Chapter Text
Stevie scrunches at her hair with a tea towel as she sorts through the first aid kit beneath the sink. She was already in a bad mood and having to find a bandaid for Barbara Holland while soaking wet is not helping the matter. She wishes she could have stuck to her original plans for this evening - smoking the last of the weed in her stash and watching Grease in her underwear, but instead she’s thrown this party and is going to have to try and sleep while hearing Tommy and Carol fuck through the wall. Ordinarily they’d take the guest room at the end of the hall so that this shit could be avoided, but thanks to Danny and Nancy they are going to have to take the one next to her bedroom instead, because there is no chance in hell that she’s going to listen to Nancy fucking Wheeler lose her virginity tonight.
The back door swings open and would have banged into the wall if not for Tommy drunkenly grabbing the handle to steady himself. Carol laughs as she hangs off of him.
“Stevie! Hey!” Tommy laughs. He’s got that dopey grin he always gets when he’s had too much to drink. “We’re - um - we’re going to go upstairs to…”
“To dry off,” Carol finishes. She’s got a smirk on her face that tells Stevie exactly what they’ll really be doing upstairs - as if that wasn’t already immediately obvious. Then, as if to drive the point home, as they stumble past her towards the stairs, the arm Carol has wrapped around Tommy’s waist snakes up under his shirt and Tommy laughs again.
Stevie rolls her eyes.
“Hey, we’re going to go upstairs too,” Danny says, him and Nancy appearing the doorway, just as Stevie hears Tommy fall up the stairs to Carol’s cackling laugh. “Is it okay if Nance borrows something to wear?”
Nancy’s half stood behind Danny, her wet hair clinging to her face and neck. She’s looking nervously between the two of them and holding one of Danny’s hands with both of hers. Stevie would perhaps feel a bit more sympathetic except that Nancy Wheeler is the type of girl that Stevie hates on principle. She is the type of girl, the smart girls, that pride themselves on being above all the high school drama, but still called girls like Stevie and Carol sluts behind their backs. The fact that she has even given Danny Miller the time of day is just further proof of the hypocrisy.
Danny is an alright guy, as far as guys from the basketball team went, better than some, worse than others. Though, Stevie can admit, she judges him much more harshly than she does Tommy, who, having been her best friend since she was 4, gets a lot more grace in terms of how much of an asshole he can be before Stevie has enough of his shit. Danny didn’t join their group until the end of freshman year, when Tommy decided he needed a ‘guy friend’, otherwise people would start thinking he was a queer (the horror) for hanging out with girls all the time. As if that made any fucking sense. She perhaps wouldn’t mind Danny so much if the popularity that came with being their friend didn’t go to his head. He took to being ‘the most popular boy in school’ with extreme glee and it always grinded her gears because she was the one that made him that way. There was also the fact that whenever Tommy and Carol would start making out during their hangouts he would always try to get closer to her, always making passing comments about how much simpler it would be if they got together so these could be double dates instead. Which takes her right back around to agreeing to host this party so he could impress Nancy fucking Wheeler.
Stevie really didn’t feel like handing out some clothes to a girl she had only had a few conversations with, but she is well versed at this point at hiding her annoyance and clenches her toes in her wet shoes instead of grinding her teeth.
“Of course,” she says through a false smile. “Just take something out of the first chest of drawers you come to in my room. It’s the first door on the left at the top of the stairs.”
Nancy gives a sweet smile that makes Stevie’s teeth hurt. “Thank you.” She looks at Danny once before letting go of his hand to move towards the stairs.
Stevie grabs Danny’s wrist when he moves to follow. Her smile had vanished the second that Nancy had turned her back and her face settled into what Tommy and Carol affectionately dubbed her ‘bitch face.’
“You’re taking her to the room at the end of the hall,” she hisses.
“Jeez, Stevie I know-”
“I mean it. The room at the end of the hall. You are not doing anything in my bedroom because if you do, you’ll finally get your wish of me laying a hand on your dick, but trust me, it won’t be a pleasurable experience”
Danny grimaces.
“You owe me for this, Miller. You owe me big”
“Don’t worry,” he says through a little laugh that only makes Stevie scowl harder. “You’re the best. I mean it. I’ll pay you back for this somehow” he shakes off her hand and takes a few steps towards the stairs, before turning back with a teasing grin. “Who knows, maybe when you finally find a guy that’s up to your standards I can be the wingman for you for a change”
“Ugh!” Stevie groans, throwing a handful of bandaids at his back, which was very unsatisfying since they fluttered in different directions towards the floor before they could even get to him.
Danny goes up the stairs with a laugh.
Stevie sighs and turns back to the first aid kit on the counter. She tries to run a hand through her hair like she always does when she’s frustrated, but grimaces when it gets caught in a wet, tangled knot. Since she doesn’t have a scrunchie on hand she settles for twisting her hair up onto the top her head and sticking a fork handle through it as a temporary hold.
Barb looks extra pathetic now she’s on her own. She’s sat at the end of the diving board, the pool gently rippling as she moves her feet back and forth. Her coat is still on, even though Stevie knows from experience that the heat from the pool makes you feel especially warm when you’re sat that close, even on cold nights like these. She’s hunched in on herself, still pressing the tea towel that Stevie had handed her against her bleeding palm.
“Hey,” Barb jumps at the sound of her voice, and cranes her neck around to look. Stevie holds up the bandaid. “Got you this”
Barb twists where she’s sat and does a funny sort of crawl to get off the diving board. Stevie sucks on her teeth so she doesn’t laugh. She could be a bitch, but she did have a line and she thinks laughing at a girl bleeding alone in the dark definitely qualified as going over it.
“Here,” she hands her the bandaid and the wipe. “I’m gonna go shower, you can take care of that and…get going I guess.” Sure, maybe she feels a little bad that everyone would be staying over but her, but the only other room left was her parents, so that wasn’t going to happen, and like hell was she about to offer up her own bed.
“Thanks,” Barb says as she takes the proffered items, not sounding particularly sincere about it. “I’m Nancy’s ride so I’ll wait”
Stevie snorts and glances up to the lit window where she knows Danny and Nancy are right now - though in what state of dress they’re in she doesn’t really want to think on. She especially doesn’t want to think about whether Nancy had a chance to change into some of Stevie’s clothes before Danny inevitably took them back off of her.
“Yeah,” Stevie draws out the word, a bit of mean laughter in her voice that she can’t quite stifle. “I think you’ll be waiting a long time”
Barb follows her gaze to the lit window, scoffs, and looks down to her injured hand. She fumbles a bit with the packaging on the bandaid. Stevie turns to go back in the house, wanting nothing more than to have a hot shower and wake up to a day where she can forget this night ever happened, but stops when she hears Barb hiss through her teeth. She drops her head forward until her chin is almost touching her chest and swears under her breath, before turning back around.
“Come here,” she says, grabbing the bandaid and wipe from her. “If you’re going to be a baby about it”
Barb glares and then pointedly looks away towards the pool as Stevie unwraps the towel from her hand. She frowns a bit at the mess of blood around the neat slice to the palm of her hand, but, well, Stevie had seen worse. She’s on the soccer team and has seen enough bloody hands and knees to last a life time. Last year, Amy C had underestimated her momentum and slid into Beth Wildfire when trying to score on her goal - her bone had stuck out of her leg and everything. That had been horrific, sometimes Stevie can still hear Beth screaming. All the other girls had panicked and huddled around her at a distance. Coach Wilson had put his arm around Beth and tried to soothe her, while shouting to Lisa to go and grab the school nurse. Stevie was the only one willing to get close enough to put her hands on Beth’s leg to help to stop the bleeding. That was leagues worse than this.
She rips open the antiseptic wipe with her teeth and starts to clean up the blood as gently as she can. Barb hisses through her teeth again and Stevie looks up at the side of her face to see her jaw clench.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s not that bad. I think it’s safe to say you won’t lose the hand”
The joke gets no reaction and Stevie sighs. God, but does she hate girls like this. Stuck up prisses that won’t thaw for anything. She’s known enough of them. Girls that get partnered with her in class and take Stevie’s apparently stupid questions as some sort of manipulation tactic to get them to do the work for her. Never mind the fact that if they never answer the questions she’s never going to fucking learn. Girls that reassure themselves that it doesn’t matter that they’re not popular because they’re smart and going places. God, what a fucking joke. As if anyone who lives in Hawkins ever really got out at all.
“All done,” Stevie says as she smooths the bandaid across her palm.
This finally gets a reaction. Barb looks down at her hand and then moves her hands away from Stevie so that she can shove them in her pockets instead. For a second it almost looks like she’s going to thank her, but instead she looks up at the window to the room at the end of the hall. Stevie glances up too. The light is off now.
“Is she really up there with him?” Barb asks.
Stevie’s brows raise and she scoffs a little. “And I would lie about that, because…”
Barb shakes her head. “Nancy doesn’t do stuff like this. She doesn’t lie to her parents about where she’s going, she doesn’t drink, she doesn’t ditch me to go up to a bedroom with some guy. She isn’t like-”
Barb cuts herself off, but Stevie hears the end of her sentence regardless and she feels a mean little smirk come onto her face. The one that always riles up whoever she is talking to. The one that she and Carol both share, which means they are never quite able to trick anyone into believing they’re ‘nice, young girls.’
“Like me?” Barb glares at her words and Stevie gives an amused huff. “Well, she did do all those things. With pleasure actually.” Barb keeps glaring and it sucks any of the amusement Stevie had at the situation out of her and she glares right back. “No one forced you to come here, you know, except maybe Wheeler, that so called ‘good girl’ who did actually ditch you”
“Don’t talk about her like that” Barb snaps.
Stevie rolls her eyes. “Je-sus, lighten up. You’ve been a misery guts all evening. If you’d just relax a bit maybe you could have even had a little fu-”
She thinks her brain stops working right about then.
Barb screams.
Barb falls.
Barb is dragged back into the pool.
Stevie’s had too many training drills when she’s lifeguarding at the pool to do anything but jump in after her.
Something’s dragging Barb down, and it is a something. A dark blur that Stevie can’t make out more of than a clawed hand around Barb’s ankle. She tries to reach out for Barb, but it’s dragging her faster than Stevie is swimming.
Barb is gone.
There is a hole at the bottom of her pool, which makes no fucking sense since none of the water is draining out, but there is a hole at the bottom of her pool and Barb had disappeared into it. Maybe if Stevie could think she would have swam back to the surface. Maybe if Stevie could think she wouldn’t have dove right in after her. But she can’t and she does and then and then…
“What the f-fuck”
She’s sat back on her knees and her breath stutters and gasps from her chest as she looks around with wide eyes. She’s…somewhere, because, well, she has to be somewhere, but where that is she has no fucking idea. It’s a pit, or…some sort of pit, or…no…an empty pool. An empty pool that’s filled with some grey-black (what the fuck) vines. She soaking wet and freezing and surrounded by vines. They drip something viscous and she doesn’t think about how she’s kneeling in that right now. Barb is on her hands and knees a little distance away, hacking and sputtering as she chokes up water.
“What the fuck” Stevie says again, with more feeling this time.
“That - that thing,” Barb manages to get out before she's back to coughing and hacking. When she’s got her breath back she sits up on her knees and turns to look at Stevie. One of the lenses on her glasses is cracked. “The t-thing that g-grabbed me…where is it?”
For a second Stevie couldn’t breathe. In the face of everything, she had forgotten about that. Forgotten that the reason they’re…wherever the fuck they are is because of that clawed, blurred something that had grabbed Barb and dragged her down. She doesn’t know what it could be. Doesn’t even want to think about what it could be. Especially doesn’t want to think about what it would do to them if it got them.
They’re in an empty pool, vines climbing up on every side, the three step ladder too high for them to reach without the water. She doesn’t know what that thing is. Doesn’t know what it will do once it gets them (kill them, kill them, kill them). Doesn’t know where they are. One thing she does know, is they cannot stay in this fucking pool. They’re fish in a barrel and Stevie sure as hell doesn’t want to wait around to get shot.
“We need to get out of here,” Stevie gasps, she puts her hands out to push herself unsteadily to her feat. A voice in the back of her head is saying ew ew ew when she lays her hands on those vines. She moves over to the side of the pool and waves an impatient hand at Barb. “Come on, I’ll give you a boost.”
She’ll have to, she knows. There’s no way Barb would be able to climb out of here, but with the help of the vines, Stevie thinks she’ll manage. She’s captain of the soccer and swim teams; she’s fit, she can even do more pull ups than Tommy, which has been a point of pride to her for years. She can get out of here, but Barb definitely won’t be able to unless Stevie lets her go first.
For a second Barb doesn’t move.
“Come on!” Stevie snaps, impatient and terrified.
Barb scrambles to her feet and comes over to her, almost tripping over the vines in her haste. Stevie bends her knees, locks her fingers together and holds out her hands, the way she did for Carol when they had to jump the Davidson’s fence when the cops had broken up Tina’s Halloween party last month. Barb’s feet are bare, she must have taken them off when she was dipping them in the pool, she puts a foot on Stevie’s hands and braces herself with a hand on her shoulder.
“When you get up there, just start running, I’ll catch up,” Barb nods and then Stevie is heaving her up. She staggers for a moment under Barb’s weight, but then she’s got enough of a hold on the ground above to pull herself up and out of the pool.
Stevie backs up several steps, eyes mapping the vines on the side of the pool until she finds one that she thinks will be the best hand hold, then she runs and leaps. She grabs at the vine (ew ew ew) and almost slips back down before the tips of her converse manage to find purchase on the vines below her. She pulls herself up until she can grab at another vine on the ground above the pool. She’s just in the process of pulling herself up when her leg is grabbed. She yells out. Only the fact that her hands had instinctively clenched in her fear kept her from falling.
“Stevie!” Barb calls, panicked from some distance away.
Stevie looks down behind her. She really wishes she hadn’t. It’s a tall thing, huge and terrifying. Its grey and slimy like the vines that surround them. It’s arms were almost the same length as it's fucking body which was creepy in the same way spider legs are. One arm is outstretched, it’s clawed hand wrapped around Stevie’s leg, just below her knee. She whimpers as she looks at the size of those claws. Razor sharp, each as long as one of Stevie’s fingers. Then it’s head…it’s head fucking opens, peeling outwards like the petals of some horrific, fucked up flower, teeth fucking everywhere inside. It lets out ear splitting shriek. Stevie screams and Barb yells out for her again.
Her hair had already come loose from the temporary hold from swimming in the pool, the fork barely holding it together at the base of her neck, but now it falls out completely and, miraculously, the fork falls right into the creatures gaping maw. The shriek turns into a garbled choke as it’s head closes back up and it tosses it from side to side. Stevie uses the distraction to kick out with her other leg, nailing it in the head. It’s claws scrape right down, knee to ankle, as it falls back. She pulls herself up out of the pool, even as she’s crying out at the sudden, blistering pain. She stumbles onto her hands and knees and then quickly pushes herself up and onto her feet, starting to run to where Barb is stood, wide eyed and terrified, by the gate at the side of Stevie’s house.
“Run!”
Barb whirls around, pushing open the gate and Stevie follows. She’s faster than Barb, soon catching up and overtaking her, but her hand shoots out to grab at Barb’s wrist to make sure she doesn’t fall behind. They run down the drive, then the street, then the next and the next, all the while Stevie is letting out a stream of words consisting only of what the fuck, what the fuck, this is crazy, this is crazy. They’re three streets away when they slow to a jog and then to a stop. Stevie is gasping for breath. Barb is bent at the waist, clutching her side and wheezing. For a minute they just stand there, dazed and catching their breath. Barb straightens up and they catch each other’s eyes. For another minute they are still, staring at each other, neither knowing what to say. Finally:
“Seriously, what the actual fuck!” Stevie finally exclaims.
Barb just shakes her head. She’s soaking wet and shaking all over. Her glasses are askew on her face, cheeks red and tears streaming down them. Stevie isn’t crying. She isn’t a crier. Ever since she was little, she would always just disappear to a place in her head and stay there until she felt settled enough to come back. She can’t even do that now. Can’t even let herself sit in her utter fucking terror, because if she does…if she does then what the hell is she meant to do then? For the first time in her life she wishes she was a crier. She used to be relieved that she wasn’t. In middle school she was the girl that threw punches at the people that looked at her wrong, the girl that rolled around in the dirt with the boy that ate an earthworm on a dare, she didn’t need anyone having the ammunition of seeing her fucking cry, but now…now she just wishes she could get this awful, sickening feeling out of her chest. She feels like she could burst with it, but it is all just stuck there, writhing.
“Where are we?” Stevie asks. Her voice is meek in the way that Stevie’s voice never is.
“I don’t know,” Barb says back.
They look around. It’s Grove Avenue. Stevie had walked down it hundreds of times. Danny lives right down the street. It looks familiar in an awful, haunting way. All the houses are there, the mailboxes, the cars, there’s even the trellis on the side of Rachel Sander’s house that Danny had once climbed to sneak into her bedroom window. But in all the ways it’s familiar, it’s also really, really not. There are still vines everywhere, though not as densely packed as they were in the pool. There’s still concrete, but they’re snaking up the side of houses and around cars. Everything is dark, grey and dank. The whole street looking old and rotting - sick. Even the sky isn’t the sky anymore, just as dark and grey as the rest of this place, swirling clouds of something writhing around up there.
“How do we get home?” Barb asks.
“I don’t know,” Stevie says back.
She can see her breath in front of her and she’s suddenly really aware that she is fucking freezing. There’s no feeling of wind, if anything the air feels oppressive the same way it does when it’s hot and humid, but instead it’s just a constant, oppressing cold. She also notices that, despite the lack of wind, there’s stuff, floating in the air like ash, though she can’t imagine anything could burn here. She shivers and wraps her arms around her waist. She’s soaking wet, her clothes clinging uncomfortably, her feet chafing in her wet shoes. Her leg is fucking throbbing. It’s the only part of her that feels warm, blood soaking through her jeans and pooling at her sock.
There’s a guttural growl from somewhere behind them, interspersed with a strange sort of clicking, the sort of sound bugs make late at night, but louder and infinitely more terrifying. Stevie turns her head to catch Barb’s eyes, they share a look of complete and total fear, before they turn around. The monster is at the end of the street, in all it’s terrifying glory. Barb screams as she gets her first look at the awful thing that’s hunting them. The monster’s head peels open and it makes that awful, awful shriek again. Barb lets out another scream.
“Into the house! Into the fucking house!”
They run to Rachel Sander’s house and push on the door until it opens, the rotting lock giving way with just a little bit of force. Stevie slams it behind them. Barb stumbles forward until she can press her back against the living room wall, knocking into the photos hanging there until they smash at her feet. Stevie whirls around and thanks her lucky fucking stars that the Sander’s are apparently the sort of paranoid people that keep a baseball bat by the side of the door. She grabs it and holds it ready, staring at the door. Apparently that was the wrong place to look because a moment later the monster comes smashing through the front window. They both scream. The monster reaches out those long limbs, it’s lower half still stuck in the window, Stevie stumbles back and throws out an arm in front of Barb - not as though Barb was suicidal enough to want to get any fucking closer. She thinks about playing baseball with Tommy in the old junkyard, she thinks about when she was little and her dad still called her slugger and would play with her in the yard. She thinks not today, you motherfucker and swings the bat.
“Go out the back!” She shouts as she nails the thing in the head. The monster screeches and she swings again, bringing the bat down on the fucking arm as it tries to take a swipe, she smashes it down onto the coffee table, the wooden legs breaking under the force of the hit. She hears doors slam open as Barb follows her order. She swings one more time, as hard as she can, this time at the thing’s head, and then she runs.
The kitchen is behind the living room, the back door, still open, coming off of it. The garden is big and the back gate at the far end of it is also open from Barb running through. They’re lucky that it’s a garden that backs onto the next street instead of another yard. Stevie catches up to Barb, her leg is aching and raw and so fucking painful that she can barely keep pace with her now that it’s really set in, let alone pass her in speed. It’s taking everything in her not to let it buckle out from under her. This time they don’t stop running. They don’t trust that they’ve lost the thing, they run and run and run.
They run until Barb stumbles, until she stops, clutching at her chest, gasping “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she lets out a choking sort of sob and Stevie stands and shakes next to her. “I’m sorry, I can’t run anymore”
“It’s okay,” Stevie gasps.
She thinks if Barb hadn’t stopped right then, Stevie probably would have collapsed regardless. Her knee buckles as her leg throbs and throbs and throbs. She waves her arms out and awkwardly manages to catch herself on the window ledge at the front of Winston’s Hardware. They heave and gasp for a minute. Stevie desperately wants to sit. She wants to curl up around her injured leg like a sick dog, but she thinks if she did that she wouldn’t be able to get back up. She’s terrified. She’s wet and cold and fucking bleeding and she is terrified. It’s nothing like she’s ever felt before. Nothing like having a nightmare as a kid, nothing like feeling nervous before a soccer match, nothing like the time she climbed that big oak tree in Tommy’s garden and Mr Hagen had to help her down. This is real, bone-deep terror. She’s so scared she feels sick with it.
“H-how di-did it find us?” She asks. “It doesn’t haven’t any fucking eyes. How did it find us?”
Barb sniffs hard, pulling up her glasses so she can scrub across her face with the sleeve of her coat. She puts her glasses back in place and swallows hard enough that Stevie can hear it. “Most predators hunt by smell. They know the smell of their prey and can figure out where they are, like how sharks can smell…” Barb looks at Stevie with wide eyes. No, not at Stevie, at her leg.
Stevie hadn’t had a chance to look, but now she looks down. From the knee down, her entire pant leg is sodden with blood. The denim darkened into a blackish shade of red. It’s clinging uncomfortably to gauges that Stevie doesn’t even want to think about. It’s as if acknowledging its existence made the pain kick up ten notches and Stevie grits her teeth to avoid crying out. Her stomach gives a sharp lurch.
“Blood,” Stevie finishes, looking up at Barb. “It’s smelling the blood”
Barb looks down at the palm of her hand. The plaster had been lost at some point, probably since she got dragged through the pool. It’s not as bad as it had been, but it’s weeping enough that its smeared blood across her palm and fingers. It would have perhaps started to dry out some if they weren’t still soaking wet. Barb clenches her hand into a fist and stuffs it into her coat pocket as if to shield the injury, then she cast her eyes down the street.
“There’s Melvald’s,” Barb says. “We should get bandages and see if we can find something that will cover the smell”
They don’t talk as they walk/hobble down the street. Stevie doesn’t know what Barb is thinking, but all she can think about is how goddamn lucky they’ve been since they got here. Lucky that the fork fell from Stevie’s hair at just the right time to distract the monster. Lucky that the Anders’ had a bat. Lucky that their house was backed by the street. How many times would they have died if it wasn’t for dumb fucking luck? Stevie could have been mauled and torn apart and fucking eaten at the bottom of the nightmare version of her own pool. They could have been swiped at and torn apart in the Anders’ living room. Stevie could have been trying to give Barb a boost over a backyard fence as that monster took a bite out of her side. So many close calls. So many ways this could be so, so, so much fucking worse.
She numbly follows Barb into the store and down the isles until they reach the toiletries. Barb immediately moves to the first aid section and starts pulling bandages off the shelves. Stevie finally looses the battle with her leg and groans as it buckles and she drops the bat to grab at a shelf to slow her inevitable trip to the floor. She lets out a whine through her teeth as she stretches her injured leg out in front of herself.
“…are you okay?” Barb asks hesitantly, arms full of bandages.
Stevie glares. “Do I look fucking okay?” She snaps through gritted teeth.
“I was only asking” Barb snaps back.
“Well don’t ask!” Stevie closes her eyes and lets her head fall back and she bangs it against the shelf a few times. Maybe if she does it enough she’ll wake up and this fucking nightmare will be over.
She hears Barb drop the bandages to the floor beside her, but she makes no move to take them just yet. She focuses on her breathing, trying desperately not to think about the awful pain in her leg. Not that she can think of anything but and even if she could, what the fuck else could she think about? The fact that they’re in a nightmare version of their own town and that there is a fucking ten foot tall monster out for their blood?
“…err…”
Stevie opens her eyes and looks up.
Barb had opened one of the bandages and had unrolled some. What should be a white, sterile bandage is greying and flimsy. Stevie’s stomach sinks.
“That’s not good,” she says quietly.
“…Do we - do we still use it?” Barb asks.
Stevie looks at the bandage with a grimace. She really doesn’t think they should have those on open wounds, but then again, what other fucking choice do they have?
“It’s better than nothing…at least I think it is,” she assumes it is. A dirty bandage has got to at least be better than exposing the wounds to whatever it is that’s in the air, right? And it’s definitely got to be better than having a scent induced target on their backs every second.
Stevie casts her eyes about the rest of the shelves, but every single product on them looks the same. Every single one of them is washed out from colour. All of them looking like they’ve been left there to rot for decades.
“Wait,” she says. “Grab those”
Barb looks at the panty pads she’s pointing at then back at Stevie. “You’re not-“
Stevie shakes her head. Another thing they’re lucky for she supposes. “No, look - they’re the scented ones”
“Good idea,” Barb says. The obvious surprise in her voice makes Stevie glare at her back when she crouches down to grab them.
She tears open the packet and sniff at it.
“Well?” Stevie asks.
“Still doesn’t look good, but it still smells like it should,” Barb says, half relieved and half reluctant to have it on the cut, which, you know, fair. She puts it across her hand and then begins to wind the bandages around it.
Stevie looks down at her leg and it gives a truly awful throb at the attention. She really, really doesn’t want to move. It’s hard to roll her jeans up anyway, never mind when they’re soaking wet and bloody. She grits her teeth and lifts her hips as she undoes the button to slide them down her hips and thighs. She stops when she gets to her knees and takes several steadying breathes. This is going to hurt. This is really going to fucking hurt. She takes her good leg out first and then slowly start to peel down the other. And it really is a peel. It’s sticking to the gashes in her leg, pulling at injured, bloody skin. She can only thank god that it didn’t fucking dry. Her teeth are clenched so hard they hurt but even so, whimpers and groans and fucking keens can’t help but fall out as she continues through the slow process of getting her pants off.
“Jesus Christ” Barb gasps.
Stevie’s breathes are heaving and she finally gets a good look. Barb was right Jesus fucking Christ. Three truly awful gouges are going down the length of her calf. The worst and the deepest just below the knee and getting shallower towards the ankle as the monster had lost its grip. The skin is peeled back and split, blood still oozing out and down her leg. It needs stitches. It definitely needs stitches, but unless she goes ham with a needle and thread and hopes that she’s doing it right, that’s not happening anytime soon.
Barb drops to her knees and starts to undo panty pad packets. It takes two length ways and a third next to them to cover the cuts. Barb then starts to wind the bandages around them and Stevie throws back her head with a groan as the pressure shoots agony up her entire leg. Barb stops.
“Keep going” Stevie grinds out.
She presses her hands against the floor until her knuckles whiten and keeps her head back with her eyes scrunched closed as Barb winds the bandage around her leg again and again, muttering sorry sorry sorry the whole time. When she’s done Stevie sits there for several long moments, breathing deep and trying to get the pain under control. When she finally opens her eyes, Barb is still knelt next to her, face scrunched up. Stevie wants to snap at her for staring, but really, what’s the fucking point. She shifts to sit up better and when she does her elbow catches on the shelf behind her and several canisters of deodorant topple and fall like bowling pins on the shelf. Stevie cranes her neck to look at them over her shoulder and huffs out a little laugh.
“Fucking score,” she grabs one and sprays it into the lid to smell. Not quite as strong as usual, but better than nothing she supposes. She sprays it up and down her bandages several times. Barb is still staring. She shrugs. “Extra smell protection.” She shakes the bottle in an offer. Barb holds out her hand and Stevie sprays her bandages too. Then she pull out her top and sprays under her pits.
Barb gives her a deeply judgemental look. “Seriously?”
“I’m sweaty and gross and it’s not like I can fucking shower, god knows what’s in the water in this place, if there ever is any” Stevie says defensively. Barb rolls her eyes.
Anyone else, Stevie thinks once again. Could she not have been stuck here with anyone fucking else.
Stevie shivers. If she had thought she was cold before, it’s definitely worse now that she is only in her shirt, panties and bloodied socks. Somehow despite being inside it’s just as awfully cold as it is everywhere else in this godforsaken place.
She reaches her arms out. “Help me up.” Barb grabs her by the elbows, then by the waist, to help her to her feet. It hurt like a bitch to put weight on her leg again - how the fuck had she been running around before? - but it had to be done. “We should get some warmer clothes. They’re probably gross as fuck-”
Barb scoffs. “Right, Stevie Harrington wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes from a general store, right?”
Stevie glares. “Gross because everything in this fucking place is gross” she snaps. Also yes, she would not be caught dead in clothes from a general store, but she wasn’t about to admit that now. Plus there was the added fact that she might actually end up fucking dead if she doesn’t wear the shitty clothes that Melvald’s no doubt stocks. “They must have their winter stock now”
Not wanting anymore help from Barb fucking Holland, Stevie limps towards the small clothing section at the back of the store. The first thing she finds is a pack of thermals and she rummages around until she can find her size. She gets the top on easy, but the leggings give her trouble.
“I can hel-“
“I got it!” Stevie snaps.
Barb rears back in surprise and then sets her jaw. “I was only offering,” she says and then mutters something unkind under her breathe as she turns to hunt through the thermals for her own size.
Stevie hunts through the other racks of clothes. The pants are all ugly and cheap, which is what she expected, not helped at all by the fact that they were all covered in a thin layer of whatever those fucking flakes were that were floating in the air.
“Jesus,” she mutters when she comes across a rack of bell bottom jeans. “Is this the fucking ‘70s?”
She’s grimaces and pulls off a pair that’s her size. She’s going to look ridiculous, but at least the flared bottoms will keep some pressure off her leg. She leans her back against the wall so that she can struggle herself into them while keeping her injured leg as straight as possible. She finds a green sweater on a rack close by, pauses for a second and then decides to pull a second one over top just to be safe. Then she finds some hats, scarves and gloves. They’re all multipack and only come in black or magenta, so she grabs two of the black, one set for herself and another for Barb to set to one side until she finds a coat. She’s hunting through the jackets when Barb comes back. She’s wearing hiking boots, cargo pants and what looks like a man’s jumper. Stevie feels a laugh bubbling up in her chest, but she swallows it down. She kind of wishes Carol was here so she could share that certain look with her that they always shared when someone came to school dressed like a total dweeb.
Barb drops several boxes of boots on the floor between them, as well as a packet of fluffy socks. “I didn’t know your size,”
“Thanks,” Stevie says reluctantly. “I got you a hat, scarf and gloves,” she says, gesturing to where she’d shoved them on top of a rack of truly awful patterned shirts.
“Thanks,” Barb says, just as reluctantly, grabbing them and pulling them apart where they were attached with a snap.
Stevie goes back to looking through the jackets.
Barb scoffs.
Stevie’s teeth grind and she turns her head.
“Problem?”
For a second Barb looks like she’s not going to answer, but then she rolls her shoulders back and says, “Does this really matter? You’re acting like you’re on some sort of shopping trip”
Stevie glares. “I’m sorry, does me taking an extra minute to look for something semi-cute to wear in this stupid store get in the way of all the nothing we’re doing?”
Barb rolls her eyes.
“Some of us actually care what we look like” Stevie snaps.
“We’re trapped in some sort of hell-scape with a monster chasing us!” Barb snaps. “How could you possibly be caring about what you look like right now!” Barb shakes her head and says, quieter, “could I not have been stuck with anyone else?”
Its only echoing thoughts Stevie herself had been having, but it still rankles.
“Excuse me?” It’s quiet when it comes out. It makes Barb’s lips purse. Most everyone at Hawkin’s High knows that Stevie’s voice only goes like that when she is truly pissed off and nothing good ever follows. “I’m the one that jumped in after you! I’m the one that got you out of the pool! I’m the one that fought that fucking thing so you could get away! But, sure, I’m the one that it sucks to be stuck with”
“I didn’t ask you to do any of that!” Barb shouts, face red. “I was only at your house because of your stupid party. I didn’t even want to be there!”
“I only threw that stupid party so that Danny could impress your priss of a best friend. It’s not my fault your gullible ass expected her to do anything else but ditch you to get laid” Stevie snaps.
For second Barb looks mad enough to throw a punch. Stevie squares her shoulders, fucking ready for it, but instead, she just mutters something under her breath and walks off. If they were back in the real world, Stevie would stop her. She’d get in her face and demand she repeat herself, but instead she just scoffs and keeps looking through the jackets. She settles on a forest green knock off parka. She puts it on, but then puts on the hat, scarf and gloves, before zipping the coat right up to her chin.
After putting on several pairs of the fluffy socks and the god-ugly hiking boots, she goes to the home isle to grab some pillows and blankets. She looks down at the soft bundles in her arms and considers finding a corner to curl up in, but sighs and reluctantly starts to look for Barb. She limps through half the isles in the store before she sees Barb's legs sticking out from under the counter for the tills. Barb glares up at her when she approaches. Stevie holds out one of the cushions as a peace offering. It takes a moment, but her face softens and she takes the pillow, shuffling to one side to make room. Stevie tosses her own pillow down and groans in pain as she lowers herself. She settles next to Barb and throws the blankets over them. Neither of them apologise, but they lay down pressed against each other. Stevie closes her eyes and thinks about how mere hours ago she didn’t want to offer her bed up to Barb, and now they’re sleeping beside each other regardless.
She falls asleep to the sound of Barb crying beside her and her last thought before she drifts off is that she really hopes she wakes up to find out that this was just some kind of fucked up dream.