Missing [ST]

Seventeen

One glimpse of that night was all it took.

The days he had spent in ignorance, prioritising selfishness over selflessness, had finally bandaged together a cruel punishment of sickly guilt that snapped him right out of his reverie.

The addiction of curing his pain, arguably his fatal flaw, pushed aside after the failure to reach his heart in an instant. The heart that showed somewhere inside, he was still there. Steven Victor Tallarico was still there. It was the beat that kept him alive and it was that quality that meant he could always be more than a pawn to the game of pain.

He just had to try.

<>

"Fuckin' hell, slow down!" Joe shouted, jumping out the van.

Ignoring him, Steven continued to struggle with the lock with uncoordinated hands.

"These goddamn stupid fucking keys."

"What is wrong with you? Can you just talk to me? Tell me what's-"

Steven struck gold, clattering inside before he had his shoulder yanked back.

"Steven?" Tom was already there in the hallway, looking utterly thrown by his presence. "Joe?"

"Hey, man," Joe acknowledged, a casual break from his panic.

"Um..." After a glance over his shoulder, Tom continued, "Are you guys okay?"

Front door closed, and knowing Joe was now next to him, Steven nodded too many times to pass as sane.

"Mhm fine, I need to go upstairs. Need to-" He was on the move well before he could finish his blubbering sentence, which he didn't really know where he was going with anyway.

Breathing shaky from too many short and rapid bursts of energy, Steven fell to his knees with a thump in the privacy of his bedroom like he was about to pray and confess his guilty conscience.

The article was in his hands, he was kneeling in front of his unmade bed, and he read everything that was on the page until he felt like he had memorised it all. The images, the cut off sentences, the statements. He didn't miss a single detail. He didn't allow himself to skip over something that was a little more unbearable than the last, because he knew he deserved the punishment.

It crashed and burned him, and when the urge to flip the page sunk in, being forced to relive the past showed no signs of mercy.

<>

Eight months ago, Boston, Massachusetts, Precise location: Unknown.

Lighting the cigarette that hung from his lips, Steven looked out across the city's river that rippled gently in the silvery moonlight. The air was sticky, clinging to the back of his neck, coating the air he breathed, and everything about the quiet summer night piqued his nerves.

He took long drags to calm his mind, but they only made him fall into the same trace of sombre reflection about the city ahead of him. The one that had given him the highest of highs in his life, but had never held back on the lowest of lows. The city that had fuelled his passion, and then shattered it into a million pieces.

Boston may have been his home, but for the foreseeable future, his home was not in Boston.

With the sound of an engine chugging closer, Steven blinked away the thought and wiped the moisture that had collected in the corner of his eye with his knuckle. He turned around with a sharp sniff through his nose to compose himself, and watched the light from the dipped headlights bounce along the uneven ground towards him.