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told you so
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. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
Alina Fairgrieves sat cross-legged on the top bunk of the room she shared with William Byers, holding a lighter out in front of her. Her finger slid over the trigger, letting a bluish-orange flame loose, and she watched it bloom into the air, forcing herself not to shrink away from it. Gritting her teeth, she instead brought it closer to her face—close enough so she could feel the heat, but not close enough to get burned—and held it there, forcing her hand not to shake, so as to not drop the silver cigarette lighter.
That'd be a good way to burn down the house, she thought, the mental image making herself still. It'd be quite the awful compensation for the Byers' kindness in taking her in by making their house go up in flames. Sucking in deep breaths through her clenched teeth, Alina brought the lighter even closer to her face, close enough that if she raised it even a little, she'd catch her eyelashes on fire.
Steady. Alina counted to thirty in her head. She'd been doing this lately, trying to conquer her irrational fears by forcing herself not to be afraid of them. Her fear of spiders she'd gotten rid of by forcing herself to rescue every spider she found and take it outside, instead of panicking and throwing objects it like usual, and she'd combatted her claustrophobia by sleeping in her closet for three nights straight.
Her fear of fire was a relatively new one, and it had come after James Dante had held a lighter up to her face a year ago. He'd, reasonably, thought that she'd burned him with one of her own when she zapped him with her energy, and had retaliated by threatening to burn her face if Mike didn't jump off the cliff in Hawkins Quarry.
And so this was the next fear she needed to conquer. She'd asked Joyce to borrow her lighter, and would hold it as close to her as she could stand and try not to shake. Lately, she'd become more and more daring with it, which was how she'd managed to burn her hand yesterday. It had hurt like hell, but now that what she feared had come to pass, Alina didn't find fire so scary anymore. Today was the most daring she'd gone with the lighter.
