nails like god | georgebur

legit tattoo gun

George doesn't recall how he got here, wearing clothes that are far too big for him, laying on a bed that isn't his. He knows what happened, sure, but it's all a bit blurry in George's head. He turns to lay on his side, curling into himself, he closes his eyes. George thinks about it all. He's always done this. A small little catch-up with himself before he drifts off to sleep. He asks himself, "What happened today?"

They were sitting on that bench for a long time. Wilbur began getting cold, but the bus finally came soon after that. They both got on. George's phone had died, and he got on the bus with Wilbur without a second thought. Maybe it was to keep Wilbur from completing his To-Do list of leaping beneath a train. Maybe it was more selfish than that, and George just didn't want to be left alone. He doesn't know. He wishes he could say it was to keep this stranger alive, but really, George doesn't know if he's that good of a person.

Wilbur didn't ask why George followed him, as if he had expected things to go that way. When they sat down together, Wilbur asked where they were going. George said he doesn't know. The taller thought for a bit. George could tell he was thinking because he brought his hand to his chin, and occasionally, he hummed.

Wilbur then said, "I'm going to my apartment." He said it like a question, like he didn't actually know if that's what he was doing.

George muttered, "Am I going with you?"

"I don't know, are you?" Wilbur responded.

George looked at his feet, then, before stating a plain 'yes.'

The bus ride was quiet. George didn't know what to say to Wilbur. Really, they were strangers. As much as they convinced themselves they knew how the other felt, and who they were even based on such a small introduction, they didn't. Wilbur prides himself on truly understanding people, and George prides himself on being unreadable to the world.

Wilbur scratched at his arm a lot during the ride. It was his upper-arm. Wilbur was scratching so harshly, George swore he saw blood under the man's nails. When Wilbur noticed George's staring, he got incredibly red. He murmured something to justify his actions, but George simply pointed to a small, fading black mark just above where Wilbur was scratching.

"What is that?"

Wil looked at it. "A stick and poke," he said, "I did some with my friends when we were, like, sixteen."

George got closer and inspected it. The tattoo was a messy drawing of two hands, and floating above them, a lighter with a symbol on it. Under the tiny image, the words 'Hello Sadness' were written in scratchy handwriting. George asked, "What's it mean?"

"Just a song." Wilbur said.

George sat back, satisfied with the answer. "You have stuff for tattoos?"

Wilbur tapped his feet on the bus's floor. "Yeah, probably. I'll have to look. Why, you want one?"

"Yes," George said. He's quite impulsive.

The ride got quiet again after that. It stayed quiet until Wilbur stood and pointed that this was his stop. George followed him off the bus. It was only then that George thought about the dangers of entering a stranger's home with a dead phone. He hesitated at the door. "How do I know you won't kill me?"

"I'm not a murderer," Wilbur said, though it sounded unconvincing. "You don't have to come in, George. Don't you have your own house?"

"I don't want to go back there." George looked behind him, noting where in Brighton he was. "Well, if you're a murderer - make it quick, please." He said as he walked past Wilbur into his apartment.

George shifts in bed. He knows how he got here.

Wilbur spent a few minutes pointing around the home, showing off the bathroom, the one bedroom, and the fact it looked like an episode of Hoarders. There was food in places there shouldn't be, bowls left uncleaned, clothing thrown about randomly. It looks like George's house.

Then, Wilbur offered George some sleeping clothes. George accepted. Wilbur insisted George take his bed, as he wasn't going to fall asleep for a while.

"You're not going to kill yourself, are you?" George asked him before shutting the bedroom's door. Wilbur was in the doorway, tall enough that he'd have to bend slightly to get under it.

"No," He said earnestly, "Not tonight."

"Okay," George nodded. He was in no position to lecture Wilbur, really. He wasn't going to yell, 'don't kill yourself!' like most people would. George and Wilbur, even after only knowing each other for maybe a few hours, have grown this sort of dynamic. They're both fucked up, they both know it. Why dwell on it with each other?

Wilbur smiled at George before he shut the door. George doesn't know if it was sincere, or what the smile really meant, but he made sure to smile back.

George turns over in Wilbur's bed, acutely aware of the warm shirt he had on. It has stripes, which makes sense to the brunette. Wilbur seems like a stripes kind of person. George stops his nightly catch-up, deciding finally to go to sleep.

'Going to sleep' for George was actually 'lay down and stare into the darkness of the room until you find something there to comfort you and carry you to dreamland.' It can last hours. He fell unconscious around 4 a.m.

Still, he heard Wilbur strumming a guitar faintly at that time.