I Will Not Make You Suffer (pingnut)

The city lights blurred outside the bar window, mirroring the haze in Way's mind. The X Hunter team's championship celebration was loud, vibrant, and utterly suffocating. His heart twisted with a familiar ache as Babe and Charlie, newly official, laughed together, oblivious to the storm brewing within him.
He drank, chasing oblivion, but the jealousy clung to him like a second skin. Alan's concerned questions were distant echoes. Later, as his teammates piled out, loud and drunk, Way waved them off, insisting he was fine, his car waiting.
But the moment they left, the bar seemed to grow larger, darker. A stranger emerged from the shadows, his gaze unnervingly fixed on Way. A sense of dread, cold and sharp, pierced through the alcohol-induced fog. Way tried to leave, to escape the unsettling attention, but the stranger and his accomplices blocked his path.
Panic began to set in. He fumbled for his phone, desperate for Alan, but there was no answer. The stranger's hand clamped onto his waist, a chilling intimacy. Way screamed, thrashed, but his drunken body betrayed him. His cries were muffled, his struggles futile, as he was dragged out into the menacing night and forced into a car.
