Footsteps [Will GrossmanxReader]

4

You clicked your pen absently as you stared right through the rough draft of your essay. It was a weird feeling, to do something so mundane after the events that took place in the Hospital, but not even magic clowns and mysterious boys could stop the world from spinning on.

After you'd woken up in a hospital bed, bruised and dry-mouthed but undeniably alive, you were questioned by all colors of cops, agents and reporters. You knew right away that no one would believe the truth about Will and Laughing Jack. You didn't want to believe it yourself. So you fed them a half-truth, a vague story about a tall man with dark hair who broke in and knocked you out. When they asked questions, you claimed you didn't know anything. Eventually they all came to accept your uselessness, told you that you were very brave, and left you alone.

Then your life returned to normalcy...except, it didn't. During the morning of your second day back in school, you found a single white flower stuck in your locker. The next day, you found two more. Every day for the past three weeks you would come to school to find more little flowers of all shapes and sizes stuck in your locker. There was never any note, or anything but the flowers. Your friends began teasing you about your 'secret admirer', much to your annoyance, but the flowers weren't the end of it. Whenever you were alone the hairs on back of your neck would stand up, and you felt like you were being watched. You could've sworn that you had barely glimpsed a figure darting out of sight at least twice. Once you had looked out of your window to see a figure with a white mask looking up at you, flinched away, then peeked back out to find they had vanished without a trace, leaving you to wonder if you had been imagining things or not. Between the flowers, and the feeling, and the figure...it felt like you were being stalked.

"Maybe I'm just paranoid." You sighed and set your pen down. You were tired, and the essay could wait. After checking that all of the doors and windows were locked and tossing another log into the fireplace, you rolled to your room and got ready for bed. Who wouldn't be paranoid after what you had experienced? More than likely, you were just freaking yourself out, and the Secret Admirer was just that, a secret admirer. With that thought in mind you curled up in bed and tried to sleep.

Outside on the front lawn, unknown to you or anyone else, a hooded man leaned against a crabapple tree and simply stared as the light in your window became darkness. He wore an antique white mask with a long, beak-like nose that gave him the appearance of some old-world ghoul stalking the night.

"How long are we going to do this?" His friend whined, appearing out of nowere and leaning on the other side of the tree. "You've been staring at that girl's window for three fucking weeks. Can we move on now, please?"

"Shut up, LJ." Will grumbled under his breath, "You're going to wake up the whole neighborhood."

"And wouldn't that just be a tragedy." Laughing Jack rolled his eyes and swung around the trunk of the tree. "Then you're ladyfriend might see you. Heaven forbid!"

"Shut up! You just don't get it." Will crossed his arms and looked away from Laughing Jack, his face already heating up.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Hormonal teenagers, blah-dee-blah blah. But you do realize that we can't stick around forev-" Laughing Jack replied, only to be cut off by a sharp shhhhh-ing noise from Will.

"Listen." Will said. Both men fell silent, making way for the faint beeping noise from within your house to be heard. "Smoke alarms." Will breathed. Not a moment later, smoke began to billow out of your house through every orifice it could find. There was no doubt about it. Your house was on fire.

"Shit!(Y/n)'s home alone! I've gotta save her!" Will exclaimed. He took his knife and charged forward, using it to break open a first-floor window and vault into the house.

"Will, you fucking idiot!" Laughing Jack hissed and ran into the fire after him.

Meanwhile, in your bedroom, you weren't having the best of times. The fire alarms had woken you up, and the smoke came soon after. In the flurry of panic you accidentally bumped your wheelchair and watched it roll a few feet away. Fantastic.

The smoke made you cough and stung your eyes. You knew that suffocation would be the thing that killed you first, so you rolled out of your bed and dropped to the ground. You could feel heat rising through your carpet from the lower level of the house. How could this happen? Your mom was away, and you couldn't reach any phones to call for help. It seemed like being helpless in life-threatening situations was your thing lately.

You laid as flat as you could, but the hot air and the smoke proved to be too much for you. You coughed and coughed until the room was spinning around you and you felt far away. Everything was so distorted that you barely noticed when two strong arms wrapped around you, and a different kind of smoke filled the room.

Suddenly it felt like everything was rushing by you at the speed of light. The world was spinning, dizzy, breathless, just colors and wind blowing past your face. It was all too much for your weakened senses.

You blacked out.