1982

After the death of the Grabber, for a long time Finney had believed it was truly over and that he could return to his normal life. However, he discovered that normalcy had become impossible for him. The past refused to leave him, and all he could do to cope was get into fights to release pent-up anger and smoke weed to forget what had happened to him.

He had really tried to be normal, but he couldn't do it. His grades were dropping, people avoided him, and even his sister thought he had become a prick. And after the whole Camp Alpine Lake ordeal, things were somewhere between worse and better.

He tried to console himself with the fact that things were definitely worse for you. The Grabber’s kid...

Finney still didn't know how to act around you. One part of him really wanted to break your nose with his fists; that was the part that saw the offspring of the man who had ruined his life.

And then there was the part that remembered the first time he had seen you, years before—your terrified face and that agonizing scream when you had come down into the basement and seen your father trying to kill him. And subsequently, him strangling your father...

Sometimes he felt guilty when he saw the way people treated you, when he heard that another foster family had refused to take you in for fear that one day you might wake up and gut them in their sleep. Sometimes.

So, when social services placed you with the Blake family, he felt like part of a sick joke. Every time he saw you sitting on the couch with Gwen, every time he saw something of yours lying around the house, every time he looked into the corner of the room he shared with you and you were there... he felt his skin crawl. He didn't want you there.

Finney woke up in the middle of the night with his forehead covered in cold sweat, his breathing ragged, sitting up abruptly as he tried to shake the image of the nightmare from his head. The ringing phone, the suffocatingly cramped space, the Grabber.

He got out of bed, cursing under his breath, rummaging through the mess scattered around the room to find what he needed. Weed. He was too sober to deal with this shit. When he couldn't find it, he started wondering if Gwen had thrown it away to force him to quit; it was then that he noticed your bed was empty.

"Fuck..." he whispered to himself, pacing out onto the porch. You were there, your expression relaxed from the effects of the drug.

"I told you that you can't touch my stuff," he snapped, huffing, snatching the lit joint from your hand and reclaiming the sealed plastic bag with the rest of his weed. "And how did you know where I keep it, anyway?"

He stared at you for a few seconds, taking a drag and letting his muscles relax with the familiar sensation of numbness that cleared his mind. "Geez, how many have you had? You’re a mess."