worn out places | grayson & damien
"Got everything, sweetie?" His mother smoothed the fabric that barely clung to Damien’s frame. The motion could only be described as fluttering, his mother’s hands unsure and reluctant.
Damien smiled, as reassuringly as possible despite it feeling awkward and wrong, and it both eased Caprice but made her fingers dig for purchase. “Of course.” Him and his father share a brief look and he’s untangling his wife’s hands from their son, tucked closer to her side. He stood upright to press a kiss to her cheek. Jon murmured something to Caprice and, taking that moment of distraction, Damien absconded.
He glowered at a lot of fourth years eyeballing a compartment he knew to be empty of all but a trunk and shouldered his way past the few stubborn ones of the lot. He dropped everything but the basket in his arms, which was tossing about furiously, and carefully extracted the cat from its bundle. Dahlia spat and hissed at him, throwing herself onto the over-head luggage rack and he groaned. It was one of those days, of bloody course it was.
Taking his seat before she could try to eviscerate his face, he kicked his trunk until it was shoved against the door, out of his way and partially blocking the door from any would-be intruder. Hopefully it’d knock the shins from beneath someone.
Grayson’s little chat with Dom hadn’t done much to soothe his restlessness, but it did well enough for his anxiety, which was a plus in itself. He at least didn’t feel like he was going to crawl out of his skin anymore, and his previous need to visit every compartment in the train had finally abated.
He did, however, still make a few detours to check in on his siblings to make certain they were settled comfortably, and he had yet to come across Soup. He knew he would see him soon enough, and really, the guy was probably tired of him after spending the last few weeks of the summer with him. With no other reason to keep him from his own compartment, he returned with a quiet eagerness made known only by the grin he was unable to keep from his face.
Sliding the door open, he narrowly missed falling over the trunk against the door and instead ended up splayed across it, his eyes wide at this sudden turn of events. “I’m so glad I didn’t come running in, what if I was being chased by someone, or there was an emergency and I was told to hurry back to my seat, or I needed to fetch something for someone and had to get it to them in a hurry, or the lights cut off as I was coming in, or what if I was holding Rupert because I was going to hide him from Addieriana and I couldn’t catch myself or I’d risk squishing him and so I ended up falling on my face?”
By the time he’d finished speaking, he’d slid the door closed and pulled his limbs back to his person, perched on the trunk-turned-seat and was lightly glaring at Damien. “That’s my seat, by the way, and here I was excited to come see you.”