Let's (not) do the time warp again

by Here_we_go

Summary:

“Explain,” Erica snaps from where she and the others have all turned to watch the show.

“That was my time loop password!” Dustin says and spreads his arms as much as he can while still wrapped up in Steve, clearly expecting awe. Lucas is the only one who delivers,

“No fucking way,” he gasps.

“Yes fucking way!” Dustin crows

-

Or Steve Harrington finally breaks the time loop and the aftermath.

Chapter 1: The Oracle

“I love you, man,” Eddie says and the blood comes quick this time. A bubble rising from his lips and popping over his chin.

“I love you too,” Dustin sobs and sobs and sobs.

Eddie’s blood is warm and tacky against Steve’s hands. His skin is slick with it, his naked organs slippery under Steve’s palm where he presses hard to his wounds. Eddie’s breath comes one more time, twice, and then is gone forever, or until tomorrow, or maybe never stopped. Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t fucking know.

Dustin is wailing, his curly head burrowing into Steve’s aching side. Steve doesn’t lift his hands from Eddie. He wants to turn, he wants to comfort him and hold him close and make it all right. He tells himself he’s saving his energy, but the truth is he’s just tired.

He’s just tired.

The first time he was here to see this he had heaved Eddie into his arms and ran like he hadn’t since–well since the last apocalypse he guesses. Eddie had thrashed in his arms, beyond pain, beyond understanding what was happening. Steve thinks the whole thing just probably killed him faster, just made it all worse.

Steve doesn’t do that anymore. He might be a little slow, but even he learns after a dozen or so goes at it. Once they get to this point there’s no more saving Eddie. There’s only trying to make it easy on him. There’s only holding his guts in so that at least this Dustin never has to know what they feel like under his fingers.

It might be a little selfish actually. It’s easier on Steve when Eddie goes like this; calmly, bravely. It’s worse when Eddie is thrashing like a wild thing in his arms, screaming like Steve is killing him because–well because he kind of is.

It doesn’t matter anyway. No one is going to remember this except for him.

“Eddie,” Dustin wails and he is clutching at Steve. He is twelve years old again and the years between them are a chasm, make Steve ten feet tall, make him someone that Dustin can hide behind, someone he can hold onto.

The first time Steve had been here for this he had clutched Dustin close, got Eddie’s blood all in his hair and on his cheeks holding him. He had hugged him tight and close and felt every one of Dustin’s sobs rattle his own chest and wished he could bring him closer somehow. Wished he could’ve tucked him away in his own rib cage where all of Dustin’s hurts could be his instead. Where nothing could ever hurt him.

Now he just feels like a cassette jammed in the player; tangled and unspooled. Overplayed.

“I’ll fix this,” he says into Dustin’s hair for the millionth time.

He hears a sound like a record scratch, like the chimes of a clock being rewound. He feels buzzing all over his body. He hears El’s voice in his head–

No.

-

“To killing Henry,” Says Steve,

“Slash One,” Robin replies,

“Slash Vecna,”

And they clink their Molotov cocktails together in morbid cheers.

Then Steve rears back and he blinks, blinks hard, shakes his head once like a wet dog, and something about him changes . Something about the set of his shoulders, the tension of his jaw, the creases around his eyes. All of a sudden he looks tired, like, really tired.

“Shit,” he sighs long and slow and his hands go slack, “One more time,” he whispers and for a second offers her a wane smile like she’s in on the joke, but for once she isn’t, she isn’t in on the joke with Steve and–

“Henderson!” Steve shouts across the field and Dustin turns, alert and adorable, like a meerkat, from where he was roughhousing with Eddie, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once,” Steve says nonsensically, like he’s quoting something.

“Holy shit!” Dustin screeches from across the field, flailing and jumping in place, “Holy shit!”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs, “Holy shit,” and his shoulder falls against hers and she doesn’t know what’s happening but she holds him up, she holds him steady.

Then Dustin is racing across the field stumbling on his nerdy little legs, “Oh my God,” he’s crowing, “Oh my God!”

Steve catches him with a soft oof, keeping all three of them from tipping completely over. Henderson has him by the lapels and is shaking him back and forth,

“I can’t believe this!” he exclaims, “How many times? How long? This is so–”

Steve muscles an arm around Henderson’s neck and pulls him close and still in a headlock, “If you say curiosity door to me again, I swear to God Henderson,” He gives him a shake.

His tone is the same as always, put upon and just a little fond. His body language is not the same. The way he bonelessly drops his head into Henderson’s curls and pulls him close is relief and nothing more.

“What?” Robin says.

“What?” Eddie echos, trudging over.

“Again?” Dustin beams up at Steve.

“Explain,” Erica snaps from where she and the others have all turned to watch the show.

“That was my time loop password!” Dustin says and spreads his arms as much as he can while still wrapped up in Steve, clearly expecting awe. Lucas is the only one who delivers,

“No fucking way,” he gasps.

“Yes fucking way!” Dustin crows, “I told you. I fucking told you–”

“Less gloating, more explaining,” Robin orders, shoving at Dustin.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, “Let the rest of us in on the joke,”

Everyone is closing in now, drawn by the comotion

“My time loop password,” Dustin repeats like it’ll make more sense the second time. Steve stays where he is. Dustin sighs at all their blank looks, “A secret phrase I’ve never told anyone ever so that if anyone ever says it I’ll know they’re in a time loop,”

“Hold the phone–” Eddie says,

“ Steve , is in a time loop,” Erica scoffs,

“How did Steve get the password then?” Robin asks, Steve is holding onto Dustin way too tight, like white knuckled tight, like I just woke up from a nightmare tight. Robin takes his free wrist and he turns his hand in hers and holds on tight to her too.

“I had to convince the shithead,” Steve says “And let me tell you this , little know it all brat didn’t make it easy,” He gives Dustin a shake.

“What’s a time loop?” Max asks,

“It’s a kind of time travel,” Lucas says,

“Steve’s been reliving the same set of days, hours, seconds, whatever on repeat,” Dustin continues,

“An ouroboros,” Robin breathes and looks at the side of Steve’s head,

“Sure,” Dustin says.

“But what does that mean?” Max says, “Why would that happen?”

“Because he keeps doing it wrong,” Dustin says, flipping his hands palm up.

“Fuck you, Henderson,” Steve growls into Dustin’s hair.

“Because we keep losing,” Nancy interrupts, ice cold, and steely certain.

Silence falls like a chill over the group as they all turn to look at Steve.

Robin’s seen Steve drugged out of his mind, she’s seen him so hungover he can barely roll over to puke in the trash, she’s seen him so tired that his hands shake, and refusing sleep.

She’s never seen him quite like this.

Steve panics and he clings and he gets scared just like they all do. But never until the danger has passed. Maybe twice isn’t enough to establish a pattern, but she’s never seen Steve like this, not while the apocalypse isn’t over yet. Steve always gets up. He gets the shit beaten out of him and he gets drugged and he pukes his guts out and he gets up. He gets drowned and choked and eaten alive and he gets up. This Steve isn’t getting up. He’s staying where he is. He’s staying with his head pressed into Dustin and his hand tight in hers.

Robin sways closer, “How many times have you done this Steve?” she whispers. Even Steve has to run out of fight sometime. Even Steve. She holds his hand tighter.

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye and she can read him again, “A few,” he says and means A lot, means, Too many, means, please don’t ask me now, means, I can’t take anymore right now, ask me later, ask me when we’re safe, ask me when we’re back in my bed in the dark and we’re safe. She squeezes his hand to tell him she understands.

Steve squeezes back. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“Let me tell you what I know,”

And Steve does.

They all gather around the steps where he and Robin sit like kids at story time and he talks. He doesn’t really explain the loops or what happened in them, just what he’s found out. He explains the earthquake and Vecna disappearing and the bats dropping out of the sky at the exact same time every loop and how he still can’t figure out why. He explains that El is there, that she’s probably the cause of the loops, that she is fighting Vecna from wherever she is at the same time they are. That she somehow has her powers back.

“How do you even know that?” Dustin asks, “the loop always ends for you before you can meet up with everyone doesn’t it? There’s no way Max could have told you,”

Steve smiles thinly, “Turns out that endless time loops really rack up the trauma,” he gestures down at himself, “All you can eat buffet right here,”

“You’ve been Vecna’d,” Max whispers, horrified. Robin presses closer to Steve, watches him.

“Once or twice,” Steve says, blaise. Robin can feel how tight he’s holding on.

Robin feels sick. She actually feels really, really sick, like Russian drugs level sick. Steve’s died. He’s actually really died and he still remembers. She presses their wrists together and feels his pulse against hers, feels it beating. It’s beating, it’s beating, it’s beating. She closes her eyes.

“Why don’t we just wait?” Lucas asks, “El has her powers back and the bats die apparently. Max can just keep the walkman and we can wait,”

Lucas looks scared. He’s holding Max’s hand tight and she’s letting him. It doesn’t take a genius to know that Max has died in at least some of these loops, not when she’s the one in the most danger. Lucas looks desperate.

He looks like he’s fifteen and he’s been fighting monsters for three years and he just wants it to be easy for once.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says and he looks it, “If it’s not Max it’s someone else. Even if we all listen to music we’re not the only people in town with trauma. Henry wants Max but he won’t wait. He’ll settle for someone else. And if we don’t stop him…”

“Who will?” Robin finishes, echoing their earlier conversation.

“Rip off the band aid,” Eddie interrupts, he’s twisting at his hair anxiously, “Who dies?”

Steve closes his eyes. He swallows once and then twice, and Robin knows what nausea looks like on him.

“You,” he says, “Max,” he says, “In the first loop. Others,” he falters, “Everyone’s died since then,”

Eddie stops. Perfectly still for maybe the first time since Robin’s known him. He looks at Steve looks through him maybe, presses his lips thin and nods. Nods like it makes sense. His hands are shaking. Max just flexes her jaw and takes the hit, like she always does, like she’s been doing all her life.

“I’m close,” Steve says, “I’m so close,” His knuckles are white around Robin’s and her hand aches with how tight he’s holding it. She holds him back just as tight, as tight as he needs. His head is bent. He is praying, he is begging, whether them or himself or the fucking universe she doesn’t know.

“Then let’s make this one the last,” Nancy Wheeler says, eyes sharp, hands steady, a sawed off shotgun slung across her back, strong enough to steady them all with her spine of steel, “Let’s kill this fucker,”

-

Nancy says let’s kill this fucker and Eddie watches all of them nod, one by one. It’s not until just then that Eddie really understands; they’re soldiers. They’re veterans of this fight that Eddie has only just been thrust into. Nancy with her pink nails, and Robin with her nervous rambling. Steve Harrington with his perfect hair and all the kids with the baby fat still clinging to their cheeks, even Erica. They’ve fought in this war before, Steve has fought this battle a dozen or a hundred times, and they’re all ready to do it again.

Eddie thinks of his own words to Dustin only minutes ago, There will be no more retreating for Eddie the Banished.

No more running.

“Munson!” Steve snaps over the others debating, “Get that stupid look off your face!”

Eddie flinches then rears back, “Ex cuse me–”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Steve says over him, “It’s not cute,”

Eddie doesn’t know exactly what to do with that, but attempts to rally, “Your Majesty,” he rolls his eyes, taking his contrite act and dialing up to fifty.

“Ah ah ah,” Steve interrupts like he’s talking to a toddler, “Max is a perfect angel who lives at least half the time,” Steve says, dropping his hand on her shoulder. Eddie catches a flash of a pleased look before she scowls at Steve, “You,” Steve points aggressively, “Are a dumbass with less sense than God gave a rock, so leave the getting ideas to the rest of us and cool your fucking jets,”

“Wait,” Dustin says, “Why does Eddie keep dying?”

“Cause he’s a big damn hero,” Steve scoffs like it’s a fact, like it’s normal and true and they all know it. The sky is blue, water is wet and Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson is a big damn hero. So says Steve Harrington.

Eddie raises one brow like that will protect him, “The only time I’m a hero–”

“Is when you’re playing D&D yes I know,” Steve interrupts finishing his sentence exactly as he was planning to and rolling his eyes along with it.

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever been this pissed off about someone thinking something objectively nice about him. Looking at Steve though maybe it isn’t unearned. Looking at Steve, tired as shit, old veteran of these unknown wars, clutching Robin and Dustin tight, he looks maybe scared, maybe scared for Eddie. Maybe there have been timelines in this wide universe where Eddie Munson is not a coward. It’s too big to think about.

“Rest assured,” Eddie says, hands up in surrender, “I will do as you bid my liege, only cowardice here,” It kind of hurts to say, but not really more than anything else.

Steve just scoffs, which Eddie resents, but lets it drop.

“Okay,” Robin draws out, “Now that that’s sorted,” She raises an eyebrow at Harrington which apparently carries some secret unknowable meaning that makes him take their clasped hands and punch her in the shoulder, “Vecna/Henry/One how do we kill him?

“More importantly, what have we tried that hasn’t worked?” Nancy asks.

“I think it’s not how we kill him but when,” Steve says, “When I was the one getting Vecna’d El was there, like in my head, fighting him,”

“Can someone please explain who the hell that is?” Eddie asks,

“Supergirl,” Harrington says.

“My best friend,” Max says.

“Like Jean Grey but real,” Lucas explains.

“She’s an experiment from the lab,” Nancy says.

“Our mage,” Dustin adds.

“Okay,” Eddie says, “That’s great. Cool. Awesome. Normal,”

“Anyway,” Harrigton continues, while Robin offers Eddie a sympathetic look, “It was a little dicey for a second, but she totally had him on the ropes at the end but then he just like–poof,” Harrington mimes it as he says it without dropping Robin’s hand, “Up in smoke, gone. I didn’t think to check my watch until the second time through,” Steve rolls his eyes at himself, like he’s stupid for not thinking to check his watch while in the midst of some kind of psychic fucking battle, “It was 8:42 which is just about when the firing squad arrives in the Upside-Down usually,” he tips his head to Nancy and Robin,

“Your watch was working in your Vecna vision?” Max asks. Steve shrugs,

“I have a good sense of time. At least enough to be fairly confident that’s what caused it.”

“So what?” Robin says, “We need to let El kill him first before we do?”

“I’m not–” Steve starts,

“Yes!” Dustin interrupts, jumping up, “Yes! Vecna is a Lich, the fucking Lich King! And how do you kill a Lich?” Dustin spreads his hands wide, inviting, his face absolutely lit up,

“You destroy its phylactery,” Eddie says in dawning realization, and Dustin points at him beaming,

“Bingo!”

“Holy shit,” Lucas whispers and he starts to smile,

“So what Max is his phylactery?” Erica says, but she doesn’t sound doubtful, she sounds considering

“His phylacta-what-now?” Max says, looking vaguely offended.

“His connection to the material plane, where he stores his life force,” Dustin says.

“Something he can use to come back if his material body is destroyed,” Eddie adds, happy to be with the program for once.

“But that’s just in your game,” Nancy says, “That doesn’t mean it’s true,”

“It makes sense though doesn’t it?” Robin says, “Vecna/Henry/One has some weird kind of psychic voodoo going on with Max. Like he projects his consciousness into his victims when he–'' she waggles her fingers in a vaguely menacing fashion, “It makes sense that we need to kill the mind and the body right?”

“We just need to time it right,” Dustin says, “Let El do her thing and then we do ours. We can do this!”

“It’s not that simple,” Steve says, “Once El beats him, destroys his phylacta-whatever, he’s not going to be remote-traveling anymore, he’s going to be awake,”

That realization kills the momentum like nothing has so far. This plan only ever got the go ahead because it meant they could get him when he’s weak. Now they can’t, now he’ll be awake for it.

“We just have to hit him before he shakes it off,” Nancy says, “He’ll be drained and disoriented from fighting El. We can still do this. We can save Hawkins,”

And who are they to argue with Nancy Wheeler?

So they plan; again. Steve tells them about Jason, about him showing up at the fucking Creel house no matter what they’ve tried because the whole damn town is looking for all of them.

Which is a huge problem, because without Erica there to get their timing right their whole plan is dead in the water.

“So we just need to beat Jason and his goons before El finishes killing Vecna, so he won’t get in the way,” Dustin says, like it’s that easy.

“Jason has a gun, Dustin,” Steve says,

“I could have a gun,” Erica says, and Eddie is very scared of her actually.

“Someone else should be with them,” Steve says, “To protect them,”

“Are you suggesting yourself?” Dustin asks, brows raised,

“You don’t exactly have the best track record with winning fights,” Lucas says, “No offense, man,”

“Oh yeah. No offense taken,” Steve says sarcastically, slapping Lucas’s shoulder, and Eddie is very curious about King Steve losing fights, plural.

“We don’t have any guns to spare,” Nancy says, pulling her keys from her pocket, “But I do have this,” she unclips an adorable pink canister of mace from her keyring and hands it over, “I wasn’t thinking about it since most of the Upside-Down freaks don’t have eyes. But I think it should work just fine on Jason and his lackeys,”

“Wicked,” Max says, and Erica snatches up the mace.

Steve turns to Lucas, “Jason’s totally wacked out by now, but he’s not trigger happy. He won’t shoot off the bat and that’ll give you a chance. He’s weak in his left knee from an injury freshman year–”

And so it goes. They plan and they plan and they don their armor and they gather their weapons and they go into the breach once more.

-

The plan was pretty similar to the one Nancy had proposed in the end. Only this time they were going into it with foreknowledge they had lacked only an hour ago, which Dustin didn’t need to say was cool as fuck . 

The foreknowledge amounted to a few things. Firstly Steve was coming with Dustin and Eddie now. This was because, Steve claimed, Eddie was too stupid to be left to his own devices and needed the best babysitter Hawkins could provide to watch him. The best babysitter of course being Steve. It was kind of crazy, because at the beginning of all of this Steve hadn’t even wanted to look for Eddie, but now he was, like genuinely, for real, pissed at him for dying. Like the kind of pissed that Steve had only been a few times, like at Billy. Which didn’t seem super fair since Eddie was the one dying, but whatever.

The second was how kitted out Erica and Lucas ended up being. Nobody really loved the idea of stabbing Jason Carver with a knife even if he was totally crazy now, but needs must. Lucas wasn’t naturally blood thirsty, but Dustin had no doubts that he would stab a motherfucker if it was for Max. And of course nothing need be said for Erica's willingness to do bodily harm.

The third was a ladder, hastily retrieved from a nearby farm for Nancy and Robin. Apparently there was an earthquake that alerted the vines on the stairwell as they were coming in and that was a waste of time they just couldn’t afford, so they’d be coming in through the attic window.

Finally instead of fortifying Eddie’s trailer for the distraction, they were fortifying Eddie’s neighbors’ pick up truck. Dustin figured it was a genuine Spring Break Miracle that the old grime covered, 1983, Upside-Down car actually started, but with a little finagling from Eddie start it did. They built a cage of scavenged chain link fence in the bed of the truck from within which Eddie would host the most metal concert two worlds had ever seen.

Steve insisted it would be better for them to be on the move and no one had found reason to argue that.

“Hey,” Steve says, as him and Dustin are pinning chicken wire to the inside of the windshield, “I have something for you,”

Dustin looks over, intrigued, “time travel souvenir?” he asks.

“More of a call back actually,” Steve says and pulls two objects from his pockets, “Found it in the bathroom of the RV. Thought it might come in handy,”

“Fire vulnerability,” Dustin murmurs, taking the two things reverently as their purpose clicks, “So she was a woman of taste then,”

“Evidently,” Steve smiles, and ruffles Dustin’s hair through his hood, looking–for the first time this afternoon–a little less tired.

-

Robin pulls Steve aside before her and Nancy split off.

“Hey,” she says, their faces leaned close her hands around his forearms, “I take back what I said earlier,” she squeezes his arms, “I actually have a really good feeling about this one,”

She doesn’t know if she actually does, but she’ll make it true. She was resigned to trying before, she was resigned to giving it their best because no one else was there to give anything. But now Steve is stuck here. Now Steve is stuck in this day until they win and she doesn’t know how many more times he can take. She needs to make it true for Steve.

“My best friend just made us the best plan ever,” She smiles, “There’s no way we’re losing,”

She knocks her forehead into his and doesn’t need to look to see his smile. Feels him uncoil under her hands.

“We’re gonna kill Henry,” Robin says,

“Slash Vecna,” Steve replies, smiling

“Slash one,” Robin finishes.

Steve reels her in for one quick, rough squeeze, “Good luck,” he whispers into her hair.

“See you on the flip side,” Robin salutes, and they part ways.

-

Steve grabs Eddie by the shoulder just as he’s about to climb his way into the bed of the truck, stopping him dead one foot down one foot up.

“Hey,” Steve says and he’s looking at Eddie with a lot of weight. It’s not a look that Eddie can really parse, but it’s fucking heavy . The kind of heavy that feels out of place to Eddie, but sits naturally on Steve’s tired face. The kind of heavy that has to do with dozens of days that Steve has lived with Eddie that Eddie has not.

“I know that you’re not going to listen to me no matter what I say,” Steve says, “I’ve tried every fucking way I can think of to ask you not to be the hero and it never fucking works,” he offers a smile that is mostly exhausted, and definitely kind of pissed, but also maybe a little fond.

Eddie still finds it hard to believe. That in all the loops Steve has lived, Eddie has been a hero, not just once or twice, but in every single one of them. That’s not what he thinks of himself. He’s been running since he was a kid. He’d run away from home dozens of times before the one that finally stuck. Run from his dad and bullies, and truths about himself that he hadn't been ready for.

“So I’m not gonna ask you not to be the hero, Munson,” Steve says, his eyes are dark and warm and begging, “I’m just going to ask you to be my hero,” He squeezes Eddie’s shoulder tight and desperate, “Please, Eddie, please live through this one. For me,”

And Eddie feels some string of fate or affection or oath hook itself from his chest to Steve’s. And he opens his mouth to say something dramatic, something about your majesty, your wish is my command . But what comes out is calm and short and true,

“Okay,” Eddie agrees.

-

Max hasn’t been on a roller coaster since California, but this feeling in her gut as she waits to go to Vecna is just like that. Just like the steady click click click as she’s wound closer to the top of a drop.

At least Lucas is strapped in next to her so he can hold her hand or something.

Then Erica finds Vecna and she stands and laces her shoes up tight.

She walks up the stairs to the attic and Lucas is right behind her, socked feet quiet, breath shaking. He’s right behind her. She’ll be alone when Vecna takes her, she knows that. She knows that it won’t matter if he’s there shouting or screaming or holding her hand, but she’s so fucking glad that he’s going to be. That she won’t be alone.

She walks up the stairs and sits down and cracks her chest open, sternum to waist. She opens herself up and lets all the rot spill out. Like the noxious air that she breathed in those tunnels never left her. Like it’s just been growing inside her for years, making her sick . And now she spills it all out on the floor of the Creel house, for Lucas and Vecna to hear.

“I just want you to take me away,” She whispers, and a tear streaks hot down her cheek, “And I want you to make me disappear,”

She waits, one second, then two, then Max Mayfield disappears.

-

Light flashes from the window of the Creel house, and Erica Sinclair radios into a different dimension.

“Okay she’s in. Initiate phase three,”

A few thousand miles away in a pizza dough cooler Jane Elanor Hopper says, “I think I’m in a memory. A Max memory,”

-

Dustin’s radio crackles to life, “Copy that. Initiating phase three,” he flicks the power on the scavenged generator on the bench seat next to him to a belch of gas and plugs in the amp.

The amp whines with feedback. Red lightning cracks across the black sky. The truck rumbles below them.

Dustin gives Eddie a thumbs up through the rear window, he nods, his chest jolting with a deep inhale.

Eddie tears the pick from his neck and whispers something. Then he starts to play.

The first chord is like a fucking lightning strike. It blasts from the amp and grows and grows and grows until the whole fucking upside down is ringing with it. And it doesn’t stop there. The music spills from Eddie like his fucking guts are being pulled out. Vicious and bloody and so. Fucking. Metal .

Eddie plays like a man possessed. Brows furrowed in focus, hair flying as his head bangs along, curled around the guitar like a mortal wound. Dustin bangs his head in time, whooping as he comes to the end of the first run of chords.

Demobats scream in the distance. Eddie plays on. Steve revs the engine, eyes pinned to the horizon.

This is going to work.

-

Nancy and Robin shoulder their ladder and make for the Creel house. Robin is reminded, hysterically, of being an extra in a production of Mary Poppins.

“This reminds me of drama club,” Robin whispers.

Nancy almost stops in her tracks before the ladder over both their shoulders propels her forward, “How the hell does this remind you of drama?” she hisses.

“I was an extra in Mary Poppins,” the Creel house rises like a desiccated carcass before them and it forces the words out faster, “You know the chimney sweep song? Chim-chimney Chim-chimney Chim-chim Charoo,” Robin warbles, “I was in the background. I carried a ladder with Felicity Jenkins. She was way worse at carrying and ladder than you she–I don’t know I think her legs are uneven or something because-”

“Robin,” Nancy interrupts, they arrive at the house and tip the ladder so it’s held upright between them. She takes one of Robin’s hands in hers and squeezes, “We’ve got this,”

“Yeah, yeah,” Robin breathes and squeezes back, “We’ve got this,”

-

Max fucking runs. She’s fifteen now and it’s embarrassing looking back, but also she’s holding tight to anything that makes her happy with both fucking hands right now so; she’s the party’s zoomer. She runs.

The Creel house is just as much of a nightmare in her head as it is in the real world. Vecna behind her is even fucking worse.

Vecna is so unlike the demodogs in the tunnels or the mindflayer last summer. Because Vecna isn’t going to maul her to death. Vecna is going to dig her up, he’s going to exhume every fucking body that she’s spent almost a year trying to put to rest. Max has been running from the shit inside her head for a lot longer than she’s been running from monsters from other dimensions and that’s because it’s fucking scarier.

She fucking bolts and Vecna stalks slowly behind her, so sure that he’ll catch up even if he takes his time.

The air is thick and rotten like it was in the tunnels.

Vecna is behind her. He’s behind her. He’s–

-

Those stupid jocks arrive right on time. Just like Steve said they would.

Erica runs because she’s played D&D for a year now and she understands plans, and specialities and objectives.

She’s gotta run and get these douchebags as far away from her stupid brother and his girlfriend as she can.

They immediately split their party, which is their first mistake.

Erica’s first mistake is probably assuming that she and some basketball jocks are gonna have the same movement speed.

She goes down fast and hard after only fifty feet, and it fucking hurts. He’s on top of her and he’s pulling her arms back and he’s heavy and stronger and bigger and fear rises and clogs her throat. She thrashes,

“Get off me!” she spits, “Get off me! Get off me, get off get off getoffget–”

-

“T-minus thirty seconds,” Dustin screams over Eddie's guitar, the truck engine, and the encroaching tornado of bats.

Steve keeps his eyes on the swarm, hands tight on the wheel. Eddie flicks his eyes to Dustin; granting him a split second before racing into a new labyrinthian cascade of notes, ringed fingers flying over the frets. The truck growls and Eddie feels the rumble of it in his chest.

-

Nancy and Robin enter the Creel house, Nancy first while Robin holds the ladder steady. Then Robin as Nancy crouches on the sill one foot in one foot out, one eye on Vecna and one on Robin.

It’s so quiet.

In the distance she can hear Eddie’s guitar wailing away and the screaming of demobats as her plan unfolds just like she hoped it would.

She’s trying not to focus on Vecna, on fucking Henry Creel just hanging in front of her completely defenseless while she has a gun strapped to her back. She’s trying not to fuckng lose it thinking about her highschool career, about how she can’t fucking sleep through the night anymore, and how the guilt of Barb almost killed her and how it wrecked hers and Steve’s relationship and how it was all her fault .

Except for it wasn’t.

It wasn’t because it was actually all his fucking fault. All Henry’s fault for starting this. For being such a textbook fucking psycho and thinking he’s so goddamned special . Thinking he can do whatever he fucking wants to her and her town and her fucking family . And–

“Nancy,” Robin whispers, and she snaps back to look at her.

Robin is at the top of the ladder looking up at her with big blue eyes. She’s biting at her lip pushing the blood away until it’s white instead of red and plush. She holds out a hand half hopeful, half self deprecating, waiting for Nancy to take it and help her through the window,

“I don’t want to bash my head open before we even get a chance to do some hero shit,” she whispers.

Nancy nods and takes her hand and takes some of her weight and it reels her in.

Game face, Wheeler. They’ve got a job to do.

-

Max throws open a door to Billy crazed and possessed as he was a year ago.

“Let me out!” he screams and he’s going to hurt her. He’s going to kill her. He’s going to kill her friends, he–he–

He needs her help. He needed her help and she was too much of a coward–

He slams into the door and the chain jolts. She jolts. She closes her eyes and it feels like she’s breathing through a straw.

Lucas , she thinks. Lucas and El and the California sun and friends for the first time in her life. Lucas. Lucas. LucasLucas Lucas .

-

“T-minus twenty!” Dustin screeches and Eddie’s fingers play faster. Play better. Play the best he ever has. 

-

Erica twists and twists and the skin of her wrist fucking burns. Her eyes are hot. Her lungs are burning. The fucking jock is laughing. He’s holding her down and helpless when she has fought monsters and he’s laughing.

She twists farther, feels her skin tear, feels her tears spill over. She understands the plan. She understands sacrifice. She understands that her brother and his stupid girlfriend and everyone in the whole fucking world are relying on Erica Sinclair.

She rips her blood slick wrist free and darts her hand into her pocket. It wraps around hard pink plastic.

-

Billy is screaming. He’s screaming and he’s going to kill her he’s possessed and he’s horrible and he’s going to die–

Lucas. Lucas and the dance and a sweet fucking happiness that hadn’t been ruined for anything just for one night. Just her and Lucas and her very own friends and–

Billy slams into the door. Metal wails and starts to give.

Lucas–

-

“T-minus ten!”

-

“Max!” Billy screams and she remembers him. Rabid and slathering at the mouth and so fucking terrifying and-

-

“Five!”

-

Lucas; so warm and happy in her arms and her in his–

-

“Four!”

-

And the door flies off the hinges and smashes the ground in front of her–

-

“Three!”

-

His forehead pressed to hers, and her heart fluttering in her chest and the stupid banners and disco ball and–

-

“Two!”

-

The burning hot air of the sauna they had trapped Billy in washes over her–

-

“One!”

Eddie races his way up the neck of the guitar and slams out one last booming chord as the bats reach them.

-

Max opens her eyes to the Snow Ball.

-

Erica snatches the canister, pops the top off with her thumb, twists, and fires.

The jock rears back, screaming, hands scrabbling at weeping eyes. Erica slithers out from under him, draws back and kicks him right in the nuts,

“Crit hit bitch!”

Then she runs for her brother.

-

“Most metal ever!” Dustin screams as Steve slams the gas.

The truck careens forward into the storm of bats. Eddie loses his footing toppling over in the bed, his head slamming into the back of the cab. Demobats claw and grapple at the chain link, and splatter over the windshield.

“Oh my God,” Eddie slurs, halfway between a laugh and a scream, “Oh my God!”

“Encore! Encore!” Dustin screams pounding the roof of the cab, beaming at Eddie.

“Hold on!” Steve yells and spins the wheel. Eddie’s head lolls dizzily against the bed of the truck as they careen around a row of trailers and switch directions.

“Encore!” Dustin screams at him again,

“Give us another,” Steve agrees, catching his eyes for just a moment as they hit a straightaway and gain speed.

“Okay,” Eddie laughs, “This one’s for you, Steve-o,” he smiles giddily at Steve. He presses one foot against the amp they nailed to the bed of the truck, pinning himself precariously between it and the cab. He puts his fingers back on the frets,

“All Aboard!” he cackles maniacally up to the cloud of bats that trail them, and falls headlong into the opening of Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train .

-

Nancy and Robin creep into position in front of Vecna.

Nancy slings the gun from her back and into her arms. Robin takes the first Molotov and holds the lighter under its scrap of cloth ready and waiting.

Vecna breathes, easy and deep. His eyes flicker under their distorted lids.

Nancy settles her gun on her shoulder. Robin shuffles her feet. They breathe. They hold steady as an earthquake shakes the house.

They wait.

-

El walks barefoot across hot cement and looks for Max. The air is filled with the sounds of teenagers shouting and the clacking of plastic wheels against concrete. Max’s red hair catches her eyes like a banner.

“I found her,” She whispers to the friends that can hear her in the real world. Tiny memory Max flips off the older teen heckling her and stands.

“Max,” El calls out to her, but she doesn’t turn.

“She can’t hear me,” El whispers.

“Is there anything weird in the memory?” Will asks from the real world, and suddenly there is.

There is a DJ stand covered in silver streamers playing music that she remembers. The memory strikes her warm and bright in the chest.

“I know where she is,”

-

Lucas watches Max’s eyes roll back and he can’t do anything about it. He keeps the walkman close, just like Steve told him.

He needs to keep it safe. He needs to keep it safe so that he can keep Max safe after she’s kept everyone else in this town safe being a real life hero.

He watches the whites of her eyes flicker and the breath flutter in her lungs. Vecna has her. Vecna has her and Lucas has to wait. Has to wait for El to save her, for El to go someplace Lucas can’t follow and kill Vecna. He can’t help her yet, he can’t do anything, because Max is a hero and he needs to be her Steve Trevor. He needs to be here to call her home.

He needs to keep her body safe while she’s gone.

The stairs to the attic creak. Jason Carver, just like Steve said.

“What have you done?” Jason says, horrified.

Lucas stands to face him, squares up between him and Max.

Lucas Sinclair has fought monsters. He can handle one jumped up jock.

-

The Snow Ball isn’t really as fun or comforting when it’s completely empty. It still beats the Creel house by a fucking mile.

Then the speakers start pumping out Dream a Little Dream instead of Every Breath You Take and Max has gotta say she does not care for that shit at all.

Max wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could run from Vecna for long. She’s just a regular teenager, and it might be her head but Henry has powers . Still the speed that everything starts rotting is discouraging. The walls begin to shed streamers, the flower centerpieces at the tables start to wither, and then it starts snowing. Not snow, but ash, rot the way it had been in the tunnels.

The nearest balloon pops into a splatter of blood like an overripe tic. Then the next, and the next. It’s like the beat of approaching footsteps.

Max closes her eyes and thinks. She thinks of El and ice cream sweet on her tongue and laughs that bubbled out of her unbidden, traded back and forth between them. She thinks of a summer golden before it all went wrong.

“You think I don’t see what you’re doing?” Vecna says,

“Is Mike a good kisser?” Max asks El and they laugh because there is nothing worse in the world to worry about then.

“You think you can trick me? You think I don’t see everything?” Vecna says, “You think your friends can stop me?”

Max sees a car wreck. She sees Steve fighting and Eddie being eaten alive and Dustin screaming. She sees vines choking the life out of Robin and Nancy and she doesn’t know if it's real. She doesn’t know if any of it is real. If Vecna is lying to her like he has before or if he doesn’t need to lie now because the truth is worse. They’ve lost this fight before. They’ve lost this fight before a lot of times and–

She opens her eyes and searches for him. Searches for something she can fight.

“It’s time, Max,” He intones directly fucking behind her because obviously.

She tries to brace herself, but it’s like bracing for a train to hit you. It doesn’t do a goddamn thing.

-

Lucas doesn’t like violence really. He’ll immolate some Upside Down monsters any day of the week, but he doesn’t like it so much when it’s people. His parents raised him right and it reminds him of Troy. He’ll do what he needs to do, but he doesn’t like it, he’ll try and avoid it if he can.

According to Steve Lucas avoids it best he can most loops and it doesn’t really get him anywhere. Jason is beyond talking now. If there’s a combination of words to get him to back down a dozen Lucas’s before him haven’t found it and Max is right there. Max is right there and a dozen Jason Carver’s have destroyed the only thing that can save her.

He’s past talking.

Jason says, “Is this what you did to Chrissy?” with his hand behind Max’s back about to touch, and Lucas lunges.

The gun is on the left side, Steve has told him.

They go rolling across the floor away from Max, away from the walkman. Their faces smash together and Lucas feels a starburst of pain and tastes blood. He snatches the gun from Jason’s pocket and throws.

“I knew it,” Jason hisses, and throws Lucas viciously off of him, “I knew I never should have taken a chance on you, Sinclair,”

Jason stands and Lucas scrambles to follow. Jason is weak in the left knee. Lucas has a knife strapped to his thigh that he desperately does not want to use.

Jason is faster. He swings, one, two, three times he smashes Lucas’s face in, then whips him over a crate to the floor. Towards the gun. Towards the walkman. Lucas can’t let him have either.

He kicks the crate into Jason’s shins. Jason falls and crushes him into the floor. They grapple and roll. Lucas kicks out fruitlessly. He’s winded by a blow to the stomach, blind and clawing and swinging.

Jason is better at fighting, but Lucas has been bullied since grade school. He’s far better at taking a hit. He snaps out a foot and nails Jason’s bad knee. Jason cries out and falls back a moment. He stumbles up and away and Lucas’s moment of relief, of victory is crushed as surely as the walkman under Jason’s retreating heel.

“No,” Lucas whispers, “No!”

And Jason just snarls, with no fucking idea of what he’s done and charges.

-

Max slams headlong into the cinder block wall of the middle school gym. She hears a whiny gasp from far away as every scrap of air is blown from her lungs.

Her limbs are splayed and pulled and pinned like a bug on a board, like a doll carelessly played with.

“You are brave Maxine,” Vecna says, and stalks closer.

Max grasps vainly for a happy memory, but they slip through her fingers like sand. The fear she feels now is so enormous it’s impossible to remember ever feeling anything else.

“Much braver than your brother,” Vecna says, close enough that his breath wafts over her face. She can’t turn from it. She can’t run. It smells just like the tunnels did.

“But in the end,” He says, “You are weak, and fragile,” Max wants to move. Wants to pull away, but she is pinned so thoroughly all she can do is twitch like a rabbit in a trap, “And you will break,” She wants to look away, but she’s too scared to close her eyes. All she’s ever been is afraid and all she’ll ever be is afraid. Until Vecna makes her disappear.

“Just like him,” And he raises a clawed hand and Max’s eyes raise with it, until they’re rolled back and all white.

-

Vecna’s eyes roll to a stop under his lids and he takes a deep slow breath.

“That just can’t be good,” Robin whispers.

-

Eleven finds Max. She finds Max and Henry and she does not need to think of an angry memory, because there is nothing angrier than this. There is nothing angrier than Max pinned to a wall being hurt.

She reaches her hand out and pulls .

-

Max is breathing.

Max is on the ground.

She can see.

She can see.

She’s on the ground. The polished wood floor of the gym. She can breathe. She raises her heavy, aching head and looks.

El, her best friend in the whole world, is holding Vecna up like she’s fucking Darth Vader and she’s choking the life out of him.

“You,” Vecna hisses.

“Hi,” El replies and slams Vecna through the wood bleachers.

-

“Turn right!” Dustin screeches, “Right! I said right Goddamnit!”

“No one likes a backseat driver!” Steve yells back taking the truck in a tight doughnut that leaves Eddie sick to his stomach.

Steve clicks the windshield wipers to a higher setting to clear the bat guts as they slam forward into the storm once more.

Eddie is knocked out of the strains of Crazy Train when a bat finally manages to wriggle its way through the chainlink and immediately latches hard into the juncture between Eddie’s neck and shoulder.

“Fuck!” he screams flailing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He pinches the bat just behind the jaw like you’re supposed to do with snakes and rips it free to a river of hot agony. Another immediately latches to his side as two more crawl through the gap.

“Fuck!”

One of the back tires pops and the truck fishtails, shaking Eddie and his bat friends around like a handful of d6s. Steve quickly wrestles back control.

“Ughghh,” Eddie groans,

“If you had just turned right–”

“Shut the hell up and help Eddie! Christ!”

Dustin slams the back window open and wriggles through in a way that simply would not be possible if he had the usual amount of bones.

He stands unsteadily in the shaking bed of the truck and stamps desperately at the bat latched on to Eddie’s side, like he’s playing a particularly high stakes game of Just Dance.

He only clips Eddie’s ribs a little which seems like a win overall.

While Dustin is doing that however two more bats lash out with their tails. One wraps around his ankle and the other his throat. Eddie is immediately overcome by the bone deep panic of suffocation. He thrashes and claws at the tail around his neck. Then he hears Dustin scream

“Munson!” Harrington shouts furiously from the driver's seat and Eddie fucking agrees. He drops the tail around his neck and flails for Dustin desperately.

He can’t see, but feels a handful of leathery wing and immediately crumples it in his grip and tears.

Dustin pops up gasping and Eddie is flooded momentarily with relief. Before he remembers he’s being strangled to death. He reaches for the tail again, but his grip is weak and impotent by now. He sees more bats squeezing in through the opening out of the corner of his eye. Clinging to the chainlink as the truck passes and lining up to crawl through. His vision is starting to go gray at the corners. So much for living through this one.

Eddie’s just cobbling together some noble apology for Steve when Dustin whips an aerosol can and a lighter from his pocket,

“Farrah Fawcett, motherfucker!” he screams, and an enormous gout of flame shoots forward from the canister.

-

“Max!” El cries, running to her, “Are you alright,”

“Better now that you’re here,” Max smiles as El helps her to her feet. It’s a cliche line, but also it’s so true. Not even in the psychic superhero way. It’s just good to have El here.

El smiles back and all is well for just a moment in this vision from hell.

Then Vecna crawls his way out of the hole El put him in and El turns away, jaw set like a warrior to battle.

“Stay back,” She whispers to Max, and sure Max will take that under advisement, then El turns to Vecna,

“If you touch her again, I will kill you. Again,”

-

Vecna’s chest jerks in its steady pattern. His fingers twitch. His brow furrows.

El’s arrived.

Nancy watches him strain and feels a smile curl her lips, and just for a little longer she waits.

-

“Is that what you did?” Henry asks, “Did you kill me?”

El looks at his burned face, remembers it kind in the rainbow room. Yes, Eleven thinks, that is what I did.

“I am so glad you’re here, Eleven. This is going to be beautiful,” Henry says and wood shards rise behind him like a wave of arrow waiting to fall, “So beautiful. And it’s all thanks to you,”

The arrows fall. Eleven bats them away, but Henry is already on her, whipping her across the room. She’s so much stronger now, but so is he. She hits a table, a wall, the floor, and doesn’t stop falling, sliding, hurting.

For a moment she is not strong at all. For a moment she is curled on the floor and she is small and weak and the others are going to hurt her again. Henry is stepping forward. Henry–One is going to hurt her.

Then Max is there, shouting, swinging a folding chair into One’s back.

He blows her back and away, but not before he is made to stumble.

He is just a person. Just a person just like her and she is strong now.

She tips to her feet and pushes, just like he does. For a moment it is just like the test with the pushing and the circles they can’t leave. They lean their force against each other, just that, just raw power. They both skid backwards, Eleven’s bare feet slipping on the wood floor, like two magnets repelled from each other.

Eleven slips further. Blood comes in rivers from her nostrils, soaking her mouth, rinsing her in copper. Her toes curl, try to grip the floor. She slips another inch.

Then there is a warm back against hers. Max pressed against her, feet planted, helping her push.

Papa is gone. This is not a test. She is not small. She has friends now.

She brings a second hand up, and screams, and pushes .

The gym explodes outwards.

-

The Walkman is broken.

Lucas stumbles to his feet and steps toward it. That can’t be right. He can’t have done that. He can’t have failed like that after Steve already warned him, that’s–that’s–

His head snaps backwards. All the air rushes out of his lungs. He’s being hit. Jason is hitting him.

He needs to fight back. He needs– He can still–

He fists a hand in Jason’s jacket and tries to grapple him backwards. He kicks for Jason’s knee again and Jason flinches back. Lucas tanks a hit to the face. He grasps the handle of his knife with his free hand.

Glass shatters over his head.

He stumbles. Back and back and back, tipping dizzily until he hits the wall of the attic. Jason’s hands find his throat. Jason’s eyes flash, his face is red, he panting and frothing at the mouth. He’s so far gone.

His hands tighten. Lucas thinks nonsensically that they should cut Steve more slack for losing that fight against Billy. His head is spinning. His vision flashing and tilting like a kaleidoscope.

His grip isn’t strong enough to break Jason’s. He’s running out of air. He’s running out of seconds to act.

Max is lifting off the ground behind Jason. Her legs unfolding as she raises up. She’s dying.

Fight smarter not harder.

Lucas snatches his knife from its sheath, and stabs it upwards through Jason’s bicep.

Jason gasps, stumbles backwards a step, looks at his arm like he just can’t believe it. Lucas drops to the ground gasping, knife in hand. Blood gushes from Jason’s wound, washing his letterman jacket in red.

“You little shit,” Jason hisses, “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you,”

Max is floating. She’s floating. Max. Max Max Max–

There’s a banging sound. Lucas can’t tell if it’s real or just the ringing in his ears. Jason’s foot rears back. Lucas get’s one knee under himself.

Erica leaps onto Jason’s back, wraps one arm around his neck, and sprays him straight in the eyes with mace.

“Get the fuck,” Erica screams in his ear, “away from my brother!”

-

The gym is gone. They’re in the Creel house.

Max feels the wet swampy blood of the place soak through her clothes. She slits her eyes open. El is with her. El is still with her. The blood on her face looks almost black in the light of this place. She’s limp. Her eyes are closed.

Max flips haltingly onto her front and shoves an elbow underneath her. Her head aches like it’s about to pop. It’s such bullshit that she can get concussed in her own psychic vision. She tries to get a knee under her, but her limbs are like cooked spaghetti. She can’t make them work like she wants to.

Crawling it is. She needs to make sure El is okay.

Then Vecna is there. She doesn’t see him or hear him, but she knows. She knows by the fear that grips her in that ancient animal part of her brain.

Vines lash out and drag . Pulling her towards another pillar. Like Chrissy and Fred and Patrick. She’s frozen. Frozen and stupid and useless. Her muscles are slack and worthless, resisting her every command. They’re going to pin her there. She’s going to break apart. Vecna is going to hurt her. He’s going to put his hands inside her head and feast on her like a vulture. She doesn’t– She doesn’t–

She wants to live .

“El!” She screams, turns her head frantically. El is being dragged too, vines around her wrists and ankles as her brow furrows and she struggles for consciousness, “El!”

Her limbs obey her. She thrashes and struggles and bites.

“El!” She snatches a ridge of rock as she dragged and holds the fuck on, “Let go of her, you scrotum-faced fuck!”

Her nails are breaking, her shoulder straining. She’s so goddamn weak .

“Max,” El slurs.

“El! El !” Max screams. Her grip is slick with blood, her fingers going numb.

She slips and slams back into the pillar, “ Max !” she hears, and then nothing.

-

Jason shouts and stumbles back. He claws at his weeping eyes as Erica continues to cling and spray.

“Get your,” Erica grunts as Jason slams her back into a wall, “Stupid girlfriend, idiot!”

Lucas stares up stunned,

“Go!” Erica snaps, “I’ve got this jackass,”

Lucas jolts forward, scrambling on hands and knees. The knife clatters forgotten from numb fingers. Max.

He runs until he can get his hands around her ankles.

“Max,” he whispers, pleads, sobs. It won’t work. She can’t hear him. He already failed. He didn’t protect the walkman. She can’t hear him. He can’t do anything.

Her arm bends. Strains in the joint until her forearm finally gives. Snaps with a sick sound that Lucas can’t bear.

“Max!”

-

El is pinned in place against the door to the Creel house, wrists, ankles and throat. She feels weak. She feels like when Papa made her try and try and try until she was worn paper thin. She looks at Max.

Her back is arching, her eyes are rolling. Henry is hurting her. He’s hurting her.

“El,” She hears, “El can you hear me?”

“Mike,” she whispers.

“I don’t know if you can hear this, but… but if you can I want you to know I’m here. I’m here okay? And…and I love you,”

Mike. Mike.

“I love you. El, do you hear me? I love you. I’m sorry I don’t say it more. It’s not because I’m scared of you. It’s not. I’ve never felt that way. Never ,”

Mike .

“It’s because I’m scared of losing you. I’m scared that someday you’ll realize that you don’t need me, and if I said it that would make it hurt more. But that’s stupid. Because I love you, and I’m never gonna stop loving you. No matter what. No matter if you lose your powers again, or bash another girl’s nose in with a skate. You can do anything, El. Anything ,”

-

One of Max’s legs is straining under his grip.

He needs to do something. He needs to do something. He needs to save Max.

He–

“It doesn’t hurt me,” Lucas hiccups, “Yeah, yeah, oh,”

His voice is trembling, weak, but he knows this song better than he’s ever known anything. Knew it even before all of this, because he knew that Max loved it. Listened to it when she wouldn’t talk to him just to feel her.

“Do you wanna feel how it feels? Yeah, yeah, oh,” he gasps, holds steady, “Do you wanna know, know that it doesn’t hurt me? Yeah, yeah, oh,”

There’s a wet pop from Max’s knee and he sings louder so he doesn’t have to hear it,

“Do you wanna hear about the deal I’m making? Yeah, yeah, oh,” 

Please , he thinks, please Max .

“You. It’s you and me!”

-

Max is gasping, hurting, dying, and El can’t move. She can’t move.

“You can beat him!” Mike screams to her, “You can do it!”

She forces it, feels the blood start to dribble again, the vines slowly unwind.

“You just have to fight!”

-

Lucas sings. He sings and he looks at Max and he tries to make it good. Tries to make her hear him. Focuses everything in him on her, like a compass towards north, like iron to a magnet, like gravity, like a thousand other things that are just the laws of the universe. He focuses on Max like the immutable truth of it can draw her back to him.

He sings and ignores the sounds of Erica fighting with Jason, ignores everything that isn’t Max.

Max.

Max.

Max .

“You don’t wanna hurt me,” he sings.

-

Vine’s come and come and come. They choke and grapple her as she struggles to break through.

“Fight!” Mike screams and she tries.

-

Lucas…

Lucas…

 

Lucas.

 

It’s you and me.

 

Lucas.

 

It’s you and me, won’t be unhappy.

 

LUCAS.

Max’s eyes snap open in hell.

She rears up and snaps her jaws closed on one of Vecna’s disgusting fingers.

-

There’s one moment, just one moment of shock.

El blows all the vines away.

-

“ Oh come on, baby,

Oh come on, darling,

Let me steal this moment from you now ,”

-

Vecna rips his hand away, leaving the taste of rot on Max’s tongue.

El screams from outside her sight.

“You,” Max pants, and grins, all teeth, “Are so fucked,”

And Vecna drops her.

-

A few miles away a few hundred bats drop to the ground dead right on time, and Steve Harrington wheels the truck around.

-

“ Fight !”

-

El slams Vecna away from Max. Crushes him into the pillar across from her.

-

“ Oh come on angel,

Come on, come on, darling ,”

-

“What,” El hisses, curling her outstretched hand into a fist, “did I say,” Vecna strains against her and she slams him back, “about touching her?”

Vecna shouts. El jerks her head sharply to the side and for the first, but not the last time that night, Henry Creel dies.

-

Max falls into Lucas’s arms.

“Light him up!” Erica screams into the walkie.

-

Vecna gasps awake to a molotov cocktail already in the air.

It bursts across him in an inferno.

Vecna goes up like gasoline.

“Yes!” Robin yelps, shielding her eyes, “I hit him,” her fingers already scrambling for the next one.

Vecna is screaming. All his vines burned away, his feet back on the ground.

“Finally,” Nancy whispers, her finger on the trigger, hands steady.

She’s been waiting three years for this.

She takes her first shot as Vecna steps toward them. She takes the recoil in her shoulder and doesn’t falter. Her second shot as he’s still stumbling. Her third, her fourth. He bursts aflame anew as Robin throws her second cocktail.

Her fifth. Shells clatter around her. She steps forward as he retreats. Her sixth shot, her seventh.

He’s screaming.

He’s screaming .

He finds his feet and steps forward, howls, starts to raise his hands, but Nancy isn’t scared at all.

She fires again. Forces him back. Forces all her nightmares back.

She forces him back straight out the goddamn window.

-

“Lucas,” Max says and her eyes are weeping blood, “you…” she shudders in his grip, screwing her face up in pain.

“Max!” Lucas grabs her good hand, “What is it?"

“You kind of,” she wheezes, “you kind of suck at singing,”

And Lucas laughs. He laugh and laughs and cries and curls over Max and fucking holds her.

-

“Steve, where are we going?” Dustin screeches as they barrel over bat carcasses and between trailers.

“Seconded,” Eddie groans from the floor, “I could really use a hospital, so like if you could put whatever alternate dimension errands you have on hold I would really appreciate it,”

Steve glances back at Eddie, mad-eyed.

“You’ll live,” he pronounces and crushes the gas pedal to the floor.

-

“We need to check,” Nancy pants, “If he’s really dead,”

“Yeah,” Robin stutters, “Yeah for sure,”

Nancy nods and turns and Robin follows.

-

“Steve!” Dustin shrieks, as the truck dodges full speed over roots, and between trees, and again louder, as the side mirror snaps off “Steve!”

Steve doesn’t answer, just drives, jaw tight, frantic eyes forwards.

“Fuck,” Eddie groans from the back, his injured body jostled harshly by the uneven ground.

“Steve-” Dustin starts to protest again.

Then the truck slams headlong into a fleeing, smoldering Vecna.

-

Robin and Nancy race to the end of the burning trail Vecna left to find him pinned under the truck with Steve turning him to mince meat with his ax. Steve’s breathing like a racehorse, wild-eyed, and splattered with gore.

Nancy sighs in relief at the sight.

“Steve, I-uhh I think you got him,” Dustin says tentatively, stepping out of the truck, and Steve doesn’t stop.

Robin can still read him, can always read him. He’s scared. He’s feral and covered in blood and he is fucking scared .

“Steve,” she says strong, and steps forward and wraps a hand around his wrist “take me home,”

Scared Steve likes to help. Scared Steve likes to take care of people and make sure they’re alright.

Steve blinks, blinks again, shudders, looks at her hand on his wrist, breathes out long and slow.

“It’s done,” Robin says, tucking herself closer, “We won. Let’s go home,”

“Yeah,” Steve gasps, and unhooks his fingers from the ax one at a time, holds her crushingly close, “Yeah, I’m tired. Let’s go home,”

Chapter 2: And Back Again

Summary:

The party finally takes a short rest after the last few days

They agree to split up, which kind of makes Steve feel like he’s going to die, but what doesn’t these days?

They drive back to the trailer, while a very concussed Eddie clumsily warbles out We Are the Champions to a chorus of tuneless singing along, and hysterical, relieved laughter. They haul themselves back through the portal out of the Upside-down at which point it becomes extremely clear that Steve and Eddie require a hospital ASAP. Nancy volunteers to go pick up Max and the Sinclairs so they don’t have to wait to which Steve throws–he can admit in retrospect–a tantrum of epic proportions that ends spectacularly with him falling to the ground and not being able to get back up.

Steve is exhausted. He’s– He’s– He bites his cheek until his mouth floods with copper. He’s not gonna cry. He’s not going to fucking cry in front of Nancy after screaming at her, sitting on the gravel outside of Eddie’s trailer because he’s being told no.

He needs to see Max. He needs to see Max and Lucas and Erica, because he remembers what they look like dead. He remembers Max smashed to pieces and weeping. He remembers Lucas with a wet hole in his head. He remembers Erica–Erica–

He turns his head and gags. Nothing comes up but a mouthful of blood and a string of bile. His eyes sting as the motion tears at the wounds on his side.

“We can’t,” Steve begs now where he had screamed it before, “We can’t split up I–I–”

And then Robin is there. She is holding him together, not caring for once about his disgusting, vomit mouth pressed to her shoulder.

“I’ll get them, okay?” she presses into his hair, “I’ll get them. I’ll get them for you,” And it is the only thing anyone could have said to convince him. Nancy is capable and whip smart, but Robin is him. Robin is the closest Steve will ever get to being two places at once. Robin is the only person in the whole world he could trust with those kids right now, when he is out of his fucking mind with worry.

“I love you,” Steve says nonsensically, but Robin understands. She always understands. She squeezes him tighter,

“Ask them to give you a rabies shot at the hospital,” She says, “I am not joking,”

So they split up. Steve kisses Robin’s head and presses his palm to the pulse in Nancy’s wrist, and grapples Dustin into his arms, and then he makes himself let go of them.

Eddie and Steve ‘borrow’ Eddie’s uncle’s truck and Nancy and the rest take the Winnebago. Steve drives them to the hospital and wrestles them both out of the truck and through the doors, Eddie’s arm slung over his shoulder to steady them both. The woman at the desk jumps out of her chair, with her hand slapped over her mouth.

It is about this time that Steve remembers Eddie is a wanted murderer. The woman picks up her phone and shouts for security.

“Fuck,” Steve whispers, through ten inches of TV static, then he faints dead away.

-

Dustin radios on the way to the Creel house.

“We’ve got everything under control,” Erica says seemingly offhand through the walkie, a pause then a scuffle, then Lucas;

“Max needs a hospital,” Lucas says, sounding worried, but still casual enough that Robin doesn’t feel the urge to chew her own cuticles off, “And maybe the cops? I don’t–” more muffled noises then Erica again;

“Max and Lucas need a hospital. And you can call the pigs if you want,” a low groan in the background, “but honestly it’ll keep. Over and out,” and then nothing.

“Ominous,” Robin says, and Dustin and Nancy nod along, trading looks back and forth.

None of that prepared Robin for the tableau that would greet them in the Creel attic.

Max is propped up on a crate, head tipped back over the edge. She has one leg stretched out and one arm cradled to her chest. The blood streaked down her cheeks looks black in the blue light from the lanterns, like she’s wept tar. Her face is slick with sweat and her jaw is tight.

Lucas is bobbing unsteadily around the room seemingly looking for something. His face is beat to hell and back. He kicks aside a bloody knife as he searches.

Erica Sinclair is pointing a gun at Jason Carver’s unmoving body.

“What,” Robin says.

“the hell?” Dustin tacks on.

“Oh hey,” Max answers cheerily, “glad you’re finally here. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug, but I’d really love some morphine.” She lifts her good arm to show the left which is–not good, to say the least.

“Is he dead?” Nancy asks, tipping her head towards Jason, and does not sound very concerned at all.

Robin is very concerned. She is very concerned that this long as fuck night is about to get longer, because they have to hide a body. That they’re all going to have to run from the law and live in the woods and she’s going to have to learn how to skin a rabbit, and Steve is going to languish away in guilt that one of his children was forced to commit murder when he wasn’t there to wipe the blood of their face after, and–

“Nah,” Lucas answers, kicking through some shattered glass, “he just can’t get up,”

On cue Jason Carver slurs something angry and completely unintelligible and tries to stand. He gets about two and a half inches off the ground before his arms give out under him.

“Erica pistol whipped him,” Lucas says, “like really hard? I don’t know, man, it could also be the blood loss from when I stabbed him? Are there any major arteries in the arm?”

“Metal,” Dustin says.

Nancy walks over to Jason and flips him onto his back with the sole of her shoe. His face is burning red, his eyes puffy, his cheeks wet. His letterman jacket is asymmetrical with blood. There are scratches around his eyes like he clawed at them. There is a wide oozing gash at his temple and his pupils are different sizes.

“He’ll live,” Nancy declares.

“I told you,” Erica scoffs at Lucas.

“Whatever,” then more cheerfully; “Ah hah!” Lucas unearths a set of curtains, still on the rod, from the debris around them, “Stretcher,” he says, beaming over at Max.

“Thanks,” Max says, offering a small, genuine smile back. Erica fakes gagging.

“Alright,” Nancy says, clapping her hands together, “Let’s move.”

They move. It takes a lot of maneuvering to get Max onto the curtains without jostling her too bad. Lucas and Nancy mostly cover the leg work while Erica keeps guard over Jason and Dustin and Robin stand back, neither confident enough in their coordination to contribute. Robin mostly just flutters her hands over them and watches, while Dustin contributes meaningless platitudes and unasked for instruction.

Max is leaking tears by the time they’re through, teeth grit, and it makes Robin feel like utter shit. Lucas gathers the fabric by Max’s head into a sort of hammock, and Robin takes the curtain rod. Nancy, god bless her, is practically made of twigs. Hopelessly Robin is the second best muscle they’ve got after Lucas.

“On three,” she says, Lucas nods, “One, two, three!” and they hoist Max up and start the harrowing journey down the stairs.

“We’ll call someone for you when we get to the hospital,” Nancy calls to Jason, keeping pace with her and Lucas, her hands hovering underneath Max to spot her, Dustin across from her doing the same. Erica flips Jason off one last time and follows.

“You got him?” Max asks.

“Yeah,” Nancy says, and the curl of her mouth is about as far from suburban princess as it’s possible to get, “we got him.”

“He was pretty much a goner and then Steve hit him with the truck,” Dustin says.

“And then went totally wild on him with his ax, so like rest in pieces Vecna,” Robin adds.

“Slash Henry,” Lucas chimes.

“Slash One,” Max finishes, and they laugh and curse when it hurts and laugh a little more cause they fucking did it.

They’re not exactly a well oiled machine, but they’re probably about as close as some random high schoolers can get, and Robin thinks that’s probably kind of fucked, but it’s also pretty convenient. They lay Max out across the couch in the back of the Winnebago, Lucas sitting on the floor next to her head. The rest of them find seats and Nancy drives.

“Hey,” Robin says, “You guys did really good out there,” she looks at the kids, “You looked after each other, and I’m really glad you’re all okay.”

She says it because it’s what Steve would say and he’s not here to say it, but she is. She says it because her hands are shaking and her throat is tight and it’s been a really long night and it’s true.

“What are you our basketball coach?” Max says, raising a brow.

“How much time have you been spending around Steve?” Erica adds, “Cause like maybe consider that it’s been too much,”

“Good game,” Lucas says, “Good game out there everybody,” and shuffles around the car handing out high fives. Max, Erica, Dustin and even Nancy accept with a smile.

“Oh yeah,” Robin says, “fucking yuck it up,” she slaps Lucas’s hand when it’s offered to her, “that’s the last time I ever try and babysit you gremlins,” but she can’t help that she’s laughing. That they’re all laughing on the way to the hospital.

-

Steve is a big guy. Former jock, current monster slayer, he's deliciously muscled, with a healthy layer of fat on top, rectangular in the best possible way. Eddie could go on. The word big only applies to Eddie in two ways; his hair, and his doe eyes. His reflexes and coordination also leave almost everything to be desired. That was without even bringing his rattled skull and gnawed on body into it–

Suffice to say that when Steve suddenly faints next to him in the hospital lobby he tries his best, but who can really fault him for failing?

They hit the floor fast and they hit it hard. Eddie’s scrambled head cracking against the tile. He should be given a medal of valor for turning his head away from Steve’s unconscious face in time when the gut punch of nausea hits him.

Puking is maybe the most painful experience of his life. It rips through every one of his many bat bites and rocks his tender head against the floor. The pain and smell of it culminate in a horrific feedback loop of unending gagging that lasts all the way up until security arrives.

“I’m innocent,” Eddie slurs, and apparently his doe eyes are much less effective when the pupils are different sizes or something, because nobody pays a lick of attention to that.

They take Steve. They pull him out of Eddie’s arms like it’s nothing–like–like– 

“Stop,” he rasps and means to say more, but his head is full of buzzing. He feels–he feels-he doesn’t know. Fucking insane maybe.

He reaches out a hand to the nurses as they pull Steve away, palm up, entreating. It’s maybe kind of poetic; a hand reaching out in desperation to a comrade that was once an enemy. Two returning heroes separated in what was meant to be their hour of victory–

Or maybe he’s just a kid who failed senior year twice lying on the linoleum floor in a hospital next to a puddle of his own puke.

He tries to find words to convince these faceless people not to separate them, not to take Steve away. He tries to find words but all he can think is; I’m cold. Please don’t take him, I’m cold.

But the words catch in his syrupy throat and before he can free them he’s being rolled onto his side.

The world spins out like paint down the drain.

-

Time is kind of slippery for Max after she gets in the camper. Which is a bit scary to be honest. Max is used to vigilance. The kind she needed every moment of every day when she lived with Neil and Billy. The kind she needed after she figured out monsters are real.

Awareness had slipped off her like water off a duck's back often after Billy but that wasn’t–that was because–

It’s different now.

She remembers the moment of desperate fear in the vision of the Creel House. I want to live. The thought had hit her like a kick to the chest and clung. She wants to live now. So she shouldn’t let her awareness slip through her fingers like this. It should scare her, but it just–doesn’t. Because even as she closes her eyes and loses time she can still hear her friends, see them still there when she blinks them open again. Max is safe. She’s safe.

“Shit–”

“--we’re not wanted by the cops right?”

“Except Erica slashed–”

“Goddamn Steve and Eddie, obviously they would–”

“--really blame them? Eddie’s wanted for murder can’t really avoid–”

“--Winnebago is stolen, fuck–”

“--park around the corner and–”

Max drifts off for a little while.

She floats back up a little bit when Lucas touches her shoulder.

“We’re here. We’re gonna pick you up now, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she sighs, and they lift her and they don’t mean to but her arm–

Things slip away for a long while then.

-

Nancy Wheeler is frightening.

Obviously she’s a crack shot and a first class monster hunter, but this has nothing to do with that. Nancy, the suburban princess, the owner of a little ballerina music box, the wearer of terrible bras, is terrifying.

“I’m sorry,” she says wiping her eyes, looking up at Callahan with her enormous Bambi eyes, “I’m so sorry we were just so scared.”

“It’s alright” Callahan stutters, hands fluttering around her frantically, “just calm down a moment and–”

“Jason was acting so crazy ,” she whines, “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Please, I really didn’t,” she lies.

“I believe you, Miss,” Callahan says, so far out of his depths that Robin almost feels a bit bad for him, “We understand, everything is fine.”

“Miss Wheeler,” Powell, who has a better head on his shoulders interrupts, “We understand that it’s been a trying evening for you, but we need to know where you’ve been. Your mother was worried sick for you.”

“I–,” she hiccups, “I was just looking for the kids. I’m always so worried about them ever since what happened to Will–” she breaks off with a sob.

“We had the kids well in hand before they ran off–”

“I know, I know,” she says, hands folded delicately in front of her mouth, “I’m sorry we all caused so much trouble for you. I can’t believe those kids were able to get away from you like that. I mean two trained officers. They’re such a handful,”

Powell looks like he’s bitten a lemon. Robin bites the inside of her cheek, hard . It brings tears to her eyes which hopefully adds to their credibility as the officers glance back at her.

Nancy dabs her eyes with the end of one sleeve. “I just can’t believe Jason would do this. To attack kids like that. Even little Erica. She was so frightened, you know? She’s only eleven,” Nancy’s chest hitches. Someone give the woman an oscar. “He just didn’t seem like himself at all.” she pauses for dramatic effect then gives a little gasp, “You don’t think–Oh no I shouldn’t even say it.” She puts her hands over her eyes.

“Say what Miss Wheeler?” Callahan says.

“You don’t think,” she whispers, “You don’t think Jason could have been the one to k-kill those people do you?”

Callahan’s jaw drops.

“He knew Chrissy and Patrick, and he was never nice to Fred. And what he did to Max,” Nancy closes her eyes for a moment, “I just don’t know.”

“Miss Wheeler, that’s a very serious–” Powell tries to interject, but Nancy cuts him off right at the pass, by dissolving into histrionics.

“Miss–” Callahan tries, hand hovering over Nancy’s shoulder, but she just sobs harder.

Robin takes her cue and darts forward, wrapping Nancy in her arms and glaring at the officers at every attempt to continue with questioning.

“I understand,” Powell eventually sighs, “Take a moment to calm down, we’ll talk again later,” and they both turn and walk away.

“Holy shit! ” Robin whisper-shouts, pulling back to look Nancy in the face. She gives a wane smile pulling back.

“There’s only one thing cops love more than a little golden boy like Jason,” Nancy sneers, scraping the running makeup from her cheeks, “and that’s a crying white girl."

“No kidding,” Robin laughs, “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

Nancy smiles at her, “How else was I supposed to convince our mom that all our fights were Mike’s fault? Now come on, I have some calls to make.”

-

Max needs surgery for her left arm, which was broken in four places. She’ll be fine. The nurses won’t tell Lucas anymore than that no matter how much he tears up and hiccups in their direction, which was not actually a tactic that Lucas had employed on purpose, despite Dustin congratulating him on it. It just became really, really hard to control his emotions when he kind of felt like his brain had turned into pudding.

Max was going to be fine.

Lucas had decided to move on to crying about other important things. Like Erica.

“Erica,” He whines, reaching a hand out towards her imploringly.

“No way,” She snaps, pulling her injured wrist to her chest protectively.

“Dude,” Dustin chimes in, “You’ve kissed it better like five times already. I think it’s fine.”

“You don’t understand,” Lucas says, because Dustin doesn’t. He doesn’t have a little sister. He didn’t see Erica when she was a baby . He didn’t see how little she was. Dustin is the little one to Steve. He doesn’t get how it is to be the bigger sibling, “You’re too little to get it,”

“What the hell?” Dustin scowls, “You are not that much taller than me, dude!”

“Calm down everyone,” The doctor intones gently, still working on stitching and treating all the cuts getting a vase smashed over your head gets you. She’d numbed his scalp so it didn’t even really hurt, which was very cool.

Dustin huffs and subsides. Him and Erica aren’t technically allowed to be with Lucas for this, but Lucas had kind of cried like a lot when the nurses and doctors had tried to separate them so that ended up being that.

“Erica,” Lucas says again with his hand out, because Dustin doesn’t get it. He may have fought Russian’s with Erica, but he wasn’t there when she learned how to ride a bike. He wasn’t there when she skinned her little knees and their Dad kissed it better for her. Dustin can riff with her, but he doesn’t get that their parents aren’t here yet and Erica had only fought it a little bit when he kissed it better the first time, and still hasn’t even threatened him with what she found under his bed.

Erica sighs like the most put upon person in the whole world and proffers her wrist again.

-

Steve wakes up lying down which is weird. Steve can’t really remember the last time he was lying down for longer than it took him to get back to his feet. It’s not like he’s slept in the last two months, or however you’re supposed to measure time in time loops.

He feels like utter shit.

Every inch of him aches, the kind of deep ache of muscles worked until they tear. The kind of deep ache of being eaten alive by bats, and strangled by evil vines, and shot in the head by psychopathic prom kings, and–he could go on. Mostly he’s just really sore. The kind of sore that tells him he’s going to have trouble even making a fist. He starts groaning before he even realizes it, and then just keeps going because he deserves it.

“You finally awake over there, sleeping beauty?”

Eddie.

He smells antiseptic. It’s familiar to him after three years of this shit. The hospital. The hospital and Eddie is there and he’s alive. Steve’s heart starts pounding, the shrill beeping of a heart monitor keeping time.

The memories of everything are so tangled, the same day lived again and again until he can barely tell the fucking days apart–

He thinks he did it. He thinks he did it, and if he opens his eyes and that’s not true– If he opens his eyes and Vecna is there to take it all away again–

He curls his hands into fists and feels the ache in his forearms crawl up his arms like liquid fire. Steve knows that you can’t feel pain in dreams, but that doesn’t make this real.

He could feel pain when Vecna had him too.

“--eve? Hey man! Steve!” Eddie.

Eddie.

He knows what the inside of him feels like. He knows what his blood tastes like. He knows the slick copper feel of Eddie’s lips on his when they’re all dying. He has screamed himself hoarse for this man.

Steve doesn’t want to know. Steve can’t take knowing anymore. He just fucking can’t .

“Steve?” Eddie asks, and Steve can’t open his eyes. If he opens his eyes and it’s not real he doesn’t know if he can survive it. Doesn’t know if he can make himself get up and keep trying.

“Steve?” Eddie says again, his voice higher, thready, pleading.

Steve opens his eyes and looks.

Eddie is alive.

Eddie is alive.

Eddie is alive and the sun is rising behind him lighting up his hair through the window. Eddie is wane in a hospital bed and made ten times smaller by the loss of his rings, and jacket, and vest.

Eddie is alive and the sun is rising behind him. The sun is rising instead of rewinding and rewinding and rewinding and hanging like a guillotine above Steve’s head in the evening sky. It is moving forward. It is moving forward .

Steve’s face is wet before he even realizes it. It takes more than a moment to understand it isn’t blood. It takes more than a second to understand the tightness of his throat and the pressure in his chest is more than suffocation. It hurts so fucking bad to cry.

It hurts a lot less than anything has in a long time.

The sun is rising.

Eddie is not dead.

He has finally, finally done it right.

Steve comes down like a house of cards

-

Eddie isn’t having the worst time of his life. That honor clearly goes to literally every second of the last few days. Watching Chrissy die if he’s feeling noble. Getting savaged by bats in the back of a pick up in literal hell if he wants to be a little more forthright.

Still.

Still .

Eddie is getting fucking whiplash from the things Steve Harrington is putting him through. First he’s a hot unobtainable douchebag that Eddie loved to hate. Then he’s somehow, infuriatingly, the idol of all his new crop of sheep. Then he turns out to be a monster-fighting-genuinely-good-guy-hotter-than-the-fucking-sun-bat-eating-badass, equally as unobtainable as his douchebag King Steve self, but for the opposite reasons.

Now he’s crying his fucking eyes out on the hospital bed next to Eddie.

“It’s tomorrow,” Steve gasps, “It’s tomorrow. It’s tomorrow. I-t’s tom-o-orrow.”

Eddie’s gonna fucking cry from this shit.

“Fuck,” Steve chokes, halfway between a sob and a laugh, “Fuck. I did it. You’re alive. You’re alive. We’re all alive.”

The tears spill over Eddie’s lash line. He’s crying. He’s fucking crying over Steve Harrington and he’s man enough to admit it. It’s been such a shit few days. He’s earned it. Steve is crying over him. Steve Harrington fucking slayer of monsters is actually crying over him, and it is ugly.

He’s actually kind of pissed about it. The whole ugly cry over Eddie’s still beating heart is kind of making him seem human and attainable and shit and Eddie doesn’t appreciate it. It’s dishonest. Disrespectful even.

Eddie gives a disgusting snotty inhale and then finally tries to make himself useful.

“We’re okay, Stevie,” He says, “The evil is defeated, all the heroes returned triumphantly home, you know etc etc.”

He’s kind of struggling for words a bit, but the situation is more than extenuating.

Still Steve gives a stuttered laugh at his dramatics. Eddie can probably chalk it up to 80% hysteria and adrenaline crash, but a win is a win.

“We’re all okay,” Eddie says again, “We’re all gonna be okay,” And in the light of dawn the first day after Hell he realizes that it’s true.

Notes:

This chapter is only about half the length as the last one but I thought this was a good stopping place and the scenes after this have a bit of a different tone so I decided to cut it off here.

As always lmk what you thought!

Chapter 3: Right Side Up

Summary:

Reunions are had and monsters are put to bed. Also Steve deals with the wonderful world of being queer with moderate success.

Notes:

Steve makes mention of the dangers of being queer in the 80s (up to and including death) in his inner monologue. It's not graphic and nothing happens to any of the characters but be aware.

The rest of the night is pretty choppy in Robin’s memory. She’s sleep deprived and she doesn’t have the adrenaline of fighting an evil wizard or being responsible for children to hold her up by the hair anymore.

First Nancy makes her phone call, which it turns out is a direct line to the feds, because that is apparently a thing that Nancy Wheeler has access to. A phone number that she can just punch into any old payphone and get Uncle Sam on the horn. The benefits of threatening to burn the government to the ground in the court of public opinion Robin supposes.

Robin maybe has a little bit of a hate crush on Nancy. A wicked cross between the sick kick of attraction and hatred she got from watching popular girls in the halls at school and the admiring sort of mooning she’d felt over Ripley after watching Alien. The kind of crush that Robin thinks is born primarily out of self preservation. Erica may have a point; she might really be spending too much time with Steve if she’s starting to crush on his exes. C’est la vie.

Well either way the feds seem to agree with her assessment. They may not know better than to fuck with alternate hell dimensions, but it seems they do know enough not to fuck with Nancy Wheeler. They pick up on the second ring.

“Dr. Owens,” Nancy says into the receiver then a moment of silence, “I’m sorry to hear that.” only it sounds like eat shit and die in a fire when she says it.

More silence. Robin can just make out the sounds of a man talking over the line. He sounds perfectly pleasant, but judging by the staring contest Nancy is having with the wall she doesn’t like what he’s saying.

“No, yes, we cleaned up your mess here again, I appreciate you checking in,” If anyone ever spoke to Robin in that tone of voice she would probably just go and jump in the quarry. Save herself the trouble, “Yes I heard that you were fucking around again, gave El another haircut and everything–” with every word Nancy’s voice just gets sharper. By the time she’s cut off her eye’s are wide, her teeth bared in a snarl.

Nancy is quiet for a moment, “How magnanimous of you!” she spits into the phone, “you fucking felt bad! I’m so happy for you–”

Silence as Nancy curls over the receiver and drums her chipped nails against the phone box.

“Where are they now?” a pause, “Fantastic! Fucking fantastic!” Nancy slams the receiver onto the hook. She grips the phone box like she’s going to rip it out of the wall. She puts her forehead to it and takes a deep breath. It rattles in and out of her chest. She’s dirty and scrawny and they’ve been going non-stop for days. They smell like gas and vodka.

Nancy breathes in deep through her nose and hisses it out between her teeth. Then she picks up the phone and dials again.

It goes like this; the military tried to kill El and co. Sam and his goons snatched them up and stuck El in a vat until her powers came back. (Nancy doesn’t get into the technical process, but Robin has to assume some human rights violations are being glossed over in that explanation somewhere) The military showed up with a helicopter. El kicked ass, a villian from a previous installment that Robin was not privy to died (even though he was already supposed to be dead?) and everyone got out of dodge. Last known word on El was that she was astral projecting from a pizza cooler(?) so that’s fun.

Also Sam will be sending some feds to clean things up and make a cover up for them in Hawkin’s as per usual. So just shut up and don’t break your friends out of police custody because now that the real life boogie man has been killed by a bunch of kids the government is ready to take it from here. It’s not like Robin has ever been brimming with faith in the United States government, for, like, a lot of reasons, but this is really the icing on the cake.

Robin’ll give the feds 24 hours to sort their shit and then after that–well she’s sure busting Steve out of police custody can’t be any harder than escaping from a russian base.

Their parents arrive and coo and fret and yell and they all make their excuses to them and the cops that try and catch them in the lobby as they leave. They’re soooo tired. They’re soooo traumatized. Can’t it wait until tomorrow, pretty please with a cherry on top?

Dustin’s mom caves like a house of cards instantly once she knows her little Dustybun is okay, which Robin will be keeping in her back pocket for blackmail for the foreseeable future. Max puts off the guillotine by being unconscious and Mrs. Wheeler gives in with the gusty sigh of a woman who has been getting stonewalled by her kids for years about other dimensions and government conspiracies.

Robin’s been lying to her parents for way longer than three years about something that’s frankly a lot more near and dear to her heart than evil psychic children, plus her parent’s adore Steve for some god forsaken reason so anything that has to do with him is basically a get out of jail free card.

Which just leaves the cops, but it turns out she shouldn’t have worried about that when the Sinclairs are around.

Lucas is concussed and emotional and Erica is just a kid and the apocalyptic fury that their parents turn on the cops when they even deign to suggest anything about a slashed police tire when the white kids who assaulted their babies are still running around god only knows where buys the rest of them plenty of time to slip out unaccosted.

The apocalypse is over and now all they can do is wait for the adults to decide what’ll happen next.

–

It’s not until Steve wakes up the second time that he realizes he’s cuffed to the bed. Which is honestly just fucking typical.

He comes to consciousness groggy, disoriented and still tired. The same way he’s woken up dozens of times in the last few years from a midday nap, after a sleepless night. It takes him a long few moments to place where he is. He’s been coming to on the steps of a winnebago for so long it makes him dizzy to wake up lying down. His eyes are practically glued shut from gunk, and as he tries to raise his hands to clear them they jolt to a stop only a few inches in. Cuffed.

For a moment he’s struck by russians-under-the-mall terror and then it sputters and gives out. The last however long has been one long smear of trauma, like a VHS that’s been copied over so many times it’s just static. After long enough even terror becomes routine.

His eyes are still puffy from his crying jag, his cheeks sticky with dried tear tracks. He feels like shit.

Like yes everyone is alive and the sun is rising on a new day and a ton of other shit, but honestly fuck all of this. He’s nineteen goddamn years old and he knows what guts feel like. He knows what interdimensional bats taste like. He knows what his own insides look like. He knows what it’s like to kiss the boy lying in the hospital bed next to him, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to do it without blood in his mouth. He’s lived through the goddamn apocalypse over two dozen times without sleeping.

It’s bullshit .

It’s such unbelievable fucking bullshit .

“Apologize,” he orders without looking at Eddie because he's so unbelievably fucking angry.

“For what?” Eddie squawks, presumably flailing in some way to produce all the jingling coming from his own cuffs.

“Dying.”

“Ex cuse me?” Eddie says, high-pitched and incredulous.

Is Steve being fair? No absolutely the fuck not. But he’s died so many goddamned times and so has Eddie and so has everybody else and it just sucked so fucking bad and if Eddie could have just stopped beefing it for five minutes-

“Apologize,” he repeats, staring at the hospital ceiling.

“Screw you,” Eddie says, scandalized, lying in the bed next to him.

“I just want you to say sorry, is that really so much to ask?”

“Uh yeah?” Eddie says, “I didn’t do anything?”

“You died. ” Steve says, “Like two dozen times. In my arms ,”

“ I didn’t do any of that–”

“Fuck off with that, man. Different timeline you is still you–”

“No he isn’t –”

“You have the same bullshit tendencies, if I had let you you would have–” 

“If you had let me? You’re mad because I have the potential to die? You want me to apologize for the crime of being killable?” Eddie heaves himself up one one elbow and turns a squinting, outraged grimace on Steve.

“I want you to apologize for getting killed so many times,” Steve replies, struggling until he’s halfway sitting to grimace back, “ in my arms ,” he emphasizes.

“You want me to apologize for heroically sacrificing myself for the greater good? Is that really what you want, Harrington?”

“Yes.” Steve says and makes a move to cross his arms before remembering the handcuffs, “And I want you to promise not to do it again,”

Eddie stares at him for a few stretching moments, Steve can see him cracking. He recognizes the tight skin around Eddie's eyes, feels a sympathy throbbing in his own head. Eddie sighs gustily.

“I’m sooo sorry for dying while trying to save the world from a powerful interdimensional wizard,” he rolls his eyes, “It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” Steve mutters, snuggling back down into his hospital bed, “I forgive you.”

“You motherfucker –”

–

Max wakes up.

Her eye’s ache and her vision feels blurred, but she can smell the antiseptic and sick scent of the hospital well enough. The thick cotton feeling of painkillers makes itself clear a moment later. Her right arm is in a red cast, and her left leg in a brace.

Her head is empty.

Vecna is gone. He’s gone. She hadn’t realized how much pressure was in her head until it’s gone. Billy is still a raw wound in her chest, but the poison that was keeping it rotting has been flushed.

She looks to the left and sees her mom slumped asleep in the chair beside her bed. She’s still wearing her work uniform, her hand lying limp on the bed to Max’s side like she was holding Max’s hand when she fell asleep.

I want to live , Max thinks tentatively, and finds the thought holds her weight.

–

Eddie isn’t stupid right? Monsters may be real and they may make their home in Hawkins, but that doesn’t mean that Eddie Munson has any chance with Steve Harrington. In fact maybe it means he has less of a chance than before. Like how lightning doesn’t strike twice there’s no way that those two statistical anomalies could both exist in Hawkins. Like, there’s a world where Steve is a closeted jock and he hits Eddie up for some no strings attached sex, because no one would ever believe the freak over the king and it would be safe-ish. And then there’s a world where Steve is a bonafide good guy who fights monsters and wins. There is no intersection of those two realities. No way.

If Dustin were here he’d probably say some condescending shit about how being struck by lightning once doesn’t actually affect your chances of being struck in the future, but there’s a reason Eddie’s repeating senior year a second time and Dustin’s the second coming of Einstein or whatever.

Anyway all of this to say that Eddie is almost certainly putting undue weight on Steve’s outburst, but still . The way Steve’s voice cracked over in my arms – It makes a man hope is all.

Also: Eddie is high. Like very high. So high he finds himself staring at Steve’s face without realizing it, and even more tellingly losing track of their bickering.

Steve looks–bad. Yeah, bad. His eyes are bloodshot and bruised from lack of sleep, and red from crying. His skin is pale and marked with a dozen cosmetic scrapes and bruises. His famed hair is a mat of grease, sweat and unidentifiable monster goop. He looks like shit. Also, his eyelashes are very long.

Eddie has to bite his tongue to keep from sighing–like honest to god sighing–like he’s a lovesick maiden. He’s starting to think he might be a little fucked.

Eddie can feel something stupid bubbling up his throat and in a flash of panic opens his mouth to cut it off with the first thing that comes to mind. What comes out is this; “You wanna play D&D?”

–

If there was a punch card for having to sign NDA’s to cover up government fuck ups the feds would be paying for Dustin’s degree at MIT in a few years from all the points he could redeem. As it stands the only thing he’s gotten out of it so far is carpal tunnel from all the permutations of the same “keep your damn mouth shut or we’ll mail you and your mother to Guantanamo'' they make him sign every year.

Which is a total waste of time anyway since he’s a minor and he can’t actually legally sign contracts. Not that that matters because the government decides what’s legal and it would never go to court in the first place. Dustin would just disappear and they would release another bullshit story about a bear attack about it.

Whatever. Steve may not believe it but Dustin actually is aware of when a point doesn’t need belaboring, or rather when there’s a more important point to be belabored.

“When are Steve and Eddie going to be cleared?”

“I assure you we have agents seeing to the matter as we speak, could you please–”

“What are you going to tell the police? There needs to be a replacement suspect or Eddie will still be in danger.”

“Mr. Henderson, please–”

“I’ll sign the forms when Steve and Eddie are in the clear,” Dustin says and sets his jaw. The agent in front of him narrows her eyes. She is so buttoned up and smoothed down that Dustin can’t really read a thing in her. It’s like looking at the alligators at the zoo, that cold, reptile regard.

Dustin’s not stupid he understands that black bagged by a government goon is just as dead as eaten by interdimensional monsters, but he’s faced one for his friends already and there isn’t any way he’s not willing to face the other. Besides they all agreed the night before, hushed over the walkies. Steve and Eddie for their silence, and friends don’t lie.

–

Steve eventually capitulates to playing D&D. He puts up a good fight but in the end he is literally a captive audience to Eddie’s pontificating and the only way to get a word in edgewise is to submit and start roleplaying. Which leads them to their current predicament.

“The troll raises his massive club to strike you and that’s,” Eddie rolls his d20, which miraculously remained in his pocket from Hellfire through their entire hellish visit to Mordor to find itself on the side table in their hospital room, “a 19!” he crows.

“Stop saying the numbers like they mean anything to me,” Steve groans.

Eddie opens his mouth one finger up to explain and Steve immediately sits bolt upright and points with all the grit and authority of Hawkins most hardened babysitter, “If you try and explain “thack-o” to me one more time, Munson,” he growls air quotes and all, “I swear to Christ I will break my thumb to get out of these cuffs and come over there and smother you.”

“After everything you went through to keep me alive,” Eddie croons and bats his eyelashes.

Steve meets his eyes coldly, grabs his left thumb and–

“No!” Eddie shrieks, “Gross, gross, gross! Stop doing that to your thumb!”

And that’s about when the feds walk in.

–

In the end it goes like this; the Feds release a statement that the real killer was Henry Creel, thought dead, but actually alive and returned to his old stomping grounds. He has since been taken into federal custody for having committed murders across state lines.

Eddie is cleared of all charges and a statement is released about his bravery in the face of extenuating circumstances, when he and Steve Harrington contributed to Henry Creel’s capture, resulting in their grievous injuries. Max and Eddie were both hunted by Henry Creel, please excuse your children’s actions in the face of the imminent danger they and their friends faced, we’re so sorry, but we can’t say anything more on the matter, we’re sure you understand, here’s a number you can call if your ever interested in another serving of bullshit etc etc.

The feds also pay a visit to Jason Carver just to let him know that any weird shit he saw was due to his head trauma and he’s crazy if he thinks any different, and if he goes around telling people things he shouldn’t they might have to institutionalize him. For his own safety obviously. They also graciously agree to serve papers to Jason and Andy on behalf of the Sinclairs who continue to be displeased with the fact that their children were attacked by a deranged mob of jocks.

In the end they all part ways having signed NDAs and received assurances that hospital bills will be paid and trailers replaced, all secretly hoping never to have to see each other again.

–

Robin gets to the hospital first, because–and she hates to fucking say this because it pissed her off so bad when Dustin first said it but–Steve and her are like lovebirds. Not like actually in love, but like the real bird; if you separate them for too long they’re liable to drop dead.

Robin was so fucking alone before Steve. Like she had friends and she had her parents, but no one knew her. When she talked to other people it was like speaking through a wall, like no matter what there was a gulf between them that couldn’t be crossed or maybe it could be, but the only way to do it was on a whisper thin rope bridge and the person on the other side was holding a pair of scissors.

Sitting in that stupid bathroom stall with their knees knocking together, faces red with laughter, was the first time Robin had ever touched another person. It was like–like drinking water for the first time. Like she had lived her entire life in a state of deprivation, suffering, without realizing the cause, without realizing how much it fucking hurt , until it stopped. She had slaked her thirst, drunk greedily of Steve’s intrinsic, instant understanding of her, his companionship, his love, and she could never ever go back.

After that relief from pain returning to it, even temporarily, was unbearable. Robin needs Steve like she needs air.

So: lovebirds.

She drops her bike on the hospital lawn and barely stops to get Steve’s room number from the receptionist before she’s running again. She nearly twists her ankle turning the corner to blow through the doors of his and Eddie’s room.

“Dingus!” she cries, out of breath and beaming.

“Buckley!” He replies, lighting up like a Christmas tree.

And there he is. Alive and whole despite having been out of her sight, despite having gone through the apocalypse without her, or without this her at least. She bounds across the room and throws herself on top of him.

He wrestles her into his arms, half kissing her hair, half giving her a noogie. She gets a mouthful of his shoulder and bites down. He yelps but he’s also laughing and so is she. Like a feedback loop that doesn’t stop. Like those Russian drugs paved a road in their brains that they can access any time with sufficient adrenaline. He’s feeling her up but not in a gross way, in a way where he’s checking her for blood and injury. She kneels up in his lap, their arms still looped together to get a good look at him.

“Steve!” she repeats, giddy.

“Robin!” he echoes, matching her.

They watch each other quietly for a few moments, cataloging any changes that might’ve happened during their, admittedly brief, separation.

“We haven’t been to work in a week,” she says, wobbly.

“We’re so fired,” Steve agrees and then they’re laughing again. Robin tips, jelly limbed into Steve, supporting her red face in the crook of his neck and Steve follows suit. Robin keeps her palm to Steve’s thudding pulse and she laughs.

–

Lucas gets to the hospital next, and beelines straight for Max’s room, his mom trailing behind indulgently. His brain still feels like an overinflated balloon but the first sight of Max has him beaming.

Her hair is a curtain of fire over the drab hospital sheets. Her arm is in a cast and her injured leg elevated on the bed, her skin sickly pale, her freckles exaggerated by the contrast. Her face opens up when she sees him like it hasn’t in months.

She lifts her arms from the bed in invitation and Lucas goes. He wriggles his arms under her shoulders to feel her weight in his hold, feels hers hook over his shoulders and hold tight.

“Max,” he says and it is everything; her alive and breathing and letting herself be held, holding him back.

“Lucas,” She replies and their cheeks are pressed together and he can feel tears on his skin, but doesn’t know which of them is crying, doesn’t care.

Lucas has been through this circus too many times to think that this is the end of it. Maybe– maybe it’s the end of the Upside Down finally, but that doesn’t mean it’s over for them. Doesn’t mean they’re done with the nightmares or the anger or any of the other aftershocks. But Max is in his arms and all of their friends are racing to the hospital and it’s going to be okay.

It’s going to be okay.

–

They spend the next few hours making life a living hell for the hospital staff in a variety of ways. After going toe to toe with a hell dimension and cowing the federal government it’s hard to scrape together a fuck to give between them about hospital regulations on visitation.

The day passes in a mad rush of teenagers, parents, and one preteen creating a constant rush of traffic between Steve and Eddie’s room and Max’s. Every person therein is sufficiently tackled and screamed over until they’ve all convinced themselves of each other’s safety. Robin, in particular, plays a hideous game of telephone running between Steve and Max’s rooms trying to convince Steve that Max is alive and fine and vice versa. In the end Steve is so unbearable that she ends up stealing a wheelchair and smuggling him out of his room so he can get a look for himself and calm the fuck down. This results in a dressing down from a nurse that makes Robin want to shrivel up and blow away, but is ultimately worth it when Steve actually does calm the fuck down.

Wayne Munson is finally allowed in to see his nephew and the reunion is so legitimately touching that Steve and Robin, who are both more familiar with their empty houses than occupied ones, have to cover their faces with their hands so they don’t just melt like all those Nazi’s who were exposed to the divine light of god or whatever in Indiana Jones. There’s tears , and kisses on the forehead , for Christ’s sake.

Steve’s parents, of course, never turn up, but the amount of near violent mothering he receives from Claudia Henderson more than fills his quota.

All of the patients in the hospital are informed that they will be kept for observation for three days, and will be seen to by a few experts from out of state. Everyone in the know immediately realizes that they are being kept to observe if there are any side effects from the Upside Down. Nancy organizes a schedule to make sure that none of the patients will spend any time alone in the hospital for both safety and comfort.

The first two days pass with little more fanfare. Steve is freed from Dungeons and Dragons Duty by Dustin, Lucas, and Erica who swarm Eddie's bed on their visits and bury it under books and dice and loose paper. Dustin spends a hellish two hours applying his ‘expertise’ to cleaning Steve’s hair. The real estate on Max’s cast for sharpie drawings and signatures is competed over zealously and Steve, Eddie, and Max spend a few hours arguing over the walkies the others brought them, ranking the flavors of hospital jello when they can’t sleep.

On the third day a pizza van arrives in Hawkins.

–

El directs them straight to the hospital when they get to town. This is not particularly heartening, but according to the shoddy remote traveling that could be accomplished with a blindfold and hands pressed over ears in a moving car, no one is dead. And besides the hospital is a fine enough destination considering the fact that four of the van’s five occupants don’t have anywhere to live in Hawkins anymore.

They bypass the receptionist, and El leads them with unerring confidence directly to Max’s room. She opens the door and steps through and says “Max,” in that voice she has that is so all encompassing and sweet.

Max sits up in the bed, eyes practically popping out, and then she is beaming, “El!” And then they are in each other's arms and laughing and whispering and Jonathan catches “wicked” and “bitchin’” passed back between them in a giddy, complimentary loop. El is a newer sibling to Jonathan than Will, but he feels that same warm, proud feeling in his chest watching her be happy, watching her have friends.

Jonathan steps through the door and to the side to get a full look inside the room finally and finds Nancy sitting beside the bed in front of a discarded pile of nail polish spilled across the sheets. He tries to offer her a smile, but can immediately feel the way it sits as more of an awkward grimace on his face. She gives him a wry grin in return.

After burying an FBI agent in the desert it feels like a relief to return to the teenage relationship problems that had felt like the end of the world only two weeks ago.

–

The news of the Hopper-Beyers return moves like wildfire through the hospital. Hugs are piled on to everyone again and stories are swapped in high pitched, fast paced, overlapping voices. Steve catalogs all his missing charges whom he has needed to forget about these past months in the time loop to focus on the only children he could protect. Argyle and Eddie, their new additions, shuffle through introductions with the half of the group they haven’t met.

Finally in the evening, after all the kids have assembled in Max’s room and Jonathan and Argyle have stepped out to check on the state of the cabin and turn out Steve’s spare rooms for the meantime, Steve finds the time for a conversation he’s been putting off.

“Robin,” he says, where they’re sitting cross legged on his bed facing each other over the job section of the Hawkin’s Post, “I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah?” She says drawing the word out questioningly. Steve tips his head meaningfully towards the private bathroom door (a privilege afforded them due to the fact that they were originally being held by the police and no one wanted them leaving the room.) Her eyebrows jump up her face, “Really?”

Steve nods.

She jumps up onto her knees and grabs his shoulders, eyes wide, “Really, really!?”

“Really, really,” he intones.

She hops off the beds and starts waving her hands and dancing around him impatiently while he works on heaving his battered body out of bed. She ushers him quickly to the bathroom and shuts the door behind them. She drops to the floor back to one wall and watches with her enormous eyes as he lowers himself gently to the floor across from her. She props her chin on her hands and beams her curiosity directly into his brain.

“I kissed Eddie,” he pauses while she gapes, “a couple times,” he adds.

“YOU KIS–” Robin’s hand slaps over her own mouth at the same instant Steve’s does, her eyebrows, however, do not stop screaming at him. She shoves their hands off and hisses in pure elated, disgusted delight, “Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson!?”

“Yes.”

Robin wrings the life out the collar of his shirt. She’s crossed the distance between them so they’re sitting with their knees pulled up to their chests and their legs tangled.

“Holy shit,” She says.

“Yeah, holy shit,” Steve grins wryly.

“I love you,” She replies, and Steve is cut loose.

“Me too,” he says, “It wasn’t this Eddie. It was in a couple different loops.”

Robin nods in instant understanding, her excitement flattening into something that can bear the load of this story. There’s no way to ever really explain what it meant for him to die over and over again, no way to explain what it was like to watch his friends die gruesome deaths and then stand up and make himself do it again, but Robin doesn’t need him to explain. Robin gets him. There is not an iteration of Robin in any loop that did not reach across the gulf and understand him. This Robin is no different.

“The first time he was dying and I was there and he just kind of um- like pulled me down and–” Steve can feel his face heating and it feels so stupid, because it wasn’t, like, a juvenile kiss, it was desperate and there was blood, but also Eddie . Eddie looking up at him with the last light in his eyes, rasping; I always wanted to do that . “It was um nice?”

Robin’s mouth is pressed thin like she is trying not to laugh at him, but when he looks into her eyes it is all love. Love and love and love and love.

“After that he kissed me a couple different times and um I also kissed him,” Steve stumbles through tugging at his hair. “It was really um– bad it was really bad and kissing him was,” he chokes, “nice.” he finishes and it feels simultaneously like wildly overstating and wildly understating what it was like to kiss Eddie Munson at the end of the world. It was one nice thing that he had snatched from the teeth of the whole experience. Once or twice it was the only nice thing he could grab to keep him going through it.

“Yeah?” Robin says, teasing and loving and there.

“Yeah, Eddie is um–”

“Nice?” Robin offers biting her lip, eyes bright.

Steve remembers Eddie’s warm, dark eyes and his racing mouth and his long fingered hands. He remembers the comradery of another person loving his kids, remembers Eddie’s hair pulled shyly, giddily in front of his laughing mouth. His cheeks feel like they’re burning.

“Yeah,” he says faintly, and puts his hands in front of his face in humiliation.

Robin laughs and wraps her arms and torso around his head, rocking them violently back and forth. After a moment Steve is laughing too.

After an unnameable amount of time they separate, breathless.

“Sooo?” Robin says, “You like guys?”

“I guess?” Steve says and his heart jumps in his chest. After facing the Upside Down four times he feels like it shouldn’t scare him. After sinking his popularity as completely as he was capable of, the idea of social exile shouldn’t strangle him like this. But it does. Dead by bigots is just as dead as dead by monster.

But Robin is here. Robin is here and there isn’t anything wrong with her. There isn’t anything wrong with her or Eddie or (if he’s right) Will. So there can’t be anything wrong with Steve. It’s like the transportation property or whatever Dustin said.

“And girls?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

And then there's nothing to do but laugh some more.

–

Early the next morning El sits bolt upright in bed and darts from her guest room in Steve’s house, psychically throwing open every door in the hall on her way past. Shouts of alarm chase her. She practically falls down the stairs in her hurry, jamming her feet into shoes and then hopping from foot to foot as she waits for the others to arrive.

“Will!” she screams up the stairs, “Jonathan!”

A moment later they’re both stumbling down the stairs towards her, hair disheveled.

“What?” Jonathan rasps, scrubbing at his face.

“Hopper.” El answers.

“What?” he repeats.

“He’s here,” El grabs his arm and drags him towards the door, shoving keys into his hand, “Come on.”

“El–” Jonathan tries to say.

El turns and meets his eyes head on like she’s learned to, “Hopper is here.”

Jonathan looked at her for a moment in confusion before his face resolves, “Okay,” he says, “Shoes and coat,” he says to Will and her, “Let’s go.”

El climbs into the pizza van’s front seat, puts her head down on her knees and covers her ears. She reaches for her dad in that in between space, reaches and reaches like she has strained to do since she lost her powers, lost him. Finally she finds him.

He’s skinny now, his hair gone just like hers. He’s standing with Joyce next to a car El doesn’t recognize in front of the cabin.

She surfaces for a moment, “The cabin,” she rasps, and realizes her voice is thick and her cheeks are wet. “The cabin,” she insists to Jonathan in the driver's seat. He nods, runs his hand over her buzzed head, and turns on the car.

El goes back to the in between. She can’t stop looking. Hopper. Hopper. Hopper. Dad . She takes in the sight of him greedily, drinks in the rough bur of his voice. She can feel far away that her face is wet, can’t tell if it’s more tears or a bloody nose; doesn’t care. She can’t stop. She watches them talk and nod and walk into the cabin.

She startles back to her body when Jonathan shakes her shoulder. They’re parked in front of the cabin next to the car that El didn’t recognize, which Jonathan is watching warily. She kicks the door open and runs.

“Dad!” she screams, stumbling over the leaves and roots to the cabin.

The door bursts open and there he is. Hopper. Dad. He runs to meet her and sweeps her up into his arms when they collide. She is small and safe and encompassed in a way she hadn’t been until Hopper and hasn’t been since.

“Dad,” She sobs, “Dad, dad, dad.”

“Hey, baby. Hey, it’s alright I’m here. I’m here,” he says into her scalp. She can feel the rumble in his chest and hear his voice. Hopper. Hopper. Dad.

Somewhere past them Will and Jonathan are reuniting with Joyce and sometime soon El will do the same, but for now there is only this. Only this all encompassing embrace, where she is completely and utterly safe .

–

Hopper and Joyce come to the hospital a bit later that morning and the screaming hugging reunions and exchanging of stories of the previous day is repeated. It feels almost impossible that Hopper is back, both for the obvious reasons and that they would experience another monumental win so close to their previous. Steve has become so used to tragedy, and to triage that victory is like a slap in the face.

Later that day El and Will bring them news of an even more shocking success: the Upside Down is gone. Or rather, it isn’t connected to their world anymore. El and Will had made a perimeter of the town and confirmed it themselves. Now that Henry is gone the link between the two is severed. It won’t bother them ever again.

–

Nancy is sitting at the kitchen table. She wants to be cleaning her guns, but there is no reason to do that anymore. The Upside Down is gone. It’s gone. Steve and Eddie are out of the hospital. Hopper is back.

She feels like there are spiders crawling all over her. Her hands are claws scraping uselessly against the smooth surface of the table. Nearly four years and now it’s just fucking gone. Gone. She stands up and bangs through the kitchen starting a pot of coffee despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night.

She doesn’t know how to live like this anymore. How to go to school and care about it. How to sleep through the night. How to be the little girl she had been. She grips the counter and puts her head down and chokes.

Gone. Fucking gone.

She snatches a mug from the counter and smashes it on the floor. It shatters and she realizes that she’s screaming. She can’t stop. She grabs the wire of the dish drying rack and grips it until her hands hurt, then drags the whole thing off the counter and slams it to the ground. Porcelain shatters over her bare feet and the pain is shocking. Good. She slams her fists down onto the counter, keeps screaming.

She raises her hands again to slam them against the counter but someone grabs her wrists. She whips her head around teeth bared, so ready to fight, but then–

“Nancy!” it’s her mom. Standing in her pajamas and a bathrobe, her bare feet bloody from crossing the kitchen to reach her. Her eyes are wide, her mouth open. She looks scared. She looks worried.

Nancy stops screaming. She heaves for breath like coming up for air, tests her mom’s grip by instinct but doesn’t pull free.

“Nancy,” her mom asks desperately, “What is going on with you?”

What is going on with her? Her hands are shaking. She feels like she’s going to shake apart, shatter and join all the porcelain on the floor. She thinks she’s going to combust. Burst apart like the taste of gunpowder on her lips.

She thinks of monsters that open up like flowers. Of people that would torture a little girl and kill civilians and brush it all under the rug. She thinks of the guns that her hands now know better than Holly’s hair. She thinks of killing a thing that had once been a man.

What is going on with her?

She opens her mouth to say a thousand things and only finds a sob.

What is going on with her?

“I miss Barbara,” she sobs, “I miss Barbara, Mom.”

Her mom yanks her forward into her arms, tucking her head into the crook of her neck and petting through her hair like she’s always done. Nancy grips like a child. She soaks her mom’s shoulder with tears and snot and spit and still can’t stop crying.

“Oh, Nancy,” her mom murmurs, tucking her cheek against Nancy's hair.

I miss Barbara , she thinks and lets her mom hold her.

–

Steve finds Eddie at the hotel where the government is putting him and his uncle up while they replace the trailer the day after they both leave the hospital. He has a conversation he needs to have with Eddie that he’s been putting off, not the kind of conversation that either of them would have liked to have when they were both trapped in the hospital with each other.

He takes a bracing breath and knocks.

Eddie opens the door a moment later and Steve immediately wishes that he hadn’t. Eddie is dressed in black jeans and a self-cropped Metallica shirt. His stomach is pale from lack of sun, the edges of shitty tattoos peeking out from under the shirt and above his pants. Steve wants to bite him. He’s going insane, Eddie isn’t even that fit. He’s scrawny. Steve tries to reason with himself, but gets nowhere, only managing to tear his eyes away at the promise of looking at Eddie’s face which he also, regrettably, likes.

“Harrington,” Eddie says, surprised, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Can I talk to you,” Steve forces out, “Somewhere private?”

Eddie cocks his head at Steve, then holds up a finger. He leans back through the door “Wayne, I’m going out,” he shouts, grabbing a key from the side table. An affirmation comes from inside, he nods.

“Alright, my liege, let’s go.” he says and ducks into the hall to lead the way. Steve follows and tries not to look anywhere in particular.

Eddie leads them to an abandoned picnic table sitting in the yellowed grass behind the hotel. As requested there’s no one around. They take seats across from each other, Eddie with one foot up on the bench and Steve trying to resist wringing his hands. He has no idea how to say this.

“Soooo?” Eddie prompts, rocking in his seat, after a minute passes in silence.

“Okay,” Steve says, raking a hand through his hair, “I’m just going to say it.” He takes two quick breaths to brace himself and shakes out his hands before meeting Eddie’s wide brown eyes.

“Eddie,” he says and reaches across the table to lay a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, “You’re gay.”

Eddie stalls out for three full seconds.

“What?” he squeaks after a moment, looking like a deer in headlights.

“You’re gay.” Steve repeats, “And that’s fine.”

Eddie laughs hysterically and looks around like he’s looking for the catch.

“What are you talking about, Steve-o?” he says, voice still high.

“I know this might be a shock,” Steve says, taking his hand back “But you kissed me in the Upside Down–”

“I definitely did not.” Eddie interrupts.

“Not you -you,” Steve waves off, “In like a few of the loops you did.”

“A few?” Eddie repeats, dazed.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “A few times it was my fault, but anyway I wasn’t sure if you knew so–”

“I’m aware,” Eddie cuts in, “Very aware.”

“Oh good.” Steve sighs. He is not qualified to field a gay crisis from Eddie Munson.

“Wait what do you mean your fault!?” Eddie squawks.

“I–” Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. He hadn’t meant to say that. His heart starts rabbiting in his chest. How can he say this to someone who isn’t Robin, someone who isn’t practically him. He–

He looks up and Eddie’s eyes are on him, big and brown and shocked and maybe a little hopeful.

He’s beaten the Upside Down. He’s lived through all of it. He can be brave one more time.

He reaches a hand across the table to cup Eddie’s jaw and sees his eyes go wider, his elastic mouth hitching up towards a smile. Steve’s heart flutters in his chest, excited not afraid.

He leans across the table and kisses Eddie Munson and does not taste blood.

Notes:

And there it is! It's been over a year lol, but now it's done. Hope you like it!

Notes:

Up next most people get some R&R and some people get arrested.

lmk what you thought!