Chapter Text
It was 30 seconds before 5pm when you clocked in for your evening shift, you noted, giving yourself a little internal pat on the back for not being late for once. The manager at Fennel Fields wasn’t too anal about arrival times and, really, who else were they going to hire, but you still weren’t looking for another lecture. You tied your apron into place around your back, pinning on your nametag button, and making sure all your pens were in their proper pockets.
Fennel Fields wasn’t the worst place you’d ever worked (that one went to the weird taxidermist you worked under for like a week), but it was definitely a dead-end job. The manager had worked here for a veritable eternity and most of your co-workers seemed like they’d resolved themselves to this for the foreseeable future. Sure, everyone talked about getting out of Evergreen, but nobody ever did. Well, you had once, for a little bit at least. You’d done all the right shit, supposedly: finished high school, went off to college, and gotten yourself a bachelor's degree, but that didn’t mean shit in the end. You’d still found yourself back here. The only difference now was the exorbitant amount of student loan debt tied to your name.
You were just putting the hat on (you hated the hat) when a familiar voice spoke up behind you. “So, how’d that date yesterday go? What was his name…?” Blake asked.
You turned to face her, giving her a frown and a vague grumbling noise. She was leaning on the wall nearby, in a corner near the kitchen, looking very eager for the report. You had been hoping she wouldn’t ask, or maybe that she’d have forgotten, but that was an absurd hope and you’d known it. Blake was your favorite of the hosts here and, arguably, your best friend, but she was relentlessly nosy. You weren’t sure why she was always so dogged about it; she never shared anyones’ gossip around, but she seemed determined to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everyone’s business.
“Bad,” you said simply. “I just—I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it. Which like, no big deal, that’s life, but then he cornered me into kissing him after.” She gave you a frown. “Felt like I couldn’t spit or brush my teeth enough times after.” You didn’t answer her question about his name. It didn’t matter and talking about the situation was making your stomach feel sour enough.
“Gross,” she replied, reaching out to pull your hat into the correct position. “You okay?”
“I think so, but that wasn’t it. I tried to tell him later he’d made me uncomfortable, thinking—I don’t know—that he’d apologize? He told me he could tell I was uncomfortable but said I was being ridiculous and that he couldn’t have asked if I was okay with it, because it’d have ruined the moment,” you added with a bitter smile and air quotes. “Like, there was no moment. I was just trying to get the hell out of there. I ended up blocking his number after he started getting weirdly aggressive and then guess what?”
“Oh, god, what?” she asked.
“He texted me a murder-suicide threat from a new number,” you said with a little fake-enthusiastic double hand wave.
“What? Show me,” she demanded, her voice pitching into outrage.
You pulled out your phone and tapped on the messaging app, handing it back to her. She was quiet for a moment as she looked over the text.
She made a face. “Are these…song lyrics?”
You gave her a shrug. “Yeah, I googled it afterward, but, like...melodramatic song lyrics or not, it says what it says. I’m not sure how else to interpret it after all the rest of that.”
“You’re not wrong, it definitely reads like that,” Blake agreed. “You’re sure it was him?”
You’d asked yourself the same question, truthfully, but you still made a face at her. “Who the fuck else would be sending me that shit?”
She hummed an acquiescing noise, handing your phone back to you. “Good point. He doesn’t know where you live or anything, right?”
“We live in Podunk McFucktown. Everybody knows where everybody lives, Blake,” you grimaced, realizing you hadn’t thought of that yet. Suddenly, you weren’t looking forward to walking home tonight.
You looked up then to find your other coworker, Adrian staring at you in your periphery. You gave him a perplexed look. “You okay?” you asked when he didn’t react.
He startled for a second, seeming like he’d forgotten all concept of himself as something that existed within the physical realm before you spoke. “Yes—No—Yes. I’m good. Sorry. Totally fine, yeah. Why do you ask?” he said, jumbling his words together almost incomprehensibly.
The front doorbell jingled as it opened and you turned to see Blake rush off to play hostess for the first customer of the evening shift. You weren’t sure what to say to Adrian, really, so you just awkwardly nodded at him. He nodded back with more enthusiasm than you and you both went your separate ways.
Getting into the mind-numbing customer service role took a bit more effort than usual tonight with everything on your mind. You felt yourself mindlessly slipping into anxieties during dull moments, brain spinning and weaving elaborate and terrifying possibilities, but you managed to get through work well enough. It was a slow night, as most Wednesday nights were. Lots of standing around, lots of pretending to be busy cleaning. As much as you wanted to go home, you were definitely feeling the dread as time ticked down.
The diner finally had the last customer out the door at 15 minutes past 11, wrapping up the clean-up and closing tasks putting your own departure closer to midnight.
You untied your apron, hat already shoved in your pocket, and clocked out, bidding Blake goodbye. She’d asked half a dozen times if you needed her to walk you home, but she lived in the opposite direction and you knew you were being paranoid. It was just some stupid song lyrics. How serious could that be? Nobody sent song lyrics when they were going to actually kill someone…right?
A heavy gust of wind whipped the tree branches around as you walked out the back door. The fall crickets sang in the cool night, jumping about as you passed under the flickering parking lot light to the sidewalk. You fidgeted with the keys sitting in your hoodie pouch nervously. You usually loved your walks home. It was a peaceful time for you to think and listen to music and sometimes, if nobody else was around, dance a little. Everything felt awful and ominous tonight, though. Shadows seemed to twist themselves into human forms, animals in the brush became people with guns, and you were far too paranoid to risk putting in even one headphone.
Your hands wrapped around the stupid little pink mace hanging on your keychain that you’d bought years ago. Did pepper spray expire? You didn’t remember seeing a date on it, but if it did expire, it almost definitely was by now, you realized with dismay. You were more than halfway home, by now, though. Another two turns and you’d be able to see your apartment complex.
You’d barely completed the thought when you heard a voice saying your name. Your blood froze, breath catching in your throat. You repositioned your grip on the mace, aiming for a casual sort of nonchalantness as you searched the darkness, some part of you still convinced you were overreacting. A figure stepped closer to the street light and you clenched your teeth. Fuck, it was him.
“Oh, shit! Funny seeing you here,” the man said, far too casually for the situation.
“No, it’s really not very funny, David,” you ground out.
“Oh, don’t act like that. I work at the bowling alley just around the corner. There’s nothing weird happening here,” he explained, moving closer. You watched him closely, mind reeling.
“The bowling alley closes at 9,” you said, voice sounding quieter than you’d meant it to, fear audibly edging into it now.
He smiled, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. Don’t freak out on me. I just wanted to talk and you blocked my numbers so it’s not like I could’ve called you,” he said as though it was obvious this situation was your fault. “I know we didn’t leave off on the best of terms, and I just wanted to see about giving it another shot, yeah?”
Your mind was screaming for you to give a firm retort, but all you managed was a hollow, “I don’t—” before your mind trailed off into panicked numbness.
He was a few feet away now, still speaking confidently. He was still smiling too, but it felt even more predatory than before. You screamed at yourself to run, fight, do something, but your body refused to budge, feet like lead weight digging into the concrete. The world was starting to spin a little in your head. “I gotta say, I think we’d look really great together,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Hmm. Y’know, I don’t really see it,” a new, boyish voice came from your right. Your heads both spun around. Wasn’t that…what the fuck did he call himself…Vigilante? You’d heard stories about him. Shit, hadn’t the news said he’d killed like…a lot of people? “I mean, let’s be honest, she’s real cute, but you’re…I mean I guess you’re somebody’s type. Everybody’s somebody’s type,” he said with a shrug.
“Who the fuck are you?” David pressed, moving closer to you still and clearly not taking the newcomer seriously.
“You know, I’m still figuring that out, man. Every day is just a journey of self-discovery,” Vigilante said, twitching his covered head to the side whimsically.
“Fuck off, dude. This is none of your business,” David said, going for something on his waist and moving to grab at you. You pulled your mace up to his face level then, pressing down hard on the button and waiting for his scream of agony.
It fizzled a pitiful little spit of liquid on the concrete and you cursed, throwing it at his face instead and turning to run as David’s hands reached out, hunting knife visible in his hand now as his anger flared at your attempted attack. You tripped, shoes skidding on gravel and open palms scraping against the cracked concrete.
Vigilante was quick, though, and David didn’t stand a chance. By the time you looked up from your desperate scrambling, David was limp on the ground, neck sliced clean open, the meat and cartilage of his throat visible as his mouth gaped like a fish. You knew there were major veins and arteries in the neck, but Jesus, that was a lot of blood.
Vigilante wiped his knife off on David’s shirt, sliding it easily back in its sheath at the base of his spine. You stared, not sure if you were in more or less danger now. “You okay?” he asked, moving closer. His boyish voice felt wrong now, incompatible with the ruthless killer standing in front of you now. You looked down at yourself and nodded. Your hands were scraped up, but no major swaths of skin were open and blood and everything was still attached, you supposed, so you were definitely looking like a winner compared to David.
Vigilante handed you your keys, the useless and apparently very expired mace still hanging off of it mockingly. “Um…thanks,” you breathed, staring at him again. What the hell were you supposed to do now?
“No problemo,” he said, hands on his hips. He reached a hand out to you. “Come on, I’ll walk you home, dude.”
You stared at his hand for a moment before taking it. The fabric scraped uncomfortably against your abraded hands as he pulled you to your feet. You dusted off your pants, checking yourself over again, before glancing at the limp body.
“Wait—what if someone thinks I fucking killed him?” you realized. “Christ, should I call the cops?”
“Nah, you’ll be fine,” he said casually. “They still haven’t caught me for anything and I do this stuff all the time.”
“I’m not wearing a mask,” you hissed, deciding to resolutely ignore his confession to untold numbers of murders.
“Hmm good point, but, I mean, I don’t see any cameras,” he said looking around. “Don’t worry so much. I’ll…I don’t know…post about it on my Facebook page or something and say I did it.”
You squinted at him. “You have a…Facebook page?”
“Yeah, for…uh Vigilante things,” he said, shrugging and glancing around. “We should probably get out of here, though, before somebody drives by or something. We can double back through here. Come on.”
Fuck, what other choice did you have here? You pulled your hood over your head, feeling a little more protected and anonymous in its shadow, and trailed after him. He was holding a broken chain link fence up for you and you ducked under, watching him follow. He led you around a few more corners and through somebody’s backyard, taking you parallel to your normal path home. You followed him as he approached the first major streetlight you’d passed under, the giant beam giving definition to his silhouette. You squinted at him a little. What the hell was that on his arm?
“Oh holy shit, dude, you’re bleeding,” you hissed, rushing closer. “Like a fucking lot.”
“Wait—what? Oh. That’s what that was. That does kinda sting,” he said, not sounding remotely concerned
“That—that is a serious gash. Okay, shit—,” You searched through your bag and pulled out your apron, folding it, the cleaner inner side up, and pressing it into his hand. “Put this on it and keep pressure, okay? I’ll…fuck. I’ve got some suture at home. I assume you’re not the hospital type.”
He hummed. “Nah, hospitals aren’t really my thing, but I can just superglue this. Don’t worry,” he said, waving a hand at you. He still pressed the apron to it as directed, though.
You scrunched your face up imagining the sting of dousing a wound that size in fucking superglue. Somehow, you bet he’d glue his own hand to his arm too. “Yeah, that’s not going to work on something this big, my dude. Come on.”
It was your turn to lead now, patting him briefly on his good shoulder and motioning for him to follow as you headed down the quickest route you knew to your apartment. It took a full 15 minutes to get there after the weaving detour he’d taken you on earlier. You struggled not to rush on the way, doing your best to act casual and stay away from the road where possible. You didn’t want this fucker passing out in the dirt from blood loss or some shit. Vigilante just chatted the whole time, not nearly as worried as you. You appreciated it, truthfully. It was a good distraction, yeah, but it also let you know he wasn’t about to pass out quite yet.
You fumbled with your keys as you climbed the stairs to your apartment, giving the mace keychain a scowl, and pressing the key into the lock. The door creaked as you opened it and reached over to flick the light switch to “on”. You tossed your bag down onto the carpet next to the couch and, as ungracefully as humanly possible, slipped off your hoodie to throw it down next to it. Vigilante closed the door behind him, looking at everything around him
“Stay here for just a sec. I’ll be right back,” you said, heading to your bathroom to gather up supplies. You opened up the cabinet and sat yourself down on the tile. Okay, suture, needle drivers, and thumb forceps were in the first aid kit you’d put together a while ago. You pulled those out. The suture you found was a year expired now, but, hey, you weren’t running a hospital here. If Vigilante wanted in-date suture and actual sterility he could call an uber and go to the damn ER. You rifled through the plastic organizing drawers in the corner. Non-adhesive gauze might be a good idea for now, though you didn’t think it’d need to stay covered. You guessed you could just tape the gauze on like a giant makeshift band-aid.
“Oh, sick,” you heard an enthusiastic voice say behind you, your body jolting in surprise. You twisted around to see Vigilante looking through your mishmashed collection of nicknacks and things. “Aww, it’s a kitty,” he said, picking the little figurine up and making it do a little dance in your direction.
“Jesus, dude, I told you to stay in the living room,” you said, a bit of the frustration from being startled so easily showing in your voice.
“Sorry, I got bored,” he said, picking something else up to peer at it. He didn’t sound sorry at all, you noted, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to be angry. It was all…kind of weirdly endearing, a childish enthusiasm that stood as a bizarre juxtaposition against the person you just watched efficiently slice someone’s neck open less than half an hour ago.
You stood up, grabbing your collected supplies off the bathroom floor. “Okay, come on. Put that down. You can look at whatever you want later,” you admonished. “Don’t want you bleeding all over my house.” You didn’t imagine blood was easy to get out of whatever kind of ancient carpeting they’d installed in this apartment.
He followed dutifully behind you as you led him down the hall to the kitchen. You flipped on the light switch, the fluorescent tubing flickering to life obediently, if not a bit hesitantly. It wasn’t especially bright in this part of the house, but it was brighter than in your bathroom and you’d have a bit more room to work.
“Okay, sit here on the counter and just like…lean over the sink I guess,” you said, patting the laminate countertop. He jumped up to sit on the faux-granite effortlessly as you lathered soap over your hands, blinking away a wince as your own scrapes burned with pain. That was going to be really annoying for a few days.
“If you can get your arm out of your sleeve that’d be really helpful, but, like, it’s whatever you feel comfortable with uh, secret identity and all,” you said, glancing over at him as you finished rinsing the soap off your hands. You’d probably be pretty touchy about showing much of anything if you had as many arrest warrants as you were pretty sure this man did.
You grabbed a clean bowl from your cabinet as he pulled off his glove, shifting his arm out of the sleeve and rolling the shirt to sit on his shoulder. You tried not to look, watching as the bowl slowly filled with water and wishing you had one of those fancy corded faucet heads…or at least some goddamn water pressure. You glanced at him finally, immediately trying to swallow down the heat you felt in your cheeks with a heavy dose of internal scolding. You’d always had a thing for arms.
You poured water over the gash, watching as the water stained murky red, flowing over this morning's unwashed dishes and collecting in your favorite coffee mug. "Sorry it’s so cold," you apologized. "This sink takes forever to get warm."
"It’s fine," he assured you, his obscured face turned down to watch as your fingers rubbed diluted soap into his skin around the cut, gently breaking up the dried, crusted blood before rinsing again.
You rinsed it a few more times before shutting off the water, patting the skin with a paper towel, and setting up your supplies. The wound was gently oozing blood now, some clots likely disrupted by the cleaning process, but nothing was spurting or bleeding too wildly. It’d probably be fine with sutures and some time, you decided.
You steadied your needle drivers in one hand as you pressed the edges of the wound together in the other, digging into one side and then the other with a twitch of your wrist. The muscles of his arm tensed with each bite of the suture needle. You thread each one through, leaving just a hint of tail each time to loop around the needle drivers and tie into small knots, cutting off the end, and piercing through the flesh for another stitch. It'd been a while since you'd sutured anything and your hands were shaking more than you'd like. The stitches looked neat enough so far, though, and they seemed to be holding close enough to the right tautness around the skin.
You glanced up at him, suddenly realizing he'd been extremely quiet this whole time. "You still doing okay?" you asked. “Being pretty quiet.”
"Yeah, I'm—I'm good," he said, still looking down at you. His voice got a hint quieter then. "I uh…I think this is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."
You stared at him like a deer in the headlights for a moment before ducking your head with an awkward shrug. “I mean, it—it’s not a big deal, really. You did save my ass back there. Even if the uh, methodology of choice was a lot to swallow,” you said, pausing before squinting in realization and adding, “no pun intended.”
“Oh haha because of the—” he motioned to his neck.
“Yeah, because of the uh…the neck meat,” you nodded, huffing out another laugh.
“Where’d you learn to do this shit anyway?” he asked as you peeled open the packaging on the gauze pad, his quiet streak over, apparently. You set the gauze down, still in the package, to tear off a few strips of tape and stick them to hang off the countertop.
“My dad was into survivalist shit. Taught me how to suture when I was a teenager. I never needed to use it before now, though,” you said, pressing the gauze pad to his arm and grabbing a strip of tape to secure it. “So I, uh, I guess you’re my first patient.” You laughed a little, fully securing the gauze pad.
You looked up again to see him just watching you silently again and tried to remember to breathe.
“Anyways, you should be good now with that and I should probably get to bed,” you said, breaking yourself out of whatever that was. You felt a bit guilty basically kicking him out, but this was…well, weird didn’t seem to cover it. He seemed nice enough (to you at least), but your growing attraction was making you seriously question your taste and risk analysis capabilities. You almost died tonight and this was decidedly not the time to be making this kind of a judgment call.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he replied, seeming to break from his own trance as well. He hopped down from your kitchen counter, putting his sleeve and glove back on.
“So, do you need me to like…I don’t know, call you an Uber?” you asked.
“Oh, uh, no, I’m good,” he said, giving you a thumbs up.
“Oh, okay, then. Um…shit, lemme get the door for you, I guess,” you floundered, hurrying to the front door to let him out.
“Thanks,” he said, “for the stuff,” he gestured to his arm.
“Yeah, sure, uh good luck with the whole…Vigilante…thing,” you replied, cursing yourself for how stupid that sounded before remembering to add, “Oh, also, you can take out those sutures in like 2 weeks or so, okay?”
“Okay, doc, will do,” he said, giving you a little salute and starting down the stairs.
You closed the door and locked it, just standing there for a minute before letting out a deep sigh. You were going to shower and sleep and leave processing all of this shit to tomorrow-you.