ANGEL ~ vance hopper x reader ~

⌗ 𓂃 𖥔༌ ᰷ ﹅chapter 13﹅ ᰷ 𖥔༌ 𓂃⌗

CHAPTER 13
⌗ 𓂃 𖥔༌ ᰷ ﹅new science, old friends﹅ ᰷ 𖥔༌ 𓂃⌗

it was a week after we'd returned home and finney had been adjusting back to home life surprisingly well. dora, his social worker, had been helping us with how we should treat finney and what behaviours from him we could expect. she'd also been working privately with him, giving us debriefs of how he feels generally as she was unable to disclose any specific words or statements due to the strict confidentiality rules.

finney himself had been chirpier than before his kidnapping, his confidence had skyrocketed and was even telling dad and I that he was ready to go back to school soon. I was happy that finney was happy and so were dad and gwen.

the three of us kids were also getting closer with dad. we learnt to fear him a little less and we even took family day trips some weekends. dad made the effort to find someone to cover him at work so he could be there for every one of finney's baseball games and took him to practice, he picked gwen up every saturday morning from susie's house and I finally felt comfortable with leaving the kids at home while I was at track on friday.

speaking of track, I had a track meet coming up the next wednesday after school and coach russo had been pushing us all harder to run faster. dad had vowed to be there to see me run my first track meet. I'd been chosen to run the 100m sprint — my specialty — with katy. vance had also been talking non-stop about how excited he was for us.

during practices, imani had been completely airing me the whole time. she and cameron had also been trying to freeze me out of the friend group, but everyone else refused to take sides and even tried to get us to rejoin friends. everytime I tried to talk to her, she would turn away from me or stalk off angrily. it hurt knowing one of my best friends was mad at me and I couldn't do anything about it without pissing her off further. vance had even tried to apologise to cameron and her, but neither of them were having any of it.

I mulled these thoughts over in my head as bruce, vance and I walked to our science classes, ignoring the frequent glances of fear from bruce to vance.

"you ok? you're real quiet. is everything with your dad still ok?" bruce asked me with a concerned look on his face.

"yeah, everything with dad's fine! I'm just thinking about imani..." I replied.

bruce slung an arm around my shoulder. I felt vance's grip on my hand tighten at his action and I squeezed briefly in response to tell him it was ok.

"I'm sure imani will come around." he said confidently before shrinking away from me in fear. "sorry..."

I looked up at vance in confusion to find the meanest glare on his face directed at bruce.

"vance! he was just being friendly." I scolded him.

"whatever. can you wait here a sec? I gotta grab something from my locker." he walked over to his locker and span the code.

"your boyfriend scares the crap outta me." bruce said, tucking his hands in his pockets.

"i'm sorry about him, he can get protective." I explained.

"didn't he hospitalise a guy for looking at you?" he asked.

"what?? when?"