Chapter Text
The rain fell steadily from a gray sky that seemed to hang, heavy and languid, like a wet cloth over the city. Puddles had formed in the cracks in the asphalt, small mirrors that reflected the pale light of the street lamps. A boy, no older than nineteen, walked there with his hands deep in the pockets of a coat that was clearly not made for the weather. His hood hung limply, letting raindrops slide down his face, his purple locks ruined by rain. In his left hand he clutched a half-empty can of cheap Coke, the can cold against his skin, almost frozen by the winter air. He took a sip now and then, but not to quench his thirst. It was more of an occupation, something to keep his hands busy and his thoughts still for a moment.
He should have been working right now. He could see it in his mind’s eye: the bright fluorescent lights of the supermarket, the checkouts beeping in monotonous patterns, the voices of customers politely and cursorily asking where the milk was. He hated it. Not just the work itself, but everything about it. The feeling of being trapped in a pattern he hadn’t chosen. This afternoon he’d looked at the clock, knowing his shift was about to start. He’d grabbed his coat, put the keys in his pocket. Once on the bus, he could feel his patience already leaving him. But when he reached the automatic door of the supermarket, he’d turned around. The thought of going there suddenly felt like giving up something he couldn’t even name yet. So he’d walked into the shop next door to keep himself busy, an excuse not to come home yet, and fumbled through his coat pocket for the few coins he had on him. Great… just enough to get some cheap Bloxycola crap.
And so here he was, walking in the rain, like he had to go somewhere when he didn’t really want to go anywhere. The idea of going home wasn’t an option. His boyfriend was waiting for him there, and he didn’t feel like it at the moment. Jaquavion wouldn’t leave him alone the past few days. As if that idiot hadn’t messed with his life enough, he kept demanding more and more of his time. The tension in that house was on the verge of bursting almost every day. Something was missing in that house, or there was too much of one thing. That made home not only empty, but also heavy, as if that emptiness filled every room with something you couldn’t avoid.
Ray stopped at a bus stop, where a broken advertising poster hung halfway to the side of the glass booth. Here he had a few minutes to stand still, his eyes on the shiny trails of rain running down the poster. What had he thought would be better than standing at work? The cold bit through his jacket, his shoes were soaked, and his can of soda tasted more like metal than that excuse for a Coke. But still, this was… freer. Here he didn’t have to wear a mask. No feigning politeness for customers who barely looked at him. No excuses for who he was, or where he failed. Here in the rain he was just a teen, with no expectations and no obligations.
And yet, as he stood there, he felt the unrest bubbling inside him. He knew he couldn’t keep walking like this forever, without a plan, without a goal. Tomorrow he might be back in the grocery store, resuming the routine as if this evening had never existed. But right now he was just a silhouette in the rain, with wet shoes and a cheap can of soda, struggling with a thought he couldn’t put into words: that he was looking for something he couldn’t find yet.
Raymond pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. The screen was damp from the rain that had seeped through his torn hood. His fingers, cold and slightly stiff, wiped away the moisture as he pressed the power button. The light from the screen burned brightly in his eyes, a stark contrast to the gray world around him. At the top was a notification. A new email.
Frowning, he opened the message. The sender was his manager, someone who always pretended to be friendly but whose smile never reached his eyes. "Raymond, we regret to inform you that we have been forced to terminate your contract..." The words jumped off the screen, almost screaming in their polite coldness. He didn't even have to read the rest. He knew what it said. Always the same: regret, disappointment, and a reference to some line in the contract. His fingers lingered over the screen for a moment before he swiped the message away without any response.
“Well, that’s that,” he muttered to himself. His voice sounded strange in the silence, as if even the rain was ignoring him. He knew it was coming. How many times had he thought, “Maybe I won’t go today. They don’t really need me anyway.” And he’d been right. Apparently they didn’t need him. But it wasn’t the relief he’d expected. Somewhere, deep inside, it felt like confirmation of something he’d been afraid of: that he was failing. That he’d never really belong anywhere. That he wasn't wanted.
With a sigh, he opened Twitter. His timeline was a collection of thoughts from people he barely knew and celebrity accounts pretending to be normal. Ray stared at the empty text field for a moment, the blinking cursor a silent invitation. Finally, without really thinking about it, he typed: "Just got fired again. Breaking a world record at this point."
He pressed “Tweet” and put his phone back in his pocket. The words hung in the digital air, unimportant and unread, like so many other thoughts he’d shared there. He had almost no followers—a few family members, a casual acquaintance he never spoke to again, and a handful of bots who’d started following him for reasons he didn’t understand. No one would see it. It was almost as if he’d written it for himself.
But a few minutes later, when he pulled out his phone again, he saw a notification that stopped him in his tracks. Someone had liked his tweet. His heart skipped a beat. Not because it was a grand gesture, but because it was so rare. His tweets rarely got any attention. Who could this be?
He tapped the notification, his eyes scanning the username. It was an account he didn’t recognize, with a profile picture of someone on a bridge in the dark. Not a real name, and the description of the account was even vaguer.
“Hmu if you need a hitman”
Ray stood still for a moment, his gaze fixed on the screen as the rain continued to tap around him. His fingers hovered over the screen, unsure if it was worth replying. There was no way this person really meant it. Who was stupid enough to post their.. murder businesson Twitter? They were just asking to be found by the FBI or whatever.
It had to be a joke, and since Ray had nothing else to do but wait for the bus, he tapped the message icon and quickly typed out a message.
@UnapologethicRay: “So how much I gotta pay you for one job?”
With his lip curled in a smirk, Ray sent the message. This was probably just a dumb bio, a stupid joke, because who the fuck would advertise their assassinations on fucking Twitter? The stranger would probably look up from his message in confusion. It didn’t take long for him to see 3 dancing bubbles on his screen and get a reply back.
@Blazeburner: “Depends on the job itself. Got someone in mind?”
The grin quickly disappeared from his face. This wasn’t serious, was it? No, it was just a scam and this person was going along with the joke. Or it was a prank. But he had to answer the question. He now had someone to talk to, or to irritate and he wasn’t going to let that chance pass him by. "Okay Ray, think. This is a scam, or a prank account. Who would be funy to mess with?" he thought to himself. Who would he prank on and really surprise? A light bulb went off in his head after he thought of a person. Ray could already imagine how shocked Jaquavion would be if a prank company suddenly showed up on their doorstep. Or maybe it was a hacker and they wanted to mess with Jaquavion’s account.
@UnapologethicRay: “Yeah This big walking idiot calling himself Jaquavion. Arrogant, selfish, annoying. His tag is @BestPersonAlive.”
Ray looked up from his phone. Through the pouring rain, he could see the bus approaching in the distance. That, along with his low battery percentage, meant this conversation would soon be over. The teen looked back at his phone, only to see that he had another message.
@Blazeburner: “Anything else?”
@UnapologethicRay: “Just mess with him a bit. G2g.”
Without waiting for an answer, Ray shoved his phone back into his soaked pocket. He quickly took the last few sips of his cheap ripoff Coke before the bus pulled up right in front of him, and he got on.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the stop closest to his house. It was still a few minutes’ walk, but now that the rain had cleared up, it was a lot easier. He couldn’t wait to get home, to deny Jaquavion his disgusting looking baking, and to plop down on the couch. During the short walk to Jaquavion apartment, Raymond had thought back to the person on Twitter earlier. He had wanted to ask more questions, to chat more, to waste more of his time. But the universe had not given him luck, and his phone had died and left him there.
Once he reached the front door, he put the keys in the lock. What if that person really was a hitman? Whatever, he would message them again when his phone was charged and working again. There was no way that someone was really a hitman on fucking Twitter. And then, how bad would he feel if Jaquavion really did get killed? It had almost happened before… and then he had been the one to almost finished the job…
Ray pushed the front door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. It smelled of something he couldn’t immediately place—not bad, but not like it normally smelled either. Maybe Jaquavion had made a new attempt on his newfound hobby of baking and cooking. He shook off his wet hood and called out as he kicked off his shoes,
“Hey, I’m home!”
No answer. The silence was immediate. Normally, he could hear the pounding bass of Jaquavion’s favorite music vibrating through the walls even before he had his jacket off. Jaquavion liked to turn the kitchen into a stage, singing along as if there was an audience in front of him. But now… nothing. No music. No sound of pans, no cheerful whistle. Just silence, and the soft patter of drizzling raindrops hitting the windows.
Ray frowned. He walked into the living room, where the curtains were half-open and the television was off. The cushions on the couch were unkempt, as always, but there was no sign of Jaquavion. Maybe he was asleep? But that was unlikely; Jaquavion was never one to just fall asleep in the middle of the day. Maybe Jaquavion was out with his shitty friends. If so, he would have texted Ray.
Ray pulled his phone out of his pocket, but the screen remained black. "Shit," he mumbled. The battery was dead. He shuffled over to the wall outlet in the kitchen, where the charger usually was, and plugged in his phone. The silence around him suddenly felt heavier. He rubbed his face and mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else:
"Where the fuck...?"
His gaze wandered around the kitchen. The chair at the small dining table was tilted, as if someone had pushed it aside halfway through standing. A glass with a bit of water in it sat on the counter, next to a dish that hadn’t been washed yet. A fork had been tossed aside from the plate, which still had food on it. At first glance, everything seemed normal, but something didn’t feel right. It was a feeling, a pressing presence that he couldn’t explain. Sure, Jaquavion was far from tidy, but he didn't let his stuff linger like this.
“Jaquavion?” he called again, a little louder this time. No answer.
Ray walked further into the kitchen, his eyes scanning for something he didn’t even know he was looking for. And then he saw it. At first it was just a shoe sticking out around the corner of the kitchen island. It was Jaquavion’s sneaker, he knew that immediately. Ray stood there, as if his body wouldn’t go any further. But his mind raced on, making connections he didn’t want to make.
"Jaquavion?"
His voice was careful as he rounded the corner. There, on the floor, lay Jaquavion. His face pale and still, his eyes closed as if he were asleep. But Ray knew that wasn’t so. Jaquavion’s skin was strange, a color that didn’t seem right. His hand lay half-open on the floor, like a petal that had just fallen. And then Ray saw the gaping wound across Jaquavion’s chest and throat.
Ray felt his breath catch, his chest tighten. Everything around him seemed to slow down suddenly, as if the world had stopped spinning for a moment. He expected Jaquavion to jump up and laugh, call him stupid for believing he had really died. Or maybe Ray was expecting his old acquaintance Peter to appear from somewhere in the room, and pass him by again, muttering that Raymond should be thankful.
Ray didn’t know how long he stood there, his hand in his hair, staring at the body in front of him, as if he wasn’t sure whether to touch him or call someone. Jaquavion was dead, and this time the ambulance couldn't do anything anymore, so why bother calling? The silence was suddenly broken by the familiar sound of a notification from his phone. As if jolted awake, he snapped his head to the phone on the counter and stormed over to it.
It was a simple notification, yet so.. ominous.
@Blazeburner: “Job done. Guy was a real prick. No wonder you wanted him gone. This one was on the house. Feel free to text again. I'm one tweet away.”
Ray froze as he read the message. So it had all been real. This person was a hitman, what had he thought?! Ray turned his head back to Jaquavion’s lifeless body on the kitchen floor, his cold blood pooling beneath him. He should turn them in, give their account to the police. But despite it all, there was an unfamiliar sense of tension, and he almost didn’t care as he looked back at his phone screen, typing out his message with a newfound interest:
@UnapologethicRay: “Wanna hang out sometime?”