Darkside (a Jeff the killer romance)

chapter 9

This is stupid. Really stupid. Jeff knows this. He knows he's being stupid.

Still, he does it anyway. Poor impulse control, he supposes.

Jeff crouches, looking at the house from behind some bushes at the bottom of the large garden. No crime scene tape or anything similar, as far as he can see. Which should make it easier to do what he's here to do. That being: grab the shit he left here stupidly. Yep, he came all the way back to this place just to grab an old kitchen knife and a ratty torn up hoodie. That's the only reason he's here. And the only reason he's glad to not see any indication of having left a dead body here. Because then his shit would have been taken as evidence, of course. It all makes perfect sense, really. Or at least, it does to him.

After staying in the bushes looking at the house for a while, mentally going over the facts about how he's here to find his knife because he just misses it a lot, Jeff walks up to the shed. The door is wide open, which causes him to take caution as he enters. But there's no one in there.

He looks for his items and finds that his hoodie is in a small pile of neatly folded clothes on the coffee table. It's almost unrecognisable however, not only cleaned but appearing as though someone's made an effort to remove the years of blood stains from the old thing. He quickly puts it on and discards the black one he's been wearing instead (which was actually warmer and more comfortable, but what can he say, he doesn't like change)

After searching the whole room Jeff doesn't locate his knife, so he goes back outside. He sighs, looking up at the large house.

Every single window is not just open, but wide open. Which is quite strange given the freezing cold temperatures. Even weirder is that the back door is ajar, making it way too easy for Jeff to just walk right in. It's almost as cold inside the house as outside, Jeff realises as he walks through the kitchen. He stops, finding a familiar object laying in the middle of the kitchen table. His knife. He grins as he picks it up. This too has been cleaned, and it even looks like it's been sharpened.

Hoodie: acquired. Knife: acquired. Though, Jeff still walks further into the house. In the living room, images of the last time he was here get slightly clearer in his mind. Having night terrors and waking up in a deluded panic is something he's accustomed to happening every so often, which just makes it more frustrating that he started being okay with sleeping around someone else. He's still filled with this horrible kind of dread feeling whenever he thinks about how completely vulnerable he'd been.

He looks around the spacious living room, eyes able to see well enough in the dark. There isn't a body in here.

Before he even questions why he's doing it, he's making his way upstairs.

There's a lot of rooms in this house. It's a pretty big house after all. Most of the rooms are filled with old furniture and boxes of various things. 'Storage for old crap' as Adrian had told him at one point. Jeff knows his way around the place and doesn't bother with any of these rooms, instead moving directly to the bedroom of the only person who lives here. What am I doing? The question finds its way to the surface of Jeff's thoughts. He's got what he came here for. What's his plan now? Perhaps to take revenge for the whole stupid situation. Or maybe just to make sure that the person who'd seen him in such a state was in fact dead, out of sheer embarrassment. Whatever the reason, Jeff now stands in the doorway, peering into the darkness of the bedroom, newly regained knife still in his hand.

Jeff is still completely unaware of his own motives, standing over the bed where an apparently not dead teenage boy sleeps.

Maybe he'll actually be scared this time.

He shouldn't be thinking that way. Those thoughts are exactly how he wound up sticking around this kid in the first place. Some weird need to scare him, to prove he wasn't any different from his terrified screaming victims (yep, that's the only reason. Not the conversations, friendly greetings, company of spending time with someone. none of that contributed at all.) Though, still, maybe it actually will work this time. Sure he apparently survived, but perhaps the experience of the last time Jeff was here was enough to shake the kids' infuriating fearlessness. Maybe Jeff will get to hear him scream and cry as he dies. He'd like that.

The knife wielding home invader just stands quietly watching as the boy starts to shift in his sleep. Brown eyes flutter open and widen when they see the figure looming over the bed in the dark. Adrian jolts in shock briefly, but soon settles and just lays there, calmly looking up at Jeff. he doesn't say anything.

There's a long moment of silence where the two just stare at each other in the dark, both seemingly waiting for something to happen. When nothing does, Adrian slowly brings a hand up to rub his eyes, clearly still half asleep and somewhat confused. "Uh. Hi?" he mumbles as he looks back up at Jeff, who just stands over him staring down with a blank expression.

After a few more seconds of silence, Adrian slowly kicks the blankets off of him and sits up slightly. He moves over to the other side of the bed to flip on the light on his bedside table, before turning back to Jeff, now able to see him more clearly. "Jeff..?" the tired teenager again tries to get a response, looking at the silent Jeff with confusion. "How long have you been standing there watching me sleep? Bit creepy, dude." he laughs, hoping to lighten up the mood. And it does snap Jeff out of just silently watching him.

"Shut up." His tone is vacant and his face still doesn't show any expression.

"Make me." The playful remark probably isn't the best thing to say to the known murderer standing over his bed holding a knife, but does Adrian care? Not really.

After again waiting to be attacked and nothing happening, Adrian gets out of bed. He stretches, yawns, and lazily starts to look through a pile of clothes, acting as though Jeff isn't even there. Despite having been asleep in bed, Adrian is wearing tracksuit bottoms and an oversized t-shirt (probably due to it being freezing in the house with all the windows open) so he only pulls a dressing gown from the mess of clothing on his floor.

"You're alive, then?" Jeff speaks just for the sake of getting Adrian's attention, still finding it weird and annoying to have someone turn their back on him casually like he isn't a threat.

"Hm?" Adrian turns to him. "I mean, you beat me up pretty bad, but surely you didn't think I died from it?"

Jeff looks him up and down, taking note of the bruises that still cover his face and the parts of his skin that are visible.

"I don't really remember the details."

"Oh." Adrian looks at him with a sad expression. "Do you... want me to fill in the gaps?"

"No. I don't care." Jeff states firmly, pissed off at the kindness and pity in the others words. "Clearly I beat the crap out of you, and you should count yourself lucky cos you deserve worse." he thinks back to the events of that night, and to everything before. Adrian really is lucky that a beating is all he's got so far.

"Is that why you're here, then? You did say something about coming back here to kill me."

Jeff looks down at the knife in his hand. He can't really answer Adrian's question, since he doesn't even know himself why he's here right now. Or why he's again been roped into talking with the guy he should have killed months ago.

"I came to get my knife back." he finally answers after a long pause.

"Right..." Adrian isn't buying that. He climbs back onto his bed and sits cross legged, facing Jeff. "You know..." he thinks for a moment, choosing his words carefully. "It's okay. To be lonely. Wanting someone to talk to..." Jeff might not know why he's here, but Adrian does. He can recognise the loneliness in him. It's probably why he finds himself empathising so strongly with the dangerous psycho.

"That night when I was completely sloshed, I got you to agree that we're friends, remember?" Adrian is just talking at Jeff at this point, accepting that he's not going to respond. "I can tell that you need a friend, even if you refuse to admit that to yourself. So kill me, don't kill me, beat the shit out of me, whatever." a bright smile spreads across his face. "I'm your friend. Okay?"

Jeff stares blankly at the boy who's smiling at him with the warmest, sunniest, most well-intentioned expression he's ever had directed at him in his life, and he responds. 

 "Okay."