Work Text:
Billy Idol’s ’Eyes without a face’ played from the radio of the car at a low volume as Steve drove you both away from the mall.
The bruises and blood your face was still fresh, skin stinging still. You felt as if you should be feeling something emotionally. Perhaps anger, or fear, or frustration, but you just felt numb.
Your head was pounding. Every punch that had landed on your face had ricocheted your head back, slamming it into the wall as you mumbled some pathetic plea of innocence. The drugs had fucked you up too, leaving you with the worse migraine of your life.
If you weren’t careful, any quick movement would send your vision swimming, bright spots of colour painting your sight, rendering you momentarily blind.
Every little sound annoyed you, and the radio was testing your patience. You slammed the button without looking, switching it off, keeping your gaze fixed on the road ahead.
Eventually, you tore your eyes away from their fixed position, turning to look at Steve, whose face was equally, if not more, blooded and bruised.
Somehow, even though he looked as if he had been dragged through Hell and back, the sight of him still made your stomach flip. You’d always felt some bizarre feeling of shame at your crush, for Steve was your closest friend, just as you were his.
You turned away again, exhaling like some over dramatic main character. Those were thoughts for later. All you wanted now was to sleep. Sleep for very long time. You leant your head on the window, the glass cool despite the outside air warm from a day of sun.
You closed your eyes, too tired and exhausted to keep them open. It was a bad idea really, for the blank canvas of your eyelids was the perfect space for your brain to project images of the Russians, Billy’s death, and whatever that flesh thing was.
“We’re here” Steve said. You never noticed that the car had stopped moving, or that the radio had started playing again.
With your eyes now open and head straight up, you faced at Steve, confusion evident on your face. “Your house” he said, tone ambiguous. You hesitated before you looked behind his shoulder. Your house, with its porch light on, and drawn curtains.
“Right, uhh… house. Yeah” you said, opening your door, only then noticing the blood on the sleeve of your work uniform.
Suddenly, and inexplicably, your eyes started welling up with tears. Painfully salty. You swung open the door and stepped out, practically slamming it behind you. You bit back sobs as you walked hastily to your house.
You wanted to claw back that numb feeling from before, and let the blissful ignorance consume you. It was better, so much better, than dealing with the situation.
Your heart ached for your own suffering, for Robin’s, Dustin and Erica’s narrow escape, but most importantly Steve. He could have died, perished in the hands of the Russians, and you had been bound to a fucking chair, incapable of doing anything.
It wasn’t your fault, none of it was, but the guilt of what could have happened, the guilt from your own stupid fantasy, stopped you from moving any closer to your front door. It wasn’t survivors guilt, you all survived, but something close.
You pulled your sleeve down, wiping under your eyes, the awful stench of iron burning the back of your throat. If you went home, there would be no one, you could cry as loud as you wished.
But there would be no one. No one to comfort you, no one to hold you as you sobbed.
Steve hadn’t moved an inch. The car’s engine hummed dully in the back of his head as he watched you. He didn’t roll down the window, he didn’t tell you to go inside, he didn’t do anything. He just watched, stomach contorting as he did so.
His eyes followed you as you trudged back to the door, as you flung it open and sat down like a petulant child.
“I don’t think I can be alone right now, not after what happened” you admitted, only looking at him for a second before you turned your head away again, facing your lap like it had personally offended you.
He was thankful you turned your head back, for he couldn’t bear looking at your face, how it was stained and smeared with your blood, peppered with purple bruises, and streaked with tears.
You looked at him again, as if expecting him to say something. He looked away, your poorly masked pain only making his swelling guilt worse. If it weren’t for the radio he had turned back on, you would have heard his heart shatter.
“You can spend the night at my house” he said. The truth was he never wanted you to go home anyway and was secretly thankful you had turned back. It was selfish, he knew that, but he couldn’t help it, he didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t want you to be alone either.
Steve Harrington wanted you to comfort you, wanted you to sob into his arms, and deep down inside, he wished you would do the same for him.
His house wasn’t far away, but for two tortured teenagers, it felt like you had been trapped in the car for hours.
When he pulled up outside his house, you rushed out the car, slamming the door shut behind you. You didn’t want Steve to see you cry, even though you knew he wouldn’t have cared.
You stopped two feet from his front door, bouncing on yours heels as you waited for him to get out and unlock the door.
He was surprisingly annoyed at your curt attitude. He recognised it was him being selfish again, you had endured unspeakable suffering after all, but so had he, and he was the one letting you spend the night, just so you weren’t alone. He was the one who cared enough to stay by your side after the attack on the mall.
He finally got out the car and walked past you to take a key from under a plant pot “If you’re hungry I can order pizza or something” he muttered, putting the key in the keyhole.
You made a small sound of agreement. You felt bad for being so rude to him, but if you tried to say something, you knew that all that would come out would be an embarrassing sob.
“Hey, why are you acting like this?” Steve said, and immediately regretted it. But the damage was irreversible, for the look on your face when he turned around pulled his heart apart.
“Why am I acting like this?” You repeated, scoffing. You took a small step back, staring at him incredulously. You swallowed the lump in your throat, now would be a bad time to start crying again.
“No, listen I didn’t mea—“ he started, guilt fully legible on his face.
“What did you mean then, Steve?” You interrupted, “Because if it’s just going to be some complaint my attitude then I don’t want to fucking hear it”
He opened and closed his mouth, bewildered that you weren’t hearing him out. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, fumble another crush like this.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole but, we’ve been tortured by the Russian government, and I don’t deal with situations the same was you do. You can just move on, continue with your life. But I can’t, this will haunt me forever, I’ll lie awake at night haunted by this shit, while you will just be fine, because you’re always fine”
The words tumbled out your mouth a mile a minute. The anger that was absent before, speaking for you, spewing utter nonsense at Steve, the man who you knew wasn’t just ‘fine’.
“I’m always fine? I’m not always fine, and I don’t think I ever will be after the past twenty-four hours. And maybe I don’t cope with things the same way as you, but Jesus, I was still tortured. What makes you think anyone would be fine after that?” He bit back.
You paused, you knew he was right, your outburst was out of exhaustion and not truth. But you had committed to your point, and you felt you couldn’t back down now.
“Why should I even invite you in, huh?” Steve continued, raising his voice “clearly, you’re heartless and don’t even care about my feelings or what I went through so why should I let you stay?” He was on the verge of shouting, annoyance getting the better of him.
At your prolonged silence he opened his door and began to walk through it.
“Because I love you!” You shouted back, voice breaking, tears pooling in your eyes again. He didn’t turn, just stopped.
“I’ve loved you, for so long, and seeing you like this is so painful. You think I don’t care? You’re the person who I care about the most,” he turned to look at you as you continued with your monologue, “when the Russians were still interrogating you, and it was just Robin and I bound to those chairs, I was screaming at the officer to tell me if you were alright
“And I feel guilty about the whole thing because I could have done more. I could have done more to stop your stupid fucking face from becoming so messed up,” tears began pouring down your face, warm but not in any way comforting.
Yours words became so chocked up, that you had to pause before you spoke again.
“I’ve wanted to tell you I love you for ages. I’m only telling you now because I’m so scared something will happen to you again. Next time you might not be dragged out of a room unconscious, but rather dead and I would have never told you anything and-“
You were cut off by his lips pressing against yours, your eyes widening briefly. It took you a moment to grasp what was going on before you leant into the kiss and closed your eyes.
You could taste the dried blood on his lips, and were almost certain he could taste your own blood on your lips too. You moved your hands up to the back of his head, fingers threading through the ends.
You didn’t know how long you both stood outside his door, but eventually he pulled away, looking at you with a look of pure admiration.
“Sorry for what I said before, you’re not heartless” he said, resting his forehead against yours, hands wrapped around you.
“It should be me apologising, I was being cold for no reason” you admitted, cheeks turning pink as you remembered what he said.
“Saying that I’m always fine? Ouch, I do have feeling you know” he teased, laughing at the end of his sentence as you rolled your eyes. You felt as if you should have felt guilty about the argument, but neither of you seemed to care that much about it. It was as if both of you had recognised neither of you meant what you said.
After a while you both moved inside, choosing to ignore everything you had endured. In the back of your mind, you knew that nightmares would make your sleep far from restless, but at least you weren’t alone.