya got all the facts? Holy Hell, Paige, are ya TRYIN’ to put me into an early grave? I can hear my blood pressure risin’ as we speak!”
Why she hadn’t expected this train wreck of a response, she wasn’t sure. But she felt herself shrink at the parts he knew he had a point on, burn with indignity when she knew he was going overboard, and altogether just feel… deflated.
“But Sammy… I love this one,” she said weakly, maybe too quiet for him to hear.
Then he went on. And her jaw set, and those gorgeous blue Guthrie eyes looked back at him defiantly.
“Now use that empty melon on top of your shoulders, Sammy Z, d’you really think the X-Men would have given him the time of day after Baltimore if they thought he really was guilty? Warren’s paying a lot of money for a lawyer and the rest of us…”
Well, come to think of it… no one’d done a thing. Kitty and Warren and Paige were only people that had paid any attention at all to him being gone. Sure they had a lot of other things going on. But did they believe he was guilty too?
Paige shook her head, refusing to let the logic, however weighty, hold her down. “Bobby Drake is innocent Sam. He is. He’s not like Jack, or Trace, or Noah. He wouldn’t hurt a soul, and he’s. Well he’s too good for me, Sammy. I just wish you’d…”
Realizing they were being openly gawked at, she looked back at the onlookers angrily. “Mind y’own business!” she snapped, and sighed in a great huff.
Looking at Sammy with a baleful expression, she waited for what she felt she deserved. An apology.
She didn’t get one.
What she got was somehow better, if decidedly embarrassing. Her big brother leaned across the table and hugged her. He hugged her so hard that she thought for a moment she might snap. Then he let go of her.
“Ya hated Brenda when I met her,” he said. “Ya told me so. But ya set that aside for our weddin’, an’ I never thanked ya. I’ll reserve judgment for now, Chubs. But I warn ya now. He so much as puts one eyelash outta line, I’m gonna bounce his butt to DC an’ back again.”
Another opening to tell her about the real reasons for being here.
Which he didn’t grasp.
Not having expected quite that reaction, she sat heavily back in her seat and fixed him with a somewhat perplexed expression.
He was listening to what she said. He was giving her, and Bobby the benefit of the doubt. And he equated the situation to when he married Brenda. Suddenly she saw herself marrying Bobby, and while it almost made her laugh(she didn’t feel she was the marrying type), it touched her. Then his absence was felt all the more strongly.
It was a little too much. With a soft laugh, Paige started to cry.
She picked up her napkin, silverware clattering across the table, and pressed it to her eyes. Giggling through her tears (Paige hated crying in front of –anyone-, even her brother), she shook her head.
“Well you had better be stickin’ around for a few days, not just sweepin’ in ta make me cry then hightailing it back out.”
Looking at him with a shaky little smile, she laughed once more.
“Y’all ain’t gonna get rid of me that easy, Chubs,” he said, fondly. “I’m like a bad penny, me. Keep on turnin’ up.”
Besides, what do I have to go home to right now? An empty apartment and an empty life.
He smiled back at her, and the waitress appropriately brought them their lunch, removing the need to tell her anything at all.
He'd never understood that expression. None of the women he knew actually powdered their noses when they went to the bathroom. It was the weirdest euphemism going.
He toyed with the ice in the glass, played with the cruet and fiddled with the napkins and generall fidgeted. It was the first time he'd been out to eat like this since Brenda had left. Not that she'd ever gone out for meals with him, she had always been too busy worrying about how many calories she was taking on board.
Popping back into her chair, her blonde ponytail bounced a bit as she greeted her brother with one of her sunshine-bright smiles.
“Gosh Sammy. I’m –starving-. I hope are too! Bet I can still best ya at Jenny’s Steakhouse.” The ‘fancy’ restaurant in their town had an all you can eat prime rib night now and then, and it had been a Guthrie family tradition to fully exploit said event whenever it came around. Paige had eaten her brother under the table more than once- a fact she never let him live down.
“So how ya doin’ anyway? Didn’t really get a chance to talk yesterday, you gotta forgive me, but then, that’s what you get for surprising me!” She grinned.
He matched her grin with one of his own and their relationship to one another was more than apparent to anybody looking. He was as handsome as she was beautiful, although in a slightly more…well, to put it kindly, untidy way. “I’m not bad, Chubs,” he said. “Been off work for a coupla weeks – doc reckoned I needed a rest. Workin’ too hard.”
Not a complete lie. He’d been so stressed and miserable over the separation that he’d stopped sleeping. The doctor had signed him off work for three weeks.
“Momma sends her love,” he said. “I called her yesterday when I got to the Institute so she knew I’d got here OK – ya know what she can be like.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t call and ruin the surprise,” she nodded, sipping her soda. “And what’s this about workin’ yourself to death? Sammy Z you know better than that.” Her eyes betrayed real concern, though the expression on her face was more cute than anything.
“So you’re not goin’ back… right.” Paige eyed him. “You’re gonna stay at the mansion and be an X-Man with me. Right?” It was fully in her nature to be demanding of him- being the oldest daughter and the apple of Daddy’s eye had made being spoiled par for the course. After their father died, that privilege had passed fully and unrelentingly to her big brother.
He looked surprised at the suggestion. “I can’t do that, Paige. I mean, I’ve got a job, responsibilities…ya know, a mortgage, a..a..a wife, those sorts of things.” It was his opening. His opportunity to tell her about Brenda.
And he couldn’t do it.
“So tell me about this Warren guy,” he said, changing the subject.
Paige looked momentarily disappointed, but wasn’t really surprised. Though she had to wonder what in the hell he was doing there… maybe just checking up, likely for Momma.
“Warren?” Her smile lingered, her cheeks flushed a bit. She ran her hand along the back of her neck, clearing her throat. “He’s a friend. I met him shortly after I showed up.” Paige giggled. “Great guy.”
He almost physically winced. She’d said that about all her boyfriends in the past. “Great guy.” Sam had been forced to Have A Quiet Word with most of them. “Yeah, I had a bit of a talk with him. He seems pretty decent.”
Sam pushed an ice cube down and watched it float back up again.
“I guess y’all are…ya know. Being careful and everythin’?”
Paige’s face was a blank face of innocence as she laughed. What was he talking about? Careful in the Danger Room?
“Well we haven’t really had a chance to- OH my gosh!” she almost squealed, looking around as people stared at them, then covering her mouth and laughing.
“Oh jeez. No Sammy, Warren and I aren’t together. He’s my…. Well… I’m seeing someone else. Warren’s good friend, actually.” She laughed softly, blushing even pinker. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of Warren that way, but it just wasn’t the way it worked. She loved Bobby. Warren was just… a friend.
“No… Warren’s a friend and nothing else Sam.” She gestured over her chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Why’d you think we were together? Cause we ran off together like that?” Paige shook her head. “He was just helping me with pictures.”
If Paige was blushing, Sam’s shade of red made her look merely baby pink. He mumbled something, then coughed. “Ya both looked pretty eager to be away with each other an’, I mean, y’all were wearin’ somethin’ that wouldn’t cover a twig’s decency an’…oh, God, I done gone dropped myself right in it, ain’t I?”
As if to save Sam from Death By Embarrassment, the waitress came over to take their order. Sam barely managed to stammer out his request for his choice from the menu (something heavy on the cream and the kind of thing that meant you’d hear your own arteries clanging shut).
After she’d gone away, he stared at the tablecloth. “Momma said to me once, Sammy Zachery Guthrie, ya realize, don’tcha, that now ya the man of the house, y’all gonna have to talk to the chilluns about…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Sex.”
Something seemed to register.
“Pictures?” he said, his brow feathering in confusion. “What pictures?”
Paige watched her brother with a mixture of confusion and amusement. Did Momma send her big brother here to lecture her about the dangers of being a pretty girl out in the world on her own? Was that what they were worried about- her laying down with every boy in the mansion before they could throw a box of prophylactics at her?
Oh brother.
“Pictures for my boyfriend,” she said plainly, feeling a little cornered. “Nothin’ you’d… well okay you might disapprove, but nothin’ a nineteen year old girl shouldn’t do for a boy she can’t get near, that’s for sure.” She smirked.
“Why can’t ya get near him? He in the Navy or some such? Hey, he ain’t one of those weird guys I done heard tell about, them ones who sit in internet chat rooms and lure girls to places they got no right to be?” His anxiety was endearing, but reminded her of how cloistered he really was. For all Sam had got out of Cumberland and traveled, he was still a country bumpkin at heart. “I read about them in the papers,” he added, as though affirming what he knew.
He took a slug of his Coke.
“I just worry ‘bout ya, Paige, is all. An’ I reckon as ya gonna be suspectin’ I just drove all the way up here to talk with ya, but…that ain’t it. Not at all. I just…when I saw you with Feath…uh…Warren, I…”
He continued to stare at the table, the blush still on his cheeks.
“It’s okay Sammy.” She patted his hand with hers, smiling sweetly. “I know ya’only do it cause you love me. Same as Momma.”
Paige turned her ice cubes with her straw, biting her bottom lip.
“You heard about what happened in Baltimore right? Well… I’m kinda… seein’ an X-Man. One of the big boys, he’s been in magazines.” Pride laced through her words and she couldn’t help a shy little smile. “But he ended up in a little trouble after Baltimore. He’s… well Sam, he’s been arrested for murdering an officer.”
Seeing the look on his face, she quickly amended her explanation. “But he didn’t do it, Sam, some girl from the Brotherhood controlled his mind. And they’re gonna figure that out, and he’ll come home.”
Paige nodded. That tone in her voice was classic Paige, the one that absolutely refused to surrender in the face of adversity. Which meant if she was using it, there was definitely something she was fighting against. Maybe it was just her brother… maybe it was something else.
“I see,” said Sam, in his own classic tone of voice that meant “I don’t see at all, and I’m really not happy about this, but I’m not the brightest button in the box, so I need time to formulate my reaction.”
He looked up at her, at the earnest expression on her face. And not for the first time in the nineteen years since his sister had come into the world (screaming, apparently, according to Momma Guthrie, and she ain’t done shut up since), he could feel all the resolve, all the determination to do what was best for her melt away into a need to see her smile, to make her happy.
“Paige, honey…dammit, girl, why d’ya have to go do this to me again? Don’t ya remember what happened last time ya got involved with a delinquent? How d’ya want me to react, kid, ‘cos I really ain’t got a clue. I mean, with him it was bustin’ up cars an’ people’s faces. But murder? Paige, what the hell are ya thinkin’?”
He massaged his temples and decided he didn’t like where his train of thought was taking him. So he got off and boarded another one.
He continued before she could speak and interrupt.
“I’m hearin’ what ya say, ‘bout him bein’ innocent an’ all, but have ya got all the facts? Holy Hell, Paige, are ya TRYIN’ to put me into an early grave? I can hear my blood pressure risin’ as we speak!”
Why she hadn’t expected this train wreck of a response, she wasn’t sure. But she felt herself shrink at the parts he knew he had a point on, burn with indignity when she knew he was going overboard, and altogether just feel… deflated.
“But Sammy… I love this one,” she said weakly, maybe too quiet for him to hear.
Then he went on. And her jaw set, and those gorgeous blue Guthrie eyes looked back at him defiantly.
“Now use that empty melon on top of your shoulders, Sammy Z, d’you really think the X-Men would have given him the time of day after Baltimore if they thought he really was guilty? Warren’s paying a lot of money for a lawyer and the rest of us…”
Well, come to think of it… no one’d done a thing. Kitty and Warren and Paige were only people that had paid any attention at all to him being gone. Sure they had a lot of other things going on. But did they believe he was guilty too?
Paige shook her head, refusing to let the logic, however weighty, hold her down. “Bobby Drake is innocent Sam. He is. He’s not like Jack, or Trace, or Noah. He wouldn’t hurt a soul, and he’s. Well he’s too good for me, Sammy. I just wish you’d…”
Realizing they were being openly gawked at, she looked back at the onlookers angrily. “Mind y’own business!” she snapped, and sighed in a great huff.
Looking at Sammy with a baleful expression, she waited for what she felt she deserved. An apology.
She didn’t get one.
What she got was somehow better, if decidedly embarrassing. Her big brother leaned across the table and hugged her. He hugged her so hard that she thought for a moment she might snap. Then he let go of her.
“Ya hated Brenda when I met her,” he said. “Ya told me so. But ya set that aside for our weddin’, an’ I never thanked ya. I’ll reserve judgment for now, Chubs. But I warn ya now. He so much as puts one eyelash outta line, I’m gonna bounce his butt to DC an’ back again.”
Another opening to tell her about the real reasons for being here.
Which he didn’t grasp.
Not having expected quite that reaction, she sat heavily back in her seat and fixed him with a somewhat perplexed expression.
He was listening to what she said. He was giving her, and Bobby the benefit of the doubt. And he equated the situation to when he married Brenda. Suddenly she saw herself marrying Bobby, and while it almost made her laugh(she didn’t feel she was the marrying type), it touched her. Then his absence was felt all the more strongly.
It was a little too much. With a soft laugh, Paige started to cry.
She picked up her napkin, silverware clattering across the table, and pressed it to her eyes. Giggling through her tears (Paige hated crying in front of –anyone-, even her brother), she shook her head.
“Well you had better be stickin’ around for a few days, not just sweepin’ in ta make me cry then hightailing it back out.”
Looking at him with a shaky little smile, she laughed once more.
“Y’all ain’t gonna get rid of me that easy, Chubs,” he said, fondly. “I’m like a bad penny, me. Keep on turnin’ up.”
Besides, what do I have to go home to right now? An empty apartment and an empty life.
He smiled back at her, and the waitress appropriately brought them their lunch, removing the need to tell her anything at all.
