All of Them People

“Yeah, but I won’t be there all night.” Sean took a long puff of his joint, slowly exhaling it before speaking once again. “I can’t stand being around drunken hooligans for very long… No offence if you like to drink a lot.” The more Sean and Cian talked the less sure Sean was about how much of his first impression of Cian was true. Regardless of first impressions he tried not to judge others too harshly or keep grudges. Everyone has reasons for the things they do, whether the reasons are good or bad is beside the point. Besides as long as the company was good he would be happy. “Will you be at Tawny’s tomorrow too?” Sean asked, and then put out his joint because his home was a few houses away.

"Yeah, I’ll be there," Cian responded. He tossed what remained of the joint on the sidewalk in front of him and crushed it under his foot. Cian checked his phone for the time as they turned into Sean’s driveway, it was almost eleven. He was surprised, it seemed later than that. He glanced upwards, the moon and the stars were all blocked out by clouds.

“Home sweet home.” Sean said reaching into his coat pocket to retrieve his keys. However the familiar metal keys were not there and Sean groaned when he realized that he had left them on the counter. He normally wasn't the type of person to forget things like that. ‘It’s probably because I've got so much going on’ he thought. So instead he rang the doorbell once, waited a few seconds then rhythmically knocked on the door.

Emmett was enjoying the silence of Sean’s house when the doorbell went off a few minutes after eleven. Prior to this disturbance Emmett had been messing around with the core of Sean’s old computer. And man was it old! It was a 2006 model! He was about to go back to his work when he heard rhythmic knocking at the door. He heaved a sigh before getting up to answer it, knowing it was Sean because of the knocking pattern.

“Of course he has to forget how to open the door when I'm busy working on something!” Emmett said to no one in particular. He slowly walked down the stairs since his Pegasus slippers were slippery and he didn't feel like cracking open his skull tonight. He also thought of how he should reprimand Sean for troubling him. Yet as soon as he unlocked and opened the door he froze in his tracks because there was someone else with Sean.

“Thanks Emmett, uh this is Cian. He’ll be staying over for a while.” Sean said walking into his house.

“I didn't know you had friends.” Emmett mumbled to Sean before he scurried back into Sean’s bedroom.

Sean paused momentarily, watching Emmett run away presumably to Sean’s bedroom before he lead Cian around the house. First to the kitchen where he briefly showed him where some of the utensils were kept.

"You can pretty much help yourself to anything in the fridge, but in a few minutes I’ll have dinner ready." Across from the kitchen was the dining room as well as living room combination. He then led Cian back towards the front door, pointing out his Fathers bedroom which was the first door on the right as soon as you entered the house. After that he brought Cian upstairs.

"The door on the left is the bathroom, and the one in the middle there is my room." Sean opened the door on the right and walked inside urging Cian into the room as well.

"This was the guest room. Everything’s basically unused since we use it as a storage room, so you can move the boxes wherever you like for now and make yourself comfortable." He then exited the room and went back downstairs to retrieve the borscht from the freezer and defrost it in a large pot. As he waited for it to heat up he took out three bowls from the cupboard and some eating utensils. Then after placing them neatly on the counter he got out some buns and cut them in half to eat with the borscht. He also set the small margarine container on the counter so that he and maybe Cian could butter their buns. He stirred the pot once more but found it to still be lumpy and cold. So he patiently waited listening to the quietness of his house which soothed his constantly whirring mind. Only the low bubbling of the borscht and the frantic but faint tapping coming from upstairs could be heard.

When the door opened, Cian couldn't hold back a grin, he knew this other kid from school. He thought he was in his class once…. maybe more often than that. Chase loved picking on him. He was just that weird kid who wore slippers to school, towered over most of the class, but didn't give a damn about what went on. Cian would agree he was strange, but didn't see the thrill in pointing it out, Emmett just seemed to drown them out most of the time.

Sean showed him around the house, a courtesy Cian wasn't used to, so he just followed Sean awkwardly. Now he just stood in the guest room. He wondered what was in the boxes. On his tip toes he made an attempt to look into one that was stacked just above his eye level, and barely caught it from almost tipping over. It was quiet for a moment and he heard a tapping sound that caught his interest. Forgetting the boxes, he tracked the sound to upstairs, behind a door that was only open by a few centimetres. Cian pushed the door further open with his finger and peeked inside.