'cause dirt on you is dirt on me, and we both know our hands ain't clean
Calan sighs at the results of the coin toss, though the truth is that he’d called tails and it had come up heads, which was the sort of betrayal a boy ought to be allowed to take personally without any griping. "Okaaaaay," he says, dragging the word out with all the suffering of someone being asked to do the hard part of a very good idea. He holds out his hand for the orange peels in Carlo’s fingers, nose wrinkling before he’s even got them.
The peels are bitter the second he shoves them into his mouth, all sharp oil and sour pith, and Calan’s face twists up before he can help it. Which, actually, is perfect. He chews with determination, shoulders hunching as his mouth floods with spit and his eyes start to water. Rotten food, he reminds himself. Poisoned, probably. Maybe cursed. Definitely worth drawing a crowd over, surely, and who in their right mind would get close enough to tell that the froth coming out of his lips smelled like citrus and not rotting bird?
By the time he swallows, he’s already got one hand pressed dramatically to his stomach. "Oh," Calan groans, loud enough for the nearest sunbathers to glance over. Then louder, because glancing isn’t gathering. "Oh, noOoOOOooo. Ohhh, that’s bad." He staggers one step, then another, bare feet scuffing through the warm sand as he lets his knees wobble beneath him. A woman with a basket of shell bracelets looks up. Someone near the water turns. Good.
Calan makes his face go pale and miserable, or at least as pale and miserable as he can manage while trying to keep all eyes on him so that his brother can pick out a target. "Hey!" he wails, pitching his voice high enough to slice clean through the lazy noise of the Ahi Coast. One arm flings out toward the food vendor and his neat little stack of wraps. "Hey! That guy is selling rotten hel meat!"
The peels are bitter the second he shoves them into his mouth, all sharp oil and sour pith, and Calan’s face twists up before he can help it. Which, actually, is perfect. He chews with determination, shoulders hunching as his mouth floods with spit and his eyes start to water. Rotten food, he reminds himself. Poisoned, probably. Maybe cursed. Definitely worth drawing a crowd over, surely, and who in their right mind would get close enough to tell that the froth coming out of his lips smelled like citrus and not rotting bird?
By the time he swallows, he’s already got one hand pressed dramatically to his stomach. "Oh," Calan groans, loud enough for the nearest sunbathers to glance over. Then louder, because glancing isn’t gathering. "Oh, noOoOOOooo. Ohhh, that’s bad." He staggers one step, then another, bare feet scuffing through the warm sand as he lets his knees wobble beneath him. A woman with a basket of shell bracelets looks up. Someone near the water turns. Good.
Calan makes his face go pale and miserable, or at least as pale and miserable as he can manage while trying to keep all eyes on him so that his brother can pick out a target. "Hey!" he wails, pitching his voice high enough to slice clean through the lazy noise of the Ahi Coast. One arm flings out toward the food vendor and his neat little stack of wraps. "Hey! That guy is selling rotten hel meat!"
if it all goes wrong and we end up on the news, if you go down I'm goin' down too
