Who: Jason and Annie.
Where: The Bernhard Warehouse.
When: Mid-afternoon.
It was usually for the best for Jason to keep his distance from the others when he didn’t trust himself to keep everything under control. If nothing else he might say or do something that offended or hurt someone else’s feelings and these people were supposed to be able to trust and respect him. How could they do that if he upset them? The worst case scenario was that he would lose his temper too much to pull back from and he would do something he would end up regretting, potentially for the rest of his life, someone might pay the price for his lack of control and that was a risk Jason wasn’t willing to take.
That was one of the main reasons he’d had this one piece of equipment installed in the place not long after their arrival. As strange an investment as it might have seemed to most people, especially for a group who didn’t have much of anything at all, the bag was all but invaluable, a healthy way for Jason to release the stress and pressure that could build up to boiling point. That was a stage none of them wanted him to reach, they had all seen or at least heard what happened when he passed the point of no return. They had had to leave London because of that temper of his, because he’d almost killed a man and revealed himself as a supernatural. A wild animal.
The yell that broke out of him when he swung a fresh punch into the bag was ragged and angry, thick with aggression and frustration and all that tension that was threatening to strain his muscles to breaking point. Sweat trickled down his bare arms and the sides of his face, threatening to sting his eyes before he lifted a roughly bound hand to swipe it away. His hair was plastered to his temples and brow and his chest heaved as he stepped back from the swinging back and then paced around it. When he attacked again it was suddenly, swiftly and sharply, striking with all the power he had to throw into the blows.
Jason didn’t like feeling out of control. Someone or something had stripped that away, not just from him but from all of them, leaving them blank and dazed, their true identities washed away. Perhaps that was what was really getting to him, losing that sense of calm ignorance and easy control, having to come back to this. Anger, frustration, restlessness. Rage.
Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: The Summers House.
When: Early morning.
The DVD player had long since switched itself off and the TV showed nothing but a quiet field of desaturated static, casting a pale light across the room in the early morning before the sun had even risen all the way above the horizon. On the coffee table in front of the couch were various snacks, a couple of glasses and a few soda cans, remnants of a night spent indulging in entertainment and various foods that had little in the way of nutritional value. The remote had fallen on the floor at some point. The cases for the movies they had watched were stacked haphazardly down in front of the entertainment unit, the last one they’d been watching before sleep had taken them both still popped open and left sitting at a strange angle atop all the others.
When consciousness started to return it was with a quiet wash of confusion that it did so, the feeling that something about where he was wasn’t right, and it was that creeping doubt that had him opening his eyes and blinking to try and clear the sleep from them, moving to lift one arm to try and dispel the grogginess before he realised he wasn’t alone. At some point during the night his companion had slouched against him completely and they had fallen asleep that way. With a single glance Sam knew it was Jo, her short hair was a little ruffled but unmistakable and her scent was so unique and so familiar that he would know it anywhere.
For several seconds he remained exactly where he was, trying to figure out what was wrong because something was. His other arm was free, he realised, and it was that he lifted to swipe at his face but he stopped halfway. There were scars on his arm. What he could see of the other one had the same sorts of scars. Abruptly and without warning Sam’s mind’s eye was filled with sharp teeth and snapping jaws, the echoes of snarls and howls rolled hauntingly in his ears. Mountains, trees, blood and balled fists, raucous laughter and cruel jeering. Sam’s breath caught harshly in his throat and fear struck him with the force of a freight train.
This was wrong. ( All wrong. )
Who: Nico.
Where: A hotel in town.
When: Morning.
It was like something clicked in his brain, a release under a sudden pressure, and it was as simple as being asleep one moment and awake the next. Air caught in his throat as he pushed up reflexively beneath the sheets and blankets of a bed that was not his own, a fact he knew immediately and did not particularly care for, and his dark keen eyes scanned the room. The shades were drawn but not securely covered, on the wrong side of the room from where they normally were. The furniture was not that which had picked out for him. Items were missing, nowhere to be seen. The scent was all wrong. Something was missing.
Someone was missing.
Nico removed himself from the bed with light easy movements, pushing his dishevelled hair from his face with steady hands as he studied his surroundings quickly but with a small, simmering sense of disquiet. This was not his room. When he glanced past the shades to the world beyond he was too high up to be in the house that he belonged in. This was wrong. All wrong.
There were his clothes, draped over the back of an armchair that he did not recognise beyond the faintest recollection that told him he must have consciously entered the room and as he stood gazing at it scraps and shards of memory came back to him: fear and panic and confusion, leaving the house without a word, coming here to this hotel, buying a phone. That phone was on the desk against the wall, connected to the wall by a cable obviously meant to charge the battery.
Nico shook his head, turning his eyes from it and looking around the room again. This made no sense. This wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Was it?
His hands found their way to his head, either side, his fingers burying in his thick hair as his eyes closed and he tried to put the pieces together but they wouldn’t fit, misshapen sections of mismatched puzzles that had no business going together. Nico didn’t know what he was doing here, where to go or what to do, whether the phone needed to be destroyed or if he should keep it. Was he sorry he was alone or quietly glad?
With a strangled sound of frustration in the base of his throat he moved to the door leading into the bathroom and shut it behind him, breathing with increasing speed in his building confusion and distress as he stepped into the shower, of all places, and turned on the water. That made no sense either, he hadn’t paused to take off the shorts he had worn to bed, but the water that streamed down from the shower head and run through his hair and over his skin helped to shut out some of the questions that were filling his skull and threatening to either deafen him or just drive him mad.
It was a temporary solution though, a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, and there was only one thing Nico could think to do, something he went on to do as reflexively as someone might perform a basic task, something they had done hundreds or thousands of times before.
Without letting himself pause to think about it first he took a deep breath and opened his mind to reach out for that of another. Whatever was going on he couldn’t do it alone.
Who: Mason and Kiley.
Where: Cherryblossom Place; Mason’s apartment.
When: Morning.
There was no alarm that went off to trigger his return to the waking world and it was a slow and steady recovery of consciousness, nothing special about it at all to signify that anything was out of place. More often than not he didn’t really need that alarm, Mason was more than capable of getting himself out of bed but as he started to stir and the sounds of the world beyond the windows and walls of the apartment started to creep in at the edges of his awareness, the subtlest shaft of light from the morning sun landing across the surface of the bed in which he lay, he knew something was different. The warmth of the bed itself, the sheer comfort he felt, made it difficult to care but as the minutes ticked by and sleep relinquished its hold on him piece by piece things started to settle, his mind shook off the dust of slumber and started feeding him information about where he was, what needed to happen that day, and with whom. There was someone else in the bed, too.
Not that unusual, really, it wasn’t the first time Kiley had shared his bed and last night wasn’t the first time they had--
Wait.
Mason’s eyes opened and he rose up onto his elbows, bringing his chest off the mattress while being careful not to disturb Kiley’s arm where it had come to drape across his back at some point during the night while they were both asleep. At some point he had rolled over onto his stomach, evidently, and she had nestled in close to his side. Without even needing to look beneath the sheets that were draped over them both Mason knew one fact with unwavering certainty: neither of them were wearing any clothes.
They had slept together. More than once.
“Oh my God.” It was so quiet it could scarcely even be considered a whisper and just for a moment Mason pressed his face into the crumpled pillows on his side of the bed before lifting his head again and lifting one hand to lay it gently against her bare shoulder, a light touch coupled with her name in a soft hushed tone meant to rouse her from sleep slowly and carefully.
Something had happened to bring them to this point. Mason just wasn’t entirely sure yet what that something was.
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