Every Breath You Take

5

"You think the grocery clerks will wonder why we're buying out their meat selection?" I ask, tossing another sirloin into our cart.

"Wonder, yes." Steve glances over at me as he tosses more cuts of meat into the cart, "give a crap, no."

"We look like total carnivores." I chuckle.

"Aren't people carnivores as is?" Steve scrunches his eyebrows.

"Nope, omnivores." I smirk, pointing to a vegetable display nearby the meat section.

Steve and I stopped back at his house first, since it was nearby. We picked up a few weapons from his garage to add to his bat, Steve doing a lot of the choosing and myself doing more of the rationalization.

"A hammer?" I deadpanned, "really?"

"Yeah, this would hurt." Steve raises his eyebrows, swinging the hammer downwards into a nail on his dad's workbench, "look at that force."

"I don't think you'll want to be that close to the demogorgan," I pause, "or... whatever it is, Steve."

He sighs, running an empty hand through his hair and hesitantly placing the hammer back on the bench with a little pat.

"You're right."

After we did that, we pulled up to the grocery store. Steve's apparently sensitive to the smell of gasoline -I know right- so he insisted on picking up the meat first to spend the least amount of time around "cartons full of that bullshit."

"I'm not super huge on vegetables." Steve sighs, turning towards me and leaning up against the cart.

"Fruit?" I ask, curious.

"Strawberries." He replies, "delicious."

"Okay, now I want some fruit." I give him a smile, laughing as I begin to walk towards the heart of the produce section.

"Where are you going?" His eyes don't leave mine as I walk backwards slowly.

"Watch the cart." I laugh, "I'm going to get us a snack."

"Do we need that?"

"Oh we need it."

He laughs, shaking his head at my persistence and turning back to the display we were looking at as I turn to face the direction I was walking.

I pass by shelves and shelves of food that looks great, and my mind starts to wander to Eleven. She loves those eggo waffles, and I just passed them by in the frozen section.

reaching down, I loop my hand around smaller basket and pick it up, waltzing back over to the eggos and throwing some into my bag for her.

I feel awful hiding the fact that she's okay from everyone, and I feel awful having to keep her locked indoors like some sort of prisoner. I just hope she can see that I'm only doing it to keep her safe, and maybe picking up some food for her will help with that.

I grab a bag of cheese puffs off of the next shelf I pass by, followed by a jug of animal crackers, and some chip's ahoy cookies.

"Perfect." I mumble, looking at the collection of food items I've acquired for El, "now, strawberries."

The market begins to feel oddly quiet as I approach the produce, the only sound filling my ears being that of my footsteps clapping against the ground.

I stop for a moment, looking from side to side, and listening for any sort of conversation or music. After standing for around a minute, probably looking like an idiot with my confused expression, I shrug my shoulders and continue walking to the strawberries for Steve and I.