The babysitters club|| Steve Harrington

36

Matteo was pretty sure wounds don't make noises like this one was.

El's skin sizzled and squelched as she continued to scream in pain. Matteo just let her squeeze his hand, occasionally brushing her hair out of her face as wiping her tears away.

She looked so young, the same as Max and Dustin. And who knew how much more she had gone through. He just wanted to wrap her in a blanket and keep her safe from everything.

Matteo's eyes drifted back to the wound, unable to keep staring at El in pain, her face red hot. Something seemed to move just under his skin, just beneath the wound, like a small tentacle. Matteo recoiled from disgust.

"What is that?"

"There's something in there" Mike realized, loosening his grip on El's shoulder to scramble to her injured leg.

Something definitely bubbled and sizzled, wriggling under El's skin.

"Jesus Christ" Dustin looked about as disgusted and concerned as Matteo felt.

"Knife" Matteo mumbled, a free hand tapping Dustin on his shoulder to get his attention, "Dusty, my pocket knife is in your bag, we need to get that thing out of her leg"

"You're adjusting pretty well to this whole supernatural shit" Steve spoke up next to him, flashing him a half smile.

Dustin jumped into action, rushing to his bag before pouring all the other useless things out. One of them was metal and it fell right on his foot, though he took it like a champ and didn't even yell in pain. He just grabbed the pocket knife and tossed it to Jonathan.

"Keep her talking" Jonathan advised as he caught the knife and also began running away to god knew where. "Keep her awake"

His footsteps squeaked on the polished floor as Matteo watched the boy running across the food court and into a restaurant. What he hoped to do there was beyond Matteo, but he had to hope Jonathan had experience with this sort of thing.

"Jesus Christ" Dustin kept repeating.

Matteo's heart was racing, his blood rushed in his ears as panic trickled into his blood stream. He really didn't want to have a panic attack right now. Robin's hand on his shoulder squeezed and he gave her a grateful smile. Steve reached out, fingers curling around Matteo's knee like he had down in the Russian bunker. Matteo was just so glad to have those two.

He couldn't even imagine how much pain El must be in, so he decided to focus on making her as comfortable as possible.

"Hey, hey, hey," Mike rambled, "Stay awake, stay awake, are you comfortable— I think you should move, new guy" He looked up straight at Matteo when he said it, shooing him.

Matteo scrunched his nose. Rude ass teenagers.

"Move her and you'll just make her hurt more." He swatted Mike's hand away, his own hand coming away with blood. El was losing blood rapidly from her wound, so much that her hand was soaked in it and now so was Matteo's.

The smell was a familiar sickening, metallic one that made Matteo want to barf, but he held it in for her sake. He could not wait to go home and take a long shower.

"It's uh... You know, it's not actually that bad" Robin started and Matteo already knew this wasn't going to end well. Neither of them did great in panicky situations, especially if they were panicky at the same time. All of them looked up at her in confusion and morbid fascination, "There was a... Matteo's parents signed him up for soccer one year, the goalie on his soccer team— Leonard Wildfire, and this other guy slid onto his leg and the whole bone came out—"