[Scavenging while people are still around is...different. He's used to it for the most part, considering he'd already done more than enough of it for war supplies, but for alcohol— for luxury goods in the middle of a damn city— makes this whole thing feel like even more of a dream. But he can feel the rough pull of fabric in his hands from the satchel he's slung over his shoulder, the off-balance sloshing of bottles pressing against his back. Nothing imagined could be this real, and at the moment there's no helping where he is. What he's stuck doing.
His heavy boots drag over the doorstep of the boarding house he's rented out. It's a nice place, given the state of the city. Too nice to put up with the mud Joel clearly doesn't mind dragging in with him, already heading upstairs towards his room by the time the old woman that owns the place calls out a distant, homely greeting.
He also doesn't answer her.
Cracking the doorknob to his room, he doesn't hold the door for Henry. But there's space for him in that wide room— lovingly furnished, and entirely unsuited to the man that's currently dumping out bottles of rare, aged spirits across a hundred year old bedspread.]
TIMESKIP
His heavy boots drag over the doorstep of the boarding house he's rented out. It's a nice place, given the state of the city. Too nice to put up with the mud Joel clearly doesn't mind dragging in with him, already heading upstairs towards his room by the time the old woman that owns the place calls out a distant, homely greeting.
He also doesn't answer her.
Cracking the doorknob to his room, he doesn't hold the door for Henry. But there's space for him in that wide room— lovingly furnished, and entirely unsuited to the man that's currently dumping out bottles of rare, aged spirits across a hundred year old bedspread.]