sleepless in the park, c

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YOU PAINTED BLACK WHERE MY NAKED HEART IS

Some things took getting used to, like: daylights' savings, in which an hour was pulled forward or backwards, jarring routines; the fluctuating temperature as of late that couldn't seem to decide on whether it should stick with either cold or hot (Mother Nature, make up your damn mind, Reno would inwardly growl); but there were other things, like having a stable roof over his head, a place he could return to and officially deem his home, that the redhead still couldn't fix into his cranium, even when he already had no more than a few months to let it sink in as fact.

This was where he'd slept, he'd acknowledge, eyes veering through the browning greenery of the park before visually settling onto a familiar bench he had once before made his resting place, a secondary "bed" if one could call it that—a wooden bed he had, for hours of the night, laid his body upon and shut his eyes until the beckoning of a rising sun awoke him. No longer would he have to live like that again, and that thought, that detail, sent a lump at his throat—which he forcefully swallowed as he trudged onward, hands in pockets, bulky case containing none other than a guitar strapped around his shoulders.

People passed, some jogged through the stone trail whilst others strolled on as couples or as a family—none of which spoke in contrast to an otherwise ordinary lifestyle until sunset-palette irises fell onto a silhouette at a distance, leading Reno to pause in his advancement to pin his focus entirely onto the recognizable human shape. Hair as dark as the night, a pad of paper in possession, and face seemingly contorted into a stiff expression of concentration—Acheron? He walked closer, quickly being able to put a name onto the face. And indeed it was Acheron.

"Yo! Lemark! Draw me like one of your French girls!" he hollered out to the older male as his feet stepped from the boundaries of the park's route to crunch on the grass, nearing the blue-eyed wonder who appeared comfortably stationed under the shades provided by a tree, "... tch, as if I'd actually want you to do that." he snorted and halted before the other, leaning forward with the lone corner of his lips perked upwards into the formation of a small smirk; ruby orbs briefly met sapphire blues before slowly traveling down the physical contours of the artist.

Pulling a hand out of the crevice of his jeans, Reno lazily waved to the sketchbook against Acheron's lap, "This what you normally do in your free time, play with pencil and paper?" He crouched onto his knees, tilting his head in hopes of capturing a better angle of the drawn subject his comrade had begun, "What're you drawing?"

Eyes lifted, curious and bored as they observed the man he faced, and without so little as a warning, Reno drew his hand to Acheron's raven locks, fingers gently weaving through its silky strands to tug out what seemed to be a product disposed by the branches above them: "A leaf." Vegetation piece pinched between his slender digits, Reno tossed it over his shoulders, still awaiting an answer.

● ACHERON LEMARK

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YOU PAINTED BLACK WHERE MY NAKED HEART IS

"That's disgusting, Lamark. Don't you ever fucking say shit like that again. It's making my skin crawl, look!" was his immediate response in the form of a scowl, lips twisted into a grimace; he lifted his arm, an uncomfortable chill sending a wave of bumps over his milky flesh, "I'd sooner murder Luke than 'put the moves' on someone from our mad hou-" Sentence abruptly cutting amidst the gross image of flirting with a male friend, joke or not, Reno eyes sharpened. Mad house. Was that what Acheron called the group? "Oi, what were you trying to imply by calling where we live a mad house?" he barked, knowing the description could have been a barb directed at him, the word "mad" often being associated with his gruff behavior.

Was the other trying to say something, like, "oh, Reno, you've got enough anger to power the world for a thousand years"? Of coures, each individual living under the shared flat were not the prime term of normal by any means, even the most ordinary-seeming of the bunch (that being Konrad and Lacie).

Axel had issues removing his ass from the flat's couch, so much that the couch might as well have replaced his own bed, drool stains and crumbs proof that it wholly belonged to the male Jones; the twin, Lacie, was the exact opposite, and had the drive of a robot that it was a wonder if she even had an "off" switch somewhere on her (Reno suspected at any given day that the flat would receive a call from her workplace saying that she collapsed from exhaustion); Acheron seemed to hole himself in his room the majority of the time, doing whatever mysterious shit nobody in the living quarters had any idea of (hell, Acheron could have been doing some Breaking Bad crap, creating drugs in some dinky secret laboratory, and nobody would have suspected); and Konrad was—well, Konrad was Konrad. People said the silent ones were deadly, but have they met the nice ones? Reno was quite confident they were the folks to watch out for.

Then, there was himself. And he admitted it, he might have had a [slightly] lower boiling point than most, and so what? He was fucking flawless.

How the mixture of misfits were able to get along as well as they did was beyond any theories the redhead could conjure; however, he didn't care enough to question nor doubt the bond they shared as a whole. "It's only mad half of the time 'cause you and Konrad can't leave freakin' cats well where they belong: outside! Tch," huffed the younger lad as he shifted to the spot beside the elder, crossing his arms as he leaned his spine against the bark of the tree, mismatched eyes glaring at passing people.

"And who the hell has been putting a bowl of milk right in front of the apartment? It's either you or Konrad, probably even Lacie 'cause god knows she's just as enslaved to damn strays as you two are," His eyes slid to the corner, settling on Acheron for a mere second before anchoring his vision to the sketch, "It's like a drive-by window for diseased cats. We're not the fucking McDonald's, goddammit."

@acheron

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