Interacting with: Serving Staff, Samantha (@Liriia)
A heavy base beat thumped through the rented car, its harsh rock'n'roll feel utterly at odds to the sleek and smooth nature of the vehicle. A song like this should really be listened to in a spluttering old banger with coffee stained seats and a dozen friends crammed in and all singing badly, not alone in a brand new Porsche, rented and driven for the first time today. This was utterly lost on the driver though, who happily chanted the song's familiar words as he stared through the fluttering snowflakes, searching for a familiar landmark or a signpost.
Bloody strange being back here, Arthur reflected as he drummed his fingers on the wheel and hummed a particularly striking couple of instrumental bars. It had been more than ten years, maybe more like fifteen, since he had visited the family winter retreat. There wasn't much of a good reason for it, now he thought about it, he'd just stopped visiting. No storm out or cessation of all contact with his parent's or anything so dramatic.
Not with a bang but with a whimper...The final hammer blow of the song, coupled with the sighting of a far off signpost, jerked Arthur out of his reverie. With practised ease, he slowed the car right down and peered through the empty passenger seat's snowy window towards the sign.
Aha! Success! It really shouldn't have been that hard to find the family residence, not with GPS, a knowledge of the area and how well Lee had the area maintained but Arthur had not been borne with a skill for orientation. Rather the reverse, in fact.
The rest of the drive took only a few short moments but the wave of anxiety that had been strangely absent from his mind now returned and swept over Arthur. It was like walking up to his parent's office as a child with a report card in his hand, knowing that it would tell them he hadn't worked as hard on his work as he had on making his classmates laugh. Again.
Only now I get to explain why I didn't bring Melissa and Abbi or why I'm still a producer and not a businessman, altogether more difficult matters to explain.Shaking his head, Arthur swung the wheel around and pulled up in front of the main doors. Before he stepped out of the car to hand the keys to a nearby servant, he guilty stuffed the Wether's Originals wrappers and Best of Queen CD into the glovebox. Arthur was no more suited to this car than the song he'd hastily muted upon arrival and had tried to drown his mild discomfort with sleek leather and chrome with sweets and Freddie Mercury. He wasn't sure of his father's position on the latter and only to clear on his position on the former, though, so he'd prefer not to advertise it.
Dragging his suitcase behind him, Arthur climbed the steps and stepped inside. The anxiety was still scratching at the back of his mind but now it was being drowned out by nostalgia.
I ran down that hall when Sam was chasing me... And I chased Emile down it while wearing a santa hat. With a pang, he thought of Abbi.
I could've brought her, it might've been good to give her a look at the whole clan at once... But with an uncharacteristic straightening of his spine, Arthur walked on and climbed the stairs.
He'd struggled with the idea of bringing her a lot in the days before leaving. On the one hand, the letter had made it clear this was an opportunity to come together, to be a family again or, perhaps, for the first time. Arthur wanted to believe that with almost his entire being. But on the other hand, he remembered how uncomfortable his mother was with her first granddaughter and how few of his siblings had ever showed much interest in his family, not to mention how little there was for a young girl to do in this place.
No, better that I do this alone. A Carrington she may be, but it's only because even Melissa can't fight genetics. His room was familiar, though not in such a comforting way. He'd slept here before and even stayed awake for hours with Sam but so too had he been sent here without dinner by his mother after delivering one too many raunchy jokes at a New Year's Eve meal. It had been the first and last time he'd been punished like that but the look of utter disgust on her face at his antics had never truly faded from his mind.
Shaking his head, he dropped his suitcase on the bed and glanced at the spotless but clearly untouched bookcase. There were a host of golden age Fantasy books sitting alongside some classic 80s Sci-Fi, the sort of books Lee had bought him guiltily and his mother had sniffed at whenever she saw them. Or, more memorably, they were the books Sam would playfully refer to as 'the reason you're so damn straight'. Even the thought of her good natured ribbing put a smile on Arthur's face as he ran a finger over the weathered spines.
And on the subject of Sam... Arthur thought, stepping out of his own room and wandering down the hall. He wouldn't be surprised if Sam wasn't here yet, she was often fashionably late, but he'd rather face the hosts with some company. So he walked to her old room (noticing that the KEEP OUT OR DIE! signs had been removed at some point), gently knocked and spoke with characteristic levity.
"I hope there aren't any artists in this house, I've had just about as much of those worthless layabouts as I can take."
fledermaus
Nightwing95