saturday night and the moon is out
Sep. 19th, 2022 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feel_humanTucked away off the road in Bon Temps, there's a road house. Warm light spills from its windows, and the sound of a jukebox playing drifts out into the muggy Louisiana night. The regular assortment of trucks and Hail-Mary-please-keep-this-lemon-goin'-just-a-little-longer cars sit in the dirt parking lot; what amounts to about half the town's small population... or, at least, of those of the 'drinking age and above' persuasion.
Inside, it's a bar of the type scattered all across the American South: homey, no-nonsense. Booths and tables. A man in a plaid flannel shirt wiping the bar; a crossdresser in the kitchen singing Gospel hymns and rolling his hips in time with the words just to scandalize the prep cook. A handful of waitresses, bustling about.
Sookie makes her way briskly through it all, a tray balanced on her palm and her eyes kept stubbornly front, as voices swarm around her. Aloud, and... less so.
...I cannot wait to get the hell out of this podunk town...
Inside, it's a bar of the type scattered all across the American South: homey, no-nonsense. Booths and tables. A man in a plaid flannel shirt wiping the bar; a crossdresser in the kitchen singing Gospel hymns and rolling his hips in time with the words just to scandalize the prep cook. A handful of waitresses, bustling about.
Sookie makes her way briskly through it all, a tray balanced on her palm and her eyes kept stubbornly front, as voices swarm around her. Aloud, and... less so.
...I’m just going to have one beer tonight Jesus one beer that’s all...
...better not gripe about me eating fries not after what I did for him last night...
...I cannot wait to get the hell out of this podunk town...
"Well, make sure you do, and before it’s too late," she responds, thoughtless, to the young man. "Because every year you wait? You just get more and more stuck here. Believe me, I know."
He stares at her. So do his parents.
So does the other table. And she realizes, too little too late, that he hadn't said that out loud, not at all. She laughs, uncomfortable. "I’ll get y'all some ketchup," she says, brightly, and flees, ponytail swinging against the nape of her neck as she goes.
Stupid, Sookie, she chides herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He stares at her. So do his parents.
So does the other table. And she realizes, too little too late, that he hadn't said that out loud, not at all. She laughs, uncomfortable. "I’ll get y'all some ketchup," she says, brightly, and flees, ponytail swinging against the nape of her neck as she goes.
Stupid, Sookie, she chides herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
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Date: 2022-09-27 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-27 02:54 am (UTC)She lifts her hand to stroke over his hair, lightly, smiling to see him there on her other pillow. "Don't go anywhere 'til I fall asleep, okay?"
The low murmur of his thoughts is almost soothing, like the sound of rain on the tin roof, or wind through the trees outside. And she needs soothing, tonight.
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Date: 2022-09-27 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-27 03:01 am (UTC)"Good night, Sam."
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Date: 2022-09-27 03:04 am (UTC)He presses a gentle kiss to her forehead and strokes his hand over her back, then watches her as she closes her eyes.
The faint breeze from outside stirs the curtains, and the sound of distant night-calling birds and insects hums on the air. Sam listens to it while Sookie's breathing deepens, never noticing how his own slows to match.
He doesn't even notice when his own eyes close.