Disclaimer:
Not mine. Ever. (Dang.)
Title:
Turns of Fate
Pairing:
Ben/Riley
Summary:The
darkness hiding the danger.
Spoilers:
National Treasure I
Notes:
This is the beginning to a story that is 30 pages long in my word
processor. It includes homophobia and Riley having a painful past;
this is considered disability!fic, as a main character will lose the
permanent use of a sense. If any of that is an issue, please do not
read.
"He who does not understand your silence
will probably not understand your words."
- Elbert Hubbard -
He'd gone down the alleyway as a shortcut to his apartment, something he'd done a dozen times before. It was a faster route from the coffee shop than to go all the way around the block and given that he normally worked well into the night on his software programs, it was understandable that he wanted to get home in the shortest amount of time possible.
So he hadn't thought twice about it – an alleyway was an alleyway and aside from the cats that sometimes leapt from the dumpster at his head, he'd never been afraid to walk through it.
Riley never saw the guys coming, the darkness hiding the danger.
How they'd guessed – correctly – that he was gay, he would never know. How they'd found him and why they'd targeted him were other questions to which he'd never get answers; he was just another statistic, an incident of discrimination based on his sexuality.
And as he laid in the alley that night, a stagnant puddle by his head and his body aching from the beating, Riley clung to the amusement that he was both a statistic and celebrity before the darkness claimed him.