Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 23 - sexual content warning

Her eyes followed Alan Bloomgate as he sat down on the desk chair in Jake's motel room. Once settled, he looked across the room towards the bed, where she and Jake were seated next to each other on the edge of the mattress, staring back at the Duskwood Police Chief.

After a moment, Alan lifted his gaze off of Jake to glance at her, then returned it back to Jake once more before speaking.

"Alright to speak freely?"

She looked over at Jake, who was sitting silently beside her, his eyes trained on the police chief intently. Wordlessly, he gave a slight nod, and Alan continued.

"I got a call last night," Alan said, leaning back in the chair slightly and crossing his arms over his chest. Slate grey eyes watched Jake hawkishly as the room fell into silence again, and then Jake spoke quietly.

"I see."

She looked over at him in confusion, her eyes scanning his face worriedly as she tried to gain some footing in the sudden hazardous terrain that had materialized underneath their feet. But Jake's expression was neutral, thoughtful even, as he returned the police chief's stare, his deep blue eyes unreadable in the low light that shone from the lamp on the desk.

Alan then asked a cryptic question, watching Jake closely as he did so.

"Did you bring it with you?"

Her brow furrowed deeply as she tried to make sense of the police chief's question, looking back at Jake once more as a frenzy of anxious thoughts began their onslaught in her head. Jake seemed to have been unaffected by the strange question, however, remaining motionless beside her as he fixed Alan with a brooding gaze.

"Of course not," Jake said after a moment, his voice inflectionless. "Continue."

Barely managing to refrain from raising an eyebrow at Jake's words, she stared at him mutely. The command that Jake had issued to the police chief to continue speaking was a bit unnerving - she could not help but feel slightly shocked at the overt audacity of his seemingly effortless ability to compel a police chief to do his bidding.

Also seemingly unbothered by Jake's behaviour, as if he had been subject to it before, Alan spoke again.

"They seem to be under the impression that you are attempting to mobilize it. I have been ordered to initiate surveillance at the Donfort's."

At this, Jake stood up and walked over to where Alan was seated on the desk chair that sat in front of a desk that was supporting three computer monitors and a keyboard.

"I need to check something," Jake said, and Alan stood and walked over to her as Jake sat down. He nodded curtly at her as he approached and sat on the edge of the bed beside her, with his gaze trained on Jake.

"Nice to finally meet," Alan said, slowly transferring his focus from Jake to her face, where storm grey eyes watched her appraisingly. She offered him a slight smile, which he returned, and they sat in silence together as Jake's fingers filled the room with the soft rainfall sounds of typing.

She watched Jake as he typed, transfixed by the way that the light from the monitors seemed to gleam like quicksilver on his pale skin, sinking and disappearing in shimmering highlights into the raven black of his eyelashes, brows, and hair. The expression on his face was one of intense focus, the tiniest frown of concentration disappearing under the layers of his hair as they fell into the deep teal of his eyes.

She found herself marvelling at the surreal display of the scene of him - this was the face that had been hidden behind the glitch artefacts that he had used to obscure his identity in the videos that he had sent to her. This was the face that had been obscured by the shadow of the hoodie that he had been wearing in the videos, and she found herself wondering if he had brought that hoodie with him to Duskwood. She had spent a significant amount of time wondering what that hood was hiding, and to find that the reality of him was so much more incredible than anything she could ever have imagined? She didn't have the words.