she sits , knees tucked to her chest , chin resting upon them . " i like it here. " amber gaze shifts , raising to meet the other's & there is moisture in her eyes , tears . " i don't ever want to go back to where i came from . " / ani finding herself in hawkins after escaping the cult !
He'd fetched the blanket from inside, the back of the couch where he could remember his mother keeping it in his youth. Slowly, carefully Steve draped it over her shoulders to keep the night chill from chewing at her skin.
He'd never make it out of Hawkins alive.
So he never tried. Aspirations, dreams, everything he'd ever thought of his future crumbled the older he got. Nothing seemed achievable or realistic anymore and so he settled. So he inherited his childhood home when his parents passed away. So he began working at the high school where he'd once been revered as podunk-town royalty.
Nothing changed. Not even him.
Her arrival was different. The last time he could recall different made his heart ache. Unrealities that nobody would believe if he shared them. So he kept his mouth shut and never tried. Anyone who understood or knew had moved far away, maybe into the next life, and all that remained was the ghost of a town he once saw differently and a reputation he'd hoped to outrun.
Fat chance of that when he never went far.
He let her ruminate in momentary silence while he fished his hand into the loose front pocket of his yard work jeans. Permanent grass stains and tears adorned them and Steve cared too little for appearances when he was landscaping. (The shit adults did, how boring.) From within the confines he pulled out a beaten pack of cigarettes and tugged one out from the carton. Pressed between his lips he lit the vice with the Bic that followed and inhaled the first taste of crave-reducing nicotine.
Only when she spoke did he let hazel eyes find the huddled mass of her form. It was the spark of tears in her eyes that had him pausing, brows knitted in concern until she continued.
"Well," a beat, another inhale. When he continued smoke plumed from his nose and lips like some sort of humanized dragon. "You're welcome to couch-crash as long as you need to get on your feet. Nobody really comes around here, and if they did I'd turn them away."
He wouldn't pry. Not until she wanted to tell him, if she did. It was obvious she had scars - not the physical kind, but the ones that bore on your psyche and turned you all sorts of twisted. He had some, too.
"Thirsty? Hungry?"