there's no place like it ! --- tag: dodger

[oliver]

Home, for Oliver, was still a new concept. He had been moved around so much for so long that there had never been a place that he truly identified as 'home'. Yes, there was the orphanage, and he supposed that was the closest thing he had to home for a long time; yet he never really felt comfortable there. There were too many other children, hell he even shared a room with a dozen other boys, and the staff were constantly watching him, making sure he didn't stray too far or act too disruptively (not that he ever did. Oliver had been, for the most part, a good child, quiet and keeping to himself and never causing too much of a fuss). There was never a moment's rest for Oliver at the orphanage, nor for anyone else. Then, of course, there were the foster homes: with the word 'home' being used in the loosest sense possible. He never stayed in one for more than a few months, and he never felt he belonged in any of them. For the first sixteen years of his life Oliver had been a stranger to everyone and everyone had been a stranger to him. No one could ever feel at home in a world full of strangers.

Now, however, things were changing. Oliver smiled softly to himself as he looked around the room he was in, a room he now knew so well. The couch he was sitting on felt familiar underneath his weight, and the slightly tattered book he held in his hand was his own--not one borrowed from the library of his orphanage or school, but his very own property. As were the books resting on the coffee table in front of him. True, he had purchased them second-hand (four for a dollar) and they had once belonged another, but now they were his for as long as he wanted them. Nothing here was strange to him anymore, a feeling Oliver had so rarely felt that it was like a wave of familiarity washing over him again and again. This room, this place, this apartment... he had one word for it all and it was the word he had wanted to say, and say with complete earnest, for so long (four letters, one syllable, one meaning). Oliver was home.

But right now there was something missing, or more like someone. It was almost one in the morning and, despite it being a school night, Oliver was up and awake. Phin wasn't back yet and although Oliver knew that the older man had things to do and jobs to sort out (some of which Oliver was not yet privy to), he still couldn't help but get a little bit anxious when his roommate returned home late. It wouldn't have been too bad if Phin had told him he would be out past midnight, or that he wouldn't be back home for dinner, but this time he had neglected to tell Oliver anything. It was rude if not anything else!

Letting out an annoyed huff and glancing over at the clock for the twentieth time in the span of ten minutes, Oliver felt a yawn rise up from his chest. He was exhausted from school and the part-time parcel delivery job he did after it. His shin was bruised from a bad bump he had with a parked car fender when he was cycling through the city centre and his eyes were heavy from reading most of the evening. Before he knew it he had lain his head on a couch cushions and closed his eyes, his book falling from his grip and landing with a flop onto the floor. In a matter of seconds Oliver was curled up and dozing.

[megan2]

Phinneas spent that evening out on the ground with a random girl he’d met the night before. They had slept on a blanket on the grounds at a park. It wasn’t unknown that he had many lady friends, but what was uncommon was spending all night out with them.

He woke his female companion and told her it was time to go. They gathered their clothing and headed towards his car. He pulled on a t-shirt when they reached the vehicle, and after one last glance towards the woods and the park area, they hopped into the jeep and left. He had to go home and shower and take a nap before reporting to work that afternoon. He dropped the girl off at her college dorm, kissing her before letting her go. ‘Call me’ she says to him. He nods, knowing he will probably never see here again in this aspect. Maybe at the bar on another night he was tending bar.

He drove off back towards the downtown area to his apartment. He had glanced at the clock when he dropped the girl off, 2 o’clock in the morning. His mind began to wonder to his roommate – had Oliver stayed up to wait on him? Usually they hung out together, played video games or something before bed. The two of them were like brothers. In Dodger’s mind, Oliver made up for the missing person in his life, his own little brother. After he got out of jail and moved away, he had not spoken to him. Nor did he try to find him.

Living with Oliver felt like ‘home’. That word meant many things to Phin. People that love you, no matter what; a place to go that will always welcome you no matter what you did wrong. He parked his jeep close to the complex and walked up the stairs, pulling out his keys to open the door. He tried to remain quiet while he pushed open the door and crept through the dark to his bedroom. In the process, he had knocked over a stack of books on the coffee table.

(Sorry this one is kind of short and lame... the next will be better! I promise!)

[oliver]

(Aww it's fine <3)

The dream was a hazy one. Oliver was running, not to anywhere and not from anything, but just... running. The world he had fabricated around himself was like a still frame of the real world--the waking world. He could see in the peripheral vision of his mind's eye all the collective things he identified as a part of his life. His school, whizzing by in a blur, and his schoolmates sitting unmoving at their desks, like they were instead two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of themselves. There was his orphanage, grey and grainy as if it were a scene from an old movie, and his numerous foster homes. Oliver ran by them all, one after another, barely having enough time to take in each still scene he was seeing before another flew past him. And throughout it all he couldn't keep his feet from running, not even when he reached the scene of the apartment he shared with Phin and the one place he called home.

A loud crash jolted Oliver out of his slumber, the dream vanishing into his subconscious as the boy awoke. Bleary eyed and yawning, he turned to see through vision blurred from sleep a figure standing by the coffee table and a pile of books scattered on the floor by the figure's feet. Oliver quickly sat himself up and turned to switch on the nearby lamp resting on a side table by the couch. The light from the lamp filled the room with a dim luminescence. As he had expected the figure by the coffee table had been Phin trying, and failing quite miserably, to tiptoe his way to his bedroom without making a noise. Rubbing the remainder of sleep from his eyes, Oliver gave Phin an inquisitive glare.

"I thought you'd be home earlier," he said accusingly as he ran a hand through the strawberry-blond curls of his hair. Oliver knew he probably had terrible bed-head (or should it be couch-head?), but Phin had seen him in worse conditions before. Plus, Oliver was too annoyed at his roommate to care about his undoubtedly bedraggled appearance. Not that he was entirely sure why he was annoyed, after all he was rarely the type to get annoyed easily. But things were different with Phin than they were with other people. Maybe because the two knew each other so well now. Oliver let out a small sigh and turned his eyes away from his roommate to look down at the floor and, by extension, his own bare feet.

"You didn't tell me you'd be out late," he added in a mutter.