Chapter Text
The first thing he does when he gets home is shower.
It’s the logical thing to do. The obvious choice of action when covered in blood and grime and fuck knows what else. The paramedics had declared him good to go (he’d lied to them, pretended he couldn’t feel broken ribs and a probable concussion, pretended the puncture wound in his neck was a wasp sting and not a filthy needle full of psychoactive drugs. They had bigger things to worry about, had to care for the ones that mattered, the kids and Ms. Wheeler and Robin) and he had gotten a ride home from Callahan. Poor guy was still reeling from the fact that Hopper (Jim, he called him, but always Hopper or Hop or Chief in Steve’s mind) was dead and gone.
The uniform is so bloody and torn. His blood had stained the lapels an ugly maroon, the tears in the blue fabric reminding him all too much of being shot at by the Russian bastards down in those tunnels. (And what was it with him and tunnels, him and being stuck beneath the earth? Sunlight had never felt so sweet the first time he had emerged, and he still hasn’t felt it yet this time around.)
The water was hot. The water is hot. His brain struggles desperately to catch up, to realize the difference between past and present, the then and now, the danger and the calm. The water pooling at his feet is dark pink, flecks of dirt catching between his toes before swirling down the drain. It stings , the scalding hot water rushing over him, needles boring into his back and scalp; he barely even feels it, can only clutch at the wall and try desperately not to fall. All he feels is numb. Sure, he feels pain--how could he not, with his ribs screaming and his eye throbbing and that puncture in his neck like an ant bite--but inside, where he knows he should be feeling relief and worry and triumph and sadness, he just feels empty exhaustion. Numbness.
He only realizes how long he’s been standing there when the water runs cold, scalding hot needles fading into icy pinpricks against his bruised back. He doesn’t get out; the water is still swirling pink, still trying desperately to wash away the remnants of the nightmarish event. Finally, he raises his hands to jerkily scrape his nails along his scalp, to grab a washcloth and slowly run it down the cuts and bruises on his arms and legs. It’s as if his joints are frozen by the water, unwilling to move, unwilling to try to clean what he knows can’t go away.
Steve’s been scarred before, sure. He’s hit monsters with fangs protruding from flower shaped heads before, swung a bat full of bent nails and bloodstains at enemies time and time again. He’s braved tunnels and a child with black smoke hissing from his body like a gas leak, braved hells he could never have imagined. What’s so bad about being kidnapped and tortured next to monsters from another dimension? What’s so bad, really?
He only gets out when his lips are purple and his teeth click together in a morbid staccato, leaving the pink water to swirl down the drain, tinting the white porcelain with its hue. When he looks in the mirror, he notes with a vacant, empty surprise that even despite the travesty that is his battle wounds, he looks somewhat cleansed. Somewhat like before, despite the feeling of blood still rising in his throat.
Steve is fine. Steve is perfectly fine.
--
The day after the incident, Max comes to his doorstep with barely-controlled tears in her eyes. Her family had just gone to go look at caskets, and the building had been so busy they could barely get in the door. Billy’s body had been at the scene of the crime, though, an obvious victim and hero to the citizens of Hawkins (though a victim of what, the public was not privy to). They’d been allowed to push past the crowd of people tearfully running their fingers over glistening wood and pristine floral displays.
Oak wood and satin lining, she says, staring resolutely at a couch cushion even as tears spill from her eyes. He’d been forced to leave his surfboard in California years and years ago, oak painted yellow and green. She’s happy he gets at least that small remembrance of what brought him back. After a moment, he scoots closer to her and wraps his bruised arms around her thin frame, ignores her flaming red hair tickling his nose. He pretends he doesn’t feel her crying against him, hot tears soaking into the shoulder of his t-shirt. In a way, he’s happy she comes to him; he wants to be able to help her in some way, be a rock in this hellish period of upheaval.
That night, he sits in his shower with hot water hailing down upon his bare skin and gasps for breath, feeling as if his throat is clogged with blood again, as if he’s being choked and punched all at once. It hurts, it hurts hurts hurts . The water still runs pink around him, the drain leering at him as his blood disappears down into the sewers again. The water cleans him, though, feels like ice water on a burn even if he’s the one that’s freezing cold. In some dim way he doesn’t understand how he’s still hurting so bad, how the water still stains the white porcelain pink; in the back of his mind, though, hidden beneath layers and layers of everything, it makes perfect sense. The water cleans; he is dirty, stained, still somehow in that room.
It makes sense.
And when he turns the water off, he dries his hair mechanically with a towel, hands moving as if they aren’t his own. He dresses again in boxers and a t-shirt, drags his feet to bed and curls up, a horizontal mimicry of how he had hunched over in the shower just minutes before.
And Steve is okay.
--
He’s in a room, arms tied behind his back, the taste of iron filling his mouth and leaking from the corners of his lips.
Who do you work for? He spits blood onto a polished black boot, stares up in defiance with the one eye not blacked out with blood. A pale face, lined and cold, smiles back with pure malice, clinical and mask-like. It’s been hours. Hours. Everything hurts-- his ribs feel smashed in, his arms stinging from hits that belong in a boxing ring. His face is in agony, a broken nose and swollen eye certainly doing wonders for his appearance. He’s tired . And still it continues.
“I work for Scoops Ahoy, asshole,” he finally spits out, nearly choking on the blood in his throat. He barely has time to blink before there’s another fist flying towards his face, ugly laughter in his ears. When he finally blinks his eyes (well, eye, at this point) open, a frisson of terror runs through him. The floor is stained red at this point, how had he not noticed, how, how? He can feel the warmth dripping down his neck and chest, can see the ugly maroon stains on his shirt.
Who do you work for? It’s in his ear, that disgusting voice, that accent (allophony, Robin had told him as they tried to decipher the code, the reason they sound so different is their vowel map and their habit of allophony with their syllables) that grates on his nerves like barbed wire. I know you’re lying.
He tries to reply again, tries to choke out the words, but he hears his own voice outside of his head as if he’s standing beside himself. Dustin, yeah, Henderson. That’s the one, that’s… The door before him opens, and they push in a frightened face, so young and scared and pale beneath that mop of curly hair. The blood running so eagerly through and out of his veins turns cold as ice. He had failed him, hadn’t he? He had told them who Dustin was.
There’s blood on Dustin, too, blood on all of them-- it stains Steve’s white socks, stains the greenish-brown outfit of the Russian leering down at him, runs down Dustin’s chin and mixes with the tears streaming from his eyes. He was never missing that many teeth before, was he?
Who do you work for? A gun leveled at Dustin’s head. Robin’s screams in the back of his mind, shrieking his name. Who do you work for?
“I work--” He gags on the heavy taste of iron, cloying and overwhelming as it fills his mouth and runs down his chin. It hurts, it hurts. “Work for--”
Who do you work for? He watches as a skinny thumb pulls back the safety on the gun, watches as those blue eyes already overflowing with tears seem to blow out in mind-boggling panic. He isn’t being hit, but he aches, like his whole body is being stabbed and kicked at once, like his soul is being ripped out. Robin sobs behind him, every gasping cry an ice pick through his ears. Who do you work for? He’s trying, can’t get it out past the blood and the feeling of his heart sitting on his tongue and the taste of hot iron. Dustin’s eyes are so wide with fear. His hands are so small. He’s so small.
Bang.
The scream bubbles up past the blood, a muddle of words that meld and blend into each other like sticky syrup. His hands and feet are still stuck, pulling and flailing, and everything is so dark and where’s Robin where’s Dustin where is he is he alive are they alive is Dustin alive--
“What the fuck, dude, shit--”
“Who’s goddamn dying--”
“Turn on the LIGHTS, you moron--”
And he’s laying beside a couch in his ex-girlfriend’s basement, voices all around him and footsteps every which way, (and he can’t breathe, he can’t think, all he can hear is that bang bang bang bang) and there’s a hand on his shoulder and he screams, twisting away and kicking out. It’s the Russian, brown hair curling around a freckled face, wide blue eyes staring staring staring and--
“Steve, Steve, holy shit--” He’s scrambled back onto the couch before his brain finally catches up, finally sees what’s before him. The kids are in various states of disarray, hair rumpled, eyes wide with shock and confusion as they stare up at where he’s crouched on the couch. Nancy is favouring one leg, rubbing at her thigh, no anger in her face. A lamp is on, lighting up the nest of blankets they had built earlier in the night, light glinting off Mike’s giant Dungeons and Dragons almanac that lays on the floor beside the couch. Did he kick it off?
He can see them before him, can see that he’s in a basement, warm and safe. The fabric of the couch is rough and pliant beneath his clenched fists, free from sheets and ropes. His throat, though, his throat is so full of blood and he can feel it still, can feel it drying and cracking on his collarbone and soaking into his shirt, and he can still smell cognac on the words on Who do you work for? and see those wide blue eyes--
--and after a moment of freezing, he all but launches himself at Dustin, wraps his arms around the frazzled boy and sinks to the ground, clutching him like a lifeline.
“Steve, what--” His thoughts are racing a million miles an hour, the echo of his drugged words resonating in his head, and all he can mumble into Dustin’s messy hair is “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry you’re safe you’re safe I’m so sorry--” How could he have betrayed him, how could he have told them who he was? Dustin’s his responsibility , more than that-- his friend, his partner. He can’t even hear the anxious muttering behind them, barely registers Dustin’s arms hesitantly wrapping around his neck as he rocks back and forth, pulling Dustin close as if he can somehow shield him from the world. It’s all his fault Dustin could have died, him and his stupid, stupid big mouth. “I’m-- I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have told them, I should have--”
“Whoa, whoa, dude, Steve, slow down.” Dustin’s voice is soft, his lisp exaggerated by sleep. “Told who what-- Oh. Oh.” The cogs turn in Dustin’s head (and there had been a gun against those curls and part of him knows there hadn’t been but god oh god there could have been because of him ) and his embrace tightens around Steve, pulling him closer. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay, dude, it’s okay. You were drugged. You couldn’t have… I shouldn’t have said that shit, you couldn’t help it. It’s okay. I’m fine. You’re fine. Okay?” He’s not fine, the blood still clogs his throat and he can feel the wet, sticky liquid running down his shirt and his arms, he’s going to stain Dustin, too, isn’t he?
“I’m sorry,” he says, because it’s all he can say. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry--” Is he holding Dustin or is Dustin holding him? His hands are so small where they clutch at Steve’s loose nightshirt, so small and young and god, god , he can feel the blood spreading. His hands are so small.
“It’s ok, Steve, it’s okay, we’re all okay. It’s not your fault, it’s not, I promise, Robin would say the exact same thing--” His voice is quiet enough that Steve knows only he can hear it, knows that they never really told the others. That’s okay. That’s perfectly okay. He doesn’t need to stain anyone else.
At some point, Nancy pries him away from Dustin and helps him up the stairs, drives him home murmuring comfort the whole way. He doesn’t want to be home-- the rooms are too clean and empty and the layer of dust on the mantel hurts him every time he looks at it, but she’s guiding him over the threshold and joking about how if she could carry him they’d look like a married couple. The first one to grace this house in a month, the first one to actually speak in the same room. She ask-tells him to go to sleep, does he want her to stay, does he need someone?
The water pours over him like boiling rain, and it swirls in pink puddles at his feet. Just watch Dustin, make sure he’s okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
His hands are so small, Nance.
The still-bloody name tag stares at him from his dresser. He doesn’t sleep again that morning.
But it’s okay. Steve is okay. Steve is just fine.
--
He ignores the doorbell when it rings the next day, pretends he doesn’t hear it as he lays in bed. It’s a routine he falls into too easily-- lay in bed, pretend to sleep with eyes wide open. Wait until the doorbell has stopped ringing, until the knocking is gone again. Pull himself out of bed like his broken ribs are almost healed already and haul himself to the shower. The water is cleansing, scalding cold and freezing hot and always red pooling around him. Sometimes he moves to the couch, lowers himself onto the soft surface and stares at the hardwood floor until the sun glares in his unblinking eyes. It’s enough that he can still claim to be alive.
He can’t sleep. He won’t sleep. Not when it brings him back there, not when he has to hear Robin screaming and see tears streaming down Dustin’s face and hear that voice hissing like poison gas Who do you work for? in his ear. It wanders into his mind more than once that what if that drug is still fucking him up? What if he’s going crazy and whatever the fuck was in that goddamn syringe is killing his mind?
The doorbell rings again, again and again and again, but his door is locked and he can pretend he’s deaf to the world. The only thing he feels he can really hear right now is the slur of a foreign accent, a question on loop with ugly laughter tracing around it.
The water is red when he realizes he’s crying again. How stupid. He shouldn’t be crying now. It’s over, isn’t it? He’s home, curled up in a porcelain tub with water to wash away the blood, freezing hot and just strong enough that he can feel the droplets through his shirt. stinging the bruises that are slowly fading from his back. He didn’t have it as bad as some of the others, he didn’t lose a brother or get possessed or almost die from a flesh monster borne of a sad old woman in a fucking hospital, so why is he crying?
He doesn’t even notice that the knocking is on his bathroom door until it’s already opening, doesn’t realize someone else is in there to watch him stare at the tiles of the wall and cry until their hand is on his arm.
When they touch him, he can’t help but flinch back, can’t help but fear for a moment that somehow he’s being taken again; instead of that cold, lined face, though, Robin’s grey eyes stare at him with worry.
She all but hoists him out of the tub, mutters about ‘jesus, Harrington, your lips are blue ’ as she half-leads him to the couch. When she sits next to him, he knows she’s definitely not doing great, either; her hair is frazzled and the bags beneath her eyes are deep purple, weary and tired. Between how he’s curled with his mouth hidden behind his knees and how she fidgets like a scared kid, they certainly look the part of trauma.
“Not the only one who can’t sleep, then?” he finally mumbles. Her worry cracks into a grin devoid of all humour as she huffs out what could be a laugh or a sigh of despair.
“God, no. Every time I close my eyes I can’t help but…” Remember. Yeah. That’s the hardest part. “How do you… make it stop? I just-- fuck.” She sighs, leans back against the cushion as she pushes a hand through her hair. “We were kidnapped, dude. By fucking Russians. Before fighting-- that. ”
He knows all too well. Bet on that.
“I don’t know what to do,” she confesses after a moment of silence, still gazing at a damp Steve. “I just…” She doesn’t need to say it. He knows.
“Every time I shower I still see blood,” he finally murmurs, gaze falling to the hardwood floor before the couch. “I don’t--I know it isn’t there any more but it’s still there. ” It hangs over him, heavy like a water-laden storm cloud.
“Wanna know something stupid?” she finally asks. He looks over at her in questioning, forces himself to blink away images of blood on her fair skin. “And I mean, like, really stupid. I, uh…” Another huffed laugh, not quite as despairing but surely slightly ashamed. “So my bedroom is painted white, right? Been like that since I was born. But I… That first night, after all of it. I walked in and it… I felt like I was back there. I have this little desk in the corner, and I saw the chair in front of it and I broke down crying. I haven’t set foot in there for the past… what is it, five days? Six? My mom’s been having to go in there to get my clothes.”
It doesn’t sound stupid at all to him. He knows he’s lucky his parents decided on a shitty beige and grey scheme for their walls, lucky his bathroom is painted peach.
“I haven’t been able to wear blue,” he whispers in reply. “Looks too much like that fuckin’ uniform. Stupid goddamn sailor theme.” She does laugh at that, and he’s happy she does. She needs to laugh at something, needs something other than quiet despair to fill those hollow grey eyes. Finally, she scoots closer, pulls him against her, runs a thumb over his cheek. He didn’t realize tears were still there.
“I don’t know how to make it stop,” she murmurs against his hair. Slowly, he unfolds his arms from around his knees and wraps them around her, trying not to wince as the action pulls oddly at a healing rib. “I just… I get nightmares, every single night, and they won’t stop. I keep seeing that thing and ending up back there underground, and I just keep hearing you scream and thinking you’re dead and--” Her voice, slowly growing more frantic, chokes off with a quiet sob; her arms tighten around Steve.
“Hey, hey--” He shifts so he can actually look at her. Her eyes are full of tears, unshed but threatening to spill over her eyelashes. “I-- I get that too. That’s… why I haven’t been sleeping. I keep just…” It hurts to admit it aloud, hurts to stop shoving it away into the filing cabinet of trauma he’s accumulated over the past two years (longer than that, if he’s being honest, but these past two years certainly outweigh the rest). “I keep going back there too. Hearing you screaming. Seeing…” He swallows, raises a hand to rub his neck. The bump where he’d been injected with that goddamn drug still twinges like a bruise at the touch. “I keep wondering what would have happened if they… if they actually found Dustin. After they drugged us. I told them his name, I… I put him in danger, Robin. Fuck, there could still--” Could still be others out there, others who didn’t get caught, others who know Dustin’s name and can find him and hurt him and--
He doesn’t even realize that his nails are digging stripes into his neck until Robin’s hand is around his, pulling it off of his skin, pulling him close again. It hurts. It hurts. Her arms are around him and she’s whispering soothing words into his ear, when was he crying, did he ever even stop? Her shirt is soft in his clenched hands, soft against his cheek, and she holds him both so softly his heart breaks and so tightly he knows she’s the only thing keeping him together.
“He’s so small,” he whispers into her neck as she holds him, painfully reminiscent of how he had held Dustin just (two? three?) nights ago. “I don’t--he keeps putting himself in danger and that’s his decision but I told them, I told them his name and they knew and they, they could, I don’t--” He can feel the blood choking his throat again, can feel it running down his face and onto Robin’s shirt.
“It wasn’t your fault, Steve. You were drugged. We both were.” Her voice is firm, despite the sound of tears edging at her throat. “You can’t blame yourself for that.” How can he not, though? He curls closer to her, doesn’t fight the small sob that hitches his shoulders up and sends a flare of pain through his ribs.
“He’s so small, Robin.” His hands tighten on her soft shirt again. Not rope, just soft flannel, worn and warm. “His hands are so small. ”
“I know, Steve.”
She holds him until the sun comes up, until both of their tears have been spilled on each others clothing. He’s exhausted , tired in a way that makes it feel as if his very bones are begging to rest. He can’t sleep. He can’t go back there again.
“I need to go shower.” Her grip tightens on him when he tries weakly to unfold himself from the ball he’s in, curled against her with her limbs cradling him as if he’s a small child (his hands are so small ).
“You don’t, Steve.” But he feels so unclean , like there’s blood all over him again and like his eye is swollen shut and like the wound on his neck is sending poison through him once again. Look at the swirling pink water, see it run between your toes and tell yourself that for this moment, for this one moment, you are clean, unscathed, unscarred. Tell yourself you’re fine as the water washes the blood away. “Stay here.” A hand slides down from where it presses against his back to pull his knees against her side, her foot locking over his. Entanglement, once a torture, now a comfort. “Okay?”
And she knows his trauma better than anyone else, knows better than anyone else why he needs to, why he shouldn’t. Who is he to deny the facts, when she had so willingly stuck by his side through it all?
“Okay.”