#v;heathen thing borne from dirt and desolation

[vastiitas]

nap time pt 2, ft el hermano, el moco- @quick-drawn lkasdjfk slappin it on here as per requested

[vastiitas]

Colt's tear-bleary face finally erupts out from beneath the blankets, eyes all heated and pointy, but the jab of irritation falls short with that soppy dress of red-tint and puff-bloat. Fabric rustles in the beats of quiet. Cole nurses a frown, squashed brows, and a gaze that just sinks into all the little signs of grief that wedges itself onto Colt like a damn shadow.

The irritation, he thinks, is better than nothing. So, he stabs a flag into it and calls it victory; capitalizes on it as Colt's hand knock into his shoulder.

He drawls, unsympathetic, and swings his foot up onto the bed and punches his heel into the other's knee, "Y'got two, ain't you?"

Oh...right.

Cole still can't drive stick. He's sure supplies and feed are running low — they were before the world flipped upside down some days ago, he can only imagine now...

— but the thought is interrupted by something akin to an EARTHQUAKE as the other falls to the springy mattress, Colt tugging back on the blanket as it's pried away from him. The prod prompting what could easily be considered an overly-sensitive "OW" from Colton, if it wasn't actually one of his eyes the other shoved a finger into. But it does also get him to finally throw the covers from over his head, if only to shoot Cole an irritated, pointed look. Hands quickly move to rub at aching eyes, unsure if it was due to the finger that just jabbed at him, the drastic change in lighting or the fact that he's been crying for the past who-knows-how-long.

There's a few moments of silence between the two before hands finally drag down his face with a huff.

"Air is air...ain't no fresher on th'porch than through that window." it's grumbled in a fit of irritability before he finally sits up into a slump, brushing at his stuffy nose with a wrist. " — an' definitely not in th'barn..."

He looks over to Cole, gaze narrowing ever so slightly before both hands quickly move to SHOVE at his nearest shoulder. "An' that was my EYE, asshole. Neither one'a us will be able t'drive if y'turn me blind."

[vastiitas]

@quick-drawn

They sit in the aftermath of it, collapsed in the dirt after having been run off from the premises for starting shit with some dung-pile ridden asswipes posturing too much with their seedy little guns and their vest-covered chests all puffed out like the regalia had meant something. Cole squints at Colton beneath a smatter of upturned mud and strands of uprooted grass, hair blown to disheveled angles that leaves his forehead exposed; it glistens with sweat, dilutes the dirt amongst smeared rivulets, wets the crumpled ridges of knit brows.

And then he launches out an exhale, collapsing back-first into the sun-baked earth. Pebbles meet his shoulder blades. There's a stupid grin peeling at his lips as he drags the heel of his palm against his forehead, along his screwed-shut eyes; some sorta adrenaline laughter that knocks his breathing to a stuttered rhythm.

"Sure," and maybe he's fucking giggling because he isn't going to get the visual of Colt getting angry out of his mind any time soon. Fuck, he doesn't know why, but it's a funny fucking sight when it isn't directed at him, "Anyone ever tell you that you look like a fucking gorilla who got their banana stolen from 'em when y'get like that?"

There's a bruise in his chest that clatters against the snicker. His grin aches against the warmth of the sun. His voice is pinched breathless, "Like somebody pissed in your cereal."

[vastiitas]

"people don't change. you know that."

Fists clenched to white knuckles, his eyes fling up to Colt's. Heat flashes.

You know that rattles around like an acrid condemnation and it stains his tongue with the taste of petrol.

"Horseshit," Cole snaps this out like he's hurling a punch, but it fractures out brittle, splinters on the rocks of his voice. His shoulders volley up, haunches set to a hackle-raise.

( Brazen and brash, an exposed nerve screaming. If people didn't change, then where does that leave him? DEAD BOY, FAILURE, SELF-MADE ORPHAN. )

"Sounds like a two-bit cop-out to avoid tryin'."

[vastiitas]

it was, like, this middle aged couple who were having a dispute while driving bc they been having some brewing Marital Problems over the course of a few months. They basically never get the whole story about the banditos; never knew they were in potential danger. they get out of there w cole and drive to the nearest town cos it'd be faster than trying to get an ambulance or a helicopter over (though, procedurally speaking, it'd be safer to wait, especially w the threat of a broken neck; but human error and human panic, etc etc). cole gets a weird glimpse of domestic life bc they try to take responsibility over it, but he leaves thru the window after he's recovered, after dinner, after he thanks them sincerely for everything that they've done for him. leaves a note on the bed that reiterates these sentiments, but says that he can't save their marriage for them, etc etc.

[vastiitas]

pre-tween cole deffo had a black-out rage episode beating the shit out of some other, older tween in one of the orphanages bf he got yoinked to another house,

[vastiitas]

" — 'm sorry...'bout yesterday." he better accept this, colt's not usually one for sorry's —

@quick-drawn

Cole gimaces: pinched eyes, the grit of teeth briefly exposed by a peeling of lips. His torso is in mid-twist, hands shoved against the haul of straw. Stray scraps of hay fray out, scratches itchy where it manages to poke into an exposed arm. Brows knitting, he busies himself with launching the bale into the loft. It lands, thunking dull, against the boards and Cole tries not to think too hard about how this sounds a lot like the crash collapse of a body.

"Weren't your fault," He answers mullishly. His voice wisps out softer than he's used to when talking to Colt, but the memory of yesterday's tribulation's has its fangs to his jugular, bleeds him out into slanted shoulders and a weary expression. He inhales, groping distractedly for the next bale, "'Ppreciate it, though."

[vastiitas]

"that's...gotta be one'a th'prettiest girls i've ever seen..." — don't think i forgot 'bout rose,

Colton's enraptured staring leaves no questions on who he's talking about. She's wedged between two dust-rotten aisles, appraising two stocks of different branded feed. She's... all right, Cole reckons. Dressed nice and simple in Sunday whites, hair done sleek with the care of a brush. Another glance at Colt's smitten-drenched expression has him scoffing out a burst of noise, a single syllable breath that doesn't make it in full to a laugh.

"Oughta use your mouth t'go talk t'her if you're gonna leave it open like that," He shoves the heel of a fist light-heartedly against Colt's slack-jawed expression, grinning lop-sided, "Before a fly wanders in."

[vastiitas]

@quick-drawn

A bedsheet drags off of colton's head in cascading pipe folds; crash-lands lumpy and valleys off shoulders. Cole tugs at the linen, squares out the distribution so the fabric evens out and doesn't threaten to kiss suburbia lawn dirt. Candle-lit jack-o-lanterns glower orange at their feet, revealing just enough of colton beneath the battered threads: a warm-glowing silhouette, features obscured and made bleary into sculpted masses of shadow that suggest the vague impression of him.

Cole huffs.

"You sure are one sorry ass lookin' excuse for a ghost."

Ain't exactly scary, but that isn't the goal here.

[vastiitas]

smthing smthing the irony of cole's situation finding @quick-drawn is that he is forced to remain cole cassidy in whom he presumes and wants dead but is also anchored by that very same force into desiring to stay alive.

[vastiitas]

"i'll make it quick — promise."

He's not sure if it's the nerves or the fact that he's been stabbed, but he's blinking through the cold drench of sweat that's dribbled over his eyes. He squeezes his teeth into a salty, dirt-seasoned roll of fabric, tries to avoid tonguing the rough ribs of cotton that's got the taste of motor grease. The only response he can offer Colton is a grunt, fisting a grip on the other's sleeve sitting at the shoulder. He eyes the blade that is red-hot and angry held in the other's hand. It glowers off the tint of amber that flecks his copper browns. He breathes out shaky.

Fuck. This is going to hurt like a cunt.

And, yet, still, it's a better alternative to bleeding out and dying to some stupid dipshit who thought 10 bucks was worth killing somebody over. Bitch. Who just fucking stabs somebody and doesn't finish the job? What the fuck-

Cole makes another muffled noise, gnarls his brows and screws his eyes shut. His fingers curl just a little bit tighter over Colt's shoulder, coiling into a brace.

Fuck your promise, hermano - Just do it.

[vastiitas]

@quick-drawn

He plants the butt of his rifle's stock next to him, kneeling down to a crouch over a series of hoof prints. They are dark indentations, packing a rhythm where the earth has been palmed, scooped, and upheaved. His hand hovers over where the impression burrows bolder than the second set whispering behind it. "It's a ram," He murmurs, and the breath it's packaged itself in sounds more addressed to himself than the present company involved. His eyes flick up, "They got those big horns on 'em. Makes their front prints deeper than their back set. It's how y'can tell."

The dirt beneath his boots crunches out gritty and crackling as he shifts and shuffles. Cole braces his weight against his rifle as he pushes himself to his feet. "Folklore says the deeper the print, the heavier their rack." He slips the rifle's shooting sling over his neck, peering over at Colton who's half-doused between a valley's blue shadow and the orange sunrise cresting over it. The air's dry, crisp. Not yet baked. He huffs and the air comes out skittering in clouds.

"Bigger the ram, too, but I reckon we best keep an eye out. They'll hit us right off a cliff if we don't shoot 'em first."

[vastiitas]

"y'look a lot better..."

"Better than you?" His grin slots sideways, corners pinned to a shit-eater's peak. He knocks a ruddy elbow into Colton's, "Always have been, hermano. Glad t'see y'finally grew yourself a pair of eyes."

Truthfully, he wouldn't know. He still avoids his reflection like it's the plague.

[vastiitas]

"Reckon I ain't ever asked b'fore," Colton leans inquisitively to the wooden handle of a shovel — admittedly using the query to take a breather from the back breaking work of shoveling stalls for an hour straight. And, well...he'd be LYING if he said the thought hadn't crossed his mind before...

" — what happened exactly? Y'know...like, back home...?"

"The hell do you mean?" comes hurling out before he can even think to stop it and he's straightening from his stoop to fix Colton a bemused look beneath sweat-drenched brows. He gnaws the inside of his cheek, gritting callouses against the inside of his gloves as he squeezes and twists his palm against the handle of his own shovel. He clunks its rusted head against the floor, mind toppling over itself as he haphazardly rifles his way through his memory of the past week for some sort of issue he might've ran into at the farm house.

His lips are twisting into a scowl. What stupid shit did he stir now--

The tension in his expression abruptly blinks out, knocked obsolete by the blistering shade of a belated and unwelcome realization. Oh. His shoulders stiffen, pitching up and stilling to some poor man's imitation of Rigor Mortis.

And maybe he's just that, for a little bit. A corpse with nothing to say. Breath sunk to a slow and shallow stagnation, heartbeat exiled to the land of the dead.

( You don't reach that far back unless you're looking for your own grave. The one that still doesn't have a body. The one that stains your fingertips black and purple with the ink of your rotten, godforsaken name. There is so much shit left in the wake of your shadow, you are forced hurtling forward. Turning back is Hades; turning back is damnation.)

He blinks slowly, gaze locked to a space buried a million miles away beyond the mulch-stained floor and its scatter of stray straw constellations.

And, with that same sluggishness, his brows screw right back to a knot. They lock, contemplative and troubled, lacking that heat burst just seconds earlier. He grips both hands on the shovel's handle, drags the nail of his thumb against wood grain and itches it back and forth.

What's your Story?'s have become a dime a dozen icebreaker minted in the aftermath of the War. Strangers looking to hold hands with strangers as they straggle to face the breaking dawn of an uncertain world.

A default answer is already spring-loaded on his tongue. Just another story. Just another statistic. Most folk don't press for more and neither does he want them to.

But, Colt's... fucking different. Unfortunately.

His lungs flatten out a harsh gust of air and he slides his eyes closed, shoulders curling forward and slumping to an unwilling and disgruntled deflation. He doesn't realize that he's brought the shovel closer to his chest, that it's pointed end skitters and scratches a thin line through the floor.

"Just a... shit turn of luck," He grouses and wrings the damn handle like it'll give him some sort of peace. Its end juts into his shoulder. The knit of his brow gnarls and he struggles to scrape together the words that he needs to press past the noose that's bearing down on his throat like the bull-heavy blade of a guillotine. He's never had to walk through it before. Never had to verbalize and dissect the autopsy. His own voice warbles distantly to him; the faux frustration of stitching together sentences lands deadpan and vacant.

"Ain't any... back home left. Everything's..." He trails off and he realizes he's never said this either and the strength bottoms out from his voice, collapses in on itself, and leaves it desecrated and wispy, "Gone."

He scuffs his boot against a misplaced strand of hay. Dirt crunches. He dithers.

"War came through," he mutters, and the words rock out over an uneven turbulence. it's tempting to leave it there. It's all the explanation anyone ever needs for a town wiped off the face of the planet, blasted into redaction from maps, left abandoned and forgotten as a dirt speck by everybody else.

Still, it's quid pro quo. You show me your's, I'll show you mine. Their stories are fucked up inverses that start and end with a fucking gun. Colt's told him his piece and it's a pound of wounded flesh for a pound of wounded flesh. Cole owes him his due.

So, he slits in the proverbial dressing knife just above the stomach, and saws.

He chews the bottom of his lip, digging teeth to the seat of it, and that distant point miles and miles away is suddenly rushing forward, unrelenting, gripping him so violently by the shoulders that they jerk in a recoil. there is a monstrosity of a wave crashing in, sucking him under, crushing him beneath the weight of oceans as it rips him violently away from the salvation of a surface.

"Those... drop ships deployed some couple of miles East from us. Didn't know 'til they hit. We just-" He wrenches in an inhale, forces it through his lungs; knife snagged on a rib, "Our town - It was between 'em and the big city they were after. We weren't- much a consideration, and they made us out t'be exactly what they thought of us." Nothing. Ashes. Rubble. Stampeded through without a second thought. "Got caught beneath the house. Roof fell through," Whole house fell through, he was just stepping out of the living room from the kitchen, the television had been crackling, "Knocked my head-" Blood blossoming over the eyes, shaky vision colored red; the world is fucking rupturing and there is a horrible banshee shrieking in the air melded from a thousand voices howling. The air is strangled with ash, broiling to fields flashed to fire. Jesus Christ, where is the Gun? Where is the fucking Gun?

"Saw my Ma and Pa," He hasn't called Joel that in years, and he finds his voice guttering to the trying strokes of a croak, "Caught out in the front yard. Omnics left and right. Looked like," He twitches, fingers flexing, "Cattle. Bein' herded like that."

Firing squad. Line em up, shoot em down.

His grip loosens on the shovel handle. Bile burns in his stomach, buzzes vitriol. It feels, vaguely, like his entrails are smashing into each other, wrestling into knots. But, this, too, is far away. Slipping between fingers, white noise.

"Had my revolver on me. Had a shot. Just needed to shoot one."

Every syllable beats out blank and hollowed out.

He drags his gaze up against gravity to meet Colton's. He speaks plainly. This is not a confession. Fact printed in neat, black print on stark white paper, delivered impersonally on a severed, dial-tone disconnect:

"I missed."

[vastiitas]

@quick-drawn

You've never really thought about how much water can feel like a damn anchor. There are infinite hands dragging vitriolic claws on your clothes and it presses your shirt flush against the skin while eager and hungry and trying to spirit away any and all excess. Usually, Cole is dressed for the occasion. Usually, he isn't battling the sudden sour onset of dread and nausea and the start of a full throttle heart attack.

Colton crashes head first into water, tripping over a shitty ass board that's welted through and water-rotted on the heels following a wrestler's tumble. There's a blazing splash, white-water ripples that send the water undulating and smacking into the dock's water posts. A second ticks into two and stumbles into three. By the time it pours into four and the water begins to settle, Cole is ripping off gloves, shucking off boots, and tearing through the air after him.

The wind sears through his ears - a scream abruptly swallowed by the dull murmur of water. Everything is murky, and it's sheer blind luck that reaching out a hand drives his knuckles against something vaguely Colton-shaped. His palm finds denim and he fists all that he can of it while driving all other limbs towards the rippling lights denoting up. He's never had to carry anyone before, not in water, and the exertion is worming a burn into his arms, lodging an ache in the lungs. Air bubbles are bursting in plumes around him. The surface is so damn far.

And, yet, they manage to shatter through it. He can hear Colton coughing up water-logged lungs just barely over his own gasps. Desperate, beseeching air. The paddle towards the bank has their heads barely bobbing above water. He swaps his grip, hauling both hands against the other's bib and kicks until they're pile-driving into rocks and stone and pebbles where the water has shallowed out and leaks in flimsy, shushing waves into the gaps between them.

Cole topples; rocks scatter loose, clattering. Folded over on his hands and knees, chest heaving for air, he thinks that God could take a picture of them now and call it: Drenched Mongrels.

"COLTON," He smacks his hand into the other boy's arm with a bruising force. His heart is jack hammering and for the first time since leaving everything, his hands are wrecked into a viscious tremble. For all the lack of air rendering his voice raspy, adrenaline fills the gut gushing with hot-blood. It spills out of him, a throaty snap that shatters through the air and bursts into cracks, "Were you ever plannin' on tellin' me that you couldn't fuckin' SWIM!?"