Chapter Text
Erica doesn’t have a soft spot for Steve Harrington.
She doesn’t.
He’s annoying, for one. A total dweeb who never shuts up and always has to have the last word. He’s also a complete dork. He has a twelve-step hair care routine that he lives by religiously. He never shuts up and he can be a total bitch when he wants to be.
She still hasn’t forgiven him for the time he loudly told her to ask out James Lyndon when he was in the booth right next to them at the diner. Erica has not felt shame that intense since she was pushed into a mud puddle in kindergarten. She doesn’t even like James Lyndon! He’s a complete moron. Steve was just being a jerk because she ate the stupid cherry on his ice cream sundae before he could stop her. He paid pretty succinctly for that little stunt with a very hard kick to the shin from her rubber-bottomed My Little Pony custom boots. He’d responded by rolling his eyes at her, but Erica caught him rubbing his leg with a pinched face later, so he definitely felt it.
Ruthless retaliation. The only way anything ever gets done. Erica’s honing her skills now so she can use them in the totally achievable twenty-step world domination campaign she’s going to start running as soon as she’s tall enough to reach the upper shelf where her mom keeps the peanut butter. Devious plans take a lot of legwork, and if Erica’s learned anything from her foray into that Russian bunker, it's that you really can’t do anything cool on a calorie deficit.
So, she doesn’t have a soft spot for Steve Harrington. He’s mostly just, vaguely amusing. Erica likes amusing things. And if anything, she’s just sticking around for the free milkshake he gets her every Friday afternoon.
It should also be made perfectly clear that this is not a Steve Harrington exclusive thing. Erica doesn’t do favorites. She doesn’t have a soft spot for anyone. Except maybe Max. But that’s only because Max is fucking awesome.
That being said, going to the hospital is hard.
It’s hard to walk through the doors, and it’s hard to get in the elevator, and it’s hard to see Steve lying dead asleep in his stupid hospital bed.
He looks kind of dumb, actually. He’s always flopped out on top of the covers with his legs hanging off the side. It’s weird. Especially since he’s got some sort of fucked up lung situation going on that makes his whole chest wheeze like an especially sad balloon letting out its last dredges of air.
She doesn’t sit by his bedside though. Not like she does with Max. She doesn’t know why it feels different, but it does. And it’s been bothering her for days, why she feels so wrong-footed all of the sudden.
It’s like this: Steve isn’t special, but he is good and nice, and sometimes he just gets it. In a way it’s hard for Erica to understand. In a way that even Lucas can’t always manage.
Which, she loves Lucas! Even if he’s gross and kind of dumb. He’s loyal and funny. He taught her how to read and gave her his DnD stuff, even though he never asked her to play with him. He’s her big brother. He always will be.
He just doesn’t get it, sometimes. Not really. He sees the pieces, but she isn’t sure how to make him understand. He heard about everything, but he doesn’t know in the same way she doesn’t know; why he carries that stupid wrist rocket in his backpack or why he always feels braver in face paint.
She wasn’t there for that part. She doesn’t have context.
Lucas wasn’t there. Under the mall, in the elevator, climbing through the vents. He didn’t get chased by Russians through a secret facility. Didn’t hijack a golf cart to rescue the only designated adults around. He didn’t grab an electric taser or get up close and personal with Russian acid.
There are things he can’t understand.
And that’s… fine.
But Steve was there. He got them out of the elevator. He knocked out the Russian guard and held the door closed while Erica and Dustin got to the vents. He was drugged and bruised and beaten, and then he got back up. He threw fireworks at a flesh monster and drove them out of the mall to the safety of Cerebro.
He’s just kept going, through all of it. Putting himself in front of them when there’s danger. Always smiling and making fun of Dustin to get her to laugh. Steve is there. Steve has been there. He’s stupid and dorky and annoying and there.
And it’s not like she’s ever thought he was like, invincible or anything. She’s seen him get drugged, captured by Soviets, and punched so hard he still can’t remember basic facts on his worst days. She knows he has to shut himself up in his house with the lights off sometimes, and that Robin had to make him a dumb sticky-note cork board to help him keep his schedule straight. She knows he does roll calls on the radios before school, and that when he drops off her and Lucas in the mornings he always packs them lunch.
Steve is a lot of things. He’s an annoying rule stickler and secretly a total nerd. He gets weirdly intense about basketball and likes to pretend he can talk circles around Erica even though he actually can’t. He’s Steve. The unexpected big brother-type none of them ever even knew they needed. As embarrassing as he is, as much as she is sure she will never ever tell him, Steve means something to her.
Maybe. A little.
He’s someone who gets it without her always having to say.
So maybe it’s a little hard to see him like this, laying still in his hospital bed. He seems older, somehow. But not older like he looked when he climbed down the rope ladder out of the Upside Down, or older the way Lucas was when he told off Tina for making a too-sarcastic comment about Erica’s hair. He looks exhausted and deflated. He’s got bandages wrapped around his torso and an IV digging into the vein of his forearm. He’s still, and quiet, and when he smiles, his eyes are tired. It’s wrong. It’s not how he’s meant to be.
Especially not when he’s been the only one to hold back so many of the things that haunt Erica’s nightmares.
So Erica doesn’t sit with Steve. It’s not something she does. She just kind of hovers near him, thinking up funny things to say that won’t sound mean to someone who collapsed a couple of days ago and is on mandatory bed rest.
It’s like navigating a conversation she doesn’t understand. Steve has never been this way in the entire year she’s known him. He’s always taken her barbs with good humor and an exasperated fondness he can’t ever really hide. Now though, even with the other kids back from California and the adults rolling in from Russia, even with Eddie finally kind of waking up, Steve is still carrying that stilted weight behind his smiles. That uncharacteristic seriousness. He’s still not normal.
It’s throwing Erica off.
It’s also hard, a little, because for the first time since last year, Erica isn’t sure she can talk to Steve about all the things swirling in her head. For the first time since this started, he wasn’t there for everything. He might not understand. And it feels different. Especially because he’s clearly dealing with so much shit right now on his own.
And what is Erica supposed to say, exactly?
That she keeps replaying every moment of that stupid spring break over and over in her head? That she can still feel Andy’s impossibly strong arms pushing her into the dirt? Or that when she closes her eyes, every time, she’s back in that empty hallway; remembering the crack in her brother’s voice when he begged her to call an ambulance through a locked door.
It’s too much. So she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t sit with Steve.
She knows he can tell something’s up. He keeps giving her those dumb concerned eyes he gets when he knows something’s wrong and Erica kind of hates that he can just tell. She’s good at being strong. That’s like her whole thing. It’s infuriating that some dorky 19-year-old can read the uncertainty she’s doing her very best to hide.
But Steve’s always been adept at that. At people. It’s one of the things that makes him good to have around. Erica can scheme and blackmail with the best of them. She can posture and craft and find the perfect precisely aimed insult to hit at someone’s deepest insecurities. But Steve can see people. He’s always somehow being exactly what they need, exactly when they need it. He knows when to lay off Dustin or when to handle Mike especially carefully. When Max started pulling away, it was Steve that got through to her. More than anyone else. It’s honestly kind of crazy.
Erica’s not very good at the being seen part. It chafes. She doesn’t want to be a crybaby about any of this. She doesn’t want to not be okay. She wants it to be like it was last year. When it wasn’t something she even thought about that much, other than to joke about how cool she was with Lucas or to discuss on quiet ice cream runs with Steve and Robin. Because for all it was new and scary and hard, someone was always there. Steve was there. Robin was there. Dustin was there.
It was just her and Andy in the park. No backup. No support. Just her and her flashlight and her not fast enough legs. When he tackled her, really properly held her to the ground, it felt like all the air in the world snuffed out, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
It kind of feels like she hasn’t caught her breath since.
She doesn’t want to remember those moments. She doesn’t want to be stuck with the memories. She wants Max to wake up. She wants Lucas to smile and Eddie to be okay. She wants Dustin to stop crying in the hallway behind the vending machine where he thinks no one can hear him.
She wants Steve to get back up again.
Like he always does.
He catches her out pretty quick, all things considered. Makes eye contact with her and nods his head at the visitor's chair as everyone is leaving from their check-in at the end of his third day in the hospital. He waves the rest of them out and nudges the chair with his foot, gesturing for Erica to make herself at home. He keeps looking at her as she settles. His eyes getting that knowing glint they do when he’s about to roll a fucking natural 20 in perception and ask her something she probably won’t like. He tilts his head, and thinks a little about what he wants to say.
“You’ve been really quiet.” He settles on eventually. “You okay?”
She feels the sudden sting of tears threatening in her eyes like a tidal wave, vast and unstoppable. She breathes out and shakes her head, clenching her hands in her lap.
“I’m fine.” She says. Because she is. She’s strong and tough and fine. Stupid Steve Harrington with his stupid knowing eyes isn’t going to get to her.
Steve’s look softens even more, drooping at his eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth. It makes him look like a sad rescue abandoned on the side of the road. Erica watches the clock on the wall beat a staccato rhythm of seconds to avoid his gaze.
“You can tell me if something is going on,” he says gently. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
But what about what you need?
And suddenly she’s kind of angry, actually. Because Lucas is falling apart, and Dustin is crying in the hallways, and Steve isn’t here right now. Not really . He's stuck in his stupid hospital bed because he couldn’t let someone take care of him the way he needed. And he’s sitting there asking her if she’s okay when he won’t let anyone else ask him the same question. It makes her mad. Because how is she supposed to tell him anything if he’s like this? If he won’t let anyone take care of him the way he should? And maybe it’s unfair, but it’s burning in her throat.
“You’ve been really fucking stupid,” Erica says tightly, trying not to play her whole hand. “You should have had your bites looked at when we got here. You’re a total idiot.”
She can see his confusion at her choice of topic twist in his eyebrows and it makes her angry enough to clench her teeth.
“Okay,” Steve says diplomatically, still confused. “That’s fair. I deserve that. I’m fine though. You know that right? I’m gonna be fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Then who will? She thinks furiously.
“I know a lot is going on right now. Do you want to talk about any of it?”
“Not really,” She says.
Something about this is unsettling her. She can feel the nervous fluttering of panic licking up her throat. She has to leave. She actually can’t do this right now, thanks.
She stands abruptly, pushing against the edge of Steve’s bed and backing away, a halfhearted excuse on the tip of her tongue as she turns around and runs.
She makes it through the hallways just fine. Small enough to deftly avoid the grumbling doctors and harried nurses as she makes her way down the hall. She has the unbidden thought that if there were more obstacles in the way that night she might have been able to outrun Andy.
Stop.
The panic builds.
She makes it to Max’s room quickly. Stepping carefully through the door and closing it firmly behind her. This room, unlike Steve and Eddie’s, is calm and quiet. She can hear her breath echoing on the empty walls, jagged and uneven against the steady beating of Max’s heart monitor. Lucas looks up from the book he has propped up against the bed, furrowing his eyebrows painfully as he takes in what must surely be a totally embarrassing view.
“What’s wrong?”
His voice is quiet and concerned. Like he thinks if he talks too loud he’ll spook her into running right back out. Or maybe he’s just talking quietly for Max. It doesn’t really make a difference.
She shakes her head. Curls into a chair, cheek pressed against the cold hard line of the wooden armrest as she stares at Max’s pale face. The anger spikes, sudden and raw. Erica swallows against the razor-sharp feeling of it. Flicking her eyes to Lucas’s battered face instead. To the raw gash on his chin, his swollen lip and his black eye. He’s starting to heal, but he still can’t make many facial expressions without wincing instinctively. Erica’s gut curdles with fury.
She feels like shouting. She feels like tearing something down and burning it up until she can crush the ashes underneath her heel. She’s going to crawl out of her skin, maybe. She’s going to explode in this stupid room in this stupid hospital where nothing can be done, and no one is okay, and everything is fucked.
And then Lucas’s hand is on her arm and she jumps, coming back into her body with a startled intake of breath. His chocolate eyes are warm and worried as he kneels in front of her. His face is a fading patchwork of colors and swollen lumps. Erica swallows and her throat clicks against it, painfully audible in the empty room.
“It’s just everything.” Is what she says finally, pulling her legs up into the rigid padding of the visitor's chair, and feeling very small. “Everyone’s being stupid, and nothing is the way it’s supposed to be.”
She takes a deep breath.
“It wasn’t like this last time.”
Lucas sighs, resting his elbow on her knee as he leans closer to her.
“Of course it’s not.” He says tiredly. “I’ve done this four times. Every year is different. It’s not gonna feel like it did before.”
She shakes her head. Lucas isn’t getting it.
“Everything before, it was crazy and scary and awful, but it was also okay. It was fine. I was mostly over it. And now suddenly everything’s completely fucked. You’re hurt and Eddie is hurt and Max isn’t even awake. And Steve! Steve is just-“
She bites back a hysterical laugh. Feels the anger build back up in her chest, wet and hot, choking in her throat in a way that feels a little like despair.
“It’s just wrong. I don’t like feeling like I don’t have my footing.”
Lucas sighs.
“I know,” he says. “I felt it too. The second time.”
He brings his arms up onto his own knees, resting his chin there and staring up at Erica, his thoughts gathering like storm clouds behind his eyes.
“There was a moment there, at the Byers house that second year, when I thought Billy was going to kill me. He had me pushed up against the wall, and I’d never seen someone with that look in their eyes before. Like they could murder you and not lose a second of sleep over it.
“I don’t think I really understood until that moment that people could be monsters too. After that night, for weeks and weeks, I would see Billy around town. Just walking and laughing with his friends. He would catch my eyes sometimes, and I would just think, Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the day he comes for me, right here in the street. Maybe no one will save me this time.”
He shakes his head. Closes his eyes.
“There are things that stay with you.” He says gently. “Things that don’t heal the way physical injuries do. I know something more happened to you that night. I know there’s something you’re keeping bottled up inside. Holding onto it. It’s never going to get better if you can’t talk about it.”
“I know,” Erica says tightly. Lucas just shakes his head.
“Sometimes you want to be stronger than everyone else. And I just think you don’t have to be strong all the time. You’re allowed to be a kid. You’re allowed to feel things.” He pauses then, taking a deep, bracing kind of breath.
“I guess sometimes it feels like I haven’t been there for you the way I’ve wanted to. And I just want you to know that it’s okay if you aren’t okay. You can talk to me.”
She’s not sure exactly how she gets there, but one moment she’s in her chair and the next she’s curled in Lucas’s lap, her weight pillowed against his shoulder as he leans back against the bed frame and wraps his arms fully around her, tucking her head beneath his chin and pulling her to his chest.
She remembers suddenly, viscerally, sitting this exact same way when they were both very small. When she went to that park playground on Cornwallis and fell off the tall swing. It feels like a million years ago Lucas held her in his lap, his arms around her back as she cried into his shirt. He’d kept her there until she calmed down and then took her home to clean her scraped knee. She's bigger now. The feelings are more complicated and the world doesn’t make any sense anymore, but some things are the same.
She still fits.
“Andy tackled me in the park.” She whispers into his shirt. “He held me to the ground and I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes it feels like I still can’t. I keep waiting to see him everywhere I go. I keep feeling his hands pushing my face into the gravel. I still hear you screaming through the door. I can’t close my eyes without going back there and I don’t know what to do.”
She feels his arms tighten around her. So different from the crushing weight that holds her down in her dreams. She shudders into his chest, her eyes stinging.
All at once it’s like a flip has switched in her brain and the tears come fast. It feels like a release. The fear of that night. The hurt she’s been holding in her chest for her friends. It is every moment she held Dustin while he cried. Every time she watched as Eddie gasped awake or Steve’s eyes tightened when he moved. It is her pain. Understood and held in his arms and soothed with silent comfort. Screw being cool and unaffected. Everything’s fucked and broken, and it feels like maybe Lucas is the only thing holding her together.
She cries harder.
They sit that way for a long time. Long enough that Erica’s face has dried and Lucas’s legs must be completely asleep. She shifts gingerly, crawling out of his lap to sit beside him on the floor, their legs stretched out side by side on the linoleum.
She takes a shuddering breath.
“What if it never gets better? What if I feel like this forever?”
“You won’t.” He says simply. “But if you did, I’d be here.”
He nudges her shoulder with his own and she pushes back. A smile tugs at the corner of her lips as they both lean in to press their body weight against each other as hard as they can. The back and forth gets more and more aggressive, going until she gets an elbow under his arm and shoves him hard enough to fall over in defeat. He laughs softly as he sits back up and gently pushes her forehead sideways with his palm.
“I’ll be here.” He says again, his smile still there, but his eyes serious.
“I know.” She says, leaning back on him with her own returning grin. “And you’ll still be a total dork too.”
He laughs delightedly at her, tired but bright, and then suddenly he’s standing, going to the desk at the corner of the room and opening up a box resting there amongst all of Max’s belongings. He exclaims triumphantly and turns back to the bed, emptying a colorful armload of something’s right on the edge by Max’s cast.
Erica leans forward to get a better view and finds her eyebrows kissing her hairline as she looks at the diverse collection of Kate Bush band flags, Karate Kid posters, and a variety of moderately painted to terribly drawn portraits of Wonder Woman. She sees the neon duct tape clutched in her brother’s hand and feels understanding dawn as he faces the empty white walls of the hospital room, his lips twisted in determination.
“I've been meaning to decorate it for when she wakes up.” He says. “But everything has been so crazy and I don’t really want to do it alone.”
He doesn’t say anything more as she gets up to help, but she knows what he’s asking her anyway.
They arrange every poster carefully, Erica grunting with effort as she moves the chair into place so she can reach a little easier. They keep going for almost an hour, stepping around each other, taping the decorations up in total silence until there’s not a speck of white showing through on any of the walls. The sheer mass of color is a little nauseating, but Erica is pretty sure it looks exactly the way Max would want it if she were awake.
It isn’t until they’ve stepped back to admire their handiwork that Erica realizes the itch to smash something has disappeared from under her skin. Instead, she feels the warmth of a good job done. Of knowing that if Max woke up right this second she wouldn’t be totally depressed or embarrassed by her room.
Lucas nudges her shoulder, and when she looks up, he’s already smiling at her, warm and kind.
“Better?” He asks, like he doesn’t already know the answer.
“Better.” She replies.
They stay until the stars are out and visiting hours have ended. Creeping through the cool corridors to sneak past patients' rooms and out to the front of the Hospital. The silence is almost nice. Like the hallways are carrying on that peaceful stillness she found with Lucas by Max’s bedside.
It’s not until they’re making their way past Steve and Eddie’s room that Erica hears the low murmur of voices. She waves Lucas on, compelled by a pulling in her chest that is definitely not worry, and peaks her head through the door. Looking but not looking into the dimly lit space and blinking in surprise at what she sees.
It’s still quiet here. Barren walls and shadows from the windows casting over the floor. Both of the actual occupants of 307 are dead asleep. Buried in their pillows and half sitting up. Like they were in the middle of a conversation when they nodded off.
They’re not alone though.
She realizes it’s Hopper and Wayne standing by Steve’s bed pretty quickly. Not before her heart rate spikes, but early enough that she doesn’t jump to any worst-case scenarios about why someone could possibly be in Steve and Eddie’s room in the dark.
They both cut intimidating figures. Locked in quietly serious conversation with each other, gruff and beaten in. They seem totally focused on whatever it is they’re discussing, though Erica doesn’t care enough to try and follow it. Instead, she watches in delighted fascination as Hopper reaches over and tucks Steve’s scratchy hospital blanket a little tighter at his shoulders, not even breaking eye contact with Wayne as he absentmindedly runs his hand along the seam of the blanket and pulls it higher.
It’s so stupid and embarrassing Erica wants to laugh. She smiles instead, imagining all the different shades of red Steve’s face might have turned if she’d managed to get a picture of that touching display.
Something about it feels right though. Like it’s the way things should be. Steve is weird, and dumb, and kind, and so incredibly stupidly stubborn it makes Erica want to tear her hair out. From what she’s seen and heard since the adults got back from Russia, Hopper might be the only one who could possibly take care of him without much of a fuss. If only because he’s even more bullheaded than Steve is.
It makes some half-buried tension ease in her chest to see it, even if she would literally rather die than tell Steve she cares about him. It’s an emotion she’s decided does not need to be acknowledged. Ever.
It’s just funny to see Steve be tucked in like a little kid, that’s all.
For the first time in a long while, Erica feels something like relief. Something like not worrying about all the idiots she constantly finds herself surrounded with. Something like, maybe it will all be okay, eventually. And in the meantime, she has an endless amount of blackmail material to try out on Lucas.
She feels herself smiling as she turns away to follow him out the door.