Chapter Text
Thunder, but no rain.
Sometimes, a desert brought dry storms like that; something for an otherwise arid area, but tonight just didn’t seem to give it. More like a shadow passing over the land than an actual stormfront. The lack of a moon’s guiding light sure wasn’t helping the young man get back to his hotel room, sick collecting in his throat from one drink too many and his vision well past blurred.
He even figured it might be raining; he sure didn’t know, nor did he really care. A clean hotel bed after a day on the road was all the one-track mind crawled towards. So much so that he didn’t see his shadow grow two feet from under him, merely following him down the walkway to his room.
The shadow, silent in its pursuing for a quiet stretch of outdoor patio leading down the many hotel rooms, was now in front of him. The man jolted, sizing it up as someone well over his size and barely getting a chance to utter the curse out before he lurched forward. Thrown to the floor with a sturdy elbow, just a slight movement from the other man, a sobering train of thought was pulled from him as he hit the ground, almost brushing a motel room door to his left.
“What the fuck-“ He almost wheezed it out, glaring up and having the silhouette fall into place as it crept closer, a wallet chain on his hip swinging ever so slightly with his movement and some hard to read look of disdain on his face. If the night didn’t obscure enough of him, the bill of a hat sure got the rest.
He had recognized him from another horizon he had been earlier, catching scruffy features in the low light. It was someone who had been sitting by when he was stopped by a younger woman, one with a notepad and questions he sure wasn’t interested in answering. He was far more interested in the gentle, floral scent coming from her clothes, and the twinkle in those [y/e/c] eyes, wanting nothing more than to hang onto his words for some motive he since forgot.
Obscenity made him laugh, and he looked up at the dude, like he didn’t know he had noticed her alongside him, possibly jealous he wasn’t the one being singled out. “Oh, Christ. This is about that lil girl I was trying to screw, is it?”
He was stock still, merely watching as he sat up from where he was thrown on the ground, and the man sputtered on his question, “What does that make you, the pressman’s little fuckbuddy? Some sweet ol’ help from behind the wheel? Shit, is that why she’s so curious to start?”
He blew air from his nostrils, barely audible to the man on the ground below him. “I was gonna show her,” He joked, spitting as he spoke, “What a guy can do to people who’re just too curious for their britches.” It only made the man chuckle once more, something untrue that gave him a full pull back from the force of an exhale that came through an adjustment of his shoulders.
It was the only warning before his boot came right down on the disheveled man’s ankle in full force.
“I’m sure you were,” He spoke evenly over the yelp, speaking with a voice as sturdy as his build. He quelled the sound by moving his boot up to his stomach, a sturdy kick that silenced him for good with a debilitating loss of breath. “Her help.” He echoed over the man’s noise of utter pain as he kept moving upwards on the splayed body, a guttural yell that died into coughing as he went above the shoulders with another kick, catching a slight bout of begging under his breath before he came down one last time and the windpipe was crushed.
Still, he cricked his neck, and looked down at the slowing body beneath him. “Guess there’s no point in lyin'. Can take those words right out of your mouth, as a matter of fact:
I just might be.”
He stepped away from the motel, dirt already helping with the dark stains covering his soles, the rest blown away with wind that blew forth, and precipitation starting to turn everything to mud. He looked up, seeing that the weather had changed its mind with soft touches of rain on the bill of his hat.
"That’ll do it. Keep the trouble off the road for the night."