Chapter 1: one: THE TRAP | THE PARTY
Summary:
“Steve?” he hears faintly, as if from far away. For a moment, Steve is back underwater, back in the depths of the lake, movements slow and thoughts viscous. He tries to climb but his hands are frozen on the rope, his muscles locked and burning.
He hears a clock chime. Weird. He didn’t think the Munsons had a clock that chimed. It chimes again. Again. Again. Again.
He looks up, through the gate, and his friends are all screaming, but silence presses in on his ears. Their eyes are wide and scared, their hands waving like they’re trying to catch Steve’s attention, but it’s like it’s all behind glass. He can’t hear them.
Then something moves in his head. Something awful, slippery and slithering, like tentacles… like vines.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Nancy shoots; the window breaks; Vecna falls.
Steve runs.
He had a feeling. He had a fucking feeling things weren’t right, like he’s listening to a song he knows by heart and catches a missed chord buried deep in the melody. He runs, because he knows if it’s Max that Lucas will take care of her, at least until Steve can get there to take care of both of them, but there are two other people who have to be okay, who are all on their own, who have to make it out of here alive or Steve is going to set the world on fire-
It’s just a gut feeling, but Steve’s learned to trust those. He does hope this one is wrong, though. Just this once, let him be wrong.
He runs until hears them. “Here!” Henderson screams, voice clawed with fear and exertion. “We’re over here!” He sees them: a shadowy mess of limbs in the dusty gray outside the trailer park. He wasn’t wrong, then, because they shouldn’t still be here. They shouldn’t even be in this dimension. Steve wants to scream, to demand an answer: why are you still here? Why aren’t you safe? I told you not to be cute.
But he doesn’t scream, because when he skids to a stop next to Eddie on the ground, clutched in Dustin’s arms, he can’t speak at all. His throat has locked up like someone poured cement and it set in his esophagus; his mouth hangs open uselessly.
“He’s,” Dustin weeps, all wet face and teary slobber, teenage terror and despair. “He’s- he ran- he-”
“Okay,” Steve says, cement fault line in his throat breaking under the earthquake of Dustin’s tears. He grabs Dustin’s shoulder, shakes him a little for no reason other than he can, because Dustin’s here and alive and that’s a win, at least. “Okay, we’ll take care of him. It’s- it’s gonna be fine, Henderson.”
He puts enough feeling into it that even he believes it. He steels himself. He needs to look down. He doesn’t want to. He has to. He does.
Eddie’s ripped open, bleeding sluggishly from his torso. It’s worse than Steve’s injuries, for sure, but there’s too much torn fabric and carnage in the way to be able to tell how much worse, and it’s not like they could do anything different either way. Steve doesn’t have to wonder too much about what happened; the dead demobat two feet away with a chunk of Hellfire t-shirt in its mouth paints a clear picture.
Steve rips his backpack off and digs inside for something to stop the blood flow, hand brushing against matchboxes and batteries and his keys until they land on something soft. He pulls Eddie’s battle vest from his bag and wads it up, shoving it hard against Eddie’s stomach. Red seeps into the denim, mixing with the dried, rusty offerings from Steve’s own bat bites. Eddie makes a pained little oof and rocks with the movement, like he’s lost his weight in blood, like he could be knocked aside with a breath. His eyelashes flutter, and he smiles dazedly up at Steve with bloody teeth.
“There he is,” Eddie wheezes, half-delirious. “My favorite jock.”
Steve pushes the vest down harder, and Eddie unfurls in pain, head tilting back and heels sliding in the dirt. Steve snarls, angry at Eddie, at Dustin, at himself for being angry at the two of them, “Shut the fuck up, Munson, save your breath.” Then, because- because: “I’m your only jock.” Then: “Stop laughing, you idiot.”
Steve gets the story in fits and starts through Dustin’s shuddering sobs. How they’d missed the vents when boarding up the trailer, how the bats got in. How Eddie had paused at the bottom of the rope, and Dustin heard him say to himself, “Not this time.” How Eddie cut the rope and ran, leaving Dustin behind to scream at him from the other side.
Steve doesn’t know what to do except press the vest down, stop the blood by force.
Robin and Nancy are only a few minutes behind Steve, and then Robin is right there grabbing Eddie’s battered hand. “Oh, you jerk,” she whispers, already crying. “How could you do this?”
“Steve can’t always be the hero, Buck,” Eddie says, a flash of glassy smile. “It was my turn.”
Nancy helps Steve press down on Eddie’s vest, her small hands like burning coals on top of Steve’s. After a minute or so, she lifts a corner of denim away and says, “I think it’s not as bad as it looks. If we can get him out of here, he might be okay.” When Steve doesn’t let up, she touches the back of his hand. “He’ll be okay, Steve.”
Steve doesn’t answer.
Everyone else argues for a minute — including Eddie with his fucking guts in Steve’s hands, but Steve says silent because he’s full up with something that feels like rage and if he opens his mouth he’ll flood the trailer park with it — about which gate to head for, because the Munson trailer is right there but they would have to get Eddie through the ceiling, where if they walk for a mile or so, they can get to the gate where Fred died and just step straight through.
Steve gingerly pulls the vest away from Eddie’s stomach, folds it up and pushes it back into his backpack. Then he stands, puts his hands under Eddie’s shoulders and thighs in a bridal carry, and says, “Trailer. I can’t go a mile right now.”
That settles it. Robin throws Steve’s bag over her own shoulder, and helps Dustin limp along; Nancy takes point with her gun out in case of straggler bats; Steve grits his teeth and carries Eddie a relatively short distance that feels as long as a marathon. His sides burn from his own bites rubbing against thin makeshift bandages, and his back is one big sting from being dragged along the dry lakebed. His sweaty hair keeps dripping into his eyes. He’s achingly tired, and sore, and hurt, and scared, but Eddie leans forward and stage-whispers, “This is just like that scene in Swamp Thing. Except I’m not in a white dress, and you’re not all lizardy.”
“Shame,” Steve says under his breath. “White’s your color.”
“Yeah?” Eddie asks, grinning in the dazed way of someone so hurt they’re able to ignore the pain entirely, which is scarier than anything else right now. Steve tries to speed up, but his exhausted body can only push so hard.
“Almost to the trailer,” he promises.
“You’re gonna carry me over the threshold like I’m your little wife, and I’m not even wearing white.” Eddie tuts, makes a silly noise of consternation. His pupils are massive, his head swaying like he’s six drinks and two joints in. “We’re bucking tradition.”
“You wouldn’t know tradition if it bit you in the ass,” Steve grumbles, and Eddie laughs, blood-soaked, and hums a blood-drunk rendition of Going to the Chapel.
Steve puts one tired foot in front of the other, and refuses to let his body shut down the way it wants to. He gets Eddie inside the trailer and laid out on the mold-covered couch, and then ties another sheet onto the end of the rope that Eddie cut. Nancy and Robin set about making a sort of sling for Eddie out of Wayne’s old quilt (this version mildewed and bitten, like the bats got hungry) and some bungee cords Steve finds in the pantry-slash-junk closet off the kitchen.
The girls go through the gate first, testing that the rope will hold and tossing their weapons, the walkie-talkies, the bags, then themselves through the gate, somersaulting to the mattress on the other side. Steve helps Dustin onto the table next, giving him a boost to keep his weight off his injured leg. Now comes the hard part.
Dustin, with his engineering brain, tells Steve how to feed the sheet rope through the bungee cords to make a litter, which they’ll use to pull Eddie through from the other side. Steve gets Eddie and his litter wrapped up in his arms again, holding him up as much as his wounds allow so the other three don’t have to pull him as far. Eddie’s breath comes out faster as Steve jostles him and apologizes for it.
“Don’t apologize,” Eddie says, simultaneously offended and winded. “You can’t apologize while actively saving my life.”
“Wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t pulled this stupid shit in the first place,” Steve mutters.
Eddie smiles a little, and raps his knuckles on Steve’s chest. Still woozy, still delirious. Still an idiot. “But then I couldn’t play damsel, and you’re so good at being the gallant knight.”
“I will actually murder you.”
“You and the rest of town, get in line,” Eddie grins, and then there’s a tug from the other side, and he’s slowly, painstakingly, pulled through the gate to the real world. Steve helps lift and lift until his fingers are extended and he’s not really touching Eddie anymore, and then Eddie crosses through and, with a yelp, the litter meets the gravity of the real world and Eddie tumbles to the mattress.
“All good?” Steve calls, because from this angle all he can see is the edge of the mattress and hear a few thumps and curses from the other side. “Guys?”
Eddie appears, standing now, leaned weakly between Nancy and Robin and pale, but smiling. “All alive over here.”
“You gonna join us anytime soon, or stand there gawking?” Robin teases, and tilts her head against Eddie’s. Steve feels a rush of relief like a pulse of blood, warm and wet, and he folds his hands behind his head and laughs a little. They made it through. Whether or not Vecna’s actually dead is yet to be seen, but the plan worked, and now everyone’s back through the gate and Steve’s ready to join them.
He grabs the sheet rope and sets his hands to one of the knots, ready to hoist himself up even though it’s going to suck so much to pull his wounds like that. But that’s fine. They’re getting out, he can deal with his pain later.
He pulls himself up and groans, and puts one hand over the other, hoisting his battered body upward. He does it again. And again.
The ceiling isn’t that far away. When Steve stands at full height and raises his arms, he’s close enough for his fingers to brush the popcorned surface.
He should be there by now. He should be feeling that weird, floaty feeling of being between-worlds, until he’s able to flip into a different plane and have his back hit the mattress safe and sound. He should be there.
“Steve?” he hears faintly, as if from far away. For a moment, Steve is back underwater, back in the depths of the lake, movements slow and thoughts viscous. He tries to climb but his hands are frozen on the rope, his muscles locked and burning.
He hears a clock chime. Weird. He didn’t think the Munsons had a clock that chimed. It chimes again. Again. Again. Again.
He looks up, through the gate, and his friends are all screaming, but silence presses in on his ears. Their eyes are wide and scared, their hands waving like they’re trying to catch Steve’s attention, but it’s like it’s all behind glass. He can’t hear them.
Then something moves in his head. Something awful, slippery and slithering, like tentacles… like vines.
A voice, deep and cracked, shakes the inside of his brain.
YOU ARE NOT THE ONE I’D PLANNED TO KEEP, BUT YOU WILL DO JUST FINE. I SEE PLENTY IN YOUR MIND THAT I CAN USE. JOIN ME.
JOIN ME, STEVE.
“STEVE!” Robin is screaming, her voice a wet, shattered shriek like she’s been yelling for hours. Steve blinks and looks up, and the gate is still just a couple of feet over his head. He doesn’t know what that was. He isn’t going to think about it. He can hear Dustin, his croaky crying voice, shouting, “What’s his song? What’s Steve’s fucking song?”
Steve puts his hand out and lifts himself up, pulls himself forward like a dying man in the desert, and the gate gets no closer. He does it again. The gate remains frustratingly out of reach.
“Steve, hurry!” Nancy shouts. “It’s closing, hurry!”
Steve glances to the side and, sure enough, the edges of the viney, crumbling hole are glowing a terrible red and starting to creep into the center, like a wound knitting together in fast forward. Dustin and Robin are now throwing their whole combined weight onto the other end of the rope, trying to haul Steve through, and he can feel it but it’s not enough, the trailer ceiling isn’t that tall and he shouldn’t still be climbing, (how can he still be climbing?), and the hole closes further, the hole shrinks to a size he’d struggle to squeeze through but he can still do it, he could do it if he could just reach it-
In all the movies, this is where the hero would accept their fate give an unruffled, cool one-liner, but Steve doesn’t have one. He’s not usually very quick on his feet with stuff like this; when Dustin and Steve watched Star Wars together for the first time, Dustin said, a little in awe, “Man, you’re just like Han Solo.” And Steve had thought, yeah, I wish, because he never would be cool enough to answer I love you with a smooth, I know.
Steve doesn’t have time to say anything. He doesn’t say what he wants to, which is not to worry, he’ll be fine. He’ll be fine, and they should go, check on Max, go, he loves them and he wants them safe, go, go. He doesn’t say any of that.
The hole creeps forward and Steve keeps climbing, the endless rope never getting him any closer, and Steve couldn’t possibly fit through the gap anymore. He’s sweating and shaking and sick with fear, and he can’t get through.
The last thing he sees as the gate seals itself shut is Eddie’s horrified face, and the way he reaches out, reaches up, like maybe he can plunge his hand through and grab Steve by the wrist, tug him through in defiance of physics and gravity.
Steve reaches back. The gate seals closed, and he’s close enough for his knuckles to brush the filled-in hole.
No more gate.
Steve’s trapped in the Upside Down.
THEN
HALLOWEEN 1984
Eddie decided at Tina Swanson’s party that he was just going to stop selling on Halloween.
It was basically waste of time. Sure, some people bought weed, but not as many as on a regular night, and he wasn’t carrying harder stuff because Rick kicked up a fuss after Eddie’s latest close call, when he got pulled over by Callahan last week for speeding. Anyway, alcohol was always the drug of choice on Halloween, and Eddie couldn’t make money off of that.
Plus, selling on Halloween meant he had to go to a stupid party with people who didn’t want him around and couldn’t do what he actually wanted to do, which was to hang out with the boys, maybe play a demons-and-devils Samhain-inspired D&D one-shot. Fuck around with their instruments, or watch some terrible horror movies. Go scare some kiddies and steal their candy when they run away. Stupid shit, but more fun than this.
There was something about Halloween that unleashed something wild in people. Pranks and homemade costumes and liquor, masks and fights and that feeling of the air vibrating with tension, waiting for someone to kick a hole into the dam to make it burst. As one of Hawkins’ resident punching bags, it made Eddie itchy and uneasy.
But, speaking of fights…
“Oh, shit,” someone said inside the house. “Harrington just spilled a drink all over his girlfriend.”
“You think that means she’ll finally take her top off for him?”
“Nah, she’s still frigid. That’s how she got Harrington wrapped around her finger.”
Snicker, snicker, snicker.
Eddie rolled his eyes and went back to his nice quiet cigarette on the back porch. He’d made his presence known about an hour ago, so people have trickled out to find him as needed. He wasn’t going to stand in a clump of sweaty dancers, or make awkward conversation over loud music with people who didn’t like him, or be a test subject for whatever monstrosity was in that punch bowl.
Eddie loved a bit of gossip, don’t get him wrong. He loved sparking up a joint and theorizing with his friends about who was sleeping with who and who was cheating on who and who was on the kind of drugs Eddie’d never touch and who was going to fail out of high school. (That last one stopped being a topic when Eddie got the letter that he’d have to repeat senior year.) Steve Harrington’s love life was a hot topic among the lesser beings of Hawkins High, Eddie included, because it was sort of like celebrity news: so far removed from them that it almost felt unreal. Yeah, Harrington got a BJ under the bleachers from that girl who just moved here from Ohio. Didja hear — Harrington had a party and slept with both Montague twins in one night. I heard that Harrington’s packing a shotgun in those too-tight Levi’s-
Well. Eddie shared a locker room with Harrington now, since they were in senior PE together. That last one, at least, wasn’t gossip. That was stone cold fact.
But King Steve seemed to have turned a new leaf, or something, and he and Nancy Wheeler had been steady for months now. Boring.
Nice, Eddie supposed. But boring.
Eddie kept one ear on the party, if only to listen for a groundswell of aggression that could lead to a brawl, which was usually his cue to take his lunchbox o’ goodies and head home. With Billy Hargove in there stalking around like a caged tiger it wasn’t entirely out of the question. But, really, he mostly wanted to go home even without having a real reason. Maybe he’d rewatch The Company of Wolves, which was racking up late fees because he’d rented it weeks ago to get it before the Halloween rush cleared out the Family Video horror shelves.
He’d give it five more minutes, time enough to finish up his smoke, then he’d get out of here.
Four minutes later, he stubbed his smoke and tossed it into one of Tina’s mom’s potted plants, and closed up his lunchbox.
A figure burst into the backyard.
Eddie froze, waiting to see if the person was being chased — he’d hop a fence in a heartbeat before getting caught up in a fight — but no one followed the guy out, and he mostly seemed to want to be alone. He stood at the low edge of the patio that extended out from the back door, and had one his on his hip, oddly reminiscent of a disgruntled mom, and the other pinching at his nose with his head tilted back toward the sky.
Well, Eddie could read a mood: the guy clearly wanted a moment to himself. Eddie was about to slip inside, let the guy have his drunken moment in peace, except then a cloud shifted overhead and moonlight poured down, and Eddie recognized the hair. Or, to rephrase, he recognized The Hair.
Steve Harrington let out a long, slow exhale and thumped down to sit on the edge of the patio, feet stuck out in front of himself. He hung his head, and for a moment Eddie was a little worried he’d watch Harrington tip down face-first onto the dewy grass and pass out cold.
He didn’t though. He just sat there, all sad, like a kicked puppy.
Fuck. Eddie already hated himself, but he’d always had terrible impulse control. That was why he got a goddamn demon tattoo in someone’s basement when he was seventeen.
“Jesus, Harrington,” Eddie said as he sat next to him, and Harrington jumped like he’d been shocked with a cattle prod. “Someone spit in your hairspray?”
Harrington glowered over at him and tucked his chin down into his chest, petulant. Eddie felt his age, suddenly; Steve Harrington looked young in the milky moonlight, even though he was only a year younger than Eddie. “Just leave me alone, man,” he said. “I’m not in the fucking mood.”
Eddie didn’t leave, because that would be the easy thing. Instead, he tapped out another cigarette from his pack, lit it, took a drag, and offered it over.
Harrington looked at it for a long moment, then sighed. “Not gonna charge me for it?”
“Just tobacco, man,” Eddie said. “We’ll call this one on the house.”
He took the cig and their fingers brushed, and all Eddie could register was how hot Harrington’s hands were. Maybe Eddie’d been outside too long, or something. Harrington took a drag of the cigarette and tipped his head back to blow out the smoke, his throat long and pale, his jaw squared and sharp.
Behind them, the back door was still open, and terrible pop music floated out on the breeze to them. The back door was right off the kitchen, which meant that they could hear every word said, and a lot of it was about the king himself. He flinched every time he heard his own name. His hands were shaking.
“...went home with someone else! Totally wasted, too-”
“It was that weird Byers kid, the one whose brother, like, died but came back last year?”
“Zombie Boy?”
“Zombie Boy’s older brother stole Steve Harrington’s girlfriend!”
Harrington groaned and shoved the heels of his palms into his eyes.
“I could go shut the door,” Eddie offered.
Harrington sighed. “Wouldn’t do any good. They’d still talk.”
“They do tend to do that,” Eddie agreed.
“Yeah,” Harrington said, looking over at Eddie. “Suppose you’d know all about that.”
With his face fully turned to Eddie’s, it was clear he’d been crying: red nose, red-rimmed eyes, and his voice had that waver to it. Eddie didn’t draw attention to it, just quirked his eyebrows.
“Yeah, well, the rumors about me are less likely to be true. I haven’t sacrificed anyone to Satan out behind the trailer park lately, for example.”
Harrington huffed the tiniest laugh, and took another drag. “Good to hear.”
Eddie grinned. It didn’t matter who it was, he loved an audience. Call it his vice: it was half the reason he ended up adopting so many little sheep at school. “And I haven’t drank blood in years. Terrible on the teeth, you know. Stains for days.”
Harrington looked sideways at him, still bogarting the cigarette, and said, “And what about the other rumors?”
“Which ones?” Eddie asked with a wide sweep of his hand. “There are a thousand to choose from, so choose wisely.”
Harrington exhaled smoke, and said, “The ones about you sleeping with guys.”
Eddie froze, just for a second, but it was long enough. He didn’t usually freeze. He’d been asked more explicitly before — hell, he’d been mocked as a queer by boys who’d had their dicks in Eddie’s mouth before — and always he’d laughed it off. Turned it into a joke. Performed, as jesters do. For some reason, this time he hadn’t expected the accusation, and it struck him quiet just long enough for Harrington to spot the truth.
Harrington’s eyes changed: they didn’t narrow or widen, but something still shifted there, and Eddie felt it like a thump to his sternum. Well, it was fun bonding with royalty while it lasted, but he needed to go. “That’s a less interesting topic than some of the other rumors, I’d think,” Eddie finally said.
“I don’t know,” Harrington said. “I find it pretty interesting.”
“Cool, well,” Eddie said, and snatched his cigarette back. “I’ll have to postpone the beating you have planned for me for another day, I’m busy tonight.”
“Wait,” Harrington said, and grabbed Eddie’s wrist. Again he froze, a rabbit in a trap. They stared at each other, but Harrington didn’t seem interested in continuing his thought. His brows were furrowed, his eyes flickering back and forth between Eddie’s.
“C’mon, man, I don’t-” Eddie said, trying to pull his arm free. “Just let me go.”
“I’m thinking,” Harrington said.
“Yeah? That’s a first,” Eddie said before his self-preservation kicked in. But Harrington only laughed again, a quiet sound, and still didn’t let go of Eddie’s wrist, so Eddie said, “Okay. What are you thinking about?”
“Paint buckets,” Harrington replied.
Eddie, startled, was the one who laughed this time. It was only, like, forty percent a fear response. “What?”
“My mom, she- uh. So, I used to get nightmares as a kid,” Harrington said, and Eddie felt, all of a sudden, like he’d somehow tilted through the looking glass and ended up in a trippy kind of world where Steve Harrington told him sensitive personal information. “And my mom would- she used to go to a- well. Uh.”
“You’re bad at telling stories,” Eddie observed.
“Shut up,” Harrington said, with no heat to it. “My mom talked to- someone who, like, gave her tips to clear her mind, and she would pass them on to me to help with nightmares. And one of them, the one I liked the most, was to picture the inside of your skull, like, completely empty except the bad thoughts, right? And picture a little paint roller and paint bucket, and you just paint right over everything so it’s blank and clean. It was kind of like counting sheep, except sheep don’t make me feel better, and the paint bucket thing did.”
Eddie opened his mouth and it just hung there for a second. “Right. Okay. So you’re thinking about-”
“Paint buckets,” Steve said. “I’m painting over the bad thoughts.”
“Right,” Eddie said, and laughed again. “Okay. Sure.”
“You’re pretty when you laugh,” Harrington said, and then seemed surprised at himself, like that was supposed to stay inside.
Eddie coughed and said, “Wow, Harrington. Girlfriend dumps you and you immediately want to slum it?”
“So it is true about you,” Harrington said. “You and guys.”
Eddie, having an absolutely wild out of body experience, said, “I don’t know, man, what’s it to you?”
And Harrington said, “If you liked guys, I’d kiss you.”
This was where Eddie should leave. There was enough plausible deniability that this could be forgotten by the morning — hell, if Harrington had another few drinks, it could be forgotten before the clock struck one. But he didn’t understand the prank. Usually, the goal was to get the queer to confess to you, not the other way around. Eddie hadn’t given himself away, but Harrington had sure said a lot. And there was no gathered crowd to gawk and jeer, no gang of goons to pound Eddie’s face in if he did something stupid like take Harrington up on the offer. It was like Harrington was acting out a part that had no supporting roles, and Eddie was there too without a script, shoved on stage and told to wing it.
“I think you’ve had enough to drink, and you’ve had a bad night,” Eddie said.
“I’m not drunk,” Harrington said, sounding drunk. “I mean it. If you were a- if you liked dudes, I’d kiss you.”
Eddie, for the first time in his life, reined in his worst impulses. He didn’t care what Harrington said; maybe he wasn’t drunk, but he clearly wasn’t in his right mind after his fight with Wheeler, and Eddie’s luck had already been pressed beyond belief.
“Well, that’s… nice?” Eddie said down to his hands. “But just because I’d be into it doesn’t mean you would, and that’s not very fair, is it?”
Harrington’s brow furrowed even more, like he was parsing that sentence for meaning, and Eddie didn’t give him time to do it properly before he clambered to his feet, grabbing his lunchbox and grinning.
“Besides,” he said, “full moon on a Halloween night? I’ve gotta go shed my skin, bark at the moon, bite a few people and bring ‘em to the dark side.”
Harrington looked, if possible, even more baffled. But not in a murderous rage towards the queer he hit on for some reason, so Eddie would take it. He said, “You’re so fucking weird,” and it didn’t even sound like an insult.
Eddie said, “Guilty as charged, my liege.”
And then he left, and hoped that would never come back to bite him.
Notes:
NOTES:
- MAD PROPS YET AGAIN TO SIERRA FOR THE ART holy SHIT. link below if you want to reblog.
- Swamp Thing is a 1982 DC Comics film about a scientist who gets turned into a radioactive lizard monster and falls in love with a lady while getting revenge for being turned into a lizard monster. We’ll hear more about this later, specifically Eddie’s interest in the more romantic parts of the film (hint hint hint)
- The Going to the Chapel song (“Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married”) is actually called Chapel of Love by the Dixie Cups, but I feel like Steve wouldn’t know that and would just think of it as the Going to the Chapel song.
- The Company of Wolves is a 1984 British gothic werewolf horror film in which lycanthropy is pretty clearly code for teenage hormones. (HINT HINT HINT 😇)art and fic link on my tumblr here. please share if you're enjoying!
Chapter 2: two: THE DEAL | THE DEALER
Summary:
“Right. Well… flattering as this is, Harrington, I’m not really the guy you come to for experimenting. I don’t want to be your, I don’t know, your goddamn gay greaser fling to piss off your parents, or whatever.”
Harrington’s brow furrowed a little, and tilted his uncovered ear towards Eddie like he heard him wrong. “Greaser?”
“You know, The Outsiders?” Eddie said. “Freshman English class? Greasers and Socs? The poor kid in a leather jacket from the wrong side of the tracks, and the rich girl slumming it for a taste of something new?”
Harrington shrugged, then brightened. “Oh, like Grease?”
“Oh my god,” Eddie said in horror. “No.”
Notes:
TW for the “Now” section: Steve experiences a panic attack but the description is very simplified and short. There is canon-typical violence and extreme injury towards the end of the section. If you need to skip, stop reading at “he does seem regretful when he says, ‘Unfortunate.’” and start up again at “Steve hangs limply among the vines.”
TW for the “Then” section: mentions of child abuse from Eddie’s father, but no specifics.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Steve is starting to realize that he might be the worst possible person to be trapped in the Upside Down.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there in the Munsons’ living room, staring up at the place where the gate used to be. It feels like a couple of seconds. It feels like an eternity. It feels, for a while, like he’s not even thinking, or breathing, or living, he’s just- stuck. Eventually, though, he stops looking straight up, and there is no step two to his plan after that.
He has absolutely zero idea how to get out of here. He barely understands how this whole interdimensional thing works, and he mostly tuned out anytime Dustin started talking about physics or wormholes or whatever else. His survival skills are basically nil. His main talent is bashing things with other things until one of those things is broken. Now, though, that skill is not doing him a hell of a lot of good.
The first thing he does is leave the Munson trailer, which feels incredibly bad. At least there he knows what to expect. Where the good blankets are, where Eddie puts his weed. But Vecna obviously knew they were there, otherwise how could he have talked in Steve’s head? So he leaves, and makes his pain-riddled way to the next gate out on the highway where Fred died. It takes him fucking ages, and while he doesn’t expect much, he finds even less: just a mottled mass of vines where a hole used to be.
He stands over it and sighs.
He doesn’t bother going to Lover’s Lake. He’s not Henderson; he doesn’t feel the need to test a hypothesis over and over again. Twice is plenty. The gates are closed.
So. Right.
First things first, he has to stay away from Vecna. If he, Robin, and Nance couldn’t take the monster down all together, then Steve has no hope on his own. Especially like this, wounded and exhausted. He doesn’t even have his bat, since Robin threw it through the gate before she went in.
No sign of the big guy yet; so far, so good on that.
Second things second: he needs to check his wounds, because the patch job from before is not holding up.
He almost starts the long walk to Loch Nora, but he realizes pretty quickly that would be a waste of time. If this world is stuck in 1983, then Steve won’t have bought the big first aid kit to stow away in his bathroom yet, and his mom’s medicine won’t be there because they weren’t in town, which is why he was able to have that little party with Tommy and Carol and Nancy and- and Barb.
But where else? He could break into the pharmacy or the general store, he supposes, but downtown’s a long walk from the highway through that weird patch of forest the kids call Mirkwood.
There’s the Wheelers’ place, but it seems like Karen Wheeler wouldn’t have an arsenal of bandages there, seeing as how Nancy’s not accident-prone and Mike’s hardly the most physical guy in the world. Same as the Byers’, though a quiet part of Steve’s mind thinks that Joyce likely would keep a hospital’s worth of first aid stuff around if she could afford it.
Hopper’s cabin probably has plenty of painkillers, but that’s not necessarily his number one priority right now.
Henderson… Henderson! Claudia’s a nurse!
“Oh thank god,” Steve says when he gets to the Henderson bungalow and finds a treasure trove of gauze, bandages, ointments, and ibuprofen galore under the bathroom sink. Steve tries the shower but gets no water from the pipes — makes sense, since the lake was dry. In fact, he’s not seen any water in the Upside Down at all — so he makes do by wiping the remaining dried blood and gunk off of himself. He dabs on some antibiotic and awkwardly winds the gauze around his torso, tying it off clumsily. He rifles through Dustin’s closet for a t-shirt, then remembers that’s not going to work because Dustin was about two feet tall in 1983. He grimaces as he shrugs back into his grimy, sweaty clothes, and zips his tac jacket back on.
He steals Henderson’s Jansport and stuffs it full of medicine and bandages, and then checks the pantry.
No food.
That seems like a pretty big deal, and an obvious difference between the real world and this one. The Henderson house always has food. Claudia’s a perpetually anxious stress baker and Dustin gets nauseous if he doesn’t eat, like, every four hours on the dot. Steve couldn’t count the number of times he’s had to swing through a drive-through after picking Dustin up from somewhere because it had been a while since he’d eaten, and he was all crabby and pale until he got some fries or a shake.
So if there’s no food here, there’s probably no food anywhere.
He feels like he should be making a list or something. Problems to be solved. That’s what Nancy would do, in her little reporter notebook. It’s what Robin would do, too, except hers would be in, like, Latin or something. The kids would already have found a way to communicate with the other side, even with the gates closed. That’s what Will did when he was trapped, and he was a goddamn child.
Literally anyone in their little band of heroes would be closer to a solution than Steve.
Steve suddenly finds that he needs to sit. He’s dizzy and his breath is coming fast and his vision is blurry and spotty, and this is usually where Robin guides him to put his head between his knees and talks at him until he can make sense of her words and can tell her he’s okay again.
Robin’s not here, though. No one’s here. Just Steve. Fuck. Fuck. Just Steve, alone with the monsters and a homicidal vine man who can get into his head.
Steve shudders his way through one minute, then another, and then stumbles back to Henderson’s bedroom and curls up under his Star Wars sheets and cries.
He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to. It’s weird, right? That he’s not hungry, that he’s not thirsty, that he doesn’t need to sleep after the most exhausting day of his life?
He wallows for a bit and then makes himself get up, shake it off, push it down, and leave the Henderson house. Sitting still for too long feels like a bad idea. If the only thing he has going for him is that he’s surviving against the odds, then he won’t make himself a sitting duck.
His sides and back still throb with pain, which is comforting, if only because it means he’s not, like, a zombie or something. He’s not dead. He’s not dead, he’s walking around and hurting and that’s a human thing to do.
For lack of any better ideas, he walks towards downtown. He notices pretty quickly that while parts of this version of Hawkins are still floating in weird places and jagged and broken and vine-covered, the monsters all seem to have gone somewhere else. He doesn’t hear bat wings, or the clicking call of the demodogs. It’s almost like the gates closed and everything went dormant.
Maybe that’s a good thing. For the moment, it certainly doesn’t seem bad. He doesn’t think he’s safe, but he doesn’t feel hunted, either.
Downtown is fractured and strange. Steve breaks into Melvald’s and finds batteries and a flashlight, a compact sleeping bag, and rope. He rips into the packaging of a few basic pocket knives and straps them to himself. He goes to the kitchenware aisle and gets the longest steak knife he can find, and uses a roll of duct tape to make a spear with the knife and a broom handle.
If he’s here long enough, he’ll walk to the sporting goods store. There are probably all kinds of rifles there that he’ll ignore — he’s not a great shot, to Nancy’s eternal frustration — but there are baseball bats there too, and he knows what to do with those.
Melvald’s in the real world has a little food section, just staples and non-perishables, but those aisles in this world are empty and taunting. No cans, no packages, no water, no drinks.
He’s still not hungry or thirsty, though that is probably the exhaustion talking. He’s actually probably starving and dehydrated, but his body can’t focus on that. Anyway, he still has a little sliver of hope that he’ll be able to get out of here before this actually becomes an issue.
As he sits for a moment, resting his legs and giving his sides a break from the constant movement, he tries to plan.
His new priority is getting someone’s attention on the other side. If he can let the baby geniuses know he needs to be rescued, they can put their brains together and find a way to get him out. So, he needs to find… a light? Right? He really doesn’t know how all this works, but he knows they need lights to communicate. He could only hear Henderson at the Wheelers’ house in Upside Hawkins because they were in the same location and his flashlight was on. But that means he needs to find them.
So where would they go? He pictures himself on the other side of the gate if things had gone according to plan. He would have insisted that they go check on Max and Lucas and Erica — except, no, wait, Eddie was hurt. Eddie was really hurt. So he would have insisted that they took Eddie to the hospital. Eddie and maybe Nancy would have kicked up a fuss because Eddie’s still a wanted man, but Steve would have said they’d deal with that when the guy wasn’t bleeding out. Robin and Dustin would have backed him up. Since Steve wasn’t there, Dustin would probably push that plan himself, as Eddie’s little pocket-sized mother hen.
Two places to go, so they probably would have split up. Nancy and Dustin would take Steve’s car and run Eddie to the hospital, and Robin would bike over to the Creel house to check on the others. And- and surely they’re alright, because if not, Vecna would be there, right? He’d be on the other side, he’d be in the real world. Wasn’t that what Nancy’s vision said? Max was the fourth chime, the fourth death that Vecna needed to open the gates?
God, Steve wishes he was better at this. He pinches his nose and wishes uselessly for another brain. The details slip through his mind like sand. Robin says it’s not his fault, it’s all the head injuries, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
Anyway. Hospital? That seems like the best plan of action. Steve can wander with his flashlight until he hears familiar voices, and then he can signal them to come get him. They’ll make a plan, tell Steve what to do, and rescue him. Rob will do it. She’d bite through the crust of the earth for him, which he knows because he’d do the same for her. And Dustin loves Steve and loves being right, so he’d rush to be the first to find a solution, and Eddie-
Well. Eddie’s hopefully unconscious and on a healthy dose of legal drugs, letting himself be taken care of. If he’s not, when Steve gets topside, he’s wringing his skinny neck.
It feels good to have a plan. He stands and slings his bag over his shoulders, tests his grip on his spear, steps out of Melvald’s and-
“Hello, Steve.”
“Fuck!” Steve shouts, scrambling backwards and slashing out automatically with his spear. The hit doesn’t land, and the handle is knocked easily out of his grip. He grabs for a knife and swings wildly, but then a gray vine lashes up and wraps his wrist, holding him in place, and then another does the same to his left side, and more around his ankles.
Vecna looms over him, horrible creeping skin that never stops moving, and piercing blue eyes that are so human that it’s almost worse to look directly at them. Steve struggles against the vines, useless, and thinks about how stupid it is that he’s going to die in Melvald’s, where he buys his toothpaste and lemons.
“You are not going to die, Steve,” Vecna says.
“Feels like it,” Steve says, still yanking at his restraints. “Feels a lot like I’m going to die.”
“That would be a waste,” Vecna says. His voice is like bugs crawling over fallen leaves. He walks toward Steve, unhurried. “You are already here with me, and your death would be a loss of opportunity for both of us.”
“You mean I’m not even worth killing?” Steve says. “That’s fucked, man.”
Vecna curls his big, clawed hand, and Steve feels another vine wind around his arms and tortured sides, lifting him into the air. Steve yelps in pain and wriggles, but he’s held fast. Vecna’s head tilts. “Not many try to cope with their fear through humor. It will make things interesting for us, I believe.”
“What do you want from me?” Steve grits out. His torso roars in pain, and his vision goes spotty again, this time from lack of air in his compressed chest.
“I would like to make a deal, Steve Harrington.”
Steve laughs a little, heart jittering. “No? Fuck you.”
Vecna’s head tilts to the other side. “If you prefer, I can crush you to pieces here. Your friends already mourn you, and I can make that real.”
“What do you mean, they mourn me?” Steve asks, words barely a gasp. “I woke up, like, two hours ago. They’ll be back to get me, and we’ll burn your ass to the ground.”
“Ah,” Vecna says. The pressure around Steve’s body lessens and he sucks in a breath, though his feet still don’t touch the ground. “I forgot you can’t see the things I can see. No, Steve. Your friends will not be coming back to get you. They passed through the gate between worlds almost two weeks ago, and since they’ve had no sign that you’re alive, they believe you died here.”
“Two- two weeks?” Steve repeats.
“You lost some time after the gate closed,” Vecna says. “Part of that is my doing. I did not want you to die before I could focus on you, so I made your body go still so that your wounds would not worsen, and you would not die of hunger or thirst until I was ready for you. You woke up, as you say, about two hours ago.”
“Two weeks,” Steve says, feeling like he’s going to be sick. Wouldn’t that be fun, to puke all over Vecna. “Fuck.”
Vecna says, “Would you like to hear my deal?”
“No,” Steve says, fighting his hold again, desperately. “No, no- fuck you, fuck you! I’ve been gone for two weeks?”
Vecna doesn’t sigh, but he does seem regretful when he says, “Unfortunate.”
The vines tighten, and something in Steve’s chest cracks.
His vision swims in black and kaleidoscope spots, and his throat feels like it’s bleeding from the force of his screams. The entire middle of his body crackles with pain. Ribs- broken ribs? Spine?
“Are you ready to listen now?”
Steve shudders, and the words fall out of him: “Fuck- no- you- fuck you- no-”
His wrists both break.
Next are his ankles.
On and on. He washes away on a tide of pain. He doesn’t know how he’s still awake. He doesn’t know how he’s still alive. Every part of him is broken. Every part of him screams.
Every few minutes, Vecna asks again. Steve says no until he can’t, and then he has no answers to give. He has no words except these:
“Kill me!” he screams, blood frothing at his mouth. “Kill me! Just kill me!”
Vecna says, “That does not solve my problem, nor yours.”
Steve hangs limply among the vines that keep him aloft and bleeds and cries and bleeds and cries.
“Until you’re ready to hear my deal,” Vecna says, “I’ll tell you what you’ve missed. It might help you make your decision.” Vecna is close, now, towering over Steve, hand up and claws pressed against Steve’s face.
“Little Eleven, my sweet sister, is who to blame for you being trapped here,” Vecna starts. “She and I fought in the hallways of Max’s mind, and she was able to block me long enough to seal the exits from this world I’d worked so hard to create. She didn’t know anyone was still on this side, so she unwittingly locked you in here with me. As you can imagine, she’s rather upset to find that your death is her fault.”
He says this sadly, and Steve’s overwrought brain thinks about how Max and Nancy described this monster, how he spoke to their worst fears and impulses, manipulative and all-seeing. Steve would never want El to regret a choice she made to keep everyone safe, even if he was hurt in the process. He never would. He wishes he could tell her that.
“She knows me, as she was raised in the same way that I was. She took away every loophole she could think of to keep me here. She knows how to shut me out of her mind, now, and I believe she’s taught the rest of your friends the same trick. I had holds on several people in your little gang, and without those I cannot spread my influence to others and make more doors between worlds. More gates.”
Steve sluggishly thinks about how glad he is that El fought him out, how brave and strong she is. His mouth drips with blood and he doesn’t think his mangled jaw could form words, but if he could he’d thank her, hope she could feel it somehow.
“She can’t,” Vecna says. “She can’t feel you at all. By walling herself off from me and this realm, she took away her connection to you. This is why they all think you’re dead, and she won’t risk searching for you in case I find her instead and follow her back through. I am, admittedly, thoroughly trapped here.”
Good, Steve thinks fiercely. Good. Stay here. Rot here.
“It seems that is the plan,” Vecna agrees. “But, as I said before, she hadn’t planned for you. She didn’t know you were still here. And while I don’t have connections to Hawkins Above any longer, you do. Look, Steve.”
There’s a wash of something: white light and a wave of shivers, a sharp rap on the inside of Steve’s head like — stupidly, he thinks of Fonzie and the jukebox, and it’s like the Fonz tapped his head to bring it to life. His thoughts run faster, his ears stop ringing, his eyes creak open.
The Upside Down is no longer dull grays and reds. It’s purples and blues in the darkest shadows, it’s greens and yellows in the vines and rotten plants, it’s pinks and oranges on the movie theater sign and in the blood on the ground around Steve’s dangling feet.
The vine around his left wrist — the one without the knife — uncurls and he lifts that arm automatically to see his palm glowing like a lantern, and a dozen strings of light shooting straight up at the sky. The strings are golden-hot and hard to look at, too much on Steve’s overloaded senses. He has to squint at them from the corner of his eye until he adjusts.
“Look at that,” Vecna says, moving that large clawed hand from Steve’s face to wrap around Steve’s free wrist. “That’s a power I never gained, try as I might. All that love and affection you have for your friends has connected you securely to them. Even as a dead man, you have ties to the world above. Eleven did not plan for that. Could not plan for that.”
“So I could go,” Steve surmises, the connections knitting together in his head like two obvious puzzle pieces clicking into place. “I could leave, even though you can’t. Because I’m tied to people on the other side, like you were to Max.”
“If only it were that easy,” Vecna says. “There are no more doors in between realms, so your body would stay here, as mine did. But I could teach you how to follow those connections with your mind and visit your friends in their dreams and memories.”
It rings like a struck piano key, that offer. It has to be too good to be true.
But Robin has thought that Steve has been dead for two weeks. Dustin has thought- Nancy, Max, Lucas- Eddie-
“But if you teach me, I could still leave,” Steve says. He’s staring at those lights erupting from his palm, and the more he looks, he feels like he can see differences between them. One seems weaker than most of the others and looks like wood smoke and has a ruddy red tinge that, for some reason, Steve knows is the string tying him to Will Byers. One is pinkish and looks wrapped in lace: Nancy. Robin’s looks like water dripped with nail polish, swirls of navy blue. He can pick out Dustin’s, then Lucas, El, Max, Jon, Erica, even Mike. Eddie. There are others, too — two off apart from the others that remind him of his mom’s perfume and the glint of his dad’s wristwatches, thinner than all the rest like plants that haven’t seen sunlight in a while. And more: Joyce, Wayne, Claudia. He thinks- is that one Tommy? And Carol? Hopper?-
He can’t think about this. He rips his gaze away.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“I can teach you how to visit them. How to talk to them,” Vecna says. “Through dreams and hallucinations, yes, but you could see them, and they could see you. See that you’re alive.”
“But trapped.”
“Yes,” Vecna says. “The only way either of us could ever truly leave this place is if Eleven opens the gates back up, or if Max dies to finish the ritual I began. And I’m assuming you’re not willing to do that second option.”
“Fuck you.”
“As I thought. So, we’ve come to the point, and here is my deal: I will give you the powers of this realm. I will teach you what I know. You will cross back into Hawkins Above and connect with your friends, let them know you’re alive. If you are convincing enough, they will come to rescue you.”
“That all seems good for me,” Steve says. “But my dad’s a lawyer, buddy, and I can tell when someone’s bullshitting me. Get to the point. What do you get out of it?”
Vecna’s warped, veined face reinvents itself to smile. “If I give you my powers, it would not be for free. You will act as my lieutenant here in this realm. You will control the beasts in my stead, and do as I command. When your friends come to rescue you, I won’t make you fight them, but I will be there to welcome them, and this will finally be finished.”
“So you think you’d win,” Steve guesses. “If they came here to fight you, you think you’d beat them, even without my help.”
“I do. And I think you can warn them all you want, but I will know it. I’ve connected us, Steve. I can hear every thought in your head. So they will come to rescue you, and I will know their plan but they cannot plan for me.”
“Then why would I do this?” Steve laughs, incredulous. “Why would I draw them here, if they’re just going to die for it?”
“Because you doubt me when I say that I would win against them,” Vecna says. He lays it out like a winning poker hand. “Just because I believe I will win does not mean it is guaranteed. You believe in your friends. You believe they could beat me. And if they do, you could be saved.”
“And if I say no?” Steve asks.
Immediately, the pain he hadn’t realized had vanished from his body comes pouring back, his vision going blurry, the colors fading from the world, his mouth filling once again with blood. His thoughts are slow and dripping. He groans and slumps forward, barely held up by the vines around him.
“Then I leave you like this,” Vecna says. “It won’t take long for you to die. Your friends will never know what happened to you, and I will spend as long as I need to working to get back to the other world without you. And I’ll have help, because your friends cannot keep the government from meddling once more. Every crack they make in the barrier between worlds is one I can exploit. I will get through some day. At least this way, you have a chance to stop me. You have a chance to live again.”
Steve breathes unsteadily and looks back down at his palm. The lights disappeared when the pain came back, when color faded from the world. He thinks about those tiny connections to people that he loves, and thinks about leaving them to fight this fight without him.
It’s stupid. He isn’t the person who should be making this deal. He knows that Vecna manipulates and twists to get what he wants. But his logic makes sense, too.
Steve doesn’t know what to do. He’s not the planner. He’s not the right one to choose this. He’s-
Two weeks. Robin, Dustin, Eddie, Erica, Max, Lucas, Eddie, Jon, Will, Mike, Eddie, Joyce, Claudia, Wayne, Tommy, Carol, his parents, Eddie- they all think he’s gone. He remembers how he felt when Hopper died. He can’t-
His jaw creaks when he opens his mouth.
“Fine,” he says, pain cracking his voice into something horrible, weak, pathetic. He sucks in another breath. “It’s a deal.”
THEN
NOVEMBER 1984
Eddie started buying from Reefer Rick when he was nine. His dad would send him across town with a wad of cash and tell him to buy Rick out, and Rick would let Eddie watch TV while he took Eddie's backpack to another room to stuff it full of packets and packages. When Eddie was eleven, Rick caught him sneaking one of the dimebags of white powder into his pocket and told him, “Not that shit, little man, at least not yet. Plus, your old man’ll kill you if you bring home less than he sent you for.”
Eddie was twelve when his dad was locked up, and his mom had been gone for years, so he was moved from the shitty apartments on one side of Hawkins to the trailer park on the outskirts of the other side, to live with his dad’s brother, his Uncle Wayne. Wayne severely disliked his no-good little brother and thus had been estranged from Eddie’s parents for years, and suddenly Eddie was living with him.
He ran away a lot, not because Wayne was terrible, but because he wasn’t: Eddie was used to living with his back against the wall, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Living with Wayne was like being on the edge of a panic attack all the time — nothing had set Wayne off, so Eddie didn’t know what to avoid to keep from setting Wayne off. It was an ouroboros of anxiety. The longer it went that Eddie lived with Wayne and he never snapped, the scarier it was, and so the more he’d run away.
Wayne wasn’t perfect; he was gone to the plant more often than he was home, and he took a while to adjust to suddenly having a kid in his space. But it never came to a head. The shoe never dropped. Every time Eddie was brought back to the trailer park by a long-suffering Hawkins PD officer, Wayne just sighed and said, “I ain’t gonna yell at you, boy. But I’d really prefer it if you knocked that shit off.”
That was deeply confusing for Eddie, who once got his ass beaten for walking too loudly when his dad had a hangover. He kept expecting Wayne to be the same. He once dropped a plate, shattering it, and ran out the door before Wayne could turn and grab the broom, because he assumed he’d get hit for his mistake. He ran when he failed a test in school, when Chief Hopper caught him with stolen cigarettes.
The last time Eddie ran, he went to Rick’s place on the lake, and knocked on his door in the middle of a downpour.
He had been thirteen, and Rick had waved him in like he’d been expecting him even as he dripped on the floors. He served Eddie half of the can of Chef Boyardee beefaroni he’d been heating on the stove. They watched an episode of The Price is Right where Eddie lost to Rick at every game because he had no idea how much shit like washing machines could cost, and then they watched an episode of Family Feud, and Eddie won that one because Rick would answer questions like, “Name a place where people keep money” with some off-the-wall shit like, “In the bread box, man,” instead of the obvious answer, which was “a bank.”
“Not that I’m not happy to have you here, little man,” Rick had said at a commercial break, “but shouldn’t you be home?”
“That’s not my home,” Eddie’d said, all teenage despair. “I don’t have a home.”
“Bullshit,” Rick said, though he didn’t say it meanly. “Wayne’s a good guy.”
“I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me. He works all day, I go to school, we pass each other in the evenings and barely speak,” Eddie said.
“Better than your dad’s, isn’t it?” Rick asked, which threw Eddie for a loop.
“Well- yeah, but,” Eddie sputtered. “I thought you were friends with my dad.”
Rick snorted a laugh. “No, man. I’m his dealer, not his friend. Your dad’s a sack of shit.” Then, remembering who he was talking to, said, “Sorry.”
“No,” Eddie had said as his world rearranged itself. “It’s okay.”
“Listen,” Rick said. “I’m not gonna talk to you like a kid, because I don’t know how to do that. And you know enough that I don’t have to babysit you. But you’re so much better off now, man, than you were with your dad. He had you running fuckin’ drugs to him in elementary school! I almost told you no that first time, but I’ve seen what he does to people he’s unhappy with, man, so I’m glad I didn’t.”
Eddie felt like he was floating away from reality. Here he was, at a drug dealer’s house, being told by said drug dealer that his own dad was the biggest risk in his life. Eddie had leaned forward and laughed, a little hysterically, into his hands.
“Listen, man,” Rick said again. “I went to school with your dad and Wayne, you know? I used to deal back then, too, and your dad was real mean when I didn’t have what he wanted. And he’s not gotten any nicer since. But Wayne’s a good dude. He’s quiet, but he’s good. And he won’t pin you down, man.”
Rick let Eddie watch two more episodes of daytime TV before he drove him back to Forest Hills in his van. Wayne wasn’t home from work yet; had never known Eddie was gone.
“Stay in fuckin’ school, man,” Rick said. “And let Wayne know what’s up. He’s good people. And so are you, little man.”
When Wayne got home, Eddie was at the dining table, and Wayne raised an eyebrow as he shed his work boots and jacket by the door. “Evenin',” he said.
“Hi,” Eddie said. “I want to put up posters in my room. Posters of metal bands, specifically. Lots of devils and pentagrams and stuff.”
Wayne stopped for a moment and considered. “Alright.”
Eddie took another breath. “And I like to read books about magic and wizards, and play Dungeons & Dragons.”
Wayne walked over to the coffee pot, which Eddie had started for him a half hour before. “Sounds good.”
“And I hate my dad,” Eddie said in a big rush. “I hate him, and I hate my mom for leaving me with him. And I-” he choked, completely unintentionally, a sob caught in his throat, “I’m really scared that I’m going to figure out what’s going to make you hate me as much as they did.”
Wayne abandoned his coffee immediately and turned to Eddie, pulling him into an awkward, tobacco-and-motor oil hug. After a moment of letting Eddie cry like he hadn’t in years, he pulled back and put both hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “There’s nothing you could do, boy. My love ain’t conditional.”
Things changed after that.
Eddie bought that van off of Rick when he turned fifteen, after a summer of mowing lawns and an autumn of raking leaves and a winter of shoveling snow. He crashed at Rick’s when he was out of town and watered his dumb little bonsai trees and fed the cats he kept intermittently. After he got the van, Eddie tried getting a job bagging groceries but the manager said he didn’t have the right look, and then he tried to get a job at the mechanic’s but he wasn’t old enough, and he tried to get a job at Melvald’s but a frazzled woman named Joyce said they didn’t have any openings, sweetie, but she was sure that something would be available soon if he wanted to leave his phone number.
So he talked to Rick, and started selling at school.
“Just fuckin’ weed, man,” Rick warned. “I’m not giving you more than that.”
But the school was a hit place to move some drugs, it turned out, and so Rick reluctantly let Eddie add to his stock over time: coke, and ket, and E, and mushrooms, when he could get them. Eddie let the rumor spread that he’d have the goods at the old picnic table in the woods beyond the football field, and every Thursday he’d be there with a steady flow of customers for a couple of hours after school ended. He got told when parties would be happening — not invited, that was clear, but if he happened to be there and happened to bring his drugs, he’d be let in.
When he was informed he had to repeat senior year, he almost didn’t go back. What fucking use would it be, really, when it wasn’t like he was going to go to college? He and Wayne couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t have the dedication for it anyway. He might as well get started on making money with a real job, and he was sure Wayne could get him on at the plant. Maybe they’d let him wear his Walkman while he worked.
But Wayne and Rick both convinced him not to give up, that it would be worth it. That with a diploma he could go to trade school, or take some writing classes later on down the road.
So he did it again. He sucked it up, and ignored the jeers from the people who lined up to buy his drugs when they were away from their friends, and put his head down. Except the boring shit from his first senior year didn’t get any more interesting during the second go round, and he was rapidly plummeting towards a third time even with his best(ish) effort.
Which led to this day: two weeks after a shitty Halloween party, and he was out at the picnic table on a Thursday afternoon. It’d been slow, always was in the lead up to holidays; Thanksgiving didn’t put people in the party mood, apparently. Eddie had a pocket knife out and was carving his initials into the top of the old wooden table when there was a rustle in the dead leaves at the edge of the tree line.
He looked up, and found Steve Harrington there, staring back at him.
He looked- well. He looked like fucking Swim Team Ken, only missing the Barbie on his arm and a bit more blonde in his hair. Cute little polo tucked into jeans that showed off his slim hips, shiny white Nikes, brown belt, Members Only jacket. But he also looked like hell warmed over, with a fading ring of bruises around his eye and a few dark stitches at his hairline. One of his ears was taped over with gauze.
“Shit, Harrington,” Eddie said without much thought. “You look like you went ten rounds with a grizzly bear.”
Harrington smiled a little, and rubbed the knuckles of one hand against the other bicep. “You’re not far off. Billy Hargrove.”
“Oh, shit,” Eddie said, a little quieter. Very little scared Eddie like the dead-eyed stare of Billy Hargrove. “So you’re here for, uh,” he pulled out a baggie of weed and wiggled it, “herbal painkillers?”
Harrington didn’t answer, just crossed the clearing and sat across from Eddie at the table, folding his hands together. Eddie was struck by the realization that this is the first time King Steve himself was buying from him; usually it was Hagan or another one of the lesser beings sent to procure for a royal party.
“Actually,” Harrington said. “I wanted to talk to you about, uh. About Halloween.”
Eddie put the weed away, and subtly locked his lunchbox so he could run when the time called for it. He still had the pocketknife in his hands. He hoped to fucking high heaven he didn’t need it. “Yeah. Crazy night.”
“Not that crazy,” Harrington said. “I told you, I wasn’t drunk.” At Eddie’s skeptical look, he rolled his eyes. “I'd had two beers, but I planned to drive Nance home so that was it.”
“Okay...” Eddie said, letting it trail.
Harrington seemed to notice Eddie’s initials then, the second layer of exposed wood a light tan against the aged and graffitied table top, and he reached out and traced the letters: EM. He traced them again and again. EM. EM. EM. It was hypnotic, his long fingers against Eddie’s name.
Finally, he looked up and his eye contact with Eddie hit like a body slam. Eddie felt winded with it. Harrington said, “I wasn’t drunk. I knew what I was doing.”
You look pretty when you laugh.
If you liked guys, I’d kiss you.
“Okay,” Eddie said again, slightly more strangled.
“I know you…” Harrington said, then stopped, frustrated. “I still- if you’re interested. If you want- it doesn’t have to mean anything, if you don’t want it to.”
“English, dude,” Eddie said. “Because I’m very worried I’m misinterpreting, here.”
“I said it at the party. I want-” Harrington groaned, shoved his hands through his hair. “I want to fucking kiss you. I want that. I want you.”
Eddie was glad he was sitting down. His heart was thundering in his chest. He could feel how wide his eyes were. “So, right, okay. I wasn’t misinterpreting you.”
“No,” Harrington said. “You weren’t.”
“But you like girls. You have a girlfriend.”
“Not anymore.”
“To which one?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Harrington said.
“And liking girls?”
“I still like girls,” Harrington said. “But I think that’s not all.”
“You think,” Eddie said, stomach sinking. “Right. Well… flattering as this is, Harrington, I’m not really the guy you come to for experimenting. I don’t want to be your, I don’t know, your goddamn gay greaser fling to piss off your parents, or whatever.”
Harrington’s brow furrowed a little, and tilted his uncovered ear towards Eddie like he heard him wrong. “Greaser?”
“You know, The Outsiders?” Eddie said. “Freshman English class? Greasers and Socs? The poor kid in a leather jacket from the wrong side of the tracks, and the rich girl slumming it for a taste of something new?”
Harrington shrugged, then brightened. “Oh, like Grease?”
“Oh my god,” Eddie said in horror. “No.”
“It totally is!” Harrington said. “I don’t know what The Outsiders is, but that’s totally the plot of Grease.”
”Grease has no plot,” Eddie said. “It’s ninety minutes of bad musical theatre and thirty-year-old actors pretending they’re still in high school. Rizzo is old enough to be your mom!”
“My mom is slightly older than thirty,” Harrington said dryly. “Okay, fine, you don’t like that comparison, so what about Uptown Girl? The Billy Joel song. That works.”
Eddie said, faintly, “Are you saying you’re the uptown girl, and I’m the backstreet guy?”
“If the shoe fits,” Harrington grins.
“That doesn’t- Harrington,” Eddie said desperately. “I feel like we got off track. I don’t want to be the guy you use as a test run to see if you’re into dudes.”
“You’re not,” Harrington said. “And stop calling me by my last name like you’re my coach or something.”
“You don’t use my first name,” Eddie pointed out. Harrington made a little, alright, fine face and stuck out his hand.
“Steve Harrington,” he said. “You can call me Steve.”
Eddie said, “I know who you are, man. Everyone knows the king.”
“You know, nobody called me that until Billy Hargrove showed up,” Harrington said, hand still extended. “It’s pretty stupid, actually, and I’d really prefer for him to not get to pick my nickname after he tried to brain me with a plate. And I’m not a king. I was popular, and I think that’s gone now. I’m just Steve.”
Eddie, completely lost on what to do here, closed his pocketknife before he accidentally stabbed Steve Harrington in the hand. He slid it into his pocket and stared at Harrington until he wiggled his fingers and raised his eyebrows, then Eddie shook his hand, bewildered. “Eddie Munson.”
“Great. Eddie,” Steve said, and, unfortunately, it sent a shiver down Eddie’s spine. Harrington saw it, and grinned. “So you’re not totally against the idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Eddie said.
“Why?”
“Because- because!” Eddie said, waving his arms. “This is Hawkins! We can’t just do this! People already want to burn me at the stake for the music I listen to and the way I dress, and if they find out I’m corrupting the-” king, he stopped himself from saying, “golden boy of this town, I’ll be toast!”
“Then we don’t let them find out,” Steve said. “I can keep a secret.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said. “Listen, this goes against every rule of the Munson Doctrine, which has not failed me yet.”
“The Munson… what?” Steve asked, head cocked to the side.
“Yeah. It goes like this: people are split up into groups, right, and people in those groups have rules that they follow. I, you see, am an outcast. I play games that people think were created by Satan, and I wear clothes from places other than the Gap, and I have no money and a shitty van, which means that I have excellent taste but few friends, and regularly scheduled beatings from the local jocks.” Steve opened his mouth to respond, and Eddie held up his hand to stop him. “You, Steve, are popular, good-looking, athletic, and the ladies love you, which means that you have to be a total dickhead. It also means that you, as a rule, can’t like people like me. If you were going to dip into the rainbow side, you would do it with someone more like… well, you.”
“I don’t want someone like me,” Steve said. “Also, that’s all bullshit. You can’t put people in boxes, man. That’s not how life works. I was popular, and I played sports, and I dated some girls, yes, but I also have very weird friends and have only had one long-term relationship which ended- well, you saw how it ended. My life isn’t perfect, just because you think you can tell me it is. Also,” he smiled, a bit too sincere to be a smirk, “you called me good-looking.”
“Well, yeah!” Eddie said, waving his hand at Steve’s face. “I’m scared, not blind.”
“I don’t want you to be scared,” Steve said, so fucking earnest. “I think this could be really good.”
“Well I think you don’t know the risks you’re signing up for.”
“We’ll be careful. I’ll be careful,” Steve promised. “Just- here,” Steve got up, and circled the table so he could sit next to Eddie, close enough that their arms brushed as Steve swung himself onto the bench. “There,” he said, turning to look at Eddie, their faces way too close.
“Harrington,” Eddie said weakly.
“Steve,” Steve corrected.
“Steve,” Eddie said, little more than a whisper. “I don’t want you to regret this.”
“Then I won’t,” Steve said, like it was that easy.
Eddie smiled shakily. “This is stupid.”
“Probably,” Steve murmured, and laid a big hand against Eddie’s cheek. “But I’ve done stupider things.”
His lips landed soft against Eddie’s and Eddie had a sound pulled unwillingly from him, something high and shocked and a little scared, and then Harrington tilted his head and then his mouth opened against Eddie’s and- oh.
Oh, hell. Harrington was a really good kisser.
He slid his tongue along Eddie’s with deliberate slowness, and ran his thumb along the edge of Eddie’s jaw. Eddie clutched at Steve’s jacket with both hands and yanked him closer, or tried to, except Harrington was all muscle and instead Eddie just pulled himself closer to Steve, his ass scooting along the bench until he was pressed against Steve from thigh to chest. Steve grinned against his mouth and took Eddie’s bottom lip between his teeth and bit down, just a little.
Eddie pulled back with a gasp, and said, “Okay, fuck it, fuck you, hold on,” and shoved at Steve — who looked confused but went with it — until he had one knee to either side of the bench, facing Eddie. Eddie clambered awkwardly out of the seat and deposited himself directly into Steve’s lap, and Steve made a noise like he’d been punched. “Good?” Eddie asked, now a little worried.
“Yeah,” Steve said, and now he was the breathless one, which made Eddie smirk and wiggle his hips, an instinctive move of pride from Steve’s reaction. Steve grinned back, totally unselfconscious, and pressed a thumb into Eddie’s dimple.
Eddie, now that he knew they were allowed to touch, ran a careful finger around the bruising on Steve’s eye. “Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Not anymore,” Steve said.
“I can try to kill him, if you want me to,” Eddie said. “I mean, it wouldn’t work. He’d definitely win. I’m like half his body weight. But I could try.”
Steve laughed a little, and leaned forward and took Eddie’s mouth again, sweet now. When he pulled back, he was smiling softly. “Not necessary. His little sister already threatened him for me.”
“Uh,” Eddie said, swaying forward and half-listening. “What?”
“Step-sister, I guess,” Steve said. “She’s twelve, and terrifying.”
“Why do you know a terrifying twelve year old Hargrove sister?” Eddie said against Steve’s throat, where he was trying to see if he could taste Steve’s expensive cologne.
“I’m her- um- babysitter,” Steve gasped, leaning his head a little to give Eddie more room.
Eddie pulled back, and Steve made an irritated sound. “Babysitter? Why are you babysitting?”
“Is that what you want to talk about?” Steve asked, incredulous. “Now?”
“Oh,” Eddie said, then remembered that his ass was currently placed neatly on Steve Harrington’s lovely thighs. “Right.”
The kisses, this time, were harder, deeper. Eddie let his hips move how they wanted, and Steve clutched at his waist and made noises that were sinfully good, a heaven’s chorus of bitten-off moans. Their mouths slid together and Eddie was lightheaded with it, chasing Steve’s taste like he could catch it. Eddie was thinking, wildly and gleefully, that he could get off like this, rubbing up against Steve’s warm stomach, when a car door slammed somewhere in the distance and they startled apart.
“Shit,” Eddie pulled back, wiping his mouth. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Steve said dazedly, grinning. “Wait. Good shit?”
“Christ,” Eddie said, and swooped forward to kiss Steve again, hard and fast. “Yeah. Good shit.”
“Oh, good,” Steve said, still smiling. “So we can do this again?”
Voices, now, carrying through the little copse of trees Eddie didn’t own but might as well, with his name carved on the tabletop and his seat on the throne of Steve Harrington’s lap.
“This is still stupid,” Eddie said, and Steve just laughed.
“Yeah.” He pushed Eddie gently back and extricated himself from the bench, ruffling his hair and clothes back into place. “You’ll be here next week?”
“Every Thursday,” Eddie answered automatically.
“Cool,” Steve said.
And then he was gone, slipping quietly between the trees away from the approaching voices, and Eddie had to figure out how to go back to normal with the taste of gold in his mouth, as two meathead football players approached and pooled their money and never realized that Eddie charged them double for half of what they usually bought.
When he got home, Wayne asked, “How’s your day?”
And Eddie said, “I’ve got no goddamn idea.”
And Wayne looked at him for a long minute, then said, unruffled as ever, “Alright.”
Notes:
NOTES:
- Steve’s “baby geniuses” thought isn’t inspired by the movie Baby Geniuses - that won’t be released until 1999.
- Fonzie is a character from the sitcom Happy Days, which ran from ’74-’84. Fonzie was the “bad boy” character and his trick was that he could start a jukebox just by tapping the top of it.
- You can picture Reefer Rick as Tommy Chong, if you want. It’s what I did while writing him. It just feels right.Sierra's art for this chapter can be found on tumblr here.
Chapter 3: three: THE MONSTER LAKE | THE SHOVEL TALK
Summary:
“I just want to point out,” Steve says through gritted teeth, as he’s trying to figure out how to take the feeling in the back of his head, new and dark and unnatural, and manifest it into something real, “that when the gate closed, you said that I’d do just fine.”
“Yes,” Vecna says. “I connect more easily with those who have pain in their past that they have not reconciled. You were aware of this already.”
“My past is fine,” Steve says.
“I would disagree,” says the awful vine-monster that tried to murder the world, so that feels great.
Notes:
happy thanksgiving to those who celebrate! have a little smut and angst as a treat.
next part will be posted on saturday!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Steve must have passed out from the pain after agreeing to Vecna’s deal, because when he wakes he’s no longer outside of Melvald’s, and is instead propped up against a beam in an uncomfortably familiar attic of an uncomfortably familiar big old house.
Of course, there’s now a new hole in the Creel house, created by Nancy blasting Vecna through the wall with her shotgun. Steve grins viciously when he sees it, then blinks a couple of times and takes stock.
He’s not bleeding anymore. His joints and bones all look the way they’re supposed to, no longer broken and splintered. He’s seeing the intense colors again, the saturation of a lifeless world. He turns his palm over and finds those lights gathered there in his hand, less intense now than before.
He wants to focus on them, follow those familiar auras to their owners, but there’s more that pulls his attention.
His vision is clear and unblemished by his usual issues: floating lights and spikes of color and fuzziness around every edge. He can see the detail of the stained glass pieces from the broken window floating around the room as well as he can see the lines on his palms in front of his face.
His wrists and ankles don’t click when he moves. His knee doesn’t ache even though he walked miles earlier. His spine is fine. His shoulders are fine. His feet are fine. He’s- he’s fine.
He can hear out of his left ear. He hasn’t been able to hear out of his left ear since Billy Hargrove smashed a plate over his head.
“You’re awake,” says a creeping, crawling voice behind him; it sounds like Vecna, but different. Maybe now that Steve’s hearing is better he’s able to catch more tones he couldn’t before, or something, but this voice is smoother, lighter. Closer to a normal human’s. Less like the earthy darkness of worms in deep soil and more like wind through dead leaves.
Steve turns, and-
Oh, okay. Something’s definitely changed.
Vecna still looks like Vecna: gray-brown viney skin and exaggerated limbs. Man made monster. Except, he’s somehow less monstrous than he was before. Smaller. Less gray, more peach. Like a regular person painted in an elaborate costume. When he moves, Steve feels like he can almost see a flash of blonde hair.
Steve wonders, for the first time, what Henry-slash-One looked like back when El met him. He thinks he can sort of see it now.
“What happened?” Steve asks.
“My lieutenant can’t be hamstrung by human frailties,” Vecna says. “I’ve repaired your body.”
Ominous. But it feels like the truth: normally, if Steve sat on the floor for any length of time, his shoulders and back would ache for hours afterwards. He feels fine. His ears don’t ring. His vision doesn’t swim.
And he-
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he feels like he’s thinking faster. The blankness and short term memory loss he’s dealt with so much in the past few years — and that have gotten worse with every subsequent concussion — aren’t there like overhanging shadows, ready to rip away his words when he needs them.
“Lieutenant,” Steve repeats, because he doesn’t know how to feel about the villain in the story fixing him when the supposed good guys in the DoE never could. “You were serious about that part.”
“I was serious about all of it, Steve,” Vecna says. With this new version of his voice, it’s easier to pick out sounds that weren’t there before: he almost sounds triumphant. “You agreed; you are now second in command to all the armies of this world. The beasts answer to you, as do the buildings and plants. I will show you how to use it all in time.”
“Tell me about these,” Steve says, holding out his palm, showing the lights.
“I already did,” Vecna says. He comes closer, silhouetted against the nest of vines they’d found him in during their attack. He reaches out towards Steve’s lights and then stops himself, which is good, because Steve didn’t want him to touch them. It feels wrong. The lights are his. But he doesn’t miss the way Vecna’s eyes linger on the lights, greedy. “Those are the connections the people of Hawkins Above are still maintaining with you. They will grow weaker as they start to forget you or change their feelings towards you, unless you use your new powers to nurture them.”
“And these connections, that’s how I get out of here? Show me.”
“In due time,” Vecna says. “First, we must see what skills you’ve been given.”
There’s no way to track the passage of time in the Upside Down, so Steve has no idea if he spends an hour or a day or a week testing out what it means to be the lieutenant of the armies of darkness, or whatever. As it turns out, Vecna — Henry? Should Steve be calling him Henry now? Or, god forbid, sir or something? — has never given anyone powers before, and Steve’s never been given powers; they’re both in new territory.
Vecna also makes it clear that Steve was not his first choice.
“Eleven, of course, was the first I extended my offer to,” Vecna muses as Steve nearly sweats himself to death trying to summon a vine from thin air like Vecna did so easily. “She declined, as you could surely guess. Max, Chrissy, Patrick, and Fred were all given the option to join me rather than die. None took it, though panic often influenced their decisions. Nancy Wheeler, she would make an ideal second, but was too concerned with the people I showed her in her vision. But even then, out of all who I thought would join me, you had never crossed my mind.”
“I just want to point out,” Steve says through gritted teeth, as he’s trying to figure out how to take the feeling in the back of his head, new and dark and unnatural, and manifest it into something real, “that when the gate closed, you said that I’d do just fine.”
“Yes,” Vecna says. “I connect more easily with those who have pain in their past that they have not reconciled. You were aware of this already.”
“My past is fine,” Steve says.
“I would disagree,” says the awful vine-monster that tried to murder the world, so that feels great.
However long it takes, there’s finally a list when all is tried and tested and flexed and guessed at: Steve can do a minor version of almost everything Vecna himself can do: he can move shit with his mind, and disappear and reappear wherever he wants in this version of Hawkins. He heals quickly and can sort of float above the ground, though he can’t outright fly. He can fuse with the vines and plants around the world and can rearrange the world itself, make the weird floating building pieces go back together if he wants, or get even more fucked up.
He doesn’t need food or water. He’s been trying not to think about that.
He is still disgusting, still covered in crusted blood even though his wounds were healed, dirty bandages and ripped clothes. He figures out a trick of whirling wind to wick some of the dirt away, like being sand-blasted to cleanliness, and then stops by the Upside Down version of his own house to grab extra clothes. His favorite jeans, a t-shirt. He’s noticed it’s not cold here anymore, or maybe he’s just used to it.
Besides the musty air and the vines coating a lot of the surfaces, the Harrington home is as empty and echoing as it always is, so Steve doesn’t linger long. Tries not to think about that, either.
Relatively clean, armed with an arsenal of new power, and pushing away every uncomfortable thought about what the hell is actually happening so his brain won’t explode, Steve gets used to life in the underworld.
Vecna tells Steve there is one more power he must learn to employ. He takes Steve to Lover’s Lake, or at least where it would be if there was any water, and Steve says, “Wow, I’ve been here many times with many people, but you are by far my ugliest date.”
Vecna, who seems to have decided to ignore when Steve is an asshole to him, holds his arm out for Steve to look. Steve, with nothing better to do and wanting to move on to the thing he’s actually interested in, looks.
For a second, Steve’s healed eyes and brain can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. But then he blinks, and everything rearranges.
For that second, he’d thought the dusty lakebed was covered in dark, lumpy rocks and boulders, slimy and glistening as all things seem to be in the Upside Down. But, no, it’s not rocks. It’s monsters.
Hundreds, thousands, of monsters: demobats and demodogs and piles of demogorgons, and others Steve’s never seen before, human-shaped smoke monsters and snake things with those awful petal mouths and more that Steve doesn’t look at because his empty stomach wants to heave with fear and adrenaline. Some are tiny, smaller than the bats. Some are huge. Bigger than cars. His hands ache to wrap around his nail bat, little good it would do.
“Are they- are they dead?” Steve whispers. He remembers the horde of bats that bore down on the Munson trailer when Eddie started his guitar solo. He knows what would happen if they woke.
Vecna says, “No. This was what I had to take care of while you were made to wait. With no way to leave to feed, the creatures here would have soon turned to each other for sustenance. They can be regrown quickly, but having them kill each other is a waste.”
“They eat each other?”
“If no other food source is available. They prefer humans and animals.”
Steve, again, feels like he wants to throw up the air in his empty stomach. “So they’re, what, sleeping?”
“Of a sort,” Vecna says. “They wait for our call. We can wake them and have them rest as needed.”
And so Steve is instructed how to do it: he reaches out with his mind and finds the closest thing, a demobat, and pokes at it gingerly in his mind until it wakes. It does, flapping and weaving in circles, and Steve swings at it when it gets too close out of instinct. He might not have the scars anymore — he doesn’t know, he hasn’t looked and hasn't seen a reflective surface since he woke up for the second time — but he knows the feeling of those teeth against his ribs, that tail around his throat.
“It won’t hurt you,” Vecna says, and uses a hard grip around Steve’s wrist to make him stand still until the bat circles and lands on his forearm, croaking and clicking horribly. Steve shudders the whole time, and sends the bat away and back to sleep as fast as he can.
“It works, alright,” Steve says. “That’s what we needed to know.”
“Indeed,” Vecna says.
“So can I see my friends now?”
If he was a person, Steve would say that Vecna smiles. “Indeed,” he says again.
“Of course,” Vecna says, “it might not work.”
They’re back at the Creel house, because Vecna seems to need to return every few hours (days?) to get his energy back. Like a battery being replaced or something. Steve doesn’t mind as much anymore; once the boogeyman you were trying to kill has had several conversations with you about how to fling rocks with your mind, it’s easier to ignore the inherent danger in the place where he lurks.
This, though, makes Steve snap his attention back on Vecna like a magnet. “What? What do you mean, it might not work?”
Vecna stands unnaturally still even while awake, but Steve didn’t inherit that trait (he’s still a person, or human, or- or maybe he’s not. They haven’t covered that. Steve hasn’t asked.) and so he paces around the room in fear and worry.
“I mean that you have a small percentage of the power I do,” Vecna says. “It is not guaranteed that you can leave this realm like I can.”
“Like hell,” Steve says. “I’m getting the fuck out of here, worm-boy.”
“It might not be up to you,” Vecna says. “I am able to connect to humans by stoking their fear and anger. I don’t think that will work for you.”
“Then what do I do?”
“You have to find a person willing to let you in,” Vecna says. “They must be amenable to your presence. That might be more difficult to find than you’d think.”
Steve’s eyes narrow. “Why?”
“Do you think everyone will be happy to see you back, when they’ve been so thoroughly convinced you’re dead?” Vecna asks, like a trailing vine through water, a devil playing his own advocate.
“Yes,” Steve snaps. Of course his friends will want to see him. Why wouldn’t they?
“We shall see,” Vecna says. “Close your eyes and choose a light.”
Steve, still angry, shuts his eyes and flips over his hand so it’s palm up. He feels the group of lights in his hand like he’s holding a dozen tiny beating hearts. He knows the differences between them all now, as familiar to him as the people they represent. He can’t choose, though: does he pick the strategic option in Eleven? The sentimental one in Robin? The science whiz who’s pieced all the rest of this shit together, Dustin? The details-gatherer, Nancy? He can’t think of a reason he’d follow the connection to his parents, or Tommy or Carol, or Mike or Jonathan (no offense to the last two), so he disregards those. Unfortunately, a traitorous piece of his mind wants to follow the one to Eddie just to- just to make sure he’s okay. That he’s coping. He’s been tossed into all of this head-first and will only be with people who are veterans in all of this. Steve knows what it feels like to be the guy that has no idea what’s going on, and he’s been there since the beginning.
And, of course, no one knows that Eddie just lost Steve in a different way than everyone else did. No one will know what to say to get that divot of worry and pain to disappear from between his eyes like Steve could.
“Okay,” Steve says, though he still hasn’t decided what thread to choose.
“You won’t be able to stay long, this first time,” Vecna says. “It is to establish contact, and carve a path to easily return.”
“Okay,” Steve says impatiently. “Now what?”
“Follow it,” Vecna says, as simple as that sounds.
And, actually, maybe it is that simple. Steve grabs the light that calls to him most and follows it, smells the stale scent of cheap cologne and sweet-skunk of weed and sees a swirling, psychedelic tunnel of maroon and black and sparkling navy and a dash of yellow that looks like the color of Steve’s favorite sweater.
Steve opens his eyes and is taken aback by what he finds: his own bedroom in his parents’ house. The plaid on the walls, the calendar with sports cars. The color-coordinated closet. The little scrape of knifed-in letters on the bedpost.
Did he accidentally go into his own memories somehow?
He flicks a sharp glance around the room, collecting every detail. He can’t remember the last time he’d been here, stayed the night here. The clothes in the closet are all his least favorites or too small. The personal touches have all been packed up and moved out. There’s not even a nail bat under the bed anymore. He wonders if he wasted his chance and brought himself to an empty memory of a room.
But, no — someone’s changed things. Just a little. There’s a pile of tapes and books on the desk, most of it not his. A familiar boot toppled over by the door.
And there’s someone on the bed.
Oh. Eddie.
Pale, withdrawn, curls a riot, dark shadows under his eyes. Staring up at the ceiling, one hand draped over his stomach and the other folded under his head. He sighs, melodramatic as ever.
Steve grins. He’d appeared by the window, so he leans back against the sill. Crosses his arms. “Something wrong, Munson?”
Eddie’s scream is, admittedly, satisfying.
THEN
FEBRUARY 1985
“Headin’ out?” Wayne asked.
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Meeting a friend for food, maybe a movie.”
“Uh-huh,” Wayne said. “Right. Is this friend gonna be sneaking into or out of my house in the middle of the night again?”
“I don’t know what you’re implying,” Eddie deflected, red face giving him away immediately. Wayne snorted, so Eddie said, “Okay, fine, no. My friend will not be doing that.”
“If you get anyone pregnant, I’m wringing your goddamn neck,” Wayne said, shooting Eddie a look that said I’m not fucking around, then going back to his paper. “Be good, now.”
“Never,” Eddie said automatically, his usual answer, and Wayne just sighed and pretended he was annoyed even though Eddie could see the edge of his smile. Eddie paused outside the trailer door and wondered if he should go back in, correct some clearly incorrect assumptions that were being made. But then he thought about the mortifying experience of explaining to Wayne that he wasn’t going to get anyone pregnant, because the person who was sneaking into their house twice a week was actually the captain of the boys’ basketball team, and anyway the furthest they’d gotten so far was sticking their hands down each other’s pants.
Yeah, no, no thanks. Wayne took it incredibly well when Eddie said he thought he might like boys as well as girls, and Eddie wasn’t pushing his luck by explaining what happened in detail behind metaphorical closed doors. There was a niggling thought in the back of his head that maybe Wayne could support him in the abstract, but being faced with the reality of Eddie with a dude would be a step too far. He knew it wasn’t likely, but he wasn’t going to test that theory on the small chance it was correct.
Eddie hopped down the steps of the trailer and slung himself into the van. It was a quick drive to the diner off Main Street, the sleepy one with the good burgers and the decent fries, where the old waitress clucked at Eddie’s leather jacket and long hair, but always gave him extra ketchup packets when he sweet talked her.
She asked, “Got any special plans tonight?” as she rang up Eddie’s meal (his favorite: the cheapest thing on the menu).
“Besides seeing your lovely face?” said Eddie, fluttering his eyelashes.
She didn’t crack even the slightest smile when she said, “Maybe next year, then.”
“Sure,” Eddie said, even though he had no idea what she was talking about. “Hope springs eternal.”
Eddie got his food to go, walked along the cracked sidewalk to the strip mall, and followed the sounds of synth and metal pings into the arcade. It was nearly empty, save one group gathered around a single game. Eddie didn’t even garner a glance from them when he snuck by.
Steve Harrington was in the secret spot in the back of the arcade, a corner of the room that was only accessible if you wedged the Ms. Pac-Man machine aside and scooted past while holding your breath. It was one of a dozen boltholes Eddie kept around Hawkins to deal or escape from people who wanted to punch him for dealing. It was a terrible place to be for too long, because the back of the machines kicked out gusty bursts of warm air, but that was why it was perfect for meetings like this.
Steve was cross-legged on the floor picking at his own food (pasta primavera from Enzo’s, a far cry from Eddie’s style of takeout) and grimacing, a hand to his temple. The arcade was always loud, but the laser sounds from the Zaxxon machine and the fake punch noises from Double Dragon were combining to make a hellish amount of noise. Yet another reason why this spot was perfect: no one could hear a word they said.
“Hey,” Eddie said, slipping in and sitting next to Steve. Steve grunted, looked around furtively, and pulled Eddie forward with a hand wrapped in Eddie’s shirt to kiss him. Eddie had learned quickly that this was something Steve expected, even from his clandestine hookups; the first time Eddie shied away from a hello kiss when they were alone, Steve had looked like Eddie had said he’d just come from the pound and had enjoyed his time as Designated Puppy Kicker: disappointed in Eddie, but also disappointed in himself by association. Eddie hadn’t made the same mistake of refusing a kiss since.
Today, the hello kiss was quick but hard and a little like Steve was pressing a bruise to feel the hurt, an edge of something Eddie was starting to recognize in Steve but didn’t have a name for yet. “Bad day?” Eddie asked.
“Headache,” Steve said. “But I promised the brats I’d bring them here after school, and they don’t let me back out when I promise things.”
Eddie still had a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of Steve Harrington, Semi-Professional Babysitter. It wasn’t like he needed the money, and from the tidbits Steve dropped, Eddie was pretty sure his kids were old enough they didn’t actually need a babysitter any longer. But it wasn’t some weird lie to cover up something worse: Eddie had been in Steve’s car, seen the left-behind middle school math homework, accidentally sat on half of an abandoned Milky Way bar, and, of course, there was Billy Hargrove’s sister’s skateboard propped up in the backseat like precious cargo.
Eddie still hadn’t met the kids. It sort of felt like when a single mom wouldn’t introduce her children to the new boyfriend until he’d proven himself so the kids didn’t get attached to someone who wouldn’t last, except, actually, it wasn’t anything like that because Eddie wasn’t the boyfriend. He wasn’t the anything, just a guy. Just a guy who furtively met another guy in spots around town where no one would look for them, kissed him a bunch, and tried not to feel any feelings about all of it.
“You could bring in backup,” Eddie offered as a solution. “Call Wheeler, have her get the kids. If you have a headache, you should go home.”
“Nance is on a date,” Steve said automatically.
“Oh,” Eddie said. He never knew what to say about Nancy Wheeler; Steve seemed to vacillate between pretending she didn’t exist and extolling her virtues to the uninitiated (Eddie). “Still. You shouldn’t be on call for the little monsters if you don’t feel well.”
“The headache isn't that bad,” Steve said, though the way he pressed hard fingers against his temple like he could shove the pain out of his skull said otherwise. “It’s just- I don’t really want to be around people today.”
“Oh,” Eddie said again. “Well I can take my food to go, man. Get out of your hair.”
“No, not you,” Steve said. “You don’t count as people.”
“Uh,” Eddie said. “Thanks?”
“I mean,” Steve said, “you’re not bothering me. I want you around. I don’t want other people around.”
“Oh,” Eddie said for a third time, blushing like an idiot down at his greasy fries. It didn’t mean anything. He gave Steve free orgasms without the attachments and drama of his previous relationships. But it was still nice, being someone Steve wanted around.
“Even the kids,” Steve said, poking listlessly at his pasta. “It’s like, I want to hang out with them. They’re annoying little shits, but they’re still good kids, and I like being their babysitter. But sometimes I just need my space, which they don’t understand, even though they were there when-”
And then he did that thing, the thing where he cut himself off because he realized he was saying shit he clearly wasn’t supposed to. Eddie had never asked him about it, even though the curiosity burned inside him; his DM mind was good at puzzles and this was one he was desperately piecing together, even though he was pretty sure he only had about ten percent of the pieces and no idea of the bigger picture he was trying to reveal.
He knew it had something to do with the scars around Steve’s temple and ear and the fight with Billy Hargrove, whatever he kept in the trunk of his car covered up with old blankets that he refused to let Eddie see, the jumpiness at loud noises, the way he flinched when lights flickered.
At school, the gossip mill continued to churn around fallen King Steve and his new posse, Nancy Wheeler with her sharp eyes and no-nonsense jut of her chin, and Jonathan Byers, silent and slippery, fluid and fractious. The three of them sometimes acted like normal people, smiling and chatting in the cafeteria like they couldn’t feel all eyes on them, or leaning against their lockers in the hallways between classes. But other times they looked like prisoners of war, shoulders high and tight, eyes bouncing around like they constantly expected a threat.
Eddie didn’t talk to Steve at school. It was one of their unspoken rules, a boundary they didn’t cross. Eddie didn’t speak to Steve, but he did watch, and what he saw didn’t make any sense. Steve Harrington and his weird friends acted like the men Wayne would talk about from his time in Vietnam, except Steve was a rich boy who had only left the state of Indiana for vacations and not a soldier with shell-shock.
“How about this,” Eddie said, instead of asking Steve what he’d started to say. Instead of asking him to explain, because Eddie was dying to know. “You go round up your little ducklings and take them home, and I’ll take this,” he pointed to Steve’s takeout box, “to my place and reheat it for you. Join me when you’re done, we’ll have a quiet night in.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Steve said. “We can still go see a movie or something.”
“I hate to say it, man,” Eddie said, “but I don’t think The Breakfast Club is going to be my cup of tea.”
“I think it looks good,” Steve argued.
“Exactly,” Eddie laughed, and Steve rolled his eyes and flipped Eddie off, but didn’t protest when Eddie swiped his food box and stacked it on top of his own. He snuck out of their alcove and Steve’s clump of kids, who had moved to the Dig-Dug console, didn’t notice him as he slipped out.
It was a bit of a waste, he supposed, coming all the way here just to change plans, but he didn’t mind so much. Wayne would be gone to work by the time Eddie got back to the trailer and they could settle in on the couch, maybe do a little more than that. Eddie’d heard that orgasms relieved muscle tension and headaches; he could see how Steve felt about giving that a try.
Anyway, he and Steve had gone to see a couple of movies together since they started… whatever they were doing, and it was always strange. He’d thought Steve had been joking at first, when he’d pulled back from kissing Eddie up against the wall behind Melvald’s and said, “Hey, want to see Beverly Hills Cop with me on Monday?”
Like a date. Like he was taking Eddie out on a date, like he’d bring flowers and pick Eddie up in his nice car and promise Eddie’s uncle he’d have him home by curfew, sir, of course.
Eddie had laughed, and Steve’s brow had furrowed. “What?” he asked. “You don’t like Eddie Murphy?”
And so Eddie went to see Beverly Hills Cop with Steve Harrington, then reruns of Ghostbusters and Gremlins at the drive-in (arriving in separate cars), then The Purple Rose of Cairo (Steve swore he didn’t know what it was about when he bought the tickets, and they were the only two in the theater that day who weren’t middle-aged housewives).
If the theater was empty, they’d sit together and make out during the boring bits, smearing popcorn grease on their cheeks and clothes with desperate hands. But if there was a single other person in the theater, they sat on the same row but a few seats apart, sharing an experience in general but not in specific. Together, but apart.
The Breakfast Club was opening tonight, so it was undoubtedly full. Which meant that Eddie was signing up for an hour and a half of rom-com shenanigans with none of the actual benefits of feeling Steve’s arm press against his on the armrest. That was an experience he was okay skipping, especially if the alternative was getting Steve all to himself.
Nearly an hour later, the BMW was parking outside the trailer and Eddie was pulling Steve’s dinner out of the oven where he’d been keeping it warm. Steve pulled him in for another kiss when he came into the house, said, “Bathroom. Tylenol?” and Eddie said, “Medicine cabinet,” and Steve nodded. They fell onto the couch and flipped through the TV Guide until they found a terrible TV movie called Obsessed With a Married Woman. Eddie made snide commentary to hear Steve laugh, and grinned into his styrofoam box when Steve unleashed his own snark in answer.
Eventually, Steve was drifting to sleep, his head tipped back, so Eddie cleaned up their takeout trash and switched off the TV set.
“Steve,” he said softly, “c’mon, come lay down for a bit.”
“Mm,” Steve said, eyes still closed. “No, I should go.”
“Wayne won’t be home for hours, man. Just take a quick nap.”
This wasn’t usually how it went. They very rarely were in the same place and not attempting to taste each other’s tonsils, or frantically unbuttoning their jeans to shove them down to make room for an eager hand. They weren’t dating, that had been made clear (it doesn’t have to mean anything) and they weren’t really friends. Steve came over once or twice a week and crawled through Eddie’s bedroom window if Wayne was home, or snuck in through the front door when he wasn’t, so they could spend a few hours kissing like it was their last night on earth, ridiculously long sessions of mouth on mouth that rarely progressed beyond that, and honestly Eddie didn’t care about that part at all. It was exhilarating, it was baffling, it was incredibly goddamn hot. Steve Harrington kissed like it was all he wanted out of life, and Eddie was happy to be included in his plans.
Then, at some arbitrary time that was usually in the small hours of the extremely early morning, Steve would say, “I should go,” and clamber back out through Eddie’s window. A few days later, the cycle would start all over again with a note in Eddie’s locker, or a visit from Steve at the picnic table past the football field: can I see you tonight?
But tonight, Steve stood woozily from the couch and said, “Hold on.” He shoved his feet back into his shoes and stepped outside, returning a moment later with his backpack on over one shoulder. Eddie raised an eyebrow.
“Planning on getting some homework done?”
“Maybe,” Steve said, but didn’t offer any other reason.
Steve followed Eddie quietly down the hall to his bedroom. Eddie, trying to be as cool and suave, like he had hot guys sleeping in his bed all the time, unbuttoned his jeans to puddle on the floor, leaving him in boxers and a worn Metallica shirt. Steve set his bag down and did the same, and Eddie spent that time shoving his laundry off the bed and onto the floor and sweeping the sheets for crumpled balls of paper and guitar picks. He left the lamp on, because total darkness felt like a bridge too far somehow.
Eddie got into bed first so he was closest to the wall and Steve followed, and for a moment they both just laid there, staring up at the ceiling.
Eddie wanted to fill the silence, but this was a strangely fragile moment. Plus, Steve still had the pinched look of pain from his headache, and Eddie didn’t want to make it worse. He laid there on his back, hands folded over his stomach, and hoped the ceiling would fall in from all the damp spots, or that some of the neighbors would get into a screaming match, just to give them something to talk about.
But then:
“Who’s that guy?” Steve asked. He had one hand under his head and the other resting on his chest, like a stargazer looking up at the mold-spotted ceiling.
He didn’t point, or anything, so Eddie said, “What guy?”
“That guy,” Steve said, still not indicating anything in particular, but looking vaguely over at the wall across the room. At Eddie’s aggrieved noise, he said. “Skeleton guy.”
“Oh, that’s Eddie,” said Eddie. At Steve’s look, he snorted. “Different Eddie.”
“No, yeah, I got that,” Steve said. “Who’s Eddie?”
“I’m Eddie,” said Eddie.
“Jesus,” Steve laughed. “Are we about to break into Who’s On First? I mean the skeleton guy on the poster over there. His name is Eddie?”
Eddie snickered, then wiggled his shoulders a little, settling in. “Yeah. He’s the mascot, sorta, for Iron Maiden.”
“And that’s a… band?”
“Bingo. Heavy metal English band. Ever heard the song The Trooper?” The look Steve sent him was so bitchy that Eddie laughed. “Right. I’ll play it for you sometime. Anyway, Eddie’s been on every one of their album covers. Their last album had him as the head of a sphinx in Egypt. Wicked, right?”
“Sure,” Steve said.
“I’m named for him,” Eddie said, because the dam of silence was broken now, and that was all Steve’s fault so he only had himself to blame for Eddie’s chatter.
“What?” Steve asked, turning to look at him. They were sharing the same pillow — Eddie only had one — so he didn’t have to turn far. “How old is this band?”
Eddie grinned, settling into story mode. “My parents didn’t name me after him, or anything. I did. I’m named after my dad, right? Piece of shit. Massive asshole. He was always Big Ed, and I was Edward, all the way up until 1980. I was living here with Wayne, by that time. There’s this little record store up in Indy that he took me to for my birthday, and I picked up the first Iron Maiden album.” He was talking with his hands now, but Steve didn’t seem to mind. His gaze flicked back and forth between Eddie’s moving hands and his mouth. “So I take it up to the counter, and the guy starts telling me about it. His name was Tony, and he was a big fan of Iron Maiden, apparently. He drops the name Eddie, and I was like: ‘Hold on. Tell me all about Eddie.’ And he did, we talked for ages, and when Wayne came back to pick me up later I told him, I want to be Eddie now, not Edward, he was totally cool with it.”
Eddie was hot-tempered and panicky and spiteful as a fourteen-year-old, puberty and poverty combining to make his life at school hell, and he’d had to buzz his hair because there had been a lice outbreak and that was the easiest option. But Tony at the record store had treated him like an adult, or at least not like a stupid kid, and talked to him about music and movies and books and, looking back now, Eddie could confidently say that Tony was an early pit stop on his queer road trip, with his infectious smile and wide shoulders and the way he let Eddie ramble like it was the most interesting thing he’d heard.
Of course now Eddie was in bed with Steve Harrington, whose smile was equally catching when he deigned to bestow it, whose shoulders were similarly wide and dreamy, and who let Eddie ramble with a minimal amount of teasing, which he allowed Eddie to dish back when needed.
“It suits you,” Steve said. “Eddie.”
“Yeah?” Eddie said.
Steve moved the hand resting on his own chest and touched Eddie’s face, running his thumb over the curve of Eddie’s eyebrow and down to the edge of his mouth. “Yeah.”
They stayed like that for a moment, and Eddie had had this guy’s tongue in his mouth before but somehow this was more intimate, inches apart on a worn-in mattress, Steve’s thumb tracing the line of his cupid’s bow. Eddie’s heart was a jackhammer in his chest, his skin heating under Steve’s hand.
Steve had to feel the way Eddie responded to him, but he didn’t mention it. Just threw one thigh over Eddie’s and rested his hand on his chest, and said, “Okay, that poster over there. Tell me about that one.”
And Eddie did. He talked through every poster on his wall, the Curse of the Wolf Man one with Oliver Reed and his romantic unlaced white shirt, the various bands from Sabbath to Pantera to Anthrax, even his handmade Corroded Coffin one. Then, when Steve didn’t stop him, he moved on to the stack of VHS tapes on his dresser, and the books piled up around the foot of the bed, and the guitar hanging on the wall. Eddie couldn’t pinpoint when, but at some point during his monologue Steve drifted off, his hand heavy on Eddie’s chest, his breath soft on Eddie’s throat.
Eddie shoved away more of those awful giddy feelings and let himself rest too; it was a Thursday night, so theoretically they had school in the morning. He slid into sleep thinking about waking up next to Steve, getting dressed with Steve. Maybe they could share a shower. Maybe Eddie could make a pot of coffee — which he disliked unless he could pour his weight in sugar into it, but his dream self was cool and mature and liked it black — and they could have breakfast together.
Eddie’s mattress dipped in the middle and at some point in the night they both ended up there, Eddie’s head on Steve’s chest and Steve’s knee between Eddie’s legs. Eddie blinked awake a little, wondering what woke him.
A quiet moment passed, then he heard a muffled sound he didn’t recognize, something mechanical, and voices. Like a radio being tuned.
Eddie crawled over Steve to get out of bed and went to inspect, and found the source of the noise: Steve’s backpack. Eddie, not wanting to snoop (okay, desperately wanting to snoop, but absolutely not wanting to get caught), held the bag to his ear and could hear clearly the voices that had been muffled before.
“-heard from Will? Over.”
“I’m here. All good. Over.”
“...about Nancy? Over.”
“She’s fine, dude. Over.”
A girl’s voice: “She’s with Jonathan, ooooh. Over.”
“Shut up about my sister!”
“You have to say ‘over,’ Mike. Over.”
“Shut up about my sister. Over.”
More squabbling and arguing, then:
“Steve? Come in, Steve. Over.”
Silence.
The same voice, a little louder. “Steve. Come in. This is a mandatory check in! Over.”
Another voice: “He’s gotta be fine, Dustin. Over.”
A different girl’s voice, this one soft. “He is probably asleep. Over.”
“He should still check in! Steve, answer your goddamn walkie! OVER!”
Eddie unzipped the backpack and was baffled to find a blocky walkie-talkie with a bright red light, crackling with static between each call. With the walkie out of the bag, it was much louder when the first voice, Dustin, said: “STEVE! THIS ISN’T FUNNY! OVER!”
Steve startled awake and flailed out of a tangle of sheets, scrambling upright to look around in a panic. He didn’t even seem to register Eddie there as he grabbed for the walkie-talkie and spoke into it, his voice hoarse from sleep, “Hey, Henderson, hey. I’m here. Checking in. I’m here.”
A burst of static as Dustin sighed. “Jesus, man. I thought you’d been eaten. Also, you have to say ‘over.’ Over.”
Steve cracked a tired laugh, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Not eaten, man. Just sleeping. Everything okay? Over.”
“Yeah,” said Dustin, and Eddie, as well as everyone on the call, stayed quiet because Dustin hadn’t said the magic word. “Nightmare. Over.”
Steve nodded to himself, leaned back on one elbow. “Everyone else checked in? Over.”
“Yeah, you were the last one. Except Nancy and Jonathan, apparently they’re… busy. Over.”
“Dude!” cut in another voice. “Seriously, shut up about it, I’m gonna barf!”
“Wonderful commentary as always, gang,” Steve said, smiling even as he was worrying his lip between his teeth. “All clear, then. Need me to come by? Over.”
“Nah,” Dustin said. “It would take you forever to get here from your place, anyway. Over.”
“I’m not at my place,” Steve said, clearly without thinking, because then he seemed to fully wake up as there was a burst of chatter and catcalling.
“Oh my god, where are you? Over.”
“Steve had a daaaate. Over.”
“Is that why you made us leave the arcade early, you jerk? Over.”
“I knew you had a new girlfriend! Over.”
“Sorry if we woke you, Steve’s date! Over.”
“It’s not- I’m at a friend’s!” Steve said.
One of them scoffed. “A likely story. Over.”
“Jesus,” Steve said. “I am alive and uneaten. You are all assholes. Good night.” And then he switched the walkie off, and the noise crackled into silence.
“You didn’t say ‘over,’” said Eddie.
Steve grumbled and tossed the walkie back onto his bag, then did the worst thing ever and swung himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his eyes and said, “What time is it?”
“Uh,” Eddie grabbed his watch from the dresser. “3:23 in the morning.”
“Shit,” Steve said, voice rough. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to,” Eddie said, still standing there by the bed. “What, uh. What was all that?”
“Huh?” Steve asked, then waved his hand. “Oh. My kids- the kids. They get nightmares sometimes.”
“No, I got that part. Why the check-in?”
“Because then we all know we’re safe,” Steve said, and Eddie felt that glass wall again, the one that kept him from that part of Steve’s life he was trying so hard to pretend didn’t exist.
“Stay,” Eddie said, instead of tell me your secrets. I’ll tell you mine in return. Even though they’re probably not nearly as interesting.
“I shouldn’t.”
“You already have. What’s a couple more hours?” Steve seemed to hesitate, so Eddie drifted closer, smiling a little. “I know this isn’t the Ritz, but it won’t kill you to spend the whole night.”
Steve sighed, and slowly reclined back down. Eddie grinned and crawled back over him, trying to seem like he wasn’t lingering with his legs on either side of Steve’s waist.
They settled back in, and Eddie prepared to drift off again when Steve spoke up. “There was… something that happened, back in November. With the kids. And- they had to split up. It scared them. Rightfully so, shit, it scared me too until we were all back in one place together. But that’s why we have the check-in.”
It didn’t really explain anything at all, but it was something, and Eddie was grateful for that, at least. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Thanks for listening,” Steve said, equally soft. The silence between them was thick and waiting.
Suddenly, Steve was all movement, rolling over to pin Eddie underneath him and catching his mouth in a hard kiss. Eddie groaned and kissed back, and it was heat and tongues and the blood in Eddie’s head rushing southward so fast he was dizzy. Eddie ran his hand along the back of Steve’s neck and tangled in his hair, and Steve dropped his hips so that he was rutting against Eddie and yanking little punched-out noises out of him, ah-ah-ah.
“Can I blow you?” he asked, pulling just far enough away that Eddie felt the words rather than hearing them. Eddie closed his eyes and prayed for stamina, because the words alone were about to do him in.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, breathless. “Yeah, dude, fuck. Of course.”
Steve slid down to fumble with the waistband of Eddie’s boxers. Eddie kept the hand in Steve’s hair and put the other high on his own neck, feeling his pulse thunder in his throat. Steve got Eddie out and just looked at him for a second, and Eddie realized that this was probably the first time Steve Harrington had been up close and personal with a dick other than his own.
“Put your hand around the base,” Eddie murmured, and Steve flickered his glance up but did as he was told. “Keep to the head at first. Get used to it before taking more.”
Steve shuddered a breath and ducked, his breath hot against Eddie’s skin. He licked tentatively up the underside of Eddie’s dick and Eddie’s fingers tightened in his hair, so he made a little noise Eddie might have categorized as a whine and took Eddie into his mouth.
“God,” Eddie said. “So good, Steve. Your mouth is so good.”
Steve pulled off, eyes still on Eddie’s cock. “Yeah?” He sounded almost shy, which was ridiculous. But he flickered a glance up at Eddie, and there was something cautious in his eyes.
“Fuck yeah,” Eddie said immediately, and Steve pinked. “Your mouth is to die for. It’s to kill for. God, fuck.”
Steve wasn’t a slow learner, despite the rumors to the contrary, and he’d likely been the recipient of plenty of blowjobs in his life, so soon Eddie was thrusting in time with his movements. Saliva dripped down Eddie’s dick and over Steve’s hand, and tightness was building at the base of Eddie’s spine.
“Pull off,” Eddie warned, half-breathless. “Pull off, I’m close.”
Steve didn’t pull off, instead keeping his speed even and his pressure tight. Eddie felt the build grow and grow, heels sliding on the sheets, slid his hand up into his own hair to tug and-
“Shit,” he moaned, and felt Steve jump a little when the come hit the back of his throat, but stayed latched around Eddie’s cock as he pulsed once, twice, three times.
Steve sat up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes were dark and his lips swollen. His dick was a thick line in his underwear. Eddie felt as destroyed as Steve already looked.
“C’mere,” he said, tongue heavy in his mouth, and tugged Steve down by the shirt. His head swam with something like delirium. “C’mon. Let me help.”
Steve settled over him and kissed at Eddie’s neck as Eddie scratched his nails down Steve’s stomach, along a trail of hair to his cock, hard and wet at the tip. This wasn’t the first time Eddie had gotten his hand around it but he still let himself marvel: King Steve’s legendary weapon.
Plus two to horniness, Eddie thought to himself, and stifled a come-drunk giggle. Double damage against any homosexuals in a sixty-foot radius.
Eddie took his hand back and wet it, licking a thick stripe from his palm to his fingertips, then went back to work. Steve’s arms trembled to keep him propped up over Eddie, so Eddie rolled him over to reverse their positions. Eventually, though, he couldn’t help it any longer and he said, “Buckle up, baby, I’m going to return the favor,” before leaning down to suck Steve’s cock into his mouth for the first time.
Steve’s hips jumped and Eddie pressed him back down with his arm. This wasn’t his first dick rodeo — he went to Indianapolis for more than prime cassettes — and he relaxed his throat, letting Steve’s thick length press deeply enough that he couldn’t breathe for a few seconds at a time. It was intoxicating, and Eddie could hear a sort of contented humming coming from his own throat whenever he had enough air for it. Steve’s head was tossed back and he was gasping, “Eddie, shit, god, so good, so good,” and Eddie delighted in it.
“Nothing against the fine ladies of Hawkins,” Eddie said when he pulled off for a breather, jacking Steve with his hand to keep him rushing towards the finale, “but you act like this is your first time with a mouth on your dick.”
“Not the first,” Steve mumbled, arm thrown over his face, thighs tensing under Eddie’s chest, “but definitely the best.”
“Well, ain’t that sweet,” Eddie said. “Helps when you have an owner’s manual for the equipment.” When Steve laughed, breathless, Eddie swooped back in and went about trying to prove that Steve should just stick with guys, and, hey, if he’s going to stick with guys he should just stick with Eddie-
“Coming,” Steve gasped out. “Eddie, coming, I’m-”
Eddie’s no quitter, so he took Steve deep and let the salty thick hit his tongue, lapping it back and closing his eyes.
When he sat up, Steve was pink-faced and dazed. “Wow,” he said, and pulled Eddie close to kiss him. Eddie could feel the way Steve’s tongue was searching for his own taste, and Eddie felt a flash of heat burn in his stomach at the thought.
“If I could get your review in writing, that would be great,” Eddie said, stupid with endorphins and interrupted sleep.
“Review?” Steve asked, equally sleepily. He shuffled his underwear back up to his hips, and did the same for Eddie, then pushed and prodded until they were curled up together.
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I need it in writing that I’m better at sucking dick than anyone else in Hawkins. That kind of boost could really kickstart my career.”
Steve was quiet, then he leaned his head up and looked at Eddie wryly. “Your career in dick sucking?”
“Hey, it’s a living,” Eddie said, stupid, stupid, stupid.
“How about this,” Steve said through a yawn. “If you ever need a reference, put me down.”
“Holding you to that, dude,” Eddie said, and Steve huffed a laugh, and the night slipped away.
Eddie would never know how it happened, but when he woke up next he was holding Steve’s hand.
The morning came slow, which was nice of it. Eddie smacked his lips and rubbed his face against the warmth next to him, the heartbeat under his ear a welcome alarm clock.
His fingers were a little numb, tangled as they were with another hand. That was what woke Eddie, the thudding of his own heartbeat trapped in the tips of his fingers. He blinked awake for the second time in as many hours and came face to face with Steve Harrington, mouth open and breathing softly, hair a mess against Eddie’s pillow. Hand holding Eddie’s.
Eddie’d had his hands all over Steve Harrington in the months they’ve been doing this, but he had never held Steve’s hand before. Never held anyone’s hand before, if he was being honest. It was nice, if the pterodactyl-sized butterflies in his stomach could be characterized as nice. It made him want to do stupid shit like giggle and twirl his hair.
From the angle of the sun through Eddie’s half-broken blinds, it was still early. Maybe Steve was a good influence on him and he wouldn’t end up screeching into the school parking lot five minutes after the first bell rang.
Soon enough, Steve’s eyes opened too. He stretched and yawned and his fingers flexed against Eddie’s, but he didn’t withdraw them.
“Hi,” Eddie said, voice gravelly.
“Hey,” Steve said, his own voice deep. It sent something bubbling in Eddie’s veins but he didn’t chase it.
“School,” Eddie said.
“Yeah,” Steve said.
“We could skip,” Eddie said.
“Nah,” Steve said, scrubbing his empty hand through his hair, looking more like a boy than he ever had in Eddie’s presence. Young and untroubled, sleepy and sweet. “Test in bio today.”
Eddie mulled it over, and figured he was already awake, so the number one impediment to going to school was already out of the way. He kissed the back of Steve’s hand to apologize for letting go, and carefully untangled his fingers from Steve’s. Then he rolled over Steve cartoonishly, making Steve go, “Oof,” and swat at him, chuckling. He threw open his closet and rummaged in the piles of indeterminately cleanish clothing to find something to wear.
“Want to borrow something?” he asked Steve, who was stepping back into his jeans from yesterday.
“I’m a little bigger than you,” Steve said, with a nearly-insulting eyebrow lift. “I’d probably rip anything you gave me.”
An enticing image, but Eddie just made a face and dug until he found an old shirt he was pretty sure he got from Rick’s, a Hawkins Tigers shirt from the 60s with ringed sleeves. He tossed it to Steve, who raised the other eyebrow to join the first.
“Proved me wrong, I guess,” Steve said, and pulled his polo from yesterday over his head. Eddie stopped and watched; Steve had chest hair. A lot of chest hair.
That bubbling in his veins came roaring back.
Steve caught him and cocked a grin his way. “See something interesting?”
“Uh,” Eddie said intelligently, and Steve’s grin grew. He pulled the old Hawkins shirt over his head and stepped over to Eddie, tucking his thumbs through Eddie’s belt loops.
“You’ll have to get your shirt back sometime,” he murmured against Eddie’s mouth. “But I’ll try not to get it too dirty.”
It wasn’t remotely a sexy thing to say, but Eddie shivered anyway.
I like you so much, he thought, and wondered if there had ever been a bigger idiot in the history of the world.
“Come on,” Steve said. “Don’t wanna be late.”
“Right,” Eddie said. “Obviously not.”
Eddie’s morning routine was simple: clothes, rings, necklaces, shoes. Fluff the hair. Deodorant, cologne. Brush teeth. Out the door, eight minutes flat.
Steve’s, apparently, usually took more time. But he contained himself to a few minutes of tousling his hair back to its usual height and adjusting his clothes.
“Ready, princess?” Eddie asked, leaning against the doorway.
“Shut up,” Steve said, and slung his backpack over his shoulder. They jostled each other as they walked down the short hall toward the kitchen.
“Or what?” Eddie grinned, bouncing on his toes. He wasn’t a morning person by any means, but when he was up, he was up, and waking up next to Steve sparked something in him he didn’t know how to explain. “You gonna…” he trailed off, seeing Steve’s eyes widen at something behind him. Eddie spun.
“Morning,” Wayne said, sipping his coffee at the table, sitting in the chair that faced the hallway like he was lying in wait.
Eddie felt his brain stop hard, like the clanking of a VHS tape paused in its tracks, then hurl itself forward again. Right, of course Wayne was home. Why wouldn’t he be home? How did Eddie forget Wayne would be home?
“Yes it is,” Eddie said, and pleaded with his eyes at Wayne to be cool, please be cool. Wayne raised a placid eyebrow right back at him.
“That must be your BMW outside, then,” Wayne directed to Steve.
“Um,” Steve said, closer to a squeak than a word. “Yes, sir.”
“Wayne,” Eddie said, still widening his eyes so Wayne would hopefully catch his drift, “this is Steve.”
“Harrington, right?” Wayne asked. At Steve’s nod, he said, “Yeah, thought so. You look like your mama. She doin’ okay?”
“Oh, um,” Steve said again, clearly caught off guard. “Yes. She’s doing fine.”
“Good,” Wayne said. “Well, come on, sit down. Don’t wanna be late for school.”
“Did you cook breakfast?” Eddie asked.
“I put waffles in the toaster,” Wayne said dryly. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“I should, uh,” Steve said, looking desperately awkward. “I can go. I should just go. I’ll see you at school?”
“Nah, sit,” Wayne said, nudging out the Guest Chair (the least wobbly one) with his foot. “Ain’t no reason to run now, I’ve already seen you.” Then, like a fucking lunatic, he says, “You like waffles, Steve?”
“Yes, sir,” Steve said, sitting gingerly in the chair.
“Uh-huh, good,” Wayne said. “Syrup alright for you? Eddie likes chocolate sauce instead, but I’m more old fashioned.”
“Syrup’s fine,” Steve said.
“Wonderful,” Wayne said. “Are you or your daddy going to cause any problems for my kid, here?”
“Wayne,” Eddie hissed.
“No,” Steve said, voice rough but thin. “My dad and I don’t really talk much. And I don’t plan on causing any problems.”
Wayne surveyed him for an inscrutable second, then pushed a plated waffle toward him, along with the syrup bottle, a knock-off brand called Ms. Sweetstacks that Eddie always thought looked like a plastic ogre in an apron. Steve took the plate and the syrup, and he and Wayne looked at each other for a long moment. Then, as if a silent agreement had been made, Wayne nodded and went back to his coffee, and Steve cut into his waffle.
Eddie, feeling like he was being piloted by forces outside his control, coated his waffle in chocolate sauce, dropped on some banana slices, and rolled it up out of sheer muscle memory.
Steve broke the silence to say, “I can’t believe you eat waffles wrong.”
Eddie pulled free from his out-of-body experience to say, almost on instinct, “What the hell did you say to me, you conformist sheep?”
And Wayne rounded out the whole thing by saying, “He ain’t wrong, son. Waffles are for syrup. What you’re eating is cake.”
“Am I being teamed up on in my own house?” Eddie cried. “Let a man eat in peace!”
“Your breakfast is an abomination,” Wayne said, because he and Eddie were both dramatics, just at opposite ends of the spectrum. Eddie overacted to the point of absurdity. Wayne made dire pronouncements with the same tone he’d use to discuss the weather.
“Have you seen him eat fries with ketchup and honey?” Steve asked. “It’s horrifying.”
“Boy, don’t get me started,” Wayne said, and Eddie sputtered as the two of them spent the next five minutes lovingly picking him to pieces about his food choices.
Eventually, though, Steve said, “I really should go. I told Nance I’d meet her to go over the bio test flashcards she made for me.”
“‘kay,” Eddie said, thumbing the chocolate from the corner of his mouth and sucking on his thumb. “See you… around?”
“Yeah,” Steve said, and they both just looked at each other really hard because this would be a normal place to kiss goodbye, right? Except Wayne was right there, and also they didn’t really do that. They kissed hello, they kissed in the middle, but they didn’t kiss goodbye. Steve cleared his throat and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Munson, sir.”
“Call me Wayne,” Wayne said. “I assume I’ll be seeing you around. I’d prefer if you entered and exited through the door from now on, now that we’ve met.”
Steve flushed and said, “Right, of course.” Then he turned tail and bounced out of the house. As soon as he was gone, Wayne smacked Eddie with the folded up newspaper.
“A Harrington? Are you out of your damn mind?” Wayne asked, exasperated.
Eddie yelped and smacked back. “He’s not like that!”
“He’d better not be,” Wayne said. “His mama’s one thing but his daddy’s a world of trouble.”
“Yeah, what was that about? Why are you asking after his mom?”
Wayne sighed. “If he ain’t told you, I’m not getting into all of it. That’s his business, and honestly I don’t know much.”
“Wayne,” Eddie said. “You can’t leave me hanging like that, now I’m dying to know.”
Wayne sighed again. “She’s sick, son. Cancer or something, last I’d heard. I assume your boy’s got much more information than I do, so you should ask him.”
“Oh, shit,” Eddie said. He’d never heard Steve mention his mom; his dad got a few throwaway references from time to time, but never his mom. Also: “He’s not my boy, by the way.”
Wayne raised an eyebrow. “Eddie. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and he slept over. And, not to be too crass, but when I came home last night you two were awake, and you were hardly keeping your hands to yourself.”
“I… did not know you were home, or we wouldn’t have done anything,” Eddie said, then, with dawning realization, “And I genuinely did not know it was Valentine’s Day.”
That does explain why Nancy Wheeler’s plans took precedence over chauffeuring the kids. Why the waitress asked after his plans. Why the arcade was mostly empty. Why the kids thought Steve had been on a date.
“Christ alive, son,” Wayne said. “You’re smarter than this.”
“It still doesn’t matter,” Eddie insisted. “We aren’t dating. We’re just… hanging out.”
“Well whatever you call it, it better not end up with you hurt,” Wayne said. “I don’t know anything about the boy, but he comes from a family used to getting their way on things, and I would assume he’d been raised in the same vein.”
“No, he’s- he’s good, Wayne. He’s not like that.” Eddie traced an old cigarette burn on the table top with a shaking finger. “So you’re okay with, you know, all of this?” At Wayne’s look, he said, “Me, with a guy?”
Wayne snorted. “Eddie, you been staring at boys like they’re the second coming since you moved in here. It ain’t really a surprise. But yes, to put your mind at ease, I’m okay with it. As long as you’re being safe and the person treats you well, I trust you to do what you want.”
Eddie hadn’t planned to end this breakfast with tears in his eyes, and yet here he was. “Thanks, old man. Even though you tried to scare him off already.”
Wayne shrugged, unrepentant. “He could take it. Now eat your blasphemy waffle and get to school.” Eddie jumped up, and was halfway to the door when Wayne said, “You’ll be careful, right?”
And Eddie said, “Yeah, Wayne. Always am.”
“Alright, then. Be good.”
Eddie grinned. “Never.”
Notes:
NOTES:
- Zaxxon and Double Dragon are both real arcade games from the 80s — decently popular, but not as enduring as games like Galaga and Pac-Man.
- Tiny historical inaccuracy here - The Breakfast Club was actually released on February 15th, 1985, not the 14th. That messed with my plot, though, so I disregarded reality. Just by one day, though!
- Who’s On First, for the uninitiated, is an Abbott and Costello comedy sketch they started performing in the 1930s and included in several variations in a few movies, including the linked video which is from The Naughty Nineties (1945). The whole point is that they’re watching a baseball team whose names are all easily misunderstood, so a man named Who is on second base, and a man named What is on first base, so the jokes are along the lines of “Who’s on first?” “No, What’s on first.” Etc. etc.
- If this fic was realistic, Steve would either have the walkie turned off all night, or he would be spending a fortune on batteries. We’ll go with option 2, but I just want to note here that it is unrealistic for the walkies to be on all the time.
Chapter 4: interlude: THE VISITOR
Summary:
Buckley’s working on her parents, but they’re not keen on the idea of their little girl harboring a once-fugitive, and especially not so soon after they guy they presumed was her boyfriend-
“I’m sorry,” Robin said when the idea of where Eddie should go was proposed. She was the one elected to tell him, or she volunteered, Eddie doesn’t know. Either way, she gripped his hands and said, pouring every bit of feeling into it, “I’m sorry, but there’s nowhere else.”
So Eddie packed up the bag of clothes Wayne saved for him before the trailer fell in, and secretly moved his ass into Loch Nora and the empty Casa Harrington.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
INTERLUDE
NOW
The cool thing about the end of the world is that no one looks at you like you’re crazy when you are, actually, going crazy.
Eddie’s lost his mind. He feels entitled to it. He’s been through more- well, fuck, no more than anyone else in the ragtag gang he’s found himself in. But he’s been through a lot, and he won’t apologize for falling off the deep end due to it all. He’s been through more than fuckin’ Jason Carver, or Martha from the goddamn grocery store, or motherfucking anyone in that godforsaken high school.
He’s been chewed up and spit out both literally and metaphorically. He’s a goddamn mess of scars on his insides and outsides. The nerve damage in his torso is extensive. His new friends are like soldiers on leave, jumpy and within arm’s reach of a weapon at all times. He can’t tell his only family member what actually happened.
The worst part — the worst fucking part — is that he has to be in this house.
Unfortunately, it makes sense. The trailer is long gone, disappeared into a hole in the ground when Vecna’s murder plot tried to unfold. Good riddance, Eddie thinks, except for all his stuff and the nostalgia of a home he’d grown to love. He does miss his shit. But he’d never have been able to sleep there again, not with the specter of Chrissy in her cheer uniform up on the ceiling. Not with the memory of Dustin’s teary face through the gate as Eddie cut the rope and ran to play hero. And especially not when that’s where- that’s where they left-
Anyway. Eddie is glad the trailer’s gone.
Officially, he’s been exonerated; he’ll never like Owens and the other feds, doesn’t have suspicious-but-comforted feelings about them swooping in like the others do, but he’ll give them this — they work fast. He is no longer wanted by police or on the run.
But, unfortunately, there is still the court of public opinion, and there’s a healthy faction of Hawkins that thinks Eddie’s to blame for everything: the dead teenagers, the earthquakes, the families leaving town in droves. And since Max Mayfield is stronger than anyone Eddie’s ever met, and survived against all odds to stop Vecna’s plans in their tracks, the town is still mostly intact. Cleanup and donation collections are in full force, but otherwise the people of Hawkins have nothing better to do besides sit around and think about things they want to blame on Eddie. It’s gotten to be a long list.
So he can’t live with Wayne, who, luckily, has gone mostly unbothered; people know he’s Eddie’s flesh and blood, but not his actual dad, which seems to be his saving grace. He’s been tucked away in a motel paid for by the government, and knows Eddie’s alive and safe, and they call every few days to mostly reassure each other that they’re fine. Eddie knows he’d be painting a target on Wayne’s back if he was seen at the motel, so he stays away; he’s torn in half by the want to be with Wayne and the need to keep him safe.
Wayne keeps asking about Eddie’s friends, with that pointed tone he always had before when talking about Steve, like he wants to ask outright but thinks the lines might be tapped. Eddie hears it in the pauses between sentences, the way Wayne would say, how’s your boy?, and Eddie never had the heart to correct him after that first time, that Steve was never his, so he’d just say, good. He’s good.
Wayne keeps asking about Eddie’s friends, and Eddie can’t tell him. Eddie can’t tell him Steve’s in their trailer in another dimension, stuck, gone. People might be listening in, but that’s not the only reason why he can’t say it.
So Eddie can’t live with Wayne. But he also can’t live with Henderson, whose mom still barely lets him out of her sight after the latest scare. Nor the Hopper-Byers clan with all their kids, adjusting to being the world’s weirdest blended family. Karen Wheeler would shoot Eddie herself if he walked through her door, no matter what Mike and Nancy have told her. The Sinclairs are out too; they’re already taking care of Max, and one trailer park stray is probably enough at a time.
Buckley’s working on her parents, but they’re not keen on the idea of their little girl harboring a once-fugitive, and especially not so soon after they guy they presumed was her boyfriend-
“I’m sorry,” Robin said when the idea of where Eddie should go was proposed. She was the one elected to tell him, or she volunteered, Eddie doesn’t know. Either way, she gripped his hands and said, pouring every bit of feeling into it, “I’m sorry, but there’s nowhere else.”
So Eddie packed up the bag of clothes Wayne saved for him before the trailer fell in, and secretly moved his ass into Loch Nora and the empty Casa Harrington.
(He doesn’t know if Steve’s parents have been told. There are lists of the missing and presumed dead after the earthquakes, and their son’s name is on there. Has anyone thought to call them? Is that his job? Surely that’s not his job.)
It’s awful. He’d hated this place before when it was just a symbol of everything bad in Steve Harrington’s life: his terrible former friends, his absent parents, the trappings and expectations of an upper class lifestyle. Now, it’s all of that and more, because even though there’s very little personality in this place, the little bit that does exist here is Steve’s, it’s all Steve, and that-
Unfortunately, Eddie also has very little to do except sit around and think about what he’s done wrong, and how it all led to this.
He’s not ready to go back to school yet, mentally, physically, or emotionally, but he’s gotten permission to treat the remainder of the semester like a correspondence course. This works for both him and the school administration, who don’t want the inevitable riot on their hands if he went back to class like nothing happened. The only reason they’re even backing down on expelling him outright for some made up reason is because the suits and Hopper remind them daily that he’s innocent in all this in the eyes of the law. Anyway, Nancy and Robin are determined for Eddie to graduate this time around, so they pick up and drop off his packets from the school, and do homework with him at the big Harrington dining table, ignoring the massive, coiffed-haired elephant in the room.
Eddie lives like a roommate with the ghost of Steve Harrington. He lives each day stuck in what-was and what-could-have-been.
He lays in Steve Harrington’s bed at night and thinks about how he’d slept there so often before, but never alone.
He eats breakfast in Steve Harrington’s kitchen and thinks about Steve frying eggs at the stove, little apron on over his bare chest and pajama pants, terrible pop music from the radio in the kitchen window.
He uses the big stereo downstairs and has to take out Steve’s last tape — Blondie, so actually maybe one of Robin’s that he borrowed — and find a place to keep it until- until Steve comes back- but he won’t- he isn't-
He takes a shower and remembers fucking Steve against the clear glass wall.
He sits out by the pool and smokes and thinks about Steve laying out on a deck chair and tanning, the smell of coconut oil and the way he’d lazily smile when Eddie called him vain.
He uses the phone to talk to Wayne and thinks about how he’d seen Steve in that same spot, checking in briefly with his mom, or rolling his eyes as the kids demanded a ride somewhere, or talking shit with Robin for an hour as Eddie made increasingly louder comments about his willingness to take his pants off as soon as Steve was done gossiping like an old biddy.
Ghosts everywhere. Every goddamn inch of the house. Every goddamn song on the radio. Every goddamn memory in Eddie’s head. Ghosts and ghosts and ghosts, a thousand versions of a boy that had never been meant to be a permanent fixture in Eddie’s life, and now he is but he isn’t because he’s gone.
Gone.
Gone.
The kids come to visit. None of them are really okay; Eddie knows they have near-daily brainstorming sessions about somehow safely reopening a gate, unbeknownst to Hopper or any other parents who would, rightfully, throw a shitfit. Nancy has pointed out that Steve would be angry too, if he knew.
“He wouldn’t want us risking it,” she says quietly when the kids are all whispering none-too-subtly about their plans.
“Yeah, well, he’s not here, is he,” says Mike, of all people, shitty and hurt in equal measure. “That’s why we have to do it.”
Eddie and Robin don’t participate. They huddle together away from the group and speak in half-fragments so as to get points across to each other but keep everyone else out.
He knows that she and Nancy are both in the same place that he is, with regards to rescuing Steve: they’ll move mountains to make it happen if it can be done, but it’s the tiniest chance in the world that there’s anything left of Steve to save.
They won’t tell the kids that. If there’s a mission to open a gate and get Steve out, Eddie will be there, and he will be the one to carry Steve’s body out like Steve did for him. He won’t let himself think about Steve still being alive in the Upside Down. It wouldn’t do any good; Eleven says she can’t feel anything. He’s not there.
He’s gone.
The kids keep planning, of course. Even Eleven. Especially Eleven. Everyone tries to convince her that it’s not her fault, but her guilt is palpable when Steve is discussed. None of kids will be dissuaded from planning his rescue. In fact, they get mad when Eddie and Nancy and Robin won’t help. Eddie especially.
“He carried you to the gate!” Dustin howls, tears streaming, pounding a fist against Eddie’s chest as Eddie holds him close and stares off into the middle distance. “He saved you, and you want to leave him there?” And then he collapses, sobbing, and Eddie has nothing to say in his defense, just breaks along with him.
At some point, someone had brought Steve’s bag, the one from the Upside Down attack, back to the house. There was Eddie’s vest, rumpled and stained, and there were the clinking bottles of ethanol for the Molotov cocktails, and there was the first aid kit, and there- there were Steve’s keys. Eddie pulled the well-worn key with the Wite-Out daisies off the ring and slid it onto his necklace next to his guitar pick, and he’d cried, and cried, and cried some more.
None of them know, is the thing. None of them know why it eats Eddie alive like poison in a salted wound to live here of all places. None of them know why he can’t say Steve’s name out loud. They think it’s the bonding they’ve all shared, and it’s not not that, but it isn’t that, and Robin’s the only one who knows. Who knew. Who understands.
And even then, he’s not sure Robin knows the full extent of it, her status as Steve’s soulmate notwithstanding. How could it even be put into words? Steve has been the most consistent part of Eddie’s life besides his uncle for almost two years, and yet they’re not even together. Steve moved into the trailer with them last summer, and yet no one but his codependent lesbian coworker knows they even spoke to each other before spring break and Chrissy dying. Eddie’s stupid with love for Steve Harrington, and they weren’t even dating, and now he’s gone.
He can see Steve’s face, that resignation when he’d realized he wasn’t making it out with the rest of them. He can hear Steve’s heart, thumping against his ear as Steve hoisted his broken body out of hell. Eddie’s throat still aches from how loud he screamed for Steve to move, please move, please move, as his eyes rolled back in his head and he froze while they watched in horror through the gate.
It’s been a month in a world without Steve Harrington and, honestly, Eddie doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want this version of the world. He wants the old one back.
He always knew Steve wouldn’t be his forever, but he didn’t think it would end like this.
He doesn’t sleep much. Especially not in Steve’s room. But he tries. He tries for the kids, who worry about him even as they shake and shudder awake when they fall asleep during movie nights, when they cry for no reason, when they jump at small noises and flinch at the ringing of the phone. And they’re worried about him. Their fucked-up stand-in for their golden boy babysitter. The king’s secret consort handed the reins to the kingdom.
Buckley stays over when she can. That helps, to have a body next to him, to have a friend, to have a sister (a sister-in-law his brain fills in, and he yells back, shut up shut up shut UP) there to hold his hand and brush his hair back when he startles awake calling for Steve.
But tonight the kids have to be at their various homes with their families. Being normal. Buckley’s with Nancy; girls night, they told him. He doesn’t mind — he knows he’s one of the topics they’ll discuss tonight while he’s not there. How he’s handling everything worse than everyone else.
It’s okay. He understands.
He did find the infamous nail bat under Steve’s bed his first night in the house. He thinks he’d like the chance to swing it at a monster that’s earned it. He keeps it close in case he needs it.
Tonight, Eddie lays on top of Steve Harrington’s terrible plaid comforter and stares up at the ceiling. He keeps a lamp on because the dark makes him sweat and see spots now, and he has a tape playing because he’s not falling asleep anytime soon. It’s his own: Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, left here who knows when, and it was already in the boombox so Steve had been listening to it without Eddie around. That stirs up something like cinnamon powder in his lungs, spicy and choking, so he doesn’t think about it.
He does think about lighting up a cigarette, but his pack is downstairs and he’s too exhausted to get it.
He sighs, long and loud and dramatic, because there’s no one to complain to. And that’s the thing — he and Steve fucked each other all over every inch of this house, the trailer, the picnic table in the woods, and more places besides, but it was more than that. They also spent their days together, sometimes with a plan and things to do, often just killing time together, working on their own shit. Eddie would play guitar as Steve talked on the phone. Steve would put on a movie while Eddie worked painfully through his homework. Somehow, even though Eddie misses every part of their relationship, it’s the time spent together doing nothing that he misses the most.
If only Steve was goddamn here. If only-
There’s a ticking like a watch, but not as subtle. Like the heavy tic-tic-tic of an expensive gold second hand on a rich man's Victorian pocketwatch. It’s such a small sound, but it drowns out the music for a moment. Eddie frowns, ears caught on the oddity.
“Something wrong, Munson?” says a voice, and Eddie yelps and rolls out of bed.
When he pops up on the other side, he sees Steve Harrington perched on his own bedroom windowsill. His face is exaggeratedly wild, sharper than it had been, and his hair is windswept and untamed. His skin is silvery-blue in the moonlight. His fingernails are dark and long, like Elvira’s or Ozzy’s. He’s in a Hawkins Swim t-shirt and his bare arms are swiped with old, dried blood.
He’s like the film negative of a boy Eddie knows by heart, like a cover version of his favorite song.
And then he smiles, and his teeth are sharp.
“Hey, babe,” Steve says. “Did you miss me?”
Eddie, bravely, faints.
Notes:
NOTES:
- For the youngins - a correspondence course was an early iteration of what would evolve into online classes, but where everything was done by mail.
Chapter 5: four: THE BATS | THE TALK
Summary:
He has to kill Vecna.
It’s obvious. He has powers now, and he has a way to communicate with the people who can help get him out. He might get stronger over time, especially if he practices with his powers and learns how to use them, but he’s pretty sure Vecna’s getting stronger too as time passes since their attack, and that seems worse. Plus, Steve isn’t really a patient sort of guy.
Also, how fucking rad would it be to pop back into the real world in someone’s mind, or maybe all his friends’ minds, and be able to announce, guess what, assholes, I’m not only alive but I took out the existential threat we locked in the underworld. Now come get me.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Steve gets yanked back to the Upside Down pretty much the second Eddie keels over in his — honestly, adorable — faint, so Vecna wasn’t wrong about the whole short first visit thing.
Vecna questions Steve relentlessly and is clearly furious when there’s nothing to tell (“I showed up, I said hey, he fainted, I popped back here. Not much else to say, man.”), but Steve doesn’t care. He’s fucking giddy. He can do it, he can actually do it. He can get back home, even if only partially. And he wasn’t even, like, a ghost nobody could see. Eddie could definitely see him.
And seemed freaked, so maybe Steve should stop avoiding mirrors.
Anyway, Steve is ecstatic. He keeps replaying that tiny moment of time over and over like he’s watching his favorite movie, and he has the strangest feeling that Vecna can see it too, and that’s why he’s so angry.
Because Steve has figured out that much. He doesn’t really think Vecna’s bluffing with the whole I can see into your mind thing. First of all, he’s answered thoughts Steve never voiced out loud. He references Steve’s memories like they’re his own. Plus, it’s what he did with Max, with Nancy; why wouldn’t he be able to do it with Steve? If anything, it would make sense if he could see even more of Steve’s mind than theirs, since they’re connected by their deal, or whatever.
So Vecna’s angry, because he can see what Steve could see, and so he knows Steve’s telling the truth. Nothing happened, but everything has changed, because now that Steve knows he can contact his friends, his next step is clear:
He has to kill Vecna.
It’s obvious. He has powers now, and he has a way to communicate with the people who can help get him out. He might get stronger over time, especially if he practices with his powers and learns how to use them, but he’s pretty sure Vecna’s getting stronger too as time passes since their attack, and that seems worse. Plus, Steve isn’t really a patient sort of guy.
Also, how fucking rad would it be to pop back into the real world in someone’s mind, or maybe all his friends’ minds, and be able to announce, guess what, assholes, I’m not only alive but I took out the existential threat we locked in the underworld. Now come get me.
That would be amazing.
So, he needs a plan. He considers going back to the house, his parents’ house, but that feels useless. There’s no nail bat there because Jonathan Byers hasn’t made it yet in this dimension.
He could go to the Byers’, there’s apparently a baseball bat there that will be turned into the nail bat, but he doesn’t know where it would be and, honestly, it feels a little weird. Snooping through the Byers’ house like he belongs there, when, sure, Will likes him and he likes Will, and Joyce pretty much adopted him from afar after the fight with Billy, but things will eternally be weird with Jonathan.
So not there.
He keeps thinking about the Munson trailer. Because, the thing is, there’s probably no baseball bat there. Eddie’s never been the sports type. But Wayne always has projects going, repairing things around the trailer or helping out the neighbors. Even if Steve would have to get creative with the handle part, he knows for sure there are nails and a hammer in the trailer, and he even knows where they are.
That settles it. Steve gives an excuse to his supervillain boss and pops himself over to the vine-coated trailer in Forest Hills. Honestly, now that they’re not trying to strangle him, he can ignore the vines. The grime isn’t great, but Steve doesn’t plan on being stuck in this world long enough that his latent tendency to stress clean will appear.
Before he gets started on his weapon, though, his curiosity is killing him, so he bypasses the living room, the table still beneath the closed-over gate, and heads for the hallway bathroom.
He uses his arm to wipe away some muck on the mirror and-
Oh.
Well, okay, that might explain Eddie fainting.
The mirror is pitted as though it’s been decades since this world froze in 1983, but Steve can see enough. It’s like his features have all been carved with a heavy hand wielding a paring knife, everything sharper: his jaw, his cheekbones, his eyes. He pushes his lip up with the tip of his finger and that’s how he discovers that his canine teeth are more like fangs now, and also that his fingernails are dark and clawed. Honestly, he’s not sure how he missed that one.
His eyes are a nearly-glowing gold. His skin is tinged silver.
He looks like a goddamn elf or something from one of Dustin’s adventure books.
Right. He’s just… not going to think about that. Surely, when he’s back in Hawkins Above, he’ll go back to normal.
And if not, he’ll get those pet nail clippers for his claws and color contacts for his eyes. He’ll go to the salon and use their tanning beds. Whatever, he’ll deal with it.
Steve leaves the bathroom and heads, out of instinct, to Eddie’s room. He has the grimy end-of-day feeling where he wants to shower and change his clothes and climb into clean sheets, even though he doesn’t need to sleep and the weird twilight here never really ends. Maybe it’s a comfort thing. He’s not going to interrogate it too much.
So he does what he’s done a hundred times before, and he opens Eddie’s minefield of a closet and digs until something appears that doesn’t look like it would shred in half if Steve stuck his arm or leg in.
Of course, this is Eddie’s closet circa 1983, and while it’s not like he’s beefed up since then, he is a little wider in the shoulders now, a little thicker around the hips. Steve knows, because he’s watched it happen. In part, that was a concerted effort by Wayne with Steve’s help: Eddie’s attention is so easily swayed that he’d often go a couple of days without a full meal, but Steve doesn’t skip meals. Steve gets hungry and wants to eat when he’s hungry, and he can’t just switch his brain off when that happens. So this led to Eddie eating more often, just because Steve was there and he was also eating.
Anyway, in this closet that hasn’t happened yet, so that means that Steve has to dig pretty hard to find an older Eagles concert shirt that used to be Wayne’s but that Eddie sleeps in, worn and faded and soft. Steve wipes off with a dry towel as thoroughly as he can, then tosses his own shirt to the side where he usually would, starting his own pile of laundry that he’d take back to his own house to do — along with some of Eddie’s and Wayne’s — when his clothing situation got dire.
Of course, he won’t be doing laundry here. But it’s a habit easy to fall back into.
Pants are easy to find, and Steve steps into a thin pair of Eddie’s sweatpants that he’s sure he’s worn before, feeling, just for a moment, like things are normal. Like he’s about to leave the room and find Eddie and Wayne in the living room, Eddie fiddling with the VCR and Wayne cracking open a beer, asking, now what the hell are you making me watch this time? and Steve apologizing for his job at Family Video giving Eddie access to more weirdo horror and creepy fantasy shit than he ever had before. He’d make popcorn and sit next to Eddie on the couch, hands tangling in the bowl. Wayne would tease them if they cuddled too much, and Eddie would tease Wayne back if he started to doze halfway through the movie.
Steve sits heavily on the edge of Eddie’s bed and puts his head in his hands and breathes.
He misses his life. His stupid, boring, fucked up life.
He gives himself a minute, then sniffs and gets up again. No use crying over it, when he has a plan that will get him out. So, the plan: Steve will go find something to use in place of a baseball bat, and then he’ll shove some nails in it. Then he’ll go find Vecna, wherever he is, and sneak up on him and bash him in the head. Maybe use his powers to hop out of reach if the single hit doesn’t take Vecna out, or summon up a demobat army or something to help him out — though he’d like to avoid that last one, if he could. The bats still give him the creeps.
He heads back to the living room, planning on rummaging around in Wayne’s tool stuff outside, but he stops short because the living room isn’t empty.
“You thought it would be that easy?” Vecna asks, and doesn’t even sound angry. He wraps his big clawed hand around Steve’s neck and lifts him into the air like it’s nothing. “You thought you could destroy me? You?”
Steve scrabbles his own short claws against the back of Vecna’s hand but it’s like scratching at a brick wall. He tries to kick out but can’t connect, tries to teleport away but can’t, tries to reach out with his mind to call a bat swarm but can’t.
“I have been here too long to be killed by the likes of you,” Vecna snarls, his human-ish voice a rasp of rage. “You aren’t even the most dangerous among your band of little friends, let alone against someone with actual power. Pathetic.”
He throws Steve off to the side, and Steve connects with the wall of the trailer like it’s made of stone instead of cheap particleboard and metal siding. Steve sees spots but he rolls to his feet and lashes out with his raw new powers: shit goes flying around the room, everything not nailed down shooting towards Vecna but stopping several feet away from him. Steve tries again to teleport away but it’s like a hand is holding him by the collar, keeping him locked in one place.
“Perhaps it would have been better if I’d left you for dead,” Vecna muses. “I might have an easier time without you holding me back.” He does his slow walk towards Steve and unleashes his, admittedly successful, preferred move, wrapping vines around Steve’s wrists and ankles to lock him in place. Steve’s head had been ringing from being thrown against the wall but he heals fast, now, and he’s already back to top shape. Maybe he could use that. Maybe he could damage himself and rip out of the vines, healing as he ran. Of course, where would he go?
Problems for later. Steve twists his arms and howls, but the vines don’t let him slip free.
“Yes, I can see it now,” Vecna says. “You’ve been a disappointment for everyone else in your life, so I don’t know why that would change here.”
“Shut up,” Steve hisses. “Let me go!”
A vine winds around Steve’s mouth, a slimy gag. Vecna steps close, and it’s like the overlay of humanity Steve had been starting to see has been hidden away again. He’s all monster now.
“Do I lie? You’ve disappointed your parents countless times, to the point they want nothing to do with you. You were a terrible boyfriend to the one girl you’ve ever loved. Your friends are children who tolerate you based on what you can provide for them. Your best friend is embarrassed by your stupidity and is disgusted by your former attraction to her.”
That’s not true, Steve thinks, but it’s a weak rebuttal. These are all fears he’s spoken out loud to himself late at night, all alone in a big, empty house. He knows that’s why Vecna’s saying them, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear.
But he does think his friends love him, more than tolerate him. He knows Robin is miles smarter than he is, but she doesn’t seem to mind explaining things to him. Nancy forgave him and he forgave her and they’re both better for it all. His parents are preoccupied with their own lives and trust Steve to be self-sufficient. Eddie-
“Ah, yes,” Vecna says, words curling. “The secret romance. He’s embarrassed of you too, of course, which is why he still hasn’t told anyone about the two of you, even though you’re supposedly gone. There’s no risk to your secret getting out, but he only ever wanted you because you were willing and he was bored. Desperate. He doesn’t even really like you, just likes what you can do for him.”
Steve feels wetness on his face and realizes tears are dripping in rivers, let loose from behind his usual walls. STOP, he screams inside his head. STOP. PLEASE.
“I understand your simple plan,” Vecna says. “It’s obvious and juvenile, but I understand it. You thought you could dispose of me and call on your friends to get you out, but it won’t work. You can’t keep secrets from me, for one. But you should know, if I am killed, your powers are stripped away. I made you what you are. I gave you what you have. If I am gone, you are back to being nothing but a half-dead human, and you would be stuck here for as long as you could survive. It wouldn’t be long.”
Steve cries and yanks fruitlessly at the vines, and wishes he was smarter, better, stronger. Anything. Anything but this: Steve Harrington, tricked and trapped and useless.
“Not useless,” Vecna says, “but you will have to learn a lesson, I think. I believe you were trying to summon some help, were you not? I’ll call them for you now.”
He tilts his head back and closes those unnatural blue eyes, and a few moments later Steve’s heart rate doubles as he hears the sound of wings on the wind. The trailer rocks as dozens of dark, blurring shapes smash against the side of it, chittering and snapping, an awful cacophony. The demobats crawl through the front door in waves, not flying straight for Steve to attack him, but instead cramming inside until every surface in the trailer is bats, bats everywhere, flapping wings and dripping mouths.
“I know you fear them still,” Vecna says. “This will make you do two things, then: overcome your fear, and recognize the folly of trying to defeat me.”
The vines drop Steve to the floor and he collapses, shuddering away from shuffling monsters watching him warily, hungrily.
“I will return when I’m ready. They will not feed unless provoked, but they will stop you from leaving.” Vecna surveys the trailer, Steve’s new prison, and then turns back to Steve. “You will need to return to Hawkins Above soon. You need energy from another world, now, and if you go too long without it you’ll grow weak.”
Steve wants to ask what the hell that means, but also wants to curl up into a ball and maybe throw up, and so he doesn’t do any of that. He sits among the horde of monsters, and pulls his knees up to his chest.
Vecna leaves, and then it’s just Steve and the bats.
THEN
MARCH 1985
“Hey.” A finger prodded at Eddie’s scapula, hard enough to bruise. “Freak. For you.”
He didn’t turn, so the note was tossed onto his desk from over his shoulder. He stared at it for a moment and sighed, then unfolded it; he skimmed it quickly and sighed again.
He turned in his seat and looked out over the classroom to see who was looking back. A couple of people looked away guiltily — the ones who bought from Eddie and feared he’d put a curse on the weed because they believed their parents about D&D being a thin veneer for devil worship, but still wanted his drugs enough to risk it — but two pairs of eyes caught his and locked.
One was Steve Harrington.
The other was Tommy Hagan.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie whispered, knuckling at his eye. He turned back to his notebook and flipped to a new page. He wrote in big letters, tracing over them in pencil enough times that the words were bolded:
NO
THURSDAYS ONLY
He turned back, and this time more people were watching, because Eddie and an idiot having a conversation was more interesting than whatever Ms. Click was writing on the board about supply lines for the Battle of Antietam. He held up his notebook and tapped his pencil next to the word ONLY, like a tutor helping a second grader sound out a two-syllable word.
Steve blinked.
Hagan, on the other hand, went red.
“No,” he whispered, eyes cutting to Click at the chalkboard. “Today, Munson.”
Eddie sighed once more, a little more theatrically. He turned back to his notebook and wrote another note, and this time when he flipped the notebook around, there was a scattering of giggles.
DO YOU KNOW THE DAYS OF THE WEEK?
IT’S THE ONE AFTER WEDNESDAY
Hagan was so angry his nostrils flared, and he sat back in his chair so hard it squeaked a little on the tile.
The thing was, Eddie would totally sell to someone on a Tuesday. He had no moral issues against it, or anything. In fact, he was meeting a group at the picnic table in the woods after school this very afternoon. The difference was that today he was selling weed to a group of high-strung band geeks who had been told their whole lives were riding on getting scholarships to Juilliard, and they had so much anxiety about it all that they’d started to hate their trumpets and had to smoke copious amounts of weed just to function. Eddie was fine meeting them; they were jittery and weird, but he’s fine with weird.
And Eddie would meet with others who asked, too. There was a group of cheerleaders he dealt to pretty regularly who weren’t necessarily kind to him, but they had the unfortunate combination of being born both female and Midwestern, so their politeness was impeccable. Sometimes they even smiled at him.
The stoners were his regulars, the other freaks, goths, metalheads, and nerds got whatever they wanted because Eddie prioritized his own, and the jocks who bought from Eddie one minute and turned around and tried to stick his head in a toilet the next got lowest rank on his personal totem pole: Thursdays only.
Hagan, unsurprisingly, was the king of that last group.
The whispers and giggles died down as Click turned around to continue on about casualty lists and troop maneuvers, and Eddie got another hard poke in the shoulder. Eddie almost crumpled this new note up and threw it aside, uninterested in Hagan’s uncreative threats, but the paper was creased more carefully than Hagan’s sloppy one, and- yup, that was a little tiny heart right where Eddie would slide his thumb to open it. He unfolded it.
Meet after school? - S
Eddie flicked his glance over and caught Steve’s gaze. He had that very specific look on his face that said he thought he was being casual and aloof, but was in reality staring so hard at Eddie that he was sort of surprised his clothes didn’t just evaporate off of him. It was one of Eddie’s favorite things about Steve Harrington, that he didn’t really have a setting between zero percent and a hundred. He was either ignoring Eddie entirely to keep their reputations intact, or so laser-focused on him that Eddie felt it like a touch.
Steve always framed his notes like a question: can I see you today? Arcade after school? I have swim practice, meet at 5 instead? As though Eddie has ever once said no to him.
He also always stuck his notes in Eddie’s locker, didn’t pass them to him across a classroom assuming no one would open it and infer the truth. It was bold to proposition Eddie in the middle of history class, but the kind of bold that seemed to be a uniquely Steve trait: bold by sheer default, from someone who didn’t know any other way to be.
A few people were still watching curiously, waiting to see Eddie react to Steve, who was generally regarded as nicer now but also not popular anymore, so Eddie picked up his notebook again and underlined the THURSDAYS ONLY part, turning it to Steve so he could read it. When the few onlookers got their fill and looked away, Eddie winked, and Steve’s mouth twitched a little.
Cool. Now Eddie had plans to look forward to. Even in his head, his nonchalance was forced, and he ignored his fluttering stomach for its stupid betrayal.
When fifth period ended, Eddie shuffled out with the rest of the class, and somehow timed it to be right between Steve and Hagan. A jock sandwich — an old dream of Eddie’s, though if he was going to picture himself pressed between two athletic bodies, he’d pick someone easier on the eyes and ears than Hagan. Maybe Phillips, that baseball player with the nice arms. Or Chrissy Cunningham.
Either way, it was all moot; Steve wasn’t the type to share, which Eddie was fine with. He had more than he could handle already, jock-wise.
As soon as Eddie was out in the hall, someone grabbed him by the backpack strap and slammed him against the wall. Ms. Click looked up at the noise, saw that it was Eddie being manhandled, and went back to shuffling her papers at her desk. Nearly everyone else in the hallway stopped to watch, with only a few continuing about their business.
“Listen here, freak,” Tommy Hagan snarled, face inches from Eddie’s. Eddie swallowed and leaned his head back, scrabbling at Hagan’s hand to get him to let go. “You don’t tell me no. You’re lucky I’m not just fucking taking what you have in your stupid little lunchbox and I’m even willing to pay for it.”
“Fuck off, Hagan,” Eddie said, voice immediately pitching high from stress. “I don’t have my shit with me today.”
“Then go get it, and come back,” Hagan said, like he was talking to a simpleton. “It’s not like anyone will care if you miss class, you’re failing again anyway.”
A few people snickered, and Eddie felt his stomach roll. He could handle being the center of attention on his own terms, but Hagan had poked a sore spot and Eddie didn’t always make the smartest decisions when backed into a corner.
“At least my girlfriend’s not doing my papers for me,” Eddie said. “Is she going to follow you to college and do the same thing there, too? I hope you’re paying her for the trouble.”
Hagan’s eyes narrowed as laughter tripped down the hallway again, hiding in the crevasses between onlookers. Hawkins High generally respected the social pecking order, but the mighty could be laughed at as long as you weren’t caught.
“You don’t even have a girlfriend,” Hagan reminded him, as though Eddie had forgotten. “You’re too much of a fucking loser to get one. Or is it a different problem for you, huh, Munson? I’ve seen you looking around in the showers. Is that more your speed?”
Eddie had been called worse — and confronted more directly — often enough that he didn’t freeze, didn’t gasp. He didn’t blink or go red. He just stared at Hagan, because, in Eddie’s experience, boys who yelled a little too loudly about other boys being queer sometimes had more than skeletons in their closets. Not always; sometimes they really were just awful, hateful people. But sometimes it was something else.
So Eddie murmured, just low enough for Hagan to hear, “Why were you watching me in the showers? Is Perkins not what you’re looking for anymore?”
Hagan wasn’t used to being called a faggot. He wasn’t used to slurs and accusations being hurled his way. So he didn’t bother with a rejoinder, and Eddie had no time to brace before Hagan’s fist pummeled his stomach, and he curled over with a wheeze.
“Keep your goddamn mouth shut, Munson. You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” Hagan said icily, bending down close to Eddie’s ear, but speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. “I give it a year before you’re dead or in prison, and either way, you won’t be missed.”
There was a sound, then — a scuffle of some kind. Eddie, stomach still radiating pain, stood to find Hagan against the wall now, Steve’s fist wrapped in his shirt.
“Leave him the fuck alone, Tommy,” Steve said.
Hagan laughed, though his eyes were white-edged and mean, feral. “Is this your crowd now, Harrington? The Satan-worshipping king of the nerds?” He looked over at Eddie again, as though sizing him up for another round. Like he could fight his way back to 1983, before Steve chose Nancy Wheeler over him, and Hagan’s little world imploded.
Steve, to his credit, didn’t look Eddie’s way. “It’s not about Munson,” he said. “It’s about you, asshole. It’s your weird need to hurt people who won’t hit back.”
“Munson can hit me if he wants to,” Hagan taunted, grinning wide. “He’s just too chickenshit to do anything.”
“You’re missing the point, man,” Steve said. He stepped away, eyebrows drawn together like he couldn’t reconcile the person in front of him. He was undoubtedly rethinking all the cruelty he’d stood by and watched Hagan mete out, because he was bored and didn’t know enough about the people around him to care. Steve tended to have revelations slowly; see example one, when he seemed to realize for the first time that he was interested in kissing a boy while talking to Eddie at that Halloween party, but took two weeks of simmering to act on it. “Can’t you just let people live?”
“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” asked the basketball coach, who must’ve been summoned when a fight seemed imminent, then realized who he was getting between. “Hagan? Harrington? Go on, boys, whatever this is will keep until later.”
“Yes, sir,” Steve said, eyes still on Hagan, a little hurt, a little sad.
Hagan didn’t say anything, just shoved past Steve and away down the hallway. The crowd dispersed, and Eddie melted away with it, back to his locker so he could try to catch his breath again. If he stayed there too long he’d be late for English.
He set his forehead against the cool metal of his locker door, and breathed deep. He tried to concentrate on what mattered. School. Graduating. Passing classes. Not staying in the empty hallway where he would be a target to anyone walking by.
“Dude,” a voice hissed from next to him, and Eddie blinked. Gareth was there, leaning on the locker next to Eddie’s, eyes wide. The boys always congregated here between classes; Eddie had forgotten he’d have an audience. “What the hell was that?”
“That was King Steve to the rescue,” said Frankie, pretending to swoon. “Eddie the Damsel!”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t call him that,” Eddie said, feeling very far away. Eddie the Damsel. Eddie the Rescued. Why was his heart beating so fast? The hit to his stomach wasn’t as bad as some of the beatings he’d endured over the years, and yet his mind was stuck. When Jeff patted him on the shoulder in solidarity, Eddie flinched.
Gareth snorted. “Why not? Don’t like picturing yourself thrown over the back of the king’s noble steed?”
“He doesn’t like it,” Eddie said automatically, and then felt himself slide back into awareness, and had to catch himself before he winced at that slip. Jeff was already looking at him funny. “Plus it’s stupid. There are no kings here, my friends. Just us zombies, and the liches who sold their souls for a little more power than the rest of us.”
Frankie laughed and Eddie put his history book away. He would go to English class today, he decided, and maybe he could convince Mrs. O’Donnell to let him turn in his essay late. He did it, he just forgot to bring it to class. Maybe that would fix some of his problems. Not all of them. A fraction.
The boys floated around Eddie as he walked, not in an attempt to keep him safe — none of them were safe, and he wouldn’t expect any of them to jump in front of him to sacrifice themselves if Hagan was really out for revenge — but to keep him from wandering off and leading them all into even more trouble. He’d have to admit, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Eddie led the way towards the English hallway, but there were two paths to get there, and without thinking he chose the one that took him past Steve’s locker. It was habit, by now; sometimes, Steve would see him and his glance would settle on Eddie and stick like snow, like glitter, and Eddie would feel it the rest of the day.
Today, Steve didn’t notice him because he was deep in discussion with Wheeler and Byers, heads bowed together. They were in their little triad formation, Steve and Byers leaning over Wheeler, who was clearly the ringleader between them. Bystanders passed around them in a steady flow, but Eddie couldn’t help trying to listen in.
“Trouble in paradise,” Gareth whispered, the insatiable gossip.
“...target of yourself,” Wheeler was saying. “We’ve got enough eyes on us as it is, and you can’t afford more trouble.”
“Leave him alone,” Byers murmured. “Hagan was asking for it.”
“Yeah, about that,” Wheeler said. “I know you and Tommy aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye these days, but it seems reckless to just attack him.”
Steve cleared his throat. “I didn’t attack him, Nance,” he said. His voice sounded weird, like he had a cold. “He was being an asshole.”
At that point, Byers looked past Wheeler and made eye contact with Eddie, and then Wheeler turned to see who he was looking at, and then Steve did too. Eddie stopped, pinned in place. The boys did as well, confused. For a moment, everyone stared at each other, like the two armies facing down over the Potomac in the Battle of Antietam.
Huh. Maybe some of Click’s lecture today did stick.
Steve’s eyes had widened when he saw Eddie there, and Eddie was sure he looked like some version of the proverbial deer in the blinding headlights. He gripped his notebook tight to his chest, hands clammy.
He’d never talked to Steve at school.
“Uh,” Eddie finally said to break the silence, voice like a croak. “Hey, Harrington. Thanks. You didn’t have to-”
“I know,” Steve said. He was doing that thing again, the burning eyes thing where Eddie felt his gaze as tangibly as if he was running a hand up Eddie’s chest and neck and face. Eddie’s cheeks warmed red, but couldn’t look away. For a moment, they just stared at each other, silent.
“Right,” Eddie said, hands flexing around his notebook. “Well. Uh, it was cool of you, so thank you. Very paladin-esque, how you threw in a little morality judgment there at the end. Good stuff.”
Steve quirked an eyebrow, familiar enough that Eddie felt his head tilt a little in response. If they were alone, Eddie would sidle up close and squeeze Steve’s bicep, make a whole production out of a big strong man come to save him. Maybe swoon a little. And Steve would roll his eyes, but he’d also eat it up, let his gaze go all dark and heavy, and he’d throw Eddie onto the nearest soft surface the first moment he got.
They weren’t alone, though. Eddie felt eyes like spotlights on him, and that’s not to even mention Steve’s weighty stare.
“Yeah, well,” Steve said. Where Eddie’s voice had gone raspy like he hadn’t used it in a decade, Steve’s had deepened. His eyes had also softened a little, though Eddie didn’t know if anyone else could tell. “Next time, I’ll try casting Protection From Evil before jumping in.”
Eddie barked a laugh he couldn't keep in, clapped his hand over his mouth, and spun on his heel to face his friends. They goggled at him like they’d just watched him don a suit made of meat and climb into a tiger’s den. “Hey,” he said, falsely bright. “I just remembered I left something in my locker. I’ll meet you all in class.”
“None of us have class with you?” Gareth called after him, but Eddie was already speed-walking away, feeling Steve’s eyes between his shoulder blades.
“Protection From Evil?” Eddie heard Nancy ask as he pushed through a group of gossiping Latin club geeks.
“Something I’ve heard from Henderson,” Steve said. “Anyway, I should…”
Eddie escaped around the corner as Steve’s voice trailed out of earshot. He exhaled shakily. That felt like a bullet dodged. Like everyone could read all over him how he knew the feeling of Steve Harrington’s mouth, like he was branded and caught and strung up for onlookers to see. Wheeler was smart, hell, Byers was too, and the boys — well, none of them had ever said anything, but they knew Eddie didn’t date. Didn’t date girls, specifically. If nothing else, they were probably all giggling together about Eddie’s stupid crush on King Steve.
Or maybe they were having a collective meltdown about Steve using D&D words like he knew what he was talking about — which he did, of course; Eddie had been building a paladin NPC for the Hellfire campaign for a few weeks, and had talked through the character background with Steve to work out the knots. It was kind of like how Eddie still couldn’t tell his quarterbacks from his point guards, but he knew the Pacers were having a dogshit year, and that the name Bobby Knight was one to be spoken of with respect. It was a cultural exchange of sorts, usually done while panting and sated and getting their breath back, sometimes on the couch, sometimes in the back of the van, sometimes sprawled in Eddie’s bed. As the sweat cooled and their heartbeats returned to a semi-normal pace, Eddie talked fantasy monsters and inscrutable novels, and Steve talked sports and school drama he was still on the fringes enough to catch. (Eddie enjoyed gossip; Steve loved gossip. He’d spend half an hour talking about a couple’s breakup and when Eddie would say, “Okay, and remind me again, how do you know these people?” he’d shrug and say, “I don’t.”)
Eddie scrubbed his hand over his face. He had to get it together. He’d spent five goddamn years in this hell of a place and never once ran face-first into a conversation with Steve; now he’d done it, he’d broken that seal, and his brain was liquifying with fear. Surely everyone knew. Surely they’d be after him with pitchforks and tar and feathers. Surely it was written all over him, his damnable heart on his fucking sleeve.
He was supposed to be going to English class and begging to turn in his paper late. He was supposed to be trying to graduate, for fuck’s sake. Not doing this. Not whatever this was.
Then, once again, there was a hand dragging him from behind to somewhere against his will. This time, he was pulled into an empty teacher’s lounge, its couches faded and worn, the stained coffeepot empty on the Formica tabletop.
“Hagan, I swear to Christ, I will hit back this time- oh,” Eddie said, yanking out of his captor’s hold to find not Tommy Hagan, back for another round, but Steve, with spots of red high on his cheeks now to match Eddie.
“Are you okay?” Steve asked immediately. “How’s your stomach?”
“Bruised,” Eddie said. “Steve, what are you doing? We can’t get caught here. Especially not after what just happened.” Forget their friends — by now, the whole school would have been reminded about the rumors regarding Eddie’s proclivities, thanks to Hagan, and would be discussing the former king’s jump to his defense. Most people wouldn’t put two and two together to get whatever Steve and Eddie were, but some might.
“No one uses this room after lunch,” Steve said, waving away Eddie’s concern. “Me, Tommy, and Carol used to come in here to smoke all the time. Look.” He dug his hand into the crevasse between two sagging couch cushions and pulled out a battered pack of Marlboros. “I put this here two years ago, and no one’s touched it since.”
He tossed the cigarettes to the side and pulled Eddie’s shirt up, untucking it from his jeans. He hissed in sympathy at the blotchy red on Eddie’s abdomen, warm to the touch and already aching.
“You should have hit him back,” Steve said lowly. “He sucker-punched you, you totally had the right.”
Eddie scoffed. “I know you like to jump into fights you won’t win, darling, but that’s not really my style.”
Steve flicked him on the hipbone for his comment, but otherwise didn’t reply. He settled a hand over the skin of Eddie’s stomach, and the other around Eddie’s neck. He kept his eyes down. Something about it felt deliberate.
“Hey,” Eddie said. “Are you okay?”
Steve cleared his throat, and sniffed. He pulled his hand away from Eddie’s stomach to swipe at his own face, just once. Eddie, astonished, put his hands to Steve’s cheeks and made him look up, finding watery, red-rimmed eyes.
“Shit, what’s wrong?” Eddie asked, thumbing at his cheek. “This isn’t for me, is it? Because I’ve suffered worse without a white knight riding in to save me before. I’ll be totally fine.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Steve said, looking furiously away. “This is all just- bullshit. It’s bullshit!”
Eddie laughed a little, not meanly, but a little mocking. “Yeah, honey. That’s high school for you.” He traced Steve’s jaw with the same thumb. “That’s not all this is, though. Is it?”
Steve still looked away, head angled away from Eddie so what he mostly saw was the hard clench of Steve’s jaw, and Steve passed the back of his wrist over his cheek again. For a moment, they were quiet, then Steve said. “I have to go. Biology.”
“Right,” Eddie said, and withdrew his hand. “Mitosis. Evolution. Frogs?”
Steve laughed, and it was only a little watery. He was good at pulling the haughty blankness back on like a shield, the unaffected boredom. Must be a symptom of popularity. He sniffed, and ruffled his hair back into place. “Yeah, that's the one. I’ll see you after school. I have practice, so how about after that?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Where?”
“Skull Rock,” Steve said. “Should be empty today, it’s supposed to rain.”
“So you want me to catch my death from wet hair and ruin my jacket,” Eddie said.
Steve huffed another laugh, and stepped close to kiss Eddie. For a moment, that took Eddie over completely, his mouth on Steve’s, the world made right. His hands rested on Steve’s chest, and he felt caught by something deeper than he wanted to examine. A kiss from a pretty boy shouldn’t settle him this much. “Yes,” Steve said with a grin when he pulled back, licking his lips. “That’s exactly what I want. See you there.”
He left first, and Eddie followed a minute later. The hallway was empty, except a flash of what looked like a letterman jacket around the corner of the hallway, so Eddie turned on his heel and went the other direction.
He didn’t go to English class. He spent sixth period smoking under the bleachers and writing terrible lyrics about being saved by a knight on a white horse, and then he packed his shit back up and went inside for his last class of the day, even though Hagan was right: he was failing anyway.
Out at the picnic table after school, he found the high-strung band geeks already waiting for him: unsurprising, and not unwelcome. There were two of them, though one, a Japanese kid Eddie vaguely recalled from his time in band and thought might be named Mortimer, just smiled and shook his head when Eddie asked if he wanted anything.
“I’m just here for supervision,” he said, voice dry but cheery. “Peter has been talking about trying mushrooms before his orchestra audition at Northwestern, so I’m here to stop that idea from happening.”
“Probably for the best,” Eddie said, handing Peter a baggie of weed and absolutely nothing else. “In front of an audience is not the best place for a first trip.”
“But, what if-” Peter said, and Eddie raised an eyebrow. Peter, who was shaking tremulously like a chihuahua, swallowed and said, “Fine, never mind. Twenty bucks?”
“Call it fifteen, if you consider telling your parents you hate band,” Eddie said.
“I could never,” Peter said, scandalized, and handed Eddie a crisp twenty.
Mortimer (or was it Milo? Milton? It was definitely something that could be the Monopoly man’s first name) smiled and steered his friend away, and then Eddie packed up his lunchbox and nearly skipped to his van.
Here was the plan: he was just going to forget about earlier. Yes, his stomach still ached, and his nerves still rattled from adrenaline and the close call of Hagan knocking at his closet door. Yes, he offered Steve a shoulder to cry on and Steve pulled away. Yes, Frankie spent all of seventh period making kissy faces at Eddie, so the boys had definitely put at least one and one together and got something close to the truth about Eddie’s feelings. But it was all over now. Now, he let excitement bubble.
It was a little stupid, he’d admit to himself. He was hardly unfamiliar with the wonders of Steve Harrington’s mouth, and kissing outside just sounded like a recipe for bugs in his hair. But Skull Rock was legendary, and Steve was the reason for it; Eddie used to eavesdrop on girls in the cafeteria who would sigh and twirl their fork in their fingers, staring off into the middle distance, and when their friends would ask for details, they could only find words like “magical,” or “radical,” or, in one particularly intriguing case: “Like maybe I, like, died? And went to heaven? And heaven smelled like Drakkar Noir?”
Steve wore Kouros by YSL now, but the thought was still compelling enough that it propelled some of Eddie’s early fantasies about Steve, long before there was a possibility of those actually bearing out in reality.
Eddie parked by the BMW and left his jacket in the car, because he’d rather be chilly than ruin the leather. There wasn’t quite enough traffic to Skull Rock yet for a path to have been made, despite Steve’s attempts otherwise, so Eddie stomped his way through thickets and over tree limbs and was swearing at a particularly handsy vine when he heard an amused voice from above.
“You’re supposed to hug the trees, Munson, not fight them off.”
Eddie looked up to find the famous rock itself, and up on top of it was Steve, grinning over the edge at Eddie.
“What the hell, man,” Eddie said. “You didn’t tell me I needed to bring climbing gear.”
Steve scoffed. “It’s not that bad. Start on the other side.”
Sure enough, when Eddie wound his way to the other side of the rock, there were enough grooves and cracks to make the ascent simple, and he was up on top in a few minutes. He flopped dramatically onto his back when he got there, saying, “This is why people shouldn’t hang out with jocks. They make you exercise.”
Steve laughed, and then there was a pop; Eddie rolled over to find-
“A picnic?” Eddie asked, as Steve poured a bottle of wine into two plastic cups. Then: “How did you get the basket up here?” Then: “Is that a pie?”
“Yes, and yes,” Steve answered. “And for your middle question, I’m very strong and… what’s that word? The D&D word? The sneaky one.”
“Dexterity?” Eddie asked faintly.
“Right. I’m dextrous,” Steve grinned.
“Holy shit,” Eddie said. He took the wine from Steve’s hand, setting it gently to the side on a flat space. And then he knocked Steve onto his back, kissing him vigorously.
Steve laughed, and slowed the kiss until it was something approaching gentle. Eddie, heart hammering, let him, but only because this was definitely good too. For a while it was just that, Steve’s big hands sliding up under Eddie’s shirt and spanning across most of his back, his tongue deft and soft, his little noises a symphony in Eddie’s ear. But Steve pulled back eventually, eyes bright and cheeks a hectic red.
“Come on, you’re going to miss the best part,” Steve said, kissing Eddie once more and then pushing him back. He rearranged them so that they were facing the same direction, looking out over the lake and the forest on the far shore. The sun was watery and low, orange and heavy, and as Eddie watched it started to dip below the horizon. Gray clouds patterned the sky overhead, not obscuring the view but adding to it. Shoots of pink threaded the clouds like embroidery.
Steve nudged him and offered him one of the cups of wine, then tapped his to Eddie’s in a toast of plastic on plastic. “Salute,” he said, giving the word an Italian spin that made Eddie’s stomach flip.
“Sure, sure, and also with you,” Eddie said, and Steve laughed as he brought the cup to his mouth. They were quiet as the sunset painted the world around them in thick, sweet colors, the jewel tones of night creeping towards them in increments.
“See, this is where people get it wrong,” Steve said, putting an arm around Eddie’s shoulders in a move so smooth Eddie was desperate to tease him for it, if he wasn’t utterly charmed. “Sure, you come here to make out, but there’s gotta be ambiance, too.”
“Are you telling me I ain’t the first dame you’ve brought here?” Eddie asked, clutching his invisible pearls.
Steve grinned at him, and leaned close. “Only one I’ve gotten to the top,” he said lasciviously, clearly proud of himself for that stretch of an innuendo, but then he tilted his head back to look up at the bruising sky, going burgundy like the wine. “I come here to think, sometimes. My house is quiet, but not, like… a good quiet.”
Eddie hummed and let himself lean closer to Steve’s warmth, his arm an intoxicating weight across Eddie’s shoulders. He thought about all the cheerleaders he and the boys had mocked for wearing their boyfriends’ letterman jackets, the way they tucked up under their guys’ arms like it would protect them from anything. Turns out they were onto something. “Thinking’s good,” Eddie said. “Big fan of thinking, here.”
Steve shook his head but smiled, and tipped his head to the side to rest against Eddie’s. His breath kept catching, like he was trying to form words but they evaded him. Eddie could be quiet, when the setting called for it. He could be patient, when Steve needed him to be.
Finally, the words made their escape: “I got my college letters back,” Steve said.
“Oh,” Eddie said. Right. College. He’d never even tried; last year it hadn’t crossed his mind and then he’d found out he hadn’t passed, and this year his grades were even worse. He knew where the guidance counselor’s office was, but it was because he had to report to her for Serious Discussions About Your Future every month or so, not because he was stopping by for tips on application essays. “And that’s… good? Bad? Neutral?”
Steve laughed, but it was an unhappy sound. “Bad, I think. Well, no, I know. ‘Mr. Harrington, we regret to inform you,’ yadda yadda yadda, in four separate letters from my first choice, my backups, and my desperate option.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, and meant it. Steve deserved to get out of Hawkins. Steve deserved college, if that’s what he wanted. “What… happens now?”
“Well, if you listen to Nancy, I should appeal the decisions,” Steve said. “Drive there in person, demand a meeting with someone important, smile a lot and talk about my troubled past, and get a pity admission.” His voice had an edge to it that Eddie had never really associated with Steve; it sounded, if anything, like the little glimpses Eddie had gotten of Nancy herself. Sharp and cutting, a little ruthless. Steve was the opposite of ruthless. “And I should also start applying to other places. Community colleges, vocational programs, culinary school. Did you know that you can become a chiropractic assistant without a bachelor’s degree? She’s got the whole thing mapped out for me.”
“I can’t really see you being a chiropractic assistant,” Eddie said.
“I don’t even know what that is,” Steve said, and Eddie huffed a laugh. “It’s just- she has these huge hopes for me, and I don’t know how to tell her that I can’t live up to them. Not in this way. And like, sure, I’m scared shitless to tell my dad I didn’t get into college, but it was almost worse to tell Nancy. That’s why I was…” Steve shrugged, but it was forced. “On edge, I guess. With Tommy earlier. I’d told Nancy at lunch about not getting into colleges and she immediately started planning phase two, and I just wasn’t ready to hear it.”
The words settled between them, though Eddie felt a little like he was the only one who could feel their weight. Nancy Wheeler had been a specter in the back of Eddie’s mind since approximately half past midnight on Halloween ‘84, waiting for the moment Steve decided he didn’t like his girlfriend being lured away from him actually, thanks, and decided to win her back. Steve talked about her with such reverence, it was impossible not to confront the brightly burning torch he still obviously carried for her.
Eddie’s role here was the bit of fun to pass the time, but Steve and Nancy were the type of power couple that tended to stick together like magnets. Eddie could almost picture a future, or at least Nancy Wheeler’s version of it: a couple of decades down the road, college degrees and a white wedding, two-point-five kids, a dog, a cat, a house, his-and-hers cars in the driveway. Nancy the epitome of the career woman, the breadwinner, and Steve there as her foundation, her support. Eddie could see a moment frozen in time like a photo: Nancy and Steve with the beginnings of wrinkles in dignified places, little sparkles of silver in their great hair. A journalist and her security detail. A lawyer and her paralegal. President Nancy Harrington and First Gentleman Steve.
Eddie hated it. Viscerally.
“And that’s not to mention there’s no way I’ll get into law school, like my dad wants,” Steve was saying. “I have a fucking criminal record, and yeah it’s just a few misdemeanors, but shit like that keeps you out of good schools. My parents don’t know about those, and when they find out I’m dead.”
Eddie cocked his head to the side. “I didn’t know you had a record.”
Steve snorted, and rubbed his face. “Well, it mostly got expunged. Hop- Chief Hopper, he waived some of it for me. But yeah, one charge for that fight with Jon, and one for vandalism at the, uh, the movie theater.”
Right: All The Right Moves starring Nancy “The Slut” Wheeler. Steve had taken the rap for that, hadn’t he; Eddie had always assumed that was actually Carol Perkins’ idea. Harrington wasn’t cruel enough to have thought of it, and Hagan wasn’t smart enough. Perkins was both. Steve was just the one with his heart on the line.
And there they were again, back to Nancy Wheeler.
Eddie couldn’t help but compare himself to her. They had a lot in common, at least on the outside: curly brown hair, thin wrists, big dark eyes. Steve went on about Nancy’s seriousness when it came to things that mattered — and it seemed like everything mattered to Nancy, which wasn’t like Eddie, but when he did care, he cared too much. He’d put his goddamn neck on the line for the things that mattered to him: good music, the right to play tabletop games in peace, and the idiocy of following brainless leaders off the edge of a cliff. Nancy might not agree with Eddie on the specific subject matter, but he knew she was the same about her own interests. Passionate.
And, of course, the big similarity: they both got caught up in Steve Harrington. Nancy tore free, Eddie didn’t. But they both got caught at some point, honey sweet boy a honeypot trap.
That was the thing: Eddie always expected Steve to have an end date to their little romance. Eddie didn’t; Eddie couldn’t. Eddie was hardly the type to interrogate a good thing while it was happening, and he wasn’t going to push Steve away. But someday Steve would go, and it would presumably be back to Nancy.
And… and if that was what Steve wanted, Eddie wouldn’t fight. It wasn’t his right to do so.
“Do you…” Eddie said unthinkingly, and then stopped, because why? Why would he do this to himself? But Steve swung his head over and made a questioning sound, and Eddie didn’t know how to leave goddamn well enough alone, so he finished his thought. “Do you plan to get back together with her? With Nancy?”
It was like all the warmth in the world disappeared. Steve froze, his arm hovering over Eddie’s shoulder instead of resting comfortably. “Why would you say that?” he asked.
Eddie pulled one of his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on it. “Steve.” He said this to a crack in the rock, because it was the only way to get the words out. “Come on.”
“No, what ‘come on’?” Steve said, voice laced with anger. “Eddie, what the hell?”
He was angry? Maybe he’d already tried and Nancy had rejected him. Maybe his failure to get into college made her change her mind about him. There was Byers, too, of course, but-
Eddie couldn’t understand. Who, when given the option of Steve Harrington, would choose anything else? Anyone else?
“Eddie, fucking look at me,” Steve said, and it didn’t sound angry anymore. It sounded confused, mostly. A trace of hurt. “Are you seeing other people?”
Eddie scoffed. “Obviously not.”
The arm over his shoulder disappeared. Right. So that’s that. Eddie dug his chin more firmly into his knee. But then Steve was reaching over, taking his hand, tugging until Eddie turned.
“I’m with you,” Steve said, in this way that felt meaningful, but Eddie lacked the translation to tell him what the meaning actually was. He stared at his hand held in Steve’s, then looked up. Steve looked heartbreakingly earnest about it all. “Eddie, I don’t want to be with Nancy. I’m with you.”
“Sure, for now,” Eddie said, and it wasn’t angry. Eddie didn’t have a right to be angry. “Then what?”
Steve made an incomprehensible sound, then threw his free hand up in exasperation. “How the hell am I supposed to know? I don’t plan for what happens after things end, dude.”
“Never?” Eddie asked. He’d planned for what happened when Steve went back to Nancy — or moved on to whoever. It involved breaking things and watching Wayne’s old VHS of Brian’s Song that he’d recorded when it played on ABC Movie of the Week, because it would give him an excuse to cry. He’d write a lot of terrible songs. And then he’d get up, and keep going, and be grateful for the time he had. Eddie already wished for it, in a way, ready to get the inevitable heartbreak over with and behind him. He’d lose Steve at some point in the future to someone better suited for him, and he’d mourn that, and then he’d move forward, awful as it would be.
“Not this,” Steve said. “This- I’m in this. Do you get that?”
Sure. “Sure,” Eddie said. Steve’s in this now. He’d been cheated on; Eddie would never expect to hold Steve’s attention forever, but he did know he’d never have to share it. Steve’s not the type. “I get that.”
“And we’re on the same page?” Steve said.
“Yeah, of course,” Eddie said, even though this seemed like a lot of fuss for Steve to be telling him what he already knew: yes, they were in this weird dance of kissing and touching and secret meetings. Someday, that would end, and Steve would no longer be in it, but Steve wasn’t planning for that just yet. It was nice to know. Sort of like knowing a big test is coming: easier to study for it, if it’s not a surprise. Easier to plan for heartbreak when you know it’s not coming tomorrow.
Steve spent a long minute looking at Eddie right in the eyes, brow furrowed. “You’re sure. We’re in this together, right? This is it?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, more confused by the moment, but a smile was tucked into the corner of his mouth, because Steve was looking at him like he contained the universe and all its stars. “Yeah, Steve. This is it.”
It certainly was for Eddie. He could plan beyond the eclipse of Steve in his future, but it wasn’t fun to think about. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t what he wanted.
Steve kissed Eddie then, and Eddie thought: if it’s just for now, then that’s enough. What I’ve gotten is enough.
When Steve pulled back, he smiled, a slow unfurl that lit Eddie up. “God,” he said. “I’m a lucky guy.”
Eddie grinned back, helpless, and said, “Is that why you made me pie?”
“Partially,” Steve said, and like Eddie had reminded him, he turned back to the basket, to the mostly-full bottle of wine. The sun was nearly set now, and the evening was cool but cushioned, not sharp like autumn chill. “I also had some apples that were going bad.”
“So you used me,” Eddie said. “I’m your compost pile for rotting apples.”
“You’re a dramatic shit-stirrer, is what you are,” Steve said, and kissed Eddie on the cheek before passing him the plate with a slice of pie.
They spent another hour there, picnicking on top of Skull Rock like a coupla goddamn idiots, drinking cheap wine out of cheaper cups and talking about how college was stupid, how high school was stupid, how a lot of things were stupid, but that some things weren’t: movie popcorn, the smell of rain, acing a pop quiz. Eddie thumbed a bit of pie filling from the corner of Steve’s mouth and Steve tilted his head, considering him with a little smile tucked away.
Eddie climbed down from Skull Rock by the grace of some unseen hand and only somewhat helpful instructions from Steve (“Put your foot in that spot to the left. The raised spot. The little bump part. The spot! Oh, you almost- are you okay? You’re fine. Okay, your right foot should go…”). When they started the trek back to their cars, the clouds overhead finally split and poured, and Eddie shrieked when the first raindrop snuck down the back of his t-shirt. When they stumbled out of the woods they were soaked, and Steve was laughing and howling like a wolf at the obscured moon as Eddie swore vociferously at him.
“You dragged me out to see mother-damn-fucking nature and this is what I get for it?” Eddie hollered, half a performance as always. Steve laughed and tossed his picnic basket into the passenger seat of the BMW. “I could have drowned! I’ll catch my death! You are a bad penny, Harrington, and I’ll never get rid of y- hng.”
Steve backed Eddie up against the van and silenced him in his most research-tested-Eddie-approved way: by kissing the living daylights out of him. They were both cold and soggy and Eddie felt like a cat in a bathtub with his hair plastered to his face, but Steve laughed and kissed him and laughed again, and the rain just kept coming, cold trails along them both but their mouths hot against each other, and Eddie laughed too.
Notes:
NOTES:
- Fun fact: tanning beds were invented in the 1970s, and in 1987 tanning salons were the fastest growing business in the US. I was going to have Steve contemplate covering up his new silver skin with spray tan, but that wasn't commercially available until the 90s.
- VCRs were still pretty expensive in 1986, so I don’t think the Munsons would have one on their own. But I do think that Steve would steal the one from his parents’ house when he moved out, and they never noticed. They only bought it because they were a new luxury, after all.
- God, I just realized I might need to explain what a VCR is. A VCR is the player for VHS tapes, the predecessor to a DVD player.
- Bobby Knight was a legendary Hoosiers basketball coach, who was at Indiana from 1971-2000.
- The Pacers really did suck in the 84-85 season, winning 22 games and losing 60.
- My “Steve is an insatiable gossip” agenda is heavily at play here, but it’s canon To Me.
- For anyone who read Rebel Robin, Milton the band geek who came with his friend to buy weed from Eddie is Robin’s friend in the book. They grow apart in the book due to him dating someone and her focusing on saving money to travel abroad, but they’re still friendly when she starts at Scoops and meets Steve.
- Canon (from what I can find on my rewatches) is pretty unclear about what happened legally after Jonathan was arrested after the fight with Steve, except that weapons were confiscated by Hawkins PD. It’s pretty unlikely that Steve would have had any charges for the fight or vandalism, but then again, maybe Hopper would have pushed them through as a favor for Joyce, since he didn’t know Steve yet in S1.
- Brian’s Song is a made-for-TV movie based on the true story of an NFL football player with terminal cancer and his interracial friendship with another player, which broke all kinds of norms of segregation in the league. I’ve never watched it, but by all accounts it’s a tearjerker.
Chapter 6: five: THE CHASE | THE HARRINGTONS
Summary:
“She’ll see I’m not so tough, just because I’m in love with…” Eddie trailed off, their dance slowing. Steve’s eyes were hot honey in the late morning light, his mouth ticked up in a grin. The words reverberated in Eddie’s head like ripples on water: I’m in love with-
He wasn’t, though. Right? He liked Steve, sure. He was surprisingly likable for a guy Eddie once assumed would rub his face into dirt for looking at him wrong. His touch sent shivers along Eddie’s veins and Eddie smiled automatically when he heard Steve’s voice, even in school, even when he couldn’t give the reason for his smile when his friends asked. Eddie looked forward to their clandestine meetings and missed him when he left. Wayne liked him. He fit into Eddie’s life like a missing harmony.
It wasn’t supposed to be that.
Notes:
TW for the “Then” section: mentions of physical and emotional abuse. Let me know if you need more details.
This one's a doozy! Enjoy :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
For a long time, Steve doesn’t do anything. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t even breathe.
The bats aren’t frozen, don’t just sit there and watch him with eyeless faces. They shuffle around and flap their wings, and behave almost like the parakeets Steve would see in the pet shop window at the mall, jostling each other for places in the big bird cage.
(He’s never thought about the fate of the pet shop animals in the Starcourt fire before this very day, and he suddenly feels awful about the oversight. Hopefully the birds, at least, were able to get away.)
Every once in a while, Steve flinches from an errant tail brushing his leg or a wing catching his arm, and his movement sends the trailer zoo chittering and rustling once more. That makes him freeze in fear, then another comes too near, he jumps again, and the cycle repeats. His heart rattles in fear and adrenaline keeps him still: fight or flight, but he can’t do either because both options are nightmares he’s tried and failed before.
Steve’s been eaten alive by these things, and yet this is worse. The anticipation is terrifying.
It takes a while for rational thought to come slinking back in. He does believe Vecna when he says that the bats won’t attack him. His dad’s voice echoes in his ear: why would I waste an investment I spent so long preparing to benefit from? If Steve’s dad was a snake-man psychic monster instead of a corporate lawyer with commitment issues, the two of them might be indistinguishable from each other.
Another phrase sticks in his mind as well. “You feed off energy from another world,” Vecna had said. Steve has no idea what that means. He hasn’t needed to eat or drink, so he just sort of assumed he didn’t need anything to survive. Naive, he guesses now, to think he was self-sufficient in any way.
Steve doesn’t think too hard about anything else Vecna said. None of it was new, and all of it had lived in Steve’s head way before it came out of Vecna’s mouth, so it’s relatively easy to push aside.
What he wants, more than anything, is to close his eyes and end up back in the real world again.
And what else is he supposed to do? Vecna even told him to do it.
He wishes he could protect himself while out of his body, though. He has the wild thought to build a pillow fort with the couch cushions, but he can’t imagine the chaos he’d cause by standing and crossing the room, when the smallest jump of his leg or arm sends the monsters into a building-wide flutter.
So Steve decides: fuck it. Fuck it! He wants to go back to where he’s supposed to be, and he’ll just have to leave himself vulnerable and hope nothing happens. If Vecna healed him from dying once, he could do it again.
He settles in against the wall, making himself comfortable with his legs crossed and hands on his knees. He takes a deep breath, then turns his palm over to see the lights flare back into reality.
He can tell them apart easily now, the nuances between Jonathan’s deep water navy and Max’s California-sky bright blue. The lights are like bottled essence of his friends and makeshift family, like the peppermint oil Mrs. Henderson puts in her humidifiers to help with allergies. He loves them, his lights. It’s the only part of all of this that doesn’t spark some fear in his gut. He stares at Hopper’s furious, nicotine-scented red light for a while and wonders what the hell it means, if he’s still tied to people beyond the living. He stares at his parents’ as well, and Tommy and Carol’s — none of them dead, as far as he knows, but hardly in his inner circle. It’s like his heart hung on to them and this is the first time his brain is noticing. He kind of hates it, but he’s not really surprised.
He’s discovered that he can get a little bit of feeling through each of them, emotions strong enough to bleed through the walls between worlds. Unfortunately, it mostly seems to be grief, some of his friends feeling it in slow, wavelike washes, some of them getting sharp spikes at random times. He doesn’t know what is happening in the other world, and he fears this means that things are even worse up there than he pictured. What could be so bad, to make them all feel like this?
Hopefully he’ll get a chance to ask soon.
He closes his eyes, and thinks about Robin. He doesn’t know how she wasn’t his first thought, when he did this before. He misses her like a limb, like a couple of valves in his heart closed off and he’s having to make do with only half of himself. He wants her here, because here is where he is, but also he’s so wildly, unashamedly glad that she made it through the gate and is in the right place. If she was here, they’d probably have a plan to escape and seven new inside jokes about Vecna’s ugly face and the way the bats look sort of stupid up close, but also Steve would be nearly catatonic with fear that something bad would happen to her and he wouldn’t survive that.
He picks out her light in his palm. Hers is marbled blue with flecks of gold, smells like hot VHS tapes straight out of the VCR and her favorite snack, slightly-burnt popcorn. He traces the string of light, plucks it like he’s seen Eddie do with his guitar, and tries to follow it to where Robin is. He sits for a long minute before he realizes nothing is happening.
Right. It had seemed so easy last time, but maybe that was beginner’s luck. He takes a deep breath, resettles, and tries again. There’s a lifting feeling, like he’s in an elevator going up, but- he opens his eyes and is staring right at a demobat that has shuffled closer like it’s curious. He winces and slowly pulls his foot further in so he doesn’t touch it.
Follow it, Vecna had said. Follow the light. Well, Steve’s fucking trying, and it’s like he’s a balloon bouncing against the ceiling with nowhere to go.
He blows out a breath. He closes his eyes again and looks for a different light: Dustin’s. He’d know that one if he lost every bit of sense left to him. Dustin’s is olive green like his camper shorts and dandelion yellow. It sounds like mechanical gears clicking and the swish-hum of lightsabers, and smells like humidifier peppermint oil and the fries from that diner Steve would take him to after Hellfire game nights.
Steve grabs, this time, and tugs. He envisions himself shrinking and falling into the light, being beamed up like there’s a UFO overhead. He tries to put his face against the light. Tries to request what he wants out loud.
Nothing works.
He tries all of them, all the lights besides Eddie’s, because that one seemed fine. And- and surely there’s no reason that the lights don’t work, right? Surely he wouldn’t have lights for all these people if they were… if they weren’t alive. He thinks about Hopper’s light again, and shies away immediately. It has to be something he’s doing wrong, not something wrong with the people he’s connected to.
Out of desperation, Steve thinks about Eddie, finds his cigarette and weed smoke light, maroon and black and yellow, the sound of wailing guitar, and-
He opens his eyes. And, immediately, slams them shut again, because a jet of water just sprayed directly into his corneas.
“Ow?” he says. He covers his eyes with a hand and blinks slowly.
He’s naked. He’s naked and wet and- oh. In his own shower, the one in the ensuite bathroom in his bedroom. Okay.
He shuts the water off and stumbles out, grabbing a towel on instinct and wrapping it around his waist. He drips rivulets of water onto the floor and doesn’t care at all, stepping out of the warm, foggy bathroom to find someone kneeling on his bed with their back to Steve.
“Oh my god,” Steve says, nearly collapsing with relief. “Eddie.”
Eddie turns and- oh. Did he cut his hair? Steve tries to think back to when he saw him on this same bed in this same room just a day ago. Was his hair shorter then? But that’s not the only change. Eddie seems smaller, too, his face a little thinner. His undereyes have lost that haunted blue tinge of missed sleep he definitely noticed last time. He’s also grinning like a madman, and holding a knife.
“What… are you doing?” Steve asks.
“Oh, just leaving a more personalized mark than a notch on your bedpost,” Eddie says, leaning over a little. Over Eddie’s shoulder, Steve can see his corner bedpost, and the initials E.M. carved into the solid wood.
But- but Eddie did that ages ago. That already happened. Steve remembers it clearly; his parents hadn’t been home, so Eddie stayed over. Steve made dinner, Eddie distracted him through cleanup, they made out on the couch for a bit through a rewatch of one of the Planet of the Apes movies. They slept wrapped around each other, then in the morning after Steve got out of the shower he found Eddie doing-
Well, this. This exact thing.
So this is a memory, not the present. This is Eddie back in… September, maybe, of last year? Eight months or so ago, back before Vecna was even known by the group. Back before Eddie was involved with any of this mess.
And, because it’s a memory, Steve knows what he’s supposed to do next. He clambers on the bed next to Eddie and traces over the letters with a finger, feeling the rough edge of the cuts, the hard slashes. In the present, the letters are worn smoother and less noticeable, because they became something like a worry stone for Steve when he actually was in his own bedroom: he’d lay with his head at the foot of the bed and listen to music or talk on the phone and the whole time he’d have one arm up, his thumb rubbing over and over Eddie’s initials.
Here, Steve notices something different: his hands are back to normal. A quick glance tells him he’s his usual skin color, not his new silver tinge. His nails are normal fingernails, not dark claws at the end of darkening fingertips. He runs his tongue over his teeth: no fangs.
He’s a memory too, apparently.
“You’re such a damn delinquent,” he says, just like he did last time, and Eddie beams.
“You signed up for delinquency with me, Harrington,” he says. “If you’ll recall, I was breaking several laws the first time you kissed me.”
Steve, following the script, hums and tilts his head, eyes catching on Eddie’s mouth. “I do recall that, yeah.” He licks his lips, and Eddie echoes him. “Want to break another one right here?”
“Hm, which one would that be?” Eddie murmurs. “Grand theft auto? Arson? Murder?”
“I was thinking sodomy, but those all sound fun too,” Steve says, and Eddie laughs and crashes their mouths together. Steve feels a flare of heat in his chest and lets Eddie’s weight push him onto his back.
In the endless twilight of the Upside Down, Steve has no idea how long it’s been since he’s kissed Eddie, but he knows even a few minutes is longer than he likes, and so the break has been torture. He yanks at the knot on his towel and relishes the high moan Eddie makes when Steve’s fully naked underneath him, when Eddie chases a few water droplets with his tongue. They roll and laugh and sigh and moan, and Eddie’s enthusiastically licking into his mouth when he pulls back suddenly.
“Ow,” he says, with a little smile. “What’ve you got in there, baby? Razorblades?”
But then he blinks, and his eyes grow wide and horrified. “Steve? What happened to you?”
Steve can take a guess; he lifts a hand and examines it and, yeah, back to silver and dark fingers and claws and fangs.
“Well, hell,” Steve sighs.
“Wait,” Eddie says. “Wait, this is- this is familiar, this- this happened before.” His eyes are flickering all over Steve, chasing details. “I’ve seen this before. In- in this room.”
And then his breath hitches and he scrambles away, across the room, tripping and falling to the floor gracelessly, putting his back against the wall. “Okay, so, what, this is- you’re Vecna, right? You’re Vecna, and you’ve learned how to, fucking, I don’t know, shapeshift into what I want most?”
“I’m what you want most?” Steve asks brightly, then, “Oh, no, I’m not Vecna. Eddie, babe, no. It’s me.”
“No,” Eddie says, pulling at his hair. “No, no no no, no, because you’re- okay. What am I supposed to do? Max said she ran, ran to happy memories. I need fucking- I need music, where’s the goddamn-”
He runs from the room.
Steve stands, feeling a little dumb dripping and naked there in a memory that didn’t go quite this way, and tries to follow.
And wakes, with a gasp, back in the Upside Down. The gasp sends the bats fluttering, and for long minutes Steve can do nothing but wait out the animal screeching and wing noises, and the feeling of his heart pounding in his undead chest.
Steve tries again, of course. Once he gets his breath back, he opens his palm and finds the black-smoke-guitar light and follows it, and again he’s back in his own bedroom.
This scene is different, though: Eddie’s hair is longer and his t-shirt is stained and wrinkled and- Steve’s, actually, that’s Steve’s shirt, his white Hawkins Swim one with his name on the back. Eddie’s face is drawn and pale and his eyes are dark. He’s curled up on the floor in the corner of Steve’s bedroom, and when he sees Steve he moans in fear and crushes the heels of his hands against his eyes. The room is dark; a shaft of moonlight cuts the room in half.
“Leave me alone,” Eddie says, voice strained. “I can’t do a goddamn mental breakdown right now, thanks.”
“I’m not a hallucination,” Steve says. “Well. Okay, I am, but I’m a real one.”
Eddie laughs, and then sobs, eyes still covered. “God, you even fucking sound like him. Go away, you’re ruining my grieving process!”
“Eddie,” Steve says. His voice sounds different here, he’s just noticed it. Deeper. More growly. Huh. Steve takes a step forward, then another. Cautious. “Babe. Please look at me.”
“No, because then you’ll get me,” Eddie says nonsensically. “I know how this works, dude. Fuck off.”
“No,” Steve says, a stubborn automatic response. “You fuck off!”
Eddie, seemingly surprised into breaking his own rules, looks up and frowns. “No. Fuck you!”
“This is stupid,” Steve says. “It’s me! I’m Steve, not Vecna in disguise.”
“Well, sure, but that’s what Vecna would say too,” Eddie says. “Also, stay the fuck over there.”
Steve hesitates, because this hadn’t exactly been the plan. He’d expected to show up and be showered with kisses and praise for figuring out how this all works, but he hadn’t really accounted for Eddie’s reaction to his new look and palpable fear. He decides he’s just going to wait it out. Eddie’s one of the least patient people Steve’s ever met, and that includes Dustin Henderson, so-
But he doesn’t get the chance for that, because his bedroom goes fuzzy around the edges and then he wakes up in the trailer in the Upside Down again, head spinning a little.
There’s a weight on his leg. He looks down, and yelps — a demobat is perched on his shin, its little eyeless monster face turned towards him. He immediately twitches the leg to get the thing off but it doesn’t move, instead angling its head like- hell, like a damn dog, minus everything that makes the action cute on a German shepherd.
“Okay,” Steve says, high and breathless. “Sure, what the fuck.”
His leg is trembling but, despite everything, Vecna’s impromptu exposure therapy seems to be doing something, at least. The bat is just as terrifying up close now as the ones that bit chunks out of him underneath Lovers Lake, those rows of wicked teeth and that leathery, unpredictable body. Steve, tentatively, reaches out with his mind and finds the consciousness of this one bat, and sort of- nudges it. Go somewhere else, he tells it. It’s not cuddle time for little horrors. And, miraculously, it goes away, crawling off his leg and worming back into the crowd of other bats around him.
“Right,” Steve says. Luckily, the bats seem to not be as freaked out anymore either, and his voice doesn’t stir them. “Okay. Attempt three.”
This time, he wakes somewhere different than in his own bedroom. In fact, he’s not in a house at all; he’s in a much smaller, more cramped space.
“Another?” offers a voice to his right. Steve, laid out in the back of Eddie’s van, arm tucked up under his head, rolls his neck to look over and smiles. Eddie’s there, lazily smiling back, smoke hazy in the air between them, his eyes red and hooded. Steve takes the offered joint and takes a pull — and fuck this, because he can taste the dryness of the smoke in his throat and the thick taste of cheap weed on his tongue, but he’s about as sober as it gets and, as he passes the joint back, he doesn’t get even the slightest bit of sensation from his hit. This, apparently, is the downside to visiting memories, other than the whole thing where he’s inflicting emotional scarring on Eddie.
It’s chilly in the van, the back doors thrown open, their feet dangling out over the bumper. The light outside is the heavy orange-red sunlight of early evening, and Steve recognizes the view as an unused overlook on the far side of the lake. No one ever bothered them here, so they’d come out to smoke or drink or fool around when Wayne was home or Steve didn’t want to be. Which means — this must be early days for the two of them. After Steve was officially introduced to Wayne, they didn’t work so hard to avoid him, and he didn’t give them grief when Steve stayed over. That must make this… January 1985, maybe? A couple of months after Eddie and Steve got together, but before Valentine’s Day, when Wayne caught them and their secret expanded out to something a little less terrifying with a witness who wouldn’t kick them to the curb.
“Last hit,” Eddie says, and Steve looks back over. His hair is shorter again, barely past his chin, and his face is thin and he seems young. Strange, now, to think that this Eddie in this memory is only a couple of months younger than Steve is in the present, but he seems almost innocent, somehow. Steve wants to eat him whole.
“You take it,” Steve says. Wouldn’t do him any good anyway. But Eddie grins mischievously and puts the joint to his lips.
“We’ll share, how about that?” he says, and pulls in smoke while keeping his eyes locked on Steve’s. Steve remembers this now, and shivers a little in anticipation as Eddie holds his inhale and puts the roach out in a Pepsi can off to the side. Eddie tugs Steve and Steve goes willingly, positioning himself right over Eddie, caging him in with his forearms against the makeshift pallet of blankets Eddie keeps in the van for just such occasions as this.
Eddie flicks his gaze down to Steve’s lips, then back up, a question. Steve nods and leans close, and Eddie gently grabs his chin to maneuver him close. Steve inhales, Eddie exhales, and the smoke flows between them.
Steve remembers this memory too, a sweet one from the cold winter after the holiday spirit was knocked right out of him by the Mind Flayer and Billy Hargrove’s fist against his temple and the surprise appearance of his parents back in town for a short visit. He remembers the way Eddie’s lips barely brushed his and sent him buzzing with anticipation, as though they hadn’t been kissing in stolen moments for months at that point. Here, Steve lets the touch stay soft: back in the original memory, he’d groaned and slid their mouths together immediately, hot and wet and good.
Eddie leans back down, head against a pillow, and grins again. “You take it like a champ, Harrington.”
“You haven’t seen me take it yet, Munson,” Steve says, and Eddie laughs, a little shocked. That’s Steve’s favorite of Eddie’s laughs, the one he gets when he says something that wasn’t what Eddie expected of him and his prior reputation. Steve’s chest flares with pride from getting Eddie to laugh like that, a visceral feeling that fills him up with light.
This wasn’t how the memory originally went. Steve hadn’t made a sex joke back in the actual memory; probably couldn’t have. It had been easier to fall into kissing and touching Eddie, marveling at the rub of scruff when Eddie went without shaving for a while, the way his hands were long and strong and how he made Steve feel small sometimes, small and taken care of. It had been easy — remarkably easy — to do all of that, but talking about it? Joking about loving a man, when the thought of it had once sent pangs of fear through his veins? There was no way that would have happened in the first months of Eddie and Steve.
But here, Steve is safe in a contained memory, and he leans his weight over on one elbow and brings his other hand up, twirls a short curl around his finger. “You look sexy in the sunset light.”
Eddie’s breath hitches. “Uh,” he squeaks, then clears his throat. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. “Don’t you think so?”
“Do I think I’m sexy?” Eddie snorts, wide-eyed. “No, Steve, I can’t say I do. What I do think is that I got too high and passed out, and this is a very lovely dream I’m having.”
“You think you got too high from one joint, rather than the more sensible option that I think you’re nice to look at?”
“Maybe I wasn’t paying attention and somehow laced the joint with angel dust or something,” Eddie says faintly. “Or rat poison.”
“Do you stock angel dust in your little lunchbox?” Steve teases.
“No,” Eddie says. “Maybe my attention wandered a lot and I made my own, somehow.”
“Well, then we might as well capitalize on your magic drug making skills,” Steve says. “Start our own operation. Run Reefer Rick out of business.”
“I can finally be the drug kingpin I was always meant to be,” Eddie says, and Steve laughs. Eddie clears his throat again. “You look nice too. Pretty. I mean- um.” His face flushes red. Again, in this real memory, Steve wouldn’t have known what to do, but he’s had over a year of Eddie Munson compliments by now, many that were much more shocking than this one.
“You can call me pretty,” Steve says. “I am, after all.” And then he grins. And Eddie grins back, biting his lip. And he reaches up to trace the line of Steve’s lips with his thumb, but then his thumb brushes something that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Goddamn it,” Steve says as Eddie freezes, his thumb against Steve’s newly reappeared fang. “Shit. Eddie, wait-”
“No, no- fuck,” Eddie says, shoving Steve hard to get out from under him, rolling to the ground outside the van with a loud thump and scuttling backward, eyes wide. “No, not again, not again, fuck. Leave me alone!”
He turns and clambers up to his feet and runs, and this time Steve follows. The world outside the van, the cool, quiet woods next to Lovers Lake, dissolve and swirl into something new: the high school cafeteria, after he was kicked from the throne after Halloween ‘84, sitting with Nancy and Jonathan and a few of Nancy’s school newspaper friends talking around him like he wasn’t there. Across the room, like a magnet drawing Steve’s attention, Eddie talks with wild hands to his band of geeks and losers, the guys Steve has never met but heard all about: Jeff and his dry humor, Gareth and his haircare routine nearly as complicated as Steve’s, Frankie and his puns that have the whole table groaning. Steve stands, and it draws Eddie’s eye even across the room, and his whole face contorts in horror.
“No-” Steve hears through the cafeteria noise. “No, fuck, please! Just leave me alone, please!”
And Eddie runs again. Steve follows, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
Eddie’s too alert to be lulled into the memories again. Steve chases him to the picnic table beyond the football field where they first kissed, to the Munson trailer at various points throughout ‘85 and ‘86, to the Harrington pool, to the van again. Eddie runs and runs and Steve runs too, calling all the while: “Eddie, please! It’s me, please! Don’t run, just let me explain!” But Eddie never does.
Periodically, Steve gets pulled from Eddie’s memories and deposited back into the trailer in the Upside Down, feeling fuzzy like he’s been awake for days and itchy with the need to go back, to fix it. He doesn’t know how much actual time has passed: surely this is all the same night, and Eddie hasn’t been stuck in his own mind being chased by Steve for days on end.
The bats have seemed to accept Steve as just another piece of furniture, and he’s started waking back up with one or two of the monsters wrapped around his arms, or perched on his foot. He wakes once to one settled on his chest and he flails around until that one crawls off of him, looking distinctly disgruntled for a creature with no face. Steve can’t focus on them, he just keeps catching his breath and diving back into Eddie’s string of light.
Finally, finally, he follows Eddie into a memory and finds Eddie backed into the corner of his own bedroom in the trailer, with Steve between him and the door. Eddie’s chest heaves with exertion; they’re both exhausted. Eddie has stopped screaming and protesting, Steve has stopped begging for a chance. In fact, Steve is already feeling the tingly warning he’s started noticing in his hands when his time in Eddie’s memories is almost up. He doesn’t have long, but Eddie can’t run from him here, and Steve has to know. He has to know.
“Can you just-” he says, his new deeper voice broken and cracked, “just tell me- is everyone okay?”
“What?” Eddie asks. He’s pressed as far into the corner of the room as he can get, shrunk in on himself. His hands shake. Steve doesn’t step closer. Eddie doesn’t want him to, so he won’t.
“Is everyone okay?” Steve repeats. “Robin- Dustin. Max. Is Hopper-? Fuck. Everyone. I can’t- I can’t come to them, like I can with you. I just- are they alright?”
“Are they- why do you want to know? Am I not fun to torture anymore, you need to find someone else to get your kicks from?” Eddie challenges, even as his legs seem to almost buckle in exhaustion.
“No,” Steve says. He didn’t want this. He didn’t think it would be this hard. Eddie’s brow furrows, eyes flickering all over Steve’s altered, alien face. “I just miss them. I miss them, and I miss you. And I just want to know you’re all okay.”
Eddie’s eyes widen, his mouth falls open. “Oh my god,” he breathes. “It really is you.”
Steve doesn’t get the chance to answer. He dissolves away, and wakes once again in the Upside Down on the floor of the Munson trailer, and this time he doesn’t force his exhausted, strained mind to chase Eddie back into a new memory. He curls up, surrounded by curious demobats, and cries himself through yet another night in the Upside Down.
THEN
MAY 1985
Eddie didn’t go to the graduation for his second failed senior class. He wasn’t even bitter this time around; he would fully admit he didn’t put half the effort into school this time even compared to the year before, which was minimal at best and insulting at worst.
Half of his failure came from the sheer lack of challenge. Eddie was no scholar, don’t get him wrong, but he got jittery and cranky when he was bored, and being trapped in classrooms he’d long outgrown and relearning the causes leading to World War I and how to use an Oxford comma for the second year in a row was hardly stimulating. It didn’t take long for him to fall back into doodling D&D monsters in his notebooks and writing song lyrics instead of completing the math worksheets he already did a year ago.
But that was only half the problem.
The other half was hanging off of him right now, many more than three sheets to the wind, toasting his can of beer up to the sky. “Cheers!” Steve Harrington shouted, thrusting his can forward at nothing and sloshing some of his drink out onto the ground. “To being fucking done!”
“Cheers,” Eddie said dryly, arm around Steve’s waist as platonically as it could possibly be. Not that anyone was looking at them right now: the fallen king and the court jester were the least of anyone’s concerns.
It was the grad night bonfire, an annual tradition that gave Hawkins law enforcement conniptions, created legends that would last for decades, and was, if Eddie could distance himself from his cynicism, not too bad of a time. It was an open invite shindig, not a popular kids party, not exclusive. All seniors were invited, and every senior showed up. Kids who had never attended a single rager during their high school career were here tonight now that high school was over, clutching plastic cups of spiked lemonade or mostly-full cans of piss beer. The cheerleaders mingled with the mathletes, Eddie’s loser friends got up the gumption to talk to the intimidatingly tall girl’s basketball team, and Eddie could sit on a log next to a roaring fire propping up a shitfaced Steve Harrington, and nobody would say a word.
There was only one rule: seniors only. Everyone here tonight — except Eddie, presumably — got their diploma and a handshake earlier today, and they were done with compulsory education. This was the aftermath. This was the party to end all parties.
It was all nostalgia, that achy feeling that led to sappy novels written in yearbooks by people who will never speak again, the strange regret at the end of something you used to want to be over. It was why the popular kids were stooping to address the lessers in the social hierarchy. It was why goody-two-shoes virgins and stoner burnouts were passing joints and hard liquor between them like old pals.
The bonfire spot was in that hazy area of forest that borders everything in Hawkins: they’re closer to the Forest Hills side of the woods than the Loch Nora side, and somewhere in the middle of those two were the sleepy neighborhoods where people like Nancy Wheeler lived. The trees stretched all the way over to the outskirts of town, where you could find the few commercial farms in the area, the plant where Wayne worked, and the ominous Hawkins Lab.
In fact, the bonfire spot was so close to Forest Hills that Eddie didn’t drive tonight, just walked over. It was a creepy walk — had been since those two kids disappeared a couple of years ago and only one of them returned — but peaceful enough, at least until Eddie got close enough to hear the roaring flames of a too-big fire, the chatter of a hundred drunk eighteen-year-olds, and music pumping from someone’s large, shitty stereo system wired up through their car.
Steve tilted his head back and drained his can of Coors, drunk enough to not even make a face like Eddie knew he would have if he could still taste anything, and tossed his can into the fire. “‘Nother,” he said, and stood on wobbly legs.
“You sure about that, cowboy?” Eddie said. He wasn’t selling tonight — people bought plenty from him in the run up to the party if they really wanted it — but he still hadn’t had much to drink. No matter how kumbaya and peace-on-earth this party was supposed to be, Eddie had been thrown up against enough trees and cars and walls to be wary of drunks in groups. Especially since Billy Hargrove was across the fire from them, grimy and unbuttoned, with both arms draped over the shoulders of two wasted girls Eddie couldn’t name if you held a gun to his head.
“Yeah, think I’ll be working at the pool this summer,” Billy was saying loudly, performatively. Hagan and Perkins were nearby, drunkenly kissing and chittering slurred sentences at passers-by in equal turns. “They need a new head lifeguard, since the old one is such a fuckin’ chump.”
The old head lifeguard, luckily enough, didn’t hear any of that, and just smiled beatifically at Eddie and said. “Yeah. C’mon, Eddie. They’re over here.” As though Eddie could miss the massive trough of beer created by lining someone’s pickup truck bed with an old tarp, filling it with ice, and stuffing it with so many cans that the truck’s tires looked in danger of popping under the weight.
“Sure,” Eddie said, and bit his tongue to keep a pet name from spilling out. Hargrove was still watching Steve, and by extension, Eddie, across the way, and Hagan and Perkins had stopped their face sucking to look over too. Their gazes were less outwardly antagonistic than Hargrove’s, but Eddie wasn’t chancing it. None of them liked Steve associating with Eddie, but Eddie would be the target if they got mad enough to do something about it.
Eddie followed Steve over to the beer, hand hovering to steady Steve if it was needed, which it was a few times. Steve just laughed; he was a sleepy drunk, and often a giggly one too. He was the same while high, one of Eddie’s top five discoveries ever.
Steve cracked a beer and gulped it, turning back to Eddie. “Good party.”
“Not quite as rowdy as some of yours, is it,” Eddie said.
“No, but that’s not a bad thing,” Steve said thoughtfully. “My parties were usually stupid.”
“All parties are stupid,” Eddie argued.
“This one’s good,” Steve said. “Nice. Hey.” Against the side of the truck full of beer, Steve slid a hand around Eddie’s waist under the cover of his vest, brave from the beer, sweet in equal measure. “You look good tonight,” he said, heavy-lidded and charmingly sloshed.
“Yeah?” Eddie said, ducking his face to the side so no one could see his smile. “Might be able to do something about that if you weren’t halfway to liquifying yourself.”
Steve’s face scrunched like he’d caught about half of that, and then smiled again when he clearly disregarded whatever Eddie said. “Take me home?”
“Yeah?” Eddie repeated, no longer grinning. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah. Fuck ‘em. Fuck all of ‘em.”
“Alright, sweetheart,” Eddie said, quiet enough in their bubble. “Come on, then.”
“Leaving so soon, Harrington?” Hargrove called as they retreated, and Steve didn’t acknowledge him but Eddie braved a middle finger as they left. He knew it could come back to bite him, but if he ripped into any of these assholes the way he wanted to, he’d be leaving the party on a stretcher instead of following Steve Harrington in his cute little striped button-up and those light-wash jeans that drove Eddie nuts.
Eddie took the lead after they left the bright warmth of the bonfire clearing, and after another minute he tucked his arm over Steve’s shoulders and Steve wrapped his arm around Eddie’s waist. Reversed from how they’d been by the fire, and entirely different besides: that was two friends sauced on Milwaukee’s finest, this was two boys who knew the feeling of their hands on each other’s bodies, familiarity born of skin-on-skin contact.
Steve was quiet, and Eddie let him be. They’d both known this day was going to be a fucking nightmare, each for their own reasons: Eddie, for once again watching his future beyond the halls of Hawkins High take a step away from him, and Steve, because the expected happened, which is that nothing happened, and Steve had been taught long ago to bottle up the feelings that came along with that. Eddie was working on breaking that bottle, but he’d only been at it for a few months and Steve had been conditioned for years. He still had a lot of work to do.
Once back at the trailer, Eddie stopped by the passenger door to the Bimmer, which Steve had parked neatly next to his van like always. “We can stay here. You don’t have to go back.”
“I know,” Steve said. “Wayne’s sleeping, don’t wanna wake him up. Take me home.”
Eddie could refuse. Steve was conscientious enough that he wouldn’t drive, drunk as he was, but he was also stubborn enough that he’d probably walk, which means he’d probably stumble into late night traffic and get himself run over, which wouldn’t do anyone any good. Eddie sighed and fished the keys out of Steve’s back pocket (“Hey,” Steve said, snickering, “that’s not how you’re s’posed to get into my pants, dude.”) and unlocked the door. He helped Steve in, all limbs akimbo, then clambered into the driver’s seat.
“Should I brace myself for whatever nightmare you’ve been listening to?” Eddie said. “Tiffany? Kenny Loggins? Cyndi Lauper?” Steve grinned.
“No, no, try it,” he said, and as Eddie started the car up, the tape in the player began, and Eddie, despite himself, raised his eyebrows.
“Sabbath,” he said. “Alright, man, not bad at all. Maybe your taste isn’t irredeemable.”
Steve snorted. “S’your tape, idiot. You told me I had to listen to it.”
“Well, yeah,” Eddie said. “I need to know your feelings on Ozzy versus Dio as lead singer.”
Steve laid his head back, eyes fluttering shut, as Neon Knights filtered through the air around them. Steve still got headaches sometimes thanks to Hargrove’s heavy hand, so Eddie didn’t test out the BMW’s speakers the way he wanted to, just kept the volume at a polite level and took them slowly out of the trailer park and towards the back road that would cut them through to Loch Nora. Eddie thought he might be asleep, but then he said, “Dio’s a better singer. Ozzy’s scarier. Both‘re good.”
“Steve Harrington,” Eddie marveled despite himself. “Always keeping me on my toes.”
Steve laughed, raspy and tired, and bumped his knuckles against Eddie’s thigh. “Even trade,” he said. “You sat through an hour of me and Wayne talking about the Pacers last week. Figured I’d give your boy bands a listen.”
Eddie’s offended screech could probably be heard back at the bonfire, and Steve cracked an eye open to watch the reaction, pleased with himself like a cat covered in canary feathers. “They- Those are not-” Eddie said, and Steve laughed at his sputtering, “Black Sabbath is not a boy band!”
“Man band, then,” Steve said. “Dudes in matching outfits having fun singing about death together. Don’t see the difference.”
“Well, we had a good run,” Eddie said regretfully. “But I’m afraid this is it, I can no longer speak to you. My conscience won’t allow it.”
“Your conscience can kiss my ass,” Steve said, eyes closed again.
“Just my conscience?” Eddie teased, and Steve huffed another laugh.
“Tonight, yeah,” Steve said. “Don’t think you want any part of this. I’m sweating like crazy from sitting by the fire.”
“You doubt my commitment, Harrington, thinking that’ll scare me off,” Eddie said, and Steve laughed one more time.
He was starting to sober up, Eddie could hear it. Steve’s tolerance was high, but he lost his buzz quickly; a good trait for the guy who used to always have to play host, but it meant that when Steve wanted to go hard, it took a hell of a lot to get him there. The brisk spring night and the drive must have kickstarted the sobering process for him.
Of course, that meant when they parked in front of the Harrington house, dark and empty, Steve was aware enough to have that set to his jaw again.
“Steve,” Eddie said awkwardly, but Steve pushed himself out of the car and towards the house without a word. Eddie, bracing himself for the worst, followed Steve inside.
This was probably not the best night for his first visit to the Harrington abode. Well, not the first visit — he’d been here for many a party back before Steve gave up on all those trappings, but that wasn’t the same. When Eddie came to a Steve Harrington shindig, he hovered near the back door as per his usual tactic, ready to run at the first mention of cops or a fun party game of Hunt The Freak.
He’d also been outside the house plenty of times since November, picking Steve up or dropping him off, usually after a covert stop near the lake to make out in the van for a bit.
But he’d never set foot inside when it wasn’t jammed full of teenage bodies, and as he did so now, he was sort of wishing that was still the case.
Inside was like a magazine spread, save for the tiny signs of life Eddie recognized as Steve’s: keys on the entry table, shoes by the welcome mat, backpack slung over a formal dining chair, jacket laid over the back of the couch. The ceilings were tall, the art was generic, the furniture looked unused except the couch facing the TV, which had a little Steve-shaped divot and a rumpled blanket, like he slept here as often as his own bed. Steve was nowhere to be seen, but there were footsteps upstairs, so Eddie trailed that direction.
Up on the second floor, Eddie passed a couple of closed doors, then one that was cracked open. He could hear Steve moving inside the room further along at the end of the hall, and his curiosity burned, so he peeked inside the barely-open doorway.
This had to be the master bedroom. Moonlight fell in through the bay windows onto a massive bed with carved wooden posts at each of the corners and a mauve chintz bedspread. Heavy drapery hung to each side of the windows, and thick wooden nightstands stood guard to either side of the bed. It was all heavy mahogany furniture and light pastel accents, fashionable and expensive, except for one notable exception: neatly packed away to one corner of the room was a rolling cart of medical equipment, beige power cords connected to small machines, clear fluid bags and orderly rows of pill bottles.
Eddie swallowed and stepped back, easing the door back to its original position. He followed the sounds of movement back to the last room on the end and found Steve there, tossing his smoke-scented clothes from the bonfire into a hamper. His tan back had a little bruising right over his shoulder blade, the exact shape of Eddie’s fingers.
“You’re staying,” he said, not a question but not a command, and Eddie said, softly, “Yeah, of course.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Steve said, sharp but thin.
“I don’t,” Eddie said, and he meant that. He was sad for Steve but he didn’t pity him: they both had shit parents, just at opposite corners of the Shit Parents Graph.
Steve had crossed the graduation stage today without his parents there to watch. Hadn’t been back in at least a month, Eddie was pretty sure, judging by Steve’s offhand remarks and the frequency with which he was having dinner with Wayne and Eddie.
He said it didn’t bother him, and maybe that was true; Eddie knew full well it was possible to turn continual disappointment into a hard callus of apathy, but that didn’t mean that a new hurt couldn’t slip through from time to time and pierce mostly-numbed nerves.
Steve slid into bed and Eddie followed.
“Christ,” Eddie groaned, sinking into the mattress. “Okay. Here’s the plan: we’ll take your car back to my place tomorrow, grab the van, and we come back to steal this mattress.”
Steve snorted. “And have the neighbors call the cops on us for robbing the poor absent Harringtons? No, I don’t think so.”
“Cops. Right,” Eddie mused. “Not a problem at the trailer park, as such. We tend to handle problems internally.”
“I’ve noticed,” Steve said. They’d sat out on the front porch at the trailer not three nights ago and watched the Johnsons across the lot with the shitty RV fight at top volume about everything from his snoring to her stupid yapping dogs. They’d passed a beer back and forth between them and gave color commentary on the combatants’ choices of projectiles — the lawn chair was an inspired choice — until old Mrs. Cassini came out and yelled at the Johnsons to shut the hell up, I can’t hear my soaps!
“Also, I do still live here,” Steve continued, “and I need somewhere to sleep.”
“Right,” Eddie said again. “Of course.”
They were quiet after that for a few minutes, and Eddie took that time to look around. His first thought was, goddamn, that’s a lot of plaid, then, it doesn’t even look like he lives here. The desk was tidy, the wall unadorned except for an insultingly generic muscle car calendar, which he knew Steve didn’t pick because Steve cared less about cars than he did about almost anything else. There were no tapes or books or pictures. The only sign of life was a little frog-shaped novelty eraser, which sat at point of pride among Steve’s swim trophies on top of the desk. Eddie recognized that eraser: you could win those at the arcade. Steve’s kids must have gotten that for him.
Otherwise, nothing. Steve could pack his preppy polos and tight jeans and hairspray into a bag tomorrow and disappear and this room would be no different except, Eddie assumed, Steve would probably take the little frog eraser.
“Do you, um,” Steve said, breaking the silence. His voice had that straining-to-be-normal quality that Eddie most often heard when Steve had his headaches and was trying desperately to ignore them. “Do you mind. Um.”
“Probably not,” Eddie said. “But what are you asking about, in particular?”
Instead of using words, Steve turned on his side facing away from Eddie, and then reached back to grab Eddie’s hand. He tugged, gently, until Eddie got the hint and turned that way as well. He hesitated, just for a moment, not wanting to misread things, but Steve pulled at his hand again so Eddie curled up against his back, fitting his body against Steve’s from calves to shoulders.
Steve, on an exhale, relaxed and softened, tension leaking from him.
Eddie traced nonsensical shapes up and down Steve’s sides, and set his mouth against Steve’s spine, not a kiss, just a touch.
“Hey, Steve,” Eddie said, saying the words against his skin. A thousand questions crowded on his tongue, barely held back: Why don’t your parents come home? What happened to make you fall from grace? Why do you let me in when you don’t let in anyone else?
He felt Steve tense against him again, like he could hear the questions out loud. “Yeah?” he asked, a whisper.
Eddie couldn’t do it. His undying curiosity wouldn’t be what killed this intimacy. “Who’s your favorite musician?” he asked instead.
Steve uncurled, and Eddie felt the soft hah sound of surprise he made. “Why?”
“Just wanna know,” Eddie said.
“Just wanna make fun of me, more like,” Steve grumbled, but it was good-natured. “I don’t know, man. I like Tears for Fears. I like Whitney Houston. Wham! is good, and I don’t want to hear any arguments,” he said, before Eddie could open his mouth to do just that.
Eddie chuckled. “Fine. No arguments. Tonight, at least.”
He thought that was it, but then Steve said, quiet again, “The Carpenters.”
Oh. Eddie heard the stirs of I can take all the madness the world has to give, but I won't last a day without you in his head and was taken back to a crackly album on a dirty, mess-strewn kitchen counter, a woman’s hand in his, making him spin and laugh.
“My mom loved the Carpenters,” he said.
Steve said, “Mine too.”
They fell asleep not long after, Eddie still wrapped around Steve, hearts beating in time to soft music in their heads.
The next day, Steve and Eddie moved around each other in a morning routine they were used to doing but doing somewhere else, like theatre actors on their first day in front of a crowd after months of rehearsals. They bumped into each other more in Steve’s ensuite bathroom than they ever did in the hallway bathroom at the Munson trailer, even though that one was half the size of this one. Steve’s counter was sparkly clean and his hair products were neatly arranged, and Eddie teased him up until Steve started threatening to gel Eddie’s bangs like he was in A Flock of Seagulls, but at least he was smiling.
They made breakfast and Steve turned on a small radio that sat in the kitchen window, tuning the dial until he found Casey Kasem’s voice down to the last few songs of the AT40 countdown.
“And a new song in the number one spot this week, fresh off the boat from the UK,” said Casey, “is Wham! with Everything She Wants.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Eddie said over the synth intro. “Come on, we can find something better than this.”
“Metal is not for breakfast,” Steve said primly, waving his spatula. He said it like it was a well-known proverb, and Eddie laughed to himself when he thought about the phrase cross-stitched onto a throw pillow.
“Fine,” Eddie said, and then went back to bothering Steve while he fried bacon. Eddie hissed when the grease popped him on the arm, and withdrew a little.
“That’s why you wear armor while cooking,” Steve said, tugging pointedly at the little apron he’d thrown on when they’d entered the kitchen.
“That’s some pretty cute armor,” Eddie said.
“Thanks,” Steve said, and cleared his throat. “It’s my mom’s.”
“Oh,” Eddie said, horribly thrown. “It’s nice.”
Steve flipped the bacon again, and slid Eddie a look. “You haven’t asked.”
“I didn’t know… if you wanted me to,” Eddie said truthfully.
“I don’t mind,” Steve said, though his stiff shoulders disagreed with him. “It’s not a secret, or anything.”
Eddie bit his lip for a moment. He didn’t want to pry, but Steve was the one who brought it up. He might just want to talk about it. Eddie set a hand on Steve’s hip and squeezed, then hopped up on the counter next to the stove.
“Tell me about her,” he said.
And Steve did.
“My mom has cancer,” Steve said. He scooped out the bacon and set it aside, then took the pancake batter he’d been letting rest and poured a dollop right into the hot grease. “Breast cancer. She was diagnosed about eight years ago, went through chemotherapy and everything. She got the best care, of course, but it was still really scary.”
“I’m sure,” Eddie said softly.
“She lost all her hair from chemo,” Steve said. “Hers was just like mine, and she lost it all, and even when it grew back, it was never the same. I felt so guilty. I mean, it’s stupid, it’s not like I could give her my hair or anything, but it was something we had in common and then that became, like, my thing, and it felt so wrong when she had lost hers.”
He flipped the pancake, shook the pan a little.
“It wasn’t like my parents were always around when I was growing up, but when she was at her worst they were gone for months. She was in a hospital in Indianapolis, and I would go to visit once a week or so, but mostly I was here with a nanny. People didn’t really know my mom was sick back then, they just knew I had a nanny, so I got made fun of for that. I didn’t really care, but it got old, you know?”
Eddie remembered that. Steve was a year below him in middle school but gossip was gossip, and Eddie, angry and poor and ate up with the injustice of the world, hated that Steve Harrington had seemed to have an abundance of people around to keep track of him. He still lived with his dad at that point, and he could go full days without seeing the man conscious. And that, seeing him passed out on the couch or out of the house entirely, was better than when he was awake with Eddie around. Eddie had scoffed at any kid needing a nanny, when he was self-sufficient enough to survive entirely on his own.
Now, though, his stomach twisted with what he hadn’t known.
“But she got better, and it was okay for a while after that. She spent a lot of time in bed, but when I got home from school we’d watch TV together, or I’d help her make dinner.”
“Is she the one who taught you to cook?” Eddie asked.
“Yeah, for the most part,” Steve smiled, pouring out more batter. “I’ve picked up a couple of cookbooks on my own since, but she comes from this big Italian family and so she taught me the family recipes.”
“Your cacio e pepe is to die for,” Eddie said with utmost sincerity.
Steve snorted. “Mine is the only cacio e pepe you’ve ever had. You called it Richie Rich mac and cheese.”
Now that Eddie knew his family was Italian, he could hear the tiny inflection in those few foreign words, the way they rolled a little more smoothly. He’d have to ask some other time if he knew any other words. Hell, he could probably read off a grocery list in Italian and have Eddie half-hard.
Not the time, he reprimanded himself.
“It basically is!” Eddie said. “But she’s okay now?”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “She’s been in remission for a few years. But…”
Eddie could see him chewing on the words, holding them back. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, baby.”
“No, I know,” Steve said. “It’s just fucking- ugh. When my mom was here all the time recovering after chemo, my dad went back to work, which is a lot of travel. And he’s, like. He’s an asshole, right? Grade-A dick. And he cheated on her. A lot. I don’t know if it was happening before the cancer, but it definitely happened after. Did you know that men are, like, seven times more likely to leave their spouses when they get sick compared to women? And he didn’t even bother leaving, he just cheated. Obviously and constantly.”
“Fuck him,” Eddie said, offended on Steve’s mom’s behalf.
“Fuck him,” Steve agreed. “It destroyed my mom. She thought he really cared, because, like, he made such a big deal out of playing the devoted husband in public when she was sick. But then she found out about all the secretaries. So as soon as she was able to, she started traveling with him everywhere so he’d have to try a little harder to keep it in his pants.”
“She just left you here?” Eddie asked.
“Well, yeah, but she- it’s complicated,” Steve said.
“How long ago was that?”
Steve was quiet for a moment. “Five years ago.”
Eddie had no right to say it, but he did anyway. “She should have stayed with you.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “But she didn’t. She had this therapist — probably still does, I don’t know — who basically told her that she had to choose what to focus on, and she picked him. Actually- remember the night we first… met, talked, whatever? When I told you about the paint buckets thing, painting over the bad thoughts? That was something she got from her therapist. She used to tell me stuff that he’d tell her, but we haven’t talked like that in a while.”
Eddie’s head was swimming. His anger at the Harringtons mixed with his fond memories of Steve at that Halloween party, and he was starting to feel ate up inside again like he had at age ten, at age thirteen, at fifteen, except now it was because he was looking at Steve Harrington and thinking: I think I like you more than I’m supposed to. I think I want to hurt people who hurt you first. I think if you asked me to burn this awful house down, I’d ask if you want me to use my lighter or matches.
Steve mistook his staring, apparently, because he said, “I don’t think about it. I can’t do anything about it, so I don’t think about it.” He switched the stovetop off, tossed his spatula down, and turned to Eddie, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. “Do you get that? Please tell me you get that.”
“I do,” Eddie said, and tugged Steve to stand between his knees. “God, fuck, baby, of course I do. I get it. Let me tell you my story, I’ll prove that I get it.”
He twirled a finger in a strand of Steve’s hair. Steve said, “Okay. Tell me your story.”
“It’s not a happy one,” Eddie warned.
“Whose is?” Steve asked, and Eddie’s mind conjured up memories of Steve shaking awake from fitful sleep, of flinches at flickering light, of his little gang of kids who went through something but no one will say what.
“Right. Well. My old man-”
“Ed,” Steve supplied, like he was trying to ace a quiz.
“That’s the one. He had a lot of issues, chief among them that his habits were expensive and he never had a job to pay for them. He’d go out, steal a car and sell it to some chop shop in Indy, come back home with a stack of cash, and blow it all in a week before we even got groceries.”
“You said he got arrested,” Steve said, leaning into Eddie’s hand against his temple.
“Yeah, when I was twelve,” Eddie said. “But this isn’t about him.”
He thinks about a Carpenters record, and the smell of cigarettes, and dried roadside flowers in old books.
“My mom is a lot like yours, I think,” he said. “She loves me. Loved me. I never doubted that. We had our good days, and we survived the bad ones. It was me and her against the world, which often took the shape of Big Ed. We’d leave the house when he was high, or drunk, and we’d have a picnic out at the quarry, or window shop down Main Street. We couldn’t afford anything, but sometimes the deli would throw out their day-old stock and we could get to it before it went bad. It was like treasure hunting, that’s what she called it. She had me steal some records while she distracted the people at the register, and we’d take them home and not feel bad at all. I was good at it. Still am.”
He wiggled his fingers. Steve, in his big shiny house, with his designer clothes and expensive car, had nothing to say to all that. Eddie thought again about the wide variety of ways parents could fuck up their kids, and didn’t hold all that against him.
“She really was a good mom,” Eddie said. “She taught me to dance to the stolen records. Sometimes she’d come home from work with clothes for me that I’m pretty sure she took off of laundry lines she passed on her way home. She was a waitress and she’d sneak food when she could so I could eat, but then she got fired when she got caught, so that stopped.
“And she wasn’t perfect,” Eddie said, lost in perfumed memory. “She had her vices. A lot of her paycheck went to vodka every week. She sometimes dabbled in the same shit my dad did. There was a reason they got together in the first place, you know?”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “It’s kind of like how my mom cares as much about shit like our reputation and the Harrington name as my dad does.”
“Same coin, different sides,” Eddie agreed. “Anyway, that all lasted up until I was about seven. My dad started going even deeper into rages, his highs lasted longer, took longer to wear off. He drank to offset his comedowns, and that didn’t help much either. He got more violent. I got hit a lot. So did Mom. Finally, it was like she snapped — it wasn’t even a bad day. Nothing really happened, at least as far as I know. Dad was out of it on the couch, and Mom came out of their bedroom with a suitcase. She said she had to go, and she loved me. Said she’d be back soon to get me.”
“She never came back,” Steve finished softly for him, eyes wide. “Oh, Eddie.”
“So, see?” Eddie said, clearing his throat. “I do understand parents making choices. And I understand that even if our moms did what they did to protect themselves, they still left us behind to fend for ourselves. And that’s on them.”
Steve shook his head a little, like he couldn’t reconcile that, but didn’t dispute it out loud. The heaviness weighed the air down like it was a physical thing. They watched each other like either might make a move to hurt, to injure. Even if only verbally.
Eddie didn’t want to hurt Steve. He never would on purpose. But he didn’t always have control when backed into a corner, and if Steve was going to argue that his own mom had the right to leave him, that Eddie’s mom had the right to go and not take him too, Eddie might lash out.
But Steve also looked backed into his own corner. He’d told himself for years that it was fine that he was left alone, and he didn’t want to confront that. They were both still physically close, Steve standing between Eddie’s knees, but there was a wall between them now. Eddie didn’t know how to climb it. Steve looked like he didn’t either, eyes lost even as they were stuck on Eddie’s face.
It had always been simple between him and Steve, because they both knew the rules. Eddie was a rules guy, and this game was simple. They wanted to kiss and fool around and both were keen not to get caught. They got along well enough and had become sort-of friends. Steve let Eddie call him baby, Eddie let Steve wake him up with his vicious nightmares. This was boys doing what boys do in small towns that would stone them if they knew what happened behind closed doors. This was Steve falling onto the Island of Misfit Boys and finding Eddie there waiting at the bottom.
They both knew what this was, and it wasn’t the kind of thing where they had heart-to-hearts.
(Except when Steve stayed over and answered his walkie in the middle of the night. Except when Steve took Eddie to the top of Skull Rock and used the word “future” for the first time. Except just now, when Steve told Eddie about his mom.)
(They didn’t have heart-to-hearts, except when they did.)
In the background, the little radio in the window had been playing quietly all that time. Eddie heard the muted chatter of Casey Kasem passing the baton on to the local DJ, and cueing up a song as he departed: then, the familiar pattern of drums. Eddie’s head was still stuck on a conversation that shouldn’t have happened, because there were rules and that wasn’t in the rules, but the song broke through.
“Oh my god,” Eddie said on instinct, and the silence cracked like ice on a warm morning. “Baaaabe. It’s our song!” He pitched his voice up, and ended up sounding uncannily like that Tammy Thompson girl that Eddie and Steve both had math class with this year.
“We don’t have a- oh my god,” Steve said, and covered his face with his hands while he laughed. “Uptown Girl is not our song!”
“Yes it is!” Eddie said, sliding off the counter and pulling Steve into a sloppy, terrible dance, singing loud. “I bet she’s never had a backstreet guy, I bet her mama never told her why.”
Steve groaned but quickly slipped into the lead, guiding them into a western two-step like it was line dancing week in gym class. Steve was smooth on his feet and Eddie kept adding flourishes, twirling Steve, kicking out his foot to dip him low, doing his best to duet with Billy Joel.
“She’ll see I’m not so tough, just because I’m in love with…” Eddie trailed off, their dance slowing. Steve’s eyes were hot honey in the late morning light, his mouth ticked up in a grin. The words reverberated in Eddie’s head like ripples on water: I’m in love with-
He wasn’t, though. Right? He liked Steve, sure. He was surprisingly likable for a guy Eddie once assumed would rub his face into dirt for looking at him wrong. His touch sent shivers along Eddie’s veins and Eddie smiled automatically when he heard Steve’s voice, even in school, even when he couldn’t give the reason for his smile when his friends asked. Eddie looked forward to their clandestine meetings and missed him when he left. Wayne liked him. He fit into Eddie’s life like a missing harmony.
This wasn’t in the rules.
That wasn’t what this was. It wasn’t supposed to be that. Steve said so, that first time at Eddie’s dealing table out in the woods.
It doesn’t have to mean anything, if you don’t want it to.
What does that mean? What is this? For the first time since Eddie first kissed Steve Harrington, he was starting to wonder what the hell was going on.
“What, did you forget the words?” Steve teased. “Here, I’ll take over.” He tugged Eddie impossibly closer, their chests pressed together as they danced around the room on bare feet. Eddie held Steve’s hand as his head swirled.
Eddie wore Steve’s clothes, Eddie woke up in Steve’s bed, Eddie told Steve about his mom.
This wasn’t in the rules.
“And when she’s talking she’ll say that she’s mi-i-ine,” Steve sang into Eddie’s ear. “She’ll say I’m not so tough” — no, Eddie couldn’t be — “just because” — he couldn’t be, right? — “I’m in love” — he couldn’t breathe — “with an uptown girl.”
Eddie pressed his mouth to Steve’s and stole the rest of the song, kissing him to stillness, then kissing him to movement, pressing him back back back against the pantry door, and Steve made a high, tight sound when his shoulders connected with the wood. They kissed desperately, the slow morning turned to wildfire. Steve pulled back from Eddie’s lips and gasped out, pupils wide. He tilted his head back: surrender. He was always surrendering to Eddie.
Eddie still couldn’t breathe.
“Can I?” he asked, willing to take whatever Steve offered in return.
“Yes, fuck, I’ve been waiting- been wanting,” Steve said desperately. “Fuck me, Eddie. You’re going to fuck me, right?”
“Shit,” Eddie said, breathless. “Okay, baby. Come on. Upstairs.”
“Here,” Steve said, stubborn, clutching Eddie close. “Here, Eddie, please-”
“Not this time,” Eddie said, biting Steve’s lower lip and soothing it. “Upstairs.”
They chased each other, leaving Billy Joel and their cooling breakfast in the kitchen. Steve took the stairs two at a time and Eddie had a hand on him the whole way, giggling like idiots, stopping to kiss when they made it to the top of the stairs. Steve still had the apron on and Eddie was careful with it as he picked at the knot in the strings, laying it over the stair bannister so it wouldn’t be ripped or dirtied.
He was a little less delicate with the rest of their clothes.
“Fuck,” Eddie growled, ripping Steve’s t-shirt over his head and tossing it to parts unknown. “You are-”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Steve chanted nonsensically, kicking out of his own shorts and falling backwards onto his bed. He reached up and tugged Eddie out of his boxers as he stood next to the bed, wrapping his mouth around Eddie’s dick as Eddie whipped his own shirt off.
“Shit, baby, warn a guy,” Eddie said, dizzy with the way his blood rushed south. Steve’s mouth was hot and wet, sucking at the head like he was doing his best to get Eddie’s orgasm to break the land speed record. Eddie pushed a hand through Steve’s hair out of habit and Steve moaned, high and loud, the sound wavering as he sucked Eddie to the back of his throat again and again.
Right. House to themselves. No close neighbors. Holy shit, Steve could be as loud as he wanted. Eddie could make him be as loud as he wanted.
Eddie grabbed Steve’s chin and pulled out, bending to kiss him instead when Steve huffed at the loss. Eddie crawled into the bed and straddled Steve’s chest, curled over to keep their mouths together.
“I have,” Steve said, pulling away only enough to be able to speak the words into Eddie’s mouth, “stuff. Bedside table.”
“Been planning, huh?” Eddie said, grinning, and reached over to the table. Sure enough, unopened box of condoms, unopened bottle of lube. Eddie raised an eyebrow. “No takers so far?”
“No one else I want,” Steve said, in that uncomplicated way he did that knocked Eddie off his axis. Maybe he felt the same- no, Eddie couldn’t do that right now. This was this, and only this, right now.
Eddie had a little experience with sex from his Indy trips and a few magazines given to him by friends he made there. This was the practical exam, though, and he needed it to be good. Couldn’t bear it if it wasn’t good.
(This wasn’t in the rules.)
“On your belly, sweetheart,” Eddie said, smoothing his hands down Steve’s sides as he rolled over. “God, look at you.”
Steve peeked back over his shoulder, his strong back undulating with the move. He almost looked coy like this. Sweet was a good look on him. “What do I do?”
“Nothing,” Eddie said, sliding his palms from the backs of Steve’s thighs up to his shoulders. “Just let me get you ready. You tell me if it hurts, okay?”
“Okay,” Steve said. “I trust you.”
Jesus. Eddie ripped the plastic off the KY bottle and poured some on his fingers then, after some consideration, pulled Steve Harrington’s exquisite cheeks apart and poured some directly onto his skin. Steve jumped, and Eddie murmured an apology.
“Just cold,” Steve said, wiggling a little. “Can you- oh.”
Eddie traced his finger around Steve’s entrance again, soft skin hot against Eddie’s fingertip. Steve was shifting against the sheets now, hips jumping.
“Sensitive,” Eddie said, and slid the first fingertip in so slowly, just past his fingernail. Steve exhaled shakily and his hips twitched forward again. “Very sensitive. You okay, Steve?”
“God,” Steve groaned. “More.”
“Hm-mm,” Eddie hummed in the negative. “Slow, sweetheart.”
And Eddie did mean slow. He took a few minutes just to get the first finger in, an achingly glacial pace that had Steve alternating between begging and swearing. Eddie trailed kisses up his spine and to that sensitive spot on the nape of his neck in penance, but refused to speed up.
But, even as slow as Eddie went, one finger became two. Steve stopped talking and just made noises, little groans and sighs, his muscles tensing and loosening. Eddie bit his own lip and thought back to those magazines, used his fingers to press in and search and-
“Oh, shit!” Steve said, jolting. “Oh my god, that- fuck, babe, do that again.”
Babe. Babe. Eddie, exhilarated, did it again.
“Oh, oh,” Steve said, shaking. “What the hell, what is that? It’s- oh my god- it’s so good.”
“Prostate,” Eddie said, grinning again. “Worth the wait?”
“Goddamn it,” Steve said, burying his face in his crossed arms. “Yeah. Keep going.”
Two fingers, slicked and sliding in and out, pressing at Steve’s prostate rhythmically enough that he was moaning for it, but not often enough to get him to come. It was a tightrope to walk but Eddie thrilled with it, watching Steve fall apart in this brand new way for the first time.
Three fingers now, and Steve exhaled shakily when the stretch was a little too much. Eddie took it slow, remembered his first time being pulled apart at the seams in a way that was so good but so scary, tried to make Steve’s first time more of the former and less of the latter. He didn’t seem scared; he was sweating and pulsating, constantly moving, to the point that Eddie had to lay a hand on the base of his spine to keep him still.
Four fingers. “Fuck,” Steve swore, gripping at the sheets. “Unless you’re packing a- fuck- goddamn baseball bat, I think- I- I- shit, Eddie, I’m ready.”
Eddie just hummed, letting Steve be mad. He could wait.
Four fingers all the way in, Eddie’s knuckles squeezed by tight muscle. Eddie’s dick had flagged for a bit in the middle, when he was concentrating so hard on Steve that he forgot about his own need, but it was back to attention now. Steve shook and cursed into his pillow, a long string of half-moaned nonsense.
Finally, Steve felt open enough that Eddie was only a little worried that he’d hurt him. Also, Steve threatened to run him over with his own van if he didn’t, quote, get a goddamn move on, Munson.
Eddie pulled Steve up by his hips long enough to shove a couple of pillows under him, then laid him back down. He rolled on a condom and slicked on more lube. He lined himself up.
Steve peeked back over his shoulder again. He didn’t snap off something bitchy, like Eddie thought he would. Instead, he said, “Eddie. I’m ready. You won’t hurt me.”
“I might,” Eddie said, and didn’t feel like he was entirely talking about sex.
“Then trust that I can take it,” Steve said.
Eddie leaned forward to kiss him, the angle awkward but their mouths warm, and then pulled back. He set his hands on Steve’s hips and said, “Okay. Deep breath.”
Steve’s eyes fluttered and his hands twisted in the sheets when Eddie pushed in. His breath kept catching, loud in the quiet room. Eddie slowly slid halfway in and stopped when Steve panted, “Hold on, babe, hold- god.”
Eddie leaned forward and kissed Steve’s shoulder. “I can wait. You okay, baby?”
“Full,” Steve said, which was flattering enough that Eddie felt his face warm. Steve shifted his hips a little, then said. “Okay. More.”
“Always wanting more,” Eddie murmured.
“Want all of you,” Steve murmured back. “Is that a bad thing?”
Eddie’s stomach flipped and flopped, his smile stupid. “No. Not a bad thing at all.”
This wasn’t Eddie’s first time, and god and all of Hawkins knew it wasn’t Steve’s either, but something- something was new, still, here between them. Eddie slid slow, and Steve gasped into the pillow and shivered and twisted his hands in the sheets. Eddie felt the entire world whittle down to only him and Steve and the bed below them, all the places where their skin touched. The heat of Steve’s body, the roll of his spine.
He moved. He moved and Steve arched, his shoulders wide and golden below Eddie. He leaned down and bit over a shoulder blade, left teeth imprints and a bruise the shape of his mouth. He moved. He slid one hand to Steve’s hip, as leverage, the other hand holding Steve’s hands against the mattress, as connection. He moved.
The slide was excruciatingly good. Eddie shuddered and kept feeling words dropping out of him he couldn’t contain: “Baby, god, so good, so tight, baby,” and Steve, an echo, “Yes, fuck, come on Eddie, please, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
It wasn’t going to be a long go of it. Eddie was already lightheaded and Steve’s voice was hitching in the middle of words. His moans pitched up, soft high sounds that had Eddie thrusting faster, chasing them to the edge.
“Close,” he groaned into Steve’s nape.
“Yes, come on,” Steve gasped. “Come on, babe, do it.”
The world tilted and Eddie crested, his stomach soaring as he pumped once, twice more, heart racing.
He pulled out slowly and, after taking the smallest moment to catch his breath, rolled Steve over. His cock was leaking rivers and his cheeks were stained red, his chest rising and falling and his eyes dark and wide and wild.
Eddie scooted backwards a little, collapsed down onto his stomach, and took Steve’s dick into his mouth. Steve yelped and fell back, one hand smoothing Eddie’s hair away from his face automatically and the other clenching and unclenching next to his hip bone.
“God, fuck, Eddie,” Steve moaned. “Your goddamn mouth.”
Eddie smiled and slick spit slid down Steve’s length, so he used it to glide his hand up to meet his mouth. With his other hand, he circled Steve’s entrance and then pushed two fingers back in, working in concert with his mouth. Steve howled, voice breaking. “Yes! Fuck, Eddie!”
Eddie kept each pull short and tight, kept his fingers quick, knowing by the way Steve’s thighs trembled that he was-
“Gonna-” Steve gasped, head tossed back. “Eddie, gonna-”
Eddie sucked hard one last time and thick wetness hit the back of his throat, making his eyes water. Worth it, for the sounds that ripped out of Steve. Worth it, for the sweet sated feeling and the way Steve tugged him back up to share a pillow, just like they always did at the trailer, even though Steve had multiple to choose from.
Worth it, even if it would hurt later when Eddie remembered the rules. And he would. He always did.
The day passed in flashes. A dam had broken, and neither Eddie nor Steve were in a hurry to rebuild it. They ate cold pancakes and bacon in their boxers at the kitchen island, then chased the taste of syrup (brand name Mrs. Butterworth’s, of course) from each other’s mouths.
They lounged on the couch and watched terrible daytime TV. Steve rolled Eddie underneath him and spent a slow half hour sucking him dry, Eddie near tears by the end and his hair wild and knotted around his fingers from pulling so hard.
Steve made dinner and Eddie gave him a handjob as they waited for the oven timer to go off, Steve’s head hung, his hands braced against the counter as Eddie pressed up behind him, hand working him under his boxers.
They fell into bed and kissed until they fell asleep, faces still in breathing distance on the same pillow.
They woke to voices.
Walkie talkie, Eddie thought blearily, but that wasn’t right. He sat up and stretched, and heard the voices again: too old to be Steve’s kids. A man and a woman.
Shit.
Steve’s eyes crashed open and he threw himself out of bed, naked and glorious and clearly freaking out. “Fuck, what day is it?” he asked.
“...get my bags, you go check the mail,” the man’s voice said. “...hedges look a little tall? Gardener’s slacking off again.” Outside. They were outside. In the driveway, it sounded like.
“I don’t even know my damn name right now,” Eddie said, dizzy with the sudden wake-up. “Monday, maybe?”
“They’re not supposed to be home!” Steve said. He threw a t-shirt and a pair of ridiculously small dolphin shorts at Eddie and ran out into the hallway, his footsteps thumping into the distance. Eddie pulled on the clothes and jogged downstairs as well. Steve was throwing all the evidence of their day and a half together into every available hiding place. He kicked their strewn clothing under the couch and gathered up their plates and cups like a seasoned waiter. Eddie tried to help, but Steve stopped him.
“No,” he said, setting the dishes into the sink and yanking on the hot water tap. He grabbed his own pair of sweatpants that Eddie had tossed enthusiastically over the dining table yesterday and hopped into them, one foot at a time. “You have to go. I’m sorry, I’m- if they see you, we’re both toast.”
Eddie knew that. He knew the rules. His stupid fucking heart didn’t, but it wasn’t in control at the moment. “I’ll go. Should I climb out your window?”
“Backdoor,” Steve said, pouring in dish soap. “Get my keys, go out the back and sneak around. Take my car, I’ll get it from you later.”
“Won’t they notice the car’s gone?” Eddie asked.
“It’s fine,” Steve said. “I’ll call you. Go.”
But he pulled Eddie in for a kiss, because he always did, and then there was an unlocking sound from the front door and Steve said, “Shit. Stay by the window, I’ll get the keys to you. Go.”
So Eddie did what he’d always expected he’d eventually have to do, and he sprinted out the back door of Steve Harrington’s house in a panic. He pressed himself up against the wall right under the kitchen window. Steve slid the window and screen open, then set about washing dishes like he was trying to scrape the color off them.
Clattering of shoes against the hardwood floors, the front door closing, rustling of clothes. The soapy sounds of Steve panic-cleaning. Then:
“Steven, darling,” a woman’s voice said. It was sweeter than Eddie expected, but then he’d built up pretty terrifying monsters in his mind when he thought about the absent Harringtons. Or maybe he thought she would sound weak and warbling from illness. Either way, she actually sounded like Mary Poppins if Mary was from Chicago.
“Hey mom,” Steve said. A splashing sound, more clothes rustling.
“Quite a mess in here,” said a man’s voice, eerily similar to Steve’s, dry and amused. “Must have been one hell of a party.”
“No,” Steve said. “No party, just- just had a few friends over.”
Eddie, friend in question, slid down with his back against the wall and crouched, leaning his weight on his heels. He was barefoot, in Steve Harrington’s tiniest shorts (bright turquoise shorts), and two people who absolutely would have him arrested for trespassing were about seven feet away from him through an open window.
He hoped like hell that neither of the Harringtons got a wild hair to check on the backyard and the pool, though he felt like it was probably safe. Steve had mentioned that his parents never used the pool, and Steve hadn’t in almost two years. He’d only opened the thing up this spring because his babysitting charges had started making noises about swim parties, and Steve wasn’t about to hang out at the public pool.
(“God forbid you hang out with the commoners at the public pool,” Eddie had said when Steve mentioned it, and Steve had smiled in that way he did when Eddie poked fun at all his money, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, so Eddie left it alone.)
“Well, whoever these friends were sure did a number on you,” Mr. Harrington said, and Eddie winced when he remembered the state he’d left Steve’s chest and neck in, bruised and bitten and meant to be a secret, but Steve hadn’t had a chance to put a shirt on before his parents came in. His dad must have poked one of the bruises or something, because Steve hissed and his dad laughed, sounding boyish and sly.
“So you’ve found yourself a girl, Steve?” his mom asked. She also sounded sly, the way old ladies asked newly married girls when they could expect some bouncing babies to be added to the family. “I’m sure she’s nice, though I’d appreciate it if you were a little more discreet.”
“No, it’s- uh,” Steve said, clearly torn between about four different lies, and probably also trying not to think about Eddie hearing every word of this seemingly private conversation. “Um. Yeah, it’s, uh. New. Sorry, I’ll… find a shirt.”
“Nah, don’t bother,” his dad said, and there was a sound like a hand clapping a bare shoulder. “We’re only here to grab some fresh clothes and I have to swing by the office for a meeting, then we’re back on the road. Besides, it’s good to see you back to normal, kid. You were acting so strange the last time we checked in on you.”
“I wasn’t acting weird, I had a concussion.”
“Sure,” Mr. Harrington said. “Bianca, can you take my jacket upstairs? I’ll be up in a minute. Thanks, sweetheart.”
Silence descended as Mrs. Harrington left in a click of heels on cool tile, and Steve turned back to the dishes. Eddie wasn’t there to see for sure, but it felt strained through the window.
An unsettling feeling swept through Eddie’s stomach and crawled up his throat. He had the weirdest urge to burst in and protect Steve even though his dad hadn’t said anything threatening. It was more like… like the way prey animals have heightened senses to spot danger. Eddie was the wariest prey of them all, and something about Steve’s dad set his alarm bells ringing.
Mr. Harrington and Steve sounded the same on a surface level. Mild humor, dry annoyance as a default, with a crack of charisma shining through. For Steve, this had made people around him want to impress him, to have Steve give a nod of acceptance, a flickered glance of interest. Eddie hadn’t been immune to that; still wasn’t now, even as he’d started to learn that that was just how Steve’s face looked, how he sounded, that he actually cared about things so deeply that he had to bury it all under a bitchy raised eyebrow. When he talked about his kids it was always with an edge of exasperation, but Eddie could feel the love leaking out of him with every complaint about Dustin’s shoes leaving mud in the car or catching Max and Lucas sneaking away to kiss in the Wheelers’ basement again.
Mr. Harrington’s brand of dryness seemed shallow. A riverbed run to dust. His derision hid nothing, his playful jabs and jokes just a hint of mean for no reason.
Steve’s annoyance was warm. When Eddie could provoke that curled lip and that snapping tone, he knew Steve did it to play. He complained about his kids but would rip the world in half for them. Nancy Wheeler broke his heart and he’d still go to war for her, even when he seemed annoyed that that was the case. Like a sunburn, Steve’s ire left marks on Eddie that he prodded at later to feel the sting.
His dad’s dryness was cold.
His mom’s footsteps faded, then Steve must have finished his frantic dishwashing because the water in the sink shut off, and the kitchen was left in even deeper silence save for the little radio in the window quietly playing Time After Time. The silence lingered and seeped into every second, stretching it out like taffy. Eddie’s stomach roiled with discomfort.
“You missed my graduation,” Steve said.
“Did we?” his dad answered, ambivalence in two short syllables. “I didn’t really think there needed to be a celebration for something you were expected to do in the first place.”
Steve stayed silent, a feat of monumental strength; Eddie felt like he could hear Steve’s teeth grinding from outside.
“So, do you have an answer for me, or are you still dicking around and pretending you have other options?” his dad said.
“An answer?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Harrington said, the you idiot follow up silent but clearly implied. “Your offer to start at the firm. Just paralegal work at first, you can’t do more than that without a degree.”
“Oh,” Steve said. Eddie hadn’t known that Steve had been offered a job with his dad. They didn’t ever talk about his dad. Clearly, it was a sore spot for a reason.
“Oh?” his dad repeated, still in that light, teasing tone that chilled the air like dry ice. No joy behind the joke. “This is the best chance you’re going to get, kid. Work for a bit, we’ll pay your way through college and law school, and you’ll come on as a junior partner after you pass the bar. It doesn’t matter what rinky-dink school you got into, you can transfer to Notre Dame when you get your grades up. We know people there, it won’t take much to get you in. Where did you apply to, anyway?”
Steve said, “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t… what?”
“I didn’t apply anywhere.”
“You mean you didn’t apply to any major universities,” his dad said. “Honestly, it probably would have just been a waste of time, with your grades. Better to start small and work your way up. Besides, law schools love that humble shit, you can tell them the sob story in your entrance interview.”
“I didn’t apply anywhere,” Steve said. His voice was the flattest Eddie had ever heard it, even at school when he sometimes looked like he’d been marched to the gallows. “I’m not going to college.”
His dad laughed, like that was a joke, then stopped when it clearly wasn’t. “Yes you are,” he said. “You’re going to college, Steve. Harringtons go to college.”
“I didn’t get into college,” Steve said, the change deliberate. Eddie felt his own adrenaline pumping, and he couldn’t imagine what Steve felt like right now. This was the nightmare Steve hadn’t wanted to confront, and here it was in all its glory.
“You didn’t get in.” Mr. Harrington sounded baffled. “Anywhere? You’re too stupid for every college?”
“I’m not-” Steve said, then cut himself off. Again, Eddie had the awful feeling that Steve was highly aware of Eddie hearing every word of this. “I don’t want to go to college. I don’t care if your connections can get me in. It’s not for me, not now, maybe ever.”
“You do realize that, as well as I do at the firm, we aren’t actually Kennedys, right?” his dad said. “You can’t spend your days fucking around and sleeping the day away, unless that new girlfriend of yours is a Rockefeller cousin that just moved to town.”
Eddie almost wished this was his entrance cue, like this was a sitcom, like this was where he’d be revealed through a series of comedic mishaps, and Steve would gulp audibly and go, Uh-oh! and shrug at the camera. But this was hideously real. Steve said, with no wink to any fictional camera, “I’ll get a job.”
“And who would take you? Who’s desperate enough to hire the guy who barely graduated high school and has no ambition for more?”
“Someone will,” Steve said, that fierceness roaring up. “And I do have ambition, I do have a plan, it’s just not matching up with yours.”
“Then it’s a shitty plan!” Mr. Harrington laughed. “Are you serious about this? You’re going to go be a waiter, or a- a cashier, and ruin everything I set up for you?”
“I didn’t ruin anything,” Steve said. “I don’t care about the firm. I never did!”
“It’s got your name on it, our name on it, so you should care,” his dad said, cold now. “Especially seeing as how that name is just about the only thing you have anymore that’s worth anything.”
In the angry, crackling moment after that, the sounds of heels reappeared, and Eddie had the briefest flare of hope that the Harringtons were packed and would be leaving and Eddie could go back in and hug their son, even though that was definitely against the rules. He wanted to call Wayne and let him know he’d be with Steve for one more night, and he wanted to tuck Steve Harrington back into his bed and slide up close behind him, and whisper the opposite of everything his dad just said until Steve believed it. Even if it took all night. Even if it took a year. A decade. The rest of their lives.
(The rule book was on fire. The rule book spontaneously combusted and left behind a square of ash and the smell of smoke.)
“Everything alright in here?” Mrs. Harrington said, with bright cheer.
Steve’s dad’s voice was back to its cool humor. “Peachy keen, dear. Steve’s going to spend the summer working and will make a decision on his future after that.”
“Oh, wonderful,” she said. Again, a flare of hope, and Eddie wondered if Steve might finally have an ally in his conversation. But then: “It’ll be good for you to have something to do, since you’re not getting ready for college. That will open up quite a lot of time in your schedule, won’t it?”
And another puzzle piece clicked into place: Steve had learned smarmy assholery from one master, and apparently got his passive aggression from another.
“Anyway, I think that’s a perfect idea,” Mrs. Harrington said. “This is the best way for you to get those skills you lack. Work ethic, and such. That’ll be so important when you’re doing your real job someday.”
Steve’s dad snorted. “Yeah, if he ever gets one.” And then there was the sound of his exit, like a storm cloud floating out of view.
Steve had retreated into silence. Click-clack went the heels once more, and Eddie heard the soft sound of a kiss, presumably to Steve’s cheek.
“It’ll be nice to be home for a night,” his mother said. “I miss you terribly while we’re gone, Steven. And I always mean to call, but you know how my pills affect me at the end of the day. Come on, come sit. Tell me all about graduation. Did you win any awards?”
“I’ll, uh- I’ll be there in a minute, Mom. Gotta finish up the dishes.”
“Oh, of course,” she said. “Maybe you could get a job as a maid? You always did look good in black.” And she laughed a little, before leaving too.
Eddie stayed there, crouched under the window, as he heard Steve take in a breath, and let it out. It didn’t shake, it didn’t waver. He was still for a moment, then he left the room. Then he was back, and a set of keys dangled over Eddie’s head.
Eddie stood and faced Steve through the window. Steve’s eyes were averted, his cheeks red. The bruising and scratches across his chest looked vicious in the daylight. Eddie was mortified, but for no real reason he could put into words. His stomach also ached like it never had before. “Hey. Steve. Are you- do you want-”
“No, I’m fine,” Steve said. “Here. I’ll call you tomorrow to get the car back to me.”
“Steve,” Eddie said again, helpless. He took the keys.
“I’m fine,” he repeated. “You should go.”
Luckily, Wayne wasn’t home when Eddie got there, because even a sarcastic call of nice shorts, Marathon Man would have sent Eddie spiraling.
He fumbled his way inside the house, stripped out of Steve’s shorts and tossed them onto the floor, but left Steve’s shirt on. The morning had been so horrible that Eddie hadn’t paid any attention to it yet, but he did now: he’d been given a white Hawkins Swim shirt, the front naming him Captain, the back emblazoned with HARRINGTON.
Eddie sank onto his bed and put his head in his hands, and, for the first time, he finally cried over Steve Harrington.
Three evenings later, he snuck into the once-again empty Harrington house. Steve had called him earlier, and had said the kids were wanting to have a movie night at the Wheelers’, and he was chaperoning. He’d said he thought he had a job lined up for the summer, but hadn’t said anything else. It was the closest they had come to talking about it.
Eddie used the spare key Steve gave him for emergencies and let himself in, and snuck upstairs. He dithered for a moment, but decided to leave his present on the desk, and spent a few minutes arranging it to perfection: a tape, purchased earlier that day in the record store a town over, the Carpenters album Yesterday Once More; a fill-in-yourself recipe book with just one recipe already inside (Wayne’s chili recipe, a staple in the Munson household); and a single roadside daisy.
Steve never mentioned it, but the next time Eddie came over, the wilted daisy was still placed in a full cup of water in the window, facing the sun.
Notes:
NOTES:
- The Carpenters song Eddie thinks of is I Won't Last A Day Without You, from 1972. It's a very touching, sweet song, and also horrifically sad lyrics if you think of it in the context of tiny Eddie being abandoned by his mom and her leaving that record behind for him.
- A Flock of Seagulls was an English new wave band that had some crossover top 40 hits, but were culturally known for their very specific hairstyles. It’s hard to explain, so I encourage google!
- Casey Kasem is a legendary host and co-creator of the American Top 40 radio countdown, which is still in production and hosted by Ryan Seacrest currently. Casey was the original host from 1970-1988. He’s also the original voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, which has no bearing on the story but is important To Me.
- Wham!’s Everything She Wants was the number one song on AT40 in the week of May 25th, 1985.
- That stat about men being much more likely to leave their ill/dying spouses is true, unfortunately.
- Line dancing/square dancing is a thing in American high school gym classes, and that was especially the case in the 80s-90s.
- You’d know dolphin shorts if you saw them. They’re the really short shorts with contrasting piping and rounded corners, and were made popular starting in the 80s.
Chapter 7: six: THE TRAILER | THE MALL
Summary:
“You know,” Eddie edges far enough around the couch that Steve can see him again. He holds up two fingers by his mouth like fangs. “The teeth, the eyes. Are you a commander of the undead? A count on Sesame Street? A Friend of Dracula’s, so to speak?”
Steve snorts, and that seems to take the last bit of energy out of him. He closes his eyes. He’s completely vulnerable; if Eddie was the dangerous type, Steve would be scared, but he isn’t and Steve’s not. Just tired.
“No,” Steve says. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Well. Good. Though that could be cool,” Eddie says.
“Only because you have a thing for Bela Lugosi,” Steve says.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
For a long time, Steve does something like sleep. He doesn’t think he’s actually sleeping — doesn’t think he can do that anymore — but his brain fuzzes out and his eyes close and that’s close enough. The fluttering of demobat wings have somehow become familiar enough that it’s like rain on a metal roof or the comforting hum of the box fan the Munsons would run from April to November.
He’s exhausted in a way that’s unfamiliar, which he didn’t think was possible anymore. Steve thought he had experienced every type of tired known to man: the up-all-night crying from heartbreak exhaustion, the forcing his eyes open because someone has to be the adult and keep watch exhaustion, the bone-deep exhaustion of oh, shit, not again. The unending weariness of grief. The childhood fear that this would be the time his parents wouldn’t come home, so he would sleep fitfully in the big, empty house until they were back. The sterile hospital flavor of exhaustion when he stayed with his mom through her treatments. The nights he spent with his back against Dustin Henderson’s bedroom door, there to keep watch because Dustin was scared, but not in the room because then Dustin would try to force himself to stay awake to show how tough he was. The exhaustion that came from a night of nightmares, almost worse than no sleep at all. Strained muscles and bleeding wounds exhaustion. Staying awake to check for concussion symptoms exhaustion. Holding others through their nightmares exhaustion.
All of that, he knew intimately. This is different.
His body isn’t tired at all. He isn’t sore from sitting in one place for who knows how long, since his body doesn’t seem to be involved at all once he travels into Eddie’s head.
But his mind is so worn away and woozy that he’s afraid that he won’t be able to defend himself if Vecna comes back, if the bats turn on him. If he even had to answer a question right now, he thinks his brain would just rip in half. Distantly, he remembers Vecna’s warning about needing energy from the other world, but his confused mind can’t make heads or tails of anything right now. He feels like every bit of power he has is being spent on not dying.
Lying there with his eyes closed, he becomes aware of a feeling cutting through his heavy, thick weariness: his palm, the right one, the one with the strings of light, is warm.
Almost on instinct, Steve follows the feeling, and blinks awake to find himself right back in the exact same room. He’s standing now, shirtless and dirty, bloodcrusted. He’s tan again for just a moment as the memory starts, but then that flickers away like the illusion wasn’t worth maintaining. He’s back to silver skin and claws, fangs and growls.
He holds Eddie in his arms like a bride.
“Hey,” Steve rasps, voice thick and deep; voice like Vecna. He gets it now, gets why Eddie would run. He would run too, faced with a monster.
Eddie, back in his Upside Down armor, his camo bandana keeping his sweaty bangs back, his ripped up chest and stomach bleeding sluggishly, has his arms around Steve’s neck. “Hey,” he answers.
For a moment, they just look at each other. It almost feels like a frozen moment, except there’s a swaying rope made of sheets dangling next to them, and Steve’s pretty sure if he looked up, he’d see Nancy and Robin and Dustin through a portal in the ceiling. He wonders what will happen when the memory doesn’t continue like it did the first time around, when he’s not able to lift Eddie up through the gate, when Vecna doesn’t stop him and speak in his head. Do the three who are characters in this memory keep going like actors on a stage? Or do they freeze in place like Steve did?
Steve is already breathless just from standing and holding Eddie, and Eddie doesn’t seem to feel the pain from his wounds, so Steve gingerly lets Eddie go so he can collapse onto the moldy, spore-covered couch.
“I think you’re supposed to be shoving me through the ceiling hole,” Eddie says haltingly, thumbing back over his shoulder at the hole in question. “You don’t really look up for that at the moment, though.”
“No,” Steve agrees and, without input from him, his body slumps over, drained.
“Shit,” Eddie says, and there’s a shuffling sound like he’d started to move closer but stopped himself. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Steve says again, and gets a mouthful of musty alternate dimension couch for his trouble. He rolls his head to the side. “Think I’m about out of juice.”
“Juice… like- like blood? Are you- uh.” Eddie does step closer then. “I know the kids made fun of you when you suggested it, but are you, like, a vampire?”
“What?” Steve asks. He’s still awkwardly fallen over on the couch, like a puppet with his strings cut. The words seem to be floating out of him, like how he’s at his loosest two beers in after not sleeping for two days. This feels like that, just colder. And, normally, a sleepless two-beer night would have Eddie pressed against him on the couch, keeping him laughing, keeping him away from the dipping darkness of his nightmares until he was able to pass out into dreamless sleep. Obviously, that’s not happening here.
“You know,” Eddie edges far enough around the couch that Steve can see him again. He holds up two fingers by his mouth like fangs. “The teeth, the eyes. Are you a commander of the undead? A count on Sesame Street? A Friend of Dracula’s, so to speak?”
Steve snorts, and that seems to take the last bit of energy out of him. He closes his eyes. He’s completely vulnerable; if Eddie was the dangerous type, Steve would be scared, but he isn’t and Steve’s not. Just tired.
“No,” Steve says. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Well. Good. Though that could be cool,” Eddie says. There’s a sound Steve recognizes without opening his eyes, a slide back and forth: Eddie scuffing his foot against the floor, like a bashful kid. It makes Steve smile, though smiling makes his face ache.
“Only because you have a thing for Bela Lugosi,” Steve says.
“Excuse you,” Eddie says, affronted. “There are other reasons it would be cool, like the flying, and the enhanced senses. Also, everyone has a thing for Bela’s Dracula. He’s the best one.”
“I can fly,” Steve says. His eyes are still closed. Like this, he could almost imagine this is a normal day at the trailer, and he’s trying to take a nap but Eddie won’t stop pestering him. Any minute now, Wayne will drag Eddie out to let Steve rest and make Eddie help reshingle the roof, or patch a neighbor’s screen door. They’ll be back in a few hours and Steve will have dinner ready, or two cold beers open and sweating on the counter for them. Or maybe Robin will come bounding in with yet another sad French film about lesbians that she says Steve has to watch because it’s his heritage, or something. The lesbian part, not the French part, though Steve’s not a lesbian, far as he knows. He squeezes his eyes tighter, because he can smell the moldy ozone of the Upside Down, and Eddie’s keeping a careful distance like he hasn’t done since Steve kissed him at a picnic table in the woods that first time. It’s not a normal day. Nothing’s normal anymore. “And I have enhanced senses now.”
“And you’re trying to tell me you aren’t a vampire?” Eddie says skeptically. Another shuffling noise, and Steve feels the nearness of Eddie when he’s finally close enough to touch, though Steve can’t make that happen because he’s pretty sure his arms have disconnected. He can’t feel anything below his chin.
“I don’t drink blood,” Steve says.
“Well, that is the big one,” Eddie says. “Are… are you sure?”
Steve cracks his eye open, just enough to see Eddie crouched on the floor in front of him, looking more concerned than he should be. “Pretty sure I haven’t drank blood, yes.”
“I hate to be insensitive, my dear,” Eddie says; the pet name comes naturally, his uncertain pause after it does not. He barrels onward rather than drawing attention to it. “But you look about three seconds from unconsciousness, so maybe you’re missing something that you need.”
“I don’t need blood,” Steve says. He doesn’t know why, but he knows it’s true.
“Okay,” Eddie says. In the silence that follows, Steve can start to feel the warm, tingling feeling in his apparently-still-attached fingers that says he’ll be leaving this memory soon, pulled back to this same trailer, sans Eddie and plus bat horde.
“I don’t want to go back,” Steve mumbles.
“Then don’t.”
“Can’t stay. Not strong enough.”
“Can I help?” Eddie asks.
“Prob’ly not,” Steve says. His jaw feels like it’s starting to lock, his muscles freezing. It’s going to be so goddamn embarrassing if Vecna has to save him from the edge of death yet again because Steve couldn’t figure out how to eat energy, or whatever.
Eddie huffs a little sound, and scoots closer. “I hate this. I hate seeing this.”
“Mm,” Steve hums his agreement. His eyes flicker closed one last time. “Yeah, this must suck for you.”
That time, Eddie does laugh, an incredulous chuckle, and something lights up in Steve’s body. He feels it like a jolt, like those paddle things they use on General Hospital when a patient is dying. A shot of adrenaline sends his veins thrumming, and his eyes flutter open again.
“What the hell,” he says. “Do that again.”
“What?” Eddie asks.
“Laugh,” Steve says.
“What?” Eddie repeats, but he does laugh, a little baffled sound. Steve feels it like a shot of tequila on an empty stomach, whirling and bright.
“Jesus,” he groans, and shivers. He gets his hands underneath himself and pushes back up to sitting. He feels like he’s pulsing with light, like he just woke up from a nap and, for the first time in years, is refreshed and rested and ready for anything.
Eddie stares at him, mouth open.
“Is that all it takes?” Eddie asks. “I have to laugh?”
“I don’t know how this shit works,” Steve says, stretching his hands out and flexing his fingers. He hasn’t felt this good since before they went into the Upside Down the first time. “But yeah, apparently.”
“Well, fuck, okay,” Eddie says. “I guess the next time you come to haunt my dreams you should bring a few knock-knock jokes with you.”
Steve frowns. “I’m not haunting you.”
“Sure as shit fooled me,” Eddie says. “Showing up every night looking like the Tin Man’s demonic brother come to drag me to hell.”
Steve worries at his lip with a fang, an unconscious thing; once he realized he had them, he couldn’t help but run his tongue along the points or press his thumb to make an indentation. It was like prodding the empty spot after losing a tooth, relearning the shape of his own mouth. He sees Eddie’s eyes catch on the sharp edge and makes himself not hide it away, knowing that Eddie won’t run if he knows what he’s up against. Finally, he says, “Is it really that bad?”
Steve’s under no illusions here. He might feel like himself (besides all the new, y’know. The changes. The magic powers and such), but he definitely doesn’t look like himself anymore. He could trick himself into thinking everything was fine, but Eddie still saw a monster when he looked at Steve. The only thing that was familiar when Steve had looked in the mirror was his t-shirt. And his hair. His hair was blessedly still the same, still ruffled but cool. Of course, the last time he checked was days ago; who knows what it looks like now. Steve pats at his hair out of instinct, ruffles it back into shape like he used to do after taking off his sailor hat from Scoops.
Eddie catches him and snorts at him, and Steve feels the sound of it like a teasing touch, like playful fingers dancing across his chest.
“No,” Eddie finally says. “It’s new, and you caught me off guard those first few times, that’s for sure-”
“First hundred times,” Steve says dryly. “I chased you for days.”
Eddie grins a little. “Yeah, well, I’m a coward, what can I say. And I was pretty sure you were dead and your ghost had come to exact revenge.”
“Why would I do that?” Steve asks.
“Well, according to the research I’ve done, specifically in the esteemed scholarly works of Poltergeist and The Fog, when someone dies in a way that is particularly awful or wrong, they come back to haunt the person who caused it.”
“You didn’t cause anything,” Steve says. “Eddie, are you serious? You aren’t the reason I’m- I’m like this, whatever this is. I was the last one through the gate by my choice. If it had been you, or Dustin, or anyone, Vecna would have trapped that person instead. It was bad luck.”
“You were last because you had to help me through,” Eddie argues, “and you all would have been long gone without me.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “If we’d left you there, it would be you leading Vecna’s monster army instead of me, which isn’t any better.”
Eddie freezes. “What?”
“It’s not any better if it’s you stuck in the Upside Down instead of me,” Steve repeats, a little shittier the second time out.
“No, not- not that part,” Eddie says. “What was that about an army?”
“Oh,” Steve says. He forgot they hadn’t gotten to that yet. “Right. So. For Vecna to let me live, I had to make a deal.”
“A deal to be his puppet?” Eddie asks.
“No, more like- I have some of his powers, and I help him, like, run the place.”
“Why?” Eddie asks. “Why would he do that? Why would he give you anything?”
Right. The hard part. “Because he plans to use me to get you all back in the Upside Down for one last fight.”
“You’re… bait?” Eddie asks, and slumps onto the couch next to Steve, looking winded.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “I think the only way I can get out is if you all come back in. He seems to think Eleven has to be the one to open the door from your side. So I’m here to convince you of that, I guess.”
“Pretty effective bait,” Eddie concedes faintly. “Jesus. I thought- I don’t know what I thought. I guess you’d somehow absorbed some of the Upside Down by being trapped so long. I didn’t realize he’d given it to you.”
“It’s definitely gotten more, I don’t know, visible? Obvious? Over time. I didn’t look like this at first.”
“So, sorry, but Wheeler’s been rubbing off on me with her flashcards and I just- I need a summary,” Eddie says. “You got trapped here because you were the last one through, and you made a deal with Vecna to get his powers-”
“And not die,” Steve interjects.
“-and not die,” Eddie says, “so that you could be used to lure us all back into hell for a final rumble. That’s… a lot.”
“He thinks there’s no way you’ll win,” Steve says. “That’s why he’s okay with me knowing the plan, he doesn’t think it’ll matter.”
“Right,” Eddie says. “Well, based on the previous track record, I think he’s got a good reason for that.” He buries his face in his hands. “God, I can’t believe Robin has to find out you’re still alive and trapped. The fucking kids-”
“Do you… do you think they’ll come?” Steve asks. “For me, I mean?”
Eddie laughs, but this one is so broken that it doesn’t stir anything in Steve’s blood. “It’s taken everything Nancy, Robin, and I could come up with to keep them away so far. They never would have left you in the first place, if they didn’t have to. They hate that you were trapped. No, that’s not it— they’re furious. They’re out for revenge.”
Steve isn't so sure. He wasn’t the planner, the brains, the innocent to be protected. He was the hitter. If Vecna had offered the deal to him up front, Steve probably would have agreed to it to keep everyone safe. Dustin, the other kids, Robin. Nance. Eddie. All of them deserved to get out, and they did. He knows Rob misses him, knows it like he knows his own mind, and of course Eddie missed him until he showed up again. The kids probably do too, but missing him and going back into the nightmare realm for him are two different things.
For a moment, it’s quiet as they both think.
“Of course,” Eddie says slowly, “this all assumes that you’re telling the truth.”
“I am,” Steve says immediately. “I really am Steve, there really was a deal.”
“I don’t doubt any of that,” Eddie says, tilting his head to look over at Steve. “I believe you’re Steve, or whatever is left of Steve. And I believe there was a deal — now that I think about it, it would take more than time spent in the Upside Down to change as much as you have. I mean, look at Will. He’s different from his time spent here, but not the way you are.”
“So you do believe me,” Steve says.
“I… I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I want to. Maybe that’s the issue. But what if Vecna’s lying to you? And then, even if you are telling the truth, how do I know you won’t have to tell Vecna everything we talk about?”
“No, I know,” Steve says. His stomach aches, a ball of awful nerves. He feels like any wrong word could derail everything. “I don’t even know the answer to that. I haven’t seen him in days, and he’s hardly, like, forthcoming about everything. I’m, uh. I’m kind of being punished, right now.”
“Punished?” Eddie’s gaze sharpens. “Why?”
“Tried to kill him?” Steve says sheepishly, now realizing what an awful plan he’d made. Like a 2x4 full of nails was going to do in the prince of darkness, or whatever.
“Christ,” Eddie laughs. (Steve feels it in his lungs like he swallowed fireflies.) “Sure, why not? Is he- he’s not hurting you, right?”
“Oh,” Steve says, and for the first time wants to hold back a little. He’s always tried to be honest with Eddie without getting him hurt (maybe too honest, or at least more honest than Eddie wanted from him), but Steve suddenly doesn’t want Eddie to have all the gruesome details. It feels like fuel on an already roaring fire. “Just, like. Solitary confinement. He’s locked me in the trailer, actually.”
Eddie’s gaze is steady and Steve has the rising feeling of Eddie seeing his lie for what it is. “That’s it?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. “So what do we do now?”
Eddie snorts, rubs his face again. “I have no fucking idea. I feel like if I call a group meeting and say, hey, everyone, you were right and Steve’s still in there, and Vecna’s set a very obvious trap for us to come get him, the kids would run for the nearest gate so fast they’d just turn into puffs of smoke like on Scooby Doo.”
“They think I’m still alive?” Steve asks.
“Some days, yeah,” Eddie answers quietly. “I don’t suppose you could pop into their heads to explain this to them, could you?”
“I don’t think so,” Steve admits. “I’ve tried, but you’re the only one that has worked.”
The tingling has returned to his fingers, staved off for a little while by the energy from Eddie’s laughter, but not to be ignored entirely.
“You’re… fading,” Eddie says.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “But I’ll come find you again, I promise.”
“I know you will,” Eddie says.
“Think of a happy memory, next time,” Steve says. “For me.”
And then he dissolves away, back to the trailer full of bats, the pulse of golden light still burning through him. This time, for the first time, Eddie watches as he goes, and he almost looks sad.
When Steve blinks back into himself in the trailer once more, there’s a demobat wrapped around his ankle and another by his ear. He doesn’t even startle anymore; the things are kind of like big stupid cats. The Hendersons’ second cat, Tews, seemed to always know when someone wanted to pet him and would archly ignore that person like a king passing a beggar, but the moment someone was busy cooking, or sleeping, or just not in the mood, Tews was like Velcro, stuck on like burrs. The bats are like that, but worse in every conceivable way.
Steve’s started noticing a few differences between them. One of the bats has a half-tail, like a junkyard dog that lost a fight. A few are more brown than gray-black. Some have spots. One has something like a racing stripe down its back.
He’s started calling the striped one Speed Racer after that cartoon Dustin is gaga over, but then he stops himself, because naming the hell monsters seems like a step too far. Didn’t he argue with Dustin about that same thing with Dart?
“Go on,” Steve says as he comes back to himself. That was the longest time he’d spent in a memory yet, but he still feels rejuvenated from Eddie’s laughter. He can’t even begin to puzzle that whole thing out; he knows for sure Vecna doesn’t feed on laughter, so why does Steve? He shoos his hand at the bat by his face (a polka dotted one he’d been calling Minnie Mouse in his head) and says, “Scram, you little nightmare.”
The bats chitter as the two leave Steve alone and join the others, but it’s the irritated rustling of a spoiled pet told they can’t have more treats. Just like Tews. Steve rolls his eyes.
“You seem to have a way with them,” Vecna says, and Steve yelps and rolls to his feet.
“What the hell,” he gasps, hand to his frantically beating heart. “How long have you been here?”
Vecna stands in his wide-legged stance right under the bit of ceiling where the gate used to be. He’s back to that overlaid look of a thin, pale man with wide blue eyes under the monster outside. Steve wonders if that’s because he’s not seen him in a few days, or if it’s the energy he got from Eddie making his vision as good as it was when he was first changed.
“Not long,” Vecna says silkily. “You look like you’ve clawed back from the verge of death.”
“Yeah, well, your instructions weren’t all that clear and I don’t know what I’m doing,” Steve says, annoyed.
“Yet you figured it out,” Vecna says. “As I knew you would.”
“Only because I chased Eddie for days,” Steve says. “I couldn’t even give him a break, since I can’t visit anyone else but the other option was twiddling my thumbs in the trailer full of nightmares-”
“You can’t visit anyone else?” Vecna cuts through his irritated tirade. “Just Eddie Munson?”
Steve feels a little like he gave away a major clue that he didn’t realize was a major clue. “Uh. Yeah? Just Eddie.”
“Show me,” Vecna commands, and stalks closer. He reaches for Steve’s arm with that awful big clawed hand, and turns it over so the lights glow on his palm. Steve obliges, because he’s also curious — maybe now that he’s got more energy (fed? Is that the right word?), he can visit someone other than Eddie. He finds Robin’s string of light — marbled blue and gold, has the texture of polyester like their Scoops uniforms and Family Video vests — and tries to follow it. He can feel her (she’s… tired? Worried? Sad? Negative emotions cloud him like perfume) but it’s like he’s still hitting a wall. Same with Dustin, all the same feelings as Robin and equally spiky, but he can’t go anywhere. He tries everyone in the party, even the weaker threads of Will and Jon and Eleven, but there’s nothing there except snatches of sadness. He steels himself and reaches for the lilac and rosewater one that feels like his mom. He can feel a gut-churning worry, and he knows that’s for him — she doesn’t have big reactions to her husband’s antics anymore — and he wants to see her so badly, even if it’s to haunt her, like Eddie said, but he doesn’t even feel a little give when he tries to follow it.
When he’s exhausted all his options he’s breathing hard, tired again. Not as spent as he had been before, but not at top level. It almost feels like he’s battery operated now, and every little effort takes away from his total charge. He’ll have to drop in to hear Eddie’s laugh just to make sure he can do the minimum of what he wants to do, like pop from place to place and tell the bats to leave him alone.
“Laughter,” muses Vecna. Right. Mind reading. “You truly are a sentimental thing, aren’t you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asks, taking his hand back.
“I feed on fear because it’s an easy resource,” Vecna says, like he’s giving a lecture. Steve just notes the use of the word feed, because apparently that is what he’s doing. Eating Eddie’s laughter. In a way, it’s kind of thrilling. “People give their fear away so easily. It’s an unending supply. And yet you’re drawn to laughter, which not only relies on people not running from you, but enjoying your company.”
“Why does it matter?” Steve asks. “I did it. I- fed, or whatever. Who cares how it happens?”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter, if you’ve tricked your way into his confidence enough to sustain yourself,” Vecna muses.
“I didn’t trick him,” Steve argues. “He was happy to see me, because even when I look like this it means I’m not fucking dead.”
“Oh?” Vecna asks. “I suppose his tune has changed, then.”
Steve doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to give this vine-faced bastard the satisfaction. But also- “What are you talking about?”
“I just mean to say that he didn’t seem devastated when you didn’t make it to the surface world,” Vecna says. “I was a little surprised, to be honest. But, I never really understood relationships. I was always a solitary child, and then I was in a laboratory. Perhaps that lack of reaction is normal.”
Jesus. Steve focuses on the important part of Vecna’s little speech. “Of course he was sad. Why wouldn’t he have been sad? And I thought you were trapped here?”
“I was, but I caught a few glimpses as the gates closed.” Vecna smiles a little, that thin face under his monster layer sly. “I can show you, if you want.”
Once, when they were working a slow shift, Robin had asked Steve, “If you could fake your death and attend your own funeral, would you?”
“No?” he’d answered without giving it any thought. “That seems like a lot of work, and also, I don’t want people to think I’m dead.”
“But you can see their true feelings for you that way!” Robin said. “People are always more honest when the person’s not around anymore.”
“It feels like they’d be kinder, because they’d feel bad,” Steve pointed out.
Robin had snorted. “No way. I’d do it. I don’t want to live my life based on how people think about me, but I would be curious.”
Steve shuddered. “Ugh, I wouldn’t. I’ve had enough people suck up to me or be nice to my face and call me stupid behind my back, I couldn’t stand it.”
“Luckily,” Robin had said, patting his arm, “I think it’s unlikely to happen.”
Well, here he fucking was, huh. He sighs.
“Fine,” he says. “Go on.”
There’s a clock chiming, clung, clung, clung, clung, and Steve feels the world around him go black and melt away, and another scene takes its place.
The trailer. This same trailer, except the actual one — Wayne and Eddie’s house on the right side of the gate. The floor is gross with mud and blood and debris, scattered backpacks full of gear and weapons. Nancy’s sawed off. Eddie’s guitar.
And his friends. God. Eddie’s face he’s seen recently, so his gaze sticks on Rob, on Dustin, Nance. Teary and frightened, they all stare up at the ceiling, scarred from where the gate used to be and still coated in otherworldly vines.
“He- he didn’t make it,” Nancy whispers. Her hand shakes as she brings it up to her mouth.
“Why?” Robin asks, throaty with tears. “What happened? Why didn’t he just climb?”
“Because he’s an idiot!” Dustin shouts, all misplaced anger, face wet. “Because he never did what he was supposed to do!”
Robin wraps an arm around Dustin’s shoulders and he shudders out angry breaths. Nancy looks away from the closed gate first.
“Eddie,” she says, “Come on, we have to get you to a hospital.”
Dustin pushes his way to the front door, his limp pronounced. Robin follows, wringing her hands.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, little more than a breath. He still stares up at the closed gate, his arm wrapped around his waist. Blood seeps through his Hellfire shirt. “Yeah. Of course. Is there anything- should we do something?”
“I can’t believe it,” Robin says. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“But he is,” Dustin says, hand on the doorknob. “He is, and we have to go. We have to get to Max.”
There’s a murmur of agreement, and then the four of them leave furtively through the front door of the trailer after Nancy checks that the coast is clear. They all shoot sad looks back at the portal, but are quiet as they leave. As the door closes, Vecna says, “I suppose that’s all you could ask for, right? Sadness at your death, and commitment to the task at hand?”
But Steve can’t answer. He is so thoroughly aware that Vecna is picking every thought out of his head that he ends up shoving it all out and just not thinking about it. “Get me out of here,” he says.
“Of course,” Vecna says, and smiles, and it’s terrible.
The thing is, that is what Steve wants to be real. He doesn’t want to think about his friends hurting from his loss, aching for him when he very well might never come back. If he could choose a way to go, it would be out of sight of his friends so they’re not left with a terrible memory, and if he could go out swinging, even better. He would want everyone to be sad for a moment, just for the sake of his pride, and then carry on. No use crying over spilled Steve, or whatever.
But- but to see it happen that way. His heart hurts, and his throat aches with something unsaid. It’s unfair. It’s- it’s not right. But is it right?
Steve can’t think about this. Vecna’s no doubt reading every one of his thoughts, trying to find broken links in the chain to push until he breaks.
He won’t break.
He goes out to the lake full of sleeping monsters and takes a deep breath. He opens his mind wide and nudges a demobat awake. He makes it crawl over, its eyeless face looking up at him. He reaches out with a hand and twists his wrist harshly to the side; the demobat’s neck cracks. It lies dead, a creature gone, one less little killer to deal with.
And Steve doesn’t feel any better. He could kill them all, from the smallest bat to the great winged demogorgons he’s seen shuffling around on the far edges of the lake, and it wouldn’t matter. Because he’s trapped in here with a real monster, and the monster wants to kill his friends, and Steve is selfish enough that he agreed to help make that happen.
He turns his palm over and finds the cassette tape fuzziness and denim texture of Eddie’s string of light, follows it. Eddie’s sitting on the loveseat in Steve’s living room, hands twisting nervously between his knees. He looks up, wide-eyed, when he sees Steve there.
“I need you to show me what happened when I was trapped,” Steve says.
And then, as if from a distance, he hears screaming.
THEN
JUNE 1985
“I guess, okay,” Steve said from the bathroom, his voice echoing because he was leaning up close to the mirror, working to get his hair to lay perfectly how he wanted. Eddie watched in fascination; not of the haircare routine, which was opaque and magical to Eddie, he of the grocery store generic shampoo and a broken-tooth comb, but of the way the sailor uniform shorts pulled tight across Steve’s ass like they were tailored for him. Steve saw his look, and cocked a single eyebrow as he continued. “I just don’t really understand how capitalism can be bad when, like, we have to buy stuff. So, uh, people also have to sell stuff, right?”
“But that’s the thing, dearest!” Eddie said. He was starfished out across Steve’s bed, his boots up on top of the headboard and leaving tiny little scuffs on the wall, which settled something possessive in Eddie’s horrible chest. He liked leaving marks all over Steve Harrington, in whatever way he could. Sometimes he marked Steve’s walls, boot scuffs and pencil scribbles and a Mötley Crüe poster that was a compromise for both of them. Sometimes it was his body, the long column of his neck, the rise of his shoulders, the dip of his sternum, all purple-red from Eddie’s mouth and fingertips. Steve’s desk had quickly accumulated some of Eddie’s daily detritus and was starting to look like a smaller version of the intentional chaos of Eddie’s bedroom. All of it made his heart feel like a purring cat. “Do we have to buy stuff? Humans went millennia without creating money, it used to be all bartering systems and communal living. Money is just fancy paper with dead people on it, and we’ve decided that it has value and we need it to be able to have food and shelter.”
“But, like,” Steve said slowly, still futzing with his hair, “okay, but, even if that’s true, it’s not like we can just pretend money isn’t real. We still have to have money to live even if we think the whole system is bullshit.” Then he rattled around in his bathroom drawer and pulled out that “moisturizing lip balm” that made his mouth all shiny and pretty pink. He swiped the tube around his mouth and continued, “Unless we just decide to go steal all the money and burn it so no one has any and we’re all equal, or something.”
“Oh, baby,” Eddie grinned, rolling to his stomach and catching Steve’s eyes in the mirror. “Someday I’m going to introduce you to a little friend of mine named Karl Marx, and you are going to get along so well.”
“I don’t know a Karl,” Steve frowned, fluffing his hair once more. “Is that the kid who always threw up when we had to do rope climbing in gym?”
“Nah, that was Carl with a C. He was harmless. He wrote an English essay for me once for the cheap price of two joints,” Eddie said, and Steve snorted.
“Well,” Steve stepped out of the bathroom. “It might not be very metal of me, but I still do have to go to work in the… what was it?”
“Capitalistic hellhole,” Eddie supplied cheerfully.
“Right,” Steve said, dry as a bone. “So, are you hanging out here, or what?”
“Ugh, no thanks,” Eddie said. The only thing that tempted him into entering the Harrington house after that disastrous first visit post-graduation was Steve, so if Steve was leaving, Eddie was leaving. “I’ve got some stuff to pick up, anyway. Want to ride together?”
“You need to pick up some stuff from the mall, which you just spent half an hour convincing me was a symbol of all the evil in the world,” Steve said.
“Yes, Harrington. I, too, fall prey to the convenience of shiny stores with fun things in them.” Plus, you’re there, he didn’t say, because those weren’t the sorts of things they told each other.
“Sure, whatever. You going home tonight?” Steve asked, slipping into his blue tennis shoes that he bought the day he got his job to perfectly match the uniform.
“Probably. Wayne’s home early tonight, might make dinner.”
“What, boxed mac and cheese and hot dogs?”
“... So?”
“Fuck off, I’ll cook,” Steve said. “But come on, I’m going to be late and Robin already hates me.”
“Because she has taste, gorgeous,” Eddie said, and laughed as he dodged Steve's swipe.
“What does that say about you, then?” Steve grumbled.
“That you’re worth me breaking my rules,” Eddie said, on the verge of too sincere. Steve’s mouth twitched up in the corners, and he leaned down and let Eddie kiss the shine off his lips for a precious minute, before pulling away and ushering them both out the door.
“When’s your little tagalong back from camp, again?” Eddie asked, thumbing through the stack of tapes in Steve’s glove compartment.
“Around Fourth of July, I think,” Steve said. “He sent me a fucking letter, man, did I tell you?”
“You did,” Eddie said. “Remember, you asked me what ‘perspicacious’ meant.” And then they’d had to dig out a dictionary from the Harrington home office, because Eddie didn’t know either.
“Oh, right,” Steve said. “Little asshole using words he knows I won’t know.”
“So basically you’ll have a trade,” Eddie said as the mall came into view. “I’ll head out of town that week and you’ll get your most perspicacious teenager back to keep you preoccupied.”
Eddie and Wayne had been planning a trip out to Missouri to see family, just the few days that Wayne could get off work from the plant and Eddie had asked off from the tire shop where he picked up hours when they needed extra hands. Steve wasn’t happy about it — not that Eddie was going to see family, but that he couldn’t come, stuck at his own minimum wage prison as he was.
(“You want to come with me to meet my Memaw?” Eddie had asked skeptically. “In Missouri?”
And Steve, with no hint of sarcasm, frowned and said, “Yeah, of course. Why not?”)
“Yeah, I guess,” Steve said now, navigating the BMW into a parking spot way at the back of the lot, because the mall owners got real weird about employees taking the good spots at the front. “What are you here to get, anyway?”
“You know that vest I’ve been working on?” Eddie asked, sliding out of the car into the heavy June heat. Steve nodded, swiping his uniform hat from the backseat. “The record store here has a patch bin, and it’s a mostly shit selection but I found an Anthrax patch last week and so I thought I’d give it another go. And then Wayne’s birthday, you know.”
“Oh, shit, that’s right,” Steve said. He dug his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out forty bucks. Eddie was no good at math, but he was pretty sure that was almost a whole week’s paycheck for him. “Here, get him something from both of us.” They were up to the entrance by now, crowded as it always was, and so Eddie didn’t have time to dissect the warm, bubbly feeling of Steve wanting to do a joint present for Eddie’s basically-dad, like they were- like some kind of married couple, or something. Steve, unaware of this, flashed Eddie a quick smile and knocked his knuckles against Eddie’s arm, the closest they could get to their normal goodbye. “I get off at eight.”
“You’re getting off without me?” Eddie asked, and Steve rolled his eyes and smirked.
“Yeah, sometimes,” Steve said, but he flashed Eddie a look that said if he played his cards right, tonight wouldn’t be one of those nights.
Then they diverged, and Steve went left towards the food court near the central fountain, and Eddie went right towards Camelot Music, tucked behind the Merry-Go-Round and Waldenbooks. The patch bin ended up being a bust, but that was okay, because Wayne had already promised Eddie they’d stop in St. Louis on the way to Memaw’s and he was sure he could get some pins and patches there. Maybe even a full back piece for his vest if he could find a t-shirt he liked enough that he wouldn’t have to sacrifice one of his few precious concert tees to the cause.
Eddie wandered after that, ducking his head when he passed the Gap and saw a pack of letterman jacket-wearing hyenas braying in laughter by a khakis display at something said by Jason Carver, the rising senior who had been nipping at Hargrove’s heels all last year to be the most popular kid in school. Eddie ran into Gareth at the fountain and teased him for his bag of hair products from the beauty counter in Macy’s. He avoided another group of jockazoids — cheerleaders, this time — and spent a little while browsing at Sam Goody, but only because every once in a while they stocked posters of people other than Madonna and Michael Jackson. Not today, but some days.
His last stop was at Sears, where he wove his way through families buying matching flag-themed outfits and dads arguing with salesmen about the charcoal grills on display, and found the work clothes section. Wayne didn’t like Eddie spending money on him, but he’d accept a gift if it was either handmade or something he actually needed. Eddie had crafted his fair share of lopsided birdhouses in woodshop class, recorded mixtapes of Glen Campbell and Loretta Lynn from the radio, tried out a free pottery class at the community center once and brought Wayne home a terrible ashtray. Wayne kept all of those — the ashtray is still the one he uses daily, on the side table next to his coaster and the TV remote. (Once, Steve asked, “Hey, Wayne, why do you keep that weird plate by your chair?” and Wayne laughed so hard he had to go outside to get himself under control.)
Today, though, Eddie was giving in to his lazier tendencies and buying rather than making. Wayne wouldn’t like it, but he’d get over it if it came from Steve, too. Wayne was nuts for the guy, and the feeling was mutual from Steve. It often made Eddie think about that stupid comment he’d hear from girls all the time, overheard at parties when they treated him like a marijuana vending machine with no ears or feelings: “You date the ones that catch your eye. You marry the one that’s just like your dad.”
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Eddie grabbed his paper Sears bag and shoved the thought of marriage and Steve out of his head. It took the whole walk through the mall for the thought to leave, until he was at the entrance of Scoops Ahoy, the wildly incongruous sea-themed ice cream shop in landlocked Indiana. It was busy, so Eddie got to observe Steve in one of the few arenas where he didn’t excel automatically: food service.
“She said strawberry, Steve. Strawberry. Strawberry. It’s to the left- the left? The other left. The pink one. With strawberries in it. Okay, okay, just let me-”
“Okay, no worries, I’ll do the register,” said Steve. “That’ll be, uh… four-fifty? That doesn’t seem right. Hold on.”
Eddie bit down a grin as he waited his turn in line, and spent his time people watching. It was the one good thing about the location, Steve always said; you got to see everyone who came and went from the mall, all the dramatic confrontations and teenage breakups and the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. Of course, there was the downside too: if you could see everyone then everyone also could see you, meaning that the gossip about Steve Harrington working a menial labor job in a uniform that was sexy if you were into men’s thighs quickly spread and plenty of people stopped by to see it in person. Eddie spent a lot of time in Scoops Ahoy in Steve’s first few days of work, nursing a milkshake and waiting for confrontation that boiled over into something Steve needed help with, but it never came. He charmingly weathered the moms who complimented him to the point of harassment, bitched back to the middle schoolers who only knew Steve as a name, and even kept a dead-eyed stare when Tommy Hagan strolled in, puffed-up chest in an Indiana State shirt.
“Enjoy,” Steve had said as he handed over Hagan’s cheap ass vanilla cone, blandly, like they didn’t know each other.
Hagan had been working up to a reply when Eddie cleared his throat from his booth and Tommy turned, eyes widening when he saw Eddie there. Hagan did a couple of double takes between Eddie and Steve and, clearly realizing he was outnumbered for once, left. Eddie hadn’t seen him since.
Today, Robin Buckley looked even more frazzled than usual, flyaway hair tangled around her face under her tilted hat. Steve was frowning down at the register and poking random buttons, then brightening when the drawer popped open. “Great! What did I say? Oh, right, four-fifty. Yep, for a single scoop in a waffle cone. I know, inflation is crazy! Have a great day.”
When Eddie got to the front of the line, Robin automatically smiled a terrible false smile, saying, “Ahoy and welcome, matey. What can I- oh.” The smile dropped, and Eddie was treated to something more like mildly confused disdain. Eddie liked that a lot more than her customer service smile. “Are you actually going to pay for yourself, today?”
Her eyebrow was cocked, hand on her hip. Eddie shrugged, unrepentant. “No idea. Guess we’ll see!”
She shook her head. “Please never try to explain to me why The Hair is paying for your ice cream, because I think my brain would explode.”
“And mine would explode in the telling,” Eddie agreed. “Double dip butterscotch and bubblegum in a cup, please and thank you.”
“Horrifying,” Buckley said in answer, and Eddie smiled back.
“Okay, right, I think I hit- the total button? How much are the- Robin? How much are the signature flavors?” Eddie slid down to stand in front of Steve, watching him puzzle out the cash register.
“It’s thirty cents for signatures, twenty cents for classics, and forty cents for a sundae,” Robin rattled off with all the joy of a funeral director. “As it has been for a month now.”
“Right. Got it.” Steve stuck his tongue out a little and pushed a few buttons. “Cool. Okay. It’ll be fifty-four- oh my god.” He finally looked up and realized who was there. “You let me do all that work!”
“I’m helping you practice!” Eddie said, grinning. “You’ll be a whiz with the register in no time.”
“Just for that, you have to pay for your own today,” Steve said. He took off his hat and ruffled his hair back into its wave, and Robin scoffed at him from her end of the counter. Eddie, who’d seen Steve’s hair in much worse shape (sticking straight up off his forehead after he fell asleep against Eddie’s stomach, gummy with come after he sunk to his knees and Eddie couldn’t take it, crunchy from his over-chlorinated pool), still thought he looked like a goddamn miracle, but that was his own issue.
“No discount?” Eddie pouted.
“No discount. Fifty-four cents.” Steve propped his hip against the counter and said sweetly, “And a tip is appreciated.”
Eddie sighed and dug a dollar out of his pocket, crumpled up and covered in lint and what Eddie assumed was Steve’s hair, seeing as how these jeans had last been washed in the Harringtons’ top of the line Maytags. The bill was also, somehow, wrapped around a condom wrapper. An opened, empty one.
“Christ,” Steve swore , and dropped the wrapper like it wasn't from his own bedside table stash . “You’re supposed to throw these away when you’re done.”
“I was busy at the time,” Eddie said with a smile, licking up his ice cream cone. “Do I get my change?”
“No,” Steve said, incredulous. “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too,” Eddie said brightly, and thumbed over his shoulder. “I’ll be over there when you get bored.”
He headed over to his usual booth, the one closest to the register. Eddie pulled an equally linty pen out of his other pocket and spent a while scratching out sketches and terrible lyrics on a napkin covered in jaunty anchors. After about a half hour, Steve hopped over the counter and called to Buckley, “I’m taking my break.”
“I’ll miss you,” said Buckley, dead-eyed, and Steve grinned as he slid into the booth across from Eddie.
“I think I’m starting to wear her down,” he said.
“Like Coke on a corroded battery,” Eddie said.
“What?” Steve asked.
“I said you’re pretty,” Eddie said.
“Oh. Cool. You are too. What did you get Wayne?”
Eventually, though, Steve was pulled back to work and Eddie was pulled into the little paperback copy of an Anne McCaffrey novel he’d gotten for a nickel at the library sale back in May. Steve brought over a monstrosity that a customer ordered and then changed their mind on — a toffee ice cream and lemon-lime sherbert milkshake with sprinkles — and said, “Here, you’re the only person here depraved enough to eat this,” and Eddie said, “Ooh, my favorite!” and laughed when Steve pretended to gag. The daylight through the skylights over the food court started to fade into evening, and Steve was wiping down counters and helping Robin switch out the empty tubs for new ones when there was a small stampede up to the counter.
“Again?” Steve said, his hands going automatically to his hips. “Are you nerds trying to catch every single movie released this summer?”
“If they continue to be free, yes,” said a dark-headed boy at the front of the group, with pale, freckled skin and an upturned nose. Behind him, a group of children all nodded their agreement.
Steve sighed, but shrugged like he was giving up. “Whatever. What are you seeing tonight?”
“Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,” said a redheaded girl promptly, smiling. Steve narrowed his eyes at her, and she dropped the smile immediately and rolled her eyes.
“I thought we were going to see Day of the Dead?” asked a quieter one towards the back — oh, Eddie knew that one. Will Byers. He wasn’t aware that he was in Steve’s pack of kids.
The other three hissed and elbowed him in unison, with a gangly black boy saying, “Will! Be cool!”
Steve pinched his nose like he was getting a headache. “You know what? Not my problem. If you brats get nightmares, that’s on you.” He turned on his heel to let them behind the counter and into the breakroom in the back.
“Yeah, this is what will give us nightmares,” muttered the first boy to Will Byers, and Will laughed a little and rubbed the back of his neck. Then they disappeared like a line of ducklings behind Steve as Robin watched, looking half-baffled, half-enraged.
“He’s a babysitter,” Eddie called helpfully to her.
“He’s also an ice cream parlor employee, so it seems like he’s terrible at both his jobs,” Robin said.
Steve reappeared and finished cleaning up, then clocked out and joined Eddie at his booth. “Come on, I don’t want to be here any longer than I need to.”
“My liege,” Eddie said, bowing so that Steve would go first.
“Bye, Robin!” Steve said over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow!”
“I hope the mall burns down first!” she replied, waving cheerily.
A few days later, Eddie wandered into a mostly-empty Scoops Ahoy to catch the tail end of Steve saying, “... and that’s why, like, we, as the workers or whatever, should have all the money. We should take it, because the people who have it all didn’t earn it by, like, contributing to society. They just hired people and took most of the profit. It’s called, uh, capitalism.”
And Robin, eyebrows furrowed, just said, “Huh.” Then, she turned back to cleaning the ice cream scoops, but not before Eddie saw the look he recognized from everyone who interacted with Steve Harrington and didn’t know to be prepared for a surprise underneath that catalog model exterior.
Steve himself didn’t seem to notice her face; he was too busy noticing Eddie instead, and lighting up like his day had been made as Eddie approached the counter.
“Hello, sailor,” Eddie said.
“Ahoy, captain,” Steve replied, and flipped his ice cream scoop like a six shooter, showing off. “What’ll it be?”
Late June crept by until July arrived, sluggish and hot, long empty days of a few hours at the tire shop and running all over town to sell a few ounces of weed, nights alternated between the muggy interior of the trailer and the sweet, stale air conditioning of the Harrington house when Steve’s parents were away. Eddie and Steve didn’t stay together every single night, but without school to stand in their way, and with most of Eddie’s friends on vacations or at their own jobs for the summer, there wasn’t much to keep them apart.
Plus, y’know, Wayne liked to check in on Steve too. It was cheaper to carpool. Easier to grocery shop for one household instead of two. Saved water to only do one load of laundry. Saved even more water to shower together.
Excuses, excuses.
Whatever. Eddie always knew his time with Steve would be limited. Sure, in the beginning he thought it would be limited to a couple of discreet makeout sessions before Steve turned tail and ran back to relationships with girls, not that it would extend on into over half a year of… this. Whatever this happened to be.
Soon enough, Eddie would go back to being a third-try high school senior and Steve would realize he didn’t have to tie himself so securely to a town he hated, with a person who couldn’t follow him, at least not right away. They weren’t even dating. Steve would make choices and move on, and Eddie would be here. It would happen; Eddie would let it happen.
But for now, he had this. He had Steve in the morning, breathing sleep-slow breaths across the back of his neck. He had Steve at the diner, hands knocking over a shared plate of fries. On the table where Eddie dealt weed to idiots and friends alike. At the Munson trailer, cursing in Italian at a pan of chicken that didn’t want to cooperate.
At Scoops Ahoy, shoved up against the wall in the breakroom, his tongue in Eddie’s mouth.
It was just- a man could only take so much. Eddie ruined Steve in that dumb little sailor uniform multiple times a week, and he still couldn’t get enough. He’d see the long line of Steve’s legs in those shorts, the tan of his bicep against the white and navy pipework, the shine of his lips as he smiled at customers over the counter — and Eddie knew he did that on purpose, looked up at girls through his eyelashes and asked if they’d like to sail on an ocean of flavor with me? just to shoot a devious look in Eddie’s direction, letting him know it was all a show and that Steve knew his jealousy would flood him like adrenaline to see it — and he’d just- his brain would melt. Most days, they made it to one of their bedrooms without incident. On particularly tough days, they’d make it to the car or the van and find a place to pull over before Eddie did his best to rip that sailor uniform off Steve’s body without disconnecting their mouths.
Today, Eddie couldn’t even make it that long.
It was the last day before he and Wayne left on their trip, and maybe that was what had his blood fizzing. The idea of even a week without this — without Steve — suddenly felt like it stretched for an age.
“Take your break,” Eddie stalked up to the counter and murmured to Steve in an undertone while Buckley was in the freezer digging out more chocolate ice cream. “Now.”
“Break,” Steve repeated with a crack through his voice. His eyes were wide, cheeks flushed. There was no one in line. No one in the store to hear. Eddie planned ahead enough for that, at least. Louder, voice dazed, he said, “Break, Robin, I’m- I’m taking my break.”
“Great timing as always, dingus!” Robin shouted from the freezer, but Eddie was already in hot pursuit of Steve to the breakroom behind the shop front.
“Fuck,” Steve said as Eddie crowded him against the wall, half-hidden by the shelf of extra cones and jars of maraschino cherries if the window opened. “We shouldn’t…”
“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t look like a fucking wet dream, then,” Eddie said, immediately kissing along Steve’s neck. Steve whined and tilted his head. “Shouldn’t reapply your lip balm like you’re wanting everyone to look at your mouth.” Eddie licked his way up to Steve’s ear, bit the lobe. Steve gasped. “Shouldn’t flirt with every girl who comes in like you don’t know that drives me crazy.”
“Yeah,” Steve panted. “But it worked, right?” Eddie leaned back to see Steve grinning, eyes dark, completely unapologetic.
“You are-” Eddie said, lost for words, and Steve’s smile just widened.
“What am I?” Steve asked, soft now. Eyes angled up at Eddie like he did to all the girls in the shop. It was terribly effective, coy and sly and sweet and sexy. “Yours?”
Eddie made a high noise in the back of his throat and crushed their mouths together, drinking away Steve’s satisfied groan. Eddie had been kissing Steve near-daily for months; he knew what Steve wanted when he was like this. Eddie knocked his hat to the floor and pulled a handful of hair, scratching at Steve’s scalp. He shoved a knee between Steve’s legs so his thigh was against Steve’s dick. He kissed Steve in possessive, deep sweeps, withdrawing only so they could catch their breath and dive back in.
When all of this started, when Steve first put his big hand on Eddie’s cheek and Eddie melted like a goddamn cliche, Eddie’d assumed what roles they’d be playing. Steve, the boy next door, the athlete, the masculinity packaged in 1980s decadence, and Eddie, the outcast, the weirdo, the one on the fringes who wore strange jewelry and listed to bands who wore makeup and chains. They seemed to fit into pretty neat boxes. To wit: Eddie assumed that he’d be taking it, that he’d be “the girl” because that was what Steve knew. And Steve definitely liked that, it turned out, but he liked it the other way just as much. Actually, Steve liked everything.
Eddie had no goal in this moment, but possibilities spun out in his head. He could drop to his knees. He could shove Steve to his knees. They could commandeer the freezer and try to make each other come before they got frostbite. They could sneak out the back door to the empty hallway that led outside. They could find an empty bathroom stall.
They could-
“Steve, I swear, if you make me carry all these- C’EST QUOI CE BORDEL.”
Eddie startled and bit Steve’s lip, and Steve jolted in panic and elbowed Eddie in the stomach. They scrambled around to find Robin in the doorway, eyes wide. A tub of ice cream tumbled from her arms to the floor with a thud. A line of chocolate leached slowly outward across the floor, but otherwise the room was entirely still.
“I- Robin,” Steve said, cheeks red in a different way now, hectic and scared. Eddie saw that, and understood it, but it was like his body wasn’t reacting at all. He was past fear, somehow. “It’s not what it- we weren’t-”
“It was me,” Eddie said immediately. It was the obvious explanation. “He didn’t- Steve didn’t ask for this. I- uh, forced this. It was me. If you’re going to tell anyone.”
“No-” Steve cut in angrily, and Eddie squeezed his side in a hard pinch.
“Buckley?” Eddie asked. She was still staring at them, frozen.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said in a rush, a little too loud. “It’s fine. We’ll just- it didn’t happen! So there’s nothing to tell. Okay. Bye.” And then she turned heel and walked back out, the swinging door whooshing shut after her.
“Shit,” Steve whispered.
“Baby, I’m so sorry,” Eddie said, his reaction hitting now, his fear flooding him too late. His breath was fast, his head dizzy. He felt both frozen and on fire. “Shit. Shit. You were right, we shouldn’t have- that was so stupid, I’m- I'm sorry.”
“No, it wasn’t just you,” Steve said, eyes stuck on the door, like at any minute Chief Hopper and his band of idiot deputies might storm the room and arrest them, or Buckley might rush back in and yell at them more in- was that French? “I pushed you, it was both of us. Why did you say that?”
“Say what? That it was my fault?” Eddie asked. “Because it was, first of all. But also that’s what people will believe anyway, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Steve. Who corrupted who, the metalhead who can’t pass a senior Biology class and plays Satan’s favorite game for fun, or the king of Hawkins High who is one apology to his parents away from a cushy career doing fuck all?”
For once, Steve didn’t protest the nickname, but he looked hurt all the same. “Eddie-”
“I should go,” Eddie said. “Better that I’m not hanging around if she does come back. I- I’ll pick you up when your shift ends, but maybe…” he bit his lip. “Maybe we shouldn’t stay together tonight. Just in case.”
“Just in case, what, Robin reports us to someone and the cops come calling?” Steve scoffed, though he still looked rattled. “They won’t arrest us. People can talk, but that’s all they can do.”
Eddie felt himself smiling at Steve gently, like a parent telling their kid the family hamster went to live on a farm upstate. Breaking hard truths in the softest way. “That might be true for you, baby. But that’s not true for me.”
Later, Eddie drove Steve home to that big, awful, empty house, and they stared at each other for a long moment through the open van window. This felt like some kind of test.
“I’ll be back late on Thursday,” Eddie said.
“Okay,” Steve said. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll talk to Robin. We’ll be fine.”
Eddie let his gaze flicker all over Steve’s face. “Yeah, of course. Be careful.”
“You too,” Steve said. They didn’t kiss goodbye, even though that had been their standard since March, since Skull Rock. Too visible in the Harrington driveway. Too nervous from getting caught once already. Eddie’s hands twitched like they were going to reach out and grab Steve’s hand of their own volition, his mouth curled around the words I’m sorry and don’t do something stupid and this is worth whatever happens next, all of which he couldn’t force out.
Steve stood outside the house and watched Eddie pull away.
Eddie was distracted and jumpy through the whole trip. He knew Wayne could tell, but he couldn’t figure out how to say the words: we got caught. We got caught, Wayne. People know now. I don’t know what we might be returning to.
Awful visions of terrible possibilities plagued him through the stops in nowhere towns on Highway 64, through the changing landscape from the flat plains to woods to old mountains no taller than hills, through the arrival at the Munson ancestral home, which was a small, ancient giraffe house deep in the Ozarks. Eddie walked around to the back of Wayne’s truck and pulled his duffel bag out, but was lost in his own head as he did so, picturing the trailer back in Forest Hills burned to ash when they got back, or maybe coated in spraypainted accusations. He nodded when Wayne asked if he was alright, while he pictured Steve getting chased out of the mall and having to hide out in his big house as a mob gathered outside.
He didn’t think the worst of Buckley, didn’t think she’d be the one to lead the mob or whatever, but scared people did stupid things and she had seemed scared.
Eddie endured the greetings from cousins and aunts and Memaw herself, the mighty matriarch in her ancient apron and steel-gray hair. She took one look at his face and shoved him into a seat at the table, piling a plate with biscuits and gravy and bacon. She clucked when he picked at his food, but otherwise left him alone.
“You look like you seen a ghost,” joked one of Eddie’s uncles (not actually an uncle, a third cousin or something, but it was easier to call everyone his age a cousin and everyone older an aunt or uncle). A few others laughed, but the rest were preoccupied with their own conversations or were busy welcoming Wayne. Eddie was usually able to turn his brain off while here, to enjoy simple pursuits and family gossip, but he was stuck now and couldn’t get out of his own head.
“Can I borrow the phone?” Eddie asked Memaw, and she shooed him off with a promise he’d return and finish his plate when he was done. The house had one receiver, an old rotary phone in Memaw’s bedroom that was dingy and worn from use. His pulse skyrocketed when no one answered at the Harrington house, but he remembered it was still early evening, so he dialed another number instead.
“Scoops Ahoy, can I interest you in a sail to Paradise Peach Beach today?” Steve answered loudly when Eddie called.
“Steve,” Eddie breathed. “How are you, are you okay? Are things okay?”
“Eddie?” Steve asked, voice dropping back to his usual level. “Hey, yeah, I’m okay. It’s all kind of- well. It’s fine, everything’s fine. There’s, uh. Henderson’s back, and he’s got us chasing some- it’s stupid, it’s probably nothing. But I think everything’s okay. How’s your family?”
Eddie pulled the phone away and gaped at it, because there was no way they were just going to pretend nothing happened. He put the phone back to his ear. “That’s it? We were- there’s no issues?”
“Listen, I have to go,” Steve said. “I’ll see you when you get back, but really, everything’s fine. I’m fine.” He lowered his voice a little, like there was someone else there — Robin, probably, Eddie realized. “Really, babe. Don’t worry about it. We’re okay.”
But Eddie’s brain wouldn’t let him rest that easily. He found the tiny little house overwhelming where usually it was comforting, people around every corner, coming and going at all hours. He and Wayne were only going to be there for three days, but those three days felt like they lasted an eternity.
He spent his days outside, avoiding questions from his family and Wayne’s knowing looks. He spent hours with his jeans rolled up and his bare feet in the creek, his shoulders and nose burning under the sun. He tried to read, tried to write, tried to draw, but nothing came out, blocked by his preoccupying fear. When he had to be around others, like at meals or when his younger cousins would beg him to get his guitar and play with them, he felt jittery and at loose ends, like a needle on a record player that had jumped out of its groove. He escaped to the porch as the sun dipped below the hills every evening and the heat became bearable, leaning back against the still-warm river rock siding of the house.
On the last night he found Memaw out there as well, smoking and rocking in her chair. She took one look at him, snorted in a way that sounded just like Wayne, and tapped out a cigarette for him without a word.
They smoked in silence for a while, crickets singing their evening songs and the creek burbling nearby. It was almost peaceful, except for the way Eddie kept imagining all the different ways that he, or Steve, or both, could be hurt by this secret now surely unfolding across Hawkins. He pictured it like spilled ink across a map, black rot eating away at the town little by little: who would Buckley tell- band kids? She’d tell her band friends — oh my god, you’ll never believe who I walked in on — and her band friends would tell the theater kids, who would tell the nerds, who would tell the preps, who would tell the jocks, and then everyone would know. Everyone probably already knew, and he was here, and Steve was there. He wanted to think about anything else, but nothing else was big enough to eclipse his fear.
“Whoever he is,” Memaw finally said when she got up from her chair with a crack of old joints, “I hope he’s worth all this frettin’.”
“I- what?” Eddie choked, inhaling his smoke unexpectedly. “He- who?”
“Your young man,” Memaw said. “That’s what’s got you all a-trussed up like a hare in a trap, ain’t it?”
“Uh,” Eddie said. “I- yeah? I mean, no. Um.” He’d always heard family was the hardest to tell, but the zines and books had never covered what to do when your battleax of a grandmother blindsided you with your own queerness.
Memaw snorted again. “I hope he’s what’s turned you stupid, too, ‘cause you didn’t usedta be duller than a widow woman’s axe.”
“Right, sorry,” Eddie said. “Um. It’s complicated.”
“Well, yeah, you’re a homosexual,” Memaw said, the word blending together like it was just another bit of eccentric Ozark vernacular: homaseshule. “Tends t’ be more complicated n’ most.”
“I’m just. Catching up,” Eddie said, bewildered. “Sorry. Um. Someone found out about us and then I had to come here and left- left him there, and I don’t know what to do.”
“He okay?” Memaw said.
“I-I think so?”
“And you’re okay?”
“Physically, yeah.”
“Then you’ll be okay. Just keep your head up and your nose clean, you’ll be a’right.”
Eddie took in one last drag of his cigarette and stood, wrapping Memaw in a hug. Eddie inherited his tactility from his mom, not his dad’s family, and he knew Memaw wouldn’t let the hug last long but he had to let her know that she’d helped. “Thanks. Thank you.”
“A’right then, that’s enough,” Memaw said. “Come on, been a-waiting on you to perk up so you could help me with something.”
“Let me guess,” Eddie said, “it’s something super fun and not gross at all.”
“It’s a litter a’ varmints under the barn needs chasing out,” Memaw said. “So I s’pose that depends on your definition of fun.”
“I didn’t know Memaw knew,” Eddie said when they were almost back to Hawkins. “About me.”
Wayne snorted, an echo of his mother. “I think you can assume she knows everything, unless you have proof otherwise.”
“And she’s not… mad?”
“She’s madder’n a badger halfway up a tree,” Wayne said, “but no, not how you mean it. She loves you, boy, and ain’t nothing standing in the way of that.”
“Oh,” Eddie said, and for some reason could only think about Daniel Harrington, and his wry, unaffected cruelty as he called his son stupid and lazy. Then he thought about his own dad, his big, alcohol-red face, and the way he’d fist a hand in Eddie’s hair and laugh when he cried, called him a pussy, called him a girl, called him-
As they reentered Hawkins, fireworks exploded over the Fourth of July carnival in the distance. Wayne drove them to the trailer and Eddie immediately hopped over into his van. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, and Wayne just waved him off.
“Take your time,” Wayne said. “And tell your boy I said hello.”
Your boy. Hopefully that was still true, in whatever capacity.
Eddie started on the road towards Loch Nora, but a gut feeling kept him on the main street towards Starcourt instead, even though it was too late for the mall to still be open. His gut was right, but in the worst possible way.
“What the fuck,” Eddie breathed when he realized the glow from the mall wasn’t neon and fluorescents, but fire. Great, awful spikes of fire pouring out through the skylights over the food court, fire licking at the purple roof, fire eating away at the bubble letters of the sign, the neon popping like a science experiment. “What the fuck, what the fuck.”
The parking lot was full of fire trucks and ambulances, and a few military vehicles parked close to the entrance. Fear grew like rot in Eddie’s stomach as he took in the scene, but he pushed it all away. Maybe it was from spending so much time with Steve, who either ignored his problems entirely or ran at them head-on with a battering ram, but Eddie found his old ways of coping (running away, or running his mouth) no longer made him feel safe. He wanted to spin his steering wheel and peel out of there, but he couldn’t do that anymore.
He parked the van and got out, wandering aimlessly through the crowds. He saw a few familiar faces: Joyce Byers from Melvald’s, along with her boys; Nancy Wheeler, looking pale but firm as she was interviewed by a man in military fatigues; some of Steve’s kids, scattered about and bruised and bleeding. Eddie knew Steve was here, there was no way he’d be anywhere else.
In the back of an ambulance, he found them. Robin Buckley, disheveled, dirty, bloody, and Steve. Steve-
“Oh, fuck, Steve,” Eddie said, and Steve looked up and it was even worse. “What the fuck, what happened?”
Eddie didn’t wait for an answer before he was there in Steve’s space, cradling his head with gentle hands, because clearly nothing else had been gentle with Steve tonight. His left eye was red-black-purple, the eyelid nearly swollen shut. His uniform was ripped and filthy, his legs and arms covered in scratches and bruises. His mouth was cracked in the corner. Steve gripped Eddie’s wrists and stared up at him through one good eye.
“Eddie,” Steve said. “You’re here.”
“What the fuck,” Eddie whispered, his only vocabulary tonight. “Baby, what did you do?”
“Why do you think it’s my fault?” Steve complained, his voice all shot through with exhaustion, but the not-bleeding side of his mouth twitched up.
“Because you’re always pulling stupid shit,” Eddie said softly, not playing along. He swept the lightest finger over the bruising that spread up towards Steve’s left ear and Steve winced, just a little.
“You can say that again,” said Buckley- right. Right. Fuck. Buckley.
“Robin, oh, shit, I forgot- I mean-” Eddie babbled, but Steve squeezed his wrists again.
“Eddie,” he said quietly. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“Yeah,” Robin said quickly. “Sorry for freaking out on you. I didn’t know…” and then she looked at Steve, and it was like the world had turned inside-out like Eddie’s t-shirts on laundry day when he got desperate, because that was definitely Robin looking to Steve for guidance. She seemed to read something on Steve’s beaten face, because she took a deep breath and said, little more than a rasp, “I didn’t know there was anyone else… like me… in Hawkins. So I freaked. Sorry.”
Like me. “Well, fuck,” Eddie said, dazed. “Okay. Welcome to the club. Sorry you had to witness what goes on behind closed doors.”
“Yeah, we’ll be better about sending out invitations next time,” Steve said.
“Invitations to see you make out?” Robin asked.
“No, invitations to the club,” Steve said. “The gay club. The- glub?”
“No,” Robin said. “Absolutely not. That’s worse than your attempts to name the new specials.”
“I still stand by Floats Your Boat Fridays. That was good.”
“Your terrible puns were not the worst part of working at Scoops, but they were on the list.”
“Did they rank above the imminent danger and fear of death?” Steve asked dryly.
“Yeah, speaking of?” Eddie interrupted, finally dropping his hands from Steve’s face and wrapping his fingers in Steve’s sleeve just to stay in contact. “The mall is in flames? What the fuck happened?”
“Oh my god, it was insane, it was-” Robin said, but Steve cut in over her.
“Fire in the food court,” he said. “At the, uh, the really shady place that did pizza and tacos?”
“El Pepperoni burned down the mall?” Eddie asked.
“Yeah, it was nuts,” Steve said. Robin just ping-ponged her gaze between them, eyes wide.
“Steve,” Eddie said.
“Yeah?”
Eddie looked at him for a long moment, from the sweaty mess of his hair down to the scrapes and cuts along the neck of his uniform. He looked tired — more than that: half-dead with exhaustion, beaten to the edge of consciousness — and worried, but not scared. Not shaky with fear, not fidgety with adrenaline. Calm.
Eddie thought about nightmares he’d heard and how Steve would call out run in his dreams; thought about frantic walkie-talkie check-ins at all hours of the night. He thought about Steve’s face bruised and bloody back in November of last year. How he and Wheeler and Byers acted like sentries at the gates of hell, how they’re all here tonight.
“You don’t have to tell me the truth,” Eddie said finally. “But please don’t lie to me.”
Steve looked back at him for just as long, and Eddie wondered what he saw. Did he see a constant, a willing partner in this- whatever this was? Someone willing to help, if help could be given? Or did he see a temporary character in the tale of his life, someone who didn’t need all the details because he was never meant to last this long?
Steve brushed soft knuckles up the back of Eddie’s arm and said. “Okay. You’re right.” Then, shrugging off his emergency blanket, said, “Rob, you coming?”
Robin, eyes flickering between them, said, “Yeah, sure. But, uh, I should probably call my parents first.”
“No worries,” Steve said. “The Munsons have a phone. You can call from there.” He brushed his shoulder against Eddie’s, a hot touch, and said, “Let’s go home.”
Notes:
NOTES:
- I am inordinately proud of the “are you a Friend of Dracula’s?” comment from Eddie. Shame that it was wasted on Steve, who was half-dead in the moment and also doesn’t know Dorothy from Adam.
- Did y’all know the original Speed Racer is from the 60s? I thought it was a 90s thing, but apparently it was just syndicated then. Anyway, Speed Racer is a manga about car racing that was adapted into anime, and was broadcast in Japan and the US starting in ’67.
- Reminder here that Eddie is a twice-failed high school senior in 1985. His ideas about communal living, sociopolitical systems, and heavy reading are not going to be the most in-depth you’ve ever heard, and maybe even incorrect in some ways. This goes doubly for Steve, who heard everything he knows about capitalism from Eddie.
- Reminder that this is a fic set in the 80s, so the idea of binary male/female roles in relationships are still the norm.
- I know that Appalachian Eddie is a whole thing in this fandom, and I support it! I do! But here’s my entry for consideration into the “what if the Munsons were from west of Indiana, not east?” conversation. I hope it’s compelling. The Ozarks are just as weird and wild and I have the benefit of knowing that kind of weird a little more intimately. If anything, I hope you enjoy something a little different!
- Minimum wage was $2.75 in 1985, so if Steve worked 20 hours a week, he made $55 before taxes. So, indeed, he gave up about a week’s pay for Wayne’s birthday present.
- Yes, it’s ridiculously dramatic to have Robin default to French when she’s surprised, but this is based off of her characterization in Rebel Robin, where she does that very thing a couple of times. She’s also even snarkier and harder to impress in the book, which I tried to bring through here.
- Okay, here’s the Ozarks lore dump — sorry, you’ll have to suffer through my regional expertise for a moment. Giraffe houses are rock-sided houses mostly built in the years after the Great Depression, because building materials were expensive but river rocks are plentiful. I didn’t want to phonetically do the accent for every single word, so if you want to get an idea of Memaw’s voice, honestly, Ruth from the Netflix show Ozark is a pretty good place to turn to. She had a dialect coach and besides a couple of odd words here and there, she’s close to the real thing. The Ozarks accent is pretty much dropping any hard middle sounds and blending words together, very twangy and dragging. Adding the a- prefix to verbs (a-trussed, a-keep) is common, and there are many, many region-specific idioms that mostly have to do with critters.
Chapter 8: interlude: THE FAMILY MEETING
Summary:
"But there’s so much to him they never got to see, because he hid it and only showed us — for good reason. But now they’ll never get to know him like we did. Smart and shitty and kind and stubborn. Not perfect, but good.”
Eddie had wiped hard at his face, pushing his tears back into his hair. “Fuck, Rob,” he’d said. “How am I supposed to tell them that they didn’t really know him, and now they never will?”
“The same way we do everything,” she’d said. “Carefully, with a plan, which will inevitably go to hell the moment we start.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
INTERLUDE
NOW
Eddie has spent five weeks, three days, and a handful of hours putting on his best possible face. It convinced absolutely nobody, of course, and every single one of his friends is clearly worried for him, but he thought they were going along with the illusion that things were okay. Or, at least, that things weren’t awful.
But he should have known better, and that Robin Buckley and Dustin Henderson weren’t just going to let his slide into insanity go uncommented on. That Nancy Wheeler wouldn’t drag him back from the brink of madness herself, and never even smudge her lavender eyeshadow as she did it.
“Hey, asshat,” Buckley says, waking Eddie with a pillow to the face. She didn’t use to swear so much, but then the mall burned down and she became attached at the hip to Steve, and Steve was attached at the mouth to Eddie, and so she picked up some bad habits through osmosis. Steve-mosis. “Family meeting. Twenty minutes, go shower.”
“Hngwhat?” Eddie groans, then the words penetrate past his sleep haze and he stuffs his face into the pillow, whispering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Last night, he fell asleep and, as had happened for about five days straight, he dreamed a memory. Exact details, exactly as it happened, until a point when things would shift, just a little, just to the left enough to notice, and he would notice, and he’d blink, and then suddenly he’d be seeing a memory of Steve who wasn’t Steve anymore: not-Steve. Not-Steve was bigger, broader, silver-coated and sharp-clawed. His familiar features would morph into something wildly exotic, like he was a member of the fae come to snatch Eddie away to his realm of riddles and danger. He was terrifying and beautiful, like watching an approaching thunderhead. His eyes glowed a copper-gold so bright that sometimes Eddie saw the afterimage of them against his eyelids when he screamed awake. It was Steve, but it wasn’t Steve. It was Steve, but a Steve he knew instinctively to fear.
But this time, Eddie hadn’t screamed awake, because he’d finally understood: the Steve that met him in his dreams every night wasn’t not-Steve. That wasn’t a twisted image of the Steve he loved, dreamed up by his own unconscious mind to morph all his memories into nightmares. It was actual Steve, it was really Steve, changed by the Upside Down and saddled with secrets once again.
Eddie spent last night sitting side-by-side with Steve as he fell into death-like stillness, as he was miraculously brought back to life by Eddie’s laughter. As he, in a voice so deep it was a rumble, through a mouth now graced by two white fangs that pricked at his plush lower lip, told Eddie about the deal he’d struck.
It was a strange thing, to see the boy Eddie knows better than almost anyone distorted into a monstrous, inhuman version of himself, but to hear him speak and display that same lovely, ridiculous heart he’d always had.
It was an even stranger thing to realize that Eddie is now the only living person to know that Steve Harrington is still alive, a fact that will rock the foundations of the city of Hawkins when it gets out.
Eddie washes perfunctorily, winding his hair up into one of Max’s scrunchies on top of his head, too preoccupied to deal with the routine Steve had cooked up for him. (“Shower, shampoo with coconut oil for your dryness, conditioner with shea oil for your curls. Towel dry, no heat, then mousse, pat dry with this special towel, ruffle into place, then don’t touch. Got it?”) He throws on one of his own worn-in pairs of sweatpants and a Hoosiers basketball t-shirt that he’d laid claim to months ago, so big that it hangs off him so his collarbones show.
Downstairs, the Harrington living room is alive for the first time in months. Even when the kids would come visit before, they were always subdued, sad or tired or scared, and their boundless energy would be swallowed up by the high ceilings and the emptiness. Now, though, they hop around setting out snacks and drinks, like a last-minute party Eddie didn’t know he’d been invited to. Robin and Max direct the parade from a couch, Nancy straightens the platters of crackers and cheese that the boys bring in from the kitchen, Eleven divvies out plates and napkins with single-minded intensity.
“Uh, good morning?” Eddie offers. Everyone freezes, including Jonathan, who stops halfway through pouring a cup of coffee, and on some silent command they all bustle into place like the curtain is rising on a play and he’s the one-man audience.
“Good morning,” Nancy says. “Sit down.”
“Sure, sure, alright,” Eddie says, and he feels hands on his back pushing him. He looks over his shoulder to find Dustin steering him towards the loveseat, which has been left conspicuously free. When he sits, he finds himself staring down a room full of his friends watching him with wary, concerned looks, plates of teenage-made hors d'oeuvres in their stilled hands.
“Is… everything all right?” Eddie ventures.
“You tell us,” Dustin says immediately.
“Dustin,” Nancy says.
“Right,” Dustin says. “Sorry. I mean, we would appreciate it if you would open up and share your feelings with us.”
Eddie drops his head into his hands. “Christ. Which one of you bought the book on interventions?” When he looks up again, Nancy is trying to subtly scoot her tote bag behind her chair with her foot, and Eddie can see part of a title peeking out of the bag from his chair: Help Someone Who Doesn’t Want Help. “Wheeler, you know that shit’s for addicts, right? And I like a good time now and then, but I’m hardly an addict.”
“The same principles apply,” Nancy sniffs, then her eyes soften. “You’re not telling us something, and it’s clearly affecting you.”
“I-” Eddie starts, then stops. He’s not telling them a thousand things, most of them secrets by habit and revolving around how he fell in love with their babysitter when he wasn’t supposed to, and a few of them related to how the babysitter is now an undead army general in another dimension. “Yes. But.”
He looks over at Robin pleadingly, but she’s no help. In fact, despite Nancy leading the charge, Eddie can tell by the look on Robin’s face that this was probably all her idea.
Weeks ago, mere days after Steve was trapped in the Upside Down, when the Byers boys and Eleven and Chief Hopper and Joyce Byers had made their arrivals back into town and Eddie had been quietly moved into the Harrington house after being checked out of the hospital, Robin stopped by with lunch.
“I think you should tell everyone,” she had said around a mouthful of PB&J.
“Mmow mmt?” Eddie had asked around his own mouthful, but his was bologna and Swiss cheese.
“About you and Steve,” she’d said.
He’d shut her down immediately, after swallowing past his suddenly-dry throat. “I’m not going to fucking steal their grief and make it about me, just because I’m the guy he was sleeping with when he- you know.”
“But it could help,” Robin said. “If you talk about it, it could help.”
“How?” Eddie had laughed, pain caught in his throat. “How could it help?”
He expected some sharp retort, but he didn’t get it. “The kids… even Nancy, they only knew some parts of him,” Robin had said slowly, pushing her sandwich crumbs into a pile on her plate. “The guy who ran at danger, who wasn’t great at school, the over-the-top romantic, the stand-in big brother. Those are parts of him, we know that. But there’s so much to him they never got to see, because he hid it and only showed us — for good reason. But now they’ll never get to know him like we did. Smart and shitty and kind and stubborn. Not perfect, but good.”
Eddie had wiped hard at his face, pushing his tears back into his hair. “Fuck, Rob,” he’d said. “How am I supposed to tell them that they didn’t really know him, and now they never will?”
“The same way we do everything,” she’d said. “Carefully, with a plan, which will inevitably go to hell the moment we start.”
But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t look at Henderson and tell him that his friend, his hero, hid a secret as big as Eddie, and then went and died before he could tell him about it. He’s not worried about the gay thing (he has eyes and has been in the same room as Will Byers); he’s worried about the keeping secrets thing. This group is weird about secrets — for good reason, Eddie understands, what with the Vecna of it all — and Eddie wasn’t going to desecrate Steve’s good name with things that would only hurt everyone else.
But Robin hadn’t given up just because Eddie did, and she’s been pushing the idea since that first conversation, springing it on him like he’s going to be startled into agreeing.
“Isn’t this the same conversation you were having with him about me?” he had snapped at one point. “That he should tell me the truth about the monster shit, because it could make it better?”
“Yes!” she’d said. “And he should have! Wouldn’t that have made it better?”
“Nothing could make this better, Buckley,” Eddie had said. “Nothing I say is going to make it easier that he’s gone.”
“Fine, maybe it won’t make things better,” Robin had said, eyes glinting wet. “But it’ll be so much worse when they find out, and it doesn’t come from you. Because they will find out eventually.”
Here in this off-brand intervention, Robin looks back at him with a practiced look of blankness on her face. Just tell them, he can hear her pushing his way. Just do it. Rip the bandaid off.
“I-” he tries again, and clears his throat. “It’s not just my secret to tell.”
“We know it’s about Steve,” Max says, and he jumps. She’s wearing the dark glasses she got from the government doctors that are supposed to protect her healing eyes, but mostly she wears them to hide her emotions and look mysterious. It’s effective, he’ll give her that.
“Yeah, there’s obviously something we’re missing here,” Mike cuts in. “You flinch every time you hear his name, man.”
“No I don’t,” Eddie says.
“You just did!” Mike says.
“You make us stop talking about him when you’re around,” Lucas chimes in.
“We all miss him,” Eleven says. “But you miss him… differently.”
Eddie exhales slowly. “I- okay. It’s… I don’t even know where to start.”
Dustin, sitting the closest to Eddie, reaches over and puts a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. We know Steve wasn’t the greatest in high school. We understand if he was mean to you, especially if you feel conflicted about it.”
“Wait, hold on,” Eddie says.
“Did he beat you up and take your drug money?” Erica asks.
“No, why would he-”
“Tease you in the locker room?” Lucas asks sympathetically.
“No,” Eddie says. Robin and Jonathan are quiet — Robin because she knows and she wants Eddie to handle his shit, and Jon because he’s probably the next closest to figuring it out, what with the Will of it all — and Nancy watches with sharp eyes as he weakly deflects. “No, no, you have it all wrong. No, that’s not it.”
“Then tell us,” Dustin says. By the wobble in his voice, by the fierceness of his gaze, Eddie feels like he’s starting to understand: they’re feeling stuck on how to save Steve, maybe even starting to think it’s impossible, and so they’ve found something else to solve. Something a little closer to home.
“I will, I’ve just- I’ve never actually told anyone,” he says. “It’s not the easiest…”
A sound catches his ear. Ticking. Ticking like a watch, louder, and louder.
“Oh, fuck,” he says, staring into the middle distance. “This is terrible timing. Robin, tell them, just tell them, it’s-”
Tick, tick, TICK, TICK-
Steve appears, one blink to the next like always, right in the empty space between Eddie and the rest of the group. He doesn’t seem to notice anyone around them, his blazing golden eyes locked on Eddie, his eyebrows all crumpled up like they get when he’s upset.
“I need you to show me what happened when I was trapped,” he says.
Eddie stands and moves to him automatically, and has the strangest sensation of knowing that it’s all happening in his mind, because his body is still on the loveseat. Steve looms over him now, tall and broad, and his clawed hands clench into fists and uncurl rhythmically as Eddie approaches. “Baby,” he says, one reflex followed by another as he reaches out to cup Steve’s beautiful, alien face. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
“I just need to know the truth. I need to see. Show me.”
“I will,” Eddie promises, even though if there was ever one memory he never wanted to revisit, it would be the moments after realizing Steve was gone. His gut churns just at the thought. “But, uh, could we take a rain check? Not that I’m not happy to see you, sweetheart, but you sort of popped in at a bad time.”
From far away, like they’re at one end of a long tunnel, they can hear their friends screaming. Mostly Eddie’s name, but also calls for a Walkman and specific cassette tapes. The room around them is blurred, as though they’re watching the scene through a rain-soaked window, but they can see a crowd around Eddie’s unmoving body on the couch. Eddie would bet that his eyes are rolled back, his body twitching a little. Just like Nancy. Just like Max. But entirely different, too.
“Oh,” Steve says, staring at the scene. “I didn’t know that happened to you when I visited.”
“Well, to be fair, neither did I, since I’m usually asleep when you show up,” Eddie says. “How about this: give me two minutes. Go back and let me wake up, I’ll explain as fast as I possibly can and let them know not to try to get me out, and then you can come back. Cool?”
“Yeah,” Steve says, turning away from the far-off glimpses of their group. He sets his forehead against Eddie’s for a moment. “Two minutes.”
And then he’s gone, and Eddie gasps awake on the loveseat again.
“Fuck me,” he says, pounding at his chest. “Jesus.”
“Eddie!” shouts Dustin. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, hey, okay, I have to talk fast. We don’t need that,” he says, pointing to Lucas, who’s panting and holding a pile of tapes he must have grabbed from upstairs. “So. Christ. Okay. Steve’s been, uh, visiting me. He’s alive in the Upside Down, and he has been given some of Vecna’s powers and is now his second-in-command of all the monsters. Also, the only way we can get him out is by opening a gate and going back in, so Vecna’s trying to lure us back into a fight so we can save Steve, but it’s definitely a trap and Vecna’s going to try to kill us all so he can escape. Steve’s letting me explain all this, but he’ll be back very soon and when he does, don’t try to wake me up because he needs to talk to me. Everything clear?”
Everyone stares at him for approximately four seconds, and then all hell breaks loose.
“What?” Robin screeches.
“How do you know it’s Steve, not Vecna in disguise?” Lucas asks.
“It’s a long story, but believe me, I know,” Eddie says. “That was the first thing I made sure of.”
“How long have you known?” Nancy asks.
“What time is it?” Eddie asks.
“Almost ten o’clock.”
“About six hours. I’ve been dreaming about him for almost a week, but I thought they were hallucinations. I only confirmed last night that it’s actually him, and I was going to tell you all today. So, surprise, I guess?”
“He’s alive?” Dustin asks, and all stops again.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, laying a hand on his shoulder. “He misses you so badly, man. All of you.”
“He can’t come speak to us,” Eleven guesses.
“No, and that’s the thing,” Eddie says. He hears a watch ticking again, quietly, like Steve’s getting impatient and reaching out to give Eddie a warning. “He says I’m the only one he could get through to, so maybe everyone else is blocking him out somehow? I don’t know, you all are the experts.” Tick, tick, TICK. “He’s almost here. Any messages you want me to pass on from the other side?”
“Tell him he’s an idiot,” Robin says thickly. She’s moved to sit next to Eddie and is gripping his hand. “And we need our idiot.”
“Tell him we’re going to get him out,” Nancy says. “No matter what it takes.”
“And we love him.” This is Will. Everyone is always quiet when Will speaks. He looks a little green, but has a determined set to his chin. “It’s good to know, when you’re all alone.”
TICK, TICK, TICK.
Eddie blinks, and he’s in the trailer. He’s gushing blood but it’s happening sort of abstractly, like it’s important to the memory but he doesn’t want to feel it. He’s propped up against Robin, because if he remembers correctly at this point in the nightmare that was March 27th, he couldn’t really feel his legs anymore. He’s staring up at the ceiling gate, which is inching closed as they look through in horror at Steve’s resigned face, halfway up a rope it should have taken him five seconds to climb.
Eddie falls into the memory screaming. They’re all screaming. All Eddie can remember is screaming.
“Steve!” Dustin is shrieking.
“STEVE!” Robin is sobbing.
“Climb, Steve! Move! Wake up!” Nancy is begging.
Eddie couldn’t form words, he remembers. He was just screaming sounds; meaningless, awful sounds.
Looking back, he’s amazed they weren’t caught there. Eddie was still a wanted criminal and would remain that way for several more days, until government officials in dark suits showed up with papers in hand at the hospital, and Officers Callahan and Powell went from Eddie’s jailers to his bodyguards. A few angry groups showed up to yell when word got out about Eddie’s survival, but some of the men in dark suits stuck around just long enough to prove they weren’t playing around with the whole exonerated-of-all-charges thing.
But there was a total possibility that they never even got to that point, because when the gate started closing Eddie, Nancy, Robin, and Dustin raised the noise of holy hell with no regard to their fugitive status. They abandoned all thought of a silent escape from the trailer, and while shouting and fighting weren’t uncommon in Forest Hills, this did not sound anything like that. People had to know something was going on.
Bless the trailer park for hating cops more than being scared of each other, he guesses.
In this memory, Eddie sees the moment Vecna leaves Steve’s mind and he comes back to himself, that blankness in his eyes fading out to fear and confusion. He’s dangling on the rope just far enough below the gate that he can’t get his arm up and through, and the gate closes more quickly in playback than it had seemed to in the moment. Steve watches their faces like he’s committing them to memory, his own resigned, sad, a little scared, until he disappears from view. Right before he’s gone, he lifts his hand and reaches toward them futilely, and it’s only then that Eddie realizes he’d done the same thing first, that Steve’s hand outstretched towards him was an answer, not a question.
The vines swallow the gate until there’s no space left.
“No, no, no, no,” Dustin moans immediately, sobbing. “No, open it- open it back up, how do we open it up?” He stabs up at the gate with his spear, his swings going wide because he’s off balance from his injured leg.
Robin gets Eddie over to the couch and then kicks the mattress out of the way, dragging over the kitchen table so she can get closer to the ceiling. She climbs up on top and yanks at the vines, like the hole might still be there, just hidden. She’s shouting nonsense, “Stupid- fucking- how dare- burn down your whole dimension-”
Nancy levels her shotgun up at the ceiling, seems to rethink that plan, and lays it aside. Then she pulls out a massive hunting knife and joins Robin on the table, slashing at the vines. They fall away in limp strands, dead now. Tears pour steadily down her stoic face, while Robin is blotchy and her breath hitches between screams but her tears are stuck behind a wall.
Eddie doesn’t remember what he did. He couldn’t move much, what with the blood loss, and he couldn’t speak, frozen in horror and fear and deep, unending agony. He just stares at the spot of ceiling that has now ruined his life in two different ways. He doesn’t remember crying, but he must, because then Robin’s there and he collapses into her, Steve’s other half, Steve’s two other halves broken because they’re missing their middle piece.
“Buck,” he finds his memory mouth saying, “Buck, he- he’s-”
“No, no, he can’t be gone, he’s not gone,” Robin insists. “We just have to get Eleven to open the gates, we have to, she won’t say no. She can’t say no, Eddie.”
“Robbie,” he says, and he had never called her that — that was Steve’s name for her. She crumples, and while Nancy still tries to tear a portal into the trailer ceiling by sheer force and Dustin digs through their bags for something, anything, to help, Robin and Eddie fall apart into each others’ shoulders.
Through the pounding in his own ears, Eddie hears a low choking sob, and he looks over Robin’s shoulder to see Dustin, snotty and dripping with tears, pull something out of Steve’s backpack.
“Oh, Eddie,” Robin says wetly when she sees what it is.
Eddie’s vest. Bloodstained inside and out, folded careful and tucked into his bag because Steve would never want Eddie to lose it. Dustin limps over and hands it to Eddie, collapsing next to him on the couch. They all stare at it, Eddie’s prized possession guarded by Steve Harrington even from another dimension, but Eddie knows he sees things in the denim they don’t: the pink thread around the Sabbath patch that Steve got for him as a joke thinking he wouldn’t use it. The Mötörhead pin Steve picked up for him when he had to go with his parents to see family in Chicago at Thanksgiving. That same pink thread in the tiniest, simplest heart, just six little embroidered lines, on the Accept patch, where it would be right over his actual heart when he wore it. Actually, he doesn’t know if even Steve knew about that one. But it was for him, all the same.
Eddie holds the vest to his chest, a lump of fabric he’d destroy in a moment if it brought Steve back.
Nancy climbs off the table and collapses to her knees in front of them on the couch, wrapping her arms around herself. “What do we do?” she asks, broken, sounding seventeen for the first time since Eddie was finally, officially introduced to her, like four days before this terrible night.
“We go find another gate,” Dustin says. “The one out on the highway, where Fred died.”
“Max,” Eddie reminds them, voice weak and rasping with fear and hurt.
“Eleven could help,” Robin insists again.
“We can’t leave,” Dustin insists. “He’s trapped! We have to get him out!”
“We can’t do anything from here,” Nancy says tonelessly. “Let’s check on Max and Lucas, and maybe we can get in touch with Eleven and make a plan.”
“He’s-” Dustin cries. “He’s right there, we just have to-”
“He’s smart,” Eddie says, pulling Dustin close. All this year, he and Steve have been making jokes about sharing custody of the kids, but Eddie’s never felt so alone as he is here, trying to comfort Dustin when that was always Steve’s job. “The bats were all dead. Vecna was hurt, or dead. If Steve just stays there, he’ll be fine. He’s smart, and he’s strong. He can survive this.”
Robin grips the hand not wrapped around Dustin and squeezes so tight it would be painful, except Eddie remembers he can’t really feel it, because in that moment the stress and blood loss hit, and his vision goes a little white.
Everything freezes.
Eddie shakes himself, and looks around. This must be where the memory ends: he went unconscious, and the next time he woke up he was in Steve’s car being driven by Nancy, hurtling towards the hospital. The world looks like a VHS tape paused in the middle of a scene, the edges of everything and everyone indistinct. Eddie looks away from Dustin and finds Steve, not-not-Steve, by the door. He looks devastated.
“I guess this isn’t the happy memory you asked for before, is it,” Eddie says heavily.
“No, but I brought this on myself,” Steve says.
“What happened?”
“Vecna… showed me a different version of this memory,” Steve says slowly. “Similar enough, but not the same. And I think I’m supposed to wonder which one is the real one.”
“You know what he’s trying to do, right?” Eddie says, trying to keep the emotional wobble out of his voice. “He wants to convince you to fight with him when we show up to get you. That’s why he gave you powers. He didn’t need to do that to use you as bait.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, voice cracked through with anger. “I’m starting to get that.” He reaches out and Eddie stands, out of the frozen tableau of Robin and Dustin clinging to him on the couch. Eddie takes his hand and they both turn to look back on it, the worst moment among several days of awful moments.
“Can I try something?” Steve asks.
“Yeah, of course,” Eddie says.
Steve catches his chin with a big hand and stares into his eyes, and Eddie thinks for a heart-stopping moment that he’s going to kiss him, and for an even wilder moment realizes he doesn’t think he’d mind, fangs and all, and then he can- he can feel Steve plucking at some unseen thread in his mind, and they both stand still as the trailer swirls away and then the world reforms around them, except —
It’s suddenly bright, and hot, and loud with pop music.
Technicolor turquoise catches Eddie’s eye, and he turns to see a pool: the Harrington pool, specifically, clear water dotted with floaties and toys. Eddie looks to his left, sees the edge of the BMW out in front of the house and a pile of towels in an empty deck chair, a boombox blaring out Don Henley (“I can tell you my love for you will still be strong, after the boys of summer have gone … ”). Turns right, and sees Steve, regular Steve, in the chair next to him, and Robin in the one on his other side. They’re both sprawled out and nearly asleep, the laziness of too much sun and too little anything else.
This could be any day of summer '85, from the morning after the Starcourt mall fire to the first day of school for Robin’s senior year and Eddie’s senior-senior-senior year. Though, considering Steve’s face is clear of bruises and Robin’s hair is more sun-blonde than bleached, he thinks it’s late in the summer. They spent weeks out by the pool, Robin insisting that if she was going to be best friends with “this dingbat,” as she thumbed over her shoulder at Steve, she might as well enjoy some perks. Eddie, who avoided the public pool because it’s usually a haven for people like Billy Hargrove and, well, Steve Harrington, discovered that, actually, he did like to swim if it didn’t come with a risk of being held under by a meathead football player.
Eddie’s not the type to tan, so he was always under an umbrella or in the water, while Steve and Robin alternated between catnaps on the deck chairs and joining Eddie in the pool. Steve even had one of those mirrors for tanning his face, and while Robin and Eddie both lathered up in sunscreen, Steve would drizzle on tanning oil and grin at their concern. “Let me be hot, damn it,” he’d say, smelling like artificial coconut and settling his Ray Bans on a towel next to him so he didn’t get tan lines. “If I live long enough for too much sun to be an issue, it’ll be a miracle.”
Every time he’d make that comment, Robin would snort, as if to say, well, he has a point. Eddie, knowing now what she was thinking, would agree, but that’s harder to do when Steve’s prediction came true so much faster than even he could have known.
Steve was a revelation poolside. It seemed to be the place he was meant for — yes, Eddie loved the way he looked in the hallways at school with Eddie’s bruises underneath his preppy clothes, loved him cocky and sure in his Scoops uniform, adored him in Eddie’s clothes in the living room at the trailer, sipping coffee and shooting the breeze with Wayne, but he glowed out by the pool. He wore neon swim trunks so tiny it was indecent (“They’re European, you heathen,” he would sniff when Robin complained. “Yeah, Robin, leave him alone,” Eddie would agree, and Robin would say, “Don’t you dare,” before Steve could even proposition Eddie a little) and always tasted like fruit and salt and, sometimes, when Robin fell asleep in her chair, Eddie could persuade him inside to cool off with a shower that would run so long they’d be shivering and spent by the end of it.
Looking back, the summer of ‘85 with Steve and Robin was a high point in Eddie’s life, and he hadn’t even recognized it for what it was at the time. At the time, it had just been… normal.
“This,” Steve sighs. Eddie looks up from the splay of Steve’s hairy brown thighs to find his gaze locked back on him in return, amused and bright. “This is what I miss.”
“Sunlight?” Eddie asks.
“Yeah,” Steve says. “But also everything else.” His tan is starting to melt to silver, and Eddie can see a fang overhanging his lower lip. Even as he changes to his new self under Eddie’s watch, he’s starting to fade out and, soon enough, Eddie will be back in a world without him.
“Don’t let him convince you we don’t love you,” Eddie says.
Steve’s gaze snaps to Eddie’s. His eyes search Eddie for a long moment, and Eddie wonders if, even after all this, that was too much. But, no; Steve smiles, and it’s not as terrible as Eddie might have thought. Even with the fangs. “I won’t,” he promises.
Eddie wakes with a gasp for the second time in as many minutes. He jumps a little to find Dustin Henderson hovering inches away, grinning. The rest of the Party is arrayed around him, expressions serious.
“We have a plan.”
The plan is that Eleven thinks she’ll be able to talk to Steve when he’s in Eddie’s head. But they can’t set a meeting time because Steve doesn’t know what time it is in the real world, and Eddie has no way to contact him first. Instead, the next time Eddie’s eyes roll back, someone will need to call El in and she’ll have to work fast, before Steve’s out of energy.
Robin is elected to stay glued to Eddie’s side for the foreseeable future, with the whole rest of the gang taking over the Harrington house until this is all sorted.
“What happens if Steve’s parents actually do show up?” Eddie ventures. It’s been over a month, but won’t they need to check in eventually? “If it’s just me, I can hide until they leave. Somehow, I think they’ll notice ten unknown faces and we can’t all hide in Steve’s closet.”
The others mull that over and Robin snorts, muttering to Eddie, “Wouldn’t be the first time you were hiding in a closet, would it?”
“I was never hiding,” Eddie whispers back, “just biding my time.”
The party builds out a few plans which basically amount to: hey, we’ll wing it if that happens, but for now we’ll pretend that’s not going to happen because we have other things to think about. Then, they spend the rest of the day peppering Eddie with questions. Like:
“What powers does Steve have?”
“I don’t know, man. Haven’t asked.”
“You haven’t asked?” Mike says. He’s a lot less scared of Eddie now than he used to be, which is a shame.
“I thought he was a nightmare until last night! Was I supposed to stop running and ask what his monster baseball card stats would be?”
Mike frowns. “How do you know about baseball cards? You hate that shit.”
Instead of the real answer (which is “Steve collects them”), Eddie says, “Did I mention he has fangs now?”
Max says, “Whoa, what?”
“Yup. And I think he said he can fly.”
“Dude!”
And:
“Does he have to eat anything?” Nancy asks.
“I think it’s, like… energy? Like how Vecna feeds on fear, I think Steve feeds on…”
“Feeds on what?”
“You’re going to think I’m lying.”
“Why would this be the thing you started lying about?” Lucas asks.
“Good point. Uh, I think he feeds on, like, happiness? Or, laughter, or something?”
“Oh my god. Are you having to actually laugh at his terrible jokes just to keep him alive?” Max says.
“Apparently so.”
And:
“Why you?”
This is Dustin, and Eddie gets it. It’s a question he has asked himself nightly since this started. At first, it was a plea for understanding of why Eddie always had to be the one with the worst luck, first with having to witness Chrissy’s violent end, then Jason hunting him, then hallucinations of his dead lover: why me? Why is it always goddamn me? Then, it was more wonder: why, of all the people Steve could visit, is he stuck with Eddie?
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. He catches Robin’s eye and she looks away. Apparently, she’s abandoned her plan of getting Eddie to have the I Was Pseudo-Dating Steve conversation, and he’s relieved.
That night, they crawl into Steve’s bed and turn towards each other. This isn’t exactly weird for them; or, it is, but only because Steve isn’t there like an electric blanket between them keeping them warm. Robin spent more than a few nights falling asleep next to them over the course of the last year; she’d tell her parents she was sleeping over at a friend’s house or at a study party and spend a few days with Steve and Eddie switching from the trailer to Loch Nora, depending on their mood (and the Harrington house’s emptiness).
“Is it stupid to say I miss his snoring?” Robin whispers as they settle in.
“No,” Eddie says. “I miss the way his leg hair would scratch me when it was growing in after he shaved for swim meets.”
Robin laughs, and then she’s crying. Hiccuping, shuddering tears. “I can’t believe I knew his stupid song, and I froze when the time came to use it.”
Eddie, bewildered, pulls her close, lets her soak the front of his (Steve’s) shirt. “What are you talking about?
“When Vecna got him,” she sobs. “I knew his song, but I couldn’t think. I was so scared, and I froze when he needed me most, and now he’s-”
“Don’t you dare,” Eddie murmurs, pushing her hair back and kissing her forehead. “Don’t blame yourself for something a monster did. This isn’t your fault.”
“It is a little,” Robin argues, sniffling. “He’s not here, because when I saw him freeze I couldn’t remember the words to stupid Uptown Girl.”
“You- what?” Eddie asks faintly.
“I know,” she says, leaning back and scrubbing at her face, smiling a watery smile. “When he told me his song, just in case, I nearly broke a rib laughing. Of course his favorite song is Uptown Girl. You couldn’t get more Top 40, classic Harrington.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Classic Harrington,” and he wonders if the song choice is a coincidence, or if it’s not, and how right now it doesn’t really matter either way.
At least Steve is consistent. Eddie and Robin are on the edge of drifting off, groggy and quiet from a long day of emotional revelations and planning, when he hears a watch ticking.
“Rob,” he says, heart starting to race. “It’s happening, he’s on the way.”
She scrambles for the door, and as he fades into Steve’s grasp, he hears her shout:
“El! Dustin! Everyone! Steve’s here!”
Notes:
NOTES:
- Nancy did indeed pick up a book on interventions to talk with Eddie about his Obvious Issues He’s Not Dealing With — specifically, she bought the brand new book Intervention: How to help someone who doesn’t want help by Vernon Johnson, published in 1986. Johnson pioneered the concept of early intervention in chemical dependency, specifically alcoholism, rather than the more common approach of letting an addict “hit rock bottom” first before helping.
- You might have noticed that Steve’s arriving sound is the ticking of a watch rather than the chimes of a clock, because his powers are are more minimized version of Vecna’s.
- The Don Henley song in the pool memory scene is The Boys of Summer, and far too on the nose for me not to use it.
Chapter 9: seven: THE TRIO | THE TRIO
Summary:
“It doesn’t make sense to risk your lives for me, especially now that I’m… this,” Steve argues, gesturing at himself. “And besides, Vecna knows you’re coming. If I know any tiny part of the plan, he might be able to see it in my mind.”
“What if you block him?” El offers. “Like we have been doing.”
“Block him,” Steve repeats. “How? Can you teach me?”
“Yes,” El says. “He will know you’re doing it, though.”
“That’s okay,” Steve says. “I’ve not really hidden the fact that I hate him and want him to lose, so. Teach me your ways, rockstar.”
Notes:
So, hey, those of you that have been eyeing that "minor monsterfucking" tag, this one's for you. :)
Next part is out on Thursday, then wrapping up on Saturday!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Steve can tell the difference by now when he’s stepping into a memory versus stepping into a hallucination; the past jerks him forward like a rollercoaster car launching forward. He has to hold on for the first few seconds to gather the details of where and when and who he is, which Steve, in which phase of his metamorphosis from idiot jock to idiot babysitter to idiot boyfriend he’s supposed to be. Then, once that’s sorted out, there’s a pre-written script he can choose to follow or disregard. His memory isn’t the best — even before the concussions it wasn’t great — so he knows that the memories have to be stored somewhere deeper than his own brain, because he recalls everything in perfect clarity.
But when he follows the warm light into Eddie’s head and they stay in the present, it feels different. The edges of the world blur and smooth, and everything that isn’t Eddie becomes background noise. There’s no script, there’s no invisible tugging to get him in place.
Tonight, Steve feels the light in his palm glow warm and he follows it. (He’s started wondering if maybe that happens when Eddie’s thinking of him. He won’t ask; he likes that idea and doesn’t want to consider an alternative.) When he reappears in the real world, it’s the present, the scene fuzzy beyond the tiny scope of him and Eddie. Eddie is sitting in the middle of Steve’s bed in the Harrington house, crossed-legged and shower-damp, waiting for him. A lamp glows on the bedside table (on Eddie’s side; Steve put it there when Eddie started staying over more, because before that he had to get out of bed to turn the light off when he was done reading for the night), and Eddie picks at a loose string on the plaid bedspread. He’s smiling.
He’s also not alone.
“Eleven?” Steve gasps. “How- can you see me?”
A smile grows wide across Eleven’s face, and her eyes go watery immediately. “Yes,” she says, tears starting to roll in steady streams. “I can see you. Hello, Steve.”
“Oh my god, come here,” Steve says, and Eleven scrambles up and into his arms. “God, look at you! Pretty girl, what happened to your hair? If it was Mike, I’ll kill him, just say the word.”
Eleven giggles, but then the joy falls away a little. “No, it was Papa. He found me again.”
Steve stills, feels his brow furrow, and pulls Eleven back so he can look her over. “And you’re okay? You’re back home?”
“Yes,” Eleven says. “I got away. But.” She ducks her head, a learned affectation because she used to keep her emotions buried deep, and they’ve had to teach her to let them loose when she can. “I had to do bad things to get free.”
“Hey,” Steve says, and rubs a hand over her head, dark brown hair grown out to a thick inch of curls. “None of that. I don’t know what happened, but I know it wasn’t your fault.”
Eleven smiles again, and then the tears start back up, and she buries her face in Steve’s shoulder. “I missed you,” she says, muffled into his grimy, terrible Upside Down-ruined t-shirt. “I am sorry I trapped you.”
“Hey, none of that,” Steve repeats, softer now.
Over Eleven’s head, Steve catches Eddie’s eye. Eddie smiles at him, and says, “Mother hen.”
Steve sticks out his tongue, and Eddie snorts. Steve gets Eleven back over to the bed, and they clamber onto the mattress, a triangle of crossed legs.
“So how did this happen?” Steve asks. “I thought I could only visit Eddie.”
“Eddie explained to us what has been going on,” Eleven says. “Dustin had an idea. He thought that Eddie did not know to block his mind from Henry, because he is new to this.”
Eddie looks guilty, but that tracks, so Steve says, “Sure, makes sense.”
“And then you connected with him because he was the last person you saw before the gate closed,” El continues.
Now Steve is the one who feels guilty. “Uh. Maybe. But you can go around it?”
“Yes,” Eleven says unnecessarily, because here she sits. “I had to know where to find you, and now I know I can find you here in Eddie’s head.”
Eddie clears his throat. “Just so cards are on the table,” he tells Steve, “the whole gang is here. They can’t see you, obviously, but they have music ready to go in case this is a Vecna trick.”
He nods to the doorway behind Steve, and sure enough, Steve can see them through the blue: the kids, Robbie, Nancy, even Joyce and someone who looks like Hopper, all clustered against the wall in Steve’s bedroom. Steve stands and makes his way over to Robin and kneels before her indistinct shape, and tries to touch her, but his hand passes right through. “Can I talk to them, too?” He moves over to Dustin, trying to squint as though that will clarify his vision. Lucas and Max, Jon and Will and Mike and Erica. All there, but not there.
“I don’t know,” Eleven says. “I am trying to come up with a plan. I don’t want to risk letting Henry out.”
“If it helps, he thinks he can’t get out without a new gate,” Steve says. He stands and pauses; it is Hopper, Hopper, alive, arms crossed by the door. He feels his breath catch. “Hop is… Hop’s okay?”
He turns back to see Eleven smile shakily. “Yes. He will be okay.”
“He was in Russia, apparently?” Eddie says. “Honestly, I still don’t really know what happened. He showed up out of the blue and everyone started crying, and I thought we were being arrested.”
Steve laughs a little, and again tries to reach out and touch; Hopper’s outline wavers, like a ripple on water. “I guess people are coming back from the dead all over the place, huh.”
“You are not dead,” Eleven says fiercely. “You are stuck. We will get you.”
“Right. About that,” Steve goes back to the bed. “I’m rethinking things, and I’ve decided that was a stupid plan.”
“What is?” Eddie asks. “Your rescue?”
“Yes,” Steve says. “It’s, like, a numbers game. There are thirteen people in this room, and then there’s me. I’m not worth thirteen people, but that’s what we risk if El opens the gate. And more, if Vecna wins. I’m not worth it.”
“The plan is not stupid. That is stupid,” Eleven says.
“Agreed, asshole,” Eddie says. They both glare at him.
“It doesn’t make sense to risk your lives for me, especially now that I’m… this,” Steve argues, gesturing at himself. “And besides, Vecna knows you’re coming. If I know any tiny part of the plan, he might be able to see it in my mind.”
“What if you block him?” El offers. “Like we have been doing.”
“Block him,” Steve repeats. “How? Can you teach me?”
“Yes,” El says. “He will know you’re doing it, though.”
“That’s okay,” Steve says. “I’ve not really hidden the fact that I hate him and want him to lose, so. Teach me your ways, rockstar.”
El has Steve close his eyes, and picture a place that he relates to happy memories. “You should know it very well,” she says. “You will have to know if it’s a fake version if he tries to trick you.” Steve casts around, thinks about Eddie’s bedroom in the trailer, but discards that because of all the detritus; Steve knows most of the posters and pictures, but Eddie accumulates tchotchkes like other people accumulate loose change, and he doesn’t think he could catch every little wrong detail. Then he thinks about his own bedroom, which has its stores of happy memories — most involving Eddie and no clothes, some involving Nancy and no clothes, and a small few involving either of them with clothes — but that doesn’t seem strong enough.
He keeps thinking. The parlor of Scoops Ahoy, where he first met Robin and got near-daily visits from the kids and Eddie, where he earned his first paycheck that wasn’t based on his last name. Skull Rock, for obvious reasons. The Harrington pool, but that’s an easy no.
Then it hits him: the kitchen.
God, of course it should be the kitchen. Besides one disastrous conversation with his dad about his future, it was an almost entirely happy space: that’s where he learned to cook with his mom, echoing her curses when she burned the focaccia or forgot to set the oven timer, porco cane, vaffanculo, stupido! She’d pour wine for herself and juice for him in the same long-stemmed glasses, and taught him how to lightly clink his drink to hers with a wink to show they were conspirators. She’d tell him stories and talk frankly about her health and she’d worry over him when he came home with bruises or scratches from playing roughly with other boys, all while dinner simmered in the background, a scent memory as much as anything else.
Then he thinks of Dustin and Robin, the only two who would stay over consistently after movie nights, at the kitchen table begging for breakfast, both wearing Steve’s way too big pajama bottoms as they argued blearily about whatever caught their attention. Or the game nights he hosted after the Byers and El left town because the Wheelers’ basement made everyone too sad, and he’d go all out with snacks to the point that even Mike couldn’t be that snarky about it. Even when he was on his own, while the echoing emptiness of the rest of the house pressed down on him until he couldn’t ignore it, he could retreat to the kitchen and lose himself in steam and spices and the stains on his stack of cookbooks.
Or all the moments with Eddie. Eddie dancing with him. Eddie moaning outlandishly around his fork when Steve made him the simplest things for lunch. Eddie kissing him against the pantry door, against the cabinets, against the breakfast bar, against the floor.
The morning after the graduation bonfire, when Steve exposed all the dark rot in his heart about his mom and his dad and his future, and the way Eddie opened up his own chest to show him the mirror image of black fear and sadness under his ribs, and the way they saw each other there for the first time in full. That was the morning Steve knew he loved Eddie, really loved him, and he was pretty sure Eddie loved him too.
“Okay,” he says, and feels the way the sunlight would fall over him from the kitchen window, hears the crackle of the radio as whoever he was with turned the dial to what they wanted — Robin would find the station that played new wave, Dustin to some scientific talk radio, his mom would find Elvis wherever she could, and Eddie would twist the knob as far over as it went, hunting down the strains of roaring guitar from a station out of Indy — and sees the people he loves arrayed around the room all together, just how he’d always wanted it. He could imagine it. That was enough.
El talks him through finding the safest place in that room, which ends up being a box high on a shelf in the pantry, next to the second-rate salad spinner and stand mixer. Inside, he arranges the memories he wants to hide from Vecna like they’re recipe cards, sliding each one in order of how fucked he’d be if Vecna found them. He lingers over the one in the Munson trailer where he almost died, the longest conversation he’s had with Eddie in at least a month, and Eddie didn’t even run screaming from the building at the end of it.
Eddie’s silent now, letting El walk Steve through the process of hiding his memories away, but he’s attentive, helping Steve visualize a lock on the box made up of what El calls his unbreakable memories, the happiest ones Steve has in the tank, the ones it’ll be the hardest for Vecna to twist and shatter. He deliberates and picks a few: the Starcourt mall bathroom, his mom’s all-clear diagnosis, getting Dustin ready for the Snowball, Eddie on top of Skull Rock when they agreed they were on the same page about a future together.
“How do we test it?” Eddie asks when it’s done. Steve wonders the same thing, then his brain gets a slam of energy into it.
“Jesus!” he gasps, and immediately throws up whatever walls of happy memories he can find, before realizing it’s not Vecna pilfering through his mind like a raccoon in a garbage can. The feeling is distinctly someone else. “El, you’re like a feral cat!”
El meows like she’s heard the word but has never actually met a cat and Eddie laughs, and the rushing feeling Steve gets from that distracts him enough that El scratches her way into his mind-kitchen with the sunlight on the tile. She immediately begins rattling the cupboards, and he can feel her energy scrabbling for crumbs wherever she can find them. He tenses when she finds the pantry, and she feels it and snoops inside, shoving aside a loaf of bread and bags of potatoes and eventually finding the box. He waits with bated breath while she shakes it, picks at the lock, throws it on the floor. He thinks he’s got it handled until Eleven says, “Eddie. Distract him.”
“I’d be delighted,” Eddie says, and Steve doesn’t open his eyes, but he feels the mattress dip when Eddie crawls close. He thinks his face is probably starting to go pink, and is glad that even though there’s technically an audience, they can’t actually see what’s happening except for El, who’s hopefully preoccupied. Eddie crawls up close to Steve and Steve, for a moment, thinks Eddie will disregard their not-in-front-of-the-kids rule and climb directly into his lap. The thought alone is enough for Steve to lose his concentration, for El to make a triumphant noise as the lock clicks, like it’s a combination and she got one of the numbers right.
But Eddie isn’t crawling in his lap. He winds around Steve’s side like water and curls around Steve’s back instead, sitting up on his knees and draping forward so his arms hang in front of Steve’s chest. Another click of the lock, and Steve swallows.
“I wonder what you’re thinking about in that pretty head of yours, baby,” Eddie murmurs into his ear. “You’ll have to tell me all about it when I get you to myself again. I have a few ideas of my favorite memories I could share.”
Steve doesn’t let himself lean back into Eddie’s warmth. This is a test, after all, to make sure that his secrets are airtight, that someone who means real harm won’t be able to force their way in. He doesn’t answer, just concentrates on watching El’s amorphous energy rattle his box of secrets harder.
“Like our first time in your pool, remember that?” Eddie continues, voice still a soft wisp of air against Steve’s ear so El won’t hear. Steve’s breath catches. “Yeah, I knew you would. You were so cocky, weren’t you? Saying that the neighbors couldn’t see, that you dared me. And then you stripped out of that tiny little swimsuit and jumped in, and you didn’t think I’d do it too, but I did.”
God, yeah, he did. Steve remembers it, his grin taunting from the water, the way that grin jolted into a shocked smile when Eddie raised an eyebrow, piled his hair on top of his head with a scrunchie he’d stolen from Robin, and kicked out of his own swim trunks until he was beautifully, gloriously bare too. Then he slid into the pool and swam over to Steve, tangling their legs together under the water.
The lock in the box clicks again, and this time El laughs and says, “More, Eddie.”
“Maybe that’s the next memory you’ll find me in,” Eddie whispers, almost too low for even Steve to hear. “Or maybe something different. Maybe you can come find me and we’ll take this new look for a spin.”
Steve opens his eyes, turns his head to the side to catch Eddie’s gaze. His hungry, dark-eyed gaze. Eddie runs his thumb over Steve’s bottom lip, and pauses for just a moment on the sharp edge of a fang.
In El’s hands inside his head, the box springs open.
At Steve’s back, Eddie smiles, raw and wild, and withdraws.
“You need to work on that,” El says frankly, and Steve can only nod. “If we know that you can be distracted, we will practice.”
“Practice sounds good,” Eddie chirps brightly.
“Right,” Steve says, voice strained. “Okay. Thanks, El.”
She nods, and smiles. “You should go. It is late here, and we will plan all day tomorrow so you can talk to everyone.”
“Right, yeah, okay,” Steve says. “Thank you. Really.”
He doesn’t know what to do except go, leaving Eddie and Eleven there on the bed, their friends arrayed around them in the blurred background, as he banishes himself back to a different world.
Vecna is there when Steve opens his eyes. He gets no time to prepare. No time to plan.
Vecna shoves into his brain violently, gleefully.
Like El, Steve can feel where Vecna is in his head as he moves around; unlike El, Vecna’s presence isn’t a glowing light like a hamster trapped inside a bouncy ball, but dark, creeping and cold and frightening. He walks through the memory of the Munson trailer and slides his finger along the rows of mugs, crashing each of them to the ground, lingering when it was one that was a little more important and Steve instinctively reached out to save it. When the Care Bears one Steve had commandeered slides off its hook and breaks into pieces, Steve flinches and Vecna laughs.
He tears through Steve’s memories like bear claws through a tent, lingering when Steve gets uncomfortable. He replays Steve and Nancy’s first time over and over, made worse in hindsight by the knowledge of Barb being taken outside as it happened. He stands in the corner of the kitchen as Steve and his dad argue about Steve’s future when he didn’t get into college. He’s there at Starcourt Mall, when Steve watches in horror as Max approaches Billy, and he is too far away to pull her back, to put himself in her harm’s way.
When Vecna sees Eleven, he lingers, staring. Like Steve’s memories will suddenly produce a weakness that Vecna can grasp onto.
(God, he hopes that doesn’t happen.)
“I know her weaknesses,” Vecna muses, answering Steve’s thought. “You, and her other little friends. The boy with the dark hair especially. The police chief. She tries to protect you all, and she has failed before. She’ll do anything to not fail again.”
Far away in Steve’s mind, a secret box of memories on a pantry shelf rattles like it wants attention, and Steve thinks about anything else. His mind grabs onto El and he and Vecna are moved into a new memory, a pool party Steve had allowed the kids to throw early in summer ‘85. Before Starcourt. Before Billy. Before Joyce Byers packed her boys and El up and ran to somewhere safer. They’d be high schoolers at the end of the summer, nearly adults, Dustin had insisted, and a party was the perfect way to celebrate.
Steve had rolled his eyes and pretended to think about it, but relented, because for all Dustin’s talk about being adults, they weren’t; as the memory starts, Lucas is holding a pool noodle to Mike’s neck and shouting, “Surrender, knave!”
Mike, arms held by Will on one side and Dustin on the other, fights theatrically and says, “Never!”
“Then we leave your judgment to the princesses,” Lucas says. “What say you, ladies?”
Max and El are in the loungers on the other side, shaded by an umbrella. Max is reading a comic book. El is sprawled on her stomach, feet crossed behind her in the air, chin resting on her hands; she’s been watching the whole time.
“Guilty,” Max calls without looking up from Wonder Woman #314.
El, taking that as her cue, gives a sad thumbs down, but then beams immediately when Lucas, Dustin, and Will all crow their agreement. Lucas thrusts the pool noodle exaggeratedly at Mike, and he crumples, drama personified, face-down into the pool.
Over the noise of laughter and splashing as the others follow into the water, Steve looks to his left; Nancy’s there, nose in a book by someone named Rosalynn Carter. She looks up, sees Steve looking at her, smiles, and goes back to reading. Nancy didn’t seem to know how to get out of the awkward stage between them after their breakup, and Steve didn’t know how to tell her it was fine: she moved on with Jon, he moved on with Eddie, they were both happier with other people. It was all fine, but he’d never figured out how to make his mouth say those words.
Steve, by habit, looks to his right to find Robin, forgetting it was too early of a memory for her to be there, and jumps a little to find Vecna there instead. “Jesus,” he says. “You’re so much worse to look at under direct sunlight.”
Vecna is watching Eleven across the pool, laughing as the boys dunk each other underwater and shooting shy looks towards Max, who hasn’t become her best friend yet in this memory. Vecna takes a step towards her, stepping onto the surface of the pool like it’s solid, and the boys keep playing like he’s not there — because he’s not, Steve reminds himself, he’s not, he’s not, this is a memory, nothing can happen to them. The kids are safe, a universe away.
He forgets that the second Vecna reaches out and grabs Eleven, who gasps and struggles with her hands around her throat.
It’s Steve, though, who can’t breathe. Vecna has Eleven up in the air, her feet kicking, her eyes streaming tears as much from fear as from strangulation, but it’s Steve who collapses to the warm cement on all fours, choking.
“Interesting,” Vecna says.
Eleven disappears from his hand. Steve sucks in air. The memory changes.
Skull Rock. Steve recognizes it immediately, recognizes the memory immediately. It had been a whiplash sort of day; March in ‘85, months before he’d meet Robin, months before he’d graduate and kiss the nightmare of high school goodbye, months after he’d kissed Eddie Munson for the first time and felt the click of something right in his life.
He’d seen red when Tommy Hagan had put Eddie up against the wall after class, posturing and bullying and mean, and Steve couldn’t stop himself from pushing back, from defending Eddie the only way he knew how, derisive and aloof to drive Tommy nuts.
Steve hadn’t actually had swim practice that day, but it was a convenient excuse to be able to drive home and unearth one of his mom’s good baskets (“It’s a Longaberger, Daniel, it’s going to cost money for that kind of quality!” he remembered her saying when she’d ordered it from a catalog and he’d scoffed at the price). He’d carefully wrapped a bottle of wine in a towel and put together sandwiches and driven out to wait for Eddie to arrive, excited like a kid waiting for their birthday party.
Steve had always known that Eddie was more reticent about discussing their relationship than Steve was. He got cagey when Steve asked him on dates and it took him forever to let Steve sleep over for the first time; Steve would sneak in through Eddie’s window and linger until he felt he couldn’t anymore, and Eddie would never offer for him to just stay, so he’d leave at some ungodly hour of the morning and wonder what he’d have to do to get to sleep in Eddie’s bed. (As it turned out, what it would take would be a migraine from his at-that-point latest concussion and a lackluster Valentine’s Day that ended up being the best one of Steve’s life.)
Steve didn’t begrudge Eddie for shying away; he knew some of it, probably a lot of it, had to do with the gay thing. Them being gay, that is. Their relationship being gay. Whatever. Steve sort of understood, though he still wasn’t really sure what the worst that could happen was; yeah, they’d probably get called names if they were found out, maybe take a few beatings, but they’d both survived that before. Hell, Steve had survived worse then, and Eddie’s survived worse since.
But Eddie doesn’t think like that, and Steve might not get it, but he won’t push. He’s heard the news, he knows the score: people like them don’t have a guaranteed forever. Queers, yeah, but also two boys tied up in government conspiracies and monster stories when all they have is no luck and less sense. Steve knows their story isn’t likely to end happily, but isn’t that a reason to try for happiness while they can?
And now, it’s all even more complicated than it was before, when they were both normal human dudes. Now, Steve’s technically the leader of a monster army made up of creatures who once tried to kill Eddie, and the only moments they get alone together are stolen from time spent in nightmares and purgatory. It’s all too much, and Steve would never blame Eddie for wanting to continue the pattern of not talking about it. It was easier not to talk about it.
Maybe talking never would have been enough, anyway. The word “boyfriends,” as much as Steve likes the sound of it, didn’t ever seem to really fit them, and everything else — lover, friend, confidante, secret — isn’t enough to cover it all. He’s always struggled with what to call Eddie in his head, trying out every label Robin could throw at him:
“Partner?”
“Like a law firm? No thanks.”
“Paramour?”
“I don’t even know what that one means.”
“Gentleman caller?”
“I’m sorry, I thought I was talking to Robin, not Jane Austen.”
But even with all the options he and Robin tried, he always landed back on Eddie — he’s Steve’s Eddie.
He’d never said that out loud. He never felt like he needed to: Eddie seemed to understand Steve in the ways that mattered, and Steve had been burned in the past by using words that others weren’t ready to hear. So he won’t call Eddie his Eddie, and he won’t tell him he loves him, even though he does, and he won’t hold his hand and kiss him in public even though he’s dying to, because Eddie doesn’t want him to.
Still, Eddie had climbed up to join Steve on Skull Rock and let Steve put his arm around him like boyfriends do, and shared a meal watching the sunset like boyfriends do, and when Steve had said,
We’re in this together, right? This is it?
Eddie had said, with his little secret smile,
Yeah. And then, Yeah, Steve. This is it.
It wasn’t exchanging “I love you”s, but Steve’s heart was still a little too fragile for all that, and he could wait if Eddie could wait. This is it said the same thing, anyway. It said, I choose you and you choose me, and we choose this together. It said, we don’t need the same words everyone else does, we know what we are.
Steve, lost in thought, forgets where he is until Vecna says, “ Ah, of course. Your star-crossed man from the wrong side of town.”
Steve breathes steadily through his nose. He won’t let Vecna ruin this. He won’t think about the box rattling in the pantry of the kitchen of his mind.
“He was who I’d intended to recruit for the role you’re in now, of course,” Vecna says. “I assumed you all would leave him behind, since he was gravely injured. I hadn’t expected you to insist on saving him.” Vecna watches Steve move through the memory, clinking his glass against Eddie’s, salute, and continues with a put-upon sigh, “Pity I don’t have him. He has a mind for strategy, that one.”
Steve’s hand clenches and his knuckles roll against his thigh, and of course Vecna notices, so he says, “Leave him alone.”
“Well, of course I will, for now,” Vecna says. “There’s nothing I can do to him from here anyway.”
Steve stares out at the memory of a sunset, and feels the warmth of the memory of Eddie under his arm, and hears his memories of their most recent conversations rattle in their locked tight box.
“I know you’re keeping secrets, Steve,” Vecna says silkily, voice a cobweb on the back of Steve’s neck. He shivers involuntarily. “It’s just as easy for me to tell when you’re hiding something as when you think about it outright. And you might have dug a hole to put them in for now, but I will find them. I will know everything, Steve. You can’t hide from me.”
The nice thing about being the reluctant lieutenant to the armies of the underworld is that Steve doesn’t have to ask for permission to fuck off when he wants to. So, when Vecna withdraws from his mind like a thorny vine being pulled from soft clothing, Steve doesn’t say a word, just glares, and stomps out of the trailer.
He wanders for a bit, but really he’s just killing time. He wants to go back and talk to Eddie. He wants to talk to Eleven again. He wants to find a way to talk to Robin, Dustin, Nance, Hopper. Hell, he’d fight another dozen demobats to have an uncivil conversation with Mike Wheeler right now.
He has no idea how time passes in the Upside Down, but he knows that his friends will be preparing for Steve to visit again today, probably with plans A, B, and C all lined out, with a few backup options on the table as well. He’s revitalized from his last trip, Eddie’s laughter lighting him up, so he could have stayed longer. But they’re all still — well, they’re human, and need to sleep, to eat, to release the no doubt stirred up emotions from Steve’s unannounced return. He couldn’t just sit there and watch them sleep. Could he? No, that’s a step too far even for the monster.
Steve goes to Loch Nora, changes his clothes, spends a few minutes fussing in the pitted, aged mirror with his hair. He’s more a monster now than he was last time he checked, eyes brighter gold, skin more silver, claws longer, teeth sharper. There’s webbing between his fingers now, thin, veiny skin. He looks as out of place in this body wearing his 1982 swim camp shirt as Michael J. Fox did as a werewolf wearing a basketball uniform.
His hair’s still fine, so that’s one thing in the yay column. And… he runs a thumb along a fang, just like Eddie did. Maybe this body isn’t all bad.
He shakes his head, and makes himself leave.
He kills time by practicing his skills with controlling the mutant plants and separating buildings and putting them back together, like massive aerial Lego sets. He’s avoiding Vecna, because underneath literally all of what’s going on with that guy, in the end he’s just a jerk with a power complex. Steve’s also avoiding the bats, but that’s because Steve’s a jerk too, and doesn’t want to have to apologize to a flock of animals for killing one of them when they tried to kill him first.
But, finally, he feels his palm go warm, a tug, and he follows it immediately.
He blinks and finds himself in his parents’ living room, the room blurred outside of the little bubble of the couch where Eddie sits.
“Hi,” Eddie says with a small smile. Next to him, Eleven waves.
“Hi,” Steve says back. “What’s the plan?”
Eddie holds up Nancy’s reporter notebook and shakes it. “You have tricks to perform, my dear.”
The notebook is full of questions from the group for Steve to answer (“How far can you teleport? How quickly do you heal? Do the demobats talk to you?”) and things to try with his newfound powers. Steve demonstrates what he can, lets them know what he’s not able to do, and is exhausted quickly. Luckily, Eddie’s got a mind for details, and he prods Steve into a teasing conversation about whether or not a pet rock counted as a knick-knack or a cry for help until they’re both giggling and Steve doesn’t feel quite so drained.
And so the routine is formed. Steve appears, Eddie rattles off the latest questions from the group, they brainstorm, El helps Steve practice his defense against Vecna and try new things with his powers. Sometimes, he, Eddie, and El go into memories to find specific answers to questions about Vecna’s weaknesses or to show Eleven what happened the last time they fought him, but they’re limited to the memories that include both Steve and Eddie, so he can’t show them anything from his time since being trapped down below or even the assault on Vecna where Nancy shot him.
“Dustin wants to,” El reads carefully off the notepad one day, “‘explore the link of… com-commonality? Between Steve and Eddie to confirm why you two are connected.’ He suggests going back to the strongest memory of your relationship.”
“Oh, uh,” Steve says.
“That’s not-” Eddie says.
“Doesn’t seem necessary-”
“Don’t even know what memory that would be, really, so.”
Eleven stares at the both of them after their terrible excuses fade away. “Okay,” she says, and just writes NO next to Dustin’s request.
Steve tells Eddie and El his theory about feeling the pull to visit, that it’s when Eddie wants him to return, and Eddie goes a little pink but El nods knowingly. “Probably,” she says. “I do not know for sure, but that sounds right.”
“Cool,” Eddie coughs, and later murmurs to Steve, “Surprised your hand isn’t burning like you touched a stove all the time, then,” and that’s when Steve goes pink.
It makes Steve feel useful, being able to give as much information to the fight as he can, like a super obvious spy who is useful enough that he hasn’t been executed yet. He starts getting lists of things to pay attention to when he’s back in the Upside Down, questions about the physics of the world and where Vecna goes to recuperate and lots of questions about the monsters. Steve answers what he can and guesses at the rest, and El assures him that they’re making progress towards a goal. What goal, he doesn’t know, but a goal, and that has to be good enough. He knows they’re keeping some things from him, just in case Vecna does crack open the safe in his mind.
Eddie withdraws more during these conversations, lets El take the lead. He and El have started taking to napping on the couch together in the middle of the day, resting up for long conversations with Steve that zap all of their energy. Steve always knew they’d get along, and it’s gratifying to see, even in glimpses, how Steve’s little oddball family has absorbed Eddie in like he knew they would.
It’s good. It’s progress. It’s all great.
It’s… a little frustrating that Steve doesn’t get any alone time with Eddie anymore. They’re visiting memories that are the opposite of fun, usually, or they’re with El in the present with the gang circled around them. Steve’s glad for it, glad to be helping, glad to not just be rotting in another dimension, but.
Steve has never really had to keep himself from touching Eddie before. They never really interacted outside of private spaces, and even when they were in public together at Scoops, or the diner, or the movie theater, Steve would sneak touches and smiles and little whispers as much as he could. And Eddie would let him. So this — being in front of El, yes, but also not really being himself, is tough.
But also Eddie made a couple of very pointed comments that Steve is dying to explore, and sometimes he watches Steve with this look on his face that communicates something like: if we were alone and if our friends weren’t watching and if our dear friend who is a child wasn’t here with us, I’d tear you to pieces, then you could do the same to me.
It’s just distracting, is all.
Luckily, of all the kids El is the sweetest, and if she notices any tension, she doesn’t mention it.
There’s one more part of the routine as well, though this part doesn’t involve Eddie and El: when Steve returns from their talks to his body in the Upside Down, Vecna is always there waiting to pounce. He strikes immediately, rifling through Steve’s racing thoughts and ricocheting memories trying to find anything to use against the Party, against Steve. The box in the pantry hasn’t been found yet, but it’s only a matter of time and Steve’s already started talking about contingency plans with El.
“As long as Eddie is not there to distract you,” she says, “you seem to be fine keeping me out. We will keep practicing.”
“And I’ll try to be less distracting,” Eddie says, grinning.
Every time Vecna is unsuccessful seems to make him more and more angry, but he won’t stop Steve from going back. If he wants Steve to convince the Party to open the gates, Steve’s gotta go, even if he’s clearly hiding things. It’s a stalemate, and Steve refuses to lose.
But.
He does worry. He spends so much of his time worrying. He thinks about Eddie, back when he knew Steve was involved with dangerous things but not exactly what it was, and how he said he worried about Steve even more because of the uncertainty. Now it’s Steve fretting, Steve the one who’s scared, but it’s because he knows so much hinges on him keeping secrets safe, and he thinks he can do it, he does, but.
But.
He waits until it feels like it’s been hours, and he follows Eddie’s light up into the real world, and finds Eddie sleeping in Steve’s bed next to Robin. The room is silent except their breathing, the moon outside nearly gone, a sliver in the sky.
Steve walks quietly over to the open space by the wall and sits, trying not to make any noise. And then he thinks.
He thinks about what Vecna knows. Vecna has spent so much time digging in Steve’s head that he might know Steve better than anyone now. He could eventually follow the same pattern of thought that Steve did to find a place to store his memories, the warm kitchen with laughter glancing off the walls, the feeling of knowing that happy bubble under Steve’s skin was love as he danced with Eddie to Billy Joel. That brightness would draw Vecna like a moth to a flame.
But Steve knows Vecna now, too. Vecna believes that one or two big events can change the trajectory of a life, and these huge, life-altering memories are where he gets his strongest powers of fear and dismay. Nancy had said something, after Vecna’s vision for her, about Vecna being a lonely, strange child, and so he wonders if Vecna knows that most of life isn’t big events, it’s day-to-day monotony. It’s the boring bits between the action. It’s a quiet dinner spent chewing and not talking, it’s passing out on the couch in front of the TV, it’s waking up to a phone call in the middle of the night and answering with, “Family Video, what can I help you find today?” before remembering you’re not on the clock.
Steve thinks about secrets, and he thinks about distractions, and he thinks about, of all goddamn things, D&D. He thinks about how Eddie had been planning for a big surprise in the Hellfire campaign. Some guy, the right hand of D&D-Vecna, was going to betray him and help the Party in the fight. Eddie was over the moon with the twist of it, planning out how the reveal would happen.
He thinks about what Vecna would expect Steve to hide from him. And he goes into his mind, into that little recipe box in the memory kitchen, and he opens it. He takes out the memories that are actually important: him planning with El and Eddie, the questions they’re trying to answer, what he knows about Vecna’s weakness, and he sets those aside. Then he digs deep for what he thinks Vecna would think would affect Steve most:
The day his mom sat him down and explained that she was sick, and she wasn’t going to get better any time soon.
Barb’s funeral. The bathroom at a Halloween party: bullshit.
His father’s condescending laugh, you’re too stupid for every college?
Holding Max’s hair as she threw up behind a tree at the graveyard after Billy’s funeral.
The night Eddie tried to end things between them.
The second time Steve visited Eddie in memories, the way he’d looked so scared when he ran from Steve.
Vecna’s version of the memory of Steve getting trapped, his friends’ lack of concern.
Eddie’s version of the memory of Steve getting trapped, his friends’ devastation.
Eddie and Steve in the memory of the trailer, when Steve explained the deal he’d made. When Eddie’s face had gone sad and scared and blank, for a minute, and he’d said, Pretty effective bait.
He locks those memories up into the recipe box and puts it back on the pantry shelf. He thinks about it, and drops one more in: a small moment of early planning against Vecna, a few ideas they’d ended up scrapping. Dustin had been all for a secret assault, but he’d been talked down from that; how could they hide from a guy who reads minds? So Steve slips that memory in as a distraction, since Vecna expects that he’s been planning with the Party anyway. He also finds a few memories of conversations being dropped with Steve around, apologetic explanations of “Sorry, man, but until we know you’re safe…”
He looks at his box of second-level secrets, pats it. Then he takes the real secrets with him to another memory in his own mind.
The Munson trailer, a random day in September last year. Eddie was at the table doing homework, and Steve was on the couch, stretched out with his face covered with a cool washcloth. He’d had a ripping headache through the day that painkillers couldn’t fight off, and his feet were sore because Keith decided the store shelves need to be rearranged and Steve could manage it single-handedly. Steve had the TV on low playing Monday Night Baseball and he couldn’t see anything, but he could hear Eddie’s frustrated grumbling and pencil scratching over the calls of balls and strikes and murmured commentary.
“Goddamn it,” Eddie hissed. “What’s the point of algebra? Can someone tell me? Can someone enlighten me as to what godforsaken use I will have for the formula to find slope? Seriously, I’m waiting!”
“Eddie,” Steve groaned. “Too much, man. Way too much. Can you just fucking chill tonight?”
“Oh, I’m sorry that my academic failure is making your night worse, Your Highness,” Eddie groused, and lapsed back into silence. His pencil scribbling got louder, then there was the clear snap of a pencil lead breaking, and then Eddie snarled and threw something — probably the pencil — across the kitchen. “I give up. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the waste of space in bed.”
Steve had let the vitriol wash over him and laid there for another half hour or so, until he heard the Pirates clench the win and the staticky end of programming message came on. He sat up gingerly, head pounding, and deposited the washcloth in the sink on the way to Eddie’s bedroom. He changed quietly out of his work clothes and slid into bed next to Eddie in just his boxers.
In the quiet darkness of the room, Eddie was just a lump under the covers and a mess of hair on the pillow. His eyes glinted, though, just a little. “Hey,” he said, voice hoarse. “Sorry.”
“Hey,” Steve said, “Me too.”
It’s there, in that memory of the most mundane of days, that Steve hides the real secrets. He breaks the memory to crawl out of bed, leaving Eddie sleeping lightly, and finds Eddie’s D&D notebook on the desk. For Christmas, Steve would get him a Trapper-Keeper for his Hellfire stuff, but until then Eddie used a spiral bound notebook that Wayne had bought him to use in his government class.
Steve opens the notebook to a page that, fittingly, says VECNA WEAKNESSES at the top in Eddie’s scratchy print. He slides the secret memories in and this time they look like Polaroids, snapshots that Vecna can’t be allowed to find.
Steve pulls out of his own head and watches the real Eddie and Robin sleep for a little longer, then goes back to the Upside Down.
A few days later, Steve is only back in the Upside Down for a short amount of time after the day’s visit with Eddie and El when he feels that warm pull again from Eddie’s light. He’s not too tired and Vecna’s already done his ambush, so Steve follows the warmth automatically.
When Steve falls into the memory, his body is already mid-movement: a swipe towards Eddie who laughs and dances away on nimble feet. He lets the motions of the past carry him so he can take stock of where he is, when he is, and it doesn’t take long to figure it out: the sun falls onto heavy tree cover so only a little slips through, the shade cool compared to the warmth of the day. Underfoot, fallen pine needles and tough grass cushion his steps. He’s chasing Eddie around a familiar old wooden picnic table, at the spot in the woods past the football field.
This is different from the type of chasing he’s been doing before, though. Eddie cackles as he steps up onto the table’s bench seat and then up onto the tabletop so he escapes Steve’s clutches. When Steve swats for Eddie’s leg, Eddie lets him grab it, lets him feel the muscle tensing under his jeans, before he hops off onto the other side and the chase resumes.
Steve remembers this. It was early autumn last year, after Starcourt, and after Steve was full time at Family Video and Eddie and Robin were both back in school. It was a Thursday — Eddie always dealt on Thursday afternoons — and Steve had showed up to keep him company. Eddie had made a joke, Steve doesn’t remember it now, and out of long-held boyish instinct he grabbed for Eddie to give him a noogie, to wrestle. He used to do the same thing with Nancy, and she would squeal and bat at his shoulders as he would pick her up and playfully drop her onto the nearest soft surface (usually a bed, because sometimes his mind was about as one-track as it gets).
But Steve sometimes forgot Eddie had those boy instincts too, and he’d wrestle back. He would mess with Steve’s hair and tug at his clothes and run when Steve wanted to chase.
“Slowing down in your old age, Harrington?” Eddie teases, avoiding another swipe from Steve with a grin.
“You’re older than me,” Steve reminds him. “Maybe I’m wearing you down.”
He finally gets a hand around Eddie’s forearm, pulls him close. Eddie pokes and prods to fight Steve off but he’s not really trying; somewhere along the way, the touches turn from play fighting to more intentional. Eddie puts his palms to Steve’s chest like he’s going to shove away but just slides them up to curl around Steve’s neck instead. Steve slips a hand under the back of Eddie’s shirt, traces shapes there. Steve’s heart pounds, excited. Happy. It’s the exact same feeling, the exact same steps and touches, that happened in the real memory. They haven’t stepped out of their roles yet, still acting like it’s 1985 and the world is what they thought it was.
Steve remembers what happens next. He wants to follow it. Wants to live here in this bubble of time from Before. Wants to keep seeing Eddie’s smile as they tease each other.
But he can feel the boundaries of the memory flexing, knows his new shape is slipping in. The fingers tracing Eddie’s spine are clawed now. His teeth in his grinning mouth are sharp. His new eyes ache a little in the brightness.
Eddie watches as this change comes on slowly, and doesn’t run. His smile lessens a little, but he doesn’t move away. He stays. For a moment, they watch each other warily, wondering which will break.
Eddie swallows. He says, “Well?”
“Well what?” Steve asks. His voice is deeper, crumbling dark earth in a forgotten dimension.
Eddie’s eyes- darken. Steve feels his breath catch. Eddie’s hand squeezes a little tighter around his neck.
“You know how the rest of this goes,” Eddie says, his own voice a rasp. “Number one rule of storytelling, don’t break character.”
He doesn’t mean- surely he doesn’t mean to keep going. He’d alluded to it before, but Steve had been trying so hard not to think about it, because surely he didn’t mean- surely he didn’t mean it. Steve’s heart — dead, dormant, whatever — pounds harder.
Eddie must feel it through the thin skin of his own sternum, the few barriers between their chests insubstantial now. He presses closer, his body warm. God, he’s warm. Steve might not feel cold in the Upside Down anymore, but that’s so different from feeling warm.
“Come on, big boy,” Eddie murmurs. “Keep going. What comes next?”
Steve won’t argue. Steve can’t argue, his brain scattered. He didn’t really believe Eddie would still want him like this.
He sets his hands on Eddie’s hips. Eddie jolts a little when the claws press into the soft skin of his waist, but he still nods. Steve grips Eddie and lifts, picking Eddie fully off the ground and spinning so he can set him on top of the picnic table.
It’s easier this time; Steve’s stronger now.
The first time this happened, Eddie had yelped and sworn in surprise, then laughed, pink-cheeked, as Steve settled in front of him. The sun had been bright, the woods had been empty. Just Eddie’s laughter, then moans, then their words, quiet and contained between them.
Now, Eddie inhales when Steve drops him to the picnic table, and, maybe without even meaning to, spreads his legs a little. Steve still isn’t going to argue; the part of his brain that does that normally is screaming HE WANTS YOU, HE STILL WANTS YOU, EVEN LIKE THIS.
Steve swings his leg over the picnic bench, sits. Like this, his mouth is about even with Eddie’s belt buckle, which is the point. He reaches out and snakes Eddie’s belt through the loops, drops it aside. The sound of metal against the old wood table is loud, but this is a memory, and they can’t get caught here.
His fingers are clumsy on Eddie’s button, his zipper, new claws in the way and he’s afraid to be anything but gentle. He folds Eddie’s boxers down. He looks up, just in case, just to confirm (he won’t argue), and Eddie, biting his lip, his chest rising and falling rapidly, nods.
Steve reaches in, and- fuck. Eddie’s heat is all concentrated here, the hot, hard skin in his hand thudding with Eddie’s heartbeat. Steve makes an unconscious sound and automatically leans down to take Eddie’s cock in his mouth. He wants that heat in him, however he can get it.
But- fangs. Right.
He can do this. He’s good at this. He can figure out a goddamn way to do this if he has to rip the fangs from his own mouth; he’s pretty sure he’d heal from it, and it would be worth it.
He licks up the underside of Eddie’s dick, tracing the vein, until he reaches the head and takes it softly in his mouth. He uses his tongue more than suction to create a rhythm, but it’s slow, and more of a tease than anything.
“Oh, fuck,” Eddie says, tipping his head back. “Steve, oh my god.”
Steve pulls off and says, “Is this- Eddie, is this okay?”
“Okay?” Eddie asks, voice going high. “Yeah, baby, it’s okay. Yeah, fuck, it’s better than okay. Please, just-”
And that’s enough for Steve, who is happy to oblige. Eddie moans loudly when Steve takes his cock back into his mouth, finds a way to wrap one oversized hand around the base of Eddie’s dick so the claws aren’t touching anything sensitive and he can still keep sucking.
“God, I can’t believe this,” Eddie pants, carding and pulling at Steve’s hair, his eyes wide and dark. “I can’t fucking believe this.”
Steve can. He remembers Eddie going red when they watched Swamp Thing, making offhand jokes about finding a gown so he’d be appropriately dressed for Steve to carry him around like a maiden lost in the woods. But Eddie hadn’t really been joking, and now they’re playing it out for real. The rumble of noise in Steve’s throat makes Eddie shout and arch, his dick pressing down Steve’s throat.
Eddie likes holding Steve down and pushing him up against walls and talking low and slow and dirty right into Steve’s ear, but he also likes this: being smaller, being weaker, putting up a little fight just to get manhandled back into place.
Steve pulls off and licks his lips, and Eddie makes a high, soft noise in the back of his throat. Steve grins and starts pushing, steady and slow, until Eddie is laying flat against the picnic table top and staring up at Steve, pupils wide and deep.
“What’re you- Steve-” Eddie says when Steve pulls his shirt off, an old polo that he tosses aside with no thought to where it lands. He uses a single claw to shred his belt, and steps out of his jeans and boxers. He climbs up onto the table, and settles across Eddie’s hips, looming over him.
Steve sticks a finger in his own mouth and wets it, then reaches back and presses in. He and Eddie make similar noises at the same time, a punched-out oh, fuck from both of them; Eddie from the sight of it, Steve from the pressure. It stings, the claw unavoidable, but Steve can feel himself healing even as he persuades the muscle into loosening. Soon enough, the slide is easier, and he figures out how to angle his fingers better. Eddie is keeping up a stream of breathy curses and gasps, and soon Steve’s breath catches too when he feels Eddie’s hand probing at where he’s opening himself.
“Hurts, baby?” Eddie asks, and doesn’t wait for Steve to answer before he pushes in a fingertip next to Steve’s. Steve groans and nods, and Eddie pulls his finger back out, wetting it in his mouth just like Steve did, and presses back in.
It takes a while without real lube, but Steve’s persistent and Eddie’s patient, so eventually Steve pulls out and wets his palm to slick Eddie’s dick, then reaches back to line himself up. The push is slower than they’ve ever done it, even compared to their first time, when Eddie opened him up so sweet and gentle and murmured praise in his ear with every push. Here, Eddie’s hands flex and squeeze against Steve’s hips, his throat bared, and it’s Steve setting the pace. Eddie’s cock is leaking and that helps the slide, helps Steve move down and down.
Finally, Steve is full, full, and Eddie is gasping and his heels keep sliding against the tabletop like he’s overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to get the energy out.
Steve leans forward, putting his weight on his knees, and starts to ride.
They’ve done this before — on a bed, in the van, on various couches and floors, never on a picnic table — usually when Steve had anger in his head he couldn’t stop hearing like the bell over the door at Family Video, and that lined up with Eddie feeling passive enough for Steve to take control. He’d smile up at Steve and get his heels underneath him so he could thrust up and eventually Steve’s anger would be worked out in sweat and he’d be limp and fucked out by the end of it, malleable and ready for Eddie to take care of him.
That is not what happens here.
Steve moans and rolls his hips, one hand against the table by Eddie’s head, the other splayed across Eddie’s chest. Eddie whines and whimpers like he’s the one getting fucked instead of Steve, one hand clutching Steve’s waist, the other wrapped around the wrist pressing him down. Steve’s claws prick a circle in the skin over Eddie’s sternum.
Under his palm, over Eddie’s heart, he feels something small and hard; he slips his hand up under Eddie’s shirt and finds a key; his key, the key to the Munson trailer, on Eddie’s necklace chain next to his guitar pick. He looks up, and slows for a second when he meets Eddie’s eyes. Eddie stares back.
“Yeah,” Eddie answers, as if Steve had asked, and Steve wants to ask, but he doesn’t have to, because Eddie says, “Yeah, baby. It’s yours.”
“Fuck,” Steve says, voice a low rumble, and he pushes up and drops back down to watch Eddie’s mouth drop open and his eyes roll back.
Steve feels good; Steve feels great, the pulsing feeling of almost-too-much filling him up, the glide of skin that never fails to thrill him. He’s ridiculously glad to find out that his prostate is still as sensitive as ever in this new body, and he finds an angle that lets Eddie’s dick brush it on every other stroke or so. His own cock is hard and dripping onto Eddie’s chest. He feels tingly and warm, heat building low in his stomach. But all of that is secondary to watching Eddie fall to pieces underneath him.
“Please, baby, baby, please,” he begs, and Steve hums and keeps his steady pace, trailing circles around Eddie’s nipples through his rucked-up shirt, across the hollow of his throat, with the point of his claw. When Eddie’s noises start to go high and rhythmic, Steve slows his hips and makes Eddie sob out in frustration.
“Asshole,” Eddie gasps, and Steve just smiles and leans down, weight on his forearms now.
“Can I?” he murmurs, and scrapes his teeth, his fangs, pointedly against Eddie’s shoulder.
“Oh, fuck,” Eddie says, breathless. Then, “Yes, yes, ohmygodohymgod.”
Steve bites. Not deep, not hard, barely more than pricks of teeth. He really isn’t a vampire, so the blood just tastes like blood, coppery and bright, but the feeling of Eddie squirming beneath him is like ambrosia in his veins. Steve bites over Eddie’s collarbone, the base of his throat, up high behind his ear. Eddie is crying now, tears streaming steadily as he tangles his hand in Steve’s hair and holds him in place against Eddie’s throat, his teeth sunk in.
“Steve, fuck, baby, you-” Eddie cries out, voice hitching. “Bite me, bite me, fuck me up, baby, please.”
Steve doesn’t; he pulls back and licks a stripe across the bites instead, and Eddie howls. He’s undone, unraveled, and he comes so hard he jolts and Steve nearly gouges him with his claws. Steve stays pressed against Eddie’s chest and works a hand between them to pull hard at his own neglected dick, his orgasm pulsing through him just moments later.
And, finally, for the first time in- god, how long has it been? Weeks? Months? An eternity? For the first time in far too long, Steve kisses Eddie.
Eddie moans, weak and sweet, and kisses back. His tongue presses curiously against Steve’s fangs and Steve bites gently at his lip, but it’s mostly just soft presses, their breathing evening out.
Steve finally moves off of Eddie’s softened cock and they both inhale at the feeling, then Steve prods Eddie until he can lay down behind him on top of the table, spooning him close.
The table is probably uncomfortable, but Steve’s body is either unwilling to feel it or riding high on enough endorphins that it’s worth the trade-off. He’s bigger, now, stretched out in this monster form, so Eddie feels small in his arms in a way that’s new. It settles something in Steve’s stomach to hold him close, Steve’s body wrapping around Eddie’s like an outline. He traces patterns on Eddie’s skin with his claw tips. He kisses the back of Eddie’s neck. He hopes fiercely that this hasn’t ruined everything.
After a few moments spent catching their breath, Steve sees the bruises blossoming around the bites on Eddie's throat. He touches one softly and Eddie groans, and Steve unsuccessfully hides a grin.
"I want to leave these," he murmurs, "but I think you'd get some questions."
Eddie snorts. "Dustin would probably think I developed a violent allergy to the Upside Down and keep me from seeing you somehow."
"Well, we can't have that," Steve says, and lays his palm over Eddie's neck. He wills healing and growth into Eddie's skin and when he pulls back there are no teeth marks, and the bruises are faded to a near-invisible yellow. "That's handy."
"Handy, he says," Eddie says. "His hands have magical healing, and he says it's handy."
This, obviously, was not the way the original memory went. In the original memory, Steve sucked Eddie off while he sat on top of the picnic table, which Eddie tried to reciprocate until a customer wandered their way and Steve had to gallop into the trees holding up his unzipped jeans by the waist, hiding behind a tree until the girl — a gum-snapping friend of Carol’s whose name Steve could never remember, even though he’d gone on a few dates with her older sister — got her baggie of weed and left. Eddie’d collapsed into laughter as soon as she was gone, and pantomimed Steve’s near-pantsless sprint away from the table until Steve grabbed him around the waist again to shut him up. He’d pressed back, pushed Steve up against a tree, and put his mouth to good use until Steve was shaky with it, his love sounds quiet and soft in the early autumn afternoon.
Then-
Then.
Despite the new route this version of the memory took, Steve wants to finish it out the same way he did the last time, following the steps of his past self. He wants to bully Eddie into cuddling with him at the table, Eddie’s legs flung over Steve’s lap and Steve rubbing circles against the bones of Eddie’s knees. Exchanging stories from their days, Steve about the dumb things people asked at Family Video and Eddie going on one of his tangents about conformity being rewarded because his English teacher wasn’t letting him write a research paper on dragons. Steve tracing the old letters he’d seen Eddie carving that first time he was out here, EM, and holding out his hand. Eddie handing him his pocket knife, the one he always kept on hand while dealing, just in case. Steve flicking open the knife blade, testing it against his thumb as though he knows what he’s doing, and then setting the blade against the worn wooden tabletop and carving.
He wants to feel a little silly, just like he did in the real version of this memory, a little like a boy in over his head, struck dumb by his sweetheart.
He wants to slide the pocketknife blade back home with a click, and hand it back to Eddie, and turn to see him making that face: mouth dropped open, cheeks pink, eyes big and wide. He wants to watch Eddie run his thumb over Steve’s addition to the tabletop art, the scratchy EM, faded and smoothed with time, now sporting a fuller message:
EM
+
SH
Steve wants that so badly his teeth ache with it, but- well.
Just because he and Eddie have fallen back into each others’ arms doesn’t mean they’re back to what was. He’s going to be okay if this was just about getting off because Eddie thought it would be hot and Steve missed him with a fierce sort of ache and would never say no. He gets it if Eddie just wanted to fuck the Swamp Thing and not become its boyfriend, or whatever.
He’s okay if their relationship has to build back up. But he will fight to build it back up.
That makes his decision. He was never going to let Eddie slip away from him easily, and even though things have gotten so much stranger since they first kissed at this same table almost two years ago, Steve is still holding on with both hands to what they could be.
Steve uncurls from Eddie and sits up. He doesn’t bother finding his clothes; it’s just him and Eddie here. He slides down to sit on the table’s bench and, this time, uses the claw on his pointer finger to carve his initials into the table under Eddie’s. This time, he doesn’t add the plus sign between them. This time, he’s less confident that it’s the right thing to do.
EM
SH
Eddie sat up when Steve did, and he watches quietly, rumpled and bloodstained around his throat and still red from exertion, as Steve carves.
Steve doesn’t have long left in the memory; he’s starting to feel the pull back to the Upside Down. But he and Eddie have always communicated better in gestures and their own language than in straightforward discussions, and so Steve leaves it open for Eddie to tell him where they are.
Eddie looks at Steve for a long time, long enough that Steve thinks he won’t get an answer before he has to go, but then Eddie takes the knife out of his back pocket. He flicks out the blade and, like Steve, tests it against his thumb. He leans over and, with two hard cuts, carves in the last part.
EM
+
SH
Steve is pulled out of the memory just seconds later, but those seconds are spent staring into the eyes of Eddie Munson, feeling like, once again, they didn’t need words to confirm what they both know: that this is it. That what they have is real.
Steve blinks and his Eddie disappears, but the feeling of him lingers in the hallways of Steve’s veins.
When Steve comes back into his body in the Upside Down, he’s near Lover’s Lake, wherever he’d left off when he’d felt the call from Eddie. He thinks about a plus sign, thinks about love, thinks about anger, thinks about helplessness. He turns and heads towards the lake.
At the edge of where there should be water is the dead demobat he’d killed just a few days ago, being nudged at by a few others. The bats draw back, their toothy, ringed mouths flaring as he approaches. He feels bad, suddenly. Feels like as much of a monster as these things, these creatures that are stuck here just as much as he is.
He extends his arm and concentrates on the earth next to the dead bat, envisioning a pile of dirt being scooped up and tossed aside, another, another. Soon, there’s a decent hole in the shore, and Steve approaches cautiously until he feels sure the bats won’t attack. He picks up the dead bat, sort of wraps its wings up around its body, and lays it in the hole. He uses his hands, not his powers, to fill the hole back in. Dirt is gritty under his claws. He pats the top of the makeshift grave when he finishes.
One of the bats makes a little chrrip? noise at him and crawls close. He recognizes the two stripes down its back.
“Hey, Speed Racer,” Steve says. “Sorry about your friend.”
He reaches out and, haltingly, holds out his palm like the bat might sniff it, like he was taught to do with dogs. The bat’s mouth expands and contracts, and then it bumps its head against Steve’s palm, just like Tews does.
Steve sighs. “Alright, then,” he says, and pets the monster gingerly behind where it feels like it should have ears. “Hey, do you guys know how to beat Vecna?” he asks, and Speed Racer’s stupid little monster head tilts, like it’s considering his question, and then it bumps Steve’s hand again. Another few bats crawl up for attention too, and Steve says, “Yeah, I guess that would be too easy.”
When he walks back to Loch Nora later to change clothes, he’s followed at a distance by an ever-present set of monsters, eyeless faces turned his direction, watching as he walks the streets of his new home.
THEN
AUGUST 1985
On July 4th, 1985, the Starcourt Mall burned to the ground.
On July 5th, 1985, Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, and Eddie Munson got lunch at the diner around the corner from the arcade, where Eddie flirted with the ancient waitress to get extra ketchup packets and free refills. It was quiet, which was good because everyone wanted to hear the story of the mall fire, and the three of them wanted to talk about literally anything else. Steve especially was rattled; overnight, one of his kids (Dustin) had walkied to let him know that Chief Hopper, who’d apparently been somewhere else in the mall, hadn’t made it out. Steve had thanked Dustin for the update, set the walkie-talkie aside, and then curled up into a ball between Eddie and Robin and cried until he fell asleep.
He didn’t want to talk about the mall.
So they didn’t.
To the untrained eye, they were teenagers with the undereye-bruised kind of sleepiness that reeked of hangovers and silly antics, the weary lean-together of kids who haven’t learned boundaries yet. They weren’t the former heartthrob of Hawkins High and his band-geek coworker and drug dealer. They were anonymous.
At this lunch, where one of the three of them was bruised and beaten so badly he had to order a milkshake because it hurt to chew, they decided, without saying the words out loud, that they were stuck together now. Not, like, by force. Stuck by choice.
Another of the three of them, a polyglot who apparently usually had really good handwriting but her hands shook too badly that day (“I think I haven’t puked out all the Russian drugs yet.” “I’m sorry, drugs? Russian drugs?” “Oh, no, I meant… smoke. Smoke inhalation.” “…Sure.”), wrote in wobbly letters across the top of a notebook page: Operation Croissant Deux.
“Originally,” Robin explained, “Operation Croissant” — she said this like an asshole, cwah-ssohn, and Eddie mightily resisted rolling his eyes — “was my plan to save up money and fly by myself to Europe for the whole summer before senior year, but then my parents found my cash and thought I was on drugs, so I cut off all my hair and crashed prom instead.”
“That was you?” Steve asked.
“So,” Robin continued brightly, “this is attempt number two! Only, it will be all three of us running off to Europe together, and since I’ll have graduated from high school by then, my parents can’t say no.”
The last of the three of them, who had barely left the state of Indiana except to go deep into hillbilly country, who had never been further east than Ohio (and also had never been to prom, so didn’t know it had even been crashed), and who absolutely did not think he was going to be able to go to Europe in a year, said, “Great. Sounds good. Merci boo-ko.”
“Right, so, we’ll leave the translating to me,” Robin said, jotting down a note that said: Eddie does not speak French, as though that was something that needed to be immortalized on paper.
“Except Italian,” Steve reminded her. “My Italian is still better than yours.”
“Non è,” Robin huffed. “Stronzo.”
“Don’t start with me,” Steve said. “Also, how do you already know every curse word?”
Robin just smiled, and they went back to bickering like long-lost siblings as Eddie watched from across the table.
A month passed in fits and starts, the taffy feeling of summer stretching too long and too short simultaneously without school there to keep boundaries in place. Steve moved more of his clothing into Eddie’s packed closet and spent fewer nights in his own home; when he did stay in Loch Nora, Eddie and sometimes Robin were there too.
Robin chose a mug from Wayne’s collection to be hers, and so her DON’T BOTHER ME, I’M CRABBY mug with the cartoon crab wearing sunglasses joined Eddie’s (Garfield on a teeter-totter that said I’m not one who rises to occasions) and Steve’s (the Good Luck Care Bear one that said Treat yourself to a rainbow day!) on the counter every morning, each full of cheap black drip coffee.
Steve carpooled his rugrats over to the Harrington house for pool parties that Robin attended, but Eddie didn’t even when Steve extended the obligatory invitation. When the Byers family packed up and left town, Steve helped them fold clothes into boxes and sent a going away present with Jonathan Byers from Eddie’s personal stash of good weed.
He bought a cheap lawn chair that he’d set up in front of the trailer and he’d lay out when the heat wasn’t debilitating, his Walkman’s puffy headphones over his ears as he dozed and listened to his Laura Branigan tape. He’d come inside all pink-cheeked and golden, warm to the touch, and sing Spanish Eddie in Eddie’s ear until he laughed and pushed Steve away.
Most days, when Steve pulled up in the BMW, he’d picked up Robin on the way over. She never acted like a stranger in the Munson house, just inserted herself like she’d always been there. In return, Eddie, Steve, and Wayne didn’t change anything about their habits around her either. When Steve cooked, Eddie pressed up behind him like he always did, chin on Steve’s shoulder, and Robin would provide commentary from her seat at the dining table. She joined Wayne in heckling the two of them when they cuddled on the couch during movie night, so Steve started stretching out over the two of them, head in Eddie’s lap and thighs on Robin’s, which usually mollified her. The first night after Starcourt, when she and Steve had come stumbling in after Eddie smelling like smoke and looking like two girl scouts who washed up on shore after a shipwreck, Wayne had taken one look at her, and then raised an eyebrow at Eddie.
“Another stray?” he’d asked, and had sighed when Eddie shrugged. “Well, the last one you picked up ain’t so bad,” he’d said, knuckling Steve’s head, and Steve had grinned at him tiredly.
“Wayne,” he’d said, like he was the proud nephew, a thought that twisted up in Eddie’s head like a snake caught in a net, “this is Robin.”
Robin had stuck out her hand so enthusiastically that she nearly smacked Steve in the face, and Eddie had said, “Come on, you two. Bedtime. Let’s do introductions when you’re not crashing from adrenaline highs.”
“Yeah, that’s what we’re high on,” Robin had said, and Steve had snorted and stumbled his way to Eddie’s room, pulling Robin behind him.
Wayne had caught Eddie later, after Steve and Robin had indeed crashed and crashed hard, curled around each other in Eddie’s bed wearing Eddie’s clothes, and said, “Everything okay?”
And Eddie could only say, “I think so. I think- I think we’re okay.” And then, after a moment’s breath, he said, “She knows, Wayne. She’s the one who saw me and Steve. And she’s- it’s fine.”
Wayne had let out a long breath. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry to know that you’ve got another person in your corner.” Then he’d chuckled, a tired, quiet sound. “You’ve got the strangest damn life, kid.”
And Eddie, burying his face in his hands and laughing too, said, “You’ve got no idea.”
A couple of weeks after Steve became a de facto resident of Forest Hills, the trailer park got another new face: Billy Hargrove’s sister, the redhead with the skateboard from Steve’s little band of delinquents. Steve and Robin helped move her and her mom’s boxes into their trailer, alongside the rest of the Harrington troupe. Eddie watched from his own living room through slatted blinds as Steve hoisted a faded yellow and green floral couch into the house with a minimal amount of help from a gangly, dark-headed teenager that Eddie thought was Nancy Wheeler’s kid brother. When Steve stepped back out into the sunlight, he ruffled the hair of a curly-headed kid (Dustin? Eddie was pretty sure that one was Dustin) and then argued with a girl in pigtails and overalls about something, and even from his vantage point Eddie could see Steve was losing. Steve lifted his shirt hem to wipe the sweat on his face and then shot a glance over at the window like he knew Eddie was looking. Eddie scoffed when, even from dozens of feet away, he could tell Steve winked.
They realized then that there was going to be an issue: Red was going to see Steve and Robin coming and going from Eddie’s and would pretty quickly draw some conclusions that she might share with the rest of the gang. Steve still clearly wanted Eddie separate from that part of his life, even though they hadn’t discussed it explicitly, and it wasn’t like Steve and Buckley were just going to stop coming over.
“It doesn’t have to be that big of a deal,” Robin said as they discussed their options over Wayne’s famous chili. “Just tell… her. You know- tell her.” She lowered her head and widened her eyes significantly.
“No,” Steve said, simple as that. “I’m not doing it, Rob.”
“She’d probably understand. Hell, she’d probably be really cool about it,” Robin said. “But not if you’re trying to keep secrets.”
Eddie pushed his spoon around the bowl and stayed out of it. He knew that, whatever they were talking about, there were about five hidden layers under the actual words. In fact, he was pretty sure he was one of those layers. Wayne, across from him, also observed quietly.
“Fine, I’ll talk to her,” Steve sighed, pushing up from the dining table. Robin scoffed audibly at Steve’s retreating back even though ostensibly she was getting her way. She huddled next to Eddie in front of the living room window and watched through barely-open blinds as Steve knocked on the door of the Mayfield trailer and Max joined him outside. They sat on the steps side by side and talked, neither looking at each other. At one point, Steve put his arm around Max and she leaned into him, and then she pushed him away and said something that made him laugh. A few minutes later Steve was walking back into the house, and didn’t look surprised at all to see Eddie and Robin trying badly to look like they hadn’t been spying on him.
“She’ll be fine,” he said.
“What did you say?” Robin asked.
“That this is where we’re safe,” Steve explained easily. “Come on, I’m still starving.”
A month passed, and it slowly changed everything: Eddie-and-Steve became Eddie-and-Steve-and-Robin nearly overnight. The trailer had never felt so full or so warm or so crowded. Eddie felt constantly torn between overflowing with love and belonging, and horribly jealous and territorial over Steve’s attention. He bickered with Robin sparingly and teamed up with her to tease Steve constantly. He fell asleep next to Steve almost every night. So did Robin. It was familiar. It was confusing. It was strange. It was perfect.
On August 5th, 1985, Eddie woke to sweat along his arms and forehead, his box fan’s blades swinging lazily through the thick, hot air. He’d tacked up a black sheet over the window to keep the sunlight out, but it just made his room feel like an oven, dark and uncomfortably warm. Wayne kept saying he’d look into a new window air conditioner unit, but his truck had a flat the week before and a new tire was more important than being comfortable. Eddie and Steve were pinching pennies from their paychecks to add to the AC fund, but it was slow going.
Steve was already up. (“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man, uh. Ready to go, you know? Like, ready to get going. That’s Shakespeare.”) He’d been painting houses to make money since Scoops Ahoy became an inferno. He’d told his dad about it and it had caused a huge fight, because apparently Daniel Harrington had thought Steve was kidding about the whole “not going to college” thing. Officially, as of about three weeks ago, Harrington Senior had started cutting Steve off. No credit cards, no staying at the house while his parents were there. He could keep the car. He also got to keep the name, fat lot of good it did him.
Steve didn’t consider it a loss, and he was mostly bummed that his new job didn’t include working with Eddie or Robin. Eddie had convinced the manager at Thatcher Tire to let him stay on until school started, and Robin was a frantic peruser of the classified ads to find any job that she could do without a car or experience. Steve had become the breadwinner between the three of them: sometimes he went out and did a day’s work in the cool hours of too-early morning and was back before Eddie even rolled out of bed. On those days, he’d shower quickly and slide back into the sheets behind Eddie, limbs loose and sun-warmed. Those were good days.
Of course, this was shaping up to be a good day too. Eddie stretched and shuffled his way out of his dark dungeon of a bedroom to the kitchen, where Steve was whistling along to one of the few cassettes everyone in the house could agree on (Jolene by Dolly Parton: Wayne liked Miss Dolly’s voice, Steve liked the stories, Robin liked the melodies, and Eddie liked the simple, sweet guitar).
“Morning,” Steve said, leaning over and kissing Eddie’s bare shoulder as Eddie blearily fixed himself a cup of coffee from the old stained pot Wayne had bought back when Nixon was president.
“Morning,” Eddie yawned, and wrapped his free hand around Steve’s waist, burying his face in Steve’s broad back. Steve just kept frying eggs, used to Eddie’s koala tendencies in the morning.
In the living room, the TV was turned to The Looney Tunes Comedy Hour, and Robin and Wayne were having one of their 90/10 arguments where Wayne said one word for Robin’s every dozen, and pissed her off so badly with his succinctness that she ended up screeching at some point. Judging by the pitch in her tone, that wasn’t far off, reliable as an alarm clock.
Eddie sometimes liked to think about going back to his past self from before Tina Swanson’s Halloween party, and telling himself, hey, you’re gonna meet the love of your life on Halloween, and he’ll be dressed as Risky Business Tom Cruise. He’s going to basically move in with you and Wayne and bring a girl with him. And he’s not even sleeping with her! Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds.
Or, even funnier, he’d picture telling his fifteen-year-old self, who of course noticed Steve Harrington, who of course hated him in the way of all queer little boys who don’t know what to do with feelings that don’t seem to fit right in their bodies, that, hey, kid, not only are you going to get to kiss that boy, but you’re going to wake up next to him most mornings, and he won’t even punch you the first time you hold his hand. Fifteen-year-old Eddie would have thought that was the height of romance; by that point, he had been punched a couple of times for doing a lot less than holding a boy’s hand. Nineteen-year-old Eddie also thought it was pretty goddamn romantic.
He usually didn’t let the imaginary conversations go too much further than that, because thinking phrases like love of my life made Eddie feel like his brain had grown claws and was trying to escape his skull. Sometimes, it felt like Robin could sense when Eddie was having those thoughts: she’d send him a look that was a cross between amusement and pity. Something like, damn, Eddie, you sure are head over heels for a guy who you aren’t dating. Something that told him she’d be sympathetic when Steve eventually left him behind and this weird, fledgling thing they have crashed and burned.
But, hopefully, that wouldn’t be today.
He accepted the plate of eggs and slumped into his chair at the kitchen table. He’d stayed up too late the night before working on a song idea that hit him out of nowhere, and his fingers were sore and his eyes itched, but he’d gotten a decent intro and chorus down. Steve had slept through it all, and Robin hadn’t been there, appeasing her parents by staying close to home overnight but out the door first thing in the morning to join Eddie and Steve once more.
Steve tsked when he saw Eddie’s reddened fingers, turning over his hand to look at the raw skin. “Don’t they make, like, gloves, or something?”
“This is a badge of honor, baby,” Eddie said, taking his hand back to shovel in a mouthful of egg. “No chickenshit workarounds for me, I earn my callouses.”
“Eddie, I’m going to kill your uncle for making me question the physics in the world of Bugs Bunny,” Robin announced as she took her seat at the table, what used to be the guest chair, and then became Steve’s, and then became Robin’s by default of being the newest. “Also, I heard you talking about callouses, and I hope to god you’re talking about your guitar.”
Eddie snorted. “As opposed to what?”
Robin’s stare was blank. “What you do when I’m not around is your own business.”
Steve said, scooping up his own forkful of eggs, “You’re right. He stayed up all night playing.”
“Again?” Robin asked. “That’s twice this week.”
“The muse giveth and the muse taketh away,” Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know when inspiration will strike, but I have to get it on paper or I’ll lose it forever.”
“Are you going to play with the marching band again this year?” Robin asked.
“I still can’t believe you were in band,” Steve said. He told Robin, “I had no idea until, like January. I was in the middle of a game and looked up, and there he was! Dumb hat and everything.”
“Well, it’s hardly what I’m known for,” Eddie said. “And believe me, green is not my color. But I don’t know, Buckley. Five years is enough of my life dedicated to riffing to John Phillip Sousa.”
“Fair point,” Robin said. “I thought about quitting last year, but I’d sort of miss it.”
Eddie finished his plate, then cleaned up as Steve and Robin shot the shit at the table about everything and nothing. Eddie talked a lot, but Robin talked fast: one subject to the next like a jackrabbit on cocaine. Steve, for his part, threw up roadblocks to Robin’s word spirals that made her circle back to her point, but otherwise let himself get pulled along. He seemed to enjoy it.
“So what’s the plan today?” Eddie asked in a moment of quiet, his back to the room as he dried the dishes and put them back in the cupboard.
“I was going to take Robbie to the library,” Steve said. “She needs another book about Spanish verbs, can you believe it?”
“Then we were going to stop by Melvald’s, because Steve has this lemon cake thing he wanted to try but he doesn’t have lemons, or sugar, or flour, or any cake ingredients,” Robin continued.
“Oh,” Eddie said. Steve had been talking about that lemon cake recipe for a couple of days since he stumbled across it in one of his cookbooks. Should Eddie have offered to go with him to get his ingredients? Normally, he would have been the one to go with Steve just by default — who else would go with him, his babysitting charges? Nancy Wheeler-minus-Byers? But Robin could do it now. “Right. Cool.”
“What are you doing today?” Steve asked. Eddie wiped his hands on the towel and wiped whatever look he had off his face, and turned around with what he hoped was a pleasantly unbothered expression.
“Don’t know yet. Suppose I’ll see where the day takes me.”
“Cool,” Steve said. He stood, stretched. He was in those little turquoise shorts that Eddie had worn once before, which was an attack on everyone, and his shoulders were freckled from the sun. He stepped close and kissed Eddie goodbye, short and sweet, and then he and Robin were gone.
For a while, Eddie went back to his room and played guitar, but when he found himself unconsciously playing the opening riff to Dolly's When Someone Wants to Leave three times in a row, he (gently) set his guitar down in disgust. He tried to read, couldn’t concentrate. Tried to smoke, but he was out of everything except the cheapest batch, more stems and seeds than anything worthwhile (the Hagan Special, he liked to call it, which Steve thought was hilarious). Maybe he’d go see Rick today, stock back up.
Or he could call up the band, see about an impromptu practice. None of them were quite as committed to Corroded Coffin as Eddie, but maybe the guys were bored too here at the lazy end of summer. But, no, Eddie remembered Gareth saying he’d be out of town for a couple of weeks with his family. Eddie could swing by Jeff’s and see if he wanted to jam, but decided against it: the Hellfire and metal stuff was just a costume for Jeff, Gareth, and Frankie, something they put on at school to show they belonged somewhere. At home, they could shed that skin and be something a little more normal, so when Eddie showed up with his tattoos and hair and loud voice usually talking about fantasy monsters or metal lyrics about death and blood, he wasn’t exactly a welcome presence.
The thing is, Eddie had seen this coming. Eddie had always known a day would come when a girl would waltz in and take Steve’s attention away. He thought it would be Nancy Wheeler, sure, but he’d been open to the possibility that it would be some other girl that caught Steve’s eye and held it, taking him away from Eddie for good. What he hadn’t known is that when the girl arrived she’d be a lesbian who would soul-bond with Steve over the course of, like, three days, or that the worst part of all of this was that Eddie couldn’t even hate her, because he sort of loved her too.
He decided to take a nap. Maybe he could sleep away the pit in his stomach.
That evening, everything was fine. Eddie’s vague nausea mostly dissolved when Robin and Steve came stumbling into the trailer laden with grocery bags and Steve did his baking to an audience of two. Eddie and Robin cheered when Steve figured out the candied lemon thing, and booed when he wouldn’t let them eat the whole cake in one sitting. Eddie felt warm and fluttery when Steve rifled through Eddie’s crate of records and tossed on Led Zeppelin’s III, settling the needle and humming along to Since I Been Loving You.
“How I love you, darling, how I love you, baby,” Steve sang as he toppled a couple of cake slices into a Tupperware container for Wayne. “My beloved little girl.”
“Yuck,” Robin said. "That's my least favorite thing in music.”
“What, love?” Eddie asked.
“Yes,” Robin said, deadpan. “I hate the concept of love in all forms, especially put to song. No, that weird thing where grown men call their girlfriends ‘little girl.’”
“Oh,” Eddie said. “I’ve never really thought about it. I guess I thought that girls found it hot?”
“Hello, your official girl correspondent here reporting in: no, it’s super weird.”
“Huh,” Eddie mused, then waved his hand vaguely in the air. “Girls. A mystery.”
Steve snorted. “I cannot believe there is anyone out there who thinks you’re straight.”
“Right?” Eddie asked. “Wild stuff. I work so hard for my reputation and yet the moms of Hawkins are out there worried I’m going to show up to take their daughter to the drive-in. Girls are pretty, but I tend to appreciate them from afar.”
“Who else does that?” Steve asked Robin. “The song thing?”
“Tons of them do!” Robin said, throwing her hands up. “Christine Sixteen is about a sixteen year old, and I don’t have their birth certificates or anything, but something tells me the members of KISS are older than that.”
“Yikes,” Steve said.
“Deep Purple’s Hush,” Eddie said, playing along. “The Rolling Stones have a few too.”
“Once you’ve noticed, you’ll never be able to miss it. There are, like, four Led Zeppelin songs other than this one I can think of off the top of my head that do it,” Robin said. “Oh, and then there’s Bruce Springsteen.”
Steve gasped, and turned around. “Don’t you dare!”
“In I’m On Fire!” Robin said, pointing a finger at Steve like he had penned the words. “‘Hey little girl, is your daddy home?’ Gross! Out in the Street! Jersey Girl! Accept it, Harrington.”
“You leave the Boss out of this,” Steve hissed.
“Even the mighty must fall!” Robin declared. Steve threw a lemon peel at her. “But anyway, this brings up a question, and you two can hopefully answer it. How is there any difference between a grown man calling his girlfriend ‘little girl,’ and a grown man calling his boyfriend ‘baby’?”
This time, Eddie gasped. “That’s- they’re two totally different-”
“It’s a valid question!” Robin said.
“No the fuck it’s not!” Eddie said. “Little girl is weird! Baby is normal! Tons of people say it!”
“And that makes it okay?” Robin challenged.
“Robin, shut the fuck up!” Steve said. “If this leads to Eddie no longer calling me his baby, no more car privileges for you. None!”
“You couldn’t stop me if I wanted a ride,” Robin said, eyes narrowed.
“I will sell the BMW myself and we’ll both be fucked because of your choices,” Steve said, pointing his spatula at her. “Fucking try me.”
It was a Saturday night, and, even though the differences between weekends and weeknights were negligible in the summer, Robin was only allowed to stay at a friend’s house on weekends as long as she checked in with her parents before bed.
“Yeah, Mom, Nancy and I are just watching movies and talking about boys,” Robin said into the Munsons’ phone, rolling her eyes. “Yes, I’m being careful. No, I don’t think there are any axe murderers around, but if I see any, I’ll be sure to call. No, that wasn’t sarcastic, what gave you that impression? Right. Uh-huh. Good night!”
“Aren’t your parents hippies?” Steve asked, flipping through a magazine at the table. “You’d think they’d be less strict.”
“They are hippies, and they used to be,” Robin said, leaning against the wall by the phone. “Then Will Byers disappeared, and all their coolness disappeared along with him.”
She stared steadily at Steve when she said this, as though Steve had been the one to kidnap the kid; honestly, Eddie had never talked with Steve about that, even though he was close to the center of it, dating Nancy at the time. He’d also never thought about how strange it was that Steve took a tumble from the throne at exactly the same time that Will Byers was… taken? Ran away?
Robin was clearly trying to communicate something with her eyebrows, and Steve was stonewalling her back. Eddie cleared his throat.
“I didn’t know you knew Nancy,” he said. Just like with the kids, he still hadn’t been introduced to Nancy either, and that was fine by him. Nancy Wheeler, along with others of her ilk, smart and sharp in a way that seemed likely to cut, made Eddie nervous. Plus, what was Steve supposed to say in that introduction? Hey, Nancy, remember when we broke up dramatically at that Halloween party? This is the next available person I found to sleep with me, and he’s stuck around ever since! Cool, right?
“Oh, yeah, we, uh,” Robin said, flickering her glance to Steve. “We met at the mall.”
“Oh,” Eddie said. “Right.”
“And… remember Barb Holland?” Robin continued, her voice edged.
“Yeah, I think so,” Eddie said. “She died in an accident, right? Something to do with Hawkins Lab?”
“Something like that,” Robin said.
“Rob,” Steve said. A warning.
“Barb and I used to be friends,” Robin continued like she didn’t hear him. “Years ago, but still. And then she was friends with Nancy, so, you know, through that it’s like Nancy and I have been friends for years.”
“Right,” Eddie said.
“Coincidences are crazy!” Robin said blithely. “It’s almost like there’s a secret world right under our noses and we’d never know if someone didn’t tell us.”
“Robin,” Steve said.
The age-old feeling of being left out of the loop made Eddie’s stomach boil with nausea. He tapped his knuckles on the table. “Right. I’m going for a smoke. Back in a minute.”
Eddie pushed out the door lighting a cigarette with shaky hands, and let the damp warmth of the evening press him down. Nicotine hit his lungs and he held his breath until his dry throat ached, and he let the smoke out up into the sky.
It was stupid to get his feelings hurt about something that had been part of his and Steve’s thing since the very beginning. Since that first day out at the picnic table in the woods, Eddie knew the bruises Steve wore weren’t just from any old fight, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. He had no right to demand more information, to be let in on the secret; he wasn’t Steve’s boyfriend, and even if he was, that still wasn’t something he could just ask. Steve wasn’t telling him for a reason, and for some other reason, he had decided to tell Robin. And that was fine. Since this whole thing first started, Eddie had always told himself that he was fine with whatever Steve was willing to give him, even if it was just scraps.
He hadn’t realized then that he’d been lying to himself, but even if that was the case, he didn’t think lying to himself would hurt this badly.
He finished one cigarette and immediately lit another with shaking hands, leaning back against the trailer and listening to the crickets sing. Inside the house, he could hear harried whispers; most of the windows were thrown open the moment the sun went down, in an attempt to catch any breeze. He tried not to listen, but then again, it was his house. They didn’t have to be here if they wanted to keep secrets, he thought vindictively, and leaned a little closer to the nearest window.
“...tell him already!” Robin hissed.
“You know why not,” Steve muttered. “Wouldn’t you like to go back to before you knew?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Robin whispered. “I’d rather know what’s going on than be left in the dark. It would kill me to know I’d missed something this big. And I’ve been in this for a few weeks. You’ve been with Eddie for ages!”
“It’s been less than a year, drama queen. And it’s not safe,” Steve whispered back. “I don’t care about hurt feelings, there are worse things.”
“He deserves to know,” Robin said.
“That’s not your call to make,” Steve said.
Eddie stubbed his smoke out on the bottom of his shoe and tossed it in Wayne’s porch ashtray, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and went for a walk. Across the lane, a red-headed girl with dark shadowed eyes and a permanent scowl watched him pass by; he nodded, and she returned it.
He knew whatever it was that haunted Steve was dangerous, that much was obvious. Between Steve’s face beaten black and blue twice in the span of a year, and his screaming nightmares, and the walkie-talkie check-in system, Eddie knew there were larger things at work than what he’d originally envisioned. He’d thought at first maybe it was something as stupid as turf wars between jocks, truly just boys fighting over a girl. Then he’d thought that maybe it was something shady with Steve’s dad’s business, but that idea was quickly disproved when Eddie witnessed how Mr. Harrington treated his son and saw there was no love lost there.
Whatever it was led to real, actual harm. Broken bones and burst blood vessels. Burned down buildings. Death — a month on, Steve still woke up calling for Chief Hopper some nights.
Eddie didn’t want to be involved. He liked his bones unbroken, thanks. But he didn’t want Steve involved either, or Robin, or Steve’s kids or Nancy Wheeler or Jonathan Byers, even though he’d never met any of them.
When Eddie had made a circuit of the trailer park, he’d made no plans but had come to three conclusions:
One, that he wasn’t going to beg Steve to be included in a part of his life that he clearly didn’t want Eddie to know about.
Two, that if there was any way to help keep Steve safe, he’d do it, even if he didn’t know the underlying reasons of why he was even in danger.
Three, he was pretty goddamn sure this terrible feeling under his lungs was heartache, and that fucking sucked.
When he got back to the house, Steve was outside waiting for him. He didn’t look worried, but he did look sad.
“You overheard,” Steve guessed.
“Some,” Eddie agreed, stuffing his hands in his pockets just for something to do. “Windows are open.”
“Right,” Steve said. For a moment, they just looked at each other.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Eddie said. “I know there are reasons you don’t.”
“They’re good reasons, Eddie. I promise.”
“Sure.”
“I wouldn’t want Robin to know either, if I could force that to happen. If she hadn’t- if she hadn’t been there for it all, I wouldn’t have told her either.”
“I believe you, baby.”
“Does it…” Steve started. “Does it help that I’m sorry?”
Eddie thought about it seriously for a moment. “Yes and no.”
Steve’s brow furrowed and he chewed the inside of his cheek. “Can I do anything to make it better?”
“Can you stop being involved?” Eddie asked immediately.
Steve’s expression got, if possible, sadder. “No. Not anymore.”
Eddie scuffed the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Are you being as safe as you can with whatever this is?”
Steve hesitated, which told Eddie enough. “As much as I can, yeah,” he said. “But sometimes I have to… step in, I guess. And that can get dangerous. But I try to be safe.”
Eddie nodded, crossed his arms and looked down. “I don’t think I can ask for more than that.”
“Hey,” Steve said. This whole conversation had happened with five long feet of space between them; Steve crossed that in a few quick steps. He lifted Eddie’s chin. “Hey. You can ask for whatever the hell you want. I might not be able to give it to you, but you can ask for it.”
“Come home,” Eddie said without thinking. “Just promise that, whatever happens, you’ll always come home.”
Steve blinked, then smiled like a man who knew that wasn’t a promise he could keep. He said it anyway: “Yeah, of course. I’ll always come home.”
Robin smiled at Eddie just as sadly when he and Steve came back inside, and they were all quiet as they readied for bed. Slipping under the covers should have felt awkward, but it felt more like the end of a conversation that had been happening all day: no matter what they did as separate pieces, the three of them came back together eventually. Eddie took the side of the bed closest to the wall because he liked to put his back against something solid, like the wall or Steve; Robin took the edge because she got up to pee at least twice a night; Steve took the middle, because he slept better when he was touching both of them.
Eddie fell asleep quickly, drained from a day of doing nothing but angsting, and woke up in the early hours of the morning when Steve slipped out of bed for work. He dressed quietly in the dark and left for a while to freshen up in the bathroom, but came back in before he left. He leaned across the mattress and found Eddie’s mouth, kissing him soft and long.
“Bye, babe,” he whispered. Then, before he stood, he leaned back a little and kissed Robin’s forehead too. “Bye, Robbie. Back soon.”
Eddie blinked the sleep away and found Robin doing the same in the semi-darkness of dawn. They watched each other for a moment over the empty space that was still warm from Steve’s absence. They heard the front door open quietly, then close. Footsteps on gravel, the BMW starting. Then it was quiet again.
“I’m not trying to take him from you,” Robin said, her voice raspy from sleep. Eddie nodded a little.
“I know. He’s not exactly your type.”
“No, I mean- even platonically. I know he’s important to you beyond, like, romantically,” Robin said, earnest now. “I’m not trying to take that away.”
Eddie reached out under the blankets, and took her hand. “I appreciate it, Buckley. And it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Eddie shrugged, and smiled. “He’s not mine to take.”
Robin opened her mouth, then shut it. Neither of them said anything else for a long time, then they both quietly fell back into sleep.
Eddie always dreaded the first day of school, but the third one in a row for his senior year was particularly demoralizing. He knew every room and every shortcut and every teacher and every face to avoid in the hallways, but there was still an uncertainty he’d never learned to master. He’d get there eventually. This was his last chance; he would turn twenty in the spring, and after that, they wouldn’t let him enroll in high school anymore and he’d have to get his GED instead. He wasn’t going to do that. He was going to make it out of this year with a diploma if it killed him.
In the lunchroom, he saw a gaggle of kids standing awkwardly in the doorway, looking for seats. The one in the front had some truly righteous curls and a Weird Al shirt. Brave of him, Eddie thought. Little lost sheep, maybe they need a place to sit. They were vaguely familiar. Eddie called them over, three boys who walked together like they knew each other well, but their bodies had grown and made their movements unpredictable in the intervening years.
“Welcome to Freak Island, kiddies,” Eddie said with a grin. “I’m Eddie. Names?”
Lucas Sinclair — familiar. Mike Wheeler — very familiar.
“Dustin Henderson,” said the one in the Weird Al shirt. His voice was so common on Steve’s walkie-talkie that Eddie almost felt a sense of deja vu.
“Henderson, Sinclair, Wheeler,” Eddie said, wondering at the odds of picking up Steve’s brood out of the dozens of new lost faces. “Any of you ever played D&D?”
His last class of the day was history, Eddie’s least favorite subject because he was terrible with memorization and even worse with remembering dates. Ms. Click eyed him with distaste as he entered, and he refrained from sending her a jaunty little salute, because it would just piss her off. He slumped into his favorite chair by the window, and prayed to whoever’s out there that the class passed quickly.
Someone settled in the desk next to him. He didn’t pay any attention until roll was called, and when Buckley, Robin was called, her voice came from next to him: “Here. Uh. Present.”
Eddie sat up and looked over. She grinned at him, and wiggled her fingers. “Hey. First project is a group paper. Partners?”
“You’re going to regret this,” Eddie grinned back. He heard Ms. Click call Munson, Eddie, and he said, “Yup. Back again.”
The class tittered with laughter, Ms. Click narrowed her eyes, and Eddie smiled. Maybe this really would be his year.
Notes:
Fantastic art by Sierra - post link will be available soon!!
END NOTES:
- Nancy in the poolside memory is reading Rosalynn Carter’s First Lady from Plains, her autobiography released in 1984. Rosalynn is the wife of former president Jimmy Carter, and was hugely influential during her time as First Lady. Steve vaguely recognized the name because I think he’d know the president, but I doubt he’d know much beyond that. He has his strengths! This is not one of them.
- You’ve probably noticed, but Steve in this fic is incredibly blasé about his own sexuality. Hot people are hot people in Steve Harrington’s eyes, and the biggest difference is how much outside interference he would have to deal with during his date.
- The Michael J. Fox reference is to the original Teen Wolf movie, where he plays a teenage werewolf, shockingly enough.
- I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s so interesting. Back in the 80s and into the 90s, reruns weren’t as common yet and TV stations didn’t have 24 hour content. So, usually around midnight or so, depending on your area, the station would play an end of programming message that was basically “We are (station name) and we hope you enjoyed your night, God Bless America” and then the national anthem would play. Then the TV would go to static until the morning programming started up. No, this isn’t a joke.
- You don’t have to point out to me that I have a Thing about Steve and Eddie carving their initials into various places to prove that they love each other. I know I do. I know.
- Operation Croissant is pulled from the novel Rebel Robin. The prom story is from that as well.
- Italian translation: Robin (basically) tells Steve “Not it’s not, asshole.”
- The DON’T BOTHER ME, I”M CRABBY and Garfield teeter-totter mugs are both canonically in Wayne’s collection. The Care Bear one is a real mug from the 80s, but it’s not one that was on Wayne’s wall.
- The quote Steve butchers is actually “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” and was said by Ben Franklin in his Poor Richard’s Almanac, not Shakespeare.
- Continuing my insistence on dropping Dolly Parton into fics where she can only tangentially be mentioned. Jolene is Dolly’s 13th album and easily one of her best known. It was released in 1974. Besides the song Jolene and the original I Will Always Love You, the album had other fantastic songs, including this version of Eddie’s pining go-to that he plays when Robin and Steve go run errands: When Someone Wants to Leave (“There’s nothing quite as sad as a one-sided love/when one doesn’t care at all and the other cares too much”).
- I was going to have Robin rant about the genre of heavy-handed songs written to be movie tie-ins. This rant was going to be inspired by Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory, which was written as a soundtrack song for the movie Young Guns and even includes the line “I’m no one’s son, call me young gun,” but since that came out in 1990, it didn’t work chronologically, so I had to adjust Robin’s rant to the usage of “little girl” in rock songs. It is true that Bruce Springsteen does really like to call his presumably adult woman lovers “little girl” in songs. No comment!
Chapter 10: eight: THE LIGHTS | THE ANNIVERSARY
Summary:
El nods enthusiastically. “You can only go into Eddie’s memories, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I was able to find you because I can go into anyone’s mind. But the others can’t do that, so you have to find them instead.”
“In Eddie’s mind,” Steve says, trying not to sound skeptical.
“Through my mind, I think,” Eddie says.
“Right,” Steve says, because that’s the part that was hanging him up.
Notes:
The chapters are only going to get longer from here. Sorry, unless you're into that, in which case you're welcome. :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Steve thinks it’s been about eight days of hard work, back and forth between the Upside Down and Eddie’s mind, pulled there as often as Eddie and El are able to handle it. They seem exhausted; Steve is too. The plotting still seems to be happening with Steve on the periphery, knowing just enough to help but not enough for Vecna to get the whole plan if he breaks into Steve’s secret memory pantry. He wants to help more, but doesn’t know how besides passing on as much information as possible.
What no one else in the group knows (except Robin, presumably, based on the teasing notes passed through Eddie and El — lots of keep it in your demonic pants, loser when Eddie's hickeys and bites are so deep they don't fully fade under Steve's touch) is that every spare minute Eddie isn’t planning an Upside Down coup, or sleeping, he’s alone with Steve.
And Steve is getting his goddamn back blown out.
It’s like early ‘85 all over again. The moment the memory starts, Steve can feel Eddie’s eyes hot on him like spotlights, counting down the moments until they change trajectories to be naked as quickly as possible.
With one caveat: they’ve learned that they can linger for longer after coming if they let the memory play out a little. Something about being settled into the memory keeps them there even once they’re panting and sated, exhausted and swimming in bliss.
So Eddie treats it like roleplay, and Steve is just along for the ride. It’s not very good roleplay, at least on Steve’s end — first of all, he never starts the memories as his old self anymore; he always looks like a twisted version of the guy he used to recognize in the mirror, sharp and angled and big and frightening, and he’s also not a very good actor, but Eddie works around his flaws. And Eddie doesn’t seem to mind the new look, either, which Steve is so overwhelmingly glad about that he can’t think about it too much or he might do something dumb like cry about it.
So they play out former versions of themselves until they can’t stand it anymore, and then one of them breaks and they’re on each other in seconds. The fuck in memories of the Munson trailer and the Harrington house, Skull Rock and the stolen RV from March. They discover quickly that once they go off-script from the original memory, everyone else in the scene freezes in place. Otherwise, they’re fed their lines through memory and they can move along to pre-written steps until they snap, which is like walking on a tightrope and plunging into a pool of cool water when the tension breaks.
This particular memory had started with Steve mid-step in a jog. The scene asserts itself in the squeaks of shoes against the gym floor, that particular smell of floor polish and exertion, the shrill whistle of the referee echoing against the tall ceiling. Steve lets muscle memory take him through a play he barely remembers, the basketball a comforting weight against his palm when he dribbles. He passes to a junior guard, Phillips, and weaves his way through a battery of sweaty bodies until he’s open in the corner. He gets the pass back, shoots, scores; three points for the Tigers. He pumps his fist, and his eyes go searching automatically for Eddie, just like he did in the real memory.
Because Eddie’s definitely here; that’s how his powers work. Steve can’t follow Eddie into his childhood, or times with Hellfire or his metal band, times when Steve wasn’t there. So Eddie’s gotta be somewhere…
And there he is.
He’s with the marching band, little green and white spangly jacket and the silly hat with the feather. He’s by himself towards the front of the group, even though Steve can see Robin in among the other trumpet players towards the middle, but that makes sense, because they didn't really meet each other while Steve was in high school.
Eddie’s eyes are already on him and Steve feels it like a rush, wanting to know how Eddie will spin this memory. Will he drag him off the court to the locker rooms, or wait until the game is over and the memories of other people leave them all alone?
He keeps playing, feeling a little jolt the first time he sees a familiar mean smile on Billy Hargrove’s face, his stomach churning with that weird mix of pity and discomfort that Steve has felt since he died. Steve doesn’t have to think about where he’s supposed to be or what he’s supposed to do, which is good because his body moves differently now, faster and taller and stronger, and he’s not entirely sure how he’s playing without puncturing the ball with his claws, but he assumes it’s all just supposed to happen this way.
Late in the fourth quarter, Steve’s been playing the memory of a basketball game for about ten minutes when he sinks a shot and turns to run back to the other end of the court, only to find Eddie there in his path. The band uniform should be a turn off, but unfortunately Steve is so far gone that he thinks Eddie looks hot in anything, though he does run a finger up the feather on his hat and grin. Eddie rolls his eyes and throws the hat off to the side, and then he’s pushing Steve back with a hand to his chest so that he’s walking backwards, passing through the people who have all frozen in place now that the memory has gone off course.
“What do you think all these people would say if I’d actually done this?” Eddie asks. It’s one of his favorite games, and Steve wants to play along but the moment Eddie starts his brain can only think about what’s coming next and can’t come up with good, sexy answers. Usually, it sounds something like this:
“Uh,” Steve says, sounding gobsmacked as though he didn’t know this is exactly where they’d end up. “I don’t know?”
“You don’t?” Eddie purrs, and shoves Steve back so that he lands on the vinyl players’ bench, sprawled out and looking up at Eddie. “Do you think they’d try to stop me?”
He’s shucking the jacket now, revealing a worn Twisted Sister cutoff t-shirt underneath. Next are the starched pants with the overall buckles, which he quickly steps out of. Then the shirt and boxers are gone as well, and Eddie’s standing there, in the middle of the crowded gym, naked and hardening, with his eyes locked on Steve. On his chest glints Steve’s gold key and his guitar pick.
“No,” Steve says. “No, I- I wouldn’t let them.”
“You wouldn’t?” Eddie asks. “If I wanted you to suck me off in the middle of your game, in front of all of Hawkins, you wouldn’t let anyone stop you?”
Steve makes a high, involuntary sound at the back of his throat, picturing it. Imagines Eddie striding across the gym, the referees blowing their whistles to stop the action, everyone confused as a band kid with a gleam in his eyes stalks up to Steve Harrington and wraps a hand in his hair and puts him on his knees in front of the crowd. If Eddie had done it, would Steve have gone along with it? Would he have opened his mouth and let Eddie fuck his face like it was just the two of them alone, even despite the gasping crowd, the outrage, the shouting?
Steve likes to think he would. Despite the hell it would cause, if Eddie asked, he’d do it. He would have been perfectly fine with treating Eddie like his steady girl when they were in school together, arm over Eddie’s shoulders in the halls, Eddie in his letterman in the stands of his games, Eddie wearing his class ring on his middle finger, a little too big, if Eddie had been okay with it too. And that means that, if Eddie had asked for a public display, Steve probably would have given it to him.
He didn’t. He never asked for that. If anything, he asked for the opposite: secrets and whispers. Stolen looks.
But they have this, now. Chances to act it out without consequences.
“Eddie, please,” Steve says, and Eddie comes closer.
“Begging, baby?” Eddie tuts. “Already? I haven’t even touched you yet.”
But he does, and Steve melts with it. He’s sprawled out on the sticky vinyl of the players’ bench, his breath coming in quick bursts. Eddie skims confident hands under Steve’s jersey, thumbs over his nipples, and then pulls the jersey up and off. He loses the shorts next: “Take care of that?” Eddie asks, and Steve shreds the mesh with his claws before Eddie finishes his request, and Eddie laughs, delighted.
When Steve’s naked and Eddie’s still naked, Eddie climbs into Steve’s lap. Steve groans with the feeling of it; they’ve found that Eddie runs hot in dreams and Steve is cooler now (“Cold-blooded, like a reptile” is what Dustin’s research notes say, which Steve is mildly offended by even though it’s technically correct), and Steve reaches towards the warmth like sunflower asking for more light. He shivers when Eddie’s warm thighs settle around his hips.
“Wanna try the thing again?” Eddie asks, and Steve bites back a truly embarrassing sound.
“Yeah,” he says instead, rough. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Dream logic doesn’t seem to work when Eddie’s in control of the memories; even when he stops the memory from playing out, his effects are limited to things he can physically do with the objects or people already around him. Eddie, for example, could have walked right past Steve in this memory and laid a big wet kiss on Billy Hargrove instead — and, god, what an awful thought that is — and that would be allowed, and a memory version of Billy cobbled together from Eddie’s brain would respond and act like it really happened. But Eddie couldn’t pull a pair of handcuffs out of his marching band jacket and cuff Billy to the locker room door, because he didn’t have handcuffs in the original memory. He couldn’t summon Steve’s nail bat to appear, even though it existed and was in Steve’s car outside the gym at the time, because this is Eddie’s memory and Eddie, at that time, didn’t know the bat was there. He’s stuck in the tiny world of the past, with only the tools he originally had to change the flow of time.
The same is not true of Steve.
If Steve wants to imagine a piano falling out of the sky like a Looney Tunes cartoon right on Billy’s head, he could do it. He could summon up a hundred people who weren’t in the gym that night and make them appear in matching pajamas and all sporting bright purple hair to do a conga line as the halftime show. He could turn the basketball into a miniature moon and feed it to Eddie on a cracker if he wanted.
El and Max say that’s an echo of what Vecna can do, though of course Vecna uses his power for fear and terror. Boards up doors and turns living people into rotting corpses, bugs everywhere, clocks stuck in trees, all that nonsense.
Steve uses his powers for much more practical purposes. To make Eddie laugh. To skim over some more unpleasant parts of some memories. And, most frequently, for sex.
“Okay,” he says, and concentrates, thinking about his fingers, thinking about the slick feeling of lube, thinking about tight heat even brighter than the flash of skin to skin contact.
“Oh,” Eddie says. “That’s- oh.” He squirms a little in Steve’s lap.
“Did it work?” Steve asks, and reaches a hand around. His finger slips inside Eddie with barely any resistance, the way he only got in the real world when Steve spent a long, long time loosening him up with fingers and tongue, with copious KY and lots of breaks.
“Neat little trick,” Eddie says breathlessly. Steve grins against his mouth and helps Eddie kneel up, lines his dick up with Eddie’s opening.
“Fuck,” they both gasp when Eddie sinks down. They haven’t done this yet, not since Steve changed — it’s easier for Eddie to fuck Steve, if they’re going that far, because of his pain tolerance and Eddie’s lack of claws, plus it was their usual go-to so it was a little more familiar. But Steve’s been flexing his powers and trying new things and now he has Eddie in his lap, hips rocking in a sort of rhythm.
Steve will take over soon. Eddie likes the control of fucking Steve and Steve’s happy to hand that over, but when Eddie’s the one taking it he gives in completely, goes boneless and maneuverable, quiet. Steve likes to watch Eddie settle into this, his measured breaths at the new stretch, the way his eyelashes flutter like Steve’s dick is a drug that slows Eddie to syrup.
“God,” Eddie murmurs, and sets his mouth against Steve’s. Not kissing, just breathing in each other’s air. When he talks, their lips brush and Steve feels it like a tingle. “Been too long.”
“Yeah? Missed me, did you?” Steve asks, and sets his hands on Eddie’s waist, gets his feet underneath him for leverage.
Eddie’s tongue touches the corner of Steve’s mouth, runs along the seam of his lips until he stops at a fang, lingering. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Missed you.”
Steve kisses him, plants his feet like a good jumpshot, and thrusts up.
Eddie pitches forward, hands going to Steve’s shoulders, and moans. Steve keeps the rhythm going, his hips pulsing upward as his hands guide Eddie’s weight down to meet him for each thrust. Eddie’s head lolls and he clutches at Steve’s shoulders. Steve’s enhanced hearing is able to catch every little shuddered breath and nearly-silent moan out of Eddie’s mouth.
Steve’s turn. “Imagine if everyone here could see us like this,” he says, and Eddie makes a sweet little whine. “Everyone who used to think I was so hot would see this nightmare body,” he says, still thrusting, still pressing into a heat so bright it’s going to burn him, he just knows it, “and they’d see you taking it like a fucking dream.”
“They’d be jealous,” Eddie says, lips loose, eyes fluttering.
“Of me?” Steve asks, and brings one hand around to touch where they’re connected.
“Me,” Eddie corrects, hazy eyes crinkled with a half-fucked smile. “Watching me get fucked so well.”
“By a monster,” Steve dismisses.
“By a damn angel,” Eddie groans, and his hands scrabble at Steve’s chest.
When Eddie comes he stripes Steve’s collarbones and bats at his shoulders to stop, oversensitive. Steve would live if it ended there, but Eddie doesn’t work that way, and he curls up around Steve’s side and jacks him off with a honed precision that only comes from someone being intimately familiar with your dick.
Steve kisses Eddie when he comes, then pulls to the side and sets his fangs against Eddie’s jaw, not pressing in, just holding there, because it makes Eddie all shivery like he might want to go again.
After, they don’t know how long they’ll get before Steve’s little energy meter runs out and he’s sent packing, so they stay slumped there, the ghosts of a crowd around them.
“I don’t even remember this game,” Steve muses, looking up at the scoreboard. This is a memory of his senior season, so he was no longer captain, supplanted by Hargrove. He recognizes the other team, a high school from a few towns over, but doesn’t remember how this game ended or anything memorable at all. Funny how that all fades when more important things are happening.
“I do,” Eddie says, almost apologetic. He’s running his blunt fingernails over Steve’s ribs. “This is the one where you twisted your ankle.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Steve says. He’d landed badly when a kid rushed him after a layup, and had been subbed out so he could get his ankle checked and taped up, in theory to get back into the game and help secure the lead. But there was so little time left and he was no longer the team star, a solid player but not the one Coach looked to for the big shot, that he ended up watching the final seconds from the bench, one of his shoes off and his ankle starting to swell.
At the end of the night, Eddie had been waiting in the parking lot for him. It had taken Steve so long to hobble into the shower and rinse off that he was the last one out, and his car and Eddie’s van were the last two in the lot. Eddie helped him into his car, asked around the edges about whether his parents would be home to take care of him, and suggested he come over to the trailer instead when Steve confirmed they wouldn’t. Wayne had retaped his ankle in the morning when he got back from work, and bid Eddie and Steve to have a good day before they left for another day of school and he went to bed.
Steve assumed most people's memories could be categorized into good, bad, and a mix of both, and the vast majority of his were that mixed category. This was one of them. His fall from popularity was most evident in two locations: the cafeteria, and the basketball gym. His stomach was always a little nauseous during games after his captain role was taken away, extremely aware that everyone was watching him to see if he’d screw up and get pushed even further into mediocrity. Billy Hargrove was mean, aggressive, and loud, and while he never put hands on Steve again after he was threatened with a nail bat to the groin, he insinuated plenty. He generalized in ways that could only be about Steve. He dated girls who’d dated Steve first and then had them tell everyone Billy was better in bed. Stupid shit — Steve was happy in his own situation, of course, but no one knew that and that made it worse. He could have marched up and told Billy, “I’m better fucked than you’ve ever been, or will ever be,” but Eddie didn’t want the target on his back and Steve respected that, so he kept his head down, his mouth shut, his eyes on graduation. During games, he didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t storm off in a huff and quit when he was benched. He took his wins. Absorbed his losses.
And afterward, he’d go to Eddie. He would be doted on by Eddie when they got to his house, and Wayne gave a gruff explanation that he’d been an athlete once, too, and had always had an issue with finicky ankles so he was good with a roll of athletic tape, and he touched Steve’s aching foot with such care that it made him tear up and Eddie cluck because he thought he was in pain. That was the good, to balance the bad. His house was cold and empty, his friends were middle schoolers or his ex with whom he had a strained but cordial relationship and her boyfriend who beat him up once. He was in love with a boy who needed him to keep that a secret. Alien monsters from other dimensions were real and occasionally Steve had to hit them with baseball bats. But in the in-between times, he had bright moments, warm moments, good moments, real moments.
“Hey,” he tells Eddie, who rolls his head over to look at Steve, tired and loose, smiling.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad I had you,” Steve says, and feels the tug of the Upside Down calling him back, so he leans in and kisses Eddie goodbye, like he always used to. “I’m glad we had each other back then. It was worth it.”
The next time Steve sees El in Eddie’s head, she’s nearly vibrating with excitement. Eddie’s also grinning, though he’s more cautious.
“We have a plan,” El says, eyes bright.
“We have an idea of a plan,” Eddie says.
When they explain it, Steve thinks it’s nuts, but then again he’s a silver-skinned monster who has somehow grown six inches taller like he’s a goddamn prepubescent going through a growth spurt and now his pants are all too short, so what does he know, honestly.
“So, right,” he says when they’ve explained. “I can see the others if I go through Eddie’s mind first?”
El nods enthusiastically. “You can only go into Eddie’s memories, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I was able to find you because I can go into anyone’s mind. But the others can’t do that, so you have to find them instead.”
“In Eddie’s mind,” Steve says, trying not to sound skeptical.
“Through my mind, I think,” Eddie says.
“Right,” Steve says, because that’s the part that was hanging him up. “And how do I do that?”
Eddie shrugs, and El says, “You find them.”
“Gotta be honest, kid,” Steve says. “I’m gonna need more than that.”
El’s brow scrunches as she thinks. “You said everyone has… lights, right? And you can see them?”
Steve flips his hand over and there they are, though El’s and Eddie’s are neon bright compared to the others while he's with them. “Can you see them?”
“No,” El says, “but I don’t need to. Follow that and you can find them.”
Eddie reaches out and prods at Steve’s palm, which is black around the edges now, like his fingers and wristbones and the tips of his ears, he noticed recently, and unerringly finds his light. He leaves his finger there and says, “Is this mine?”
Steve doesn’t answer right away, because his stomach is rolling and he feels a little dizzy. Kind of like he’s on a more friendly dose of Russian truth serum and maybe ice skating on numb legs. “Yeah,” he says. “Uh. I think I can feel you touching it?”
“Yeah, I think I feel it too,” Eddie says. “Do you feel warm and kinda fluttery?”
“No, I feel-” like that time we did mushrooms and listened to Led Zeppelin and you ate me out on your bedroom floor he definitely does not say because El is there, but maybe some blip of the memory passes through the light to Eddie, because suddenly the memory they were in changes and they’re in Eddie’s bedroom, Dazed and Confused is floating through the air, and the curtains are drawn.
Eddie grins at Steve, recognizing the memory, and says, “Huh. You get the good side effects, I guess.”
Steve grabs Eddie’s hand with his empty one and pulls his finger away, because he’s either about to throw up or come and neither option seems good out of thin air.
“Tomorrow,” El says. “I will work with everyone on getting ready for you tomorrow.”
When tomorrow comes, Steve is nervous. Which is stupid. He knows that Eddie and El have warned the others about all his… adjustments. His new look. He knows they know it’s really him. But do they? He likes to think he’d keep an open mind if another person in the group had been left in the Upside Down and showed back up saying they were the same person and totally friendly even though they look like a monster, but he doesn’t know for sure.
He feels the pull and he follows it to a memory, and- oh, okay. Eddie’s made it easy for him.
It’s late summer in Loch Nora. Steve’s stepping out of the house into the backyard, and he sees his two favorite people on the edge of the pool, their feet dangling in the water. Eddie’s pale back is glistening with sweat and marked with scribbly tattoos over his shoulder blades and up one of his sides (that one, a sword with a fancy name from a book, he knows is basically gone now, Eddie’s sides torn to shreds from the bats and only little patches of ink showing through the scar tissue). Robin’s back is pale too around her swim top, but that’s because she’s religious about two things: the entire discography of the B-52s, and sunscreen.
The door slides shut behind Steve, and he’s holding three cans of Tab because Eddie, for some reason, insists it’s his favorite.
Eddie and Robin turn to look at him. This is how the memory went last time.
Eddie smiles. Just like last time.
Robin’s eyes grow huge. Her mouth drops open. She’s on her feet from one blink to the next, and sprinting at him a half-second later. She throws herself at him; he drops the cans of Tab. This is not how the memory went last time.
“Steve? Steve!” Robin shouts, and then she’s in his arms, and her legs are around his waist, and she’s crying, and he’s crying, and he’s spinning her in a circle, and it’s Robin.
“You’re so big and ugly now,” she sobs, and he laughs, wiping his tears away with a big, ugly clawed hand.
“Keep your opinions to yourself,” Eddie says from next to them, grinning and looking a little watery as well. Steve keeps Robin up with one arm — he can do that now, and he’s only a little smug — and pulls Eddie close with the other.
“Gross,” Robin says. “Wait, how does that-”
“Do you want to ask?” Steve asks her. His face is currently pressed against Robin’s collarbones. He has no plan to move. “He’ll tell you, you know he will.”
“He has magic lube fingers now,” Eddie says.
“No I don't,” Steve says to Robin’s throat.
“Gross,” Robin says again, even more cheerfully. “I am interested, but that's maybe not the most important conversation right now.”
“I’ll tell you the dirty bits when Steve goes back to hell,” Eddie says, and Robin laughs, but then it falls.
“Is it awful? Are you being tortured? You’d tell us if you were being tortured, right?” she asks, and pokes at Steve’s pointy ear.
“It’s…” Steve says. “Well. I don’t want to be there anymore. It’s better than being dead?”
“A glowing report,” Robin says. “Hey. I missed you, you jackass. Next time the world ends, be better at escaping.”
“Yeah,” Steve says. “My bad on that one. Shoulda trained harder, but I’ll get it next time, coach.”
“Good,” Robin says, soft, and they don’t let go of each other for a long time.
It’s exhausting. Steve thinks it’s different with Robin instead of Eleven because El gets herself into the memory, where Steve has to keep Robin in it. Like a balloon with helium versus one with just regular air, and having to keep them both off the floor.
He can tell that Eddie can tell he’s flagging, so Eddie makes sure to let loose a laugh now and then that’s definitely over-the-top and too much for Steve’s dumb comments, but that zaps him awake for a few more minutes and buys him more time to drink in Robin’s voice for the first time in too long.
“The kids,” Steve says when he’s settled Robin on the ground and has dragged them both back over to the side of the pool. His toes are the same as his fingers — clawed, blackened, webbed, with the darkened patch of skin stretching up to his ankles — and they look like lost fish through the veil of chlorinated water. He’s already made sure Robin is okay, has asked for excruciating detail of what she’s been up to (“Mostly crying with this bozo because you’re gone,” she nodded at Eddie, “and planning to get you back. Also going to school,” she blew a raspberry and did a thumbs down, “and avoiding my parents, who think I’m mourning my boyfriend’s untimely death.”), and now he can ask the other questions that have weighed on him for weeks.
He doesn’t have to go on beyond his opener, and she fills him in on everything he’s needed to hear.
Max is fine. She’s in casts for her broken arms and leg, and has plans for physical therapy. She’s fully blind in one eye and partially in the other. She wears Steve’s Ray-Bans instead of her hospital-given sunglasses. She’s cantankerous as an old cat and ready to rip Vecna’s balls off at the first opportunity.
Mike is fine, except he’s all moony and pouty over El and moony and pouty over Will and none of the three of them will talk to each other beyond basic pleasantries and it’s excruciating for everyone who has to watch.
Will is fine. Will is quiet. Will doesn’t want to draw attention to himself, and El thinks he has a sort of sixth sense about Upside Down shenanigans but doesn’t want anyone to know that. Will talks to Mike at a distance and then spends half an hour sitting silently next to Jonathan like he’s replaying every word in his mind and despairing.
El is fine, except she still cries sometimes because she locked Steve in the underworld, but he already knew that because he’s seen her.
Erica is fine. Erica collects cassette tapes like they’re made of gold. She forced everyone to think very carefully about their ten favorite songs and she made them mixtapes (blank tapes bought using money she stole from Steve’s wallet)(because he wasn’t using it)(and he hadn’t bought her ice cream in months and that was their deal!) so Vecna won’t catch them unprepared, but they won’t grow tired of the same song over and over and start to dislike it, thereby rendering it useless. She told Robin to tell Steve he’s a dumbass, which Steve is supposed to interpret as love. He does.
Lucas is fine. He hovers over Max until she gets mad and snaps, but snapping at Lucas is like snapping at a really old, sad dog, and even half-blind Max can’t miss those big sad eyes, and so she relents and doesn’t apologize but she does ask him for help, which is what he wanted in the first place. He quit the basketball team, and he’s thinking about baseball next spring. He and Dustin have been going to the firing range with Nancy, because they aren’t getting caught out again.
Dustin is…
“Dustin misses you,” Robin sighs. Steve has been in the memory so long he almost feels punch-drunk, and even Eddie and Robin’s laughter, genuine or faked, isn’t enough to tie him down forever. He has maybe a few minutes left, but he’s impossibly grateful for what he’s gotten so far. “I mean, they all miss you, I don’t want it to sound like they don’t. But- well, you know Dustin. He thinks it’s his fault, if he could have helped carry Eddie, or maybe if he hadn’t hurt his leg, you could have made it through. We’ve tried telling him he’s not the reason for everything, but you know how only children are.”
Eddie snorts, and Steve feels it like a zing over his knuckles and around his wrists at his pulse points.
“He’s going to come fight Vecna himself to talk to you next, by the way, so don’t nap for too long,” Eddie says.
“I won’t,” Steve promises, so tired. “But he’s okay? He’s healthy, he’s fine?”
He asked Eddie, of course, way back at the beginning of all this. And it’s not that he doesn’t trust Eddie’s assessment. But there is a difference in hearing it from Robin, for some reason. Maybe because neither of them would sugarcoat things, or lie for the sake of lying, but Eddie can dance around an unpleasant answer better than anyone and Robin doesn’t bother with all that.
“He’s fine,” Robin promises.
Steve leans back, closes his eyes and soaks in the memory of the sun in August ‘85. “Good.” He can feel the beginnings of the pull out of the memory. “Hey, let’s try something. Eddie, can you get her back?”
“Yeah, baby, I can do that,” Eddie says.
“Okay,” Steve says. “I’ll follow you.”
He blinks, and Eddie’s gone, Robin’s gone, and it’s just him and an empty pool. He feels warmth, chooses Robin’s light to follow specifically, and goes: he blinks again, and he’s in his own bed.
He turns to his left, there’s Eddie, smiling tiredly at him, sleepy and frizzy-haired.
He turns to his right, and there’s Robin, and she’s crying a little.
“I can see you,” she says, and grabs his hand. “You’re here. It wasn’t a dream.”
“Well, technically-” Eddie says.
“Shut up, Munson,” Robin says, and Eddie chuckles. It’s morning; they look good in sunlight. They look happy that Steve’s here.
“I’m coming back,” Steve promises, and grabs Eddie’s other hand.
“We love you,” Robin says, and Eddie nods like it's impulse, like he didn't mean to, but he does nod, and — Steve knows that they love him, but it’s still good to hear it as he fades out of reality and back to his dimension.
The next time, Eddie doesn’t lead in with a memory of just him, Dustin, and Steve, probably because the only thing even close to that was the discussion outside the Upside Down trailer: Look at us. We are not heroes.
Steve, instead, follows the warmth of Eddie’s light calling him and pushes through into the present, the blur of the room outside the scope of Eddie, on the couch, next to:
“Henderson,” Steve says in relief.
Except Dustin’s blurry, insubstantial, and clearly didn’t hear Steve. Steve looks to Eddie, who shrugs.
Well, first: Steve leans over and kisses Eddie. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” Eddie says, mouth turned up in the corner like he wants to stay serious but can’t help it. “Any ideas?”
“Honestly, those aren’t usually my thing,” Steve says. “Let me try some stuff.”
He can’t touch Dustin, but that doesn’t seem important here. El said to follow the light, and Steve tries, but he runs into that same barrier he’d felt before. He’d been able to see and talk with Robin, but that had been a memory first, like that was where they had to start to make a connection.
Maybe they should just relive the Upside Down, just to jumpstart things. But if Eddie didn’t start them there, Steve assumes there was a reason, and he appreciates that Eddie also does not want to cause Dustin Henderson more harm than he’s already lived through.
“Hey,” he says, frowning. “This might not work, but… try something for me. Focus on a memory of you and Dustin, just you two. A really good, strong one.”
Eddie closes his eyes, and Steve concentrates on Dustin’s light: olive green and red and yellow, smells like peppermint and diner fries, sounds like the mechanical gears of his various doodads Steve isn’t smart enough to understand.
And he also thinks about Eddie’s light, black and red and sparkly gold, a box fan’s rhythmic swishing and the very specific smell of his cologne right at the highest point of his neck behind his jaw.
He thinks about them together, these lights, and pushes into Eddie’s like it’s an arrow that will propel him forward into Eddie’s head and beyond the memories he knows already.
Something. He can see something, like the room around him is flickering, like a TV with the antenna gone crooked. Flashing back and forth, he sees his own house's living room, then a dark room he doesn’t recognize, then the living room, then- is that a throne?
He blinks. When he opens his eyes, he vaguely recognizes where he is, even though he’s only had it described to him.
“Hellfire?” Steve asks. He turns on his heel and finds the multicolored stage lights on and pointed down at the folding table in the center, Eddie’s big dramatic throne at the head of the table, the Hellfire logo on a circular sign hung up in the background.
“Of course,” Eddie says. He starts the memory sprawled in his throne, like he came here just to pose. Honestly, Steve wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what actually happened. “This is-”
“Hello!” calls a voice, familiar, and Steve nearly goes weak with it. “Eddie? You said to meet here… Was that a prank? It feels like a prank.”
Dustin’s voice is coming closer, like he took the back entrance from the parking lot, and he’s picking his way around the random props scattered around.
“-the first day we met,” Eddie finishes with a stage whisper, and then winks. Then he yells, big and brash, “Henderson? Is that you, my little lost lamb?”
“I can’t tell if that’s an insult about my hair or a comment on my innocence,” says Dustin, even closer. There’s movement on the other side of the big, dusty stage curtain, like Dustin’s trying to paw through to the stage.
“Can’t it be both?” Eddie says. The back-and-forth has the flavor of a memory, so this must be how it actually went that day, the first day of Dustin’s freshman year. Steve’s a little proud of Dustin: brand new school ecosystem, and he knows Eddie can be intimidating when he puts the effort in. He wouldn’t have scared Dustin off on purpose, since he would have gotten an earful about it from Steve, but he was probably still his over-the-top self, gregarious but not pushed around, and Dustin braved that tornado of personality because he wanted a place to play his game with friends.
Dustin’s hand emerges from the curtain, then the rest of him. He coughs a little, making a face at the clouds of dust, and wipes off his Weird Al shirt.
“This seems like a strange place to- Steve?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. Then, as though the memory is slipping away, Dustin’s eyes widen and he says, “Steve!”
For the second time in as many days, Steve ends up with an armful of a friend. Dustin’s hands hit ineffectually at Steve’s chest.
“So- goddamn- mad- at- you,” Dustin says through angry tears, and Steve just lets him hit and rage. He can take it.
“Hey, bud,” Steve murmurs. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Fuck you,” Dustin says, sounding eleven all over again, and Steve laughs and tucks his chin down so his face is in Dustin’s hair.
“Okay,” Dustin pushes back. “I’m still mad!” He points a finger at Steve, like a warning. “But I know our time is limited. Tell me everything.”
Steve does. Everything, even what Dustin’s heard before. Unfreezing in the Munson trailer and wandering until Vecna found him. Being crushed to death until he took the deal. His enhanced senses, his newfound powers. The bats. The other monsters.
“Wait, hold on,” Dustin says. “Describe that again. A dragon?”
“I don’t know, man!” Steve says. “I don’t have the Monster Manual memorized like you do.” Eddie makes a noise, and waves them off when Dustin and Steve send looks his way. “It’s like… take a demogorgon, but more, like, lizardy? And bigger.”
“How much bigger?”
“I don’t know,” Steve says again. “I don’t go near those. They sleep on the other side of the lake, and I don’t mess with them. The bats are enough.”
“Okay, show me your claws again,” Dustin says, and then spends a few seconds pushing at the blackened pads of Steve’s fingers like he’s trying to make the claws retract like a kitten’s. He makes a curious noise and puts Steve’s hand against the folding table in front of them, and uses it like a rake to carve a groove through the cheap plastic.
“Dude,” Eddie says.
“It’s not the actual table,” Dustin says. “Okay, so you’ve got weapons. That’s good.”
“I’d prefer not to scratch my way to victory, but I appreciate the approval,” Steve says.
Steve leans against the throne where Eddie sprawls, his hip against Eddie’s shoulder, as Dustin paces and extrapolates or whatever the hell science words he does. “And you said you have these memories locked up, right? Vecna doesn’t know how much we know?”
“Locked tight,” Steve nods.
“Where?”
“I don’t want to think about it too much,” Steve says. “If I do, it brings it up to the front. I just let it sit in the back of my mind.”
Dustin eyes him for a long moment. “You’re sure.” It’s not a question. “A lot is riding on the element of surprise.”
Steve knows that. “I’m sure,” he says. “He’s not getting in. I won’t let him.”
Dustin nods, then asks Steve about how far he can teleport.
Before long, Steve’s slumped against the throne, exhaustion pulling at him yet again. Eddie helps him stay upright but they don’t have long left before Steve will have to go recover for the next round. Dustin doesn’t seem to notice, trapped in his own head with a burgeoning plan or maybe several, until Steve’s knees finally give out and he hits the floor with a groan. Eddie, probably expecting it, hops out of the throne and kneels behind Steve, taking as much of his weight as he can.
“What- Steve?” Dustin asks. “What is this, what’s happening?”
“This wears me out, man,” Steve says. “I’m not here much longer, I’ll have to go back. Any last info you need from me?”
Dustin squats in front of Steve, putting his hands on Steve’s shoulders. “You know, Robin said you were ugly now,” he says, and Steve snorts. “But I don’t think she’s right. You look badass, dude.”
Steve tips his head back against Eddie’s shoulder, feeling himself starting to fade. “That’s all that matters, then.” Eddie is the one who snorts this time, and Dustin grins.
“See you soon,” Dustin says.
“Soon as I can get back,” Steve promises.
Vecna waits for him, in the Upside Down.
He rattles the insides of Steve’s brain, turns over memories and stories like empty shoeboxes. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for.
“It’s going to be so much worse for them if you keep hiding things from me,” Vecna says, low and quiet and mean, too close to Steve’s face. “I have use for you, and possibly for Eleven. The rest are nothing to me. Cannon fodder. I will tear them to pieces just to see your reaction. Or, you can tell me what they’re planning, and maybe I’ll let some of them live.”
“I don’t know anything,” Steve says, and Vecna’s horrible, inhumanly blue eyes tighten, and Steve survives once again.
The next one is the one Steve has feared from the moment he knew it was coming.
He follows the pull to Eddie, smoke-red-cigarette kisses, and blinks to find himself in a boat. It rocks on small waves, made more unsteady by its occupants’ frenetic energy.
He’s got his sweater halfway off when the memory starts. He stops, looks over his shoulder. Eddie’s watching him. So is Robin. So is Nancy.
Steve pulls his sweater back down. He’s glad to have it back; he assumes no one went back for the stolen boat when they went through the watergate, so it’s probably still shoved between the little bench seats in an abandoned boat, next to Eddie’s crushed, sodden cigarette pack and Dustin’s compass.
“Who’s with me?” he asks.
Eddie wiggles his fingers. Robin says, “I’m here.”
And Nancy, quiet, shocked, says, “Steve?”
Her big eyes are comically wide, taking in Steve’s new everything. He can’t get a good look in the pitted mirrors of the Upside Down, but he’s started noticing his spine is sticking out more. He doesn’t know what that means, but it can’t be good. But even if the spine thing doesn’t look as weird as it feels, he knows there’s still a lot to take in.
“Hey, Nance,” Steve says. He turns fully around, settles back down in his seat. He uses his control over the dream to still the rocking motion, and to make the boat a little bigger — not a yacht or anything stupid, but big enough that his new, elongated legs can criss-cross without tipping them over.
“Steve,” Nancy says again. She reaches a hand out, like she’s going to take Steve’s, but stops halfway. “Are you- are you okay?”
Steve chuckles a little, and then to his embarrassment, it catches in his throat. He’d be mortified, if the three people in this boat weren’t the three people he trusted most with his life. “Yeah,” he says, wobbly. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Robin reaches over without hesitation and takes his hand. Nancy, seeing that, takes his other one.
Steve expects questions. He expects Nancy to produce her omnipresent notebook and start pressing him on the gaps in the stories he’s passed on so far — most of them Eddie-shaped, for obvious reasons. He’s been bracing for this. He’s been steeling himself for Nancy’s sharp-eyed observations to tear him to shreds. He expects a scathing what were you thinking, trying to play hero? and he expects to have no answer, other than, I was scared.
But it’s quiet. Nancy touches a gentle finger to a claw, and shines the flashlight on his skin. She flickers her gaze from head to toe perfunctorily, catching every detail. But she doesn’t ask anything.
Steve looks up, catches Robin’s eye, then Eddie’s. They both look like how Steve feels; cautious, but willing to let Nancy take her time.
Finally, she speaks. “I had an idea.”
There have been so many ideas. Some have been good. Some have led to Steve by himself in the Upside Down, feeling like an idiot as he tries to use his powers to levitate multiple cars at the same time and utterly failing, wondering how that particular skill could possibly save them.
“Okay,” Steve says. “Hit me.”
“Your… powers,” she says. “They’re a minor version of- of Vecna’s, right? He can read a person’s thoughts, and speak in a person’s mind. Can you do that?”
Steve shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Try,” she says, and, well, of course Steve is going to try.
It would be easiest with Eddie, because he’s Steve’s connection to all three of them, and the memory itself. Robin volunteers, but Nancy says, “Try it. Read my mind, Steve.”
Steve hesitates. “I don’t know, Nance…”
“Do it,” she says, quiet but firm. “There’s nothing I need to hide from you.”
He doesn’t really know what to do. He sort of- reaches out, with his mind, like he does with the demobats. There’s something there, but he doesn’t know how to grab it. He’s very aware of himself, his breathing, his movements, and the eyes on him. Finally, he closes his eyes and chases the pink chiffon of Nancy’s light.
It’s like crawling through mud, trying to push into something that doesn’t want to allow him in. Then, like he’s breached a layer, he’s slowly able to feel a thick mass of thoughts, like a radio’s volume slowly being turned up. It’s like trying to scoop meaning out of the ocean, but then one thought pushes out of the mass to the forefront.
I miss you. I’m glad you’re still here.
says Nancy’s voice, and her mouth hasn’t moved but Steve can hear it all the same. Her eyes are heavy on him, her brow pinched in the middle.
Steve thinks back,
Me too.
Nancy smiles.
“Are you up for this?” Eddie asks quietly. His body is prostrate on the couch in the Harrington living room, head tilted and eyes rolling back. He’s also standing next to Steve, hand around Steve’s wrist. Around the room is everyone else, that thick barrier of blurry air between them.
“I have to be,” Steve says.
“What if you exhaust yourself and Vecna gets in because of it?” Eddie pushes.
Steve knows that’s a risk. “It won’t happen,” he says, and tugs Eddie close.
“Promises, promises,” Eddie says, trying to make it a joke. Steve doesn’t blame him for worrying. He’s nearly catatonic with fear if he thinks about it too much, so he just doesn’t. He can’t.
“Come on,” Steve says. He pulls Eddie over to the couch, sits next to his prone body. Eddie, gingerly, sits where he’s already sitting.
“Trippy,” he says. waving a hand through his own insubstantial body.
Steve raps him with his knuckles in warning, and then presses into Eddie’s light, an arrow shot forward.
The first few are easy: he sees himself and Eddie and Robin at Family Video, arguing over which of the Rocky movies was the best. That leads to him, Robin, Eddie, and Nancy in the Upside Down, laughing in exhausted joy as the glow from an interdimensional Lite Brite flickered to life in front of them. Then Dustin is brought in, in the field outside the parked RV as he and Eddie hammered nails into trash can lids to make shields.
As each memory flickers by, Steve feels the bubble of awareness around him expanding. He feels Robin reach out and touch his shoulder, hears Nancy’s inhale like she’d been without air. Dustin immediately starts whispering questions to Eddie, who hushes him.
It’s more difficult to catch the others, but Steve pushes through. He follows Dustin’s light to Erica, Scoops Troop, with him and Robin in a plummeting Russian elevator. Erica leads him to Lucas, of course, standing with Dustin outside of Erica’s bedroom, holding a box with a dumb-looking dragon on it. Lucas’ memory takes Steve to the old bus at the junkyard, which pulls in Max, too. Through Max’s light — burnt orange, the sound of skateboard wheels on the sidewalk, the smell of homemade lasagna — he gets El, who accepts his presence easily, expecting it. She helpfully offers a memory of her, Mike, and Will in the back of a vehicle Steve doesn’t recognize, speeding through the desert somewhere. He follows the weak pull of Will’s light — the one that feels the least substantial, like Will isn’t sure about Steve and, honestly, Steve doesn’t blame him — and sees him and Jonathan on a bed in their old house, the Ramones echoing through the air.
“Shit,” he hears, and someone hushes Jonathan as Steve follows a memory of Joyce holding Jonathan and Will after Starcourt, the fire raging behind them. Joyce’s light — rich purple, Marlboros and sweet perfume — takes him to her and-
It’s Steve’s turn to gasp, and his eyes open to find everyone there on the inside of his bubble; all looking at him, all staring as he rises to his feet and flings himself at:
“Hop,” Steve says, curling his hands in Hopper’s shirt front. “I thought you were-?”
“Not yet, kid,” Hop says. Like this, he’s smaller than Steve, skinny and clearly recovering from something harrowing. “And we thought you-”
“Not yet,” Steve says, and grins, and Hopper sees his fangs and startles a little, but grins back. Steve turns back to the rest of the group. “Hey, everyone,” he says, and waves a little.
“Yeah, that’s really his loser ass,” Erica says.
“You look terrible,” Mike says.
“You look awesome,” Max says appreciatively.
“Dude,” Lucas says, and Max elbows him.
“So,” Nancy says, calling the room to order. “Are we going to make a plan to take out Vecna, or what?”
This time, when Steve grins, the room grins back.
THEN
NOVEMBER 1985
“It’s official!” Eddie shouted as he pushed his way into Family Video like a gunslinger entering a saloon, both hands outstretched and the double glass doors swinging closed behind him. “Hawkins High has gotta go. I can’t do it anymore, it must be burned to the ground!”
The store wasn’t empty; it usually wasn’t at this time, that nebulous after school hour where kids ran in to find something their stressed-out moms would allow them to rent as they smoked in their cars in the parking lot. Their older siblings, too cool to be picked up by Mom’s Pinto, would stop by later on their bikes, to gawk at Phoebe Cates’ cutout by the door, or to try to watch whatever the poor minimum wage workers had thrown on the TVs that day until they were chased out.
Speaking of the unappreciated workers, Steve and Robin were both behind the counter today. Unfortunately, Family Video wouldn’t allow them to wear their matching sailor uniforms despite Eddie’s begging, so they were both dork-chic in their polyester green vests decorated in buttons asking you to Be Kind, Rewind! and Let me help you pick your next flick!
They were both slashing their arms across their necks in the universal SHUT THE FUCK UP gesture. Robin was mouthing something at Eddie he couldn’t quite make out, and Steve was giving Eddie the same look as the last time he’d tried to tattoo himself in the bathroom at the trailer. Something like a cross between alarmed amusement and sheer bafflement over his choices, with an extra kick of why do you have to make things harder for yourself?
But Eddie was a sick, sick individual who discovered long ago that little thrilled him more than the eyes of other people glued to him in horror. He strode forward and flung himself across the counter, playacting his damn heart out. He rolled so he could drape, despondent as a swooning maiden, one wrist to his forehead.
“No, no, don’t try to stop me,” Eddie continued grandly. “I shouldn’t be silenced, I should be given an award! I go to that hellhole every day and have not yet once tried to burn the place down.”
“Eddie-” Steve said, hands up like he was trying to surrender.
“Well, maybe once,” Eddie said.
“Oh my god,” Robin said.
“Or twice. A strong three times, if pressed.”
“We don’t joke about arson!” Robin hissed.
“Sure we do! All the time,” Eddie said, and stood because his back was starting to twinge, which was when he noticed the person behind him waiting to check out once Eddie finished his one-man monologue.
“Principal Higgins,” Eddie said weakly. “That was… hyperbole? Also, I’m. Uh. Practicing for a play.”
Higgins, holding a copy of Diner and a sad single bag of Himalayas Chocolate Mints, sighed and handed Robin a five dollar bill.
“I commend your restraint and commitment to your studies, Mr. Munson,” he said, and slid his change into the tip jar that Robin and Steve put out during their shifts together. “And you’re correct. That would be a hyperbole.”
“An educator through and through,” Eddie said, and saluted. “Thank you for your service.”
Principal Higgins sighed again, and Eddie waited until the glass doors closed behind him before burying his face in his hands. “Oh my god,” he said. “Why did you let me do that?”
Steve snorted, and pushed Eddie to the side so he could take a stack of Shirley Temple movies from a woman who looked about a thousand years old. “We don’t let you do anything, dude. That’ll be a dollar eighty-two,” he said, and the woman started counting pennies out of an equally ancient coin purse.
“I believe our contract states you are specifically around to be my impulse control,” Eddie said.
“If that’s the case, then we’re severely overworked and underpaid and I’m suing for breach of contract,” Robin said.
“Hey, we’re on for Friday, right?” Steve asked, leaning forward on his forearms, looking up at Eddie through his lashes.
“Friday…” Eddie said. “Did we have plans?”
“Oh,” Steve said, tapping at the counter. “Not, like, officially. I just thought- since it’s been a year.”
“A year,” Eddie repeated again, and now Robin was looking at him too, like she was waiting to see if he got the hint. A year — what was a year ago? Eddie got a week’s detention for using a scalpel from the biology lab to carve a pentagram into a chair. He’d brought Gareth into Hellfire finally, after he’d spent months as the new freshman hanging out on the edge of the group, too scared to fully join. He made a decent bit of money selling between Halloween and Thanksgiving, though he’d had to restock after the Halloween party, and he had a hard time finding a few minutes to go to Rick’s because he was busy all of a sudden with-
“A year!” Eddie exclaimed. “Damn, I didn’t realize it was our-”
He didn’t say anniversary, suddenly very aware of prying ears, but Steve must have heard it anyway because he grinned.
“Yeah, so,” Steve said. “I figured you and I could, I dunno. Do something.”
“Yeah, definitely, of course,” Eddie said. “Friday it is. I’ll wear a tie.”
“You don’t own a tie,” Robin said.
“And Buckley will not be there,” Eddie continued.
“Correct, because I’ve got better things to do than witness all,” she waved her hand at them vaguely, “this.”
Eddie held a hand to his chest. “What are you implying, Buck? That we’re not embarking on a proper courtship that preserves our modesty and maidenhood?”
“Christ,” Steve said, trying not to laugh. “Is that what we’re doing?”
“Apparently not, according to Robin,” Eddie said. “Anyway, I gotta head home, it’s Wayne’s night off and we’re working on his truck so it doesn’t die on us again. See you tonight?”
“Probably,” Steve said. “Depends on if my parents are gone yet or not. My dad keeps saying I’m not allowed at the house, but my mom keeps telling me to come over so we can catch up, and I have no idea if they’ve even spoken to each other about me.”
“Okay,” Eddie said, tapping Steve’s hand lightly three times. “Buck, take care of him.”
Robin said, “Sure, if he lets me.”
Eddie bowed to Cardboard Phoebe Cates on his way out the door, threw a smile back at his favorite duo, and headed out into the late afternoon sun.
The lunch table was raucous the next day, but Eddie wasn’t really following along. The popular tables were in an uproar — Chrissy Cunningham had showed up wearing a little gold band and Jason Carver was telling everyone it was a promise ring, and Eddie wanted to puke on her behalf — but his little band of nerds had their own gossip going, specifically about the long-departed Will Byers.
“But he has answered your calls,” Mike Wheeler was saying, those sharp eyes pinned on Henderson.
“Yes, dude,” Dustin sighed, “he answers my calls. I don’t think he’s mad, I think he’s upset.”
“Why would he be upset?” Mike said. “All I said is that I hope he finds a group like Hellfire at his new school. That’s a nice thing to say!”
“You know it’s more than that,” Sinclair said. He was wearing his new basketball warmup jacket, which Eddie was working very hard not to sneer at. That was helped along by exposure therapy thanks to Steve’s wardrobe. Apparently sleeping with jocks benefitted everyone, not just the well-fucked.
“Lucas is right,” Dustin said. “Will loves the Party. Remember, all he wanted was for us to get back to our game nights, before girls and-” he cut his eyes over to Eddie, who was half-listening, and Gareth and Jeff, who had long learned that they couldn’t possibly parse the intricacies of the relationships between these three and their extended group, but observed all conversations like wildlife researchers gathering notes. Eddie understood that feeling; he was on the fringes of it, and he barely understood it himself. “-everything else.”
“He’s more than welcome to get a girlfriend, too,” Mike huffed, crossing his arms.
“I think that’s…” Lucas trailed off delicately, “not what he wants.”
Okay, well, now Eddie was listening. Was Steve babysitting a burgeoning homosexual? He had no idea. He’d have to badger Steve about it later.
“But he’s coming back for Thanksgiving, right?” Mike asked. “Did he tell you he was, Dustin?”
“I don’t think he is, man,” Dustin said. “His whole family’s in California, he doesn’t have a reason to come back.”
“He has us!” Mike said, throwing up those gangly arms in frustration.
“He also has some,” Dustin cut his eyes again, and this time Eddie caught them. Raised an eyebrow. “Uh,” Dustin said, clearly editing for his audience. “Historical issues. With Hawkins, you know.”
That knocked the wind from Mike’s sails. “Right, well. He still shouldn’t ignore us. Ignore me.”
“Then apologize,” Dustin said, clapping him on the shoulder. “And fix it, dude.”
There was a quiet moment that Mike spent poking listlessly at the homemade meatloaf his mom had packed him for lunch, and Lucas and Dustin had a silent but expressive conversation over Mike’s head, and Eddie zoned out again for a few minutes. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, he heard Gareth say, “We’re on for Friday, right?”
“Hell yeah,” Jeff said. “I’m ready to take on the vampire lair, I think we’re ready.”
“Oh shit!” Dustin said, lighting up. “That’s right! I’ve been looking up spell options, since we leveled up. We’re gonna dominate those bloodsuckers.”
“I’m sure DM will throw in a twist,” Mike said, that starry-eyed hero worship still plain on his face. Eddie would never admit it, but it did give him a boost, knowing someone thought he was cool.
“Obviously,” Eddie said, more a reaction than anything else, then pulled himself out of the ether of half-daydream, half-eavesdropping and said, “Wait, sorry, what?”
“Friday, dude,” Jeff said. “Hellfire? The last one before Thanksgiving break? You promised it would be brutal.”
“Of course it will be,” Eddie said automatically. “I’m going to blow your tiny, tiny minds.” He’d been jotting down ideas for weeks, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to scribble notes on the pad he kept jammed between his bed and the wall, most of which were nonsensical when he tried to read them again the next morning. It drove Robin nuts when she stayed over, which was a lot less often compared to the summer and her parents let loose her leash a little. She had stayed at the trailer about once a week through the summer; now, it was more like once every three weeks, and only with elaborate planning so her parents didn’t catch on. Steve, on the other hand, slept right through Eddie’s manic midnight note taking, and even sometimes tried to help him translate his nonsense into real thoughts the next morning.
“Horse crow soup?” he’d asked one morning, squinting blearily at Eddie as he ate cereal standing up in the kitchen, leaned against the countertop. “Like, uh. Soup as an actual meal, or, like, soup as a mix of things to make something new?” And that was how Eddie came up with the black feathered pegasus that the vampire matriarch rode around on.
Which. Speaking of.
“Shit,” Eddie said, smacking himself in the forehead like the worst goddamn sitcom cliche. “Oh, fuck, oh shit.”
“What?” Mike asked, alarmed.
“Goddamn it. Friday. I’m supposed to-”
“Oh my god,” Jeff said, looking delighted. “You double-booked yourself. You have to cancel Hellfire!”
“No!” Eddie denied, but only to save face, because he didn’t allow anyone else to skip Hellfire. If they tried, Eddie demolished them. Hellfire was one of the only things that kept Eddie coming back to this building almost every day, and he wasn’t letting anyone derail that. Not without just rebuke, at least. “I’ll just- rearrange my schedule. It’ll be- it’ll be fine.”
“Wow,” Gareth said. “Whatever it is must be important, for you to forget about Hellfire. Did you have a hot date?”
Eddie, who’d unfortunately chosen to take a drink of nearly-soured cafeteria milk at that moment, choked and had to Heimlich himself with a fist to his own sternum. “Christ,” he groaned.
“Is that… a yes?” Dustin asked. “You have a date?”
“That’s totally a yes,” Jeff said, smiling in a way that did not bode well for Eddie. “Who is it, Munson?”
“There’s no date!” Eddie said. “I will kill all of your characters. They will all fall in invisible, unavoidable pits of acid. Try me.”
“Hard to kill our characters when you’re on a date during Hellfire,” Frankie said, singsong. “What are your big date plans? The chef's special at the diner?”
“No, no, it’s totally sharing a romantic pre-rolled out at the quarry,” Jeff snickered.
“I bet he buys flowers,” Dustin said, trying to joke along, but Jeff snapped his fingers at him.
“Nope, not yet, freshie,” Jeff said.
“Right, yep, sorry,” Dustin said.
“But he’s totally gonna buy flowers,” Jeff said, and Gareth broke out into laughter, the freshmen quietly joining in.
And Eddie would dispute it, except, well. He’d been trying to come up with a big romantic date for Friday, and his best plan had been takeout burgers from the diner out at the quarry with a joint for dessert, and he’d hovered at the pitiful flower selection at Melvald’s yesterday, budgeting out in his head the ridiculous twelve dollars he would need to buy a dozen roses.
He just wasn’t sure what you were supposed to do for your one year anniversary of not-dating your secret gay hookup you were in love with. Like, the first anniversary is the paper one for straight people; is it the same for not-straight people? Should he write Steve a song? Draw him a nudie sketch of Eddie’s dick to keep in his wallet and look at when times got hard? Write out a formal invitation for Steve to join him and Wayne in Missouri for Christmas this year?
Or was none of that necessary? Maybe Steve just wanted a normal night in. Discounted rental movies and sloppy head on the couch, a regular Friday for them. He didn’t want to overdo it and have Steve read into the truth and be weirded out, but he also didn’t want to underdo it and make Steve upset.
And now he might not be able to do anything at all, because he was a hardass about club attendance and a major idiot in several facets of his life, but a hypocrite he was not.
“Fuck,” Eddie said, thumping his head against the sticky cafeteria table. Gareth snorted.
“Just call and reschedule, dude,” he said, as though he had any concept of A, Eddie’s relationship status, B, that one did not simply reschedule a date with Steve Harrington, and C, actually landing a goddamn date with anyone in the first place.
“I’ll make it work,” Eddie said again. “I will. It’s fine.”
That evening, the couch was scattered with papers of various importance, from Eddie’s campaign notes, to a half-assed song he’d tried to write where he rhymed “ass” with “grass” and it wasn’t supposed to be funny but Robin laughed when she read it, to a geometry worksheet that was identical to one he’d completed a year before and the year before that. The wall flashed with headlights cutting through the window blinds, and a few moments later Eddie heard the sound of steps approaching.
“Hey, babe,” Steve said as he entered, heading towards the bedroom to change out of his work clothes. He padded back out to the living room a few moments later in a pair of Eddie’s gray sweatpants, so thinned at the knees that the tan of Steve’s legs showed through, and nothing else. Something about Steve Harrington barefoot did something to Eddie, like seeing a dog roll over and show its vulnerable belly; something about feeling safe in Eddie’s space that made him want to cry and maybe spill all his soft insides too.
“Hey,” Eddie said. “So. I have bad news.”
Steve raised an eyebrow, shoving Eddie’s papers aside to make a hole for himself on the couch. He nestled in and pulled Eddie’s foot towards him, rubbing a thumb absently over the bone of his ankle. “Great start to the evening.”
“It’s not my fault?” Eddie tried, then, “Okay, fine, I’m trapped in a prison of my own hubris. Whatever.”
“No idea what that means,” Steve said. “Is this a dungeoning thing?”
“Sorta. I planned Hellfire for this Friday,” Eddie said. “It was set weeks ago, you know, we’ve been running up to this really pivotal moment with the coven stuff and the week before Thanksgiving seemed perfect, and I can reschedule but I’ll never hear the end of it, and-”
“So we’ll just start our night later,” Steve interrupted.
“-you should have heard Jeff and Gareth today, they were- what?”
“We’ll do our thing after Hellfire,” Steve said. “It won’t go that long, right? So if you start at six, you should be done by nine or so. I’ll have to pick up the gremlins anyway, so I’ll know when you’re done. We’ll just hang out after that.”
“We- yeah,” Eddie said. “You’re sure?”
“I’d hate for your gang of nerds to eviscerate you for daring to make plans,” Steve said dryly. “It’s fine. We are technically adults. We can stay out late on a Friday night.”
“Huh,” Eddie said.
Steve snorted, then reached over Eddie to grab the clicker. “Come on. Let’s see who’s on the Love Boat tonight, and then we’ll go to bed.”
The guest was Charo that episode, and Eddie spent the rest of the evening trying to fit rolled Rs into every word as Steve chuckled at the particularly egregious close ups of bare shoulders and bellies.
When the Love Boat was sailing off into the sexy, sunny distance, Steve yawned and turned the TV off, and helped Eddie off the couch. Eddie put his papers into some semblance of order and Steve did his usual nightly watchdog routine: checked the doors were locked, slid the blinds closed, left a single light on over the stove for Wayne when he got home, and put his wallet by his keys on the entry table so he could grab them on his way out in the morning.
One of the keys on Steve’s keyring was a little shinier than the rest, a little newer. It had glitter along the round head from a girls’ night at Steve’s house when Sinclair’s little sister, allegedly, got creative with the nail polish, and Steve had decorated it with Wite-Out polka dot daisies when he was bored at work one day. Eddie touched the key before following Steve to bed, falling onto the mattress and arranging himself around Steve’s sprawl.
Offering Steve that key had been one of the scariest things Eddie had ever done, which made absolutely no sense. It had been burning a hole in his scarcely-used underwear drawer for, god, months, since way back in the spring when Steve had made a few too many mentions about his parents being willing to lock him out of the house if he did things they didn’t approve of, and Eddie assumed he was high on that list of things Steve wasn’t supposed to do.
Even if he never gave the key to Steve it was still good to have a spare, he’d thought desperately as he’d picked up the key from the hardware store, trying to play it cool even though the dude in the toolbelt definitely thought he was on something, the way he was staring at that key and fidgeting.
So Eddie had a spare key made for Steve and shoved it under his least-used underwear and tried to tell himself it wasn’t that big of a deal, really, honestly, and then graduation happened, then the bonfire party happened, then Eddie overheard the way Steve Harrington had been raised, and his fingers had itched.
Sometime in June, not long after that, Steve had pulled back from a lazy makeout on the couch and sighed and said, “I should probably go. It’s late.”
And Eddie, with no plan, had blurted, “You know you don’t have to go, right. You don’t have to go back.”
And then he’d jogged to his room, to dig around in his drawer until he found the key, and he’d made his way back to the couch where Steve watched, open-mouthed, as Eddie presented it to him.
“What? Eddie, I can’t-”
“Why not?” Eddie had asked. “I want you here. Wayne wants you here.” And then, realizing that actually maybe Steve was protesting for a different reason, Eddie rushed to say, “I mean, I know it’s not the goddamn Taj Mahal, and it- it would be a little smaller, ha, than you’re used to, but-”
“No, no, Eddie, no,” Steve had said, and took the key and held it to his chest. “No, it’s not that. This is- this is one of my favorite places in the world. I don’t care if- I don’t care about all that. But I can’t just move in, I’m like- I’m a barely high school graduate who’s working at the mall, I can’t pay rent or anything.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie said, and clambered back onto the couch, worming one foot behind Steve and throwing the other over his lap. “Did I mention rent? No. Just pay for food when you can and help Wayne when the sink leaks or whatever.”
Steve opened his hand again and stared down at the key. Then: “It’s your job to help Wayne with house repairs.”
“Right, and now I brought in new blood and it’s his turn,” Eddie said brightly, and Steve had laughed, and gently set his new key aside, and then put his hands back on Eddie’s face and kissed him until neither of them could breathe and they had to stop. But he didn’t leave.
Tonight, Steve was out like a light within moments of his back hitting the mattress. He had an arm outstretched that Eddie rested his head on, and his breathing was slow and deep. Eddie fiddled with Steve’s sweatpants, absently scratching his nails along the waistband, and thought about vampire covens and wilting roses and lunch table bullying and Will Byers in California until sleep took him.
Friday came quickly. Steve shoved at Eddie’s shoulder to wake him so he wouldn’t be late to school, rolling onto his back and stretching luxuriously.
“Morning,” Steve chirped. “It’s 7:32.”
“It’s hell,” Eddie groaned, burying his head under his pillow. “Hell and death and the miasma of the unwashed masses of Hawkins High.”
“Drama queen,” Steve tutted, and pulled Eddie’s pillow away. He pushed Eddie’s hands out of the way and kissed him, slow and sweet. “Happy anniversary.”
Well, Eddie was awake. “Hi,” he said back, stupidly, and Steve grinned. “Happy anniversary.”
Steve left after a few more kisses. Eddie rolled out of bed about fifteen minutes later, threw on the same jeans he’d worn yesterday, remembered that today was special, tried to find something cleaner, did not succeed, put the first pair of jeans on again, and then dug his one collared shirt out of the back of his closet. It was black, and a pinch too tight because Wayne bought it for him to wear to an aunt’s funeral a few years back.
Robin had been correct about the lack of ties in Eddie’s closet, but he thought the look wasn’t too bad. He rolled the sleeves and threw on his battle vest over the top for school, and ruffled his hair into place for long enough that when he remembered to look at his watch he yelped and had to sprint to the van and hit eighty on the backroads to get to school only ten minutes late.
Eddie didn’t think anything more of his outfit until lunch, when he walked towards the Hellfire table and was suddenly the target of whistles and whoops.
“Date night Munson!” Jeff cheered, and Frankie wolf-whistled loudly enough that even the tables across the room were craning their necks to see.
“Cowards,” Eddie hissed as he clattered his lunch tray to the table and tried to hide behind his hair. “You hide from the eyes of Hawkins High until it’s time to make a spectacle of my love life.”
“Yup,” Gareth said cheerfully. “Who’s the hot date, Munson? We’re not letting up, you know.”
“You will if you know what’s good for you,” Eddie threatened, and while the freshies sunk back, Gareth just laughed and took a bite of his sandwich.
“Bet the vamps won’t be as hard to beat as the ol’ DM here was bragging,” Frankie said to the others, thumbing at Eddie like he wasn’t there. “We’ll be wrapped up by 7:30, guaranteed.”
“I’ll take that bet,” Jeff said. “I bet we won’t make it to 7:15, and he’ll be at a 7:30 reservation at Enzo’s.”
“Price is Right rules — I bet 7:31,” Gareth said, and thus: chaos. Eddie pulled out his notebook and added five HP to the vampire matriarch every time someone made another guess about his dating life.
“My, um,” Dustin said, when Gareth, Jeff, and Frankie’s argument about whether Jeff or Gareth wins the bet if Eddie tries to sell his date drugs devolved into personal attacks, “my friend, um, Steve? Steve Harrington? He’s, like, really good at this sort of stuff, and he told me you should ignore her and make her come to you. It’s, like, catnip to girls or something.”
Eddie, who had felt his insides freeze somewhere around the time Dustin said Steve’s name, unfroze again by the end of Dustin’s comment. He coughed a little, wiping at the smirk on his face. “Oh yeah? Harrington gives out free dating advice? Maybe I should take him up on some lessons.”
Dustin, not sensing the sarcasm, nodded enthusiastically. “Totally! I have a girlfriend now, you know-”
“Suzie,” Eddie said at the same time as Dustin.
“-and- well, okay, I didn’t follow Steve’s advice exactly with her, but. I still have a girlfriend, and I didn’t before I knew him!”
“You mean when you were an infant in the cradle?” Eddie snorted. “Anyway, what do you mean you didn’t follow his advice?”
“Well, you know,” Dustin said. “I didn’t ignore her. I sort of talked at her, like, constantly. Until she started talking back. But I’m sure some of his lessons helped!”
Eddie huffed a laugh. “Harrington’s full of shit. Also, I don’t think I should ignore my date seeing as how, you know, I got the date. And dates typically expect you to talk to them.”
“Oh. True.” Dustin frowned a little. “But he’s not full of shit! Things just work differently for him because of his hair and car.”
“Right,” Eddie said, voice tight to keep the laughter in. “The hair and the car are effective.”
“He’s picking us up after Hellfire tonight,” Dustin said earnestly. “You should see if he has tips!”
Eddie set his forehead against the table and tried not to die. “Yeah, Henderson, I’ll ask if he has any advice for me.”
The stage lights were hot and, Eddie, knew, expensive as hell to replace when they burned out, but the cool thing about being the pariah of school clubs was that they often flew under the radar. The theater nerds didn’t know they used the stage as often as they did, and as long as everything was cleaned up at the end of the night, they never had to.
The group was about an hour an a half into a massive fight with the vampire coven and the matriarch hadn’t even made her debut yet when there was a distinctive static sound from Dustin’s backpack. Gareth, who had been poring over his spell list desperately like he might find one called One-Hit Vampire Killer he’d overlooked, looked up, wide-eyed. “What was that?”
Dustin, frowning, pushed away from the table and went to the pile of backpacks on the floor by the stage curtain. He pulled out his massive gray walkie-talkie, the twin to Steve’s, and cranked the volume knob. “-hear me?” came a familiar voice, and then another familiar voice more quietly, like they were further away:
“You didn’t say ‘over.’ He’s probably waiting for you to say ‘over.’”
“Fine, Robin, fine. Henderson, do you hear me? OVER.”
“It’s just proper walkie etiquette, Steve, it’s not that hard,” Dustin said. “What’s going on, what’s wrong? Over.”
Eddie wanted to know the same thing. Gareth tried to ask a question about the Charm Monster spell but Eddie shushed him. Steve didn’t bust out the walkie for just anything. Did he get in another fight, his face destroyed in its annual autumn punishment for some reason?
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Steve said, and Eddie felt himself relax, like, maybe five percent, even though he was fully aware that Steve would probably say he was fine if he was set on fire, not wanting to bother anyone. “But I got called into work and I can’t pick you up from your board game night.”
“Board game night?” Mike hissed, but Eddie could hear the little smirk in Steve’s tone, and knew that was absolutely on purpose.
“Steve, what the hell!” Dustin said into the walkie. “My mom has book club tonight, and Nancy’s working too. What are we supposed to do? Over.”
“I’m here ’til ten, man, I don’t know what to tell you. Didn’t you ride your bike today?”
Dustin waited a moment for the “over” and growled when he didn’t get it. “No! We rode with Nancy because we had Hellfire! Over!”
“Well, if you can find a way to get here, I’ll still drive you home,” Steve said. “But I can’t leave. Robin’s shift ends in twenty minutes and she has curfew, and if I leave early again Keith will definitely fire me this time.”
That was probably true. Eddie used to sell weed to Keith, who was an unpleasant little man and used to complain that he didn’t get Eddie’s friends and family discount when they’d never spoken outside of their illegal interactions. And he hated Steve. Seemed to be some weird leftover feelings from high school. Steve didn’t get it, but unfortunately Eddie did.
“And you want us to walk there? In Hawkins? Over.”
Eddie saw Jeff make a weird look at that, and cleared his throat. “Henderson,” he said. “I’ll take you guys to Harrington. It’s fine.”
“Oh thank Christ,” Dustin said, then hit the walkie button again. “It’s fine, Steve. Eddie’s going to drive us. Over.”
“Oh,” Steve said. “I didn’t know people were listening in. Well. Good. I’m glad he can do that.”
“You interrupted the middle of a battle, Steve,” Dustin bitched. “Yeah, everyone’s listening. Anyway, aren’t you going to say thank you to Eddie for saving us from being eaten? Over.”
“Being eaten by what?” Eddie heard Frankie ask, but then the walkie emitted the single most Steve Harrington sigh, and Steve’s voice said, “Thank you, Eddie.”
Eddie snorted. “You’re welcome, Steve. Now, Henderson, put the walkie down and let’s play some goddamn D&D.”
It was long past nine when the session wrapped up, Jeff clapping Eddie on the shoulder as he left with Frankie, jostling each other about who caused what damage tonight (Frankie landed the killing blow but Jeff’s tank of a barbarian did sixty points of damage in one round, so Eddie thought they were both right) and Gareth chatted with the freshmen as they helped put the tables away and pack the supplies up into one of the cupboards in the costume room behind the stage.
Then Gareth was gone too, waving to Eddie and calling out a, “Hope she’s forgiving, man! You’re very late!”
“Late? To- oh shit!” Dustin said, big button eyes going wide. “Oh my god, your date!”
“Listen, Henderson, it’s fine-” Eddie started, but Mike was jumping in as well.
“No, this is all Steve’s fault! He’s the worst,” Mike said.
“He’s saved your ass a few too many times to be calling him the worst,” Lucas said with an eyebrow raise.
“Yeah, Mike, Steve fucked up this time but he’s still awesome,” Dustin said, hustling the others out to Eddie’s van. Eddie rolled his eyes at the mini-mothering, knocking the doorstopper out of the way so the theater door swung shut behind them. Dustin continued, “You’re just still mad because he dated Nancy.”
“And, like, everyone else in this town!” Mike said, crossing his arms. “Plus he’s so lame. Like, cool, you’ve got a car, you’ve got hair and, like, lips or whatever. So what!”
Eddie felt his eyebrow raise at the lips or whatever comment. Steve told Eddie in detail about the types of gum he’d been trying since September to try to find his “signature taste” but he wouldn’t tell Eddie about his whole little flock of unaware gay kids? His priorities were completely out of wack.
“Listen, it’s fine,” Dustin said, clambering into the van’s passenger seat like he’d never seen a goddamn car before, all shoulders first and feet kicking. Lucas and Mike, stick bug-shaped children that they were, crawled into the back and perched gingerly on the pillows and guitar string packets and other detritus Eddie forgot was back there. “We’ll just have Steve call your date and tell her what happened! Everyone knows him, he’s a reliable guy, and she’ll have to reschedule with you.”
“You want,” Eddie said, “Steve Harrington to call my date for me and tell them I was late because he had to work?”
“Yeah,” Dustin said.
“Steve ‘has dated everyone in town’ Harrington, according to Mike? You think he should call my date and apologize for me?”
“Yeah,” Dustin said. “He probably already knows her!”
“There sure are a lot of blankets in here,” Lucas said, looking around the van. Admittedly, Eddie had rolled out all the stops for a smoke date with Steve a few nights ago that had been very successful judging by Steve's enthusiastic reaction, and he cringed a little to think about what Lucas and Mike might be sitting in. He had to remember to do laundry sometime.
“Do you have a comment, Sinclair?” Eddie asked.
“No, just… questions,” Lucas said.
Eddie made eye contact with him in the rearview mirror, raised his eyebrows, and when Lucas shook his head minutely, Eddie started up the van in a roar of a terrible engine and blown-out speakers. The Scorpions screamed out Can’t live, can’t live without you! as the van raced along the quiet streets, homes softly lit in the cool evening, a sleepy town shut down. Eddie threw out an arm across Henderson’s chest to keep him from being thrown through the windshield when he slammed on the brakes at a stop sign he’d forgotten about. In the back of the van, Mike and Lucas jolted around like semi-precious stones in a preteen girl’s rock tumbler, and Eddie whooped and took a corner on two wheels.
“Is this because you’re late, or do you always drive like this?” Dustin yelled over the road noise and squealing tires and German metal.
“BOTH,” Eddie yelled, and Dustin grinned and sang along when No One Like You came on next.
In the back, Mike moaned, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Eddie said, “No need! We’re here, gallant knights.”
The Family Video’s wide windows were leaking light out onto the parking lot in big orange squares, highlighting the lonely BMW parked off in the employee spots and not a single other soul. The van doors flung open and teenage boys fell about the place, with only Dustin able to keep his sea legs for long enough to get himself to the front door.
“STEVE,” he yelled, rushing inside. Mike and Lucas, still looking queasy, followed, then Eddie brought up the rear.
“What the fuck,” Steve said from behind the counter, eyes wide. He had a hand shoved under the counter like he was an old-fashioned saloon keeper about to level a shotgun at a group of outlaws. Eddie almost snorted at the image.
But when he saw who was stampeding in, he relaxed, pulling his hand out from under the counter and pinching the bridge of his nose. “What the hell, man?” he said. “You come storming in like you’re being chased and I’m going to think that’s what’s happening.”
“Chill out, we’re not being chased,” Dustin said. “But you owe someone an apology.”
“An- what?” Steve asked, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
“You ruined Eddie’s date night!” Mike said, a little explosion of angst. “And he’s been excited about it all week!”
“Eddie’s-” Steve frowned, and then looked past the boys to see Eddie there in the doorway. His eyes went wide, and when Dustin moved aside to look back at Eddie too, Eddie finally got a good look at Steve and felt his jaw go a little slack.
Steve looked good. Not that he didn’t always look good, but tonight was something else entirely. He was in a new baby blue sweater that pulled snug across his shoulders and brought out the gold in his hair and his eyes, and jeans tight enough that Eddie could’ve bounced a quarter off of them. He had his hair in perfect place, and a delicate golden chain along his collarbones. Even under the unflattering fluorescents of Family Video, he looked like a goddamn dream.
It took Eddie a moment to understand that the silence was ringing between them, because Steve looked similarly dumbstruck. Eddie looked down and remembered he’d tried to dress nicely today, picked his jewelry with care — the onyx stone ring Steve liked stealing and smoothing his thumb over, the stacked skull ring that Steve himself bought Eddie when he went to Indianapolis with Robin a few months ago, the matching silver chain to Steve’s gold one — and his black collared shirt a little rumpled from a day of school, but still decent.
“Hey,” Steve said, his eyes dipping, dipping, following the line of Eddie’s tucked-in shirt to his jeans ripped up at the top of his thighs to his shitkicker boots and back up; those lovely eyes were much darker than before when they met Eddie’s again.
“Hey,” Eddie said, staring back, wanting to know how he ever got someone like Steve Harrington to look at him like that.
“Reeeeeally weird vibe, guys,” Dustin said.
Steve twitched a smile, dropped his eyes to Eddie’s waist one more time, and then moved his gaze to Dustin. “What were you yelling about?”
“An apology?” Dustin said impatiently. “For Eddie? For ruining his date night he’s been planning all week?”
“Oh,” Steve said, tilting forward to rest his forearms on the counter. Somehow, he’d figured out early on that it did something to Eddie to see Steve make himself small on purpose, all eyelashes and soft mouth. “I didn’t realize you’d had plans, Munson. Hope they weren’t important.” His eyes glinted, those sweet lips tipped in mischief.
“Oh, you know,” Eddie said, swaggering forward to meet him in the middle, leaning on the counter and matching Steve’s nonchalance. “My date is very forgiving. I’m sure I can make it up to ‘em.”
“Yeah?” Steve asked. “Good to know. Sorry you didn’t get to have your big night.”
Eddie shrugged, and grinned. “The night might not be totally wasted. Who knows.”
Steve’s eyes kept dropping down, like he couldn’t keep them off of Eddie’s hands, his mouth, the V of his open collar. Eddie felt it like a fever flush, his heart upticking in anticipation.
“Hey!” Dustin said. “That didn’t make things any less weird! What is wrong with you two?”
“Do you know each other?” Mike asked, nose wrinkled.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “This town has all of twelve people, five of them are in this room, and two of them,” he gestured to himself and Steve, “have made names for themselves. Yeah, dude, we know each other.”
“Munson and I go way back,” Steve said.
“That’s weird,” Mike said.
“Crossing the streams,” Lucas said in agreement.
“Right, well, I’m on the clock for fifteen more minutes,” Steve said, “and I think we should all remember that Eddie could have been showing his date a good time at this very moment if it weren’t for you three, so grab some returns and start shelving. Even you, Wheeler.”
“How did this become our fault?” Mike complained, but he, Lucas, Dustin, and even Eddie finished shelving the returns, counting out the register, and rewinding the last few VHSes in record time. At one point, Eddie found himself alone in the dramas section with Steve, and their fingers brushed over a suspiciously sticky copy of The Blue Lagoon.
“You look incredible,” Eddie murmured, and Steve touched a soft finger to the back of Eddie’s hand as he moved his hand away to reshelve The Postman Always Rings Twice.
“I’m going to break every speed limit in town to get these kids home,” Steve said back, voice mild, still politely doing his job, “and then I’m coming right back here and you’re gonna fuck me on the counter.”
Eddie dropped the case for Reds he’d been holding, a plastic clatter on the dull carpet, and Steve sunk to his knees to pick it up, looking up at Eddie through his lashes and biting his lip. Eddie swallowed and wiped his hand across his mouth, and Steve grinned.
“Two minutes!” Steve called to the kids, who acknowledged that with general apathy and accusations of child labor, and Steve’s grin grew as he slowly rose back up to Eddie’s eye level.
“Christ,” Eddie wheezed, and Steve slid a finger between two of the buttons on Eddie’s shirt, the feeling of that tiny point of contact of his skin against Eddie’s like an electric shock, and then he pulled away. The kids had gathered at the counter, and Steve sauntered up to them like he hadn’t just rocked every inch of Eddie’s brain.
“Ready?” Steve asked, and as the boys scrambled out to the BMW, Steve waited for Eddie to exit first before following him out. He stuck his key in the door lock and moved his wrist, but the key stayed in place, and Steve deliberately made eye contact as he pulled the key out again and twirled the keyring on his fingers. “Are you gonna be ready for me when I get back?” he asked lowly.
“Jesus goddamn fuck,” Eddie breathed.
Steve tilted his head a little. “Is that a yes?”
“Steve, what the hell, he’s already late enough!” Dustin called. “Let Eddie go on his date already!”
Eddie’s fingers curled and uncurled, his mouth dry. “I’ll be ready.”
“Good. You looking fucking hot, by the way. Can’t wait ’til you’re in me.” And then Steve was gone, pulling the BMW out of the parking lot at a perfectly normal speed, which Eddie could have predicted.
“Oh my god,” Eddie said out loud to himself. “Oh my god.”
He spent a moment staring up at the moon, who seemed to be looking back down on him like she was saying, what? You’re into this, don’t pretend you’re not! and it sounded too much like Robin. Then he opened the door to Family Video, and slipped back inside.
It felt like a mistake to turn all the lights back on, and not just because anyone who drove by could see exactly what was going on inside. Eddie could just imagine sliding balls-deep into Steve only to hear that ring of the door opening and some confused patron trying to return their overdue copy of All The President’s Men, tottering in because “the lights were on, I thought you’d be open!”
He kept his hands outstretched to keep from knocking over Cardboard Phoebe Cates and fumbled his way around to the counter. He bumped into the gumball machine and barely kept it from falling and cracking open, turning this sexy scene into a Scooby Doo-level escapade, and shuffled awkwardly around until he was at the swinging counter door. He creaked it open, then he was behind the counter, then-
Well. Then he still had about twenty minutes to kill, at the earliest, before Steve would be back.
Right.
He couldn’t read the magazines that got stashed behind the daily cash ledgers, couldn’t pop a movie on the screens, couldn’t steal the candy that had been put away for the night. All he could do was think, and overthink:
Should he strip? Be ready to go, dick out, condom on, as soon as Steve walked in? Would that ruin the mood? Should he jog to Melvald’s and get some lube? Did they need lube? Steve was usually a pretty literal guy; did he actually want to be fucked, as in penetration, or did he just mean sex, like, generally? Should Eddie jog to the diner and pay for a slice of pie for anniversary dessert? Should Eddie jog around the block a couple of times to get his shakiness out of his limbs?
No; no. This was all so stupid. He didn’t have anything to worry about: the hottest guy in the world wanted sex with Eddie and had wanted sex with Eddie, consistently, routinely, for a year. A year. He didn’t need to roll out the unvacuumed maroon Family Video carpet; he just needed to be ready when Steve came in.
And, luckily for Eddie, it didn’t take long for that to happen. Despite Steve’s adherence to road safety when his kids were in the car, he’d apparently broken the sound barrier to get back to Family Video once he’d dropped them off.
The bell jangled sharply in the silence when he opened the door. He was just a silhouette outlined by the streetlights outside, but Eddie could see the way his shoulders rolled, the way his hand flexed on the door handle.
“Hey,” he said, and in his voice Eddie heard everything he needed to hear.
“Hey,” Eddie said. “Come here.”
Steve let the door swing shut, locked it behind him without looking. Then he was moving, and when he got to the counter he put his hands on it and jumped, like-
“Goddamn fucking Superman,” Eddie said, and Steve laughed, and then crowded him back and kissed him.
Eddie moaned, loud, unabashed. Steve had one hand wound up in Eddie’s hair, big hand cradling the back of Eddie’s head, and the other was tripping up and down the buttons on Eddie’s chest.
“I can’t believe you dressed up for me,” Steve murmured against Eddie’s lips.
“What, this old thing?” Eddie said, hands clutching at Steve’s shoulders. “And you’re one to talk, looking like a goddamn model in your cute fucking sweater.”
“Yeah?” Steve asked. It was too dark to make out his expression, but Eddie still knew what it was; all coy and sweet, all sparkle and blush.
“Took everything in me not to march over and feel you up when I saw you,” Eddie said. “Woulda scarred the boys for life, but I almost didn’t stop myself.”
“Should have,” Steve gasped when Eddie moved his mouth to Steve’s throat and started working on a bruise there. “Should have, should have done it, they’d have gotten over it-”
“You’re such a fucking exhibitionist,” Eddie said. “Is that what this is? Want the risk of someone walking in, seeing you bent over for me, taking it like a man?”
“Fuck,” Steve said, hips jumping. “Yeah, fuck, maybe, I didn’t know I was into that but apparently I am.”
“Then scream loud, sweetheart,” Eddie said, fumbling with Steve’s belt. “Get someone’s attention.”
It was becoming clear to Eddie they weren’t going to make it to the full, sweaty thing tonight; Steve was too revved up and, honestly, Eddie was too. Eddie backed them up until he found the worn-in desk chair that the employees could use if no customers or Keith were in the store, and pulled Steve into his lap once he was there. He got Steve’s zipper down and his own dick out too and wrapped one hand around them both. The slide was exquisite, the noises from Steve even more so.
“Hold- hold on-” Steve panted, and leaned over so that his lovely sweater was right there in Eddie’s face, so Eddie buried his forehead against Steve’s sternum and rubbed back and forth. Steve said, “Aha,” and flicked a switch, and a tiny little lamp on the counter flickered to life. It was a weak light, hardly bright enough to even make out colors other than black and gray, but it felt like a spotlight on them as they moved together.
“Gonna give everyone a show, baby?” Eddie asked, and resumed sliding his hand along them both. Steve whined and threw his head back, his Adam’s apple working as he swallowed and ran one of his hands back along his own throat and into his hair. His dick thudded in Eddie’s hand, a heartbeat racing to match Eddie’s own.
A year. A year of this, a year of Steve Harrington in his arms, in his mouth, in his life. He wondered if this was a reward for something, like time off for good behavior. Or maybe punishment for something, ruining him for the rest of his life when Steve decided he’d had enough.
“Fuck me, you are-” Eddie said, and had a million ends to that sentence, but what came out was, “everything, you are everything.”
Steve laughed a little, head still tipped back, hips moving in Eddie’s lap. “Flattery,” he said.
“The truth,” Eddie refuted, and used his empty hand to push up Steve’s pretty sweater so he could get his mouth on Steve’s chest, his belly. He groaned against Steve’s chest hair and Steve said, “Eddie, Eddie, I’m close, I’m-”
“Do it,” Eddie urged, his own release coiling up in his gut. “Come on, mark me up, baby, ruin this outfit you like so much.”
Steve gasped out and came, his cock pulsing as he did indeed ruin Eddie’s shirt, thick white lines like a Pollock painting. Eddie leaned back so Steve could lean in and their mouths met, Steve’s lax and panting and Eddie’s vicious and biting.
“Shit, shit,” Eddie gasped, and he came too, a swirling shiver up his spine and a flash of white as his eyes rolled back.
For a moment, they just looked at each other, and then Steve grinned. “That was good.”
“Uh, no,” Eddie said. “That was amazing.”
Eddie wiped his hand on his shirt and pulled Steve in so he could cuddle for a second. The chair creaked ominously under them as Steve curled down, his forehead against Eddie’s shoulder.
“Robin’s going to make you burn this chair,” Eddie said.
“She doesn’t have to know,” Steve said into Eddie’s shirt.
“She’s going to know immediately,” Eddie said, and Steve snorted.
“Well, it won’t matter if we break it first,” Steve said, and reluctantly pulled back and stood, buttoning his jeans back up and smoothing down his sweater. Eddie would have enjoyed that view from eye level, but his eyes had adjusted to the dim light and something glinting under the counter facing the front door had caught his eye, and his stomach was turning like he was suddenly out at sea.
“Eddie?” Steve asked.
“What is that,” Eddie asked, pointing. Steve didn’t turn to look, but his face froze.
“What is what?” he asked.
“Steve,” Eddie said. “What the hell is that?”
Steve didn’t stop him as he stepped around him, standing in the same place Steve had been when the boys barreled in earlier, startling him. Eddie reached under the counter.
It was nearly hidden behind stacks of broken VHS cases and piles of paper and contraband snack trash. Eddie reached past all that, finding wood, smooth and heavy. He gripped it in his hands and pulled it from its hiding place, like Arthur with the sword in the stone.
It was a baseball bat. It was also, simultaneously, the worst thing Eddie had ever seen.
Grisly six-inch nails bore through the bat’s thick end, their points aimed in all directions. The wood was cracked and stained around the nails, horridly used. There was… stuff on the nails. Bits hanging off the sharp points, bits in-between.
And this had been what Steve had been reaching for when they came in.
“Oh my god,” Eddie said quietly, his hands shaking as he set the bat down on the counter with a solid thunk.
This kept happening. This kept happening. Eddie would get lulled into something like normalcy surrounding Steve Harrington, with his letterman jacket and disappointing parents and fairytale smile, and then Steve would get beaten senseless and pretend that was fine. Or he’d barely escape yet another tragic circumstance that had circled him like a vulture. Or he’d let slip something he didn’t want Eddie to know, something about his hidden life, like how he could still smell the burning plastic smell of Starcourt Mall and how he sometimes went to the firing range with Nancy Wheeler after work and how he was really less of a babysitter and more of a bodyguard.
“Eddie,” Steve said, but didn’t follow that up with any excuse. Eddie appreciated that, at least.
“I… I don’t think I can do this anymore,” Eddie said.
“What?” Steve said, moving closer and pulling Eddie’s shoulders to face him fully. “Eddie, no, what are you talking about?” Eddie let himself be moved, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the bat.
“This is too much,” Eddie said. “This is- every time I learn something new about whatever the hell you’re involved with, I just- I can’t-”
“But you’re not involved,” Steve said, shaking Eddie’s shoulders a little. “You’re safe, you’re not in it!”
“You think that’s all I care about?” Eddie asked, finally ripping his eyes from the grisly thing on the counter. “You think that my fucking safety is all I’m thinking about here? You know everything about me, you know all of my dirtiest goddamn secrets, and I don’t know anything about you.”
“You do,” Steve said, brows all turned up in hurt, and Eddie hurt too, but wasn’t that the point? This was hurting them both, mutually assured destruction. “You know me better than anyone except Robin.”
“No, here’s what I know: jack shit.” Eddie poked hard at Steve’s chest, mouth crumpling. “I know fucking shit all about what you’ve gotten into, and every day you go out into the world and do- do whatever this is, and I’m left at home like it wouldn’t fucking kill me if something happened to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Steve said, hands now gripping Eddie tight enough to hurt. “It’s been quiet for months, nothing’s going to happen, I promise.”
“You can’t promise shit!” Eddie said. “You get beaten to fucking hospitalization every six months, and you think that’s just done and dusted? I may not know the fucking details, but I can see enough. Whatever it is isn’t over, and you, and Buckley, and the kids, and fucking Wheeler and whoever else are just throwing yourself into danger over and over again.”
“We have to,” Steve said desperately. “Eddie, I don’t want to be in this. I’m so goddamn glad you’re not involved, because it’s- it’s awful, it’s the worst thing you can imagine, and I’m so goddamn grateful every day that you’re safe from it. But we’re the only ones-”
“The only ones?” Eddie said, raising his voice now, edging on hysterical. “You’re armed with fucking medieval weaponry and going after something that hurts you, and no one can help? I’m no bootlicker but even I can see this is when you call the police! The FBI! The fucking army, I don’t know!”
“We did,” Steve said quietly, going small as Eddie goes big. “We have. No one helps. It’s all on us. And I really do think it’s over, Eddie, I mean that. When- when Hop died,” his voice broke, “when- Starcourt- that’s the end of it. I really believe that.”
“I need to go home,” Eddie said. “And I think you need to give me space for a while. I just- I need to think. I can’t fucking think when you’re around.”
“Okay,” Steve said, hands falling from his shoulders. “Just- Eddie. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, throat now clogging up. “Yeah, man. Me too.”
He cried in the van. Great, shuddering tears, covering up the sound of the Scorpions tape he’d been blasting before so he could barely hear Klaus Meine anymore, the only future we've got exists right now. He was glad Wayne was at work when he got home, because he didn’t want to try to explain the dense hurt in his chest, the way he couldn’t seem to draw a full breath.
He slept fitfully, waking from nightmares that he didn’t need a dream journal to interpret. Faceless danger, dark rooms, a baseball bat dripping with blood. Dustin Henderson dripping with blood. Robin Buckley dripping with blood. Steve Harrington-
Eddie rolled out of bed in the early light of pre-dawn, and fixed eggs (just two; when it was him and Steve he made four, when it was the two of them and Robin he made eight, because Robin ate like a mouse until it came to eggs, which she inhaled) and choked them down. When Wayne got home, he gave Eddie a long, scrutinizing look, but accepted Eddie’s “I don’t want to talk about it,” with a nod. He went to bed, and Eddie’s was left with his thoughts again.
The breakfast sat heavy in his stomach like he might be sick. He drank water to push it back down, but then his stomach just sloshed with too much liquid. He scrubbed the come stains from his button-up shirt in the sink and made arguments out loud, trying to convince a Steve who wasn’t there to run away with him, to get out of whatever damn trouble he’d gotten into, but that just made it worse because he couldn’t think of anything that was convincing enough if the fire and beatings and danger wasn’t enough.
He grabbed his pack of smokes and slammed through the screen door out onto the porch, falling listlessly onto the old couch they’d moved out here after Steve found the new one inside at a garage sale. He’d borrowed Wayne’s truck and brought it home like a kid showing off a toy: “Look!” he’d said, “look, and it was only twenty bucks! It’s a bit gross, but Mrs. Henderson has this whole book of how to remove stains, and I can go get baking soda after work. Isn’t it great!”
Jesus. Eddie had no expectations that he’d actually be able to cut Steve out of his life, but reminders of just how twisted their roots had gotten made it even worse.
The morning was chilly, and it was a mix of fog and smoke that left Eddie’s mouth with each puff. He wanted to go inside. He wanted to go back to bed. He wanted to drive back to Family Video and march right past whoever was working this morning to steal the bat, as though it was a totem bringing the danger to everyone instead of a tool to keep the danger at bay.
He wanted Steve. That was the worst part.
He was out on the porch maybe half an hour when there was movement across the road. A door opened and closed, and a figure made her way over.
“Hey,” said Max Mayfield, arms crossed. “Is this, like, a cry for help?”
“No,” Eddie said. “Go on, Little Red. I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not good to isolate,” Max said.
Eddie snorted. “Why, hello, Miss Pot. So glad to meet you, I’m Kettle, and you’re sure a lovely shade of jet today.”
“Yeah, okay,” Max said, hiking her leg up to step up onto the porch without walking over to the stairs first. She fell down onto the couch next to Eddie. “I might be a hypocrite, but I know what I’m doing is dumb. It’s just easier for me to be dumb right now.”
“Hear hear,” Eddie muttered. “Shouldn’t you still be in bed like a good teenager?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, and the way she said it sounded eerily familiar. “Did you fight with Steve?”
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and everyone in Bethlehem,” Eddie swore, and covered his face with both hands, the end of his cigarette poking his cheek. “What the hell, Mayfield.”
“He didn’t go to work today, and Robin walkied everyone and said to leave him alone,” Max said. “Did you do something?”
“No,” Eddie said, but Max just waited, and he said, “I didn’t do anything, I just asked for a little space. That’s normal, you know.”
“Sure,” Max said. “Because you’re such a normal guy.” She swiped his cigarette and stole a puff, then coughed for a solid minute and handed it back. “That’s awful.”
“Why do you still try it when you know you hate it?” Eddie asked. She made a face, but continued to watch him, expecting an answer.
Max and Eddie had bonded when Eddie came out to heckle Steve tanning one day during the summer and found Max had already beat him to it. That kicked up a friendly repartee of nods and waves until school started, and Max realized he was the Hellfire guy and she started avoiding him like the plague when Lucas and the others joined. He’d had to lure her back like a stray cat, making it clear that they could be friends and not talk about Sinclair, or Henderson, or Steve, or anyone except their trailer trash neighbors. They got each other in a way no one else did; Eddie might be head over stupid feet in love with Steve Harrington, but the guy had his blind spots, and growing up rich was one of them. Eddie and Max lived in this world of houses on wheels and dirt floors and cars on blocks; everyone else around them was just a tourist.
“It was about all the…” Eddie waved his hand vaguely. “This shit you’re all involved in, the dangerous stuff, whatever it is. I don’t want to know the details, but I just want to know that he’s… that everyone’s safe.”
And there: just like Steve, Max went still when Eddie even alluded to it. She unfroze, but just to sit up and get closer to Eddie, eyes intent.
“He hasn’t told you about it?”
“No,” Eddie said shortly, and then sucked on his smoke. “He hasn’t.”
“Well, I guess that makes sense,” Max said, and Eddie was prepared to be offended until she continued, “We’ve signed, like, a million contracts that say we can’t talk about it, and Steve’s very worried about us being hunted down by the government for blabbing.”
“Why would- why did you-” Eddie tried to marshal his thoughts. “What the hell?”
“Oh, you don’t know anything, okay,” Max said. “Wow. Well, hey, you’re not missing out. It all sucks.”
“How did you get involved?” Eddie asked, picturing an even smaller Max being sat down in front of a stack of papers taller than herself and being handed a pen.
Max shifted, which meant the answer was Lucas. “Last Halloween, when… Billy, my brother, he…” she shrugged, and huddled back into the couch again. “I had to get out of the house, and unfortunately I picked a bad crowd to run with that night.”
Eddie knew she didn’t mean that, knew it in the same way that he’d never be able to regret Steve Harrington.
“Why?” he asked. “Why deal with this? Why not run from whatever it is?”
Max didn’t give him the flippant, too-stubborn teenager answer he expected. “Once you know,” she said slowly, “you can’t not know. And I don’t want… what happened to happen again, not if I can help it.”
“You mean the mall fire?”
Max gave him a look he couldn’t read. “Billy didn’t die because of the fire.”
Oh, fuck. “Oh,” Eddie said.
“Did Steve tell you you’re better off not knowing?” Max asked. “Because he’s right.”
“That’s what he keeps saying,” Eddie said.
“Believe him,” Max said. “I have a headache. Do you have Tylenol?”
And then she was gone, banging into the house like she owned it, just like Robin had, just like Steve did.
A half hour after Max went home, carrying Eddie’s leftover eggs on a plate that she’ll wash and return later, a burgundy BMW pulled slowly into Forest Hills. Eddie was still on the porch couch (“Pouch?” Steve had tried, and Eddie and Robin had both groaned and vetoed that one), on his third cigarette of the morning.
“I know you said to give you space,” Steve said when he got out of the car. He was in a faded sweatshirt that was too loose around the collar and the same pair of jeans from yesterday; there was a suspicious stain right by the zipper. Most of Steve’s clothes were in the Munson trailer now, so he must have had to dig for anything he could find. “But Max called and said you wanted to talk.”
Eddie looked over at Max’s trailer; sure enough, she was watching with crossed arms from behind her screen door.
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “She said you’ve signed contracts not to talk.”
Steve, slowly, moved a little closer. “Yeah. We did.”
“And that her brother didn’t die in a fire.”
“No,” Steve said, even more slowly. “He didn’t.”
“When it happens again,” Eddie said, “I don’t want to be involved. But I’d like to know that it is happening, so I can, fucking, keep an eye out, or whatever.”
“It might be kind of hard to miss,” Steve said, scratching the back of his neck. “You were gone for the Starcourt thing, but I don’t think it would’ve been possible to hide any of that if you’d been around.”
“So you’ll tell me,” Eddie pushed. “The next time this happens, you’ll tell me.”
Steve stepped a little closer. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m always worried about you,” Eddie said, brutally honest in a way that made his jaw hurt.
He saw Steve absorb that, and nod. “Okay.”
Eddie took one last drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out. “Come on. You look like shit.”
“Gee, thanks,” Steve said, but followed Eddie inside, and when the door shut behind them, Max Mayfield ended her vigil and shut her door as well.
Notes:
NOTES:
- I fully believe I’m hilarious, so the “Himalayas Chocolate Mints” are a play on a knockoff version of Andes mints. I headcanon that Family Video stocked mostly off-brand and worse versions of the big name snacks and those weird candies no one ever bought but still appeared everywhere, like the strawberries with the gooey centers and Werther’s and the fruit-flavored Tootsie Rolls.
- Diner was released in 1982, and is a movie about friends in their early adulthood wishing to be back in their carefree youth. I like to think that Higgins relates to pining for the days of less responsibility, especially when faced with students like Eddie Munson.
- Is Mike referencing Shania Twain’s smash hit That Don’t Impress Me Much twelve years before its release when talking about Steve? Maybe.
- Dustin’s comment about Steve being a reference for why Eddie was late to his hypothetical girlfriend was absolutely based on Steve using his mom as a reference to get a job. Like mother, like son.
- Rock tumbling became, like, A Thing in the 80s, when companies started selling plastic versions of what are normally more heavy duty pieces of equipment to smooth stones and make them shiny.
Chapter 11: nine: THE PLAN | THE UPSIDE DOWN
Summary:
“Right. So. Far be it for me to insert myself into your relationship,” Robin says.
“Why would you stop now?” Steve asks.
“Point,” Robin says, tapping a finger to her nose. “So, okay, then let me insert myself into your relationship, because…”
Then she looks at him for a long, long moment.
“Yes?” Steve asks.
“Right. The thing is.” Robin take a deep breath. “Are you… sure that you’re in a relationship?”
Notes:
This is the big one, folks. Strap in.
TW for canon-typical violence in the "Then" section — it's basically a written description of canon, so hopefully nothing unexpected.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
Steve has never been big on, like, metaphor or whatever, but he keeps thinking about the time back when he and Nancy were still together and she called him an open book. Back then, he was pretty sure that was about his tendency to overshare, maybe a side of teasing about how things tended to go in one of his ears and out the other. But now he feels it in a different way. He is an open book; his mind is an open book, and he’s also there, because he’s the blank pages everyone else uses to meet in his memories and include him in the conversations. His mind is the staging ground for the discussions about the fight with Vecna. He’s the one who is holding up the other participants like that guy in that myth. With the boulder. Or the whole earth? Whatever.
But, more than anyone else, he’s the novel that Vecna is reading. Digging through his mind day after day, hour after hour, pouncing before Steve can get his feet underneath him and his walls back up. His frustration with Steve’s secrecy is mounting, and Steve can feel it boiling under him like a volcano getting ready to blow.
Steve’s a dog on a leash. When Steve’s not in someone’s head up in the real world, he’s steps away from Vecna, who is watching him incessantly to find a tip about the plan against him. When Steve lingers a little too long in the Upside Down Melvald’s because he’s trying to see if the wet wipes are just, like, gone, or if they’re just dry cloths, because if he has to live in grime for one more day he might kill Vecna himself, Vecna is one aisle over.
“You’ve tried to kill me,” Vecna says over the top of the shelf between them. Like they’re actually two shoppers going about their days, instead of the only two English-speaking beings in the dimension. “You would fail again.”
“I just don’t understand why you’d make a world where you can’t take a bath, man,” Steve says. “Do you enjoy being gross, or…?”
“It was not relevant,” Vecna says, “at the time.”
“But Melvald’s was,” Steve says. “Naturally.”
When Steve goes to Lover’s Lake and wakes a few bats to practice working with them (checking on them, really, but he’s not examining that too closely, and he’s had enough mother hen jokes made about him that he’s not going to tell anyone else, either), Vecna, as though he really is the bratty kid in class who has to one-up everyone, wakes a demogorgon, which swipes one of the bats out of the air and rips it in half.
“Okay,” Steve says. “Cool. Guess I’ll go do something else.”
“I could leave you to your devices,” Vecna offers. “I only need to know Eleven’s plan.”
“That’s what we’re down to?” Steve asks. “You’re just going to annoy me into telling you everything?”
“If that’s what it takes,” Vecna growls.
He feels a warm tug on his palm, Eddie calling, and Steve grins. “Well, suppose we’ll have to get back to it some other time,” he says, and follows the light into the real world.
“Hi,” he says to Eddie. “My boss is being a real bitch today, how’s your day going?”
Eddie grins. “Slightly better. Will has powers now. Come see.”
Steve thinks it’s been three days since he reintroduced himself to the Party, though it’s hard for him to keep track. Either way, however long it’s been, he knows the gang has been working to exhaustion filling in the gaps of the plan, doing target practice, stockpiling weapons, and, apparently, discovering new powers.
Steve can’t see in detail; he’s in Eddie’s head and isn’t going to go into Will’s because it might throw him off, but he can see enough through the bubble of separation. Will has his hand extended and is picking Eleven up off the ground with, apparently, his mind. He lifts her a few inches, holds her there, then sets her down, shaking and sweating. The group cheers, even Eddie, who’s technically comatose on the couch as this happens.
“That’s sick,” Steve says. “Tell him I said so, when we’re done.”
“I will,” Eddie says. “I like the kid. He’s sweet.”
“You think that now,” Steve warns fondly. “Wait until he’s comfortable with you. Total dick, he fits right in here.”
Eddie’s grin widens. “Even better, then. Anyway, I think Buck wanted to talk to you. Got a bug up her butt about something.”
“Huh,” Steve says. “Seems unsanitary.”
“Ridiculous,” Eddie says, and kisses him, and it feels stolen, here in the room full of everyone where none of them can see.
“Hey,” Steve says, and keeps Eddie close for a second. Maybe it’s the impending doom, maybe it’s the monster waiting for him in the other dimension, but he’s felt clingy lately. Nancy used to keep him at arm’s length when he felt like this, or would roll her eyes and smile when he jumped out to grab her and spin her at her locker. Eddie’s the opposite; he lets Steve crowd close, relishes in it. “I miss you. Like. Being in the same room as you, for real.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, going soft. He puts his palms on Steve’s chest and holds them there, then curls them into fists and knocks shave-and-a-haircut on Steve’s pecs. “Me too. Even when you’re being literal about cliches.”
“She might actually have bugs! I don’t know!” Steve says, and Eddie rolls his eyes but it feels different when he does it, fond, and he watches Steve go with a look that Steve has never known how to read.
Will isn’t the only one who’s spent the last few days discovering new talents. Now that everyone knows Steve’s himself, they’ve been trained by El to allow him in without going through Eddie first. Before, Steve had been trying to push through pathways that had been bricked off for caution’s sake against Vecna. Now, El’s helping them reshape the bricks so that there’s a Steve-sized hole that Vecna can’t also squeeze through. It’s not foolproof, and the ones that are less close with Steve — Erica, Mike, all the Byers — don’t easily let him in and he still has to use Eddie’s memories as a hallway to them, but his closest people — Robin, Dustin, Max, and El — have pathways he can follow right into their minds, just like with Eddie.
He spots Robin across the room, and branches over from Eddie’s light to hers. She startles a little, they all do now when they see Steve, but it’s quickly overtaken with her usual smile. “Hey, bat boy. Got a minute?”
“Oh, no, I was actually really busy,” Steve says. “Vecna and I were having a girls night. I was painting his finger claws with mud and monster shit, and we were going to do truth or dare later.”
“I hate you,” Robin says cheerfully. “Come on, follow me.”
She, in reality, has gone still and unblinking, her eyes rolled and body twitching minutely. Everyone has described this to Steve in detail, and he thinks it’s awful, that they’re all just going about their days and then person after person is possessed into a shock state just so he can talk to them. They’ve all assured him they’ve gotten used to it, that they’ve all started keeping an ear out for the ticking of a watch that heralds his arrival, that sometimes Eddie is mid-step when Steve comes to him and so they’ve started keeping cushions on the floor in case he goes tumbling to the ground.
So she’s frozen in place with her eyes rolling, but in her head, Robin turns towards the staircase up to the bedrooms. Steve sort of assumes they’re going to revisit a memory, because almost everyone has an easier time visualizing entering a memory when they go through an actual door, but Robin doesn’t lead him anywhere except his own bedroom in the present. She sits on the bed and pats the mattress next to her. He sits.
“So, updates. Will’s been moved to the attack force, what with,” Robin waves downstairs. “El thinks now that the dam has broken and he’s aware he has powers” — she rolls her eyes; everyone had apparently been trying to convince Will for weeks that the goosebumps before Upside Down events and flares of adrenaline had to be something bigger than just leftover Mind Flayer weirdness — “that she can have him up and fighting quickly. Also, Dustin’s flamethrower idea apparently violates international law? So he can’t get what he needs, which means we’re back to either calling that weird Murray guy for his or driving across state lines to buy a few of our own. We’ll probably just go buy some. Dustin’s hush money from the government is burning a hole in his Star Wars wallet.”
“Smart.” Steve nods. “My dad always said to buy rather than rent, because then you’re just investing in something you can get the return back on later.”
“Yeah, well, your dad’s an asshole and I hope we accidentally burn his house down with the flamethrowers we’re purchasing illegally,” she says. “With no one inside, of course! No bodily harm. But I do want this building to be ashes.”
“If you get to burn this house down before I do, I’m suing,” Steve says.
“What, you gonna call Daddy and say I beat you to the arson you wanted to commit?” Robin pretend-pouts.
“Maybe,” Steve says. “He may not like me, but he does like me more than you.”
“That’s not a trophy, Steve. That’s a sign that you’re not doing enough to weird him the fuck out.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s true anymore,” Steve says, gesturing down to himself. “Did I tell you that I think I’m turning ambidextrous? I have webs between my fingers and toes now.” He shows her, spreading his fingers to show the thin webbing that starts at the second knuckle, gray-black and deceptively soft.
“Well! Congrats, that is weird!” Robin says, poking at the webbing. “Also, what if you’re just turning into the world’s creepiest duck? That would be hilarious. Also, also: the word is amphibious.”
“What did I say?”
“Ambidextrous.”
“Ohhh. Is that where you can jerk off with either hand?”
“I- honestly, maybe? But I don’t think that’s the dictionary definition.”
“Huh. Hey,” Steve says. “We could have had this conversation downstairs. What’s up?”
“Right. Do you need to-” She gestures to his head, and makes a little locking motion.
“Oh, right, hang on, let me just-” Steve closes his eyes and disappears into his own head. He walks the memory of that less-great-than-average night in the Munson trailer, a headache and a snapping argument, tired bodies straight to sleep and frustration in their grinding teeth. He finds the notebook in the memory of Eddie’s desk, opens it up to VECNA WEAKNESSES, and slides the Polaroid memory of the last few minutes, Will’s powers and the updated fight strategy, into his secret file. Then he shakes the original memory from his head like an Etch-A-Sketch, and opens his eyes again. “Got it. Go.”
“Right. So. Far be it for me to insert myself into your relationship,” Robin says.
“Why would you stop now?” Steve asks.
“Point,” Robin says, tapping a finger to her nose. “So, okay, then let me insert myself into your relationship, because…”
Then she looks at him for a long, long moment.
“Yes?” Steve asks.
“Right. The thing is.” Robin take a deep breath. “Are you… sure that you’re in a relationship?”
Steve laughs a little, but it peters off when Robin doesn’t join in. “Sorry, I must be missing something. Yes, Robbie, I am in a relationship. You’ve met him? He’s the hot asshole downstairs that thinks wearing chains will distract people from realizing that he’s an emotional lump of sugar.” Steve grabs Robin’s arms; gentle, though, because of the monster strength. “You are Robin, right? Is Vecna trying to mind-fuck me with a bad copy of my Robin? Blink once if you’re Vecna.”
“Well, fuck, that’s not fair, I have to blink, Steve!” Robin says, and flails her arms in a way that’s too familiar to be Vecna. “It’s not that. I have met the asshole, thank you-”
“Hot asshole, I said hot asshole-”
“-but I. Okay. When you asked Eddie out, what did you say, exactly?”
“Jeez, Rob. I don’t know. Which time?”
“…What do you mean, which time?”
“Well,” Steve says, holding up a hand and counting on his claw tips. “I propositioned him-”
“SAT word choice, nice,” Robin says.
“-thank you, on Halloween in ’84. He ran off. I kissed him at the drug dealing table two weeks later and convinced him we should give it a go. Then in March ’85 we had the big talk at Skull Rock, confirmed we’re in it for the long haul, so on and so forth. Any of those could have been the beginning, but I consider the drug dealing table one to be our official start.”
“How romantic,” Robin says. “Can you, like, show me? What you said?”
So, sure, Steve does. That’s not a tough ask. He likes that memory; he and Eddie have revisited it a couple of times on their own. It’s a little strange, playacting with a memory of Eddie that doesn’t know what’s going on outside of his own reality, with an apparition of Robin off to the side, watching, frowning.
“I wasn’t drunk. I knew what I was doing,” Steve’s says, following the script.
“Promising,” Robin comments from the sidelines, talking over memory-Eddie’s wide-eyed, startled, “Okay.”
“I know you…” Steve says, and his body moves on its own to follow the memory, shoving a frustrated hand through his hair. He remembers not being able to get the words right, and the terrible feeling of having his meaning locked away behind a wall in his head. “I still- if you’re interested. If you want- it doesn’t have to mean anything, if you don’t want it to.”
“Okay,” Robin says.
“English, dude,” memory-Eddie says. He looked so startled, back then, so wary of all of Steve’s intentions. And Steve remembers thinking fondly that he’d been such a dick about it all, snappish and hissy like a feral cat. “Because I’m very worried I’m misinterpreting, here.”
So then came Steve’s fumbling confession, baring his beating heart, or whatever: “I said it at the party. I want- I want to fucking kiss you. I want that. I want you.”
And there they go! Teasing and touching and Eddie clambering into Steve’s lap after a first kiss and a second and a third. Steve lets the memory play out until he remembers Robin is there, but she doesn’t even have a sarcastic quip planned when he pulls back, breathing hard, from Eddie’s mouth.
“So?” he asks. Past-Eddie freezes, locked in place where the memory left off. His eyes are half-lidded, his lips red and a little swollen. Steve wants to eat him whole, but he looks at Robin instead. She’s still frowning, a little divot between her eyebrows.
“Yeah, I- that explains a lot.” She thumbs at her chin. “But not everything. Can you show me the other one? The Skull Rock one?”
She doesn’t comment during this memory, just paces around Steve and memory-Eddie as they replay one of the best few minutes of Steve’s life, with sunset hues and Eddie’s warmth under his arm and a picnic basket behind him. He remembers being so confused about Eddie’s comment about Nancy, but Eddie had always been weird about Nancy — never wanted to meet her even though he was so excited to meet the kids for the first time, never laughed when Steve told funny stories about her. Never took her side in disagreements with Steve even when Steve knew he was in the wrong. He’d always chalked it up to a jealousy thing, and then this conversation came around:
“Do you plan to get back together with her? With Nancy?”
In the moment, it had felt so out of left field that Steve thought maybe he’d missed something. Had he somehow implied that he wasn’t happy with Eddie? Had he accidentally slipped, called Eddie by Nancy’s name? They were so alike sometimes, and his brain has had a few hard knocks, but that’s no excuse because they’re also so different, and Steve knows Eddie like he knows the inside of his own mouth-
But that hadn’t been it. No, just: anxiety about the future, about Steve mentioning college, about how they didn’t have words for what they were and the future felt unstable underneath them. Steve had realized that Eddie had just wanted reassurance. And so Steve had given it to him.
“I’m in this. Do you get that?”
“Sure,” memory-Eddie says, still sounding so unsure. “I get that.”
“And we’re on the same page?” Steve asks.
“Yeah, of course,” Eddie says, sounding even less sure than before.
“You’re sure. We’re in this together, right? This is it?”
“Yeah,” past-Eddie says, and there’s a little helpless smile in the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, Steve, this is it.”
Steve doesn’t kiss memory-Eddie this time. He looks past him to Robin, whose mouth is open and her eyebrows no longer in their confused shape but instead angled down, an angry V.
Wait. Angry?
“You!” she says, and walks over and swats Steve on the shoulder between each word. “You- are- such- a- dingus!”
“Hey!” Steve says, and doesn’t swat back because he’s a monster now and might accidentally break her arm or something, but sticks his tongue out instead. “What! What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Robin screeches. “What’s wrong, he asks! What’s wrong is that you are incapable- of- communication.” More smacks to Steve’s shoulder, which he doesn’t feel physically as much as, like, emotionally.
“Rob, please!” Steve says. “I’m freaking out. You’re freaking me out. What did I do?”
“Oh my god,” Robin says. She drops to sit next to Steve and takes his hands. “I’m telling you this because you are the other half of me and I get you, I do, but I need you to know that other people cannot read your mind.”
“You can,” Steve says stubbornly.
“I said other people. And I can’t read your mind, I just know what you’re thinking because it’s consistently, like, exactly ninety degrees off of what I’m thinking. If you’re thinking about pizza, I’m thinking about my hair washing schedule.”
“Because grease,” Steve says.
“Exactly,” Robin says.
“And that’s… bad?” Steve says.
“No! But yes, because other people don’t think like I do, so they don’t know how to think like you do. Including Eddie.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It is when you don’t communicate and assume everyone knows what’s going on in here!” She taps her knuckles to Steve’s forehead. “Don’t start spiraling, but you have to know. I have to tell you. You fucked up, babe.”
Steve’s stomach is turning like a tumble dryer. “Just say it.”
“Okay.” Robin, still holding Steve’s hands, settles and rolls her shoulders. “Right. Imagine you’re Eddie.”
“Robin. Is now the time for role-play?”
“Just do it! Imagine you’re Eddie in 1984, and you’re gay. You know you’re gay, you know you’ll never date a girl, no interest in that at all. You have a few secret hookups far, far out of Hawkins but otherwise plan to leave town after you graduate and never look back. And then the most popular guy in school, the heartthrob of Hawkins High, has a fight with his girlfriend at a party, runs into you, and tells you he’d like to kiss you.”
“With you so far,” Steve says, though he hates thinking about himself as anyone’s heartthrob: anyone who genuinely thought that about him didn’t know him at all. He was too weird, too broken, too stuck in his own head to be anything as simple as the boy next door. Still, this isn’t about that.
“Great. That’s the easy part. Okay, now you’re Eddie, and you have this secret that suddenly the most popular guy in school seems to know about you, and you’re terrified he’s going to tell everyone. You play it cool, you think the guy is drunk, you get away, and the rumor mill never eats you so you assume you’re safe.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Steve says defensively. Robin quirks an eyebrow at him.
“Eddie didn’t know that. And you’re Eddie right now, so hush. You’re dealing drugs two weeks later and the guy shows up again, and he says he really meant it. And that’s all you wanted, right? Was for someone to want you back when you wanted them first? But you can’t, because you’ll be killed. You’ll be run out of town. It’s too big of a risk. And what’s worse is that the guy isn’t even offering to date you, for all this risk. He says, it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“That’s not what I-” Steve says, but Robin holds up a hand, still holding Steve’s so she’s basically just waving Steve’s clasped palm around.
“It doesn’t matter what you meant, Steve! It’s what you said! But Eddie’s not going to say no. And so now, you, Eddie, are the secret gay hookup for the popular guy who’s rebounding after his girlfriend broke up with him. He keeps you a secret, only coming to you at night or when no one’s around, and he talks about his ex-girlfriend and keeps secrets, and never ever clarifies that maybe he’s having feelings that could be shared.”
“I took him on dates,” Steve says, but it’s a weak rebuttal.
“Dates only count as dates if both people know it’s a date,” Robin says. “Did you ever say the words, ‘will you go on a date with me?’”
“Well, no, but-”
“So! A few months pass. You keep hooking up, even though you never speak in public. And then one day the guy drops the bomb that his ex-girlfriend has been making college plans for him. So, you think, is this when he tells me he’s got to focus on his future with his ex? You ask him, and he gets mad, and he insists that right now he’s with you, but he never uses the term relationship, or commitment, or boyfriends, or future, or anything else that would give you some idea that he’s serious about you.”
“Robin,” Steve says.
“A year passes.” Robin’s face is serious now. “And the huge, crazy secret that your fuck-buddy you fell for bursts open and you get caught up in it in the worst way. You fight through near-literal Hell to get out alive and mostly intact. But he doesn’t make it out.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Steve says.
“What would you think?” Robin asks. She’s gentle, but forceful too. “If you were Eddie, and the guy you’re in love with presumably dies, but no one knows you had even spoken before, could you grieve? Could you move on?”
“Holy shit,” Steve says. The world goes muffled for a second and he thinks he might be passing out, but it’s just his own hands coming up of their own volition to grab at the sides of his head. “Robin, holy shit, I did fuck up. I fucked up so bad.”
“He wants this too, I promise you,” Robin says. “You need to talk to him, but he wants what you thought was happening to be real.”
“How?” Steve asks, voice pitched high and wild. “How could he want that with me when I’ve been so stupid about this? He thinks I’ve been using him! For years!”
“Hey,” Robin says, and smacks his arm once more. “None of that. Eddie doesn’t think you’ve been using him, he thinks you’re tragically in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, just like he is.”
“I- what.”
“And you’re not stupid, you’re emotionally damaged by Nancy Wheeler and governmental agencies mishandling the underworld. Be nice to my best friend.”
“Holy shit, Rob,” Steve says. His stomach feels like it’s trying to eat its way out of his body, nausea roiling. “I have to talk to him.”
“Not right now you don’t,” Robin says. “You’re fucked up, and he’s been fucked up, and that’s a recipe for disaster. Give it time to settle.”
“God,” Steve says. “You’ve had to watch us fumble our way through this, haven’t you. You’ve seen us missing each other entirely and couldn’t say anything.”
“Well,” Robin shrugs demurely. “Yeah, I’m a damn saint. But you didn’t want him to know about the Upside Down, which was the explanation behind a lot of your hang-ups about Nancy and keeping part of yourself walled off, and he didn’t want you to know- well.”
“Know what?”
Robin props her chin on her knee. “You should talk to him.”
“Now,” Steve suggests hopefully.
“No,” Robin says.
“Killjoy,” Steve murmurs, and rubs a hand on his sternum like he might be able to settle his frantic heart.
“Best friend,” Robin corrects.
They watch the memory of a sunset fade to navy blue, and the past version of Eddie Munson sits nearby, frozen in time. He’s got the look on his face that Steve never knew how to describe, but saw aimed at himself so often, and unfortunately now he knows exactly what it is: fond resignation, the kind that says, this will hurt later, but at least I have him for now. Steve knows it, because it was the same way he felt about Eddie when he thought about him inevitably finding out about the Upside Down, freaking out, and leaving Hawkins (and Steve) in his dust.
“What do I do?” Steve asks into Robin’s hair.
“Normally I’d say sleep on it, but you don’t really do that, do you?” she muses. “I’m not sure. Go throw some rocks at demon bats?”
“I don’t really do that anymore either,” Steve says. “Turns out they’re not so bad.”
“Steve,” Robin says, like this is an old argument. “They tried to eat you.”
“Technically they did, just not all of me,” Steve says. “They’re harmless.”
“Objectively incorrect!”
“They’re like weird, slippery, angry cats. Like Tews when he hasn’t been fed yet.”
“There is no way that’s correct,” Robin says. “But sure. Go pet some bats and calm down. Figure out what you feel and think and need to say, then find him. Not before.”
“I love you too, you know that, right?” Steve says. “I feel like I need to be clear about that. I love you, and you’re my favorite person.”
“Of course I am,” Robin says. “I love you too, dingus.”
Steve’s head is still spinning later when he lets Robin go, back to her real life without him, and him back to the purgatory of the Upside Down.
He just- he can’t believe he’s been living an entirely different reality than Eddie’s, even though they were right there together the whole time. All along, he’s thought they were living out some kind of domestic bliss, days spent apart at work or school but evenings spent cooking dinner and gossiping and kissing and curling up on the couch and teasing Robin about her terrible taste in women and then curling up in bed and talking until they fall asleep and waking up curled together and doing it again and again and again. And Eddie must have been wondering when the other shoe was going to drop the whole time. When Steve was going to be tired of secrets and stolen kisses and was going to go back to what he knew, out in the open and unafraid.
Steve had never told Eddie that the parts of Steve that fit badly with Nancy clicked into perfect place with him. That while he’ll always love Nancy, he’ll never be in love with her again, too aware of their shortcomings together and their strengths apart. That he’s been head over goddamn heels for Eddie since the picnic table, since the first kiss, since the first time Eddie smiled at him in that way that was so helpless that Steve couldn’t do anything but taste it.
God, Eddie must think Steve’s the worst. Robin wouldn’t lie, but maybe Robin was just trying to protect Steve from his own bad decisions. Surely Eddie couldn’t still love him, after all this.
But Steve thinks about the way Eddie looks at him now, not scared of his new self but awestruck, and the way he wears Steve’s key to the Munson trailer around his neck, and the way that neither of them want to go when their time together is up, even if all they’re doing is looking at each other.
Steve’s mind is a tornado of indecision, tearing up everything he thought he knew.
Which means he’s an easy target, when he makes it back to the Upside Down.
“Finally,” Vecna snarls, and has his hand around Steve’s throat before he can even gasp.
Vecna’s mind-roots crash through Steve’s memories, catching on Steve’s thoughts and following them back to his talk with Robin, then branching on and on, rotting all Steve’s defenses. Steve watches in panic as Vecna scrapes through everything Steve would never want him to know that wasn’t actively locked away, perusing each memory like an article in the Sunday paper.
“Fuck! Stop,” Steve pleads, scratching at Vecna’s hand around his neck. “Stop, please, please-”
Vecna finds the thickest wall in Steve’s mind. Tendrils of creeping despair crawl through the tiniest cracks, make the wall unsteady, make the wall unstable, make the wall fall. Sunlight burns in. Uptown Girl plays on a little radio.
Then Vecna has them. The secrets Steve had hidden away, there in Vecna’s awful hands.
“Finally,” Vecna says again, victorious.
“No,” Steve says. “No, no, no, you can’t- please, you can’t-”
He’s heaving, he’s screaming, he’s dying, he’s dying, he’s dying. Vecna smiles, terrible and cold.
“This is all I needed,” Vecna croons. “I have what I need to destroy your friends, and it came right from the source they were so sure wouldn’t betray them. How ironic.”
“No, you can’t, you can’t,” Steve is crying now, hot wet tears coursing down his cheeks. He didn’t cry when he’d been beaten within inches of death, but this is different; this isn’t him in danger. It’s the people he loves. “No, please, I’ll- I’ll do anything, please.”
“This was always the plan,” Vecna says, like a teacher reprimanding a student, like Steve’s dad telling him he had two months to get his life together or he’d be out on his ass. “You knew this from the beginning. And I told you that you wouldn’t defeat me. You would never be able to keep me out forever.”
He’s still in Steve’s head, just as much as he’s in front of Steve holding him by the throat. He shuffles through Steve’s memories and plays them out, watching all Steve's worst moments, watching the group up above plan Vecna’s downfall. Steve struggles in his grip but he’s an afterthought to Vecna, whose smile is still hauntingly wide, terrifyingly grim.
Leverage, there has to be leverage, Steve’s dad is always talking about fucking leverage: what do we have on them? How can we bury them? What do they care about? What makes an impact?
Steve is a monster. Vecna wants monsters. Vecna wants to control monsters. Vecna wants-
“Stop, please, I’ll do it,” Steve says, a gasp. “I’ll do it.”
Vecna looks amused. “You have nothing to offer me anymore.”
“I do- I’ll do it. I’ll- you want a lieutenant? I’ll be your lieutenant. I’ll stand at your back against- I’ll do it. Just- just give me Eddie. Don’t- fuck,” Steve chokes back something awful like vomit or a sob around the great clawed hand on his throat.
Vecna considers it. Long, slow moments where he stares at Steve and Steve stares back and the world swirls around them, red lightning and bat wings.
“I’ll kill the others,” Vecna says. “You can’t bargain for all of them.”
“The others have fought before,” Steve says. “They- they know what they’re doing. He’s- he didn’t ask for this. He shouldn’t be in this.”
“Everyone else is fair game, but I give you your musician,” Vecna muses.
“You leave him alone,” Steve says. Something from another life, where he passed his classes and got into Notre Dame and flirted his way through law school and became a partner at Young, Downes, and Harrington, comes through: “He’s off limits. No interference. No tricking him. No getting in his mind. No giving him visions. No tricking others into hurting him. Give him to me.”
Vecna hums, still looking amused. “I am glad to finally see some backbone from you, Steve.” His fingers tighten around Steve’s throat. Then:
“Fine. You have Eddie Munson. I’ll take the rest.”
He drops Steve to the dirt and Steve stays there, gasping, wondering what he’s just done.
THEN
MARCH 1986
It was an unfortunate side effect of being A) a small-town drug dealer and B) the son of a small-town carjacker and C) a homosexual who broke sodomy laws regularly and D) a guy with Eddie’s general disdain for playing nice when he might have to take the fall, that when Chrissy Cunningham’s second arm cracked backwards from mysterious forces that held her against the Munson ceiling, Eddie had two thoughts:
The first: Oh, no, Chrissy. You don’t deserve this.
The second, less great thought: I have to goddamn get out of here.
Eddie had always been a runner. It’s why all of his shit was broken and trashed but his drug lunchbox’s lock was solid enough to sprint at a moment’s notice. It’s why it took Steve two weeks to track him down after Tina’s Halloween party to follow up on his offer, because when Eddie saw him at school, he’d bolt. It’s why he always parked his van so it was ready to fly: he could jump in, jam in the key, slam on the gas, and be gone.
That’s what he did when Chrissy’s eyes flattened into her skull. He stumbled to the van and he ran.
Eddie’s mind was a buzz of panic and white noise. No thoughts penetrated. He was on autopilot; instinct. He didn’t drive like a maniac. He didn’t think he could; admittedly, it was sometimes a lot of work to drive like an idiot. He rolled his van quietly along dark backstreets and through neighborhoods where nobody suspected him of wrongdoing.
Yet. Obviously, that would change.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. Eddie didn’t want to think, but thoughts pushed through anyway.
I should have helped.
I should have grabbed Chrissy when she started floating.
I should have brought her with me so no one would find her.
I shouldn’t have offered ket.
I shouldn’t have been the last one with her.
I shouldn’t-
I shouldn’t-
I-
There was a massive wrought-iron gate that announced the entrance to Loch Nora, all pointed curlicues and spiky fence-tops, like the kind in movies that bodies thrown from high windows always seemed to land on. There was no actual barrier to entry, though, and despite every nerve in Eddie’s body screaming that if he was to be caught anywhere, it would be here, he rolled onward. His van’s rumble even seemed subdued, like she could feel the tension too.
The Harringtons lived on Highland Drive, the furthest street from the gate and, therefore, the riffraff. Eddie drove towards it like a moth desperate to get to a flame, but his panic wasn’t blind enough for him to miss the car parked out front, and not the one he wanted to see.
A jet black Mercedes-Benz C126 sat at place of pride outside, a matching luxury to the house itself. Eddie adored Steve’s Bimmer, the meticulously-kept insides and pristine paint job even though it was used as the taxi service to a rowdy band of children. But the Benz… Eddie was intimidated by the Benz, having seen it on occasion while working at Thatcher’s. He had been scared he’d ruin it somehow even though he knew his way around a car, and then he’d learned that it belonged to the Harringtons, and he was even more afraid. Eddie’s stress dreams morphed after that, so that when the dream-Mr. Harrington threw open the door and found his dream-son in flagrante with trailer trash, he’d scream: You’re sullying yourself with the moron who destroyed my car!
So there was the Benz, but not the BMW, which meant there were two people in that house who wouldn’t hesitate to call the cops on Eddie just for looking at them, let alone for the actual thing he was going to be arrested for, so Eddie punched the gas and sped away.
Where could he go? Where could he go? Wayne would be at work for hours. He couldn’t hightail it out of town, he didn’t have money or gas and the van was on its last legs on a good day. Steve wasn’t at home; hell, because his parents were around, he’d probably planned to stay over at Robin’s after the basketball game or-
Or he’d show up at the Munson trailer to find a dead girl there.
Eddie had to find him. Eddie had to talk to him.
But the weight of invisible eyes now felt like rocks tied to his feet dragging him under. He felt like every nosy neighbor looking out their window could be creating a map of his movements that would lead the cops right to him.
He had to get off the road. He had to hide. He had to hide. He had to hide he had to hide he had to-
He saw the sign pointing towards Lover’s Lake and made an abrupt turn with tires squealing. A few minutes later, Eddie was parking the van in a dense thicket of trees and overgrown bushes near the quiet, desolate cabin of Reefer Rick.
He didn’t sleep, but he also didn’t feel awake. He drifted around the house, picking things up and putting them down without seeing them. Rick had been busted for possession six months ago and Eddie had been coming over every couple of weeks to make sure the place hadn’t been ransacked by teenage partiers looking for drugs or cops also looking for drugs. He’d watered the plants and fed the feral cats that slept in the boathouse. His old footsteps were distinct in the dust, undisturbed.
Time passed. Apparently.
The sun rose, the sun kept rising. All Eddie heard was the buzzing in his ears and the snapping of bones. He wondered when sirens would break through his haze. He wondered if he’d run again, when the time came.
He wondered if Steve went to the house last night, or if he was blissfully unaware that everything had changed.
He wondered if Wayne-
Fuck. Wayne. Wayne shouldn’t have had to see that. Eddie should’ve — for Chrissy’s sake, for Steve’s sake, for Wayne’s sake — not just left her there, should’ve- cleaned up, should’ve-
He should’ve-
He should’ve-
It was maybe noon when Eddie heard car tires on gravel. He sprinted out to his hiding place, easing the boathouse’s door closed behind him so it didn’t slam. He thought about weapons, but he’d be useless with them. Thought about swimming, but he was no swim team captain. Needed to hide, but where?
The old boat hanging in the water cutout was full of dirt, old fish hooks, trash, and an oar that jabbed Eddie in the kidneys when he hauled himself in and scrambled under the tarp. His heart hammered. His breath sounded like a foghorn in the silence. He heard car doors slam and voices, too jumbled and far away to make out specifics. His pulse was like cotton in his ears, dulling every sound. His hand found the thick ridges of a beer bottle neck and he gripped it tight. That was the clearest sensation, the feeling of cool glass against his hot palm. Everything else was muffled, or scrambled, or distorted.
But he did hear when footsteps crunched in the leaves outside the boathouse. He heard when the door was opened slowly, and someone said, “Hello?” Heard multiple sets of feet enter and start shuffling around, hissed whispers and low undertones.
“He’s gotta be here, right?” said one voice, and Eddie knew that voice, but couldn’t recognize it, like it was a record on a turntable with the speed all fucked up.
“He’s gotta,” said another voice, and Eddie knew that voice too, he knew it, but then footsteps approached his hiding place and a hand was prodding at the tarp and then Eddie was jumping out, fight or flight and apparently his body chose both, and-
He had a broken bottle in his hand and a jacket crumpled in his fist, and a body up against the wall and a cacophony of sounds in his ear, and all he saw was skin, a throat, a throat to slice open if they moved wrong, and he-
He pushed the bottle in a little. The line of red that appeared made Eddie feel vicious, like the killer everyone thought he was. He could do it. He could end a threat here.
His hand didn’t shake. There was a lot of noise. He didn’t comprehend any of it.
He was staring so hard at this one spot that he saw a little blue bruise near the cut, nearly unnoticeable, next to a patch of freckles.
He knew that bruise. He knew those freckles. He knew that throat.
He-
“Hey,” said Steve Harrington, held against a wall and cut by Eddie’s hand, “hey, hey, hey, Eddie, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
Eddie stumbled back. His arm dropped to his side, limp. His head swam. “You,” he said, and couldn’t finish. You found me. Or: you came for me. Either worked.
Eddie moved forward again, and there was another explosion of noise. This time, he could understand some of it: Dustin Henderson screeching, “No, no, Eddie, it’s me, Steve’s with me!” and Max Mayfield shouting, “Munson, knock it off!” and Robin Buckley right there behind Eddie, a quiet babble, “Eddie, no, don’t, we know you’re scared, we know you’re freaked, don’t do this, don’t-”
Eddie ignored them. He got to Steve, who looked wrecked; Eddie understood very little, in that moment, but he understood the red of Steve’s eyes, the mess of his hair, the skew of his collar. He’d been scared. He’d been scared for Eddie.
Eddie made it back to Steve. He leaned forward (Dustin yelled: “Eddie! Don’t hurt him!”) and put his head against Steve’s collarbone. The broken bottle in his hand fell to the floor.
Steve said, soft in his ear, “Babe, are you okay? Are you hurt? Eddie?” Then, louder, “Eddie?”
But Eddie’s heart had finally given up from all the commotion. He slumped into darkness just as strong hands caught him, and as unconsciousness swept over him he heard, “Oh, shit!”
When Eddie was upright again, he still thought he might be dreaming. Everything had an air of unreality to it: the bright spring sunlight cutting the dusty air to ribbons, the crunch of brand-name Honey Combs (Eddie’s favorite, when he was feeling fancy; normally, the Munson Family Budget only allowed for the store brand GOOD SMILES HONEY MUNCHIES OAT PUFFS), and especially the words coming out of Dustin’s mouth.
Aliens. Alternate dimensions. Russian spies. Girls with superpowers.
Eddie stared at Dustin as he gave an abbreviated version of the whole sordid tale, and in his mind he finally saw the map that connected all the weirdness of the last few years. Will Byers disappearing and dying and reappearing alive again, the stories about Hawkins Lab, the mall fire. The strange deaths of Barb Holland, Billy Hargrove, Chief Hopper, the mayor and Heather Holloway and the people in the mall and random nameless citizens that Eddie never knew. He stared at Dustin, because looking at Robin’s pitying face would make him cry, looking at Max’s battle-worn set of her jaw would make him cry, and looking at Steve- well.
When Eddie had come awake again, he was fussed over for a few minutes by Dustin and Robin. Max perched on an overturned tackle box and watched with her usual aloofness. Steve stood the furthest away, his shoulder leaned against one of the beams holding up the boat, holding himself tightly together with his arms crossed. Eddie didn’t question it. The world was apparently full of monsters and mayhem beyond his ken, why wouldn’t everything else be turned on its axis too?
That didn’t mean Eddie didn’t try to talk to him, though.
“How long has all of this been happening?” Eddie directed Steve’s way.
“1983,” Dustin answered, oblivious. “Or, at least, that’s when we came in. But I think Eleven had been there for years.”
Eddie was sufficiently distracted. “There?”
“Hawkins Lab. It was a whole thing; mind control experiments and stuff. Real bad shit. We’ll come back to that.”
“And…” Eddie said, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes, then looking up at Steve again. “You’ve all been… doing this since then? Fighting monsters? Since ’83?”
“I wasn’t here in ’83,” Max said. “I moved here in ’84. But yeah, since then.”
“Starcourt,” Robin said. “I’ve been in since Starcourt.” Since she and Steve formed their sudden inexplicable bond, inexplicable no more. God, it all made sense.
“Steve was there at the beginning because he was dating Nancy,” Dustin said, almost cheerful. “He beat the shit out of a demogorgon with a baseball bat covered in nails.” He turned and looked at Steve over his shoulder. “I guess you could have gotten out after that, since Nancy broke up with you.”
Steve’s rolled his eyes. “You dragged me back in, Henderson.”
“I didn’t know that,” Robin said. “I’ve never heard that story.”
“You tell it, Steve,” Dustin said. “You have such a way with words.”
“Ha ha,” Steve said. Everyone in the room could read the tension in him, his knuckles white where he gripped his elbows, but Eddie wondered what Dustin and Max attributed it to. He looked up, finally met Eddie’s eyes. “Halloween in ’84.”
Eddie jolted a little. Steve saw it, and his jaw tensed, but he continued.
“I was on my way to Nancy’s,” he said, voice carefully neutral, “the day after the Halloween party, to tell her- to tell her that it wasn’t going to work between us. That’s when Dustin caught me, and started yelling about monsters in his basement.”
So Eddie wandered his way into this mess when he caught Steve’s eye, and here he was reaping the cost.
Eddie didn’t have any words and Steve didn’t seem to have any more either, but they weren’t looking away like the conversation was done. Eddie felt it in the air between them, thick. A few long, silent seconds stretched until Robin broke it with a throat clear, and they both looked in opposite directions, Eddie at the floor and Steve up to the ceiling. Dustin, unaware, then launched back into his story about the lizard monster that ate his cat.
That was the only time Eddie looked at Steve. It was blindingly clear that this was bigger than them.
The story was, simultaneously, completely bonkers and like getting an answer key to a quiz he’d repeatedly failed. Eddie had known something was up; sure, he hadn’t guessed it was of the out-of-this world variety, but he’d known it wasn’t normal. It was nightmares and bloody faces and death, and now he knew why Steve flinched away sometimes, why he clung to Eddie or Robin in his sleep. Why he’d never wanted Eddie involved.
“We can’t stay here tonight,” Dustin said. Hours had passed, the sun cutting its way across to the west window, inching down to touch the lake outside. Eddie wanted to know everything and the others were willing to answer his questions, but he also hated every answer he got. His stomach burned with a mix of being the last one in the know and fear and lack of sleep and sadness. “We need to find Lucas,” Max made a face, but otherwise stayed silent, “and Nancy, and we’ve gotta get in touch with everyone in California. But we’ll fix this, Eddie. I promise.”
Dustin had always had this way of talking like he was a general in a movie about aliens invading the Earth, and he was the last pep talk the fighters got before certain doom. Now, that trait made a little more sense.
“Okay,” Eddie said, voice a croak. He swallowed convulsively. He didn’t really believe Dustin that everything would be peachy keen, but he didn’t think Dustin was lying. He was just pretty sure this was outside Dustin’s control. Aliens and spies, sure, but a hometown sweetheart was dead in the Satanic Panic poster boy’s house. Yeah, Eddie wanted to live through this, but he had no confidence he’d make it through without handcuffs on his wrists and a cell in the pen. Maybe they’d put him next to dear old Pops. Family reunion in Cell Block D.
“I’m being serious, Eddie,” Dustin said, infused with righteousness. “We’ll be back tomorrow. It’ll all be over soon.”
“If there’s one good thing about all this,” Robin said, “it’s that it tends to happen fast, once it starts. I went from hating Steve to breaking into a Russian lab with him within two days.”
Right. Eddie kept forgetting that he’d been around for all of this too, just on the periphery. Eddie had left town as Dustin returned back in June ’85, and that must’ve kicked off the Russian mall adventure. Eddie missed it by barely a day. He wondered if he would’ve tagged along with the Russian base break-in. He wondered if Steve would have kept him away then even as he allowed Robin in.
Not that he wanted to be involved back then. Not that he wanted to be involved now.
“We’ll be back,” Max reiterated as the group shuffled to the door. Eddie believed Max, maybe more than the others. She wouldn’t hold back if he was fucked. And she wasn’t saying he wasn’t fucked, just that they’d return eventually. He did believe that.
Eddie sat there a little longer as the gang headed back to the BMW, gravel crunching underfoot once again. There were murmurs of conversation, probably about what the hell they were going to do. Eddie noticed that while Dustin and Robin had been full of reassurances, they’d not mentioned any sort of plan.
Eddie would head back into the house eventually. Crash on Rick’s couch like he’d done a hundred times before, see if the power was still on to watch TV. Try not to think about any of this.
But.
Footsteps were approaching again, and Eddie knew before the boathouse door opened that it was Steve. From the corner of his eye, he saw Steve shut the door behind him, set something to the side, and walk with purpose to Eddie, dropping to his knees in front of where he was curled in on himself. He wrapped his arms around Eddie and burrowed his head against his shoulders. Eddie, limply, clung on in return, staring unseeingly forward.
He was saying something over and over into Eddie’s neck, and it took a moment to make it out: “I’m sorry,” Steve was saying, voice shot through with something truly terrible, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Steve,” Eddie rasped.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Steve said. “I never wanted you in this. I never wanted this. I’m sorry. Babe, I’m so sorry.”
“Steve,” Eddie said, and Steve stopped, though his hands were still fisted in the front of Eddie’s shirt.
Maybe, after everything, after a long year and a half of an imbalanced relationship, after all the secrets and fear and joy they’d experienced with each other and because of each other, maybe this was the most significant moment between them. Here, with a broken glass bottle on the ground next to Steve’s dirtied knees, with Eddie wrung out of tears, with Steve’s flashlight pointed up at the ceiling so that it caught their shadows and twisted them, the secrets were out in the open. Maybe this was the moment that everything would actually start to make sense.
“I’m so scared,” Eddie whispered.
“I’m scared too,” Steve said.
Steve couldn’t stay. Eddie knew that; he had a car full of passengers waiting on him, he couldn’t stay and hold Eddie all night. Eventually, he pulled back and kissed Eddie slowly, carefully, like Eddie was cotton candy and a single drop of water would melt him to nothing.
“I, uh,” he said, scrubbing at his cheeks and then his hair, ruffling it messily back into place, “I sort of panicked, when I saw the trailer on the news. Robin and I looked all over for you, couldn’t find you, and eventually we picked up Dustin and Max but until then, I, uh.”
He gestured over to whatever he’d laid by the door; Eddie tilted over until he saw a paper grocery bag bulging with snacks, shelf-stable food, water, and beer. Next to that was one of Steve’s swim team duffle bags, and Eddie could guess that it was stuffed with clothes and extra shoes and probably some of that shea oil he’d been trying to make Eddie use on his hair. Eddie laughed wetly, wiping at his own face.
“I knew you’d have to hide,” Steve said, sort of sheepishly. “And I thought, well, he probably won’t need, like, camping gear. But he might need food. And, you know, if this all ended up being a horrible mistake, then I got groceries to last us a few days. I think some of that tuna Wayne likes ended up in there, I was sort of panic-shopping. But. It’s for you, and if you need more, you radio us and we’ll bring more.”
He was holding out his walkie-talkie, and Eddie took it with trepidation. “Jesus,” Eddie said. “So this is real, then. I’m not having a bad dream.”
“I hate to tell you,” Steve said, smiling grimly, “but it’s never that easy.”
Mid-afternoon the next day, there was a scramble of static and then Dustin’s voice, shredded to pieces as he screamed, “CODE RED, CODE RED, Robin, Nancy, do you copy?”
In the shouting and explaining that followed, Eddie pieced it together.
Max. Max was the next target.
The third morning, Eddie’s anxious snacking meant he was down to Wayne’s cans of tuna and one more can of Busch. He was also desperately afraid of what was going on beyond Rick’s empty house. Every distant noise, every neighbor’s car door, every trolling motor out on the lake made him jump. He’d heard the report that Max was okay, but nothing since. The Scooby gang was apparently back at the Wheelers’ and he had a self-pitying ache in the depths of his lungs, telling him he’d been forgotten because someone else, someone more important, was in danger.
Not that he begrudged them taking care of Max. If he could, he’d do the same thing. But he couldn’t. He was here, stuck, hunted.
“Hey, uh,” he said into his walkie before he could talk himself out of it. “Dustin. Duuuustin. Eddie the Banished here. Dustin?”
“Hey,” a voice said. “It’s Nancy.”
“Wheeler,” Eddie said, and immediately regretted everything. “Hey. Uh. How’s… everything?”
“Eddie, it’s six AM.” Nancy sounded like she was rubbing her eyes, like a mother with a rambunctious toddler. Eddie hated himself passionately. “Did you have a reason for radioing?”
“I did. I do. Um,” Eddie said.
Silence, then Nancy said, “Which is?”
“Food? Food delivery would be supreme, Lady Wheeler,” Eddie said. “And, uh, I know it’s stupid as shit, but more beer? I know, I know, alcohol dependence is an issue that runs in your family, Eddie, what are you doing? But a cold beer would reaaally help to calm these jangled nerves.” He was babbling. Why was he babbling. “Unless you want me going outside to get my own sustenance. Which I can — Munsons aren’t moochers! But that, uh, seems. Bad. So-”
“No, no, don’t do that,” Nancy said. “I- hold on.” Static. “I’ll call you back.”
“No no no, don’t you dare. Wheeler,” Eddie hissed. “Wheeler? Shit.”
His arm holding the walkie fell limp to his side. Then, another buzz of static. “Eddie?”
“Steve,” Eddie said, flooded with relief. “Steve. Hey.”
“Hey,” Steve said, voice husky like it always was in the mornings. “Just saw Nance run off. What’s up?”
“No idea,” Eddie said. “What’s going on? Is Max okay? What’s the plan, what’s happening?”
“One second,” Steve murmured. There was about thirty seconds of silence, then he was back. “Sorry, had to step outside. Everyone’s sleeping, and all the walkies are off except one to save batteries. It’s just us.”
Eddie sank into the beaten sofa with relief. “Thank fuck,” he said. “God. Do I need to repeat all my questions?”
“No, no,” Steve said, talking through a yawn. “I can’t really answer too much, but only ‘cause I don’t really understand everything. My role is the guy who hits things. But, uh, Max is okay. She hasn’t slept, because this whole thing, what happened to Chrissy and Fred too, is tied to nightmares, I guess? And music. But she’s writing goddamn letters to people like she’s off to the gallows, which I’m not happy about.”
“Of course she is,” Eddie said quietly. Again, he felt a deep kinship with Max Mayfield, and hated that what tied them so closely together was bullshit outside their control.
“Also, turns out Jason Carver’s out for your head,” Steve said, a little less lightly. “He’s convinced you- uh, that you did it and he’s going to be the one who turns you in, or worse.”
“Oh,” Eddie said, and swallowed. “How do you know that? Did he take out an ad in the paper?”
“Lucas,” Steve said. “Lucas was with him when he found out about Chrissy, said he went berserk. He hunted down your friends, and, uh, Gareth, I think? Gareth told him that you know Dustin, and so Lucas distracted them and came to tell us.”
“Fuck,” Eddie said. “I owe that kid an apology.”
“Yeah, asshole,” Steve said, tired but fond. “That was a shitty move, making him choose in the first place.”
“I know, I know, but,” Eddie said, and he could hear how weak the excuse was, “no one skips Hellfire.” He cleared his throat. “I did get to meet Mini Sinclair.”
Steve chuckled. “Aw, did Erica kick your imaginary ass?”
Eddie smiled, tipped his head back. “You know, she did. She’s a nightmare, I want to arm her with explosives and set her loose on the world.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Steve said dryly.
There was a quiet moment. This wasn’t exactly the same as being on the phone with Steve; sometimes Steve would call just because he couldn’t sleep (the thought of which unlocked yet another oh, shit memory block in Eddie’s mind, thinking of all the times Steve woke sweating and screaming and unable to tell Eddie what was wrong, when he’d scramble to find a walkie talkie, when he could only relax when he heard the last voice say, “Here, I’m here,” and now Eddie knew why), and they would just listen to each other breathe after they ran out of words. Or, Eddie would wedge the phone against his ear and play his guitar softly until Steve’s breaths evened. The phone bills for that four months or so before Steve just gave up and started staying over nearly every night were astronomical, and Eddie’d had to start sliding some of his dealing money over to Wayne to cover it, smiling sheepishly when Wayne rolled his eyes.
Now, though, there was a harsh cut between talking and silence. Eddie didn’t get to hear Steve’s breathing. His thumb hovered over the button; he had a billion things he wanted to say, and he couldn’t think of any of them.
“I should go,” Steve said a quiet moment later. “Check on Max. You need more food? I know how you eat when you’re stressed.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie said. “And yes. Rick’s a big fan of Spaghettios and obviously we are a-”
“Chef Boyardee family, right,” Steve finished for him, and Eddie grinned, then felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. “I’ll get some stuff for you. No beer.”
“But,” Eddie said.
“No beer,” Steve said, more firmly. “You need to be able to run at a moment’s notice. I shouldn’t have left any in the first place.”
The tears collected and started falling. Eddie wasn’t any more scared or worried in this moment than he had been before, but one shining second of normalcy, of a back and forth with Steve, had set him off in chills and panic again.
“Be careful,” he said. He knew his voice was shaky and wet, that Steve would hear it.
“You too,” Steve said. He didn’t sound teary. He sounded hard. Battle-worn. “Over and out.”
As evening crept in, he heard tires on gravel outside. Eddie weighed the idea of throwing the door open and calling out, “Honey, I’m home!” even though it was the wrong way around, just to make Steve smile. But he hesitated, remembering this was now a world of monsters and blood, and he was glad for that hesitation a few seconds later when he checked out the window.
“Shit,” he whispered. Three boys in black suits, led by golden blond Jason Carver, held crowbars and golf clubs and stared menacingly at the house. As they stalked to the front door, Eddie snuck out the back again. He eased the boathouse door open and tried to pull the tarp off the boat as silently as possible, but every sound was on stereo, pumped up past eleven. He kept trying the walkie, frantic hisses of, “Dustin? Steve? Wheeler? Anybody?” But the static just mocked him.
It took the hunters a while to think to check the boathouse, the evening faded fully into dark. When they did finally find him, Eddie had eased the boat into the open lake and was paddling fruitlessly, bent over to be as small as possible. His heart hammered and his palms were slick with sweat. The walkie talkie was mockingly silent between his feet in the bottom of the boat.
“Hey, freak! Where do you think you’re going?”
The engine was dead. Carver was peeling out of his funeral blacks and his crisp white shirt that glowed in the moonlight and diving in, and the engine was dead. Eddie groaned desperately and threw himself back into rowing.
When it happened again, a body cracking to pieces in front of Eddie’s eyes, he didn’t scream. He fell ass backwards into the water, and he started moving even as he heard the splash of the kid — Patrick? Carver kept yelling “Patrick!” — falling back into the lake.
Eddie didn’t scream, but Carver did. Carver screamed, and screamed, and screamed. It echoed in Eddie’s ears even as he clambered back into the boat and paddled furiously for the other side of lake, far away from yet another body.
He heard them before he saw them, though he had been keeping an eye out. “Oh, boom!” he heard Steve say. “Bada-bing bada-boom, there she is, Henderson. Skull Rock. In your face, in your stupid, cocky little face!”
Eddie flooded with relief. It had been four long days, two dead bodies, and a manhunt, but he was no longer alone.
“So where is he?” Dustin asked as they approached. “If this is the famous Skull Rock, where’s Eddie?”
But Steve knew where to look to find Eddie watching from up on top of the rock, chin in hands as he surveyed the scene. Eddie, overcome with a giddy sort of release at hearing voices other than his own that weren’t demanding for his head, winked, and Steve shook his head wryly. Then Steve grabbed Dustin’s chin, and pointed his eyes in the right direction.
“Jesus, dude, we thought you were a goner!” Dustin exclaimed. “What are you doing up there?”
“Better views, mon frère!” Eddie said, and rolled onto his stomach to shimmy his way down.
“Your French is still awful!” Robin called from where she was struggling through a bit of handsy brush.
“Since when do you wear yellow?” Dustin asked when Eddie got to the bottom, plucking at his sweater sleeve. Eddie didn’t, obviously; Steve must have packed the bag with clothes that he’d left at Robin’s, since he didn’t keep anything at Loch Nora anymore and he couldn’t stop by the trailer. Over the days of isolation, Eddie had cycled through his stress sweat-drenched Hellfire shirt and a collection of Hawkins Swim Team shirts that were too loose in the shoulders. Buried in the bottom of the bag was Steve’s yellow sweater, a mistake, maybe, or Steve knew he’d need the comfort. He’d been sleeping in it, and hadn’t changed out of it yesterday before Jason and the others got to Rick’s.
He was still himself, though, so he’d thrown on his battle vest over the top. The yellow in the Dio patch actually complemented the sweater pretty well, if he dared say so.
“Metal comes in all colors, my man, even pastel,” Eddie said instead. He accepted Dustin’s hug, and caught and held Steve’s eyes over Dustin’s shoulder. Steve’s gaze flickered heavily all over like he was checking for blood or injury. Luckily, Eddie’s only injuries were on the inside, and he’d made it through the worst of it all intact. Now that the gang was here, there had to be a plan, and Eddie wouldn’t die at the hands of murderous jocks. Things had to get better now. That’s how all the best stories went.
Robin slammed into him next, muscling past Dustin and babbling as she wrapped him up into her own hug, “Dingus Deux, we have so much to tell you! Plus we brought more food, and there’s so much happening, but you need to eat! We’re probably going to be, uh, doing a lot of running today, so eat! High calories, lots of protein! Peanut butter!” Nancy pulled her away, looking begrudgingly fond, so she could check Eddie for injuries herself.
“Let him breathe, Robbie,” Steve said. “And he’s allergic to peanut butter.”
Dustin railroaded over that comment, seeming not to hear, but Max raised an eyebrow at Eddie as she and Lucas stepped up to complete the circle. He narrowed his eyes back and she grinned, tucking her chin. She had a set of headphones around her neck, and Eddie could hear music pumping at a decent volume.
She was okay. Eddie was okay. They’d all be okay.
Right?
“Somebody’s gotta go down there and check this thing out,” Steve said when the compass spun wildly over a random spot in the lake. He shucked his Nikes and tucked his socks into his shoes, just like he did at home. Eddie tried to come up with a combination of words that would make Steve stop stripping long enough to listen to him — a problem he never thought he’d need to solve — but nothing was coming to him, figuring don’t leave me alone again wasn’t strong enough to do it.
Instead, he watched Steve slide his sweater — his nice baby blue one from their terrible anniversary date — over his head and reveal his strong back and scattered moles and star-speckle freckles to the moonlight. There was a fading mouth-shaped bruise over Steve’s shoulder (there rarely wasn’t some of Eddie’s teeth marks somewhere on him; Eddie was a biter) and Nancy raised an eyebrow as Robin shot Eddie a lascivious look. Steve missed all of this, tossing his sweater to Eddie and standing to face the cold, lapping water. There was nothing to look at except Steve’s back muscles shifting as he prepared to dive into the cold dark water.
“He-hey,” Eddie said, throat suddenly dry. He wrapped a flashlight up into a plastic bag and handed it over. Steve took it, and their hands lingered for a moment.
“Thanks,” he murmured. Eddie nodded, and wanted to say something, but his mouth was empty of anything useful.
“Hey, Steve?” Nancy said. She smiled up at Steve when he looked her way, soft and girlish. “Be careful.”
Steve nodded, caught Eddie’s eyes again before he turned back around and, after a deep breath, leapt in.
It was, maybe, a minute. It felt like an hour. It felt like the stretch of a Tolkien age. Ideally, Eddie would be smoking like a freight train in this moment to give his hands something to do, but he’d been around Robin long enough to know the moment his lighter clicked, his cigarette would be snatched out of his mouth and tossed into the lake, so he didn’t bother. Steve’s flashlight glow disappeared quickly in the gloom, and then the only movement was the slosh of water against the boat and Nancy’s nails tapping against the wooden edge. Eddie didn’t realize his legs were jouncing up and down until Robin reached over and laid her hand on his knee, stilling him. Nancy’s eyes stuck on Robin’s hand, and Eddie’s eyes stuck on Nancy, and Robin stared at the water completely unaware of all that, and then they all jumped when Steve resurfaced in a splash, gasping in air and pushing his sodden hair out of his eyes.
“I found it,” he said, sucking air, spitting water, “I found it.” When he grinned, Eddie doubled over, forcing air back into his own lungs in relief. Nancy and Robin both made noises of exultation.
“Dustin, you’re a goddamn Einstein! Steve found the gate,” Robin crowed into the walkie.
“What was it? What did you see?” Nancy asked, both hands clutching the side of the boat.
“It’s pretty wild,” Steve said, still bobbing in the water, winded but excited. “It’s more of a snack-sized gate than the mama gate, but still, it was pretty damn big.”
There was a sucking splash, and Steve disappeared. He resurfaced a second later, looked around wildly, made eye contact with each of the three of them, then something pulled him in again.
Eddie screamed. Nancy yelled, “Steve!” Robin shot to her feet, the boat rocking wildly. Streams of bubbles peppered the surface and Eddie threw himself to the edge, dipping so far over that his nose nearly brushed the water. It was like staring into a pool of tar, not a shift of movement in sight. “No, no, no!” Eddie wailed. “What the hell was that?”
Nancy stood determinedly. “Wait, wait!” Eddie said, mouth tumbling over the words. “Wait, where- do we go? Do we go find him? Where is he?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going in. Wait here if you need to,” Nancy said. And she dove into the water, smooth as butter.
In the split second of silence after that, Eddie reached out and clenched Robin’s hand. “I’ve spent so much time in his goddamn pool and I’m still a terrible swimmer,” he despaired.
“Me too,” Robin said, and smiled at him like a razor wire slash. They stumbled around until they were on their feet, unsteady from the waves and splashing, and then, like kids daring each other to go off the diving board at the public pool, counted together: “One, two, three, jump!”
It was frigid, and murky when Eddie strained his eyes open. He gripped desperately at Robin’s hand and swam in the opposite direction of what nature wanted, fighting past the pressure as they cut downward. Eventually, Eddie’s eyes caught something glowing, and he pulled Robin that way. His lungs were on fire. The gate, as the others called it, was a strange crack of red-hot light in the dark lakebed, pulsing ominously. They could see the heels of Nancy’s prim boots breaching the gate as they swam close, and forced themselves through the weird, pressurized membrane together.
Eddie gasped when he was back in the rarefied air of… oh, fuck. Hell. This had to be Hell, right? Like biblical, actual, fire-and-brimstone Hell?
The sky was an awful mangled mess of red and gray with streaking lightning. The ground was tentacles. The air was dust. There was noise. There was screaming. There was- Steve screaming?
“Fuck, Robin, fuck, come on,” Eddie said, but Robin was already running so Eddie sprinted after her, slipping wetly on the squelching ground under them and running for the mass of movement not far off. Nancy was a spot of white and gray in the distance, and they closed in as she reached-
“Oh, Steve, oh, fuck,” Eddie moaned, fear making his teeth chatter as his feet pounded on hard dirt between vines of uncomfortably fleshy material. “What is that, what are those?”
Steve was jolting horrifically on the ground, blood pouring out of him as three things dug into him, two with teeth and claws at his ribs, one wrapped around his neck. Eddie hated them, whatever they were, awful chittering things that howled and dug into Steve’s vulnerable stomach.
Eddie had no thoughts in his head. Every move was against instinct, which told him to turn around, against logic, which told him he should find the nearest cliff and hop right off, it’d be less messy. He ran, and he kept running, and he ran past Robin as she skittered to a halt and past Nancy as she picked up an oar from the remains of a boat nearby and he ran until he was there, right there over Steve’s face turning blue and his blood bubbling red and those awful monsters and he screamed, and he screamed, and he stomped.
The bat around Steve’s neck screeched and slithered its tail tighter around Steve’s neck, and Eddie kept stomping the monster until it loosened enough for Steve to get a hand under the tail and shove it up so he could- so he could bite it, and the monster loosed an awful sound as it tried to peel its hanging tail off Steve’s throat. Eddie was still kicking mercilessly: it felt good, in that moment, to just scream like a maniac and curb-stomp the source of his fear, except then the monster flipped around and opened up its horrifying little face into rows of razor teeth and leapt at Eddie, and then it wasn’t fun anymore.
“AGH!” he yelped, and barely heard as Nancy made a quip like an actual goddamn action movie star, then she and Robin were swinging oars like no one’s business.
Steve was up, ripping the clawing, shrieking bat off the clawing, shrieking Eddie, and hurled it like a Frisbee; it tumbled drunkenly, unable to right itself with its tail all fucked. Eddie scrambled around until he found his own oar and started swinging at anything that came hurtling out of the sky, stabbing one through its face and knocking another down so the others could beat it to pieces.
“Come on, come on, you son of a bitch!” Eddie howled, and swung wildly for the last bat screeching towards him to knock it off course. He saw Steve pin it down long enough to grab it by the tail, and as it strained to fly away he slammed it down onto the ground once, twice, then stepped on its creepy crawly body and pulled until the tail ripped away with a horrifying sound. The monster went limp, and Steve turned, panting, mouth dripping with monster blood.
“Steve, Steve, oh my god,” Nancy said but Eddie was closer, and turned Steve around so he could see the damage.
“Jesus H. Christ,” he swore, and then looked up at Steve and said, “sorry, I know that probably doesn’t help. But honestly. What in the goddamn shitting hell. Are you okay?”
“Well, they took about a pound of flesh,” Steve said, and where Eddie was shaking like the Johnsons’ stupid chihuahuas that kept the trailer park up all night with their yapping, Steve seemed almost fine. He touched his own torn-up stomach gingerly. “But other than that, yeah, never better.”
“I hate you,” Eddie said. “I hate this. What the absolute hell, you maniac. You bit one of those! What if you turn into a vampire?”
“Like Bela Lugosi,” Steve said.
“There are other actors who play vampires, Harrington,” Eddie said, clutching at Steve’s arm like he might be the one to pass out instead of the guy with severe blood loss. Robin, nearby, prodded at a dead monster with an oar. Nancy stalked around the edge of the circle, eyes on the skies.
“Bela’s the good one though, right?” Steve asked.
“Shut up,” Eddie said.
“Or these bats could have rabies,” Robin said, still poking one. “Rabies are my number one fear, Steve, you know this. If you have rabies I’ll have to kill you, then I’ll be sad.”
“Yeah,” Steve said, and put his hands on his hips. “But I doubt Upside Down Hawkins General is open for a visit, Rob, so I’m not sure-”
There was another far-off screech: more bats, a horde, bearing down on them with chittering ferocity.
“Run? Is- is that- is this where we-” Eddie stammered.
“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said, grabbing Eddie’s arm as he started to move backwards, eyes on the pack of sky rats. “This is where we run.”
“Come on!” Nancy commanded. Eddie sprinted as fast as he could but it was like he was in one of those specifically awful nightmares where every step was like running through molasses and he could hear wings behind him, ominously close. When they got to Skull Rock, Eddie followed Robin under the overhang to cower together as the bats screeched by overhead.
Steve held up okay until the bat horde was past and then he stumbled, panting, hand clutching his stomach.
“Steve!” Nancy said, and this time she was the closest, helping Steve to stagger back against the rock wall. When Steve pulled his hand away Eddie nearly hurled, turning away and putting his hands behind his head like they were told to do in gym class when they ran too much on empty stomachs. He didn’t used to have a thing with blood, but he might now. This whole goddamn ordeal was going to turn him soft.
Steve didn’t cry or shout when Nancy pressed the hem of her shirt to his wounds, just breathed out shakily, hands lifting up and running anxiously through his hair. Nancy’s hand on Steve’s belly seemed so small, quick and agile as she tied the knot of the makeshift tourniquet. Robin had stepped back to stay out of the way and ended up next to Eddie.
“Hey,” she murmured. “It’s fine. He’s fine.”
“I know,” Eddie said. “He’s fine. I’m fine.”
“We’re all fine,” Robin agreed.
“We’re fine. Wheeler’s fine too,” Eddie said, and Robin paused knowingly.
“Ah,” she said. “Eddie, there’s nothing- you don’t have to worry about that.”
“I’m worrying about everything, Buck,” Eddie said. He swung his arm over her shoulder and tugged her tight just to feel the warmth. He knew she could feel the shake in his limbs, fear contained to his extremities. “My mind is a wondrous place that can freak out about many things all at one time.”
From a distance, Steve and Nancy looked like those two from The Terminator, sweaty and bloody and tough and smiling and wrapped up in each other even as the world ended. Nancy looked up at Steve through her eyelashes, a killer move. Steve smiled back, murmured something that made her laugh. Steve touched the bandage around his stomach like it was made of gold and Eddie, suddenly, needed to be doing something else. He turned and found a half-fallen tree that he could clamber up, and he called to Robin, “So, uh, this place is like Hawkins, but with monsters and nasty shit?”
“Eloquent as always,” Robin said. “But, yeah, pretty much.”
Nancy had Steve’s arm around her shoulders and her arm around his waist as she helped him over. “Hey, watch out for the vines. It’s all a hive mind.”
“All a- what?” Eddie asked.
“You know,” Steve said from behind her, winded from standing. “Like those guys in D&D. The, uh, squid brain dudes.”
“Sure, mind flayers. Right. Of course,” Eddie said, and it came out a squeak. He moved cautiously back down the trunk.
“No, this one is Vecna. The mind flayer was last time,” Robin said.
“Our mind flayer was last time,” Steve agreed. “But the monsters in the D&D books are different. Less, uh. Smoky.”
“Your mind flayer?” Eddie said, pitch going even higher.
“Oh, yeah, that’s what we called the thing that took over people’s minds,” Robin said. “The thing that wrecked the mall and killed Billy Hargrove.”
“Right,” Eddie said. “Well. That explains some of the reactions I got when I introduced mind flayers in the Hellfire campaign.”
“I told you to run stuff by me first, dude,” Steve said.
“I forgot!” Eddie said. “I didn’t realize it would be interfering with real life trauma!”
“Why would he tell you about his D&D game?” Nancy asked Steve.
“Idea!” Robin said. “If this is a version of Hawkins, then we can go to the police department and get, like, guns and hand grenades to blow up those bat things at the gate.”
“I don’t think Hawkins PD is packing explosives, Buck,” Eddie said. “They barely let Callahan have a nightstick.”
“And we don’t have to go downtown for guns,” Nancy said. “I have guns. In my bedroom.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, holding up a hand. “Lots of wild shit has happened today, and my hearing might be going: you, Nancy Wheeler, have guns, plural, in your bedroom.”
“Full of surprises, isn’t she,” Robin said, sounding like a lovestruck preteen.
Nancy crossed her arms, unimpressed. “A Russian Makarov and a revolver.”
“Yeah, you almost shot me with that one,” Steve said, moving gingerly forward to stand at Nancy’s shoulder.
Nancy looked up at Steve and smiled. “You almost deserved it.”
When Eddie first moved into the trailer with Wayne, he befriended the most scraggly junkyard cat in all of Forest Hills: crusty eyes, slashed ear, a croaky meow, and fleas for days. He left food scraps for it out by the trailer door, and would catch it to clean it in the sink when Wayne wasn’t home, despite its yowling protests. He named it Duny, because he was reading Earthsea yet again, and loved that mangy, awful cat with his whole heart. But when Duny was all cleaned up and at a healthier weight, another family in the park took him in and kept him, and Eddie was sick with jealousy even though that family never knew that in his mind, Duny had been his.
This felt humiliatingly similar.
As Steve and Nancy stared at each other, Eddie shrugged out of his battle vest and tossed it, perhaps a little harder than necessary, at Steve’s face.
“For your modesty, sweetheart,” Eddie said, and Steve raised an eyebrow but shrugged it on. Nancy looked baffled.
The ground started to shake. Robin fell backwards and Eddie caught her as they both went sprawling. Steve did the same with Nancy, wrapping her up in one arm and bracing himself against the rock with the other. As the earthquake subsided, monsters of various makeups started howling or chattering in the distance.
“Yeah, so, guns seem like a pretty good idea to me,” Eddie said, breathless.
“Yeah, me too,” Robin agreed in a hurry.
Steve clicked his flashlight on, and led the way into the darkness.
Eddie didn’t know how long they walked. It had been early night when they’d gone through the gate; it had probably been at least a couple of hours, but the sky was no darker or lighter for it. The lightning flashed irregularly but it never rained anything more substantial than white, powdery dust, like insulation floating in an old attic.
Eventually, Nancy moved up to lead, with Robin following her. Eddie, exhausted, fell behind, and Steve brought up the rear with his flashlight beam swinging regularly from side to side. Every once in a while he’d call out something quietly, like, “Something ahead on the left,” or “Bats, hide,” and they’d all go still until the danger passed, but mostly it was a long, uneventful slog of miles through the dark.
Steve caught up to Eddie about halfway through. They walked in step for a while before Steve spoke. “I feel like I don’t need to ask, but, how’re you holding up?”
“I’m…” Eddie said. “Can I ask a question first?”
“Eddie. Babe,” Steve said, and caught Eddie’s hand to pull him to stillness. His brow was furrowed, his hand warm around Eddie’s. “You can ask anything. You can say anything. This is- I know this is a lot.”
“You said you’d tell me,” Eddie said. “When things started again.”
“Yeah,” Steve said slowly. “I did.”
“If I wasn’t in the middle of it, would you still have told me?” Eddie asked. “If I wasn’t at the goddamn epicenter, would you have brought me in?”
Steve didn’t answer immediately. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Eddie.” He scrubbed his empty hand uneasily through his hair. In the distance, the girls were pulling further ahead. Steve didn’t seem concerned. “Now that you know, would you have wanted me to tell you?”
“Yes,” Eddie said. “No. Fuck. I don’t know.”
“That’s it, though, right,” Steve said. “That’s exactly how I felt for this entire goddamn time. I wanted you to know. But I didn’t. But I did. Back and forth and back and forth.”
“I just keep thinking,” Eddie said, “about if I wasn’t here. If that happened to Chrissy somewhere else and you all came here to investigate, in this fucking terrifying place, and something happened and I never knew. Because that’s not impossible, right? It’s not impossible that we won’t make it out.”
“We’re going to make it out,” Steve said.
“Shove the pep talk, captain,” Eddie said. “Realistically, we could die in here. And what if I wasn’t here, and you and Buckley and Wheeler crawled your way into this dimension and something ate you, and I never knew? I mean, not to make this all about me, man, but that’s fucked. That’s fucked.”
“You can’t think like that,” Steve said. “I know, it’s bullshit, but you can’t. You’ll fuck yourself up if you start thinking about what could happen instead of what is happening.”
“How close have you gotten?” Eddie asked. “To dying. How close have you gotten?”
Steve sighed, and looked off to the side. “Very close. Too close.”
“And that’s not even the half of it,” Eddie said. “You were lying to me about all of this. And, now that I know why, I get that. I do. But you were still hiding this huge thing from me, and every day you had to talk about shit like your minimum wage job and U.S. history exams and things other than alien monsters.”
Steve just dipped his head down and looked up at Eddie through his lashes; not flirty, but penitent.
“But it turns out all these other people,” Eddie continued, “know about the alien monsters, and yet you were hiding us from them all this time. So you had to lie to them, too!”
Steve jerked his head back up at that. “Hold on. I wasn’t hiding you from them because I wanted to. I was doing what you wanted! You wanted to keep us a secret. Right?”
“I wanted to keep from getting skinned alive for being a queer, Steve,” Eddie said. “Not to never meet your friends. Not to be kept out of the biggest part of your life.”
“This isn’t the biggest part of my life,” Steve said. “This is a fucking nightmare that rolls around about once a year. The rest of the time, it’s not on the radar at all.”
“Your goddamn nail bat at Family Video says otherwise,” Eddie said.
“That was-” Steve said. “Sure, okay. But we don’t exactly get a calendar telling us when this shit will happen, dude. Yeah, I’m alert for danger, but it’s not- it’s not the only thing I’m thinking about.”
“You wake up screaming from nightmares,” Eddie said, desperate to make his argument. “You get beaten within an inch of death regularly. You jump every time someone turns off the lights. And then, through all of that, you were having your equally dangerous secret gay romance. And, sure, the aliens might not care about that part, but the people of Hawkins sure as hell would have.”
“Okay, fine,” Steve said, throwing up his hands. “My life is goddamn dangerous. What’s your point, Eddie?”
“My point is,” Eddie said, then cupped Steve’s cheek. “My point is: does anyone know you, man? Does anyone actually know all of you? Do you have anyone you can share all of this with?”
Steve gripped Eddie’s wrists. He looked ancient and worn and strong and soft. He looked sad. “You do now. Maybe not before, but now you know everything. You know all of me.”
Eddie kissed him. He tasted awful, and Eddie belatedly remembered that he’d had a mouthful of bat tail distressingly recently, but Eddie pushed past it. He crowded in close, careful with Steve’s stomach and the road rash on his back, keeping his hands curled safely in Steve’s hair. Steve had no compunctions about wrapping his arms around Eddie and pulling him in until they were chest to chest, bandages to lake-soaked sweater.
When they broke apart, Eddie said, “I don’t care how scared I am. I want to know you. Don’t shut me out again.”
“I can’t,” Steve said, hands soft on either side of Eddie’s throat. “Not anymore.”
They stood with foreheads together, breathing, listening to distant red thunder and wings, then Steve said, “We should probably catch up.”
Eddie nodded, but kept his hand tucked in Steve’s back pocket until they were close enough for Nancy and Robin’s conversation to become audible again.
“So,” Steve said in an undertone. “How Ozzy was I, with the bats back there?”
“Jesus,” Eddie said. “First you’re talking mind flayers, now Sabbath. I might have to jump your bones behind an alien tree, Harrington. Apologies in advance.”
Steve grinned at him. “Might not be the most romantic place for it.”
“But it wouldn’t be the least romantic, either,” Eddie said, grinning back. “Remember that broken down bus in the junkyard with all the busted glass in it?”
Steve chuckled, and said, “So, funny story about that bus…”
After a trip to the Wheeler house, which wielded information through magical light fixtures but no guns, they were back to Forest Hills and staring up at the hole in the ceiling of the Munson trailer that marked where Chrissy had died. Steve’s arm was warm against Eddie’s, and as Nancy and Dustin called suggestions to each other through the gate, Robin asked quietly, “How’re you doing? Are you okay? It’s okay if you’re not okay.”
“I bet you two didn’t need nursemaids to hold your hand through your first time through this shit,” Eddie muttered.
“Oh, no, I did,” Robin said. “I had a breakdown and came out to Steve in the mall bathroom while high. Then I spent weeks sleeping in the same bed as you two.”
“And I didn’t have anyone, and it sucked,” Steve said. “Let us take care of you, dude.”
“We need something soft to land on!” Nancy was calling. “Couch cushions, or a mattress or something.”
“We’ll get the mattress,” Lucas said.
“Wait, uh,” Eddie said, and then covered his face with his hands when he heard Lucas say, “Dude, when’s the last time you washed your sheets?”
“I’ve been a bit busy, Sinclair!” Eddie said. When he peeked up, it was pretty bad: bong water and beer spills and sweat stains and, well, other of his and Steve’s substances that he wasn’t going to discuss with children.
Dustin and Erica fed a rope made of tied-together sheets through the hole and it hung in place, defying physics. Robin went through first, then Eddie followed her; the sensation of moving from one world to the other was like driving too fast over a dip, his stomach whirling and head dizzy.
“That was fun!” Eddie said, grinning up at Dustin, who was holding out a hand to help him up.
“Nance. Nancy! Stay with me! Hey!”
Steve was upside down through a hole in the ceiling, shaking a blank, unseeing Nancy by the shoulders, and the swoop in Eddie’s stomach this time wasn’t vertigo, it was fear.
Nancy shook off Vecna on her own and eventually crawled her way into the correct dimension, leaving Steve there on the other side by himself. For a horrible moment, Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said to Steve earlier: what if this whole thing was happening somewhere else. What if they weren’t here, where Eddie could watch Steve set his hands on the rope and start to hoist himself up, muscles straining and breath short. What if Steve couldn’t get out, and Eddie had never known he was gone?
Eddie didn’t think he’d be able to survive that.
“Sure, let’s go get weapons, but is it worth the time?” Dustin asked. “It’ll take all day to bike there and back.”
“Who said anything about bikes?” Eddie said, and despite himself, his excitement eclipsed his fear for the first time in days. Steve saw the look on his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. Eddie shook his arm, bouncing on his toes. “Steve. C’mon. The Johnsons deserve it. It’ll finally shut their dogs up!”
“You can’t use the end of the world as an excuse to terrorize your neighbors,” Steve said, but he was smiling with fond exasperation.
“Sorry, what’s going on? Do we have a plan?” Nancy cut in.
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “We can get a vehicle and it’ll fit all of us, but it’s not exactly a car. Anyone worried about a little light grand theft auto?”
The Johnsons were outside their RV watching The Beverly Hillbillies on a portable TV at full volume, lawn chairs creaking every time they moved. Both of them had a shivering, slobbering chihuahua-shaped devil on their laps.
Eddie hoisted himself into the RV on the other side through the broken back window (was he the one who broke it with an errantly-thrown rock from peeling out in the van one day? Maybe.) and flopped his way onto the back bench seat, Steve landing behind him a second later. Eddie, overcome with reckless adrenaline, tossed the Halloween mask aside and hauled Steve close and kissed him, breaking off with a wild grin just before Nancy appeared in the window. Steve laughed, breathless, and followed as Eddie crept up to the front and silently locked the door.
Eddie threw himself into the driver’s seat and fumbled for a set of wire cutters, popping open the panel under the steering wheel. “After all this,” he said to Steve, who was leaning over his shoulder as he worked, “if my dad’s criminal tendencies end up saving us, I might go insane. Just warning you.”
“Skills are skills, man,” Steve said. “How do you think I feel knowing I got my dad’s flirting techniques?”
“Gross,” Robin said from over his shoulder.
“Hey,” Eddie said around the pliers in his mouth. “Don’t knock it ’til you try it, Buck. They may be ill-gotten, but his techniques work.”
“No less gross!” Robin said.
The wires sparked, the RV roared to life, and Eddie whooped. “All yours, big boy!”
He jumped up, and set his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Steve, without thought, lifted Eddie by the waist and deposited him behind the driver’s seat, swearing all the while. Eddie cackled as the Johnsons leapt up in surprise, their dogs running in excited circles around their legs.
“Everybody hang on to something!” Steve shouted.
“Drive, Steve, drive!” Dustin howled.
The RV rumbled away, Steve’s bare foot stomped to the floor, the Johnsons’ tent awning fluttering in the wind behind them.
Eddie napped for a bit right behind the driver’s seat, soothed by the dull roar of the road. Robin joined him, tossing her legs over his lap and tucking her head in the crook of his throat.
“You smell bad,” she mumbled into the shoulder of his yellow sweater.
“Sue me,” Eddie said. “Been in the lake and to hell since my last shower.”
“Disgusting,” Robin said, then her breathing evened out, eyelashes fluttering against his skin.
A few minutes later, soft footsteps paused next to them, and Eddie didn’t need to open his tired eyes to know it was Nancy, her heeled boots clicking with each step. She continued past them and slid into the passenger seat. Over the soft sound of the radio and the breathing of exhausted teenagers slumped around the vehicle, Eddie heard Nancy ask, “How does it handle?”
“Not half bad, considering this is a... house,” Steve said.
If Eddie was more awake, he’d make a joke, call Steve Richie Rich and ask why they didn’t just take his jetpack or some shit, but Eddie wasn’t really awake, floating on the edge of unconsciousness.
“Is that how you know Eddie?” Nancy asked. Steve made a questioning sound, and Nancy said, “He’s dating Robin, right?”
“Oh,” Steve said, sounding amused. “No, they’re not dating. They’re friends, they were in band together.”
“Eddie was in band? That doesn’t seem like his thing.”
“Eddie is an, uh, what’s the word? An enigma.” He sounded fond. Nancy hummed.
“I didn’t know you knew him,” she said.
Steve was quiet for a while. When he spoke, it was slow, like he was planning his words out carefully. “I think that you don’t really know me very well at all.” For a moment, the only sound was James Taylor on the radio: my body’s aching and my time is at hand, and I won’t make it any other way. Nancy must have made a face, because Steve said hurriedly, “And that’s okay! I don’t really know you, either.”
“You know me, Steve.” Nancy said, and indeed she did sound hurt, and confused. “And I know you. We dated for a pretty long time, which means we know each other pretty well.”
“I don’t think we do,” Steve said apologetically. Maybe the conversation with Eddie earlier was on Steve’s mind (does anyone actually know all of you?), because he continued: “I never asked you the first date questions. We never did the small talk thing. It was a study date with flashcards, then, bam, right into this, like, extremely tense and crazy thing, Will and Barb gone, and monsters and shit. We never actually had a chance to get to know each other.”
Nancy said, “So you’re saying you don’t know me at all?”
“I know the important stuff,” Steve said. “I know how you feel about your family, that you’re smart and strong and competent. But I don’t know your favorite color. I don’t know why you have a Tom Cruise poster, what your favorite movie is. I don’t know why you want to be a journalist.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Nancy said. “I thought… I don’t know. I thought you were angling for- for something else.”
“Like for us to get back together?” Steve said. Eddie fought through the murk in his head and made himself sharpen up, listen more closely. Steve continued, unaware of his audience, “No. I mean, maybe, if things were different, I’d want that. I don’t think you would, though. I want… shit, Nance. I want the full brood of kids, three girls and three boys and the dog and the family road trips in an RV just like this one. And you want a career with nothing holding you back. You don’t want what I can offer.”
“Your plan sounds nice?” Nancy offered.
Steve scoffed. “Yes, you sound very enthusiastic.”
“Well, the six kids part is a lot to consider,” Nancy said.
“You don’t want that. And you definitely don’t want that with me.” Nancy offered a weak protest and Steve said, “It’s fine, Nance. Honestly. I don’t want to be with someone who has to lie to me so that I get what I want and they don’t.”
“Steve,” Nancy said. “It doesn’t- it’s not that black and white. We don’t have to- I mean, not that we were ever going to-”
“Right, so, I’m saying all this because…” Steve hesitated. “Because Eddie Munson is one of my favorite people in the world, and you didn’t even know we knew each other. And there’s more, too. My mom has cancer. My dad pretty much kicked me out of the house last summer. I’m not going to college, probably ever, but I’ve been thinking about signing up to be a little league coach this fall. And I- like someone. I like someone and, sorry, this is, I don’t know any other way to say it, but, it’s not… you.”
For a while, it was quiet, just James Taylor on the radio, I always thought I’d see you, baby, one more time again. Eddie desperately wanted to know what Nancy’s face looked like, what Steve’s looked like. Hell, he couldn’t even tell what his own face was doing as he feigned sleep.
“Oh,” Nancy said.
“Yeah,” Steve said.
“And you want… the RV and the six kids with this other person?” Nancy asked.
“Yeah, well, you know,” Steve said. “I’ve got a lot of practice wrangling shithead kids. Figured I might as well use it.”
In the silence between them, James Taylor finished his crooning, and the next song up made both Nancy and Steve snort. “Loving you isn’t the right thing to do,” sang Lindsey Buckingham, “How can I ever change things that I feel?”
“You ever feel like we’re in a bad horror movie?” Steve said. “Jesus. I might have nearly failed English, but even I can understand the irony here.”
“Sometimes,” Nancy chuckled. “Hey, Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your favorite color?”
Steve laughed, a quick huff of breath. “Blue. Robin’s egg blue.”
Nancy hummed. “Like the sweater you were wearing?”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “Which- oh, shit. That’s still in the boat. Damn. Do you think the cops, like, took that for evidence?”
Nancy laughed softly. “I think the police had bigger things to worry about than whoever was running around shirtless.”
Steve harrumphed. “They better not have. That was my favorite sweater.” Fleetwood Mac was wailing on about going your own way, then Steve said, “Hey. I may not really know you, but I do want to get to know you. I’d like to be actual friends with Nancy Wheeler.”
“Yeah,” Nancy said. “Me too. I’d like to be actual friends with Steve Harrington.”
And Robin, apparently still awake, muttered against Eddie’s collarbone: “Told you you had nothing to worry about.”
After visiting the aptly-named War Zone, Steve parked the RV in some field out east of town. By some unspoken agreement, it had been decided to wait until dark to set the plan in motion; in theory, so there would be fewer eyes on them, but in reality Eddie knew none of them, except maybe Nancy, were in a hurry to get started.
Nancy, speaking of the devil, was off with Max talking guns. The Sinclairs were making spears. Steve and Robin were huddled together in the shade of the RV, and Eddie’s gaze kept pulling toward them. Something was up with Robin, something that must’ve happened in the War Zone, but he hadn’t had a chance to ask before Dustin was dragging him off to hammer nails into trash can lids.
“Like Steve’s bat!” Dustin said, pulling Eddie along by the elbow. “You’ve seen Steve’s bat, right, Eddie? It’s awesome.”
“Oh, I’ve seen Steve’s bat,” Eddie laughed.
“Dude!” Dustin said, outraged and clearly missing the innuendo. “Just because Steve prefers a two-handed weapon-” Eddie snorted again, “-over something boring like a gun, doesn’t make him any less cool.”
“No, no, I know,” Eddie said. “He should use both hands. He’s great at it.”
“All fighters have different strengths, right? We’ve all got different proficiencies,” Dustin said. “Man, think of how cool Hellfire’s going to be now that you’re in on all the inside jokes. It’s going to be awesome!”
“Right,” Eddie said, and delicately side-stepped the part of the conversation where he wasn’t the Hellfire DM anymore in about two months, whether or not he survived this week and then subsequently passed senior-senior-senior year. “Hey. Is this, uh, normal, for you guys?”
“What, making our own weapons?” Dustin asked. “Yeah. Nancy’s usually the only one packing anything pre-made.”
“No, I mean, like. Everyone’s… happy. Or, like, not freaking out.”
“Well, yeah,” Dustin said, serious now. “What good would that do? We have to do the scary things anyway. Why make it harder on ourselves?” He scrutinized Eddie. “Why. Are you going to start freaking out?”
“No,” Eddie said. “No, Henderson, I actually think this time I won’t. I’ve got good role models for courage now.”
“Who? Oh, Steve? Yeah, I get that-”
“Nah, man,” Eddie said. “Well, okay, yeah, Harrington’s like goddamn Cool Hand Luke. But no, man. You.”
“Me?” Dustin said, and, audibly, his voice cracked.
Eddie grinned, and reached out to waggle Dustin by the cap. “Yeah, dude. Never change, Henderson.”
“No,” Dustin said, grinning widely and bashfully down at his own hands. “No, I won’t.”
A shadow appeared over Dustin’s shoulder; Nancy Wheeler, with her cute sweater and felonious firearm. “Hey,” she said. “Steve’s made snacks.”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Dustin said, and shot off toward the RV. Eddie stood to follow.
“Hey,” Nancy said again. “Eddie. Can we talk?”
Eddie sat back down on his milk crate he’d been using as a makeshift blacksmith’s table. “Yeah, uh. Sure.”
Nancy took Dustin’s milk crate, looking down at her folded hands. Eddie’s eyes were drawn to her fingernails: perfect ovals with a clear shiny coating. Her hands were dirty, polka-dotted with callouses that Eddie assumed were from her time at the shooting range, and she had cuts from their fight with the demobats. But her fingernails, under the grime, weren’t chipped or imperfect in any way.
Eddie’s nails were always ragged, bitten and uneven, ripped cuticles. He wondered when the last time he washed his hands was this week. He wondered if he’d ever stop comparing himself to Nancy Wheeler.
“Every time this happens,” she said, “we all think it’s the last time. This one really feels like it. And maybe it’s not. Maybe we’re kidding ourselves. But this feels bigger than before.”
Eddie cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, as someone who’s new to this whole thing, I can tell you it feels pretty fucking massive to me.”
“Yeah,” Nancy agreed. “We thought the same thing when it was just one demogorgon in the Byers’ house.”
“So what you’re saying is that there’s always a bigger monster,” Eddie said. “Great. So this is like D&D after all.”
“What?” Nancy asked.
“You know. You build a campaign by starting with your puny level one characters fighting two goblins in a cave, and it’s hard for the players to win but then they get better, so goblins get too easy, so you move up to wolves, and then they get good at beating wolves, so then it’s bandits, then it’s knights, then kings, then demons, then dragons, on and on because there always has to be a worse bad guy.”
“Huh,” Nancy said. “Yeah, I guess so. In D&D, how do you end that cycle?”
“You kill the one at the top,” Eddie shrugged. “Then your characters get to go back to their lives, or start new ones. They can rest easy, knowing the job is done.”
“Damn,” Nancy said, and tilted her head to look over at Eddie with a rueful smile. “Resting easy sounds amazing.”
Eddie chuckled. “So, was there something you needed from me?”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “It’s… awkward.”
“Okay,” Eddie said. “How awkward? Do you need me to cover you while you pee in the woods?”
“We have an RV with a functioning bathroom,” Nancy said.
“Okay, so it’s something else,” Eddie said. “I don’t have any drugs on me.”
“Eddie,” Nancy said, batting away Eddie’s pathetic deflection. “It’s Steve.”
Eddie, on instinct, looked over at the RV. Robin was still glugging kerosene into glass bottles but Steve was holding a plate of something over his head, pushing Dustin back with a palm to Dustin’s forehead as Erica heckled nearby. Steve was laughing, dirty face creased in the lines. He looked past Dustin and caught Eddie looking, and winked.
“What about Steve?” Eddie asked, trying to sound innocent, trying not to sound like Steve was the number one thing he wanted right now, preferably naked, preferably spooning Eddie into a restful night’s sleep that neither of them would wake from with horrific nightmares. Honestly, he could probably have everything except that last part. Steve would probably be down to cuddle right away if Eddie asked; they could head in the RV and turn that Formica-topped table into the pullout bed and be lights out until showtime. Maybe not naked, though. There were innocent eyes around.
“You’re… friends,” Nancy said. Not a question.
“Y…es?” Eddie said.
“So you know he’s… different. From how everyone thinks he is, I mean.”
“Yes,” Eddie said. This conversation seemed to be made entirely of meaningful pauses, but he had no idea what she was getting at.
“He’s,” Nancy said, and then her patience seemed to run out, and she sighed, puffing her curly, fuzzy bangs out of her face with a frustrated breath. “I’m just going to say it, and I just want to remind you that if you hurt him, I own several guns besides just this one.”
“Right, yeah, no, I remember,” Eddie said.
“Good,” Nancy said. “I think he has a crush on you.”
Eddie felt like he'd been hit in the head, suddenly. “He- what? Why, uh, do you think that?”
“We had a talk earlier,” Nancy waved her hands. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, he deserves to be happy, and I think you could make that happen.”
Eddie might be about to hyperventilate. “Wheeler, I-”
“Don’t talk to me about it, talk to him,” Nancy said. She seemed embarrassed, cheeks pinking and eyes flickering to Eddie’s face and away. “And maybe not now, it’ll be a distraction. After.”
“Is there going to be an after?” Eddie asked.
“Yes,” Nancy said. For all Steve’s glowing reports about Nancy, he’d somehow undersold her determination. Eddie believed her wholeheartedly, despite knowing this was a long shot at best.
“Okay,” Eddie said, because what else do you say to your secret hookup’s ex-girlfriend when she tries to independently set you up with him on the contingency you stop the world from ending? “Uh, thanks, Wheeler.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, then stood, cradling her shotgun. “C’mon. Time to plan.”
“Yeah, definitely, I’ll, uh. Be there in a second,” Eddie said. When she raised an eyebrow, he smiled weakly. “Maybe I’m the one who needs a leak in the woods.” She didn’t press, but she stood at the door to the RV and shaded her eyes to watch as Eddie crossed to the nearest thatch of trees. He stood in the shade and stared vaguely upward until he heard footsteps crunching on twigs behind him.
“Hey,” he said to Steve, who stood behind him, wrapped an arm around his waist. Eddie loved when Steve was playing boyfriend, but now it almost felt like too much. Eddie turned in his hold and put his hand on Steve’s chest, keeping distance.
“Is everything okay?” Steve asked. “Besides the obvious, I mean.”
“Wheeler wants me to take you to the sock hop,” Eddie said.
“Oh,” Steve said, and went red across the bridge of his nose, under the dirt and over his perma-tan. “Well. Sounds ginchy.”
“Proving yet again that you’re absolutely the Daphne of the group,” Eddie said.
“I’m Fred!” Steve said.
“Absolutely not. You’re Daphne. You look good in purple and spend more time on your hair than the rest of us combined. Plus, you make a cute damsel.”
“Eddie,” Steve said, pushing a chunk of dirty, uncombed hair behind Eddie’s ear. “Will you promise me something?”
Oh, god. Steve had his romantic hero face on, like he was about to be sealed in carbonite. Eddie felt shaky just seeing it. “What?”
“When we divide up for this, Dustin has to go with you,” Steve said. “Nancy’s going to want me to be with him and keep him safe, but I can’t stand on the sidelines this time.”
“I can’t protect him like you can,” Eddie said.
“Yes you can,” Steve said. “And you won’t need to. You’ll be the distraction, right? Distract, then fucking get out. Leave. Don’t hang out and do something stupid.”
“If I can help-”
“I can’t do this if you’re in danger,” Steve said, gripping Eddie’s hips and pulling him close. His eyes were wide, red. He hadn’t been sleeping, Eddie could tell. “Do you get that? I’m barely hanging on here, man. Robin’s talking about having bad feelings about this. Nancy won’t back down on the plan. Max has gone self-sacrificial. I can’t- I can’t even think about you being in danger. I can’t. You have to stay safe, you and Dustin both.”
“Okay,” Eddie said, and curled his arms around Steve’s shoulders. “Yeah, okay, we’ll stay out of it. But you have to be careful too. It’s the same feelings here on my end, man, even if I haven’t had them as long. I can’t focus if you’re out there taking on an army with a baseball bat.”
Steve’s eyes flickered between Eddie’s, like he was looking for something, and then he was pressing Eddie back against a tree and kissing him, kissing him senseless in the most literal way: he was shocked into thoughtlessness, pressing back hungrily.
“Fuck,” Eddie gasped when Steve let him up for air. “Is this end of the world sex? Is that what you people do?”
“We don’t have end of the world sex,” Steve said, dropping to his knees and fumbling with Eddie’s belt. “Most of this group is made up of children.”
“You and Buckley don’t go looking for strange before fighting the bad guy?” Eddie got out, blood rushing all kinds of places as Steve shoved his jeans down. It had to be so gross, but Steve wasn’t complaining and nearly immediately had his nose against Eddie’s stomach, Eddie’s dick sheathed all the way down his throat.
“No,” Steve said on a slide up, wiping the spit from the corners of his mouth. The he stopped, contemplative, with his hand ringing the base of Eddie’s cock. “I guess me and Nance were having sex, the first time. Like, in the middle of it. And- oh, damn, she and Byers did the second time too. Good for her.”
“Steve,” Eddie whined. “My question was rhetorical. Please don’t stop.”
“Oh, right,” Steve said, but his grin told Eddie that he knew he was being a tease, and it was working. He put his mouth back to work, and Eddie shouted loud enough that birds scattered into the sky from their little patch of woods.
The Upside Down seemed worse, the second time in it. The sky seemed darker. The lightning brighter. The smell was worse; Eddie didn’t remember it smelling bad before, but now it was omnipresent, mud and blood and mold.
“Don’t try to be cute, or a hero, or something,” Steve said, and his gaze caught Eddie’s, and Eddie wanted to run, to run, to run. Over Steve’s shoulders, Nancy and Robin watched like his guardian angels. The tail mark around his throat was livid red, even here in the near-darkness. Eddie had left no bruises back in the field; Steve was bruised enough without his help.
“Don’t worry. You can be the hero, Steve,” Dustin said, all teenage bravado.
“Absolutely,” Eddie said. He knew his eyes were too soft for this moment, his smile too sad. His comment wouldn’t land, but he said it anyway: “I mean, look at us. We are not heroes.”
Steve stared at them both for another long minute, then turned. It was that image, Steve heading off into the wider dimension armed with Molotov cocktails and an axe, that made Eddie step forward. He looked like the doomed hero of every story, off to fight impossible odds.
“Hey, Steve?” Eddie said. When Steve turned, his eyes were soft too. Eddie took another step closer, another. If he burrowed into Steve now, he’d never come out, so he didn’t. He didn’t collapse into Steve’s arms. Steve was a hero. He had a job to do. Eddie had a job to do. So Eddie didn’t say I love you. He didn’t say come back to me. He didn’t say I need you to survive this, because I want to survive too and I don’t think I can do that without you. He said, “Make him pay.”
Thunder crackled overhead. Steve nodded. He and the girls disappeared into the dark.
Steve had bought Eddie the Master of Puppets tape the day it released; drove all the way to Indy when Eddie was at school and had it wrapped in newspaper on the table at the trailer when he got home. Eddie almost cried — Steve had also hung a little handmade banner over the microwave, HAPPY BIRTHDAY written on Post-its and Family Video receipts — and then Eddie had shown Steve his most enthusiastic thanks possible, the kind that took Wayne being out of the house for at least two hours and a quarter of a bottle of lube. They’d listened to the album all the way through together in the afterglow, Eddie draped heavy and sweaty over Steve’s scratched-up back, and Eddie had continued to listen to it nonstop since.
Eddie didn’t know that other people couldn’t hear a song a few times and be able to recreate it, at least simplistically. “Boy, I had that guitar since before you was a twinkle in my idiot brother’s eye, and I ain’t never been able to play a song from memory like you can,” Wayne had groused when Eddie complained about band practice being boring because the others hadn’t grasped the songs yet. Eddie liked to think it was his one superpower; well, that, and that thing he could do with his tongue to get Steve Harrington to cry.
The amp crackled and whined with static when it was plugged in, a sound that seemed to reverberate in the silent, thick air. The red lightning flashes were the only light they had to see, except Dustin’s puny flashlight, and the backing track was the thunder: not a comforting roll, but a threatening crackle after each zap of electricity.
He didn’t have to play a real song. He could’ve just riffed for five minutes, it wasn’t like the bats would know. But it felt right, to bring metal to the underworld. It felt right to set his fingers to the strings in a familiar way, and create something that he felt with every bit of his beating, pumping heart.
Eddie kissed the guitar pick he’d pulled from around his neck, and started playing.
In the distance, he heard the bats screech.
They were all around the trailer. Thrashing, scratching, clawing, screeching, screaming, screaming, screaming.
The vent burst open.
Eddie got Dustin through the gate. He was safe, back in the real world.
It hadn’t been long enough. Nothing had changed. There’d been no call from Erica, from Lucas, from Robin, that said the plan had worked. The bats were here, sure, but they probably would figure out pretty quickly that their prey had gone.
Dustin was safe. That was what Steve asked for: for Dustin to be safe. For Eddie to be with him. But now Steve was the one in danger, with Buckley and Wheeler, and Eddie was the one here who could do something.
Eddie could do something.
He didn’t have to run away. He could be the hero, for once in his miserable life. He wouldn’t run.
“Not this time,” he said to himself, and cut the rope to the rightside world.
A swirl of monsters. A tornado enveloped him. He stabbed out with his spear and triumphantly caught two; eight more swarmed him. A tail wrapped around his throat, dragged him down quickly. He was down too quickly.
Something pierced his leg. His stomach. His chest.
He screamed.
Pain.
The bats fell in unison. Eddie smiled, felt blood crack and crumble around his mouth.
“Eddie! EDDIE!” That was Henderson, Eddie’s brain sluggishly connected. Henderson. He was safe. “Oh god. Eddie, no!”
Hands. Warm hands, pressing against Eddie’s frozen, flayed skin. He knew it was bad. He knew it was terrible.
“Bad, huh?” Eddie grinned a rictus smile. Dustin sobbed, and Eddie thought for a fleeting moment how glad he was that Dustin was alive. That he’d get to live. Eddie hoped he got to see it, wherever he went next.
He kept himself awake as long as he could, even though he could feel sleep — or something darker — pulling at the edges of his vision. He let Dustin have his final words. He let himself rest; the campaign was over. The heroes could go back to their lives.
Who knows how long it took, but time passed, and Eddie felt more than heard Dustin yell, “Here! We’re over here!”
He heard pounding feet, skidding to a stop next to him.
“He’s- he’s- he ran, he-” Dustin sobbed.
“Okay,” said Steve, and Eddie breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, we’ll take care of him. It’s- it’s gonna be fine, Henderson.”
Eddie let himself smile. Let himself drift. He could rest now; Steve was here.
Notes:
NOTES:
- The Gang finds Eddie earlier this time around because the moment Steve saw the news and recognized the trailer, he wasn’t staying at work to twiddle his thumbs. He and Robin picked up Dustin and Max from Dustin’s to help with the search.
- For the youngsters, generic items were a really big deal, especially in the 70s and 80s. This isn’t generic as in, like, when you go to a pharmacy and they have the store brand of Tylenol next to the real Tylenol, or whatever. This was literally like cans of tomato soup that were just white label, black words in massive font: SOUP. Google it, it’s fascinating.
- Satanic Panic was kicked off in 1980 and built steam all the way up through the 90s and beyond. The idea was basically that Satanic worship was more prevalent than the average person knew, and that thousands to millions of people had been abused, tortured, killed, etc. by Satanists who then wiped their memories if they were left alive. It’s widely discredited and most of it is exactly what we see in the show: anyone who was an outcast, different, or considered “unChristian” could be accused as a Satan worshipper with no proof. One of the biggest actual trials to come out of Satanic Panic was the McMartin Preschool trial, which was active between 1983-1990, so right up through S4.
- “Honey, I’m home!” is from I Love Lucy.
- The things I know about how cars work could fill maybe a short pamphlet or a one page flyer. If Eddie’s hot-wiring is incorrect here, let’s chalk it up to magical realism.
- Listen. Is “Go Your Own Way” a little TOO on the nose for Steve and Nancy’s heart to heart in the RV? Maybe. But this author enjoys a bit of heavy-handed thematic work through soundtracks, so!
- Cool Hand Luke is a Paul Newman prison escape drama from 1967.
- The escalating ladder of ever-increasing villain difficulty Eddie describes is called the Sorting Algorithm of Evil on tvtropes. I had SO many examples I wanted Eddie to use, but all of the ones I liked were post-’86 — Aliens, the Wheel of Time series, the Legend of Drizzt, Mission Impossible, and of course, the most egregious example: Supernatural, where the season 5 bad guy is the Literal Devil, Lucifer, and there are many more seasons after that with increasingly More Evil Than The Literal Devil guys. Dragonball Z is another great example. If only this show was set in the 90s!!!
- Definitive casting of ST characters as Scooby Doo characters: Steve is Daphne, Nancy is Fred, Robin is Velma, Eddie is Shaggy, unless Jonathan is in the mix, in which case he’s Shaggy and Eddie is Scooby Doo, and that’s only partially because of Scooby’s propensity to gulp audibly and shakily ask “Rh-rhat’s that?” Can’t you picture Eddie doing that?
Chapter 12: interlude: THE VISITOR RETURNS
Summary:
Eddie feels completely outside of it all. He feels scooped out. Hollow. Maybe the rest of them felt this way on their second go round, and he’s just one step behind them on the ladder of acceptance, or whatever. Maybe this is normal.
“How are you okay with this?” he’d asked Robin when the planning began in earnest. “How are you not completely freaking out?”
“I mean, I am,” Robin had said. “My heart feels like a hummingbird on speed. But this is also the most time we’ve ever gotten to prepare for a fight. We always end up stumbling into it, rather than having a real plan.” She nudged him with her elbow. “Steve bought us time. This is a huge difference.”
Chapter Text
INTERLUDE
NOW
Eddie’s stare is blank as he tapes yet another knife to yet another broom handle for a makeshift spear. The tape catches on his hands and rips a little hair off the back of his knuckles; he doesn’t feel it. He’s mechanical in his motions: pull out length of tape, rip off with his teeth, tightly wind around the handle. Repeat. Repeat.
The last time he’d prepped for battle — and, Christ, what a sentence that is — he’d been freaked out and confused, but pumped full of enough adrenaline and nervous energy that he could fake-spar with Dustin out in a field, practicing their cool rolls they were definitely going to do, then he reciprocally sucked off Steve Harrington in a patch of trees barely out of sight of the rest of their friends.
This time, the energy that floods him is a dull, paralyzing fear of a different kind. Not the fear of the unknown, this time around; the fear of the very, very known. He knows what they’re up against. They all do.
But he’s the only one stuck in his own head. The rest of the Party plans and preps with a grim warrior cheer. Nancy and Hopper divide out ammunition and first aid packs. Dustin and Robin talk explosives. Erica has somehow procured enough cassette players for each of them, plus a few extra she keeps in a My Little Pony backpack. Will and Eleven practice their mind tricks but mostly rest up. Jonathan and Mike and Lucas dig through their stockpile of army surplus gear and tactical equipment. Max sits off to the side, eyes staring forward but head cocked as she listens and inserts commentary wherever she pleases.
Eddie feels completely outside of it all. He feels scooped out. Hollow. Maybe the rest of them felt this way on their second go round, and he’s just one step behind them on the ladder of acceptance, or whatever. Maybe this is normal.
“How are you okay with this?” he’d asked Robin when the planning began in earnest. “How are you not completely freaking out?”
“I mean, I am,” Robin had said. “My heart feels like a hummingbird on speed. But this is also the most time we’ve ever gotten to prepare for a fight. We always end up stumbling into it, rather than having a real plan.” She nudged him with her elbow. “Steve bought us time. This is a huge difference.”
And maybe that’s the crux of it. Last time, Eddie could be the support player in the background, the de facto Upside Down babysitter, because they had heavier hitters. He was the distraction, the jester, and the Robin-Nancy-Steve team were the hammer. That’s why he was able to joke, to laugh, to kiss Steve; he can’t do any of that this time, and not just because Steve’s not here. It just feels different.
“Alright,” Hopper calls over the din around sundown. “It’s time. Grab your shit.”
“Aye-aye, captain!” Dustin cheers, and there’s a scramble for the multitude of rooms in the Harrington house to dress and grab packs. Eddie walks up the stairs to Steve’s bedroom feeling like his feet are studded with lead, dragging him down. Robin’s laid out his outfit like a mom before the first day of school: thick pants that won’t tear easily, a tac vest, fitted leather gloves, a bandana. He changes, vacantly processing Robin’s nervous chatter as she does the same.
He follows Robin back down the stairs and to the dining table, the central location for all their scheming. A taped-together map of the Upside Down, cobbled from Steve’s information and Will’s memory, is splayed across the length of the table. The Vecna figurine from Eddie’s D&D set is in the center, the Creel house. Scattered around the rest of the map are other toys marking their places: army men for Joyce and Hopper, the boys and Erica using their D&D mini figs, Polly Pockets for Robin and Nancy, and He-Man mini-figures for Jonathan and Eddie (both with the distinctive He-Man blonde hair colored in brown by Mike for accuracy).
Dustin chose a dragon out of Eddie’s D&D set for Steve. When asked why, he’d shrugged and said, “It feels right.” The dragon sits next to the rubber jelly bracelet marking the gate they’ll be using, the big one at Hawkins Lab. On the wall are more maps and sheets of notes and the big poster Eddie made weeks ago, when a plan had started to form, the headline THE RULES in his neatest hand at the top, underlined three times. He doesn’t bother rereading the rules here; he memorized them nearly immediately after writing them.
“We all know what we’re doing, right?” Nancy asks from the head of the table after she walks them through the plan one last time. She has Eleven and Hopper to either side. The rest of them are scattered around the edge of the table, nodding. “Good. Let’s wait for our signal, then we’re off.”
It doesn’t take long; a few minutes later, Eddie hears the tick-tick-tick of a watch and says, “Get ready, everyone,” before that specific pressure on his ears and dizzying feeling of stepping through a mirror swamps over him, announcing Steve’s presence.
He looks- well. He looks like Steve, new Steve, Upside Down Steve, which Eddie hates calling him even in his mind because it feels like he’s giving up on the idea of Before Steve ever returning. Eddie can see the ripple effect flow through the room as Steve’s mind touches everyone else’s in a chain, bringing them all into his bubble of interaction.
He materializes on the other side of the big dining table, and his eyes lock on Eddie and stay. He steps forward, through the table, like he needs to get to Eddie as quickly as possible, furniture be damned.
“Steve,” Eddie says. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
Steve’s eyes are wide and wild. His hands, large, clawed, and silver-rough, shake. He steps closer without a word, locked on Eddie.
“C’mon, man, you’re freaking me out,” Eddie says. “Steve, what’s- mmph-”
Steve reaches forward, wraps his hands around Eddie’s throat, and pulls him in for a kiss. Eddie goes willingly, falling against Steve and angling upward to adjust for Steve looming over him, hands clutching in- fuck, the yellow sweater, stretched out and too small on this new version of Steve but soft, pulled right out of his Upside Down closet. No grime and guts from the real world.
Steve kisses Eddie frantically but gently, gentle as he has been every time with Eddie, hyper-aware of his strength and claws and fangs. Eddie feels the tips of the claws pressing into his scalp where Steve has slid his hands up into his hair. His mouth moves against Eddie’s and his fangs catch on Eddie’s lower lip, drawing blood that Steve swipes away with his tongue.
When they break apart, Steve keeps Eddie close, one hand still up high on the back of Eddie’s neck, the other wrapped around his back. Eddie’s panting, catching his breath, but Steve looks steadier after all that.
“I thought you knew,” Steve says, voice a rumble that shakes everything in Eddie. “Fuck, Eddie, I thought you knew.”
“What the hell?” Eddie said. “Knew what?”
“I thought you knew I was in love with you,” Steve says. “Am. Am in love with you. Fuck, I’ve been in love with you since 1984, you asshole.”
“I-” Eddie says, then his brain catches up with him. “You what?”
“This whole time, I thought you understood but Robin told me I did that thing again, where I assume you know what I mean instead of communicating.” Eddie laughs wetly; that does sound like a Robin comment. “When I said I was in this, I meant everything. A relationship. Commitment. A future. A future with you.”
“No you didn’t,” Eddie says, like an automatic reaction. “No- you said it didn’t have to mean anything.”
“It meant everything,” Steve says. Then his voice bleeds into Eddie’s mind, the way he’d been practicing:
I didn’t just love you. I couldn’t help falling in love with you.
Then it’s not words but images, memories — Steve’s version of events. Skull Rock, nights at the trailer, days by the pool, Scoops Ahoy, Family Video, driving in the BMW, Rick’s boathouse. All of it from Steve’s perspective, all of it with this paradoxically heavy and light feeling, like a frightened joy, like a blissful anxiety.
“Steve, fuck,” Eddie says in disbelief as Steve’s overwhelming feelings cloud him. “I- me too. I’ve been in love with you for forever, man. I thought you just didn’t want-”
“I do,” Steve says. “I did, and I do.”
Eddie kisses him again and pulls him close, close, until there’s no air between them. Steve makes a low sound and gets his arms under Eddie’s thighs, picking him up and walking him backward like he’s going to put Eddie’s back against the wall and yes, yes, Eddie wants that too, wants that like he wants air, and Steve’s hands are cool and possessive as they grip him tight, and-
“Not the time, idiots!” Robin is saying, and Eddie pulls back with a deep breath like he’s surfacing from underwater. Robin smacks her hand against Steve’s shoulder. “God, am I going to have to spray you with water like my mom’s dog when he’s humping the couch pillow? Knock it off!”
Steve, eyes dark, blinks once and then grins at Robin. “Hey, Robbie. He loves me back.”
“Yeah, I heard, dingus,” Robin says. “We all heard.”
“Oh,” Steve says. “Right.”
He lets Eddie down, and they both turn to find the room in stunned silence behind them. Hopper’s pinching the bridge of his nose, so now Eddie knows where Steve got that move from. Joyce looks like she walked in on something she wasn’t meant to see, but is still trying to be encouraging. The kids- well.
“So, uh,” Eddie says weakly. “I think the cat’s out of the bag?”
“Am I a dog, or a cat?” Steve says. Then his eyes go a little blank, like he’s listening to something far away, and he says, “I have to go. He’s- Vecna’s- he’s suspicious.”
“Yeah, go, go,” Eddie says.
“I-” Steve says, and looks around the room. The kids are still in shock, apparently; Dustin’s mouth is fully hanging open. Eddie hasn’t looked at Nancy yet. Maybe he just won’t. Ever. Steve’s expression goes from dopey to serious. “Guys, this is- you have to be careful. It’s…” He goes a little blank again. Eddie wonders if Vecna’s trying to listen in. If he’s fighting in the hallways of Steve’s mind right now. Steve says, earnest, on the edge of desperate, “I can’t keep him from finding you. I can’t- it’s going to be hard. This is it.”
“We know,” Nancy says. “But we can do it. We’ve got your help, and he doesn’t know the plan.”
“Just be careful,” Steve says again. He lets go of Eddie for the first time and gathers Robin up in a hug. “I have to go. I have to-”
He turns back to Eddie, pulls him close, rests their foreheads together. “Hey,” he says. “Make him pay, babe.”
Echoes. It’s all echoes. Eddie nods. Steve nods. Echoes and circles, around and around. Steve kisses him again, brief. In one blink to the next, the pressure on his ears is gone, and so is Steve.
“What,” says Dustin, “the fuck.”
“Language,” Eddie says automatically. “We should go? Right?”
And he leads the way out, flushed bright red and wondering what his odds are of not being interrogated.
The odds are bad.
The drive is excruciating. They’re all crammed in Eddie’s van, which Wayne dropped off last night and they’d parked out in a copse of trees to keep the neighbors from calling the cops on the suspicious beater outside the absent Harringtons’ house. Hopper’s up front with Joyce, and everyone under age twenty-one is crammed into the back. They are all, without fail, staring at Eddie. Even Hopper, his eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror way more than necessary.
He grins sheepishly. “So. Uh. Big Vecna fight, right guys?”
“Since 1984?” Dustin screeches, and so the flood starts. “It’s an affront! A betrayal of trust!”
“Because it was a secret, or because it happened at all?” Max questions gleefully. “You can’t get mad when other people have sex lives, Dustin.”
“No sex talk!” Hopper barks.
“Yes, exactly,” Mike groans. “I don’t need to know any of this.”
“Is this because they’re gay?” Lucas says. “Your mother raised you better than that, Michael.”
“I’ve seen those Reagan yard signs, no she did not,” Eddie mutters, and Robin pinches him.
“It’s not because they’re gay, it’s because it’s them,” Mike says, like Eddie’s not right there.
“You should have told us!” Dustin is still yelling, far too loud in the enclosed space.
“I didn’t even know you when it started!” Eddie says. “Blame your babysitter!”
“Wait, okay, I need to know,” Max says, leaning forward like it’s gossip. “So you’ve been hooking up-”
“No sex talk!” Hopper yells again, sounding more defeated this time.
“-all this time, and he really never told you about the Upside Down?”
“No,” Eddie says. “Can we talk about literally anything else?”
“No,” El says. “I do not want to think about Vecna. Who did the first kiss.”
“Oh my god,” Eddie and Hopper say at the same time.
Eddie deflects as well as he can, with absolutely no help from Robin, who just periodically whispers, “Told you you should have told them before now,” which is wildly unhelpful, until Hopper’s shouting, “Shut up, we’re here!”
He parks the van off in the woods on the side of the deserted stretch of highway. The woods leading to the Hawkins Lab campus are unstable and pockmarked with small rifts; the actual gate is still intact, according to El, but the way there is not easy to cross, and to Eddie’s relief the questioning dies off as they concentrate on navigating.
But, of course, he can’t get off scot-free. Soon enough, he hears the rhythmic crunch of someone with him. Two someones.
“I knew you two were, like, sleeping together,” Max says, no warning, her hand on Lucas’ arm to guide her forward, “but I didn’t know it was love.”
“You didn’t know shit!” Eddie says. “We kept it a secret!”
Max’s deadpan look could have poked his eye out, it was so pointed. “Sure,” she says. “Anyway, I’m happy for you or whatever.” Eddie smiles at her, his little feral neighbor, and she must be able to feel it because she rolls her hazy white eyes and says, “God, you’re the worst.”
Eddie keeps moving forward, jumping over a rift he discovers partway through that he’s misjudged, and has a moment to think, well, shit, before a hand grabs him and tugs him forward.
“Oh thank fuck,” Eddie says, then audibly gulps when it’s Nancy there in front of him. “Hey, Wheeler.”
“So when I talked to you about Steve having a crush on you,” she says, and like Max it’s with no warning to let him gird his quaking loins, “you were already together.”
“Yes?” Eddie says. “But to be fair, I thought he told you that to make you jealous. I didn’t think he actually… meant it.”
“Steve usually says what he means,” Nancy says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There are a thousand answers to that, but Eddie gives the most all-encompassing. “I was scared,” he says. “I didn’t want you to know that I was the one who you had to be better than to get him back, because I was so sure it would happen.”
Nancy helps him to his feet and they set off together. “Steve and I… we never would have worked,” she says. “He wanted me because I was the first to not give in immediately, and I wanted him because he’d picked me over everyone else.”
“I’m sure it was more than that,” Eddie says. “For both of you.”
“Maybe,” Nancy allows. She cuts him a catlike grin. “He’s also nice to look at.”
Eddie splutters a barrage of vowels. “Yeah, obviously, but I cannot do this with you.”
“What?” Nancy asks innocently. “Does he still do the thing where he bites your bottom lip a little while kissing?”
Eddie covers his face with both hands, which is stupid because he’s walking through a minefield of open holes to the pits of hell, and makes a fraught noise. “Yes. Shut up, I implore you.”
Nancy chuckles, then sobers. “I’m sorry it had to be like this. I wish you could have told us on your own time.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says.
“And I’m sorry that we didn’t know what Steve was to you, all this time,” Nancy continues. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“Yeah, not great,” Eddie says, tugging at his hair because he can’t mess with his bangs while they’re up under his bandana. “But you didn’t know.”
“No, but now we do,” she says, and grins. “Welcome to the family, I suppose.”
“Jesus alive,” Eddie says. “Wheeler, you’re a nightmare.”
She laughs, and they’re quiet for the rest of the trek, until they’re crawling through broken-down metal gates and around piles of rubble to get inside the abandoned lab. Hopper and El are in front with flashlights, Jonathan in the rear. Their footsteps echo eerily in the quiet.
When Eddie follows Dustin into the room with the gate, he isn’t surprised to see the red, livid scar on the wall slowly crumbling open, but he’s not thrilled about it either. El pulls it wider with a lift of her hand, and she wipes the blood from under her nose as she says, “Hurry.”
Once through, Nancy gives everyone a few seconds to look around in horror — some of their group seeing the Upside Down for the first time, and the Byers family in particular all looking like they want to be sick — before she says, “Steve’s not here.”
“Maybe he’s leading Vecna somewhere else?” suggests Lucas.
“He’s supposed to be here,” Nancy insists.
“Doesn’t seem great that part one of phase one is already off the rails,” Robin says, chewing on the end of her gloves.
“He was supposed to meet us, that was the plan,” Nancy says.
“Well, we can’t wait for him all day,” Hopper says. “This… Vecna, he reads minds? Then we don’t want to hang out and wait for him to find us. Stay together, like we planned.”
Every step feels like the wrong one as they move away from the lab and back towards town. The distance doesn’t seem exactly equal to the real world, or maybe their perception of time is different; it seems to take no time at all to get to the broken, scummy windows of Melvald’s and the movie theater, and beyond that towards the neighborhoods that ring the town center.
“I don’t like this,” Dustin says. “Steve said there were monsters everywhere. Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Just keep moving,” Nancy says. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Almost there.”
Vecna didn’t recreate every house in all of Hawkins. Just like when Eddie, Steve, Robin, and Nancy went searching for the Wheelers’ house and it was the only one for a mile around, the same is true of the Creel house. Dense, broken trees and slithering vines nearly obscure the view, and the sky feels weighted overhead, like eyes are everywhere. They step into a clearing where they can move closer together, the trees ringed around them like a perimeter.
“This feels like a trap, right?” Eddie asks, hushed.
“Astute,” says a voice, and Eddie hates it immediately. “Hello, little sister.”
Eddie whips around to find- oh, god.
Vecna. Eddie’s never seen him, just heard descriptions, and it’s so much worse than he thought. Slimy, tentacle-covered body, strangely inhuman eyes, oversized hands and wickedly sharp claws.
Then—
“Steve,” Eddie whispers.
Steve is behind Vecna, at his shoulder. He looks exactly the same as he did when he appeared to them a couple of hours ago, tall and wide and silver and fanged, but where before he was single-mindedly focused on Eddie, here he looks scattered, scared. His eyes are desperate and his own clawed hands are clenched. He towers over Vecna now, and looks like a monster on a leash.
“You didn’t warn them,” Vecna says, and Eddie realizes he’s talking to Steve, who flinches. “I expected some trick, that you thought you could fool me. I’m glad to see that’s not the case.”
“Run,” Steve tells them, seeming to ignore Vecna’s taunting. “Run, please, just run, just go-”
“Ah, it’s too late for that,” Vecna says. He steps forward. “You let them come and be in harm’s way. Now you must fulfill your oath.”
“Oath,” Dustin says, voice quavering. “What oath?”
Vecna just smiles. He lifts a hand, and Eddie expects someone to rise in the air, expects bones breaking, expects screaming. Instead, Steve falls to his knees. He convulses on all fours, shaking and shuddering. Eddie was right about one thing though: Steve screams. He screams.
A few seconds later, he stumbles to his feet and Eddie watches, horrified, as great, dark wings spread from Steve’s bloody back. His eyes glint mad gold.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Vecna says.
Steve bends his knees and hurtles towards them with a snarl. In a second, he has Dustin up in the air by his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he says through bared fangs, then he launches into the air, taking Dustin with him.
Notes:
(dodges tomatoes) everyone loves cliffhangers, right?
Amazing art by Sierra - go give her some love!
NOTES:
- Yes, Steve recycles what he heard from Robin when talking to Eddie about their relationship (specifically using the words relationship, commitment, future - he just says them, doesn’t try to work them into a sentence) because he figures hey, my way isn’t working, but Robin’s a genius and maybe she can help me clean up my mess.
- I think Max would be/was the most interested in Steve keeping secrets from Eddie (she asks him about that both in this interlude and in ch. 8 after the anniversary blowup) because she knows she could have been kept on the outside of things just as easily.
- Steve's got wings! The Amazing Flying Steve!
Chapter 13: ten: THE BEFORE | THE AFTER
Summary:
Steve says, “Look, I made a deal. You can go. You’re safe. Go.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Eddie says, and, god, tears stream immediately down his face. It makes Steve’s legs want to buckle, to drop to his knees and beg, to tell Eddie whatever he wants to hear. “Don’t you dare tell me to go. I can’t go!”
“You can!” Steve says frantically. “I can’t protect you here, and you’re- you’re all I can save. You have to go, Eddie!”
Notes:
Hello hello! For those of you who may be concerned, I recommend a quick re-read of the tags above. This is a bumpy ride, but not an unhappy one.
TW for some pretty intensive fight scenes and some descriptions of injuries. I'd consider it all pretty canon-typical, but let me know if you need details or recommend that I add other TWs or tags.
Also, if you've been reading along as I've been posting, I went back and added art to chapter seven (THE TRIO) and the final interlude (THE VISITOR RETURNS). Go check it out, it's amazing!! Sierra was a FANTASTIC partner in this BB process and I'm so glad she picked this project to work on!
Enjoy :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
NOW
If Vecna wanted an emotional blow from Steve’s sudden transformation and attack, he got it. Dustin struggles in his grasp as he flies upward on unsteady wings — wings — and the others scream in betrayal. Steve ignores Robin’s shriek of “What are you doing?” because he can’t think about that right now. He pulls Dustin up even with the tree line as he gasps, scrabbling at Steve’s hand around his throat.
He stops, hovers over the dark forest below. Dustin wheezes, “Steve!” Steve’s heart thunders in fear, and forcibly relaxes the muscles in his hand. Dustin clings to his arm for a moment instinctively, then drops.
The agonized screams erupt again from the group. Steve wants to scream with them. He doesn’t.
Steve turns back to the fight. His wings keep him aloft without thought, but they ache like under-used muscles — which, technically, they are, because they’re brand new, and Steve wonders where they came from, if he just has extra body parts now — and he wobbles a little as he makes a sharp turn, unused to maneuvering like a goddamn bird.
Vecna had followed Steve’s attack with his own: the vines and tree limbs lash out and pull his friends down, yanking the shotgun from Nancy’s hands, knocking the lighter from Robin’s. Eleven strides forward, her arm outstretched towards Vecna. He smiles, and it’s awful, and halts her in her tracks with his own outstretched hand.
There is a hill. Do you see it?
Steve knows he’s not supposed to go for Eleven. Vecna had made that clear; he didn’t have to hurt his friends, though he’d be rewarded if he did. And he could fight El, distract her, keep her from helping the others or the others from helping her, but Vecna gets the speech and the final blow. That was the arrangement.
Eddie and Robin are both pulling at the vines around El, despite the vines winding around themselves. It’s a good plan; El’s the tip of the spear. If she’s out, they’re fucked. Steve swoops down, and hoists El into the air before the others can get her free.
“No!” she shouts, and fights harder than Dustin did. “Steve!”
Steve doesn’t drop her from up high, because he doesn’t know if she’d be able to stop herself from hitting the ground or not. He wraps one arm around hers to keep them pinned to her sides as they fly, up and out of the battle to the other side of the clearing. He sets her on a small rise, and where they land is a little behind Vecna, out of his sight.
Vecna probably still knows that El is there, but he’s distracted in the moment because Robin found her lighter again and the Molotov cocktails are flying. Flames burst across Vecna’s body but he yanks vines from the ground and smothers them, only for another bottle to break against him and the cycle to start over. Behind Robin and Eddie throwing the Molotovs, Nancy’s still fighting with a vine to get her gun back.
“Steve,” El says, and her big eyes are watery and wide, and he hates this, he hates it, but he doesn’t say anything, just flies up and back into the fray.
Stupid- plants- just- let- go!
Steve tries to do what he can. He almost gets hit in the face with a tossed cocktail and deflects it so that it spins up into the trees and drops onto a writhing pile of vines that Max is fighting off with a knife and a snarl, exploding into flame that Steve can feel through the vines he’s learned to tap into. Robin swipes at him, pissed like a wet cat, eyes wild. “Motherfucker,” she hisses, and he has to trip her to make her let him go. But she knows him, and so she lets herself fall and drags him with her, so that they’re rolling end over end. They bump into Nancy, who falls sideways too, but the sudden shift means she’s able to yank her gun free and she doesn’t hesitate for a moment to swing it up and point it at Vecna, firing steadily.
El and Vecna don’t seem to notice at all, despite Vecna’s chest blossoming open with each bullet’s spray. But if Steve has accelerated healing, then Vecna has instant healing, and his body knits itself back together over and over again. El and Vecna are fighting silently, nearly motionlessly, their arms shaking as they hold their hands out and their teeth bared into snarls.
T-minus two minutes! Anyone copy?
Steve and Robin roll to a stop with her underneath him, pinned in place by his hands at her elbows and his wings pressing down on her shins. She’s fighting angrily, eyes shiny. “Dustin? You picked Dustin?” she’s shouting. “How could you?”
Copy that!
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and then rolls Robin away and wraps her wrists in vines he summons with a curl of his hand. The vines pull her away, back towards Max, as she howls curses at Steve’s back. Steve can’t think about it. He can’t think.
Gotta get there. Need a ride.
Steve whirls and finds: oh, shit.
“Eddie,” he says, and immediately wraps Eddie up in his arms and flies upward, over the mass of fighting plants and people.
“What are you doing?” Eddie shouts, and Steve sets him down on the edge of the fight, closer to Vecna and Eleven locked in their stalemate. Steve’s desperately aware that Vecna is listening to everything, every word, even as he pours all his effort into defeating El.
“Getting you out of the mess,” Steve says. “Look, I made a deal. You can go. You’re safe. Go.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Eddie says, and, god, tears stream immediately down his face. It makes Steve’s legs want to buckle, to drop to his knees and beg, to tell Eddie whatever he wants to hear. “Don’t you dare tell me to go. I can’t go!”
“You can!” Steve says frantically. “I can’t protect you here, and you’re- you’re all I can save. You have to go, Eddie!”
They’re shouting, voices audible over everything, even the explosions. Vecna laughs. “Did you hear that?” he taunts El, who he’s locked in fierce battle with even though it just looks like they’re pointing at each other from ten feet away. “Steve made a deal for one life. The rest of you are mine.”
He swipes his big clawed hand out and knocks El sideways, vines immediately creeping up around her to hold her in place. She struggles, and she’s crying too. Hell, maybe they’re all crying. It feels like that kind of moment.
On route!
It’s en route, dummy. This is why you should be taking French!
“You have to go. Now!” Steve says, and Eddie stumbles back, shaking his head.
“I can’t believe you did this,” he says, and backs away, and Steve uses his powers to push back the vines that creep toward Eddie automatically, clearing the path for him back into the forest so he can run.
“I did what I had to,” Steve says.
He lifts his hands again, and this time he searches, sending his mind out and nudging at the crowds of consciousness all around them. One bat wakes, another. A cloud of them start shaking awake, and he can feel it when they take to the skies.
It’s time!
“I love you,” Steve says, and Eddie sobs, holding a hand over his mouth.
And the Oscar goes to…
Shut up, Mike!
Chittering sounds start rolling towards them from the edges of the trees, that snapping, guttural sound of approaching monsters. Overhead, wingbeats start to thud in the distance.
Vecna laughs, approaching Eleven slowly so that he looms over her prone on the ground. He seems to be gearing up for the pre-planned big speech when he stumbles forward, a hole ripping through his shoulder after the echoing blast of a gun.
He turns, snarling, and is hoisted into the air by an outstretched hand.
“Leave my sister alone, asshole,” says Will Byers.
Now!
“Now?” Eddie asks.
NOW! Steve yells in his mind.
Joyce Byers’ shitty Pinto comes roaring into the clearing, followed by Hopper and Joyce in Hopper’s Blazer. Will hops out of the Pinto, arm outstretched as he keeps Vecna locked in place, hovering in the air. Jon gets out of the driver’s seat, and cocks a shotgun. Hop has a pistol aimed out the Blazer’s window as he drives, popping off shots at the vines roiling around them, Joyce sitting on the open passenger window so her shotgun is steadied on the top of the car as she fires at Vecna again. Out of the back of the Blazer roll Lucas, Erica, Mike, and Dustin, each holding more Molotov cocktails and, in Dustin’s case, strapped into a flamethrower. Steve channels the blind relief at seeing Dustin in one piece into his mental voice when he says,
Henderson! You survived!
Dustin: Told you I would.
And then he’s yelling triumphantly as he lights up a garden’s worth of flailing vines.
A demodog leaps out of the treeline and is immediately crushed under the wheels of another approaching vehicle: Eddie’s van, the 1983 version a little shinier than its modern counterpart. Wayne parks and an entire motley crew falls out of the back of the van: that weird guy, Murray, with a matching flamethrower to Dustin’s; some other full grown dude Steve’s never met; Officer Powell, looking wide-eyed around at the assembled monsters and mayhem; and Jon’s friend Argyle.
“Uncle Wayne, we talked about this!” Eddie shouts. He’s knelt down with a knife next to El, slicing through the vines keeping her tied down. Steve reaches out and helps, urging the vines to sink back down into being stationary. “We need a soundtrack!”
Steve swears he can hear Wayne sigh from across the clearing, but he leans back into the van and rolls the volume knob up. Guitar bursts out of the van’s shitty speakers a few seconds later, a relentless rhythm that Steve recognizes immediately.
Steve: There are other bands besides Metallica.
Eddie: Symmetry, baby! Circles and echoes, echoes and circles!
Robin: I’d absolutely love it if you two wouldn’t flirt on the party line.
Lucas: Agreed. Steve, help!
Steve flies over to Lucas and Max, who are being advanced on by a full-fledged demogorgon. Steve lands in front of them and holds his hands up. “Go on,” Steve says, and shoos the demogorgon back. “Go on, get!” The demogorgon pauses, then opens up its petal mouth and roars. Steve sighs. “Fine.”
He lifts his hands and summons the nearest vines, wrapping them around the demogorgon’s version of wrists, tying it into place. He holds a hand out and is given Max’s knife, which he uses to slash forward and open the monster from stem to stern. He gives the knife back and holds up his hands, curling his fingers into fists and making a ripping motion like he’s violently opening curtains. The demogorgon splits into two along the knife line in its center.
“Thanks,” Lucas says breathlessly.
“Aren’t you supposed to be doing something else?” Max says, and her white eyes are looking up, where Steve’s just noticed the assembled flock of demobats hovering, their wingbeats concussive now that he’s noticed it.
“Ah,” Steve says. “Yeah. Thanks, kid.”
He ruffles her hair and she growls at him, and Lucas grins and cocks his arm back to throw a Molotov at a demodog scratching at the van.
Eddie: You leave my baby alone, Sinclair!
Lucas: Steve’s fine?
Eddie: THE VAN, SINCLAIR. MY FIRST LOVE.
Hopper: This is not what this connection
is supposed to be used for.
Robin: Just don’t think about Steve naked, Eddie.
A second later, a dozen different voices think EW at top volume when Eddie does just that.
Eddie: What? It’s like saying “don’t think about elephants” —
you say naked Steve, I’m gonna think about naked Steve!
Wayne: Boy, if you don’t focus on the problem at hand.
Eddie: Right, which is Sinclair defiling my van!
The van is fine, though, still bellowing Metallica at top volume from the crackling, overworked speakers. Eddie sings along as he swings his spear at the monsters trying to get to El, who’s back on her feet and locked in battle with Vecna. Vecna has a hand outstretched towards her, face painted into a maniacal grimace, and another towards Will, who advances from the other direction.
“With all our screaming, we’re gonna rip right through your brain,” Eddie howls, that fast patter of lyrics it took Steve a dozen listens to even parse. “We got the lethal power, it is causing you sweet pain!” He stabs his spear through a vine, which withers away. Steve’d had a theory that the vines and monsters of the world would be held to Vecna’s bargain and wouldn’t be able to hurt Eddie and it seems like that’s the case, the vines edging past him to creep towards El and the demo-creatures giving him a wide berth. Eddie doesn’t have the same restrictions, and he gleefully swipes at another vine, continuing to sing, “When we start to rock, we never stop again! Hit the lights!”
Steve can’t watch, though, because Max was right and he’s got another focus: the bats are waiting. He lifts up into the air and summons them forward to hurtle down into the battle, about half ripping into their fellow monsters with teeth and claws, and the rest funneled towards Vecna, held in place by Will and El.
“No! You are mine to command!” Vecna roars, and snaps the arm he was directing at Will up at the bats, shoving them away with a mighty push. He suffers for it, though, when Will curls his hands into fists and forces that arm down, trapped against Vecna’s side, useless. Then it’s back to a standstill, the three deadlocked.
Steve holds out his arm and Speed Racer, with its distinctive lines up its little monster back, settles like a falcon on a perch, its tail curling around Steve’s forearm. Steve lands near Vecna, and nudges Speed Racer to hop over onto Vecna’s remaining outstretched arm instead. It moves like a cat, winding and wending around until it has settled around the squishiest part of Vecna’s abdomen, anchored in place with sharp claws.
“That’s the thing about pets,” Steve says. “If you don’t treat them right, they’ll find someone new. Kind of like girlfriends.”
Robin: Okay, whoa, I object to that on behalf of all girls.
Speed Racer chitters, rears back, and plunges its open mouth into Vecna’s stomach.
Vecna screams, and the entire dimension seems to shiver.
In the chaos, the bats are able to decimate more of the vines holding Wayne and Erica hostage, taking out the demogorgons swiping their massive clawed hands at Hopper and Mike. Dustin and Murray light up everything that moves in flickering flame. Larger monsters lumber around the edges of the clearing, held back by the vines Steve manipulates and the fire. Eddie stays on guard duty next to El, knocking away anything that comes for her.
Robin finds Steve, and grips his arm before passing him her lucky knife — the only one she hasn’t cut herself with. “I still can’t believe you picked Dustin to get the flamethrower,” Robin shouts over the howling wind and cries of dying monsters. “I wanted it!”
“We didn’t even know for sure that Will would be able to catch him with his powers!” Steve says. “And Dustin doesn’t have collarbones, so that’s fewer bones that could break if he actually fell.”
Dustin: Oh, so all my other bones are fine to break?
Hopper: Is this the time?
Max: No fun, Chief.
El: Steve.
Her nose is pouring blood. So is Will’s. Vecna is struggling, one hand trapped to his side, the other outstretched towards the little girl who defeated him before. A few bats have converged on Vecna, finding an easy meal, but Steve shoos them away as he approaches.
“You’ve lost,” Steve says simply.
“Never,” Vecna snarls. He’s smaller than Steve now, with Steve’s monster form expanded up and out to be the weapon he was shaped into. Steve hadn’t noticed before.
Vecna might be the big speech guy. Steve isn’t. He grasps Robin’s lucky knife and swings out: with Vecna’s physical and mental shields pulled apart by El and Will, the knife slices through.
Vecna’s hand falls to the ground, thumping wetly and still menacing even separated from him, and his body crumples, curled around the stump of his arm. El and Will approach slowly, keeping Vecna pinned in place as Steve stands over him.
When Steve had pitched the idea to the others, a double-bluff of plans he’d keep hidden in the secret place in his mind, everyone had objected. At first, Steve thought it was just a bad plan — he was never the plan guy before, after all — but after the uproar died down, it turned out that they were just worried for his safety.
“If he finds the real plan, we can come up with something else, but you’ll be toast, dude,” Lucas had objected.
“Yeah, no, I don’t like it,” Eddie had said.
“Me either,” Robin said.
“Then I won’t let him find the plan,” Steve had said. “I’ll let him find a decoy, plus all the shit he loves to see about my dad hating me and no one loving me or whatever” — at this, a good half-dozen people in the room made outraged noises, which he appreciated but bulldozed past — “and he’ll think he’s got me trapped into helping him. But I can block him out to keep the real plan secret and keep in contact with you all. I can.”
“It’s not that we don’t believe you, kid,” Hopper said heavily. “It’s a question of risk.”
“I’ve turned into a monster. Risk was always part of it,” Steve had argued.
Dustin, who’d been strangely silent about it all, made a noise like he was finally remembering the name of a song that had been stuck in his head. “Oh, fuck,” he said.
“Language,” said Steve and Joyce.
“Right, sorry, it’s just-” Dustin turned to Eddie. “It’s like the campaign. The Cult of Vecna!”
“Yeah, man,” Eddie said, raising an eyebrow. “I remember.”
“No, not like that. In the final battle, the night that Chrissy-” he stopped when Eddie winced a little, “one of Vecna’s lieutenants betrayed him to help us. Kas, remember?”
“Yeah, that was awesome,” Mike said. “When he took out Vecna’s eye!”
“Your point, boys?” Hopper said.
“Kas’ betrayal worked because Vecna never expected it. He was too close, Vecna never thought he’d be a threat because he’d given Kas everything he had. Which is why he never saw it coming.”
“Steve the Betrayer,” Eddie murmured, and looked over at Steve. “Sounds metal as hell, as scared as I am to admit that.”
“Bitchin’,” El agreed.
“Actually, it sounds lame as shit,” Erica said, crossing her arms. “But I think we do it anyway.”
“You know, you didn’t have to make me into this,” Steve says, looking down at Vecna, bleeding and rotting and convulsing. “You could have just stayed here and ruled your little domain.”
“I could never allow the stain of humanity to go unchecked,” Vecna snarled. “The worthlessness of-”
“Yeah, no,” Steve says, “I don’t care. All I want to say is that you’re a lot like my dad. You teach me everything you know, and then you’re surprised when I use it for myself.”
“Need this?” Robin offers her knife again. They’ve all gathered in a loose semi-circle, leaving the monsters to fight each other on the edges of the clearing, Metallica still blaring in the background. Steve thinks he can feel the biggest monsters waking, the ones with wings like him, the ones larger than cars, than buses, the ones he’d never seen awake. He wants this to be done.
“No,” Steve says. “I think I’ll use the gifts I was given.”
He holds up his hand, blackened claws and all, and plunges it into Vecna’s face.
Power floods Steve’s body and he’s flung back, stumbling to stay upright, arms outstretched and head thrown back. His wings are raised up in full behind him like he’s being electrified. He can feel all of this, abstractly, but overpowering all of that is a voice in Steve’s mind.
WE MADE A DEAL, STEVE HARRINGTON.
AN AGREEMENT TO KEEP YOU WHOLE,
AS LONG AS IT WAS IN SERVICE TO ME.
Vecna’s dead. Steve’s sure of it; felt the pulse of his death ricochet through the world, felt his skull give under Steve’s grasping claws. Yet his voice rings out like he’s standing tall, looming over Steve, about to tear him to shreds.
YOU BROKE THAT DEAL.
Steve, still distant from his body and the way it’s moving of its own accord, the way other bodies — other hands — are holding onto it, feels his knees hit muddy, churned-up soil.
YOU BETRAYED WHAT KEPT YOU ALIVE.
He’s a lamp plugged into a socket. He’s a BMW filled with rocket fuel. He’s the crackle of an amp being plugged in to a too-loud guitar. He’s full. He’s spilling over. He’s pinned under the dense weight of power he doesn’t understand, can’t comprehend. He knows he could reach out with one hand and level this version of Hawkins. He could reach that same hand up and level the real Hawkins too. Fire and blood. Ash. Dust. Bodies. He can’t do any of that, because the power is ripping him to shreds.
YOU TAKE IN WHAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL.
He hears, like echoes of noise from underwater, screams. He isn’t distant from his body anymore; he feels every old wound open and start pouring blood. The bat bites. The road rash on his back. Then, in consecutive order, the bones Vecna broke, the eviscerations. The power in his blood tries to heal him, but the power is also what’s causing the the damage: like cancer, Steve thinks. A body eating itself.
YOU WILL SUFFER, STEVE HARRINGTON.
AS MY FINAL ACT, I SWEAR: YOU WILL SUFFER.
Steve’s spine cracks. He falls into the mud.
NOWHERE
Water. He’s up to his ankles in it, swishing and lapping over his shoes. He’s wearing the blue Nikes that matched his Scoops outfit perfectly. Or, no, the white ones he left in Reefer Rick’s boat when he jumped into the lake. No, he’s barefoot. Does he even have feet? He can’t remember.
Water stretches in all directions but that’s it. Otherwise, it’s just darkness. Black and still from his ankles up to the sky overhead, or ceiling, or nothingness. Nothing stretches on and on in all directions, unending. He’s supposed to be doing something. He’s supposed to be… someone.
He is someone.
He remembers… pain. Fear. Red sky and muddy ground. Blood. Bats. A voice in his head, clanging like he stuck his head up in a bell before it was rung.
Vecna.
Oh, fuck.
Steve’s breathing speeds up and he whips around, looking behind him, expecting to see Vecna looming over him. Except, no, because Vecna… died? He died. He was there, on the ground, and Steve’s hand was buried up to his knuckles into the guy’s face. He definitely died. And then Steve got all his powers.
Steve lifts his hands and tries to summon something. Send something away. Twist the fabric of the world. But there’s nothing to move, to twist, to pull. He turns his hand over and looks for the lights. Nothing.
Okay. Right. So… Steve’s dead too. He’s dead and this is the afterlife. A lot more stagnant than he thought it’d be, to be fair. Like, sure, he wasn’t expecting the story he heard growing up in church, back when his dad still cared about keeping up those particular appearances, before Mom got sick and that gave them a reason to skip Sunday mornings in the pews; he didn’t really think little fat babies with wings and halos would usher him into Cloud Land, or whatever. But maybe he’d get to see his grandpa, who died a few years ago, or maybe Barb, and he could get some atonement from her. He could apologize for being a dumbass, and that she got caught up in the crossfire of something so much bigger than all of them.
It’s not that he hadn’t seen death coming. In fact, he suspects he’s squeaked out a couple more months than what he was allotted to begin with, with his residency in the Upside Down. Sure, he had to be changed into a monster to get those couple of months, but it was more time with the people he loved, so that had to be worth the cost.
So this is death, and he’s just supposed to think himself into eternity, or something. Eddie had told him about different planes in D&D, including one that was just gray blankness where souls went to someday be judged. Steve looks around and figures, besides being black instead of gray, it’s not far off.
Eddie. God, Steve just left him there. He just left all of them there. He wonders if this is the kind of place where he can watch the people he left behind, a voyeuristic attempt at seeing everyone one last time. It would be torture, watching from a distance without being able to interact with anyone, but he’d done that before, hadn’t he? Before he and El and Eddie had figured out the mind link thing?
Steve stands still in the water, sets his hands out at his side, palms up. Closes his eyes. Thinks about the lights in his palm and that lifting feeling as he moved through dimensions to get back to his people.
For a moment, it’s just the muted sloshing of water. Then, distantly: “Steve?”
Steve’s eyes are still closed, and his feet are still submerged in water. He doesn’t think he’s back in the Upside Down, or the real world. It doesn’t feel different. Maybe his brain is making things up. Maybe he’s hearing what he wants to hear.
“Steve? Baby?”
God, his brain is good. His brain is very good. It sounds like he’s actually here, but there’s no way because why would Eddie be in Steve’s hell?
“Baby, are you okay? What’s wrong with him? Is this not the right place?”
“No. This is him,” says another voice, and Steve processes that other voice, then the words themselves, and opens his eyes.
Eddie and El. Battle-bloody and weary, smiling at Steve.
“Hey, hot stuff,” Eddie says, eyes bright and wet. “Thought we lost you there for a minute.”
“Eddie,” Steve says. It sounds like his voice again. “El. What… what happened?”
El’s face pulls into its fierce scowl. “You took in all of Henry’s power, when you killed him. It was a trap. A…” She looks at Eddie.
“A failsafe,” Eddie says. “A Plan Z, when he’d tried everything else and knew he was going to lose, so he could screw us one last time on the way out.”
“He thought that I would be the one to end him,” El says. “If he could overwhelm me in his last moments, he could have taken over my body, and had my powers and his together.”
“Fuck,” Steve says. “Did he take my powers?”
“No, baby,” Eddie says. “You absorbed it all. He’s gone.”
“And I’m… dead,” Steve guesses. “Well, I’m glad you all are safe. It’s worth it, if you’re okay.”
Both Eddie and El make exasperated faces at him. “No, it’s not worth it,” Eddie says. “You aren’t acceptable collateral damage, Harrington. We’re all making it out of this shit alive, or it’s a failed mission.”
“I’m here,” Steve says, extending his arm out, “and I don’t think there’s an exit.”
They exchange another loaded glance. “About that,” Eddie says.
“We had a plan,” El says. “In case this happened.”
“You planned for me to kill Vecna and absorb his powers like some kind of nightmare sponge,” Steve says. “Really.”
Eddie steps closer, and for the first time Steve realizes he must not be a monster here, or at least not fully. Eddie’s taller than him again, just the slightest bit of height advantage he used to rub in Steve’s face when they played around. But then, no: Steve can feel the weight of wings pulling his shoulders back. When Eddie’s close enough, Steve lifts a hand to his cheek on instinct and his fingers are still tipped in claws. His skin still shimmers silver.
Still partly a monster, then, even in the afterlife. But Eddie, never shying from Steve’s worst parts, grips Steve’s wrist as he cups Eddie’s cheek. “We planned for everything, sweetheart,” he says, eyes soft and sad. “We knew you were the one with the greatest risk, and none of us could stand that. So yes, we planned for this. We planned for everything, and hid it from you so Vecna could never know.”
“We would not lose you,” El says. “It’s against the rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes,” El says, and Eddie says, “El, we don’t have to-”
“I want to hear the rules,” Steve says.
“One, do not let Steve die,” El says, like a recitation. “Two, do not let Steve be seriously maimed. Three, do not let Steve be sort-of maimed. Four, do not harm Steve’s hair.”
“That one was for you,” Eddie says, covering up most of his face, which is bright pink. “In case you got fussy about the other ones.”
“Five, bring him home,” El finishes.
“Oh,” Steve says.
“Eddie wrote the rules down and made us say them every time we planned,” El says.
“Oh,” Steve says again, helpless. “Okay. Then what’s the plan?”
“Well,” Eddie says.
“You’re not going to like it,” El says bluntly.
“Tell me anyway,” Steve says.
“Before she does,” Eddie cuts in. “Everyone agreed to this. Erica and Wayne volunteered as well, but we kept it to the core group so that it would be easiest for you, but you have everyone’s full consent.”
“You’re freaking me out,” Steve says. “Full consent for what?”
“You are still connected to all of us,” El says. “In the Upside Down, your body is still trying to rip itself apart and heal itself with the same powers. We came here to the in-between to find you, but your body and mind are still there.”
“Jesus,” Steve says.
“Yes,” El says, serious. “We want you to use your connection to us to share some of the power so you do not have to take it all.”
“The power ripping me to shreds? You want me to share that power?” Steve says. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“You will die,” El says. “If you don’t share it, you die.”
“Then I die,” Steve says. “I can’t share it, are you nuts? What if I send too much and one of you dies instead?”
“You won’t,” El says.
“That’s not enough for me, El, I’m sorry,” Steve says. “No, I can’t do this.”
“Dustin was going to sneak into the Upside Down to get your body entirely on his own,” Eddie says quietly. “Robin and I found the plans before you started visiting my dreams and ripped them up, gave him hell for it because he’d just get himself killed too, but he was still dead-set on it. And Erica, did you know she’s decided her new favorite song is Dancing in the Dark, because she knows it’s one of your favorites? Max steals your clothes from your closet and wears them more than I do. So does Lucas. Robin-”
Steve’s crying. He doesn’t know when it started, but it pours down his cheeks, and he thinks this hurts more than everything else he’s ever endured: the weight of love pressing him down so that he can barely breathe.
Eddie’s teary too, lip wobbling. “Robin and I can’t live without you, baby. We’re making jokes to each other that only you would laugh at. We sleep with a hole in between us where you’re supposed to go. We’re stuck without you. We built every plan around you and then you were gone.” He squeezes Steve’s wrist, too hard. “You were gone, and now we have you back, and you think we’re going to let you go? No chance, Harrington. You picked us, and you’re stuck with us.”
“I can’t hurt you,” Steve whispers.
“We can take it,” Eddie says.
“Rule five,” El says. “Bring him home.”
“I can’t find the lights,” Steve says. “I tried, I can’t.”
“You’re blocked from everything because you’re shielding from the pain,” El says. “You came here to keep safe, but you have to come back, and we’ll be there to help.”
The water laps over Steve’s ankles but he’s not actually wet. He’s here, but here doesn’t exist, whatever it is. When Steve focuses, he can feel the pull of his body back in the present. He can feel the thrumming of pain too, waiting for him.
“Hey,” Eddie says, when Steve squares up to that distant reality and takes a deep breath. When Steve looks his way, he’s smiling. “I love you.”
“Fuck,” Steve says. “Yeah. I love you too. That’s cheating, you know.”
“I’m using every weapon at my disposal,” Eddie says. “See you in the real world, baby.”
Pain.
Streams of lights, like blood vessels, like electric wires, like tributaries into a river.
Pain.
Others. Others around. Voices.
We’re here.
It echoes.
We’re here. (we’re here we’re here we’re here)
Let us help. (let us help let us help let us)
Let go, Steve. (let go let go let go let go let)
Pain.
Steve lets his grip on it loosen. Just a little. Just a little.
Others screaming. He tries to pull the pain back, but they don’t let him. They grip onto it, pull it into themselves. Steve feels it pulse along his veins and into theirs; a transfusion.
Pain.
Darkness.
NOW
Steve wakes slowly to a weight on his legs, his stomach, his arms. He must be back in the trailer, covered up in demobats after falling asleep. He’ll let himself wake in a minute, feel their sharp claws flex when he shoos them away. He’ll let himself stare up at the Upside Down Munson trailer ceiling in a moment, trace patterns in the mold stains and dripping water.
He can hear the bats breathing, louder than usual. He also hears a rhythmic sound beyond himself — beeping. A steady, mechanical beeping.
That’s interesting enough to pull his tired eyes open, and then he has to immediately slam them shut again when light floods in, burning his aching eyes.
It’s not bright in the Upside Down. It’s dark. Positively gloomy.
Which means.
“Steve?”
Robin’s not in the Upside Down. But she is here, wherever here is.
“Someone close the blinds.” Hopper. That’s Hopper. The last time Steve saw Hopper, he was…
Firing a gun into a mound of demodogs, snapping at swooping demobats. Right. The fight. The battle. The last stand. That happened, then. And Steve… died? But not really.
“Yeah, if it was too bright for me, I can’t imagine what it’s like for him.”
Dustin.
The brightness pushing at Steve’s eyelids dims, and he tries again to force his eyes open. He’s crowded by faces looking down at him, hands gripping his arms and hands, torsos leaned across his legs, his lower stomach. His friends, his family. Robin and Dustin are to his left, each trying to grip more of his hand than the other, like it’s a competition to hold Steve’s hand more. Then it’s Lucas, steadying Max, Mike and Will, Jon, Nancy, Erica fully sitting on Steve’s right shin, Hop, El, Joyce, even Wayne.
“We,” Steve rasps, throat dry and cracking like he’s been asleep for a year. Maybe he has. He has no idea.
“Yeah, Stevie,” Robin says, watery. “We won.”
“Oh,” Steve lets his head rest back. “Good.”
“Sleep,” says Hopper gruffly. “We’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“Wh’r’s Eddie?” Steve mumbles, but he’s asleep before he gets an answer.
When he wakes again, everyone’s still there, but not leaning over him quite so intensely. It takes an enormous effort to crack his eyes open and an act of pure will to focus enough to catch that Nancy and Robin are playing cards on either side of Steve, using his stomach as a table between them.
“Good morning, Sleeping Dingbat,” Robin says when she notices him awake.
“Except it’s actually two in the morning, so really it's nighttime,” Nancy says, setting down her cards and smiling at Steve.
“Where are we?” Steve asks, brain sluggish.
“A hospital in Indianapolis,” Nancy answers. “The DoE didn’t feel like Hawkins General was secure enough for you.”
“Secure,” Steve says. “Like… I might break out?”
“Or turn into a vampire monster and kill everyone,” Robin says. “You haven’t done that, by the way.”
“Cool,” Steve says. His eyes flutter closed again, and he hears Robin say, “Eddie’s going to be pissed when he hears he missed Steve again.”
And Nancy answers, “Then he should stop going out for smoke breaks.”
Steve wants to say, He can’t sit still for too long, that’s what the smoke breaks are for, but unconsciousness drags him back under.
It takes three days, or so Steve is told, to stay awake for more than a half-remembered conversation. He has blurry memories of doctors holding clipboards and men in suits asking him questions, but at least for that second one, he has a slightly more clear memory of the men in suits being told to fuck off by someone standing with their back to Steve and a distinctively loud, passionate voice. In fact, Steve halfway remembers hearing something about “shove your authoritarian overreach to a problem you fuckers caused up your collective, boring assholes. He will speak to you once he’s of sound mind and has a goddamn lawyer.”
When he wakes three days in, he feels clearer. The stiffness in his limbs outweighs the soreness and pain of a body that had been wildly overworked.
“Yeah, I bet,” Hopper snorts from a chair nearby when he mentions feeling less fuzzy. “You’ve been off the Percocet for about twelve hours now.”
There’s no sun glaring in through the windows this time. In the warm light from the couple of lamps around the room, Steve can see fine, finding faces looking back that he’s so glad to see that he might just have a breakdown about it. But maybe Hop’s wrong about the Percocet, because while the faces are all familiar, they’re also all just slightly… off.
“What happened? Someone fill me in,” he croaks.
“You killed Vecna, dude,” Dustin says immediately. “It was awesome.” He’s the same as ever, curls shoved under a hat and round cheeks, but he’s also different in a way Steve can't place.
“Okay, more than that,” Steve says. “I already knew both of those things.”
“It was actually pretty awful,” Nancy says, arms crossed and eyes down. Her cheekbones are so sharp that the shadows collect in them. When she looks up, her eyes seem to flash. “You were screaming and shaking but it was like your body was doing that on its own and you were just- gone.”
“Yeah,” Steve says. “I was in the water place. You know.” When no one said anything, he said, “The Few Plane? Something like that. El, back me up.”
El nods. “The in-between world.”
“Right,” Steve says. “The gray place where you go before you die.”
“You mean the Fugue Plane?” Dustin asks. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m dating your Dungeon Master. I thought we covered this,” Steve says. “Did I dream that? Robbie, did I dream that?”
“No, we were all witness to that,” Robin says. She’s close enough that he has to crane around to look at her, and when he does he freezes, then reaches out with both hands and pulls her face close.
“What the hell,” Steve says. “I am awake, right? This isn’t a dream?”
The details are all just a little wrong. Robin’s jaw is a hard cut of bone and her ears seem almost tipped at the top. Her eyes are at a slightly harsher angle. Her blue eyes are darker but brighter, somehow.
“What’s my favorite food?” Steve demands.
“Your mom’s bucatini alla puttanesca,” Robin says immediately. “Why?”
“You all look different,” Steve says, and lets go of Robin’s face because he’s just realized his own hands are still clawed, though less severely than before. More like black-painted nails filed to a point than the great curved weapons they were before, but still not what he looked like back before spring break. His skin is still faintly silvery. He feels his ears: they’re still pointed. He shifts his shoulders and something in the muscles feels strange, like maybe there’s something there under his skin that hadn’t been there the last time he was in this dimension.
El says, “We took the power when you shared it.”
“And it turned you all into monsters too?” Steve asks, horror creeping in. “Oh, shit.”
“There have been a couple of side effects,” Dustin says, and that's what was weird: when he grins, his teeth are a little too sharp. And now that he’s looking, he can see it: Lucas’ barely silvered forearms where he’s braced at the end of the bed, Mike’s angled ears, Jon’s claws.
Then: “Max,” Steve whispers.
Max rolls her nearly-glowing blue eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Shut up.”
“I will not!” Steve says, indignant. “You can see?”
“That’s not all I can do,” Max says, and pinches Steve’s leg, and he jumps, and laughs, and wonders what the hell they’ve gotten themselves into.
“Holy shit,” says a voice. Eddie stands in the doorway, haloed by the brighter hallway lights, carrying a ridiculous amount of coffee cups. The minute he sees Steve awake, he drops the cups and hurtles over, clambering onto Steve’s bed to kiss the ever-living daylights out of him.
“I feel like that’s medically unwise,” Dustin says.
“Oh, this is nothing,” Robin says knowingly.
“Gross,” Max says.
Steve doesn’t care. He breaks off to grip his hands in Eddie’s shirt. “You brought me back,” he says.
“I brought you home,” Eddie says.
“Rule number five,” El, Will, Lucas, and Mike say in unison.
Steve leans forward to kiss Eddie again. In the moment before their mouths meet, he glances back at the doorway, where the coffees Eddie had been carrying didn’t fall to the floor, instead hovering about three feet off the ground.
“What,” he says.
“We’re all monsters now, baby,” Eddie grins, and when he kisses Steve, Steve’s tongue brushes the edge of a fang.
Notes:
NOTES:
- Robin mentions the mental group chat being a “party line”, which I loved for multiple reasons. The first is that it’s the Party on the party line, so, hey, wordplay! The second is that I just really wanted to include party lines as a fun quirk that basically ended in the 80s. A party line is a closed loop of people, usually neighbors, all using the same phone number with different receivers. If someone calls the party line’s number, every phone in the loop would ring, and anyone in the loop could pick up. If the person calling didn’t get who they were trying to reach, the person who answered would have to go over to their house and see if they were there and let them know they had a phone call. Anyone could also pick up their receiver and hear the conversation that was already going. It was prime for gossip, which I like to think Steve’s mental group chat was also perfect for.
- During the battle, Eddie’s singing Hit the Lights from Metallica’s debut album. It was the only album they had out when the Upside Down froze in 1983.
- Kas the Betrayer cuts off Vecna’s hand and cuts out his eye in both Eddie’s campaign and the original D&D lore. Steve didn’t know that, he was just doing what felt right.
- A tiny tidbit I love: the phrases “Yeah, no,” to mean no and “No, yeah,” to mean yeah are Midwestern as all hell, and Steve never used those phrases until he started hanging out with Eddie “Midwestern Gothic” Munson.
- The Fugue Plane that Eddie told Steve about is a D&D plane, which as far as I can tell was introduced around 2001, but I can’t find any kind of documentation for what 1E afterlife options were. Apologies for the anachronism, but it was just too good not to use.
Chapter 14: epilogue: THE REST
Summary:
Biweekly check-ins for a year. Twenty-six total. Blood was drawn for testing, vitals recorded, tests on dexterity and hand-eye coordination and vision and hearing and everything else were all given. The doctors that came to check on them were new to the group, fully briefed so they didn’t react visibly to Steve and his wings, and relatively easy to work with. Eddie didn’t hate them personally, or anything.
But, god, was he ready to finish being an experiment.
Notes:
Thank you again to the mods of the Steddie Big Bang for putting this all together, to my incredible BB team, and everyone who read this far!
Super special shout out to my incredible artist, Sierra, who went above and beyond with the art for this story. You're a rockstar!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
LATER
APRIL 1987
Eddie wakes to sunlight bright on his face, striped through the blinds. He squints and blinks, and reaches out a hand even though he knows it’s a useless effort: he’s definitely alone.
Sucks.
On a normal day, he might make someone pay for that. He might stretch out a little, push his (stolen) pajama bottoms down until he could get himself in hand. Maybe spit on his palm so the slide is slick and loud. Maybe moan a little. Maybe put on a little show for someone with hearing good enough to catch it, to know he’s missing out.
(Eddie has received complaints — many complaints, typically a few a week — that Steve is no longer the only one with enhanced hearing and they all have to listen to that, but then Eddie has had to overhear some truly nauseating puppy love conversations and has bought them multiple boxes of industrial-grade ear plugs, so what else is he supposed to do? Not try to seduce his boyfriend? No chance.)
But it’s not a normal day. It’s hopefully the last not-normal day they have to suffer through, at least until some other interdimensional emergency burrows through the earth’s core into Hawkins.
He sighs, rolls out of bed, and heads downstairs.
It’s chaos. The boys are circled around the TV with Saturday morning cartoons on even as they hold their own conversation about — Eddie listens in — spell slot advantages between rangers and rogues. Eddie is tempted to add his two cents, but moves on. Max and El are continuing their quest to paint every room in the house with the brightest colors they’re allowed, so today they’re painting over the stale whiteness of the dining room with a sunny gold.
They could have picked any other day, but Eddie knows it’s strategic, that if the place smells like wet paint and is loud from cartoons and teenage yelling and any intruders are being glared at from all sides, those intruders might not linger overly long.
Hop and Joyce are drinking coffee at the dining table and supervising, because one time Max got a little overconfident on the top of a ladder and without El’s power cradling her before she hit the floor, it could’ve gotten pretty bad.
Out the sliding glass door, Eddie can see Jonathan and Argyle lighting up in the pool chairs, because while the doctors will fuss about the test results being skewed from substance use, Jon’s made an argument that his baseline is to be a little stoned, so it’s really more accurate. Also, no one’s going to be able to stop him. Nancy’s out on the porch as well, the kitchen phone’s extra-long cord stretched so she can curl up with Jon in a chair and make faces at whoever she’s talking to; her mom, probably, off in a little suburb of Cincinnati with Holly, in her neat little divorcee cottage that Nancy and Mike visit every other weekend or so. It took a lot of reassurance that they would have gone with her after the split from Ted Wheeler, but their mom has been read in just enough on everything that she understands why they have to stick close to Hawkins for at least a little longer.
Eddie’s target is in the kitchen, of course, scooping bacon out of a frying pan and bopping his head to the little kitchen radio, humming along to Robin’s stream-of-consciousness about what paperwork they’ll have to sign when all is said and done today.
“I mean, we’re over eighteen, so our parents don’t technically have to know anything, but I wonder if they’ll make us have them sign off now that the tests are done? Like, ‘hey, just FYI, we’ve been monitoring your daughter for a year to see if she turns into a monster, and we’ve determined that she won’t, so you were never at risk! Bye!’”
“Doubt it,” Steve says. “Plus you already told your parents everything despite the NDAs, so it won’t matter anyway.”
“I had to. If I had to hear the speech about moving in with two ‘young, virile men’ before marriage one more time, I was going to set something on fire,” Robin says. “Hi, Eddie.”
Steve turns and smiles at Eddie, his brown eyes lit gold from the bright sunlight. Eddie hops up on the counter with Robin and snags a piece of bacon, even after he gets his knuckles rapped from Steve’s spatula.
“Last one,” he says, and Robin and Steve make similar sounds, a mix of relief and fear and impatience and joy.
“Last one,” Steve echoes, and flips a pancake with one hand.
When the Department of Energy discovered that Martin Brenner’s whole teenage MKUltra psychic army had been slaughtered except a few runaways, they’d mostly planned to shut things down. Tidy up, sweep under the rug, murder the remaining superpowered children so none could talk about what they saw, and move on to other fun little ideas. Eleven threw a wrench in that the first time around.
Then, three years later, Eleven emerged from the interdimensional gate in the abandoned Hawkins lab with a small troupe of people who were all faintly glowing, fanged, clawed, and in one case, winged. They were covered in blood, carrying the decimated body of an even worse monster, and accompanied by a child (pigtails perfect even though her knife had gotten plenty of action), a Soviet prison guard, an ex-murder suspect’s uncle, and the guy who’d leaked all the Hawkins Lab stuff to the press in the first place.
The DoE only knew about all this because apparently they’d left one alarm in the building that would silently trip if anyone ever approached the gate again. When Eleven led the way through the gate, followed by the missing-presumed-dead Steve Harrington, propped up between also presumed-dead Jim Hopper and presumed-murderer Eddie Munson, and Steve’s body was a mess of bites and bruises and broken bones and his wings dragged the ground behind him, they were met with about thirty guns aimed at them and it nearly ended badly.
Like, Max swiped Nancy’s shotgun and leveled it right back at them. That kind of badly.
But there was a guy there, who Eddie would learn was named Owens, and who calmed tensions even after El had to be held back from smacking the guy across the face — and Eddie understood why, with the armed agents and all, but god did he want to let her go — and led them all into a dusty, disused conference room.
“Eleven,” he’d said. “I know you won’t believe me, but I’m glad to see you alive.”
“You better not just be glad,” Hopper said warningly. “You’d better be sorry. You’d better be sorry to the tune of compensation, official pardons, and leaving us the hell alone forever.”
“Yes to the first, of course to the second,” Owens said, and his brow crumpled apologetically. “Let’s discuss the third.”
The deal was one year of check-ins every two weeks. It was a compromise between the DoE higher-ups’ offer, which was to lock the Party away until the end of time and run tests on them indiscriminately to attempt to replicate their new mutations in others, and the Party’s offer, which basically boiled down to “Touch us and die, maybe?”
“This means you’ll need to stay where we can find you,” Owens said. “Preferably out of the public eye. For most of you, it will be easy enough to construct stories to explain things, considering the state of the town after the events of March. For others of you,” his gaze lingered on Hopper, Steve, and Eddie, “it might be a longer road.”
Biweekly check-ins for a year. Twenty-six total. Blood was drawn for testing, vitals recorded, tests on dexterity and hand-eye coordination and vision and hearing and everything else were all given. The doctors that came to check on them were new to the group, fully briefed so they didn’t react visibly to Steve and his wings, and relatively easy to work with. Eddie didn’t hate them personally, or anything.
But, god, was he ready to finish being an experiment.
It helped that they all had questions of their own — namely, if they would all look like extras from the set of The Munsters forever. If Steve would suffer any effects from living off of only energy for two months. If the Upside Down was closed for good (because El didn’t wait to be allowed to close the gate at the lab, taking her chance the first moment she could. Steve had helped, one hand outstretched as he leaned heavily against Eddie’s side). When the final portal, the biggest gate, knit closed, it felt like all of them breathed a sigh of relief.
As May rolled onward into the empty summer of 1986, they got some of their answers. The silver of their skin began to fade to only a tinge, like roll-on glitter under direct sunlight. Fangs dulled so they weren’t quite as much of a hazard while eating or talking or anything more salacious. The girls painted over their claws and taught everyone how to file down the tips with emery boards. Steve, painstakingly, learned how to pull his wings in when he had to be around normal people, and strengthened the muscles so it wasn’t agony to hide them away for hours, then days. Their eyes weren’t as shockingly bright anymore, and on picture day at school the kids wore color contacts so the camera flash wouldn’t make them glow.
But the summer was strange beyond just their newly-powered bodies being reintroduced to the world. The Harringtons had put their house up for sale when the earthquakes hit but no one was in a rush to buy it, which was why the Party could squat there and stash Eddie away until the frenzy for his arrest died down. A few days after Steve’s miraculous return, he approached Eddie and Robin with an idea.
“We have money now,” Steve had said.
“You’ve always had money, darling,” Eddie said. He was lying on his stomach on a hotel bed, eating room service grapes out of a bowl and watching music videos on MTV. Robin was doing the same, except she had her head nestled in the dip of Eddie’s back and was trying to toss grapes up in the air and catch them. Eddie had already had to use his brand new powers to pull grapes out of her throat when she started choking. Twice. “But sure, now Buck and I join you in the land of the nouveau riche. What about it?”
“I’ve never been to New Voriche,” Steve said. “I think we should buy my parents’ house.”
When Eddie sat up suddenly, Robin choked for the third time on a grape, but once her airways were cleared, she sat up too. “I thought you didn’t want to see your parents yet,” Eddie said, pounding Robin on the back.
“I don’t. Or. I don’t know, I haven’t decided,” Steve had shrugged. “But they don’t have to know we’re the ones who buy it.”
“You hate that house,” Robin said. “You wanted out of it as quickly as possible.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “But we need a place to go, and sure, we could rent a house somewhere, but I’ve been thinking.”
“About?” Robin prompted.
“The deal with Owens. We’re having tests run, right? So, what, we trek to Indianapolis every other week, for who knows how long? How are we supposed to hold down jobs if we can’t work every other weekend, if they even let us work at all? Or are they going to send us into Hawkins General like we’re just getting regular old bloodwork done and make us wear masks so no one recognizes us, or something?”
“So you’re offering,” Eddie said, making sure he understood, “to buy your parents’ house, which you hate, and move back into it so that we can have medical tests done in the privacy of our shared home?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Steve made a face. He sat next to them, traced the paisley pattern on the bedspread. “I think… that I wouldn’t hate the house if it was our house. Sure, it’s big and cold now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. And I like the space for… you know. I mean, it’s stupid.”
Eddie, who felt like the goddamn Grinch with his heart growing three sizes too big for his dumb chest, smiled helplessly at Steve. “Aw, baby. This is about your brood of kiddos again, isn’t it?”
“Well!” Steve said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Yeah, maybe!”
“That’s cute as hell, Harrington,” Eddie said. “Screw it, I’m in.”
“That money is supposed to last us a while,” Robin said. “We’re supposed to put it in savings accounts. Operation Croissant Deux!”
“Operation Do Croissants is still on the table,” Steve said. “But we can’t go for a year anyway, with these tests. And, plus, my dad used to always talk about how real estate is a solid investment. It’s going to appreciate its value, like, immediately.”
“That sounds real,” Eddie said. “C’mon, Buckley. Become a homeowner with your best friends at an irresponsibly young age.”
“We can get you one of those things you’ve always wanted but your parents said no. You know, the t-word thing,” Steve said.
“T-word?” Eddie asked.
“Yeah. It’s like… tarrasque?”
“That’s a dinosaur monster in D&D, my love,” Eddie said. “And I don’t think Buck’s been wishing for one of those.”
“Terrarium,” Robin filled in. “And fine. Deal if you buy me a terrarium.”
“You can have all the creepy crawlies you want,” Steve promised.
“Uh, fuck no,” Eddie said. “Hold on. If it’s spiders, big fat veto. If you bring a tarantula into our loving home I will leave this partnership immediately and use all my stupid money to sue you for emotional distress.”
“No, like, lizards and stuff,” Robin said. “Also, you have a tattoo of a spider on your body.”
“It was a face-your-fears kind of thing,” Eddie said. “And it was incredibly stupid. I jump every time I forget about it and look in the mirror.”
“He does,” Steve said. “It’s funny. Anyway, Rob, you could just buy yourself a terrarium, since I assume all our money’s going into one account.” When Eddie and Robin just looked at him, he said, “Right? We’re putting all our money together because we’re always going to live together anyway, right?”
“Oh, babe,” Eddie said. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that level of commitment.” When Steve’s face went scarlet in embarrassment, Eddie nudged him and said, “I just don’t know. I mean, sure, I’ll go to hell for you, that’s one thing. But combining finances? I just think that’s too far.”
“You total asshole,” Steve said, relieved, and then said, “Robbie?”
“What the hell,” Robin said. “You were never getting rid of me anyway. Go on, Stevie. Find us an accountant and let’s set up a savings account.”
“I think we need an LLC, too. Whatever that is,” Steve said, and then left to hunt down his Rolodex in the stuff he’d packed from the remains of the Munson trailer.
Three days later, the Harringtons were back in town to review an offer they’d gotten on the house with their lawyer. Owens let Steve know that the Department had cobbled together a story for him — amnesia from getting hit in the head during the earthquakes by falling rubble, evacuated to a hospital in the next town over as a John Doe, physical therapy, slowly regaining memories, contacting his friends who came to confirm his identity, and brought home after that good as new except the scars and strangeness — and he could speak with them if he wanted.
“I just don’t know,” Steve had said, pacing the floor in tight ovals. Their hotel room had been re-upped by the DoE for another two months to get the real estate deal through, assuming the Harringtons took it. They’d lowballed their offer, posing as an investment group through a business manager that Steve hired. If we take the listed price, my dad will think he’s got the upper hand and push the price up more. If we come in lower, he’ll respect that we know what we’re doing, Steve had said, to which Eddie had replied, Do we know what we’re doing? And Steve had said, Sure. Portfolios. Bear market. Insider trading. “I mean, I was missing for two months. Wayne put posters up with his own phone number to get tips about finding me, but my parents, who could have offered an actual reward, didn’t even come to town to look for me? But they’ll come running back to sign off on selling the house, sure.”
“Steve,” Eddie said. He reached out and grabbed Steve’s hand when he passed by. “The devil has plenty of advocates, so I won’t be one here. Maybe they didn’t come back because they didn’t care, or maybe they didn’t come back because it was too hard to face that you were gone. Forget them for a minute. You don’t owe them shit, we know this. But do you want to see them?”
“I…” Steve trailed off.
“Really,” Eddie pushed. “Will it benefit you to see them?”
“I’d like to see my mom,” Steve said quietly. “I don’t want to see my dad. But I don’t think I can just ask to see one of them.”
“Listen,” Eddie said, and held up his hand so he could make the foundation of the room shake the tiniest bit, the littlest earthquake imaginable. “We’re monsters made of science magic. We can keep one loser out of a room if you don’t want him in there.”
“I just keep thinking,” Steve said, then paused, and flicked a look over at Eddie. Almost shy. “I keep thinking, what would Eddie do? And I don’t think I’m brave enough for that.”
Eddie, now rocked to his very foundations, felt himself move physically backwards at that idea, straightening up and breathing out a shocked, slow exhale. Steve Harrington, with all his talent and accolades and accoutrements, asked himself what Eddie would do? Eddie: freak, murder suspect, homosexual in a town that kills people for less?
“Wow, okay, sorry,” Eddie said. “That was just the loveliest goddamn thing anyone’s ever said to me. One second, I’m having to rethink everything now.”
“You can’t be surprised about this,” Steve said. “I think you’re the bravest guy I know. Why wouldn’t I want to be like you?”
Well, that was the final straw. Eddie buried his face in his hands. “Steve,” he said, through an emotionally scratched voice. “You fight monsters for fun. You are a thousand times braver than I’ve ever been.”
“Well, that’s not true,” Steve said. “Sure, I hit a few monsters with a baseball bat, but you hit them with oars and knives and stuff. And before all this, in high school? Once I started paying attention, I didn’t understand how everyone wasn’t watching you all the time. It’s all I did. You called out assholes for their stupid shit and protected people who needed it, and you were so you all the time.”
“We have to move on,” Eddie said, “or I’m going to melt into something that will definitely stain the carpet.”
“Heaven forbid,” Steve said dryly. “Anyway, I think I know what you’d do. You’d walk right in and give your dad the full business, then walk back out again and never see them again.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Eddie said. “I’ve seen your dad in action, Steve. If I were you, and I was in a room with him? I’d shut down. I’d go along with what he said just to keep from getting yelled at.”
“But that’s what I already do,” Steve said.
“Yeah, baby,” Eddie said. “I think you found the path of survival, and no one can blame you for that. Least of all me.” He squeezed Steve’s hand. “Anyway, I think there’s a happy medium somewhere, but it’s just fine if you default to what you feel safest doing.”
Steve decided to meet with his parents, exactly one week after crawling his way out of hell. To match his concocted story, he forced his wings back under his skin and wore a perfectly clean gauze bandage around his forehead and was told to pretend he had a hard time remembering details.
“I don’t have to pretend,” Steve had told the agent who came by their hotel room to brief him. “I don’t remember jack these days. I don’t know your name. I barely know my name. Who are you? Why are you here?”
He’d kept up the questioning until the agent left, then grinned over at Eddie and Robin and Wayne, who held up scores on sheets of hotel room stationary like judges at the Olympics. (Eddie gave Steve an 8.6, Robin a 7.5, and Wayne a 10, but Wayne’s a sap and no one’s ever argued otherwise.)
But Eddie, Robin, and Wayne didn’t accompany Steve to the lunch with his parents, though not for lack of trying on Eddie’s part.
“I know,” Steve had said, fussing with his shirt in the mirror again before he left. His collars never laid right anymore, sticking up oddly on the ridge of his spine that was the top of his new set of bones and muscles, where the joining of his wings sat when they were extended. “But if you come with me and I pitch a fit like I plan to, they’ll blame you for it instead of me. And I don’t want them knowing any of you exist so they can’t track you down later.”
So Eddie and Robin spent the afternoon being distracted at the Wheelers’ house, secreted there by Wayne, whose new truck (thank you, federal government) had heavy tint on the windows so he could ferry around any number of walking experiments. The kids put on movies and peppered them with questions — Dustin still caught up on the injustice of having to find out about his “older male role models” being in a relationship without his knowledge — and Nancy and Jon kept plying Robin and Eddie with snacks, at a loss for what else to do. They were absent and jumpy until the basement door opened and Steve came in, pulling off his Ray-Bans and grinning. Eddie and Robin jumped up to hug him, both talking over each other.
“How did they take it-”
“-going to sell the house?”
“-end up shouting at them?”
“-tell me you let them have it, baby-”
“No, no, it’s so much better than that,” Steve said, and everyone clustered around him on the couch. “Okay, so I was thinking about it. What would my dad hate more than anything?”
“Being embarrassed in public?” Dustin suggested.
“That’s definitely up there,” Steve said. “And, Jesus, I thought about it. I thought, what if I go in there and just start sobbing? It fits with my story, and my dad would blow a gasket. But that’s the thing, right? There’s an explanation for it, if anyone tried to comment on it later. I’m a traumatized wreck, and poor Daniel Harrington has to deal with me. No, I did something else.”
“That’s a terrifying look on your face,” Nancy said, and she wasn’t wrong; it was the same kind of half-cocked grin that had convinced Eddie to do a lot of very risky things in semi-public spaces.
“Get this,” Steve said. “I just ignored him.”
Robin laughed, shocked. “What?”
“Yeah,” Steve laughed too, giddy. “Every time he spoke, I just let it sit there and pretended I didn’t hear it, then would change the subject with my mom. It made him furious. God, it was glorious.”
“Oh my god,” Eddie said. “Baby, that’s genius.”
“I know,” Steve said smugly. “It was amazing. He kept talking louder and louder, trying to get me to answer, and finally my mom was like, ‘Daniel, dear, you’re making a scene’ and he just left! Went and pouted in the car until my mom was finished with lunch!”
Eddie covered his mouth to soften the bark of his laugh, but Steve didn’t let him, pulling his hand aside and kissing him. “You’re amazing,” Eddie laughed into his mouth.
“I will never get used to that,” Lucas said.
“You think it’s weird for you? Those are my two older male role models!” Dustin said.
“Dude, you’ve got to stop calling them that,” Mike said.
Will, quietly, murmured, “Yeah, just call them your daddies,” and then he laughed as his friends walloped him with pillows, as Steve pulled back and wiped at his mouth.
“Alright, simmer down,” Eddie said, though he had absolutely no authority when his face was that pink.
“Okay, listen, that’s not all,” Steve said. “Get this. The day we came back through the gate, I think there was some kind of, I don’t know, like an aftershock or something. My mom was telling me that she suddenly started feeling better, she had more energy and felt like she had before she ever got sick. She went to see her doctor and he said it was like there had never been cancer there in the first place.”
“And you think that’s connected to you?” Max asked.
“Maybe?” Steve said. “I mean, you got your eyesight back. Our injuries all healed quickly. It’s weird, but is it weirder than anything else we’ve seen?”
Nancy hummed thoughtfully. “It’s an interesting idea.”
“And,” Steve said, “last bit of news: they approved the sale of the house. We’re getting the keys in forty-five days.”
“What?” Jon asked.
“You bought a house?” Mike asked.
“You bought your house?” Erica asked.
“Yup,” Eddie said. “We’re gonna stick a sign out front: Harrington’s Home for Wayward Monster Kids and Medical Testing.”
Then Dustin said, “I call the master bedroom,” and all hell broke loose.
On the drive back to the hotel, Loretta Lynn quiet on the stereo, Steve said, “I didn’t want to say this in front of everyone, but the conversation with my mom wasn’t just the fun stuff when I was ignoring my dad.”
Wayne clicked the volume down and Robin asked, “What happened?”
Wayne’s truck was a single cab with a bench seat, so they were all pressed up against each other to fit, the gear shift wedged between Eddie’s knees that he would shift when Wayne needed it. So Eddie felt it when Steve took in a deep breath and held it.
“I asked her why she chose him over me,” he said finally, and Eddie’s stomach fell from secondhand hurt. “It’s- you asked me that once, Eddie, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. He’s awful, he’s mean, he’s been so bad to her, and she still chose him and left me here alone.”
“What did she say?” Eddie asked.
“Nothing,” Steve said. “And… I guess I’m glad for that. I’m glad she didn’t have some excuse ready to go, or something. But it was like she’d never even thought about it.”
A quiet mile passed by outside the windows, evening dulling everything to navy darkness and yellow streetlamps. Then Wayne said, “Maybe this was the push she needed to start askin’ herself some tough questions.”
So the Harrington House became home, minimalist design thrown out in favor of color and warmth. Steve’s parents still don’t know he lives in Loch Nora; he had the phone number changed when they moved in, so even when he talks to his mom on the phone, which he does with regularity, she doesn’t know he’s calling from his childhood kitchen. She just hears the noise in the background, the music pouring from the kitchen radio, the shouts from the pool, the laughter from the living room. The life in a once-lifeless house.
In the end, Robin and Eddie jointly decided that the master bedroom would be the one outfitted for the DoE testing, so Steve didn’t have to make the difficult decision of whether he should start using that space or give it to someone else. When the testing is done — so soon, now — they’ll find a new use for it. Eddie doesn’t think it’s possible to burn down a single second-story room in a house while leaving everything else intact, but he’ll research it if that’s what Steve wants. But also, the kids have been clamoring for a foosball table and Steve keeps rolling his eyes about it, but in the Sears catalog they got in the mail, the page of foosball and pool tables has been dog-eared.
The doctors always take Steve in for testing first, since he’s the biggest risk, the one with the most tests to do. Steve’s never said anything to Eddie, but Eddie thinks Steve hasn’t shown the doctors the extent of his remaining powers. Eddie sure as fuck hasn’t. In fact, if Eddie had a pocketful of gold, he’d wager it all that none of this group of people traumatized from governmental decisions were entirely honest about things with said governmental officials. But they’ll probably never talk about it, just in case they’ve somehow missed a hidden camera somewhere and they’re being watched. They’re all paranoid, but for good reason.
When the white coats arrive, asking Steve to make his way upstairs in fifteen minutes to give them time to set up, Steve’s at the counter with a plate of breakfast while Eddie does dishes. “You know,” Steve is saying. “Last day and all, I think we should celebrate.”
“Yeah?” Eddie asks. “Champagne and caviar for time well served?”
“No,” Steve rolls his eyes. “I’m thinking those individual ice cream cups and a movie rental.”
“Party hard, Harrington,” Eddie says, and laughs when Steve throws a dish towel at him. Still, when Steve goes upstairs, Eddie finds Nancy and tells her, “I’m heading out for some snacks for later. Need anything?”
Nancy, chewing distractedly on the end of a pen, looks up and says, “No, thank you. Though, when you get back, come find me? I have something… weird.”
“Spooky,” Eddie says. “Sure.”
Eddie takes the BMW, because it’s the most fun to drive, but also because the nondescript DoE cars with no plates are blocking in Robin’s Volvo and Eddie’s never been brave enough to ask Hopper for the keys to the Bronco. Eddie tosses in his mixtape handmade by Erica for the assault on the Upside Down, and sings along to Judas Priest as the green of Loch Nora melts away to the beiges and blues of downtown.
They were never technically barred from going out in public. Steve, Hop, and Eddie had to wait until their official stories were released, but that took no more than a week. The kids went back to school in August after everything. The older group all got jobs around town. Hop’s part time at the precinct and his schedule seems to be I’ll help out when I want and if I want, otherwise I’m retired, fuck off. Wayne’s back at the plant, but does the morning shift now, since he doesn’t need the time and a half pay from overnights anymore. Life, theoretically, is back to normal, and as long as they don’t flash inhuman eyes at people, or try to rip out anyone’s jugular with their fangs, and as long as Steve isn’t doing afternoon flights around the neighborhood, no one’s limiting where they go. Of course, that’s just in theory.
In reality, Eddie spent the first three months hiding out because half the town was still convinced he had something to do with everything, and the other half couldn’t look him in the eye, what with being so easily whipped up into a frenzied mob by a clearly-traumatized jock with Church Issues. Steve stayed with him; being around too many people made him want to lash out, and he sometimes mentions offhandedly that when he hears all those heartbeats in one place it makes him want to create a sinkhole under a building so they’ll all go quiet, which no one is going to interrogate too much.
But, slowly, other things took precedence, or maybe people just moved on. Eddie went to Thatcher’s one day to see about a job in the nebulous future and no one jeered at him or tried to jab him with a pitchfork. He could stop in at the diner and grab takeout with no one whipping ketchup at his head, though he was sad to learn the ancient waitress had left town after the earthquakes. He went to work and stopped for gas and picked up the kids from school, even, and not a single person tried to string him up. Then one day he went to Melvald’s, because the kids still used the walkie-talkies like they were run on magical nice thoughts instead of expensive batteries.
“Yes, okay, Henderson,” Eddie had said, snorting at the list that had been shoved in his hand. “‘Energizer ONLY, no generic.’ Yeah, I’m made of money, sure.”
“Eddie?” a voice had asked, and he’d turned to see Gareth and Jeff there at the end of the aisle, staring at him like they’d seen a ghost.
“Hey, fellas,” Eddie said. He’d heard Gareth had taken some shit from Carver when he’d been on the hunt, and didn’t know how they felt about everything in the fallout. Luckily, Gareth dropped his pack of Keebler Fudge cookies and rushed Eddie to pull him into a hug.
“Fuck, man! We thought you’d been disappeared!” he said.
“Disappeared? Like a rogue spy?” Eddie asked.
“Not a joke, man,” Jeff said, coming up to clap Eddie on the shoulder. “We didn’t see you for two months, then dudes in black suits started showing up asking people about you. It was super weird.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that sounds about right. About as subtle as a brick through a window.”
“What?” Gareth asked.
“I said, I’m happy to be back, man,” Eddie said. “We should hang at some point. I’ve got new digs now, you’ll flip when you see it.”
And so Eddie was reintroduced to Hawkins and no one murdered him, even a little, which was good because Steve wouldn’t hesitate to chase someone to the bowels of hell if he needed to exact revenge. Eddie works part time at Thatcher’s and runs D&D games out of his own dining room, which is fucking awesome. The first time the full Hellfire group stepped into the house and Jeff whistled, and said, “Damn, dude, this is all you?” Eddie thought it might have all been worth it.
Those squishy, happy feelings might be ruined, though, when a pair of eyes watch him pull into the grocery store parking lot.
“Fuck,” Eddie breathes when Tommy Hagan freezes by the front door to watch Eddie park. His eyes are narrowed. His jaw set. Right. Well, Steve’s nail bat is in the trunk, and in the worst case scenario he could do some monster magic to get away and be arrested by the Feds to get him out of the situation.
Eddie gets out of the Bimmer and approaches the store, pretending as hard as he can that he doesn’t see Hagan there, like a neon light drawing his attention.
“Munson,” Hagan says when Eddie’s close enough, and Eddie tucks his chin with a plan to keep moving.
“Leave me alone, Hagan,” he says, but Hagan steps in his path.
“Hey, stop for a second,” Hagan says. “Is that Steve’s car?”
Eddie stares over Hagan’s shoulder and says, “Yes. He let me borrow it, it’s not stolen or anything.”
“No, that’s not- so he’s okay?” Hagan asks.
“He’s fine. Let me through, man,” Eddie says, and then, like an echo of high school long past, a hand wraps around his arm and unyieldingly tugs him around the corner of the building to the alleyway next to the dumpster. Eddie rips his arm out of Hagan’s hold and scuttles backwards, putting his hands up reflexively, ready to use experimental powers to blast Hagan away if need be. “Jesus. What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” Hagan spits a laugh. “My problem is that the town’s goddamn falling apart, and I get a call from my mom while I’m at college doing something with my life and she tells me no one’s seen Steve since the earthquakes, and then I see you driving his car like it’s nothing. That’s my problem, Munson.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” Eddie says. “Yeah, Steve’s banged up but he’s fine. He’s recovering and staying away from people, because assholes like you dropped him like he was nothing for having the audacity to care about people. Is it any wonder he wasn’t running to your mommy’s house to tell you personally that he was okay?”
“That’s not what I- fuck’s sake,” Hagan says, breathing hard, arms crossed. He stares down at the ground. “I saw you. Senior year, that day Steve stepped in to keep me from kicking your ass, he followed you to the teacher’s lounge and I followed him. And I saw you two. Together.”
Senior year… teacher’s lounge. Oh, fuck. Yeah, Eddie remembers; Steve cupping his face and kissing him soft, his hand on Eddie’s bare stomach, on the hot skin where Hagan’s fist had connected. That was the same day as their big Skull Rock conversation, which had taken up so much space in Eddie’s mind that he’d completely forgotten about his fight with Hagan earlier that day.
Eddie turns and immediately books it for the alley entrance. He’s not going to die here, chased by one of his boyfriend’s old friends defending Steve’s sexuality on his behalf.
“Wait, Munson! Shit, would you just-” Eddie hears, and then an arm is wrapping around his waist and pinning him to the brick wall, spinning him around. It’d be hot, if Eddie wasn’t blind with panic but also not blind enough to think anything Hagan did could be hot.
“Don’t,” Eddie says. “Whatever it is, just- don’t, please.”
“I’m not going to fucking beat you up for- for that,” Hagan says, stumbling over the words. “I’m not- listen, it’s not my- my business, or fucking whatever. It’s, like, I just want to make sure Steve’s okay. And he is, I guess, so I’ll go.”
Eddie’s panic simmers down enough that he can see the paleness of Hagan’s face, the way his hands are shaking.
God. What a strange world, where Eddie’s feeling pity for Tommy Hagan.
“Steve’s fine,” Eddie says, pushing Hagan back slowly. “He’s good, actually. He’s got a lot of people around who love him.”
“Good,” Hagan says, eyes averted. He wipes hard at his mouth with the back of his hand, sniffs. “Good, yeah, that’s good to hear. Just- be careful, alright? If you two get- like, I don’t know, caught or whatever, that could be bad.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “We know.”
“Yeah,” Hagan says. “Does he, uh. Talk about me?”
“No,” Eddie says. “But I don’t think he doesn’t care. He cut you out because you were bad for him, man. Not because he wanted to.”
Hagan doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, so he just nods jerkily and leaves Eddie there in the alleyway next to an overflowing dumpster, filled with a mix of emotions he couldn’t possibly begin to name.
Eddie’s head is still spinning a half hour later, back at the house. He’s putting boxes of fudgecicles into the freezer on autopilot, and then he’s done with that but still just standing there, staring into the open freezer and wondering distantly why his nose is so cold.
“…ie? Eddie. Eddie. Do I need to get the Walkman?”
Eddie shakes his head so hard his cheeks wobble, and smacks himself in the face a couple of times. To his left, Nancy is staring at him, one eyebrow raised. “Hey, Nance,” he says.
“The ice cream is probably half melted,” Nancy says. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Have you ever had an out of body experience?” Eddie asks.
“Yes,” she says. “You were there.”
“Right,” Eddie says. “How about a metaphorical one, and Tommy Hagan was there?” Nancy’s eyes sharpen.
“Let’s talk,” she says.
He tells her everything, of course. He needs Nancy’s brain to help him unravel what the hell just happened, and how the hell he might have made things even fucking worse by not just leaving.
“It’s bad, right?” he asks nervously. “Like, I never straight up said that Steve and I are together, but it would be very easy in that conversation to get from point A to point B, and I’m afraid he’s going to be waiting for me at Point B with a gun and a body bag.”
“I don’t think so,” Nancy says slowly. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about earlier. Look at this.” She shuffles through a stack of papers on the dining table where the kids do homework and Nancy writes her stories, her typewriter tucked away on a shelf nearby. She finds a manilla envelope and opens it, and two stacks of paper slide out. “Remember when we debriefed the parents and asked them to keep an eye out for anything that might be relevant to our… situation?” She waves her hand vaguely at her claws, which are unnaturally thick and still slightly pointy, though painted over with a soft pink. “Dustin’s mom spotted these reports from the day we brought Steve through the gate.”
Eddie pulls the files closer and flips one page. The papers are photocopies of what look like hospital records, the words fuzzy and nearly illegible at some points, but his heart jumps at the first few lines.
Patient Name: HAGAN, THOMAS
Complaints of extreme pain lasting five-ten minutes before fading, ringing in ears, sunlight hurting eyes. Hearing voices. Patient said he could “move things with his mind.” Very frightened. Recommend 24-hour evaluation, possible psychiatric intervention.
His hands shake as he turns another couple of pages, long lists of symptoms and tests, and then a page with a big red stamp: REDACTED. The other packet is another person’s record.
Patient Name: PERKINS, CAROL
“Claudia was able to copy these before the DoE swooped in,” Nancy says. “She didn’t know it was them, they didn’t identify themselves, but it had to be.”
“So, sorry,” Eddie rubs his thumbs on his temples. “You’re telling me that when Steve slid the powers through the line to us, he accidentally sent some to Hagan and Perkins as well?”
“I do,” she says. “And I don’t think that’s all. Remember when he talked to his mom? She said she was suddenly healthier starting on that day. She was healed, just like Max was.”
“Holy shit,” Eddie says. “What the hell does this mean? What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Nancy says. “At least, not officially. If the DoE knows I have this, they might pull a stunt. But…”
“But?”
“Well, I did put an anonymous note in the Hagan mailbox. I let Tommy know that if they wanted answers, this is the place to come for that. Maybe he thought it was a prank, until he saw you today.”
“Wheeler,” Eddie says. “You sly little fiend. You think they’ll actually come?”
“That’s up to them,” Nancy shrugs. “But if they really want to know, they will. And, honestly, they were terrible people in high school, but Steve does love them. Once he picks you, he keeps you forever in one way or another.”
Eddie, in his daze, had forgotten to rent a movie, so after the doctors leave for the last time ever, Steve puts on one of the ever-expanding piles of VHS tapes scattered around the living room TV. As the Nostromo floats through space on screen, Eddie looks around the room at his scattered group of beloved assholes and thinks about the future.
They have to get official confirmation, but the lead DoE doctor had paused on the way out earlier and thanked them for the opportunity to study the unknown. “By all our accounts,” he’d said, mostly to Hopper, who he seemed to think was the patriarch of this strange, strange brood, “you should have no increasing side effects and your abnormalities are continuing to taper off. It’s our official recommendation that you need no further testing.”
Hopper had nodded, and the door had closed, and they’d erupted. Cheers, tears, hugs, a combination of all three.
Dustin, Mike, and Will are arguing Alien semantics in the corner. They’ve all seen this movie so many times that it’s mostly background noise and points of reference for their various debates. They’ll all go quiet around the time Ripley starts running around in her underwear, even Will, though his seems to be a more academic kind of curiosity. Nearby, Max is getting her toenails painted by El and her hair braided by Lucas with Erica’s direction. It’s going badly on both fronts, because El keeps giggling and smudging the polish and Lucas is truly terrible at braiding.
Hop, Joyce, Wayne, Murray, the Russian guy, and a few other Party parents are in the kitchen, talking in low voices about what the results today mean for all of them. They might as well speak at full volume; nearly everyone that cares to eavesdrop is doing so already. Nancy in particular is listening intently from where she’s tucked between Jon and Argyle on one of the couches. The guys, on the other hand, are sharing bites from a breakfast burrito that they’re passing back and forth, which is impressive only because it’s nearly nine P.M. and they won’t tell where they got the burrito from. One of Jon’s hands rests on Nancy’s thigh. Argyle’s fingers are tangled lazily in her curls. Despite the fact that everyone in this room is burningly curious about that whole situation and they’re all armed with literal superpowers they could use to suss it out, no one can figure out what the hell is their deal. Except Steve, who can still read minds when he concentrates, and has been sworn to secrecy, apparently. He’s awfully smug about it, too.
Robin’s the only one paying rapt attention to the movie. She’s at one end of the biggest couch, curled up with her chin in her hand. Steve’s got his legs thrown across her thighs, and she absently runs her knuckles over his shins like a worry stone. He’s got his head in Eddie’s lap and, in this exact moment, is smiling up at him.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he murmurs, running a still-clawed finger along Eddie’s jaw.
“My thoughts are worth at least a dime. Maybe a nickel, on a bad day,” Eddie says.
“I’ll cut you a check later. What are you thinking?”
He’s thinking about tomorrow, when they’ll wake up and there won’t be anything left tying them to Hawkins except the people in this room. If they want to go, they can go, but if they want to stay, they can stay. Eddie thinks they’ll probably stay for a while; Robin’s still figuring out her feelings on college, and they’ll go where she goes. When they do, the house will go to the Hopper-Byers; Steve already has the contract written up, just needs to sign and date it. They’ll argue it’s too much, but Steve won’t let them get away with refusing.
Anyway, Eddie likes what they’ve done with the place, but he misses close quarters with Steve and Wayne and Robin. Wayne was given a small house in a neighborhood near the old trailer park, and Eddie’s already started boxing up some stuff to move over there. The floorboards creak and the ceiling leaks but he’s infinitely more comfortable there than here, where neighbors seem to be waiting for the weirdo Harrington kid’s strange assortment of guests to burn the place down.
But that’ll come later. Eddie and Steve have an envelope of cash they’ll present to Robin on her birthday in two weeks, Operation Croissant Deux written on the front and a drawing of a baguette that’s only a little phallic drawn in the corner. Dustin’s all packed for Camp Know Where, and his excitement at seeing Suzie again has made him nearly hypersonic when he talks about it. The Sinclairs-plus-Max are heading to California to track down Max’s mom and have a vacation of their own. Nancy’s got three J-schools she’s been admitted to, but she’s mentioned she might like the idea of staying local for a little longer, getting the Hawkins Post in better shape before she leaves. Her boys will follow her, like Steve and Eddie will with Robin.
Whatever happens, they have time.
“I’m thinking,” Eddie finally says, “that maybe I could teach you how to play guitar.”
“Yeah?” Steve asks.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “How do you feel about learning Uptown Girl?”
THE END.
Notes:
NOTES:
- Does anyone remember roll on glitter???? It was BIG in the 90s but I think the trend of roll-on body glitter and glitter lipgloss started in the 80s, unless someone can fact check me on that?
- Steve’s “I’ve never been to New Voriche” joke is ABSOLUTELY stolen from the “I never went to Oovoo Javer” vine.
- I couldn’t find an official list of what MTV would have been playing in June 1986, but it’s almost guaranteed the list would have included Europe’s The Final Countdown, Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer, and The Outfield’s Your Love. All of which are certified bangers.
- Steve still doesn’t speak French, if you were wondering.
- A Rolodex (I can’t believe this is where fic has taken me. Explaining Rolodexes to people who Weren’t There.) is basically a paper contacts list. It was a little wheel of index cards where you could write down all the contact info for a person, usually with all the contacts listed in alphabetical order.
- You might’ve noticed, but Steve likes word associations. When he’s trying to prove he knows something, he just says all the other related words he knows. That’s a verbal tic he also passed on to Eddie.
- Yes, Wayne put missing persons flyers up all around town for Steve instead of Eddie in this story, since he knew Eddie was safe but knew Steve wasn’t. Yes, the thought of that is incredibly sad. Also incredibly sad is the thought that Steve’s pictures were a lot less likely to be torn down or vandalized than Eddie’s :(
- So, back in the day, Sears would send out this massive holiday catalog every year to, as far as I can tell, basically everyone. When I say massive, I mean like 600+ pages of nothing but Items You Can Buy At Sears: clothing, housewares, toys, you name it. The Fall/Winter 1986 catalog can be found here and I HIGHLY recommend a page through.
- Listen. I don’t think every bully is a closeted gay kid. That’s usually incorrect! But do I think specifically that it would make TOTAL SENSE that Tommy Hagan would be so IRRATIONALLY angry about Steve leaving him that it took seeing Steve kissing Eddie for Tommy to realize that, oh, he’d been treating it like a breakup. And, maybe that’s kind of what it was. Maybe that’s kind of what it was even if neither of them knew it. HMMMM!!!
- If you’re wondering, while Wayne, Erica, and Steve’s dad all did have lights/connections to Steve, none of them got powers from him on purpose. For Wayne and Erica, it’s because Steve was actively concentrating on not sharing the pain with them, because Erica’s too young for that and Steve was concerned Wayne’s heart would give out (which, while valid, wouldn’t have happened. Wayne’s tough as nails). His dad didn’t get any powers because Steve basically tried to pretend that connection didn’t exist, even if he couldn’t erase it entirely. For his mom, Tommy, and Carol, the connection was still decently strong mostly from nostalgia.
- JANGYLE!!! Is that the name? I don’t actually know, but I’m here for it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you again for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can reblog the tumblr post here if you want, and please give Sierra all the love she deserves for the art for this story.
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