There's no place like home

Skype | Claire & Alex

He shrugged licking his lips nervously. “I haven’t slept in the last few days.” After his confession he felt sightly relived but it quickly went away when his father came to his mind. “I hate my father. I loathe him. I absolutely can’t stand him.”  With a heavy sight he continued. “But even if we haven’t talked in years I still love my sister.”

Claire bit her lip, wishing she could say somethin - anyting - to make him feel better. Seeing him like this was breaking her heart She listened to him talking about his father, before nodding slowly.  “I think you should go.” She murmured softly. “She’s your sister, and you don’t want to cause a rift between the two of you that you can’t fix. I know how much you wish you were closer to her.” She started, before pausing, pressing her lips together. The next part played on her mind a little, wondering whether it was a good idea, before she just said it anyway. “You should take someone with you.. like a date. To distract you. I mean, I’m willing to jump on a plane and come over and be your date, but.. I uh.. I figured that would... I mean, you probably wouldn’t want that considering everything...”

Skype | Claire & Alex

“You look…” He trailed off trying to find the perfect word. “…tired and sad.” He hated to be the cause of her sadness. Maybe that was selfish of him, maybe he wasn’t the cause of it. “I-I am dealing with a lot at the moment. My sister is getting married and my father is here. I’m torn between attending or not.” It wasn’t the topic they needed to talk about but he didn’t want things to be even more awkward. 

Claire glanced at her keyboard when Alex said she looked tired and sad and gave a small shrug. “I could say the same for you.” She answered softly, before deciding to go with the topic change for now. Maybe it would give her a chance to work out what to say. “Damn... That’s... Wow.” Claire said quietly at first, licking her lip. “So... you want to go for your sister... but it’s your father being there that’s stopping you?” She asked, just to clarify.

Skype | Claire & Alex

The prospect of talking to Claire face to face, or at least via Skype which at the moment was the most similar thing, made Alex nervous. It was a fact that she wasn’t very happy about his latest actions and he had always hated to see her sad. Claire always radiated happiness, except from when she was sad. As if that wasn’t enough he looked like a mess, hair falling over his head without any kind of form, dark circles under his eyes from the lack of sleep and skin paler than usual. He threw his hair back and put on his best smile when Claire’s name showed on his laptop. “Hey..” 

When Claire saw Alex and how he looked, she most definitely didn’t want to make fun of him. In fact, she felt guilty. Guilty for being the cause of it... “Hey.” She returned, voice cracking a little but she quickly cleared her throat, giving him a smile in return, just as put-on as his was. There was a silence, before she finally decided to just ask “How are you?” while moving her hand over her hair, down to the hair in the band to fiddle with the strands. It was one of a few nervous habits she had, but she wasn’t planning on doing anything about it.