She can tell the stranger is used to this.
Feeling around the empty dark, feeling for the things that go bump in the night. This? This is nothing new.
His hands are silver, almost gold, scars twining around and over his palms, crossing over his fingers like rings. There's an age to them that she can't explain, and every time he turns, she gets a peek at a new one. Showing from under his collar, marring his hip-bones when his shirt rides up.
If she was any other person, she might have even been worried. She's only baffled now.
He's tall, gigantic almost, towering over her 5'4 frame. It's surprising though, that he doesn't make her feel small. Instead, it looks like he himself is trying to look smaller. When they met, he was all hunched shoulders and hands in pockets. Now she's not sure what they're looking for, but he's in his element, she can tell. He still won't rise up to his full height.
She likes to think she's good at reading people, but she can't read him.
It's not because of the forlorn eyes (they look like the sun when it cuts through leaves), or because of the way he moves like he's stalking prey. It's not because when he talks she feels something deeper behind his words, something that shouldn't be there at his age. He reminds her of her brother Daniel. Always sweet and kind and caring until he joined the army. Daniel came back but he left himself behind.
The kid is young though, early twenties.
Her gut twists like a rope.
Long fingers trail on the trunks of trees they stride past, overcast sky setting shadows and angular lines on his face. There's no sun in the woods, no chirping birds. Only leaves crunching under their feet and biting wind.
Suddenly, he stops and turns, squatting and hovering a hand over worn and packed dirt. He does it gently like he's afraid of upsetting the roots of the trees. If she shifts a little and looks past his look of concentration, she can see a print in the earth. It's not of any animal she recognizes, the markings wide and crooked like crows feet.
Except the prints are huge, and the stranger knows exactly what they are.
His lips don't move but when he turns around, the look on his face says it all. Eyebrows that are turned down and hooded eyes. Frenzied hands moving so fast their motions are imperceivable. He knows something's wrong, but there's the tiniest of smiles creeping across his face. He knows something's wrong and he's happy and that terrifies her.
Thin-lipped and all, he's not scared.
Loaded shotgun and throwing knives, the stranger is all fight.
It's ridiculous because they're about to die, and he can't beat this thing, this monster, but as the dock splinters under her feet, she sees light enter his eyes. Like an airplane cutting through clouds, he seems to loosen up and go harder, practically asking to be killed. He wants something he knows he can't get, but he's going to try anyway and fuck the consequences.
She's going to die in a rainstorm with monsters and a stranger and not enough-
There's no light anymore.
Water crashes on her hard, pounding her deeper and deeper into the everlasting dark. She's never been afraid of the water, but anyone mentions drowning, and she feels liquid filling her lungs. Much like being buried alive, the thought of not being able to breathe, the absolute panic of being cut off from the one thing that is easiest to get-
It makes her insides curl.
Now though, there's no air, and she isn't losing her mind. Instinct tells her not to let the tide in, not until lights begin flickering in and out of her vision. She feels her body rebelling against her mind, saying No, you will not breathe in. As much as she wants to fight, as much as she wants to find the surface and break through it, she can't. Exhaustion and something else she can't name hold her down.
In a split-second, a million thoughts race through her brain. She wonders where the stranger is. She wonders if he's still alive. She wonders if the thing that was chasing them is dead. She wonders if the weight of the water and the pain is enough to keep her from floating up to the top. A whole night of running from monsters she thought was only possible in nightmares. The stranger clearly knew what he was doing and what he was looking for. The creature didn't take long to find, and that's when the whole evening went to shit.
She wonders-
Hands grab her biceps tight, and before she can even process what's happening, her head breaks the surface of the water. Sneakers scrape a rough lake bottom and she finds she can breathe. The storm and the waves don't let her see who's helping her, but she can guess. The lake threatens to throw them around still, but the stranger pulls her by the arm until her waist breaks past the surface of the waves.
He lets go.
They both collapse onto wet sand, toppling over like dominos. Torn muscles and broken bones and cuts and scrapes and fresh pain are etched into his features, probably hers too, and when he shivers she almost catches a name on his lips.
He's leaning over, throwing up lake water and crawling as far away from her as possible. His long limbs look too wobbly to hold him up so she watches tiredly as he tries. The sand is hard and compact, uncomfortable to lie on, but she doesn't even think of moving any time soon. The storm is not going to let up any time soon, and she wants so desperately to close her eyes but-
The stranger is there.
Harsh inhalations wrack his chest, but he's no longer emptying his lungs of lake water. He's simply resting on his knees, a water-logged piece of paper in his hands. Black ink trails down his wrists like the blood running down his temple, painting him like a watercolor. The wind whips his long hair into his face and she can't tell what he's thinking. She's not sure she wants to.
They stay on the beach until the stranger leans forward on his heels and gets up, running a hand through his hair to get it out of his face. She's been lying on the ground, grabbing fistfuls of crumbling sand and letting the grains run through her fingers. It's only drizzling then, and he reaches out a hand to haul her up, shoving the piece of paper back in his hoodie.
She wants so badly to go home.
An Impala is what waits for them in the parking lot, and when they settle in, she can tell he doesn't like driving it. It's his, but he's not comfortable at the helm, as if someone else has driven it for a long time. The grooves in the steering wheel aren't molded to his hands.
Words always fail her, but this is a good time to speak.
"I'm Decca." It's so quiet in the car, she's sure she's screaming when she says it, but the stranger doesn't even turn to her. He just drapes his arms on the wheel and leans his head on his elbow.
"Sam."
"Did-" Decca's scared to ask. She doesn't want to know.
"Did you kill it?"
Sam brings his arms back down and places his forehead very carefully on the steering wheel, as if he doesn't want to damage it. Decca thinks he's forgetting that they're both soaked and covered in blood. He closes his eyes and gulps, Adam's apple bobbing in confirmation. Decca sighs in relief, but she feels none coming from him. Sam cracks his eyes open to glance at her.
She likes to think she's good at reading people, but she can't read him.
It's not because of the eyes (they're the color of dark nights spent alone and too many mistakes), or because of the way his shoulders shake like he's lost something close, something of value. It's not because when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the paper his eyes crinkle sadly at the corners. He doesn't remind her of anyone now. Only of nostalgia for a sort of sadness she's never felt.
Before he turns on the car she feels a burning in her chest and a question in her mind.
We lived. You killed it. Why are you so sad?
She doesn't say it, but her mind idly supplies it, and she thinks she catches the same name on his lips. Sam clasps his fingers together and reaches back, grabbing his neck like he wants to wring the life out of himself. He shakes his head and bores his eyes through a hole in the knee of his jeans.
"He's never coming. He's never coming back."
im on tumblr koedeza where u can send me prompts and yell at me and what not