a_littlefaith | (no subject)

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newt

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She can't afford it.

The money in her account is nice, but Beth knows she needs it for food and rent and to buy a whole new wardrobe, since the only clothes that came with her had reeked of sweat and dirt and all sorts of zombie guts. She's gone out a few times, tentatively explored the area around her new apartment building, bought a fresh pair of jeans, some shirts, new underthings that aren't so old and stained they look grey instead of white, and a nice soft sweater she's wrapped up in now as she stands in front of the music store and stares inside.

She can't afford it, but does she ever want it anyway. It's the nicest guitar she's ever seen up close, a Gibson with a beautiful finish, shining in the soft light of the display case and she wants it so bad she can feel an itch in her fingers. She used to play her dad's old guitar out on the porch, she remembers strumming chords, singing songs she'd heard growing up or making up ones of her own. She hasn't touched a guitar since her mother died and it reminds her of a time when things used to be safe.

Daryl's warned her against getting too settled, but she kinda can't help it. She's sleeping in a real bed for the first time in a long time, a bed in a room that's all hers. Already she's spent some time online, looking for a GED program, for a part time job that might hire a girl with no real experience and no references. And now she wants this guitar.

"Hey," she says, turning to look at someone nearby. He seems to be looking at the guitars on display, too, so she hopes she's not bothering him. "D'you know if there's any pawn shops or anything around here? Someplace where I might find a guitar I can actually afford without havin' to go hungry for six months?"

It's a joke, but she thinks maybe it's a dumb one to make, especially when she knows she's still too thin, all bones and sharp angles from trying to live on peanut butter and canned peas.

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"Yeah, pretty new," she agrees, laughing a little at herself, because it just seems kinda silly, being so new and yet being here in the music store, thinking about blowing what little money she has left on a guitar when there's probably about a thousand other things she could buy instead. Smart investments, things she'll need down the road, especially if she's going to start studying for the GED.

But she just really wants the guitar. If she has it, maybe she can make a little extra money, too, singing in coffee shops or something. Even if it's just out on the street, she's seen buskers all over the park already and they seem to make more money than she ever would've thought.

"I should probably be more worried about fillin' my fridge or findin' a job, but..." She trails off and looks back at the guitar. "No parents to tell me what to do and I could be lookin' to buy a lot worse things, right?"

"Good times," he says dryly before shifting his gaze to admire the other Gibson the girl had been eyeing. He hasn't made the leap yet, hasn't bought a guitar even though he really ought to considering he's already committed to Jesse's movie and helping out with Kurt's band. He doesn't know what's been stopping him, it's like he really has a whole lot of inhibitions when it comes to doing and getting what he wants. Maybe it's the idea--the preposterous idea--that he'll pick up that guitar and realize that he's not the rock star he used to be, not like he'd been back at the 'Dome. This is so not true, of course, but the seed's been planted in his brain and now there are weeds everywhere.

At the mention of job-seeking, he quirks an eyebrow. "Finding a job isn't as hard as it sounds, at least doesn't seem like it in this city," Newt comments. "I work at a lab, I've gotten friends into open admin positions there. It's not super glamorous or anything but between that and our mysterious benefactor throwing us all a grand every month, it's not bad. 'Specially not if you're looking to get one of these gorgeous things. What'd you do back home?"

Already, in her limited time in Darrow, Beth's learned that people don't think she's so crazy when she talks about the walkers. It's still not the first thing she thinks to bring up. It's kinda depressing and she's doing her best to look at this place as a fresh start, somewhere she doesn't have to think about the dead coming back to life and trying to eat her. Somewhere she can have regular meals and men don't grab her or try to yank her into cars.

At the memory, a shiver races up her spine that she tries to cover with a smile and a shrug.

"I was in high school," she says. "Then my world kinda... went a little crazy, so I've never really had a job. I helped out on my family's farm, but it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of cows around here that need to be milked." Besides, she doesn't want to go back to that. Being a farmhand isn't the life she imagined for herself, not even back there, not even knowing it was what her daddy would've wanted. His whole family right there with him.

He doesn't miss that she seems to shiver, doesn't miss that it's immediately followed by that smile--and maybe he would have a couple months ago but it's different now that sometimes he finds himself doing the same thing when he's reminded of things he'd rather keep firmly tucked away into the deeper recesses of his mind.

So he pretends like he doesn't notice because if it were him, he'd want it go unnoticed. Maybe that's not the best way to go about things, and he's got people in every corner telling him that when he needs to talk, when he's ready to talk about That Night, they'll be there; but the thing is, he's never going to want to talk about it, not really, and as far as he's concerned, the want outweighs the need for him right now.

She's talking, though, and he's asked her a question so he'd probably do well to listen to the answer. He smiles as he tunes back into the conversation in time to hear her mention the lack of need for cow milking in Darrow and shrugs. "Hey, stranger things have happened here. So you don't have a lot of job experience, that just means you need friends in high places." He puffs his chest out a bit, lifting his chin. "I should probably at least get your name before making any future attempts but if you think you need it, I'd be happy to help a fellow Gibson lover."

She can't help it, her smile turns a lot more genuine and gets a little bit brighter when he puffs out his chest and lifts his chin and a little laugh escapes her. The people here are good, she knows that much already. Sometimes she can't help but feel a little smug about it, like it proves her right to Daryl, like it means he'll eventually have to come around to her way of thinking. There are far more good people in the world than there are bad and Beth knows he finds her optimism annoying and probably childish and naive, but she doesn't care. There's proof that she's right all over the place.

And she appreciates that he doesn't ask about the fading smile, if he's noticed at all. It's not such a big deal, nothing even ended up happening, but sometimes she can't help but think about what might have happened. If she hadn't come to Darrow. Those men weren't grabbing her because they wanted to be friends.

"Friends in high places, huh?" she asks, then offers her hand. "I'm Beth. Probably easier to call me that than 'Fellow Gibson Lover' all the time, right?"

"Easier, sure, but nicknames are so entertaining." He doesn't have one for all of his friends, but Newt almost always picks one out before he learns a person's name. Owen's the exception, simply because 'Big O' is the best nickname of all time, but Sawyer had unknowingly had to suffer the title of Texas Ranger before they'd officially introduces themselves to each other.

"Considering what I've come up with before, 'Fellow Gibson Lover' really isn't so bad. But okay, Beth, I'm Newt, and by friends in high places, I mean regular-sized guys who work on the eight floor of a lab." He has no idea why he's suddenly so invested in getting this girl a job if he wants to, he's only known her for like, five minutes; but he remembers how instant the connection with Allison had been, a connection that had prompted her to fucking adopt him as a goddamn brother, that crazed yet wonderful girl.

There's something about Beth that he'd seen in Allison, an inherent kindness and softness even though there's still a hint of a life that hadn't been the easiest. He's making wild assumptions, of course, but it's Darrow. Nearly everyone's life has been a little less than easy.

"Regular-sized guys who work in labs are probably better than friends in high places," she says, meaning it sincerely, and it's not that she has anything at all against people in high places, but Beth doesn't think she'd have much in common with a big CEO at some multi-million dollar company. At least she and Newt have guitars in common, even if working in a lab seems to suggest he's probably doing pretty well for himself as well.

Not that she has any experience with labs either. She heard the stories from Rick and Andrea about the Center for Disease Control, but that's as close as she's gotten. And mostly she's glad she wasn't there for any of that.

"And I'd really appreciate any help," she admits. "I've ordered my books to take the GED, but until I've got that, there's pretty much no hope of college. So a job would be good. At least that way I'll be able to pay for college when I do go." Her gaze drifts to the guitar again and she smiles. "Or buy myself a pretty guitar. Not goin' to college isn't so bad, right?" Except she's always wanted to go. She just also really wants the guitar.

"Wow, you're not wasting any time, huh?" He says it with a small smile but hey, he figures it's better than the month he'd dedicated to trying to find a way out of Darrow. Still, that had eventually led him back to the train station, to Kate, so he can't really call it a waste. "I'm not the person to ask that question, though, I loved college."

He'd loved it because he'd been there already with a purpose, he'd already known without a shadow of a doubt what his concentration and his future would be, and that's not something everyone can say. It had been easy for him and having been so young, it hadn't been terribly difficult to sacrifice a majority of his social life.

"But I love guitars, too, so it's kind of a toss-up." He points at the one he'd been studying earlier and glances at her with a curious expression. "What do you think about this one? I've already tested it out, I just never committed to buying it because-- Well, I'm not sure why."

Beth shrugs a little at his comment and although she's still smiling, it fades a little. "Not much to go back to is all," she says, even though there are some things. There's Maggie and Glenn and Judith, because she's sure they're all still alive. Carl's here and he's told her, he's been with his dad and Michonne and she knows, just like she told Daryl, that they're all too strong to die.

If anyone was going to die, she knows it would've been her. That she was with Daryl was just luck. On her own out there, she never would've made it as far as that funeral home.

"I really wanna go to college," she tells him, her smile growing again. "But I also really want a guitar." And when he gestures at the one he's been looking at, she leans in and gives a little sigh. "It's beautiful. You should buy it or... hey, we'll both test them out. I can play with you. Sometimes it's better to know if a guitar's the one that's meant for you when you hear it played alongside another instrument." That's what her mom told her once, that instruments are better when played together, but Beth's never really had that chance. It's always just been her and the old guitar or her and their piano.

Newt's expression softens at that, and it makes him wonder what the world would have offered him had he never ended up in Darrow. With the kaiju gone, there wouldn't have been high demand for a scientist whose primary field of concentration was k-science and beyond that, there would have been a hell a lot of work going toward putting everything and everyone back together, toward picking up the pieces of their lives and moving on to trying to wake up every morning and remembering that they don't have to worry about being killed or losing someone because of a giant monster that day. That doesn't sound too appealing, not to Newt.

He brightens again at her suggestion of playing together and nods emphatically. "That would be badass. My girlfriend's friend is starting this band, I think we're both going to be in it or I'm consulting, I don't know, whatever. Point is, I definitely need the practice but to practice, I need the one." He gestures to the guitar Beth had been examining. "How long have you been playing anyway? Because I started when I was pretty young and I'll tell you what, it's kind of excruciating not being able to play."

"A long time," she says, thinking back. "My parents put me in piano lessons when I was just a kid, maybe only five or six, and then I started messing around with my dad's old guitar when I wasn't much older than that." She's never had any official guitar lessons, they never could really afford it back then, not with her dad's drinking and the farm not making much money, but she doesn't say that. It doesn't matter what he used to do, her father changed and now he's gone and thinking bad thoughts about things long past doesn't make it any easier.

"Did you meet your girlfriend here?" she asks, looking around for someone who works in the store, someone who's willing to let them plug into some of the amps that are in the room with the guitars. She's never been in a music store quite this big and she's a little hesitant to touch anything without one of the people who work here. "Or did you know her before?" In Darrow, it seems like both are equally possible. She's got Daryl and Carl here with her from home, but she's met plenty of new people. Plenty of handsome people, too, she thinks, her cheeks burning a little as she thinks of Chuck.

Newt smiles at that, very much able to relate. With a musically-gifted mother, a father who tuned pianos for a living, and an uncle who'd revolutionized European dance music, it would have been terribly difficult to escape a life filled with music. It's the reason he's always worked better with his favorite tunes blasting at work, though it often seems to disrupt his colleagues just as it had disrupted Hermann. "I'm in the same boat," he tells her. "Keyboard, drums, guitar, I learned how to play the big three really young. I do a pretty badass triangle, too, if I do say so myself."

He spots a nearby attendant and raises a hand to signal for assistance, receiving an acknowleding nod in return just as the attendant moves to the register to check out a customer. Newt turns back to Beth as they wait, shaking his head at her question. "I didn't know her. She actually used to work at the train station and that's how we met. I got lucky, though, had one person in this city that I did already know, even though we weren't exactly friends where we came from. Peas in completely different pods, y'know? Still, it kind of helps a lot."

"We should make a triangle and glockenspiel band," Beth tells him with a teasing smile, because that's the only thing she can play besides piano and guitar, and the idea of just those two instruments makes her laugh. She's not really looking to be in a band at all, not because she's got something against it, but she's never had to create music with other people before. It's always been sort of a private thing, something she'd do on a quiet Saturday afternoon, holed up on the porch or in the barn. Sometimes she'd sing with Maggie, but that had always been different. They'd just sing old folk songs their father wanted to hear; it wasn't about making music the way she misses it.

"Yeah, I understand that," she says, nodding at the comment about his friend. "I got a couple of people here from home and it's good to have 'em, I don't know what I would've done that first day without a familiar face. Not to say people weren't real helpful, because they were, even though I must've looked and smelled somethin' awful. I tried to shake this guy's hand, this nice Australian guy, and it was gross. I was all covered in dirt and blood and stuff. He must've thought I was a real winner."

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