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Toby doesn't flinch much at shadows anymore.
There comes a point in someone's life where they see the same thing over and over again and it no longer affects them. Sure, certain hallucinations still get to him. The random touches or sudden loud noises. But not so much these ones. The shadowy figures that creep around in the corner of his vision. They never make any noise or touch him. Once he got used to it, they just became a nuisance. Well.. during the day at least.
The introduction of demons, killers, and paranormal entities into his life has made it a little harder to recognize whether something is real or not. Before everything happened, he could rely on other people's ideas of reality. That is, if he wasn't having an episode. Now that he lived in the mansion he couldn't tell himself that the ghosts, shadow people, insane psycho killers weren't real.
Something that keeps him at ease is the reaction of others. He can always look to the people around him to gage whether he should be worried or not. If no one else is looking at it then he shouldn't either. But that strategy can only go so far. It doesn't help when none of his peers are with him.
But honestly nothing could have prepared him for tonight. It's not like these things sprung up on him or anything. He could feel himself slowly getting worse. His motivation to care for himself plummeted and he became disorganized. Then came the intrusive thoughts and the increased hallucinations. He knew staying up all night wouldn't help but there was no way to fall asleep with everything going on. He was too paranoid and every time he got close to sleep, a loud sound would go off or he would feel like he was falling.
He was downstairs in the kitchen bar preparing his late night guilty pleasure. Four slices of bread with butter. He was looking out to the living room, watching all the figures and random colors dance around. He would be lying if he said he wasn't about to run back upstairs with his bread so the shadow people don't get him. His motions were slower, as if trying not to draw attention to himself. He felt like there was a spotlight on him. He could tell himself that nothing he's seeing was real. That they weren't even approaching him. Just walking around and watching. But nothing was going to convince his subconscious that he wasn't in danger.
He sandwiched the slices together and wrapped them in a paper towel to make transport easier and started walking to the stares when a figure came closer. He flinched but ignored it-That was until it fucking grabbed him. Toby let out a scream slightly too high pitched to be a man's and punched the figure in the jaw. He was met with a solid object that made a grunt and quickly backed up and grabbed their face.
Toby took a moment to step back and catch his breath before flicking the kitchen light on and seeing Jack. He was holding the side of his face and glaring at toby. "Jesus tobes I was just trying to see what you were doing. It's 2 in the fucking morning!" Toby caught his breath and looked a bit sheepishly at Jack. "......I thought you were someone else?" Jack raised an eyebrow. "Who the hell would be down here that you would want to punch?"
Toby looked away. To the discarded slices of bread on the floor. He had dropped them when he sucker punched Jack. "No one in particular." Toby hoped that Jack would drop it. Jack wasn't stupid. Hallucinations are not uncommon in the mansion. He's even had them a time or two during sleepless nights or when missions went on for too long.
He sighed and helped toby pick up the remains of his food. "Out of all things you could have ventured out into the dark to grab, four slices of buttered bread was what you chose?" Jack questioned. Toby looked up at Jack. "Well what were YOU down here for?" Jack shrugged. "To smoke." He said, gesturing towards the front door.
Jack threw the bread away and shook his head. Half a loaf wasted. He returned to toby. Toby didn't look well. He looked tired but his eyes were wide open, looking into the distance. Jack took him by the shoulder and started leading him to his room. "C'mon. You don't need food, you need sleep. Staying up is only making things worse." Toby followed but looked conflicted. "Weren't you going to smoke?" Jack shrugged again. I lost the urge. My jaw hurts too much. He teased lightly. Toby looked away. "I didn't mean to." That was Toby's way of apologizing without actually saying sorry. Jack just nodded and kept walking.
They made it to Toby's cluttered room. It got like that when he let his mental health slip. Jack took it all in but made no reaction that toby could discern. He pushed toby into bed and firmly told him to lay down. Toby raised an eyebrow but was too exhausted to really care. He laid down and sighed.
so what now?" Toby asked. Jack sat on the side of Toby's bed. "You sleep and I watch over you." Jack's tail had made its way to Toby's hip. The weight of it was comforting in a way. Toby gave a bit of mumbled words salad that Jack pretended to follow and had a few more bad moments before finally falling asleep.
Jack looked around Toby's room. It was hard to gage how Toby's doing sometimes. He never outright said anything. There was a look in his eye that he sometimes had but the biggest indicator of his well-being was his room. With nothing better to do, Jack started sorting through his friends stuff, putting things where they belong and putting his laundry downstairs.
Jack watched over him the rest of the night. He returned to his room just before sunrise so no one else would know he spent the night in Toby's room. Toby woke up sometime that afternoon. His body was sore from sleeping for so long but his head felt a bit less cluttered. It wasn't fixed but it was better than before he slept. He saw his clean room and blushed deeply. He couldn't believe he let Jack see him like that. Jack didn't actually mind Toby's mess at all. He was more concerned with helping his friend(crush).