aiden richards . (brokenrules) wrote in exsanguious, @ 2015-10-26 16:53:00 |
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In all the months he'd been here, the side streets and back alleys of San Luis Obispo had grown familiar. Aiden could walk them with his eyes closed if he had to. By daylight, by the stark yellow of the street lights at night, in that hazy grey light just before dawn when he could almost feel the sun hovering below the horizon. He knew the feel of the pavement under his boots, the way the air tasted at night, the way the sounds of the city night life ebbed and flowed as the hours rolled by. The way it breathed. It was a rare thing to stay in one place long enough to feel it in his bones like this. Aiden couldn't remember the last time, if there had ever been one, and that feeling was becoming like a sixth sense as he patrolled at night, and he was learning to trust it.
And so when it started to change, when the energy shifted, he felt it.
He couldn't put words to the feeling, not yet. Maybe not ever. But something had changed in a way that he hadn't felt before, something like more eyes searching in the darkness, like the city holding its breath. Waiting for something. Looking for something. He felt it even when the shadows were empty, felt the uneasy itch of eyes on him even when he turned to find nobody there. There was a kind of tension all the time now, it was in those dark alleys before he reached them and it followed him out when he left. Aiden was starting to feel like he was waiting for something, too.
He'd been here too long to ignore that feeling, even if he wanted to. And he did want to, he wanted to let it wash over him and pass him by, he wanted to leave patrolling in the night where it belonged and spend his days in that half-approximation of normal he and Lucky had carved out. He wanted to pretend, the way they'd always been able to, because each moment of feeling almost normal and happy together could be the last they ever got. But he'd been doing all this too long, he'd been a Slayer too long to just push his instincts aside. They intruded on everything now.
He was waiting, the whole city was waiting, the darkness and the shadows holding their breath for something that might or might not come. Might or might not reveal itself to him when it did. Might or might not be more than a Slayer's keen senses in overdrive, a city on the edge after so many disasters, a creeping and uneasy sense of mortality. Might be more than all that. Aiden walked his patrol and felt eyes in the darkness, and he waited.