Among Us.

Turning around and still holding his arm a trickle of blood had started down his hand that covered the wound. Donovan shook his head at the shop keeper. "I'm uh...I need to get home." He couldn't really afford for anyone to see his arm like this and neither did he want to go to work tomorrow. Maybe he could call in sick for the next two days and say it was the flu or something.

That would be enough time to get himself to the city to see a doctor he knew was a fellow alien. They would be able to get him mended up quickly and the nurse for the office was alien too. They kept it all nice and quiet. Finally he let go of his arm and reached for his car door handle. His hand was smeared with too much blood and the door wouldn't come open. Instead he grabbed the handle over and over only for it to keep slipping out of his grasp before he could manage to get it opened. Growling out of frustration he kicked at the car tire. "C'mon!" There wasn't anything more stressful than having a bystander for something like this.
 
''Dude, chill out !'' Josh said as an attempt to calm Donovan down. ''At least let me give you a bandage, you wouldn't want to bleed all over your seats would you ?''
The clerk knew that it was no time for jokes but anyway he had to make Donovan calm down was worth trying.
If there was one thing Josh was't willing to let happen is to allow the situation blow out of proportion, a couple of troublemakers and a minor bullet wound wasn't gonna be enough to let the cops show up and put his store under lock-down.

Even though the clerk improvised diplomat noticed the cheer confusion on Donovan's face, the 6 footer didn't look in has much pain as most of the people getting shot.
Wether it had to do with his now regular consumer's thick skin or just the adrenaline kicking in, it surely pricked Josh's eyebrows up a bit.
But regardless of any of that the clerk had one plan in mind get the bleeding mess of a man out of the street and calm down the situation as quickly as he could.
 
The store clerk seemed to be insistent on helping and Donovan's frown deepened. "I just need to get home." At this point his brain had gone to a single track and he was desperate to get out of the situation. There had been a few that were discovered, but they often had to disappear from their area and he didn't want to do that. He'd just settled here and he didn't want to move again.

Donovan glanced at the store clerk again and then grabbed his arm. "Fine, I'll step into your bathroom in there and clean up." At least it would get him out of the man's view for a few more minutes and if he got cleaned up and brought out a few paper towels he could clean the bottom side of the handle on his door. Maybe then he could go home without too many more questions. Clenching his jaw he started back toward the store again. Of all the people that this could have happened in front of, it had to be this guy. Thankfully he'd managed to keep it from going to the police and calling in an ambulance. It saved Donovan that much trouble, but he was also worried that he wasn't entirely saved.
 
Josh waited outside the store for Donovan to return and sat in his little garden chair as the sun crawled to disapear behind the the flat land of Nevadan countryside.
The clerk decided to call his brother to inform him that he won't be home for a moment due to the mess he had to clean up at the store.
He grabbed a mop and started to wash away some of the blood from the empty parking lot.

Slightly worried for his customer he got back into the sotre and gently banged at the bathroom door. ''Everything alright in there ?'' He asked nicely.
But before he got any responce he heard a the, oh too familiar, sound of a car pulling up in front of the store.
Skylar was picking her shift up early like on most Mondays.

With the mess in front of the store barely cleaned up and a bleeding giant in the bathroom, Josh could feel the situation was going to be hard to explain to his co-worker.
 
Walking as quickly as possible Donovan tried not to leave his blood everywhere. He even twisted his hand around to try and catch any extra droplets so he wouldn't be bleeding in the store as he walked through to the back and then shut the bathroom door once he was inside. Turning the water on he let it run over his hands till the water ran a light pink and then let it run a little more till he added soap. It didn't feel like very long and then the man was knocking on the door.

"I'm fine." Calling back through the door he noticed that his voice wavered some. Maybe it would sound normal for a person to be a little weak after something like this. The alien was beginning to feel the stress and his arm was finally starting to throb. So far the bullet had gone in too deep for him to retrieve it. Wincing a little he reached for the paper towels and began to get one wet so that he could wash around the wound in his arm. It was nearly fifteen minutes before he finally stepped out of the bathroom with a few extra paper towels stuffed into his pant pocket and a few wrapped around his arm.

He wasn't met by just the nosy store clerk. Instead Donovan found himself faced with a woman too and he narrowed his eyes slightly. Had that store clerk called somebody in to report on this or something?
 
Josh had done his best to explain to Skylar what had happened and that everything was alright.
It felt kind of pointless since his co-worker kept her smile on during the entire explainantion of a situation that wasn't so positive.
While in the middle of explaining he saw Donovan walk out of the bathroom with a fortune bandage on his arm and a confused look on his face.

Josh turned his co-worker around and said the following. ''There he is. He's the guy who got shot by those bloody kids.'' He then asked the understandably shooked up Donovan: ''Feeling any better ?'' As Josh asked his client the basics, he noticed that his friend's relatively cemented grin was wiped off her face completely the moment she saw Donovan come out of the bathroom.

She proceeded to hurry out of the store, back to her car before driving away as fast as her old rental would allow her to.
After this puzzling incident, Josh and the injured Donovan were left with none but themselves in the store.
 
Having the store clerk state that he'd been shot was about the worst thing that could have happened in Donovan's mind. He blinked a few times and stared at the woman and the clerk. No one said anything for what seemed to be a long time and then Josh piped up with his question. The tall man turned his head toward him and shook his head. "Nah." By his estimation a human should be experiencing more pain after it all began to settle in and he was starting to feel more if it himself. His kind wasn't so drastically different from humans except in their bones.

Almost as soon as the short exchange occurred the woman darted out of the store and drove off. Donovan stared at Josh for a moment and then he shrugged. "I need to go." Grimacing a little he adjusted the bandage on his arm. "Need to get to my doctor." Starting toward the doorway he nudged at the door with his foot and as it opened he walked through.

Momentarily he had to release his arm so that he could clean the car door handle off with the extra paper towels and then he sat down in his car seat. "Probably be around in a couple of days." Fumbling with the paper towels he growled a little and then shut his car door before letting out a sigh.
 
Josh watched as Donovan drove away. Here he was again, alone facing the darkness of the outside. The clerk had no time to breath in the unheasy athmosphere though.
Alot had to be done to put the store back in order before closing.

After many hours spent moping the parking lot, cleaning the bathroom, and finish grocery staking, Josh was finally done with this extraordinarily stressfull day.
The 2.AM mark hit the clock and he decided it was about time to head home. The fat man packed up his things, closed up the store and sat in his car.

Josh felt incredibly anerved now that he had got some time to think. For as far as he could remember his childhood friend always had this bright smile on her face.
They befriended one another as the result of being alienated by other kids in school. He always was the fat nerd who loved sci-fi movies and she was the quiet one that rarely talked but made all the kids jealous with her grades alone.

The clerk mostly raised himself due to his mother mother breaking up with his dad which turned Josh's father into an alchoolic mess.
His best friend Sky also had an odd family, really quiet people, even though, they never seemed to integrate here.
And one day they completely disapeared. It was like Mister and Misses Simons never existed. Whenever he asked Skylar about it she would always find a way to steer off the conversation into a joke or something.

Even without her parents she was always happy, in any case and any situation, she always had that bright smile on her face.
So why did some random freak made her react that way ?

After what felt like days questioning himslef the fat clerk snapped out of it and headed home.

Not without an odd thought in the back of his head though...
 
Donovan didn't even stop home at home. Driving past his apartment and then onto the highway he drove another 2 hours till he reached the city and then he made a phone call into his doctor. "Hey I have an emergency." The community would have to decide if the situation was severe enough for him to move again or not. People were gradually becoming more suspicious in some areas and it was showing.

The woman looked at him for a long moment and then started the scans. "Looks like we'll need to use a local anesthetic so I can get that out. We need you to fill out a report with the name of all those around who saw it."

He couldn't know all the names, but he did his best. After what felt like forever of talking with the nurse and doctor he was given a shot and he waited while the doctor dug into his arm and pushed and shoved to finally get hold of the bullet. A constant stream of blood had begun to flow down his arm again and the nurse didn't seem to worry about it. Nobody was going to fuss about the blood till this was all over. After the procedure Donovan was handed a note for his work. It excused him for the next 2 weeks with a small note on a procedure for a torn muscle.

How he wanted to explain that was his own business. Donovan walked out of the doctor's office by late afternoon and got a hotel room for himself. It was a little difficult to sleep well with the itching and stinging in his arm. By morning he called into his work to let them know he was out due to a torn muscle. "Had to get a repair on it. I was playing around and didn't warm up enough I guess."

Thankfully the boss didn't sound to mad, he was just slightly annoyed sounding. The drive home was easy going and Donovan parked his car back at the apartment. He was a little suspicious feeling and he noticed a car that he recognized from the store sitting just a few rows down. Shaking his head he went up to his apartment and unlocked the door.
 
Josh had been wainting in his car for a while now when he recognized Donovan's car parking up in the lot.
Donovan threw a quick glance in Josh's direction ,which he ducked to avoid, before entering the building.
''Okay, now is the time.'' Josh said as he grabbed his bag and stepped out of the car to walk towards the entrance of the 4 stories appartment complex.
The clerk took out a small piece of paper on wich Donovan's adress was indicated. He had got it from Donovan's boss who was a long time friend of Josh.

The fat man struggled to climb up the stage to reach the secound floor of the building and got ready to bang at the door.
Questions had to be asked and answers had to be given.
 
Barely inside his home and it was feeling uneasy rather than better. Donovan sat on the edge of his bed and dropped his bag of dirty clothes at the end of it. The first thing he wanted was a big can of soup. Wandering into his kitchen he left the bedroom door wide open and started to dig in his pantry. There was one can of Campbells Chicken Noodle soup and he was going to enjoy it.

Donovan had just finished dumping the can into a kettle and starting the burner when he heard some beating on his door. "I already paid the rent!" Yelling back at the person on the other side he figured they would leave. Sometimes the land lord was nosy, but he would usually leave if Donovan yelled about the rent. This time however the knocking continued and he sighed. "Alright, alright." Shuffling through the house he turned the knob on the door and swung it open to see the store clerk. "What the hell are you doing here?"
 
Josh felt small ounce he was confronted to Donovan's towering figure but he quickly gathered himself and told the rather frustrated construction worker the following.
''I just came over to see how you were doing .'' He pulled out a fancy looking bottle of vodka from under his coat and said ''I know it's kinda out of the blue but i think i got some apologies to give you. Wanna talk a bit around that thing of beauty ?'' Josh said as he offered the silver bottle to the resident.

Josh gave a quick glance at Donvan's appartment and he got an idea of the type of man that was the massive one standing in front of him.
Everything was in order and there was a lovely smell of chicken soup coming from the kitchen. This and the small size of the appartment indicated to Josh than Donovan lived alone and was a pretty proper dude, this coupled with his general friendly yet quite nature gave Josh a better feel of the man he'd been tourmenting for the past weeks's personality.
 
The gut instinct was to tell the store clerk that he would accept the apologies and send him off with his bottle of vodka. However, he'd seen how this clerk could be and he didn't think he would get away with just sending the guy off. Donovan stared at the vodka for a moment and he rolled his eyes. "Vodka and chicken noodle soup. Great combination." Stepping aside he let the store clerk into the house and he wandered into the kitchen while the other sat down at the little kitchen bar.

Thankfully there were two large seats. They would fit the flubby fella and Donovan needed them just because he was big. There wasn't anything to see in his room so he didn't care much if the door was open or not. Reaching into the cupboard he pulled out two bowls and then grabbed two spoons from the drawer. His arm was a little sore and he had it wrapped up in ace bandages though the bruising was extending beyond the immediate wrapped part of his arm. "Figured you'd like something to eat." It was a family sized can and it was likely that either one of them could have eaten the entire thing by themselves, but Donovan wasn't about to have someone watch him eat without eating something too.

A small foam started to form at the top of the soup and then it began to churn with boiling. Donovan used the ladle to serve soup into both bowls and then carried them one by one to the counter. Taking a seat next to the clerk he sighed. "You apologizing for staring at me, or for being creepy in general?"
 
Josh let walked into Donovan's apartment and, to his delight, the sweet smell of the chicken soup was much stronger inside. He had a sit at the bar and answered his hosts question.''Came to apologize for this and, you know, losing my shit in public, not letting you go home when you were injured and overall being an ass to you, some guy i had never met before.''

He said as he was opening the bottle of alchool and enjoying the lovely smell of the soup in the kitchen.
He took a quick glance around Donovan's appartment. As he suspected the place was comfy, clean and well in order.
''Nice place you have there man. Got a lady keeping this place toghether or what?'' Josh said with a chuckle.

Classic southern ways made Josh a bit crude with his sence of humour but he tried to control himself as much as he could not to annoy Donovan.
The clerck pulled out two very fancy shot glasses from a mat black box he had in his bag.
The glasses had a brand logo sanded into them and the small black casing had the same symbol marked onto it with a nice fabric finish around the edges of the box.
These things looked as expensive as they were, way to expensive for some random clerk to buy that's for sure.
He begun to poor the vodka in the branded glasses, pulled out a match and lit the drinks on fire before blowing on his and emptying the glass in half the time it took to fill it up.
 
The guy was nosy still. Donovan had to refrain from rolling his eyes when the clerk mentioned having a lady or someone like that to keep the place for him. "No, I just don't like to come home to a dirty house." Grabbing his spoon he carefully started to carefully eat some of the soup. "If you clean as you go its never much work and the place stays neater." By the third bite he saw the clerk start to pour the vodka and then light it on fire.

Hardly seemed to be a point in drinking the alcohol if you burned most of the contents out of it. Taking his glass he slowly sipped at it and then resumed eating his soup. "Mum was a maid for a couple of rich guys. She didn't clean other folks houses all day long to come home and have a dirty house." That was perhaps the best story he had from childhood that he could share with the clerk. It would at least make him sound more average. There were a lot of average folk and as far as he was concerned Donovan was one of them.

Glancing at the clerk he noted that the man was more busy drinking than he was eating. Pushing his glass over to the clerk he smirked. "Yah might want to drink mine too?"
 
Josh chuckled and said ''With the price this damn bottle cost me you bet you're gonna finish that drink." As he was joking around Josh remember he had some questions for Donovan.
''Say ,how long you've been living here for ? You're no old face around here are you ?''

Donovan seemed like an everage guy who was just trying to get by, but for some reason Josh always felt something was off about him. He never was able to pinpont what but there was something. Was it that he was talking weird ? Or that he wasn't talking enough ? Was it those weird unnatural colored eyes he'd only ever seen on his friend Skylar's face ? Or maybe it was simply that no one in there right mind would move to the middle of the Nevadan desert instead of moving up to Vegas.

Either way Josh was happy to finally get a moment to talk to 'that weird guy' that no one in town particularly liked or care about.
 
Sliding the drink back over to himself Donovan took a sip of it. He sighed a little and then began digging into his bowl again. He finished the first bowl and got up to fill it again. While he was busy ladling more soup into the bowl Josh started to ask him a few questions that Donovan thought would be easy enough to guess. "Newer in town. Moved out here for more work."

It was easier to leave it at newer in town instead of giving dates. First of all he didn't keep track of the exact date that he moved to an area and he pretty well figured that the clerk would have noticed about time he moved in. There wasn't time to have made friends yet and Donovan was indifferent to the idea of having friends. For the most part folks around here appeared to feel the same way about him. No one was in a hurry to welcome or try to chase him off. The closest he'd come to any reaction was this clerk and it was a little strange.

Sitting down again he took a few more bites of his soup before he sipped at the vodka again. "Why are you still poking around? I like my quiet life just fine. You can probably guess as well as anyone else about when I moved to town. Its the only damn store in the entire town."
 
"You're new face in town and frankly new faces are a rare treat here, so can you really blame me for wanting make friends ?'' ''I mean hell i broke down and spewed my stupid little problems at you in the middle of a bloody parking lot.'' ''Isn't the best way to introduce myself, i know ,but even though you didn't ask to know what was bothering the drunk lard pile behind the store counter, now you do and i, personally, would like to get to know the big tough guy that never speaks to anyone.''

Josh smiled to Don, filled his glass up with vodka and said:
''I hope you forgive me for the rough start i gave you and that we can brush the bad intros off like they never happened, okay ?"
''It's a small town and as you said i work at the only store in this damned place, so there's no point holding a beef and it's a way better solution to make friends.''

Josh filled his own glass up and raised it above the table, inviting Donovan to toast with him.

''To forgiveness ?''
 
Donovan didn't want another glass of vodka. It seemed that he was getting one whether he wanted it or not and now the store clerk was wanting to be making friends. One eyebrow did raise slightly at mention of how he was known. Folks thought he was a big tough guy that didn't talk to anyone? It was maybe time to go to the bar at night and get a girlfriend or something. A lady that would distract him and let folks think he was busy with her. Might have been a sight better than having to deal with this clerk.

Silently he let Josh blabber on and he slowly too his glass and made the toast. "Sure." He wasn't going to be promising any friendship yet. Finishing this glass much faster Donovan slid it over toward the clerk again. "Don't want anymore." Looking at the man's bowl of food he nodded. "Yah gonna eat that, or you come over here to drink?"

Now that Josh knew where he lived it was going to be hard to keep him away so Donovan decided to lay some ground rules. "I don't like messes around here, no time to get drunk, and never come over without asking."
 
Josh had a bright smile on his faced when Don's glass and his clinged together and they both got to gulp them down as is tradition.
Donnovan then asked about the soup bowl wich was abnormally full by josh's standards. ''Don't worry man, whatch this!''
The clerk picked up the bowl, put it to his mouth and chugged down the soup in an instant leaving the bowl empty and Donovan slightly disgusted.

He put the glasses back in the box, got up from his seat, took the soup bowl to the dishwasher and said the following to his new aquaintance:
''Worry none man. I ain't no creep who would turn up to your house uninvited am I ?'' Josh laughed it off and handed the bottle to Donovan saying:
''Keep it, it's a gift.''
The fat clerk shook hand with his host and said as he was opening the front door to depart ''You know where to find mes lad. See you.''

Josh walked out of the building with a bright smile on his face.
It was a rare treat to see new faces around. Even though he could still feel that Donovan was still a bit unheasy and closed around him, he hoped that he was on his way to make a new friend and take his mind off all the stuff that has been going on in his life.

At least for a while.
 
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