Chapter Text
For a kegster, this isn’t so bad, Jack thinks as he weaves his way through the pulsing, excited crowd in the direction of the kitchen.
Shitty had insisted that Jack stay for this one. “No friend of mine is staying locked up in his room watching some conspiracy-theory-““It’s about trench warfare in the first World War, Shits-““While one of the greatest parties in the universe is raging just below! I won’t have it!” So, reluctantly, Jack agreed to hang around for this one. Ransom and Holster were keeping him company for most of the night, providing conversation and making sure Jack felt comfortable, Shitty and Lardo were on crowd control, and Jack was willing to admit that, yeah, these parties might actually be fun.
A song had started playing through the speakers and Ransom and Holster bolted to the middle of the dance floor, leaving Jack alone. It was a Beyoncé song that Bittle was singing in the shower just a few days ago, so when the small blonde wasn’t right there, dancing along with Ransom and Holster, Jack was surprised.
Jack finally managed to get into the kitchen. He was expecting to see Bittle in there, too, making a pie or grabbing another beer, but he was nowhere in sight. Where is he? Jack thought as he put his beer down left of the sink, where he could find it later. Unlike him, Bitty loved Haus parties. He had sworn he saw him earlier that night, talking with one of the swimmers on the porch, but then he was gone.
Jack was about to head back into the living room when he felt a thump beneath his feet. The heavy table, covered in food, snacks, beer, and dishes rattled.
“What the hell-“ Jack asked the empty kitchen. Another thump answered, louder this time, and a muffled exclamation.
The basement. That was really the only option. But didn’t he always carefully lock the door before each party? His freshman year, the lacrosse players managed to get down there and make a huge mess before he, Shitty, and Johnson chased them out. They swore that the basement would always be locked during kegsters after that, because water heaters are expensive and college students don’t care.
He pushed back through the crowd in the direction of the hallway and he heard the song come to an end. Something else started playing, Justin Bieber, maybe? Jack didn’t care. The bass, dancing, and talking had obviously hidden the noises from downstairs. It was a miracle no one noticed as Jack edged his way around the drunken crowd and slipped through the unlocked basement door.
“Okay, I thought you would cooperate, but it looks like you’re choosing the hard way.” Was that… Bittle’s voice? Jack didn’t have time to turn the thought over in his head in the answering roar followed by another loud THUMP.
He threw himself down the stairs thinking I should have grabbed a broom when he saw something that left his mind blank.
Bitty, the small, unimposing boy from the South, glowing in the light from the single hanging lightbulb, was staring down a man tied to a chair. Jack couldn’t quite make out his face in the darkness of his hair. He was tied with some rope that had always been in the corner by the washing machine but had never moved, and though his arms and legs were restrained, his head has twisting violently back and forth as he tried to free himself.
Harder to explain were the objects floating in the air. Bittle didn’t seem to care about them, but Jack’s legs were feeling light as another chair, a broken lamp, an abandoned jersey, and a box slowly orbited the pair in the center of the room.
Bitty was suddenly facing him. How did he move so fast? “J-Jack?” he whispered. I must have gasped, Jack thought absently as the man (much younger than Jack initially thought, probably a student) looked up at him, too. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging out of their sockets, his mouth was stretched in a wide grin that bared all his teeth. More than anything, Jack wanted to turn around and go back up the stairs to the first party he could say he was enjoying, but he was frozen in that wide-eyed gaze.
“Jack, I can explain,” Bitty said. Jack broke the other young man’s stare and looked at Bitty again, at his expression of concern. His huge, pretty brown eyes looked like they were glowing from within, but surely that was the light from the bulb? It couldn’t be anything else? Jack was starting to feel dizzy.
The floating chair launched out of orbit, aimed directly at the back of Bittle’s head. Jack was about to unfreeze and push the smaller man out of the way, but without looking, Bitty flicked his hand and the chair turned and smashed into kindling against the wall to their left.
“I guess that explains the noise,” Jack said. As he spoke, the edges of his vision started becoming fuzzy.
“Jack, please, oh no – oh, you stop that! Have some respect! – Jack, I’m so sorry, please sit down, don’t pass out on me – I said stop it!” Bitty deflected another object but Jack couldn’t see what it was, he was too busy sitting on the bottom stair and putting his head between his knees. He focused on breathing and memorizing the cracked cement between his feet. Bittle was back with the kid in the chair, scolding him and asking questions that Jack couldn’t understand with the ringing in his ears. His hands, which he had kept steady for so long, were shaking on his knees.
Jack began focusing on what he could feel. The basement was unseasonably cold, the stair was hard enough to make his ass a little sore from sitting, the bass from the party was beating against his ribs, not quite on-beat with his heart. Breathe in, hold for three, and out all the way. In, hold, out. Ignore the person in the chair, who was growling and spitting venomous words at Bittle, who was reciting something in a language Jack didn’t understand.
A loud roar, something crashing on the ceiling of the basement. Jack flinched. In, hold, out.
“Jack, are you okay over there?” Bitty stopped chanting and sounded concerned. Jack held up a shaky thumbs-up. “Good, I’ll be over to help you in a sec. I have to deal with this unpleasant fellow for a bit, but then I’ll be over there again.”
Jack was feeling better, perhaps even good enough to glance over at what Bitty was doing. Hands still clenched on his knees, he looked up and regretted it.
He had sworn when he first saw the pair, there hadn’t been anything on the floor around them, but now there were definitely glowing symbols, spinning and moving in a circle around the man in the chair. Jack didn’t understand any of it, furthermore, he didn’t understand the black mist swirling around the form of the thrashing restrained student. Bitty was chanting louder, faster, and more darkness was oozing from the boy’s pores until it formed reaching hands, curling claws, gaping jaws. Out of the desperate human crawled a tall dark figure with two heads and four horns, long, human arms with clawed hands, long legs, and… a whipping tail. It was easily eight feet tall, towering over Bittle’s glowing form (stop kidding yourself, Jack thought, it’s not the lightbulb. He’s actually glowing). The frigid basement got even colder and the grotesque jaws were opening wider, looking like they could swallow his head in a single bite –
Bittle exclaimed loudly and clearly, “Recede hinc, pecus! Ego praecipio tibi, unde venisti!” And the figure sank into the basement floor with a final, gargling shriek. The glowing symbols disappeared and the miscellaneous floating object crashed to the floor. The man in the chair went completely limp, and Bitty, well.
Jack gasped. Bitty was glowing brighter than that lightbulb, Jack imagined he could see iridescent flames licking up his arms, and on his shoulders, reaching almost entirely across the basement…
“Wings,” Jack gasped and let the darkness take him.