just_another | Entries tagged with location: crossroads

It's not the first dream he's had, but it's the first one he remembers in such great detail.

( Cut for violent imagery )

He wakes up with his heart pounding and a scream in his throat, but it never quite manages to catch hold. It's four in the morning, but Joel lies in bed beside Spencer, staring up at the ceiling until the sun comes up and then he puts on a smile and goes about his day like any other. But the dream lingers. It hangs on and it leaves him feeling deeply unsettled, even as he kisses Spencer goodbye and tells him to take the morning off.

Joel desperately wants to be with him, he needs to be touching Spencer just to remind himself that it was only a dream, he'd never actually hurt anyone he loves, but he needs the time alone, too. He has to do some kind of research, he has to figure out what's happening because something is happening. He can't pretend anymore. Something is very wrong.

As he opens the store, he finds himself thinking of Nerium and wishing he had some way to contact her. She would know, he thinks, or she'd have an idea. She would be able to help him and he wonders if he thinks hard enough about her that she'll know he needs her. She always seems to know.

It's only once he's inside the store that he allows himself a moment. Standing against the door in the dark, Joel closes his eyes and he sees those awful things again. The people he loves most in the world hurt at his hands and he wonders who else he's dreamed off. There are strange, confusing memories of other dreams and he thinks he should be thankful he can't remember all the details.

But he opens his eyes and then he opens the store and he goes about his day, but between customers, he drags out a book on dark spirits and demons, reading every last bit of information he can.

This isn't happening to him. It isn't.

[Joel's demon is getting louder. >:D Come visit the bookstore!]

He's been avoiding his parents' calls and their requests to talk on Skype ever since he and Spencer got back and he can't do it anymore. It isn't that he doesn't want them to know that he got married, but that he's been trying to avoid the inevitable descent upon Siren Cove his mother will perform as soon as she discovers what has happened. She'll be furious with him at first, he knows that, but once she's done being angry, she'll insist on coming to spend some time with them and Joel has kind of been enjoying having this time alone with Spencer.

But he's in the store that afternoon when the phone rings and he scoops it up without looking at the number. "Crossroads," he says.

"Finally. I was beginning to think you were dead."

"Mom," Joel says, glancing around the store, glad to find it empty. He doesn't want to have this conversation with a bunch of other people in the store. "Hi."

"Where have you been?" she asks and he can hear his father's voice in the background, asking the exact same question.

"I'm sorry, I've just been busy. We... Spencer and I bought the store. We've been dealing with the paperwork," he says, holding the phone with his shoulder as he busies himself tidying the counter. He's only doing it because he's nervous and he's glad his mother can't see him, because she would know something was going on.

"For two weeks?" she asks, her skepticism clear in her voice. "I mean, I'm sorry. That's wonderful news, I know you've wanted to buy the property for years."

"Yeah," he says. "It is good news and..." He has to tell her. He just isn't prepared for the fact that his parents are going to be hurt that they weren't invited to be there.

"And?" she prompts gently.

"Spencer and I went away for a bit," he says, his voice suddenly dry. "We got married."

There's silence on the other end of the phone for a very long time and Joel winces after about ten seconds. At first he'd been happy to avoid Skype, but now all he has is the silence and he finds himself wishing he was able to see his mother right now so he can better gauge her reaction. But the silence stretches on and finally, he says, "Mom?"

"You..." Her voice sound faint. "You got married."

"Yes."

"Without us there."

He winces again. "Yes. I'm sorry. It just... it needed to be just us."

The silence starts up again and then, finally, she says exactly what he expected. "I still have some vacation time. Your father and I will be there next week." There's a pause and then he thinks he can hear a muffled sniffle, which he feels terrible about. "I'm very happy for you. I love you, Joel."

They talk for a few more minutes and although he feels a little better when he hangs up the phone, he still needs to take a moment. Heading outside, Joel stands in the door of his store for a long moment, then sits down on the bench to the right of the door, burying his hands in his hair and dropping his head to look down at the ground between his feet.

It's his own fault, really, but that doesn't stop him from being pissed off.

Joel knows the basement of Crossroads is prone to flooding. He's been meaning to get all the boxes down there raised off the floor and onto pallets for months, but he's never gotten around to it and he could give a thousand excuses for why he's never done it, but the truth is he's been putting it off only because pallets aren't cheap and he hasn't had the extra money lying around to buy any. For the past year and a half he's been desperately saving every cent he can in hopes he'll be able to outright buy the property from his landlord and he's so close.

But now he's paying for it.

For a long moment he only stares at the ruined boxes and when he finally picks one up, the cardboard just disintegrates and the damaged books go tumbling onto the floor, all of them wrinkled and swollen with water. What makes it worse is that these aren't stock for the store. These are his mother's books.

"No, no, no," he chants are he gathers them up into his arms, as if somehow that will undo all the water damage. They're probably beyond saving and it's only two boxes, but that's not acceptable to Joel. He can't just give up without trying and so he grabs the second box, hauling all the damaged books upstairs and out the front door of his store. There has to be something he can do.

The day is bright and warm and he begins to spread the books out on the sidewalk, realizing with every passing moment that there's really no hope of salvaging them. Not just by drying them in the sun and he's trying desperately to come up with some kind of solution when someone walks toward the store. They're probably just passing by, but he turns toward them anyway.

"Do you have a hair dryer?" he asks, realizing just how desperate and stupid he sounds. "N-not on you, I know you probably don't have one on you, I just... my books. I don't have one."

This is ridiculous. The books are likely a lost cause.

[Be the person Joel is trying to beg a hair dryer from or find him later, totally defeated and sitting on the bench outside his store with the books drying in the sun.]

There's half a bottle of whiskey sitting on the counter in Crossroads and Joel is sitting just behind it, staring at it thoughtfully, wondering if he'll ever be able to drink it again or even just the smell of whiskey will remind him of Spencer for the rest of his life. He doesn't need to drink it, there had been enough beer in his fridge to get him sufficiently drunk, especially when combined with the painkillers the doctor had given him for his wrist, but he wants to drink it.

He wants to share it with Spencer. That was the plan. He likes whiskey, but he'd only bought it because Spencer likes it, too, and while they'd had some of it together already, the plan was to finish it with him. Because Joel had plans. He'd been stupid enough to make plans all the while knowing it could never last because he's done bad things and he's hurt people and there are reasons he's tried so hard to keep his distance. Good reasons. But he'd been stupid and he'd listened to the part of him that thought it was okay to move on. The part of him that felt weightless every time Spencer smiled in his direction. The part that thought asking him out on a date was going to end well.

And it hadn't. It hadn't ended well at all. Joel isn't prone to exaggeration, but he thinks calling last night a complete disaster isn't far off. Mark had come and he'd taken Spencer and he'd hurt him. Joel knows it could have been worse; he knows they both could have died in that lighthouse, but that doesn't make the things that had been done to Spencer any easier to stomach. Especially not when he knows it's his fault. If they hadn't gotten close, if he hadn't let himself get so... so carried away, then Spencer never would have become a target.

Now he doesn't even think it matters. He can't imagine that Spencer will want anything to do with him anymore and that's why he's sitting in his closed, dark store instead of somewhere with Spencer. He should have stayed at the hospital, he shouldn't have been such a coward, but he doesn't think he can face hearing Spencer tell him he doesn't want him around anymore. So he's here. And he's drunk. And he's swaying back and forth on his stool behind the counter, wondering if there's enough whiskey left in the bottle to get him so drunk that he blacks out for a week or two.

He doesn't want to be here. He wants to go back and erase Friday night and do it all over again. He wants to be wherever Spencer is. That's the only thing he wants and he wants it so badly that his chest aches with it, but he can't have it.

"Fuck it," he mutters, his words already slurred, then uncaps the bottle of whiskey and takes a long swallow. Black out drunk sounds better than any of his other options right about now.

[Timed to Saturday late afternoon/evening. While the store is technically closed, he'll open the door for anyone who knocks or rings the bell. Given the violence of the attack on Spencer, the news has probably gotten around, so feel free to come bang on his door and assume your pup has heard. Joel himself has a black eye, a bruised jaw and a sprained wrist.]

Though his store has escaped suffering any damage due to the protection spells laid upon it, the exterior street is another story entirely and Joel stands just outside the front door of Crossroads and stares at the debris littered across the sidewalk. He has a mug of coffee in one hand and he has every intention of beginning to assist with the cleanup just as soon as he finishes it, but for the time being he merely assesses what's to be done, his gaze drifting across garbage and what looks to be a large part of what used to be a wall and window in the middle of the street.

He knows he's lucky. That there are others who are injured, in the hospital, people whose homes and businesses have been destroyed. There isn't much for him to worry about and yet he can't keep his gaze from drifting toward the water every few seconds.

Something strange is happening. Something more strange than usual, but he has no real idea what it might be. The only premonitions he's been having lately have been especially vague, feelings more than visuals, sensations of danger that pass quickly and mean little to him, even after he dwells on them.

With a sigh, he sets his mug down on the small table near the door, then takes hold of a broom and begins to sweep the sidewalk in front of his store.