If You Were With Me
Dwight Houston and Wesley Hughes
Dwight's been lying in bed for a few hours now, blankly staring off into space. It's Sunday, the day after the anniversary of Alan's death, but he doesn't feel like getting up. Todd left the room half an hour ago, quietly creeping past Dwight's bed near the door, opening the door slowly so that the hinge didn't creak. The only thing Dwight can think of is how if Alan were alive, they would be poring over books on the supernatural right now. Maybe they would be sharing a sandwich with Swiss cheese and turkey – with no mayonnaise because Alan hated mayonnaise – a hint of midday sunlight streaming through the thin, drawn curtains.
Sighing deeply, he gets up, sitting on the edge of his bed. His mind, his body, his whole being feels numb down to the core, and he tries so hard to think of something – anything – less painful than Alan. Head inclining ever so slowly over to his bedside table, he remembers the pack of cigarettes and the pink lighter he had bought this morning, almost on a whim. This was probably what Logan felt like when he was on his medication – sluggish, tired, numb. He would give anything to just leave this numbness behind, because this dead feeling was somehow even more painful that being able to feel the waves of anguish that had crashed over him at Alan's funeral.
He's paralyzed, almost glued to the edge of his bed, staring at the blue box of cigarettes, unable to make up his mind. Finally, he decides that anything is better than just sitting here, doing nothing, letting the numbness wash over him like a heavy dosage of anesthesia. Reaching his hand across the desk in one swift movement, he grabs a cigarette, lighting it before he can change his mind again. Hesitantly, he holds it up to his mouth, face involuntarily cringing at the smell of the smoke coming from the lighted end of cigarette. Opening his mouth a fraction of an inch, he brings the cigarette to his lips... and he chokes. For some reason, he remembers thinking that it isn't supposed to be like this. In movies, the protagonist gets depressed, smokes a cigarette, and all of a sudden, they are less stressed and everything is better again. But as he coughs and splutters helplessly, attempting – but failing – to stifle the sound in case someone hears, he knows that this is not right. It doesn't feel right at all, and if anything, smoking has made things worse. He puts out the cigarette quickly, drawing open the curtains of a window and fanning the smoke out in case Todd comes back soon.
And that is the exact moment when Wes steps into the room. Dwight jumps, startled, when the shorter boy slams the door shut, his navy blue t-shirt drenched and sticking to his chest, his back leaning against the door for support, babbling something nonsensically about the twins' having a water balloon war. And just as suddenly as his torrent of words begin, it stops, and a silence fills the room. Wes realizes that Dwight is leaning against the window, his hands still – almost comically – in the air, fanning the smoke out. The Asian's dark brown eyes stray from Dwight's figure near the windowsill to the little box of cigarettes on the bedside table, and Dwight remains motionless as Wes's mind connects the two.
All of a sudden, the awkward silence is broken as Wes starts screeching hysterically at Dwight for smoking, because smoking can become a habit, and when habits form, they're hard to break. Enraged, Wes picks up the closest thing he can lay his hands on in Todd and Dwight's shared room – in this case, the former's baseball bat – and whacks it hard against Dwight's head, hoping to knock some sense in him. But as Dwight slumps to the floor, obviously concussed, Wes realizes what he has done, and panicking, he calls Blaine into the room. And Blaine, who is usually so calm and one of the more level-headed ones at Windsor, freaks out. Before Dwight loses consciousness, he can hear Blaine beckoning Charlie to come.
Dwight's eyelids flutter, and he tries to lift them fully, but they are so unbearably heavy, and there's a dull, throbbing pain in the back of his head that won't go away. When he wakes up, he's lying in his bed, the covers pulled up to his chin, Blaine's anxious face looming over him. And when Blaine sees that he's woken up, he runs to tell the others. Simultaneously, everyone tries to crowd into his room at once, and Dwight cringes at the uproar that ensues as the twins cheer for their White Knight and Charlie demands that everyone leave Dwight alone, at least for the time being. The slight ache in the back of his head quickly morphs into a sharp, stabbing twinge and Dwight feels like his head is going to split open, because all of a sudden, his vision has gotten blurrier, and he feels like he's going to fall down, even though he isn't standing up. Once again, he loses consciousness, his mind retreating back to the heavy lull of darkness.
When he wakes up again, the feeling of nauseousness he experienced before is completely gone. His mind functions slowly at first, creating half-formed thoughts about the supernatural, mayonnaise, and cigarettes. He jolts up in his bed, as if someone has electrocuted his spine. Cigarettes. Oh god. Wes. Baseball bat. Concussion. Not even stopping to think, Dwight races over to the room that Wes and David share. Opening the door silently, stealthily, Dwight peers inside. Hesitating, wondering if he should have purified the room and worn a cross before he entered, he steps through the threshold. The bed closer to the door is made and no one is sleeping in it; that bed is David's, who had gone home for the weekend to be with his family. In the other bed, the one closer to the window, a sleeping form lays, sprawled across the bed. Wes.
Tiptoeing over to Wes's bedside, Dwight gently nudges the other boy on the shoulder. Wes looks like he's about to stir, but he ends up just turning over in his bed. Dwight nudges him again, a little more urgently this time. After a minute of minimal to no response, Dwight starts to shake Wes's snoozing form even more pressingly, determined to wake him up. Blearily, Wes opens his eyes, turning over and sitting up in his bed, demanding to know why Dwight is waking him up at this ungodly hour. But then his mind clears a bit, and he knows exactly why Dwight is sitting on the side of his bed, shaking him awake hours before dawn.
Wes arches one eyebrow questioningly, and Dwight hangs his head in shame. The latter understands what Wes is asking. Dwight explains that it was supposed to feel good, that smoking was supposed to help him get his mind off of Alan's death, to alleviate the stress of it all. Wes smirks a little, telling Dwight that even though it didn't turn out as he anticipated, his plan had worked; Dwight's mind had definitely been taken off of Alan. Of course, he had also been heavily concussed by Todd's baseball bat, but to Wes, that was a minor detail. But afterwards, Wes assures Dwight that he won't tell anyone about the smoking or why Dwight tried to do it, as long as the younger boy promised to never do it again, and definitely not to make a habit of it. And Dwight happily complies, not only because he fears the wrath of Wes when coupled with a sturdy bat, but also because smoking only made things worse for him.
Wes never brought it up ever again, and for that, Dwight was grateful. That was an experience he would rather forget, one that he shoved into the dark recesses of his mind and never thought about ever again. And as months passed by, and the anniversary of Alan's death came again, Dwight awoke at the crack of dawn to find a bouquet of pink sweet pea flowers – the ones that Alan liked best – laying atop his bedside table with a small, white tag on it. It simply read: For Alan Houston. Dwight smiled. He knew who those were from.