David had fought a squeal when he'd seen Campbell's ID on his phone - Campbell had forbidden him to use his actual name and suggested he list him as a family member. "Put me down as your father or something" being his exact instructions which David had followed to the letter - and when he picked up, he was greeted with an enthusiastic, "Davey!"
"Mr. Campbell!" David clapped a hand over his mouth when the campers turned towards his maybe too-loud return greeting, and waved at Gwen to watch them while he took himself a little ways away. He asked at a more modulated volume, "How are you, sir? The camp is doing very well, although there are a few small things I'd like to talk to you about in person, you know - if it's not too much bother and -"
"David, if they're tapping this call now, just tell me about the weather," Campbell interjected, suddenly serious.
"No, no one's tapping the call, sir," David paused, and added uncertainly, "Or at least not that I know of...?"
"Well, anyway, the reason I'm calling is because I'll be stopping in to check the camp tomorrow."
"That's a little short notice," David laughed nervously, thinking of all the repairs he hadn't made yet and the damage wrought by Max's Rube Goldberg machines and the various rampages of the children, "May I ask why, sir?"
"Well, it's definitely not due to any small uprisings you may hear about in Thailand; the timing is completely unrelated," Campbell asserted firmly, "So get that out of your head."
"...What?" David asked, the smile still stretched across his face getting a little more strained with confusion.
"Never you mind, Davey," Campbell chuckled, "I can always count on you, can't I?"
David had never experienced the feeling that his heart was so full it might burst out of his chest before and it wasn't as uncomfortable as he'd thought, "Yes, sir!"
There was a burst of static and a sound like an explosion before Campbell shouted away from the phone, "You'll never take back the cursed gem of the mountains!"
"Sir?"
"See you soon, Davey!"
Putting the phone calmly in his pocket, David calmly walked and did not skip back to Gwen where he calmly screamed, "GWEN-WE-HAVE-TO-CLEAN-EVERYTHING!"
Okay, he was panicked and excited all at once and maybe he was holding Gwen's shoulders and he might have shaken her just a little and sure his grin was probably unsettling, but she didn't need to slap him.
While he rubbed the spot she'd hit, David explained more quietly what was going on with a barely restrained vibration of glee, and she rolled her eyes but helped him enlist the kids in cleaning things up.
David completed not four, not six but five different repairs around the camp before they needed to go shopping to get the supplies for the ice cream - pizza party they'd planned to reward the kids for their hard work. They were gone a little longer than anticipated because, well... Honestly David had been a little fuzzy on the details while it was happening. Someone had called out to Gwen at the grocery store and she'd groaned and tried to walk faster, but David had stopped to greet her friend, and his hand on the side of the cart made her shudder to a halt.
"Gwen, how are you?" The young man had a mohawk colored in greens and blues and he grinned roguishly, "Still up at that camp?"
"...Yes, she is!" David answered for her with a friendly smile when Gwen just stared between them both stonily, "How do you two know each other?"
"We don't," Gwen stated firmly, then grabbed David's hand and held it, saying, "Come on, Davey." This public expression of friendship was almost more than David could bear, coming from his usually stoic coworker, and when she glanced back to see his eyes full of tears, she hissed under her breath, "Don't you dare until we get out of the store."
"...Okay," David squeaked through his watery grin, but the young man had caught up with them before David got too deep in the warm fuzzies.
"Come on, Gwen," he said, keeping pace at David's side, "Aren't you going to introduce me? Or did you forget me when you took up with this tall glass of awkward?"
"Took up what?" David asked and was ignored.
"David, Glen; Glen, David," Gwen gritted out.
"Nice to meet you-" David attempted, but was yanked around the corner by Gwen. Glen followed. This continued to be the template for their interactions throughout the store. Glen or Gwen would insinuate something that went right over David's head, Glen would initiate some friendly conversation with David, and Gwen would try to pull him off balance around another corner before Glen caught up and they started fighting again.
"Honestly, I didn't peg you for the type that likes musclebound dicks," Glen muttered and for the first time got a snort out of Gwen.
"Musclebound?" she echoed, "This wimp? He cries when he gets jostled by a camper too hard."
Honestly, David was too surprised Glen had commented on his physique at all to address the dick part or Gwen's truthful, but hurtful response, "Excuse me, but I don't see why you're suddenly concerned with my body type in the middle of a friendly discussion."
"A fucking jock," Glen reiterated, hooking a thumb at David but addressing Gwen, "You must just be using him for his body."
"Excuse me?" David's voice shot up a few octaves into a squeak, and he blushed belatedly as the entire shopping trip snapped into sudden, sharp perspective. The blush deepened as each insinuation became clear, the argument continuing around him.
"Gwen and I are friends," David stressed abruptly over whatever Glen was sneering then, "And coworkers. And best camp buddies for life. Not- not- I'm not- we're not-"
"Labelling what we have," Gwen finished coolly, turning her nose up at Glen, "So could you please take the million hints and get lost?"
"Hey, all I wanted was to talk," Glen protested, and then they were back at it as David stood woodenly beside them in line to check out. They bickered and snapped at each other all through the wide-eyed cashier ringing up their purchases as David paid and gathered their bags back into the cart with a pale face. Gwen's renewed grip on his hand became painful as they exited the store and walked to the car. Gwen and Glen unloaded the cart with David, almost shouting each other down in the parking lot even as they passed over tubs of ice cream and frozen pizza stacks. When it was all in the car, Gwen threw her arms up and shouted, "I never want to see your face again! Thanks for helping with the freaking groceries!"
"Well, I just want a little closure!" Glen growled back, adding angrily, "And you're welcome!"
"Goodbye!" Gwen slammed the car door shut, glaring at Glen through the window until he threw her a rude gesture and stomped away.
"Gwen," David started cautiously when he slid into the driver's seat, but she shook her head and held up a finger, eyes shut and brows high.
"I am clearing my chakras of anger," she informed him.
David held up his hands in a gesture of surrender she couldn't see and started the car. Halfway there, she sighed in a long exhale, and opened her eyes.
"That was my ex, Glen, and we didn't end things well. When I told him last time that I didn't leave him for anyone, he didn't believe me, and things- ugh, I don't want to think about it, okay?"
David kept his mouth shut and nodded sagely even though he had yet to have a relationship last more than a week. He was pretty sure his main problem was that he didn't shower them with enough affection, but he didn't know how much higher he could dial it up.
With a thoughtful air, Gwen was looking him over.
"You... don't want to date me now, right?" David asked hesitantly, because while he loved Gwen, he didn't... love Gwen.
"No," Gwen replied instantly, snorting, then waved the thought away entirely with a dismissive hand, "I was just thinking about what Glen said about you. I've seen you lift ten year olds with one hand and yet you have been consistently bowled over by a light breeze."
Well, that was untrue! David might not look like a bodybuilder but he was hardly lacking in strength. The first part of her sentence went unregistered, "I have never been knocked over by the wind!"
"Not literally, David," she leaned back against the door, twisted dangerously in her seat with her feet up on the dash. He knew better than to tell her off for it, anymore, "But the kids pull you in every direction and God knows how many times Max has dragged you down to his level to give you another villainous monologue. Do you just.. Let them?"
"Well, of course," David frowned at her, "I'm not about to ignore when a camper wants me to see something or listen to them."
"And you've been hit by a bus on more than one occasion," Gwen was muttering to herself now.
"That's just a matter of going with the impact and getting the air out of my lungs," David pointed out, "Plus, I don't really bruise, you know? I'm not unaffected by that sort of thing, it's only that the effects aren't really visible. I'm not inhuman."
"Yeah," Gwen said, but her tone was incredulous, "But David, you're a thin stick of muscle and bone and I have no idea how I didn't notice with all the weird ass things you do that require impossible strength. You've held Max at arm's length by an ankle, and I didn't realize that was out of the norm until now." Her tone was edging into panic, "Oh god, I'm going native. I need trash TV and potato chips and a weekend in the city."
"We- we have potato chips," David said weakly, but he really didn't want to handle the camp alone for a weekend - that was two days in which someone could attack and force his hand. Without someone else to watch the kids...
"Oh god," Gwen repeated, hyperventilating just a little.
David pulled off the road and patted her shoulder, "Nova Scotia and burly men of honor."
She made a high-pitched keening noise and David knew then they'd be there a while.
.
So with all of that, they were delayed getting back into camp long enough that an uprising had taken place and splintered into two factions before they'd reached the kitchen to unload the groceries.
"Mutiny!" The Quartermaster growled in warning from his position taped to the inside wall as they opened the dining hall door to chaos and, oddly, a thin layer of blueprints for some sort of ramp scattered across any flat surface unoccupied by sugar-high or screaming children.
"Get him!" Nikki shouted, pointing at David. The children dogpiled him, which was adorable but not very useful. None of them thought of tripping him up with their own bodies, instead clinging to the limbs they had within reach and being dragged along as David made his careful way to the Quartermaster. They abandoned this stratagem quickly and switched their attentions to Gwen, who was easier to subdue physically, even if she kept up a steady stream of invective that made David want to pull her aside and lecture her on her language. Not to mention the damage she might be doing to the children's self esteem.
"What happened?" David asked the Quartermaster, reaching for his knife now that he was free of children to cut the man loose. Unfortunately, Max and his splinter group chose that moment to blow a hole in the wall and David was distracted - leaving the Quartermaster trapped.
"A common enemy!" Neil cried, "First David, then social justice, Max!" This cry had David hastily sheathing his knife in case they jumped at him again.
"I'm not arguing," Max grinned with the unholy glee that often preceded some harm to David's person.
"Yeah, that'd be cool," Erid flipped her hair over her shoulder, "Like a superhero team up."
"We can't take him down with brute strength!" Nikki called over to Max and Neil - er, and Space Kid, too - now that Erid had given the greenlight for a joining of forces, "He's just too stubborn!"
"Oh, it's easy to make David stand down," Max's grin was toothy and wider than David had seen it, even if it was made sinister by the strange war paint Max had smeared over himself, "I just need a little help from Nurf."
David prepared himself to dodge, or to withstand another dog pile, but instead, Max put a hand on the large, red-headed bully's arm as he shuffled up next to him, "Nurf, would you say you've been somewhat moderate in your bullying here at camp?"
"Oh, yes," Nurf nodded, his low, nasal voice casual, "I haven't engaged in any of the destructive behaviors that made the local church declare me irredeemable before Mom sent me out here, such as the Super-Triple-Axel-Wedgie."
"Wow, a midair wedgie in motion," Max took on a tone of faked awe, "I can't imagine how much that could destroy a child's self esteem and ability to succeed in life. If David won't submit to the new regime, do you think you could while away the time demonstrating this bullying technique on, say, Space Kid?"
"No!" David blurted, putting his hands palm out placatingly, "Violence doesn't solve anything! You don't understand what's at stake -"
"I don't think they care Campbell's coming tomorrow," Gwen interrupted flatly from where the other campers had begun securing her to the flagpole. She seemed annoyed but was unable to fight back without hurting a kid or herself - or both.
"Perfect," Max's grin reached Cheshire proportions, "David, if you don't surrender right now I'll get the rest of the rebels to destroy this camp before Campbell shows up and he'll fire you on the spot."
David's heart missed a beat and jumped up into his throat. He couldn't be restrained but he couldn't be fired or the camp would be completely defenseless. He felt his mouth dry and he began again, more pleadingly, "Max..."
"Surrender, David," Max buffed his nails on his hoodie, examining them before looking up with a malicious glee at David, "Or you'll have campers and the camp on your conscience."
He could probably wiggle free. They didn't seem to have anymore tape since they'd tied down Gwen with jump ropes. David tried one last angle, "If you all go through with this, I'll have to contact your parents..."
"Hah," Max moved forward with a victorious smirk, "My parents won't care. Give up." When David continued to hesitate, Max snapped his fingers, "Nurf, I think David would like a preview - "
"No, I surrender."
The smile slid back across Max's face, "Excellent."
After securing his hands and feet together, it was easy enough to topple David to the ground, drag him to the flagpole, and secure him upside down on the other side from Gwen. Especially since he was neither resisting nor fighting - as either might cause them harm. Instead he was doing something that hadn't been familiar to him for a long time: brooding. He needed a plan to get out of this and to bring them all back under control. Before tomorrow preferably. However, Gwen was distracted by trash TV on Neil's tablet before she could be of any help and it was practically impossible to regain her attention after the day she'd had.
So David focused on wiggling free. However Max had clearly been paying attention in knot-tying class and there wasn't much progress on that front. He felt a surge of pride alongside the irritated betrayal and closed his eyes for just a moment to calm himself.
He was woken to screaming.
Gosh, he must have been more tired out from the emotional turmoil of the day than he'd thought to have fallen asleep upside down.
"Shit, shit, shit," Max was chanting, pulling at David's ropes and awkwardly feeling his pockets until he found David's knife and sliced through the restraints. David crashed onto the ground head-first and Max barely spared him a glance as he dragged the tall counselor behind him (David scrambled to his feet after the first tug with a shake of his head like a dog shedding water) and rambled in a quiet voice, "Good, you're awake. I have no idea what you're going to do to help us but they cut the phone line and I don't know where your cell phone is and Gwen's is useless and I couldn't think of anything else to do but go to the most useless fucking shithead in this camp for help and you're probably as worthless as Gwen's cell phone but we put her into some kind of coma from all the trash TV and she wouldn't fucking wake up and then that shitty John Joubert wannabe got away from Nikki so now they're all holed up in Campbell's secret attic but I knew we couldn't just stay there forever so I snuck back down here for you and - "
"Breathe," David insisted, coming to a standstill by the side of the counselor's cabin and thus stopping a wide-eyed, paranoid Max from dragging him through any more shadows. That was the longest run on sentence he had ever heard in his life. He tried to focus Max on the important bits, "We're under attack. You haven't been able to call the police, right?" Max nodded, looking surly but pale, and David mirrored the motion, putting a hand on Max's head comfortingly, "I'll scare him off. It's going to be all right."
"You're not exactly scary," Max sneered, but his voice was weak and he didn't dislodge David's hand.
"Do you know where the... wannabe is?" David pressed.
"Last I saw he was prowling around the bathrooms like the fucking creep he is," Max pointed as if David didn't know where they were, a testament to his shaken state.
"You should go hide with the others," David was about to say when something glinted, coming around the corner of the cabin. He yanked Max out of the way instead. The crowbar swept through the air previously occupied by Max's head. A bedraggled, dark man with ragged nails and wild eyes lunged after them. David blamed the fact that he'd just woken up for missing his less than stealthy approach.
"Shit-fuck-shit," Max was hissing, hands fisted in David's shirt from the near miss before he forced himself to let go. Again, David tried to tell him to run, but this latest attacker was a bit more single-minded than the others, and had completely ignored David to take another swing at Max. This time, David tackled the other man back away from his camper, the crowbar connecting with an admittedly lackluster thwack against his back. Probably since it had to be redirected. Still, David didn't want to take a hit to the head from that thing. Which, of course, was the next thing he had to dodge by rolling off the man and to his feet.
He gave the man a vicious kick to the side by habit - when he was struggling, any damage that slowed the other down was worth it, or so he usually rationalized - and cringed when he heard Max's intake of breath. But the distraction cost him. Instead of immediately scrambling to his feet, the other man swung at his knee and gosh darn that hurt. David hissed in reaction to the blow landing. The man - Annoying, David dubbed him agitatedly, for a multitude of obvious reasons - took the opening to regain his feet. Annoying eyed him, and Max behind him, trying to edge to the left and force them to circle each other. That was a bad idea since Max was still standing there.
For a third time, David opened his mouth to tell Max to go. That darn and aptly named Annoying swiped at him. He had to spend his breath jumping back out of reach. It made his temper flare and his blood heat, focus turning more fully onto the man in front of him for this third interruption. "You," he gritted out through an irritated grin, "are really getting on my gosh darn nerves."
It was ill-advised, and time better spent warning Max. David often found his mouth running when he was fighting an attacker of the camp. It was a habit he hadn't had to break before now, when he had a camper frozen at the scene. Max had done this last time, too. It was like he couldn't quite decide the correct course of action and so instead stood absolutely still - like a frightened deer, really.
David ducked under a swing at his head and barreled into the man's midsection. He couldn't believe Max would be witness to two different fights with people who had threatened him or his friends. Well, three, or two point five, counting the Wood Scouts. Still, if Max couldn't bring himself to flee, David could probably fix that. Hooking Annoying's leg with his, he brought the man back to the ground with a satisfying thump.
Following the man's shoulders touching earth, David hastily stomped on Annoying's crowbar wielding hand. He backpedaled wildly while the man swore. David took the time he was distracted to grab Max up into a sloppy carry, sprinting away over the grounds.
It was a few seconds later that Max blinked back to life. The first thing out of his mouth was, "You have a fucking knife! Why didn't you threaten him with it, you oblivious shit?"
"I might have-" gotten carried away if I'd pulled a knife. David snapped his mouth shut with no little horror that he'd almost answered Max honestly. No ten year old needed to know something like that about their current caretaker. "Here," he skidded into the storage shed and shoved the boxes over the trap door out of the way. "Get in and stay quiet until I come back for you, Max."
Lips thinned on the boy's face, but he nodded unreadably and descended into the hidden cellar. David put a few empty boxes over the top and exited the storage shed to another, wild swing of the crowbar. It was noticeably less controlled in Annoying's off hand.
"I know he's in there," Annoying spat angrily. "They're all in there, aren't they?"
"Ah, full sentences," David murmured, landing a solid kick against Annoying's knee in revenge for the man's first real blow against him.
"There's no point hiding them from me," Annoying continued, voice more strained now as he tried another few swings that David dodged. Moving in past his guard on the last, he pushed a punch directly up into the man's diaphragm. It drove the air from his lungs, finally gaining David just the advantage he needed.
"I'm not hiding him from you," David informed him with a smile. It was almost charming how off track the man was. With a pinch and twist of the man's wrist, the crowbar fell with a muted clatter to the dirt path. As a follow up, David headbutted Annoying to keep him off balance and unable to recover. Feeling his expression grow sharp with anger that Annoying had been so... well, annoying, David's tone remained sweet, "I'm hiding him from me."
Annoying tried to push David back, get him on his back foot as he evidently got a second wind. Unfortunately for him, David didn't have to keep from traumatizing a ten year old anymore. He twisted with the movement and threw Annoying over his hip to the ground. Following him down to add his weight to the fall with his knee landing on a kidney, he added a second impact that made Annoying cough, one arm pulled behind his back at an unnatural angle.
"I am getting real fed up with you folks," David told him in an even tone belied by the way his grin resembled the bared teeth of a predator and the increasing pressure on the man's arm that led to an audible snap. David shoved Annoying's face into the dirt before he could cry out, leading to a sort of muffled, strangled noise that probably wouldn't carry into the cellar. "But luckily for you, I can't have you die screaming when it might haunt Max forever if he heard it." With one hand and the other arm out of the way, David could focus on shifting his hold to a strangling one, but his temper still boiled under the surface. Little bits began to bubble over and out his mouth, "You know, Max was actually happy today. I mean, he mutinied and I do not approve of how he encouraged the others in the anarchy we came back to, but he was just being a kid. They were all just being kids. And now they're locked up, hiding, scared out of their minds, because of you." Annoying wasn't in any position to respond, but his legs kicked weakly. David tightened his grip, leaned in. He kept Annoying's sidelong gaze, taking in the helpless rage he saw there and letting it ease his own, "If I could, I'd kill you twice. And," he dropped his voice to a whisper, "if you weren't able to get onto the camp grounds, it would have been long, bloody, and painful." David's face broke into a grin, "Aren't you lucky?"
When the man finally stopped struggling, stopped breathing, David held on a minute longer, then hastily released him and hoisted him up. No body, no murder investigation. That seemed to be the rule of thumb for Sleepy Peak police.
When he reached the treeline, he shouted as loudly as he could, "You're not getting away, scoundrel!" Always good to get a few more 'witnesses' having heard his 'struggle' when it came to a story he'd need to spin to the Sheriff. Again. Practically within a month of the last one.
He was taken entirely by surprise when he was tackled sideways by a thin, pale man and lashed out on instinct for the man's throat.
"You killed David!" choked out Surprise, and David was momentarily taken aback before realizing the dead man he'd dropped was probably also named David. Small world. "He was just trying to save you!"
Again, he paid for his moment of confusion with pain by the man working his way down enough to bite David. He swore and slammed Surprise's head back against the trunk to which he'd pinned him.
"I would take out your teeth if I wasn't so short on time," David gave him a tight smile. "So let's not test my self control, shall we?" A part of his mind was spinning into gibbering hysterics at the thought there might be more than one within a day, now. The rest of him was tensed in razor sharp focus on the high-cheeked man in front of him. There was some uncomfortable resistance in him to killing two people in a row in the exact same way, but that was the thought of an actual serial killer. Which he was not. Thus, David shook it off, pressing a hand over Surprise's mouth and delivering a series of quick, hard strikes to the man's throat while the man's hands scrabbled at his shoulders and arms futilely. Thank god the second one was smaller and weaker than the first. He didn't take long to die. Still, it was not a good amount of time to delay when David had already called out.
"Finally," David shot the corpse an irritated smile and tossed him onto his friend. He'd need to carry them both out of sight. As he ran his hand through his hair, he stiffened almost imperceptibly at the sound of a third attacker.
"Jesus on a cracker," he said under his breath, and lashed out. The arm he grabbed was small and he pulled them out with immediately lessened force.
"Shit," Max breathed, not trying to escape his grip but clearly terrified. Terrified of David. He felt a sharp pain in his chest at the expression on the kid's face.
"What in the heck are you doing out here?" David asked before he could stop himself. Aside from it being what he really would like to know, the chatty mood he got into with attackers was lingering. His mouth was going with very little input from his brain. A brain that was screaming and waving red flags even as he continued, "I would have thought you'd had enough near death experiences to stay put."
Max's eyes shuttered. He almost looked like his usual, bored self, except for the visible white around his eyes and the paleness of his face, as he rambled with the forced cadence of a drawl, "I thought you were running off like a headless chicken again but clearly I was really wrong, so if you're going to kill me, you might want to hurry up and do it before I die out of pure, seething spite."
Well, that wasn't the reaction he'd expected.
...
(Base photos sourced from UnSplash https://unsplash.com/@neudekk https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema)