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Steve dies on a sweltering Wednesday evening in the middle of June, 1986.
“What?” he shouts, muffled by a handful of Doritos. “What do you mean, I’m dead!?”
He drops both feet flat to the floor, sitting straight up to glare. Next to him, Robin snatches a napkin and grumbles about crumbs; he ignores her. Eddie’s expression is unreadable, and the kids all have these shocked, horrified stares that might under other circumstances - and if it were a less plausible question in their lives - make him ask Who died?
In this case, no one. Because, “No!” He says, spreading his arms to emphasize the point. “No way!” Eddie continues to make that fucking non-face at him, and Steve turns his attention to the rest of the group, gesturing a do you see this shit!? at them. They just keep giving him pity-horror-shock looks, except for Max, who does the pity-horror thing but with skeptically raised eyebrows.
Steve turns back to Eddie. “That’s not fair.”
“Steve—” Dustin admonishes, darting glances to Eddie like he’s fuckin’ ashamed of Steve or something. Steve ignores him, too.
“Just, just - like that,” Steve protests, snapping his fingers incredulously. “That is way too quick to just be dead—”
This is not the first time Steve’s died.
Kind of. Ish.
It happens in his head, again and again. Not before he leaps into any given fray - which, it’s kind of fucked up, that he has a norm for that. But no, that’s all gut, just the barest passing thought for if you go into that house, that fight, that lake, you might not come back, okay. The dying happens after, when he’s bloodied and fighting for consciousness, or later, when he realizes he’s played through the risk in detail somewhere along the line, decided it was fine. Or even later still, when he tries to sleep and relives it out instead, slightly worse this time, staring at the ceiling or unavoidable in his dreams. Not the real thing, but…tastes of it. Pieces.
So yeah, he thinks he’s died a bit, here and there.
He thinks he’s haunting himself.
Because there’s definitely a ghost around, okay? It’s really fucking annoying. It’s there all the damn time, and it has all these goddamn opinions, and Steve would really love if it would shut the actual hell up.
But it won’t. So it’s just kind of…there. Asking him What are you doing? when he gets bullied by a fifteen year old into picking up ice cream for scifi movie night. What are you doing? when he half-asses another date instead of turning up the charm. What are you doing? When he agrees to pretend to be an elf or whatever with a bunch of basement-dwelling nerds every Wednesday evening. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?
It’s not like the ghost can— it can’t do anything. Steve thinks that’s what makes it so mad. This isn’t some possession shit (god, please, fuck no, never again), and somewhere along the line the urge to be a dick has mostly faded, most of the time. It’s just that sometimes he looks in the mirror, and a voice that sounds like his own wonders when the fuck did this guy turn up?, and then he gets on with doing his hair.
“Fair, Harrington? You think this is about fair?”
“Would someone please explain, how, how the hell—”
When he’d tried to explain it to her - the ghost thing - Robin had asked, “Is this some kind of metaphor?”
“It’s not a metaphor."
“It sounds like a metaphor.”
Steve had groaned into his arms, leaning on the counter by the register. “I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s like there’s some other guy, and I know everything he thinks but he’s not me—”
“If this isn’t a metaphor, it’s freaky shit, you know that, right? Please don’t start floating, please please, I don’t want you to die, but your taste in music is—”
“Okay, okay, fine, metaphor, whatever,” He looked at her imploringly. “What do you think?”
Robin had gone a bit blank, which was just his luck. Not to mention his own fault, really, for surrounding himself with people who were so good at being themselves. “It sounds like you can’t get over high school,” she’d finally said. Then paused stacking returns to eyeball him. “You should really get over high school.”
“I’d love to. It’s not so easy, Rob, when you stick around your hometown.”
She gave him an unimpressed look, at that. He probably deserved it.
Except then a pair of recent Hawkins grads had giggled their way into the video store, and there was an uncomfortable little stand-off as they squinted at Steve while the ghost that likes to follow him around pointed out they were Kimberly Lowell and Derek Something-That-Starts-With-P, and that Kim had been a couple years below him but not quite as pretty as Nancy Wheeler and that Derek P. had been a moderate rising talent on the court back in his sophomore year, starstruck when Steve Harrington tossed him some half-assed compliment after practice. It’s a memory that made the ghost preen, while Steve himself had had to suffer through an almost unbearably awkward minor eternity before the pair of them headed off into the stacks, snickering and glancing.
It at least gave Steve fodder to make a complicated, emphatic gesture at Robin, including a hapless wave towards the couple once he was sure their backs were turned.
“Okay, fine, you have a point,” she’d muttered at him. Then she’d poked him in the chest and added in a condescending undertone, “Just remember, you’re a badass monster-slayer, champ.”
Which led to whining about how, somehow, that had made him less cool, and is that how heroism is supposed to go? At which point Robin had made fun of him for watching NeverEnding Story too much with Dustin, and he’d pointed out that that was to make fun of Dustin, which had set the ghost off into mourning wails while Robin patted his cheek and cooed about how that was even uncooler, which was when Eddie Munson turned up.
What are you doing? the ghost asked the instant Steve clocked him, hard to miss with all the unpredictable freneticism and ostentatious rings and leather and denim and hair. Which was funny, because the ghost usually waited to commentate until after Steve, like, did something, and right then all he’d done was look.
Anyway.
Eddie had done his usual song and dance and flung himself onto the counter (Dustin needed better role models) and then flung himself onto them, arms draping warm and heavy across both Steve and Robin in a way that made Steve forget what he was thinking about and forced Robin to stumble back from her spot up in his face. Which set Steve to thinking ah, shit, and also that yeah, Robin and Eddie, they’d have looked good together, under other circumstances, all offbeat and jewelry-toting and constantly in motion, matching weird-for-weird and irreverent-for-disaffected, neither one of them giving a shit what anyone else thinks except for how under it all they both care, so goddamn much, in every way that Steve could possibly respect. That they match. And that had made him kind of pleased and kind of nauseous, standing there in his stupid striped polo shirt beside them, and why is that, and What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?
“What did you think you were doing? You were unarmed—”
“I had a weapon!”
“You had a fishing rod,” Max deadpans.
“It’s a weapon.”
“Not to mention you’re a cleric, you know that, right?” Mike points out, “You have, like. No hit points.”
“And whose fault is that?” Steve asks, which for some reason sets everyone off.
Steve catches Eddie opening his mouth - to quell the chaos, probably - around the same time the accusations make their way back around to Steve.
“A dragon,” Mike is saying. “You walked up to a dragon. You asked it to eat you.”
Eddie’s mouth snaps back closed into a superior little I-run-this-show smirk, leaving Steve on his own.
Which is just un-fucking-fair, all over again. “I was being a distraction,” Steve defends, “I didn’t think it would!”
This seems to surprise Eddie, who turns so fast his hair gets in his face. He makes no move to fix that, which makes Steve’s fingers inexplicably itchy. “What do you mean, didn’t think it would?”
“Well, you’re making up the dragon, aren’t you?” Steve points out. “It could have been a nice dragon!”
“It was red!” Mike, Lucas, and Will chorus, as if that means anything.
“It was clearly not a nice dragon,” Robin mutters.
“Dumbass,” Max adds.
“Whoa, whoa, Steve.” Dustin waves his arms, “Eddie’s games are killer, dude, we told you that!”
“No, Dustin, you told me he’d go easy on us!”
“You said what!?” That’s Eddie, scandalized.
“Oh, no, no, Eddie, I swear, I didn’t mean—“
“Doable, you said!” Steve continues over them, pushing his finger in Dustin’s face, “He’d only do - whatchyamacallit - low! Low level engagements—“
“Encounters,” Lucas interjects.
“—because he wouldn’t wanna scare off—“
“Henderson! Have you no respect—”
Everyone is in love with Nancy Wheeler. At least they all can agree on that.
Well, Jonathan and Steve and Steve’s ghost can agree on that, though Steve thinks he’s maybe in love with her in a different way now. Maybe Jonathan is, too. The ghost is bad at letting go.
“It’s just,” Nancy had said, not long after Vecna. “You’ve been here, this whole time, and I’ve…I’ve needed someone here, you know? But then last time around that was Jonathan, and I just…”
“Nance,” Steve had said, brow furrowed, and— he hasn’t always been the best with feelings, when it comes to her, but he’d still tried to impress that, “we’ll still be here for you even if you don’t kiss us after, you know.”
“I know,” Nancy had said, like knew she should know but was still trying to convince herself, and was mad that she couldn’t.
Eddie had walked in on that, which was really Steve’s fault, because Steve had invited him over. Because he does that a lot despite how for some reason it makes the What are you doing?s run louder, hard to hear past, but worth it because Steve likes it, hanging out with Eddie. What he didn’t like was how Eddie stammered his way back out of the room, eyes flicking between Steve and Nancy and looking a little bereft and then covering bereft with bravado, the messy self-effacing kind that made Steve think of Eddie’s face close to his cheek and voice in his ear, teasing around the word jealous.
The ghost had overhelpfully supplied that it would like to shove Eddie Munson in a locker. Steve wanted to punch it in the face more than usual.
But it’s probably that - the stupid territorial bad-news ghost bullshit - that makes him feel so shit when he thinks that yeah, okay, sure, maybe he was wrong about the Robin thing or maybe he wasn’t (a second weird frission there, that Steve did the same thing, they maybe have the same taste). Either way, it’s not a surprise. Everyone is in love with Nancy Wheeler, nothing new to see.
“—have to, uh,” Steve makes a sputtering noise and a flippy hand gesture that he hopes successfully fills the words in. It fails, and he finally finds, “roll that shit?”
“I did,” Eddie huffs. He looks halfway frazzled and supremely annoyed, which is kind of amazing because in the short time Steve’s been playing this dumb game he’s never really seen Eddie look anything but vivid and skilled and in control, though he also misses that a bit, because it’s amazing to watch. There’s something riveting to the self-possession of him, the way he can cast his enthusiasm, his stories, whatever mood he damn well wants around the room like a spell, like he—
No. No, wait, no, not the point, not right now, because fuck you, Eddie Munson. “Did you do it right?” He narrows his eyes.
“Steve—” Robin and Dustin both start at the same time, exasperated and horrified, respectively.
“Yes, I did,” Eddie says, almost petulant if not for the flash of his eyes. He gestures sweepingly behind his stupid pretentious screen.
“Oh, for fuck’s—” someone - not Robin or Dustin or Eddie, probably Mike, possibly Will - starts. Steve ignores it.
“Fuckin’— Lemmee see that—” Steve lunges across the table, and all hell breaks loose.
It’s just - Nancy is going to college, and Jonathan will go too, when he gets his shit together, and Steve hopes Robin will get that chance as well. The kids are growing up, bright and scarred and brilliant, and he both loves and hates it when they stop having to ask for rides. The ghost bitches emphatically while Steve teaches Dustin to drive; Steve offers more practice time just to watch it squirm. Even if he spends most of it screaming and clutching the passenger side door.
They’re growing up, all of them. Everyone’s becoming more of themselves, even Eddie, who might not graduate and is halfway to lockdown but still swans into the video store and holds court in the Wheeler basement at least once a week; it’s only Steve who keeps losing bits instead. Shitty high school friends, reputation, picture-perfect future, girlfriend. Sanity, some days. Sleep. Mostly things he’s well rid of, he explains to the ghost, even if he can’t shut off the What are you doing?s it likes to hurl in response.
But everyone else - they got it. They’re doing it, they’re becoming, they’re springing forward into what happens next. And it’s kind of beautiful to watch, how they go along.
Which is - he tells the ghost, when he’s home alone and staring out at the pool and has no one else to talk to, because for all its bullshit the ghost has always been kind of an incorrigible gossip - the only reason he’s so interested in who Eddie Munson wants to date.
“—sacred ground, Harrington! The little shits don’t come back here, my veteran players don’t come back here, and you definitely don’t—”
“—making it up, back there, just to spite me, because you’re having your little made-up-game power trip and—”
A soda goes over, an indignant shout.
“—take you anywhere. Do you have to be such a drama queen about everything? Like, I love you, Steve, but you’re reaching new whole heights of—”
“—no idea this would be such a show. Really, guys, I would have agreed so much sooner if I realized you all would—”
The crinkle of chips, swept aside.
“—be a distraction, not a liability. And now we’re down a healer and you just know Eddie’s gonna throw something nasty—”
“—learn Wish for a really, really long time, but maybe, if we can find that one crotchety guy from last session - you know, the one with—”
The clatter-skitter of dice, scattered.
“—allowed him to even play, if he isn’t going to take it seriously. No, Will, I know you want everyone to have a good time, but—”
A shuffle of paper, limbs jostled. .
“—character sheet. I bet Eddie keeps a bunch, can’t imagine he doesn’t, Steve, it’s not like it’s the end of the—”
It’s November, 1983, and Steve Harrington leaves an invisible corpse of himself somewhere between his car and Jonathan Byers’ front door.
It's a long time before he notices.
And then, suddenly, there’s June, 1986.
“Face it, man,” Eddie Munson tells him, “You’re dead.”
He says it grave and serious, weighted. It’s easy to forget he was just a moment ago hugging his screen and dice to him like some kind of territorial, shouty gremlin.
“Cool,” Steve says sort of mindlessly. He’s been sufficiently cowed - they all have - but the Wheeler basement is still more of a mess even than usual, strewn with overturned chip bags and scattered dice. The tiny robed figurine Dustin had made him pick out special is toppled, half-hidden under a rumpled mat with a grid printed on it, and there’s a smear of grease and a spill of sopped-up soda running across the little boxes and words that had been dictated onto his character sheet. He can’t even see some of the numbers anymore. Not that he ever understood them, but - he’d wanted to. And they’d taken a long time. A truly, deeply embarrassing amount of time and energy, made all useless by dumb choices and shit luck. “Cool, cool, cool.” He looks around the table, at everyone staring at him, wide-eyed and tense like he‘s losing his mind. “Cool.”
He runs his thumb over a spot where coke stains blur Sir Kevin the Very Metal’s name and spread into the column for items, the smudge of now-unreadable pencil there making him wish he’d paid more attention when filling it out. He imagines doing so anew, what he’d put. A baseball bat, for sure. Nancy Wheeler’s respect. A gaggle of stupid, wonderful kids who are barely kids anymore, the best friend in the world, Eddie Munson’s denim vest. Eddie Munson, who is looking at him, stern and avid and piercing, and even like this has a way of taking up the whole room. He knows how to do that, really well, how to crowd a space with his words and personality and energy until there’s no room left for anything except what he puts there, who he allows. And Steve doesn’t think ghosts get to sit at Eddie’s gaming table, and maybe that’s why it only just occurred to him that none are here, none at all. How could there be? Not when Eddie is looking like that, like Steve’s the only thing in the world, like this is the most important, most intensely solemn thing in multiple dimensions, except for—
Oh.
“Cool.” Steve says, again, and there’s the barest twitch to Eddie’s jaw, and Steve thinks again, oh. Because he knows something now. Multiple things, maybe, and he’ll spend some time with that later, but right now he settles on this. This something that isn’t private, exactly, but somehow - Steve glances around the silent, somber basement to confirm - yes, somehow, he’s the only one that catches it, the only one aware. Or, they are, together. Him and Eddie.
And here it is: that for some reason - and no, Steve does not know this game well enough to understand why - under all that solemnity, Eddie's fucking delighted. Off-the-walls, bouncing, rolickingly pleased. That if he didn’t have such a damn good deadpan (and he does, he does, he has the world’s best deadpan, how does he do that?), he’d be wearing that wide, slightly unhinged grin of his.
And Steve.
Steve does not have a deadpan.
Steve grins back.
“Cool,” he says. And there’s no one around to ask What are you doing?, so Steve wiggles his eyebrows and grins wider and leans in to fill that space. “What happens next?”