joshua

who: lullaby and joshua
where: text!
when: early afternoon

Lullaby didn't know when Joshua was up and about, really, not anymore, though she thought that was something she should know. So...she gave it a while and didn't text him at the ass-crack of dawn or anything, and waited until a little after noon to text him.

Hey, how're you? You don't have a mirror in your bedroom or anything, do you?<3lulu

After she sent it, she sort of wondered to herself if she shouldn't work on being more subtle, or going with natural segues instead of hopping right into the weird paranoia...

it gets worse at night.

Who: Joshua and Marek
When: afternoon
Where: NMU's campus

"No, ma, I think we can manage it," Joshua said as he walked out of the building, phone tucked between his head and his shoulder, as his hands were full of glossy pamphlets and papers. "The lady said a student visa isn't too hard to get, and she gave me some stuff about scholarships, so we might not have to ... well, yeah, I know you would, but if I can ..." He trailed off as she just talked over him, and grinned a bit.

The night before had been full of lots of thinking. And talking to himself, which was how he thought things through the best. Talking to Claire about future plans and jobs and the like had put sort of a spotlight on how useless he was being. He needed to do something with his life, whether Lu was in it or not. And unless he was going to -- clumsily -- stock groceries for the rest of his life, that involved going on with his school-plan.

"No, I don't have a major yet, that's not for a wh-- aw fuck," he cut himself off as a gust of wind caught the papers in his hand and blew them completely away across the grass. "I gotta call you back, ma, loveyoubye!" He hung up and pocketed the phone as he hurried to try and catch all of it.

Who: Claire and Joshua
When: afternoonish
Where: down by the lake

Maybe it was from being born and raised on an island, but Joshua liked being on the lakeshore. There was something soothing about the water. The damn thing was big enough to be an ocean, when you were standing on the side of it. In any case, he'd walked aimlessly out there again, far from where he'd run into the naked-feather-man, but still. Down there. His head was all over the place, and he'd been hoping the movement would help, but it hadn't really.

She'd said that she missed him. Gave him little text hearts. But he hadn't heard from her again. She hadn't wanted to see him. He was again in that place where he didn't know what she was thinking and he was stopping himself from texting her at least once an hour. He didn't know what to do. Should he do it? Go out there and try to see her? Would she even ask for his help if she needed some? He kind of didn't think so. But then he didn't want to be the insane stalker ex-boyfriend either, who just showed up to a house that wasn't even her's and demanded -- or begged, more likely -- to see her. So he was stuck. Wondering if she was thinking about him at all, if she'd meant it when she said she missed him, or if he was just ... placated and tucked to one side. Because that was what it felt like. She hadn't actually talked to him, after all, just made references to having a hard time. A hard time she apparently didn't want his help with. Not that he had any. He was worried about her, and felt completely helpless. Which really had been the problem, hadn't it? It was a bad headspace to be in.

Who: Joshua and Lullaby
When: late, 11:40ish
Where: over the phone

Everything had a certain point where it became unbearable. Even good things, pleasurable things, people were built to only take so much of. This was not one of those things, which made Joshua's threshhold of tolerance even lower. He hadn't heard from her yet. Not at all, and it was driving him crazy. Yeah, she'd dumped him, said she needed time and all that, and that was why he'd deleted every text message that he'd gotten halfway through writing to her. And there had been a lot. But laying on his back listening to Radiohead had put him in a certain mood, and one of them finally made it through. She probably wouldn't answer, but he couldn't make himself not risk it anymore.

If he was going to be a man, he had to man up to rejection too. So he hit send and dropped the phone to his stomach again.

Hi. you doing ok? -J

Who: Claire and Joshua
When: lunch, post-meeting stuff
Where: MSHS

Joshua couldn't help but be glad that the meeting on the sidelawn was over. It was a good idea, to keep everybody in touch, that was great and all. He just felt ... out of place there, conspicuous with the tape over his nose and his wrist all wrapped up. That and it really fucking sucked to have to an awkward and brief conversation with Dean. Wasn't his fault, in the end, but still. It was weird. In any case, he was relieved when they all split up. He started around the corner of the school building, board tucked up under his arm, sneakers flopping a bit from where he'd pulled the goddamn laces out of them, on his way back to the sidewalk to go home.

Who: Charlotte, Dean, Herbert, Joshua, Isaac, Peyton, Sammy, Stacey, and Thom.
When: Lunchtime.
Where: Side lawn at school.

Charlotte would have felt much better about this if Kaysen was there. She hadn't been nervous about this until she woke up this morning and realized she had no freaking idea what she was doing. Or maybe everyone would think she was crazy, or that it was a waste of time. They won't. she kept telling herself. If they agreed to show up in the first place, they must think it's a good idea. She just kept telling herself that.

[because I never gave him one before, Joshua's handwriting can be found here.]

Who: Sean and Joshua
When: middayish, right after scene with Dessi
Where: on the way home

Who: Text messages from Charlotte to Kaysen, Dean, and Joshua.
When: Lunch time.
Where: School.

Charlotte felt better now that school had started, and fell back into the routine of it all with relief and ease. She was glad it looked like things could be getting back to normal, and with that... time to get back to the plans. First, she sent a message to Kaysen.

Who: Joshua and Dessi
When: mid-day
Where: along the lakeshore

Drunk-sleeping away almost the entire day before made it hard to keep doing it, and Joshua had been up since early morning. He still felt kind of all over the place emotionally, but at least he hadn't cried since his sobby pity-party the day before, right before he passed out, so he was counting that as good. He was thinking about her obsessively, however, and that was not. He'd gotten his phone back from Sean at some point, and sat listlessly around the apartment until he just couldn't anymore, and had gone out for a walk.

In an attempt to distract himself, and to stop punching in long badly-spelled text messages to her only to delete them, Joshua rode his board down toward the lake and then stashed it to walk. It looked like the drizzle-rain was stopping, though that hadn't prevented him going out in it, and he was kind of damp. He didn't care. He paused to snag up another rock and hurl it out into the water, mind grinding on in that unstoppable way it had.

Who: Sean and Joshua
When: mid-morning, riiiight after Joshua/Lullaby
Where: on the road, their apartment

Joshua didn't want to go back in the house. Even though she wasn't in there, she was still down by the water where he'd left her, he didn't want to go back in that place. Not yet. Maybe he'd send Sophie and Oz a thank you card or something later, but right now? His dumb ass was staying outside. He was almost tempted just to start walking home on his own, to give himself some time without somebody's eyes on him, but he knew that if Lulu went back in without him, Sean would likely freak out a little, and he didn't want to deal with that today. So, standing out by their car, he thumbed a message into his phone and sent it to the angel.

have to leave, just got dumped. out by the car, you coming? - J

who: joshua and lullaby
where: the lakeshore
when: early/mid morning

Who: Maddie, Sean and Joshua, then...
Where: Osbourne Household
When: Approaching dusk

Who: Dean and various (Caleb, Charlotte, Joshua, Thia if any want to reply!)
Where: By Text / phone
When: Just before dark

Who: Lulu and Joshua
When: late afternoon
Where: Osbourne house

It was on the cusp between afternoon and evening that Joshua really woke up. He'd stayed up a while in the morning, trying not to be in the way and helping where he could. He'd apologized to Sophie for the window. Well, both of them. But eventually sleep had dragged him down for a while. He was tired as hell, having been up the whole night before, and the one before that ... naps in the daytime really weren't a substitute for much. Luckily exhaustion left him mostly dreamless. Eventually though, he sat up on the bed in the room he'd been loaned, rubbing a hand over his stubble and yawning some. He took some time just to sit for a little while and try to wake up

Lullaby had peeked in on Joshua a few times that day, wanting to talk to him but not wanting to wake him either. She knew he needed the rest, and there was that wanting to take care of him part of the equation that kicked in there too. So, she'd waited, and was on her way up to check again, when she peeked into the room and saw him sitting up. She smiled at him, a light expression. Tired herself being she hadn't gotten sleep. "Hey." she said. "Sleep well?" she asked.

Who: Joshua and Lullaby
When: late night
Where: Osbourne house

Lullaby felt shakey. All over. She didn't know if she was shaking, but she felt like she was. It had hurt again, in a vague sort of way, when she'd come back to life. Just drawing that first breath made her chest hurt, though everything else was perfect. Sean had picked her up and she'd had a few brief moments to be amazed at the fact that she was being carried. By someone who was flying, and then it had been over. There weren't the gunshots from when she'd cut out, just...one second the world had been full of awful badness, and then it was all silent and hushed. To say she wasn't sure what to do would have been understating it. Her mind was a mess, not sure what to latch onto or even if she should. She didn't even know where she'd been brought in at, but there was Joshua there. That filtered through better.

Who: Dean and Joshua
When: a little before dark
Where: the Osbourne house

Joshua had slept some, in a light and shitty kind of way, helped out here and there where he could, and felt quite a bit better when Oz had given him a job for the night. He could be a lookout, he was fine with that. At least it wasn't being stuck down in the basement all night, which was what he'd half-expected to be told. So instead he was going to be upstairs with a walkie-talkie, working on spotting the vamps where he could. It would at least keep him occupied until the twenty-four hour mark rolled around and he started watching for Lullaby instead. Once she was safe ... back to the vampires -- if any showed up, he hoped to god they didn't. There was a bit of time left, though, and Joshua found himself walking through the house, sort of masochistically looking for Dean.

Dean was in Thia's room. Sophie and he hadn't been back for very long - he was sure that she'd kept him out of the house for most of the day on purpose in an effort to keep his mind off things, or some bullshit like that. Whatever - like that was going to work. But they'd had to be home well before dark and he'd driven them back about half an hour ago - successfully managing to not crash at all. Which was a triumph for his first driving lesson, as far as he was concerned. Now, though, he was unpacking her stuff that he'd picked up from Journey's, putting it all in drawers, cupboards, adding in the bags of things that Sophie had bought her on the basis that no girl could possibly survive with so little. Especially not shoes - Sophie had jumped right on the absence of shoes. It was taking a little time, but the pile he'd dumped on the bed was going down. And Dean was refusing to even consider the possibility that she wasn't coming back to use them.

Who: Sean and Joshua
When: early morning
Where: Osbourne house

Who: Charlotte and various text messages.
When: 9 AMish.

To Kaysen:
Still alive? Y/Y?

To Joshua:
Doing okay? I'm good.

To Dean:
Doing okay today? I'm good, checking in with others. -Charlotte.

who: everyone at the osbourne household
where: oz's house
when: around midnight(predawn)

Things were relatively quiet, until around midnight. The night had been mostly undisturbed as far out as they were, though Oz had a police scanner in the kitchen quietly broadcasting. That told them that the vampires hadn't moved on from town, like they had the others. Fires were breaking out, people were dying, stores were looted, it was mayhem in town.

Just not out there. Not until it was interrupted by the first strike of lightning that crashed down from the sky all on it's own, to hit a figure that was moving in from the treeline. That was when the badness started.

Got your messg. sorry took so long to get back. you ok? -joshua

Who: Joshua and Lullaby
When: midday
Where: Oz/Sophie/Dean's house

Lullaby was trying to get used to the pain. Really, she totally was. The pain meds helped, but seriously...at the end of the morning, she still had an untended broken wrist. It still in fact, felt like someone had replaced her bones in there with broken glass. Only now with the meds, it felt like someone had then wrapped it up in velvet or something. Either way? It still didn't feel good, and she was trying very very hard to not at all move it. Her back with the lacerations there wasn't happy either...but then again, really nothing was. She'd spent a lot of her morning getting woken up intermittenly by painfully freezing touches to her shoulder, which she'd been told was Maddie keeping her awake because it was dangerous for her to sleep just yet.

She'd also been assured she could sleep later. She just didn't know when that 'later' was going to be. Joshua when he'd come downstairs hadn't really left her side, and people were sort of wandering in and out. Sometimes so fast she only caught the tail end of them leaving. Of course, there was a ton of stuff to be done--not that she actually even knew what was being done. She did know she kept hearing intermitten thunks. Like someone was hammering a whole lot. It was faint to her, but she could hear it. All in all, her mood, while drugged up and full of pain--was actually fairly okay. She'd done something. And she'd done something useful. Something good. It gave her a little bit of new home that maybe she wasn't a monster. Or even if she was? Maybe she could make up for that.

Who: Sean and Joshua then Sean Joshua and Lullaby with a guest mini-appearance by Dean
Where: Dean, Sophie and Oz's house
When: Night

Sean hadn't heard much about what was going on in town. Scratch that, he hadn't heard anything about what was going on in town - he'd been watching a movie when he'd felt that unmistakable 'oh shit' feeling that told him that Joshua was in some kind of trouble. Once he was out of the door and on his way, though, that changed pretty damn quick - a bird's eye view of a city would do that for a guy and flying was the quickest way of getting to wherever the guy was - quickest and shortest, being he could go in a straight line.

On the ground below him, fires burned. Two big ones, one with smoke belching up into the atmosphere, but there were smaller ones springing up here and there. Emergency vehicles seemed to be everywhere, stopped at scenes and haring either to or from them. It was chaos and Joshua was out there, somewhere, pushing Sean on faster and faster, flying solely on instinct, trusting on his abilities as Joshua's guardian to guide him unerringly to his side.

His panic and concern lessened slightly as he was directed towards the lake, flying out of town, the ground below becoming quieter, darker, the houses more spaced out. There were no emergency vehicles here, no crashed cars, the screams sounded a long way off. It was as good as he could hope for as the angel touched down in the driveway of a house. Of course, the first thing he saw was the battered old truck, the way the hood was crumpled and the blood smeared across it. Now that? Wasn't good. At all. And Sean reached the house door in a matter of moments, banging hard on it. Joshua was inside, there was blood out here and if he had to break down the door to get to him, that was what would be happening. He'd give them ten seconds. Maybe less. Five was seeming too long right now. Four, three...

Who: In various groupings: billy dean joshua lullaby maddie oz and sophie
Where: All over the damn place!
When: After dark

The world was swimming as Billy drove up the road to Oz' house. It was a damned good job that there was no other traffic and that the place wasn't far, because he was swerving all over the place. His head was throbbing, the world wouldn't keep still, and he only had one hand that wanted to help with the whole 'working' thing. He clipped the corner as he pulled the battered truck into the gravel driveway of his friend's house and swerved to a stop, pushing down far too hard on the brake. He felt the pain lance through him as he jerked forward, then back and for a moment he lost his breath. This was the part where he got out of the car, he knew. But he didn't want to move. He was tired and his head was spinning. He should just sit here for a while. Maybe sleep for a bit.

Who: Joshua and Lullaby
When: afternoon
Where: Journey's house

Joshua tried to take a minute outside on the front porch before he went in. He was looking down at the books in his hands, and wondering -- stupidly, most likely -- just who's idea it had been for Dean to go get them, and how all that had gone down. And how things had gone last night, with them alone out at the orphanage, apparently playing with her abilities. Not that he thought anything happened, it just ... didn't do anything for his sense that he hadn't actually done anything for her. But that place was probably a death trap for him anyway. If there was a floor to collapse and drop you to your death, he'd probably find it, despite having been there before. But he could've brought her books, goddammit, that he could at least handle. He took a few breaths, told himself that he wouldn't let her know because she didn't need that on top of everything else, and walked into the house, looking around for her. "Lu?" he called overly loudly.

Lullaby happened to be in the living room, playing her millionth game of solitaire. The only good part about it was she knew several different types of it, so she could change it up now and then. The downside was it was her sitting around playing stupid cards all day when she was antsy to leave. Go outside, do anything that wasn't sitting inside playing soitaire. However, that wasn't doable, so she sat. And played, and waited. When she heard Joshua call for her, she looked up, then hopped up from where she was in the corner, smiling at him. "Hi!" she said, coming over to give him a kiss, and she looked at the stuff he was carrying. "Hey you'll be here in time for when Dean comes by too--though he said he can't stay. But he was supposed to bring books..." she paused, noting that one of the titles seemed pretty familiar in the sense that she was pretty sure that it was something Dean would have been bringing.

Who: Dean and Joshua
Where: Near Journey's house
When: afternoon

Dean was hurrying - he'd run out of school the moment the bell had sounded. The trip to Nevermore had been done at speed, in, looking around long enough to grab the first book on Fades he could find (not that there were actually a lot there anyway) and then something on psychic ability that seemed to have a large proportion of it on something called 'disruptors' which looking at the summary seemed to be very like what he could do. He'd paid with hardly a word to the person on the counter, playing the sullen teen thing up to the max so that he didn't get caught in conversation and then headed straight over to Journey's. He couldn't stay long - he'd caught it in the neck from Sophie when he'd got home, well after dark, last night. He'd thought that she'd go easy on her, being all supposedly bereaved and everything. He'd been wrong. Oh hell had he been wrong. He'd never really seen Sophie mad before and he didn't really want to see her mad again. She wiped the floor with him - Oz carefully staying in the other room and not getting involved. So, he really had to be home on time today. Or, at least, well before sundown. The last thing he needed was her to follow through on her threat to start delivering him to and picking him up from school.

He was breathing heavily by the time he rounded the corner to Journey's road, still at a run, though it had slowed by now to more of a fast jog. He slowed further as he saw a familiar figure in front of him. Joshua - who, he assumed, would be heading to the same place he was. He stopped and took a breath, before calling out. "Hey, Joshua!"

Who: A message left on Joshua's voicemail.
When: 3:30ish.

"Hi Joshua, it's Charlotte? Um... I hope it's okay that I called you. There's some stuff I'd like to talk about... if you're up for it. Call me if you want, but I understand if you can't, or, um... don't want to. Bye."

who: lullaby and joshua
where: journey's house
when: midday

Who: Joshua and Lullaby
When: a little after noon
Where: over the phone

i need to be sure you werent a dream. love, J