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After fighting Vecna, when they'd gotten back to the trailer park, panting for toxic breath, they found Dustin crumpled over Eddie, shaking so hard he nearly blurred. He fought them, even Nancy, when they tried to get him to understand they had to go, they had to go now.
Dustin looked at Steve, his face blotchy-red, streaked with tears and sweat. His mouth opened and closed; he didn't have any more fight in him.
"This is our fault," he said. His voice sounded rough, clogged with snot. He stood with difficulty but pushed away Robin's helping hand. As he turned for the trailer, he added, "This is all our fault."
Despite his bad ankle, he wouldn't let them help him up through the gate.
Steve tried to get Eddie's body over his shoulders, then tried a bridal carry. He couldn't hold Eddie and climb the fucking rope. Munson wasn't all that heavy, it wasn't that, though there was a weight to him that had nothing to do with his physical form. He just kept slipping, flopping, falling. Steve touched a dead body once before, when he was eight and his grampa died and his cousin Stacy dared him to at the wake. That was different; Grampa's wrist was hard as concrete.
Eddie was still soft. Just gone, every bit as much as Grampa.
Steve tried. He really did, with those bats dive-bombing him and chittering, with the foul, cold air choking him, while Robin and Nancy yelled at him from the other side of the gate. Eddie's loose limbs flopped and Steve staggered back and forth. He couldn't do it.
The edges of the gate kept shivering, glowing occasionally, like something taking slow, laborious breaths. Gathering its strength.
He tucked Eddie into bed before he left. He thought he should say a prayer, but he didn't know any.
Eddie's hair spread over the pillowcase like a dark halo.
*
You know those dreams where you have something very important to do—take a test or deliver a message or rescue a loved one—but you spend all your time and energy running around distracted by immediate concerns, conscious all the while that you're failing to accomplish something far more significant?
Steve is living the dream. That dream. He can't shake this creeping dread that there's something he needs to do. Something he isn't doing. Something hovers just over his shoulder; it flees the corner of his eye, turns a corner just before he looks closer.
Dustin snaps his fingers several times in front of Steve's face. "Are you even listening right now? Jesus Christ, Steve."
Steve shoves him lightly, just to make his point, before crossing his arms and trying to look serious. Intent. "I'm listening. Go on."
Across the table, Robin rolls her eyes. "What is with you?"
They're trying to plan out safety patrols in this quadrant. Between random demogorgons and questing tentacles on one side and triggerhappy asshole humans and freakishly robotic military on the other, it's not exactly a stroll in the park.
Steve shrugs. "I'm fine. Where were we?"
Sighing heavily, Dustin drops his head on the table and bangs it a few times, totally melodramatically. "That's it. I give up. Why bother going on?"
Robin gives Steve a capital-L Look; Steve doesn't know what it means. He's fucking up everywhere, isn't he?
"Hey, Henderson," he tries. "I'm, uh. I'm sorry? I've got a lot on my mind, you know, and it's—"
In a flash, seemingly all at once, Dustin's sitting up, adjusting his cap and rifling the pile of papers and maps spread out before them. "We've all got a lot on our minds, Steve. Goes with the post-apocalyptic territory, wouldn't you say?"
Over his head, Steve makes pleading eyes at Robin, but she just smirks at him.
Damn it. Steve swallows the heat billowing up his chest and burning at his sinuses. Now is probably-definitely not the time to keep arguing, even if Dustin insists on being a grade-A obnoxious little prick.
"Yeah, I know," Steve says as gently as he can. "I do." When Dustin squints at him, Steve adds, "I would. I will."
"Now you're just babbling," Robin points out.
Steve ignores her. He gets that feeling again, the something just behind him, just out of sight, but waiting for him.
They're all on edge, understandably so. That's all this is.
*
Steve keeps dreaming about Eddie. He isn't sleeping much, but when he does, he's back in the Upside Down. Every time.
The air's dark, it's cold and damp, there's all that dandruff-shit floating around. The vines are writhing all over the place, cheep-cheeping and slurping. And there's Munson, right in front of him. Weird face, big eyes, lank hair. Unmistakably Munson.
Sometimes he speaks: why'd you leave me here?
Sometimes he opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. Only a tentacle, slimy and thick, squeezing its way forward. It's reaching for Steve.
He shouts himself awake. The bruises on his neck burn under his hand.
*
He's so tired, he's seeing things.
Then again, with evil tendrils curling out of the cracks ripping apart their town, with more dead unaccounted for than living left, maybe it's something else.
Steve just wants to know what's going on.
"How do you know if something's a ghost?" he asks Dustin early one morning. Everyone has been crashing at his place—he doesn't remember being asked, but he's glad for the company—and he stumbles into the kitchen only to find Dustin wide awake, checking ordinance maps spread out over Steve's mom's pristine formica counters.
"Why do you want to know?" Dustin asks back.
"I just need to know, all right? Hit me with the education."
Dustin launches into an explanation that could be bullshit or the spook's honest truth. Steve can't tell, not this early, on this minuscule amount of sleep. He pours himself a coffee.
"Henderson, I swear to God. Start over. Small words."
Dustin tries to cock one eyebrow, but just looks weird. "How small?"
"Just tell me, all right? Should I look for, like, what's that stuff? The gloopy green ghost cum? What if there isn't any? Not a ghost?"
"Ectoplasm."
"Bless you."
"No, the ghost goop, that's ectoplasm. Or 'slime', in the parlance of the Big Apple's very own Ghostbusters."
Steve rubs his chin. "So what do I do? Watch Ghostbusters again?"
Dustin grins. It's the first time he's actually smiled since—since they got back. Since everything got so much worse. He looks about a thousand years younger. "Would that really be such a hardship?"
"No," Steve admits and drains down the rest of his coffee. "Not at all."
Family Video has been ransacked a couple times already, but Steve's pretty sure that he has Ghostbusters taped off HBO somewhere around here.
He refills the coffeemaker to brew another pot. While he does, he says, "So how are you doing, anyway? Holding up okay?"
Dustin doesn't answer. When, exasperated, Steve turns around, ready to insult him, he sees that he's alone.
*
The guys get the Boy Scouts of America-certified pup tent up and stable in a truly impressive amount of time. Then they hit a snag trying to work the wading pool into the narrow flap opening.
Robin said they should have put the pool inside first, then inflated it and poured in the salt water, but she was shot down.
Now they're cutting out the bottom of the tent and placing it over the pool.
"So how's this work again?" Steve can't help but ask. He's short on sleep—no one's sleeping much these days—and hungry. He feels like he's not quite filling his own skin any more, like it and his mind are just slightly out of phase. His eyes are often bleary. His throat hurts all the time, but Robin refuses to check for strep any longer.
Dustin sits back, hands splayed on his knees. "It's very simple, Steve. We're using the tent to amplify Eleven's mental connection to the Upside Down so that she can more safely traverse the interdimensional connective tissues in search of Max's soul."
"Right, but—" Steve shuts up when Robin kicks him. From the other side, Lucas elbows him. "Right, right. Forget it."
To make things even more calm, Steve puts on his mom's favorite Windham Hill album to play while Eleven floats. He drags the speaker as close as he can to the deck, then drops into a crouch beside it.
It's never sat right with him that they rely so much on Eleven. Not that she's not amazing, but it's got to suck, being a weird sad kid with the weight of several worlds on your scrawny shoulders.
Arm up on the speaker, Steve watches the kids out on the deck put the finishing touches on the tent and pool. At the far end, shoulders hunched, Mike paces alone, kicking at stray leaves, while Robin and Erica kneel together near the tent, ready to help Eleven get inside.
Steve's just so tired. When he blinks, his vision pales for a couple moments, goes monochrome, then fills back up with color. He scrubs at his eyes and shakes himself awake. He can taste salt, see flakes of ash drifting through the air. His balance sways.
*
"Why'd you leave, man?" Eddie asks.
Steve looks up to see Eddie standing where the tent and pool had been a second ago. Eddie cocks his head and a breeze that Steve can't feel blows hair across his face.
"I tried to bring you back," Steve tells him.
He can still hear the piano music, but it's a little farther away.
"What is this shit?" Eddie points at the speaker. "Figured you had terrible taste, but this is some next-level New Age quiche-for-brunch shit."
"It's not mine," Steve says, struggling to stand up. He feels like he's slowly filling with lead and sinking. "It's my mom's, I thought..." He shakes his head to clear it. "What are you doing here?"
Eddie looks around, wearing that anxious, hunted expression from the boat house. Big eyes, skeletal cheekbones. Soft hair blowing here and there. "Where is here?"
"Oh," Steve says. "My house. My parents' house, I—"
"Sweet little casa," Eddie says, hands on his hips, and tosses a smirk at Steve. "In-ground pool?"
"Yeah, I guess." Steve keeps touching his neck, the base of his throat, seeking his own pulse. "We don't really use it any more."
"Shame." Eddie hops backward onto the diving board's steps and drums his hands between his legs. "So."
"So," Steve echoes.
They go quiet, awkwardly so. Steve shuffles his feet, scratches his neck, pushes a hand through his hair several times. Eddie hums, and drums, and lets his legs dangle.
Steve remembers Dustin, the anger that's balled up tighter than anything inside him, making him snappish and more impatient than ever.
"So, Munson," Steve starts, then goes faster. "Are you a ghost? Or what?"
Eddie's head is bobbing along to music only he can hear, so his attention takes its time swimming back to Steve. When it does, he smiles slowly, showing lots of teeth. "Dunno. Am I?"
"Answer the question, man, would you?"
Eddie springs forward, bonelessly, and before Steve's quite sure what's happening, he's backed up against the glass door and Eddie's breath is hitting his face. Cold, sour, definitely Upside-Down-y.
"Got unfinished business, Steve?"
"What? No!" He tries to move left, then right, then forward, but Eddie's strong, and quicker than anything, and he's got Steve well and truly trapped. "That's stupid. Of course not."
"Huh," Eddie says. This close, his eyes are all black, liquid night skies, no whites to be seen. It occurs, distantly and vaguely, to Steve that that can't be right. But Eddie's tracing his index finger along Steve's jaw, tapping his chin, poking his lower lip. "You sure about that?"
Steve opens his mouth to reply, but all he can do is inhale the cold, burning air of the Upside Down. He's grabbing at nothing, watching Eddie fade into particles, falling.
*
He opens his eyes to Dustin kneeling over him, screaming. At first, all Steve can do is see the scene, not hear, not feel, but then he hits himself, or returns to consciousness, whatever, and here's Dustin Henderson making an amazing fool of himself.
"Christ almighty, what the fuck, Steve?" He shakes Steve by the shoulders, wheezes asthmatically, starts to yell again. "You're not going anywhere! What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Behind him, Robin comes into focus, sliding her arm around Dustin's chest, pulling him off Steve. What looks like a demobat over her shoulder is just Mike Wheeler.
Steve rolls onto his side and coughs out all the disgusting shit he just breathed in. He coughs himself empty, then keeps coughing, until he's laughing, hysterically, shaking with it, kicking at the flagstones of the deck.
"You think that's funny, motherfucker?" Dustin shouts.
Steve waves at him, coughs, tries for several choking moments to speak. Finally, weakly, he gets out, "Language, Henderson."
Coughing again, he rolls onto his front, plants his hands, and tries to push himself up. He can't quite make it, but Dustin falls to his knees again to help. He hugs Steve fiercely, nails scraping skin through Steve's shirt, the shirt itself twisting in Dustin's grip.
"Easy, man," Steve manages to say, haltingly. "I'm right here."
Robin touches Steve's cheek and smiles weakly. Around her, the others gather, even Eleven. They ring him like mountains, silhouetted against the sky. He's not going anywhere.