Chapter Text
There's a man in the alley.
There's a man and a corpse in the alley.
Normally, Grace wouldn't even try to go anywhere near the backdrop of a dark, sinuous and dirty alley.
It is the one he has to pass by on his way to and from school. It always gives him a frightful shudder each time he chances a glance to the side and spies inside the darkening maw stretching upwards. Everyday, he sees shapes, people, propped up against each side of the painted walls and among the burgeoning trash that keeps piling up and leaking rotting juice all over the dirty pavement.
It feels like this particular street came out of a thriller movie, a shady place where murderers and drug dealers come as a meeting point, shadowed by grey clouds and mouths set in a lustful sneer.
Grace doesn't even live in a particularly dangerous area, but this particular alley reeks of malevolence. It is also probably because it is so narrow, with barely enough space for someone to stretch their hands from side to side and the staggering height of the two buildings that would put a strain on anyone’s neck, paint flaking from time to time and never taken care of. Or perhaps it is the accumulated dust that forms its own spider web made of trash and waste, dangling from dirty metal constructions which had long rotted and rusted.
Still, most of the days, Grace would go about his day and resolutely look in front of him while passing by that dark, sinister entrance.
This is what he should have done when he biked back to his apartment after a tiring day at school.
Instead, he'd heard sound. Not the reassuring one, the sharp ones that meant something was hurting and was letting out a small, long, keening whine of pain.
It didn't sound like a dog or a cat either.
He probably should have turned his back on that sound and kept on looking away, but perhaps that specific day, he'd wanted to do something good with his life. He had never thought of himself as too much of a selfish person. He dedicated his life to going forward, never hurting anyone who wasn’t a prick, contributed to the economy, helped if asked and whatnots… But he had never truly helped outside of his little bubble.
He does help whenever someone was in trouble, but there is a difference, he thinks, between actively helping and just… Be conveniently there for others. Like helping an elderly person walk through a crosswalk, helping a colleague carry heavy stuff around, donating to a GoFundMe page about other countries’ problems, and helping someone find the proper address in their neighbourhood.
But it is not the same as when scrolling idly through social media while curled up in his bed, and he sees people helping others, fighting and striving for a better world, without asking anything in return... He sees on the Internet people stand up for others they have never met before. He sees people scream and actively raise their fists in the air for the greater good of humanity, while he stays in the background.
He applauds those persons, admires them, likes their post and send a cheerful comment nobody cares to read, him included, but that's about it. This is the regular way of living, he says to himself on those night when he wonders if he could have done something more. It's not your job nor is it your task or your duty, he repeats himself incessantly. He likes his life as it is, no need to change it any other way, just follow the current, help navigate others as they pass by...
Still, he can't help but continue scrolling through this kind of content and be a bit jealous of the way they'd rush to save the day of others...
This is surely that guilty consciousness, which should have no right telling him what to do, that crowns at him, ‘one look won’t hurt’, when he passes by that darkening alley. He can just silently slip away, call the cops and be done with it.
Helping by being a faraway onlooker.
He pulls on the brakes of his bike and puts a foot on the ground, squinting. He doesn't go inside, he's not crazy enough to do that, but he still tries to peer in the darkness, leaning forward, his eyes adjusting and...
Here, he sees it. A man stands above a crumpled form. They are just barely close enough for light to illuminate the scene in the most sombre and lugubrious way. There's a pool of blood staining the pavement, and it continues to stretch, staining the feet that poke out behind a toppled trash can.
Again, he probably should have left, pedalled far, far away, as much as he could before the killer sees him. He can call the cops as soon as he is safe at this apartment.
But when his widening eyes jump to the killer’s face, he freezes, feet already halfway up the pedal.
Because he recognises who the murderer is. Who is holding a bleeding hammer, still dribbling fresh blood (he can almost see clumps of hair still stuck on the object). He had short hair, soft features, impassive expression despite the splatters of red staining his cheek and nose. A simple grey T-shirt and pants. Surprisingly no white vest.
It's his neighbour.
Well, shoot, he knows where I live, is his first thought.
The second is, holy molly, that's my neighbour, the one with who I spent the last evening watching TV.
Because yes, he knows the man inside the alley, who's covered in blood and still is dispassionately looking down at the crumpled corpse.
His name is Driver, or that is what he calls himself, not that Grace ever managed to pry out his true name despite the numerous teasing and relentless pokes and jabs at him.
He is a young alpha who moved in a few months ago. Silent and pretty withdrawn, Grace probably wouldn't even have noticed him if they didn't meet several times on different occasions every week, forcing familiarity to build even without knowing each other. At the laundromat, at the coffee shop, sometimes when Grace goes out in the morning and bikes to school, and when they share the elevator. Sometimes when they go shopping too and bump into each other. It's not surprising given that they're neighbours. He also sometimes hears faint shuffling sounds coming out of the thin wall connecting their living rooms.
All of those small encounters spark a small smile and a greeting wave from Grace each time.
After all, it's always nice to have some constant in his life, and this one seemed like a welcoming one.
Grace doesn't particularly hate his routine. He loves his kids and enjoys his job most of the time, but he's deeply aware that his window of matching with a potential mate shortens by the day. It's not like he desperately wants to marry someone and have kids, but the curious and repetitive probes each year from his nosy mid-schoolers (or god forbid, their parents), wondering if he has someone at home, can be grating to the ear. Or the pitying look he sometimes gets when it is revealed he's still very much a single omega already reaching his fifties, their eyes then switching back to their dear children as if to reassure themselves that they got what he doesn't... Well, it kind of weighs on him at some point.
Added to the fact that he doesn't have a lot of close friends is a bit of another nail in his early coffin. Yes, he has a lot of acquaintances and good relationships with people, but his close friends are Rocky, who is a country away from him. Eva Stratt, who's also busy being inside the government and actively changing things from the inside. And Carl, who is in the state, but not in the same town as Grace. He is the one he sees the most, and they try to schedule a monthly bar night where they catch up on each other's lives. Still, it's not a lot.
So when there's a young person, not more than thirty, who he regularly meets and who begins to ‘talk’ (in Driver’s fashion) to him, it's a very welcome breath of fresh air. The small polite greetings they exchange on their way out of their laundry days and nods of acknowledgement when they meet in the elevator slowly change to conversations and then to invitations to eat together.
There isn't much in common between the two of them. Driver doesn't talk much and stares unblinkingly with the sort of focus that would be borderline uneasy and freaky for anyone but Grace, who prefers to mask his nervousness with endless chatter and info-dumping others. Grace is a middle-school teacher with a deep interest in scientific research, while Driver (from the little things he's managed to pry out) "drives", does stunts and works at a garage. Grace admitted he knew nothing of mechanics and cars, but Driver had just shrugged it off and continued to listen intently to Grace droning about some scientific jargon.
By all means they probably should have drifted apart after they'd realised all of their interests clashed instead of matched, but shockingly enough, they had managed to find quite an easy balance and lo and behold, a few months later, Grace now often invites Driver in his apartment as they watched a movie together or go to a restaurant to eat and talk (Grace does most of the talking, not that he minds. Drive nods. And stares, a lot).
He supposes he must look like a creep sometimes, talking to someone so much younger than him that some could think he is Driver's father, but Driver never seemed to mind and instead, had sought Grace when he had tried to put some distance between them once.
He probably would always grimace fondly at that memory, still a bit embarrassed about it.
Grace had been walking back to his apartment on foot, because of course his tyre had deflated on the way home, and night had already fallen when he finally tiredly punched the elevator button up to his floor. His apartment complex, of course, didn't have any metro station nearby. Moreover, rush hours made it so that buses were overcrowded, and he didn't want to deal with people sending him nasty glares if he tried to wriggle in with his busted bike.
And so he had just walked and walked and walked.
He had been calculating the cost of reparation as well as mumbling the added time that would impede on his already packed schedule, waking up earlier to compensate for the almost 1h walk he'd have to make (or the bus, but the time was almost the same because of traffic jams), when the elevator doors opened and he walked out and inside the apartment complex corridor.
However, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, eyebrows flying up to his hairline, when he saw Driver sitting on the floor against the door of his apartment, elbows on his folded knees, looking at the walls in front of him. When he heard the ding of the elevator, his head slowly turned to the side and silently stared at Grace.
It was probably because neither of them pressed on the corridor light button, and the yellow elevator had closed it doors with the only light coming from the exit door and its green, neon light, but Grace almost hallucinated the glint in Driver's eyes when he looked up at Grace and simply asked: "Did I do something wrong?" as if he was asking if Grace had had a good day today.
Driver had probably meant Grace waking up at ungodly hours to slip by his neighbour’s door to avoid accidentally stumbling upon the other inside the elevator. He had also changed the hours of his laundry day, switched his shopping to another nearby store because it had ‘better sales’ and ‘fresher veggies’, and stopped knocking at Driver’s door during weekend evenings to invite the young alpha out.
Grace had just dumbly answered: "My bike broke..." and stupidly lifted the hand on which his helmet hung.
Driver had silently looked at him before he slowly nodded and continued softly, "I have a car, I can drive you to your work, if you want."
The way Driver spoke was a mystery in itself, as much as was the way he stared at things.
He had this sort of soft expression on his face despite the intensity of his gaze, which clashed with the way he walked and behaved himself, as if always preparing to take or throw a punch. Despite all of this, he spoke in a soft and low voice, unusual for any other alpha Grace had the displeasure of meeting. Most of them talked and behaved like human, civil beings, but some particularly pesky ones never hesitated to try and lord over 'meek and weak' omegas, which always got them sucker-punched by an incensed Grace whenever they tried to bend him over ‘the way they liked’.
Seeing such a withdrawn and silent alpha, not truly brooding but simply muted, was as intriguing as it whispered sorrow in Grace's heart.
All other suspicions and doubts vanished in a matter of seconds as soon as Driver offered him his car, as if laying out all that he had in front of Grace's feet. At least, it was the way it seemed with the way Driver looked down when he said the last part of his sentence, his ungloved hands flexing around his knees, before they looked back up at the older omega.
There wasn't much to see in his eyes, even the way he smelled was almost sterile and barren, but the small tilt of the corner of his eyes screamed of something hopeful.
Or perhaps it was Grace projecting...
Grace took a sharp inhale of breath and instantly felt guilty.
He forced his feet to move towards Driver and slowly joined him on the floor. Driver's head was still hung down, but his pupils sharply followed each of Grace's movements. He grunted when he fell on the floor. Staying up on his feet all day was nice until you had to unfreeze your joints and had to crouch, bending your knees after walking for some kilometres to get back home.
They stayed like that, facing the wall and not saying anything for a long time, plunged in darkness.
Grace felt a bit silly, especially if one of their other neighbour came out of the elevator and saw them sitting side by side, legs almost touching, in the empty, dark corridor. Grace also realised he didn’t really care, especially when the warmth of the body beside him radiated heat, seeping into his own cold sides.
"Why were you sitting outside? It's cold out there, it's nighttime," he finally asked.
"Your bike wasn't on the rack,” Driver replied without missing a beat.
The realisation that the other man had waited outside, just to see if Grace was coming back or not, even if he was just one hour late from his usual routine (which he never strayed away from, he could admit that), was...
It filled Grace with a violent emotion that scorched the inside of his throat and made him cough in his sleeve, sniffling to simulate the sound of clearing his throat. He ignored the feel of burning spreading across his cheeks and hoped the darkness concealed the stupid smile stretching his lips.
"So you waited here?" he said a bit cheekily, not managing to stop himself and feeling a bit lightheaded.
"Yes, I was about to look for you," Driver answered again, without giving Grace a chance to recover, talking in a subdued, yet simple tone, as if it were the most normal thing to say to a neighbour of barely a few months.
Grace was still utterly charmed, and he smiled softly in the darkness.
His rational mind tried to whisper something at him, but the overwhelming joy rushing to his head, the idea that someone was worried enough they would simply wait for him, just to check if he truly made it out...
Well, it stroked his bruised ego! There! He just said it.
It filled him with something he'd been achingly missing for the better part of his life. He wouldn't say that Eva, Carl or even Rocky wouldn't ring him up if he ever went AWOL for more than two days, but his neighbour? Someone he's been spending some of his afternoons, speaking and talking about nothing but stupid telenovela and rambling about this and that on a daily basis? Well damn, that felt good! Sue him for feeling like he was somewhat important to someone else close to him!
He didn't even realise the more implicit meanings under Driver's words.
Instead, he fiddled with the glasses perched on his nose, readjusting them even though he's been regularly looking at Driver over them, and chuckled.
"Well, here I am,” he tapped his hands on his thighs before he continued: “I was about to order takeout. Have you eaten yet?"
He watched as Driver's eyes looked down at his lap for a second, then he shook his head, "No, not yet."
Grace clapped in his hands softly in cheers, "Great! Then I'll order, and we can eat at home? I've been wanting to watch the newest episode of that true crime series, I told you about it, right? Wanna watch it with me?"
He didn’t 't even wait for the other to answer. Instead, he got up with another grunt and ambled back to his door, unlocking it and leaving it ajar, looking back at Driver and gesturing a "come here" motion with his hand. He knew Driver would follow him, so he went and threw his stuff on the table, fishing out his phone and pulling up his favourite asian restaurant.
He heard the click of his door getting closed while he rattled off their usual order.
Grace had felt happy and content like he had never felt before.
He had felt at peace, hopeful, and so, so, so damn Happy.
But right now, on his newly repaired bike and watching the darkness of the alley, looking at Driver who’s heaving, covered in dark blood as he looks down on the mangled corpse he's just bashed to a pulp, Grace wonders...
He wonders and he…
He feels…
He feels fear.
.
.
.