Ink and Bone|| Gen & Clive
Whye River was quiet and pleasant mid-afternoon. Boats passed and Clive halfheartedly waved as they went, not paying much attention to them. He had enough on his mind and it was still clearing of the paranoia that the week before had blessed him with. Sitting and watching the water slowly helped ease his mind, even if he still pictured something under the surface looking back at him. There wasn’t anything, he knew that, but did he really know that? His hands twitched on his lap and he took in a deep breath, tried the counting trick that Marley Spitzer had told him. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
He had sworn against mayonnaise and tuna for the rest of his life, almost cancelled his subscription to literally everything. Such a deep set paranoia had nearly crushed him, but he managed to keep himself upright. Just another fucking week in the best town Maine had to offer. He needed a cigarette and to his dismay, he found himself without one. Of course. He wasn’t even a smoker, but damn the town was on a warpath to turn him into one. Nigel was in the hospital, the cabin looked ready for war, Tod had wanted to learn necromancy. He had thought he was a ghost for an uncomfortable period of time. It was enough to drive anyone into becoming a trembling mess of a recluse just to avoid it all. Instead, he sat watching the water, and when he was done he would return to the cabin where his family was. Family didn’t end with blood, it seemed. Or something like that. They weren’t his family, but they were all at once.
It was confounding. They shared meals, they shared a space, they looked out for each other. That was what a family did. A family that knew each other well enough that it could hardly be questioned. Well, it could be. They had their personal lives and their secrets, but they still shared bits and pieces with everyone that lived there. It wasn’t his family, yet it was. He was still happy to call them that. Happy. Interesting. It was nice, just to have the semblance of one again. Soon, his family would be back and she would meet the ones he had been sharing an interesting life with while she was gone. Jane would like them and he knew it. He smiled vaguely at his shaking hands and smoothed them over his thighs as he started to stand.
Blackthorne Architecture loomed nearby as he walked away from the water’s edge and he briefly wondered how Nate Blackthorne was. Their...meeting of interest by Dark Score had been one way of meeting and he hoped the younger man was doing alright. Their shared and mutual effort of raising the pitchforks against condiments wouldn’t be forgotten anytime soon. He then wondered about Brett the ‘Scribe’, who he had believed worked for the nefarious Condiment King. Whatever the hell a scribe was. God, it was embarrassing to even think about. Not to mention mild enraging. Between lacertasite demon pheromones and sudden onset paranoia, he was loathing the moments where his mind wasn’t entirely his own. His hand tugged idly on the hem of his grey t-shirt, focusing on the breathing instead of the bubbling agitation.
Clive frowned and paused on the sidewalk in front of the firm, staring across at the unmarked building. He never knew what that was and it looked like a place that dust had claimed. People went in and out of it, making it clear it wasn’t abandoned. Just...intriguing. Place of intrigue in Ashkent that he didn’t already know were places he wanted to know about and once the street was clear, he languidly crossed over as he pocketed his hands. A case of curiosity wasn’t a crime, not like jaywalking was, yet it wasn’t exactly bothered by it. The cops could barely solve the dozens and dozens of murders. Jaywalking would be wonderfully overlooked and he made it over to the other side, eyeing the strange building casually from the sidewalk.
Oh, it had secrets and he knew it. Secrets he would be interested in, he had to figure. That was just the nature of any odd and questionable building in Ashkent Creek.
fairfaxgen
