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Ranged • 01: Firetower

You and Steve have been sent on a missing person's case, a park ranger in the Cascades went missing from his post after reporting a large area of downed trees. Could be something up your alley.

Pairing: special agent!Steve Harrington x special agent!Reader

Wordcount: 5742

Warnings: very slowburn, this fic is episodic, coworkers to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, canon-typical violence, canon-typical gore, weapons, fighting, murder, viruses, decay, monsters *This chapter contains mentions of animal harm, blood, vomit/nausea, potential character death, and whump/bad injuries - also hey, I'm not a doctor and this fic is free, so my inaccuracies might bug you. xo

This blog is 18+ only. I do not give permission for any of my fics to be duplicated, reposted, or put into AI. Thank you!

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Moodboard • 00: Prologue • 02: Home [Coming Soon]

Fire Lookout Tower 647 - Cascades

Fog blanketed the forest floor and just beyond, it coated the tops of trees, covering pine needles in vast, rolling smoke. Everything lacked saturation up here, everything but verdant moss and fern and branch, a sea of grey and green, damp and deep. The sunlight filtered in way far off, to the West, but everything out of its reach had begun to groan under the steady pelt of plummeting rain.

Rain pittered and pat against the tin roof and into the quickly filling bucket in the corner. Its splash zone had been haphazardly mopped with a shaggy old towel.

You watched the landscape shift beyond the clouds, wrapped in wool socks and a flannel blanket while your partner took his turn retrieving fire wood from its drying spot beneath the tower.

His presence was announced by the groaning of stairs and the creaking of a rusted spring on the door.

Steve had only smiled a handful of times since you met him, a painful stretch of soft features, the wrinkle never leaving his brow. To be fair, your job rarely warranted more than a polite grimace to townsfolk whose crops you’d left ablaze, whose family members you’d left on a slab.

Today was no different.

“This place is a shit hole,” he grumbled, rolling cut wood from his arms onto the ground in front of the stove.

You hummed, knowing better than to argue something so trivial before he had his dinner.

He hunched to stoke the fire, now mere ashes and embers that glowed red in the little iron stove. He was soaked to the bone, dark hair clinging to his forehead and around his ears. He’d have to cut it again before your next return to Base.

His hands were bright red, nipped cold and hard-worked, and you rolled your eyes at the pair of gloves he’d left on the rickety card table near the door.

“Fucking rain,” he muttered, shoving kindling in hopes for it to catch.

With a sigh, you pushed yourself upright and reached for your own rain slicker on its hook. A puddle had formed and seeped through the floorboards, creating a patch of darkened wood that ringed with all puddles that had come before. “I’m going to get water to boil.”

“Be careful.”

The spring creaked. Rain gushed from dips in the roof and splashed loudly against rocks on the hillside.

You glanced back at Steve. He was hunched in front of a started fire, worry etched between his brows.

He shrugged. “I slipped at the bottom of the stairs.” He gestured to the mud that streaked his left pant-leg. “Be careful.”

You nodded and stepped out into the deluge.

The window coverings provided a good roof for the porch, save a few leaks here and there, and you clung to the side of the building as your guard rail to round it. You’d put empty buckets on the south end. All five of them had all overflowed.

You picked the lightest one. You’d managed to haul it back across slippery planks, dozens of feet in the air, to the door before your right foot slipped out from under you. With a yelp, and the sting of bitter cold against your ass cheeks, you fell. The building teetered under your shifted weight, and you clung to the railing with pinched breath.

The spring creaked. Steve stood at the door with lumbered shoulders and that same frown, looking down a freckled nose at you. He picked up the bucket with one hand and held his other for you to take. “I said, ‘be careful’.”

While the water boiled and Steve grumbled about canned meatballs, you stripped out of wet jeans and remained in damp Long Johns, removing your socks and hat and gloves to hang near the fire.

The sun had already dipped far to the west, catching on split clouds in purples and oranges before it was swallowed up again by the grey.

“You get the radio working?” Steve sighed, adverse to the quiet.

You shook your head and stirred tomato paste around in the pot. After many meals with Steve, you were sure he grew up in the kind of household that only ate their meals on trays in front of the television. He could never really sit and appreciate the stillness. “Go ahead and tinker with it. Is there a game tonight?”

“There was,” he deployed a long antenna and fidgeted with a few dials. Static buzzed from the plastic between his hands. “Might be too late. What time zone are we in?”

“Pacific,” you explained. “Two hours behind.”

You felt lighter after food. Warmth settled over your chest and shoulders, and you huddled further into your blanket.

Steve’s hair dried a little, and you managed to coax him into taking one of your spare hats. The stitches stretched over the circumference. With a sigh, you slowly ripped out the project you’d been knitting and cast more stitches onto your needle.

The radio hadn’t worked, too far out of reach to hear the score, and it had been discarded. Instead, Steve hummed, and the fire crackled, and your needles clacked against one another. The rain had died down, too.

“Think we’ll find him?” He asked, picking at the frayed stitching on the baseball he’d been tossing around.

Your target was the missing tower keeper, a man named Les Joplin who hadn’t reported in a few days after he’d gone in search of what he had described to dispatch as a rotten cropping of trees in the east acreage.

You glanced back up at Steve, never knowing if he wanted you to answer honestly or not. Your fingers kept pace. Knit, purl, knit, purl. “Hope so.”

“My grandmother used to knit.” He nodded to the project slowly making way in your hands.

You hummed. You’d heard this story before. A few months back, you began to notice a pattern to the information Steve had given you about his former life, only snapshots, hand-picked. You wondered if he had been trained this way, or if he still didn’t trust you.

The repeated stories didn’t stop you from prying for more.

“What’d you call you grandmother?” You asked.

“What do you mean?” He frowned back at you.

“You know, ‘grandma’, ‘granny’, ‘nana’?”

He snorted, rolled his eyes, tossed the ball a few times. “Grandmother.”

You cocked a brow. “Grandmother? What, like the Queen?”

There it was, the softest uptick of the corner of his lips, a flash of amusement in his eyes as he rolled them. “Exactly like the Queen. I was lucky if I got to address her as anything other than ‘ma’am’.”

Another peak behind the curtain. You snickered and pressed on. “Mom or Dad’s mom?”

“Uh…” He frowned again, mulling something over. “Mom’s. My dad’s parents were old as shit, died before I was born.” Another insight.

“How’d they meet, your parents?”

“Huh?” He blinked back at you, brow in a proper frown now. “I don’t know.”

You’d lost him. You’d pressed too hard. With a sigh, you turned back to your knitting. Knit, purl. Knit, purl.

He shook his head, and his sleeping bag shuffled as he stood and stretched. He set the baseball back on the little table, and it rolled until it met the pot of leftover spaghetti sauce. “Listen, I’m gonna take a leak, and we should probably think about getting some sleep. Early morning tomorrow.”

You nodded, tucked your knitting back into your bag. “I’ll wash the dishes.”

“Thank you.” He said, and he exited the little hut. The stairs creaked his whole way down.

“Robin? No. No, Robin, no.”

You awoke to Steve’s muffled cries. His sleeping bag shifted around a twitching body.

This wasn’t the first nightmare, and you knew it wouldn’t be the last. You didn’t know who Robin was, and the fear in his voice dimmed your hope that she’d lived.

You swallowed to clear the sleep from your vocal cords before speaking his name into the darkness. It took several tries, a full shout, to snap him out of whatever version of Hell his subconscious had pulled him in, and when he did rouse, it was with force.

He shot from his pillow, gripping the hilt of a knife stashed under it, and glanced around the room. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

You sighed, tucked your face into your pillow, and murmured. “I’m cold.”

“What?” He peered at you.

It wasn’t a lie. The fire had gone out, and your toes had numbed slightly, and you’d argued with him when he agreed to the floor, so you were sure he was cold too. Maybe that had caused the nightmare. “I’m cold. Will you just get over here, please?”

You heard his groan, and a shuffle of sleeping bag as he pulled himself upright. His back and shoulders were silhouetted, broad and hunched. He wound his sleeping bag up between his fists, joints cracking as he made his way over to your cot.

“Is there room?”

You shifted impossibly closer to the wall and hugged your sleeping bag to you to expose just how much room was left on the little cot. Not much, if you were being honest, but you were cold, and you had hoped your presence beside him might calm the terrors that plagued him.

He spread his blanket out beside you before asking if you needed a sip of water.

You shook your head, but watched as he ambled across the room to the rickety card table for a swig from the canteen.

The rain had stopped, but fog blanketed the windows on all sides. The sloshing of the water in his bottle sent a shiver through you.

“Alright, I’m coming,” he grumbled, and returned to slide himself into bed beside you.

His arm came up first, once he’d settled, and you stiffened under his hold.

“What’re you doing?” You rubbed at tired eyes, trying to catch any glimpse of the curve of his nose.

“Warming you up, don’t make it weird.” He looped you in, scooping your sleeping bag up between the two of you. His other arm reached around your middle and pulled you close.

You weren’t surprised at his strength. He’d offered you a helping hand with more than one injury in the field. You’d seen him pull women and children from burning buildings. That one time he hauled a sheepdog from the river, both man and beast soaking wet and panting, dog tossed around his broad shoulders.

“Better?” His gruff voice fanned your forehead, deliciously warm.

You hummed, reaching aching cold hands out to warm against his chest.

He hissed under your touch and wrapped your fingers up in his own. “Didn’t I tell you to sleep next to the fire?” He scolded.

“No,” you hummed, letting your eyes grow heavy again. “You told me to take the cot.”

He grumbled something incoherent and adjusted on the tiny pad beside you. You knew he’d complain about a crick in his neck in the morning.

“Night, Steve,” you mumbled.

His nose tipped itself against your temple, and he sighed. “Get some sleep.”

He slept after that.

—

The rain made rivulets of mud and Earth. Where trails once climbed the mountainside, rocks and boulders now fell, surging into teeming river beds.

Your boots squelched beneath you, each step a slip away from disaster.

Steve stood a few yards ahead, more surefooted. He whipped at overgrowth with the business end of a machete. “Joplin!” He cried out, startling a few birds from their perches.

You glanced around, hand around the gun strapped to your thigh, just in case. If Joplin was eaten by a bear out here, or worse, you had to have confidence in protecting yourselves. “Les!”

Steve called your name. He stood with his machete extended, scrubbing at his tired eyes with the palm of his other hand.

Just beyond him, the forest had been blighted. Root to crown, these massive conifers were decimated. A widow maker forest, limbs fell at odd angles, having melted from the trunk. Green grass and fern and vine turned to black ash.

You cursed under your breath and took careful steps to meet your partner to ensure the ground didn’t swallow you whole. When you reached him, the rancid stench stung in your nostrils, watered your eyes. “Well, guess he wasn’t kidding.”

You glanced back up to the fire tower, now a mere speck on the horizon.

Steve’s jaw clenched. He nodded. “I’m gonna look for holes. Call it in, will you?”

With a sigh, you stripped the heavy pack from your back. Your shoulders ached in relief. “Be careful.” You warned, and watched as he took off at a slower pace into the patch of rot.

You kept an eye on him as you dialed, service spotty, but you were quickly patched through to dispatch. “Yeah, hi.” You offered up your badge number, called in reinforcements for a controlled burn.

“How big is the affected area?” The woman on the other lined cracked her gum between her molars.

You glanced around at the rot. This was small, relatively fresh. A chill rolled down your spine. You looked from Steve to the blanket of mist rolling downhill from the clouds. “About ten acres.”

“Alright, hon, we’ll get someone out there in the next day or so. Are you in need of emergency evac?”

“No, we’re good to hang out until the crew gets here. Thank you.” She hung up first, and you pushed the antenna back into the device. Before you could shove it back into your bag, however, you heard a cry, a moan, really, in the distance, carried on the wind, prickling the hairs at the base of your neck.

“Steve?” You called out, standing up straight to survey the area.

You heard it again, to your left.

You swung around. Steve was gone. You were alone.

You took off on a run to where you’d last seen him, careful not to trip over any loose roots, trying not to bump any more precariously hung branches from their roosts hundreds of feet in the air. You called for your partner, still clutching the piece at your side in one hand, the satellite phone in the other.

The noise was louder now, a grunt and a groan, two noises, two distinct voices.

You stopped, surveyed your surroundings, posted up on the good side of a half-rotted stump.

“Can you walk?” Steve’s voice hissed from nearby.

Your heart thumped wildly in your chest. You swung around, gun out, pointed toward the sound.

“I broke it,” another voice, unfamiliar, croaked. They were beneath you.

Rounding the stump, you found a hollowed out bit of ground wherein your partner was hacking away at the vines curled around the leg of an emaciated older man. This man was coated in mud and slime, curled hair sticking to his head. You sighed in relief and holstered your weapon.

“Les Joplin?” You asked, taking a few steps to the edge of the hole.

Both men jumped. Steve frowned back up at you before hacking away at another root.

Les gulped, nodded. Shit, you’d left your pack at the edge of the rot.

“Think you can limp it back to more solid ground? I’m going to call for an airlift.” You uncurled your knuckles from around the phone to dispatch the antenna and dial the number again.

Les winced, teeth grit, sweat streaking the mud on his forehead.

You pulled your partner’s gaze. His jaw ticked. He pushed hair from his eyes with the back of his hand. He nodded, threw the man’s arm over broad shoulders. “Alright, count of three?”

—

The rain came back as the air lift set down. Propellers pummeled large drops at you, sideways rain that stuck your clothes to your skin and cut off your breath.

You squeezed Les’s wrist as they strapped him to the gurney. His teeth chattered, face gray beneath a shiny mylar blanket. The ventilator obscured everything but his eyes, tired, frantic.

Steve spoke to the team. He was shouting, but you couldn’t hear his voice over the wind and the slap of rain.

Your hair stuck to the corners of your mouth.

Steve backed up to your front, shielding you behind his slim frame. He lifted a hand to wave as the helicopter ascended, clouds bending and melting beneath it.

When it was a high enough altitude, Steve linked a large hand around your wrist and tugged you upwards, through wind-whipped grass and mud, toward the lonesome fire tower.

The stairs were just as slick as the grass, and Steve kept a firm grip at your waist. To hold you upright or himself, you weren’t sure, but you felt anchored nonetheless.

When you finally summited, the world around you coated in a thick, grey cloud, you began to strip the soaked clothes from your body. Steve began to lodge firewood from the corner of the room into the little stove.

“We have to go back out there,” he grunted, lighting a match to kindling before tossing it in.

You groaned, unsticking your long-sleeve shirt from your back to wheel it over your head. “After lunch.” You pled.

You tried to stand your ground and not cower as Steve’s gaze swept your frame. He licked at pink lips, hair stuck to his face, his own clothes three shades darker than they were when you’d left the tower that morning.

“After lunch.” He conceded, unbuttoning his shirt. You watched his back muscles shift beneath the outline of a white tank top, the moles placed hither and thither.

You slipped a dry t-shirt over your head and began boiling water in a pot.

Steve’s knees were pulled to his chest, toes wiggling in dry socks.

You finished first, famished from your earlier excursion, and continued your knitting. The rhythmic clack of needles a metronome to the rain against the tin roof and pouring from spouts, the crackle of the fire, the steady in-take-out-take of your breath.

Steve eyed you warily, cheeks puffed around a meatball. He chewed, swallowed, and gestured with a fork toward the project in your lap. “What’re you making?”

“A hat,” you pinched your smile.

He reached between you to wrap thick fingers around the ball of yarn like a baseball. He pressed the fiber for a moment before nodding, licking something from between his molars. “I really like that color.”

You agreed. The burgundy would bring out the warmth of his eyes, the flush of his cheeks when he bickered with you.

“It felt good right? Helping Joplin.”

His words startled you, stitch slipping off the needle before you could catch it.

You blinked back at him, watched the worry etched between his brows, wondered what he could possibly be thinking, and you forced a bright smile. “Yeah, Steve, it felt great. That’s what this is all about, right? Saving people.”

He nodded, shrugged, tongued at his molars.

You can’t save everyone.

You picked your stitch back up and carried on. A few phrases turned in your mind, questions you’d posed to yourself before you dared ask him. ‘Doesn’t every save feel good?’ ‘Do you think Les’s leg’ll be okay?’ ‘Who couldn’t you save?’

You glanced to the spot on the floor where he had been tossing and turning the night before. ‘Who’s Robin?’ You couldn’t. You knew he’d throw himself into one of those broody nightmares, and you had a job to do.

“So,” you bundled your knitting and stuffed it back into the bag you brought it in, “what’re we thinking? Demodog? Demogorgon? Grizzly?”

“Yeah, you wish it’s a Grizzly.” Steve snorted, making to wash the dishes.

You did wish it was a Grizzly. At least you could shoot a Grizzly, watch it fall with a groan and lie peaceful against hard ground. Demodogs meant tunnel dwellers, a pack. Demogorgon meant portals.

“Hey, before we head out there, can I ask you something?” He stood with his hands full of items to be washed, hair finally drying into wisps of curls near his ears.

“Shoot,” you pulled yourself to a stand, rolled your stiff shoulders, got a little closer to the stove to warm your hands.

“Do I talk in my sleep?”

You had half a second to make your decision, and “No” came out faster than that. You weren’t sure why you lied, maybe it was the same reason you hadn’t asked him about the name he’d been crying out for. You had a job to do, and you couldn’t afford a sulking partner ten steps ahead.

His scowl proved he was weighing you up, trying to call your bluff. Apparently he convinced, he shrugged, and said, “Oh, well, you do.” Then he opened the creaky door and let himself outside to do the washing up.

—

The rain continued as you hunted. You slipped twice, twisting an ankle on a bunch of rocks hidden behind tall grass, but you’d had worse, so you persisted until the internal ache wore off and the external ache from the cold had you gritting your teeth.

“I fucking hate this place.” Steve dropped another meatball into the grass beside you. “It reminds me of that…” He glanced around, in the air, searching for phantom airborne monsters.

You hadn’t gone into the other dimension, not for long enough to really get a feel for it, not like Steve. You knew it was cold and damp and miserable though, and these mountains were starting to feel just as desolate, just as grey.

You came to the rot again, stench heavier under the blanket of ozone.

Steve pressed his lips into a whistle, low and slow, coaxing whatever may be lurking.

Your finger found the trigger at your hip. Bullets didn’t kill an inter dimensional creature, but it’d sure as Hell slow it down.

Without a response to his call, you carried on, following him and his endless trail of meatballs past the stump in which you’d found Les Joplin. Steve poked his head inside, but vines had already begun to seam it up, devouring the flesh of the tree that rot there.

“Do you remember what direction he said he saw it?” You asked, back to Steve as you surveyed the area. It could be anywhere, whatever it is. It was probably watching you now, smelling you, sensing you.

“Let’s head East,” Steve signaled.

You doubled back and headed toward a particularly treacherous outcropping along the hillside. Boulders carved rivulets in the landscape, water gushing over rock and stone in glorious splendor.

Your big toes were beginning to ache from the cold, and the sound of rain and wind and now waterfalls was hurting your ears. With a huff, you seated yourself on a soaked rock and pulled your pack from your back to salvage a chocolate bar.

“What’re you doing?” Steve snapped. He’d already trudged a good distance from you, and must have stopped when he didn’t hear the patter of your feet behind him.

“Maybe it was a deer,” you offered, ripping back the mylar packaging and indulging in one semi-sweet bite. It didn’t melt instantly, your teeth and jaw too cold to warm it.

“It wasn’t a deer.” That permanent crease in Steve’s forehead stuck out under a curl of wet hair.

“Come have a bite.” Your teeth chattered, hand extended. The chocolate was instantly pelted with rain.

Steve sighed and took a step toward you, and then promptly disappeared.

—

The cavern was deep, about ten feet high and thirty feet wide, a whole expanse of the forest that had just sunk in on itself. It looked like the vines hadn’t quite worked their way here, but the blight and the rain had washed away bits of the mountainside. The outcropping fell into the land and Steve had fallen into the rocks.

“Don’t come any closer!” He shouted, teeth grit in pain. He adjusted his leg, and you saw the blood spill from his knee cap to discolor his pant legs.

“I’m going to radio for help. How bad is it? Do you need to tourniquet it?”

“No , it’s just a scrape.” He lied through his teeth. “I can’t see how far this goes, so go slow, and be careful.”

With a nod, you made for your pack, muttering under your breath about your bossy partner, always getting himself into trouble. Then the breath was swept out of you as you free-fell into the cavern, too.

Your ankles rolled, the one from earlier crying out from added injury, and you jaw slammed closed on a portion of your tongue when you hit the cavern floor. It was softer than you expected, wet mud and dirt breaking most of your fall.

Your name echoed with the pounding of your heart as you regulated and pull yourself to a stand, brushing mud from your hands to your thighs. Water rushed into the cavern from above. Not enough to cause concern, but you stared up at the hole in the sky with a grimace.

Steve called your name again, and you turned to face him.

“Are you alright?” He asked, eyes wide with worry.

You shrugged, nodded. “My ankle hurts.”

“Is it broken?”

You assessed the injury, tried to roll it back into place. A sharp, shooting pain spilled up your spinal column. You nodded. “Probably.”

“I told you to be careful.” Steve scoffed from his lean against the far wall. He’d made no effort to rescue you.

“Is your leg broken?” You mapped your way to him, a slow and steady course through rocky terrain. Each step limped, you gripped the roots tied into the walls beside you.

“No,” Steve shook his head. “Just a bad cut.” His large hand shook, pressed to a gash that was dying the rainwater red.

“Well,” you sighed, “if the meatballs weren’t good enough…”

“Shut up,” he shifted in place, hand outstretched to help you over the last huge boulder. “Careful, sharp bit there.” He nodded to a likely culprit, a jagged bit of rock that stuck up at an odd angle. An odd substance pooled near the bottom, and you tried not to wretch when you realized it was likely the fat from Steve’s thigh.

“We need to get you off your feet.” You instructed, carrying his weight to help him find a good bit of stone that was flat enough, but not too slippery for him to rest. It proved to be quite the undertaking.

“It stopped raining,” he mused when he’d settled, the two of you wedged into a pit of mud that looked out of the gaping mouth onto grey skies.

He was right. You hadn’t noticed it beneath the swell of water surging downhill, and the patter that continued on the other edge of the cave, but the rain had stopped, or at least slowed.

“Did you play baseball in high school?” You asked, picking through the rubble for a hefty enough sized rock.

“Why?” Steve asked, perturbed by your questioning, but you noticed, for once, he didn’t have the energy to argue.

You could imagine him playing baseball, chewing sunflower seeds in the dug out, hiking around the bases in those tight little white pants. You smiled and tossed him the rock.

He caught it one-handed, clearly annoyed you’d thrown it in the first place.

You pointed to the spot you fell. “Throw it really hard. My pack’s up there. Might knock it into the hole.”

“Your pack-!?” Steve closed his eyes, took a few calming breaths. Then he shot you a look before hocking the rock as far as he could throw. It was very impressive.

You both waited with bated breath, but the impact created no further damaged, and you slumped into one another, asses wet and legs throbbing. “I have my flare,” you explained, patting the inside pocket of your jacket. You always kept one, and a lighter, filled, just in case.

Steve sighed. “Me too.” He was just loopy enough to flash you a tired smile.

“Alright, big boy,” you shook at his bicep to keep him alert and shrugged out of your jacket to remove your sweater. The air was warmer down her, and damp. Your breath fogged. “You’re going to have to stay awake until morning. So it’s time to tell me a story.”

Steve winced with each adjustment as you wrapped your sweater around his leg to aid with pressure. His hands still trembled, flesh of his palms bloodied, and you elevated his leg a little higher, pushing him into the mud at his back.

“What kind of story?” He asked, teeth chattering.

You hunched beside him and took both of his bloody hands into your own. The whole place smelled of Earth and iron. “Tell me about Indiana.”

He groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Come on. What position were you on the baseball team?”

He grit his teeth and shook his head. “I didn’t play baseball. Track and field.”

You smiled and unzipped his coat to let yourself in, arms wrapped around his trembling frame. You pressed your face to his throat, nestled under the crook of his jaw where stubble had begun to poke and scratch. “Alright, tell me about that then. Did your high school sweetheart cheer you on from the stands? Steve, Steve, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, no one can!” You actually managed to rah a chuckle out of him.

He winced again, his chin bouncing into your head. “She wasn’t a cheerleader. She was on the school paper.”

You changed your tone, put on a Trans-Atlantic accent. “Aaaaand they’re off. Steve Harrington takes the lead. Have you ever seen anything quicker on its feet? A horse, maybe.”

He snorted, swung his arm around you. “Has anyone ever told you how obnoxious you are?”

“You have,” you nodded. “A number of times. Kind of rude, actually. I’m always saving your ass.”

He chuckled and mumbled an apology into your hair.

“What else can you tell me about Indiana?” Your own exhaustion had begun to creep around the corners of your mind, hearing the dull thud of Steve’s heartbeat match the ache in your ankle and shin and thigh.

When he didn’t respond, you prodded at his chest. “Steve.”

He shushed you, gripping your arm a little tighter.

You were suddenly very alert. You could hear birdsong just over the ripple and rush of water over the rocks. You heard it too, the distinct clicking growl of a flower-faced beast.

“Can you move?” Steve muttered into your hair, barely a whisper.

You nodded, swallowed, reached for the flare at your side.

“My knife,” he said. “Can you see it?” He nodded to where you’d found him.

You shifted in his arms, hoping the beast couldn’t hear the grunt he emitted between clenched molars. There, where rubble met a river of mud, you saw the glint of his knife.

With a deep breath and a strain of every muscle in your body, you hoisted yourself onto your good leg and began your precarious hobble to your weapon. The rocks twisted under your feet, and the pain churned your stomach.

“Easy,” Steve guided, his breath shallow. “You’ve got this.”

You managed to dip yourself low enough, balanced on one leg, to wrap your fingers around the hilt and lift it from the rubble. You caught yourself on the wall and released a breath you’d been holding.

The knife was a bit muddy, but mostly fine. It glinted in the diminishing sunlight, flashing the walls a pale pink red before your heard the call again. A rattled click preceded the visage that peered over the cavern mouth.

The dog’s face opened, all teeth and fleshy flower petals, and before Steve had a chance to instruct you, the thing was on you, and you were elbow-deep in Demodog. It’s teeth scraped and tore at the nylon of your parka and one final dying breath rattled from its small frame before it squelched off of your blade and to the ground.

“It’s not alone.” Steve warned from his spot on the floor.

You nodded, grit your teeth, and readied your stance for another.

—

Three demodogs died at your hands and burned. The acrid sting of burning flesh kept you awake, your body rejoicing at the warmth.

You managed to keep Steve awake, although his skin had paled and his eyelids drooped.

The smoke alerted the helicopter before your flare did.

Oxygen mask over your face, you linked your fingertips into Steve’s and offered him a smile. He was already asleep by the time you rose, higher and higher above cloud coverage and rain. You slipped up and away from the fire tower. Up and away from verdant hills and from rot and decay.

Steve’s grasp was loose in your hand, and you wondered what he dreamt about now. You hoped it was peaceful.

You finished his hat beside his hospital bed while you watched the latest game. Someone ran a home run. Steve cheered. You looped the last few stitches together and weaved in your ends.

“This is for you,” you tossed it onto his lap. The burgundy was stark against white sheets.

Steve frowned back at you, fingers toying with the fabric. “For me?”

You nodded. “You needed a wool hat. Just put it on and be grateful.”

He did as instructed, smile refusing to play on handsome features. He cocked an eyebrow to get your input. It was exactly as you’d hoped, a sweet contrast that a brought out the honeyed brown of his eyes, the flush of his cheeks.

You bit back a smile, rolled your eyes. “Maybe you’re right. Your ego doesn’t need this boost. Give it back.”

He smiled at that, a ruefully shy thing that had your heart pitter-pattering like rain on a tin roof. “No. It’s mine.”

“Steve,” you let your question linger on your tongue for a moment, wondering if you ought to ask it, if you ought to push.

He hummed, attention drawn back to the television.

You swallowed, let the question die. Maybe another day, you’d find out who Robin was, what happened to them.

“Yeah?” He glanced back at you, brown eyes wide with concern.

You smiled. “What did I say in my sleep?”

Once again, the corners of pink lips turned up, and he shook his head. “I’ll never tell.”

---

Moodboard • 00: Prologue • 02: Home [Coming Soon]

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