The age old story of two best friends falling in love...
... Only, one's a lab experiment with an entire Upside Down hunting her down, and the other won't leave her side, no matter how hard she tries.
steve harrington x fem oc / season 2 o...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter ten lonely nights
🖤
SO. STEVE WOULD NOT STOP PUKING FOR, like, ten whole minutes, so the two swapped seats, and Ruby drove the rest of the stretch home. They concluded that this was because of breathing in the Upside Down, and that Ruby never reacted like that — well, because Ruby's Ruby. She felt guilty for not thinking about that before letting him follow her in there.
She pulls onto her driveway, and glances cautiously over at Steve. He last vomited three minutes ago, so she braces herself for another round. The smell makes her feel gross, too, but she keeps quiet because at least she isn't the one puking.
"If you puke in my house, Harrington, you're dead."
"No, I think I'm fine now," says Steve, looking pale.
Ruby raises her eyebrows. "Are you sure...?"
"I think so—" He stops himself, and pukes again into the plastic bag. Ruby covers her nose with her fingers, pinching her nostrils. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault," she says.
They end up going inside her house, Steve getting the last of the Upside Down out of him in the downstairs bathroom. Ruby quickly runs around the house to make sure it's all tidy; she doesn't know why she's so nervous, because he's been here more times she can count, but still. He hasn't been over like this in a long time.
She returns downstairs, where Steve's cleaning himself up. It's in that moment that Ruby notices that the two of them are covered in the weird, slimy goo that covers the Upside Down, and she frowns.
"I'll, uh, go home in a second—"
But the anxiety of sleeping here, home alone tonight, scares her so much that she tells him without a moment's consideration, "You can stay."
Steve frowns at her. "Uh..."
"I mean, you might be sick still... And—" Ruby pauses, and sighs, admitting defeat. "And I think I'm... uh... freaked out, still. So it'd be nice if you stayed."
He looks at her in surprise, this level of vulnerability being divorced from their friendship the past year. Ruby remembers before, on that night where she saw the monster whilst high, and Steve cradled her, because she was so scared. He just thought she was paranoid, but he still stayed there with her.
"OK." Steve nods, and he cracks a smile. "No funny business though, Brenner... I know what you're like."
Ruby's mouth opens into an O, taken aback. "What does that mean, Harrington?"
He walks past her to leave the bathroom, but pauses just as he reaches her. She looks up at him, and she knows he's only teasing her, pausing to lean in like this, but still, the closeness makes her skin prickly. "I think it was you that kissed me, right?" he says.
