CLOSED ✖ camoflaged by all the fallen leaves a hand holds up the sky while shamefully i make my plea

[mangemouth]

CHARACTERS: mangemouth & ruineaxt.
LOCATION/SETTING: In a tree right on the edge of the forest. Noooot quite in it, yet...
DATE & TIME: Friday afternoon, shortly after classes.
WARNINGS: Smoking, language, p...ossible drug references and such?
SUMMARY: Badou and Shinjiro have a sort of routine: they show up, they smoke, Badou complains about his everyday, mundane

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[mangemouth]

[he swallows that smile (half as difficult as those bitter pills), because Shinjiro's right]

[it's never brought up. sort of ironic that no one ever accepting him and all his twitchesswitches made his big tree the perfect place to be yourself under. he doesn't care about what's in the boy's blood. he only cares about if that blood hits the pavement, when that blood hits the pavement, why it's spilling and what a pretty color it is (the one thing about them that is attractive, maybe)]

Hidin'? [he asks it like he's never thought of that option before!] The heeeell would I hide for? F'I can't breathe, they're gonna hear me pantin' for it, doncha think?

Naw. S'safer if you don't get busted in the first place.

[all Reims really was, was a safe place for him (them) to lay their heads until the streets swallowed them whole again (like they were the bitter little pills).]

[ruineaxt]

Well shit, you got a point there. I'll let you know if I see him coming, then. [For a short moment, he was thankful his own vice was- potentially- much more subtle. No acrid smells or clouds of smoke, clicking of lighters, or the ashes and smouldering bits left behind. At least he didn't have to run out to the edge of the grounds, close to earning an additional detention just for being near the forest, just to get a fix.

...Granted, he came out here anyway. Funny, that.

But it meant less time in the room, less time smothered by people close-by and nitpicking and nagging and reminding him of what all had to be done. Right now he could just stare out at the clouds moving hazily, the track team going in circles, and forget in the almost-comforting scent of secondhand smoke. His lips curled up, subtly, contentedly for a faint moment: it always came so much easier in the quiet euphoria of being strung out.]

How long before they figure out 'bout you coming up here to smoke, you think?

[mangemouth]

[there are leaves in his hair and an earthy smell where his back is pressed into the tree, but nothing could ever wash the miasmic cloak off of him]

[despite nagging and nitpicking, he doesn't actually care -- to get caught by faculty or student, to be punished, to be expelled --]

[...maybe he'd care about expulsion. maybe. if only because the tree has gotten so comfortable.]

Mm'sure they already have.

[worst case scenario, life's true facts.]

Real question is, how long before you think they startin' carin'? Youth today, man... an' the old guys, too. Nobody gives a shit.

[he inhales, long and deep, blackening.]

[ruineaxt]

Point. [There was no way they didn't know. Maybe about Shinjiro, but Badou sweat carcinogens and spat tar. And probably pissed nicotine, who knew. There was no way that the RA or faculty didn't know that he would sneak off to smoke. But Badou was right-- as long as everything else was kept up, there was no reason for them to care. As long as they had nothing to gain from it, they could stay to stalking the network instead of stalking the grounds, leaving their stupid gnarled haven alone.

The inherent humor of them meeting and shooting the shit, talking about nearly everything but both their inevitable self-destruction, under a weathered and battered old tree, was only half-lost on Shinjiro.]

Don't give a shit 'til they have to. Why the hell would they? [His arms folded across his chest, thumb moved idly against the unfelt sore point on the inside of his arm.]

And I kinda doubt it's ever been different. Ain't just today that people look out for themselves first.

[mangemouth]

[from the other side of the tree, with the trunk dividing them, Badou's jaw twitches like it'd been struck and his teeth chattersnap shut]

[no. it ain't just today. but Badou thinks about yesterday, of all those yesterdays some four years ago that he had someone to look out for him, that he'd had someone (whose opinion he actually cared about) telling him to stop smoking and get better and get lost all at once]

[he remembers before, when his eyes were still droopy, but there were two of them, and he could see a tall man with a broad back and the same fiery orange hair without squinting]

[Badou's never asked about the discoloration on Shinjiro's arm, the blue turning to black and abscessing red]

[Shinjiro's never asked about the black shadow over Badou's right eye, what once was green spilled over with that inky, charcoal patch]

Nah, it ain't ever been.

[it's a sober agreement, and the teen grinds his cigarette out in the same spot on the tree's trunk that he always has, where he's started a great welt on the bark