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William shivered as he roamed the halls of the Prime Defenders' base.
He didn’t know where he was going, ignorant of the world around him, simply putting one foot in front of the other, staring at nothing. That didn’t matter; any obstacles in his path were simply ignored and passed straight through.
What was his path?
There was something tugging at him - a bone-deep exhausting that couldn’t be lifted by rest or by sleep. Searching? Searching for something.
“Will?”
The voice sounded low-pass and William had to strain his concentration to listen. The very act of stopping and turning to look at who had spoken seemed a monumental effort, and one of the many wisps nearby nudged him, eager to continue walking. Searching.
Any direction that wasn’t the right one seemed dull and grey: the form of whoever had spoken sticking out like a sore thumb in the emptiness. He recognised them from somewhere, a ping at the back of his mind cutting through the haze.
“Hey are you-? Oh.”
As they approached, the soft blue light of the wisps illuminated their features, revealing a curiosity that quickly turned to something else; like an understanding of some kind.
“Hey,” they repeated, gentler than before, “they’re uh - they’re bugging you again?” They seemed almost cautious, darting glances at the wisps then back at William.
William looked at the person a moment longer, before turning to walk away once again.
They grabbed his sleeve, “Woah wait- come on, or you’ll just be pacing all night, and it’s kind of freaky actually.”
He looked down at the hand around his arm. It was calloused and scarred. The grip was strong but gentle like someone with practice at keeping their strength in check. William knew this, knew he trusted this person.
He let himself be pulled a little before falling into step just behind this person, their hand slipping into his like something warm and comforting. The strain in his chest eased slightly as they went, the wisps following in that strange way that looked like they were always a few steps ahead or a few steps behind - never moving while in a line of sight, but always gone once you looked back at them a second time.
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William was led out onto the roof.
It was quieter here, somehow, without the ambient hum of appliances or the background noise of people just existing, or the gurgling of the pipes or the creak of the walls.
The other hand tugged at his, guiding him to sit on the ledge with his legs hanging over the side.
“Better?”
He blinked, feeling a quiet breeze brush at his hair and looking out at the cloudless starry night. There was hardly any light pollution here, hardly any people or cars or anything at all. It felt abandoned and desolate and altogether Quiet.
Peaceful.
It sounded more like home. His home? Or someone else’s? There were still questions, but the amicable atmosphere was enough to quell them for now, even for someone like William who never seemed to let anything go unknown.
Satisfied, most of the wisps took their leave, back to wherever they went in their own time away from the material plane. William shook away the image of the lake that drifted into his mind again, instead looking up to the person beside him. “‘Kota?”
“Hey man, glad you’re back.”
“Thanks for dragging me out here.”
Dakota shrugged, “It’s nice.” He seemed to then notice their hands still intertwined and brought his back, clasping both hands over his knees and kicking out his legs in the air.
They both sat in silence like that for a long while, William with his eyes closed and just soaking in the emptiness of the place, basking in how far and disconnected the rooftop seemed from the rest of the world. Here, it was just him and his friend and nothing else at all.
Despite how it could be a nuisance to need to come out somewhere quiet and just… recharge, every once in a while, William would never give up how good it felt. It was like aches that he didn’t know even existed were lifted, energy that he didn’t even know was missing was restored. It felt like being on top of the world; something satisfying like a long-persisting itch that was finally scratched.
Dakota cleared his throat, dragging William back out of his stupor, “So, uh... What like- why do you go all 'ghost' like that sometimes? I know you don’t really like talking about the ghost stuff but it’s- it’s a little scary when you haunt the place y’know? It’s not a big deal really I just- I'm curious.”
“I don’t really know,” Will sighed after a moment's contemplation, which was true enough, “I have a theory though.”
He felt more than saw Dakota shift beside him, leaning back with his hands splayed behind him. Most likely, the other teen was preparing for some long-winded, haphazardly strung-together theory that William was going to spout.
Despite that, he was listening intently. It was a nice gesture.
“I- sometimes I see this forest with a lake. I think that’s where the wisps come from, or something… me being here kind of connects them more strongly to the material plane instead of just the spirit world and wherever their lake is, and I guess they’re not used to all the noise here really. Just kinda gets to them sometimes. And that gets to me.”
“Oh. Makes sense.”
And just that, just to hear his theory validated even though neither of them actually had any clue what was really happening, was more than anything Will could’ve hoped for. It settled the desperation for answers more than anything else ever could, and for the first time tonight William could confidently say he was fully and completely relaxed.
Comfortable silence lapsed once again as the night sky twinkled high above, but as the breeze brushed past again he noticed Dakota shiver.
That was also when he realised Dakota was only wearing one of his white tank tops and a pair of pyjama shorts, while William himself was still wrapped up in trousers and a hoodie despite his apathetic relationship with temperature.
He pulled the latter off, offering it to Dakota.
“Thanks, man.” The dark jumper looked strange on Dakota with his vibrant red hair and tendency for lighter coloured clothes, and despite being far more well-built than William, Dakota was noticeably smaller, allowing him to cover his hands with the ends of the hoodie’s sleeves even as he wrapped his arms around his stomach.
“We should probably go back inside,” Will offered, not wanting to pressure his friend to be out here any longer than he was comfortable with. This time, it was Dakota who looked far away, already seeming to be falling asleep still sitting there on the roof.
In fact, William was surprised he’d been awake this long at this time of night at all.
He stood and offered a hand to the other teen who wordlessly took it, yawning as William pulled him up. Well, more accurately as William stood there with his hand out and Dakota pulled himself up; even half-asleep Dakota was still incredibly strong and William…was decidedly not.
Before they’d even got all the way inside Dakota was already leaning most of his weight against the other teen and his head was ducked towards his chest, and again Will felt bad for keeping him up so late, especially in the cold. But one of Dakota’s hands was clutched protectively at the back of William’s shirt, and he hadn’t seemed upset or mad at all, so for once, William decided to forgive himself.
It wasn’t as if the others ever felt the need to apologise for the quirks of their powers, so maybe Will shouldn’t have to either.
Slowly, William and Dakota made it back down into the base and to Dakota’s room. By now Will could feel himself struggling to prop Dakota up and could only breathe a sigh of relief that his powers hadn’t chosen this very inopportune time to troll him or anything.
“Dakota,” he whispered, nudging the teen who was now fully leant on his shoulder, “This is your stop bud.”
In lieu of an intelligible response, Dakota only muttered something and held tighter. Will sighed.
It seemed almost comical; him standing there in the middle of the dark hallway trying to encourage Dakota to go to bed, the redhead in question now flat out refusing to move anywhere or cooperate at all. He was pretty sure tomorrow was a school day, which made the entire situation worse.
And then to top it all off, the door to Vynce’s room creaked open.
It could not get any worse than this, William thought, before desperately trying to mentally backtrack in fear of jinxing himself. Wait. Did acknowledging the prospect of a jinx make it more or less likely to happen?
“What’re you guys doing? It’s so early,” Vyncent drawled in a whisper as he pushed his door open a little more, peeking his head out. The elven teen’s hair was the definition of bedhead, sticking up in all places that gravity surely shouldn’t allow.
“Vynce, you gotta help me, he won’t let go,” William desperately pleaded, electing to skip over the initial question completely. But instead of offering any kind of help at all, Vyncent brightened, his pointed ears twitching upwards as he smiled, “yooo are we doing a slumber party? Wait here-” and he disappeared back inside his room despite Will’s protests.
He reappeared moments later with his arms full of pillows and blankets. The amount of them wasn’t a surprise - Vycent’s room was covered head-to-toe in anything and everything soft - but how he was carrying them all at once was a mystery. William spluttered as Vyncent moved past him to Dakota’s room, dumping the potpourri of bedding to the floor before returning to the hallway and somehow, effortlessly, dragging the sleepy Dakota and bewildered William inside.
Dakota, obviously, was asleep before he even hit the floor, mumbling strange things William didn’t currently have the brainpower to decipher. But Vyncent was still standing next to him and put a hand on Will’s shoulder.
“Hey”, and god, William was already starting to lose the ability to use any kind of sophisticated language. He blamed it on the events of the night.
“You look kinda shaken,” Vynce noticed, ”Are you sure you’re okay? ”
Will paused, looking at the sincere concern written on Vyncent’s face in this one moment and deduced that maybe, he hadn’t suggested a slumber party randomly or without consideration for William’s apparent distress. Maybe, it had been quite the opposite.
And for a moment all William felt was overwhelmed by how much these two, Vyncent and Dakota, really cared about him, and the lengths they went to just to see him smile, and it was William’s one wish in that moment to hope he was even half the friend to them that they were to him. He swallowed the lump building in his throat and said simply, “I think I am, now.”
Vynce smiled back. “Good.”
It was a little awkward getting into the makeshift slumber-party bed that Vyncent made because, even after that one moment of emotional vulnerability, Vyncent was still Vyncent and something about him always managed to make William feel a little awkward. So when they had both laid down a little ways apart and Vyncent had just thrown one arm over Will like it was nothing, William was sure that this was going to be when he would just fall right through the floor and ruin the moment.
But it didn't happen. What did happen was William silently thanked the darkness for hiding the blush that was most definitely creeping up his neck just as Dakota rolled over and smacked him in the face.
“Ow, ‘Kota!” William whisper-hissed as Vyncent tried to stifle his laugh to no avail. Thankfully the end result was that much of the building tension diffused, though Prime be Damned if William was going to attempt to cuddle Vyncent back.
Dakota- ever the clingy one even in sleep- had no such qualms.
Even with all the artificial noise and the closeness of people around him, William felt comfortable here. It was a strange thing to have concepts that had previously been a cause of distress to suddenly be a soothing presence: Dakota’s even breaths causing his own to fall into a steady rhythm, and Vycent’s arm thrown almost protectively around him was a safety William hadn’t even known he wanted until just now.
Without body heat of his own William almost always felt as though he were drifting and distant, as if perpetually standing out by that lake in a cold wind and with no one around. But this, these two, were a warmth and a grounding presence that allowed William’s eyes to slip shut as he fell into slumber.
The wisps flickered and fizzled out as William finally fell asleep, leaving only darkness... and Quiet.
Quiet. Peacefull. Home.
Home.
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