Archive of Our Own

When Eddie thinks back on it later, he’ll honestly be impressed by the amount of plans they manage to make on the fly. One after the other, swapped around and modified as soon as the previous one goes to hell. 

(The Upside Down swallows them at Lovers Lake and spits them out in the Harringtons’ pool and Erica Sinclair makes the call to bring in an actual adult to keep Steve from dying.)

(Max’s nose starts bleeding even with Hounds of Love playing over her earphones and there’s a gate glowing in Steve’s pool and they decide they need to play offense instead of defense. Steve’s words, not Eddie’s.)

(Mrs Henderson shoots down any idea Steve has of charging head first back into the Upside Down. “You’re not supposed to walk around unaccompanied, you’re definitely not swimming back into that hole.” They call Wayne, a final Hail Mary maneuver that surprisingly pays off.)

They make a plan and that plan goes to shit.

And somehow they come through alive. 

-

Eddie doesn’t need skin grafts so he knows it could have been worse.

Eddie got off easy, all things considered. He could be laid up in the ICU like Max with a bunch of pins and rods holding his legs and arms together. Or he could be dead. Like Patrick. Like Chrissy. Like Fred. Like Barb. 

What’s some skin off the old face and chunks of burnt hair compared to that? Not much, not really. 

The bite wound on his arm hasn’t gotten infected and there’s bandages that keep him from having to see the burns on his face in the mirror and when his hair grows back it’ll cover any scarring on his temple.

The doctor treating him even said his eye should be fine once the swelling goes down, even if Eddie needs to follow up again just to make sure.

He tries to remind himself that whenever he has visitors. The kids all flinch back when they see him the first time. Henderson, nearly in tears, takes Eddie’s hand and tells him he saved Max’s life. 

Erica doesn’t really look at him, and Lucas apologizes after she steps outside, saying fire freaks her out. “Since, y’know, the mall burned down.” 

Eddie does his best, has been through his share of hardships, knows how to grin and bear it. It’s hard not to feel like a freak on display though, face half bandaged and balding patches on the left side of his head. 

Having Steve Harrington visit him doesn’t make it any easier. One look and he’s wearing an expression like Eddie’s punched him in his healing stomach. Steve bites his mouth thin and brittle at the door to Eddie’s room, pauses mid-step behind Robin’s wheelchair. 

There’s a defensive remark poised behind Eddie’s teeth, a sharp reminder that Steve still looks like shit himself, barely any better off than either Eddie or Robin. He should probably be in here with them right now.

It hasn’t even been a week since he was monster chow and for all Mrs Henderson’s care, the long measured breaths Steve takes tell of a need to be poked and prodded by doctors and made to lay down for a good long while.

But Eddie can still hear Steve apologizing, his ragged voice saying sorry for needing to be looked after. 

Eddie looks at Steve and can hear another apology coming, some kind of bullshit about how no one would have been hurt if Steve had just been there in their stead. Eddie doesn’t know what it would have done to him if he’d seen Steve get hurt again, can’t imagine what Steve would have done in that moment when everything went south and Vecna had the upper hand. Something stupid. Something terrible. 

It makes everything inside him go slimy and cold. 

Eddie doesn’t know what crying will do to his fucked up eye so he holds his tongue all together. 

Robin fusses until Steve takes the chair Wayne left next to Eddie’s bed, and both of them watch Steve like hawks while he sits, though there’s no missing the sweaty shine to his face or the huff under his breath when he bends at the waist.  

“Hey.” Eddie says, sounds like he’s been chain smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. If nothing, becoming a human torch might just be the nail in the coffin of Eddie’s smoking days, which should make Robin happy at least. 

He wants to say as much, wants to dislodge the terrible look on her and Steve’s faces, as if Eddie’s the worst thing they’ve seen, as though the bruising around Robin’s neck weren’t just as painful to look at.

As if Eddie weren’t still alive because of her.

Robin’s hands are wrapped in bandages from when she tried to put Eddie out with her bare hands seconds before someone else knocked him down and rolled him in the thick Upside Down dirt. 

“I’m sorry.” Robin croaks, staring down at her wrapped hands. “I freaked—”

Eddie shakes his head. Whatever they gave him for the pain isn’t the good stuff he got from the dentist last year when they pulled his wisdom tooth, so he can feel a dull throb deep under his skin. It’s probably for the best, who knows what he’d say if he was completely blasted. 

What he does say is, “Not your fault pitching’s never been my strong suit, Buckley.” Who would have guessed how dangerous tossing a Molotov cocktail in a small place could be? He glances at Steve, thinks it must be super obvious with just the one eye out for all to see. 

He thinks about baseball bats and t-ball and how he had a better time swinging away. Even if the teeth marks dug into his arm suggest otherwise. Steve’s looking straight at him, eyes considering and way too intense for Eddie to handle right now. 

So not the time, he thinks with an ill-timed burst of chuckles at the back of his throat. It makes him cough. 

Steve bites back a pained breath when he gets up and pours Eddie a cup of water, steadies the straw so Eddie can pull a long drink. 

“We’re a pretty bunch, huh?” Eddie asks after Steve’s put the cup back on the table. 

“Yeah, we’re real beauty queens.” Steve says tersely.

Robin makes a hiccuping noise, dry and thin. It takes Eddie a minute to realize she’s laughing, eyes wet and red rimmed as they are. 

-

Eddie gets a visit from some guys in suits and a doctor who isn’t one of his regular doctors. He zones out after the part where they tell him they’ve made sure Hawkins PD no longer considers him a person of interest, like someone flips a switch in his brain and it all goes dark. 

He doesn’t think to ask what that means exactly, regrets it later when Wayne comes to pick him up once he’s discharged. 

Wayne drives them in the opposite direction of home. It takes Eddie a long second to realize that they’re leaving Hawkins behind them all together. There’s a cold spike in Eddie’s belly, thinking about all the people they’re behind, but the blow is softened by the shroud of exhaustion wrapping ever tighter around Eddie’s shoulders. Wayne drives them to the E-Z Rest Lodge nearly half an hour out of town. The parking lot is surprisingly full. 

Eddie realizes he doesn’t actually know too much about what’s happened in the week he’s been stuck in the hospital.

“Feds’ got half the town shut down. Say they’re investigating some kind of gas leak.” Wayne mumbles, bruises gone all green and purple down the side of his face. “Whole trailer park is off limits. Didn’t even let me go in to grab our crap. Keep saying they’ll be in touch soon as it's ‘under control’.” Wayne sighs heavily, pulls into a parking spot and kills the engine.  “Picked up some clothes and things for you in town. It’s not much but hopefully we won’t be here long.”

Wayne offers him a well-meaning if tight smile. Takes Eddie back to a state-funded youth home nearly twelve years ago, all his earthly belongings stuffed in a single trash bag. For all the blurry days that came after, the memory of Wayne waiting for him on the other side of a door stands out crystal clear. Apologetic but not pitying, careful and reassuring. “You’re gonna stay with me, alright. While your dad figures stuff out.”  

There’s a talk they have to have, Eddie knows there is. About what really happened with Chrissy Cunningham that night in their home. About why Eddie ran and stayed away for as long as he had. And whether Eddie would have gone back into an demented pocket universe full of razor-toothed monsters and psychic vampires without another word to Wayne. 

(Eddie doesn’t have an answer for that last one. Can’t imagine what he would have done if things had been different. If the plan had shaken out another way. He already feels sick knowing he pulled Wayne into the shit, looks at the bruises on his uncle’s face and feels gritty with guilt.) 

“Thanks, Wayne.” Eddie manages, the lump in his throat only partially to blame on smoke inhalation. His voice sounds bloated in his own ears, swollen with years of debts Eddie would never be able to repay. 

Wayne, never one for flowery words, reaches over, braces a hand gently against Eddie’s uninjured forearm. 

“C’mon, Ed. This place has cable.” 

-

Eddie uses the stuff Wayne got him to shower, sits as still as he can while Wayne changes the dressings on his face. “It’s looking good, kid.” Wayne says reassuringly while he dabs antibiotic ointment on the side of Eddie’s face. Eddie knows Wayne’s not just saying it, can feel how the swelling really has gone down around his eye. He can nearly open it completely now, though everything still looks sort of hazy, squiggly marks floating in his field of vision when he looks up. 

There’s another week of this, twice a day, before Eddie can go around without a bandage. He doesn’t want to ask Wayne to do it every single time but he doesn’t know that he has the nerve to do it for himself just yet. That can be a problem for future Eddie, he thinks. Like the hair he didn’t wash, braided loosely and shoved under the cheap motel provided shower cap for tonight.

Wayne fills him in on some of what he’s missed. The high school gym turned into a kind of relief center for people displaced by the ‘gas leak’. Streets closed down. The absolute clusterfuck of traffic flow. 

“And Jim Hopper’s alive.” Wayne wraps up. Eddie jerks backwards, shoulder blades knocking against the top of the toilet tank.

“Way to bury the lead!” Eddie says, immediately regretting the instinctive widening of his eyes, the impulse to pull a face, the immediate spike of pain that stabs across his face. “Shit!” He winces, reaches up only to have Wayne grab his hand. “Don’t want to be doing that, kid.” He says jokingly, gently pushing Eddie’s arm back down. 

“Sorry, just, are we talking zombie or another one of those government cover up things?” Neither is out of the realm of possibility these days. 

Wayne cracks a smile. “The second one, from the sounds of it.” 

“Huh.” Eddie breathes, nothing much left to say while Wayne tapes bandages in place. One more weird ass happening to add to the ever growing list of things Eddie’s experienced lately. 

“You need anything, kid?” Wayne checks after Eddie’s gotten himself settled on the bed furthest from the door. Eddie’s swapped out the scrubs he was given to wear out of the hospital for the pair of sweats and one of the t-shirts Wayne got him and has the tv remote at hand. Eddie gives him a thumbs up, resting back against the headboard. 

Eddie waits until he can hear the shower running through the plywood door. He doesn’t know why he feels like he needs to sneak, is sure Wayne wouldn’t have had a problem with Eddie making a phone call. 

Maybe it’s just that this is one more thing Eddie doesn’t know how to express. This compulsion to check in, this sense of responsibility he’s still carrying around like a rock in his pocket. Steve kept himself alive just fine while Eddie was off trying to be a substitute hero, just like he did in the years before this shit darkened Eddie’s door. The guy obviously doesn’t need looking after. 

Still that doesn’t stop Eddie from creeping across the room, the floor underneath him creaking when he walks over to the little desk set up under the window. There’s a phonebook in one of the drawers, the spine broken open, the pages yellowed and dog eared. It doesn’t take Eddie very long to find the right section, even less to skim the columns of names until he finds the one he’s looking for. 

He dials the number to the Harringtons house carefully, holds the phone up to his right ear. He can picture it, Steve’s cordless phone sitting on the side table in the living room. They spent half a week hiding there, to say nothing about the hours (days?) they were stuck there on the other side. Eddie thinks he could walk that house with his eyes closed now if he needed to. 

The phone rings in his ear. It rings and it rings. Goes unanswered. 

A dozen terrible images flash in his head. Steve fallen in the shower. Steve in a heap at the foot of the stairs. Steve gone all together, a new dreadful tear in the universe shining sinisterly under the surface of the pool in his backyard. 

He fumbles the phone back onto the receiver. His hands are shaking. He flips through the phone book. Robin got cut loose from the hospital two days ago. She’ll know. Of course she’ll know. Maybe Steve is with her. He visited her almost every day, pushed her into Eddie’s room at her request, sat next to her. Of course Steve is with her. 

Mr Buckley answers. He asks Eddie to repeat himself twice before telling him he’ll go check if Robin’s still awake. Eddie taps his short-bitten nails on the faux-wood desktop. 

“Eddie?” Robin’s voice rasps thinly in Eddie’s ear. She sounds like she’s been pulled from sleep. Eddie feels a flash of guilt for bothering her. 

“Hey, sorry, I just, uh, wondering if you’d seen Steve recently.” He rushes to get it out, impatient for an answer. A plan if necessary. 

“Yeah. Yesterday.” Robin answers, sounds more alert already, voice edged with concern. 

“Was he okay—” Eddie starts asking and then clamps his mouth shut, eyes on the clock sitting on the desk in front of him. It’s after eleven. Steve’s probably asleep. He’s probably not laying dead on his bathroom floor at all. “Shit.” Eddie breathes out. 

“Eddie?”

“I—sorry, I just. Called him. No one answered.” He swallows, forces a laugh. “But I’m thinking that might be an overaction now.” He rubs at his unbandaged eye, feels like a complete idiot even as his heart continues beating above average speeds.

“Sorry I’ll let you go—”

“He’s not at his house.” Robin says, words overlapping with Eddie’s apology. 

Eddie bites the tip of tongue, feels his ear go hot against the plastic of the phone. He’s not jealous. That would be stupid. Eddie’s a lot of things but he’s never been a homewrecker. Not that there’s any chance of anyone or anything getting between Robin and Steve.  

He nearly asks if Robin’s got Steve hiding under her bed as they speak. That can’t have been easy to pull off quickly given the injuries between them. 

Robin goes on talking, “They roped off his whole house, y’know, because of the thing in the pool.” She whispers the last part. “He’s staying at the motel that’s out towards Smithsville, uh—”

“The E-Z Lodge?” Eddie asks, fingers tightening momentarily. He’d think about how oddly small the world is if it weren’t for the fact that Hawkins is an armpit. 

“Yeah, that one.” Robin clicks her tongue over the phone line. “Uh, I wrote his room number down, it’s 206. You can call him there.”

“Cool. Hm, thanks, Robin. I—I—”

“I get it.” Robin says, surprisingly gentle. “It sticks on you. The worry. It just—burrows into your brain and takes a long time to go away.” 

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, only half-informed at best about what actually happened at Starcourt last summer. 

“Yeah. Can’t tell you how long, mind you. I’m still working on it to be honest.” Robin sounds that terrible combination of resigned and sad Eddie’s heard from all of them when they talk about the things they’ve survived. 

“I appreciate the honesty, Buckley.” Eddie thanks her, the sentiment radiating throughout his body from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. The gratitude is very nearly level with the amount of thanks he bears for her for not letting him burn to a crispier finish. “Really.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

- 

There’s light coming through the mustard colored curtains and Eddie can hear the low drone of something playing on the other side of the door. He feels like a bit of a creep hanging around outside, staring at the dull brass room number, the peep hole staring back at him like a critical eye. 

Eddie scowls at it and mentally tells it to fuck off. He clears his throat. 

Hey , he rehearses in his head. He’s not sure what to follow that up with. Hey, heard you were in the neighborhood. Hey, who the fuck put you on the second floor with a busted elevator? Or maybe Hey —

Either luck or cruel fate cuts short any other attempts at planning, the door swinging open all at once, leaving Eddie staring at Steve himself. Steve yelps, steps back, plastic ice bucket clutched to his chest. 

“Holy—”

“Fuck—” Eddie squeaks, stumbling forward, nearly stumbling face first over the threshold. He grabs at the door frame, holds on for dear life. 

“Hey.” He tries valiantly. “Uh. Fancy meeting you here.”

Steve stares at him dumbfounded. Then he manages a weak, “Hey.” 

“Hi.” Eddie shoots back. Wow. He’s astounding even himself right now. 

“Are you—”

“We’re staying here too.” Eddie says, pointing at the parking lot below. “Uncle Sam’s booted half of the town out, apparently.” 

Steve, still hugging the ice bucket to himself, nods, “Yeah. They’ve got El looking at the gates.” 

Eddie has no idea what that means, though when Steve says, “That’s our supergirl.” at the look on his face, it fills in some blanks. “She got her powers back.” Steve gives a small shrug. “It’s a long story. I’m not sure I actually got most of it.”

“Right.” Eddie nods slowly, hoping he’s selling a greater amount of understanding than he feels. “Good.” 

Steve stares at Eddie. Blinks. Then. “It’s good to see you, Eddie.” He says, arms momentarily tightening around his ice bucket before they relax, his shoulders falling a little easier. 

“Yeah?” Eddie asks stupidly, taken by surprise all over again. He wonders if this is just what life is just going to be like now from here on out. This constant off-kilter feeling knocking him off balance without warning, the world tilted on its axis permanently.  And there, in the midst of it all, is that now familiar feeling pooling at the center of his chest, pressing up against his lungs, welling up in his heart before it spreads out, filling his limbs with rushing heat. It leaves him nearly lightheaded even now. 

Steve’s expression softens, his chapped lips lift at the corners. “Yeah, of course.” 

Eddie glances behind Steve’s shoulder, spies the single twin bed pushed up against the wall. It’s a smaller room the one Wayne and Eddie have downstairs. Looks lonelier in a way that has nothing to do with its intended occupancy level. 

Because he thinks of Steve and Robin sharing the guest room bed. He remembers Lucas and Dustin at Steve’s elbow the first time he walked down the hall, Erica trailing Steve between the kitchen and the living room, Nancy checking Steve’s temperature more often than even Mrs Henderson said they needed too. He thinks of Max, walkman in her lap, sitting next to Steve in the guest room while Steve slept. 

“Do you wanna come crash with us?” Eddie asks, figures he’s allowed to give into the impulse, the nagging itch between his shoulders that wants Steve where he can see him. It wasn’t long ago at all that he was in charge of making sure Steve stayed alive. “We’re on the first floor. Closer to the ice machine too.” 

Steve breathes out hard, looks conflicted but not completely opposed to the invitation. Eddie knows an in when he sees one. He presses on.  

“I mean, I think I speak for Mrs Henderson and Robin, as well as myself, when I say that you probably shouldn’t be on your own. You still look like a strong breeze could knock you over.” 

Steve grins weakly, “Don’t think I look that bad.” He counters. And he’s not wrong, but he’s not right either. Maybe it’s the way he’s holding himself, the deliberate stillness threaded throughout his body, the rigid measured way he’s breathing. He reminds Eddie of a bruise, even if the only visible wound on him is the scabbing cut on his throat. 

Eddie picks up the thread of Steve’s joke. “I’m visually impaired right now, Steve and even I can say with confidence that you’ve definitely looked better.” He bites the inside of his right cheek, holds his breath while he gauges Steve’s reaction. 

Steve’s grin turns a little more solid around the edges, his eyes crinkling with amusement when he says, “Yeah?”  

They stare at each other, caught in the weirdest game of chicken, the teasing air between them so at odds with their setting, their injuries, the last two weeks of dealing with shit wildly out of their control. Eddie looks away first, reaches out and plucks the ice bucket from Steve’s relaxed hold.  “C’mon Steve, grab your shit. I’ll stroke your ego later.” 

“Promises, promises.” Steve mumbles, but he dutifully pulls a ziplock bag with toiletries out of the duffle sitting on top of the desk and follows Eddie outside. Steve doesn’t need Eddie’s arm around him any more, but Eddie needs to grab the handrail right now that his depth perception is fucked. And he’s more than happy to have Steve’s hand resting just above his elbow, fingers curled loosely into his shirt sleeve. 

-

Wayne’s already under the bleached white sheet, Eddie’s note no longer on the table between their beds. The lamp over Eddie’s bed is the sole source of light in the room, but it’s more than enough for them to see by. Steve’s long sought after ice rattles dully in its bucket when Eddie sets it down on the desk.  

Steve takes his shoes off, slips them half under the bed. Eddie kicks his own sneakers off with far less care, though he double checks that the twin thumps don’t wake Wayne. 

Eddie grabs the toothbrush Wayne bought him, gestures at the bathroom door. “I’m gonna, y’know. You can just.” He motions at the bed. Steve nods, pulling the topmost comforter back. “Okay.” 

Eddie spends too long staring at himself in the mirror.  The hair on the left side of his head is uneven, red shiny skin peeking out here and there. Just looking at it reminds Eddie of the horrible smell of burnt hair. Brushing his teeth isn’t pleasant, pain zinging under the bandages at every twitch of his face. 

He spits into the sink, uses one of the cheap plastic cups on the counter to rinse, exhaustion crashing over him all at once. Back in the room the light over his bed is still on, Steve laying on the side closer to the wall, stretched out on his back, arms over the sheet, hands resting on his chest. He’s got ice packed into the plastic lining bag from the bucket in Wayne and Eddie’s room, the shapeless blob resting on his left shoulder.  He tips his head towards Eddie, squinting under the lamp light. 

“What happened?” Eddie whispers as he walks towards the bed, pointing in the general direction of Steve’s shoulder. 

“Carver.” Steve answers shortly. He doesn’t offer any more information when Eddie lifts the sheets, or when he slides underneath it. 

“Do you—” Eddie points at the light overhead. Before their trip to the Upside Down the dark fucked with his head. He doesn’t know where Steve stands on the issue. 

Steve shakes his head gently. 

Eddie clicks the light off, but it only takes a second for the immense darkness to soften, give way to all the light that exists around them. The yellow lights out in the parking lot, diffused by the curtains, reflected in the mirror, slanting across the walls. 

Back at Steve’s house, Lucas and Erica shared Steve’s room. Mrs Henderson and Dustin shared his parents’ bedroom. Max and Nancy set up camp in the living room, pulled out the Harringtons’ rollaway bed and made up the couch. Robin slept next to Steve and Eddie never second guessed his choice to sleep on the floor right next to that bed. Because being on his own felt impossible after so long spent hiding by himself. Because not being near Steve was—

Next to him Steve breathes out. Eddie echoes him. 

-

Later, Eddie will look back and think regretfully about his first night sharing an actual bed with another guy. 

For starters every wrong turn draws a pained hiss or a mumbled apology or worse an overblown startle reflex. He touches Steve in the dark, tries to comfort him, but his hand lands in the wrong place and Steve flinches, caught too unawares to bother hiding it. 

Eddie doesn’t sleep so much as he drifts through various degrees of consciousness, always half aware of Steve and his own injured body. The dull ache. The stinging pull. The swollen heat trapped under his skin. 

The fact that his uncle is sleeping not three feet away the whole time is a completely different story. 

Later, Eddie will have the space necessary in his brain to be mad that so many things have been ruined by the Upside Down. Things that should have been funny stories to reminisce about when he’s older, youthful touchstones shadowed by loss and fear and pain. 

Right now, Eddie gives up on sleep all together, lays there under the bleached sheet and the thin flannel blanket, watches the room grow brighter and brighter. He doesn’t know how long he does that before Steve sighs, tips his head towards him. “Can’t sleep?”

“Nah.” 

“Me either.” 

“Wanna go for a walk?”  

-

They take the scenic route to the vending machine, though neither of them have any change. They do a slow lap of the parking lot, everything quiet and very nearly still. There’s an occasional chirp of a bird in one of the nearby trees, the growl of a passing truck on the highway beyond the motel. It’s kind of nice. 

The sun hasn’t completely risen yet, everything tinged blue-grey, the air chilled enough that Eddie can see his breath when he exhales. 

“C’mon.” Steve says, fingers grazing Eddie’s elbow. Eddie doesn’t bother asking where they’re going, just follows dutifully as Steve takes them back around the parking lot, towards the corner furthest from the parking lot entrance. Eddie hadn’t really paid that much attention yesterday when they pulled in, just saw the top of a white iron fence and put it out of mind. He can smell chlorine now that he’s closer, sees the surface of the pool ripple under the wind. 

There’s a sign on the gate that clearly states pool hours are between 11AM and 7PM but Steve just sticks his hand through the bars, unlatches it from the inside and pulls the door open. 

“After you.” He says courteously, ushering Eddie in with a gallant sweep of his arm. Eddie can’t help but grin. 

The fence feels excessive once Eddie sees what’s behind it. The Hawkins public pool it is not. It’s a square pit,  roughly half the size of the pool at Steve’s place and doesn’t go as deep, the top of it littered with dead bugs and errant leaves. The bottom, visible through the water, is grimey looking white tile. The smell coming off the water though is strangely comforting in a way it’s never been before. Eddie breathes in deep.  

Steve sits in one of the plastic chairs set out, bends like the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz , like he’s rusted overnight. 

“What happened with Carver?” Eddie asks, sitting in his own chair, teeth chattering a little. He’s wearing Wayne’s jacket, heavy canvas lined with flannel, the smell of cigarette smoke caught in the fabric. The jacket Wayne brought to the hospital for Eddie, the faded corduroy one he’d left in Wayne’s truck earlier in March, is hanging off Steve’s shoulders. It’s probably warmer than whatever member’s only jacket Steve brought from home and readily at hand, sparing Steve from a trip up the stairs. At least that’s what Eddie’s telling himself.   

“What always happens with jerks like that.” Steve says dejectedly fiddling with the button on the right sleeve. “He showed up looking for a fight. I gave him one.” 

“Steve.” Eddie knows he sounds reproachful, can’t help it. He remembers how pale Steve looked after they came back, how much each step he took seemed to cost him. He wasn’t in any shape to start a fight. That’s the whole reason they left him with the kids. 

He was supposed to be there to help keep Max grounded while they tried to destroy the mirror version of the Creel house, that clock that kept haunting Max’s dreams.

“Max was—it was starting, y’know. She was all still and Lucas was trying to snap her out of it. She was bleeding. From her nose and her ears and the walkman wasn’t working. I was trying to hold on to her, like keep her on the ground, and then—Jadson just came crashing through the attic door.” Steve hunches forward. “I kinda lost it on him.” 

“Did you bite him too?” Eddie asks, mortified that Steve had gotten himself hurt again and impressed by the amount of guts it must have taken to square off with Jason Carver when he’d been monster munch not three days before. 

Steve shoots him an unimpressed glare. “No, I didn’t bite him.” 

Eddie sits there, holding his breath. “He hurt you though.” 

“He landed a lucky punch. Believe me, I’ve had worse.” 

“Oh I believe you, Harrington.” He says, holding his hands up lest Steve presume Eddie isn’t suitably impressed by his ability to go absolutely feral. 

“Anyway, Erica hit him over the head with a chair so it doesn’t even matter.” Steve says like it’s an afterthought and not one of the wilder statements Eddie’s heard of late. Which is saying a lot. 

“She what ?” 

-

Wayne comes to find them about an hour later, by which time their conversation has meandered away from the clusterfuck of spring break towards a weird walk down memory lane. “I knew Tommy was full of shit.” Steve’s laughing, one hand pressed to his lower abdomen, like he has to support his internal organs through every chuckle. 

“Yeah, no, I never gave anyone a freebie. That’s just not good business practice.” 

“Morning gentlemen.” Wayne says drily. 

“I got a call from Hawkins PD just now.” Wayne says, “Not about you.” He adds when he sees Eddie’s face. “Just Powell saying some people need my signature. I’m going to head over in a little bit. Figured we could get breakfast first.” 

Steve looks at Eddie, chews on his lip. Then he does the facial equivalent of a shrug, the creases around his mouth deepening into the shape of a horseshoe turned on its head. 

“I could eat.” He says casually, hands clasped loosely in front of him. He untucks his chin, looks Eddie’s way patiently. “What about you, Ed?” 

-

They go up the road to a diner that’s already teeming with displaced Hawkin’s residents. 

“There’s counter space.” The waitress offers, and Eddie sees Steve open his mouth, the beginning of a nod and an unbothered “Whatever’s fine” but Eddie shakes his head. “We’ll wait for a table, no rush.” 

Wayne isn’t in any kind of hurry to go sign anything, asks for a cup of coffee while they wait, but they don’t actually have to wait that long. They thankfully don’t get a booth, so there’s less squeezing and shuffling to worry about, just a regular old four seater in the middle of the floor.

Middle of the room. 

Right where anyone can see them. See him. 

There’s no way anybody misses him. Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson, an eyesore even before he was torched. He can’t see anything or anyone on his left side, takes some comfort in knowing it’s Steve sitting in the chair on his left, that Wayne’s got his eyes on the room to Eddie’s back, but still Eddie does his best to slump forward, shrinks closer to the slightly damp table. 

He can feel dozens of eyes on him, even with his eyes fixed on the table in front of him. Every scrape of a chair on the floor, every ding of a fork against a plate, every voice turned conspiratory in his ears. He flexes his naked hands against the table, sweaty and tingly. His left leg bounces, knee bobbing up and down, up and down. 

Something touches his leg, and he has to lean a little bit back to get a good look, sees Steve’s hand resting up over his knee. There are still scabs on some of his knuckles, half flaked off, revealing bright pink skin underneath. His thumb presses gently on the outside of Eddie’s leg. 

He looks up, sees Steve looking at him, concerned crease between his eyebrows, dipping into the bridge of his nose. He’s got an impressive nose, Eddie thinks stupidly, a strong profile. 

Freak used to call Steve a pampered pretty boy but up close Eddie doesn’t think pretty’s the right word for him. It’s not because of the stubble shadowing his upper lip or the squared set of his jawline, or the strong ridge of his brow bone. 

Steve’s got the capacity for pretty, Eddie’s seen it, in the silly wiggle of his fingers in greeting and the way he puts his hands on his hips when he’s lecturing Henderson, the playful habit to mess with whatever knickknack is close at hand.   

It’s just that up close, personal, he transcends surface level labels, leaves behind questions about whether or not he’s physically attractive. He’s just, well, Steve . In the same way he was just Steve when Eddie pressed his ear to his chest in the dark of the Upside Down and Eddie didn’t even have room to think about how he was touching another man. Like Steve was his body but so much more than the body that contained him. 

It’s weird thought to be having now, in the middle of this grubby diner outside of Hawkins, panic still zipping along the base of his brainstem, his uncle sitting across the table from him. 

“Ready to order?” Their server asks, scaring the shit out of Eddie who didn’t see them approach, all his attention turned Steve’s way. Eddie knocks his elbow into the table edge hard enough to make the salt and pepper shakers rattle against each other and tip over. 

“Uh, maybe another minute.” Wayne asks for politely, gives the server a pleasant smile. “If that’s alright.”

“You doing alright, kid?” Wayne asks quietly once they’re on their own again. Steve’s hand is still on Eddie’s knee. Wayne’s boot knocks gently against the tip of Eddie’s sneaker. 

Eddie nods, does his best to ignore the uneven tuffs of hair that aren’t long enough to be held back in his braid, singed short. 

People are looking. People are still looking. People will always be looking at Eddie from now on, even once the bandages come off. There’s nowhere to hide. 

He might as well get used to it. 

-

Wayne drops them off the motel before he heads out. Steve makes an attempt to go back upstairs, “You should probably rest.” He says simply, “You didn’t really sleep last night.” 

Neither did you , Eddie thinks dourly, bites his mouth shut. “I’m not gonna sleep now.” Eddie insists, tired to the point of feeling strangely wired. “You might as well, uh, stick around. I mean, unless your day planner is absolutely bursting with social engagements.” 

He doesn’t feel nearly as pathetic as he sounds, he swears. It’s just, he really will go crazy if he’s on his own again. And Steve probably doesn’t need the isolation either. Eddie’s just a good samaritan. 

Steve rolls his eyes, “You can just say you like having me around, y’know. I won’t tell anyone.” 

Eddie can feel the unbandaged half of his face go hot. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” He replies primly, playing with the room key in his hands. “Ya coming in or what?” 

Steve smiles, surprisingly chipper considering they’re standing at the door of a shitty motel room on a weekday morning before ten o’clock. Somewhere nearby kids are yelling, shrill shrieks of laughter.  “Well, since you insist.”

-

They watch television. Visit the vending machine again for pops neither of them open. Steve ices his shoulder. Eddie naps on Wayne’s bed while Steve channel surfs, wakes up to find Steve doing weird stretches sitting at the desk chair. Bending his leg, raising it slightly towards his abdomen, holding it for a few breaths before he extends his leg again, sets it down. Repeats the process with the other. 

“Did the doctors look at you?” Eddie asks drowsily, “Like, I mean, after Mrs Henderson?”  

Steve drops his bent knee, nods. “Yeah. She basically threw me under the bus as soon as Max got whisked away.” 

“What they say?” Eddie asks, scared even now that there was something they missed, something none of them knew to take care of. When Steve passed out Eddie was positive that Steve must have been bleeding out internally, that he was probably dying the whole time Eddie was lugging him around. 

“That I shouldn’t be hiking at night.” Steve says drily. 

“Dude.”

Steve makes a funny frustrated sound, tosses his hands up. “They gave me a script of antibiotics and made sure all my vaccines were up to date. I’m supposed to do a bunch of exercises to help with this—” He gestures at his middle, “Said it’s going to be a while for it to not feel like—” He stops. “It’s not a big deal. We’re all fucked up.” 

Eddie nods, tips his head back onto the pillow, looks up at the ceiling. Steve clears his throat. “I don’t—I didn’t mean, you’re not. I don’t think you’re fucked up. I just meant I’m not the only person who got hurt, y’know.”

Eddie nods. He does know that. 

But the truth is he does feel fucked up. His face and his hair and his head, like the inside part, his brain soaked in fear and stale adrenaline. He thinks the chemical makeup of his every thought has been irrevocably altered. 

“Eddie?” Steve asks, and there’s the sound of him getting up, walking over. He doesn’t go around the bed, instead sitting to Eddie’s right side, leaning forward, worried look on his face. 

“Yeah?” 

Steve shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, the tip of his tongue swiping at the corner of his lip before he says, “That you got hurt.”

Eddie doesn’t really want Steve, or anyone, to apologize. Not to him. He got off easy. He knows he did. Max is in for a long ass road towards recovery and Robin’s hands won’t be holding a trumpet any time soon and Chrissy Cunningham is dead. But he gets it, looks at Steve and feels it in the bit of his stomach. “Yeah, me too.” He clears his throat, “For you I mean. I wish you weren’t—”

Steve holds himself so still Eddie’s afraid he’s offended him but eventually Steve nods. Eddie thinks he understands. Hopes he does. 

“Hey, Steve.” Eddie says, tries to swallow down the jagged feeling that’s trying to crawl its way out his mouth, “You think you can do me a favor.” 

If Steve’s surprised by the sudden turn in their conversation he hides it, rubs at his nose, leaves it pink. “Yeah, of course. Anything.” 

Eddie hopes they don’t regret this. 

-

The scissors Steve was able to procure from the reception area aren’t the sharpest looking shears in the county but Eddie’s pretty sure they’ll do. 

“You sure about this?” Steve asks, frowning openly at the back of Eddie’s head in the mirror. 

Eddie, sitting in front of him on the luggage rack he found in the closet when the desk chair wouldn’t fit through the door, nods confidently. “Yeah. Totally. You’ve got this big boy.” He says, grins widely at Steve’s crinkly confused face. 

Steve runs his hand through Eddie’s hair on the right side, combs his fingers carefully through the tangle. Eddie hasn’t washed it since a nurse did it at the hospital. It’s probably greasy. But Steve doesn’t look grossed out. Instead he’s looking at Eddie’s hair like he’s trying to solve long division, brow furrowed, mouth slightly puckered. 

“Okay, so, we’re just, making it even?” Steve triple checks, fingertips gently brushing the shortest ends hanging over Eddie’s left shoulder. 

“That’s the plan.” Eddie says, ignores the dull-edged sadness in his chest. It took him nearly a year to grow it out to this length and Steve’s gonna have it off in less than five minutes. 

Steve makes a low ‘Huh’ sound, mouth dropping slightly open. “Okay, but what if I only cut it to here?” Steve asks, picking up one of the longest singed pieces. It’s just above Eddie’s shoulder. “So it won’t be super short. ” Steve is still touching Eddie’s hair, pulling pieces of it apart carefully wherever he finds a knot. “I can cut it again once it grows out more, so you’ll still, uh, look like you, y’know.” He sounds almost shy. “Does that sound good?”

“Yeah.” Eddie says. “That sounds good.” 

Steve takes a deep breath before he makes the first cut. The scissors snip through Eddie’s hair, the sound of it sends tingles across his scalp. He remembers being a kid, maybe five or six, getting his mom’s scissors and going to town on his bowl cut. Afterward, Dad had sat him down in the bathroom and it had been buzz cuts for Eddie for years after. 

“You’ve got a lot of hair.” Steve mumbles, cutting the hair at the back of Eddie’s neck. 

Eddie twirls a wispy strand of hair that’s fallen onto his lap.

Steve takes a surprising amount of time on Eddie’s hair. Too long maybe considering what Eddie asked him to do. 

“I just, don’t wanna leave you looking like one of Erica’s banished Barbies.” 

“Right, a bad hair cut would really draw attention.” Eddie drawls, “Wouldn’t want that.” He grins sheepishly when Steve glares at him in the mirror. 

“Don’t think it was your hair that was drawing attention, Eddie.” Steve mumbles, his attention on the task at hand. “Think you could pull that in a suit and tie if you really wanted to.” 

Eddie wraps his own hair around his finger. He wonders where his rings went, whether they’re at the hospital or in a hazardous waste bag being sent off for incineration as they speak. They weren’t real silver or anything, mostly cheap junk he’d picked up here and there, traded with other metalheads at a few of the shows he was able to attend last summer. Still his hands feel so naked without them. 

He’s sitting there in a shirt that doesn’t belong to him, in clothes Wayne bought him who knows where, with Steve Harrington standing behind him, snipping away at his hair. Steve is the only familiar thing in the room. 

“How long do you think we’re gonna be stuck here?” Eddie asks while Steve fusses behind him. 

“No clue. However long it takes to make sure nothing else is gonna come crawling out of any of those gates I guess.”

Eddie shudders at the thought. “Any word on how that’s going?”

Steve shakes his head, “Nah, don’t really wanna bother El. She’s got a lot on her plate right now.” His eyes shift, avoid Eddie’s stare in their shared reflection, “Honestly, I’m not in a rush to get back.” 

Eddie raises his right eyebrow as high as he can comfortably. “Dude, the room they’ve got you in here isn’t a quarter of your guest room. Your guest room Steven.”

“It’s just Steve actually.” Steve says, pulling his fingers through Eddie’s hair again. It makes little shivers run across Eddie’s scalp. “And I know, alright. It’s just.” He’s not using the scissors anymore, just sort of petting Eddie’s hair. “I guess I always knew. I used to tell myself that there was no way of knowing for sure, but I just had this feeling in my gut. Like, I could feel something was wrong no matter how much I wanted to pretend otherwise. And now I know. Barb died there. I asked Nancy upstairs and left her back there and she died. And now that I know that I don’t know if I can keep living there, like nothing happened.” Steve swallows, falls quiet. “Maybe they’ll condemn it, like the Creel house. So no one can ever go in there again.” 

“What about you? Where would you go if they did that?”

Steve sets the scissors back down on the counter, brushes wayward hair off Eddie’s shoulders, his back, “I don’t know yet. Maybe look for a place in Hawkins. Or, somewhere else. A little further out. Could be alright.” 

“What, you’re not going to follow Buckley to the Windy City?” Robin got herself a nice scholarship to Loyola, is supposed to be starting there in the Fall. Eddie assumed that Steve would go with her when she left, after everything. 

Steve shakes his head. “Nah, she’s—we talked about it. Before, y’know, shit hit the fan. She’s gonna go, do her thing for a while.” He’s still looking at the back of Eddie’s head, distractedly picking up pieces and letting them fall again. 

“So you’re okay with long distance?” Eddie asks, can’t imagine it’s easy making that sort of leap after spending every day together, working at the same place, hanging out together around town. Hell, even sharing in their near death experiences. 

“She’s going to Illinois not Oregon—” Steve stops short, eyebrows wrinkling. He purses his mouth and then retracts his lips in an exaggerated grimace. “Long distance?” Eddie immediately knows he’s said the wrong thing.  

“Henderson said—” Eddie tries to start over.

“ Henderson? ” Steve’s eyes go big, his top lip hooking upward. Eddie needs to stop staring at Steve’s mouth. 

“And I have eyes man, you two are like a Vulcan mind-meld gone wrong. When you got hurt I thought Robin was gonna duke it out with Nancy for suggesting we split up—”

“God, that little twerp is so annoying,” Steve is saying right over Eddie’s verbal vomit, “He just thinks he knows everything! No matter how many times you tell him he’s wrong, he’s just always got to be the smartest person in the room. And the way he talks to you—”

“It’s the tone right?” Eddie asks, catching the tail end of Steve’s speech. Steve throws his arms up a bit too forcibly, scissors still in hand. 

“I’m gonna kill him.” Steve groans, looks annoyed. Eddie feels stupid. He tugs on the cast off hair he’s holding. 

“Sorry.” Eddie says, trying to erase the humiliation growing in his stomach, and the weird leaping feeling happening simultaneously in his chest. Steve’s not dating Robin. So what? 

Steve sighs, goes back to messing with Eddie’s hair. “She said no, by the way. Robin. We were both really fucked up, like, high off our asses. I asked her out and she immediately turned  me down. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me.” 

“She shot you down?” Eddie asks, trying to pick up the joking thread of Steve’s voice. 

It works. Steve grins. “Total wipeout.” He confirms, still twisting his fingers gently in Eddie’s hair. It helps tramp down on Eddie’s embarrassment more than it should. 

“Bummer.” Eddie snaps his fingers, reciprocates Steve’s smile. 

-

Wayne comes back. He doesn’t ask about Eddie’s hair, hanging shaggy and only a little uneven at his shoulders. He brings a bag with him, sandwiches and chips, and the three of them eat in relative silence. 

“I’m gonna head upstairs.” Steve says afterward, “Shower. Check in with my folks.” 

Wayne nods, but Eddie’s already standing, making to follow Steve. “Just, gonna offer you a hand, promise.” He says, doesn’t want to overdo it but also can’t ignore the nervousness pitching forward behind his navel. 

“Feel like I’m gonna need to help you out when you go down.” Steve says when they’re about halfway up. 

“Then I’d have to help you back up.” Eddie retorts, one step behind Steve.

“And I’ll help you down.” Steve says, looking at Eddie over his shoulder.  

-

There’s no real plan for the days that follow. 

One day Wayne gives them both a lift to Robin’s and picks them up from the Sinclairs another. Another day Ms Henderson brings Dustin, and the three of them sit out by the motel pool. No one suggests swimming. There’s an early April chill in the air, thin clouds dim the sun. 

“Max’s mom is the only one allowed to see her right now.” Dustin tells them, annoyed, “Lucas is being a total nightmare.” He huffs miserably. “El is even worse.” 

Steve, for all his bitching about how he was gonna kick Dustin’s ass, sends him off with a careful hug and a promise to call.  

Sleep gets a bit easier everyday that passes, Eddie slipping a little bit further when he really tries. Steve doesn’t spend every night in their room, but when he does Eddie relaxes a bit more easily against the mattress springs, listens to Steve’s breathing even out as it goes loose in his chest. 

(There are nightmares for all of them, Wayne getting up and smoking outside the door in the yellow lamp light at 3AM, Steve groaning as he kicks the sheet away, Eddie waking up paralyzed and sweat soaked, struggling to breath. Steve and him spend more than one morning out by the pool.)

The physical pain in Eddie’s skin dulls bit by bit, recedes until it isn’t the first thing he notices every morning and the last thing he thinks about at night. He’s ready for the bandages to come off and terrified of the day arriving, imagines what kind of damage will be left behind. 

He remembers the pastor at the church Dad’s girlfriend used to take him to, talking on and on about Cain wearing his brother’s murder on his skin. If someone needed to find a symbol of everything Eddie’s ever got wrong, they might never need to look further than his face. 

“I don’t think you need to worry about anything like that, kid.” Wayne assures him when he’s changing Eddie’s dressing in the morning. There’s only three more days left before Eddie can go without, the vision in his left eye almost back to normal. There’s some fuzziness at his peripheral that hasn’t cleared yet, but Eddie’s not going to freak out about it. Not yet. 

“You sure, I was thinking of scoping out the catacombs of Hawkins, maybe setting up an organ down there. Lure young metalheads down into the dark depths with my guitar skills.” 

Wayne chuckles, tapes down the last side of the bandage. “Think you’re gonna have to hold off on that.” 

One more thing put on hold. They’ve been here almost a week, no word from anyone regarding when, if, they’ll be able to go back to Forest Hills. Eddie doesn’t know how he’ll feel when the call comes. 

He thinks Steve has the right idea. Maybe, even if they’re allowed back, Eddie won’t go. Maybe Eddie will do what he always planned to do, grab his shit and hit the road. 

Except now he doesn’t know if that’s even what he wants.

Leaving Hawkins means leaving Wayne in the rearview. Henderson and the Sinclairs, leaving Gareth and Jeff and Freak. Leaving—

At night, alone in his motel bed, Eddie tries to imagine a different future. Dozens of possibilities reel through his head, flicking by quick and disappearing as soon as they come.  

-

“Is it always like this? After shit happens?” Eddie asks, disrupting the quiet they’ve been sitting in for the past half hour. It’s been a weird week, slow and fairly boring after all the shit they went through during spring break.  

Steve tosses another card at the ice bucket they’ve got set up between Eddie’s seat on the floor and Steve’s seat on the edge of the bed. Steve’s got one eye closed as his way of evening the playing field, which means there’s just a shit load of playing cards flung wild across the floor.

Steve huffs a sigh, blinks both eyes open. “Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s like waiting.” He flips through the stack of cards in his hand with the tip of his thumb nail. It makes a scratchy clicking sound. 

“What do you usually do?” Eddie asks, mindful of the thoughtful look creeping onto Steve’s face. “While you’re waiting?”

Steve’s thumb comes to a stop on the top card, pins it down. “The first time? Hung around Nancy.” He admits, sounds sort of sheepish. “The second time I, uh, definitely stuck close to Henderson.” Steve grins, “After the whole thing happened we started hanging out, like, for real.  Kid’s insane, as you know. He taught me how to make a bottle of pop explode with a mint.” Of course he did. 

Eddie tries not to shift too much, but there’s something uncomfortable and, well, disappointed collecting under his tongue. It’s not exactly hard to pick up the pattern Steve’s laying out for him. And it’s not even as if Eddie can blame him. Hasn’t he done the same thing to Steve, taken him under his protection like some sort of knight errant. It might just be the thing to do after you find out monsters are real. You protect whatever and whoever is closest. 

“And then last year, I met Robin—”

“And you added her to your collection?” Eddie guesses, tries to swallow the sour, unsatisfied taste in his mouth. 

Steve laughs, flings another card. This one lands in the bucket. “No way. She took me on as her schmuck.” He sounds as disbelieving as he did in the Upside Down when Eddie told him Dustin worshiped him. And Eddie can understand how Dustin got it into his head that Steve and Robin were dating, because Steve just looks so genuinely happy right now, calling himself a schmuck. 

And Eddie gets that, remembers how he felt when he met Jeff back in middle school, connecting over a cassette of Fireball Jeff brought into show and tell one Friday. He’d had friends before, other kids to run around with whenever Dad and him stopped somewhere for more than a few hours, but Jeff was his first best friend . And he’s glad Steve has that connection with someone too. 

Alright, Eddie tells himself, that’s alright. Steve picks up friends in life threatening situations. Even Wheeler, his freaking ex, is still a friend. Chances are good that whatever comes next, Steve and him are definitely friends now. 

And that’ll be enough. Because Steve is a good guy and Eddie’s not going to make this weird. So what if there’s something in Eddie’s gut, something that isn’t satisfied by friendship alone. 

Eddie tosses a card. He doesn’t even see where it lands. 

-

“You sure you’re going to be alright on your own?” Wayne asks again, hesitating at the motel room door. 

“Yes. For the hundredth time. I’m going to be a-okay for the next eight hours.” Eddie tries to sound annoyed and not mildly terrified by the prospect of being alone through the night. He can’t forward to show weakness now, knows Wayne has already burnt through his sick and emergency leave at the plant first by running off into battle and then sticking around while Eddie pulled himself together. 

(Whatever Eddie does next, he needs to make sure it includes taking Wayne on a week long fishing trip or a million dollars or something, because Eddie owes him. Big time.)

“You’ll call if anything happens?” Wayne says, face grave and Eddie doesn’t even have the gall to be sarcastic because it’s not like Wayne doesn’t have a reason to make him promise. 

“Yeah. Of course.” Eddie promises, adds another week to that fishing trip. And a Springsteen concert. 

Wayne catches Eddie off guard by walking over to him and pulling him into a hug, mindful of his healing cheek when he reaches up and pets the back of Eddie’s head. It reminds Eddie of the hug Wayne gave him the first time he saw Eddie in the Harringtons’ house, what feels like years ago. 

“Okay.” Wayne says, when he pulls away. He pats Eddie’s shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.” 

“Okay.” Eddie echoes. “I love you.” He says, because he does, because he can’t remember the last time he told Wayne as much and that feels like a crime now more than ever. Wayne smiles, the same smile he’s been sharing with Eddie for years, the one that greeted him when he picked Eddie up, when he brought him home, when Eddie first woke up in Hawkins General.  

“Me too, kid.” Wayne says, patting Eddie’s shoulder again. “Don’t stay up too late.” 

It takes Eddie a while to feel less like he needs to crawl under the bed and cry once Wayne’s gone. He goes through his night routine. Showers. Changes his bandages. It’s only another two days until they come off and Eddie goes back to the doctors. Some of the cars in the parking lot have started disappearing, a sign of people being allowed back into their homes. Hawkins slowly being revived. 

Eddie feels like he should be getting ready, preparing himself for someone to step off that break and send him careening back into ‘real life’. 

He brushes his teeth instead. 

He’s not remotely close to sleep when there’s a knock at the door. He flings the book he found in the lost and found book by reception to the bedside table before he goes to open the door, feeling severely misled by the title. The book has way less to-do with high adventure and the occult and more to do with creepy dudes exploiting women. He can understand why someone would leave it behind. 

Steve is waiting patiently on the other side of the door, dressed in his now-familiar sweatpants and his grey Hawkins gym shirt. 

There’s no question about what Steve’s doing here. He’s managing the stairs a bit better, though he needs to take them slow and hold on to the handrail, no reason why he keeps coming down and sharing Eddie’s bed other than because he doesn’t want to be alone. Eddie gets that. 

They talk about the infomercial playing on television. The wildest thing they’ve ever seen and what they’ve been most tempted to buy. “The clapper.” Steve says wistfully, laying on his back on his side of the bed. He gleefully sings, “Clap on!” He claps on beat, “Clap off!” 

Eddie laughs up at the ceiling, rolls on his side so he can look at Steve properly. The overhead light makes Steve’s skin warm, brushed golden, his eyes speckled with green or amber, something else entirely. The kind of eyes someone could write a song about, Eddie thinks, love-struck all over. 

“What about you?” Steve asks, easing himself on his side. He barely winces, though he does turn the whole way over onto his stomach, rests his chin on his folded arms. “What would you buy?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Eddie asks, feels the full weight of Steve’s stare, “ Secret Love , man. Three cassettes for $19.95.” He expects Steve to snicker at the stupidity of his joke, but Steve doesn’t. 

He’s still staring at Eddie, except he’s bypassed long division and is trying to find all the angles in a geometry workbook in Eddie’s face.

Steve moves, pushes himself up on his elbows and shifts under the sheet, mouth pulling into a grimace for a moment before he leans into Eddie’s space. 

Eddie’s breath stops without his say so, his heart kicks off a drum solo John Bonham cry. Steve leans forward, a strained tremble in his breathing, a shiver visible in his shoulder from holding himself up. 

Eddie turns his face into the pillow, feels the press of the pillow up under his bandaged cheek.  It doesn’t hurt as badly as it would have days ago, but he can’t hold it for long. Steve’s nose hits Eddie’s uninjured cheek, though it’s barely there for a second before he’s pulling back. Eddie doesn’t know what to call the sound that rises in his throat. 

“Shit, sorry, did that hurt?” Steve asks, eyes gone wide and worried, cheeks stained nearly red.

Eddie shakes his head carefully, feels his heart racing unchecked in his throat. “No, just, uh—”

It’s just Eddie had plans too, stupid as that feels now. The way he wanted certain things to go. Not just the getting the fuck out of Hawkins or making it big on the music scene. Not even just the rightful order of the universe according to his Munson Doctrine. 

“Sorry, I’m just—” He doesn’t know what he’s even trying to say. 

It feels like such a dumb thing to get caught up in when Steve Harrington was literally seconds away from kissing him, but he can’t help it. Thinks about the first kiss he imagined for himself and how it never looked anything like this. Didn’t think anyone would be in pain. Not himself. Definitely not Steve.  

Steve moves, awkwardly pulls himself into a seated position, one leg folded in front of himself, the other dangling off the side of the bed. “Shit, I’m sorry Eddie. I didn’t—I shouldn’t have just—I thought—” He exhales hard, runs a hand through his hair. “Wow. Can’t believe I did it again.”

“Steve.” Eddie says, pushing himself upright. 

“You really don’t have to.” Steve says, cringing. He covers his face with his hands.  “Really. Don’t try to let me down easy. Please .” His voice is muffled but still clearly distraught. Under any other circumstances this would be hilarious. 

But it isn’t funny now. Eddie scoots across the mattress, brings himself close enough that Steve’s bent knee is almost at his hip.  

Eddie reaches out, closes his fingers around one of Steve’s wrists, gives it a gentle tug. It doesn’t budge. “I’m not trying to let you down easy.” He licks his bottom lip, summons up all his courage. “I just wanna kiss you when I don’t have to worry about my eye popping out.” 

Steve’s hands fall away from his face in an instant. “Your eye isn’t going to pop out.” He says so vehemently that it takes the gas off the nervous headtrip Eddie’s getting started.  

“Do you really wanna risk it though?” Eddie asks, reverting back to the safe grounds that teasing and joking provide him. But Steve’s face is still wrinkled with worry, embarrassment coloring his face when he looks away. 

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek, still holding Steve’s wrist in his grasp. It’s such a light touch compared to the others they’ve had the opportunity to share. “Because I wouldn’t want to do anything that might hurt you.” He’s had his fill of seeing people hurt. Can’t stand to see Steve hurt anymore than he already has. 

Steve looks at him, cautious, looks down at Eddie’s hand on his arm. Eddie squeezes briefly, carefully. Hopeful. 

Steve clears his throat, looks up again, “ Just so we’re a hundred percent clear: You’re okay with me wanting to kiss you? I didn’t just ruin everything?” 

Eddie holds his nerves in an iron fist, “That depends. Do you only want to kiss me because you think you owe me? Or because I’m here?”

Steve’s eyebrows rise, wrinkle his forehead. “What? No—Are those the only two choices here?” 

Eddie shrugs, wishes he’d kept his dumb mouth closed. “You tell me.”

“Okay, well, how about, I want to kiss you because I like you. And I like you because you’re brave and you’re funny and you’re good-looking—yes, shut up, don’t make that face. I like spending time with you and I trust you, Eddie. And I think you like me too. Is that a good enough reason?”

Eddie thinks he felt less startled the time he fell into an alternate universe. “Yeah.” He bleats. “That works for me.”

“Okay. Good.” Steve seems a bit at a loss himself. 

Eddie doesn’t know a whole lot about his life right now but he knows this much. “I want you to kiss me too.” He clarifies, because it still needs to be said. “Because I do like you.” He chuckles. “I have the worst timing.” 

“Can’t be worse than mine.” Steve laughs, mouth going soft again with laughter. 

“It isn’t a competition Steve.” Eddie says because what he actually wants to say is that he hopes he can see Steve shirtless again someday soon instead of when they were running for their lives. Eddie takes a deep breath and slips his hand down, takes a proper hold of Steve’s hand. It’s nice, really nice, to touch him without something terrible happening first. “We can both suck at this.”

Steve looks down at their hands, rubs his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. He catches Eddie off guard when he leans close again, though this time he isn’t aiming for Eddie’s mouth. His lips are chapped against Eddie’s right cheek, the kiss there and gone again in the blink of an eye. 

“Just. Uh. Holding my place.” Steve grins, charming and sweet.

Eddie can’t help it. He thinks about the stupidest, most ridiculous romantic thing he’s read in a book. He knows life isn’t anything like a storybook but he’s never been the kind to give up on something wholecloth. If monsters can be real why not some of the rest of it. Why shouldn’t Eddie grab onto some piece of the good stuff he’s always loved.   

He lifts Steve’s hand in his, kisses the back of it like a knight from a fairytale, likes the way Steve’s breath catches just a bit when he does it. 

It’s nice, better even, he decides, taking care of each other with gentleness instead of violence. 

-

“You’re really just going to sit there?” Eddie asks, again, fingernails gently prying at the edges of the tape holding his bandage down. 

“I can leave if you really want me to.” Steve says, still sitting on the closed toilet lid, watching Eddie. Eddie wants to take him up on it, have Steve wait outside where Wayne’s still sleeping but he’s also afraid of what’s waiting for him when he finally takes the medical tape and the gauze held underneath off for good. 

“How about I show you mine if you show me yours.” Eddie sing-songs, just to be an asshole. He doesn’t actually expect Steve to whip his shirt off without a second’s hesitation, just like he did on the boat though a little less smoothly.  

“There.” Steve says, t-shirt wound around his right wrist. The bruise at his shoulder and collarbone is yellow and faint brown. “Though technically, you saw mine before even I did.” 

Eddie only half-hears him, looking at the span of Steve’s chest. Did he have this much chest hair the whole time they were stuck in the Upside Down? Eddie knows he touched it, touched Steve, a lot but it doesn’t count. No way. Because Steve was bleeding and hurting and they were all so afraid. Eddie didn’t even register the full extent of his own attraction. Christ alive the guy’s easy to look at. Which Eddie knew, sure, but now he knows . 

And better still Steve knows he’s looking. Steve is okay with him looking.

Eddie’s eye drops lower, looks at the healing bat bites on Steve’s stomach. They’re still scabbed at the deepest points, a different thickness to them, all in shades of brown and rust-red. The skin around those, the places where they’ve started healing, looks a darker brown, dotted with smaller patches of pale pink skin where older scabs have peeled off recently.

The skin is superficial, Eddie knows, the pain of recovery burrowed further down under the surface he’s looking at now. It’s the sort of thing that takes time. 

They have time now. No more needing to jump headfirst at the next problem. They can take it slow.

“Okay.” Eddie says, taking a steadying breath, turning back towards the mirror. It’s easy to lift the edge of the tape, already grubby and loose from sleeping in it. The skin under the medical tape is sensitive, starting to irritate, so it’s definitely a good thing it’s coming off now. “Okay.” 

He closes his right eye when the last piece comes off, keeps it shut, gauze still kept in place by Eddie’s fingertips. He reminds himself to breathe. Right now he just needs to breathe. 

He lets his hand drop, leaves his face bare. 

His eyes are still closed. 

He turns his face away from the mirror, tips it towards Steve. It only seems fair after all, Eddie did see Steve’s before Steve did. 

“How’s it look?” 

He hears the creak of the plastic toilet lid, hears the pad of Steve’s bare feet on the vinyl floor. The bathroom isn’t huge, it doesn’t take long at all for Steve to reach him, but Eddie still jumps at the touch of Steve’s hand on his shoulder. 

Eddie’s less surprised by Steve’s fingertips on his chin, callused and careful. “You look like you.” Steve says softly. He half-expects Steve to kiss him, waits to feel his chapped lips against his own mouth now that his face is unbandaged, but Steve tilts Eddie’s face forward, back towards the mirror. “See?”

Eddie opens his eyes.

The healed, healing, skin is pink all over, some spots raised, others dimpled. It looks weirdly shiny, though that could be the ointment Eddie slapped on last night, still sitting on the skin. It goes from his left temple in a splatter that stops just shy of his nose, drips down towards his jaw and then stops. It’s undeniable. Unavoidable. 

But it isn’t the worst. And god knows, it could have been worse. Not just for him. For all of them. 

He looks at the reflection of Steve standing next to him, traces the outline of Steve’s nose, the line of his jaw, sees the scars speckled over the back of his freckled bicep where his shirt sleeve is rumpled. 

Steve isn’t looking in the mirror now. He’s staring at Eddie, his hand resting on Eddie’s chest now rather than his chin, just looking.  

Eddie’s eyes lift back to his own face, sees himself staring back.