Buildings and street lights pass in a blur. Much too fast for you focus on, so you watch a random rain drop slide down the window between you and the outside world. Your music blaring in your ears through your head phones drowning out the other passengers on the bus.
Just your normal ride home after a long day at work.
You feel the bus slowing down as it prepares to stop, till it jerks and you fight the unintentional lunge forward. A cold gust of wind rolls in as the driver opens the door and you pull your jacket tight to shield yourself from it. Watching as the damp bystanders join you and the others before taking their randomly selected seat. All of which you’ve seen at one point or another on your journey to and from work, except one.
The man was wearing a red shirt under a dark brown and black ombre jacket, with the hood down. Leaving his head exposed to the elements. Water dripped from his short hair down to his face. and upon further inspection, you conclude that the jacket was in fact dark red, and only appeared brown due to the drenched nature of the man.
As he got closer, you notice he his eye stayed low, watching his feet as he walked past. In his hand, a soaked bouquet of bright yellow sunflowers. You watched him as he scuffles through the aisle till he chooses a seat crossway to yours and plops down.
With that, the bus starts moving again, and you once again turn your gaze back to the streaks of rain and light that pass by your window.
Soon, you find your vision wondering back over to the man with the flowers.
In the short time the bus has been in motion, he’d apparently made himself more comfortable. With one foot planted on the seat next to him, bringing his knee up in to view, and his elbow resting on the back of the seat, leaving his head propped against his knuckles. The wounded look on his face was only amplified by the glazed look in his eyes as he stared out in to nothing. The whole picture was made all the more pitiful by the water still dripping from his clothes, forming a small puddle on the bus floor, and the flowers he’d haphazardly thrown in the seat in front of him.
No doubt he was on the lonely ride home after the result of being turned down, or dumped, but you wondered what was so bad about the man that warranted such action. Anyone with a set of working eyes could tell he was handsome, even if his beard was showing more gray then not. So it wasn’t likely to be they found him unattractive. He also didn’t appear to be that old, maybe in his mid-forties at most. So as far as you could tell, based on appearances only of course, he didn’t seem like a bad guy.
Still, you kept watching him. That maybe somehow watching him so intensely would make something new appear, like one of those old 3D pictures or something. But all it did was draw his attention to you.
Startled, you don’t know what to do, so you just continue to stare at him, and he stared back. Till eventually, his mouth moves and…. Nothing.
“What?” Again his mouth moves as if to say something, but instead he stops and points to his ears. That’s when you remember your head phones. “Oh, sorry.” You chuckle nervously as you move to remove them.
“It’s fine.” He mumbles before looking back out the window, “Just wanted to make sure you knew you were staring.”
“Oh, yeah,” you smile weakly, and look away for a moment ashamed, “I’m sorry.”
He nods and hums back a response, and that was it.
Silence follows for the longest time and you contemplate putting you head phones back on. You could still hear the music playing through them, but you just couldn’t find the will power to do it in case he said something else.
But before that could happen, the bus started to slow down again, and he rose to his feet.
For some reason panic knots up in your stomach and you want to reach out to him. Reach out and tell him that it will be okay, that although it may hurt now, things will get better. Yet you knew you had no right to tell him that when you didn’t even know his story. You’d just appear to be some crazy person on the bus over stepping their boundaries’. So you keep quite.
The bus finely comes to a complete stop and he reaches over and snatches up the once discarded flowers. He then takes a half step toward the door before quickly coming to a stop next to you.
Confused, you look up at him as he looks down at the flowers in hand. “I caught her cheating.” He whispers.
“That’s why you were staring, right? Trying to figure out why I looked so pathetic?”
“Oh, no, no! I mean, yeah, it was, but it’s not like you-you didn’t have to-”
“No it’s alright. I don’t blame you. I know I’m a mess.” He smiles for a split second before it fades just as quickly, “I was trying to surprise her by coming home early. When I walked in, I knew right away something was wrong.”
“Sir,” You both look up to see the driver watching you two in the mirror, “Sir, if this is your stop, then please hurry.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” He sighs, before turning back to you and holding out the flowers, “Here, you take them. Better they go to someone then in the trash.”
Hesitantly, you reach out and take hold of the bouquet, giving him a second glance to silently ask if he was sure. He gives you a soft painful smile, and nods, already letting them go completely and walking down the aisle of the bus.
You look over the flowers for a brief moment before spinning around in your seat to look back at him. “Wait!” He stops on the first step and looks back at you, much to the annoyance of the driver and other passengers, “My – my names (Y/N)” you manage to croak out.
The man nibbles on his lip for a second, before the first, genuine smile graces his face since his boarding, and he says, “Negan.” and steps off the bus.
Rushing to the window, you peer out in to the dark to see him standing there in the rain all alone and looking back up at you. You share a smile just before the bus starts to pull off and he turns to walk in the opposite direction.
You watch him as long as you can through the rain, till he’s only a smug in the distance, and then fall back in to your seat. Looking down at the flowers now in your lap, your confused as to where the rain is coming from.
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
janainaart
gummygunk
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blakekathryn
