Adrian Moretti (theneedtofeed) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-12-07 03:09:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #may 2018, adrian, adrian x toby, toby |
Who: Adrian & Toby
Where: Toby's place, Haven Park
When: Friday night, May 4th
Adrian was going a little stir crazy. It wasn't just staying in the same house for days at a time that was challenging, it was the fact he had no idea what was coming. It was different this time as he wasn't as pessimistic but the hope almost felt worse, as if he dared to hope too much it would shatter him when things went wrong. He still hadn't talked to the sheriff and he still hadn't heard back from Caius and he was really beginning to feel like he was cramping Mila's style by staying with her. On some level he knew that wasn't true but feelings and logic rarely agreed. They'd agreed he wouldn't go out until they sorted this but every man had a limit and one night he made a compromise with her and Aaron. He would be very careful, he'd only go see the one guy who knew the truth about him, he'd borrow Aaron's car (and a couple of beers from the fridge) and be extra - extra - safe. He'd pointed out that they'd get a much needed evening alone too and it felt a little weird to have a curfew again at the ripe age of thirty-three but he promised to be back by midnight.
The plan was to drop by Toby's house and it felt a little dumb to show up unannounced but he didn't have his number. If he wasn't home, Adrian would park somewhere in the woods and enjoy his little bit of freedom instead. He didn't have to think further than that, Toby's car was parked outside so all Adrian had to do was hope he wasn't interrupting something as he headed to the door and knocked.
Toby was finding it harder and harder to relax in his off time. When he was at work, he was often busy enough that he didn’t have time to worry about what might be going on elsewhere, but when he was at home alone the paranoia started to creep in. Was AIR looking from him? Had they found him? Did they have eyes on his apartment, watching him come and go? He thought they might pick him up as soon as they found him, but they might also use him to find others. That would actually be smart on their part and it made meeting up with the others seem foolish. But then he hadn’t heard much from them either. Whatever Jane was planning, she wasn’t ready to act on it. She could call him any day now, or show up at his door.
It was Jane he thought of when the knocking came. AIR wouldn’t have knocked. They’d have barged in in the night and carried him off before he had a chance to protest or put up a fight. And Neil would have texted. So when he opened the door to see Adrian standing there it was a pleasant surprise. “Adrian!” Toby grinned, then threw his arms around him in a hug. “You’re alive! I thought you’d skipped town or something.”
"I did," Adrian said with a wry smile because that had been a monumental failure but he'd gotten out of the mess and he was here now so he was willing to let that go. "But I'm back," he added and patted Toby's back with one hand, not all that surprised by the hug. Toby was a very loving kinda guy. Once the hug was over he raised the hand holding his two bottles of beer and gave Toby an apologetic smile. "I know I said I'd bring you a cocktail but I'm completely broke so maybe another time. Sorry. You busy? Got time for a cold one?" It was at least still cold, he'd come here straight from Mila and Aaron's house and they didn't live too far away.
“Oh, honey, I’m a cheap drunk,” Toby grinned as he ushered Adrian inside. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got. Beer’s always fine. Come in, come in, tell me what you’ve been up to.” He led the way into the apartment, then back to the kitchen where he retrieved a bottle opener. Adrian was a much better distraction than Jane, plus he was curious to hear what he’d been up to since they last saw each other. It didn’t really surprise him that Adrian had skipped town, but he was kind of glad that he was back, at least for a bit. He knew that it was hard for Adrian to stay in Point Pleasant on account of him being dead there and everything. “It’s been, what, five months? Did you go hibernate or something?”
"Something like that," Adrian said with a little huff of a laugh because going into how he'd pretty much been kidnapped and experimented on was a very heavy way to start a conversation. "I'm working on coming back for good though, you know, out in the open and back from the dead," he told him when he returned and accepted his beer with a smile. It was strange to be back here and not in an assload of pain and it was certainly nice to be somewhere that wasn't Mila's house for a change. He helped himself to Toby's couch, flopping down and fiddling with the bottle. "What about you? What have you been up to?"
“That is fantastic news,” Toby smiled. “We could always use you back at the hospital, you know. If you want to stay in that line of work.” He couldn’t imagine why Adrian wouldn’t want to, except for the blood aspect. Toby wasn’t sure if that might be a draw for him and it wasn’t polite to ask. “It can get a little crazy there, when things get a little crazy here, but that keeps it interesting.” Point Pleasant was always going to be challenging in its own way, but it had been quiet lately. It made Toby wonder what AIR was up to if they were really behind all the crazy shit that went on there. “I’ve been… I dunno, working? Nothing all that exciting. I had some old friends reach out to me about some stupid shit we did as kids and I keep expecting them to turn up again. I was really glad it was you at the door and not them.”
Adrian had no idea just how heavy that 'stupid shit' really was and he groaned softly with sympathy. "What did you do?" he asked, imagining some shenanigans and he was very familiar with that having been an insufferable prankster growing up. Nothing so heavy that people would come to him about it all these years later but, well, some of it wasn't that far in the past. It was weird to think about that because he really didn't have it in him anymore, not after everything that had happened.
“Uhhh, it’s probably best not to say,” Toby cringed. “Pretty sure we could still be arrested for it, so—you know. Don’t wanna make you an accessory after the fact or some shit.” He said it with a smile, presenting it as a joke, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes. Toby trusted Adrian more than most, but this was a lot heavier than he was comfortable delving into within seconds of him walking in the door. Toby perched himself on the arm of the couch and took a sip of his beer as he looked down at Adrian. “I was really hoping the past had died, but you know how things are around here. It’s not that easy.”
"Tell me about it," Adrian muttered after a much needed sip of his beer. It had been forever since he had a drink and it was probably a good thing he was only planning on having one beer, he had no idea what his metabolism was like anymore when it came to alcohol. "I need to talk to the sheriff soon and uh explain where I've been for the last five years and how no, I didn't have anything to do with the deaths of my friends. My sister says he's a believer but it still feels a little - like a lot, telling him what happened." He grinned again, but much like Toby he was putting it on. "Did you kill someone?"
“Of course not!” Toby exclaimed, all drama as the instinct to lie kicked in hard. “Not me personally. I was more like—like a good luck charm. For a heist. If you want to call it that.” Adrain was someone he thought he could trust, but admitting to his part in the AIR facility fire didn’t come easily. He swore he’d never tell a soul about it, but that was when he thought AIR was out of his life forever. Now they were back and there was a chance he could be dead or taken before the year was out. No one would know what happened to him but the other AIR kids and they could suffer the same fate. It occurred to him then that Adrian might be the only person he could confide in, though telling him something that heavy seemed unfair, especially when he had his own shit to deal with. “I’ve heard good things about the sheriff. If he’s a believer, then it could work. I think it will. I think… you should give him a chance.”
"A heist," Adrian echoed, his interest piqued and he watched Toby with narrowed eyes and a faint smile as he tried to suss out what it might have been. He couldn't remember anything heist related happening when he was a kid and of course heist made him think of those Ocean movies. But Toby turned it back on him and he waved his hand dismissively. "I will, I don't have a choice. But let's get back to your heist. Did you steal something? You can't tease me like that, man. I won't tell the sheriff, pinky swear."
“It was more like an escape,” Toby admitted with a cringe. He bit his lip as he considered it a moment further, then took a long sip of his beer. His sixth sense, whatever it was, said he could trust Adrian with this. That he’d understand. He might even relate. The later seemed unlikely, but he’d learned to trust his instincts long ago, even if he didn’t understand them. He didn’t need a pinky promise to ensure that Adrian wouldn’t rat him out. After he finished his sip, he held the bottle with both hands, rolling it between his palms as he studied Adrian. “You sure you wanna know about this? It’s…It’s pretty heavy. And not really the kind of conversation you dropped by for.”
It was true, Adrian had dropped in for a light chat and a beer with someone who had saved his ass and was, as a bonus, an all around great person. But how could he back out now? He would wonder forever what Toby had needed to escape from as a kid, something that was haunting him again now, there was no way he was changing the topic. "If you wanna tell me, then yeah," he replied, solemn now because this did indeed feel heavy. He didn't have Toby's gift but that didn't stop him from feeling like maybe they had something in common there, however vaguely.
Toby nodded, since yes, he did want to tell him. It had always been hard not talking to anyone about his past, but it had gotten so much worse since Jane had popped up in his life. AIR was no longer this ghost from his childhood, but this monster that could be lurking around every corner. For the first time in a long time, Toby felt haunted. And maybe even hunted. “I was kidnapped when I was ten. Just picked up out of my front yard and taken to this facility where they experimented on kids. Tortured us, really, trying to trigger some kind of ability in us. Some of them died. I mean, they never said outright, but we knew. I knew. Eventually we hatched a plan to escape. Burned the place to the ground in the process.” He stopped and took a sip of his beer. “That was supposed to be the end of it. Everyone was dead. But… apparently they’re back in business.”
Adrian wasn't sure what he'd been imagining - or trying to imagine - but it wasn't this. Some haunted mansion somewhere, a scary ghoul in the woods, that Thing in the tunnels. He blinked, stared at Toby for a moment as he processed it and thought of where he'd just been. "How do you know they're back?" he asked quietly and his heartbeat had picked up a bit, images of his rescue flashing through his mind, that creepy hidden building in the woods, the monster that had gotten loose. Was it still there? Or was it free now, slithering through the woods to find a person to kill. If it was the same place then at least he had some good news for Toby, but he didn't know how deep it went, how many people hadn't been at work that day.
It was amazing to Toby how easily Adrian rolled with a drop like that, but then Adrian wasn’t exactly normal himself. What did it say about them that they could swallow that kind of news without flinching? “I don’t personally, but Jane—one of the other kids I escaped with that’s not a kid anymore—Jane does. Or the guy that reached out to her. I’m supposed to meet him, but I haven’t yet. Between the two of them, they could find out. We know the facility is back, but we don’t know for sure they’re snatching kids again. Except… that’s what they do. Or did. If they’re not yet, it’s probably just a matter of time.” It made him sick to think about it. Where were they? Did he really want to know? The more he knew about AIR and those involved, the more likely he was to pick up their wavelength. It all terrified Toby. He wanted out, even when he was barely even in.
"I was in a place where they - where they were supposed to help me," Adrian muttered and idly began picking at the label on his beer bottle. "I don't know who they were or what they were all about but there were doctors, or scientists, and a witch." His stomach dropped at the mere idea that there might have been children there, locked away and experimented on. He hadn't searched the place to see if anyone needed help, his own terror and the urgency to get Mila the hell out of there had kept all such thoughts at bay and really, he wasn't sure he would have survived doing something like that. It made him want to go back now though, make sure he hadn't left someone behind, someone now possibly half-starved to death if not dead from dehydration. "They locked me up instead, I think they wanted to see what would happen to me when I change. Do you think it could be the same people?"
“It totally could be,” Toby said. It sounded like the kind of thing AIR would do, and he could see them putting up a front as trying to help Adrian. “How’d they find you though? And how’d you get away? ‘Cause there was no way they were going to willingly let us go.” No one had ever said that that Toby remembered, but it was mutually agreed upon among the kids. After being there a year or more, it became apparent that he was never going home, no matter what they promised. “Was this recent? Or, like, before?” He remembered Adrian saying that a witch had given him his tattoos, the ones that warned him if things were started to get bad, so maybe this had happened before the fog and everything. It made sense, yet Toby had the feeling that wasn’t right, so he asked instead of assumed.
"You're not going to like that story," Adrian muttered. "I don't know how they found me. I was brought to a hospital and it turned out it wasn't one, that's about all I remember. They let me go out after a while, I was supposed to work for them but my 'handler' got killed and I ran. I went back there after... You know. After you found me. Because it was getting worse and I thought they could actually help me but they decided to let me turn. I got out-" he hesitated, thought of Aaron and Mila and how they didn't need to be part of any of this beyond the way they already were. "Something they were experimenting on got out, it killed everyone. It's probably still loose out there in the woods so uh, I feel like I should do something about it but I mean, what the hell can I do? I heard gunfire, it didn't do shit." That thing was a new addition to his already frustrating and frequent nightmares but at this point he didn't think they could get any worse so they'd started to feel almost mundane. He was quicker to shake it off after he woke up and remembered he was okay, that he was safe and that there were people around him who loved him.
Adrian was right. Toby didn't like that story one bit. If it was AIR, it meant they were definitely involved in some shady shit again and if it wasn't AIR, then there were two different organizations subjecting people to fucked up experiments. And to make matters worse, it sounded like there was someone or something now running amuck in the woods, potentially killing anyone they came across. "The thing--did you see it? Was it human?" he asked, his knee bouncing nervously. "AIR, if this was AIR, pushes people to their limits in an effort to activate dormant abilities. I don't know how they identify their test subjects, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had a psychic on their team that helps with the selection process. The people that were holding you, you said they're dead? They're not going to come looking for you now?"
"I didn't stop to check all the bodies," Adrian admitted. "But if anyone on watch that night survived then I'd call that a miracle." Maybe it had been mostly guards who died, some the doctors huddled up in some safe room waiting for help. "I was pretty hungry by the time I got out," he muttered. "I could hear... a lot. A lot of different sounds, could hear that thing moving on the floor below me, its heartbeat. It definitely wasn't human and if it ever was then I don't know what happened to it to make it look like that." The memory of it had warped with the nightmares and he couldn't help but think that was normal, that he wasn't supposed to have seen it and survived. "I'm pretty sure I'm not a priority to whoever survived that thing." He drank, not knowing what else to do after spilling his guts, taking a long swig of his beer before settling the bottle on his lap again. "It was really far from here," he told Toby, a small reassurance if any. "I got a ride back."
“Can you always hear heartbeats?” Toby asked. It didn’t really pertain to the conversation, but it was a detail he didn’t remember Adrian mentioning before. He was probably a decent lie detector if so, but it also made him wonder how he’d skirted his way around his own truth before. Then again, the whole situation was fucked, so calling him out on his BS might not have been Adrian’s priority at the time. “I don’t know if they’re close or far, but—but Point Pleasant was their hunting ground before, so I’m willing to bet they’re close.” Almost all the kids that had escaped had been from Point Pleasant, but that didn’t mean he didn’t pull from nearby towns as well. “I’m glad you got out. Sounds like it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.” The thing in the woods worried him, but he was glad to hear it was far away. Hopefully it would stay that way. They had enough to deal with without an additional monster stalking their town.
"No, I can't always hear them" Adrian replied with a faint smile. "Only when I'm really hungry." It wasn't a good thing, it was a hunter thing, it made him want to rip those hearts out of their respective chests still beating and he hated that feeling. The bright side to that was that he hadn't felt that urge at all with Mila or Aaron and he could probably wax poetic about the power of love saving him from evil or something but he didn't even know if that was true. Everything was weird, he and Aaron were both indebted to someone - or something - powerful and that calmness Adrian felt around his sister might have been Westin's influence. He felt like he didn't really understand anything anymore, he was just rolling with the punches. "So hey, we've both been held captive and experimented on," he muttered and raised his bottle in a cheerless toast. "Might be the same people, might not. I never heard the name AIR, is it AIR? Like the element?"
"Yay us," Toby snorted, raising his bottle in return. It was such a bizarre thing to have in common and Toby wouldn't wish it on anyone, but there was comfort in knowing he wasn't alone. "Like the element," he said. "It stands for American Institute of Research. They studied social sciences and did behavioral assessments when they weren't torturing kids. I did some research on it when I was, like, fifteen, and they covered their tracks pretty well. I don't know if everyone working there was aware of what was going on or not. Some days I think they had to know, but others I feel like that's too big a secret for an entire organization to handle. There'd have been a leak. The more people that know, the more likely it is to get out, you know?" Neither way made him feel any better about it all. If they didn't all know, then innocent people had died. If they did, what did that really say about humanity that that many people were okay with kidnapping and experimenting on kids?
Adrian frowned softly at the name and it took him a beat before he remembered. "Wasn't that the big fuck-off building that burned down in-" he'd been in high school, that was all he remembered but it clicked into place before he could start guessing the year. "It burned down," he repeated quietly, watching Toby intently. Was that the same event? Was that where they'd kept Toby and the others? It was just a bit of news to Adrian back in the day, something he'd heard mentioned on the job as an adult, about how institutions tended to catch fire in Point Pleasant. He leaned over to put his beer down on the table, a little unsettled but also feeling like he was already getting tipsy from less than half the bottle. If he was going to drive home he should probably stop now, just in case it was the beer and not just the heavy topic.
"Yeah," Toby muttered, his eyes dropping away from Adrian's, unable to face whatever judgement might follow. He wondered if he was doing the math, putting together the year with the difference of their ages. Toby had been thirteen at the time, which meant he'd been there almost three years. It was weird to talk about it all now when he'd sworn not to talk about it ever, but that was easier to do when he felt like it was over. Now that it had all come back, he didn't go a day without thinking about it. It also made his powers harder to turn off, always on high alert in case someone tracked him down. "One of the kids could start fires with his mind--not me, I'm not as useful in a fight, but-- fires create chaos. And we knew, if we didn't get out, they were never gonna let us go."
Adrian didn't know a lot about the fire but the guilt Toby was radiating was strong enough that he didn't need to be psychic to pick up on it. "Jesus," he whispered because that was new. Or was it? He'd met witches now, great big bulging weird monsters, a near skeleton like freak with the strength of a hundred men. Was setting fire with one's mind really that weird? It kind of made him want to finish his beer, just to have something to do, and he picked it up again to pick at the label. "You got out," he said after processing for a few moments, the air thick between them as Toby fretted and Adrian did the mental gymnastics of trying to understand what he'd been told. "I would have burned that fucking place down a hundred times over to get out. They didn't even really experiment on me or hurt me until that last day but it was terrifying, thinking I was going to become a monster, maybe I'd always be crazy and hungry and I'm not even sure... I don't even know if I can die when I get that way." He wasn't sure about any of what he was saying, the smell of blood in the air still haunted him, he wasn't sure all those people deserved what they got but it hadn't been his doing. By the sound of it, it hadn't been Toby's doing either. "And you were just a kid."
Even though these were things Toby had told himself, it was different to hear it from someone not involved. Of course he could justify it. So could Jane and Neil. But for someone on the outside to understand was a small relief. He wasn’t sure he’d ever completely let go of the guilt, but it loosened up a little bit knowing that Adrian didn’t think he was a complete monster. “We were all kids,” Toby sighed. “And when someone messes with your head day after day, for years, you kinda start to… to break. What they put us through to—to activate our abilities was bad enough, but then it became this mind game. Dance like a good little monkey and you get a reward. Until they decide you can do better and that might take… a new kind of trauma. Isolation. Starvation. At least I knew they wouldn’t let me die. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.” He pictured Adrian, stuck in a cell, craving meat, ready to jump the next poor bastard who walked through the door. They’d probably deserve it at that point. It was a sick thing to think, but it rang true in his head. “Sorry,” he said. “This whole thing’s fucking with my head.”
"Yeah, it is the kinda thing that'll do that," Adrian said with a wan smile. "So either we were taken by the same twisted group of people or there's two of them." If it was the same one, then a majority of them were dead now but maybe not all. That part of him that longed for a normal life wanted to tell the sheriff everything and have him deal with the place he'd just escaped but knowing what he knew, he didn't want anyone going out there. Maybe witches, someone with powerful magic at their disposal, or someone who could set fire to things with his mind. But not regular people, not a bunch of small town deputies with rifles at best. "Part of me feels like I should go back," he admitted quietly. "Go back hungry, I mean. Try to take that thing out myself. Check to see if anyone's alive, if they've cleaned up the place and it's running like normal. But I'm just, I'm scared." He smiled again, though it wasn't a very strong smile this time either. It felt good to admit it, to say it out loud. He was so careful around Mila, trying so hard not to traumatize her further so he tried not to talk about these things with her.
“No,” Toby said with a shake of his head. “There’s no good outcome to you going back. If everyone’s dead, it’s fuel for nightmares for years. The rot will make you sick. And the monster might actually find you. If they’re alive, you’ll be outnumbered. They could catch you again, and even if you get away, they could come looking for you. It’s safer to stay away.” He could almost see the possible paths in his mind, but they all hinged on details that seemed uncertain. Toby had never been great at predicting the future, not when there were so many unforeseen obstacles, but he knew deep in his gut that Adrian going back wasn’t a good idea, even if he couldn’t put his finger on why. That was usually good enough for him. “That thing though… Someone will have to deal with it if it heads this way. I’m not saying you, but… someone.”
"Are you thinking of your fire-friend?" Adrian asked because his first reaction was to ask 'who'. Who the hell could stop something like that? Maybe Toby knew more people like that, like that Jane person he'd mentioned. Adrian didn't know what she could do either - or Toby himself, if anything. He'd said he was a good luck charm rather than an instigator but that didn't tell Adrian much. He blinked slowly as he watched Toby, feeling mellow now despite the horrible subject. Maybe it was just kind of nice to talk about trauma and nightmares when he wasn't actually in the middle of one. Toby's place was nice and Toby was nice and Adrian felt a little drunk; it was the safest way to discuss things. "What were they trying to make you do?" he asked finally. "And did they... There's something you can do?"
“I… I don’t have a good name for what I can do,” Toby said with a small smile. “They called me clairvoyant, which is true enough, but also not quite right. It’s more like—like I know things. Usually things I shouldn’t know. It might be something you’re thinking, but didn’t say out loud. Or what you had for breakfast. Or that your sister’s going to call in five minutes—she’s not by the way, just an example. I’m not a mind reader, but sometimes if I’m really tuned in, I might pick up what someone’s thinking about. Which tends to freak people out. So I try to keep it all turned down, you know?” It was a lot all at once, and Toby realized he was rambling, but talking about what he could do made him nervous. People didn’t take lightly to the thought that he could be in their head, even if he insisted that wasn’t how it worked. And he had no way to prove he wasn’t reading their every move. He tried his best not to abuse his abilities, but once people knew about them they became suspicious. He was hoping that wouldn’t happen with Adrian, but he really couldn’t know unless he tried. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use his abilities on himself. His own future was always fog.
"Well, then it's a good thing I spilled my secrets already," Adrian said with a smile that was at least a little warmer than his previous attempts. "Is that how you knew to find me? Back in January?" Toby had pretty much showed up out of the blue and Adrian hadn't questioned it much but if it was because of his clairvoyance then it already made more sense. He hadn't spilled all his secrets of course, but the ones he hadn't felt so mundane and far from his mind with everything else that had been going on, he didn't even think of them in the moment. Then there were Mila's secrets, and Caius being a witch and a whole lot of other things he was now thinking about and wondering if Toby was picking up on. He didn't think it mattered if he did, he trusted Toby and it wasn't like he was telling him these things. "Can you control it at all? Or does it just happen?"
“That day in January? When everyone was acting crazy? It was like someone had amped up the volume on everything and I couldn’t turn it down. I’m pretty sure that’s how I knew to find you, but it’s weird because I wasn’t looking, you know? I didn’t leave the hospital thinking, I need to go find Adrian, but maybe I heard something, or sensed something, and I was just too out of my mind to really understand it.” Toby knew something had been going on in Point Pleasant that day, making people violent or exhausted, and it had affected him differently than everyone else. He’d felt out of control that day, moreso than usual. “Sometimes it just happens, like, I feel like I’ve got it going on at a low level all the time and I usually try to ignore it, but I can push for more if I need to. Physical touch usually acts as an amplifier, whether I like it or not.”
Adrian winced at that, he loved touching people, had felt touch starved for so long that lately he found himself pulling his sister into random hugs all the damn time just because he could. "That sounds like hell," he muttered. "I'm glad you were there, I don't know if you saved my life that day but you sure as hell saved my sanity. Just wish you could turn it off when you wanted to." He had to respect Toby more, working as a nurse was a very physical job, it probably gave him more insight into the wellbeing of his patients so it could benefit him professionally but at the same time it had to drive him crazy at times.
"Yeah, me too," Toby said quietly. Life would've been easier if he'd had a power like Jane's or Neil's, or even Shane's, something that came out to play only when he wanted it to. Instead, it was always there, flaring up whenever it wanted, acting more like a chronic disease than a honed ability. Relationships had always been hard for him, in large part due to his personality and being a gay guy in small town USA, but the powers didn't help. "It's not always bad," he said, hoping to lighten the mood a little. "Drinking numbs it a bit. And other external sensors can sometimes overwhelm it. The real issue is when I know something I'm not supposed to know and I forget that I'm not supposed to know it, and then I say something stupid and I can't explain it. That's no fun at all."
"Drink up then," Adrian smiled and raised his bottle but didn't drink from it despite the urge to. "I already feel tipsy," he explained with a wry smile at said bottle. "So apparently it's gonna be cheap as hell to get drunk from now on so I guess that's a small bonus to all of this." He would happily pay for more drinks to be rid of it so it didn't exactly make it all better, which brought to mind Caius. "You know, there are witches in town," he said, remembering how they'd talked about it the last time they met. "My sister found one who's going to try to help me. I'm not holding my breath but... Damn it'd be good to get this shit under control."
“No shame in being a cheap drunk,” Toby smiled, taking a sip big enough for the both of them. He’d learned in college that being drunk at a bar with loud pounding music could drown out even the strongest of psychic urges. It would’ve been so easy to waste away in the bottle, to numb himself every night, but the fear that he’d drink himself to death kept Toby in check. He could use it to relax, maybe have a little fun, but he wouldn’t self medicate. And he couldn’t escape. “If you find yourself a witch who can help you handle your voodoo, point me their direction. I could use something that numbs my powers without fucking up the rest of me. And I can find some way to pay ‘em. Maybe give ‘em lottery ticket numbers or something. How’s your sister find one?”
"I don't know," Adrian replied casually, not wanting to go into the details on how Mila had needed help herself or how she actually worked for the witch in question. He trusted Toby with his own secrets but that didn't mean he could go babbling about everybody else's secrets too. "I'll ask though, if there's a way to do that. It's a psychic thing and if alcohol works then there's gotta be something else that does too, something not as destructive. Hell, I'd suggest trying mood stabilizers just from the medical point of view, it'd be interesting to see how they affected it at least." He was not a doctor though, nor a shrink, he just knew the mere basics of the medications available. "I'll ask him," he reiterated. "Give him your number, which by the way I'd really like to have again too."
There were secrets hovering there, just beneath the surface, but Toby resisted the urge to poke at them. If Adrian didn't want him to know, then he didn't want to hear them. He focused on what Adrian was saying now, careful not to let his mind wander, else he'd know whether he liked it or not. "There might be something medically that works, but that would take talking to a doctor about it, which is a big no for me, or stealing meds, which is also a no. Maybe it's weird, given I'm a nurse, but I might feel better about something a little bit magical," he snickered. "And of course you can have my number. I should've given it to you last time." He thought he had, but then things had been crazy and it wouldn't have surprised him if it had slipped his mind.
"Well I didn't have a phone," Adrian replied. "And I still don't, but I will, when things get..." He stopped, grimacing softly because things would never get normal so he wasn't quite sure what word to use for it. "I'm kinda dreading it," he admitted. "Coming back from the dead is a bit... You know. I don't know what to tell my parents and there's going to be so much crying." And praying and possibly some blaming, he didn't know how to explain why he hadn't come home all these years, his very valid reasons would worry his mother sick so it was tempting to make something else up but that would just make her angry. If she knew what he was now he wasn't so sure she'd embrace him as her son or call an exorcist. It was a lot. "I just want to snap my fingers and skip all that and go back to work, you know?"
"Yeah, it kinda sucks," Toby agreed. "Especially when you have to lie about it. I think I told the cops that I'd joined the circus," he ticked one off his finger, then the next. "That I'd been living in the woods off berries and nuts, that I'd hitchhiked down to Texas and become a cowboy, and that I'd been kidnapped and forced to smuggle diamonds across the border for a group of Russians with furry hats. I will say this--at some point, they don't really care. The people that are glad to have you back in their lives only care that you're back, not the details. And the cops get bored." Maybe they'd pry a bit more into Adrian's reasons since he'd been accused of murder, but once the murder charge was dropped, Toby was willing to bet their interest in his return would dwindle. "I don't think you can get past the crying though. Parents cry. Hopefully they'll be happy tears."
It was a heavy topic but Adrian couldn't help but laugh anyway, the thought of a grown man spinning such lofty tales was just that amusing. "Yeah I'm not sure I'd get away with those kinds of stories," he replied with a grin. "Those are amazing though. I thought about like.. Amnesia, got the scars to say I had brain damage or something but we both know how heavy that is and how just... unlikely." He groaned and took a sip of his beer before remembering he wasn't going to do that but it tasted good and it was just a little one so it should be fine.
“It was the best I could come up with at thirteen,” Toby laughed softly. “I knew no one would believe me. That wasn’t the point. I just wanted to distract them from the truth.” It had worked well enough, though it hadn’t won him any points with the cops. “You know, amnesia sounds ridiculous in most places, but around here I think they’ll believe anything,” he said. “People go missing all the time. When AIR was around, a good number of kids went missing and came back with no recollection of where they’d been. Saying you don’t remember might not be satisfying, but it doesn’t require an elaborate lie. It’s worth considering.”
"I still need to talk to the sheriff," Adrian sighed. "Mila says he knows things, a lot of things so he'll believe me if I tell him the truth. It's just that the truth could get him killed so I'm uh- understandably not super eager to tell him where I was." Again he wished he could just snap his fingers and skip this part. "I bet it helped being underage, they can't hound you when you're just a kid. I just hope Mila's right and that he's open to the truth, even if I end up not telling him all of it." There were so many things he was afraid of and going to jail was just one of them. It would be a massacre if he did so in all these scenarios he kept fretting about, it wasn't really his own life he was worried about.
“How’s your sister know about the sheriff?” Toby asked, since that was a slightly different question than her knowing about a witch. She seemed well connected and he wondered if it all went back to the time she went missing. Toby hadn’t been her nurse when she’d been in the hospital, but now he wondered what he’d have picked up if he had been. “I wish I could tell you how it’d go, but I’ve never met the man. I feel good about it for you though, and that’s a good sign, even if it’s a vague one.” If it was a really bad move, Toby felt like he’d know by now. They’d been talking about it long enough that he’d have felt the warning signs of something foreboding. “Just remember, honey--no matter hard it is to come back, it’s gotta be easier than being dead. Things might not be normal, but they should be better.”
Adrian shrugged a bit helplessly at Toby's first question and he was honestly glad Toby kept talking so he didn't really have to answer it. Of course it was entirely possible that Toby knew more about Mila than Adrian realized, both because of his job and his strange gift. That was different than Adrian blabbing all her secrets to him though, he'd already fucked up by telling Caius of all people that she was pregnant. "A good feeling is better than nothing," he murmured. "It honestly makes me feel a little better about it actually." He often felt like he deserved whatever bad thing came his way, after everything he'd done, but the one thing that kept him from fully believing it was that anything bad that happened to him now would destroy Mila and she only deserved good things.
Of all the brainwaves for Toby to pick up, the one he caught was that Mila was pregnant, which didn’t seem to fit with anything else. He didn’t ask about it though because it would only highlight how intrusive his abilities could be and he really didn’t want to lost Adrian’s trust when he seemed to have it. That was rare in people that knew what he could do. Most immediately put distance. “You think you’ll come back to work at Mercy?” he asked with a small smile. “I’d love to have you around again.” He was still working for the Raynor’s as well, but that was more to put away for retirement someday. Or a vacation. He seriously deserved a vacation. “You’re gonna have to get a lot more than a phone if you come back. You’ll need, like, a place to live. With an actual address.”
"God, I know," Adrian groaned. "I'm not exactly loving living with my sister right now. I feel like a total burden and she's going broke just trying to keep me fed." God he hoped Caius could help with that, it wasn't sustainable at all. "I'm gonna have to learn to hunt," he muttered unhappily and while he had absolutely hunted, he'd done so when half out of his mind with hunger and that was not a very human way of killing prey. "I want to come back to Mercy, like I said, I want to just skip ahead in time to when things are okay again and I have a job and a place to live. I thought about driving out to check if my car is still where I left it, at least then I could sell it for parts or something, get a little money for Mila."
"There are lots of things I could help you with. Hunting is not one of them," Toby said with a little laugh. It wasn't really funny, considering Adrian needed it to survive, but his brain had gone another direction. "Can you imagine me with a bow and arrow? That's a guaranteed shot in the foot." A gun would be even worse. The closest Toby got to owning a weapon was the butcher knife in the kitchen. "You know... if you're really hard up for cash and we could play the lottery. Not for, like, the big jackpot, but enough to get you started. I just can't cash it in. And neither can you, since you're not alive yet." It was something he hadn't done in years, but he knew he was still good for it. The scratch and win tickets were the easiest, but on a good day he could usually get at enough of the numbers for a couple thousand in winnings.
"You can seriously do that?" Adrian asked and he was glad Toby had changed the topic. It was far more amusing to imagine Toby hunting in some joking fashion than it was to think of himself the same way. He had always hated guns and while rifles didn't bother him as much as handguns did, he still didn't like them. "Why aren't you like... Living in a New York penthouse, having the time of your life?" There was probably something about ethics there, Adrian could understand it. It was hard to grow up with Catholic guilt and feel entitled to anything unless he worked hard for it. But all the good that could be done with money could easily erase some of the bad feelings that came with it, surely.
“Because winning the lottery attracts attention. The bigger the payout, the higher the chances of someone finding me that I’d really like to avoid. Winning it more than once looks super suspicious,” Toby pointed out with a smile. “I went to Vegas once in college though. That was a blast. I think they’ve got me on some watchlist now, but it was worth it.” It’d been enough to pay off his student loans and that was all that really mattered to him at the time, that he could start his career without being seriously in debt. There were probably other good things he could do with that kind of money, but the older he got the more it felt like cheating. And now that AIR was back, it was completely out of the question.
"Yeah that makes sense," Adrian said with a little frown and he should have guessed the reason after what Toby had told him. He himself was scared of people finding him again, of someone having survived knowing enough to take all the information to some other shady institution. "If you want, you could do that, my sister or Aaron could cash it out, we could split it." He didn't want to come off like he was using Toby and it'd be weird to accept the offer without sharing but god it was tempting, he was doing very poorly with nothing to his name but some old things hidden away in storage at his parents' house. This really was an offer he couldn't turn down.
“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it,” Toby smiled. He appreciated the emotions coming off of Adrian—the reluctance, especially—because they were honest emotions. And good ones at heart. If greed had been at the forefront, he would have worried. But Adrian needed this and it didn’t feel like a handout when lottery tickets only cost a dollar or two. “I’ll pick up some tickets on my way home tomorrow and see what I can do. Just don’t tell your sister where you got ‘em.” Mila seemed trustworthy when it came to Adrian’s secrets, but she was family to him. Toby didn’t really know her and didn’t like the idea of anyone outside his immediate circle knowing what he could do. The more people that knew, the more dangerous it could be.
"I'll ask Aaron to cash them in," Adrian replied. "He's less likely to press me for answers." There was a chance Aaron would tell Mila but it felt easier to do it like this, buy himself some time and try not to lie to his sister's face yet again - or tell her the truth, that he couldn't tell her where he got the money. Maybe he could get Aaron to just not talk about it or claim he won it himself. "I really appreciate it," he added. "I'll make it worth your while once I get on my feet again. Like, start with a proper bottle of wine or something."
Toby laughed, genuinely appreciating the offer, even if he really didn’t care if Adrian came through with it. “Honey, I just wanna keep seeing your pretty face from time to time. You don’t have to get me drunk unless you want to. I don’t wanna drink alone,” he smiled, stretching his legs out before sliding down to sit on the other end of the couch. “No more disappearing or I’ll think they’ve got you.” And if that was the case, Toby would gather his little anti-AIR army and go in guns blazing, regardless of the fact that they had no guns, or no plan. He wondered if there was anyone in the group that would try to stop him, but there was only Neil, who’d been roped in even easier than he’d been.
Adrian laughed at the compliment and it was kind of sad yet amusing to him now how being gay had been the worst and most awful secret he'd kept from everyone for so long when these days it barely even felt like it was part of him anymore. A few years ago getting complimented by any guy would have stirred up a whole lot of weird feelings but now it was just sweet. "My face has lost a lot of its pretty over the last few years," he said with a titter. "But thanks, I'll make sure you get to see it again, hopefully at work until you start associating me with normal stress and trauma instead of personal stress and trauma."
Adrian’s sexuality was on of those things that Toby had picked up the first time upon meeting him, then filed away and forgotten about it. It didn’t change how he treated him, or how he occasionally flirted with him, and at this point he honestly couldn’t have said if Adrian was out or not. In terms of the secrets he was dealing with, it seemed rather low on the totem pole comparatively, but he would’ve understood how he might not want to pile one more thing onto the list of revelations he had to make to the people that might care. In Toby’s world that had been his mother, who hadn’t been the least bit surprised. “You’re like a good bourbon,” Toby grinned. “Better with age. Besides, I don’t associate you with my stress and trauma, though I appreciate you letting me vent about it.”
Adrian wasn't sure he'd agree he was like good bourbon and aside from aging a little, he was more thinking about the scars. His one and only ex would probably have hated them. "Well I'm glad I don't stir up bad memories for you," he told Toby with a smile and it was so tempting to curl up on his couch and sprawl out comfortably, he might have given into it if he didn't know he had to get going soon and didn't want to risk dozing off. "It'll be weird coming back," he admitted. "With Benito and Simon gone. I feel like I won't know a lot of people. I'm glad you're still there, in case I start working again."
For the longest time Toby had lumped Adrian in with Benito and Simon, but it was more about them dying together than working together. It was probably better that Adrian wouldn't know as many people, since those that remembered him were going to be the ones that asked questions. "You'll be fine," Toby said with a wave of his hand. "People come and go around here. You haven't missed much. Though there is this super hot doctor who's dating this cute little twink. I mean, I say that, but he's probably in his early twenties. The boyfriend, not Doctor Sexy. I met him at the Christmas party. And the fact that the best gossip I have is months old should tell you how quiet it's been lately."
It was delightful gossip especially since it included a reference Adrian actually recognized and it made him feel weirdly normal, like they could just sit there and talk about old tv shows and make fun of their co-workers. "The last time I heard someone talk about Dr. Sexy they were talking about Doctor Dernburg, the guy who was retiring after like fifty thousand years at Mercy." He didn't remember exactly what year it had been but it had been shortly after he'd moved back home from Portland so he had a rough idea. "Remember him? Because if you do, you'll understand why I'm not exactly sure if this Doctor Sexy is hot or not."
“Oh no, no, no, no,” Toby laughed. “This guy’s, like, legit hot. I think the girls were seriously disappointed when they found out he had a boyfriend. I was just upset that I didn’t get to him first.” Toby snickered, though he was exaggerating on that fact. As a nurse, it would be a horrible idea to date a doctor. “You’ll like him. He’s a good guy. Not sure what brought him here of all places, but he’s stayed through some of the crazy, so he’s not a short-timer. There’s a few others that are new. I need to work at being more social. I took this part time job and it’s kind of eaten up my free time.” But it wouldn’t be long before he could afford a down-payment on a house, which made the arrangement with the Raynors worth it.
Adrian wondered if he hadn't met Doctor Hot already, unless there were more than one hot doctor new at Mercy there was a chance he knew the guy. "I met one of the new guys during the fog," he said, though he didn't really remember much of their conversation, he was just glad the guy had opened the door for him. "Aaron and Mila were at the hospital and I needed to make sure they were safe." The whole thing had been so strange, thinking back on it felt almost dream like. It made him wonder if that feeling was stronger for some people here, that they just discarded the strange events like a bad dream eventually. He knew dating a doctor could be a bad idea and he'd been down that road once though it hadn't really blown up in his face or anything. Still, a lot of sexy doctors would give him something to look at during down time so that wasn't too bad.
“It’s possible,” Toby said. “He started before the fog rolled in, though I couldn’t exactly say when.” That had been months ago now and he didn’t really have a defining moment for when Connor had started. If he had to guess, he’d say it was sometime in the fall, but he could be wrong. “I can’t believe you set foot in the hospital and I didn’t know you were here,” he smiled. “That takes some balls, by the way. I’m not the only one who’d recognize you. But it was a good place to be during the fog. We had just about everything.” It was the people who were stranded that he’d worried about. Hopefully nothing like that would ever happen again. People were showing minor signs of PTSD every time the fog rolled in.
"Or it was just plain stupid," Adrian replied with a sheepish smile. "It's hard to think about consequences when you're scared for your people. I got lucky, I guess. But everyone was so scattered around, hiding mostly. We hunkered down in the stairwell until it was over." It felt like years ago and not just months, such a strange feeling to look back and remember how scared for Mila he was at the time and how it seemed to have turned around completely now. She was doing so well these days and he was a fucking mess though he suspected she still had her nightmares and trauma, she just had happy things to focus on for a change. "I kept my hood up whenever I had to run to get something, which... as you know isn't always that effective."
“It’s not perfect, you had my screwy brain to contend with,” Toby snickered. “I think it’d work, most of the time. But I’m glad you won’t have to do that anymore. I can’t believe you’ve done it as long as you have.” If it was him, he’d have moved across the country to a place where no one knew him and he didn’t have to hide. But Adrian had family here that needed him. Toby and his sister weren’t close, but he thought that he could still relate. He liked to think that if he thought she was dealing with something similar to whatever Mila had been dealing with, he’d have been there for her, even if he thought AIR was tracking him. He was still there now, even when he should be running, which maybe meant he wasn’t as big a coward as he thought he was.
"Screwy? Or gifted?" Adrian said with a grin. He understood it could be a burden and it certainly hadn't come from a good place, but Toby's brain was probably the reason Toby had come to help him so Adrian couldn't think too harshly of it. "At least it can be useful. I bet it helps at work sometimes, with the more difficult patients." He couldn't count how often he had acted on pure instinct at the hospital, some gut feeling guiding him in the right direction. Having actual telepathy couldn't hurt in that regard.
Toby knew there were many times in his life that his powers were a gift. He was alive because of them, and Adrian probably was too. And in his line of work, probably countless others. It was something he tried to keep in mind whenever it felt like a curse. “It’s part of why I decided to go into nursing,” Toby said. “If I couldn’t turn it off completely, I wanted to do something where it had a benefit that I wouldn’t feel guilty about. People can’t always communicate what’s really wrong, so it helps.” He knew his patients might not appreciate it, it could be intrusive, but more times than not they reaped the benefits.
Adrian nodded. "Then I know who to call if I get a difficult patient," he said and while he had no idea if he would or could come back it felt nicer to think he might. That a few months down the line his life could be somewhere close to resembling normal. It was better to focus on that than on all the things he was terrified of, all the things that could go wrong. "Do you have any idea how strong your gossip game could be though?" he added cheekily, giving Toby a slightly drowsy smile. It was probably a good thing that the cattier nurses they'd worked with didn't have this power, he could at least be sure they didn't because they would have shared it one way or another.
“Oh, I could be queen if I wanted to be,” Toby grinned, then shook his head. “It’s not right though, picking up secrets like that. It’s hard enough to trust people as it is. I’m just glad I’m not a flat out mind reader. I can’t imagine what that’s like, all those voices floating around. Could be highly entertaining, if you didn’t go mad from it.” He only gleaned people’s crazy thoughts; he didn’t outright hear them in their entirety. Toby didn’t want that kind of power. He wasn’t even happy with what he had. “I am trying to see if my abilities span as far as telepathy, at least as far as projecting my own thoughts. Not picking up others. I’m not sure I’d ever need it, but it’d be good to know.”
That piqued Adrian's interest again and he arched his brows curiously. "Like, this is Radio Toby, broadcasting live inside your head?" He grinned again. "How do you even go about testing that?" It would be a handy ability for sure, especially if he was at risk from this facility that had kidnapped him as a child. Adrian both found himself wanted to know more about them and yet not at the same time. There was definitely a part of him that didn't want to know any of the things he did already, who just wanted to really catch a touch of amnesia and be left clueless about the horrors of the world and the horrors he was capable of committing.
"Yeah, something like that," Toby laughed, preferring Adrian's version of how it might work to the typical telepathic invasion it probably was. "I'm not one hundred percent sure, is the thing. Neil said I could practice on him, just once, after ten PM, with a follow-up text. Which, I mean, is totally fair. But I haven't tried it yet because..." He sighed and shrugged. "What if it works? But what if I broadcast to everyone and not just Neil? I want a private phone call, not the high school overhead speaker, you know? There's this miniscule chance that AIR doesn't know about me and the last thing I want is to out myself to them, along with the whole town." Not that he thought he was that powerful, but testing his limits could be just as dangerous as not knowing them.
Adrian understood that more intimately than most; he was terrified of someone new finding out what he was, of being subjected to tests again, of possibly not being rescued that next time. It was a shitty thing for them to have in common but at least they could relate to one another. He didn't know who Neil was but "Yeah, that sounds risky," he said quietly. "But maybe if you send something super generic but specific, something you've talked about with him. We have random thoughts all the time, or most of us do. Memories or echoes of the day. You don't have to announce yourself." He smiled lazily at that idea of actually announcing himself in someone's head, hi this is Toby, is this a bad time? It was probably funnier to him than it should be. "You can try now if you want, something dumb. I know alcohol is like a dampener in movies and stuff but it might not be in real life, who the hell knows."
“That’s true. It’s not like a phone call where they can call me back,” Toby snickered, then thought about it for a second. Adrian was less skittish than Neil for sure. Maybe he could aim it at Adrian, if such a thing was possible, but then check with Neil later and see if he heard it too. It seemed like a good idea, though he had no idea if he was within Neil’s guidelines of when to try it out. Oh well, Toby thought. “Okay,” he said, setting his beer down and rubbing his hands together. “Let me know if anything concrete, but foreign pops into your head.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then did his best to focus his thoughts at Adrian without making his name the focus. Instead he thought, I want cookies. Chocolate chip, with oatmeal. And nuts. Just thinking about it made him smile.
It was hard to figure out if any of the thoughts that entered Adrian's head were actually his own or if Toby was putting them there because he instantly started thinking about telepathy, watching Toby closely as he wondered what he would send out if he was trying to test that kind of skill. Think of a shape, triangle? Circle? His thoughts were racing so Toby might not even even get a word in edgewise, so to speak. He shook his head and let out a little laugh, possibly too tipsy to do this now. "Maybe we should decide on like... a card. Think of a card and I'll guess which one. If I get it right all the time you're doing great."
Toby wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved that Adrian didn’t seem to pick up any of the thoughts he’d tried to send him. It would have been a helpful skill in a pinch, but he didn’t mind having limits, especially invasive ones. At least he knew his thoughts were his own and that he wasn’t accidentally projecting them at people without realizing it. Still, he was willing to try the card trick, since it was one of the first ways he’d learned to read other people. He didn’t get their thoughts, per se, but he could almost always guess their card. “Okay,” he grinned. “Never done this in reverse, but I’ve got one.” Jack of Spades, he thought, again trying to direct it at Adrian. It felt a little silly trying to direct his thoughts toward a person, like he could visualize cartoon waves making their way across the room, but he didn’t know any other way to do it without possibly broadcasting to the whole neighborhood.
"I don't know man," Adrian said with a little laugh, feeling weirdly put on the spot as if this was a test of his abilities as much as they were Toby's. "Uhm... Now I'm overthinking. Nothing is, like, popping up like magic in my brain. Maybe it works better when I'm not expecting it?" He squinted as he thought about it and the truth was he was just thinking of too many cards so if Toby's message was making it across he couldn't tell it from his own jumbled thoughts. Again, the booze probably wasn't helping even if it was just half a beer. Jesus, he thought. Half a beer. A shot of whiskey would put him on his ass. "Maybe do it again when we're talking about something else," he decided. "And... I'm feeling super peckish, you got any cookies?"
“Yeah, if you’re already thinking about cards, could be hard to know which thought is mine and which is yours,” Toby snickered. Plus, they were both drinking, which probably wasn’t helping things. That alone could be enough to put a damper on whatever abilities he might have. He was already blowing it off when Adrian asked for a cookie and Toby’s eyes widened comically, his mouth slightly agape. “Seriously? Do you normally eat cookies while drinking?” he asked, because it was too specific to be a coincidence. When it came to dealing with psychics, Toby was pretty sure coincidence wasn’t even a thing. “What kind of cookie?”
It was a weird question until Adrian realized that no, cookies really didn't go with beer. Maybe he wanted to sober up? "Chocolate chip," he replied, laughing again and it started to dawn on him that maybe this was what Toby had been trying to 'send' him earlier. "With... oatmeal? Fuck." He leaned back with his hand on his chest. "Did you put that in my head? It's so fucking random. Maybe he'd get a random card in his head too, once he was thinking about something else though it was hard to get cards out of his head in general after this little experiment.
“That was the point, wasn’t it?” Toby said, a laugh bubbling up in his throat. He put his hands in his hair and took a deep breath, climbing off the arm of the couch to pace a little. “Sorry, I don’t have cookies. But I wish I did. Oatmeal chocolate chip. With nuts. The fact that you got any of that means there’s some low lying telepathic ability that I haven’t ever tapped into. Which is a little freaky, but I mostly want to use it as an emergency SOS, not to send subliminal messages for the munchies. Damn!” It was exciting, even while it kind of scared him. He hadn’t attempted anything new in years and there was a desire to test it out, but also to keep it quiet, something he didn’t know how to do when it came to this particular skill. “I wonder if it was just you,” he said. “Or… if my neighbors are suddenly craving cookies too.”
"You were going for subtle," Adrian reminded him, still grinning though his giggle fit had mostly subsided. "Sending out an actual SOS would probably be louder and clearer, we don't hold back when we've got adrenaline rushing through our bodies." He hoped Toby never had to find out if that was true but given what he'd told Adrian, maybe that hope was a little naive. Much like returning home felt a bit naive, there might still be people hunting him, there was some lunatic out there who might want to kill him again and if he was only crazy because of the fog, he at least now knew that Adrian wasn't human. They were surrounded by bad things, hope felt like a risky and harmful thing at times.