Ah, so you've only been upholding family tradition all this time.
[Prior's nose has been nuzzled quite deliberately close to Byerly's shoulder for long enough now to undermine that comment, though he hangs back a little en route to the door. It means something, to have a memory of his own from before things started to crumble.
Another pleasant thing: to skip a step in the rush to catch him up in the doorway. The cane's back home beside the bed. In his mind he's almost never broken.
The hallway is - a hallway, a limb that doesn't seem detached from the room they've just been in, nothing untoward or out of the ordinary except that, as soon as they're both in it, the music stops. Replacing it nothing but a distant blip - blip - blip that Prior recognizes too easily as the tuneless refrain of a hospital monitor.]
On second thoughts, I liked that room, lets stay there. [Pulse racing fast enough to set off an alarm, he turns to be met by a wall of white.
Four of them, actually, building up around them as the hallway of Byerly's home tumbles like children's building blocks. It's a private room. One bed, a stark metal lamp angled over it like a spotlight as Prior tries to sleep. It would be easier if every breath weren't an effort, every movement a new ache. His face is all hollows and bruises, nobody would give the boy in that bed long, to look at him.
Prior... doesn't look at him. Can't look at himself. Now it's his hand roughly clasping Byerly's wrist, heading for the next door, another exit.]
No, no no this is not nostalgia, this was [There's tinsel edging the frame. He stops and looks at it, a telling little sprig.] right before Christmas. We can't stay.
[His hand moves for the door handle just as it turns, opens. Prior never made contact but he pulls back like something's scalded him, throwing that hand up to hide his face from the... very ordinary man who enters. Louis is clean, he's not starved or neglected but he looks like he's wearing three day old clothes. His features are taut, and there's a momentary pull of his lips, something squeamish, almost queasy, as he looks across at the bed.]
no subject
[Prior's nose has been nuzzled quite deliberately close to Byerly's shoulder for long enough now to undermine that comment, though he hangs back a little en route to the door. It means something, to have a memory of his own from before things started to crumble.
Another pleasant thing: to skip a step in the rush to catch him up in the doorway. The cane's back home beside the bed. In his mind he's almost never broken.
The hallway is - a hallway, a limb that doesn't seem detached from the room they've just been in, nothing untoward or out of the ordinary except that, as soon as they're both in it, the music stops. Replacing it nothing but a distant blip - blip - blip that Prior recognizes too easily as the tuneless refrain of a hospital monitor.]
On second thoughts, I liked that room, lets stay there. [Pulse racing fast enough to set off an alarm, he turns to be met by a wall of white.
Four of them, actually, building up around them as the hallway of Byerly's home tumbles like children's building blocks. It's a private room. One bed, a stark metal lamp angled over it like a spotlight as Prior tries to sleep. It would be easier if every breath weren't an effort, every movement a new ache. His face is all hollows and bruises, nobody would give the boy in that bed long, to look at him.
Prior... doesn't look at him. Can't look at himself. Now it's his hand roughly clasping Byerly's wrist, heading for the next door, another exit.]
No, no no this is not nostalgia, this was [There's tinsel edging the frame. He stops and looks at it, a telling little sprig.] right before Christmas. We can't stay.
[His hand moves for the door handle just as it turns, opens. Prior never made contact but he pulls back like something's scalded him, throwing that hand up to hide his face from the... very ordinary man who enters. Louis is clean, he's not starved or neglected but he looks like he's wearing three day old clothes. His features are taut, and there's a momentary pull of his lips, something squeamish, almost queasy, as he looks across at the bed.]