RORY (betmylife) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2022-08-19 19:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | #july 2018, rory, rory x wes, wes |
Who: Rory and Wes
Where: Their house on Ludlow
When: Late night, Monday, July 2
Status: Status
The house was cold. Colder than it should be, especially for the summer. That was Rory’s first thought when he opened his eyes. He reached for Wes and found the bed empty, not even a touch of warmth on the sheets. Rory frowned and sat up, shivering as the covers fell to his waist. “Babe?” he called out before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and pulling on his boxers. Downstairs, a door opened and closed. Maybe Wes had woken up and gotten hungry? Rory headed towards the stairs, a sense of wrong filling his lungs with every breath. “Babe?” he said again, this time louder, frost hanging in the air when he spoke.
As soon as he stepped out of the bedroom, the door slammed shut behind him. Rory turned, trying to open it, but found it locked. Before him, the hallway stretched unnaturally, looking far longer than was ever possible. He swallowed the knot that had formed in his throat as he stepped forward, inching towards the stairs, and his foot came back wet. Another step and the liquid, dark and murky, squished over his toes. Rory started moving faster, hurrying towards the stairs that seemed a mile away. He was out of breath by the time he reached them, his legs burning, his feet wet, and the first step onto them sent him tumbling forward.
He fell for what seemed like forever, the impact of the stairs hitting his shins, shoulders, every bit of his body, but the worst was his head. Rory brought his arms up to protect himself and groaned when he finally came to a stop, pain pulsing from every limb. Had he broken anything? Could he even move? He was surprised to see he could and pulled himself onto his hands and knees. Footsteps moved closer, loud and certain in the silence of the night. Rory looked up to see a silhouette in the doorway, backlit by the night sky–a man, too tall, too slim to be Wes, and on his head a bowler hat. “No,” Rory gasped, trying to back away, to crawl or run, escape. The stairs behind him became a slide, proving impossible to climb as the Dark Man loomed closer.
“Wes!” Rory shouted, panic rising as he failed to get away. “Wes!” He wasn’t even sure if he was asking for help or issuing a warning, the fear too overwhelming to focus his thoughts. He tried to run but he kept slipping, the dark liquid from the floor above now visibly red on the floor. Precious seconds slipped by and the Dark Man was on him, grabbing him by the hair–
Rory woke, screaming in fear, thrashing in an attempt to get away. The Dark Man was gone, only a dream, but his feet were wet and his body ached, bruises already forming on his skin.
Beside him, Wes’s body gave a hard jerk and he did some thrashing of his own before he got himself upright and started coughing. Well, his body attempted to cough, anyway. Wes wheezed thinly, his core heaving with effort until he leaned forward and coughed out a small flood of water. His skin felt cold and clammy and soaked, and he started shivering as he puke-coughed, his lungs fighting for the air they had been denied.
He’d been small, too small for logic, and Rory had been small too. The bowler hat man had chased them through all kinds of terrain, woods and field and a residential neighborhood where all the houses were set dressing, flat plywood fronts with nowhere to hide. Wes had run until he felt like his heart was going to explode in his chest, clutching Rory as tight as he could, but the Dark Man had caught up to them eventually with his huge long stride. He’d plucked them up and stuffed them in a sack cloth like unwanted kittens.
When they’d plunged into the cold water, Wes knew it was over. He’d cried and yelled and fought, able to feel Rory thrashing and fighting just as hard beside him as the black pressure closed around them and stole their breath and his insides turned icy.
But now he was awake, purging the dark water and getting air again and he was bruised and sore and freezing and confused.
Rory frantically reached for his hair, trying to untangle it from fingers that were no longer there. He watched with wide eyes and Wes leaned over the side of the bed and vomited up more water than seemed possible, then heaved for air. Their room seemed empty, but he reached for the light anyways, needing to confirm they were alone before anything else. Seemingly safe, he reached for Wes. “Are you okay? I thought he got you, I couldn’t find you, oh fuck, what happened?” he asked, trying to do an assessment, to understand what had just transpired. It was just a dream, but it wasn’t. There was still blood on his feet from where he’d walked through the damp carpet and scratches on his scalp that burned like the devil.
Wes’s mind was a jumble, part of it still locked in that horrible nightmare, drowning in a sack next to Rory. But he was getting air again, though he was still coughing, and the surface under him was actually a surface and not just black water. He heard Rory’s voice and tried to mentally cling to it to calm his system down, one hand groping blindly until it locked around Rory’s forearm to cling tight. Wes sat up again with great effort, his throat still feeling too tight as he pulled in air. He looked around with wide eyes, his body still shivering. It was like someone had dumped a bucket of water on him. “What the fuck,” he panted. “I was -- ohfuck, Ror --” Wes couldn’t really form the words, but he’d just spotted Rory’s bloody feet and the mess they’d left on the sheets, and he pointed with his free hand.
“It’s not my blood,” Rory murmured. Fear crept up Rory’s spine as he looked at his feet, trying to understand how the blood could be there if it was only a dream. The only thing that made sense was that some part of it had been real, and so he reached for his gun, suddenly desperate to ensure that the room was clear. He checked the closet and the bathroom first, quick and easy considering they weren’t very big to begin with, but hesitated before opening the bedroom door. Throwing it open, he looked down at the carpet, relieved to find it a dull beige, though the memory of walking through it, blood seeping between his toes, remained. “What the fuck just happened?” he asked, looking back at Wes, his gun slowly lowering to his side.
He felt stupidly helpless as he watched Rory get up, his lungs still burning and his limbs feeling weak from all of the struggle against drowning. It was dark in the room so he couldn’t see Rory’s injuries yet, but all that dark blood on his feet had shaken Wes. He’d made it to sitting on the edge of the bed when Rory looked back, and he shook his head to the question, just as baffled. “It was a dream, I -- ... we were drowning. In a bag, like, like a giant pillowcase. Like people do with kittens. It was the guy, the thing, with the hat? Remember?” he rasped out, his throat raw. Wes stood up, but it immediately made him dizzy, so he sat back down. Fear and frustration rose in him in equal measures. “Should we check downstairs?”
For some reason, Rory expected Wes’s dream to be some variation of his own, but that would have seated some part of the dream in reality. It would have put the man with the bowler hat in their house, so even if it didn’t make sense, Rory knew having different dreams was probably a good thing. “I dunno,” he said, looking again towards the door. “He was here, in my dream. The guy with the hat. There was blood on the carpet. I fell down the stairs and he grabbed me by the hair.” His head still hurt and he swore he could feel bruises forming from the fall. “I don’t really want to go check,” he admitted with a frown. The fear was still so real, running through his veins and telling him to get as far away from that man as possible. If he was downstairs, Rory wanted to stay upstairs. Rory slowly shut the door and locked it, then returned to Wes, setting his gun on the nightstand. “Are you okay?”
If Wes didn’t feel so spent and shaky, he probably would have gone to do the checking himself, but he was no match for anything at the moment, not even the stairs. He didn’t blame Rory for not wanting to go down there either, and Wes was grateful when he came close enough to reach. “Yeah,” he whispered, nodding as he took Rory’s hand to pull him down to sit next to him. He didn’t quite feel okay, but he was catching his breath and nothing felt actually injured, just sore from all the coughing. It had shaken him, however, and he twisted a bit to cling to Rory. “Are you?” Wes murmured. It really clicked that Rory said he’d fallen down the stairs, and Wes pulled back enough to look him over, frowning with concern. “Did you break anything?”
They’d been through a lot together over the past six or seven months, but Rory didn’t recall ever seeing Wes this sick and shaken. He kept thinking about how much water he’d vomited up and wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t woken up. Would Rory have been able to wake him? Would he have drowned in their bed while Rory struggled to get out of the Dark Man’s grasp? They were horrible possibilities that he hadn’t even considered possible and it made him cling back to Wes in return. He’d thought they were moderately safe when they went to sleep and now he knew that was just an illusion. “My ankle’s killing me, but otherwise just… bruised up,” he said with a frown. “Lucky, I guess.”
The idea that any of this could be lucky was pretty laughable, but Wes didn’t feel like laughing. He was having similar thoughts -- what if he hadn’t woken up in time? That had been real water coming out of him, even though that was impossible. Wes wasn’t sure that word even meant anything anymore, too many impossible things kept happening to them. He nodded a bit, glad that Rory’s injuries hadn’t been any worse, but even a sprained ankle could be bad for them in their current situation. They needed to be able to get away from all the people who meant them harm. “Need to go to Mercy for it?” he asked, his eyes coming up from Rory’s ankle to his face, dark with concern. “Or, or wrap it up or something, you think?”
“No, no hospitals,” Rory said quickly, instinct that came from growing up a child of the mob. He was used to grinning and bearing far worse than a sprained ankle, though he did realize that being on the run with one could prove difficult. He didn’t like the idea of going anywhere that wanted to see proof of identification, even if what they usually provided was fake. It was one more record they didn’t need. “I’m okay. I’ll wrap it. Ice it. If it’s not broken, Doctor Google is good enough for me.” If it didn’t heal in a couple days, then he’d consider doing more. Rory took a deep breath, eyes searching the room before settling back on Wes. “Fuck. I don’t know what to do about this. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep.”
Wes felt kind of fretty, like maybe Rory should go get checked out, but he knew hospitals were risky for them. He’d been able to get up and walk on it, which was more than Wes had been able to do so far, so maybe he was okay. A wave of uncomfortable helplessness rolled through him as he glanced around the room as well. How did you defend against something that could come for you in your sleep? “I don’t know either,” he murmured. His body felt exhausted and like it wanted to go right back to sleep, but Wes’s mind disagreed. Which probably meant that he should move around a bit and wake the rest of him up. He had a mess to clean off the side of the bed, and his mouth tasted like garbage. “I’m gonna get some towels,” he added as he moved to stand. His body still felt shaky, but his knees didn’t buckle as he shuffled toward their bathroom.
Rory had the feeling he’d be better able to assess his injuries in the morning, after the adrenaline had a chance to wear off. At the moment, he’d push through any amount of pain to ensure that they were safe. His fight or flight instinct didn’t know what to do in a situation like this—he was sure they couldn’t fight that thing, but could you run from something that could chase you down in your dreams? Rory forced himself to focus on Wes, unable to answer the questions his mind posed. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he watched in concern as Wes rose from the bed. He wanted to stop him, take care of him even, but he was suddenly aware of the mess on his feet and the tracks he’d left all over the room. “Could you bring me one too?”
He wanted to snap that no he wasn’t okay, he’d just almost drowned in his sleep, neither of them were okay, but Wes knew that wasn’t helpful. His breaths were coming easier now, more or less back to normal, but he still felt shaken and afraid and Wes hated that feeling. He had no idea how to defend against what had just happened. “Yeah, m’fine,” he answered Rory, because there wasn’t much else he could say. Rory couldn’t fix it any more than he could. Wes grabbed a few towels and the first aid kit out of the bathroom closet, only giving himself a quick glance in the mirror -- unsurprisingly, he didn’t look good -- before he returned to his man. “Here,” he said quietly, handing a towel and the kit to Rory so he could patch up his feet. Wes got on his knees on the floor to start cleaning up his own mess.
Rory sometimes felt he could talk himself out of any situation. In the few instances where that hadn’t worked, he’d run away, with the most epic time being when he went on the run with Wes. Now he found himself in a situation that words didn’t seem to help, with a monster that didn’t care what he said and he couldn’t run from. He was defenseless and, worse, he couldn’t even protect Wes. Not even leaving would help—not that he’d consider it, but it still ran through his brain. He’d never felt more like a couple of sitting ducks until now, not even when Dean had called him out at the carnival. He quietly wiped off his feet and decided to ignore the already ruined sheets for now. They didn’t have spares, so he’d just have to wash them in the morning. It left him with nothing to do but wait for Wes, unsure how to comfort him. He felt like they both needed it, but in his exhaustion a solution didn’t come to mind. They were fucked.
At least the liquid that had hit the carpet off the side of the bed was mostly water with only a little puke mixed in. Wes was glad they’d had dinner hours before they went to bed. As he scrubbed the wet spot, he tried to think of something they could do too. How did you run from something that could haunt your dreams? Would it go with them if they left Point Pleasant, or was it tied to this place? Wes had never been through anything like the shit they’d been through since they’d gotten here, and somehow the idea of running away was still unappealing. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense, but it was what it was. Wes got the mess as clean as he could manage, then tossed the towels into the laundry basket to be dealt with later. That done, he went to sit on the bed next to Rory, and took his hand. “Should we make some coffee?” he murmured after another moment of silence. “Put something loud on TV to keep us awake?”
Rory took a deep breath, then sighed heavily as he exhaled, nodding his agreement. Going back to sleep tonight didn’t seem like a good idea, even if he could manage it. He didn’t think he could, but he didn’t want to risk it either. Coffee, company, and a distraction should keep him up until dawn. He might be a zombie at work in the morning, but he didn’t think anyone would care or notice. It wouldn’t even surprise him if this happened to other people at this point. This town seemed hard to leave now that they’d settled there and Rory vaguely wondered if everyone else felt the same. “Yeah,” he said, pulling himself out of bed. He looked at the gun next to the bed, then picked it up again before letting Wes pull him towards the door. “I think it’s gonna be a long night.”