#lautrui

     the grey cloak moves a step closer. he hasn’t been standing there long --- his quiet comes from practice and habit, and the cloak is for privacy, not spying. he drops his hood, and the light catches the metallic gleam of his right hand.   “it’s all right. it’s just me.”

crowds and close quarters of a plane always put an itch in the back of alejandro’s teeth that he sees glimmer back at him from kate’s eyes, but he’s learned that if someone is going to kill you they won’t try it at an airport. no one person is important enough for the effort. the boredom these days usually saturates his bones, leaving him a half-asleep guard dog who is just looking forward to going home.

it’s stranger with kate in the seat next to him. the same feeling of a commute home at the end of a long day is punctuated by knowing that his dogs will be happier to see kate than they are to see him (they always are; he doesn’t blame them), by knowing that for the first time in a remarkably long time, his apartment will have more than one human in it.

it’s not anxiety. not exactly. it’s a kind of simmering neighbour to it, poking and prickling at his other, more inoperable neuroses. his elbow nudges against hers the whole time and wheels finally hitting tarmac is like letting a breath out - another breath in for unloading bags and getting through the airport. a breath out for moving away from el dorado and towards the inner city. 

a breath in when he sees the facade of his apartment, shifting his bag up over his shoulder. he has a long list of particular opinions about american food and is thinking, as much as anything else, about his distinctly non-american home, with its locally sourced coffee, with its local beer from nearby microbreweries because soitude has afforded him time to become a snob.

memes, accepting

“ breakfast. ” he replies, rubbing cold hands together and parking himself on the curb. above them, the sky turns another shade of muted orange. around the corner, a pup eyes their backs. 

she says it warm and a little ironic, something that feels in temperament like a gentle elbow from a distance. lou, bundled up in a sling against sam’s chest, fusses a little in answer. skepticism doesn’t always bleed into everything sam does or says, but people are naturally stubborn, including him; he hasn’t managed to shuck all his bad habits like corn or a jacket.

“sorry,” he says. someone else would manage to joke that’s just my voice, born sounding like everything’s doomed. in his interior world, sam thinks he’s pretty funny. but he’s is too well adjusted to impermanence and talking to himself, the assumption that there’s not a lot of value in trying to make himself heard.

those kinds of habits die hard, too. the ones left over from being raised by someone who seemed more obliged than actually loving. he’s been reading books, trying to be the best dad he can be, and you aren’t born naturally believing you ought to be quiet. so lou gets all of sam’s bad jokes, all his commentary.