#{ emery fernsby *// 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 }

[thcmpscns]

One thing Dayn could confidently say he sucked at was building routine of any kind. His days before had been spent up way too late, whether it be work or milling about the undesirable places of a sleepy city for entertainment, not sleeping until the sun was well up in the sky the next afternoon. Sometimes he found it in himself to go for runs in early fog, jumping out of the way of morning traffic. Nothing was ever clear, or ever consistent.

This godforsaken place was going to test his patience in more ways than he could anticipate, wasn't it?

He was getting antsy. He purposefully had been keeping to himself as much as possible in the week that he'd already been here, sleep deprived from the voices outside the gas station every night, loud enough to taunt him. Dayn was even convinced they were right up by the second story window, tracing fingers on the dusty glass into shapes just for the heck of it. As Dayn paced back and forth behind the bar, he was in desperate search for coffee. Not coffee liqueur, which he kept seemingly coming across, but actual coffee. "Every kind of liquor under the sun, but we draw the line at coffee," he muttered, before glancing over at the person sitting at the stool - snuck up on him, huh? He thought he was more alert than that, but he was arguably pretty distracted. "What're you looking for?"

[thcmpscns]

It was becoming clearer and clearer by the day that Dayn had to resort back to that survival mode - the one day at a time mentality, otherwise keeping track of days brought different kinds of upset and fear. The first Christmas without family, a birthday passing without your twin - it was an old hurt. It wasn't one in a million years he thought would ever resurface again, but he was adept at pushing that down, which he did in record speed. As soon as the thought entered his mind, it was gone, not to be entertained as a hard and fast rule.

It made him believe he'd actually do well here.

"Don't go outside after dark, and don't be a dickhead to your neighbors?" he said, reciting as best as he could to memory. There was probably more there, but he figured it could be boiled down to those core tenets. "Oh, don't worry, I won't be," Dayn remarked, more sure of himself than he had any right to be, for being so new. "I'm sure everyone's very nice here and all that. But I'm saving my own skin before anyone else's. If I end up in that graveyard, know at least I went down swinging." He took a glass off the stack and gestured it in her direction, a silent offering for a drink if she wanted.

To a newcomer, seven years sounded like a Hell of a long time. She'd been there before. With previous people who had not come to see an escape to this town, not alive at least, with people who were still surviving day by day. Surviving in this town was a gamble of sorts. Every day brought something new and she could never tell what it was. Shaw had been here for fifteen years. Baby even longer. Twenty four years of this Hell, and the kid had no idea about the outside world. She couldn't share that info with Dayn. Not now, not yet. It only invoked stress and irrational behaviors, perhaps not right away - but anyone knowing there was a low percentage chance to make it out of here alive would eventually lose their mind one way or another.

''The spiders here are weird, make sure to pay the clinic a visit. Ask for Shaw, they know what to do.'' The ink on his arm didn't go unnoticed by her in the few seconds it caught her attention, before her eyes went back up to him.

''You've been told the rules about this place, right?'' She didn't need to ask - or else he wouldn't have been here. People who didn't listen either figured out the hard way or didn't make it past day one. New people that arrived into town rarely died on their first day, but it wasn't a never either.

''Look kid, there's things even I don't know about this place. Those things... they cannot die. They're not human, they're something beyond our knowledge. You just make sure to stick to safety rather than bravery. Don't be a hero kid - enough people before you've made that choice already... there's a graveyard in town for a reason.''

[thcmpscns]

"Seven?" he said, the word bursting out from him before he could help it. Lucky for him, his poker face was well practiced, and the only trace of unease could be found within the fact that he spoke at all. He couldn't be stuck here for seven years, or more; he hated that he was here for a week already. Dayn couldn't handle more of his years being stolen from him. He'd already lost four.

He had gone back to his search anyway, that he might be able to find something, even if it wasn't coffee, to keep himself busy and moving. And unlucky for him in this scenario, Dayn did not drink - though the temptation was getting stronger. Hearing that he was in fact the object of her search, he did stop. Habitual suspicion shivered across his brain and he stood straighter, hands on the bar as he raised a brow, urging her to continue. "Got a couple spider bites from the gas station, but I've had worse," he said, the inside of his arm inked with his numerals tattoo and dotted with some slowly healing pinprick bites to prove it. The bruise on his nose was but a shadow now that a week had passed since he tried to fight his way out of the police station on his first night here.

"I wasn't going to ask that," he stated, his voice even and cool in the face of this all. The time to rage was when he was alone. "What are those things? They told me they aren't people. What else would they be?"

Ever since the arrival of her wife, Emery had been feeling less like shit. Giddy, almost. How could she not, after seven years of missing those hazel eyes that she drowned in every time they shared an intimate moment. Seven years of missing having her arms around her that were sheltering her from harm, warming her precious body, holding her like she was the most precious woman on earth. To Emery, she was. Is. She'd do the worst to anyone who'd harm her in this place. Or worse, anything. Because there was nothing that could stop Them.

Either way, she wasn't here to think of the worst case scenarios. She forced the voice in the back of her head to be gone, she damned Nika's words to the pits of Hell.

''Fuck. What I'd do for a good cup of coffee. You think a week without coffee is bad? Try seven years, give or take.'' There was a lightness present in the way she spoke, would be bad to piss the new guy off if all she wanted to do was help him out. She took her hat off and placed it on the counter. Dayn wasn't the first to make work out of exploring the bar and he certainly wouldn't be the last, Emery had seen her fair share of people arrive in town. Enough to know a thing or two about people. Everybody carried their own demons, one way or another, and alcohol could silence those voices yet awaken much worse results. ''You, actually.'' Emery came straight to the point, her arms came to rest on the counter, ''just checking up on how you're settling in. Got any questions that aren't the typical 'how do I get out?' because if I'd known, none of us would've been here, you can trust me on that.''