complexfemalecharacter | (no subject)

Working at the record store is pretty great. It's certainly better than Scoops A-fucking-hoy, that's for sure. Steve can wear whatever he wants as long as he puts on his name tag, and his bosses are cool. He gets to talk about music all day and get paid for it. He couldn't really ask for more at this point.

He's clocking out of his shift and throwing a peace sign up over his head when he sees Maeve come through the door, and he wonders why she couldn't have stopped by just a little bit earlier.

"Yep, I'm free. Are you shopping for something?" Steve hooks his thumb over his shoulder. "I can tell them to give you my discount."

For a moment she'd been thinking about asking if he'd want to hang out and now she's not so sure. The way he says it, offering his discount, it makes it sound like he's on his way out the door and doesn't want to stop to see her.

Which is fine. Steve doesn't owe her anything, not even his company. Not even his discount. She might have admitted to Aimee that it stings a little, but Aimee isn't here and Maeve doesn't really know anyone else all that well anyway, so she just forces a smile and shakes her head.

"Mostly just looking to kill time," she admits. "Everyone back at the home is cramming for exams and I'm bored as hell watching them." Especially when so many of them study so poorly.

"Oh, screw this place then." Steve throws a peace sign over his head and then drapes his arm over Maeve's shoulders to lead her back outside. "I am excellent at killing time. I had to kill time before there was the internet."

Once they're outside, he lets go of her and removes his name tag so he can slip it into his pocket. Her comment makes him huff out a laugh, and he smiles slyly over at her. "I am also excellent at not cramming for exams, and I won't even feel bad about keeping you from doing it, because you're a genius."

"I'm also not in class yet," she reminds him, looking amused. "I'd almost rather be studying, just so I could be done with it all this year instead of next."

She's trying not to seem pleased that he's willing to spend time with her, especially after thinking he didn't want to and she looks over at him, then gives him a bump with her elbow.

"So how do you kill time here?" she asks.

"Shit, right. Sorry," Steve says sheepishly, because he knew that. Maybe it's because he has a shiny new warning in his head, one that flashes high school whenever Maeve is around.

She nudges him and he elbows her back, light and teasing, before letting out a thoughtful hum. "I'm at the batting cages a lot. I was on the baseball team back home but that isn't even it. It's like-- therapeutic, almost?"

Whacking balls with sticks is a good way for him to get out of his own head when he starts thinking too much about monsters or Nancy or being stuck here in Darrow. It's that or pot, and at least hitting balls won't give him the munchies.

"I'm also rediscovering my love of the arcade," he tells her, "after years of thinking that I was above it all. But fuck that, Space Invaders rocks."

Maeve has absolutely no interest in baseball, not really one for sports in general, but definitely not one for what she sees as the most American sport of the whole lot. So he mentions batting cages and she shakes her head, her nose wrinkling in response. Watching him play baseball might not be so bad, but she's also not great at sitting on the sidelines either.

"The arcade," she tells him. "It sounds a lot more interesting than smacking a ball with a stick."

She could have first said no offence, but as she grins over at him, she knows that wouldn't have even begun to sound genuine. Not with the smile she's wearing now.

“Come on, you’ve never just wanted to whack something with a bat?” Steve smiles back at her, openly amused, and then makes a show of shrugging his shoulders. “The arcade it is.”

They set off in the direction of the arcade, and Steve is relieved to find that he isn’t aching for a cigarette. He really is trying to cut back, and it seems to be working. It’s kind of a relief.

“They have mini golf there,” Steve offers. “How do you feel about lightly tapping balls with sticks?”

"I hit a broken down car with a piece of wood until the windows and mirrors broke," she answers. "That was a lot more fun than I think baseball can ever be."

That night had been one of the best she's ever had. It's hard to explain it to someone else, though, why it felt so important, the six of them out there in the junk yard, helping Aimee deal with the anger she'd been holding onto over her assault. Women are never allowed to just be angry and even if she and Ola will never be the best of friends, Ola had given them all a gift that night.

"I mean, mini golf isn't quite beating the shit out of a car, but it'll do," she says, still grinning.

“Well, that sounds awesome.” He can kind of perfectly imagine her doing something so badass, and he kind of wants to tell her about how he took out literal monsters with his nail-studded bat, but it seems like sort of an awkward thing to spring on someone out of the blue.

“I’ll keep an eye out if you wanna take a few whacks at the clown,” he says with a laugh. Soon enough they’re close enough for him to smell the gas from the go-karts, and he looks over at her excitedly. “I’ll have to get you something with my tickets. How do you feel about disappearing ink? Or one tiny plastic soldier?”

"What about a little bottle of bubbles?" she asks, looking amused. "Or one of those sticky hands you can toss at things?"

She hasn't been in a proper arcade maybe ever. It's not the sort of place her mother would have ever taken her, not when the money could have been better spent on drugs or alcohol. And Sean wouldn't have taken her either. At least he would have spent the money on food and rent most of the time, but they hadn't really done anything fun when it was just the two of them.

“Oh, so you’re gonna be high maintenance. I see how it is,” Steve teases as they walk through the parking lot. “Bubbles it is.”

He opens the door for her and then follows her inside, taking a moment to acclimate to the sudden burst of noise that assaults him. The whole place smells a little like pizza, and it’s overrun with kids, but he still gets a kick out of it.

“Which first? Games or golf?” He walks up to one of the payment kiosks and pulls out his wallet. “Back home we had to deal with tokens. The cards they give you here are so much better.”

Moordale hadn't really had anything like this. It was a small town and half the time the movies in their theatre were six months old. There was something like an arcade attached to the theatre, but she had hardly ever gone inside. Playing arcade games has never been something she's done much of and she has a feeling Steve will be able to kick her ass at anything competitive they try.

"Golf," she says. "That way I might have a chance at actually winning."

“Golf it is,” Steve says, fiddling with the machine for a moment until he has two cards full of credits for each of them. He hands one over to Maeve and pockets his own. “For after. I’m not leaving here without playing some skee ball.”

They weave through the arcade, between rows of brightly colored machines with people crowded around them, and Steve steps up to the golf counter to get them tickets. After grabbing a scorecard and one of those little pencils, he’s handed two clubs and two balls, one orange and one blue, and turns around to hold them both in his palm.

“Ladies choice,” he says with a smirk. “Pick your color.”

Maeve tries to ignore that he'd just paid for her to play the games, kind of like a date, because she is actively not trying to date anyone. Including Steve. Even if he is kind of cute and doesn't seem to be a complete shithead like most of the guys she's met in her life.

After everything with Jackson and then Otis, it's just all been too much.

"Blue, of course," she answers with a grin, plucking the ball from his hand and taking her club as well. "I think you'd look good in orange."

Steve watches her pluck the ball from his hand and thinks of a pretty good blue balls joke, but he has the good sense not to say it. Instead he just laughs and lifts the putter up to hold it over his shoulder as he leads them outside to the golf course.

"We've got two options," he says, pointing his putter at the signs for the courses. "Old timey western town theme, or jungle theme that gives up about halfway through and turns into sort of a mash up of random shit. Your choice."

"Old timey western town, obviously," Maeve answers, looking at the western theme course with interest. "That's not really a thing we do in England."

The jungle turning into random mishmash of things sounds fun in its own way and Maeve glances in that direction before she says, "Not that we have a lot of jungles in England either. We'll just have to do the other one next time."

This is assuming there will be a next time, which she realizes a little too late she's said.

"Prospectors it is, then." Steve grins over at her, pleased that she's already thinking about a next time, but he doesn't draw attention to it. Instead he leads her over to the first hole, a simple one that's pretty much a straight shot through some saloon doors that open and close on a timer, and plants his putter into the astroturf.

"Ladies first," he tells her, gesturing for her to go ahead. "I need to see what I'm up against here." A thought occurs to him and he lifts his putter to lightly poke at the back of her knee. "Should we make this interesting?"

Maeve is busy lining up her first putt when Steve pokes her and she whirls around, her own putter raised, letting it swing within about six inches of him. She's teasing, she's still smiling and if she'd wanted to hit him, she would have. Steve has proven himself to be a decent guy, though, and she's enjoying being with him.

"Interesting how?" she asks, looking at him down the length of the putter she has pointed at him. A bet would be fun, but only if she can get something she wants out of the whole deal.

"Loser buys the shitty arcade pizza after," Steve replies, quirking a brow as he reaches out to grip the end of her putter. He tugs her forward and looks over her face, remembering only too late that he's really trying not to flirt with her.

"Why?" He asks, biting briefly at his bottom lip. "Did you have something else in mind?"

Maeve's eyes flick briefly to Steve's bottom lip when his teeth press into it and then she looks up again and grins at him.

"Nope," she says, whirling around again to line up her shot. She's sure that single word sounded like the complete and utter bullshit it was, but she's trying really hard not to get herself into something here that just ends up screwing her over again. Steve is fun and he's cute, but she knows fun and cute. That's the sort of thing she's been trying to avoid.

But then why did she go looking for him? It's not a question she's going to let herself think on too hard right now.

Carefully, she hits the little ball, then watches as it bounces off one of the wall and ends up a lot closer to the first hole than she expected. She turns back with another grin and says, "Hmm, looks like you might be buying the shitty pizza."

Steve's eyes narrow a bit as Maeve spins away from him, but he can't deny that he's a little grateful for the reprieve. Not that she isn't gorgeous, or fun, or smart, or-- ugh. She's fantastic, but he can't help but to be hung up on her age.

And he can't think of any non-creepy way to ask when she turns eighteen, because the question itself is creepy. He really doesn't want to be creepy, so he just does his best to push it all aside because he's happy to have Maeve as his friend.

"Getting cocky a little early, aren't we?" Steve laughs and nudges her out of the way with his hip so he can lean down and set up his own ball. He feels the urge to impress her, but he doubts Maeve is the kind of girl who would be impressed by a hole-in-one on a put-put course.

If he wanted to impress her, he would probably have to, like, read a book.

He lines up his shot and waits for the saloon doors to open, tapping the ball with his putter and watching as it sails right for the hole. His brows raise and then drop again as the ball skirts around the rim of the hole and then shoots off towards the edge. "Of course."

"Oh, so close," she says with a little smirk, stepping forward on the course and swinging her putter as she goes. Maeve isn't one for sports; she'd gone to watch Jackson swim only because it was expected her instead of because she was actually interested, which she realizes was sort of shitty of her. She's kind of a mess, though, and she knows it. But this isn't a sport. It's just having fun with someone instead of standing on the sidelines and watching.

She's done a lot of watching from the sidelines all her life.

Her next shot is an easy one and she plucks her ball from the hole after she sinks it, then steps back and gestures for Steve to go.

"So if you don't make this next shot, I believe I'm already winning."

"Are you going to be this insufferable the whole time?" Steve asks, but the smile on his face makes it obvious that he's teasing. Still, he hands over the scorecard and the little pencil, since he doesn't want to be in charge of them anyway.

Once they're in her hand, he lines up his shot and knocks the ball into the hole. After scooping it out, he turns to her and lifts a brow. "What do we get if we tie? As long as we're negotiating terms."

"I've been insufferable my whole life," she answers as she takes the scorecard from him, marking down their scores before she tucks it into the back pocket of her shorts along with the pencil.

"If we tie," she starts, her tone thoughtful as they move along to the next hole. "Someone pays tonight and the other person pays for it next time? It's not very creative, but given how little I know about this place so far, it's the best I've got. Unless you've got another idea."

She sets her little ball down and considers the next hole while she waits, trying to figure out her plan of attack. For a bloody mini-golf course. She just really wants to win.

“This doesn’t surprise me,” he replies, watching as she meticulously marks down their scores. Her idea, while not incredibly inventive, makes Steve smile because it means she’s thinking about hanging out with him like this again. He’ll take that.

She eyes up the shot like they’re on a PGA Tour, and Steve rolls his eyes in fond exasperation.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” he tells her, smirking as he nudges her calf with the end of his putter. “This place closes at midnight, you know.”

"So I've got a few more hours yet to make this putt, yeah?" she answers, throwing a glance at Steve over her shoulder before she taps the ball with her putter. It's pretty pathetic, considering her preparation, and the ball just rolls toward the corner, then bounces off the little wall and comes halfway back toward her.

"I planned it that way," she announces as she steps out of the way for Steve's turn.

"Not if you want to make that dream of arcade pizza a reality," he replies. "Plus, I still have to win you a sticky hand."

He gives her a dry look and bumps her further out of the way with his hip before leaning over to place his ball. This hole has a weird little hump at the end, with the hole resting on top of it, and Steve narrows his eyes a bit as he calculates his swing. The ball goes sailing right over the hump and past the hole, bouncing around a few times before coming to a stop in the corner.

"Okay," Steve concedes. "We may have to kiss that pizza goodbye."

"No, just the money it's going to cost you," she answers, then steps up to her ball and focuses harder than she really ought to for such a stupid little thing. It works out, though, and her ball climbs the little hump and drops into the hole, though only just. For a second she'd been sure it was going to come rolling back toward her. Again.

Maeve steps up to Steve and bumps him back. Just because she can.

It goes on like that for a while, both of them talking shit (with Maeve definitely taking the lead on that) while being not terribly good at mini-golf. He finds himself wanting to touch her, to flirt and lean in to brush her hair out of her face, and he wonders if that makes him an asshole. She's seventeen, and probably just wants to be friends, but his stupid horny brain won't shut it.

After the ninth hole, Steve steps up and snatches the score card out of her back pocket, wincing as he totals up the scores. A lot of guys he knew back home would absolutely lose their shit at losing to a girl, and he probably would have been annoyed at some point, but now he can't really bring himself to care. She's better than him, and that's fine.

"I could still make a comeback," he tells her with a grin, offering the card back to her. "Unlikely, but possible."

"I could have been doctoring the score all along," she points out, smirking at Steve as she lines up this next shot. She hasn't been and she doesn't even think he's been letting her win, which is a nice change of pace from guys who think they need to treat her like she's breakable.

Not that anyone in Moordale thought that. People in Moordale were mostly afraid of her.

"How far ahead am I?" she asks, turning her back on her ball as it rolls toward the hole. She doesn't even get to see her first hole-in-one. She's too busy looking at Steve, at the crooked grin he's wearing, at the way he's holding the card toward her.

"You could have, but you weren't. You don't need to," Steve says with a chuckle. "I do have eyes, despite what my low score might imply."

Maeve hits her ball and turns around, leaving Steve to be the only witness to the way her ball sails to the hole and drops neatly into it.

"Holy shit, did you do that on purpose?" He asks, because turning away to not even watch it is a total power move. The quizzical expression on her face tells him otherwise, and he lets out a woop as he goes over to give her a hug. "You got a hole in one!"

He lifts her off of her feet and turns her around so she can see the empty green, and then holds her up with one arm snug under her ass so he can throw his other arm in the air with a loud, embarrassing whoop of celebration.

He makes such a big deal about it and Maeve wants to act like it doesn't affect her, the way Steve first hugs her, then picks her straight up off the ground. This isn't her, feeling that stupid fluttering in her chest over a dumb boy.

Or maybe it is her. She'd felt it with Jackson, at least at first, and she'd felt it with Otis. It's just that people always disappoint her. They always let her down. She's so tired of it.

But she's tired of pretending she doesn't have feelings, too. On impulse, Maeve lifts both her hands to Steve's face so she can turn him toward her and press a kiss against his mouth.

For Steve, the kiss comes completely out of left field. Her mouth presses to his and he drops the putter and the scorecard so he can wrap his other arm around Maeve’s waist and kiss her back. He’s been trying not to think about this exact thing pretty much all day, but as soon as it’s offered up, his brain seems to go offline.

It’s a good kiss, her lips soft against his as she cradles his face in her warm hands. Steve has almost forgotten what it felt like to be kissed like this, with feeling behind it.

He likes Maeve, he really does, even if she’s only seventeen—

And there it is, his brain rebooting. God, he hates his brain.

He pulls back from the kiss as gently as he can manage, and carefully sets her back on the ground. Her mouth looks a little bruised and Steve stares at it for a moment before shaking himself and meeting her eyes instead.

“I— uh.” He swallows hard and realizes he’s still gripping her hip, so he lets go of her. “You’re seventeen.”

He wants to kiss her again. He wishes it didn’t make him feel like such a creep.

That's not at all what Maeve expects to hear and she takes a step back, looking up at Steve with a bewildered expression. He's rejecting her. At the same time, she knows he isn't, because that kiss... it had been a good kiss. A guy doesn't kiss her back like that if he isn't interested.

It's about her age, she realizes, and she laughs, a dry sound, then shakes her head.

"I'm seventeen, so we can't kiss," she says, looking faintly amused. Her feelings are hurt a little, a rejection still stings, even when she knows the reason has nothing to do with whether or not he wants to. Mostly, though, she's mentally calculating the days until she turns eighteen. Maeve usually hates her birthday, but maybe this year it won't be so bad.

"So what, I turn eighteen and I'm fuckable?" she asks.

At first she looks a little hurt and it makes Steve kind of feel like he’s just kicked a puppy on accident, because he doesn’t want her to be hurt. Then her expression turns teasing and what she says makes Steve let out a choking cough, cheeks going red as he rubs at his breastbone.

“I—“

“Hey, are you guys gonna play the damn hole, or what?”

Steve looks over at a group of kids waiting to play through, and he laughs as he gathers up their putters and scorecard and takes Maeve’s hand to lead her towards a small grouping of picnic tables so they can have this horribly awkward conversation.

He sits on the bench with his back to the table, and he can’t help but to remember that day in the park, when he sprawled out with his head in her lap, and how comfortable he had been.

“That’s— a very loaded question,” he finally says, huffing out a laugh as he looks over at her with pink cheeks. “Look, I like you. You know I like you.”

His gaze drops to her mouth again. “This definitely isn’t about me not wanting to kiss you.”

"See, I was always told Americans were prudes, but I never believed it until now," she says, her mouth pursed in something that's almost a smile, but not quite there. It's partly the armour she's spent so long building up coming into play, keeping her safe from hurt, from disappointment. Yeah, she knows he likes her. At least she knows now that he's said as much. She doesn't really see what the problem is.

It's something to do with honour, but she doesn't completely get it. She's not going to be any more grown up in three months. He's trying to be a good guy, though, she has to give him that. It's more than most guys are capable of.

"Just wait until I tell Robin I kissed you and you said I was too young," she teases. "And just wait until three months from now."

“Prudes?” Steve laughs at that, but he doesn’t know enough about other places to argue. He doesn’t think he’s a prude, but a beautiful girl kissed him and he— he pulled away like a fucking idiot.

She’s looking at him like he’s an idiot, but she doesn’t seem mad or upset. He stares back at her and feels a little winded, like the air has been knocked out of him.

“Fuck, do not tell—“ He cuts himself off and swallows hard. “Three months? That’s not so long.”

His gaze drops to her mouth again, and his fingers twitch at his sides.

"Oh, I'm telling Robin," she answers. "I don't really do girl talk very well, but I think she and I can muddle through for this."

Maybe she won't tell Robin, but she feels like she needs a little leverage here. Something to give Steve a hard time about. Maybe there's nothing personal in him saying she's too young -- not even too young, just under eighteen, because she'll always be younger than him by exactly the same number of days -- but she still feels oddly vulnerable.

"I don't tell anyone about my birthday, so don't you dare do anything for it, but... yeah, September eighth," she says, then shrugs.

Steve lets out a beleaguered sigh as he imagines the severe taunting that his best friend will give him for this. They may not actively dislike each other anymore, but they sure haven’t stopped roasting each other to hell and back.

He looks over at Maeve and wonders if he overreacted, or if he’s too much in his own head. Maeve is more mature than most people he meets that are around his age.

“It just seemed like an important line for me to draw,” he says, trying to explain. He spends so much time around kids, both in Hawkins and here, but Maeve isn’t a kid. She’s far from being a kid, and it isn’t fair of him to treat her like one.

He sighs and scrubs his hands over his face before looking over at her again, feeling the corner of his mouth quirk into a smile.

“Not anything?” He asks, shifting a bit closer to her. She smells so good. He wants to kiss her again, but he wonders if maybe he missed his chance. “What if I took you to dinner? Someplace casual. Paper napkins only.”

Edited 2020-08-05 18:01 (UTC)

"As long as no one mentions the word birthday, it can just be a regular hang out," she answers, still smirking. Steve has shifted closer to her and she thinks, no matter what he's saying about drawing a line, he'd very much like to kiss her again.

But she's not going to make it that easy. It's a little unrelenting of her to keep giving him a hard time, especially since she's not actually angry about it at all. It makes sense and she respects it. That doesn't mean her ego isn't still a little bruised.

So she gets up from the bench, casually, as if she's not doing it just to bug him, then grabs her putter.

"Come on," she says. "I haven't won my free pizza yet."

A regular hang out. The words make Steve's insides do an internal wince that only gets worse when she gets up and walks away from him, but he does his best to push all his self-deprecating bullshit to the side and takes a look at her face. She looks like she's trying hard to smirk, and Steve realizes that he's being teased.

It's such a relief that he lets out a huffed laugh and pulls himself to his feet. He follows after her and this time when she bends over to place her ball, he really lets himself look at her. Her hips seem to sway in a way that's entirely unnecessary, and also in a way that could entirely be Steve's imagination.

"My game was shit before you distracted the hell out of me," Steve admits, finally dragging his gaze away from her ass as she takes her shot. "I'm pretty sure victory is yours."

Things have changed and Maeve can feel it as they play through the next few holes. Everything is just a little bit charged where it hadn't been before and it's both frustrating and exciting. She doesn't want to like Steve, because liking guys is so often the kind of thing that ends up going very poorly. All her life, she doesn't think she's had one single good experience.

Jackson had been sweet and he'd been a good boyfriend, but she'd fucked that one up by just being herself. By being too much of herself when he had so much going for him. And Otis... well, she mostly tries not to think of him.

Steve isn't like either of them. She has no idea if that's a good or bad thing. She knows she wants to kiss him again. She also knows she doesn't think she can make another attempt, not if she's going to get gently turned down again.

"Victory is very close to being mine," she announces once they've reached the last hole. "So show me what you've got."

Steve is so distracted that he pretty much tanks his score, and doesn’t show much prowess in the way of putt putt golf. They keep looking at each other, letting their gazes linger, and suddenly Steve’s sad little blue ball becomes much more metaphorical.

The last hole is an easy one, just a ramp with a hole at the end that keeps the ball once it drops in. Steve lines up his shot and makes a bet with himself. If he makes it, he’ll stop thinking so damn hard.

He takes a breath and hits the ball, breath caught in his chest as he watches it roll up the ramp. It drops neatly into the cup, and Steve celebrates his first and only hole in one of the day by dropping his putter and turning around to pull Maeve into his arms and kiss her. He keeps one arm locked around her waist and cups her cheek with his other hand, holding her close and he kisses her hard enough to make up for all the stupid tension he put them through for nine long holes.

It's not an easy task, surprising Maeve Wiley. She's been through too much shit and dealt with too many crappy people to be anything but wary and on guard, but somehow Steve manages it. That says something about how he puts her at ease, something she can't let herself think about for too long or she'll convince herself it's a bad idea to let her guard down at all.

It's a good kiss. A really good kiss and she sinks into it with a soft sound against his lips. She knows Steve isn't going to completely change his mind and take her back to his place, but the kiss still makes her ache in a deeply pleasant way.

When they part, Maeve doesn't step away, just looks up at him with a small, crooked smile. "So all I needed was to be twenty minutes older, yeah?" she asks, looking amused.

It's a hell of a kiss. Steve is breathless by the time he pulls away, and he keeps a loose grip on her hip so she can't separate from him entirely. And then she speaks, and he lets out a huff of laughter as he rolls his eyes in fond amusement.

"Are you always such a smart ass?" He asks her, knowing full well the answer. His brow furrows briefly at the mention of her age, but he pushes past it. Arbitrary rules are sure to have exceptions, after all. "Three months isn't so long."

He kisses her again, and this time it’s softer. Maybe a little sweeter, so she knows that he doesn’t plan on this being the last one. He steps away from her and licks his bottom lip before bending down to grab her putter and offer it back to her. "Last hole, and then the pizza's all yours. You won."

"Pretty much all the time," she answers with a smirk, but she leans into the second kiss, too, and tries not to think about why she's a smart ass. It's kept her safe for this long and she can't imagine it's going to change any time soon.

She likes Steve. She doesn't want to, but she does, and that makes her nervous no matter how much she likes him or likes kissing him. No one is reliable, not really, and she has no way of knowing whether or not he'll just turn around and decide she's far too young tomorrow.

But that's a worry for tomorrow.

Instead of worrying, she takes her putter, turns and takes her shot. It doesn't go in, but he's right, she's still won even with taking two strokes on this hole and once it's complete she turns back to him with a smug grin.

Steve lets out an amused huff and shifts the items in his hand until he can scribble in her final score, even signing his initial at the bottom for posterity, and then hands it over to her.

"Congratulations," he tells her, smiling at her for a lingering moment before reaching out to take her putter from her. He sets them on the specified return counter and then opens the door to follow her into the arcade.

The sudden burst of light and sound is a little disorienting after being outside, and he blinks as he adjusts to it. He looks over at Maeve and doesn't quite know what to say, or how to touch her, so he reaches out to hook his index finger in the belt loop on her hip, giving it a little tug.

"Pizza," he says, smiling as his gaze shifts past her to a bank of games along the back wall. "And then I'm going to try to redeem myself over on that basketball game."