RORY (betmylife) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2021-08-13 20:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, rory, rory x wes, wes |
Who: Rory and Wes
When: night, Saturday, June 16th
Where: the marina
Status: Complete
In spite of the weird shit, Point Pleasant could be boring as fuck a lot of the time, Wes had discovered. It definitely wasn’t like where he was used to living. There was work to keep him occupied during the day -- and sometimes in the evening, if they needed him to cover a shift -- and he and Rory spent a lot of their off time together, but there wasn’t a lot to actually do. There was a pool table and dart boards at the Porch, so they went there sometimes ... Dragonfly was nice for a classier evening, but it was still a bar. Wes would’ve rather eaten glass than get up and sing in front of people, so the karaoke bar was out. Nor was he very good at video games anymore, and he didn’t want to waste money at the arcade. So a lot of their off time was spent fucking and watching TV. Not the most thrilling existence.
So when he heard about the live music and drinks and stuff at the pier, he’d suggested to Rory that they go. It didn’t sound like it would be the biggest party scene, but it was something social to do. A reason to put on something other than work clothes or sweatpants. Almost like a date, which gave him weird feelings to think about. Wes had tried to look as nice as he was capable of, trimming his beard up and picking out some decent clothes, which for him meant black jeans and a dark blue flannel with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, and his non-work boots.
Before they left he got Rory’s attention, spreading his hands a bit as he glanced down at himself. “This okay, you think?” he murmured. Rory knew far more about appropriate clothes than he did, and Wes cared more about his opinion than he cared to admit.
Point Pleasant was safe and stable. Rory had to keep reminding himself of those facts because he was often bored out of his mind. He was used to busy days, cycling through his family’s various establishments and checking on their inventory. He’d been good at managing the day to day, one of the happier faces that was there to get shit done, though people often knew that if there were serious issues, someone else would handle it. Now work consisted of seeing the same handful of people every day, doing the same damn thing, and Rory actually missed the edge of danger that had been present his entire life. He couldn’t even get into a proper bar fight because he couldn’t risk being barred from one of the two bars in town. Two. Fuck.
The opportunity to go out and have some fun on the town made him almost giddy, even if it was just Point Pleasant. He was looking forward to having some fun with Wes, then hopefully coming home to have even more fun with Wes. The town might be boring, but being with Wes was definitely not. Rory dressed himself up in his dark jeans and a crisp, black button down with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail, though strands from the front kept escaping to frame his face. He looked up as Wes entered the room, dressed and ready to go. “Hot, as always,” Rory grinned, walking over to him to grab him by the front of the shirt and pull him in for a quick kiss. “You look great.”
Rory knew how to deliver compliments, and Wes grinned after smooching him back. It was so dumb, but he couldn’t get enough of hearing Rory say nice things about him. Even though they were kind of stuck together, he still wanted to put some effort into their relationship and look good for his man. “You look better,” he murmured, one hand slipping around to pat Rory’s butt while he was close enough. Wes liked his hair up like that, especially when some of it came loose. He snuck one more kiss to Rory’s lips, then backed up and tapped his pockets for his keys. “Ready to go?” Wes hoped this would be fun in some capacity. He didn’t even know what sort of live music it would be, but if it wasn’t good, maybe they could make fun of it together. His expectations weren’t much higher than having a pretzel and a beer and people watching.
“Flatterer,” Rory murmured back, but still preened a little at the complement. He’d never expected to land a guy like Wes, but found he really, truly enjoyed it, even if it meant there was significantly less talking about feelings. He could handle that, at least so far. It wasn’t like he just loved opening up himself. What he did love was the feeling of Wes’s hands on his ass, strong enough to hold him there if he wanted to. “Yeah, I think so,” Rory said, grabbing his wallet off the counter. His gun sat next to it and he stared at it for a moment before looking to Wes. “Are you carrying tonight?” He’d gone through life with a gun on him, even if he’d never actually shot someone. It felt weird not to wear it, but he kept thinking this might be a family event. There could be kids there. Who could he possibly expect to meet that he’d need it?
Wes had never allowed himself to expect to end up with a guy in the first place, so he’d definitely never dreamed that he would really honestly be with anyone like Rory. Smart, fun, good looking. He worried sometimes that it was their circumstances -- that if they were just normal dudes living a normal life, their relationship wouldn’t work, but Wes tried not to think about it too much. Things were as they were, and he’d fallen for the guy he was supposed to kill, and that was just how it was. “Yeah,” he answered, lifting his right leg to touch the hard lump of metal strapped against his calf. It was a small caliber pistol under his jeans, so not the most accessible, but there if he ended up needing it. But it was safe from any small nosy hands and tucked where most people wouldn’t even notice it. “So I got us covered, if you don’t want to.” Wes gave him a small smile.
Even though Wes carrying should be enough, Rory still hesitated. He’d been trusting Wes with his life for months now, long past the point where he worried he might kill him in his sleep, but he still wasn’t used to relying on Wes to defend him. He knew he would, that he had when it had mattered most, when he’d least expected it, but he’d never asked to do it for him. Suddenly leaving his weapon behind felt like a bigger deal than it should be. Rory huffed and blew it out of his mind. “It feels weird not to,” he admitted, but left it on the counter anyways. “If I regret it tonight, I’ll never do it again. So let’s hope for an uneventful evening.” It was a weird thing to hope for, considering how bored they’d both been, but an outing that required his firearm wasn’t exactly what he wanted either. They were going to have some fun, dammit. That shouldn’t require him to be armed, especially in a town like Point Pleasant.
“No events that require bullets, anyway,” Wes murmured and chuckled low in his throat. Being Rory’s protector appealed to him in ways that were hard for him to describe. It wasn’t that he thought Rory wasn’t capable of watching out for himself -- one didn’t grow up in that sort of family without figuring that out -- he just enjoyed the sense of being useful and important, specifically to Rory. He’d always had a boss, and while their dynamic was obviously different than that, in Wes’s mind, his role here was some mixture of boyfriend and bodyguard. He headed out of the house with Rory, pausing long enough to lock up, and soon enough they were in the car and on their way to the pier. Hopefully this would be at least mildly entertaining. If nothing else, the weather was nice and they would be right on the water.
Rory liked the idea of Wes protecting him, yet he didn’t like the idea that he couldn’t protect himself, and it sometimes felt like two conflicting ideas that he had to reconcile. He knew that wasn't the case. The first was a personal preference, a factor of their relationship, while the later was pushback against his family’s beliefs—family that wasn’t even there to argue with. No one was going to call him weak for leaving his gun behind. Foolish, maybe, but that was yet to be seen. Rory climbed into the car with Wes, letting him drive them down to the pier. It was already crowded with people and they could hear the festivities from where they parked, a few blocks away. When they finally made it down to the pier, Rory had to smile at the setup. It reminded him of something out of a movie, a romcom where the small peach queen returned home to reunite with her high school beau. It was the opposite of the kind of parties he was used to attending, but it didn’t matter in the least. It looked like a lot of fun.
It was a nice night for a walk, and there were plenty of other people out doing the same, so Wes felt pretty good as they strolled from their parking spot down to where everyone had gathered at the marina. More people ought to mean more danger for them, but there was some animal herding instinct that told him they would be okay in a crowd. Everyone seemed to be in a light mood, with snippets of conversation and laughter drifting in and out around them. He kept his hands tucked into his pockets, not quite to the point where he could hold Rory’s hand out in a crowded public, but Wes did walk close to him and bump their shoulders together every now and then just to feel him. Once they’d acquired some beer and a couple of big soft pretzels, Wes glanced over at him with a smile. “You wanna find a place to sit? Or get closer to the music, or what?” he asked before he took a bite of soft, salty bread.
“Let’s sit,” Rory said, nodding for Wes to follow him. There were more standing stations than sitting and co-mingling with chatty locals didn’t really appeal to him at the moment, so he avoided the big tables with the long benches. Instead he found a place along the edge of the pier, where they could hop up and sit on the railing. It put the water behind them and gave them a good vantage point over the crowd, something he navigated to instinctively due to his upbringing. Rory hopped up on the ledge and took a seat, setting his beer down beside him. “This okay?” he asked, taking a bite of pretzel. “These remind me of going to the ballpark as a kid, and watching the Yankees play. I always preferred pretzels over peanuts.”
Wes was happy to separate themselves a bit from the crowd, so he didn’t mind the spot Rory picked at all. He boosted himself up to join him on the ledge, tucking his beer between his thighs as he settled in. Wes grinned over at Rory a bit. “I only got to go in the stadium a couple times,” he said. “But me and my dad used to sit outside sometimes where we could hear all the cheers, and listen to the radio broadcast. When I was little.” That had been long ago and far away, it seemed, and it gave Wes a pang of nostalgia right in the chest. “I didn’t give much of a shit about baseball, especially at that age, I just liked hanging out with him.” He munched on his pretzel and sipped from the plastic cup of beer and tried not to think about missing his family. He’d lost them long before the flight to Point Pleasant, and he wondered if they even knew he wasn’t in New York anymore.
It was times like these that Rory realized how little he knew about Wes and the life he’d led before they’d ended up here. He knew some of the basics, especially those that connected their lives, but friends, family, and Wes’s past leading up to their meeting were just fog to Rory. He’d picked up on details here and there, like that Wes’s mother was still alive and probably worried about him, but otherwise there were gaping holes in the picture. This was the first he’d ever spoken of his father that Rory recalled and he wondered if he was still alive. “Were you close?” he asked. “I always wanted to be, with my father. But I was a mama’s boy. No changin’ it.” The older he’d gotten, the more distance there had been between him and his father. Rory knew a lot of it had to do with his sexuality, but he’d swear it was that way before he ever came out.
“Nah,” Wes answered, drawing the word out a bit. He chuckled faintly, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “I uh ... just didn’t turn out how he wanted me to, I guess. You know how fathers can be.” He glanced over at Rory’s face. Wes knew much more about Rory’s family than the other way around, obviously, and he’d overheard plenty of bitching from the elder DeAngelo about his son. He wondered if it had cut Rory as deeply as his own father’s disapproval had cut him. Wes suspected so. He thought they were cut from the same cloth in a lot of ways, but maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part. “He and my mom were split up. I spent summers with him until I was a teenager, then that sorta just stopped. I didn’t impress none of ‘em as I grew up, really. Haven’t spoken to any family in years.”
Rory had often wondered if his life would be better if his family hadn’t been such an integral part of it, but it felt impossible to even imagine. They’d been ingrained in every part of it from the very beginning, making it hard to separate the two. He’d be a different person, that was for sure. And he probably wouldn’t be here, now. But then he wouldn’t have Wes in his life, and he couldn’t completely reject a path that had brought the two of them together, no matter how fucked up it was. His father would disapprove, loudly in fact, but he disapproved of almost everything Rory did. What was one more little cut? “Probably a good thing,” Rory said, smiling despite the heavy subject matter. It was so much easier to joke about it. “Better than mine, who’d kill me if they found me.”
It really wasn’t funny, but Wes huffed a soft laugh anyway, because it was indeed easier to whistle in the dark about it than let it really sink in, how alone they were. They had each other, and that was what Wes clung to. He just tried not to be annoying about it. “Small blessings, right?” he murmured. Maybe he was lucky that his family wouldn’t do him any violence if they crossed paths again, they would probably all just be severely disappointed and continue to keep their distance. Wes wasn’t sure which they would disapprove of more -- him being gay, or him being a criminal. He fell into a thoughtful silence and sipped on his beer as his gaze drifted out over the people milling around again.
Small blessings was right. Rory hadn’t had much of an appreciation for them before his life had been upturned, but now it was the little things that helped him get by. A quiet day might be boring, but it wasn’t a day on the run, fearing for their lives. A party at the pier wasn’t a club in NYC, but he had Wes by his side and a beer in one hand, so life was really pretty good. “I heard they’re setting up another game this week,” Rory said after a moment of silence. “You in?” There was only one type of game that Rory was really interested in playing and that was cards. He was always in and would scramble to find the cash to buy in if he didn’t have it. It was an addiction and they both knew it, however he figured it was safe enough around here. He didn’t think he could get in deep enough to get in any real trouble.
Wes knew very well what kind of game Rory was talking about, and he got a familiar rush of mixed emotions about it. On one hand, he liked cards too, and they were both good players, so playing in the local games could be lucrative for them. But on the other hand ... they couldn’t really afford for Rory to completely lose control. They were both aware that was a possibility. He rubbed his free hand against his jeans and sighed through his nose before he looked over at Rory, a little half smile on his face. “I mean ... maybe,” he said. “Are you planning on bein’ in?” Wes didn’t want to mother him, and Rory was making more money than he was, they had all their bills covered, he just didn’t want it to become a problem for them here.
The answer was yes, of course, but the fact that Wes was asking gave Rory pause. He’d been aware that gambling was a problem for him even before they found themselves in their current situation, but he hadn’t realized how bad of a problem it was. He often thought he could make up the money later, usually under the influence of alcohol or his own disillusions. He didn’t know his limits, as much as he liked to think he did. Rory smiled, a touch of embarrassment, a touch of shame peeking through, and looked at the ground, then back up at Wes. “Yeah. I mean, I never put in more than I have on me. I’ve got no collateral. But… it’d be nice to have someone who knows to kick me if I even think about doing something stupid, you know? Didn’t have enough people to kick me back home.”
At least he never argued about it. Rory knew he had a gambling issue, and Wes was glad he was that self-aware now. It made the idea of joining a poker game a little less terrifying, especially since Rory seemed to want him involved too. To hold him accountable. Wes thought he could do that, he wasn’t afraid to get firm with him if it was needed. He nodded slowly, his gaze lingering on Rory’s face. “I’ll kick you then,” he agreed. Wes picked up his beer to tap the plastic against Rory’s cup in a little toast of promise. “And I’m gonna clean you out and bring home more money than you,” he added, a faint grin blooming on his face. Sometimes it was fun to rile up that competitive spirit.
Rory knew it was one thing to promise to be good now and quite another to keep his word in the moment, but he truly believed he could handle himself better going forward. No more making bets he couldn’t bounce back from. He clinked his cup against Wes’s, then began to laugh at the idea of Wes trouncing him at poker. On most days he was good, really good, and even if it was his confidence that often got him in trouble, it was also well earned. “No fuckin’ way,” he grinned. “You pull that off and you can bend me over the table.” Preferably their own table, when they got home, since Rory’s wild streak did not extend to exhibitionism. He occasionally enjoyed being manhandled by Wes, who never made him feel weaker or lesser for it.
Wes laughed, a full throated sound that felt really good. So much of his life he’d felt so restrained, like he had to keep parts of himself on an extremely tight leash for various reasons, but he’d been relaxing by increments since they’d been here. Maybe that was stupid of him, maybe letting his guard down would end up fucking them over, but how could he help himself when Rory grinned at him like that? When they could make those kinds of jokes about fucking? Maybe he didn’t have to live in such a tiny box. Chest suddenly full of warmth, Wes slipped his hand behind Rory’s neck and pulled him in for a quick kiss, with a murmured “c’mere” before their lips met. They were in public, so he didn’t linger there, but it felt nice to do even briefly. “I’m gonna hold you to that. We just kissed on it, that’s just as good as shaking,” he said once their mouths parted again.
Rory knew a kiss wasn’t a big deal, but it felt like that with Wes. They’d kissed over a hundred times now, but rarely in public. Normally, Rory wouldn’t think anything of it, he’d stopped hiding who he was years ago, but he knew this was new to Wes and didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. It felt like they’d come a long way since those first awkward nights of sharing a room and even if the cost had been high, it was getting hard for Rory to regret it. “Deal,” he smiled, stomach all fluttery at the prospect of either winning big or getting fucked good. It was kind of a win-win situation from his end, but Wes didn’t have to know that. “When I win, I’m gonna take us out for a steak dinner.”
Kissing in public, even just a quick pop kiss, was a big deal to Wes. He’d struggled to do it even in private at first, having to dig his way out of layers of fear and homophobia that had been instilled in him. Sometimes he thought back to those first nights on the run with Rory, when he was yearning so hard he could taste it, and he felt like a completely different person now. Some paranoias were still proving hard to shake, so he was wary about acting like A Couple in crowds, but it was getting continuously better. “Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Wes murmured with a grin. “You’re gonna be the steak dinner.” He snickered softly and sipped on his beer as his eyes scanned the crowd again.
“So confident,” Rory snickered, then reached over to give Wes’s thigh a squeeze. “It’s kinda sexy.” He pulled his hand back, rather than let it linger. He wasn’t sure where Wes’s line was, but he tried to be cognizant of it in public. If they’d been at home, he’d probably be palming him by now, eager to feel him go hard in his hand. Rory took a sip of beer to clear his thoughts, preferring not to sport wood in public if he could help it. It was one thing if it was a dark club with pounding music and he was tucked away in some corner, but this was practically a family event. And then his brain had to go and put a thought in his head that started him laughing again. “Either way, I’ll get stuffed.”
The hand on his thigh gave him a little flutter like he always got when Rory touched him somewhere slightly intimate. He was having thoughts of getting home with his man soon when Rory made him laugh too. It was so silly and juvenile, but he loved it. Wes tilted his plastic cup back to drain the last of it, and as he lowered it and glanced around again, something caught his eye. Or someone, more specifically. There was a man standing across the way from them, lurking half in the shadow of one of the vendor stalls, but he seemed ... wrong somehow. Wes blinked and squinted. He was skinny and looked weirdly tall, like he was on stilts -- which wouldn’t be too unusual at an event like this, but something about him gave Wes goosebumps and started his heart beating harder. A sense of dread and danger began to spread through his stomach. “Hey,” he said quietly to Rory. “You see that guy over there?”
Rory loved it when he could make Wes laugh. Not smile or snicker, or even just chuckle, but laugh. It felt like such an achievement coming from a man who was so often somber, who hadn’t even cracked a smile the first few weeks they knew each other. Granted, the situation had been stressful, but Rory still thought of this as progress. “What guy?” he asked, noticing the change in Wes’s expression even before he followed his line of sight. At first he didn’t see anything alarming, just a bunch of people enjoying themselves, none of which looked like they gave a shit about Rory or Wes, but then he saw him. A tall man in a bowler hat. As Rory looked, the man turned his direction and a chill shot through Rory’s system like a bullet to the heart. He couldn’t see his eyes, but there was something about his grin that made Rory want to bolt. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Who is that?”
The more he looked, the more wrong the man seemed. His eyes were obscured by the brim of his hat, but that smile sent a terrible feeling down Wes’s spine. Everything felt prickly all of the sudden, the colors and sounds around them sharpening as his body started to hyper-focus. There was something bad about that guy, and they were in danger, Wes was sure of it. Without taking his eyes off of the man-thing in the bowler hat, Wes put his beer and pretzel down next to him and reached for Rory’s forearm, even as he slid off of the ledge they were sitting on. “Come on, we need to go,” he said, low but firm. Every sense he had was screaming to get away from the tall grinning man.
Rory had never drawn his gun on anyone in all the times that he’d carried it. He hadn’t drawn it because he knew you didn’t point a gun at someone unless you fully intended to follow through with the threat if necessary. For the first time ever, he felt himself reaching for his gun, only to find it wasn’t there. Because he’d been a fucking idiot and left it on the kitchen counter. He wanted to kick himself, but there wasn’t time for that. Instead, he slid off the wall and abandoned his pretzel and beer in favor of keeping hold of Wes. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here,” he said, trying to move without taking his eyes off the man. It was going to be hard in the crowd, but at least he was in front of them now. The problem would be when they had to turn their backs. Rory wasn’t sure he could keep himself from running.
No one else seemed to be noticing the figure, which only added to the creepiness and sense of dread. Wes had heard countless stories about this town that he only took with a grain of salt, but they’d also experienced some shit he couldn’t explain, like the screaming outside that one night. And now this unnatural looking dude grinning at them. The presence of the gun under his jeans crossed his mind, but Wes had enough sense not to pull it out and wave it around in a crowd of families. First they would try to get away, and if the bowler hat man followed ... well, Wes would do what had to be done to protect them. For now that was to walk swiftly away toward the parking lot, he and Rory both gripping one another. Wes kept glancing over his shoulder while he tried his best not to outright run.
The point at which they had to turn their back on the man was the worst and Rory struggled not to run, aware that would draw even more attention to them. They just needed to casually get back to their car and be on their way. He kept glancing back, heart pounding as he located the man once more, and tried to assess if he was getting closer. It didn’t look like he was following them, but he was definitely watching them and Rory was reminded of those horror movies where the monster suddenly was upon their victim inexplicably. Why was no one else reacting to this man? How did no one else see him? Rory knew weird things happened in Point Pleasant, he heard about them at work, whispered in the break room, but it was different to be caught in one of those situations. There’d been plenty of people who scared Rory in his life, men who he knew were a threat, who could put a bullet in his head, but none of them struck the same kind of terror as the man in the bowler hat.
The man -- if it even was a man, but Wes didn’t want to entertain that thought for very long -- didn’t follow them, but he did keep looking. Every time Wes glanced back, there was that grin, halfway in shadows. His entire back prickled with awareness, and he too was expecting to look back and see the bowler hat man mere inches away from them, huge teeth at the ready. Wes shuddered and walked a little faster, and as soon as there was a corner they could turn, he turned it. There was nobody directly around them now, so Wes stopped and let go of Rory abruptly to crouch and yank his pant leg up to pull the pistol out. He was breathing hard now, and not from walking, just from fear, and Wes wiped his palm off on his jeans before he settled his gun into it to grip. He kept it down close to his side and grabbed Rory’s hand again to hustle toward their car.
“This is fucking insane,” Rory muttered when they stopped for Wes to grab his gun. It burned that he hadn’t brought his own and that he’d have to depend on Wes to defend him. He knew he could, Wes had proven himself to be reliable and very much capable of protecting him, but Rory still didn’t like it. He felt defenseless right now, when he most needed some form of control over that—that man. That thing. Rory kept looking over his shoulder, checking to make sure they weren’t being followed as they hurried towards the car. He was relying on Wes to keep him going in the right direction, fearful that if he stopped looking back that that thing would be upon them and they’d have no warning. He had a vision of those teeth sinking into his arm, ripping through his flesh, and he shivered. The whole notion was ridiculous, but for some reason it felt very real, very possible in that moment. Rory released Wes’s hand as they approached the car and scurried around to the passenger side, practically flinging himself inside. “Come on, come on, come on!” he whispered, looking back over his shoulder. There was nothing to see, not yet, but that could change at any moment.
They probably looked ridiculously suspicious, hustling away while looking over their shoulders every few seconds, but Wes couldn’t care. The only imperative in his body was to Get Away. If Rory hadn’t been with him, he probably would’ve been running within the first few seconds. Wes got inside the car with just as much urgency, and fumbled with the keys a little before he got the engine started. Leaving it to Rory to keep watch now, he whipped the car out of the parking lot and hit the gas, missing the bumper of another parked car by mere centimeters. Wes’s heart was still racing and his palms were sweaty, the gun now in the console between the front seats. He imagined the man in the bowler hat coming after them now, somehow unseen by everyone as he caught up to them with impossibly long legs, and the car skidded a bit as Wes turned out of the lot and onto the road again. He had to calm down, or they would surely get pulled over and it would turn into a huge problem, but it was hard not to floor it once there was open pavement under his tires. “Do you see it?” he asked Rory in a tight voice.
“The thing with the hat and the teeth?” Rory asked, glancing at Wes, terror still caught in his eyes. “No, I think we’re good.” Unless it could run as fast as a car, they should be good. And yet, Rory had this horrible feeling that if it wanted to catch up with them, it would. He couldn’t even think of it as a man, despite its human-like shape. Something about it had just been wrong, and dangerous, and Rory was sure it was coming after them, even when he had no evidence to support that theory. His focus stayed on the back window, watching for anything out of the ordinary, while his heart continued to race. “Did we overreact?” he asked, still watching. “That thing was real… wasn’t it?” There was no way they were the only ones to have seen it, but no one else was running. It was another one of those times where they were sharing an experience that no one else seemed to have and it was just so fucking weird.
Wes wanted to be staring out the back window himself at the moment, so he was glad that Rory was still looking. He was quickly putting distance between them and the man-thing, but it didn’t feel like enough and like it was happening too slowly. Which would have been ridiculous if they had just seen a tall guy in a stupid hat, but all of Wes’s instincts said it hadn’t been human. “What the fuck is it with this place?” he grumbled, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. Wes glanced over at Rory. “It was real, we both saw it.” He didn’t know why nobody else seemed to, but Rory had reacted exactly the way he had, so Wes felt justified. “Real and fucked up and dangerous, so ... no. No overreaction.”
“Fuck,” Rory muttered, his voice still shaking. He wasn’t sure he’d feel safe until they were home again, locked inside their house. He knew four solid walls weren’t actual protection from anything, but it’d be better than out in the open. His eyes continued to search the street as they put distance between themselves and the pier, just to be sure they weren’t being followed. “Of all the nights not to carry…” He knew he couldn’t draw his weapon in public, not without causing a scene that would most likely get them arrested, but he would’ve felt better knowing he had some defense against that thing. Humans he thought he could handle, but this was something else.
He could sympathize with where Rory was coming from, but Wes didn’t think that being armed would have made much difference, except as a security blanket. Waving their weapons around in family-friendly public was a surefire way to draw unwanted attention to themselves from law enforcement, and nobody wanted that. It seemed pointless to say so, however, so Wes just kept his mouth shut and kept driving. He kept expecting to relax, for some sense of safety to grow and let him unclench, but it wasn’t happening yet, even with a couple of miles between them and the bowler hat man. “Fuck,” he hissed, hitting his palm sharply against the steering wheel. It didn’t help release any tension, and Wes’s jaw clenched. “Shit just keeps ... happening here.”
Rory appreciated Wes’s desire to hit something. He wasn’t alone in that feeling. He would have happily emptied his gun into that creature’s head and thought nothing of it, just to ensure it wouldn’t show up again later, grinning on their doorstep. Running away from it didn’t feel like enough. It had seen them, he was sure, and it could come back. It could find them. Rory had thought they were done running when they’d settled in Point Pleasant, but now he wasn’t so sure. “I’ve heard people talk, but I didn’t… It sounded like ghost stories. Nothing concrete. Or just weird, unexplainable shit. That thing, though… it was real.” He could feel it in his bones, and he knew running had been the right answer.
Wes had the same creepy sense that they were marked now, like making eye contact with that thing had made it more aware of them, and they would be targeted later. That sounded fucking crazy in his head, but all of his instincts said it was true, and it made him want to run even farther. He could just keep driving with Rory, out of this weird fucking town and off somewhere else to hide. Part of him so didn’t want to, though. Point Pleasant had an undercurrent of weirdness, but it had started to feel like home, and he did feel safe from Rory’s family here, in the middle of nowhere. Wes shifted forward and then back in his seat again, his body restless and on high alert. “It was real,” he repeated in a mutter, almost to himself. “I’ve heard plenty of shit too, but ... yeah, that was real.” He swallowed thickly and looked over at Rory with a deeply furrowed brow. “What do we do?”
It was such a simple question, yet it still took Rory a moment to answer. Instinct said they should keep driving, drive until they found another town, some place safer, but he knew that was an overreaction to his fear. It would be a pain in the ass to start over, something that was even harder to do on the run, with so little cash and fake IDs to deal with. They’d built something here, and he wasn’t willing to just upend their lives again, not because some tall man in a crowd had scared him. “We go home,” he said, swallowing the knot in his throat. “We lock all the doors, close all the curtains, and sleep with a light on and our guns at our side. And… it’ll be fine in the morning.” And if that thing came for them, they’d be ready. Short of booking it out of town, it was the best they could do.
Something inside of Wes was relieved at Rory’s answer. They would go home and fortify and wait. He knew it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but that was what he wanted to do. He definitely didn’t want to run with only the clothes on his back again, they’d just gotten settled and comfortable. “Okay,” Wes murmured, nodding slowly as he took Rory’s reassurance to heart. Things would be fine in the morning. Rory was way smarter than him, Wes trusted him, so of course he was right. It was a little soothing, at least, and Wes quit squirming in place and tried to focus on driving them home safely. He was intensely grateful to finally pull into their driveway, and Wes twisted and turned to look through all of the windows carefully before he killed the engine. Nothing seemed to be waiting for them, but his heart was still beating too hard in his chest.
Rory typically had a good head on his shoulders, but this didn’t feel like something he was at all prepared for. He didn’t like that he was ignoring his instinct to run, but he knew that logically staying was the best plan. If the threat persisted, then they could reassess staying, but if it turned out to be a one night thing, like that time someone had been screaming outside their house, then hopefully they could just put it behind them and move on. He sat still in the car with Wes after they pulled in the drive, waiting for that moment when they needed to make a break for the house. Rory dug his keys out, so they’d each have a set to the door, just in case something went wrong. “We’ll be fine,” he said, forcing himself to be the voice of reason. “Out of the car. First one to the door unlocks it. We get inside, we deadbolt it. There’s nothing out there. We’re just being cautious.”
Wes hated this helpless, terrified feeling. He nodded quickly at Rory’s instructions, trying to swallow down the fear. He’d been in mortal danger before, he could handle this, right? He had a gun to carry in with them, he could just shoot any lanky bowler-hat motherfuckers that popped out of the bushes, right? Nothing could survive getting its head blown off. That was what he desperately wanted to believe, anyway. Wes took his keys out of the ignition and found the house key on the ring, holding it at the ready as he picked up the pistol in his other hand. “Yeah,” he agreed, trying to keep his voice steady. He reached for the door handle. “We’ll be fine. Ready? Go.”
It was only a few feet from the car to the house, yet Rory sprinted like someone was firing bullets at him from the bushes. He didn’t even look to make sure his car door shut, only heard it slam behind him as practically ran into the door. The seconds it took to unlock it felt like hours, made even more difficult due to the fact that his hands were shaking, but then the door opened and he rushed inside like a scared animal. “Come on, come on!” he muttered, and as soon as Wes was in, he shut and locked the door behind them. It was a terrifying couple of seconds and for some reason it seemed so much worse that they didn’t have a real threat outside the door. He would’ve felt better with something they could see, maybe destroy. But instead there was just his fear and the lingering feeling that something was going to get them if they weren’t more careful.
Wes was right on his heels, and he didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to cross the threshold of this house. He didn’t linger, however, because there was more to do. Wes hurried away from the front door to check every other exterior door to make sure they were locked up tight. He pulled every open curtain closed as he went -- there weren’t many, since the two of them tended to keep those shut anyway. Once the downstairs was as secure as it could be, Wes thumped his way up the steps to do the same to the windows upstairs. As he reached to tug the bedroom curtain shut, he half expected to see the grinning man out there, just floating in the dark ... but there was nothing except the usual view of the street.
Rory wanted nothing more than to slump against the door and relax, but he knew he wouldn’t find peace until he knew they were secure inside the house. He grabbed his gun off the kitchen counter, then worked the opposite side of the house from Wes, then followed him up the stairs, checking behind him once he reached the top, just in case. He didn’t know what he’d do if that thing was in the house—probably try to blow its head off—but he was relieved to find the stairway empty behind him. Even still, he shut and locked the bedroom door behind him. “We should be safe,” he muttered as he turned to face Wes. His gun hung useless at his side, but he was reluctant to let it go now that he had it. He stepped closer to Wes, where he’d been peering out towards the street. “See anything?”
“No, nothing,” Wes muttered as he pulled the curtain closed. He turned toward Rory to see him holding his gun too, and a wave of weird anger rolled through Wes. They shouldn’t have to do this, any of it. They were supposed to be safe here, that was the whole point. Were they going to be up here hiding in their room every other day because something fucked up spooked them? Was that any better than hiding from Rory’s family? Sighing deeply, Wes moved to put his pistol down on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed. He wanted to take his boots off, but he didn’t know yet how relaxed he really wanted to get. “I don’t even know how to deal with this,” he said, rubbing his palms against his face. “Fuckin’ ... ghosts and shit? What the hell.”
“I don’t either,” Rory sighed, his gun tapping lightly against his thigh. Now that he had it, he was reluctant to put it down, but he really didn’t need it if it was just him and Wes in the bedroom. There was no threat to point it at. For safety’s sake, he set it on the nightstand, but remained close enough to grab it if necessary. “This place… it’s fucked up. But… we can handle it, right? I mean, nothing’s actually hurt us.” The word ‘yet’ caught on his tongue and he wondered if he really believed that was a possibility. Now that they were locked back inside their house, running from a man that had done nothing but grin at them seemed a little insane, but the threat had felt so real in the moment. He knew it was the right thing to do and he was sure that instinct had kept them alive. But nothing had actually happened. It felt foolish to ruin all they’d built here over a ghost, something he wasn’t even sure he believed in.
Wes didn’t really believe in ghosts either, he just didn’t know what else to call it. A demon? He wasn’t a religious man, never had been, and he’d usually just been amused by stuff meant to scare him. He’d never run from something like this, that was for sure. At least not since he’d been a child. Wes took a purposefully deep breath and scrubbed his palms against his jeans. If it had just been him in this place, he might have been gone already, but Rory was with him, and he needed to protect both of them, right? Right. It was motivation. “Yeah ... yeah, we can handle it,” he murmured, glancing between his boyfriend and the closed window. He could handle it for Rory. And if they needed to book it out of town eventually? They would go together. It just didn’t have to be tonight.
Rory didn’t know if he was trying to convince Wes or vice versa; he just knew that leaving town because they saw a scary dude grin at them seemed silly, no matter how terrifying it had been in the moment. Building a life up from scratch had been difficult and he didn’t want to do it again just because they’d been spooked. He told himself they could handle it, that no one had actually gotten hurt, but if it happened again he’d have a harder time ignoring his instincts. “Let’s… um… wanna watch tv?” He was too wound up to even consider sleep, but wasn’t sure if putting something on the tv would help. A part of him wanted to be able to hear if anything even got close to the house, but that was the paranoia talking. They had no reason to believe that thing knew where they lived. If it did, they’d leave tonight and ask questions later.
It did seem silly and stupid, but Wes was still having trouble shaking that deep fear the bowler hat asshole had created in him. It was something he would’ve rolled his eyes at if it had been on a show or in a movie, but fuck ... being in the crosshairs of that smile was something else. And that’s what it had felt like -- a weapon aimed right at them. He imagined the tall man-thing downstairs, standing at one of the windows and just waiting for them to peek, and he suppressed a shudder. “Yeah, sure, just ... low volume,” Wes muttered. He went to unlace one of his boots and then stopped, not sure how undressed he wanted to get. After another moment’s consideration, Wes jerked the laces loose and kicked the boot off. He would keep pants on, but he would never relax unless he took his shoes off.
“Yeah… yeah, of course,” Rory nodded. “We can even put it on mute. I’m just… not tired.” He wanted to try and relax, but was torn on how to actually go about that. Having a couple of drinks would do the trick, but he wanted to stay on his guard in case anything happened. The whole thing left him frustrated, scared, and pissed off. This was supposed to be their night out, a chance to hang out and have fun. It was the closest they got to going on a date and some asshole monster had to go ruin it for them. Rory huffed in annoyance, then sat down beside Wes and began to tug his shoes off. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go, but wasn’t that always the way with them? He should be used to it by now, but he’d liked feeling normal for once, even if it was a bit more low key than usual. This wasn’t the kind of excitement he’d been craving.
Wes wasn’t tired either and even with bare feet he wasn’t sure he would truly relax for a while, but it was a step in the right direction. This definitely hadn’t been how he’d wanted the evening to go either. They were supposed to have some fun out in public, then come home and have even more fun with each other. It was all unsettling and disappointing and he wasn’t sure how to balance feeling safe with fixing it. Once Rory had his shoes off, Wes slipped both arms around his shoulders to pull him into a hug. “Sorry our night got fucked,” he murmured before pressing his lips against the side of Rory’s head. Wes knew it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t been the only one freaking out, but still. It sucked.
Rory leaned into Wes’s hold and shut his eyes, breathing in his scent and basking in his stillness. The fear still lingered, but the need to panic was gone. He just needed to relax and try to let it go. “Not your fault,” he said, still curled against Wes. If he just stayed like this, maybe everything would be okay. They’d laugh about it in the morning, how foolish they’d been, running from ghosts. He hoped it was that simple, that this was just an overreaction on their part, that they’d had more to drink than they realized, but he suspected it was far worse—that they were ignoring the danger for their own comfort. He just hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite them later.