Drabble 3: Restless.

"... Are you going to tell me anything?" Soldier asked, bumping NF with his elbow and staring at the ground below them. It had been a while since the two of them had sat together in this tree. They were probably too old for it now.

NF sighed again and finally released the words replaying in his mind, "So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."

Soldier was used to NF speaking in riddles and quotes. "Where's that from?"

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, published 1999."

"You should be a librarian or something."

NF's laugh turned to half a sob.

"What? What did I say? Hey." Another nudge of the elbow.

NF shook his head. "What do you want to do with your life?"

"Do with my life?" A beat of silence. A scuff. "Do with my life. Hell, I don't know."

"Well I know." NF said. "I know."

"Of course, you do. You'll take over your dad's practice."

"No."

"No?"

"I'm not going to med school. I'm not going to stitch wounds. I don't want to be a doctor."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"What do you want to do?"

"... I want... I want to be an English teacher."

"So you told them, and now you're hiding in a tree?"

A nod.

"Well..." A stretch. "I'll always hide with you." Elbow nudge.

NF pushed Soldier with his shoulder. [oh dear tongue twister] "Somehow, I thought you might say that."


Notes:

When writing NF - literary references
When writing Ing - comparisons
When writing Liam - relations to weather
When writing Oliver - ?
When writing Soldier - ? Cats? haha

Seriously, Self, get some names for these poor men.