Guns & Roses

Chapter 23

                                    [Hank]

Hank woke up, coming to realise he felt even more exhausted than before he'd gone to sleep. In addition, his muscles felt stiff and tensed. Probably because he slept against a rock. Either way, he felt infinitely worse, but he could already tell he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep if he tried, so he begrudgingly brought himself to his feet, stretching to try to make something feel better, to no avail. Already annoyed by how the day was going, he decided to check their stock, figuring it might make him feel better knowing roughly how long the other three will be gone.

He looked back to where Sheriff was when he last saw them, assuming they'd have the supplies. Surprisingly Sheriff wasn't there, he silently hoped they'd left, but he knew they'd be back at some point. At the very least it gave him some time to himself. He wandered over, trying to fight off the lasting remnants of tiredness. He spotted a burlap bag left against the rock, he picked it up, it was fairly heavy for a bag of rations, based on the feel alone he guessed everything in there would probably last him about a fortnight. Though, he knew it would probably only last a week, considering it had to be split between the two of them. He also knew from previous instances he usually had a day or so left of rations when the trio returned. Considering all that, he probably had five to six days to figure something out. He let it drop back to the ground, he wasn't worried about anything breaking, the portions were already small so it didn't really matter. Besides, he knew damn well Sanford was way too good at tying those things closed, they didn't even need to tie the damn thing, but they did it anyway. He wasn't about to sit there trying to undo the drawstring for another twenty minutes just to confirm. He had other things he needed to do.

First, he carefully scanned the area around him, suspiciously trying to define the outlines of anything in the distance. He didn't know why Sheriff up and left, so he wanted to make sure it wasn't because they managed to arrange an ambush. Everything was fairly illuminated thanks to the red sky, making it a lot easier for him to tell it was the same old Nevada; boundless desert with rocks scattered about. Now he could be a little less on guard, knowing there was a smaller chance anyone else was out there. Next he had to figure out what he and Sheriff could talk about, Hank had never been that good with leading conversations and usually wasn't interested in learning how to. Unfortunately for him, this was a case where he had to be the first person to initiate some kind of interaction, since he highly doubted Sheriff would approach him first anymore.

Upon trying to come up with a topic, he blanked. He jokingly wondered if he could talk about the weather, but knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. It wasn't like the conditions in Nevada were particularly enjoyable. Hank wondered what would get Sheriff to humour the scenario of talking to him, specifically what Hank could talk about that would get them interested in talking. If he did that, hopefully he could instil a sense of comfort, that way Hank could be around more often to keep a closer eye on them. While mulling over the possibilities he realised he didn't have the key element he needed to really intrigue them. He didn't know a thing about them, well... anything outside of the context of fighting them. He didn't know what they did or didn't like, which was proving to be a huge detriment to his conversational options. There was always small talk, the usual "hello, how are you?" scenario, but he'd already reserved that as his last resort, while finding a topic made his job harder, he found small talk to be a special breed of dull. The last thing he wanted was to be bored out of his mind while talking to someone he didn't even like.

Hank heard quiet footsteps over to his right, he instinctively snapped his focus into that direction. Only Sheriff. They flinched, before resuming whatever they were up to, though he noticed they seemed tensed. He elected to ignore that part, it wouldn't really be a concern soon anyway. He looked away again, he didn't want them to think he was staring, if they were put on edge his idea wouldn't run as smoothly. Well, as smoothly as he'd like to think it would go. Everything was set in place for him, Sheriff was back, he had a decent amount of time to get them to like him, he just needed something to make himself seem friendlier to them. But he had nothing to make that happen, appearing as he would normally seemed to scare them now, and the only thing he'd ever done since they'd got here was intimidate them. It wasn't like he could take back the ramifications of his actions, they'd already taken place.