He ends up crashed out here, 'cause of course he does. 'Cause pickin' his way back home would be - a little too immediate, feels like. A little too familiar. He don't quite mean to simply doze into oblivion when he ends up here, nor does he actually mean to end up at the bar itself.

But end up there he does. Scrapes up a chair, plonks his coccyx into one of the seats, and is almost immediately out like a light.

It's a fitful rest at best. He keeps seeing a lotta things behind closed sockets: kids falling from walls, faces slit open in wide, reddened grins; a high scream of claws and teeth hitching into skin as she told him go because she'd cover him; a buzzing, static-torn message that barely gets through, that must'a been important, only he only catches a handful of it. A patient, bright smile atop a skull that inevitably becomes parted from its body, the headless spine waving uselessly among the ice and snow before it folds to dust and takes the vibrant arc of red with it.

He jerks awake with a start, periodically, unable to catch more than an hour or so at a time. Place is mostly empty. Mostly.

Thank god for that.