Hypervigilance (Pitch x Reader)

Why couldn't you stop falling into cycles of infatuation with people that weren't real?

The idea of how to cease appeared simple enough: Stop doing it. Stop fawning over them. Stop. Thinking. About it.

However, you of all people knew how difficult it was to stop a thought. The harder you pushed away, the more persistance they had.  

Your issue was not with paranoia, per se. No, you knew it was ridiculous. It was the threat of something ambiguous with ill intent in your room in and of itself. Not even necassarily anything you had identified as a possibility, or any number of fathomed hobgoblins you'd spent hours looking over your shoulder for in the wee hours of the morning. It was just something. A robber, an entity culmination, it was surely malicious and had almost definately focused on you in particular.

And as you sat there on your bed, legs crossed and eyes focused so hopefully on your television screen, the thoughts reared their ugly heads.

"There is nothing there," You sighed, attempting to ignite a genuine fire in your mindspace to burn the bastards away. "Nothing at all."

But what if I think about it more and I can't stop thinking about it and thinking about it makes it real or something and then it's drawn to me and then and then

You cocked your head in a rather forceful jerk, as if trying to shake the thoughts from your brain, hoping they'd fall from your ear and onto the bed sheet to skuttle away into nothingness. The breif worry that it was too late to rid them by simple self arguement dawned.

Distraction. Yes.

You eyed the closed laptop at the corner of your room, left there to prevent certain searches but so tantalizing.

No. You would not look up screencaps of him. You would not rewatch the movie. You would
not get giddy over a fictional being all over again. No matter how high the anxiety mounted. No matter what tricks your eyes played, no matter what sounds-

A sharp clatter near the window, then a horrid whine like nails over the surface.

It's a robber ohfuck it's a demon no it's like a shadow person it's something that wants to get me no no no it's

"It's... it is the boogeyman," You whispered to yourself in a shakingly low voice, aware that it was counterproductive to your initial plan of leaving the characters in their media and out of your mind; however, the anxious tingle was beginning to create the compulsion to bolt for the door to wake someone else up and that was a far more embarassing prospect.  "It's just Pitch Black. And Pitch Black never harms anyone, he just scares them."

Thank every good thing upon this Earth nobody was around to hear you. The idea was, admittedly, calming in the oddest of ways.

Like when they tell someone with stagefright to picture their audience nude, right? Just picture everything terrifying as Pitch Black trying to get my goat.

The space of bed directly behind you groaned and shifted slightly, the workings of your bed creaking with weight. You sucked a large amount of air through your nostrils, only breathing again after you swallowed what felt like a rock slingshot from the bottom of your stomach. Forced your eyes, certainly the span of saucers now, to focus on nothing but your fingers as they rested in your lap. Begged your legs not to carry you away like autonomous agents guiled by fear.

Yeah, that's kind of creepy. But there's an explanation. There's an explanation for it. Everything's explainable.

'Is it really?'

The muscles in your neck grew rigid, along with your spine, as they both experienced the shudder and panic over the whisper flowing into your left ear drum.

"Pitch?" It felt silly to say his name aloud, howbeit the nervous hues of your octaves, and almost immediately you could feel your cheeks heat up in embarassment over the unanswering silence after your voice.

Stupid stupid stupid there's no one here much less a fictional-

A shocked gasp and throat full of air became the current reality as a gaunt hand cupped your mouth gently but abruptly.

freAKING ENTITY ROBBER STRANGLER SHADOW THING NO NO I KNEW IT I

Your nerves were quick to react, pulling your face to look behind at the thing you always worried so intensely was there and after you, to meet your maker, to see what it was finally after the nightly torment of your mind and the anxious need to escape.

But you only met with raven hair, golden orbs placed on a pallid face, a thin smile that opened to chuckle before an amused, seemingly got'cha-themed comment.
"Boo."