rylee mears (itsjustafeeling) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-04-10 08:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, carson, carson x rylee, rylee |
Who: Rylee and Carson
When: Wednesday, Dec 13th, morning
Where: their apartment
Status: Complete
Carson had largely been running on auto pilot since Jared’s visit to the gym on Sunday. Besides the brief interlude of Jules showing up to talk about whatever telepathic nonsense was going on between all of them, he’d been mostly checked out of his brain while the news settled in and made a dark home in him. He didn’t know how else to deal. He’d known it was a possibility that he’d been the werewolf to kill Sadie, but it had been on par with the knowledge that a giant meteor could hit the earth and kill all of them at any time. Possible but unlikely, and what could be done about it anyway?
Only it wasn’t unlikely. It was true. He’d known as soon as Jared mentioned the tracks, that there had only been three paws making them instead of four. The news had been like a punch in the chest, and Carson had felt somewhat in shock since then. Knowing a thing might be possible and knowing it had definitely happened were two different animals. He’d tried to keep everyone else safe from him that first month and he’d failed, and it had cost a good woman her life. How did he go on living with that? How was it at all fair that he’d cheated death twice now, and Sadie had lost hers?
Those questions and more just kept circling and circling in his head, which left him with his third night of shitty sleep. Carson hadn’t been tossing and turning, just laying awake with his heart beating too hard and feeling sick to his stomach while Rylee slept beside him. They’d had offset shifts for the past few days, which had helped him keep this breakdown under wraps, but he couldn’t keep it in any longer. No secrets, he’d promised. And god knew Carson needed help with this, or that darkness in his brain would swallow him whole. He gingerly rolled onto his side and stared at Rylee for a while before he nudged her gently. “Ry,” he whispered. “Wake up, please.”
Rylee had been working longer shifts than usual to try and get some extra money to pay for her classes, so she had been sleeping pretty well for the past few nights, unaware of Carson's anxiety filled insomnia. The full moon still lingered in her mind, but as everything had gone smoothly, it was more background noise than anything else. She had a feeling as they got closer to next month, she would start worrying again, but Rylee felt like she could handle it. She had to, for Carson's sake.
She felt him nudge her in a hazy, semi-conscious sort of way, knowing it was morning but unwilling to yet accept it. Groaning softly at the sound of his voice, Rylee finally squinted her eyes open to look at him. "What is it?" she asked, voice hoarse from sleep. If the apartment was on fire she was sure he would have had much more urgency in his voice.
She was so damn beautiful to him, even half-asleep and groggy, Carson’s chest hurt as he looked at her and wondered if she would ever look at him the same way again. Rylee had accepted the reality of him being a werewolf better than anyone could’ve expected her to, but confirmation that he’d killed someone? It made him want to cry already. He swallowed thickly. “I need to talk to you about something serious,” he murmured, his face pale and sad. He’d obviously been awake a lot longer than she had. “Let me know if when you’re ready.” Carson needed her support, but dumping it all on her when she’d barely opened her eyes seemed stupid now.
Well, something like that was certainly going to wake her up faster than anything else. Her heart seized in her chest and Rylee shifted to sit up a bit against the headboard, her eyes still on Carson, now filled with concern. God, she was tired of serious and bad news and... all of it. He looked exhausted and distressed and she couldn't imagine what else it could be on top of the dream problems and being a werewolf. She suddenly had the thought that maybe someone had died. Her mom? Sister? Rylee's breath caught and she visibly tensed. "What is it? What happened? Is everyone okay?"
He was tired enough that he wanted to keep laying down, but Carson pushed himself up to sit when Rylee did. He shifted around so he was facing her, and subconsciously pulled the blanket over his legs as he crossed them. Of course she would be startled and worried, that only made sense, but Carson shook his head at her alarm at the end. “Everyone’s fine ...” he started to reassure her, but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? “I mean ... nothing new has happened.” He wet his lips and looked down at the bed. “Jared Gaines came into the gym on Sunday ... we got to talking, he was asking me some questions, and ...” Carson had to pause to swallow again, the last few words coming out shaky and small. “I’m the one who killed Sadie.”
While she had been jarred to full consciousness with the worry that something had happened to her mom, Rylee still felt a groggy, sleepy haze of confusion as Carson spoke. Jared Gaines was a cop. Sadie. Sadies Gaines. The confusion didn't last long and realization settled over her expression, her lips parted slightly. "Wait... no, you don't know that, Carson," she began, though her heart was beating harder in her chest now. "I mean, there's no way to know... and there are other werewolves in town. What did Jared say to you?" Whatever he said he had to have been lying, or trying to trip Carson up or something. Did Jared know about Carson?
Carson had known Rylee would protest, because she loved him and she was a good person, but he hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt to have to shake his head as she did. He looked pained as he took an unsteady breath. “He was asking stuff about what I remembered about the wolf that attacked me,” he said quietly. “Whether or not it was missing a leg. He took pictures of the tracks around ... the crime scene, with Sadie, to a big game hunter or something. The guy told him whatever it was only had three legs.” It didn’t take a genius to figure it out, and even though his memory of being attacked was sort of jumbled, Carson knew there wasn’t another tripod werewolf running around. “So ... yeah, I do know now,” he murmured miserably.
Rylee's lips parted in an effort to insist there could be another three legged werewolf, but the odds were probably slim, especially in such a small town. Her hands clutched the blanket tightly as Rylee tried to work her brain around all of this, and how to make it better. But she knew nothing would ease his mind about it, and Rylee knew she would probably feel the same way he was probably feeling if she had been in his shoes. "Carson," she murmured, "that wasn't you. That thing takes over your body and your mind, and I mean, you need tranquilizers to subdue it. You can't blame yourself. You tried everything you could to stay locked up that first month. It was just..." Unfortunate timing. Rylee frowned and reached out to touch him. "I'm so sorry."
Had he really tried everything he could? He had tried, he knew that, but did that make it better? Sadie was still dead. She wouldn’t have been dead if it hadn’t been for him, and in such an awful way. Maybe it wasn’t rational to blame himself, but Carson didn’t know what else to do. So much in his life had turned so hard and terrible these past few months, and now he was a killer, curse or no. He held it together until Rylee touched him, then emotion overwhelmed all of his defenses. His face crumpled as the lump in his throat dissolved into tears. “I dunno wh-what to d-do,” he managed to force out in between hitching breaths.
She scooted over to wrap her arms around him, one hand coming up to cup the back of his neck. "There's nothing..." Rylee took a breath. There wasn't anything he could do, or they could do. What happened happened. Though it worried her that Sadie's ex was talking to some kind of hunter, and he was a cop himself. They couldn't possibly prosecute Carson when the autopsy determined it was an animal attack, right? "Did he know it was you?" Rylee whispered. "Jared?" If not, they could figure something out. If Jared already knew, well, he had to understand that Carson would never hurt anyone intentionally. Weren't they friends?
Carson’s head bowed and tucked into Rylee’s shoulder, his arms snaking around her tightly. His back shook as he held his breath against the sobs that would surely turn completely hysterical if he just let them go. He was breaking down, but he didn’t want to break down enough to scare Rylee. He shook his head strongly against her and tried to get some break back to speak. “I don’t th-think so,” he mumbled against her shirt. “He doesn’t b-believe in shit.” Jared had actually been nice and concerned for him too, which had just made Carson feel worse. He did want to hunt down the monster though, and that was scary. What if he got free again somehow? Carson clung tighter to Rylee. “I lied and t-told him I thought the, uh, the one who bit me had a st-stump.”
"Okay, then we'll let him believe that. And after a while it'll be clear that whoever that might have been has left town," Rylee said, trying to think ahead even as she spoke. "It wasn't your fault. And I know if Jared knew the truth... he would eventually realize that too. But no one knows but us, right? You didn't tell anyone else?" Rylee couldn't imagine who he would tell, but it was always better to make sure rather than make assumptions. This was terrible news and it would probably hang over Carson for a long time. But they needed to make sure he was safe too.
The honest part of Carson wanted to confess, but who would even believe him at the sheriff’s office? There would be no physical evidence linking him to the crime except the wolf tracks, and it wasn’t like they could prosecute him on that. As far as he knew they’d already ruled Sadie’s death as an animal attack and it was over and done with in the system. He understood why Jared would want more answers, he just didn’t know how the man would react to the truth. What if he decided Carson needed to be put down? Carson’s body shifted downward until he was laying down again, his head and shoulders in Rylee’s lap, face pressed against her stomach, arms still around her. “I didn’t tell anyone else,” he murmured. “But the other dreamers might hear it.” It was another complication to this that he definitely didn’t need.
Rylee slid her hands into his hair, stroking the strands softly. There wasn't much they could do about what happened now. All Rylee knew was that he couldn't be blamed for what happened. That werewolf was not Carson. She hated that someone had died and Rylee couldn't begin to understand what he was feeling. Nothing she could say or do would help him, and that was an awful feeling itself. When he mentioned the dreamers, Rylee's hands stalled briefly in his hair as she looked down at him. "Maybe we can try to figure out a way to... stop that. Or at least control it. Unless... you trust them enough to tell them the truth."
“No.” It came out of Carson’s mouth more like a moan than a word, and he shook his head against Rylee’s stomach. It wasn’t a matter of trust, he didn’t think any of them would try to turn him into the cops or anything. Carson just didn’t want them to know they were telepathically linked to some killer monster. Even if he was just a once-a-month monster. Nic knew about that part, of course, but not that Carson had actually killed anyone yet. One of the people involved was a teenage girl, for fuck’s sake, who might have been taught by Sadie Gaines. No, they couldn’t know. Carson just wasn’t sure how he was going to keep it from them. “I dunno if we can figure anything out about this shit,” he muttered miserably. “But we need to.”
She wasn't going to pressure him into telling the dreamers if he didn't want to. She could understand his hesitance, but it felt like unless they all learned to control the telepathy, the others would find out eventually. "Okay," Rylee murmured, running her hand over his hair. "We'll do what we can. Check with... Nick, maybe? Or that dreamwalker girl? Maybe what she did triggered this? It's worth a shot to ask." Obviously she was just throwing things out there, but some suggestions were better than nothing at all. The sooner they learned how to control this stuff, if it could be controlled, the better. Otherwise she had no idea what Carson was going to do about any of this.
“Yeah, maybe,” Carson murmured without much hope in his voice. “Both, why not.” Nobody they’d talked to so far had any fucking clue how to help them, so he didn’t know if Nick-the-werewolf-expert could do anything. Jane had given them just a tidbit of information ... it hadn’t occurred to Carson that maybe this telepathy was from something she’d done instead of something the dream monster was doing, but maybe it was ... Fuck, why did everything have to be so complicated? Not for the first time, he wished they could just pack up and leave and start over somewhere else. Rylee petting him had made him feel calmer, but now he was just exhausted under the weight of it all. “We need a vacation,” he added, nuzzling Rylee a bit and trying for some kind of levity.
Rylee had no idea if Nick knew about the dreamers and their connection, but if he knew about werewolves maybe he knew about other supernatural things. Or maybe he would know someone who did and give her a referral or something. "Wouldn't that be nice," Rylee said with a soft laugh when he mentioned a vacation. Just leaving Point Pleasant for a while, getting away from all of his... bad energy. Unfortunately, vacations cost money and she didn't have a lot of that laying around. "Where would you want to go, if we could?" she asked, just to try and change the subject and lighten the mood a little. It wouldn't fix anything, but if she could distract Carson for a bit, she wouldn't. That seemed to be her job a lot lately, distracting him.
Carson thought a bit wistfully about all that money Brad had laid on him. Giving it to charity had been the right thing to do, but he still kind of wished he had a few thousand to drop on a really nice vacation for them. If anything, Rylee really deserved it. “I dunno ... somewhere with a beach,” he said, tilting his head a bit so he could look up at her. “Maybe Hawaii. Sand, surf, no winter. You in a bikini.” A tiny smirk crossed Carson’s face. “Where would you go, if we could? I haven’t done a speaking engagement in a while, maybe I can book one somewhere nice ...” That would at least get half the travel and hotel paid for, depending on the booking. Sometimes Carson forgot that the Wounded Warrior Project was still a direct part of his life, now seemed like the kind of time to draw on it.
Rylee smiled, resting her head back against the headboard. Hawaii sounded heavenly. And a bit out of their reach. "Definitely somewhere warm with a nice beach," she said wistfully. "Where we can be ourselves and... skinny dip." Brushing her fingers through his hair and stared out the window for a moment before her gaze ticked down to his face. "It's a nice thought, and maybe someday we can get away... but I'm not sure you're in the right mental state for a speaking engagement. There's a lot going on that we need to deal with."
She was probably right about that, as much as Carson hated to admit it. His problems wouldn’t go away just because he went to a tropical paradise. Hell, he couldn’t even say he could leave most of them behind for when he got back. He would still know he was a killer, anywhere in the world. Or the monster inside of him was. One that Carson would apparently never shake off. Nick had said definitively that there was no cure. Carson just had to keep doing everything he could to keep everyone safe from him once a month. “Yeah, you’re right,” he murmured. “Maybe soon though. Just like ... Florida or the Carolina coast next summer or something. You deserve a getaway too, and like, time together without worrying about shit.”
"Yeah." Next summer felt like a lifetime away. Everything was just so heavy lately and Rylee just felt helpless. She wasn't a witch like Zania or Nic, nor was she any kind of supernatural expert like Nick. It drove her crazy that there wasn't anything she could really do to help the situation, and now with the news about Sadie... Rylee felt at a loss for words as well. Studying his face, Rylee brushed her thumb along his jaw. "Do you want me to make you some coffee? Breakfast? I'll even go for a jog with you, if you want to run off some steam."
Carson hated how much it all sucked, and how it all revolved around him. Not that he wanted anything bad to happen to Rylee, of course, but he still felt like a burden and a magnet for bad shit in their lives. He would’ve been there to support her just as hard if she needed him, but she didn’t. At least not in any acute way. He just wished they could live some kind of normally. “Breakfast would be great,” he said, smiling up at her a little. “I’ll come with you and do the coffee ... then we’ll see about the run.” He probably didn’t need to lay around in bed by himself and start overthinking again. Getting on with the day was better. That was life -- one foot in front of the other, so to speak.
Rylee returned his smile, wishing they could just lay in bed forever and forget everything else. Just like she wished they could go to the beach. But they would try to figure everything else out when they could and Rylee was thankful that they knew a small handful of people who might be able to help, otherwise she had no idea what they would have done. "That sounds like a plan." And maybe a plan was all they needed right now. One thing to focus on and then another, and then another. Just keep moving. There really wasn't anything else they could do.