Who: Spence and Roxy When: late night, Monday, July 2 Where: Spence’s house Status: Complete
The nightmare started out confused and jumbled, with Roxy being chased through a huge hedge maze that became an office building that became a stone labyrinth like that old movie. She wasn’t even sure what was behind her, only that it would kill her in horrible ways if she let it catch up. At one point she physically ran into Caden and begged him for help, only for him to disappear through a door that led nowhere when she opened it herself.
When the thing pursuing her finally closed in, she recognized it -- bowler hat, huge pointed-teeth smile -- but couldn’t place from where. It didn’t matter, because it was going to kill her and eat her and somehow make her keep suffering after that, she just knew it. Roxy screamed with all the power in her lungs and tried to run again, but her legs suddenly weighed a thousand pounds a piece. The dark man reached for her --
The sudden pain in Roxy’s arm jolted her awake. She sat up with a heaving gasp and scrambled back toward the headboard, still disoriented and terrified. The skin of her forearm burned and stung and when Roxy clutched at it with her other hand, she felt slick blood on her skin.
Spence hadn't been a deep sleeper since his days in the army, so he was awake almost as soon as Roxy was, her gasp and flailing startling him into a sitting position. For one, terrifying moment, he was sure he had hurt her somehow, maybe from a nightmare of his own and when he saw the blood on her arm, Spence was almost positive it was because of him. "Shit," he breathed, his heart pounding as he reached over to fumble with the lamp beside the bed. Once he was able to turn it on, he faced Roxy, reaching carefully for her arm. "What happened? Did I... shit, hold on, let me get you a towel." He started pushing the blankets from his body. "Are you okay?"
It took Roxy’s brain a couple of extra seconds to catch up to the fact that she was in Spence’s bed, in his house, and not alone. The presence of someone so close to her gave her another jolt. She squinted against the sudden light, her eyes watering with pain and confused fear, but she at least started to recognize her surroundings. This was the real world, she was safe, and Spence was there. Roxy looked down at her arm as she pulled her hand away so they could both see what it was -- four deep scratches in her right forearm, all parallel like they’d come from some giant cat ... or a person with sharp nails. They were bleeding pretty good, and Roxy hurried to put pressure on them again, looking up at Spence with wide wet eyes. “I don’t know, it -- I was -- it was a dream,” she tried to badly explain.
A dream. Spence still assumed it had been his dream, because he'd had violent ones before. His meds usually helped, but maybe his dosage was off. Trying to stay calm despite his inner turmoil, Spence hurried from the bed to rush into the bathroom where he grabbed a towel. She was bleeding. Had he hurt her that badly? His fingers didn't have any blood on them. Now wasn't really the time to try and think through what had happened. He just wanted to help her.
Returning to the bedroom, he sat back down on the bed to wrap the towel around her arm, at least to stop the bleeding. She might need stitches, which meant a trip to the hospital. "I'm so sorry," he breathed, looking up at her face. "We'll get it cleaned up and bandaged. I don't know how I did this."
In the brief moments Spence was gone, Roxy looked down and saw that she’d bled on his sheets. For some dumb reason that was more upsetting than her injury, and tears started to flow faster out of her eyes. She was so grateful when he came back with a towel, and she let him wrap her up. Spence’s words confused her for a moment, and it showed on her face before she frowned. “What? No, it wasn’t -- it wasn’t you, Spence,” she said. Roxy took hold of one of Spence’s wrists to pull his hand up to look at his fingernails. They were cut short and blunt on both hands, and free of blood. Had she scratched herself? Roxy had nicked herself on her nails before, but this was far more than a nick. She’d gotten blood on her left hand already, so it was hard to tell. “I was having this awful dream,” she told him, her brow furrowed. “It was this ... this man, but like a nightmare man, and he grabbed me, he grabbed my arm.”
It wasn't him? Spence frowned and nearly protested. But she was right. His nails were clean, but for the blood he'd gotten on his hands from her arm as he got it wrapped up. They would need to clean it and bandage it properly, but he wanted the blood to slow a bit first. He still thought maybe she would need stitches. Spence focused on what she was saying and his frown deepened. "He grabbed your arm in the dream?" he asked dumbly, his gaze shifting back to the towel wrapped around her arm. "Do you think... did you scratch yourself, maybe in your dream you were trying to get him off of you?"
Roxy’s instinct was to say no, it had been the man, but ... that didn’t make any sense, did it? They were obviously alone in Spence’s bedroom, he hadn’t woken up to any intrusions or anything. And things that happened in dreams just stayed in dreams, right? “I ... I guess I must have,” she murmured, still looking dismayed and confused. She had the craziest urge to call Gavin Lucas, since he’d been with her when she’d seen -- Roxy sat up straighter, looking at Spence with more urgency as the memory came back. “I’ve seen him before,” she said, gripping Spence’s forearm with her good hand. “Outside of a dream, in the real world -- Gavin saw it too. And he’s not -- it doesn’t look like a real person, Spence. Like something out of a horror movie with these huge teeth and he’s too ... too long.” She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to put a cork in it.
Spence had grown up in Point Pleasant so of course he'd heard stories. He would be stupid not to believe some of them. Brows furrowed, he studied her face and recognized genuine fear. He knew Roxy wouldn't lie about something like this. Gavin Lucas was known in town for being a drunk, or at least a semi-functioning alcoholic, so he wasn't sure if he'd take that guy's word for it. But Roxy... he believed her. "Okay," he said slowly, taking her hand from his forearm to bring it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles gently. "So you've seen this... not-person... before? In town? Do you remember where?"
So many terrible things had happened since January, maybe it wasn’t surprising that the incident had drifted to the back of Roxy’s mind, but now she recalled it all too clearly. “It was out behind the bar,” Roxy told Spence, squeezing his fingers just a bit. “I was just getting there for my shift and Gavin was leaving ... he was down on his knees, at first I thought he was having a heart attack. But then I saw this ... thing, just standing there and grinning at us. It was creepy as fuck, it just made me want to run. Gavin started shooting at it. I was there one second and gone the next, and the cops showed up like ten seconds later and arrested Gavin.” Roxy knew it sounded like a crazy, unprovable story, and it was, but she knew what she saw, and that thing had just been in her dream.
Spence had heard through the grapevine about Gavin Lucas firing a gun behind the bar, but he hadn't really known the context. It hadn't surprised him, considering the reputation the Lucas family had. Licking his lips, he glanced back over her arm to make sure the blood wasn't seeping through the towel. "Okay, so you've seen this guy from your dreams. This man... thing," he corrected quickly. "And he did this to you in your dream, but... you woke up bleeding." It was hard to fathom but he knew what this town was capable of. "That's really crazy, Roxy. Not y-you being crazy, just... dangerously crazy." Spence exhaled slowly. "We need to get your arm cleaned up and bandaged."
It was pretty crazy, but in the grand scheme of crazy shit Roxy had been witness to? It didn’t feel so extreme. Maybe Spence was sort of lucky that he didn’t automatically believe the connection, it meant that most of his trauma wasn’t supernatural. Roxy sighed herself and glanced down at her arm, then nodded as she started to untangle herself from the covers. “I’ve seen stranger shit, believe me,” she murmured. She could only hope that it didn’t really mean anything, it was a one-off sort of nightmare, and that it wouldn’t happen again. Roxy felt antsy and unsettled as she climbed out of bed to walk to the bathroom with Spence. Ugh, she hoped she didn’t need stitches, but her arm was stinging and burning pretty bad.
"That doesn't make me feel any better," Spence said dryly as he slipped an arm around her waist to help her, in case the blood made her feel woozy or something. He knew shit in Point Pleasant was crazy and dangerous, but he had always compartmentalized it. Now that he knew Roxy could be in danger, it scared him. Inside the bathroom, he began to pull the towel from her arm. "This has never happened before, right? You've never had dreams of something in town that... hurt you while you were sleeping?" How had that even happened? Had that thing been in their room? Spence felt a bit helpless, and he hated that feeling, especially with Roxy bleeding and hurt in front of him. What if it had been worse?
Roxy hissed in a breath through her teeth as Spence peeled the towel away from her injuries and the sticky blood there. At least the bleeding seemed to have slowed down and almost stopped. She made a little room on the counter with her free hand, then boosted herself up to sit on it so Spence could clean her up, still just in her panties. The cool vinyl under her ass and thighs was kind of grounding. “No, this is new,” Roxy murmured, glancing between her bloody arm and Spence’s face. “And I don’t -- I mean ... maybe I did it to myself in my sleep.” She sounded doubtful as she examined the nails on her left hand again. She liked her manicure rounded or squared, so it wasn’t like she had claws to really dig in, but maybe the sides were sharp? Roxy didn’t know. “But it just ... doesn’t feel like it. I’m just glad I woke up when I did.” And she was glad that Spence was there, God only knew how much of a comfort or help Caden would’ve been. Not much, she had to assume.
"If you had done this to yourself, you would have blood, and probably skin, under your fingernails," Spence pointed out. He turned on the water to get it warm enough to comfortably clean the blood from her arm and bent down to grab a washcloth from beneath the sink. "And I didn't do it either. So that tells me it had to have come from someone else. Something else. And that worries me." Spence got the cloth wet and turned off the water before looking at Roxy. "You said Gavin saw the guy too, right? Shot at him? I think... would you call him tomorrow, or I guess later today... ask him if he had the same kind of dream? Maybe it's connected."
That thought hadn’t occurred to her yet, and Roxy’s first gut feeling was aversion at the idea of calling Gavin for anything. He was much more likely to hate her on Caden’s behalf than Aaron was, for obvious reasons, and he’d probably deleted her number and everything already. It was a good thought though, if they wanted to try to figure any of this out. At the moment, Roxy kind of didn’t, she just wanted to go back to sleep in Spence’s arms and forget about the whole thing, but she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. It scared her too. “I can try, yeah,” she answered while Spence washed the blood off of her. His hands were so gentle with her, it made her feel kind of emotional. “I dunno if he’ll answer or talk to me, I’m probably like ... Lucas Enemy Number One. But I can try.”
Spence shrugged softly. "If he doesn't answer, text him what happened. Maybe if he sees it's important, he'll respond." He supposed he understood sibling loyalty. Spence would do anything for Greg, obviously, but when it came to something like this? He would put his personal feelings aside to help. Hopefully Gavin Lucas thought the same way. Grimacing a little as the wounds came into clearer view, Spence wondered if a bandage would be enough. "You may need stitches," he said apologetically. "I can try and bandage it up for the night and see how it is in the morning, but these scratches look pretty deep, Rox."
She supposed that was a reasonable option for handling Gavin. And if he didn’t want to talk to her about any of it? So be it. At least she would have made the effort. She pulled a face when Spence mentioned stitches, then nodded to his suggestion. “Yeah, just ... do that and we’ll look again in the morning,” she mumbled unhappily. “I really don’t want to be in the ER tonight.” If she ended up with some gnarly scars on her arm, then so be it. Roxy didn’t want to spend hours at Mercy that night, waiting for someone to stitch her up. They hurt, burning brighter while Spence cleaned and flushed them out, but Roxy could tolerate it so far, and the bleeding seemed to be slowing down.
Spence debated arguing, because her arm did look pretty bad and he had the completely irrational fear that she could bleed out in the middle of the night. But they were just deep scratches and the blood had already slowed. So he got to work getting them cleaned up, placing some proper bandages over the area. He still wanted someone to look at them, to make sure they didn't get infected, but it was late and she looked exhausted, so he supposed it could wait until morning. Still, what did it mean? When he finished, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Go lay down. I'll get you some water and tylenol."
Feeling worn out and kind of pouty about all of this, Roxy nodded slightly. The pressure from the bandage Spence had wrapped around her arm made it feel better, and she didn’t feel like she was going to bleed out, so she was eager to get back to bed. Before he could get too far away, she wrapped her arms around him to hug him tightly, kissed his collarbone, then let him go so she could slip off of the counter. Roxy shuffled back to Spence’s bed -- their bed, it was starting to feel like -- and eyed the bloody spots on the sheets. Most of it was on the top sheet, so Roxy tugged that one off of the bed, then pulled the comforter back into place. By the time Spence returned she was under it, sitting propped up against the headboard. “I bled on your sheets, sorry,” she told him with a little nose wrinkle.
Spence made quick work of getting a glass of ice water and some tylenol for Roxy. He carried them to the bed, handing them over carefully. "Sheets can be cleaned. They can also be replaced," Spence said dismissively before offering a faint smile. He knew how difficult it could be to get blood stains out of fabric if not treated right away. "Don't worry about it. That's the least of my worries right now." He slipped into bed beside her, waiting until she took the tylenol and put the glass aside before he slipped an arm around her to gently pull her in close. "We're going to figure this out and make sure it d-doesn't happen again."
Roxy murmured her gratitude before she tossed the pills back and swallowed them down. Hopefully they would help and she would be able to get back to sleep. Spence’s warm body pressed against hers was certainly soothing, and Roxy didn’t hesitate to cuddle in. His optimism about figuring it out made her smile faintly. In this town shit just happened without any real explanation, much less a clear strategy to stay safe in the future, and she thought this was probably one of those things. “I hope you’re right,” she murmured, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “So many things have happened that I’ve never figured out.”
"That seems to be par for the course here," Spence said before reaching over to switch off the lamp. "But that doesn't mean we can't try. I don't want this to happen again." He had no real power or it, since it was something beyond his comprehension, but he could sure as hell try. Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, Spence hoped the pain wouldn't be too bad for her tonight. "Wake me up if anything else happens, okay? Even if you need more pain meds, I'll get them for you." His house was safe but Spence felt weirdly protective, not wanting her to wander around the house in the middle of the night by herself.
Roxy considered telling him about some of the stuff she’d witnessed as a semi-part of the Lucas family -- Amelia disappearing and then reappearing ten years older, everything that had happened with Jasper ... well, not everything, but there was plenty to tell beyond Joseph’s murder. As many bad feelings as she had about Caden, she didn’t want to make trouble for the kid who would’ve been her nephew. He had enough problems. Roxy tried to just let it all go and relax into Spence, ignoring the burning pain in her arm as best she could until the painkillers kicked in. She shifted enough to find his lips with her own for a few soft kisses, gratitude and a strong sense of finally swelling in her chest. Finally someone wanted to take care of her, give her comfort, and protect her without being an asshole about it. “Thank you, Spence,” she whispered close to his mouth.
Spence stroked her shoulder with his fingers, well aware that it might be a bit difficult to sleep tonight, aware that Roxy could have another nightmare and wake up with worse injuries. Would he see it if it happened? The thought was terrifying. But he didn't want to show his fear in front of her. She was the one who had lived it tonight. When she thanked him, Spence lifted a brow. "You don't have to thank me. I just want you to be okay." He was there to take care of her, and Spence knew she would have done the same for him, if their roles had been reversed.
She just smiled faintly. He didn’t have to understand her gratitude for something that seemed like such a given to him. Roxy was actually kind of glad he didn’t get it. She kissed the tip of his nose before she relaxed again, settling her cheek against his shoulder. She didn’t know how long it would take her to get back to sleep, or what her dreams would be like. The thought had occurred to her that it could happen again and she could end up waking up to something worse, but any anxiety she felt about it was oddly dull. She was comfortable and safe and feeling loved at the moment, and tiredness was pulling at her.