Chapter Text
The bats are so much worse than the Demo-dogs. At least those were large enough to plough through with a baseball bat. At least those were a target Steve could aim for. These bats may as well be bodiless vapours, attacking and disappearing fluidly, making them almost impossible to strike.
Making him totally defenceless.
He feels he must look like some kind of joke, tempting the demonic creatures. Too good to be true. Irresistible. He doubts they often get their meals presenting themselves so easily like this, lying flat on the ground and waiting to be swooped upon.
And God do they bite. They have rows upon rows of rotating teeth, just like the Demo-dogs. But these bats latch onto his flesh like anchors, one right above each of his hip bones, and they feast. Steve screams. And screams. One of them has its tail wrapped around his neck, pulling tighter and slicing through. If he doesn’t get it off soon, it will carve his jugular in two and that will be the end. A particularly bloody way to die.
He kicks his legs, but he can’t get out of the grip. And while he struggles, the other two bats bury their monstrous faces in his skin. They feel like blades - in and out and in and out. There’s so much blood covering the floor, the same colour as the sky, which looks like it’s been swallowed whole by a demon or enveloped by a desert dust storm.
If Steve’s completely honest, he feels vulnerable. Moments away from destruction. The agony blooming in his sides is going right to his head, making everything spin. He can hear a pounding that sounds like waves buffeting a coastline, and the bat around his neck is cutting off circulation to his brain. It’s not long before he loses consciousness, and the rest of the - flock? Pack? What do you call a group of bats? - comes to finish him off.
A colony, Steve remembers with a small smile. Dustin told him once. What wouldn’t he give to see that little shit again now? He could say: “Hey, Henderson. I’m about to be killed by a colony of bats.” Dustin would be so surprised too - surprised and proud. Steve never remembers any of the nerdy facts he shares. There’s a first time for everything. It’s just a shame it had to be here and now.
Steve wakes in sweat. That isn’t unusual. Since Vecna was killed, nightmares have been commonplace. Actually, since all this started, even when it was just Demo-dogs, sleep has been less of a friend to Steve and more of a hurdle. Something to be conquered. Something to avoid.
He lies still for a moment. It’s usually all it takes to calm his racing heartbeat. The techniques are almost second nature now, something he’s mastered since his war with sleep began. It’s easy to switch from the panicked state he awakes in to something akin to normal - so similar, in fact, that it would fool anyone else watching from the outside. The only person who knows Steve will never feel properly relaxed or safe or normal again is Steve himself.
Odd. It must’ve been a nasty dream - even worse than usual, which is saying something, as all his worst fears and memories seem to play in super definition on the cinema screen in his mind at night. He thinks this because his heart is still ricocheting against the walls of his rib cage, and the sticky cover of sweat still coats his skin.
Maybe what he needs is a glass of water. He tries to manage his thoughts and keep them rational, because he knows that if he stops monitoring them for even a second, they’ll writhe with panic. He’s made that mistake enough times, and it always ends with him calling Robin, who does her best to sound patient and polite, but is most definitely pissed about being woken up at three in the morning.
And besides, Steve is almost an adult. He can handle his own mind. He isn’t a child with a restless imagination - he’s a man who’s seen unimaginable things. There’s a difference. He knows that the monsters he sees behind his eyelids are very much real, unlike the ones kids see under their beds.
But pain shoots through his sides in twin tendrils, slicing up in perfect unison, stemming from the hideous scars that Steve hides within an inch of his life. He isn’t ashamed; he’s just…insecure. The only thing going for him in high school was that he looked perfect - the only thing his parents told him he was good for was looking perfect. Thanks to these scars, he’s got nothing.
He staggers, slamming back against the bed, panting to catch his breath. The scars look innocent enough - smooth and pink, like messy stitches holding together broken skin. As large as a balled fist, shaped like the gaping mouth of the Demo-bats. Looking at them fills him with nausea; he can still taste the acidic bitterness - the dirty blood - of the one he bit in half.
The good news is that the scars don’t look infected. The bad news is that they’re burning. Not just a little bit itchy, but full-on, intense pain. Like someone’s holding a naked flame against each of them, sizzling and melting them into something uglier than they already are. He scratches them, but that makes it worse. They’re screaming, begging him to scrape the fire away. It’s unbearable.
They’re bright red now, covered with the lines left by Steve’s fingernails. His body is still damp, but now there’s heat right in his core. His whole body is shivering, despite the overwhelming heat, and the weak tears that squeeze their way from his eyes are as warm as everything else.
His first thought is that he has a fever. His second thought is that he needs to call Robin, so that someone will know to come round and collect his body if he drops dead. There’s nothing worse than dying at home and being left for days until someone gets worried enough that they come and check, only to find a long-gone, reeking corpse. At least he’s prepared.
“What is it, dingus?” Robin’s voice is hoarse, like she’s just woken up.
“What are the symptoms of rabies?” Steve asks.
There’s silence.
“You woke me up at four to talk about my biggest fear?” She does sound pissed.
“Yes. Can you just tell me? This is important.” He can’t help the slight note of urgency creeping into the last word.
Robin must hear it too, because her tone shifts to something more distressed. That hurts Steve to listen to - Robin has enough difficulty controlling her mind at the best of times, and he knows that. It’s not fair to give her things to stress about when her brain is already a rapid current of pieces that get mixed up in the water, not staying connected or coming out whole. She has enough worries of her own.
“Did you get bitten by a dog?” She asks, “If it’s infected, you need to get to a hospital. Can you drive? No, of course not. If you’ve got rabies you’re probably half-delirious by now. Uh, hold on and I’ll pick you up. I can drive. Can you describe what you’re feeling? In case you pass out or something, and I have to talk to the doctor.”
“Robin.” Steve says, “Breathe.”
“Breathing.” She says, laughing weakly.
“Good. I’m not saying I have rabies. I’m just -” His words merge into a groan as another wave of pain rolls through him, falling heaviest on the scars. His head seems to have its own heartbeat, aching like it’s being squeezed by a tight band all the way across his forehead. Little clusters of what feel like extreme bruises are forming in his temples.
“Steve?” Robin asks, “Do you need me to come over?”
“I’m good.” He says, “Got a bit of a headache. I’ll be fine.”
She sighs. “I swear to God, Steve Harrington, if you’re invalidating your own pain once again because it’s your duty to protect everyone else or something similarly crazy, I will come over there and take care of your sorry little ass. And I’m not listening to any of your excuses - I don’t care if the kids have suffered more, you’re still allowed to be vulnerable every once in a while.”
Vulnerable. Just like when those bats had him pinned down and spread out like a carcass being ripped apart by vultures.
“I get it.” He says, “If I knew I was gonna be verbally attacked, I wouldn’t have called you.”
“That’s what you signed up for by being friends with me - verbal abuse. Calling you names, mainly.” He can hear her smile down the phone. It’s relieving, even though he still feels like he’s in hell. Hearing Robin freak out reminds Steve of being tortured by Russians and makes him feel she's in danger again.
“Why do I put myself through that?” Steve laughs.
“Beats me, dingus.” Robin says, “But, hey…call me if you’re not feeling good. Your voice sounds a little rough. I don’t care how gross it is; I’ve seen you naked before. I can cope with anything.”
“Ew, Rob. Just didn’t get much sleep.” Steve says, “Don’t worry about me, okay? I know how to stay safe.”
“Says the dingus.”
“You’re the one who’s friends with me. I think that makes you the even bigger dingus out of both of us.”
“Fuck. Out dingus-ed by the dingus. I’m having an existential crisis now.”
All the pain reaches a crescendo simultaneously. Steve lies down, his muscles cramping and shaking interchangeably. But there’s something new - like toothache, but worse. It feels more like someone’s ripping his teeth out. Only the canines, though. Like a pair of tongs are severing the roots. His scream is weirdly muffled, and he can hear Robin calling his name down the phone - so much for not freaking her out.
His canine teeth feel like they’re stretching, being elongated until they hardly fit in his mouth. They poke into his bottom lip, drawing a pinprick of blood. It tastes just like the blood of that bat. And the pain - his vision spiralling, his gut twisting with sickness, the ceaseless, impossible to ignore burning of the scars, the weight resting on his head - it all gets too much. Steve feels like he’s being smothered or crushed alive, like he’s about to ignite and go up in flames. Just like that day in the Upside Down, when he thought he was bat food, he feels hopeless.
The same hopelessness surrounds him when he blacks out.