Chapter Text
Frank swung open the door to Julie’s locker, pointedly ignoring the old photographs taped to the inside that were faded and dirty, torn at the corners. His hands shook wildly as he tore through her things: an old hoodie that still vaguely smelled like Julie behind its musty dampness; an unopened bottle of her favorite soda; a blank tape. At first, Frank had decided to be careful with her things, but as he dug deeper into the pile, he became frantic, grunting and throwing her shit onto the grimey floor.
Going through Julie’s things was a last resort, a desperate, impulsive decision brought on by a furiously addled mind. The ski resort had been practically picked clean by the Legion during their extended stay in The Fog, but Frank had decided to leave Julie’s locker as it was, preferring to avoid the memories that were bound to be inside. He wasn’t wrong. There were a lot of photos, taken with disposable cameras and stashed in a flimsy almost-disintegrated envelope. When he tossed the package over his shoulder, it dashed photos of the group all over the floor, a picture of him and Julie sliding to his feet.
Finally, at the very back, he found what he was looking for. He grabbed for the crumbled pack of cigarettes and upturned it. Only one left.
“Fffuck. Fuck, fuck.”
Whatever, good enough. Frank ripped the hood back from his head and peeled off his mask, carelessly letting it clatter to the floor. His fingers were trembling so badly that he had trouble putting the cigarette between his lips as he made his way to the couch in front of the wood stove. He pulled a lighter from his jacket, lit up, and threw that as well.
The impossibly long drag he took burned his throat and stormed his lungs but he didn’t care about anything beyond the hit of nicotine and the way the stick felt on his mouth. Frank wasn’t a smoker. Never had been. This was probably his last of a handful of impulsive temptations with the things. Julie smoked, and the last one he could remember bumming from her was the night when The Fog had crept up on them and stolen Frank from his miserable life in Ormond. Since then, Frank’s jacket always smelled of Julie’s cigarettes, and it drove him fucking insane.
He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and then dragged his fingers up through his hair, raking at his scalp, letting out a long, shuddering sigh and a puff of smoke. The sofa cushions coughed up a cloud of dust motes as Frank swung his legs up and angled his hand behind his head, laying against the couch’s arm. For the first time what felt like forever, his mind was unrecognizably and blissfully blank. The cigarette hung loosely from his dry lips, the length turning into ash as he simply let it burn away, listening to the crackle of the fire and the wind blow through the lodge.
Ormond was so
fucking
lonely.
Julie, Susie, and Joey left a long time ago. Frank couldn’t even say when, given that time didn’t really exist in The Fog. In between trials, all Frank had to do was bide his time, alone, picking through the scraps of his old life and drowning in his own, solitary thoughts. It was purgatory. Torture. His favorite place in the world was now his prison, even with its pleasant woody scent and the peaceful snowfall.
He could have tried to find the rest of The Legion — he wanted to, of course. But every time he thought about it, Frank would ultimately come to the same conclusion. They’d left because they resented him, and they were right to; being stuck here was Frank’s fault after all. This was his atonement for all his thoughtlessness, his selfishness, and every other fucked up quality he’d inherited from childhood trauma. It wasn’t just what he’d done that’d landed them all in Hell, it was who he was . And when Julie realized that, after being stuck in this The Fog for eternity, she checked out, and took Susie and Joey with her.
Frank let himself wallow in the lonely confines of the ski lodge, trying everything to forget the others, hoping that the passage of time would wipe away their memories like it’d done to those photographs Julie taped inside her locker. But time stretched on and on between trials. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was reminiscing, or thinking about walking past the edges of the resort into the forest, to chase Julie and beg her to come back. In his old life, his friends were all he was — Frank’s legacy, the only thing he was ever good for. Now even they were gone, and all he was good for was laying around feeling sorry for himself, and endlessly sacrificing the same faces to The Entity.
That is, until you showed up.
Frank ran his fingertips lightly over the couch, trying to soak up any little remnants of you that you could have left behind on it. An image of you flashed through his mind: arching your back up off the cushion, covered in blood, neck burning violet from the hickey he gave you, and that moan , god, that fucking pretty moan in your pretty voice.
He brushed ash from his jacket and took the cigarette between his fingers, tracing his lips with it, fixating on the picture of your lips he’d seared into his mind. He’d kissed you so much in those Macmillan woods that he thought he’d be able to feel your mouth on his forever. So soft, breathy, the way your lips seemed to slot perfectly into his…
“Shit…”
Frank balled his fingers into a fist, letting his nails cut tiny crescents into his palm. The cigarette was supposed to help him relax, but even in his calmer moments, he couldn’t stop thinking about you .
It was making him crazy. It’d been making him crazy for too long now, ever since that first time he saw you. God, there was just something about you; he could smell it on you as he chased you through the trees, over window sills, around and around like an out-of-control carousel. Through the pinholes in his mask, he’d watched you, strangely drawn to the shape of your legs as they carried you along, and the sparks in your eyes as they flashed their gaze at him. At first it felt like a carnal fascination, like when a cat finds a spider. Frank couldn’t help but revel in it.
He loved seeing you in his trials. There was something exciting about being challenged for once, and the thrill he got from chasing you in particular made his hair stand on end and his skin tingle. It was an exercise for his body and mind. Even when he was back at Ormond, he would replay his matches with you in his memory: you in that knit sweater, your features peeking over your shoulder with a taunting stare.
But that thrilling excitement didn’t last forever. When you started beating him trial after trial, he’d end up back at the lodge fuming, pacing the rickety wooden floors and hating the way he kept seeing your face when he closed his eyes.
It was fun when it felt like a game, when seeing you felt like a refreshing rainfall. But Frank began to drown in you, consumed in images of you that flashed constantly in his head. Before he knew it, all his waking hours were spent thinking about you -- not only how he wanted to bury his knife in your chest, but how he wanted to bury his nose in your hair and kiss the slope of your neck. What would it feel like to finally catch you and latch your thighs around him, pressing into you, clinging onto the dips and curves of your body? He was aching to know. It was tearing him up.
When the Entity granted him a shot at you, he thought that would be enough, that you’d stop bothering him with your annoying fucking presence. But the more he saw you, the more he wanted you. Especially after Macmillan, something… something felt wrong . Frank felt shrunken up inside, like his guts had turned to beef jerky. And he was sure the Entity was punishing him for something, because it had felt like a lifetime since you’d laid there in the woods together, post-fuck, drunk on your orgasms and talking. Maybe you’d both enjoyed yourselves too much, and the penance was time apart.
The absence felt like withdrawal. Frank was starting to shake constantly, feeling a chill that was never there before, even though he basically lived inside of a blizzard. He couldn’t stop moving, tapping his heels, pulling his knuckles. He couldn’t sleep; he kept thinking about you under him and on top of him and feeling the ghost of your body pressing against his skin. Ormond was a snowglobe of a waking, living nightmare and you were the monster stalking him through the mountain.
So the cigarette… It was supposed to help. It was his last ditch effort, and now it was gone. Frank let the butt fall out of his fingers to the raggedy rug beneath the couch and turned his face to the fire. If he closed his eyes, he could see your head resting on his chest, feel your hand splayed on his stomach, with the scent of your shampoo and your sweat filling his nose.
“What’s up with you and that girl?” You’d asked.
“What?” He asked flatly, not exactly interested in your out of the blue question. Or any question, really. But he’d humored everything else that came out of your mouth, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t hate talking to you.
“The one who matches you. The other Legion.”
Frank let time tick by, your question chewing away at him, his chest clenching in an annoying and painful sting. He had no way of knowing whether or not Julie or the rest of them were still around. Maybe they’d somehow escaped The Fog, who the fuck knows. But this was his confirmation -- Julie, Susie, and Joey were still out there. Somewhere. Choosing every moment to not come back to Ormond.
“The fuck do you care?” he snapped, his volume a stark contrast against the steady silence of the forest. He wondered if you were jealous. Frank and Julie’s matching outfits were a pretty cheesy dead giveaway that they were together. Were -- the night they wandered into the Entity’s clutches. Then came the days and days and fucking days of arguing and fights and the two of them punching everything in fucking sight. It truly was Hell.
Who were you to be jealous, anyway? Were you that emotionally attached that you were getting bothered by competition? Fucking Frank at the end of trials didn’t make you his girlfriend or anything. You were nothing . Just another sacrifice he had to make to survive…
But then he couldn’t help but wonder who you had waiting for you when you’d wake up after a trial. There were so many campers, and you were so… attractive. Everyone would be stupid to not be begging for a piece. For that matter, was Frank the only killer under the Entity’s employ making deals? Maybe you were really getting around; maybe you were The Fog’s bicycle.
Before he could catch himself, Frank heaved a sigh that bobbed your head up with his expanding ribcage, and he clapped his hand over yours and squeezed. He realized he completely missed your answer to his question, but it didn’t matter.
“Hey. Are you fucking anyone else?” he demanded. The inflection was threatening, because there was a wrong answer, and Frank really didn’t want to hear it. The idea of you being with someone else — someone else making you moan and scream, someone else putting their hands on you and bruising you — made his skin bristle. He had no idea why that was, but trying to reason with himself was just making him angrier.
“No,” you replied simply.
“I’m serious --”
“Me too!”
“Alright, quit it,” he grumbled. You obeyed, surprisingly, giving Frank time to think about his next words. “Keep it that way…” If you weren’t already fucking someone else, then you weren’t gonna start. He’d make sure of it, no matter what it took.
He tightened his grip on your hand before unfurling his fingers and letting his hand rest lazily on top of yours. He couldn’t figure out why he was saying the things he was saying, but he brushed his fingers through your hair, and the words settled in his stomach, like they just felt right . This felt right: lying in the grass, moon-rimmed clouds passing overhead, smelling your perfume, and feeling the warmth of you slotted against him.
It felt so good that he hated you for it.
Frank had killed you painlessly that time, for real, and when he felt your life slip from your fingers, he found himself lingering on some sort of goodbye. You were dead, a bag of meat and bones on the ground, but for some reason he felt compelled to kneel for just a bit next to you, brushing fingers down your arm, committing one last look at your face to memory before returning to Ormond. It was like some part of him knew that it would be a long time between then and the next time he’d see you.
It didn’t help -- the goodbye -- because now he was spread out on the couch ( your couch) listlessly watching the fire burn, seeing your eyes, tasting you , hoping at any moment he’d be pulled into a trial and feel you there. What he’d give to see you crouched in a field of corn or running through an empty lab.
“What the fuck?”
What the fuck was he thinking? Who hopes to see a person in a corn field ? Why were you constantly on his mind? It was like some sort of sick joke that the Entity was playing on him. It was probably an unspoken part of the deal -- Frank gets his toy, but the payment was an infinite number of sacrifies and a dumb fucking curse that made him unable to think about anything else but you .
So far it’d been hard fucking work, keeping up with his payments. Ever since that first encounter with you in Ormond, Frank had been running his ass off in every single trial, sacrificing nearly every single person he saw. He’d chase until his lungs burst and his toes bled, gripping his knife so hard that his forearm sometimes felt numb. Unlike the survivors, the killers didn’t have the luxury of waking up healed. If they got hurt, they were put out of commission until they were better, which would be great if Frank didn’t have an unspoken quota. He couldn’t afford to wait out his exhaustion. In a way, it worked out, because the trials provided some distraction. Of course, they also provided an outlet for the pure fucking rage that had been building in him that was all your fault .
Idly, Frank grasped the collar of his jacket and lifted the soft fabric of the hoodie to his nose. For a while after you’d laid together in the woods, your scent had clung to the material, and it was terrible and annoying but, fuck was it also great. It was confusing in trials, when he couldn’t be sure if he was smelling you or his own clothes, but when he was back at Ormond, all by his lonesome, some little part of you holding onto some little part of him felt… comforting. It’d been so long that the scent was pretty much gone. If just one particle still remained, Frank needed it right now. He just did .
By some luck — or maybe it was his imagination — he caught a whiff of you this time, memories of you rushing back into him. Well, not memories exactly, but more just the general feel of you. It made his fingers itch like they wanted to wrap around something that wasn’t there. He could feel your hair lightly brushing across his lips, feel your hot breath in his mouth, feel the presence of your shape against his like a warm ghost. How was it possible to feel full but empty at the same time? Your comfort was just a harsh reminder of how rough and jagged Frank felt, like filling the center of a nail bomb with cotton. It didn’t matter how soft the recollections of you were. It didn’t change a thing about Frank.
But, god , were you soft. He ran the fingertips of his left hand over the fingers of his right, a delicate tickling that was just a poor imitation of the way you’d touched his hand in the Estate. The way you pressed the pads of your fingers into his palm, your nails dancing over the lines of his hand and knuckles, fuck, it drove him fucking crazy. It drove him so nuts that all he could do was stand there, shocked by his own enjoyment. Frank liked everything fast and hard, so why did he love when you took it slow? Why did he like the way you looked at him, like every little wrinkle in his hand held the secret to the universe? It made him nauseous just thinking about it, how your touch sent bolts of fire burning from his arm to his stomach. The affection in your eyes disgusted him, but all he could think about in that moment was how he wanted to lace his fingers in your hair and kiss you.
He adjusted himself on the couch, shifting deeper into the sunken cushions, letting them nest around him as his hand drifted to his belt. If Frank couldn’t chase you in earnest, then he’d chase the pleasure you brought him by himself… This had become somewhat of a habit, growing more frequent as time marched on, but especially ever since he saw you in that goddamn skirt . He could see it now, bunched up above your hips, his hand under your ass, holding you against the wall. And those fucking thigh high stockings and straps — he was rock hard as soon as he saw you. It was like you’d stepped straight out of a wet dream, you looked so fucking sexy.
He thought back to that trial. Fucking hell. The fire that blazed through Frank’s veins at the sight of you made him soar faster than ever that trial, tearing up grass as he dipped between trees to hunt down your companions. He loved seeing the fear rip through them when they saw how fast he was going. They knew they didn’t stand a chance, but they ran anyway, Frank smiling behind his mask the entire time. He couldn’t wait to get back to you, and everyone else was just in the way .
His hand was gripped around his cock now, lazily yanked out of his underwear and already dripping precum at the mere thought of you in soft, lacy things. The fingers of his other hand went to his lips, in another mediocre imitation of what you’d done, lightly tracing his cupid’s bow, wishing it were your fingers instead. Shame and anger burned in his stomach, disappointed in himself for wanting you, longing for your attention and your affection. It was quickly doused, though, by the electric desire shooting through his body as he stroked himself, slowly — how you’d do it if you were here.
“Sh-sh-shhhit,” he hissed into the empty lodge, his voice pinching as he threw his head back and screwed his eyes shut. Sure, it felt good; Frank obviously knew how to get himself off. But it was only really good because he was pretending it was you, your scalding heat wrapped around his cock, trying to replay your moans through his mind, remembering what it was like to have your nails scratching down his back.
He’d give just about anything to drop into a trial with you right now. Fuck the other survivors, fuck the location, fuck the generators, and the stupid game itself, Frank wanted you and only you . He wanted to feel your skin on his, your legs pulling him into you, your hands bunching in the collar of his hoodie and mashing your mouth against his. His switched to trying to fuck up into his hand, imagining that somehow you could drop from the ceiling and be on top of him, but your weight was sorely missed, so he resolved to just pump himself faster.
Sad realization was dawning on him, not for the first time, but debilitating all the same. Really, no matter what he did, it wasn’t gonna feel as good as you, and that was fucking infuriating. You were… you were…
You were fucking full of it. Everything had to be about you lately. What was it about you, exactly? Were you hot shit just because you made Frank cum a few times? Because he’d made you cum? You thought you were special, just because he picked you? No. You were just a pretty little thing to stick his dick in, that’s all. He could cum with or without you, and —
Frank picked up the rhythm, setting a furious pace, huffing with ragged breaths through gritted teeth.
“ F-fuck you — you — hah — fffuck, ” he panted.
“ Gonna f-fucking ki… kill y-you — I’ll fucki — god… Gonna kill you, gonna k — cum… ”
Steam clouds puffed into the air as Frank screamed, yelling through his orgasm, rage blistering in his voice. Cum launched and poured out of him, covering his hand and all his clothes from the waist down. He apathetically let his hand fall over the side of the sofa, his own fluids dripping to the floor, as he stared into the fire again. Boredom, exhaustion, and loneliness set in again almost instantly, but it was all studded now with a little something extra.
Frank was done — utterly and fully fed up with letting you control him. You were everywhere, from his head to his toes, slowly eating away at him like thousands of tiny termites. His heart was alight with bloodlust. Mere moments ago he would have cut off his own leg to be with you, but now he’d do it just to kill you. He wanted to wrap his hands around your throat and watch the life leave your eyes as you stared back at his mask. He thought he had it figured out — that if he could have you in trials, he could leave you there and you wouldn’t follow him back to Ormond anymore. As much as he hated to admit he was wrong, that obviously wasn’t working.
Frank would have to take a different approach. Letting you escape, and fucking you were off the table. The only thing left to do was to kill you.