"To be asked to take this plunge, to forgive and forget
And be the better man, to be a better man, to be a better man."
“… You’re a bit of a nerd, aren’t you?” you observe, watching as she tries to find words to describe the phenomena that been occurring to you, and probably her, for the past couple of weeks. You suppose there really isn’t a good way to summarize it. Time stop? Freeze? No. That sounded worse. Still, her brief stint of babbling is enough to pull you back down to earth and ground you. Take your mind off of whatever the hell you just did a second ago.
Calm or not, however, you jump as she thrusts said tie forward, your eyes becoming wider than you’d like them to be. Upon inspection, you see that it is actually a perfectly nice tie! There was absolutely no way that you wanted to use something like that to cover a wound up! You examine it a little closer, noting the high thread count and the rich, deep color of the red dye. You can’t see a tag either, so there’s no way that this is just some offhand department store brand. With quality like that you’re almost certain that this is actually a vintage- Oh my god, just how long have you been staring at this thing?
Between this and your early demonstration of just excellent verbal communication skills, this professional looking lady probably thinks you have a mild concussion. Your cheeks start to burn as you take it, sacrificing it for what you suppose is the greater good, or at least for the greater good of your leg. A finely crafted artifact from the recent past
gone. Closing your eyes, you knot it tightly around the gash in your thigh.
… it looks pretty cool like that, actually.
“I’ll buy you a new one later,” you tell her, brushing yourself off. Experimentally, you put weight on your leg again. You take a sharp inhale of breath between your teeth. It’s just as useless as it was before, except now its sort of numb and… heavy feeling. But, if she was going to give you something it was only natural to give something in return, right? Despite the dull throb, you shuffle over to your green canvas messenger bag which, has thankfully avoided the blackish-red Jackson Pollock imitation you’ve made on that side of the bus.
You shuffle through the bag, which rattles in a way that is welcome and familiar to you. Hand sanitizer is the first thing you slap on before moving to toss a half empty bottle of aspirin at her. Just as you begin to make the motion, you realize this... might end in disaster. She probably can’t catch very well can she? Instead, you stand up and hand it to her. The rest of your bag proves useless in producing a beverage that you have not contaminated yet, aside from one small pouch of strawberry preserves. It’s… not really a drink. More like blended strawberries in a pouch. It’s drinkable though?
“Sorry,” you say, looking away. It isn’t a decent offering at all. Not even in the slightest.
You turn, determined to keep interaction even more brief from there on out. Giving a mumbled ‘come on’, you limp to the end of the train car and the connecting bridge. The vibrations jittering along the train’s underbelly feel even more apparent as you go through one of the halls made of thinner material. The hairs on the back of your neck raise. What is that? You peel your fingers underneath the handle to the next car and slowly open it.
"HI!"You slam it back shut again before your mind has time to register that it's just simply another human. Heart still hammering, you look over your shoulder to see if your slip up went unnoticed. You straighten, open the door once again with an acceptably neutral expression, making way for… you never asked her name, to go through.
So love me mother, and love me father, and love my sister as well.
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