Lucas Moves In

He stared intensely, not flinching nor straying from the point he was focused on. His target moved a little, near a metre away, breathing quietly. Lucas had moved himself in to Captain's household not long over a couple of hours ago. By the time Lucas had set himself up on the living room couch, it had become night time and everyone had gone to sleep. All except for Captain.

Lucas had come from a crime group, all sorts of sewer like smells wafting off of him and on to the furniture, although it wasn't a sewer it was a wet, dirty bunker. Captain thought this was close enough and left that train of thought where it stood, focusing back on Lucas who was suddenly staring back at him.

"Were you watching me sleep?" Alarmed, he sat up.

"Yes." Captain didn't want to beat around the bush here so he cut straight to the point, "Are you scared of me?"

"No, should I be?" Lucas looked at him, returning the stare. Neither of them flinching.

"Yes."

"Any why would that be?" Lucas tilted his head to his right.

"Let's not waste any more time here and cut to the chase. I don't like you. I think you know that and if not, you are worse than I thought. I know your past, I've spoken to the people you call friends and frankly, I don't want that sort of a person living in the same house as me." He fixed his stare once again, making Lucas shifted a little.

"If you ever decide to hurt any member of this household in any way, shape, or form, I will not hesitate to hurt you. You might be thinking, 'this idiot doesn't know what he's talking about. He wouldn't be able to hurt a fly.' And just in case, I'd love to enlighten you on that front, I can't list specifics but I can estimate. I have injured a grand total of around 30 people or more in my lifetime so far. That might not be a grand feat to your kind but I like to hold it as a bit of an achievement. I have now, murdered a total of two people. Both of which decided to get in my way and didn't want to move. And if that's not enough, try this for size, I have almost died on multiple occasions and am quoted as being 'annoyingly hard to kill.' If that's no incentive to stay out of my way then I don't know what is. Ah, I know. What about if you decide to snitch on me, to anyone, I take down you and your entire little 'crime family'? How's that?"

Lucas sat there, not daring to move. "Is that a threat?"

Captain laughed, something which he doesn't do much. Lucas flinched and leaned back in shock. It was almost a cackle of sorts, probably from how little it happened.

"My god- Yes! It's a threat! I am threatening you! Are you dense?!" He held the bridge of his nose in place of a face palm. "Thanks for the laugh, have fun trying to sleep. I'm going to go have insomnia somewhere else." With that, he left Lucas alone in the living room. With nothing he could do.

Lucas was used to being intimidated by others, most of the time this consisted of him just being scared of them or deciding they were not someone he wanted to be around. But this, this was different. He had never actively had someone trying to intimidate him. Lucas lingered on the fact that this was his first time being intimidated in his entire career of crime on the other hand, he acknowledged that he wasn’t really a major part of the group and even then, he wasn’t one of the ‘crime doers’ in the first place. He stopped to think about the type of person who was threatening him. Normally it was just some random person, begging for their life in some sort of attempt to threaten him. A train echoed outside, its whale like screech shaking the windows. Lucas wasn’t normally scared but this particular encounter had shaken him. He started talking to himself in a quiet mumble. “I don’t know what to do, normally I don’t get scared easily but this- is it because of his face? Maybe, could it be his whole personality? I mean, who knows what he’s done- except for what he told me.” He couldn’t place his finger on it but something was different here. “Could it be that Caspian- a professional, was even not smart enough- or brave enough for that matter- to actually kill him? It’s probably that. I don’t have the guts to do that, or the stomach for it.” He quieted down as the train stopped screeching. “I know for a fact I shouldn’t attack him, he would overpower me in an instant, he looks like he’s gotten into a load of fights and I haven’t, at all. Maybe I can do something though, because when someone threatens you, you do something back to show that you don’t care about their threat. That shows them who’s boss.”

He thought about the kid that Captain’s friend was taking care of. “No, I can’t do that.” He quickly brushed off the idea of anything to do with her. “This is my fight. I’ll fight it my way.” He nodded to himself and sat up, putting on a coat and leaving through the front door, closing it quietly.

Walking in the night after being threatened by someone equally as intimidating as a murder plays on one’s mind. Lucas could see his breath in the cold winter night, Aiko would love this weather, he thought. Lucas sighed, thinking about Aiko and the others was making him miss them a little, convenient as this was where he was heading. He walked out of the city and through the bush on an old overgrown track towards the highway where the group’s bunker was located. When he got there, he knocked on the door and was greeted by Waylon.

“Welcome back, Lucas. It’s good to see you.” He said, with a flat face as he opened the door and Aiko joined them, Waylon leaving as soon as she showed up.  “What’s up Luca?” Aiko smiled widely, she knew he took offense to her calling him Luca. Lucas took a breath, “I wouldn’t tell you but I need to so here goes. You know that half burnt crisp of a human being that Caspian was after?”

“Yeah, what about him?”

“He threatened me, about half an hour ago.”

“Huh.” Aiko shrugged. “So, what’s the big deal?”

“What- What do you mean what’s the big deal?! If you guys do anything, and I mean anything, he’s probably going to kill me!” He waved his arms to emphasize his point.

Aiko laughed, tilting her head backwards and raising her arms. “HA! I know! You think that I care?”

“I’D HOPE SO.”

“Okay, well, fine. I’ll send out Lorelei, she can keep an eye on him I guess. Why were you talking to him anyway?”

“No reason. He came up to me. He hates my guts.”

“See you around Luca. Have fun with your murderer friend!” Aiko waved as he left, closing the door. When he got up the path there were footsteps behind him and he couldn’t see for a moment. “GUESS WHO? ~”

“GET OFF LORELEI.” He ripped her hands off of his face and moved further away from her. “WHY DID AIKO SEND YOU?”

“Because! ~” She sung.

“She definitely sent you on a secret mission to annoy me.” Lucas mumbled.

“What?” Lorelei turned to him.

“Nothing.”

It was a short walk back but it felt like it took forever because of Lorelei’s sing-song voice and her endless screeching. Lucas could swear he had gone partly deaf by the time he got back to the house. He shooed Lorelei away to try to be able to stay low and go back inside in peace, she was quieter by herself anyway. Lucas opened the door as he thought of an excuse to why he was out so late, he often was not very imaginative and struggled with coming up with excuses almost on the daily so he had written some down on a sliver of paper which he hid in his pocket. He took it out as he closed the door and settled back down where he was set up. It was quiet once again.

The silence was eerie, no one was up, or so he thought and there was no wind or trains outside to make any noise. He continued to browse through the options of excuses until he found one which he liked, putting the paper back in his pocket he laid back and went to sleep.

Early the next morning he heard loud talking coming from the next room over. It was Lila, on the phone with someone. “So, when will it be done? Wait- sorry, I mean when will you be here to put it in.” there was a pause. “Oh, okay. So, ten? Alright. Bye.” She put the phone down and noticed Lucas looking at her. “Hello! Good morning.”

“Good morning to you too.” He thought for a moment. “Who was that?”

“I was just on a call with a company that installs security cameras. There was a lot of noise nearby last night and I thought I should see if I can get some so that we can see what it was.”

Lucas’ eyes widened. “Uh- well it might have been me. I was- uhh-”

“I was out!” He raised his voice more than he had wanted to. ‘Nice job Lucas, totally not suspicious at all.’ He ‘complimented’ himself.

“Alright. Well, I’m still getting them anyway because I already paid for them. Maybe just tell me when you are going out late beforehand so that I can know in advance?”

“Okay.”

Lila gave Lucas a thumbs up and a big smile on her way up the stairs behind him, halfway up the stairs she turned back and shouted, “Oh! By the way, I think Captain said he wanted to talk to you? Just keep an ear out for that I guess.”

Lucas shuddered. ‘What now?’ He thought, ‘surely it wouldn’t be about yesterday. Maybe if I’m lucky, it’ll be an apology?’ He scoffed, ‘Yeah right. As if someone like that would apologize to anyone who’s ever existed.’ He could hear faint talking up stairs and could make out a few words. “Is Lucas-““Yeah” “What do you want?” “No, don’t do that.” “Fine.”

“Just be nice, okay?” he could hear that one as clear as day. ‘Just be nice’ wasn’t very comforting. He debated whether to run away before anyone could come down the stairs, whether to block them or whether to stay. He reluctantly decided to stay and see through what was going to happen. He breathed in and tried to prepare himself, trying to look tough as he always did.

The footsteps on the stairs were louder, Lucas fiddled with the piece of paper which he unconsciously took out of his pocket, this was taking too long. He stood up and met, eye to eye with Captain. ‘I’m in for it.’ He thought, coughing dryly. “Hello.”

“Don’t ‘hello’ me, you traitor.”

“What?”

“-God you are painful to deal with. Don’t act like you don’t know what you did.”

Lucas looked at him, straying away from his stare when he looked back.

“It hasn’t even been twenty four hours and you’ve already broken one of the two promises you made by living here.”

“Which one?” Then he realized. Not even an hour after he had been threatened, he told the entirety of the group what was going on. He hadn’t even realized he’d done it. “-Oh.” Lucas noticed himself shivering a little. “-Oh no. I didn’t mean to-”He was cut off mid-sentence by a stabbing pain in the center of his face and by the time he realized what was happening he was pinned to a wall by his collar with a slow trickle of blood running down his face, he could swear his nose was broken and if not, it was close to broken.

“PEOPLE LIKE YOU MAKE ME SICK.” Lucas blinked, still registering what had happened. His eyes began to water, partially from fear, partially from the pain of his still throbbing nose. Just as he was about to open his mouth to reply there was a figure in the entrance of the room. “HEY!” Suddenly Lila was there, “Hey-” She tried to direct the attention away from Lucas who was now staring, eyes wide. “Hey, look at me.” She directed Captain’s stare to her. “Hey, it’s okay. Lucas shouldn’t have done what he did but this isn’t right either, please, let him go. I know you can do it.” She smiled, worried, with tears in her eyes. There was a long pause.

Eventually, after what felt like eternity he let Lucas go. Lucas slipped out of his grasp, stepped away and held his nose, trying to stop it from hurting. He turned around to see what was happening, Lila had wrapped her arms around Captain in a hug. She was trying not to sob into his sleeve, trying to be the calm one in the situation. There was a long silence. It was evident to Lucas that this happened a lot. Maybe not recently, but Lila seemed to know exactly how to handle the situation. From start to finish, every word seemed to have a purpose, from getting his attention to calming him down in just a matter of seconds. He watched them for a moment, it was interesting. “You can go.” Lucas didn’t know who was talking, he focused and realized it was Captain. “But don’t think that you are off the hook. I’m still keeping an eye on you so don’t do anything stupid.” His face was still bright red and hot while he spoke to Lucas. Purposely not making eye contact, he pointed to the door. Lucas nodded, making his way out. He picked up his jacket on the way.

Lucas had not returned to see how everything had turned out because he didn’t want to make things worse. His nose was still sore but he had gone to the hospital and they had made sure it wasn’t broken, just a large bruise. Since being there, on that day, he has debated more than once, whether or not to leave the group for good. Of course Aiko wouldn’t agree with him leaving, he didn’t care. If these were the sorts of people who they were harming on an almost daily basis he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The people Aiko had murdered, had they had a family? Had they been a part of a crew of doctors, trying to save the world? Or maybe they were just normal people, similar to Lila and Captain, who were having enough trouble surviving in the world as is. He hadn’t been a fan of the crime group ever since he had joined, because of all the blood, violence and generally unforgiving murderers. This however, had hit close to home. He didn’t want to have to deal with splitting up ordinary families or friends anymore, splitting them up felt like the worst thing you could possibly do to a family.

He sat alone, in the park around the corner from the pizza place. It was almost midnight but he didn’t have anywhere to go, he had been kicked out of the bunker as soon as he said he wanted to leave and he didn’t want to risk going back to Lila’s house. There were clouds in the sky, hanging low to the ground and sheltering him from the moonlight. Lucas stood up, dusting himself off and headed to a different part of the park. Waylon had glared at him on his way out of the bunker, as if Lucas had betrayed him. He couldn’t get that image out of his head. Waylon, hating him. His only friend, never wanting anything else to do with him. He sat down in the dirt, covering his face with his hands. Then he started sobbing. There was no one around, the pizza place was closed, the park was empty, and the bunker was locked up, the only other people he knew had said not to visit. He truly was all alone.