Work Text:
He’s not sure what to expect after the fight is over. Knows he won’t get one of those participation trophies he received in elementary school. Won’t be held by his parents, they’re off for some business trip he adamantly refused to join. And he definitely knows that he’s not going to be fully satisfied with the fact that everything is finally over.
Maybe a few new nightmares added to his roster. And a knack for calling his friends at two in the morning, driving himself up a wall when they don’t answer, and then eventually driving himself around town until he absolutely has to go back home and “rest.” It’ll be like taking a deep breath after the basketball championships he did in high school—when Hawkins didn’t win and his hours upon hours of practice ultimately amounted to nothing.
Like he’ll know that he did good, but it almost feels like not enough.
It’s getting right side up that proves that point.
Nancy suggests they go through the portal that was created after Fred’s death—whoever Fred is, Steve isn’t sure, but he takes Nancy’s suggestion. They make that detour. He helps the girls step through to the correct landscape. To the just barely cracked road and the dark blue of usual night. And then they head back towards Forest Hills.
If everything went okay, like he figures it did considering the bats didn’t storm them and that they didn’t hear the chimes of a clock, then both Eddie and Dustin will be waiting for them. Yet, when they approach, it’s just Dustin. Huddled tight on himself, sitting on the very last porch step to the Munson’s trailer. He’s holding things in his hands. But there’s no sight of Eddie, which immediately puts Steve on guard, so he runs fast. Faster than he thinks he’s ever pushed himself to. Not even high school track & field got him this agile.
Dustin doesn’t hear him, though. Doesn’t hear Steve’s heavy boots on the dirt. Doesn’t hear him huffing and puffing. Doesn’t hear him call out.
So, Steve crouches down in front of Dustin, puts his hands on the kid’s shoulders, and jostles him slightly. “Dust? Dustin? Hey—Hey, we did it. We won. We’re okay,” he says. Shakes Dustin’s shoulders again when he only tightens. “It’s over, dude. We—We’re all here and we’re all”—
Something is shoved into the center of Steve’s chest. One of Dustin’s balled up hands. He looks down at it. Hand off of Dustin’s left shoulder, hesitantly reaching down for the tight fist. There’s black fabric poking all which ways out of his fingers. Dirty and musty and tinted a saturated red. “What?” Steve mumbles, “what is this?” He can’t quite pry open Dustin’s fingers, so he forces both his hands around the fist, effectively covering the entirety of Dustin’s much, much smaller hand. And with the slightest bit of force, yet the gentlest grip, Steve unravels the hand in front of him.
Palm up at him. In the well of Dustin’s palm is a black bandana. And when he fully flattens it out, Steve recognizes it as the skull and bones one that used to reside in Eddie’s pocket. The one he wore on his tangle of hair before the fight.
If this is Eddie’s, Steve thinks, then where is—
“He wanted me to give it to you,” Dustin murmurs. Voice snotty and raspy, yet almost hollow. Almost, Steve notes, because there’s a deep lake of sadness flooding through the kid. The kid. “Said that…that you always loved it. That when you guys were kids, you used to hold onto it and play with it. It calmed you down? I didn’t know, Steve.”
Steve looks up to Dustin at that. There’s a boulder in his chest. And emotions, a bundle of them, warping and stretching and filling behind his eyes. Something in him shrivels when he realizes what happened.
Dustin continues, “I didn’t know you guys were friends. How come you didn’t tell me?” He doesn’t ask out of jealousy, something more…jagged and broken and devastated replacing it instead. “Why didn’t you tell me, Steve? Why’d you call him a freak?” There’s anger, too. And that—well—Steve doesn’t know what to do with that.
Off his right, behind him, Steve can hear Nancy and Robin finally catch up to them. Can hear them muttering under their breaths. Not quite facing them, not quite acknowledging, but planning nonetheless. He doesn’t want them to see him, Steve realizes. Doesn’t want any of them to know about this part of him.
He gently drags his fingers down the center of the wrinkled bandana, over the middle where the soft part of Dustin’s palm hides beneath. Strokes the fabric reverently, with a longing he’s always had to taste, and now will always know the flavor of. “I didn’t think it mattered,” Steve whisper-croaks, “who I was friends with. Or that…I don’t know. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“But why?” Dustin pushes, “why not tell me? I wasn’t going to judge you for it! If anything, I’d want all of us to hang out. To—to egg each other on and be all close and I…I thought you hated him, but you…You knew him? You knew him, Steve. And yet you”—
Steve stands from his position on the ground. Knees popping. Burning aches and stretched edges of wounds pulling on every area of skin on his back. He swears the ground shifts under his feet, but it’s just him. Woozy and unable to get a grasp on anything. Like always. Clueless and scared.
“We need to go,” Steve says, “Max, Lucas, and Erica are probably waiting for us. We need to make sure all of them are okay.” And he begins to turn away, leave the bandana alone, make his way towards Nancy and Robin to figure out some way to get that RV back to the Creel House. But then Dustin’s tugging on his wrist with that bandana still in his hand, the drying, congealed blood on it cold against the skin of Steve’s wrist.
He comes face to face with Dustin again, when he lets himself be pulled. “Hey,” Dustin then says, making his voice softer, less harsh around the edges than it was before, “Steve, I’m sorry. I…I didn’t mean to get angry. It’s just—You knew Eddie? I thought you didn’t care.”
It’s hard masking his expression, what his face wants to do. A part of him wants to glare—because how dare Dustin suggest something like that. But also…he kind of wants to cry because, yeah, of course Dustin’s sort of right.
So his eyes are cowed. Wide and open and taking in everything. His nose catches on blood, his mouth full of air and rot, hot and cold in all the right places, the park around them almost silent, and Dustin in front of him with a mixture of apprehension and understanding and that same desperation from before. He’s not sure he could lie even if he tried. Eddie was Dustin’s friend, too.
“Remember how…do you remember a couple years ago when I told you the key to dating Suzy was sorta being all dumb? Just acting like you don’t care?” He asks, voice dropped low, dropped past that boulder in his chest. Everything is so heavy inside of him, he wishes Eddie were here to help pluck things away. He always knew how, at least to Steve it seemed that way.
“What does this have to do with”—Dustin’s mouth drops open. And his eyes are about the size of the moon. Then he gets that deeper sort of understanding to his face.—“Oh. Oh. Steve…” He hates the way Dustin says his name. Pitiful and concerned. But he doesn’t say that. Because at least Dustin isn’t shoving him away or saying something awful. Doesn’t stop looking at him like he always does. Like Steve is a world he’s eager to explore, like he’s all that matters, like they’re family. “Steve, I’m sorry,” Dustin eventually murmurs, “I’m sorry I couldn’t—I would’ve stopped him if I knew. Damnit”—
Steve shrugs and sighs. But the breath doesn’t relieve him, if anything, it tangles him even worse. Wonders, very briefly, if he’ll ever be undone again. His eyes have gone down to Dustin’s hand. Now sitting open again in front of him. That bandana wrong and crumpled and bloody. Wants to reach out and take it, but doesn’t want to accept the gravity and reality of it all.
“I was going to tell him after,” Steve whispers, “I was.”
“I’m sorry”—
He shakes his head and steps closer to Dustin. And he envelops him in the tightest hug he can offer, even as Dustin tried to flinch away from him, as if Steve would ever do something like that. But he won’t acknowledge that right now. They saved the world.
Not everybody can be saved, he knows that. Knows that beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s something he’s told himself for years. Since Nancy broke up with him. And sure, at the time it seemed foolish and douchey of him. But now it’s the only way he can care to think.
“I’m sorry, Dustin,” Steve tearfully muffles into Dustin’s hood. His chest stutters almost painfully as he tries to heave in a deep breath. This isn’t how things were supposed to go. He pulls back, hands by his sides. To stare Dustin directly in the eyes to say, “I wouldn’t have left you alone with him if I knew he was going to do this. There was something wrong. I knew it. I’ve seen that look on him before, but I didn’t…” He shakes his head, defeated, unsure of where to go. “Are you okay? Did those bats…”
“No,” Dustin answers quickly, “no bats got to me. It was just Eddie.” He looks down at the bandana again, shoves his hand closer to Steve once more. “Take this, please. He told me he wanted me to give it to you. And I promised him. I also promised him that”—Dustin sighs sorrowfully—“that I’d tell you that he loved you. Like…for years, he loved you. But he told me that things had to be this way. Which I don’t understand because he could’ve had you after all this and you’re great and we could’ve all been…I just don’t understand him sometimes. Wish I was able to now.”
Steve swallows. “He loved me?” He asks aloud, quietly. Immediately, his eyes burn something fierce. Sharp and itchy and painful. Something flames inside of him, anger so wild he doesn’t know how to tame it. Rage is the only thing he can care to taste. “I could’ve, but I—I was going to tell him. I was going to tell that son of a bitch I loved him, too and that I wanted to have a whole fucking world with him and he just—I’m a fucking coward. A stupid fucking”—
The tears come whether he wanted them to or not. Big heaving sobs from deep within him. Large and larger than the next, so much he wants to puke, so little he could tear the whole world apart and that still wouldn’t be enough. He’s angry, he knows that. But he’s confused and disheartened and unsure. Doesn’t know where to put it. How to be.
Dustin wraps around him again. The bandana shoved forcefully in Steve’s left grip. And he’s squeezed as hard as possible. Lisped shushing in his ear as Dustin tries to comfort him. It’s weird being the one needing to be taken care of, protected almost. It’s weird having felt so whole for a moment to then rot into something so empty.
There’s no next time. There’s no tomorrow where he goes to Eddie. There’s no playful banter. No running through the backwoods of Hawkins with his childhood best friend by his side. No promising each other impossible things like stars and the moon and a lifetime together. No sneaking each other lunches like they did in high school. No nurturing, no arguing over music taste, no hugging, nothing.
The only thing he can think of is that last glance he shared with Eddie.
If only he knew there wouldn’t be an after.
If only they had more time.