Chapter Text
Steve was having that creepy ass dream again.
He was in some sort of void, surrounded by darkness. It was an empty sort of darkness; it felt less like an absence of light and more like an absence of everything. There was light coming from somewhere, though. There must be. When he looked down, his own body was perfectly visible, and he could see the ripples his feet made in the thin layer of water that coated the ground. Everything else was pure black. Steve and the water seemed to be the only things that existed in this strange void. As far as he could see in all directions – which might not be far at all, but could also be miles and miles – there was just… nothing. Not even a source for the strange light.
It was both suffocating and uncomfortably vast at the same time. Sometimes Steve felt like there must be something right in front of him, lurking in the shadows, but when he would reach out all he was met with was empty air. Other times he felt small and vulnerable in the center of such a wide, open space, lost with nowhere to go. He wasn’t sure which he preferred. Probably he’d prefer not having the dream at all.
But, much to his dismay, he kept having it. He was having it right now.
It had been happening ever since the Upside Down came back. It wasn’t the worst thing that came out of everything; at least when he was dreaming, he couldn’t feel the perpetual headache that had been plaguing him since Billy rocked his shit. And there were probably worse things he could be dreaming about, too: demodogs or dead kids or crazy government scientists were a lot scarier than the dark. Or at least, they should be. This was just one more night in a long line of nights spent standing in the middle of complete darkness, waiting for something to appear. So far, nothing had.
Except this time was different. Steve wasn’t sure how long he’d been dreaming when, without warning, he heard a soft banging in the distance. It was loud and rhythmic, stopping after only a few seconds. He couldn’t tell what direction it came from, or if it was just there without a source, similar to the pale light shining down on him.
“Hello?” he called. He’d meant for it to be a shout, but it emerged as more of a nervous whisper. He did not want this to be the time he found out what was hiding in the dark. Actually, he didn’t think he ever wanted to find out. Hopefully he was just imagining things.
He wasn’t. The pounding returned, louder and more insistent. It surrounded him on all sides, increasing in urgency, and a shiver shot up his spine as he spun in a circle in an attempt to- he didn’t know. He wanted to escape, to get away from the noise, but he wasn’t sure where to go.
He clapped his hands over his ears, but it did nothing to dampen the sound. Instinctively, Steve took a cautious step backwards, but the ground disappeared under his feet. His stomach bottomed out as he fell, before suddenly he was jerking awake, the breath knocked out of him as his back collided with a hard surface.
His eyes shot open and he blinked painfully against the sunlight streaming in through the windows. He was in his living room, he realized. He was safe and awake and he was on the floor of his living room, covered in crumpled paper because before he’d fallen asleep he’d been catching up on all the homework he’d missed while recovering from his concussion. He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but he didn’t make any move to get up off the floor. He wasn’t quite ready to move yet.
His heart jumped into his throat when the rhythmic pounding noise from his dream started up again, sitting up too quickly which sent his head spinning. For a moment he was worried that whatever was making the noise had followed him into the waking world, but as the room tilted around him, Steve’s brain caught up to reality and recognized the sound as someone knocking on the front door. He sighed in relief and leaned sideways against the couch, smoothing his hands on the fabric of his jeans. It’s fine, he told himself. I’m fine. Everything is fine.
It took him a few seconds to catch his breath, but eventually he managed to push himself up and shuffle over to the door. When he opened it, he was only mildly surprised to find Dustin Henderson waiting for him on the other side, grinning excitedly.
“Hey Steve!” he said. His bike was tipped on its side in the driveway next to the Beemer and he was wearing a backpack, gripping the straps with each hand. “Wow, your bruises look super gross right now. Do they hurt? Has anything weird happened?”
Steve blinked at him, taken aback. “Uh,” he said. “Yes? What are you doing here?”
Dustin’s eyes widened. “Yes your bruises hurt or yes something weird happened? Also, I brought you something.”
Wincing, Steve glanced over the kid’s shoulder. The street was pretty much empty, but he didn’t know what he expected – half his neighbors only lived here during the summer. “Nothing weird happened,” he hissed. “And of course I’m in pain, my ribs are cracked and I have a concussion.” He faltered for only a moment before stepping back and holding the door open. “Uh, wanna come in?”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Dustin, and then he was bounding over the threshold, crouching down to untie his shoes.
Steve closed the door and watched him wordlessly, still processing his sudden appearance. “How’d you know where I live?” he wondered.
“Hopper,” was the answer, which honestly Steve should have expected. Hopper had been over a few times in the past week to check on him, and he’d warned him that the kids had been hounding him with all sorts of questions about Steve. “I could’ve looked it up in the phone book, but he made us all swear not to bother you until you were healed enough to handle us. So I made him swear to call me when that happened. I also tried to get him to give me a ride, but he didn’t agree to that part.”
Steve silently sent a ‘thank you’ to Hopper, because yeah, he would not have wanted to deal with a bunch of middle school kids while severely concussed. Right now, though, he found he didn’t mind the company. “Hang on, did you bike here from the middle school? Does your mom know where you are?”
Dustin snorted, waving a hand dismissively as he finally kicked off his shoes. “Yes, Steve, my mom knows where I am. She also wants you to come to dinner sometime, but I told her you’re busy for an indeterminate amount of time that will end when you no longer look like the victim of a meat-grinder. She’s already super anxious about everything, so all she needs to know is that you helped me look for Mews, got it?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Steve said, still feeling a bit wrong-footed. He glanced at the clock; it was only about 4:30. “What did you want to show me?”
Dustin held up a finger and crouched down, rummaging in his backpack for a moment before producing a black, rectangular object. He held it out to Steve. “We all wanted you to have this.” It was said with ceremony, like Dustin was handing over a priceless family heirloom and not a walkie-talkie.
“Oh, thanks.” He let Dustin press the walkie-talkie into his hands, holding onto it with all ten of his fingers as he gazed down at it. “Why are you giving me this?”
Dustin scoffed. “So you can contact us, duh!”
Steve rubbed his thumb over the buttons on the side of the device, feeling strangely honored. “Why not just use a regular phone, though? That seems a lot easier.”
“Easy but dangerous,” Dustin chided him, as if he should’ve known better. “Those people from the lab were always tapping into the phone lines and shit, it’s how these kinds of organizations operate. We need to take precautions.” He reached over and taps the walkie in Steve’s grip. “Hence the walkie.”
“Hence the walkie,” Steve echoed. He turned the thing over in his hands, examining it. It was small and simple looking, if not a bit clunky in design. “What kind of batteries does it use?”
“Double A,” Dustin said. His eyes flit to Steve’s face. “Everyone usually stays on channel six, but if you ever want privacy just ask to switch. Everyone has to respect the sanctity of privacy channels, that’s a Party rule. Do not be the guy who breaks it.”
That was easy enough to agree to, because Steve didn’t think he’d ever be tempted to eavesdrop on the personal conversations of a bunch of thirteen-year-olds. But, “Wait, if I have to follow the ‘party rules’, does that mean I’m a part of this party thing?”
“Yes, Steve, oh my god,” Dustin huffed, throwing his hands up. “That’s what the walkie means – it’s like your membership badge. It’s symbolic of the bond we all share as members of the Party!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Steve raised his palms in surrender, unable to help the crooked grin that made its way onto his face. “I’m honored, really.”
Dustin crossed his arms, but the effect dampened by his own smile. “You better be. We’re very exclusive.”
“Oh, I bet,” Steve quipped back. Secretly he was a lot more pleased than he was letting on that the kids wanted him in their little club thing. After what they’d been through together, Steve wasn’t sure he would’ve been okay with not seeing them again. He’d tried so hard to keep them alive, and they’d done the same for him in return. Somehow, between all the running and the nearly-maybe-actually dying, those little shits had grown on him. In just one night, they’d gotten under his skin and wormed their way into his heart, and now he felt a tiny bit responsible for each of them.
Almost as if he’d been reading Steve’s mind, Dustin drawled, “Sooo,” his suspiciously innocent tone making Steve immediately wary. “Are you ready to talk about the whole ‘coming back to life’ thing?”
Steve was suddenly very aware of the pounding of his heart behind his rib cage. He bit the inside of his cheek. “Not really.”
Dustin sighed impatiently, brushing past him into the living room and plopping himself down on the couch. “Oh come on, we have like, a responsibility to address this! What if it’s important?”
“We don’t even know if I for sure ‘came back to life’ like that,” Steve protested weakly, but he knew he wasn’t going to win this battle, even against himself. Despite how much it terrified him, he was aware this wasn’t something he could afford to brush off.
He continued to grasp at any last fragments of normalcy anyway. “Do you even know how long I was out? Maybe it felt longer than it was.”
“I didn’t start a timer,” Dustin snapped. “For all I knew you weren’t waking up.”
Steve grimaced apologetically, shifting his weight back and forth. “Okay, that’s fair.”
Dustin inhaled deeply before forcing the air out of his lungs, shaking his head a couple times like he was re-calibrating. “I’m sorry,” he said, which was surprising for some reason. “You’re probably freaking out. I would be too if I were you. I mean, I’m not you, and I’m still freaking out. But just to let you know, we weren’t lying before.”
Unsure if he really wanted to know the answer, Steve asked again, “How long?”
Dustin just shrugged. “However long you’re thinking, it was longer than that.” He sounded so miserable about it that there was no way it wasn’t true. There really had been a while there during which Dustin Henderson had believed him to be dead. Whether the truth was more complicated than that remained to be seen, but Steve could see it in his eyes that he’d already started to accept it, had already started to mourn him by the time he’d woken back up.
He realized with a start that this was just a child in front of him. A child who had watched him die, and was just as scared as he was. Both of them were just trying (and failing) to make sense of what they’d been through. “Shit,” he muttered. He finally joined Dustin on the sofa, sitting down hard and running a nervous hand through his already messy hair. He was so incredibly out of his depth right now – but for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like he had to face the open sea alone. It was kind of nice. “Got any theories?”
“I don’t even know where to start,” Dustin admitted, shaking his head. “You could be like El. I know she got her powers from the lab, but most of the details are super top secret.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t raised in a lab,” Steve said.
Dustin squinted at him. “Not even when you were a baby?”
“How would I know that? Do you remember being a baby?”
“Of course not!” Dustin huffed, exasperated. “Just- show me your wrists for a second!”
Frowning, Steve did as he was told, holding his hands out in front of him. Dustin reached over and grabbed them, turning them over so that his palms were facing up. They were a bit scraped up from his fight with Billy, but that didn’t seem to be what the kid was interested in.
“Okay, so if you did get your powers from the lab, they didn’t give you a number,” he concluded, apparently having seen what he needed to. “Unless it got removed, or they never gave you one in the first place.”
Steve wrinkled his nose. “I really don’t think it was the lab.”
Dustin sighed. “Okay, forget the lab. What about that thing that sprayed you in the tunnels?”
Though most of his memories of that night were hazy at best, Steve could vaguely recall seeing something move and stepping in front of Dustin just in time to get sprayed with a sap-like liquid. Despite his own insistence on wearing face protection, he knew goggles and a shoddily tied piece of fabric weren’t exactly infallible; it wasn’t impossible to think something had gotten through and he’d breathed it in. “Isn’t it more likely that’s what killed me?” he hypothesized. “I mean, everything in that place is just… the worst. Bringing people back to life is pretty much the opposite of what it likes to do.”
“Unless it gave you that ability for a reason,” Dustin reasoned. “You haven’t been exhibiting any signs of possession, have you? Do you feel the sudden need to be in the cold?”
Steve gave him a flat look. “I’m not possessed. And does it even matter how it happened?”
“Everything matters, Steve,” Dustin told him gravely. “Everything matters. If we can figure out how you got these powers, it might tell us more about what your powers even are.”
“My powers?” Steve raised an eyebrow.
Dustin was growing more animated the longer he talked, excited by all the possibilities. “Yeah, like, what are your limits? What can and can’t kill you? Are you even capable of dying?”
“Woah, hold the phone,” Steve interrupted, head spinning. He held up his hands. “I’m not about to be your next science project. Remember what happened with D’art?”
“Well we can’t just ignore it! Aren’t you at least a little bit curious?”
Steve was curious, of course he was. He was the one who had inexplicably died and come back to life – that was bound to leave anyone wanting answers. “I am, but I’d rather not make a big deal about it,” he admitted begrudgingly. “I don’t want to accidentally un-do whatever magic spell is keeping me alive.”
Dustin rolled his eyes. “I don’t think that’s how it works, Steve.”
Throwing his hands in the air, Steve couldn’t help raising his voice. “You don’t know that! The entire point of this conversation is that we don’t know what happened!” Pausing, he took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, don’t we know someone with actual superpowers? Why can’t you just ask her about this instead of playing scientist?”
“None of us know when we’ll see her next,” Dustin said, practically pouting. “She’ll be lucky if Hopper lets her out before we graduate. I wish we could’ve asked her about it when we all slept over at Will’s, but Mrs. Byers didn’t let any of us out of her sight the whole night. Like, I took five minutes in the bathroom and she sent Jonathan to check on me.”
Considering everything that had happened that night, Steve didn’t blame her one bit. He was also grateful for her over-protectiveness in the wake of a crisis. “Dustin, I think it will be okay if we don’t figure this out immediately. There’s no deadline to meet or anything, right? You said El closed the gate, so we’ve got plenty of time.”
Dustin didn’t seem convinced. “I don’t like not knowing things,” he grumbled, petulant and stubborn.
“It won’t be forever,” Steve reassured him. “We’re just taking things slow. Letting the answers come to us.”
For a moment Dustin considered him carefully, eyes narrowed and mouth twisted in concentration. “Taking it slow,” he echoed, still a bit dubiously. “Okay, fine. We can do it your way.”
Steve tried not to make his relief too obvious. “You can ask El about it when you talk to her next,” he promised. In fact, he was rather looking forward to hearing what she had to say himself. “Even without Hopper’s permission, I know you little shits would probably find a way to see her anyway. Give it a month.”
Pointing at him, Dustin said, “I’m holding you to that.”
Steve pointed right back. “I don’t care.” Dustin rolled his eyes and Steve couldn’t help but smile, amused. “Anyway, I’m hungry, so can we be done talking about this right now? I’ll make extra food just for you if you say yes.”
“Then yes,” Dustin agreed. “But we will talk about this again.”
Sighing, Steve put his hands on his knees and stood up. “I’m looking forward to it already,” he joked. “Now how do you feel about mac n’ cheese?”