(there’s a room) where the light won’t find you
starting off the week with a very short fic. this is part one of a fic, and the other parts will come later in the week. thanks to everyone who participated today!
Part One - 3 years after the gate closes
There’s a painful moment when the door first shuts when Nancy thinks they all made it, that all of them had been close enough to the door when it opened to get through before it had slide shut again.
But they didn’t.
Around her, she can see Dustin holding Lucas up, Will’s hands clasped over the wound in his thigh. She tries not to focus too much on the blood leaking through Will’s fingers. Jonathan’s getting to his feet next to her, and when she finally catches her breath enough to turn around, she finds El already scanning the perimeter of the door anxiously with her dark eyes.
So no Mike, no Max, and no Steve.
There’s muffled shouting coming from the other side of the door, and Nancy can faintly make out the words “stay right where you fucking are, we don’t know where it is” and the knot in her stomach gets tighter. It’s not just that they’re split up, it’s that this room had been the only one guaranteed to be safe from... whatever it is they’re fighting and three of them are still in danger.
She presses a hand up against the seal of the door, stiffing a pained groan at how every movement jostles her probably broken ribs.
“Are you guys alright?” She calls, hoping her voice carries through the small crack between door and wall.
“Peachy,” Steve calls back, voiced strained, and there’s more yelling Nancy can’t make out before Steve’s “seriously shut up, I can’t think” rings through.
“We’ll get the door open from this side, and we’re going to get you guys out of there,” she promises, as much a conviction for herself as it is for them, although her voice shakes a little in the middle of it.
“Nancy,” a soft voice calls, and she’s so focused on trying to hear anything she can behind the door that it takes her a second to realize it’s El’s voice. The young teen is pressed up against the other side of the door nearly identically to how Nancy is, and with another pained hiss, Nancy makes her way over to her.
“Nancy?” Mike calls through, and Nancy feels relief rush through her at the sound of her little brother’s voice. She leans heavily against the door and takes as deep a breath as she can before responding.
“I’m here, Mike.”
The hardest part of it all is knowing there is nothing he can do right now. Jonathan’s not good with technology or at least decent enough to follow Mike’s instruction like Nancy can, and he’s no better at first aid than Will is.
He ends up slumped against the door, head lolled back while he watches everyone else in the room. He’s almost certainly concussed, and he’s pretty sure something in his ankle is messed up, but overall he’s not the worst off. Not when Nancy’s movements get stiffer and more pained every minute, or how Lucas is awake and talking but hasn’t gotten up since they made it into the room. And he has no idea if the three still stuck on the other side of the door are hurt or not. There’s blood splattered across El’s face and Jonathan has no idea who it belongs too.
“Nancy?” Jonathan blinks at the sound of Steve’s voice. He’s been quiet since Jonathan sat down on the other side of the door.
“Just me,” he responds, and there’s a dull thunk that Jonathan imagines is Steve’s head hitting the door.
“Feel like I’m going crazy in here. S’too dark, I think I’m seeing things.” Jonathan tries to ignore the slight slur in Steve’s voice, or chalk it up to exhaustion.
“They’re gonna get the door open, Steve,” he tries, but knows his voice falls short of reassuring.
“Right.” The response is clipped, disbelieving.
“We will.”
His entire body feels like it’s on ice. It had started in his face, where the thing got him, but the longer he sits the more it feels like it’s spreading indiscriminately. He thinks the bat is still gripped in his hand, but it’s hard to know for sure.
What Steve does know for sure is that he’s fucked.
The scattered shuffle of multiple legs hasn’t stopped since the door shut, which he creature, monster, whatever the fuck, is still around. It sounds like it’s on the side of him further away from Mike and Max, which is good, he guesses. It’s pitch-black in the hallway they’re stuck in, so they’re at least protected from it knowing where they are unless it happens to stumble onto one of them.
God, what kind of monstrosity only attacks in the light? It’s so fucked up.
They’ll have seconds once the door is opened to get into the safe room and get the door shut again before the monster can get through, and Steve can barely move. He might be drifting in and out of consciousness, too, but he doesn’t really know if he’d be able to tell even if he was.
“Steve, you still with us?” Jonathan calls through the door, and Steve manages a noise he thinks is loud enough in response. He’s been trying not to talk so much since the dark started getting to him. The last thing he needs is to start confessing to Jonathan about how much he’s missed him and Nancy or spend his last moments doing something embarrassingly pathetic like whining about being left behind in Hawkins because they went on to bigger and better things. The best thing he can do for all of them is keep his fucking mouth shut.
Steve tips his head back against the wall, ignoring the tacky blood on his face trying to stick to the plaster.
He fucking hates monster hunting.
