"Hey," he says, leaning against the wall just outside the bar. It's late, so people aren't really filtering into the place anymore. Instead they've either made themselves comfortable inside or they've left for another place. Wylie, on the other hand, has nowhere to fucking go tonight, so he has no problem with hanging around and kind of looking over the sexy bouncer standing around and watching his post. Isn't that adorable. 

"Long night or not bad?" he asks, just making conversation to start. Wylie wants a feel for the guy. He wants to <I>feel</I> the guy. Hah.

You are one of the people who "goes places in life."

(links to Wylie's fortune cookie meme post.)

They finally found time to go camping. They had been talking about it for some time and things would get in the way and then there was suddenly a dog around and they had to get that thing trained. Wylie liked the dog, but he left a lot of the training to Je since she knew more about what she wanted it to act like. Besides, it was her dog. Wylie was more like the lenient parent that fed him scraps under the table. Wylie was in trouble with Jelani for things like that a lot.

At any rate, camping finally happened. They looked like an adorable family unit, minus the two and a half kids. Since they both were more outdoorsy, they liked the idea of being somewhere in nature where they could soak it all in. Jelani could drag Wylie out on morning runs liked she liked to do, Wylie now coming in third after Van. Stupid dog had more energy than Wylie did it seemed. He really did like the dog though.

At the camp, having set up with Wylie being mostly in the way, he stepped up behind Jelani, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and nuzzled in against her neck, smiling softly. "I'm glad we did this," he murmured against her luminescent skin.

They were at the dock fairly soon and they unpacked to carry everything on. Wylie wasn't helpless so he carried his own an climbed onto the boat with him. "I play guitar, piano, violin, the bango when one is around... Most anything with strings, I guess."

He took a look around. He was impressed and maybe a little intimidated by it.

Wylie was really good at bailing out when something important was going on. Or maybe it wasn't so much that something important was happening, but something important might happen. Or maybe it was just because he was a fucking moron. Yeah, that sounded about right. 

Wylie had never felt more out of his element. Usually the confident and ever charming man that he was, he could take himself anywhere and still be as confident as ever. Right now? Not the case. He was frustrated and still a little unsure about what exactly he was doing here and where exactly here was. It wasn't easy being dropped into the unknown an though a lot of his life involved not having any idea what was going on around him and simply going with the flow, this didn't feel quite the same. 

However, he didn't let that on. He was all smiles and charm, hilarity and carefree disposition. Wylie had learned to be a liar over the years in a way to keep himself sane, or so he said. Really what it probably was is that he wasn't willing to get hurt and it was easier to hurt someone else instead. Great philosophy on life, that kid had. 

For now, his time with Jelani was both unexpected and uneasy. He managed to look as though it was okay and he was just fine, coping with the best of them, but something about having to be rescued by the woman that he so unceremoniously found himself drawn to was slightly emasculating. He wasn't about to let her know that either. Wylie had every intention of keeping his mouth shut through this whole thing until he could leave because really, all he needed was to be attached to some woman who wasn't even full human and apparently made a living out of murdering people for money. He probably didn't actually understand the full extent of what she was, what she did and where they were, but making his own truths with wildly off base assumptions was a favorite past time of his. 

"Je," he asked, calling over his shoulder as he was sitting in the living room staring down at his hands, slouched on the couch, legs long and sprawled. "We gotta do something, I'm getting restless..." and a restless Wylie was never good news.

"Hello, my love," Wylie said, approaching with a smile, hands tucked in his pockets. He missed him already even in such a short amount of time. Nothing was easy anymore about this, but soon enough they'd be married and he'd never have to leave his side again. As they said, some cliche about things making the heart grow fonder. Not the point. 

 Since he'd gotten back from seeing Charlotte, Wylie felt much better about himself and about his current situation. He wasn't afraid of what he was leaving behind or what he was facing. He knew that without a doubt he was making the most solid and true decision of his entire life and he had every intention of seeing it through. He knew about Damon's reluctance to give in completely to what he wanted. Wylie was more than aware of how Damon too wanted to see him live forever, but he saw how when he'd brought it up, Damon almost wanted him to think about it. As if there was a choice for Wylie. He couldn't think of anything else.

Currently sitting on the couch in Damon's place - though it was his too now that he essentially had moved in without exactly saying so - he was fiddling with his guitar. He'd been thinking about how he needed to bring it up, talking about the situation and when they would, but he couldn't quite bring himself to ask. So instead, he was caught in this in between place where he wanted to ask, but was nervous to bring it up. He wasn't sure how the conversation would go.

He left the apartment and the month's rent. The last thing he said to Johnny was a text one his weekend with Alice saying, 'Give her a hug for me.' After that? Radio silence. Wylie was crowded. He was feeling the pressures of what he'd have to live up to with a boyfriend who wanted to be serious - who could see something like falling in their future. There was a daughter to consider. There was hearts. There was everything that came with it. Wylie wasn't willing to put them through it. 

Three weeks went by. He traveled with just a backpack of stuff. He'd left anything too big to carry on his bike in storage. He'd have to come back to town to get it, but he figured if he waited long enough, he could sneak into town and leave before anything could go wrong. But over those three weeks while he was out losing himself on the road, he was finding himself just as much. 

If you asked him, he wouldn't be able to tell you how he ended up back at the apartment building that housed Johnny's place. It had been raining, the leather jacket he wore not enough to shield him from the elements. As he stood outside his door, eyes fixated on the number beside it while he blanked out. Why he was there, he'd never be able to answer. He should have kept going. He should have left it all behind. But now he was standing there, dripping wet and soaked through, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He knocked, not caring that it was easily past midnight.

 It was late and he shouldn't have been out. No, he should have stayed home and drunk himself into a coma and passed out on his floor in the apartment. Instead, he decided to parade his night of misery all over town, bar hopping and getting kicked out of two. He stumbled upon the one he was at, though he didn't actually enter the bar. They were passed closing time and he was too drunk to get another one anyway. Maybe he wasn't that drunk. It could have just felt like he was trashed. There was a really shitty combination of something going on in his head. 

He anxiously grabbed a cigarette from the pack he carried in his pocket. He'd gone through almost an entire pack in a night, which was unlike him in so many ways. Lighting it, he took a long drag and felt for a few moments how that might just save him from himself for now before he had to stumble home and make his way to bed. He'd be lucky if he got there. Not on nights like this. Not tonight. Not this day.