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Rock Lobstah wasn’t his favorite place in town. Sure, someone who listened to loud music to drown out his own thoughts should love a restaurant that catered to his type of music but Caleb didn’t like the way they tried to make themselves more relevant by adding the most random things to their collection. A hair from Janis Joplin’s head? Please. Not even he was gullible enough to believe that was real. 

But, when they called and asked him to come out to fix a broken display case he couldn’t really turn the money down. He needed every penny he could get these days. The restaurant was pretty busy as he worked to replace the lock, some of the people enjoying their sushi doing their best to not look suspicious as they inched closer. Bob Dylan’s toothbrush was apparently very interesting as was the opportunity to see it out in the open and not behind a glass case.

It wasn’t until he was finished that he noticed a familiar face tucked into the corner, Caleb raising an eyebrow at how he seemed so…distraught? Yea, he seemed distraught. 

Maybe it wasn’t his place to check in after their last encounter. He probably didn’t want to hear from the guy who had stolen his body no matter how many times he’d said Caleb was forgiven but he went over to the table anyway. The least he could do was check on him. “Luc, hey…you doing alright?”

Even the first few weeks after Sebastian had gone missing hadn’t left Luc feeling as lost as he did now. The hope had helped, naive as it felt to have clung to it, now. It was obviously more naive to try to hold onto any hope now, knowing what he knew. Having seen the dark confirmation flash behind Baz’s eyes, even if they hadn’t directly confirmed it with their words. Maybe Luc had known for longer than he was willing to admit, maybe he had felt the overwhelming lack of Sebastian’s presence ever since he’d arrived at the empty apartment. Whether he had felt it the whole time or not, Luc sure was feeling it now, a gaping empty hole in his chest that just seemed to grow with each attempt to close it or ignore it. 

Sebastian was gone. Had been gone for a while which meant all of Luc’s attempts to find him, to help him, had been useless. Luc didn’t even know how, just had a vague idea of when but… there was no body, no proof. No way for him to call Sebastian’s family with the news because ‘a face borrowing creature in a town in Maine told me he was dead’. Did that mean there would never be a funeral? Would Luc never get to properly grieve the man he loved - had loved? Would his family cling to hope the same way Luc had? 

All of these thoughts had spiraled further and further, drilling the hole in his chest deeper and bigger. Luc couldn’t go home, couldn’t face Monica who would instantly know something was up. The fall chill had started to seep into his bones by the time the dark settled and Luc was still wandering the streets aimlessly, waiting for the hole to plateau, to stop growing. It didn’t but at least he could silence the chattering of his teeth by ducking into the next restaurant, not really taking notice of the nautical celebrity theme as he was led to a table. His stomach had turned over at the thought of food and what had started as one house cocktail had turned to… Well, Luc had lost count at some point. 

At least it was a little bit harder to gauge just how deep the hole was, now. 

The sound of his name made Luc wonder for a moment if Baz had decided to track him down and Luc wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not that he didn’t have to look at Seb’s face right now. Instead, he was met with the worried (and slightly out of focus) face of Caleb. Someone who had also dabbled in a bit of body stealing, but by accident. And he’d given Luc his body back, wasn’t strutting around with the face of someone’s dead fiance... “Heeyy, Caleb,” Luc tried for a smile but it was very unconvincing, faltering almost immediately. And Luc was pretty sure he was drunk. Like a sad level of drunk, which was a first. Having a dead fiance was also a first. 

“Oh, y’know… no,” Luc answered honestly, not finding the effort needed to lie to someone who knew him as little as Caleb. His head rolled back against the booth, trying to bring Caleb’s face properly into focus. “Think I had too many of their drinks. They were red, like the creepy lobster guy at the door.” 

Caleb wasn’t sure whether he should laugh or be concerned. Luc was pretty far gone and judging by the look on his face it wasn’t for a good reason, but he was also a little endearing as a drunk, wasn’t he? He turned his head at the mention of the lobster, allowed himself a small smile at the creepy description, but then let the concern come back full force when he turned back to the other. Something was wrong. It wasn’t the time to be amused by drunk ramblings. 

Instead, Caleb slid into the booth next to Luc, tilting his head when he took in how many glasses were on the table. It seemed the waitress hadn’t realized how full it had gotten or the night was  just too busy for her to care. “It looks like you’ve been having a good time. Let’s hope you don’t forget the drink was red when you get sick later tonight.” Because there was no doubt in his mind that this man was going to get sick. He might end up seeing messages from him later about how he was puking up blood and Caleb didn’t want to have to be the one to explain what it actually was.

“You want to talk about it?” If there was one thing the zombie knew he was good for it was a listening ear. He tried to be someone that others felt comfortable telling things to because he felt that people deserved that much. He’d never had someone like that himself, at least not until he’d gotten older. “Promise not to judge or anything. I don’t really have any room to.” Caleb smiled at Luc, the attempt at a joke most likely falling flat. “Or is it weird sharing things with the guy who stole your body and irritated your stomach?” 

Luc wouldn’t have blamed Caleb, who was practically a stranger despite the weird intimacy of trying on someone else’s body for half a day, for bolting at the realization that he was dealing with a sad drunk. Maybe the zombie felt like he could make up for that first instance of bolting, with Luc’s body nonetheless, by sticking around now. Luc couldn’t quite tell if the friendly presence was a relief or not as he couldn’t really tell how he felt about anything at the moment. Which was what the relentless ordering of cocktails had been supposed to achieve, right? Mission accomplished? No matter how Luc might or might not have felt about Caleb’s continued presence, there was no scenario in which he told the other man to leave, just watching blearily as the zombie took in the damage. 

Huffing a dry laugh at the thought of the inevitable panic the red drinks were going to cause, Luc shrugged noncommittally. Yeah, he was having a great time. He moved to grab the one glass still containing a dredge of cocktail, knocking it over instead, red spilling ominously across the table. “Shit,” Luc muttered, eyes transfixed on the blood-like puddle for a moment before he let his head fall back against the booth. Had Sebastian bled? Had his death been anywhere as gruesome as that man’s by the lake? 

Caleb’s soft voice pulled him back from the edge, head lolling to the side to meet the earnest gaze. What a kind, gentle zombie. Well, mostly - Caleb had admitted to some meals being fresh and Luc wondered for a moment if someone else had stumbled into this cursed town looking for their partner, just like him, only their partner had been eaten by a zombie. It was a thought he found difficult to focus on with Caleb trying to crack a joke and lighten the mood with that soft and slightly tense smile. “Not much weirder than someone walking around wearing the face of my dead–” The rest of the sentence caught in his throat, those two words back to back having rattled around his head all evening but saying them outloud… The hole in his chest felt like it was growing again despite the drinks, or maybe the discomfort was just being brought on by the drinks. Either way, Luc rubbed desperately at his face, shaking his head. 

“I came here because my fiance went missing,” Luc finally said, voice muffled by his hands until they slammed down against the sticky table. “Just poof, gone. Until he appeared here so I thought I’d come find him, y’know? Bring him back home.” Luc searched Caleb’s eyes for any sort of confirmation that that wasn’t an insane idea but the zombie’s face seemed even blurrier than before. 

“But it wasn’t… him. Because he’s…” Again, the rest of the words were too heavy to speak into existence but Luc figured that Caleb might piece it together. Tears stung his eyes as Luc cleared his throat, gaze turning to his hands instead, which were also quite out of focus. “Think that last drink was one too many…” he mused, voice raw.

“Oh, okay, hold on.” As the red liquid started to spread over the table, Caleb grabbed a wad of napkins from the little dispenser shaped like an electric guitar. It wouldn’t get the table entirely clean as he suspected there was a stickiness that might stick around but he did his best to mop up the mess. Not feeling as if it were wise to leave Luc like this, even just to walk across the building to toss away the trash, he placed the used napkins in some of the empty glasses littering the place. There was still a red tinge to the tabletop, some remnants of the drink circling more of the empty glasses, but it would have to be good enough. 

All while he was cleaning he did his best to listen to Luc as he spoke, freezing as soon as he heard it. ‘Someone walking around wearing the face…’ Wearing a face…wearing someone else’s face…

The mess was left forgotten, Caleb’s body starting to tremble under the weight of those words. Was Aesil back? Did they somehow claw their way up from the depths of whatever hell Lil had sent them to just to possess another unsuspecting soul? He was listening intently to the rest of what Luc was saying, the man not able to really give full details despite the zombie clinging to every scrap of them he could. From what it sounded like, the fiance wasn’t even alive anymore. From what he knew, Aesil didn’t kill their hosts, at least not until after they’d gotten what they wanted from them. No, the demon had mentioned more than once that they preferred to leave their victims with the psychological torture they could inflict.

It would have been a relief if Luc didn’t look like he had just lost everything that was important to him. Caleb, unfortunately, still needed that confirmation. “He’s not…alive anymore. Somebody else has his face but he’s not alive…” Biting into his bottom lip, Caleb reached out and took Luc’s hand in his own. He didn’t know what it was like to lose someone he loved to death but he did know what it was like to lose them in general. It was one of the most hurtful things a person could go through. “I’m so sorry, Luc.”

He glanced back at the glasses on the table, nodding his agreement with the last statement. “I think you’re right about that. But it sounds like it was…needed. Maybe I should get you home.”

All of Caleb’s unease at the vague statements went entirely unnoticed by Luc, his focus barely clinging to the conversation at hand, much less his surroundings. Caleb’s words did cut through and somehow, not alive anymore sounded more gentle than the harsh, single syllable of dead. It didn’t change the meaning, didn’t change the reality that Luc was currently aimless in a town of monsters and death with no damn clue where to go next. It didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t even a body to bury and how did one host a funeral like that? Luc didn’t even have any proof that Sebastian was gone, was he just supposed to call Sebastian’s parents and repeat the nonsense Baz had told him? Maybe include the bits where he’d swapped places with a zombie and almost gotten attacked by animated lions or the murder committed by the axolotl looking woman in the lake? Those were all questions neither drunk nor sober Luc had any answers to but he could confirm what Caleb had spelled out, so Luc gave an unsteady nod, spine feeling a bit like Jell-o as his head bobbed. At least Caleb was weird enough to not question what Luc was explaining. Well, explaining was perhaps being a bit too generous. 

His focus found something to cling to at the unexpected touch, Caleb’s cold fingers kinda nice against Luc’s flushed skin, dragging him out of the hole of questions and what-ifs and wondering once again. It was such an easy hole to fall into. The genuine empathy finally broke the dam as warm tears spilled down Luc’s cheeks, free hand fumbling to reach for a napkin but the stupid electric guitar wouldn’t give them up without a fight. Giving up, Luc settled for pushing the silly thing off the table, something he definitely would regret in the morning (if most of this evening wasn’t bound to be a drunken blur). “I thought… it still feels like I’m going to find him. Like it shouldn’t be possible that he’s just gone.” Luc sniffled, everything in his chest constricting and churning all at once, making it all the more appreciated that he had Caleb’s hand to anchor him down. Especially with the way the restaurant was spinning just slightly. “I don’t know what to do now,” he admitted or maybe whispered, the low confession perhaps drowned out by the restaurant’s jaunty music. 

As for what he could do right now, getting out of here did seem like the sensible thing. Luc grimaced, hand slipping out of Caleb’s grip so he could rub at his face, attempting some semblance of composure. People were probably staring, maybe they had been the whole time, but it had mattered less and less with each drink. “My roommate,” Luc answered incoherently before realizing that wasn’t a whole sentence. “She’ll worry. I don’t… I can’t tell her. Not right now,” Luc sighed, feeling guilty at the thought of keeping something this big from Monica but then again, she didn’t even really know much about the Sebastian situation at all. No one did, except Baz and Joel and now, Caleb. 

As much as he hated this for Luc, the head nod of confirmation sent a wave of relief through Caleb. It wasn’t the case of a demon possession. That was good. But then what was it? What other creatures could walk around wearing a face that didn’t belong to them and how many times had Caleb encountered such a thing without realizing? It was a scary thought, one that he only dwelled on for a few seconds before he pushed it aside for later. Luc was too distraught to focus on anything else right now, and with good reason. 

Even with all of his years in the business of burying people, the zombie had never quite learned the correct way to comfort someone after a loved one had died. He supposed it was different for everyone and that’s why a method had never really stuck for long but Caleb had found that most of the time people just preferred to talk. Words were cheap in situations like this, usually going unheard by the person they were intended for. Not because they didn’t appreciate the attempt but because they weren’t helpful. So, he let the man speak, let the tears flow without interruptions, and when Luc pushed the guitar dispenser off the table, he flinched slightly but made no attempt to pick it up himself as he waved off the look of the exasperated waitress when she walked by. 

It was Luc’s next statement that had Caleb speaking up. Maybe these words would be cheap too or maybe they would help Luc in some way. They weren’t profound or intelligent or anything, just honest. “You keep going. That’s all you can do. I doubt your fiance would want anything more from you.” Especially if he loved Luc the way the man loved him. “It won’t be easy…but is anything ever easy?”

He nodded, Luc’s release of his hand allowing him to clean up the mess a little more so that the glare the waitress was sending them might lessen. It was a nervous tic of his, never wanting to leave a place messy when it was clean before he’d gotten there. Luc’s words had his hands slowing though while possibly solutions ran through his mind. There were hotels but what asshole would send a grieving person to a place alone? And Caleb wasn’t sure if Luc had any other friends in town considering he was new. There was only one solution he could think of. “You can stay at my place if you want. I have a spare room. It’s nothing fancy but it’s a place to sleep.”

Again, Caleb’s kindness and empathy just served as a strange reminder that this man was technically dead, that by all accounts of pop culture and history and what not, he was a monster. A perfect example of things not being what they seemed, Luc thought, just like this fairly quiet town hadn’t seemed all that doomed or how Sebastian wasn’t Sebastian but just Baz or whatever their real name actually was. Caleb didn’t seem like a monster and for how young he was, no one would expect Luc to be a… shit, he still hadn’t figured out if there was a word like ‘widower’ but for those that didn’t even make it to the actual wedding. His silly hope and positivity hadn’t allowed Luc to delve into those thoughts so here he was, no longer a fiance but just… mourning. 

For right now, the thought of continuing felt absolutely herculean. Luc knew Caleb didn’t mean for it to sound nonchalant or simple but all Luc could think was that if Sebastian could want anything, he’d want to still be alive. He’d not want his face strutting around town doing lord knows what. Luc’s stomach flipped again, this time with something that burned much warmer than all the loss and grief. The sudden flash of anger was brighter than everything else but it hurt significantly less, Luc realized. Alas, his mind was swimming in a lake of red cocktails and much like every other thought before it, the angry ones floated off in an incoherent jumble. “It’s not… fucking fair,” Luc muttered, the cursing pretty foreign on his tongue but it felt good for the briefest of moments. 

Distractedly, Luc watched his friend (?) try to minimize the mess caused by drunken and clumsy hands, something fond but sad swirling in his chest. Sebastian would have liked Caleb, Luc thought. Sure, Seb might have given the zombie a bit more trouble about the whole body snatching thing (Luc had maybe possibly overcorrected and gone too easy on Caleb) but they would have gotten along eventually. Sebastian would have been able to draw a carefree side out of Caleb like he managed with practically everyone he met and he would have appreciated the kind heart nestled in the undead chest. Only there was no reality in which Seb and Caleb met because Sebastian’s death was the only reason Luc had to be in this town. Still, it was a thought that really stung and warmed Luc’s heart all the same. At this point, he’d settle for scraps. 

“Yeah?” Luc asked, too exhausted to remember that he was inconveniencing Caleb and should probably be apologizing vehemently and telling the zombie that it was fine and he didn’t have to do that. “I’d like that.” Getting to his feet was… a mission. With the help of the table and then Caleb, Luc finally managed, having just enough sense to shoot the poor waitress and apologetic look and leave a half decent tip. Not that her night was worse than his, she probably didn’t have a dead fiance– Luc stumbled, reaching for Caleb again to prevent his face from slamming into the sidewalk. Wouldn’t that just be the perfect end to this shitty, shitty day. “Thank you,” Luc muttered once they’d made it out into the fresh air, which helped for a moment before the struggle of being vertical finally caught up to him, confirming Caleb’s prophecy from before about the drinks returning looking just as bright red as they had going down. 

“You’re right…” He nodded, not elaborating any further because there wasn’t much to say to that. It wasn’t fair that Luc had to lose someone he loved and keep going nor was it fair that he had to keep seeing the man’s face on whatever was walking around with it. Caleb couldn’t stop his thoughts from going to the victims he’d made over the years, his own violent tendencies mixed with his own body snatch making so many people feel just like Luc. The look on his friend’s face mirrored Caleb’s nightmares. He couldn’t focus on it though. Right now was about Luc and making sure he was safe for the rest of the night. “Yea. Like I said, it’s not fancy…and um, you should probably stay out of the basement.” Luc probably wouldn’t remember that tomorrow but it was good to state.

After helping him stand and leading him out of the restaurant, Caleb went to let the man go so he could walk on his own but that turned out to be a mistake. His arm wrapped around Luc’s waist to hold him steady when the man almost tripped and used him to hold himself up. Luckily Caleb’s truck wasn’t too far away and even luckier still Luc’s stomach decided it had had enough before they got to it. He rubbed the man’s back lightly, awkwardly, while the sidewalk was painted in red before he was settled enough to take the ride.

The guest room had been cleaned up since the last time it had been used, the furniture that had been in disrepair replaced with new…old but new to him things. He changed the sheets, made sure any of the scratch marks Mercy had made on the wood floors were hidden as much as possible, and then went to grab Luc from where he’d left him on the couch. When the other was settled, Caleb leaned his back against the door jam as Luc slept and started wondering what other horrors he might face in this town. Would Luc stay in Wicked’s Rest now that he knew what had happened?