Julius Weaver 🔫 Goodnight Robicheaux (warisnotover) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2017-09-04 23:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | julius weaver, raphael cruz |
Who: Julius Weaver and Raphael Cruz
What: And on Labor Day, the philanthropist sees his shadow.
Where: Jules's apartment, upper east side of NYC
When: Monday, September 4; evening
Warnings: TBD but probably none
There had been a few times when Jules had felt like he was being followed over the past few months.
Out of context that sounded suspicious. In the context of Jules's life it sounded ridiculous. There were more than a few times he'd felt that way. His life was a series of feelings that somebody was following them and most of them he'd known for a fact weren't founded in anything like reality. That was the nature of anxiety, wasn't it? Being afraid of the wolf at the door and the monster under the bed even when you'd checked them both a hundred times and you knew that there was nothing in either place waiting to pounce on you. He could tell himself time and time again that there was nothing there and yet he would be absolutely convinced that the next time he looked, the next time, there would be.
The best that Jules could do was learn to live with it; he certainly wouldn't be seeing anyone about it. Some families might encourage therapy but his was the suck it up and carry it like a man type. Jules wasn't like that. Not in the least. If it were anyone else in his family or anyone else in his life at all he would be telling them that it didn't matter what their family thought, that they needed to get help before the monsters under the bed ate them alive. It was different when it was himself that he was talking about. Jules was absolutely awful at following his own advice and no amount of knowing about that particular character flaw of his had done anything to fix it. He couldn't do that to his family. Couldn't bring one more disappointment on his parents even if that disappointment was that their youngest son hadn't escaped the night that had changed his life and sobered him up without enough scars to ruin him forever.
And wasn't that melodramatic? It was a good line, he thought. It was almost too bad that there was no one to hear it but Goody; at least he approved. They both knew a thing or two about scars. Jules had a few literal ones as well. Plastic surgery could have fixed them right up but he hadn't wanted them to. He'd needed the reminder back when he'd thought that there was still a chance that he'd slip and go back to his old habits.
That wasn't something that would ever happen. Not anymore. Not when Jules was feeling like people were following him when there was absolutely no reason why anyone would be following him.
And yet.
He'd just been running a few errands that day. Boring everyday things but he hadn't had to do them in his work attire. He'd been able to go to the grocery store for himself. Walk around in the aisles and pretend like he had any idea what it was that he was shopping for before he gave up and left the store with a pint of ice cream and a bag of chips. It was more a test for himself. Seeing if he could handle being around all of those unfamiliar people.
For once he'd passed with flying colors. Not an ounce of panic and not a single urge to go hide in a corner and shake. Jules had been proud of himself until he'd stepped out of the store and suddenly felt like someone was watching him. He looked around; he always looked around. He never saw anything because there wasn't anything there. This time though... it could have been nothing. There could have been a perfectly good reason for the handsome Latino man to be looking at him. If Jules had been his old self he would have assumed it was because he was attracted to him. Maybe tried to take him back to his place with him.
This wasn't the old Jules and he wasn't confident enough to think that it might be something so innocent as that. He'd gotten even more certain about it when he saw the man again a few blocks down. And a few more blocks after that. If Jules hadn't been looking for him he wouldn't have noticed him at all. If Jules hadn't been working with the trained gaze of a sniper he'd never have picked him out in the crowd after that first sighting even if he'd been looking for him.
If Jules hadn't suffered from near crippling anxiety it would never have occurred to him to look in the first place.
The man stayed with him all the way back to his place and it couldn't be coincidence. Even taking into account his paranoia it couldn't be a coincidence that the man he'd seen outside the grocery store had taken the exact same route back to his apartment complex and then not gone inside.
The final test was this: once Jules was back inside his apartment he let Goody take over for a brief moment. Just long enough to pick out the spot that he would have watched from if he were trying to get a good sight on someone in this particular room. If he wasn't there then Jules had just been paranoid after all; but he was.
As for what Jules planned to do with that... well. Clearly this man had plenty of opportunities to hurt him if that was what he wanted to do. Jules was defenseless here. He hadn't even seen the flash of a gun though. Nothing to make him think that the man was taking aim. And if he had been behind any of those feelings that he was being followed in the past few months, the ones that were stronger than usual, then clearly he'd had plenty of opportunities then too. Or maybe it was just that Jules had very little sense of self-preservation when he was actually thinking about it instead of only reacting.
He made a couple of cups of coffee and took them out onto his patio. He lived on the first floor, easy enough to see and easy enough to reach from the outside world. It had caused him no end of anxiety until he'd adjusted to it and installed some state of the art security equipment. One cup he sat down in front of himself on the small table that his decorater had put on the patio. The other he placed in the chair across from him. Then... then he looked over in the direction where Goody had spotted his shadow and waved, then pointed at the second cup. It was the other man's move now.