Chapter Text
Understanding and grief wash over her as he stands before her, looming over her. Not once does he move to truly hurt her, his hands are rough and demanding, but there is a distinct lack of violence- of cruelty when his attention fully settles onto her. She knows he is capable of horrible things.
She had seen the blood smeared all down his clothes, bloody finger marks pressed into his pants- senseless splatters over the walls. She remembered all too well of what Annie had looked like curled in her lap with him lurking over them. The memory played out differently in her head after reading that god damned book. Despite the narcissistic piece of shit that had written it, the man had still managed to be honest amidst the lies, painting a pitful picture of a boy that loved his mother, that loved his baby sister. Which...
"Michael." Her whisper whimpered into the darkness of the shack could have very well have been a shout with the silence between them, their breathing and crickets the only other noises in the night. "Were you-"
Laurie coughs, hacking into her arm, body shaking with weariness. She hadn't slept properly in days, nightmares wracking her worse than ever and it was showing. But she has to pull herself together, needs to ask him the question that had been weighing heavier and heavier on her mind the longer she had gone without asking. "Were you looking for something?"
No, that's not it.
"Were you looking...for me?"
He looks to her, more than he already had been. His head tilting up somewhat from the hunched-over position to really look at her. She can feel his stare like a touch, her hairs rising on her arms, her body desperately trying to warn her of the dangerdangerdangerdanger like she didn't know already. Like she hadn't seen first hand just what he could do. Like she hadn't spent night after unbearable fucking night with her brain reminding her of the thousands of ways he could kill her if he really wanted to. If she miscalculated and instead of some sort of fucked fondness, he was really just playing the long game of cat and mouse, anticipating when he could finally finish what he had started with Judith.
But she chokes it out, needing to ask it, even if it was the last thing she ever said, with her brother standing barely a foot from her, looming down on her with his gaze unwavering from her shaking bloodied form.
"Because you... missed me? This whole time?"
When she finally manages to stand on shaking legs, despite the threat of the knife in his hand, he lets her go.
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It's almost like what she imagined having a stray pet would be like. Not that she would ever say that. Without the tell of normal social cues, it was hard to figure out what exactly was going on behind Michael's mask and if he would find it as funny as she did sometimes.
But every day, he reminded her more and more of a stray cat. Wandering as he pleased, returning with battered trinkets that he presented her with. The crumpled photo he had initially shown her makes a return one day, still delicately handled even after nearly two decades, and a stray candy wrapper the next, its bright smiling exterior more the point behind what he's trying to offer her, rather than what used to be in the wrapper. At least she hoped.
When there wasn't some odd trinket, he would take to trailing after her from a distance. It had put her on edge the first dozen or so times she had whipped around on an abandoned street, only to see nothing. But slowly, slowly, after nothing happens despite her body raising to high alert, she spots him, hiding behind a tree in a painfully obvious hiding spot, his body bigger than the tree was tall.
It's around the fourth time that she spots him hiding in the stupidest of spots. The behemoth of a man is staring at a fence post in an obvious feigned show of disinterest, only to duck his head around it in an exaggerated blur of motion to stare at her when it finally clicks. This was his silent bid for her attention.
He was playing hide and seek, peek-a-boo.
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How he managed to evade the police became obvious soon enough. It was so stupid.
She had been wondering about what the cops had been doing. Even if the violence had been a far cry from the last time he had been free to terrorize the streets, he was still a felon, an escaped murderer that was roaming free in his hometown. A book had just come out about him, them, she supposed.
Either way, that aside.
She spots him a mile away in the crowd, his gait a familiar one at this point. What isn't familiar is the lack of that blank mask or the tangle of a beard that is creeping past the drawn hood. Maybe it was because the mask had been so creepy, but somehow, she can't find it in herself to be as scared as she used to be. He looked just like everyone else, if not a little lost.
It was a reminder. Before ever being the bogeyman, he had been a person. Just a scared little boy. A son... and a brother. Though the fate of his- their older sister didn't promote much confidence, she still somehow felt soothed at the realization.
For better or for worse, for the times that his attention was honed entirely in on her, his hands had never directly raised against her. For better or for worse, he cared about her.
Michael Myers, the big hulking evil of the night, was just a person. Flesh and blood, wearing clothes too big and his hair too long. He could be awkward, and maybe even a little bit nice.
The thought prompts equal parts nausea and relief. Her hand moves without her brain's input, a wiggling little wave at his hulking figure.
Despite the thick crowd, she knows he can see her. Laurie thinks she imagines it, a faint uptick of his mouth in what could be called a smile on anyone else. But what really gobsmacks her is when his hand raises back, big clunky fingers wiggling back in a clumsy mimic of her wave.
Despite herself, that minuscule, faint, undeniably human reaction fills her with a sense of fondness rather than dread.
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A month or so in, she finally thinks to ask what he does with himself in the times not spent trailing her like a ghost.
Not that he really answers aside from loose wave to the town's outskirts, as if that answers anything at all, only promoting more questions that he stays decidedly mute for.
What she doesn't need to ask is whether or not he's hungry. His stomach loudly gurgling that information out freely. Her eyes go wide, an interrogation on her lips already forming.
"What do you even eat?"
After all, it wasn't as if asylum runaways had jobs- or money at that.
Yet again, obviously, he doesn't answer. Turning on her heel in a heated huff, she's quick to spin back around, her finger jabbing into his chest with a firm
"Stay."
And shockingly, he does. He falls to an obedient halt at the word, hands falling to his side and his body gone entirely still. There's no resistance, no fight, not a shred of--- well.
He listens, is the point.
He's still there ten minutes later when she comes storming back with a fistful of a greasy bag in one hand and a large coke in the other. When she shoves it into his hands, he takes it with a gentleness that seems almost unnatural.
Right when that creeping fondness rolls in at the uncharacteristic gentleness is right when he ruins it. Michael rips into the burger and fries like something savage and starved, his teeth gnashing into the sandwich like it was still pulsing in his grip. Pickles and ketchup drip into his beard, redness smearing into his clothes.
Nausea roils in her at the sight, eyes honing in on the ketchup dripping down his hand and her brain helpfully transposing this moment with the sight of her bloodied home, Annie laying, gagging, and choking on her own blood.
Michael's in her space before she can even process it, his body blocking out the sun and the redness as he abruptly envelops her in a full-bodied hug. His beard scratches at her forehead, his left hand cold from the soda as it presses between her shoulder blades, but it's only then that she realizes she'd begun heaving sometime between handing him the sandwich and now, tears rolling fast down her face and dripping from her chin as she bawls like a baby in his arms, nausea leaving her head spinning as she stays still and helpless as he holds her.
He soothes her, his words were halting and awkward, but gentle. So unbearably gentle, his body rocking them both back and forth in the hug.
"Shhhh, Boo, Shhhh."