Chapter Text
“Hey, JJ, you got a sec?”
You look up from the front desk’s computer screen to find your boss – Olivia, a woman in her late forties, brown hair tinged grey at the temples – leaning against the counter. She waits patiently as you try to figure out if today is verbal day or not; sometimes it takes you a long while to figure it out, but that’s why you prefer working the late shifts. Almost no one bothers you at half past midnight, and if they do, you’re usually able to at least find the strength for a few words here and there.
You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again, but find the words aren’t working with you tonight.
With a quiet sigh, you lift your hands up and sign instead.
‘Sure, boss. What’s up?’
“Well, y’know how the night security position hasn’t been filled yet?” Olivia asks, a smile trying to force its way onto her face; you stifle a groan, because if this is going where you think it’s going, she’s going to be severely disappointed.
‘Look, if you’re about to ask me if I want the job, I need to remind you that I’m barely 5’10 and only weigh one-eighty-five on a good day, so I’m really not all that intimidating for security. I couldn’t even scare a Chihuahua,’ you sign with a wry grin that makes Olivia laugh.
“Oh, sweetie, have a little faith in yourself; you could probably scare a really tiny Chihuahua, if you really put some effort into it,” Olivia tells him with a chuckle. “But relax, I’m not asking you to take on security.”
With an exaggerated sigh of relief, you slump back into your chair as Olivia rolls her eyes at your dramatics.
“Okay, your dramatic highness, take it down a notch. Ruined my shocking reveal and everything,” she grumbles, but there’s no real anger behind it. “Look, I just wanted to let you know before I leave for the night that the position has been filled.”
You raise a questioning eyebrow at her, waiting for her to continue. Which she does, because this is Olivia and she’s always excited about good news, but the slight fidget in her hands tells you that it’s not completely good news. Depending on what it is. As far as you’re concerned, as long as it’s someone else taking up security and you no longer have to worry about possibly getting shivved in the parking lot, this is fantastic news.
‘What’s the catch?’
“Well…” Olivia drawls, not quite looking at you. “I got a call from Smith’s Grove, asking if the hotel would be willing to—”
You throw your hands up in the air in silent frustration; Smith’s Grove? Smith’s Grove? Everyone and their grandmother has heard about how awful that place is and has been for years, yet somehow the place hasn’t been shut down.
“– participate in a new Work-Release therapy program they have,” Olivia continues, slightly raising her voice as if you’d verbally displayed your distaste of Smith’s Grove instead of silently. “And yes, I know, Smith’s Grove wouldn’t exactly be my first choice to help out, but I figured it’d do someone some good to spend a few hours a night away from there.”
… She does have a point.
Your shoulders sag and you lift your hands once more to ask ‘Who is it?’
Not like you’d know anyway, but still.
Olivia hums quietly as she flips through her stack of paperwork, “Says here it’s a one Michael Myers. He’s about your age, I think.”
The name seems familiar, but you can’t quite place it; it buzzes in the back of your skull. You know you’ve heard that name before, and now it’s going to bug you until you remember.
Your boss leaves after making sure you have your set of keys on you, and then you’re left with only your thoughts, at 11pm in the near silent hotel lobby, the pitch dark night just on the other side of glass double doors.
-*-
There are no late night room service calls from the few guests they have tonight, no calls from someone needing a room for the night.
You while away the hours the way you usually do on nights like tonight; you make coffee in the back room that doubles as the security room, let one of your many playlists play softly on the computer while you clean, try to get a little farther in the most recent book you picked up from the library, trying to decide what you want to eat when you get home while making sure everything is ready for the day crew.
Y’know, the usual.
-*-
Out of boredom – and curiosity – you Google ‘Smith’s Grove Sanitarium.’
It’s going to piss you off; you know it’s going to piss you off, because Smith’s Grove is… it’s like it tries to embody and reinforce every bad horror movie cliché and demonizing stereotype that “people with mental illnesses are all scary and bad” and you can already feel a slow-boiling anger thrumming away beneath your skin.
Ugh, you’re gonna wreck your blood pressure and you’re not even twenty-five yet.
The only recent articles about the place you can find date back to last year and are about a scandal involving a Dr. Loomis who apparently wrote a book about a patient of his without permission (from either the patient or the patient’s family), but one look at his quote about the patient (“[Name Redacted] has the devil’s eyes; it took me years, but I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.”), which is, quite frankly, enough for you to close out the tab entirely. You’re just glad that this asshole was fired, because that kind of attitude about one of his patients doesn’t help anyone, and quite honestly, as far as you’re concerned, with that kind of view about someone who is mentally ill, Loomis probably shouldn’t have been allowed to even work there.
(And that’s not even mentioning the other news articles about the two security guards who were arrested for sexually assaulting the patients. That pisses you off more than Loomis, but at least they’re in prison now – and apparently one of the other patients had beaten the shit out of them, so there’s some small justice you suppose.)
But then again, this is Smith’s Grove and they weren’t exactly all that great to begin with.
Your right knee begins to bounce, impatience and frustration welling up within you. Fuck, you need to get up, move around, but there are questions flying around your head and you won’t be getting any answers for them. It’s not like you can march up to Smith’s Grove and demand answers, and while you could probably find a way to contact this Dr. Loomis, you know you won’t; you’d only end up ripping this guy a new one and honestly, you’d rather keep him as far away from you as possible.
With a frustrated huff, you push away from the desk and head into the back room.
You need more coffee.
-*-
“Up and at ‘em, kiddo!”
Downing a second pot of coffee was a bad idea.
Cracking one bleary eye open, all you can see is Harvey’s grinning, far too chipper for five in the morning, face.
You get up with a groan and rub tiredly at your eyes, trying to get them to focus. That second pot of coffee was a really bad idea and you wish you could go back and stop yourself from making it.
“Party too hard last night?” Harvey asks cheerfully as he ruffles your hair. Swatting at his hand, you decide to try for your voice because you’re not really awake enough to try focusing on signing. No, you’re still far too focused on that jackass, Dr. Loomis, and Smith’s Grove’s lack of standards, and trying to figure out who the hell Michael Myers is and why his name is so familiar to you.
“Something like that,” you manage to croak out as you start gathering your things; you need to shower and a lot of sleep and you still have no clue what you want to eat and—
“Get home safe, JJ,” Harvey calls after you. “Don’t need you falling asleep in the parking lot again!”
You flip him off and his boisterous laughter follows you out of the lobby.
-*-
The walk up to your apartment is the same as it always is; the old floorboards groan beneath your every step, the walls are that strange off-white yet not quite any other actual color, and the light by the stairs flickers.
A sigh escapes you as you unwrap the soft, well-worn scarf from around your neck. This place is a wreck and you should probably look for somewhere else to live, but you don’t really have the time or money or even the energy to do so. Maybe if you found a roommate, but you’re not good at sharing living space with someone you barely know, and your night shift job doesn’t really make it easy to get to know people who you don’t work with (more like see at the beginning or end of your shifts, if you’re being honest).
Point is, you’re kinda stuck in this not great apartment building that looks like it’s one strong breeze away from collapsing. It’s not all bad, although the only good things about it that come to mind are ‘close enough to work and the store that you don’t need to drive’ and ‘not a cardboard box.’
Besides, you like your job enough to be fine with calling this place home.
Even if your key nearly breaks off in the lock. Again.
(You should probably get a spare made on your next day off… just in case.)
As soon as the front door of your tiny apartment shuts behind you, you strip down to nothing but your boxers and t-shirt as you make your way to bed; you’re too exhausted to even think about showering or eating right now.
Why do those things now when you can do them later and sleep instead?
You flop down, face first, onto your bed and as soon as your head hits the pillow you’re out like a light.
-*-
You wake up five minutes before the alarm on your phone goes off, feeling stiff and sore for no reason other than the fact you didn’t even try to lay down right on the old, lumpy mattress.
Rolling onto your back, you stare up at the ceiling for a while, watching the sunlight that dyes the off-white to a sort of pastel orange. Your eyes slip shut and you just… listen to the world go by outside; cars driving by, people going about their day…
It’s not enough to make you fall asleep again, but the loud buzzing from the nightstand finally gets you moving, grabbing your phone and the bottle of vitamin D pills.
(One of the drawbacks of working nightshift.)
On the way to bathroom, you check your messages; there’s a couple from Olivia, reminding you that the new Work-Release guy starts tonight, and there’s a shit ton of texts from the group chat, although most of them are just Harvey and Tanis spamming each other with pictures of cats. With a huff of fond amusement, you set your phone down on the bathroom counter before stepping into the shower.
It doesn’t take long – you tend to take short, efficient showers because the building doesn’t really have good water pressure after fifteen minutes – but by the time you shut off the water, your bathroom is filled with steam, the mirror fogged over completely.
Grabbing a towel, you start drying yourself off, your mind already going through a checklist of things you have to do once you get to work; it’ll just be you and the new guy – Michael Myers, whoever he is, you still have no clue other than his maddeningly familiar name – after Olivia leaves for the night, and that’s the part you’re kind of dreading. You’ve never been really extroverted, anxiety always gnawing away at you, and you hope that if tonight is another non-verbal day that it won’t throw the new guy off too much.
Leaning slightly over the counter, you use your towel to clean off the fogged over mirror and stare back at your blurry reflection, and eyes dark enough to be as black as obsidian stare back at you. Lifting a hand, and watching as your reflection does the same, you gently tug at your dark hair.
“You need a haircut,” you murmur to yourself. It’s long enough now (not quite down to your shoulders, not even past your sharp jawline, but it’s still just a little too long for your liking) that it’ll curl up something fierce when it dries – cowlicks and waves going off in various, annoying directions; you can’t remember the last time you got a haircut.
Maybe for Tanis and Gigi’s wedding a few months ago? you think idly, combing back your hair and hoping that when it dries it’ll stay back.
With a sigh, you push away from the counter and open the door, the steam rolling out with you, and get back to getting ready for the day. Night. Whatever.
-*-
As soon as you step into the lobby of the Haddonfield’s Respite (seriously, who named this place?) it’s been nothing but go, go, go.
The hotel is the same as it always is, but getting things set up for the long, uneventful night and helping day shift wind things down is always a bit too chaotic, and more than once you’ve had to shoo Harvey away from your stash of leftover Halloween candy that you keep in the bottom left drawer of the front desk.
So of course you don’t even notice when 8pm rolls around, you don’t notice that Harvey and the rest of the day crew has left, and you certainly don’t notice someone standing behind you until you turn around and walk right into a solid wall of muscle. Stumbling back, your gaze catches on piercing blue eyes watching you from behind a curtain of dark blond hair.
“Michael!” an unfamiliar voice splutters from behind the man – so this is Michael – and out of the corner of your eye you can see Olivia and a man in a Smith’s Grove uniform. “We’ve talked about this, you can’t just—”
But Michael doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to the man, and you kind of just tune the guy out too, but mostly out of quiet surprise than anything else.
The name is familiar, but this giant of a man you just ran into isn’t familiar at all. Maybe he just has one of those names, where you feel like you’ve heard it a thousand times? Or something. You don’t know. You’re not really sure what you were expecting now that you think about it.
All you know is that your first impression of Michael Myers is ‘Wow, he’s tall,’ and ‘Maybe now I don’t have to hunt down a ladder every time I need something from the top shelves of the supply closets.’