†༙ When The Sun Hits — 00. Just like an angel, your skin makes me cry.
steve harrington x vampire!reader. fem!reader, pre-established relationship, deviating from s5 plot line! mild mentions of gore and blood, very similar death to Eddie (who is alive and well in this fic!). reader is described as pale and having both light and darker hair. Reader gives succubus vibes at a later point in this chapter. Suicide mention for Steve if you squint. Depressed!steve. Reader is often described as small and tiny in comparison to Steve! find the masterlist here!
Hair sprawled against his pillows, light and tickling under his nose. His warmth invades your space like a welcomed blanket, big arms cradled around you. “I can’t sleep if you’re not here.” You had told him, bent leg hitched up against his hipbone. Steve had huffed in that happy way that he does — enamoured and a complete lovefool. His fingers had shifted, back and forth against the cotton of your pyjamas. He always ran hot, couldn’t understand how you slept in so many layers while he lay in a simple pair of boxers. The contrast, back then, made his head spin and his heart flutter.
“Good thing I’ll always be here, huh?”
Sleep doesn’t come so easy anymore. Not for Steve, at least. Bags collect under his eyes like tattoos now. He’s plagued, riddled with mental curses thrust upon him by wicked hands. Every night, the same blood-curdling scream, the same crimson spitting past your lips, the same tremor in his hands. You’d always been cold compared to him, your little hands icy in his hold, but your blood, it was so warm. Thick, pouring, hot to the touch. He thinks about it every night — how he tried to push it down, keep it inside you, how he told you that you were going to make it.
He’s a damned liar.
You didn’t make it. Your sleep is eternal, unsettling and stiff. Red smeared against frills and lace, your sweet innocence immortalised in a sea of blood. He can still see it, the light leaving your bright eyes as you looked up at him. “I don’t wanna go, Stevie,” you had whispered, even when it was hard to do so. Even when your chest failed to rise properly and your voice crackled. You were so tiny, so vulnerable. His sweet girl, his precious thing, torn apart by an evil beyond this world. He had cried and cried, told you to hold on, to wait for help, watched his tears dilute the red smears on your cheeks. “I-I’m not ready to go.”
You didn’t make it out to see the strikes they had hit against Vecna; didn’t even get to face the creature that had caused your friends so much pain. You’d never know the fate of Max, never know that in reality, she was the lucky one who made it through. They hadn’t let Steve stay with your body, didn’t let him kiss you goodbye. They dragged him kicking and screaming as the bats began to swarm tenfold over your stiff figure. You didn’t make it anywhere, forced into a future of decay in the Upside Down. The bats had torn you to shreds, torn chunks off of you in such a hedonistic, hungry way — god, it’s been two months, and he’s only just stopped throwing up.
What haunts him the most? The fact that he’ll never get to lay you to rest. Hopper had gone back into the upside down just over week later, and your body was gone. Nothing but a splattered stain of red blood, probably fed off of and discarded by the monsters. He didn’t get to plan your funeral, had to be the one to tell your parents that their daughter had left in the middle of the night, ran away from the town that was plagued by the devil. He had to make you out to be a fool, a scared little girl that put her safety and sanity before anyone else’s. So far from the truth.
There’s pieces of you everywhere, untouched. Your toothbrush next to his. The odd hair tie in his BMW. Ribbons and makeup still sit on the vanity he had bought for you. A half-open pack of bubblegum abandoned next to his aftershave. He sees glimmers of the once full of life girl he loved so dearly, and he doesn’t dare to touch them.
He’d never admit it, not even to Dustin, but sometimes, he sees you.
At first, it’s your eyes when he closes his own. Hears your voice when the shower’s running. He’s even sure that he felt your hand against his once, when the kids had dragged him to the arcade in the hope of raising his spirits.
Lately, it’s gotten worse.
It’s fleeting moments. A blink, and then you’re gone. Never close enough to touch, to hold, to talk to. But… he’s a man, bewitched. Has been ever since you both fell in love. He cherished you most ardently, knew you better than you knew yourself, could recite every inch of you.
Maybe he’s insane. Maybe he’s the newest victim of Vecna’s curse. He’d never say it out loud, but he knows the truth. Those fleeting moments, those passing figures, the magnetic pull that has his the hair on his arms sticking up, they’re real.
Tonight, you’re there. You’re really there, stood across the street. He couldn’t possibly describe what it is that possesses him to look up from the bench he sits on, why he peers over the passing crowds towards Melvald’s general. But he does, and there you are. A lingering shadow in the setting sun. So different from the day that he lost you. There’s no evidence of pain, no choking blood at your pretty lips, you’re not pale like you were when you died. You’re so pretty, as pretty as the night he first kissed you, and you look so full — not of life, just… something different.
Your hair looks a little darker. Blown out and big, like you’ve had time to style it in the afterlife. Your skin doesn’t catch the sun the way it used to. It doesn’t glow; it drinks the light in, soft and matte, like moonstone instead of glass. You look alive, impossibly alive, but there’s something uncanny beneath it. A stillness, a composure you never quite had when you were by his side. You used to fidget, shift your weight, hide behind him, chew on your lip when you thought no one was looking. Now you stand like the world has learned to move around you.
Your lips are the same shape, still plush, still devastating, but darker at the seams, as if they’ve been kissed by wine. When you breathe, it’s subtle; not the rise and fall Steve memorized in his sleep, not the grounding proof he used to press his palm against at night. It’s optional now. Habitual. Something you do because you remember needing to.
The clothes you wear are ones that he's seen before, clothes that should be nestled in drawers in his bedroom. A light pink top, your favourite denim jacket, the jeans that he had bought you on a date at Starcourt the other year. They fit you differently now, more assured, less fragile. The sneakers on your feet are the same ones you died in. They’re coated in dust, speckled in blood, an unwelcome reminder of the Upside Down.
He stares deeper, rising from his seat. His umber eyes drink you in, heart stammering in his chest. His stomach turns like someone's just punched him in the gut. Palms sweat, chest aches. He's pained to see you, because he's wished for it every day since you died in his arms. Wondered if death should meet him at the door and reunite you both.
When your eyes meet his, it completely undoes him.
Because they're the only thing that doesn't look like you.
They're not the same pretty colour, don't look like the pair that used to glimmer up at him. They don't shine in the light. The colour that they used to be still lives, humming beneath the surface, pulsating. They've been darkened, steeped in something thicker. Like clear water turned wine-dark the moment blood touches it.
When you blink, it’s slow. Intentional. The red shifts when you do, gathering toward your pupils before easing back again, as if it knows how far it’s allowed to go. Your stare isn’t empty, or wild, or cruel — it’s aware. Too aware. You see more now than you ever did before, and you don’t waste movement pretending otherwise.
You look out at the world through eyes that have learned patience, learned control, learned how to wait.
And that’s the worst part.
Because your eyes don’t look damned.
They look like they’ve chosen to stay.
But then, you're gone. A flash of a yellow school bus is all that it takes, chugging and spluttering through the street, forcing your eyes apart from his. When it clears in a passing blur, you're gone. The place that you had stood is empty. No dark ribbon caught in the breeze. No familiar silhouette. No red-tinged gaze lingering just a second too long.
Alone again, naturally.
The moment haunts him for weeks to come, linger behind him like a stalker in the night. They brush his skin with the ghost of a touch, pull him away from conversation to get lost in his own head. He knows it was real, that there’s no explanation for what was happening; but then again, creatures from a mythical board game swarm in a world beneath Hawkins.
He chooses to keep the moment to himself. As spooky as the moment had been, it’s the closest he’s come to comfort in months.
The second time Steve sees you, he's looking on purpose. He doesn’t tell Robin or Dustin that, of course. The pair had dragged him out of the house, insisting that he needs to get some fresh air, that he shouldn't be alone for so long. Robin insists he’s turning into a cryptid. Dustin says sunlight builds character. Between the two of them, Steve doesn’t stand a chance. They drag him to the music festival on the outskirts of town, and he lets them.
Bags gather underneath his eyes. His hair is flatter and he forgot to wash it today, spent too long looking at your half-used body wash. There’s a hole in his jacket that he had asked you to stitch up, something you never got around to doing, and he thumbs at it to ground himself.
Trampled grass and crooked stages, the air thick with fried food and cheap beer and feedback from speakers that aren’t quite tuned right. It’s loud in that chaotic, living way that makes Steve’s skin prickle. Too many heartbeats. Too many voices. Too much proof that the world kept spinning after you died.
He scans the crowd anyway.
They’re all celebrating without knowing what lingers below them. They have no idea that a group of kids just postponed their deaths, stopped Hawkins from splitting into four. They have no idea that you died saving them.
There’s hundreds of faces here, people he knows well and those he scarcely recognises. He scans the crowd over and over again, eyes on a mission. They seek you out like a man starved. He needs to see you again, needs to know that he isn’t going crazy, needs to know that there’s a reason your clothes are missing from his house.
“Dude, are you even listening?”
He whips back to Dustin’s voice. Pupils dilated, Steve’s brow creases.
“Huh?”
“Definitely not listening.” Robin scoffs amusedly. She's got a corndog in her hand, half eaten, speckles of battered crumb against her lips.
"Sorry..." he's sheepish; caught in the act. "Just people watching."
"Huh." Robin looks to dustin, the younger boy's brows drawn upwards as though a string pulls them that way. "Because you've always loved crowds."
"Why don't you get some food?" The boy in the cap asks. "Or a drink? Just let loose for a little while, we've missed you." There's cheesy fries sat on the table of the bench they all sit at, wood chips flaking and decaying. Steve swallows — everything's a reminder of you, of your death. "You're allowed to have fun, you know? That's what she would've wanted."
The words force him to draw in a breath. They sting, make his throat burn.
Steve swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as if it has its own heartbeat. He looks down at the plate of fries, golden and greasy, the smell sharp and almost nauseating. Every one seems to mock him; fried, warm, alive, while everything inside him is frozen in that memory of you. The bite he wants to take feels impossible.
He thought he knew everything, how you would've reacted, how you would've spoke, what you would've wanted him to do. But now, as you haunt him, he's not sure of anything.
“I… yeah,” he mutters finally, voice tight. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Dustin grins, oblivious to the storm in his friend’s chest. “That’s the spirit! Food fixes everything.” He shovels a fry into his mouth, crunching loudly.
Robin takes a slow bite of her corndog, smirking. “Yeah, Steve. You can’t hide in your house forever. You gotta live a little. And for the record, I don’t want to have to drag you out again next week.”
Steve nods mechanically, lips pressed tight.
He tries, for a little while. Forces himself to laugh at jokes, to eat, to listen to the thumping bass. He's agreeable, gentle, a shell of King Steve that everyone seems so desperate to see again.
But then it happens again.
A ghostly wind brushes through the air, whisking away the sounds of Dustin and Robin's laughter. It blurs everything around him, morphs people into shadows. The bass in the distance thumps in his chest like a second heartbeat, slower now, irregular. He blinks, and the crowd warps again, faces blur, smiles stretch into strange shapes, laughter turning hollow. His stomach twists, the cold gripping him like ice through his veins. It feels wrong.
It's connected to you, or whatever you've become. And that's not right, because you were always the sunshine in Steve's once-dank life. He sits upright, scanning once more.
And there you are.
At the edge of the crowd, near the ferris wheel lights that flicker like failing stars. You’re standing perfectly still, wind in your bouncy hair, denim jacket hanging just so, hands relaxed at your sides. There's that same confidence about you, as though whatever happened to you in the Upside Down has morphed you. Red pierces through the crowd like a firing arrow, sharp irises stabbing into him. You look darker this time, as though that dreadful world clings to you. You’ve been waiting, even if you can’t come closer, even if the world doesn’t bend to your presence.
His jeans scuff against the wood as he suddenly stands.
"Steve, you good?"
He ignores the words from his friends as your eyes move away from him, to the people in the crowd. You're so far away, but he can see everything. A vein pops in your neck, and your tongue comes out to wet your pale lips. You almost look... hungry.
It burns his throat. The look in your eye, the way you take in the people around you. You’ve never looked like this before — whatever happened to you, whatever brought you back to life in the Upside Down… it’s changed you completely. It’s darkened your soul, damned you.
My girl. He thinks, my precious girl.
And almost as though you can hear his thoughts, your eyes snap back to him.
Red. Focused. Sharp enough to hurt.
Something passes over your face then, recognition, but also restraint. Control. Like you’ve caught yourself staring too long at a knife and remembered what it’s for. Your lips part, just slightly, and for one terrifying second Steve thinks you’re going to smile.
You don’t.
Instead, your expression tightens, subtle but unmistakable. Your chin lifts, proud and defiant, and you look away again, this time deliberately. Like you’re choosing not to look at him. Like looking at him makes things worse.
"Guys..." He speaks, a dreadful feeling curdling in him. "Do you see that?"
"See what?" Dustin murmurs around his fries, eyes following Steve's.
"She's here — she's..."
"Who's here, Steve?" Robin asks, craning her neck towards the flicker of lights. "I can't see anyone. Is it Vik?"
"It's Y/N."
He doesn’t see the looks exchanged by his two best friends. Doesn’t see how worried they are, how they tense at the shoulders.
Dustin’s voice is low when he speaks again. “Where, Steve? There’s no one there.”
“She’s right there!” He looks down at the boy, voice loud in his outburst. His eyes are wide and maddened, ablaze with sovereign love. “Don’t you see…” his voice trails off as he looks back up.
You’re gone.
“Uh… is this a coping mechanism? My mom read a book about this type of thing. I-If you’re seeing things then we should probably—”
“I’m not seeing things.” He pleads, looking back to the concerned faces of his friends. “I swear. She was right there. She— she looked different.”
“Man, you’re probably just tired. Right, Robin?” The girl nods her head profusely, but it’s not a believable thing. She can’t even look Steve in the eye. “This is the most socialising you’ve done in months. There’s reminders of her everywhere, right? It’s normal to miss her.”
And so, he tries again. He ignores that awful feeling, pushes a hand through his hair. He listens as Dustin and Robin try to distract him, but it’s not enough.
Not when he catches sight of you once more.
That flashing red, a blur of denim. Pale skin and the scent of your perfume. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t stand, just watches. Steve can’t risk his friends thinking he’s gone insane, even if he possibly has. Can't risk the possibility of not being able to see you again, even if it causes this awful feeling. Any feeling, any pain, is worth seeing you again.
You’re scouring, like some sort of predator. The red has completely overcome any other colour in your eyes. You're moving like you're floating, feet ghosting the floor. There's no noise with your movements, just precision. Your lip twitches, an upward motion that curls your face in a way he's never seen before. Everything seems heightened. Like your hindbrain is the thing that's controlling you now... like you have an insatiable itch, and you're searching for your respite in the sea of people. You move again, eyes trained on a group of boys that wonder through the crowds.
"I'm gonna grab some water." Steve murmurs, standing. He doesn't give his friends a chance to reply before he scrambles away from the wooden bench. It's a complete lie, but his brain doesn't think fast enough to make up a good excuse. He pushes through the crowds, stare caught on the back of your head, the deepness of your denim jacket. Steve watches as you reach out to one of the boys in the group, your tiny, familiar hand inching closer to the boy's shoulder.
Someone bumps into him, knocks his shoulder back.
"Watch where you're going, Harrington!" The voice calls, and Steve breaks his contact with you for a millisecond. When he looks back, his heart freezes over.
Your eyes, now once the colour he adored so deeply, stare up at the boy sweetly. You're curling in on yourself, appearing sheepish, some sort of hunting seduction that he can't look away from. It's almost like Steve can hear your voice, your supple tone as your wine-stained lips move. You look at this boy how you used to look at Steve, pupils large and glimmering. It's so familiar, but you're so different. Not the girl who would braid Eleven's hair when it got long enough, not the girl who took Lucas to the farmer's market every weekend to buy Max flowers, not the girl who hummed as she wrote in her journal. That sweet innocence is gone, possessed by something darker.
Your hand lands against the boy's jacket. Steve sucks in a breath, but it doesn't feel like it goes anywhere. He remembers that touch, how it felt to be chosen by you, and it kills him inside to see it like this. He stumbles forward as he tries to do something, anything, because he knows innately that this isn't going to end well. The boy is instantly enchanted, falling back as his friends keep walking. Blue eyes glaze over as he looks down at you.
His body responds before his mind can catch up, shoulders loosening, attention tunneling in on you alone.
Steve can see the exact moment the hook sinks in.
Your fingers press more firmly now, guiding. Anchoring. The boy follows without question, steps syncing to yours as if pulled by an invisible thread. You lead him sideways, toward the darker edges of the festival, where the lights thin and the music dulls into a distant, muffled thrum. To any passers-by, it looks completely innocent, a crushing girl dragging a boy towards the secluded outskirts of the festival. But Steve knows, of course he knows.
You don’t rush.
Predators never do.
With creased brows and a permanent frown, Steve tries to move faster, tries to bring it all to a sudden halt, tries to get close enough. And suddenly, he's paralysed, because you look back at him. Your gaze cuts straight through the crowd and lands on him like an arrow finding its mark. For a fraction of a second, the mask slips. The red bleeds back through. Hunger. Awareness. Control.
Steve’s breath stutters in his chest.
Jesus, the look you give him... it pins him in place, sharp and deliberate, like you’ve reached inside his ribcage and wrapped your fingers around his heart.
You know he’s watching.
The realization hits him like ice water. This isn’t something unfolding without him. This isn’t a secret hunt carried out in the margins of his vision.
You are letting him see.
The red in your eyes pulses once, vivid and unmistakable, before your lashes lower and the softness slides back into place. The mask seals itself shut. To the boy, you’re still sweet, still harmless. Your hand light at his wrist now, guiding rather than gripping, a suggestion instead of a command. Your lips move once again, a curling smile inches up your face, and for a second, he swears he sees the flashes of pointed canines.
The crowd seems to resist him, bodies shifting just enough to slow him down, hands brushing his arms, shoulders colliding. Sound dulls, like cotton stuffed in his ears. His heart is beating too hard, too fast, every thud echoing with a single, desperate thought:
Stop. Please. Stop.
His wish comes true, because it does all stop. It stops in a fraction of a second. You just… step sideways, pulling the boy with you, and the crowd seals over the space you vacated like water closing over a stone. One moment Steve can see the pale edge of your jacket, the angling of your jaw. He sees marks against your neck, two little dots in a matching shade of scarlets to your eyes.
The next, there’s nothing.
It’s in the news a week later. A boy, just a year older than Steve, missing for seven days. Last seen with his friends at Hawkins Fest.
Sleep hasn't found the Harrington boy in days. He's beyond tired, slipping into a state of constant drowsiness. No matter what he tries, he can't sleep, because every time he closes his ember eyes, those little red incisions burn into his brain. He remembers the way that you looked at the boy, the way you whisked him away so effortlessly. The thought of you clammers onto him, scratches with sharp nails and scars him, rips into him every night. It’s the driving force that keeps his eyes from closing, not allowing his mind to shut off.
On the fourth night without sleep, Steve decides to try things a little differently. Instead of accepting, hiding, pondering, he decides that this is the time to question. Why, how could you possibly be back? What happened to you once they left your lifeless body? Why were you hunting people down, taking them, maybe even killing them? Why were your belongings going missing from his home? The latest was a necklace — a golden S that Steve had got you on your two year anniversary. He tried to tell himself that he had misplaced it, that maybe you had worn it when you died, but no amount of convincing himself was enough. He remembers. Knows you took it off when you guys had prepared to go into the upside down, left it dangling off the mirror of your vanity.
“I don’t want it to get ruined.” He remembers you saying as you unclasped it, sat pretty in front of your own reflection. “Who knows what those flying particles do to things after a long time, huh? Besides,” you had smiled, so soft and sweet and everything he could ever want, “some things deserve to stay on this side, where sacred things have meaning still.”
“Okay.” He says to no one, shaking the memory from his head. It hurts a little too much. The two of you had no idea then — not even an inkling of what was coming, of the fact that you wouldn’t return to this side, that your sacrality would die in that tainted place. “Okay. Here we go.” Big hands move, contort the pages in front of him.
There’s four different books from Hawkins library. They all smell old and had a pile of dust atop them when he picked them up from the shelf. SUPERNATURAL BEINGS, Vol 1. VISIONS OF THE VAMPIRE. FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY. A GUIDE TO DREADED DEMONS. They all seem crude, an ancient way of categorising what has happened to you. You’re no demon, but you’re not who you once were. Steve’s unsure if any of these books will aid him at all, give him any answers, he doubts it, but he’s tired of just accepting. Something has to give.
Its a process that takes a long time. Steve's never been a good reader, or writer, so accustomed to having your sweet tone read aloud to him. His eyes water, both from the tiredness and the haunting nature of these books. What they speak of curdles his stomach. All of the books talk about human transformation, the pain of venom surging through bloodstreams, teeth piercing through gums, the insatiable hunger for blood. The words morph in his mind, sending him reeling into wild fantasies of what could've happened to you. He aches at the thought of you, seizing and twitching wildly as the demobats inject their venom into you, the sudden opening of your eyes and a gasp of breath you don't need to take. He throws up in his mouth more times than he can count.
Steve barely notices when the sun starts to rise.
It slips through his blinds in anaemic stripes, rips away the darkness of the night. It washes away the two dots of glowing red that stare into his bedroom window, sat eerily besides his heated pool.
The sun bleaches the edges of the books, seeps into the pages and warms his hand like a gentle touch. His room is a mess, cluttered with the books and notes he'd taken upon himself to write. There's scrunched up balls beside his bin. Stray hairs litter his desk where he's continuously ran his hands through his hair. He looks like a mad man -- still dressed in yesterday's clothes, duvet shrugged over his shoulders carelessly, deep bags settled underneath his eyes.
That's the sight that Dustin Henderson walks in on.
"Dude... are you doing homework on vampires?"
†༙
eeeeekkkk!! here we go!!! thank you for reading!
