Chapter Text
Light dances across his eyelids, not too harsh, but enough to wake him up. He furrow his eyebrows and wrinkles his nose in slight annoyance while pulling his comforter over his head, to block out the light and the waking world.
It is then he notice his bed is colder and emptier than he’s used to, he reaches out looking for the comforting presence of Leigh, but his hand only hits the edge of his bed, he pulls down the comforter and cracks open an eye, only to see his bed is smaller than he thought and there is no Leigh in sight.
A heavy feeling settles in his stomach and his throat and it gets harder to breathe, but he forces himself to calm down, to take a deep breath before he sits up, clenching the comforter with fists that are too small, and he looks around in a room that is all too familiar, and he can’t breathe. Tears swell up in his eyes as sobs stumble out of his mouth. This is wrong, all wrong. This can’t be happening, it’s just a dream, a terrible, terrible dream, and he’ll wake up soon, he has to.
He pinches his arm, hard, and shuts his eyes, counts to seven, as Nell did and Luke does, and hopes against hope that when he opens his eyes he’ll be back in his bed in his house next to Leigh.
And he opens his eyes, and to his dread he is still in his old bedroom, in The House, and he can’t keep it in anymore, he screams, as tears makes rivers down his face, sobs rock their way through his body and out his mouth and it’s all so painful and he’s so terrified he really feels like the thirteen year old kid he now looks like.
He hears heavy steps run towards his room and slam open the door, and there’s his dad, all wide eyes and young, oh so young, had his dad ever really looked that young? Not weighed down by grief and the overwhelming feeling of failure. Hugh rushes towards him and cradles him gently, running his hand through Steves hair, asking what happened and saying it will all be alright, that whatever it was must’ve been a nightmare, not knowing this was the nightmare, being back here, in this monster of a house.
But despite being terrified and wishing so badly for it all to be a dream, he can’t help but take comfort from his dads warmth, his arms around him, shielding him from the world and everything bad. So eventually he starts to calm down, his breathing not as shallow and he dares looking up from his dad’s chest, and as he looks over his shoulder he sees his mum in the doorway, as young as ever.
She’s hugging herself, looking unsure if she should come over and help comfort her baby boy, or if she should let Hugh handle it. And so she just stands there, looking pained, and behind her, he sees a figure, just for a moment before she’s gone, but he could swear it was Poppy, as she looked in the picture in the drawer in her vanity. All young and wild eyed. And he closes his eyes again and hugs his dad harder.
Hugh lifts him up and carries him to the kitchen, Olivia doesn’t follow, says that it seems like Hugh has it all handled, so she’ll go back to bed. Hugh sets him down in one of the chairs and starts finding ingredients like milk and chocolate and finds a pot, and before he knows it he has a steaming mug of hot chocolate in his hands, the warmth seeps through his fingers and the smell soothes the headache he hadn't even noticed blooming.
Hugh sits down over him in the other side of the table, with his own mug of steaming goodness. And he just sits there for a while, staring to the side and out the window, before he lets his oh so blue, and oh so young eyes on Steve, and Steve freezes up because he knows he has to come up with an excuse, because he couldn’t possibly tell him the truth could he?
“Are you alright?” The question is so simple, and he really wants to cry and say no no nonono over and over again, because no. He isn’t, but he also doesn’t want to bother Hugh, because he’s a grown man now and this is all a dream, it has to be, even though the taste of chocolate is so strong on his tongue and he’s pretty sure he can smell the faint scent of mould underneath everything else.
Instead he nods his head and puts on his best, reassuring smile. It usually works but this time something must have been off with it. Maybe because his face is too young for it to be familiar to him yet, but Hugh doesn’t look entirely convinced, it’s that look on his face where he knits his brow together a bit and his mouth dips ever so slightly in a frown. He doesn’t comment though, so Steve takes it as a win, however small it is.
They finish their hot chocolates and his dad puts them in water in the sink, so they can be washed in the morning, before he follows Steve to his room and tucks him in, and Steve feels so much more like a child than he did when he was actually thirteen. His dad lightly pats the top of his head, and gives him a warm, yet absent minded smile, as if he’s thinking deeply about something but still wants to reassure Steve that everything is and will be alright, and then he’s gone, turned off the light and closed the door.
The darkness isn’t as bad as he thought it would be, its quiet, the underlying scent of mould is so weak here, and though he thinks he can hear The House humming, almost giddy at the thought that he’s back, as a child, so helpless and defenseless, it’s not as bad as it could be. As he closes his eyes, and hopes again, that it’s a dream and he’ll wake up in his grown up body, he swears he can feel phantom fingers carding through his hair, and someone distantly humming an old lullaby he’s never heard, but is oh so familiar.
“Welcome home, Steven,” he hears a voice say, and it sounds so much like his mum, but then again no, and then he sleeps.