@hardlydead

[outerfringe]

[One day David simply stops appearing by the fire with the rest of them, and Jeff does his very best to be relieved for him. There are only two real possible reasons for that, right? Either he'd actually died for real, or he'd managed to find a way back home- and either way, it meant that he was out of this place. Jeff tries to be happy for him, and for the most part, he is.

He doesn't think about David at all the first day after he wakes up on the cold floor of the Ormond resort, back stiff and jacket crusted with frost. Instead he's too busy finding his way back to town, organizing arrangements to make it home. His apartment key no longer works, he recognizes none of his neighbors, but his bank account was still somehow in alright standing.

Jeff finds a new place. He does not find a new dog.

He feels weird about creating a Facebook account just to check for David, but he does it anyway. When that comes up fruitless, he thinks a lot about the conversations the two of them had while tucked close together in the dark. Wonders if David would even want to be found by someone like him, to be faced with a reminder of the time they'd spent doing everything they could to simply survive.

Jeff tries to paint but can't seem to pull himself out of severe blacks and reds. Tries to catch up on the music he'd missed from the bands he'd loved but it fails to soothe him the way it had before. He considers a therapist, and then decides that he'd be locked away the second he was candid enough for someone to actually help him.

So he packs some things, books a flight. Finds himself at his fifth seedy pub in three days without much hope - except this time when he says he's looking for David King, the big guy by the bar makes a point of sizing him up. Jeff sets his shoulders, frowns and promises that he's an old friend, but it doesn't seem to affect much the scowl on the guy's face. He says something (that Jeff completely misses, he can barely understand a goddamn thing when people here are drunk and loud), but seems to indicate for him to wait.

Which he does. He parks on a stool with a drink, assumes his most unapproachable aura, and waits. He doesn't know who he's expecting to appear, but it's not David.

There's not a chance it would actually be that simple.]

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[hardlydead]

[ at first, when he'd come to, david had made the logical assumption: it was one hell of a weird fucking dream. he must've gotten jumped or passed out drunk after making a tit of himself at the airport, he's laying on the damp grass in the same park he'd walked to after, except. it didn't feel that recent. it felt years passed. like the more he tried to piece together why he was there, the more space filled in the gaps. ]

[ the whole fucking year after was just picking up the scraps of his life while trying to figure out what to do with his memories of the fog. people asked where he'd been and he told them not to worry about it, and even the rare subset who cared tried not to push because they could see the way he'd changed. harrowed was the word rik liked to use. but he went back to his old work, back to his old flat, and the more dead social media accounts he found with familiar names, the better he got at wearing a costume of his old self. ]

[ so, needless to say, when he gets a call that there's "some beardy american" looking for him, jeff is literally the last person he expects when he comes in and greets the bartender with a broad "who's the poor sod lookin' to scrap then?" ]

[ it stops him in his tracks when they point him in jeff's direction and david sees his face. christ, he missed that face. over a year and david still thinks about him more than anyone else. his eyes start to sting and he takes a deep breath before he walks on over and forces a grin onto his face. ]

They told me it was an American looking for me.

[ he's doing his best to tone his accent back down for jeff's benefit, but it's been a long time since he had to do that either. it doesn't come naturally anymore. ]