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The truck rumbles along the road, jostling everyone in the back now and again. Dustin sits crammed between Mike and Lucas and continues to grip his spear tightly. Adrenaline keeps his limbs rigid, ready to spring into action at any moment. Steve is up at the front driving. It’s the first time he’s let Steve out of his sight since…Dustin’s not actually sure. Maybe since the terrible fight they had in the basement of Hawkins Lab. He flexes his fingers around the spear and breathes out through his nose. He’s on edge. It took all his self-control not to bodily drag Robin out of the passenger seat so that he could sit next to Steve and keep a watchful gaze on him as they exited the Upside Down.
Now they were back in Hawkins, dropping people off in twos and threes like some sort of nightmare school bus. Dustin would laugh, but his jaw is clenched too tightly. No one else is speaking either. A mixture of relief, disbelief and exhaustion play over his friends’ faces. They drop the Byers-Hopper family off first, and then the Sinclairs and Wheelers, and then all at once he’s alone in the back of the truck. Bullet shells rattle across the floor, bloody cloths sit in bunches in the corners, the smell of gunpowder, gasoline and gore fills his nostrils. Its too much, and Dustin pounds on the cab wall, needing Steve to pull over right now.
The truck slows and pulls to the side almost immediately, and even though it’s a gentle stop, Dustin lurches forward, spear clattering from his grasp. The door rolls up, and Robin and Steve are there looking wild-eyed and panicked. Dustin hunches forward, taking quick shallow gasps of air into his lungs trying to avoid the smell that fills the truck. He feels his vision whiting out around the edges. He can hear Robin babbling concern, a steady stream of anxious nonsense that Dustin can’t parse but nonetheless helps to keep the panic from fully overwhelming him. Steve has already leapt into the truck bed and is gathering Dustin in his arms, whispering “I’m here” in his ear over and over. The solid weight of Steve grounds him. After a few moments, Dustin manages to get things back under control. He gathers a shaky breath, nearly retches, and pulls out of Steve’s embrace.
“I’m okay. It just smells like shit in here. Can I squeeze in with you guys up front?”
“Sure. We’re almost to Robin’s,” Steve says quietly.
Steve helps Dustin down from the bed and keeps a hand on his elbow until he clambers into the cab. He shares the passenger seat with Robin, and she tangles her fingers with his the rest of the short drive to her house.
“Thank God the window is already rolled down because you stink just as bad as Steve, Dustin. I guess it’s actually a good thing that this is all I can focus on right now, right? It’s the biggest thing I have to worry about anymore, as opposed to say, fighting off a hugely massive interdimensional spider-dragon-mind flayer monster hive-mind creature thing.”
She chatters on, and Dustin lets it roll over him, flicking his eyes to Steve every few seconds, trying to catalogue injuries. There are no obvious head wounds besides the cut on his cheek, but he holds himself stiffly in the seat. He seems to be also trying to assess Dustin’s damage. Their eyes meet in quick glances even as Steve tries to keep his eyes on the road. When they pull up to Robin’s house, she folds both of them into a bone-crushing hug that lasts for several long moments, smell be damned. Then she’s gone, and Steve and Dustin are alone. They sit in silence, though it’s not an uncomfortable one. Despite what everyone thinks, Steve and Dustin are capable of being quiet together. Steve seems as exhausted as Dustin, maybe even more so. The image of Steve tumbling backward off the radio tower flashes through his mind. He reaches out sharply, grabbing Steve’s wrist with two fingers to count his pulse; to reassure himself that Steve is solid and not a figment of Dustin’s imagination. Steve places a hand over Dustin’s fingers, holding him in place for a moment before starting the car.
When Steve pulls to a stop five minutes later, the teen realizes they’re parked in front of Dustin’s house. He whips his head around to look at Steve. He can’t walk into his own house right now and leave Steve behind him in the truck, cannot let him drive away out of his sight. Steve is already looking at him, some kind of internal battle warring on his features. Dustin’s throat closes up. He can’t speak, can only shake his head and look imploringly at Steve. Relief floods Steve’s face, and it unlocks Dustin’s tongue.
“Take me home,” Dustin says.
Steve breathes out a shaky, “yeah, okay,” as he puts the truck in drive and takes the familiar route to Steve’s house. At some point, Steve slips his hand into Dustin’s, letting him place index and middle finger on his wrist over the pulse again. Dustin doesn’t let go even as the two of them stumble heavily up the stairs to the bedroom.
Steve turns and says, “showers first, then first aid?”
“You first,” Dustin offers. For once, Steve doesn’t argue. Dustin thinks he might be too tired for it.
Dustin shucks his crusted gilly suit while Steve sits down heavily, groaning. He tries to bend over to untie his shoes and gasps in pain. Dustin is on him in an instant.
“It’s your ribs, isn’t it? Let me help.”
Steve grunts in assent, holding his middle gingerly. Dustin gets Steve’s feet free of the combat boots and then pulls the baseball hat off his head, which he cracks a small smile at. Dustin lost his at some point during the night. He’s not sure when. Steve looks up at him, and it strikes Dustin how unused he is to looking down at Steve. His face is open and his eyes glimmer with the same dark intensity as when he said “You die, I die” to Dustin back at the radio station. That same intensity that sends another shiver down Dustin’s spine. Steve’s hands have drifted from holding his ribs to holding onto the edges of Dustin’s coat.
“Up,” Dustin says. He needs to help Steve get his jacket and shirt off, which look like they’ve grafted to his skin with the amount of congealed viscera coating him. Steve turns, and Dustin yanks the coat, first from the shoulders, then the cuffs and manages to ease it off without jostling his ribs too much. Dustin drops it on top of the gilly suit. Steve tries to pull the shirt off but almost immediately stops, grimacing from the strain.
“I think I need to cut if off,” Dustin suggests.
He finds scissors in the bathroom first aid kit and steps back into Steve’s space. He makes sure his hands are steady before he cuts the short sleeves open first, then moves to the collar. The cold metal grazes against Steve’s skin for a moment and he sucks in a breath, startled.
“Sorry,” Dustin breathes, keeping his eyes firmly on the shirt and not Steve’s face. He fears for the steadiness of his hands if he looks into Steve’s eyes right now, sees that dark intensity again. Even so, he can feel the taller man’s gaze on him as he slices through the thin cotton. Peeling the fabric back reveals a constellation of bruises all over Steve’s chest and stomach, congealed blood, and somehow worst of all, scarring on either side of his abdomen from demo-bat bites. Dustin’s breath catches in his throat, and his hands flutter uselessly over Steve, as if he could remove each blemish with the brush of a finger. Steve’s hands come around Dustin again to hold the sides of his coat, folding him in an embrace without actually touching him.
“You look—” the words come out hoarse and strangled. Dustin looks up at Steve and his voice dies. It doesn’t matter that Steve’s covered in the mysterious fluid of the mind-flayer, that his hair is matted down with days of grease, or that his skin is mostly hidden under blue and purple mottling. Dustin thinks this is the most gorgeous he’s ever looked. He places a hand on Steve’s chest almost involuntarily, trapped in Steve’s gaze.
“I need to shower,” Steve says almost gently, shocking Dustin out of his reverie. Dustin steps away like he’s been shocked, even as Steve grazes a hand against his as they part. Dustin hears the shower start as he starts to shed more layers, hands shaking. He’s known that he’s been attracted to Steve for years but his grief for Eddie, the impossible anger he could only direct at Steve, and the mind-numbing fear for his life put most of those thoughts firmly on the back shelf of his mind for months. Now he’s not sure where the ache to keep Steve alive begins and the plain old ache for Steve ends. He's not sure if it even matters, as the heat pools in his gut thinking of the way Steve kept him pressed tightly against his body after the ladder fell through the melted stairwell. How Steve shuffled them away from the hole before sliding down the wall, refusing to let go as Dustin clung to him crying. How Steve brushed his knuckles along Dustin’s cheek over and over before they finally started looking for a second stairwell to get to Nancy and Jonathan.
Dustin has stripped to his t-shirt and pants and scrounged up a pair of boxers and sweatpants for Steve when the water shuts off, and the door opens a crack.
“Uh, Dustin,” Steve starts. Dustin passes the bundle to him through the gap in the door before he has a chance to finish the sentence.
He emerges a moment later, looking slightly less war-torn, but still heavily battered. Dustin is eager to wash the filth of the Upside Down and the Abyss off. He has a deep gash on his arm that Mike wrapped for him at some point after the battle in the Abyss, and he discovers cuts and scrapes as he goes, forgotten in the aftermath of battle or never noticed to begin with. Some that were clotted reopen. Dustin watches the blood swirl down the drain with the soap.
When he’s decent, Steve crowds into the bathroom and sits him on the toilet. “You first this time,” he says, passing him a few painkillers to swallow. He watches Steve’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he assesses Dustin’s own bruising along his ribs from Andy and his goons kicking the shit out of him. It feels like a lifetime ago.
“Jesus,” Steve mutters under his breath. “I could fucking kill them.” Dustin burns at the thought, half turned on, half scared he’ll actually go and do it. Four against one isn’t a fair fight, even if it’s Steve. “The fact that you don’t have a punctured lung is a goddamn miracle.”
He tackles the gash on Dustin’s arm next, disinfecting and wrapping, muttering about it needing stitches. Dustin doesn’t take his eyes off Steve the entire time, drinking in the sight of him, watching the hair behind his ears curl as it dries, the subtle movement of shoulder muscles, the way that he sucks his lower lip between his teeth while he concentrates, the subtle shake of his hands while he works. Steve falters in his ministrations every so often, returning the gaze before flicking his eyes away as if he’s embarrassed to be caught staring when Dustin is the one devouring him.
As Steve finishes and turns to put away supplies, Dustin spots a dark purple bruise swollen along the edge of his jaw. He catches Steve’s chin to look closer at it before he realizes what he’s doing. Steve makes a small noise in the back of his throat in surprise and maybe pain. He looks at Dustin out of the corner of his eye with confusion but doesn’t move away, letting Dustin pull him in closer to inspect.
“What is this…?” Dustin starts to ask. Too much has happened in the last 48 hours. But he trails off almost instantly when he recognizes the bruise for what it is. Evidence of a punch landed by Dustin himself. He feels bile in his throat, guilt roiling in his stomach. He’s been so righteous in his anger at Steve for always getting himself hurt, and here Dustin is, adding one more violent scar to a body already littered with them. He ghosts his fingers over the tender flesh, like he can somehow heal the bruise with a soft touch as easily as when he put it there with a cruel one. Steve makes another small keening noise, almost a whimper, and his eyes slip shut, but there’s no trace of pain on his features.
“Dustin,” Steve breathes, voice ragged. He’s panting like he’s out of breath, hot air puffing against Dustin’s thumb. It sends sparks through Dustin’s arm and down his body, gathering low in his abdomen.
Dustin leans forward, brushing his lips against the bruise, barely more than a caress. “I’m sorry,” he whispers plaintively.
Steve groans in earnest this time and twists his head to capture Dustin’s lips in a burning kiss, hands bracketing either side of his face. Dustin’s answering hitched gasp of longing is swallowed up as Steve licks into his pliant mouth. Dustin tangles his hands into Steve’s damp hair, holding on for dear life as Steve pulls them both upright, an arm moving to pull him in closer by the waist. Steve walks them backward into the bedroom, stumbling as his legs collide with the edge of the bed. The kiss breaks as he collapses down, and Steve stares up at Dustin, eyes wild and dark, like Dustin is something precious, worthy of being wanted. Whatever last thoughts of rationality Dustin might have had flee, and he clambers onto Steve, straddling his hips, but trying to prop himself up so he doesn’t hurt their bruised ribs.
Steve pulls Dustin down to keep kissing him hungrily. They’re desperate, nearly frantic, trading feverish gasps when they part for air. It’s not enough, not nearly enough. Dustin’s hands rove everywhere that’s not bruised until he can’t stand it anymore and presses his full weight into Steve. He groans in pain, but runs his arms up Dustin's back, holding him in place. Dustin trails his mouth to Steve’s throat and starts sucking a bruising kiss right over his pulse point to match the bruise on his jaw. Steve lets out a long, downright filthy moan, bucking his hips up against Dustin who can feel just how hard he’s making Steve. The thought nearly sends him completely over the edge as he grinds back down, settling into a sloppy rhythm. Steve’s hands move from Dustin’s back to his hips, fingers pressing tightly against his skin as they continue to kiss deeply, rubbing against each other through their sweatpants. Dustin isn’t going to last much longer, and he breaks a kiss to say so.
“Steve, I’m—” he can barely gasp the words out, but understanding glimmers hotly in Steve’s eyes, and he only has to press the palm of his hand against Dustin before he comes, tucking his face into Steve’s neck as he does, waves of pleasure crashing through him. He feels like his heart is about to burst and stupidly, he wants to cry. As his heart rate slows, and he comes back to himself, he’s vaguely embarrassed about basically coming untouched in his pants, but Steve is running his fingers through Dustin’s hair and murmuring to him, calming his nerves before they have a chance to grow.
Dustin can still fill Steve’s own arousal pressing insistently against his thigh, and he sits up, wanting to satisfy Steve, but somewhat at a loss for how to proceed. He knows his way around his own dick, but he’s not sure what Steve would want. Steve can sense Dustin’s hesitation.
“Just kiss me” he says, looking up at Dustin, expression open and soft. Full of love, Dustin realizes. He does as he’s told without a sarcastic reply on his tongue for maybe the first time in his life, shifting his weight to the side so that Steve can slip a hand into his own pants. Gradually, his gasps speed up, and his rhythm gets jerkier, and Dustin pulls away from sucking another bruise onto his collarbone, desperate to see Steve come. Steve’s eyes widen as he looks at Dustin before screwing them shut and flinging back his head and finishing with a bitten off moan. He lays languid on the bed, hair splayed out and a pink flush dusting his cheeks, breathing heavily. The sight is so beyond wanton that Dustin can almost feel himself stirring again. When Steve opens his eyes again, Dustin is startled to see that they’re glassy, and as he watches, a tear falls, slipping past his temple into his hair.
“Holy shit,” Dustin grins.
Steve huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, holy shit is right.”
It takes all of Dustin’s strength to not fully collapse onto Steve. The adrenaline that has sustained him for so long is finally wearing off and replacing it is bone-deep exhaustion. They somehow manage to drag themselves under the bedcovers and turn the lights off. The darkness is immediately blinding, but Steve reaches out for Dustin, tangling their hands together. He presses a lazy, tender kiss to Dustin that half-misses his mouth, dark as it is.
We’re alive,” Steve says, like he can hardly believe it.
“We’re both alive,” Dustin repeats.
There, in the darkness of Steve's bedroom, for the first time in a long time, the feeling of safety drops over Dustin. He lets the rhythm of Steve’s pulse under his fingers lull him to sleep.