Chapter Text
Eddie's jewellery ends up in a bag in his hospital room, familiar rings jumbled in together with his necklace, keys and wallet. They hadn't bothered to clean anything after he was brought in, they'd probably just dropped it all in there after cutting him out of the clothes he was wearing. Both the metal of the rings and the links of the necklace are stained red-brown-black, and Steve honestly doesn't know how much of it's dried blood and how much is toxic, festering shit from the upside-down.
For all the times he'd been through this, he'd never got the hang of the come-down, when everything tilts back to normal but he still feels beat to hell, when the faceless people in suits come in and clean it all away, give them their government approved stories to tell. Sorry for the inconvenience folks, and also for the inter-dimensional horrors we helped unleash.
But since Steve figures that the world had stopped being on fire for five minutes, and there was no longer anything for him to put himself in front of and smack until he felt better, then he could at least have a go at cleaning Eddie's stuff up for him. He doesn't know him very well, but after everything they went through together Steve hates the idea of him waking up to all the pieces of his life tossed carelessly aside and left to rot. A gross reminder that no one in town had cared about him, that no one had believed him, or thought he was important enough to try and save.
Max is still at the hospital too and Steve's pretty sure he's going to be here every day anyway, shuttling the kids in and out. He figures he can take the bag home, scrub everything clean and then bring it back tomorrow.
Eddie deserves someone looking after the small details of his life, at the very least. Though Steve does wonder whether that's just an excuse, if he's just desperately trying to find a task that will make him feel useful, something he can relax into and not feel like he's going out of his mind in the moments when he's doing nothing.
He leaves the bag in the upstairs bathroom while he makes himself a sandwich, which he practically inhales without tasting, suggesting that he'd been far hungrier than he'd realised. He can almost hear Robin in his head griping at him for not taking care of himself when he has the chance. But, honestly, having the time to complain about access to sandwiches, signing the government's stupid forms, and hearing Dustin's less than subtle remarks that he needs a shower, are starting to make him feel like it's really over. Because if they're worrying about that shit then maybe they can stop worrying about teens with broken bones and mind-control wizards and things with too many teeth that want to eat them all.
For all that the whole town is currently cracked in half there's a reassuring lack of doorways to festering hellscapes opening, so Steve is giving everyone a free pass on giving him shit. He's not gonna tell them because they'll only take advantage, it's an unacknowledged free pass, until such time as they realise, or another flaming, upside-down asshole opens on main street.
He heads upstairs, fills the sink, opens the cabinet and claims his mom's nail brush then sets to work. The wallet he does his best with, but the leather's thin and soft in places and he doesn't want it to stay wet for long, there's also blood in the stitching and it might be a lost cause. He cleans off Eddie's keys and hangs them on the towel rack before scrubbing blood off the three larger rings, which are of dubious metal content and are bent and marked enough to have clearly seen better days. But he'd still rather see them back on Eddie's hand than disgusting and abandoned in a bag.
They do come clean eventually, shining against the sink, detail picked out in a way that makes them look battered but almost new. He's more careful with the black stone one, since it's not one solid piece, it's the one Eddie wears singly on his right hand, the curves of metal resisting his attempts to clean it more than the others. But it feels more important somehow, different enough to be noticeable. He's carefully brushing around the setting when the doorbell goes.
Steve startles, ends up with water splashed and spotted down his shirt in a way that has a curse spitting between his teeth. He reminds himself harshly that monsters probably aren't going to use the doorbell, though the jury's still out on 'visiting him at home' since they all dealt with possession-by-mindflayer last year. He finds himself turning with the ring still held in his hand, bites out an annoyed grumble and slips it on his own finger before heading down.
He's had more visitors since everything happened, and he tries not to feel so suspicious at the sudden influx of people, both official and not, who just want to check up on him. He's been the one doing it for so long that he can't help but feel antsy - and a little bitter if he's being honest - about this sudden need to make sure everything is ok with him. But he realises at this point that there are too many people in the group they've made for any one house or car to hold them all, and he has to admit it is nice to be in the middle of a group he doesn't have to tell the government-approved lies to. As for everyone else in Hawkins, hell, at the end of the day, it's good to know that even if most of the people in this town don't actually get it they know enough to check their neighbours are safe.
Steve eventually heads back upstairs, turns the black stone ring on his finger once he hits the bathroom to slide it off again - only to discover that it doesn't want to come off.
He looks down, thumb and fingers gripping the circle of it, pressing down on the inlay and pulling, but it won't budge. The damn thing is wedged tight on his finger.
"Seriously?"
It won't even shift to the knuckle, refusing to slide upwards at all, and he can already tell he's not getting it back over it. How the hell did it even go on in the first place? He hadn't been paying attention and he'd just slipped the damn thing down onto his hand like it was nothing. But clearly it wasn't nothing and now Eddie's ring is stuck on his finger.
"Shit."
Steve only has to think about it for a second, he may not wear rings but he's seen plenty of movies. He tries the soap first, smearing it over the metal until pieces catch in the gaps, before lathering it up and tugging, which gets him no movement except the spin around his finger. He upends the shampoo bottle next, rubbing until his entire finger is coated before trying to get a grip on the ring. He pulls until his knuckle hurts, until the skin at the bottom of his finger goes red. No dice. It doesn't aid in the slide at all. The thing is now gross and slippery but still stuck on his finger. If anything he feels as if he'd made it worse. The skin under the ring is sensitive, the finger itself now looking a bit puffy, and it's getting difficult to turn at all. Yeah, he's definitely just making it worse.
Steve washes it all off, then leaves his hand in the running water for a few minutes to see if cooling it down will shrink it any and help with the removal. It doesn't though, and now his fingers are cold and they smell of shampoo. He holds his hand up, staring at where he has a ring which is not his own stuck on his finger, resisting all attempts to remove it.
He leaves it alone for a minute, figuring it's a problem he's not going to solve until he lets his hand chill out and relax for a while. Panicking probably wasn't helping here, it's only leaving him all sweaty and stressed out. It'll probably come off later when he's not thinking about it so hard. Instead, he bags up the rest of Eddie's jewellery, keys and wallet, and takes them back downstairs. With any luck he can add the ring to it before he leaves with Dustin tomorrow.
He doesn't expect to sleep much so he doesn't try, instead he stays on the couch, tries to find something worth watching but the reception here is kind of shit right now. The ring sits on his finger, not uncomfortably tight but definitely snug, an unfamiliar weight that he's not sure what to do with. He should have known better than to put it on, it was his own fault for getting distracted. It's different enough from his normal style to keep catching his eye, jewellery where no jewellery should be, though the shape of it is surprisingly easy to forget after a while. It's still weird seeing it there, pressed up against his knuckle every time he turns his head. Something so very Eddie Munson looking completely out of place on him.
Steve falls asleep to the sound of whistles and clattering and yelling, can't tell for sure what sport is playing, or if it's even a sport at all.
He doesn't remember what he dreams about, which is a small mercy, but he wakes too fast, convinced he's somewhere else. There's a solid ache in his neck, from where it'd been draped over the back of the couch, and it doesn't fade even as he moves and makes himself get up and get on with the day.
The ring is still on his finger.
It doesn't come off.
-
Steve doesn't head straight for Dustin's. Instead he goes to Robin's house first, lures her outside using only his eyebrows. Something he's very happy that he can do because he really doesn't want to have this conversation this early in the morning where her parents might overhear.
She stomps out to the car in hastily done up shoes and no socks, hair crumpled on one side.
"Steve, why am I up at six in the morning? Is everyone ok, is it back - is there -?" He can feel the way she braces herself for god knows what and realises that showing up so early isn't really fair only a few days after everything happened. He decides to cut off the panic he'd accidentally caused by lifting his hand and showing her the problem.
Robin blinks, her eyes tracking to his hand and then focusing.
"Why are you wearing Eddie's ring?" The fact that he hadn't even had to say anything is a bad sign. He'd known the damn thing was too recognizable. "Is there something you want to tell me? Because either he woke up and you changed your mind about some important things really fast, or -"
"It's stuck," Steve hisses and he feels like there is exactly the right amount of understandable panic in the words. "I can't get it off."
"Why do you even have it? More importantly, why the hell did you put it on in the first place?" Robin reaches out and grips it, pulls at the metal, waggles his hand back and forth in a way that he really wants to complain is not helpful.
"I took his stuff home to clean it up for him, I didn't mean to - the doorbell went and I didn't want to lose it so I just stuffed it on my finger for safekeeping, but then it wouldn't come off again."
"Why did you think putting it on would be a good idea?"
"I literally just told you, safekeeping."
"Well it's definitely safe," she mutters. Which in any other situation he would probably find funny. "So now you have Eddie's ring stuck on your hand. How could you not have known that would end badly? A ring belonging to our skinny, musician friend who does not have giant, sports-playing hands -"
"I do not have giant sports-playing hands." Steve would also like to point out that Eddie is only really their friend through proximity to horrible danger. That wasn't his fault, obviously, but he got pulled into their shit basically a week ago and they barely know him at all. Even if they had all saved the world together.
"They're still bigger than Eddie's."
"It went on there fine," Steve protests, because he doesn't think now is the time for a hand size argument. "If it had been a tight fit I would have thought to myself 'hey, that's clearly going to get stuck, I better shove it in my pocket instead.'"
Robin is still turning his hand, like she thinks there might be another secret ring accidentally crammed somewhere else. He tries not to feel judged.
"Did you try soap?" she suggests. "Olive oil, KY, butter?"
"Yes, first thing I thought of, thank you, I tried soap and then shampoo to get it loose, didn't budge it."
"What about icing your hand?"
"I held it under cold water for five minutes. I also sat on it to try and send my hand numb. I've tried rotating it. I've tried levering it. It won't come off."
She pouts down at the ring, and he's glad she finally seems to be getting how frustrating this is.
"You did give it a good go, didn't you? Hell, you might have to get this thing cut off."
"No." Steve pulls his hand back, because that's the last possible option here. "Eddie is currently unconscious in hospital with eighty-five stitches and I'm pretty sure like two skin grafts, after putting literally everything on the line for us. His home is trashed and he's lucky to even be alive right now. I'm not going to be responsible for ruining one of the only things we know he has any attachment to. This thing could be important to him. It could have belonged to someone important and maybe it's the only thing he has left of them or some shit." He honestly hadn't realised how much the thought had been worrying him until all that had come out.
"He could also have found it in the woods under a log." Robin is a big fan of finding random things and declaring them her own. But Steve has to admit she's making a fair point, he fully believes Eddie would find jewellery in the woods and make it part of his look. The fact is that they don't know for sure.
"It doesn't matter," Steve decides. "The fact is it's Eddie's and he's lost enough shit already, most of his things are gone, they cut off literally everything he was wearing. I'll get it off, I just need some time."
"And maybe some better lubrication?" Robin suggests again. "We gotta make your fingers wet like a slip-n-slide -" she pulls a face as soon as the words are out, which he mirrors right back at her, "- yes, ok, we're going to pretend I didn't say that. That thought went too far."
"Trust me, I'm working on it. But I have to go. I have to pick up Dustin in twenty minutes. Please, just wish me luck for the rest of the day."
She salutes, then seems to realise that isn't wishing him luck and makes an attempt at what looks like a boy scout salute. He doesn't have the heart to correct her.
"He's probably going to accuse me of stealing it," he says miserably. "I can hear it in his voice already 'he's in a coma, Steve, who does that? I expected better from you.'"
Robin snorts, fingers back on his hand, clearly with a new plan, this time corkscrewing it up, which is really just an old plan of Steve's, so he knows it's not going to work.
"Your little baby bear would never," she says, like she's certain.
"I'm just sick of feeling like I'm the bad guy," Steve continues. "Why do I always end up the bad guy when I'm trying to do something nice?" That may have come out a little more intense than he expected, but in his defense it's been a long week.
"What are you going to say if anyone asks about it?" Robin shakes the ring for emphasis.
"No one's going to ask about it," Steve says, though he realises that's more awkwardly defensive than what he actually believes. He's friends with some of the nosiest little assholes around, who can't leave anything alone for five minutes without turning it into a mystery to be solved. So he's going to need an excuse. "Ok, people are probably going to ask about it. But I'm not going to tell them I was the idiot who got it stuck. I'll just tell them I didn't want it to get lost. Maybe I'll say I found it on the floor or something."
"Yeah, that's going to work for a day or two maximum, so you might want to stock up on some more oil and get to work freeing yourself. Maybe you could put your whole hand in the freezer? If we still worked at Scoops I could just pop you in there for a bit. Or maybe peas, those peas that draw the moisture out of stuff. Though dehydrating you seems a little extreme." She still looks like she's seriously contemplating it.
"It'll be fine," Steve assures her. "It'll come off eventually."
She waves him off from the driveway, and he heads in the other direction.
But the thing is, for all Steve's prepared excuses, Dustin doesn't say anything. No, that's a lie, he says a million things, he's literally an avalanche of thoughts he needs to share at all times that Steve only grasps half of and has to hope he's not agreeing to anything he shouldn't. Dustin definitely notices the ring. Steve watches him cut off halfway through a sentence and look at his hands on the wheel. Then he watches the shape of his mouth scrunch in for a second, as if he has something he wants to say, or a lot of things he wants to say. But Steve watches him visibly restrain himself, for maybe the first time he's ever known him, before giving him a look he can't decipher and flicking the radio on.
"I'm looking after it," Steve says, belatedly, because maybe he can head off any questions before they happen. "I know it's important to him, I found it -" he doesn't say 'in the bag with the others' because he'd learned that the best lie is one that's secretly the truth. "And I didn't want it to get lost."
"Yeah, of course," Dustin agrees, the words punching out of him too fast. "Obviously, obviously you're taking care of it for him. That's very - very cool of you, Steve." There's an awkward amount of emphasis on the words that he can't help but find suspicious. "Very cool of you and totally fine," he adds with a weird sort of stress on 'fine', and if anything the look gets worse.
Steve suspects he's being made fun of in some way.
"Alright, shut up, sharing moment is over."
He starts the car.
That went better than he expected.
It's been a few days so the visits are almost routine at this point. Steve hovers in the doorway for a bit while they check on Max, lost for a way to actually make himself useful here. He knows enough about himself to realise that's kind of stupid, there's nothing he can do after all. He can bring the kids here but there's no way he can fix this, just be around while they all wait for improvement for either of their party.
Eddie looks the same, a shade thinner than he should be under too many bandages, and Steve can hear Robin in his head saying 'our skinny musician friend' with what he realises now was an odd sort of fondness. His dark hair is spread out across the pillow, pulled away from his face and leaving his neck oddly bare. His bangs have been drawn to one side, in a way Steve's never seen him wear them, which is strangely unsettling. Part of him kind of wants to pat them down, make him look like he should. For some reason that bothers him more than all the machinery.
He sets the bag of Eddie's stuff that he'd cleaned with the clothes he'd picked up earlier, in a colour palette that wouldn't give Munson hives. So everything in here is clean now at least, ready for when he wakes up. Except the ring that's currently jammed on Steve's hand. Which he stares at guiltily.
"He's going to wake up," Dustin says. "You know that right, the doctors said everything looks good and he's not in any danger anymore."
"Yes, Dustin." Steve shoves his hands in his pockets. "I was in the room when they told us."
"I know you were there but, y'know, just in case you needed to hear it. I'm trying to be comforting."
Steve isn't sure why he's the one that needs comforting. Maybe this is a pointed comment on how he'd been lax in his reassurance. Which, he has to admit, is probably fair. He'd been run off his feet the last few days but letting the kids know that everything is going to be fine is important, especially after what they went through - and are still going through.
"Yeah, I know," he says, quieter now, trying to keep as much bite out of his tone as he can. "I know he's going to be fine. You know that too, right?"
Dustin's face does an ugly crumpling thing for a second and Steve hates it, hates it so much he feels it like a punch.
"Yes, I mean, obviously. I just didn't realise, I didn't know, and it must have been really shitty for you to have to -" Dustin stops and looks at the bed. "To find him like that and carry him back through the gate and everything."
"Yeah, not my best day," Steve agrees. "But we were all there, we all did what we had to do, and we knew the stakes."
Dustin nods and the lack of words is enough for Steve to take three steps and press both hands down on his shoulders, squeezing gently, before taking something that feels more like a headbutt to the chest than a hug. He still hugs back. He ends up staying in the room with him past lunchtime, listening to Dustin talk about Eddie with a pointed sort of pride and Steve thinks maybe he can finally stop being so fucking jealous of the people that make his kids happy.
-
Steve has to leave eventually, people still need groceries and the amount of property damage means it's kind of a crapshoot getting them until clear-up starts happening properly. Which is one thing he can at least be useful for.
Nancy meets him outside, since she's on the second shift for the kids today. They're letting them visit the hospital as much as they want, and it seems to be helping. Steve doesn't currently have a job right now, since last he heard Family Video is kind of perilously close to a big fucking crevasse or something, so he's at a loose end and it's either this or sit around in his big empty house with Robin and think too much.
"How is everyone?" Nancy asks.
"The same," Steve tells her. "Mostly the same, though the doctors seem to think Eddie might wake up soon."
She nods, clearly relieved and Steve doesn't know exactly when Eddie became one of theirs but it's becoming obvious that he is.
"Max?"
"Nothing yet, but she's stable and there's brain activity, which is good. El seems confident that she's just taking her time, healing up the worst of it." He fishes in his pocket for his keys, pulls them out, slips the ring over his finger out of habit. Nancy looks surprised for a moment, blinking while her mouth works open and shut, and then she seems to shake herself and something more like sympathy rolls over her face.
"Oh, Steve, you should have said something." She reaches out, carefully touches his wrist.
"Said - what?" He looks down at where she'd turned the hand holding his keys into the light, which is now striking the dark stone of the ring that's still wedged on his finger. The words 'I got it stuck there by accident' are so close to slipping free.
"You must have been so worried." It's not a question, and it's offered so softly, as if she thinks saying it louder might bruise him in some way.
"I mean, yeah, we all were." He knows he wasn't in a position to keep Eddie safe, but it feels like it had still been his responsibility.
"You could have told me, you know," Nancy says quietly. "You didn't have to panic and say - but I understand that it must have been a lot for you to deal with, especially in the middle of everything -" She looks stricken for a second as if she thinks she's messing up an apology of some sort. "I understand and I support you, always, you know that. I'm here for you, both of you I mean." She tips her head towards his hand and he thinks maybe he's missing something.
"I'm looking after it for him," Steve hears himself say. Because Nancy clearly thinks that him and Eddie bonded in the upside-down or something, and now he's torn up about his new friend being in a coma. Confessing that they barely know each other at all feels like the wrong move, because he knows enough about Eddie now to realise that he's a good dude, with a huge soft spot for the kids. Which is basically Steve's fucking kryptonite at this point. So he knows that when Eddie wakes up they're going to be friends, whether he likes it or not. Though he minds that idea much less than he'd thought he would a week ago. And, yeah, they might be an odd fit but look at the rest of them. He thinks that Nancy likes Eddie too, in her own way. She's slow to warm up to people but he knows how much she values her friends and he'd seen Eddie making her laugh when he thinks she might have needed it most.
"Of course," Nancy says with a nod. "And that's what I'll tell anyone who asks." There's something briefly fierce in her voice and he's not used to having that sharp, weirdly protective tone directed at him. He feels the ragged, jittery tension inside him, that had been there so long it almost felt permanent, finally slowly settle. He doesn't know how he managed to find so many friends who make him feel like he could literally take on inter-dimensional monsters and win, not once but four times. He's not sure he deserves them.
"Thanks, Nance." His voice sounds faraway, and she must feel it too, because she dips in and hugs him, the sudden squeeze not tentative but firm, her small fingers bunched tight in his shirt.
-
Visiting hours are a shitty construct.
Steve knows that the staff at the hospital have to do their job and they can't have a bunch of people milling around their patients all the time, but watching the kids be politely urged out is still horrible. The idea that there can be huge stretches of time when none of them are there. Where they can't be around the people that need them, the people that they love.
Steve knows that he'd appreciate the fact that people were around, waiting for him to wake up. He wouldn't want to be alone there.
But they all get sent home eventually.
"How are we doing?" Robin's looking at him, one hand full of chips the other holding the TV remote.
Steve lifts his hand out of the bowl of olive oil, watching it run off his fingers for a minute. They'd put a towel down but the stuff is already half over his jeans in smears and patches and also dotted on one of Robin's shoes. It's going to be a bitch to get out of the carpet, but this is kind of an emergency and Steve's not sure his parents are even coming back at this point, so he guesses it's now his carpet anyway. His carpet, his problem.
"I feel like my hand is melting," he complains. But he reaches up and gives the ring a twist. It slides around his finger more easily but still won't pull upwards. It's clear at this point that it's not tight enough that he needs to worry about blood circulation, it just doesn't want to come off. "Nope, still jammed on my hand." He wipes his fingers off on the towel and somehow there's another spot of oil on his jeans.
Robin looks genuinely annoyed for him, and it's nice that some of his frustration has finally transferred.
"Damn, I really thought that would work."
"Ten more minutes?" Steve suggests hopefully.
"Well if it doesn't work, at least your skin will be silky smooth," she reassures him. "You'll have silky baby hands that everyone will be jealous of."
That couldn't sound less appealing, if he's being honest.
"Shut up and watch your stupid murder show."
"Excuse me, I will not have you badmouthing Jessica Fletcher."
Steve picks the bowl up and puts it on his lap, swivelling the ring where it's slightly smeared out by the oil.
"If I end up having to cut it off, will you help me find him a new one?"
"You know I will," she says immediately. "I will have to because the one you picked would probably be ugly and he would never wear it."
Steve frowns at the certainty in her voice, which feels a little unfair. He'd always thought he was pretty good at buying gifts, he may get a lot of comments on his own apparently awful taste but he knows how to pay attention to what other people like. That's the whole point of presents, you buy people things that they like, not things that you like.
"I'd just find a picture of one of those stupid bands he's into and then find him a ring that looked the same as one that those guys were wearing."
Robin baps her fist on his knee, a smile taking over the lower half of her face.
"Ok, I take it back, you would definitely buy him a ring he liked. I never should have doubted you."
"But it won't matter because we're going to get this one off," he says firmly.
-
The ring doesn't come off.