Work Text:
The fences have been Kevin’s little pet project for the better part of a month.
It’s one of those things that had been low enough on the list of things to do that it stays down there as more and more jobs keep creeping their way onto the list. It’s only now he’s got to it, and only because one of their cows was found way down by Mrs Fowler’s farm.
Kevin’s made a day of it. The cousins are here over the weekend, making it the perfect opportunity to divide up workloads between them and give someone the time to put the damn fence together. Last thing anyone needs are cows on the loose.
Kevin’s gloves are just about ruined, not helped by how he keeps nicking the already present holes on the barbed wire- and maybe that’s what he gets for leaving this damn job for so long. He and his dad owe the Fowlers one now for getting the cow back, and that’s not a position he wants to be in. Their matriarch will probably make him lend her girl Leah a hand with their fussy horses. He's not exactly itching to be kicked in the face again.
Kevin’s too engrossed in his work to notice the car immediately, but he lifts his head, raising a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind his ear when his eyes see it. The car.
He stares at it longer than he probably needs to. It's black, a little dusty. Parked quietly off the road like it’s begging not to be seen.
It's a nice car, too, if a little in need of some TLC. But Kevin can tell it's well-loved and well cared for. So, he's curious. There's only farmland out here. Sure, there are plenty of people if you know what driveways to head up, but if someone started screaming, houses are far enough apart that there’s no guarantee anyone would hear anything.
Kevin does love it out here. The only things that he hears on most mornings are the low rumble of the cows as they follow after him, curious about whatever he’s doing, the birds, and his own breathing.
Kevin isn't fearful of the echoing silence; most people find the endless expanse of fields and fences unwelcoming. Perhaps something to be wary of, even. It's a nice view when the sun's up, but people get cold feet as soon as dusk descends. It’s a little irrational. The city is far more dangerous than a couple of fields in the middle of nowhere, but he tosses it up to people being people. If he’s learnt anything in his 21 years, it’s that people are funny about silence, and few can tolerate it.
The car is not the type you’d find on a farm. Not one that Kevin recognises either, and he would recognise it if it were a local’s. Even stranger, he’s sure that it’s the car he spotted yesterday as he was scouting out what parts of the fence needed the most work.
It’s the type of car that Cal - their other closest neighbour - would froth at the mouth for. Sleek and smooth, even Kevin can tell it’s a beautiful car. There’s something to it, out here where it shouldn’t be, that strikes him so violently that he stops moving for a moment, one hand on the fence post, another still gripping the wire.
The windows are thick with condensation. No one has moved it since he last eyeballed it. It's not the kind of car that someone would abandon, and outwardly, there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with it. It doesn’t belong, but that doesn’t explain the feeling of growing dread deep in the pit of his stomach the longer he stares at it.
He keeps his eyes on it, willing something to happen, so he can write the whole thing off as a little weird but harmless. Still nothing.
He moves to turn around to tend the fence post when there's a brittle change in the air, like one wrong step will bring foundations down around him, and the relatively short distance between him and the car feels like an abyss, benign no longer. He takes a step forward and then another. Nothing changes.
It’s not something he’s ever felt before, not even a feeling, more like a sure wave of a warning that settles in his bones.
He takes a deep breath and looks back to the fence where his abandoned equipment lies as if it will reveal an answer to him.
He takes a breath and knows if he doesn’t inspect this damn car, it will haunt him, regardless of his instincts.
He approaches slowly, his boots crunching on the gravel beneath him, sounding like hailstones on a tin roof.
Kevin approaches the back of the car, inching to the driver’s passenger side door. Standing inches from it, Kevin reaches out and taps the side window with dirty gloved knuckles.
There’s silence, then movement, something clicks almost like - but h e can’t complete the thought before the door swings open, creaking with the effort.
A man emerges, all limbs; he seems to never end, impossible that he could fit in there comfortably. Kevin comes up to his shoulder at best.
His face has a red tint on one side; hair dishevelled enough that the man was probably sleeping.
And Kevin really, really doesn't want to stare, but there are long claw - claw - marks wracked across his other cheek. They're deep and inflamed, like the most amount of care they got was a hasty wipe of his jacket sleeve across the open wounds.
Kevin can’t find any words, not for the man, nor for the gun in the man’s hand, aimed at him.
He looks Kevin up and down, the muscles in his arm twitch, and then, finally, the gun lowers. He clicks the safety on but doesn’t put it away. Somehow, that’s more threatening than when he was looking down its barrel.
The man can't be much older than him, but the look in his eyes - bright and haunted - tells him that it’s not a question he should ask.
“Is there something wrong?” he asks. His voice is the gravelly texture of someone who just woke up, but the gun comfortably resting in the man’s hand makes the words seem heavier.
“We ain’t causing trouble,” another voice says - and Kevin didn’t even hear the other man get out of the car. He’s shorter than the first man, but Kevin still wouldn’t reach his height, and there are red, bright wounds over this man’s face as well. Angry and burning, they cast against the man’s cold stare, and the knife clutched in his hand, resting on the roof of the car.
Kevin chokes down a lump of saliva stuck in his throat.
“I was just mending my fence,” he gestures at the tools behind him, but doesn’t dare take his eyes off the two men in front of him. His mouth is dry. “Not a sight you usually see around here.”
The taller man turns back just enough to see his partner, and there’s a thread of tension in both their shoulders that dissipates, but not enough to make Kevin think he’s out of danger - or that he’s not a danger to them.
It doesn’t make that much sense. Kevin’s lean and strong from a life working on the farm, but he’s not… he’s not dangerous. He could swing a shovel at someone’s head if you begged him to, with no guarantee that he’d land the hit or that he wouldn’t throw up afterwards.
He’s not a danger to them, but they don’t seem too willing to take the chance.
“Sure,” the tall one says. Kevin sees him run his thumb over the gun. “We won’t keep you then.”
“Right, sure. Nice car,” he grabs the dismissal with both hands, turning on his heel and walking back to his tools, trying to not allow himself to break into a run.
There’s silence behind him all the way until he makes it back and starts working on the fence with a renewed determination. He glances up when he hears doors creak, and he watches the two men pile themselves back into the car, weapons vanished. The engine starts, and Kevin curses out loud, unable to take his eyes off the car until it’s too far away to see.
He’s not met anyone like that before. He’s not seen people with eyes like that, with wounds like that. He’s not met anyone whose first reaction to a stranger is to level them with a deadly weapon and a gaze to match it.
He pulls the fence back together in record time and gathers his tools.
His instincts had told him something was deeply wrong, and he’d nearly got a bullet to the brain for his curiosity.
He wets his lips, eyes the greying skyline, watching a flock of birds take off from the sturdy branches of a tree. For a brief second, he questions whether it happened at all, but the sweat on his brow and his trembling hands tell a different story.
He thinks of that feeling he’d had as he stared at the car. A warning, almost.
He looks down at his bloodied, worn gloves, and pictures his body - dead, with a gunshot wound to the head, or maybe a stab wound to the neck - and understands why maybe people prefer the city.
At least there’s someone to hear you scream.