#brought to you by me listening to Lifeline by Joshua Bastett one too many times

[atlantablack]

i'm facing all my fears of the unknown (i've been shaking in my bones)

also on Ao3

At the end of the world, his sides still aching, and Eddie’s blood still tacky on his hands, Steve calls his mom. Leans heavily against the side of the phone booth right outside the hospital, the dial tone somehow still hanging steady in the air, and punches in a number his fingers still remember by heart.

It isn’t that his parents ever officially moved out of Hawkins. It isn’t that they’d ever looked him in the face and said, we’re never coming back. One day there’d just been a number written out in his mother’s small, cramped script on a neon yellow sticky note, hanging next to the phone. He used to call it every few months just to hear his mom say hello. Just to make sure they didn’t move somewhere else and forget to tell him.

He stopped checking at some point. Before Robin, before the party and Nancy’s slurred words. He’s not sure of the exact moment his parents faded into an entity he didn’t care to check on, but if he had to guess, he’d say it happened right around the same moment Jonathan slid his bloody palm into Steve’s and dragged him away from the monster bursting out of the wall.

But still, at the end of the world, the bites on his stomach burning, he calls his mom.

He doesn’t even know if she still lives there, if she’ll answer, if she’s home, but four rings laters his mom’s airy voice says, “Hello? Betty speaking.”

He breathes in harshly, lungs aching in a way he’s come to associate with bruised ribs. Breathes out softly and, the word more air than sound, says, “Mom?”

If he’d thought on it, he’d have thought he’d need to explain, to go into detail, to tell her that something awful is happening, has happened, that he doesn’t even know what he wants her to do, he just, he’d just been standing in the hospital watching Dustin sob and Robin press her hands to her throat and Nancy stare blankly at her bloody hands and he’d needed something he couldn’t name. If he’d thought on it, he wouldn’t have called at all.

But she doesn’t ask for an explanation, not really. He says mom, his voice shaking around the word like it hasn’t since he was six years old and still convinced his mother hung the stars, and she makes a noise he’s never heard, but recognizes from the few times he’s seen Joyce fuss over Will.

“Where are you?” Is what she asks, instead of any of the other questions he has answers for.

“The hospital,” he says blankly, staring at the parking lot, the cars parked haphazardly, the diseased red light still flickering out of a crack across the street. “I’m at the hospital. I’m, we lost… it’s really bad here,” he settles on after a minute, listening to the faint background noise of her moving around a room.

“Are you hurt?” Her tone is brisk, heels clacking as she moves back and forth while she talks.

He thinks about lying. Even now, when she’s actually asking, he thinks about lying and telling her it’s fine and hanging up. He’d handled this mess at 16 and been fine. Had handled it every year after that, always younger than he is now, and he’d been fine. But he glances back toward the hospital and the grief. Thinks of Lucas still sobbing when they’d finally managed to get to the Creel house, to Erica’s shaking hands, how she’s never seemed as small as she’d been in that moment.

He’s thinking of the blood, all the fucking blood, and the way this town just keeps hemorrhaging, drowning person after person, kid after kid. Thinks too, of all the times this week he’d barely made it out alive.

“I’ll live,” he says.

It’s maybe supposed to sound like a joke but she goes very quiet, the only noise the sound of her nails tapping, click click click, in rapid succession against a table. “I’ll be there in six hours,” she says. “Steve, don’t go anywhere. Wait at the hospital.”

He laughs, only vaguely registering that the sound is too high. “Yeah, trust me, I’m not going anywhere.”

Another long pause, her heels clicking across the floor faster than before. “Six hours,” she says again, voice tight. “Go sit down, Steve.”

———

Dustin cries himself out somewhere around 2am, falls asleep with his head on Robin’s shoulder. Robin rests her head on Steve’s shoulder and he rests his head against hers. On his other side Nancy is picking at the skin around her fingernails and he reaches out, gently pulls her hands apart and holds on.

Lucas sits on her other side, eyes unerringly fixed on the door, waiting for the doctor to come back with news on Max. Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Henderson are sitting on the other side of the room, speaking in low tones and Steve, selfishly, wishes that Erica was still in sight as well. He knows Ms. Sinclair was right to take her home but it makes him anxious that he can’t see her anymore. That anything could happen between here and her house and he’d never know until it was too late.

“What are we going to do?” Robin whispers, twisting her hands together like she’s trying to turn the shadows into puppets she can banish.

He doesn’t answer, couldn’t even if he had one for her. It’s lucky really that they seem to have entered the lull following the battle, because he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to stand up again without passing out.

If a monster burst through the door right now, if something gave him a shot of fear fueled adrenaline, he could keep going. But the adrenaline crash, the facade of safety settling on their shoulders, the grief wrapping around his throat—

His sides feel like they’re melting, like every brush of cloth against raw skin is sandpaper instead. And it’s fine, he can wait, of course he can wait. There are still other people in the hospital who need to be seen more than him. So many people who got caught in the earthquake and are hurting. So many people who didn’t make it all because the upside down swallowed them and isn’t going to give them back.

“Steve?” Nancy murmurs, “Are you okay?” She’s squinting at him in concern when he tilts his head her way and he can’t figure out what gave him away until he sees how tightly he’s holding her hand.

“I’m fine,” he says, forcing himself to let go of her hand. He forces an awkward laugh and a weak smile. “I’m just tired and worried about Max.”

Nancy’s eyes narrow but she hums under her breath and he knows she’s going to swallow the lie. But he should have known Robin wouldn’t. Should have expected the sharp jab to his side and the pain that goes bursting through him. He almost falls off of his chair with how tightly he curls in on himself, almost throws up on Robin’s stupid, filthy shoes.

Robin and Nancy both exclaim in alarm, although what exactly Robin expected to happen he can’t imagine. Lucas startles and Dustin wakes up with a shout. Dimly, around the ocean roaring in his ears, he can hear Mr. Sinclair’s smooth voice cutting through the noise, but it’s hard to focus on much of anything when his skin feels like it’s trying to peel off of his bones.

“You fucking asshole,” he grits out , not caring if she can hear him. “I’m never giving you a ride again.”

Robin laughs, high-pitched and terrified as she grabs his right arm and hoists him up and out of the chair, Nancy doing the same on his left. “Well, sense of humor is still intact, so—”

“If you say that’s a good sign,” he says, the words coming out fainter than he’d like.

She huffs in annoyance, doing her best to steady him as Nancy mutters, thank god, at the sight of the nurses hurrying towards them. “It is a good sign,” Robin says quietly. “You being alive and talking is always a good sign because I remember the first time when you weren’t and you can’t do that to me again Steve, okay? You can’t.”

His heart clenches, twisting itself into a knot and pulling at his lungs until they ache. “I’m fine, Robin. You know me. Can’t keep me down for long.”

Her breath hitches, and as the nurses herd him into a wheelchair, he thinks he just barely hears her whisper, yeah, that’s what I’m worried about dingus.

Inspired by:

And no, I'm not good at calling Dad said I've fallen off the grid We hardly say I love you 'Cause your parent's parents never did Ohh, ohh, ooh Save me, now I'm facing All my fears of the unknown I've been shakin' in my bones Lately, I've been praying To a god I've never known I can't do this on my own