Neil (piezoelectric) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-04-30 04:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, neil, neil x nic, nic |
Who: Neil & Nic
What: Run-in at the witches' market
Where: Main Street
When: Evening, Friday 10/20
Neil didn't often bother with his family but apparently it was something he needed to do at least every two months or so lest they started fretting and bothering him. That was really the only reason he agreed to come to the witch festival. Josh and Martha loved that festival, Martha especially delighted in all the fake witches running around, reading palms and selling charms. Her enthusiasm for it made Neil hate it more and he reluctantly stayed with them as long as he could tolerate before making up some inane excuse for why he really had to get going after dinner and that no, he really couldn't go on the witch tour they were planning on taking.
His mood was strange as he made his way down Main Street, relieved for it to be over with but also irritated to have to waste his evening doing something he didn't enjoy. There was one booth at the market selling books that looked old and that caught his attention. It might be all for show but they looked pretty and Neil loved pretty old books. He set aside his annoyance with the festival for now in order to browse the selection, finding to his amusement that the books were indeed mostly fake, made to look old and weathered spell books. That didn't mean they weren't pretty and whoever had made them had done good work so he indulged and stayed for a spell.
Though Nic didn’t like to say it, he often thought the Witch’s Festival was a waste of time. It didn’t really bring in new business and they had to close the shop in order to run the booth. While one of them could work one and one work the other, that didn’t allow for anyone to leave their post and that was too many long hours sitting at an outdoor festival without a break. So he and Zan took turns, allowing the other to get up and stretch their legs and check out the festival. He was pretty sure it was ninety percent junk, but there were some good finds here and there.
The books caught his attention, and then Neil did instead, a guy that Nic had only seen here and there since high school. He knew him, but Nic wouldn’t have said they were friends just because they’d lived in the same neighborhood. That was why it had been so weird to dream about him. The dream had felt too real, even if he knew he’d been asleep. He almost kept moving, then decided to hell with it, and stepped up beside Neil at the booth. “Hey,” he said, in an effort to get Neil’s attention, kind of hoping for a reaction of recognition, rather than confusion.
He got his recognition with a dash of wide-eyed panic before Neil caught himself and forced himself to settle down and look away. He knew Nic, that was what had made the dream so weird. The fact Nic was suddenly greeting him now was not a good sign at all and Neil had had it with all the strange things happening lately. "Castell, right?" he asked, but it was hard to hide the way his body tensed as he looked at the other man again. "Hey yourself?" Maybe Nic just wanted him to move out of the way or ask him some inane question but Neil really didn't think that was it.
With the way Neil responded, there was no question in Nic’s mind that he was alarmed to see him. The question was, was it due to a really weird shared experience, or because Neil remembered him as the kid who’d almost beat another kid to death? There were people who still steered away from him for that reason alone, like he might lash out at random. He wouldn’t know without asking and he didn’t know how to ask without sounding crazy. But then, if Neil already thought he was, it wouldn’t change anything. “Right,” he nodded. “This is going to sound crazy, but… Have you been having weird dreams lately?”
As far as Neil knew, Nic was just a psychopath from Overlook who had nothing to do with AIR or Jane or any of his usual problems. Having someone he'd just had a dream about approach him and ask him about his dreams was on par with those experiences though and he suddenly felt exhausted by it all. He sighed, clenched his jaw and looked skyward as if there might be an answer there to the perpetual question of 'why me?' "Have you been having weird dreams lately?" he said, turning the question back on Nic.
That wasn’t exactly the sort of response Nic expected, suddenly sensing an impatience that didn’t make sense. They hadn’t had this conversation before. In fact, they’d barely spoken, if ever. “Yeah, I have,” Nic said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “One where I’m in a forest, and I see people, and then there’s this awful scream.” He saw Neil, he was sure of it. And a blonde girl that he knew he knew from somewhere, but couldn’t quite put his finger on where. Nic knew dreams could be random, but this hadn’t felt like a normal dream. It hadn’t faded when he woke up. It hung around, the scream still ringing in his ears minutes later.
"And I was there," Neil sighed since he knew that's where Nic was going with this. He had enough weirdness going on in his life without some strange dreams coming into play too and it had to be related to AIR, it just had to be. Maybe Jane was manipulating him in some way, though he couldn't imagine what it had to do with Nic Castell. "Did you still hear it when you woke up?" he asked, setting down the book he'd been looking at and turning away from the booth. At least this was a pretty random place to be talking, if AIR was watching they'd have to be pretty damn thorough to have put spy equipment here. Unless Nic was the spy. Neil's head hurt just thinking about it.
“Yeah,” Nic sighed, glad that Neil was at least meeting him halfway. He could have spelled it out, but then he’d likely have gotten pissed if Neil denied it, mostly with himself for believing it. It had felt so real and he wasn’t usually the sort to buy into illusions without any proof, but what did he have outside of a dream? “I did,” he nodded. “Like, it lingered. The whole thing did. I know it was just a dream, but… it felt different.” Dreams were patchy. They faded almost instantly. This ended up feeling more like a memory than anything else, one that made no sense no matter how he looked at it.
Neil nodded slowly, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "Do you by any chance know Jane Randolph?" He had to ask, it was the only logical explanation he could think of for this kind of dream manipulation, even if he hadn't seen her in that dream. The other possibility, the one he didn't want to think about, was that it had something to do with what AIR had done to him. That maybe he was causing this somehow with whatever ability it was Jane wanted him to remember. He refused to acknowledge that so any other possibility would be explored first.
Nic pursed his lips, thinking for a minute, then shook his head. He was pretty good with names and that one meant nothing to him. “I don’t think so. Where would I know her from?” He knew that Neil must be trying to link Jane, whomever she was, with what was happening to them, and he wondered if she was maybe one of the other people in the dream. “Is she the blonde girl from the dream? She seemed familiar.” He’d seen her face, even if he’d never spoken to her. And there was another that he was positive he’d never met, but he doubted the guy’s name was Jane.
"No she's... someone else," Neil sighed. 'The blond girl' was vague enough but it still made him feel uneasy. "Who else did you see there?" he asked because it really did sound like they had the exact same dream and he didn't know any logical explanation for it. Jane's ability wasn't exactly logical either but he didn't want to think about that. His whole world was crumbling yet again and there was only so much he could focus on at once.
“Um… the blonde and…” Nic closed his eyes for a moment, trying to pull up the image in his head. “A guy. Tall. Short, dark hair and a beard.” He opened his eyes and shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before. I remember thinking that in the dream. You were the only one I knew for sure.” Which wasn’t very helpful, he realized, but he’d wanted to connect with someone that was experiencing what he was experiencing. It made him feel a little less crazy.
"The blonde is some cheerleader in the high school and the man..." Neil paused, trying to recall his name. "He works at the gym, I think." Neither of them had anything to do with AIR, neither did Nic. "Have you had something like this happen to you before?" he asked though at this point he wasn't sure he wanted to know what was going on. He felt tired, at the brink of just giving up and letting AIR take him if that was what they wanted. At least he'd know.
Neither of those rang a bell. Nic’s knowledge of the high school crowd was slim. He only made a point of knowing them if they were witches, or if they really liked tea. And he’d never been to the gym. He could work out at home without paying an arm and a leg. “Nothing like the dream, but… there’s been some other weird things.” There was no reason to think the weirdness with the mirrors was connected to the dreams, even though it was the first thing that came to mind. He hadn’t even told Zania about that, since it had kind of felt like he was losing his mind and then it was gone again.
If someone had told Neil he'd be chatting about dreams with Nic Castell this afternoon he would have rolled his eyes hard at them because it was so unlikely. It didn't escape his notice how weird it was that they were actually there, talking. He didn't want to be talking about any of this and it wasn't at all comforting to know that other people were experiencing the same thing but at the same time... He wasn't alone with it and it didn't seem to be AIR related, at least not in any way he could deduce. "What sort of other things?" he asked warily. Had Nic lost time as a child? Neil didn't remember him but that didn't mean much.
“Something… something about the mirrors,” Nic said, hesitant to go into it on the off chance it was unrelated and Neil just thought he was crazy. “They’re behaving strangely.” Considering the kind of forces active in his life, it took a lot to shake Nic up. Magic by itself didn’t do that. Neither did ghosts. Demons were bad news, but they were explainable. His reflection misbehaving though? That made no sense at all. It didn’t feel like a curse or a hex. It felt like a hallucination, but he couldn’t figure out the cause.
Neil sighed heavily and reached up to rub at his eyelids. This was too much. He knew Nic wasn't making this shit up just to fuck with him because Neil hadn't told anyone about that stuff with the mirror. He didn't talk to people, he didn't keep a journal. "Your reflection did something odd? That you weren't doing?" he muttered then and it wasn't so much a question as it was a confirmation that they were on the same page. "Do you have any idea what's causing this?"
Nic sighed in relief, glad he wasn’t going down the wrong rabbit hole. He didn’t know what it meant to know the two things were connected, but it was better than two unrelated incidents of weird, he supposed. “Yes,” he said. “Like my reflection was freaking out. Pounding on the glass from the other side and screaming. And since then I’ll have times that it just… it’s like it’s making me crazy. Then the dreams started.” He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was trying to tell him something, but had no idea what that might be. “No. I’ve dealt with some crazy shit in my life, but nothing like this. It kind of feels like a curse, but I don’t know how we’re connected.”
Neil was getting the feeling that this was somehow connected to him and not AIR or Jane or even really Nic. It seemed as likely an explanation as any, that maybe he was dream walking too and stirring up trouble without meaning to. "Perhaps we should... talk to the others. If they don't know then at least we know it's just us. That would narrow it down some." Not that he was in any rush to approach the others, a snooty teenager and a gym-guy? He couldn't imagine it going well.
Nic knew that was probably the logical conclusion, to get everyone together and compare notes and try and work things out, but he hadn’t even been sure about approaching Neil. He didn’t know the other two at all. “We probably should,” he said reluctantly. “I feel like I’ve done all I can on my own. And if we knew they were involved, then we could figure out the common denominator.” Or something like that. If it was random, then they were screwed.
Neil worried that the only common denominator was him, and that Nic had just gotten dragged into it by pure coincidence. Not that Neil knew why that would have happened, Nic hadn't exactly been on his radar before suddenly popping up in his dream but who knew how this worked. "Did you... ever go missing?" he asked cautiously. "Or lost time?" He didn't remember Nic being one of the other kids but then again Adam remembered nothing so who knew if half of what he did remember was even true.
While Nic felt like he’d lost time while he was in juvie, he knew that wasn’t really the case. It was just this weird space in his life where everything had turned upside down, but it was far enough back that it didn’t bother him anymore, not unless people brought it up. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “My whole life is accounted for.” He knew that wasn’t the case with Neil. He remembered when he went missing, then the shock when he turned up again. When people went missing in Point Pleasant, they almost never came back. Sometimes there was a body, sometimes not, but back and alive was a rarity.
Neil's life was mostly accounted for too though he chose to forget a large chunk of it and pretended to have forgotten those two years completely. It wasn't until now that he'd been talking about it at all and he couldn't help like something terrible was going to happen because of it. "So could you talk to them? I can give you my number, or my email address," he said and again it occurred to him that this was Nic Castell he was talking to and it was absurd to keep in contact with him. Oh well, it wasn't like he had much choice there if he wanted to get to the bottom of this.
“You want me to?” Nic said, not at all thrilled with that idea. “How about I take one and you take the other?” He wasn’t into this whole talking to strangers thing, which was why he’d approached Neil. He wasn’t a complete stranger, even if he wasn’t a friend. Maybe Neil thought he was into this because he’d talked to him, but tracking down strangers and asking them if they were having shared dreams was so not his thing. “But yeah, we can exchange numbers.” He’d much rather text than have awkward meetings anyways.
If Neil had a say, Nic would talk to both of those people because as much as Nic didn't want to, Neil wanted to even less. "I suppose," he said with a frown as he tried to do the mental gymnastics of figuring out which one would be less painful to talk to. If he could remember the girl's name he would have picked her. Makayla might know her and he could use that to his advantage. Since he didn't remember he thought maybe it was safer to talk to the gym-guy, even if the thought alone almost gave him hives. At least then he wouldn't be hanging around the high school like some creep. "Do you have any idea how to find the girl?" he asked since he doubted she'd be dropping by the library again any time soon.
Nic could tell that Neil was just about as excited about this task as he was, but that’s what made it fair to split up the work. Neither one of them wanted to do it, but he thought the only way they were going to solve this mystery was to start to bring the players together. “I could probably figure it out,” Nic said. “She looks like she’s in high school, so the real trick is how to do it without looking like a total creep.” He seriously didn’t need this in his life. “She feels so familiar though. If I could just figure out why, I think that would help.” Nic didn’t hang out with high schoolers, but he’d definitely seen her somewhere. If he could figure out where, everything would be easier.
"There's always the yearbook," Neil sighed. "I've seen her before and I'm sure she's a cheerleader, that will narrow it down." How to approach her without coming off as a creep? That was the real question. "Maybe we should... talk to the man first." If he didn't recognize them or remember a dream then Neil didn't see the point in harassing a teenage girl. Maybe he could get Mak to talk to her, though he had a feeling Mak didn't go near that kind of girl. She was bookish and geeky and nice whereas cheerleaders, in Neil's opinion, tended to be loud and catty.
“That… yeah,” Nic nodded, feeling better about that idea. “I’ll try and find out who she is, just in case. But if the other guy doesn’t know what we’re talking about, then I’d rather not bother a high schooler.” If he could just remember where he knew her from, then it would help. He thought maybe if he saw her pictures or figured out her name, he’d be able to narrow it down. “The library has yearbooks, right?” he asked, not actually realizing that was where Neil worked. He just knew that she wouldn’t be in any of his and he didn’t know another teenager to ask to look at thiers.
Neil sighed and nodded. "I'll look into it at work on Monday if it's not too busy," he said, thinking Nic knew where he worked and was pawning this off on him because of it. Of course he would much rather do the research work than the actual talking-to work but that was beside the point. "Will you talk to the guy then?" he asked and maybe that was his out. If Nic talked to Mr. Gym and he didn't know anything, Neil wouldn't have to talk to the girl.
“At work?” Nic asked, not quite following Neil. Why were they switching now? Nic could totally go by the library. “Okay,” he said hesitantly. “But then I’m not gonna go look up the girl.” God, they were going around in circles. “I’ll see what I can find out. Here,” he said, taking out his phone. “Let me get your number and I’ll shoot you a text.” Or not. Bugging some guy at the gym really sounded like a bad idea if the guy didn’t recognize him. Maybe he’d just let it drop and hope it went away.
Neil caught onto the confusion as he took the phone to put his number in. "I work at the library," he said as a way of explanation. "So it's easy for me to... Find it." Just as easy as it was for Nic to show up and do the same, but he didn't need to point that out. If he actually wanted to talk to Jane, he might find her and ask her about Nic and if she had anything to do with this, but he wasn't sure he'd bring it up even if she came to him again.
“Ah, okay,” Nic said, and it was hard to argue that he should do the looking up when it really did seem to fall in Neil’s court. Once he had Neil’s number in his phone, he dropped it back in his pocket and gave Neil a small smile. “Well… I’ll let you know what I find out.” He wasn’t looking forward to it at all, but it was his own damn fault for talking to Neil about it. There wasn’t much he could do now but move forward.
Neil nodded, then pulled out his own phone and unlocked it. "Tell me yours," he muttered, not at all eager to just hand his phone over to Nic, even if Nic had handed him his. "In case I find something out." He wasn't sure he would tell Nic everything he found out, what if he found out it was AIR causing it and the other people involved were just random? He wouldn't want to spill all his secrets to strangers, he didn't even like to talk about them to people who had been there.
Dammit, Nic thought. He couldn’t just ghost if he gave Neil his number, but he couldn’t exactly say no now without looking like an ass. Rather than ramble off his number, he sent Neil a quick text. Just ‘This is Nic’, but now he had his number. Ugh. “There you go,” he said. “Just in case you find something.”
"Just in case we find something," Neil repeated because he too didn't much like giving out his number. He doubted Nic was going to make social calls but you never knew with people. Some people were like cats, the less you wanted them around the more they showed up to pester you. "You could just text me," he added. "You don't have to... call." He curled his lip without meaning to and pocketed his phone.
“Don’t worry,” Nic said with a snort of amusement, already backing away from Neil. “I won’t.” Which was probably rude, but he wasn’t going to call unless it was some kind of emergency. They weren’t friends. He wasn’t looking to pick him up or hang out. They were having shared nightmares and that was it. Well, that and the weird mirror shit. But it wasn’t the kind of thing Nic was looking to call and chat about. “Later?” he asked, raising a brow.
Rude or not, it was what Neil wanted to hear and he nodded curtly. "Later." He didn't like any of this and he'd have to ask Jane if she knew what was going on. Or not, the less he talked to Jane the better. He turned his attention back to the booth he'd been looking at, ready to let Nic go.