Chapter Text
Louis had invited Niall around for a study session, and really, he ought to have known that there would be literally no studying involved. When Niall came round with armfuls of snacks and his entire DVD collection crammed under one arm, Louis’ suspicions were confirmed. They were both lazy university students who despised studying; the only real difference between them was that while Louis was willing to force himself to work, Niall never bothered – and he always got better grades anyway, which was an endless source of frustration for Louis.
“I’ve got a bunch of great new movies, Lou; you’re gonna love ‘em,” Niall proclaimed as they stepped into Louis’ untidy and not very large living room. He couldn’t afford anything much bigger, but it was just as well, really; he was incredibly forgetful and if his flat was any bigger, chances were he’d probably get lost in it. Or at least lose most of his possessions.
Niall was a permanently excited nineteen-year-old; Irish, rosy-cheeked, loving life and hating work. Louis wasn’t sure why the blond had ever enrolled in university in the first place – unless it was because he knew he could get away with doing literally nothing and come out with absolutely perfect scores in every test he ever took. He was taller than Louis, and his eyes were the colour of ink that had leaked from a broken biro, interspersed with flecks of moss green around the middle. The combination was a pair of the prettiest eyes Louis had ever seen, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Most of the time, Niall acted high as a kite even though the only drug he regularly consumed was caffeine; he swore obnoxiously in every conversation like curse-words were an irreplaceable part of his vocabulary and slipped in as naturally as taking a breath; he rarely went anywhere without some kind of food in his mouth and he liked to wear loose jeans or Chinos that hung halfway down his backside so that Louis was ninety per cent sure he could pick out every pair of boxers Niall had ever owned from a line-up of underwear in a pants factory, simply because he got such an unabashed view of them every time Niall walked in front of him – which, as they were late for almost everything and Niall was usually the one hurrying ahead to try and get there on time, happened an awful lot. He was Louis’ best friend, and he had announced that this would be the case from the moment that Louis had walked into their university common room and fallen over Niall’s feet, which were sticking out halfway into the room because he had such long legs and was lying sprawled lazily on a sofa not bothering to keep track of his gangly limbs. It was an unusual start to a friendship, to be hauled to your feet after falling over someone and be cheerfully told, “That was fucking brilliant, I’ve never met someone so clumsy in all my life, let’s be friends!”, but Niall was a good best friend, even if he did have somewhat of an obsession with horror movies, talked with his mouth full and had a slight flatulence problem, so Louis didn’t really object to the situation. He couldn’t really afford to. He hadn’t had very many friends over the years, let alone ones as nice as Niall.
Louis was twenty-one, about a half a head shorter, to his annoyance, brown haired, had forget-me-not blue irises never wore socks, told stupid jokes 24/7, had come to university without really thinking about the logistics of studying for four years and getting into massive debt at the end of it, and worked in a nearby pub on Saturday evenings, which worked out extremely well for both of them, because Louis gave Niall ridiculous discounts on everything and Niall gave Louis ridiculously generous tips for doing pretty much nothing at all other than be his mate, which barely made the discounts worthwhile because Niall had pretty much paid the same amount for his booze at the end of the evening. Not that Louis was going to point this out. When he laughed hard enough, he got crinkles around his eyes. He was often described as being quite feminine, and punched anyone who said so. And he despised the thought of growing up more than anything else in the world, but woke up every morning and realised he was already there.
“Yeah, I bet,” Louis said sourly, shoving past his friend and tossing his keys onto the table, where they landed on top of a pile of homework that was probably due in for tomorrow and which he still hadn’t done, although he’d got it out of his bag just to show willing. “Just like last time. I fell asleep, didn’t I?”
“It hadn’t got to the good bit,” answered Niall defensively, “and you couldn’t possibly know if it was good or not; you were watching it with your eyes closed.”
“Funnily enough, that’s what usually happens when you’re sleeping. An unfortunate side effect. Listen, however much I’d love to subject myself to watching shitty films with you, there’s a little thing normal people do, called studying. It’s kind of a necessity for people who don’t manage to retain every scrap of information going without even listening to it first, so either you help me revise, or you get out.”
Niall didn’t answer him. He just turned on the puppy eyes, fixing Louis with a gaze that could melt a heart of stone like ice cream, and that after almost a year, Louis still hadn’t gained any form of immunity to. He tried to avoid the stare, but everywhere he went, he could feel it burning into his back.
Right now, Louis was torn between doing the responsible thing, which was studying for his end of term algebra test, which would undoubtedly result in his brain turning into soup and pouring out through his ears and leaving an almighty mess for him to clean up later – or the irresponsible thing, which was to let Niall put on one of the many installments of his collection of horror movies so he could watch a simulated brain turn to soup and leak out through someone else’s ears, and the only mess he’d need to clean up afterwards would be popcorn crumbs. Studying maths at university had been one of the worst decisions of his life, granted, but failing it would be an even worse decision. Also, Niall’s taste in movies was abysmal. Therefore, out of both potential ideas offered to him, studying was clearly the better option.
Of course, Louis was not exactly renowned for choosing the better option.
With a sigh, he collapsed down onto his sofa, running his fingers through his quiff and then wishing he hadn’t; it took an awful lot of hairspray to get it to stand up in the first place, and he’d just thoroughly destroyed it. Groaning resignedly, he swept an assortment of textbooks off the table with his bare foot as a display of rebellion, yawned, stretched, then threw a pillow at Niall and reached for an open packet of Doritos that had been waiting for him to finish eating them for about a week. He tasted one experimentally, and it wasn’t that stale, so he continued chewing the ‘orange cardboard triangles’, as his mother liked to call them, and cast Niall a dirty look across the room. The blond was looking far too excited; he dimmed the lights and skipped over to the TV, swinging a plastic carrier bag filled with snacks with reckless abandon and almost whacking Louis over the head with it.
Louis rubbed his blue eyes. “If I fail my end of term maths paper, I’ll blame you, I hope you realize that.”
“You won’t fail!” Niall announced in a cheery, lilting tone, his Irish accent making the words sound oddly musical as usual. He oozed optimism. In their first few weeks of friendship, Louis had found it refreshing. After that, it had started to irritate him a little bit. “Staying up and watching movies isn’t going to affect your grade, Lou. It’s nearly the end of term! We get six weeks off after this. Relax a little bit.”
Grumbling at him, Louis crammed more Doritos into his mouth so he wouldn’t be tempted to hurl insults or make allusions to the fact that Niall could stumble out of bed twenty minutes before an exam was due to start, spend fifteen minutes eating breakfast, stagger onto campus just in time to enter the exam hall with everyone else and come swaggering out with an excellent grade at the end of it. He chewed, he swallowed, and then demanded, “What are we watching, anyway?”
“Slenderman,” Niall told him as he popped the disk into the DVD player. “It’s based on that legend, you know, the one with the role-playing game? I tried to show you, remember, but you hit me and wouldn’t watch me play,” he said mournfully.
Louis cast him an incredulous glance. “That was because we were in the middle of an IT assessment!” he hissed. IT was another of the subjects he heartily wished he hadn’t taken. “Not a good time to show me some nerdy fantasy game with low-quality graphics and an even lower quality plot, Niall. You do choose your moments to try and drag me into your obsessions.”
Wrinkling his nose, Niall threw himself onto the sofa and pulled Louis’ duvet over their legs from where he had left it on the floor after falling asleep in front of the TV the night before. “Whatever. Better than working, isn’t it? Anyway, Slenderman is seriously cool. It’s about this creepy spirit or monster or something – nobody really knows what he is – and he doesn’t have a face. He’s really tall and thin, and he dresses all in black.”
“Sounds like Mr. Connoway,” Louis joked, referring to one of their less liked teachers.
“Ha, ha,” said Niall sourly. “Anyway, this Slenderman goes around in the dead of night, picks his victims, and then he stalks them, following them around for weeks on end, sometimes even months. You see him out of the corner of your eye, or in reflections, or as a shadow, or hear weird noises. First it makes you a bit jumpy, then the paranoia kicks in until you’re terrified of everything and everyone; the slightest little noise makes you think Slenderman is coming for you. No matter how many people you tell, nobody believes you; they all laugh and nobody listens, because nobody believes Slenderman exists. He won’tlet them believe. And then eventually, it drives you mad.” He tilted his head to one side and widened his eyes impressively. “Then, in the middle of the night, after he’s driven you round the bend, he comes for you, and takes you away, and nobody ever sees you again.”
Louis rolled his eyes; Niall’s voice had dropped to a whisper, and then the menu screen blossomed across the TV screen, a greyish black background with white titles and supposedly eerie music playing in the background that just made Louis snort dismissively, and Niall started flicking through the options, looking incredibly excited.
Then the movie started, and Louis could tell from the first few clunky notes of dreary piano music that it was going to be one of the worst films he’d ever seen.
~*~
By the time the end credits were scrolling across the screen, Louis had come to the conclusion that he would have been far better off studying for the algebra test after all, and it would have been a far more productive and less boring use of his time if he had done. Niall had been thrilled by the film; Louis had laughed at the jerky CGI animation used to make the Slenderman, giggled all the way through the first victim’s struggle with insanity (but really, who was driven mad by a few squeaky doors and the odd flicker of shadow out of the corner of their eye?) and when the final girl had defeated the Slenderman after being chased through an old, empty house by knocking over a grandfather clock and crushing him, Niall had stared in open-mouthed admiration while Louis gloomily scoured the bottom of the popcorn bowl for crumbs.
“How great was that?” Niall asked proudly, popping the DVD out and sliding it back into its box. “Did you see the bit where Slenderman drove that guy mad, and he pulled the other guy’s head off? That was totally cool.”
“Cheesy,” Louis corrected, “and like I said, the graphics were terrible. Definitely not worth failing my test. You’re not going home until we’ve gone through this entire last module we just studied, and I don’t care what time it is tomorrow morning when we finish; you’re not leaving this house until I’ve studied.”
Niall rolled his eyes and switched the TV off. “Fine, fine, whatever. Hey, can you imagine! What if old Slendy does exist? How wicked would that be?”
“Not very. They’d probably lock him in a zoo, poor guy. Anyway, creatures like that belong in rubbish, low-budget movies, not the real world. Now where’s my algebra textbook?”
“If he was real, he’d come after you,” Niall muttered. “You saw the movie. Slendy always comes after people who don’t believe in him.”
“Oh, I’m quaking in my boots. You’re so gullible, it’s laughable. Really. Come on, idiot, get your head back in the real world and help me study, right?” To get his point across, Louis whacked Niall lightly across the back of the head with the textbook he’d just pulled out from under the sofa.
~*~
Outside the window, a dark figure was crouched in the flowerbed, almost bent double with one hand flattened against the glass, staring silently in. He was wearing black trousers and a black jacket, and his form was as substantial as a shadow; his face blurred, as if you were looking at it through an unfocused magnifying glass. Trying to look at it hard enough to get a good look at him gave you a splitting headache. He didn’t make a sound as he watched the two boys inside, boredly flicking through the darker haired boy’s maths book.
The blond seemed more apathetic, his thoughts filled with food and sleep and girls and films. He looked sleepy and kept rubbing his eyes like he was struggling to keep them open. Whether he would make it home tonight was debatable; he would probably end up curling up on the brunette’s sofa. But he was of no consequence; just a bystander who would be forgotten and mean very little in the grand scheme of things.
It was the brunet who had piqued the figure’s interest. His forehead was furrowed with concentration, tongue poking out of his mouth as he intensely studied the papers in front of him. He had very blue eyes. He was tired, but doing his utmost not to acknowledge his exhaustion. And the loneliness that poured off him in great, thick waves was so tangible that the figure could taste it on his tongue, hear it singing to him like the saddest melody he’d ever heard. It had been a long time since he’d heard a song quite so lonely – in fact, the only time he ever remembered hearing anything more melancholy, more desolate than the song that was echoing through the streets from the boy with the icy blue eyes was on the rare occasions when he’d listened to his own. Very rarely had he ever heard his own soul’s song; usually he listened to other people’s because his own was so full of misery and disquiet. But there came rare occasions when he was so far from civilization that there were no other songs to hear, and he’d rather ache with the terrible sound of his own loneliness than sit in silence.
Focusing on the boy, he wondered, as he always did, whether he was doing the right thing. To frighten a stranger so intensely, as he always seemed to. But in the end, the outcome made the method seem worth it, no matter how terrified the human was beforehand.
It always began by attracting the person’s attention, once he’d found them and listened to their song. He’d heard it once, he’d recognize it anywhere. Bowing his head in regret, a silent apology for the distress he would cause, the figure raised his hand and tapped twice on the window pane with a long, slender finger.
The two boys inside looked up instantly, heads jerking in surprise, but he’d already torn himself away from the window, whipping away and becoming insubstantial shadows that clung to the wall of the house and poured down, sticky and disgusting, but not to leave a trace once he’d gone. Still, he made sure that the boy with the brown hair looked up first, quickly enough to just about see the very edge of a trail of darkness flickering in his peripheral vision before vanishing away from the window. As substantial as smoke, the figure evaporated into thin air and nothing else with the sound of a faint whisper, leaving not a trace behind that he had ever been there other than the slightest memory from the brown haired boy of a slight flicker in the corner of his eye.
“What?” asked Niall.
“Nothing. I thought I saw…nothing.”
“Was that a branch knocking on the window, or something?”
“I suppose it must have been.”
Shrugging, Niall turned back to the book he wasn’t really paying attention to, instantly dismissing the noise, but Louis frowned and wandered over to the window, pulling one of the slightly drawn curtains back and peeking around it, looking out onto the street. Pools of garish orange light formed underneath every streetlamp, and around them, the rest of the night was inky black, as if someone had thrown orange paint onto black paper. He could just about make out the silhouette of a couple of rhododendron bushes, waving slightly in the breeze. There was nobody outside at this time of night, not even any drunken students making their way home after a night out. It was perfectly quiet, perfectly still, and that’s why the slight movement out of the corner of his eye made absolutely no sense.
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, deciding that tiredness must be to blame. Staying up watching movies and then studying and getting up early to do even more studying must be taking its toll. So he drew the curtains and, as an afterthought, locked the front door, because of course he wasn’t expecting any kind of danger from anything that a locked door wouldn’t deter.