Welcome to the First Day of the Rest of Your Life
When night finally rolls around and St. John has apparently given up on tossing Ramon's belongings (or Ramon himself) out into the hall for now, the tall kid figures that that means this is where he's bedding down. At least for tonight.
Despite the other person's grudging allowance of letting him stay in the same room as him, or perhaps because of ( Read more... )
Despite the other person's grudging allowance of letting him stay in the same room as him, or perhaps because of ( Read more... )
However, that does not in any way mean he wants to deal with Ramon crying. "Kid. I am going to shove your head in the toilet." Such is the communicative nature of teenaged boys.
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"S-Sorry..." he mutters miserably, and it doesn't seem he's going to say much more after that. But then!
"A-Aren't you scared, th-though?" He realizes asking this, or even initiating conversation at all might get his head dunked in the toilet anyways, but. "N-Nothing's ever g-going to be the same, St. John. Almost everybody's dying and-...And what are we going to DO?"
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He's not scared, exactly. He's apprehensive, a little, but that's mostly from the idea that things are changing very very rapidly, and the idea that this new world might be one that he fits significantly better into than any version of normalcy is, as with the idea of exploding tanks, both disconcerting and comforting.
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"N-No. That's just it. I don't know wh-WHAT I'm going to do either. I-I can't even g-go outside now without being scared of, you know, them. H-How am I supposed to go on when-? When-?"
There's pause for a whimper, which the shorter boy is sure to love. While St. John is poised for an existence where his power can be more readily and openly used, Ramon, on the other hand, is facing a world where he's now all but crippled by his abilities. Put that on top of the daunting realization that it's the end of the world as we know it, and that more and more people are dying by the second...
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St. John, is, sadly, not the type to bond with...anyone, really, or he'd tell Ramon that's how he felt when he came home to find his house burned to the ground and realized he was probably never going to be able to stop running. His parents had alternately ignored or been openly afraid or loathing of what he could do, but they kept him going anyway, and that was something. When they were gone - dead, or taken by the Shop - it was just him and he had nothing to build his momentum but himself.
He won't say any of this, of course. "Look, right now we can't even leave town." And don't think he's not upset about that. "There's only so many dead people here."
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It's a quiet, flat reply, and it's said in a surprisingly steady tone compared to how Ramon normally talks. He sits up before he continues, staring at the vase of fake flowers across the room instead of at St. John.
"Sometimes? Sometimes they stay in one place. Sometimes they get trapped. But they roam. They seem to even travel thousands and thousands of miles in seconds sometimes. If they want to. If they're looking for something, I guess. Or someplace. Or...Or someone."
The familiar stammer is back and Ramon starts to bunch in on himself a bit more.
"...Sometimes I get scared th-that they look for me. That all of them are trying to find me. Because I-I'm the only that knows they're there. And I'm s-scared of what's going to happen now. With so m-many of them."
This is a great deal more that Ramon has ever said to another person, living OR dead, about his abilities and what he sees and fears. Although it's probably asking too much of St. John to realize that and be flattered. Because it's hard to be flattered at 1 ( ... )
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St. John has absolutely no idea how Ramon's interactions with the dead work, but he has never met a soul he couldn't tell to shut the fuck up, and thus to him this seems entirely reasonable!
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"E-Easy for YOU to say." He sniffles again, which does NOTHING to help him sound any tougher with that 'comeback', such as it is. "It's not-...They don't-...Mmph." He sighs, then tries again.
"If they don't want t-to leave me alone, they won't. Wh-What can I do to them anyways? If I wanted to make them go away? S-S'not like I can beat them up or anything." It's not like Ramon can beat ANYTHING up. Although, he actually has never gotten assertive with the spirits either. Since he prefers the tactic of 'run and scream like a pussy'. As St. John has seen firsthand.
"And if YOU saw what they looked like..."
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Either way, he flips over on his side to actually look at Ramon. "What do they look like?" He's going to regret asking that, probably. Or maybe not, because as a person who has not, in fact, had to view horrible spectres his entire life, the notion of gore is mostly 'zomg cool' to him. Boys. I'll tell you.
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He trails off again, rubbing one of his palms over the opposite arm in a motion similar to his constant sleeve-tugging. "They look dead." There's a little, nervous and weary sound that might have been meant to be a laugh. "They're all different, depending on h-how they died. But they all look dead. They all s-still have the, you know, the wounds from what killed them. Or they look sick and rotten if it was a disease instead ( ... )
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Also there's a little of him that's excited by this. He has no idea what happens after a person dies, and he's never really stopped to think about it, but the idea that one can A) still go on and B) still harass the living, sounds from this vantage point pretty awesome. Ramon better hope St. John never dies, or he's going to be the most annoying haunting in the history of ever.
Thankfully, he finds this too much effort to explain to his new roommate and as such just makes a non-committal little 'huh,' noise. Can't have Ramon thinking he's impressed or anything. "So if you did tell them to shove it and they didn't, you wouldn't be any worse off than you are now." Oh, St. John, how little you know.
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"I've run into, um, angry ones before. They're-...They're awful. Or the ones that-...I think the ones that have been here too long, instead of, you know, going to heaven or...or whatever. They're the ones that stop acting like people."
There's a pause as he considers what else to say. It almost feels good to tell someone else about all of this, and bonus points that it's a person that believes him. Even though his lack of eloquence doesn't make for very good descriptions. Then again, if he was, St. John might wind up with some severe nightmare fodder.
"...There was an angry one ch-chasing me. When I ran to catch up with, um, you guys in the truck." He says this very plain, as though it explains a lot. And it does.
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"I thought it was the pleasure of my company." Syrupy, palpable sarcasm there. Since there's apparently going to be no sleeping ever agoddamngain, he sits up, swings his leg over the edge of the bed and rubs his eyes. Clearly he will need a cigarette to deal with this. Or possibly two. Or a carton.
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Ramon looks down at the blankets over his knees, picking at a fraying thread on the topsheet. He hasn't realized that St. John's getting cigs yet, or he might very, very timidly protest. Smoking in a closed room can get...smokey.
"I think they resent me too sometimes. That I'm still alive and they're not. They're all so different sometimes and h-hard to predict. So I just...want to stay away from all of them."
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"That's not gonna get any better." He says, clearly making every effort to soothe Ramon! "I'd get used to the living being that way too." Cigarettes found, he taps one out and brandishes his lighter. "They're dying. We're not."
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"Y-Yeah. Not that that's going to last long, though." There's a pause when he considers what he just said, and how that sounds. "I-I meant them. Not us. They won't be...dying much longer. Pretty soon, they'll-...yeah." He'd say something about their suffering ending soon, but he knows better than that. Although maybe that one on the plane WAS right; maybe the dead ARE the lucky ones this time.
"St. John? What, um, was it then about the people in the, um, suits? The ones back in the airport that you were telling me about?" Ramon's talked about his personal boogeymen this long; let's move onto St. John's, shall we?
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