Chapter 4 : Various Methods of Escape (Coming Soon) NSFW
Chapter 5 : Another Version of the Truth (Coming Soon) NSFW
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This list will be updated with new links as new chapters are posted.
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My Masterlist for all the other characters I have written for (featuring a variety of actors) can be found HERE on my primary blog.
Anyone who would like to be tagged in future chapters and is not being tagged already, please let me know. Comments and Reblogs of my writing are encouraged and deeply appreciated; they're what helps keep me going. Asks and direct messages are also welcome. I'm always open to new mutuals.
An Exercise in Control - Cooper Adams/Abbott x Fem OC
* Part 2 : The Line Begins to Blur *
Welcome to chapter 2 (of 5) of my Cooper Adams/Abbott fic. Thank you to everyone who gave the first chapter a chance, especially those who reblogged and/or commented. I know it wasn't super exciting, but some groundwork had to be laid. I promise things are about to get more interesting 💙As Always, gif is mine.
CHAPTER 1 CAN BE FOUND HERE
(( word count ~ 4,200 ))
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“Hey there, Delilah,” rang out a voice that was not familiar, yet the source, unmistakable. She could have passed by without noticing them, or pretended she hadn't, but her earbuds had gone quiet between tracks, and the second of pause in her stride told them they had not gone unheard. When they shouted her name alone, louder, she paused completely, and swerved around in an annoyed one-eighty.
“What?!” her voice called back, raising her shoulders at a pair of fast fashion clothing store employees, hanging just outside the opening that served as the retailer's door. She didn't know all of their names, but almost all of them, throughout the mall, seemed to belong to the same hivemind of juvenile behavior. They are juveniles, Delilah silently reminded herself as they beckoned her over. They're teenagers. Their frontal lobes aren't fully developed-
“Is it true you're fucking the narc?” one of the girls demanded, and the few steps Delilah had taken came to a pause. “It is, right? You're fucking the Rent-A-Cop?” she reiterated, and Delilah's eyes simply slid closed, a sigh escaping her.
“Not that's it's remotely your business who I fuck, but no. Cooper and I are just friends,” she stated simply, hoping to end it there, but before she could turn, a sharp acrylic nail snagged the edge of her uniform top, threatening to pierce it.
“Oh, first-name basis? That's...yeah, that's convincing,” the other girl quipped.
Delilah wished the experience of this ridiculousness was a first time occurrence, but it had probably happened at least a half dozen times now, between employees speaking directly at her – never to her – or talking about it like she wasn't in clear earshot. It was like living in perpetual high school, over a decade post-graduation.
“Don't you have some sweatshop shirts to sell?” Delilah retorted, and they both rolled their eyes. “Or a junior year to repeat, Samantha?” The taller of the two suddenly went quite still.
“That's not true-”
“Really? That's not what Laura said” she replied, choosing a name out of dozens, no idea if it was the right one, nor did she care. This would go on forever if she didn't force a distraction.
“Laura from the Hollister?” she demanded, and Delilah nodded quickly. She'd have to remember to avoid passing by the Hollister for a while. With the two girls distracted by manufactured drama, Delilah made quick steps the direction she'd originally been traveling. She walked so fast she didn't notice the security guard on the other side of the wall she passed, tucked away in the shadow, listening intently.
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A hand suddenly placed against the small of her back sent a full-body shudder through Delilah's body as she stood near the far end of the bookstore, the mall just closed within the last hour, granting her the time to finally take care of the stocking of shelves without the worry of booktok-addicted thieves popping in to snatch something and scamper off. One of her earbuds was plucked from her ear by a hand that wasn't her own, and she turned about to find Cooper standing even closer than usual. “You're never gonna stop doing that, are you?” she questioned, letting out a sigh and putting her palm against the black material of his uniform to create a bit more distance between them.
“I'll stop doing it when you stop giving me such cute reactions,” Cooper answered, and Delilah's cheeks flushed a few shades. It was true what she'd told the H&M girlies, that they were, in fact, not fucking. They hadn't even kissed. Nothing had happened beyond him occasionally placing his hands on her in ways that were just close enough to indifferent to not spark definite suspicions of some deeper intent. Or maybe the bookseller just didn't want to let her hopes and imagination get the best of her, and leave her with more melancholy. “Are you alright?”
“Why wouldn't I be alright?” Delilah asked, gathering up the new books that wouldn't fit on the shelves, and tucking them back into the inventory box.
“I don't know. I usually see you at least once before closing time. Thought I might have done something,” he shrugged, watching her flit around, out of his physical reach.
“Of course not,” she answered automatically, and before she could get past him, he spoke up again.
“I heard those girls,” Cooper stated simply, his mind having reflected on the conversation he'd listened in on a few hours previous. “Does that happen a lot?”
“It's...it's just stupid teen gossip,” Delilah quipped, avoiding direct eye contact as she shuffled around. She always seemed to be visibly more busied when she didn't like the direction of the conversation. “They think I get special treatment because we...” she paused, hearing the squeaking sound of worn vinyl as Cooper plopped down on a beanbag chair from the children's section, his body looking like that of a giant, atop the diminutive peace of 'furniture'. “Because you hang around a lot, I guess.”
Cooper was quiet for several seconds before he spoke up, Delilah's actions becoming more unfocused. Though she tried to make herself look busy, the security guard experienced no issue in seeing right through her performative nonchalance. “Does that bother you?” he asked suddenly, and Delilah's body stilled, shifting to finally look at him. He was pretty much all she thought about anymore, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to simply be around him when she wanted so much more than a casual workplace friendship.
“That they bring their bratty high school attitude to work and make it everyone else's problem?” she retorted.
“That I spend so much time around here,” he clarified. “I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome.”
“No, of course not, you aren't...not remotely,” she finally admitted, shaking her head slightly, her green eyes earnest as she stared into his umber gaze, almost blackened by the shadow cast from his brow.
“You're sure?” Cooper asked, his stare unceasing as she leaned against the edge of a sturdy bookcase.
“Of...Of course,” she mumbled, her vision falling away as his eyes became too dangerous to continue staring into. “You're...I mean, I'm sure you've noticed that I...I really don't have much in the way of...well, anyone,” she admitted, her thumb running along her other hand where she clasped them together in a self-soothing gesture.
“You've got friends outside w-”
“No, I really don't. I used to. But I don't know, it's like...it's so hard to make friends that you don't,” she paused and gestured to him as an example, punishing the beanbag chair with his muscle-fueled weight, “work in the vicinity of. I used to have friends, back when I worked at the office. Or I thought I did, but...between everyone else quitting or moving, or getting married, or pregnant, or both...all my friendships kind of dissolved before I ever left. It's like...if you don't fit inside this predetermined section of adulthood, you're not worth being around...Especially when you're the not-fun one who also doesn't want to go to happy hour, after.”
Cooper sat in silence, listening to her spill. It was true that he hadn't established any surface friendships that weren't extremely casual, and connected to the mall, but making friends and staying on people's positive purview had never been an issue for him. Though, the whole mentally unstable serial killer charm was probably tied to that. Or maybe it was just harder for women. “So, I'm not bothering you?” he finally asked. He wasn't really invested in the idea of helping her develop new friendships. He liked her exactly where she was, right below his metaphorical thumb.
“To be honest...you're pretty much the highlight of my day, most days,” she admitted, her gaze falling back to the floor at the admission. It felt uncomfortably close to an admission of her attraction, her affection for him, but it was true, and she couldn't keep living in the perpetual fear that her feelings weren't reflected in his own.
“Well,” Cooper finally spoke up, reaching his hand up for assistance off what was practically the floor. It took nearly all of her effort when she took his hand and pulled with all her strength to bring him up to his feet, stumbling a bit when he towered over her, not even a foot between them. A light chuckle not even Cooper expected slipped out of him, and his left hand was reaching for hers, his right tipping up her chin with the slightest contact. “I suppose I'll just have to work on making it 'everyday'.”
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It was half past one when Delilah's shoes clacked against the peeling vinyl floor of an Italian restaurant conjoined with the mall, thankful she'd kept the key-code to the outside door, written down from when a former employee had shared it with her. A secret entrance for employees only that not even Cooper had noticed on his rounds, it had saved her more than once when she'd left the mall after work and realized she'd left something behind, long after the guards had locked up. It had been her laptop charger this time, and with her actually managing to snag a full day and night off, she couldn't afford to leave it until she worked next. She held an unlikely hope that she might run into Cooper one last time before her day off, with the comforting attention he'd paid her earlier that night, and the knowledge that she'd have to deal with her roommate soon. Walking a little too close to one of the lengthy walls down a main corridor, she nearly toppled to the ground when a door she had never seen utilized suddenly swung open, almost smacking against her.
“C-Cooper...That's two times in one night,” she managed, a little shaken from almost colliding face-first with the solid door.
“Where...How did you get in here? I made sure your car was gone before I locked everything up,” Cooper spoke, his voice sounding a bit off, his brows more animate than usual, and his bottom jaw shifting from side to side with tension.
“There's a key-code door to the Maggiano's employee entrance. I guess the code hasn't changed in a while,” she explained. “Speaking of doors...” she indicated the one Cooper had his hand firmly planted against. “I didn't even know anyone used that one. What were you doing in there?”
Cooper's little facial ticks pricked and tugged at his handsome features, actively thinking up a believable lie. Never once had he accessed the basement levels when the mall was open, while Delilah was on the premises. His acts...his violent, carved up acts...it wasn't exactly possible to keep his two lives separate as he had before, in his marriage. Perhaps it had not been as separate as he might admit to himself, given the jewelry he'd gifted his wife and daughter, literal trophies of some of his dismemberments. But this side of himself, he had no intentions to introduce her to. Their game was not about violence, as all his others had been. His urges were not the same as what he felt toward those people he believed saw themselves as whole. It hadn't been worth the risk of letting her even know the lower levels even existed, but her fingers were reaching for the handle of the door before he could register her movement.
“I can't let you-” Cooper began, his tone like a command, as if it were forbidden. That only made her want to venture on.
“Oh, come on, what's down there?” she asked, intrigued.
“It's...not much of anything,” he uttered, but she was slipping around him and reaching for the knob again, his arms shooting out to grasp her wrists before he realized what he was doing. Neither moved, both conscious of the new, even more powerful position he held over her. His eyes seemed so black in the poor lighting of the after hours hallway, no words exchanged between them as he carefully guided her hands to the cool metal of the door, her slender form practically engulfed in his shadow. “It's not for you,” he stated firmly, which only served to shift her curiosity into suspicion.
“What do you mean, it's not for me...Is it for someone else?” she asked. The last question had a twinge of self-doubt that she immediately regretted.
Cooper observed her in silence, his hands abandoning her wrists and drawing away from the door, his palms finding the sides of her waist, his grip light but not subtle. “Who else would there be?”
Delilah's hands finally broke contact with the metal surface, drifting down to insufficiently wrap over the hands at her waist, her gaze following, watching with nervous interest as his digits played at the untucked hem of her shirt, curling slightly to expose her midriff, his callous-roughened fingertips and blunt nails scraping her skin. Looking not to the man at her back, but past him to the camera she knew pointed in their vicinity from it's home on the ceiling, her fingers finally gripped his hands for fully, and she dragged them away from her torso. “I should really be-”
“Don't go,” Cooper murmured, his hand grasping hers before she could completely escape his presence. “If you really want to see...I'll show you what's down there,” his voice was low, calm, almost disconcertingly so, but it held her just as firmly as his physical grasp. “It can be our secret.”
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Slipping through the heavy, metal door, Delilah's shoulders twitched at the sound of it slamming home behind herself and the security guard. From what she could see in the seconds before it had closed noisily behind them, they seemed to be standing in a long hallway that didn't have an apparent end. Surrounding the two of them was only darkness, the neon lights on the consumer side of the door not even creeping in through the bottom edge. There was only blackness and silence outside of her anxious breathing for several seconds before Cooper spoke up again, Delilah already beginning to spiral over how incredibly stupid of a decision she might have just made. What did she know about him, really? Sure, he paid her attention, like no one else had in longer than she wished to admit, but she knew virtually nothing about him outside of the building they both worked in.
“It's this way,” he finally spoke up, and in this pitch-dark space, his presence felt even more engulfing than usual. Even alone in the bookstore at night, the only two souls left in the building, his company had never felt this intense...almost threatening.
“Wh...what's this way?” she asked, her voice cracking, his hand cupping her shoulder as she walked ahead of him at a leisured pace.
“A staircase,” he stated simply, his free hand reaching into one of his many pocket compartments to draw out a high lumen flashlight, Delilah's shoulders going slack almost immediately at the sudden flood of light. “There's a whole basement floor that seems to have been abandoned,” he advised, mentally noting her quickly calming demeanor as she glanced along the walls, and Cooper pressed the flashlight into her hand to allow her to take lead. His current victim was chained and gagged at the far end of the basement level, after all, and way out of earshot from anywhere he'd permit her to explore. When they finally reached a wall, a single story flight of stairs came into view, a faint glow at the bottom.
“This is...how did you find out about this?” Delilah queried, clicking off the flashlight and passing it back to Cooper, her gaze flitting in all directions as they reached the bottom of the staircase.
Schematics and blueprints from the city archives, Cooper recalled, before speaking up. “I lucked out. I found a ring of keys in the security office behind the desk, and one of them fit.” He'd searched extensively for hidden spaces, forgotten by time, long before settling on this community, and his current position.
“Okay, but...why keep it a secret?” she continued, giving him a confused look, before glancing past his shoulder. The basement level was full of half-built walls that opened up to empty spaces, winding hallways, a few locked doors here and there.
“Purely selfish reasons,” Cooper admitted, and Delilah glanced back at him once more.
“Like?” She asked, and when the security guard hesitated, her features took on a look of despondence. “Oh, right. We don't talk about you. I almost forgot-”
“I have some hobbies that require a lot of space that my home can't accommodate,” the Butcher spoke up. “Plus...sometimes it's nice to have a little space to hide away. I know you can relate to that.”
“A little?” Delilah repeated his words, reaching a hand out and making a sweeping gesture with her arm at the enormous, seemingly endless liminal space they found themselves in. Cooper put on a casual smile and shrugged his shoulders, glancing around as well, making certain they weren't anywhere near his victim. Well, his other victim. “And those hobbies?” she hedged, but he shook his head faintly, and she nodded.
“Like I said...they aren't for you,” he reminded, and she cast her gaze away from him.
“So...I guess I don't understand why you wanted me to come down here, then?” she concluded, a frown forming on her lips.
Cooper was silent for a few moments before he spoke up. He wasn't certain, himself, why he'd gone against his better, secret-keeping judgment. “Maybe I...just wanted to get you to myself,” he finally offered.
Delilah let out a soft, unenthusiastic laugh. “You basically have me to yourself, all the time...it's not like anyone's exactly competing for my time, and...attention,” she paused when she registered that he was no longer at her side. When she turned around, it also dawned on her just how dark it had become, realizing they had managed to wander way past the functionality of the overhead lights. “Cooper?”
“I'm here,” he spoke up almost immediately, and she swiveled around in the direction of his voice.
“I...think we should go back,” she mumbled, glancing around in the dark when she heard his feet move against the concrete floor.
“Why?” he asked bluntly, and Delilah's brows knit together in confusion and unease.
“Because...you're kind of...making me uncomfortable,” she admitted, turning when she heard his shoes on the floor again.
“Do you want me to make you comfortable?” he inquired, which did nothing but put her more on edge.
“Cooper-”
“We could stay...I could keep you down here...all to myself...steal you away,” his voice had taken on a low, gravely tone that confused her even more, though not so much with him, but herself. Where was her self-preservation instinct? Did she not have a phone with a flashlight in her pocket? Could she not just- “I'm not hearing a no.”
“Of course it's a no,” she managed, reaching out in the direction she perceived his voice to be emanating from, and grasping a fistful of his jacket.
“You don't sound so sure,” Cooper spoke up, his hand gently grasping the smaller one that gripped his outer layer of clothing, carefully dragging it away, weaving his own fingers betwixt hers instead.
“Cooper, you're...you're kind of scaring me,” she admitted, and the Butcher finally paused.
“I know,” he finally answered, feeling her fingers attempting to tug away from his grasp. “It's not fair of me, but I...you know it's just a joke, right? You know I'd never hurt you.”
No, I definitely don't know that, Delilah thought, but kept her vocalizations more subdued. “Then...let's just get out of here,” she cautiously suggested.
More silence from the large, looming form in front of her, and his free hand was at her cheek, the subtlest flinch giving him a moment's pause. “Please...just a little longer. I know you have to go home, but...just stay a little longer. No more bad jokes,” he pleaded, his tone subdued.
When she returned no words in answer, he let out an audible breath, glancing back in the direction he knew led to the staircase. He'd pushed too far. It was too-
"I guess I...I just don't really understand what you see in me. I mean, you're so...and I'm just...I'm really not anything special,” she finally admitted, and if she'd been able to see anything, she'd have seen the surprise and disbelieve on his face.
"Who told you that lie?" he finally spoke, the hand that had morphed with hers departing to rise up and cup her cheek, her flushed skin warm and soft against his callous-roughened hand.
“It's more like years of experience,” she mumbled, and she felt him step in closer, her own feet traveling backwards on instinct. “You hang around me all the time, but you don't let me in, and I never know where I stand with you, and-” her words came to an end when she felt the pad of his finger press against her lips, her back colliding against one of the many walls she couldn't see. Expecting to feel his lips against hers, she was surprised to feel the firm surface of his forehead against hers instead, Cooper leaning over her, his hands at her jaw, her neck, over her shoulders where they remained.
“You're right...I'm out of practice, and that's no fault of yours,” he admitted, waiting for her shoulders to tense or not. They remained lax in his loose grip.
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Much as he desired to stay in the hidden realm of the basement level, to test the limits of her trust, push her farther, perhaps across an empty table with her chest to the unvarnished wood, one hand on her back while the other dragged down his zipper to...well, perhaps some other time. So long as Cooper played his hand well, kept the worst of his proclivities at bay, his time and chances to turn her to putty in his hands were virtually limitless. Maybe a little private show under the watchful, constant gaze of the CCTV from the comfort of the security office-
The clanging of the metal barrier slapping against the recently mopped floors brought Cooper's thoughts back to the real world, and he pressed off the wall he'd leaned against, waiting for Delilah to retrieve her laptop charger. “Got it,” she declared, holding it up as if he required proof, before stuffing it into her purse. He nodded and reached out a hand when she stepped close enough, the two of them meeting in the middle of the corridor. When Cooper noticed her brief hesitance, he made the decision for her, and clasped his hand around hers, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Somehow, if felt different in the open, under the glowing neon of the store fronts they passed, even with no one else around to see them.
“I'm not gonna bite,” Cooper spoke up as he observed the way she focused her gaze on literally anything but himself, though she made no attempt to extract her hand from his. “Unless you want me to,” he added, and was pleased and a bit relieved to catch the smile that tugged at her lips.
She nearly apologized before she caught herself, concluding she didn't really have anything to apologize for. “In the basement, you...you really made me uncomfortable,” she explained, chancing a glance up to his eyes that watched her so ceaselessly.
“I know,” he confessed, abandoning her hand closest to him, only to reach around and grasp her other hand, lifting it to hold in his where his wrist balanced atop her shoulder. “I can't promise it won't happen again,” he admitted, giving the hand clutched in his larger one a slight squeeze when her brows furrowed at his words. “But, I'll try to be more...cognizant of your boundaries.”
We haven't even been on a date, and I feel like I need a safe word, Delilah thought, as the mall entrance closest to her car came into view. “Well, anyway...thanks for...whatever the hell tonight was,” she declared as Cooper finally let go of her hand, her brows quirked as she considered the strangeness of their evening. Cooper shrugged his shoulders, a calm smile across his lips as he set to work unlocking the door, and holding it open for her. “I guess I'll see you...in a couple nights,” she added, and he nodded simply, lifting a hand to wave before she could turn away to trudge toward her car.
She hadn't made it ten feet before his voice suddenly called out to her, and she swiveled around to face him. “Delilah, can I...can I take you out to dinner, sometime?”
The bookseller stared at him, her lips parting, and closing again without sound, running her tongue nervously over them, trying again. “Like, on a date? A real date?”
Cooper's smile became more broad as his gaze softened, leaning against the open door of the building entrance. “Yeah. A real one.”
If I forgot anyone, I apologize, and please let me know if you want to be tagged in the next one
COMMENTS AND REBLOGS AND TAGS ARE DEEPLY APPRECIATED. I KNOW THIS IS A BIT DIFFERENT THAN MOST OF THE OTHER COOPER STORIES BEING WRITTEN, BUT I HOPE IT APPEALS TO SOMEONE BESIDES MYSELF 💙
Chapter 2 is almost done and should be up by Saturday. This might turn into a weekly thing until I finish it, but hopefully I can get the chapters out a little faster.
Hopefully this one will be more interesting to people.
This story is *VERY LOOSELY* based on some of my own personal experiences, not with a serial killer, but with a security guard at a place I worked at, who paid way more attention to me than he should have at the time - something I wouldn't really come to comprehend until many years later. This story will feature explicit sexual content in some future chapters (I'm currently aiming for 5-6 chapters total), all of which should basically be considered dubious consent (let's be honest, that's about the only consent there really could be, given the power dynamic issues). There will be no DDLG kink, breeding kink, degradation kink, or...some other kinks popular with this character's fandom that is prominent in other fics. Other writers are thoroughly filling that niche. It's more of a...love bombing-ish situation, with plenty of manipulation for the aim of control. ( gif is mine, watermarked because I witnessed one of my gifs being stolen recently )
(( word count ~ 4,600 ))
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There had been no answer when Cooper had called out and rattled the metal shutters to the bookstore within the mall he patrolled, but the faint sound of lofi and very soft human speech clearly indicated an occupant. When he called out once more, received no response once again, he reached for his ring of keys and went to work opening the aluminum gating. It was almost one in the morning, and even the cleaning crew had gone home. There should not have been a soul in the building save for the assigned security guard, and Cooper just happened to be the man tasked with that assignment.
After the concert in Pennsylvania, the confrontation, and his subsequent escape from the incompetent police department, the Butcher had gone on the run, inadvertently aided by the media's purposeful downplaying of his escape that would have shamed all law enforcement involved. Cowards, the way Cooper saw them, but convenient cowards. In the months that followed, he had moved around quite a bit, never settling anywhere for too long, utilizing a slew of motel rooms and stolen identities. When he finally felt like he'd reached a destination he could call permanent, he'd gone in search of work and found himself right at home in the convenience of mall security. The idea had seemed laughable at first as he'd scanned the wanted ads in a local paper, weeks after chopping up one of the previously employed night guards, but the more he'd contemplated it, the more perfect of a fit it seemed to be. That had been about a month ago, and now he found himself in one of the stores, hours after closing, not as alone as he should be.
Officially armed with a flash light and a baton, unofficially armed with a taser and chloroform, Cooper proceeded through the store, quiet and alert, glancing in all directions as he moved toward the back corner of the store, the source of the soft music, and the the faint glow of an electronic device. Expecting to find some stoned teens or a homeless person, Cooper instead stumbled upon a store employee, ambient synthwave streaming from the speakers of her laptop as she typed away. Apparently, she was so engrossed in her after-hours work that she failed to notice him until he switched on his flashlight and shone it against the wall in front of her, and all around her. She nearly fell out of the store chair that cradled her body when she finally took notice of him.
“Who the f-...oh, thank god, security,” she breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed his uniform, her vision not yet reaching the stern look across his face.
“Mall's closed,” he stated simply, switching off his flashlight and sliding it back into the assigned holster.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I, uh...the other security guard just lets me hang after hours,” she explained, closing her computer and sliding it into her bag.
“That's probably why he got fired,” Cooper commented harshly in return. Well, fired in the literal since, as Cooper had burned his body to reduce the evidence. He was far less bold in his disposal of victims' remains, since his temporary capture. The bookstore worker paused at his statement. She hadn't seen the other guard in weeks, and had assumed he'd simply quit. If she were really the cause...she felt a twinge of guilt at the idea.
“I'm sorry, I hadn't heard that. I...I'll get my stuff. It won't happen again,” she assured, keeping her focus on her belongings she gathered, making sure to pick up her accumulated garbage from her food court-sourced dinner so she could dump it in the trash. Cooper nodded, but said nothing, as he watched her move about, and followed her as they trudged back out of the store, the door coming down in a noisy crash at the insistence of Cooper's harsh yank. It felt excessive to the bookstore employee, but she said nothing. If she'd already gotten someone fired for bending the rules, she certainly didn't want to end up on the bad side of his replacement. The store didn't exactly pay well, but she couldn't afford to lose the income.
“Um...sorry, again,” she mumbled as Cooper walked a few steps behind her, seeing that she got to an exit so he could re-lock the doors. The Butcher shifted his gaze from the empty corridor stretched out before him, to the young woman a few steps ahead of him. Already nearly a foot shorter than himself, she seemed even smaller with her shoulders hunched and her arms meeting at her clasped hands before her.
“It's...it's fine,” he finally uttered, and her head seemed to tilt briefly toward his voice, before focusing on her destination again. “I need this job. I can't afford write-ups, already.”
“Right...s-” she began to apologize again, but her words were cut short by the light contact of his fingertips upon her shoulder, and her feet slowed to a stop as she turned around to look back at him, confused at his odd touch.
“Stop apologizing. I get it. You're sorry,” his voice was firm, but less harsh than it had been in the bookstore. “Let's just...make it a habit of being out by midnight, alright?” he offered, his thick, dark brows raising as if to punctuate his request.
“S-...sure,” she managed, and no more words were exchanged between the two strangers the last hundred-ish feet to the exit nearest her automobile. She paused at the door, but said nothing, as Cooper unlocked it and held it open, watching her exit. She glanced back at him briefly, before heading for her car, Cooper's dark eyes focused on the lock as he re-secured the exit. His gaze rose to watch her walk alone, along the empty parking lot, until she reached a car he reckoned was hers, the guard not turning around to resume his patrol until her lights were on, and her vehicle set into motion.
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A few evenings had passed since the incident at the bookstore, Cooper's night off falling the day after, a different shift the day after that, and he was back to night duty. He didn't mind it. He enjoyed the silence. During the day shifts, his gaze would wander, taking in the multitude of mall patrons, contemplating his next kill, but the evenings were peaceful. More time to think. More time to plan without distractions.
It had also been a few nights since he'd stopped by the bookstore, and though he'd avoided it for the bulk of regular operating hours, his feet did eventually guide him in the shop's direction, and he found himself standing against the wall across from it, staring in through the door-less entry. His eyes followed the movements and actions of a slightly familiar figure inside, Cooper watching as the young woman he'd escorted out a few nights before flitted around the store, assisting what few customers stepped inside, straightening books, re-homing the tomes that wound up in the wrong locations. Cooper had watched for a full fifteen minutes, almost unflinching, before she looked up from her work long enough to notice him, and she made no secret of it when she did.
“Hey!,” she waved him down, completely unnecessarily, as she crossed the short distance through the store and out into the corridor to greet the security guard. “Hi, I just wanted to apologize again for the other night, I don't usually-”
“Ah, no need,” Cooper raised a hand as if to put a barrier between the two of them. “It's these late nights, you know? I'm not used to the overnight shift and I was just...” he shrugged his shoulders, and put on a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “I was just...kinda grumpy” he suggested.
“I get that, but, um...I mean, I really don't usually hang around that long-”
“Really, it's fine,” he reiterated, the false smile still in place. “Hey, I'm Cooper. I didn't catch your name,” he offered his hand, and she hesitated only for a couple of seconds before accepting it, a half smile forming on her lips that was far more sincere than his.
“Delilah. It's, um...nice to meet you, Cooper,” she shook the hand he'd offered lightly before withdrawing her own again. “Hey, um...did I really get the other guard fired? I feel terrible-”
“Oh, no, he, uh...” Cooper began, his mind searching, quick as lightning, for a reasonable lie. “He didn't show up to work a couple of days in a row, and no one heard from him, so he got let go...apparently,” he quickly tossed in.
Delilah's brows knit together as she contemplated his words. “Well, I'm glad it wasn't me...I hope he's okay. I don't think he had much family,” she thought aloud.
Cooper considered her briefly before speaking again, “Did you know him?”
“I mean, not well, but...about as much as anyone around here who works the night shift, and...doesn't keep their face buried in their phones,” she shrugged.
“Well, I'm sure he'll turn out to be...just fine,” Cooper lied, his umber eyes fixed on her forest green ones.
“Yeah, I...I hope so,” she nodded, her gaze transfixed by the strange intensity of his stare, as if he were waiting to see if she believed him. “Well...I gotta get back before we lose another customer to Amazon. It was nice to meet you, again,” she explained as her eyes finally glanced back to the store, and the annoyed-looking customer inside. When she looked back again, just inside the entrance below the giant letters that spelled out PAGE TURNERS, he had vanished.
🔪
Days turned to weeks as Cooper acclimated to his position as the primary evening security officer, scoping out all the stores, and the dark hallways that led to back rooms, every inch of the oversized shopping destination. He was attentive to his duties, though less than invested on a personal level. His job was nothing but a cover, and a convenient location for his executions, in the basement levels that most were either unaware of, or considered abandoned. He'd stored away plenty of money over the years in a dozen locations in case he were ever discovered and had to run, and his home was far more comfortable than any normal security guard could truly hope for. Unfulfilling as his duties were, however, his employ did lend him opportunities to gain trust within the micro-community of this retail mega-facility, meeting various store employees, making nice with managers, cleaning crew...book sellers.
Nearly every evening that they shared a coinciding schedule, Cooper found an excuse to at least pass by the Page Turners book store on the top floor, a shop that he silently questioned the need for in the age of giant online sellers that an independent bookseller could not complete with the prices of. Business appeared fairly slow to him, but the main evening employee he'd began having brief, friendly interactions with, seemed to always find something to do. He usually had to clear his throat just to gain her attention when he'd enter the store, but she always seemed pleased to see him.
“You always manage to look busy,” Cooper commented from just beyond the threshold between the store interior and the walkway, and he watched her shoulders jump slightly in surprise, before she turned in the direction of his voice from where she crouched beside a bookcase on the floor.
“And you always manage to make me jump,” she answered, though nothing else about her demeanor suggested that his presence bothered her. “I'll have you know that I've had a whopping...three? No, four groups of customers, tonight,” she declared, rising up to full height, nearly a foot shorter than the security guard, and dusting her polyester slacks off.
“That many?” Cooper asked, his eyes following her form as she abandoned the half-stocked box of tween novellas to circle around to the employee side of the register desk. “I guess it's only Tuesday, though.” Delilah shrugged as she slid her phone into a compartment out of sight, the need for distraction lessened by Cooper's companionship. “Do you ever manage to get a night off?” he asked suddenly, and her eyes that had already been trained on his features lit up with surprise at the inquiry.
“Um...well, yeah, of course. I just, uh...I'm the only non-manager who actually volunteers for the night shift, so my schedule is pretty predictable,” she explained, and he nodded, leaning his weight into his hands that gripped at the side of the register table opposite her.
“Night owl?” he suggested, and she shrugged, her expression unaltered, though her gaze diverted from his, as it often did when his proximity to her increased.
“I guess...it's more like, most of the other employees are teenagers, and they don't want to waste their summer vacation working the night shift,” she concluded. Honestly, they didn't do much of anything while they were there to begin with, but someone had to mind the store.
“Yeah, I've noticed it's mostly teenagers. I guess they probably make for the best customers, too,” he continued, adjusting his weight so it fell against his crossed arms on the recently wiped-down surface. “How old are you, anyway? I mean, if it's okay to ask,” he questioned suddenly, and she finally looked back up at him again, surprised.
“Um...thirty one,” she answered, brows furrowing as she watched him curiously.
Cooper's face displayed a look of surprise, as he pushed off, raising back to his full, towering height. “Really? I wouldn't have guess that.”
“What would you have guessed?” Delilah asked, her arms crossing in subconscious defense.
“I don't know. Maybe...twenty six? Twenty seven?” His answer was honest, and her demeanor seemed to visibly soften. “How's that possible?”
“I, uh...well, I don't drink, or smoke, or use drugs, or...spend much time in the sun,” she explained, waving a hand in the direction of the hall way, and the enormous overhead skylights that naturally brightened the walkways during the day.
“I imagine you must burn pretty easy,” he mentioned, his body maneuvering around the corner of the register table, reaching out to fondle a few strands of her auburn hair that fell past her shoulders, his vision trained on her, even as passersby glanced in to perceive the two of them.
“Yeah, I, uh...I try not to put myself in that position, anymore,” she mumbled, her gaze focused on his large hand as it abandoned her as quickly as it had reached out. “I don't wanna get burned.”
Cooper nodded but remained silent for several seconds, watching the confusion and anxiousness present itself on her features. Eventually, when it seemed she might excuse herself, he finally spoke up again. “So, how old do I look?”
“I...it must be a really slow night for you, too,” she commented, glancing briefly to the corridor for possible customers, the mall mostly dead, typical for a weeknight.
“Come on,” he encouraged, dark eyes ever watchful, clocking the mild discomfort across her features and ignoring it. “You're not gonna hurt my feelings.”
“Um...” she paused in her tiny steps backward, Cooper standing quite still, and finally took the opportunity to really look him over, something she'd done many times, but never so closely and obviously. “I'm really bad at this,” she mumbled, but he shook his head, a non-deranged smile in place. “Maybe...forty...four?” she hedged, and his expression told her that she at least had not insulted him.
“Forty six,” he corrected, and Delilah nodded, and shrugged. She wasn't quite sure why he cared about either of their ages, figured he must be desperate to run down the clock before his next round of surveillance was scheduled. “Pretty close. Maybe I need to start taking better care of my skin,” he thought aloud, rubbing absently at the short whiskers that cast a dark shadow over his chin. “Not so long ago, I was getting mistaken for...thirties,” he threw out the words in a casual tone, but the look Delilah immediately gave him – brows quirked, and a strange smile that seemed to silently say 'Yeah, right!' - gave him a tiny moment of pause, followed by a simple, “Ouch!”
“Sorry! I just...I mean, I don't know why you would want to confused for thirties,” she shrugged, suddenly a bit more at ease from the renewed levity of his company. “Like, have you met men in their thirties? They're barely men. They act like they're in their twenties, and guys in their twenties act like they're still in high school...”
“So...you're saying that forties is better?” Cooper prodded, and before he could take a step closer, the chatter of mall patrons suddenly reached their ears, and said patrons' feet led them into the bookstore before Cooper could take their conversation any further.
“Don't you have something to secure,” Delilah mumbled, a grin she couldn't defy pulling at her lips as Cooper maneuvered behind her.
“I'm just gonna go do some 'older guy' stuff,” he whispered in return, his large hand passing over the small of her back as he slipped by.
“Go secure something,” she called back as he disappeared out the door, her face flushed, smile still firmly in place. He'd never exactly struck her as insecure in their correspondence so far. As far as she was concerned, it didn't matter how old he actually was when he looked like that.
🔪
“So...movie theater...other movie theater...call center, office job...bookseller at a dying mall?” Cooper rattled off the jobs she'd detailed, counting them on his fingers, watching her nod along as she dusted the countless shelves of books. “How does that happen?”
“Well,” she began, pulling out an incorrectly placed book and sliding it toward the direction of its proper location. “The theaters paid awful wages, but I still lived with my mother, so I didn't need much. Quit the first one, got fired from the second one.”
“How do-”
“Nepotism. I pointed out some nepotism to the wrong co-worker, and it turned out they had a bigger mouth than I thought. And after that...a year at a call center that made me never want to talk on the phone again...and nine soul-sucking years at the office.”
“And then you ended up here,” Cooper concluded aloud, and she nodded, moving on to the next set of shelves. “Was it worth it?” he asked, and she shifted to look back over to the security guard whose body leaned against the sturdy register desk. “I mean, I can't imagine the pay is any better than where you were at.”
“It's not,” she admitted, her voice a little softer. She didn't like being reminded of her financial problems, wondering about the choices she'd made in her life to lead her here. “It's less money, for sure, but...a different company bought us out, and our jobs got more difficult, and our work loads doubled...and the raises turned into a joke. I hated it. I made enough to live on my own, but only barely, and...” Delilah's words dropped away, her fingers stilling over the spines of the books she had been correcting the placement of. Cooper simply stood in silence, taking in every ounce of information she spilled. “And what about you?” she suddenly questioned, an attempt to deflect some attention.
“Me?” Cooper asked, his brows raising. “Well, there's not much to tell,” he answered. It wasn't wise to give away too much, even his own trained lies. His resume had been full of falsehoods, but the hiring manager had been so desperate to bring someone on with the sudden disappearance of the guard Cooper had annihilated, that he hadn't even checked up on his references. A clean background check and some forged documents of training had been enough to secure the position Cooper now found himself in. “I've mostly worked...I guess you'd call them positions of authority.” Hadn't that been what the FBI profile had said? Surely, that was vague enough.
“And you never, um...” Cooper observed as the bookseller tapped her empty ring finger on her left hand.
“I, uh...I'm divorced,” he lied, though in fairness, he was certain Rachel would have divorced him, had the authorities actually managed to keep him in custody beyond the Prisoner Transport vehicle. “I don't really like talking about that part of my life.”
“You don't really like talking about yourself at all,” she observed, and Cooper couldn't exactly argue. Obviously, there was very little of his life he could safely share, as his interactions with the FBI and Philadelphia police had been far too close for comfort.
“Maybe I just find you fascinating,” he hedged, and received a sigh and an eye roll, but she ceased her questions, all the same.
🔪
It was another late night, later than usual for Cooper to find Delilah's dented-up car in the mall parking lot, so late that he cut his outside patrol short to re-enter the enormous structure. Ever since their first meeting, when he had acted so harshly toward her, before he had selected her as the subject of his strange experiment, she had actually made efforts to be out of the mall before midnight. Though there were nights that she didn't quite make their agreed-upon curfew, he had never witnessed her in the building so late that it almost classified as early. By the time he'd completed the trek to the metal gates outside of Page Turners' store front, it was just after 3am.
Cooper called out her name, called again louder, but received no answer. He didn't even hear the typical wave of soft music that usually emanated from the store when she stuck around after-hours. Giving the metal barrier a loud shake and still hearing nothing beyond it that indicated life, he reached to his large ring of keys and let himself inside.
He wasn't sure what it was that drove him. It felt like something almost comparable to concern, but he was certain that wasn't it. She was just an experiment, a little toy to manipulate and eventually play with. Replaceable. So why was he relieved when he found her at the back of the store that he trudged through, not ignoring him at all, not consciously anyway?
“Delilah,” Cooper spoke just above a whisper after he carefully tugged the headphones she wore away from her ears, watching her stir, barely aware of his presence. He received a tiny 'Hmm?' in response, but nothing else, her eyes still closed. Crouching down next to the well-worn bean bag chair she snoozed in, he pushed some stray strands of hair away from her ear, and leaned in closer, his voice a bit louder as he spoke her name again.
“It's too early,” she mumbled, closed eyes scrunching tight with annoyance as she shifted in the nearly-shapeless seat.
“Or too late,” Cooper answered, and finally recognizing his voice, Delilah managed to open her eyes long enough to look over her shoulder, toward him.
“Cooper?” she asked, her tone and the expression on her face full of confusion. “What are you...what time is it?”
“Way past midnight,” he answered, dragging out his phone when she failed to locate her own, showing her the time, watching her eyes widen with realization.
“Oh my g-...shit!” she exclaimed, scrambling out of the so-called chair and unsteadily to her feet. “I am so sorry. I can't believe I actually fell asleep,” she continued, searching for her belongings to gather in her messenger bag.
“I can,” Cooper responded, and she gave him a confused look before returning her attention to her bag to make sure she had everything. “I can believe that you fell asleep, I mean,” he clarified. “Delilah...is there a reason you don't want to go home?”
“What?” she asked, finally standing up to full height again, grasping her purse, and the bag big enough to hold her laptop.
“That's why you stay so late, isn't it? You stay at the store for hours after it closes, after you've clocked out. You volunteer to work these late shifts, when most people are off work, and at home. No one likes the night shift that much,” Cooper concluded, his dark eyes focused on the young woman before him, who had noticeably stopped fidgeting. “Boyfriend?”
That single word prompted a look akin to the one she'd given him the night he'd suggested he could pass for a man in his thirties. “Do you really think I'd spend so much time around you if I...no, there's no boyfriend. It's, uh...it's my roommate...and her boyfriend, usually.”
Cooper registered all of her words, but chose not to comment on the first half. He'd tuck that away for later. “Continue,” he invited, simply, not too firmly.
“She just...I kinda hate her,” Delilah admitted, letting out a sigh of defeat. She did her best to not mix her time around Cooper in with her home life, but he was frustratingly perceptive. She watched as the security guard lowered himself to the vacuumed floor and reached his hand out in her direction, encouraging her to join him. She plopped down far less gracefully. “We didn't even really know each other when I moved in. She was looking for a roommate to split the bills with, and I was month-to-month at my apartment, and running out of what passed for my savings from my old job, and...it seemed like a good match at the time.”
“So, what changed?” he questioned, hesitating for a few moments, before reaching out his hand again and taking hers carefully in his grasp. She stared at it for a noticeable length of time before her words resumed.
“Well...she ended up getting this boyfriend, and at first it was nice, because they were almost always at his place. Then, they started fighting, like...all the time. And when they weren't fighting, they were fucking so loud, the neighbors would bang on the walls, and...”
“And that's when you started staying here so late?” he offered, and she shrugged.
“Yeah...I started looking for freelance stuff online to make more money so I could move out on my own again, but...everything just keeps getting so much more expensive. I just...I feel so stuck. And up here,” her words paused for a moment, and she indicated with her free hand her general surroundings, “it's about the only peace I get that doesn't involve earplugs.” She gave a faint smile that didn't reach her eyes, focused on an invisible spot on the floor. When silence overtook the room, it became harder to ignore his large hand that still encompassed hers, and she finally took in a deep breath, letting it out in a slightly dramatic sigh. “So...now that you know my sob story...any words of wisdom?”
Her gaze finally lifted to Cooper's umber eyes that had not left her own green ones since she'd began to speak, but she found his expression unreadable. “Well?” she asked again.
“I'm not sure I have much wisdom to impart,” Cooper admitted, “and it's probably selfish, but...I kind of like having you up here, alone...all to myself.”
If I forgot anyone, I apologize, and please let me know if you want to be tagged in the next one
COMMENTS AND REBLOGS AND TAGS ARE DEEPLY APPRECIATED. I KNOW THIS IS A BIT DIFFERENT THAN MOST OF THE OTHER COOPER STORIES BEING WRITTEN, BUT I HOPE IT APPEALS TO SOMEONE BESIDES MYSELF 💙
This story is *VERY LOOSELY* based on some of my own personal experiences, not with a serial killer, but with a security guard at a place I worked at, who paid way more attention to me than he should have at the time - something I wouldn't really come to comprehend until many years later. This story will feature explicit sexual content in some future chapters (I'm currently aiming for 5-6 chapters total), all of which should basically be considered dubious consent (let's be honest, that's about the only consent there really could be, given the power dynamic issues). There will be no DDLG kink, breeding kink, degradation kink, or...some other kinks popular with this character's fandom that is prominent in other fics. Other writers are thoroughly filling that niche. It's more of a...love bombing-ish situation, with plenty of manipulation for the aim of control. ( gif is mine, watermarked because I witnessed one of my gifs being stolen recently )
(( word count ~ 4,600 ))
🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪 🔪
There had been no answer when Cooper had called out and rattled the metal shutters to the bookstore within the mall he patrolled, but the faint sound of lofi and very soft human speech clearly indicated an occupant. When he called out once more, received no response once again, he reached for his ring of keys and went to work opening the aluminum gating. It was almost one in the morning, and even the cleaning crew had gone home. There should not have been a soul in the building save for the assigned security guard, and Cooper just happened to be the man tasked with that assignment.
After the concert in Pennsylvania, the confrontation, and his subsequent escape from the incompetent police department, the Butcher had gone on the run, inadvertently aided by the media's purposeful downplaying of his escape that would have shamed all law enforcement involved. Cowards, the way Cooper saw them, but convenient cowards. In the months that followed, he had moved around quite a bit, never settling anywhere for too long, utilizing a slew of motel rooms and stolen identities. When he finally felt like he'd reached a destination he could call permanent, he'd gone in search of work and found himself right at home in the convenience of mall security. The idea had seemed laughable at first as he'd scanned the wanted ads in a local paper, weeks after chopping up one of the previously employed night guards, but the more he'd contemplated it, the more perfect of a fit it seemed to be. That had been about a month ago, and now he found himself in one of the stores, hours after closing, not as alone as he should be.
Officially armed with a flash light and a baton, unofficially armed with a taser and chloroform, Cooper proceeded through the store, quiet and alert, glancing in all directions as he moved toward the back corner of the store, the source of the soft music, and the the faint glow of an electronic device. Expecting to find some stoned teens or a homeless person, Cooper instead stumbled upon a store employee, ambient synthwave streaming from the speakers of her laptop as she typed away. Apparently, she was so engrossed in her after-hours work that she failed to notice him until he switched on his flashlight and shone it against the wall in front of her, and all around her. She nearly fell out of the store chair that cradled her body when she finally took notice of him.
“Who the f-...oh, thank god, security,” she breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed his uniform, her vision not yet reaching the stern look across his face.
“Mall's closed,” he stated simply, switching off his flashlight and sliding it back into the assigned holster.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I, uh...the other security guard just lets me hang after hours,” she explained, closing her computer and sliding it into her bag.
“That's probably why he got fired,” Cooper commented harshly in return. Well, fired in the literal since, as Cooper had burned his body to reduce the evidence. He was far less bold in his disposal of victims' remains, since his temporary capture. The bookstore worker paused at his statement. She hadn't seen the other guard in weeks, and had assumed he'd simply quit. If she were really the cause...she felt a twinge of guilt at the idea.
“I'm sorry, I hadn't heard that. I...I'll get my stuff. It won't happen again,” she assured, keeping her focus on her belongings she gathered, making sure to pick up her accumulated garbage from her food court-sourced dinner so she could dump it in the trash. Cooper nodded, but said nothing, as he watched her move about, and followed her as they trudged back out of the store, the door coming down in a noisy crash at the insistence of Cooper's harsh yank. It felt excessive to the bookstore employee, but she said nothing. If she'd already gotten someone fired for bending the rules, she certainly didn't want to end up on the bad side of his replacement. The store didn't exactly pay well, but she couldn't afford to lose the income.
“Um...sorry, again,” she mumbled as Cooper walked a few steps behind her, seeing that she got to an exit so he could re-lock the doors. The Butcher shifted his gaze from the empty corridor stretched out before him, to the young woman a few steps ahead of him. Already nearly a foot shorter than himself, she seemed even smaller with her shoulders hunched and her arms meeting at her clasped hands before her.
“It's...it's fine,” he finally uttered, and her head seemed to tilt briefly toward his voice, before focusing on her destination again. “I need this job. I can't afford write-ups, already.”
“Right...s-” she began to apologize again, but her words were cut short by the light contact of his fingertips upon her shoulder, and her feet slowed to a stop as she turned around to look back at him, confused at his odd touch.
“Stop apologizing. I get it. You're sorry,” his voice was firm, but less harsh than it had been in the bookstore. “Let's just...make it a habit of being out by midnight, alright?” he offered, his thick, dark brows raising as if to punctuate his request.
“S-...sure,” she managed, and no more words were exchanged between the two strangers the last hundred-ish feet to the exit nearest her automobile. She paused at the door, but said nothing, as Cooper unlocked it and held it open, watching her exit. She glanced back at him briefly, before heading for her car, Cooper's dark eyes focused on the lock as he re-secured the exit. His gaze rose to watch her walk alone, along the empty parking lot, until she reached a car he reckoned was hers, the guard not turning around to resume his patrol until her lights were on, and her vehicle set into motion.
🔪
A few evenings had passed since the incident at the bookstore, Cooper's night off falling the day after, a different shift the day after that, and he was back to night duty. He didn't mind it. He enjoyed the silence. During the day shifts, his gaze would wander, taking in the multitude of mall patrons, contemplating his next kill, but the evenings were peaceful. More time to think. More time to plan without distractions.
It had also been a few nights since he'd stopped by the bookstore, and though he'd avoided it for the bulk of regular operating hours, his feet did eventually guide him in the shop's direction, and he found himself standing against the wall across from it, staring in through the door-less entry. His eyes followed the movements and actions of a slightly familiar figure inside, Cooper watching as the young woman he'd escorted out a few nights before flitted around the store, assisting what few customers stepped inside, straightening books, re-homing the tomes that wound up in the wrong locations. Cooper had watched for a full fifteen minutes, almost unflinching, before she looked up from her work long enough to notice him, and she made no secret of it when she did.
“Hey!,” she waved him down, completely unnecessarily, as she crossed the short distance through the store and out into the corridor to greet the security guard. “Hi, I just wanted to apologize again for the other night, I don't usually-”
“Ah, no need,” Cooper raised a hand as if to put a barrier between the two of them. “It's these late nights, you know? I'm not used to the overnight shift and I was just...” he shrugged his shoulders, and put on a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “I was just...kinda grumpy” he suggested.
“I get that, but, um...I mean, I really don't usually hang around that long-”
“Really, it's fine,” he reiterated, the false smile still in place. “Hey, I'm Cooper. I didn't catch your name,” he offered his hand, and she hesitated only for a couple of seconds before accepting it, a half smile forming on her lips that was far more sincere than his.
“Delilah. It's, um...nice to meet you, Cooper,” she shook the hand he'd offered lightly before withdrawing her own again. “Hey, um...did I really get the other guard fired? I feel terrible-”
“Oh, no, he, uh...” Cooper began, his mind searching, quick as lightning, for a reasonable lie. “He didn't show up to work a couple of days in a row, and no one heard from him, so he got let go...apparently,” he quickly tossed in.
Delilah's brows knit together as she contemplated his words. “Well, I'm glad it wasn't me...I hope he's okay. I don't think he had much family,” she thought aloud.
Cooper considered her briefly before speaking again, “Did you know him?”
“I mean, not well, but...about as much as anyone around here who works the night shift, and...doesn't keep their face buried in their phones,” she shrugged.
“Well, I'm sure he'll turn out to be...just fine,” Cooper lied, his umber eyes fixed on her forest green ones.
“Yeah, I...I hope so,” she nodded, her gaze transfixed by the strange intensity of his stare, as if he were waiting to see if she believed him. “Well...I gotta get back before we lose another customer to Amazon. It was nice to meet you, again,” she explained as her eyes finally glanced back to the store, and the annoyed-looking customer inside. When she looked back again, just inside the entrance below the giant letters that spelled out PAGE TURNERS, he had vanished.
🔪
Days turned to weeks as Cooper acclimated to his position as the primary evening security officer, scoping out all the stores, and the dark hallways that led to back rooms, every inch of the oversized shopping destination. He was attentive to his duties, though less than invested on a personal level. His job was nothing but a cover, and a convenient location for his executions, in the basement levels that most were either unaware of, or considered abandoned. He'd stored away plenty of money over the years in a dozen locations in case he were ever discovered and had to run, and his home was far more comfortable than any normal security guard could truly hope for. Unfulfilling as his duties were, however, his employ did lend him opportunities to gain trust within the micro-community of this retail mega-facility, meeting various store employees, making nice with managers, cleaning crew...book sellers.
Nearly every evening that they shared a coinciding schedule, Cooper found an excuse to at least pass by the Page Turners book store on the top floor, a shop that he silently questioned the need for in the age of giant online sellers that an independent bookseller could not complete with the prices of. Business appeared fairly slow to him, but the main evening employee he'd began having brief, friendly interactions with, seemed to always find something to do. He usually had to clear his throat just to gain her attention when he'd enter the store, but she always seemed pleased to see him.
“You always manage to look busy,” Cooper commented from just beyond the threshold between the store interior and the walkway, and he watched her shoulders jump slightly in surprise, before she turned in the direction of his voice from where she crouched beside a bookcase on the floor.
“And you always manage to make me jump,” she answered, though nothing else about her demeanor suggested that his presence bothered her. “I'll have you know that I've had a whopping...three? No, four groups of customers, tonight,” she declared, rising up to full height, nearly a foot shorter than the security guard, and dusting her polyester slacks off.
“That many?” Cooper asked, his eyes following her form as she abandoned the half-stocked box of tween novellas to circle around to the employee side of the register desk. “I guess it's only Tuesday, though.” Delilah shrugged as she slid her phone into a compartment out of sight, the need for distraction lessened by Cooper's companionship. “Do you ever manage to get a night off?” he asked suddenly, and her eyes that had already been trained on his features lit up with surprise at the inquiry.
“Um...well, yeah, of course. I just, uh...I'm the only non-manager who actually volunteers for the night shift, so my schedule is pretty predictable,” she explained, and he nodded, leaning his weight into his hands that gripped at the side of the register table opposite her.
“Night owl?” he suggested, and she shrugged, her expression unaltered, though her gaze diverted from his, as it often did when his proximity to her increased.
“I guess...it's more like, most of the other employees are teenagers, and they don't want to waste their summer vacation working the night shift,” she concluded. Honestly, they didn't do much of anything while they were there to begin with, but someone had to mind the store.
“Yeah, I've noticed it's mostly teenagers. I guess they probably make for the best customers, too,” he continued, adjusting his weight so it fell against his crossed arms on the recently wiped-down surface. “How old are you, anyway? I mean, if it's okay to ask,” he questioned suddenly, and she finally looked back up at him again, surprised.
“Um...thirty one,” she answered, brows furrowing as she watched him curiously.
Cooper's face displayed a look of surprise, as he pushed off, raising back to his full, towering height. “Really? I wouldn't have guess that.”
“What would you have guessed?” Delilah asked, her arms crossing in subconscious defense.
“I don't know. Maybe...twenty six? Twenty seven?” His answer was honest, and her demeanor seemed to visibly soften. “How's that possible?”
“I, uh...well, I don't drink, or smoke, or use drugs, or...spend much time in the sun,” she explained, waving a hand in the direction of the hall way, and the enormous overhead skylights that naturally brightened the walkways during the day.
“I imagine you must burn pretty easy,” he mentioned, his body maneuvering around the corner of the register table, reaching out to fondle a few strands of her auburn hair that fell past her shoulders, his vision trained on her, even as passersby glanced in to perceive the two of them.
“Yeah, I, uh...I try not to put myself in that position, anymore,” she mumbled, her gaze focused on his large hand as it abandoned her as quickly as it had reached out. “I don't wanna get burned.”
Cooper nodded but remained silent for several seconds, watching the confusion and anxiousness present itself on her features. Eventually, when it seemed she might excuse herself, he finally spoke up again. “So, how old do I look?”
“I...it must be a really slow night for you, too,” she commented, glancing briefly to the corridor for possible customers, the mall mostly dead, typical for a weeknight.
“Come on,” he encouraged, dark eyes ever watchful, clocking the mild discomfort across her features and ignoring it. “You're not gonna hurt my feelings.”
“Um...” she paused in her tiny steps backward, Cooper standing quite still, and finally took the opportunity to really look him over, something she'd done many times, but never so closely and obviously. “I'm really bad at this,” she mumbled, but he shook his head, a non-deranged smile in place. “Maybe...forty...four?” she hedged, and his expression told her that she at least had not insulted him.
“Forty six,” he corrected, and Delilah nodded, and shrugged. She wasn't quite sure why he cared about either of their ages, figured he must be desperate to run down the clock before his next round of surveillance was scheduled. “Pretty close. Maybe I need to start taking better care of my skin,” he thought aloud, rubbing absently at the short whiskers that cast a dark shadow over his chin. “Not so long ago, I was getting mistaken for...thirties,” he threw out the words in a casual tone, but the look Delilah immediately gave him – brows quirked, and a strange smile that seemed to silently say 'Yeah, right!' - gave him a tiny moment of pause, followed by a simple, “Ouch!”
“Sorry! I just...I mean, I don't know why you would want to confused for thirties,” she shrugged, suddenly a bit more at ease from the renewed levity of his company. “Like, have you met men in their thirties? They're barely men. They act like they're in their twenties, and guys in their twenties act like they're still in high school...”
“So...you're saying that forties is better?” Cooper prodded, and before he could take a step closer, the chatter of mall patrons suddenly reached their ears, and said patrons' feet led them into the bookstore before Cooper could take their conversation any further.
“Don't you have something to secure,” Delilah mumbled, a grin she couldn't defy pulling at her lips as Cooper maneuvered behind her.
“I'm just gonna go do some 'older guy' stuff,” he whispered in return, his large hand passing over the small of her back as he slipped by.
“Go secure something,” she called back as he disappeared out the door, her face flushed, smile still firmly in place. He'd never exactly struck her as insecure in their correspondence so far. As far as she was concerned, it didn't matter how old he actually was when he looked like that.
🔪
“So...movie theater...other movie theater...call center, office job...bookseller at a dying mall?” Cooper rattled off the jobs she'd detailed, counting them on his fingers, watching her nod along as she dusted the countless shelves of books. “How does that happen?”
“Well,” she began, pulling out an incorrectly placed book and sliding it toward the direction of its proper location. “The theaters paid awful wages, but I still lived with my mother, so I didn't need much. Quit the first one, got fired from the second one.”
“How do-”
“Nepotism. I pointed out some nepotism to the wrong co-worker, and it turned out they had a bigger mouth than I thought. And after that...a year at a call center that made me never want to talk on the phone again...and nine soul-sucking years at the office.”
“And then you ended up here,” Cooper concluded aloud, and she nodded, moving on to the next set of shelves. “Was it worth it?” he asked, and she shifted to look back over to the security guard whose body leaned against the sturdy register desk. “I mean, I can't imagine the pay is any better than where you were at.”
“It's not,” she admitted, her voice a little softer. She didn't like being reminded of her financial problems, wondering about the choices she'd made in her life to lead her here. “It's less money, for sure, but...a different company bought us out, and our jobs got more difficult, and our work loads doubled...and the raises turned into a joke. I hated it. I made enough to live on my own, but only barely, and...” Delilah's words dropped away, her fingers stilling over the spines of the books she had been correcting the placement of. Cooper simply stood in silence, taking in every ounce of information she spilled. “And what about you?” she suddenly questioned, an attempt to deflect some attention.
“Me?” Cooper asked, his brows raising. “Well, there's not much to tell,” he answered. It wasn't wise to give away too much, even his own trained lies. His resume had been full of falsehoods, but the hiring manager had been so desperate to bring someone on with the sudden disappearance of the guard Cooper had annihilated, that he hadn't even checked up on his references. A clean background check and some forged documents of training had been enough to secure the position Cooper now found himself in. “I've mostly worked...I guess you'd call them positions of authority.” Hadn't that been what the FBI profile had said? Surely, that was vague enough.
“And you never, um...” Cooper observed as the bookseller tapped her empty ring finger on her left hand.
“I, uh...I'm divorced,” he lied, though in fairness, he was certain Rachel would have divorced him, had the authorities actually managed to keep him in custody beyond the Prisoner Transport vehicle. “I don't really like talking about that part of my life.”
“You don't really like talking about yourself at all,” she observed, and Cooper couldn't exactly argue. Obviously, there was very little of his life he could safely share, as his interactions with the FBI and Philadelphia police had been far too close for comfort.
“Maybe I just find you fascinating,” he hedged, and received a sigh and an eye roll, but she ceased her questions, all the same.
🔪
It was another late night, later than usual for Cooper to find Delilah's dented-up car in the mall parking lot, so late that he cut his outside patrol short to re-enter the enormous structure. Ever since their first meeting, when he had acted so harshly toward her, before he had selected her as the subject of his strange experiment, she had actually made efforts to be out of the mall before midnight. Though there were nights that she didn't quite make their agreed-upon curfew, he had never witnessed her in the building so late that it almost classified as early. By the time he'd completed the trek to the metal gates outside of Page Turners' store front, it was just after 3am.
Cooper called out her name, called again louder, but received no answer. He didn't even hear the typical wave of soft music that usually emanated from the store when she stuck around after-hours. Giving the metal barrier a loud shake and still hearing nothing beyond it that indicated life, he reached to his large ring of keys and let himself inside.
He wasn't sure what it was that drove him. It felt like something almost comparable to concern, but he was certain that wasn't it. She was just an experiment, a little toy to manipulate and eventually play with. Replaceable. So why was he relieved when he found her at the back of the store that he trudged through, not ignoring him at all, not consciously anyway?
“Delilah,” Cooper spoke just above a whisper after he carefully tugged the headphones she wore away from her ears, watching her stir, barely aware of his presence. He received a tiny 'Hmm?' in response, but nothing else, her eyes still closed. Crouching down next to the well-worn bean bag chair she snoozed in, he pushed some stray strands of hair away from her ear, and leaned in closer, his voice a bit louder as he spoke her name again.
“It's too early,” she mumbled, closed eyes scrunching tight with annoyance as she shifted in the nearly-shapeless seat.
“Or too late,” Cooper answered, and finally recognizing his voice, Delilah managed to open her eyes long enough to look over her shoulder, toward him.
“Cooper?” she asked, her tone and the expression on her face full of confusion. “What are you...what time is it?”
“Way past midnight,” he answered, dragging out his phone when she failed to locate her own, showing her the time, watching her eyes widen with realization.
“Oh my g-...shit!” she exclaimed, scrambling out of the so-called chair and unsteadily to her feet. “I am so sorry. I can't believe I actually fell asleep,” she continued, searching for her belongings to gather in her messenger bag.
“I can,” Cooper responded, and she gave him a confused look before returning her attention to her bag to make sure she had everything. “I can believe that you fell asleep, I mean,” he clarified. “Delilah...is there a reason you don't want to go home?”
“What?” she asked, finally standing up to full height again, grasping her purse, and the bag big enough to hold her laptop.
“That's why you stay so late, isn't it? You stay at the store for hours after it closes, after you've clocked out. You volunteer to work these late shifts, when most people are off work, and at home. No one likes the night shift that much,” Cooper concluded, his dark eyes focused on the young woman before him, who had noticeably stopped fidgeting. “Boyfriend?”
That single word prompted a look akin to the one she'd given him the night he'd suggested he could pass for a man in his thirties. “Do you really think I'd spend so much time around you if I...no, there's no boyfriend. It's, uh...it's my roommate...and her boyfriend, usually.”
Cooper registered all of her words, but chose not to comment on the first half. He'd tuck that away for later. “Continue,” he invited, simply, not too firmly.
“She just...I kinda hate her,” Delilah admitted, letting out a sigh of defeat. She did her best to not mix her time around Cooper in with her home life, but he was frustratingly perceptive. She watched as the security guard lowered himself to the vacuumed floor and reached his hand out in her direction, encouraging her to join him. She plopped down far less gracefully. “We didn't even really know each other when I moved in. She was looking for a roommate to split the bills with, and I was month-to-month at my apartment, and running out of what passed for my savings from my old job, and...it seemed like a good match at the time.”
“So, what changed?” he questioned, hesitating for a few moments, before reaching out his hand again and taking hers carefully in his grasp. She stared at it for a noticeable length of time before her words resumed.
“Well...she ended up getting this boyfriend, and at first it was nice, because they were almost always at his place. Then, they started fighting, like...all the time. And when they weren't fighting, they were fucking so loud, the neighbors would bang on the walls, and...”
“And that's when you started staying here so late?” he offered, and she shrugged.
“Yeah...I started looking for freelance stuff online to make more money so I could move out on my own again, but...everything just keeps getting so much more expensive. I just...I feel so stuck. And up here,” her words paused for a moment, and she indicated with her free hand her general surroundings, “it's about the only peace I get that doesn't involve earplugs.” She gave a faint smile that didn't reach her eyes, focused on an invisible spot on the floor. When silence overtook the room, it became harder to ignore his large hand that still encompassed hers, and she finally took in a deep breath, letting it out in a slightly dramatic sigh. “So...now that you know my sob story...any words of wisdom?”
Her gaze finally lifted to Cooper's umber eyes that had not left her own green ones since she'd began to speak, but she found his expression unreadable. “Well?” she asked again.
“I'm not sure I have much wisdom to impart,” Cooper admitted, “and it's probably selfish, but...I kind of like having you up here, alone...all to myself.”
If I forgot anyone, I apologize, and please let me know if you want to be tagged in the next one
COMMENTS AND REBLOGS AND TAGS ARE DEEPLY APPRECIATED. I KNOW THIS IS A BIT DIFFERENT THAN MOST OF THE OTHER COOPER STORIES BEING WRITTEN, BUT I HOPE IT APPEALS TO SOMEONE BESIDES MYSELF 💙
I know this sounds bad but... I sort of agree with Cooper Adams that people are not always "whole".
Technically everyone has flaws that don't entirely fit, which makes people who they are.
Cooper just takes it the wrong way because he's so broken inside and can hardly feel secure in himself. Its understandable why Cooper immediately thinks to commit suicide in the car with Lady Raven. He would kill himself like he's killed others. Adams mentality is basically : dead = good. In jail = bad.
When Lady Raven did that phone flashlight thingy, I had the same reaction as Cooper. Like wtf this is so corny lol.
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