Breathe In
Sandra Lee eyed her son carefully through the screen door, momentarily frozen. There were several things she took in nearly instantaneously; he was frightened, he was apologetic, and he was crushing hard on someoneShe knew these things in the space of moments between the flood of desperate relief and the blinding flash of anger. She gave voice to
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Kumar had always been a second son to her, and she'd always treated whoever was special to Harold as another child. Sandra still missed Maria, and honestly longed to understand more of how that had fallen apart, even if they had tried to help Harold pick up after it by nudging Cindy back his way.
She didn't think now was at all the time to bring that up.
It was natural for her to want to transfer that same vague sense of family to the newest... person in her son's life, but that didn't mean she understood, yet.
He seemed harmless. Not just harmless; shrewdly intelligent and appeared to share some of her ability to see to the heart of a given matter.
She watched him, mostly out of the corner of her eye. As if somehow his motion or demeanor could reveal more of him to her.
It was a lot to take in. That entire mess, and every bit of it Harold said he'd chosen for himself. Sandra wasn't so sure. She didn't think anyone could choose much for themselves with another person-- in their mind. Even if neither had-- what had Harold said? Obliterated? --the other, she thought two opposing forces in one conscious space had to be nigh on impossible to cope with.
She mourned that her son had been the one to shatter. She glanced at Harold. He didn't look shattered. Even terrified of his father and apologizing and fighting to hand her an answer to her simple questions, he hadn't seemed to her in any way crippled. Hurt, sure, scared, absolutely. But he was still her Harold, if a little... more audacious.
At once she was amazed and entirely unsurprised that Harold had told his father the entirety of that story. She hadn't especially enjoyed the mental images, and the... falling... into bed, and she'd ached with him as he weaved the tale. She always had, when he had them to lay at his parents' feet. But never had Harold been quite so free with the bare facts. It was an amazing leap of trust on both Harold and Myon's parts, the relaying and acceptance of that story.
She was exceptionally proud of both of the men in her life, today.
And of this one, not yet in her life, but hands-deep in her sink. He clearly needed something to occupy himself with. She couldn't blame him. If everything they said was true, this little Scot was just as lost and likely frightened as her Harold had been, and even the comparatively gentle interrogation couldn't have been easy.
Musing that Kumar had probably cracked a kilt joke of some description, she smirked to herself, before realization loosed a small pang. Harold had gone to Kumar before his own mother.
She sighed. There was nothing for it. She'd have to forgive it.
Boxing up the leftover pizza, she spared a more open look Scotty's way, before reaching over to pat his shoulder briefly. She had thought to ask her son this question that seemed to her quite vital, but wrapped up in his pain and bizarre tale as she'd been, she had neglected to ask Scotty, who likely had as much a complicated answer as her son must have, whether he'd actually give it or not.
"Are you okay, sweetheart?"
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Sandra nodded, taking her hand back slowly. There were things she wanted to know. She gathered she had to be delicate.
"You did good, you know." It was spoken softly, with an encouraging little smile. Many people would feel as though they were entirely overstepping their bounds, but Sandra was more concerned with just how uncomfortable finding oneself front and center for that much family tension must have been. "Mister Lee is a good father, but he's stern. Not always easy to understand. That couldn't have been easy, sweetheart." She nodded. She didn't know the man well enough to guess how that might land, but she hoped to perhaps help him feel a little less alone.
"Harold did most o' th' talkin'." Scotty started rinsing the dishes, setting them on the rack until he had a chance to dry them. "It wasna bad."
"He did." Pizza in tupperware, and she set it in the fridge, moving to take up a dish to dry herself. "That was his responsibility. This wasn't yours." She leaned against the counter sideways, watching him for a moment before flicking her look to the dish she was drying. She had no desire to unnerve him, and was quietly ticking over the gentlest possible way to ask her questions.
She wasn't sure, looking at this man, if subtlety or the outright truth of the matter where more effective. She fell to the latter.
"My son seems to think a whole lot of you. I'm going to be honest with you, sweetheart, I was pretty scared listening to that. That he was in such an awful place he could do all those things, I was looking at you for a little while there thinking maybe you were just another one in line to pull the strings." Her dish towel stilled on the plate, long since dry. She looked up at him. "I'm good at reading people. You don't strike me that way. You don't seem like the sort of boy to be on the other end of those strings, either. Can you tell me something, honey?" She nodded in the direction her son and husband had gone. "Is he really through all that? And you. What do you need?" She gestured with the towel. "Can't nobody get stolen from his life twice and not land funny. What do you need?"
"I dinna ken." Scotty shook his head, not looking up from the dishes. "I dinna ken if he is or nae. All I ken is that he was bein' jerked around, an' I didna like it." He understood the notion that he could have been the same, but it still stung, and he wasn't so sure doing dishes was quite enough to keep the urge to bolt somewhere -- anywhere -- at bay. Still, he was honest. He answered. "I dinna need anything. Still breathin'; anything else isna all that desperately important. I'd like a job, or some way t' earn my keep, but that's... nae so easy at th' moment. But aside that, I'm a'right."
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"All right." She ticked it over, a little while. Drying that plate, setting it aside, taking up another. "You said your mother's a chef, right, sweetheart?" She privately wondered if the woman was somewhere missing her little boy, like Sandra had. Surely she must be. "That you were good in a kitchen?" She nodded to herself. Maggie in the writers' circle had a daughter. She kept a coffee shop in Hoboken.
Okay, so Sandra may or may not have tried to set Harold up with the girl more than once. Still, she imagined she could call in a favor or two. It wouldn't be perfect, and Harold would likely try and shoo his mother away from Scotty just out of general principle, but the boy had said what he wanted. He didn't have anyone else in the world, aside Harold. He would damn well have her, even if it was unwanted.
What she didn't imagine was that Scotty would have any ID accepted on this planet. "If you can cook, darling, I can probably set you up. If you're staying with--" Harold. "If you're going to be staying around here. Okay?"
"Aye, I can cook. I suppose I rate about around a three-star chef; I was reasonably popular even cookin' on th' Enterprise." At least in mechanics and cooking, Scotty had no trouble acknowledging a skill. "I suppose we have t' deal with whatever th' police were there for, though."
Hrm. Bit better than a little coffee shop in the ass-end of Hoboken, but she'd still sort something out for him. "I'll see what I can do, sweetie."
She'd almost forgotten about that little complication. To be fair, she still had quite a lot to digest. "That's a little harder. We have a good lawyer," she sighed, putting away another plate. "After the Cuba incident we kept a very nice man in our rolodex." He'd done his best, but there was only so much one could do in someone's defense when they were a fugitive. Even less when they'd been declared a terrorist. Still, he had a good reputation. Sandra tried to swallow her anxiety; that entire mess had been horrifying. She had always been frightened of some sort of repeat. "Do you have any inkling at all why they were there, hon? And did they see you? Taking off like that?" A brief gesture. She was trying to count the charges.
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"He's a good boy," she replied simply. That wasn't to say she hadn't wanted to slap him now and again. When the plane back from Amsterdam had landed, she actually had. Sandra was not a violent woman, but... a bong? On a plane? To Amsterdam? She couldn't hold back.
"I'll have a word with him. Neither of you try and call him, Lord knows what the police want and I don't want either of you under anyone's radar." She supposed Scotty knew that. It didn't matter; she said it anyway. Some recess of her mind wondered when she'd gotten quite so sneaky. Another recess answered, 'since Harold met Kumar.' "We'll get the lawyer to do some quiet checking about warrants out on Harold's name, and things like that. Maybe put it down to something to do with the missing persons report. In the meantime, dear." Another plate set aside, a fresh one picked up to dry. "We have a little vacation house. I think it's Jane's turn at it, but she's not up there and she won't mind me swapping some time there for our usual, okay? You two can stay low until we find out what it's all about." Her tone had gone soft, reassuring, and she reached over, rag slung over the back of her hand, and patted his shoulder again.
He was projecting the stoic, surviving kind. That didn't mean he didn't deserve a motherly sort of reassurance just the same as anyone else.
"That's... up t' Harold." Scotty nodded a bit, though he didn't jump this time at the pat. "I mean, if he told me t' go, I would, an' I'd figure out how t' manage -- I've worked under th' table afore, an' I can fake an American accent well enough nae t' raise too many eyebrows -- but this is his world; it's up t' him, where we go. I'm nae particularly worried about how I'll handle it, so much as wantin' t' make sure he's a'right; I can make due just about anywhere. He's..." God, why was he talking so much? "...he's tougher'n he gives himself credit for, by far, but until he starts actually givin' himself credit, he willna believe that, an' whatever it takes fer him t' get comfortable enough to, I'm fine with."
Sandra left her hand at that shoulder, the intention of which was to get him some measure of comfortable with her. She watched him, a faint grin twitching her lips. Maybe not always so stoic.
"Sweetie, this isn't his world. It's nobody's. Just a place." She let her hand drop. "You're right. He is tough. He's clearly gotten into a whole lot of mess I don't understand, and he's still hurting, but I never thought for a minute through that whole crazy story that he wouldn't come out of it okay." Her smile was kindly, and she dipped her head, the same sort of look that Harold gives over his glasses, just without frames. "You're a good boy." It was the same tone she'd used for Kumar. "I thank God he had a friend through all that. And from where I sit, Harold Lee is lit up like a roman candle over you. I'm glad I got to meet you, honey."
She smiled lightly to herself, shelving the dry plate.
"Thanks." Scotty wasn't sure what else to say about it, though he did give her a slight half-smile, rinsing the last ditch and setting it over on the rack. Nice people, no doubt. Or, decent. But he'd about run out his conversation, and he hoped that Harold was faring all right.
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