MAURICE - harrington

xi.

ACT ONE, chapter xi.

♡

When Mars felt like he could walk again, the two boys left the isolation of Jonathan's room. They were immediately met with deafening silence from everyone but Hopper, who shouted into the telephone with as much anger as he could.

"I don't know how many people are left alive!" he shouted through the receiver. Mars was suddenly reminded that many lives were at stake, and he was stuck in a house with people he either didn't know well or wasn't close to. Marmee and JJ were probably at home, oblivious, wondering where he was. Hopefully they were at home...

Mars didn't realize he'd stopped, watching Hopper shout, until Steve's hand on his back ushered him into the kitchen, where the youngest members of their ragtag group were nervously seated around a table.

"I am the police!" Hopper screwed up his face in frustration. "Chief Jim Hopper!... Yes, the number that I gave you, yes. Six-seven-six-seven... I will be here." He slammed the phone back on the receiver, turning to find Max, Lucas, Dustin, and Mike all staring at him.

"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asked, seeming not at all surprised.

"We'll see."

"'We'll see'?" Mike spat. "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"

"Each second we're here someone could be out there..." Mars choked on his words, "dying." Steve knew in an instant that Mars was thinking of Marmee and JJ because, in some strange occurrence, he too had been thinking of them. The fate of the town-- hell, the whole world -- as they knew it was on the line, and yet, instead of worrying for his own parents, or the people he knew in school, he was frightened for Mars's family.

Hopper's eyes moved to Mars, hardened in a way that commanded you to fall in line, "We stay here, and we wait for help." Mars gritted his jaw, and when Hopper turned away, stuck his tongue out angrily. Steve almost laughed, but Mars was genuinely upset, and it managed to make such a childish move seem heartbreaking.

With the fire of Hopper's anger gone, disappeared with him into Joyce's room, the cold silence seeped back in. No one had anything to say. No one wanted to speak. Jonathan and Nancy watched over Will, both worried for his wellbeing. Will's friends sat around the kitchen table, picking at their fingers, shooting worried looks toward each other, utterly helpless.

Mars and Steve sat side by side on the kitchen counter, Mars's face lit up by the moonlight as he distractedly stared out the kitchen window.

"Hey," Steve said softly, placing his hand lightly on Mars's folded arms. "They're gonna be okay."

Mars cracked a small smile as best he could, but it was clearly forced, and so unlike the natural smiles Steve had come to cherish, "Thanks... but there's no way you can know that," he whispered.