The Excalibur Chronicles: Camelot Rising

Chapter Two - The Sword In The Park

A/N (17/06/14): I revised the first chapter and chopped it up a bit (at the most excellent advice of @ELatimer) and so if you've read the old verseion, I seriously recommend reading the new one, otherwise this is going to seem like I'm repeating myself. Enjoy! And thank you to all my new followers and the people who are watching this story <3 

---------------------

CHAPTER TWO - THE SWORD IN THE PARK

“Without stopping to read what was written on the stone, Arthur pulled out the sword at a touch…”

Adam Blythe collapsed onto a park bench and slid down it until his head hit the back and his long legs were stretched out far in front. “Another job interview bites the dust,” he said to no one but himself and a couple of pigeons nearby.

He knew he wouldn’t get it. He had been twenty minutes late, completely flustered and very much the wrong person for the job. He wasn’t too upset, not really. His father had been the one to suggest the position, and it felt like from the moment he’d stepped into the office building, his father was an inescapable presence; men in sharp, tailored suits, with cold glances and all the sensitivity of a rotting grapefruit.

Okay, maybe the last one was just his dad.

They’d said that they needed someone a little more reliable for the Stock Exchange. Someone…grounded, with experience, a head for numbers. Or at least someone who’d buttoned his shirt up right.

Adam untucked that shirt now and loosened his tie, which felt like a noose around his neck. He was restless; pent up energy coursed through his body and he couldn’t fathom why. He’d spent the whole interview bouncing his leg up and down and shifting in his seat. He’d put the edgy feeling down to not wanting to be there, to not wanting to be scrutinised and pulled apart and judged, but now…now he was in the open air, with the last of the evening sun shining on him and he still felt like his skin was crawling.

It was definitely the suit. He was obviously completely allergic to business-wear.

He pulled out his phone to see one message from Clara, asking him how the interview had gone. Didn’t get it, he replied quickly, absently surveying the park around him. Not boring enough.

She didn’t reply, but he didn’t expect her to. Unlike him, his best friend was happily employed. Alright - happy might have been a stretch, but she was employed, and she certainly didn’t have his father breathing down her neck. Besides, they were meeting later anyway.

He was dreading the news of his failed interview getting to his father. It was times like these that he wished that he had his own place and that he didn’t still live at home. And then another part of him (albeit much smaller) never wanted to leave. There was so much comfort and familiarity in his bedroom - the same bedroom he’d had for nineteen years - with its outdated artex ceiling, covered in glow in the dark stars his mother had put there and a faded Digimon poster.

It was probably time he took them down but he didn’t really have the heart to. His mother had put the stars up when he was a kid and there was so little of her left in the house that he felt duty bound to preserve the traces of her that lingered. His father was very much of the attitude out of sight, out of mind. He grieved by letting go. Adam grieved by holding on, keeping a tight grip of those precious memories, the ghost of her being there so he didn’t forget that she had been.

 He kept the poster up because, well, Digimon was awesome.

 But still, comfort aside, living with his dad’s constant pressure to find a real job and the dreaded do something with your life lecture was starting to drain him. Their relationship had never been perfect but if he had to endure his dad telling him that being a writer wasn’t a viable job any longer, he was probably going to bludgeon the old man to death with his laptop.