log: blake and graham, thorne house
Graham couldn't sleep.
His head was a mess, more so than usual, and he didn't want or need dreams of Lorelei, of Clem, of a memory in a bottle and a drunken night making cracks and fractures widen and shatter like broken glass. Screw sleep. He didn't need sleep. The house was huge, real quiet this late, and he figured nobody would care if he went wandering around in the dark. So he got up, threw on a shirt, and got to walking. Bare feet didn't make much sound on the floor, and he almost felt like a ghost, like he could pass through walls and even if he came across somebody living they wouldn't see him there.
Yeah, a ghost. Seemed fitting. He'd never really been here much anyway, had he? Some people with delusions, they didn't realize, but he did. He knew he wasn't right in the head. Nobody who saw a dead woman like she was living was, nobody who talked to a woman who wasn't there and wore his wedding ring and talked like vows went beyond death could be called sane. But he'd never cared much. Before, when it was just him and Shane, no one gave a damn, he could still call up his son or go visit and if he pretended his wife was alive and well, it didn't hurt anybody.
Not like it did now.
Drunk or not, he'd slept with his wife's sister and talked about running her off and Shane was right, he'd always been right, he couldn't always tell who he was seeing when he was sober so it was no surprise he'd fucked up when he was not. And now people were posting on the damn journals about his dead wife, asking about his son, talking about lights at the end of tunnels-- only light in his life was that his kid had grown up safe, happy, that he was out there in the real world and had family down South, family that wasn't broken, family that didn't have one foot in the grave already.
He wandered through the house like he wandered through life, and he ended up at the library by chance. There was light coming from inside, real dim, but it drew him forward and he stopped in the doorway once he realized it wasn't empty. Too late to draw back, to disappear, and he stared right back.
"Hey." Right, it was Amelia's brother, the young guy. Master of the house. His gaze dropped to the coffee mug he held, and he wondered if it was coffee or something else. He wondered, if it was the latter, if he'd be willing to share. "Yeah. That's me." He shrugged when the guy--Blake--apologized. "No," he said. "It's fine. Couldn't sleep either."