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There was a broken bottle at his throat. Steve swallowed hard as he looked into the eyes of Eddie Munson, deep brown irises blown out with fear like a cornered animal. He struggled to catch his breath as he recovered from the wind being knocked out of him and tried to focus on anything but the makeshift weapon being nervously held up in front of him. Eddie’s hands weren’t shaking. His eyes were terrified, but his body wasn’t betraying any of that same fear. Steve was locked in place by a deceivingly strong arm and couldn’t do anything as Dustin tried his best to talk Eddie down from killing his best friend.
“Maybe Steve should drop the oar,” Dustin instructed calmly. Steve immediately opened his clenched fist and released the oar he had been holding, the clatter only causing Eddie to move the bottle impossibly closer to Steve’s neck. Steve closed his eyes despite himself. He knew how to take a beating pretty well at this point, but he didn’t like his chances against shards of glass to the jugular.
Eddie lowered the bottle; Steve could finally breathe again. He stumbled over to the nearest seat that he could find in the stuffy boat house and tried to regain some composure. Robin rushed to his side, most likely to see if the bottle had grazed his neck and gauge whether or not he needed a tetanus shot after this. His assailant had fallen to the ground, defeated. Dustin leaned over him, talking in the same hushed tones he had used before. It really was like they were taming some wild animal that had gotten itself stuck in a cage. Eddie’s eyes met with his again, and all he saw was a scared kid. He saw the same scared kid that had greeted him in the mirror after fighting the demogorgon for the first time.
“You wouldn’t believe me,” he heard Eddie say. Defeat already saturated the statement, like the man had already made peace with the fact that he was doomed. Steve softened at this, knowing the pain of experiencing horrors beyond the imagination and having to hold it all inside you. If he didn’t have the kids, Robin, Nance, and even Jonathan, he didn’t know what he’d do.
“Try us,” said Max, who had been silent until that moment. Her words were simple, but she said them with absolute sincerity. Steve watched Eddie’s face shift from confusion to realization in one swift moment. Watched him take a deep breath as he prepared to talk about what was probably the most horrifying experience of his life. He wanted to tell the man that he didn’t have to say anything, that it was ok if he wanted to keep it bottled up inside. Steve still hadn’t been able to say a word about what had happened to him with the Russians hidden under the Starcourt mall. Over a year had passed, and still, the mere thought of stepping into an elevator caused him to seize up. But Eddie needed to tell them what he saw so they could know whether or not they would have to yet again save the world from the same goddamn monsters they had been surviving for years now.
Eddie told them about Chrissy - how she floated into the air, and her bones bent and snapped, and her eyes disappeared. He stared at the ground, staying close to Dustin as he divulged the last of his story, and he looked up at the figures that surrounded him as if he expected them to attack him. Steve just sighed, placing a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder as Dustin assured him that they believed him, and began to question him about whether the attack at his trailer had any of the telltale markings of a visit from the upside down. It didn’t seem to ring any bells for Steve, but it was too freaky to think of anything else that could have possibly been the cause. It looked like Eddie was officially a member of the party.
*****
There was a pounding in his head. Steve’s entire body pulsed with a steady thrum of pain as the wounds on his sides rubbed against the crude bandages that Nancy had wrapped around his torso. He could still feel the bats ripping parts of him away, gnawing through his skin and into his muscle as a cord wrapped tightly around his neck. He was honestly surprised he was conscious, let alone trekking through the woods after Robin and Nancy to go find the guns in his terrifying ex-girlfriend’s bedroom.
“Very metal what you did, is all I’m saying,” Eddie said as Steve looked at him in confusion. He continued to ramble as the pair made their way through the twisted version of the woods Steve figured he had probably played in at some point in his life. He was only half listening to the man, his dialogue about Olly Ozman or whoever it was falling on deaf ears.
Eddie wasn’t anything like Steve had expected him to be. He wasn’t the man that their small conservative town had painted him. Steve knew well enough that being different in Hawkins was hard. He had been on both sides of the acceptable binary previous generations had set out for the youth to follow. It just hadn’t occurred to him to look beyond the surface of the guy whose only presence in his life had been the dealer at parties with good weed.
The conversation shifted to Dustin, and Steve smiled, still not responding but noting the change in topic. His breath caught in his throat as Eddie pushed up into his personal space, the smell of weed and tobacco and cheap cologne still present on the man despite the grime that now coated him from the upside down. Eddie was gravitational. In the same way that he had pulled Dustin into his orbit, Steve could feel himself being moved off of his feet and into Eddie’s atmosphere. His mind was hazy, and he didn’t know if it was from the figure pressing his arm just a bit too close to his side or from the way his body screamed with every footstep on the hard cold earth.
It was only when they came to a stop that Steve pulled back into focus. Nancy and Robin were hurriedly discussing something ahead of them, and Eddie was once again close enough to Steve that he could almost feel his breath. Eddie was saying something to him about the girls ahead of them, how they had jumped into the water without hesitation to rescue him from the upside down. He felt a surge of warmth in his chest at Eddie’s words, but as he looked over at the man, his long curly hair once again framing his face in a halo now that it was dry, he couldn’t understand what he was trying to convey. As Eddie continued, Steve found it increasingly harder not to stare at the man’s lips, chapped and bitten to all hell but somehow mesmerizing.
As Steve looked back up to meet Eddie’s eyes, he listened as the man told him that he should find some way to get back with Nancy. Steve frowned and looked over at the pair of girls ahead of him. Sure, the proposition was tempting; being with Nancy was the last time that Steve had felt any kind of normal in a very long time. He missed the way that when he was with her, he had something consistent to count on. But none of that past longing was love, not the kind he used to feel for her anyway. He had meant it in the Starcourt bathroom when he told Robin he wasn’t in love with her anymore, and thinking about the idea of rekindling their old relationship created a knot in Steve’s stomach that confused and aggravated him. Nancy had broken his heart, and Eddie wanted him to go after her. He didn’t know which of these facts hurt him more.
*****
There was a voice near his ear. It was barely a whisper, but Steve knew in an instant that it belonged to Dustin, the boy’s usual self-assured ramblings making their way through the boundary between the real world and the upside down to comfort him. He hadn’t climbed the stairs to Nancy’s room with the others, the thought of being in her room in any form at the moment was a bit too much for him to bear, and this fact led to him now standing alone in the mangled and decaying version of the Wheeler’s front entryway, the voice of Dustin surely accosting him even through the veil of the two worlds.
He yelled Dustin’s name, a desperate attempt to try and reach the people not trapped in the upside down. He remembered how Will had been stuck in this place, and how Ms. Byers had the whole town convinced she was crazy when she insisted she could hear her son’s voice in her house when everyone knew him to be dead. Now here Steve was, screaming at nothing, hoping that the same phenomenon could happen with his best friend.
The others came down the stairs when they heard his screaming, Robin giving him a look that clearly meant she was still under the impression that the bat bites had messed with his head, and he attempted to explain himself,
“It’s Herderson, that little shit, I can hear him!”
Eddie and Nancy gave him appraising looks before the voice of Dustin once again broke through the dampened quiet of the house, a fleeting glimpse of the real world sounding through the barrier. Dustin was in the real Wheeler house, which meant the others probably were too. Eddie gave Steve a supportive pat on the arm, a move that jostled Steve in a way that hurt just a bit, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
When the group eventually came around to feeling the warmth emanating from the aura around the chandelier, Steve couldn’t help but be in awe that such a beautiful thing could come from a place like they were in. There was a gentle beauty in the way the particles that surrounded the electricity of the fixture swam as they moved it. Steve looked over at Eddie and smiled, the older boy’s face lit up with the same excitement as Steve was sure he was wearing. Eddie’s smile was triumphant, a grin that lit up his soft brown eyes and exposed the dimples on his cheeks. Steve had the fleeting thought that he would do anything to see that smile on his face as much as possible.
“Does anyone know morse code?” Nancy asked, pulling Steve back to reality.
Silence rung for a moment before Eddie responded, “Does S.O.S. count?” and Steve breathed out a sigh of relief as he gave the metalhead the same comforting pat on the arm that he had received from him earlier. Once again the smile lit up his face.
*****
There was a scream in his throat. As Steve biked through the upside-down the fabric of his wrappings pulled at the congealed blood that cemented his wounds to the makeshift bandages. They had to be fast, the bats’ location being unknown gave them an unsure window of time in which to make their way to the Munson trailer and back to the safety of home. Steve had to remind himself that the nauseating pain the movement of his muscles caused on his ride was better than being eaten alive, so he held the noises he wanted to scream out inside, hoping that they would reach their destination sooner than later.
As the trailer park pulled into view, Steve let out a pained sigh of relief he hadn’t meant to give up, and he received an appraising look from his companions as they made their way through the homes to reach their destination. As Steve dropped his bike in front of the vine-wrapped shell of Eddie’s trailer, his breath shook with the telltale end of an adrenaline high. He was honestly surprised that it had carried him this long, and now that he was nearing a crash he could feel cold sweat begin to send chills down his spine.
Looking up at the fissure in Eddie’s ceiling was nauseating, even more so that the pain and exhaustion that crept into Steve’s consciousness. The membrane covering the hole’s entrance began to shake and stretch, and Steve felt Robin grab his hand as something sharp broke through. To the utter relief of the group, the figures greeting them on the other side were not monsters, but Dustin, Max, and Erica looking up from the floor of the real trailer’s living room. Steve had never been so relieved to see any of their faces before, and he laughed along with Dustin as the group began to prepare to make their ascent, and then descent, back into reality.
Against his own better judgement, Steve decided he would go through the gate last, assisting the others in their landings onto Eddie’s suspiciously stained mattress. Robin and Eddie made it through fine, both being welcomed back to the land of the living by their friends, but when Steve went to help Nancy through the gate she was frozen. He figured it was just nerves, so he tentatively shook the girl’s shoulder in a gesture of confidence, but he noticed very quickly that her eyes were rolled all the way back in her head, her expression unmoving and slack.
“Nance? Nance!” he called, now vigorously shaking her as he called for help to those on the other side of the gate. This couldn’t be happening. Nancy hadn’t even been having headaches or nosebleeds, at least not that she had let on to the rest of them. He could vaguely hear the frenzied shouts of his friends as they ran through Eddie’s trailer to find some kind of music to play to snap Nancy out of her trance, but he was too focused on Nancy’s unresponsive state to really pick up what was going on around him. Steve felt helpless as he just shook Nancy over and over again, not knowing what else to do to possibly get her out of the trance that Vecna had her in. He couldn’t breathe, he felt like crying, this was all too much. Moments ago he had been on the verge of collapse, and now he was so awake and alert that he thought he’d have to take a lap around the trailer park after this to calm his nerves down.
As the shouting in the trailer escalated to a head, Eddie’s voice coming through clear above the rest with a sharp “THIS IS MUSIC!” Nancy suddenly woke back up. Steve caught her carefully as she slumped down, but she quickly righted herself and began to exclaim about the vision she had while under the control of Vecna. Steve’s heart finally slowed its beating as the regular Nance began to shine through again, already grabbing the rope and making her way out of the upside-down. Steve followed soon after, his body revolting against the strain that climbing a rope did to his torn up torso, and as he fell onto Eddie’s mattress, the wind completely knocked out of him, all he could feel was relief.
The group collectively decided to move their party over to Max’s trailer in the adjacent lot, the looming presence of the gateway too close for comfort in the Munson’s home, and by the time they were halfway across the space Steve felt his knees finally begin to buckle. Before he could fall flat on his face, however, there was a hand on the small of his back settling him back into place. Steve looked over to see Eddie carefully keeping him steady, motioning for Dustin to grab Steve’s other side. He was relieved and embarrassed simultaneously that the others had noticed his sudden drop in strength, and he gave himself over to lean into the support of Eddie and Dustin’s arms. He noticed that even now Eddie still had that same smell to him, the earthy scent of cigarettes and weed clinging to his clothes pleasantly against all odds. Steve fought the urge to melt into the scent completely as he was practically carried to their destination.
*****
There was a pressure on his side. Steve’s bites still stung under their wrapping, but the pressure he was feeling now was a warmth that grounded him rather than a burn that made him seize up. He was standing over Eddie, the metalhead displaying an advertisement for The War Zone and leaning comfortably back into Steve, his body pressed against him like it was meant to sit there. The gentle touch was reassuring, the leather of Eddie’s jacket pressing up against the worn denim of the vest that usually accompanied it. Steve realized with a pang of disappointment that once they used his dad’s credit card to buy themselves new clothes with their weapons that he would probably be expected to give the garment back to its owner. The vest had been serving as a lifeline to Steve, the frays and patches grounding as he ran his fingertips across them. It felt like Eddie was all around him, which, like the heat of the man pressed into his side, was strangely reassuring.
Steve didn’t know why Eddie had been taking up so much of his mind since they had been introduced by way of a threat in the boat house just days before. He was just so completely different to the image that he had constructed throughout the years they were in high school. Eddie’s wit and confidence were still there, of course, but all the venom that usually came through with his words had long since dissipated when the threats switched from jocks to otherworldly terrors. Steve personally thought that the metalhead was handling everything quite well despite the circumstances, and he hated knowing that much like himself, Eddie was silently stewing in a pit of self doubt about his contributions to the party.
If it were anyone else, Steve would have quietly made some remark about his worth and participation, giving the classic babysitter pep talk that usually satisfied most self loathing, but with Eddie things felt more difficult. Eddie had somehow known exactly what to say to him in the upside-down to placate his nerves, and Steve felt the overwhelming need to do the same for the boy who now leaned against him, back against stomach. Not knowing what to say to him, Steve opted for an unsatisfactory and mundane observation about their current situation,
“You’ve got some kind of car we don’t know about?”
With this, Steve felt the warmth leave his side in favour of Eddie’s face now inches from his own, the man once again smiling that intense and overwhelming grin,
“It’s not exactly a car, Steve, and it’s not exactly mine, but it’ll do.”
Steve was nearly speechless as the man pulled away, hoping that his face didn’t have quite the confused expression on it that he supposed it must have. He just hoped that the grime that still covered every surface of him was enough to hide the redness that had most likely accompanied the heat now travelling across his cheeks.
He followed Eddie almost robotically, the man now donning, for some reason, a Michael Myers halloween mask, and clambered into the window of one of the campers in the park that happened to be driveable. Steve pressed up against the metalhead as he meticulously stripped the wires and began to prep them for igniting the engine.
“Where’d you learn how to do this?” he asked, trying to take in exactly what Eddie was doing.
Eddie’s demeanour changed, his shoulders squaring slightly as he put up his guard. Steve felt immediately like apologizing, but the man answered,
“Well, while the other dads were teaching their kids how to fish or play ball, my old man was teaching me how to hot wire. Now, I swore to myself I wouldn’t wind up like he did, but now I’m wanted for murder and soon, grand theft auto. So I’m really living up to that Munson name.”
Steve knew about Eddie’s father. Knew from his parents and most of the other parents in Hawkins that the Munsons were bad news. He had never thought before about how this must have affected Eddie, but it was clear through the disdain that came through his voice that he was as much a fan of his father as Steve was of his own, which was to say, not a fan at all.
Before Steve could come up with a response, Robin appeared behind him, worry on her face.
“Eddie, I’m not sure I love the idea of you driving,” she said, and memories of Eddie’s van screeching into the Hawkins High parking lot flashed across Steve’s mind.
“Oh I’m just starting this sucker,” Eddie replied, a smile crossing his face, “Harrington’s got her. Don’t ya big boy?”
Steve’s mind went blank. Eddie’s smile and the words “big boy” played in his mind over and over as he frantically took the wheel of the now-started motorhome. He felt the heat on his face again, a definite blush building all the way to his ears. Oh shit. He thought, gripping the wheel harder as his bare foot slammed the gas, I’ve got a crush on Eddie Munson.
*****
There was a humming beside him. Eddie sat in the passenger seat of the camper they had just driven away from The War Zone in a hurry, not waiting to stick around and see what Jason and his buddies were capable of. It hadn’t taken Steve long to figure out how to navigate the beast of a vehicle, and he now sat in relative comfort behind the wheel as he took his gang of misfits to the army surplus store to prepare for whatever unearthly horrors they were going to have to face in the next few hours. Steve glanced at Robin every once in a while in the rear-view mirror, his best friend’s heart in desperate need of repair after seeing Vickie kiss her boyfriend in the middle of the aisle. Unfortunately, as pressing as that issue was, Steve couldn’t find it in him to look away from Eddie for too long before glancing back over to him.
The metalhead beside him was fiddling with the dials on the radio, trying unsuccessfully to find something in his taste to play over the speakers. He sighed as he flicked past another few top 40 stations and resolved to turn the radio off altogether and blanket the RV in comfortable silence.
“Man, I didn’t know that my tapes were going to be so essential for this adventure,” Eddie said as he put his feet up on the dash, “You all need to be educated on what real music sounds like.”
Steve scoffed, “I listen to real music, Munson. Just because we don’t listen to Dark Sabbath or whatever doesn’t mean we don’t have taste.”
“Black Sabbath, Stevie. I take back my statement about you pulling an Ozzie move. That was just disrespectful.”
Steve laughed softly, shaking his head, “Hey, you can’t take back a compliment once it’s out in the world. You said I was metal, and you have to stand by it.”
Eddie took his feet off the dashboard and turned to look at Steve, his head in his hands, staring in mock sincerity, “Maybe I was too kind saying you were metal. You look pretty at home in this family camper King Steve. Don’t know if the pit at a W.A.S.P. show is your kind of party.”
“You know, I’ve always kind of dreamed of a life like this,” Steve said, not knowing where his genuine sincerity was coming from, “a lot of kids, family vacations, that kind of stuff.”
Eddie hadn’t broken his gaze on Steve since he had turned to him, now looking at him with a gaze of confusion and interest. Steve felt himself grow warm once again under Eddie’s watchful eyes. He was becoming more and more annoyed at his growing crush ever since he discovered it, since now it seemed nearly impossible to not blush when Eddie so much as looked at him.
“I never would have pegged you as a family man, Harrington. Did your parents’ sensibilities rub off on you?”
Steve laughed, “No, unless you think that having a son for looks and then leaving him to fend for himself as soon as he can use the stove is the picture of ideal parenting.”
Steve didn’t talk about his family much, but it was a bit of an open secret that the Harringtons didn’t have the time of day for their son. Steve had been with nannies since the moment he was walking, and left on his own far too soon after that. No parents, big house.
“Well, even if it isn’t very metal,” Eddie responded, “that life doesn’t seem all that bad. It seems like you already have the kids sorted out though.”
Steve smiled at him, glancing around to look at the group that inhabited the back of the trailer. His heart ached with how much he cared about each of those kids, and about the ones that weren’t with him out in California. He imagined a future where all these kids would be grown up with kids of their own. A future, he quietly hoped, that perhaps contained Eddie Munson.
*****
There was a pain in his chest. Steve watched as pairs of the party prepared for their battle with Vecna in different parts of the field that they had parked the camper in. He sat with Robin making molotov cocktails, watching with a pang as Eddie and Dustin wrestled with their homemade weapons, the jealousy he had previously felt about their bond now dissipated into a quiet fondness.
“What’s on your mind Steve?” Robin said, interrupting his watch. Steve contemplated what to say. His rapidly developing feelings for Eddie were embarrassing and very new, but this was Robin. Robin who trusted him enough to tell him her deepest secret, and who would never truly judge him even if she liked to poke fun. He sighed, placing down the bottle he was holding, and turned to look at her.
“I have feelings for Eddie Munson.”
“Like…angry feelings? Annoyed feelings?”
“No Rob! Like romantic obnoxious feelings that make me blush when he looks at me with his stupid big eyes or smiles really big.”
Robin looked at him, shocked, and then her expression softened into a smile.
“Oh Stevie,” she said, grabbing his hands in hers, laughing gently, “you certainly have a type don’t you.”
Steve looked up at the field, his gaze moving from Eddie over to Nancy, and he began laughing along with Robin. The twin heads of curly brown hair turned towards the pair, Steve and Robin only laughing louder as they were met with the large eyes and slender features of his ex-girlfriend and current crush.
“What am I going to do Robin,” Steve finally said, leaning his head into her shoulder as they continued to survey their friends.
“I guess we’ll have to figure that out after all of this goes down,” she replied, lacing her fingers through Steve’s. She smiled down at him again before breaking their gaze, looking off into the distance with an unreadable expression.
“Are you scared?” she asked him after a beat.
“Terrified.”
Robin just nodded, her face set anxiously as she rubbed her thumb over Steve’s. He sat up and squeezed her hand, looking straight at her as she continued to look away.
“You think we shouldn’t be doing this?”
She sighed, picking up the canister of kerosine and prompting him to once again take up the bottles,
“I mean, we have to try, right?”
*****
There was a familiar panic washing over him. Everyone had been taken to their respective locations, every part of the plan was in place. All that was left to do was for Steve, Robin, and Nancy to go to the upside-down version of the Creel house and hope that each different facet of their cobbled-together plan went off as well as it could. Steve’s head swum with the amount of things that could go wrong, but he pushed all his fear to the back of his mind to focus solely on the task at hand.
As he was walking away from the Munson trailer, panic rolled through him once again and he turned around to face Dustin and Eddie where they stood waiting for their part in the scheme.
“Hey, guys, listen,” he said, looking both boys in the eyes and mustering as much command as he could in his nervous voice, “If things here start to go south, I mean, at all, you abort. Okay? Draw the attention of the bats. Keep ‘em busy for a minute or two. We’ll take care of Venca.” As he spoke, Steve noticed Eddie’s eyes drifting away from his, staring at the ground and looking distant.
“Don’t try to be cute or be a hero or something,” he continued, “Okay? You guys are just-”
“Decoys!” Dustin interjected, “Don’t worry, you can be the hero Steve.”
That wasn’t what Steve meant at all. He was terrified, out of his mind with worry, barely able to put one foot in front of the other to follow Robin and Nancy. He didn’t want to be the hero, but he needed Dustin and Eddie to be safe. He needed to be sure they weren’t going to do something incredibly stupid, something like what he always did.
Eddie looked up once again, looking Steve dead in the eyes, “Absolutely. I mean, look at us. We are not heroes.”
Steve wanted to throw his arms around Eddie and tell him that he was simultaneously very happy that they were going to stick to the plan and very sad that the man didn’t see himself as a hero. He had already risked his life multiple times throughout the course of the short time that Steve had known him, and if Dustin’s word was anything to go by, combined with what Steve had seen, Eddie was more than a hero to him. In the moment after Eddie stopped talking, Steve held his gaze, a whirlpool of emotion swimming in the eyes of both of them as they looked at each other. Eddie smiled, a softer smile than the one Steve had grown so used to, and he smiled in response, turning to begin his long walk towards Vecna. He didn’t want to say goodbye, it felt too final.
But then Eddie called his name, and he instantly spun back around.
“Hey Steve?” the brunette said, walking closer tentatively. He looked like he wanted to say something, his eyes searching for the words, but in the end all he said was a simple “Make him pay.”
Steve couldn’t hold himself back anymore. He rushed forward, closing the distance between them and pulling Eddie into a tight hug. Eddie stood still for a moment before he responded, squeezing Steve tight in his own embrace.
“I’m really glad I met you, Munson,” Steve said into Eddie’s ear, “Now don’t die or I’ll kill you.”
*****
There was a scream in the distance. As Steve returned with Robin and Nancy, worse for wear but thankfully alive, he was startled by the cry of Dustin filling the air around the trailer park. He dropped what he was holding and immediately ran towards the noise, not checking if the girls were following him as he broke into a run that shouldn’t have been possible given the injuries that riddled his frame.
As he got closer to the crying boy, Steve’s heart sank. Surrounded by the corpses of innumerable bats was Dustin holding a limp Eddie in his arms. Steve scrambled to the side of the boy, immediately taking Eddie’s head into his lap to allow Dustin freedom of motion. Eddie was still, blood seeping through his clothes and marring his face, tears cutting through the grime from his half-lidded eyes. He was so pale, and he looked so fragile that Steve was afraid he would break him. He heard a gasp behind him as Robin and Nancy finally caught up to his position, but he was too focused on the task at hand to acknowledge them.
Putting his fingers on Eddie’s neck, Steve could feel a flighty and flickering pulse still evident under the blood and gore. He felt under the boy’s nose and let out a sigh of relief when he felt whispery breaths coming through. Steve immediately jumped into action, blinking away tears as he began the process of lifting Eddie up without doing more harm than good. The boy groaned softly as Steve lifted him, a good sign in his book, and he carried Eddie bridal-style as quickly as he could towards the Munson trailer. Robin and Nancy followed, the pair supporting Dustin who had apparently also hurt himself in the stunt that he and Eddie had pulled.
Entering through the now broken door of the trailer, Steve was confronted with the reality that there was now no rope to assist their exit from the upside-down. Dustin, it seemed, had had the foresight to place the mattress once again under the opening in the real world, but there was still a significant difficulty present with the lack of the ability to climb into the gate itself.
“Alright, I’ll lift you guys up, and then I’ll pass you Eddie as carefully as I can and you’ll all have to catch him,” Steve said, a confidence that he was sorely not feeling present within the voice he heard giving out instructions. Robin nodded, her face frozen in a quiet panic, and she stepped up to be lifted into the gate’s gravity. She landed with a slight gasp, but got up almost immediately and left the mattress to let the next person through.
Nancy and Dustin were also lifted with not much effort, though Dustin’s ankle was definitely broken and it took Steve a bit of maneuvering to manage to get him high enough without too much pain for either of them. It was Eddie’s turn.
Steve leaned down to pick up Eddie the same way he had done before, and this time the boy opened his eyes weakly as Steve came close to him.
“I guess you’ll h-ave to k-kill me now… h-huh, Harrington?” Eddie said weakly. Steve could have cried he was so relieved.
“Save your strength you asshole,” Steve said in reply, picking up Eddie with a groan from the both of them, “I’ll kick your ass once you’re recovered.”
Steve lifted Eddie carefully, blood covering his hands and clothes as he slowly brought the metalhead’s upper torso closer and closer to the gate. The ground shook softly beneath him, evidence of the instability of the upside-down crashing in on him in tandem with the anxiety of the situation. Robin, Nancy, and Dustin all stood on the mattress below, ready with their arms high to catch Eddie before he could fall too far.
As the gravity of the real world began to grab Eddie, Steve held on tighter to his legs, making sure to ease him as gently as possible into the waiting arms of the party. Eddie was received with only a small collapse, the fall significantly softer than in normal circumstances. With that out of the way, Steve grabbed the most solid looking object he could find, stood on it as high as he could, and jumped for the gateway. It took a few tries, but eventually his fingers grasped the edge of the fissure and he was able to pull himself up high enough for gravity to take over, crashing onto the mattress with a snap onto his left arm.
His body screamed for him to stop, to give himself a rest, but there was no time. Not only was there no guarantee that something wouldn’t happen to where they were standing with the tremors in the upside down bringing their ominous warnings, but Eddie was still losing blood, and they needed to get him to a hospital as soon as humanly possible. Murder charge be damned, Eddie was going to live if Steve had anything to do with it.
*****
There was a squeeze to his hand. Steve was sitting in a quarantined section of the Hawkins general hospital, a cast on his left arm and Eddie’s hand held by his right. With a lot of arguing and the warnings of many doctors, Steve had been allowed to move his IVs and a wheelchair into Eddie’s room to stay by his side. Robin, Nancy, and Dustin were all in a similar wing, every person who had physically entered the upside down being under watch, but Steve and Eddie were the only ones under strict isolation, given that they had both been bitten by the bats. Steve’s healing bites ached in their new hospital wrappings, the promise of physiotherapy for his ruined muscles looming in their throbbing pain.
He and Eddie would have matching scars, the star-shaped mouths of the demo-bats cutting into their sides in the same way. Of course, Eddie had many more than just that, which was why he was now laying nearly unresponsive in a hospital bed, mirroring the one that Max was in just downstairs, both of them in perilous condition but tentatively expected to recover.
Steve stared at the hand that was held in his, hoping that the movement he felt in it wasn’t a trick of his mind. Eddie’s fingers flinched again, and Steve let out a panicked laugh. It had been too many days of nothing, Steve having to be wheeled over to the plastic barrier that the government had set up between him and the rest of the world to give updates of no change to Dustin and Eddie’s uncle Wayne, to receive the updates about Max in return. It had begun to feel like a sick kind of purgatory exchanging no news day after day.
But now Eddie’s fingers moved, as as Steve looked up at Eddie’s face he saw his eyebrows scrunch in a brief contort of pain. Despite the pang that this caused in Steve’s chest, he felt tears well up in his eyes from relief. As he watched, Eddie’s eyes began to open, and he slowly focused on the figure beside him. Steve stood up, ignoring the pain in his abdomen in order to get a closer look at the older boy.
“Steve?” Eddie croaked, his voice unsteady from lack of use.
“It’s me,” Steve replied, his face in a grin wide enough to mirror the one he loved so much on Eddie, “you’re awake.”
“I guess you’ll have to kick my ass then, huh?” Eddie retorted, a small smile appearing on the boy’s face.
“Screw that Munson, I could kiss you! I’m just so happy you’re awake.”
“Then do it,” Eddie whispered, barely audible, “kiss me.”
Steve’s eyes opened in surprise, appraising the man in front of him for signals about if he was serious or just off his mind on pain medication. Eddie just nodded, squeezing the hand that still held his on the side of the bed. Steve brushed Eddie’s hair gently off his face and leaned in, pressing their lips together in a gentle kiss.
Eddie, to Steve’s delight, kissed back. Steve deepened the embrace, removing his hand from Eddie’s to cup his chin as he parted his lips experimentally with his tongue. Eddie let Steve in enthusiastically, biting the younger man’s lower lip as he smiled into Steve. If Steve’s body hadn’t betrayed him, he could have stood there and tasted Eddie Munson forever. His lips were chapped, but still full and warm, and his stubble brushed against Steve’s skin perfectly. Steve couldn’t believe he had missed out on kissing Eddie for this long, and he placed one more chaste peck on his lips before sitting back down in his chair, thoroughly worn out from their small embrace.
“I’ve wanted to do that ever since you held a bottle to my neck,” Steve said, locking eyes with Eddie who was gazing at him as if he were dreaming.
“Didn’t know you were kinky, Steve, we’ll have to remember that for later.”
Steve smiled, grabbing Eddie’s hand again and tracing small circles over his palm. With everything back to the tentative normal that Steve was used to, he began to let himself think about the fact that the future he had briefly envisioned containing Eddie within it was more feasible than ever, “We have all the time in the world.”