Chapter Text
Gavin doesn't consider his life to be necessarily bad.
He isn't going hungry, fighting disease, or dealing with any hardships. He's quite wealthy, in fact. Enough money for the roof over his head to be one of an extremely large house filled with frivolous expensive items that he has no use for.
The only complaint he has is that his life is rather lonely.
Being a rich twenty four year old man with no responsibilities and living in an almost mansion-sized house in the middle of nowhere would be the living dream for most. He can spend his days doing whatever he wants, he doesn't have to work, and he doesn't have to impress or keep anybody happy.
In fact, he's doesn't really have anybody.
He has a maid though. A lovely young woman named Barbara, who drives in every week and tidies up the place. Sometimes he'll attempt to help, but she'll playfully scold him and say that it's her job to do it.
He'd actually rather if she didn't clean. It would be a lot better if she just spent her Tuesday's hanging out with him in the house instead of cleaning it. And, he certainly wouldn't mind cleaning it himself, the chore would give him something to do to pass the time.
Firing her is out of the question, her weekly presence is the only thing that keeps him sane sometimes. She's his only friend, forming a sibling-type bond over the past few years she's worked for him, and firing her would feel more like firing a sister and damning himself to eternal solitude.
It isn't Gavin that's paying her, but it's probably his responsibility to make sure she's doing her job and actually earning her (extremely large) paycheck each week. He's told her numerous times that she could just spend the entire day hanging out with him, and he could clean the house himself some other day, but she's much too stubborn for that. A hardworking girl through and through, never wanting to take the easy way out.
Sometimes he'll beg her to take the day off though, and they'll drive out into the city together and spend the day having fun. Going out to fancy restaurants, theaters, or gorging themselves on ice-cream. Those days are always Gavin's favorites. Being out in the city is a lot more sociable and free than being cooped up in his house all day.
Being surrounded by the presence of people is enough to make him feel better.
It's always the worse when she finishes up cleaning for the day and has to say goodbye. Then it's just him, alone, in the big empty house for another week.
"It's past nine o'clock, Gav!" she shouts from the front entrance, pulling on her coat and attempting to tie up her shoes as quickly as possible.
He leans against the door frame casually, aware that asking her to stay just a little bit longer would be cruel and selfish. "Alright, thanks again."
"No problem," she grins, "It is my job after all."
He smiles, biting back the urge to remind her, once again, that she really doesn't have to do all of the cleaning nonsense. "See you next week."
"Of course! I'll even bring some Jersey Mikes takeaway for you."
"Ah, thank you," he groans at the very prospect, "You are literally the best."
"I know!" she smirks playfully, reaching up to press a friendly kiss to his cheek. He accepts it, taking the time to slip a couple bills into her coat pocket unnoticed. "See ya!"
"Bye! Oh, and say hello to little Cindy for me!"
"Will do!"
It's only when the slam of the door echoes throughout the house, that he allows a sigh to escape his lips.
He doesn't blame her for wanting to get out quickly, he knows that it's an extremely long drive back to the city and that she has a younger sister at home to take care of.
The thought of not seeing her for another week is just depressing.
He watches her car pull out of the driveway and make it's way in the direction of the city, getting smaller and smaller until his vision is blocked by the trees surrounding his house.
The house is so quiet, almost all of the lights already turned off by Barbara. He locks the door and doesn't even bother setting the security alarm for the night. Once he had accidentally punched in the wrong code and it went off, resulting in spending the next two hours arguing with the company over the phone. It isn't exactly something he wants to repeat.
After double checking to make sure that the kitchen door is locked, he makes his way down the hall and towards his bedroom. There isn't any point in staying up any longer, anything he could waste time doing now could instead be done tomorrow.
He rubs his eyes, annoyed at how exhausted he could feel after another day of doing absolutely nothing. He pauses mid-walk when he hears a noise. It's only faint, as though it's far away, but it's enough to make his ears perk in alarm. It sounded like glass breaking.
Did he leave the television on?
Going back and turning it off seems like to much of a hassle for his tired body to accomplish. It is a big house after all, walking all the way back just to turn off the TV feels really unnecessary right now. The only thing he feels like he has enough energy for his collapsing into his bed.
As he weighs the pros and cons in his head, he begins hearing more noise. This time it isn't the shrill sound of glass shattering, it's the muffled murmurs of people arguing.
That can't be the television.
Somebody's in the house.
Fear leaps up his throat, constricting his ability to think clearly for a few moments. He just stands in the middle of the dimly lit hallway, slightly crouched with eyes wide as saucers.
What the fuck is he gonna do? It has to be burglars, or murderers, or some other type of villain that he only thought existed in horror movies. He can't fight them off, even scaring them would be out of the question.
For Christ's sake, he's wearing a pair of baggy plaid pajama pants and a thin white T-shirt that hangs off of his lanky frame so much that it could probably fit two of him. Not exactly the sight of somebody that could make burglars run for cover.
Fuck, why doesn't he keep some kind of weapon in his room? It seems so stupid now that he looks back on it. He's the only son of the wealthiest man in Los Santos, of course he should have weapons in his room. Although, even if he did, he'd still be hopeless with them. Why was he never trained from birth how to wield a sword or fire a gun?
He doesn't have anymore time to reflect on his would-have-been/should-have-been Ninja Kid style upbringing, the voices have stopped, and he knows that now is the time to get the hell out of here.
The house is large, and luckily there are many different ways to the kitchen. It's the closest area of the house that has an exit, and his best chance to escape unseen. The security alarm isn't going off, so the police definitely haven't been notified, and it isn't like there's anybody to call and check up on him. Hiding would be the most ridiculous thing he could do right now, these people would have all of the time in the world to search the house from top to bottom.
It's worse now that it sounds like they've stopped arguing. He has no idea where they are in the house or how close they could be to him. Does he bolt as quickly as he can to the kitchen, or slowly sneak his way there and pray there they're nowhere nearby?
Making decisions on what to do in these situations is so much easier when he's watching it happen on a shitty Netflix horror movie that he's watching behind the spaces between his fingers.
He begins tiptoeing to the end of the hallway, sucking in a fresh breath of air whenever he hears a noise from somewhere in the house. It's hard to tell if it's near him or not. It's hard to really make sense of anything right now, his heart if thumping at a million beats per second. His jaw and fingers are trembling, and he's sure that his breath would be unsteady if he could focus on anything other than trying to keep as quiet as possible.
Slowly, but surely, he passes by the study, wanting to cry from the pure relief that they haven't come to this hallway yet.
The kitchen isn't much further away, but the closest route requires passing through the lounge room, which is always dimly illuminated by the over-extravagant fish tank. Gavin's never wanted to curse those tropical fish more.
Fuck it. It doesn't sound like there's anybody close to him yet. All he has to do is sneak through the lounge, and then once he reaches the kitchen, he's practically home-free.
He's careful to watch where he's stepping, accidentally making any noise could be the death of him right now, and he'd like the avoid that as much as possible.
The light is on in the kitchen, and he stands still for a moment, trying to remember if he had turned it off after locking the door.
He might have forgotten the light on, which means that the room could still be empty and he can make it to the backdoor without anybody in the house noticing. It's his only option at this point, turning back and hiding will just end with him getting found, and there's no other exits that he could get to without the risk of being spotted.
His best choice is to just run through the kitchen as quickly as he can, no hesitation whatsoever, and just pray that he can get to the door, even if somebody is in there.
Without giving himself a chance to pussy out, he flings open the door and breaks out into a sprint.
His eyes are too busy adjusting to the light for him to avoid running into the person that's standing a mere six feet in front of the kitchen door.
Gavin's thrown back, dramatically falling to the floor as though he's in some kind of teen romance movie. Except when he looks up, it isn't to the sight of the school's handsome quarter back, hanging out by the lockers. It's to somebody much more horrifying.
The most simple and least intimidating thing they're wearing is a pair of simple blue jeans, but even those have a large dark stain at the bottom right leg. Gavin's seen enough movies to know that it's blood, stained into the fabric and unable to come out with a simple wash. The leather jacket is slightly more worrisome, but maybe he's just watched the movie Grease with Barbara too many times.
The mask is by far the worst.
It's a skull, painted entirely black and covering their entire face. Before the person had turned around, to see who had so undignifiedly ran into their back, Gavin had caught the glimpse of a small ponytail.
The person is looking at him now though, looking down and not saying a word, just watching him laid sprawled out on the floor, eyes wide and horrified at being caught.
Fuck, this was the worst case scenario for his kitchen-plan.
Gavin doesn't even attempt to stand up, knowing that there's no way that could end well. Attempting to get as far away from the man in the mask seems to be the only plan he can come up with right now. He frantically scrambles backwards, keeping his eyes on the masked person who just continues to watch him. It's only when his back hits the kitchen cupboards, and there's nowhere else for him to go, that the masked man begins walking toward him.
Gavin begins to let out an extremely undignified scream, although doing so will result in nothing. There's nobody to hear it, nobody to come and rescue him. He wishes they lived closer to the city, or at least had neighbors. It's something he's always dreamed for as a child, but he's never wished so badly in his life that it were true.
It's stopped mid-way through when the masked person slaps a firm hand over his mouth. The movement is so quick and harsh that it causes the back of his head to slam against the cupboard, only adding pain to his current misery and horror.
"What the fuck is going on!?" a man shouts as he enters the kitchen, quickly taking in the scene with annoyance in his features. It appears the screaming has caught the attention of everybody else in the house. Once his eyes settle on Gavin, they widen in realization and confusion.
"What is it!?"
"Is that Ryan!?"
"The hell is he doing?!"
An array of voices all yell at once, entering the room at different speeds, and from different exits. Gavin applauds himself for knowing early on that they would be in various areas of the house, but also realizes that he underestimated how many of them there would be.
They all look so different from one another, not exactly the picture-perfect idea of burglars. None of them are wearing masks like the first one he had ran into, but there were no cliched black ski masks or black and white stripped shirts, and it makes him wonder just how sheltered he is, living out here in the middle of nowhere.
While he reflects on that nonsense, two of the men have begun arguing, full out yelling at one another over the discovery of somebody being in the house. Another attempts to calm them, but just ends up yelling too, thus unintentionally joining the fight. They all speak at once, screaming at one another either frantically or angrily, voices echoing throughout the rest of the empty house.
He attempts to make sense of what they're arguing about, but his head is still throbbing from being smacked against the cupboard, and he's so scared that it's a miracle he can even see straight.
Gavin takes note that there are five of them. Definitely too many for him to fight on his own, even if he were capable of doing so.
The one in the purple zip-up hoodie and beanie looks to be the smallest out of all of them, and Gavin thinks he could probably take him if it weren't for the pink sniper rifle hanging off his back.
He attempts to join in arguing with the rest of them, but his voice is nowhere near as impassioned or loud. It appears he's trying to calm them down or get them to shut up, much like how the bearded man was, but he's much too sensible to get caught up in the argument.
Instead, he finally gives up on using his voice to get their attention, and unhooks the sniper rifle from his back. Gavin seems to be the only one watching until unloads at least seven bullets into the ceiling, easily drowning out the sound of the others loud voices.
The arguing stops immediately, and everybody's head snaps over to look at Ray.
That certainly succeeded in getting the crew's attention.
Despite watching the man the entire time, Gavin still jumps in fright at the sound of the gun going off. And as pathetic as it sounds, he feels a single tear escape his eye and roll down his cheek until it's stopped by Ryan's hand, which is still firmly clamped over his mouth. He's never cried once since childhood, but being attacked by strangers in his own house and having his ceiling shot up, is enough to affect anybody.
"Can you idiots stop arguing for three seconds!?"
The man who first entered the room, his face decorated with an (almost comedic) 70's porn star mustache, glares at the purple hoodie guy. "Ray! You're supposed to be standing watch!"
He gestures to Gavin, "Well clearly I didn't do a very good job!"
"Get back to the fucking door and tell us if anybody is coming. We'll deal with this-" he stumbles for a moment, unable to find the correct word, "Situation in here."
"Fine. I didn't want to stand here and listen to you assholes argue anyway," he states, letting out an annoyed huff as he leaves the room. Gavin almost hopes that Ray leaving would quiet down the arguing a little, but they just immediately go back at it.
He isn't able to place his own emotions right now. All he knows is that he's hyped up on adrenaline and panic. There are strangers in his house, terrifying strangers with guns and weapons, and they just broke in.
Gavin doesn't have any time to consider that this might have been an unorganized or unintended plan, all he can think of is how this usually ends in movies. He's probably going to be stabbed soon. Skull-mask here in front of him looks like he could easily have a knife stored in the back of his jeans pocket. And there's no way they would just leave him here to die in a puddle of his own blood on the kitchen floor. They'll probably drag him off to the woods behind the house, until they reach the river, then they'd either bury him or chuck him in the water. Fuck, they'd probably never find his body.
Gavin attempts to shake his head to pull himself away from such thoughts, only to be reminded of the hand held roughly against his mouth, keeping him pinned to the cupboard. The man, Ryan, is glaring at him through the holes in his mask, eyes filled to the brim with anger. It makes his heart stop for a moment, makes him want to sit as still as possible so he doesn't have to piss off the man anymore. He is, without a doubt, the scariest looking of the bunch. It's only when the man takes a quick glance to the side does Gavin realize that the man wasn't glaring at him. His eyes are angry, no doubt, but the aggression isn't toward him. It's toward his partners who are still arguing loudly. And then to the one who is now kneeling down beside him, and has joined in the game of staring at him.
He doesn't look nearly as frightening though, his thick beard making him look more like a ginger Santa Claus than a murderer. His eyes are kind, and look as though they're filled with concern for him. Which is terrifyingly confusing because it's a little late to be worried for his well being after they've broken into his house and are practically holding him at gun point.
"It's okay, just calm down. We aren't going to hurt you, alright?" the bearded man attempts to soothe.
When Gavin concentrates on his voice, all of the others become background noise. He knows it might only be because of the fear that's coursing through every inch of his body right now, but he can't help but think of how this guy could be a therapist. Maybe he should look into other work options.
"This isn't the time to coo at the guy like he's some kind of fucking baby!" The curly haired one yells at him..
"Look at him! He's freaking out!"
"Of fucking course he is! We are literally in the middle of kidnapping somebody, Jack!"
"It's not kidnapping!" The mustached man yells, his eyes angry, yet still filled with a deep emotion that is difficult for Gavin to place at the moment. Concern? Although it's different from the bearded man's. Maybe hesitance?
The loud argument continues, despite the difficulty Gavin has trying to keep up with it.
"Well what the fuck else are we going to do with him!? We can't just pat his head, say goodbye, and then be on our merry way. We've gotta take him with us!"
"What would we do with him then?"
"I don't know, let Ryan take care of him!"
Ryan takes his hand off of Gavin's mouth and turns to the others. Instead of speaking, his brings up his hands to sign the words, 'I'm on a murder break!'
"Goddamn it, Ryan! Well, we've gotta do something with him!"
Gavin isn't entirely sure how he finds his voice through the fear that's pumping straight to his heart. He just knows that he has to speak quickly before Ryan puts a hand over his mouth again.
"R-Ransom!" he blurts out, his voice sounding shaky and hoarse.
All of the others turn to look at him, their faces still frustrated from the ongoing argument.
"You don't have to kill me," he suggests, desperate to keep them as far away from that option as possible. "Look at this place. I have money. You could just kill me and take whatever you want from here, but you could probably get a lot more if my father finds out I've been kidnapped."
It's a smart plan, one they would be foolish not to take. The only flaw is that Gavin knows his father wouldn't give two shits if he were kidnapped and being held for ransom. He'd end up rotting in the basement (or tool shed, or wherever the hell kidnapped people are stored) before his father would give them a penny.
But they don't know that, and right now, Gavin's going to do whatever he can to make sure that his life doesn't end tonight.
The others turn to one another again, their faces all show their reluctance, but Gavin isn't entirely sure what it's for. They aren't arguing anymore at least, and he figures he can chalk that up to a win.
"Hey, guys?" a voice yells from the other room. The lookout guy comes back into the kitchen, "There's somebody here!"
"Yeah, thanks, Ray," Curly-hair rolls his eyes, "It's a little too late to point that out now."
"No, dumbass! I mean, somebody is pulling up in the driveway!"
Barbara must have come back. He doesn't know what for though, maybe she had forgotten something, or noticed the wad of cash he slipped into her pocket. Her coming back isn't good though, it puts not only his life in more danger, but hers as well.
"Fuck," the mustached one curses, and then turns to look at Ryan, "Knock him out."
He continues to give the others instructions on what to do, but Gavin can't listen to them. Only paying attention to the fact that he's about to be knocked unconscious, and that these might be his last few seconds alive. He doesn't even have time to panic and continue to plea for his life.
"No! Wait-"
The bearded man gives him an empathetic shrug, and that's the last thing he sees before everything goes black.