Archive of Our Own

Eddie figured that after swimming through a portal to a literal Hell dimension and fighting off a bunch of actual real-life monsters, the worst was over. 

Eddie is, obviously, a fucking idiot. 

-

Everything happens quickly. Like the universe hit double speed on time or something. From the second Eddie dives into the dark waters of Lovers Lake, it’s just one hit after another, swinging an oar and shrieking his head off, staring in stunned silence as Steve Harrington swings a fucking winged-beast over his head and then bites down on it’s spinal column. With his teeth. His teeth . 

“Jesus Christ.” Eddie spits, freaking out the way any sane person would and should be, but there’s no time for that either. One more melt down for Eddie to bottle up and shove down, as deep as it’ll go, which isn’t deep at all because he’s reaching capacity over here. It’s been a hell of a week. 

The four of them start running, more of those dragon-bat things flying overhead, run for the cover of the freaky looking trees in the distance, Eddie operating solely on instinct. There’s a teeny-tiny part of his brain that tells Coach Smith to suck it, Eddie can run just fine with the right motivation threatening to eat him. He never had to run that stupid mile in class. 

The craggy ground turns to bumpy uneven dips and raised roots under the brittle eaves of dying trees and Eddie feels like his chest is on fire, his legs shaking almost as badly as his hands have been shaking since—

“Steve!” Robin yells and Eddie hasn’t even caught his breath, stitch in his side and fear drying out his mouth, but he’s turning towards the sound of her voice, catches the sight as Steve as he goes from barely holding himself upright against a tree trunk to falling forward into the dirt. 

Steve falls and doesn’t get back up. 

-

“Shit, shit, shit.” Eddie can’t help himself, drops to his knees on Wheelers orders and tries to get Steve on his side. He used to do this for his old man, when he’d pass out drunk in the living room, thinks he’d almost rather but back there than here. 

“Oh my god.” Robin groans, kneeling next to Nancy in front of Steve, looking at the literal caters in the skin of his stomach and his sides, but Eddie’s looking at the disaster on his back, the torn skin and dirt, the bits of gravel embedded into the wounds. Eddie thinks he might be the one about to throw up. 

Steve’s still breathing, though each breath is ragged and he doesn’t respond to any of them when they say his name. There are tears cutting through the dirt on Robin’s face and Nancy’s hands fumble at the hem of her sweater before she manages to rip a strip of it off. 

“Think he needs more than a bandage.” Eddie chokes out, pressing his bandana to the bloody mess on Steve’s back. “He’s, shit, he’s really hurt guys.” 

Robin makes a pained noise at the back of her throat, echoed by Steve when Nancy wraps the makeshift bandage around his torso. Though maybe it has more to do with how Eddie and Robin have to lift him up in order for Nancy to get it all the way around. Nancy ties it off and Steve jerks against the pressure, legs kicking, head knocking back into Eddie’s stomach. Eddie grabs ahold of Steve instinctively to keep himself upright. His skin is clammy, lake water and sweat going cold, but his skin is unsettlingly warm. 

“We’ve got to get him out of here.” Nancy says, voice sharp with determination. 

“We don’t even know where here is.” Eddie snaps, still supporting Steve’s weight. Robin’s got one hand on Steve’s arm, knuckles white as she squeezes. 

“It’s the Upside Down.” Nancy says with that infuriating calm that all these people talk about this crazy shit, monsters and demons and kids with superpowers. “Steve found the gate Dustin was talking about. We went through it.” She points out at the barren expanse they just ran off of. 

“This is place, it’s like a photo negative of Hawkins as we know it.” Nancy keeps going, and Eddie looks out, realizes its not just some barren wasteland he’s looking at. It’s some warped version of Lovers Lake. Dried and emptied. The shores where they left the kids waiting for them turned to this crop of withered trees. 

“Christ.” Eddie breathes, the lump in his throat growing so big he can’t breathe, can’t, goes lightheaded and weak all at once, like someone’s turned all his insides to overcooked pasta. A gloopy mess scorched to the bottom of a pot gone dry. 

He gags.

“Eddie.” Robin says his name, tight and scared, her hand moving off Steve’s arm and covering Eddie’s hand where it’s cupping Steve’s shoulder. “Stay with us. I know it’s asking a lot but we have to keep our heads if we’re going to get Steve out of here.” 

“How?” Eddie asks, voice choked full of desperation, disbelief, fear. 

“I don’t know.” Robin says, cold fingers pressing down on his. “But we need to get Steve help so we’re going to figure it out. Okay?” Her eyes are shining in the weird dim light that trickles down from the cracked sky overhead. Her mouth is grim but her grip is brutal. Eddie thinks of her and Nancy jumping without hesitation over the side of the boat, disappearing after Steve into the water. 

“Okay.” He manages, because he doesn’t think she’ll accept any other answer. 

-

It becomes pretty clear that they can’t just stay in the woods. Those things are still out there and there’s worst out there most likely. Nancy talks about demogorgons with petaled faces and Robin shudders as she tells Eddie about something made up of other people’s flesh. Steve’s floating in and out of consciousness, doesn’t have much to contribute to their planning. 

“If this place is a mirror universe of Hawkins there’s got to be stuff we can use, right?” Eddie offers, does his best to cling to something when everything else is going to shit. At least here they’re all hiding from something worse than Hawkins PD, not just Eddie crouching under window frames waiting for someone to respond over a walkie talkie. “Maybe a car or something?” 

“And drive into the sky?” Robin shoots back, sitting next to Steve where they’ve got him propped up against a tree trunk. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, “Or a ladder.” 

“It’s worth looking into.” Nancy says, mouth pinched unhappily before she says, “We need to put Steve somewhere.” 

“What?” Robin and Eddie ask almost simultaneously. 

“I don’t like it either but,” Nancy breathes out slowly, “he’s hurt. And we can’t carry him with us while we go looking for a way out.”

“We’re not going to leave him!” Robin says, standing so quickly she almost stumbles. Her hands are balled into fists at her sides. “If we’re getting out, we’re all getting out.”

“Robin.” Nancy says, holding her hands up, “We’re all going to get out. I’m just suggesting we find a place where Steve can be safe while we look. We’ll get him once we know what we’re doing.” 

Eddie knows she has a point. Knows time’s of the essence, knows Max is still back in the Rightside Up, Kate Bush blasting in her ears, Jason on the loose looking for Eddie, willing to hurt whoever gets in his way. And now there’s Steve, looking worse by the minute. 

“Where do we start looking?” Robin asks, still clearly wary of Nancy’s suggestion. 

Nancy’s expression wavers for the first time since she suggested they split up. Her eyes drift down, look at Steve, something unhappy and haunted crossing over her face. “I have an idea.”

-

A few days ago, in Rick’s boathouse, when Eddie got the drop on Steve and managed to knock him nearly clear off his feet, he had a couple of things going for him. The sheer adrenaline of being found, the element of surprise, the broken beer bottle in his hand. 

Now Eddie just has his own stubborn will helping him shoulder half of Steve’s weight while Nancy carefully leads the way through the forest. “Don’t step on the vines.” Nancy orders in a whisper, adding one more thing to Eddie’s to-do list as he and Robin more or less drag Steve between them.

Honestly, having a task to do helps him from losing it completely. Eddie gets to focus on his feet, lifting one, then the other, gets to think about Steve’s arm around his shoulders, his wrist in Eddie’s hand, his hip knocking into his as they move forward, inch by inch. It’s nothing but physical labor, exertion blocking out the hysterical screaming wailing in Eddie’s brain. 

Eddie wonders if this is how Sam felt when he carried Frodo up Mount Doom. 

They make it a good distance like that but Robin’s starting to stagger, tripping over her boots as the ground gets even more uneven, starting to steep upward. 

“Hold up.” Eddie grounds out, breathing hard. Robin comes to a halt, panting under her breath. His face is soaked with sweat, his shirt sticks to his back under the uncomfortable weight of his jacket. His vest. His pants, already uncomfortable with lake water, are chafing at the thigh with sweat. 

“I can help.” Nancy says, coming back towards them. 

Eddie shakes his head, feels the hair on the back of his head stick to the sweat on his neck. 

“Just focus on getting us there, Wheeler.” He shifts, looks at Robin. “I’m gonna try something, help me get him on my back.” 

Robin hesitates for a split second, then nods, holds Steve up while Eddie drops into a crouch in front of him. She helps him arrange Steve’s arms over his shoulders, while Eddie gets his arms under Steve’s knees, stands slowly until Steve’s cleared the ground. 

Shit, the guy is so much heavier than he looks. 

“You got him?” Robin asks, hovering at Eddie’s elbow. 

Eddie adjusts his grip on Steve’s thighs, bends forward enough that gravity helps keep Steve in place as much as Eddie’s hold does. 

“Yeah, Buckley, I’ve got him.” 

The trek is brutal but they move slightly faster, cut through the forest at a better clip now that they’re not dragging Steve. Still Eddie’s never been happier than he feels when they finally clear the trees and step out onto a lawn overgrown with scraggly weeds, a lonely house looming up head, the windows dark, the back patio in disarray. 

It’s a far cry from the house Eddie used to deal at when Steve Harrington was the king of the keg stand. Eddie thinks of the kids, hopes they actually followed directions, went to Steve’s house like they were told to before the four of them climbed into the boat. 

“If something goes wrong, just go. We’ll regroup at my place!” Steve had ordered as they drifted away from the shore. 

“Dude, that’s so far!” Dustin complained. 

“Yeah, and no one’s gonna look for you there!”

Eddie hopes that logic still holds over here. The Upside Down version of the Harringtons’ house looks cold, lifeless, the kind of place to steer clear of in a scary movie. 

It’s still somehow the most beautiful place Eddie’s ever laid eyes on. 

-

Robin breaks the glass in one of the downstairs windows with an amount of relish that Eddie admires. Or he would admire it if his whole body weren’t seconds from collapsing under Steve’s dead weight. 

Robin tosses her overshirt over the glass, reaches in and unlatches the window properly before she disappears into the dark house. “Be careful.” Nancy whispers after her, gets a thumbs up in return. There’s a crash from inside, a bitten off curse, and then Robin’s voice, slightly further away. “I’m okay. It’s just. Dark.”

Eddie’s arms are shaking, his hands sore from how tightly he’s holding on to Steve still, looks at Steve’s bloodied hands dangling in front of him. His breathing is an uneasy rasp in Eddie’s ear. 

The guy is bleeding heat against Eddie’s back and quite possibly actual blood too, it’s hard to tell with the sheer amount of sweat covering Eddie’s skin. 

There’s a click and a rough creak, Robin appearing at a suddenly open door. There’s a flashlight in her hand. “Come on.” She waves her hand at them, a beam of light dancing in Eddie’s eyes, ushering them inside. 

The door closed behind them, Eddie follows the beam of Robin’s light, walks through the floating dustmites and closed in scent of mildew and disuse into what he vaguely remembers is the living room. “Put him here.” Robin says, gesturing at the sofa. It’s dusty and suspect to look at but can’t be worse than anything living in a monster’s mouth, so Eddie sets Steve down as easily as he can.  

Eddie plops down on the ground next to the sofa the moment Steve’s off his back, sits there, breathing hard, limbs trembling, doesn’t think he could back up even if a whole herd of monsters appeared in front of him right now. 

Robin thrusts the flashlight into Eddie’s shaking hands. “I’m gonna help Nancy.” She says quickly, disappearing before Eddie can say anything. 

There’s rummaging from other rooms, some bangs, some dragging, then Robin and Nancy both appear, arms laden with what Eddie hopes are supplies. 

“It’s weird.” Robin’s saying, the understatement of the century. “The first aid kit is always in Steve’s bathroom.” 

Nancy doesn’t answer, drops a bunch of stuff on the coffee table and starts tearing a bedsheet to strips. Robin deposits her own armful of water bottles a bit less gracefully, sends them rolling all over. Eddie picks one up, doesn’t even think twice before he’s twisting the top off and chugging half the bottle in one long swig. 

Robin and Nancy give him a run down. No electricity. No running water. Robin couldn’t find the good first aid kit Steve keeps in his bathroom, but she found the Harrington’s emergency kit in the basement, so they have a tiny one at least. A couple of bandages and tweezers, some alcohol wipes. 

Nancy’s raided the linen closet (because of course the Harringtons’ have a linen closet) and she’s making more bandages because obviously a band-aid isn’t going to cut it here, and Robin got a bunch of water bottles out of the pantry. “There’s some canned foods in there too, but, uh, I thought we could hold off on that for now.” Robin says, skittish as she tips Steve’s head up and pours some water into his mouth. 

Steve doesn’t really stir, eyes opening and closing slowly. Against all better judgment Eddie reaches out, unsteady fingers working loose the knot holding Steve’s improvised bandage closed. It’s not pretty underneath. 

He couldn’t really see any of it too clearly when they were out by the lake, but here, with a flashlight in hand, he can see how deep the bites go, how many of them there are. They’re still bleeding, new blood shining red through the dirt crusting over them, the blood that’s already drying rusty brown. 

He thinks about the wounds on Steve’s back. The gravel embedded in them. His stomach turns threateningly.  

“We’ve got to clean those before we wrap them again.” Eddie says, his heart still racing in his chest.

Robin nods, fumbles for the first aid kit someone dropped earlier, pulls out the little strip of alcohol wipes. “Shit!” Robin cries as she tears the first, the second, the third one open. “These are dried out.” 

Nancy moves, walks briskly over to the liquor cabinet across the room. She kicks the glass in, reaches inside and starts pulling out bottles. Eddie swallows the panic fighting like hell to break loose all over his insides, croaks, “See if they’ve got whiskey.” 

“Now’s not the time.” Nancy snaps.

“It’s gonna be stronger than anything else they have, if you’re planning on doing what I think you’re planning.”

Nancy makes an affirmative noise, comes back with what is probably an expensive ass bottle of scotch.  

The first splash makes all of Steve’s limbs flail, his eyes shooting open as he struggles to sit up. His eyes aren’t focused, Eddie doesn’t know if he sees them at all, his arms flailing, his legs kicking. 

“Steve!” Robin cries, holding him by the shoulders, earning another pained groan from Steve when she pushes him back. Eddie doesn’t even have time to warn her about his back, throwing himself across Steve’s thighs, trying to keep him from rolling clean off the couch. 

“Just, hold him down.” Nancy says, voice iron-clad but her hand is shaking as she pours more liquor across Steve’s injuries.

Steve screams. 

Even after Robin claps a hand over his mouth, the sound of it rings in Eddie’s ears. 

-

Steve either passes out or knocks out after they’ve got the bites on his stomach clean, dried, and bandaged with something other than Nancy’s dirty shirt. Robin put the antiseptic cream from the first aid kit on everything she could reach, placed the sealed gauze over the worst of the wounds before Eddie helped her sit Steve up, essentially holding Steve to him so that Nancy could rewrap everything with the bedsheet she tore apart.

Steve shudders when Robin cleans his back, but thankfully doesn’t struggle against Eddie, mostly gone limp with exhaustion or pain. Bits of rock clink against the glass tabletop of the Harringtons’ coffee table as Robin sets them down, one by one. 

Eddie doesn’t know if they taught this kind of shit in Health class, but he’s gonna start petitioning someone does. 

Once that’s done Robin tries to arrange some of the deflated couch cushions to prop Steve on his less injured side, Eddie helping her roll Steve so that his back is to the living room. Robin touches her ringed hand to Steve’s back, head hanging forward as if in prayer. She sniffs. Rubs at her eyes. 

Eddie doesn’t know what to say right now. Doesn’t know what there is to say. Sorry your boyfriend got eaten by monsters doesn’t quite have the right ring to it. 

“I’m gonna go see if Nancy needs any help.” Eddie mumbles, needs something to do, can already feel the gates keeping his shit in check threatening to give way. Robin barely nods. 

Eddie leaves.

The beam of Nancy’s flashlight shining through the back doors that open out onto the patio. Eddie doesn’t have the slightest idea what she’s looking for out there. When he peers outside all he can see is the dark pit where the Harringtons’ swimming pool usually is, Nancy kneeling at one end, pointing her light at the bottom of the empty pool. 

The door squeaks horribly when Eddie slides it open, startles Nancy visibly. 

“Sorry.” Eddie whispers, holding his hands up. “I just, uh, wanted to see. You—anything I can do?” 

Nancy shakes her head, head still bent forward, still looking into the overgrown mess of roots and vines and plant debris at the bottom of the pool, exploding out of the center of the pool, the thick of mass of them shaped almost like a person, legs and arms extended at the sides. “I thought—” Nancy says softly, almost to herself, “I thought there’d be something here.”

“Like what?” Eddie asks, creeping closer, shaken by the sound of Nancy’s voice, the tears glimmer in her eyes when she tips the flashlight upward, catches the bottom of her face for a second. 

“Nevermind.” Nancy answers, rising to her feet, steady once more. She drags her arm over her face, almost as if wiping her expression back into place. “It doesn’t matter.”

She walks away from the edge of the pool. “Come on, we should get inside.” 

-

“Dustin was right.” Nancy says, pointing down at a rough diagram of Hawkins she’s drawn on a scrap of fabric. “There was a gate in the lake. That means there’s going to be others.”

Robin nods, sitting on the edge of the couch, leaning forward to hold the flashlight over Nancy’s map. 

“The Byers’ old house, right? That’s where you and Steve fought off that first one?”

Nancy draws an X on the map. “Starcourt?” She asks, moving her marker, puts another stark black X down. 

“Uh, the junkyard?” Robin adds, chewing her lip. “That’s where Steve and the kids faced off with the dogs.” 

“The tunnels.” Nancy says as if agreeing, adds another mark. 

“Forest Hills.” Eddie says, clears his throat. “The trailer. Where Chrissy—”

Nancy nods even though Eddie doesn’t finish the thought. Nancy adds a few more, the map looking like the key to the most fucked up scavenger hunt.  

“That’s the whole town.” Eddie says, despair welling up in his chest, heart plummeting. 

“It’s the best shot we’ve got.” Nancy stands. “We don’t have any other leads. She folds her handmade map, sticks it in her pocket. “Listen, I’ve got some guns at my place, we’ll go there first, then we can check some of these places off.” 

“We can’t just leave Steve here alone.” Robin says, voice steely, hands gripping her knees. 

“We can’t take him.” Nancy shoots back, not cruelly, just painfully practical. It makes Eddie wince. 

“What if one of those things shows up? He’s barely awake, he can’t defend himself!” Robin hisses. 

“I’ll stay with him.” Eddie says, the words falling out of his mouth before he’s even made up his mind. 

Two sets of eyes and a flashlight immediately leap his way. 

“I mean, if something comes here, I can move him. So that. Makes sense. Y’know?”

It’s true. He knows it’s true. He can pick Steve up even if he doesn’t know how far he can carry him. He still feels like an absolute coward staying behind. 

-

Eddie’s watch is pretty much a decoration since he took it for a swim, but they’re able to wind up the clock on the mantle. 

“Two hours.” Nancy said before they left, pointing at the slowly ticking second hand. “We’re going to my house. Then we’re going to check out the Byers’ house. See if we can make it to the school.” 

That was half an hour ago. Since then there’s been nothing but the stagnant quiet. He resists the urge to turn his flashlight back on, knows it probably best to preserve the battery for when he’s actually got shit to do, something more involved than sitting on his ass on the Harringtons’ dusty carpet with Steve passed out behind him. Outside the world is dark and broody, ominous black cloud coverage that’s occasionally illuminated from within by red lightning. Eddie would not be surprised if it rains blood in this place. 

“It would be fucking rad if you could wake up now, Harrington.” Eddie whispers, staring at Steve’s face in the gloomy light that comes through the transparent curtains. (Rich people. Seriously.)

If Steve hears him, he doesn’t say anything back. 

-

Two hours pass as if every minute were an hour. By the time Eddie hears anything beside his own rattling heart and Steve’s breathing, he feels like he’s been waiting for years. It takes him a second to realize what he’s hearing, the peddling-swoosh of a bike rolling over the asphalt, then steps bounding up the front steps. 

They agreed to keep the door locked and quasi-barricaded while Nancy and Robin were out so Eddie needs to push a bunch of dining room furniture out of the way so he can open the door to let them in. Their faces don’t inspire much hope when he gets a good look at them. 

“We found more flashlights.” Robin says, but there’s disappointment in her voice. 

“Great. And your gun?” Eddie asks Nancy, the door closed and the furniture slide back into place. The rest of the dining room furniture they used to secure the door leading into the room where Robin broke the window. Steve’s dad’s office. 

“Wasn’t there.” Nancy bites out, starts pacing across the living room. “It’s like—it’s like someone pushed a set button or something. Put everything back to the way it was before—”

She gets up, rushes up the stairs, her boot steps echoing in the eerie quiet. Eddie takes off after her, limbs itching to move after two hours of waiting (he is so sick of waiting), catches her at the top of the stairs. He’s never been in any of the rooms, wasn’t really encouraged to explore the few times he was here before, so he doesn’t know what he expects when he follows her into one of the rooms. A bathroom. Nancy’s pulling open the cabinet under the sink, reaching under and pulling out. Another first aid kit. 

“It wasn’t in Steve’s room because he hadn’t moved it yet.” She says as if that means something. “Like my gun. It wasn’t there yet when this place was made.” 

“I don’t—”

“This place, it isn’t Hawkins now. It’s like someone made a photocopy of Hawkins from, I don’t know, years ago. 1983 maybe. When this all started.” 

Eddie doesn’t know how that helps them other than meaning they don’t have any weapons and possibly that they’re going to starve. Does canned food go bad? How long do they have before botulism kicks in?

“So we’re more fucked than we thought. Cool.” Eddie says, everything he’s been pushing down erupting out of his mouth. “Steve’s half-dead downstairs and we don’t have the slightest idea how to get out of here and also we’re in 1983. Right? Right. Of course. We’re fucked. Fuck. Fuck!” 

He puts his face in his hands, scalp tingling all over and skin too tight, chest caving in. They’re going to die here. They’re going to die. This is it for them. For him. 

(Max is going to die just like Chrissy. Like Patrick. Bones cracking and eyes bleeding, floating in the air, silent. Frozen. Unable to even scream.)

Things get hazy after that. 

-

Robin and Nancy go out again. Have another site or two to cross off their list. They’re going to try going further out today, but even with the bikes, they’re estimating four hours before they come back. There wasn’t any discussion of someone else staying with Steve today. 

They’re probably looking at Eddie as a bigger liability to the team than Steve right now after his melt down yesterday. (Was it yesterday? Eddie’s not sure. No one’s slept. There’s no sunrise in this place. Everything outside stays the same. Dark. Still. Dead.)

On the couch, Steve groans, tries to sit up. “Dude, careful.” Eddie chides, the first words he’s spoken in hours. His voice is shot to shit. But making sure Steve doesn’t topple face first into the glass coffee table is something, more than just sitting here thinking about their imminent demise.  

He makes Steve drink more water, seems to revive him a little bit more than before.

“Where’s Robin? Nancy?” Steve struggles to ask, face pinched with the effort of getting the words out. 

“They went to get help.” Eddie says, sticks to the most abridged version of events he can. “They’ll be back soon.” He has no idea if that’s even true. They’ve been gone maybe an hour, but Eddie doesn’t actually know if they’ll come back. Doesn’t know anything. 

Steve pushes himself slightly more upright, winces and reaches for his side. “Fuck.”

“Those things got you pretty bad.” Eddie has no idea why he’s telling Steve this. He knows better than anyone how bad it is. “You were pretty out of it.” 

Steve looks up, and under the light of Eddie’s flashlight his skin is still flushed unsettlingly, eyes glossy, pain etched in every line of his face. Steve squints, turns away slightly, tilts his head when he spots something in the room. “Are we—is this my house?”

“A fucked up version of it, yeah.”

“Why—”

“Wheeler thought it would be a good place to stash you. She said there might be something that could help us here.” Eddie says, the words rushing out of him. “There wasn’t.” 

Steve shakes his head. Groans as he drops his head into his hands. The guy looks like shit.

Eddie tries to stick to the facts he’s got. Gives Steve an overview of their supplies. The layout of Nancy’s map. “They’re trying to find a gate out of here.” 

“Where?” Steve asks, leaning wearily against the couch. 

“All over. Hawkins is apparently a minefield of possible portals.” Eddie answers, tries his best to look less like a guy on the brink of losing his mind. 

Steve lets his head fall back, adam’s apple bobbing visibly in his throat when he swallows. Shit, no wonder he sounds rough, Eddie thinks, looking at the swollen laceration wrapping around his neck. “Shit. We, uh, let me clean that.” Eddie says, reaching for their significantly depleted bottle of scotch and another strip of bedsheet. 

“Huh—oh fuck.” Steve cringes at the first touch of the alcohol-soaked rag to his neck. Eddie wishes they had ice or something, to help with the swelling, but right now they’ve got grain alcohol and a dude who managed to pass Health class on the second try. 

“Sorry.” Eddie says quietly when Steve winces, throat muscles tensing noticeably under Eddie’s fingertips. 

“It’s okay.” Steve lies, keeps still while Eddie wipes at the torn skin. 

“Sorry you’re stuck babysitting me.” Steve breathes when Eddie pulls back, looking down at his lap. 

Eddie’s stomach hurts, thinks he ought to tell Steve he’s probably as much on babysitting duty here as Eddie is. 

-

“Can you, uh, can you help me upstairs?” Steve asks after a while, still sitting upright on the couch. 

Eddie eyes him, fairly sure the guy shouldn’t be walking ten feet right now much less navigate stairs. With or without help. 

“What’s upstairs?” Eddie asks skeptically. 

“My stuff?” Steve replies shortly, exhales through his nose. “Hate to deprive you of the view, Munson, but I’d like to not be half naked the next time something tries to kill us.” 

Eddie scoffs, but he can’t argue with that. “You’re not that great to look at.” 

Steve manages a thin grin. “How great would you say, then?”

“Shut up and let me get you up.” It’s less of a struggle getting Steve upright now that he’s actually conscious, but the stairs prove to be as much of a pain in the ass as Eddie feared. Mostly because every move pulls at something on Steve’s body, makes his hiss and flinch miserably, sweat collecting on his face from the monumental effort. Robin is going to kill Eddie when she finds out he let Steve do this. 

“I should just carry you again.” Eddie grouses when they’re halfway up. He’s got the flashlight clutched in his right hand, bumping into the wall every other step because that’s the arm he’s got around Steve’s back, trying to prevent him from pitching backwards and finishing what the bats started. 

“You couldn’t have led with that?” Steve groans, breathing so hard Eddie leans him against the wall for a few seconds. Steve’s not the only one struggling for air right now. God. Eddie really just need to cut back on the cigarettes. If he ever gets out of here. 

“Well it’s too late for that now.” Eddie says, bracing his hands on the walls on both sides of Steve, pinning him in place. 

He doesn’t actually know how long it takes them to get themselves together enough to keep going, but eventually they make it to the second floor landing. 

“That way.” Steve says, pointing weakly to the left. The carpet bears the signs of Nancy and Robin’s feet from their earlier quest for supplies, the only marks disrupting the dust laying thick over everything. 

The door to Steve’s room creaks like everything else in this house creaks when moved. Inside there’s more dust everywhere Eddie points the light. On the carpet, the furniture, the bedding. 

Eddie kicks the cushion off of the wooden chair at Steve’s desk and sets Steve down there. Steve more or less sags against the back of the chair, wipes at his face. Eddie wished he’d thought to stick a bottle of water in his pocket. 

“Hey, you okay, just, uh, sitting tight for a sec?” Eddie asks, shedding his jacket, the denim vest over it, letting them both fall to the floor. 

“I’ll try my best.” Steve replies wryly. 

“You do that.” Eddie says, pats Steve’s shoulder carefully before heading back downstairs. He grabs waters, another flashlight, the extra first aid kit Nancy unearthed from under the bathroom sink. 

He takes the steps two at a time to get back upstairs. 

Steve’s still sitting exactly how Eddie left him. He doesn’t even react when Eddie clears a bunch of shit off the desk to set down his wares, just accepts the water bottle gratefully when Eddie hands it to him. “How you feeling?” Eddie asks after drinking his own water, setting the second light on the desk upright so that the ceiling is illuminated, a wider umbrella of light cast over the whole room. 

Steve just makes a noncommittal noise in response. He looks more out of it than he did downstairs and there’s a sharp, hot panic stabbing through Eddie’s belly. He shouldn’t have moved him at all. Who knows what kind of fucked up internal injuries Steve’s got and all Eddie’s been doing is dragging him from Point A to Point B, probably making everything worse. 

“Hey, Harrington, you with me?” Eddie asks, dropping into a crouch in front of the chair, putting a hand on Steve’s knee. 

Steve swallows, eyes opening reluctantly. “Yeah.” He says, nods unconvincingly. “Yeah, I’m here.” 

“‘Kay.” Eddie says, patting his knee, “What’d you need up here. Where do we start?”

If Steve thinks that we is weird he doesn’t say anything, turns his head right and left and then seems to decide on a course of action. “Closet. In the far back. There should be a bat.”

“Another one?” Eddie jokes mildly, actually pulls a dry chuckle from Steve’s mouth. But it soothes some of the panic in Eddie’s gut, because if Steve can laugh it can’t be that bad, right?

Eddie moves to the closet, pushes all the clothes hanging inside to one side so he can see the back. There are shoe boxes stacked along the floor, a sleeping bag, some other random crap. There’s also a wooden baseball ball. “Thought basketball was your sport, Harrington.” Eddie calls, pulling the bat free. 

“Former T-ball champion of Hawkins middle school.” Steve says, though the grin falls off his face when he sees the bat in Eddie’s hand. “That’s not—that isn’t—”

Eddie looks down at the bat. He thinks of Nancy’s face, crestfallen and confused, as she stared at the first aid kit. “Oh.” Eddie breathes, still staring down the unblemished length of the wooden baseball bat in his hands. “Yeah, we sorta time traveled.” 

-

“Is that why it’s called Back to the Future ?” Steve asks some confounding amount of time later, after Eddie’s talked in circles he can’t follow for himself. Because honestly he knows fuck all about this alternative dimension, monster-hunting, government cover up bullshit. 

If he ever makes it out of here he’s gonna have a hell of an idea for a campaign, but right now he’s just lost in the muddle of it all. And he hates it. 

So he’s gonna focus on Steve Harrington, still sitting in front of him, chewed on and spit out by monster bat-shaped things. He’s gonna focus on keeping this guy alive until Nancy and Robin find a way out of here. He can do that. He has to do that. 

“What?” Eddie bleats, trying to pick up the conversation Steve might as well be having with himself. 

“You know, Alex Keaton and the doctor, they went back in time. But then they were trying to get back to their own time. Like the future.” 

Eddie puts his hand on Steve’s forehead. Steve moves his head away, nearly brains himself on the back of the chair. He’s warm, definitely, but Eddie has no idea if that means he’s feverish or still cooling down after their trek up the stairs. 

“Just—forget it. Whatever.” Steve sounds annoyed. Pained. He shifts uncomfortably, one hand hovering over his side. “Can you, in that drawer, there should be shirts and stuff. Can you—”

“Yeah, sure.” Eddie pulls the drawer open, the mildew scent in the room intensifying immediately. “These are pretty rank, man.” He says, poking at the insides with the head of his flashlight. 

“I, just, anything dude. I need something .” There’s a desperate edge to Steve’s voice but the decaying smell is so strong, makes Eddie think of shitty apartments and truck stop bathrooms and the trunk of his old man’s car where Eddie hid once when he was a kid. 

But he gets needing something, any kind of barrier between himself and the fucked up shit in this place. There’s too much of it touching Eddie as it is, leaving him feeling grimy and filthy in a way he hasn’t in a long, long time. 

“Here.” Eddie says, peeling his vest off his jacket where he threw it on Steve’s desk. “For your modesty.” He drops it over Steve’s shoulder, immediately feels like a dick as he watches Steve struggle to get one of his arms through it. He almost steps in to help but then Steve’s got it, pulls it over his back and the bandages stuck there with medical tape. 

There’s no sharing his shoes with Steve unfortunately, so Eddie has to go back to the closet. He pulls one of the shoe boxes out. The leather of the sneakers is dry, cracks and flakes when Eddie shakes one and then the other out vigorously. “Spiders, man.” He says in response to the look Steve gives him as he approaches, dropping the shoes to the ground Steve’s feet. 

Christ his feet are all messed up too, cracked and bloody in places. “I’m just gonna—” Eddie starts, realizes he’s not even asking for permission this time. He just sets to work. He rests the sole of Steve’s foot on his thigh as gently as he can, uses the stuff he brought from downstairs to clean and bandage his left foot as best he can before he slips it into the shoe he found. Then he does the same thing with the other one.

Steve doesn’t even fight him on it, which is as unsettling as anything else that’s happened so far. 

“Okay up there?” Eddie asks, looking up from where he’s kneeling, studying Steve’s face. He looks tired, fit to drop Uncle Wayne might say. 

Steve nods slowly. He swallows again, face pinching at the discomfort he must feel. “Thank you.” He says. He rests his head back again, eyes closing. “Just, uh, need a minute. Before we move. Is that—”

Eddie puts his hand back on Steve’s knee, same as before, pats it again. It feels like a safe touch. Somewhere Steve’s not actively hurting. He doesn’t know if he’s doing this right. Not the first-aid stuff, he already knows he’s winging that shit wildly. The being comforting part. When Gareth gets worked up about Mrs Click ragging on him in class or Jeff comes in all quiet ‘cause he fought with his brother or Freak had to deal with a bunch of asshole jocks ganging up on him in gym Eddie knows what to do. He’s loud and obnoxious, gets them out of their heads by doubling down hard on the insignificance of their adversaries. The same trick he taught himself when he was younger, trying to outmaneuver his dad in his own head. 

Eddie knows how to rile people up, get them out of a funk with anger or laughter. He made Chrissy laugh in the clearing and his chest lit up, fed by her attention, her smile, her laughter. He wanted more of that, was willing to bring her into his home after dark to get more, wanted to erase the unsettled look in her eyes. 

This. This is a previously unexplored country for Eddie. Trying to be gentle. Quiet. Soft. 

“Yeah. Take your time, Harrington. No rush.” He says, shifting on his knees. His legs are still sore from yesterday. Shit, all of him is sore from yesterday. 

“You can call me Steve, man.” Steve says up to the ceiling, laughter rasping in the air when he adds, “You already saved my ass. Think it’s okay if we move on to first names. Eddie.”

Eddie laughs, sits flat on his ass at Steve’s feet, one arm still outstretched so that he can keep his hand on Steve’s knee since it hasn’t been bucked off. “You totally saved your own ass. I mean that move with the teeth. That was a real Ozzy move.” 

“Ozzy?”

“Ozzy Osbourne? Black Sabbath? Bit a bat’s head off onstage?” Steve stares blankly back with half hooded eyes. “Doesn’t matter. It was very metal what you did. All I’m saying.” He chuckles under his breath, disbelief bubbling up in his throat. Everything he’s been trying and failing not to feel is pressing down on his chest now, right there, closing in for the kill. He can’t fall apart like he did on Wheeler though, needs to keep his shit together for Steve who never looks more than a second away from passing out himself. That’s literally Eddie’s one job here. 

He pushes the frenzied feeling back, offers up, “Henderson told me you were a badass—insisted on the matter in fact—I didn’t believe him—”

“Dustin said that?” Steve asks, surprise clearly written over his face. 

“Oh yeah. The kid worships you. Like you’ve got no idea. It’s kinda annoying really.” Eddie scratches at his head with his free hand, flashlight set down beside him on the carpet. This can’t seriously be news to Harrington. Since August it’s been nothing but Steve this and Steve that, Dustin showing Eddie’s high score on air hockey in the arcade and dropping tidbits like, “Steve defended us from Billy Hargrove. You remember that lunatic.” 

“I don’t know why I even care what that little shrimp thinks, but, uh, I guess I was actually a little bit jealous, y’know.” Eddie laughs again, though it rings hollow in his ears. He knows why he cares. “Stupid, right?”

He drops his eyes to the floor, the cracked leather of Steve’s shoes. Steve’s done this all before. More than once. He’s been in through the eye of the storm and comes back to face it each and every time. Dustin had to come find Eddie, help him from one hiding place to another. Put him right in the way of Jason Carver’s warpath. 

Eddie rubs at his face. “I just couldn’t accept that Steve Harrington was actually a good dude. Rich parents, popular, girls love him. Not a douche? No way man, no way. That just flies in the face of the laws of the universe and my own personal Munson doctrine.” 

Steve laughs at that, forces Eddie to look up again, catches the slight shake of his head. 

“I appreciate the vote of confidence but I think you’re over selling it a bit.” Steve’s attempt at humor comes out all crooked, his voice strained with exhaustion and pain. 

Eddie shakes his head now, fingers curling a bit tighter around Steve’s knee. “No, you don’t get it. I’m still jealous as hell. More so even. Truth is I’m only here because Nancy and Robin jumped first. You disappeared and those girls didn’t even blink. They jumped straight after you.  And I was just too ashamed to be the one who stayed behind.” His heart is beating so hard inside his chest. His eyes sting, the words bitter in his mouth. “Because it turns out that outside of DnD I’m no hero. I see danger and I turn heel and run. At least that’s what I’ve learned about myself this week—”

“Hey. Don’t.” Steve’s hand covers Eddie’s on his knee, cuts his words short. “Give yourself a break, man.” His fingers are clammy, but they’re long and his hand is big, his palm hides the entire width of Eddie’s hand. 

“Wanna know the truth?” Steve asks, though he’s clearly not interested in Eddie’s answer. His grip turns nearly brutal over Eddie’s hand, a strange light in his eyes reflecting in the dark. “I ran too.  I turned tail and I ran. The first time. I didn’t want to go back.” 

“But you did.” Eddie counters, eyes fixed to Steve’s. Steve’s face crumples, creased with unhappiness, like Eddie’s not listening. Steve sniffs hard, his face smoothes out. He’s still touching Eddie’s hand. 

“And you jumped.” Steve says, like that proves his point. 

-

Eventually Steve asks to go back downstairs. It’s hard to tell if that’s easier than going up, Eddie freaks out a bit more, afraid Steve’s going to lose his footing and plummet down the dark stairs. It makes Eddie hold on that much tighter, loosen his grip only when they get to the bottom.

Steve doesn’t want to go back to the couch though, directs Eddie towards the garage instead.

“I don’t know, Steve, maybe you should slow your roll.” Eddie tries, Steve hanging off his side. 

He’ll give Harrington this much, the guy is stubborn as hell. “I’ve been out of commission for an entire day already. I’m tired of sitting around.” 

“You weren’t even awake for most of it.” Eddie grumbles, earns a sharp glare from Steve who then attempts to disengage from Eddie’s hold entirely. Because he’s clearly got a deathwish.

Eddie tries his best to keep Steve still without jarring anything sensitive. 

“Jesus Christ. You hurt yourself anymore and Buckley is definitely going to kill me.”

“Then you’re better off helping me.” Steve says like an absolute brat.

They go to the garage.  

It’s dark as hell inside, makes the hair on Eddie’s arms stand up, but Steve points his own flashlight towards a workbench, the open rack of hammers and pliers and a bunch of other tools on display over it. “Okay, just, you wait here.” Eddie says, deposits Steve on the threshold. “Just be ready to slam the door if anything growls.”

“I’m not leaving you in here.” Steve argues. Eddie pulls a face. “I’m not asking you to! Wait for me to be on the other side of the door before slamming it. I thought that went without saying.”

He flashes the light around the garage. It’s weirdly empty. No cars. No miscellaneous boxes of random crap. Not so much as a lawn mower. Makes Eddie wonder what the hell the Harringtons even have this room for. 

“There should be nails in one of the drawers. Or screws.” Steve says, light dancing over the set of drawers under the workbench.

He has to open a few different drawers to find the nails, that prickly feeling intensifying on the back of his neck. He turns around. Checks the far corners of the room. There’s nothing there. Just shadows. 

Eddie starts towards the door but Steve tells him they need a hammer. Eddie turns heel, grabs the biggest one off the rack and then jogs back. He pulls the door closed behind him, double checks the lock. The prickly feeling is still there, even with the wooden door between them and the garage.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, trying to push himself off the wall. He takes a halting step towards Eddie. Eddie stops him with a hand to his chest, palm pressed to the denim vest. “What isn’t?” Eddie answers, feels like he needs to catch his breath all over again. 

“Fair.” Steve nods, reaching for the box of nails. 

“What do we need those for anyway?” Eddie asks, pointing with the hammer in his hand. 

Steve looks up, his grim face splitting into an unnerving grin. “Go grab that bat from upstairs and I’ll show you.”

-

“I’m gonna have to apologize again, Harr—Steve. Obviously you’re way more metal than I previously gave you credit for.”

“Thanks?” Steve says, examining the ungodly amount of nails freshly hammered through the head of the baseball bat. Eddie did most of the hammering, since swinging one is a bit beyond Steve’s abilities at the moment. “I mean, this was actually Nancy’s idea. Back when it all started. I just copied her.” 

“Wheeler’s such a badass.” Eddie marvels, another page ripped straight out of his book. “I mean. Did you know she had a gun?” 

“Think she has more than one now.” Steve answers like it’s not a big deal. All these freaks hiding right in plain sight and Eddie would have never known if it weren’t for the last few days. He really does owe Steve an apology.  

Outside, there’s a distant rumble, a far off howl. The light fixtures overhead tremble. “What the hell was that?” Eddie asks, looking up, inching towards the window, peering through the sheer curtains. He can’t see anything, the same creepy landscape, the same dark sky. He squints, thinks he sees something reflecting back at him from the trees across the road. 

“Eddie?” Comes Steve’s voice from behind him, thin, panicked. A solid crack rings out, pulls Eddie back from the window, and it’s to the sight of Steve holding himself barely upright, one palm pressed to the glass coffee table. There’s a crack in the glass, a fragment of the edge broken off by the force of the bat Steve must have dropped on top of it.

Eddie rushes over, kicks the broken glass away from Steve, toes the bat out of the way in case Steve tips sideways. “What happened—what’s wrong?”

Steve shakes his head, or at least he starts to, breathing pulling in tight as he slumps forward there. “I’m just, fuck, really dizzy.” 

“Shit. Shit. Okay. Uh. Lay down.” Steve’s breathing is still going fast, only interrupted by the pained sound he makes when he stretches out on the sofa. Eddie tries to remember what they did the time the pianist fainted at the church Dad’s girlfriend used to take him to. He tries to prop Steve’s legs up, hopes he’s doing things right. Is positive he’s not. 

“I was jealous too.” Steve struggles to say. “So fucking jealous. I thought, shit, what’s Dustin need me for? He’s found someone—someone else. Who, like, gets him. Y’know. Is smart and nerdy and shit.”

Eddie wants Steve to shut up. Is pretty sure not talking is better than forcing words out when he sounds like he’s not getting enough air. But he also needs to say, “Smart? Steve, I’m doing my senior year for the third time.”

“Kid thinks you’re a genius.” Steve wheezes. “The stories you tell. The stuff you come up with. Says no one else has a mind like yours.” 

“Can’t believe we care so much about what fucking fourteen year old thinks of us.” 

Steve chokes out a sound that could be a laugh. 

“He told me once, he said, if I died, he was gonna die too.” Steve’s whole face scrunches up. He heaves, chokes on a devastated sound. “Don’t let him, okay? Whatever happens, you can’t let him die.”

“Hey, you’re not—no one’s gonna die, alright. Not Henderson. Not you.” Eddie lies, babbling false reassurances as he tries to figure out what to do. 

“Eddie—” Steve says, voice fainter, “I don’t want to—”

“Steve?”

Steve’s head lolls to the side, his voice cut off, the air rushes out of him all at once. “Steve.” Eddie’s voice breaks. “Oh god, fuck, no, no, no.” He drops to his knees next to the sofa, puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders, lowers his head to Steve’s chest. His heart is still drumming inside him. 

It goes and goes and goes under Eddie’s ear. 

-

Eddie sits in the living room. A bat driven through with nails on one side. A flashlight on the other. In front of him Steve Harrington breathes, chest rising and falling, rising and falling, rising and falling. 

Eddie’s whole world shrinks down to that living room. Each inhale. Each exhale. To Steve. 

-

Eddie figured after seeing Chrissy Cummingham die in front of him, after running, after swimming through a portal to a literal Hell dimension and dragging Steve’s bleeding body through the wilds of the Upside Down, the worst was over. 

Eddie is, as always, an idiot. 

-

There’s growling and snarling outside, bangs at the glass doors at the side of the house. Steve’s skin is burning, his eyes slits that don’t, won’t, can’t focus on Eddie when he grabs hold of Steve’s face and calls his name. 

The banging gets louder, the barking multiples. Eddie prays the girls aren’t anywhere nearby, hopes they’re somewhere safer, fewer fucking windows to worry about. “Goddamn it!” Eddie shouts, because there’s no point in being quiet, whatever’s outside knows they’re in here. 

“Harrington. Steve. Shit. Steve, I—what the fuck do I do?” He asks, but there’s no answer, of course there’s no answer, Steve’s cooking inside his own skin and Eddie just here to watch at this point. Just a bystander while another person dies in front of him. 

“Fuck this.” Eddie grinds out, pushes his panic, his fear, his blind despair to the bottom, lets the anger rising up inside him take hold. “Fuck!.” Because he’s tired. He’s sick and he’s tired and he’s so fucking pissed at himself, at the world, at the universe for shitting on him. Dead mom and deadbeat dad, an uncle who works too hard to take care of Eddie’s useless ass. Higgins and all those fucking teachers who look down their noses at Eddie because he doesn’t care about school, doesn’t care about grades. The idiots he’s gone to school with year after year, who call Eddie a freak and a loser and a queer and don’t even know the half of it. 

Eddie’s muscles burn with from the effort it takes to lift Steve up off the couch. His knees threaten to give out but he manages to stay standing, Steve’s back to his chest and his legs dragging as Eddie does his best to haul him across the living room. Eddie can’t distinguish between the rattling at the doors and the beating of his own heart pounding in his ears, just focuses on dragging Steve, pulling him along until they reach the closet tucked under the stairs. Robin and Nancy raided it earlier but there wasn’t anything useful.

Just coats for Eddie to knock down as he does his best to situate Steve inside the small space, no time to worry about worsening the damage the bats did. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Eddie babbles as he sets Steve down on the floor on top of crumpled coats that have been eaten by something worse than moths. 

“I’m so sorry.” Steve barely responds, eyes barely glancing Eddie’s way as he stands, leaves Steve on the closet floor.

I’m so sorry. Eddie repeats in his head, over and over again as he closes the door. Leaves Steve in the dark. 

The banging is getting louder, Eddie’s heart deafening, nearly drowning out everything else. He shoves the Harrington’s side table in front of the closet door, anything set on top if falling to the floor in a clatter. Things crunch under Eddie’s feet as he runs, back to the living room. 

He moves on instinct, lets it carry him, doesn’t even stop until he’s standing outside the garage door. 

The barking stops. Everything gets quiet for a single second. Even Eddie’s heart. 

Then it all starts again, a cacophony of sounds and movement. It’s bedlam. Pandemonium. 

Eddie runs. One of the things that’s been clobbering at the patio door rounds the corner of the house before Eddie does. It’s face opens, drooling and growling, snaps it’s multi-hinged jaws at Eddie. It’s teeth glisten in the weird light.

Eddie doesn’t even fully realize what he’s got in hand until he’s swinging, until it connects with the slobbering maw. The thing whines in pain, tries to rear back but the nails make that hard, Eddie holding fast to the bat in his hands so that the nails tear through flesh as the monster in front of him struggles to free itself. 

He brings his other arm down as hard as he can, the head of the flashlight striking down on the thing’s spine. The impact rattles all the way up his arm, aches in his wrist. He tightens his grip, pulls his arm back, strikes another blow. The thing goes limp with a miserable whimper. 

He doesn’t even have a chance to catch his breath. Pulls the bat free, runs forward to meet the next attack. 

One of them gets a bite in on his arm, latches on to Eddie’s arm. He strikes in in the side, leaves gouges along it’s ribcage as he kicks it away. 

The flashlight gets lost somewhere. Broken. Dark. 

One of the things lunges at him, send them other down, over the edge of the empty pool. Eddie scrambles over the thick roots, picks up the bat with slippery hands. It’s blood, he thinks is some small corner of his head. It’s his blood. Monsters’ blood. Makes it harder to hold on to. 

It’s some much darker in the pit than it even was up above, but Eddie can hear the thing growling in front of him, can smell it’s rank breath. He steps backward, lifts his foot over the thickest tangle of roots, knows he’s somewhere in the middle of the pool. The steps aren’t far.

The thing in front of him snaps its many teeth. 

Eddie plants his feet. It jumps. He swings. 

-

It spreads like a laceration, as if someone were dragging a jagged knife across the heart of the roots tangled under the body of the thing Eddie’s killed.

He stumbles backwards, bat still clutched in his aching hand. 

Red light begins to come through as if spilling through cracks in a wall, illuminates the still body of the monster. More cracks follow. More red light. Dust dances through it, seems to get picked up on an invisible current that sends it out of its way, propels it upwards, towards the sky and out of sight. 

The light keeps spreading out, twisting over and long the limbs of the roots, glows across the floor of the swimming pool. 

Eddie doesn’t think anyone would blame him for running this time. 

-

His heart is still racing when he slams the door leading into the house from the garage closed. He doesn’t drop the bat. Walks on trembling legs through the house. 

There’s a weak thud. Eddie lifts the bat, tries to get a hold of his breathing so he can hear it when it comes again.

And it does. A quiet thud. Almost out of place alongside his rattling pulse. The floorboards creak under his sneakers. They squeak, damp again, with blood now instead of lake water.  

Another beat. Eddie clears a corner, steps into the hallway. He can see the glow of the red light from here, spilling in through the archway that leads into the kitchen. It seems brighter. More dangerous now that Eddie’s further away from it. 

He doesn’t know what it means. Doesn’t know what he’s done. He was just trying to help. He just wanted to help. Keep Steve safe. Keep them both alive a little while longer. 

The door to the closet rattles. 

Eddie drops the bat. 

He doesn’t slide the table out of the way so much as he knocks it over, clears the doorway so he can pull it open. Steve spills out with a groan. 

“I’m sorry.” Eddie chokes, dropping, his arms and legs useless now, can’t do much more than kneel there on the floor, gather Steve as close as he can. “I’m sorry.” 

His hands leave bloody handprints on Steve’s skin.

“Henderson?” Steve mumbles, head tipped against Eddie’s shoulder. “Henderson?” 

“He’s safe.” Eddie tries to assure him, “He’s with Max and Lucas. He’s safe. At your house. The real one. You told him to go to your house.” 

Steve struggles to open his eyes, pries them apart and looks up at Eddie, looks away, looks at something far away. “Dustin.” He says again. Barely audible. “Can’t you hear him?”

Eddie shakes his head. He’s crying. Everything inside of him has gone soft, fallen to pieces like wet newspaper. He holds on to Steve that much tighter. 

“Dustin’s not here, Steve. He’s safe.”

“Eddie.” Steve says his name, one hand reaching up and pulling at Eddie’s jacket. “Listen.” 

But all Eddie can hear is the sound of his own breath tearing through him. 

“Eddie! Steve!” Nancy’s voice cuts through the house. 

There’s a crash, wood splintering, running feet. Eddie should reach for his weapon. He should try to stash Steve again, out of harm's way, but he’s so tired now. The anger from earlier drained away with nothing but hopelessness to take its place. 

“Steve!” Robin’s voice is frantic, closer, closer, and then she’s in front of them. 

“Is he—”

Steve says Dustin’s name again and Eddie looks at Robin, sees the relief and confusion that cuts into her face. Nancy runs right past them, into the kitchen, her disappearance followed by the sound of glass falling. 

Steve looks at Robin, gives her a distorted grin. “Hey Rob.” 

“Hey, Steve.” Robin says, getting down on their level. 

Something seems to catch Steve’s attention, pulls his eyes away from Robin. That terrifies Eddie more than anything else. 

“He says he can hear Dustin.” 

Robin’s face wrinkles in confusion. “Eddie what happened? Did he, did he hit his head or—” She touches one of the red smears on Steve’s bandaged stomach. “Did the bleeding start again? We have to put pressure on—” She pulls back, looks at Eddie with wet eyes. “Eddie, you’re bleeding.” 

“Long story.” Eddie sniffs, still holding Steve, feels like he might completely and totally finish unraveling if he lets him go. He doesn’t know what’s happening inside his body right now. His chest is cold. Tight. His hands are numb and tingling at the same time. Steve feels like the only solid thing he has left. His head spins. “There were these fucked up dog things. They were trying to get in. I, uh, I fought them off. But I—I think I did something bad, Robin. I fucked up out there—” 

“You guys need to see this!” Nancy’s voice cuts Eddie off before he can say more. 

-

They don’t want to leave Steve alone inside, so Robin and Eddie take up their old positions on either side of him, pull him up. He’s still muttering about Dustin, asking if they can hear him. “He’s here.” He says as Robin and Eddie set him down at a chair at the kitchen table. 

“We’re going to be right back.” Robin tells him, squeezes Steve’s hand. Eddie follows her back into the back yard, towards the red light shining from the bottom of the pool. Except, the closer he gets it seems to change, goes from crimson to gold like a holographic decal struck by a ray of sunlight. The dust sparkles as it flies up, embers of some invisible fire, disappear into the dark sky above. 

“I knew it.” Nancy’s saying, kneeling on the cement edge of the pool, just like Eddie saw her just yesterday. Her face glows in the red-gold light, her mouth twisted with disbelief, her eyes gone wide, shining in the wild glow. “I knew there had to be a gate here.”

“There is?” Robin asks, edging closer, wary, “Why here?” 

“Because this is where it took her.” Nancy reaches a trembling hand out into the beam of light rising from the pool, her fingers trailing through it as if through water. “This is where Barb died.” 

Barb Holland. She bought weed off Eddie a few times. She was funny. It hadn’t made sense when they said she’d run away from home. Eddie looks into the glowing depths of Steve’s pool, sees how the light branches out along the same paths as the roots, picture’s Barb’s red hair. 

Nancy stands up, “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here.”

-

It happens so quickly. Slipping into the pulsing center at the middle of the light, feeling water around his legs even as he braces his arms to the edge. Robin went first, Steve with her, barely conscious and still asking if they could hear Henderson. “You’re gonna see him real soon, alright?” Robin told him before they disappeared. 

It was harder than Eddie could have ever imagined letting Steve go without him. 

“Ready?” Eddie asks Nancy, bobbing in the water beside him. His arm burning where that thing bit him. 

“On the count of three?”

One. Two. Three. 

He takes a deep breath, dunks his head and is immediately knocked off center, finds his legs over his head, his arms twisting in the water, looking at the sky underneath him next to the pale blue bottom of the Harringtons’ pool. 

Eddie kicks, turns his head, tries to find the surface of the water. Red trails in the water when he moves his arm, his hair floats in dark pieces, obscures his eyes. Everything is muffled. Something closes over his arm, pulls. Eddie lets himself be dragged, breaks the surface of the water coughing, gasping. Lucas Sinclair bobs in the water next to him. 

“I’ve got you.” Lucas says, pulling Eddie to the edge of the pool like a half-drowned cat. There are people waiting there. Lady Applejack. Max. Nancy is wading up the steps, and Robin has Steve spread out on the patio, Dustin next to them. 

Eddie crawls out of the pool, collapses onto the chilled concrete. He rolls on his back, blinks pool water from his eyes, stares up at the immense night sky overhead, twinkling with stars. 

It’s not over. He knows it’s not over yet. But fuck if he can move now. 

Lucas asks if he’s alright. Eddie thinks he nods. “Just gimme a minute.” Eddie pants, still looking at the sky. 

-

The world is so much brighter here. Even with the lights off. There’s the moon outside, the stars, the street lights. 

Eddie can see the light coming through the crack at the bottom of the door, the hallway light leaking through like floodwater. Eddie closes his eyes just so he can open them again, see the light all over again. 

He can still hear Mrs Henderson down the hall, asking a hundred questions, can make out the murmur of Dustin and Lucas’ voice in response. 

Eddie’s arm throbs under the bandages Dustin’s mom wrapped around it after cleaning out the bite. It didn’t need stitches at least. 

The bed creaks overhead, grabs Eddie’s attention, turns on his side in time to see Steve swing his feet over the side of the bed. 

Robin and Dustin did their best to clean him up before Mrs Henderson showed up, but there wasn’t any explanation any of them could give that satisfied her or prevented her from pressing. 

It was Lucas who told the truth, “We’re wasting time.” He’d argued and he was right, of course he was right. Max was sitting in the kitchen with Eddie, headphones around her neck with the music blasting so loud Eddie could hear it from across the counter. He’d wondered if Kate Bush was loud enough to drown out the clock ticking in her head. 

So they’d told her the truth, called Max and Eddie out of the kitchen, took her to the Harrington’s guest room where they’d put Steve because Eddie hadn’t been strong enough to carry him upstairs once he’d been able to pry himself off the ground. 

Eddie had done his best to tell her about what had happened, about Chrissy, and Patrick, about the things he’d seen in the Upside Down. 

“Mom, think about it! We got ready to go to Will’s funeral and then he was suddenly alive? And the fire at the mall! All the stuff that just happens to go wrong in Hawkins? All the people that just die?” 

Eddie doesn’t know if Mrs Henderson actually believes any of them, but she’s still enough of a professional to put that aside long enough to help Steve. Help Eddie. 

“He was pretty out of it, over there.” Eddie said, sitting off to one side while Mrs Henderson reapplied clean bandages. “I thought—”

“Might have been shock. It’s always crazy to think how much a person can handle before their body throws in the towel and forces them to stop.” Mrs Henderson told Eddie. “His temperature’s a little spiked but the acetaminophen will help with that. No signs of infection anywhere from what I can see, though, we’ll have to keep an eye out for that. You all did a good job taking care of him.” 

Now she’s out there, grilling her kid and a bunch of other freshmen for the truth and Eddie’s in here, looking up at Steve as he holds himself up on his arms, slumping forward. 

Behind Steve there’s rustling, Robin shifting under the sheet but she doesn’t sit up, might still be knocked out. 

“Hey.” Eddie whispers, pushing himself upright, sleeping bag falling down to his waist. He’s wearing Steve’s clothes now, a Cubs shirt and a pair of gym shorts he stole from his drawer upstairs. His hair smells like Steve’s shampoo and his skin smells like Steve’s soap, and Eddie doesn’t care if he smells like a tub of fucking Dippity Do right now so long as he doesn’t have the smell of rot and decay in his nose anymore. “You okay? You need me to get Mrs H?”

He can see the motion of Steve’s head shaking. “Fuck,” Steve breathes out, a long exhale that hangs heavy between them. “I’m so sorry.” 

Eddie’s face wrinkles, “What are saying? You’re—dude—you’re okay. No need to apologize.” 

“I got dragged in there and you all had to follow. And you, you , Eddie you got stuck babysitting my sorry ass.” 

“Pretty sure I got benched because I was on the verge of emotional and mental collapse actually.” Eddie tries to joke. There’s two pb&j sandwiches in his stomach and the caffeine of an entire can of Jolt in his veins and there’s light in the sky, in the room, in the world. Steve shouldn’t be sorry right now. 

“If anything I owe you an apology. Steve, I—I fucking put you in a closet. If I had died out there—you would have been—”

I don’t want to die, Steve didn’t say but Eddie heard it all the same. Because he feels the same desperate urge to live inside himself. Even when he was nearly feral with anger, swinging at monsters, Eddie didn’t want to die.

He doesn’t want Steve to die either. 

“You came back though.” Steve says weakly, warmly, and the words course through Eddie like a pull off a cigarette, hot and curling, spread throughout his chest. 

“Yeah. Guess so.” Eddie rubs at his nose. “Listen, you found that gate and now, we have another one. In your very own backyard. The brains are going to figure out what the hell we should do with it. So right now, just, try not to beat yourself up about any of it. It wasn’t any skin off my back keeping an eye on you, Steve. Actually, it, uh, helped. Keep me together down there.” He laughs to himself. “That probably sounds totally messed up. But I swear, I mean it in a good way.” 

He can see the whites of Steve’s eyes when he looks at him, checking for some kind of sign he hasn’t just permanently stuck his foot in his mouth. Steve nods, “I get that. It helps, y’know, having a purpose.” 

Eddie goes to snap his fingers, remembers Robin and sucks his knuckle into his mouth instead. “Yeah, that.” He mumbles eventually. “That’s it.” 

“Well.” Steve says, softly, looking down at Eddie in the dim light, the point of his nose creating a funny shadow across his face, “Thank you. For looking out for me. I owe you. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Eddie answers, still trying to extract whatever humor he can from this particular stone. But the truth is the warm feeling in his chest is still growing, pooling at the center of him and then spreading out, covering everything in a heated rush. It leaves him nearly lightheaded. 

So not the time, Eddie thinks to himself, lying down again. Body aching all over. He hears Steve sigh, do the same, the mattress springs sighing as he lays back down. 

Eddie listens to the sound of Steve breathing nearby and closes his eyes.