“Put me down, asshole,” Austin yells, bicycling his legs in the air as Walker lifts him higher and higher, up above the tops of the bookshelves. “It’s not a fight if you just leave me up here.”
“Woah, hey now. Watch your language.” Walker chuckles. His hands are shoved casually in the pockets of his jacket, and he steps underneath of Austin, looking up at him. “Maybe I’ll keep you in time out until you clean up your mouth.”
“Fuck you,” Austin says again, with feeling.
“Man, I have never heard your brother swear like this. Then again, I guess that’s why he works behind a desk all day and you’re - well, not quite homeless…” Walker smiles nastily. His hair is floating around his face like he’s standing in a wind tunnel, his eyes dark and calculating. Austin can feel his blood pumping with how tightly his fists are clenched, his finger joints hot and tight with the need to throw a punch.
“Put me down,” he says again, trying to make it come out like an order. “I’ll call Jacob and have you fired -”
Walker rolls his eyes. “Puh-lease. Like I don’t know how famously you and your brother get along. And he can’t fire me, anyway. Trust me. I’ve tried.”
Austin makes a noise that’s between a snarl and a growl. He tries to fight his way back down to the floor, flinging his legs out more wildly to see if he can get a good enough angle to punt Walker in the face from. No dice. He’s too high up, and his legs are too short to reach. Instead, he digs the toe of one shoe into the heel of the other and slides it halfway off, then kicks his leg forwards in a wide arc, sending the shoe flying at Walker. It smacks him in the head, and bounces off onto the floor.
“Ow! What the fuck!” Walker yells. “You really want me to leave you up there all night?”
Austin’s eyes feel hot, like his rage is boiling them in his skull. The muscles in his arms are painfully tense. “I want you to put me down so I can punch you, asshole.”
Walker’s eyes narrow. “You want to come down? Fine. I’ll put you down.”
His gaze flicks down towards the floor and suddenly Austin is plummeting, no longer trapped in place in the air, but falling from at least ten feet up. He sees the cheerful, geometric carpet patterns rushing towards him in a blur, and tries to curl inwards and brace for impact. He squeezes his eyes shut, but the pain he’s expecting - the feeling of a bone shattering, or a limb dislocating - never comes.
Peeling his eyes open, Austin finds himself floating just inches away from the library floor, close enough that his nose is almost brushing it. He lets out a breath that he didn’t notice he had been holding. Walker laughs.
“What, you didn’t think I was actually going to kill you, did you?”
Austin opens his mouth to retort, but there’s a feeling like the invisible cords holding him up have suddenly snapped, and he’s abruptly smacked in the face by the floor. Walker is still laughing as Austin picks himself up.
“Relax, kid, I’m just fucking with you. Your brother’d ream me out over the phone again if I let anything bad happen -”
Austin slugs him across the face. Walker makes a startled, gargling sound and reels backwards, slapping a hand to his nose. Blood trickles between his fingers. He looks at Austin, and something like fear flashes across his face, just for a moment. Good, Austin thinks. You should be scared of me.
“You broke my fucking nose,” Walker says. His voice is nasal - fucking turns to fugging - and he brings his second hand up to his face, touching it gingerly. Austin snorts.
“Yeah, well, I’m sure whatever my brother is paying you to babysit me will cover the hospital bill.”
Something large and heavy smacks Austin in the back of the head so hard that it shoves him forwards, his ears ringing. He hears a thump as whatever it was falls to the floor, and has enough time to turn and realize that it was a book before Walker sends another flying off the shelf and into his back. Pain shoots through him, radiating outwards from where he struck the table earlier, and Austin just barely ducks around the next book that comes at him. It zips past his face fast enough to ruffle his hair.
“This is not what I signed up for,” Walker yells, hurling a few more books at Austin, “when I told Jacob I would keep you out of trouble!”
“I don’t need help staying out of trouble!” Austin yells back. He catches a book headed straight for his chest, and hurls it back, Frisbee-style, at Walker. It nearly hits him before it freezes, stuck in mid-air.
“Clearly you do, if I can’t even leave you alone for one night without you getting stabbed in the woods!”
Walker sends the book flying back at him, so fast that Austin doesn’t even try to reach up and grab it until it’s already striking his chest hard enough to knock him to the floor. He struggles to get to his feet, but can’t get much farther than propping himself up on his elbows. There’s a pressure on his chest forcing him back down to the floor, like someone’s sitting on it - not hard enough to crush him, but just hard enough to make it uncomfortable to breathe evenly. Austin glares at Walker.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Walker says, stepping forwards again so he can stand over Austin. “I’m here to look after you. And until your brother tells me to stop, that’s what I’m gonna do. So get used to it.”
“I don’t want you to look after me. I didn’t ask Jacob to send you,” Austin wheezes.
“Yeah, well, he did. Suck it up.” Walker crouches down to look Austin in the eyes. His nose is still sluggishly bleeding, dark red streaks staining his unshaven jaw. “Look, I’m not the man trying to keep you down or anything. I’m not here to write down everything you do and report it back to your brother. But like it or not, kid, he obviously cares about you, and that means I can’t leave here until you do.”
Austin can’t think of anything smart to say to that. He keeps struggling to get up, mutely, hoping that the expression on his face is enough to convey how much he still wants to punch Walker again. The adrenaline is wearing off, and his whole body aches from being battered around.
“Anyway, have fun with your whole ghostbusting…thing. I think you can probably make it through this one without getting stabbed, so I’m out of here.”
Walker stands back up, wiping his face off on the sleeve of his jacket. He keeps Austin pinned to the floor until he’s through the front doors of the library, so all Austin can do is watch his back and shake with rage as he leaves. Austin doesn’t bother trying to catch him in the parking lot. He doesn’t want to know what Walker could do with a car at his disposal.
“Austin?” Richard drifts through a bookshelf as Austin is picking himself up, leaning unsteadily against a table. “We found - are you okay? What happened?”
Austin coughs. “Walker happened. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Austin lies. “I’m good. Just…show me what you found.”
“walker happened” ain’t that just the way