#halfshells

          Duck whittles a stick and prattles on about his horses, his chickens, his pigs and his sheep. Some don’t sleep well and scream at night, some are chewing up his fence posts. The truck’s broke so he’ll have to take the Appaloosa into town, the pretty dapple grey, and see a man about a part. Duck dips the brim of his hat and gives pause, the natural pout of his mouth turning up at the edges.         “Hm, might just be.” The little penknife resumes peeling strips from the stick. “Ain’t a single song left unwritten, just the ones we ain’t heard yet.”

          Walter, unsurprisingly, is lacking in emotional vocabulary so this is a touch hard for him. His words tend to be short and blunt and grossly Southern, just like the rest of him, but they are at least genuine. He means what he says. “I been stagnant, Joey,” he firmly rebuts after wrestling for words. There’s a marked conviction there, clearly Walt has been doing some thinking on his down time. “Wail, I’ve come to see that don’t do much good for nobody. I been made aware of my ways.”

 ‘ we. are. going. out. ’ each word is punctuated with a clap, mark practically levitating out of his seat at the first sign of nadia. he hasn’t thought far enough ahead as to where they will be going, but god help him he is getting his ass out of this apartment. he’s been too alone with his own thoughts lately, it’s about time he had better company. 

.meme_response{ source: the-mist;status: accepting; }

elliot likes nadia. it’s the kind of thought he doesn’t have often. it’s not that he doesn’t like people, at all, ever. it’s just that liking them is hard when you know more about people than they tell you, know their scars before they’ve healed enough to show. he knows more about her than she’d be happy for him to know. maybe it doesn’t matter that he knows what her discover weekly on spotify looks like right now. all the same, he shouldn’t know. he scratched the itch and now he misses it. she has facebook but doesn’t post there, but she scrolls like everyone else. i know this and there are other people who know it too. people complain, sometimes, they make statements, but at the root of it nobody cares, not enough to change anything. the success of any protest is dependent on how long you can stomach before you have to start tweeting about it.

— but i like nadia. she has a presence. it’s not hostile, not in the way that some people can be hostile. elliot wants to talk to her, and he couldn’t – wouldn’t – say that about everyone.

“i will.” the tail end of fall is maybe not the best time to visit coney island – it’s brisk and chilly and the wind is whippet-sharp, cutting like flint, like glass – but elliot doesn’t mind. is that a smile? maybe. he digs his hands deeper into the pocket of his hoodie. “thanks, nadia.” there’s a space on the bench between them. he makes it smaller. (she posts art on her instagram. i could have read her text messages, but i didn’t.) “do you want these?” on the boardwalk he’d been accosted by someone from a candy store and had a small paper bag of fudge stamped with the store’s name pressed into his reluctant grip. he’s been fidgeting with it in his hoodie pocket ever since; he offers it to her now, slightly more crumpled than it had been when it went in there. “don’t really have - uh, a sweet tooth.” if i was a different person, maybe i’d say, you look like you do. or maybe i wouldn’t. is it flattering to be told you look like you like candy? is it flirting? presumptuous? rude?

eleanor  sits  with  her  legs  dangling  from  the  balcony.   dragging  her  key  across  the  metal  bars,  watching  the  others  come  and  go.   there’s  a  distinct  pattern  in  the  sort  of  people  who  pass  through:  truckers,  a  sea  of  flannels  and  baseball  caps,  people  do  not  want  to  be  seen  or  heard.   only  one  aside  from  herself  that  doesn’t  quite  fit  with  the  others.   

“  was  that  your  dad?  ”   she  doesn’t  mean  to  speak  at  all,  it  comes  unprompted.   a  bad  habit,  she  hasn’t  managed  to  leave  it  behind  just  yet.   “  he  looks  creepy.   i  mean  most  people  here  are.   but  a  different  kind  of  creepy,  you  know?  ”

you starters // accepting i am BEGGING you 

“I’m already there.”

Literally, she was already going to be there, for all intents and purposes--Spirit sniffs out parties like a dog sniffing for scraps, or a drug dealer looking for business.

you starters // accepting i am BEGGING you 

“I don’t have cable.” 

She says this as if defending herself from the greatest offense, which insinuating Spirit has not seen all of the horror movies is. The disgust on her face has nothing to do with the blood on Amy or the cops they’ve narrowly--and perhaps temporarily--ditched.