Chapter Text
Head pounding, Steve downed the Tyllenol.
Tucking the medicine into the pocket of his jacket, he threw back a glass of water, just to ease the passage a bit, and coughed when it went down the wrong way. Quietly, though. Didn’t want to disturb the kids.
Steve glanced behind him at the thought. Yep, there they were: still asleep. Max was slumped in an armchair, auburn hair spilling out of her bun and into her mouth; Lucas was sitting against the wall, chin on his chest; Dustin was spread-eagled on the floor, making such a ridiculous face that Steve chuckled.
Honestly, they were cute. Thinking they’d be able to watch Steve all night, then falling asleep barely an hour in. These guys were amateurs at babysitting, at best.
Steve’s smile flickered as guilt crept in. These kids had dealt with a lot, even without considering the past couple of days. They just wanted to make sure he was safe. As was their right, he guessed.
It wasn’t their fault he couldn’t fall asleep.
Steve sighed, setting the glass back onto the table where he’d found it. It’d probably been used, but, hey, he was going to die tomorrow. It wasn’t like he was picky.
He’d meant to walk back over to the couch--maybe pretend to sleep--but instead, found a haze settling over his mind, making him bend over and press his hands against the table as his vacant eyes traced the grain of the wood.
Steve was bone tired. He had been for weeks. If it’d just been the terror of knowing that these were his last few hours on Earth, he probably would’ve been able to sleep fine. But, of course, there were the nightmares.
Even now--staring at nothing, barely even thinking beyond just wisps of detached emotion, drifting through his mind--he involuntarily shuddered. Those dreams… they weren’t normal. They were real. He could touch them, see them. For a guy who’d never had a dream more realistic than an episode of a TV show--props to teenage imagination, I guess--that was a signifier that something was wrong.
But even more damning was that the nightmares didn’t scare him.
Well, no, that was wrong. They freaking terrified him. He woke up in a cold sweat every night, and his thoughts ran in panicked circles for a solid half an hour before he could calm down. But he never woke up screaming, never jumped at every shadow and breath of the wind.
Usual nightmares, Steve was pretty sure, made you fear for your life. Honestly, the fact that these nightmares didn’t probably should have clued him in that a mind wizard who knew his every secret was spying on him.
Steve was never scared for himself.
Finally, Steve tugged his brain back ashore and straightened, studying the kids.
They had a plan. They always did, shitty or not. And they usually worked. But it wouldn’t this time.
Steve couldn’t be saved. He was literally a walking corpse. They had no clue who Vecna was, why he was doing this, or what could stop him. Upstairs, Nancy and Robin were planning like crazy, trying to find a clue or even the barest of hints as to how to save him.
Outwardly, Steve supported them: Hey, hey, Robin, calm down. Why would I be worried? You guys got this or Come on, you guys are always the ones who figure this kind of stuff out, I’m just along for the ride or Look, I’ll punch Vecna in the face when I see him, okay? It’ll be fine. But inwardly, Steve was resigned to his fate. He was dead. There was nothing anyone could do. And he was fine with that.
He was just terrified for the ones he’d have to leave behind.
Steve swallowed the wave of panic that crept up his throat, suffered the dizziness that made him want to keel over, all while keeping a smile on his face. He knew no one was there to see, but habits were hard to break.
It was the Harrington Code. Fake it ‘till you make it. Or, you know, die at the hands of an evil wizard from an alternate dimension.
Steve hesitated.
His parents. They didn’t know.
Don’t get him wrong: they were the worst parents on the face of the planet, except for maybe Max’s stepdad, and there wasn’t a chance in Hell that Steve would waste the last few hours of his life on them. But against it all, he didn’t want to just leave them without a word. He didn’t want them to--to forget him.
“ God, that sounds stupid,” Steve muttered, dragging a hand across his face and turning away from the kids. He began to pace almost without consciously realizing it. “You don’t want them to forget you? What’s that supposed to mean, Harrington? They’re your parents. I think Mom’d remember giving birth to you, even if she was just annoyed at the effort on her part.”
Wow, those are interesting opinions of yours, Harrington. You have mommy issues?
“First off, obviously. Second--what’re we playing here, devil’s advocate? I’m supposed to be talking to you, not the other way around.”
Yeah, um, sorry about that. Just wondering when you’re going to realize that you’re talking to yourself in an empty room, despite there being three people you could wake up instead.
“They’re kids, Harrington. They need sleep.”
And you don’t? You’re going to die tomorrow.
“Yeah, exactly. A little missed sleep isn’t going to matter.”
And time with them isn’t? You don’t know when Vecna’s going to strike. You don’t know how much time you have. What if you never talk to Nancy or Robin again? What if the last thing you say to Lucas is “pass the Eggos”?
“Okay, now you’re just being stupid. And there’s nothing wrong with me. Obviously, I am a completely sane individual, who… talks to himself… in his ex’s basement…”
Steve’s pacing came to a stop. He sighed.
Against his will, images of Chrissy and Fred’s mangled bodies surfaced in his mind. Their limbs, twisted and broken. Their eyes, spilled out on their cheeks. Their mouths, stretched into an eternal scream.
They had the headaches. The nightmares. The--the trauma.
That’s why they were gone.
That’s why they were dead.
Shit. He was really going to die.
Steve swallowed again, blinking rapidly. It was the lamps’ fault. They were too bright. Honestly, how had no one replaced them yet?
That’s when he realized his hands were trembling.
Steve breathed in sharply through his mouth, squeezing his hands into fists. After a few seconds, the shaking stopped.
What was wrong with him?
“I need something to do,” he muttered.
There were some pillows and blankets stored in the back; he unfolded and refolded them, shaking out the bugs and the dust before sorting them by color. He briefly considered building a fort out of them and some old chairs scattered across the basement, but, you know, he wasn’t twelve. Steve skimmed through a cookbook until he got to a recipe for meatloaf that reminded him too much of a certain Meat Puppet from about a year back. He briefly rifled through a storage bin in the corner, filled with tapes that Nancy had grown out of: Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, even a Bonnie Tyler tape. Which, you know, bummer. Ooh, Michael Jackson!
Steve swiped a cassette player from a sleeping Max, and popped in “Smooth Criminal”, before quickly realizing that a song about a murder wouldn’t really be a good idea at the moment and swapped it out for “Beat It”.
After a few more minutes of poking around in the basement and refusing to think about his future, Steve finally flopped into a wooden chair in front of a desk, humming limply along to the music that pulsed from Max’s headphones.
He was tired. Honestly, if he stopped for a moment, he’d probably fall asleep in seconds. And there wasn’t much he could do in the middle of the night.
Steve was debating the pros and cons of sleep--you might get a heads-up as to what Vecna’ll throw at you; you’ll put yourself a few hours closer to death--when he noticed something on the desk in front of him. Smooth and white, the stack of paper gleamed in the light of the lamp next to it.
And next to it… was a box of pencils.
Maybe… Steve didn’t have to leave them behind.
And so, bobbing his head to a song about determination and injustice (desperately trying not to think about having to write essays for school), Steve pulled a pencil out of the box…
And he wrote.