He nods a little, rolling his lips together. He expected as much. "Yeah... I know."
Damien falls quiet as they wind through the streets toward a coffee shop. They're easy enough to find, really, they're basically on every corner these days. When they reach the nearest one, he pauses long enough to hold the door open for Mark to go inside before following suit a moment later.
Immediately, he's hit with all the reasons this was a really, really bad idea. Not only is the coffee shop genuinely noisy with blenders and people making orders, music he doesn't like and the swarm of chatter that can't be made out but just heard in a general way. But there's so many people, and so many emotions, and it's kind of like a wave of dozens of things at once––
The sharp spike of annoyance from a girl in the corner booth that's being hit on by some fratboy who can't take a hint–
The idle anxiety in the guy at a window seat, undefined but very obvious all the same–
Absolute glee from a kid sitting with his mom, who just handed him her phone to play a game on–
The boredom from the teenager with a laptop and headphones at one of the tables with an outlet–
The stress of one of the baristas behind the counter that feels a lot more like a hammer pounding in his head than anything else–
And a ton of other things he can't even place because it's just too much all at once. He's tempted to clamp his hands over his ears, but he knows it won't help and it would look weird as hell, so he just tightens the arms folded across his chest and tries not to feel seasick at it all.
no subject
Damien falls quiet as they wind through the streets toward a coffee shop. They're easy enough to find, really, they're basically on every corner these days. When they reach the nearest one, he pauses long enough to hold the door open for Mark to go inside before following suit a moment later.
Immediately, he's hit with all the reasons this was a really, really bad idea. Not only is the coffee shop genuinely noisy with blenders and people making orders, music he doesn't like and the swarm of chatter that can't be made out but just heard in a general way. But there's so many people, and so many emotions, and it's kind of like a wave of dozens of things at once––
And a ton of other things he can't even place because it's just too much all at once. He's tempted to clamp his hands over his ears, but he knows it won't help and it would look weird as hell, so he just tightens the arms folded across his chest and tries not to feel seasick at it all.