baggage [c]

It wasn't often he had the house to himself - usually Jamie found peace outside Primo's house, but it was oddly empty today, left for Jamie to wander like a ghost. He almost didn't know what to do - he was tired, but trying to get any sleep was always an exercise in futility.

He watched the light falling on the wallpaper, shimmering, breaking up and leading him in circles until he heard the sound of a shutting door. The little slits of light scrambled, and Jamie startled, stumbled into the nearest room, door slamming shut behind him and leaving him in a sudden musty dimness.

There was a small window, a small block of light hitting the floor in four panes and dancing dust motes. He stared down at it until it blurred, coming into sharp focus as the door behind him opened.

Jamie whirled to see who it was - Primo, Nessa, Vanni? - but it was a stranger. He stared with wide, silent eyes, wondering if she was real.

"Who are you?"

@lucie

He felt undone by her gaze. Not undressed, but as if the skin was being peeled from his bones. He wrinkled his nose and looked down at his feet, expecting guts to be spilling and blood to be pooling. He curled the toes of his socked feet and made no indication that he heard when she said her name.

Because, he doesn't know a Lucie.

Another silence draws out, though it doesn't feel that silent on his part. The light and shadows paint a sharp enough contrast to strike a sound, almost. Like the black on white of piano keys and the copper of guitar strings – the smell and feel that sticks on you for days. Like blood.

Is he sure he's not bleeding?

He looked like a deer in headlights, blinking like he was blinded when he met her eyes. "Jameson." He croaked. Jamie." Jameson felt like too big a name, Jamie was small and digestible like him.

@lucie

"It's a pleasure to meet you." He replied in turn, assuming she was just being polite – and that he should do the same. Nobody really thought that, there was nothing nice about Jamie at all. Well, maybe there was one person, but that was besides the point. There was a stranger inside his house.

Jamie didn't entirely process that he might be unnerving her as well. As far as he knew, she was just a ghost, an apparition, a projection of his own frazzled mind.

He tilted his head, not consciously, but mirroring her. She looked around the room and he did so as well, wondering if he had missed anything. "I think so." He mused. "Depends."

@lucie

He nodded – it did depend, on what was real. Maybe to him it didn't matter, because he could never tell the difference, but most other people seemed to make a great distinction between what was and wasn't real. Jamie's eyes were ringed with dark circles, and he rubbed at them with the heels of his hands. When he lowered his hands, the woman was still standing there. She was probably real. Though that left the question of what a stranger was doing inside their house.

He could tell her about the lights and angles and sounds, but he didn't. That was the sort of stuff that got him laughed at, or beat up on at school. Jamie chewed on his lip, offered a shrug. "I was. But there's you now." He mumbled.

@lucie

Lucie was glancing around too, and Jamie wondered if she saw all the things he did. But her expression was impartial enough that he thought she might not. Nobody saw the world quite like he did - Primo said he was unique and lovely and special for it. Everybody else said he was a freak.

But it didn't matter. He just shrugged at her apology - he'd suffered worst invasions of privacy. "I wasn't doing anything." Jamie told her, fingering the hem of his shirt.

Jamie shook his head. "It's alright." He never expected anything - nobody really told him things. When they did, he forgot anyways.

"My uncle." The thought of him being one of Primo's children was laughable. They were all hunters, he was prey, like an antelope living among a pride of lions. But everybody had a mother and a father, or was expected to - Jamie didn't really have either. "Is he home too?" They often had guests on business, but none of them every paid Jamie any mind. Sometimes Primo brought him along, let him (or rather made him) sit in on meetings to learn the trade. Was she here for that?

@lucie

Primo was his uncle, but more of a father than his own had ever been, Jamie supposed. He didn't think he loved him like a father or anything, or even considered him one, but Primo took care of him, taught him everything he would need to know when he took over the club. He was the closest thing. But Jamie didn't say any of that, just nodding. Primo still terrified him.

"Are you here on business?" He asked. Usually Primo's partners were aging men in expensive suits. They smoked cigars and spoke in rumbling voices about the business. The family.

Lucie seemed different from that.

@lucie