Pathos - A Duskwood Fanfiction

Chapter 38

As the first weak rays of a wintry sun began to spread across a gelid dark blue sky, a dark green four door with tinted windows was driving down a silent highway.

Inside the car's cabin, Alan sat behind the steering wheel, staring out at the highway ahead. Beside him in the passenger seat, Jake was leaning with his head against the window, using the black hoodie that he always seemed to wear as a buffer against the cold glass.

Alan could not tell if the other man was asleep or awake because the hood had obscured his face completely, but the other man had not seemed to have moved a single muscle for the past two hours.

The trip had been a tense one up until that moment, to say the very least. The two men had barely spoken to each other for its entirety, only speaking when absolutely necessary for matters of navigation. And even then, Jake had seemed to deeply loathe having to expend more than one word at a time on the police chief, and when he was forced into speaking by circumstance, his tone was terse and acrid.

For his part, Alan had matched the general hostility given off by the other man and had not attempted to initiate any conversation. He knew, from his months long study of the man who now sat beside him, that if Jake had anything to say to him about whatever the fuck had happened at that bus terminal, he would do it on his own terms and in his own time.

Or perhaps never at all.

Which was probably going to be the case, Alan reasoned to himself silently as he drove on.

He had no idea what exactly had transpired between Jake and Whatshisname, but the black eye that Jake was sporting now and the cellphone that Alan now had in his pocket combined together to give him a pretty good guess at the general gist.

Also, the fact that Jake had given him the cellphone with the text from himself clearly visible upon the phone's launch had been a reasonable indicator that Jake was likely fully aware of the... scope of his relationship with Whatshisname.

Which meant that his penchant for having his hook up dress like the man who was now sitting next to him was no longer just a kink that he used to get off - it was a very real and very damning liability.

And now, they both knew it.

It was a lot to unpack, to which Alan knew that he would be doing into a bottle of bourbon later, but there was another liability that Alan had sitting on his dash, waiting.

Regardless of what Jake might or might not think of him and their relationship now, he had made a promise and he was going to fulfill it.

So, taking a deep breath, he fulfilled it.

"Wake up," Alan said, more harshly than he had intended to, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

In his peripheral vision, he watched as Jake remained completely still with not even a flinch at the first sounds aside from the hum of the highway to be heard inside of the car in hours.

Great. Asleep.

Not relishing the idea of having to speak again and louder this time, he opened his mouth and was about to increase the decibels when Jake spoke.

"I wasn't sleeping."

His voice still held the same inflectionless cadence that he'd had for the entirety of the drive, but there was a slight softening around the edges of it that gave it the ghost of a gentler feel.

Alan proceeded.

"There's something that I thought you would want to see," he said, and reached forward to pick up the phone sitting on the dash. He activated the screen, pressed his thumb against the biometric scanner, and then extended it out toward Jake.

The other man turned his head towards him then as the police chief did this, and stared at the phone for a moment before lifting his gaze to look into Alan's eyes. It was the briefest of looks because Alan had to look back at the road else risk veering off into the abutment, but Jake's gaze in that moment was the most singularly beautiful thing that he had ever seen.

Upon later reflection as to what about it had been so incredibly powerful, he could only return to the simple fact of the sheer beauty of the man that had been sitting next to him.There had been something about the way that the early morning light had fallen onto his face, half obscured in the shadows of his hood - it had thrown his eyes into a cacophony of deep blue brilliance, the colour almost bordering on a dark and unearthly teal. The dark severity of his eyebrows had only served to intensify the effect of the other man's hypnotic stare, and later, when Alan was in bed alone in the dark and coming into his fist, his last coherent thought before his mind blinked off was the vision of those impossible eyes.

Jake took the phone slowly, and out of his peripheral vision, Alan could see him narrow his eyes slightly at the screen as he focused on its display.

"Is this by the Aurora?" Jake said with the edge of a question in his voice, and looked back over to Alan searchingly.

"Play it," Alan said quietly, and watched as Jake tapped the screen.

As the video began to play, he watched what he could see of the man sitting beside him in the limited scope of his peripheral vision. As the frames of the video flickered on the screen, Alan could see the light emitting from the screen blossoming upwards to bathe Jake's face in a cool white glow.

The light made his already too pale skin look completely devoid of colour, while also having the effect of turning his eyes into a dazzling display of icy blue. The complete lack of expression on the other man's face while the video played gave no indication as to what might have been running through his mind as he watched, and then the screen, and Jake's face, fell into darkness as the video ended.

Alan watched out of the corner of his eye as Jake stared at the blank screen for a second longer than the police chief thought that he might have intended to, and then took the phone back as Jake held it out towards him. He tossed it back onto the dash and stayed silent as he returned his focus back to driving.

Enough miles passed in silence that Alan thought that Jake was not going to comment on what he had seen on the screen, but then Jake spoke a single word that dropped like a stone into the silence of the cabin.

"When."

Alan replied.

"Three days after you left."

Jake was silent for a moment, and then softly spoke the last words that he would say for the rest of the drive.

"Drop me off at the Aurora."