have you ever seen the rain <3 || kneedles

Today Becks was not accompanied, as he so often was, by whatever piece of mechanical junk he could get his hands on and so found his body and hands unusually free for once. It was vaguely disconcerting, or at least it would have been if Becks was the type to be disconcerted by anything. This new state of affairs was as easily accepted as the previous and he hummed happily to himself as he made the long journey home. In yesterday’s clothes and a vaguely stale scent following him, a passersby might assume that at this hour in the morning Becks was performing that age old ritual of the walk of shame, having stopped out somewhere he shouldn’t have been last night with someone that he shouldn’t have been with.

But that wasn’t Becks’ style, never had been never would be. He’d stopped over late at his brother’s place, first for dinner with a few of his brother’s friends and then conversation before he’d ended up staying over when they simply lost track of time and the District got dark and it became clear that most of the flickering lights werent going to deign to shine for Three that evening- as though they were at all visible through the thick smog that descended during the night anyway. All of it perfectly above board, perfectly normal, perfectly safe- even if there might have been the smallest twinging in the back of Becks’ head- the last lingering remnants of the few tiny, tiny sips of his brother’s bootlegged liquor; the kind of stuff that smelt and tasted like paint stripper and motor oil. But it was hard being straight edge all the time- surely Becks was allowed to lapse every once in a very long while.
This time last year, he would never have been able to stay out late like that- his folks would have gone berserk, frothing at the mouth with worry over their vulnerable, used up little middle child. These days though, the reigns were slowly loosening, and they had stopped looking at him like a victim for once and for all and now it was different, everything was different. They were forgetting. And that made Becks incredibly happy even though he knew that as hard as he could try, as well as he could fake it, he himself never could. There were scars that ran too deep, cracks too large to ever paper over but at least he could pretend that they weren’t there. If he pretended hard enough they might just slip away.

Becks ducked into a dingy little café that didn’t look like it was up to any sort of health and safety code, flashed the woman behind the counter his biggest brightest smile over his order for coffee and was rewarded with an eye roll and a “Do you know what time it is, sonny?” escaping in a rasp characteristic of too many cigarettes from behind a mouth lined with smudgy pink lipstick.

“I guess I’m just a morning person,” Becks shrugged, counting out the coins for his decidedly too expensive orange juice. He took a sip and it tasted synthetic, as though the water had been boiled in a slowly melting plastic bag and not even left to cool but he clutched at the polystyrene cup and thanked the waitress all the same. On the way out he saw a few guys on early shifts or just finishing their night shifts making a mess of some sickly looking beans on a plate and felt whatever hunger he might have had just slip away into nothing.

So with no rush to get home and eat breakfast and no desire to get home and sleep either- for someone who was always so laidback and slow moving it was strange how Becks could survive on so little sleep, eat like a bird and then spend most of his day staring intently at something very small that would give most people a headache- Becks decided to take a more scenic route back. Part of him was also hoping that if he went back this way he could stop by the computer works and have a rummage in the dumpster for something to show Sixth Floor. The way that a cat might bring a dead mouse back to its master without realising that it was just about the last thing he wanted.

The birds were singing in staccato from a sickly looking tree, probably choking to death and starved of oxygen, heaving in all the toxic air but to Becks their music was beautiful; high and chirruping like a piccolo and the sound of his hand on the polystyrene coffee cup, the way that his feet hit the pavement. Even this early in the morning, even with so few people to hear it the world was already electrical, already filled with a thousand sounds and a thousand melodies- it was almost selfish that Becks should be the only one who got to hear it- but half the time he was the only person really listening anyway so Becks couldn’t feel too bad about it.

There was a bench and somebody who seemed friendly enough sitting on it, which made it the sort of bench Becks liked and it never really occurred to him that at this time in the morning there were human beings that much preferred to be left alone. But that was Beck’s wasn’t it? He liked people and he liked their stories, preferred being in the company of someone else even if it meant that they weren’t talking. So Becks didn’t ask if he could sit down in an awkward way the way that someone else would, only sat down with some degree of easy confidence. Legs apart, slouching down a little, he cradled his cup between his hands and between his thighs, taking a small sip unsurprised to find that the quality of his orange juice had not been improved at all- that it was still warm and still sort of…chunky… tasting too. Becks grimaced a little and smiled over at the young man beside him.

“This is the worst orange juice in the world man, I swear. Like…it should win an award for how horrible it manages to be.” Worst orange juice, but at least it was a conversation starter.

Becks laughed as the boy responded to his comments with a joke, “Yeah that was the one,” and shrugged in a sort of ‘what’re you gonna do?’ sort of way. The best of everything fresh from the lower districts seemed to go to the capitol anyway and district 3 was probably lucky to get anything that looked like an orange or dried up instant coffee anyway- the café just around the corner was probably doing its best with the bad ingredients it was given. No use getting worked up about it, no use shaking his fist to the sky and cursing district three for its inferior food products. Still though, that was no excuse for the dirt smeared seven layers thick onto the peeling linoleum floor tiles and the musty smell of body odor and stale sandwiches that lingered through the place.“I don’t normally come down this way; my place is west of here…but the coffee really isn’t much better back there either. Just as well I don’t really drink the stuff.” Hot drinks and Becks never really mixed for some reason, especially coffee with its added rush of caffeine to add a nervous jitter to a cool and calm demeanour that had been so carefully honed. No thank you, thought Becks.

As always, Beck’s met the gaze of the boy beside him with a seemingly careless but not always altogether unaffected look, they were brown like his, turning out towards the park with the lingering traces of a shyness that Becks once had possessed but had willingly shucked away like the rind of an orange probably still swirling in his polystyrene cup. With another grin, his eyes drifted across to the bench to find a notebook laid out and set aside just begging to be asked about. He’d noticed earlier on when he’d come to the bench that the other boy was drawing in it and appreciated people with passions and hobbies. After all what was Becks if not a series of sounds and shifting melodies, more the music than a boy while his new friend could be like that only with art. Seeing the world in pencil lines the way that Becks did in musical scales.

He raised a fawn coloured finger in gesture to the notebook and smiled, “Getting up early to…draw…is it? That’s dedication. What sort of stuff do you do?”Becks just came out and asked, like of course he wanted to share what he was doing as opposed to keeping it held tightly against him in private like a pearl cupped inside of an oyster shell. Most people wanted to be extroverts at heart, Becks believed, even the shy ones like this boy and like Sixth Floor, the nervous but very cute boy who lived two floors above him, because hadn’t Becks? All it took was a little time and a little patience and a lot of smiles, wide ones through a generous mouth like the one Becks gave out now and it was patience that kept his questions light, not too probing, he thought- otherwise he would have just demanded out and out to see his art work there and then.