#s4 eyelids | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kurokoros · 1 year

Text

into open flames | (s.h.)

Rated: M (future smut, descriptions of blood/injury)

Words: 15.2K

Pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

Summary: There’s a storm raging, winds howling and snow beating against the cabin walls. Outside a monster shrieks his name in an awful and warbled voice that sounds like you. And it shouldn’t be awkward, Steve thinks. It’s not the first time he’s seen you naked.

You and Steve are almost something. Almost lovers. And it feels almost like hell; almost romantic.

OR: A blackout snowstorm and a monster force you and Steve to take shelter in Hopper’s old cabin. From there, everything starts slotting into place.

AN: oops! this took longer to write than expected and now it’s being posted in three parts because I didn’t have it in me to try and write another 10K+ before posting. the third part will include smut!

Warnings: horror elements (the monster is modeled after the official illustration of the “bagman” from dnd). descriptions of blood and gore. non-sexual nudity. reader implied to be shorter than steve. reader is a hopper but there’s no mention of blood relation. cop!steve but it’s for monster hunting reasons. S3 and S4 never happened in this universe alteration, but upside down shenanigans have still been happening post-S2

Chapters: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Steve’s head is throbbing.

That’s the first thing he registers. Consciousness creeps over him slowly. Languid. The ringing in his ears drags him back. It’s dark and his head feels swollen and ready to pop under the pressure thrumming through his skull. Stuffed with cotton. Or shoved too deep underwater. Not a hangover, he knows that much. He’s had enough to know the difference. Wherever he is, it’s cold and wet. The exposed parts of his skin feel damp under burning numbness. And he hurts. The pressure beneath his skull. The right side of his chest and arm burn. His hands sting.

Beneath the ringing in his ears there’s something else, something muffled. Icey fingers touch his cheek.

Slowly, his head lolls to the side. His eyes are closed, he realizes belatedly. It takes more effort than it should to get them to open, his eyelids sticky like glue. When they do open, he can’t see anything. For a horrifying second, he thinks he’s been struck blind. Then, his vision starts to readjust. Acclimating to the darkness.

Everything is a hazy shade of blue.

For a second, he’s back in high school. Sprawled across the Byers’ couch after getting the shit beaten out of him by Billy Hargrove. Bloody. Mottled black and blue bruises spattered across his face and chest like a sick watercolor painting, the colors all blending together. It hurt to move. Hurt to breathe. Something in his chest rattled whenever he did. His ears wouldn’t stop ringing. The queasy feeling in his stomach only got worse as shapes and shadows moved around the room, voices shouting over each other until the bile surged up his throat and he vomited all over the Byers’ floor.

A concussion.

There’s a shadow leaning over him, and he thinks of you, stroking back his hair and whispering to him that night, telling him everything would be okay. That he was okay. Now, he can’t make out the words.

A sluggish blink and suddenly everything looks sharper.

The sky is black. So black, he can’t see the stars behind the clouds rolling overhead. Only a sliver of the moon peeks through, waning, but enough to dimly light the space where he’s lying. Steve’s head lolls sideways. His cheek presses against ice. Snow. There’s snow surrounding him. Turned blue in the shadow of a distant light. And trees. The shape of them is silhouetted and dark. Spindly oak trees. Branches bare and snapped off in some places. Blood in the snow. Smeared across one of the trees in a color that’s almost black. Streaked across the sleeve of a jacket he distantly realizes is his.

There’s a gun in his hand.

The shadow leans over him again.

It takes another second for the pieces to snap back into place.

His fingers clench. He lunges. Pain ripples through his shoulder as he wrenches around in the snow, gun in his hand, aimed in a brutal swing towards the figure hovering over his chest. Milky eyes. No face. Too long limbs. Too tight skin. Claws. Claws. Claws.

Steve doesn’t brain the creature like he hopes to. His arm is forced back into the snow by a solid grip on his wrist. The push and pull tears at the lacerations on his right arm. A pained hiss slips from between his teeth; the gun slips from between his numb fingers. Hands hold him down. Hot breath washes over his face and he thinks of that trilling, gurgling growl he hears in his nightmares. Panic, white-hot and sharp, digs into the spaces between his ribs and rips at his insides.

Before he can swing again, the pressure on his arm releases. Hands grab his face and wrench his head to the side.

“Shh,” a familiar voice whispers. “Shh, Steve, it’s me. It’s me. You’re okay. You’re okay.” The words come out in a rush, strung together frantically. It sounds like white noise until the ringing fades.

The shadow over him takes physical form. Wild eyes. Frazzled hair. A pretty face that haunts his waking hours. Just as pretty as he last saw this morning.

Your name tumbles from his lips, slurred around a numb tongue and a mouthful of blood.

Your hands are shaking where they’re pressed to his cheeks. Cold. Afraid. Both. When clarity sinks into his hazel eyes, you smile, but it’s strained. Your bottom lip wobbles. Your eyes are bloodshot and puffy. Your face is wet. “It’s me,” you tell him again. “It’s just me.” One of your knees nudges against the side of his chest and he groans as it sends pain shooting along his ribs. “I’m sorry. Please, you have to—you have to stay quiet. Okay? You’re okay.”

One of your hands slides from his cheek down to his chest, slipping under his open jacket to rest over his rapidly beating heart. Your palm rubs against the fabric of his uniform shirt, your thumb sweeping back and forth idly until his pulse starts to slow.

You’re alive. It slams into his chest with the gentle touch of your hand, your open palm on his heart. Fuck, you’re alive. A strange, shuddering breath rattles in his chest and claws out of his mouth around the sudden tightness in his throat. The lingering panic from when he couldn’t find you seeps from his muscles and leaves him lying there limply underneath you as one of your hands sweeps the damp hair away from his forehead. His eyes flutter shut. Just for a moment. Until he remembers where he is. Remembers the thing that attacked him. A monster.

A tree branch snaps. Your red and swollen eyes wrench away from his to scan the shadowy spaces between the spindly trees. Nothing calls out to you or Steve from the darkness.

“What happened?” Steve asks around a cottony mouth. He shifts his weight until he can sit up on his elbows, hissing as his shoulder burns in protest. The hand on his chest tries to ease him back down. He doesn’t let you. With his good arm, he grasps just above your elbow, needing to feel you under his hands. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” you cut him off. Cold fingers stroke down his cheek to cup his jaw and force him to meet your eyes. “I’m fine. I don’t—I don’t know what happened. I was coming back from the cabin and it was just there. I thought—I heard someone. I thought it was a kid or something, but…” Briefly, you trail off, gaze far away before you squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head. “And I ran. It followed me, and I couldn’t—I tried to go back to the road. I left the radio in the car. I thought if I could get there and call you, maybe…”

There’s a tightness in his chest that won’t loosen. “It didn’t hurt you?”

“No,” you’re quick to reassure him, “no, Steve, I’m fine. Look at me. I’m okay.” His hand strokes down your arm from elbow to wrist, grounding you both as he does what you say and looks at you. His eyes dart around wildly, unfocused, but desperate to make sure you’re really okay.

“There was a space down by the creek,” you tell him as he looks you over carefully. His good hand drops down to your waist, automatically burrowing under your jacket to hold you closer. “It must have been somewhere a deer was nesting. I hid there for a while. It couldn’t find me.” You wet you lips, rushing through your explanation without allowing him time to question any of it. “I came out when I heard the gunshot.”

Steve squeezes your side gently, fingers digging into your sweater enough for you to feel the heat of his hand. “Jesus Christ.” He breathes through his nose, closing his eyes tightly as his head throbs. “Tommy Mulligan thought he saw a wild man in the woods last night,” he says when you brush his hair away from his face again. “And I—I thought I heard you screaming last night.”

It’s a quiet admission, one he doesn’t mean to make. He hates telling you about his nightmares. The panic attacks. The headaches that won’t go away. They make you worry. The concern that pinches the space between your brows makes guilt swirl in his stomach. Vulnerability still doesn’t come easy to him, even with you.

Steve swallows his pride. “I thought it…” he trails off, but you already know. He thought it was a nightmare. One where he saw you disappear in front of him while he couldn’t do shit to protect you. When he has night terrors like that, he never comes out of them quickly. They linger. Itch at his skin until the soft murmur of your voice and gentle hands manage to soothe the raw nerves once more, like a balm. “But, Will heard it, too. I didn’t. I didn’t want to—”

Scare you. Watch that faraway look cloud over your eyes as you were sucked back into something horrible, lost in your own head. Didn’t want to believe it, because that would make it real, and fuck Steve’s tired of all of this. He’s so damn tired of watching everything fall apart—watching you fall apart.

You chew your bottom lip. “The gates?”

Steve closes his eyes. “Closed,” he says. “They’re still closed. Owens said they haven’t been active in months.” Which means a new gate. Or maybe this thing has been living in Hawkins for years without any of them noticing. Hiding. Watching.

The thought makes him sick.

You’re still chewing on your bottom lip when he looks at you again. Like he feared, that faraway look is back in your eyes, panic at the edges of your pupils, like you’re remembering something awful. “It can throw its voice,” you blurt before Steve can ask you what’s wrong.

He blinks. A wrinkle forms between his eyebrows. “What?”

His voice rouses you from the confines of your own head. Your eyes snap up to meet his. “You know in some cartoons? Like, like old episodes of Scooby Doo? You remember—you remember when we used to watch them?” you ask, the beginning of a ramble on the tip of your tongue. “Some characters could throw their voices. Or, or ventriloquists, I guess.” Steve isn’t following, you can tell by the confused tilt of his head, and you force yourself to take a breath and gather yourself. When you speak again, you sound more sure. “It can make it sound like it’s somewhere it isn’t,” you explain, as simple as you can. “When I was… hiding, it sounded like it was everywhere at the same time. It would be in front of me, then behind me the next second. Or, or close and then further away. Like it was trying to make me think it was somewhere it wasn’t. Or trying to disorient me.”

It felt like it was screwing with you. Taunting you for reasons you couldn’t understand. It didn’t feel like you were being hunted, not in the same way as the Demogorgon made you feel, or that pack of monstrous, canine-like creatures. Stalked, but not hunted.

“Son of a bitch,” Steve says under his breath. “That’s how it got me. Thought there was a second one coming from the side.” With your help, he sits up fully, grabbing his gun from where it sunk into the snow and pulling his wounded arm close to his chest.

The blood oozing from his open wounds makes your stomach churn. The flashlight, half-buried beneath mounting flakes illuminates the area just enough for you to see the gore staining the fresh snow.

“It’s smart,” you say, forcing your eyes away from the bloodstains. “It got me to leave the path because I thought I heard someone crying. Like a little kid. And all I could think was—”

“Will,” he finishes for you.

“Yeah,” you agree, voice small. “Like it, like it knew that I’d stop because of that. And it, it could have just attacked me. It probably could have killed me before I even knew it was there. I didn’t have anything to protect me. But it didn’t. It was trying to lure me somewhere and ambush me, or something. I don’t—” Don’t know. Don’t want to know. Don’t understand.

He sighs. “The Mulligans said it ran away when they fired a warning shot.”

“Right.” You wet your lips. “And you must have scared it, too. It knocked you out. It could have killed you while you were unconscious if it wanted food, or just wanted to hunt. So, why didn’t it?”

He doesn’t have an answer for you, and the silence blanketing the woods is unnerving. Wind whistles through the trees, growing shrill, and you shiver as the cold air wraps around you, blowing your hair into your face.

“We can’t stay here,” you tell Steve, lowering your voice and leaning closer to him, for comfort or warmth, he isn’t sure. “I don’t know how well it can hear, and we can’t stay out here all night. The snow is already getting worse.”

A blizzard is what your dad called it. Unlike any storm Hawkins has seen in years. The kind you can’t survive outdoors. Enough snow that he and Joyce couldn’t risk driving home. Enough to bury you and Steve in the woods until spring thaws your frostbitten skin, or the animals find you.

He makes a face like he knows what you’re thinking. “You know how to get to the road from here?”

You nod. “But it’s not close. A mile walk. Maybe more than that.” You try to do the calculations in your head, but between your cold fingers and the exhaustion pulling at your weary muscles, you can’t figure out exactly where you are. “I don’t… I don’t know how far out we are right now. The cabin’s closer. And you… Steve, you’re hurt,” you tell him, finally acknowledging the gore splattered across the snow, his sleeve, the trees. Thick and red and still leaking down from a gruesome wound on his arm.

“We can’t call for help from the cabin,” he tries to argue.

“We can’t call from the car, either,” you snap. “We’d have to go back to the trailer.”

He groans. “And if it follows us, we’d lead it right to the kids. Fuck.”

There’s a part of him that wants to risk going to the car and getting the hell out of here, but it’s gone before he can dwell on it. He won’t risk the kids’ safety. And you’re cold. And his shoulder is still bleeding sluggishly.

You look at him like you’d follow him anywhere, and he won’t risk you.

“Fuck,” he says again.

It’s a long hike to the cabin. Normally a twenty-minute walk, the growing storm makes it hard to see. The snow is thick. Neither of you can see more than two dozen feet ahead, and with the snow up to your knees in places, it isn’t easy to cut between the trees.

Blood drips down Steve’s sleeve onto the snow, leaving a faint trail behind you that you pray is lost under the snow and wind. He’s leaning against you heavily, one of his arms wrapped around your shoulders and keeping you pressed up against his side. The gun in his hand is cocked and ready, the safety clicked off. It isn’t safe, and it goes against everything he’s been taught, but if that thing comes back, he’s not letting it touch you.

The forest is quiet until suddenly it isn’t.

Far off to the North, a creature bays. Howling and screeching over the wind, he can’t make out the words it says, but you shrink into his side. Both of your steps come to a halt.

Another call comes from the direction you came from, echoing the first.

Like you said, the calls seem to circle the two of you, and Steve swears under his breath, unable to pinpoint where they’re coming from. His grip around you tightens, and he drags you forward on long legs that have you struggling to keep up. The two of you stumble through the snow, steps hurried even as the snow grabs hold of your legs and sucks you in, unwilling to let go.

You don’t make it more than a dozen feet before a sound like lightning rips through the woods, a loud crack that makes his heart jump into his throat. A tree branch snapping in two.

Steve pulls you tight to his chest and drags you to the nearest tree, your back flush to his front. Bark from the tree behind him scrapes against his shoulders through his jacket as he presses closer to the large oak tree, one with a trunk large enough to span the width of his shoulders. The gun is heavy in his right hand, his finger already hovering over the trigger as another branch snaps in the distance. Both of your hands clutch at the arm braced over your collarbone, your fingers digging into his forearm as snow crunches somewhere behind you, barely audible beneath the wind. He squeezes your shoulder, grounding you both as the footsteps grow closer.

A shadow moves across the snow, barely visible in the faint moonlight streaking between the trees.

There are sixteen bullets left in the magazine. This morning, when he counted them, there were seventeen. It only took a single shot to scare the damn thing off before. That might not be enough this time. Fuck, they should have gone for the car. At least you would have gotten a head start. A way out. Steve, he can hold it back for a while, maybe even kill it, if he gets lucky. But you? You’re unarmed. And if this thing follows you straight to the cabin, then what? You wait there, stranded? Trapped inside until it gets bored, or it gives up? Or the door gives in?, a nasty part of his brain offers.

“Hello?”

The taste of iron coats his tongue with every shuddering breath he takes, his cheek split open where he bit down when the monster knocked him to the ground. The cold air stings his lungs. Blood roars in his ears, so loud he thinks it’s that thing at first, growling and clicking like other monsters from the other side of reality. Red drips down his arm, blood soaking his mangled sleeve, and Steve wonders if the creature stalking them can smell it. If it knows exactly where they are and it’s just toying with them.

“Steve?”

His grip on the gun falters.

It’s using your voice again. The creature cries out his name, a tremor to its tone, like it’s going to cry. He’s heard that same tone in your own voice: in his nightmares and in his memory.

You shake in his arms, a testament to just how fucking petrified you are after what you’ve been through today. Steve’s seen you stare down monsters before with no regard for your own life. He’s never seen you timid like this, and it only makes him angrier.

Maybe he can surprise it. It’s behind him. Somewhere to the right. If he’s fast enough, he can get a handful of shots off before it even knows you and Steve are there. He’d have to get lucky with the angle, though. And he might not be able to see it through the snow.

He’s about to slip out from behind you when you let go of his arm and place your hand over his on the gun, stilling him before he can raise it. You don’t dare say a word, even as the creature wanders through the trees, calling out in a voice it stole from you.

You hold him there, keeping the gun pointed at the ground and him pressed against your back as the monster’s cries fade into the distance.

Neither of you move for a while.

By the time the cabin comes into view, there are black spots in Steve’s vision.

His grip hasn’t loosened on the gun since that thing almost caught them. And he hasn’t let go of you, either. Left arm looped around your shoulder. Your right slung around his waist, letting him lean some of his weight onto you. His legs are fine, but he still feels sluggish. Waves of dizziness wash over him at random moments, infrequent, but still somewhat alarming. At first, you’d let him be, trusting him to keep himself upright, but after the third time he started to sway you slipped your arm around him and haven’t let go since.

Pressed against him like this, Steve can feel every shiver that wracks your body. They’ve been getting worse in the time the two of you have been walking. The clothes you wore today are already soaked through and stiff with frost and a thin sheen of ice. There’s ice in your hair, too, where the fresh torrent of snow is starting to layer and melt. It’s starting to make him nervous, if he’s being honest. With the temperature dropping and the storm getting worse, he’s worried about hypothermia setting in.

You seem to be doing all right, for now, but he needs to warm you up.

The porch stairs are climbed in a pair of unsteady steps. Steve leans more of his weight onto you than he’d like, an old injury to his knee starting to ache with the cold, but you only squeeze your arm around him tighter.

With your free hand, you fumble with the door. It takes a few tries for you to get a grasp on the knob and jiggle it open, your hands have started shaking so badly. As quick as you get it open, your hand retreats back into your sleeve, a vain attempt to shield your fingers from the cold.

He kicks the door open with his foot. It doesn’t open more than a crack. It’s dark inside. The lights are off, and he can’t remember if you mentioned there being any power or not. Regardless, it’s safe. Safer than being outside, anyway.

Gently, he shifts his arm from around your shoulders, pressing his hand to your lower back and nudging you forward. You glance up at him, searching his face, and you must find whatever you’re looking for, because you slip through the crack in the door without a word.

Steve only places his handgun back into its holster after you disappear into the darkened room.

Before he follows you, Steve turns half-way around, glancing across the short yard towards the edge of the tree line from where you came. For a moment, he waits, listening for cries or calls of his name coming from the woods. Nothing. It’s silent. The snow is too thick to see more than a dozen feet away.

There’s an itch under his skin. A crawling feeling, like he’s being watched. If the monster is out there, stalking them, it keeps its distance for now. He can only hope that lasts.

“Steve?”

He flinches. He only turns when he realizes the call came from behind him. You’re standing in the doorway, arms wrapped around yourself as you wait for him to follow you inside. You look small, shivering there in one of his old jackets, with your hands tucked into the sleeves and your hair a mess from the wind and snow.

Casting one last look over his shoulder, Steve follows you inside. He kicks the door shut again, pressing his back against the wood to keep it closed. The two of you are plunged into darkness. Neither of you move for a moment, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing. You’re not even two feet from him, but you’re only a silhouette in the shadows. Intangible. Like he could reach to touch you, but pass right through. Close enough for him to smell the last lingering wisps of your perfume, fruity or floral, he can’t quite tell. But it’s you. It’s home.

Eventually, he forces himself to turn the deadbolt on the door. Tries not to think about how easy it would be to break it down anyway.

“Where’s your lighter?” you ask as Steve reaches for the flashlight on his belt. The beam is weak, and it flickers, but he keeps it aimed at the floor anyway.

The question makes his brows furrow, a frown tugging at his mouth. “What?”

You sigh, a note of frustration creeping in, perhaps unfairly. “Your lighter,” you repeat, a little louder, taking a half-step closer to him. “The power’s out. I—I don’t think anything really works here anymore. There’s no heat or water, so we need to, we need to light the fireplace or we’re just going to end up freezing in here.” You stumble over the explanation, still trembling even without the wind beating down on you.

The slight slur to your words makes his frown deepen.

You mistake his silence for concern over something else. “And don’t bullshit me. I know you still smoke sometimes when you’re stressed. I can smell it on you when you come to bed after.” You sniff, shuffling from one foot to the other, wincing at the pins and needles stabbing at your feet, the numbness starting to catch up to you now that you’re inside and have a moment to breathe. “So, where’s your lighter?”

“Left pocket,” he admits, a little ashamed that you know he still keeps it on him. He’s been trying to stop, for you. Thought he did, for a while, until all of this shit started up again last summer.

There’s no disappointment in your tone though, only impatience. “Jacket?”

“Yeah.”

Your hand peeks from your sleeve and slips into his pocket without a word. The lighter is buried deep, and your fingers are numb, and for several frustrating seconds you can’t find it until Steve lifts his arm and places his hand on your side, holding you together with a single touch. It takes another second for your hands to stop shaking long enough for you to wrap your fingers around the piece of metal. Steve’s thumb moves over your jacket in slow strokes until you step back again, the lighter clenched in your fist.

You’re slower to move entirely out of his space.

Though you were here only hours ago, the layout of the room is unfamiliar. Dark, save for the weak flicker of the flashlight in Steve’s hand, there are strange shadows cast along the walls. Furniture is distorted. Elongated. Twisted into hunched figures with gangly limbs and gnarled claws. At once, you feel like a child again. Scared of the dark and what lurks there.

Except, you already know the answer to that. And the real monsters, not the ones that used to hide under the bed, are more horrific than anything you could have imagined.

You take a few shuffling steps into the living room, dragging your feet to feel for the furniture. The fireplace is on the far wall. You can’t remember what lies between.

As you cross the room, Steve turns around and starts sliding the locks into place. Three, besides the deadbolt. Each snap into place with a loud click that makes your breath catch and your heart seize.

Dim light illuminates the room. The coffee table is inches from your shin.

“Hey?” Steve calls across the room. You can’t see him behind the flashlight beam. He lowers the light, crossing the distance to you in a few long strides. He wets his lips before dipping his chin to speak softly into your ear. “Stay here, okay?” he asks, reaching out to take your elbow into his hand, squeezing gently. “I’m going to go check the backdoor. Make sure everything’s locked up tight.”

You take your bottom lip between your teeth, worrying it. “We need to look at your arm,” you remind him, glancing down at the mess of dark blood and torn skin hidden beneath his ripped clothes. The sight makes your eyes itchy and wet, and you have to blink back the tears threatening to spill over.

“After,” Steve says, squeezing your arm. “It won’t take long.” He keeps a firm grip on your elbow until you nod, and even then, he’s reluctant to leave you standing here alone. His palm slips an inch down your arm, his grip loosening as he starts to pull away, but then he stops. Before you can ask what’s wrong, he presses his lips to your temple, lingering with his eyes squeezed shut until he hears you take a slow, shallow breath and your shoulders relax. “I’ll be right back.”

Both of you feel colder after he takes a step back.

He leaves the flashlight on the coffee table. The weak beam flickers in and out. By now, the battery is nearly drained, and the only replacements are crammed into the glovebox of Hopper’s truck. Still, it’s just enough to keep you from being plunged into the darkness completely. A welcome respite until the fire is lit.

His chest tightens when he crosses the room. The flashlight is just enough to let him see your figure against the shadows on the walls. It’s not until he rounds a wall that you’re out of sight, leaving an open pit in his stomach. Beneath the creaking floorboards, the cabin is too quiet. Too still. It’s unnerving. He moves quickly through the small space, uncaring of the way he slams his knees and shins into furniture in the dark. The noise helps. In the living room, it reminds you that he’s still here. Out of sight, but here. For Steve, the bang of his knees colliding with a half-collapsed table drowns out the faint ringing in his ears.

In the darkness, his hands fumble for the door. Fingers crawl blindly across the wall, catching on slivers and cracks in the wood until he finds the weathered door. It takes a moment of groping to find the knob and twist. The door doesn’t budge. Steve throws his weight against it, his good shoulder banging against the solid wood. It stays firmly shut. Again, his hand wanders over the wall near the door, fingers running over one, two, three more locks running along the height of the doorway. He loops his fingers around each chain one by one, yanking on them roughly to be sure the metal won’t give.

They don’t, and he only hopes that fucking thing in the woods isn’t smart enough to open them from outside.

It takes more stumbling through the dark and stubbing his fingers against walls and cabinets to find the windows. Like the door, they’re all locked tightly. Curtains are pulled shut over most of them, keeping anyone from looking outside—or looking in. He doesn’t know if that thing can see. Its eyes were pale, milky white, like his grandfather’s were after the cataracts got so bad he couldn’t see anything anymore. He doesn’t know if it, like the Demogorgon, doesn’t need to see. If it can track them down in other ways. Hearing. It can mimic voices, so it has to hear well enough.

Or smell, he thinks with a grimace, shoulder aching and blood dripping down his arm.

Stomach churning, he leaves the curtains closed. He leaves the backroom quickly, checking the bedrooms and closing the curtains there as well, casting glances at you as he moves from room to room. You stay crouched by the unlit fireplace, barely moving.

When Steve steps back into the living room to close the curtains there, he realizes you’re trembling. Your hands, mostly, the tremors vibrating along your arms until your entire body is quivering.

“Come on,” you murmur around teeth that are starting to chatter, thumb scraping against the flint. The lighter clicks, sparking, but the flame doesn’t catch. The next flick of your thumb ends the same. Your hands are too shaky. Too numb. “Come on. Fuck. Come on. Please.” There’s a sharp pressure behind your eyes and in your throat, frustration choking you until you can’t breathe right. You ignore the stinging in your eyes, continuing to drag your finger against the spark wheel desperately.

Steve’s footsteps are loud, the wood floors still creaking underfoot, but you barely notice him there until he lowers himself to one knee beside you. His right hand sweeps up your back, smoothing over your damp jacket. You gasp, stiffening under his touch until his knee knocks against yours, familiar and firm. He leaves his hand pressed between your shoulder blades, the heat from his palm sinking into you through the layers of your clothes. The warmth almost makes you whimper.

“Hey,” he starts, voice low against your ear. The hand that isn’t anchored to your back reaches towards the lighter you’re still trying to start. “Let me—”

“I’ve got it.” It comes out in a rush, barely audible. Your hands are shaking worse, and you don’t spare him a look, forcing yourself to concentrate.

He sighs, rubbing your back gently. “Seriously, come on. Just let me—”

“I’ve got it, Steve,” you snap at him, pinning him with a harsh look before your stare returns to the unlit logs. Expression almost manic, there’s nothing you can do to hide the raw panic in your gaze. All of your bravado seems to have melted away in the long minutes he left you alone, rationality giving way to fear. You’ve been doing so, so well holding yourself together so far, but the cracks in your façade are starting to spread. One more chip in the glass and you might just splinter apart. Shatter.

And it makes his heart sink into the pit of his stomach to think about. Because you were alone. For hours, you were alone in the woods. And you were scared. Exhaustion is clear in the way you’re curled into yourself, shivering and weary. Seeing you like this scares him. You’ve always been a rock. Always kept him grounded when he needed it. And he would do anything to make you feel safe. Anything. He’d burn this world to the ground if that’s what it took.

“Hey,” he says softly, practically cooing as he reaches out and tilts your chin towards him, coaxing you to look at him again. Your eyes slide right past his face, dropping lower to the blood soaked into his sleeve. The gray fabric is stained from shoulder to elbow, darker around the edges and in tatters where sharp claws sliced through. He presses his fingers into your jaw a little harder, squeezing gently until you finally meet his eyes. “I’m okay. You’re okay. All right?” He chews the inside of his cheek, thumb idly sweeping across your jaw. “I’m not… I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. Okay? We just have to get the fire started and wait it out, remember? We just need to wait it out.”

Your fingers are wrapped around his lighter so tightly that the metal is digging into your palm, leaving harsh lines. It takes several long seconds for his words to sink in, but the soothing motion of his thumb across your jaw makes the tension in your frame release. Eventually, you nod, your eyes squeezing shut briefly.

His fingers leave your chin. Slowly, he lowers his hand to hover over yours, his fingertips grazing your knuckles. “Can I?” he asks, gesturing to the lighter still clenched in your fist.

You nod again. “Yeah,” you say, voice cracking at the end. You wet your lips and try again. “Yes. Sorry.”

Steve hushes you as you start to murmur apologies under your breath. You’re still trembling, and he slips his palm around your wrist, thumb rubbing circles over the thin skin covering your rapid pulse. The two of you sit like that for a minute, until your iron grip starts to loosen and you fall quiet again. Slowly, his big hand slides down, engulfing yours as he pries your fingers away from the metal, careful with your stiff digits.

“Fuck, honey,” he says as your grip slackens enough for the lighter to slip to the floor with a clatter. Neither of you move to pick it up and light the fire. Instead, Steve wraps his hand around yours, his thumb rubbing over the bumps of your knuckles. Lips downturned, his brows knit together. “Your hands are freezing.”

The heat that envelops your fingers makes you shudder. Too hot. Too much. Too fast. A sound akin to a whimper slips out on your exhale, shaky and painfully soft.

“Does that hurt?” He loosens his grip slightly, thumb still working circles into your knuckles. Alarm buzzes through him at the iciness where your skin meets his. The drastic difference opens a pit in his stomach. Your hands have always been colder than his, but never like this. This isn’t your chilly toes bumping playfully against his legs at night to startle him into a yelp. This cold is bone deep, the kind that burns when they start to thaw, stiff and painful to the touch.

You grimace as he starts to uncurl your fingers more. There’s a sob crawling up the back of your throat at the sharp, stabbing pain in your hands, but you swallow it down before it can slip from between your teeth. “A little,” you admit, downplaying as much as he’ll let you get away with. Unable to stop yourself, your gaze slips down to the blood and torn fabric and torn skin—

“I left my gloves on the counter,” you tell him sheepishly, offering a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. Tone more bitter than you mean it to be, you add, “Guess I should have been more careful, huh?”

Steve doesn’t say anything, just lifts your hand to his mouth and presses his lips to your knuckles, trying to soothe the ache spreading through your fingers as warmth slowly seeps back into them. For a while, he leaves his lips there, parted slightly as he breathes through his mouth. His thumb never stops moving, and the friction helps, even as the burning grows intense. Pins and needles stab at your flesh, and you bite your bottom lip to distract from the sharp aches.

Eventually, his grip loosens. Reluctantly, he pulls your hand from his lips. “Better?” he asks, lowering your linked hands to your thigh before slipping his fingers out from between yours. His grip shifts to your leg, squeezing gently. The fabric is stiff and cold under his palm, and he flinches away instinctively.

“I fell,” you admit when his eyes jump back to yours in horror, though it takes longer than it should for you to realize why he’s so concerned. “I thought the creek was frozen over, but the ice wasn’t thick enough.”

For a moment, he’s quiet. Then, he manages to choke out a soft, “When?” Careful to keep his tone even.

“I don’t—a couple hours, maybe?” Your brows pinch together in confusion. “I’m not sure. A while ago, I guess. I can’t really feel it, so I just—I… forgot.”

Forgot. You forgot that you fell into water. Forgot that you’ve been wearing freezing clothes for hours.

Hypothermic, he realizes with a jolt. You’re hypothermic. It takes a second for his thoughts to unscramble, for him to swallow back the initial surge of panic that rises up in his chest at the new information. You seemed so level-headed before that he didn’t even notice the stiffness of your jeans or the patches of ice clinging to your clothes and hair, his head still foggy from being slammed against the ground before you found him. Bitterly, he berates himself for not seeing it before. The signs are right there. Steve doesn’t take his eyes off your face, taking in the discolored hue of your lips and the slow way you’re blinking, the more noticeable slur to the way you’re speaking.

Your eyes widen. Alarm twists your expression as you come to the same conclusion as him moments later than you should. “Steve…”

“Okay,” he says. Nervously, his tongue darts out to wet his lips. Slowly, he lowers his hand again, hovering over your thigh briefly before he reaches for the lighter on the floor instead. Fire. He needs to light the damn fire. “It’s okay. Just let me…”

Where you fumbled with the lighter, Steve catches the flame first try. Logs are already piled in the fireplace from the cabin was still occupied, and there are more stacked in the corner from last summer, when Hopper coerced Steve and Jonathan into helping him chop down one of the old oaks nearby. It was Fourth of July weekend and Steve left with blisters on his hands and a bone-deep ache in his arms. There’s enough wood to survive the winter, more than enough to last for a few days out here, if you need to. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.

The kindling is still dry, thankfully. The flames spread quickly, the logs catching fire one after another until they’re burning steadily. He’ll have to keep an eye on it, make sure the flames don’t burn too low or burn out.

“There.” He clears his throat, sliding the lighter back into his pocket. The firelight casts a warm glow through the room, and for the first time tonight he gets a good look at you. In the light, the faint discoloration of your lips and skin is more prominent, and he can see how badly you’re trembling in your soaked clothes. “How’s that? Fire starting to help at all?” he asks, even though he knows it’s too early for your frozen limbs to thaw.

His heart sinks when you only give him a weak smile in return.

“Come on.” Steve taps your thigh, hooking one hand under your leg and tugging until your confusion melts into realization. Limbs stiff and numb, it takes a minute for you to stand like he wants, and once you’re on your feet you sway unsteadily, knees weak from being crouched in the same position for so long. He keeps you steady with his hand on your thigh, grip tight over an icy patch on your jeans. “We need to get you out of this,” he says, looking up at you as you place your hands on his shoulders delicately, a frown pulling at your pretty mouth.

“Your arm,” you start to argue, glancing at the sluggishly growing stain on his right sleeve.

“Can wait,” he tells you, firm. Your brows knit together, your lips pursing. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re freezing.” He sends you a pointed look as a shiver wracks your body, and you avert your gaze. “Your clothes are soaked,” he continues, rubbing his thumb back and forth against your inner thigh. “Baby, if we don’t warm you up…” He shakes his head. “And you were out there for hours. We need to get you out of these clothes. I’m not—I’m not gonna argue about this.”

You chew your bottom lip. “You’re bleeding,” you try anyway, fingers curling into his sleeve above the top laceration.

“I don’t care.” He squeezes your leg, pinning you with the most serious look you’ve ever seen. “Just… let me take care of you, okay? Will you please just let me take care of you first?” His eyes search yours. He finds them melancholy and heavy with guilt, and he hates that look more than anything. “And, this?” He shrugs his bad shoulder. “Doesn’t even hurt. Not even a little bit.”

“Liar,” you call him, just like you did this morning. And you’re right to. His shoulder is still throbbing, and the amount of blood soaked into his clothes is concerning, but he needs to take care of you first. Needs to make sure you’re going to be okay.

“I’m serious. It barely scratched me.” Besides, Steve’s suffered worse than a couple of cuts on his arm.

You’re still looking at him like you want to put up a fight, but it’s not long before you come to the conclusion that you’ll be no good to him like this—barely able to feel your fingers and toes, shaking so badly you couldn’t even light the fire without help.

“Okay,” you relent, giving in to the concern in his eyes and the gentle touch of his hand on your leg.

“Okay?”

You sniff, nodding. “Yeah.”

“All right.”

Steve lets you rest more of your weight on his shoulders as he shifts to a more comfortable position, his knees already starting to sting. Both of his hands slide up and down the outside of your thighs, soothing you more than trying to warm you up at this point. Friction won’t help anymore. Even if the ice melts, your clothes are still drenched. Staying in wet clothes will only make you sick, and that’s assuming you aren’t already, because it’s cold outside. Colder than cold, really, different from the kind of cold that November brings. This time of January, it’s the kind of cold that hurts when you breathe in too deep.

He squeezes your knee once before sliding his hand down your calf to where your pants are tucked into the top of your boot. It’s quick work, undoing the laces enough so that he can slip your shoes off without jostling you too much. You don’t make a sound as he keeps you balanced, chucking the shoes somewhere behind you without taking his eyes off your legs. He grimaces when he sees your socks are soaked through.

Soaked, but not frozen. It’s barely a respite, all things considered, but it’s better than the alternative, he supposes, already rolling the first damp sock down over the heel of your foot.

“Can you feel that?” he asks, glancing up as he runs his thumb over the top of your foot.

“Yeah.”

He lowers your foot to the floor, reaching for the other. “Both of them?”

This time you only nod.

Your fuzzy, purple socks join the growing pile of clothes on the floor, and he grimaces when he sees the wet patches near the hem of your jacket. “This, too, honey,” he says, tugging at the edge.

Again, all you do is nod, too cold or too miserable or too tired to put up any more of a fight for the time being. One of your hands leaves his arms as you start to shrug the coat from your shoulders, movements stiff and slow. Steve helps you from his spot on the floor, tugging on the sleeve to help slip it off. The second arm comes faster, and soon the jacket is laying in a heap on the floor behind you.

The palm of Steve’s hand runs along your thigh over the wet, frozen patches there. You stiffen briefly as his fingers slide to the button of your jeans, and when you look down you find his eyes already on you, searching your expression for permission to keep going. It’s going to hurt, sliding the wet denim off your legs, and he doesn’t want to push too hard too fast.

And your pulse shouldn’t jump the way it does, seeing him on his knees in front of you, thick fingers fiddling with the button on your jeans. Not when you’re borderline hypothermic and the wound on his arm is still bleeding sluggishly. Not when there’s something out there in the woods stalking you both. But you’re still foggy from the cold, and it’s impossible not to think about the last time he was on his knees for you like this, big hands grabbing at your thighs and mouth hot on your skin, moans muffled behind the palm of your hand as he had you pressed back against a door.

A muscle in his jaw twitches, and you wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.

“Still doing okay? Do you want me to…” He swallows his tongue before he can ask if you want him to stop. You both know that right now he can’t. It’ll only make things harder.

“I’m okay.” You loosen your grip on one of his shoulders, finding the curve of his jaw instead and pressing the tips of your fingers to his cheek. You offer him a muted half-smile that only makes him feel worse and brush the hair from his face, hand stroking back the damp strands before falling back to his shoulder. “You can keep going.”

He wets his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, all right. Let me just…”

The button pops open with a deft move of his thumb and finger, easy in a way that only comes with familiarity. The click of your zipper sliding down is loud beneath the crackle of firewood, and it sends a shiver up your spine that you tell yourself is from the cold and nothing else.

Your fingernails bite into Steve’s shoulders as he loops his fingers around the waistband of your jeans and starts to tug them down. The material is soaked through and stiff, half-frozen where you slipped and went through the ice, damp everywhere else from the snow, and it’s a slow process, working the fabric down around your hips and thighs. Each inch might as well be a mile. He’s gentle as he rolls the waistband down, as gentle as he can be, anyway. At first, it isn’t bad. The fabric is stiff, sure, but being inside where it’s warmer has helped to soften the denim some. It’s worse on your right side. Where the left side slides down without too much trouble, the right sticks to your leg high on your thigh. Gentle pressure doesn’t inch the fabric loose, and his stomach drops when he sees the discolored skin peeking out from beneath.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he murmurs, the only warning he gives you before pulling harder.

You flinch and cry out when he has to peel your jeans away from your skin. It makes an awful, ripping noise, like it’s fused to your leg, and you nearly bite clear through your bottom lip in an effort not to scream. The slick sound of your skin peeling away from the fabric makes his stomach churn, and Steve slides his hand up your leg to your hip, squeezing gently as you let out a shuddering breath that dissolves into a wet sob.

He winces at every muffled whimper that slips between your lips, hating that he’s the one hurting you right now. Steve isn’t so self-loathing anymore to blame himself, but it still feels like he’s being sucker punched in the chest each time you cry out. When you do, he murmurs apologies. Reassurances. Nonsensical strings of words that he wishes made it hurt less. And maybe they do. You start to relax into his hold the more he talks, flinching and hiccupping less as he gets the fabric down to your knees. They slide down easier then, clinging less in the spots that are wet, not as tightly plastered to your calves where they were covered by your boots.

“How bad is it?” you ask, after he’s worked your jeans down to your ankles and helped you step out of the soaked denim. Your voice crackles over the words, wet and thick.

Steve stays on his knees in front of you, letting your shaking hands grip his shoulders too tight, your fingers digging in too close to the open wound on his arm. One of his big hands strokes up your leg from knee to hip, rubbing gently at the raw patches of skin. There are welts decorating your right leg, ruddy and dark like fresh bruises. Or burns. The sight of them makes him sick, but they aren’t nearly as bad as they could be, all things considered. Your left is relatively okay. You must have landed on your side when you fell.

You inhale sharply as he lingers over one for too long, and he whispers an apology that’s almost lost under the crackle of fire wood.

“Could be worse,” he tells you honestly. “It’s not pretty. And it’s gonna hurt like a bitch for a couple of days, but I don’t think we’ll have to amputate.”

You giggle. It’s startled and wet, but it’s a laugh, and he’ll take it.

His lips quirk upwards at the corners, and he almost leans in to kiss your hip, but stops himself, afraid to aggravate the sores on your legs any further.

“That’s probably for the best,” you say, easing your grip on his arms when he rubs circles into your hip with his thumb. There’s a touch of humor in your voice that makes the tension in his shoulders loosen. “I think you’d pass out if you had to cut my leg off. Then, we’d both be fucked.”

“You think I can’t handle a little blood?” he asks, scoffing. “I think my track record might prove otherwise.” Because he’s fought monsters before. Dozens of them. And they’ve ripped him to pieces before, but he’s always gotten right back up and kept swinging.

It would be different if it was you, though. Steve knows that. And you know it, too. The sight of your blood on Steve’s hands would make him sick. The idea of hurting you like that, even if it were necessary, makes him want to vomit.

He clears his throat and scrubs the thought away. His palm brushes against the welts forming on your leg again, careful not to hurt you. “Want me to look for something for these?” There might be some antibiotic ointment somewhere in here, but the best thing you can do for an ice burn is soak it in warm water, and that’s not going to be possible for a while unless one of you risks going outside to gather snow.

You follow a similar train of thought, more lucid now that the fire is warming you, and shake your head slowly. “No,” you say as he stands.

His breath hitches as sharp pain ripples through his right arm, and you frown up at him. Steve keeps his hands on your hips, his fingers slipping under the hem of your sweater so he can feel your skin. Clammy and covered in goosebumps, but solid and alive under his touch, growing warm. You press your hand to his chest, just beneath the lacerations splitting open his shirt.

“Sit,” you tell him, gently pushing him away from you towards the couch.

He wets his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”

Steve cradles his injured arm to his side as he skirts around the coffee table, careful not to bang his shins against it this time. With his lingering adrenaline fading to nothing, the tenderness in his side is coming back in full force. Gingerly, he lowers himself onto the raggedy old couch, leans his head against the back, and watches you, backlit by the fire, as you gather your things.

You fold your jacket and leave it in a pile with your socks and shoes. The jeans you leave in a heap on the floor, too soaked to do much else with right now. Absentmindedly, your fingers brush against one of the welts resting high on your right leg, the same one Steve caressed. It must sting, because your hand flinches away and you wrap your arms around your torso instead, fingers clenched in the thick, knitted fabric. Feeling his gaze on you, you look up, silhouetted in shadows so he can’t see your expression.

Without a word, you come back to him.

The sweater you’re still wearing is damp instead of drenched, but you’re still shivering as you help him out of his own clothes, working in silence as you watch him with worried eyes, your bottom lip caught between your teeth, biting it raw as you get a better look at the extent of the damage. His jacket and uniform top are ripped across the shoulder and soaked through with blood, beyond repair. You could try sewing the gashes shut, but you’d never be able to fully wash out the stains, an ugly reminder of tonight.

Steve is able to shrug the jacket off on his own, working the zipper down with his good arm and wriggling to slip the sleeve down his shoulder. The right sleeve is harder, and he winces as he bends his injured arm, expression screwing up in a way that has you reaching out to smooth a hand through his hair. Your palm comes to rest on the back of his neck, thumb rubbing back and forth. He leans into your touch, eyelids fluttering shut briefly before he finally wrenches the heavy jacket from his arm.

He tosses it to the other end of the couch and wonders if he should burn it to mask the scent of blood.

The button up is harder. The blood makes the fabric stick to his skin, and he struggles with the buttons until you brush his fingers aside and replace them with your own. Nimbly, you pop them open, hands beginning to shake less as the numbness and pain retreat. He doesn’t complain, sighing and sinking back further against the couch, watching you through half-lidded eyes as your hand moves down his chest.

Once his shirt is hanging open, you pause, chewing your lip as you try to decide what to do next.

You wish you had a pair of scissors. Something to cut through his shirt and make it easier to remove. Less painful to remove. But you aren’t sure if there’s one left in the cabin, and you aren’t willing to leave him alone for long to look. With his jacket gone you can see just how much blood he’s already lost, and your stomach twists sickly at the red stains covering most of his right arm and the side of his chest.

Steve is patient, watching as your brows pinch together and your lips turn down. Your hand is on his chest, pressed to the lower part of his ribs where you can feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing, reassuring you that he’s alive.

Slowly, your palm slides upwards, moving closer to the bloody gashes resting higher on his chest. You lower yourself onto the couch next to him, your knees pressed up against his right thigh. You’re half-sitting on the arm of the couch, leaning forward to get a better look at the mangled part of his arm without pressing up against him.

“What do you think, doc?” he asks, letting your touch move over his arm even though it hurts like a bitch. “Am I gonna lose the arm?”

He’s hoping for another smile, maybe even a laugh, if he’s lucky, but you only frown, brows pinched together. “I have to get your shirt off, Steve.”

There’s an apology beneath the statement, and he sighs, leaning into you more as you play with the hair at the nape of his neck in an effort to make him relax. “Yeah,” he says, closing his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Do what you gotta do.”

“It’ll hurt,” you warn him, your free hand skimming the thin slices in his shirt, careful not to apply any pressure. “Some of the blood is dry. Or, frozen. It’s not going to come off nicely.”

Steve thinks of the way he had to peel the jeans from your legs, how the tearing sound made him want to puke.

“Like ripping off a really fucking big band aid,” he mutters.

You nod, stroking his hair away from his face. “Yeah. A really fucking big band aid.”

“Awesome,” he says. “Let’s get this over with.”

Where Steve had been hesitant to work your jeans down your legs, you’re more certain in your actions as you grab the right side of his open shirt and pull the ripped strips of fabric away from his wounds. It’s not that you have less reservations about hurting him, you’ve simply been doing this for years, patching him up after every stupid fight he got into during high school, taking care of him after monsters would ravage Hawkins once per year, ruthless in your need to keep him alive.

“Son of a—fuck!” he groans, eyes screwing shut as he clenches his teeth so hard that they rattle, his jaw aching under the pressure. Whispered apologies soothe the hurt, but he can’t make out the words behind the burning sensation on his chest and the dull ringing in his ears.

Barely allowing him a break, you’re quick to turn your attention to the deeper cuts on his arm. The pale blue fabric is bunched sideways until it starts to pull on the wound, the fibers sticking to the raw, fleshy edges of the lacerations. Clots pull and crack, bleeding freely again as you start to dislodge the soiled remains of his shirt. Steve’s hands are clenched into fists at his side, white-knuckled and shaking with the effort to keep still.

He hisses in surprise when the blue fabric peels away from the top cut on his arm, the shallowest of the three. All are still bleeding, but it’s sluggish now, even as the clots and scabs start to come loose with the fibers you pull free. He isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or not—if he was bleeding more, maybe this would hurt less.

One by one, you unstick his shirt from his arm, and once the remains of his shirt pull away from the blood crusting under the open wound on his bicep, you yank the soiled fabric down to his elbow, shoving it further to his wrist, and then off before you toss it onto the floor.

He’s breathing heavily through his nose when you glance at his face. A thin sheen of sweat mats his hair to his forehead, and you brush the unruly strands back, leaning down to press your lips to his temple.

The tips of your fingers brush against the skin above his elbow before sliding upwards, though you stop shy of the lacerations. There are three of them. Shallow across his chest; deeper through the flesh of his arm. The cuts across his pec have stopped bleeding again already, beginning to clot and crust over into thick, itchy scabs. His skin is a mess of flaking, frozen blood, smeared across his chest and arm in a way that looks like one big open wound. The warm air and sticky feeling make him wince.

“Oh, Steve,” you murmur, thumb brushing the underside of one of the cuts. Your finger comes away red and wet when you pull back. The somber, guilty lilt of your voice makes his jaw clench harder, but he keeps his mouth shut as you examine the wound the monster left behind.

None of this is your fault, and he’ll make sure you know that later, but you don’t need reassurance from him while he’s still bleeding and his head is throbbing from being cracked against the ground.

There’s a joke on the tip of his tongue when he gets his breathing back under control, something to lighten the mood, even just a little. His head feels foggy as he peels his eyes open, looking at you. As if you can feel his gaze, you lift your head. Your eyes meet his, and they’re red and watery, and whatever he was about to say gets stuck in his throat.

“These need stitches,” you tell him, grasping his bicep under the cuts. “I don’t… I don’t think they’re too bad, but just to be safe. In case…” In case it comes back, you think, but don’t say out loud. In case you have to run. In case you have to fight. “We’ll need to get you checked out by a doctor.”

Steve nods. Your sweater is bunched up under his hand, his palm pressed to the small of your back, but he doesn’t remember grabbing you. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to ground, you or him. “Coyote?” he asks.

You shake your head. “Bear,” you decide after several seconds of thinking. “We went for a walk before the snowstorm and didn’t see it until it was too late. It ran off after you took a shot at it.”

He leans his head back against the couch. “As close to the truth as possible, huh?” The smile he sends you is wry, and you offer one of your own, but it’s damp and wobbles at the edges. Steve rubs his hand against your lower back. “I’m okay, honey.”

“You’re not,” you correct him immediately, a little bite to your tone. “I’ll get the first aid kit. We left one in the bathroom.”

Without another word, you slip from Steve’s hold and get off of the couch, careful to avoid his eyes as you grab the flashlight off the coffee table. The floor creaks under your bare feet as you hurry from the room before he can call out to you, trying not to run as you b-line towards the tiny bathroom.

As soon as you step into the room, you click the flashlight on, shutting the door with your back and fumbling for the knob to lock the door behind you. The flashlight beam is even weaker than it was before, the flickering growing more frequent. Ignoring the erratic flickers, you shove away from the door and set the flashlight on the edge of the sink.

“Come on, come on,” you murmur to yourself, throwing open drawers and the medicine cabinet doors in search of the damn kit. It should have been in the cabinet. That’s where you left it last summer after—and you haven’t touched it since. It should still be here.

You slam one of the drawers closed.

The flashlight clatters to the ground and goes dark.

Throat tight, you lean over the sink, breaths coming in short, shallow gasps. Your pulse quickens. Blood is sticky between your fingers, your hands shaking so badly that you have to grip the edge of the sink so tightly that the porcelain digs into your palms until they hurt. It’s too dark. Too dark to see anything but shapes and shadows in the mirror. Behind you, a figure moves, looming over you.

You squeeze your eyes shut. Try to breathe the way your dad taught you.

You’d kept your explanation to Steve short. Five hours is too much to condense into a single sentence. Though, you hadn’t lied, mostly. You ran. You hid. That’s it. That’s the simplest way to put it, because thinking about the details has bile tickling at the back of your mouth. Acid burns your throat, acrid and choking. You lean over the sink and try not to gag.

That thing had chased you through the woods for what seemed like hours, driving you deeper into the woods until you weren’t sure where you were anymore. You couldn’t find the road. Or the cabin. For hours, it seemed like you were just running in circles. Lost. Terrified.

And then it caught you.

You fell into the creek. You fell, and your hip smashed through the layer of ice covering the running water. The cold knocked the breath out of your lungs. In the next blink, it was on top of you. Those sightless, milky eyes bored into yours. The matted hair around its face hung vertically. The wiry, greasy ends tickled your cheek. It crouched over your body, gangly limps jutting out, spiderlike, elbows and knees sharp and skin pulled taut.

“Hello?” it called to you in your own voice.

Clawed fingers reached out and you squeezed your eyes shut, unable to stop the sob ripping from your throat or the tears leaking down your face. You flinched as a lone claw delicately slid down your cheek. A sick imitation of a caress.

“Hello? Steve?”

“Please,” you choked out.

And it repeated “please” and cocked its head to the side, asked, “Cold?” in Steve’s voice.

You only sobbed again.

For what felt like hours, you laid there, that thing leaning over you, repeating words back to you in your voice—in Steve’s voice. What made you sickest was when it said words you hadn’t said, still using your voice. No longer just mimicking.

And then it cocked its head to the other side. Once more, it ran a spindly finger down the side of your face. You closed your eyes tight enough to see spots, and when you opened them again it was gone.

The flashlight flickers on.

There’s nothing in the mirror behind you.

When you come back to the living room, you’re carrying the first aid kit, a pile of old towels, and a bottle of rum. Without a word, you plop down onto the coffee table across from Steve, your knee knocking gently against his. He doesn’t mention how long you were gone, or the redness of your eyes.

He eyes the bottle as you flick open the locks holding the old, plastic first aid kit shut. “Your old man’s gonna be pissed that the rum’s gone,” he says, squinting to read the label in the firelight and whistling when he recognizes the brand. “Damn, this is the good stuff. He’ll have a conniption or some shit. Jesus.”

“Let him,” you say, glancing up from the contents of the kit to meet his eyes. “We’ll get him something nice for the wedding.”

The edge of his mouth quirks upwards, but it’s weak. Now that you’re finally getting a chance to really look at him, you can see the exhaustion dragging down his features. His smile isn’t there, and his eyes are half-lidded. His focus keeps drifting when he isn’t talking, and you aren’t sure if you should be more worried about the blood loss or the probable concussion.

Queasy with the thought, you turn back to the first aid kit, biting your lip as you examine the meager supplies left over from whenever you last stocked it. It must have been sometime last summer, before the gate was breached. You patched Steve up that time, too. A bloody gash on the outside of his leg. And Lucas had a cut above his brow that wouldn’t stop bleeding no matter how long Max kept pressure on it. All that’s left now is a roll of gauze, half a bottle of peroxide, and an old suture kit you kept, just in case.

It’s not much, but you’ll have to make it work.

“Drink,” you say, pressing the rum into his hands.

Steve doesn’t argue. With a twist, he pops the glass stopper out of the top and brings the bottle to his lips, face screwing up as he swallows a mouthful of the amber liquid. It burns on the way down, taste distorted by the blood in his mouth. He takes another swig as you lay towels and your suture kit on the arm of the couch, the peroxide in your hand.

“Stay still for me,” you tell him.

There’s no good way to reach the lacerations on Steve’s shoulder and the top of his chest, so without hesitation, you swing one leg over his lap. He tenses when you straddle him, grasping your waist with one big hand to steady you as you settle on top of him. The heat of his hand sinks into your skin through your clothes and you can’t help the content sigh that accompanies his touch.

The bottle almost slips out of his grip as you pour peroxide on one of the towels and press the cloth to the cuts on his chest. “Fuck,” he hisses, squeezing his eyes shut as you dab at the cuts, cleaning the dried blood off his skin. “Christ. Easier said than done. A little warning next time?”

You ignore him, wiping his skin clean with as gentle a touch as you can manage right now.

The two of you slip into a mindless rhythm, quiet as you clean him up with one hand, the other pressing a towel to the deeper wounds on his shoulder, hoping to stop the bleeding. Steve’s breathing becomes labored as you work, pained noises and curses muttered into the dimly lit room. You don’t do more than clean his skin and tape gauze over the shallow claw marks splitting open his skin.

A muscle in Steve’s jaw jumps as the space between you continues to shrink, your hips flush with his, and it’s impossible not to notice how close you are, how good your weight feels on top of him. His grip on you tightens as your ministrations shift to his shoulder, his fingers digging into your side over your sweater until he craves contact enough to slip his hand under your clothes.

You’re gentle as you clean his wounds. As gentle as you can be, anyway. Once the blood is cleaned away from the wounds on his arm, you pause, one hand hovering over the suture kit as you bite your lip, worrying it raw. They need stitches. Desperately. Cleaned, they don’t look quite as bad as when his arm was a mess of blood and tissue, but now you can see just how deep they go, how long they are. Each cut is at least four inches long, probably longer. They aren’t as deep as you feared, but they need more than gauze and peroxide.

“How many?” he asks as your fingers trace the underside of one of the gashes. He pulls you tighter to his chest with the hand on your back as you look at him. “Stitches.” He wets his lips after clarifying. “How many stitches?”

Your hand wraps loosely around his bicep. “The cuts are pretty long, Steve,” you admit, lips downturned.

“Just tell me how many, honey.”

For several seconds, you’re silent, thumb rubbing against the inside of his arm soothingly. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five for each, to be safe,” you tell him. “You’ll have to get them redone as soon as we can get you to a hospital. Right now, I’m more worried about the bleeding than an infection.”

“Okay,” he says, nodding in understanding. He pulls his arm from your grasp as he raises the rum bottle to his lips and takes another long drink, then sets the bottle on the side table. “Yeah, okay—okay. Let’s, let’s get it over with.”

Your hands shake as you thread the medical suture through the end of the needle. Steve leans his head back against the couch, his eyes closed as he waits for you to start. His hand is twisted in your sweater again, gripping the damp fabric tightly to keep himself grounded to you.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

The first stitch is rough. He groans, long and low as you push the needle into his skin and pull it through to the other side. You keep your weight settled over his hips, holding him in place on the couch as he fights not to thrash against the white-hot, burning sensation lacing across his upper arm. You work quickly, tying off the thread and cutting it carefully.

Neither of you speak for a long time, the silence broken by the popping firewood and the hisses and groans that slip between Steve’s teeth as you stitch him shut, pausing every few minutes to wipe away the blood sluggishly leaking from his wounds.

Twenty-five. That’s how many stitches it takes to sew the first gash shut. Not professional by any means, but prettier than he could have done himself. There’s a fine layer of sweat covering him by the time you pause to look over your work, and his hair is matted to his forehead. You run your fingers through the strands, pushing them away from his eyes before letting your knuckles graze his cheek.

Steve breathes out, a shaky sound.

You make it halfway through the second gash before Steve speaks.

“You still have the car keys, right?”

You glance up, meeting his half-lidded gaze as you tie off a stitch. “Yeah. Why?”

The tips of his fingers press into your back subconsciously, holding you tighter to him. The weight of what he wants to say lays heavy on his chest, making it impossible to breathe. When he doesn’t answer, you look at him again, needle in hand and blood staining the skin around your fingernails.

“Listen,” he starts, hand dropping to your hip, “if that thing comes back—”

You tense over his lap, fingers digging into his arm below his open wounds. “No,” you shut him down.

Steve shakes his head, continuing as if you didn’t speak. “I want you to run.”

“Absolutely not,” you’re quick to argue. “I’m not—I’m not just going to leave you.”

He presses his palm to the base of your spine, keeping you close when you start to pull back. “No one’s leaving anybody.” He says it like it’s a promise, staring back at you with those big, hazel eyes. Sincere. Sober and exhausted, all the alcohol has done is loosen his tongue a little. He’s been mulling over this since he heard you crying in the bathroom, sobs muffled behind the door. “Look, if it gets inside… I want you to run for the car, okay? Just run. I’ll be right there behind you, yeah? I’ll be right behind you.”

“No, you won’t,” you say, bitterness creeping into your tone. Because you know him. You know Steve better than you know yourself, and he’s an idiot with too big a heart and too little self-preservation. Because he doesn’t care what happens to him so long as everyone else makes it out alive, but you do. If Steve thought he could give you the chance to run—to stay behind and ensure you stay safe, you know he’d take it.

The bite in those three words makes him wince, but he pushes ahead anyway. “Get to the Byers’ new place. Your dad’s practically got an artillery in the shed. You’ll—you’ll have to protect the kids. Please, can you just—can you do that?”

The needle slips from between your fingers.

You reach up, cup Steve’s face in your bloodstained hands and force him to look at you. “I’m not going anywhere without you,” you tell him firmly, breaking midway through. You swallow back the lump in your throat, forced to speak around the tightness there. “If you think I am, then maybe you really are an idiot. Now shut up and let me work.”

You’re harsher than you mean to be, and you turn back to Steve’s arm before he can see the wetness gathered along your lash-line. The needle dangles against his bicep, but your hands are shaking too much to add another suture so soon, so you busy yourself by wetting a towel and dabbing at the fresh blood leaking around the wounds.

Steve taps an unrecognizable pattern against your spine, stroking over the small of your back like an apology.

It’s another minute before you grab the needle again. Neither of you speaks as you continue to sew him up; you stop whispering reassurances between sutures.

After you cut the last stitch, you dip your chin and press your lips to the top of his shoulder.

He draws you into his chest, ignoring the way his arm protests the movement, the stitches pulling awkwardly as his muscles flex beneath the thread.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper against his neck, muffled, but close enough for him to hear. It’s a tight squeeze, an awkward angle, but you manage to wrap your arms around his back, pressing to him like a second skin. “Fuck, Steve, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Yelled at him. Called him an idiot. Dragged him into this bullshit because you messed up and couldn’t handle it yourself. He never should have been out here in the first place.

And he knows you so well. Well enough to know the way your thoughts are spiraling as fear and exhaustion sink deep into your bones. “Hey, hey, hey,” he says, hand sliding up your spine to cradle the back of your neck, thumb pressed to your pulse. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t… don’t blame yourself, okay?” And God he wishes he was better with words. If he was, maybe he could do something other than sit here and hold you as you shake in his arms.

Your fingers curl against his back, searching for something to hold onto, but only finding skin.

“If I had just stayed home—”

“Don’t.”

“—and you got hurt because of me.”

His grip shifts to your jaw. Gently, he pulls you away from the curve of his neck, his hand on your chin coaxing you to look at him as he sweeps his thumb across your cheek. Your eyes are puffy, red and watery, and it breaks his heart. “This thing was already here, remember? Last night, I heard it. So did Will. And so did the Mulligans. It was already here,” he tells you again. “And it was hunting, or whatever the hell it’s out there doing. And we would have had to handle it anyway, like we always do. We just caught on a little faster this time.”

“Steve,” you say softly.

He slides his hand around to the back of your neck and pulls you down for a chaste kiss before you can say anything else. It doesn’t last for more than a moment. Just long enough to steal the words from your lips, the warm press of his mouth on yours a reminder that he’s here. That he’s alive. Your arms come unstuck from behind him, and your hands cup his cheeks as he pulls away, reluctant to let him go too far.

“I thought you were dead,” you murmur as he leans his forehead against yours. “I heard the gunshot, and I ran and… and you were just lying there. And there was blood everywhere. And you weren’t… you weren’t moving, Steve. You weren’t moving. I thought you weren’t—I thought—”

His mouth slots against yours once more, lingering longer, a little harder. His crooked nose bumps against yours, and it tastes like iron and salt as his mouth moves against your own, your lips parting under his like muscle memory. Ignoring the burn in his shoulder, Steve crushes you against his chest, holding you close and hoping you can feel his heart beating in time with yours.

The fire crackles and snaps, and you watch as the new logs Steve placed into the hearth are consumed by the flames. The heat radiating from the fireplace warms your skin, but your sweater is still damp. The wet fabric is heavy on your frame, clinging in strange spots, and you haven’t stopped fidgeting uncomfortably since you finished the stitches in Steve’s arm, but you haven’t been able to will yourself to strip off the last of your clothes. Keeping them on will only make you sick, you know that, but the thought is shoved to the back of your mind as you stare into the flames, entranced.

Neither of you can make sense of the time.

Steve’s watch must have come loose in the snow, and you’ve never been inclined to wear one, so it was impossible to tell how late it was by the time you and Steve finally disentangled yourselves from each other. There was a bottle of pain medication in the first aid kit, and Steve swallowed two of them dry after you pressed the bottle into his hand. At some point, you started shivering again, far enough from the fire that your sweater refused to dry, and Steve gently slid you from his lap with a hand on your hip, nudging you towards the fireplace to warm up as he muttered about finding blankets for the two of you. It didn’t escape you how pale he looked, dark circles like bruises under his eyes, a clammy sheen to his skin.

You hadn’t realized just how physically exhausted you were until you stood and swayed on your feet. It couldn’t be any later than eight, maybe nine, by the time you finished closing the wound on Steve’s arm. Between mopping up the blood and forcing your hands to stop shaking after each suture, the process lasted longer than it should have.

There’s still blood crusted under and around your fingernails, dry and flaking off as you pick at the blotchy, ruddy stains. Each time you close your eyes you see teeth and gangly, grotesque limbs, sightless eyes staring down at you, your own voice calling out from a mouth that isn’t yours.

Outside, the wind shrieks, a shrill cry that you swear sounds like Steve’s name.

Shaking your head, you will the thought away. You shift your weight from one leg to the other as the cold registers again.

Your fingers tremble as you grasp the hem of your sweater and peel the thick fabric over your head. It squelches. Droplets splatter down your chest and back as your grip wrings water from the material. The sweater lands in a wet heap on the floor, and you wince at the loud, slick sound, more wet than damp like you thought it was.

With shaky, frozen fingers you fumble with the clasp of your bra for several seconds before you’re able to shrug the equally damp fabric down your arms. Immediately, the chilly air descends on your now bare skin. Goosebumps erupt across your chest, and you bite your lip to stifle a breathy whimper.

Steve hears you over the crackle of the fireplace. Glancing up from the makeshift nest of blankets he’s piled together, he can’t help the way his head snaps back up for a second look. Cold and shivering, you’re standing by the clothes rack he managed to dig out from one of the closets, angled in a way that leaves you in shadow, the silhouette of your bare breasts illuminated in the firelight. His breath catches, his heart lurching into his throat as your fingers slide over your hips and slip beneath the hem of your panties, dragging them down an inch.

“Don’t,” he says, louder and sharper than he means to. Gasping, your head snaps towards him, eyes wide. Steve clears his throat, looking away. “Don’t. If they’re dry, you should keep them on. You’ll be warmer that way.” The subtle innuendo makes him wince, but from the corner of his eye he sees your hands leave your panties, watches as your arms come up to cover your breasts instead.

You wet your lips. “Right.”

You glance at the fire again, arms crossed over your chest, the flames warming your bare skin and finally chasing away the chill that seeped into your bones and took root inside you, like you’d never know heat again. With your head turned to the side, you don’t see Steve’s eyes wander back to you, unable to help himself, but you can feel the weight of them tracing over your frame. Fire licks across your spine, and it has nothing to do with the flames in front of you.

This shouldn’t be awkward, Steve thinks. It’s not the first time he’s seen you naked. Not even close. But this feels different. Intimate. Vulnerable. It’s not a clash of teeth and tongues, his hands grabbing your ass and hoisting you up against the nearest wall as you yank at his belt with impatient fingers because the world might as well be ending and you need to feel each other closer, at least once more, just in case. It’s not a tipsy kiss at a party neither of you want to be at, with his fingers slipping under your skirt as he bends you over a bathroom counter. Different from the risky quickies you’ve had in the front seat of his car, both of you pent up and desperate for release, your panties hooked to the side and his pants shoved down just enough for your hand to wrap around his cock.

Steve has seen you naked. He’s fucked you senseless, more than once. This is softer, somehow. Sweeter. No frantic hands. No desperation. In any other situation, it would be almost romantic.

Standing from his spot knelt next to the pile of blankets, Steve keeps his gaze firmly on the floor as he tugs at his belt, quickly slipping out of his wet and stained pants. His hands still as the floor creaks under your steps, his head tilting towards you as he sees you out of the corner of his eye.

Your arms are still crossed over your chest, loose enough for him to see the swell of your breasts. This close, he can see you’re wearing those lacy, royal blue panties that he likes. “Come warm me up?” you ask like you did last night, but there’s an implication there that wasn’t before. You want to forget tonight. You want to forget all of it, and Steve has always been good at making your thoughts grow quiet.

You’re close enough to touch. And he thinks about laying you out on the blankets, covering your body with his own and kissing you senseless until you’re moaning and writhing underneath him—your breathy cries sinking into him and drowning out the horrific screams still echoing in his head. You’d let him. There’s a look in your eyes, heady and dark, that tugs at the pit of his stomach and makes his skin feel hot.

Beneath that is something haunted.

Steve dips his chin and presses his lips to your temple instead.

“Come here, honey,” he murmurs against your skin. You shiver, eyes squeezing shut as he wraps his arm around your lower back, pulling you against him.

It isn’t long before the two of you make your way down against the blankets, burying beneath thick quilts and fuzzy throw blankets left behind during a hasty move. Steve kisses you again, soft and sweet, and you sigh into his mouth as his chest presses to yours, skin against skin. Just once, and then you slot into place against his side, head tucked under his chin and an arm slung over his stomach, your fingers sprawled beneath his navel.

You both lie there for a while, listening to the storm rage outside. You’re quick to drift, hours of being lost in the woods and hunted down leaving you unable to keep your eyes open once you’re pressed safe and warm to Steve’s side.

The rhythmic puffs of your breaths tickle his chest as Steve runs his hand along the curve of your hip and waist, pacifying himself as much as it soothes you. Exhaustion hits him hard, the last twenty-four hours catching up to him as your cold toes press against his legs. And for a moment he can pretend he’s home, with you.

There’s a tap against the window. Innocuous, but loud enough to rouse him from a doze.

“Steve?”

Your voice is barely above a whisper, muffled and far-off, distorted even though you’re so close. He hums instead of answering, head lolling towards yours. You shift closer to him, your lips pressing against the dip of his collarbone. A content sigh heaves from your lungs.

“Steve?” you whisper again. Your mouth doesn’t move.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #stranger things #steve harrington #st fic #stranger things fic #fic: into open flames

281 notes · View notes