There was something wilting in him, too, of course. At first it was only that thriving thing that helped him. He found a route for a delivery company, just days away from loosing his mite-ridden motel room in the outskirts of the city but close to a pivotal buss stop. Stars in dark eyes and a fresh kind of handsome got him ahead in a few lines and interviews. On a bike, the kind that is propelled by your legs and yesterdays breakfast burritos today, he'd started plucking out sympathetic hearts, everywhere he could deliver trinkets in the boxes they had ready for him. He learned the smiles that girls take to, and let them come, he remembered the jokes that made men billow and boys snort.<br/><br/>He ended up selling iron and chrome to someone who provided the golden tiers of the skyline with their vehicles. Joseph hadn't had a chance, not when his scruff looked like father's, and his sensibilities were the same. Joe had no daughter to offer, but he didn't mind sharing his other things with the running boy. Drinking with people with oils in their hair and unheard plastic in their dinner jacket pockets, the boy who was repeating his genesis accumulated garages and stalls that became hungry for his products. In the end, having their love and having their money was the same thing. Now, something bespoke from the boy from the mountains, The Wicker Boy, didn't just mean you had means, but that you lived the kind of late-night mirage that concrete born children thirsted for.<br/><br/>And all he'd have to pay was the things that kept him sweet. His friendship was currency. A whore for the debutantes and a villain for their gossip. Hold your drink in your mouth, hold your crystals in your veins and your snow in your nose. Breathe when you're ready to loose every step you've climbed on the glass and metal towers. If she'd asked him how many Reno's he'd forsaken, she'd feel an overwhelming sense of belonging in a home she'd never been.<br/><br/>His fingers gossiped to him about the awakening festivals that rode her neck down when the digits stirred the roots of her hair. His upper lip stayed in place when the lower one moved to the side, a very becoming clue to the pity inside. She wouldn't see that, and it was better, because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. It wasn't like he didn't see the standing, fine hairs anyway. Even little girls feel the things women do. He thought it was adorable.<br/><br/>He saw it again when he tended to her paint, but it was more acute to try and chase away the ghosts of every girl he'd kissed than rouse her out of it. A whore's hand has a whore's effect even on the patrons that don't have credit cards. But at their proximity now, even her weapons were effective. The joints in spry and nimble, car-building phalanges dried and rusted when she summoned her own phantoms between them. He suffered. Other boys. They should chase other skirts. She should kneel in hers, waiting for-- he supposed that was incredibly unfair.<br/><br/>It dissuaded him from even tending to the black flakes coagulated at the corners of her mouth. He'd looked forward to scraping them off her the most. Now he just had to stew in whatever this was, that she'd put in him, when she was the one standing in front of her mother's vanity and borrowing pretty from a bottle. A pretty that was passing him by. He could have appreciated the black fangs down her eyes and the dainty of her build in the strong whorls of her life. Hadn't he fallen for less? Funeral girls with shivers and red mouths are honey to boy's honeycomb hearts. But he thought he knew the mannequin under the ragged-glorious coat, and the mistaken light from a brother's stubborn romanticism was stronger than a man's inclinations, and further misguided libido.<br/><br/>He fumbled, inevitably, when she melted out of his hand's way. Fine. Up to you. And then they were neighbors when they should have been conjoined. The damned box had taken on more chill than the fucking surface of father's stone. He was annoyed about that until he was annoyed about the noisy heat. These road weren't as new to him as he hoped. Worming map to all his suffocated synapses, breathing electric pangs into forgotten epochs. Here she'd tried to run out into the sporadic supply of poorly maintained trucks, all so she could give a healthy boy a cardiovascular episode and get to their brook, sooner than they had to. Another scar on the back of her thigh for that, when he pulled her back. Even Miranda had been mad at him for that.<br/><br/>"Yeah?" he tested back. Meaner. This was nothing. Taller girls with a worst state of granulates and creams on their faces had said darker things to him in his own bed. So he'd give them the ruthless hips they wanted against theirs. He was just happy she was sharing. "Well, you..." look like a stranger because I've never dreamt about you. But he didn't know the flex of her nerves at the moment, and would rather not see what she'd do if she heard something so-- brotherly. "look like someone who didn't get the beautiful life she deserved, but somehow stayed beautiful anyway." Why did hurt to say that, when it was meant to make her smile?<br/><br/>The house fit exactly into its holster in his remembrance. It was heart wrenching. The decay that had  shrunken father's liver was littering the yard and climbing the old wood. He slapped the wheels once and pulled his hair back, leaning into the seat. "Fuck, Ren." he said with honest surprise. What a dumb tourist, thinking leaving on a summer day and trudging back on flat tires and graveyard conversations would look the same. He tossed his head her way, hair wild but settling. What are we going to do about this. He opened the door and went out, but stuck his face and warning finger back in. "I live here now." he muttered, and it sounded like a bloody testament.<br/><br/>With fairy-tale gestures he reached over the side and pulled his back from where he'd placed it under a strap. The band shook like he'd played it. He hung his luggage on himself in the same manner and knocked on a truck window, as though it wasn't clear. "Show me." Your home. He was aghast enough at the state, but it made good sense that a girl who had to work and lug a grown, weeping man around couldn't moonlight in carpentry, also. At least he was animated. He even laughed miserably, shrill, at the debris he passed, arms out like the hatted man in the middle of the circus. Another cigarette to soothe himself by the time he reached the door. Fireball making lines in the night. This place couldn't catch fire if he wiped it off first. Was he eager?<br/><br/>He looked at her, cadence like the brother that she wished for, and knocked back on the door like she didn't know. "Ren. Lets go." words in smoke.