borderline - the last of us.

42. haha, hoback.

BOWIE DELVECCHIO, for all five foot something of him, posed a mean threat to any infected that came across his path. He was all shits and giggles to anybody he spoke to, a ditsy fella with little to no genuine wits about him, but he could be a mean bastard if he needed to. That's just the duality of man in a world like this, Ralph supposes. Especially when you're the eldest brother of five baby sisters. Gotta do what it takes to keep the people you love alive. That went well for him, eh?

Either way, he's Jesse's go to patrol leader, especially for the newer rookies. He has a sense of organisation and ruthlessness about him that nobody would expect from a twenty year old that still looks fifteen, but he prevails. He's the only patrol leader, who isn't breaching middle age, that Ralph would feel decently afraid of if he was put in a room alone with orders to kill him. Bowie sticks out from all of Jackson's other dweeb, cocky wannabes -- He knows what he is. What he's capable of. That's where they're alike.

It's always been a bit of a embarrassment to him that he regularly hangs out with his estranged daughter's boyfriend, but Ralph can't help it. The little fucker's radiant to the core, and that's exactly why nobody in Jackson has a bad thing to say about the weirdo. He's a good kid, but Ralph's internally realising he's wasting that term on damn near anybody he considers to be a 'kid.'

He likes Bowie, though. He had his initial suspicions, as does any dad when a hyperactive white boy starts lurking near their daughter a little too closely, but once the inherited pharmacist made it clear that he was in it for the long run, Ralph grew on him. Soon enough, Bowie was joining them at the dinner table every Sunday, making joyous small talk with himself during those tension filled times. He was a hero, really. Many awkward dinners were made, at least a little bit, less awkward with his presence.

Cooped up in the small apartment above the pharmacy that his family runs, Bowie and Ralph are sitting cross legged on the floor of the living room with rubbing alcohol, rags and cotton balls, and an ashtray with a half smoked joint. They're splayed out around a bunch of firearms, a small pile of two pistols, a double barrel shotgun and a sniper off to the side, yet to be scrubbed down. Ralph's busying himself with a hunting rifle, absently nodding his head in time to the music that blares around them, smearing a sterile smelling rag over the wooden handle as he looks over at the blonde.

"Who's this?" He asks, scrubbing the gun from breach to muzzle and then back down the length of it, barrel pointed directly towards him nonchalantly.

"You've never heard MF Doom?" Bowie cocks his head, jaw agape as the music rings out around them, no doubt leaking down into the very much active pharmacy beneath the two of them. The stench of weed probably isn't helping either, but he gets this shit for free, so, fuck them. "Oh, how have you lived, you sad man?"

"Being Korean makes me a sad man? Well, okay, then," Ralph puts the words in his mouth with an exaggerated blow of a raspberry, to which Bowie just laughs and picks up his blunt, lifting it to his lips and taking a big inhale before setting it back down again.

"Does Mr. M know you smoke?" The younger boy asks curiously, cocking his gun back and inspecting the crevices, ensuring there's no build up of grime or collections of Infected blood.

"Don't call him Mr. M, he's my husband," Ralph hisses as if the reminder of his senior status has physically hurt him, plonking the hunting rifle off to the pile of cleaned weapons and picking up the double barrel next. They're hosing down all of Bowie's guns, and while it's a little jarring that one dude needs this many, Ralph can't talk. Their basement looks like a panic room for a trigger happy maniac. "And I don't even smoke. I come over here and you hotbox me and I have to endure it 'cause you never clean your rims."