Greg had done a good job of being calm all through the ordeal with Jules. She'd needed a rock and he'd been one - albeit a babbly rock who kept saying stupid shit, but still a rock. It wasn't until he was home that the reality of the situation caught up with him and he had just started up a game on the Xbox when his hands started shaking and the shock set in. "Holy shit," he whispered. "Holy fucking shit, what was that." He put down the controller, stared blankly at the screen for a few long moments as he focused on breathing, then decided he could very much not be alone right now. He could almost feel that creature he'd seen lurking behind him, come sliding out of the wall or crawl out of the floorboards, that horrible grin on its face even as it cried. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he mumbled and got up, not really stopping until he'd gotten his shoes and coats on and was out the door. Why that was better he wasn't sure, he'd been outside when he saw it so he should feel safer inside, but he didn't. Not alone. He got in the car and texted Phee as he started the engine. Can I come over?
Phee hadn’t been having a good day either, in a completely different sort of way. It had started out okay, just another morning to sleep in before she had to go back to school the next week, but as soon as she’d gone downstairs for breakfast it had taken a turn. Her mother was in an incredibly bad mood, and she’d apparently decided to make it Phee’s problem. After some sharp criticism about what Phee was eating, they’d gotten into a yelling match that had ended with Phee stomping back up to her room in tears. Hours later, when she’d tried to approach Brianna to grudgingly apologize for raising her voice -- something that was always expected after a parental argument -- her mother had bitten her head off again, causing another retreat to her room.
She was still wallowing, sniffling and listening to sad indie music when Greg’s text came through, sending her heart leaping into her throat. She looked like a hot mess, still in her pjs, her hair unbrushed, eyes red and cry-puffy. Dammit, his timing really sucked. Not only that, Phee knew that Brianna would be a total bitch today about her boyfriend coming over. She nibbled at her bottom lip, not wanting to say no, but ... pick me up? mom’s being a bitch Phee thought they could either go to Greg’s place or just drive around or something. Either way, she got up off her bed and started to find clothes to pull on.
Just come out when you're ready Greg sent back because he was literally only two minutes away and he didn't want to pressure her by giving her that ETA. He drove down the street and parked outside the McCarthys house, letting the car idle because it was too cold to turn off the engine when he hadn't had time to heat up the car, unable to keep himself from constantly looking around in case the trees lost their color or his surroundings changed in some other weird way. That thing had been after Jules, he tried to remind himself. She'd caused it to happen, it probably wouldn't since she wasn't there. But what if it did? He was still tense and uncomfortable when he finally spotted Phee come out of the house, the sight of her relaxing him a little. He waited until she got in and gave her a little smile before leaning over to kiss her. She didn't look like she'd been having a good day either, it was always easy to tell with the McCarthy siblings when they'd been crying and he felt a bit shitty about dumping on her when her mom had obviously upset her. "Hey, babe," he murmured, reaching over to take her hand. "You okay?"
Phee didn’t try to pretty up too much, just ran a brush through her hair and put on warm and comfortable clothes. Unless Greg was having trouble with his parents too, they could go back to his place and have some privacy in his basement. She didn’t bother to tell her mother she was going anywhere, slipping out the front door as soon as she had her boots on. She would text her in a bit, that was safer. Brianna might come barging over to the Wheelers to collect her, given the Crazy Bitch mood she was in, but Phee kind of doubted it. Spending some time with Greg would be worth whatever punishment awaited her. She climbed into the car and returned his kiss, then squeezed his hand with a sigh. “Yeah, she’s just ... got a bug up her ass today or something,” she muttered sourly, then lifted his hand to kiss the back of it. “Glad to see you. Are you all right?” Phee studied his face -- Greg didn’t often ask to come over, and it occurred to her now that she was out of the line of fire that maybe he was avoiding home too.
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone anything about this but-" Greg blurted out. "I'm kinda freaking out and I know I can trust you not to tell anyone so I'm breaking my promise, shit." He shook his head and took a deep breath, already feeling a little calmer now that he was not alone though it felt like a far way to go to be all the way calm. "I saw something crazy, like legit really crazy, on the same level as the fog monster crazy." For a second he wondered if he was piling too much on his girlfriend, she'd been under a lot of stress too, but keeping a secret from her just felt worse. "So you gotta promise not to tell anyone about this if I tell you, not even Bash, okay?"
Phee looked mildly alarmed right off the bat, her eyes widening and then her brow furrowing at him the more he talked. Greg had seen some crazy shit, and the fog monsters had been pretty fucking crazy, so anything on the level they were had to be bad. She squeezed his hand and tossed an uncertain glance toward the house, half expecting Brianna to come storming out to yell at her and drag her out of the car. “Okay, yeah of course I won’t tell, I promise,” she told Greg, her eyes coming back to him. “Can we like, go to your house first? Just so mom doesn’t interrupt. I can even drive if you want.” He looked pretty shaken up, so she felt like it was right to offer.
"Nah, nah, s'cool, I can drive," Greg replied but she was right, they should get a move on and not have this conversation in the car. He'd been shaken, being alone at home, but logically he knew that the threat he'd seen was outside and they'd be safer within the walls of his house. He just hoped he was right about that. For now he took comfort in having Phee there with him as he turned the car around and headed back home, holding her hand whenever he didn't need it for other things because it was soothing damn it. He wasn't being a big baby or anything, anyone would be freaked out! Once they'd parked and hurried inside he realized just how good of an idea it was to come back home. His car had warmed up a little but nowhere near enough and it was cold outside. Home was better. He grabbed some drinks from his little fridge and led the way to the couch where he flopped down and took a big breath as it to steady himself. "Why's everything just getting weirder and weirder, Phee?" he sighed then. "It's like we went through a wormhole or something."
It was a short trip, but long enough for Phee’s concern to grow and her imagination to run away with her. After everything they’d been through already, something that shook Greg up this much had to be pretty bad. At least it hadn’t been town-wide this time, at least not as far as she knew. She stripped off her coat and shoes at the door, then padded after Greg to the couch. Phee settled in next to Greg, scooting in close and draping one of her legs over his thigh. She hugged his arm to her side and gazed at his face, that concerned look still on her face. “I dunno, but it fucking sucks,” she murmured with real sympathy. She linked their fingers together. “What happened, babe? Are you okay?”
"I'm okay," Greg replied, already a lot calmer now that he was getting a lot of girlfriend loving. "Just a little... A lot weirded out. So- super secret, don't tell your brother, I promised not to tell anyone, not even you." He took another deep breath before starting by telling her about how he'd found Jules at the side of the road, her car totalled. "That's where it got weird," he groaned. "Because right in front of her there was- the trees were like... wrong. It was kinda like there was a portal into a different forest, the colors were all weird, the trees were a little different and there was something in there, some weird creature just coming toward us, hiding behind the trees and making these godawful sounds. Like... crying and laughing but not human. I think... I think Jules caused it to happen. Either it was an illusion or it was a real creature, I didn't exactly wanna hang out and find out, you know?"
Phee listened and tried to understand, studying his face. She was attempting to picture what he was describing, but ‘different’ and ‘weird’ didn’t get her very far. It was bizarre enough to make her skin feel a bit crawly, especially the bit about inhuman crying and laughing. “... wow, I mean, like ... what kind of creature? What makes you think Jules was doing it?” she asked, rubbing her thumb against his knuckles. Those were only two questions of dozens that were popping up in her head, but they seemed as good a place to start as any other. “Could it like, see you too?”
"Ohh yeah, it was coming straight toward us," Greg said, eyes wide. "Well, not straight, more like veering, drunk bee style from tree to tree but definitely toward us and like... staring. Jules said her hands hurt and she was holding them up like this." He raised his hands, palms facing forward like Jules had had them, like she was puppeteering the damn thing - but obviously not on purpose. "I didn't really realize at first, you know? I thought she was just hurt and all I was focused on was getting her and me the hell out of there but we talked on the way to the hospital and she said her hands have been hurting like that and it flared up right before that happened and when it disappeared she said it was - that she'd probably done that." He could probably be more coherent about the whole thing if more time had passed but it felt almost like describing a dream, confusing and hard to pin down details. "Oh! And she said the monsters looked like something she'd been dreaming about - the ones in the fog, so there's something really weird going on with her and she doesn't want to talk to anyone about it so I don't know what to do."
It was a lot of information to try and absorb at once, and the more rational part of Phee’s mind wanted to try and preserve itself and say that it hadn’t really happened like that, that it was shock or they’d both been hallucinating somehow. That didn’t make a lot of sense though. Greg hadn’t said the accident had been super horrific or anything, and he was pretty good at keeping a cool head, at least as far as she’d seen. If only Jules had seen it, she might’ve just hit her head or something, but Greg too? He looked really scared, and that was pretty convincing. “... are you sure?” she had to ask, though she sounded doubtful about the question itself. “It wasn’t somebody like ... trying to play a trick on you guys and adrenaline just made it look more real or ... something?” Phe hurried to add, “Not that I don’t believe you, I do, but just ... what the fuck, Greg, that sounds super crazy.” She squeezed his hand to try and convey that was more of a sympathetic statement than a judgemental one.
"It was super crazy," Greg agreed because yeah, it had been ridiculous and he wouldn't believe it either if he hadn't seen it. "But I saw it disappear and the whole - whole area changed, Phee. It wasn't just some asshole in a monster mask, everything changed. Like... Like it was a giant window into another area. A portal." He suddenly felt like texting Jules again as that clicked in his head. Maybe she was making portals and that was fucking bad because what if she did it again to somewhere worse? What if she did it while she was sleeping and some fucking thing came crawling into this world, tearing her apart? That would only be the beginning too. Maybe that's where monsters came from, people accidentally opening portals. His mind was racing and for a second it all made sense before his logical side caught up with him and screamed that this shit just happened in fairy tales. Then how do you explain the fog? "Fuuuuuck," he said under his breath, giving Phee's hand a little squeeze. "I'm not handling this awesomely."
So not just some optical illusion then. Even knowing about magic, Phee might not have believed him a few weeks ago. Before the fog. But that fog and those monsters didn’t come from their world, there was no questioning that. They were from somewhere else. Maybe a different somewhere else than Greg had just peeked into, gods knew how many ‘else’s there were. It made her worry for a second that Jules caused the fog somehow, but pondering that out loud wouldn’t help anybody. “Okay,” she whispered, switching the hand Greg was holding so she could run the other one through his hair. “I believe you. I don’t blame you though, for not handling. It sounds fucking terrifying.” Phee felt a little helpless, not sure what she could do except try to be there for him. She lifted his hand to kiss the back of it and rested her cheek against it. “Was Jules okay? From the accident, I mean,” she murmured.
"Might have had a concussion but she looked okay," Greg said and that was something he could handle thinking about because that was normal stuff - a car crash, a concussion. Hell, concussions were a normal in his life - probably too normal. "I took her to the ER and waited for her mom to get there but then I skedaddled 'cause, you know, it got weird to hang out there." He'd never really considered Jules a friend - she was Sebastian's ex girlfriend and one of the Overlook crew, but after all of this he thought he could safely say they were closer than they'd been before. Weird shit brought people closer together. "Thanks for believing me," he said belatedly, shuffling around until he could lie down with his head in her lap - with some slightly exaggerated groaning as he got comfortable. "I mean, I knew you would, but shit. Who do you talk to about shit like that if not your girlfriend? I'm so glad you know about this stuff, I don't know how I'd keep my mouth shut."
Phee had suspected that talking about something ‘real’ might help, and it seemed to. Her heart squeezed a little as she pictured Greg rescuing Jules from the car and still getting her to the hospital to be checked out, even with all the other scary bullshit going on. It was actually pretty heroic, and she would’ve focused on that way more if he hadn’t had a brush with insane supernatural stuff. Phee shifted her position to accommodate him, propping her feet up on the coffee table in front of them. She started running her fingers through his thick hair, slow and hopefully soothing. “I’m happy to be here for you,” she murmured, giving him a faint smile. “Even if I can’t like, do anything to help. See, this is why I wanna learn like, all the magic, really fast.” She sighed. “So I can make stuff to help protect you. I want you to talk to me about it anytime though. I’m glad you’re safe, most of all.”
She was glad he was safe, which just reminded him that he might not have been, that the creature he'd seen could have gotten to him and Jules and done something horrible, things he didn't want to even try to imagine. "Shit," he whispered. "Yeah, me too. But yeah, it'll be awesome when you know more magic, you can make me protection stuff and avenge me if something does happen to me. Badass witch girlfriend. On second thought, let's skip the avenging part and just focus on the protecting." He wasn't sure if talking about what had happened was helping or hurting, it made it feel more real but it also made him feel less alone with it and Phee petting his hair was soothing. "I just wonder, you know? If people can open portals like that, maybe that's what happened to my cousin, maybe that's what's causing a lot of this weird shit happening. I don't think Jules is the only one who can do it if that's actually a thing but, it'd... Explain things? Or, really just make them weirder, I don't know."
It made Phee happy whenever Greg referred to her as a badass witch in some way, so that bit made her smile. She definitely didn’t want to be avenging him, though. “It could maybe explain some things,” she agreed thoughtfully, still stroking his hair. “I doubt it would cover like, everything. But people being able to do that sure can’t be making things less weird.” It was a lot to try and wrap her head around, and while she believed him, Phee was having trouble imagining it. As scary as it sounded, she kind of wished she’d been there to see it herself, it had to have been amazing, in a terrifying way. “Gods, I just ... poor Jules,” she murmured after a pause. “I can’t imagine just finding something like that out, in such a shitty way.” Jules and Phee hadn’t been close when she’d been dating Sebastian, and Phee had always kind of thought she was a snob, but she couldn’t help but feel for her. “I hope she like ... learns to be careful with it.” She frowned vaguely.
"I feel like I'm keeping secrets for everyone," Greg sighed. "No, not even feel like, I am keeping secrets for everyone. How the hell did that happen? Have you met me? I don't even like secrets." He felt like telling her everything now, every stupid little thing he was keeping under lock and key because someone had been stupid enough to tell it to him of all people. He'd been doing a good job of keeping his mouth shut but it was getting to be a lot. With Jules it was the dreams too so he'd already sort of told Phee about it, but only part of the story. "Promise me you won't tell anyone about this," he murmured. "I know you won't, I know. I'm just kind of freaked out and I want to just talk and talk until I'm not keeping any secrets anymore." It helped that she knew a big chunk of the secrets already since they had to do with her and her brother.
The pitifulness behind that complaint was so endearing. Phee made a huff-chuckle-’aww’ sort of sound and bent over Greg to kiss the spot between his eyebrows. “Poor baby,” she said, slightly amused but not mocking. “You’re just too trustworthy and easy to talk to, I guess. And I’m sorry some of those secrets you’ve gotta carry are mine. But yeah, I promise I won’t tell anyone anything. I’ll share the load with you if you’re comfy with it.” Phee didn’t mind keeping secrets, she’d been doing it for a long time, so it came more naturally to her. She kissed his nose and then his lips softly before sitting up again. “You can ramble to me if you need to.”
"You're the best," Greg sighed, not minding the pity at all. It was on par with being sick and getting pampered because of it, only he didn't need to suffer the symptoms of a cold to get the pampering. "I just feel like I know way too many people's business, like who's a witch, who's dealing with some other paranormal shit. Like Bash's ex boyfriend getting possessed, like what the fuck was that even about? And now Jules is opening portals or something and sharing dreams with some random guys." He groaned again and scrubbed his hand over his face. "So on Halloween I drove her out to where the bus crashed because she had some crazy dream about the place and I didn't want her to go by herself. She was acting a little crazy, left practice and was just, I don't know, in a bad way. She told me she's been sleepwalking and seeing weird shit in her mirror and she's not the only one. She named names and they're all like these older guys who live in town. I know for sure one of them is a witch. Maybe they all are, I don't even know anymore. And today I saw that portal thing and Jules told me she broke up with Jasper so that's another secret, I guess." He stopped talking, pressing his lips together and blowing out air through the corners. "Are you regretting letting me ramble yet?"
It was a lot to take in, once again. Phee frowned vaguely at the story about Halloween -- he’d been sitting on this since Halloween? -- and then all the other stuff about Jules. It was weird that she’d dumped all of that on Greg instead of like, Bash or her own damn boyfriend, but Phee smothered the uptick in possessive annoyance. They saw each other a lot, Greg tried to be helpful to everybody, it wasn’t a thing. At least Phee hoped it wasn’t from Jules’s side. It sounded like she had enough shit to worry about. “No,” she answered his question first, still petting him gently. “It’s just ... a lot to process, holy shit. And I thought our lives were complicated. ... Did anything happen on Halloween when you took her out to the place? Like, I wanna ask if it’s maybe all in her head, but if there's other real people involved, and what you saw today ...” she trailed off.
"Nothing like today, no," Greg said, thinking back on that day. "Her nose started bleeding and she kinda freaked out but I didn't see anything. We just hightailed it out of there real fast after I took some pictures for her. She wanted to ask the guys if they recognized that place too. You know, where the bus crashed. Guess she thinks it's all connected somehow or something." He would think she might be crazy too but he'd seen that thing, that horrible grinning monster, so whatever Jules was going through was not just in her head. "She was just crying a lot today, man, I don't think I'm good at dealing with that. We're giving Jasper the cold shoulder for now." He didn't think Phee ran into the guy a lot, at least he hoped not, Jasper had always been a bit of a dick.
It sounded like Jules had a lot going on, to understate it, and all of it sounded scary and fucked up to Phee. Which was sad for her, because life was hard enough without additional fucked up things making it worse. This town didn’t seem to have gotten that memo though ... or maybe it liked making their lives hard. “Are we?” she murmured with a tiny laugh. “I don’t think I ever like, see him, except in the hallway.” She would’ve been really surprised if Jasper Lucas knew who she was. Besides the people who wanted to give Greg crap for dating her, she felt pretty invisible to the seniors, which was kind of comfortable. “That’s a shitty day though, poor Jules.” Phee looked sympathetic, then leaned down to kissed Greg’s head again. “It was really nice you were there for her. She probably feels crazy, I kinda did when my power first started, but I knew that was coming, so ... I can’t imagine.”
"Yeah, I can't either, shit," Greg said quietly. "Her dad died when she was real little, maybe he was like that too, maybe he would have taught her how to use it and stuff - like your dad's teaching you - if he hadn't died and all. Seems really shitty if he didn't tell her mom anything about it and nobody else knows but who knows, he probably felt immortal. Like, I don't think about dying, I'm not writing a will or making sure everything's taken care of when I die. Maybe we should be doing that... Fuck. With this place we live in maybe we should all be making sure our affairs are in order." He wrinkled his nose. "Ugh, so morbid, sorry babe. I'm not planning on croaking anytime soon and I won't let you either so I'm just gonna shut up about that now."
It was a morbid topic, even if he was probably right. Phee wrinkled her nose a bit. The last thing she wanted to think about right then was death. “Yes please,” she said, giving his hair a gentle little tug. “We’re not going anywhere for a long time, so just hush. Let’s talk about something else, yeah?” She wasn’t sure what, since he’d been through something crazy and traumatic and all, but maybe some kind of subject change was in order. There wasn’t anything they could really do for Jules, and Greg had gotten to vent, so hopefully he felt a little better. “Or we can put on a show and snuggle or make out or whatever you want,” Phee added, aware he might not even want to talk anymore. Rare for Greg, but still.
"Can you stay for a while?" Greg asked, giving her a hopeful look. Making out sounded awesome, even if they could only do it for a short time. He was addicted to touching her in any way possible and as comfortable he was lying there with his head on her lap, more touching sounded more appealing. "We can put on something braindead and fun and just make out and hang out for a bit," he murmured since he was done talking - at least about boring stuff. He couldn't wait for school to start again, it'd make time pass quicker until spring arrived and all he could do was hope things wouldn't keep being so damn dark and crazy.