Outside the B&B: Atticus & Janus Who: Atticus and Janus What: Re-meeting Where: The B&B When: Nowish Warnings/Rating: Nope!
Atticus wasn't actually working at the B&B. He felt slightly remorseful, but that was mostly assuaged by Connie's pay increase. He was trying to acquire additional staff, but that wasn't particularly simple when you ran a haunted house in a small town. He should, he thought, be inside. There was surely something to be done, and he should be doing whatever that something was. But Atticus, he'd never been particularly diligent about anything. He didn't speak up. He procrastinated. He didn't shave whenever he could get away with it. His hair was always a mess.
Like, tonight, his hair was a nest of curls rampant upon his head, and his stubble had gone beyond being technically able to use the term stubble. Dark hair climbed partway down his throat, and his goatee was no longer a goatee. He stood in front of the B&B, a Marlboro burning down vermillion between his fingers, and an old Walkman in his back pocket. The cigarette was a menthol, though he preferred reds, but he hadn't looked at the pack when he grabbed it from a roadside store on the way into town. He considered going to buy non-menthols, but he didn't move from where he was standing. His legs were braced wide, and he considered his future from the front lawn. His hair curled in disarray around an old pair of headphones, black and spongy.
The old house was a metaphor for family schism. The old house was a girl's false leg. The old house was a boy's fish. The old house was an innocent man on the stand. The old house was a foaming dog awaiting a bullet. The old house was the reminder of the years his parents had spent in prison. It was, he decided in melodramatic fashion, his albatross.
He'd never cared for Coleridge. Who stopped individual wedding guests, anyway?
He wore dress pants in grey, rumpled and too large for his stocky frame. His sweater was blue, a v-neck over a white undershirt. The man couldn't look more the absent-minded professor as he stood there, not if he tried. There was a novel in this, he thought, though he knew he would never write it. His love for the short story was born out of faineance. He understood himself, which was a pity. He suspected that being doomed to blindness would have been rather more literary.
He took another drag from the cigarette, which was soaked flat between his lips in nearly-futile anticipation. The crisp night air turned to mint around him, and he tugged the headphones over his head and onto his ears. Music played loudly enough to taint the air around him.