Chapter Text
Some of the other symptoms of rabies, besides the whole can’t-swallow/foaming-at-the-mouth thing, according to the info sheet they’ve just handed him yet again after giving him his second booster dose (as if he’s not an expert on this by now): agitation. Hyperactivity. Insomnia. You know, fun stuff like that.
Steve can’t stop his legs from bouncing up and down, as he sits in the hallway outside room 308 and waits for the kids to finish up in there so he can take them home. He’d been in the room with them for a little while, handed over the new book he’d brought at Lucas’ request, asked him bumbling questions how the recovery was going and gotten a few three word answers eventually followed by a slightly desperate rant about the latest, slightly more hopeful prognosis that he’d fought valiantly to respond appropriately to—a fight he’d probably lost. Max just looked so small in there, lying in the bed surrounded by bright-white sheets and bandages that washed out what little color was left in her already-pale skin, and the other kids around her seemed just as dwarfed by the gravity of the situation. Lucas at the bedside, Erica beside him with his hand in hers, Dustin and El in chairs on the other side of the room and Will and Mike sitting on the floor at their feet: they all look so young, and at the same time so heartbreakingly adult, the matching expressions of grim determination on their faces hard to reconcile with the childish slump of them on top of each other in search of comfort Steve wished he knew how to provide.
He doesn’t know what the rule is on the number of visitors allowed at a time. He doubts any staff in the still-overwhelmed hospital are worried much about enforcing that rule right now anyway. But he felt weird about being in there with all the kids—his large awkward presence surely an intrusion on the moment—and so he let Will and El’s arrival in the already-crowded room be his excuse to run away from the scene, said his goodbyes to Max, and went to wait out in the hall for Dustin and the Sinclairs to do the same.
The info sheet with its list full of terrifying symptoms that he already has practically memorized at this point isn’t enough to distract him from his thoughts: the image of Max in that bed, accompanied over and over again by an accusatory chorus. If I’d been there with her, if I’d been faster killing Vecna, if I’d spoken up and put a stop to Plan Vecna-Bait in the first place before it even got started… He tells himself, trying to project as much conviction as Lucas, that Max isn’t dead yet, that kids always bounce back, that in a few weeks’ time she’s going to be perfectly okay and it’ll be like it never even happened, but he’s having a hard time buying what he’s selling—especially now that he’s just seen her again, lying there, looking just as pale and lifeless as on the day they’d first brought her in. In his long, storied, and ultimately unremarkable days as an athlete-student, he saw more than one teammate receive a career-ending injury. He knows what it looks like by now when—short of a miracle, one he’s still desperately hoping for—there just isn’t any coming back from something, at least not in the same shape you were before.
His legs bounce; he gets up; he paces up and down the hall for several minutes, always making sure to keep room 308 within sight; he goes to the vending machine and discovers that it’s out of order; he realizes just how much of an obstacle he’s making himself for the nurses moving up and down the hall on urgent business, gives up and sits uselessly back down, back against the wall, and folds the paper over and over in his hands, wishing he remembered how to make one of those little origami bird-things Nancy showed him once back when they were still together. He’s desperate to do something: get behind the wheel, get Dustin and Lucas and Erica safely back to their own homes, then hit the gas, drive for miles at top speed. Maybe hit something else, too. Go home himself, maybe, at some point, if he ever manages to wear himself down enough. Start cleaning out the pantry, look for more cans to take to the gym tomorrow. Finally put the cover back on the pool, like he’s been telling himself he’ll do for the past week. Hell, maybe even deep-clean all the bathrooms in the house or something. He might as well do something constructive, because it’s not like he’s likely to sleep any more tonight than he has all week anyway, right?
He gets up one more time to locate a trash can and dump his wadded-up info sheet somewhere he can’t look at it anymore. Hyperactivity, agitation, insomnia—anxiety’s on that list, too, and the last thing he needs is to add that one to the collection now psyching himself out about this shit. He’s been spending way too much time around Robin’s hypochondria for anybody’s good.
It feels like another hour before Dustin emerges into the hallway. No Sinclairs. Steve doesn’t even get as far as asking the question before Dustin’s answering, the words stumbling awkwardly from his mouth as the pair of them walk slowly down the hallway towards the exit:
“He doesn’t want to leave yet,” Dustin says, eyes fixed firmly on the floor. They reach the elevator and he jabs at the button with a vengeance. “Erica said she’d stay with him, and they’ll hitch a ride back with the Wheelers or someone later.”
The elevator is slow—probably busy on other floors. Steve glances back down the hall, to where the door to room 308 stands firmly closed. “He’s been here since…”
“I know,” Dustin says. He pokes the button again, several times in a row, as if it’ll make the elevator come any faster. All it does is make him look even younger than he already is. “I tried to get him to come, but he won’t. I guess he just feels…”
He trails off. Steve gets the idea. He thinks he knows exactly what Lucas must be feeling—that specific combination of helplessness and guilt that comes along when you’re seeing someone you care about lying lifeless right in front of you, when sitting there with the body and bearing witness feels like a crime but turning your back and just leaving it feels, somehow, so much worse. (Especially if it was supposed to be your job to stop any of this from happening in the first place.)
He thinks he knows why Dustin doesn’t seem to want to talk about it with him of all people, too, which he can only guess is fair enough.
He wakes up with minimal gasping this time. He’s been getting better at being quiet, which is probably for the best—when his parents finally decide they’ve waited out the post-quake evacuation rush long enough and ditch NYC to come back to Hawkins and start packing up all their shit for good, or whatever their long-term plans are, at least he won’t wake them up in the middle of the night. He untangles himself from the sheets twisted around him, scrubs a hand through his sweat-damp hair to push it back from his face, and props himself up on an elbow to wait a minute for the jagged edges of his breathing to settle a bit.
The thing was, as terrible as it sounds, he thinks he’s almost gotten used to watching Eddie die in front of him by now, but Henderson making guest appearances? That’s new. His ears are still ringing with the kid’s desperate cries: we have to go back for him! we can’t just leave him behind! we can still make it, there’s still time, please, let me go back in…
It takes Steve a long while, before his breath calms enough that he can sit up properly in his bed and start thinking about what he wants to do next.
It’s still several hours to sunrise, according to the clock on his bedside table, but he doesn’t try to go back to sleep. This time, he doesn’t lie in bed for a couple more hours pretending he’s going to, either, or even get up and start vacuuming floors of the house to kill the time until Robin’ll be ready for him to pick her up and head back to the gym for the morning. Instead, he throws on the nearest shirt and pair of pants he can find, leftovers from yesterday dropped on the floor by the bed, and ends up downstairs, car keys in hand, before he’s even really thought about it. He needs to drive again, he decides, to get behind a wheel and floor it until the sun comes back up or he runs out of gas, whichever comes first. Destination, who cares; it’s the journey that’s supposed to matter anyway, right?
He goes all the way across town, drives by the Hendersons’ then the Wheelers’ and the Sinclairs’ and then keeps going, all the way out to the edge of town, clear past the Welcome to Hawkins, Indiana sign. For a minute he tries to imagine himself continuing on even beyond that: just clearing out, finally skipping this goddamned recurring-nightmare town once and for all alongside his parents or whatever. He doesn’t, obviously—for a variety of reasons. Robin, or Nancy, or Henderson, or Sinclair, or the cop cars parked sideways across the road up ahead, he’s assuming to prevent any well-meaning out-of-towners from wandering in and seeing things they shouldn’t be seeing: take your pick, Harrington, and take your time about it, you’re going nowhere fast. After the U-turn he keeps driving along the outskirts of town, taking turns at random, almost not realizing where they’re taking him until suddenly there’s a glowing red light up ahead surrounded by a field of buildings in various stages of disrepair, and then he gets it: on autopilot, he’s driven himself right back to the trailer park.
Which just figures. Waking, dreaming—it’s kind of all the same these days, it feels like.
He nudges the car carefully off the road, yanks out the key and breathes out a sigh into the sudden quiet left behind by the halt of the engine. He sits like that a moment, then he throws open the door and steps out.
The night’s cool. It’s still barely spring here, and he hadn’t thought to bring a jacket. It almost feels nice, though, the wind through his clothes and hair as he walks, slowly, toward the gaping red wound in the earth up ahead.
He stops a few paces back from the brand-new cliff and takes a seat in the grass behind one of the half-ruined trailers. Probably this is trespassing on the owners’ land, and all, but he doubts they’re still around anyway given the visible structural instability. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s around, actually—no lights anywhere as he glances around, although he guesses it could just be that they’re all asleep given the hour. His gaze lands briefly on Max’s mother’s trailer across the field. It’s still in alright shape, all things considered, but he doubts she’s there right now: she’s been staying over at the hospital most nights after getting off work, according to Lucas, seeing her daughter.
No point in looking for Eddie’s place, obviously: it’s gone, without a trace unless you count the gates that have torn the town apart. Swallowed up. Never to be seen again.
He wonders for a moment what’s happened to—Eddie had mentioned an uncle. Henderson, too: the kid hadn’t talked about it in detail, but Steve knows he ran into the guy in the gym a couple days ago, broke at least the heart of the news to him so he could take down all the missing-person posters. In a way Steve’s glad he missed out on that encounter, because even speculating on the details of it makes him feel sick: he keeps envisioning a man with Eddie’s eyes, staring fixedly at Steve’s face like they’re searching him for answers he couldn’t give even if he had them as Steve fumbled for words like a guilty kid. But then again, he feels even sicker imagining Dustin—the actual kid, the one who actually lost a close friend—facing down that scrutiny in his stead.
Welcome to Hawkins, Indiana, recurring-nightmare town: it’s the same shit here, over and over, and somehow Steve’s never ready for it anyway. Again the friend-of-a-friend dead on his watch; again Steve not brave enough to quit running and hiding and confront the family after the fact. Again no body, no real closure to offer, no end in sight. It really is just Barbara Holland all over—except even worse this time, because Steve’s supposed to be older and wiser and better by now, and yet he’s still let it all fall out exactly the same.
Before him, the red of the cliff-gate pulses slightly, casting his shadow into the grass behind him like the world’s most fucked-up bonfire.
They’d agreed not to try to go back through, in the first days after the rifts formed. El had warned them off it, saying that danger still lurked on the other side, and Steve was willing to believe it. That ominous red glow, the occasional ash and smoke spewing forth from the cracks that’s been explained away to skeptical residents as the byproduct of geologic activity... It’s all a sign of worse to come, and soon, he’s sure. Vecna did, if only on a technicality, accomplish his goal, and Steve doesn’t really want to think about what might be accumulating on the other side of the gates now that the ground’s stopped shaking. But he’d entertained thoughts, anyway: if he could just get in near the original trailer gate, the body’s not all that far away. If he could just figure out a way to get it back out…
It’d be easier to do with a partner, probably, someone to help him watch his back and navigate the cliffs at the edges of the gate-vents or whatever especially if he’s got the weight of the body to worry about. Preferably someone better at planning shit than him (not hard to come by). But he can’t ask Henderson, for obvious reasons, or any of the other kids. He thought about asking Nancy, and then he thought for ten entire seconds about the idea of Steve Harrington asking Nancy Wheeler to risk her life to go fetch a week-dead body out of the Upside Down with him so he can—what? produce it to the grieving uncle or something, like he’s the hero of this story?—and he realized he can’t ask Nancy either. There’s Jonathan, but Jonathan never even knew the guy and probably has enough problems of his own besides given that unless you count Hopper’s half-destroyed old cabin in the woods his whole family are effectively homeless at the moment, so it doesn’t seem fair to drag him into this. There’s Robin, but Steve thinks he’s got a decent idea of how Robin would react if he proposed willingly going back through the gate right now. He doesn’t need to give her another excuse to start worrying about whether he’s losing his mind. He’s spent enough time worrying about that himself for the both of them, lately.
So he guesses he’s not going back down there anytime soon, unless he wants to chance it alone.
Still, he can’t quite bring himself to get up and turn away from the rift in the ground yet. He sits there staring down into it, a cigarette that he keeps forgetting to bring to his mouth burning down in his hand as he watches that slowly pulsing blood-red glow. Until it starts getting outcompeted by the vivid orange of the sun as it pokes its way above the distant horizon. Only then does he get up, legs stiff with the hours of sitting and the cold, and make his way back over to his car to go.
“Steve,” is the first thing Robin says to him after she’s dropped into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed behind her. She follows it up immediately with, “Didn’t you wear that shirt yesterday?”
He looks down at himself for a second, confused, before he remembers the 3 a.m. scramble for clothes in the dark of his bedroom. Well, shit. “Nope,” he says. “It’s just, like you always say. I’ve got too many polos for my own good, isn’t that it?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Do all of your polos smell this much like sweat and dirt and cigarette smoke when you pull them out of the laundry?”
Steve glances over at her, and then down at himself, and then turns his head down and to the side to take a quick sniff at his left armpit. Robin looks revolted. But she has a point. “Fine,” says Steve. “Maybe I did grab this one from the wrong pile. Who cares, get buckled, let’s go.”
“We are going,” says Robin, “to go back to your house, and you are going to change. Actually, you’re going to shower, then change. I’m not letting you terrorize the townspeople with—” She gestures, vaguely, as if to indicate his entire being.
Steve’s got enough experience with girls, and with Robin, to know when arguing is pointless. He turns right instead of left at the next light.
Robin follows him inside and—though she’s got the run of the whole empty house if she wants it—all the way upstairs, to wait in his room while he winces his way through a shower, trying not to look down at himself. He feels kind of bad about what a mess it is in there right now, but she’s seen it worse, and it’s not exactly his fault she’s invited herself over on no notice anyway. He emerges with a towel wrapped around his waist to find her sitting on the bed, back to him, head bent over something in her lap; at the creak of the bathroom door, she turns, and says, sounding a bit choked, “Steve—”
It’s the vest in her hands, he registers, dully, as if his head is somewhere outside the room. So she’s found it wherever he must have left it, probably draped over the bottom shelf of the end table near his bed. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, how he’s going to explain any of this, because his head isn’t here and his heart is suddenly going hard enough that he can’t focus on much else, almost can’t hear Robin over it when she speaks again:
“I forgot you had this,” she breathes, barely a whisper. “God, Steve, I…”
And then she—Robin Buckley, town motormouth—seems to run out of words.
“I know,” Steve manages, and then, “Me too,” although he doesn’t know what he means by it. He didn’t forget about the vest, although he did forget that he left it out where Robin would be able to see it without digging through his drawers, not that even that would have really been much of a deterrent to her—his drawers are essentially hers, and vice versa, whenever they’re in each other’s rooms. They don’t have any secrets from each other, never have since the day they vomited up a Russian truth serum and all the contents of their hearts in the bathroom outside the doomed mall’s movie theater. He guesses he just—wasn’t thinking about it, or something. He doesn’t know how he managed that, how he could possibly not have seen this coming when he let her in here. Probably the lack of sleep or something finally getting to him. It’s got to be about time by now.
“I keep meaning to give it back,” Steve blurts, because Robin’s still looking at him like she’s expecting something from him and for some reason it’s bringing up all his defensive instincts. “It’s just, it’s been so crazy around here, and I don’t know who—I should talk to Dustin about it again, I don’t think he was really listening to me last time. Maybe he…”
And then Steve’s out of words too, which leaves them alone in the oddly charged silence that fills the room. Robin turns the vest over in her hands, looking down at it as if she’s reading a book and then back up at Steve, who realizes with a jolt under her gaze that he’s still standing, frozen, in the center of his room like a deer in headlights.
Still wearing nothing but the towel wrapped around him, he crosses the rest of the way over and sinks down to sit on the bed beside her. They’re not quite touching, but they’re close enough that their combined weight makes a slight dip in the mattress, wrinkling the quilt around them.
“Do you remember what he said when he gave this to you?” Robin says, eventually, maybe just to fill that terrible quiet with something.
As if it would ever have been possible for Steve to forget that particular moment—and he tells Robin as much. Even if the next 24 hours or so hadn’t played out like they had, Steve doesn’t think that weird flood of defensive humiliation that had slammed him right in the chest along with the vest and the words, “For your modesty,” as if Steve had been—he half-coughs, half-snorts. One of the corner’s of Robin’s mouth quirks up.
“Oh, come on, I still think it was funny,” she says, nudging his shoulder with hers. His still-damp arm leaves behind a wet mark on her sleeve that she rubs at, but she asked for that, so he refuses to apologize. “He was trying to help you out! He was being considerate!”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve says, fighting half an urge to roll his eyes and another half to shove to his feet and turn his back on this conversation before it gets even more ridiculous. “If he cared so much about being considerate, he could’ve held onto my actual shirt, maybe brought that through the gate for me. I actually liked that shirt a lot, you know that?”
He realizes as he says it that it’s truer than he thought. There’s a pulse of irritation that runs through him at the thought that he’s probably never going to see it again now—more intense than any piece of fabric probably deserves. He has to shake his head to clear it, wet strands of his hair sticking to his forehead as the bitterness drains away. “Guess that’s what I get for trusting Munson to just do the one thing I asked him to.”
Robin makes a face Steve isn’t sure to interpret, aimed at the vest that she’s still folding over and over in her lap. “Well,” she says. “In Eddie’s defense. I think there were a few things more important than your shirt on his mind at that point in time? You know, none of us were really having our finest moment there, after you…” Went under. Went through. “I mean, it was total mayhem up there, we were panicking—do you understand how scary it was watching that happen to you? I know that’s a stupid question—” (she adds hurriedly, probably spotting Steve’s mouth spring open to protest out of the corner of her eye) “—obviously you know how scary it was, because you were the one it was actually happening to, but… Steve, you were just gone, and I didn’t even know what to do, I was panicking so much I couldn’t think at all.”
Robin’s twisting of the vest in her lap is getting more and more agitated, like her hands are drowning in the fabric and she’s desperate to free them. Steve hesitates a moment before reaching over and taking it—she surrenders it without protest, watching him fold it up and place it back on his bedside table.
“Me too,” he says. It’s an admission, and it feels like one: the words feel almost stuck in his throat. He clears it. “When I felt it grab me, I panicked, too. You know, there was a second there after it got me but before it started really pulling when—I don’t know, maybe I could have grabbed something, or at least said something to you guys before it pulled me under, but I guess I just froze… And then the whole way down I just kept thinking: what if this is it, you know? What if this is really it this time and I didn’t even manage to say goodbye or anything?”
“It was never going to be it,” Robin says, insistent. She turns her eyes on him, full of hyperfocus intensity. “Not with us around. Not with Nancy around. You know, she didn’t even wait three seconds before jumping in, I don’t think she panicked at all, she just—” Robin makes a divebomb motion with one of her hands. “Went right in. Before either of us even understood what was going on.”
“Sounds like Nancy.”
Robin gives maybe the softest laugh he’s ever heard from her. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”
As Steve watches, she lowers her upper body down onto his bed until she’s lying on it, legs still hanging off at the knees but her back stretched across his bedspread. He follows her. Both of their eyes are fixed on the ceiling above them—whole and white, not a crack in the plaster anywhere in sight. Not after Steve spent a few late night hours a couple days ago painting over all the hairlines. He told himself it would pay off if his parents ever do show up wanting to put this house on the market, assuming there’s ever a market for real estate in Hawkins, Indiana again. Honestly it seems pretty unlikely that anyone other than the Byers family would be crazy enough to want to move back in with the gates belching smoke ominously on the horizon all day and night, continually threatening an end to whatever stalemate their dimension’s got going on with the Upside Down one right now, but he guesses you never know.
“I’m sorry,” she says, abruptly. He’s startled but he doesn’t look over. Maybe some part of him knows it might mess with the moment. “That I wasn’t first through after you. It should have been—I mean, you’re my best friend, and…”
Heat fills Steve’s chest. It’s not the first time he’s heard Robin refer to him as her best friend, but it overwhelms him every time. He guesses a part of him still can’t quite believe the way things have worked out between them, can’t believe that the same fate or God or luck or whatever that’s been running him through the gauntlet of monsters and hell and ruined reputations and fractured relationships and near-death experiences over the past two and a half years has also let him gain this in the process: maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Robin and the kids, he always tells himself, that’s what makes it all worth it—worth it enough that, given a chance to go back to November of 1983 and do the whole thing over again monster-free, in spite of it all, he thinks he would still answer no. He’s so much better off with these people in his life. But he’s never sure if they feel the same way about him. Maybe that’s why hearing Robin say “my best friend” does this to him: it makes him feel wanted, needed even, in a way he thinks he’s maybe been desperate to feel his entire life, every one of the nineteen years’ worth of days he’s lived in this house.
“It’s okay,” he says. He’s greeted with silence, so he presses the point: “Robin, seriously, it’s fine. You all got there in time, right? Not like I even noticed who came through first or anything, I was a little busy with some other shit.”
“Yeah, but, I’m still sorry, okay? I should have been there sooner. And the bandages—I should have been more helpful with those too, I’m sorry I just walked off and didn’t—you know what I’m like, I’m not good with blood, or, or—and it was coming from you, and I just couldn’t—”
“Hey,” Steve says, a bit overwhelmed. “I mean it, it’s fine, okay? Nancy did a good job, it’s fine.”
Robin makes a frustrated noise. “I know, but—I still wish it had been me, yeah? I feel like it should have been me.”
Steve doesn’t know what to say, so instead he just reaches over for Robin’s hands again. Empty this time, they’re still twisting around each other atop her stomach. He takes one of them away from the other and pulls it into the small space between them on the bed. It doesn’t feel like enough, but Robin lets him do it—so, he guesses, at least it’s not too much.
They lay there, side by side, for a few more minutes, before Steve pushes himself up with a groan and goes to put on a shirt and do something about his hair. On his way over to his dresser, he picks Eddie’s vest up from where he’d set it on the end table and folds it into one of the dresser drawers. He’s pretty sure Robin watches him do it, but she doesn’t comment.
He’s grateful for that, for reasons he doesn’t even understand—he doesn’t know what his subconscious is afraid she might say.
“Sinclair,” Steve says, when Lucas pauses for a breath.
It’s like Lucas doesn’t hear him, at first, but Steve decides to give it a minute. He really hates to push the kid. He’s been through more than enough already. Even a week after his encounter with Jason, the marks are still all over him: black eye, bruised lip, overactive startle reflex. Looking at him almost reminds Steve of himself, post-Jonathan Byers (or post-Billy Hargrove, or maybe post-nameless Russian guards). It’s hard for Steve to see without wincing in sympathy, because he knows what bruises like that feel like, and then wincing again in revulsion, because he hates that Lucas knows what bruises like that feel like, now. He’s still too young for this. He doesn’t deserve any of this shit. He’s supposed to be sitting in classrooms right now, dragging himself through the last quarter of his freshman year while the spring sun calls out teasingly to him through the windows. Instead, he’s spending shifts sitting at his comatose first girlfriend’s hospital bedside, insisting on reading to her himself for hours at a time even though Steve knows firsthand exactly how shitty it feels staring at text this soon after your head gets knocked around like that.
“Hey, Sinclair,” he says again, softly, shifting a bit in his own chair.
This time, Lucas looks up and over at the rustling. There’s the jolt again in Steve’s stomach, when they make eye contact: when he sees the half-there look in Lucas’ eyes and has to reckon all over again with it.
“Time check,” Steve says, tapping his watch. He hates to do this, he really does—but it’s 7:45 already, and now that the hospital is back to something a little more like normal operation the nurses have started kicking out anyone who isn’t an immediate relative of the patient by 8 pm. He doesn’t want Lucas taken by surprise, forced out before he’s readied himself and said his goodbyes.
Lucas glances over at the clock on the wall above the door, and it seems to stir something in him: he snaps into focus, looks back down at his book and marks his place with a thumb before flipping a couple of pages over. “Right,” he says. “I’m almost done with this chapter, I’m gonna go ahead and finish.”
Finishing the chapter takes him another five minutes. Steve takes the time to rise from his chair—quietly enough that he hopes he isn’t being distracting—and gather a few things from around the room: coats, uneaten snacks, the other book that Lucas finished reading out earlier that evening. When Lucas comes to a stop and slowly closes the book, Steve is leaning against one of the walls, ready to go with arms awkwardly full. Lucas looks over.
“Hey is it okay if, before we leave—I’m just gonna run to the bathroom down the hall real quick?”
Oh, fuck. This kid is going to kill Steve, one of these days. His voice sounds raspy from talking for hours, and uncertain—as if Steve’s going to tell him no, deny him the chance to go gather himself for a minute in private before the two of them drive back to the Sinclair house. “Sure, yeah,” says Steve. “You want me to go grab the car, pull around out front, or…”
Lucas is biting his lip. Steve pauses a minute, and Lucas grabs the opportunity. “Can you just—stay with her?” he says. “For a little bit longer. I don’t want her to be alone.”
Of course. “Of course,” Steve says. “Just—hey, come meet me back here, okay? I parked somewhere different today, we should walk out together.”
Lucas nods, then bends over Max, his face close to hers. Steve looks away, feeling weirdly guilty about being there, interrupting this moment between the two of them—but whatever it is Lucas has to say or do to Max only takes a minute, and then he’s slipping out the door of the room with one last backward glance at Max in her bed.
Leaving Steve alone with her, after the door closes.
He fidgets aimlessly for a minute before he deposits all the things he’s holding back in his chair and drifts across the room into the chair that Lucas just vacated beside the bedside. Max doesn’t look any better up close: paler if anything, her breath coming more slowly than it should if she was just sleeping.
Maybe she isn’t just sleeping. After all, Lucas has spent the most time with her out of anyone, and he’s convinced she’s awake in there on some level. Hence all the reading out loud and, probably, Steve thinks, hence the refusal to let anyone else do it for him—because he wants to be the one whose voice she hears, who’s there for her. Steve… gets it, he thinks, although he’s still not sure whether he actually believes Max can hear anything right now or not.
He’s realizing now, sitting here, that for as much time as he’s spent in this room over the past week, he doesn’t think he’s ever really been alone in here yet. Lucas, and/or at least one of the other kids, has always been around. It’s never just been him and Max before. Sitting here just the two of them is making him aware of the silence in the room in a way he doesn’t like: the angry beeping of the monitors is too loud in his ears. It’s already starting to drive him nuts. Part of him hopes that Max can’t hear her surroundings right now—the thought of her having to listen to that beeping all day long, trapped with the noise and her thoughts but unable to move at all or communicate with anyone around her makes him feel sick.
He clears his throat.
“Uh,” he says—and immediately feels stupid, awkward. “Hey, Max.”
No response, obviously. But it’s either press on or sit here and listen to the beeping again, so. He presses on. “Look, I don’t honestly know if you’re there, really? But if you are, uh. You know we’re all rooting for you, right?” Wow, Steve. Inspirational. Unheard-of. He clears his throat. “I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard that about a thousand times, from, like, everyone. They’ve all been in here basically every minute it’s been allowed, you know? Especially Lucas.” Steve pauses for breath, huffs it out and drops his hand from his hair into his lap, where it joins the other one in fidgeting around with Lucas’ book.
“God, Lucas—you know he’s crazy about you? I mean, I’m sure you know that. Like, he was your boyfriend for a long time, even if lately you guys were having some kind of trouble or whatever—not that you have to tell me about that, or whatever, it’s your guys’ business, I just—” This really is stupid. What is he even doing, giving lectures on love to a comatose fifteen year old? He’s maybe the last person—the only other time he’s ever really given love advice to anyone other than maybe Robin, who doesn’t count because she’s Robin and it’s a whole separate thing, was to Dustin like two years ago, back when he was right in the middle of a bitter breakup, and it showed; he ran his mouth for a while about how the best way to deal with feelings like that was by pretending they just didn’t exist. Acting like you couldn’t care less about the other person, really. Didn’t exactly do Dustin any favors in the long run, did it?
Which, whatever, that’s what the kid got for asking the Asshole Steve of 1984 for advice on shit like that in the middle of a high-stress situation and also like a day after his girlfriend dumped him at a party and kind of soured him on the whole love thing for a while, and Steve doesn’t exactly have it super close to the top of the whole list of things he feels bad about these days, but still. It’s on there somewhere. Last thing Steve needs to do now is go meddling in Max’s relationship with Lucas, too—especially when Lucas is already probably doing about ten times better at the whole boyfriend thing than Steve ever has. Not caring just isn’t a thing Sinclair ever does, no matter how high-stress or shitty things are, apparently—even with everything that’s been going on, even though he’s beaten to shit right now, he’s been here every day since the first. He’s done everything anyone could ask for Max, and then some: he reads her books, he plays her favorite songs. He dragged her lifeless body alone away from the opening gates—this whole time he’s been there for her, through more shit than Steve could have imagined existed in the world at their age, let alone managed to step up and deal with.
“I just hope you know, he’s a really good guy, and all,” Steve says. “And, uh—when you wake up—” He says when, not if. He still thinks it’ll take a miracle, but—Max Mayfield is just as much of a force of nature as Lucas Sinclair; in just the last couple weeks, she’s fought her way back to life through shit that Steve still can’t imagine, really, even after hearing two first-hand accounts. And Lucas knows her better than anyone, and he thinks there’s at least a part of her that can still hear what people say to her. So Steve says when. Not if. “I hope you and he get everything sorted out okay. Like, not that you have to be together anymore, if you don’t want to, but—I kind of hope you give it another try, maybe. Or at least stay friends, anyway. He just cares a lot about you, you know? And I know you care too, so.”
“Steve?”
Steve jumps. Lucas is a figure in the open doorway, starkly lit in the hallway fluorescents, eyes fixed right on Steve in his chair next to Max. No telling how long he’s been there for—Steve didn’t hear him walking back. He has no idea how much Lucas has heard of what Steve’s been saying, the past few minutes—maybe none, maybe enough to justify the weird sort of gnawing guilt Steve feels as he scrambles up and out of the chair.
“Ready?” he says, and Lucas nods.
“Whenever you are.”
Steve casts a last glance backward at Max as they slip out. He hates to leave her alone in there, maybe just as much as Lucas does—he wishes they could stay an extra couple hours, until Ms. Mayfield gets off her shift at the grocery at least. But multiple occasions in the last few days have taught him better than to try arguing with a bunch of nurses collectively having the worst work week of their lives, and besides, Lucas seriously needs to get home and go to bed. The kid looks half-dead on his feet.
When he pulls the car up in front of the Sinclairs’ driveway, though, Lucas doesn’t get out right away. He fidgets in the passenger seat for longer than it takes him to gather up his things and check that his shoes are tied, and Steve can’t help glancing over and watching him as he stalls. He doesn’t know if he should say anything, debates it with himself for a minute but doesn’t get around to making a decision before Lucas apparently beats him to it: the kid breathes out and turns to face Steve, one hand poised on the door handle as he speaks.
“I wanted to say thanks,” he says. “For…” he trails off.
Steve’s surprised. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate it, or whatever, it’s just—he kind of thought they were past this point, really. Like, he’s done this a lot—the kids know they don’t need to make a point of thanking him for rides by now, and they pretty much never do. Maybe a quick word over their shoulder as they leave if they’re thinking about it, but usually they kind of just run off impatiently in all directions as soon as the car comes to a stop.
“Yeah, you know, anytime,” he says. “Same time tomorrow, right?”
“Not the—well, not just for the ride,” Lucas says. “For—you know, everything. What you said to Max, I guess. And, uh, just being there. And…”
Oh.
Steve gives him another minute. When he doesn’t follow it up with anything, Steve clears his throat. “Uh, you’re welcome,” he says. Lucas isn’t looking at him anymore, dark eyes trained out the windshield in front of them, and Steve’s heart breaks for about the fifteenth time just this evening watching him watch the streetlights flicker in the gathering darkness. Never mind appreciating it—Steve just wishes the kid hadn’t said anything at all, because saying “you’re welcome” like this just makes him feel like a massive fraud or something when it’s obvious just looking at him that whatever Steve’s been able to do for him the last week or so isn’t and will never be enough to make up for everything he couldn’t do.
“I should probably get inside,” Lucas says, abruptly. “I told Dustin earlier today that I’d call him tonight, so…”
“Yeah, sure,” Steve says, half-absently, before the full impact of Lucas’ words hits him. The kid is half out the door, but Steve can’t help calling his attention back: “Hey, Lucas?”
Lucas pauses, one foot hovering above the ground outside the car. “Yeah?”
“How is Dustin, by the way? I haven’t seen him much in a couple days.”
Immediately he wishes he hadn’t said anything. His own voice sounds pathetic in his ears, and Lucas’ already somber expression goes a bit more—guarded, or something, maybe. Steve can’t really tell what’s going on behind his eyes anymore, actually. “A little better, maybe,” Lucas says, carefully enough that Steve hears hesitation in his voice. “But, you know…”
Steve breathes out a sigh. “Yeah, I know,” he says. He doesn’t sound any less pathetic, he doesn’t think. The streetlight is still flickering a bit, a little ways past the car: Steve finds his gaze drawn to it. On and off, on and off. Part of him wants to climb out and go give the thing a good whack to see if he can get it to stop: he’s had more than enough of flickering lights for one lifetime already. He doubts he’ll be able to do anything, though. He’ll probably just break it even worse and make more of a problem for everyone.
Lucas is hovering. Steve gets ahold of himself—the kid said already he needs to get inside. “Hey, do me a favor? Just remind him when you’re talking to him that Robin and I will be there by 10 tomorrow to pick him up, yeah?”
“Uh, sure—we probably won’t talk all that long, though, you could call him yourself when you get home if you need to tell him anything?”
Steve thinks it over for a second, but—
“Nah, it’s getting kind of late, and I’ll see him tomorrow anyway. Just remind him I’ll be there, is all.”
Lucas nods and finally climbs the rest of the way out of the car. Steve waits until he sees the door to the house close behind him before he puts the car back in gear to head home.
By the time he gets there, he actually feels tired enough that the thought of going to bed is genuinely tempting for the first time in, like, a while. Hospitals take it out of you, he guesses. Not that he’s complaining. He heads upstairs, not bothering to turn on the lights as he walks through the house, and absently sets about the task of getting ready. He brushes his teeth, washes his face, strips down and goes digging through his dresser for a clean shirt to sleep in and makes a point of not looking at the vest that’s still tucked in at the back of the drawer.
It doesn’t belong there, he knows, between his rolled-up t-shirts and his socks; he’d meant what he said to Robin a couple days ago, about planning on dealing with it soon. As soon as things calm down a bit, once he’s not as busy handling the kids. He just—can’t think about it tonight, not when he’s this tired, and stands a chance of maybe falling asleep within the next hour if he gets into bed right now. Maybe tomorrow he’ll get a minute. Maybe it’ll be easier to deal with in the morning. Isn’t that what they always say—you’ll feel better about it in the morning, after you’ve had a good night’s sleep?
Steve turns out the light in his room and makes his way to the bed in the dark, closes his eyes and rolls over, arms splayed out across the bed. He feels himself slipping off towards sleep with surprising speed. The last real thought he manages before he’s over the edge is a vague almost-prayer, directed at fate or God or luck or really anything that’s out there and might listen to him, that he can stay that way until it’s light outside again tomorrow.