Chapter Text
The forest clearing didn’t smell like disinfectant.
It smelled of damp leaves, sun-warmed bark, and summer.
And yet, Eddie can’t help but think this little hospital room evokes that place.Maybe it’s because Steve is here.
Maybe because, even now, when everything seems to be falling apart,
Steve still looks at him like he’s the only thing holding it all together.And then Eddie remembers.
That first “Are you okay?” he asked the boy with tangled hair and scraped knees.
And the bright, ridiculously sweet “I’m Steve!” in reply, from a boy who hadn’t yet realized how disappointing the world could be.Now, years later, it’s Steve who murmurs half-asleep:
“Monster?”And Eddie answers, soft but steady:
“I’m here, princess.”Nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.Back then, their friendship had to be a secret.
Because they were kids.
Because they didn’t know how to explain that they were each other’s refuge.Now, they still don’t explain it.
Because they don’t need to.Because if, after all this, someone still needs it spelled out clearly,
maybe they were never meant to understand it.
It took Steve a couple of days to realize something was wrong.
It wasn’t just the dull ache in his side or the sensitivity in his left ear, or even the constant ringing that followed him like a ghost. It was something else—something he couldn’t quite name but felt every time he opened his eyes in that shared hospital room.
At first, he thought it was the meds. His vision blurred, he slept too much, dreamed of half-memories and broken images. But when the fog began to lift and his mind started piecing things together, he noticed the gaps.
Robin, Nancy, even the kids, only came by when Wayne wasn’t there. Or when Steve was asleep.
The first time, he thought it was coincidence. The second time, it stung. The third, he stopped pretending not to notice.
He didn’t say anything. What was there to say? That the quiet hurt more than the cracked ribs?
With Eddie unconscious most of the time, Steve learned to measure the hours by the rhythm of the nurse changing their IVs, by the way Wayne moved around the room. They didn’t speak much, but there was comfort in the routine—in the way Wayne always left a water bottle within reach, or how he’d tug the blanket up when he thought Steve was asleep.
Steve never said it out loud, but he was grateful. More than he could put into words.
The first time he asked about the others, Wayne just looked at him—quiet, assessing, like he was weighing whether Steve really wanted the truth. Then he gave a vague answer about “kids being kids” and went back to reading the paper.
Steve didn’t press.
Because deep down, he already knew. He knew he’d crossed some kind of line by going back for Eddie. That, in their eyes, he’d done something reckless. Stupid. Once again, he’d thrown himself into danger for someone who, they thought, didn’t “deserve” it.
And yet, he’d do it again. A thousand times.
When everything ended—or at least when the smoke cleared and the world stopped burning—Steve didn’t think about praise or dirty looks. He thought about Eddie. About his blood, his barely-there breathing. He thought about Wayne, alone and waiting for answers. He thought about what it would’ve felt like if he hadn’t gone back.
So he went back.
And no one really forgave him for it.
Robin barely looked at him. Nancy treated him like he’d failed some test he didn’t remember taking. The kids avoided him, like they didn’t know where he fit anymore. Like the new version of him didn’t make sense in their story.
Even Dustin—his Dustin—barely spoke.
The worst part? They weren’t even angry. They just looked at him like he didn’t belong to them anymore. Like he’d stepped outside the lines and now they couldn’t draw him back in.
But Steve didn’t regret it. Not even a little.
He’d spent his whole life making choices to make other people happy. He’d been the perfect son—quiet and polished—the ideal boyfriend, the loyal friend. And for a while, he believed that’s what made someone worth keeping.
But Eddie was different. With his loud laugh and sharp mouth and the way he looked at Steve like he could see through the layers... Steve remembered who he was when Eddie was around. Who he could be—if he let himself.
For years, Steve convinced himself that Eddie didn’t need him. That they were just... a constant for each other. Familiarity. But the moment he thought Eddie was dead—something in him broke. Or maybe, something clicked into place.
He couldn’t picture a world without Eddie Munson in it.
Now, they shared a room. Eddie still slept most of the time, and Steve rarely said much—but something in his chest eased every time he heard Eddie breathing. Every small inhale and exhale, proof that he’d made the right choice.
Wayne still watched over them, always there. Always steady. Steve had never said it, but Wayne was family in a way his own parents never managed to be.
The others stayed away.
Steve leaned back carefully, turning toward Eddie’s side of the room. His body ached, his head throbbed, and everything inside him felt too full. Too heavy.
He looked at Eddie—bandaged, bruised, pale—and felt something like peace.
“I’d do it again,” he whispered.
No one answered. But in his chest, the silence didn’t feel so heavy anymore.
It took Eddie a couple of days to notice the pattern.
The kids — especially Robin and Nancy — only came into the hospital room when Uncle Wayne wasn’t around… or when Steve was asleep. At first, Eddie blamed it on the medication, which kept him in a hazy limbo between wakefulness and sleep. But once his mind started clearing, the detail became impossible to ignore.
Part of him chalked it up to the morphine. Another part to the fact that he was more stitches and bandages than man. But still, he noticed. He noticed how the air in the room seemed to freeze the moment Steve opened his eyes, how visits became short, awkward, strained.
Thanks to the kids, he learned that it was all over. Max was alive — in a coma, but stable. Her body was still fighting, but at least it had stopped dying. Nancy — accompanied by a government agent who reeked of office furniture and self-importance — also informed him that his name had been cleared. Officially, Eddie Munson was no longer a wanted fugitive. Just another name on Hawkins' growing list of “missing” people — and the town was far too busy rebuilding itself to go looking for scapegoats.
What was hardest to process, though, was that he hadn’t been awake to see how it all ended.
There were pieces he only knew through the kids — scattered fragments that filled the gaps in the low, cautious recounting Wayne had given him in the late hours of the night. In Wayne’s voice, rough and dry, trying not to sound emotional.
According to them, Steve had come back for him. For his body, technically. Alongside Wayne. They’d found him barely alive.
“He came to get me,” Wayne had said one night, with that mix of pride and barely hidden fury that he reserved solely for Steve Harrington. “I tried getting him to a hospital more than once. He was covered in dirt, blood, and… other things I’d rather not remember. But the stubborn idiot insisted on taking me back down there. Told me everything he couldn’t before. Told me about that other world. About the girl. About the monsters…”
Wayne had paused.
“When we found you, I didn’t think you were still breathing. And him… he just collapsed when he saw you. I thought it was from relief — until I saw the blood. It wasn’t yours.”
His uncle’s words still echoed in his head whenever he lay there, eyes closed.
Because Steve… Steve had been everything and nothing since the first summer Eddie had moved in with Wayne. Two broken kids, stitched together by invisible thread that only Wayne seemed to see.
Always together, yet always halfway in the shadows. Aware — even from a young age — that some things were better left unsaid. Some truths didn’t belong in the open. Not in Hawkins.
Wayne had always been the exception. The third point in their tiny universe. The one who showed up on his days off with an excuse to teach Steve something new — how to fish, how to change a tire, how to make a proper breakfast, how to put up a Christmas tree without nearly killing yourself.
Over the years, there had been silences and reconnections. Gaps that hurt more because of what wasn’t said than what was. But they always found their rhythm again, like nothing had changed. No one ever seemed to notice how closely they orbited one another, like they shared a frequency no one else could hear.
Always on the edge of “something more,” but never quite close enough to fall.
Because Hawkins wasn’t safe. Not for Steve. Not for Eddie. And definitely not for anything that even looked like love.
Sometimes, Eddie wondered if they were meant to be just that — two sides of the same coin. Always together, always facing opposite directions, never quite allowed to merge. Or if, maybe someday, they’d escape the weight of their names and make a life where “I love you” didn’t have to be whispered into the dark, but spoken loud and clear.
So no — it didn’t surprise him that Steve had come back for him.
He would’ve done the same. With Wayne behind the wheel and no hesitation.
What did surprise him — beyond the fever, the pain, the exhaustion — was the atmosphere in the room. Something had shifted. Something had cracked during the hours Eddie had spent unconscious and Steve had been awake.
Because even though Steve had woken up a day earlier, he looked more drained. Duller. The kids avoided looking Wayne in the eye. And every time Steve stirred, tension filled the space like fog.
Eddie noticed.
Day after day.
Until he’d had enough.
That night, he fought off the drug-induced sleep. Asked the nurse to delay his next dose. And once Steve had finally drifted off — after a shared dinner and a round of meds — Eddie turned to his uncle, every question from the past week plain on his face.
Wayne saw it immediately. He sighed.
“You know I don’t get into your business. Or his. But when we got to the hospital… those kids were pissed. Not scared. Pissed. Said he was being an idiot for going back for you.”
Wayne snorted, got up slowly, started pacing the room like he was trying not to trip over his own anger.
“Like he had a choice,” he muttered. “Like anyone else was gonna go. Like he didn’t have every damn right to be scared. To act.”
Then came the names. Robin. Dustin. Mike. Nancy.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Wayne said. “They’re good kids. In their own way. But… some kinds of love don’t do a damn bit of good. Robin doesn’t give him space. Cuts him off before he finishes a thought. Dustin worships him but expects him to talk like a damn scientist. Nancy… well. Nancy casts a long shadow. And Mike…”
Wayne didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
Eddie knew. Steve had endured it for years — the quiet judgment. The jokes about how “slow” or “clueless” he was. The way they treated him like a loyal but clumsy dog.
And still, every single one of them had been saved by him at least once.
None of them seemed to remember.
“Steve’s the smartest of them all,” Eddie murmured, more to himself than to Wayne. “They just never give him time to prove it.”
His uncle nodded silently, fiddling with the edge of Steve’s blanket like he still had more to say.
“What is it?” Eddie asked, forcing his body not to give in to sleep.
Wayne hesitated.
“The Harringtons didn’t show up. Again.”
Eddie closed his eyes. Not from shock — but from that familiar ache in his chest. That old wound. The one Steve never mentioned, but that bled every time he saw a full family in a waiting room.
“Tell me something I don’t already know, Dad.”
Wayne didn’t laugh. But his mouth twitched.
“When you’re both awake, I want to talk to you. There’s something I’ve been thinking about for years. And I think… I think it’s time.”
Eddie could only nod. The world crashed down on him with the weight of exhaustion he couldn’t hold off any longer. The last thing he heard before slipping under was his uncle’s quiet chuckle…
…and the steady breathing of Steve beside him.
It all began shortly after Eddie started living with his uncle Wayne.
His mother had been missing for months, and his father had been caught with more drugs than any court would overlook. That was when Wayne took the step he’d been wanting for years: to become Eddie’s legal guardian. Though, in truth, he’d always been there—not as a shadow, but as a constant presence.
Many years later, Eddie would realize Wayne had done the same for Steve.
A counselor accompanied the social worker who brought Eddie to Wayne’s doorstep. In a low voice, choosing his words carefully, he explained that although Eddie was almost eleven, his emotional maturity was closer to that of a teenager. He spoke like someone older. He thought like someone older. That’s why he got bored in class. That’s why he didn’t fit in with other kids.
“He’s going to struggle adapting,” the counselor warned. “Not because he can’t—because he’s already learned that sometimes it’s just not worth it.”
Wayne nodded silently, casting a side glance that said, without words, “I’ve got this.” When Eddie left the emergency foster home where he’d spent a few days, only nightmares remained. And his shaved head—a visible mark of a childhood torn apart in pieces.
The first days with Wayne were quiet. Eddie didn’t speak much. He watched. He studied the new routine like someone learning the rules of a strange but necessary game.
He wasn’t allowed to wander at night like he had with his father.
He had to shower before dinner.
He couldn’t stay up reading until four in the morning, nor skip meals, even when he said he wasn’t hungry.
They weren’t harsh rules, but they were new.
And Eddie didn’t know what to do with rules made to protect him, not punish him.
Wayne, however, had his own rhythm.
Once Eddie settled in, he let him explore. Let him walk.
He knew Eddie needed space, air, something beyond those walls heavy with inherited silence and tension.
That summer, Eddie spent his days in the forest behind the house.
He carried a backpack full of books, notebooks, and some fruit Wayne insisted he eat.
He always searched for a new clearing, a hiding spot, a different story to tell the sky.
And that’s how he found him.
It was the sound that caught his attention first.
A shrill voice full of frustration. Interrupted shouts. Stifled cries.
At first, he thought it was a cat. Then maybe another child.
But curiosity got the best of him.
He walked silently until he saw, between the trees, a smaller boy kicking a bicycle tossed on the grass.
The boy’s face was red, cheeks wet, hair covered in leaves.
He’d been crying a lot and probably fallen more times than he could count.
Eddie watched quietly from a bush.
He weighed whether to intervene.
Then purposely made noise as he stepped out—not wanting to scare him.
“Hey… are you okay?”
The boy looked at him with wide eyes, hesitating.
Then he smiled.
A goofy, warm, completely disarmed smile.
“I’m Steve!”
And just like that—no ceremony, no preamble—they became friends.
That first summer, they were inseparable.
Steve was only eight, but like Eddie, he already knew the world could be cruel. Neither asked about the other’s parents. Neither needed to know much. Their friendship existed among the trees, protected by the wind and forest silence.
Over time, they discovered that clearing was exactly halfway between their houses. They marked their own path, their own rules—A little secret universe where they could be kids without having to defend themselves.
Wayne watched it all with a mixture of relief and resignation. He liked Steve. A respectful, smart boy with a sadness well-hidden behind his smile. He liked it even more when the two laughed so loudly the birds flew from the trees.
Time passed.
Steve became “King Steve.”
Eddie, the “freak from the Hellfire club.”
The world tried to pull them apart.
Sometimes it succeeded.
But the thread that tied them held firm.
There were nights of fights.
Weeks of silence.
But a tap on the window, a flashlight turned on, an old signal was all it took to find each other again.
Until Nancy Wheeler came along.
And the distance grew wider.
Time that was once theirs belonged to Nancy.
Another chapter. Another silence.
Until the night Steve showed up at Eddie’s house, trembling, pale, speechless.
Wayne was on the night shift. Eddie didn’t know what to do. He called his uncle through tears.
Wayne arrived in less than half an hour—no uniform, no words.
He motioned for Steve to take a shower. Asked Eddie to prepare the bed. He warmed up chocolate milk like he used to when Eddie had nightmares.
Steve told a strange, impossible story. Of shadows, screams, and things without names. No one asked for explanations. They just listened.
That was the first time the Upside Down entered their lives. And ever since, whenever it did, Steve sought refuge at the Munson house like one escaping a storm.
And so it went—until a cheerleader died in Eddie’s living room.