Wes was severely unimpressed with the building Jackson lived in. He expected something more, something maybe more modern, but instead, it seemed to be in a very old building, maybe even one of the oldest in their city. It wasn't small and it looked like it had been renovated, but it still looked very old.
He didn't hate it.
But he had expected something different.
Jackson lived toward the top of the building, one of only two apartments on the top floor, and when Jackson opened the door for him and stood back to let him enter first, Wes entered to see the inside.
Jackson’s apartment was bigger than Wes’s own studio, but it was messy in the way apartments usually were when you first moved in. "Just move in?" He asked curiously as he slowly walked through the living room, looking around at the chaos.
“I’ve been here for two years, actually,” Jackson mumbled as he closed and locked the front door.
Yikes. “It’s nice.” Wes said with a tight smile.
“It’s got thick walls, so my neighbors can’t what my screaming,” Jackson said with a strange look on his face.
Wes nodded with a smirk. “Kinky.” His smirk fell and he twisted to look to Jackson with a startled look. "So let me get this straight, you've lived here this entire fucking time-"
"And we've never run into each other." Jackson finished for him, nodding with a solemn look. "Yes."
"Why were you here, though? I mean, I thought you just came here once you heard this is where I was fucking around." His eyes narrowed. "This is a nothing little city. Why are you here?"
"I was looking for your family. I knew he had gone to Cambell's Meadow, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find it. All I knew was that this city was the last place my great grandfather had his things sent to when he moved here, so I figured you and your family had to be not entirely far from here."
Wes nodded a little, looking away from Jackson to look around the messy apartment. "Weren't looking for Molehill. What would you have done if we had still been named Cambell's Meadow?"
"We would have met many years earlier." Jackson said flatly.
Wes turned a little to look at him. "How many years?"
"Many." Jackson said shortly. "I started seriously looking ten years ago, back when I started....losing control."
Wes looked him over briefly before he grunted, meeting Jackson's gaze. He nodded. signaling he wanted to start, and Jackson nodded as well. “It’s going to be weird...hearing each other’s thoughts….” Wes stated lamely as he pulled off his coat, tossing it to one of the couches in the spacy living room.
Jackson just stared at him with the same wild look, like he wanted to eat him, kill him, or both.
“I’m not trained.” Wes blurted out, not really knowing what else to say. “I’m not trained, like, at all. Like, at all. So, fair warning.” He said with an uneasy laugh. “This could get bad real fast.”
“I went through some training,” Jackson said very quietly, his eyes shimmering in the light of the apartment. “Between the two of us, I think we’ll manage.”
“Well let’s hope so, or else we’re both fucked!” Wes joked, snapping his fingers by his waist. He nodded to himself, nervously bouncing on his feet.
He was going to fuck this up.
He was so going to fuck this up.
FUCK!
"Okay!" Wes said with a nervous laugh, "Let’s, uh, move this to the bathroom. I might puke.” He stopped and turned to look at Jackson. “I’m for sure going to puke, so...another fair warning for you.” He shot Jackson with a finger gun before Jackson led him to the bathroom. It was a weird-looking bathroom. The walls were a weird color, and the lights in here blinked like they were on their last dying breath.
It looked like a place where someone had died very violently, and a very long time ago.
"Dude, this place makes me want to go crazy. How do you do it?" He asked as he looked around.
"I just go crazy." Jackson said plainly.
Wes snorted, giving him an amused look before he sat down on the floor by the bathtub, clearing his throat. "I'm going to puke in your tub. It'll be easier I think."
"Puke away." Jackson said as he lowered himself to sit opposite Wes, facing him.
Wes licked his lips and leaned back to rest his back against the wall next to the tub, adjusting his position to get more comfortable. When that didn't work he moved to sit on his knees, Jackson sitting in the lotus position. Wes cleared his throat and scooted closer so his knees touched Jackson's shins.
He met Jackson's gaze. The light might be blinking, but its brightness made him see the silvery blue ring in the other man's eyes. They were pretty, and kind of haunting. He quirked his lips at Jackson and shrugged a shoulder and Jackson gave him a tiny smile in return, then an encouraging nod.
"Soory in advance if I fuck this up." Wes said quietly.
"You're not going to fuck this up." Jackson replied very softly, "I know you won't."
"And if I do?" Wes asked, his gaze leaving to look to the tub.
Jackson touched the bottom of his chin with his knuckle and Wes looked back to his and his haunting eyes. "You won't. You can't. You are designed to fit into my mind perfectly."
Wes scoffed, but blinked and nodded, licking his lips. "Well...we'll see." He dropped his gaze briefly before he closed his eyes and concentrated.
He let Jackson's mind suck him in, inhale his psyche so that Wes had breeched the walls of Jackson's mind entirely.
It was a very strange sensation, akin to a muscle that hadn’t been used in a very long time.
But there it was - the darkness.
Well, that wasn’t so bad! It was more like a really big step down, rather than a plunge. At the bottom of it, he searched the darkness. It was hard to explain what was there. It was pitch black, but he could sense channels, tunnels that stretched out in every which direction...up, down, left, right, forward back.
Wes sucked in a long, slow breath before he let it out slowly. As he exhaled, he began to fill Jackson’s mind with his own. It was a slow creeping forward, like mist rolling over hills.
Experts could easily fill the minds of others in minutes time and explained it as being something like water pouring out and filling the container that was the other’s mind, but Wes was not practiced. All the books said to take it slow and easy, go until you began to feel yourself hitting the wall, and then stop - overexertion could cause extreme exhaustion in both Lock and Key, and in extreme cases, even brain death.
But he didn’t feel a wall.
There was so much more space to fill inside of Jackson's mind, but after a while he began to feel like he was drained, like there was no more breath to give. He began to pull back, but hands clamping down on his face had him pausing. He remembered then that he wasn’t supposed to pull back, instead just sort of, for lack of better words, float back. It was a weird sensation. Not detaching, but instead just...lifting off of it, leaving his work there. It was a bit like coming up out of water.
When Wes opened his eyes, he saw Jackson was slightly slumped forward and clinging to his upper arms. Wes felt light headed. Seriously, seriously light headed. “I think I’m going to pass out.” He slurred, his voice light and gaspy. He was having problems catching his breath.
Jackson slowly opened his eyes, his gaze lowered to Wes's own. He didn’t reply.
Wes began to feel himself tilting backward, only held up by Jackson’s grip on him. His chin tipped back and he stared at the ceiling and saw there was peeling wallpaper up there. Who the fuck wallpapers the ceiling, seriously?
“I did it when I was drunk.” Wes heard Jackson mumble through the cloud around his head. Had he said that out loud? “No - I can hear you, sort of...it’s very distant, quiet...like in the apartment below mine...but I can hear you in my mind.”
“Spacey.” Wes slurred as his head tilted further back, feeling too heavy for his neck. He wondered if this was how newborn babies felt, unable to hold their head up. Weeeeird. The books didn’t say anything about this. Did he do something wrong? His mind couldn’t quite wrap around that. It couldn’t wrap anything. It was just sort of floating there, outside his body, whispering that he fucked up, again-
All the sudden his stomach lurched and he vomited in his mouth, jerking as he choked on it. Jackson yanked him up into a sitting position and then moved him sideways to lean him against the side of the bathtub, Wes vomiting into it. He kept vomiting until he fell into a different sort of blackness, the type inside of his own head.
And then there was nothing.
Real nothing.
Not black out drunk nothing.
Actual nothing.
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