Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I tap my fingers over the counter, rattling them off repetitively in a way that mimics the outside rain.

The static-fogged camera feed staggers in clips on the CRT television caddy-cornered on the desk, flipping through empty isles of various VHS tapes and DVD's.

I watch it, half-lidded, eyes feeling heavier and heavier as the wall clock chimes in another hour.

This has been the longest fucking shift of my life.

It's been raining all day, which isn't really a change in pace from any other day, and it doesn't seem susceptible to change any time soon. It's just so heavy, the sidewalks are essentially concrete-bottomed puddles at this point. It at least rides to the middle of my sneakers, which are already fucking disgusting to begin with.

Not like I can afford a new pair on this salary anyway.

Another song scratches over the store speakers from the ancient stereo behind me, and the flip in CD's rips out an electric whirl that makes my shoulders flinch. God, you would think the owner would have shut this place down years ago with the amount of overbearing silence it finds itself prone too. I've only seen probably two customers today, and both of them just looked like dropheads coming in to catch a break from the rain.

At least one of them bought something.

I drag myself off of the counter, my elbows dented from leaning in on the edge, and a silent sigh breathes out of my nostrils as I pace over the bowling-alley-esque carpet to the lounge area. Guess I should make sure they didn't leave any empty droppers. At least it's better than syringes.

I turn the corner down a specific isle, pausing between the 90's porn flicks and vinyl to pull my vape out of my pocket in a space where I know the cameras can't reach. Not that I really think my boss would give a shit, but it's better to be safe than sorry. It's the second time that I hit it, vapor curling out around my face from my nostrils as I crouch down on my heels, that I hear the cowbell tied loosely to the front door cry out.

I stand up straight as a pin, wafting the smoke away with my hand and shoving my vape back into my pocket. It's pretty late for people to be coming in, but then again, I don't think it's ever too late for anything around here. At least we're not located in the business district.

I heel around a corner, breaking pace through the aisles as I navigate to the front. If anyone steals anything it comes out of my fucking paycheck, and that shit isn't happening again on my watch.

"Hello?"

I round the edge of shitty murder novel display and almost plunge face-first into an oversized military coat.

"Oh shit," He flinches away at the sound of my voice, his hands static from where they've been thumbing through the various titles, and his eyes are wide behind the lenses of his clear framed glasses. "Hey, sorry, welcome in."

I take a step or two back, suddenly feeling overtly aware of my own presence, and his lips fall into a flat line. He looks a bit older than me maybe, baby-faced in a way that doesn't age well. He avoids eye contact.

"Hello."

The word is over-articulated and forced, almost as if he's speaking directly from his lungs.

Well, okay.

I nod before stepping around him, and his face pinches as he flattens himself as close to the rack of books as physically possible. Shit, did I forget to put on deodorant today or something?

I lift an arm as I turn to walk away, gripping the end of my long sleeve and pulling my shirt taut as I sniff myself as inconspicuously as possible before remembering that I'm supposed to be cleaning up the lounge area.

Which just so happens to be maybe two yards away from this guy at the novel rack.

The walk to the other end of our hand-me-down couch seems too short, and I fight the urge to glance over my shoulder as I try to remain placid while yanking up the first couch cushion. I shove my hand in between them, digging around for any discarded trash left by dweeb-kids or damp drugheads, and ball up a few receipts and candy wrappers before turning around to drop them into the trashcan, which is an entire foot away from the couch itself.

People suck.

"Do you have any archived Gotham Gazettes? Or Gotham Globes?"

I break my head over my shoulder.

"Like, the newspapers?"

God, stupid question, stupid fucking question. Obviously, the newspapers.

He nods, face blank and neck hidden by the large hood resting over his shoulders.

I nod back.

"We have two compilations, I don't know the dates on them though." I remember them distinctly, because my boss bartered over the price with some collector last year for almost a full hour. "I can, uh, I can show you where they're at."

There's a beat of pregnant silence, two blank stares piercing into one another, before he clears his throat.

"Yes, please."

I nod again, which seems like the optimal form of communication here.

I turn on a pivot, walking around the edge of the couch to the shelves that lie behind it. I can hear his footsteps falling into beat with my own, hear the way they sound in between the beats of rain on the roof.

"Uh," I turn to face a specific shelf of Gotham-related non-fiction. It isn't a broad category, not many people are all two interested in the shitty history of this city, so not a lot comes through regarding it. "It should be, erm... here."

I thumb out a title as he falls in beside me, putting an arms length distance between us. He cranes his head as I net both the books in my arms, flipping open to first hard cover and filing through the print with flattened fingers.

"Uh... nineteen sixty-seven?" I shake the hair from over the frames of my glasses as I look up at him. "Hold on, let me check the other-"

"I'll take them." His voice cuts through like broken glass. "Both."

I take the inner meat of my cheek between my teeth, a nervous tick, and pause as his gaze rakes over my face. His demeanor seems so collectively unnerving, like I just can't get a good read on him. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I can't begin to explain why.

I nod, which seems to be the only thing I can do today.

"Let me take them to the counter and get a price check on them for you."

We walk through the empty store, the soles of our shoes padding over the thin carpet in a staccato of beats, and the lights flicker as a train passes overhead. It shakes the building to it's core, and I already know the pile of cups on my nightstand will be knocked over when I get home.

I sigh as I round the counter, dropping the books flat on top of it with a thud.

"I hate that thing." I dart my gaze to him for a second before turning my back to bend down and search for the price logs. "It's too expensive and too loud. Who even thought that was a good idea?"

No one here takes the train. Or at least, no one in this specific district of the city. The price to ride even a short distance is higher than taking a cab, and you probably would get there in the same amount of time. It wasn't built with people like us in mind anyway, more so for what our local government considered to be the modern businessman. The people who worked in the tops of our sky-scratching buildings, not the bottoms.

I find the price log for collector books, the spine peeling for one too many years of usage, and slide it out before standing back up to the counter.

The man is straightened a little, one hand shoved off into his pocket, the other hanging waywardly to his side as he cracks his knuckles between his thumb.

The pop of cartilage snaps me back from staring.

I drop the price log, opening it up and sifting through the pages. It's not organized alphabetically, which would have been the smartest way to do so, but by time of donation. I open the front cover of the top book, checking the corner for a catalog number, before dragging my attention back down to the price log. Hey, just my luck. I'm nowhere near where I need to be.

"Have you ever rode the train before?"

I loose my place all over again as I cut my eyes up to him, his face caught in a smudge on my lenses.

I nod, slowly, taking his body language in one piece at a time.

"Once." My voice catches in my throat, and I take a breath out of my nose before pulling my eyes back down to the aged paper. "Once, coming home from the Business district. We went to a club for a friends birthday, couldn't hail a cab. I remember," a laugh escapes me, slips past my tongue at the recollection. "I remember peoples faces, when we sat down. Like it was odd, regular people riding the train, sans suits. They must have thought we were dropheads, or something.

I find the catalog number and toss away my wistfulness with a shake of the head, drawing my attention back up to him.

"The last person to access them marked forty-five for the pair."

Ouch, pretty steep for some books.

As our eyes focus in on each other, I note the slight curve of his mouth. Ever so subtle, ever so hidden by the way a shadow casts over his face from the frames of his glasses. I couldn't tell you the color of his eyes, or the tone of his complexion. If I had to use a word to describe, it'd probably be pale. Or maybe sandy.

He opens his mouth as if to speak, but closes it again, and my gaze flickers between his eyes and his pocket as he removes his hand.

"I've never rode the train." His wallet is a thin, classic, worn leather one, the brown skin of it a balding beige in the corners. He unfolds it clinically, fingers moving and working with routine and purpose as he pulls out an even forty-five in bills. "I prefer to walk."

I cock a brow.

"In the rain?"

He sets the money on the counter, drumming his fingers over it in a consecutive line that seems all too familiar.

"You don't think it's nice sometimes?"

He draws his hand back, and all I can think about as my gaze lingers over it is how plain he is. He has no jewelry, no distinctive style aside from the coat and a pale, collared shirt, and his hair is cropped into an average, mid-length. Even the frames of his glasses are clear, void of color or life. He seems so different from anyone I've ever seen lurking in the underbelly of the train tracks.

I meet his face again, his small smile now unmistakable. It rakes its nails up my back, making me stand a little straighter, hear a little clearer.

Shit, this guy is kind of unsettling.

I nod before taking the cash off the counter, filing through the bills with my fingers and clicking open the register.

The mechanical chime makes me flinch, and I pray it goes unnoticed by my present company. I've never been all to good with a poker face.

"You would have to be a masochist to live here and hate the rain."

It seems as good as a comment as any to ease further into our conversation. I don't really want this guy to know that I walk myself, but maybe he's already noticed my umbrella tucked into the corner behind me.

I ring him up and pen down a receipt, ripping it off the pad before unfolding a paper sack from the stack.

"Do you want it wrapped?"

A customary question, I ask every person that actually makes it to the counter with a purchase.

He quirks a brow.

I clear my throat.

"It's uh, nothing fancy. We just fold over the sack flat and tie it up with this."

I reach down a pluck up a spool of thin glittery ribbon, almost matching to the shade of his coat.

He smiles.

"Maybe another time."

The rest of the process moves by without conversation. I slide the books, along with the receipt, into the brown bag, folding down the top twice and all while reciting our strict "no returns" policy. He stands overtly still, the crease of his uneven smile burning through me, and he waits until I've completely cleaned the counter area of the price log and receipt pad before moving to grab his bag.

"They weren't thinking of us," He wets his lips with his tongue, a motion that doesn't go unnoticed by me. "You and I, when they built the train."

What an odd choice of words.

I try and laugh the stiffness out of me, try and break the one sided tension.

"When have they ever, right?"

He smile widens, like it could split right through his face.

"Have a good day."

His voice ricochets through me as he leaves, all at once, without a glance back.

I watch his back as the cowbell cries out against the glass door, watch his blurred form move across the sidewalk through the tear-stroked window panes.

His presence somehow lingers even though he's fully gone, and my shoulders slacken with relief at my regaining solace.

What an odd interaction.

What an odd guy.

The business district isn't really all business, I guess by definition. Like, when you think "business," you don't really think ludicrous amounts of scandalous clubs and seething drug distribution. Or maybe you do, maybe you're a business man.

I live and work on the opposite side of our district furthest from the border, so I don't really ever see the worst of it, but our little re-sale media store definitely sees the products of it.

Two of them walk in now, as my boss and I are leaning over in stools with the news playing on our little TV, and he groans at their presence before flipping back to the VHS camera feed. I look at myself, the top of my head on the screen, and watch the clipped motion of our guests dart for the lounge through the eyes of our old cameras.

"Hey, welcome in." My voice is tired, unmotivated. "It's buy two, get one free on CD's today."

If they heard me, they don't register it.

My boss groans, again.

"How often do they do this? Just come in and sit?"

His voice is thick of New York accent, it coats his words like oil.

I laugh.

"Honestly? Every day." I turn away from the cameras as it shutters into a new scene, grabbing a stack of newly donated DVD's before rising from my stool. "I couldn't pick their faces out of a lineup, though. I wouldn't know who regulars."

He grunts.

"I'll work the counter. If they're still loitering by the time you get done restocking, tell them to get out."

I nod, it isn't the first time I've had to deal with the lingering presence of unwanted company. We don't have a gun, because my boss thinks that having one behind the counter is a cry for trouble in itself, but we keep a large metal bat tucked under the ridge between the cabinet and the carpet.

I've only picked it up once or twice, and most dropheads are too poor and scared already to deal with what it threatens by staying any longer.

I weave through the aisles, noting the two people dripping onto the couch behind me, and round the edge of a rack to the back corner of the store.

We keep all the splatter films back here, and personally, I think anyone that wanders to this side of the store should be put on a list. Especially whoever donated this fresh new stack of them.

At least the camera doesn't extend past this point, and I haven't had a break all day, so I shift the stack to one arm before dipping my hand into my pocket for my-

"Holy shit!"

I flinch to a sudden halt, DVD's jolting out of my shaking hands and clattering across the carpet. My vape tumbles out of my fingers to the ground, my breath lodging somewhere in my throat as I blink the figure in front of me into focus.

"Holy shit, I didn't know you were back here!"

My words leave me in a sort of breathless jumble, and he seems completely un-phased by my little scare as he sets down a certain title.

He looks exactly the same, same coat, same glasses, same hair. At least he's wearing a different shirt.

There's still moisture from the rain clinging to the dangling strands on his forehead, trapping them against his skin and leaving his face with a sheen slick.

"I'm sorry." He turns to face me, body moving in that rigid tactfulness. "I came in a few moments ago."

What? How did we not notice him? I sure as hell didn't hear the bell.

I nod, still visibly shaken, and drop to my knees to begin gathering the plastic cases all too quickly. I hope the dropheads in the lounge aren't getting too comfortable, because I'm about to finish this re-stock in record time.

I have a small stack beginning when he cuts the space between us, striding over to lower himself on his heels and pick up a discarded title. He adds it to my pile before straightening them with the flats of his hands, lining the edges up surgically.

"Thanks."

The word chokes out of me, and I watch him from the neck down as he picks up a few more movies.

His hands are nimble, quiet with long, articulated fingers. The hangnails that line around his fingernails are torn, an irritated pink lining the cuticles, and his fingers move so adeptly as they wrap around the plastic cases.

"Seems as if I'm not your only customer today."

A dry laugh spills past my lips.

"No, you probably still are." We finish the stack, and I crane my head under an aisle to see where my vape rolled off to. "Those guys aren't gonna buy anything."

He flattens his palms against the side of the stack, working his fingers under the bottom case and picking them up as he rises. Fuck, I guess I'll find my vape later.

I stand with him, shaking back a step as I recognize our closeness, and mumble another quick thanks before reaching out to take the stack.

My fingers brush over the edges of his knuckles, the bone firm against my finger tips. He releases them all too quickly into me, and it almost causes me to drop them all over again.

"Is this yours?"

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a metallic, red cylinder. Oh, thank god.

"Yeah, shit," I slide the stack back into one arm, extending my hand out and letting him drop the vape into my palm. "Thank you. Sorry for uh, sorry for freaking out."

He shrugs.

I walk around him, his head turning to follow me, and rake over the rack with my eyes before locating the spot for the first title in my stack. I quickly drop it in, and move to do the next.

"They don't purchase anything?"

I glance over the stack, and watch him watch me.

This guy has like, no sense of social cues.

"Uh, no, not most of the time." I drop in another title, it clacks against the display. "I think they're dropheads. They come in for a break from the rain."

"Masochists."

I drop another title into the rack, brow cocking up on my forehead. "Huh?"

He smiles, but not at me. His eyes are following my hand as it pauses over the cases.

"To live here, and hate the rain."

Oh, I forgot I had said that.

I nod, discarding two of the same title to another shelf. My gaze flickers over the cover, "The Caged Virgin." This guys owned two of these? Fucking gross.

"Yeah, I don't really think they live anywhere. Maybe they live in the rain."

He cocks his head.

"What an observation." He takes a step closer as I work my way down the aisle. "Does it bother you? Them being here?"

Wow, he sure is talkative today. The only things that's really bothering me is finding this guy in this section, of all places.

"Uh, no, I guess not." Another drop, another clack of plastic. "They're addicts. They can't really help it. I'd probably be here too."

I plop in the last title, turning on a pivot to face him from the end of the aisle. He has one hand in his pocket, the other by his side, popping his knuckles. It must be a habit.

"I guess you could say your an addict yourself."

He gestures towards me, eyes flicking down to my hand where my vape is tucked between my thumb and forefinger. Did I put all the DVD's up while holding it? Huh, I guess I did.

I laugh as I hold it up, rolling it around in my hand before stuffing it into my shirt pocket.

"Yeah, I guess I could." I shrug, throwing my hands up before dropping them back down, starting toward the exit of the aisle behind him. "Do you really watch this stuff?"

He looks back out into the aisle, gaze lingering over the covers. His head shakes back and forth on his shoulders, hood resting around his neck.

"It's desensitizing."

I pass him, something chemical mixed in with the scent of bar soap wafting off his clothes, and my shoulder sears as it brushes his arm.

"Maybe that's why people watch it."

When I get back to the lounge area, the two people are gone. At least I won't be having to deal with that. The couch cushions are consequently soaked through. I will probably be having to deal with that.

My boss raises his face as I make my way back to the entrance, and promptly frowns.

"They bought a book at the very least. What took you so long?"

I shrug, rounding the corner of the counter as he plops off of the stool.

"I was talking to the customer in the back." My hands press into the edge of the worn counter, leveraging myself as I lean back into the stool. "What book?"

"Some shit title from the supernatural erotica section." His eyes dance over my form to the TV behind me, arm extending past my back to flick back on the news, before blinking an expression of confusion across his face. "Wait, customer in the-"

"Hello."

We both jump, and very notably so, when the man approaches the counter to set two CD cases onto the top of it with a small scrape of plastic.

My eyes dart to my peripheral, and a quick read of my bosses face lets me know he never saw him enter as well.

Sneaky guy.

It takes a moment or two for the both of us to jolt back into motion, my boss clearing his throat and lowering to dig for the receipt pad he no doubt just put away.

Meaning he wants me to interact with the guy.

Typical.

I draw my gaze down to the CD's, feigning placidity as I wrap my fingers around them to bring them closer.

I inspect the covers before splitting open the cases, plucking out the CD's inside and turning to drop the first in the cleaning machine. It whirls good life, and my boss still can't seem to locate the receipt pad.

It's crazy, that he just seems to lose track of that thing so easily.

I frown as he cuts his eyes at me from below the counter.

"Uh," my gaze flickers back to our current company, a small and quiet smile resting in the corners of his mouth. "It's buy two, get one free. The CD's, today."

What a well articulated sentence.

His expression furls behind the lenses of his glasses, and he wets his lips with the end of his tongue before opening his mouth.

"I wouldn't know what to get."

I draw my mouth into a tight line, glance down at the CD's on the counter between us.

They're abandoned mixtapes, we have an entire section of them, hand crafted playlists burned and gifted only to be regifted to us. I flip over the case as the machine behind me continues to whirl, read through some of the songs. A few are from local bands, and a few more I recognize from the days before I dropped out of college. Songs played between the halls of our shitty dorms, doors opened to hear from room to room. A pang of nostalgia creeps in over me, and I hum in acknowledgement of it.

"Is this your taste or are you trying something new?"

I don't even register the way my boss cocks a brow at my seemingly sudden interest, or the way I lean ever-so-closely into the counter, my elbows digging into the ridge.

Don't even register the placid smile that splits over my company's face.

His eyes flicker between the counter and me, an odd laugh dropping quietly from his lips.

"Music is as redundant as it is infinite." His fingers deftly rise to the edge of the counter, tap in a line parallel to my elbow. "Does anyone ever try anything new?"

Spoken like a poet, like something I've heard from the back of a dimly lit lecture hall.

I try not to smile, I do.

"Well," I slide off the stool, maneuver around my boss who has, in a miracle, found the receipt pad. "Let me grab you something of a similar redundancy."

I already have an album in mind before I've even rounded into the aisle, and once I've collected it and stepped back out into the entryway, he's turned ever so slightly to catch my gaze.

"If you hate it, it's free." I hold the case up into the air, flashing the cover at him as I fall back aside my boss, who is penning out the receipt. "Besides, there's a no return policy."

I drop the case on the counter, pop the disk out and exchange it with the one in the machine. He cranes his head over the counter, his torso pressing into the edge.

"Meth Wax?"

My boss coughs from the way his face is angled over the pad, his pen pressing harshly into the thin paper.

I frown.

"It's good. Music is subjective anyway." I pop out the CD, replace the machine with the last disc. "So at the very least, it's good to someone."

His teeth show through his smile as I turn, straight, small teeth that don't quite suit his face.

"If it's good to you, than it's worth a listen."

I blink at him.

Heat rushes to fill the corners of my cheeks, creeps up behind my ears in a way that's impossible to hide. I dip my head away from his gaze, let my hair fall over the rims of my glasses.

Is this... is he flirting with me?

The rip of paper interrupts my train of thought, and my boss slides a fresh receipt across the counter before unfurling a brown sales sack.

"You want it wrapped?"

The customary question sounds so harsh on his lips.

I'm guessing the customer shakes his head from the way that my boss continues to drop the CD's in one by one, and I turn to place the last cleaned CD into its case before handing it off to him.

He drops it into the sack, along with the receipt, and slides it across the counter.

"Like they said, no returns." He taps the back twice with a harsh hand, his calloused fingers scraping over the paper. "Have a good one."

My eyes flicker up to catch his across the counter, and he's already looking down at me.

"Have a good one."

He parrots the words with a nod, turning with a smile and exiting the way he supposedly came. The bell rings as the door clutters to a shut, and his form eventually fades into a blur in the drizzled rain.

My boss turns.

"You gotta crush on that rat-looking guy?"

I frown.

"No." The stool groans as I slide back onto it. "He's actually one of the only regulars we have that ever buys anything."

"Regular?" He leans over me with a grunt, flicks back on the news as the now-empty store falls into silence. "How regular?"

Twice. Today makes twice.

I decide to lie.

"Regular enough."

Politicians gripe on opposing sides of a split screen, words dash across the bottom border in bold headlines. My boss hums.

"Does he make you uncomfortable?"

I smile despite myself. My boss is a good guy, despite his less-than-digestible appearance. He's sweet to the core, a sucker dropped in the dirt.

"Nah. There are worse guys in Gotham."

There are.

We keep watching the news until close.

Chapter Text

There's a regular here today.

A real regular, not some drophead, but the ultimate neck-beard, collector type. He's peering at me from the lounge in a black t-shirt with a worn Thundercat's logo printed on the front, and every few seconds he sticks his thumb behind the lenses of his thin, rectangular glasses to wipe them with the pad of it.

I can only imagine that it's making the smudging worse, but I keep the thought to myself.

This is the type of guy my boss had in mind when I referred to that one customer as a regular, the kind of guy that breathes out of their mouth and spends way too long in-store. We're ten minutes until close, and the metal bat below the cabinet edge glares at me.

I glance up at the guy, and he falters, shoulders hitching as he dips lower into the couch.

"We're ten minutes until close." I speak the words through a sigh. "Do you have anything you'd like to buy?"

He has a whole pile, actually. It's resting beside him as he pretends to read through a book, niche porn hidden between nu-metal CD's and plastic wrapped comics.

He laughs, something like a crow, and I cringe.

"God, I got caught up, didn't I?" He makes a scene of flipping his wrist to glance at his watch before standing and gathering his items. "Have you read this title?"

I frown.

"Nope."

He shrugs.

"I could have sworn I saw it on the counter last time I came in."

Oh, so that's why he picked it up. He doesn't really seem like a Eric Larocca type to me.

"Probably for restock."

I already have the receipt pad readied beside an empty bag by the time he makes it to the counter, a new scene on the VHS cameras flicks a cast of blue light over me. I have half the store lights turned off already, thinking that maybe he'd take the hint, little did I know that subtlety doesn't work on these types.

"So, you doing anything after work?"

I pop his ancient, Asian porn out of the case, drop it in the disk cleaner. The machine whirls as I cock a brow.

"Nope."

I leave it at that. Don't really feel like having this guy trail me home.

He nods, runs a hand over the expanse of counter before him. He drums on it with two fingers, out of beat, in a way that rakes nails over the chalkboard of my brain.

"Ah, you not the going out type? Me neither. I'm probably going home to play Warzone." His eyes run over me down to my chest, and he cocks a toothy grin as he nods towards me. "Cool shirt. You listen to them a lot?"

I glance down.

It's a Dead Poet Society tour shirt I actually got here. Someone donated it, and I asked my boss if I could have it since we don't sell clothes. He took the cost out of my salary.

"Nope."

I lie.

"It's my boyfriends."

I lie again.

His smile twitches.

I bag the rest of his stuff in silence, he doesn't. If anything my boyfriend fib has not deterred him at all, and I'll give it to him, at least he's determined. He continues to ask me questions that I silently answer, shaking my head yes or no up until the point I drop the receipt into the bag.

"You want it wrapped?"

He ponders over the question for a moment.

"Nah. Sweet of you to offer."

He grins.

I hope he chokes.

He exits the store five minutes after close, waving a hand behind him and shouting, "See you later!" over the beating rain.

I watch him struggle with his umbrella before disappearing out of sight from the window.

A sigh escapes my lips into the open, empty air. The dark store sighs back at me, and we share the company of one another as I click open the cash register to recount it.

It's the last thing on my to-do list, everything else having already been done in the time that guy spent loitering on our couch. He literally sat there the entire time I vacuumed, the entire time I restocked, and the entire time I dusted the cameras and replaced the VHS tapes.

103.67.

That's not bad for a Wednesday.

I replace the cash back into the register, penning the total down in the ledger before slapping the ancient book shut and sliding it back into place.

I click through the cameras one last time, and round my way through the entire store.

Officially empty, void of life aside from me.

When I make it back to the counter, I collect my bag and umbrella with haste. I plan on getting carry-out at a local diner and bingeing Hannibal when I get home, but the diner closes thirty minutes after the store usually does. It's a ten minute walk, but I think I should make it in time.

I tug on my jacket at the door, an oversized Old Navy one that I got at Goodwill, and brace myself as I step out through the glass.

Rain ricochets off the sidewalk from where it hits over the roof ledge, splattering up around my pants legs as I turn back to lock the door. At least this ledge is here, or else I'd already be completely soaked.

It takes a moment for me to jiggle the lock into place, the old keys twisted and dull from years of use. Rain fills my ears, creeps dampness around the back of my neck and up to my cheeks. Could it at least not be so humid all the time?

"Hey!"

Something deep inside me rakes up to my throat as my head snaps on a pivot, and my eyes widen behind my fogged glasses as a figure comes into view.

It's the guy, the neckbeard guy, who from the looks of it has been waiting against the wall of the building this entire time.

My teeth clack to a close, body straightening and breath catching.

He stepped out of the window so I wouldn't see him, and waited. Waited for me.

This is the first time in all four years of working here that this has happened. I'm not the type of person that's attractive enough for people to harass, at least not for guys like this. I'm relatively broad-shouldered, baggy clothes concealing whatever type of curve or form my body might hold underneath them. Petite or delicate aren't words I would use to define myself, but even so, I've seemed to unknowingly gathered the attention of this guy without my consent.

A completely new wave of horror sets over me as he steps off the wall.

"This rain is crazy, huh? Do you have an umbrella?"

Bile rises in my throat as he leers closer, head dipping down to me so as not to yell over the sound of the rain.

I open my mouth, close it. My umbrella is right here in my hand, can't he see it?

His eyes dip down over my entirety, work their way back up.

He grins, toothy with a canine peaking over his lip. A wolfs grin.

"Let me walk you home, yeah? I worry about you in this weather."

I glance over his shoulder to an empty street, too numb to take the chance of glancing behind me. Any moment my eyes are not him is an open ended opportunity.

I open my mouth just to stutter, just to stumble over a string of words that resemble close to nothing. Suddenly everything is so warm, I'm sweating through the mist of the rain, letting it mix together behind my bangs against my forehead.

"I, u-um... my boyfriend. My boyfriend, h-he's picking me up."

My lie from earlier, stretched out to be all too unconvincing through my jittering teeth, and he knows it.

It just draws his grin to stretch further.

He makes another show of checking his watch, swapping hands with his umbrella in the process.

"Didn't you get off, like, fifteen minutes ago?"

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Of course I did, and this guy is a regular, so of course he would know that.

I scour my brain as he leans in further, as my body solidifies to rock beneath his caving form, as the world closes in around me and my breath gets lost somewhere between my lungs and my throat.

There's no assembly of words to make this go away, no confrontational anger to power me out of his grasp.

Attention like this isn't something I'm accustomed to, there's no rule book in my brain de-coding the correct response.

I flinch back as his finger tips brush my jacket sleeve, as he says something I can't hear over the sound of my own blood behind my ears.

I've got to get the fuck out of here, how can I get the fuck-

"Hello?"

A quiet voice, deep and stony, cast out somewhere from the rain.

I open the eyes I didn't know I had shut, this guys face inches away from my own, but one glance at his expression lets me know he heard it too.

I cut my gaze away from him, look out behind him.

Ten yards away in the empty road, a figure without an umbrella lets the rain beat over him.

Clear framed glasses. An oversized military coat. One hand in his pocket, the other out to his side.

My heart sings.

I tear myself away from him, abandon my umbrella as I split through the rain in a mad pursuit. Laughter pours out of my chest along with my re-found breath, the air hitting my lungs like a freight train in a way that has me feeling almost lightheaded. Rain coats over every inch of me, soaking through my hair and clothes and painting paths down the lenses of my glasses. I overwork my limbs, moving in record time across the flooded street as each footfall is a mine that explodes a crash of water around me.

But I don't care.

Because this fucking weirdo is here, and I definitely prefer him to my present company.

I'm looking at him the entire time I close the distance between us, my arms churning at my sides, and he's looking through me. His gaze is fixated somewhere over my shoulder up until the point I'm right in front of him, and surprise fills his face as I don't slow my pace.

We crash into each other, our soaked forms colliding in a mass of damp clothes and slicked hair, and I toss my arms around him before dipping my face into his neck.

"I don't know this guy. He waited for me to close. Please just go along with this." I burry my cheek against the wet skin of his jaw, try and feign a loving embrace despite my unknowing cast member. "Promise you'll stay. Until he leaves."

His body is as stiff as a rock, ice cold as his hands waver around in the air behind my back.

It takes a moment for my words to register with him, for the recognition to settle in around the corners of his eyes, and his hands close in around me to rest with featherlight touch over the back of my jacket.

I sob a cry of relief into him, let my body draw slack against his rigid form, and as embarrassing as this is, I can't manage the energy to care.

Thank fucking god for this guy, this small toothed, rat-looking man.

There's faith for humanity in this world after all.

I slide out and away from him, taking a step back as he releases me back into the street.

I turn back to the guy at the door, who isn't there. The storefront is empty save for my umbrella, but there's no point in going back to grab it now. Some drophead can have it for all I care, they probably need it more than I do.

I draw my attention down to my hands, hold them palm up as the rain catches in the grooves of skin. They're still shaking, my entire body is shaking, and I have the feeling it's not from the rain.

"He left his bag."

I cock my head up to my present company, follow his gaze to the other side of the street.

A soaked through, brown paper beg rests in the gutter, no doubt dropped as the guy made his escape.

"You can, uh," I stumble over my words, residual tension still grasping onto me as I navigate through a sentence. "You can have it. It's all, like, fetish porn." I look back up to him. "Maybe a comic or two."

He stares down at me for a moment, disbelief creeping over the corners of his eyes, before a sudden chuckle of a laugh escapes him.

He shakes his head, laughter bubbling up past his lips as he casts off beads of rain from his hair, and then his shoulders are shaking as more laughter unearths from his chest.

I don't even realize that I'm laughing as well for a moment, in fact, it sort of creeps up on me in tiny intervals.

And then we're both full-heartedly laughing in the rain, the sky opening up to unleash its wrath upon us, and all we can do it laugh.

I'm buckled over at some point, hands planted onto my knees as my joints regain their strength, and he pauses just enough to speak a chopped statement.

"You- you are resilient."

He's chuckling out the words, pulling up his his glasses with one hand and wiping the slick of rain off his face with the other.

I blink at him.

What a way to describe a person.

"What's your name?"

The question bubbles out of me with a lack of self control, and his face twists into an expression of confusion as he blinks back down at me.

His lips form a tight line.

"Ed."

Ed. An average name for an average guy.

I smile, a genuine smile, and unfold myself to stand up straight.

"Thank you, Ed."

He reciprocates my smile, lets it creep out of the corners of his mouth, and I'm so relieved by the action itself that I completely forget to ask what he was even doing there in the first place.

My boss makes a fit of the cameras.

From the angle of the cameras in store, you can very clearly see the regular crowd my space as I'm locking up.

But one thing you cannot see clearly, is his face.

My boss pulls his form up in store from every angle, tracing his steps back through the entirety of his stay, but the cops say it's still too unclear. Without a name, it will be just short of impossible to find this guy.

My boss rages.

"I'm calling the owner right, fucking, now," His accent is thick and powerful, the ground quaking in his path of fury. "We're getting new cameras, we're writing down every name at purchase. This fuckwad is still out there, can still come in whenever he pleases."

The printer in the break room squeals, inching out a ink-stained sheet at the pace of a snail.

He rips the sheet out when it's through, not giving the machine its full time to spit it out, and consequently tearing off the blank space at the end of the paper. I follow him as he storms back into the entry way.

He slaps the paper onto a cork board behind the counter, pins it down with a vengeance.

It's a board of shoplifters, blurry photographs taken from clips of camera feed, except this one is triple the size of any of the other. And it's in color.

He rips off the cap of a large red sharpie, the dried up marker screaming against the paper as he draws around the face in circles. "Pervert" he labels it, in all caps.

"If you see this fucker come back in, call the cops, no hesitation. Brick him with the bat, for all I care."

I nod, opting to stay silent through out his tirade. It's nice to see him so worked up over my safety, but there's a part of me that just wants to drop all lingering memory of the event from my mind.

The next few days pass by in a blur, and my boss makes it point to stay until close for every one of them. He stands beside me like personal security as I count the bills, vacuum the floor, lock up the doors. Yesterday someone came in with a set of rectangular glasses while I was in the bathroom, and my boss exploded into a fit of yelling and pointed fingers. When I came out of the bathroom he was waving around the blurred photograph in one hand and the bat in the other. It took me five minutes to convince him it wasn't the guy, and by that point in time, the poor customer had already escaped back out through the front doors.

The new cameras come in a week later. Apparently the owner was as pleased as my boss is by the entire fiasco and decided to shell out the cash for an entirely new system.

The installation guys unplug and drag off our CRT television, but I manage to claim it from them before they throw it in the dump. I'll have to get a cab to haul it home, but I just can't bare to watch it get thrown out.

The new monitor comes with a tiny computer, built strictly for using the new camera system, but my boss convinces them to rig the setup with the old television antenna so we can get local cable. I'm not sure who he would become if he wasn't able to watch the news through out the day.

It's Friday again, the weekend crawling to catch up with me, and by the time the installation people leave it's an hour until close.

My boss made a big fuss over him leaving early, apparently he has a dinner with his ex-wife he simply cannot reschedule, but I assure him that I'll be fine. He grumbles something about hiring more staff before waving goodbye and making his way through the glass doors, the cowbell ringing in his wake.

A sigh escapes me, and the old hunk of a television sighs back at me from the floor.

It's just you and me left, huh?

There's not much business on Friday nights, most people out contributing to the nightlife around this time, so I decide to navigate the new monitor onto local cable.

The debating politicians operate as white noise as I grab a freshly donated stack of old horror novels, working my way through the aisles as I begin the slow process of restocking. I take my time, let my fingertips brush over the worn edges of yellowed pages as I slide them into place. It's been a while since I've been in the solace of the store like this, since I've been able to allow myself to feel at ease.

I get halfway through the stack when the cowbell cries out, and I force down the pang of anxiety ringing out through my chest, leaning over to set the stack of books onto the carpet.

"Hello?"

"Hello-"

We both call out at the same time, and as I round the corner of the aisle, I catch Ed standing as straight as a board in the doorway.

I swallow something down, something I can't quite register completely, and wipe clammy palms against the sides of my jeans.

"Hey."

His eyes dart around the edges of my face without actually looking at me.

"I tried to announce my presence, I didn't want to-"

"You're fine."

I don't need to hear his words to feel the pity in his voice, so I steer the conversation away from the topic hanging around in the air.

I clear my throat.

"What can I help you with?"

I don't think I've asked a customer that type of question in years, and I don't catch the eagerness in my tone as my body inches further into the entryway.

He wets his lips nervously, pops a knuckle with his thumb.

"Do you have any Gotham-related, official biographies?"

I click my tongue on the roof of my dry mouth as a specific title comes to mind.

"No... but I think I have something similar?" He steps further into the room and I click into motion, making my way to the historical section. "Are you a history buff?"

He scoffs, or makes a sound that poorly resembles a scoff.

"Of sorts, you could say."

I simply nod, not quite knowing how to respond. We round a corner, his footfalls hit a beat or two behind my own.

"Did you like the CD's?"

I glance at him over my shoulder, and a small smile stretches out over his face.

"They're a little more modern for my tastes, but I found them nice." I stop in the historical section, he stops two paces away from me. "I'm assuming they are your preferred strain of redundancy."

I croak an unsteady laugh, the first I've had in days, and cut my eyes to him before scanning back over the shelf.

"You would assume correct. It's a good band."

I lean forward, fingers falling over the worn spine of an old, handheld book. I maneuver it out delicately, trying my damndest to not add onto the damage already wearing the cover.

"Not sure if this is what your looking for, but it's what we have." The book slips out into my waiting palm, and I brush over the cover before popping it open and inspecting the inside. "We don't have anything over the Arkham's, it goes quick. This is an old book regarding the Wayne estates from..." I skim the inside cover, draw my finger through the print. "Nineteen-eighty-seven?"

I crane my head up, shake the hair out of my vision.

He's beaming.

"It's exactly what I'm looking for."

I beam back at him.

"I'm glad to have helped."

We make our way to the entryway in a polite little line, him a footfall behind me, with quiet conversation barely audible over the news displayed on our all-too-bright camera monitor.

I turn it down as I round behind the counter.

"Sorry, I don't like the quiet."

He shakes his head, and I grab the price log.

"Don't apologize." I watch him as he leans forward, pressing his torso against the counter parallel to me, watch his hair fall past his eyes as he cranes his head to see. "I like to watch the news."

My face twists, and not because of the newfound proximity.

"You like it?"

A politician reflects off of his lenses, and one corner of his mouth rising as he tilts his head ever-so-slightly to face me.

"What?" His voice dips, annunciation creeping into an odd sing-song. "Does that make me a masochist?"

Heat presses against the skin of my cheeks with the insistence of a slap, seeping into the corners of my ears and fading away down my neck, below my shirt collar. Our eyes fall into place with one another, and I duck my head down in retreat to feign an attempt at looking for the receipt pad.

From the moment I met this man, my first thought was that his face doesn't quite suit him. No part of me has ever found him attractive, and I repeat that in my head as a mantra while I grab the small stack of thin paper.

He chuckles, finding himself funny, and the sound rings in my ears.

I cough, trying my hardest to steer away the conversation as he leans back away from the screen, still keeping both hands along his edge of the counter.

"We have a new store policy, I have to take your full name down on the receipt. Do you have your ID?"

He cocks a brow.

"What elicited that?"

I frown.

"We still haven't found that guy, my boss is the paranoid type." My shoulders slump into a shrug, Ed leans just an inch closer into the counter. "Thinks he might chance coming back in. He's a regular, or was."

I watch his deft fingers tap a little line against the linoleum, watch his hand move away to slip past the zipper of his coat. He removes his wallet from a lining pocket, unfolds the insides and plucks out an ID with precision. The edge of my nail brushes against the pad of his thumb as I take it from him, clapping the plastic flat against the counter.

I won't lie and say my eyes don't linger for more than what could be deemed as necessary, and I wince as I skim over his birth year.

Yikes, a whole six years older than me. Not that it matters.

"Edward... Nashton..." I write it down as I say it out, the ink sinking down into the paper.

Oh, shit.

I wrote the wrong last name.

"Shit," I pull it off, crumble it my hands. Start a new one. "We had another Edward come in earlier, I got confused."

He follows my hand as I deposit the receipt into the trash beside me, as I start scribbling over the new one.

He eyes flicker.

"You're here very frequently."

I smile.

"Maybe I'm only here every time that you are."

He smiles back, taps out another pretty line.

"Is this place open on weekends?"

A question that easily skims the gray area of appropriate to ask, but I answer it anyway.

"My boss and I trade the shift every other Saturday. It's a half one, so it's not too bad." I finish the receipt, slide the ID back to him. "I think you first came in on a Saturday."

He pauses as he's sliding his ID back into place, his touch lingering over the worn leather of his wallet. The lenses of glasses reflect the light like window panes, a grin creeping into place.

"You remember?"

Something flutters out of place behind my stomach. I push it down.

But apparently not far enough, because I find myself leaning my ribs against the counter edge, laughing out a quiet beat of breath as I slip the receipt into the bag.

"Unless you somehow managed to break our coincidence before it even happened."

His grin stretches further, his elbows dipping into the edge of the chipped, blue paint. He lowers his head down to level with my own, leans out a foot over the counter-space between us.

"I don't really believe in coincidence."

I snort, our faces just a counters width apart.

"So, what? You purposely plan your trips around my schedule?"

The door opens, the cowbell cries out, and both of us straighten to the full length of our spines. We detach from the counter almost as if it has scalded us, burnt a brand into the parts that were touching, and some mousy looking high schooler with dark hair and lip piercings shoots us an odd glance before darting into an aisle.

"Welcome in." I call out weakly, my voice caught on my heart lodged in my throat.

The quiet settles back in between us, dialogue from the news mumbling about oppositions and donations. Ed clears his throat, runs his palms down the front of his coat.

"You know, I haven't actually paid yet."

Oh, shit. He sure hasn't.

I just laugh, laugh at myself for being so forlorn to my own character, and he dips his head as he shutters out a laugh himself.

I tell him the price, and he hands me exact change.

The cash register rings out as I press the bills between its teeth, and the dweeby high schooler falls in line behind him to my disappointment.

Although I'm not too sure why I'm disappointed. Something to investigate on a different day.

We exchange goodbyes, and he walks out the door without a second glance back. I check out the kid, who buys a used Dungeon and Dragons Master's Guide, and tells me he doesn't have an ID when I ask for his name.

What is he doing out so late in the first place, if he's that young?

He leaves the store after my call to be careful going home, shooting me another weird glance. Whatever. Don't be careful then.

It's 15 minutes until close. Gosh, how long was Ed in here? The time seemed to speed past.

At least it's not raining tonight, not that it matters. I'm taking a cab home anyway.

I call one in before finishing my chores, which seem to go by even faster, so I decide to strip the couch cushions and wash the covers at home. Maybe it will put my boss in a better mood when he comes in on Monday.

We decided to close for good tomorrow, give us both the full weekend after such a draining week. It's not like it matters really, Saturday is sort of a slow day for business.

By the time I'm done the cab is waiting for me outside, and he quirks a brow as I fall into the seat with an old, clunky television and a trash bag of couch cushions.

I just give him my address and point my gaze out the window. The street is alive tonight, full of passerby's going from A to B, but they pass our store windows without a second glance. At least we don't have to worry about getting robbed.

I don't focus in on any of them, don't let my eyes linger for too long, I just stick my earbuds in and drown out of existence for the time it takes to get home.

I don't register any of their faces, any particular details. Don't register their varying forms, their clothes. Don't register a particular figure that catches light in the lenses of its glasses as we round the corner, standing far enough back in the shadows that I probably wouldn't have noticed them if walking.

I don't register any of it.

It's all just out of focus.

Chapter Text

My boss splits the Monday shifts with me straight down the middle.

I washed the cushions, put them back on the couches before opening, and when the smell of laundry detergent hit him as he entered the room at lunch, he was beaming.

"You're a good worker, a hard worker," He rounded the corner of the counter, shoved past me as he grabbed the receipt pad. His smile was contagious. "Look at this! Seven sales already, and it's not even lunch yet? You take the day. Take the day, I'll close. I'll pen you down as closing. Go buy yourself something. Buy yourself a drink. Take the day."

So I take the day.

I leave with my own quiet grin, being chauffeured to the front door with all sorts of waving hands and praise. My guess is his ex-wife is visiting him at work later, but I don't really care. It's nice to feel praised, even for such minimal efforts.

It's not raining today, but it's dangerous to even have the thought. The sky could hear me and decide to open up on me, breaking the sun straight in half.

I still have part of last weeks paycheck in my pocket, all my bills and rent falling together at the beginning of the month, so I decide to heed my boss's words and buy myself something.

Goodwill is mostly empty when I step through the doors, save for the workers and a woman with a particularly rambunctious child. It careens around me as I skim through the aisles, stopping to ask about my glasses and my chipped nail polish from time to time. It only brightens my mood.

I'm going through the pants, remembering the red slushie I spilt over one of my favorite pairs last week, when I pause through the hangers.

There's a denim skirt, it looks roughly around my size, and just by glancing at I'm guessing it would fall somewhere right above my knees.

I'm not the kind of person to wear skirts of any sorts, but I pause nonetheless.

I move past it.

I get all the way to the end of the aisle before walking back to it, parting the clothes and glaring down at it.

I would look feminine in it. It would compliment my figure nicely. It's a change of pace from the oversized cargo-pants I wear almost every other day.

I leave it, move to the collared shirts on the other side of the store.

I pick out two shirts, both sized up for comfort, one with muddied-orange stripes and another a dark shade of shadowy green. I don't allow myself to think too deeply about why it called out to me.

And then I find myself back in front of the skirt, hands outstretched to push the clothes around it to the side.

I should just get it.

It's not like I'd actually have to wear it anywhere.

It could just be mine. Just to have.

I check out with the two shirts, the skirt, a pair of lightly-worn chunky sneakers, and a nail polish with the shade name "Cajun Shrimp."

The clerk looks at me, looks at the skirt, ands asks if it's for my girlfriend.

I say yes, just to save myself from any embarrassing explanation.

She nods and tells me that my non-existent girlfriend will love it.

I'm sure she will.

The rest of the week crawls by in a haze, but at least things have begun to regain some normalcy.

My boss drags out a box of Halloween decorations on Wednesday despite it only being the first. October is our busiest month of the year, people of all types piling in to buy old horror films on VHS and novelty collector items for costumes.

I spend all of Thursday on top of a stepping stool, tacking dollar store streamers and fake cobwebs to the ceiling tiles, but at least I only have to do it once a year.

It's the taking it down that really sucks.

I'm tacking construction-paper bats to the window when my boss comes in to open, which scares the shit out of me. He's usually never here this early.

But I guess I'm already a bit on edge today, regarding my stunt of an outfit choice. I guess I'm just bracing myself for his reaction.

He comes in through the back, stumbling around in the break room and no doubt pouring himself a mug of coffee from the pot I started when I came in. I hear him grumble to himself, something about a restock, and then he hobbles out of the doorway into the lobby.

His eyes fall over me, and he stops.

A beaming smile breaks over his face.

"Wow! Would you look at you!" He sets his mug on the counter, holds his open palms up into the air. "Look at you! Look at this, a skirt? Get down from there, get down from there!"

I try to stifle my own smile as I step down from the stool, and he snatches the stack of paper bats from my hands.

"You look nice! Finally taking up your appearance, look at you! A skirt! Shouldn't be standin' up on a ladder in a skirt." He scoffs at me as he steps around me, humor dripping off his expression as he climbs up the stool. "I like it! Much better than those... those weird pants. Makes you look like a stoner."

My eyes roll despite myself, and I make my way to unlock the front door.

"They're cargo pants."

He tells me that they've ordered a large shipment from an online vendor to restock the store with, and we might end up having to stay a little later than usual to sift through it all. He gripes about it, how our last few Friday's haven't quite ended on a positive note, but I don't mind the work. It's not like I had plans anyway.

It ends up being a busy Friday, groups of people coming in two or three at a time. The lounge couch ends up getting filled with people other than dropheads for a first, and I silently thank whatever god is listening that I washed the couch cushions earlier in the week.

Most of them buy something, some of them browse, but despite all of the decorating, customers, and restock, I still find myself a little underwhelmed.

Maybe because I've noticed a pattern of coincidence, or at least thought I had, and was hoping to see if it reoccurred. But he hasn't yet, and the shift is already an hour away from ending.

My boss leaves after a certain point, but I'll give it to him, he worked his ass off today. Most of the decorations are complete thanks to him, and anything that involved bending down or climbing the step stool was quickly out of question for me to do. He insisted that it wasn't polite for me to subject myself to that kind of work in a skirt, especially when he was here to do it for me.

Maybe I should invest in more skirts.

I shake the front of the green collared shirt I bought on Monday, pulling it from sweat-sheened chest before plucking up another box out of the lobby. The delivery guys came in and tossed the entire restock just to the right of the doors, and customers have been stepping around the boxes all day to check out. I finally move the last one, dropping it off into the break room, and step around the doorway to glance at our stupid Ghostbusters clock.

Ten minutes until close.

I rush to vacuum the floor, almost tripping over the tangled cord more than once, and restock a stack of VHS tapes before sinking into the stool behind the counter.

It has been an extremely long day, I almost wish there had been less customers. Well, I take that back. There's at least one I wouldn't mind, at least I don't think.

I pop open the cash register with a mechanical ding, place another CD in the store player behind me. The music crackles to life over the shitty speakers, and I hum in satisfaction before pulling out the stack of tens.

I'm on the fives when the cowbell cries out (the door I consciously forgot to lock in case of a certain coincidence), and when I shoot my head up from the counter with a slight grin across my face, I freeze.

The lenses of his glasses reflect off the overhead fluorescent lights. Thin, metal-framed, rectangular glasses.

My boss was right.

He did come back.

"Hey."

His smile stretches from ear to ear as our gazes meet, and every joint in my body locks into place. A breath barely whispers from my nostrils, hands shaking as I drop the bills into a stack on the counter.

The bat screams at me from under the cabinet.

"I thought you guys were closed? You're not usually open this late."

My eyes dart to the clock, dart back to him. He seems even closer now.

I risk a breath.

"We're closed." My voice is forced out of me like a punch to the gut, and I inch out of my stool with a shuttered step. "Sorry."

Sorry, fucking sorry. Like I should be saying sorry to this prick.

If anyone's sorry, it's him.

He takes a step further, relaxed, at ease. I watch his hand as he brushes a knuckle over the counter, but it's a mistake, because he uses the distraction to step even closer.

He can see over the edge of the barrier between us, and his eyes flutter down to my bare legs before languidly traveling their way back up.

I want to puke. I need to grab the bat.

"I hope you don't mind the company, then." He takes another step, but to the side this time. A new type of horror slaps a nail into the base of my spine. "I don't need to buy anything."

He has no intention of leaving.

He's trying to get around the counter.

I have to move.

There are two options. I can grab for the phone, call the cops, pray it either scares him off or they make it in time before something happens. But that's only if I'm actually quick enough to dial, if I'm faster at pressing the buttons that he is at getting around the counter.

Or, I lean down and grab the bat, will myself into swinging at any part of him with it and hope it lands.

I wet my lips, my open palms shaking at my sides.

I dip my eyes, graze them over the knob of metal peaking out at me. When I flick them back to him, he's followed my gaze.

He looks at me.

I move.

My knees feel like putty as I drop down, yanking the bat out between both palms and rising to swing as hard and as fast as I can as he rounds the corner in a heartbeat of movement. He's ready for it, bracing himself with his forearm, and the bat connects with it in a shock of bone against metal.

The handle reverberates in my palm, and it slows him, but it doesn't stop him.

I draw back, prepared to bring it down over the top of his head, but as I swing he snatches it mid air, plucks it from my hands to discard it somewhere on the carpet behind him.

And then he's here, just a foot away from me.

A heavy and jagged breath falls out of him as he closes in, and I flatten myself as small as possible against the wall behind me.

"You're one stupid fuck, you know that?" His breath hits my face, spans out over the bridge of my nose and across my cheeks. "You are one dumb bitch. You know, your cameras aren't even working. You install an open-ended cloud network like that, anyone can get in."

A stupid little sputter of a noise trembles past my lips as he draws lazy fingertips over my upper arm, dipping his forehead so close it brushes my bangs.

I'm shaking so harshly I'm not even sure how I'm still physically able to stand, fear so severe it's almost painful raking raw nails over the cords of my heart.

I want to scream, want to run, want to do anything, but it's as if my body as completely shut itself off from my brain. I'm just dead weight, solidified into a statue against the wall.

He laughs, and I flinch.

"Look at this, all for me." He dips his free hand down, on the arm I hit with the bat, and hooks a finger under the taut hem of my skirt between my thighs. I sob as he pulls to pop it, squeeze my legs together as tight as I can manage.

"I waited, waited for your ugly, prick boss to stop nesting in here like a fucking mother hen."

This can't be happening, it isn't happening.

He leans in, a beat of a breath hot and damp against the lenses of my glasses.

"You're a tease, you know that? A stupid, fucking, tea-"

The next few seconds unfold with such a quickness, that I hardly register what's happened until after it's been done. The sound of a skull rebounding off of a metal bat is something that will forever embedded in my mind, but in the moment, I was glad to hear it.

The bat swings so closely to my face that I can feel the vacuum of wind sweep through my hair.

I watch the mans seemingly lifeless form slam to the floor, watch as a steady stream of blood begins to trickle out of his ear and pool onto the carpet.

His body stutters, eyes fluttering open and close while his mouth gapes. He's lost at least two teeth, and I can't even begin to tell you where his glasses went.

I'm in such a state of shock that all I can do is watch him, watch him begin to slowly shut down all at once.

An arm reaches out, his spasming fingers extending to curl around one of my untied shoelaces. A foreign boot dips in to kick it away.

The clank of the bat dropping to the floor clicks my brain back into place, snaps my consciousness awake and swings me violently back into reality.

A sob choles out of me, my chest caving forward, and I follow the booted foot all the way up to the form it's attached to.

Ed watches me as I fall, watches me drop down with another fumbling cry. I draw my hands to my chest, curl them into one another.

He just blinks, mouth slightly parted, eyes widened.

I blink back.

"The store cameras aren't connected to a local cloud, there's no wireless internet connection nor a ethernet one." He releases a breath, like he's been holding it in this entire time, and it comes out in the form of a sick, humorless laugh. "He was lying. It was a lie."

The man twitches between us in a way that doesn't reassure me that he's alive. Blood pools around the soles of my sneakers.

I glance at it, glance back up at Ed, watch him pop a knuckles between his thumb and forefinger.

He's breathing so heavily now that it almost matches my own, our breaths falling in and out of beat with one another. The tears openly falling down my face begin to leak down my neck, seeping into my shirt collar.

I can't speak, I couldn't even form a stream of conscious thought if I tried, but Ed doesn't make me. He just leans forward, plucking my cellphone off the counter to the side of me, and adjusts his glasses as he holds the screen to his face.

He's able to maneuver me out and away from the mans crumpled form before the cops arrive, but it's more of him lifting me from my underarms than it is any actual strength on my own part. He halfway carries me to the couch, setting down beside me as they storm in one by one.

My boss shows up sometime later after all of the five cops that arrive have tried to question me down with no avail, his furious form pouring into the store with the wrath of a hurricane.

He's petting my face in between praising Ed like a saint, pushing back my hair, yelling at anyone that steps within two feet of me.

"They're traumatized, you fucks. They're fucking shocked, give them some fucking space, for Christ's sake."

Ed cooperates with the police to an extent. He sits a foot away from me on the couch, retells a quiet and clinical account of how he came into the store unnoticed, witnessed what was happening, and picked up the discarded bat.

I didn't even hear the cowbell ring.

When they try to ask him to come back to the station, he falls silent. His eyes tell more about how he feels of the thought than his words ever could.

My boss is up in arms over the idea, and immediately begins to screech about the cameras. If Ed was going to the station, they'd have to drag my boss down as well for interfering with an arrest.

All five of the cops step around the counter after EMS arrives to carry the limp form of the man away, and my boss pulls up the camera feed off of a DVD disk.

I guess Ed was right, about the cameras at least. I wonder how he knew.

They all silently watch the events unfold, and I know the exact moment he touches my skirt when my bosses eyes flutter over to mine from across the room. His brows are pursed, and he falls uncharacteristically silent.

Ed shuffles uncomfortably beside me.

I cough out the barbed wire that's been clogging up my throat, take a chance at words.

"You don't have to stay."

He snaps his head to me, blinks once or twice before tapping a little line over his knee with his fingertips.

I watch him open his mouth, close it. He opens it again.

"What can you break, but never hold or touch?"

His voice is off kilter, tilted in a way that sounds throaty and whole. His eyes dance around me without really looking at me before falling somewhere in my lap.

I clasp my palms over my knees, draw them to knock against each other out of insecurity. He looks away.

"I-" I tremble out a breath, suck in my lips to keep from crying. "I don't know. What- what is it?"

He tilts his head to me, his hair falling out of place from how it rests around his face. He seems nervous, unsure and exhilarated from the sudden shock of adrenaline. His knee bounces, and he releases his bottom lip from his teeth before speaking.

"A promise."

I meet his eyes, a coppery tang filling my mouth from where my own lip is tucked between my teeth, and nod.

A promise to stay.

After watching the footage twice, the cops decide there was no foul play on Ed's part, and tell us they have enough information to let us all go home.

My boss burns them a copy of the clip of footage onto a disk, handing it to one of the officers before they leave through the front of the store.

Ed offers to walk me home a moment after they leave in a short and awkward break of silence, but my boss cuts in to insist that he drives me.

I don't think he'll ever trust another customer with glasses until the day he finally croaks, even if Ed is some sort of hero in his eyes.

It doesn't stop Ed from staying the entire time my boss finishes closing, all the way up until he shuts off the lights and locks the door. My boss tells me I can take as much time off as I need while he jogs to open the passenger door of his car for me, and I glance back over my shoulder to catch Ed standing under the awning at the front of the building.

He has one hand tucked away in his pocket, the other hanging loosely out to his side. He lifts it up as our eyes meet, shoots me a weak wave before I step into the seat, my boss closing the door behind me.

I lift my own hand to the car window, draw my fingers out into a curt wave.

It elicits the corners of Ed's mouth to curve up ever-so-slightly, and somehow, the sight of it does mine the same.

My boss drives me home in anything but silence, stammering on over and over about hiring more staff and calling the owner about relocation.

His voice drowns out to nothingness in my ears, white noise to fuel the ride as a light rain begins to draw paths across the windshield.

All I can think about is the cowbell.

I never heard it ring.

Chapter Text

Monday is a bore.

I don't go back to work, can't find the motivation in myself to even think about the place, so I stay at home in pajama pants and watch South Park until the TV asks if I'm even still watching.

I don't move off the couch for hours at a time, choosing to waste away from underneath the protection of an old thrifted quilt.

On Tuesday I drag the CRT television I stole from work and set it up on a makeshift cinder-block table in my bedroom, hooking it up with a bent coat hanger to local cable and turning it to PBS. My room is filled with Sesame Street reruns, and the highlight of my day is a food delivery dropped off to my front doorstep by mistake.

I try and explain to the delivery guy that I didn't order any food, and whoever did put down the wrong address, but he insists that the issue is above his pay-grade. He doesn't take the orders, he just makes the deliveries.

So I enjoy a meal on someone else's behalf, which is honestly the first full meal I've ate since Friday. It fills my stomach, warming me with enough energy and motivation to climb into the shower.

The water feels good traveling through my hair, running in channels down the expanse of my greasy skin.

I scrub myself down with a fluffy loofa gifted to me by a friend, rub down my face with a generous amount of moisturizer after toweling off.

I look over my naked form in the mirror, stare deep into my own eyes while my chest rises and falls with beats of breath. It's still just myself looking back, still my own brain lodged between my ears and attached to my body. My body.

I drag a set of clothes over it, a worn gray pullover and a pair of plaid pajama pants, and finally decide it's due time to wash my sheets.

It's a laborious process, I pop the corners of them of before pulling my comforter to the floor, drawing the sheets into a ball and marching down the stairs only to realize I forgot my pillowcase.

Oh well. I'll just turn it inside-out.

The laundry room has one other person loitering around in it, a mother from a floor above me with her child playing some sort of video game on the bench beside her.

I quietly and politely say hi, shove a few quarters into the machine one down from hers before dropping my sheets down in a tangled mess.

I watch the water weigh them down, watch it ink over the fabric until it's fully dampened.

Then I shut the lid.

The walk back upstairs is grueling, but I survive. I stumble through the door, having left it unlocked for such a short trip, and lean against it after closing to catch my breath.

Oh shit, my phone is ringing.

It's lying flat and centered on my counter, and I clear the space to it before checking the caller ID.

Val.

I tap it open, put it on speaker so I don't have to hold it.

"Hello?"

She goes straight into demanding the details of my day, wanting the count of my phone pedometer, asking if I've had anything to eat, any water.

Oh shit, I should drink some water.

I make my way to the fridge, opening it and scooping up a bottle from the door as she babbles on.

I met Val at college right before I decided to drop out, maybe two years ago. Val being short for Valentine, which is beautiful in my opinion, but she hates it. Says her parents were shroomed out hippies, probably out roaming the streets as more recent dropheads.

She's constantly working, she has at least two jobs, and all on top of her online classes she continues at home. If my boss thinks I'm a hard working, I should never let him get a good look at Val in action. I would be out of a job.

"Did you send me food earlier?" I cut her off mid-sentence, and her words sputter to a halt.

"What?"

I chug a swig of the water bottle down, walk to the counter and place it beside my phone.

"Did you sent me Peking? To my apartment?" I unravel a loose string on the sleeve of my pullover, draw out the stitching with my fingers. "If you did, I just wanna say thanks."

The gum she's no doubt chewing pops between her teeth.

"I don't think I did," I pull the thread taut, and the seam busts loose. "At least not today. Did someone send you food?"

I sigh.

"Yeah, I think someone ordered to the wrong address. I ate it anyway. Maybe I was trying to pretend it was you to alleviate my guilt."

"Fuck it, free food. They should know their address."

She tells me about her day, says her shift was long due to one of the cooks coming in with their face busted in, so she had to step in and help with a lot of the cooking. She's off of her first job and a few hours away from going into her second, but she has the time to come by and check up on me before taking the train to the business district.

I wince at the mention of it, both the train and the district. I don't like her working at Iceberg, but I've hounded on her about it more times than I can count. I'll leave it to rest for the day, and I tell her she's fine to come over.

After we hang up I decide I need to clean. There's an array of dust-collecting glasses on every side table in sight, the dishes are piled up to my chest, and the entire apartment looks more kin to a laundry basket than a place to live.

I make quick work of it, piling the clothes in the hamper in the corner and collecting the glasses in my arms to scrub in my now-empty sink.

I start the dishwasher, load it with more soap than necessary, and she comes through the door as I'm folding the quilt behind my couch.

"You just leave your door unlocked?"

I snort.

"You came in like you knew it was going to be unlocked anyway."

Her rose-pink lips fall into a tight line, lashes dipping as she squints at me.

She turns on a pivot, her kitten heels digging into the wood floor, and locks the door behind her with purpose.

"You shouldn't leave your door unlocked, some freaks gonna break in some day."

"Looks like one already has."

I gesture to her with my hand as I toss the quilt down onto the back of the couch, and she clears the room fairly quickly for someone in heels to shove me over the edge of it.

She stays for a while, we watch the news, talk about anything and everything. Bruce Wayne comes onto the screen and she gushes, apparently his company stocks are dipping. That doesn't divert her affection, and she says something gross about wanting to give him heirs.

Half the time we just sit in a comfortable silence, our shoulders leaned together in the midst of the couch cushions as the nostalgic cartoon we put on in place of the news paints colors of light over our faces.

She cocks her head to me, her eyes wide.

"Are you really okay?"

I look back to her, watch the light swim over the panes of her face in the dim room.

I think about it for a second, think about the past few days spent combined with my mattress. Today has been better.

I nod.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

She gets up to leave for work a few moments later, pulls out a large candle from her purse and sets it on my kitchen counter as a gift. I dip my nose to it and smell it, and it smells like laundry detergent. It's nice.

She leaves with a cute little wave, demands I lock the door behind her, and I do.

Up until the point I remember my sheets in the laundry room.

I take the stairs two at a time, sprinting and cursing myself under my breath. It's already so late, I'm going to have to sleep on my mattress bare at this point.

When I push past the door, the mom and her kid are gone. The room is empty, and for some reason that gives me a quiet wave of relief.

I dash to the machine and pluck up the lid before groaning. It's fucking empty.

Please, don't let it be that some drophead has come in to steal my shit. It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. I check all the other machines in case I've simply forgotten which one I put them in, but my sheets are in none of them.

I'm about to give up and head back to my room, throw my quilt down as a makeshift sheet until I can buy new ones tomorrow, when the buzzer on a dryer screeches out so loudly I jump.

It scares the piss out of me, and I cut my head to the corner of the room it screams from.

The machine stirs to a slow halt, but the color behind the glass door looks all too familiar.

I step around a row of washers cautiously, like if I move too quickly the dryer might actually jump out at me. I don't want anyone to come in and see my sifting through their clothes, but I'm almost one-hundred percent positive those are my sheets in that dryer.

I approach it, it's on the highest row, and reach up to pop the lid. I have to lean forward on the tips of my toes to be able to dip my hand in, and when I feel the warmth of fabric on my fingertips, I scoop them out.

It's my sheets.

Someone must have put them into the dryer for me.

I step out of the washroom, arch my head up and down the hallway. There's no one there, just a dim, empty corridor.

They must have needed to use the washer, but there's like, five other washers in there.

I guess I'm just having an insanely lucky day.

My luck runs out when I remember I have to trudge back up the stairs.

When I get back to my apartment, I slam the door behind me and collapse onto the couch before I do anything else. It takes me a moment to catch my breath, to scoop my body up and force myself to put the sheets back on my bed.

I fall into bed more exhausted than I've felt in days, my body finally in need of actual rest rather than activity. The sheets feel soft and warm from the dryer, and I let the heat of them carry me off to sleep.

I'm about to fully doze off when I realize I've forgotten to lock the door again. I debate getting up, but eventually decide just to shake it off.

No ones ever broke in before, it's not like they're going to do it now.

We have a new employee.

He scares the shit out of me when I stumble in on Wednesday, groggy from sleep and shuffling from the cold. I sat my backpack and coat down to start a pot of coffee, only to realize one had already been started.

I poked my head around the corner and caught his form behind the counter, recognizing him as the mousy-looking high-schooler from the other day.

I thought he broke in, I tried to kick him out.

My boss arrives moments later in the midst of the two of us attempting to yell over one another, and he's so excited to see me in the store that he doesn't even catch the mood of the room.

By the time he's done exclaiming how happy he is to see me, I can't even remember what I was yelling about.

Mouse-boy coughs, shoots me a pointed look, and then I remember.

He introduces us, tells me my new coworkers name is Samuel, but goes by Sam. Sam is apparently not a high-schooler, but just a very small college student, and our new schedules have been stacked in a way that will never leave one person in the store at a time.

New meaning new for them, for Sam and my boss. My schedule will remain the same as the only full-timer, but now my boss will take the morning shift, and Sam will take the night shift. It really just feels as if my boss has hired me a tiny, wiry security guard, but I keep the thought to myself. It'll at least be nice to split the closing chores with someone, I guess.

We'll all work together in the store for a full shift today due to the overwhelming restock from the online-seller. Apparently not much of a dent has been put into it in the two days I've been gone, so we'll rotate out one person on the counter and two on restock until we can get it done.

It's an effective plan, and I help Sam learn which things go where as we take our first rotation on restocking.

He's a quiet guy, but he warms up as we go, complaining about his back and occasionally asking me when we can take a smoke break.

My boss sends us out to grab him a soda and a bag of chips from the convenience store after about an hour and a half, and although it seems like a petty errand to keep him behind the counter instead of restocking, we take it.

We walk side by side under a tiny umbrella, our shoulders bumping as we step down the sidewalk, and we split a cigarette Sam pulls out from a dented carton in his back pocket.

"Does that like, effect your piercings or something?"

He takes a long drag of it, handing it off to me as we round a corner of street.

His eyebrow dips behind his greasy brown hair.

"No, I don't think so." He lifts a hand and consciously twists one of the loops. "I don't think I ever asked."

We make polite conversation, apparently he's a Computer Science major. I tell him I was too at some point, and he just nods. It's around that time I decide I like Sam, he's not a very complicated person, and he doesn't seem like the type to pry.

When we get back to the store with our bosses snack, we've smoked through two more cigarettes, and my bosses face twists at the smell.

"For Christ's sake, fucking train engines." He pulls out a bottle of men's body spray from the shoulder bag on the hanger beside him, comes around the counter to attack us with it. "That fucking stinks, you're gonna ruin your lungs."

Sam takes the counter next, but after about thirty minutes of my boss and I restocking, it's clear he needs someone to man it with him.

He lets one customer leave without penning down a receipt, and starts a full on argument with another after they claim to have a discount that he doesn't believe to exist.

My boss assures me he'll be able to cut through some of the work himself before sending me to help with Sam, and I'll give it to him, he doesn't even argue when I step around the edge of the counter.

He slides off the stool and gestures for me to sit, and we pretty much just spend our time watching youtube videos after Sam connects the computer to his hotspot. We pause them in between customers, minimize the window when the boss gets too close to the front. It's like having a little partner in crime, and I honestly don't think I'll mind having a coworker at all.

The cowbell cries out over the soft crackle of music through the store speakers, and Sam reaches over my shoulder to tap pause on the MatPat game theory video we've been watching in intervals for the past thirty minutes.

"Welcome i-"

I just barely glance to the door when my words catch in my throat, and I watch Ed as he steps through before swiping off residual rain from his coat sleeves.

Sam clears his throat.

"Hey, we have a ten percent sale on anything in the sci-fi section."

Ed pauses for a moment before nodding, and his eyes dart down to mine before flicking away to the carpet. He makes his way to a corner of the store, his form disappearing down an aisle.

Sam leans over and taps play on the video.

"That guy is fucking weird. He's come in past three days."

I look over my shoulder at Sam, his tongue toying with his piercing from behind his lip as his focus draws in on the monitor. MatPat rambles on over Golden Freddy.

I blink the stream of conscious back into my head, regain some form of thought.

My voice feels dry in my throat.

"Did he buy anything?"

Sam shakes his head.

"He said he couldn't find what he came for. Told him to wait 'til we finished the restock."

I nod, the weight of my body suddenly feeling much heavier under the force of gravity. I become extremely aware of Sam's small form, of the way it's propped over my shoulder behind me with one hand bracing his weight against the wall to my side, and it makes the air traveling to my lungs strain to release.

"Hey!"

Sam jolts into a turn, pulling his hand down from the wall as both our heads snap behind us.

Our boss glares at us from the end of an aisle, his face red and heated from lifting and pushing.

Sam shakes his hair out of his face.

"Aw, shit."

"One of you fucking bums go ask the customers if they need anything, stop watching your little shows over the camera feed before I take away your smoke breaks."

Sam groans.

"And you," My boss jabs a finger across the room to us, but I can tell by his eyes that he's speaking to me. "Let Sam check this one out. He's not gonna learn shit with you doing everything for him. Once he gets done, he's on restock."

We watch as he disappears into the break room, and Sam groans once again before reaching over me to close the window. I watch his hand travel off the mouse, run up to rake his long hair back in a wave.

"I'll go, you can chill."

My body rises to stand before I can tell it to.

"No," I clear my throat, try to drown the edge out of my tone. "No, it's cool. I'll do it, he wants you at the register anyway."

Sam doesn't argue, he just cocks a brow and steps back to allow me space to slide down off of the stool. I take a weighted breath, move around him before dipping my eyes to the floor.

There's a large "welcome" mat covering the expanse of carpet behind the counter. I guess they couldn't get the stain out.

The large girl sitting on the couch reading a manga in the lounge presses a finger down over her fake lashes as she looks up at me. She's pretty, with a pretty round face, and she smiles through pearly teeth when I ask her if she needs help finding anything.

She politely declines, drawing her attention back to her book and leaving me to find someone else to bother. I cut through the aisles one at a time with slight apprehension, all too knowing of who I'm destined to find.

I catch him at the end of CD aisle, almost running flat into him as he's picking up a mixtape.

He chuckles as I take a step back, recount a breath.

"You have a habit of that."

I frown.

"I wouldn't count twice as a habit."

He cocks a brow, a subtle grin displaying a sliver of teeth.

"Most people say seven equals a habit." He rolls the CD around in his hand, toys with it between his fingers. "How many occurrences equals out to a habit by your definition?"

I mull my answer around in my head, wet my lips with my tongue in a nervous tick and pretend not to catch his eyes as they follow the motion. He pretends too.

"How many times have you come into the store this week?"

His face burns as he laughs out loud, his head tilting back and eyes looking at anything but me.

"That's a coincidence."

"I thought you didn't believe in those."

He shrugs, a calm and honest smile plastered across his face.

"Newly surfaced information has led me to change my opinion."

I try not to smile but somehow catch myself doing it anyway, the corners of my mouth rising without thought. We stand there for a beat of awkward silence, the both of us embarrassed for something I can't quite pin, and then I remember what I'm supposed to be doing.

I clear my throat, draw my gaze up to his.

"Do you need help finding anything?"

His brows furrow for a second, and then recollection sweeps over his face.

"Maybe." His voice dips a tad, an odd annunciation on the 'may' of his word. "But I think I've already found something."

He holds up the mixtape he's had held in his hand, draws it out flat in the space between us. I run my eyes over the cover, suck in a deep breath.

"Is this your handwriting?"

I cock a brow at him before taking the disk, the pad of my thumb brushing over his fingernail as he releases the case.

"You know my handwriting?"

He shrugs.

"You write my receipts." His face is fairly placid, curious if anything. "You're the only person I've seen write in all capitals."

Ugh. I look over the words scribbled out over the paper stuck in the cover, inspect the script I've come to hate.

"Yeah, I guess you could say it's a habit, right?" I try and smile at my own stupid joke, and he smiles weakly on my behalf. "This is mine, or I made it. There's no telling how long it's been up here collecting dust."

I flip it over in my hands, read the songs on the back. It's definitely been a while since I've listened to any of these.

"Why is it here?"

I shrug.

"I made it for someone in college and never gave it to them. I donate stuff up here all the time, it must have got mixed in."

He nods, his eyes following my own as we read in tandem over the case.

He laughs at something he's found funny, and his expression curls behind his grin as he releases his bottom lip from his teeth.

"If He Likes It, Let Him Do It?"

The words sound so poised on his tongue, taut and soft and purposely spoken. I hear them in my hips rather than my ears. I flush, flip the case back over in a snap.

"It's not like it sounds." I avoid looking him in the face, hand the CD back to him. "It's a good song."

He takes it, his hand slowly and articulately grasping the plastic so as not to let our fingers touch. I release it all too quickly.

The silence settles back in around us, and he flips the case over in his own palm to finish reading the back.

"Well," I pull my eyes off the tips of his shoes, and his gaze meets mine from behind the brush of his hair. It's gotten longer since I first met him. "I'll let you know if you're lying. Maybe one day I can listen to a," He flips the cover over, reads off the title. "Dorm 108, volume two?"

I feel a flutter of something rise in my chest and fall still in the depth of my stomach as I take in his words, a heat of blush pushing up against my cheeks and face. I laugh, lift a hand to rub my eye from under my glasses.

"Yeah. Sure."

He asks me to help him find a book of a specific title, but we don't have it in stock. We spend at least five minutes stalking up and down the historical aisle, both of us focused on skimming through the titles printed out on worn book spines.

I tell him my boss can pen it down for a special order, see if any of our donors or sellers have it, but that he might have to pay a fee. He nods, and I follow behind him to the counter, watching the back of his head as he turns to face Sam.

Sam cocks a brow as we approach the counter, his hair now pulled back in hairtie on the back of his head. I note the parallel bars he has through both brows, now that I can actually see his forehead. I bet it's hard for him to sleep at night.

I round the corner of the counter, and Sam flattens myself against it to let me in. Ed just watches in silence, sets the CD down with a clack of plastic.

I watch over Sam's shoulder as he checks the price log, give him the name to pen down on the receipt.

"I thought I was supposed to get his ID?"

I shrug.

"It's fine, he's a regular."

Sam bags it, slips the receipt in, and asks if Ed wants it wrapped while I count through the change and drop it into the register.

"No returns." He slides the paper bag over the counter, Ed just looks at it.  "Have a nice day."

"Oh, wait!" I rip a corner off the old newspaper under the counter, grab the pen from Sam's hand. "Write that title down! For the order, so I can tell my boss."

Ed's hand brushes over mine, plucks the pen from me before straightening the scrap of paper in front of him. His face blanches, void of any expression, and the pen hesitates for a moment before meeting the paper.

"I'm going for smoke break before I have to restock, wanna come?"

Sam lowers his voice as he turns to me, cutting out our present company as if he isn't there.

I blink at him, shrug.

"I'm okay. Thanks, though."

Ed finishes penning out the title, folding the paper over and sliding across the counter to me. I pick it up between my fingers, palm it off in my hand.

With a nod and a wave he's out the door, brown paper sack tucked under his arm.

Sam and I watch his form disappear around the corner in the light rain, and Sam chuckles out an odd laugh before cocking his head to face me.

"Are you hooking up with that guy or something?"

I almost choke on my breath, a stumble of sounds plummeting out of my mouth before I'm even able to form a sentence.

"What? No, he just," I clear my throat, straighten my shoulders. "No, you're gross, dude."

He shrugs, rolls his shoulders back before stretching his arms out behind his head.

"I mean, I'm not judging. He's kind of old though. And ugly." He slaps a hand down, releases a sigh. "I'm going on break."

The paper in my hand crinkles as my fist flexes, and I take a step back to allow him past.

He goes out the front, pulling the pack of cigarettes from his pocket before he's even out the door, and I draw my attention to the scrap of paper in my palm.

"Hey," I'm speaking as I unfold it, rounding the corner to the break room. My boss lifts his head from the old laptop he has opened at the table, sipping his bottled drink from a straw. "That guy Ed wants to place an order."

My boss nods, opens a new window on his computer.

"The title?"

I flatten out the crinkled gray with my thumb, let the ridges glide over my skin. I start to read it out loud, the odd print scratched out in blue ink.

"You need it to- wait, what? What did he-"

I read over the scrape of text fully, roll the words around in my head.

You need it to live, though it cannot exist without death.

I stand there for a moment, a little dumbfounded, and try to grasp a sense of understanding I simply cannot find. What the fuck is this?

"Dinner."

I squint, pull the paper away from my face.

"What?"

My boss reaches up, snatches the paper between two fingers, spins it around.

"The back, it says dinner."

I lean into his hand, my breath fluttering over it as read it once, twice.

Dinner.

Is he...? Surely not.

I can feel the temperature rise in the room, feel the tiny ping of anxiety swell up in my chest as my bosses eyes take in my expression.

"You said that guy Ed gave you this?"

I snatch it from his hand in a heartbeat, curl it into a ball and stuff into my pocket.

"No. Nothing, nevermind."

But it's too late, he's already got this shit-eating grin plastered over his face as he leans back into his chair.

I scowl at him, urge him with a look to keep his damn mouth shut, and practically sprint out of the room.

I make it all the back to the counter before dipping my fingers back into my pocket, plucking the paper out and flattening it over the blue-painted wood.

You need it live, though it cannot exist without death.

Dinner.

There's absolutely no way, right?

I mean, he has come in for the last three days, but surely not for me. Surely not to scribble down this stupid note, not to catch me off guard in the mixtape section.

I run the paper through my fingers, flip it back and forth over and over.

How would I even know how to tell him yes? I know nothing about him other than his name, no phone number or anything else that could help me get in touch with him.

I sift the paper back and forth, rub it between my thumb and forefinger.

I guess I'll just have to wait until I see him next to know.

If it's what I think it is, I'll probably say yes. Not that I could feel you why, I just know that I would.

Christ, wait until Val hears about this.

The cowbell rings and I jump, flatten the paper under my palm into the counter.

Sam stalks in, flicking the bud of his cigarette onto the concrete behind him.

"Hey, did you know it's raining?"

I roll my eyes. It's been raining all day, and even though he didn't step out from under the awning, the ends of his pants are still consequently soaked.

"That's clever. Did you know your funny?"

One corner of his mouth rises, a sideways grin.

"Known for a while. Move, I gotta grab my water."

I take a step back, slide the paper along with me and crinkle it into my fist. He steps forward, grabs the water bottle from behind the counter, steps back.

"Hey, I heard about what happened." I purse my brows as I point my gaze to him, watch him untwist the cap of his bottle with an all-too-casual demeanor. "I was just fucking with you, earlier. Sorry if I pissed you off, I didn't mean to."

I laugh, a genuine one that breaks the weird bit of tension, and relax back down into the stool.

"You're fine, man. I don't care."

He nods, takes a long swig of his bottle. When he sets it down again, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Do you wanna see the blood puddle under the mat?"

I take a breath. Blink at him. Think about it for a second or two.

I nod.

"Yeah, I kinda do."

We move at a quick pace to keep the boss from but noticing, apparently Sam got his ass crawled for touching the mat earlier in the week.

I shuffle the stool out of the way, kick some discarded objects behind the counter to the side, and Sam bends down in one quick movement to pluck up an edge and drag it to the side.

I stand back, watch the rug move, and hold in a breath.

It looks just about the same as I remember it.

It does look like my boss had someone come in to try and clean it, but my guess is the only way to get rid of it fully is to take out the carpet as a whole. It's a faded brown, it reeks of decay and acrid must. With the mat full gone, you can smell the lingering scent of what would have stayed behind even if the stain didn't.

I can still map out his body, place the parts of his twitching form around the rust faded splotches.

Sam falls in beside me, takes it in.

"That shit is gross."

I swallow down the saliva pooling on my tongue, force a shallow breath.

"Did you watch the camera feed?"

Sam nods.

"The boss showed it to me. Not out of like, curiosity or interest or anything." He takes a step forward, begins to drag the mat back into place. "I think he worries I don't know how to swing a bat. That guy hit him pretty fucking hard."

The mat falls with a plop back onto the carpet, and the angry stain goes back into the void of non-existence. Out of sight, out of mind.

I shake the movement back into my joints, move to grab the stool.

"Yeah." I place it back down, drag myself on top of it. "I'm glad he did."

Chapter Text

Val attempts to coax me out Saturday evening, she's had the full day off work and is feeling antsy to do something.

She shows up to my work in a sleek pair of mary-jane heels and a button up coat, drags me out from behind the counter to sit beside her on the lounge couch thirty minutes before my shift ends.

Sam is parallel to us, propping himself up against a shelf and attempting his best at concealing the vape in his shirt sleeve. Though I wouldn't pin Sam as Val's particular type, his charm and mellow have seemed to catch her eye, and they have more conversation than her and I do.

They're in the middle of discussing local bars, Sam somehow getting mixed into the plans Val is currently supposed to be convincing me of, when the cowbell loudly clunks behind Sam's shelf.

He drops his arm, vapor pooling out from his nostrils, and cocks his head over his shoulder to glance at the door. A smile peels out over his face, and he turns back to shoot me a pointed look.

"Would you look at that. Thirty minutes until close. He's been cutting it pretty close, yeah?"

Val cocks a brow, and I try to pretend like I don't understand as a knowing strike of panic sends the hair on my arms on end.

"What?"

He just rolls his eyes.

"You know, he could be stealing. Aren't you supposed to be on the register?"

A groan shudders out from my chest as I push myself up from the couch, but it's hardly believable. Even Val begins to rise, angle her head and extend her neck over so slightly as to see above the shelf.

"Christ, stop." I push her back lightly, and the smile that grows on her lips is one to match Sam's, who only laughs as I pass him on the way to the front. "I hate both of you."

I pass two or three aisles and heel around the edge of a shelf into the front entrance, not a soul in sight. I turn back to see the back of Sam's head peaking out over the top of an aisle just in time to hear Val's shriek of a laugh mix into his. Fucking gross.

"Hello."

My heart leaps up into my throat, and I turn on a full pivot as my hands shoot up to clasp my chest.

He's in the corner, a yard or two down from the entrance, wedged between an aisle and the window.  It's an inky dark outside, and the overhead fluorescent lights have a hard time combating with the night. I must have missed him when I walked past.

"Christ, Ed." I take a steep breath, stretch my fingers in and out of a fist as I drop them back down to my sides. "If anyone has a habit, it's you."

He chuckles lightly, brushes a knuckle over the edge of the shelf beside him as he cocks his head.

"Of what?"

I take a few steps toward him despite myself, peer down into the aisle behind him. A car passes on the street, casts a slice of yellow over the side of his face that runs down the aisle like a raindrop on glass. I watch it move, watch it travel away into non-existence.

My tongue feels dry against the roof of my mouth.

"Of scaring me."

The corners of his mouth debate a smile.

"You have an odd way of showing it."

"What does that mean?"

I watch his shoulders rise as he shrugs, watch them fall underneath the fabric of shirt. It's a T-shirt today, no collar, and it takes me a moment to realize he's dressed casually. Plain white shirt, worn jeans, sneakers. I pull my gaze back to his face.

"You don't seem very scared."

My mouth draws into a flat line as a string pulls taut up my spine.

"Do you need help finding anything?"

It's seems like he recollects what he's doing, a flicker of thought passing under the lenses of his glasses. He blinks it away, draws his gaze to the shelf beside him.

"Halloween's coming up." His hand travels back up to pick up a VHS tape, rub his thumb over the worn cardboard case. "Your store seems festive."

I come up behind him, shrink myself in the small gap between him and the window, and step into the aisle beside him. He's holding a copy of Scream, a movie Val's forced me to watch a thousand times. The nostalgia draws a subtle smile to my face.

"Yeah, I guess so." I lean in to inspect the cover, the residual rain on his jacket brushing off onto my bare arm. "Are you looking for a movie or something? This is a good one."

He laughs something slight and throaty, flips the movie over in his hand to inspect the back.

"I thought these were desensitizing?"

I shake my head, becoming innately aware of our closeness, and draw a step back.

"No, not these. These are the good ones. It's a slasher, not like, gore-porn or anything."

He cocks a brow.

"Gore-porn?"

My cheeks heat, and I open my mouth to defend myself.

"We get a lot of weird, incel types that buy up abunch of splatter films this time of year." I brush my hair out of my face nervously, card it back between my fingers. "The genre is gross, in general. I wouldn't recommend it."

He's looking down at me beside him, drops of rain still beaded along the lenses of his glasses. His eyes pierce through me behind them.

"What makes you recommend this?"

I shrug.

"It's simple. It's just some guy in a mask running around, you won't lose sleep over it."

He snorts, semi-turns to face me with a look on his face that strikes me a little as disbelief. He has a different aura about him tonight, and although I've never known him to be socially adept, the weird way a bit of confidence has seemed to set into the curve of his jaw makes me slightly uneasy.

Not that I mind.

"He's a serial killer, right?" He blinks, parts his mouth in a slight grin that exposes a sliver of teeth. "That doesn't make you lose sleep?"

I think about my answer, map the words out in my head before I speak them.

"It's not real." I answer casually. "There are scarier things to be."

I watch him take my words into consideration as his eyes travel over my face, clasp and unclasp clammy palms at my sides. He looks like he's seeing right through me to the wall behind me, and it's odd considering how fiercely he usually seems to avoid eye contact. His stance is relaxed but precise, body swayed in a way that is all to conscious of his form, and my gaze flickers to his hands as he moves to place the tape back onto the shelf.

His eyes follow it too, scrape over the masked man on the cover one last time.

Another car passes, and he turns back to me just in time to catch the full rain of light that spreads out over the panes of his face. It passes from him to me, stains over my vision for no longer than a heartbeat, and then we're back in the dim shroud of dark.

"Do you have plans after work?"

Instant anxiety crawls through me up to my throat, and my body temperature rises to blush out the expanse of my face and neck.

I can still feel the crinkle of newspaper scalded into my palm, and I clench my fist tight to close the absence.

So it wasn't a joke, or a whim, or something done to spear a reaction from me. He didn't directly bring it up, but I don't think I want him to. I'd probably hit the floor from embarrassment.

I try and dip my head, will the bad lighting to hide my unwanted reaction, but the instant tension that folds into my form is more of a tell than anything else.

"My friend is currently trying to convince me to go to Iceberg with her and my coworker."

His chest rises with a heavy breath, shoulders peeling back.

"You shouldn't do that." He says it so quick, so raw and unplanned, and I think it even takes him by surprise. His face twists as he back-pedals. "You should- I would like to buy you dinner."

The words hit like a rock and my chest, and I think I've known all along that I would like him to as well.

I glance at the clock on the wall despite knowing exactly what time it is, but my open and flayed brain has me irrationally antsy.

"It's late." I take my bottom lip in, scrape over it with my front teeth before releasing it and drawing my gaze back to him. "Will anything be open around here?"

He nods.

"I already have a place in mind. We'd have to..." He flickers his gaze out the window, rain smearing against the glass. "We'll need to hail a cab."

'We'd have to,' to 'we'll need,' as if he already knows my answer, and the hypotheticals aren't worth entertaining.

I nod, because I already know my answer too.

"Okay. Let me grab my stuff."

His face relaxes, a half-laugh slipping past his lips without caution. Tension seems to slide off his shoulders, his jaw slacking as half lidded eyes crease at the corners.

Fuck, I hate to say I find it cute considering my initial impression of him, but it is. I laugh too, feel a small wave of relief starting from two months ago. Who would have thought.

He turns to card a hand through his hair, the first time I've ever seen him do it, and the strands fall back over his forehead in a mess.

"I thought you'd be hesitant."

I laugh again, a dam broken that can't find its close.

"Why?"

He shrugs.

"I thought I scared you."

Sam bitches about closing up alone, but eventually agrees once I cut a deal to do the same for him next Saturday. Plus, I think his mood spikes back up when Val mentions still wanting to go out with just him.

She's so bright and sweet and sunny, and he's so awkward and sharp and small. They don't quite fit, but then again, maybe they do. I think I've accidentally played cupid by leaving early, but hey, I guess there's just something going around tonight.

Her and Sam trail back to the counter as I grab my things, and she offers to help him with closing chores before peaking out the window.

"Oh god, that guy is ugly."

Sam snorts.

"And he's old. Like, thirty."

I frown.

"Sam, you look like you're twelve." I finish pushing my arm through my jacket, grabbing my bag and slinging it over my shoulder. "I'll see you guys later, get home safe."

Val kisses my cheek in a quick hug, Sam just waves from behind the counter with a quiet 'later.'

When I get to the door, tugging it open wide and quick, Val cups her hands around her mouth and begins to screech.

"PRACTICE SAFE SEX! DON'T DO ANYTHING I WOULDN'T DO!"

Ed's head spins from to sidewalk to glance back at me, his eyebrows so high up on his head that they could probably fly away.

I send her a humorless smile, sarcasm dripping off my expression.

"I doubt there's very little you wouldn't do."

Sam cocks a brow, and it's at that point I decide it's time to shut the door.

I pull my bag tighter over my shoulder, my sneakers slapping through the puddles as I meet Ed at the edge of the awning.

He's still looking down at me, both hands tucked away in his jacket pockets.

"Everything alright?"

I roll my eyes, try and feign nonchalance to drive away my nerves.

"My friends are annoying."

He smiles, small and subtle.

"I'm sure you keep pleasant company."

I find his smile contagious, just like everything he seems to do tonight.

"Yeah, I'm hanging out with you, right?"

The ride isn't a long one, but it's longer than I expected.

We pass the streets in a pregnant silence, Ed's fingers drumming a little line over his knee as shades of neon swim over him from outside.

Our cab driver compliments my shirt at some point, his eyes meeting mine from the rear view mirror, and although I'm sure it's just mindless conversation to get a quick tip, Ed and I both glance down to look at it anyway.

"Is it a band?"

I nod.

"Yeah, they're one of my favorites."

I pull my hands from my lap, draw the hem out to stretch the fabric taut. It's an old Team Sleep shirt I wore around in high school, a few holes worn in around the collar. I almost wish I would have known about this in advance, I probably would have dressed a little nicer.

"Oh," He shrugs a little more into his seat, leans in a way that's better to face me. "They're on your mixtape, right? The CD, the one I bought."

I flicker my eyes to meet his, neon green painting a halo around his hair as we pass another stretch of street.

"Yeah." I swallow the beat of my heart, force it back down into my chest. "Yeah, I think so."

The rest of the ride is quiet, and as the cab begins to slow down in front of Iceberg lounge, I shoot Ed a pointed look.

He shakes his head, a quick and broken movement, and his face twists into distaste.

"No, no, it's... it's across the street."

He leans forward, his arm breaking into my space as he draws a circle in the condensation on my windshield with a pointed finger. His movements are sharp and fidgety, arm outstretching like he's unwinding a spool of wire. I watch him, examine the cord of muscle in his wrist and forearm as his jacket sleeve rides up, watch the end of his finger press into the glass.

He finishes, leaning back as the driver complains about fingerprints, and I look past his drawing to see a small diner with a large neon sign.

That's a bit of an overkill for such a tiny spot.

The driver pulls to a stop at the curb, and we both pour out into the street, puddles splashing around our ankles as we break pace for the covered sidewalk.

The hood of Ed's jacket falls back off of his head as he slows to a stop under the shroud of light coming from the diner windows, his bangs mussed and damp from the falling rain. He breaths out a heavy grin, shakes his arms to brush off the rain.

I laugh and begin to do the same, not really getting much of anything achieved considering we're just shaking the rain off onto one another.

Our damp arms brush as we step in through the door, the woman behind the counter looking up to cast a quiet welcome, and his the chest of his shirt smooths over the fabric of my jacket shoulder as he maneuvers around me to lead us towards a booth.

I take an all-too-quick step back, my wet sneakers squeaking out against the tile, and he looks back behind him to snort out a laugh.

It sounds awkward and breathy, and I hear it somewhere in my chest rather than my ears.

We sit down, the woman behind the counter comes up to take our drink orders and pass us two old, laminated menus, and Ed orders a coffee while I order a tea.

"You're a tea person?"

The waitress steps away from our table, her tennis shoes tapping as she rounds the counter.

I look up at him, register his question.

"Yeah, I guess." I set down my bag, start to shrug out of my wet jacket. "I wouldn't label myself as like, a 'tea person,' but I like tea."

"But you prefer it to coffee?"

I cock a brow.

"Is this like, some pseudo-personality thing I'm not up to date on?"

He frowns.

"Just answer the question."

I can't help but laugh at his wilted expression, feeling a little more relaxed in the safety of this small, corner booth.

"Yeah, yes, I guess so."

He digests this with a nod, leaning back to grasp the zipper of his coat and swipe it down his chest. He shrugs out of it slowly, his eyes pointed down at the menu resting in front of him, and I watch as the green fabric travels down past his shoulders, his upper arms.

It's the first time I've seen him without it, his coat, and now that I can see his bare arms I blink in his form. The coat adds like, a good 20 pounds to him. I thought he was much bigger than he actually is, but he seems fairly lean.

He pulls his watch-bearing wrist out of the sleeve carefully before dropping the coat fully behind him, pressing both elbows into counter and clasping his hands together near his chin. His gaze is still pointed downwards, his glasses angled so I can see the blonde lashes lining his eyes.

God, I need to quit staring. Here I was thinking he was the creepy one.

"You've been here before, right?" I cough the words out through a dry mouth, trying anything to break the one-sided tension. "What do you usually get?"

He sets his head up, directing his attention to me, and I set my gaze on his hands as he pops the knuckle of his index finger. Definitely a safer choice than his face.

"I'm not actually sure. I only come here during my lunch breaks, the menus different at night time."

Oh yeah, this guy works. He's like, a completely functioning adult, who has a job that requires lunch breaks.

"Where do you work?"

His face twists.

"I'm an accountant. Nothing as interesting as a media store."

I scoff.

"Yeah, because my job is so incredibly interesting."

He smiles, flips over the menu.

"I'm sure that it is. You seem to enjoy it."

"I enjoy that it pays my rent. I wouldn't go as far as to label it as interesting."

He laughs and the noise tumbles down onto the table in front of him.

"I would go as far as to say I find anything about you quite interesting."

He doesn't say it directly to me, but rather to the menu, and even so it shatters me to pieces. I lean forward and press cold palms against the warm skin of my face.

"God, stop. You're trying to flatter me."

He laughs again at my embarrassment, and the waitress reappears to set our drinks in front of us. We both order the same sandwich, and he asks for a slice of the dinners daily dessert to split.

The action alone is enough to spread a jittery buzz through my chest and stomach, and he seems to off-put himself as he asks awkwardly, hands resting in his lap and back straight against his seat. He doesn't look at either at us as he speaks, but rather diverts his gaze to the corner of the table, and once the waitress jots it down and disappears he pulls it back up to me.

"How long have you been employed at the store?"

I set my drink down, the tea warming my stomach.

"Four years, this upcoming Halloween. What about you? How long have you been an accountant?"

He shakes his head, blows out quick breath as his face stirs with thought.

"Six or seven. It's easy to manage, and low risk. A comfortable job."

"Easy to manage? Isn't there like, a shit ton of math involved?"

He laughs.

"Math is just numbers. There's always a correct answer, a findable solution. There's no room for error or confusion. I feel as if your job would be kin to bomb diffusion for me. I couldn't manage any sort of customer rapport, retail-"

"Customer rapport?" I snort, accidentally interrupting his train of thought. "Like I have any sort of rapport with the kind of people that frequent our store."

He cocks his head and pauses halfway into reaching for the sugar across the table.

"Don't you think that's a bit ironic?"

It takes a moment for me to register that he's being sarcastic, and I cough out a stifled laugh.

"No, this is just regular customer service for us. Sam's our new date guy, actually."

He cracks a smile at my lame joke as he pours in an ungodly amount of sugar into his coffee, setting down the shaker to stir it in with a spoon.

"How fortunate for me, that I ended up with you." My turn to grin, my hands running down my thighs to my knees. "I did notice him, Sam, I'm guessing? When did he start?"

I start to tell him, start to relay my bosses demand for more staff and the chain of events that led to Sam's hiring, only to cut myself short. My chest deflates as a flicker of small, rectangular glasses casts out behind my eyelids, and I clasp my mouth shut in a line. Ed notices the shift in mood, rests his hand from stirring his drink.

"You don't-"

"It was after that guy came in. My boss hired him so no one would be in the store alone again." I clear my throat, straighten my shoulders. "He's okay, he's quiet. He lets me bum cigarettes on breaks."

I force a smile, noticing the way Ed's shoulders tense. He doesn't take my pitch for an easier topic.

"You don't have to force yourself. I-" He takes a heavy breath, one that looks like it hurts going in, and his head inches in an angle to the side as he redirects his eyes back to his drink. "I'm glad you won't be alone."

I nod, take another sip of my drink.

"I'm just glad I wasn't then. I'm glad you were there."

His body tenses into a wall, the veins of his forearm cording down to beneath his watch. I watch his jaw reset, his face blank from expression.

"It was very strange, for me. I didn't- I felt associated. I can tell, that you're..." He finally draws his eyes to meet mine. "That you're apprehensive of me. I know we joke, but I don't like to think that I might actually scare you."

I tilt my head, heart feeling suddenly heavy.

"Why? Why would you scare me?"

He shifts in his seat.

"It was a very violent scene."

It was. It was violent, I can still see the blood pouring from his ears, his mouth. Still see the consciousness fade from his open gaze, the tug of trembling fingers against my shoelace. I think about the welcome mat behind the counter, the stench that lies beneath it.

And then I think about the finger tugging under the hem of my skirt, one I was so excited to wear.

"I would have been more scared if you didn't." My voice sounds all too raw, all too exposed in the quiet air between us. "I was- I wanted to see you." My voice breaks over the words, but I push through to the end. "I'm glad you did it."

He leans back, his eyes set on me in a haze of an expression. I can't read it, can't gauge what kind of thoughts he could possibly be having.

"I don't consider myself someone capable of-of being violent." His eyes sear into mine, drive holes straight through my head. "But I think I'm glad too, despite myself."

I nod, hold his gaze a stretch longer, and a quiet and unsaid understanding settles between us. I think we both experienced the moment together, in different ways. The experience left it's thumbprint on both of our beings, changed us in two separate forms of forbearance. I wonder how it's changed him.

I try and ease away from the subject, try and bring more lightheartedness into the conversation.

"You know, my boss made Sam watch the video footage when he hired him. To make sure he knew how to swing a bat. You could call it our new employee training video."

Ed's face smears into an uneasy grin, like he wants to laugh, but doesn't know if he should.

"I wouldn't consider it a good example. I hardly knew what I was doing while I was doing it."

I shrug, will myself to ease back down against the table.

"Could have fooled me. You seemed to have experience." After a quick glance up, Ed's eyes already on my own, I add, "With a bat. I mean, I tried to hit him before you came in. I wasn't very successful."

His expression falters, and I feel my own twist in confusion.

"I saw... I saw quite a lot. I came in very quietly, moved very slowly. I didn't want to alert him of my presence."

I laugh despite the context, roll my eyes as I look at him.

"Yeah, you're pretty good at that." I take another long sip of my drink, set the empty mug back onto the table. "I almost never hear you come in. You seem like a quiet person in general, though."

His face falls flat.

"A pseudo-personality theory of yours?"

A laugh tumbles out of me without thought. He's so oddly good and bad at conversation, always looping back to things we've said in the past. I can't tell if I find it charming or overplayed. At least I know he's listening.

"No, you just seem like a quiet person. Like, not very sociable, I guess."

He contemplates this with a blank expression, like the words lack a great deal of substance. Maybe I've unknowingly offput him.

"Would you consider yourself a loud person?" He draws as he wraps a hand around his mug.

I blink back at him. No, I generally wouldn't, and it doesn't seem like a difficult question to answer. Despite this, his eyes are so pointed when he asks, that I can feel heat blossom at the tips of my ears. 

"I wouldn't, I guess." I say through a bit-down stammer.

He shrugs, takes a sip of his coffee.

"Well, if we're going based off of your definition," The cup rings out a clank of a noise as he sets it back onto the table, and it ricochets around in my ribs. "You would be loud by comparison."

The waitress reappears so violently beside me that I almost drop dead in my seat, and she glares at me with a pinched expression after I've flinched halfway into the booth.

She sets down our sandwiches, grabs our mugs to refill them, and pads back away to the back of her counter.

Ed stares down at his food, and I do about the same.

Now that I think about it, I'm not even really that hungry.

Ed shifts his weight in his seat.

"Should we..." My hair sways over my vision as I look up to him, and he glances up at the same time to meet my gaze. "Should we just skip to dessert?"

The air in the room grows tight as it makes its way to my lungs.

"Sure."

When the waitress returns with our drinks, and we ask for dessert, a to-go box, and the bill.

She brings us back all three, and we make quick work of the lukewarm cherry pie she sets between us. Our forks scrape over one another for purchase of it, and honestly, I could've ate another slice.

We lump our sandwiches over one another in the to-go box, and the lid barely closes to a shut, but Ed makes it work by squashing it down with a flat palm.

I snort and he stammers something about how it's flat anyway, and he drops enough money for the bill and a nice tip before we make our way to the door.

The rain has let up significantly, just a drizzly haze at this point, and as the night air sets in around us, so does a wave of trepidation.

We stand side by side on the curb and watch the commotion unfold at Iceberg across the street in silence, our shoulders daring to brush but never quite making it. People scream and yell and sing as they hop out from cabs, loiter in a line outside, adjust their skirts and business ties under the neon glow. Light from the signs stains the puddles in the street, and their aura extends out in halos through the humid drizzle of rain that thickens in the air.

I don't want to be the one to speak first, but I highly doubt that he does either. I don't even know what he would say.

I cough, clear out to cotton clogging my throat.

"Do you-" I stop mid question, consider the weight of my words and how they can be conveyed.

Fuck it.

"Do you live close to here?"

He cocks his head to me in a beat of motion, his re-dampened hair swinging around his forehead.

I watch his eyes flutter, notice the fist clenching in his pocket.

"I- Yes. I live nearby, but-"

"I live maybe a fifteen minute walk from here." I shuffle on my feet, rub the sole of my shoe over the curve of the concrete. "We can... can you walk me home?"

A car passes us and showers us from the knee down with the uproar of a gutter puddle, beads of post-rain and headlight beams coating us over in a snapshot of movement. I don't think either of us even register it, we're not really paying attention.

Ed parts his lips, closes them again.

"Are you sure?"

I could turn back now if I wanted to, make an excuse, shy away. I don't think it would offend him, I'm sure he'd still come into the store now and again to lurk around and ask for niche history books.

But I don't want to turn back.

"Yeah, of course."

I can't stop my eyes from lingering as his jaw resets, as his shoulders fall back and fists burry further into his coat pockets.

He turns off of the edge of the curb, takes a step closer towards me.

I almost want to meet him in the middle.

"Which way?"

The lights flickering from apartment windows and storefront signs seems to brighten, people passing by in groups fade into nothingness as the world folds itself in around just the two of us. I note that our sneakers are equally dirty and ruddied now that I'm looking at them side by side, the toes of his shoes only a foot away from mine.

The world seems so small through my gaze, the streets a meaningless maze that I path out in the back of my head, only one way home.

So I turn, and he follows.

Chapter Text

It's an eerily silent walk to my complex.

I wasn't expecting any sort of incredibly interesting conversation, but I think the nerves biting into me have their jaws hooked onto both of us.

Not that it's easy to tell, because Ed is a generally unreadable person. His face always seems vacant, maybe a little dazed. His eyes give of the impression that he's looking at everything and nothing all at once.

I try not to mind the quiet beat of our wet footfalls, utilize it to assess my own intentions.

It's hard for me to decipher whether or not my feelings for Ed extend past my own sheer interest, a selfish curiosity for what lurks behind the blurry lenses of his glasses. I feel sort of indebted to him, and yeah, he is sort of scary, but for some reason I can't find it in me to be scared.

The painfully articulated way he speaks, as if he's constructing his words bit by bit slowly in his mind, or the static yet precise movements of his hands and fingers shouldn't intrigue me like they do. But they do.

I like talking to him, like watching him. I like the things he says, his cleverness and the delivery of his words. He's older than me, you can tell by the way he thinks and speaks, but that doesn't seem to bother him. He's still right here beside me, still walking me home.

I'm still letting him.

I take a moment to glance at him, to run my eyes over the expanse of his profile.

Generically speaking, he isn't attractive. I wouldn't look at him at first glance and think anything of the sort, and in fact I didn't when first meeting him. I don't know when I started fixating on little movements, on the hinge of his jaw, the way his deft fingers bend, or how slightly crooked teeth peak over his bottom lip when he grins. I can't find a particular point in our timeline when these sorts of things began to effect me in the way that they do, but I recognize them now. Consciously, I can feel the trickle of heat pool in my stomach when I catch my gaze lingering over them.

I could say I would do the same for anyone, but whenever I think of Sam's pierced lips, or Val's manicured hands, it doesn't feel the same. How boring of me to prefer something so plain.

He rounds the corner into the entryway a half-step ahead of me, and it takes me almost running flat into his back to realize we're already here.

My knees feel well-oiled, like they might slip out from under me, and I try to keep my heart grasped tight beneath my ribs.

I follow him closely, pressing myself into his space subconsciously as we wonder through the bottom floor of my complex to the stairwell. It's so quiet it's as if our own breath has halted, the only sound echoing out through the hall being the wet slaps of our heavy footfalls.

He turns up the stairs and the panic in my chest rises to my collar, ringing like a string of bells tied from one side of my ribcage to the other. They continue to ring frantically as I rise up the steps, watch the back of Ed's head as he cocks it to glance up the next flight. The hair on his nape brushes back over the gray of his jacket, a light, plain stretch of fabric that seems loose on his form.

It's a little jarring, seeing him out of what I can now recognize as professional clothing. I had expected the slacks and collared shirts to be apart of his everyday wardrobe, labeling him down in my head as just ignorantly unfashionable. Not that I would call this outfit a step anywhere near any sort of intentional fashion, but it suits him. Suits his... it just suits him.

We make it to my floor and fluttering sort of dread burrows into my stomach. I've never been good at this part of the night, not that I've ever actually made it this far before. Not that I've even made it to very many dinner-dates in general.

He pauses at the top of the stairwell to allow me to step ahead of him, our eyes brushing over one another with bated breath. They meet for a flash of a moment, his own wide and empty. I almost wish he'd show me something, let me know what he's thinking in that odd little head of his.

I take the reigns, stepping in front of him and guiding him down the left end of the corridor. The complex isn't very safe, considering it's mostly outdoors, with no way to prevent others from wondering in or lingering around. A few people towards the end of the hall are leaned against the walls on opposite sides, smoking cigarettes or making phone calls. My neighbor a door down is rummaging through their mail, stepping back through their door without cashing us so much as a second glance.

I hear the deadlock turn with a clack as I draw my feet to a halt, fumbling around in my pocket for the key to unlock my own. Ed stops a foot away from me, his front angled to face my side. His eyes wonder over my head, down into the open corridor. He stares, unnervingly so, at nothing in particular. A knuckle pops in his pants pocket.

I manage to slide the key in with little trouble despite my slightly trembling fingers, and when I push the door open into my entry way I cast a glance to the company beside me.

He barely notices, barely registers the action. His eyes linger behind my head for a moment more before following me in.

The only light turned on is a lamp across the living room, and our forms cast caricatures of shadows in the golden light against the walls. I stumble in, hiking up my baggy pants leg to begin stripping off my sneakers as the straps of my backpack slide off of my shoulders. The shoe and bag fall with loud thumps against the floor, and I hike up my other leg as I lean my wall to work on the opposite foot.

"I'm about to start some tea. Do you like earl gray?" My other shoe drops to the floor, and I turn without a backwards glance as I step out of the entryway towards the kitchen. "I uh, I think I might have some instant cappuccino stuff somewhere. Since you're a coffee person, or something like that."

I'm all the way to rummaging around in my dishwasher for clean mugs, pushing down my nerves by occupying my hands, when I glance up to find I'm alone.

My socks pad over the wooden floor, the handles of two mugs wrapped around a finger, and step past the corner of my entryway.

He's just standing there, his back practically pressed against the closed door, and in the dim lighting he almost looks like a shadow himself. The glare off the lamp reflects back off of the lenses of his glasses, two blank slates of yellow glow to meet my gaze. I can't read his face, can barely make out his features in the dark.

The knot in my chest furrows deeper.

"Ed?"

The silence eats away at the remaining air in the room. I might just suffocate.

I catch a flicker of movement from his face, and release a breath of something I'd be too cautious to label as relief.

"Ed, are you okay? Do you wanna come in?"

He stays deathly still as I chance a step forward, the mugs still dangling from my hand clanking against one another to break the quiet. Somewhere in the distance, a train begins to pass.

If it wasn't for proximity, I wouldn't notice the rise and fall of a heavy breath from his shoulders.

"I shouldn't come in."

I take another step closer, the anxiety worming around in my veins hardening with disappointment.

"Wait, why? You don't-"

A hand rises to grasp my arm as I take another step forward, and I didn't even realize how close I was until his touch weighed me back down to reality.

My head is craned to see his, the ends of our shoes less than a foot apart, and after another beat of weighted silence he finally drops his chin with a release of breath. The heat from it pans out over my face, fogs up a portion of my glasses lenses. When it fades away, I can see his eyes behind his.

"I just- I shouldn't come in."

Shit, shit, have I misread something? What wasn't I noticing in the walk I spent daydreaming to get here?

I nod, my eyes searching for something over the panes of his face. There's nothing there to see.

"Okay, you- you don't have to." I swallow down something non existent, lift a hand to wipe my eyes and force the ghost of tears that dares to itch them. "I'm sorry if I-"

"Don't," He forces the word out, like it's choking him to say it, and it sounds much louder than it actually is. "Don't apologize to me."

His other arm stirs into movement with the rest of his body, his hand inching up slowly to grasp my wrist. I feel the warmth from the pads of his fingers dip past my jacket sleeve, feel his thumb press a firm pressure against my pulse point. I can't do anything aside from watch as he leans closer, shifting ever so slightly to coat my shadows with his own until they become one. We become so close in those achingly long seconds that I could lean forward and touch our noses if I wanted to.

I've lost track of his eyes again, the closeness and the dim light working against my struggling vision. I hear a strain in his voice as he speaks, feel his fingers craft a web around the places their grasping on my arms.

"I should be sorry. Can... can I? I should be sorry."

He's mumbling, words tumbling slowly yet painfully out of his mouth.

He could do a lot if he wanted to.

To what he's asking, I'm not sure, but there's no way I'm in any position to deny him anything when his darkened voice wakes up something inhuman deep below my stomach.

"Yes," I practically throw the word up, gag over it as I try my fucking hardest to steady myself. "Yes, yeah..."

The hand he has braced against my bicep releases me only to find purchase against the column of my throat. His fingernails catch my skin first with a purpose, lightly raking over the tender slope under my jaw before flattening out against his palm. His touch is firm, not delicate yet not harsh, and I struggle to make a breath as my knees debate whether or not to give up on me.

I'm buzzing, feeling so out of body that I could possibly be floating up somewhere around the rafters of my building, but the noise that falls out of his mouth as he parts his lips and cocks his head grounds me in a shock of lightening.

He pulls himself even closer to me, which at this point I didn't think was possible, but as I feel the fabrics of our shirts brush against one another, our knees slotting together slightly off kilter, I can't control the light gasp that slips past my own lips.

It stirs him, the noise, but it doesn't scare him off. In fact, I pretend not to notice the slight quirk at the corner of his mouth for the sake of my own sanity.

He kisses me like it should brand me, evenly and flat over my lips. Like if it were to leave a mark against my skin, it should be a perfect one. A perfectly clinical definition of a kiss.

He pulls back seconds later to place another, the same as before, but not without dipping his head further to the side, not without drawing his fingers further up my jaw.

He opens his mouth and I cave into it, our teeth raking over each other in a way that should make me cringe, but somehow the friction lights a match somewhere behind my belly button. I want to move my hands, want to will them somewhere against him, but the one that isn't holding two coffee mugs is grasped tight in his own to prevent it.

It almost feels selfish, the way he uses the moment to serve himself. I'm not allowed to touch, not allowed to lean down into him. He covers me, controls our pace. I let him.

He cups my jaw as he kisses me further, fingertips pressing into the hollow of my cheeks, and I open my mouth wider to accommodate it. When he slips his tongue into me, he slides it over the backs of my teeth, and I can't fight back the noise it elicits from me.

He swallows it, hums with appreciation for it, and he shuffles forward without breaking our kiss to press his belt buckle against my stomach.

Holy shit, he doesn't want to come in? Is he sure he doesn't want to come in? I might even be tempted to bribe him at this point.

I arch myself forward, carve myself further into him, and he leers back before parting our mouths with a pop. His hand stays pressed into my face, my mouth remaining open and thoroughly flushed.

I'm so dazed for a moment that I can't even register the release of his grip, and I stand there slightly slack-jawed with half-lidded eyes burying their gaze somewhere in his.

"I should," He takes a steep breath, releases it out through his nose against my cheeks. "I should leave."

I collect myself, drop back down to my heels and clasp my mouth shut tight into a line.

He keeps his face pressed close against mine, the strands of our hair mixing together between us.

I try desperately to find words, manage to find a few.

"O- okay. Okay, that's-" I swallow the saliva pooling on my tongue as he drops my wrist, taking the moment to step back away from him. "I had fun. Thank you, for inviting me out."

If there's anyway to describe the expression painted over his face, it would be curled. His entire body seems tense and twisted, like something inside of him is aching at every turn of every joint. He's a tall man, but you wouldn't be able to tell the way he's holding his shoulders, or arching his neck. His body language is completely unreadable to me, and another sliver of nerves cuts their way through my lungs as he flattens himself back out with a wheeze of breath.

"I... I enjoyed tonight."

I wouldn't be able to tell, the way he says it. He says it like someone has a gun to his head, like someone has a gun to my head and they're threatening to pull the trigger if he doesn't. He articulates the wrong parts of the words, emphasizes his vowels with a strange slowness.

I go rigid, the air in my lungs turns to lead.

He moves slowly on a pivot, hand moving toward the doorknob as if he had the path mapped out before carrying out the action. Every movement from him is so orchestrated, nothing is an accident.

"Get home safe."

He pauses in the open doorway, the one he's practically slithering out of, and turns his head ever-so-slightly to look back at me.

"Don't forget to lock your door."

And the door itself shuts behind him.

I take in the breath I didn't know I had been holding for so long, and the warm air that fills my lungs isn't any form of relief.

I'm alone, like usual, in my apartment, staring at the back of my own door like if I look away it might combust into flames. I almost expect it to.

So I do what he says, I lock my door, and go back into the kitchen to start my tea.

My mind is reeling, every nerve ending on my skin alive and awake and feeling everything at once.

He could have stayed, I wanted him to stay. I know what that means, know what the act of staying entails. He knew all too well, which is why he clung so desperately to the entryway. I wanted to coax him out, like a scared or wounded animal, but scared and wounded animals are kin to bite.

The events play back through my mind over and over while I desperately try and pinpoint the change in mood, try and locate which point turned him to twist his behavior. I can't find it.

I'm so distracted by the entire unfolding of events, that I don't even question how he knew to turn into the correct complex a half step ahead of me.

Chapter Text

Something shifts.

Maybe in the air, maybe in myself, I'm not sure, but I can feel it. It worms its way under my skin and tickles at my nerve endings. Paranoia. It sinks slowly tied to cinderblocks in the pit of my stomach.

It starts Monday, the end of our shift. The boss gives Sam and I forty bucks to split, lets us take off an hour early. His ex-wife is coming in, it's almost too painfully obvious. Not like we're feeling all that confrontational about it. Sam pockets the cash and we scram.

The bar downstairs from my complex sells a mean shepherd's pie, and and the bartender doesn't bat an eye whenever I approach the bar to buy two drinks for myself.

"Whatever happened with Ed?" Sam says like a smudge. He's an incredible lightweight, which is not something I was accounting for.

"Let's actually talk about anything else." I reply, because I too, am I lightweight, and I'm too drunk to get into the details.

We down maybe three or four guinnesses each, slapping down the full forty on the table before tumbling out into the rain-slicked street knowing damn well it's not enough to cover the tab. Whatever. Carpe diem, or something like that.

Sam is insisting he can walk home, but I live just upstairs, so I drag him up drunkenly by the coat collar. We keep tripping over one another, laughing and gripping on shoulders for balance.

"Call Valentine." Sam says when we tumble to the door, and I wrangle with the keys dumbly. He leans against the wall, tilts his head back, rain dripping off his hair. "I miss her. She didn't leave her number."

"Leave it? Where?" The key finally shoves itself in, with little to no help from me.

"I would've cooked her breakfast." He says instead of answering. "I'm not good with eggs. She would've had to cook the eggs."

We end up falling asleep on opposite ends of the couch, a quilt thrown over us, shoes and all. Our damp clothes seep into the cushions, legs entangled through layers of denim and khaki. I sleep hard and sound, deep into the layers of my sub-conscious. My dreams go in and out of clear-framed glasses, lip-rings, and the reverberation of a breaking bat throbbing alongside my heartbeat.

When I wake up, the front door is open. Not all the way, but slightly ajar, just enough so the jam is poking out over the frame.

I sling myself off the couch, and Sam fumbles onto the floor, our legs still intertwined.

"What the fuck," He murmurs, lifting his head off the rug.

"Did you shut the door behind you last night?" I say, sleep still itching in the corners of my eyes.

He combs over his face with a palm, sits upright. His eyes are half-lidded when he follows my gaze.

"Yeah. Did you? Who came in last?"

"Fuck if I know." I shove the door shut, thumb the lock down. "Surprised we didn't get left on cinderblocks."

When I look back, Sam is glancing at his wrist watch, his coat all askew on his wiry frame.

"I need a shower. Let me borrow some clothes?"

"Only if you make me some of those eggs you were talking about last night."

"Fuck off."

I didn't let myself linger on it after that. We were both half-drunk, both smears against the wet sidewalk outside. Shit happens. There wasn't any more explanation for it other than that. It's only after Thursday that I let my mind rewind back to the cracked door.

It's mid-shift, late afternoon sun sifting through the windows. Sam is on a smoke break, the boss left a few hours earlier. I dig my elbow into the counter, press the phone deeper into the shell of my ear. I lean forward and peaking around the edge of the window to where I can't see. I catch a sliver of Sam's boot, the edge of it dipping off the curb.

"Did you forget on purpose?" I say into the phone.

"I swear to god, I didn't. He's really sweet, he's so sweet, it's just like-" Val sighs. She called on the landline a few minutes ago, right as Sam was stepping out the door. Incredible timing, honestly. "He's just too sweet. Like, uncharacteristically so. Also, his apartment is almost worse than yours."

"First off, ouch." I lean back in the stool, click off the cameras and back to facebook marketplace. Speaking of Sam's apartment, his lease is ending soon. The living room at mine is too big as it is. furniture all tucked into a single half of the room, and I told him I wouldn't mind him crashing at mine for a bit under the condition he threw out his piss-stain of a mattress. I scroll past one on the screen, for free, pick up today, and it looks just as horrendous. "Second of all, you better make up your mind quick, because it's gonna get real awkward if he actually moves in. Just talk to him, at the very least."

Val sighs all over again, even more dramatic than the first. It blows through the phone static.

"You give him my number. I don't want to be the one to call first."

"You're such a girl."

She ignores me. "Where is he, anyway? Are you doing something later? I'm off tonight."

I don't answer for a moment, not at first. I stay quiet, keep my breath tucked away in my lungs. Everything in the room sort of tumbles out of my consciousness, and I draw away from every sense other than sound. It's so subtle I almost didn't notice, and I probably wouldn't have if not for Val's speaking.

Halfway through her sentence, a soft click flickered over the line, cut through the anyway of her question. Meaning, someone's on the other line.

It's happened, once or twice, both me and the boss accidentally answering from different rooms, or him eavesdropping on my or Sam's conversations. Except the boss left two hours ago, and Sam is outside. The phone in the breakroom is mounted to the wall, an old-school thing with a coiled wire that no one ever bothers to replace.

"Did you hear that?" I say through a breath.

"Hear what?" Val replies.

"Hold on."

I set the phone down, and my palms itch at my sides. Sliding off the stool has gravity weighing heavier on my shoulders, has the soles of my sneakers hitting the floor harder than before. My gaze stays locked on the breakroom door, which is pushed halfway open, just like the boss left it.

I step out from behind the counter, and hesitate for a moment. The metal knob at the end of the bat flashes against the backs of my eyelids as I blink. Surely it's not that serious, surely the boss is back or surely Sam came around through the alley for some unknown reason. The light is off in the breakroom. I take another step forward, trepidation trembling into my fingertips.

"Sam." I say, less like a call and more like a demand. I don't like being fucked with, not like this, not after- stop. I won't let myself think about it, won't let myself get worked up. The next step I take has purpose behind it, and I push the breakroom door open. Fluorescent light chases in, my shadow stretching out over the carpet.

Empty. The breakroom is empty, the phone still hung up on the wall.

My breath presses hard through my nose, comes out all at once. I flatten a palm over my chest. The cowbell cries out behind me.

"There's a homeless guy wearing a minions shirt in the alley." I cut my head behind me, and Sam tosses his bud out the door, wipes his shoes on the rug. "He said he'd suck my dick for ten bucks. Think it's worth it? Sounds like a deal to me."

"You were in the alley?"

His face twists. "With minions glory-hole guy? No, no I wasn't."

"Are you fucking with me? Were you on the phone?"

Sam straightens himself out in the doorway, the door shutting softly behind him. He drops his arms to his side, cocks a brow as he glares at me from across the room.

"I was outside, I wasn't- are you okay?" His eyes dart between the phone resting on the counter to where I'm crinkled up in front of the breakroom door. The expression on his face deepens, and I begin to grow incredibly self-aware of what it must look like.

Fuck. Fuck me, right? I wet my lips with my tongue, try and cough some casualness back into my lungs. It hurts to flatten out my spine.

"Yeah. I- yeah." I turn to face him, the breakroom door wide open behind me. "I'm good."

He glances at the counter again, tucks his hands into his pockets. He doesn't look like he believes me, but he doesn't look like he's going to confront me about it either. "Is there someone on the phone right now?" He says instead.

Oh, shit. Yeah, there is.

I dart back to the phone, press it against my ear and curl around, my back facing where Sam is tucked into the entryway.

"I'll text you." I whisper, which in no way resembles a whisper. Footfalls round the side of the counter.

"Is everything okay? What'd you hear? Is someone-"

"Yeah, Sam's still here. We'll check on it." The emphasis I put into the word Sam, is anything but inconspicuous. He's right beside me now, tilting his head down over my shoulder. "See you tomorrow."

Sam flinches back when I jump to shove the phone back into the receiver, and his hands shove deeper into his jeans pockets. There's an expression on his face I can't read, a kiss between the creases of his pierced brows.

"Who was that?"

"Nothing. It was- yeah. Nothing." I'm tenser than usual, not on my game enough to round up a worthy excuse. The stool wobbles when I bump into it, pressing the small of my back into the counter. Sam leans into the wall across from me, our feet a few steps apart. "The boss called to make sure we stripped the couches tonight."

He scrunches his face up, narrows his gaze. "Alright." His voice is a sigh. He looks tired, but then again, it's midterms. Comp-sci isn't the easiest major in the world.

His eyes cut to the clock behind me, jump back down to find mine. "You down for Peking later? I'll split a quarter with you if you buy. I'll even roll it."

Sam is hardly ever paying for his own food, I've come to notice. Overall, the deal doesn't sound half bad. My mind loops back to Val over the phone, and I lean forward a bit.

"Hold that thought. Let me see your phone." I draw my arm up, make a grabby hand. He eyeballs it with a scowl.

"Fuck no."

"I'm giving you Val's number, weirdass, not checking your search history." His brown eyes shine gold in the sun for a moment, widening up before dying down slightly. He fishes his phone out of his hoodie pocket begrudgingly. It's not fooling anyone.

When he steps outside to make the call on the sidewalk, I go with him under the guise of being nosy. In actuality, I just don't think I can manage being inside alone right now. The flicker of static through the phone speaker rings like a handful of bells in my mind, the sound bouncing around and overlapping itself in the empty space behind my skull.

In between the spots of silence I can find, the door jam blinks itself in and out of existence. The phone flicker, the door jam, the sheets in the dryer. Dots connect where there might not be any. I roll it back and find something else, then roll it back again.

"I would've made you breakfast." Sam says into his cracked phone a yard or two away from me. He leans back and holds out a cigarette at the end of two black-chipped fingernails. I take it graciously.

I hold it to my lips, draw in a steep breath, and think of Tim Savage.

Tim Savage is a sports-stock analyst and collectible enthusiast. Tim Savage has a three-year-old daughter, a seven-year-old son, and a wife he's been married to for eight years. Tim Savage is in a coma that he won't be coming out of in the foreseeable future. The metal bat turned his brain into hamburger meat, and if he does ever wake up he'll be met with not only a warrant but divorce papers as well.

Tim Savage is facing the well deserved consequences of his actions, at least that's what my boss says. It still makes my stomach twist to think about it.

The police came in on Tuesday to give us an update nobody asked for. Two of them, short and fat in all the wrong places. Sam had made himself into a pillar, tucked away in an aisle. The boss kept interjecting after every word they spoke, being callous and sharp, his dislike for them and the entire situation dripping all over his accent.

I stayed in the breakroom and didn't make a sound. I didn't want to hear about Tim Savage, I didn't want to think about him. Putting a name to the face made it all too real.

When the boss ripped his picture off the wall, the shred of the paper rang in my ears.

Tim Savage is in a vegetative state, and if he isn't, he's in jail. It's as simple as that. He's not haunting my phone calls, or lingering in my doorway. To think so would be irrational, and I won't allow myself to dilute down to that state.

Despite it all, something subtle shifts between my neurons. Paranoia. It comes to life then and there, without my consent. The insidious trickle seeps through the cracks of my mind, curates a playlist of clips and fragments of memories and thought that play over and over and over.

"You down for Peking later? I have a quarter I'll split with you guys." Sam leans back and snatches the cigarette out from between my lips. "I'll even be a gentleman and roll for you."

God, he's laying it on a little thick, huh?

The acrid air stings under my jacket. It's crisp outside despite the sun, the sidewalks still wet from the day before. The curbs are all full of trash-slush, the road lines faded away down to hardly anything at all. I step into the empty street and kick a can out of the water. Sam frowns when dirt-water flicks over the ends of his boots.

"Bet. We'll meet you there. Don't flake."

I can hear Val's patented giggle even from here. He hangs up the phone, turning to face me while pressing the filter to his lips.

"What's your deal?" Smoke coils around his face, stray strands of hair falling out from where it's tied up on his head. "I'm trying to get laid and you're bumming me out."

My face cringes up without meaning to. His frown deepens.

"You're not getting laid at my place."

"Our place. Don't forget, bitch." The cigarette drops to the concrete, and he snuffs it out with the tip of his boot. "Trust me, I'm not super stoked on hearing you get your back blown out by a thirty-year-old history teacher. Or vice-versa. To each their own. I'm not too sure how all of... that works."

"Shut the fuck up." There's venom behind it, and Sam looks less than pleased. I steel myself, take a breath. He's not the reason I'm in a shit mood right now. "Sorry. I just- we didn't do anything. I haven't heard from him."

His face flattens back out. The edges of his eyes are soft, and he stabs his tongue behind his lip, fucks with one of the rings. He looks like he's trying to find the right words to say, and ultimately failing.

"Didn't leave a number?"

I laugh despite myself.

"Can you believe that?" Sarcasm drips off my words, and Sam's lips crease into a grin.

He steps off the curb, kicks the same can into the street as a car passes. The tire hits it, smashing it flat against asphalt.

"Well, in brighter news, tomorrow's Friday." I fish my vape out of my pocket, because I'm anything if not a fiend. "Two paychecks says he comes in thirty minutes to close."

I toss it his way, and he catches it against his chest.

"Whatever."

I'm not super confident that Ed will come in tomorrow. The week of silence has worn me thin. Still, the thought of it has anxiety pricking at my fingertips. My palms buzz, and I rub them down the side of my pants in attempt to wear the feeling off. It doesn't work.

"Val's meeting us at yours." He hits my vape, blows smoke through his nose. "Ours. You sure you're cool with that?"

I shrug, catch my vape out of the air when he tosses it.

"Better than being alone. My neighborhoods kind of sketch."

"Hell yeah it is. I wasn't gonna say anything. Has anyone ever gotten broken into before? At your complex?"

I shake my head, press the plastic to my lips. "Not that I know of." My mind reels back, tries to comb through what I can remember from the three years I've lived there. Only one thing comes to mind. "People like to fuck with the laundry, though."

Val drinks, but she doesn't smoke. She drinks and laughs and shoves a CD into the radio by the coffee machine. Neither me nor Sam know any of the songs, but she sings and spins and loses at Texas Hold'em. We keep having to reteach her the rules, and Sam stays craned over her shoulder, telling her when to fold or when to shove more soy-sauce packets into the little betting pot we've created, and somehow she still continues to go broke.

"I think I'm getting it."

"You're definitely not." He says against her cheek.

It's gross.

Eventually she passes out on the couch, and Sam and I finish the rest of the food on my bed. He pulls a baggie out of his pocket, starts licking his fingers and plucking at a little box of wrapping papers, and I swat his hands away.

"I have a pipe."

"You have a pipe?"

"Yeah." I lean back to my bedside drawer. "I haven't used it in like, forever."

Sam shrugs. "Fuck it."

We both inhale so much lint and dust that our lungs practically collapse on themselves.

"Maybe we should've ran that shit under some water."

"Can you clean 'em like that?"

"Fuck if I know."

I fall back on the bed, kicking empty take-out boxes onto the floor, and let myself deflate. My limbs grow heavy, chest feeling flat and malleable. Sam deflates down beside me, shaking the bed as he falls back. The silence settles in, nice and soft, and rain begins to drum on the windows.

"I actually really like Val."

"Okay." I don't feel like talking. Apparently Sam does.

"You gotta fire escape in here?"

"Yeah." I lift a lazy hand to the corner of the room, and Sam's eyes half-heartedly follow. "Right there."

"Sick." He drops his head back down. "We should get some plants. Val likes cactuses and stuff."

"Go to bed, man."

He hums. "Alright."

Sleep takes us in it's gentle embrace. Rain comes full force over the building, blanketing the apartment in a quiet buzz. Through the curtainless windows, the moon glitters over the wet world outside.

There's a dead bird in the alley doorway when they get to work. Sam kicks it out of the way, and it smacks against the brick wall.

"Oh, shit. It's a bat."

It's membranous wings flatten out over the concrete, veiny and lifeless.

"We get bats around here?"

"Sure. I guess."

The door scoops it's small body out of the way when we step inside.

Work is surprisingly busy today. The shift feels like it's moving in fast forward, people pouring in and out. The boss sticks Sam on the register, because despite being a shithead, his callous indifference works in our favor.

"This isn't a fucking auction, that's the price. Your coupon doesn't mean shit to me."

He already has the over half the price log memorized, and cuts the line down quickly with ease. The boss holes up in the breakroom, prying out his laptop and connecting it to the cameras. He obsesses over it for a majority of the day, and everything else gets put on the back burner.

"Walk the aisles, watch their asses. Kick every drophead out on sight, and if you have a problem, come tag me in."

So I walk the aisles, I watch their asses. Apparently someone mentioned us in an article in the Gazette. News broke out about Tim Savage, who is not only a sports-stock analyst, but the son of the current Chief of Police. This revelation has the boss nothing less than thrilled, he's practically giddy. Ed is his new superhero. He could print his weaselly-little face onto a T-shirt and wear it around the store.

They didn't make mention of me or my name in the article, just "victim." Sam and I read it off of his cracked phone screen on the curb during a smoke break, the rain a drizzling haze around us. He swipes the mist of his screen, holds it back out for me to see.

Charges were pressed by the county after a short investigation. Video-footage showed Savage walking behind the counter of the store and cornering the cashier before another customer used a bat kept by the employer to prevent the attack. Another report was made earlier in the month regarding an incident that occurred outside the store. The trial is set to happen later next year, depending on Savage's medical status. There are no current statements from Chief of Police, Pete Savage.

"Fucking weak, man." Sam puts out his cigarette on the sole of his boot. "They totally Watergated it. I had no idea, the cops didn't say shit when they came in. There's no fucking way they didn't know."

"I don't care." I lean forward, drive my face into my palms. I'm a fucking roadside attraction. What a great end to the week. "Fuck that guy. Fuck all these people, too."

"I don't think anyone knows it's you." He runs a palm up my back despite it, an odd attempt at comfort. Maybe he is too sweet. "No offence, but you don't look like the type most public officials try to assault."

It's more reassuring than he knows.

We go back inside, bracing ourselves for the eye of the storm. The boss looks overwhelmed behind the counter, and his eyes dart to us as soon as we step through the door.

"You want blue-ray, you go to a fuckin' Redbox. This is a resale store, that doesn't sound like my problem, pal. SAM. GET OVER HERE."

In the later hours of the shift, the crowd seems to expand with the number of people getting off of work. Sam is right, most of them don't even give me a second glance as they dart through the aisles, plucking apart sales racks and jabbing things all out of place. The same cute, chubby girl from a few weeks ago smiles at me from the couch as I pass, a manga clasped between her manicured hands, and she looks a little bewildered by all the fuss. She's probably the only one who would really know, considering she's an actual regular, and that's even if she reads the news. Most people don't.

I turn down an aisle, swing past two men wearing ties and slacks fingering through a stack of ancient porn tapes. They're laughing amongst themselves, suit jackets slung over their shoulders, hair slicked back on their heads. They could be my age, or they could be ten years older. It's hard to tell with types like them. 

Business types. I try not to let my gaze linger. Out of their suits, they could sport a thundercats shirt and unkempt, thin, rectangular glasses. 

I raise my head when their laughter dies an aisle away, and my feet cement to the carpet. Air traps itself tightly in my chest, shuttering shut with whimpering bronchioles. 

It's Ed. 

He's in the far back corner of the store, staring downwards at a CD display. The long, mousy strands of his hair strip over his glasses, unwashed and askew. From the side, his profile is jagged and etched out into the loose lighting of the back of the store. The tactical coat he's wearing is a new shade of green, like it's been recently purchased, bulky and stiff in the creases. 

Hesitation cripples the innate sort of instinct I feel to pull into his orbit, like a moon caught in his gravity. I haven't spoken to him in a week, but then again, I didn't speak to him a week before that. The way we left things, the soft pads of his fingers carved into the hollows of my cheeks, has my the nape of my neck buzzing. Under my skin is like the outside rain, hazy and glowing and surreal. 

The train runs past somewhere overhead, shaking the building, and lights flicker from it's thundering surge. The room is too loud, conversation, performative laughs, the shuffle of too many feet. 

He looks like a lucid dream. Maybe he is. 

I round the edge of the aisle, knowing what it is before I even step in. I don't like coming back here, don't even like that the section exists, but it makes sales regardless. The splatter film aisle feels like a tomb in itself, and I enclose the two of us in it's mausoleum as I approach him. 

"What are you doing?" Is the first question I ask, because I'm not sure if I can manage any other. I have too many unspoken words, too many thoughts jammed into the structure of my skull. To say them out loud would be my own damnation and pension in one.

"Desensitizing." He answers like a prayer. He doesn't look up when he speaks. A knuckle pops in the loose hand hanging at his side. 

His voice, usually full of over-punctuated consonants and gaping vowels, is as lulled as cursive. Something about him feels disjointed. Maybe I feel disjointed myself. The red-splashed covers of VHS tapes glare up at me. 

"Are you okay?" Someone an aisle away is laughing over me. I can hardly hear myself in my own skull, between my own ears.

"I am 20,390 dollars in debt."

At first, I'm not sure I've heard him correctly. He seems to be having a conversation without me being involved. My chest aches vacantly, like something should be there but isn't.

"What are you-"

"I wanted to be an engineer." 

At long last, he looks up. 

I try not to flinch, I truly do. It's like the reflex is so ingrained into my being that I just can't help it. When he turns his head to the side, air strips down the back of my throat so tightly it stings. Like the sandpaper in my lungs, his eyes grind over me. The pupils of them are like flecked obsidian, wide like the moon. If I had to find a word to describe them, it would be feral. 

"I wanted to be an engineer. I, at one point in time, was naïve enough to have aspirations. I wanted to be an engineer, but worse than that, I believed myself to be capable of becoming one. Through the piss and garbage of the orphanage gutters at the bottom of this crumbling city, I had allowed myself to lean into whimsy." 

He looks so fervently into the depth of my being that I can't even think about pulling away. My palms grow clammy, heat pricks at my collar.

"In article seven of Renewal, they orchestrate the re-organization of the foster care system within Gotham, covering topics such as group homes, funding, and extended foster care. There would be resources, article seven claimed. We would have resources. Those of us no longer young enough to be considered children of the system would have the same opportunities as every other Gothamite elite."

I can't breathe. My airpipe shuts down completely. Is he closer now? Has he moved? Another train passes, another surge, another staccato of flickering lights. A woman laughs shrilly from the front of the store.

We are a footfall apart. We are nothing and no one in the splatter film section at the back of the store where the lights barely reach. 

We we we. 

Ed doesn't believe in coincidence. 

"I don't- why are you telling me this?"

His fingers grace the ends of my own with a touch divined by something I wouldn't consider to be god. Whatever is fabricating the web of our universe, drawing our strings to become entangled in one another, is nothing less than an undefined agent of chaos. Something tells me at this point, that it might be Ed himself. There is no enigma. There is no riddle. I blink through the glass, and my reflection blinks back.

When he sighs, it's as if the world around us breathes with him. The pain that breaks into his expression is not that of remorse, like a mourning for what has been loss or what could have been. It's the pain that comes with blisters aged into callouses, the pain that comes with a hunger that never recedes. His mouth trembles with rehearsed words that can't be found. In the midst of the entropy filling this crowded room, we cease to exist. It's almost purposeful the way not a single eye in the room happens to fall in our direction. 

"Why did you never give your mixed CD to the person who lived in Dorm 108?"

An arrow through the chest, his words break across me like with the same force as a slap to the face. I tumble out a string of thoughtless noise, caution dripping off my lips. Something feels different. Something feels dangerous. 

He tilts his head closer. I still haven't taken a breath. The corners of my vision filter into a comfortable buzz. 

"Halloween is Tuesday." His breath says against the bridge of my nose. "I'd like to see you. After your shift."

I swallow the nothingness rising at the back of my throat. My mind is a frothing pit of ceramic handles hooped through my fingers, the sound of a bat breaking against a skull, fingernails brushing the cusp of my jaw, does that make me a masochist?

I'd like to see him too. 

"Yeah, okay. Yeah." My voice sounds distant, as if it's coming from two rooms away. I hardly know who is speaking until the words have already hit the crawlspace of air between us. 

When he kisses me, it's as if it is a stolen thing. I've never been kissed the way Ed kisses me in midst of the crowded store, like we exist on the pinnacle of the center of the universe. 

He lips press to mine so quick and stumbled that our teeth clack against one another, canines cutting into my upper lip, a hand coming to cradle my cheek more like a grasp than a touch. I open myself up into him, our shirts brushing, his thumb scraping the bag under my eye. His tongue runs over the backs of my teeth, like there's something to find, something to need there. The two businessmen in the porn section discuss categories, a child runs somewhere they shouldn't be, Sam's tense voice carries over the chaos from the front of the store. We are inexistant. We are as small as a pinpoint in the crux of creation. 

He pulls apart from me, the spit on his lips pink from the nick in the edge of my lip. My mouth tastes like skin and copper. His face is broken. Something is wrong. 

I kiss him again, lean forward and press a peck into the corner of his mouth like he just might escape me, like I might never find the chance to again. He straightens himself under the clinical fluorescent lights. 

"I'll find you. Tuesday." 

"Okay." 

Our voices are whispers in the dark. 

I don't move from the aisle until he's fully disappeared into the madness of people flocked here special for me. As he sifts into their ever throbbing forms, its as if he is swallowed whole, invisible in the mass of suit jackets and straightened hair. 

Some itches inside of me, somewhere I can't reach, somewhere I can't see. It scrapes the backs of my ribs with pain like a forced breath. Like I've been running and running and my lungs have finally caught up with me. I hate this. I hate these people. I hate this fucking train. 

It trembles the building all over again, running more tonight than I've ever heard it, and blood dribbles down from my lip to my chin. I swipe at it with the back of my hand, and it kisses my knuckles in pink. 

I'll find you. Tuesday. 

Sam's voice cuts over the crowd. It's my name, he needs me at the register for some dumbass who is illiterate when it comes to price tags. 

He'll find me. 

Where?

Chapter Text

I couldn't afford to stay.

The hunk of a laptop collecting dust in the bottom drawer of my desk stares back at me. Underneath it are textbooks I always said I would take back and never did, thumb drives and external drives filled with clips of unfinished codes and programs I could never manage to make work.

I couldn't afford to stay, because halfway through my second term, Renewal revoked the grants given to me by their extended foster care act. My life was pulled apart from me in Dorm 102 on a Thursday afternoon in an email sent to me by my advisor informing me I could no longer afford the dorm room I had been staying in. My life in boxes, I had signed a lease to an apartment based on a lie.

Four years ago, I walked back into one of the only happy memories I've ever had from a foster family. There was too many of them, all lumped together under the same roof. The mother was soft-faced and cherub-like, with warmth in her gaze for me like a mother should have for her own children. She sent us two blocks away to pick up a movie, and Val tottered beside me as the eldest of the siblings that weren't ours walked us into the media store.

"Are you guys hiring?"

"No." The boss didn't have the patience to humor me. He was alone in the store, watching the news, flicking through cameras.

I swallowed down my pride and tried again.

"I lied on a lease and said I worked here."

He had glanced up from his monitor and given me a curt once-over. I'm not sure what he saw, but it was enough for one question. "They got washing machines there?"

I nodded.

"You're hired. Strip the couch covers once a week and wash'em. I'll add the cost to your paycheck."

Four years later, and I am 15,450 dollars in debt. Renewal revoked everything, even the year-and-a-half that came before my doomsday. I haven't payed a single cent back, because I can't afford to, because I probably never will be. It's why Val works two jobs to put herself through online classes, it's why Sam can't sleep at night, because he's up late selling stolen web domains and hacked ROMs.

I close the drawer. The band of my mask is too tight around my head.

Sam shuffles into the room, quite literally. His costume drags on the floor behind him, keeps getting caught up on his boots.

"You almost look scarier than normal."

I frown. "I usually look scary?"

The shrug that lolls over his shoulders gets lost in the swarm of black fabric draped over his small frame. "One could say you have a severe case of RBF."

"Maybe I'll look less scary, then."

I drag the mask down, and shove him out the front door.

The sidewalks are already a throbbing conglomerate of Gotham's finest, misguided youth, half-drunk and high from the night before and parading around between cars in the streets like the cars themselves have the audacity to be there. Except, seventy-five percent of them are dressed as Euphoria cheerleaders, and the other twenty-five percent are wearing tacky, halloween-store masks. Sam and I fall into the later.

His Ghostface mask is perched atop his head, the white plastic collecting a wet sheen from the hazy mist outside, and he grunts at me as he pulls out a cigarette. I lean forward to cup my hands around it, and someone shoulders between us smelling like vomit and grape Swishers. Sam cuts his eyes back behind him, and I grab his shoulder to prevent any sort of unnecessary skirmish.

"Fucking prick," He shoots under his breath, unlit cigarette still dangling off his lips. I cup my hands around it, and he flicks his lighter once, twice.

"Can you see under that?"

I shake my head, and a swarm of Men in Black pass us by, flashing laser pointers over the buildings. "I can't fit my glasses underneath."

"That's a horrible idea."

"I'm trying to be festive."

I'm wearing a Jason Voorhees mask. It's Val's from last year, who carried a real machete down 7th street whilst bar-hopping. One can only imagine how well that went.

The cigarette catches. His breath steeps in, and the end embers prettily. The block ebbs with life. We cut through a group of founding fathers and begin the trek to work.

There's another dead bat in the alleyway. We only know it's new because it's wiry mass is lumped together with the first one. Sam's button nose crinkles.

"That's... an odd coincidence."

I don't believe in coincidence.

My lips brush the inner plastic of the mask as my frown curls. He nudges them out of our way and we pass in through the breakroom door.

The boss is aflutter as soon as we step in. He's dressed like Dracula from the Bronx. His hair has more grease in it than a McDonalds.

"Get your ass in here, I should fire you. The both of ya. You're-" He flicks his red-shimmered cape back and pops up his wrist-watch. "You're four minutes late. The both of ya. Get your ass in here."

People come in almost as soon as we unlock the doors, which is typical for Halloween here. I squint my eyes and scrawl down receipts until Sam shoves me out of the way with a sigh. Regulars can't seem to decide if they like him or hate him, but I have noticed a few returning highschool girls with thick, black eyeliner and too many holes in their ears coming in to buy mixtapes and loiter in the lounge. I mentally dub them as his fanclub, but I think he'd probably gag if I mentioned this observation to him.

One of them comes up to the counter now, dressed as goth Helga from Hey Arnold and clutching three CD's and one of the two copies of Caged Virgin I restocked almost a month-and-a-half ago. Sam flips up his mask when she sets them down against the laminate, and she practically swoons. The piercings on his brows upturn with a cringe.

"You watch this shit? What are you, like, fourteen?" She makes a nervous noise while repositioning her feet, and Sam turns his head to me to hold the title up in the air. "Can we like, legally sell this to her?"

I slide off of the stool, grabbing the case and flipping it over. Usually certain films have a color-coded sticker when we're not allowed to sell them to minors, but I can't tell you the last time me or the boss actually remembered to go through and label them.

Lucky for me, there's a bright yellow sticker slapped across the back corner, and I draw my attention to the edgy teenager in front of me.

"Do you have an ID?"

She fidgets with her hands and opens her plum-painted mouth just to re-close it.

"I don't-" Behind her the door opens, the ringing cowbell causing her words the catch on her tongue. She clears her throat and tries again. "I don't have it with me."

I'm about to tell her the bad news when Sam's elbow drives so deep into my ribcage that I almost drop everything to punch a hole through his head. When I snap my own to no-doubt call him something inappropriate to say in front of a fourteen-year-old, I follow his gaze across the room.

A hunched head, shoulders buried in faded green. The lumped form darts for the back. My heart clinches tight into a fist, fingernails digging into my aortas. I open my mouth, close it, blink my gaze between the counter and the stretch of store. Sam clears his throat and shoves me out of the way.

"Listen, you can't buy this shit. Elmo in Grouchland on VHS is in aisle eight."

She looks like she's about to cry. I'm hardly paying attention.

My throat has tightened with a pain that hurts kindly, my brain skipping through reality like clipped film. Like moments that should be there aren't, replaced with gritty footage of rainy walks and dark doorways. Sam gives me one last good shove that has my side catching on the side of the laminate as I stagger out from behind the counter. He makes a pointed face at me. I'm still not truly digesting it.

I'll find you.

I wonder out into the store.

I drift through between the aisles with light feet, with light breath, like I could flutter into the ceiling if I truly wanted to. My steps are grounding, solid and real, breath sifting past my lips and trapping moisture against the plastic of the mask. Nervous hands pull stray bangs behind my ears, fuss with the seam on the outer thigh of my jeans. A glare reflected off of clear framed glasses, the scoop of a mossy-green hood over a head. With bated breath, I step into the Historical non-fiction aisle. He turns his head.

My body launches into stillness, like a deer trapped in the center of a highway.

At the end of the section, picking through titles, glaring foreignly at me through the smudged lenses of a copy-paste set of clear-framed glasses, is a man I've never seen before. My breath halts in my lungs. He blinks from under the shadows casted by his hood.

"Hello." He says simply. The inflection in his voice is daunting. I manage a meager step back.

"Sorry," Words find me. I shake my head for no reason at all. "Sorry, I- do you need help finding anything?"

He presses a title back a little too quickly, like I've caught him in some sort of act. He grips a stack of books he's already holding tighter to the chest of his coat. There's a splatter film there between the binds. "No, I don't."

My presence isn't wanted here, in this aisle, with this man. His round, moon-pan eyes look alien behind the frames of his glasses.

I don't believe in coincidence.

I escape out of the aisle.

My brain shuts itself out of this channel of reality for the remainder of the shift. People come in, buy some stupid movie, swarm out. The train passes. Sam gripes at customers. The boss gripes over the phone about the bugging cameras, accent tripping all over the plastic fangs in his mouth.

I check the price log, jot down receipts, ask "Do you want this gift wrapped?" Rinse and repeat. It's not me saying it through, not me going through the motions. It's an autopilot, one slotted into place as Sam eyed down the hooded man across the counter from us. He turned around as he left, mouthed "He's your type," as another fanclub member wearing too many fishnets stepped into line behind him.

A coincidence. One after the other. Coincidence Coincidence Coincidence. Like they're falling from the sky, pennies cracking the concrete. Cracks split through my mind, fracking my lobes and creating space for doubt. Am I fucking loosing it? Or is there something tangible here in all this loose change?

Every Friday. Thirty minutes from closing. The bats in the alleyway, the scrape of static on the phone, the cowbell that didn't ring.

"The store cameras aren't connected to a local cloud, there's no wireless internet connection nor a ethernet one."

I cut my head behind me, and breath hurtles onto my tongue like I might just vomit it out. My bosses voice leaks out from the breakroom, careening over the jumble of voices and footfalls.

"Factory settings? You can't send someone? I'm not about to fuck with the settings, I can hardly operate my Roku remote."

I never heard the cowbell ring.

I yank my head back to the stupid-fucking Ghostbuster clock mounted on the wall. Sam cuts his gaze to me from where he's begrudgingly checking out fishnet-girl and her three copies of Loveless manga.

"You good?"

"Stellar." We have forty-six minutes until close. I pull myself away from the counter, pressing into the breakroom with purpose.

"You busy?"

The boss drops the phone to his chest, the spiral cord stretching over his crisp collar. His face looks like cardiac arrest. "Yeah, I'm fucking busy. What? What do you want?"

"Can we leave early? It's Halloween. We're wasting our youth away in here."

"Leave? Early?" His face is like straight out of a MAD magazine. He's so exasperated at the gall of the question that he can't even choose the correct expression for it. "I should fire you. Are you an idiot? Maybe I should give you a raise, too, yeah?"

"I know how to adjust the settings on the CCTV."

"The huh?"

"The cameras. The store cameras."

He slams the phone back onto the receiver with a sigh like wind slicing through a canyon. When he straightens himself out, a flat frown painted over his lips, eyes tired and shoulders stressed across his apple of a body, it's hard to take him serious with all the Dracula vomited over him. I try my damndest to.

He makes a face like a father.

"Alright. Get the hell out of here before I change my mind." He lifts his hands and shoos me out of the doorway. "You shitheads better vacuum first. I'm not kidding. One minute late tomorrow and your fired. Both of ya."

He can't see the smile that bubbles easy onto my lips. I can see the one he tries to hide.

"Okay. Thank you."

I've never vacuumed so quickly in my entire life.

Val's hot pink nails glow bullets against the shot glass delicately clasps between her fingertips. I reach for it, the touch of God under this cathedral of light and sound, and press the rim to my lips. Like the barrel of a gun between my teeth, I shotgun it back. Liquor burns down my throat to where it settles in my stomach with a welcomed warmth. The room throbs. Sam's mouth is smeared Val's infra-red. His mask stings like a shard of moonlight under the ebbing blacklights.

We've been skin against denim and nylon and skin again to the beat of pulsing synth and thundering bass for close to two hours now. I hardly remember walking in, hardly remember the rush of swelling anxiety that crept through my bones at the thought of actually furthering into the belly of Iceberg. Val was to the moon when we called her from the sidewalk, temporarily unemployed and planless. The bouncers took one look at the two of us and croaked out laughs like crows. Val elbowed past them, a candied princess all neon pinks and reds, and dragged us inside with a cheshire smile.

I'm guessing working at Iceberg isn't really working when it's Halloween. That doesn't stop her from dancing on Sam like he's paying her for it. We're so packed in against one another that it's almost hard not to.

Sam laughs when his hair brushes mine, Val's breath kindling on my neck, sweat pricking at my collar. I've haven't been this drunk since Dorm 108, never been somewhere so fervently alive. I've been taking anything handed to me, inhaling, swallowing whole. Everything is buzzing and soft and tangible. I feel afloat in this sea of people. I'm logged out. Off map. Uncharted.

A damp palm finds mine, and another runs over my shoulder from behind.

"Table," Sam says like a distant dream into the shell of my ear. He tugs and the conglomerate of the three of us move.

The living, breathing mass of people part through limbs and hips to allow us through. Touches brush over me, the fabric on my shirt sleeves, the thighs of my jeans, subconscious and unthought. Everyone is just moving to move, breathing to breathe, existing to exist. We inch through their collective consciousness.

Sam holds onto my hand like an anchor, his tiny form pushing his chin up over the crowd, maneuvering us valiantly. Val laughs behind me, her shrill giggle unmistakable through all the noise, and I laugh too. It just feels all too surreal.

"Are you having fun?" She slurs as she tugs herself closer into my back.

I am, despite myself. I haven't had a singular cohesive thought since I've passed through the front doors, my mind forcibly pushing aside every inhibition in preference of reactionary indulgence. Dionysian, the world outside and all of it's coincidences cease to exist in the realm of Iceberg and it's fruity drinks, lingering touches, and thrumming music. I've never laughed so loudly, so unafraid of who might be around to hear it.

I turn my head over my shoulder, bangs all mussed about my forehead.

"Yeah, I've never-"

A jagged pillar of a person, unmoving and stonelike in the midst of entropy. I catch it in my peripheral far too late. Two fingers hook into the beltloop on the hip of my jeans, a palm flattening out on my ribs. I'm expunged from Val's soft breath on the back of my jaw, Sam's stern grip interlaced in my own. It all happens so fast I can barely blink it into existence.

And then, I'm alone.

I spin, eaten whole by the stomach of smeared, unknown bodies. The breath tumbling jaggedly from my mouth catches against the backs of my teeth. The lazy high behind my eyes sharpens into pinpoint pressure behind my lungs, spears daggers into my temples.

"Sam?" I press against people as leverage, a weak attempt at stabbing my head above the crowd. "Sam? Val!"

My voice is swallowed by the speakers. I suck in a breath that doesn't make it to my lungs, and it tastes like smoke and the sweet musk of sweat. Someone jabs an elbow into my chest.

"Fuck, christ." A caricature of Darth Maul cuts their spiked head to me. "Are you-"

"Where's the bathroom?" My tongue is to thick for my mouth.

They point, and I push through.

I can't decide if everything is moving in fast-forward, or slow-motion. The input received by my sight and touch and sound isn't siphoning to my brain quickly enough, and in consequence, the world becomes a stagnant blur. The surrealness of it all solidifies as almost nothingness. I move through nothingness to a set of stairs, taking me out of the pit of people, following a piercing red light leaking out at the end of an outstretched balcony through bleeding handfuls of costumed Gothamites. At the end of it all is a narrow hallway, the beacon of an exit light, the graffitied scrawl of "bathroom" and a slash of an arrow slapped against the wall. I pour into the dim hallway like a sanction, and my breath slowly meets me there. The concrete feels cool against my spine, the vibrations of the building rocking through my vertebrae.

I loll my head back, release a spout of breath against the inner plastic of my mask. When I close my eyes, the heartbeat of bass shaking the building shocks against my own. They thud in and out in tandem. My high crawls back in, the liquor in my veins slowly easing me back up to surface level. I no longer feel six feet under this building, stomped on by all these dancing limbs.

I curl my toes in my shoes to see if I can feel it. Suddenly, I become very aware of the empty shadows down the stretch of the hallway beside me. 

I have find Val and Sam. My hand flexes out at my side, the air cooling the damp skin of my palm. My senses trickle in, one by one, slowly and dreary. My phone is in my back pocket, but I doubt I would have heard or felt it ring. I shuffle my now operating hand to finger it out from the denim. 

I open my eyes, and a finger hooks under the bottom edge of my mask.

The gasp I release catches on the back of gloved knuckles. I have no time to think before my voice is swallowed by another mouth against my own.

The wet collision of lips crushing between teeth is branded onto the inner bone of my skull, that sharp hurt that tastes honeyed and metallic all at once is so brazenly heightened by the alcohol leaking into my brain that it steals me away completely. My brain auto-clips in the gaps, is familiar with the feeling before I even am capable of questioning it. Every part of me curls into it. It's like no one ever came before it.

Wet leather smears up my side, fumbles up the hem of my shirt so a hand can bury a thumb into my hip. I inhale through my nose at the feel of it, air meeting my skin like a kiss, the icy, wet strip of touch smeared up my side. Another gloved palm takes my wrist in a fist as I dig out handfuls of coat into my meager grip, a loose touch to reality. The texture is tight and bruising, like a steel hold into place, keeping me small and pressed into the wall there, a rat in a trap. Like I could escape if I wanted to, like I would escape if I could.

Every coincidence melts away. I hardly remember they even existed in the first place. A tongue runs over bottom lip, sloppy and unpracticed, raw and fumbled. I soak it in with a choked breath.

"I told you-" His eyes are closed behind the steam coating over his glasses lenses. He digs his forehead into my own, arched over me in the stretch of dark, and his sweat-dampened hair is swabbed around his head in tendrils. There's a scrawl of a smile on his lips, one I've never seen on him before. "I told you I'd find you. You weren't- I told you."

His words are spoken like it hurts them to hit the air between us, like the consonants are too angled in his throat, the vowels too whole to slip past his teeth. They hit the bridge of my nose in damp breaths. Copper laces my tongue for the second time in a week.

"I- I didn't-" 

I didn't want to see you.

I'm too drunk for this. I'm too high for this. I don't have the mental energy to pretend the things I like about Ed aren't glaringly caught in the web of an enigma I'm not smart enough to decipher.

"I'm scared." I say, a confession. 

We are nothing and no one in the dark cracks where the light can't reach.

His grip deepens, thumbprint bruises in the fat of my hip. His laugh is foxlike. His energy is high and venomous, and the alcohol numbing my fingertips staggers to understand. 

"I need you. You-" His tongue darts out to swipe at my spit on his lips. He opens is eyes, and they are gaping abysses behind his fogged lenses. "I need you. Don't be scared. You- you shouldn't be scared."

The hand on my wrist releases, and comes to caress my face. Wearily, I allow it, the touch to my cheek my eternal damnation. Our eyes pierce into one another in the dark as he swipes his thumb over my lip, drawing constellations there, connecting the dots between the nick from last week and the fresh cut on my upper lip.

There's something behind the frames of his glasses I can't see, something hiding under the layers of his tactical coat I don't understand. The reason another man in an Ed costume was loitering around in the store, how Ed knows more about the CCTV factory settings on the store cameras than my boss does, too many questions remaining unanswered in the space between us. 

I don't even know him. I'll never know him, not even now, pressed against him like this, his hand wondering further under the hems of my clothes. This is dangerous, it feels dangerous, and alarms ricochet off the walls of my skull back and forth until they drown out into nothing in the pit of my stomach. His thumb brushes further to dip a fraction under the waistband of my boxers, and my sternum sears heat down to my hips. 

Maybe I don't want answers. Maybe it isn't for me to figure out. Ignorance is nothing if not bliss. 

I allow my tongue, languid and wondering, to slip past my lips, connecting softly to the leather pad of his thumb. The sharp intake of breath that shifts through his nostrils is so violently gratifying I could die from it.

I angle my head further, and he presses against me, easing the digit in until the pressure of it is buried into the flat bed of my tongue. I close my lips around it and he sighs, sliding his trembling forehead down over my skin until it's digging into slope of my shoulder. His teeth find me there, softly gnawing a kiss into the cord of my neck. The feeling rakes down my spine with claws for nails.

Copper floods my mouth, salty and bitter in the hallows of my cheeks, in the creases of my gums. Realization shotgun blasts through the side of my skull. My teeth instinctively close down like a steel trap, and his own retaliate in a bite onto the column of my throat like an unholy damnation.

The blood, it's from him. It's on him. This isn't my blood in my mouth.

He pops his mouth off of my neck, and a palm finds my own.

"This way."

We trail down the rabbit hole of the charcoaled hallway, hand in bloodied hand. All thought abandons me as we head towards the bathroom.

Chapter Text

The crawlspace of the inside of a club bathroom stall is tattooed with scrawled numbers, slapped raw with chunky stickers, and glittered with empty plastic baggies and discarded droppers. They crunch under your feet, like little breaking bird bones under the soles of your shoes, and you feel them breaking more than you hear it, because the music is still so throbbing through the open bathroom doorway that your heart races to keep up its pace. Behind the flimsy and half broken stall door, the walls look ghastly and infernal under the red bulbs twisted off into every light fixture, turning the blood smeared over the two of us into ink, black tendrils tracing over jaws and slopes of our necks. There's a mirror on the wall behind the toilet, one fixtured in over the toilet tank reflecting residue of whatever was left un-snorted or un-packed. 

I've never once thought about what the texture of all these things might feel like, but then again, I never once thought I would pressed against any of them. If I had to describe the way the branded and scared walls might feel like against my skin, the chunky breaks in the wall tile and the chipping paint of various graffiti, I would probably say gritty. It feels gritty against the stripe of my skin where my shirt has rode up to my ribs, where a gloved hand is digging its grip with wondering fingers further upwards.

Trembling breath hits the crease of my throat where my hair has dampened and clung to the sides of my neck. I can feel anything and everything. My lazed gaze opens up to blink back at me from the stall mirror. I don't recognize the person in the reflection. 

A knee shoves between my thighs, keeping me effectively pinned and pressed against the cold tile of the wall, where my shoulders bear any other weight as I stretch my torso out, as two fingers shove the fabric of my shirt past my spit-shined lips and into the cage of my teeth. I clamp down, keep it in place, let my skin turn red under the lights. I'm effectively glowing under this mirage. Ed's dark form is a phantom. No part of him shines. His glasses frames suck in the light in a way that has them turning infrared, heat-seeking and leaching off the warmth between us. 

He plucks a glove off his hand the same time his teeth catch the skin of my chest. It hits the floor in another crunch of bird bones under our feet.

"I-I don't-" Bare fingers pluck apart my pants button, and cold air kisses the soft skin under my navel. His mouth travels across the base of my sternum. "I've haven't-"

My voice is eaten up by the fabric in my mouth, the swab of it still held up in place by the grit of my teeth. Ed licks up a stripe across the left side of my chest, meeting my collar bone in a kiss like rubber bullet. His face finally swarms up into mine in a shift of movement that has his knee grinding through the center of me, a violent sting of friction, and the noise it forces out of me hits over the flat of his nose. 

His teeth glow red in the tumble of laughter that pours out between us. He lifts a gloved hand to slowly pull the bottom hem of my shirt from my teeth, and I open my mouth further to allow him. 

"Do..." I hate that I can't make out his expression through the shadows cast over his face, through the dimly-lit haze of rubescent light. His voice lilts from a void. It makes the experience that much more unnerving. "Do you want to-"

"Yes." I practically gag out, practically choke the word out in a slur of my voice that doesn't sound quite like myself. "Yes, I just- I-I haven't done something like this. Before."

An understatement. For a shudder of a moment, I see a clip of my dormmates flushed skin, her coiled hair barely brushing her shoulders. It was late and drowsy and dreary and lazy under the moonlight looking in over us through the dorm window. Our voices were soft and questioning, unknowing and nervous. It feels wholly insignificant compared to this.

"That makes two of us," He hardly whispers, and collides his mouth back into my own. 

With two hands finding purchase over my hipbones, thumbs tucked into the limp waistband of my pants, he rolls me down over himself. The slice of a moan I release is swallowed down past his teeth, our mouths open at the close of one another, and he digs the pads of his thumbs into my skin in order to pull me down harder, a fraction quicker. 

Bare fingers brush the elastic band of my boxers, our lips parting with a bead of saliva, and I nod desperately, depravedly. He fumbles his hand over the round curve of my stomach, flattens his palm downwards until a jagged cry slips past my lips. He shushes me, curls his face closer, presses his fingers against me like a devout prayer. 

There are words under his breath I can't comprehend, my attention struck and spent and stretched to every corner of this grimy bathroom stall. My strained spine itches against the tile as I roll myself against his hand in a spasm of movement, a unfamiliar reflex, my eternal damnation. More words I can't understand, a droning whisper dragging me through this loose realm of consciousness. Fire rises from between my hips, smoke curling it's fingers between my ribs. A wave rises and falls, tide steady and beckoning. He answers it with another steep pressure, another curve of his own fingers. That gloved hand on my hip bleeds bruises into my skin. 

"Ed," I manage to choke. 

"-perfect, perfect, perfect-" He's saying steadily against the wet pane of my cheek, smeared into my hair and all the way down to the cusp of my ear. His lips trace the words out over my skin. 

He builds a pace, steadies his trembling hands, presses himself so close into me that we're practically one jumbled ebbing thing against bathroom wall. The waves grow steeper as they collide into me, my body wearily reacting without thought as I wax and wane against him, grinding my self downward and fucking myself into his hand. His shifts his touch, and a gloved hand comes to catch the breaking noise at my lips before it meets the air. 

Footfalls thrum through the world outside. Soft clips of kitten heels. My eyes shoot open as my body locks into place. 

Val. Fuck, fuck. Knowing her, she'll drop her head under every stall. 

I try to communicate this over the thundering base, try and will my eyes to spell it out to Ed in the sweat and steam between us. 

He presses two hooked fingers inside of me so quick I see stars. Lighting shoots up my spine and has my hips sputtering like they've lost their breath. I clench my teeth over a gloved finger to hold back the cry that rakes up the back of my throat. 

"Hello? Is someone here?" Her heels clack closer at the fumble of noise. Ed finally tilts his head upwards into the light. Damp strands of hair are slicked against his forehead, and the inky black blood has dried in a stretching smear over the edge of his mouth, the hollow of his right eye. It's speckled over his glasses lenses, dried in the hair framing his face. Under the glow of the red light, he looks inconceivable. A nightmare pressed against my skin. 

He wets his lips with the end of his tongue, and pulls his touch out of me just to press it back in. And again. And again. I bite into him with a pension, and bury my face into the front of his coat. Internally, an edge draws near. 

"Occupied," He says so evenly that it sounds like a completely different person. I've never heard him speak so clearly.

If it was Sam, he'd immediately clock it. In the two days he's spent living out of my livingroom, he's probably done over twelve admittedly accurate impersonations of Ed and his hunched shoulders while we brush our teeth, or lounge on the couch, or water the new plants on the fire escape. 

But it's not Sam, it's Val, and she's never come close enough to the man currently procuring my detonation inside this fucking bathroom stall to know. 

"Fuck- I, uh. Sorry, sorry," She clacks out of the bathroom. 

When the harrowing synth overtakes the sound and the solace of the bathroom filter back in, I release his hand to gasp in breaths like sandpaper against my lungs. The front of my coat grows damp with beaded tears at the corners of my eyes, the smeared spit swiped over my chin. He doesn't stop, nothing fazing his pace, and I loll my head back to the bathroom wall with a thunk. 

There are earthquakes between my hips, the unholy pension of an unfolding disaster, the inevitable aftermath of hurricanes and eruptions and wildfires. My breath tumbles in and out of my mouth, scrapes into my lungs. I am slowly decomposing under his touch. 

"I'm gonna come," I spit out. 

Ed's glasses flicker red-hot glares under the light. Coat sleeve pressed up to his elbow, the corded veins under his skin flex down the arm ending off past the waistband of my boxers. The noise that sputters past his lips is a coyote laugh, and it ricochets off the walls of my mind. 

"Christ, please," He pants, shifts me up his hips until I'm fully stretched out against the wall. That gloved hand releases its bruising grip from hip, flattens out to run up my stomach, up my chest. He shoves the bottom hem of my shirt to my collarbone, exposes me out to the air again. His joints are quaking, his face is broken. It's overwhelming. "You're perfect, you're perfect-"

I detonate. 

Leather-covered fingers shove off into my mouth to catch my teeth before they have the opportunity to clamp shut, forcing every damning sound into the air. Like a lunar eclipse, my conscious flickers in and out of this realm of reality, heat so scalding it stings like I'm connected to a live circuit catching my bones, racketing between my hips just to receded and shock to life all over again. He doesn't stop, he doesn't stop, he just keeps working me until it's so fervently overwhelming that I can hardly catch my breath, I can hardly form a thought. 

"Ed," I say like a sob. Everything is redredred. Behind my eyelids, flashing like fire alarms in every corner of my skull. That live-circuit catches me in it's web all over again. I am helpless stuck in its tendrils. 

Finally, his hand relaxes. The absence of touch that trickles in as he draw his hand out has me groaning, has a foreign pain like a worn muscle filtering in from the insides of my thighs and out. It blossoms kindly. 

"Open up," I can hardly hear through the blood pulsing behind my ears. Mindlessly, I relax my jaw, and he draws his hand out slowly. When he lifts the other, the wetness of his fingers glittering under the red light, I watch without a shred of thought as he draws them to my mouth. Softly, slowly, he presses the pads of them against my tongue. I let him, let the taste settle in, let my mouth ache shut. The moan that eases past his lips cuts through the sound like a thousand jingling bells in the depraved corners of my brain sounds like Christmas. I could come again from that alone. 

I hollow out my cheeks, worm my tongue over the velvet of his skin. He makes a sound like he's crying, like he could cry. 

My head finds me as he draws his hand away, as the disheveled hem of my shirt falls down past my ribs. We sit for a moment, breath catching in our lungs, the rise and fall of our chests the only movement between us. 

My voice is distant and raw in my throat. 

"Do you- can I take care of-"

"No, no, you don't have to. You-" The timbre of his voice is so gravely and baritone that I'm taken back for a clip of a second. His bare hand finds mine, and he leans back, shoves up the hem of his own shirt. My heart sputters in my chest. 

He pushes my hand past the waistband of his pants, his boxers, and presses it against himself. It's a complete first for me, and with my pulse in my throat, I slowly wrap my grip around him. 

Holy shit. He- he already came. 

It glides between my fingers, clings to my palm. I take him in a loose and testing grip, swipe my thumb over the slick head of his dick. He hisses, like it might hurt. When I pull my hand back out, knuckles brushing the light scruff that runs up an inch or two above his navel, my hand is a mirror of his own from before, wet skin kissed by the glow of the light. 

I swallow the nothingness rising up in the back of my throat. My entire stomach lurches to my chest. 

"Open up." 

For a fraction of a heartbeat, my consciousness coils in on itself, cringes at the words I've muttered out between us. The abysses of his eyes blink at me from behind his ignited lenses. But when he leans down, lips parting, the backs of his bottom teeth meeting me eye-level before his tongue inches out slowly, something harrowing and irredeemable slots into place in my mind. 

The pads of my middle fingers find purchase over the flat of his tongue, and I presses them in further. His eyes flutter shut, wet lashes catching the light. He hallows his cheeks, and I let myself succumb to him. The image burns into me, tattoos into my soul. He closes his eyes, hallows his cheeks, and a throb clips through my from where his knee is still connected to me between my thighs. 

"Jesus Christ," I barely manage. 

The world seems to tilt off axis. Something innate has altered the fundamental foundation of my existence. 

I slip my hand from his mouth. He straightens out against me. 

"We should go," He cautions. 

Something in me wants to spit no. 

Instead, I say, "Okay."

When he kisses me, I taste him on my tongue. Our reflections cradle one another in the mirror like art. 

-

Sam presses the damp rag against my temple and smears the fabric down softly. It comes back stained pink. Without a word, he runs it down the slope of my shoulder. 

I heave more nothingness into the toilet bowl. Every bit of substance I had left in me is now sprayed over the side of a cab door. Sam had to venmo the driver an extra twenty bucks, but he complain. There's a sincerity in his eyes that hasn't faded since we left Iceberg thirty minutes ago. It's hard for me to look and see it there. 

The skin of my cheek melts against the cool porcelain of the toilet seat. The fever under my skin hasn't receded since I left the bathroom, since I tumbled headfirst into Sam in the midnight hallway. We were a collision of tangled limbs and frantic yelps. 

"What the fuck? What the fuck? Holy shit, oh my god," He sputtered, hands gripping my forearms like I could have slipped away from him again. He was petting my hair back, wild eyes raking over my face. "You're- oh my fucking god, VAL! VAL! Is this- is this blood? Are you fucking bleeding?"

For a moment, I panicked. I darted my head behind me only to find I was alone, as if I had been the entire time. A fever dream, a nightmare. I looked back at Sam and our faces were mirrored. We had both lost our masks along the way. 

His clipped voice still teeters on in my mind as he lifts up the back of my long sleeve. His breath winces in his nostrils. 

"Christ... a-are you okay?"

"What is it?"

"Your back is fucked to hell."

The cracked and jagged tile. A blush crawls my already heated skin. 

"I got-" A gag cautions in my throat. I swallow it down to the best of my ability. "Swear you'll take it to the grave."

Honest eyes find me in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. I avoid my own gaze. 

"Swear on my life."

I steel myself. It takes a bit more effort than what I had thought.

"I got laid. In the bathroom."

He blinks at me once. Twice. He doesn't so much as raise a pierced brow. 

"In the bathroom? At Iceberg?" He doesn't try and shadow the disbelief in his voice. I nod, and roll my head over the toilet seat to face him. 

"Yeah."

"You- Val checked the bathroom. She said-"

"Yeah." I can't help but crease into a weary smile at the thought of her kitten heels. "She, uh, she did."

Sam snorts. He swipes over his face with his palm, shoulders slouching for the first time since we reunited in the hallway, and laughs so honest and throaty it hurts. 

"The bathroom? That's... that's equal parts impressive and disgusting."

"It was disgusting."

"Val said there was a guy in the stall. In the women's bathroom. That was you?"

"That was me."

He looks exasperated. 

"Wow. wow." His face is finally relaxed, finally eased into a loose grin. The rings in his lips glitter under the bathroom light. "Man, who's gonna break it Joe DiMaggio this Friday? That's gonna be tough."

"Who the hell is Joe DiMaggio?"

His laugh fills the room, crinkles over his face.

"Ed! Edward, your cute, little stalker! God, he's gonna be heartbroken."

The little break of surprise that cracks through my face at the mention of his name is all too damning. I reply a fraction too late, stumble over my thoughts a millisecond too long. Sam's face explodes like a firework. 

"You're fucking lying."

"Stop-"

"You're lying! There's- there is no fucking way! Who the hell let him out of the retirement home?"

"I'm going to bed." 

Prying myself off of the toilet seat is a feat in itself. Sam watches me dumbfounded from the floor, his face split apart in a gaping grin that reaches from ear to ear.

"What the hell was his costume? Leatherface?" He tosses the damp rag through the door and it slaps against the back of my thigh. 

The room sways under my feet. I close my eyes and try my damndest to drown him out, flopping into my bed and stretching my limbs full starfish. 

"Will you take my shoes off?" I spill out over the pillow meekly. A shuffle of movement tumbles out somewhere behind the me, the flick of a lightswitch. Soft foot falls pad out to the bed. 

"Only if you let me sleep in here." A hand reaches my ankle, plucks off my left shoe to discard it to the floor. I twist my head, and the analogue clock reads 2:37 AM. Jesus Christ. Looks like we're getting fired. 

"What's wrong with your bed?"

"I get freaked out." My right shoes takes a little more work. The laces get tangled together. "There are too many windows in there."

"There are just as many windows in here."

"Yeah, but if I get murdered, at least I won't be alone."

His form flops down onto the bed beside me, has the entire thing shaking and clacking against the wall. My head swarms. I release a jagged groan. 

"Don't move so much."

"My bad."

"We're gonna get fired."

Sam's cut laugh is stifled by the comforter.

"No we aren't." He says softly, voice lost in the streetlights pouring through the window panes. He rolls over, his breath falling against my hair. "He likes us too much."

Sleep comes like a thief to steal us away. 

-

At approximately 7:28 AM, the landline shrieks us awake. 

Sam jolts to life before cradling his head, and he snaps the phone off the receiver on the nightstand like a rattlesnake. 

"What?" He says, voice cracked and full of sleep. 

Something solemn trickles down over his eyes. 

"Yeah, okay. I'll tell them. Thanks." He drops the phone down and struggles upright in the bed. "Turn the news on."

I clamber into lucidness, and crawl out of bed to flick on the CRT television. 

The store is closed for the day. In fact, everything is. A city-wide shutdown. Hungover and greasy from sleep, we sit on the edge of the bed and watch pixels filter in through the static on the screen. 

A series of images, each one more ensanguined than the next. Don Mitchell bleeding out the cracks of a duct tape sarcophagus. Pretty slashes of blood over hardwood, fingerpaintings like scars over the walls. Spatters on newspapers layered with scotch tape, pools curling around the wooden legs of a chair. His body is gimp and hollow of life in his seat.

A splatter film. Gore-porn. Desensitizing. My stomach hallows in on itself.

The picture flashes out, and a woman with pressed hair and a stab of pink for lips looks sternly at us through the screen.

"-In through the skylight. Reports are saying the cause of death is multiple bludgeon wounds through the back of the head. The weapon used has yet to be found, and the overall lack of forensic evidence has said to have dumbfounded local investigators. The murder itself took place last night at approximately nine o'clock, and resulted in a skyrocketing in the polls for opposing mayoral candidate, Bella Real."

Sam's gaze is hot on the side of my face. My chest constricts so tight its hard to believe there's actually any air in the room to begin with. My eyes itch from the way I'm staring into the screen. I force myself to blink them, and the sting aches to the back of my brain.

Nine o'clock. Nine o'clock.

That blood in my mouth wasn't my own. The taste of copper rises like bile on the back of my tongue.

I only make it to the side of the bathroom threshold before heaving out nothingness over the tile. 

Chapter Text

Sam is a ghost. 

He haunts the cheap, particle-board desk pressed into the corner of the living room, cans and mugs dripping over the edges, cables tangled around the legs leading up to a bulky home-built computer, double monitors. One stretches out vertically in front of him, lengths of code splayed out over the screen, and another plays some youtube, breakcore playlist at full volume through his clunky headset. 

The dim white glow of the monitors is phantom-like on his skin. He's been basking in it for about four hours now. I set a fresh mug of tea on the edge of the desk next to a half-eaten pack of twizzlers. 

"Coffee?"

"Tea. It's mocha-mint."

The keyboard rattles along with the rain. He hums. 

"I'm a coffee guy."

My gut twists. 

"I'll put on a pot."

It's a dreary, moping Friday. The store has been closed the majority of the week. When we came back to work Thursday, the boss only made us stay for four, empty hours. A half shift. He sent us home with pay, because it was obvious no one would be coming in, and Sam and I can't really afford all the time off. He's going to the funeral today, the boss. His paint-slapped sign shone crimson under the stores fluorescent lights. NO MORE LIES, it's splattered scrawl read. I couldn't look at it. Sam could. He took one glance at the flat cardboard propped against the breakroom wall, and curved his gaze to catch my profile where he thought I might not notice it. 

He hasn't asked, and even if he did, I probably wouldn't answer. 

There was a smear of a handprint left in the humidity clinging to my window when I woke up this morning. I let the rain wash it away. 

The weekend is a messy blur of rain and nothingness. Val comes over both nights, bottles of wine tucked under her arms and hair somehow flat yet fuzzy from the rain. She paints Sam's nails in-between his incessant typing, relays work stories featuring gossip about people we don't know. 

"You know the cook? The one that came in with no teeth? He says it was Batman." She stripes a coat of Lollipop over Sam's left pinky. "He has this paranoia, now. He thinks Batman is stalking him. He flinches when anyone drops anything in the fryer."

"Maybe he deserved it."

It's the first thing Sam has said in close to thirty minutes. I find Val's gaze, her eyes a frown, and she drops the subject. 

We watch Airheads and drink too much, just the two of us, pretending Sam isn't vacuuming the mood out of the room from his desk in the corner. For a moment, I find it easier to breathe. My solace, beautiful Val, with her smile that's too much teeth and the crows feet that crease up with her laugh. We upturn the bottle, let our feet tangle between us along with our laughs, and feed each other the chip crumbs left at the bottom of the bag. Sam just types types types. 

"You had a card on your door." Val is half-lidded and wine-blushed. 

"A card?"

"Is your boyfriend a romantic?" She shifts in her seat, reaches back toward the kitchen counter behind her. Wine sloshes out of the bottle in her hand to the floor. "The old guy. This is old guy handwriting, right?"

My heart quivers to a stop. There's a break in typing I pretend not to hear. It resumes half as quick. 

When Val rights herself against the cushions again, there's a stinging yellow envelope between her Lollipop fingers. "A FAVOR" The front says. I try to mask the tremble in my own as I take it from her. 

"He- uh," I slide a thumb under the seal. It pops off with ease. "We don't talk. Anymore."

Taptaptap. The slapping keyboard reverberates against my eardrums. Val leans over expectantly. 

"Does he know that?"

The ends of her auburn hair brush over the paper as I drag out a card just a fraction too thick for the envelope it's tucked into. The cardstock is yellowing and rough, an image of two children cowering around a small blue book, makeshift ghost costumes tossed over their forms, ripened jack-o-lanterns surrounding them. In a bold, comical font, the header reads, "A HALLOWEEN WISH." 

Val's beaming face drops. My chest constricts in a tight snap of twine. Her wine-stained lips part, and before she can ask, I snap open the card. 

"Oh my- Jesus Christ." Her voice is a distant dream.

There's no text on the inside of the card, at least not printed onto it. There is, however, a scrawled writing smeared within all corners and edges of the card. There's hardly any space between the litter of letters, numbers, all randomized and vomited over the paper. It completely fills both halves of the card, almost tears through it from the pressure it's been written with. My tongue is so thick and dry against the roof of my mouth, I could almost choke on it. I part my lips, attempt at a swallow of a breath, clasp them closed again. The tapping has stopped. Sam is standing at the edge of the couch. 

"That's-" She dips her head in, flinches a trepidatious hand up to run the pad of her finger of the page. "That's really fucking creepy. That's-" 

Sam blinks down at the card in my hands. I don't look up to face him, I don't know if I can. 

Numbers and letters, it's all just numbers and letters. I scan through it briefly, my logical mind taking the reigns as my shock fades into an ebbing tide. In the mess of it, between the slashes of handwriting, is a sequence of three numbers, a letter, two more numbers. A decimal code. Maybe hexadecimal, it's hard to tell at just a glance. I shut it with a snap, but it's too late. I'm not the only one to spot it. 

"Let me see it."

"No."

My voice is so jarring and chopped it's hard to believe it's my own. I look up, and Sam's jagged face meets mine. His eyes are so searing it burns through me, his face a flat voice. His underwhelming lack of expression is harrowing. There's hardly life behind his gaze. 

"You should report this." Val cuts in. "This is- this is kind of scary. You should take this in."

I hardly have to fake the scrape of laugh I release. 

Like my boss reported Tim Savage. The crack of the bat rebounds against the inside of my skull as I blink up at her. 

"It's trash." I say. I lean past her, toss it to the counter. "Wrong house. Ed's never even been here."

"Who said it was him?" Sam snaps.

I cut my head to him. His empty gaze brands me. 

"Are you okay?" Val's voice is a shallow and wavering thing. Sam doesn't answer her. 

He stands there for a moment longer, staring straight through me, before stepping back around the couch. A beat later, and the clack of his mechanical keyboard clacks through the living room. 

"I think... I'm gonna head out." Val stutters. 

"Don't- just, just..." She's too drunk. It doesn't matter how uncomfortable the air is, I can't just let her go. "Come here. Come in here."

I switch off the TV, and we form a weak two-person line into the bedroom. With the lights off, the streetlights cast a weeping orange glow through the rain patterns on the window panes. 

"What's wrong with Sam? Is his computer okay?"

She strips off her jeans, and I sigh at the fire-escape window. The curtains I bought yesterday are a sheer sage-green. The flimsy fabric is textured on my palms as I draw them shut. "He's tired. He's working on his final." Technically not a lie.

She hums, tilts her back against the comforter. "I have to write my thesis. I haven't started."

I meet her by the edge of the bed, shucking off my house shoes. "For what?"

"Poli-sci."

"What's your thesis?"

She's cradling herself under the duvet. Her hair splatters over the pillows. 

"I'm thinking about researching how political assassinations effect polls. Call me inspired." 

Her attempt at a joke. I don't laugh. 

When I lay down beside her, the weight of an anvil finds itself curled into the pit of my chest. She shuffles closer to me, her soft breath hitting the edge of my jaw. The bruises there have faded to an ugly watercolor-wash of yellow, the same shade of the card on the counter. I try and singe the thought away. Like a cockroach, it's hard to kill. 

"Did Sam put that out there?" 

I follow her gaze to the fire escape. There, on the glistening wet metal, it the crimson strikes of Crown of Thorns cactus. 

"Yeah." I say in a breath. Her smile is wine-stained and warm. I bask in it's rays. 

The lull of sleep drags her in, and behind my cracked door, the hard stabs of keystrokes breaks through the patterns of rain against the window panes. Through the sheer curtains tossed up over the windows, the outside world is a blur. As my exhaustion wears thin, and sleep creases into me with its clawed grip, I try and convince myself that Sam really did buy the cactus peaking in at us through the curtains. 

There's a man in a suit inside the store on Monday. His hair is graying and looks like it may have been slicked back at some point, but isn't quite so anymore. Sam winds up so tight at the sight of him that I think his eyes might just jump out of their sockets. 

He's the owner, he says. I've never seen him a day in my life. I guess I always just assumed the owner of the store exists in the same way bigfoot does. There was no real evidence suggesting he existed, but there was no real evidence suggesting he didn't either. But here he is, in a suit, perched upright in the stool behind the counter. He's plucking through a price log like it's casual reading. Sam darts back into the breakroom and makes himself busy with a pot of coffee. 

Apparently the boss is in the hospital, and apparently Sam and I need to start paying attention to the news. On break, the first real designated work-break I've ever experienced in my four years of working here, Sam pulls up a video on his cracked android screen. We lean in over the curb and breathe cigarette smoke all over one another's faces. 

The footage is grimy low-quality, leaked from somewhere, of a van scraping across the crowded street, yanking off into the building columns, smashing pillars in its wake. Even through the embossed pixels, I can spot the boss, pressed against the crowd barrier, sign waved high above his head. Together, Sam and I watch the rear of the van spin out on itself, swing around to clip the barrier two down from his hunk of a form. The metal gates fling, people tumbling in on one another. His face is lost in slush of people, sign discarded onto the pavement.

Sam's face carves out completely, his eyes going starry. He closes the screen and we sit there in the morning mist in silence, our hearts beating in sync. For a moment, the world is stale and empty around us. All the hazy gray blinds out the cars, the staggering forms on the sidewalk in the distance. The curb a church, our fleeting pulses a confession. At some point, we carry one another back inside. 

"He has a broken arm, three cracked ribs." The owner tells us towards the end of the shift. We've made maybe three sales today. Our usual customers, the working class, are all out vandalizing campaign billboards and smashing bank windows. They're currently too busy inciting insurrection to be worried about our two-for-one VHS sale. "He'll be back in a week. Would you like the hospital room?"

Yes, we tell him. We would. 

Sam buys a balloon. It's the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen, but he seems smug by it. Maybe that's why he buys it. 

I pick up a card, put it back. I substitute it for a torta from the bodega down the block and shove the thing down into the bottom of his backpack. He frowns, but doesn't say anything as we step into the street. We smell like pork and cilantro all the way to the hospital. 

"Sorry." He says, the glare of a neon sign staining over his rain-slicked jacket. I turn my head to him, almost yank the shared earbud out of my ear. He plucks the one out of his, and it dangles past my shoulder. "For yesterday. The card thing. It wasn't for- I don't know. I'm sorry."

Under the rain of electric green, his expression is pungent and honest. I soak it in and let its warmth settle into me. 

"No, you're good, you're-" My heart crawls up to the base of my throat. It's hard, finding the words. They can never just come to me like they do for others. "You're right. I mean, you're kind of right. I'm sorry too."

That's all we say. The topic dies there, in the creeping cold of the street corner, underneath the misty haze of a blinking traffic light. Sam looks up at me, really looks at me, and his moon-pan eyes are depthless and solemn. I look back and catch my reflection against his irises. 

We travel the last two blocks to the soundtrack of our fallen breaths, and after meandering through the clinically eerie hallways of the hospital, we finally find the boss on the third floor. We step into the room, our footfalls echoing off of the eggshell tile, and a tiny woman with silk scarf softly tucked over her head sits up off the window ledge. Pocketed away on herself in gray slacks, sweetheart-framed glasses the shade of plastic-red, and plum lipstick filled in on her lips. I wouldn't have pictured the bosses ex-wife any other way. She smells like cigarette smoke and iced tea. The lines of her face are weary and tender.

The boss is asleep. I've never seen him so still. Sam and I stand with our thighs to the bed, quietly observing him. The smoothness of his face, the worry lines that can't be seen from the lack of worry in his unconscious state, is almost unnerving. He doesn't look like he should. I almost feel like he should be yelling at me about something. Or at least Sam.

"That balloon is so tacky." His ex-wife says when Sam releases it, letting it float up to dance over the ceiling panels. 

"He'll like it, yeah?" He says distantly. She smiles like a sigh.

When I yank Sam around, unearthing the foil-wrapped torta from the bottom of his backpack, she releases a crowing laugh that echoes through the walls. We leave it with her, clutched between her french-manicured nails, and dart back out into the night. 

We don't make it home. In fact, we bump along side-by-side into the downstairs bar, dragging up to the same booth in the back corner with a handful of cash scavenged from both our mostly-empty wallets. An hour later, bumbling up the steps to second floor, Sam form teeters a little too harshly into my own. We rear into the railing, the pole catching my hip, and I shove him off with a spilled laugh. 

"Watch it, prick."

"I'm sorry. I- I'm sorry." His words are all in cursive. "I didn't- I'm sorry."

At the front door, I shuffle through my pockets until Sam manages to produce the keys from somewhere in his own. Our fingers are all tangled and clammy when he shoves them off to me. 

"You're not scared?" He says lopsidedly. He's leaning against the wall, stretched out and languid, looking taller than he actually is. I'm jamming the key in upside-down. I fumble it around dumbly, beer-breath caught all in my hair. 

"Of what?" The key shovels in. I wiggle the knob and it finally decides to obey my grasp. 

Sam hums as an answer. I have to drag him in through the door, or he'd probably just sleep there, propped against the wall all night. 

"I get- I'm a little scared. I'm a little scared." His voice is more of a stifled thought than anything else. I'm yanking my coat off, a little too roughly from the drunk poisoning my head, and he's slacking the backpack straps off his shoulders. "It's not scary for you?"

I stumble into the kitchen, and his question pricks at a spot between the purse of my brows. I'm too slurred and stripped for it. Cultivating the neurons I know I have tucked away somewhere, I turn back to him. The tallness he found in the hallway is lost again. He looks tucked away in the doorway, backpack half-grasped to him, eyes fawn-like and greasy hair tucked behind his ears. 

"What- what's scary? What are you..."

For a moment, it's hard to believe he was ever drunk. His eyes are gaping and distant, the edges of them all blurred out from the rain-haze still clinging to my glasses lenses. The shadows scoop them out, two gunshot wounds blown out in the dark planes of his face. They blink at me. My blood solidifies like needles in the veins of my hands. 

He doesn't look like he wants to answer, like he's said more than he should have, like he's not even sure he knows himself. The warm, fuzzy comradery of the night is fizzing out, drowning, throwing limbs and gasps just to tread the water. Suddenly I'm stiff, weighted, awake. Sam looks like he might be dreaming. 

"Of what, Sam?"

A noise thunders from two stories below us. 

Like the slamming of a door, or the drop of a heavy, metal thing. It echoes through my chest, rattles my knees. 

Sam's eyes hold mine for a moment more, and his brows flinch as another muddled tremor breaks out through the walls and floors and concrete. It might sound a fraction closer, it's too hard to tell. 

Our reactions are too delayed, and maybe if they weren't we could have prevented something, anything, at least that's what I'll tell myself later. I watch him turn his head, dream-like, his hair coming untucked from his ears. 

"What was that?"

He shrugs his backpack to the floor finally, and it plops beside his shoes. He trickles through the room, moving like liquid past the couch, his bed, his desk. Head craned out the window, I catch his profile in the street lights. My heart snaps like porcelain, splinters in two, the moment I catch his face breaking. I've never seen his expression so scorned, and I'll never be able to forget it. 

"Get down." He says, so sober it wrecks my weary head to hear it. "Fuck, fuck, get down. Get- fuck! Are you listening?" 

He's yelling, flailing his arms behind him, yanking himself out of the window seal. All at once everything is moving too quickly, Sam is moving too quickly, stripping out of his jacket and yanking himself over his desk and pressing buttons on the computer, the monitors. There's another distant thud, another ache of noise, another flutter that sounds like the thrum of footfalls. It's closer now, a coming storm, an approaching flood. 

I'm not listening. I've gone momentarily deaf, momentarily stupid standing beside the empty kitchen counter. My hands are balled into fists at my side, my pulse bleeding out through me like something else has taken the reigns of it. I cut my head to Sam, his flicking screen, the empty kitchen counter, and another noise splatters in the hall. The empty kitchen counter. The empty kitchen counter. 

"Sam? Where is- Sam, what's happening?"

He clicks something, types something, and his screen blacks out. Green text explodes over it, scrolls and scrolls and whirls with a noise that drowns out everything in the room. It sounds hot, angry, buzzing like a kicked wasps nest. Like the wasps are in my hair, my ears, my arteries. They dig into my cartilage, furrow themselves in the gaps of my ligaments and muscles. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to think. 

Someone knocks softly on the door. 

Sam spins, frantic eyes combing over everything before landing on me. His face is broken. He looks nothing like the Sam I've ever seen. It's a completely different person. 

He's in front of me in a second, a heartbeat of time, hands yanking at me, pulling me, dragging me down behind the kitchen counter. He stuffs me down into the pocket of space between the counter and the oven, and we trip over one another into a jumbled pile over the laminate. 

"Look at me. Look at me, okay? Fucking- don't move. Stay down. D-don't, don't move. I love you, okay?" He's not so much talking as he is panting, words spitting up all over my face. There are tears welling up inside of me, but they won't come out. Something's happening, something so much bigger than what I'm currently capable of understanding. 

"I love you." His fingers are tearing at the skin of my biceps. His eyes spear through me. He doesn't blink, because he doesn't think he can afford to. My heart has stopped pumping blood, it waits with baited breath. "I'm sorry."

For what? I never get to ask. 

There's another knock, more firm, more insistent, and Sam clears the room. He darts out of the kitchen, flings himself out into the living room. The computer drills and drills with noise. Green flickers over the room as it buzzes and buzzes and buzzes and buzzes. I can't find my breath, can't find anything, nothing makes any fucking sense. 

From my crawlspace behind the counter, I can make out Sam from the neck up. His decapitated gaze finds me. There's wasps in my brain, wasps inside of Sam, wasps inside of the computer. His face is a scream. 

"I'm sorry."

The door implodes, and men spill over one another into the room. None of them make it to him in time, because the window explodes into a million glittering shards of neon green. 

In the bar downstairs, Sam had told me it was him who put the potted cactus onto the fire escape. The confession had bought me a breath of relief. 

I watch now as Batman takes the crown of Sam's head in his palm, and cracks it through the living room floor. 

Chapter Text

The card was never meant to meet my hands. Its incessant etched and scrambled lines of numbers and letters and more numbers, were never meant for my eyes. 

With the jutted rubber sole of a boot pressed against his neck, Sam has never looked smaller. His eyes tear into me from the floor, one of them stained pink. There's blood leaking from his nose, his eyebrow. Only two piercings stare up at me from the shining moon of his face. 

The house is destroyed. 

"Comb through it. All of it." Said the short, lump of a man in the center of the room. Behind the lenses of his glasses is an expression I've become too familiar with. The tired scoop off his eyes is one I've seen looking back at me from the mirror. 

Once the realization slapped across me, it's imprint ripening against my heart, it was easier to control my breathing. The man stretched across me from behind, the heel of his hand shoving into the base of my neck, his form burying me into place against the kitchen counter, is having a harder time. He must be out of shape. This is a busy night for all of us. 

A spindly looking man with too much mustache and not enough face produces the card from a crack in the room. He hands it to the bespectacled man, who flips its yellowing envelope over, and hands it to Batman. 

Batman. He's still got Sam crushed against the hardwood with the weight of his boot. Sam doesn't struggle, hasn't from the beginning, against the ziptie snagging his wrists together. He just glares up at me from the floor, saying something with his bleeding eyes that I can't read. I can't look at him, but I can't look away. He doesn't look like Sam, but yet, he is. I don't know who is inhabiting the boy splattered underneath a phantom on my living room floor. 

The room is filled with jostled and busy movement, uprooted furniture, confettied glass, shattered closets. In its midst is the pillar of black and rubber, flicking the tab on an envelope. His eyes bead out at me from behind his mask, just a glance, and I make it no point to meet his gaze there. I just stare at Sam, my anchor, as he creases open the card. 

Batman looks so much different than what I ever imagined him to be. I imagined him as midnight personified, an absence of light, a void of all feeling and non. But here, under the overhead light spewing out from the ceiling fan, he looks so... faded. Textured. He looks graspable and tangible, just a man in an expensive suit, just a person dipped in black rubber and hung up in the night to dry. The points on his head are almost satirical. Who does he think he's fooling? He's just a person under there. 

His voice is stirring and gravely, but I don't pick up what he says. My ears are still ringing with the aftershocks of my pulse, I'm still recovering from my heart in my throat, from the slam of my skull against the laminate counter. I don't think it would have mattered what corner of the house Sam shoved me into, I think I would have always ended up here, like this. Yanked and flattened. The cop is saying something into my ear. Not to me, but to someone else. His eyes are locked into Sam on the floor, and everyone's eyes seem to gravitate there. No matter what portion of the house they're currently desecrating, everyone takes their time to chance a stolen glance, a tossed sneer. If anything, that boot smashed into the crease of his throat is protection from the dogs waiting around to bite it. 

There's a loud shock of noise from the bedroom. My bedroom. All at once, voices pour out over one another, challenging each other to be heard, and men scramble out of the doorway. The grip on my wrists tightens, the cop in my ear prods someone for a ziptie. He doesn't want to miss out of whatever thing the others seem to have found. 

One caravans in front of the rest, quieter than any of the others. In his hands is the Crown of Thorns cactus from the fire escape. He approaches Batman and the bespectacled man, the tips of his shoes just a few feet away from the scarlet puddle forming underneath Sam's smashed cheek, and upturns the pot. Dirt and smear pummel over the tip of Sam's nose, catches over his lashes. In the pile of dirt, something thunks. Sam doesn't even flinch. A ziptie is secured around my wrists, and I'm discarded to the floor. 

Batman switches the card out to one hand. Gently, delicately, he leans down and plucks out an oblong instrument from the dirt. His gloved hand brushes the bleeding crease of Sam's brow. He doesn't so much as blink. 

In the light, the metal object looks forlorn and distant, like it might have been stolen from a dream, like it shouldn't really exist. The dirt twinkles off of it to the floor, and the layer of spackled and dried rot becomes apparent. 

"Is that-" The bespectacled man starts and stops, like he shouldn't dare to speak the words into existence. Batman spools it around, like he's looking for something but can't seem to find it. Sam is forgotten on the floor, all eyes are magnetized to the slope of metal plucked between two gloved fingers. 

All at once, everything begins to move quickly again. Someone says a hushed word, and Sam is being scraped off the floor, everyone trying to get a handful of him. With a swoop of his arm, Batman sends them all a tossed step back, and he drags Sam to the door by a heap of clutched fabric between his shoulders. His eyes never leave mine. My arms ache behind me, my head throbbing. Half of Sam's facial piercings are gone, gaunt holes punched through his face. 

"Get her up, too." Someone croons. 

"No, they didn't know- they-" His words finally find him, after all this time. He yanks his head up, and the lump in his throat dances as his strangled voice finds the air. "They had nothing to do with it. They didn't know, I swear to fucking god."

He's practically begging. This is not the face of a killer. Everyone in the room can read it off of him all at once. The air of anticipation subdues just a fraction. They all know they haven't succeeded, this isn't their guy. A pawn in a game. Sam and me are just hopeless, sorry pawns. 

My skin pricks and flares over the slope of my shoulders, the scrape of my collar. My head reals and reals. The card was never meant for me. It was meant for Sam. Sam, who codes his own malware, a web domain thief who can blackmail it back to you for the right price, who has a 4.0 GPA for his Computer Science major, an oddity, a prodigy, a whisper. 

He was so quiet and unseen, he shouldn't have ever been found, if not on purpose. The Crown of Thorns cactus on the fire escape had a weapon tangled between its roots. We were planted, we have been sacrificed for these men's sins. 

Sam's too smart to be captured by these men for something as petty as corporate terrorism. Gangly men with no guns strapped to their hips under their flat, blue jackets are still poking around at his wasp nest computer. No one can decipher it, and that's Sam's doing, nobody else's. He did this willingly. He knew this would happen. All along, he was caught in the same web as me, looking across from the other side. He could see me, I just couldn't see him. 

"I swear to- fuck. fuck. Look, question them, they don't know shit. They don't know anything. Please, just leave them alone."

Please. The room falls in on itself, an intoxicating, shared sigh bouncing back and forth between the thirty men decorating the room, the apartment, the complex. Batman shoves him over the threshold. I only catch a slice of the disaster in his eyes before he's gone. 

There's a cop parked outside. 

The pressure of a gaze through my window weighs into me as I meander through the hazardous wasteland of my apartment. If I were to lift the landline, there might possibly be a buzz there, a static caution of lingering ears. I haven't called Valentine, but I'm sure Sam has, from whatever husk of a cell he's currently occupying. Some part of me is there with him, was stolen along side him as he was scraped out of the door. 

There's a cop parked outside. 

All my curtains are gone. The rods that we installed, Sam and I, are broken bones on the floor, strangled into meaningless coat-hanger shapes. They rampaged through everything, and then rampaged some more when the computer wouldn't cave into their demands. They found nothing else in the house but a pair of clear framed glasses, tucked away in a jacket pocket in Sam's makeshift closet. For some reason, they didn't deem them worthy of taking. Maybe they simply forgot, nothing seemed too particularly organized. Instead, the glasses haunt me from the empty kitchen counter. Val's gifted candle is smashed and warped against the hardwood. I place the dustpan down, and sweep its corpse into the mouth of it. 

There's a cop parked outside, and I know this, because the hum of an idle motor twists itself into the thrum of the rain. I pass a window on my way to drop the candle corpse in the trash, and it's ugly logo glares up at me from the flooded street. GPD, in a slash of jarring font. I toss the candle out and grab for the glasses next. They hit the bottom of the trashcan unceremoniously. 

Here is the understanding I have on what happened. 

Sam had installed no VPN, utilized no proxy server or tor browser, or rerouted any sort of public wifi to his computer when stealing and creating www.rataalada.com. The card was instructions for just that, HTML broken down and rerouted through decimal and hexadecimal code, a brief description of Internet Relay Chat like Sam might've actually needed one. It only took a generator off of some cops phone to decipher the message. In under two minutes flat, the code was broken. It wasn't meant to be a kept, or hidden thing. Just like Sam, just like the cactus and the metal instrument coated in dried blood, it was meant to be found. 

Why I was shielded from the line of fire, I'm not quite sure. I remain here, in the skeleton of my home, to pick up the aftermath.

How long?

I think of Sam, shrouding in from the rain through the front doors of the store, tossing Ed and I a sideways scowl. The clunk of the Dungeon Master's Guide on the counter, his small scramble of a form glaring at me as he waited impatiently for the receipt. Was it then? Had he known then, when he saw Ed leaning over the counter? Surely not. What had Ed seen, when he looked back at him?

Or was it behind the lines of aisles, swooning Val into a night without me, while Ed politely asked me to dinner in the shadows? Maybe before that. In the week of my absence, he had filled out an application, he had watched Ed crack the metal bat against Tim Savage's scalp through the grimy filter of the CCTV cameras. I start to wonder how that made him feel, to watch, and then I push the thought away. 

There's no way he didn't know, no way he wasn't fully indoctrinated by the time I offered to let him move in. I can see it clearly now. What had been real?

The image that stands out so clearly in my mind now is Halloween. The glow of his phone screen against his face, the quick sputter of his fingers against the cracked keyboard. "I'm calling a cab," he had said. That was him, wasn't it? He had orchestrated it, tipped him off, there's no way he could have possibly known where I had fled to. 

I told you I'd find you. 

He had. I just didn't know how. 

Forgotten and unseen shards of glass skitter about as I stalk back through the room. At least someone had the decency to duct tape a tarp over the window seal. The rain hits it like a drum, bullets against it to trickle down to the floor. It's already sopped through the towel I've placed there, but there's not much else I can do. I don't quite have the energy to search for a better solution. 

My room has seen the worst of it. Books and pens and clothes torn and snapped and scattered about, littering over everything like trash in a forgotten alley. I step through it, my feet sore, my arms still partially numb. They didn't cut my ziptie off all the way up until the last cop stepped out into the walkway. 

"Hey," I had tried, voice like a meager gust of wind. It had died somewhere in the back of my throat throughout all the questioning. "Hey, can you- I'm sorry. Can you cut these off?"

He looked disgruntled and nonplussed, but he flicked out an OTF knife nonetheless. If I wouldn't have asked, I'm sure he would have left me there like that. 

At least the interrogation was brief.

"Do you have any idea who could have sent this?" The man with glasses had flipped the card over between his fingers. "A FAVOR" Ed's scratched handwriting spoke to me off the vomit-colored paper. 

I blinked at it like a forgotten friend. 

"No," My voice trembled out. The man looked thoroughly unamused, yet the disappointment in his eyes was all too loud. He tucked the card away into a plastic baggy, swiped over the seal with the press of his thumb. 

"Has Samantha ever brought anyone over? Does she have any close friends that she talks about, maybe a professor at school? Someone online?"

Bile rose and stung at the back of my throat. I didn't know until then, he never shared it with me. Knowing without him being there to permit it felt dirty and gross on my skin.

"Samuel." I spit out like a curse. "His name is Samuel."

The crushed coffin of my chunky, college laptop is laying lopsidedly over the rug. They must have plucked through its contents and discovered nothing worthwhile, because the charger coated with electrical tape is jammed off and discarded into an outlet, tangled in with the shattered stomach of the CRT television. Nothing is salvageable. My life is shredded to pieces around me. 

I slap all the lights off. The melancholy glow of the streetlights drips honey over the room through the rain patterned over the curtainless windows. My bed, in the sea of entropy, remains lousy and unmade. The one thing they didn't dare to touch. There could have been a corpse entombed in the sheets, but it didn't matter. No one wanted to put their hands on the place where either of us might've slept. 

For a heartbeat of time, I feel Sam's soft breath against the spread of my cheeks. The tickle of his hair over my pillowcase. I actually really like Val, his soft voice had cushioned against the bridge of my nose. It was all too simple. We had taken it for granted. 

The bed feels bigger somehow, the entire apartment a massive tomb. A mausoleum, built special for me. The hum of the idle motor purrs over the rain. A train passes somewhere, and the mess surrounding me rattles against the floor. My clothes are tacky and grimy over my skin, but I furl myself deeper into the sheets regardless. If I smother myself enough, I can smell how things used to be before. The musk of smoke, the stout of cologne, the whisper of laundry detergent. What had been real? It felt real, at some point. I'll cling onto it for as long as I can manage. 

A mechanical noise bubbles up distantly from outside, under the sheet of rain. For a moment, I mistake it for a parking break, and release a steep breath of relief into the pillowcase. The engine babbles on. I lift my head from the bed, hair slopping about my face. 

There's a shrouded silhouette on the fire escape. If I was the person I was before my house was raided and Batman stomped my friend into a smear on my living room floor, it might've given me a scare. The hair on my arms might've trickled into gooseflesh. Now, I lift my wilted body off the bed, and trample over the mess to the window. It groans as I pluck open the lock, shoving it open. Two cold and rain-slicked hands find mine from the outside, helping to grind it the rest of the way. I let them. I'm to exhausted to conjure reluctancy. 

"Hey," I say childishly. His head pokes through first, eyes finding mine. He doesn't glance around the room, because I'm sure he already knows what he'd find. I'm sure he's known from the beginning.  

"Hello," He says back. His limp hair is cropped about is face, glasses misty. He lowers a dripping leg through, hands cupped over the ledge. His gray jacket is soaked, t-shirt clinging to his chest. For a moment, everything feels too surreal. I'm in college again, scrambling a boy through the girls dormitory, or in highschool, untangling myself from a bush and plopping into a girls bedroom.

"Your hair,"

He steps inside cautiously, and his shoe skids over the flayed aftermath of a bookshelf. 

"I cut it." His voice is narrow and soft. He looks older this way, I think. Without the swab of bangs and the tuft of a curl on the back of his neck, his age finds him. "I had to cut it."

Had to. I don't ask why. 

He turns to shut the window, and I don't help him. I think I've already helped enough. It croaks jaggedly as he presses his weight into it, and I glance sideways out the parallel window at the parked car occupying the curb. The engine drones on. Whoever is inside it must be asleep. 

"The cop outside."

"Vermin with a payroll." He spits out like venom. "You would think they could afford to pay attention."

When he turns back to me, it's like his presence swallows up everything in the room. His eyes press into me, and it soaks up all the carnage the swat team and patrol suits left in their wake. My resolve burrows itself deeper into my chest. 

"How long did you know?" A brow quirks up where it might have been hidden by a loose streak of brown days before. I elaborate wearily. "About Sam?"

At first, his face shows nothing. Goes taut and blank as it always is, but when he laughs, a foxlike noise that stabs off of his lips, it strips into something with edge. 

"What do you- I gave him to you."

Gave him to me. Like Sam is an object to be given. He says it like I should be grateful, like the gift was obvious from the beginning. Sam was never mine. He always belonged to Ed. 

The space between us is daunting, eager and cavernous. If I pay too much attention to it, to the breath of distance between me and his clinging shirt, the wet swamp of his hair dripping over the bridge of his nose, the clammy damp of his knuckles popping idly at his side, I'll feel too entitled to close the gap. It's an innate instinct at this point, to want closeness. To need comfort. I keep myself hardened into place, and his chest waxes and wanes under the drudged creases of his shirt. His arm twitches with intention, and my eyes dart to meet it there before it remains still by his side.

I release a staggered breath that trembles out through my shoulders. There's a cry welling up in me somewhere that's growing too difficult to smother out. I'm so tired, so fucking tired. 

The streetlights catch like fireflies in his eyes. Rain patterns scramble over his face as it tears, and he inches closer. 

"Don't- please don't do that."

I can't help it, the crawling swell that I feel in the back of my throat. My eyes marble with heat, and the sting catches itself in my lashline. The first tear falls, chasing warmth down the greasy expanse of my cheek, and a cold hand smears a wet print down my forearm. He smells like rubber and sandalwood. I let him close the space, because I'm too jagged to fit us together. Somehow, our pieces fall into place. 

The skin of his neck is clammy, and my glasses smudge against it to press up into my forehead. My hands furl into fists between us, arms caught in the mopped fabric of his gray jacket, the pressure of his chin dipping into the crown of my head. Another tear falls, and another, until my cheeks are slicked with rain and salt and the awkward shift of our bodies are smashed together into one, singular mess to match everything else in the room. 

"Everything went perfect, you don't have to do that. This is good, this is- you'll see. This is perfect."

It doesn't feel good. None of this feels good. 

I let him tip his head, smearing his hair against my own until his face is pressed to mine. I let him kiss the heel of my cheek softly, starting on one side and traveling gently across the bridge of my nose. I let him take us a step back, our collective stagger trampling over the aftermath of my life coating the floor. I let his lips slip into my own, let him sigh past my teeth, let him press the backs of my thighs against the unkempt bed behind us. 

And then I let myself fall. 

Chapter Text

My insides feel nebulous and aching. How trivial it is, to be human and want and need petty, human things. How small it feels to be just a vacant, hollowed body caught in the infinite web of reality.

Reality, the enemy of all existence. Reality, being only what we know, only what we can comprehend. My current reality is unfolding inside of chest, raking up the backs of ribs, like deconstructed origami. Once intricate and beautiful, now fraying at the flattened edges.

His fingertips pry past the waistband of my pants, and my paper soul catches fire. It's like there was never even a point to it existing in the first place.

He swallows my mouth with his own, and I forget about the plastic edge of a zip-tie clawing into the meat of my wrist. I forget about the curved barbell I swept off my living room floor, I forget about asteroids colliding in brown eyes, I forget about rubber boot scuffs and nightmares standing in my kitchen. I allow myself to be consumed, to be filled with anything but the decay rotting out from the core of my being.

I let go.

The surreal taste of sweat on my tongue, lucidity clinging to the inner white of my skull, pressure tying new knots between my thighs. "Can I take this off?" And I nod I nod I nod because he can take anything off if it means relief. My jeans become another casualty on the floor, like blood spatter dripping off the edge a chair leg, like newspaper painting the windows. My skin becomes a canvas and he paints me with his raw grip. His hands aren't shaking anymore, and that hurts than anything else could.

I hardly watch as he unbuttons his own jeans, his jacket shaking off his shoulders, his hair no longer long enough to fray down around his face. He looks his age, he looks like an accountant, he looks like someone who could turn a the insides of a skull into a marshland. Our skin is tacky and our mouths are wet and I split myself apart for him. He presses into me and his voice shutters out against my neck. It feels like seeing god, it feels like holy pension, it feels like eternal damnation. I cry out into the soft, short hairs behind the curve of his ear and his fingers find me there, curling into the backs of my teeth.

"You're perfect," He chokes out, rain dripping off his glasses lens and into the divot of my collar, and I believe him, because I could only ever be perfect to someone like him.

We wax and wane into one another like lightning kissing the beach, and my sandy insides turn to delicate glass, sharp and violent with every press of himself inside of me. I flatten against the blades, finding comfort in it, because maybe I was the masochist all along. Maybe I enjoy this hurt, because obsession is the closest thing I've ever felt to want, to need, and I can't help but long to be needed by him. Relinquishing all sense of control feels like breaking the tethers hooked into my spine, the ones anchoring me to the boss, to Val, to Sam. I'm floating above us, looking down, bleeding and free as I watch him spill a curse past his lips into the crease of my collar.

He dips down, resting his forehead against the sticky dip of the bone there, and his wet hair smears against me like a kiss. His fingernails rake against the back of my gums, thumb burning a bruise into my ribs, and I want to wear the scars, my priest serving my pension in the form of touch. Sam is hard to construct behind my eyelids when he curves his grip to the back of my thigh, cupping the bend of my knee, driving my leg up and fucking deeper into me. Everything is tactile and tangible, textured under my palms, the sopping fabric of his shirt rawing my stomach as he drives his pace into the collective beat of our hearts. I could take handfuls of him and swallow, the perfect drug, an infinite dose of aphrodisiac. I'm floating and floating and floating and he hooks my leg over his shoulder, my calve tickled by his hair, and his hand glides ghost like between us to touch me. Coming down has never felt so beautifully sick.

He's speaking in riddles into my chest, like prayers to a god that neither of us believe in, in a manic monotone that makes no sense and yet, sounds so lovely and gentle to my ears. "You're perfect, fucking fatal, for me for me for me," and I take one last shuddering inhale before white blinds out every last trench of my senses. It fills every last crevice, a complete eclipse of self, and I don't even exist here in this tangible realm as I come wrapped around him, the two of us scooping up every last bit of one another.

He pulls out, staining the bulb of my stomach with pearl, and it spills over the hem of my shirt in spiderweb threads. His movements are so jagged and angled, and he's trembling, jaw slacked, lash line wet with his lips forming a perfect O. I've never seen him look more like art, beautiful and baroque, shrouded in a halo of streetlight from the windows. His voice is straining in the gravel of his throat with a moan that sounds liquid in my ears. It pours over me, molten molasses sticking to my skin. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to wash it out.

When the ebb of my insides swells out, fading into static at my fingertips, withdraw hurts like a toothache in the core of my chest. Our breaths are humming in harmony, out of tune to the idle motor now running again outside, and neither of us can find our calm. We're too jammed out of place, too lopsided and rearranged.

My swampy brain is swimming. There's an anger boiling in the thin lining of my stomach that somehow looks so clear in this light. The words I couldn't find before are stinging the flat of my tongue.

"I think-" I blink down away from his eyes. "I think I hate myself."

The muscles of his forearms subtly shift, his hands turning to fists in the sheets. His sinking breath beats against the bridge of my nose.

"Then-" Looking back up at him hurts in a way I can't express. Everything feels too raw and exposed. His eyes fill up the room. "Then let us let us join our lips in one last kiss of unutterable hatred, and," His voice is unsteady and hollow, like his thoughts are somewhere far away from here. "And so die."

And so die.

I don't know what he's quoting, but even without the context, my heart implodes. It guts me, because it sounds like goodbye. It sounds harrowingly close to the end. I hate him, and yet, the end isn't something I'm capable of conceiving.

"What do we do when we die?" I ask feebly. There's tears staining my temples that I can't remember falling.

A palm closes in on my cheek, and I wish it hurt me, because then I could find a reason to hate it too.

"We do this."

He kisses me like a guillotine. We fold our paper souls into one another and our damp paper bodies crumple into the night.

He fucks me like it's the last breath he'll ever take. Maybe he can foresee that, maybe there's something lingering in his future unknown to me that's causing him to hook trembling arms under my stomach as I bury my chin into the mattress. He trails a damp palm down the expanse of my spine and shutters a groan into my shoulder blade. 

"Let me see your hand?" 

The way he poses it as a question is too vulnerable. I toss it back and he shackles it with his grip, pressing it up my spine in a way that makes my muscles ache. 

There's no telling how long we've been like this, how long we're going to remain here even after we've left. The outside rain is now a hazy mist, filling the room with the honey glow of the streetlights and fogging the windows. We're invisible to anyone but ourselves, but then again, it's always been that way. 

His free hand swoops underneath me, descending between my legs, and when he presses his fingers against me, we both release a noise that breaks the backs of our throats. I'm sore and flushed, hot like a fever from my face to my thighs, but I wouldn't tell him to stop even if my consciousness flickered like a lightbulb between my eyes. Keeping him here is my last tedious grip on control, on knowing what will come next and knowing what I'm capable of manipulating with my own flesh and blood. Everything past these four walls, past the ebb and flow of our ricocheting bodies, that's all him. This is all I have left to own, and yet, it's all I want. 

He presses two gentle fingers into me and I crush the cotton fabric of his shirt between my teeth. I lost my own at some point along the way, and in the quiet respite of a break in our physical mourning, he lifted my arms and slid his plain one over my head. It felt like a gift and a claim all at once, and the intimacy of the moment had me dragging him close by the forearm as I pressed my chest flat to the mattress. 

I wince, the sensitive muscles inside of me drawn taut, and he comforts me like a child, coaxing me with his touch to unfold in his palm. There are light brushes like kisses up my spine that turn to bites on my neck in-between his stuttered words, his praise and panic, and he pulls my arm up further by the wrist until it's fully twisted behind my back. 

"I could die, I could die," He repeats like I know what it means for him to say it, and fresh tears blossom at the corners of my eyes as he begins to work up a steady pulse with his hand.

He could die, like this, inside me. How ironic, simple intimacy could kill a killer. Is this the true bludgeon to his skull? Does this bring him pain he can actually feel, or would he feel more attached to his humanity with a bomb fashioned around his neck? Who was he before to make a kiss become a weapon, and blood become righteous?

We're both masochists, both driving the blade deeper into one another with every smear of our clammy skin. He draws his hand back and my insides sob, but it's only seconds before he clumsily lines himself up and drives his full length into me with a gasp for air. It's a white flash of hurt, a blinding spike of pain, but it's over-ridden by his smell and his shape and the hot lash of satisfaction it brings me to hear his voice break apart. I want to bludgeon him, want to be the bomb strapped to his neck. 

Because if I can hurt him, no one else can. 

My chin dribbles over the edge of the bed, and the frame sways. His spine scrapes against the wall, and my knees throb with ache. My voice is raw. There are bruises trailing up the column of my throat. I can still feel his skin under my fingernails.

Occupying the space behind the storefront counter feels like a fucking joke.

"Do you have any of Rob Zombie's stuff?"

A girl with dark, greasy hair and freckles like constellations clacks her chipped, black nails against the linoleum. A Sam fanclub member. She chirps one last nail against the counter and I have the sudden visual of snapping the bone of her finger in my palm.

I meet her spiderweb eyes. "Music or movies? We have both."

We kick away a clearing from the mess of desecration on the floor, and I drop to my knees at the edge of the bed.

"Uh," The girl removes her hand from the counter. She must've caught me glaring at it. "I'll find it myself. Thanks."

I try and keep my eyes open as she totters out of sight. Even blinking seems too dangerous. Everything about me is pulsing with poison, invaded with visuals and tattooed touches. Fingers stuffing fabric to the backs of my teeth. Fingers clamped onto the tip of my tongue. Fingers interlaced with my own. "You can do it again." My vision holds the sepia filter of the streetlights outside my window.

The owner makes his presence known as he turns out of the breakroom. I blink up at him wearily, and his mouth forms a flat line with a sigh.

"I just posted the ad. Can you tape this to the door for me?"

He slides a sheet of paper across the counter, and it flutters like a ghost. The shoplifter corkboard behind me is gone, he had to have taken it down while I was out. Somehow, I can still feel eyes at the back of my head.

I take the paper between my fingertips. PART-TIME CASHIER WANTED, it reads. I didn't tell him about Sam, but it seems as if someone did. Maybe he wasted that one phonecall on this pathetic place.

"When will the boss be back?" Is all I can manage to say. My voice is someone else's entirely. I don't recognize it anymore.

All the owner does is eye me apologetically, mouth clamped shut, and turn back to the breakroom.

A handful of hair in my palm, gripped at the scalp, and I press my chest against the wall. There are hands wrapped around the backs of my thighs and teeth sinking down on the inside of them.

I hate myself and this stupid fucking job.

The Wayne Tower is bombed that night.

The sky is soot and ash on the walk home from work. Cars are flooding the streets like feral flocks of birds, steering mindlessly and maniacally through stoplights and crosswalks. The rain is the closest thing to a shower I've had in days, and I let it drum against the lenses of my glasses like the store window panes. There's a memory of Ed laced into the visual there, a clip of him silhouetted by shadows as a car passes, smoky spindles of rain traced over his form as he asks me to dinner. I swipe a thumb over the outside of my glasses and turn up the steps for the train.

My landlord has filed a civil complaint against the Gotham Police Department. Not only did the apartment take damage, but apparently the swat created a disturbance throughout the building. People are breaking their leases, and the company who owns the building is preparing to sue. GPD's form of amending the issue is sending me to temporary government-paid housing across town, a stack of scraping buildings hugged against the sea wall, until the damages can be fixed. Temporary is a vague term, because there's truly no telling how enthusiastic the police department is to mend the home of a suspected murderer. The lawsuit will probably come sooner.

There's no home left for me there anyway. The wasteland of the apartment is nothing but rubble and ash, a liminal space between then and now. The limbo of Val, Sam, and I will stain the concrete walls like cigarette smoke. Every time I step in, I can feel it like a film drying over my skin. The smell permeates my lungs to the point of nausea. Anything is better than remembering.

I step up to an entryway stall and tap for the barcode on my cracked phone screen. A call pops up at the flickering screen, and I swipe it away, scanning my code quickly and pressing through the turnstile with gritted teeth.

Answering Val's calls is something I'm not sure I can manage. Hearing her cathartic voice would cripple me, and confession would swell on my tongue. I could lie to myself and pretend that the wedge I've shoveled between us is to keep her safe and precious, isolated from the insidious ink I've spilt over everything else around me, but I know better. "And so die." Rings in the shell of my ear. I just want to be immortal.

There's a man on the opposite end of the car wearing clear framed glasses. I think I'm more aware of him than he is of me, but everything seems like an illusion now. Second guessing myself becomes innate in my being.

The overwhelmingly bright lights of the train-car sting my eyes, make me feel like a sopping-wet smudge smeared across this perfectly white hunk of machine. It's clinical and spotless, the metal poles glittering silver, the fabric of the drooping handles hardly creased or worn. Inside the train, the ride is as smooth as gliding. Inside my head, the lights are flickering in the back of the splatter-film section.

"Have you ever rode the train before?"

I bury my hands into damp pockets and grind my teeth until it aches.

My peripheral plays tricks on me the entire ride across town. Despite his suit, I can't stop flicking my dreary gaze to the end of the train car, and when the automated voice finally announces my stop, I scramble up and slither through the doors before they've even had time to fully open.

He looks up, just once, and his eyes meet mine as the doors begin to slide shut behind me. The clear plastic framed around his face doesn't mask the fragile brutality of his gaze, and my throat constricts with taut breath. The spaces between my fingers itch as we watch each other through the rain slicked windows, and then he's gone. Smeared by distance into nothingness. I force myself down the stairs and into the street.

After four blocks and three flights of stairs, I turn over the stocky metal key in my palm. The guts of the apartment complex are indoors, no long stretches of hallway yawning into the night. Nothing smells of smoke, but everything smells like mildew, and there's so many stains layered over the thin, cheap carpet, it's hard to tell exactly what is and isn't one.

There is fresh paint patchworked over my door, as if covering up some sort of previous damage, and the doorbell is wrapped in an electrical-tape sarcophagus. I wrench in the key, prying open the knob, and the door groans as I step inside.

This studio apartment is more of a glamorized cell, furnished with a twin-sized bed, what looks like a clothing rack from a discount store tossed into the bathroom, and a kitchenette pocketed away into a cutout in the wall. The only thing remarkable about it is the window on the far side of the room, a sliding glass double-door that leads to the balcony, overlooking the inky ocean. There's lights blooming in Arkham in the distance, smoke pillowing the cloudless nightscape, and a puddle coating the entirety of the concrete balcony. Looking into it reflects a shaking caricature of my face, the details all distorted and vague. The longer I stare down through the glass, the more I believe what's looking back at me. I drag myself away and flop down onto the bare mattress.

There are no streetlights to pour soft honey hues into the shadows of my room. The mattress smells of stiff cleaner, not of amber oil, or shitty weed. I splay my fingers out over the fabric and crush my eyes shut, and the memory of unkempt hair tickles my fingertips.

This skeleton room is empty and gaunt, and the only person here to haunt it, is me.

Before sleep steals me, I begin to grow nostalgic for the ruin I left behind.