@amaranthinepride / starter call.

His eyes flick to Job’s face as he curses, Adam’s hand outstretched and frozen as his eyes quickly try to read Job’s expression for an answer to a question that keeps dying in his throat. But the pinched expression is just tension, anxiety and fear. Adam quickly rushes into Job’s space, as he rests a gentle hand on Job’s shoulder in the brief moments between Job’s stuttered explanations.

He takes the chance to wipe the white sweater against Job’s brow, spreading the blood out of his eye more than getting rid of it but easing his own tension at seeing the wound cut deep into the brow instead of something more vital. He can’t hear Job until seconds after he has spoken, everything in Adam concentrated on wiping the blood away that he almost has to return to his body, shoulders achingly tense and body shivering with a bloody sweater fisted in his hand. 

“W-we can-.” But Job answers himself and Adam feels like part of his body shifts, like he isn’t in the room at all, only his body is. He can’t help. He doesn’t know how to help. 

Then Job turns sad eyes and cheeks covered in tears towards him and Adam moves as Job’s words wash over him. His shoulders blades feel wound together as he scrambles to his half-packed bag, throws the sweater inside and zips it up, slipping it onto one shoulder and quickly turning and rushing back to Job, grabbing his hand confidently and moving towards the door.

He can do this. Stay with Job. But between confident heartbeats, he’s flickering gently, solid, able to hang on, but moments of opacity company a coil of cold in his chest.

As he follows Job swiftly out the door, he doesn’t remember the camera on the nightstand holding all the photos he took; some of tiny brown birds swarmed on the pile of seeds he’d set down for them, of plants splashed with different colours newly bloomed or just about to, of old shops with windows cluttered with secondhand items, clothes and figurines and some photos containing parts of him, blurred and spread across the film, but together could form his own shape. 

Memories he made himself that he forgets as the door clicks shut behind them.

She nods silently and walks out and around the barn to the spigot on the outside of the barn, snatching a bucket and water on the way. She sets the bucket under the tap and turns it on, then she heads up her tower, grabbing the dish soap from inside before heading down again. It’s when she’s halfway down the steps that she didn’t argue against doing what he said. She stomps down the rest of the steps. 

She’s often caught off guard by kind people. She’d rather people were mean to her so she knew where she stood with them. With kind people she complies to quickly and then spends the rest of the time waiting for the other shoe to drop. She justifies Job’s kindness with her having agreed to pay him as she adds the dish soap into the bucket, bringing it back into the barn and picking up a rag on the way.

“I’ll clean it from now on, you just show me how.” She makes to grab the phone as she sets the bucket between them.

hear yee hear yee: i am starting a new day job tomorrow which means i’m not going to be as available on here for a while!!! i won’t be around to answer messages as frequently as i have been and though things are generally going to run on a queue i am still going to favor some threads over others. same goes for wes’ blog (though the activity there is a mess to begin with). please stay tuned as i figure my shit out!