By now, Ray was the living embodiment of fatigue. Everything was too much. Lifting a hand to run it through messy curls was too much, putting his head in his hands was too much, talking was too much. Sleep would've helped greatly, just to put his body at rest, but he couldn't go back to sleep. Wouldn't go back to sleep. Gavin could get on his knees and beg, and while Ray would feel bad, he wouldn't go to sleep. He's not sure what was wrong, but sleeping anywhere felt wrong.
He remembered walking to the kitchen to get a water bottle. He remembered the small conversation he had with Miles as the latter trekked his way up the stairs. But he didn't remember sitting down at the metallic table in the kitchen and falling asleep.
But he did remember his dream.
It was so much like real life, god. Ray was sitting at the kitchen table in the Rooster Teeth office and he was uncapping and recapping a bottle of water. Must've been something he did out of nervous habit, but whatever, minor details are minor for a reason. But then Michael approaches him, straddles the empty bench besides Ray and almost automatically Ray's mood is boosted. A smile quirked at his lips and the Puerto Rican cocked his head.
"So how's work doing, Mikey?"
"!rood eht esolC"
It was all jibberish. Michael was speaking some fucked up foreign language that Ray had absolutely no chance in guessing. Out of some shock, Ray leaned forward and furrowed his eyebrows and stared at Michael.
"C... Can you run that by me again?"
"!rood eht esolC"
Sudden fear struck Ray right in the chest and he slowly stood up. Rubbing his sweaty palms on the denim covering his thighs, an awkward laugh came out of him. One hand grasped his water bottle and he nodded slowly, looking over his best friend one last time.
"A-alright... I'll pretend like I know what you're talking about. I, um, I'm going back to the office."
"！ＲＯＯＤ ＥＨＴ ＥＳＯＬＣ"
That's when everything changed. Pain surged into Ray's head from the forehead, and everything was louder. But everything sounded like feedback from a microphone, only 20x louder. Cradling the water bottle between two fingers, Ray pressed his hands to his ears and opened his mouth to scream. Nothing came out, and instead he could hear his heartbeat intensify. It was literally beating in his ears, silencing every other noise.
"Ray? RAY!"
Ray jumped up, surprise to see Gavin sitting next to him. "Jesus, Ray. Did you hear a single thing I said?"
"No... Wasn't I sleeping?"
"No, you weren't. I thought you recognized you weren't sleeping, uh, you know..."
Ray looked at the table he was resting on, and found the water bottle popped open. It had three or four fingernail-shaped bursts in the plastic, and water had seeped out of all of the holes. Ray's eye's widened, and he looked up at Gavin.
"Where's Michael?"
"He went home two hours ago."
"What?"
"I heard you say goodbye to him! How did you just forget? Come on, love, we're going home. And you need to SLEEP."
Gavin's grip tightened on Ray's arm but Ray fought as much as he could on the way to the front doors.
It's been a rough few weeks for the part-time superhero and while other people may beg to differ, he wasn't going to listen. The process of making videos during the day, almost seven days a week, is tiring. People may not believe Ray when he says it, but sitting in a room with five (sometimes six or seven) different people during a tough part in a game was definitely enough to start a few headaches. And then all of this shit with Gavin, all of the shit X-Ray and Vav somehow put onto his plate slowly began adding up and Ray was simply tired. He deserved a few hours off, and he decided to take his mini-vacation all the way to the big bed in Gavin's shed.
His boyfriend didn't question his sudden display of fatigue at all. Gavin leaned over, gently fluffed one of Ray's pillows and stayed at his side until Ray's eyes fluttered shut. When the Puerto Rican is asleep, he's ASLEEP. Rarely would anything wake him up, and he's considered fixing that. But when no one on X-Ray's side of the Earth knew him as Ray Narvaez Jr., he can sleep as heavily as he wanted. For a few hours, it was comfortable. He didn't dream, it was just peace. Darkness and peace that was desperately needed.
Though the peace was disturbed by the REM sleep that was to come. Ray's eyelids and eyebrows began twitching as he slept, and soon he was able to actually dream. He barely recognized that it was a dream, it felt too real to actually be one. It started off with a scenario that could actually occur in real life, Ray and Gavin waiting to be seated at a diner. The diner was some place the dreamer couldn't pinpoint, but there was the full possibility that it was someplace made up with what creativity that Ray could scrape up.
"Can't believe we're actually here. It's a shock you actually got the balls to finally pay for something."
Ray scoffed at Gavin, glancing down at the mechanical device in his hand. He was used to these back in New York, but when the person seating everyone handed one to him, Gavin was flabbergasted. It was something like an alarm, one that they supply to people and it starts beeping red when a table is ready. When it beeps, the people stand up and present it to the people. Simple concept that Gavin couldn't seem to grasp.
Ray's knee began bouncing up and down, as they sat outside waiting. His brown eyes looked around the area for a few minutes, before he finally sucked in a deep breath and found the balls to grasp Gavin's hand.
There were forests around the area. Ray, actual Ray, not the dreamer, can't locate anywhere in Austin that was surrounded with trees like that restaurant. Something was off.
When Ray's barely-tanned hand grabbed at Gavin's much-more-tanned one, Gavin almost flinched away before melting into the touch. Gavin was not one for PDA, though Ray was all for holding hands and temple kisses. Ray's knee bounces a little higher when Gavin doesn't react, but soon their hands are clamped together and they're not getting stared at and it all feels okay.
It's like this, comfortable and sweet and just like a high school movie, until the device in his hand beeps. Ray jumps a little, looks down at the black box. He expects to see a little red flash glow rapidly, but instead he sees LED lights flash across the black box.
"ＴＨＩＳ ＩＳＮ'Ｔ ＹＯＵ．"
--Ray shoots up and he's not in public. There isn't daylight seeping through his window, the watery Austin sun is absent and replaced with the cold moon. His breath is hard and heavy and it rattles his lungs and makes his skin crawl with goosebumps. Gavin mumbles next to him and Ray finally realizes that they're in his apartment. His own apartment, safe from anyone who can send him creepy LED messages somehow suggesting something about X-Ray.
--He's safe here. Everything is good.
--Ray looks behind him, sees Gavin stutter as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes. His British accent while he's tired is thick and it takes a few extra seconds for Ray to comprehend what he actually said.
--"Ray, what happened?"
--"Mm... I was just sleeping. It was, like, a dream inside of a dream. Fucking insane..."
--Gavin mumbled something under his breath and wrapped his arms around Ray's thin frame. "Was it a nightmare?"
--"I... I guess. Who cares, I'll try to go ba--..."
--The door, the door that leads to his small closet creeps open. Momentary confusion strikes his already sleepy mind. He never closes that door... Something he'll close the bathroom door, but never the closet. He had never found a reason to. And now, the fact that it's open begins to bother him. Ray's mouth falls open and a sudden wind blows through his apartment and makes the sticky sheen of sweat that's glued to his skin make him feel so much more colder. He moves to cross his arms, to somehow make himself warmer, but instead he moves to get off of the bed.
--"Ray, where are you going?"
--The gamer looks down and behind him, towards his boyfriend. He tries to speak, but the first two attempts end in nothing leaving his mouth. "I-I... I'm just going to close the door."
--"Oh. Alright. It was getting a little cold in here."
--Ray moves slowly to the closet door and just as slowly he grabs the doorknob. It's burning hot, almost makes him pull back but he keeps his grip on it. Twisting it and shutting it securely, Ray lets go and stares at the painted wood for a few moments. He breathes in deeply and turns back around, expects to see Gavin all cute and cuddly in a big mess of fluffy comforters but it's not what he gets. He's in the middle of a forest, green leaves shuffling with every blow of wind. With every blow of wind, goosebumps distort his skin and make him pull himself together. Ray takes a few steps deeper into the forest and seems to flinch whenever dry winter leaves crunch under his feet.
--Ray tries to look around, to see if he can see any landmarks he actually knows but only finds more trees. And more trees. But he does a 180 and doesn't see the bedroom he arose from, no, the forest continues but there's something different. Deep in the trees in front of him, eyes glow. They glow a bright blue, and Ray knows that blue. A stuttered breath leaves his mouth and he realizes that that's the same blue that radiates from Gavin's - Vav's - eyes when slow-motion vision is activated. The glow shimmers away and he hears more leaves crunching and he automatically feels like screaming.
--The blue returns, except much closer. And this time they have a friend. A guttural growl from deep in someone's throat.
--"ＴＨＡＴ'Ｓ ＩＴ， ＲＡＹ． ＲＥＬＥＡＳＥ ＨＩＭ．"
--Ray's hands shoot up to his scalp and his fingernails pull at his roots. He's so close to ripping his hair out, and he considers doing so as a sharp pain shoots from the back of his head, to his temples, to behind his eyes. As soon as the pain hits his eyes, everything is coated in red. His powers are activated and he has no clue why. But the growls aren't done.
--"ＲＥＬＥＡＳＥ ＴＨＥ ＭＯＮＳＴＥＲ．"
--Ray lets out such a deep scream, a scream directly from the heart. He feels the pain seep from his eyes to the back of his neck, to his spine, and it intensifies by what seems like 100 right there. He's crippled, falls right to his knees as blood sprouts from the gashes he's created on his scalp.
--"Ray, WAKE UP!"
Ray's eyes shoot open and he's greeted with a ceiling much different than the one in his apartment. The light in the shed is artificial, one that comes from lightbulbs and not the moon outside. Details don't matter to him right now, pure fear grabs him by the throat and rips multiple screams out of him. He shuffles upright, clashing into Gavin as he continues to scream.
When Gavin recommends going out one last time before Christmas, Ray almost jumps at the offer. Really, he didn't want to go out as X-Ray, he didn't want to walk through Austin pretending to be all tough guy; it was something he did every week. The last few weeks of December meant relaxation time but not this week. Earlier today had sparked a match inside of Ray, and the minute the flaming tip of the match hit the fuse inside of him, he knew that something was going to go off. There was a good chance he would explode as he took out the X-Ray suit, or the minute he took a step outside, or the minute his eyes even landed on the hospital.
Everything was confusing. Ray's phone had been buzzing all day and the doctor was switching. He would change, first he would be gentle, asking questions and if Ray didn't want to answer them, the doctor would let him be. But then he'd change, his texts would get meaner and Ray could see it and feel it. He would tell Ray how he's one of God's mistakes, all because something else in Ray's brain was triggered. But the superhero wouldn't take it to heart, of course not. As he lounged on the couch, he wouldn't think about the texts and cry. He would think about the texts and clench his fists around his mug and get angry.
Ray didn't want to deal with the doctor in the first place. Leaving the hospital was the best thing for him, because the fuse would've lit right then and there if it weren't for Barbara. Maybe Barbara needed to be here now, to persuade Ray that this was the bad thing to do, but Ray hadn't heard from her ever since she got him out of there. His anger subsided for the moment but now that he's gone out of his way to contact him, it's come back and this time, a lot more stronger. Every vibration that his phone would send off would make something visibly change in Ray. It could be his eyes, they would squint or his pupils would dilate. It could be his muscles, they would tense or his posture would straighten because he knows what's coming. It's been like this for hours and he knew that going out, meeting the doctor would stamp the fuse off.
Or ignite it further, and let the firework burst inside of Ray.
Where are you?
It was sudden, but Ray needed to know. Flicking his eyes towards Gavin, Ray's eyes flashed when his phone vibrated but for a few minutes he ignored it. He got on his knees and bent over and looked under Gavin's bed, pulled out the bag that had the suit in it. Unzipping his hoodie, Ray tossed it onto the couch and pulled out his phone.
Just about to leave the hospital. If this means you want to meet me, do so at the diner, five blocks north of the hospital. It's right next to a car dealership, you can't miss it.
Narrow brown eyes read the text and then his hands throw the phone onto the bed, and that same hand meets the hem of his Vav shirt and rips it off of his torso. Normally, this is where self-consciousness would kick in but that wasn't welcome right now. Anger was the main emotion, anger is what fueled each joint in Ray's body to move, anger is what motivated each finger to peel the articles of clothing off of his skin and replace them with that dumb suit. Anger is what led Ray to trip while sliding the spandex on, and his first words are spoken as he falls onto Gavin's bed. It's nothing special, it's just --
"Ffffuck me!"
His knuckles turn white as his fists clench and he pulls through it all. He gets the suit on afterwards with no problem and then, when it's all done and his phone is shoved into the newly sewn pockets of the suit, and only then, does Ray explain what's going on in his mind. Looking up to Gavin, the first time in a while, his jaw clenches and anger makes his eyes distant.
"Tonight we're heading someone else. That cheap fucking diner a few blocks away from Sixth Street. Do you have any problems with that?"
Ray, have you opened up? I would like some answers now.
He's tried everything to ignore the buzzing in his pocket but constant noise in the silence on the Achievement Hunter office begins to drive Ray mad. Jack's gone. Ryan's gone. Michael's gone. Gavin's editing something that's going to be released in a few weeks and Geoff just wants to go home but something is holding the three of them back. What's holding Ray back is a text message from an Austin area code and the stranger's words are so eerie Ray can hear the sickeningly sweet voice through a few words.
Tense forearm and finger muscles lead Ray to fish the phone out of his pocket and with clenched teeth he reads the text over and over. He has no clue who this can be. He doesn't want to know who this is, because that's going to lead to more trouble, but this stranger knows his name while Ray doesn't know theirs and that's enough to make the stomach acids burn his throat. He exhales and some of the irritation poisoning his blood, burning his capillaries and veins escapes but not enough to make Ray feel any better.
Who the fuck are you??
It's not the nicest approach but Ray's not at his nicest at the moment. It's been a tough week, having to scrape change from in between his couch cushions for Christmas gifts because he only had enough for 1/3 of the Achievement Hunters. He had to find money from the craziest places in his apartment to get enough to buy the rest of the Hunters a Christmas gift, but a plane ride to New York and gifts for his family was still up in the air. Just the thought of the forced laughter and real disappointment on his sister's face when he ends up buying a few t-shirts instead of that toy she wanted makes Ray want to keel over and die right on the spot.
tl;dr, if Ray could forget about all of his responsibilities at the moment he would do it in a heartbeat. But now he has this flight tomorrow and the stress this stranger is bringing and everything feels wrong. After waiting fifteen minutes for a reply, the clock finally hits 4:20 and a smirk decorates Ray's lips but only his lips. The momentary act of immaturity doesn't last too long and his phone is back to buzzing and his mind is back to worrying about stupid adult things.
You don't need to know my name right now. Just know, I'm aware that you're X-Ray, part of the dynamic duo X-Ray and Vav. I know you have x-ray vision, and I just want to know how it all happened.
When Ray's done reading the entire text message a headache sprouts from nothing and he realizes that this is it. This is how he dies. Some fuckhead finding out he's X-Ray, finding out that he can see through shit and if Ray doesn't reply the way they want him to, his secret could be out and he would be out of a job. How fun.
But I know how you think. "I won't tell this person anything if I don't know who they are." So, I'll knock down this horror movie facade and admit who I really am. Doctor Stanley Blythe. I work at the big hospital in downtown Austin. I sewed up your knife wound and covered you when a nurse went into your room and found you gone. I want answers, Ray, and I deserve them because I almost lost my job for you.
Behind Ray, Geoff begins to stand up. It's obvious with the squeaking of his computer chair and the noise of the bottle of bourbon being closed. His voice cracks, most likely from not speaking for a while, but his words are a blessing. "Let's head home. It's almost Christmas Eve and I still need to wrap a gift for Millie."
Out of the corner of his eye, Ray sees Gavin quickly make changes to the footage he's editing. Rapid moving fingers save multiple files and Gavin stands up, shoves his sweatshirt on. Silence for a few minutes, sparring the noise of the door shutting, and Gavin's voice breaks that silence.
"Come on, love, let's head home. You're leaving soon, I want to spend as much time with you as I can."
Ray sighs, nodding with his lips pulled into a tough line. "Alright, uh, let's just go."
Merry Christmas, Mr. Blythe. Hope you like your restraining order.
#project hail mary
#lana del rey
#free gaza
