#tw the lamp suffered a car crash

[mothytheghost]

Yuh some humanized Airy stuff

[thewhumperinwhite]

Café: Empty Bar

Okay, I’mma be real with you: this is probably the least whumpy chapter in all of Café, and I apologize for that. There will be Active Suffering in the next scene, I promise.

TW for: I honestly don’t think there are any triggers in here; there’s concussion symptoms and Two Different Manifestations Of Low Self Worth, but it’s. Not far from being straight fluff.

@whumpitywhumpwhump

Even with his eyes closed, the random flickers of light assaulting his vision make Sol wince and turn to bury his face in his blankets.

For a long, blissful moment he’s warm on his shitty futon in his tiny apartment, holding on to his last few minutes of sleep before he has to get ready for work.

Then he remembers.

Sol sits up with a gasp, and immediately regrets it. 

“Hey, don’t,” a soft voice says, and a hand rests on his shoulder and gently pushes him back down. He lets it, raising a hand to his miserably pounding head. Someone brushes his hair carefully back out of his eyes. Their hand is very soft.

“You wanna try and sit up more slowly?” the voice says gently. “I found some ibuprofen if you want it. And you should probably drink some water, if you can.”

Ibuprofen sounds structurally necessary at the moment. Sol grunts an affirmative and scoots to sit up against the arm of the couch, his eyes still squeezed shut.

“Oh, sorry,” the voice says quickly, and the flickering light through Sol’s eyelids stops abruptly.

Sol cracks an eye open experimentally. The room is dim enough to be almost bearable. Sol blinks around at it, feeling like he has the world’s worst hangover. 

It’s a small room with plaster walls and industrial-style carpeting. Sol is stretched out on a stained yellow couch; there’s also a threadbare armchair, a very old television perched precariously on a rickety stand, a coffee table that looks like it was made in someone’s backyard, and a cramped kitchenette. The fluorescent ceiling lights are off, thank god, and the only dim light comes from a crooked floor lamp behind the TV. The coffee table is currently shoved up against the armchair to give Kent Graves room to kneel next to the couch and hand Sol a glass of water and two gelcaps. Sol gulps them down gratefully. 

“Do you feel nauseous?” Kent says when Sol has downed the entire glass.

Sol does, but no worse than when he’s hungover. “No,” he croaks, handing Kent back the glass.

“Okay. Are your ears ringing?”

Sol was into deathmetal in highschool, his ears are always ringing. “No. Where are we?”

Kent holds his hand up a foot away from Sol’s face. “Is your vision blurry at all? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Sol sits up straighter, looking around. “Is this, like… a breakroom? What time is it?”

Kent doesn’t acknowledge the question in any way. “How many fingers, Sol?”

Sol glares at him, and Kent raises one eyebrow, apparently willing to wait. Sol rolls his eyes. “Three fingers.”

“Thank you,” Kent says, lowering his hand, and sits back on his heels, looking around at the dingy room. “And— yeah, it is a break room, as far as I can tell.”

Sol pauses in the act of trying to sit upright to stare at Kent, alarmed. “You don’t know?”

Kent looks at the curtained windows, apparently a bit embarrassed. “Not— exactly? I mean, I know this is a bar. I didn’t get a good look at the sign.” He looks back at Sol, a bit sheepishly. “We’re less than two blocks from where the squad car crashed. You’re heavier than you look.”

Sol stares at him, mildly horrified. 

“Did you carry me here?” he blurts before he can stop himself.

Kent immediately looks guilt-stricken. “Yeah. I— I dragged you a little at the end. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“What the fuck did you do that for, genius?” Sol almost yells. Kent flinches like Sol’s hit him, but Sol can’t stop. “You don’t know me from shit!”

Kent uncoils from his whole-body wince slowly to stare at Sol in confusion. “You— what?”

“No wonder your nose is broken if you keep shoving it into other people’s business!” Sol snaps. Kent blinks at him, looking utterly flummoxed.

“Hold on,” Kent says. “Are you— sorry, you’re mad because you think I should have… what, left you there?”

“Uh, yeah!” Sol says furiously. “What kind of dumbass drags a stranger two blocks with a broken collarbone?” He swings his legs off the couch and sits up, gripping the upholstery and gritting his teeth through the resulting dizzy spell. “You did the same thing when the old man grabbed me at the cafe. I don’t need your help, asshole!”

Now that Sol is sitting up Kent, still kneeling on the floor, is looking up at him, wide-eyed. Then his face quirks up into a doofy sort of half-smile that Sol tells himself furiously is obnoxious, not cute. “So you would’ve left me there, huh? If you’d been in my position?”

“Hell yeah I would have!” Sol is not going to let Kent make him feel guilty, because he’s right, goddammit. “I don’t even fucking know you!”

“Interesting,” Kent says, and then he frowns and touches his chin in mock thoughtfulness. “You know, it’s funny. I swear I remember being in the car after it flipped, for just a second before I passed out. But when I woke up, I was definitely out on the pavement, out of range when it blew up.” He looks up at Sol, tilting his head in exaggerated confusion. “How do you think I got out of the car?” 

Oh. That. “That was different,” Sol says, flushing. 

Kent laughs, looking at him with that same weird, almost-fond smile he gave him at the hospital, when Sol said he hated MRIs. It was— infuriating. “Different how?” he says, and his voice is so warm that Sol shoots to his feet in order to stop looking at Kent’s face.

“Ghhgk,” Sol says eloquently, pressing a hand to his forehead while he waits for his vision to swim back into focus. “It just is, okay?” he says, and he opens the door next to the kitchenette.

“Oh,” Kent says as Sol steps out into the empty bar, scrambling to his feet behind him. “Um, I wouldn’t, uh— I wouldn’t try and go outside, yet.”

Sol catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the bar and forces himself to look away from the bruised wreck that is his face to frown at Kent. “What? Why not?”

Kent’s eyes dart out to the wide windows at the far end of the bar, leading out into the street. “Uh,” he says. He’s no longer smiling; Sol realizes with a growing chill that he looks afraid. “Well, I was watching the news while you were out,” Kent says. Sol looks around; the stools aren’t stacked up neatly on the bar and tables like he would expect. It actually looks like people may have left the bar in kind of a hurry. “It— it looks like the old man wasn’t the only one in the city.”

Sol stares at him, the ringing in his ears growing into a nervous buzz. “What? What do you mean?”

Kent shuts the door to the breakroom, cutting off the dim light and leaving the bar lit only by the streetlights outside. Sol looks out the window and sees that none of the business on the other side of the street have their signs lit. He feels suddenly very cold. “It sounds like— They think maybe it was some kind of. Attack or something? Like they were released at strategic points throughout the city. Some of them, uh— they got some of them right away, like… I did, with the old man, I guess. But it looks like whatever’s wrong with them spreads through fluid-to-fluid contact.” Kent laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like— like a zombie movie, you know?”

Sol is still staring at him. He watches a drop of sweat make its way down the side of Kent’s face. Kent’s ditched the sling they gave him at the hospital— possibly when he dragged Sol half a block— and his hand is hanging at his side. Sol can see it shaking.

“They’re telling people to stay inside,” Kent concludes, and waits for Sol’s reaction, fidgeting slightly.

Sol can’t stop staring. “My apartment’s on the other side of town.”

Kent nods. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, I can’t, uh— I have to go upstate, actually.”

“You what?” Sol says. He’s beginning to think that everything Kent says is worse than the thing before. “Did you not just tell me that the city is filled with murderous zombies?” He gestures helplessly toward the windows with his bandaged hands. “Like, 28 Days Later-style fast zombies, too, not shambling Night Of The Living Dead ones?”

Kent nods. He looks unhappy, but he also looks completely certain. “Yeah. You should find somewhere to stay around here, if you can.” He shrugs. “But I gotta go upstate.”

And… listen. Sol does not know this boy. He has seen him get backhanded by his father, but that does not mean that he knows him, any more than pulling him out of a car wreck means he knows him. Or seeing him unconscious. This is the part where Sol says, okay, thanks for carrying me I guess, have fun feeding yourself to zombies, goodbye forever. Because he might be kind of attracted, but that doesn’t make him an idiot.

“What’s upstate?” Sol says, because apparently, yes it does.

[melancholaes]

( DIEGO TINOCO. 20. CIS MALE. HE/HIM. ) in texas, NOLAN MACIAS is known to most as BOSTON. they have been riding with the diablos for ONE YEAR. they originally from MASSACHUSETTS and the PROSPECT is known to be very IMPATIENT & IMPULSIVE but the other club members will tell you they are STAUNCH & DRIVEN. as the years go by, they’ve gained a lot of respect in the club and around town. they rarely ever drive a car but when they do HOMELESS by ED SHEERAN is usually heard blasting. ( all his belongings in one black backpack, crumpled photographs in tight fists, bouncing with too much energy and nowhere to put it, riding a skateboard until it breaks, smoking a joint in the spotlight of a street lamp. ) [ skye. 24. est. she/her. ]

meet my lil baby who has had a rather rough go... but he’s still chipper and bouncy in life, give me ur attitude pls and thank.

nolan was born in boston, given up for adoption at a very young age. young enough that he doesn’t remember his parents or know why he was given up but he didn’t want to dwell on it too much. he tried to imagine that his parents had good reasons/intentions. 

he was bounced around between thirteen different foster homes, some of which he had no idea why they didn’t want him. one home he was kicked out of because he was “too hyper” (ironically this family had taken his weed away when they caught him with it, so his energy and hyperactivity rose and then...), another was because he was caught smoking weed and kicked out, then there were two of the most prominent times he left a home. one with mr & mrs murray, and another time with the taylor family.

starting with mr & mrs Murray, who were an older couple, around their early 50s/late 40s. they were amazing to him, damn ge loved them so much. it had been Mrs murrays idea to foster a child, and nolan came bouncing out with his bright eyes and smile and they fell in love. he was around ten years old. he stayed with them for about ten months, made a home of their house and a family with them. they would have kept him, but sadly, mrs Murray suffered a fatal heart attack. mr Murray claimed that nolan reminded him too much of his late wife, and wouldn’t be able to care for him on his own, so nolan was put back in the system.

then comes the taylor family, and this one isnt so heartfelt. tw sexual assault when nolan was fostered by the Taylor's, he was not their first foster child. they were about to adopt their first, a girl a year or two older than nolan, named layla. to nolan, this meant a sister. to layla, she saw someone her parents might prefer and therefore was a threat to her adoption. nolan was 14 at this point, and layla being around 15/16. layla knew the rules of the foster system in and out, knew that you dont mess around with you foster siblings. so, she used that. she moved onto nolan, flirting and touching (just like his arm and more hugs than usual), but then she pulled him in for a kiss right as she knew her parents would see. since she was their first (and pretty much favourite by default), they sided with her that nolan instigated it and he was put out of the house.

after that, he stuck to mostly group homes. one of which was out of MA, and where he got his nickname boston. upon moving in, there was already a kid named nolan so they started calling him boston instead. he made good friends in this home, and he liked it there a lot, so he kept the nickname. its endearing to him.

eventually, boston aged out of the system. when that happened, he tried to make it on his own. he had some government help obviously, but it wasn’t enough for him to live properly. he had received a postcard from a friend from a previous group home who had been moved out to texas through different families, so, boston decided to head south.

he brought with him only a black backpack with photos of mr & mrs murray and some of his friends, some clothing he had and a couple twenty dollar bills and his skateboard. 

he learned about the mc’s rather quickly and well... he had a hollywood image of them but he still was very interested in them. he decided to try and become a prospect for the diablos. he doesn’t have many ties to anything or anyone and he wants to. he wants a family, so this is how he sees the diablos.

when he settled in Texas, he got a hold of Mr Murray to tell him he was okay. he still keeps in touch with him every so often.

considering he doesnt have a job because he doesnt have much experience, he doesn't really have anywhere to live so he sneaks in and out of the clubhouse to crash there most nights, if he doesnt pass out at a friend's.

he is a gaybey though he doesn’t really realize it yet, considering he knows nothing really lasts in his life, he hasn’t focused or been particularly interested in romantic relationships. he prefers to just stick to the momentary friendships and families he has then. so, this also means my lil boy is a virgin as well.

despite the crappy hands that have been dealt to him, Boston is a pretty happy go lucky guy. he smokes weed, has since he was a preteen and his hyperactivity got him into a fight with another kid. he uses it to chill out, not really for getting high you know?? while he can seem naive, he isn’t because he clearly has been through some shit and would love to see the good in people but knows it isn't always that simple. pls be nice to him, he needs soft and nice things in his life.

connections

lorenzo kane /  father figure. they are gonna be real close, folks. boston eventually is gonna crash at his place and renzo is gonna be his forever family :))))

calla scott /  big sister or mothery figure. they smoke weed together, he is soft with him. 

oliver harris /  spring awakening.  they gonna fool around, boston is gonna realize he’s gay. it’s glorious.

I'll update these when ichat home because he has more lol