2021-03-09 - Is it a Dream or is it Relapse?

Wes going out for a run, particularly later in the evening, is a sure sign that he's trying to work off some aggression. This is not new and it's a healthy enough tool for him to keep his behaviors in check. It's certainly not anything that Casey should take personally. Everyone's anxiety manifests in it's own way. However, he's usually not gone for several hours. It's okay though because he has Casey and his parents all on the friend-finder map so no one ever has to worry about him. Tonight though, it's not showing his location at all. For all intents and purposes Wes's phone seems entirely off until there's finally a call to Casey around eleven. Four hours is a really long run.

Casey's been busy working on the apartment. He's been buying a few things for it and getting them set up, giving the whole place a clean over, washing the new things that he bought and putting them away. Truth be told, he'd lost track of time himself, so it was only toward the end of the few hours that he really noticed that Wes had been gone a while. He checked the friend finder, and not finding Wes at all, began shooting off a couple of messages. "Hey, when you turn on your phone, call me." He was already on his way out to his truck to start driving around the neighborhood when the phone rang. "Wes? Are you okay?"

Wes sounds anything but okay when his voice comes through the phone. The words are shaky and strained. "No. No I'm not." He's breathing is rapid. "I-... I'm in an alley, across from the library. Can you pick me up, please?" There's a wavering in his words. "I don't want to move. Please??"

The shakiness in Wes' voice instantly causes the hair on the back of Casey's neck to stand up and he gets that sudden racing feeling in his chest. "Okay, stay right there. I'm on my way. I was just getting in the truck to come look for you." The sound of the engine can be heard as he keeps the phone on while he pulls out of the apartment complex. "Are you hurt?"

It's not a feeling Wes wants to cause anyone, especially not Casey. Silence stretches after the question of being hurt, but eventually he answers. "I don't think so. I don't know. I don't remember what happened." His voice cracks, "Don't take long, okay?" It's really not that far, luckily.

Fortunately it is a short drive. It's not a big down, and Casey may be pushing the boundaries of what won't get him pulled over at this point. The only reason he doesn't go faster is because getting pulled over will make it take way longer. He pulls over across from the library and jumps out of the truck. "Wes? Wes?" He looks for him, and when he finds him, the first thing he does is scan him over for any visible signs of injury.

Wes is right where he said he is. He's crouched in an alley wearing what he went out in. Well, mostly. He has his sneakers on and the jeans and t-shirt, but his winter coat is tied around his waist and his hat isn't on. His shoes and pants are caked in wet muck and slime as if he walked through a pond. And he stinks. It's a weird mix of mildew and rot and ... smoke. A weird char smoky smell. When he hears his name he looks up and there's a wave of relief visible on his face. He leaps up and grabs Casey to cling to him. There doesn't seem to be a mark on him, other than he's shivering from the cold.

When Casey sees that Wes is in one piece, albeit one smelly slimy mucky piece, there is a visible release of tension in him and he lets out the breath he'd been holding as he wraps his arms around him and hugs him tightly. "Shit, Wes, what happened? You're freezing. And you smell like you rolled through a swamp." He blinks. "Let's.. get you home, and into a warm shower and some fresh clothes." Whatever else there might be going on, that's currently not important.

"I don't know. I don't know what happened. I was running, and then ... had... a fucked up dream, or bad trip, I don't know. I don't remember taking anything. I don't even remember buying anything and I wouldn't, Case. I wouldn't do that again. I swear it!" Wes says in a rush of words, not letting go of him yet. His eyes are wet as panic sets into his voice. "I don't know!" He obviously doubts his own memory of events, but will go with Casey back to the truck so they can get home.

Casey doesn't let go of him. He stands still there on the sidewalk with the truck still running nearby, and just holds onto him for a bit, a furrow in his brow and confusion setting in as well as concern. He looks down the alley and then around for evidence of anyone nearby, or signs of a struggle or fight or anything. But when he doesn't find anything, he just trails his fingers through Wes' hair and says, "Okay, let's .. go home. Step one." And he does get him into the truck, and take them back to the apartment.

A silence settles into Wes in the truck as he curls up in the passenger seat, fear on his face as he steals a few glances over at Casey. He shivers despite the truck being warm, his body temp needing time to recover. Eventually he remembers he HAS his jacket and fumbles to untie it from his waist and pulls it on. Once they're at the apartment building, he slips out of the truck and waits for Casey to walk with him inside. "I don't feel like I'm on anything, Casey." He says in a quiet plea. "But-... Everything was so real."

Casey's expression is pensive as they drive, and he's quiet as well, but mostly because he's mulling over what's going on, mingled with all the warnings that they've received since arriving, and trying to pay attention to his driving at the same time. When they get out of the truck he locks it and then comes over to walk with Casey back to the apartment. "I know," Casey says, when Wes says he doesn't feel like he's on anything. "You don't look like you're on anything." His pupils aren't dialated or tiny pinpricks. He seems scared, but lucid. Casey's seen Wes on stuff enough times to know what he looks like when he's high. He doesn't look high. He looks scared shitless, and that's a whole new sort of concerning. "Come on, strip out of those clothes and we'll get you some fresh ones." He goes into the bathroom and runs the shower, getting the water hot once they're in the apartment.

Wesley follows Casey to the bathroom and shrugs off his jacket first, then strips off his t-shirt. There are no injuries on him. No bruises. He kicks his filthy, saturated running shoes off. Then he peels off the wet jeans. It's the shoes and the jeans that are the worst but the smell is sticking to everything. Even him. "Maybe I hit my head or something? Slipped on some ice? I-... I saw other people in the dream, but it wasn't anyone I knew." He sits down on the toilet lid, still shivering as he watches the water spray from the shower.

Once the water is warm enough, Casey says, "Okay, go ahead and get in. I'm going to uh.. put these in a bag and put them outside on the patio until we figure out how to clean them or we may just want to call it a loss and get you new ones." He grabs a garbage bag and pushes the jeans and shoes into it to carry it off while Wes gets into the shower. "I don't think you hit your head," he says when he comes back. "You don't have any bruising or anything."

As the bathroom starts to steam up from the heat of the hot water running, Wesley gags a little as the smell from the clothing hits him. He looks ill to his stomach and grimaces like he might retch, but holds it back and shoves off his boxers and socks so he can climb into the shower. He stands under the hot spray and lays his head against the wall tiles, waiting until Casey gets all the offending clothing out of the bathroom before he even reaches for the soap. "Nothing in the ... dream or hallucination was real. It wasn't even possible. There were creatures, and ... this underground city. And a woman was there and she like, magically made fire."

Once Casey has everything squirreled away -- the offending clothes out on the patio in a bag, the rest that can be salvaged in the hamper, and some fresh clothes brought in for Wes, he sits on the toilet seat cover and folds his arms on his knees as he listens. "And you were just out running and then suddenly you were in this dream hallucination and you were in an underground city, with creatures, and a woman made of fire?" He's just trying to make sure he's got a handle on what it is that Wes is telling him.

Wes crouches down and lets the water just run over him, leaning on the edge of the tub. "I ... think so. I was running, and then I was... in a jungle or something. It was hot and humid and smelled like dead plants. There was this sewer pipe. There were a couple of guys there. One was named Ravn. The other was ... Mike? Michael? Something like that." He just turns the soap over nervously in his hands. "This sounds so stupid, and crazy. But Case, I never took anything." He looks over his arms, checking for any needle marks or anything else that might imply he took something he doesn't remember. "There were these alien creature things. The woman killed them all, in the fire. They were dying anyway, though. But, the screaming, and the smell..." A shudder runs through him as a queasy expression rolls over his face.

"And then when you came to you found yourself outside the library? Alone?" Casey asks. He's not even addressing the fact that there were burning creatures and a woman of fire just yet. He's just trying to connect what happened in the real world, let alone the crazy hallucination. "I know, Wes. I believe you. Promise." And he does. This isn't like high Wes. This is something else. He has no idea what it is, and it's disturbing and confusing, but he tries to piece things together as best he can.

"The people, they said it was a dream, but it was real. That this is 'Gray Harbor' like people keep talking about." Wesley shares, frowning. "And there was a big machine, and I... broke it? With my mind. I concentrated on breaking it like the woman told me to and it just fell to pieces. Then we went to another cavern and there was a pool. We went through the pool and then I was back in the street. Where I was running. I think. So ... I went into the alley to get out of the road." He gazes at Casey, that terror in his eyes. When his boyfriend -- his best friend -- promises that he believes him, he blinks a few times and it's hard to say if they're tears running from his eyes or it's the water running down over him. "What if it's.. something I took a long time ago? Like, how sometimes stuff stays in your body?"

Casey sits there and listens to Wes' voice as it echoes a little in the bathroom combined with the sound of running water. He is hunched over with his arms folded over his knees and is staring at some point on the floor, but is more staring through it than actually at it as he processes all of this. "So the people in the dream said it was a dream, and that this is the Gray Harbor that people keep talking about.. and you broke a machine with your mind.. then ended up back in the street." He just says it aloud again, repeating it as though hearing it aloud might unlock some of its strangeness or give him some enlightenment. It doesn't. "We should go talk to Diana," he decides. "She seemed to know about weird stuff in town and maybe.. it was some kind of haunting. But she seemed uh.. chill and approachable and friendly. Maybe she can help figure it out?"

Wes chokes on a sob as Casey repeats it all out loud, trying to hold it together and not quite managing. "Even though that all sounds crazy? What if she just laughs at us? What if I was making it all up in my head?" He sits down and scrubs the soap over his arms to reassure himself even more that he wasn't messing with some weird new drug. "Did we get her number?" He scrubs at his legs and feet next, trying to get the filth off that soaked through from tromping around in muck.

"Hey," Casey says gently, "It's going to be okay. We're going to figure it out." He tries to sound reassuring, as reassuring as he can be when he has no idea what's going on. "Man, everyone in this town keeps talking like there's all kinds of weird shit going on. Maybe if we tell them we saw some weird shit they'll help. It's a shot in the dark, but I'm not really sure what to do otherwise." He rubs at his face with both hands. "Unless you're having some weird flashbacks due to something from a while back.. but that's never happened to you before, has it?"

Wes nods, "Yeah, okay. I guess that's a good start. Just... see what they say." He agrees, and spends a few more minutes scrubbing clean. He shuts the water off and sits, drip-drying in the tub for a moment. "No, it's never happened before." He finally says after careful thought. "I would have told you if it did." He reaches for a towel.

Casey hands Wes one of the warm fluffy towels from where he sits. "I know you would. So that's why I'm thinking it's not that either. Everyone around us has been talking crazy about weird things going on. Let's.. find some of them and run this by them and see what they say. Worse thing that happens is they look at us like we're nuts, and then we just agree that we're all mutually insane and go our separate ways. That, or we go find the local clinic and get you tested to see if you've got anything in your system."

Oooh, new towels. Warm and soft. Wes wraps up in it and reaches for the clean clothes that Casey collected. He dries off and gets dressed, focusing on that because it's normal and mundane. "Okay. We can do that." He finally agrees, then reaches for Casey's hand to give it a tight squeeze. "Thank you, for believing me." Half of his fear was wrapped around his soulmate's reaction. Frankly, he hasn't had time to process what happened as even remotely real.

Casey clearly doesn't know what to think. He's at a loss, but he's hanging onto the fact that he knows Wes well enough to know what a relapse looks like, and this doesn't look like anything that he recognizes, and that is both comforting and upsetting at the same time. On the one hand, another relapse before they've even settled in wouldn't bode well. On the other hand, a whole /new/ problem is difficult to figure out how to approach. He squeezes Wes' hand tightly and says, "I do. I don't know what happened. But I believe you. And I'm here."