Chapter Text
Jake usually didn’t mind when his late-night tutoring sessions were interrupted. Sometimes, it would be his neighbor from across the hall inviting him over to screen the newest horror movie. Sometimes, it would be his birth mom dropping by to hand off a homemade dinner and a handful of funny stories from work. Other times, it would be a friend from school with a hot pizza wanting a session on Jake’s PS5. A few times, it would even be his sister bringing the dog for him to keep overnight when she couldn’t be at the family house. Such distractions were usually a welcome break from seemingly endless formulas and word problems but, tonight, he felt personally offended by the knocking on his front door.
Just when he’d finally been making progress on this work node!
“Shit,” he grunted, half-startled by the violent banging. It had been so quiet and still in his apartment until then. “Who can that be at this hour?”
Jay, his hired tutor, looked up from the stacks of math workbooks they’d been poring over for the past two hours. He had a black ink pen tucked behind his ear and a red pen in his right hand, marking all of the errors on Jake’s computations.
As suddenly as the knocking began, it ended.
Everything went quiet.
“Maybe they’ve got the wrong door,” Jake pondered aloud. It had happened to him before. The stupid font the landlord had used for the door numbers constantly had people confusing 1s with 7s and 3s with 8s.
Then the banging came again. Even louder. Rattling the door in its frame. Shaking the walls.
Whoever was on the other side of the door would wake the neighbors at this point and he’d only just got back on their good side after last month’s party. With a sigh, Jake stood up and trudged across the hardwood of his studio apartment on socked feet. “Coming,” he bellowed, not even knowing if he’d be heard over all of the noise.
Behind him, Jay suddenly sprang to his feet. So quickly that he nearly toppled the table where the two of them had been working. “Don’t answer that,” Jay screeched. His usually monotonous voice was on fire with apprehension. “Don’t let them in!”
“Huh? Why not?” But by then, Jake already had a hand on the doorknob, already had the door open the slightest crack. He spun around to look at his tutor but the guy was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone that quickly?
Suddenly, the door was yanked out of Jake’s hand. Thrown open with a thunderous bang.
“You there,” came a loud and pompous voice.
Jake startled and faced forward again.
Standing in the doorway was a tall, young-looking man in a garish, red velvet suit. He even sported a top hat and carried a gold-tipped cane. The gaudiness of the man’s outfit, of the ostentatious buttons on the suit jacket and the frilled collar of the dress shirt, looked quite out of place, as if the man had stepped out of a time machine.
“Uhh,” Jake eloquently began, looking him up and down. “Can I help you?”
The oddly dressed stranger tilted back the brim of his top hat and regarded Jake with barely concealed disdain. “You best be thankful I still possess the patience to ask kindly. Tell me, human. Where are you keeping 𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵?”
Jake thought his brain was about to melt out of his ears. “I’m sorry?” A nervous giggle tumbled out of his mouth. “Say that again. I did not catch that at all.”
At such a response, the man snarled. He bared his teeth . He asked again, “Where is 𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵?”
What? He couldn’t make heads or tails of that.
“Tell him to come out of hiding immediately or I will have to resort to violence.”
Jake took a precautionary step backward. Was this guy crazy? Was he batshit? Jake made to slam the door shut in the odd man’s face but the stranger caught him with an ice cold hand around his throat before he could move. “Wha--” Jake gasped out, flailing. He tried to beat the stranger off but it was like throwing punches at a brick wall. To have such a delicate face, the stranger was solid and strong enough to hoist Jake clear off his feet without so much as a grunt of effort. “I can’t--” Breathe , Jake tried to finish.
The man’s handsome face contorted with anger as he peered into Jake’s face. His eyes burned bright red, like a blazing fire had just been lit behind them.
A headache swept through Jake’s head. What felt like a sharp knife ripped through his thoughts, sliced through his memories and left tatters behind. Then the sensation was gone.
“You truly don’t know who I am talking about,” the odd man hissed. “But your ignorance won’t save you.” When he peeled his lips back to get around the syllables, his teeth appeared razor sharp. Like an animal.
Jake choked, trying to suck air into his lungs, but the stranger’s grip on his throat remained vice-tight.
“Whether you know his true name or not, he is here, human. This hovel reeks of him.” The odd man moved. He flicked his wrist like shooing away a fly.
Jake felt weightless. It took him a dizzying moment to realize that the stranger had thrown him. That he was sailing through the air so fast he could hear the whistle of it past his ears. Before he could even cuss, his body was slamming into the far wall of his apartment, right next to his mattress tucked into the corner beneath the window.
Jake wheezed. What little air he had left in his lungs spilled out of him in a scream. Pain exploded through his head, through his entire body. The plaster on the wall was smashed to bits where his body had connected with it. “What the fuck,” he gasped out. It was so hard to speak. Blood was in his mouth. His head was a whirlwind.
The stranger bellowed, “Was kicking your dog not enough, 𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵? Reveal thyself!”
Jake squinted through the swirling colors in his vision to stare at the oddly-dressed man casually strolling through his doorway. He was so far away. So far away. How had he thrown Jake so far?
“Come out, 𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵𖽵.” The stranger’s voice twisted and whipped around the syllables of whatever strange name he was calling out. “Return to court at once or face the consequences of your truancy.”
A second wave of pain jolted through Jake’s body. He spit up blood and watched it splatter across the hardwood floors between his bent legs. It hurt to swallow down a breath. It hurt to breathe. He hadn’t realized how badly he was injured until then.
The stranger pulled on the intricate gold carving at the head of his cane and he unsheathed a short sword. Like a villain out of a comic book or something!
“Show yourself to me or watch your dog be run through with my blade.” The odd stranger pointed the tip of his sword at Jake.
Jake turned his head. His neck hurt like hell but he twisted to the right to follow the tiny bit of movement he’d spotted out of the corner of his eye.
A flash of bleached blonde hair. A dazzle of silver rings.
It was Jay! He was kneeling in the doorway to the bathroom, clearly hiding from the intruder. Maybe it was the trick of the light, but his eyes were glowing electric blue as he stared across the length of the apartment at Jake. His teeth looked sharp. Predatory.
“Help me,” Jake coughed out. His vision was already blackening as the pain in his body doubled. His heart was beating so hard. His chest hurt so much. He just wanted to sleep.
Jay moved his lips but didn’t use his voice. Jake barely managed to steal the words. He’ll catch me .
Jake moaned in pain. He couldn’t move his arms. Couldn’t move his fingers. Everything hurt.
The strange man in the top hat loomed over Jake menacingly, sword pointed at Jake’s chest.
None of this felt real. None of this could really be happening, right? Jake was dreaming. He’d dozed off while studying and was having some stress-induced nightmare. Right? But the pain was immense and the light stung his eyes and he was coughing up more blood.
This was real.
The stranger reared back, sword poised, ready to strike.
Jay lunged into action. He moved so quickly that Jake almost didn’t see him, could only track the man’s movements with that surreal hyper-focus that came with being two seconds away from passing out.
“I’m so sorry,” Jay whispered into his ear. He looped one arm beneath Jake’s knees, the other beneath his armpit. As if Jake were nothing but a bundle of feathers, Jay hoisted him up and threw them both through the glass of the window above Jake’s mattress, a mere hair’s width ahead of the razor edge of the sword being swung at their backs.
All Jake felt was the wicked chill of winter wind on his too-hot skin before he lost consciousness.
Jay’s voice thrummed through the blackness like a song.
I don’t expect you to forgive me.