Who: Jules and Carson When: Mid-morning, Sunday, January 21 Where: Carson's apartment Status: Complete
Jules had been exhausted when she stumbled from Jason’s room to her own and she slept in much later than she had intended. But her dreams had remained the same, similar to the one she had while sleeping on Jason’s bed. Fog. Trees. The undeniable feeling that the fog belonged elsewhere. Except it wasn’t just the fog, it was the people infected by it. Of course, when Jules woke up her head was pounding from oversleeping, not to mention how numb she had felt after Jasper left the night before. She thought maybe the dreams were just disjointed and meant nothing, but the gut feeling they left was unmistakable.
She rolled out of bed, felt instantly nauseous, and then threw up in her toilet. Jules thought maybe she was getting the flu or something. Or maybe she had more to drink the night before than she thought. After drinking a lot of water and taking some pain killers, Jules brushed her teeth, washed her face, and then peeled off the dress she wore to bed. She pulled on a pair of dark leggings and a long-sleeved shirt before tugging all the pins from her hair. Her scalp was sore as fuck so she didn’t bother brushing her hair. She tied it into a messy ponytail instead and grabbed her coat before heading downstairs.
She left Jasper’s coat on her bed, having clung to it for most of the night. She would return that soon. But not yet. He hadn’t called or texted, and she was still holding out hope that he would. It was late for her, but early for Jasper. He could still be sleeping. Jules made the decision to text him later if she didn’t hear from him, still convinced he would wake up and realize what a mistake he had made the night before. Maybe he would at least be willing to listen to her.
Right now though, she had somewhere else to go.
Jules left the house and started up her car, shivering through the cold and then pulling out of her driveway. She had no idea if Carson was awake, or working, but she was about to find out. Carson? Jules knew it had been kind of unfair to poke at them all the night before that Jasper had somehow thought they were all out to get him and then shut them out. But she hadn’t been in the right headspace to explain anymore. She hadn’t known what to say anyway. This morning though, she needed to talk to someone. And she felt more comfortable with Carson than Nic or Neil. So Carson it was.
Carson was supposed to have a shift at the gym later that day, but he was debating trying to get someone else to cover for him. The brain-alert from Jules late the night before that her boyfriend suspected them of something had been startling, but what really worried him was the radio silence that came after. They’d all tried to speak with her, but gotten no answer. Carson hadn’t slept much or well after that. He didn’t think she was hurt or dead -- he somehow felt like they would all know if something fatal happened to one of them -- but she still didn’t sound safe. He was just hesitant to go try and find her in person.
He was still going back and forth on it by mid-morning, while he sat in his bedroom trying to find Jules on Facebook and Twitter. She was a teenager, they were always tweeting, right? He just wanted some confirmation that she hadn’t been kidnapped or something. But then suddenly Jules’s voice was in his head. Carson sat up straight and hurriedly shut his laptop like she might see what he was doing. I’m here, he answered quickly. Are you okay?
I'm okay. Talking in her head to someone else had been so weird at first but now it was like second nature to her. As was shutting them out. Jules didn't think they minded too much. It was an incredible ability to have but none of them really wanted the others poking around in their heads. She was driving to Joyland at the moment, needing something hot with caffeine. The pain killers were helping her headache, but she needed more. Are you home? Can I come see you? He might find that weird, but Jules didn't care. She was over the whole weirdness it might be for them to be alone with someone her age.
In spite of the social discomfort of their ages and genders, Carson wasn’t about to say no. Sure, it might be creepy under different circumstances, but there was nothing actually untoward about it, so fuck it. Yes, I’m home, and of course you can. He put his laptop aside and got out of bed, re-securing his prosthetic before he went to get a better shirt to pull on. Rylee was working, so they would have privacy. Part of him felt kind of good that she was reaching out to him specifically, like he was the one she felt the most comfortable with. Carson wanted to be the kind of man that deserved a teenage girl’s trust.
I'll be there soon. Jules pulled into Joyland's parking lot and ordered herself a coffee. After a brief moment of hesitation, she ordered one for Carson too. If she had been thinking properly she would have asked if he wanted anything before she pulled up to the drive thru speaker, but it was what it was. If he didn't like coffee she would just drink it all herself. Then she could crash later. Jules was pulling into the Castle View parking lot almost fifteen minutes later. Carrying both coffees, Jules managed to get into the building without too much trouble, but she couldn't remember what apartment was his. You're on the first floor right? I can't remember... I'm here. With his leg, she assumed he was on the first floor so he wouldn't have to walk up the stairs, and all that stuff.
Carson was waiting for her, pacing the length of the living room and back as he did. All of this feeling like he didn’t know what was going on had him nervous. Yeah, first floor, he confirmed, changing his pacing direction to walk to the door and open it for her. Carson told Jules the apartment number. He smiled faintly when he spotted her coming down the hallway. She looked tired, but intact. That was good. He opened the door wider to welcome her inside, then closed and locked it behind her. “So, uh ... hey,” he said then, glancing down at the two coffees in her hands.
Jules supposed she ought to feel awkward, but she didn't. She was too tired to think about anything but how to help everyone. "I don't know if you like coffee, but..." She offered one of the cups out to him. "I'm sorry about last night. I don't think I was like, in the right headspace to answer questions and stuff. I want to tell you what happened though. With Jasper, and then after." Jules paused briefly, her eyes searching his. "Did you have any weird dreams last night?"
Even though it would’ve been weird for her to drink two coffees at a time, Carson was still a little surprised when she offered one of them to him. He took it and murmured a ‘thanks,’ then listened to the rest of what she was saying. He could definitely understand not being in the frame of mind to answer questions -- he’d been blocking all of them out to avoid questions since all of this got going. “No, not that I remember ... but come on, come in and sit down.” He motioned her into the living room, then settled into the chair so she could have the couch to herself. “Did you though? Have a weird dream?”
Jules followed Carson to the living room, glancing around in that vaguely interested way that she did whenever she was somewhere new. It was obvious he lived there with someone else, but she wasn't really there to be nosy and pry into his personal life. Then again, she knew he was a werewolf now so maybe they were sort of past the normal boundaries things. Jules sat and clutched her coffee cup tight with both hands as it rested on her knees. "I did. But I had also been drinking a lot last night, because it was winter formal and then Ashton had a party and he always has a lot of beer there and..." Jules shook her head to try and focus. God, she was tired. "Anyway, I had a dream that I was in these woods, and I knew exactly where they were. You know the road we were dreaming about, at the beginning? The one leading out of town. I knew it was near that road. And my hands were hurting, like they do before something is about to happen."
She brought one hand up and clenched it briefly into a fist. "I knew that I could bring the fog back... I could make it happen again, but then... I knew we could stop it too. Make it go away, for good." Jules licked her lips, her eyes a little intense as they locked onto Carson's face. "I think that's what we do. Maybe if we bring it back, it'll fix the others. We can fix them. I don't know how, but it feels right." And maybe she was clinging to some kind of desperate hope that fixing everyone was the only conclusion to this. She couldn't think about the alternative.
Carson’s brows slowly drew together as she talked. On one hand, any signs or dreams that pointed them toward a solution was a good thing, on the other ... “Bring it back?” he repeated, sounding wary of that idea. He was. “Jules ... I dunno, that sounds ... terrifying.” Carson gave her a weak smile. “But you think you can bring it back and then send it away again?” Considering what the first round of fog had been like, he wasn’t sure how that was possible, but all of this was insane, so maybe she was right. She was the one who could open up portals with her hands, after all, even if she wasn’t exactly in control of it yet.
Jules’s lips parted to give him a definitive yes, but the truth was, she didn’t know for sure and so she hesitated before lowering her hand back to her thigh. “I don’t know. I just had this feeling that I could do it... in the dream, I mean. It sounds kind of crazy, I know. But our dreams have meant something since the beginning so maybe this means something too. I haven’t tried, uh, triggering what I can do. I’ve actually tried really hard to avoid it completely and it’s sort of worked, except for that one day at school.” She waved her hand dismissively and then exhaled slowly, trying not to fall back against the couch in defeat although her shoulders did slump a little. “I think if we don’t do something, then Point Pleasant is going to turn into the one from our dream. And maybe, like, bringing the fog back could do that too, but it could also save everyone who got hurt, because they’re not okay. I don’t know, Carson. I just don’t think we have much time left. Don’t you feel that too?”
If all of them had had the same dream together, Carson might have been slower to skepticism, but since it had just been Jules, the pessimistic part of him was a little hesitant about it. He didn’t doubt that Jules had dreamed what she’d dreamed, but what if that had just been her tired drunk brain giving her some false hope? On the other hand, what other fucking ideas did they have? Maybe the answer only came to Jules because she was the only one who could pull it off. Who the fuck knew? Carson leaned forward a bit and licked his lips, resting his elbows on his knees. “I do, yeah,” he answered quietly, idly rubbing his palms together. “And we don’t have any fuckin’ clue what else to do, so ... that may be the answer. I don’t think ‘do nothing’ is really an option here.” Carson wasn’t sure about the others, but he had the sense that their hands would be forced into something. There was a sense of purpose about all this, a sense of being chosen, which made its opaqueness even more frustrating. Carson would be thrilled to save the world, if he had any idea how to do it. “I’m worried what that might mean for you, though,” he added in a murmur. “It hurts, doesn’t it? And with something that big ...”
Jules hadn't really given a lot of thought into how it might affect her. And truthfully, thinking about the possible consequences made her go cold, despite the hot cup of coffee in her hand. But, like Carson said, they couldn't exactly do nothing. She would never forgive herself if she thought she had a way to save Jasper and she didn't take it just because there was the threat of pain. Licking her lips, Jules shrugged, wanting to try and be nonchalant about it. "I mean, yeah it hurts... but I think it'll be okay. And if it's not, then I'll deal with it. We have to try something. And maybe I'm totally wrong, but we don't have anything else, you know? Jasper said his sister was tired all the time, like she might be getting sick? And my friend, Sebastian... his mom is one of the people who got hurt. And he said he'd been feeling tired too, and he looked a little pale when I talked to him last night. I think being around them is affecting them. What if it gets worse? Plus, like... we're definitely running out of time, especially if everyone else knows who we are now like Jasper does."
Carson could see her trying to be brave, and he admired her for it. She was so young, it reminded him of all the fresh-faced recruits he saw in his military career, thinking they were ready to go to war. He’d been one of them, and now look at him, missing more of himself than anyone could see. This wasn’t exactly like human war, of course, but it was still going to be dangerous and there were so few of them ... part of him wanted to somehow shelter Jules from it all, protect her. Maybe it was kind of sexist, but he hated that a young girl was so wrapped up in all of this. She didn’t deserve what was happening. Shielding her from what was coming didn’t seem possible though, not anymore. Carson slowly rubbed his hands together for a moment while all of that ran through his head. “My friend Jared, his boyfriend Ty is one of them, and he’s getting worse too. I tried to call him yesterday and he could barely talk to me,” he said, his tone grim. “We have to act. And if whatever’s guiding us is telling you this is the right way ... I dunno what else we can do. We’ll talk to Nic and Neil.”
She wasn't surprised to hear other people were being affected. She wanted to think maybe they could contain it, but it felt bigger than that. And that scared her. What if they couldn't help? What if the universe had chosen the wrong four people to do this? What if it was just a freak accident that they were involved in the first place? Maybe it was just a coincidence that they were all Something Else. Jules thought about Jasper, how convinced he had been that she was plotting something against him. Maybe he was right, because she was sitting on Carson's couch now, plotting, even if that word sounded sinister in this context. But they were trying to help, but hurt. He would see that when this was all over. At least she hoped so.
"I think we should get together tomorrow," Jules said. "I think if we can get everyone hurt by the fog in one place... I think it's supposed to be outside of town, where our dreams started. I think that's like... where the other world begins. If we can get them there, we turn our dreams into reality and maybe the fog will heal everyone." Jules sucked in a sharp breath and felt her eyes start to burn as she began to look anywhere but at Carson. "I think maybe that's just the happy ending I want. Like, if I keep thinking that it's going to happen, then it will. But it might not."
Carson had all the same fears and doubts. He sure didn’t feel like the right person to save a bunch of people, and neither did anyone else in their little group. But they were the people who’d been chosen, so they would try. It had also occurred to him that maybe they hadn’t been chosen, at least not by anything good. What if the bad side of this equation was what was giving them the dreams? It was obviously able to manipulate other people in weird ways, what if Jules’s “answer” of bringing the fog back played right into its hands? There was no way to know that, though, and Carson had felt half-crazy more than once thinking about it. He definitely wasn’t going to raise the question in Jules’s mind at the moment, especially when she obviously got a little emotional. He picked up his coffee for a drink so he wasn’t staring at her, at a loss for what to say. He couldn’t lie, a happy ending might not be in their future. At this point he just wanted an ending, period. “You’re right, it might not,” he said finally. “But it might. We can’t know until we get there. You’re also right about the clock ticking down on all of this. We don’t have a lotta options to kick around. Maybe the other guys have ideas on how to round everyone up.”
Obviously there were more questions than answers, but Jules was starting to feel like they had enough answers to do what they had to do. Maybe it would end up failing spectacularly, but at least they tried something. And maybe something else would intervene and save everyone. Jules could hope for such things, but she wasn't going to hold her breath either. "We'll ask them," Jules said with a soft nod. "I'll reach out when I get home and see if they can meet us tomorrow sometime, if you're not working." She had school but Jules had already decided she wasn't going. There was too much to do and honestly, she didn't think she could handle being surrounded by her friends and everyone else. She couldn't pretend to be Jules Cooper while all of this was happening. "I think... just be safe until we do this. I don't know how Jasper got it in his head that we were all plotting to hurt him, but it made him kind of crazy. He was sure you guys were involved, so... maybe it was just him, but it could've been everyone else too."
Carson nodded. “I’m working but not until evening, so ... maybe tomorrow afternoon?” He was starting to feel the pressure of urgency more and more. Things were ramping up, at least one of the fog people knew too much about them now. Jules’s sense of caution was probably spot-on. “But I’ll be cautious. You too, okay? I hate to say it, but if any of them get dangerous and come after us, you’ve got the biggest target on your back.” She was a teenage girl as opposed to three grown men, one with military training, one with a criminal record of violence. If Carson was strategizing against them, he would take out Jules and Neil first. “They don’t know what you can do, of course,” he added, hoping she wasn’t offended. “But just ... watch your back, okay? Even if your boyfriend comes back apologizing, be wary.”
Even though he was right, Jules still frowned. She felt like she could handle Jasper, but what about everyone else? What about the adults? There were a handful of people she knew had been hurt in the fog, but she didn't know everyone. No, she wasn't offended, but she could at least admit to herself now that she was scared. More so than before. At the same time, Jules didn't want to cry and cower like a baby. She had to prove to Carson and the others that she could do this, that they didn't have to take care of her. Would she be able to protect herself if someone came after her? Only her hands knew, she supposed. Jules nodded and looked down at her coffee cup. "I'll be careful." That was all she could really do. And because she didn't want to overstay her welcome, Jules stood, offering Carson a faint smile. "I think that's everything for now. I should probably go."
Carson set his coffee cup aside and stood up with her. He kind of wished it wouldn’t be weird to invite her to stay a while, watch a movie and relax or something. There wasn’t much he could do for what she was going through -- what any of them were -- but he still wanted to support her. “Okay,” he said. “Uh ... do you want-- would it be weird to give you a hug?” Carson spread his arms a little and gave Jules a crooked smile. They’d been in each other’s brains and dreams, they were trying to save the world together, but somehow it still seemed inappropriate. Carson wanted to get over that though and just be a human being, because Jules really looked like she could use a hug. “No fleas, I promise,” he added in a self-deprecating murmur.
Jules hadn't expected him to offer a hug and she felt startled into place for a moment. Did she want a hug? The answer came easy to her. Yes, she wanted a hug, especially from someone who understood and was going through the same things she was. And yet, if Nic or Neil had offered, the latter being totally laughable, Jules probably would have said no. But it had always been Carson that Jules reached out to when she needed it and so it wasn't really weird to her to walk over to where he stood and wrap her arms around him to hug him back. The comment about the fleas had drawn a genuine smile from her, and no, not even his werewolfiness could scare her off. He was just a person, like she was. They both just happened to have scary things inside of them. "Thank you," Jules murmured, determined not to start crying or anything that would make this weird. But it was nice to have the comfort.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze, relieved that he hadn’t made her super awkward and forced to say no. Carson realized that he might have needed it too as they stood there for a moment. He got plenty of affection from Rylee, which he absolutely loved, of course, but she wasn’t going through the same shit like Jules was. The fact that they were both dangerous didn’t escape him either, and he felt suddenly intensely glad that none of them had made a big deal about him being what he was. Maybe it had been silly to fear their rejection -- being a werewolf seemed like a side note to everything else they were dealing with. “I can’t say everything will be okay,” he murmured back to her, rubbing her back a tiny bit. “But we’ll get through it and do everything we can.”
At times Jules wondered if she would have been more scared of Carson if she hadn't had her own terrifying ability. She wasn't supposed to believe in things like werewolves, but Jules wasn't sure there was anything she didn't believe in anymore. And she had known Carson before finding out about his affliction, and he was still Carson to her. Her throat felt uncomfortably full so Jules nodded, thankful that he wasn't trying to placate her with empty promises. She knew this could be a total disaster for everyone. But if she accepted failure before they attempted to even try, she wasn't sure she'd ever get out of bed again. Pulling back, Jules cleared her throat and reached for her coffee before giving Carson a small smile. "Thanks. I think this will work... and then things can maybe go back to normal. At least for like... a week." She huffed out a soft laugh.
Carson released her easily, feeling a tiny better about things with some human connection. He gave a lopsided grin and shook his head. “Normal? What the fuck is that, right?” he said and chuckled faintly. He turned to walk her to the door and opened it for her. “Thanks for the coffee, by the way. I’ll uh, think to you later, I guess.” Another crooked smile. He was sure that he would hear when Jules reached out to the other guys to set up a meeting so they could talk about this, and Carson was ready to back her up if they protested. He understood it wasn’t the most safe-sounding plan, but unless they had any other brilliant ideas they just hadn’t shared yet, it was the best plan they had. “Take care, Jules,” he added.
Knowing that Carson had her back made Jules feel better about her idea. Maybe her dream was bullshit, but lately she had been trying to read signs in everything that happened to her, especially when she was asleep. It gave her something to focus on rather than curling up in bed and crying all day. She was going to save Jasper, whether he liked it or not. Maybe he would never forgive her, but if she spared him from some terrible fate, then she would have to be okay with that. "Thanks, Carson. Be careful." A tiny part of Jules wanted to just stay there and hide, but she knew that would be super weird and super unproductive. Besides, if people were feeling threatened and tried something, she wanted to be home to make sure she could keep her mom and Jason safe. Jules offered one last smile before turning to head out of the apartment building, hoping that all four of them could just stay safe for a couple more days.