Who: Jared and Ty When: Monday evening/Tuesday early AM, Nov 27-28 Where: Jared's place, Cooperdale Tunnel Status: complete
Texas felt far away in memory as well as space once Jared and Ty came back, and it was a little strange to have those two very different realities being apart of his life. Jared missed home, he could feel it in his bones - even if he knew he could never really move back there. It would be nice to go and stay a little longer next time though, this visit had really been a quick one. Before they left he'd met up with a man who'd worked with his father a few times, a big game hunter who'd taken a look at the crime scene photos from Sadie's house and given him some insight into what they might be looking at. Or... no insight at all. A big wolf. A really, really big wolf - with only three legs. That bit had at least been interesting though Jared wasn't sure how it was going to help find the creature. At least it'd help them identify it. Collins - that was his name - was sure about that part at least. He'd pointed out some things in the photos and rambled on about them and Jared had done his best to learn something from it.
On Monday night Jared found himself looking at those photos again. He was waiting for Ty to get back from work and the photos had drawn him in. It wasn't exactly something he wanted to look at but at least these were just footprints in the mud, nothing graphic or overly reminding of Sadie. He tossed them back on the table when he heard the door unlock, getting up to go greet Ty.
The trip to the hunter before they’d left Texas had been ... interesting. The guy had gone on and on about how he’d never seen evidence of a wolf that big, and he’d been kind of gushy about it until they’d mentioned that it had killed someone. Jared hadn’t wanted to say who, but Ty was glad that had settled the guy down some. He wasn’t sure what to do with the information they’d actually walked away with, but it was kind of lingering in his own mind. Some freakishly huge wolf was killing people, but only like once a month? It was weird.
Luckily, work was pretty distracting, and while he was grateful for a quiet day, he was super ready to be home with Jared, too. He parked his car and hunched his shoulders as he jogged up the porch steps and let himself in. Ty smiled as he looked up and saw his man on his way over. “Hey babe,” he murmured as he locked up behind him. Ty shrugged out of his coat and hung it up, then turned to Jared for hello kisses.
Crime scene photos were probably not what a guy wanted to come home to after working all day on police business but Jared hadn't put them away so they were all scattered around the living room table when they got in there and he gave Ty a small apologetic look. He wasn't done with them though, feeling like he was missing something and he needed to figure it out and fast. The month was going by fast and he was uncomfortably aware of the once-a-month pattern going on. "Are you tired, baby?" he asked. "Want me to get you a beer?" He wanted to talk Ty's ear off, sometimes talking helped the mind work better and that was most definitely what he needed.
The spread on the coffee table hadn’t escaped Ty’s notice, but it didn’t really surprise him. Jared had been understandably fixated on this problem. Ty couldn’t blame him, but he did want at least a few minutes to breathe and change and relax a bit. So the offer of a beer was a relief. “Yeah, actually, a beer would be fantastic,” he answered with a huff. After pressing a quick kiss to Jared’s lips, Ty reached down to untie his boots and pulled them off with a little groan. “Be right out, I gotta piss.” He headed toward the bedroom, tugging his shirt out of his pants as he went.
Jared patted his ass as he left the room, then headed for the kitchen to get both of them some beer. He told himself to let it go for the night but it was hard when it wasn't just work - it was Sadie. Still. "Let it go," he whispered as he opened the fridge and pulled out a couple of beers. Fixation wasn't going to get him anywhere and he wanted to enjoy whatever time he had off with his man but... It was hard to shake it, especially after he'd brought copies of the photos home with him. Maybe that hadn't been a great idea, he'd leave them at work tomorrow... Maybe.
He came back to the living room about the same time Ty did and plopped down on the couch next to him before handing him his drink. "How was your night, baby?"
Ty relieved himself and changed his clothes into something actually comfortable, padding barefoot back into the living room when he was done. He murmured a thanks to Jared as he took the beer bottle, and took a sip before he answered. “It was all right,” he said with a nod. “Pretty quiet. How’s your day been?” There was a tiny edge of careful bemusement in his tone, and his gaze strayed meaningfully to the pictures strewn out in front of them. He might not have been super eager to go over all this, but he couldn’t exactly ignore the elephant in the room.
"I did more stuff than stare at photos," Jared said with a little laugh and an added little "yikes." He sipped his own beer and pulled one of the clearer footprint photos off the table. "But I uh, I can't shake this one theory I have and it's dumb and if I'm right we'd probably need to call in the FBI and..." He winced because saying things out loud sometimes just made them sound even dumber. "Let's acknowledge I already think it's crazy and stupid so I can just talk about it until something clears up?"
His eyebrows inched upward, and Ty took another drink as Jared spoke. He had a feeling he was going to need more than one bottle for this. “Okay,” he murmured, and made a ‘go on’ gesture with his bottle. “Tell me your crazy and stupid idea.” Ty had his suspicion about what it might be. He’d lived in this town a long time and heard a lot of stories. He knew that Weird Things happened. Fuck, he’d seen the eviscerated cow in the church yard with his own eyes. And Sadie’s body. He just couldn’t fathom saying it out loud with any sort of seriousness, because ... what the fuck. There had to be an explanation.
"Okay so," Jared started and sighed. "There were no human footprints in the yard but, what if- I mean, this is happening too- Pretty much once a month and then nothing between? What if someone's trained a dog to kill. What if we have a serial killer on our hands who just... uses pretty unconventional methods?" It didn't sound as stupid as he'd feared but it still felt so fantastical. Occam's razor said it was just a beast and Collins had said something about the size of the middle toe indicating it was a wolf but... trained wolf sounded a bit far fetched. Or did it? God, his head was spinning.
That was not what Ty was expecting to hear, but it was also much more rooted in reality than what Ty was expecting to hear, so that was probably a good sign. Or maybe a bad one for him, he didn’t know. In any case, his brow furrowed a bit as he thought about it. He recalled the same thing about the hunter being positive it was a wolf, but ... wolves could be domesticated, right? At least a little. “A guy who just ... sics his fucking timberwolf on steroids on people?” he mused, sounding wary of the idea. It was just a weird idea to entertain. “What about the cow? And all the dead deer lately on the road outta town?”
"The cow might have been ... a warning," Jared muttered. "Escalation. The dead deer might be a totally unrelated issue, those are at least out in the woods, right?" Too close to the road for comfort but still not in town. "It's a theory, I don't know what to think. It's too-" he trailed off and sighed, shrugging a bit helplessly. It was too weird, like something out of a horror movie and that... "I mean, unless it's a fucking werewolf I don't know what else it could be." He huffed softly but it was unamused because given all the damn weirdness lately, a werewolf might not be too out of the left field.
There it was, even if it was said as an offhanded joke. A little chill of weirdness ran down Ty’s back and he slowly licked his lips, quiet for a moment. “I mean ... if you can manage the training, it is a pretty foolproof way to kill people,” he said slowly. “Not exactly traceable. There uh ... there’s probably like, a database of people with exotic animals, right? We can start there, start looking for people who’ve had animals illegally ...” Ty’s Cop Brain had turned on and started churning, wondering if they could track down some breeders of wolf-dog hybrids, ask a few questions, that sort of shit. It was at least something to look into.
The defeated feeling in Jared's chest made way for a new spark of hope and it showed in his face as his brows lifted and his eyes widened a bit. "Yeah," he said with a little nod. "I mean, it's something to look into, it's not like we have a lot of leads to go on right now." And it was better than doing nothing and feeling useless about it all. That shit was hard enough when the victim wasn't someone he'd loved for years. It felt like at least a temporary bandage on a wound, something to soothe an itch.
“Yeah, we really have zero leads,” Ty agreed in a murmur, lifting his beer bottle again. Tracking some killer wild animal, whether it had been trained by a human hand or not, wasn’t exactly in the wheelhouse of the Point Pleasant PD. There had to be big game hunters in the area too, right? “And uh, maybe we can find someone local who’s good at tracking,” he said to Jared, following his train of thought out loud. “Have them on standby in case it happens again.” The other crime scenes had gone cold for that sort of thing, he was sure. Ty of course hoped that they didn’t end up with another body, but doing something pro-active was always good.
Jared felt completely out of his depth when it came to finding someone locally. He hadn't lived here that long and he felt like if there was someone readily available, Grady would have called him in by now. "So we might be looking for a person who handles exotic animals and might be uh - enamored with myths." It was something that was hard to look past, the fact these attacks were happening on the full moon. They had somewhat avoided talking about that so far because it was just so stupid, but if Jared's theory held any water it might be relevant.
“Well ... that part might be a little harder to suss out,” Ty murmured with a low chuckle. “But we can start with the animals, I guess.” It was possible that Grady had gotten in touch with a hunter of some kind and just not told them, but Ty wasn’t sure. It would be ground to cover, at least. Even if they didn’t find anything, maybe it would help ease Jared’s mind. Ty knew he had to feel pretty useless with all of this. All of them did, but he had a personal stake in it. Ty sipped some more of his beer, glancing at the photos again. “Not sure what else to do with that information,” he murmured. “But a giant, three-legged wolf has to be findable, right? I just don’t get why it’s not attacking more often.”
"Because someone who wants to be a werewolf is siccing it on people on the full moon," Jared said and shrugged helplessly. It was a crazy theory but no less crazy than what was actually happening, right? The crazier theory would be that there was an actual werewolf stalking town. He shook himself and leaned over the table to gather the pictures in a neat file. "Okay, I think that's enough work for today. I feel like I'm only going to come up with weirder theories the longer I stare at these prints." He huffed softly and added, more to himself, "A giant, three-legged wolf... Jesus."
Ty leaned forward, resting his beer between his legs for a moment while he grabbed hold of Jared and pulled him in closer. He nudged the coffee table an inch or two away from them with his foot, just to put some distance between them. “The only giant, three-legged anything I wanna think about right now is you,” he murmured, smirking a bit as he nuzzled the side of Jared’s neck. Ty smooched him one more time, then leaned back a bit to get back to his beer. “You wanna watch something stupid and drink?” he asked, running his fingers through Jared’s hair, his gaze affectionate.
Jared barked out a little laugh at that very vivid description of him and his cock but then he settled down again, grinning as he leaned in closer to Ty and let himself be petted. "That sounds great," he all but purred. He didn't even really care what they watched, it was more the feeling of it all, of relaxing and settling down while holding onto the man he loved and not thinking about work and death and psychopaths lurking out on the full moon with trained - or not trained - giant wolves. "Something light and stupid, some comedy. I think we could do with some laughs."
“Agreed,” Ty murmured as he picked up the remote. After a bit of browsing, they ended up on Brooklyn 99, which was hilarious, lighthearted, and fun to watch as a cop, even if the locale was wildly different than their own. At one point when Ty got up to get them another round of beers, he shuffled all the crime scene photos together and stuffed them in their folder to take with him to the kitchen. Even with a distraction, they didn’t need Sadie’s death staring them in the face while they were trying to relax. Ty left them on the kitchen table and came back with a fresh round to settle in with his man again and laugh.
Jared didn't say anything but he was thankful when Ty removed the photographs from the room. It released some tension he hadn't realized he'd been holding in and it made it that much easier to relax when Ty returned. He draped his arm over Ty's shoulders and pulled him in close to his side, only letting go when the show made him more than chuckle and he didn't want to be shaking Ty as he belly-laughed. It could have been a perfect night after that, if he'd only slept through the night once they finally settled in for sleep but he didn't.
He was normally a heavy sleeper and yet he woke up to the sound, maybe because on some subconscious level he'd been terrified he'd hear it again. It was unmistakably the sounds of a train and not at all quiet either. It woke him up with a start as for a second he thought it was coming right at his house but then he sat and listened as it didn't quite go by but just ... stayed there, loud and screeching outside the house. His heart was beating too fast and he could feel the prickly cold as sweat broke out on the back of his neck. The last time he'd heard the train he'd been convinced he was going crazy but after everything that had happened in town he wasn't so sure it was his mind that was a problem.
Ty had settled into a nice deep sleep, sprawled on his stomach while Jared slept peacefully beside him ... until the latter abruptly changed. He’d happily learned to sleep with someone else in bed with him, but Ty was still a light sleeper and Jared’s sudden movement startled him awake. He lifted his head, hearing nothing but the quiet of the house himself, and looked over at his upright man. “You ‘kay?” he mumbled fuzzily. Jared wasn’t getting up the rest of the way, or flailing around to kill a spider or anything, so Ty wasn’t sure what the issue was.
"The train is back." Even if he whispered the words and they were completely drowned out by the sounds of the train - to him at least - he felt like they were too loud in the room. "Ty," he said softly then and cleared his throat as he looked down at his boyfriend, forcing himself to not yell over the noise, to speak as he normally would. "I don't think it's in my head." He'd barely let the words out when the noise stopped abruptly and it was uncomfortably quiet all around him.
Ty didn’t hear anything but the hum of the heating unit, but Jared’s words made him sit up too. He shuffled in closer, the spike of worry waking him up pretty quickly. “What like, you’re hearing it right now?” he asked, reaching over to take Jared’s hand. It was difficult to imagine that it wasn’t in Jared’s head when Ty couldn’t hear it, but considering everything else that had been happening lately ... almost any fucking thing was possible.
"It just stopped," Jared replied and he was both relieved and frustrated that it had. If it had kept going, maybe he could have listened better, heard something that mattered, found some rhyme or reason in the sound. Logically he knew there probably was none to be found but there was still an ache in his chest where he longed for answers. "The first time I heard it, two other people heard it too," he said, his brows furrowed in thought, his eyes looking for some point to fix on, darting over the dark room. "When we went to the tracks we found a leg... What if." He stopped abruptly and kicked the covers off himself to get up. "I need to go out there, maybe something else has happened."
He was trying to wrap his mind around where Jared’s thoughts were going when his boyfriend abruptly started to get up. It gave Ty a little start and he began clumsily tugging the blankets off of himself too. “Wait, what? Where?” he asked, sudden worry in his voice. “Go out ... to the tracks?” Ty knew what had happened that night, of course, his brain was just still half asleep. He was awake enough to know he wasn’t going to let Jared charge out there by himself in the middle of the night.
"There's too much nonsense going on and I need answers," Jared replied as he started hunting down his clothes. "What if every time I hear that sound, something is happening and I've been ignoring it?" That wasn't ideal cop behavior, was it? He needed to be proactive now, sick of passively cowering and fretting about something being wrong with him. Nothing was wrong with him he'd decided now, there was something wrong with Point Pleasant, not him. "You coming?" he added with a faint smile and a tone that said Ty really didn't have to but he wasn't going to argue with him, he knew better.
Nonsense was a light way of putting it. “‘Course I’m coming,” Ty muttered, not quite irritably, but close. This was kind of scary and he wasn’t the biggest fan of being woken up by crazy bullshit in the dead of night, even if that was in his job description. But he wasn’t going to try to talk Jared out of it either. Ty knew that if the shoe was on the other foot, he would want to go investigate too. He got out of bed and went for the clothes he’d stuffed into the dresser drawer he’d claimed as his own. Fuck, it was going to be cold. In spite of his internal bitching, Ty moved with haste, aware they were on the clock now.
Ty was within his right to be irritated, Jared wasn't exactly in the sweetest of moods but thankfully whatever fear or anger he felt at the situation was drowned out by his current sense of purpose. He dressed quickly, glad that he'd gotten over his fear of using a gun a while ago because this wasn't something he wanted to do without a rifle on his back and a handgun on his belt. There were things out there that ripped apart large animals, he wasn't going traipsing around in the woods without weapons. He almost told Ty he didn't have to come, once they were dressed warm and shoving on boots but he swallowed it back. Of course Ty had to come and they were halfway out the door already anyway. "Maybe if I hear it again it'll do me the damn courtesy of sounding in the middle of the day," he muttered with a wry smile, acknowledging that yes, it sucked to wake up in the middle of the night and go ... ghost-sound hunting.
Ty was fully aware that he could back out at any time, it wasn’t like Jared would force him to do anything he didn’t want to do. But the desire never even seriously crossed his mind. He wasn’t eager to go do this, but there was no way in hell he was letting Jared go alone. Ty strapped on his gun belt too and bundled up, zipping his coat as he went to get one of the big flashlights from the kitchen. “Maybe,” he answered with a soft huff. Ty joined Jared at the door again. “I got another one in my car,” he said, nodding to the flashlight in his hand. “You got yours?” If they were going to go traipsing through the woods for this weird shit, they needed light.
"Yeah," Jared replied and he always kept the flashlight by the door where he could easily find it if the lights went out. It wasn't that uncommon when the weather got bad so he always had the large flashlight and a stack of candles on hand just in case. The more awake he felt the more he was beginning to doubt this decision to go rushing out into the night but it felt like it was too late to back out now. He needed to know if there was anything out there, some way to put an end to this craziness. Pulling a woollen beanie on, he opened the door and stepped outside, bracing himself against the cold.
It was just as bitterly cold out there as Ty had suspected, and he shivered in his coat, pulling out a hat for his own head. He walked with Jared off the porch, his ears straining to pick up ... something out of the ordinary. He obviously couldn’t hear what Jared had heard, but if someone had been hurt or something, maybe he could hear cries for help ... Ty didn’t know. He just wanted to be useful in solving whatever this was. “Okay, well ... you lead the way, I guess,” he said. Ty knew where the tracks were from there, of course, but Jared knew where he’d found the leg and he’d heard the train, so Ty was just backup.
Jared's emotions were uncertain and fickle, swinging from the certainty that he was wasting their time to the fear that they'd find something horrible - or something horrible would find them. He wasn't normally afraid of the dark, he was a big guy and he wasn't afraid of much other than existential dread and losing people but he was afraid now, Point Pleasant seemed to have its ways of scaring him in new and interesting ways and he wished it didn't. He was both comforted by having Ty there and worried for him as well, another mix of emotions he couldn't quite reconcile. The tracks were a ways out from his place and it was harder to walk there in the dark. It almost made him wish it had snowed again, it'd reflect the light some and make things a little less pitch black where the flashlight didn't reach. "How are you holding up?" he asked as they neared the Cooperdale Tunnel, reaching back for Ty's hand while keeping the flashlight up high, lighting up as much of the forest floor around them as he could.
Paying attention to where he put his feet at least gave Ty something to concentrate on rather than where they were going and why. His heart was beating too hard and he felt all on edge, all too wary these days of what lurked out in the woods. He let Jared light their way forward, keeping his own flashlight swinging slowly around them. It seemed darker than it usually was and he found himself uneasily wondering what phase of the moon it was. Jared’s voice was quiet, but it still made him jump a little. Ty gave his hand a squeeze when they joined together. “Fine,” he murmured. “Have you heard anything else?” He was pretty sure Jared would’ve said something, but Ty still wanted to check.
"No, it's quiet now," Jared replied and in a way that was worse, like maybe it had just been a dream and he was dragging them out here for nothing. "Except for that owl," he added belatedly at the soft hooting in the distance. It was soothing, like the forest wasn't completely dead. It was less unnatural out there if there were animals still going about their business. "Do you wanna go back?" he asked then because if Ty asked him to, he would. It felt stupid to be out there now but he couldn't be the one to decide that, it was different if he did it for Ty.
There was no real question that Ty wanted to go back, but his sense of duty was currently outweighing that personal preference. He knew it was possible that Jared was fishing for a ‘yes’ out of him, but he also had the feeling that if he did say yes and they did go back to the house, then not having done a thorough job of investigating would eventually drive Jared crazy. Ty took a deep, quiet breath and squeezed his man’s hand again. “We’re out here already, let’s go have a look,” he answered, glad that he sounded decisive about it. “If there’s something fucked up at the tunnel, better we find it than some civilian.” That was reasonable enough, right? Reason was helpful when you were scared. And he was.
Jared had to smile a little at that even as he felt reinvigorated by Ty's words. His man just knew exactly what to say to get him going and pulling the cop-card was a strong move. "We just had to become cops," he said with a sigh, giving Ty's hand a little squeeze before letting go to keep walking. They were getting closer to the tunnel and he really didn't know what to expect. Obviously the logical thing to hope for was that there was nothing there. They still hadn't identified the leg they'd found so that was a weird cold case now, did they really need more strange occurrences getting in their way? Jared would vote for no, but he also wanted those answers. To be fair, more weird occurrences probably just meant more questions.
Cooperdale tunnel was in every shape and form a threatening place, even without the weirdness. An abandoned tunnel was a blight on the community even without the weird ghost train nonsense, a hot spot for junkies and vandals and trouble in general. Jared disliked this place on principle alone but now he had even more reason to hate it. There was nothing there that screamed bloody murder at them, no obvious chunks of a body when Jared shone his flashlight up and down the tracks which meant he had to check inside the tunnels. He was so glad Ty was right there behind him because even if he wasn't alone, the hair on the back of his neck stood up like the tracks he was standing on were electric. He stopped after a few steps, close enough to see the plastic ribbon that hung from a hook at the mouth of the tunnel. "Okay, I guess that's new," he muttered, squinting to see if the way it caught the light was just the texture of the plastic or if it was wet.
Ty wasn’t a huge fan of the place either. It gave him the creeps even in the daylight, and being out there at night after Jared had heard a train barrelling through on the long-abandoned tracks definitely upped the creepy factor. He honestly expected to encounter a body with every step they took. Some paranoia reared up inside of him and he almost grabbed Jared’s arm to keep him from walking into the mouth of the tunnel, even a few steps. The feeling of not wanting to go in there was like bile in his throat. But then he spotted what his partner had spotted too, and Ty got distracted by trying to make sense of it. “Is that ... what the fuck,” he breathed as he stepped forward. His hand lifted to try and snag the end of the hanging plastic, but he couldn’t quite reach. It looked like some kind of party banner.
Some deep seated instinct told Jared not to touch the thing, like it might be covered in something grotesque and that was why it was so shiny but then Ty reached for it and he shook off that feeling and took advantage of the height difference he had on Ty. The plastic was cold to the touch but dry and he pulled it to the side to get a better look. It was bright yellow, with red letters and he didn't need to see all of them to know what they read. Welcome Home, big red letters, a crumpled smiley face at the end only making it all look a little creepier in the context. "Who the hell would hang this here?" Jared said quietly.
Ty shined his flashlight on the banner while Jared pulled it to the side, a weird chill running down his back. It was a bright and happy thing, it looked brand new, but it was just so out of place, it made this whole thing even more unsettling. “Don’t go inside,” Ty blurted without thinking, and he did reach out this time to grip Jared’s arm. His boyfriend had made no move to do such a thing, but the feeling of aversion was strong now. “Just ... c’mon, there’s nothing here, let’s go home.” Ty tried not to sound as scared as he suddenly felt, but he couldn’t help it. “Nobody’s having a fucking ‘welcome home’ party out here, it’s just ... just some kinda prank, stupid kids, or ...”
Jared let go of the banner and let Ty pull him back. He raised his flashlight to shine the light inside the tunnel one more time, half expecting to see something barreling out at them but it just felt like there was infinite darkness, more than he could ever illuminate, no matter how strong his flashlight was. "Yeah," he said quietly and the obvious fear in Ty's voice was almost more frightening than whatever his imagination was feeding him about the tunnel. Ty was afraid and he was failing at hiding it now. It made Jared want to protect him but it also stirred up some deep seated terror living inside of him. "Let's go- let's get out of here." He couldn't say let's go home, it felt like he was inviting something bad with that welcome home banner hanging right there in front of them. He didn't want to turn his back on it and it felt dumb to start walking backwards so he felt rooted to the spot.
The idea of turning his back on all that blackness called up a similar terror in Ty. What if they did and suddenly a train ran them over? Or something worse came out of the dark? They were both seasoned cops, they’d seen some awful shit -- murder-suicides, mutilated people and animals, all kinds of human violence. Even weird things they couldn’t explain. But Ty couldn’t recall being this scared, not since he’d been a kid watching horror movies he hadn't been old enough to see. There was something Bad out there, and it could Get them. Jared wasn’t moving, so Ty broke that paralysis for them, starting to back away from the tunnel and pulling Jared’s arm along with him. He kept his light trained on the entrance, just in case. Walking backward over railroad ties and loose gravel wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but fuck, he wanted out of there.
It was the kind of fear that made Jared's body feel like it wasn't his own, shifting into autopilot and giving him far too much stimulus at once. His heart was beating too hard, his muscles felt too tense, there was a weight in his gut that seemed to spread like cold ink through his innards, clutching at every organ too tightly. He didn't remember getting his gun out but when they had stumbled backwards a few steps, there it was, solid in his hand. "Fuck this," he whispered, the words an attempt at bravado, something to pump some bravery back into his veins. It should feel stupid to be this scared of nothing at all but he didn't feel that in the moment, it might not make much sense and yet it did somehow, like any strong sense of self preservation did at any given time. He wanted distance between them and that tunnel and the bright yellow plastic taunting him from the mouth of it. He wanted to be back home with the door locked and the windows closed. Ty's grip on his arm felt like a lifeline. It didn't feel like they were far enough away by the time he finally found the willpower to turn around but he needed more speed and he needed not to trip over something and get stuck there. He automatically draped his arm over Ty's shoulders in a feeble attempt to shield him in case something came after them.
It felt so crazy to be in fight-or-flight mode when there was nothing there to fight or flee from ... nothing visible, at least. It felt almost tangible though, just something in the air that screamed DANGER at the both of them. Ty could tell that Jared felt it too, and the both of them being afraid only compounded the urgency of getting the fuck out of there. Even with Jared’s big arm around his shoulder, Ty found himself glancing back several times, the expectation pounding in his chest that there would be something chasing them. There wasn’t, but they both hurried anyway. Putting the Cooperdale Tunnel and its freaky cheerful banner behind them should’ve made him feel better, but Ty got the strangest, stupidest feeling that they were just leading something bad back to where they lived. He did his best to shake it off, walking as fast as he could without tripping, his jaw clenched shut.
Jared hated how dark it was even more than he had on their way out there. It felt like a physical thing, creeping as close as it could, trying to touch them with something sinister in mind. He moved the beam of his flashlight more than strictly necessary as if it might stave something in the darkness off. Even as they drew closer to Seaview he didn't really feel safer and he had a bad feeling that even with the doors closed and locked behind them that feeling wouldn't fade just yet. It made him want to get straight in the car and drive to Ty's place, just to leave more distance between them and the tunnel and it was such a stupid thing to feel and yet it felt so real and important. They didn't say a word the whole way back, like it was some unspoken agreement that keeping quiet was safer. Jared did spare Ty plenty of little glances though, gradually moving to hold his hand rather than keep his arm around him as it made it easier to move but not breaking that physical connection for anything. He shakily found his keys as they scurried up to the porch at his place, relying on Ty to keep lookout (for what exactly, he wasn't sure) while he got the door unlocked.
Ty didn’t need to be told to keep an eye out, he was doing that by instinct. There didn’t seem to be anything but normal forest shadows to see, but that didn’t stop every inch of his body from feeling like it had been electrified. He was on high-alert even as they stomped up the porch steps to the front door, his grip tight on Jared’s hand. It felt good to get inside and get the door closed and locked, but Ty didn’t exactly feel better. His breath was coming knd of light and panty, and he had to fight off the urge to peek through the curtains to see if anything had followed them. He got an imagination flash of some fucked up clown standing out there, with a ‘welcome home’ balloon, and Ty physically scrunched up his face and rubbed at it with his palm. “That was ... fuck. You okay?” he asked, dropping his hand to look at Jared. He still felt unsettled, and like maybe they should go spend the night as his place tonight. The rest of the night, anyway.
"Yeah," Jared said automatically because that was what he was supposed to say when someone asked if he was okay, but then he shook his head because this was Ty and he didn't put up that sort of front with him. "No, not really," he said quietly and there was a chill in his bones that had nothing to do with the temperature outside. "Can we- I don't wanna stay here tonight, I just wanna get in the car and drive far away. Can we go to your place?" Or a motel. A motel would be fine too, even that tacky one near Cherries. He barely suppressed a shudder and his fingers were itching to pull his gun out again, just in case something did come barrelling down the door.
There was a small wave of relief inside Ty, but it wasn’t quite enough to soothe everything else he was feeling. He was just glad that he hadn’t been the one to suggest they go spend the night somewhere else. “Yeah, we definitely can,” Ty answered, trying not to sound as eager as he felt. It was difficult. Now that he knew they were going elsewhere, he was ready to go now. That creepy feeling in the back of his neck was still tingling, making him feel like there was still something behind them ... even though there had probably never been. “You wanna grab some clothes, or just bounce?” he asked Jared, already walking toward the bedroom to fetch his keys and wallet where he’d left them.
Jared walked in after him, even if he had no plans of packing a bag. "Nah, let's just bounce," he said, that urge to leave like a nasty itch inside of him. Ty might be downplaying his own need to leave but Jared could feel it, an unspoken agreement between them and he was honestly glad for it. On some level he knew he shouldn't be, he should want to feel like it was just needless paranoia and that he'd feel better soon but the fact they both wanted out of there made it all the more urgent to leave. For now he wasn't letting Ty out of his sight, all but bouncing as he watched him to see what he needed, relieved when it was just those two things and not something that would take more time.
Ty was very good with just bouncing. He felt tense on their way to the car, but the more distance they put between them and the tunnel, the better he felt. That bar stayed pretty low, but still. It was a relief to walk into his apartment, and he hadn’t been as eager to get there in months now. It was difficult to unwind, and they were both pretty quiet as they got back down to their skivvies and got into bed. Ty wanted to feel ridiculous for being so scared, but the truth was, he didn’t. He felt like it was justified. It was a maddening feeling, but Ty could tell that Jared felt it too, as they laid down in the semi-dark and held onto each other. It felt bigger than he could properly think about. Eventually his racing thoughts slowed down, and Ty was grateful to drift off into an exhausted sleep.