Who: Max & Ty Where: Vet's clinic When: Thursday afternoon 7/5 Status: complete
Point Pleasant was not a big town so it shouldn't really come as a surprise when everything ended up connected and yet Max was a little bit amused by it. He'd been semi-stalking Marshall Nolan since he and Greer saved his life at the carnival. Nothing creepy, he just wanted to keep tabs on him, see if there would be some twist of fate that killed him later or if Greer had really changed the current with her gift. Because that was what it was starting to feel like the longer Nolan drew breath, even if it had only been a week. Max kept imagining he'd get hit by a falling piano or struck by a truck or something dramatic enough that it was clear that the universe had wanted him dead, but he was just living his life, working as a vet and apparently dating Sage Monroe. That was the first amusing connection because Sage had been stuck with Max on the other side and then there was Ty Solomon, former deputy, now a ... vet's assistant. Nolan's assistant. It was hard not to wonder if there was some cosmic reason why the man saved by Greer's gift was suddenly so linked to two other people who'd been affected by the fog but Max was pretty sure it was just a small town thing.
He was beginning to understand his own thing a little better and for the most part he avoided it. At least it was easy to do, he could see the change in his surroundings very clearly. A corner of a house covered in flowers that weren't supposed to be there, a hole in the wall that he knew for sure wasn't there. He kept wondering if those small spaces would grow larger, if there were areas he couldn't tell were different dimensions because they looked the same. It was paranoid thinking that he couldn't afford; his anxiety and depression were already nipping at his heels and he really did not need more shit to worry about. It still lurked in the back of his mind and the only place he really felt safe was home where nothing ever shifted, probably because the O'Reilly power was too strong, layers upon layers of generational magic protecting their land.
He busied himself with other things, like getting a new bike soon now that he could afford it thanks to his wild escapades with Aidan and Aya. Money was easy when living with a teleporter and he had enough cash to go get himself the bike he'd been so sorely missing for years. It might not be his old bike, but he could make it his own. Knowing this was coming up had him in a better mood than usual and he figured he should go into town, get himself a beer and maybe go hang out with Greer and her men. Or check up on Nolan and his men. He was curious about what was going on with the others and he didn't know if Greer had reached out to Ty and Sage yet. Stopping by the vet clinic after closing seemed like a good way to catch one of them and he parked out front and waited, well aware that Ty was in there and probably aware of him too.
Ty was finishing up a couple of things on the front desk computer when he became aware that one of the others was nearby. By the time his head lifted, he knew it was Max O’Reilly. Ty looked over toward the window -- he’d shut the blinds earlier when appointment time was over and he’d locked the front door, but he could still almost see Max out there, sitting in a truck and waiting. Had he known Max had a truck already? It was hard to tell what was real prescience and what was just his subconscious. Ty was pretty sure Max was waiting for him, though he didn’t know how he knew that. It was so weird, this crazy sense of intimacy with people he barely knew. Curious about how much Max could pick up from him, Ty tried to project that he would be coming soon.
He hurried to finish up what he was doing, then shut everything down and grabbed his stuff. Ty was a little excited by the time he walked outside and locked up behind him. He didn’t know what Max was there for, but he felt sure it had something to do with their new powers. Ty had wanted to talk to everyone anyway, and it was so much easier when they came to him. He walked across the parking lot toward Max’s truck, eager to hear what he had to say.
Max busied himself singing along to Queens of the Stone Age and practicing his drumming on the steering wheel but he didn't really need to pay close attention to see when Ty was coming. He knew as soon as he left the clinic and he lowered the volume once he got closer, rolling down the window. "Man, you look so much better now that you're not a cop," he said with a lazy grin and while it was a bit of a jab, he did mean it. Uniform fetishes were all well and good and sure, he had fucked a deputy recently, but on a base level he did not like the police one bit. He was just willing to make exceptions. The fact that Ty wasn't with the PPPD anymore made him more approachable and Max was curious about Nolan so for the first time since they got back it made sense to be here. "How are you holding up?" he asked and immediately realized how sick he was of the question so he winced and scrunched up his face. "Scratch that, you look like you're holding up real well, I heard you got married and everything. Congrats, man."
With Max’s easy going demeanor, Ty wasn’t sure if that was a friendly jab or a flirt, but it made him smile either way. “It’s the beard, isn’t it?” he suggested, reaching up to scratch his fingers in it a bit. His facial hair was definitely much cleaner and more groomed than it had been Over There, and everyone kept telling him it looked good on him. He chuckled over Max correcting himself, a bit relieved to hear he looked like he was holding everything together. He felt like he was for the most part, but he didn’t think any of them were doing really well. “Yeah, I got married, spent some time outta state, we turned our honeymoon into a road trip. Looking into buying a house soon. So all that’s good ... but y’know. Still get nightmares and shit like that.” Ty paused and cocked a brow at Max. “How about you? How’s it going?”
"Still get nightmares and shit like that," Max echoed with a slow nod. "Don't think that's gonna change for a while, but yeah, I'm good." He wasn't, not really, but he was better and that counted for something. He leaned his arm on the car door, getting a little closer to Ty without getting out. They could talk like this, it'd probably just feel a little awkward to offer him to sit inside. "So we're all dealing with some weird aftermath right now, Greer told me yours, you know hers, I'm apparently dimension hopping or some shit... You got any interesting theories about what's going on?" He didn't think so, they were all in the dark here but Ty had been a cop and he had a pretty good head on his shoulders, probably more so than the rest of them. If anyone had even a clue, it'd probably be him.
‘Good’ might have been a stretch, but Ty understood. He got the sense sometimes that if he just kept saying and thinking he was okay, he would be that eventually. He wasn’t terribly surprised to hear that Greer had already talked to Max and told him about her conversation with Ty -- they’d always seemed close Over There, at least closer than most everyone else was to each other. “No idea yet,” he admitted ruefully. “Still trying to find a pattern. I’m getting medical tests and shit run to assure my husband I don’t have a brain tumor or something. I know it’s not that, especially after talking to some folks ... Vex has more control over his visions now, he can make them happen and he sees more. The werewolf can control his shifting. Sage can turn invisible. Yours ...? What do you mean by dimension hopping?”
Max kind of wanted to be dramatic about it and describe what he was seeing at the moment, but the street looked pretty mundane and if there were any dimensions mixing together here, he couldn't tell. "It's hard to explain," he said as he scanned the nearby houses. "Took me a while to figure out what was going on. I see, uh, glitches. If there was one nearby right now I could walk into it and disappear because technically I'd be somewhere else? It's fucking weird, doesn't make it very tempting to leave the house in general, in case I get stuck somewhere again." He spoke of it like it wasn't really a big deal, even huffed softly in amusement, but it was terrifying to think about and he tried not to linger on it. "Why am I not surprised to hear Vex has visions? That guy is a loon." And Sage could turn invisible, that sounded way more useful than most of the others.
“Yeah ... apparently he’s always had them, they’re just better now,” he murmured as he digested the rest of it. A puzzled little frown crossed Ty’s face while he tried to wrap his head around Max’s explanation. It did sound hard to explain and understand without seeing it happen, he supposed. His mind just immediately jumped to the bigger implications and it gave him an uncomfortable feeling in his gut. “Glitches,” Ty echoed. “So like ... there’s weak spots between dimensions everywhere? Have any of them led you back to where we were?” The idea of just accidentally walking back into that place, through some random door or rounding some corner, was nightmarish. Could anyone go through these ‘glitches,’ or just Max? He obviously hadn’t been swallowed up permanently by some other dimension, but what if he was the only one able to come back from something like that?
A literal chill crawled up Max's back at the question and he shook his head hard. "It'd be easy to spot," he said and that was the only thing that was a comfort to him. The other place had looked completely different all over, there was no mistaking it for their own reality in any way so the odds of him stumbling into the wrong spot were low. It just made him not want to sleep anywhere but at the family estate for fear those spots might manifest around him if he was unconscious. "I would have thought I was just going crazy if my brother hadn't given me a tongue lashing for disappearing on him. So I know that when I go into those spots - I'm not actually here." He gave Ty a crooked grin. "As you can imagine, I try not to go into those spots if I can help it." He'd never actually seen them fade, they were just gone when he came back to them, but what if they did while he was in them? It wasn't something he particularly cared to explore.
That was slightly reassuring to Ty and he nodded a bit. He wanted to think that this new talent of Max’s was restricted only to his own movements, that there weren’t rips in reality everywhere that some unsuspecting person could just bumble through ... but people did disappear around here all the time. There were a depressing amount of reasons for that, why would this one be exempt? Ty lifted his arm to casually rest it on Max’s side mirror. It didn’t even cross his mind to ask to join him in the cab or invite him inside -- standing outside of a car talking to someone in the driver’s seat was such a familiar position to be in. “That’s fucking crazy, man,” Ty muttered with a faint chuckle. “But what isn’t, I guess. I don’t blame you for being a homebody if that’s what’s going on. Jared kind of wants to keep me home under lock and key, he’s worried I’m gonna break my neck and not know it or something.” He gave a wan smile -- that was an exaggeration, but he knew his man was worried about him all the time. “Is it easy to get back out, once you’ve gone through a glitch?”
"Yeah, it's just spots," Max said. "I can't even go any further in, if I move out of the spot, I'm back here. It's not like a gate. It's more like a..." He trailed off and waved his hand as he searched for a word for it. "Like being on stage and someone set up the background pieces wrong." There was an obvious advantage to it but even if Ty wasn't a cop anymore, Max wasn't sure he wanted to tell him that this meant sometimes walls weren't where they were supposed to be and that was pretty juicy for someone like him. "I guess it can come in handy if I need to disappear," he said instead, shrugging faintly. "But it seems pretty pointless and creepy either way, and it's not like they're always around so with my luck I wouldn't even find one when I actually needed it." He gave a derisive huff and glanced around at the buildings again, just in case one of those spots had appeared while they were chatting. "Enough about me though, would you even know if you got seriously hurt? I mean, can you tell something is wrong even if you can't feel pain?"
Ty wondered vaguely if it was a skill Max could learn to control better, like Sage was learning to control his invisibility. Could all of them hone their skills, or were some things just what they were and that was it? Did something out there want them to hone their skills, like they were becoming some superhero team for some giant malevolent force to mind-control again? He could only speculate, and it made him feel a little insane to think about all of it in those terms. Feeling so helpless really sucked. “Sage has been practicing and getting better at controlling his thing ... maybe eventually you’ll be able to call them up,” he suggested, just to give Max something to consider. Ty gave a little sigh at the questions, even though they were reasonable ones he would’ve asked too. “I can still feel pressure and temperature and everything else, so ... I would think I’d know, if I got some big injury. I’ve done some burn tests to see if I can judge how hot is too hot. Luckily this whole thing came with faster healing too, so I can do stuff like that without it being obvious. It’s not instant though, so I’m not like, Wolverine or something. It’s just faster than normal. Dunno if I really want to test those limits, you know?”
"Oh, Greer didn't say anything about faster healing," Max said. "That shit comes in handy. Hope for your sake it means you're immune to stuff too." Faster healing was faster healing, even if it wasn't instant and he could think of a few times he'd have welcomed that gift. He could also see how being able to summon glitches in reality could come in handy for a guy like him so he hoped Ty was right. "I'm gonna have to practice, I guess. Start some meditation or something. Guess we all should. You talk to any of the others? I'm not really keen on talking to some of them. Could think of a lot of people I'd rather be linked to like this, even if I probably wouldn't wish what we went through on them."
“Just Vex, Sage, and Greer so far. Personally, anyway -- Vex told me about Carson, the uh, the werewolf.” That was still weird to say out loud, in spite of everything. “I told Vex I would field checking in with the Overlook ladies, I just haven’t done it yet.” He knew that Miriam D’Onofrio and Brianna McCarthy were more likely to talk to him out of everyone else who’d been there, like he was more on their social level due to his former job. Ty wet his lips as a tiny smirk crossed his face. “Found out that Neil Wainscott is my neighbor, so I talked to him too,” he said, his eyes intent on Max’s expression. He knew that Sage was harmless and Greer didn’t seem like the type to try to hurt anybody ... but he wasn’t so sure about Max. Ty wanted to discourage any murmurings of revenge, if they were going to come up.
"Oh fuck that guy," Max said instinctively but he laughed a little and shook his head. He wasn't going to go after those people, they'd saved his family's life, probably the whole town too. He wasn't so sure he'd even piss on them if they were on fire though, going out of his way to help them would probably be asking too much. "Fuck all of them. The wolf gets a pass since he was there with us but the other three can fuck all the way off to Alaska." It was weird how they'd known their names and faces out of the blue, just waking up and knowing who was a danger to him. Max remembered that fear and paranoia vividly, even if so many other things from that time were hazy. "Bet he was happy to see you," he murmured with a smirk. "On a scale of one to hella awkward, where would you put that?"
Max’s response made Ty laugh and set his mind at ease. He didn’t sense any real anger in the words, at least not the kind that could turn violent, and he’d always had a pretty good instinct about people. So as long as Max wasn’t some manipulative psycho -- and he’d never given any sign of being such -- Ty probably didn’t have to worry about him doing anything stupid like that. “Painfully fucking awkward, I’d say,” he answered with another chuckle. He was sure none of it was funny to Neil, but he wasn’t here, so whatever. “He about pissed himself, I’m pretty sure. He seemed to think I was there for him at first, for revenge. Which I guess I can’t blame him ... before we disappeared, I showed up at the library in uniform to talk some shit and y’know ... threaten him.” Ty was still a bit ashamed of it now, but he knew Max would understand the mindset at the time. “Not my proudest moment.”
"It was a weird time," Max said dismissively and he wouldn't be surprised to know that those three had gotten threatened by a lot more people than just Ty. He'd felt so much hatred for them, if things hadn't gone the way they had, he wasn't so sure that hatred wouldn't have grown into something too big to handle. "Glad you gave him a little scare," he said and smirked. "He deserved that. But hey listen, did Greer tell you about your boss? You work with Marshall Nolan, right?" If Ty was anyone else this probably wouldn't be any of his business, but he was one of them and he had a far better chance of keeping an eye on Nolan than Max did, being there most days for work.
Ty couldn’t say he was glad that he’d scared Neil, but he had to admit that it was kind of satisfying in a fucked up way. At least it definitely had been at the time, and he apparently still got a tiny power thrill out of it. But that was over now, he wasn’t going to harass the guy. Ty’s brows rose as Max moved on to Marsh, and his mind groped around for a second for what he might have missed or forgotten about. “Uh ... no, I don’t think she did. But yeah, that’s him ... what about him?”
"I met Greer at the carnival last week," Max said. "We were just chatting when Nolan bumped into her and she saw his death, right there and then at the carnival. I mean, what are you gonna do, let it happen? So we stopped it from happening and it worked but now I can't help but think... This guy's supposed to be dead, you know?" He wasn't sure if he was downplaying their actual heroics here because he did feel proud of what they'd done but at the same time he was too wary of it all to really enjoy it. "What if this is some Final Destination shit and death's just doing a U-turn right now. So I've been keeping an eye on him but obviously it'd be easier for you since you work with him and all. I figure if he stays alive for another week or two, maybe Greer's thing is actually good and that could be good for the rest of us too."
He definitely hadn’t expected to hear any of that, and Ty’s brows crept up and up as Max talked. He’d considered before how awful Greer’s visions must be, especially for someone who had such a big heart, but he hadn’t thought about what she could do about it. It was so bizarre to think that without her and Max’s intervention, Ty’s new boss would’ve died at the carnival. “Wow,” he murmured as he tried to wrap his head around that. “What -- what was going to happen to him? What’d she see? How did you stop it?” Ty couldn’t help but be interested, his cop brain wanting every detail to analyze.
Max didn't blame him for wanting details and now that Ty wasn't a cop anymore, it was easier to tell him those details without feeling defensive and paranoid. "A fight broke out by one of the rides. Greer saw this guy fighting with his girlfriend and Nolan stepping in to break it up. The way she saw it the guy pulled out a knife and-" he jerked his hand theatrically, indicating a slit throat. "So we headed over to the tunnel and I uh... promptly stole that guy's knife. It was fucking weird too, the whole fight happened just like she said it would and the guy calmed down almost right away, looked real shook up about it too. But hey, nobody died, so stealing can be a virtue, who'd have thunked it."
Ty’s eyes widened further the instant he realized what ride Max was talking about. He vividly remembered watching that couple fight, right after he and Jared had been overwhelmed with inappropriately-timed lust for each other. Ty found himself intensely grateful that the carnival was gone now. “Holy shit, Jared and I went on that ride,” he told Max, shaking his head a little. “And it -- well, we were ... affected, while we were on it. But it wasn’t anger, it was lust. Like we were just suddenly all over each other. It was getting illegal by the time the ride was over. But there was this couple who got off after us, and they were screaming at each other, and it was turning into one of those bad fights. I think it was just fucking up everybody’s heads. So ... that’s amazing, good work.” He passed a hand over his face and sighed. “But uh ... yeah, I can keep an eye on him while we’re here. Better than you stalking him, I guess.”
It might have been funny if it wasn't so creepy, the 'getting illegal' part at least, and Max listened with a bit of a face journey as he put the pieces together. That made sense and he kind of hoped that poor guy had managed to patch things up with his girl if it really was just another supernatural fuck-up. Could be worse of course, he could be in prison for murder. "Yeah, I'm not a very good stalker," he muttered, glad Ty was willing to take over that particular duty of sorts. "I don't have the drive and dedication for that. And really, I'm just curious, you know? I feel kinda like we changed the timeline and I've seen way too many shitty movies about the consequences of that so I've got this itchy feeling."
He hadn’t called up Grady to ask or anything, but Ty was relieved that he hadn’t heard about anyone getting seriously hurt at the carnival. There had been more questionable things than just the tunnel of love, and carnivals could be dangerous in general. Ty nodded his understanding, his own expression rather serious. “I get that,” he said. He would’ve been having the same concerns -- hell, now he was having the same concerns. He liked Marshall already, he definitely didn’t want him to die anytime soon. “I’m guessing this is the first time she’s been able to intervene? So ... probably good to know how that might turn out for future reference, too.” Besides the potential tragedy of it all, it would turn out to be a useful experiment. Hopefully Marsh would never have any idea how lucky he was. “I’m not gonna follow him home or anything, but I’ll definitely let you know if he doesn’t turn up one day, or I hear anything. So far so good.”
"Yeah, I don't want her to turn into some kinda death-defying vigilante or anything," Max said with a wry smile. "But if she can save lives I'm all for helping her do it." Hell maybe it'd give him some purpose, he'd been pretty aimless for a while. He knew better than to put too much into it though, Greer still had her men and Max had just happened to be there that one time. Saving lives sounded nice though and he did come with a very particular skill set he wasn't so sure Dev and Rost had. "But thanks, man. I think that even if he only gets a few good weeks then it's better than the alternative, right? I wonder what she'd see if she touched him now."
Ty smiled back a bit. As a cop he might have counseled Greer not to take matters into her own hands and just to stay safe ... but he could definitely understand the compulsion to Do Something if it was possible. He was sure that most of her visions were for incidents that wouldn’t happen for a long time, but not always, obviously. “I dunno, but I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t want to find out,” he said. Saving people’s lives was amazing, but only buying them a few more weeks before fate or whatever tried to take them again sounded frustrating to Ty. It would be nice to have any evidence that their lives weren’t on some fixed track and they could change their futures, but he honestly wasn’t sure if he wanted to know that either. “I’ll keep in touch though ... here, let me get your number,” he said as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had Greer’s, but Ty wanted to be able to reach all of them, if they were willing.
Max rattled off the digits and then had Ty do the same. They might always be able to find each other thanks to their newfound 'gifts' but that didn't mean phone calls or texts weren't more convenient. Max would stick to texting and he hoped Ty would too. "I'll let you get on with your day now," he murmured as he saved Ty's number in his phone before pocketing it. "Bet you're eager to get home. It was good to see you though, let me know if you talk to the others?" He wasn't going to be putting it all together, never much of a puzzle kind of guy, but that didn't mean he wasn't curious about what all the others could do now.
Modern communication was much easier than tracking each other down around the town like a bunch of bloodhounds. So far they all seemed to have respected each other’s space and understood the universal desire to get back to their real lives. Ty couldn’t help but keep thinking that there was something more in store for them all. He just hoped he was wrong. He gave Max an easy smile and nodded as he backed up a step and patted the hood of the truck. “I will, you keep in touch if anything comes up,” he said. “Good to see you too. Be safe out there, Max.” Ty paused, the old adage just rolling off his tongue from his cop days. Was ‘being safe’ even a real concept to him anymore? He chuckled and waved a dismissive hand. “You know what I mean. Take care.” Ty grinned ruefully and moved away so Max could pull away, fishing out his own keys.
Max had to laugh at that because he knew that feeling well. Telling each other to be safe was like telling someone standing out in the rain not to get wet, it wasn't up to them and at times it felt impossible. He just hoped they all found their metaphorical umbrellas and managed not to get struck by lightning again. "Stay in touch, let's get drinks sometimes. Now that you're not a boring cop anymore," he teased and started the truck, giving Ty a little salute before he drove off. Ty was of course married to a cop, as far as Max knew, but he couldn't say much since he'd fucked one of the other deputies and didn't even regret it. So maybe he was getting a soft spot for some cops, even the one who had arrested him. Life was funny that way. He did hope they'd stay in touch though, there weren't a lot of people who'd been through what they had and Max honestly didn't like most of them.