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Wet wasn't a word that Steve would associate with the Upside Down. Damp? Maybe. Slimy? Definitely. But wet? It just didn't fit. Which, for a place filled to the brim with slick vines and slobbering flower-faced monsters, was weird. Beyond weird. It was as if the whole place was adverse to water. The tunnels that had snaked through their town avoided all major sources of water. Lover’s Lake was completely dry. And when Steve had been pulled under the water and through the portal, it was as if all excess water had been sluiced right off his skin. His clothes and hair were damp, and his skin was slick, but he wasn’t sopping wet like he should have been. The same had gone for the others when they followed him into hell. They, too, looked damp, but instead of dripping wet from their swim, it looked as though they’d toweled off before coming to his rescue.
So, no, wet wasn’t a word that Steve would associate with the Upside Down, and following that line of thought, rain wasn’t the kind of weather he’d expect from the parallel universe. Sure, there were a lot of clouds and red-tinted lightning, but everyone knew about Will’s visions of the Mind Flayer, with the lightning and the living shadow. He never spoke about rain, though. It didn’t rain when Hopper and Joyce went in to rescue Will, nor when Nancy went in. Will had been in the Upside Down for a week, but he never mentioned rain from then. He only spoke about the dark and the cold.
So when Steve saw the sky getting impossibly darker as they grabbed bikes from Nancy’s garage, he didn’t think much about it. But as they biked through the town, and he noticed the vines that lay across the roads seemed to pull away to let them through, he knew something had to be up. At first, he thought maybe Vecna was summoning them, but then he realized they weren’t going far. Instead, they curled up under the trees and cars, anywhere that provided shelter. Thunder rumbled, and Steve had a very, very bad feeling settle heavy in his gut.
“Uh, guys?” He called, glancing back at them, slowing down to let the small lead he had on them diminish. “We need to get off the road.”
“What? Steve, we can’t! We have to get to Eddie’s trailer.” Nancy exclaimed.
“Yeah, like asap!” Robin agreed.
“I know that, but I think it would be a very good idea if we, you know, took a break. Now. Like right now!” Steve said when the atmospheric pressure rapidly grew laden down with some unknowable weight. He turned sharply into a driveway, the others following, confused but willing to heed the urgency in his voice. The garage was open, and Steve jumped off his bike once under the shelter, yelling at them to hurry as they pulled into the structure. As soon as Robin passed through the opening last, Steve jumped up and grabbed the door handle, pulling it down to the ground.
“Steve, what is going on?” Nancy demanded as they clambered off their bikes.
“I’d like an answer to that too. What gives, Harrington?” Eddie asked though neither of them got an answer as Steve pushed through a side door into the actual house.
The inside of it was filled with pictures of people Steve had never met, happy smiling faces of a family that had no idea their home had a nightmarish doppelganger in a world parallel to their own, complete with peeling paint and musty furniture and grime lingering on every surface. Not to mention a few vines here and there. Steve didn’t linger to make eye contact with the portraits, though. He moved to a large picture window that faced the street, pushed aside the foul-smelling curtains, and nodded toward the outside. “That’s why we had to stop.”
As they watched, the sky above opened up, and rain started to fall. But it wasn’t an ordinary storm past the first glance. As soon as the heavy drops hit the ground, they dissipated into mist, and as the rain quickly fell thicker, it formed puddles of bubbling, steaming acid. As they watched, a vine that hadn’t taken shelter in time writhed and thrashed under the onslaught. Its movements grew slowly weaker before the vine lay entirely still, the plant dissolving to nothing in the corrosive rain.
“Oh. My. God.” Robin whispered. “If we’d been out there, we would have melted just like the Wicked Witch.”
Steve frowned, glancing back at her, but he didn’t get to say anything when Eddie started laughing, the sound manic like it was spilling out before he could stop it.
“I don’t think this place is anything like the Land of Oz, Buckley!” Eddie shouted, spinning around to gesture at the house. “Does this look like the Emerald City to you?” He gestured out the window. “Cause that sure don’t look like the Yellow Brick Road to me!”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Geez, Munson. Calm down. We’ll be fine so long as we stay in here.”
“But how long do you think that’ll be?” Robin asked, glancing between Steve and Nancy. “I mean, we can’t stay here forever.”
“Well.” Nancy stared outside at the weird weather, crossing her arms in an attempt to ward off the dread creeping up on her. “Well, we don’t have a choice. So we’ll wait it out and get some rest.”
“That. Is not a bad idea, Wheeler.” Eddie said, pointing at her. He moved across the room and flopped down on the couch that was thankfully void of tendrils.
Nancy turned to Steve. “We should sleep in shifts.” She told him, and he nodded, gesturing to the loveseat.
“I’ll take first shift. You guys join Eddie.” He told the girls, leaving Nancy to nod and move to the loveseat.
“Actually, I think maybe pairing up would be smart,” Robin said, eyeing the bloodied bandages around Steve’s middle. “You might not have rabies, but if you pass out, then who knows what could happen if no one else is awake. I mean, we could get attacked by any manner of monsters and-”
“Robin.” Steve interrupted before she could continue, chuckling softly as he carefully sat down in the window nook, trying not to aggravate his injuries. “Thanks.” He said, giving her a grateful smile.
She smiled, moving to sit in the nook as well, both of them watching the sizzling rain outside. “Do you think Vecna controls the weather too?”
Steve made a thoughtful noise, tilting his head slightly. “I hope not. There has to be some limit to his power, right?”
“In theory.” Robin brought her leg up, clasping her hands around her ankle.
“Do you think the kids are okay?” Steve asked, frowning as he glanced down at his bandages and picked at the edge of them.
“More okay than us,” Robin said, though Steve’s concern was mirrored in her face. They were quiet for a minute before she nudged his foot with hers. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged, wincing a little at the movement. “I’ll live. But if I never see those things again, it’ll be too soon.”
They fell silent after that, listening to the sounds of the noisy night outside.
A few hours later, they switched with Eddie and Nancy, Steve taking the couch at Robin’s insistence while she took the loveseat. The thunder rumbled loudly overhead, and the rain poured down. Nance and Eddie talked in quiet whispers, and Steve and Robin tossed and turned, both too restless to fall asleep. The furniture, while soft, was vaguely damp, giving off a pungent scent. It made it hard for their minds to settle and let them rest.
Robin huffed, glancing over at Steve, who lay on his back, his arms and legs crossed, with one foot bouncing anxiously. “Steve? I can’t sleep.”
“Me either,” Steve answered, his eyes closed, but his face nowhere near peaceful. He opened his eyes after a minute, looking over at her. He let out a light laugh, moving to scooch over on the couch. “Come on.”
She grinned, getting off the loveseat and climbing onto the sofa with him. He opened one arm and twisted onto his side to make more room, ignoring the jolt of pain from his wounds. She settled next to him, facing his chest as they carefully got comfortable cuddling together. Her ear was pressed against his arm, and the quiet pulse beneath his skin helped to distract her from the ominous cracks of lightning. She closed her eyes, feeling herself finally starting to wind down. “Thanks, Dingus.”
Steve chuckled, and she could feel him press a light kiss against her hair. “Go to sleep, Rob. Goodnight.”
“Night, Steve.”
They slept, and outside, the rain continued to fall, and the vines remained hidden from the rain. Vecna took the period of foul weather to plan his next move, and in the real world, the kids waited inside Eddie’s trailer, growing more and more worried with every passing hour that their friends lingered in the Upside Down.