Chapter Text
Bad dreams in the night / They told me I was going to lose the fight / Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering / Wuthering Heights
- Kate Bush / Wuthering Heights
g o d can’t save the king, but g o d can kill the king. don’t you want to become a G O D?
What?
you are thane of hawkins. the d e v i l speak true. let his blood spill upon your cheeks like the way the california sea once sprayed upon your face. the raven himself be hoarse to croak the final entrance of the k i n g.
King?
the k i n g that your fists lay upon bare. twice fallen by others hands; will you let him rise again? or will you t a k e the t h r o n e.
I know what I have to do.
Hawkins, Indiana / November 1984 / 20 Minutes After Saving the World
When the world didn’t end for a second time, Steve Harrington knew some things were going to be different.
He knew, for one, that he was going to have a killer headache for the next few days, because Billy Hargrove cracked a plate over his head and god damn it still hurts.
He also knew, on some deeper and instinctual level that he hadn’t quite acknowledged yet, that he might never move on from the events that occured on that breezy November night. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to waltz on home, kick off his shoes and collapse into bed for a well-earned rest. He had a lot to think over, after all. He’ll probably think about Nancy Wheeler first (since if one thing wasn’t going to change, it was that Steve Harrington wasn’t fair in love but way too fair in war), and about how he's a pretty shitty boyfriend but Jonathan Byers will do damn better by her - it’s okay, Nance. It’s okay.
He’ll think about Billy Hargrove, and wonder how Billy will react to him next time they pass each other in the halls of school, or how they might fare at sports practice. Considering that Max-Not-Maxine-Never-Maxine Mayfield decided to seize Hargrove’s car, almost crashed the car several times and now Steve’s driving the thing back to the Byer’s place… yeah, there’s no chance in hell Hargrove is just going to forgive and fucking forget. Not even a nail-bat might be enough to make Billy ‘understand’ Max’s wishes for very long.
And Steve knew, on some much deeper subconscious level, that he was going to have nightmares - again. As if he hadn’t already been haunted by dreams of Barbara Holland’s echoing, ghostly cry for help in his backyard pool, and a grotesque creature screaming at him whilst a plethora of technicolor lights hung around the Byer’s residence blaze in his eyes. He’ll fall asleep to visions of mutant dog-like beasts prowling in the fog, and have his dreams haunted by sounds of children screaming whilst the tunnels burn and the demodogs feast on Steve’s broken promise to keep them safe.
He knew the kids will be alright though. Even though they’ve just crawled out of the sweeping expanse of eldritch tunnels that stretch through Hawkin’s crust (although now reduced to ash and decay, hopefully), and even though Steve and Dustin were almost mauled to death by a horde of alien rabid dogs ( it was a close call, such a close fucking call) , they were still the same annoying dipshits that they had been all fucking day. Whilst Steve remained stony-faced and silent as he drove them back to Mrs. Byer’s house, the kids in the back were raucous and rowdy. Mike kept insisting that Steve ought to hit the gas because he has to see El and make sure she’s okay; Lucas kept shooting Mike down, repeatedly phrasing: “we’ll get there when we get there” as if it was meant to make Mike feel any better. Meanwhile Max, wedged right in the middle of the boys with her arms folded and looking extremely disgruntled, was telling anyone who was listening that Mike Wheeler and Lucas Sinclair don’t know shit about girls.
Dustin Henderson, who delegated himself both shotgun and Steve’s caretaker, reached for the stereo. Steve slapped his hand away without even tearing his eyes away from the stretching road ahead.
“Leave it alone, Henderson.”
“Okay, jeez, sorry.”
Dustin fell into an awkward silence, and it didn’t take long for Steve to feel a twinge of guilt. His eyes remained firm on the road ahead, but he quickly muttered: “Sorry, man.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean– I just…”
“I get it,” Dustin offered, with a slight nod and a short smile. “It’s been a tough night for you. It’s okay.”
Steve didn’t like the patronizing tone, but the reasonable part of him that was somehow still conscious knew Dustin was just trying to be nice. Steve opted to relapse into his concentrated silence.
The headlamps of the ‘borrowed’ car searched into the darkness ahead, catching the shadows of the forests that surrounded the small town. There wasn’t a glimpse of light anywhere else; sunset was hours ago, and fuck knows how late it must be now. Steve was probably more tired than he’d ever been in his life - even more in the morning after that party in his freshman year with the basketball team after he performed a successful half-court shot seconds before the clock went to zero, and even more beat a fucking demogorgon half to death in 1983. Yet his mind was fully alert, ready to swing over and clamber for his bat if he needed to go another round.
The Gate’s closed; it’s over. Calm the fuck down, Harrington, you’re paranoid.
The adrenaline is wearing off. He knew he could make it back to Mrs. Byer’s place, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get himself out of the car. Maybe he’ll just take a nap on her porch. After everything, she wouldn’t mind, right?
“You okay?” Dustin inquired; both of them have tuned out the argument in the rear, which has changed into an argument about Will potentially missing their next D&D session and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. “How’re you feeling, buddy?”
Somehow, despite the overwhelming fatigue, throbbing pain across half of his face and the temptation to strangle the kids in the back, Steve was able to crack a half-grin. “Am I still gonna be pretty once this all heals over?”
“‘Course you are,” Dustin replied, breaking out into a swift smile too; but it’s quick to fall back into one of concern. “Does it hurt much?”
“Ah, it’s fine. You don’t need worry about me.”
There’s a brief gap of silence, but it’s not awkward this time. Steve just focused on the road, hoping that the endless tarmac would come to a stop soon.
“You know why they call it ‘shotgun’?” Dustin piped up suddenly. “Sitting in the passenger seat, I mean?”
Steve shrugged. “I dunno, dude. I bet my ass that you do though.”
“Back in the Old West, people would ride in wagons, right? And in the front, there’s like a - a bench, and you can fit two people in front. You got the driver, of course, who mans the reins and the horses and keeps the wagon moving. And the passenger can sit beside him. But, you know - it’s the Old West. There’s bandits and robbers and stuff. So whilst the driver - y’know, drives… the passenger sits next to him with a shotgun and protects the wagon. He protects the cargo, and protects the driver. He’s his bodyguard, and drives off anyone who’s gonna stop him.”
“That makes sense,” Steve replied. “But if this is a ploy for me to get you a shotgun or something, then you got another thing–”
“My point is,” Dustin interjected, as the lights of the Byer’s house suddenly come into view around the dusky corner, “I might not have a shotgun, but I still want to keep you safe, you know? The way you’ve done for us.”
The car parked up in front of the house, and the kids in the back immediately scrambled out. Mike was out first, of course, rushing towards the house and barging through the front door like he was raiding the place. Lucas ran in behind, and Max brought up the rear with a huff. None of them closed the doors, but Steve didn’t even bother to scold them. For the first time since he got into the car, he wasn’t looking straight ahead. He sure as hell wasn’t quite meeting Dustin’s eyes yet though.
“Steve?” Dustin implored; his voice was low and congested with worry, enough to make Steve feel a brief sweep of childish annoyance. Why does Dustin have to keep worrying about him? What’s this kid’s deal? So what - they hang out for a day, and now Dustin’s convinced they’re best friends or something?
In the same fell swoop, Steve realised that - considering everything that’s happened recently, and the fact that his former ‘best friend’ Tommy H never looked at him this way, not fucking once - Dustin is the closest to being a genuine ‘best friend’ that Steve might’ve had in all his life.
“I promised Nance I’d keep you safe,” Steve murmured; to his fresh horror, his voice was hoarse and trembling like he was holding back the fear of unconfessed peril. “And I… I don’t know if I did.”
Hawkins, Indiana / March 1985 / 4 Months After Saving the World
Steve’s eyes were usually hazel; a rich, warm brown with lashings of yellow and green. Under the reflection of the afternoon sunlight, they shine like burnished copper. But tonight, his eyes are tinted with traces of scarlet. The whites of his sclera are scarred with red and pink veins; his cheeks are flushed but the rest of his face is shadowed in a monotony of a clammy gray. He doesn’t show any signs of distress; he lies there on his bed, one arm swung underneath his head, and gazes at the same spot at the ceiling as if something might change.
In concept, the act of going to sleep was meant to provide a state of non-existence; a state of being where he was temporarily liberated from his daily troubles. But for the past few weeks, it seemed that going to bed only encouraged the churning nausea of anxiety in his stomach, the throbbing headaches and the constant foreboding that encompassed his chest.
He’s lying in bed, surrounded by an abundance of blankets and pillows that he stole from the cupboard under the stairs, staring up and watching the shadows on his wall twist and churn. Everything’s the same; nothing’s changed in his bedroom. He’s still got the closet door half-open, some old and used clothes draped over his chair, an ashtray stained with the cinders of the cigarettes he’s not allowed to smoke inside of his room, and the portable radio that The Party gifted him as a sort of ‘thanks for making sure we didn’t get killed last fall’. It’s all the same, yet he can’t shake off the feeling that he’s an alien within his own home. He’s not the same Harrington that he was a year and a half ago.
Steve releases a rattled sigh, as melodramatic as he can get without internally cringing. In his mind’s eye, he pictures a number three on a scoreboard - the kind of scoreboard that marked every shot Steve took when he still played basketball - being flipped over and replaced with a big, fat, round zero . Three day streak of not waking up from a nightmare shouting or crying or retching… boom, gone.
As Max would put it: bummer, dude, you lost your high score!
Wow. Even in his head, she’s less than empathetic.
Steve initially tried to start the trend with a simple How Many Days It’s Been Since I Had A Nightmare , but the zero on the scoreboard remained stagnant for an entire fortnight. It was unrelenting; he woke up every night with tears threatening to conjure, with one of the kid’s names caught in his throat, or instead coughing out his lungs as though spores were still clinging to his lungs.
So he switched it up, and tried to make it easier for himself: How Many Days It’s Been Since I Had A Nightmare About What Happened Last Fall. His record had been two, but he considered it a fluke: the night before he dreamt of his father full of rage and his mother telling Steve to go back to his room, and he woke up in his own fit of fury. The night before that, Steve didn’t sleep at all; instead, he found Jonathan Byers on a whim and shared three smokes and a joint with him in Fair Mart’s parking lot.
So he changed it up again on New Year’s Eve. (At 12:01am specifically, because he’d seen Nancy Wheeler kissing Jonathan Byers at 12:00am and Steve decided something needed to be done). How Many Days It’s Been Since I Had A Nightmare And Haven’t Woken Up Screaming/Shouting/Crying etc.
Three day streak broken. You’re out, Harrington! And he’d hoped an abnormally early night might’ve made some difference.
This time around, it was the tunnels. If it wasn’t the foggy junkyard, it was the tunnels. Those goddamn awful fucking tunnels that stretched and wrapped underneath Hawkin’s soil, with the broad tentacles coiling across the walls like rattlesnakes, and the spores that hovered in the air like an inbetween of snowflakes and ash. And the fucking smell, the smell that a tightly wound bandana couldn’t suppress. A horrific amalgamation of damp soil and thick chemicals and death and decay - even just thinking about it made Steve want to scramble for the nearest toilet and upheave the contents of his stomach. And then there were the dogs… where does he even start with the demodogs? When Steve closes his eyes in the dark, he can see those fucking things emerging from the fog or charging down the tunnels - their faces split open, emitting inhuman guttural shrieks and growls –
And the kids are screaming at him, Dustin is screaming – why didn’t he pull Dustin up the rope? Why did he freeze? They could have made it, Dustin could have made it — they’re coming, they’re coming and Steve can’t move — they’re on top of Dustin, tearing into him whilst he screams for help whilst Steve just fucking watches —
Steve is up and out of bed before his brain even registers that he’s on the move, pulling his jeans on and donning his jacket. He moves in a thick haze as he tries to drag his mind out of the past – no, not the past, Dustin didn’t die – and before he knows it, he’s stepped out his door and onto the front porch. The automatic lights flicker to life, and his first instinct is to eye the tungsten bulb with unnatural vigilance.
The rain sobers up his fatigue swiftly; it’s March, and it hasn’t stopped raining in three days. A rushing rumbling of rainfall provides a quiet sense of consistency that’s almost therapeutic, and draws the numbing panic and anxiety out of his lungs. There’s a sense of relief as he feels the raindrops relentlessly downpouring atop of his head, soaking into his tousled brown hair.
Relief is addicting. But it’s never enough.
Steve strides towards his car, but he doesn’t go for the driver’s side; for once, he’s not interested in cruising around in his BMW. (Who's left to impress, anyway?) Steve aims for the trunk instead, cracking it open and instantly spotting his prize: the bat with nails hammered in, the one that’s split open a Demogorgon’s face and smashed open a couple more Demodogs alongside it.
(“You’re practically synonymous with that bat now,” Dustin quipped as he spotted it wedged inside Steve’s trunk.
“Practically what now?” Steve questioned, slapping Dustin’s hand away as the younger boy tried to make a grab for it. No way was he letting him get ahold of it. Last time one of the little shits had it, Max had almost crushed Billy Hargrove’s dick.
Dustin rolled his eyes and idly stepped away, circling around towards the passenger’s side of the car. “ Synonymous. Y’know - being so closely associated with one thing, that mentioning one thing suggests the other in your mind? Like Han Solo and Chewbacca, or Batman and Robin?”
“Oh. Oh , so like… we’re one and the same?”
“... I mean, you’re on the right track, at least? ” )
“Synonymous,” Steve tries, furrowing his brow and swilling the word on his tongue, as if he’s putting it on a trial for a spot in his vocabulary. Steve and His Nail Bat; that’s all he needs to protect himself from anything that threatens him or anybody he gives a shit about. He just needs a bat and a little bit of bravado.
“Damn straight, Henderson,” Steve decides, and slams the trunk shut.
The rain is still thundering and pounding the streets as Steve wanders aimlessly, strolling down the center of the road with his bat slung over his shoulder. There’s something oddly freeing about just walking down the middle of the road, sidewalks disregarded. Maybe it’s that idea that the road wasn’t meant for him to walk, but he’s doing it anyway. There’s always a lingering sense of paranoia in the back of his head, expecting a car to swing around the corner and catch him, but it’s not difficult to forget about that thought.
Instead, he can just enjoy this solitude for now: wandering around in the dark, illuminated by the streetlights above and the warmth of the other wealthy abodes that surround House Harrington. The reasonable part of him knows that he probably looks like a fucking freak just walking out in a downpour with a nail bat at 6 in the evening, but he can’t bring himself to really worry about that anymore. His neighbors were probably glued to their televisions or eating dinner to busy themselves with parting the shades and wondering why Richard Harrington’s son is out in the rain with a weapon that would class as a potential felony. Although Steve gave up caring about their opinions in the fall of 1984.
The district Steve lives in is much further away from the majority of the kids, with exception from Will who lives just on the other side of the woods. Most of The Dipshits - or ‘The Party’ as Dustin insists on calling it, and by association everyone who ‘Knows ’ - live in a cul-de-sac hell only houses away from each other. Identical two-storey houses built on ‘four inch minimum’ lawns, with their moms balancing checks and dads juggling credit cards – good old America and their monotonous streets, they never change. Not that he couldn’t speak about white suburbia, with the Harrington palace and timer lights and automatic sprinklers and heated swimming pool. It was the same bullshit, the same kind of bullshit Nancy preached about when they broke up. Just a different class.
Bullshit. All bullshit. Yeah, he can totally see what Nancy means.
“Oh yeah, I’m sure everyone’s real sorry for you, Harrington,” Steve bitterly berates himself with a heavy scowl. “Must be so hard for a rich kid like—”
“Harrington!”
Steve skids to a halt and curses under his breath as some water from a puddle soaks through his shoes and into his socks. Shaking his foot limply as though the water might just pour out, he spots the source that had called out his name - and his heart instantly drops.
It’s Jim Hopper. Sat in his police car that’s parked up on the other side of the road, hat on, a tired scowl that’s almost always permanently drawn into his expression and the window rolled down halfway. Steve copies the frown on the Chief, and a sense of nauseous anxiety swells within his stomach. If Chief Jim Hopper is calling for Steve, then that means one of two things: either Steve was about to be carted off to the station for a misdemeanor or felony that he may or may not have committed, or Something’s Happened. With a big fucking capital ‘S’ for Something. Only one thing links Steve Harrington and Chief Jim Hopper, and it’s the same thing that’s been haunting him since 1983.
Monsters in the fog. Alternate dimensions. A government that swears it can make you disappear. Tunnels.
“What’re you doing in this rain, kid?” Hopper calls out.
Steve shrugs nonchalantly at Hopper, childishly hoping that Hopper will just ask him to move along or go home or some other cop dismissal. But he doesn’t; instead, Hopper beckons with one finger for Steve to come toward the car window.
Okay - trouble, then. Steve approaches, swinging the bat idly by his leg, and stops just in front of the window. Hopper rolls the window down completely, leaning out slightly but not enough to get caught in the downpour.
“Why do you have that bat?” Hopper asked, cocking a bushy eyebrow and eyeing it suspiciously.
Steve shrugged again. “Protection.”
“Against what?”
Steve shrugged a third time and stayed silent. Uncharacteristic of him - he’d usually have a good quip to make Hopper laugh or make him annoyed, but Steve’s just tired. He’s not in the mood for jokes or witticism right now. He just wants to be left alone to wander around as if he’s patrolling the streets as part of a neighborhood watch scheme. Yet, surprisingly, Hopper doesn’t lecture him; instead, he jerks his thumb towards the passenger seat and says: “In. Need to talk.”
Okay… if the Chief wants Steve to ride shotgun, then it probably means he’s not being arrested or anything. Unfortunately, the second option of a potential End of the World Part-Three situation isn’t much of a superior alternative.
The first thing Steve says as he wedges into the passenger seat and slams the door shut is: “Are the kids alright?”
Hopper twitches and furrows his brow, confused for a moment, then suddenly seems to come to an understanding. Steve can see the lightning bolt of realization in Hopper’s pupils - the reason why Steve Harrington is walking around in the thundering rain in the dark wielding a baseball bat with nails is the same reason why Steve’s first instinct upon seeing Chief Hopper is to ask if the kids are okay. Protection.
“They’re fine, they’re safe,” Hopper quickly states. “Nothing’s happened like that.”
A little pressure comes off Steve’s shoulders - just a little, but it feels like the equivalent of Atlas shrugging off the weight of the world. Steve used to be good at self-assurance, but only when it came to vanity and basketball and how good he was with hitting it off with the ladies. He’s certainly not good when it comes to assuring himself that everything is fine, he’s safe, it’s going to be alright. But when it comes out of someone else’s mouth - most of all Chief Hopper, who is protective but not a liar - then Steve knows it’s fine.
“‘Kay,” Steve just replies, not looking Hopper in the face and instead wedging the bat between his spread-open legs. The nails scrape at the edge of his jeans, only adding to the ruggedness of the denim.
“You don’t need to carry that everywhere around with you,” Hopper continues, giving a nod towards the bat. “It’s over. You know that.”
“It’s for protection,” Steve reiterates, as if it’s meant to smooth things over. “I can’t shoot, and I can’t talk my way out of being eaten by those dog things or - or being disappeared by the government or whatever. I get the pen is mightier than the sword and all that… but a bat’s been pretty effective so far.”
It’s a good one, but Steve’s tone is dry and humorless, and neither of them laugh. Steve just keeps slowly rotating the bat between his legs, watching the points of the nails graze against the hem of his trousers. He doesn’t look up at Hopper, but he can feel the older man’s gaze pressing on him.
“Could you do a favor for me tonight?” Hopper asks, and quickly adds as an afterthought: “Might take up your whole evening though.”
“Sure.”
Steve’s fallen quiet again, and it’s uncharacteristic of him - even Hopper knows that, because Steve usually doesn’t know when to shut up - but Steve’s nightmares just leaves him quiet and drained. Hopper’s cautious gaze lingers for a moment.
Please don’t ask if I’m alright, please, I don’t want to have to keep lying about it.
He doesn’t. Instead, Hopper leans towards the back of the police car and brings out a grocery bag. It’s filled to the brim with general goods, most of which are canned products with long expiry dates - peas in a can, rice and pasta, cereal, crackers… as well as frozen Eggo waffles, lots of them.
“Guess your diet didn’t go too well, huh, Chief?” Steve quips dryly as Hopper drops the bag on Steve’s lap. All of Steve’s humor feels unnaturally forced tonight, like he’s someone else trying to perform as Steve Harrington and only doing a half-baked attempt.
The corners of Hopper’s mouth twitch. “You know where my cabin is, kid?”
“Oh, you mean the cabin where you’ve been secretly harboring a psychic teenager, who a quarter of Hawkins thinks is a Russian weapon designed for assassination?” Steve replies with a snarky tone. He rectifies himself, speaking much more polite afterward: “Can’t say I do. Where is it? You want me to drop this all off for you?”
Hopper apparently ignores Steve’s sarcasm, although there’s a subtle twitch in his eye that Steve doesn’t miss. “There’s a big oak tree on Denfield - swing right and you’ll hit a dead-end. Five-minute walk from there.” Hopper states and Steve makes a mental note - but Hopper pauses, as if he’s cautious to ask something. Steve raises an eyebrow; what was the fuss about? “I’m gonna be working real late tonight, I think… but El is gonna be on her own, so–”
“Ah,” Steve declares. “Babysitting duty. Gotcha.” He pauses, and he can still tell that Hopper is wary, so he quickly throws in another joke to ease the Chief’s nerves. “Maybe I should start charging for my services.”
“I’m asking you to do this because I think you’re responsible, and dependable,” Hopper says, twisting in his seat to really look at Steve. He’s got that serious look on, the kind of expression where things are really crucial - similar to the one he wears when he tells the kids to stay put when the stakes turn into a no-joke, life-and-death matter, or a way to really articulate how much deep shit you’re in if you’ve royally fucked-up. “And I wouldn’t call even half the men on the force that, kid, which means I’m trusting you with this.”
“I’ve taken care of the kids loads before, don’t sweat it,” Steve begins, but Hopper’s shaking his head.
“This is different, this is - you can’t tell anybody what you’re doing tonight. El is at far greater risk than you or your family would be if you talked–”
“I’m not gonna to say anything to–”
“ Listen to me, Harrington - nobody can know she’s there, you cannot tell anybody what you’re doing tonight–”
“I haven’t got anybody to talk to who doesn’t know about her anyways, man!”
The conversation stops for a moment, grinding to a shuddering halt as Hopper blinks and Steve curses himself for not keeping his mouth shut. He hadn’t admitted that fact, not even to himself, but saying it aloud only put into perspective the sheer honesty of it. Nobody really talks to ‘King Steve’ anymore, especially not since he and Tommy H and Carol stopped hanging out. (Because were ‘friends’ really friends if they wouldn’t buy him a can of Coke and some aspirin without making him pay them back? It was only a dollar fucking twenty.).
And especially not since the whole school found out that Billy Hargrove kicked Steve Harrington’s ass in a fight. Now that everyone knew Steve Harrington wasn’t tough shit after all, just all bark and no bite – if they really knew the truth, that he was even weaker than they chalked him up to be–
“I didn’t see her,” Steve mutters, avoiding eye contact. “Didn’t do anything tonight. I-I was at home listening to Bon Jovi and pretending to study.”
Hopper seems satisfied - or, at least, close enough to it. “Take a flashlight; there’s a tripwire going around the perimeter, you’ll want to watch out for it. And you knock on the door like this–” He raps his knuckles on the wheel, one-two – one… one-two-three. “--that’s the password, so she knows that it’s me. Or someone… someone safe.”
Steve mimics the knock on the dashboard (one-two – one… one-two-three) and nods in affirmation.
“And just so you know,” Hopper continues, with a slight edge to his voice. “El’s can be… a little, er…”
“Different,” Steve offers, which is probably the most delicate way you could describe a somewhat socially underdeveloped teenager with telekinetic powers.
“Wary,” Hopper provides. “When it comes to people knocking, I mean. Just say that I sent you, and that you got Eggos, and she’ll open up. Make sure she eats dinner before dessert though, including her vegetables. TV off at 8, bed by 9. You can, y’know - stick around until I get back, watch TV. Should be some beer in the fridge. You’re eighteen now, right?”
“Do I have to worry about any nightmares?”
The question slips out before Steve stops himself, but he’s lucky - it’s framed in a casual way of just genuine paternal concern, and Hopper doesn’t need to question why he really would ask that. Steve Harrington was hoping he wasn’t the only one having nightmares.
Hopper shifts uncomfortably for a moment, and he loses eye-contact on Steve. “Uh… yeah. Yeah, she… her powers won’t… if it’s bad, she’s allowed an extra Eggo, it’s a… a kind of rule.”
“Dinner before dessert, eat your veggies, bed by 9. Extra waffle if the nightmares are bad.” Maybe he should start warming up desserts whenever he has nightmares - or would that just actively encourage nightmares to happen? “No problem-o, Chief-o.”
“You don’t have to do this if you—”
“My schedule is pretty clear right now,” Steve says with a half-grin, though it’s not even close to genuine right now. “I really haven’t got anything better to do. Catch you later.”
His hand is on the door handle, ready to slip out, and the dreaded question finally comes out from Hopper.
“Hey - you sure you’re doing alright, kid?”
Steve pauses for a moment. He doesn’t know why Hopper bothered asking, because he knows Steve will say ‘fine’ regardless. Courtesy, probably. But for a moment he’s tempted to spill - to tell Hopper that tonight he dreamt about those fucking tunnels, and that the Demodogs that ran past didn’t in his dream, that they leapt on to Dustin first and tore into his guts whilst the kids screamed and wailed above him whilst another Demodog barreled towards him—
“I’m fine, Chief,” Steve says. In the reflection of the window, he can see Hopper has finally taken off his hat.
He opens the door and he’s greeted by the thundering rain. It’s okay, his house is only a 15-minute walk and he’ll dry off properly at the cabin. He leans out to leave, but Hopper taps him on the shoulder. Glancing back, he can’t help cock a little grin as he sees a $20 bill wedged between Chief Hopper’s forefinger and thumb.
“You’re right,” Hopper says, smiling - genuinely smiling, a small half-cocked smirk of amusement and a little bit of fondness. “You should start charging us.”
*
The cabin is sequestered in the middle of the woods, surrounded by greens and yellows of trees that rustle ominously above his head under the twilight. It’s beaten and weathered, battered by the elements and close to being overwhelmed by the wild, untamed nature that thrived around it. It seemed like a good storm might sweep the whole thing away. Yet there is something homely about it too. That aesthetic of being untidy contributed to the knowledge that the entire house was used, that every floorboard and every bit of foundation contributed into making this place a ‘home’. Much unlike Steve Harrington’s home, where his mansion just feels too empty and large to contain a largely independent and mostly self-sufficient teenager.
Stopping at the door, Steve puts the bag of groceries down by his feet and pauses. Hopefully he gets this right - it’s one thing for property owners to defend their land with shotguns and rifles, but another to defend it with telekinetic powers that could snap your neck with a simple twitch of the head.
“Don’t be paranoid, Harrington,” he growls under his breath, and raps on the door with his knuckles.
One-two – one… one-two-three.
He pauses. Waits. No response.
“El?” He tries cautiously, a hint of caution in his voice. “Hey, it’s - it’s Steve. Steve Harrington? Uh… I was at Mrs. Byer’s place last fall?” He pauses, expecting a response, but there’s nothing. “I was the one with the nail bat and the good looking hair?”
Nothing, still. Maybe she snuck out. Wait, there’s something else he could try—
“Uh, the Chief said that you might like these Eggo waffles that I brought for you…?”
There’s a light pattering of footsteps, the sounds of several chains being undone, and the wooden door creaks open, barely inviting Steve into a glimpse of the threshold within.
Eleven is standing there, the door only a few inches wide, and staring up at him with an air of confusion and wariness. The first time Steve had seen her, she was rocking some punk with slicked-back hair and heavy eye-makeup. Now clearly back under the direction of attire by Chief Jim Hopper, she was in overalls with a faded plaid shirt underneath. Her hair had grown out way past her ears, a halfway between straight and curly. The new look is cute, to be fair. Countryside cute, the kind you might associate with farmer’s daughters that look after horses or some other crap.
What’s not cute is the way she’s staring at him, with an intense and vigilant glower, and Steve reminds himself that she could just snap his neck right now, close the door and go back to watching cartoons if she even just felt like it. Not exactly a settling notion, considering he has to babysit this kid for the next few hours.
“You’re not Hop,” Eleven states clearly.
Steve blinks, caught off-guard, and stumbles over his words. “Uh - no. No, I’m not.”
“You’re… Steve.”
“Steve Harrington,” he replies stupidly, and he’s suddenly self-conscious of the fact that he had never interacted with Eleven before. He’d seen her briefly after she flung a Demodog through Joyce Byers front window, but they hadn’t exactly had time for conversation. He understands that her social development was more than just a ‘little behind’ - but she’s not nerdy Dustin, or stubborn Lucas, or jerk-face Mike, or brash Max. She’s probably a whole lot worse, and for a whole bunch of different reasons.
“I, er… the Chief sent me,” he says, and picks up the bag of groceries as though it were a peace offering to apologize for his intrusion. “He’s… not gonna be home ‘til late, so he sent me to - you know, make sure you’re taken care of.”
“Okay,” Eleven remarks, apparently not very impressed.
“I have Eggos,” he adds hopefully, as if that might make some difference to his unexpected - and possibly unwelcome - social call.
They stand there staring at each other for a moment - Eleven just gazing, still wary, and Steve bouncing on his heels and wishing he’d asked Hopper for $10 extra. And here he thought Dustin Henderson was a pain in the ass to manage.
“Can I come in?” Steve finally asks, unable to bear any more staring and awkward silence.
Eleven blinks, then pulls the door open wider and walks back into the house.
Great. This was going well.
The inside is at least cozier than the exterior. Something of a home is being made here. There’s a thick layer of dust hovering constantly in the air, and it mildly reminds Steve of the fucking tunnels - but it doesn’t smell terrifying. It smells like his house after his mother has just finished vacuuming. The low orange lights are pleasant against his fatigue, and the TV is running on nothing but static—
Oh, that’s not creepy at all.
“Is your TV busted or something?” Steve asks with an edge of apprehension, moving into the kitchen and dumping the bag of groceries on the table. There’s a plate of half-eaten Eggos already there, and Steve has a sneaking suspicion that Eleven might not have been allowed to eat that. Not that he was going to narc, anyway.
Eleven, who has apparently resumed her position of sitting cross-legged in front of the television, shakes her head. “I’m watching.”
Oh yeah. Really, really not creepy. Not at all. Steve was pretty sure he’d seen something like this when he watched Poltergeist. Didn’t that film end with the whole house exploding or something? Maybe he should preemptively throw the TV out now whilst he still has the chance.
“They’ve got better shows on than TV static, I promise,” Steve nervously continues as he unpacks the grocery back. “I can take a look, usually if you just whack it really hard–”
“Not the TV,” Eleven states, and picks up a piece of cloth. “Watching people.”
“Oh,” Steve says, finally clicking onto what she’s saying - kind of, probably, maybe? “ Oh, right, I remember Nance— uh, somebody telling me. You can, like… track people, right? That’s how you found Will when he…?”
Eleven nods, and wraps the blindfold around her eyes. Steve watches for a little bit, out of mingled trepidation and curiosity, but she’s completely still and disregarding Steve as if he’s not there.
“Are you tracking Russians?” Steve asks, and nearly smacks himself in the forehead for asking such a stupid question.
Eleven jerks her shoulders, and doesn’t reply. Steve gets the feeling that he might’ve overstepped, so he leaves Eleven to it as he unpacks the groceries - slowly, because he really doesn’t want to finish up and interrupt whatever Eleven is doing. He slowly makes his way around the kitchen, putting things away and readjusting other items and moving things around - he needs something to do. He gets the feeling that he’s already left a bad impression on Eleven; it’s going to be doubly hard to convince her to eat her greens and not feast on frozen waffles.
“I watched you once.”
Steve’s hand slips on a tub of ice-cream and it clatters onto the floor, leaving a thin wet patch on the wood. Holding back a swear word behind his teeth, Steve whips his head around towards Eleven. Her blindfold is still on, she’s facing the television, but it’s clear as daylight that she’s talking to him .
“Me?” Steve asks, and stupidly adds: “Why me?”
“I watched everyone,” Eleven replies quietly. “Everyone who was there. At Will’s home.”
(Dustin talked about found family once with him, when Steve had reluctantly decided to sit-in on a Dungeons & Dragons session at the Wheeler house. Steve pretended like he didn’t really want to be there, but he didn’t actually mind the company. The little shits were loud and obnoxious, but they were also passionate and full of heart. Not that Steve was ever going to say that to their dumb, prideful faces.
Steve had been sitting on the couch ranting about his stupid Dad, how they just had another argument for the third time that week and he just wishes that his family gave a shit for once - gave a shit about Steve , not his grades or his job prospects—
“I care about you,” Dustin said, as if pointing out the obvious.
“Sure you do,” Steve shrugged, not unkindly. “But we’re not–”
“ Blood is thicker than water is a bunch of bull,” Dustin stated firmly, folding his arms and apparently trying to look much more mature than his round, youthful face appeared - and it kind of worked, too, because he suddenly didn’t seem quite the same as the little pipsqueak that he was a couple of months ago. “It’s all about found family, and that’s what we are - right? Found family.”
“So what - does that make us brothers?” Steve snorted. “If that’s the case, I’m just gonna preemptively disown you right now–”
He did earn that smack with the pillow behind his ear, but both he and Dustin were grinning).
“Well, uh…” Steve mutters, scratching the back of his hair as he awkwardly glances from the back of Eleven’s head into the vague reflection against the static of the television. “What did you… what did you see? What was I doing?”
He expects a pretty off-handed response - that he was just in bed asleep, or playing, studying at school, or just wandering around Hawkins like he does every now and then after a nightmare. Just existing in the weird lapse of a present he was scraping by in.
Instead, Eleven turns pitifully sad and almost angry, and replies with a thick gesture of bitterness in her voice: “A… A man was hurting you.”
The first image to come into his mind is Billy Hargrove, kneeling over him and beating him senseless, beating him until his body and mind became nothing but blood and disorientation, until his world was spinning and vague, and all he could think of was that he can’t let them get the kids—
But Billy hasn’t touched him since then. He’s been subject to his ribbing and taunting, sure - but he’s not in Steve’s face yet.
Someone else has though—
“Who was he? Why did he hurt you?” Eleven asks. She’s pulled off the blindfold, still remaining cross-legged on the floor, and stares at Steve with a doe-eyed mixture wavering between vague curiosity and heedful concern. Her innocent question puts him off for some reason. Even though the answer is there, it remains jammed in his throat. Burning, pounding away like an irregular pulse. The inside of his mouth feels dry, and Steve turns away from her do-eyed and innocuous face to keep putting away Hopper’s shopping.
“It was just some asshole,” Steve replies with a shrug, reaching up to shove some tins into the cupboard. He figures that if he’s busy doing other things, the conversation feels less serious, like it’s not a big deal. “World’s full of ‘em, and Hawkins is no different. It was just… just a grade-A asshole, you know?”
“A mouth-breather,” Eleven states with a scowl.
An involuntary snort puffs out from Steve, and he breaks into a smirk. “ Mouth-breather? Wow. I think Carter was in office when that phrase was going around. Who taught you that one? Wheeler, right?”
“What… What’s wrong with mouth-breather?” Eleven questions.
“What’s wrong with mouth-breather?” Steve snorts again and shakes his head, reaching up to put some more goods on the highest shelf of the cupboard. “It’s old, it’s not cool anymore. Don’t take ‘cool’ lessons from Mike Wheeler, or any of the twerps.” He pauses, thinking for a second. “On second thoughts, Max isn’t half-bad.”
“Can I say… grade-A asshole? Is that… cool? ”
Ah, shit. “Nope, definitely not, and don’t use that kind of language around Hop, alright?” Steve quickly reprimands, turning around. “He’d whip my hide if he—”
Steve almost jumps out of his skin. Eleven’s not in front of the television anymore; she’s moved closer, apparently having silently approached Steve whilst his back was turned to her. There’s tears in Eleven’s eyes, turning her soft brown eyes glassy and flooded with emotion. For the first time, Steve isn’t wary or cautious around her; instead, he feels a pang of sorrow towards her. There’s a look of understanding around her, like somehow she knows…
“Who hurt you, Steve? Nobody hurts my friends,” El growls dramatically, and she gently holds Steve’s wrist. “And friends don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying,” Steve replies irritably, but doesn’t pull away. It’s true, he’s not really lying, but—
“Lie of omission is still lying,” El interjects.
Steve scowls for a moment. Okay, she definitely picked that one up from somebody else. It’s his guess as to who. It sounds like a Hopper thing, but it was Wheeler who apparently started this trend of ‘friends don’t lie’, thus making Steve’s habitual lies of omission being more difficult to continue without feeling some twinges of guilt.
Instead, he crouches down a little in front of El - just enough to make eye-level, and not to seem patronizing - and clasps a firm but gentle hand onto her shoulder. Brown eyes gaze back into hazel.
“Look - appreciate your concern, kiddo, but…” He swallows, trying to read behind her confused and still adorably innocent expression. “This is just… it’s not something I wanna talk about. Maybe another time. Kapeesh?”
El’s brow furrowed, and she tilted her head like a curious owl. “Ka-Kapeesh?”
Steve groans and resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “God, Wheeler really taught you nothing . Kapeesh is like, you know… like, you understand what I’m saying.”
“I understand.”
“Okay.” Satisfied, Steve goes to stand. “Good, then–”
“No,” El says, shaking her head, and tugs on his wrist to drag his attention back to her. “I understand ‘kapeesh’. But I don’t understand why you won’t tell me.”
Damn it. Why was she so insistent on knowing the truth? He turns up at the cabin out of the blue with Eggos, and suddenly they’re just ‘friends’? Sure, they’d sort of met and helped in their own ways to save Hawkins from being Mind Flamer chowder (or whatever that goddamn monster thing was called), but it didn’t make any sense why she cared. He was just the babysitter, and he wasn’t even her babysitter until about 10 minutes ago. She didn’t know him from Adam. Or was Eleven just someone who got attached too quickly? Sort of the way he hooked onto Nancy Wheeler too quickly (and screwed that relationship up)?
“‘Kay, how ‘bout this,” Steve says cautiously. “If you eat your dinner and all your greens tonight… then maybe I’ll tell you all about it. Later. Fair deal?”
Ha. Little does she know, there’s one important fact that Steve’s been able to pick up from hanging out with Dustin Henderson and the rest of his gang of losers for too long: middle schoolers have a shitty attention-span and short-term memory loss. He’s counting on Eleven forgetting this bargain.
El folds her arms impassively and taps her foot, twitching her nose. Steve’s seen that look before; she’s absolutely replicated it from Chief Hopper, and she wears it just as well. “It’s a… compromise. Meeting halfway.”
“Sure, we’re making a compromise,” Steve shrugs, and sticks out a hand to make the deal. El hesitates, reaches out – and Steve pulls his hand back, poking the tip of his nose, waving his fingers and mimicking the sound of a fart. Even that’s enough to make El crack, and her displeased scowl twists into an absolutely endearing grin. It’s cute enough to make her cranky attitude thus far all worth it.
The pair collaborate to make dinner, and Steve starts to learn the habits of Chief Hopper as he’s living in the cabin. Much like Joyce Byers (as Steve has gradually come to learn over the course of half a year and a Christmas Eve), Hopper apparently wasn’t exactly a Martha Stewart when it came to the culinary arts. In the year and a quarter that El had been living in the cabin, Hopper’s dinners were usually TV dinners or ‘twenty minutes in the oven’ kind of meals. Steve gets it; he’s a cop working in a so-called quiet small town, he gets home and he’s tired. Still, it couldn’t hurt to cook up a homemade curry or something every now and then?
Steve and El spent the evening under the orange lamplight as he taught her how to make a real meal. Maybe with enough practice, the Chief wouldn’t have to cook all the time and El could treat her Dad to some meals. It worked on Steve’s Dad, after all.
(Kind of.
Once, maybe.
Okay, it hadn’t exactly gone off perfectly. His desperate plea for his father’s attention at age thirteen, in the rare instance that Richard Harrington had actually been around Hawkins, had resulted in Steve telling his nanny to take the rest of the day off and he attempted to create a cacio e pepe. It wasn’t half-bad really: nothing as good as the nanny made, but it at least had flavor. In the end, his parents had at least sat down for a family meal and his Dad said the meal ‘fine’ when Steve prompted for his Dad’s opinion.
After that, the nanny in question ‘retired’ six months later, and his parents missed Christmas Day for the first time that year).
“Hey, gremlin, get your hand out the food,” Steve says as El reaches into the pot of pasta he’s stirring together. “Don’t want your dirty paws in my food, you’ll poison it. Anyway, it’s almost done.”
“I washed my hands,” El pouts. “I’m hungry. Can I have just a little–?”
“No! You can either eat, or you can eat well - all it costs is a little patience.”
“No patience. Only food.”
“Go set the table, you cretin,” Steve grins, pausing to ruffle her head of curls to show no ill-intention. El grins back, teeth displayed in full, and dashed off.
After setting aside a couple helpings for Hopper for when he’d arrive home, and Steve ducking around some flying forks and knives, the pair finally start to demolish their way through the chicken alfredo - or at least El does, whilst Steve hovers between polite consumption and stirring his food nervously whilst his mind occasionally flickers back to his bad dreams. At the very least, El seems extremely impressed with his cooking, considering the way she was wolfing it down… or maybe she was just rushing it so she could have her Eggos as quickly as possible.
“Hey, you’re not being timed on that, y’know,” Steve says, cocking an eyebrow as El accidently releases a particularly loud slurp of the spaghetti. “I said hey, slow down or you’ll choke.”
“Sorry,” El said, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “This is good.”
“Yeah? Better than the Chief?”
El hesitates, apparently mulling over her moral stance on this question. Steve gets it: The Party tends to have some unspoken rule about saying genuinely unkind things, but on the other hand: ‘friends don’t lie’.
El finally settles with: “You’re a good cook.”
Steve grins, really and genuinely grins, and tucks into his meal with greater gusto than prior. “Well, I’ve had enough time to practice. My, er - my folks don’t really cook, on account of them not being around to do so. Eventually after enough frozen meals and TV dinners, I started to figure that cooking is a decent hobby to kill time.”
“You like it?” El asks, cleaning off her plate. “Cooking. It’s fun?”
“Yeah, it’s fun. Maybe I should enroll you into the Harrington Cooking Programme for Extremely Annoying Kids. Hey - don’t lick the plate, use some bread to mop up your sauce! Jesus, you’re worse than Dustin.”
After dinner, El shows Steve the extent of her own culinary skills by introducing him to a Triple-Decker Eggo Extravaganza, complete with whipped cream and jelly beans (“It’s only 8000 calories,” El remarks, and Steve is dead certain she stole that ‘excuse’ from Hopper). It’s delicious, admittedly, but also puts into perspective the reason why Chief Hopper’s diet plans have failed so often.
The television goes on afterwards, with Steve agreeing to half an hour of cartoons before she’s put to bed - but only fifteen minutes in, her attention wanes.
“Steve?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“You said you would tell me about that man. Who hurt you.”
Steve, who’s reclined on Hopper’s extremely comfortable chair and enjoying a can of beer, scowls and averts eye-contact. Damn, his fool-proof plan of distracting El enough to make her forget didn’t work out in the end. She’s wiser than the other dweebs.
The young girl turns, attempts to force eye-contact with him and opens her mouth to speak.
“Friends don’t–”
“I’m not trying to lie to you,” Steve insists softly. His gaze doesn’t meet hers. “It’s just… hard to talk about it.”
El falls silent, struggling with herself; Steve wonders if she’s suddenly wildly uncomfortable, but then realizes she was just trying to think up a question to coax the truth out of him when she says: “Was it… bad?”
Steve sips his beer and leans his head away, still not looking straight at her. He hesitates - friends don’t lie. They’re not friends , are they? But what kind of a babysitter would he be if Steve kept internally insisting they weren’t? Dammit, when the hell did he become such a pushover for kids?
“I’ve had worse,” he shrugs half-heartedly. He glances over when El doesn’t respond, and sees her arms folded and an eyebrow raised. He almost spits his beer out, choking slightly on the drink, and bursts out laughing. “Holy shit, you look exactly like Joyce Byers when she’s mad.”
“Why do you lie?” El asks, her voice quivering slightly. That sucks the joy right out of Steve, and his face falls.
“I’m not… okay, yeah, it wasn’t great.” Steve knows he is not gonna win with this kid, so he might as well get this all over with. “The guy who did it was… he’s someone I care about a lot. Or cared, I guess - I guess I still do.”
“Friends shouldn’t hurt each other,” El points out.
“You know it’s more complicated than that, kiddo. It’s like… you fight with the Chief, right? And you might hurt each other, or say mean things - but at the end of it, you still care about each other. Right?”
El nods; it’s her turn to avoid eye-contact, and Steve has the impression she might be reflecting on a pretty bad argument with Hopper. He didn’t mean to bring up bad memories, but it works for the analogy.
“It’s the same situation here,” Steve continues. “But he… well, he went too far. And it’s stupid and awkward between us now. But he’s not gonna do it again. You don’t need to worry, okay? He won’t hurt me.”
“Why not?” El turns around completely, TV disregarded, and sits on her knees in some vague attempt to bring herself to his level. “You - You could be in danger—”
“He’s not… he’s not in Hawkins right now,” Steve replies. “And won’t be for ages. And by the time he is, I hopefully will be out of his hair and he won’t even need to see me.”
“Out of… his hair?”
“Yeah, you know… like, I won’t be around him anymore. Understand?”
“Kapeesh. Word for the day.”
Steve grins broadly. “Exactly. And that’s the word you’re gonna show Hop tomorrow morning, not all the curse words, right? Speaking of, it’s almost 9. Time for you to sleep, and for me to watch TV and get drunk on the Chief’s beer. Also, don’t tell the Chief. I like to overstay my welcome.”
“I want to watch more TV,” El pouted as she slowly dragged herself towards her bedroom.
“Nope. This is Steve Alone Time. Do you need me to read you a bedtime story?”
“Not a kid anymore,” El says, and she really means it - although, in Steve’s respectable opinion, she doesn’t look it. She hesitates, then suddenly jolts forward and goes in to hug Steve around the waist. Her little arms wrap around his hips as he lets out a gentle ‘woah’, and her face buries into the lower portion of his chest. He grins amicably and runs a hand through her hair, feeling the brown curls entwine around his fingers. He already somewhat understands what it’s like to have a younger brother, of which he sees in Dustin; maybe this is almost what it’s like to have a younger sister.
“Thanks for coming today,” El murmurs.
“No problem, kiddo.”
“Will you come again? Make more… al-fre-do?”
“If you want me to come,” Steve says, a little surprised. “I can arrange something with Hop.” He flicks her on the forehead, extracting her from around him and shepherds her into her bedroom. “Go to sleep, or I’ll eat all your Eggos.”
That threat seemed to be enough to spur her into action, and El is tucked in bed within minutes with the lights off. Steve makes a mental note to suggest that technique to Hopper.
Now with the psychic teenager tucked up in bed, it’s the perfect opportunity for Steve to walk the thin line between being a polite house guest and taking Chief Hopper for all he was worth. With the recliner poised at its lowest and a half-downed can of beer, Steve relaxes into the sofa and begins half-watching some old gangster film from the ‘50s. He’s only half paying attention, really; his mind has already returned to being occupied with thoughts of the past few months, and of tonight - of the indistinct images of twisted nightmares that had been haunting over him like a thunderstorm overhead. Not to mention the fatigue that’s starting to sink into his bones; certainly, the warmth of the cabin and the mindless drone of the television doesn’t help.
“It wasn’t him, Charley.” The voice on the television resounds out towards him, but it’s barely comprehensible to Steve as he sinks into his contemplation, his drowsiness and his alcohol. “It was you.”
Steve releases a long yawn. Hopefully Hopper will be back soon. Maybe they could share a beer and a smoke and watch the rest of this film.
“Remember that night in the Garden - you came down to my dressing room and said, ‘Kid, this ain’t your night’.”
Yeah, no shit - this really isn’t Steve’s night tonight. It hasn’t been his night for a long time. Maybe since his house party, where he had some real fun and managed to make love to Nancy Wheeler - but even then, Barbara Holland had died in his pool whilst he was being a self-centered douchebag concerned only about how much fun he was having and how little consequences he could avoid.
“You should’ve taken care of me just a little bit so I didn’t have to take a dive for a short amount of money.”
If only his parents could have taken care of him a little bit more, maybe he wouldn’t have turned out to be such a fucking asshole. But who was he to complain? He had the two-storey mansion, the heated swimming pool, the wealth and the great car. He shouldn’t be moping. Why should he be sorry for himself? Why should anybody feel sorry for him? Wasn’t this just him facing the consequences of his actions, and in his inaction?
“I could’ve been a contender! I coulda been somebody!
Was he somebody?
Hopper wouldn’t mind if he shut his eyes for a moment…
Steve lay his head back on the recliner, slowly closing his eyes as fatigue began to overwhelm and surpass his introspection. His beer lay forgotten on the side table, partially empty. The TV screen flickers.
Turn your back to me, Steven.
The TV dial snaps and switches into static on its own.
Steve jolts upward, eyes wide open, and a terrible feeling crawls across the back of his neck like a cold wind.
That voice. But it couldn’t be—
The lights in the cabin flicker above him, convulsing between life and darkness; the static on the television rolls within its image, and the sound slowly begins to grow into a dull roar.
It’s not over. It was never over.
Eleven–!
Panic set aside, Steve stumbles from his chair and practically launches himself into Eleven’s door. His shoulder rams straight into the wood and he staggers inside–
Gone. El’s bed is vacant.
“El!” He bellows out, stumbling back into the main part of the cabin. The lights continue to shudder, and the static from the television has risen into a screech. “ Eleven! Where – what the – ?”
I said - turn your fucking back to me.
A lump, raw and burning, catches in his throat and remains stuck there. His mind is swept up in a confusion of terror and panic, and his thoughts race – the voice – no, Eleven – he needs to find —
I won’t ask again, Steven.
A flash of light almost feels like it burns at his retinas, and within an instant he’s plunged into complete darkness. Yet it’s not darkness, not quite. His surroundings are pitch black around him, like he’s been swallowed into some endless void. Beneath him, a thin sheet of water ripples underneath his bare feet. Panic threatened to consume him once more. Spinning on the spot, his heart ramming against his chest, Steve opened his mouth to shout out once again —
Two figures in the distance catch his eye, and his urge to vomit suddenly rises tenfold.
One of them stands above the other, holding a sense of empowerment that’s enough to chill Steve’s blood. He’s tall, imposing, dressed in a work shirt and a loose, plain black tie. Knelt directly in front of him is a younger man, shirtless and his back turned to his superior – with floppy and soft brown hair that nobody else in Hawkins could match —
Don’t do this, don’t do this, c’mon —
I’ve told you again, and again, and again, but the lesson just doesn’t fucking sink in for you –
Dad, please–!
A lashing sound echoes through the void. Leather hitting against flesh. Steve holds back a choked sob. He’s been hurt worse, Billy Hargrove was nothing compared to this – nothing —
Steve - the real Steve, the Steve watching this unfold like some sick and twisted performance - staggers back as nausea unfurls and churns in his stomach. This is crazy – how is this happening? How is he seeing this? What the fuck is going on?!
w i t n e s s. i swallow your f e a r s.
This voice that calls out now is different; it’s not familiar anymore. It was foreign and unearthly, hardly comprehensible behind it’s ripped vocal chords and snarling. Still blindly staggering within the darkness of nothingness, Steve’s gaze rips away from a performance of his memories and back into the void.
His eye catches something else. There’s a mass on the ground, only a few feet away. This time, Steve doesn’t even need to walk towards it to know what it is. A horror beyond anything else begins to surge within him, choking him and igniting every sense and nerve in his body.
“No,” Steve whispers, but not even a sound seems to come out; only something shaken, broken and wretched. “No, no, no… Dustin, no… ”
Dustin’s body lies before him - or what is left of it. Ripped to chunks, consumed alive: blood seeps out from the savaged wounds from where pounds of flesh had been mauled, and a part of Dustin’s young and once constant, beaming expression has been mutilated to the bone. He could see parts of his jawbone, his cheekbones, the new teeth – his face ripped open, flesh exposed, torn open by hellhounds—
Steve stumbles forward, the bottom of his jaw quivering, and collapses onto his knees. He can’t tear his gaze away, even despite the horror crashing and engulfing him. Steve can practically hear the ghost of Dustin’s terrified and agonized screams ringing in his ears and reflecting off the non-existing walls of this black hell.
“This can’t be real,” Steve breathes, then tears his gaze away and upwards, as though confronting some cruel God above. “ This isn’t fucking real! You hear me?! Dustin Henderson is alive! What - d-do you think I'm an idiot, like everyone else does?!”
Rage flares in front of him like a defense mechanism, and Steve leaps up onto his feet. He has no idea what he was facing, or if there was anything at all, but he sure as hell is going to confront it the Steve Harrington way: on the offensive, using himself as a shield, ready to be met with violence and blood.
“You think you’re gonna get me, but I’ve dealt with this kind of thing before, you know,” he calls out, circling on the spot as though he were sizing up some great enemy. “I beat the shit out of one of monsters with a fucking baseball bat! So come on! Come on! Show me what you’re fucking made of!”
a s k not for whom the bell tolls.
A wind blows against Steve’s nap once again, and the goosebumps rise up against his skin. A shadow looms over him.
it t o l l s for t h e e.
He looks up, and immediately wishes he could have the old nightmares back. They’re nothing compared to… this.
Steve almost vomits from the shock, the horror, the sheer terror that pumps through his veins in a single burst and almost causes him to pass out. The bulging mass above his head feels as though it encompasses the entirety of the airspace above his head, stretching forever – but the center shows it’s full form of… of… of something. Flesh, maybe. Or the innards of the human body. It’s bloody and pulsating, like the insides of someone’s guts still squirming in place. Right in the dead-center is an eye: a single eye that stares back at him.
It’s hazel, just like his.
No. Not his. Richard Harrington’s.
Steve’s jaw hitches open, but nothing comes out: he’s paralyzed, maybe out of fear or perhaps this creature is holding him in place. Frozen to the spot, the pulsating mass of gore above him shifts slightly. From within its depths, something akin to its jaw hinges open to reveal a bottomless maw. It’s jaws widen —
The creature stops, frozen, and the paralyzing feeling that encompasses Steve in it’s entirety seems to wane. His knees give in and he slumps backward, hitting the ground and feeling the thin surface of water underneath him seep into his trousers. It’s hazel eye shudders, and swivels towards the shadows. Scrambling back, Steve squinted into the darkness within the same direction. Something was coming – no, somebody was coming.
She appears through a veil of smoke, dressed in the pajamas Steve had put her to bed in, hand outstretched and a nosebleed trailing down her upper lip. Eleven marches slowly towards the creature, her face contorted with a deep expression of fury and resentment.
“El,” Steve managed to croak weakly, still reeling from the shock of seeing this amalgamation of flesh that formed a creature to even comprehend the fact that Eleven was here.
The eye of the creature narrows, glaring at El with a look of bitter malice. At the same time, a sinister feeling creeps across his shoulders. Something was wrong, something was fucking wrong.
A small gasp emits from Eleven, and her hand begins to quake. A gradual fear begins to manifest and grow, and her anger slowly transmutes into anxiety. Then into fright. Then into horror.
Just as she’s about to scream, the creature’s gaping maw turned on Steve and struck.
The screeching of the static was far too loud—
Steve sits up from the couch, finally releasing the scream that had been grappling to escape from his throat. And from the other side of the cabin, Eleven is screaming too.