Street Walking (Indigo/Rhys)

Indigo hadn't been able to make it clubbing, despite Rhys's long-standing invitation. He was attempting to keep up with schoolwork, spend as much time as possible with Jory, and get enough sleep, and despite the jokes he'd heard that he needed to just pick two and let the other one go, he thought he was doing a decent job. Mostly. So far.

He'd invited Rhys to the school to catch up. Getting to Diagon Alley was a challenge, but getting to Valfirid or Owlton wasn't. They were supposed to meet outside the jewelry shop and just take things as they went, and Indigo had his hood pulled up against the cold as he waited.

Rhys was glad to get away from his routine and visit the town again. He'd only ever come a small handful of times to visit the club, so it would be nice to see the town in daylight with someone who, at least theoretically, knew his way around. "Hey, Indigo," he called out when his eyes caught on the familiar form. He grinned and brought a hand out of a pocket to wave while he approached.

"Hey," Indigo returned. "How's it going?" He had a lot to talk about, but apparently Rhys had things going on too and he didn't mind holding off on his drama for a few minutes. Well, not all of it was drama, and not all of it was his, but it would be nice to hear about things around Hogwarts and Diagon Alley after so long away.

"Ah, it's going, you know," Rhys said, shrugging and smiling. "Drama and holidays, starting classes again. There's always a bit of drama, though, eh?" He didn't have the same drama-filled life as some of his friends, but he had his own fair share that popped up from time to time. "How about you? Things going well with Jory still?"

"Ah, yeah," Indigo said. He glanced back at the school, as though Jory would suddenly appear and refuse to let him talk with Rhys. "I visited his parents' house over the holidays, up to Christmas Eve. His brother's a kid, you know, but like his mom started hinting about grandkids before I'd been there a whole day. So like, we had to talk about stuff, and things got weird." Maybe Rhys knew about that kind of thing, or maybe he didn't. He and Matthew were a thing, but Indigo had no clue if their families affected anything.

Rhys chuckled at that. "I think that's a mum thing," he said. "Matthew's does it sometimes. I don't know if it's better or worse since we told her we intend to have a kid, but we just kind of learned to roll with it. Did it just get weird because you haven't been together long?" Not everyone wanted kids, especially when it was still a relatively new relationship.

"I don't know," Indigo said. "It doesn't feel like it hasn't been that long." And yet a year ago he'd been avoiding Jory and making out with Marius. It was a weird thought. Apparently a lot of things were weird.

"Neither of us had even thought about getting married or whatever, and his mom just brought it up over breakfast. You know there'll be same-sex marriages in a few months. And I was like, Citizenship stuff can take years. I'm not asking Jory to become American and I'm not going to abandon the U.S. or anything. Then his mom said, you'd be surprised how interested you become in kids once a serious relationship builds, and I was pissed."

"People with kids can be a little pushy," Rhys said. "It's like with anything, you know. Well, you just don't know how brilliant rock music is until you sit in a room and listen to it for four hours straight or whatever. Did she let up at all?" Staying for a visit with that constantly being thrown would be a pain.

"No," Indigo said, "and rock music is brilliant." He gave a little smile and shook his head at himself before going on. "I kind of went off on her. I told her that not everyone's defined by children and my parents were married over twenty-five years before they had me. My mom was like forty-seven and thought she was going through menopause or whatever. My parents didn't adopt, and it wasn't because they had to have their own kid or it wouldn't be good enough, it's because they had full lives, you know? I said I respect that they want what they think will make Jory happy, but he's a different person, we're happy, and I knew they'd respect that because they love him. His mom got all pissy then, but his dad was cool about it."

"Hopefully she'll mellow out a bit about it for your next visit," Rhys said. "And good on you for standing up, especially since his dad was fine with it. What parents think is best isn't always what's actually best, and it takes a while for them to catch on. Like, I've reconnected with my dad and it's some seriously slow going." His father had started asking more probing questions the last couple of visits, making Rhys almost want to know what Matthew had said to him at their first meeting. Almost.

Indigo eyed Rhys for a moment. He didn't know much about the guy's past, just that it was bad, messed up, and his parents had done some stuff that should probably be unforgivable. "So what's going on? I didn't know you even wanted to talk to your parents."

Whether he wanted to talk to his parents was a complicated issue. "Turns out my little brother was showing signs of magic," Rhys said. "I knew my parents probably wouldn't be able to handle it, so I paid them a visit with Dare. My mum's decided to avoid me as much as possible, but my dad's trying, at least." Kind of, enough to count.

Indigo's eyes widened in surprise. "Seriously?" he asked. "Whoah." He gestured down the street with a nod of the head. They may as well do some sight-seeing while they talked. "Your parents are both Muggles, right?" he asked. He knew Rhys was a Muggle, not a squib, and gave an almost apologetic look at the dumb question. "Mine are, so I'm Muggle-born, and Jory's brother is the opposite. He's like ten, and he's a squib. How are your parents taking it?"

Rhys scoffed, "Better than they took me being gay. Dare's been helping, and Hyacinth came with me once. My parents are both muggles and my dad's a pastor, so it's a lot for them to take in. I stalled introducing Matthew because I had no idea how he'd act. I think he let my dad have it, but I wasn't in the room." Even with the strange parting at the end of that first trip he had decided it was best to not know.

"You think," Indigo echoed. "It couldn't have been too bad if you don't know for sure, right?" He almost asked about Hyacinth, but they hadn't talked at all since he'd left school. He told himself it was none of his business. "If you ever want to drag me along I'll go," he offered. "I'm not like, a teacher or anything, but I've got two Muggle parents and I've done a lot of explaining stuff to them."