Carriage House: Atticus & Billy
In the week that Billy had spent helping the girls out around the B&B while Atticus was away, he hadn’t paid much attention to the Carriage House or even really noticed it, tucked unobtrusively away behind the larger building and half-hidden amongst the trees. He wasn’t adept enough at tuning into supernatural activity to notice fluctuations or hotspots; he only knew that half of the time when he came around the B&B, all the little hairs on his forearms stood up and he felt an uncomfortable prickling along his scalp. But he hadn’t felt anything more than that since the day of all the locked doors in town and that creeping anxiety in his stomach, and there was nothing out of the ordinary now as he headed up the walkway, drawn in by the music he could hear playing through the open door.
(The open door being one of those things that yet again drew him out of his own head to marvel at the contrast of life here compared to the city, with all of its chain locks and deadbolts, where a door propped open in any but the safest neighbourhoods was as good as an open invitation for trouble.)
It was a warmer day even as the sun started to set behind the trees, and with the added benefit of already running hot with the magic that bristled under his skin, Billy was comfortable in just a t-shirt that revealed most of his tattoos, and long pants tucked into his favourite boots (which were a little small on him, but he was saving up to buy a new pair the next time he managed to catch a ride into the city).
“Hello?” he called out upon poking his head through the open door, but probably not loud enough to be heard over the music rattling out of the old boombox. The inside of the Carriage House was quaint in an old-fashioned way that reminded Billy of his Bubbe’s house, which meant he reflexively toed out of his boots and left them by the entrance before padding over the carpet in socked feet. He followed the good smells (definitely better than the instant ramen and an overcompensatory amount of dried spices that made up his dinner most days, yes, definitely) to the door at the back of the sitting area and cracked it open, wanting to make sure Atticus wasn’t directly behind it or anything before he pushed his way into the kitchen.
“You’ve adjusted quickly to the small town thing,” he said to Atticus’ turned back as the door shut behind him, swinging his backpack down from his shoulder and unzipping the largest compartment to pull out the promised bottle of wine - a chardonnay, his mom always served chardonnay with seafood. “I still lock the door to my trailer obsessively, even if someone could probably just bust it open if they rattled the knob hard enough.”