for: @imogenarnold
where: a liqour store
With a bottle in each hand, Lucky was living out his very own Ketchup-Catsup dilemma while he was rooted in an aisle trying to decide if his day had warranted a Tito's or Smirnoff night. It didn't matter too much, yet he still found himself indecisive as he tried to pick which specific poison he would use to wipe the slate clean and try again tomorrow on the wrong foot and with a headache.
It didn't matter much either way -- every day here felt like it was the same.
Most of them for him felt like the way an overcast sky looked. Gloomy, endless, a wait for it to turn in one way or the other that never materialised. Purgatory personified. He was getting used to that feeling gradually, finding a way to feel okay about it.
Even if the sun never broke through the cloud of those feelings, he didn't need it to. The only sun he needed had her mother's golden hair and no true grasp yet on her father's shortcomings.
That could be enough, he was determined for it to be no matter how many times he found himself struck by how his hometown felt like it no longer held space for him.
Catching sight of a figure in his peripheral, he was about to take a step back to let them pass without a second glance when something told him without words to look over in their direction.
It couldn't be and yet it was.
Sometimes he worried he was some sort of emotional grim reaper, destined to drain the life out of those he wanted to keep close. He never felt more like there was an invisible scythe in his hands than that exact moment in a vodka aisle with his eyes on Imogen's.
"You're... Here."
A stupid thing to say from a boy who embodied stupidity at every turn, but even his assumptions couldn't fill in the blanks of how that came to be.