eye of the storm ¦ carnival au

[michael t.]

Michael was unsure of the last time he had been to a carnival, truly. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever been to one that wasn't rickety and breaking down, on the very verge of collapsing with one last dying breath. When he had been just a child, the carnival had been a way for he and his mother to get away from his father for a bit, even if his mother's eyes usually just glossed over whenever she went to one. She didn't care so much for her son either, she just wanted to be away from her husband. Michael preferred not to think of those days, an unsettled and itchy feeling burrowing beneath his skin that made him yearn for a cigarette. His childhood had sucked. Thank fuck it was over now. Now he had a better family, or at least a pieced together rather odd group that he had come to think of as one. The main linking piece of that family being Roxie, someone only a few years younger than him that had caught his attention and held it for a long time after they had first met, their bond becoming almost sibling like. It was difficult for him to imagine a life without her nowadays, even if he had been doing "fine" on his own before her.

When Roxie had initially told him that he should go to the carnival, he had been... skeptical. Previous bad experiences had made him hesitant to do so, and he wasn't even sure what he would do while he was there. However, an insistent Roxie was a difficult one to argue with, so now here he was, leaning up against the railing of the boardwalk in his brightly patterned shirt and worn jeans. He had been wondering just how much shit he could steal from the vendors working here when familiar voices began to grab his attention, making his mismatched blue eyes flick up quickly. Sure enough, there was his beloved sister, as well as the two horrifying men she thought of as fathers. Their presence was enough to make him hesitate in greeting her, but it also would've been pretty weird for him to just stand around without saying anything, so finally he sighed and pushed away from the railing. The jog over was short, and he mumbled with a wave, "Hey Rox... Emil, Ahab. It's good to see you guys. It's busy as hell here tonight, eh?" He could only hope that he was being casual enough, and that they wouldn't identify him as the horrible influence he very much was.

[glow=#75603C,1,000]" oh, it's a setup, no, no, we won't fall. "[/glow]