Work Text:
March 26th 1986
Steve watches as Eddie works on hot wiring the RV. His hands move with evident familiarity—which can’t help but make Steve worried—and Steve lets his eyes linger on the rings adorning his calloused hands, watching as they glimmer in the light. Steve turns his head away at the sound of Robin slinking up beside him, a worried look in her eyes.
“Eddie,” she says and Steve's eyes find their way back to his boyfriend as the older boy lets out a hum, letting her know he's listening, “I'm not sure I love the idea of you driving.”
Eddie looks at her with a wolfish grin, “Oh, I'm just starting this sucker! Harringtons got her,” Eddie makes eye contact with him, a glint in his eyes,
“Don't ya, big boy?”
Steve's chokes on his spit and he hears Robin let out a disgusted, albeit loving, gag. Eddie punctuates the sentence with a sloppy kiss on Steve's cheek, leaving a wet spot. Steve hears groans come from the back of the van and he feels his face flush.
“It’s like watching my parents kiss!”
Eddie lets out a throaty laugh, (god steve adores that laugh.) “Yeah, yeah cry about it, Henderson!” he strikes the wires together, starting the RV. Eddie jumps up and takes his place in the passenger seat and Steve scrambles to situate himself in the driver's seat and slams his bare foot on the pedal, laughing as Eddie scrambles to pull his seatbelt on.
Eddie's head shoots up at the sound of the RV’s door opening. “Hey, hey it's just me baby, alright?” Says Steve and Eddie deflates.
“Sorry.” Eddie says, looking away. “Why are you sorry? You’re allowed to be nervous.” Steve's words leave a warm feeling in his chest and he bites his lip, forgoing a response.
Steve pulls the vest off him and places it on the table along with the bag of things he got. He pulls out a first aid kit and looks over at Eddie, “Eddie?” Eddie looks at him and cocks his head. “Can you help me with this?” Steve says, motioning at his bandages and then at his stomach.
“Yeah, of course.”
Steve grabs the first aid kit and hands it to Eddie, then he pulls out a shirt and a battle jacket. He sits down on the couch and Eddie pulls a chair and sits down in front of him. He gets to work and pulls back a part of the makeshift bandage with a grimace. He glances up at Steve with his teary eyes and bitten lip and he knows they should've changed the bandage sooner, cleaned it. He doesn’t let his mind wander at the idea that Steve should look more like he is in pain than he does.
“Shit Stevie, we should've done something about this sooner. This is gonna hurt like hell, alright?” Steve drops his head in a shaky nod.
Eddie pulls his bandana out of his pocket and folds it up, holding it out for Steve to bite onto it. “Bite on this okay? You don't wanna bite your lip.” Steve bites onto it, bringing a shaky hand to adjust it and trying not to gag at the fact of how dirty it probably is.
”Men don’t cry over stupid things, Stephen.”
Eddie opens the first aid kit and pulls out what he needs. Eddie scoots himself closer and Steve spreads his legs, letting him kneel in the space between.
“I'm going to take off the bandage, okay?”
Steve nods. And Eddie cuts the bandage with the his pocket knife, hoping it'll make things easier. He pulls the fabric off and Steve lets out a muffled groan. “I know, I know, I'm sorry sweetheart.”
Steve plants his right-hand Eddie’s knee on and tries to steady his breathing, willing his himself to relax and chill the fuck out. By the time Eddie has the whole bandage off, Steve's nails are digging into his knee and a few tears have slipped down his cheek. Eddie pulls back and slips his jacket off, sweaty and nervous. Steve finds staring at his tattooed forearm a welcomed distraction.
“My eyes are up here, doll.” Steve fails to fight against the heat rising to his cheeks and Eddie smirks, leans up to cup Steve’s cheek, and leaves a chaste kiss to his cheekbone. He pulls back, tugging at the bandana to signal for Steve to take it out. “You ready to keep going, or do you want a break?” He says, leaning his forehead against Steve’s.
“Just,” Steve pauses, bringing the handkerchief back to his mouth and closes his eyes, “Get it the fuck over with.” Eddie frowns and nods. Eddie grabs the pack of tissues and stands up, squeezing Steve's hand before he makes his way to the sink, running a few folded-together tissues under the cold water.
As Eddie kneels back down the door of the van opens and he whips his head around to everyone else. Someone slams the door shut and locks it, Erica yells, “Your old friends are here!''
Eddie looks back at Steve and then at the group, “Shit.” he growls. “Wheeler, you're driving, the rest of you don't bother me.'' Dustin goes to protest, probably with some shit about being able to help but he shuts him up with a glare. He watches as Nancy plops down in the driver's seat and Robin situates herself in the passenger seat. Dustin and Lucas pull the curtains closed and Erica and Max start to get everything out of the bags. Once everyone seems to have calmed down, he turns back to Steve and ignores the stares he feels on him. Steve squeezes his knee and clamps his eyes closed as he wipes around the edge of the bites.
He sets the tissues aside and pulls out more tissues and the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and he hears Steve inhale sharply through his nose. “I know, but after this, we just have to bandage them and you'll feel much better, okay?” Steve nods. Eddie gets to work, ignoring the stinging from Steve's nails digging into each of his shoulders and the sound of Steve's pained sounds. He wraps his bandages and finally, they're done. He pulls the bandana out of his mouth and smiles softly at his drowsy eyes. He puts the chair back in place and puts the first aid kit up. He sits next to Steve on the couch after he dresses and pulls him against his side. He pulls Steve's legs over his and Steve lays his head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Soon enough Steve is asleep.
“So,” Eddie says, looking up and furrowing his brow.
“What the fuck happened?”
Steve watches his boyfriend bicker with Dustin, it’s bittersweet. “It’s almost as if everything is normal watching those two.” Steve turns to Robin and she smiles at him. “Yeah.” He replies, looking back at the bottles and continuing to prepare them.
“Steve,” He hears Robin say, he hums. “I- I have this terrible, gnawing feeling,” Steve looks up at her and frowns. “It might not work out for us this time.” Her voice is steady, and Steve can tell this has been eating at her. He whispers, “You think we shouldn’t be doing this?” She smiles sadly at that and looks at her feet. “I think we’re mad fools, the lot of us,” She laughs and brings a hand up to wipe her eyes. “But if we don’t stop him, who will? We have to try, right?”
“Yeah.”
Steve grabs a bottle and holds it up, “To killing Vecna.”
“Slash Henry.”
“Slash One.”
As they clink the bottles together he hears Eddie’s voice call across the field, “You two having a toast without us?” Steve grins and looks up at him as he makes his way to Steve’s side.
“Hi, sugar.”
“Hi” Steve leans up and pecks Eddie’s cheek.
Nancy sighs, exhaustion clear on her face. “Okay, I wanna run through the plan one more time.” She says, her voice thick with weariness. She turns her gaze toward Robin, “Phase one.”
“We meet Erica at the playground, she’ll signal Max and Lucas when we’re ready.”
“Phase two.” She says, looking at Steve. “Max baits Vecna. He’ll go after her, which’ll put him in his trance.” Nancy nods and looks at Dustin, it’s obvious this part of the plan is what she is most hesitant about. “Phase three?”
Dustin sits up and says, “Me and Eddie draw the bats away.” Eddie smirks and puts his hand on Dustin’s shoulder.
“Four.”
“We head into Vecna’s newly bat-free lair and,” She shakes the bottle she’s holding and inhales shakily, “Flambe.”
Nancy nods and looks each of them over, “Nobody moves onto the next phase until we’ve all copied. Nobody deviates from the plan no matter what. Got it?” Everyone nods.
The trek to the trailer takes longer than they would’ve liked but eventually they make it into the trailer and Eddie locks the door. Steve looks at his boyfriend and squeezes his hand as Eddie looks at him, “Be careful.” Eddie says and Steve smiles at him. “Always.” He makes his way to the portal. He grasps the makeshift rope and pulls himself up, pausing to steady his grip as he prepares for the shift of gravity and flips his body forward, the bed sheets rubbing at his hands as he slides. He lands and looks up at them through the portal, shrugging. Eddie lets out a wolf whistle that makes his cheeks flush and Robin sticks her tongue out at him, “What do you want us to do, dingus? Applaud? Hurry!” She says with false anger and Steve holds up his hands in mock defense.
Steve makes his way to Eddie’s room and wraps his arms around himself, shaking. His injuries are coming back to bite him in the ass and he’s regretting not telling Eddie about his back burns. Getting dragged on the rough ground left his back red and burnt from friction. The exertion from climbing the rope has left him exhausted. He startles as he hears someone hit the ground behind him and he turns to see Eddie stumble a bit before steadying his footing and as soon as Eddie makes eye contact with him he knows something is wrong, Eddie looks up at the group and frowns, “Give us two minutes alright? Please.” He doesn’t wait for their responses and makes his way over to Steve and places his hands on each of his cheeks.
“Darlin’? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Eddie says and Steve almost sobs at how sweet it sounds. Steve drops his head onto Eddie’s shoulder and says into the warm leather of his jacket: “I- I had more injuries I didn’t tell you about and they’re,” He pauses, looking for the words, “They hurt.”
Eddie frowns and moves Steve’s head up as gently as possible. Eddie places his hands on Steve's waist and looks so sorry. “Shit baby, I’m so sorry. We can’t do anything about it right now, do you think you can hold out for me? If you can't, you can go back through the portal and wait, there’s no shame in running, love.”
Steve shakes his head, “I can do it.”
Eddie nods and holds his hand as they go and get the mattress. Dustin is the last one through the portal and when Nancy looks like she’s about to say something about the whole thing when Eddie went through the portal he sends her a look and she decides to ask later. Steve fiddles with the zipper on his jacket and steels his nerves. “Let’s go.” He says as he looks up at everyone. They make their way out of the trailer and Eddie and Dustin watch the rest of them leave, Steve turns back toward them and looks at them. “Hey, guys, listen,” He says and inhales sharply, “If things here start to go south, I mean, at all, you abort. Okay? Don’t try to be a hero. There’s no shame in running.” Eddie smiles and walks up to him. “Yeah, yeah, Stevie we know.” Eddie grabs his hand and runs his thumb over Steves's knuckles. He silently slips one of his rings on Steve’s fingers and looks up at him, he presses their foreheads together and kisses him. Eddie tries to convey everything they don’t have the time to say into that kiss and Steve seems to understand. Eddie pulls away and rubs his nose against Steve’s cheek.
“Make him pay.”
“I will, I promise.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Steve is at the top of the Creel House stairs when his walkie crackles to life. Steve startles and looks toward Robin and Nancy at their place on the stairway.
“Steve? Do you copy? Code Red!”
Steve is shaking when he brings the walkie up to his mouth, “Yeah I copy, what’s- what's happening Dustin.”
“Eddie he-” Is all Steve needs before he’s making his way back down the stairs, his heart hammering in his chest. “He wouldn’t go back through the portal! He went to hold the bats off! Steve hurry please I- I hurt my leg when I jumped through the portal. I can't walk. I don't know what to do!” Steve is out the door. “Hey hey kid, I need you to breathe. I’m coming as fast as I can. I promise it’s gonna be okay.” Steve doesn’t feel okay.
It’s funny what the human body can do when it’s running on pure adrenaline and panic. He makes it to the trailer in record time, he would be impressed with himself in any other instance. He sees the bats before he sees Eddie and it makes him shake with fear. When he sees Eddie, his boyfriend is fighting off the bats and his heart goes to his throat. He’s bleeding. He pulls out his lighter and lights the bottle of gasoline he took with him and throws it opposite of Eddie and prays. He throws the lighter and watches as it lights up the grass, he can hear his heart thundering in his ears. He prays it distracts ghe bats and he feels like he's on the verge of a panic attack.
The bats are distracted and he makes a break for it, he doesn’t think or hear anything as he pulls Eddie into his arms and tries to hold back his tears, he uses the strength he has left and lifts Eddie with his left arm on the older boy’s back and his right arm under his knees. He stumbles his way toward the trailer and scrambles to get him to safety.
He lays Eddie on the mattress and uses Eddie's pocket knife to cut open his shirt, using the cut sheets that Dustin hands to him to press on his bites. “Hi, baby.” His boyfriend wheezes as his eye’s open and Steve sobs.
“You fucker! You- I told you not to be a fucking hero! You fucking asshole you can’t fucking die on me!” Eddie smiles at him tearily, “I love you darlin’.”
“You’re not fucking dying! You dick! You-” He can't breathe. Eddie cant die. He can't die. It’ll be like losing his heart. He's barely had him, he can't lose him, not yet.
“Steve! The bats are dead!” Dustin's voice cuts through the fog of Steve's mind and Steve looks up and scrambles to rip the bed sheets up more, wrapping them around his boyfriend. Steve squints his eyes closed and racks his brain for a plan.
“Dustin, pull the table over here and help me.”
It’s hard, but they eventually get Eddie through the portal and onto Steve’s back, he doesn’t think about anything but saving his boyfriend and keeping Dustin safe.
And then Eddie stops breathing.
”Eds?” Steve says when he stops feeling Eddie’s faint breaths against his cheek, fear furrowing his brow. “Oh god.”
He scrambles to lay Eddie on the ground as gently as possible and screams for Dustin to call an ambulance, he prays that his sleepless nights of learning first aid will pay off.
He already knows Eddie isn’t breathing so he starts to give him chest compressions, forcing himself to trust his abilities when he feels something shift under his hands.
One, two, three, four, five, six-
It’s fine, it’s normal to fracture things right? That’s what the books said, “Chest wall injury is the most common complication related to CPR. That is why rib and sternum fractures are frequently observed cases.” He’ll be fine.
After thirty he leans down and pinches Eddie’s nose and tilts his head back, gives one breath, two breaths, into his mouth and prays to a god he hasn’t believed in in a long time.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-
“Steve-“
He doesn’t realize Dustin has come back until he’s said his name all soft and scared and it makes Steve want to pull him close, kiss his head and tell him it’ll be okay.
“-The ambulance is coming, they’re- they’re a few minutes out..” He trails off as he watches Steve continue the compressions and lean down to do more rescue breaths.
Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. One breath, two breaths.
“Okay, Dustin, thank you.”
He stops to feel for Eddie’s pulse and lets out a sound that he doesn’t recognize as something from him when he feels nothing under his finger tips. “ Fuck. C’mon Eddie, please.”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven-
He feels tears run down his cheeks and he turns his head to rub it against his sleep, refusing to fall apart in front of Dustin.
He doesn’t know when the paramedics arrived just that he turned sharply, ready to attack when he felt a hand on his shoulder, only to find it was Dustin trying to tell him it’s okay to stop, that the paramedics have him.
He doesn’t feel alive as he watches the paramedics take over, he doesn’t know if Eddie will even live as he watches them get ready to shock him to life.
He almost thinks he was hearing things when a paramedic yells out that they got a pulse.
He looks at Dustin, opens his arms and pulls the kid close. He feels Dustin’s body shake as it is racked with sobs.
”I thought- I though’ he w’s gonna die! I thought we los’ him.”
“I know baby, I know. We got him, buddy. He’s okay.”
The rest is a bit of a blur, he remembers begging the paramedics to let them both ride in the ambulance, only relenting when they mention they called for another ambulance to pick Dustin up and treat him. He remembers holding onto Eddie in any way he can and not caring what anyone thinks. He remembers Eddie getting wheeled into surgery and begging the nurses to tell him if Eddie’s okay.
He remembers arguing with the cops, and he remembers seeing Hopper and rushing into the older man’s—one of his father-figures—arms and crying, and crying and crying even more when Wayne shows up. Crying more than he ever has in his life.
What he doesn’t remember, is Eddie waking up.
When Eddie wakes up the first thing he notices isn't the beeping, it isn't the feeling of the IV in his arm, he doesn’t notice the handcuff keeping him attached to the bed or how tired he feels, he notices the head lying against his arm. The brown hair on his boyfriend's head, he notices that the younger boy’s gorgeous locks seems greasy and he frowns but smiles giddily when he sees that Steve is wearing his leather jacket and battle vest and he hears the heart monitor speed up a few clicks.
He knows that there will be a lot of talking later, a lot of paperwork and conversations and a lot of work to get back into the flow of normality but for now he can just focus on the fact that he is alive, that Steve is alive and they're gonna be okay.
In the silence, Eddie has time to think, and think he does do. He thinks that maybe he and Steve could leave Hawkins and start a new life somewhere where it may be as safe as it could possibly be for them. Maybe they could find somewhere in a city and make some friends. Maybe they’d get a cat, Eddie wonders what job steve would find and thinks about his own skills and ponders if he could even get a job. Eddie feels giddy at the thought of waking up to his boyfriend every single day, the thought of a place of their own where they would be living and breathing each other.
He’s pulled out of his thoughts at the sound of steve yawning beside him, lifting his eyes to look at him blearily before recognition coats his face and he sits up.
“Eds?”
“Hi Stevie, welcome to the land of the living.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you?”
“Maybe.”
Steve leans forward and kisses him, deep and slow. When he pulls away he rests his forehead against Eddie’s and breathes him in.
“I love you, Eddie Munson.”
Eddie laughs, bright and loud.
“I love you too, Steve Harrington.”
The next few hours are a bit of a fuckshow, it takes way too fucking long for Hopper—finding out he was alive was a trip—to convince everyone that he isn’t a dangerous murderer but eventually he is allowed out of the cuffs. He gets a long hug from Dustin and gets to be the subject of the younger boy’s wrath.
And then he finds out about Max.
The younger girl is currently in a medically-induced coma and he’s gonna be allowed to visit her tomorrow.
But they’re alive.