Chapter Text
Upon his new found routine in the busy city of San Francisco, Casey had found some semblance of normality. Day work. Night work. Breakfast at a local dinner. Driving around to forget his own existence. Everything he needed was checked on his list.
Just like he had done before with Shannon, he had shown up to some independent workshop and asked for a job. This time it was easier to convince the owners of hiring him. The years spent under the old man's supervision had taught him a thing or two… That realization still made his heart ache enough to clench his jaw every time the mischievous memories decided to taunt his newly threaded normality, but he had become rather skilled at tuning them out, just like he always did with everything that felt too much.
Luckily, his new boss wasn’t a cheapskate. The pay was better than anything he'd been used to, which meant fewer night jobs. Unfortunately, Casey was a creature of habit. And nights were particularly tormentuous in the silence of his apartment. A silence that felt deafening, drowned beneath the whispers of his past and the familiar itch of violence he so desperately wanted to rid himself of, but which, more often than not, still took control of his body.
Just like it had last night.
The job was completed, that wasn’t the issue. The clients, however, had mistaken his professionalism for flexibility. They had assumed his rules could be bought, that enough money would convince him to involve himself further in their schemes, trying to establish a familiarity he neither appreciated nor tolerated. He had made certain they understood that.
For that reason he was eating breakfast with gloved hands, the leather pulled tight enough to apply a constant pressure over his bruised knuckles while concealing them beneath smooth brown fabric. He couldn’t allow this fragile work-in-progress of a life to be stained with the reds and purples of his true nature.
Not yet.
The faintest tremor ran through his fingers. His jaw tightened.
Not ever again.
So it was nice to have that reminder aching, the subtle pickling sensation of the pain telling him how to not mess it up. He unconsciously rubbed his hands together.
And it was then that something shifted in the corner of his vision. Someone twitched. Not absentmindedly, but startled. As though they hadn't expected Casey to move. As though they had been studying him.
From the counter he couldn't make out much beyond a flash of bright yellow resembling a coat, or maybe a sweater… but it was enough. His shoulders stiffened. Last night's incident was still fresh on his mind and coincidences had a way of becoming corpses if ignored. He needed to know who this person was.
He took another bite of his hash browns before exhaling through his nose, forcing the impatience building beneath the leather gloves back into its cage.
"Boss," he called casually.
"Ya' think you could put on the news? Last night's game." The cook immediately perked up. "Didn't peg you for a sports guy!" Casey rewarded him with the smallest hint of a smile while the older man happily rambled about the team's disastrous season. Perfect.
As the TV flickered to life, Casey turned in his stool. His cold blue eyes glued on the screen just long enough to seem interested before drifting naturally towards the yellow figure.
It was a man. Around his own age. Messy blonde hair. Semi-formal clothes and an identification badge hung crookedly around his neck.
Teacher. But nothing else he was able to read aside from the big bold letter of his title. Casey looked back toward the television, giving his prey space to be blissfully unaware. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the man subtly lean again.
Watching.
Still watching.
Interesting.
Several seconds passed before the stranger ducked his head, finally giving Casey the opportunity to observe him properly. An open suitcase rested beside the booth. Papers were scattered across the table, threatening to slide into a plate of pancakes nearly drowning beneath syrup. Casey lifted his coffee with an almost theatrical motion, beginning to turn back toward the counter while his eyes were fixated onto the figure. The stranger's head snapped upward, taking the bait, having their eyes locked. His eyes widened behind rectangular glasses. For one suspended second neither of them moved, until the color fled the man's face. He shrank so quickly he nearly buried himself in his own paperwork, as though Casey's stare alone had physically struck him.
Oh… He'd been caught. That reaction alone confirmed everything Casey had suspected. The man had been watching him.
It did not take long for the lanky man to stumble up from his booth, his knee colliding with the unreliable wooden table hard enough to make him hiss, "Fudge!" beneath his breath. Casey's eyebrows pulled together almost imperceptibly.
Fudge?
The choice of word was so oddly tame that, for a fleeting second, it caught him more off guard than the man's behavior itself. The man hurried toward the restroom at the back of the diner without sparing another glance in Casey's direction, shoulders drawn tight around his ears as though he wished to disappear entirely.
Casey saw his opportunity.
Finishing the rest of his coffee in one long gulp, he tugged at the leather of his gloves until they sat snugly against his fingers. Unlike his soon-to-be acquaintance, he rose from his seat without so much as scraping the stool against the floor. The chatter around the diner swallowed the quiet sound of his footsteps as he crossed the room. The walk was short, and soon enough he was greeted by the door. One gloved hand settled over the restroom door handle while Casey leaned in just enough to listen. Running water echoed from inside alongside the faint murmur of a voice, too muffled for him to distinguish any words. His fingers tightened instinctively around the handle, the bruises beneath the leather protesting at the pressure. Was the man talking to someone? The thought lingered only until the water stopped.
One step echoed inside, the man was moving towards the door.
Then another.
On the third, Casey pushed the door open in one swift motion and slipped inside before the other man had time to react, leaving him frozen on his spot.
"W-wha–" The syllable barely left his mouth before Casey crossed the distance between them, catching both of his wrists and forcing him back against the closed door. His buddy thudding against the wall behind them as Casey crowded into his space, leaving nowhere for the blond man to retreat.
"Now..." he murmured, his voice barely louder than a breath. "...Who the fuck are you?” His voice sent a tremor through the other man, who stared with his mouth agape.
"U-Um... n-no one?” The unconvincing answer stumbled out immediately, tripping over itself before the man's eyes widened in realization. "I mean–I am someone! J-just... someone you don't know." His voice lacked any semblance of rhythm, each word chasing after the last as though his own thoughts couldn't keep pace with his mouth. Casey watched his eyes dart across his face, lingering there instead of searching for a way past him. Strange.
Tilting his head slightly, Casey let his gaze drift toward the identification badge trapped awkwardly between their chests. Teacher. That he already knew, but now the text under it was readable.
"Ryland Grace," he repeated flatly. "Why would a teacher be keeping watch on me?" His fingers closed more firmly around Ryland's wrists, not enough to bruise, at least, not yet, but enough to make the point, but all Ryland offered was a stare at him. "...Keeping watch?" The words left him in little more than a whisper, his brow furrowing as though Casey had suddenly started speaking another language. It took only a heartbeat for understanding to settle over his features, and immediately every bit of color drained from his face.
"Oh… fudge…”
His knees threatened to give out beneath him, leaving Casey to unintentionally bear part of his weight simply by virtue of pinning him against the door. "You think I'm..." Ryland swallowed audibly. "You think I'm keeping watch on you." His eyes squeezed shut as the air escaped his lungs in an exasperated sigh.
"Of course you think that! Oh my gosh..." The apology bursted from him before Casey had the chance to say another word or question the imminent meltdown. "I'm so, so, so sorry." His breathing grew increasingly uneven as his thoughts visibly unraveled one after another. "This is going to sound... so much worse before it sounds better." Casey remained silent, one of his eyebrows twitching in impatience at his rambling.
"I noticed your hands." His grip tightened automatically, making Ryland immediately wince. "N-not because I thought you were dangerous!" he blurted in a hitched voice. "Well! I mean–that's probably a reasonable conclusion to make now, considering you're interrogating me in a restroom, but that wasn't…" He cut himself off with a pained grimace. His eyebrows furrow apologetically as if mentally begging his mouth to just stop. "...That didn't help." Casey said nothing to the helpless expression the man was conjuring, gaining a defeated sigh from him as his eyes shut close. "I just..." Ryland swallowed again, cheeks turning an impossible shade of pink. "You were wearing gloves while eating pancakes." In a heartbeat the man opened his eyes, as if a revelation was born onto his mind. “Hash-browns!" Ryland corrected as if the negligible detail would somehow make sense out of his story. Casey's silence proved him wrong.
“Thaaaat…" He trailed back. "...was not important, right?” Casey ignored the comment, studying instead every inch of the man's demeanor. The silence that accompanied his thorough analysis stretched long enough for the distant clatter of dishes outside to become audible again, making Ryland awkwardly shift under him. Nothing about the man resembled someone trained to observe people. His breathing was erratic, his entire body trembling beneath Casey's grip, and despite having every opportunity to struggle, Ryland had done little more than apologize for existing. If this was an act… It was the strangest one Casey had ever seen.
And somehow, that made him no less suspicious.
“And what is it to you if I wear gloves?” The question rolled out of Casey's lips in that steady voice of his, low and composed. Calculated up until the last detail.
Ryland opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "...Nothing?" The word came out more like a question than an answer. He grimaced immediately afterwards, squeezing his eyes shut. "No, that's not true either." He admitted, a nervous laugh escaped him before he could stop it. "It was... well..." His shoulders climbed toward his ears. "I thought they looked cool." Casey didn't move, but at every word that left this man's mouth the more dumbfounded he found himself. "The gloves." Ryland reiterated. “Yes, the glo–” Casey repeated in an exasperated voice but was cut short by a sudden confession.
"...And you."
Ryland looked as though every word physically pained him to say. "You looked..." His face grew steadily redder and his eyes trembled, just like the rest of his body. "...re-really cool…" Casey's expression wanted to remain unchanged, yet his eyebrows softened upon the pitiful state of the man. "I know how ridiculous that sounds." Ryland admitted. Another painful silence settled between them, at this point the man sweating due to excruciating monologue Casey was squeezing out of him.
Ryland inhaled through his nose, as though deciding that if his dignity was already beyond saving, he might as well bury what little remained of it. "I just..." He laughed weakly. "I thought you were attractive."
There.
It was out.
His eyes darted anywhere but Casey's face, gluing themselves on the door as if waiting for someone to save him from humiliation. But the diner remained oblivious to his suffering, so his eyes traced back to the man apprehending him, making him visibly spiral and open his mouth again.
"Every time I told myself to stop looking..." He rubbed one of his fingers unconsciously over the expanse of Casey's glove that was within reach of his restrained hands. Casey felt a shudder climb through his arm, a different sensation than the chastising pain of his wounds “...I'd accidentally look again." Ryland soon realized what he was doing and immediately recoiled, his voice coming smaller in a shameful whisper. "I wasn't trying to make you uncomfortable."
Casey simply stared at him, not because he doubted him, but because he genuinely did not know what to do with the information. The man was currently pinned against a restroom door by someone who had cornered him without hesitation. He had every reason to be afraid. Every reason to reconsider whatever strange fascination had brought him here in the first pplacebYet he was still telling the truth.
Ryland Grace was attracted to him. The thought felt almost absurd.
People had looked at him before. Despite his best efforts, he was still a real human being. Clients evaluated him. Enemies sized him up. Police officers memorized faces. Attention was something he had learned to recognize, even when he preferred to avoid it. Not just that, but women had flirted with Driver before. Accepting the silence, the confidence, the dangerous mystery that surrounded him. They had seen the parts of him that were easier to accept, the parts that looked controlled, capable, untouchable. But never had someone noticed Casey.
Well… That wasn't entirely true.
It happened once. And he knew exactly how that ended. The memory carried a weight he refused to examine too closely. A reminder that letting someone close enough to see beyond the surface came with consequences he couldn't risk repeating. The viscerality of his own was not to be shared. Yet, this whole situation was laced with unfamiliarity. Ryland wasn't looking at him because he knew who he was. He didn't know about the things Casey had done, the people who had feared him, or the reputation that followed him wherever he went.
But he had seen enough.
He had seen Casey corner him in a bathroom. He had felt the pressure of his grip around his wrists. He had heard the coldness in his voice when he demanded answers. And yet Ryland was still standing there, face flushed with embarrassment instead of fear, admitting something that made absolutely no sense to him. He wasn't attracted to an idea of Casey. He was attracted to the person standing in front of him. He was looking at all of it. The gloves. The silence. The threat in his voice. And somehow, after all of that… Ryland was still embarrassed because he thought Casey was attractive.
It was absurd.
The sincerity, however, was impossible to ignore. Ryland's pulse fluttered visibly beneath his collar. His breathing refused to settle. His eyes kept abandoning Casey's face, not out of fear alone, but from the overwhelming humiliation of having admitted something so ridiculous. If this was an act… It was one committed with frightening dedication.
Casey's fingers loosened around Ryland's wrists. Not consciously, they just did as his thoughts spiraled upon the enigma this school teacher was. Ryland noticed immediately but made no move to escape. "...I misjudged you," Casey admitted after a long silence. The words felt foreign as they fell from his lips. He let go entirely, taking half a step back to give Ryland room to breathe meanwhile his eyes remained glued to the floor. An unfamiliar sense of shame creeped up his neck.
The teacher remained against the door for another second before cautiously straightening himself, rubbing absentmindedly at one wrist. "I shouldn't have put my hands on you." Casey continued, his voice being almost inexistent, almost barrly mouthing the words. Ryland blinked, seeing something in Casey's demeanor that drew a small and uncertain smile onto his face. "...It's okay."
"It isn't."
"No." Ryland nodded sheepishly, a bit too fast to his taste. "It really isn't." Another silence settled between them. "I mean..." Ryland scratched awkwardly behind his ear. "I'd probably think the same thing." Casey's eyes lifted. His shoulders lighter upon catching the merciful expression on the man's face. "No one wants to deal with a stalker..." Ryland gave an embarrassed shrug, that quickly turned into a panicked expression. His index finger immediately pointed at himself in horror. "But I'm not one! I swear!"
"I gathered." Casey conceded, exhaling in an amused sound.
"I was just... catastrophically obvious."
"You were." Ryland let out a defeated groan, dropping his forehead lightly. "I've made a terrible first impression." The corner of Casey's mouth curved ever so slightly, captivated by how that was his biggest worry. Ryland noticed anyway, hope flickered across his face as he mirrored and exaggerated Casey's smile.
"So..." he began carefully, pushing himself away from the door. "If... if you'd let me... I'd actually like to start over." And that caught Casey off guard, his eyes lingered on him. Taking in all the details he had looked over when he thought this man was an enemy. He was smiling, unsure but hopefully. His hair was messier than before and his identification tag was tangled. His hands were intertwined together, like in prayer to somehow fix this messed up first encounter.
Start over. They were such ordinary words, yet they settled somewhere deep inside Casey's mind. Wasn't that exactly what he had come to San Francisco to do? To start over. To stop being a weapon that happened to wear a man's face. To become someone who could eat breakfast in peace without waiting for the past to catch up with him.
His gaze drifted back to Ryland, who stood there waiting with the same awkward patience he'd shown since the moment Casey cornered him. Somehow… The incessant rambling wasn't nearly as irritating anymore, he could imagine himself wanting to listen to it a bit more. It was oddly charming.
"...Casey," he said at last. Ryland blinked, eyebrows furrowing. Trying to decipher what was just told to him. "My name." Casey offered. Another heartbeat passed before realization dawned on Ryland's face, followed by a goofy grin that spread across it so quickly it was almost impossible to watch without staring. "...Hi, Casey." Casey hesitated only a moment before extending one gloved hand that was accepted without space for questioning.
"I'm Ryland."
"I know."
"...Right." A quiet laugh escaped him. This time, it was Casey's turn to mirror him. Letting out a small snort that lifted a weight off his shoulders. Neither of them let go immediately. For the first time in longer than Casey cared to remember, the thought of starting over didn't feel like an impossible fantasy.
Maybe…
It was something that could begin with nothing more complicated than learning a stranger's name.