Chapter Text
Nancy had just left with Barb. Steve was really hoping she would have stayed a little later, but you win some you lose some. If Nance wasn’t ready, then what could he do. He still liked her, she was a good girl, super smart, very opinionated, complete spitfire. She kinda reminded him of his last girlfriend, Shelly, before she’d graduated last year and gone off to NYU. Steve’d had to woo Nancy for weeks before she finally agreed to go out with him, but it was worth it, she has this sweetness about her, but a hidden backbone of steel. Barb was a bit of a wet blanket, but she had good taste in literature at least, they’d had a pretty good conversation about the romance era writers the other day, Barb’s favorite writer from the movement being Mary Shelly, while Steve really like Poe’s stuff. They had both brought up some really good points, but then Nance had joined them and started talking about her upcoming Chemistry test. Steve had offered to help her study, but Nance had looked at him like he was an asshole, so he shut up about it and let her and Barb talk instead.
He had finished cleaning up the pool area and was drinking the last beer while sitting on the diving board, dangling his feet over the heated pool, when he felt a presence at his back. He had just enough time to glance behind him before he felt icy blades digging into his flesh. The world seemed to be tilting on its side, and he must have blacked out for a moment, because when he opened his eyes again it was to a fucking Demon standing over him. The thing had to be at least 8 feet tall, and instead of a head it had some kind of furled knot looking thing. Steve whimpered, and that knot opened up like a fucking nightmare version of an orchid, covered in teeth and dripping saliva. It roared at him, and Steve is unashamed to say, he screamed, high and piercing, just like some chick in a horror movie. The Demon seemed to shiver for a second before turning and running off.
Steve could only lay there watching the monster disappear, but the ground beneath him started to writhe, and that was when he was able to feel that he was laying on something like thick ropes, and they were moving. Some were even wrapped around his ankles. He screamed again, and tried to sit up to tear them off, but he found himself unable to move more than a few inches without his back flaring in pain. He lay still again, trying to catch his breath. The ropes, or rather vines he supposed, now that he saw them a little clearer, had paused when he had screamed, retreating a little, but they resumed their movement quickly, so Steve did his best to power through the pain. It felt like his entire body was on fire, but after a while he was able to pull the vines off him, it was made easier once he was actually able to touch them, as they seemed to shrink back wherever he touched them with his bare hands.
After freeing himself and forcing himself to sit up he saw he was in a hole covered in those vines. There were some steps at the end of it, so he crawled his way over to them. It took him what felt like years to reach them, but finally he was able to climb out of the hole and away from those vines. Only to be met by the sight of his house, but…not his house. It looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries, covered in those moving vines and crumbling. He tried to find a way inside, but where the sliding door should have been it was blocked.
Moving was getting a little easier at least, it still hurt like a bitch, but he must have been getting used to the pain, cause it seemed to recede the more he moved around. He was about to head around to the front of the house to try the front door when he heard the Demon growl from that direction, so Steve booked it into the woods. He had no plan, other than run as fast and as far from the demon as possible, but he had to stop after some time to catch his breath, the pain was still getting easier to handle, but he was starting to get dizzy, and there was something wrong with the air, it was full of ash or something, and tasted like rot and the way gasoline smells. He had to stop once he started coughing, trying to be as quiet as possible, but it hurt so much he ended up doubled over, heaving up everything he’d had to eat and drink that day, and more than a little blood.
When he was able to catch his breath again, doing his best to ignore the fact he had been puking up blood, and a fucking lot of it at that, he got back up and started walking this time, trying to get as far from where he’d stopped as possible, without having to stop again.
It felt like he’d been walking for hours, before he had to stop again, just couldn’t move anymore. The pain was now a distant buzz, but his brain felt cloudy, and he was so fucking dizzy he wouldn’t be surprised if he had been walking in circles. He had tried to lean against a tree, but the ones that weren’t wrapped in vines seemed to be covered in black rot. He had eventually found a rock to sit on, that was mostly clear and only a little disgusting.
He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, thinks he may have drifted off there for a bit before he heard someone singing. It sounded like a kid, and the little bits he could make out sounded like that one song from the Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. Before he could think better of it, Steve followed the sound, it was the first human thing he had heard since he woke up in hell. After an eternity Steve had finally zeroed in on the source of the sound, some clubhouse in the wood with a sign that read Castle Byers. That sparked a memory, hazy in his dizziness, but wasn’t the youngest Byers kid missing or something? Quiet as he could Steve walked to the club house and pulled aside the tarp that acted as the entrance. He looked in to see a young brunette staring at him with wild eyes.
The two stared at one another silently for a minute.
“You’re Jonathan’s brother, aren’t you?”
“Y-yeah…who…who are you?”
“Steve. Harrington. Steve Harrington. Any idea what the fu-uuuuudge is going on?”
“I don’t know, I crashed my bike in the woods and was chased by a monster to my house, I tried to shoot it, but then I was here, well not here, but in my shed, but it was, not really my shed. I’ve been trying to get back, but I c-can’t.I..I can’t….” Then the kid started to cry. Steve had never dealt with a crying kid before. He himself had learned really early on not to cry, it just seemed to piss people off, his parents, his nanny, and the one time he had cried in front of Tommy, it had been super awkward, but Steve, well, Steve didn’t want the kid to cry, so he did the only thing he could think of and crawled inside the clubhouse and scooped the kid to him and held him.
At some point the kid cried himself out and fell asleep in Steve’s arms. Steve felt himself drifting off too, but forced himself to stay awake, in case the demon came back. He held the kid for hours, mind drifting, but senses alert for any noise. Eventually the kid woke up though and seemed embarrassed. Whispered a “Sorry” at Steve, who just shrugged, saying without words ‘It happens.’ even if he had no idea if it really did happen.
The next few days, or at least Steve thought days were passing, hard to tell, the lighting never really changed, and it was hard to keep track of time when he couldn’t catch more than a few minutes of sleep here and there. They occasionally left the clubhouse, going to the kid’s house to try and talk to Mrs. Byers with Christmas lights of all things. They nearly got caught by the demon a few times, but each time Steve screamed at it to go the fuck away and it would.
Will, cause that’s what the kid’s name was apparently, asked him why it would leave when Steve yelled at it, and the only thing Steve could think of was, maybe there was something about his voice that was repellant to it? Like, the thing had no eyes or whatever that they could see, but did seem to recognize noise, or maybe it was sound waves? Either way, maybe there was something about the pitch or timbre of his voice that the thing didn’t like. Other than that, they barely spoke to one another, too afraid to make and sound.
It was day four, or maybe five, or maybe still day one, he had no fucking clue, and Steve had drifted off again. He didn’t know how long he had been out, hadn’t even noticed he had fallen asleep until he woke up and Will wasn’t there. Frantically Steve began searching. Will was not in the club house, or his actual (hell dimension) house, or in the woods around the house. Steve was getting more frantic by the minute, and just started running, yelling out Will’s name. Had no idea where he was running, until he found himself in the town proper, outside the library. There Will was, wrapped in vines against the wall staring out blindly with one of the vines inside his mouth. Steve ran to him and ripped the vine out of his mouth before tearing through the ones that were wrapped around the kid.
Will slumped off the wall into his arms, still and breathless. Steve laid him down and started giving him CPR, something he’d learned from his summer job as a lifeguard, but never once had to use before. It took several tries, and Steve finally just screaming at him “Fucking Breathe Kid!” before Will coughed out some black sludge and started breathing again, though not very well. He was just about to scoop the kid into his arms when he heard noise behind him, he spun around, ready to fight off the demon and hopefully survive long enough to get the kid somewhere safe, well, as safe as they could possibly find in Hell, but instead of a flower faced demon, there were two people in Hazmat suits.
Confused, but not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, he yelled out “Help, he needs help!” The two ran the distance to them, the smaller one dropping to their knees in front of Will, who was breathing, but barely, black sludge still oozing out of his mouth. The taller of the two scooped up the unconscious boy and handed a machine gun to the smaller figure, but she dropped it yelling out “Will baby, talk to me, Will!” Steve grabbed the gun, not one he had ever used before, only having encountered a hunting rifle when camping with Tommy and his father a few times, and a couple handguns when he was dating Shelly, who liked going to a shooting range outside Shelbyville. It seemed simple enough though, Steve located the safety, and held it in a ready position but pointed towards the ground and followed the suited individuals as they ran off in the direction they came from.
Steve struggled to keep up but put on a burst of speed when the demon made another appearance. He opened fire into it while screaming at it to “Go. The. Fuck. Away!” The recoil made him miss his mark for the first two rounds, but he adjusted his stance and managed to empty at least a few dozen bullets into the thing before it ran off again.
After that the two people in Hazmat suits made sure he stayed close, and he followed them to the Hawkins Department of Energy campus, of all places, but they sure knew where they were going, cause after walking through some fleshy portal, Steve was back in the land of the living. He took a few minutes to revel in the air quality before passing the hell out.