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Steve’s first thought is: Oh, that’s a lot of blood .
His second thought is: Oh shit that’s really a lot of blood.
The demodog has, at least, been detached from his arm. He’s not sure where it went. The kids seem alright, or at least they seem all upright, even if they are drifting in and out of focus in a slightly alarming manner. Now the only problem is that a very large amount of startlingly bright blood is coming out of the mauled mess where the demodog bit. He can hear Dustin yelling and is somehow dimly aware that he needs to calm the kid down.
“Alright, stop panicking. Wrap this up with your scarf, and I’ll drive us slowly back home.” Steve says in a firm authoritative voice. It’s a mystery, therefore, why his voice sounds so much like a whisper, and why he isn’t in the car but horizontal on the earth which seems very, very cold.
Actually everything seems cold, and slightly too far away. Is he dying? He can’t be dying . Among other things that would be really, really inconvenient.
“Get in the car…” he whispers, but even he can’t hear his voice now. He feels pressure under his shoulders. Arms that are too small and too weak try to lift him up, and then there are more arms, and his head is suddenly above his shoulders which causes the entire world to lurch badly to the right.
Things aren’t that much better inside the car. He hangs on desperately to the inside of the bimmer, and to Byers’s kid brother, as Max sends his precious car hurtling out of the woods. They’re a fair distance from the city center, hell a fair distance from anywhere, and he can’t exactly remember where the Wheeler house is from here. They need, he decides, to get Hopper a walkie-talkie, or at least have some way of very quickly getting in touch with an adult with basic medical skills. They need to be more prepared for this sort of thing to happen. Except, they weren’t expecting it to happen. The gate is closed, the demodogs should be dead and gone, not hanging around a perfectly good picnic spot to jump out at people.
“He’s bleeding all over the seat!” Mike yells from next to him. Hands scrabble at his arm and Steve yells at the sudden spike in what had almost settled into dull pain. The car squeals to a sudden stop, Steve is thrown forward, and the world lurches sideways again. He can hear the kids arguing, but it sounds dim and far away.
“Why here!”
“It was close, we need to get him patched up. If he keeps bleeding, that’s bad.”
“What about-” the door opens suddenly and Steve tumbles towards it, landing heavily on top of the Byers kid who pets uncertainly at his hair and says, “His eyes have rolled up.”
Really not reassuring.
Dustin and Mike rush around, and together they half-support Steve and stagger him, semi-conscious, up a brick driveway towards the house. He has no idea which house. His trainers bounce off shallow steps and he gives an uneasy groan. “Guys, guys, I can still walk, I just can’t-”
Max rushes past them to open the door and Steve sways dangerously. Maybe it’s best if he keeps quiet.
Inside the house things are not much better. The scarf around his arm is wet with blood, oozing and sticky. His trainers grapple for purchase on the slick wooden floor. He’s surrounded by children who all seem to be yelling unfeasibly loudly. There’s the bang of a door and suddenly the last person he wanted to see in the world, Billy fucking Hargrove, is standing in front of him in a grubby off-white vest yelling, “What the fuck, Max?”
“Shut up and keep out the way.” Max snaps at him, running into the kitchen as Dustin and Mike lower Steve down onto a rather uncomfortable armchair. “Lucas, bathroom, in the cabinet, there are bandages and some of mom’s tylenol.”
“He’s bleeding!” Billy yells, face suffused with anger and confusion. “What the fuck, Harrington?”
“Yeah, well, you should see the other guy…” Steve mumbles.
“You’re getting blood on the - oh shit.” Billy storms out, as Max reappears holding a glass of water shakily to his lips. Steve manages a gulp of it before Billy is back, holding what looks like a grey T-shirt. Grabbing Steve’s bloodied arm, he shoves the T-shirt between it and the sofa.
Several things happen at once. Steve gives a high cry of pain as the ripped flesh of his arm is mauled. Dustin and Mike both start yelling at Billy. Billy steps back with a look of deep shock and Max flings the entire glass of water over him. Steve stays slumped in his armchair as they all start shouting at each other, watching hazily like a stoned Roman emperor regarding his subjects. Billy’s hands are clenching and unclenching into fists, he looks about half a second away from taking a swing at someone, but it’s clear he’s not sure who it’s safe to swing at. The natural choice would probably be Steve, but Steve is busy bleeding all over the upholstery.
Lucas arrives clutching three rolls of bandages and a pill bottle, and the tension momentarily ceases in the interest of preventing Steve from actively dying. Dustin paws at his shirt sleeve, making him whimper. “We should … we should get his shirt off or roll his sleeve up … or…”
“Fucks sake.” Billy grabs at a pair of kitchen scissors. Steve feels his vision go hazy with panic as Billy approaches, but instead of being stabbed in the face, Billy kneels down and slowly cuts his shirt out the way of his wound. “I want you all out of this house before Dad gets back.”
“We’ll be gone, soon as I can stand we’ll be gone.” Steve mutters.
The last of the sleeve falls away, and Billy gives a little hiss at the damage underneath. “What the fuck happened, Harrington?”
“Got in a fight.” Steve mumbles.
“With what, a bear-trap? A bear?”
Lucas thrusts the bandages forward and Billy sneers at him. “Antiseptic, Sinclair, we ain’t just bandaging him up it’ll get infected.” His hands are shaking as they reach into his pockets for a cigarette but they’ve steadied as he lights it, blowing the smoke away from Steve’s face. “There’s a bottle in my room. Under the bed. You touch anything else under there and I’ll break your arm.”
It’s Byers who runs off to get it, while Billy snaps, “Hot water maybe? Hell, you kids never had to patch anyone up before?”
“Not like this.” It’s Mike Wheeler who answers, staring at Billy with a look of deep loathing. Billy raises an eyebrow at him and gives an unpleasant laugh.
“You’d think dweebs like you would get kicked around enough to know.”
“Stop it…” Steve murmurs from the sofa. He wants to say more, to tell Billy to just stop being a dick for once in his life. The kids are scared, they’ve just faced a demonic dog-creature from another universe, when all of them were supposed to be dead. But of course Billy doesn’t know that. Even if he did, Steve suspects he probably wouldn’t care.
Dustin leans forward, gently stroking the sweaty hair out of Steve’s eyes. “He said something! Steve, did you say something?”
Steve tries to crack a smile. Behind him, Billy snatches the antiseptic bottle from Will Byers and shakes some out onto a warm damp towel. “Brace yourself, pretty boy, this is gonna hurt.”
The world goes white-hot. Steve isn’t sure if he’s screaming. He thinks probably someone is. When the pain dies down Dustin is rubbing his shoulders, Max is wiping his face with a damp towel, and Billy is tucking away the end of a fairly professionally-looking bandaged arm, the cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. “There you go. Not too bad. Drink some water, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
Mike hands him a glass of water and two pills. His other hand is still working, albeit very shakily, and Steve takes it and manages to get them down, watching Billy out of the corner of his eye as the boy levers himself off the floor and goes over to the sink to wash his hands. Despite everything, he still can’t help but think of Billy as a potential threat. He’s too unknown, too volatile. “Call Hopper.” he manages croakily. His voice isn’t still very loud but at least it’s still audible.
Billy spins around in an instant, fixing him with a glare. “No.”
“Billy…” Max snaps.
“Fuck no. You really want the cops in here?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see Lucas inching towards the telephone. He has a sudden feeling that this will not go well. “Not cops, just Hopper.”
“Hopper is a cop! Call the cops from your own damn phone. Whatever the fuck attacked you, Harrington, it’ll still be there when you finally get out of my house, okay?”
“It’s not your house.” Max snaps.
There’s a very long, and very intense moment of silence. Everyone’s watching Billy, waiting on edge, and Steve is a little impressed that it’s Max who breaks it first. Clearly she’s had enough of walking on egg-shells around her brother. “Lucas, call Hopper.”
“Don’t you dare.” Billy snarls, but Max is wielding her metaphorical bat with nails in it, and Billy stays where he is by the sink, eyes flashing murder as Lucas picks up the phone.
Slowly, leaning on Dustin, Steve manages to push himself upright. The world is still swimming a little, but it feels a lot better now he’s no longer actively bleeding. He staggers towards the phone and gently takes it from Lucas, listening to the dial on the other end and giving a sigh of relief as he hears the gruff voice of Hopper answering it. “Hop? Yeah it’s me. We got … attacked in the woods. Same as the thing that attacked us in Autumn … yeah. It tore my arm up pretty bad.”
“What was it?” Billy sneers, “Feral dog? Chipmunk?”
“Can you come pick us up? We’re at the Hargroves.” That shuts Billy up. His mouth snaps closed and his arms cross over his vest. “Yeah I’m okay. I … “ Steve’s eyes flicker up to meet Billy’s, “He’s here, yeah. He’s not … no he’s not, um, attacking anyone.”
“Not yet.” Billy snaps.
“Not yet.” Steve clarifies dryly into the phone, and Hopper swears down the other end of the line before promising to come around as soon as possible and get them all.
Steve clicks the phone back onto the hook, and a sudden wave of dizziness overtakes him. He stumbles sideways and Billy jumps forward without thinking to steady him.
“Don’t faint on me, Princess.” Billy growls, still clearly angry. It's frustrated anger, anger at being bossed around by his step-sister, anger at his own lack of control, anger at the world for delivering him injured Harringtons. Steve can get that, hell with the limited amount of blood in his system he feels ready to get anything.
“Get me back to the sofa before I start bleeding again.” He mumbles. Billy might be a dick, but it’s a relief to have someone around with him that’s closer to his own age. Someone who can actually hold him up without collapsing under the weight.
“You’re gonna pay for the stain on that sofa Harrington.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
Billy deposits him surprisingly gently back into the armchair, then turns on the kids. “Okay, so the police are coming to pick you up, and everyone is apparently fine with this. Until then, you stay in this room. You touch nothing. I stay in my room, and pretend I never saw you. It is a hundred-percent going to be Max’s fault if anything gets broken, okay?”
“Okay!” Dustin answers and the rest mumble assent.
“Fucking better do.” Billy snaps, flinging the bloodied cloth over his shoulder and heading off back to his room.
He doesn’t slam the door, so Steve figures maybe they didn’t piss him off quite so badly.