In the dead of night, Lee haunts the streets like a vulture.
Bars and clubs on their last last calls, messed up patrons kicked out to the curbs while still trying to get their names right. It’s a psychopath’s playground, like a tasting menu laid out in waiting for his choice.
And his choice, so it happens, takes the form of a known enemy, struggling to keep the pace of one step at a time. Left, right, left— stumble. Over where he stands, he watches Fletcher as he limps down the street, not unlike one of those stray cats he’d taken an interest in as a kid. Vulnerable, weak, with no voice of its own. And just like them, it sparks a fire — wondering just what it’d look like on the inside.
It’s too great a gift, for a man too undeserving of it. Still, Lee does his best to blend into the shadows and follow him for another block or so, holding in all laughter. In the dark, he shrugs, an attempt to shake the burning of his veins away. One is never ever out at this hour for the fun that comes with it, but all the rest, too. The syringe felt cold, but his blood is hot. Boiling, now, for one figure alone.
Finally, then, both casualty and desire clash, as does Fletcher to his body. An arm already around his shoulder, Lee smiles at baby. No question, he’s that fucked up.
“’Course I do, love.” He’s playing it up, tone sweeter, hand around Fletcher’s neck. He could snap it, now, easy. What sort of medal would Lev grant him, for such a heroic act?
Looking down, all that’s in focus is the top of Fletcher’s head — how much money is he getting for this decade old bet? —, those saucer eyes looking up at him from below. Glossy, lost, empty.
He likes his eyes, Lee decides. A little too much.
“Got them in my car, babe. C’mon,” Lee offers a hand, “let’s light one up.”
He can’t quite appreciate the soft of the fabric as Fletcher grips the cotton in front of him, it’s all just tingly. He’s no less that warring with the ground below him as he attempts to keep his face off of it; as much as the idea of decorating it with a face, paving the stones in flesh and bone in some detrimental spiral of his thoughts when he reminds himself that his hand’s again empty from his gun. It’s not his own face he imagines to be smashed on the floor – but the intrusive thoughts of it being another, potentially. Hargrave’s back to the ideations of the face in front of him, can make out pale features – like a ghost, but it feels good on his hands. They threaten to travel, to snake downwards as he recovers himself and blinks away the monsters in his peripheries – those bricks flashing with red and blue, fuck, cops?
No. Imagination. Because there’s a sweetness to the voice that draws him back, lopsided grin on his face where he’s encouraging the touch on his throat – he doesn’t react to that; welcomes it like it’s going to be some backalley high fuck that he won’t remember in the morning. Doesn’t know much about memories anymore, anyways. There’s still a drink in his hand, though, the contents spilled to near empty the crystal by this point and there’s nothing distinct that he can place besides, the faint dark orange of bricks, a notable, faint throwaway to the spatter of red on the ground and a body against him that’s hard – like he recognises he probably will be, once he gets over being whiskey dicked. “Mhm, good,” he mumbles, catches fast movement in the corner, antelope? Waits, stares past the figure holding him, feels the tight twist a little more pressure on his neck when he spins himself out with the quick movements of his head chasing a figuration in the distance.
Steps forward at the same moment a truck crashes into the deer – a squeal of metal as it folds in, near rips the skin of the animal apart as the large truck clunks to an abrupt stop and even by Fletcher’s standards; it’s unexpected, draws his attention away from everything else, as he blinks and watches the brutality vanish to become a dark shadowy street again. He shouldn’t still be grinning – but he is, glances back, catches some Cheshire cat mirroring smile for the briefest of moments.
Got them in my car, babe.
Hargrave’s down with that – history of backseat screws, add to it, why not. Finishes the remnants of the liquid in his glass, tosses it lazily behind him, hears the shatter of glass in the distance – washed out like he’s underwater.
He’s not that sure he’s walking on his own, or if he’s only upright because the stranger is assisting with it, but his skin is slick; noticeably, a kind of uncomfortable state that has Fletcher’s other hand scratching at his arm, swallowing, the liquor breath strong to his own senses and he’s continuing to slur words without thought: “Can’t wait to taste your puss-“ he cuts himself off when that scratching on his arm starts to sting and his eyes bolt downwards, see the faintest smear of red where his fingernails have dug ridges into his forearm and there’s the pinpricks of his own blood seeping through the self-given grazes – what did you take Fletcher? His hand slaps hard over the bloodied scratches, tries to act like he hasn’t just done that and then, as he attempts to focus to assess how hard he’s actually scooped, he swears he can see movements underneath his flesh – right below the epithelium that there’s legs.
A running theme, apparently. “Fuck me,” hissed, whispered and he’s still walking with the stranger, careless to anything else but the small emergence of a mosquito, a needle-like head that threatens to cause more damage as it breaks from within Fletcher’s scratches, he watches with wide-eyes, doesn’t dare flinch in case the bug – insect what the fuck, sober the – it bursts from his skin and he stumbles back where the splitting of his arm bursts like a sick birthing and he’s beginning to feel his chest tighten. Is that fear, Fletch?
Something like panic invades him that he doesn’t usually associate with, but the sight of hundreds of tiny little ants, beetles? Crawling from where he’s just drug-induced broken his skin is something and his hand closes into a fist finally, tries to keep his cool when he’s further swiping at his arm to rid the blasted insects that are spilling from where there’s now blood pooling across his arm– “hey babe, are you – lighter, fucking stat,”
Burn those buggers off me. He doesn’t recognise the hint of panic that comes when he’s grappling to reach for the other to help with the impending anxiety meltdown, entirely self-inflicted, entirely probably an overdose that could end fatal for every other reason going. “This is… the alligator’s fault,” he’s delirious, shit, “…crocodile, get the light, bitch, now,”
