the default.

jane reaches up and pulls her hair into a ponytail, but leaves her baseball cap on. white plastic gloves materialize; jane applies them, and moves further into the apartment, as if drawn to the blood.

if viktor is really dead, jane may mourn them later. probably will, if she's honest. she has a number of words for them, and while many are nowhere in the ballpark of kind, she theorizes that life without them will be dull. not dull in the way it was before she met them - this will be a resonant blankness, made worse because she has, in the course of knowing viktor, grown unused to it, and may never grow used to it again.

if viktor is really dead.

jane leans over the body, hands on her knees, and watches for breathing. she feels like a pair of hovering eyes. "well," she whispers, "since you've gone and died, viktor, i suppose you won't mind my retrieving the mailbox parts you stole from me. i have to, really, so that i'm not implicated here. you understand." a gloved hand pats viktor's still warm cheek. jane pretends not to notice the anomalous temperature. she's in the mood to be nice. viktor's been nice too, really.

the fry in lana's mouth then drew his eye. he had been avoiding it - avoiding watching her reaction to the text thread so that he would not need to formulate his own reaction. he considered himself lucky, expression wise - his scowl was near ever-present, and served as something of a catch all, and it stayed printed on his face like newsprint as lana's voice called to attention their server and - will could only speculate, given they too were obscured in booths - the occupants of several surrounding tables.

jane also prefers not to overestimate her own discernment. viktor cannot catch her slipping.

"no, you're so right. and you really don't need to be approachable! i mean, i'll handle it." jane had already been planning to handle it. "people are, like, so not accepting enough of mullets and big cocks these days. tragic."

besides, she has heard the stories. easy enough to cast jude as their central figure. were she not begging for table scraps via false idols, she might have considered a role in production.

all of will that is possessed of the notion that he doesn't have to be an addict is sure that he prefers friendship to client status, and that if caleb were to stop doing business with him, that would not be the end. it's a nice thought. will doesn't trust himself, and for that reason doesn't trust the thought in its entirety, but his inner world is quiet enough at the moment that he doesn't go chasing that issue.

she seems so fragile, even when she's like this. she isn't, he knows, but that is what keeps his tongue still - flick's precarious existence. if an apology infuriates her (though it isn't the apology, is it? it's just him, existing in space she has designated hers) what else can he say? what else might it do, might she do?

he finds a place to fall into, and he falls. he doesn't drag gunner with him no matter how much he might like to do just that, except that he's drunk and thinking about not looking, and one hand snakes out and catches gunner's sleeve, pulling him closer. "your features aren't flawed," he points out, matter of fact as he tugs.

then he remembers the earlier order, and his hand falls away. his head falls back - this is a couch. he's on a couch. does that make sense geographically? will looks around, and then shrugs off this question entirely.

the silence between them stretches and aches; hollows out the walls in her chest until all she can hear are bloodied beats. their splintered childhood throttles. he reminds her of something she can no longer stomach; their estrangement placed upon this table before them. "you can go out, i'm allowed to be left alone," she offers a laugh: contorted and hereditary. she is always in this house, even when she is not here, heaving until she tastes the cracked paint that peels in the bathroom: locked and rotting. she wavers, fingers pressing into the grooving of the fork, playing with her food,- "i'm not going to turn it into a drug den." it spills bitter, bile producing. she's always been angry, biting down on the bad dog that holds in the back of her throat, slowly, carefully.

this isn't really a day off. he'd picked up a shift that morning, too early, and there goes his time for the week, because now at the doorstep of his evening is this bullshit. (but it's understandable bullshit, he reminds himself, in the seconds after biting back. it is bullshit lying on something of a foundation).

"sorry," he says, not entirely gentle but closer to his usual. "but i'm feeling antisocial. so." he shrugs, though his shoulders barely rise.

the thing is that all of this is true, but as jude says it he also happens upon the fact that yeah, he doesn't want flick out of his sight for too long. long pauses spell death now. his worry is not entirely indifferent to the house, but it isn't focused on it, either. jude doesn't know how to say any of this without raising flick's hackles further, which is clear after a few moments of trying to thread the needle of that sentence.

warmth pools in his feet, shoved into a pair of thudding black boots, when adam looks back at him. sean loves being looked at. paid attention to. noticed. another genetic trait, one sloane cloned off of him like a cell. "yeah." his smile's reached his eyes by this point, everything about sean openly genuine. he could feel so much, just not in the ways that mattered. that's what a high school girlfriend had told him once. "i don't usually have to ask twice, my guy," stifling a giggle, proud of himself at the brag, sean projects taller than he is sometimes. "nah, i just. don't like being a burden and all." it's true. the same reason so much of his check goes to groceries - why he still lives in the trailer long paid off with his sisters and mom. why he slept on the couch that whole summer when sloane had just started high school and threw the big fit about needing space. why he did it again for fia.

that adam's happiness is tentative out of habit is irrelevant, except when it occurs to adam that his energy might give sean the wrong idea. but it hasn't yet - because, at least in some respects, they are alike.

"i like hearing you ask," he says. expression is almost a smirk now, but doesn't quite make it there. his eyes dart sean's way and stay there, sharing the joke for what it is. "but you're right. you don't have to ask twice."

they tumble into their booth, adam arranging his legs under the table and accidentally (though it is no great loss) brushing sean's under the table. this pulls a smile from adam, though the smile is directed at the surface of the table, and is gone by the time the bartender reaches them.

their drinks arrive. adam tends toward beer; tonight is no exception. he puts his hand around the condensation and sits in the quiet until sean breaks it, and adam looks up.

he'd like to give cassie a more proper hug now, but that moment has passed. they're going to catch up. levi stands, and he listens. beer, wine, white claws, vizzys, james' bourbon.

and then a question. "uh. i'll take a beer, yeah." he moves a step in the direction of the kitchen before he recalls that this isn't his place at all, and he is not a newcomer but also might as well be in the here and now no matter what he feels, and he stops.

will should opt out of analyzing this, which could be helped along by the vodka. his gaze reluctantly trails away from gunner and down to the bottle. and will chews on gunner's question, all the while wishing they were closer (physically and otherwise).

then he catches on the thing gunner had said earlier about the parole officer, and who knows how many beats too late will's shaking his head. "he's- nah. nah, fuck him. you don't wanna talk to him. man's a shit fuckin' storyteller, anyway." a frown. "i'm assuming. you got glasses?"

and then, a hopeful afterthought, warm as an offer of food (and it's here that will gives himself away a little): "you want some?"

her eyes open suddenly - meeting with the sun overhead, and a hand automatically slaps over her face, spots dancing alongside lick of fire and stroke of firework and all the falling stars she'd so heavily dreamt about. her head already hurts - a dull ache that's only amplified by every movement thus far - but she tilts it anyway to peer between fingers at the shadow above her.

"aw, shucks - does it look like i've fallen from the heavens?" kira can't imagine what she looks like - nothing too great, surely, grass sticking out through loosened braids and the blood of that grass staining the knees of her jeans. on top of it all - her stomach rumbles once, twice - three times.

he feels around in his pocket.

no wallet. car keys are gone too. his mouth flatlines.

no headache either, though. not that will's an optimist by any stretch, but that is something.