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luveline · 1 year

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maybe for zombie Steve au, there’s some sort of emergency at the college so there’s like a lockdown ish but Steve & reader get split up & then have an emotional reunion? 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

thank you so much for your request! I took a smide of inspo from scenes of twd (specifically when the prison fence gets it shit rocked) steve zombie!au ♥︎ fem!reader 5k words

"And you…" You pause, tongue sticking out as you struggle to tuck your shirt into your jeans. "You smoked?"

Steve laughs where he's shrugging into his own jeans. You're both very late.

"Everyone smoked junior year."

"I didn't."

"No, of course you didn't," he says, laughing more. It's a nice sound to hear so early in the morning. You can almost pretend you're well-rested.

"I didn't," you say emphatically, leaning against the wall by the door to slip on your sneakers.

It doesn't matter if you're telling the truth, Steve clearly doesn't believe you. He mirrors your actions and puts on his own pair of sneakers. They were white, once upon a time, but now they're a gritty grey. You stand tall in unison and pull open the door.

"Wait," Steve says.

He brushes your hair out of your face, looking over each of your features casually before his fingers dip down to your belt. You startle on instinct, though he's only fixing the mess you'd made of your tucked shirt. His fingers push under your belt methodically, efficiently. In less than a minute he's done.

Neither of you bother with a jacket. Steve pockets the keys and the door locks behind you, the two of you half jogging out of Little Hawkins to the front of the building.

"I'll be at the north fence all day, okay, so if you need me, come and find me. You're–"

"In the pantry where I always am," you say, "and I'll be fine, so you don't let anything bite you and I'll see you at dinner."

"Wait, wait, wait," Steve says, catching your wrist before you can part ways.

He pulls you in by the arm until he can grab your shoulders. He does altogether too much looking, eyes raking over your face, your neck. He meets your eyes, cups your cheek in both hands.

"I love you," he says quickly, "I love you," —he kisses you wonky, lips way too close to your nose, "I love you. See you at dinner."

He's sick in the head. He doesn't give you any time to answer or bestow the heaping of affection he deserves, simply splits and power walks away from you.

You sigh, wringing your hands together. "Steve! I– I love you too!"

He turns around, his smile ridiculously big, and waves at you. You wave back.

He races out of view. You try not to make eye contact with the people milling around outside of the dorm building and pick up the pace, running down the street to the cafeteria building.

The town hall is alive in the mornings, and class is in session, more kids than you'd ever expected to see again in your lifetime all bundled up in one room. You think it's nice, the way they teach them here. They don't bother with algebra or arithmetic, though Sammy the 'teacher' offers tutoring to anybody who wants it, they just draw and play and talk about emotional wellbeing. Sometimes there are survival classes, but they don't really talk about geeks. They show the kids what wild flora is edible, or how to wrap a cut. You think it's probably more for routine than actual teaching.

"Hi, Sammy," you say.

She smiles, and you're horrified as she says, "Hi, baby. Class, say good morning."

All the kids say good morning to you. You flush with heat from top to bottom. Their cute little faces beaming up at you is an instant disarming.

"Hi, kids," you say, waving.

Hands holding crayons and pencils wave back at you.

You make your way into the kitchen, which is a huge industrial affair connected to an otherwise small cafeteria. Maybelle and Pauline are already inside cleaning up the leftover breakfast and preparing for community dinner.

Breakfast is specifically for the people inside the community who can't manage to make it themselves, the disabled, the injured, the elderly, but dinner is for everybody.

"Sorry I'm late," you say.

"Hun, we don't care," Maybelle says.

"Did you want breakfast?" Pauline asks. "I'm gonna wrap this up otherwise. Somebody's gonna eat it."

It sounds like a threat. You take some of the breakfast they've set aside, which isn't a breakfast food at all, just boxed mac and cheese that tastes slightly stale. You barely notice it anymore, though the texture gives you the heebies.

You move into the pantry and check everything still there, the easiest and most useless part of your job. Then, Maybelle and Pauline try to put together a meal that's both cost effective (the cost being the energy expended to retrieve the food, and the likelihood that this food will be seen again) and not disgusting. Oftentimes they have to make a bunch of different stuff that doesn't go together, but it's better than nothing. You like this a whole lot more than if they just gave everybody a can a day and said there's your lot.

You mark down the things they've taken. You mark down things you might need in Hopper's next supply rub. It's a super cushy job, the kind that isn't strictly necessary, but there are a lot of people in the community and the majority are willing to do what needs to be done. They ran out of jobs quickly, and you're sure Hopper had felt a little sorry for you, so here you are. You're not like Steve. You're not a survivor. You're lucky.

You sit down after a while, no use pretending you have anything left to do, left side pressed to the side of the industrial oven.

"You know, we used to live in Mississippi?" Pauline asks you.

"What?" you ask.

"Mm-hm, we were only in Michigan for vacation, if you can believe it. We had a good time."

"Before, the uh, the apocalypse," Maybelle says with a tittering laugh. "We were hiking in the Porcupine Mountains when some dude tried to bite me. We thought he had rabies."

The room smells like jarred pasta bake, a rich, garlic-thick smell that threatens to make your eyes droop. In the cafeteria, through the open shutters, you can hear the kids singing. Sammy hates nursery rhymes, so they learn the words of old songs by Louis Armstrong. Today, they're a discordant, too fast chorus of What a Wonderful World. It's a racket.

But no matter how loud the kids sings, they can't cover the reverberations of a gunshot.

A hush falls in the kitchen.

You stand up. You aren't panicked, exactly. More like you've stepped into a heavy overcoat, trepidation a weight that settles like a second skin. You move to stand by the sink with Maybelle. She pushes it open, and the three of you stare outside.

Trees rustle in the wind. The kids descend into giggles as Matthew, one of the rare teenagers who deigns to join in, busts out a Louis Armstrong impression, his voice deep and bending. The oven hums.

The second gunshot sounds. After that, you can't count them.

Maybelle slams the window closed and twists the handle down to lock it.

Your heart beats. None of you know what to say. Your pulse bumps, and bumps, and bumps.

"Lock the doors," Maybelle says. "Lock the windows. Just in case."

Gunfire comes fast and ferocious as a sudden downpour, popping in the near distance. Your footsteps clip over the linoleum floor, firm rubber soles like an elastic band as you bound into the cafeteria and meet Sammy's eyes.

The kids are perturbingly quiet.

"I'm gonna lock the doors," you say tentatively.

Dread fills her face. "Okay. Alright."

You fizz around the room, locking the front and side entrances one after another. You're thinking so many things at once that you can't seem to focus on any, and instead your attention is drawn to the inconsequential. How cold the metal on the door's emergency push bars are. The colouring books on the floor.

You're standing in front of the last door with shaking hands as it gets thrown open. You gasp and scrabble backwards, hands in front of your chest to protect yourself.

It's Joyce. Breathless, red in the face Joyce.

"Lock the kids in the kitchen," she says. "The north fence has a leak. They're getting in."

—

Steve is not having the good day he thought he'd be getting.

You'd been exceptionally pretty this morning, tired eyed and disorientated but adorable through and through. You and Steve have fallen into a routine, and you talk so much it's a surprise your throats aren't sore. There's so much to say and never enough time to say it; you've taken to trading stories in the morning while you get dressed. Today was Steve's turn. He'd told you all about his birthday party during junior year, how his dad had almost killed him because somebody left a hole in the wall, and how he still can't eat Dunkin' Donuts without feeling queasy. You'd asked him when the last time he actually got to eat a donut was, and it hadn't been sad, like you might expect.

He'd said, "I don't need any extra sweetness, are you kidding? Got all my sugar right here."

You'd laughed at him (not with him) and nearly choked on toothpaste.

That's a perfect morning for Steve. That's as good as they get. It might be silly, but he'd felt damn good, and foolishly tricked himself into thinking the rest of the day might be similarly great.

"You're a fool, Harrington," he mutters to himself.

"What was that?"

Steve looks up. Jonathan and Christopher are staring at him.

"He's going crazy," Christopher says. "Best take him out to the back shed."

"Funny." Steve kicks the dirt in front of him. "So bored I'm talking to myself," he admits.

"It could be worse," Jonathan says. "We could be on latrine duty."

Steve would rather not think about latrine duty. God bless the communal bathroom in Little Hawkins.

The day is breezy but surprisingly warm, not a cloud in the sky. The sun bears down and heats Steve's skin in waves. He likely should've stopped for his jacket this morning, but he'd been super late. He doesn't want a citation. Another citation.

This is the slowest day they've ever seen on fence duty. Usually the general hubbub of the community catches the attention of a handful of geeks, and fence duty stabs them through the brain with lethally modified crowbars. It's gross, but it's necessary. It keeps you safe. Yet today they haven't seen a single undead.

"Maybe they're dying," Christopher says.

"They're already dead," Jonathan says.

"How do you know? You felt for a pulse?"

"They decompose," Jonathan says, laughing softly. "They're corpses."

"I'm just saying." Christopher shrugs.

Steve ignores them both without malice, staring through the section of chain link fence he's standing in front of and out into the streets. The north side of The College faces the surrounding town. From here, he can see a pharmacist's building, a sandwich shop, and a small veterinary clinic. Shells of cars long dismantled line the road. Natural works to reclaim them slowly, tires threaded with long grass. A few days ago, a deer ran straight up to the fence and stared at him. He promised you he'd come and find you next time, even though you hadn't really minded. He wants you to see it. There's more out there than just geeks and bad people.

He shivers and fiddles with the holster on his hip, checking for the tenth time in as many minutes that the gun held within has the safety mechanism on. He really doesn't wanna shoot himself in the foot. That would majorly suck, though, he thinks, you'd look after him. That might make it worth it.

Not that he'd shoot himself in the foot for your attention, that would be totally backwards. But he thinks you'd look cute as a nurse, with the little hat—

"Do you hear that?" Jonathan asks.

Steve pulls away from his questionable thoughts and turns to see his kind of friend. Jonathan stands with his nose to the fence, straight brown hair curling at the bottom of his neck. He needs a trim, but who is Steve to judge?

"Hear what?" Steve asks.

Though you can see the town through the gaps, the fences are blanketed by trees. Old trees with thick trunks, the kind that protesters would chain themselves to if the government ever suggested cutting them down. The ground around them is more dirt than grass, like the packed earth under the fence and Steve's shoes.

He assumes Jonathan's talking about the creaking of a thousand branches in the wind. Brown and orange leaves fall in droves, crinkly and scratchy as they litter the floor.

"I can't hear anything," Steve says.

"It sounds like a car engine," Jonathan says.

Steve cannot agree. Now that the world is silent, car engines sound like jet planes. They shake the ground. There are no vibrations to be felt, but… there is something.

"I'm gonna walk the perimeter," Steve says. A creeping unease takes shape over his shoulders like the winding suffocation of a python. He can feel the pressure of it against his throat.

It's nothing, he thinks to himself.

Sections of street flash between the trees. Tree, empty street. Tree, empty street. Each tree blocks the sun, and goosebumps erupt over his skin, the hairs on his arms standing up with each footstep into the dimness. Steve pulls his crowbar close to his chest.

I'm paranoid, he promises himself, even as the strange sound Jonathan had heard begins to rise. He knows what it is, he knows, but he doesn't want to know. The wet suck of meat being pulled off the bone, and the dry rattle of lungs that won't fill. He lets the sun kiss his cold face for a moment, and then he stops behind the cover of a huge sycamore tree and leans, carefully, slowly, to the left.

The sun hasn't warmed the sparse grass. Each blade is frosted into spikes. The leaf litter has turned to mulch, disturbed and churned by the body splayed open atop it. Blood emulsifies the dirt, a black mud that covers the hands, arms, knees, and mouths of a sizable herd.

Steve flinches backward, covers his nose to shield himself from the stink, and swiftly presses stiff fingers over his mouth to stop himself chucking up.

There must be fifty or more geeks huddled there, fighting for scraps of ligament, falling over chunks of inedible veel.

Steve wants to retreat quietly. His hands have other ideas.

He drops the crowbar, fumbling for it with every centimetre it falls, and ends up knocking it a couple feet away with a horrified gasp.

The fences are hammered into the ground so they can't be moved, but there aren't many fence posts between sections. Flimsy chain link is all that separates Steve and the herd.

They look up. They start to move.

Hands reach for him, hands force themselves through the holes of the fence, skin peeling back over muscle like the delicate rind of a pear. He watches in horror as the herd congregates, as the herd leans its collective weight against what's basically chicken wire, as dessicated flesh shaves off of their dead bodies, as the fence begins to bend.

The geeks use each other like ladder, pulling and climbing, heaped like jenga tiles until a gnarled hand closes over the top of the fence.

He wants to run. He needs to stay. He needs to separate them, he needs to thin the weight. He scrambles to take up his crowbar again, taking a step forward, but the tattle tale sound of metal scratching against metal squeals in his ear, and he leaps backward as the fence tips forward.

He should scream.

He trips as he grabs the crowbar, palm aching as it smashes into the ground. He barely touches the floor, pushing himself back up and using his momentum to sprint toward the rendezvous point.

"Jonathan!" he shouts, his voice strained. "They're over the fence. Section twenty one is coming down!" The fence has already come down, but Steve isn't thinking straight.

Jonathan barely looks at Steve. He only needs one glance before he's looking past him. Steve looks back, too, and then he keeps on sprinting.

Jonathan unholsters his gun. Christopher does the same.

Behind Steve, across the stretch of the college campus, a wave of geeks snap their gored maws. Steve runs harder than he's ever ran before, faster than he's ever moved, even faster than that night in the woods with you, scroungers on your tail, laughing and cussing, their flashlights shining at your heels like the beam of a prison guardhouse.

Steve vaults himself over an overgrown hedge and right into the centre of the campus. There aren't many people out, but any at all is too many.

"Get inside!" he shouts without explanation, shoes sliding over stone as he leaps for the civil defence siren nestled against the gym building. "Get inside! There are geeks inside the fence!"

Jeremy and Dustin had jerry-rigged the broken siren months ago for situations like this to only play for two seconds. Not long enough to attract anything that isn't already here. Steve slams his hand into the button and stares up at it in a petrified awe as the siren begins to cry, one long and wailing wave of sound that careers over the community.

It might be his imagination, but he thinks that the silence after it stops is imbued with impending doom. One empty, fragile moment, before the shouting begins, and the following pop of gunfire is impossible to ignore.

He thinks of you in the kitchen across the quad. He thinks of running to you, of hiding you somewhere nobody will ever get to you.

He runs back the way he came.

—

All these little faces in disarray. You huddle amongst the youngest ones and try your best to keep them quiet, whispering a story as the sound of gunshots cracking over asphalt rivets the quiet.

"Me and Steve, we saw all kinds of fish. We saw carp, and salmon, and koi fish in the lake. They looked like huge, gorgeous goldfish, they had–" everyone jumps as something close by takes a hit, a fence perhaps, split apart— "these huge black eyes and these popping mouths. You know how fish pop their lips together?"

You look around the circle and beg one of them to answer. If Sammy weren't such a wicked shot she would've stayed and handled this a hell of a lot better than you are.

"I know," says one of the youngest girls. She can't be six years olds.

"Yeah? How do they do it?"

She starts to pop her lips. You grin despite your welling panic and nod encouragingly. You'd clap if your hands weren't full of smaller hands.

"Yeah, like that! They were swimming so close to us, I could see their gills."

Your story isn't true, but it is distracting. You hold their attention for as long as you can. Pauline stands in the doorway, eyes flitting between the three entrances to the cafeteria, and Maybelle haunts the sink, hiding just behind the other overhead spray to try and find out what's going on. The storm siren hasn't sounded again, and Hopper hasn't come around to tell you it's safe.

It might never be safe again.

You swallow down the urge to scream and squeeze the tiny fingers curled over your palm. They belong to a little boy, white and brown-haired with pretty hooded eyes. He looks like Steve.

You could've sworn, just before the siren, that you'd heard him yelling, but you'd raced to the sink and looked out and hadn't seen him.

You can't help thinking about it. About everything — he could die. He could already be dead. Joyce swore she hadn't seen him, and had only managed to speak to Christopher, who'd split off to alert the older group. She said Jonthan was holding off a group of geeks. She couldn't stay, determined to go help him.

So if Christopher was looking for Hopper, and Jonathan was by himself at the north fence, where was Steve? Where exactly was the leak?

You lean forward toward the kids and whisper, "Does anyone else have a story? From a vacation?"

"We went to Niagara Falls, once," Becky says.

"You did? What was it like, huh? Was the waterfall really loud?"

Becky starts to tell her story. You try to listen. You can't think of anything at all besides Steve, though your priority is keeping everybody here safe, your brain won't stop. You can't shake the feeling that you'll lose him, and it's a bright red branding behind your eyes. You're gonna lose him.

This can't be happening.

It's been a month since Connor, an ex-member of The College with delusions of grandeur, dragged you underdressed and freezing through miles of forest with your wrists bound, wondering if you'd ever see Steve again. A month of nightmares and hot flashes and reaching out for Steve in the dark.

You'd thought, if you died, if Connor killed you, that it would ruin Steve's life. He'd waste it looking for you. You'd thought that was the worst feeling in the world, knowing you'd leave him behind.

You hadn't understood what this part felt like. How Steve must've felt, wondering if you were dead. How he must've argued with himself as you do now.

Steve hadn't hesitated. Robin mentioned it once, casual but earnest. Steve tore the place apart looking for you. He assembled a search party and went looking for you on a hunch. Steve says he's lucky they chose the right direction. You know it's more than that. You know you're the lucky one.

He knew you were in danger, and he came to get you.

"Maybelle," you say, standing up. "I'm gonna need a knife."

—

Steve isn't sure what the fuck they're doing. Hopper shouts instructions but they're confusing and nobody knows what's happening. Geek gore drips down his arm and he prays he doesn't have any broken skin as he ploughs the sharp of the crowbar deep into a grey mottled eye socket.

It shucks out, the geek's body collapsing in a heap at his feet. Tens more stagger forward.

"Everyone should be inside, but that doesn't mean everyone is inside!" Hopper shouts, his booming voice echoing over the din of shots and slick stabbing. "We need to contain them. Joyce, Jonathan, I need you back here. Bernier, Taylor, McCoy, push for the fence! We need to get it back up and standing before this gets worse. Harrington!"

Steve pierces the skull of an approaching geek like an eggshell, springing back before a second can tear a chunk out of him. "What?" he yells.

"You should circle back to the quad, make sure there aren't any stragglers."

"Joyce already secured–"

"It's up to you, kid."

Steve appreciates what Hopper's doing. Everyone knows you and Steve are unhealthily dependent on one another right now considering the circumstances, and he'll admit that his heart wants literally nothing more than to be where you are. He thinks of you locked up in the kitchen with all this happening outside and hates it, but as long as you stay where you are, that's as safe as you can be.

He doesn't bother saying yes or no, throwing himself back into the throng.

It's the ultimate workout. Sweat stings his eyes, his brain pounds behind them. He has to stay vigilant and he has to be fast. He cuts down geeks with a practised agility, Bernier on one side, Taylor the other. They force their way to the fence, and soon there's a small army of survivors behind them, bullets burning his eardrum to the right.

When the fence is finally in view again, they buckle down.

It's a huge struggle. Hopper and Livingstone front a team of five of the older guys with a replacement fence on their literal shoulders. The woods are teaming with geeks who must have heard the gunfire and the siren. They cut down the old fence behind Steve and the youngers. The new one gets thrown up just as Steve spears a geek through the ear, hammers whacking into frozen earth with a sound like a car crash.

"Harrington, inside the perimeter!"

Steve eyes an imminent geek but does as Hopper commands, weaselling through the single gap they've left behind. They finish the inner hammering and Hopper and Livingstone set about chaining the sections back together.

Steve backs away from the fence and tries to catch his breath. He leans back and brushes the hair out of his eyes, chest heaving, eyes shuttering closed in relied. They survived it. They did exactly what they were supposed to do in this situation and the plan worked.

Somebody takes the crowbar from his hand and he lets them, scrubbing both hands through his hair, scalp cool with sweat as a gale of wind blows. He looks up, and the sky has darkened, that rare morning sunshine nowhere to be seen.

He opens his eyes. Christopher is sitting a ways away looking queasy. Joyce is hugging the life out of Jonathan, kissing his cheek, hand in his hair. Bernier and Taylor are stabbing the new wave of geeks. Steve isn't worried, there aren't a quarter as many as there had been.

The smell is barbaric.

"Don't relax too quickly, kid," Hopper says, "we still gotta round up the bodies."

Steve laughs morosely, secretly pleased when Hopper pats him on the shoulder. His back fucking hurts and he stinks of gore and zombie gunk. Dead material somehow slimy and dry as bark at once, Steve wants a shower, and a hug from you, in that specific order.

"You okay?" Jonathan asks him, squinting. There's blood splattered against his forehead.

"They had to do this today?" Steve asks. "This is my favourite shirt. I'm never gonna get the guts out–"

A scream splits the air.

"The quad," Hopper announces. "Taylor, Bernier, keep going. Everyone else, with me."

His blood ice in his veins, Steve runs with the rest of the group. He realises he's left his crowbar with Taylor and grimaces, pulling the gun from his holster and knocking off the safety mechanism. Steve isn't good with a gun. He only ever used one right at the start, when he hadn't known that sound to a geek is like a porch light to moths. That, and he'd run out of ammo.

"Oh, goddammit."

There's a crowd of geeks they must've missed around the side of the town hall. Hopper immediately starts yelling at a young teenager screaming in front of the gym to get back inside.

Steve's okay, his heart's fine, and then he sees you. You're wrist deep in brains, surrounded by bodies and coated in a black spray of blood. It's in your hair, your eyebrows, all over your cheek and your shoulder.

He nearly wrenches Livingstone off of his feet as he bursts forward to help you, gun raised and poised. He shoots and drives forward. One geek, two. Three, five, he loses count. He gets so close he can hear your panting breath, not panicked but struggling to keep going.

"Fucker," he says, one geek left between you and safety.

You scramble to the side. Steve shoots it point black in the back of the head. It falls down slow, and then it thunks against your shoes.

You reach for him on automatic as you pull your feet from under him, treading over the soft of the geeks shoulders and into Steve's waiting arms. He holds the gun away from you to click on the safety, shoving it back into his borrowed holster.

"You're okay?" you ask loudly.

"I'm fine, what are you doing out here? You should've stayed inside the pantry."

"Says who?" you ask, squeezing him so tightly he feels his skin bruising in the shapes of your arms.

"Says everyone!" he shouts, squeezing you back just as hard.

You catch your breath together. His hands rove over your back, checking and rechecking that you're real and you're not hurt. He pushes you away from him to check your front properly, hand on your face, your arms.

"I'm fine," you say, "I'm perfect."

"You have more blood on you than the rest of us put together."

You hum unhappily. "I think I got a fresh one in the artery. It sprayed like a fountain, it was–" You sigh, stroking a loose curl of dirtied hair from his eyes. "It was disgusting."

He wants to kiss you, but he's normal, and you're both plastered in blood. He's less normal as he wraps his forearm behind your head and forces your face into his neck, groaning in an exhaustive relief. Your warm breath against his skin is everything he could ever ask for.

"Stay inside, next time," he murmurs.

"Not a chance."

"Think I can give him a citation?" Steve hears Hopper ask.

Joyce gasps through a laugh. "They're cute!"

"This is a public space."

Steve huffs a laugh against your ear. "Holy shit, you scared the fuck out of me."

"I had to know you were okay."

His hand slides down your shoulders, searching for something he can't explain. "I'm okay. We're okay, honey. You can relax."

The last of your resistance ebbs away. You melt into his arms, and Steve pretends for your sake that he can't feel you shaking like a leaf. You just tore your way through a herd to make sure he was okay: you're the bravest girl he's ever met.

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