we can do anything

MATEO

Mateo's mouth opens to argue, two points of colour high in his cheeks, because of course Remi is right and he hates admitting it. He isn't a young boy, he's nearly grown up (he wishes), and his ego is taking a thorough bruising all of a sudden in this conversation. Indeed, were he really grown up, the first part of his father's question would have been easily dealt with; nothing more than a scoff and a shrug and a what people do with things I make after they leave is none of my business.

But the second part? The part where someone might break in and steal things from his greenhouse? "Would people really do that?" he asks, half whispering and chewing at the inside of his cheek. "Even if they did not know what they were doing with the things they stole?" That strikes a nerve. Swallowing hard, he nods to his father, officially chastised.

"I guess I was just comparing it to the things that Frey does. They make new things all the time, and they aren't always safe. It is just how nature works, right?"

the earth has music for those who listen

i've got a river for a soul

'Why not?' The alchemist asks with a casual shrug. "Why go to the trouble of sourcing toxins and such from the black markets in Torchline when there are plants available to them just by breaking a window?" As for not knowing? Remi chuckles. "It is very easy to kill someone you know. Mix enough plants together and surely one will do the job." At this their table does earn a few looks, and it's with a stern stare towards those who are eavesdropping that Remi turns his attention back to his son.

"Are you the god of nature, then?" He wonders, and were you to ask, Remi would swear up and down that Mateo got his inflated sense of ego from Ronin and not him. Astute minds might wonder if that's necessarily the case.

MATEO

Remi does have a point there, Mateo folding his hands in his lap (to fidget, naturally), the boy nodding even though he hates the idea that his father is correct. Disliking something doesn't make it any less true, after all. Is he the god of nature, though? Mateo shakes his head hard enough that his curls tumble about his face. "Of course I am not," he mutters. "I have never even met Frey. Everest and I were talking about going to see them, one day."

He raises his eyes back to Remi's face, tilting his head. "Do you want me to get rid of all of my plants?" he asks, because he has to. "Or the dangerous ones, anyway? As long as I can plant them back where they belong, I will do it." And go back and dig them up again when he's old enough, of course.

the earth has music for those who listen

i've got a river for a soul

'Well, then you would be wise not to think you can follow in their footsteps.' Remi points out, before softening considerably. "I know it must not be easy for you, with demigods for parents." He adds, ruffling a hand through his curls. "You are not less capable for being what you are, but you must make your own paths sometimes, rather than following those that we have made." Remi might have said more things that vaguely aimed to be uplifting advice, but hearing that his son wanted to visit Frey had him stiffening in his chair.

"The nature aspect of Frey is...as you might expect. The other aspect though...I would suggest staying away from them as long as you can. Forever, if possible."

Swallowing, Remi looks at his empty glass with disdain. "Mm? Cosa? No, certo che no." Trying to breathe out the tension building in his shoulders, the alchemist extends one of his hands across the table. "I never want you to stop doing something you are passionate about. I only want you to be safe. If that means finding you a laboratory then so be it."

MATEO

Nodding again, the picture of the reprimanded child, Mateo is surprised to hear Remi say it how it is quite like that. Really, though, he ought not be that surprised. "Papa, you can become a manticore and a kraken, and possess people. I am only un ragazzino but even I know that I am less capable than you and Dad," he points out dryly, though he understands, he thinks. Or he does until he's suddenly being told to stay away from one entire aspect of a god.

Head tilting in a gesture likely picked up from Ever, he raises his eyebrows. "Forever?" he repeats, before the inevitable, "But why?" To say it is unlike Remi to completely 'ban' certain things is an understatement.

"Perhaps we can just convert the stock room at the back of the greenhouse," he suggests, for a makeshift lab. "I can move all of the hybrids and dangerous plants back there."

the earth has music for those who listen

i've got a river for a soul

"And yet you justify the things you have been doing by saying that I or Frey would do them." Remi counters, suddenly unsure if now that he is a parent he is meant to be a positive role model all the time.

"Because nearly all of my encounters with them have had terrible implications." Terrible and mostly sexual implications as it turned out; how naive it was to think the pair were done talking about sex for the day. "You need only to look at their choice of demigod to know they are not worth your time." Is this an easy shot at Sunjata? Absolutely it is.

"If you like." Remi says, mildly surprised that Mateo did not want his own lab. As a man who had sold his bed and most of his belongings to make space in his small apartment in Northaven to keep and afford his various experiments, he found his son's lack of enthusiasm shocking. But then as had been made abundantly clear, Mateo was not Remi. 'So long as there is a proper lock on the door, that would be fine.'

MATEO

"But you just said..." Mateo frowns, before giving up and shaking his head, feeling it better to drop the subject than to try and keep making all the wrong points. "Oh." Not having realised that the other aspect of Frey was the terrible implications kind, Mateo nods mostly to himself. The shot at Sunjata is mostly missed on him, given that he has had only limited contact with the Flood in his past, but he understands the implied vitriol.

"Then that is what I will do," he decides, his eyes back out on the skyships drifting through the clouds as they come into port. Perhaps it is because he already sees the greenhouse as his own, having lived there alone for a fair part of his formative years, that he doesn't consider the need to move or to create a new space. Or perhaps he is learning that there are some things that he ought to downplay, to avoid conversations like this one.

"Shall we go and see Dad and Everest?" he asks with a smile, abandoning his half finished drink.

the earth has music for those who listen

i've got a river for a soul

Feeling as though he'd somehow made a mess of things, Remi rubs at one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Ronin and I did not have a very easy time of things when we were growing up. We only want to spare you from things we know will bring you hardships, but...I am not so old that I do not remember what it is like wanting to do things against the advice of others." Gods, he did it now, often in fact.

With a swallowed-down groan, Remi looks at his empty cup, before sighing and nodding. "Yes, that sounds like a good idea." Assuming that the conversation below had gone worlds better than his had, Remi eagerly settled up for their drinks before following his son downstairs where another dumpster fire awaited them.

~FIN