Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Sixty-One. Happy To See Me?

SIXTY-ONE
— happy to see me?

     

      THE FEELING OF STEVE'S LIPS LINGER ON HERS.

      Pre-Russian-base Lucy would have said it was pathetic. She would have wiped her cherry-chapstick tinted lips with the back of her hand so many times, they'd be dried and cracked. She would have screwed her eyes shut, and thrashed her head, and cursed herself out for thinking about him during urgent times, like this. Fifteen-minutes ago, she was tossing her guts in the movie-theater bathroom, high-as-balls. Now, though? She's thinking about Steve. They're trudging around and pushing their way through the soon-to-be-closing Starcourt Mall, and she's thinking a certain big-haired buffoon standing to her left.

      She considers herself a changed woman. Possibly, it's the head-injury, or the slight-chance that the Russian drugs still pulsing through her veins. It could be a trauma-bond, which, now that it's crossed her mind, it seems like the most sensible solution for this tangled mass of thoughts in her tired mind. Her face is throbbing hot, and she can't even feel it, why? . . . she just feels the memory of his hands on the dip of her waist. And, she's okay with it. She's never been okay with it, ever, not until now.

She's flexing fingers, so her blood-stained nails are digging into the flesh of her palm. It wakes her up, a snap back into reality . . . sort of. She hears the crowd of people now, fogged voices blending together, still not forming a single coherent word. A baby cries, a mother scolds her son, someone's sneakers shuffle against the tile. Her fingernails are leaving marks, now, and her chest feels a little heavier than before. Maybe, she's not a changed woman . . . she's still worried. It was probably just the head-trauma.

"Home-sweet-home."

Finally, something makes sense. Her eyebrows snap-upwards and she makes a sharp-inhaling sound with her flared nostrils. Her fingernails leave the flesh of her hand, and she's looking at the back of Dustin's head. Had he said this? Home-sweet-home. Home . . . Dustin wants to go home. She told the Russians his address. In a flash of thoughts, she's clearing her throat.

"Henderson, uh . . ."

Steve finishes her thought, "we might not wanna go to your house."

His face contorts in confusion, "why?"

She licks her dry-lips. Lucy's throat bobs with a swallow, and she's avoiding his gaze, "I doxxed you, kinda," there's a pause, where the curly-haired boys mouth falls agape, "is your middle name Joshua?"

      Dustin's whisper is forced and raspy, "you told them my middle-name," his eyes widen, "What is wrong with you?!"

      "Dude, we were drugged," Steve comes to her defense, his swollen-lips forcefully parted open. When Dustin hits him with a sassy 'so?', the older-boy scoffs, "so?!"

      "Tough it out!" he says through his teeth, "be a man, stomach the drugs, and don't release my address to a bunch of guys, armed with teeth!"