(no subject)

[freedrinkplease]

//"What's the color of love, Pig?"

"What sort of love, love?"

"Don't know. But you know the way things, they got a color. I wonder what the color of love is."

"Jesus, Runt. You could read a thousand thick books and never know the answer to that quiz."

"It's be a good one to know, ah?"

"It'd be brilliant, Runt. It's around here somewhere."//

He couldn't sleep.

He'd had a dinner of eggs and spam and he just couldn't sleep after Tillman had closed his door. He tried pacing, he tried talking to himself, but every time he laid down he leaned over and tried to reach a hand out through a wall that wasn't there, reaching in to grasp a hand that didn't exist.

Maybe Runt had found it.

The only reason he slept was because he was tired, too tired, and this place was so warm he even took his socks off, using the couch's arm as a pillow. It was still uncomfortable and it still gave him a horrible crick in the neck, but it was better than a bus stop.

Once he did finally go to sleep, though, it was easy to tune things out. It came from living with a rambunctious toddler, it came from hearing Runt's parents yell at each other every morning, it came from his mom parking herself in front of the television and ignoring everything for that brief hour in the morning when she was free of work.

It was the smell that dropped him out of his light snoring, and his hand twitched--it was odd, but since he was little, he couldn't sleep without Runt's hand in his. Even in the hospital.

"It's around here somewhere, Runt," He said softly, before the smell hit him. His stomach rumbled loudly and he opened his eyes, jarred out of slumber from his own hunger.

"Jesus," he mumbled, getting up and rubbing his face. Where was he?

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[slayer_not_player]

Tillman's favorite nights were the kind that lacked dreams. He did not have good dreams anymore, just flashes of old memories that sleep twisted or visions of a blood soaked desert, of the deathly pale faces of the damned, of bombs and screaming.

He woke a few hours after he had set off to bed, shaking and sweating and for several terrifying minutes, he did not recognize where he was. Muscles twitching, he stood up and opened his reluctant bedroom window. The cool night air rushed in and while he could feel it ghost over his sweaty body, it did not make him feel cold. He could see his breath, and his fingers, pressed flat against the icy pane, were numb and unresponsive, but he didn't feel anything.

When dawn began to soften the shadows in the streets, he forced the window down once more and turned away. He found no comfort in watching blackness fade to gray.

Routine was what kept him functioning on mornings like this. He set up the coffee pot before stepping into the shower. He was efficient, accustomed to bathing where water was limited. When he washed his face, pain flared up and forced him to pause.

He remembered, then. The bar and the fight and an Irish waif named Pig. Cork, Ireland and babbins and kissing blokes and a splash of color that was so impossibly blue. Tillman touched his face again, a reminder that it had happened, that it wasn't some hopeful dream tucked between visions of death.

Tillman vacated the shower and dressed in worn jeans and a ratty sweatshirt. Today was his day off. He had promised his neighbor that he would fix her sink. He had an appointment with his therapist. The former was more important to him than the latter.

He poked his head into the living area briefly, eyes slow to adjust to the darkness after the naked incandescent light in the bathroom. He could just make out a pair of pale, narrow feet sprawled somewhat haphazardly over the couch.

Tillman resumed his routine. He poured himself a cup of coffee. He set some bread into the toaster. He cracked twice as many eggs as he usually did.

He was already halfway through his breakfast when he heard stirring from within the living area. He sipped his coffee and waited.