Chapter Text
The evening air feels so cool against your skin, like a brush of fingertips carefully up your arm, over your shoulder and across your cheek. It feels like a kiss as it follows you from place to place, no building seeming to break it–the wind follows you everywhere you go and you’re not quite sure if it’s ever done that before.
The sun has dipped beneath the horizon. It’s light flickers down the line of low mountains surrounding the town, leaving everything in shadow even as the sky itself radiates a warm symphony of reds and oranges that fade into blue and black. A couple stars are visible on the opposite side of the sky, peaking out shyly among the dark void. It’s hard not to feel like they’re watching you, each and every step as you hurry from one sidewalk to the next.
The game has only been going for half an hour, but you’ve already managed to get halfway home without any issues. If anything, the peace and quiet is unnerving, the lack of threat only making your paranoia reach farther out from yourself so that every shift of shadows, every rustle of branches, every breeze of air deserves your entire attention. Fear has a hold of you, laced tightly through your body–it leaves you feeling tense, so tense, each step like trying to move a mountain.
It’s a balance between hiding and moving, making sure to look back over your shoulder every minute or so just to quell the bubbling fear in your belly. The echo of Kevin’s voice simmers below your thoughts, a constant reminder etched in an unforgettable state so you know exactly what is at stake between the two of you.
With the curl of his smile and the vaguely-hidden lilting tone of his words, he looked like a hungry wolf.
“Get home before I catch you.”
It wasn’t a suggestion, it wasn’t an idea: it was a command, simple and stern and chilling to the bones.
Kevin didn’t let you ponder on the implications of what would happen if he happened to catch you, and perhaps its better that way, to let your mind whip and wander on the thoughts of ‘what if’ that keep you paranoid between each and every turn of your eyes over your shoulder.
The breeze is soft against your cheeks, caressing your form. Without the sun to keep it warm it feels cool, nearing chilly. The sky starts to look darker when you take momentary refuge at an intersection, red and orange chased further away by darkness and stars. It hangs above your head like a blanket, chasing away the daylight.
You can’t help but feel like a child in those cold moments, waiting for the walk signal to flip–you’re a child playing a game and hiding under that very blanket of darkness, hoping to stay out of sight of the big bad beast before reaching the assured, familiar safety of your apartment.
“Get home before I catch you.”
The words send a shiver down your spine.
Little by little you get closer, you’re just a few streets away from the apartment complex. Crossing intersections are eating up the most of your time, making you wait longer and longer before you can pass safely over the newly-paved roads. Laws prohibiting jaywalking have been strictly enforced–you don’t want to be the unfortunate soul caught halfway over the street and forced to answer why you’re trying to hurry home.
So close, you’re just so close to home that you can almost smell the fragrance of the air, something so distinctly of home that there’s no longer any other label for it. Your legs itch to move, to carry you across the street, but the walk sign seems to take forever to switch over.
Ten seconds pass, no switch. Another ten seconds and still no shift, no flicker that gave you legal and polite passage across the intersection. It leaves you feeling more and more exposed, out in the open and–
watched?
You feel watched, or at least you feel more aware of the sensation as it sends a shiver down your back. After a turn of cautious eyes, you find nothing behind you. Nothing to your left. Nothing to your right.
Despite the fact that you are visibly alone, the feeling of unnerved observation can’t be shaken off.
It’s there, pressing against the back of your head like a nail, sharp and obvious. You can’t ignore it anymore, the sensation grows stronger with every second that you stand by the intersection and wait for the light to change--why isn’t it changing?
Maybe--maybe another intersection, maybe this one isn’t working properly. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened. Desert Bluffs, or at least the one you reside in currently in the desert otherworld separate from the standard plane of reality, is still quite a new town with plenty of it’s own issues from such a quick creation. Lights are still understanding how to work, after all, so it’s not anything that seems too out of the ordinary for an intersection to stop working.
Or at least, that’s what you tell yourself.
It’s just a coincidence.
It takes you down a longer pathway home, down an extra street heading to the back-end of the residential district. All it means is that you’ll have to cut through a few neighborhood streets to come back to your complex instead of coming right to the main gate entrance is all, nothing much to worry about outside of the extra five or ten minutes of walking.
It doesn’t take long before that same unnerving feeling starts to bubble up in your stomach again, seeping into your bones and leaving you feeling so vulnerable .
So watched.
You quicken your pace to a not-quite-jog, something around a power walk that makes you feel as silly as you are cautious, glancing at your surroundings every few seconds to see if every shadow lay dormant and every figure--
-wait.
You’re alone.
The thoughts and fears of being watched and getting home pushed away the realization, but now it’s at the forefront of your mind, seeping into every nook and cranny of fear that leaves your eyes wide and your breath a little faster over your lips.
You’re alone.
There’s nobody else around you--no passersby on the sidewalk, no lights in the windows of nearby homes, just...nothing. Nothing at all to give you the feeling that there are other living people, leaving you with the notion, however brief, that you’re simply in a ghost town. The fear has worked into your chest and up your throat, constricting and tight and fast as the beat of your heart--it threatens to break out from against your ribcage as the fear only continues to grow.
The other intersection is the same as the first, unblinking and unmoving in letting you pass by. It’s as if the very lights taunt you with their power, keeping you from crossing what might as well be a river of torrential strength. Just one major road to cross and you will be home free, in the most literal and figurative of forms.
You stand and wait, shaking as the fear overcomes your ability to muffle it, trying to capture together your anarchy of thoughts and figure out if there’s a third path to take.
You’re somewhere in the middle of existential dread and the total acceptance of your fate when you hear it.
A footstep.
A breath.
You feel a brush of something against your hip, just barely, a shadow of pressure that you’re not quite sure if it’s real or merely imagined.
It doesn’t matter--you run, bolting without care of laws or rules or anything else. Like the very prey in which you play the role in this game you let your legs take you forward, across the road and onto the sidewalk at the other side. You don’t stop or turn around, filled with nothing but terror at what you might find behind you, following you.
Time seems to stretch to unmeasurable lengths, seconds lasting minutes, minutes lasting hours--the sprint to your apartment feels like nothing short of an eternity. You do your best not to pay attention to the shadows in the corners of your vision, nor the way they seem to flicker as you pass by.
The lights of the apartment building is a welcome sight. The glow of the lights cast softly down over your face and across the sidewalk, illuminating your last dozen yards or so before you’ll be able to turn at your building, scurry to the stairs and hurry up to the second floor where your home lay.
Safety is nearly within your grasp.
Speed nearly becomes your downfall as you turn the corner a bit too sharply, foot catching on a slightly bit of the sidewalk and sending you stumbling forward. Your heart’s in overdrive, adrenaline pumping, and luck allows you at least to catch the bottom of the hand rail to keep yourself from falling flat on your face on the bottom several steps of the stairs.
It costs you a few seconds, but a few seconds is all it takes to feel it again.
A footstep.
A breath.
You feel someone behind you, directly behind you even in the silent air. You feel the terrifying notion that there’s something flickering, a darkness and shadow just outside of your field of view--if you were to turn your head one way or the other you’d see it, an indescribable terror so powerful that it’s haunting presence is seeping into your thoughts.
All you can think about is running, getting away and to the safety of your apartment.
Your legs take you up the stairs two at a time, constantly feeling as if you’re about to trip, but it hardly matters against the feeling of that presence all but nipping at your heels. If you stop for even a moment, a fraction of a moment, then you know it will be upon you.
Your heart is hammering against your chest so hard that it almost hurts. The adrenaline feels like you’ve been dumped into an ice-filed tub, shocking you into movement driven solely by instinct and fear. Up to the top of the stairs and immediately to your right, a short hallway that ends with the relieving sight of the front door and-
Oh no.
The realization doesn’t settle into your thoughts until you’re a few hurried steps away.
It’s locked. Oh gods, it’s locked, you’re gonna have to stop and pull out the keys in order to get inside. The feeling of relief for your supposed refuge changes instantly to nothingness, cold as void in the face of something you had sorely neglected to consider, something you may have thought of if the last sprint wasn’t tailed by the very thing you’re afraid of.
“No, no no nonononono-” the words fall from your lips in a rushed mantra of dejected horror.
Despite the futility of the motion, one of your hands immediately reach to your pocket as shoes nearly skid to a stop just in front of the door. You’re so close, you almost have it, the keys are in your hands and you see the right one.
You have it between your fingers, reaching towards the bolt on the door-
“I’ve got you, dearest.”
The voice fills your ears only a breath before you feel something wrap around your ankles and wrists, tugging you back so fast that the keys fly from your hands and fall uselessly to the ground in front of the door.
You’re tugged back firm, but not hard enough that you lose your balance--it still immobilizes you from moving, from even struggling against the grip of not-quite-visible tendrils of cool, smoothing nothingness. There’s a sudden presence against your back, body solid and warm in contrast to the grip of your arms.
“You’re really good at running, but I wouldn’t let you get away from me,” The voice purrs, familiar and soft and reaching down deep to your core. “To think you were so close from the end! But a deal is a deal, dearest, and you’ve lost this little game of ours.”
Hands press to your hips as he speaks, pulling you back against his body. Kevin’s lips press to the nape of your neck. His breath tickles against your skin. You can’t move, but you don’t need to move to feel the way your body is already reacting to the firm promise grinding needly against your ass.
Fear and arousal are so easy to get mixed up in moments like this. They whirl together, two sides of the same coin, dripping through your mind until you’re not sure which is which anymore.
But maybe that’s the point.
“I feel your heartbeat--it’s so fast.”
It’s spoken with such genuine amusement, such heat and pride that it’s not a question--it’s a statement, a very true one at that. Adrenaline is still pumping through your body, though it’s fueling arousal more than anything else, so much that you feel your legs start to shake beneath your own weight.
Even though your mouth feels dry, you try to speak.
“What--” the word cracks a little. “What are you gonna do with me?”
It lingers for a moment before you feel more than hear Kevin’s giggle, the caress of lips and teeth against the nape of your neck that feel vaguely in the shape of a too-wide smile.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asks. “I’m going to do anything and everything I want with you.”