Chapter Text
One moment he’s watching the filthy, blackened bottoms of Eddie and Robin’s sneakers scramble their way up the smoke-yellowed sheets that are forming their rope to the real world, hopeful and relieved and breathing –
And the next –
Her eyes roll back, fluttering, whites showing the popped, bright red veins tracing their way through her long, dark lashes, and Steve is screaming .
“Nancy! Nancy, wake up! Snap out of it! Nancy !”
She isn’t snapping out of it, no matter how hard he grips her arms. She’s tiny, he remembers, his fingers nearly touching around her biceps as he squeezes. “Nancy!” he yells again. She doesn’t react in the slightest.
Above him – or below him, or whatever, he still isn’t sure how this whole Upside Down shit works – the kids and Robin are also shouting, all over one another, grabbing at one another, shoving and pushing, panicking.
Dustin reaches for Max, his fingers tangling in the cord of her headphones as he pulls. “Give me this!”
“We only have the one tape!” Lucas shouts, slapping Dustin’s hands away, “It won’t help!”
“We have to try!” Dustin yells, pulling hard enough that Max yelps and the cord comes undone from the walkman. She’s trying to help Dustin, to pass the walkman over, but the headphones are entangled in her hair.
Lucas shoves him off again, sending him stumbling backwards over the mattress. They start yelling even more. Erica jumps in, shouting, and starts pummeling her brother. Max rips some of her bright red hair out as she finally succeeds in tearing off the headphones and reaches for the rope.
“She didn’t have Kate Bush tapes in her room,” Robin frets, but she cups her hands together anyway, trying to give Max a boost. “She – she didn’t have –”
“At least it’s something!” Max shouts, hopping to put one foot in the stirrup of Robin’s hands, ready to throw herself up through the portal.
Through the portal to where Nancy’s head tilts back a little, her eyes still flickering like a TV with broken antennae. Her fingers twitch.
“Nancy, please,” Steve begs, feeling a sudden pressure in his palms as her heels come off the ground, “ Nancy !”
Then there comes an abrupt shout of, “Move!”
And Max tumbles over, knocked out of the way as a blur of black leather puts one sticky-bottomed Reebok in the curl of Robin’s fingers and makes a wild leap for it, all frenetic energy and grunting as he catches the rope and shoves himself the last foot until gravity flip-flops, helps him tumble through the portal.
Nancy’s toes leave the floor of the dark version of the trailer just as Eddie Munson slams to the ground, cracking Steve across the elbow with the neck of his guitar.
He falls with a loud grunt right at Steve’s feet, clumsy and not at all suave or heroic as he nearly breaks his own neck, landing weird. His long limbs flail as he stands, spitting out his own hair.
“Ow, shit ,” Steve grunts, as Eddie’s elbow grazes his bloodied, ruined side and sets sparks of agony whiting out his vision. Even through the pain, he can’t let go of Nancy, gripping her arms even tighter as she raises up, her head now level with his own.
Eddie has a guitar across his back with the strap digging into the side of his neck and a cheap, half-busted portable amp clutched to his side like some mothers carry their babies. He drops the amp, slams a cable into it, and then slings the guitar around so he’s holding it properly, seated against his front.
“Steve, give me something, anything,” Eddie begs, reaching out with the hand not on the neck of the guitar to grab Steve’s jaw when Steve is just staring helplessly at Nancy. “Buckley said no Kate Bush, so what am I working with? Anything, come on, anything !”
His rings are cold, but not as freezing cold as his long fingers, digging painfully into Steve’s bruised cheek. Steve blinks at him, and fumbles, his fingers tearing Nancy’s sweater a little. “I – I don’t know, she – it’s – it’s been a while since we listened to anything together, I–”
“ Love is a Battlefield !” Dustin screams at the top of his lungs, spit flying from his mouth with his urgency. His eyes are huge and pleading.
“Pat Benatar?!” Eddie looks up, bewildered, and Dustin nods frantically -
“I heard her listening to it! She has the tape! Try it!”
Steve shrugs, useless and helpless, when Eddie looks at him again, so he nods and rolls his shoulders back. “Fuckin’ hope this works, goddamn,” he mutters, and then he flicks his tongue along his guitar pick before setting it to the strings, fingers starting to move across the cords.
The song has a stupid opening – Steve remembers thinking this, remembers hating the way she talks all dream-like at the beginning, but Eddie somehow makes it sound good despite their desperation. Steve feels like he’s floating above it all, disconnected and watching from afar. It gives him a strange sort of peace, because if this doesn’t work…
It has to work .
Eddie’s wailing on the guitar, shaking his hair out of his face, and Steve has a near-hysterical moment to think thank god he knows this song, and then an even more disturbing and clearly insane moment where he thinks why is his voice so good before Eddie’s huge brown eyes meet his as if asking for help. He’s sweating, clearly working his ass off here, and Steve gulps.
“ We are young !” he chimes in, voice breaking slightly, but his not-so-bad voice returns after he quickly clears his throat. He sings along with Eddie, still gripping at Nancy’s sweater like it might do something, anything, like he could possibly stop her limbs from contorting and shattering if she can’t get out of this.
Later, much later, they’ll probably laugh at this. Steve and Eddie singing at the top of their lungs with Eddie violently playing guitar and Steve clutching at Nancy’s sweater like a big emotional baby, while their friends scream Nancy’s name and beg her to come back and start listing off every conceivable thing she could possibly feel guilty for and why it isn’t her fault. The list ranges from not taking Lucas to get ice cream when he was nine to cheating on Jonathan (which she hasn’t even done, Robin is just spitballing at that point).
“This is about Barb,” Steve gasps, interrupting himself in the middle of a lyric. Eddie keeps singing, giving him a look like he’s absolutely insane, and he shakes his head. “Nance, c’mon, Nancy, Barb’s death wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault, Nancy! If it’s on you, it’s on me too! I’m the reason Barb is dead, not you. Blame me instead! Don’t – don’t leave us, c’mon, Nance, please–”
Eddie’s reaching the end of the song, and Nancy is still hovering in the air.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –” Steve repeats, tears streaking down his face, cutting clean paths through the filthy black goo of the Upside Down and the blood on his chin. “It’s my fault, not yours, it isn’t your fault, please, Nance–”
Nancy knocks Steve down when she falls, gasping wetly, her face streaked with tears and mouth already open in a scream. Steve clutches her to him as Eddie’s fingers spasm and falter on the strings.
“Nancy?” Steve questions, hugging her tightly. She’s halfway across his lap, one of her knees is digging into his side in horrible pain, but he doesn’t shift or move to let her go. He just holds her tight, so tight he’s sure his fingers are bruising her arms.
She shatters in his arms, dissolving into tears, and Steve cuddles her into his chest, even closer, pressing his lips to her hair and rocking her. He looks up, meets Eddie’s eyes through his own, which are still leaking, and Eddie gives a weak thumbs up.
“Fuck yeah,” Eddie says, and drops to his knees, shaking.
—
They don’t really have time to let Nancy recover from whatever hell she just visited. Steve would love to let her cry herself out, god knows they all deserve a second, but they don’t really have one.
“I can’t climb out with Nancy,” Steve admits, “My, uh, side–”
“I can climb,” Nancy says, scrubbing at her cheeks and getting to her feet because she’s a badass, Nancy Wheeler, and Steve has always thought so.
“Ladies first,” Eddie says, sounding absolutely exhausted. He’s still on his knees and ass, the grime of the Upside Down seeping into his shredded jeans, smearing across his bared knees.
She’s still shaking, but her grip is strong as starts her way up the rope. Robin seems to be debating getting out of the way, and trying to catch her. Steve would laugh at the absolutely wild look in her eyes if he wasn’t so emotionally empty from rescuing his ex-girlfriend from the creepy gross claws of a mind-fucking monster.
“So, this is hell, right?” Steve says casually, going for lighthearted as if his throat isn’t raw from all the screaming, and the choking from the demobats, and everything else. He watches as Nancy’s head pops through the portal and she starts to tilt, gravity catching her.
“Always was told I’d end up here. Thought there’d be more fire, honestly,” Eddie says, equally as conversational, and Steve gives a weak laugh.
Eddie steps forward, pulling his guitar off from around his neck and carefully placing it around Steve, “Careful with this, she’s the love of my life, alright?”
“What are you doing?” Steve asks, confused as the weight of the guitar thumps gently against his back, but Eddie just gestures at the amp, which also has a strap on it. He picks it up like a backpack and gestures to the rope.
“Can’t climb with both. Wouldn’t have made it through with both the first time if not for Buckley. Let’s go, Harrington.”
Through the portal, Robin and Nancy are staring at them, eyes wide and fearful. Dustin and the other kids are just off to the side, Lucas now sporting a bloody lip from his furious sister’s beatings. They all keep waving their arms and hands, making gestures that clearly mean ‘hurry up’.
Eddie goes first, his arms shaking as he scales the rope, but Steve follows close behind, not wanting to wait any longer than necessary. They’re barely making it out as it is, no need for fanfare, or to push their luck.
“We need an ambulance or something, I think Steve has demobat rabies, or something, it’s really bad, and –” Robin is rambling, her tone swinging wildly between lightly teasing and genuine concern. Eddie’s head is halfway through the portal, Steve’s stupid, wild hair brushing his ankles with how close he’s following, when the rope jerks hard enough to make both men shout and have to adjust their grip.
“Tentacle!” Steve yells, and Eddie just squeezes his eyes shut and wheezes.
In the next second, they are torn back through the portal, back into the Upside down. The portal is closing, the plant and flesh-like substance scabbing and weaving as though to completely cut them off –
“Steve!” Dustin screams and as if on instinct, he for some godforsaken reason , grabs the end of the rope as it whips past his head, “Eddie!”
Dustin is yoinked up into the air, through the narrowing portal, and into the Upside Down like a cheap little stuffed toy from a carnival claw game. He grunts as he lands on Eddie, rolling off immediately and scrambling to his hands and knees, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit–”
The portal closes further. They can see, as if on a TV screen, the way their friends all scramble for another option - another rope, a broom, anything to fish them out.
But there’s no time.
And Robin Buckley uses Lucas Sinclair like a ladder, scrambling up his height like a feral cat. She leaps back through, her sleeves and arms getting cut and torn on the edges of the portal. She’s cursing and spitting like a rattlesnake as she throws herself into the jumbled pile of Eddie and Steve. Steve spits blood as basically her entire body weight collides with his abdomen.
The ceiling above them seals shut with a hissing noise. Steve, Eddie, and Robin all stare up at it for a short time.
Dustin grabs a nearby rock and starts savagely beating the tentacle that was inching its way towards Steve’s bloody foot. He’s saying a lot of words that his mother would threaten to wash his mouth out for saying. He’s saying a lot of words that start with an ‘f’.
“Dustin!” Steve manages, after the tentacle has retreated and Dustin is still slamming the rock into the ground.
Dustin looks at him, eyes wide and afraid, and Steve grips his shoulder.
“We’re fucked,” Dustin says.
Steve, unfortunately, cannot disagree.