Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The thing about being an older sibling (about being the oldest sibling) is that the title always comes with some level of hypocrisy.

The same could be said for almost any other position in a family, but the oldest especially so.

Whether for the sole benefit of yourself (cursing aloud only to chastise a sibling for it so that your parents won't find out, getting into fights only to yell at someone else for fighting, awarding yourself a privilege under the guise of "being the oldest" but not allowing the excuse of being the youngest/second oldest/middle to have any such claims) or for the benefit of your siblings and parents (telling them that you're strong enough to scare away what haunts them even though you can't chase away your own fears, telling them that you're not scared in the same breath that your voice trembles, assuring them that you'll never leave the same way your mom and dad and every other person you've known always has); hypocrisy comes as an inexorable part of the job description.

Steve knows this better than most.

He's thirteen years old when his mother kills herself. His father never says those words in that order, but he never really says anything else either, and Steve is old enough to put the pieces together for himself. Everyone says grief does weird things to people, which Steve supposes makes sense, but he doesn't know if it really explains anything either. Nelly and Luke don't say much of anything that makes sense about what happened that night, Shirl saw mom acting weird in the kitchen but not for long, Theo didn't see her any more than Steve did, but for some reason Steve feels like he should have seen more. Should have done more. He's the oldest - it's his job to help.

If he had been able to help the way he was supposed to, would his mom still be alive?

It's too late, but he does research anyway. The more he reads, the more certain he is of two things: One) he shouldn't have let their father leave mom alone in the house that night, and Two) the statistical probability that he or his siblings will wind up like their mother is high.

He's failed his mother already - he can't let his siblings down the same way.

That's where the hypocrisy really settles in.

He tries to be there for them while he's in high school, forces himself to work through the parts of him that don't want to be around them at all, and tries to make it work. He wants to be left alone; there are parts of him that are so angry that he's afraid that it will start to spill like Nellie's dreams and hurt them, but they need him at the same time. Trying to avoid them would only hurt them just as badly, and Steve can't be the one who hurts them, not if he's the one trying to protect them. So, he pushes through it, shoves the emotion deep in his chest and forces himself to be there when they want him to be, even if some days he feels like he's falling apart at the seams while he strains to keep the others together.

"Torn" is a very good word for what Steve is as a teenager.

Steve is torn between grief and anger most days - doesn't think either emotion is particularly constructive but doesn't know where to put either of them. The years pass, and he hopes that the emotions will fade, but the more he thinks about what happened (and there is no escape from thinking about what happened - whether it's classmates at school making jokes or gossiping or somewhat well-meaning teachers pushing him to use it as an essay topic or Shirley or Nellie having nightmares, it's always there at the forefront of Steve's mind), the worse everything feels.

Torn between whether he's angrier at himself, or at his father.

(He gets older and tries to rationalize it - all of it. Looks at his siblings as they get closer to that age and forces himself to think of them in his shoes; if he wouldn't expect it of them how could he have possibly expected it from himself? He was a child; it shouldn't have been his responsibility to watch out for his mother's well-being, but he had known something was wrong and hadn't spoken up about it the way he could have. His father was doing his best, he couldn't have known how things would turn out, but he was the adult in the situation who should have thought it through. Steve doesn't know who he hates more - himself or his father - and doesn't know which would be worse.)

Parents are important to kids and their development, but dad only gets to visit so infrequently. Steve is old enough to take care of himself - he doesn't need his dad anymore - but the others are younger. They don't understand, and Steve doesn't know if he wants them to - not yet, at least. 

He doesn't want it to be his fault that his siblings lost both parents. Doesn't want it to be him that drives the last wedge between the members of his family. So, he pushes the anger as far down into his chest as he can manage. He keeps to himself when dad comes around and encourages his dad to focus more on the others and the others to focus more on his dad, and Steve keeps his mouth shut as tight as he can manage it, both when his dad's around and when he's not.

(Dad still won't call that night a mistake, so Steve can't trust him not to mess up the same way with the younger kids, but dad doesn't have custody anymore. As long as Steve is there to do it right, he doesn't have to get in the way; it doesn't have to be his fault a second time.)

It's after he leaves for college that things get fucked.

It starts the day he leaves - the day he refuses to let his father drive him to campus. He tries to pass it off as a desperate bid for independence, and the brief anger as mere frustration in the prolonged conversation, but he can read the calculating look in Theo's eyes and the twin confused-wounded looks in Nellie and Luke's easy.

Almost every time they call, they check to see if he's talked to dad.

Steve starts avoiding calls from everyone, instead of just their father's.

(He knows it probably doesn't make anything better, knows he's probably just making it worse, but he doesn't know what else to do.)

After that comes the headaches. They come relatively infrequently and aren't as bad as full-blown migraines, but they come two or three times a week sometimes - just enough to make him nervous.

It started with headaches for mom, too.

(It didn't start with headaches for Steve, but he doesn't like to think about that.)

(He knows it's stupid, knows it's nonsensical, knows it's hypocritical. He's the one who hammered in the concept of mental illness and tried to make sure that his siblings all knew who to ask for help and made sure that they knew they could ask for help. He should lead by example, he should stop ignoring the signs he's already seen - has already been seeing for years - he should let himself be the proof of his own words. But asking for help means admitting there's a problem; Steve is the oldest, he can't afford to be the problem child.)

(He can't help keep the others safe if he's crazy.)

The headaches are just stress, the insomnia is just stress, the hallucinations are just stress, too. (Steve doesn't know if they even count as hallucinations, after all. He's probably just over-exaggerating. Probably just spent too much time reading too many books outside of his age range when he was younger. He's fine.)

He can handle it.

(There's a certain kind of anxiety at the thought of telling someone, born out of a brief interaction in a dark car.

"What about mom?" asked in five anxious voices, and "That's not your mother," in one steadfast monotone.

If he tells them what's wrong, will they toss him aside? Will his father look at him with determinedly blank eyes and tell his siblings, "That's not your brother" and leave him behind? Abandon him in the dark and the shadows until the only option he feels he has left is a one-way trip down a flight of stairs?

If they could do it to her - the one every one of them loved - wouldn't it only be easier to do to Steve, the one who breaks everything he tries to fix?)

College comes and goes with fewer phone calls and more problems. He tries to still Be There for the others, but it feels like it gets harder and harder every day. Luke and Nell are teenagers now, who don't want to talk to him or have him around the same way they wanted when they were younger. He's still caught between convincing himself that he's fine and wanting to scream that he's not - he doesn't know if he'll ever figure it out but doesn't know if he wants to be around them to let them see either way.

(Crazy's not contagious, but some part of him worries that if they see him like this then they'll wind up just like him anyway.)

(After all, isn't that exactly what happened to him?)

Steve perfects the act of lying, masters the art of hypocrisy.

Not that anyone cares enough to tease apart the mess of lies in the first place.

He gets better at it. Force himself to pretend like he's comfortable and having a good time, and eventually it starts to become a little more real. He starts talking to them again, and it doesn't feel forced or uncomfortable, they start coming to him again and it doesn't feel reluctant or uncertain.

Things start to work again, and something in him settles at the knowledge that he was able to fix it before it'd become too broken.

The only downside is, of course, that it's harder to hide from them than it was when they weren't around.

He thinks about telling them, sometimes.

Mostly when he's still caught in the panic and the hitched breathing and the slow growing horror. He thinks about telling someone, admitting the problem, asking for help. Tries to imagine what their responses would be, how they would react, what they would say.

Thinks about their growing anxiety, at the thought that he might wind up like their mom. Their growing uncertainty, as they worry that any strain from their own lives would only serve to break him further. Their anger at him, for burdening them with this.

It's never appealing enough to try.

He can't really figure out if the imagined scenarios are close enough to reality to be accurate. The reality is that Steve has never spent much time asking for help from his family and has never been any good at accepting it in general anyway. He can't remember when the decision was made, when the universe decided that he didn't need help anymore. Probably sometime between Tho and the twins, probably just a passing statement spoken by an exhausted parent that stuck somewhere and became Law.

Steve is the oldest - he doesn't need help, it's his job to help others.

He never says anything to anyone and tells himself that it's better that way.

Sometimes he can't tell if he's lying.

He gets older, he gets marries, he writes the book.

A rambling attempt to put words and order to the chaos of his past that lives on inside his skull, turned opportunity for profit. (He might not be able to say it in so many words, but of course the money factored in. He's been trying for so long with no success and Leigh makes enough money for both of them to make it month to month but that's not good enough. The money he gets offered for the book is good, and they need it, and Leigh deserves it, and he has to be worth something. Has to have something to bring to the his families' tables even if not for the almost inevitable future where he really loses his shit permanently).

Shirl hates it and nerve misses an opportunity to tell him so. Steve wonders why that's not enough to stop him.

("Mom was mentally ill. That's a fact. And I'll be damned if the apple didn't fall too far from the..." he'd trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. It wasn't until Shirley's voice rang hollow over a "Wow" that he'd realized all at once who she'd thought he was talking about.

"I'm sorry," he'd stammered. "I didn't..." mean you. But he couldn't tell her that. Didn't want to tell her that, still doesn't. Has every intention of holding that as close to his chest as he can for as long as possible.

That means letting her think he was talking about her. He's a bastard and a coward for letting her think it, but at least that's nothing new.)

Theo's face is unreadable when she listens to the argument, but she takes the money, and he supposes that will have to be good enough. Shirl's husband emails him later to ask, and Steve is more than happy to help. Nellie is impassive but insists she thinks it's fine, and Steve can't tell if he's imagining her voice sounding slightly colder than usual or not. Luke doesn't get an offer, but Steve sections off his percentage dutifully and pays for rehab whenever Luke reappears to try again and invests a portion of it for him, for him to have when he's clean - to help him get back on his feet and catch back up.

Steve extends the offer to his dad even though he can't tell if it's something he wants to do or if it's just a sense of obligation. It's not a surprise when his dad turns the money down, but what might be is the money Steve puts away - for "backup savings", which is a not-quite lie for "just in case something happens to him" money.

(He tells himself that it's just his job as the oldest, but privately he wonders if the anger towards his dad has been leaning far in a different direction lately, or if it had ever really been directed towards his dad at all.)

In the end, almost none of it matters.

All that really counts is that the book makes money (the books make good money), Shirley's business and family are supposes (even if she doesn't know exactly how), Theo's going back to college, Luke's treatment is paid for, and there's enough set aside just in case the others need it. Steve might be a bullshit older brother, but at least he's been able to do something right.

The steadily strengthening relationships are a little more broken, because in trying to get it right Steve had fucked everything up on the way. But it's okay if they hate him - it's nothing he's not already used to by now.

They've found a new sort of balance by the time Nell's wedding comes around, and Steve is endlessly grateful for it. Would have stayed away if they'd truly wanted him to but is so incredibly happy it didn't get to that point.

The hole of Luke's absence is felt by every one of them, but Steve tries his best to keep everyone happy and focused on the good parts of the day. Makes sure he's always around in case Nell needs him, cracks the jokes that make Shirl glare at him but make Nell smile harder like she knows what he's doing, buys a gift instead of giving money to keep the book off of everyone's minds.

It's the first time in a while that (almost) all of them have been together without devolving into some kind of argument.

It's one of the best days in Steve's life, and even better, one of the best days in Nell's.

So, it's in typical Crain fashion that the happiness couldn't last.

Nell calls him third, right after 911 and their father, and he only has to hear the trembling edges of her voice to be out of bed and pulling on his shoes before she can even tell him what happened. He meets her at the hospital and is there for not even a handful of minutes before the doctor comes out to tell them that there's nothing they can do.

Arthur's family takes care of most of the arrangements, and Nell stays with him and Leigh. Steve is probably lucky that his wife is so willing to accept Nell into their home, especially considering the state she's in. He's glad that she trusts him enough to stay with him, but spends every hour terrified that he's going to lose his sister the same way he lost his mother anyway.

He tries to convince her to sell the apartment and move somewhere else, but she refuses. He's too nervous to press the issue, too afraid of breaking the spider thin strands of recovery, but there's a thick dread curdling in his stomach when she finally leaves to go back home.

He might not quite believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean the dead don't linger and wreak havoc in homes.

Her ups and downs are exhausting to witness, but he tries to be there for her all the same.

He shudders to think what might happen if she needs him, and he's not there for her.

All it takes is one missed phone call for the worst to happen.

Luke comes to visit, thirty days sober for the first time in a long while, and Steve is proud to have him over.

He just wishes that he'd figured out a way to express concern without sounding like an asshole, in one way or another.

(Steve knows all too well what putting your faith in one singular person can do to your foundations, and it's not bad advice. He might not even be talking about Luke's new friend. Might be talking about some other pillar in the lives of his siblings.)

(But maybe he just thinks too highly of himself.)

Luke cuts his visit short, and for the next week and a half Steve's phone is constantly in his line of sight, waiting for the phone call that would tell him that Luke has left the rehab center and is back on the streets.

The call never comes, and Steve can't decide if he's proud of his brother or ashamed of his own lack of faith.

The fight with Leigh was inevitable because Steve practically ensured that it would be.

He should have said something before they got married, before she'd started talking about the possibilities with stars in her eyes and a smile on her face, before the apps and the schedules, before she'd started paying for the doctors. He'd had dozens of opportunities and he'd avoided every single one; now it's time to face the music and he still has the gall to be unprepared.

"You're telling me you did this because you might have had 'bad genes'? You ruined all those possibilities for a 'maybe'?"

'No,' he wants to say. 'No, I did it because I already knew. I've known for years, for decades. I'm already fucking crazy and I can't bring another kid up in that.'

But instead all he says is "Yes," tone pitched like it's obvious because the only thing Steve is good at is lying and now he can't seem to stop himself.

He knows what she's looking for, knows what he has to say, but knows just as well that he'll never be able to make himself say it, so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn't try to fight when she kicks him out.

(The house is, after all, hers. Bought before Steve could bring anything other than minimum wage to the house, and he might be contributing to the bills now, but he's always known better than to stake claim to things he has no right to.)

(Maybe he should have thought about that more, before he'd written the book.)

The apartment he finds to move into is shitty, but it works. Pre-furnished with pieces of terrible quality that Steve makes no effort to replace, endlessly caught between 'it was permanent enough to move out of the hotel but it's not permanent' and 'permanent or not, you don't deserve anything reasonably nice'.

He doesn't tell anyone, and it's less about keeping up appearances and more about the fact that none of his siblings needs to listen to his shit and he doesn't really have anyone else and he's fine anyway. He doesn't need help and wouldn't deserve it if he did, but he doesn't so telling the others wouldn't do anything other than annoy them because they don't want to hear from him at all or stress them out because there's nothing they could do.

(He doesn't like to think about how many of them would fall into the first category, but at nights when he's laying on the mattress in the corner of his room, his brain doesn't hesitate to tell him that it's all of them.)

(He pretends not to notice how much it sounds like Nell, her tone the same broken angry it had been at the book signing.)

(His family aren't the only people Steve's gotten good at lying to.)

Nell dies.

Nell dies, and for the first time - still curled on the floor of his empty apartment - Steve tries to admit that there's a problem.

Shirl yells and hangs up before he can force the words past his numb lips.

It's fine.

He's fine.

All it really was is confirmation of what he'd already known. It's almost better this way - to know, absolutely and explicitly, where he stands and how things work. One less thing to wonder about, one less thing to worry about as he goes through the motions and finds Luke and picks up his dad and goes to Shirley's place. There's a hard limit to how much Steve can show, how much he can say - it's not about him, it's about how he can help them, and some part of him relaxes at the knowing.

One less ghost to haunt him, once the lights are off.

(Nell is a new one, but if he's being honest, is she really?)

(He'd told that woman that he's never seen a ghost, but it wasn't the whole truth. He's never seen anyone else's ghosts, but that doesn't mean that Steve hasn't been trailing his own since he was thirteen years old.)

The mask breaks once.

The sight of her in the casket is so sudden and jarring, somehow both everything he had known to expect and nothing he had been expecting, that the lie of his stability scatters like sand through his fingers. He can barely keep his feet under him as he backs away from her, and he can feel himself speaking but he has no idea what he's saying. Shirley looks at him with professionally curated sympathy and Steve closes his eyes against the rotted visage of his mother hovering by his little sister's coffin, forces the mask back in place, and tells himself that he's fine.

No one looks close enough to notice the cracks and it's better that way.

He can't afford to have anyone look at him like that, especially not with Nellie in the other room, quiet and still and alone.

(It's not about him.)

One of the only things Steve’s dad taught him after Hill House was the ability to take things without flinching.

Arguments and contradictions aside, almost nothing was more impressive to Steve than the man’s complete and utter unflappability in the face of others tearing him to shreds and the way he’d stayed completely unmoved in his convictions – no matter how misguided Steve and everyone else thought and argued they were.

Steve can be grateful for that, even now. Especially now.

He can listen to Shirley yelling at him and hide every single reaction behind the carefully curated mask and pretend like he’s fine. It’s fine and it works. (The only person it’s never worked against has been his dad, and Steve wonders if he shouldn’t have worked at that, because maybe if Steve was better at handling their dad then none of the arguments would have broken out in the first place.)

(That’s exactly why Steve is better off hidden behind his lies and masks.)

(The reality is that he’s never made anything better, he’s only ever been good at making them worse.)

Things get out of control once Theo and Shirley start arguing. Steve stays out of it for the most part, even though part of him thinks he shouldn’t. They’re arguing about him and his book, after all, but the reality is that he has no idea who knows what. He’s been able to tell that Shirley hadn’t known about a lot of it, but he doesn’t know what Theo knows and doesn’t know what Kevin knows, and doesn’t think he could contribute anything to or break up the fight successfully without giving something away. It’s only after Shirley starts talking about kicking Theo out that Steve starts to try. (He doesn’t actually know why Theo lives with Shirley, but it’s not his place to question it and he doesn’t think it matters, not right now at least.)

In the end, he almost wishes he hadn’t. Wishes he was better at holding his tongue and pushing down his (misplaced) anger at his father, maybe almost wishes he hadn’t shown up at all. The argument ends with Shirley crying and a heavy tense silence between them and a guilty-sad look on Kevin’s face and Steve can’t help but think that it’s his fault it’s all there.

Later that night, he’ll try to convince himself that his mother couldn’t have left the buttons with Nell because his father hadn’t shown up until after that moment.

It’s not as easy as it usually is.

Everything comes to a head the night Luke goes back to the house.

Between the suddenly imparted knowledge that either ghosts are real and the house is sentient, or that Steve's been crazy longer than he'd thought (and why was his dad the only one who'd noticed?) and the man in the house (the one Steve could feel breathing on his cheek but who couldn't have been real but who his father had been able to see too), Steve is already feeling incredibly off-kilter.

Then there’s the matter of the dream (the vision? Hallucination??) where Leigh says everything Steve has been thinking for years while she rots right in front of him (“Will you go crazy, like your mother?” she asks, and even through his horror Steve almost laughs because apparently not even this fucked up placed knows that he already had). Nell wakes him up, and they manage to save Luke (the feeling of his baby brother’s ribs cracking under his desperate hands is not a sensation that Steve will ever forget), and in all of the chaos it’s almost too easy to dismiss the impossible sight of his father’s corpse that they pass in the hallway.

But the look on his dad’s face lets him know it’s not that simple.

Instead his dad looks him in the eye and tells him that the responsibility is his now (‘No, no you can’t,’ Steve wants to beg. ‘I’m falling apart, I failed years ago, I can’t do this right, I couldn’t do any of it right.’ But no, no. Steve is the oldest – it’s his job.) and tells him things that Steve doesn’t deserve to hear.

And then he’s alone in the house, with his father’s corpse on the ground beside him and a mouthful of lies that he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to maintain.

There are whispers behind him as he leaves, and Steve wonders if they can tell just how weak their supposed keeper already is.

No matter how you look at it, there’s no clean and easy way for Steve to try and explain that their father is dead and had been before he’d gotten a chance to walk through that bright red door to let them out.

He thinks about it, agonizes over it during his drive to the hospital, tries to put words to it because he’s a writer goddammit and that’s his job, but he can’t. His siblings might be at a point where they’re nigh incapable of not understanding but Steve’s words get stuck behind years of “it’s mental illness” and “the wrong parent died” and the angry tears of Shirl’s voice over the phone, and he can’t.

They watch him walk through the hospital’s front door alone and they ask where their dad is, and Steve breaks and breaks and breaks and doesn’t let a single crack show. Theo tries to give him an out, but he pulls his bared arm back before she can reach him, and he lies.

He lies, and he lies, and as he watches their expression shutter closed he thinks of going back to the house and offering, begging, for a new trade.

(The wrong parent didn’t die, the wrong sibling did, and Steve’s sure that every single one of them knows it.)

"The rest is confetti," Nell says, her smile going plastic as the mold and rot overtake her face. She turns to look him in the face with clouded eyes and angry grief twists her expression as she speaks to him and him alone, "That's a big mess you're responsible for."

Steve wakes up in a cold sweat, barely breathing through his guilt and panic, and brushes off the undeserved concern of his siblings with practiced ease and denial.

He makes a mental note not to fall asleep in front of his siblings anymore, if he manages to get any more sleep at all.

Shirl's the one who comes to find him after the fifth time he excuses himself to go wash his hands in a hospital bathroom.

It's not like he's unaware how useless an endeavor it is. Like he can't tell that the only thing he's accomplishing by scrubbing his hands raw is netting himself cracked and bleeding palms and yet no relief from the layer of humid mold that seems to coat his skin or the feeling of bones shifting under his palms.

Steve has always been a purveyor of lost causes.

Luke is discharged from the hospital and he goes home with Shirl and Theo, because they’re the ones with space for him. Steve goes back to Leigh’s house; he doesn’t deserve to have things fixed but she deserves an apology for the shit he pulled.

In theory these are new opportunities, but Steve just feels trapped behind molded doors and broken promises.

He calls to check in with the others almost every day, because they made him promise before he caught his flight back, and that at least is something he can do. He can tell that they’re trying in ways that none of them really have before, and he can appreciate it even through the knowledge that he doesn’t deserve any of it.

They push the question of what happened that night every once in a while, but Steve, with his years of practice, doesn’t waver once.

It feels harder than it used to be.

"This house is dangerous, especially for you."

"This house, the promise, is your responsibility now."

He wonders if his dad had noticed the contradiction. He wonders if he'd cared. Wonders if it matters.

Dangerous or not, Steve would never have been able to hold himself together for as long as his father had.

The things around him seem like they’re getting better, but Steve can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s only getting worse.

He thinks about trying to write it out – not to publish, just to have and process and organize – but every time he opens a word document or pulls out a pen, he thinks about the house and “you are a plastic parasite” and he just… can’t.

So instead it sticks, and it festers, and he can feel it all rotting him from the inside out, but isn’t it better that way? The news of his father’s death inside the house spreads (reported by anonymous tip once he and his siblings were settled into their story of how they’d found Luke), and his books see an uptick in sales and the placid delight in his editor’s voice when she gives him the news and prompts the concept of a Hill House sequel has him doubled over the toilet for nearly an hour, pathetically grateful that Leigh’s at work.

He is pathetic, of course, but at least he can try to maintain the illusion a little while longer.

Sleep gets harder and harder to come by, and Steve lets the hours slip through his fingers and doesn’t dwell on it too much. (Because actually sleeping is just loops of bloody foam and broken ribs, of mom pushing Nell over the railing, and the sound of grieved screams echoing in rotten halls. He almost prefers the not sleeping.) He wastes the time staring blankly at empty pages or circling the house aimlessly, keeping half an eye on the clock so that he can get back in bed before Leigh is awake to notice he’s gone.

(They’re talking a lot more honestly, now. Speaking candidly about the issues that had driven quiet wedges between them and being as clear as possible whenever they can. Steve doesn’t quite admit a willingness to reverse the vasectomy but does admit he’s not necessarily opposed to raising kids entirely, if they wanted to try other options sometime in the future. Leigh admits to noticing his reluctance and lack of enthusiasm and to dismissing it as something that would be righted once the pregnancy was real, and they agree to check in with each other more openly now. Steve doesn’t mind. As long as she keeps not-asking the right questions, he can keep the rest of his secrets held close to his chest. He can hold onto this illusion a little longer.)

He thinks she might notice anyway.

“You can wake me up,” she tells him one night as they’re getting ready for bed. “If you need to. I won’t mind.”

Unlike him, she has a steady day job that she needs to wake up early to go to, and she needs her sleep, and if Steve woke her up whenever he needed to then neither of them would ever get any sleep. But he still smiles gratefully and agrees, and she doesn’t ask if he’s lying, so he doesn’t tell her he is.

It’s those technicalities that put their marriage at risk in the first place, but Steve’s not ready to give them up yet.

(“A plastic hack, aren’t ya, honey?” he hears in the back of his mind and tries not to wince.)

"Are you holding up alright?" Shirl asks one day, and Steve's mouth goes dry.

"I'm fine," he tells her. "Why do you ask?"

He's expecting it to be something he'd managed to give away, and is caught off-guard when she says, "I've been having weird dreams lately" instead. There's the sound of something rustling on the line, and he can picture her gesturing dismissively at herself. "Keven says I've been talking about... but don't worry about it, it's probably nothing."

"Tell her," Nellie says, with all the command and authority her six-year-old body can muster. She stares up at him mulishly from her position in his kitchen doorway, and Steve just stares at her helplessly.

"Don't worry about it," he says aloud. "I'm fine."

The look she gives him is full of reproach and disappointment, and he fights to keep from going after her when she turns away to walk down the hall.

Pretends her disappointment doesn't make him sick to his fucking stomach.

He wakes up with his throat raw and ears ringing, eyes opened achingly wide to the sight of Leigh's startled gaze staring down at him in concern.

"You were screaming," she tells him, voice hushed like she's afraid of breaking the room's newfound silence.

Steve thinks of his mother with her red robe and blinks through the heat of his eyes, tries to catch his breath.

"I'm fine," he tells her, like his voice doesn't break over the word and he can't feel the way his neck prickles uncomfortably under the weight of dozens of eyes.

Like the look on her face doesn't already say she can't believe him.

“You’re hurting yourself, honey,” his mom says, her gaze and voice soft.

Steve makes a wounded noise in his throat, suddenly aware of his smallness in a way he wasn’t before. He reaches for her, but she makes no move towards him.

“They’ll hate me,” he says, his voice is small and broken and Not Right, but for now he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care that he’s the wrong age and size for these worries, because this is his mom, and right now the stress of holding himself together isn’t on his mind because who could better understand than her?

“Maybe,” she says neutrally. It’s not what he wants to hear but is also not a surprise. “But not if you wake up first.”

He knows what she’s talking about and understands the weight behind her words. He should be terrified. Should be protesting. Should be fleeing. But…

“All you’d have to do is come home.”

But…

It is so, so tempting.

He wakes up with tears on his cheeks and a terrifying sense of disappointment wrapped around his rib cage and doesn’t know what to do with either of them.

It would almost be easier to get it over with himself.

To stop delaying the inevitable and go to the house himself. Alone. To let whatever is going to happen, to him happen. Surely that would be easier than the constant push to keep fighting against it.

He wonders if this is how Nellie felt, when she’d driven herself to the house that night.

The thought is one of the only to well and truly scare him, and he wonders if he’s finally losing his mind once and for all.

Wonders if that’s enough to get him to call one of his siblings and finally ask for help and decides that it’s not.

Doesn’t want to think about how bad things would have to get, for him to finally do it. Hopes it won’t get to that point but has absolutely no faith in it.

It’s already too late for him.

Steve wakes up and doesn't know where he is.

The soles of his feet are scraped raw and aching, the street he's on is lit dimly with few and far between street lamps, his breath is cold in his throat and ragged in his lungs. The only sound comes from rustling leaves and far-off car engines, his panicked breathing and ringing phone.

He fumbles for it with half-numb fingers, can't read the screen because he doesn't have his glasses, but answers the call anyway.

"Steve?" Shirl's voice demands. "Are you okay?"

She founds half-frantic half-authoritarian. Steve isn't entirely sure this is real, isn't entirely sure he's not still dreaming.

"Steve?" Shirley repeats, concern sharpening her tone further.

"I don't... I don't know," he says finally, his voice sounding far away even to his own ears. He doesn't know where he is, hasn't sleepwalked since he was ten years old and can't remember what he's supposed to do now. Doesn't know what to do without the reassurance of one of his parent's hands in his as they lead him back to his room.

"Come home," his mom says.

"I don't know," he repeats, and thinks that Shirley is talking, but can't work out what she's saying. Should probably try to focus on listening, should probably try to figure out where he is, should probably work on putting together a convincing lie.

Should probably do something. Anything.

But he just feels stuck. Like something in him finally broke and there's nothing left to help him hold himself up anymore.

"Go home," Nellie says, her eyes bright and wide and earnest, and when she offers him her hand, Steve takes it.

It feels warm under his cold fingers, and when she tugs him along he follows and just for now, just for now, he couldn't care less which home it is she's leading him to.

“Steve?” Leigh asks, shoes half on, her voice edged with relief. “Where were you? I was just about to go look for you.”

Nell is nowhere in sight, but the hand she was holding still feels warm. His phone screen is dark, and when he clicks it back on he finds a text from Shirl telling him that they’re catching the next flight out, instructing him to stay at home and not to argue.

“Steve?” Leigh says again, more cautiously, and he snaps back to himself all at once.

“I’m,” he starts, and then stops just as quickly. “I was just…” There are no words lined up and ready to go, every lie and excuse skitters out of his reach as he strains to find one that could almost be believable. Everything is either broken or breaking. “I haven’t been completely honest.”

She doesn’t look angry, her eyes look him over with concern and she seems upset, but she doesn’t seem angry. “Okay,” she says gently, and he doesn’t deserve it, could never deserve any of it. “Let’s get you warmed up, and then we can talk.”

She agrees to wait until the others arrive in the evening to have their conversation. Steve has no idea how they managed to get such a close flight but doesn’t question it. He tries to convince Leigh that he’d be fine if she went to work, but she tells him firmly that she can miss one day without it being a big deal.

All of them are putting their lives on hold, for him, and it’s everything he’d ever been afraid of and more.

He busies himself in the kitchen instead of dwelling on any of it, because if he thinks about it for too long then he’s going to wind up cowering out and then their waste of time will become even more meaningless, and if he can just focus on a meal then he can at least pretend for a few seconds that this was planned and on purpose and not a collection of knee-jerk responses to Steve’s failure to hold himself together.

Leigh drifts in and out of the room while he works, not quite hovering but not entirely able to leave him alone. He wonders how he’d looked earlier, shivering in ragged pajamas and bare feet with distant eyes and an uncomprehendingly blank expression. Crazy, like his mother.

He almost laughs, but none of it is funny, and instead he asks if she wants to stay to help him clean the dishes while the food is in the oven and tries not to wince at the eager way she accepts.

The thing about the supposedly strong one finally breaking is that no one knows how to handle it.

Least of all himself.

His siblings show up at the front door, worn ragged from spontaneous travel and radiating disbelieving nervous energy as Leigh half-chastises them for taking a cab instead of calling for her to pick them up while Steve ushers them towards the dining room to eat.

They fall into an almost casual flow of conversation, led largely by Leigh, but Steve can feel them glancing at him more and more frequently as the night goes on. He wants to stubbornly refuse to press forward, wants to let the night progress without heaving his bullshit into it, but he knows that he can’t run from this any longer.

“I thought mom was schizophrenic,” he blurts out, and the table falls into an uneasy silence. Steve has no idea what topic he’d interrupted on but doubts that anyone could have been prepared for his non-sequitur regardless.

He knows they already know this, and that’s probably the only reason they’re not bombarding him with questions. Writer or not, Steve has never been especially good at getting his words out through speech, and right now they’re all waiting on him to organize them before they try to interrupt. It’s not quite a first, but it’s been years.

“I thought mom was schizophrenic,” he repeats, because even now he can’t help but delay the inevitable. “And I thought I was, too.”

The silence that reigns is different now, caught like a fly in a spider’s web of “mental illness” and “face the facts” and “no one in this family wants to admit it”, Steve almost doubts that there’s anything he could have said to surprise them more. He doesn’t know what they were expecting him to say when they decided to come, he doesn’t know what Leigh was expecting him to have hidden from her, he doesn’t know what they’d assumed at all, but he’s almost positive he’s surpassed their expectations in the worst way possible.

Theo is the first to break the silence, with her usual blunt and no-nonsense tone, “For how long?”

And isn’t that just the worst possible follow up question. There are dozens of answers and an equal number of refutations, but only one that’s closest to the truth. “Since I was about sixteen.”

He was wrong, there was something he could have said to surprise them more.

He could elaborate. Talk about giving people directions only to be startled out of a conversation by a friend asking who he thought he was talking to, talk about the slow growing paranoia and knowledge that he was being watched without being able to find who it was, about the constant quiet urges that seemed to rise out of his very bones. Steve was never the focus of schoolyard rumors the same way his younger siblings were, but the reason he never had to worry about distancing himself from their reputation was because everyone knew he was just as fucking strange.

Everyone but them, it seems.

“What the fuck,” Shirl breathes, and it’s not quite a question and it’s not quite angry, but Steve can’t help but flinch anyway.

“I was the oldest,” he says, as if that could explain anything, as if it explains everything, but to him it does. “I was… Mom was dead, and Dad was gone, and no one liked Aunt Janet at first, really, so I had to take care of you. I had to make sure that you were all okay, and I couldn’t… be the one causing problems. I couldn’t keep you safe if I was…”

He drops off, but Theo finishes for him. “Crazy,” she says, as if there was never any doubt that it was anything different, and he wonders if she’s always known – if she could see it on him when he helped calm her down after night terrors or anxiety attacks – or if it’s just the only reasonable assumption. He nods at her helplessly. He feels helpless in all of this, having the conversation he’d hoped to god he would never have to have, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now.

They’re all here because of him and he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing.

He feels like he’s suffocating.

"It's been getting worse," Luke says, one of the only things he's said all night, and he speaks with such certainty that Steve can't look him in the eye. Stares down at his shaking hands where they rest in his lap and digs a nail into the split skin alongside a fingernail. Nods.

Shirl makes a noise in her throat. "Is it the house?" she asks, demands, really. Her voice almost always sounds like that, but Steve can't help but feel like the tone of anger is there especially for him, especially on this night.

“What about the house?” Leigh asks, and it’s hard to tell if she sounds more scared or confused.

One of his sisters makes a noise of disbelief. “You didn’t…” they don’t get a chance to finish before something in Steve breaks, and he hunches forward to bury his face in his hands in a vain attempt to muffle the choked sob that punches its way out of his chest.

The silence that falls is the worst of the night. He can feel the stunned anxiety fill the air around him like electricity. Apart from Leigh, who’s seen him shed a tear every once in a while, over the years, he can’t remember the last time any of them saw him cry.

It’s the worst kind of humiliation.

He hasn’t even gotten to half of the shit he needs to say.

“Did you not think you could trust us?”

He heaves in a breath. “It’s not, it wasn’t about,” he scrubs at his face and forces himself to breathe and push everything back behind his usual mask, but he thinks the quick transition into something resembling calm only unsettles them more. “It wasn’t about trust. I’m the oldest, an adult, and you all have your own shit to deal with – you didn’t need mine on top of it. Besides it’s not like I never tri…” he cuts himself off, strangling the sentence before it can get too far because he hadn’t wanted to bring that up, didn’t want to sound like he was slinging accusations because he isn’t, it’s not as if he can’t understand, can’t see that’s it’s obviously not their fault.

“When?” Shirley asks, her voice nearly a whisper and fuck.

Is this a good time to lie? Is this when lying becomes acceptable? He’s been lying for so long about so much that he doesn’t know what’s okay and what isn’t anymore. He doesn’t want to tell her, doesn’t want to sound like he’s throwing it in her face, and doesn’t want her to blame herself, but does he want to keep lying?

His mother tilts her head to lean it against the door-frame to the kitchen, looking sad but offering no answers.

“It was… I,” he breaks off. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me,” she snaps, and he’s sure that she’s already put the pieces together because Shirl is smart, but she’s not going to let this go until she has her answer, and hadn’t he wanted to bring this up anyway?

Isn’t this all his fault in the first place?

“Nell,” he says finally, “The night Nell… I, she was in my apartment, when I got home that night. Just, just standing there like everything was fine. And Dad called, and I tried to tell him that she was at my place already, and he told me that she was dead. And I,” he breaks off, spreads his hands hopelessly, trying to convey whatever it is he can’t put words to. He slumps unhappily, forcing himself to look up and meet Shirl’s eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

She laughs disbelievingly, “It’s not my fault?” she asks, incredulously. “Not my fault when you tried to tell me that you were having some, some kind of breakdown and I practically told you that it was your fault Nell was dead in the first place?”

“It’s not like it was anything new,” he says, in an attempt to make her feel better that just makes her look guiltier. Goddamn him. “Even, even before mom, I saw them. Wrote one into my book and didn’t even realize. I don’t, I don’t know,” he wishes that his dad had managed to explain more, wishes he hadn’t made that deal that night, wonders if that’s too selfish of him. “Dad didn’t… Apparently, I can’t tell the difference.”

“Dad knew?”

He shrugs cluelessly, “I guess? He didn’t exactly have a lot of time to explain.” Steve reconsiders the amount of time it’d taken to get to the house. “Or maybe he did, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood to process all of it.”

Almost everyone has something they try to say, speaking over each other with years of practiced ease, but they all fall silent when Leigh finally speaks up again. “I think someone should explain to me what happened,” she says, tone almost impassive but not quite able to get it right. “Because I feel like I’m on a very different page than the rest of you.”

Everyone glances at him, and the persistent shaking in his hands and the not-quite-steady way he’s breathing, and Shirley speaks up to say, “I can explain,” but she can’t, because Steve’s been lying to her too.

“You can’t,” he says, pulling every emotion out of his voice and sequestering it away, because if any of his secrets were going to be the one to break the camel’s back of their tentative reconciliation, it will be this one. The one Steve’s been hiding behind the excuse of it being their father’s last wish despite the fact that it’s exactly the kind of lie that he’d hated his father for telling. “You didn’t… You left too early.”

He waits for the burst of anger, braces himself for it, but it doesn’t come. Shirley is gritting her teeth and Theo has her arms crossed defensively, and Luke is sitting between them, staring at Steve sadly, but none of them are yelling.

Not yet, anyway.

He tells them everything. The conversation in the car and dad’s cryptic explanations and revelations, the encounters in the hallway, the red room opening to let him in, the woman Luke tried to warn him about (he skips over the dream, because they haven’t talked about theirs and doesn’t that make it okay? And he still can’t shake the fear that he’ll tell Leigh what was said, and she’ll only react to sigh in the relief of knowing she won’t have to say it for herself), the desperate attempts at CPR, Nellie’s monologue. His siblings fidget uncomfortably throughout his explanation of the parts they already know, he doesn’t know what Leigh is doing because he can’t make himself look at her. He can’t look at his siblings once he reaches the second half of the night, once they perk up when they realize he’s about to reach the parts they don’t know yet.

Parts like dad’s body in the hallway (he hears Shirley’s quiet scoff of disbelief but doesn’t have to look at her to know that it’s more scared than angry), like the deal their dad had made for them, the things he had shown Steve once the others were gone, about the Dudley’s and their mother, and the responsibility and “some things can’t be told.”

The house falls silent, and Steve stares numbly at the tablecloth and tells himself to be ready for whatever they decide to throw at him.

Because it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.

“Okay,” Theo says. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to shelve this whole thing and get some space from each other, and then we’re going to finish this tomorrow.” Her tone offers no room for protest, and Steve is so desperate for someone else to be in charge of this clusterfuck that he wouldn’t dream of arguing. The others seem more hesitant, but it’s a testament to something that no one demands they get it over with tonight.

Maybe there is still progress being made.

Maybe Steve hasn't managed to ruin everything just yet.

Leigh doesn't try to get him to talk to her or try to ask him more questions, once they've gotten everything else taken care of for the night. He's so twisted up and uncomfortable that he almost doesn't want to share the bed with her, but every other place he could have slept is occupied by one of his siblings. She seems to understand it, everything he still can't say, and gives him a wide berth, somehow without ignoring him completely.

"I'm glad you decided to talk about it," is the only thing she tells him. "Even if it took you a while."

He wants to believe that it could be that simple. That he could possibly do something to deserve her, but knows better.

She turns away from him as she falls asleep, and Steve finds himself staring at the back of her head, wondering where the catch is.

He doesn't have to wait long.

The theoretical relief of having so many of his worst secrets exposed is in no way able to outweigh the stress of everything falling apart around him. He falls asleep at some point during the hours of anxious deliberation, winds up caught between layers of suffocating mold and decay, and wakes up screaming in his living room, staring down at Luke's terror-stricken face.

The sound of footsteps echoes through the house, and Steve is painfully aware of how his legs shake unsteadily beneath him. He fumbles behind him and sits down heavily on the edge of the coffee table, burying his face in his knees and trying to catch his breath, all too painfully aware of the way Luke is staring at him.

Crazy, like their mother.

“What happened?” Theo asks, a note of anxiety betraying her otherwise bland tone.

Luke stumbles over his words in his haste to explain, “I don’t, I don’t know. He was walking around in here, sleepwalking? I tried to get his attention, and he woke up.”

Luke and Theo are probably too young to remember, but Shirley goes still as she recalls. ‘Stevie’s being creepy in the hallway again.’ Dad eventually had to teach her how to take him back to his room herself, when things had gotten so bad they were worried he’d leave the house and get hit by a car before their parents woke up.

“I thought you stopped that when you were ten,” she says, asks? He can’t tell, he’s still having trouble breathing.

He straightens up a little, exhaustion and lingering panic leaving his muscles uncooperative. “Started again,” he says, the only explanation he has to offer. “The other night. Your phone call woke me up.”

There is an uncertain silence. “When you said you were getting worse…” Theo starts, and then trails off, like she doesn’t want to finish.

Steve grimaces. “That’s part of it.”

No one seems to want to ask what the rest of it is, and Steve doesn’t know where to start.

Someone finally looks at the clock to find it’s four in the morning, which is determined to be too early to have any kind of conversation. Leigh tries to convince him to come back to bed, but Steve has no intention of going back to sleep and sequesters himself away in his office instead.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before they come to find him.

“What’s the worst of it?” Theo asks, “The thing we can’t go further without addressing?”

A solid question, but not one Steve knows how to answer. He has no idea what’s bad and worse and normal and not, anymore.

The silence stretches, and they shift uncomfortably at the realization that this question is nearly impossible for him to answer.

“I’m not sleeping,” he settles on finally. Sleep deprivation is bad and can make symptoms worse, can create symptoms of its own. Of the things to address, it’s something relatively simple that can have a variety of impacts. Not a bad answer.

They seem skeptical. Steve doesn’t understand why they would be. It’s not like they know what’s normal for him and what isn’t.

“Sleep deprivation can contribute to hallucinations,” he says defensively. “It’s only been a few months; stress and grief can make it worse, too.”

Shirley laughs incredulously. “Really Steve?” she asks, “After everything that’s happened, you’re still pushing the mental illness angle?”

Her question may be valid, but it makes a swirl of anger and disorientation rise up from his chest to choke him. “I don’t know what to think,” he snarls, and takes an awful satisfaction in the surprise on her face. “I’ve been dealing with this for years, and it was fine because at least I understood what was happening. I knew what to expect and I knew what it was, and now I don’t know a single fucking thing. How am I supposed to be able to tell the difference between what’s ghosts and what isn’t?” The brief anger drains out of him all at once, leaving him feeling shaky and unsteady. “I knew what was real and what wasn’t, and now I just feel like I’m losing my mind twice as fast.”

No one has a neat comeback for that one.

It was never going to be easy, and things were never going to be simple. It was never going to be a problem solved in a week, no matter what Theo and Shirl thought when they took time off of work.

They take turns staying awake while he tries to sleep, to wake him up when he has nightmares or starts to get up, and every time he rises back to consciousness whoever is there just looks worse and worse, and Steve doesn’t know if it’s the sleep they’re losing or if it’s because they hadn’t thought it would be this bad.

He’s not the only one wildly out of their depth here.

They all have lives to get back to.

 Steve’s just the only one who isn’t sure that his will be worth it.

The only reassurance he really gets comes from the startled glances his siblings start to send into the corners he stares at.

It was hard to say if it was the stress of two family deaths and a healthy burden of new trauma causing worsening symptoms or if everything was just the house coming after Steve with a vengeance now that it had missed out on having him once again. Steve definitely hadn't been able to tell, but it had made hiding things a hell of a lot harder than it used to be.

Which means when Steve starts to drift out of conversations to stare at something behind his siblings, they're actually paying attention enough to notice.

The only good thing that comes of it is when they turn around quickly enough to see.

"Does she ever leave you alone?" Theo asks, swallowing thickly as her eyes trace their mother's figure across the hallway.

Steve shrugs. "Sometimes," which is technically not a lie, since he can go hours without seeing her some days, and if that's just because he's pointedly not looking then that's just that. 

No one is talking about going back to their homes.

Steve can tell it's because they're worried he'll do something stupid if they leave.

He's not so sure that they're wrong.

Steve would wonder if this is just how his life is going to work now, odd hesitations in conversation and a bizarre dreamlike quality haunting the corners of his vision, but is it really so different than it was before? Wasn't it already like that to begin with?

He wonders why he just can't handle it like he used to.

"You have to let them help you," Nell tells him, her hands gripped tight around his wrists in a way that hurts all the way down to the bones.

"I'm trying," he tells her, honestly.

But she shakes her head and jostles his arms like she's trying to emphasize something. She looks so scared that he wants to understand what she's trying to tell him as much as he doesn't.

He looks down to the sight of spilling blood and open veins full of mold and rot.

He wakes up gasping for breath, eyes locking with Theo's wide ones, her grip on his wrist an echo of Nell's.

They stare at each other with twin terror, and he'd pull away if he didn't already know that it was too late. Can tell by the expression Theo hides behind her hands as she finally steps away, and when she opens her eyes again, he can see the years of his own pent-up fear and desperation hiding behind him.

It's like looking into a mirror. It's like waking up to his worst nightmare come to life, because for a moment, there is no distinguishing between them, and it's everything Steve's ever been scared of. His siblings winding up just like him, with that look on their face and that terror in their eyes.

(Crazy, like their mother.)

(Crazy, like their brother.)

“The house is trying to kill Steve,” Theo announces to the room, and Steve is taken by the childish urge to cover her mouth with his hand.

(He doubts it would work. It hadn’t worked when they were kids, either.)

(Theo was never much of a tattletale, but she had her moments.)

“What the hell does that mean?” Shirley asks, hands frozen over the cutting board she has perched on the countertop. Leigh and Luke are equally frozen, wide eyes fixed on Theo and the way Steve is practically hunched behind her; as if he could find a way to hide from their realizations.

“She’s being dramatic,” he mutters, but doesn’t try to straighten up.

Theo rolls her eyes at him, but doesn’t quite argue and doesn’t try to elaborate, she just stares out at the group of everyone else expectantly. As if anyone would instinctively know how to respond to a statement like that.

Luke is the first one to speak up, “Like Nell?” he asks, voice hesitant.

The fact of the matter is that no one is really sure what happened with Nell. She’d told them what she’d told them, but there hadn’t been time to delve into the days or weeks before she’d gone back to the house. Steve doesn’t know what she had been thinking, what had made her think it was a good idea to go, what had pushed her to that point.

The only thing Steve knows is this: she had called, and he hadn’t answered.

(It was practical; he was at work, and he couldn’t just drop a conversation with a person every time one of his siblings called. It was thoughtless; Nell called a lot, and sometimes it wasn’t a big deal, sometimes she just liked to talk about her day. It was bitter; she’d interrupted the signing and talked a lot of shit, Steve was allowed to be mad at her for it. It was cruel; Steve had and handled his breakdowns just fine alone, why couldn’t she?)

(It was this: It was all his fault.)

“Steve,” Theo says, and he jerks back into awareness, realizes that they’re all staring at him expectantly, but he hadn’t been paying attention.

“What?” he asks, voice hoarse. How long had he been spacing out?

The uncertain glances they share with one another inspires no hope.

Theo spends almost an hour sitting with him, teaching him what she calls ‘grounding techniques’; to “keep you from getting lost”. He can see how it could be helpful.

He knows better than to think it would fix everything.

They go out to dinner that evening, the week is half done and it’s Leigh’s idea, a desperate grab at normalcy and break in pattern. Disrupt the monotony, get out of the house and the tension for a while, it’s not a bad idea. Steve is almost looking forward to it.

A woman with a small child pressed close to her legs stops him as he’s following his family into the restaurant.

“Do you know where we are?” she asks, and she seems nervous. Steve doesn’t know what kind of situation you have to be in to be lost in a relatively busy part of a big city on a Thursday evening, but the urge to help overrides any paranoia. The fact that her son looks almost eerily similar to Luke doesn’t help at all in that regard.

“Yeah, you’re in Los Angeles, California,” he tells her, voice soft and body carefully out of her space. “There’s a police station just down the street from here,” he points in the right direction, “Is there someone I can call for you?”

She opens her mouth to speak, he’s startled by a hand on his elbow.

“Steve, what’s the holdup?” Shirley asks, eyebrows raised.

He gestures, “I was just,” he turns back to the woman and recoils at the sight of bloodied and broken figures, eyes wide and pleading, before they’re gone, and Steve is left breathing harshly in their wake. He swallows harshly, pushes his phone back into his pocket, and shakes his head, “Nothing. Come on, let’s go in.”

He walks past her, knowing he probably is expected to tell the truth but having no desire to do so, and Shirley lingers where he’d left her, staring out at the empty street and trying to understand.

“What kept you?” Leigh asks, reaching out to wrap an arm around his waist, and Steve has to fight the urge to push her off, thoughts still caught on bloodstained skin and tire tread bruises.

He waves off the threat of her concern. “Thought I saw someone I knew,” he says, the lie falling off his tongue with years practiced ease.

“Who were you talking to?” Shirley demands in turn, dropping into her seat at the table with an air of something bitter and scared. He should have guessed that she was close enough to hear. “Was it mom?”

“It wasn’t mom,” he says, voice loud to stave off the clatter of silverware and voices as the implication settles in for everyone else. “I don’t know who it was; some woman and her kid.”

Theo is already glancing around for a waiter, “The grounding only works if you’re actually trying to stay focused on what’s alive and real,” she tells him, not quite scathing – yet.

He wants to laugh. He wants to leave. He stays firm in his seat and keeps his hands from curling into angry shapes around the tablecloth. “That only works if I can tell the difference,” he points out. “Am I just supposed to ignore everyone who tries to talk to me from here on out?”

That makes them falter.

“They really just look alive to you?”

“Mom and Nell are only out of place because I know they’re already dead. If I didn’t know, I’d say they’re just as alive as the rest of you.” He pauses, then makes himself add, “It’s always been like that; it’s not a big deal.”  

Dinner is quiet. Steve can’t help but feel that he’s ruined this too.

It's been a good morning. He'd only been woken up twice the night before, and that's more sleep than he's had in weeks. No one wants to say anything about it, just in case they somehow ruin the respite, but the thick dread that's permeated the house since the night before everyone showed up has almost completely dissipated.

Steve isn't stupid enough to think that it all might just go away, but he can at least hope that he can go back to his baseline normal, can't he?

The others are all waiting on the day when Steve wakes up fine, normal and healthy, and they can all feel safe about the decision to go back to their lives and leave him on his own again. Steve doesn't have the heart to tell them that it's probably never going to happen.

Even if the house is, as Theo puts it, trying to kill him, it's not like Steve hadn't missed out on the concept of normalcy decades before he landed a role as its caretaker.

No matter what winds up happening, no matter how things wind up developing, there's never going to be a clean conclusion to these issues. The goal to be 'fixed' is never going to come to fruition. This haunting was hereditary, Steve was born in it and he'll die in it.

Whether that comes to pass sooner or later is all up to him, isn't it? But he's managed this well so far.

If nothing else, that counts for something. 

Probably, at least.