Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Sixty-Seven. Peace, At Last

SIXTY-SEVEN
— peace, at last

THE FIRST TIME DANNY WENT OVER TO STEVE'S HOUSE, he brought his sister. It was Steve's sophomore year, the twins freshman year, and his parents were home a little more often. The place was all lit up for Christmas, and they had a really tall tree, ten-feet, probably, smack-dot in the center of the living room. The entire house smelled like cinnamon and fresh linen. There weren't any beer cans on the floor, no ash trays hidden in corners. The television wasn't blaring, a record player wasn't blasting, the floorboards didn't creak with every single footstep. The house was calm, and welcoming. They — meaning the twins — hadn't seen anything like this since they had been to the Plaza fucking Hotel for a pee break on a drive in New York. Danny liked Steve's house a lot better than the old trailer. He started visiting more often.

The house still smells like cinnamon and fresh linen. It's a little messier, given that it's been empty for a few days, and he didn't find time to clean before getting trapped in a Russian bunker — he has to take a mental note to pick up before his parents come home. The living room has been rearranged a little, and they changed the kitchen counter from granite to marble. Steve's house is cold. Really, really cold, colder than any house she's been in before. It might be because no one is ever home.

      They didn't leave the parking lot of Starcourt right away. She let the paramedics clean her wounds to avoid infection, and she spoke very briefly with firefighters (talking to them made her wanna puke). She held Riley in her arms for probably fifteen-minutes, and then let Eleven hold her for another twenty. She watched in silence as Claudia Henderson came for her son, and the Sinclair's for their children, and the Wheeler's for theirs. They had to drive back home in the back of Officer Powell's patrol car. He was too afraid to ask her about Jim.

Steve only turns on one light when they get inside. A dim one, the kitchen light directly over the counter he eats most his dinners on. It's so quiet. So incredibly quiet, she hears every single shuffle when he slides his blue Adidas off his feet. The floorboards still don't creak as she walks past the living room and towards the staircase. The wooden staircase that has perfect padded steps, ones that let her walk silently, and add to the calm hushed-ness of this house.

      Steve's room has plaid wallpaper and plaid curtains. His desk lamp has been on for four days. The bed is still unmade, red and blue sheets crinkled in the position of his sleeping body from a few nights ago. The room has a nostalgic yellow glow to it, one that provides some sort of sickening comfort to the heavy feeling weighing on her chest. He has dirty socks in the corner and an empty glass of water on the nightstand. When he walks past, he puts his hands on her waist. He doesn't speak, he doesn't excuse himself, he just gently pulls her into the room with him. She doesn't realize she was frozen at the doorway.

He sits on the bed and the mattress creaks. Steve exhales, for what seems like an hour. He keeps all the air out of his lungs, everything out of his chest, he exhales three days of agony and lets himself go limp. Never in his life has he been so grateful to lay on this stupid fucking bed.

Steve hasn't really processed what's happened to him. He's been super worried about Lucy, and he very much still is. He always is. But things happened so fast after the escape — they were high, he sobered up and confessed his love to the girl of his dreams, everyone met up at the mall, then boom, death and destruction. It's not until right now, as he sits on that mattress, that he realizes how heavy he's taking what happened to him in that bunker. He's realizing that they beat him and they kicked him and they drugged him with a mystery fluid he'll never discover the name of. They threw him onto the floor like an animal, they spit in his face, they almost killed him. It takes him this long to realize it's fucked.

She hasn't cried in a while, but her face still feels like she is. Swollen lips, puffy eyes, red nose. It hurts to blink. She's teetering on a breakdown, but she's pushed it off since she smelled the cinnamon and linen scent of the Harrington's house.