Chapter Text
Eddie is, perhaps, the only person who seems to be handling the fact Steve has been turned into a porcelain doll in a level-headed sort of way. Probably because he’s the newest person to be privy to Upside Down shenaniganary and quite honestly just thought ’ah. Of course. Why wouldn’t something like this be possible?’ instead of freaking out and screaming like everyone else.
“It’s a physical impossibility, Robin!” Dustin shouts.
“Well, we thought monsters didn’t exist before, but guess what-” Robin is shouting back.
“The monster situation was scientifically plausible, now proven scientifically true! Transforming a living person into a doll is magic, and magic isn’t real!”
“It fucking is now! Look at Steve!! Look at him!” Robin, who is holding Porcelain Steve, shakes him in Dustin’s face, complete with the clack of porcelain on porcelain in his face.
Eddie isn’t even fully aware he moved from his spot on the couch in the Byers-Hopper living room until he’s snatching Steve out of Robin’s hands with the thought of ’he gets migraines too easily for you to shake him like that’ and then is left wondering if little Porcelain Steve can get migraines. “Stop waving him around like a flag, Buckley. Porcelain is fragile, you could break him.”
It’s a testament to how worried Robin really is about breaking Steve that she doesn’t instantly rip him back out of Eddie’s hands like she apparently with Nancy when she had first picked him up.
“We don’t even know that’s Steve,” Dustin has never been gracefully about potentially not being right and now is no different.
“I know that Henderson!” Eddie snaps, pulling Steve to his chest in a protective two-armed hug, “But wouldn’t you feel like shit if this is Steve, somehow magically changed, and we’ve accidentally murdered him by busting his little porcelain face?”
That brings Dustin to a pause and Robin starts up again, backed by Will now.
Eddie retreats, not back to the couch, but out the front door and away from the arguments. Aside from himself hating the sound of people yelling at each other, he doesn’t want Steve to hear it either. Steve only enjoys an argument he can be bitchy in, and he can’t really participate right now.
That is, if Steve can even hear anything. If this is actually Steve, changed somehow, and not just the creepiest ransom threat left in the form of a perfectly porcelain replica. Down to the moles on his face and the scars on his torso, which Robin had claimed felt like paint when she’d ran a shaking finger over them.
He sits down gently in the front lawn, crisscrossing his legs and lays Steve in the cradle they create. Blank hazel eyes stare up unblinking into the sun and Eddie finds himself hovering a hand above Steve’s face to… protect his eyes, he supposes. He’ll admit to feeling a little embarrassed about doing it -anyone walking down the street could see him shielding the eyes of a doll in his lap- but if Steve is trapped in there, can see out those eyes, well, he’d rather do the kind thing and be little embarrassed about it.
“Don’t know if you can hear or not, Harrington,” Eddie says, “but worry not. If anyone can figure out how to return you to your flesh prison, it’s this crew. Not that you need my assurance on that. You know what they’re capable of better than I.”
It’s quiet on the front lawn except for the occasional car rolling down the street or dog barking somewhere down the road. Eddie’s never been a fan of quiet, so he talks to fill the silence. Not about anything important. He recaps the current Dungeons and Dragons campaign he’s running for Hellfire, which has been relocated to Jeff’s dining room for the summer.
“-and Will, very smart strategist that one, delayed his turn in initiative -that’s the order they take turns in combat- to cast Fireball in the room once everyone had run out of it. Worked great, especially since several of the creatures were invisible at the time and-” Eddie goes on, interrupting his own story to explain mechanics, or spells, or give backstory on why something was important, so that Steve wouldn’t be too confused about everything. It probably all still sounds like a foreign language to him, or he’s just tuned Eddie out, but Eddie would like to think that Steve would appreciate it.
Eddie sits outside long enough for his butt to go numb and for the sun to shift lower in the sky before he hears the front door open and close, and Robin sits herself down next to Eddie.
“Come to some sort of agreement yet?” Eddie asks, turning his face towards Robin.
“No,” Robin sighs, reaching a hand out. At first, Eddie thinks she’s going to take Steve but she just pets at his hair for a moment before pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “El’s got an idea, though. Don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner. She’s going to try and find Steve, y'know, with her mind. Someone will come let us know what she discovers, so no rush to head back in.”
“Oh,” Eddie replies dumbly, looking from Robin down to Steve. They sit quietly for a few minutes before Eddie says, “Is it wrong of me to hope that this is Steve?”
“Depends on why you hope that’s Steve, I guess.”
“‘Cause then we know he’s safe,” Eddie says softly, almost a whisper. “'Cause if this is Steve then he’s not… not kidnapped somewhere, alone, maybe being beaten up or tortured or- those things happen far too often to you guys.”
“Then no. It’s not wrong to hope. I think right there in your lap is probably the safest place Steve’s been, well, ever.”
“I don’t know Buckley, he was pretty safe in your hands.”
“I shook him around like a ragdoll, Munson,” Robin levels him with a look, “I’m woman enough to admit I get caught up in my nerves and don’t think of consequences. I’m not, like, the number one klutz or anything but it didn’t even occur to me that we could really hurt Steve until you said it. Like, what if what happens to the doll actually happens to Steve? What happens if his arm shatters or-” she cuts herself off to pull in a shaky breath.
“Nothing is going to happen to Steve,” Eddie says, voice more confident than he truly feels but comforting Robin is important. Steve usually grounds her with some bitchy look and sarcastic quip but he’s not close enough to Robin for him to be sure he wouldn’t just be insulting her instead of joking. “I won’t let anything happen. You won’t. No one in that house would.”
A deep breath from Robin, then, “yeah. You’re right. You hear that, Steve? We’ve got you, and nothing’s going to happen to you except becoming a real boy again.”
Eddie huffs out a laugh and sits in silence with Robin, waiting to be called back inside once El has made contact with Steve.