[ fear ] sender finds receiver having a nightmare
something is behind you. tiptoed, baited breath, there’s nothing but red rain and gleaming gray and black as far as the eye can see and something is behind you ; a bruised horizon, broken blood vessels beneath each staggered footfall and the stretch of his own flesh over too - small - too - big - too - much bones, and in this moment, will knows without a shadow of a doubt this isn’t something he can outrun. he can’t outhide it either, day after day spent peeling back layers of broken skin and dirt to bury himself in, it can’t last. he’s stretched too thin, too wide, overheated and shivering sweat from every pore, water for starving soil. it swallows whatever he can give and more, desperate, hungry, a gut - wrenching growl that pangs in his own stomach. the sound wabbles and warps around him, bends the light from red to black to red again, christmas - light cadence from R to U to N to the next trembling exhale dropped from fumbling lips, gone cold against the shell of his ear— he freezes. the footsteps behind him go silent as if they were his own.
no. no, no, non - syllable torn from crumpled - up lungs, and he feels it again along the back of his neck. “ . . .no, ” pleads aloud, head lulling more than shaking, desperate, hungry, cut up and flayed open for all to see but him, your voice, and it’s coming from behind you. something warm grabs him by the arm.
there’s a moment in which he doesn’t move, corpse - stiff and hypothermic, still as ice before it finally cracks, and it cracks all at once. kicking and screaming ; he doesn’t realize he still can until he opens his mouth and something animal comes out. [ good, that’s good, last time there was nothing. ] he half - expects his body to seize and his eyes to roll back in their sockets, blinking and burning, but instead they’re wide and overflowing, drip - dropping on aching knuckles wrapped white around jacket sleeves. blinking and burning, a light like a halo silhouettes a dawning half - familiar face. steve harrington. pale as the dead and just as wide - eyed as him, he can just barely make out the mixed sounds of their breathing and an idling engine over the blood beating in his ears. “ what— ” non - syllable— STOP. swallow. start over. “ what’s going on ? ”