psycho || luke hemmings au

luke

“Um, hi,” Raven’s voice feels lodged in her throat and she has to cough a little to speak with any connotation.

The boy, whose eyes are a reflection of the lake and the sky and fucking diamonds, laughs softly before dropping his gaze to his feet, which is half a mile away. Raven’s eyes follow his and it isn’t until now, in her state of regained sanity and speculation, that she notices what’s been in his hands this entire time.

The small girl gulps and runs her fingers through her dark hair.

By now the boy is smiling, eyes concentrated on hers and fully aware of her incessant staring, “So, what are you doing here?”

“Um,” she glances back at the tiny, neglected cabin up the hill behind her, “This is my family’s cottage…we’re staying here for the summer.”

He nods, “Didn’t know anyone lived here.”

“No one has for a while,” Raven shrugs and clasps her fingers together, a nervous habit she picked up as a child. Another bad habit of hers is avoiding eye contact which, in this case, allows her to feel rather than see those blue eyes burning through her head.

“So, what’s your name?” his voice is soft and memorable and his smile shines through in every word. She’s not sure why he’s constantly smiling, but it’s better than frowning or scowling or any of the alternatives.

“Raven.”

His grin intensifies, if that’s even possible, and his lip ring shifts right along with it, making her fingers clasp around each other even tighter. “Well, Raven, I’m sorry for scaring you.”

She shrugs, “It’s not your fault; I’m just incredibly jumpy. What’s your name?”

“Luke,” he answers, tightening his fingers around the object in his hands. There’s something about his expression that is a little off—almost like he’s surprised that he’s actually managed to speak his name.

“Well, Luke,” Raven begins, trying to get to the question she’s been meaning to ask for the last five minutes, “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you stalking around the lake carrying an axe?” Now that it’s been mentioned, she doesn’t feel quite as inclined to keep her eyes away, giving the heavy-looking weapon a crude onceover.

A long, increasingly awkward silence ensues as confusion takes over Luke’s features. He glances down at the axe in his hand, head resting on the pebbly beach, before deciding to laugh—a sound that resembles wind chimes and waves and everything that’s supposed to make you smile—and shaking his head, “Oh, that, I was just collecting firewood. Hence why I kind of appeared out of the woods.”

Raven nods, looking around him…behind him, “And where is this so-called firewood?”

Luke raises an eyebrow and grins, seemingly in disbelief, “I didn’t really get that far…hey, has anyone ever told you that you’re ridiculously paranoid?”

Before she has a chance to respond—and it was a good response—her dad is calling an overtly friendly ‘hello’ from a few feet away.

“Hello,” Luke replies politely, shaking the hand her dad offers once he reaches the beach.

“I’m Matthew Taylor, um, Raven’s dad.”

“Luke Hemmings…I uh, live in the cabin next door…next door being kind of relative, I mean, it’s a ten minute walk through the woods.”

Her dad nods the way all dads do when they’re interested in someone’s life story, “Oh, really? Looks like we have a neighbour. You live there by yourself?”

Luke smiles, “Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen…” he sees the doubt in her dad’s eyes and thinks it through, “It’s my grandparent’s place; I’m just staying here for a couple of months.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Luke,” her dad smiles before turning to Raven, “Look, you’re already making new friends!”

The dark-haired girl internally groans and shoots Luke an apologetic look but the boy’s just chuckling and staring at her, adding to the embarrassment that’s already evident by the colour of her cheeks. She shakes her head and waits until her dad has already offered his ‘hope to see you around a lot’ and is halfway to the cabin before she decides she ought to follow him.

“Well, I’ll see you around,” Raven says quietly, ducking her head because she’s known this guy for fifteen minutes and is completely unsure of what he’s thinking.

“Yeah,” Luke mumbles. Then, before she can completely walk away, says, “Hey, why don’t I show you around sometime? You know, since we’re friends now.”

Raven shoots him a wary smile and nods, “We’ll see about that.”

…

When eleven o’clock rolls around, Raven’s mom has the entire house dusted and every bed dressed in fresh sheets. The dark-haired girl is curled up at the top of her mattress, buried in a mass of covers as she flicks through a book about wildlife and flowers and tries to burn each page into her memory. She’s hoping that by the end of summer she’ll be able to distinguish between at least a couple different types of trees.

For whatever reason, Raven had decided that it would be a good idea to sleep in the bedroom with the busted window. Her dad had covered the majority of the hole with an obnoxious piece of plywood as a ‘temporary fix’ prior to asking her again if she’d prefer to sleep in the second bedroom instead...maybe even the couch. But Raven is stubborn and once she has something in her head, it’s stuck. There’s just something she likes about being so hidden in the back of the cabin and being able to hear the birds in the forest outside her window.

She’s not sure how long she stays awake, how many pages she manages to read and forget, but before she knows it her eyes are stinging and her book light is only making it worse. When she finally gives up and tucks herself in, the world is a thousand times quieter—a thousand times more peaceful than it’s ever been at home, crammed in the middle of a busy subdivision.

And perhaps it’s the utter stillness and lack of sound that makes the crunching of tree branches so noticeable. The sound is loud, close, repetitive and, if Raven didn’t know any better, she’d think it was footsteps.

But Raven does know better…and she reminded herself yet again to not be so paranoid.

…

[a/n: hiii anyone who decides to read this, I tried to get this chapter up quick because I’m really excited to get into writing the actual plotline of the story and idk. I really hope you like it! Please tell me what you think, I’ll love you forever.]