statement_ends: (bb - betrayed)
statement_ends ([personal profile] statement_ends) wrote in [personal profile] loficharm 2020-11-10 03:27 am (UTC)

There's something immediately reassuring about the café. It smells like coffee and pastries, and it's normal: a whole world away from the creeping terror of the flat he'd woken up in. Someone here will help them, surely.

But all anyone else does at first is stare at them, and John doesn't know what to make of the looks on their faces. It doesn't look like worry, or concern, but more like the kind of looks you get when you do something shockingly stupid. It's enough to make him nervous, and then to make him angry. It's not their fault that their clothes don't fit, or that they don't have shoes, or that there's no adult with them. Do they think they've come bursting in like this on purpose? What sort of idiot would think that?

But then someone approaches them, an older man with a kind face, and he asks if they're all right. John has to swallow past the knot of lingering fear and fresh indignation in his throat before he can answer.

"N-no, we're lost. We need someone to phone the police." The whole story of their awful morning wants to spill out of him, but he holds it back. He doesn't want to start crying now, when they've made it this far. He swallows again, his hand still mindlessly clutched around Martin's wrist.

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