[ accidental visual / location: Osten ] || the bitterness of one who's left alone

[child_of_none]

Walter stirs under the jacket and pokes his head out. It seems too early, it's far too quiet for it to be time to wake yet, but then it hasn't stopped him in the past. He likes the quiet, without the other boys to avoid and the timing needed to make sure he gets his spot at the table, or by the window, or...most any place he's found and tried to

Comments

[visual]

[selfmadman]

He'd managed two glasses of rye before it stopped being a release and became a reminder--before he could feel the past keenly as the whisky's burn. Smoking's less treacherous and he's been doing it for hours, pacing the office listening only to his footsteps and the flow of the air in and out of his lungs.

It's a while before he responds to the broadcast.

"Hey." The man onscreen looks a little rough around the edges: unshaven, his tie crooked. He draws on his cigarette with unusual intensity. His voice, though, remains calm--faintly dazed, but calm. "You just get here?"

[visual]

[child_of_none]

He had been busy going through the pockets of the coat, and at the sudden interruption he flinches away from it, dropping both coat and the leather bound book hidden inside it as if burned. They aren't his, he shouldn't be touching them, he knows this, but he couldn't help it.

Settled in front of the tablet now, he switches his attention to something else. "I'm sorry," he mumbles in a rush on the chance the things belong to the man on the other side of the screen, eyes cast downwards to avoid the disapproving look he knows should be there. From what he can see of the man he's not much different than the men who would visit his mother; disheveled, the same look of simultaneous contentment and disgust. Walter writes him off as one of Them, but it's no reason to ignore his manners. "I don't know. This isn't New York?"

[visual]

[selfmadman]

Don raises his eyebrows, studies the glowing tip of his cigarette. Of course. He's been trying to shake Dick Whitman, scrub him off and smoke him out, and here's another kid too scared to raise his voice above a whisper.

"It's a little bit New York," he says, wry but not unsympathetic. "Somewhere there's a deli."

He takes another drag of his cigarette, streams smoke through his nose. "You're in a city by the name of Taxon. Go ahead"--a careless wave, the cigarette caught in his fingers--"and look through the coat."

[visual]

[child_of_none]

He eyes it covetously, almost as if he's already decided it's his despite his next words, but keeps his distance from it, giving Don a doubtful look. "...But it's not mine." It's half question, half statement; he assumes the other man knows more about the situation because he is an Adult, but at the same time he doesn't remember having a coat like this one. And adults aren't always right. "Nobody will mind?"

[visual]

[selfmadman]

He gives a slight shake of his head, lets out a gust of air too leaden to pass for laughter. "No. Finders keepers," he adds, amusement glinting beneath the name of that childhood law. Don raises a cautioning finger. "Just this once."

He sits back in his chair, idly eying the tablet. "I'll answer questions when you're ready."

[visual]

[child_of_none]

It's clear by the darting glances from the coat to the street and back to the screen that he still doesn't entirely trust the words, but he nods solemnly anyway. If it becomes a problem it isn't his fault; he was told it was okay. 'Finders keepers,' and while he is reluctant to trust a man who relies on things kids say (he can't help but think he only said it because he's a kid, and he's never liked being talked down to), it's still true. "Okay

[visual]

[selfmadman]

Meanwhile, Don smokes: burns through one cigarette and lights another by its embers. He keeps an eye on the boy but doesn't pay much mind to his inventory of the coat's pockets--he's drifting between now and a then that's far too close. Dick Whitman's fear and doubt cling to him like a set of too-tight clothes.

He takes his time in answering the question, plucks a tobacco flake from his tongue. "No," he sighs. It's a glitch. He can't say that. "None of us do. But you're alive, you're not alone, and this won't last forever."

Though it might feel like it.

"What's your name?"

[visual]

[child_of_none]

It's not being here that worries him. He's endured worse, and in comparison it's not all that bad. Sure, he's by himself in a strange city he's never heard of, but he's wished for similar before. He's more concerned about having to go back, although he had assumed as much anyway.

Of course, it doesn't help that the man's words echo things he's heard more often in the past year than he really cared to. Adults always say things like that, and it rarely sounds sincere. Despite his misgivings, he answers anyway.

"Walter Kovacs." A pause as he considers, brow furrowed in thought, calculating and sorting what he knows even now, and the silence stretches for some time before he continues. He's a little more certain this time, the backbone he hides most of the time starting to creep in now that he's on slightly better footing. "Are you a shrink?"

[visual]

[selfmadman]

It's a little grotesque, the way Don laughs--his control fractures, then snaps; the laugh rings out like a slap. The hand in which his cigarette rests drops heavily to the desk.

"Are you kidding?"

[visual]

[child_of_none]

The sudden explosion of sound without warning, coupled with the shift in position, ruins what little confidence he had managed to gain, and Walter flinches back again, although he does his best to curb the impulse for all the good it does. The laugh, for that's what the sound was, after all, grates, sets his teeth on edge, and even if he knows it isn't at him, not exactly, it cuts just the same as the others.

It makes him bold, for the moment, anyway, and while he knows better than to talk back to adults, his fists clench in his lap in response, although he doesn't move.

"You talk like one," he comments, not quite accusatory.

[visual]

[selfmadman]

Don raises a hand to his face, rubs his eyes. Lifts the cigarette to his lips for another slow drag. "Least I don't look like one," he mutters under his breath.

"I'm in advertising." His gaze shifts back to the tablet; he looks squarely at the boy. Walter. "I make commercials." Though he's uttered them countless times the words sound false, strangely hollow, to his ears.

[visual]

[child_of_none]

"On television," he says for clarification, but it's really at least half question. He meets Don's gaze mostly out of determination, stares openly as if evaluating him. "What kinds?"

[visual]

[selfmadman]

"TV," he affirms with a nod. "On the radio and in print too."

Spare, simple facts. Like feeling for the wall of a darkened room. "We sell soda pop, breakfast cereal, car parts." His mouth twists into a smile--wry but gentle, no mocking edge to it.

"Floor wax."

[visual]

[child_of_none]

A pause as he considers this, but he has nothing to contribute, so he discards the topic as quickly as he started it.

"You said this won't last forever." Another question hidden behind a statement because there are just so many questions and he's not sure how to word them all, or if he's even allowed to ask them.

[visual]

[selfmadman]

Don's only reaction to the conversational about-face is an exhalation of smoke, protracted and deliberate. He watches as it curls and dissipates. "That's right," he says flatly, neither encouraging nor discouraging. "It'll be over before you know it."

Three weeks. A dizzying sense of revulsion takes hold of him. He crushes the cigarette in an ashtray already overflowing with butts.

"I need to get out of here," he rasps, swiping a hand across his mouth. His eyes flicker almost furtively to something out of the tablet's range, then return to the boy. He gets to his feet. "You want breakfast?"

[visual]

[child_of_none]

The answer only prompts more questions, what will be, and how will it be over, and will that mean he will have to go home at the end of whatever it is that's going on. He chews his lip in thought, brow furrowing almost comically as he thinks it all over, but the moment is passed before he can get any of them out, with a new question to take its place.

Walter regards Don with no small confusion, and almost says no because the idea of charity is so distasteful before he remembers it's been hours since he's eaten. Not as long as he's gone in the past, but longer than he's usually had to wait of late. And the man's been nice, it would be rude to refuse regardless of his suspicions. He nods, and climbs to his feet, journal tucked away under one arm for safe keeping as he reaches for the tablet to bring it along. "Sure." Not that he has any idea of where he'll be going. Or where breakfast can be found. Both are momentarily irrelevant; he's decided he dislikes the alley and would like to be almost anywhere else.