The surface was a rippling wall of light above. Thin divide between worlds, shifting like a soap bubble.
Pretty, Steve thought, even as he was drowning. As he kicked at a corpse that was probably Barb and probably all in his head, just one more PTSD hallucination but he could feel her rubber and steel fingers around his ankle and her eyes, what were left of them, were looking at him full of accusations, and sometimes his foot connected as he kicked out at her, he swore, and sometimes it went right on through, and was any of this real? Was this really happening?
His will broke under the burning pressure from his lungs and he tried to breathe but his throat seized before the water could slip in. Didn’t stop his chest pulling. Little hiccups gaining nothing. Slowly calming as the muscles tired. Starved.
He watched the surface. Saw it broken by red. Followed the bright color down the narrowing tunnel of his vision as it came for him but couldn’t quite—
Coming to the Hawkins Community Pool had been a mistake—he’d tried to tell the kids.
And there was rough warm concrete under his back. There was a mouth on his in the least sexy way imaginable. But there was a scratch of stubble that was—his throat opened to the breach of Billy’s breath, had to be him. Steve’s lungs filled with him. And Steve was coughing and grabbing out scared and got a fistful of wet hair and whistle string, uncertain handful of suntan-slippery skin. Holding. Holding himself conscious. And as the other mouth jerked away there was a split second of spit-slick slide, brush of startled tongue, rake of that stubble against his cheek.
Accidental. But real. Real. It had left a taste behind. Billy’s tongue. Billy’s mouth.
“Fucking useless, Harrington. Let go.”
Hard swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing under tan skin. Blue eyes skating away. Hands shoving Steve back so he’d cracked his head on the concrete.
But that had been ages ago.
Steve floats on his back in his own pool, alone. No longer afraid. Alone with Barb, still down there somewhere below but keeping quiet. Alone with the stars above. Alone. And he needs the chlorine to bring back the memory now. Billy’s long gone.
Billy’s long gone but the taste, the wet brush of tongue, hard swallow, hot eyes fleeing—that’s still here. Still here if Steve works for it.
Bright sweet moment. And the taste on his tongue is regret.
Steve slips under and the surface of the water becomes a rippling wall of light above him.
