~*~ Yay Connie's POV! His point of view explains what Veser actually went through.
Musical Muse: Nightwish songs.
Warnings: More swearing (Conrad's got a mouth), and some implied ConWorth cause it's the bomb.
Disclaimer: Not Tessa, therefore I don't own HiNaBN.
~*~Ocean of Grief Chapter 2~*~
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Fuck. Them. All.
It was all their fault. It was Hanna's fault for dragging that stinking kid into their lives, Ples' fault for calling to say he had run off, Toni's fault for suggesting they look for him after he'd been gone for twelve hours.
All. Their. Fault.
Conrad growled to himself as he leaned forward in his seat, trying to see through the condensation on his windshield. It was raining outside and too hot and muggy in here. And he hated driving in this weather, hated that he had to spend his time this close to sunrise looking for a runaway half-breed.
Hanna had told him to check the east end of town, but he couldn't see anything though his windows, and there was no way he was getting out of his car in this weather. Besides, the little punk was probably hiding somewhere. If he was, there would be no way to see him anyway.
Conrad sighed as he turned on his blinker and drove down the off-ramp that led to the ocean. It was worth a shot. Ples had said he had run off with the pelt, so there was a good chance he was on this dirty dingy excuse for a beach.
Of course, being the middle of fall early in the rainy morning, there were no cars. Conrad parked, grabbed his umbrella, and set off toward the dunes.
'This is so stupid. That stupid little bastard is fucking up everyone's day, just so he could get attention.' Conrad thought cryptically to himself. Oh yeah, sure, he sympathized with the kid. He knew what it was like to live in a home where you were either criticized or ignored. But that didn't give the kid the go-ahead to mess everyone else up.
Conrad topped the final dune and looked toward the beach. He received a blast of salty spray for his efforts, but one he had wiped off his glasses enough to see, he saw that, yep, there was a little hunk of emo sitting on the beach.
"Veser you little piece of shit!" he called out to the boy. There was no reaction. 'He better not have heard me, cause if he's ignoring me there's gonna be hell to pay' he thought savagely as he stumbled down the dune. He was honest-to-god sick of this kid. Ples could babysit him from now on if he liked him so much.
"Veser?" he barked as he got closer. The boy didn't turn, still sitting hunched over the sodden fur of his mother. "Veser!" he tramped to a halt in front of the boy and kneeled in front of him angrily. He grabbed the boy by the shoulders and gave him one good shake. He stuck his face in front of Veser's, then froze.
What was that look in his eyes? The bright green orbs, normally filled with mischief or anger, were dimmed, like the lights behind them had gone out. There was nothing, literally nothing. Conrad had never seen such dead eyes, not in his grandmother's right before she died, or in the eyes of those caught in mainstream modern society. They were empty, soulless, and looked right through him, reflecting the ocean behind Conrad.
"Veser!" he yelled this directly into the boy's face while grabbing at it with his hands. God it was cold. His skin was just as cold as his.
Finally, finally, those terrifying eyes focused on his face, but he saw no recognition there. It was chilling, how empty those eyes were. The zombie that followed Hanna had more expressive eyes. However, he didn't let the lack of emotion sway him. "Veser stop fooling around! What's wrong with you?" he demanded. "Don't you know everyone's out looking for you, and it's almost daytime! You're gonna be in deep shit when we get back to the apartment, let me tell you."
He kept ranting and raving, hoping to get a response from the chilly boy. He couldn't deny he was worried when, instead of rising to the bait like he usually did, Veser's eyes lost their focus on his face, and drifted back to the ocean behind Conrad. It was like he was staring right through him, and it was really starting to creep him out.
"Come on Ves! It's raining and I've got to get inside and you're gonna catch a cold…" Conrad kept up the constant haranguing as he tried to pull Veser to his feet while keeping the umbrella over his head. But the half-selkie was dead weight, and the wind was blowing so much water at him as it was, so finally Conrad ditched the umbrella altogether and hauled the boy to his feet. Looping one arm around his neck, Conrad pulled/dragged the boy from the beach.
The trip back up the dune was significantly worse than it was going down. The wind had changed direction, and was now blowing right in his face. Plus Veser was doing nothing to help. If anything, as his feet dragged in the sand, he was impeding his progress. "For fuck's sake, Veser," Conrad snarled, "walk would ya? It's freezing out here!"
There was no response, no sign that he was even heard. The ocean behind them, however, seemed to be growing fiercer. The vampire chanced a glance behind him, and saw the waves rolling far up the beach, seeming to reach for the pair. Trying to bring the seal boy back. Conrad gulped, and shouldered his way over the crest of the dune and into the parking lot. He opened his passenger side door and practically shoved Veser in.
Getting in to his own seat, Conrad buckled up, turned the heater up as high as it would go, shifted into drive, and was out of the lot in practically the same (unneeded) breath. Only then could he relax, and return his focus to the head-case in the seat next to him.
Veser hadn't moved since he had been shoved into the seat, and looked exactly the same that he had on the beach: sodden, dripping, and looking like there was nothing inside him. Scary. One hand on the wheel, Conrad pulled his iPhone from its holder and pressed 'Redial', which connected him to Ples.
"Ples? Yeah, it's me. I found Veser. Yeah, he was on the beach. Umm…"- Conrad sent a sideways glance at the motionless boy- "Honestly I don't think he's doing so good. I'll tell you later, right now I just want him dried off, he looks like a drowned rat. Can you call the others and tell them to call off the search? Thanks. Yeah I'll keep you posted. Bye." He ended the call and returned his overpriced piece of unneeded technology to its shrine, then accelerated a little more. A thought had occurred to him as he had spoken to Ples. Maybe if he got Veser in a familiar place, warm and dried off, he would snap out of his funk. That in mind, he drove to his apartment as quickly as the rain and laws allowed.
After parking in the complex's garage and pulling the boy into his apartment (desperately hoping none of his neighbors would look out and see a grown man pulling an apparent minor though the halls), Conrad was faced with a greater challenge. Veser stood in his entryway, dripping mournfully and still clutching the pelt. Conrad could practically feel the cold pouring off him in waves. The kid was going to get sick if he stayed like this. Conrad grudgingly pushed him into the bathroom, wincing at every drip that landed on his wood floors.
After pulling down lots of towels, starting the shower and ensuring that it was an appropriate heat, Conrad finally stopped stalling and turned to the chore of –gulp- undressing the sodden boy. The first thing that had to go was the pelt they had spent so much time and effort on. Reaching out, Conrad pried Veser's stiff fingers from the surprisingly soft fur. He thought there might have been a reaction in the boy's eyes, but it was gone too quickly to tell. He gently folded it and placed it on the counter. Now came the hard part.
"Alright, um, just…crap" Conrad momentarily blanked at the thought of pulling the clothes off his roommate. Imagining Worth in his head telling him to grow a pair, he bit his lip and reached for the zipper of the hoodie.
"Come on Veser. This is really embarrassing. I'm stripping you, the least you can do is give me some encouragement!" Conrad tried joking to the silent boy as he removed the sweatshirt. "Stop being such a zombie. Move, blink, or something." Conrad still joked as he stripped the boy of his sopping t-shirt, and finally (oh god how embarrassing) pants. Leaving him in his boxer-briefs, he pushed the cold clammy body into the flow of hot water from the shower.
He propped Veser up against the side of the shower so he wouldn't fall (oh the irony of drowning in the shower, especially now). Conrad gathered up the wet clothes and threw them all in the washing machine. They would get cleaned after Veser was out of the shower. After returning to the bathroom and making sure Veser was still upright, he carefully gathered the pelt and placed it on the dresser of his guest room, which had kinda become Veser's room.
Finally, after giving Veser enough time to thaw out, he returned to the bathroom with some sweatpants and a shirt. "Veser?" he asked. Hearing no response, he glanced in the shower, and groaned to see that Veser still hadn't moved, although his skin was certainly a lot redder. Conrad turned off the shower and grabbed the biggest towel in his arsenal. "Alright Veser, you asked for it." he warned the boy before spreading the towel and engulfing the sodden boy in its embrace. Pulling him from the shower, he roughly rubbed the thick cloth over the still body.
"You're just being a big pain in the butt today aren't you?" he barked into the ear next to his face. Veser seemed to have lost the ability to stand on his own, and was now slumped entirely on Conrad. The look in his eye was impossibly more distant. It had faded since they had left the beach, and now they really looked like corpse's eyes. Conrad gently touched the boy's face, shuddering at how cold it still was. "Come on Ves." he said softly. "Come back. Warm up. Please?" he gently pleaded the quiet shell. Conrad stilled his drying motion, and wrapped the towel around Veser's body. Groping carefully, 'oh god don't look be careful', he removed the final piece of Veser's clothing and let them drop to the floor.
He practically had to manhandle the boy, but finally he got the sweatpants and old t-shirt on Veser. Running a final towel through the goofy-colored hair, Conrad looked over the boy. He looked warm, dry, and presentable, but the way he was still slumped against him and the way his lids were drooping over the empty eyes was troubling.
He dragged the almost-corpse into his living room and laid Veser gently down on the couch. That was where the kid usually spent his time in Conrad's apartment. Half the time he slept right there instead of in the guest bed. Conrad never said anything, but he had a bad feeling that it was because it was closer to the exit, in case the boy had to run for it. Veser's eyes were now fully closed. His skin remained clammy, and now it didn't seem like he was breathing very deeply, or at all.
Conrad scrambled through all the rooms, pulling out every spare blanket he had and piling them on top and around Veser. Finally out of ideas to warm him up- aside from shoving him in the oven- Conrad just stood over the form on the couch and just watched. There really was nothing left of the wild child who had made it his personal mission to shake up Conrad's life. The brat who had stolen his computer to look at porn, the one who laughed at him every morning for putting blood in his coffee, the one who loved to get a rise out of him by insinuating about his not-a-relationship with Worth; he was lying there like a hunk of driftwood. Even his heart was starting to slow, and not in the good, sleeping rate way. More of a dead, hollow way.
But Conrad didn't know what else to do. He wasn't a doctor; he had done everything in his power to give the boy a chance to make it through this. If he didn't, then it was purely his choice. Even so, Conrad couldn't resist leaning down one last time to whisper "Come back, Veser. Come back." in his ear before leaving the room to finally change out of his partially-dried clothes.
Conrad could feel the sun begin to rise, and every vampiric bone in his body told him to go to sleep. But Conrad had spent enough time going against his nature that he hardly listened anymore. Instead, he logged on to his e-mail, puttered around for a bit online, then just sat in bed doodling. He was not straining his ears to hear if Veser moved at all. In fact, he was putting so much effort into not paying attention that he hardly noticed what he was doodling. When he did, he frantically erased the embarrassing sketches, definitely not noticing their resemblance to a certain doctor.
Finally, there was no more hope for it: he was tired. He put his sketch pad aside, took off his glasses, and crawled under the covers.
Looking back, he realized that Veser, even unconsciously, knew exactly what it took to tick him off. Because the second he was comfortable was the second Veser started screaming.
Conrad was out of his bed with glasses half on his face in one of Veser's now-madly pumping heartbeats. The kid was thrashing violently on the couch, screaming and hacking as he struggled to breathe. Conrad jumped to his side and shoved the heavy blankets off, pushing him up into a sitting position to help him breathe. "Are you alright?" he asked/demanded the boy. He noted with a terrible fascination that Veser was crying, huge tears that flowed with the gasps that turned into sobs. He was sobbing and coughing so hard he could barely get air into his lungs.
"Veser, come on. Breathe, you little idiot. You need to breathe!" Conrad reminded him as he put his hand on the boy's back. Was it there to encourage the boy to respond, or was it there to comfort? Conrad honestly wasn't sure.
Veser did finally seem to respond to the suggestion, taking short lungfuls of air that came out as harsh sobs. Conrad was pretty sure that this wasn't the right way to combat hyperventilating, but he still found himself whispering "Breathe, breathe, just breathe." He repeated that, over and over, as slowly Veser calmed down. His breathing began to even out, finally falling into rhythm with Conrad's words. Veser slumped against him, but not like he had earlier in the bathroom. Now it felt like he just wanted someone there to lean on. And Conrad was just the thing to provide that.
There'll be more chapters to follow. Please leave reviews