Chapter Text
Gray. It was all so unfathomably gray.
The banged up locker he pulled his things out of as he finally clocked out, an hour later than his shift was supposed to end.
The general wash-out of color in the store itself, as he passed through the aisles of various products. All of them somehow seeming to be a monochromatic shade of gray with no color apart from the blue branding label plastered on the front of literally everything. "Join us, thrive." They all said.
The building itself, the giant, cube-shaped, concrete building. Gray.
It was the color of the sky as he finally departed that building, heading towards one of the only places you'd find him after a day like today. A 6-pack of cans in hand, hood on his head, partly to avoid the barely there sprinkling of rain but more to avoid the occasional glances that would find him as he made his way through town.
He knew he should be heading home, while at the same time he knew he shouldn't go home, not with what he'd brought home from Joja. Another day, another excuse, and today it was that the extra hour they kept him paid for it and somehow an extra hour on the clock listening to Morris's pep-talk made him "earn" it .
But was it worse to go home with clear intentions not to stay, or to not come home at all?
They're the same, really. Equally awful and disappointing, like every other gray and monotonous day of his life.
Except, sometimes when he comes home, there's a little bit of color. Just enough to put a subtle tint back on his metaphorical glasses. Most evenings that was just Jas and her abundance of love that he still didn't understand how she had any left for him. And every now and then it was the homemade meal Marnie had prepared for their weird family.
Sometimes it was that the farmer joined them for those weird family meals. Which, from the sound of her voice through the front door of the ranch, Shane figured must be one of those nights.
But something was different today. This, too, is gray. Shane thought as he looked at her, observing the color (or lack of) her aura today as she stood in the entry of Marnie's ranch house.
Fuck, I spend too much time around Emily. Her crazy antics were rubbing off on him.
Why was Shane thinking about auras? Why was he thinking about her aura?
Because those usually crystal blue eyes seemed dulled, gray, even. That's what it was. It wasn't her "aura". But something that was normally so bright and lively was clouded over with some kind of dark film, like she was carrying something with her today that she normally wasn't.
Anyone would notice that, right? Something like the farmer's aura- someone like the farmer, would never go unnoticed.
Not by Shane, anyways.