Chapter Text
“Nancy.”
Everything hurts. A steady, dull throb that somehow feels like the dull purple-grey of a bruise, cut by the sharp coppery tang at the back of his throat. Steve tries to blink his eyes open, and immediately regrets it. Even his eyelashes hurt.
“Nancy. Nance. That’s lots, that’s more than enough.”
The voice is low and warm and kind of scratchy, like it’s playing back on vinyl. The voice that answers it is higher, sweet but steely. They’re both nice. Steve could lie here and listen to them both for a while longer. Actually, that’s a great idea. He’s going to do that. “I don’t want him to die, Jonathan.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to turn him, either, do you?” There’s a moment of guilty silence before the first voice sighs, sounding fondly exasperated. “Nancy.”
“I’m not going to!” The pressure across Steve’s mouth lifts, and he swallows down the last mouthful of copper left behind on reflex. “See?”
“Mlrphgh,” Steve says, intelligently, and both the voices go sharply and suddenly silent. He risks trying to crack an eye again, this time with more success.
A vision in plaid and red corduroy is looking down at him, her dark curls working their way out of the braid that’s falling over her shoulder and turning into a halo drifting around her foxy face. Her bright big eyes are wide and startled, like she’s just been caught in the act of – something. Steve hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at her earlier, too busy with the giant freaking monster, but his first impression was right. She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen.
He manages, with a little difficulty, to rearrange his throbbing face into something like a smile. “Hey.”
The girl blinks at him.
For the first time, Steve notices that the wrist of the hand she’s holding up, like she’s showing it off to somebody, is bloody. “Whoa, hey, y’alright?”
“No, no, lie down,” the girl says, in a tone like a strict teacher, when Steve tries to sit up, reaching for her arm to get a better look at it. He would ignore her orders, except that she’s so pretty. And there’s a stabbing pain from his sternum to his hip when he tries to move. Steve flops back against the damp, soft, leaf-slimy ground with a groan.
“I’m okay,” the girl reassures him. “You’re the one that thing tried to rip open like a Christmas present.”
“Ow,” Steve manages, stupidly. He’d do it again, though. He still doesn’t know what that thing was, but no way was he just going to leave two random kids to try to fight it with nothing but their bare hands, basically right in his own damn backyard. Sure, charging in yelling with his old Little League bat was maybe not the wisest decision he’s ever made, but – they all lived, didn’t they?
Wait. Didn’t they?
Steve tries again to sit up, and again has to lie back at the insistence of the girl and the pain in his middle. He looks left, then right, as best he can without getting up. She’d had a friend –
And there he is. Tall, dark, and brooding’s upright and not completely covered in blood, though it’s a little hard to tell in the dark. Not dead. Steve lets out a sigh, relaxing into the clammy embrace of the ground. The pain’s even starting to ebb away, going sort of soft and pink around the edges.
“There you go,” the girl says, looking down at Steve’s slashed-up stomach with a little self-satisfied smile. “Don’t try to get up and open it back up.”
“Okay,” Steve agrees. He thinks about it for a second, and then adds, as sarcastically as he can manage when he’s starting to feel like he’s had a healthy dose of the really good painkillers, “Mom.” Oh god, why did he say that. Why did he say that to the prettiest girl alive. Why did he call her Mom, sarcastic or otherwise, that’s the worst – the ground could just suck him down right now, thanks –
But the guy the girl was with has cracked a wry smile, like Steve’s made a really funny joke but he’s too cool to laugh. Stupid cool guy with his nice stupid smile. No wonder the prettiest girl alive was out in the woods alone with him at night.
The woods that are…kind of spinning around him. The stars up beyond the black cutout shapes of the trees wheel drunkenly. This is not quite so nice anymore.
“ ‘m gonna pass out,” Steve warns the prettiest girl alive, who gives him a warm, kind of indulgent smile. Like he’s a kindergartner who’s spun around in the tire swing one too many times and is now trying not to throw up.
“That’s all right. You’re going to be fine.” Her smile gets a little wry, too, like she knows something Steve doesn’t. It’s hard to focus on, though. His eyes don’t want to stay in one place. “Promise.”
“And – thanks,” Tall Dark and Cool Guy puts in, a little awkward.
Steve nods. Or thinks he does. Everything gets a little blurry after that.
When his head and his vision finally clear, he’s in a hospital bed, wrapped up like some kind of mummy in bandages, and the mystery couple are gone.
…
Steve tells everybody it was a bear.
And maybe it was a bear. With, like…mange. Maybe it was dark, and he was amped up, and his eyes played tricks on him.
It could have been a bear.
What it couldn’t have been is what Steve is somehow rock-solid certain it was. Which is a monster with no face.
They only keep him in the hospital for one night. And apparently they’re more worried about his head than the fact that he was nearly eviscerated. The first time Steve has to change his bandages, he finds out why. Where he was expecting deep, life-threatening gouges, there’s only three long, shallow scratches across his abdomen. Another couple of days and they’ll probably be gone altogether. Probably won’t even scar.
The mystery couple don’t reappear.
Maybe Steve really did just get attacked by a bear, hit his head, and imagine the whole thing. But he doesn’t think he could have imagined the prettiest girl alive’s bright eyes, her smile, the warm scratch of Tall Dark and Cool Guy’s voice, the way his ridiculous overlong flop of bangs shadowed his eyes and made them look all brooding and intense.
Doesn’t think he could have imagined the unearthly screeching roar that came out of that – thing – just before it did its damnedest to disembowel him.
Nothing seems quite real, anymore. Daylight’s thin and grey and watery, food’s kind of bland and dry, basketball’s a chore. School can’t hold Steve’s attention – though what’s new there – and even Tommy and Carol are getting annoyed with him spacing out in the middle of conversations. Steve just – he can’t stop jumping at shadows. Looking out for that thing around every corner.
Nighttime’s the worst. Bad enough that Steve’s started keeping his bat beside his bed. When he starts awake at the slightest sound, heart pounding in his throat, being able to reach out and wrap a hand around the grip is the only thing that lets him calm down anymore.
He’s not getting a whole lot of sleep.
Which is why Steve’s wide awake, about four days after he comes home from the hospital, to hear 3AM voices down around the pool.
Steve lies perfectly still, flat on his back, right hand throttling the bat’s grip, listening hard. He can’t make out the voices, not clearly, can’t tell who it is or what they’re saying. They’re obviously trying to be quiet. But they’re not quiet enough. They’re definitely human voices, and whoever they belong to are definitely standing beside his pool.
Steve sucks in a big breath through his nose, blows it out through his mouth, and forces himself up, in one big movement, off the bed and out his bedroom door.
He should probably call the police. That’s what they’re there for, right? And those were human voices. Trespassers. Maybe burglars.
But there’s a little hysterical part of Steve that’s insisting that it’s not trespassers or burglars. That it’s nothing so normal. And – that thing, the monster, had taken his blows like they were nothing before it swatted him like a fly. He’s not sure bullets would do that much more damage. And getting a cop killed is not really the kind of thing Steve’s looking to put on his permanent record. He’s already going to look bad enough on his college applications as it is.
So he slinks down to the patio door with his bat himself, heartbeat hammering in his ears, fear bitter on his tongue.
But it’s not the monster, out there. It’s not burglars, either.
The voices go quiet before Steve even puts a hand on the door handle. But when he slides the door open, the mystery couple are still standing there, on the concrete of the patio, just watching him. For a single, weird second, as he steps towards them, he thinks he sees both their eyes flash in the dim bluish glow from the pool. But it must have been a trick of the light, or his imagination, or – or something. People’s eyes don’t reflect like cats’.
“See, Nance?” Tall Dark and Cool Guy says, nudging the prettiest girl alive with his elbow. “I told you.”
“What,” Steve says. It comes out as a statement, instead of the question he’d been aiming for. He doesn’t let go of the bat. “What is this?” He can’t quite seem to settle on an emotion – fear, anger, relief. All he knows is that he didn’t imagine it. All he knows is that, for some reason, something that’s been slowly, gradually winding itself tighter and tighter in his chest has suddenly and abruptly unwound.
The mystery couple give each other a look.
“…hi,” the prettiest girl alive says, finally. “Steve, right?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. He doesn’t lower the bat. “How d’you know my name?”
“Not important,” Tall Dark and Cool Guy says, which, what. He starts to go on, but Steve cuts him off.
“No, I think that’s pretty fucking important. Who are you, how do you know my name, and what are you doing in my backyard uninvited at three in the morning?”
Tall Dark and Cool Guy opens his mouth like he’s gonna object, but the prettiest girl alive puts a hand on his arm and shoots him a warning look, and he visibly swallows down whatever he’d been about to say.
“You’re right,” the prettiest girl alive says, and hey, Steve knew there was a reason he liked her. “We owe you an explanation. I’m Nancy. Nancy Wheeler.”
“Jonathan Byers,” Tall Dark and Cool Guy admits, grudgingly, under her piercing stare.
Sometimes, it takes Steve an eternity to understand how things fit together. And then, sometimes, his brain makes lightning-fast connections between random things without his even asking it to. “What, like Crazy Ms Byers who works at Melvald’s?” he blurts, before he can make his brain make a connection to his mouth. It’s too late now, though, so he forges ahead, even though his stomach is sinking under Cool Guy’s – Jonathan’s – affronted scowl. “So, I’m, uh, guessing some relation?”
“Don’t call her crazy,” Jonathan says, shortly. Steve’s this close to apologising when Jonathan comes out with the craziest shit Steve’s ever heard, half-muttering like he doesn’t want to admit it. “That’s my kid sister.”
Steve blinks at him.
“Okay, no,” he says. “Because she’s like – my dad’s age? She’s way older than you. Unless this is, like, an adoption situation, or…some kind of, something to do with divorce…”
“Steve,” Nancy sighs, all disappointed, and Steve shuts up immediately. “Look, there’s…kind of a lot to explain. Can we come in?”
Steve should say no. The sane, normal, safe thing to do would be to say no.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, instead. “Sure. Wipe your feet.”
Jonathan gives Nancy a very pointed look, for some reason, and she returns it as a defiant glare. But all either of them says is Nancy’s deliberately-chipper, “Lead the way.”
…
So, apparently, they’re vampires.
Steve has to repeat that. Let that sink in. The mystery couple are supposedly immortal, bloodsucking creatures of the night, straight out of a Hammer flick. Vampires.
“You’re shitting me,” he says, looking from Nancy to Jonathan and back again. They’ve got good poker faces, he’ll give them that. Neither of them cracks. “You’re shitting me. There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Sure wish I still thought that,” Jonathan mutters. He’s perched himself awkwardly on the arm of Steve’s mom’s nice white couch. In the ambient glow from the pool outside, filtering eerily through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he looks like an enormous bat ready to take off.
Hey, that’s an idea.
“So turn into bats,” Steve says, looking over at Nancy. “Or – do something vampire-y. Prove it.” He thinks about that for half a second before hastily amending, “Just nothing too noisy. Don’t wake my dad up. And don’t get blood on my mom’s couch, she’ll put a stake through your heart whether you’re undead or not.”
Nancy looks up at Jonathan, who shrugs.
“Okay,” Nancy says. Steve thinks – maybe he’s imagining things, maybe it’s just the power of suggestion – that he catches a flash of white when she opens her mouth. Just a little too much tooth.
And then – he’s definitely not imagining the way she brings her own wrist up to her mouth and fucking mangles it.
“Jesus!” Steve shouts, before remembering he’s trying to be quiet and turning the volume way, way down. “Jesus, what – I said no blood!”
“Steve,” Nancy says, with that exasperated smile, and wow, there is something about her saying his name with blood all over her face that Steve is going to just pack away in the back of his mind for later. “It’s fine. Look.”
Steve looks.
And watches the messy, nasty chunk Nancy took out of her own forearm with her teeth visibly knitting itself together, right before his eyes. In a handful of seconds, it’s like it was never injured at all. The few streaks of blood left behind look almost black in the bluish light of the pool.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Steve says, looking up to meet Nancy’s eyes over her bloody, triumphant smile. “You two are vampires.”
Jonathan nods, with a rueful twist of smile. “Have been since ’53.”
Steve can’t come up with a single thing to say or do in response to that other than to gawp, bug-eyed, at them both.
“Guess you didn’t need me to rescue you from that thing in the woods,” he manages, at last. “Jesus. This is crazy.”
“It gets crazier,” Nancy says, her smile turning apologetic. She leans forward and takes Steve’s right hand in both of her own. Steve lets her. It’s not like he could stop her.
She bites at her bottom lip as she studies Steve’s face. “Jonathan thinks I enthralled you.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Does sunlight annoy you? Since you got out of the hospital?” Jonathan asks, which actually does not answer Steve’s question. “Have trouble sleeping at night? Do you feel restless, distracted, like you’re missing something, like there’s something you’re supposed to be doing but you’re not sure what?”
Steve stares at him. “…no? What are you -”
“I had to…give you some blood. After whatever that thing was got you. To make sure you didn’t die right there in the woods,” Nancy says, and Steve spins to face her fast enough he almost gives himself whiplash. “It was just to help you heal -”
“Jesus, am I a vampire now too? Is that what this is?” There’s a hard lump of panic sitting at the base of Steve’s throat. He doesn’t want to be a vampire. There are probably a lot of very good reasons for that, and the fact that the only one coming to his stunned mind is that vampires probably don’t get basketball scholarships means nothing.
“No! No, nothing like that,” Nancy hurries to reassure him. Steve isn’t totally reassured. “It’s just…um.”
“She might’ve given you a little too much,” Jonathan says, plain and clear and simple, when Nancy falters. “Which would’ve made you her thrall. Compelled to crave her company, follow her orders, want her approval…that kind of stuff. And if we just skipped town and tried to leave you here, enthralled, eventually you’d follow us. Find us. You’d have to.”
That doesn’t sound like the worst possible thing, until Jonathan adds, “Or you’d lose your mind.”
And. Well. Okay, that part sounds pretty bad.
“Okay,” Steve says, after a few seconds. He thinks, all things considered, he is handling this remarkably well. “But you can undo it, right? Like…un-enthrall me, or whatever.”
Nancy bites a little harder on her bottom lip, her pretty face pinching up. Jonathan’s intense stare doesn’t change.
Steve looks back and forth between them, the pit of his stomach sinking. “You can, can’t you?”
“There is…one way,” Nancy says, and if Jonathan’s stare gets any more murderous, it’s literally going to be drawing blood.
“Nancy.”
“He should at least know what his options are, Jonathan!”
“Oh shit, is it bad?” Steve turns to look at Jonathan. He sounds like he’s less likely to try to sugar-coat it. “It sounds like it’s bad. Do I have to – what? Kill somebody?”
“In a way,” Jonathan admits, which, well. So much for that.
Nancy squeezes Steve’s hand, to get him to look back at her. “We’d have to turn you.”
Well.
“Yeah, that’s a no,” Steve says. He hasn’t really thought about it. But then, he doesn’t really need to. “No, no, no way! You are not turning me into some kind of bloodsucking freak. What’re my other options?”
“Stay glued to Nancy’s side, doing her bidding, for the rest of your unnaturally-prolonged life,” Jonathan says. “Or book yourself a bed in the Kerley County nuthouse.”
Steve glares at him.
“Wait,” he says, when Nancy starts to open her mouth. “No, wait, hold on a second. Nancy said you thought she’d…enthralled me. Which means you’re not sure. Right?”
Jonathan just frowns. “You came down in the middle of the night when Nancy and I came into your backyard -”
“I wasn’t asleep. You were loud. I thought you might be burglars.”
“You invited us in,” Jonathan says. “When Nancy asked you to.”
And yeah, okay, sure, maybe he’s got a point, that was not the act of a rational person. But – “I wanted to know what the hell is going on!” And, Steve realises, his stomach sinking further, he hadn’t wanted the mystery couple to disappear again. He does want to be around them.
Fuck. He’s royally, truly screwed, isn’t he?
Maybe – maybe this is all a dream. It feels unreal enough. And it is 3AM. Maybe none of this is even happening, and Steve’s just having stress nightmares since he got attacked by a weird bear –
He presses a hand against the bandages still wrapped around his midsection, feeling only the slightest twinge of healing pain, and knows he doesn’t have that kind of luck.
“Steve’s got a point, though,” Nancy says, and wow, Steve could kiss her. “We don’t…know for sure that he’s a thrall. It could still all be just – a weird coincidence…”
“Really weird coincidence,” Jonathan mutters, and Nancy shoots him a sarcastic look.
“Well, we are back in Hawkins.”
That drags a begrudging grin and an eyeroll out of Jonathan. He has…kind of a nice smile, when he’s not glaring at Steve like he’d like to burn twin holes in Steve’s head.
“We’re going to have to stick around for a while anyway,” Nancy goes on, turning all her attention to Jonathan. “Find out what that thing was, where it comes from, what it’s doing here. We might as well keep an eye on Steve and see -”
“Nancy,” Jonathan sighs, his smile slipping as he runs a hand through his hair. He sounds – almost sad. “You know we can’t stay. You know it’s dangerous -”
“I still don’t see why you can’t just tell her!” Nancy snaps back, leaning across Steve to wave an indignant arm at Jonathan. Steve has to lean back to avoid being biffed in the nose by her elbow. “It’s been thirty years. She probably wouldn’t even recognise us anyway, we could just say we’re – from out of town, that we want to join the search party -”
“Nance. You didn’t see it, you didn’t see how they all treated her -” Jonathan shakes his head. “You don’t know Joyce like I do. And after what happened last time she caught a glimpse of me after I was ‘dead’ – she never let it go, Nancy. She’d recognise us. She’d know it’s me. And I’m not dragging her into this. I’m not putting her through all that again. Especially not right now.”
They seem to have landed on an old argument and forgotten Steve’s there. He settles back on the couch and lets it wash over him, trying to figure out the thread from what scraps of context they’re throwing out.
It’s funny. He’s known Joyce Byers as ‘Crazy Ms Byers’ for as long as he can remember, same as every other kid he knows. It’s never occurred to Steve to ask why people call her crazy. If she’d gone around insisting she’d seen her dead older brother wandering around town, though…yeah. That might do it.
“You’re unbelievable!” Nancy snaps, and Steve has to shush her. His mom’s sleeping with Prince Valium tonight, he’s not worried about her waking up for anything short of the end of days, but his dad –
Nancy lowers her voice, but not her intensity. “What are you even planning to do if we do find Will alive? Just dump him on her doorstep and hope he doesn’t say anything to his mom about the nice man who rescued him? You’re making it worse for Joyce by not just telling her the truth, Jonathan.” Her gaze flicks down to her knees before she adds, weirdly subdued for her, “And…she’s not going to be around forever. One day, you’re going to regret not spending all the time you could’ve with her.”
Steve doesn’t have long to reflect on how weird it is that he’s known these two for all of ten seconds and already knows ‘subdued’ is weird for Nancy, though, because Jonathan’s slipping off the arm of the couch so he can grip Nancy’s hands in his own. Steve finds himself sandwiched between them, suddenly uncomfortably aware he was sleeping in just a tee shirt and boxers before he came down with the bat, and that he didn’t stop to put pants on. “Nancy…I think, maybe, we’re finally getting close. Whatever that thing was – I’d put money on it being what killed Barbara. What took Will. We just need to find its – lair, or nest, or -”
“Hey,” Steve says. “Not that I want to interrupt this touching moment, but -”
Both Nancy and Jonathan spring apart like they’ve been shocked. Steve tries not to feel insulted.
“Oh – Steve,” Nancy says, like she’s just remembering he’s there. “Sorry, we just -”
“Have history. Yeah, I got it.” Steve takes a deep breath. “Am I hearing you two right? You’re gonna try and hunt that monster?”
Nancy and Jonathan both look at each other.
“Yes,” Nancy says, simply.
“My nephew’s missing,” Jonathan adds, and a couple more pieces click into place in Steve’s head.
“Whoa, wait, Will Byers is your -” Steve shakes his head. “This is way too weird.”
“You think it’s weird for you?” Jonathan asks, wryly.
Steve nods, and nods, and makes up his mind. “Okay. I’ll help you hunt this monster.”
“Steve,” Nancy says, all disbelieving, like don’t be silly. Steve’s a little insulted.
“No offense, but you’re human,” Jonathan points out, which, well, fair. “And,” he adds, looking down at the bandages around Steve’s middle, “fragile.”
Steve shrugs, trying to pretend that doesn’t sting even a little bit. “Fine, so I’ll leave fighting the monster to you two. But I can go out in daylight.”
Nancy’s eyebrows shoot up, like she hadn’t thought of that. She glances over at Jonathan, before adding, “And…talk to Joyce without being recognised?”
Jonathan presses his lips hard together, but there’s something that looks like mischief sparkling in the depths of his eyes. “Nancy…if we keep him, you’re going to have to feed him and take him out for walks.”
“Hey, at least I’m already housebroken,” Steve says, and tries not to examine the little swell of pride when Jonathan cracks an actual smile too closely.
“You’ll have to be careful,” Jonathan says. “If you’re not already enthralled – and that’s a big if – another save like that one will definitely do it. No more suicidal heroics.”
“I can do more suicidal heroics,” Steve protests. “Just make sure it’s you giving me the magic healing blood, not Nancy. That should work. Right?”
Jonathan stares at him. Nancy smothers a laugh with her hand.
“You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington,” she says, but it sounds kind of fond.
…
Nancy and Jonathan leave not too long after that, promising to come back again tomorrow. After sundown.
That might have something to do with the way Steve nearly passed out cold on Jonathan’s shoulder. He’s so tired.
But when he flops back down on his bed, spread-eagled, staring at the ceiling, sleep doesn’t immediately snatch Steve back up. His brain’s whirling too much.
Vampires. Jesus.
Steve doesn’t feel like – whatever Jonathan had said. A thrall. Doesn’t feel like he’s being compelled to do anything. His dad does plenty of compelling, and Steve sure as fuck notices when he does. Nancy…it’s nothing like that. Steve’s making his own decisions. He’s pretty sure. Just because he keeps deciding to do what he thinks will make the prettiest girl alive happy –
Oh. Shit. She’s not alive, though. Is she.
Steve lifts his head up from the bed, and then lets it flop back down with a dull thump. The rapidly-healing scratches across his abdomen twinge.
The worst part is, he’s already excited about seeing them again.
Okay. He needs – some kind of a plan. He needs to be logical about this. It could all still be bullshit. Or a dream. Or a hallucination. What had Jonathan said – have been since ’53? Steve’s got a year, and their names. He knows Jonathan, at least, is from Hawkins originally. He can look up – their yearbook.
Their obituaries.
Jesus, they’re really dead. At least, if they’re telling the truth, they are. Steve wonders how it happened.
If they’re telling the truth. Steve can’t see a reason why they’d make up such an elaborate lie, but – he’ll find out for sure tomorrow, won’t he? There’ll be photos in the yearbooks. News stories, if there was anything suspicious about their deaths, which, vampires. That’s pretty suspicious, if you ask him. He’ll find out for sure if Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler really existed. He’ll find out for sure if they’re really who they say they are.
And if they are, if all this crazy shit is true…well, Steve will just have to cross that bridge when he comes to it.
He turns over on his side, yanking the covers up to his chest, and shuts his eyes. For once, the monster’s faceful of fangs doesn’t fill his mind’s eye the moment he does. Instead, the image of Nancy smiling all nonchalant with blood all over her face rises against the inside of Steve’s eyelids, and he chokes down a laugh. Still a faceful of fangs. Just a different kind of monster.
He tries to picture Nancy with bared fangs, a bunch of different types of jagged teeth. It’s terrifyingly easy. Jonathan’s a little harder. Seems more like the brooding, quiet, lurking type. Like you wouldn’t even notice his teeth until they were already in your neck.
Steve can’t stop himself from wondering if they’re out there right now looking for some poor drunk stumbling home, some unsuspecting night shift worker. Somebody they can really sink their teeth into.
Jesus. Steve hadn’t even asked if they kill people. And he’d invited them into his house.
Nancy’s right. He really is an idiot.
Steve can’t stop the shiver that races through him at the thought of it being his blood spilling over Nancy’s chin and staining her lips. Neither she or Jonathan had said anything about wanting to bite him, but Steve’s not entirely stupid. There’s one very good reason a bloodsucker would need a willing and suggestible human plastered to their side for life, and it’s not to have somebody to play doubles tennis with.
He wonders, with a kind of morbid fascination, how much it’d hurt.
And yeah, okay, Jesus, maybe there is something wrong with Steve, judging by the interested twitch his dick gives at the thought of Nancy putting that pretty mouth against his neck and tearing it open with her teeth, all quick and efficient and brutal, the way she’d done to her own wrist. At the thought of her opening up a vein in the soft underside of Steve’s arm, all businesslike and professional, and offering it to Jonathan like she’d just popped the tab on a beer for him. About Jonathan taking Steve’s hand in one of his own and cradling Steve’s elbow in the other, all gentle and careful, eyes on Nancy, waiting on her okay – and then, when she nods, tearing into Steve like a starving animal, all desperate, shameless need and sharp, sharp teeth –
Yeah. Yeah, there’s definitely, definitely something wrong with Steve. He twists onto his front, mashing his hot face into the cool side of the pillow. He’s going to have to get a handle on whatever this is, and fast, or tomorrow’s going to be embarrassing.
But…well. It’s not tomorrow, yet, is it. And neither Nancy or Jonathan ever have to know, if Steve indulges this fucked-up fantasy for just a little while longer.
…
It’s some time later, as he’s starting to drift off, heavy and loose-limbed and sluggish, that Steve realises what he’s forgotten. He left the bat downstairs, leaning against the couch.
Somehow, it feels pleasantly like a problem for Tomorrow Steve. Steve shuts his eyes, and sinks into the best, deepest sleep he’s had since he left the hospital.