Chapter Text
Quiet footsteps in the hall were all the warning Theo got before the door banged open. He startled and jumped to his feet, only succeeding in drawing Arthur’s attention to himself faster. Arthur went from blank-faced to angry in the span of a second. “Why are you looking through my desk?” he asked through clenched teeth, glaring at Theo.
Theo forgot his momentary fear at being discovered immediately. “You’ve been hiding things,” he said, no less angrily. He clenched the piece of torn paper in his hand before showing Arthur the contents. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
Arthur paled for a second before remembering his anger. “I don’t remember saying you could look through my desk and then proceed to destroy it,” he said, gesturing at the drawer still lying discarded on the floor.
“Fuck you,” Theo retorted eloquently, “stop misdirecting. I remember you telling me, sometime after your sad little story about your scary little dreams, you’d never seen this thing before.” He pointed at the drawing of the ghoulish woman. “Or do your many mysterious talents now include gaslighting?”
Arthur pursed his lips. “What did you want me to tell you? That I’ve been researching supernatural and mystical occurrences and that they line up with what I’ve been experiencing? For Christ’s sake, I barely know you!”
“And whose fucking fault is that? Maybe if you weren’t always disappearing somewhere, maybe I could’ve helped you figure something out!” Theo said, nearly shouting. “I mean, fuck. I was out there too, that night. Don’t you think I deserve to know what’s trying to kill me?”
“Stop being so dramatic. It was hardly trying to kill you,” Arthur replied, rolling his eyes.
Theo seethed, taking a deep breath to try and calm himself down. It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. “In case I haven’t said it enough, fuck you. You wouldn’t know murderous intent if it bit you in the ass, rich boy. I have to get to practice.” Theo marched over to the corner of the room, retrieving his lacrosse stick. He turned around to find Arthur much closer than he’d been before. He looked angry.
Arthur shoved Theo, causing his back to collide with the wall. He pointed at Theo. “You don’t know what the hell you are fucking talking about,” Arthur said in a low voice.
“Oh, so now you’re not above swearing? You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Theo said with a razor-sharp smile.
Arthur fisted a hand in the collar of Theo’s shirt and shoved him against the wall again, this time painfully. Theo winced. “Don’t fucking talk about my mother!” He said, snarling. His eyes looked half-mad. Suddenly nervous, Theo tried to push him away, but was surprised at how strong he seemed. Arthur clenched his fist and reared his hand back—
Theo blinked.
Suddenly he was collapsing to the ground next to Arthur. But it definitely wasn’t the linoleum tile of their dorm room. It was… grass. Surprisingly soft. Iridescent. Almost too bright of an emerald green. Theo ran his hand through it. Then something in him snapped and he shook his head to clear it, clambering to his feet. Looking down at his hands, he noticed he was somehow still holding his lacrosse stick. A few feet away, Arthur was slowly getting to his feet as well. He squinted his eyes, which looked almost translucent in the blinding sunlight.
Theo looked around. They seemed to be in a field, with long and flowing green grass extending for miles in every direction. The sky was a clear blue; there wasn’t a cloud in sight. That couldn’t be right. The sky had been well on its way to sunset when Arthur had walked into their room. Theo looked up, now expecting a bright sun, but… there was nothing. Just blue sky everywhere. His head spun. He wondered what fresh hell was in store for him now, and whether it would be worse than the day before. He then decided that that was more than likely.
Theo looked back at Arthur, who was now looking decidedly embarrassed. “Look, I…” He attempted.
“Shut up,” Theo said. “Let’s figure out what the hell just happened first. Then you can write me a lengthy apology where you admit I was right, like always, and then you can explain to me all this supernatural and mystical bullshit you’ve been ranting about.”
“Idiot,” Arthur muttered. Then he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess you’re… right,” he grudgingly admitted. It was like pulling teeth.
Theo beamed. “See, was that so hard?” he asked. “Come on, let’s just pick a direction and start walking.” He turned to take a step in the direction opposite to where Arthur was standing.
As soon as his eyes refocused on the horizon, it was suddenly blocked by a person. No, multiple people. He turned back to Arthur. Somehow, they had been surrounded by a group of people despite having been dumped in the middle of nowhere. Arthur was looking just as confused as Theo felt. Theo backtracked to stand next to him.
Looking around at the people surrounding them, something felt distinctly… off. It was almost like, though the crowd looked normal enough, each person was trying to be something they were not.
Before Theo could think about that for too long, a woman stepped out of the crowd, which had been slowly closing in to form a circle around Theo and Arthur. She had long, white-blonde hair. Her clothes were plain, which looked exceedingly strange, as she was beautiful. She was tall—or taller than Theo, at least, which really wasn’t saying much. Theo couldn’t pinpoint her age. He thought at first she was in her twenties, but then he blinked and she looked closer to her early fifties. Maybe she just had one of those faces. But Theo didn’t really know what kind of a face that was.
“I asked for one,” the woman said, staring at Arthur. Her voice was melodic, entrancing, but Theo could hear an undercurrent of anger. It sparked instinctual fear in him, and he gripped his lacrosse stick.
“Well, looks like you lucked out. We’re buy one, get one free for today,” Theo retorted and then immediately cursed his own mouth in his head.
The woman swiveled to face him. “You were not permitted to speak, you little rat,” she said, her previously alluring face contorted with anger. Arthur looked at Theo with trepidation in his eyes.
Theo sighed and decided to throw caution to the wind. He’d always been good at starting fights—though the same couldn’t be said about ending them. He smirked. “If I’m a rat, then I guess you’re a cat. But really, I’d say you’re more of a bitch.”
If Theo was hoping to set the lady off, that certainly did the trick.
Suddenly, it was like something cracked in the air. Theo’s ears popped. It was like a sheet being yanked off to reveal what was underneath: the group surrounding him and Arthur completely transformed. Where before they’d been almost too plain, they now ranged from captivating and beautiful to bone-chillingly horrifying. Theo saw one man with fiery auburn hair, bright green eyes, and pointed ears, and thought he’d never seen anything so striking. Then he turned his head and saw a figure with long, gaunt limbs and antlers bursting from its skull. Its hollow eye sockets were pointed directly at Theo, and he quickly looked away. The bright blue sky was gone, replaced by eerie twilight. They now stood in a dense forest, surrounded by towering pine trees. No grass grew on the barren ground.
He jumped when he took in the woman’s appearance. She was the same creature he and Arthur had seen the day before. Her empty black eyes bored a hole in his face.
The woman bared her teeth, revealing them to be the same needle-like points that he remembered. Then, in a fluid motion, she turned her head to Arthur. An eerie smile slowly crept across her face. “Very well,” she said, her voice now an undisguised threat, “I suppose I shall just take back what is mine.” Without warning, she lunged at Arthur, her talon-like fingers extended.
“No!” Theo screamed. Remembering his lacrosse stick, he lunged forward to try and smack the woman away from his friend.
Momentarily he felt like he’d been struck by lightning. Something surged up from the ground through the tips of his fingers and into his racquet, and every muscle in his arm tensed. The woman was shocked, for a moment, before being driven back into the crowd before Theo could even blink.
For a second, the crowd was still, seemingly just as shocked as Theo. Then, like a switch flipped, they surged forward, murder in their eyes. Theo stumbled back. He could really use a nap. Maybe a nice, big meal, maybe not in that order. Luckily Arthur had more presence of mind. He fisted a hand in the back of Theo’s shirt and yanked him back, towards a gap in the writhing crowd. Theo spared a moment to dazedly think about how many times Arthur had yanked at his shirt, and then ran after him.
Arthur shifted his grip to Theo’s upper arm. Theo tried to yank it back, but Arthur held fast. Both of them still running for their lives, Arthur yelled, “Just trust me!” above the roar of the pursuing crowd.
Theo replied, “Why would I ever do that?” but admitted to himself he didn’t have much of a choice.
Arthur started mumbling something under his breath that didn’t sound like English. It barely sounded like a human language… and Theo supposed it probably wasn’t. His current willingness to believe in crazy shit was at an all time high. Soon enough, Theo spotted a break in the dense foliage. Something was wrong with the air, almost like the type of thing he’d see on a really hot day; the air seemed to shimmer and ripple past the evergreens. Arthur just kept running full-tilt at the opening, so Theo followed him. As they neared the shimmer, Theo started to hear a rushing in his ears, like a roaring river, the sound building and building, and Arthur was still gripping his arm and yanking him forward, and then—
Silence.
Theo landed hard on the floor of his dorm, Arthur landing no less roughly beside him. He still had a death grip on his lacrosse stick. Arthur scrambled to his feet. Theo followed suit, his mind still struggling to process what had just happened. Tapping his racquet on the floor, he looked over at Arthur, who looked terrified yet somehow resolute. Theo tapped his stick on the floor again and looked down at his feet. Suddenly, the floor was rising up to meet him.