Realistic or Modern 𝒯𝒶𝓃𝑔𝓁𝑒𝒹 𝐻𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓉𝓈 & 𝐻𝒾𝒹𝒹𝑒𝓃 𝒞𝓁𝓊𝑒𝓈

[Winona]

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Adriane Hadley Holloway

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Sorry, wasn't listening

“You like rich guys? But you date Mason?” Nickie blurted.

"Only until I go to New York, or LA, or Miami, or wherever," Adriane corrected. He was kind of a means to an ends -- kind of. "He's going to graduate with a scholarship, we're going to move away, I'm going to be a model and he's going to be... I don't know, whatever it is he wants to be. And we'll be rich and maybe still together."

Their relationship was already fairly toxic and Adriane could never remember if they were or weren't together anymore -- but something kept her coming back, and something kept Mason wanting to come back. She figured once they were off, though, they'd both meet much better people and end up moving on.

Or, at least, Mason finally would.

Adriane kind of saw herself being alone, floating through life on a single paycheck with no kids in a flat in the tallest building in New York City. For her, that was the dream.

"Also he's really good in bed," she added, because Adriane couldn't admit that maybe she was putting up with him because some part of her liked him.

"Dedicated? Please. The two of you will break up within the week when you catch him with some other girl."

What? Adriane was nothing if not blunt.

“You know that’s Ian Hansen. Like, Rory’s brother. You know Rory, right? Like, wasn’t she in something with you? Anyway, he runs like a freaking chicken with its head cut off—it’s hilarious. And he looks like he’s seven, even though he’s, like…twelve or something. I can’t believe they let him be the water boy.”

Rory rang a few bells, but so did Ian -- Mason complained about him a lot.

"Rory used to lend me cigarettes," she said simply. "I think we made out once, too, or something. I can't remember." Adriane added with a sigh.

(She'd definitely been with Mason at the time.)

"He looks like a loser," she said. "Why do you even know who he is? Don't you have anything better to do than memorize random people's names and gossip about them?"

Again, the irony tended to be lost on her.

fast car

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[ditto]

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MICHAEL DEXTER REID

location

the gas station

interactions

jace

if i could, i would feel nothing.

“Bullshit,” Mike said dismissively

about West walking to school for fresh air. West didn’t give a shit about fresh air. Still, Mike wasn’t feeling much like pressing for any deeper answer.

“Is it…better?” West asked.

Mike raised an eyebrow. “What? Driving?”

“Being…graduated, ya know?”

Shit, why was that always brought up? You’re past your prime, you’ve already failed—you’re graduated and working at a fucking gas station. Mike sighed deeply. He pulled his toothpick out of his mouth and gestured to West with it, bouncing it a beat as he thought for a moment, his face full of a muted sort of anger. Finally, he sighed, heaving himself off of the crumbling red leather stool that he was leaning back on. “Listen, Piss,” he started, coming out from behind the counter, “I’ve got to go clean the bathrooms, so—“

“Do you ah…have you listened to blink-182’s album?” West asked.

Mike stalled. “What the hell even is that?”

“It’s not—I mean, it’s new, but it’s not like…new new. Came out over the summer, but umm…” West shrugged. “I dunno, I’ve been ahh…I’ve been listening to it—a lot, actually.”

Mike looked him once over, not filtering his scrupulous, judgmental facial expression. At the end of a long day, Mike was just…tired, and he didn’t really want to hear something about… “Is this some, like…new band?” Moving once again toward the cleaning supply closet and popping his toothpick back in his mouth, he said, “That’s a lame fuckin’ name. Let me guess—metal or something?”

Mentioning metal made Mike grin to himself. “You know, Karma’s Touch—“ Woods and his “band” that never was. “—was the best fucking metal band out there, and we didn’t have a single fucking song. So panty-dropping that we didn’t even need to pick up a guitar to be flooded with all kinds of the hottest chicks. My fucking saxophone skills…” Mike had never played saxophone, but the Karma’s Touch pickup line worked a surprising amount with, ya know, getting some in high school.

He grinned over his shoulder back at West. “You should learn to play an instrument, West.” He chuckled, pulling on a pair of gloves. “Might finally get ya some pussy.”

“Do…girls…like boys that play guitar?” West asked. “Do umm…like—I thought they were supposed to, but…”

Mike sighed, his smile falling. He’d forgotten that West was already sort of, well, trying to play an instrument. He shrugged. “Eh, they do if you’re hot. That might be what you’re missing there, West,” he said, the fleeting moment of fun gone as he picked up a bottle of cleaning solution and paper towels. He looked down at the gum in West’s hand. “You wanting to buy that?”

double

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[ditto]

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NICOLA AVA ABRAMS

location

the football field

interactions

adriae

i know you want me.

“You smoke?” Nickie asked, instinctively crinkling up her nose in disgust.

She was the president of the smoking prevention club—Squash Smoking. Which was ironic, since her dad was a smoker, but in her opinion, her dad was old so, like, he was a lost cause anyway.

(If you couldn’t tell, Nickie didn’t really have much of a sense of what old actually was.)

“I think we made out once, too, or something,” Adriane continued. “I can’t remember.”

Nickie felt her cheeks tinged pink. “Oh, uhm…”

Making out in general was a very awkward conversation topic for Nickie right now. Kissing was one thing, but…like, it was a different vibe.

And Adriane had, like, made out with a girl?

(It was the early 00s.)

Nickie had only ever, like…made out with, like, Saint three times, maybe, and then, like…the boyfriend before him a few times. But she was fourteen, so even that was extreme behavior in her eyes.

Ninth grade was a wild time.

“He looks like a loser,” Adriane said, obviously indicating Ian, and Nickie looked back at the boy, who desperately tried to hand water to the football players who weren’t even sweating yet.

Nickie snickered. “He is such a loser, duh,” she said.

She didn’t know the kid.

“Why do you even know who he is?” Adriane asked, and Nickie looked over at her, her eyebrows knitting together. “Don’t you have anything better to do than memorize random people’s names and gossip about them?”

Nickie’s cheeks turned a bit pinker. Defensively, Nickie straightened up, insisting, “I’m not, like, gossiping or anything, like—I’m just saying. And, like, I know who he is because, like, in our, like, Squash Smoking club, we, like, had, like, mentor someone from the elementary school or whatever, so, like, I was assigned to him because, like…like, I guess alphabetically he was one of the first last names, and, like, mine is Abrams, and like…”

Nickie tended to ramble whenever she was in a state of heightened emotion.

She ran a hand over her hair again, making sure that no hair was out of place, and she sighed, crossing her arms over her chest and mirroring Adriane. “But anyway, like…” Nickie’s eyes scanned the field, looking for someone else she could talk about to keep the air from being awkward again. She found the one quickly enough.

She snickered, gesturing with a pinky toward the field, where the boy wearing the jersey reading KILLOUGH pounded his chest, she guessed as a way to hype himself up. “Keegan Killough is such, like, a freaking idiot, isn’t he?”

What Was I Made For?

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[Winona]

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Mason Lee Rivera

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Just getting by

No, Mason didn't step into line alongside everyone else.

Instead, he crossed his arms, remaining strictly beside CK as he bitched and moaned about Coach this and Coach that, and explained the basic ass fucking drill that everyone already knew, but snobby ass Freud had to go into too much detail about the whole ass--

Pick your partner, right--

Mason turns towards the team, but most of the team had already wandered off with their chosen partners -- even Killough, who Mason typically liked as a partner because well... he was fun to beat up on. Fuck, even Taylor, one of the newer members of the team, had managed to find a partner which left Mason and--

Fuck.

Annoyed, he glared in Freud's face before he yanked his helmet on to try and cover the glower in his eyes. "No one else, huh?" he asked, even if he already knew the answer, and he briefly wondered if they could just break up one of the other pairs. You know. Captain shit, except that'd probably be bad for team morale and shit.

Out of the front of his helmet, he saw the coach approaching, and Mason clapped his hand into Freud's shoulder roughly. "C'mon," he said, before backing away into position.

superman

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[Winona]

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Nathan Leslie Woods

location

the house

interactions

stupid Axel and Ellie

smile

Why was Nate still talking to him?

He supposed he didn't really know -- except that when he was smoking, Nate got very talkative. Or well, more talkative than the single word guy typically was on a day-to-day basis.

(And since he was high a majority of the time, Nate was a chatterbox a majority of the time.)

"Weed," he explained, his voice strained as he held the smoke in his lungs a moment longer, before he exhaled slowly. The smoke billowed towards the young boy, and Nate held the joint out to him. "Try it."

It reminded Nate of when he'd been a young boy -- around thirteen at the time -- and still at home in Kansas. He'd been hanging out after school one day, waiting for his older brother and sister to show up so they could go home, when some older guys had come by. At first, he'd turned down the joint, but damn, if public humiliation from peers wasn't a hell of a drug.

So, he'd accepted and the rest, as they say, was history.

"It'll chill you out," he explained, which was evident by the lazy look in Nate's own eyes. "Be careful, though -- don't want you choking too much."

superman

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[Winona]

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Ava Sanders

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Fuck off

She should've fought harder against having him as a partner.

Because yeah, Ava had laid into the teacher, begging for her to give her a different partner or just allow her to do the entire project on her own (which, obviously, she was going to be doing on her own either way). Mrs. Henderson had adamantly refused because Ava needed to "learn to work in a group."

Dumb, right?

But not as dumb as the boy before her.

She did her best to ignore how much he made her blood boil, though, so that she wouldn't make the situation worse than it already was. But it was difficult to bite her tongue, when all that ever came out were spiteful words.

"If you're so smart," she started, her voice dripping with annoyance. Ava leaned back in her seat, her arms crossing over her chest. "Then I guess you could just... do your entire half, right?" she asked and then, once again, she tapped the paper in front of him. "Why don't you start by writing your name, Einstein."

At this point, it was a demand, not a suggestion.

fast car

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[Winona]

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Jason Beckett West

location

the high school

interactions

DJ DeeRy

Is there anyone?

Although Mike's statement hurt, Jace knew he was right.

He didn't exactly stand out, instead fading into the background of everything.

His dad had tried to get him interested in sports, claiming that it would fill him out. But Jace was terrible at it, and he simply didn't like it -- so he'd stopped with sports when he'd grown old enough to say no.

"No," he responded, going to drop the gum back onto the rack -- except he didn't want Mike to leave just yet. "Actually uh... yes." He said, instead tossing the gum onto the counter.

"Why didn't you move away?" Jace asked, as he casually took his time pulling out cash from his wallet.

tik tok

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[ditto]

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Sean Trevor Callaghan

location

some park

interactions

nate

Nothing less than perfection...

What the feck?

“It’s…weed?!” Trevor asked incredulously, his eyes wide and moving to study the strange rolled…cigarette (or whatever the weed equivalent was—he didn’t know). Hearing what it was sent him into another (overly dramatic) fit of loud hacking, and the hand covering his nose moved to covering his whole lower half of his face. Finally, he stopped “coughing” and lowered his hand, glaring at the man with a confused expression on his face. “Where did you get that? Isn’t it, like, really feckin’ illegal?”

The man held the cigarette out to him. “Try it,” the man offered.

“Try it?!” Trevor repeated, his voice cracking in his utter shock.

“It’ll chill you out,” the man said. “Be careful, though—don’t want you choking too much.”

“You want me to try it?” Trevor repeated, still reeling from that fact. He shook his head vigorously, stepping back, his lips curling up in disgust. “We just feckin’ met, and you’re a grown man who’s sitting in a playground, and you’re offerin’ me—you’re offerin’ me drugs?!”

This whole situation rang alarm bells in Trevor’s head—though, to be fair, most other situations when he was in public rang alarm bells.

He looked at the cigarette, and then back at the man’s face. The man’s eyelids sagged; he looked relaxed, tired almost. Trevor’s disgusted look faded slightly as he looked from cigarette to dude, cigarette to dude, cigarette to dude.

He came out here to destress, after all. And Trevor’s whole fecking life—his whole fecking existence—all it was was misery and feckin’ idiots, and he never got any rest, and his head always hurt, and he hated it, he hated it, he hated it.

And this would help? Really?

No way that it would.

But would it? Could it?

No.

Maybe?

Maybe.

Maybe?

Heaving a deep sigh and jutting out his hand to take the cigarette, Trevor averted his eyes and said, “Eh, fuck it.”

But when he held the cigarette in his hand, he coughed again, and he stared at the used end of it. Used—how many feckin’ germs did there have to be on that thing? His lip curled up in disgust, and for a moment, he held it out from his body and back toward the man—but, determined to at least give it a try, he squeezed his eyes shut, put it between his lips, and did what he thought you were supposed to do with a cigarette: breathe in as deep as possible, then blow it all out at once.

This did not go well.

His reaction was slightly delayed and only set in once he had taken his very fast, very deep drag.

And his reaction was to go into a coughing frenzy.

His fingers clasped the joint for dear life as he pounded his chest. His eyes watered.

IMGONNADIEIMGONNADIE—

pick your poison

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[ditto]

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MICHAEL DEXTER REID

location

the gas station

interactions

jace

if i could, i would feel nothing.

“Didn’t think so,” Mike said as West placed his gum back on the rack,

and he tucked the cleaning supplies under his elbow and closed the cleaning supply closet door and brushed past West on the way to the bathrooms, gnawing on his toothpick.

“Actually uh…yes,” West said abruptly, and Mike heaved a sigh and turned back toward him.

He worked his jaw for a moment, sighing deeply. West—for fucking real? Headphones around his neck, ill-fitted clothes, fucking rich kid—and West had failed as a protégée, that was for fucking sure—there was no way any girl would ever want to touch him. What could he possibly have to say that was worthwhile at this point in his life? Mike was on the clock, couldn’t the kid understand that?

(Mike was antisocial unless he was talking to someone hot.)

“You just want my attention, don’t you?” Mike said gruffly, plopping the cleaning supplies down on the counter and running a gloved hand through his curly hair. He crossed his arms, sighing and leaning back against the counter. He chewed his toothpick, looking up toward the ceiling, then sighing deeply. “Well…spit it out, kid,” he said tiredly. “You got something important to say?”

“Why didn’t you move away?” West asked.

Mike’s muscles tensed, his eyes widening just slightly. For a moment, his fight or flight instinct told him to fuckin’ punch the dude in the face.

What kind of fucking question was that? Why didn’t Mike move away?

Because no fucking matter where he moved, he wouldn’t ever be anything more than who everyone always said he would be. His mom was born here, and so was he, and he would die here because here, as much ass as it sucked, was the only place that would have him. Here didn’t want him, but here took him him, let him hang around its sleazy bars and breathe in its stale breath, slapped him on the face and grinned, knowing that he couldn’t do anything, because here was the only place he could stay.

But Mike just rolled his eyes, chuckling. “I’ve got too many bitches here, Pisskid. If I left, who would keep them satisfied?”

He reached for West’s wallet. “Now pay up. And tip me.”

double

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[ditto]

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DONAHUE CALVIN FREUD

location

school

interactions

ava

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Donna didn’t know who this girl thought she was,

and he also didn’t know who this girl was in the first place.

“My name’s not fucking Einstein…was that your attempt at insulting me…?” There was a flash of anger across his face. “Don’t fucking try to insult me—I don’t have that kind of patience. And if you insult me…come up with something better.” He looked down at the paper, and then bit down aggressively on the pencil that he’d been keeping too close to his mouth. “And don’t compare me to fucking Einstein. He was a fucking metaphysical idiot...but I doubt that you know what I’m even talking about. You don’t strike me as very…smart.”

Donna was unendingly blunt.

He took the pencil from his mouth and threw it on the table in the direction of Ava; it started to roll toward her. “I don’t know how you managed to get me here to work with you,” Donna said dully, “but you’re not doing a good job at making me want to stay. Have you ever fucking spoken to another person…? Especially someone like me?” It was difficult to tell if he was being sarcastic or facetious or if he was being entirely genuine. “Give me one good reason why I should do this project…and maybe I’ll think about doing something, but not because you asked me to.”

hell is where i dreamt of u and woke up alone

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[ditto]

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CHELSEA KADER FREUD

location

football field

interactions

rivera

day by day...

CK Freud watched the other players fall into line,

pairing up with this person and that person. Taylor with Fitzgerald, Killough with Bentley, Langford with Lincoln…the team had already gotten so much tighter, so much smoother, and if things continued—

“No one else, huh?” came the grating fucking voice that always interrupted CK’s meditative moments with its unwanted and frankly fucking irritating presence.

CK turned his head toward the source of the voice and found Rivera, fucking helmeted up already, clearly expecting CK to want to be his fucking partner like this was kindergarten. CK stared at him with a glower.

Rivera clapped his hand on CK’s shoulder. “C’mon,” Rivera said, his eyes focused on a spot behind CK.

Chelsea turned his head and glanced with the side of his eye and found the coach to be the spot in question. Well, fuck. With a deep sigh, CK pulled on his helmet.

It was time to fucking get this on with.

• • •​

“You can’t just fucking go for my head,” Chelsea growled under his breath as he rolled his neck, “not in fucking practice—are you a fucking idiot? You’re going to get both of us hurt.”

He was sweating, panting. This was the sixth or seventh time that he’d said this so far, and it never seemed to get fucking through that trying to fucking paralyze him during practice wasn’t doing shit for practice or modeling for the team how things were supposed to fucking be done.

CK was going to fucking kill him after practice—but this was practice, and practice wasn’t about just them.

“Get fucking over yourself, asshole,” CK commanded. “We’re practicing fucking tackles that won’t get us fowled, okay? Tackles, got that?” Picking up the football again, CK walked back over into position. Reluctantly—and trying to conceal the fact that he was absolutely fucking pissed—CK said, “Let’s run that shit again.”

this fffire

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[Winona]

click!

Jason Beckett West

location

the high school

interactions

Mike

Is there anyone?

Well, Mike's response just felt like a big excuse.

And Jace supposed that it likely was, because surely there wasn't any good reason for Mike to want to stay around.

Unless, what, he really liked working as a gas station employee?

"I'm going to move," he stated. "I wanna go somewhere... cool. I dunno. Chicago, maybe. Somewhere big." And then he bit his tongue before he could continue blasting his dreams -- which were actually less dreams and more goals, because they were going to happen, he was determined.

But he didn't want to rub his future success in Mike's face, and remind his older best friend how Mike's life might've been over, but Jace's was just beginning.

"How much is the gum?" he asked, as he flipped open his wallet and started flipping through the bills. "Five dollars?" He suggested, before holding out the five dollar bill.

tik tok

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[Winona]

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Nathan Leslie Woods

location

the house

interactions

stupid Axel and Ellie

smile

Another hit from the joint,

and Nate let out a happy sigh.

“You want me to try it?” the kid said. “We just feckin’ met, and you’re a grown man who’s sitting in a playground, and you’re offerin’ me—you’re offerin’ me drugs?!”

Perhaps if he was sober, he would be able to realize that the kid had a point, and offering drugs to children on the playground was a typically frowned upon experience. (Granted, he wasn't a kid kid, he was a teen kid, but offering drugs on the playground was probably generally frowned upon no matter what.)

The kid ended up choking on the smoke, and Nate took the joint back with one hand, while he used his other hand to pat the scrawny kid's back.

"You're okay," he said absently as he took a hit from the joint with one hand, while the other hand kept on patting the kid's back. Nate glanced over his shoulder. "You think my girlfriend didn't actually wanna meet at the playground?"

Being distracted was kind of Nate's thing.

superman

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[Winona]

click!

Adriane Hadley Holloway

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Sorry, wasn't listening

"You're part of Squash Smoking?"

Adriane laughed with a roll of her eyes. She remembered their annoying little seminars all too well in school,, where they'd preach these ridiculous statistics and attempt scare tactics to get the students to quit smoking.

Of course, Adriane would always be one to sneak out and go smoke in the girls' locker room, because the door was always left unlocked and could be propped open to smoke without any of the smell staying in the building.

"I should've known," she continued with a breathy sigh. "You do look like one of those dumb little tattletales. I bet if you were at a party and someone, like... started smoking or something, you'd go tattle to their mommy, wouldn't you?" Adriane sneered.

It was smart of Nickie to attempt to change the conversation from... who were they talking about again?

“Keegan Killough is such, like, a freaking idiot, isn’t he?”

She followed Nickie's gaze to find the guy in question, but it didn't take long to see him, pounding his chest like the primitive creature he was. Adriane's nose wrinkled up. Yeah, she definitely recognized the boy -- or well, she recognized his name. He was yet another one of Mason's self-proclaimed arch enemies.

"He is," Adriane said, truthfully agreeing with Nickie for the first time ever. "What's his deal?" she asked, head tilting to the side. "Like... he's going to be absolutely doomed when he graduates, you know? I bet he'll be living off of his parents for the rest of his life." Her lips pressed into a frown. "Such a shame, too -- he's kind of cute."

fast car

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[Winona]

click!

Ava Sanders

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Fuck off

Her lip curled back in disgust when he bit into her pencil.

Eww. She was going to have to throw that away -- which was such a shame. It was brand new, freshly sharpened, and she'd wasted it on the druggie burnout.

Donna threw the pencil down, and it rolled in her direction. As it rolled to a stop by the edge of the table, Ava used her finger to push it off the table. The librarian could deal with cleaning that up later.

“I don’t know how you managed to get me here to work with you,” Donna said dully, “but you’re not doing a good job at making me want to stay. Have you ever fucking spoken to another person…? Especially someone like me?”

"I don't want you to stay," was on the tip of her tongue, but Ava managed to bite it back. Alongside: "someone like you? Like a usless burnout?" amongst a thousand other responses that would surely not give her to the answer that she requested. Which was just... simply... his name... written on their paper.

Someone in hell had wished this on her, and they were laughing up at her. Ava just knew it.

“Give me one good reason why I should do this project…and maybe I’ll think about doing something, but not because you asked me to.”

"Give you a reason..." she echoed slowly, to make sure they were on the same page, of course. "To sign the paper... and not have to do any work...?" Ava huffed, letting the steam roll out through her nose instead of bursting out in some poorly timed insult. "I don't know... because I asked? Because this way neither of us fails the class? And you're not stuck repeating this year?"

What? That was the nicest Ava could be.

fast car

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[ditto]

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MICHAEL DEXTER REID

location

the gas station

interactions

jace

if i could, i would feel nothing.

“Big city?”

Mike laughed coldheartedly. He used to have those kinds of dreams, too—but they were the kinds of dreams that guys like him couldn’t ever even fucking admit aloud without having his balls busted from all sides. “Pisskink, that’d chew you up and spit you out. You ain’t even making it [ii]here[/i], hotshot—what makes you think you will in a place like Chicago?” He sighed deeply, and he instinctively reached for the cigarettes in his pocket as he waited for West to retrieve his money, if he ever effing would. Before he recalled the whole, It’s been law for the last eight years that you can’t smoke inside, son—what the hell is your deal? speech he’d gotten from the owner of the joint just last week after some tightass old hag had complained to the boss about—what Mike made clear were simply allegations—Mike smoking indoors on shift, he already had the cigarette lit and poised between his lips.

After taking a deep breath of the nicotine and heavy metals, Mike shook his head, the humor falling from his face. “But good for you, West. Get out while you can. You’ll be doing better than me already if you do that.”

“How much is the gum?” West asked. “Five dollars?”


Mike tried not to guffaw as the kid held out a fiver. Five fucking dollars for gum? God, the kid really was a helpless idiot. Imagine where he’d be if Mike hadn’t taken him underwing. Probably dead, Mike concluded.

Still, Mike took the five dollar bill for the fifty cent—fifty-five cent after tax—pack of gum. “Yep,” he said, opening the register and subtly removing $4.45 and pocketing the four dollars with one hand as he handed West the forty-five cents. It was just a bit of sleight of hand, and neither West nor the boss would be any the wiser. “Pleasure doing business,” Mike said with a little grin, moving his cigarette to the other corner of his mouth with his tongue and taking a puff.

double

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[ditto]

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Sean Trevor Callaghan

location

some park

interactions

nate

Nothing less than perfection...

Trevor tensed as the man’s hand hit his back.

Strange man hitting a handsome, strapping young man’s back in an empty playground would generally spell one three-letter word: RUN. But, for some reason, he didn’t really want to get up—and in a couple of moments, he felt a sort of wave of gentle lightness pass over him.

Was lightness the right word? Or relaxation?

Whatever it was, it made, for a moment, his tense shoulders relax and the colors of his world brighten slightly.

He blinked, and then let out a soft chuckle.

This was probably the best feckin’ two seconds of his life—because what the hell? He could feckin’ breathe without worrying that…huh? What was he even worrying about usually?

He let out another soft chuckle, then turned to look at the man—

The strange man…

In the…

He felt a weight in his chest again, and he exhaled deeply. “What the hell am I doin’ here…?”

“You think my girlfriend didn’t actually wanna meet at the playground?” the man asked.

Trevor half-scoffed, half-laughed. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to—the feck, you thought she would?”

He closed his eyes and breathed out a deep sigh, and the poking anxious thoughts seemed now even bigger than they were before.

But, just moments ago, he had felt so—

Hesitantly, Trevor, with a miserable look, turned back to the man. “Give me another hit, Mr…ah…whateveryourfaceisIneverasked.”

pick your poison

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[ditto]

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DONAHUE CALVIN FREUD

location

school

interactions

ava

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

“Failing the class…?”

Donna restated in boredom, his half-closed eyes glazed over in a seeming daze. Mostly to spite the irritating girl in front of him, his eyes moved to the whiteboard, whereon had certainly been written some words. He spent the next half minute trying to make out what the words on the board said with squinted eyes and slightly parted lips. “X is equal to y/12…,” he said flatly. He tapped his finger lightly on the desk. “How fuck is x equal to y? They’re different letters…” He worked his jaw. “Fuckin’ chemistry…”

He looked back at Ava. “Stupid reason. I’ve failed this class already. Give me another reason.” He was just being a dick to be one at this point.

hell is where i dreamt of u and woke up alone

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[ditto]

click!

NICOLA AVA ABRAMS

location

the football field

interactions

adriae

i know you want me.

Nickie’s brows furrowed in offense,

but she quickly smoothed them out, because, like, Adriane was def, like, joking with this whole, like, acting like she hated her thing. Like, Nickie knew that, but it was easy to forget.

“Uhm, I’ve, like—!” Never gone to a party, so, like, that’s irrelevant, she almost said, but she stopped herself short of saying that, because, like, it wasn’t very cool to admit that she hadn’t really ever gone to a party before—especially someone like Adriane. “I’m not, like, a tattling little, like, bitch chick, Adriane, c’mon,” Nickie dismissed with a forced little chuckle, though she was totally a tattling little bitch chick. She flopped a hand as if to swat away the idea. “Actually, I’m, like, I’m such a party girl,” she gabbed to compensate for her actual lack of party experience. “Like, I am the life of the party, like—you can ask anyone.” Her eyes trailed all the way to the body wearing the jersey that read Rivera. “I bet you could even, like, ask Mason.” Except he probably wouldn’t even know who she was. But, like…she’d totally seen him staring a couple of times at school, she swore to God (though her friends all denied it), so maybe he’d, like, mistake staring at her in school for, like, having stared at her at a party and, like…no one would ever know that Nickie was a total, like, cool-things newb.

Adriane regarded Keegan, and Nickie felt a slight thrill from her agreeing with Nickie’s estimation of him. “Ugh, right?” Nickie said in agreement, nodding emphatically. “Hot face, but, like…literally no brains. Or, like, negative brains, if that’s even possible.” (Nickie was basing this off of rumors that she’d heard about the guy; she’d never spoken with him in person.) “He got, like, an F in freaking Home Economics because he, like, couldn’t get the bobbin threaded to sew and so he, like, went total, like, 'roid rage and broke the machine and, like, tried to square up to Mrs. Reese—“ Who was 60-plus years old. “—and his parents had to, like, pay off the school so that he wouldn’t get, like…like…” That was where her memory of the rumors ended. She shrugged. “So, like…total effing idiot. Also, his blonde is definitely from a bottle.”

What Was I Made For?

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[Winona]

click!

Ava Sanders

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Fuck off

The amount of stupidity that rolled off his tongue was hard for her to comprehend.

She just glared at him. "You know what? Forget it. I'll get you dropped, or forge your name," she snapped as she stood up from the table, grabbing the paper from the table, shoving it into her notebook, and then started shoving all of her things into her backpack. It was a lot harder when one was angry, of course, so took far too much fumbling around -- which just pissed her off more.

After it was all placed away -- and Ava had done plenty of cussing -- she rose up out of her chair, throwing her backpack over her shoulder. She paused, as if maybe she was going to say something, but ultimately thought better of it as a million different insults rolled through her head, each one just causing her to grow more annoyed.

"You suck," she grumbled half-heartedly, before finally storming away.

fast car

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[Winona]

click!

Jason Beckett West

location

the high school

interactions

Mike

Is there anyone?

He lingered for a moment longer,

wanting to continue the conversation with the guy that he viewed as his best friend. But Mike clearly wanted some time to himself, and he was keeping on an air of professionalism.

So ultimately, with a heavy sigh, Jace pocketed the gum and headed out of the gas station. The bell clanging behind him as the door fell shut behind him was the last sound he heard before he put his headphones back on, and started the CD once again. The player started to skip, so he adjusted his hold on it.

And by himself, with shoulders kind of slouched down, he started walking home. He should've driven his car, really, so he wasn't out here looking like a loser walking by himself, but...

Well, then he wouldn't have an excuse to stop by Mike's gas station every day.

tik tok

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[Winona]

click!

Nathan Leslie Woods

location

the house

interactions

stupid Axel and Ellie

smile

His eyebrows raised up in surprise as the boy started begging him for another hit,

not that Nate could really blame him. Once it hit and you realized how much better life was with it, it was hard to go back.

"Here you go, kid," he said, as he proudly passed the blunt back over to him with a kind of sleepy grin on his face. "You know what... you keep it."

Nate paused, watching the kid for a moment. "Something tells me you need it more than me," he said. It didn't seem too healthy for a kid like him to already look so stressed out, but Nate was sure that weed would be the answer to all of his problems.

"Nate," he added absently. "Your name?"

superman

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[Winona]

click!

Mason Lee Rivera

location

the house

interactions

Nickie

Just getting by

Football was supposed to be a release.

A time of the day where he could freely knock into someone without having any (real) repercussions. And it happened to be one of those things that he was good at.

And it was going to be his ticket out of this hellhole town.

Or at least it would've been, if Freud wasn't standing between him and his goal.

The word asshole kept replaying in his head, again and again, as he came towards Freud. Sweat dripped down his face, and the cold air did little to cool him through the stupid football helmet. But at least the helmet somewhat concealed his distaste, and the constant rolling of his eyes as CK babbled on about bullshit.

His hands balled into fists by his side, and Mason brought his hands behind his back to hide that -- because if Freud kept up with his shitty ass attitude, then Mason was going to send a fist flying into the fucker's face.

"I am tackling," he snapped back. "Maybe if you'd stop being a whiny little bitch, you'd know how to take a hit." A hit. A tackle. Same thing, same difference.

His voice had risen a bit louder than intended, but no one seemed to notice -- everyone else was too wrapped up in practicing with their own partners to notice. Assholes, the whole lot of them.

(Assholes solely because they'd left him facing off against Freud, of course.)

Again, they slammed into each other in the stupid football training. But this time, something happened.

They stumbled, and Mason found himself losing his balance -- along with Freud.

And then he heard a resounding crack, and soon, pain shooting up from his leg all the way through his body.

"Fuck," he yelled out, his voice cracking.

superman

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[ditto]

click!

Sean Trevor Callaghan

location

some park

interactions

nate

Nothing less than perfection...

Trevor was doing drugs with a strange grown man in a park.

Oh Christ, how had he come to this point in his life?

But he needed that relief, and the drugs were doing it for him, and so with a soft, miserable little groan, he took the joint back and sucked in a deep breath, which was followed promptly by much more hacking and then a release of the smoke, and then a deep, relieved sigh.

“You know what…you keep it,” said the man.

Trevor blinked. “Eh…?”

“Something tells me you need it more than me,” the man stated.

“You can feckin’ say that, yeah,” Trevor agreed glumly, though his logical mind protested everything that was happening right now. His mind was screaming, This thing reeks, your grandmother is going to kill you, this is probably laced with meth, this guy is going to snatch you up and sell your organs on the black market, look at his face, he looks like a scary perv—, but his whole body appreciated it all very much, and for once, Trevor was ignoring what his mind was saying.

“Nate,” said the man, and it took Trevor a second to realize that the man was telling him his name. Nate. Sounded like the name of a park perv, yeah, that checked out. Trevor drew in another breath from the joint. “Your name?”

“Tre—“ Trevor coughed, then finished, “—vor. Some people call me Trev.” He paused. “Callaghan,” he felt the need to add, like a sketchy man like Nate would recognize Trevor’s name from the school newspaper columns that bore his name.

pick your poison

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[ditto]

click!

CHELSEA KADER FREUD

location

football field

interactions

rivera

day by day...

CK was going to fucking kill Rivera,

but what was new? The asshole, you’d think, would learn over the course of time not to fuck with CK, but apparently he could never get it through that thick skull of his who was really fucking in charge here.

CK looked around, checking over his shoulders to see if anyone was getting a fucking load of this bastard here. Unfortunately, no one was looking—or, perhaps, fortunately. Rivera’s raising his voice was like a fourth-grader, bawling and clenching their teeth when their teacher confiscated their GameBoy.

CK gave a forced laugh, stepped closer to Rivera, and, in a quieter, monotone voice, said, “You think you’re funny. Your comebacks sound like they came from a fucking knock-knock joke book.” He put his helmet back on. “Whatever. Get over yourself, Rivera. You’re not the only fucking person on the field, and if you hurt one of my players, then I’ll fucking slaughter you, got that?”

CK walked back into his position, gave Rivera the nod, and—

CRACK!

The sound of a loud noise, a moment of stars, and CK, with the wind knocked out of his lungs, realized that he was lying flat on the ground. He gasped for air, rolling onto his side, as the other players gradually seemed to noice the goings on and gathered around the bodies on the ground. Somewhere in the collision and him falling on the ground, CK had lost his helmet, which his black-rimmed vision noted was on the ground a few feet away from him.

“Rivera, Freud—you boys okay?” It was the coach’s voice.

CK managed to roll back onto his back, now finally managing a deeper breath of air, and he mumbled, “Yes, Coach.”

“Shit,” the coach muttered, and he leaned down over the two boys.

CK felt something wet on his forehead, and he reached up to wipe away the sweat. He came away with something thicker than sweat, and far more tacky. With a furrowed brow, he held his hand out in front of himself, and he felt his stomach grip as he recognized the dark red color.

“Taylor, go get the nurse—Hansen, water,” the coach commanded, and he bent down next to Rivera. “Your leg, son—can you move it?”

this fffire

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