Author's Note: Just wanted to say thanks for all the lovely comments and favorites and follows! I'm so glad you're enjoying this fic! And Happy Holidays everyone!
Now without further ado, chapter six!
Steve slowly woke up, immediately realizing that he was lying on an extremely lumpy and uncomfortable mattress. He vaguely recalled arriving at the warehouse and being helped inside by El and Kali; and Mike exclaiming "Holy shit, what happened to you?!" when he'd seen the teenager.
Steve had been both relieved and surprised to find all the kids still in the same place he'd left them several hours earlier, and suspected that Will had talked them into staying put. Whenever the kids actually listened to Steve, it was usually because Will had convinced them to, and the teen was grateful to the kid for this -- now more than ever.
"Hey, hey! He's waking up!" a girl's voice said -- Steve was pretty sure it was Max.
"Hey, buddy..." that had to be Dustin -- he was the only one who called Steve buddy, "How're you feeling?"
Steve just groaned a little in response and slowly opened his eyes to see four figures leaning over him, looking down at him with concern. He started to sit up, leaning his back against the makeshift headboard (which was really just a wall that the mattress had been pushed up against), and noticed something fall from his face on his lap. Upon closer inspection he realized it was a damp cloth. ...Had he really had that bad of a fever?
He cleared his throat, though it did little to lessen the raspiness in his voice, and asked "...How long was I out?"
Lucas checked his watch and looked back at the teen, "Like an hour. --Why didn't you say something?"
"You guys needed me," Steve said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "...Where's El?"
"With Mike," said Dustin, "sitting by the fire."
Steve nodded a little, reassured by the fact that El had her favorite person around to comfort her after what she'd just experienced. They sat quietly for a minute, the kids still staring at Steve with worry; which strengthened when the teenager was suddenly doubled over in a harsh, deep sounding, coughing fit.
Dustin patted his friend's back while he coughed, trying to do what little he could to help the eighteen-year-old.
"We gotta get you some medicine," Lucas said.
"Kali said she was going to get some," said Will.
"Yeah, like half-an-hour ago," Max said in an irritated tone.
Finally the teen managed to stop coughing, and leaned back against the wall with a groan, trying to catch his breath. "...Where is Kali?" he asked.
"She said she was gonna find some medicine," said Dustin.
"But she's been gone for a while, now," Lucas said.
"I think she needed a minute to calm down," said Will, "She looked really shaken."
"Yeah," Max said, "What the hell happened while you guys were gone?"
"Some really weird shit that I don't totally understand."
"Did she use her powers?" Dustin asked.
"El? Yeah."
"No, Kali."
"No. I don't know what she can do -- but that might be a good thing." He sighed, which caught in his chest and forced a few more rough coughs out of him, and brought his legs over the side of the mattress.
He closed his eyes and pressed the heals of his hands into them for a second before standing up.
"Where do you think you're going?" Max asked, crossing her arms and looking up at the teenager from where she was sitting on the mattress.
"To find Kali. I need to talk to her about something."
"You need to rest!" Dustin said, "You're really sick."
Steve rolled his eyes at that, "It's just a cold. I'll be fine."
"No, man," Lucas said, "You're really sick. El and her sister had to basically drag you up the stairs to get you in here. You need to take it easy."
"Yeah," said Will, "You had a really high fever, too. --We can find Kali for you if you want."
"Guys," Steve said, a slight edge to his voice, "I'm fine." It was at this point, of course, that his body chose to protest to his words and make it clear exactly how not fine he was with a painful coughing fit that had him doubled over, his hands on his knees for support.
Dustin quickly stood up and guided the teen back to the mattress, sitting him back down despite the teen's weak protests between coughs.
"Steve," Max said once the teen had managed to stop coughing, "You need to rest. We're safe here, and we won't even leave this room if it'll make you feel better. Please just relax for a couple hours."
Steve could see that she was worried -- maybe even a little scared -- and he sighed. With everything else that these kids could be worried about, they were worried about him. And he hated when the kids were worried about him; especially when there were worse things happening than him having a bad cold -- that was the worst he was going to admit to having, anyway. Just an extremely inconvenient cold. But he could use some rest, even if he didn't want to admit it.
"...Will you stop harassing me if I do?" he asked, trying to hide the fact that he wanted nothing more than to curl up under a blanket and sleep this off.
The kids all nodded and he sighed again, though it was more a sigh of relief than anything else, flopping back onto the mattress with a quiet "Fine."
While this discussion was happening, El and Mike were sitting in front of the garbage can that had a fire burning inside it. El hadn't said much, but Mike knew that something was bothering her, and it wasn't only that their designated babysitter had seemed to suddenly come down with the plague, or that Hopper and Mrs. Byers were being held hostage by the man who had raised and tortured her for twelve years.
They sat in silence for a long time, El resting her head on Mike's shoulder, silent tears occasionally rolling down her cheeks. Mike didn't try to force her to talk about whatever had happened, he simply stayed with her in quiet support, holding her hand and making sure she knew he was there for her.
Meanwhile, Kali was sitting in her own room, alone, the binder filled with information about Brenner's newest experimental lab open on her lap. It was horrifying, and it brought back memories that she thought she'd pushed to the back of her mind never to be thought of again.
A few tears involuntarily forced their way out of her eyes and onto the pages, smudging the ink on some of the hand-written notes in the margins of certain pages -- handwriting she recognized as her so-called father's.
She sighed shakily and closed the binder, deciding she couldn't stomach looking at it any longer, and stood up. She'd told Jane's friends that she was going to find medicine for the oldest of them who was admittedly in pretty bad shape. That was a while ago now -- how long she wasn't entirely sure, but she knew that it was long enough that if she didn't return to them soon, the children would most likely come looking for her.
The young woman then knelt down and pulled a box out from under her bed filled with medical supplies she kept on hand just in case. After rummaging through it for several minutes she found a bottle of pills to relieve pain and fever that were, by some miracle, not expired. Perfect. There was nothing that would help that boy's cough, however. ...Maybe Dottie had something in her large collection of prescription drugs that weren't her own that could help him. Kali made a mental not to ask later, but right now she needed to get back to the small group of children she had left earlier before they started wandering around the warehouse looking for her and getting lost themselves.
She made her way back to the room that she'd left earlier and found the teenager and all of the children -- including El and Mike who had decided to check up on their temporary guardian. Upon laying eyes on the sick boy lying on the mattress, looking positively miserable, she couldn't help but think she should have intervened sooner.
She hesitated, feeling like an intruder on the small makeshift family, then knocked on the side of the doorway, seven pairs of eyes suddenly looking at her.
