The Long Game━ (l. sinclair)

damn, sam is right

Will shot awake with a gasp.

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Corey had taken to sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, leg jolting beneath him. Dustin was having an existential crisis in the kitchen whilst Lucas and Max sat across from each other against opposite sides of the hallway door frame. Nancy was in the kitchen, ignoring Dustin, while Steve practiced swinging his nail bat in front of Corey.

"If you accidentally take out my eye with that bat, Harrington," Corey muttered, feeling weird to speak in the dead silence of the house, "I'll kill you."

He lowered his bat, looking at Corey like he just remembered he was there. Steve was no longer swinging it, which soothed Corey a little — he was someone who couldn't stand watching people around so much, as it only made him nervous to see them nervous. Corey watched Steve's gaze lower to the cuff of his jeans, and Corey already knew what Steve was thinking.

Steve nodded down at Corey's leg, asking, "How're the claw marks?"

Breathing in through his nostrils, Corey grabbed his jeans and lifted them up as far as they could go — four nasty claw marks were scratched down his shin from one of the Demodogs back at the junkyard. He had been trying to protect Steve, trying to guard the door to the bus with a sheet of metal, but the Demodog's claws pierced through both the metal sheet and Corey's skin, so now his leg was left with an unruly scar.

"Definitely not as bad as Sam," Corey dismissed. His leg didn't even hurt; he wasn't even thinking about it. The only thing that played in his mind was his brutal imagination, wondering how Sam ended up in the state she was in. He shrugged, "And they look badass."

"True," nodded Steve, but he wasn't all that satisfied. As if he couldn't help himself from asking, he blurted, "Why didn't you tell her what happened in the bus?"

Corey looked down at the four bloody marks engraved into his skin, thinking carefully — something he wasn't really used to. Sam knew everything, she figured out everything. So, the fact that she hadn't noticed by now, was just really worrisome for Corey, considering Sam was usually the worrisome one. If Sam was too tired to notice Corey was in pain — the same girl who seemed as if she could feel everyone's pain — then Corey thought it better to be quiet.

He looked back up at the tall Harrington boy, only made taller by all that hair, and replied, "She's already been through enough tonight. And this is barely a bump, compared to everything happening."

"That doesn't mean it didn't happen. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter."

"Who are you, Sam?" Corey raised a judgmental eyebrow. "I didn't tell her for this reason. I don't want to answer these questions."

Steve scrutinized Corey with a look that just pissed Corey off. "Well, the kid's smart. She knows her shit. Maybe you should answer them."

Corey knew Sam was smart. Corey knew Sam knew her shit. That didn't mean it was easy, and that didn't mean he wanted her to. He still couldn't properly verbally express his feelings, and the frustration from that alone was enough to send him into another burst of anger. To avoid it, Corey usually shut the hell up, or he talked to Mike. The latter wasn't an option, considering Mike was in the shed, and neither was the first, since Steve kept asking him dumb-but-not-dumb questions.

"Or maybe I should not," Corey snapped. Harshly, he picked up Steve's bad and shoved the handle into Steve's hands. "Keep practicing your stupid baseball moves."