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Steve takes his hand as they sit in the backseat of a van that, for once, Steve isn’t driving. Hopper, who was dead and now isn’t, like Eddie was dead and now isn’t, has his grip tight on the wheel, and between them, there’s an ocean of kids.
Steve takes his hand in the backseat of a van, like it’s nothing. Like he hasn’t chosen Eddie in some intrinsic way, announced it to the world in a sense that blares. Like the touch isn’t soft on his fingers. No, he takes Steve’s hand and leans forward to glower into the mayhem. Put that seatbelt back on. And Get your legs off of Max; she’s healing. And That popsicle is dripping, Henderson!!! And I said, It’s Will’s turn to choose a song. There are shrieks back and snark and sass. They rise around Eddie and hum in his ears.
They could have gone with Robin and Nancy, hell, even Jonathan and Argyle, but Dustin had turned his big eyes onto them, and Eddie is soft, and Steve, he’s learned, might be even softer. So here they are, Joyce Byers’ gaze warm on them from the front seat. For a flicker, their eyes meet in the mirror, and her, against-all-odds for Eddie, her smile doesn’t falter but deepens. Eddie doesn’t understand it, but he tries to smile back and then drops his eyes down and away. In a car full of laughter, and cackles, and warmth, and somehow two adults, on the way to a beach by the sea, Steve takes his hand.
In the time after death, but before true life, while he’s still figuring out living again, really, he’s felt many things. Exhausted, primarily, tainted, maybe. Touched by everything in some intrinsic sense that mottles his insides, his soul finally wrapped up in darkness in the way they always thought it was. A surreality of the highest degree, to be dead and then not dead. A real mind-fuck. But here, a road stretching long before them, the sun getting brighter every mile, and Steve’s fingers twined into his, surreality reimagines itself in Eddie’s mind. Bright. This time. Gentle. This time. The brush of a thumb against the ridges of his finger, over a still-healing, probably-won’t-ever-really-heal ridge of a scar. The touch is absent and soft. Mind-blowing. For Eddie. Almost as mind-blowing as death. Maybe even more.
Steve takes his hand in the backseat of a van, like it isn’t anything. Like it isn’t everything. And for once, curled into a window, one of his arms wrapped around his chest, defensive, protective, like it always is these days, while the other is tugged open, gentle, and kept there, held, Eddie feels full of nothing but light.