#i need her to yell at me re: terms of engagement letters and to do an interim invoice for $8000 because she doesn't have money for wages and

[fazcinatingblog]

Who will get there first: Pendles reaching 10,000 disposals or Todd Michael Goldstein reaching 10,000 hitouts

[harringtonheartache]

Call It Fate, Call It Karma | Part Two

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

Summary: A continuation of part one. Steve and Y/n are stuck in the Russian base, left with many questions they will only find the answers to if they escape.

Word Count: 2,105

Warning(s): Stranger Things 3 spoilers, mild descriptions of blood and injury, cussing.

A/N: Here’s part two! Sorry for the wait. I went off book a little in terms of how shit went down in ep. 6 (skipped some lines, etc.), but that’s just because I didn’t want to bore you with scenes you had already experienced. Also, go fucking listen to Joe Keery’s song “Roddy” if you haven’t. IT’S SO GOOD HE’S THE LOVE OF MY LIFE.

The needle had brought the most brief moment of silence, and then the room erupted again into havoc. “Wait a second, wait. Hold on, okay! Wait wait wait what is that thing?” Steve’s words bounced off the walls like ping-pong balls. “It will help you talk,” the Russian man answered with an unsettling tone, one that did not fit with his promise of help. While she was not the one first in line for the mystery meds, Y/n was equally panicked, yelling in unison with him. 

“Hey, hey, hey wait! Don’t fucking-”

“Did you even clean that thing?”

Both of them were cut short and the only sound filling the room was Steve’s scream as he was injected with the drug, just where his jaw met his neck. Y/n was next, but hearing Steve’s cry was worse than experiencing the needle herself. Chaos was drained from the room at once, the two strapped to the chairs having been returned to sleep. 

It was easy to assume that the drug given to them was not a pain reliever, although Steve did feel as though the tenderness of his wounds had been dulled when he woke up for the second time in the cold room. Y/n wasn’t far behind him in her physical state, waking up shortly after he had. While they had both just taken a nap, they still felt tired while they leaned their heads against one another. “Do you feel anything?” Steve asked her. “No, not really. You?” “I-I don’t think so. Maybe? I… I kind of feel good,” he answered her with a melodious sound to his voice. She offered him a chuckle, “I kind of do too”. Their heads knocked together sternly as they laughed, but they were too jubilant to feel the pain it caused in full effect. “Morons, they messed up the drugs!” he sang. “Dumbasses!” she agreed with the same satirical tone. They continued this for a minute or two, feeling joy for the first time since arriving underground, even if it was drug-induced. 

Behind the metal door, their triumph was heard loud and clear throughout the narrow hallway, indicating to the men outside that they were ready to be attended to again. Their booted feet stomped noisily back to the door, but the sound could not be heard over the laughter coming from within. They re-entered through the door, and to the teenagers tied together, the Russian men were no longer as scary as they had been earlier. “Let’s try this again,” said the man in the uniform and hat. “Who do you work for?” 

“Scoops. Scoops Ahoy,” Steve repeated his dried up answer like someone on a game show, completely certain but not too serious. Unable to keep themselves from laughing, they didn’t even bother with hiding the lack of urgency they felt in response to the situation. Y/n’s shoe tapped madly on the floor, so taken over with giddiness. Steve’s hair bounced as well, against his forehead as chuckles bobbed his body up and down. “How did you find us?” the man continued, seemingly unfazed but still bitter. “Completely by accident,” another answer that would not satisfy those looking for the reasoning behind their visit. The response did however satisfy both Y/n and Steve himself, prompting the laughter to continue. 

Russian was muttered from the mouth of the bitter man, and a pair of small doctoral pliers entered the conversation similarly to how the needle had earlier. Before the tool was able to inflict it’s intended damage, an alarm blared at an extreme volume, perhaps just as loud as the screaming had been earlier. Steve looked up at the captor, a cocky smile twitching onto his face as he poked at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. He could feel the blood that still resided in his mouth from earlier, but no longer felt concerned with the taste. 

No more than three minutes later, Y/n and Steve rode together in the back of a small red cart, Dustin steering hastily down the hallway. His style of driving could be described as “shitty,” or “dangerous,” but rather fitting considering he had never driven anything but a bike before, and he was trying to spare the life of four, himself included. He jerked the wheel in a manner that was rather unexpected to the two in the back, causing them to fall all over one another. Y/n’s arm ended up twisted together with Steve’s leg, and she laid sprawled against his lap. The enthusiastic driving continued to milk laughter from them. “Whoooo! This is like a roller coaster!” Y/n shared. Steve agreed wholeheartedly, “I love roller coasters! Dustin go faster!” 

“No,” Erica butted in.

“What is wrong with them?” she asked the chauffeur. “I don’t know!” he yelled over his assemblage. “Did you- did you know your initials spell sshhh?” Y/n spoke in a loud whisper to Steve, dragging the two letters to mimic a librarian. The roller coaster came to a halt with the pounding of heavy barrels and the two in the back were dragged from their train car. 

While adding significant chaos to the escape plan, the drugged up duo made it back to Starcourt. After deciding that their hiding spot in the movie theater Dustin had ordered them to stay in wasn’t captivating enough, the two stumbled out into the main lobby, taking turns holding themselves up on the water fountain and downing as much liquid as they could. Y/n’s fingers started to hurt as she held down the “push here” button on the metal box with unnecessary pressure. “Hey, Y/n,” she was interrupted, her hand unintentionally slipping from the fountain. “Look at the ceiling,” said Steve. She followed his walking pattern to stand next to him, staggering as if she wasn’t fully capable of standing with complete balance. “Woaah,” she exclaimed, equitably as entranced by the stars that seemed to be dragging through the sky like someone was painting stripes on a flag. 

Their stargazing ended with them in the bathroom, disposing of what little was in their stomachs. The only thing they had eaten in the past day or two was the popcorn Steve swiped from the trashcan on their hurried retreat into the movie theater. They now stood in front of the sinks, washing out their mouths to rid themselves of the taste of bile, a taste significantly more vulgar than blood. Water now dripped from Steve’s tongue as he stuck it out under the faucet. The bathroom mirrors reflected bloodied faces, but they were not ready to take on another task of self care and clean the deep red stains from their skin. Once content with the taste of her freshly washed mouth, Y/n dropped lazily back to the ground. Steve followed shortly, sitting beside her on the floor that could most likely use a washing itself, his back to the row of sinks. 

“I think whatever they gave us is wearing off,” he spoke. 

“Yeah,” she agreed in short. 

“Well, my optimism wasn’t in vain,” Steve said playfully, remembering their conversation back in the base. He stretched his legs out in front of him, his calves coming in contact with the cool tile. His Scoops Ahoy uniform would need a good cleaning before his next shift, as the red stripes of his shirt now appeared to be dripping like melted ice cream since the addition of the running blood.

A sober laugh left Y/n, tired but content with their survival thus far. “Guess you were right, sorry I doubted you Harrington,” the end of her sentence lifted in enthusiasm. She leaned her head against the base of the sink, wishing not to consider the bacteria it was painted with. “How badly does your face hurt?” she questioned, assuming the answer was ‘a significant amount’. “A lot,” he said, “but you got pretty bruised up yourself,” he added. He turned to face her now, scooting a bit closer to her on the bathroom floor. She looked to him, expecting to meet his eyes, but found him engaged in his own observation of her injuries instead. A hand was removed from his lap and floated to the space between their two chests as he hesitated with his next action. 

The palm of his hand met her jaw and he carefully laid his thumb near a gash on her cheek. Her eyes blinked solemnly, trusting him to be gentle with her face and it’s received damage. “Shit,” he said, feeling an indisputable sense of worry that showed on his expression. His eyes (one still swollen and purple) scanned the rest of her face, looking over every cut or bruise that was added to her complexion within the past few hours. If he had not been down in that Russian base with her, he might assume she had gotten into a nasty fist-fight like he was infamous for doing himself. “I’m okay,” she told him soothingly. “You got it worse than me.” He finally redirected his gaze to meet her eyes, forcing himself to draw his focus away from the colorful bruise on the edge of her jawline that was screaming for his attention. “I’m used to getting my ass kicked,” he joked. They laughed to themselves, smiling as widely as they could stand. 

He took his hand back, but they did not subtract the closeness in proximity that Steve had initiated. “I hope you know I wasn’t saying all of that stuff back there just because I thought we were going to die,” he said, bringing a more serious conversation to bat, yet still carrying a light tone. “The stuff about enjoying my presence?” she asked, not fully grasping the lack of humor presented with his last sentence. “I’d hope you were telling the truth,” she chuckled amusingly. A smile came to Steve’s face as he looked downward, slightly embarrassed but still feeling an obligation to continue with his intended conversational route. “No, I was, but I uh- I don’t know. I,” -he paused- “I feel more than friendship with you, Y/n,” he brought his head back up now, despite his apprehension in doing so.

Her eyebrows jumped slightly, but she brought them back down as to not leave Steve regretting his confession. He watched her carefully, not wanting to miss any indication of responding emotion. His fingers twitched against one another in his lap, and he became strangely self-aware and confused as to what he should be doing with his hands. “Oh,” she said, her reply giving him little relief with only this one word. “I mean-” he started, but she didn’t let him attempt a retraction of his words. “Me too,” a smile graced her face, an honest one. “I like you too, Steve”. In all transparency, she felt as if the word “like” was not enough to express her feelings towards the person who sat in front of her, but using a more profound word was too daunting. He joined her in an elated expression, smiling both at himself and her. “Thank god, I was worried that I was going to have to go back to those Russian idiots and just let them kill me,” he said. 

They laughed again, a sound you would have heard often if you had spent the day with the two. His eyes dropped to her lips, still plump and pretty despite the small cut running vertically over her bottom one. Her laughter at his recently spewed joke filled him with enough confidence to perform his next action with almost complete certainty in himself. He swiftly moved his head to meet her lips with his own; a gentle kiss, one that was careful not to cause extreme pressure against the cut that had been bleeding all of thirty minutes ago. Nevertheless, it was soft. A moment both comforting and sweet shared between them. 

If that moment had lasted but three seconds longer than it had, it would have been shared with a third person: Dustin. The small, fretful boy slung the bathroom door open with more power than many would expect from him. He found the two he was looking for, questionably close to one another, having pulled away from a kiss seconds before. Their eye contact was broken at the sound of Dustin’s entrance, as they turned their heads to quickly meet his startled stare. “What the hell? I told you guys to stay there! What are you doing?” The two didn’t even try for words, continuous laughter now echoing off of the tiled walls. What they had was good karma. 

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Tags: @hearteyesmotherclucker