Chapter Text
Steve Harrington has wandered the woods of Hawkins, Indiana his whole life. He knows them better than the halls of Hawkins High, maybe even better than the walls of his own home. His parents have always encouraged his wandering, and when he had been young enough to need a minder one of them or one of his many aunts or uncles (if they were available) had accompanied him.
When he’s old enough not to need a minder, to take care of any problems he might encounter himself, he’s mostly left to wander at his own discretion. He kind of misses the days when his parents weren’t always off somewhere taking care of business. He understands that their work is important and that, if he really needed them, they'd come back at the drop of a hat if he just asked them to. He knows they love him, he’s never felt unloved or abandoned, it just got a little lonely sometimes in that big house all by himself. And his extended family couldn’t visit often or for long outside of the holidays.
So Steve has taken to wandering and so he knows the woods of Hawkins better than most. Something has been off for weeks now and it has been driving Steve a little crazy. It was like when you could see storm clouds on the horizon, could feel the wind shift, and you know a storm was about to hit but the feeling had been holding steady for weeks now. He’s been trying to distract himself from the feeling with more mundane pursuits, like trying to win over Nancy Wheeler. Nancy was a great distraction. She was naturally pretty and smart and clever in a way a lot of people try and fail at being. For someone of Steve’s particular disposition it was a hard combination to resist. So he wasn’t.
He lets himself be swept away in his attraction and attempted wooing of Nancy and he tries to ignore whatever is happening in the woods that he can’t track the source of. It doesn’t seem like a big enough thing to call his parents about, he’s not even sure it’s anything really bad. It’s just very unsettling, but he can’t tell if it’s the feeling itself or the fact that in his 16 years of living in Hawkins he’s never felt anything like it.
The night Will Byers disappears Steve is out wandering, unable to sleep because there’s an increasing pressure in the air-not something truly tangible but still pressing down on him. Inescapable. It’s like a bubble growing bigger and bigger, he knows it has to pop eventually but you can’t predict exactly when it’ll burst. It’s a cold November night so Steve had grabbed a winter coat before leaving the house and he’s glad he did when the pressure finally releases and suddenly Steve is on the forest floor with no memory of how he got there.
Steve is used to being around fairly powerful people, his aunties and uncles are all powerhouses in their own ways, even his parents are pretty strong. That blast was something completely different. Steve has never been Under the Hill, his parents tried to keep him as far away from the politics of their world as much as possible and Steve was grateful to them for it even if it meant he didn’t get to see them often anymore. But his mom has described the feeling of the doorway opening between planes to him before and he guesses it’d probably be a lot like what he just felt, but more controlled, more contained.
Someone has opened a Doorway but Steve has no idea where or how . It was supposed to be almost impossible here, it was the whole reason the Harringtons had moved to Hawkins in the first place. There was a major Ley Line running below this town and opening doorways in a place so overflowing with energy was not only dangerous it was difficult as all hell. It also wasn’t guaranteed to open at the desired location, you could literally end up anywhere or anywhen. It was madness, is what it was.
There was also something acrid about the feeling of the energy that has been released. Something that smelt of corruption, like a wound gone foul or a dead thing left too long in the sun. Steve stays where he is in the leaf litter on the ground beneath the barren trees for far longer than he should. He feels like the wind has been knocked from his sails, like some great beast is sitting on his chest waiting to tear his throat out. All he can do is lay there and breathe for what feels like hours. The stars are out and the sky is clear so he tries to regulate his breathing like one of his aunts taught him years ago and he goes through what constellations he can make out as something to focus on besides whatever is out there in the night, lurking.
After what seems like the whole night has passed Steve feels like he’s adjusted to the rotten thing pressing out into the world, if only enough to wobble his way up onto unsteady legs. He hasn’t felt this unsteady on his feet in a long time, his family has made sure he’s prepared for most situations. This isn’t most situations. Steve starts moving slowly from tree to tree, using them to steady his gait as he wobbles his way home. There’s no way he can investigate whatever the hell that was tonight, he’s been taught his limits and when not to push something and, though he’s terrible at following those lessons more often than not he thinks he’d better listen to them tonight.
When he arrives home and enters the wards painstakingly and lovingly erected around his home he can finally take in a full breath of air. What the fuck was that? He thinks, when he can finally string his thoughts together again. Steve is pretty sure he and his family are the only unnatural things haunting Hawkins, so what the fuck caused whatever the hell that was?
Brushing dead leaves from his hair and leaving a trail of detritus from his back door up to his bedroom Steve resolves to deal with this shit in the morning. He drags himself up the stairs and flops directly onto his bed without bothering to change or get under the covers and is asleep almost instantly.
Steve Dreams.
He is in a place that is Other. The sky is dark and stormy. Ash floats down from the sky. Red lightning flashes in the distance. He is running. Something chases. He knows these woods. He has never seen these woods in his life. There are dark vines everywhere. Choking. Waiting. Something is watching.
Steve is awake. Suddenly and irrevocably, Steve is awake. He’s not a morning person, normally he wakes slow and languid. The Dream sits heavy in his mind. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep easy any time soon. It sits in his mind and waits, like it’s waiting for him to fall asleep again so it can pounce.
“Fuck,” is all he can say. He gets out of bed and paces for a while but eventually he has to go to school. He has to at least put a token effort into keeping up the appearance that he is a normal child who people don’t need to look too closely at. He could call in sick, pretend he’s not feeling well. Heck, it’s not even a lie, not really. The constant feel of rot pushing in on him has given him a headache that he suspects will be sticking with him as long as whatever is out there remains. Sure, it’s better inside the wards but it’s still ever present and persistently there. He suspects his headache will get worse when he leaves the little protection the wards provide.
He’s right. His headache gets worse and there’s a prickly feeling, like something is watching him. He hasn’t been able to spot anything but he knows better than to assume that means there’s nothing there. He decides that all he can really do is keep an eye out and go about his day like normal.
When he gets to school he leaves a note for Nancy in her locker. He figures a little bit of a distraction is probably what he needs.