Hallway meetings

Who: Dylan and Jesse
Where: School hallways
When: Between first and second period

Hunting, monsters, attacks, guns, so many guns... Dylan's mind had been turning over all of these topics since around 6am that morning and he still hadn't gotten past the 'what the fuck' of it all. And wasn't there a lot of it! It felt like it was just a bad dream, worse than he had every night when he saw his mother being eaten alive because this wasn't one he could wake up from. It was real and he was stuck in Michigan until he turned 18 or died, whichever came first and with how a monster was probably looking for him, maybe it would be the latter.

At least there was art class. It was the only reason Dylan had come to school that day, although the fear of being left alone in the house with Frank and awkward conversations hadn't helped either. Maybe that had been more of a motivation than a simple class because art was over for the day and he still didn't want to skip home. He didn't want to go to the next class either though and after putting a couple of things back into his locker, he stood there and pretended he had a message on his phone. (Really, he was just losing to a quick game of tetris but nobody really noticed him anyway.)

Maybe he could find the library and hide amongst the sports books, flick through and look through the ones on skateboarding or keep up his research on why he'd had a premonition of Nate. And that was another thing to worry about too. Frank hunts monsters, special ones like the one that killed mom, does that mean he'd kill me too if he knew I'd had a dream of Nate before I met him? Do pychics count, am I dangerous? He turned the phone off, shoved it into his pocket and slammed his locker shut. He was about to head off to the library when he noticed somebody watching him. He stopped and stared back, an eyebrow raised curiously.

Jesse was still groggy as he shuffled down the hallway toward his second period class. Waking up was always hard to do, a process that took him a few hours in general, mostly because he rarely got enough sleep in the first place. And of course the sweetest, best sleep tended to come right before his alarm went off, once his mind was done torturing him for the night. Other people's nightmares were exhausting.

He didn't have his headphones on -- which was rare for him -- having been kind of too much of a zombie to bother trying to pick out music for the day. So he was just walking mindlessly, letting the memories and visions from the people around him flow over his own thoughts. There wasn't much going on upstairs anyway. That was, until one came through that was ... particularly disturbing. It was like something out of a bad horror movie, but the color and vividness and the smell of it was enough to prove it real. Jesse stopped, blinked, and repressed a shudder, eyes going to where it came from. A young-looking dude who turned and caught him looking. Jesse didn't look away, a little transfixed by what he'd seen.

For a long time, or that was what it felt like anyway, Dylan just stared back at the blond boy. He didn't know what else to do but eventually, his father's words came back to him. He hunted things and sometimes those things wanted revenge, sometimes they would hunt after it and for that reason, he should never tell anybody what his father did for a living. Was it too late for the warning though, was that why someone was staring at him in the school hallway or did he just have shit on his face? To run or wipe.

Dylan chose the latter and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve then crossed across to Jesse. "What?" he asked. It sounded more defensive than he really felt but he hugged his books tightly across his chest and who knew, maybe he had a right to be protective of himself. He'd just been told that monsters were not only real but killable too and while he still imagined them as massively unsocial, inhuman creatures, maybe this guy worked for them. Maybe they'd put him in a trance and sent him out to find food, food like a ripe 16 year old. Just to be sure, Dylan waved his hand across the front of Jesse's face an clicked his fingers. Sure, it not only looked it but it felt odd too, but he had to know and that sort of move always worked to wake someone up in the movies. "Uh, what's going on?"

Jesse had blinked when the guy spoke in the first place, the tone dragging him out of his fog a little. He frowned when the hand-waving and finger-snapping went on, reaching up to push at Dylan's hand. Jesus. Okay horrible trauma, but that was annoying. "Dude, stop. Sorry, I ain't awake all the way yet. You're Nate's brother, right? Was trying to place you." It was as good of an excuse as any, in the end. He wasn't very good at completely ignoring shit like that when he saw it -- which was unfortunately more and more often these days -- but at least some of the time he could talk around it, if it caught him where he didn't react strongly.

Dylan didn't expect that kind of response and when Jesse touched his hand, he was so caught up in the idea that this guy was a demon's pawn sent to kidnap him that he jumped back and jerked his hand into the air to get away. "Shit." It was purely a gut reaction and when he realised how little harm Jesse meant him, he felt so bad about it that he almost wished he had been right. At least then wouldn't be so awkward.

Unsure of what to do, Dylan stood there and stared back at the other boy with a look bordering on a mix of embarrassment and wariness. "Uh, sorry, yeah. I know Nate, why? How do you know him, you guys friends or something? I haven't seen him since the parking lot this morning though, if you're looking for him I mean."

Okay, so Nate's brother was crazy. That was good to know, and really not so surprising, considering what Jesse's mind had plucked from his. Something like that would no doubt make a person crazy. So Jesse cut him some internal slack and didn't react much to the flail backwards that he did. He just lowered his hands and stuck them into his pockets, because that was always unthreatening. "We're kinda friends, yeah. I've met him, we hung out at the bonfire thing ... I was just thinking I saw you there, no worries. I don't need him or anything, just wondering if I was right or not." He offered a tenative smile, really not sure about this guy, but not wanting to come off like an ass either. There was awkward enough already.

Dylan watched Jesse put his hands back into his pockets and he relaxed a little bit, not from that one movement but, well, from Jesse not being a monster's slave and seeming pretty safe the longer they talked. At least he wasn't looking for Nate for any bad sort of reason. He slouched a little and took a more relaxed stance, legs spread a little wider and his books no longer pressed so close to his chest, before he nodded and gave Jesse a small smile. "I was there, Nate took me." He stepped back a little closer to Jesse now that he was sure he was safe and looked him over. He scrunched up his nose and shook the hair from his eyes. "I don't think I saw you though or maybe I did, I was kind of plastered. Anyway, I'm Dylan. Uh, Alden, but you already knew that. Are you his friend, Kavin?"

Jesse gave him a slight grin. "Yeah, we were all kinda plastered, no worries. Hell we coulda had ourselves a regular conversation and not remember it," he joked. Probably not, though, he tended to remember things even when he was plastered. Which came in handy sometimes. "Nice to meetcha, Dylan. Not Kavin, nope, though I know him too. Mostly by reputation. I'm Jesse Jericho." Instead of sticking his hand out to shake like he normally would've done, he just gave Dylan a nod. The kid was understandably twitchy, so the plan of no sudden movements that would involve touching was probably the best. Everything else he was getting from the guy had the tone of the painfully normal, which just made the ... thing he'd seen stick out even more.

Dylan gave a small grin at Jesse's joke and even a small chuckle too. He didn't mean to be so uptight about meeting somebody new and a part of him wondered if the awkwardness would get back to Nate. Would it even matter if it did? Maybe Nate wouldn't care but chances were equally good that he'd be embarrassed by his younger brother's attitude, even if it was something he couldn't help. He straightened his shoulders just a little bit and glanced around the hall. He was supposed to be in his next class but he didn't care. "Uh, nice to meet you," he said. He gave he boy another smile, this one was a little wider and almost reached his eyes. "I'm Dylan which, uh, I said... So Jericho, your name is really that? It's cool, like a cowboy or a wrestler or something. I don't know, guess mine makes me sound like a folk singer. Named after Bob Dylan and all so..." He shrugged. "Am I keeping you from a class or anything?"

The blonde chuckled a bit, and unearthed one hand to reach up and push his glasses back up on his nose. "Yeah, that's really it. Mom kinda married into it, but it's cool, it fit, thanks," he said with an easier smile of his own. He wasn't empathic, but god he felt like it sometimes. "Dylan Alden? Think it sounds like a beatnik writer, myself. Dunno why, but maybe you should be writing books at some point. But can't sneer at folk singers, either." He glanced around them at the hallway that had more or less emptied out quite a bit since they started talking, and shruged a shoulder. "Yeah, but witness me not really giving a shit. Got the senior-itis pretty bad, and it just chemistry. Who the fuck needs chemistry? Besides, y'know ... chemists. Where you off to, Monsieur Alden?"

Dylan almost asked Jesse what a beatnik was and almost told him how he couldn't be a writer. His spelling was terrible and when he did bother to try and read something, he struggled with it and took forever. He would have made a shitty writer but instead of explaining that, he just kept the smile and nodded along. Besides, maybe it did sound like that, didn't mean he had to be one. "Senior-itis? Yeah, I'm just a junior like my brother but I'm sick of it too. I'm supposed to be in room..." Dylan paused as he unwrapped his timetable, he hadn't quite learnt it yet. He scrunched up his nose and laughed. "102 for 'Anatomy and Physiology' Whatever, I know my body well enough already. Unless we get practice classes on our crushes, well, who cares? Algebra is after that and that's just as bad, I only came for art class this morning."

Dylan paused for a moment and glanced around the empty hallway again before he stepped closer and pulled out a loose piece of paper from between his school diary. It was only a sketch in a grayled pencil but he could clearly see his mother staring out at him from the page. It was only her head and down to her neck but it was one he was proud of; he was sure he'd caught the curve of her lips and the way her hair was always a mess, just like his own. Over the thin line that was the edge of her shoulder, another figure stood. It was smaller and indicated that it was further away but it still lacked the basic details his mother's image had. Instead, it was shadowed from head to waist with its arms crossed over the chest forbodingly. He looked at it for a second then handed it across to Jesse, nibbling at his bottom lip as he did. "This is what I did in it. We were supposed to be doing something else but, I don't know, seems stupid to make artists work on one thing when another piece is calling them. Whatcha think?"

Jesse had to chuckle a bit at the idea of practicing anatomy on one's 'crush'. He could go in for some of that, but most definitely not in school. He was about to say something of the kind when Dylan was showing him something. A drawing. Jesse took it and pushed his glasses up on his nose before looking it over. He spent a good moment doing it, blue eyes ticking here and there. He knew kind of intuitively that the woman was Dylan's mother. Though show the other figure was, he had no clue. "I think it's meaningful," he said finally, offering it back and looking up at the younger guy. "And good. And also yes, fuck what assignments they've got for you to do, you make the art you want."

"Thanks," Dylan said shyly as he took his picture back. His cheeks brightened a little and he suddenly realised that he didn't know why he'd shown Jesse. Sure, making conversation and all that but the picture was personal and meant more than he was willing to explain. Luckily his newly found friend hadn't asked what it meant but if he had, Dylan wasn't sure if he was willing to answer it. He didn't even know if he knew what it was. He tucked the sheet back into his school diary and hugged his books to his chest protectively. "Yeah, um, so I guess we better be getting to class or something. Don't want to but...we should," he finished lamely. He shrugged and pointed in the direction where his next classroom lay. "If you know my brother though, I bet I'll see you later so I'll catch you around or something. Jess, right?"

"Jesse," he corrected with a little grin. "Or Elvis. Or JJ, whatever floats your boat, my man." He nodded at that whole class thing. It had to be done, unfortunately, and as it was, they were both going to be late. Not that Jesse really minded, but his reputation was already on the negative side for being weird, this kid was still new and had a chance. He tipped the guy a little salute and started to move toward his class. Which was in the direction opposite Dylan's. "Godspeed on your journey, young Alden. Catch you on the flipside, say hi to your bro for me." Strange kid, but he wasn't ever one to judge.