Chapter Text
Mob, as a general rule of thumb, tried not to make a scene while he was out in public. In building up a presence online, spending hours on editing and coding to create a project better than the last, he found himself becoming slightly more of a shut-in as the days passed him by. Outings with real-life friends being rescheduled as he lost himself in content creation were not a rare occasion for Mob — a genuine enjoyment of his craft simply led him to a life of seeing his online friends more than anyone. He was active in communities on Discord and Reddit, projecting a confident character that he struggled to grasp without being behind the ever-present barrier of a computer screen. Even friends who he lived within a pretty reasonable distance of, like Twixxel, were more often seen in Discord calls than anything else. After all, the grind never stops.
Online, he held the advantage; years of modding experience and crowds of people who collectively loved what he could create. He found that the bonds he created in his online servers were just as important to him as the ones he could foster in real life.
This fascination with the online world, however, left him wholly unprepared for the harsh cruelty of reality.
He found himself sprawled out in the middle of the grocery store floor with bags and produce scattered across the ground around him. A can of baked beans leaked its contents atop his freshly retwisted locs, saturating strands of hair until they hung heavy in front of his eyes. He was pretty sure he’d sprained his ankle, and he’d given himself a pretty nasty scrape against the shelves mid-fall — his only mercy was that none of them had fallen.
At least with his hair in front of his eyes, he couldn’t see all the people that were certainly watching him crawl to retrieve his fallen items. He winced in barely restrained agony as he brushed against his throbbing ankle, trying to shake the wetness from his hair as nonchalantly as humanly possible (which is, unfortunately, not at all possible when you’re dripping wet from canned beans).
Mob wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do for dinner now. The pain in his stomach was certainly making itself known; both from accidentally skipping meals and from a crippling sort of anxiety at the amount of eyes on him. If he saw himself on Instagram or whatever later, he’d be pissed the fuck off.
And then he heard a sound. A methodical sound, tapping closer and closer to his location. A person, from the sound of it.
The sound of footsteps drew closer, a swift and measured click of dress shoes making their way over to his spot upon the floor. Mob noticed the people around him backing away to clear a path, murmuring amongst themselves as a sickly yellow, bony hand entered Mob’s field of view.
Mob looked up to a face that looked… wrong. Dark arched brows, a stretched and long face, and pitch black eyes stared back at him with a profound glee that was glaringly inappropriate for the situation Mob was in. He wore a button up and brightly colored suspenders, striped pants making the guy look clown-like in a minorly unsettling way. Something about the way he presented himself made Mob think of all the reasons Mob disliked clowns — the sheer vibrancy of the guy was enough to blind passerby.
“Are you alright? You sure took a tumble there!” The young man chuckled, voice pleasant and warm and despite the inky void of nothingness resting within his eyes. It also sounded… disturbingly familiar, in a way that he didn’t want to place.
Mob felt a little crazy with the parallels he was making in his mind, feeling a sudden need to have some sort of technological detox.
The stranger shook blond strands of hair from their face as he looked down at Mob, a lanky arm pulling him upwards while paying mind to his injured ankle. Mob’s feet left the ground for a second as his entire weight was lifted with a singular hand.
“I can pay for it if you want— There’s no need to worry!”
In a flash, the man had scooped the fallen groceries back into the bag, only leaving spots of leftover sauce behind. Not a very hard task, considering the meager amount of groceries Mob had purchased— he lived alone, after all — but the effort was surprising nonetheless.
“Wait, dude, you really don’t need to—”
“No, really, I insist! You already hurt your leg today, there’s no need to hurt your wallet by rebuying all that. I can cover all of it, no problem!”
Mob was torn between his keeping his pride intact and acting within his own best interest.
With the amount of late-night high Doordash purchases he’d been making, he had no business spending unnecessary money. He had kind of hit the jackpot in the middle of an awful situation, On the other hand… who is this weird looking dude? Also, why does he sound exactly like that bullshit mod he’d installed on his computer?
His inner cheapskate, of course, won out.
“I mean… thanks man? Do you want me to pay you back, or-”
“Nonsense, I’m not exactly strapped for cash!” The stranger began deposited the discarded groceries into a nearby trash bin, beelining towards the canned food aisle with alarming speed. Thank god for this random freaky rich (?) dude — if he wasn’t here, Mob would’ve spent at least another 15 minutes entirely at a loss for what aisle his shit was in.
“I have never had anyone say that to me in this current economy. Should I be looking for a Cybertruck outside, or…?”
“Nothing like that, I’m just… living pretty comfortably at the moment, you know?” The young man had, at this point, gathered everything Mob needed, tucking everything under one freakishly long arm. Mob padded behind him with light footsteps as they made their way back to self-checkout. He made a point of whispering an apology towards the worker that was now cleaning up the sauce spill.
“I really don’t know. Sorry, but good for you, uh…” Mob paused, suddenly at a loss. “Sorry, I didn’t get a name from you.”
The stranger paused for a moment longer than Mob would consider normal.
“Must’ve slipped my mind. I guess if we’re gonna be friends, you’ll need one of those. Call me, uh… Vincent.”
Mob had no memory of agreeing to a friendship with this guy, but he didn’t find it wise to argue with the guy currently whipping out his wallet to pay for all of your things. Besides, it couldn't be that bad — day one of the friendship and he was already getting pampered for doing… literally nothing.
“Well, nice to meet you Vincent. Thanks again for doing this for me, it's really cool of you, man.”
“There’s no reason to thank me, Mob. Really, I’m just helping out a friend! Nothing crazy about that.” Vincent pushed a 20 dollar bill into the machine as he directed a wide smile towards Mob, rows of pearly white teeth gleaming in the stupid irritating fluorescent lighting of the grocery store. As the bill disappeared into the machine, Mob noticed a red, almost brown, liquid had rubbed off of it and onto Vincent’s hand.
“Ah, damn, how did I manage to spill shit in your wallet? I'm sorry dude, I didn't know I made such a mess.”
“Huh?” Vincent raised a brow, looking down at his finger as he seemed to realize something. “Oh. Right. Well, no harm in adding a little flavor!”
And with that, Vincent lifted a finger to his mouth and audibly licked it off, a contented hum leaving his lips.
That was a little odd, considering that it was either from his hair or the floor. Very odd, actually. But again, Mob had absolutely zero desire to say any of this out loud.
Vincent, passed the fresh new bag of groceries over to Mob with a grin. Mob tried very hard not to think about the saliva that was definitely on his hands now. He was definitely washing his hands later. He turned on his heel to leave, having already gotten what he wanted from this interaction — also, he was really fucking hungry. That’s kind of the whole reason he was out,
“Alright, uh. Cool. Thanks, I’ll see you arou-”
“Wait.”
A cold, firm hand had gripped his wrist and stopped him in his tracks.
That formerly warm voice had turned gravely serious, cold and piercing like an ice pick to the brain. “Will I see you again? I can buy you dinner sometime, if you’d like. I’d really like to get closer to you, Mob.”
The longer this interaction went on, the more Mob felt like he was being pursued by a very lonely sort of sugar daddy. Vincent’s gaze was intensely focused, dark eyes seeming to peer into Mob’s deepest thoughts. He barely suppressed a shiver.
Mob, not being a complete idiot, saw the warning signs flashing brighter than the blinding high beams of a BMW at night.
Mob, however, is also pretty strapped for cash and generally sort of down for spontaneous recklessness. This is kind of what he gets for going to the stupid Cheesecake Factory with Twixxel and some other friends last paycheck. It was, however, good as fuck.
Besides, if he let this jolly freak take him out to dinner a couple times a week, he’d save himself a lot of extra cash. Cash that could go towards buying a new PC that doesn’t shit itself and die after like, 30 minutes of any mod with a particularly high polygon count.
If Mob ended up getting stalked and/or murdered, he’d have a fun story to tell in the afterlife.
“Yeah, fuck it. Sure dude. Do you have Discord?”
“Nope! I just got a new phone though, I can give you my number?”
Mob had been hoping he wouldn’t have to give the guy his number, but he didn’t see a point in having these kinds of hang-ups when he’d literally be meeting the guy semi-regularly.
Mob put his number into Vincent’s phone with little fanfare. The blond had tried to give his own number, but he’d spent so long fat-fingering the keys that Mob had just taken over and texted him. He assumed they wouldn’t be texting a lot, considering the guy’s complete lack of motor function.
Vincent made a point of walking Mob to his car to “reduce fall risk”— slightly humiliating, a little awkward on Mob’s end, but not enough for him to outright refuse.
As Mob drove away under Vincent’s watchful gaze, he flicked on the radio only to be met with a grating static. He flipped stations, again, and again, until he finally encountered the grainy sound of a human voice. Thank god for that — whether it was the static or silence, Mob would've gone insane.
A missing persons report in his area, a young adult man with black hair who’d been reported as missing by his parents for about a week. He’d tuned in too late to catch the name. Mob felt a pit forming deep within his stomach, guts twisting and turning in stress.
After all, it had been a week since he’d seen Twixxel.
Immediately following the situation with Verity, Twixxel had gone dark — no activity on any games, not replying to messages, just an offline status on Discord taunting Mob for days on end.
Mob, of course, was not fucking stupid, and knew it couldn’t have anything to do with Verity. Verity, after all, is a Minecraft mod he’d installed onto his PC in his bedroom for fun. He assumed Twixxel had gotten scared initially and logged off, but the radio silence after the fact had really begun to worry Mob. He didn’t want to assume the worst, but… when you go from messaging every day and weekly hangouts to dead silence, it's hard not to. Then again, both of them were prone to depressive episodes, long periods of radio silence that they bounced back from relatively easily. There’s a very high chance he’s just worried for nothing — after all, it’s not like anyone’s come to question him, and Mob would’ve had to be one of the last people to speak with him if the timeline matched what the radio was saying.
He prays for his friends safety and then tries not to think about it, for the sake of his own mental health.
After hearing 2 more frighteningly local missing persons reports, Mob flicks off to another station one more time; just to stifle the fear growing inside of him.
He’s faced with a song he’s unfortunately become familiar with. His hands stiffen so tightly on the wheel his knuckles pop.
“Have you seen my baby? She’s not a dame nor a lady,”
For every second that Mob blinks, he sees nothing but that cartoonish smile leeching its way into his every waking thought, gluing itself to his nerve endings in a thick, tacky sludge and obscuring his train of thought.
Mob turns off the radio and spends the rest of the drive home in silence, the only noise in the car his own trembling breaths.
Verity did ask if he thought of him outside of playing. If only he knew the state of paranoia Mob had been working himself into.
He checks multiple times, looking behind him at every red light, and yet he can't shake the irrational feeling that somebody is watching him; that if he turns around one more time, he’ll see that emaciated creature with its pearly white smile sitting directly behind him once again.
He parks in his driveway and enters his house as quickly as humanly possible.