It took roughly an hour to collect himself enough to stand and make his way to where he had stashed his bag and collapsed, exhausted, beside it. When he woke up the sun was just starting to set. He left the alley at that point and wandered the city looking for the grungiest, vilest, most dangerous place possible. He was in one of his moods that he got into every once in a while where all that he wanted to do was lose himself completely: physically, mentally, and spiritually.

It took him a little under an hour until he found what appeared to be an old storefront, but there were people hanging out in the side alley with a large, obviously stoned, guy standing next to a door. The male didn't even so much as blink when Caim walked past him and into the building.

He stopped in his tracks as a wave of music and the smell of sweat and weed swept over him, and it took all his strength not to double over coughing. After a minute of standing rigid in place, he found that the smell had ebbed a bit and he was able to focus again. The room was large, the entire first floor of the building, and nearly every inch was packed with people. There was a DJ table at the far end of the room but besides that there was no furniture in the entire space.

Caim felt the little knot of tension in his stomach loosen and he allowed himself to breathe a bit more freely as he took the three short steps down into the mass of people. The music suddenly seemed a hundred times louder but that's what he wanted: something loud besides screams to overpower his thoughts.

Normally Caim would have cringed away from the crowd, shrunk away and sprinted in the opposite direction, but now he more or less ignored the bodies moving against his and the hands that tried to catch him. Across the room he noticed a guy glance his way and he quickly turned, heading in the opposite direction; he may have wanted to lose himself but he didn't necessarily want to lose himself to someone else.

He made his way across the space to a spot where there were, somehow, less people. He stood there, just looking around for a moment, but places like this with music as hypnotic as the type pounding from the speakers had a way of forcing one to move. Now Caim wasn't much of a dancer, he would joke around with Mia every once in a while but nothing outside of that, but with everyone moving around him it was easy to just close his eyes and get into the movements.

Every once in a while he'd feel a hand purposely brush against him but he blatantly ignored them, that was, until he opened his eyes at the wrong moment.

A guy stood in front of him, just a little taller than his current 5'7 stature, and all Caim could see were his icy eyes.

"Hey," the guy said, his lower voice somehow penetrating through the noise into Caim's ears.

Caim didn't reply.

The guy laughed slightly and flashed him a smile. "You got a light?" He lifted a cigarette to confirm what he meant. Caim nodded and the guy nodded back. "Cool. Thanks."

He turned away and started to head back towards the door and it took Caim a moment to realize that he was supposed to follow. When he finally got outside he found the guy standing with another male off to the side, talking and laughing. As Caim walked up to them the guy turned and smiled. Caim gave him a slight smile in response. "You needed a light?" he asked.

"Yeah." The guy handed him the cigarette and Caim turned away, as though out of the wind, and mimed pulling out a lighter. When the smoke was lit he turned back to the guy and found him a bit closer than before.

"Here," Caim said after a second, holding out the cigarette.

"Awesome." The guy took it and pulled in a long drag, exhaling the smoke through his nose. After a pause he held it back out of Caim. "Want a drag?"

Caim had never smoked, and had never intended on smoking. But hell, he hadn't intended on doing a lot of things that he had ended up doing-

-so he took the cigarette and tried to imitate the guy.

And ended up nearly coughing his lungs out.

The guy laughed a bit and took the smoke from Caim's fingers as Caim tried to get the coughing under control and regain the ability to breathe.

"Easy," the guy said, a smile evident in his voice. He rested a hand on Caim's shoulder as Caim sucked in his first controlled breath. "I'm guessing you don't smoke."

Caim shook his head and straightened, running a hand through his hair as he caught his breath.

"Fuck," he muttered, and that cause the guy to laugh again.

"Not your thing?" he asked.

"Maybe not." He forced a slight smile that probably looked more like a grimace.

The guy smiled and took another drag, looking over his shoulder at his friend who had started to talk to the bouncer. "Hey! You got that water bottle?"

The friend tossed him a bottle without looking and the guy caught it with a quiet laugh. Turning back to Caim he held the bottle out. "This'll help."

Caim eyed the bottle as he stuck his hands in his pockets.

The guy lowered the offered drink and flashed him a soft smile. "If you're thinking I'm trying to drug you, think again, I'm not that kind of guy."

Of course you're not.

Caim shook his head once and it probably looked like he was twitching because the guy raised an eyebrow and asked, "You alright?"

"Yeah, good," Caim replied. Then, despite his internal warnings, he slid the bottle from the guy's hand and took a drink. There was no burning, so acidic taste, nothing to suggest it was any sort of alcohol. When he handed the bottle back the guy smiled at him. "Listen, my friend and I are gonna ditch this place and go chill somewhere else. You wanna come? Didn't seem like you were having a party in there."

Caim shrugged a shoulder. "Sure, not like I have any place better to be."