plausible invincibility || s.hyde ✓

twelve ✿ immigrant song

Evangeline stares blankly at the TV, not even focused enough to be aware of what show is playing. The last thing she expected was to come her and get turned down and then yelled at by Hyde, all within the span of a few minutes. Despite all the roughness about him—his appearance, his sarcasm, his devil-may-care attitude—she's never heard him raise his voice in anger.

        "Evie, I—man, there's no excuse for that." He reaches for her hand again, slowly lacing his fingers through hers when she doesn't move away. Evangeline nods and looks up at him, questioning with her eyes. "I guess—I'm not okay."

          Evie leans back against the arm of the sofa and pulling her legs into a criss-cross. "You think?" She breaks away from Steven's grasp to run a hand through her hair, fluffing it as his hand falls to her knee.

          "Evangeline, I'm sorry." He trails his fingers across her skin lightly, staring straight into her baby blues. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

          "No, you shouldn't have." Steven swallows at the sharpness of her words and starts to pull his hand away, but Evie grabs it, softening her gaze. "I accept your apology, but don't do it again." Steven nods and squeezes her hand, a quiet thank you whispered into her fingers. "Are you gonna tell me what's bothering you?"

          The two stare at each other silently, Evangeline with raised eyebrows and Steven with purses lips. Then he pulls away and twists around toward the coffee table, pulling the rectangular card from under the magazine where he hid it. He tosses it into her lap; a three-by-five postcard with a picture of the colosseum on the front. "What's this?"

Hyde snorts and crosses his arms over his chest. "A post card from Edna."

"She sends you post cards?" Evie flips it over a few times, examining the photo and glancing at the writing on the back, but not reading it.

"No." He points at the side with the writing and scoffs. "Read it."

Evangeline furrows her brow and shrugs, mumbling the words to herself as she reads his mother's scratchy writing. "Steven—Italy's great, having lots of fun. Switzerland next! Hope you're fine. Edna." She glances back up to see him staring expectantly at her.

"Great, isn't it?" He shakes his head and plucks the card from the blonde's hand, reading it again to himself.

"Isn't that good?" Evie purses her lips as she watches Hyde's movements. "That she's contacting you?"

Hyde chuckles dryly and flings the card onto the table again, it slides across the glossy cover of a magazine and flutters to the rug. "She up and leaves me, her and my dad. Then she dumps him—again—to disappear off to Europe with some guy she met at a bar with no plans of coming back anytime soon. And she sends me a post card."

"Steven—" Evangeline trails off at the dead look in his eyes, the one he uses to disguise the pain underneath. He spreads his arms back over the edge of the couch behind her shoulder and Evangeline grabs his hand and laces their fingers together.

"And it's not even just that," he adds, wiggling his fingers as the corners of his mouth quirk and fall again, "she's been gone, like, a year, and there's been no contact, no nothing, and then when she does all she has to say is hope you're fine. She knows where I am. She could have called—or something." The last part he adds quickly, as if trying to dismiss the fact that he truly wishes his mother would call him.