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It happens when he least expects it. One minute he’s leading some frazzled Mom with like, three children clamouring on her down one of the aisles of Family Video, the next, he’s gasping for breath, and the room is spinning. He doesn’t know what is going on.
Sure, he’s only in his mid-40s. It's been 20 years since all that shit happened in Hawkins and even though there’s nobody around to count for it and everybody’s moved away, he’s still here, he still remembers. remembers in the world, turned completely upside down, when the upside down actually existed, when everything went to shit and he couldn’t hold onto anything that was due to him. It haunts him. Burns his blood, just like right now.
When he turns to his side, he can see Robin. She’s holding him, trying her damnest to keep him awake, but he doesn’t he can’t move or can’t open his eyes. Well, okay they’re open, but he can’t /move/ them. He can’t move anything. Only thing that’s moving is the ducking panic speeding through him like a virus, screaming and clawing at him like a wild animal as he struggles to breathe and-
“It’s okay Pretty Boy.”
The voice, so melodical and so recognisable, makes his entire body at ease in seconds. He knows that voice. Where does he know it from? Turning his head to the other side away from Robin, he gets his answer and it shatters him.
Eddie. The name winds over his frozen tongue as he’s thoroughly shaken, despite everything being still. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, the former “bad boy” of Hawkins, the freak. Kneeling beside him like nothing had happened. Like his life hadn’t been cruelly torn away in only a few minutes by dangerous creatures that they could never imagine would’ve come from such a place.
He’s wearing the jacket he died in, the bandanna that he had on that day dry and not plastered across his head with blood, covered in scars that obviously stayed with him from life till the transition of death. He’s a horrible sight to see, but a beautiful one. There’s only one reason why Eddie Munson of all people would be here.
“Is it time?” Steve asked, only able to form so many words. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to just cry and scream and bathe in Eddie’s presence, it was just that he couldn’t find anything more to say.
Eddie’s sad smile said everything. “Time to jump ship Pretty Boy, thought I give you a personal escort given the fact that you can’t even tie your own shoes on properly.”
Steve smirks back at the jab, but then his face falls. “What about the kids, what about Robin?”
“They aren’t kids any more, Stevie.” Eddie sighs, like he knew this was coming. “They’re adults now which is crazy, given the little shits couldn’t even do anything when I was around, let alone you when you were taking care of them. They have their own lives now I’ll be okay. Robin will be too. I promise. They’ve got something in mind, special just for her, waiting, but you need to go first.”
Steve saw tears at that, at the thought of leaving. Sure, yeah, the kids are basically grown up.
They’re in their early 30s, and they’re all got their own careers, some are starting families and he’s done his best to take care of them in the wake of his own parents abandoning him, but this is different.
This isn’t just leaving for a day or two to the town over or going away for a couple of weeks camping or something like that. This is him going for /good/. That hits him harder than the sudden feeling of hands hitting his chest and he looks up to see Robin sobbing, her dull reddish brown curls from ageing shaking from the force as EMTs surround him pressing on his prone body.
His head flops back to Eddie just as quickly as it left, looking desperately up at him. “I don’t know if I can do this, Eds.”
“You can.” Eddie held out a gloved hand in his direction, fingers outstretched, pulling him up from the ground despite Steve feeling like he had been frozen there for the longest time and embracing him. “You did good, Harrington. You did good.”
Steve buried his face into Eddie’s shoulder, not missing the whisper of Eddie’s name that left his mouth before he could hear Robin’s screams in the distance. Eddie turns him away from them, however, and leads him in the opposite direction towards a bright crack in the wall that on first contact makes them disappear in a flash of comforting white light.
Two weeks later, there’s a headstone in Hawkins’s town cemetery and it reads:
STEVEN JAMES HARRINGTON
1967 - 2011
A friend to all, a brother to most and loved by everyone.
Forever missed by those who knew him.