Chapter Text
1.
"The eye stretches to the horizon and then must continue up.
Anything past the horizon
is invisible, it can only be imagined. You want to see the future but
you only see the sky. Fluffy clouds.
Look — white fluffy clouds.
Looking back is easy for a while and then looking back getsmurky. There is the road, and there is the story of where the road goes,
and then more road,
the roar of the freeway, the roar of the city sheening across the city.
There should be a place.
At the rest stop, in the restaurant, the overpass, the water’s edge…"'Road Music', Richard Siken
They are all laughing in relief, Steve is too, even though he can barely breathe himself, and he feels hysterical as he turns Eddie onto his side. He rubs at his back as he coughs up ichor and then blood and then bile and finally brackish water, too much of it, so much it seems like it shouldn’t have fit inside of him. He stills and slumps again but he's breathing .
‘We need to leave, guys.’ Mike insists again, frantic this time. He's staring out the opening in the wall, staring at the lake and the dark sky and the swarms of bats that have finally caught on to their presence.
Everyone jumps into motion without talking about it, an unfortunately experienced and well-oiled machine, rolling Eddie backwards onto the drop cloth so Steve can grab it by his head and Robin and Dustin can grab the feet, like a makeshift stretcher. Steve can't stop pushing fingers against Eddie's neck, his wrists, just to make sure his heart is still pumping. He's too quiet. Too still.
They half-carry, half-drag him into the cover of the trees, to the opening of the fissure they know they can fit through, El and Mike swinging branches at the fastest of the bats that try to stop them.
They lay Eddie down next to the fault and Steve jumps through first with no hesitation. He feels the swimmy distorted vertigo that comes with it, but he’s used to it anymore and immediately leans back down to shove his arms back through to slot under Eddie’s arms and pull .
It’s easier than he was expecting, Eddie feels too light, and he pulls too hard so they land backwards into some shrubbery, Steve cushioning Eddie’s back and then immediately checking again to make sure he’s still breathing, that he can feel a pulse.
The rest of the dwindled Party come through and crowd around them, exchanging worried looks, and then the bats start to follow them and it’s chaos again.
Robin drapes the cloth over Eddie and it makes Steve’s brain do worrying things because it looks like Eddie is a body , like he isn't in there anymore, and he has to force himself to focus on the bats diving at his head because he knows it’s safer that Eddie is as sheltered as he can be because he can’t fight back. Steve throws a bare-handed punch at a bat and it throws it backwards to land writhing feet away on its back. He misses his good bat, misses Nancy with her gun and shelter and layers that could withstand the teeth.
Steve ignores the pain tugging at his arm where one of them have managed to bite through his jacket, where it's aching and pouring blood now, and does a visual sweep. El and Mike are back to back and stomping boots onto bats lying on the ground, and Dustin is swinging at a couple diving at him. Robin has a tail in her hands and is pulling it, trying to untangle it from her wrist, but it’s stretching like taffy for too long before it tears.
It’s pouring on this side too, lightning and thunder. The fault is spitting demobats, and there’s no way they can take them all.
He’s ducking away from one and trying to form a plan that’s actually helpful amidst the buzz of panic when he feels a hand on his arm and spins, has to keep himself from following through with a punch because it’s Eddie, still awful and bloody and a little hunched over but hell he’s standing and he's breathing. Alive.
Steve smiles at him, and Eddie smiles back, and they’re hugging and laughing and crying, wincing at their injuries, and then Dustin says ‘A little help here!’ and they pull away quick, run as one to where Dustin’s arms are all wrapped up together and pulled by a tail. Dustin's knees are locked and he's bracing but he's being pulled along the ground and stumbling, trying and failing to use his whole body weight to stay still.
‘Fuck-!' Eddie punches at the bat. ‘Off-!’ Punch . ‘Asshole!’ A punch that lands hard enough to separate the bat from its tail sends it flopping away like a landed fish while Steve unravels the Dustin and picks up a branch. They weren't prepared for this, they haven't seen bats in weeks.
Eddie shouldn’t be fighting but there isn’t really another option. The three of them stand in a triangle formation, back-to-back-to-back, and catch what breath they can between landing punches and stomping and ducking. It’s too much, there are too many of them, and there’s only so much punching you can do at moving targets that want to eat you up and strangle you, not necessarily in that order.
Steve caught a really rank bite to his face at some point, and it’s pouring blood and it’s so deep he can taste it when he tongues the hole in his cheek. All the blood is making the branch too slippery to grip, and he’s starting to feel a little woozy, actually, like he’s seeing tunnel vision, and darkness is pushing across the horizon in a worrying wave.
Then there’s the sound of a car horn and a bright flash of light, and when Steve looks up he sees Argyle and Will hopping out of that fucking pizza van.
‘Go back!’ he’s yelling, spitting blood, and he grabs at as many arms as he can as he takes off running. He's pushing people into the van, pulling Eddie with him into the very back so Eddie can lay down because he was half-dead ten minutes ago.
He can hear bats bombing into the sides of the van, and he knows the glass of the windows will only take so much, but he has a second to breathe and spit more blood and wince and look at everyone to make sure they are safe. Then the darkness overwhelms him.
When he wakes up, he can tell they are moving, and he can hear hushed voices, and there’s something stuck to his face, and everything aches , but he’s warm and people are pressed against him on all sides.
He doesn’t want to open his eyes because his head is pounding, so he leans there for a moment, the past day like it’s playing in a tv episode recap across his eyelids. He gets to the part about Eddie, about him probably dying there and the way he looked under the cloth and then him standing and smiling, and he shoots upright fast enough his head swims painfully. When he puts his hands to his temples to stabilize it again, he feels the cloth pressed into and taped against the wound on his cheek, and then hands are all over them and voices are raising and then it’s just the one voice, firm, saying ‘hey let’s give him a second’.
Steve opens his eyes to thank him and he gets to see Eddie again, alive and with his normal (giant) human eyes, rich and watery and focused on him, and it’s too much, actually. He’d half-prayed to the good gods and now, what, Eddie was just fine and here and good? He has a hysterical thought about debt and the price of life.
Robin, sitting tight up against his other side, says ‘sorry’ quietly and Steve winces as he does it but he puts his arm around her and squeezes. She’s filthy too, like they all are, but she seems to have less blood on her than he does so he’s happy to use that as a gauge of wellness for now. It's a low bar because his clothes are covered, stiff and crusty, and he feels like he can smell the metal of it all like rust on an old junker.
Will is sitting in front of him, and Mike and Dustin are sitting on the bench seat, and they’re all looking at him.
‘What?’
‘“What” he says.’ Dustin is rolling his eyes. ‘You’ve been out for hours, buddy, we were worried sick.’
‘Hours?!’ Steve spits, still tasting copper, throat ragged. ‘Where the hell are we?’
‘Heading to a secondary location, my man.’ Argyle speaks up from the front. ‘We gotta reconvene.’
‘Figure out our next steps.’ El is nodding at him with big eyes, turned completely in her seat up front in a way that makes Steve want to yell about seatbelts.
‘Next steps.’
‘They aren’t stopping, Steve.’ Will brings his attention back around to him. ‘I don’t know why. We… Eddie… I don’t know where Vecna is, I can’t feel him at all.’
‘Well that’s. Worrying.’
‘To say the least.’ Eddie finally pitches in, passes Steve a bottle of water.
Steve takes it gratefully and tries to sip at it instead of chugging it down like he wants to.
‘Hopper and Jonathan are at a place Murray knew about, we’re meeting them there.’ Robin explains. ‘Argyle and Will kind of saved our asses back there.’
Steve meets Will’s eye and nods at him in appreciation. Will looks scared and small and distracted, even though he's taller than Steve is these days.
‘Ten minutes, amigos!’ Argyle warns them.
‘You woke up just in time.’ Eddie says, quiet, and nudges him gently. Steve looks at him again, presses his hand against his wrist to assure himself that there’s still a pulse there. Wonders what Eddie remembers about the boathouse. His left arm feels Wrong, like the bite through his jacket took something important. His fingertips throb.
When they pull up to what looks like an abandoned concrete shed in the woods, the sky looks weirdly light. Argyle told him it’s only 8pm. He forgot how fucked the sky got in Hawkins. He's never been to the desert but he's craving it, sun and warmth and dry air, dry clothes. Everything feels slimy.
They all peel themselves out of the van and Argyle and Mike lead the way to the bunker before waving them all in after them. There’s no roof, and the walls are falling down into tall piles of cement and dirt that tiny plants have sprouted out of, not in the Upside Down way, just the way normal nature reclaims things when they fall.
Steve's legs are stiff and terrible and his head is pounding. He has to lean between Eddie and Robin to get up and over the doorway, and he hates it, hates that he's not the one caring for them, for Eddie, who so nearly didn't get to be here for this, but he can't do anything about it. He can barely breathe, like he has to have the conscious thought to do it and even then it's something that has to be pulled in and gasped back out, like it never reaches all the parts it's supposed to. Aches like nerve damage, like a rotten tooth.
By the time the three of them make it across the threshold, there are excited voices to follow and a light pouring from a doorway.
When they catch up, they find that the light leads them down a set of concrete stairs which feel impossible to Steve and he has to stop and catch his breath twice. He doesn't know how Eddie is not only upright and carrying his own weight but some of Steve's too; he's also taking that as a sign that he's doing okay, but he apologizes to the both of them the whole way. Robin has a look in her eye that tells him if he weren't playing ding dong ditch at death's door she'd be smacking him in the head for it.
The basement of the bunker is empty, but there's a large and secure-looking door propped open and, when they round the corner they find a surprisingly well-kept meeting room. There's a large and sturdy-looking table that is covered in paper; it looks too big to have been moved into the space, and there are shelves and cabinets lining the walls that seem to have conspiracy-theorist levels of supplies stocking them. Whoever the owners were they weren't too wrong, probably, about the world ending.
Robin and Eddie drop Steve into a hard chair that Hopper vacates for him, looking worried. Steve waves him off, but he leans forward onto the table to catch his breath and he feels hands touching his back and grounding him. Hopper hasn't stopped talking, and it takes Steve a while to tune in and catch up.
'We can't know that, Murray.' He's not yelling, not quite, but his voice is tense.
'I feel okay.' Eddie is rumbling close behind him. He sounds as exhausted as Steve feels, but he feels his hand lift in a shrug before it lands on his shoulder. 'It's not as busy in here.' In his head. Good. That's a good sign.
'For how long, though, kid, this isn't a science. Maybe you just scared him away for a while. Maybe Vecna's just… licking his wounds.'
'How did you do that anyway? And what happened to Steve down there?' Murray asks plainly, and before Steve can even think of how to say anything that makes sense, Robin chirps.
'Oh, true love's first kiss!'
Robin. Please. Shut up. He drops his head into his arms and he feels Eddie stiffen and still behind him before he drops his hand completely. He knows, he just knows , there are eyes drilling into him. Maybe every eye. It makes him itchier than the filth covering him, itchier than the briar patch scratches through his jeans.
'What the fuck does that mean?' Because Eddie doesn't know. They'd been a little preoccupied, he guesses. He wonders if he can die from the blood loss hours after the fact, or if he's still bleeding enough to have it all leak out now. He wonders if Eddie even remembers the kiss at all. If he regrets it. He feels dizzy.
It's so quiet for so long that Steve has to raise his head, choke down the nausea and vertigo from the movement. He sees Hopper first, right across the table, and he's just looking at him, stone-faced. He meets eye after eye and no one is talking . Even Dustin and Robin are quiet, but they're at least looking at each other, not at him. He's glad he can't see Eddie, still behind him, but at the same time he wishes he could see him, gauge what he was thinking. Steve clears his throat.
'Dustin?' he says weakly. 'It's your fucking fairytale, man.'
Dustin's eyes widen, then flick from Robin to Steve to Eddie, a cycle repeated.
'A hunch, it was just a hunch, and. Well.' he flaps his hands at Eddie. 'It worked.'
'For now?' Hopper interrupts.
'We don't… really… know.' Robin pitches in. 'We didn't even know if it would work at all, just. We were running out of ideas, and Vecna kept quoting stupid old fairy tales with Eddie's mouth, like the spider and the parlor and the big bad wolves or whatever. Just a hunch, like the music.'
'A hunch like the music.' Eddie murmurs behind him, sounding far away.
'And we just. We. Well.' Robin is trying to explain in a way that is kind and thoughtful of Steve, he can tell, and he appreciates it because he doesn't even fucking knows what's going on, but at this point?
'They knew I. Had, have, a. Thing. For Eddie.' He says it into the sleeve that's not as stuff with blood. It's not a big sweeping love proclamation or anything, but. He doesn't know, and he doesn't have the energy, barely has the blood to blush. He lifts again to see Dustin beam at him and feels Robin literally pat him on the back.
Eddie kneels on his knees on the floor to his right, maybe collapses even, but slowly.
'Hey pal,' he rests his head on the table so he's even with Steve. 'What the fuck.' He's smiling big but not creepy but like Vecna/Eddie, big like delight, like maybe even teasing through the streaked blood.
Steve presses his face into his arm again, hard enough that the bruised places twinge. Robin pats his back again.
'Okay.' Hopper barks. It's enough for Steve to snap his head up again, wince, and he sees Dustin and Will and El and Argyle across the room, looking at him fondly, and he knows if he could see Robin and Jonathan and hell probably even Murray behind him it'd be more of the same. It makes him feel uncomfortably warm. He looks back at Eddie and he's still grinning at him and his blood feels like it's actually pumping again, even if it still feels slow and sludgy.
'Stop.' he tells him, face feeling warm against all odds as Hopper goes on about how there's no way to know if it worked or if he's hiding, as Will says he can't feel him anywhere.
'I will not.' he pokes gently at his side, misses all the places where his skin is open. 'King Steve like-likes the Freak? Is this a joke?' Pokes again, looks at him fondly.
Steve grumbles 'not with this attitude I don't' and presses his face back into his arm, and Hopper claps his hands.
'Not to interrupt the throes of young love over here, but we need a better plan than "it's probably fine".'
'Sorry, I'm just bleeding out, don't mind me.' Steve complains into his bloody jacket.
' Not funny.' snipes Robin from behind him.
'This sucks.' He knows he's just bitching, but he feels terrible and he's sticky and crusty and didn't even know he liked boys like that until today, not really, and now he's had to what, come out? To everyone that matters, practically, all at once? He wishes he could go fight or go to sleep or eat and he can't do any of it. He can't even sit down and talk to Eddie about this, or Robin, even though half of him wants to hash it out and half of him wants to hide from it, say 'just kidding' and go back to the way things have always been.
He's too tired for all of it, lost too many important parts of himself, too much blood. He finds himself dozing off and tuning in for snips of conversation about traps and whether they should get Lucas and Max involved and when and how they need to go back to Hawkins, or back to the Upside Down. He lets himself be a passenger, lets the grown-ups have control just this once, where they can.
When he wakes up for real the conversations have fizzled out; Murray and Hopper are gone, and everyone else is chatting idly amongst themselves. The kids seem to be taking stock of all the supplies on the shelves, and Jonathan and Argyle are sitting in front of a small pile of guns and knives and scribbling into a wrinkled notebook. They're close enough that Steve can tell they smell green, and they're eating dried noodles broken from a brick of instant soup.
Robin and Eddie are talking quietly around him, now in rusted folding chairs. He can see Eddie's filthy shoes propped up on the table next to him. His legs are long and thin, pale and streaked with blood and scratches and bruises under where the jeans are ripped, one of the legs torn up the side to the knee. It looks like his sneakers are falling apart. He thinks of the way he shivered when he first saw him in the boathouse, and he knows he's frozen still. If Steve's this cold there's no way he's not. But he can hear him chuckling with Robin about something over his head, and he thinks he might actually drift off again before he hears the door fling open upstairs and it jolts him awake with a start. Eddie's legs hit the floor with a surprised thud and he and Robin try to calm him like a scared horse, pushing on his shoulders and saying 'It's Hopper' and 'you can sit' and 'it's okay'.
The kids are looking at him, so he sits back in the chair and presses a hand to his chest to will his heart to calm again.
Dustin throws Eddie a water bottle, and he cracks it, sniffs it, tests a sip, and passes it on to Steve.
Hopper and Murray come in, carrying boxes and smelling like fried food. They've got takeout, a huge assortment of it, and an absurd amount of supplies. As they all eat, they unpack sandwich things and more knives and wound care, sodas and water and granola bars. Steve takes three ibuprofen as soon as he pulls the bottle out, and Robin scolds him because it can thin your blood but he needs something to calm some of the pounding in his skull so he assures her with false confidence that he'll be just fine.
Some of the bags hold piles of generic jeans and tee shirts and sweaters, some have shoes and jackets, and Steve is overjoyed with the promise of even a sponge bath and new clothes. If you'd asked him to wear something off the rack at Walmart three years ago, without washing it, no less, he'd have called you a name and laughed at you for it, but that was King Steve and current, regular, wounded Steve can't wait .
'I got us a few motel rooms in town. Not fancy, but we gotta sleep before we can do anything.'
Steve looks at Hopper and he knows his face is ridiculous because Hopper smiles at him. 'And shower?'
'Of course shower, you smell like shit, all of you. And if you don't scrub some of the goo out of your scrapes you're gonna have bigger problems than stinking.'
Steve tongues his cheek, winces.
They won't let him help load up the van, even though the ibuprofen and the nap have helped him feel a little more normal. It's just as well, he's happy to sit with Robin and watch the chaos. He personally thinks Eddie should be sitting it all out too, with how half-dead he was earlier (don't think about him under the sheet, Steve, or the way his eyes looked empty, or the sheer quantity of fluids he hurled into the lake in the Upside Down) and his ribs and his crunched up left fingers. He hopes his hand heals perfectly and he can play all the terrible loud music he wants on whatever shiny new guitar he finds.
He gets to sit quietly with Robin, and she says 'It was really brave of you to say you liked Eddie in front of everyone' even though they're all family and he didn't feel brave and 'I hope you know Eddie likes you back, of course he does, everything is okay and you'll be able to talk about it later'.
He's mostly embarrassed. His skin and lungs and muscles are raw from the fighting and he is emotionally raw from everything and he feels small and soft when he knows he needs to be strong and hard. He feels like a kid and like he might not make it through the night, let alone whatever is about to happen tomorrow. He hopes that he can sleep some of it off before then.
He isn't really clear on the plan, he was out through most of it, but he knows someone will brief him, if not tonight then in the car on the way back. He tries to let it go, but his brain won't stop telling him he's not doing enough. He keeps circling through the same thoughts. He wonders what Eddie is feeling, if he's really as okay as he seems, if he wants to talk to Steve about the kiss, if he wants to even go back with them or run away forever. Steve wouldn't blame him.
When they get to the shitty roadside motel, right off the highway about as close to Hawkins as they dare to feel safe, they split up into groups. Hopper tosses Eddie a key, and he helps Robin and El get Steve and a bunch of the supplies into the only room Hopper could get on the lower floor.
Two beds, two lamps. Cigarette-burned comforters and questionably-stained brown carpet.
Steve sits on one of the beds, wincing, as the rest of them make another trip, piling things up on the desk and the floor around it.
'Can… can someone help me patch up?' Steve leans into a standing position, hopes he can stay upright for a shower at least. The other three look at each other and touch their noses, but Eddie is a little slow.
He doesn't look too put out by it as he stands and grabs Steve's elbow though, lets him lean into him.
'Er. I need to take a shower, first, maybe-'
'Calm down, Stevie, we'll protect your virtue.'
Steve is grumbling and wincing as Eddie leads him into the bathroom, lowers him to sit on the closed toilet seat.
'We're throwing these rags away, buddy, I hope you weren't too attached to any of this.' Eddie gestures at him vaguely, then throws the shower on. He frowns at the pressure as it sputters to life, and fiddles with the temperature until it seems safe. He turns and helps Steve peel off his layers. They're gentle and careful but it still stings and gets the blood oozing out again. Pulling his arm out of his jacket and the bandage off of his cheek especially worries Steve.
Eddie has a very serious face on, pinched and wrinkled between the eyebrows, as he removes the final layer, a tee shirt absolutely stiff with dark stains. Steve can see him counting the injuries. 'You let out a lot of blood. We should have cleaned you up before this… or made you a tourniquet… God, Steve, I'm so sorry…'
Steve shrugs and thumbs the button open on his jeans, slides them down as best he can, kicks them off the rest of the way, and waits for Eddie to turn around. Everyone was worried enough about everything. He's still alive. What a low bar, but it feels important.
Eddie stands with his back to the shower, but close enough that Steve can grip onto his arm to step over the lip of the tub. It's too much of a relief to stand under the warm water, to watch remnants of pain and the upside down swirl down the dirty drain, and he doesn't even feel embarrassed that Eddie is out there. He's humming and chatting idly so Steve knows he's still there. He can grip the bar in the shower with his good hand to keep steady, and if he weren't in pain all over and his eyes were closed it'd almost feel normal.
He uses the waxy-smelling body wash and shampoo and conditioner, thinks fondly of his own products at home but feels genuinely blessed to have these, to slough off the horrible sulphuric-smelling bat blood and lake water and whatever else he had stuck to him with bland floral. Almost like deja vu.
'How are you doing in there, Harrington? Still with me?'
'Yeah, man, just taking a minute.' He tilts his head back to rinse the plasticy suds out of his hair.
'You got quiet on me.'
'Sorry.'
'Are your insides still. You know, mostly inside?' Eddie is joking but Steve can hear how tense he is under it. He looks down to take better stock of his injuries.
The cheek, of course, he can't see. It feels terrible. The bites on his sides and chest had started to heal but most of them had pulled open again. His back stings, and his neck, and his head. The worst part, he thinks, is his arm. He's not a doctor but it doesn't exactly look good, it actually makes him a little queasy when he pokes at it and tries to wash some of the grime out before realizing some of that grime was actually parts of him that are usually hidden behind skin.
'Most of them.' He says faintly when he remembers Eddie is waiting for a response. 'My left arm isn't gonna be winning any beauty pageants. Not even like a completion award or whatever.'
'You right-handed?'
'Yeah.'
'Good, we're gonna need some of that muscle tomorrow I think.'
'I can give a little more muscle.'
' More muscle. Is it that bad?'
'Not good.'
Eddie hums in response.
Steve squeaks off the faucet and sticks his right hand out for a towel, which Eddie fetches quickly. He presses it first against all the most sore spots, hopes that it's cleanest that way, tousles his hair a little and wraps the towel around his waist so Eddie can help him back out and prop him up on the toilet again.
Eddie frowns at the slowly leaking blood, the way the towel has turned so pink already, and leaves the room. When he comes back he's got bags, clothes and meds and who knows what.
'I uh, definitely need to clean up before I help you bandage, but I'll be real quick. Hang tight?'
Eddie tosses his jacket off, peels off his own shirt and pants to join the pile of truly gory clothes in the corner, and climbs into the shower. Steve doesn't look at his skin, on display and mottled, or at his arm when he tosses his boxers out, or the shadowed way the frizz of his hair, even matted as it was, flattens against his head in the poorly pressured water.
It's like everything is waiting for a moment to breathe before it can click into place and Steve has no idea when that will be, if he'll ever get a quiet chance to investigate his own fucked up thoughts and feelings or if this is really it, the last stand, but he knows some things about himself and the way he operates.
Like say for example he knows he likes curly hair and big brown eyes and fragile-looking limbs and secret strength. Like Nancy, or like Ripley from Alien, or like his first serious girlfriend in middle school, even like Robin, back when he thought the love he felt for her was something else. He knows he falls too hard and too fast and it's almost never reciprocated, that his love is like a burden to carry so he carries it alone. He knows men are attractive, and most people would agree an attractive person is an attractive person and you'd probably kiss them if they were into it. He knows now is not the time for this.
'You still with me?' Steve asks at the mildewy curtain.
'Sure am. Not a lot of places to hide in here.'
He sounds about as tired as Steve feels. He's not sure if he's sounded like this the whole time, or if the shower relaxed him enough to sound so slow and drawling. He wonders if he got any sleep after they'd tied him up in the boathouse, or before that when he was walking around only taking up half the space in his own body.
He grabs another scratchy towel from under the sink, holds it until the shower turns off and he can reach it in to Eddie's grabbing hands.
Their clothes are shredded and stiff and bloody and in a pile together in the corner, cracks in the old tile, pointing at them as if to say look at how broken we all are . The tile is mint green and ugly and cold against his feet.
Steve's been on teams his whole life, he's seen lots of skin in shower rooms and games and skinny dipping nights at the quarry. He's not particularly prudish about it, everyone has skin. Eddie is just so beaten down. He knows he looks just as bad if not worse but the bruises and wounds in all stages of healing paint Eddie's skin in awful colors, like behind the ink of his tattoos he's a whole galaxy. Some of his tattoos are torn apart, laced with scratches and partially-healed wounds. It's not fair.
'Take a picture, it'll last longer.' Eddie offers a tired and humorless smile.
'Har har.'
'I know this is way hotter than anything you've ever seen but I'm gonna put it all away so I can help patch you up.'
Steve nods and looks at his hands fidgeting in his lap to give some sort of fake privacy, doesn't look at the way his own arm looks like it's missing a whole piece or the way it's bruised all around it like shadows around a crater in the face of the moon.
Eddie's ready in record time, normal jeans and a normal blue tee shirt and looking very normal, if still a little flattened and drowned-rat. His shirt is darkened where water has dripped. It reminds Steve of blood, so he looks away, back at his own aches which are easier to digest.
Eddie scrunches his hair with the towel and hangs it up on the door's hook, then grabs a bag with a whole host of bottles in it and kneels in front of him.
'Okay, let's look at that arm, babe.' Eddie's brow is wrinkled and crinkled again, and he's pulling out peroxide and cotton and gauze and bandages. He's still favoring his own left hand some, but he can at least hold a box of bandages with it. Steve thinks that's a good sign.
Steve delicately stretches his own left arm out to show where it's still trickling blood in a lazy way, like he's made out of a giant sponge. Eddie softly says his name when he grabs his arm and looks at him. His brain offers avulsion: a wound like a tear, like an animal attack . He sometimes can't remember the most basic things these days, but trivia from his first aid certification stuck around. He thinks about tetanus and rabies and makes himself stop thinking about them.
'Hey, not so bad, right?' Steve grins at him but it's like a grimace and he tastes blood again from his cheek, is sure it colors his teeth.
He'd thought Eddie was shrunken before, but he deflates even more, his eyes watering as he presses a washcloth against him gently, trying not to scratch too hard with the rough fibers.
'Not so bad.' He is glum and Steve thinks he means 'it is worse than I could have possibly imagined.' He fumbles the sticky rag a little, tries to keep it from pulling against the inside of the wound but there's not much he can do.
'You know how to clean it up?'
'Had a lot of injuries. Nothing like this though. Much as I hate it this is probably a doctor thing.'
'Well, after all of this I will add a doctor to my list of people to talk to.' Steve is talking through the clench of his teeth and trying not to look the way you do when you're getting a shot.
Eddie is chewing on his lip when he catches his eye, but he doesn't say anything, just douses the rag in peroxide to press it against the wound again before he seems to decide it'll be easier to just pour it, in hopes it irrigates whatever it can. It hurts. Bad. Causes Steve's face to wind up and his eyes to pour tears, even though they're squeezed so tight it seems impossible. He still tastes blood. His chest burns.
Eddie is also fighting off tears, Steve can hear it in the thick way he is saying soft 'I know's and 'I'm sorry's as he cleans him up the best as he can. Steve's lower arm is where the bite tore through, just below the elbow, but the bruising has crept up and down towards shoulder and wrist. There are so many little parts in there that could have gotten ruined for good. He can't really flex his fingers or turn his wrist without feeling shocks of pain. He thinks maybe all the crusted on layers of clothing had helped before, or maybe just the adrenaline. Those little fucks have a surprisingly wide grasp, and they can tear . There's a little sewing kit in the bag, but there isn't much skin to sew. His arm gets packed with gauze and wrapped.
Eddie wraps and bandages and smears antibiotics on everything he can, and they're quiet the whole time. When he's all finished, he very gently pats Steve's good cheek with his bad hand and says again 'I am so sorry'. Steve presses into his palm a little without really deciding to do it and says 'I'm okay' without really believing it.
Eddie sighs, raises up and helps him stand, offers a shoulder and an arm and between that and the towel rack Steve gets boxers and a tee shirt of his own on (bright red like blood) and they head out into the room where El and Robin are on the far bed flipping through channels blankly.
'Is everything okay?' Robin asks Eddie. Steve thinks she's asking him because Eddie won't lie and he tries to telepathically tell him not to worry them.
He either gets the message or gets Steve because he says 'Peachy.' He helps Steve into the bed and crawls in beside him.
Steve feels like a sack of meat settling into the scratch and pressure of too-bleached sheets tucked in tight. He doesn't want to be in his skin.
Eddie falls asleep before Steve, probably just because of the micro naps Steve got to have all evening, and when he does Eddie curls towards him, presses his curled fists light against his side just as a point of contact.
He hasn't heard him cough since they got out of the Upside Down. Yeah he's bruised and scratched and torn up, but he's breathing.
Steve grabs at one of his hands with his barely functioning left fingers, wraps them around his knuckles, still tense even in sleep. He falls under soon after, before either of the girls have even stood to take their own shower. He dreams about drowning, about limbs snapping under water and terrible storms.