Splintered
Steve Harrington x Reader
for a sadder ending, check out Shattered
Warnings: a whole lotta angst, brief mention of painkillers, nightmares, fear, mentions of past relationship trauma, current relationship stress, injury, near-death experience (happy ending, i promise)
WC: 5k
Note: a not-so-happy ending version of this same concept/backstory will be posted tomorrow, so keep an eye out (or let me know if you wanna be tagged) for Shattered, the alternate ending to this fic (which will be for my angsty pals who don’t mind a painful ending)
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*****
Who does he think he is? Who does he take me for? A fool?
Steve Harrington has been lying to you for years and you’re sick of it. For so long you’ve put up with the suspicions and the sneaking around, always excusing your “best friend” for every canceled plan because you didn’t want to believe he would hide things from you.
Steve Harrington has been your best friend and boyfriend for years, your family moving in next to his just before the midway point of your freshman year of high school. It was Steve’s sophomore year, so he took you under his wing and you forged the most tempered of bonds. He became the king of the school and in his eyes you were royalty yourself. So he made it official. You were king and queen of Hawkins High.
He conjured the courage within you to reveal your weaknesses and tell the tales of the hurts you faced in your previous school. You shared everything with each other, or so you thought. He was your safe space and you were his. There was never reason to doubt until about two years ago. Then the slivers of doubt slithered in and took root, building a little more with each cancelled date or avoided meeting. You could tell something was going on but Steve didn’t let you in as much anymore. Instead, you ignored the warning signs, you put up with his odd behavior and mysterious injuries - “boxing lessons”, he would say - and lived a pitiful life of forcing yourself to enjoy the moments you could have with him. He was still your boyfriend and you still cared for him more deeply than you wanted to admit.
Yet here you are now, pacing angrily across your bedroom, wearing a circle into the carpet where your feet pass repeatedly. Thoughts of the fight you had with Steve not even two hours ago are still swirling around your brain, replaying conversations over and again.
Are you overreacting? Maybe you would be if this was the first time you’d faced desertion.
You had been looking forward to the long-overdue date night with Steve, the chance to finally catch up on all of life’s crazy twists and turns and to be - just the two of you. But now two high schoolers had recently been killed in the most disturbing of ways and Steve called you to cancel your plans - again. You weren’t the clingy, dependent type, but for the fifth time this month, you were stranded at home alone again, Steve fully aware of the effect this kind of thing had on you. Steve, more than anyone, knew what you had been through in your past friendships, past relationships, and he knew how important truth and trust were. Not to mention the fear that bubbled at the thought of who might be the next victim of whatever evil was taking place in town.
So lying to you was out of the question, or so you thought.
When you questioned your boyfriend, begging him for the truth, he blew you off again with vague excuses of “there’s something I need to take care of” and “it’s Henderson again, he got himself into trouble”. It was always something with him. Once or twice was believable, but by now the lies finally reached a tipping point.
“If you don’t want to be around me anymore, can you just spare me the pity and tell me already?”
“That’s not what this is, you’re not listening-“
“Oh I’m listening, you’ve just got nothing to say, Steve! Empty excuses and avoiding me like the plague?! I don’t deserve this! I’m tired of chasing after this relationship when you’re clearly chasing… anything and everything else!”
You were a dormant volcano on the verge of emotional eruption, but you refused to let Steve see you like that. So you stormed away without looking back.
You held onto your confident convictions until you reached the safety of your bedroom, where you broke the dam and let the tears fall freely. Bringing you to now, your tear-stained face staring back at you from the mirror over your dresser.
As you stand stock still in the middle of your room, you close your eyes as a searing headache invades your senses. It’s mind-numbing pain stabbing away at your temples and not even the strongest of medications can dissolve the pain fully. This was the fifth day in a row. If these nagging pains pick up again tomorrow you swear you’ll take yourself straight to the doctor, but you hope it doesn’t come to that. It’s just the buildup of emotions over the course of the days, that’s all, right?
Knocking back a few pills, you collapse onto your bed and cover your face with your arms in an attempt to shut out the world and drift into sleep. Eventually, you fade into oblivion, sleep being your only respite from the headaches knocking at your skull.
As was pattern for the last few days, you’re awoken in the early morning with a sheen of sweat across your face. Another nightmare plaguing your rest, draining you further of the little energy you have from day to day. And every night it’s the same dream. You’re alone and you’re running from something. Something dark, sinister. But you leave behind a trail, a path leading straight toward you no matter what you do. Every failure of your life, every error and mistake that has ever followed you, now stalks closer and points the way toward you. That sinister something lurking in the shadows is creeping closer, you can feel it. And just before it reaches you, you wake up, breathless and shaking uncontrollably.
You silently extricate yourself from your blankets and pad down the stairs to the living room, having given up on sleep for the night.
Another day, another waste of time sitting alone in your house without a single thing to do or place to go. You think of calling Steve, but what’s the use? You should still be angry at him, and you are, but he is still the one person you want to talk to. Besides, he would probably come up with some pathetic excuse for his absence anyway.
So instead, you busy yourself with mindless tasks, attempt to read a book for a while, cleaning the house for when your parents return from their trip, and desperately seek out ways to pass the time.
Over time, the headache you dreaded returns with full force. You stand to walk to the kitchen, gather a drinking glass and a few pills and down them in one big gulp.
But it’s while you’re standing at the sink, glass still in hand, that you hear the oddest sound. A clock chime. Not like the one your father insisted on installing in the front hall not long after moving in, no that was a soft chime that gently reminded anyone in the vicinity of the changing hours. This chime, as it rings again, is simultaneously deep and tinny, the oddest of combinations.
You turn to seek out the source of the mysterious ticking, but your mind is blank. It’s in this moment that you realize the lights in the kitchen have gone out, leaving you in an unnatural darkness. The remains of daylight peek through the curtains, but even the setting sun casts a worrisome glow. An eerie feeling creeps up your spine and chills the back of your neck. The chime rings again. That makes three.
You wander into the hallway and turn left, then right. There’s nothing but darkness staring back at you. The front door looms to your left so you make your way toward it. As you approach, you see a shadow grow larger, taller, just on the other side. A figure of great size silhouettted against the pane of glass in the center of the door. You back away slowly, never taking your eyes off of the doorknob that slowly turns one way, then the other. The door creaks open. You back away a little faster now.
A fourth chime rings out just as the door swings wide to reveal the form on the other side of the threshold.
It’s tall and relatively thin considering the enormous presence it exudes, standing on two feet, the moonlight reflects off of what seems to be vines wound tightly up and around and through this terrible creature. But it’s the hands that you hone in on. One hand is… not a hand at all but a claw with arched fingers protruding like the claw machine at the arcade. Poised for plucking its target from its safety. Then it opens its mouth and you hold your breath.
“Y/n.”
**
Steve Harrington would never consider himself to be someone with a proclivity for making good decisions. But two decisions he thought he could never regret: falling in love with you, and then refusing to let you get involved in whatever it was that haunted Hawkins and hunted whatever happiness their little ragtag team of kids could find. First Will and Barb, then Will and Eleven over and again. Then the Russians, which was impossibly difficult to keep from you given your proclivity for puzzles and your insistence on visiting Steve at his place of work - always a welcome visit, but increasingly stressful for the boy to hide all those secrets. But Steve swore to himself long ago that he couldn't and wouldn’t put you in harm's way. He’d rather lose your love than lose your life.
He just never thought he’d actually have to choose.
You were the first person Steve felt truly himself with, the first person to call him out on his idiocy and the first person to comfort him in his pain. You had been the truest of friends and the most amazing partner. His constant. And he had to protect you.
Steve was the only person in Hawkins who knew the truth of your past, your heartache and your failings. He reminded you of all the good things you tended to forget.
You were each other’s sunshine on a rainy day.
But the rain clouds gathered too heavily and soon Steve’s attempts at keeping you safe began to push you away. He chose to lie about everything so you wouldn’t insert yourself into something so dangerous. His lies, however, necessary as they may have been, cost him dearly.
As you yelled at him, as you fought back the tears - and yes, Steve knew you were on the verge, despite your efforts at holding it back - Steve warred within himself. To lose the relationship he valued so much or to possibly lose your life. Logically, it was an easy choice. Playing it out in real life was a different story.
Now, Steve stands with the others who have dug themselves in too deep to climb out unscathed. He had listened to Eddie tell his tale of terror as he watched Chrissy Cunningham succumb to a ritualistic death by this otherworldly demon. He had seen the way Nancy pictures her friend Fred having faced a similar fate. And together the ragtag team of Hawkins heroes attempt to piece the puzzle together, to understand what they’re up against.
The array of characters he had found himself caught up with over the years is now gathered together in the basement of the Wheeler house, each individually processing the heavy weight of Max’s life-altering revelation. She is on Vecna’s list and may have limited time before she becomes his next victim. The others sit with this information, unsure of how to comfort their friend when there is no comfort to offer. This is all too much for a bunch of kids to deal with.
Nancy and Robin have just left to infiltrate the Pennhurst Asylum in an attempt to get the only known survivor of Vecna’s curse to share the secret he holds within. Hoping beyond hope they can find answers before it’s too late.
Steve closes his eyes for a moment, finding a nagging thought tugging at his memories. Something about what Max had told them earlier is nipping at him and he just can’t put his finger on it. Thoughts of everything he knows about the upside down swirl around his brain, trying so hard to connect Max’s predicament with something they already learned - something they can do to save Max. Something about always being in charge of babysitting the little rascals has made Steve… care. And if Max is next, Steve will stop at nothing to riddle out the solution.
Then Max clears her throat and captures the attention in the basement. She holds in her hands a pile of brown envelopes, then distributes them and begins to explain. “In case something happens to me, give these to the others, okay?” Lucas moves to open his letter and Max is quick to react. “Don’t read it now. Please. Just, you know, in case something happens.” The sadness behind her eyes is clear to the others.
“Hey, Max, we’re not going to let anything happen to you. Okay? Nancy and Robin are-“
“I know what they’re trying to do, but no one can guarantee anything right now.” She looks off to the side in thought. “I have a few things I need to do, places to go. Will you drive me?”
Steve thinks of all the possible ways this could go sideways. But Max is right when she reminds them that if she has limited time left she wants to spend it living and not hiding away in a basement smelling of old gym socks.
So Steve chauffeurs Max, Lucas, and Dustin around Hawkins, the car remaining mostly silent along the way. She visits her old home, her brother’s grave, her current home in the trailer park. Each stop is progressively more tense as she knows her hours may very well be ticking down.
It isn’t until they’re back on the road, having just left the trailer park, that a realization suddenly hits Steve and he slams on the brakes of the car, violently tossing the kids in the backseat forward in their seats.
“What the shit, Steve!?” Dustin cries out in alarm, arms thrown out to hold himself steady.
Steve could hear the commotion in response to his sudden stopping. “Y/n.” He speaks softly. The others strain to hear. He wills his thoughts to align into a semblance of order. “Shit, shit, SHIT!” He cries out as he stomps on the gas, plowing them forward once more.
**
“Y/n.”
It’s voice the lowest you’ve ever heard, daunting and threatening in itself. You jump at the low groan emanating from within the creature, dropping the glass you forgot was still clutched tightly in your hands. It crashes to the floor and shatters into pieces, littering the hallway. You take your eyes from the beast for a second at the sound of the glass shards clattering across the hardwood floor.
Suddenly, the home you’ve grown up in disappears from around you and you find yourself back in the halls of the school you swore you’d never go back to. The halls that tortured you so terribly and tore you to shreds one measly insult at a time. Back there again, the walls now echo with intangible voices taunting you with every flaw you’ve ever identified in yourself. You hear them and, after a while, you start to believe them. They follow you down every hallway, into every classroom. You run, one foot propelling the next to carry you forward. But every turn you make brings you back to the same place, the same hallway that was home to so much hatred and hurt.
A sudden sound surprised you and you lurch backward into the wall of lockers. The creature from before looms just in front of you. Far too close for comfort. Yet it comes closer, its presence evoking a tremor to rack your body and your breath to hitch.
**
“Steve, slow down!” Max calls from the passenger seat, her body bouncing along wildly despite the seatbelt tying her down.
“I don’t have time to slow down!” Steve shrieks, panic rising with each passing moment.
He barely focuses on the road at all, in fact, as memories of the past few days flood back. In your spats which became much more frequent in the last few days, you offhandedly had mentioned the nightmares that plagued your mind. Steve knew your history and the nightmares were direct descendents of those horrible memories of experiences of your past. Friends who turned on you. Ex-friends who tormented you relentlessly. Exes who spread the worst kinds of rumors. Things he swore he would never do to you. Those nightmares were so real to you and Steve could barely keep his eyes from growing fuzzy recalling your strained voice over the phone telling him of the horrors you imagined at night. Despite his distance, you never stopped trying to reach him.
You had even told Steve of the headaches, in a desperate attempt to get him to commit to actually coming to see you. You thought he might care a little more about you if he knew how you struggled. And now, Steve thinks back and regrets every missed conversation, every cancelled movie night and every second he could have held onto you.
After giving the briefest summation of his worry to the kids in the back, Steve slams on the brakes as the car pulls up outside your house. He throws his door open and his body out into the street. The younger friends follow suit, trailing Steve in his panicked sprint toward your front door.
Steve goes straight to the tiny stone stepper in the dirt along the porch, the one with your tiny childhood handprint impressed into the flat surface that you once told him about. He flips it over and retrieves the key hidden beneath. Then he quickly inserts the key and slams the door open in a fury.
“Y/n!” Steve waits just inside the door for any response. But all is quiet. Dread sinks deeper and he pushes himself forward.
Max and Lucas rush forward, Lucas proclaiming, “we’ll look upstairs” before their feet pound up the staircase.
Dustin follows Steve as he turns the first corner into the sitting room. Both sets of eyes dart from side to side in search of any sign of movement. Nothing.
They continue to the next room, the dining room. Still nothing. But as Steve rounds the next corner, he freezes in place.
You’re here. But you’re not here at the same time. Steve hurls himself across the room until he’s standing before you, looking you up and down in concern. You haven’t moved since he arrived. Then he sees it. Your eyes are rolled back in your head, twitching, a glossy sheen replacing the deep y/e/c that once sparkled.
Steve brings his hands up to either side of your face. He presses his palms to your cheeks, feeling the cold chill that’s taken over your skin. His hands slide down over your neck, gripping you just behind the head, “Y/n, can you hear me?” His voice is desperate and afraid. “Y/n, please. Please answer me.”
His memory scans back through Eddie’s story and this one unfolding in front of him is ringing oddly familiar. “Dustin! Help!!” Steve yells, straining his voice, knowing full well there was nothing his friend could do that he couldn’t. His gaze never leaves your face, afraid to look away and lose you.
Once more, his hands slide down further until they’re on your shoulders. He shakes you gently, “damn it, Y/n, this isn’t funny. You can wake up now.”
“Maaaax!! Lucaaas! Get down here!!” Dustin shrieks, voice cracking in fear as he watches the scene unfold before him. Then he has a thought. He pulls his bag off of his shoulder and flips the switch on the radio and, while back stepping toward the front door to give Steve space, begins calling out to Robin and Nancy on the other end. He begs them to respond, to bring any tiny shred of hope with them. “Nancy! Robin! CODE RED! Where the hell are you?”
Max and Lucas come bounding down the stairs, feet a flurry of movement. Dustin motions them toward the kitchen where they find Steve gripping your face tightly, staring directly into your glazed eyes and begging you to wake up.
“Oh my god.” Max whispers, seeing a glimpse of what may lie ahead for herself.
Steve turns his head to look at them standing behind him, eyes red and bloodshot, tears leaking from his eyes in a constant stream. “What do I do?” His voice is weak and strained. Steve is desperate, helpless, with every possible shred of guilt overtaking his mind. Every regret eating away at him.
He shouldn’t have pushed you away. He shouldn’t have lied and kept the truth from you. Every lie and every avoidance had been to save you. Every attempt at keeping you away from the Upside Down had been Steve’s desperation at keeping you out of harm's way. And now that’s exactly why you’re here, in this very situation.
**
“Y/n.”
The way your name comes out of its mouth is so… wrong. It is a croak and a gutteral moan. It is a nightmare in itself.
Another nightmare. That’s all this must be, right?
You try to wake yourself from this terror but to no avail.
“It is time. To listen to the voices of truth.”
The echoes of the hall increase in volume and you hear the words they say, repetitions of the insults hurled at you day after day all those years ago. Reminders of the failed relationships you worked so hard to maintain and the friends who abandoned you for all the flaws you worked so hard to suppress.
“It. Is. Time.”
The creature looms closer, now it stands before you, practically chest to chest. You see the concaves of its face, the fleshy tissue making up its skin that, up close, really does appear to be vines.
You are frozen in place, paralyzed with fear, and leaning toward acceptance of your fate. Tears stream down your cheeks as an instinctive reaction to the overwhelming feeling of dread settling deeper and deeper.
In that moment, flashes of Steve fill your mind. You latch onto the images of his face, the feeling of his touch and the warmth of his embrace. You regret the way you left things with him, because this was the end. You could feel it.
The oversized left hand arches wide and the clawed fingers splay outward as this demon figure raises its hand toward your face. Each appendage stretches out until your head is nearly surrounded. You feel fear coursing through your veins, but you are helpless to fight it.
The claw springs forward and each ragged finger hooks into your face on all sides. You feel the energy of the demon seeping into you, commanding your body to obey. You scream, yet you don’t. You cry, yet you don’t. Then everything around you fades to black.
**
As his hands grip your cheeks, Steve feels movement and lets his hopes rise that maybe you are returning to him. But instead your head slowly rises so his hands slide to your shoulders, but your shoulders rise as well. He steps backward in alarm as your feet leave the floor. You hover in midair, body floating so high your head nears the ceiling. Steve’s face loses all color and he gasps, sucking desperately for air.
Dustin’s pleas over the radio are echoing down the hallway. Finally, he hears a crackling and a familiar voice answer back. “Dustin, we hear you, what’s going on?” Nancy.
“It’s Y/n! We’re at their house and- and they’re in that trance thingy! Please tell me you know how Victor Creel survived!!” Dustin’s feet start leading him closer to the commotion. “Shit.” He sees you levitating motionless in the middle of the kitchen. “NANCY NOW PLEASE!”
He listens closely, nodding along. No one else is paying him any attention, their eyes and their fear glued directly to you. Steve is shaking, mouth agape and eyes blurry with tears.
“Music! We need music!” Dustin breaks Steve’s own personal trance and he turns around.
“Steve!” Max snaps her fingers, “is there a music player here?”
“Bedroom.” He mumbles, thoughts racing but nothing coherent.
Lucas races up the stairs and returns with a boombox and a pile of tapes. He drops them on the floor and they sort through them.
Dustin instructs them as he is fed his own directions. “What’s their favorite song? Something… meaningful?” All eyes turn to Steve.
He reaches down without hesitation and pops the tape into the player, smacking the play button harder than necessary.
A beat rings out in the kitchen, Max turns the volume up higher. It’s upbeat and familiar with an unmistakable twang.
“I had to learn this goddamn dance for our halloween costume last year. Please let this work.” Steve speaks of the memory affectionately without regard for who listens or cares. He cares.
The Footloose tape plays loudly, echoing through the house, disturbed only by the desperate pleas for your safe return to this life from wherever it is you’re trapped.
“Y/n!” Steve calls out to you. “Please! If you can hear me, I need you to come back to me!”
Steve threads his hands through his hair, pulling the strands taut and wishing for something- anything to happen. He blames himself for everything, if he had kept you close he would have- well, he wasn’t sure what he could have done but it sure as hell would’ve been better than leaving you alone to encounter… this.
Then without warning, your body drops to the floor in a heap, legs bending in all the wrong ways in the process. Steve rushes to your side, hurling himself to the floor, lifting your head and shoulders into his lap. He runs his hand down your arms, then over your face. You’re ice cold. Tears continue to slip down Steve’s cheeks and over the tip of his nose. “Y/n, please.”
Steve squeezes his eyes shut, so he doesn’t see when your eyes flutter open. “Steve,” it sounds like a croak more than anything else. His eyes flash open and his breathing intensifies. He clutches you tighter, words failing him. His body is racked with sobs of relief, never hearing a sweeter sound than your voice at this very moment.
Seconds go by slowly, but Steve soaks them up. You manage to steady your breathing as tears soak into the top of your shirt.
Max, Lucas, and Dustin stand motionless by the entryway of the kitchen, speechless at what they witnessed. They fade back into the wall behind them, letting the sturdy wall support their weight.
In the midst of the silence, broken only by the shuddered sobs coming from you and Steve, the front door flies open and Robin appears, Nancy just behind her. They stop in their tracks spotting the younger teens standing shocked, mouths open and eyes wide. The girls approach and see what the others were looking at. “Oh my god,” Robin expresses almost under her breath when she sees you collapsed on the ground, left leg bent out of shape under your body.
Nancy, ever the voice of reason, takes one look at you and runs back down the hallway to the phone, promptly calling for an ambulance.
Robin steps carefully over and kneels beside Steve, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He leans into her and sniffles against the drops still fighting to be released from his eyes.
Steve glances back down at you, pained by the agony in your expression, and squeezes your hand which he had claimed into his own a moment before. “I’m here. I’m here.”
**
You wake up to the blindingest of lights. You squint against the angry white walls and squeeze your eyes shut again. An incessant beeping invades your comatose mind. A soft warmth emanates from the end of your left arm and you chance a glimpse through slotted eyes to find a hand wrapped around yours. Following the hand, you find Steve slumped over in the seat beside your bed, eyes shut tight.
Your eyes wander over your body and see a white casing covering your left leg. The memories begin to flow back, horrible visions of that nightmare realm raising your heart rate. Your breathing intensifies and your hand twitches, waking Steve and pulling his attention to you and only you.
“You’re awake.” Your eyes dart back and forth and Steve understands. “Hey, hey. It’s okay, I’m here. You’re safe.” You lock eyes and see the desperation he exudes. You nod slowly, returning your breathing to normal just as a nurse arrives to check on you.
The nurse instructs Steve to step out of the room, but you cling to his hand. He leans in close, pressing a kiss to your forehead, and whispers, “I’ll be back in a minute. I promise. I won’t leave this time. I won’t ever leave you again.”
And for the first time in a long time, you believed him. He had a lot of explaining to do, but knowing you were alive to hear it was enough, for now.
*****
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