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They scramble out of the Creel House just in time to avoid being crushed in the earthquake-induced collapse that splinters the whole house apart and nearly kills them. He’d be happy to see the place go under other circumstances but the earthquake, the chime of the clock, all of it means they lost.
In the front yard he gets an arm around Nancy and Robin each and pins them against his chest, half for stability and half because Robin’s cries from earlier are still rip-roaring through him and Nancy was floating this morning he just needs them close for a second. His heart pounds in his chest, pulsing around his wounds, and he’s dizzy now that there’s nothing to fight and the adrenaline has started to fade.
Robin pats his arm where it’s across her chest. “Steve,” she says. The earthquake has ended. He needs to let them go.
He gives himself a few more seconds to squeeze them tight against him. His girls. Endlessly smart and funny, dedicated to humbling him, and wonderfully, wholly, alive.
“We need to get the kids,” Nancy says breathlessly. None of them say what they’re all thinking, which is that the earthquake means Max is probably dead, crumpled up and covered in blood and blind. One of Steve’s kids. His little sister, really, who’d been under his supervision and protection. Just thinking about it makes Steve want to fall to his knees and scream but he’s no use if he gives up now, and there’s still more to do like there always is.
They trudge in the direction of the trailer park in an exhausted, weary silence. Steve walks a half-step behind to try and curb his unreasonable desire to grab Nancy and Robin each and keep them as close as possible. For now there’s no more monsters and they’re as safe as they can be in a toxic, inter-dimensional hell, and anyways they’d both pitch a fit if they felt like he was being overprotective, so he settles for watching them and pointedly not thinking about anything else.
Or at least he tells himself that when really the inside of his head is a constant loop of Dustin Max Lucas Erica Dustin Lucas Erica Max.
Not thinking about it ceases to be an option when they step out of the woods and hear some kind of cry from the left. His step falters. Vecna might not be dead but he’s gone and the monsters all collapsed when he did and the only other option would be . . .
“Steve!”
“DUSTIN!” he screams. The adrenaline comes back and saps away the pain and the dizziness. The only thing that matters is that Dustin is out there, crying out for him and possibly injured and alone, which means they deviated from the plan and something’s wrong.
He sprints off in the direction of the noise and absently notes Robin and Nancy following him, their steps smaller but echoing in the vast silence that’s taken over this world. There’s a trail of dead bats leading to some kind of massacre, piles of them spread around a circle, and in the middle of it all is Dustin, crying over Eddie’s prone form.
“Oh god,” Steve says, coming up short. There’s nothing else to say. No words for the horror of the scene in front of him. Eddie’s covered in blood and open wounds, and Steve can see even from outside the circle that his eyes are wide open, unseeing. That he’s gone. Dustin looks physically unharmed but he’s covered in Eddie’s blood and doubled over the body, and it’s one of the worst things Steve has seen even in the terror that’s been the past four years. He can already picture the nightmares.
Nancy and Robin flank him from the sides as he picks his way over, stepping over bat carcasses and debris. When he gets to Dustin’s side he kneels down next to him and doesn’t look at Eddie’s bloody, broken body.
“Dustin,” he says, and Dustin’s eyes snap towards him like he hadn’t noticed him before. He’s crying silently now, like he’s worn himself out and has nothing left, and Steve wonders how long he’s been sitting here holding Eddie’s body as the warmth leaves him. “I’m so sorry, buddy.”
“We’ve gotta get him out,” Dustin chokes out. “We can’t leave him.”
“Dustin . . .” he starts, at a loss. How does he present Dustin with this new injustice - that they’ll have to leave Eddie here, in this world that ruined his life and then took it - and try to carry on without him? He can’t do it. He tries to be strong but this on top of everything else and everything that will come next is too much. He looks at Nancy, and then Robin, pleading for intervention where he can’t give it.
“I know it’s hard,” Robin says, crouching before them. “I wish we could, I know it’s unfair, but we can’t carry him out of here. You’ve got to let him go so we can get back to check on Max, okay?” Her slow, soft voice is so different from the normal hypervelocity word vomit she normally commits. Dustin nods, ever the trooper, and tries to take a deep breath that shudders on the way out, and very carefully lays Eddie gently to the ground, shoulders first and then head like he’s trying not to hurt him, and then he unclips one of his necklaces, stuffs it in his pocket, and reaches both hands for Steve.
Steve swoops in and grabs him the second he does. He curls an arm around his shoulders and cradles his head against his neck instinctively, like he can still shield him from this, like the damage hasn’t been done already. Nancy comes around the side and rubs Dustin’s back, sharing a look of horror with Steve over his head. Grief and terror and despair ping around his head in turn, but so does relief. He and Eddie had nodded at each other right before parting ways, a silent agreement that Steve was trusting him with Dustin, that despite their jealousy and differences they shared one thing in common, which was that they both needed Dustin to live no matter the cost or sacrifice.
“Did they get you? Are you hurt?” he asks. There’s a degree of hysteria in his voice he doesn’t even try to reign in until Dustin nods. He pulls away and cups his cheeks to look him over, moves his hands to his shoulders and down his arms, pats his sides.
“Where?”
“My leg. I fell. I can’t walk on it.”
Steve leans back enough to look at his legs. There’s no open wounds, no blood, no bone, so he rules out any immediate medical attention they can give. For the hundredth time in a week he thinks about how unqualified he is for this and feels his stomach turn over.
“That’s okay,” Steve whispers. He presses their sweaty foreheads together and wraps Dustin's jacket tighter around him. “I’ll carry you, buddy, I gotcha. That’s my job, huh? I’ll get you out of here. We’re just gonna take a second.”
Dustin retreats into silence as they watch as Nancy and Robin close Eddie’s eyes and say goodbye, adjusting his necklaces and arms so he just looks like he’s sleeping. One final kindness. Steve wishes more than anything that he could do more for him but he supposes the only thing left is to honor his sacrifice and get Dustin out. I’ll look after him, he thinks, like maybe Eddie can hear him. Finally, Dustin nods, adjusting so his arms are around his neck, and he hears it as the permission it is.
Steve wraps an arm around his shoulders and one under his legs, careful of his grip, and hefts them both up. Dustin sinks into his arms like he’s lost all the fight in him and that more than anything makes Steve want to be sick. The one time he leaves this kid during one of these shit-storms and he’s traumatized and injured and despondent. He never should have let him out of his sight, shouldn’t have let him down here at all.
“Are you okay carrying him?” Nancy asks. She puts a hand over his side where he’s bleeding through his makeshift bandages, a silent acknowledgement so as not to bring too much awareness to it. And sure, Steve’s injured and Dustin isn’t the little kid he was a few years ago - he’s nearly as tall as Steve now - but nothing in this world or any other could convince him to put him down now.
“It’s not like we have another option,” Robin says. “We need to get out of here before the gates close.”
“I have him.”
It takes some maneuvering to get Dustin through the gate, especially since the makeshift rope is gone, but they manage. They lie him down on the couch in the back to rest, and Steve doesn’t want to leave him but he doesn’t have a second to spare when he still needs to get Max and Lucas and Erica. He hands Nancy the first aid kit they grabbed when they bought their weapons and leaves them reluctantly so he can drive, weaving through disaster zones from the earthquake.
When they get to the Creel house he pounds up the stairs calling for the kids, hoping the worst hasn’t come, and falls to his knees in relief when he gets to the middle of the room where Lucas is cradling Max with Erica at his side.
“Max,” he says, and then loses the ability to say anything at all.
“She’s okay,” Lucas says, turning to look at him, and Steve’s jaw drops at his beaten and bruised face. “It’s just her leg that’s broken.”
“Lucas,” he whispers. The guilt that severs through him is quick and brutal. He left them. He left them here and Max’s leg is broken and she’s unconscious and Lucas has been beaten and Erica’s holding her arm to her chest and Dustin just watched a loved one die brutally, his first real loss. He remembers the four of them tucked behind his back in a junkyard three years ago and wishes he’d never, ever let them out of his sight.
“I’m fine,” Lucas says, startling Steve out of his thoughts. “Max needs medical attention. I’ll tell you everything later.”
He gets up and stumbles closer to them with his arms out. “Let me take her,” he says, but Lucas frowns and curls around Max protectively.
“I can do it.”
“I’m sure you could normally, but you’re injured, Luc. I got her.”
He lets Lucas think about it for a few seconds before he finally nods and carefully transitions Max into his arms.
“Erica,” Steve says. “Are you okay? What happened to your arm?”
“Jason came. One of his friends grabbed me and twisted my arm,” she says, subdued. Steve feels anger rush through him like a shot. He feels pulled in too many directions. Lucas and Dustin and Max and Erica. All four of them are hurt and need attention and he can’t fit his arms around all of them the way he wants to. He’s tired of compartmentalizing. Tired of talking these kids down from panic and grief.
“Alright kiddo, we’ll get that checked out too. Can you two walk or do you need me to come back and get you?” he asks. The Sinclairs make mirrored expressions of determination and help each other up. Beyond the pain and grief and terror, there’s a burst of pride that wells up so strong it brings tears to his eyes. Lucas and Erica. Two of the bravest, toughest kids he knows.
“We’re good,” Lucas says.
Steve lets them down the stairs first so he can watch them and follows carefully. Max’s head is tucked into his shoulder the way Dustin’s was, but she’s alarmingly limp - her arms curled between their chests, and he has to be careful not to knock her injured leg into anything. Steve takes his first full breath all day when everyone is finally in the trailer and headed for the hospital.
The day after the earthquake, as it’s being referred to, Steve makes his way to the Henderson household as soon as he wakes up, sometime in the early afternoon but still too early. He can never get as much sleep as he wants to after these things.
He hadn’t wanted to leave Dustin last night but he didn’t really have a choice when Mrs. Henderson showed up to the overrun hospital and started fussing over her son. He’d waved faintly at Dustin from the doorway and made his way alone to get his own medical attention, which turned out to be less stitches than he’d anticipated along his sides. No bat rabies, he cheered to himself.
“Good morning, Steve,” Mrs. Henderson says when he knocks. She looks tired but generally unharmed, and happy to see him despite everything else.
“Morning. I was just checking up on Dustin, is he up?”
Mrs. Henderson frowns and opens the door to let him in.
“He won’t talk to me. He hasn’t gotten out of bed. But you might have better luck. Oh, he just adores you, you know?”
He worships you, dude. You don’t even know. Eddie had said. Steve wasted so much time being jealous of Eddie for being better suited to be Dustin’s friend than he was. He was the head of a DnD club and, he learned, he was goofy and theatrical and he got all of Dustin’s nerdy references. What did Steve have to offer? He was Dustin’s hero when he was a kid, maybe, but he’d always known it was inevitable that once he got past the hero-worship he would realize that Steve wasn’t really all that. He barely scraped through high school and he has no future. He’s not half as smart as any of the kids are and if last night was anything to go by he’s shit at keeping them safe. He’s not the person Dustin needs, really, or deserves, but he’s here, and that’s all he can be.
Mrs. Henderson pats him on the cheek once before shooing him down the hallway.
He knocks gently and slowly pushes Dustins’ door open and takes in the sight of him. The kid’s curled up on his side on his bed in the dark, injured leg booted and sticking out of the blankets. His eyes are red like he’s been crying instead of sleeping and he doesn’t react at all when Steve steps into the room and shuts the door behind him.
“Hey, Dustin.”
Dustin doesn’t say anything, but when Steve sits on the floor against the bed and leans his side on the mattress he shuffles until their faces are close together, like he needs the comfort but isn’t sure how to ask for it. Steve reaches up and palms the kids forehead and then strokes back over his hair soothingly, again and again.
Dustin blinks slowly up at him.
“You wanna talk about it?”
He shrugs. Steve figured as much but he had to ask.
“That’s okay. We’ll sit here for as long as you need.”
He strokes his hair until he looks properly calm and soothed, and then he starts talking, never one for silence. “Did I ever tell you what I was doing the day you found me after you lost Dart?” Dustin shakes his head. There’s a little more life in his eyes now, like he just needed something to focus on and if he needs someone to distract him then Steve will sit here all day talking.
“Nancy pretty much broke up with me the day before. It was this awful fight we had and I was going over to try and fix it. And at that point I’d already dropped all my asshole friends and my parents were disappointed in me and then Nancy broke up with me and I was so, so miserable.”
“And then this smartass little kid came stomping into my life talking about Demodogs and asking for advice and I had a purpose again. You thinking I was cool? Looking up to me? That meant so much to me, Dustin. Especially because you’re the smartest, bravest, funniest kid I’ve ever met. You’re more emotionally intelligent than I’ll ever be and you’re curious and you’re such a good friend.”
Dustin shifts around until one of his hands emerges from the blankets to clutch Steve’s shirt at the shoulder.
“I mean I know I’m supposed to be the role model or whatever but shit, dude, I’ve been the one looking up to you this whole time. And you know who agreed with me? Eddie. Man, that guy loved you. We talked about it when we went through Watergate - how jealous we’d each been over having your attention. How funny is that?” he asks. Neither of them are laughing.
“My point is - I’m sorry about Eddie. I know how close you were. And I know it’s not the same but I’m here and I love you so, so much, Dustin. You don’t have to go through this alone.”
Steve watches him curl up on himself like he can hide the way his face has crumpled in distress and he’s shaking with silent sobs.
“Oh, buddy,” Steve whispers, and then he clambers onto the bed and gets his arms around him as tight as he can. “I’m here, Dustin. I’m here.”
Steve ducks to kiss the side of his head and holds onto him. His boy. His little brother. What he’d told Nancy - six little nuggets, her there, a road trip - all of it was true. He just left out the bit where he’d never even considered it, never thought he’d even had a future until Dustin Henderson taught him otherwise.
He sends a silent thanks to Eddie Munson, wherever he is, for doing the impossible just so Steve can keep this.
Later, they’ll get Robin and visit Max and Lucas, check on the Wheelers and the Byers. They’ll plan something to do in Eddie’s memory - a party maybe, with loud music and lots of fun - and no matter how long it takes Dustin will be okay again. Steve’s got him.