Vicissitude
phinks magcub x reader
synopsis: The train begins to move, and after a minute too long of contemplation, Phinks sits in the closest seat to him—across from you.
warnings: yandere, f reader, death of side characters, not rlly proofread lol
authors notes: 5.8k words. got my spark for writing back with this one :^] inspired by the movie ‘king of New York’ I’m literally unable to upload any type of header at all for this fic. Everything under the cut >:T
The station is sparse tonight.
Good. Phinks wasn’t up for shifting through crowds or being crammed into a train car like a sardine. Not ever, especially not tonight. There’s a couple sitting together against the wall and a scraggly man mooning about. Below the platform on the tracks, a woman’s high heel has fallen.
When the subway comes, he gets in the car, the doors sliding closed behind him after a minute. The fluorescent lights give the interior an unpleasant green quality, and it’s not any warmer in the car than it is out on the platform. It’s quiet and devoid of any nuisances, and that’s enough for him. There are only two people in the car, one directly across from him and one on the same side, further down on and sitting with his hands in his lap.
The train begins to move, and after a minute too long of contemplation, Phinks sits in the closest seat to him—across from you.
A dark blazer, a dark skirt, and dark heels, though they’re pretty short. Neatly parted hair. If he cared to look, he’d notice an off-white blouse tucked behind the blazer. On your calf is a mole that he can just barely see, peeking out on the side of the column of smooth flesh. You’re still staring down at your lap, either unaware of his staring or pretending not to notice. Phinks catches himself and looks away, gaze shifting back down to the subway floor and the soft rattling of the cars.
He tries to think about what his next move will be, then puts a hand across his forehead and rubs both his temples with his thumb, middle, and ring fingers. The normal scents he’s come to associate with the subway usually aggravate his seemingly near-constant headache: sweat and smoke and, on bad days, piss. They must’ve cleaned up recently. Instead, what he assumes must be your perfume is what’s bothering him. Stirring him slightly in a vaguely familiar way. Gourmand or whatever it was that Paku called it. He thinks about getting up to sit somewhere else.
Someone’s looking at him.
He lifts his head, but it isn’t you, and for some reason he thinks it’s unfortunate. He looks to his right at the other end of the train car, finding the culprit who is now doing the same as you: staring at his hands as if they’re the most interesting thing in the world.
Not a minute goes by and Phinks can feel eyes on him again. It’s still not you. He looks over at the man again, this time making eye contact for a brief moment before the stranger breaks it. Vaguely irritated by the attempt at a confrontation but too despondent to escalate, he lowers his head and looks at your shoes. Plain and dark, not any discernable brand. He wonders if the label is behind your heel or under the arch of your foot. He’s being stared at again.
…If the guy has a problem, he’ll say something. If he’s smart, he’ll mind his business.
He immediately regrets jinxing it, for the man stands up and begins to make his way over with some sort of false bravado.
One thing after a-fucking-nother.
He inhales sharply, mentally preparing himself for whatever bullshit is about to happen. His gaze lifts to you. Your hands are still in your lap, head and eyes lowered, apathetically pretending to not notice that the third passenger has approached.
“Hey.”
Phinks pretends not to hear it. You do the same, and he likes that. Can’t he see that you two would rather be left alone?
The man speaks a little louder this time. “Hey.”
Phinks finally gives the interlocutor some attention. Your head perks up as well, then quickly lowers again when you see it’s not you being spoken to.
“What?”
The guy is a little bit older than him, wearing a salmon-pink polo and khaki cargo shorts. It’s not the right season, so he’s apparently decided to throw on a sports jacket rather than dress for the weather. He looks ridiculous, and he’s visibly out of shape to boot.
“You’re the guy from the gas station—you took off without paying for anything.”
“Okay.” Phinks waits for him to continue, trying to keep you in his periphery. You’ve shifted ever so slightly, feigning disinterest, but he can see through that. Pakunoda taught him that once, subtle changes in body language and nonverbal cues. Reading someone's subconscious rather than having to rely on words they may not mean.
“I saw you kill that guy outside too!” The man’s voice raises a pitch with urgency. “You did something to his neck, and he fell over dead!”
“Okay.” Phinks repeats himself. From the corner of his eye, Phinks can see your expression shift from mild curiosity to poorly hidden unease. You still won’t look at him. The man flusters for a moment, caught off guard by Phinks’s apparent non sequitur. He must’ve expected some sort of frantic denial.
The automated voice comes through the speakers.
“The train will be pulling into Village Station in: 15 minutes.”
The man pulls a gun out from inside his jacket, aiming it at Phinks. His hand is shaking slightly. “You’re a murderer.” The subway rattles, and Polo Guy swallows thickly. He looks like he’s going to lose balance and fall over. “I’m making a citizen's arrest.”
You stand up, clutching your purse a little tighter. Rather than letting you tiptoe behind him to duck into the other train car, Phinks stands too, grabbing you and forces you against him; your back to his chest and with one arm tight around you to keep you still. If he had a gun, he’d jam the barrel into your side or blast this vigilante cop or whatever the fuck he said he was to smithereens. Just like a movie.
“Eek!”
“Do you want her to die?”
Though Pakunoda’s gun never jammed, Phinks always thought fists were more reliable.
He feels a little bad for dragging you into this and forcing you into the role of interposer, but he’s internally thankful that you aren’t struggling or screaming. That makes things a bit smoother. Besides, it’ll teach this self-righteous asshole a lesson.
“This is hostage taking!” The man still points his gun, aiming at Phinks. Sweat forms on his forehead and dips briefly into its wrinkles before sliding down the rest of his face. Even if he wasn’t in too deep to back out now, Phinks still wouldn’t let him.
He usually wouldn’t do this. He usually wouldn’t drag things out or play with his food, as Uvo might—might’ve put it. He usually wouldn’t drag an innocent person into his misgivings. The Spider doesn’t usually lose two members within days of each other.
But this guy is getting on his nerves, so he supposes he can make an exception.
“Look, you’re scaring her.” He taunts, tightening his hold on you. You’re shivering against him, knees buckled, either too scared or still retaining enough sense to not try anything. “She’s going to die because you wanted to play hero.”
The man’s mouth twitches downwards, and with his free hand he reaches for something in his back pocket. A phone, presumably. Phinks tosses you to the floor, rushing for the man. He can’t hear a gunshot go off, though he’s sure the trigger was pulled. With a quick and forceful manuever of the neck, the man drops to the floor with a heavy thud and a strange crunch of his vertebrae. The sound is comparable to a wild dog crushing its jaws around a gazelle’s neck.
It’s far more anticlimactic than what his victim was probably expecting.
This has to be a one-off. He can’t afford to get sloppy, not anymore. His jaw twitches and he tries not to think about the wave of unpleasantness that hits him, stinging his face and flooding his chest.
Phinks stands over the man, who lies dead on the subway floor. His neck is broken harshly at an angle, the skin torn around it and his trachea flopping out. If by some tragedy the man isn’t dead yet, he will be soon. The train car rattles on the tracks again. He thinks he sees the man’s chest rising and falling momentarily, so Phinks stomps his foot down on the man’s head for good measure.
Blood splatters up his pant leg and thoroughly covers his shoe, darkening it. It’s not enough to soak into the inside and dampen his socks, but he’ll need to get rid of this pair. That heaviness in his chest is gone for now, though, so he thinks it was worth it. Ironically, killing this arrogant dickhead was just the pick-me-up he needed. His glory is cut brief by a sort of susurration behind him.
Suddenly remembering that you’re still there, Phinks whirls around to see you, trying to pick yourself up. He must’ve thrown you against the seats or too hard, you seemed to have a hard time just moving without making any sort of whimpering sound. He walks over, picking you up by the arm. You sway slightly, your body rigid and face devoid of color. He holds onto your arm to keep you upright, and so you don’t try to step past him.
“Sorry about that.”
You still won’t look at him; the best he’s getting is that your eyes trailed over the chest of his tracksuit momentarily. He’s almost a little irked that you won’t even give him a thanks. He follows your gaze to the dead body, and he clicks his tongue in both realization and annoyance. Right, that.
Phinks slaps a calloused hand over your mouth, allowing you to gawk all you want at the corpse so long as you stay quiet. Your scrabbling fingers aren’t enough to get his hand away from your jaw, but he tightens his grip on your face anyway until he’s sure the pressure is uncomfortable.
“Don’t make me do anything you won’t like.” Phinks speaks lowly into your ear. Tacitly, you both knew the alternative, so your hands slowly lowered to your sides. He looks over at the body again, at the pistol discarded on the subway floor. The bullet was still a problem. He looks behind him and at the seats but can’t see any damage where the bullet may have struck. He hasn’t been shot. That just leaves you.
His free hand trails from your shoulder to your arm, to your torso, and to your side. The dark color of your jacket blazer makes him rely on the smell of blood and any dampness soaking through the fabric for a bullet wound. While he makes an effort to avoid brushing his hand over your chest, you’ve begun writhing and trying to pry yourself free again. He has to tighten his grasp on you, inadvertently squeezing the air out of your lungs.
“Look, I’m just–were you shot?” He gives up on trying to justify himself, focusing on keeping you still. You shake your head slightly, a muffled “no” barely getting past his hand. For all his touching, he didn’t feel any discrepancy, either. There isn’t so much as a bullet casing on the floor. The gun must’ve jammed. The subway would’ve surely stopped if it did go off, and people would’ve come to investigate from the other cars since, apparently, nobody is deciding to keep to themselves tonight.
If that asshole had just minded his business, Phinks wouldn’t have to be doing this, making himself seem like some sort of creep. He could’ve observed you quietly for the rest of your bus ride and let you go on your way. Maybe he could’ve followed you home, maybe he could’ve inserted himself into your daily routine. Gave himself something to do. Maybe he could’ve let you go and never seen you again. Instead, he’s feeling you up in the corner of a subway car.
He lowers his hand from your mouth, slackening his grip somewhat. He lets you step away only because there’s nowhere for you to go.
“What’s your name?”
He tries to ignore the growing exasperation at your silence. What is it going to take to get a proper word out of you? “You have a name, right?”
You stand rigidly trying to compose yourself and catch your breath, flinching when Phinks snatches your purse from you. He rifles through the contents to find a wallet, taking note of the other contents. A lip balm, a slim glass cylinder that he only recognizes as a perfume roller because he bought one for Paku one Christmas, keys, and a half-empty packet of press-on nails. Once he’s found it, he almost breaks the clasp to get to your driver's license. His eyes scan it quickly before jamming it back into place and the wallet in his pants pocket. Your eyes are glued to the dead man on the floor, and Phinks wonders if he’s scared you so bad that you’ve lost your voice.
“The train will be pulling into Village Station in: 10 minutes.”
Phinks looks behind him into the window of the next car. There’s nobody in there, and if there was someone in the opposing car, they’d have made a ruckus. He brings his attention back to you, grabbing you by your upper arms and giving you a little shake.
“Look: We’re going to get off this subway, and you’re going to keep your mouth shut. Or else you’ll end up like him.” He points with his eyes to the corpse on the ground, then looks back to you, searching your face for any understanding. At this point, he was willing to believe you didn’t speak a lick of English.
You swallow something down, nodding slowly. “Okay.”
Finally.
With that settled, Phinks drags you along, sidestepping the body and into the next car. He scans the car with his eyes before stepping inside fully, but it’s empty. Almost eerily so. He huddles you into the empty unit, letting the door automatically slide closed behind you two. Neither one of you feels well enough to sit down, so you both stand. One of Phinks’s hands is on the pole; the other is holding onto you.
“We’ll get off at the next stop,” he says, looking at you for anything. You’ve apparently reverted to not replying to him. He’s not really sure what he wants. The reason he hadn’t walloped your head off as well was because you hadn’t made a scene (not like anyone was around to help anyhow). Aside from the very obvious, that you were tense and afraid, he’s struggling to get a read on you.
The train moves on the tracks at an almost painfully languid pace. His restlessness ticks up and up, and for a moment he wonders if he can will the conductor to pick the pace up with his mind. Phinks shifts his weight from one foot to another, constantly looking from the other car doors to you. You’re staring straight ahead, holding onto your purse. Your temperament wasn’t making things worse, at least.
The subway rolls to a screeching halt at Village Station after what feels like twenty-some minutes. There are a few stragglers on the platform, hands in coat pockets and eyes downcast, but he’s sure a few are staring straight at him. Nobody looks like the upstanding citizen type. If anything, you’re the one that looks a little out of place, being dressed so proper.
Better get moving; they’ll see that body eventually.
Once the doors open, Phinks is quick to take you out and onto the platform with him. He puts an arm over your shoulders, keeping you pressed to his side and making it hard for you to slip out. You’re having trouble keeping up with his pace, but he doesn’t slow down. His favorite thing about York New is that for one reason or another, everyone is generally too preoccupied with themselves to ever pay attention to their surroundings.
Besides, it’s not like he looked all that suspicious with you. You two could reasonably pass as a couple, and wannabe-vigilantes are an outlier around here. The guy probably wasn’t even local.
…Well, now that he’s thought it, he does begin to notice the odd stares from people coming down into the station. Phinks glances down, seeing the blood trail he’s left by one shoe print.
God Damn it.
He picks up the pace, rushing you out with him up the stairs that lead to outside. A cold breeze hits his face, and he takes it as a good sign. Phinks doesn’t slow down any once he’s got you out of the subway station, though. Whatever part of York New he’d found himself in wasn’t particularly crowded or well-lit, but that didn’t mean he was in the clear.
Your heel gets caught a few times, but Phinks is walking so fast that you can’t do much about it other than jam your foot back awkwardly into the shoe. If there were fewer people around, he’d save himself the trouble and hoist you over his shoulder so he could pick up the pace.
Or kill you. That was always an option. The smartest one, at that.
Just had to get you someplace secluded first.
A variety of twists and shortcuts lead you two to the outskirts of York New. The amount of people has whittled down to zero. The cool breeze from earlier has settled into a chilly air, it carries the scent of sewage and industrial waste, and he can feel you shivering against him. If the full moon wasn’t out tonight, it’d be hard to get around.
When he’s sure it’s just you two, he slows down and tries to let his muscles relax. If not for the circumstances, this might’ve been idyllic. Walking through the city with some pretty woman and all. He pauses, looking up at the sky, now shifted into a dark cereulean. The giant billboard on top of the nearest building reads Tony’s Textiles. The other side of the street is a row of brick buildings and iron fence, no lights on and not a person in sight.
“Where are we going?” Your voice pulls him out of his rumination. The sidewalk is cracked in numerous spots, and none of the brick buildings you and him are walking against stand out any. The few streetlamps there are flicker and it seems like you two are the only souls for miles. Not even a car passes by, and the ones parked on the side of the street seemed to have been there since the city was built.
“Somewhere.” He gruffs out.
“You don’t know?” You ask, though it doesn’t sound like much of a question.
“I’m figuring it out.” He furrows his brow. Where did the attitude come from?
After a beat of silence, Phinks looks back down at you. “Do you know where we are? You recognize any of this?”
You shake your head, your voice has lost some of it’s meek quality from earlier. “No.”
“Okay.” Phinks sighs. His mouth twitches downward. “Me neither.”
He walks you a little further until the corner of the textile building, Phinks making you stop and get behind him. He leans forward, looking over the corner and into a parking lot. A few cars, lights on inside the building adjacent to the textile factory. Some kind of meet-up. He takes some steps back to be out of view from any potential onlookers.
Without warning, Phinks pushes you against the brick wall of the building, his hands on your shoulders. “I’m going to get us a car so we can get out of here.” He looks at you intently, fingers digging into the fabric of your blazer. “Stay here. Don’t try to run, I’ll catch you.” He pauses, looking around briefly. “There’s nobody around to help you, anyway.” He might’ve smirked to himself at the cruelty of the statement if you’d been more of a pain in the ass.
WIth that, he leaves you leaning against the brick wall, pretending not to see you brush the dust off your shoulders.
Us. We. If the police came right now, Phinks would be gone and you’d be swept into the arms of an actual officer, shaking and all the blood drained from your face. You’d sit in the back seat of a police cruiser, recounting what happened with a tremor in your voice. They’d take you back to your high rise in the city—or maybe you live in a brownstone.
Or maybe they’d suspect you're an accessory to murder. Phinks doesn’t plan on finding out.
Lucky him, he wouldn’t have to be leaving you alone for too long.
There’s already someone coming down the entrance of the adjacent building, looking back and talking to people still inside as they push the door open. Phinks lies in wait, standing in the shadows. He watches them, and he can see more clearly that it’s some guy who doesn’t look like he has any business in these outskirts. Khaki pants, blue button-down striped shirt, thick glasses.
Phinks waits, though he’s sure even if he stood out in front of a street lamp, the guy still wouldn’t spot him. He gets his keys from his back pocket, walking over to his car in the middle of the lot. Before he has a chance to get them in the keyhole, Phinks has already broken the man’s neck with a swift hit to the neck. Internally decapitated and having hit the ground with a barely audible thud, he takes the car keys and gets back to you before you can concoct a plan to scurry off.
When he comes back to you, he’s pleased to see that you didn’t call his bluff. Standing right where he left you, keeping yourself pressed against the lime washed brick. “Come on.” He pulls you up by the arm, hoisting you to your feet and dragging you towards the car. You don’t make a fuss about it.
Nobody from whatever gathering was taking place inside the building has noticed their friend was limp on the floor, and Phinks makes a point of dragging you around the car to the passenger side, away from where the body was on the driver’s side. “How’d you get the car?” You ask. Phinks opens the passenger side door, shoving you inside before you get any smart ideas like screaming or trying to fight him.
“They’re letting me borrow it.” He grins at his own joke, closing the door with more force than needed and circling the car to the driver’s side. He gets inside and flicks the child-lock on before closing the door, putting the key into the ignition. The car starts without any sputtering, the interior is surprisingly sleek, coming with a built in GPS. He guesses it’s the kind of car a woman like you is used to. Not that he felt particularly bad for killing the owner, but he feels slightly more justified for it. Serves that guy right for bringing a car this good to a part of the city this bad.
“We’re getting out of here.” He says, more to himself than you, backing up and internally wincing at what feels like the car tires going over a body. He looks for your reaction, but you’re looking out of the window anxiously. Asking you about it would be redundant. He keeps his focus on driving out of the lot and through the roads. “Don’t worry about it.” It’s the most reassurance he can give right now, half torn on if he should reach over and give your hand a squeeze. He decides against it.
You’ve been pretty tolerable hitherto. Maybe he could take killing you off the table.
Once out of the lot, he drives with no destination in mind. The engine was nearly full, no need to stop for gas. Maybe he could drop you off in a more populated area, his current safehouse was a hotel room that wasn’t fit for visitors; his longer term place needed to be cleaned up before it’d be considered “woman-proof”. He can see in the corner of his vision your hand reaching for something on the dashboard, and out of instinct he grips your wrist with one hand in a bone-crushing grip. You make a sound that’s like a cat getting it’s tail stepped on.
“Ow!”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Phinks snaps, still holding your wrist, eyes flickering between you and the empty road.
“I was trying to turn the heat on.” For a moment it sounds like you’re whining, and Phinks thinks that you must have a lot of gall to do that in your situation.
“You’re cold?” He sneers. You respond with an affirmative yes. Phinks lets go of your wrist, and you cradle it close to your chest. It’s too dark to see if he’s left a mark, but there’s one sure to form. Phinks turns the knob for the heat for you, hoping this is the last of your sudden attitude. His initial plan might not be completely off the table, then.
A few minutes more of driving, he begins to feel an odd sensation gnawing at him. Naturally, he glances at you. This time, you really are staring at him. He puts his focus back on the empty road ahead, then decides that it’s more than he can take.
“What? Are you too warm now?”
“Where are we going?”
“You already asked that.” Phinks says. Undecided on where to go, he drives not longer than ten minutes before pulling into a different parking lot, this one more secluded and behind some store that neither of you recognize the name or logo of. He parks haphazardly, not taking the key out of the ignition just yet.
“What are we–”
“Just be quiet. I need a minute to think.”
You do as he says, slinking back into the leather carseat, hands in your lap and gaze vaguely downcast. Once, you lift your head to look out of the passenger side window, then lower it again when there isn’t anything worth looking at. No landmarks or anything that stands out to you. He can feel your eyes flicking on him, but doesn’t bother meeting them.
“Uh, that guy on the subway…” You stop yourself, chewing on your lower lip. “He was right? You really did what he said you did?” Your fingers fidget nervously together on your lap. Phinks can pick-up on some sense of absent-mindedness from you. If you were trying to come up with a way to get out of the car, he wasn’t worried. For once, he thought ahead with switching on the child lock.
“I wasn’t planning on killing anyone else tonight.” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Or dragging random people into it.” He says with a cursory glance at you. “...Sorry about all of this.” Despite his less than sincere apology, you don’t seem very soothed.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I would’ve done it on the subway.” He has to choose his words carefully, the word should’ve nearly coming out instead. However agreeable of a hostage you were, he’s aware of not saying something that’d send you in a frenzy.
“It’s not too late.”
“What?”
You flinch at his tone of voice, looking away from him and out of the window for an escape to the conversation. “Sorry, forget I said that.”
He tries to do just that, sighing and pulling your driver's license out from his pocket, looking it over. You were smiling slightly in your photo, staring right back at him. He reads the information on the card, the way you signed your name in cursive and where it’d been printed under your face. He looks at the car’s dashboard, at the built-in GPS. After a moment of consideration, and what feels like a bad idea, Phinks puts your license back into your hands.
“Here. Put your address in it, I’ll take you home.” He says, pointing at the GPS tracker. He ought to do one good thing tonight. He’s usually made a point to leave no witnesses behind, especially not in circumstances like this, but you seem smart enough. Even if you go tattling to the cops, he ought to be out of York New by then. Wouldn’t be the first time some witness slipped away.
You were the first that got this close up, though.
You stare at the license put back into your hands, then at him. “You’ll actually do that?”
“What, you don’t believe me?” He nearly scoffs. You should recognize an olive branch when it’s being extended. He expects you to break eye contact, but you don’t.
“Why should I?”
Why?
Phinks’s brow furrows. “Put your address in before I change my mind.”
That must’ve snapped you into your right mind. Thankfully for him, you don’t provide any remonstrance, only murmur out a thank you, and after a bit of fumbling with the GPS, get your address in. You lean back in the car seat afterward, making a point to buckle up. Phinks does the same, giving the area a cursory look over before
The GPS takes him to the outskirts on the opposite side of the city, stopping in front of an old low-rise apartment. The parking lot is around a bend and in the back of the complex, but Phinks stops on the opposite side of the road, which is empty of people walking by. There must not be a lot of night-life on this end of York New. Black trashbags pile up outside of a dumpster and the windows to the apartment complex all have iron screens over them.
Even with all of the car windows rolled up, he can faintly hear dogs barking somewhere in the area. The stolen car looks out of place amongst the others scattered on the side of the street. This side of York New didn’t look much nicer than where he’d picked the car up in the first place. It’s not the worst place to live by any measure, but he was expecting a little more from the sleekness of your outfit.
“You live here?”
“Yeah.” There’s an excited lilt to your voice that you can’t completely conceal. It’s a little cute.
“Huh.”
Phinks looks back at the apartment complex, then to you. For some reason, he’s not ready for this to end. “Well, what’s with the outfit? You had a job interview today?” He leans back in the car seat with his arms folded over his chest, as if getting comfortable.
He assumes he’s right, because you look away as if you’d gotten a little flustered. “Yeah.” He pretends not to pick up on your growing restlessness.
Yeah. Was that your favorite word?
“Sometimes the thrift stores downtown have really nice stuff, that’s where I got everything.” You tack on, which addresses the incongruency between your appearance and your living situation. “Rich people just throw anything out, even if there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“What job were you interviewing for?”
You force an awkward smile, fingers curling and uncurling around your purse strap. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m just trying to get to know you.”
You don’t answer, and Phinks looks over at you. You’re still nervous. Hasn’t he proven himself enough already? “It doesn’t matter." You break eye contact, looking down at your lap and making it hard for him to tell if you’re being truthful. “I don’t think I got the job, anyway.”
There’s a silence; you’re looking at him expectantly, and you’re trying to not make it obvious. Phinks sighs, keeping one finger on the button that’d unlock the driver’s side door.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” His tone shifts slightly.
“What? Um, no.”
“What about roommates?”
In his periphery, he can see you shift uncomfortably in the car seat. “Yeah. She’s waiting for me, probably. I told her I’d be back by nine.”
Phinks’s eye twitches slightly. “You’re lying.”
“You’re making me nervous.” You force a slight laugh to break the tension. He likes the sound of it.
“Sorry.” Phinks sits up straighter in the car, one hand on the steering wheel. There’s a long silence that’s fermented into anxiety on your end. Then, he gets the keys from his pocket and puts them back into the ignition, turning the car on abruptly.
“I changed my mind.”
“What?”
“Look,” Phinks starts to drive away from your apartment. “it’s better this way.” He picks up speed before you can start to argue, stunned in the seat next to him. “You seem like a nice girl and all.” He rounds the corner and drives off the street.
“Where are we going?” It’s the third time you asked, though you sound a little more energetic this time. That’s good, he’d thought you were a little listless earlier.
“My place.” Your jaw slacks and you’re looking at him as if he’s sprouted another head. “I’m crashing at a hotel for a bit, but we’ll just plan from there.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s a nice room. The Plaza Hotel, you’ve seen it, right?”
“That’s not the issue here!”
So you can raise your voice. Good to know.
He looks over at you, a brow raised. “I’ll get you something to eat on the way.” He says, trying to smooth things over with you. Phinks grabs your hand when he sees it move, making an effort to be a little gentler with his grip. He gives it a squeeze, having to force his fingers to intertwine with yours since you’re trying to pry your hand free. “Just trust me, it’s for the best. You’ll like it.”
He can’t exactly remember the state he left his hotel room in, he’d thrown enough cash at the clerk for them to not care. But it was a nice place, probably had good room service. Absolute worst case scenario was that he had to keep you in the trunk of the car while he threw all of the half empty beer cans away and tidied things up. Give you time to acclimate before the considerably longer drive ahead.
Sure, it was an unconventional way to get a woman to come back with him for the night, but it really was for the best. He didn’t want to kill you, but letting you go home might be a mess on it’s own. The police would hound you for weeks, at worst implicate you. Surely you’d see that he was doing you a favor here, no?
Phinks looks at you, and you’re shivering slightly. The color has drained from your face and you’re clutching your purse so tightly that he thinks you might damage the leather. He turns the heat up a knob.
Some food will probably make you feel better.