#neverstrays

      But his funds aren’t even going to last him those presumed two weeks if he is going to keep eating out the way he does this very moment, sitting at the back of one of the only two diners in town, facing the door - watching the townsfolk come in and out as he slowly works down his large cup of coffee and stack of pancakes, drowned in melted butter and vanilla ice cream. He likes small towns like this - in fact, finds he tries to stay out of any major city if he can help it. Perhaps it reminds him of home. Perhaps he just enjoys the peace of it better - people familiar with one another, chatting in low voices. Makes this feel like a real place, like somewhere he can belong - all the while, knowing he cannot.

      The sight of a familiar face walking through the door makes him frown as he cannot quite pinpoint why it is, exactly, that it looks familiar - though it does nothing to wipe the mild smile that seems ever-present on his lips. Someone he hasn’t seen in a while, that much is certain - but there is something he knows about the sharp angles of that jaw and those cheekbones, a very particular shade of dirty blond he’s sure he’s seen before. His gaze follows the man across the room as he slowly shoves another unreasonably large slice of pancake into his mouth.

noah and job both have a cross tattoo thats gay

sometimes she thinks there’s a separate line between the swamps and the rest of the world - like crossing it and stepping into civilization would mean she’d slowly disappear. still she walks, walks for miles on the edge of the road ‘cause sometimes it is nice to step into the scary rest of the world - it reignites the love for home. she does not really need anything, let alone gas — some human contact, perhaps, is all she needs. she picks one pack of batteries for her radio, and sets it on the counter, a smile on her lips. “ i like your tattoo ” .

      It’s been fifty six hours and he is on his second pill, wide awake.

      Tawny, bloodshot eyes turn away from the window to look at the younger man seated before him and, without a word, he takes a sip of his own coffee. Figures --- of course he’s paying for this. In truth, he does not particularly mind - a cup of coffee isn’t quite going to make a dent in his pocket --- but an earlier heads-up would have been appreciated.

      “Sure. That’s fine.” Deep baritone kept quiet and hoarse, he places his own mug back on the table with a sigh. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, is it? Admittedly, this is a small rural town, and this man is not the only one he has encountered numerous times and, admittedly, if he were trying to spy on the Mercenary, he was doing a pretty piss-poor job at it, making himself known at any given time; but there are no coincidences, the Mercenary believes, only vein and foolish people that fail to notice details and patterns.

      “Might as well grab a meal while you’re at it, don’t you think? Fuckin’ starvin’.” Whatever this man might be up to, whether he has figured it out yet or not - that saying still rings true and, suppose, not having any friends at all, he must keep his (potential) enemies even closer. Plucking a greasy menu from the holder at the far end of the table that keeps them upright, his eyes scan over the items listed for something he might want.

      His window-side table at the local Good Eats is not so much a matter of comfort or nourishment as much as it is a matter of stalking his mark. A bacon cheeseburger lays half-eaten in his plate, fries untouched, and he draws his gaze away from the window only as not to appear conspicuous, so that it doesn’t seem as though he’s spying on someone, but merely watching out the window as he is dining alone and requires some source of entertainment. He feels the cold steel of his Beretta press into the small of his back, where it is tucked into the waistband of his sweats, as he straightens his back in his seat; thinks of the M40 equipped with a telescopic sight lying in a duffel bag in the trunk of the tattered Mitsubishi Lancer ‘92 parked around the front of the diner. They make him feel safe. It is then, burger held halfway from the plate to his mouth in both his cartoonishly-large, calloused hands, that he looks up and away into the diner and spots him - the young clerk from the gas station one town over, either merely passing by his booth or having stopped there deliberately (which, exactly, remains to be seen) - meeting his tawny gaze with a blue one of his own. Only half-jokingly, he mutters as he puts his burger back down; “So what, you’re some kinda stalker or somethin’?”

      Tearing the plastic wrap off a fresh pack of blue Lucky Strike, he parks one at the corner of his lips while still at the counter of the gas station convenience store. “'ey, any decent motels ‘round ‘ere?”