echoes
Steve Harrington x reader
Summary: When Steve's voice starts calling for help somewhere deep inside the Upside Down, your only instinct is to find him. That's exactly what Vecna is counting on.
Warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, minors DNI, no use of y/n, established relationship, angst, hurt/comfort, set around the events of season 4, psychological horror, canon-typical violence, anxiety, fear, fluff (lmk if i missed anything)
W/C: 8.3k
A/N: this one is HEAVILY inspired by a recent rewatch of hunger games: catching fire, specifically the scene with the jabberjays. this fic has been sat in my drafts, half-written, since, honestly, about march. i finally got round to finishing it this evening, and i feel incredibly proud of it. also probably not canon-accurate in any way, but we can all pretend. enjoy <3
Read more of my writing here: [masterlist]
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The Upside Down is quieter than it has any right to be.
Not silent - never silent - but subdued in a way that feels almost expectant, as though the whole landscape is listening rather than breathing. Ash drifts lazily through the air, settling in your hair, your eyelashes, the shoulders of your jacket, while every now and then something groans somewhere overhead, the sound echoing through the skeletal remains of Hawkins before disappearing into the endless red-grey haze. Every shadow seems to linger a fraction longer than it should. Every abandoned house feels as though it's watching you back.
Nobody speaks unless they have to anymore. After everything that's happened over the past few years, you've all learnt that unnecessary noise rarely ends well in this place.
The six of you move carefully along what used to be a residential street, flashlights sweeping slowly across abandoned cars, collapsed fences and gardens swallowed whole by impossible roots. Your boots crunch through brittle leaves that never seem to decay, disturbing clouds of pale spores that drift lazily back towards the ground as though gravity itself behaves differently here. Somewhere nearby, something creaks - a long, drawn-out noise that could just as easily be an old house settling as something waking up - and without thinking, the entire group pauses for half a second before continuing on.
Nancy walks at the front, shotgun resting across one shoulder as she periodically unfolds the increasingly battered map tucked into her jacket pocket, comparing hastily scribbled landmarks against the warped streets around you. Robin stays close enough to mutter the occasional nervous observation whenever the silence starts pressing too heavily against her chest, her voice never quite loud enough to carry beyond the group. You fall into step just behind them, while Lucas and Max keep pace a few feet back and Mike brings up the rear, glancing over his shoulder often enough that it's obvious none of you are particularly comfortable being separated.
Splitting into two groups had been necessary.
Nobody had liked it.
Least of all, Steve.
Even now, you can still picture the expression he'd worn before you'd gone your separate ways, bat slung over one shoulder, jaw set so tightly you'd thought he might crack a tooth. Every instinct he possessed had been arguing against leaving you somewhere he couldn't immediately reach, and it had taken Nancy reminding him - twice - that covering more ground was the only way this plan stood a chance of working before he'd reluctantly given in.
"Yeah," he'd muttered, still unconvinced. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."
You'd smiled despite yourself, reaching across to squeeze his hand through the fingerless leather glove he refused to throw away, reminding him that if anyone in Hawkins knew how to survive the Upside Down by now, it was probably the woman standing in front of him.
That hadn't impressed him nearly as much as you'd hoped.
Instead, he'd simply sighed, stepped closer, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Dustin wasn't looking, and pressed a quick kiss against your forehead.
"Be careful."
"Always am."
"Liar."
You'd laughed, nudged his shoulder, and watched him disappear into the crimson mist with Dustin, Jonathan, Eddie, Will and Eleven until the trees had swallowed them completely.
That was maybe an hour ago. The memory still tugs at the corner of your mouth.
Until-
"...Hey."
The smile disappears instantly.
You stop so abruptly Robin almost walks straight into your back.
"What?" she asks, steadying herself with a hand against your shoulder.
You don't answer.
Your head turns slowly towards the trees to your left, every muscle in your body suddenly taut.
It isn't loud.
If anything, it's strangely distant, the sound drifting through the dead forest like smoke on the wind. For a heartbeat there's nothing else - only the soft hiss of spores falling through bare branches and the faint crackle of your flashlight.
Then it comes again.
"Hey!"
Closer this time.
Urgent.
"I'm over here!"
Your stomach drops so violently it almost hurts.
You would know that voice anywhere.
"Steve?"
The name leaves your mouth before you've consciously decided to say it.
Nancy's head snaps around immediately. "What?"
Before you can answer, the voice comes again.
"Honey."
The nickname punches the air from your lungs.
Nobody else calls you that.
Not Robin. Not Nancy. Not your parents.
Only Steve.
"Honey!"
There's something beneath it now that wasn't there before.
Fear.
Not the loud, frantic kind, but the tight, restrained panic of somebody desperately trying to keep themselves together. The kind of fear that makes your own pulse spike before you've even had time to think.
"I can't-"
The sentence breaks apart abruptly, swallowed by the trees.
Your heart lurches into your throat.
"Steve?!" you shout, already stepping forward. "Steve, where are you?!"
For a moment, the world answers with nothing.
Not even the ordinary silence of the Upside Down, but something heavier, stranger, as though the entire landscape has paused to listen.
Then, impossibly, the voice comes again.
Closer.
Close enough that you instinctively turn your head.
"Come find me..."
The words catch on a ragged breath before the final one arrives, quiet enough to almost disappear beneath the drifting ash.
"...Please."
Everything inside you seizes.
You've heard Steve angry before. Exhausted. Bleeding. Terrified enough to stand between monsters and children with nothing but a baseball bat clutched in white knuckles.
But you've almost never heard him sound helpless.
You don't think.
You run.
The forest surges towards you as your boots hammer across uneven ground, branches clawing at your sleeves while ash billows around your legs. Somewhere behind you, Nancy shouts your name, followed almost immediately by Robin yelling, "Wait!" but neither voice properly registers. Steve sounds hurt. Steve sounds alone. Steve needs you, and every instinct you possess drowns beneath that single overwhelming certainty.
"Steve!" you yell back, your voice tearing through the trees. "Steve, where are you?"
Nothing.
Then-
"Honey!"
Further ahead now.
You change direction immediately, scrambling over the twisted roots that split the road apart. He sounds closer this time. You can get to him. You just have to keep moving.
Behind you, Nancy's voice grows sharper.
"Wait!"
This time she's running too.
Robin isn't far behind, crashing through the undergrowth in your wake, and neither of them is trying to stop you anymore.
They're following. Because they'd heard him too.
Somewhere further back, confusion suddenly erupts.
"Wait - what's happening?" Mike calls.
"What are you doing?" Lucas shouts, his voice carrying faintly between the trees.
Max's follows a heartbeat later. "Guys?"
You never hear the answer.
The forest swallows their voices almost immediately, leaving only the pounding of your own heartbeat in your ears, your breathing growing harsher with every step, and somewhere ahead, drifting through the ash like a lifeline you can't bear to lose...
Steve.
Calling your name.
Nancy doesn't waste a second.
The moment you're swallowed by the trees, she snatches the walkie-talkie from her belt without breaking stride, thumbing the transmit button as she runs, branches whipping against her sleeves and catching in her hair while Robin struggles to keep pace beside her. Both of them are still searching desperately through the dead woodland for any glimpse of your torchlight, but you're already disappearing deeper into the crimson mist, moving far faster than either of them can hope to match.
"Dustin," Nancy says sharply, breathing hard between each word. "Dustin, come in."
For one agonising second, only static answers her, the familiar crackle hissing through the speaker loud enough to make her grip tighten instinctively around the radio. Robin glances sideways, her expression caught somewhere between confusion and fear, before Dustin's voice finally bursts through the interference.
"Nancy?" he says, sounding perfectly ordinary. "You guys okay?"
"No." Nancy doesn't even attempt to soften the answer. "Where's Steve?"
There's a pause.
"...What?"
"Dustin." Her voice is tighter now. "Where is Steve?"
Another beat passes before Dustin replies, and this time the confusion in his voice is unmistakable.
"...Uh..."
The radio crackles again.
"...He's here."
Nancy almost stumbles over an exposed root. "What?"
"I said he's here."
Robin's head snaps sharply towards her, eyes already widening as Nancy presses the walkie harder against her ear, convinced she'd simply misheard. "What do you mean he's there?"
"I mean..." Dustin sounds genuinely baffled now. "...he's standing right next to me."
There's the muffled sound of movement, someone taking the radio, and then Steve's voice comes through the speaker.
"Nance?"
The blood drains from Nancy's face.
"...What's going on?"
She stops so abruptly Robin nearly crashes into her shoulder before managing to catch herself, both of them standing motionless amongst the twisted trees as the impossible settles between them. For a long moment neither woman says anything, because the voice coming through the walkie is calm, confused, completely steady. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the terrified voice that had been echoing through the forest less than a minute ago.
"...Steve?" Nancy manages eventually.
"Yeah?"
"...Are you okay?"
"...Yeah."
"You sure?"
Steve lets out a small, bewildered laugh. "I mean... considering where we are? Sure enough."
Nancy looks at Robin. Robin looks back. Neither of them says it aloud, but they both reach the same impossible conclusion at exactly the same time.
Robin leans towards the radio first.
"...Steve." Her voice comes out far quieter than she'd intended. "...We just heard you."
Silence.
Nancy forces herself to continue. "You were yelling for help. You kept calling out and..." Her throat tightens painfully as she glances in the direction you'd disappeared. "...and she ran after you."
Another silence follows, longer this time, until Dustin finally breaks it.
"...What?"
Steve sounds equally lost. "...What yelling?"
Nancy can hear her own heartbeat now, loud enough that it almost drowns out the radio. "You were calling her name."
"I wasn't."
"You said-"
"I never said anything."
There's no hesitation in the reply. No uncertainty. No searching through his memory to make sure he hasn't forgotten. Steve says it with the absolute certainty of someone stating an indisputable fact.
"I never yelled."
The words settle over both groups like falling ash.
Nobody speaks.
Not Nancy. Not Robin. Not Dustin.
Even the radio seems to fall silent.
It is Robin who finally whispers the question none of them wants to ask.
"...Then who did we hear?"
Nobody has the chance to answer.
Very faintly, through the crackling speaker, another voice reaches the other group.
"Jonathan!"
Jonathan's head jerks upright on the other end of the radio. "Nancy?"
Again.
Closer this time.
"Jonathan!"
Jonathan is already moving before anyone can stop him.
"Nancy!" he shouts instinctively into the darkness. "Where are you?"
"No!" Nancy's voice tears through the walkie. "Jonathan, wait!"
He freezes mid-step.
"It's not me!"
The forest falls deathly quiet.
Jonathan lowers his flashlight by fractions, his eyes never leaving the darkness ahead, while beside him Steve has gone completely still, every muscle in his body suddenly taut.
Then the voice comes again.
"Jonathan..."
It sounds closer now.
More desperate.
"...Please."
Jonathan's face empties of colour.
"...That's..."
The sentence dies unfinished.
Chaos erupts almost immediately afterwards. Questions crash into one another from every direction, nobody waiting long enough for an answer before another voice cuts across it.
"What the hell is that?"
"How is it doing that?"
"It sounded exactly like-"
"Jonathan, don't move!"
"Steve, wait-"
Because Steve has already taken a step towards the sound.
Just one. Instinctive. Automatic. The sort of step you don't realise you've taken until somebody points it out.
Will's voice is so quiet at first that nobody hears him.
"...It's learning."
The panic rolls straight over the top of him. The radio continues crackling with overlapping voices while Steve stares into the trees, every instinct screaming at him to run after Jonathan before it's too late.
Will looks up.
"...Guys."
Still nobody listens.
Then, louder this time-
"It's learning!"
Everything stops.
Even Steve.
Will has gone frighteningly pale, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the trees as though he's finally recognised a pattern that's been sitting just beyond reach this whole time.
"It isn't just copying us."
Nobody interrupts him. Nobody even breathes.
"It's finding the voices we'll follow."
The words settle over the group with all the weight of a death sentence.
Steve feels something cold slide slowly down his spine as every conversation he's ever had in this place suddenly replays itself in his mind. Every frantic shout across a battlefield. Every nickname. Every desperate search through the dark. Every time someone had called Robin, Dustin, Nancy, Jonathan, Eddie, Max... every time somebody had shouted his own name, or called you Honey across a room without thinking.
The Upside Down had heard it all.
It had listened.
And somewhere, somehow, it had remembered.
Not simply the sounds of their voices, but the relationships behind them. The people those voices belonged to. The ones each of them would instinctively run towards without stopping to think.
It wasn't imitating them.
It was studying them.
The realisation lands with such force that Steve feels physically winded.
His head snaps towards the walkie.
"...Where is she?"
Nancy and Robin don't answer immediately. Instead they look at one another, horror spreading slowly across both their faces as they finally understand what had just happened. Robin is the one who finds her voice first, though it barely rises above a whisper.
"...She went after the voice."
Steve doesn't wait for another word.
He tears into the trees at a sprint, Dustin and Jonathan following without hesitation while Eddie, Will and Eleven race after them. Behind him, Nancy forces herself back into motion as well, raising the walkie while she runs.
"East," she says breathlessly. "She headed east, towards the old woods. She thought..." Her voice catches for the briefest moment before she forces the words out. "...she thought she was coming to you."
Steve doesn't answer.
He can't.
Because only one thought is repeating over and over in his head now, louder than his own footsteps, louder than the pounding of his heart, louder than the forest rushing past him.
It knew you'd come.
Steve is moving before Nancy has even finished giving the direction.
"...East-"
It's the only word he hears.
His boots are already pounding across broken tarmac before his mind has caught up with the decision, the walkie still crackling uselessly somewhere behind him as Eddie swears, Jonathan shouts something he doesn't quite catch, and somebody - maybe Dustin - is barking for everyone to stay together. It barely registers. As far as Steve is concerned, he is staying together. You're out there somewhere, alone in a place that has just learnt exactly how to separate people from the ones they love, and everything else falls away beneath that single, brutal certainty. The plan, the map Nancy had spent hours drawing, the routes they'd carefully agreed to follow, even Vecna himself - all of it is pushed aside by one overwhelming instinct. You are alone, and he has to get to you.
He tears through the dead woodland without slowing, branches whipping violently across his face and shoulders, leaving thin scratches he doesn't even feel as they catch against his jacket. Thick vines snake across the forest floor, looping around his boots often enough that he nearly loses his footing twice, while ash swirls through the beam of his flashlight so densely that the trees seem to dissolve into shifting silhouettes before reforming again.
Every movement in the corner of his vision demands a second glance he doesn't have time to give. Every twisted trunk looks like somebody standing just beyond the light until he gets close enough to realise it's only another dead tree.
"Honey!"
His voice tears through the forest, louder than he intends, echoing strangely through the endless stillness before disappearing into the red-grey haze.
Nothing.
He doesn't hesitate.
"Honey!"
Again, only silence answers him. Not true silence - the Upside Down is never truly silent - but the slow groan of old trees, the distant crackle of vines shifting somewhere beyond the flashlight beam, the soft hiss of ash drifting endlessly from a sky that has forgotten what daylight looks like.
Less than two minutes ago, something in this place had been shouting your name over and over again, loud enough to pull you halfway across the forest without a second thought.
Now...
Nothing.
The silence feels deliberate somehow, as though the Upside Down has already said everything it needed to say.
Steve runs harder.
He can hear the others crashing through the undergrowth somewhere behind him, Dustin already beginning to fall behind while Jonathan stubbornly refuses to let him disappear entirely from sight, but they're little more than background noise now.
His own heartbeat pounds so violently against his ribs that it drowns almost everything else out, each breath burning harder than the last as one thought repeats over and over with desperate, unbearable simplicity.
Please answer.
Please.
Please-
A scream tears through the forest.
Steve stops breathing.
It isn't his name.
It isn't even words.
It's one raw, involuntary cry, ripped straight from somebody's chest before cutting off so abruptly it feels as though the air itself has been stolen away mid-breath.
His stomach drops.
Not because he recognises the voice, though he does immediately.
Because he recognises the fear.
The voices that had lured you away had been almost unnervingly perfect. They'd sounded exactly like him, exactly like Nancy, every sentence carefully chosen, every plea just convincing enough to override reason. Looking back, they were almost too perfect, polished in a way real panic never is.
This...
This isn't like that.
This scream isn't performed.
It isn't trying to imitate terror.
It is terror.
"Hurry!" he shouts to the others behind him, though he barely realises the words have left his mouth.
He changes direction instantly, boots skidding across loose earth as he throws himself towards the sound with reckless desperation. Branches claw at his sleeves, vines wrap around his ankles, ash blinds him for a heartbeat at a time, but none of it is enough to slow him down. Every instinct in his body is screaming that he is running out of time, and he pushes harder, lungs burning, muscles protesting, the forest seeming to resist every step as though it doesn't want him reaching you.
Then, without warning, the trees fall away.
Steve bursts into the clearing so fast he almost loses his footing entirely, stopping so abruptly that Dustin crashes into his back a second later before Jonathan catches them both.
Nobody moves.
Nobody speaks.
Even the forest seems to hold its breath.
You're suspended several feet above the ground.
Your head is thrown back so far it looks painful, your eyes rolled white beneath half-closed lids, arms drifting slowly outwards as though invisible hands are pulling them wider inch by inch. Your feet hang limp beneath you, toes barely disturbing the ash swirling below, while your fingers twitch and curl into impossible, unnatural shapes that Steve has seen once before and prayed he'd never have to witness again.
His mind doesn't even need a second to make the connection.
Another girl.
Another impossible choice.
Another body floating helplessly beneath a blood-red sky.
Max.
"Oh, God..."
The words escape him before he realises he's spoken them.
Everything inside him turns to ice.
No.
No.
God, no.
He's too late.
By the time Nancy reaches the clearing, Robin is only a step behind her, the others close on their heels, all of them arriving breathless enough that the sight before them steals what little air they had left.
Dustin reaches for Steve's arm instinctively, fingers wrapping around his sleeve before he even seems to realise he's done it, while Robin says your name just once, so quietly it barely sounds like a word at all. It comes out as disbelief more than anything else, as though saying it aloud might somehow make what she's looking at impossible. Lucas swears under his breath, a sharp, horrified sound swallowed almost immediately by the dead forest, and Nancy doesn't waste a second. Panic has always made her practical. She's already scanning the clearing, already looking for an answer, already searching for something - anything - they can still do.
Everyone is talking at once.
"What do we do?"
"Get her down!"
"El-"
"Steve!"
"The music-"
The voices blur together into meaningless noise. Steve hears them, but they never quite become words. His entire world has narrowed to the impossible image hanging in front of him.
To you.
Your head is still thrown back unnaturally, your body suspended several feet above the ash-covered ground, but then he notices something that turns his blood to ice.
Your lips are moving.
Slowly.
Almost conversationally.
As though you're talking to somebody standing right in front of you.
No sound comes out.
For one terrible, endless moment, Steve feels completely useless.
He has always known what to do. Swing the bat. Get between the monster and the kids. Buy everybody enough time to run. Keep moving until the danger passes. Even when he was terrified, there had always been something practical to hold onto, some action that made fear feel manageable.
Now...
There is nothing.
He takes one step forward, instinctively positioning himself beneath you before stopping again, his hands lifting helplessly as though he might somehow be able to catch you despite the impossible distance between you. Every instinct tells him to reach for you, to pull you back, to fix this somehow, but he can't even touch you.
His gaze flicks desperately towards Eleven, searching her face for reassurance she doesn't have, and for the first time since this nightmare began, he realises he genuinely has no idea what he's supposed to do.
Then something clicks.
The backpack. His backpack.
Before anyone can even finish shouting over one another, Steve is already dropping to his knees, wrenching the zip open with shaking hands and throwing supplies blindly into the ash as he searches. Flashlights. Rope. Spare batteries. Bandages. Everything he'd packed because somebody might need it. Dustin starts to ask what he's doing, but Steve barely hears him.
His fingers close around cold plastic.
The Walkman.
Hidden beneath spare ammunition and first-aid supplies is the cassette he'd tucked away weeks ago without ever mentioning it to you, your favourite album carefully rewound and ready to play.
He'd packed it after Max. Quietly. Secretly. Not because he'd expected to use it, but because the idea of ever standing helplessly beside another person he loved without at least trying had become unbearable.
Of course he'd brought it.
Of course he had.
Somewhere else, somewhere that doesn't feel like a place so much as a memory that's forgotten how to end, you are running.
The world around you is wrong in ways your mind can't quite untangle. Streets fold into childhood bedrooms, school corridors open into empty forests, and every familiar place seems to shift the moment you look away from it, rearranging itself into something almost recognisable before slipping just beyond understanding again.
Faces appear in the distance - people you love, people you've known your whole life - but something about them feels subtly, nauseatingly off. Their smiles linger too long. Their eyes don't quite meet yours. Their voices sound as though they're being remembered by someone who has never actually spoken to them.
Ahead of you, Steve appears between two dead trees.
He smiles.
He lifts a hand.
"Come here."
Relief floods through you so suddenly your legs almost buckle.
You take one step-
The image tears apart like paper caught in a fire.
The smile vanishes.
The trees dissolve into darkness.
And from somewhere beyond the endless red horizon, something begins to move.
Vecna emerges slowly, impossibly tall against the crimson landscape, each measured step echoing through the empty expanse until the sound seems to come from every direction at once.
He doesn't hurry. He doesn't need to.
One grotesquely elongated hand stretches towards you, fingers unfurling with terrifying patience, while his voice settles around you like smoke.
"You've always been so willing to follow."
You stumble backwards.
He keeps coming.
"There was never any question."
His hand reaches your face.
Long fingers press gently against your temple.
Your vision whites out.
Back in the Upside Down, your body jerks violently.
Robin gasps.
Steve looks up just in time to see you rise higher, another few feet lifting you into the air until you're suspended almost twelve feet above the ground, your arms beginning to spread wider as though invisible vines are pulling every joint apart one careful inch at a time.
The cassette clicks into place.
Music erupts from the tiny portable speaker, far too small for a clearing this large, the sound fighting desperately against the endless groan of the Upside Down.
Nothing happens.
Steve turns the volume higher.
Still nothing.
It can't have been more than a minute.
It feels like hours.
He stares up at you, desperately searching for any sign that you've heard it - that your fingers twitched differently, that your breathing changed, that something, anything, reached you - but your expression never changes.
Around him, nobody says it aloud.
Nobody has to.
They're all thinking exactly the same thing.
They're losing you.
Inside the vision, everything begins to unravel.
Your memories spill around you in broken fragments, recognisable enough to hurt but twisted just enough to become unbearable.
Steve turns away from you without looking back.
Robin laughs as she walks past, pretending not to know your name.
Empty rooms stretch endlessly before you, years of your life collapsing into quiet apartments where nobody ever comes to visit, birthdays forgotten, phone calls unanswered, photographs fading one by one until every face disappears.
You try to run.
The world doesn't let you.
Invisible vines wrap themselves tighter around your ribs every time you struggle, stealing each breath before it can properly fill your lungs.
"I told you," Vecna's voice murmurs somewhere behind you, everywhere at once. "Nobody ever loved you."
The memory changes.
Steve smiles sadly.
"I just felt sorry for you."
Another.
You watch your own funeral.
Nobody cries.
"The others will barely notice you're gone."
"No..." you whisper.
"They'll move on."
"No!"
You fight harder now, twisting violently against restraints you still can't see, tears streaming freely down your face as panic overtakes reason.
Nothing works.
Every desperate movement only seems to tighten whatever is holding you in place, until your screams barely escape your throat at all.
This is it.
You're never getting out.
And somehow, impossibly, the worst part isn't even that you're about to die.
It's Steve.
You heard him.
He sounded terrified.
He needed you.
You never reached him.
As another tear slips down your cheek, all you can do is pray that wherever he is, whatever found him, he made it out.
Please let him be okay.
Please let him survive this.
Even if you don't.
Suddenly-
another voice.
So quiet at first you almost mistake it for another trick.
"...Hey."
Not Vecna.
Steve.
Real Steve.
It barely reaches you, no louder than a memory, but you'd know that voice anywhere.
Vecna's words continue, louder now, trying to drown it out, but Steve keeps speaking anyway, his voice weaving itself carefully through every lie.
"Remember Family Video?"
The darkness flickers.
"The day I asked you out? You spilt that whole thing of popcorn all over the floor, then looked me dead in the eye and tried to convince me it'd already been there before you got there. You were so serious about it, I almost believed you."
Another memory.
Your first date.
"Remember when I tried so hard to impress you that I spent twenty minutes pretending I knew what I was talking about, and then you asked one follow-up question and I had to admit I'd completely made it up? You laughed so hard you nearly fell off the bench. I thought I'd ruined the whole date. You told me afterwards it was the moment you actually started liking me."
The first time he'd kissed you.
"Do you remember our first kiss? I kept saying goodnight and then not leaving. I think I said it three times. You finally laughed and told me, 'Steve, either kiss me or go home.' So I kissed you… And then I still stood there for another five minutes because I didn't actually want to leave."
The first time he'd laughed so hard he'd fallen off the bonnet of his car.
"Remember when we stayed in the Family Video parking lot for almost two hours after my shift because we kept saying, 'Okay, one more story,' and then neither of us ever left? You got halfway through telling me about the weird dream you'd had where Robin somehow became President, and you were doing all the voices. I laughed so hard I actually fell straight off the bonnet of the car. You laughed because I was laughing, and neither of us could stop."
Every story arrives exactly as it happened, warm and ordinary and completely, stubbornly true.
Vecna's voice rises in fury.
Steve's doesn't.
It just keeps talking.
Keeps reminding you.
Keeps loving you loudly enough to be heard.
The vines around your wrists loosen.
Only slightly.
But enough.
You pull.
They give.
Suddenly you're falling forward onto solid ground instead of hanging helplessly in the endless red expanse, and for the first time since this nightmare began you can see it.
A tear in the darkness.
Beyond it-
the clearing.
Your own body suspended in the air.
Nancy.
Robin.
Max.
Everyone looking up at you in horror.
And directly beneath you...
Steve.
His face is streaked with ash and panic, his mouth still moving as he tells another story, another memory, another reason to come back.
You can hear him now.
Perfectly.
Each word grows louder as you begin to run towards him, the impossible distance between you shrinking with every desperate step across the crimson landscape. He's reaching for you, even though he can't possibly touch you from where he stands, and somehow you know exactly where the gap in this red hellscape leads.
You're almost there.
Close enough to see the tears in his eyes.
Close enough to hear him say your name.
Close enough that if you just keep running-
For one suspended, impossible heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then your body drops.
There isn't a graceful descent, no slow drifting back towards the earth. One moment you're hanging impossibly high above them, the next the invisible force holding you gives way entirely, and you plummet towards the ash-covered ground.
Steve is already moving.
He catches you before you can hit the forest floor, the force of your body slamming into his hard enough to send him stumbling backwards. His knees buckle beneath the impact, Dustin grabbing his shoulder just in time to stop both of you crashing into the roots behind him, but Steve barely notices. He's already wrapping both arms around you, pulling you instinctively against his chest as though he can somehow shield you from whatever has just happened simply by refusing to let go.
"Hey, hey, hey..." His voice is shaking so badly he barely recognises it as his own. "I've got you. I've got you."
He lowers you both gently to the ground, pulling you into the safety of his lap.
You don't answer.
Not immediately.
Your body is trembling violently in his arms, each breath catching somewhere high in your chest before dissolving into another sob, your eyes squeezed shut as though opening them might drag you straight back into whatever nightmare you've just escaped. Steve's heart lurches into his throat.
"Flashlight," Nancy says quietly somewhere behind him.
He barely hears her.
His other hand cups your jaw instead, carefully tilting your face towards him just enough to check your pupils, his thumb brushing absent-mindedly across the tears still clinging to your cheek.
"Hey."
Nothing.
"Honey."
His voice breaks completely on the nickname.
"Come on."
Your eyelashes flutter.
Then, slowly, your eyes open.
They don't focus immediately. They dart frantically around the clearing, pupils wide with panic, as though you're still trying to work out which world you're standing in. For a terrifying second, Steve isn't sure you recognise him at all.
Then your gaze catches his.
Relief floods across your face so suddenly it almost hurts to look at.
Your fingers seize handfuls of his jacket before he can say another word, clutching the fabric with desperate, shaking hands.
"Steve."
"I'm here."
"What..." Your voice catches painfully. "Why were you screaming?"
Steve freezes.
"I heard you." The words tumble out faster now, tripping over one another as tears continue spilling unchecked down your face. "You sounded scared. You kept calling me and I- I tried to find you, but..." You shake your head hard, still gripping him so tightly he can feel your hands trembling through the denim. "Are you hurt? What happened? Where were you? Steve..."
Every question lands like a punch to the ribs.
You still think you were trying to save him.
You have absolutely no idea what really happened.
Steve opens his mouth.
He almost tells you.
Almost explains the voices, the mimicry, the impossible horror of hearing himself call your name while standing half a mile away. He almost tells you how close he'd come to losing you, how he'd watched you floating beneath that ruined sky exactly the way Max had, how for one unbearable moment he'd genuinely believed this was the last time he'd ever hold you.
Then he really looks at you.
You're shaking so violently your teeth chatter between words. Every breath is too quick, too shallow, your chest rising and falling in uneven bursts that never quite seem to fill your lungs. Even now, even after everything, your hands are moving over him in frantic little checks, brushing across his shoulders, his face, his arms, searching desperately for injuries that aren't there.
You're still trying to make sure he's okay.
This isn't the moment for explanations.
What you need isn't the truth.
You need certainty.
Without saying another word, Steve slides one hand gently to the back of your head and pulls you against him, his other arm wrapping securely around your shoulders until there's barely any space left between you. He can feel your heartbeat hammering wildly against his chest, completely out of rhythm with his own, and so he simply holds you there, one hand stroking slowly through your hair as though reminding you, over and over again, that he's solid.
Real.
Alive.
"I'm here," he murmurs quietly, resting his forehead against yours. "You're okay."
You shake your head weakly.
"No, but-"
"I'm here."
"I thought-"
"I know."
"I couldn't get to you."
"You don't have to."
His voice is impossibly gentle now, every word spoken with the same quiet certainty.
"I'm here, baby. I'm not hurt. I promise."
Another sob catches somewhere deep inside your chest.
"I'll explain everything when we get out of here, okay?"
He waits until your eyes find his again before continuing.
"But right now..." His thumb brushes carefully beneath your eye, wiping away another tear before it has the chance to fall. "...I've got you."
Your breathing catches.
Then, slowly, almost without either of you noticing, it begins to change.
One shaky breath.
Then another.
Steve doesn't ask you to breathe with him. He simply breathes himself, slow and steady, holding you close enough that your body has something solid to follow. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the frantic rhythm of your breathing begins to match his own, each inhale a little deeper than the last until your shoulders stop shaking quite so violently.
Only then does Steve finally lift his head.
Over your shoulder, the rest of the group stand scattered around the clearing in complete silence.
Nobody speaks.
Robin's hands are still clasped tightly over her mouth. Dustin has gone unnaturally pale. Eddie stares fixedly at the place where you'd been hanging only moments before, while Nancy slowly lowers the shotgun she'd forgotten she was still holding. Even Eleven, exhausted as she is, looks quietly shaken.
None of them need to say what they're all thinking.
The Upside Down hadn't almost fooled them.
It had almost taken you.
And for one unbearable moment...
it very nearly succeeded.
By the time you all make it back to Hawkins, the adrenaline has long since burnt itself out, leaving behind only the kind of exhaustion that settles somewhere deeper than your bones.
Nobody feels much like talking.
The drive back is almost entirely silent, broken only by the occasional crackle of the radio somebody had forgotten to switch off and Robin quietly asking if anyone wants to stop for food before immediately deciding she isn't actually hungry after all.
You end up back at Steve's house.
Somebody makes tea. Somebody else disappears upstairs and comes back with blankets that don't quite match. Dustin spends five solid minutes insisting he isn't tired before promptly falling asleep in the armchair with his head tipped awkwardly against the cushions. Jonathan and Nancy sit shoulder to shoulder on the opposite sofa without saying much of anything, content simply to exist in the same room now that they're all accounted for.
Relief, it turns out, isn't loud. It doesn't arrive with celebration or triumphant laughter. It arrives softly, in mugs of tea gone cold before anyone remembers to drink them, in blankets tucked carefully around shaking shoulders, in the quiet reassurance of counting heads every few minutes and finding that everyone is still there.
You're lying along Steve's sofa, a blanket pulled loosely over you despite the warmth of the room, your eyes half-closed with exhaustion.
Every muscle aches. Your head feels heavy, your thoughts slower than usual, as though some part of you is still trying to find its way back from wherever Vecna had taken you.
Steve hasn't left your side once.
He's sitting on the floor beside the sofa, his shoulder resting lightly against the cushions, one hand absently cradling the back of your head where it hangs over the armrest, his thumb brushing slow, absent-minded circles through your hair every now and then as though reassuring himself that you're still solid beneath his fingertips.
He waits.
Not because he's unsure whether to ask, but because he's spent the last hour watching you slowly return to yourself, and he isn't willing to rush whatever fragile peace has finally settled over the room.
Eventually, when everyone else's conversations have faded into comfortable background noise, he speaks so quietly you're almost convinced you've imagined it.
"...Can I ask you something?"
You turn your head just enough to look at him and give the smallest nod.
He hesitates for a moment, eyes dropping to where his hand still rests against your hair before he quietly asks, "...What exactly did it sound like?"
You know immediately what he means.
"The voice?"
Steve nods once.
"It sounded like..." You swallow. "...You."
He smiles sadly, shaking his head almost before you've finished.
"No." His voice is gentle. "Not who it sounded like."
A beat passes.
"...What did it say?"
You frown.
At first, all you can remember is the panic. The fear. The overwhelming certainty that Steve was somewhere ahead of you, frightened and alone. The details blur together, slipping through your fingers every time you try to hold onto them.
Then, slowly, one sentence surfaces.
Your expression changes.
"...It said..." You stop, hearing it again exactly as you had in the forest.
"'Come find me.'"
The room falls quiet.
Steve doesn't answer straight away.
Instead, he looks down at the floor between you for a long moment, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly as something clicks into place.
You see it happen.
The same realisation finds you a heartbeat later.
"...You'd never say that."
Steve looks back up. "... No. I wouldn't."
You keep turning the memory over in your mind, examining it from every angle now that you know it wasn't real, and suddenly the whole thing feels obvious in a way it hadn't before.
"You'd tell me to stay where I was."
Another slow nod.
"Yeah."
Silence settles between you again.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he quietly adds, "...Or I'd come to you."
You stare at him.
Because he's right.
Of course he's right.
If it had been true - if Steve had genuinely been lost somewhere in the Upside Down, terrified and unable to reach you - he would never have asked you to run blindly towards him. He'd have told you to stay put. To hide. To wait. He'd have found a way to reach you himself, even if it meant walking straight back into danger.
The voice had been perfect.
Every inflexion. Every hesitation. Every tiny detail that made it unmistakably Steve.
But it had made one fatal mistake.
It had copied his voice.
Not his heart.
You let out a shaky breath, something between a laugh and a sob.
"It knew how you sounded," you murmur, more to yourself than anyone else. "It just... didn't know you."
Steve's expression softens.
"No," he agrees quietly. "It didn't."
Because that's who Steve is.
The Upside Down had understood your fear. It had understood your memories, your instincts, the people whose voices would make you run without thinking. But it had failed to understand something much simpler, and much harder to imitate.
Steve Harrington has never asked the people he loves to walk into danger for him.
He goes first.
Always has.
Always will.
For a long while, nobody says anything.
The house settles into one of those rare silences that only follows genuine fear, where nobody quite trusts themselves to speak because doing so would mean acknowledging how close they'd all come to losing someone.
The mugs of tea on the coffee table have long since gone cold, and outside, somewhere beyond the curtains, a car passes along the quiet suburban street, blissfully unaware that the world has almost ended again.
You find yourself looking around the room instead.
At Robin, curled awkwardly into the corner of the sofa with her knees tucked beneath her chin.
At Nancy, staring absently into her untouched cup of tea.
At Jonathan, who hasn't taken his eyes off Nancy since they got back.
At Max, quieter than usual, her expression unreadable as she turns an empty cassette case over and over between her hands.
And at Steve, still sitting beside you on the floor, his shoulder resting lightly against the sofa, as though moving even a few feet further away from you somehow feels impossible after what happened.
It is Will who finally breaks the silence.
His voice is quiet enough that everyone has to look up to hear it.
"...We need a new rule."
No one answers immediately.
Not because anyone disagrees.
Because they all know he's right.
The old rules had kept them alive this long. Stay together. Keep the radios on. Don't make unnecessary noise. Don't split up unless you absolutely have to.
Now those rules weren't enough anymore.
Will draws a slow breath before continuing.
"If you hear somebody calling your name..."
He trails off, unable - or perhaps unwilling - to finish the sentence himself.
Steve does it for him.
"...Don't answer."
The words land heavily in the room.
Nobody argues.
Nobody even questions them.
Robin swallows hard, her eyes fixed somewhere on the carpet as she quietly adds, "...Even if it sounds exactly like us."
Another silence follows.
Longer this time.
Because that is the part none of them wants to say aloud.
Not just don't answer a stranger.
Don't answer Dustin.
Don't answer Nancy.
Don't answer Steve.
Don't answer the people you love most in the world.
The room feels colder somehow.
You glance at Steve beside you, and for the briefest moment you wonder whether, if you heard him calling for you again tomorrow, you could really ignore it.
The thought alone makes your chest tighten.
Dustin is the first to move.
Without a word, he reaches for the battered Hellfire emergency pack that's been dragged through almost every disaster the group has survived, unzips the front pocket and rummages around until he finds a thick black permanent marker.
He hesitates only briefly before uncapping it.
Then, kneeling on the living-room floor with the backpack balanced across his knees, he opens the inside flap where every previous rule has already been scribbled in increasingly cramped handwriting over the years.
He doesn't ask whether everyone agrees.
He already knows they do.
Slowly, deliberately, he writes beneath the others.
RULE #8
IF YOU HEAR SOMEONE YOU LOVE CALLING YOUR NAME...
DO NOT FOLLOW THE VOICE.
The ink is still wet when he snaps the cap back onto the marker.
Nobody comments on it.
Nobody laughs.
Nobody suggests a better wording.
Because you all understand something they hadn't understood that morning.
The Upside Down hadn't simply learnt your voices.
It had learnt your hearts. Your trusts. Who you love most.
And from now on, surviving would mean learning not to trust them.
The weeks that follow are, by all outward appearances, wonderfully ordinary.
School starts again. Family Video reopens. Robin complains about customers with renewed enthusiasm, the kids fill Steve's house almost every afternoon as though nothing has changed, and somebody inevitably starts an argument over whose turn it is to choose the film.
Life, stubbornly and almost offensively, continues.
Some days you're almost convinced you're beginning to forget.
Not what happened.
Just the feeling of it.
The constant certainty that something terrible is waiting just beyond the next corner gradually loosens its grip, replaced by familiar routines and evenings spent piled into living rooms with takeaway cartons balanced on your knees, laughing over things that would've seemed impossibly trivial only a few weeks earlier.
It gets easier.
Not better.
Just... easier.
Until one quiet evening.
Steve's house is unusually still, the late afternoon sunlight spilling lazily through the bedroom curtains in soft golden stripes that stretch across the duvet. You'd meant to stay awake. You'd only gone upstairs to lie down for half an hour while Steve started making dinner, but somewhere between closing your eyes and listening to the muffled sounds of cupboard doors opening downstairs, sleep had begun to pull gently at the edges of your thoughts.
You're hovering somewhere between dreaming and waking when you hear it.
Your name.
Quiet. Unhurried.
Floating up the staircase from somewhere below.
For one impossible moment, your body forgets where you are.
Your eyes snap open.
Every muscle locks.
Your heart lurches so violently it almost hurts, adrenaline crashing through you before your mind has had the chance to catch up.
You don't answer.
You don't move.
You simply stare at the bedroom door, every instinct warring with itself as the silence stretches on around you.
Because you know that voice.
You know it better than your own.
But you also know where that certainty almost led you.
The room remains perfectly still.
Downstairs, you hear nothing more than the faint clatter of something being set on the kitchen counter, followed by footsteps crossing the hallway.
A minute passes.
Maybe less.
It feels much longer.
Then the floorboards outside the bedroom creak softly, and a gentle knock sounds against the half-open door before Steve appears in the doorway, one hand still holding a tea towel he'd evidently forgotten to put down.
He smiles when he sees you're awake, though it fades almost immediately when he notices the way you're sitting rigid against the headboard, your breathing still just a little too fast.
"...Hey."
You don't answer straight away.
He tilts his head, confusion flickering briefly across his face.
"I called you."
A beat.
"...Why didn't you answer?"
Your throat tightens.
You look at him.
That's all you do.
You look at him, and in the space of a heartbeat you watch the question disappear from his expression.
Understanding arrives quietly.
Painfully.
His shoulders soften almost imperceptibly, and something in his eyes breaks - not dramatically, not with tears or visible grief, but with the quiet devastation of somebody realising that a wound they desperately hoped had healed is still there beneath the surface.
"Oh."
The word is barely louder than a breath.
Neither of you says anything else.
There isn't really anything to say.
Steve crosses the room without another question, sits carefully on the edge of the bed, and opens one arm in silent invitation.
You move before you've consciously decided to, the tension finally leaving your body as you fold into him, burying your face against his shoulder while he wraps both arms around you with the same steady certainty he always has. One hand settles instinctively at the back of your head, his fingers slipping gently through your hair, while the other rubs slow circles between your shoulder blades until your breathing begins, little by little, to settle again.
He doesn't apologise.
He doesn't tell you that it was only him.
He knows none of that would help.
Instead, he simply holds you, solid and warm and undeniably real, allowing his heartbeat to become the only sound worth listening to.
Outside, the world carries on exactly as it always has. Cars pass along the street. Somewhere, a dog barks. The neighbours laugh over dinner in their garden. Hawkins continues with the blissful normality it has always pretended to possess.
Inside the house, though, something has changed forever.
The tragedy isn't that you failed to answer when Steve called your name.
It's that, somewhere beneath a blood-red sky, the Upside Down had managed to reach into one of the most instinctive acts of love a person can know - the automatic certainty that the voice of someone you love means safety - and twist it into something to be feared.
You escaped.
You survived.
But some echoes don't stay behind when you leave.
And every now and then, on quiet evenings when someone calls your name from another room, you still have to remind yourself that not every voice asking you to follow is trying to lead you into the dark.
dividers: saradika-graphics
new taglist: @whispersoflost, @teheblue, @mr-joel-keeny, @simply-a-book-lover, @je33123, @eller41, @bluehexagon8, @n4ina-07, @prettyfortucker, @leahfaith, @keerymylove, @sexyvixen7, @writingforuandme
