milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Good evening, April."

That would be the Boyfriend's Brother, smiling his melancholy smile. Unlike Boromir's recent evolution in fashion, he remains dressed in the style of his home -- though more simple and casual now that he is not on Security duty.

Well, considering she doesn't cuddle with the Boyfriend's Brother or check out the Boyfriend's Brother's ass, abs, or other bits of anatomy, it's not a big deal that he's dressed normally for him.

April looks up and smiles brightly at him. "Hey there, how are you?"

She's repressing the fangirl within that still wants to pop out. Hell, it still pops out regarding Boromir sometimes, and she's sleeping with the guy.

Faramir has no interest in his brother's sex life, kthx.

"I am as well as ever," he replies in his quiet voice, though he looks... tired. Or something more than tired, but difficult to pin down exactly.

"May I join you?"

April sees that. She's not sure, but he looks rather like she's felt sometimes. And of course the writer in her wants to describe what she sees - it decides on melancholy. Noble, poetic, tired, and... maybe sad, maybe something else.

"Absolutely. In fact, I insist you do. And with cocoa. Do you drink cocoa?" She flags down a waitrat - she needs a refill anyway.

His smile is weary but sincere. He meets her eyes, but his gaze is guarded somehow.

"I do. Thank you." He takes a seat near her. "It is something I have grown to enjoy here. We did not have any such drink in Gondor."

"Well, a little chocolate can do wonders for a person's mood," she says, sending the waitrat off with an order for two BIG mugs of hot chocolate. Then she rests her chin in her hand and looks at him thoughtfully.

"Something on your mind?"

"My brother will tell you that I constantly have something on my mind, and that it can be quite irritating." He cracks a shallow grin. "No, there is nothing in particular. I have had trouble sleeping of late. That is all."

Mostly.

Sorta.

Did the narrative mention he's a REALLY bad liar?

"You know, you're almost as bad a liar as Mark is," she says with a dry smile.

Oh, look, here's the hot chocolate. Thank you, Jerry. (that waitrat's name is Jerry. Really.) April blows on hers a bit and takes a sip. "I mean, you can tell me to fuck off if it's none of my business, but you look like you could use someone to talk to."

She should know.

Faramir wraps his hands around the mug and stares at the swirling steam, his eyes half-lidded.

"I do not want you to..." He licks his lips. "It should be your business. My brother trusts you, and I trust his judgement of people -- if of nothing else." He sighs. "The simple explanation is that I have always suffered occasional bouts of melancholy. I could name for you troubles that weigh upon my mind, but in such a mood, I have come to doubt that most can be as pressing as they would seem to me in my own darkness. Every man has his shadows. Mine sometimes like to hold on a little tighter."

"I know the feeling," April says softly, staring down into her mug with a slight frown. For someone who was made to smile, she has spent far too much of her life looking upset or shadowed or bitter. And she knows just how tightly shadows can grip a person. "Can I just..." she looks up and a not-quite smile barely flickers across her face. "Y'know, in my experience, it doesn't really matter if your problems don't seem like they can be as important as they feel. They can still have an awful lot of effect on you."

This is the girl who still fights against saying and thinking that she's upset over something stupid or that she should be over by now whenever her shadows latch on too tightly. She knows what she's talking about.

And Faramir is a man who learned within his first month in the bar that he could avoid having to deal with his problems by telling people to read the book.

He takes a sip of the hot drink, not particularly caring if it burns his tongue a little.

"What troubles my nightmares pretend that I have are two years old or more. Why should they stalk me now?"

Because he has refused to deal with them at all until now, that's why. But Faramir, for all his wisdom, hasn't gotten quite that far.

April shrugs a little. "I've got shadows hanging on that're... two, three, four years old. Some more. Doesn't matter how long ago it was, it can still give you hell."

She looks up and tilts her head a little. "Did Boromir tell you much about me? How I got here and stuff, I mean."

"No. I fear we became distracted trying to shove snow into each other's clothing before we could get that far."

Well that gets a surprised laugh, and a smile back on April's face, for a moment. "Oh, I can just see it now. The distinguished lords of Gondor acting like teenagers."

She obviously finds the thought endearing.

She sobers up pretty quickly though. "I don't know whether to start and the end and move backwards or start at the beginning and move forwards. It's... kind of a long story."

"I like long stories," Faramir tells her, smiling from behind a curtain of steam from his cup. "They're good for quieting demons."

"On a condition." April mirrors his smile - a calmer version of her usual fare. "You have to reciprocate when I'm done."

"Boromir hasn't told you?" Well, that's only fair, though. So he nods. "Very well."

"He's told me his side, or most of it. Everybody's got a different story, though."

She sighs and leans back in her chair. "Well, to start with, I was born when my youngest sibling was seventeen years old. My brothers were both off at college, and Miranda was going to be in college in a year, and all the sudden there I am, totally screwing up my parents' plans for what they were going to do after Miranda left. They didn't want me, and made it abundantly clear to me from the start." It's said very matter-of-factly, with much less bitterness than there would have been had he spoken to her even two months ago.

It's still there, though. That's never going to go away entirely. "One of my first memories, I think I was four or five, and my mom told me that I was a mistake and never should have been born."

"Then you, too, are a youngest child." He tilts his head and brushes his long hair back out of his face. "That, I understand too well."

"Yeah. Didn't have the luck to get along with my older siblings, though." she runs a hand through her hair. "My dad was a doctor and my mom... I don't know, I think she'd been to law school or something at some point but she mainly just did things at the country club. My siblings were all in 'useful' careers, and fawned over and shown off, and then there was me." she actually smiles wryly at this. "I wanted to be an artist. Ever since I was little. Sometimes it was acting, sometimes it was painting or writing or singing or anything artistic, but I didn't want to do what the rest of my family had done."

She pauses to sip her hot chocolate. "They tried so hard to turn me into my sister, but I wouldn't let them. I was miserable for my entire childhood because of it, but at least I was me." Another short pause - the next bit is still almost as painful as the day it happened - moreso, because she really did prove it correct, partially. "The last time my dad tried to change my mind about being an artist, and I told him to fuck off, he told me I was going to end up a starving, homeless, drug-addicted whore. Verbatim."

"I wonder if there ever was a youngest child who could live up to their siblings' shadows and parents' expectations and not go mad." He sips his drink. "My brother was all I had. He still is." Then, after another pause, "I would like to see your artwork sometime, if I may. I am myself something of a rusty poet."

"You may." April smiles a bit. "Though most of my recent work is on a subject you are... quite familiar with." Don't worry, Daisy, she doesn't do nudes. "I'd like to see your poetry, though. I write. More professionally than I draw, if getting published posthumously can be considered professional."

But enough tangents. "Well, anyway, that long bit of the story short, I didn't finish school and left home the day I turned 18. Legally of age and all. I moved to New York and got a job, made some friends, and eventually... I met Roger."

Oh, Roger.

"Roger?" he asks.

"Roger. The only person besides your brother I've ever been in love with." She still is, always will be, really. If only a little. "He was a rock star. A musician. Beautiful and untameable and god did I love him."

A pause. There are a lot of those in this story. "And he... started using drugs. And so I did, too. And it was so amazing, it made me feel good and made me not care about all the shit they'd put me through." and there's something in her voice that hints at a need hiding deep inside of her, something she'll never quite shake, never quite be rid of. Addiction is a frightening thing. She lets out a shaky breath. "But then it would end and I'd come down and... everything would be exactly the same. Went on for a while... and then we got sick."

He peers at her with steady sympathy.

"How do you mean, sick?"