Sam & Clint | Labor Day at the Mansion
Sep. 4th, 2023 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsSam swings by the mansion to celebrate Labor Day. Clint keeps him company. (Backdated.)
Sam glanced at his phone, reading the text he'd received from Clint before turning left, looking for the man where he'd been told he should be. "Hey, thanks for the invite." "Yeah, no problem," Clint said, handing over the already opened beer he'd just pulled from a cooler full of ice. "Glad you could make it, man," he continued, raising his own so they could tap them together. "You gotta tell me what killer lettuce is. Cause I'ma eat it, but I like to know."
Sam laughed and took a swig of the beer Clint handed him. "Well you start off with lettuce- an' then you fry up some bacon and cut it up real small, add some apple cider vinegar and spring onions to the grease, an' then pour it all over the lettuce and top with your bacon. I'd've made a stack cake but they're better two or three days out and I didn't have enough time to prepare."
"Well now you gotta tell me what a stack cake is, why it's better a couple days out, and when you're gonna make one so I can try it," Clint said, grinning as he took a pull from his own bottle. "And also where you left that lettuce."
Sam shook his head with a soft laugh. "A stack cake is a buncha thin layers of a vanilla cake with layers of apple butter and dried apples in between, then topped with powdered sugar. If you let it sit a day or two it helps the apple butter soak into the cake and the dried apples and makes everything real moist. I'll have to make some apple butter and dried apples but it's well worth the work."
Sam glanced up at the other man with a small smile and then pointed towards the food table. "I tried to make space for the lettuce with all the other foods over there."
"Jesus, that sounds good," Clint said, tilting his head toward the food tables. "C'mon, we've got plates to make and you gotta explain the whole making apple butter and dried apples thing to me. I can like. Grill. And make sandwiches. And soup outta cans. You make the cake like the same way you would a pancake?"
"It's more rolled out like a giant cookie." Sam said, scrunching up his nose when Clint moved and the sunlight hit his face. "We did a lot of foraging and canning back home, so I can make all sorts of stuff. I miss ramps and pawpaw awful bad up there though, and they don't ship well or Mama'd mail me some."
"Okay, just explain what those are now," Clint said, half-laughing even as he grabbed a plate and passed it back to Sam before grabbing another for himself and sliding his beer bottle into one of his front pockets. He knew how to operate at potlucks when he didn't have to wear formal clothes. "C'mon, I made some crack chicken dip, you should try it.It's like three ingredients, so it's really hard to mess up, but it's so damn delicious..."
"Ramps are a garlicky-oniony plant that's great cooked. And pawpaws are like a custardy fruit that taste like a vanilla banana? They're so good." Sam said, mouth watering at just the thought of a ripe pawpaw. "Alright, so you've been here before....anyone's food I should avoid?"
"Christ, I gotta find somewhere with all this food you're telling me about," Clint said, half laughing. "And honestly, you shouldn't use me as a barometer for how good the food is. Cause I'll eat anything, basically. It's partly how I was raised but also a product of running away to an actual, literal circus? My friends call me a trash panda. Apparently it's some kinda sin to eat something that fell on the floor."
"Clint," Sam said with a laugh. "I'm one of nine kids. I have always eaten food from the floor. The five second rule is a dear ol' friend of mine. And you can get all these foods back home in Kentucky, but I think you might wanna get to know me a bit better 'fore I take you home to Mama."
That gave Clint the itty bittiest pause before he grinned, knocking his elbow against Sam's. "I dunno, I'm not usually the kinda guy people take home to meet their parents." Which might've been a bit more honest than he meant to be. Oops. "Anyway, first off, you got any allergies?"
"Lucky you, I only got the one." Sam teased back. "Nah, well none that I know of. I'll eat pert-near anything once."
Unsure what to make of... that... Clint handed started loading up his plate. Did Sam... realize what he'd said? He couldn't really think about that at the moment, though. Focus he told himself. "If you're not picky, just try a bit of everything."
"Great...so you been up to anything interesting lately? Feel like I haven't seen you in a bit." Sam said as he tried to add a little of everything to his plate and tried not to get caught stealing glances at Clint's arms.
"Been alright. Busy with work. Had to uh... travel. A bit," Clint said, shoveling some of his own crack chicken dip onto his plate. "What about you? Kirby's keeping you busy?"
"Yeah, if it ain't work it's the family rumor mill. My oldest little brother has a secret girlfriend and supposedly according to my two oldest sisters he's gonna be proposing soon and also maybe moving to Louisville?" Sam scrunched up his face as he thought. "Not that Jay listens to me anymore but if he's gonna move he oughta move to Nashville so I hope only the first part of the rumor mill is true."
"Jesus," Clint said, shaking his head. "My little brother's... uh." He paused, both in serving himself and speaking. "Huh. I think he's... seeing... wait, Darcy, Foggy, Marcy, Doug... I think it's just those four? But Darcy's seeing Inez, so I dunno if Matt's also seeing her or not. He's here at the mansion, though. And so are Darcy and Doug, so they're sorta easier to keep track of."
"That's a lot of people. As far as I know Jay's just got the one secret girlfriend. Now my sister Elizabeth, who isn't in on the whole proposal and moving thing, thinks that Jay has a secret boyfriend. I don't care so long as he's happy. Hell he could date a Cabot and I'd be okay with it so long as he's happy." Sam said a bit forcefully.
"A Cabot? Is this like a Hatfield and McCoy kinda a thing? Romeo and Juliet?" Clint asked, drawn in despite himself.
"The Cabots are mine rich, and we're a union family. We get on about as good as oil and water. It would be like Hatfields and McCoys if Jay was dating a Cabot- and even worse if he married one..." Sam sighed. "But all I want is for him to be happy, and if that means he marries a Cabot, then I'll just have to learn to love them too since they'll be kin."
"Yeah, man," Clint said, nodding along. "I mean, family. Once you got 'em, you're pretty much stuck with 'em, so you might as well try and like 'em. I'm lucky my older brother married a girl who's too good for him. Makes liking her a lot easier. Not that I could ever not like Laura, she's great. And then there's the niece and nephews, so."
“Jay’s the only one seemingly anywhere close to gettin’ hitched so I don’t have to worry about it too much….. yet.” Sam said, looking around for a place with enough room for him and Clint to sit. “Sorry, I don’t do a whole lot outside of work and talk to my family.”
"You're good, man," Clint said, grinning as he found them a pair of lounge chairs with a table between them. "I mean, it's kinda nice to actually be able to talk about my family as more than like, 'Oh yeah, they exist.' Which -- people care, obviously, it's usually never the right time for it, right? Except around the holidays. Which reminds me, if you're staying in New York for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, you're welcome to my dads' place for either. They have a whole big Christmas thing, but Thanksgiving's usually just the fam plus Tasha if she's in town. Dunno if she will be. She wasn't, last year. She's my best friend, bee tee dubs."
“I try to head back home for the holidays, gotta get presents for my kids and this year I’ve gotta watch the marching band in the Thanksgiving parade since one of em’s in it.” Sam said with a proud grin. “I miiiiiight be able to bring you back some of those Appalachian dishes you were so interested in earlier too.”
"Damn, you know what they say about the way to a man's heart. You show up with that apple stack thing..." Clint just shook his head, laughing as he pulled his beer out of his pocket so he could take a drink. "I dunno,I might have to figure out some actual kinda regional dish from New York or Iowa or something to try and make you in return."
“Listen, I don’t believe in God, probably- but I sure as hell thank him for my Mama’s cornbread. I’ll have to bring some of that back up.” Sam grinned, leaning in closer to Clint as he took a swig of his own beer. “You’re from Iowa? Or did you just live there a while?”
"My dad's family's from up in Iowa. There's some kinda defunct farm up there. Barney - my older brother, he keeps talking about checking it out, seeing what's around, maybe sell it off. I'm not much for farming, but I can keep a lemon tree alive and I figured... not much use selling it now, right? Nobody's bothered with it in... decades. Probably nobody will. Best to keep it as like, a backup or... something. Just in case something goes wrong down the line." He reached into his pocket a moment later, realizing that the only person to know about the farm in Iowa besides Barney, Matt, and himself was Tasha and now he'd just told a stranger, pretty much. "Wanna see the niece and nephews?"
"Absolutely, wanna see my kids?” Sam grinned, pulling out his own phone and flipping over to the album he’d made of his photos from home. “I’ve got some embarrassing pictures of teenage me in here too.”
"Yeah, but who cares about embarrassing pictures of themselves when kids are involved?" Clint asked, already having unlocked his phone so he could thumb his way to his pictures and open the folder specifically for his family. "I got some of last Christmas here, too, with the dads and Matt and Barney and everybody. Barney was nervous about attending - he's always nervous about coming around when it's the dads, like somehow he doesn't fit in just cause he's my actual blood relative instead of adopted. But Barney's sometimes dumb and Laura evens him out, so everybody had a good time." He held his phone out so Sam could see a picture that literally showed Barney basically diving into the frame in an effort to get back to his spot in the family lineup. "See, that's Steve and Andre. Andre's Matt's uncle by blood. I was put with them after the whole uh... circus thing. They're great. They'd already started adopting me when Matt's dad passed and Matt needed a home, so they adopted him, too. Barney'd aged out of the system by then, but we kept in touch."
Sam nodded along, trying to follow along with who each person was, knowing that Clint would likely have just as much trouble with his brood. He smiled proudly and then showed his phone to Clint, trying to point out each sibling as he said their name. “Here we are at Paige’s graduation party before I manifested.” Sam said with a grin. “So obviously there’s me, and then Paige has her cords on- she’s so smart, got a full ride to college. And Jay’s got daddy’s guitar there. Mel and Elizabeth are the ones wrapped around Paige there, Mel’s the taller brunette of the two. Joelle and Jeb are the two sorta leanin’ up against Jay’s legs there on the ground. And I’ve got Lewis in one arm and Cissie in the other.”
"Lookit that family," Clint said, unable to keep some admiration from his voice. "I dunno if my parents ever thought about having more kids -- or if Andre and Steve ever thought about adopting more -- but it would've been nice to grow up with more kids around. Me and Matt were the only ones in our building, so it was really only extracurriculars where we had other kids to play around with." He tilted his head to the side a bit, though, and quirked an eyebrow at Sam as he straightened up. Taking a sip, he said, "Doesn't seem like you got to be a kid much, despite being surrounded by them, huh?"
Sam shifted awkwardly in his seat and cleared his throat. "I did what I had to and I don't regret it." He said defensively. "I don't regret any of it."
"Good," Clint said, nodding. "I don't think you should. I didn't mean that as a critique or anything. More just... I dunno, an observation." Sam tried to study the leaves on the trees without appearing rude before sighing and looking back in Clint’s direction.
“I never- I didn’t wanna be their dad. But I couldn’t let ‘em grow up without one and Paige- she’s so fucking smart, Clint. Got a full ride to college, kept a 4.0, dean’s list the whole nine yards…… she wouldn’t’ve been able to focus on all that if I hadn’t-“ he sighed. “I wasn’t gonna let her get trapped there when we both knew damn well 'fore either of us left primary school that of the two of us she was the one destined for bigger and brighter things….”
Sam had chosen to use the word 'trapped' in his description of staying with his family so his sister could get an education, but Clint didn't feel like pointing that out would necessarily be for the best given their conversation. "That was good of you, looking out for her," he said instead, smiling even as he forked up a bit of food off his plate. "She go on to bigger, better things after college? Or's she still in it?"
“Graduated about two years ago. Does some sort of science thing- I can’t keep it straight no matter how many times she tries to explain it to me. ‘M just glad she got to get outta our hometown and have a chance to do somethin she loves. And Jay’s leaving home soon too, Louisville supposedly but he oughta be going to Nashville.” Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head as if this was one of the most exasperating things in his life.
"And the others?" Clint asked, shoving more food in his mouth. "How old're the youngest ones?"
“Either working near home or still in school. The twins start middle school this year - it doesn’t feel real. You saw how little they were not that long ago.” Sam said, he turned to Clint and pouted a little. “How am I supposed to cope with them growing up?”
"They ever come up to visit you? See the sights? I've got a building over in Bed-Stuy, if your mom wants to bring 'em up, she could use the apartment I have there. Barney's the super and I don't often stay there -- only stop by every now and then to check on Tasha's lemon tree, honestly," Clint offered. "Just throwing it out there, no pressure."
“Nah, Jay’s adamant that he don’t wanna leave Kentucky, and Paige has been so busy with school- it’s hard to convince them to leave home.” Sam said awkwardly. “I’d love to have em up- I know Joelle’s goin through a rough patch and it would be good for her.”
"You said he's a musician, right? Jay?" Clint asked. "Cause I figure he's gonna have to move somewhere eventually if he wants to actually do something with that. Which, y'know. New York's not Nashville or LA... or even Chicago, but I'm pretty sure we could find him some gigs between us and the rest of the mansion. And the invite's open for whoever you wanna bring up. Christmas is a good time -- gotta see the Rockefeller tree, y'know?" He shoved another forkful of food into his mouth, hoping to shut himself up before he invited the entirety of Sam's family to his dads' for their Christmas Eve party, Jesus.
"Yeah, he's real good too." Sam said proudly. "Takes after Daddy that way. I got him an electric guitar for Christmas a few years ago and he gave me hell cause he thought I was saying Daddy's old guitar ain't good enough.... I ain't seen the Rockefeller tree myself so I can't say, but I'm sure the kids would like it."
"Acoustic's pretty classic and sometimes that's what a song needs," Clint said, nodding. "But yeah. Ask your mom. See if she's interested. It'll be great. Things are always fun at the mansion, too." He finished off one half of his plate with relish, grinning as he twisted it around so he could start on the other half. "But hey, we're a couple holidays away from then, so once we're finished up here, how about I show you around the mansion? Or we could just stick by the pool."
Sam looked Clint up and down, he was tempted to suggest they stay by the pool but couldn't quite bring himself to be that forward. "A tour of the mansion would be nice. Never seen it before."
Sam glanced at his phone, reading the text he'd received from Clint before turning left, looking for the man where he'd been told he should be. "Hey, thanks for the invite." "Yeah, no problem," Clint said, handing over the already opened beer he'd just pulled from a cooler full of ice. "Glad you could make it, man," he continued, raising his own so they could tap them together. "You gotta tell me what killer lettuce is. Cause I'ma eat it, but I like to know."
Sam laughed and took a swig of the beer Clint handed him. "Well you start off with lettuce- an' then you fry up some bacon and cut it up real small, add some apple cider vinegar and spring onions to the grease, an' then pour it all over the lettuce and top with your bacon. I'd've made a stack cake but they're better two or three days out and I didn't have enough time to prepare."
"Well now you gotta tell me what a stack cake is, why it's better a couple days out, and when you're gonna make one so I can try it," Clint said, grinning as he took a pull from his own bottle. "And also where you left that lettuce."
Sam shook his head with a soft laugh. "A stack cake is a buncha thin layers of a vanilla cake with layers of apple butter and dried apples in between, then topped with powdered sugar. If you let it sit a day or two it helps the apple butter soak into the cake and the dried apples and makes everything real moist. I'll have to make some apple butter and dried apples but it's well worth the work."
Sam glanced up at the other man with a small smile and then pointed towards the food table. "I tried to make space for the lettuce with all the other foods over there."
"Jesus, that sounds good," Clint said, tilting his head toward the food tables. "C'mon, we've got plates to make and you gotta explain the whole making apple butter and dried apples thing to me. I can like. Grill. And make sandwiches. And soup outta cans. You make the cake like the same way you would a pancake?"
"It's more rolled out like a giant cookie." Sam said, scrunching up his nose when Clint moved and the sunlight hit his face. "We did a lot of foraging and canning back home, so I can make all sorts of stuff. I miss ramps and pawpaw awful bad up there though, and they don't ship well or Mama'd mail me some."
"Okay, just explain what those are now," Clint said, half-laughing even as he grabbed a plate and passed it back to Sam before grabbing another for himself and sliding his beer bottle into one of his front pockets. He knew how to operate at potlucks when he didn't have to wear formal clothes. "C'mon, I made some crack chicken dip, you should try it.It's like three ingredients, so it's really hard to mess up, but it's so damn delicious..."
"Ramps are a garlicky-oniony plant that's great cooked. And pawpaws are like a custardy fruit that taste like a vanilla banana? They're so good." Sam said, mouth watering at just the thought of a ripe pawpaw. "Alright, so you've been here before....anyone's food I should avoid?"
"Christ, I gotta find somewhere with all this food you're telling me about," Clint said, half laughing. "And honestly, you shouldn't use me as a barometer for how good the food is. Cause I'll eat anything, basically. It's partly how I was raised but also a product of running away to an actual, literal circus? My friends call me a trash panda. Apparently it's some kinda sin to eat something that fell on the floor."
"Clint," Sam said with a laugh. "I'm one of nine kids. I have always eaten food from the floor. The five second rule is a dear ol' friend of mine. And you can get all these foods back home in Kentucky, but I think you might wanna get to know me a bit better 'fore I take you home to Mama."
That gave Clint the itty bittiest pause before he grinned, knocking his elbow against Sam's. "I dunno, I'm not usually the kinda guy people take home to meet their parents." Which might've been a bit more honest than he meant to be. Oops. "Anyway, first off, you got any allergies?"
"Lucky you, I only got the one." Sam teased back. "Nah, well none that I know of. I'll eat pert-near anything once."
Unsure what to make of... that... Clint handed started loading up his plate. Did Sam... realize what he'd said? He couldn't really think about that at the moment, though. Focus he told himself. "If you're not picky, just try a bit of everything."
"Great...so you been up to anything interesting lately? Feel like I haven't seen you in a bit." Sam said as he tried to add a little of everything to his plate and tried not to get caught stealing glances at Clint's arms.
"Been alright. Busy with work. Had to uh... travel. A bit," Clint said, shoveling some of his own crack chicken dip onto his plate. "What about you? Kirby's keeping you busy?"
"Yeah, if it ain't work it's the family rumor mill. My oldest little brother has a secret girlfriend and supposedly according to my two oldest sisters he's gonna be proposing soon and also maybe moving to Louisville?" Sam scrunched up his face as he thought. "Not that Jay listens to me anymore but if he's gonna move he oughta move to Nashville so I hope only the first part of the rumor mill is true."
"Jesus," Clint said, shaking his head. "My little brother's... uh." He paused, both in serving himself and speaking. "Huh. I think he's... seeing... wait, Darcy, Foggy, Marcy, Doug... I think it's just those four? But Darcy's seeing Inez, so I dunno if Matt's also seeing her or not. He's here at the mansion, though. And so are Darcy and Doug, so they're sorta easier to keep track of."
"That's a lot of people. As far as I know Jay's just got the one secret girlfriend. Now my sister Elizabeth, who isn't in on the whole proposal and moving thing, thinks that Jay has a secret boyfriend. I don't care so long as he's happy. Hell he could date a Cabot and I'd be okay with it so long as he's happy." Sam said a bit forcefully.
"A Cabot? Is this like a Hatfield and McCoy kinda a thing? Romeo and Juliet?" Clint asked, drawn in despite himself.
"The Cabots are mine rich, and we're a union family. We get on about as good as oil and water. It would be like Hatfields and McCoys if Jay was dating a Cabot- and even worse if he married one..." Sam sighed. "But all I want is for him to be happy, and if that means he marries a Cabot, then I'll just have to learn to love them too since they'll be kin."
"Yeah, man," Clint said, nodding along. "I mean, family. Once you got 'em, you're pretty much stuck with 'em, so you might as well try and like 'em. I'm lucky my older brother married a girl who's too good for him. Makes liking her a lot easier. Not that I could ever not like Laura, she's great. And then there's the niece and nephews, so."
“Jay’s the only one seemingly anywhere close to gettin’ hitched so I don’t have to worry about it too much….. yet.” Sam said, looking around for a place with enough room for him and Clint to sit. “Sorry, I don’t do a whole lot outside of work and talk to my family.”
"You're good, man," Clint said, grinning as he found them a pair of lounge chairs with a table between them. "I mean, it's kinda nice to actually be able to talk about my family as more than like, 'Oh yeah, they exist.' Which -- people care, obviously, it's usually never the right time for it, right? Except around the holidays. Which reminds me, if you're staying in New York for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, you're welcome to my dads' place for either. They have a whole big Christmas thing, but Thanksgiving's usually just the fam plus Tasha if she's in town. Dunno if she will be. She wasn't, last year. She's my best friend, bee tee dubs."
“I try to head back home for the holidays, gotta get presents for my kids and this year I’ve gotta watch the marching band in the Thanksgiving parade since one of em’s in it.” Sam said with a proud grin. “I miiiiiight be able to bring you back some of those Appalachian dishes you were so interested in earlier too.”
"Damn, you know what they say about the way to a man's heart. You show up with that apple stack thing..." Clint just shook his head, laughing as he pulled his beer out of his pocket so he could take a drink. "I dunno,I might have to figure out some actual kinda regional dish from New York or Iowa or something to try and make you in return."
“Listen, I don’t believe in God, probably- but I sure as hell thank him for my Mama’s cornbread. I’ll have to bring some of that back up.” Sam grinned, leaning in closer to Clint as he took a swig of his own beer. “You’re from Iowa? Or did you just live there a while?”
"My dad's family's from up in Iowa. There's some kinda defunct farm up there. Barney - my older brother, he keeps talking about checking it out, seeing what's around, maybe sell it off. I'm not much for farming, but I can keep a lemon tree alive and I figured... not much use selling it now, right? Nobody's bothered with it in... decades. Probably nobody will. Best to keep it as like, a backup or... something. Just in case something goes wrong down the line." He reached into his pocket a moment later, realizing that the only person to know about the farm in Iowa besides Barney, Matt, and himself was Tasha and now he'd just told a stranger, pretty much. "Wanna see the niece and nephews?"
"Absolutely, wanna see my kids?” Sam grinned, pulling out his own phone and flipping over to the album he’d made of his photos from home. “I’ve got some embarrassing pictures of teenage me in here too.”
"Yeah, but who cares about embarrassing pictures of themselves when kids are involved?" Clint asked, already having unlocked his phone so he could thumb his way to his pictures and open the folder specifically for his family. "I got some of last Christmas here, too, with the dads and Matt and Barney and everybody. Barney was nervous about attending - he's always nervous about coming around when it's the dads, like somehow he doesn't fit in just cause he's my actual blood relative instead of adopted. But Barney's sometimes dumb and Laura evens him out, so everybody had a good time." He held his phone out so Sam could see a picture that literally showed Barney basically diving into the frame in an effort to get back to his spot in the family lineup. "See, that's Steve and Andre. Andre's Matt's uncle by blood. I was put with them after the whole uh... circus thing. They're great. They'd already started adopting me when Matt's dad passed and Matt needed a home, so they adopted him, too. Barney'd aged out of the system by then, but we kept in touch."
Sam nodded along, trying to follow along with who each person was, knowing that Clint would likely have just as much trouble with his brood. He smiled proudly and then showed his phone to Clint, trying to point out each sibling as he said their name. “Here we are at Paige’s graduation party before I manifested.” Sam said with a grin. “So obviously there’s me, and then Paige has her cords on- she’s so smart, got a full ride to college. And Jay’s got daddy’s guitar there. Mel and Elizabeth are the ones wrapped around Paige there, Mel’s the taller brunette of the two. Joelle and Jeb are the two sorta leanin’ up against Jay’s legs there on the ground. And I’ve got Lewis in one arm and Cissie in the other.”
"Lookit that family," Clint said, unable to keep some admiration from his voice. "I dunno if my parents ever thought about having more kids -- or if Andre and Steve ever thought about adopting more -- but it would've been nice to grow up with more kids around. Me and Matt were the only ones in our building, so it was really only extracurriculars where we had other kids to play around with." He tilted his head to the side a bit, though, and quirked an eyebrow at Sam as he straightened up. Taking a sip, he said, "Doesn't seem like you got to be a kid much, despite being surrounded by them, huh?"
Sam shifted awkwardly in his seat and cleared his throat. "I did what I had to and I don't regret it." He said defensively. "I don't regret any of it."
"Good," Clint said, nodding. "I don't think you should. I didn't mean that as a critique or anything. More just... I dunno, an observation." Sam tried to study the leaves on the trees without appearing rude before sighing and looking back in Clint’s direction.
“I never- I didn’t wanna be their dad. But I couldn’t let ‘em grow up without one and Paige- she’s so fucking smart, Clint. Got a full ride to college, kept a 4.0, dean’s list the whole nine yards…… she wouldn’t’ve been able to focus on all that if I hadn’t-“ he sighed. “I wasn’t gonna let her get trapped there when we both knew damn well 'fore either of us left primary school that of the two of us she was the one destined for bigger and brighter things….”
Sam had chosen to use the word 'trapped' in his description of staying with his family so his sister could get an education, but Clint didn't feel like pointing that out would necessarily be for the best given their conversation. "That was good of you, looking out for her," he said instead, smiling even as he forked up a bit of food off his plate. "She go on to bigger, better things after college? Or's she still in it?"
“Graduated about two years ago. Does some sort of science thing- I can’t keep it straight no matter how many times she tries to explain it to me. ‘M just glad she got to get outta our hometown and have a chance to do somethin she loves. And Jay’s leaving home soon too, Louisville supposedly but he oughta be going to Nashville.” Sam rolled his eyes and shook his head as if this was one of the most exasperating things in his life.
"And the others?" Clint asked, shoving more food in his mouth. "How old're the youngest ones?"
“Either working near home or still in school. The twins start middle school this year - it doesn’t feel real. You saw how little they were not that long ago.” Sam said, he turned to Clint and pouted a little. “How am I supposed to cope with them growing up?”
"They ever come up to visit you? See the sights? I've got a building over in Bed-Stuy, if your mom wants to bring 'em up, she could use the apartment I have there. Barney's the super and I don't often stay there -- only stop by every now and then to check on Tasha's lemon tree, honestly," Clint offered. "Just throwing it out there, no pressure."
“Nah, Jay’s adamant that he don’t wanna leave Kentucky, and Paige has been so busy with school- it’s hard to convince them to leave home.” Sam said awkwardly. “I’d love to have em up- I know Joelle’s goin through a rough patch and it would be good for her.”
"You said he's a musician, right? Jay?" Clint asked. "Cause I figure he's gonna have to move somewhere eventually if he wants to actually do something with that. Which, y'know. New York's not Nashville or LA... or even Chicago, but I'm pretty sure we could find him some gigs between us and the rest of the mansion. And the invite's open for whoever you wanna bring up. Christmas is a good time -- gotta see the Rockefeller tree, y'know?" He shoved another forkful of food into his mouth, hoping to shut himself up before he invited the entirety of Sam's family to his dads' for their Christmas Eve party, Jesus.
"Yeah, he's real good too." Sam said proudly. "Takes after Daddy that way. I got him an electric guitar for Christmas a few years ago and he gave me hell cause he thought I was saying Daddy's old guitar ain't good enough.... I ain't seen the Rockefeller tree myself so I can't say, but I'm sure the kids would like it."
"Acoustic's pretty classic and sometimes that's what a song needs," Clint said, nodding. "But yeah. Ask your mom. See if she's interested. It'll be great. Things are always fun at the mansion, too." He finished off one half of his plate with relish, grinning as he twisted it around so he could start on the other half. "But hey, we're a couple holidays away from then, so once we're finished up here, how about I show you around the mansion? Or we could just stick by the pool."
Sam looked Clint up and down, he was tempted to suggest they stay by the pool but couldn't quite bring himself to be that forward. "A tour of the mansion would be nice. Never seen it before."
