Wes's hometown wasn't much to get excited about - back in the day, as his Grandpa liked to say, they had a factory that made tanks, but since the world war ended, the factory had been converted back to making boring washing machines, which is where most people in town worked.

He spent his entire childhood and teenage years here and it had been a pretty chill time. He got into trouble, but his last name carried enough weight that the only discipline he got was from his Grandpa, everyone else too afraid to piss off the local Key.

When Yuriy had been in town with them, everyone pretty much avoided them, but after Yuriy got taken by the fed, Wes had been left alone. He had been sixteen.

For five hours, the feds hadn't been sure if it had been Yuriy or Wes that had caused all the chaos in town. He and Yuriy had been inseparable, so the two of them had been together when all that shit went down. And because Wes was the loud, boisterous, semi-aggressive one while Yuriy was quiet and distant, the locals all pointed toward Wes as being the one likely to have caused the trouble.

The fact that Wes attacked the fed and the Lock that pulled Yuiry out of the car didn't help his case either.

But then Wes had been transported to the hospital for his injuries and Yuriy had been brought to the police station to be processed.

And while Wes didn't know the details of what happened at the police station, apparently it became apparent to the feds pretty quickly who was the one they were actually after. 

Wes was cleared of any wrongdoing and when Wes was discharged from the hospital a month later, the townsfolk were much nicer.

But still, Wes never forgot how they had always treated him. They had never treated him badly, per se - they respected his Grandpa and Great Grandpa way too much for that - but they had always made sure to keep him at arm's length and tried to have as little to do with him as possible unless he was with his Grandpa.

Wes enjoyed some popularity in High school, and usually got laid on a regular basis because puberty had been very, very kind to him, but once Yuriy had been yanked out of town, Wes had pretty much made up his mind to leave as soon as he could.

But now that he had been away for four years, his boring little hometown was starting to appeal to him again. He came back for the holidays and birthdays, but for the most part, he had been avoiding the town just as the locals had avoided him in his childhood.

It was still exactly the same as it always had been.

When he stepped off the train, the benches on the platform were still the faded green they had always been, no one having ever bothered to repaint them. He smiled a little at the sight as he pulled out his cellphone, dialing up his older brother, Portland - 'Porty' to the family, 'Bag of Dicks' to Wes.

"I'm sleeping. Fuck off." His brother growled into the phone.

"I'm at the platform. Come pick me up." Wes said as he waltzed into the train station.

"I'm sleeping. Fuck off!" His brother snapped, his voice rising.

A muscle jumped in Wes's cheek in irritation. “You better come pick me up or I’m going to tell Pops just who smoked his fancy cigar he had imported, you fucking ass!” Wes shouted into the phone, scaring a pair of old women nearby.

His older brother cussed him out and hung up, but in half an hour Bag of Dicks was pulling up, screaming out the driver side window of his pickup truck for Wes to get his ass in the car before he ran him over.

Wes jumped into the passenger seat, he and his brother proceeding to scream at each other the entire car ride to the cluster of trailers that made up their family compound. As soon as the truck was slow enough to jump out, Wes did so to avoid getting his ear smacked by his brother, cursing at him and then screaming a sarcastic 'thank you' when his brother demanded one.

Wes hurried up the gravel path to the wooden house sitting at the center of all the trailers, going through the porch door to enter.

"Pops! Mamaw! I'm here to have a chat!" He called out as he breezed into the living room, kicking aside a toy ball.

"In the study!" he heard his Grandpa call out. 

Wes grinned before he went over to the bookshelf next to the television, the shelves packed with books and rando little keepsakes. He reached up to the top shelf until his fingers brushed against the grandmother clock that sat there, then reaching under the toy horse next to it.

There he found a small plastic bag, pulling it down to reveal a trio of hand-rolled joints, his Grandpa’s little secret. He took one out and stuck it between his teeth before he resealed the bag and put it back into its hiding place.

"Gramps, got a problem." He said as he walked down the hall to where his grandpa's study was. "Some Lock has decided to stalk me."