Who: JD and Rhett. Where: Study. When: Around 5PM.
There had been plenty of times in Rhett's life where he legitimately wished he was comfortable getting himself shitfaced drunk, and today was one of them. The thing that bothered him the most wasn't the noise itself, as much as how it made it hard for him to focus on getting himself together. He had solutions for when he got like this, but the problem was his solutions weren't viable right now. He'd either go out for a walk and get some fresh air, or he'd sleep off his anxiety and depression.
Good luck with that.
Instead his relentless, paranoid thoughts perpetuated and worsened his fatigue, which exacerbated his negative emotional state even further, and his downward spiral continued.
Eventually Rhett placed himself in the library; he just needed to focus on something else. The more he entertained his thoughts, the worse they'd get. He browsed through the books, and he was at the point where he was thinking about finding something interesting, but all he was really accomplishing was staring at the bindings and forgetting what he was doing.
Finally he pulled one out at random, and settled in one of the armchairs. When he'd flipped the book to its first page, he was suddenly Very Aware of how it felt like his eyes were going to melt out of his face. He could feel the buzzing going through his ears and digging itself through his brain as he tried to make sense of the text he was more staring at than reading, and he continued to struggle for a few more pages before his consciousness faded away on its own.
For an indescribable amount of time, Rhett felt some peace that he was partially aware of. And then his brain decided to be an asshole.
The buzzing was still prevalent in his dreams. He remembered being in a dark, stifling room. Closet. He was stuck inside a closet, and the buzzing was the TV? Or maybe the AC? He covered his ears with his small hands, and shut his eyes tightly, as if the action would make him invisible. There was a loud thudding on the other side of the wall that broke up the white noise every other beat, and the closer the sound got, the more he could feel himself shaking.
And then it stopped. He looked towards the darkness in front of him, and held his breath. And even though he expected it, he felt a tight grip around him, its huge hands and fingers easily encompassing his neck and squeezing the air out of him.
In the next moment, Rhett was in a loud, bustling prison. A crowd had gathered around him and his enemy, cheering and yelling, and while his hands were now closer to the size of his assailant's, he couldn't even match his brute strength. There was... an alarm? A siren? going off in the background, but he barely paid attention to it as he fought for air. His opponent easily lifted him up and swung him roughly, slamming his head--
Before he could register the blow, he felt the pressure off his neck and was now in a completely empty, white room. The buzzing sound was unbearably loud here, and all he could do was kneel on the floor, trying to cover his ears and block out the grating sound. All the while there was an Unshakable Feeling that he was stuck here, and something was coming... Something he couldn't stop, something that got closer and closer to his room with each passing second. There was no one to choke him there, but despite that he felt the air being squeezed out of his lungs.
The more pressure he felt in his chest, the louder the noise got until it felt like he would explode from the inside out--
"Let me go!" Rhett eyes shot open, his breathing panicked and his hands shaking and sweating.