Love Is A Battlefield (A Stranger Things/Steve Harrington Fanfiction)

Chapter Seventeen: The Demogorgan

I felt really bad leaving Eleven and the boys alone, but we had to do this for Joyce and my Dad. And Jonathan was right, they'd lasted this long on their own.

We broke into the station, getting our gear, and a fire extinguisher before going back to Jonathan's house, where we began setting the bear traps and putting all the bulbs back on the Christmas lights. They pressumably unscrewed them all during my Dad's bug search.We loaded the guns, hammered nails in the baseball bat, and drenched the carpet with gasoline, and then we were ready to go.

Jonathan reached into the kitchen drawer, pulling out three knives.

"Remember..." He prompted.

"Straight into Will's room. And-"

"Don't step on the trap." I added.

"Wait for the YoYo to move."

"And then..." He flicked the lighter. "Alright. You guys ready?" We both nodded.

"Ready." We all lifted our hands, gently pressing the blade of the knife to our palms. 

"On three. One...two...you don't have to do this."

"Jonathan stop talking."

"I'm just saying, you don't have to-"

"Three!" Nancy shouted, and then we all sliced our palms open and dripped blood onto the rug before Johnathan and Nancy sat down on the couch to bandage their hands and I bandaged my own. A creaking noise sounded from across the room. "Did you hear that?"

"Its just the wind." Jonathan said. "Don't worry. My Mom...she said the lights speak when he comes."

"Speak?"

"Blink," I clarified, "It'll be like an alarm."

She looked back down at the hand that she was bandaging, and Jonathan stared at her face. I rolled my eyes at the obvious crush these two had on each other. 

I walked over to the wall by the door, leaning against it in an attempt to give them privacy. I was only there f9r about five minutes when a loud banging on the outside of the door made me jump.

"Jonathan! Are you there, man?! Its...Its Steve! Listen, I just want to talk!" 

"Oh you've got to be kidding me!" I exclaimed, pulling the door open just enough so that he couldn't see inside. I fought the urge to cringe at just how bad his face looked, covered in bruises and cuts, one such bruise residing on his jaw that I knew matched the ones on my knuckles.

"Steve-"

"Riley..."

"You need to leave, right now." I said.

"I'm not trying to start anything, ok?"

"Yeah, that's really not important right now, go away."

"No, no, no, no, listen, I messed up, ok? I messed up, I messed up. Ok? Really, please, I just want to make things right, with you, with Nancy, all of it, ok? Please. Please..." His eyes trailed down to the bandage wrapped around my hand. "What happened to your hand?" He grabbed it off of the door, looking at it. "Is that blood? I know that's not from punching me in the face-"

"Don't worry about it! Go away."

"Did Byers do that to you?" I furrowed my eyebrows.

"What?! No, and if he did, why do you care?!" He began forcing the door open with an angry look on his face. "What the heck are you doing?!"

"Despite what you said earlier, I'm not scum ok? What I did was bad enough but its not ok to hurt girls-" He stopped talking as he pushed his way inside, seeing the state of the house with Jonathan and Nancy, the lights, the alphabet on the wall, the weapons everywhere. "What is...what the-"