i remember when your head caught flame.

he figured that it would be a quick nod of the head and be done with the conversation but when he mentioned his skateboard and how well kept the neighbourhood was he couldn’t help but grin, looking down at his board. “well, i probably shouldn’t be skating period.” he said with a shrug. “i’m a nurse, need both legs and all that.” he shook his head, flicking the ash from the cigarette away from the other. “i just moved here. are the neighbours that bad?”

he hadn’t really talked to many people here, he wasn’t very great at making friends but he figured getting on good graces with his neighbours was the way to go. when she offered lunch he didn’t really know what to say, they didn’t know each other from adam but he was hungry and he needed to run errands around town anyway. “okay.” he said, grabbing his board and holding it under his arm. “you don’t have to pay though.” he was never great with people offering to pay for him. 

elias had just gotten back from his interview at the hospital, he was now sitting outside of his new home on the steps smoking a cigarette while he looked down at his schedule for the next week, his phone in his other hand going through his contacts, hovering over his dad’s old number. sometimes he still called it. sometimes he allowed himself that the ringing would eventually stop and someone would be on the other line to pick up. no one ever did. he dialled one of his at home healthcare patients switching up times around on his days off and by the time that he finished he had gotten up again and grabbed his board, not having skated in a while, he was a little rusty. he wanted to explore more of his neighbourhood but the overwhelming feeling of his first day here was overpowering it. he had grabbed his board and started walking back, nodding his head along to a person that he passed, “neighbour,” he said, only assuming that they lived close by. @covestarters​

being here was weird now, with tainted memories of having visited as a child. but whatever problems he had he always figured it out with a run. it’s hard not to think about the life that he could have had before everything had gone down. but he finally unpacked all of his running gear and decided to go out for a jog before his interview at the hospital. he had done his stretches fairly quickly a little antsy to just get going. by the time he had actually started running he usually got himself into the zone, often forgetting about what was around him. the collision was to be expected, two people who didn’t look where they were going. fortunately, he didn’t end up falling, but he was breathing hard from the momentum and he had looked over at the other person and nodded his head, placing his hands over his head to open up his lungs. “it’s fine,” he says, feeling like he’s been saying that a lot here, “i wasn’t either.”

elias was running around town getting some last minute things that he had forgotten to buy before the big move. he had a meeting at the hospital later to figure out his employment status but had some time to kill to get a cup of coffee. he had been waiting in line for a while, still trying to wake up; he didn’t sleep very well in new places and felt like he looked like he needed coffee. he had kept to himself most of the time, noticing that people were extremely friendly, something that he had been used to in his small town but it felt different here and he didn’t really know what to do about all of that. safe to say, he wasn’t really paying attention until scalding hot coffee gets dumped on him. “oh fuck.” he says, looking down at the mess, not as surprised as the person who had done it. he had looked up at the woman and then back down at his clothes that he was going to be wearing for his interview. “it’s...” he says, smelling the strong hit of coffee, “it’s fine.” he shakes his head reaching out for the napkins that were being handed to him by the woman at the till. “it’s fine.” he understood all too well about night shifts, but he didn’t want to tell her that. he would just have to run back home and change.