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Chapter Text

Let the record show that Max Mayfield never claimed she was a good driver. She said she could drive. Those are two separate things. Besides, the only seemingly competent adults in this shithole of a town had fucked off to some secret lab, and the next closest thing they had to a competent adult is passed out in the back seat of Billy’s car.

She can still hear the shattering of the plate against Steve’s head, see the way he’d crumpled like one of the ragdolls her Mom had finally given up on getting her to like. Max glances into the rearview mirror, eyes seeking out Steve’s face. She just needs to make sure he’s still breathing. Make sure Billy didn’t do something she’ll have to live with.

She doesn’t hear Lucas’s scream quick enough. There’s just the sound of metal on metal, the car twisting and lurching, steering wheel bucking beneath her fingers like a horse still untamed, and her neck twists sideways. Whiplash. Pain.

She opens her eyes to a car full of boys screaming and a looming black figure pounding its fist against the glass of her window. She shrieks, vaulting backward into Lucas’s spot, bumping her hip painfully into the stick shift, seatbelt stretched to its limit.

“Are you okay? Fuck!” The figure shouts, wrenching the door open. He shoves his head into the car and looks over at her, eyes wide in his manic face. His hair’s wrecked – it’s a wild curly curtain clouding his face. “Shit, you’re a fucking toddler!”

Max, having finally decided that this weirdo is not at all a threat, lurches forward, slams her hands against his chest, and shoves the man out of the open car door. “I’m thirteen!” she replies, sneering. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, we’re kind of in a hurry!”

She pointedly doesn’t look at Steve still crumpled in the back seat, but it doesn’t seem to matter; the man turns his head, pupils turning into pinpricks as he takes in the limp form sprawled across Mike and Dustin’s laps.

“Is that Steve fucking Harrington?”

“What’s it to you?” Mike asks snottily. Max turns toward him, already snarling in protection, but Wheeler’s got Steve’s head cradled in his lap, and he’s got his arms raised like he can shield him from this nameless threat.

“What’d you do to his face?” he demands, almost whining, like Steve Harrington having his face bashed in is an affront to him personally.

Max lunges through the still-open window in an attempt to stop him, but it’s too late. The weird guy’s already opened the back door and has pushed his way in past Dustin to peer down into Steve’s face.

“Don’t touch him,” Max hisses just as the guy reaches out to press his fingertips gently against Steve’s cheek.

Steve hadn’t woken up as they’d dragged him to the car. It’d taken all four of them pulling his limbs into strange shapes and probably giving him a wicked roadburn. He hadn’t woken up as all three of the idiots around her had screamed unhelpful directions in her ear on the assumption that being louder would make them more intelligible. He hadn’t even woken up when Mike and Dustin started clutching at him as the stranger climbed inside.

But one touch of this guy’s trembling fingers against his cheek, and Steve’s eyes slit open.

“Nancy?” he asks, voice slurring around the name.

The guy laughs, all shaky past whatever bravado he’s lightly veneered on. “Guess again, big guy.”

Steve squints, making his barely-open eyes even smaller. She’s not sure how he can see anything at all, but he says, “Munson?” all soft and confused as he looks up at the other guy. “What’re you doin’ ‘ere?” he asks, voice slurring alarmingly.

The guy, Munson, laughs again, and uses his free hand to tuck his wild hair behind his ears. Max can see his face now, and he might’ve just been laughing, but he’s not smiling as he asks, “I could ask you the same thing,” in a tone of voice that doesn’t hide the worry behind all that forced nonchalance.

She can feel their window of opportunity closing. This guy’s going to commandeer the car, whisk Steve to a hospital, and that’ll be the end of her night. No more quests. No more delay of the inevitable.

Her palms are sweaty, and her windpipes shrinking in on itself like it’s one of those milkshake straws that gets stuck together if the shake’s too thick.

Billy’s going to kill her when he sees her again. There will be no Steve Harrington and no inexplicable bat full of nails between them. He’s going to kill her, and that’s not something she can fight.

But this? This is a plan with steps they can take to make sure everyone comes out alive. She’s a dead man walking, but Will doesn’t have to be.

And that girl with superpowers could probably use all the help she can get, no matter how cool she is.

She steps on the gas pedal, careening past the guy’s van where it’s still blocking the road, and continues on her chosen path even as the backdoor shudders with each turn of the wheel, trying to shut on mystery guy’s legs.

Everyone’s screaming, and she has no idea where she’s going, so she utilizes the lessons her family’s taught her on being heard and screams, “shut up!” at the top of her lungs until the car’s catching crickets in its silence.

“Lucas?” she asks, something churning in her stomach as he squeaks with what sounds suspiciously like fear. “Where next?”

Still, he reaches out and puts his hand on her knee, squeezing comfortingly as he says, “turn right here.”

Max turns.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the guy, Munson, hisses. “The hospital’s back there!”

And the guy must’ve made some sort of gesture that jostled Steve because he makes a small, wounded sound deep in his throat. Max adjusts the rearview mirror just so she can glare at Munson threateningly, barely avoiding careening into a mailbox.

Munson’s looking down at Steve with sad, worried eyes from where he’s crouched half overtop him, using the hand not holding up his weight to pet Steve’s bloody hair back from his head. “Sorry, Stevie.”

“‘m fine,” Steve slurs out.

Max rolls her eyes and focuses back on the road, ignoring whatever spectacle’s going on in the back seat. She’s got hours to live, and she’s going to make them count.

It’s a few short turns, following Lucas’s instructions until she’s careening off the road and bouncing to a stop on a grassy knoll, the boys in the back screaming as she slams on the brakes.

When she twists the keys and pulls them free, the headlights click off, bathing the clearing in darkness.

Max is the first one out of the car. The back door’s still open, Munson’s feet sticking out until he slides out, tumbling into an ungainly heap in the grass. He groans, flopping around until he’s on his back, messy curls covering his eyes.

Dustin’s out of the car next, stepping over Munson like he’s a log in his path, not even glancing down at him as he orders everyone around. “We have to hurry,” he says, squinting down at his watch. He turns back to the car, yelling out “Steve!” in a demanding tone, as if he hadn’t just been cradling Steve’s shoes to his chest like he was a dying baby bird.

Steve shuffles out at the sound of his name, much more graceful despite what she expects must be a wicked concussion. There’s a trail of blood starting at his hairline and trailing down his temple. “C’mon, Munson,” he says, holding out his hand to help the other boy up.

Munson peeks through his fingers up at Steve before flinging himself up on his own steam, eyes wide as he looks around the clearing like he’s never seen one before. “Oh, is this what hospitals look like now?” he asks, feigning shock. “Where’s the doctor?”

“What the hell are you talking about, dude?” Steve sighs, hands on his hips as he glares at Munson.

Munson screeches deep in his throat, loud enough that the rest of them wince. He gestures at all of Steve’s body which, yeah fair. “You’re fucked, dude!” he yells. “Your brain’s probably bleeding out your ears!”

Steve says, “no hospitals,” just as Dustin replies, “we can check his brain after,” and strides farther into the clearing without a backwards glance, like he expects everyone else to follow him without question. Max resists the urge to get back in the car and leave all these idiots to die.

After all, Steve and Lucas are still here. The rest of them can burn, for all she cares.

“I thought I made myself clear,” Steve says, hands on his hips like he’s someone’s beleaguered mother, even though he’s slurring, and Munson’s right: his brain’s probably leaking out his ears. “We’re on the bench!”

Dustin stomps back with a huff, clearly fed up with the delay. “Steve, you’re upset, I get it,” he starts. His flashlight’s on and blinding Steve as it’s shined directly into his eyes. “But the bottom line is, a party member requires assistance, and it is our duty to provide that assistance.”

Munson laughs, halfway to hysterical as he pulls a hunk of unruly hair taught in front of his own face and bites it like a dog. Max wrinkles her nose, disgusted, but then the guy says, “what is this a live-action D&D game? And I thought I was a nerd,” and she sort of starts to like him.

“Henderson,” Steve sighs, rolling his eyes when he’s immediately verbally bowled over.

“I know you promised Nancy you’d keep us safe,” Dustin says, finally pointing the flashlight away from Steve’s eyes, illuminating the ground between them. “So, keep us safe.”

Munson twitches beside Steve, inching closer to him as the silence lingers, showing exactly where his loyalties lie. But in the end, Steve sighs, shoulders slumping, and Max knows the plan’s back on.

“If we’re doing this, we’re going to do it right,” Steve says, turning back to dig through the contents of Billy’s trunk as if it was his own.

“Do what?” Munson cried, reaching up to pull his own hair by the root as he stomped his foot like a beleaguered father.

When Steve turns back, he tosses a bandana at Munson’s chest. He scrambles to grab it, but it falls into the grass, and by the time he stands back up, Steve’s got a red bandana of his own tied around the bottom half of his face, and what looks like a pair of Billy’s old swimming goggles strapped across his eyes. The pressure’s got to be killer on his concussion, but Steve doesn’t complain.

He never seems to when it’s his own well being in question. Max kind of wants to stuff him back in the car and haul ass to the hospital, or better yet, out of this spooky fucking town entirely.

Munson’s just standing there, bandana clutched in his hand as he squints at Steve like he’s an alien. With the goggles making him so bug-eyed, she can’t really blame him.

“Put that on,” Steve says, pointing down at the bandana. “The air in the Upside-Down is like, toxic or something. Hop had to be on some sort of breathing machine.

Munson takes two steps forward and waves his hand in front of Steve’s face rapidly. “Hello? Anyone fucking in there?” When Steve smacks his hand down, Munson takes a quick hop back and throws his hands in the air, letting the bandana flutter back to the grass. “What the fuck is an Upside-Down? Have you cracked?”

“Eddie,” Steve sighs. He sounds tired down to his bones. Probably happens to anyone who has to deal with Dustin for more than twenty minutes at a time, never mind this new guy and whatever his damage is.

He bends down to retrieve the bandana himself and steps forward. Munson – Eddie – takes a quick step back, eyes wide like he’s afraid he’s going to get his ass kicked. But all Steve does is brush Eddie’s messy curls off his shoulder and out of the way so he can tie the bandana around his face himself.

“Just trust me, okay?”

Max turns away, feeling suddenly like she’s seeing something she shouldn’t as Eddie shivers and shakes beneath Steve’s gentle hands.

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Eddie says, voice quivering, lips invisible behind the bandana.

Dustin stands to the side, watching as Steve pats his shoulder consolingly, as if he’s not the one whose face looks a bit like the raw meat they’d thrown all over the train tracks to lure the Demodogs in.

It never would’ve happened if Dustin hadn’t gotten into his car and practically forced him to help find D'Artagnan.

His gut curdles with the thought.

Or maybe he’s just hungry; it’s been hours since lunch, and he’d barely even finished the cafeteria’s gross meatloaf. His mom’s is way better.

“Hey, shithead,” Steve calls, and something smacks into his face. As it falls, Dustin clutches at it on instinct, barely stopping it from hitting the ground. “Put that on.”

It’s a bandana he must’ve found in the recesses of Billy’s trunk. He runs his fingers over it, grimacing when something crusty and brown flakes off onto the ground. He drops it, wiping his hand on his jeans.

“No, thank you,” Dustin replies curtly. “I brought my own.”

As if that was what they were waiting for, everyone starts tying on the face and eye covering’s they’d stolen from the Byers’ house. Dustin’s own is a scarf he’d found in Ms. Byers closet, and it smells nice, like the perfume she sometimes wears. Much better than Billy’s crusty old thing.

“What the fuck is that?” Eddie squeaks.

Dustin shines his light around, pointing at each of the Party members, making sure they’re all covered. He ends on that Eddie guy, who’s eyes look even more frightened behind the ill-fitting swim goggles he’d acquired from somewhere, hair sticking out every which way from beneath the band around his head.

The guy’s looking at Steve’s studded baseball bat like it’s going to grow teeth and bite him. Any relief Dustin had felt at adding another adult to their monster-hunting group has fled by the time he watches Eddie lean away as Steve swings the bat up on his shoulder, barely avoiding impaling himself on one of the protruding nails.

Dustin’s got to admit it, though; he doesn’t care what Mike says, Steve’s cool.

“You need weapons to fight monsters, Munson,” Steve replies, striding away.

Eddie stands there for a second, looking absolutely dumbfounded, before he rushes to catch up, staying so close that Steve almost trips over the guy’s foot.

Steve might be cool, but this new guy? Not so much. He might know something about D&D, but he looks like a strong breeze might tip him over, and when they find the hole into the tunnel, he stays behind Steve, peering over his shoulder like the monsters he doesn’t seem to get him might jump out at any second.

“A little space, dude?” Steve asks.

Eddie skitters back a few steps, and Steve wastes no time jumping into the hole, landing on his feet like some sort of superhero.

“So cool,” Dustin breathes, staring down at the top of Steve’s head.

“We brought rope!” Lucas calls, and when Dustin turns back, Mike’s already winding the rope around the closest stump.

“Do you want to die?” Eddie asks. He kneels down beside Mike, and slaps his hands away, ignoring his huffing as he twists the ropes into configurations Dustin’s never seen before pulling it all taught and yanking on it hard to test its ability to withstand weight. “You’ve gotta use a bowline, or it’s just gonna unravel.”

He stands, dusting the dirt from his knees while the Party stares incredulously at him.

“What?” he demands, hands on his hips in a clear emulation of Steve. “I was a boy scout.”

Dustin can’t help the way he snorts. “Looking like that?” he asks, outright laughing when the guy squawks.

It’s just, Dustin had been in the boy scout’s before the move. His Mom had thought it’d help him make friends. It hadn’t. The kids were nice, for the most part, but no one had ever come over for sleepovers, or eaten lunch with him at school, or called his house just to talk.

Then they’d moved to Hawkins, and he’d met Will, and Mike, and Lucas, and he’d never looked back. But, he still knew the trademark looks of a boy scout, especially the ones that got into it enough to carry it into adulthood: Dorky haircuts, frumpy t-shirts, boots they can hike in, like they need to be ready to survive the wilderness at any moment.

Eddie doesn’t have any of that. His boots look way too heavy to hike in, his jeans have too many rips just begging to be caught on low-hanging branches, and his hair’s long and wild. It even looks like he’s wearing makeup, that black stuff Nancy rubs beneath her eyes sometimes.

No way in hell was he a boy scout. He doesn’t look like he’s been prepared for anything in his entire life.

“What?” Eddie whines, stomping his foot like he’s just a big kid, worse than Lucas’s younger sister. “My Uncle signed me up!”

Dustin opens his mouth to reply, but then Steve calls from the hole in the ground, “hurry up, shitheads!” and they all jump, having entirely forgotten his presence.

Mike’s the first one to grab onto the rope and shimmy down, clearly upset at himself for having gotten off task. They all watch him descend, waiting until Steve’s caught him and moved him out of the way, ignoring his grumbling outright.

Dustin goes next. He sits and lets his feet dangle into the hole. It feels a lot higher off the ground, now, like his legs are dangling over an endless abyss. Still, everyone’s waiting for him, so he grabs onto the rope, and begins his descent.

He flips and crawls backwards on his elbows until all of him is dangling, hands clutching at the rope hard enough that they sting, legs wrapped tightly around it, but he’s still slipping, too heavy and lacking any real upper body strength to stay afloat.

He slips.

He falls.

Dustin barely has time to scream, shocked by his freefall before all the wind’s knocked out of him when he hits the bottom. But the bottom’s got arms and fingers, and it staggers when he hits it.

Dustin opens his eyes and peers right up into Steve’s mostly-covered face.

“Ow, Henderson,” Steve grumbles, but he’s clutching Dustin so tightly to his chest that Dustin can hear his heartbeat hammering where they’re pressed together.

Dustin knows he must be heavy, but Steve takes his time setting him down. “Thanks,” he mumbles, stepping back to wait with Mike while Lucas, Max, and Eddie make their own way down, much more gracefully than Dustin had.

Eddie’s eyes are bugged-out and wide as he looks around the tunnel. Dustin can’t blame him. It’s dark enough down here that the beams of their flashlights are eaten by the darkness long before anything is truly illuminated.

“What now?” Eddie asks, shuffling close enough to Steve that their shoulders brush.

But, Mike’s already strode off into the darkness with a call of, “come on!” so they have no choice but to follow.

“Hang on, Wheeler!” Steve replies, rushing past the rest of them. Eddie tries to follow, but Steve calls, “guard the rear, Munson?” and he falls back, grumbling just loudly enough for Dustin to hear the words, “–you say, captain,” whispered snidely.

Dustin hangs back with him, just a few steps ahead as Lucas jogs to catch up. In front, Steve finally elbows his way past Mike, and the tunnel’s narrow enough that Mike’s having trouble sliding around him.

“What am I supposed to be looking out for?” Eddie asks him, voice hushed like he’s afraid he’ll get caught cheating on a test.

Dustin hums, unsure of how much to say. The guy seems sort of freaked already, but he doesn’t need him to get eaten like Mews, so he replies, “Anything with too many teeth.” Thinking of Dart in pollywog form, he continues, “or no face.”

The sound of Eddie’s stomping footsteps stops for a second. Dustin keeps walking, listening intently until he hears them start back up again, quicker like he’s running to catch back up.

“No face?” he hisses.

“Uh huh,” Dustin replies.

“How can it have teeth and no–”

“Look, dude,” Dustin cuts off, ignoring Eddie’s huff. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

The tunnels are dark, wet, and crawling with vines. It’s bigger than he expected, like it’s made to fit something larger than Dart. Dustin wishes they could take their time, collect samples and study what looks like some sort of alien flora lining the ceiling and floor. But Steve’s yelling at them to hustle, so they hustle.

Steve’s haggard voice eats at his guilty conscience. He wouldn’t have gotten himself wrapped up in this and gotten almost beaten to death if it wasn’t for Dustin. Now the guy looks like he could keel over at any moment. If he dies, it’ll be Dustin’s fault.

His morbid spiraling is abruptly cut short when a high-pitched scream rings through the tunnels from behind him. Dustin turns to find the new guy on the ground, face mask pulled down around his neck. Everyone rushes over as the guy– Manson? Munston?-- falls to his knees and practically hacks up a lung, screaming between breaths.

Steve shoves Dustin aside and kneels down next to him. He asks what’s wrong, when– oh, it’s Munson– shouts, “it’s in my mouth! It’s in my mouth! It blew all that shit in my face, and I’m gonna die, fuck Harrington, it’s all over for me, man. I’m not gonna make it!”

Damn, and Dustin thought he was supposed to be the dramatic one.

But as Steve rubs circles into the guy’s back, Munson’s breathing evens out, and everything goes quiet again. He looks up at the group of kids standing in front of him and has the audacity to sound embarrassed when he says, “oh, actually I think I’m alright.” Dustin can’t help but groan and turn back to the Party who look just as fed up with this guy as he feels. Sure, he knows what D&D is, but he’s not a fighter, doesn’t have cool hair and a kick-ass car.

Steve helps Munson to his feet again, and he leans in close to Munson’s face as he readjusts the black bandana over his nose and mouth. Dustin thinks he hears the guy gasp, probably still struggling to breathe. But they’re wasting time, so Steve gives him a rough pat on the shoulder and ruffles Dustin’s hat on his way back to the front of the line, and they’re off again.

It’s quiet as they enter the large cavern they’ve been searching for. The stench of gasoline burns the hairs in Dustin’s nose and makes his eyes water a bit. But they get everything drenched before making their way back to the entrance they came from. Dustin pushes his way to the front just in time to catch Steve flick his lighter open and toss it.

For a moment, back on the boarded up bus, Dustin had briefly considered how maybe smoking does make you look cooler. Because nothing had ever been cooler than Steve Harrington flicking his lighter open, and closed, not a care in the world even in the face of certain death.

His mind’s quickly changed at the stench of the Upside-Down burning, black ichor bleeding from the vines as they screech in vain. It’s a smell he’ll never forget, and as he thinks he’s going to vomit, Munson grabs the back of his collar, hauling him after the Party who’ve already taken off behind him. He’ll leave the smoking to Steve, who’s probably the only reason it even looks cool anyways.

So they run and run and run until Dustin’s wheezing for breath. He knows Steve’s an athlete, and Lucas has always been sporty, but Dustin’s never particularly excelled at gym class.

Actually, after everything that’s happened tonight, he thinks it’s kind of insane that Steve’s still going after hunting down demodogs, walking all the way to the lab, getting the shit kicked out of him, and leading them through the tunnels, he just keeps going. Like the energizer bunny.

Maybe if Dustin’s not going to take up smoking, he could take up running instead. Seems like it might be useful if they have to do more Upside-Down shit next year, too. But, hopefully this is it. El’s going to close the gate, and the Demogorgon and Mind Flayer can go back to being terms from D&D instead of real-life monsters out to kill them.

Time moves weirdly in the tunnels – every patch of tunnel looks so much like the rest that time could have not been moving at all, and Dustin wouldn’t have noticed. But he’s pretty sure they’re about halfway back when Mike makes a strangled squawking noise and goes down hard.

Everyone’s screaming, but with how closely Mike’s been following Steve, he gets to him first. Dustin doesn’t even realize what’s got him until Steve whips his bat out and strikes the ground next to Mike’s foot. The vine wrapped around his ankle whines and writhes as the nail bat hits it again, and again, and again.

It’s quiet now, every single one of them brought to silence as the nails on Steve’s bat catch the light of all their flashlights pointing straight at him as he absolutely wails on the vine. Even Mike just sits there, staring up at Steve the same way he’d always looked at El when she’d used her powers. Dustin makes a mental note to make fun of him for it later.

As Steve finally lets the bat thunk into the ground and stay there, propping himself up with it as he catches his breath, Munson makes this weird, high-pitched whining noise. Dustin whirls on him, ready to tear a vine off him with his bare hands, but there’s nothing there. Just Munson, staring at Steve with wide eyes, cheeks pink in the sallow light of Dustin’s flashlight beam.

“What?” Dustin demands, moving the light up and down Munson’s body, double and triple checking for any wayward vines. “Did one get you?”

Munson shakes his head like a dog, sending his frizzy hair flying into his face. “Nothing!” he says, and then makes to stride past Dustin and continue walking.

It causes a minor traffic jam when Max and Lucas make no move to let him past, so all four of them stand there, bunched up together while they wait for Steve to help Mike up and lead the group once more. Eddie sulks his way into the back, arms crossed like he’s pouting.

Dustin’s ready to get out of the dark, but his legs still feel wobbly from trying to climb down the rope, so he’s thankful when the group comes to an abrupt halt. Steve’s got his arms out wide, corralling everyone behind him. Dustin sees his gloved hands drift slowly towards the nail bat on his belt when he hears chittering in front of him. Peeking around Lucas’ shoulder, he spots a lone demodog crouched to spring.

“Dart?” Dustin asks, pushing his way through the crowd, eyes glued to the tell-tale yellow markings on the creature’s back end. He thinks he hears Munson whisper “did he just call that thing Dart?” but the question’s drowned out by a chorus of too-loud shushing.

Dart flinches slightly at the noise. Dustin holds up his hands, removing his goggles and face mask even as he listens to Steve repeatedly tell him not to. The guy worries too much. So what if Dart ate Mews, it’s not like he knew any better. Plus, Mews was his mom’s cat, and Dustin’s never had his own pet before. Sue him, he misses his little buddy.

He was a total asshole, locking Dart in that dingey, disgusting cellar. Dustin can’t imagine how much it must’ve hurt his paws– claws– digging through the cement foundation. So he apologizes, over and over, until Dart relaxes. The adorable creature dips its head when Dustin remembers the candy he’s still got shoved in his pocket.

“You hungry? I’ve got our favorite, see? Nougat” Dart shakes his tail. Well, Dustin thinks he would if Dart had a tail. He wiggles his butt a bit, and that’s good enough for Dustin. So he unwraps the candy bar, slowly placing it between them for Dart to suck into his maw of razor sharp teeth.

Steve is practically hissing through his own, less impressive, teeth at him to back up, but Dustin knows what this moment really is. He tries not to tear up, as he unwraps another bar. Dart eats it with more excitement and less hesitancy.

“Is he feeding that thing nougat?” Eddie practically screeches before being violently shushed again. “Oh, holy shit. Dart? As in D’Artagnan? As in this kid is feeding this monster a Three Musketeers bar so he named it–”

“Yes, oh my god new guy, we get it,” Mike snaps. “Pull it together.”

Without looking back, Dustin waves them to pass as Dart’s distracted. With Steve in the front again, Munson grabs him by the front of his shirt to get moving.

Dustin fixes his goggles and mask back on before solemnly wishing his little buddy farewell, and they’re headed down the tunnel again.

The trek back to the cavernous opening feels faster than their trek in, so before Dustin realizes, Steve’s already hoisting Max and Lucas up the dangling ropes. When Munson and Steve move to help Mike, a low, rumbling growl echoes from a distance.

Fear rips through him, high on the edge of adrenaline, when Steve starts shouting. The older boys link their fingers together to boost Mike up while Lucas pulls at his arms. What was at first a low growl has erupted into a roaring stampede, the tunnels quake around them with the force of it.

And just like in the Byers’ living room, watching Steve take hit, after hit, after hit, Dustin’s frozen in place, eyes locked on the shadows reflecting down the tunnel. As much as he wants to be like Steve, his feet won’t allow him to move, not even to save himself.

Until he’s forcibly ripped backwards by his jacket to face them. Steve almost throws him into the air, Eddie’s hands boosting him up so fast together that he lands halfway out of the entrance while Mike and Lucas yank him to safety.

But the ground is shaking, the snarling deafening, and Dustin realizes with a gripping vice around his heart that he’ll never get the chance to learn how to style his hair with Farrah Fawcet hairspray– three pumps, damp, not wet– because Steve’s going to die down there.

He’s going to be ripped to shreds in a hole in the ground, and it’s Dustin’s fault – he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. And now the new guy too, dead, all of it Dustin’s fault.

Chapter Text

Dustin’s crying and hiding his face in Mike’s shoulder like the world’s going to end. As if some washed-up jock dying would make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Mr. Newby’s dead already, and he’d been way more useful than someone who can’t even win a fight.

Even still, his whole body loosens when Lucas cries, “they’re alive!” and jostles his shoulders like it’s something to celebrate.

Dustin drags him closer to the hole in the ground so they can both peer down in it. And there Steve is, pressing that Eddie guy into the wall, arm outstretched like he’s using his entire body as a shield to protect the newcomer.

Mike doesn’t get it – based on the D&D knowledge and the holes in his jeans, there’s no way Steve would ever be friends with this guy.

When he and Nancy first started dating, Steve used to try to be nice to him to try and stay on his sister’s good side. He’d ask about Mike’s hobbies, but Mike had always been able to see past his pasted-on smile to the judgemental grimace barely hidden underneath.

It had only lasted a few painful weeks before Will had gone missing, and Barb had died, and then Steve hadn’t come around much anymore.

So, there’s no way Steve would be friends with a guy like Eddie. But he’d still put himself in the line of fire to protect him, just like he’d leapt into action to get the vine off of Mike.

He doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t want to try, so he stands there, tapping his foot impatiently while everyone celebrates around him.

“Holy shit, Harrington,” Eddie cries, voice loud and wobbly as it echoes up to them from the depths of the hole. “You saved my life!”

And then…Mike’s not sure, what with the bad angle and all of Eddie’s curly hair blocking his view, but it almost looks like he leans in and smacks a kiss right on Steve’s lips. It’s so quick that Mike’s got no time to rubberneck before Eddie’s shoving past Steve and stumbling toward the rope.

It’s almost embarrassing the way the guy grunts and strains to get up it, especially once Steve climbs the same rope in three seconds flat, smashed-in face and all.

“So cool,” Lucas murmurs, Dustin nodding along reverently.

Mike turns away with an impatient roll of his eyes, quick-stepping to catch up with Max. There’s no universe in which Steve Harrington would ever be cool. And Eddie seems fine and all, but he’s just another liability they can’t afford, and he’s dead-weight besides. They don’t have time to coddle the guy that knows jack-all and seems to be in worse physical state than Dustin.

What if El needs help? What if they can’t get the mind flayer out of Will? Mike needs to be with them.

“Let’s go!” Mike calls, bumping Max’s shoulder as he overtakes her in his rush toward the car. “El might need help closing the gate.”

“Gate?” Eddie asks, voice cracking, and when Mike looks back at him, he’s got both hands in his messy hair and it looks like he’s pulling it in some sort of nervous tick. “Can someone tell me what the fuck is going on!”

He stomps his foot like a kid throwing a tantrum, but no one pays him any mind. Mike rolls his eyes, checks the ignition for keys, and slides into the driver’s seat.

If no one else is going to help him, he’ll go on his own. If Max could figure it out, he sure as hell can.

“Hey, shithead,” Steve says, and Mike jumps, not having heard him come up. He’s standing right by the open car door, hand outstretched. “Hand them over. There’s no way in hell you’re driving.”

Mike scoffs but scrambles over the partition and over to the other side of the car to let Steve take his place. It’ll be quicker than arguing with the meathead.

Everyone slides in as Steve cranks the engine, ignoring Eddie having a full-blown freak-out in the back seat. Mike stares out the windshield scowling as the rapid-fire questions the guy’s spitting out get higher pitched and more incoherent. His words are tripping over themselves to get out, leaving no room for anyone to answer his questions even if they wanted to.

“I’ll answer your questions when we’re back at the house, man,” Steve cuts in finally, talking right over Eddie.

“But what were those things?” Eddie whines.

Mike barely hears him as his ears ring. “What do you mean ‘the house?’” he asks, whipping his head around to glare at Steve. “We need to go help El!”

“What about Will?” Dustin asks in that snotty tone that means he’s being a judgemental ass. Mike hates it.

He turns toward the backseat, snarling as he glares at the four people crammed into the backseat and Dustin especially. “Jonathan will help Will!” he replies hotly, hoping it’s true.

It has to be true.

“And Hopper won’t help El?” Lucas asks, sounding just as critical.

Mike wants to jump back there and strangle them both. But then Eddie yells, “help them with what?” loud enough that he jerks back in his chair.

“Enough!” Steve cries, slamming on the brakes hard enough that Mike has to catch himself on the glove box to keep from smashing his head into the windshield.

The car’s completely silent, no more shouted questions or heated arguments. He swears he can’t even hear anyone breathing. It’s so sudden that Mike’s ears still ring with their phantom voices as he adjusts to the quiet.

He doesn’t want to turn toward Steve, doesn’t want to know what sort of face the guy’s making, and from the looks on Lucas and Dustin’s faces, he’s right not to want to.

But they’re wasting time, so he takes one deep breath, and turns towards the driver’s seat. Steve’s hunched over on himself, eyes closed tight enough to give him crow’s feet, and both his hands are clenched hard enough on the steering wheel that the leather creaks.

Mike curls away from him, pressing his back into the cool glass of the passenger side window. He hates the way he cowers away, like it’s his dad yelling in the kitchen about lazy kids, three seconds away from grounding him and Nancy, and not Nancy’s thug of a boyfriend having some sort of fit.

“Wheeler, we’re going back to the Byers’ house,” he says. When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t even look at Mike, just keeps his gaze trained on the dark road in front of them, barely illuminated by the car’s headlights. “I’m supposed to keep you safe, and–”

“But what about El and W–”

“And!” Steve shouts again, raising his hand like Mike’s mouth hasn’t already snapped shut. Steve winces and drops his head to the wheel with a goran. When he continues speaking, his voice is much quieter. “And for all we know, they’re already done and headed back to the house. Do you really want Ms. Byers to walk into her house and find Hargrove passed out alone in her kitchen and all of us gone?”

Ms. Byers would worry, Mike knows she would. But does that really matter when El might need help? When Will might?

Mike still doesn’t say anything. The car’s too quiet, and Steve’s proven himself to be unreasonable. He should’ve never let him into the driver’s seat.

“Shouldn’t we go to the hospital, Steve?” Eddie asks quietly.

Mike turns to look at Steve– they’re all looking at Steve, now. He looks small, somehow, curled in on himself the way he is. He’s pale in the minimal light filtering into the car, making his blooming bruises and blood stand out all the more starkly, and as he turns to meet Mike’s gaze, he swears a bit of the porcelain embedded into his scalp catches in the light.

Mike swallows, feeling suddenly spooked.

“No hospital,” Steve says, looking at Mike instead of Eddie, like turning toward the backseat would be too much work. “Not until we know everyone’s safe.”

Then he closes his eyes and just… sits there. He can see the rise and fall of his chest, but not much else happens. Mike’s throat feels clogged. He didn’t cry when Will got possessed, or when El hopped into Hopper’s truck and they drove away, but he feels suddenly like he will, now, sitting in Max’s step-brother’s car and watching Steve Harrington die from a brain bleed or whatever the fuck is going on with him.

“You need me to drive?” Eddie asks, still in that same soft voice.

Steve doesn’t respond, like he hadn’t heard Eddie speak at all. Mike’s three seconds away from reaching out and shaking his stupid shoulder just to make sure he’s still alive when Max calls, “I can do it,” and Steve levers himself back up with a groan and squints his eyes open.

He blinks once, twice, three times, like he’s a television rebooting before he finally says, “Munson, you’re up.”

Eddie doesn’t hesitate to push the door open and crawl out of the backseat. Steve doesn’t move until his door’s open, and Eddie’s maneuvering him out with an arm around his waist, holding him up.

He leads Steve around the front of the car, and Mike watches as he shuts his eyes against the blare of the headlights and leans on Eddie even more heavily. And when Eddie knocks on the passenger side window and orders Mike into the backseat, he does it without question.

It has nothing to do with the way Steve slumps into the seat when Eddie drops him, curling around his ribs and head like they hurt. It’s just the fastest way to get the car back on the road, one step closer to seeing Will and El again.

It doesn’t mean anything.

Chapter Text

It’s a bad idea not to go straight to the hospital. It’s obvious even before Eddie pulls up to Will’s house and has to support Steve’s weight all the way inside. They should have hauled him straight to a doctor, the moment he’d had his head cracked open by a plate and gone down like a sack of flour.

Lucas hadn’t been sure he’d ever get up again.

Even still, as they’d dragged Steve Harrington’s lifeless body into Billy’s car, Lucas couldn’t help but be glad that it hadn’t been him.

His heart had been galloping away in his chest when Billy had first stormed into the house and pinned Lucas against the wall with such force that his feet had dangled off the ground. But then Steve had inserted himself between them, broad back shielding Lucas from Billy’s view and his heart did a little skip instead, the same way it had when Max had smiled at him in the junkyard.

Then Billy had smashed the plate over Steve’s head, and his heart had plopped onto the floor right along with him.

They should have gone to the hospital. He might not be as smart as Dustin pretends to be, but he knows enough to realize that losing consciousness after a hit to the head is bad.

But the party sticks together; it always has. So, when Mike had concocted a plan to draw the demo-dogs away and give El a fighting chance at closing the gate, Lucas hadn’t insisted they go to the hospital. He’d gotten into that car right along with the rest of them.

It’s a poor way to repay the dude who literally saved his scrawny neck, but Will and El come first. They have to, no matter how safe he’d felt at Steve’s back.

It feels like the wrong choice now as he watches Eddie drop Steve onto the couch. He looks worse now, and Lucas isn’t sure if it’s because they’re finally in a bright enough light to see the state of his face, or if it’s because they’ve given his soft tissue long enough to really begin swelling.

“Billy’s gone,” Max says, and Lucas can feel his heartbeat in his throat as he spins, eyes roving over his surroundings.

Even as he’d watched the aftermath of his fists bloom across Steve’s face, he’d somehow forgotten about Billy. But, Max is right. There’s no sign of the guy. Despite his stolen car and the tranquilizers coursing through his bloodstream, he’d managed to leave without a trace.

Goosebumps travel up his arms and he shivers, pulling his coat tighter around him. He looks down at the spot they’d left Billy’s body, convinced that somehow his whole body will ooze out of the carpet and attack him.

“Uh uh, settle down, big guy,” Eddie says, and when Lucas looks back over at him, he’s seated next to Steve on the couch, pressing him down into the cushions by his shoulders as Steve tries to lever himself up and on his feet.

“Need to clean up before Ms. Byers comes back,” he slurs out, still trying to stand.

“The kids can worry about that,” Eddie says, not removing his hands from Steve’s shoulders as he turns to look at the rest of them with a pointedly raised brow. “As soon as one of them brings me a first aid kit.”

Lucas rushes to grab it from the bathroom, but Mike beats him to it. He drops to the floor to retrieve it from beneath the sink, knocking everything else all over the linoleum in his haste to retrieve it. He shoulder-checks Lucas in his rush out of the bathroom, first aid kit held securely beneath his arm.

Lucas looks down at the mess he left. There’s a few overturned spray bottles, one of which is leaking all over some of the foam rollers Ms. Byers sometimes sleeps in, a few bath toys that must be leftovers from when Will was younger, and a roll of toilet paper, now partially unraveled. Everywhere they go, they leave messes that have to be cleaned up.

Ms. Byers’ bathroom, Eddie’s van, Steve Harrington’s face, it never stops.

“And some ice!” Eddie calls.

Lucas rushes into the kitchen, glad to finally contribute something. Max beats him to it, grabbing a twist-tied bag of frozen peas when she doesn’t locate any ice and running back to the couch with it, leaving Lucas alone and useless in the kitchen.

“Let me get a look at you.” Eddie’s voice carries, just like Steve’s little hiss does in reply.

Lucas doesn’t look. He can’t seem to force himself to turn and face what he’d wrought. Instead, he grabs the broom where it’s tucked in the crack between the fridge and the counter and begins sweeping up the remnants of Ms. Byers’ broken china, trying his best not to look at the specks of blood coating it.

If he can’t help Steve, he can at least be useful some other way. Max joins him soon after. They clean in companionable silence, both ignoring the sounds of Mike and Dustin bickering in the living room. Lucas is glad for it, happy for any noise that will drown out any pained sounds Steve could be making.

“And this girl has super powers?” Eddie’s voice sounds incredulous. Lucas isn’t sure why, not when he’d already seen the monsters. Super powers should be an easier sell.

“Yes, come on, keep up!” Dustin responds. Lucas and Max share an exasperated look. He smiles when Max rolls her eyes, but it drops off soon after when he hears Steve hiss and Eddie’s murmured apology.

He focuses back on cleaning up. Mike and Dustin can read in the new guy, Lucas doesn’t care.

Max holds the dustpan steady for him to sweep his pile into. Once she’s dumped it into the trash, there’s nothing left to do. He knows there’s a dead demo-dog to somehow dispose of in the living room and blood to scrub out of the carpet, but he can’t face it yet, can’t face him yet, so he puts the broom back into its hiding place and then leans against the fridge, letting himself slide down it until his butt hits the floor.

Max’s warmth settles beside him, close enough that their knees knock together. He wants to hold her hand, but his palms are clammy from hours of fear and Steve Harrington’s blood is dried into his life line so he clutches at his own denim-covered thighs instead.

“This is my fault,” he says, staring at the open entryway of the kitchen. Mike says something and Dustin laughs, bright and happy, like Nancy’s boyfriend’s blood isn’t caked into the carpet beneath his feet. Like his face isn’t closer to Frankenstein’s monster rather than Prince Charming.

Erica always makes him watch that movie with her, even though she spends half the movie complaining that Cinderella should just beat up her stupid evil step-sisters and go get her man. Lucas never thought he was good enough for her. Cinderella had to do all the work in their relationship, and all Prince Charming had to do was show up and have a lot of money.

Maybe he’s not so different from Steve after all. If the Hawkins rumor mill is to be believed, he’s got money, and girls, and holds himself a lot like a prince. And he’d shown up too, but instead of getting the girl, he’d ended up half-dead.

Max punches him in the shoulder, hard enough to sting, and he snaps back into his body so fast, it’s like she’d smacked his brain back into his skull.

“What the hell was that for?” he asks, rubbing away the pain.

“For being an idiot!” she replies, loud enough that all the noise in the living room ceases. “How the hell is this your fault?”

“Billy was going for me,” Lucas replies hotly. “If I hadn’t been–”

“Been what?” Max hisses.

Lucas doesn’t know. Hadn’t been here? Hadn’t been black? Hadn’t had a crush on the new white girl with a racist brother? There’s a lot of ways to end his sentence, and he’s pretty sure every one of them would get him smacked, by Max and his mother both.

“He was going for me,” he mutters, staring down at his dirty knees, the corners of his eyes watering. “Steve got hurt helping me.”

It’s quiet enough in the kitchen now that Lucas can hear the buzzing of electricity traveling through the fridge behind him, and the sounds of Max’s breathing beside him, and the pounding of his own heart beneath his ribcage. He wishes she’d say something, even if it was to lay all the sins at his feet. Instead, he watches as she slides her hand into his, clammy palm to clammy palm.

“Billy’s my step-brother,” she says, quiet, so quiet, like she’s afraid someone else might hear. Even him. “Doesn’t that mean it’s my fault he was here at all?”

She says it like she knows there can only be one answer, and it’s going to be a bad one. And when he turns to look at her, she’s looking down at their linked hands, eyebrows all scrunched together like she’s real mad. Lucas is starting to wonder if maybe every time she gets mad, it’s just to keep from getting sad, or afraid, or any of the other feelings she doesn’t want to face.

He squeezes her hand, turning his palm in hers so he can link their fingers. They’re both sweaty, and dirty, and covered in someone else’s blood. It’s set up to be the worst first time holding a girl’s hand, but Lucas has never liked the feel of anything better.

“Of course not, Max.” he says.

She squeezes his fingers right back hard enough to hurt, and when they finally lock eyes, there’s a fierceness in hers that surprises him, even though it shouldn’t. It’s like a storm on a cloudy day, looking into her serious eyes.

“Then it’s not your fault either,” she says.

Lucas swallows, throat suddenly dry as he nods. There’s no course to take but to agree in the face of her certainty, if not for herself, than for him. After a few seconds more, they both turn back to the threshold of the kitchen.

Noise filters back in patches. Mike’s bitchy voice, Dustin’s bitchier one. Eddie’s soothing words as he does what he can to keep Steve alive and comfortable. Neither he or Max make any move to join them. They sit, hand in hand in the Byers’ kitchen and wait for the real adults to finally come back and help them.

Chapter Text

When Steve hears the sound of tires on the Byers’ gravel driveway, he staggers to his feet, only managing to stay upright with Eddie’s steadying hand on his elbow. Steve raises his free arm straight out, as if that will be enough to shield the kids from harm and keep them behind him.

He wants his bat, wishes he could remember where he’d left it. But no matter how much care Eddie had taken in cleaning up his face, it hadn’t been any help to his throbbing brain.

“It’s just Hopper, idiot,” Mike says dismissively as he rushes past them both to swing open the front door.

Steve squints at the open doorway, determined to stay on his feet long enough to make sure Hopper’s the only one that comes through. The last thing he needs is another Billy Hargrove situation. Or even worse, another demo-whatsit.

Could a demogorgon even drive?

Before Steve has time to puzzle that one out, Hopper strides through the front door, that little girl cradled to his chest, still in his arms.

“What’s wrong with her?” Mike demands, loud enough to make Steve wince.

“Just exhaustion,” Hopper replies, sounding just as exhausted himself.

He strides past all of them to place her gently on the couch. Eddie pulls Steve out of the way, and the sudden movement has Steve swallowing down bile as the world swims around him. He closes his eyes, but the room keeps swaying beneath his lids, the only steadiness the grip Eddie has on him.

“Munson?”

“Hey, chief,” Eddie says, sounding downright cheerful for a guy who’d seen his first monster less than an hour before. Or maybe it’s been longer; he’s lost track of time. As soon as Eddie’d swiped that damp cloth against his cheek, he’d checked out.

“What are you–” Hopper cuts himself off abruptly only to immediately start right back up again, sounding far more alarmed than he had moments ago. “What the hell happened to you, kid?”

Steve opens his eyes. If something happened to one of the kids on his watch, he needs to know. But Hopper’s gaze is trained directly on him, bushy brows all scrunched up together. Steve opens his mouth to reply, but when bile starts making its way up his throat again, he snaps his mouth shut and swallows it down.

“Billy Hargrove kicked his ass,” Dustin cuts in, sounding almost impressed by that fact. If it wouldn’t make his eyes pop straight out of his skull, he’d roll them.

“You need to go to the hospital, kid”

“That’s what I said,” Eddie cries, that same hysterical edge as in the tunnels creeping back into his voice. “But he just had to make sure everyone was safe.”

“‘m fine,” Steve says, finally looking up to meet Hopper’s eyes, ready to ask him about Will, and Nancy and Jonathan, and even Ms. Byers. He opens his mouth and spews all over the carpet, throat burning as he bends over and heaves, barely avoiding Hopper’s shoes as the man jumps back.

His and Eddie’s own shoes are far less lucky.

“Gross, dude!” Mike cries.

“At least it wasn’t on El,” Dustin mutters, sounding just as disgusted.

He expects Eddie to drop him, but all he does is walk them backwards until he’s depositing Steve into the empty spot by El’s feet. The world spins as his vantage point changes. He closes his eyes against it.

“Take him to the hospital,” Hopper orders.

“But–”

“Now, Munson.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but the only cars out front sure ain’t mine!” Eddie cuts in, loud enough that it makes Steve’s ears ring. As if sensing his discomfort, Eddie pats his shoulder gently. “And I know a police set-up when I see one– no way in hell am I stealing Hargrove’s ride.”

“Again,” Dustin mutters, and Eddie echoes him, sounding just about as fed up as Steve feels.

“I’m going to do what any well-behaved high schooler would do in this situation,” Eddie says before Hopper can start yelling. Steve can’t help but snort at that. They may not have overlapped much in school, but even he knows that calling Eddie ‘well-behaved’ is like calling a demo-dog a friendly neighborhood pet. “I’m calling Wayne.”

He squeezes Steve’s shoulder once before the warmth and pressure of his hand retreats, leaving Steve alone with El on the couch. He listens to Eddie’s footsteps walk away, presumably to call this Wayne person. Steve doesn’t know who that is, but can’t bring himself to probe at the question too much. His brain’s probably bled all its gooey bits out of his ears, just like Eddie had said, and now all that’s left is a rapidly-drying raisin that he can’t get to think any coherent thoughts.

He might not ever think a thought again.

Steve keeps his eyes closed, lets himself drift. The kids talk, Hopper talks, Eddie talks, but Steve doesn’t; he’s got a raisin for a brain now, and raisins don’t have to talk.

“Son?” There’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking it gently. “You with me?”

His brain’s still rattling around in his skull, but he opens his eyes. There’s a man standing in front of him, bald, and tired-eyed, and vaguely familiar in the way everyone is in Hawkins. Steve blinks at him and tries to figure out what the hell’s going on.

But then Eddie’s there, crouched down beside the man, holding his hand out. Steve takes it without hesitation and lets Eddie lever him up until he’s propped between Eddie and the other man, barely allowed to even support his own weight.

“Let’s get you to the hospital, Stevie,” Eddie says, and then leads their trio in a limping procession toward the Byers’ front door.

Byers. Shit, right. “Will?” Steve asks, hoping someone will answer his barely-coherent question.

“He’s fine,” Hopper says, maneuvering in front of them to hold the door open. “Hell, you can visit him at the hospital if you want, as long as you let a doctor check you out first.”

Steve hums and lets himself be hauled out of the house and toward a beat-up truck. Eddie opens the passenger-side door, and climbs in, leaving Steve standing out in the cold, only upright by the other man’s steady hands.

“Up you get, Harrington,” he says, and then he’s pushing Steve forward and up as Eddie pulls. Somehow he ends up seated in the passenger seat, Eddie close at his side. When the engine kicks to life, it rumbles soothingly through Steve until he’s slumping into Eddie, too exhausted to hold up his head.

“Stay awake, pretty boy,” Eddie says, shrugging his shoulder just enough to tip Steve off of it and back upright. “Can’t fall asleep until we know your brain isn’t bleeding.”

“‘m not sleeping,” Steve replies, hating the way his voice whines out of him. His head feels too heavy on his neck. It’s a struggle to keep upright as the swaying of the truck lulls him. “M’ face is all messed up.”

Eddie snorts. “I know,” he says, slinging his arm around Steve’s shoulder, and letting him slump into his side. “That’s why you can’t fall asleep.”

“But you still think I’m pretty?” Steve asks, smiling as he tucks himself further into Eddie’s warmth as the other boy stutters, but notably does not deny it. The truck’s cold despite the tepid air sputtering out of the heater. In contrast, all the places their sides are pressed together are an inferno, heating him up from the outside in.

It’s nice. Eddie’s nice. He always has been, even if Steve hadn’t used to think so. But he’d gone into the tunnels with them despite obviously not knowing what was going on, and he’d helped boost Dustin out of the hole, sacrificing himself in the kid’s place, even though he’d clearly been scared shitless.

His body had been wracked with tremors as Steve pressed him into the tunnel wall, trying desperately to shield him as the demo-dogs rushed past. In the moments after they’d all passed, leaving the pair of them unscathed, Eddie had laughed, seemingly so full of the relief of making it through the night that he’d leaned forward and–

“Did you really kiss me?” Steve asks, forgetting entirely about Wayne in the driver’s seat of the truck until he hears the man snort.

Eddie makes a high-pitched whining noise but doesn’t pull away. Steve will take it.

“Boy, mind telling me what you’ve gotten yourself into?” Wayne asks.

“Nothing!” Eddie cries, like a liar. He continues speaking in a whisper, like that will somehow stop Steve from hearing him despite the way they’re pressed together. “Later, Wayne.”

Steve laughs, and stays right there, propped against Eddie for the rest of the drive while the pair bicker back and forth. They’re good-natured about it, even as they push each other’s buttons just enough to get a reaction. It’s nice. At his house, the buttons are usually more like land mines and the goal is always to blow the other person up. This is more like something you’d see in a sitcom where everyone loves each other, and the stakes are all dropped by the end of the episode.

The ride’s over quicker than he would have liked. Then he’s being maneuvered into the hospital and whisked away from them both.

He ends up in a small, windowless room, propped on an examination table, the paper sheet beneath him crinkling and ripping every time he shifts his ass. A nurse with a clipboard asks him questions he mostly tells the truth about. After all, what had hurt him had been entirely human.

It always is.

They scan his brain, find the concussion everyone was expecting, and bring him into a brand new windowless room with a fresh paper shield to rip. He’s poked and prodded and rebandaged, and then left there to rot.

Steve loses track of time.

He’s got nothing to do but think. He starts by wandering the small room and squinting at all the posters on its walls. That goes quick though, so he goes back to the table and eases himself back down and starts thinking about people and monsters and people that are monsters.

He wishes Eddie and Wayne were still here, distracting him with their squabbling. Or the kids, even. Historically, they’re loud enough to make his head pound, but he’d take that right now over this lonesomeness.

It feels wrong to be alone– it had the first time, too, after monsters and Will Byers came back from the dead. After the hospital. After they’d left Jonathan with Will and he’d driven Nancy home, he’d holed up in his own house, and tried not to think about a monster pouring from his ceiling.

This time feels worse. Maybe it’s because he’d had all the kids to wrangle, or because Eddie was stuck to him like glue, or because he’d been there with the whole group while they came up with a plan, surrounded from all sides with people all talking loudly enough that he can still hear their voices echoing through his head.

The quiet feels foreign, more isolating as he’s forced to sit in it.

And after the first time, he’d still had Nancy the next day at school. He’s not sure he can say that any more, isn’t sure there’s anyone left. The kids have each other, Eddie’s got his group of weirdos, and Nancy’s got Jonathan.

Who’s left? Just Steve.

It’s a relief when the doctor comes to give him instructions he barely listens to. Better his big, empty house than this tiny, empty room. Steve follows him out, through winding hallways he would have never been able to navigate on his own, and out into the lobby.

He’s not sure how he’s going to get home. Everyone who might be willing has bigger priorities like El and Will. His parents are in Chicago, and wouldn’t come anyway. It’s moments like this that he really misses Carol and Tommy, no matter how big of assholes they might have been.

He’s just begun psyching himself up for the arduous walk home when he sees Eddie and Wayne. They must catch sight of him, too, because they both stand from their uncomfortable-looking chairs and head straight for him.

“What are you still doing here?” Steve asks once they’re in hearing range.

Eddie scoffs. “What, did you think we’d just leave you to find your own way home?”

Steve stares at his earnest eyes, throat clogged. Maybe, somehow, despite everything, he’s got at least two people in his corner. That’s enough.

“What’s your prognosis?” Wayne asks.

Steve shifts his gaze to him and tries to get his muddled brain to produce the correct words. “Concussion?”

Wayne’s face goes stern, eyebrows all caterpillared together in the middle. It’s all Steve can do not to take a step back. “What’re the instructions for that?”

Steve hadn’t listened to that part. When all Steve does is stare at him, Wayne huffs, turns on his heel and strides away. Steve watches him go.

“Is he… going to come back?” Steve asks hesitantly.

Eddie snorts. “He’s going to corner one of the nurses until they tell him what we need to do for your noggin,” Eddie says. When that doesn’t seem to reassure Steve, Eddie continues. “He’s going to come back.”

“And then?” Steve asks.

“We drive you home,” Eddie replies.

Steve thinks of the small, clinical room he’d been left alone in, the way the walls seemed to cave in around him, making his alone-ness even worse.

“Can we visit Will first?”

Chapter Text

“What the hell happened to you?”

Will’s been dozing on and off for hours. He feels drained, worse, somehow, than when he’d been trapped in the Upside Down. He’d been sick then. Now, he’s just hollow. But, at Jonathan’s question, he sits up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

There, in the doorway of his hospital room, stands Steve Harrington. His clothes are stained and rumpled like he’d been crawling around in the dirt, and his face looks like it was bashed in. He looks worse than Will feels, and that’s a high bar to surpass because Will thinks he might have actually died this time.

“Wheeler didn’t tell you?” Steve asks, smiling as he walks fully into the room, a guy following on his heels that Will’s never seen before.

He’s almost as grubby as Steve, but it fits him better. Where Steve’s jacket and jeans look like they were pristine before tonight, the other guy’s wearing a jacket that’s more patch than leather, and the rips in the knees of his jeans look like they’re worn enough to be old. He wears scruffiness well, even with the twigs in his hair. Plus, aside from a little dirt smeared on his face, he looks clear-skinned, not a wound in sight.

“He hasn’t been by,” Will replies, hoping the way that stings isn’t audible in his voice. Last year when he’d woken up in the hospital, Mike had already been at his side, waiting for him to wake up. This time, he hasn’t had any visitors yet besides his mom and Jonathan.

It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.

“That makes sense,” Steve says, nodding as he steps further into the room. As he gets closer, his face only looks worse– nose swollen, eyes blackening, blood and stitches barely visible beneath his drooping, dirty hair. “Hop’s definitely not going to leave El to drive him over.”

Jonathan had told him about El when he’d woken up. And he’s glad she’s safe, really. While she was gone, Lucas and Dustin had talked about her like she was a superhero. But, Mike? Mike hadn’t talked about her at all.

That silence has lingered in the spaces between them in a way nothing ever has before. And now she’s back, and Mike’s with her instead of him.

“You okay, little dude?” Steve asks.

Will jerks his head up to find that Steve and the new guy have both taken a seat at the other side of his bed, and all three of them are staring at him with the same worried look.

“What happened to you?” Will asks Steve, reiterating his brother’s question. He wants to know almost as much as he wants them all to stop looking at him like that.

“Hargrove broke one of your Mom’s plates over my head,” Steve replies, and he smiles wryly like it’s funny.

“Hargrove did what now?” the stranger asks, leaning toward Steve until their faces are close enough that for a second, he thinks they’re going to kiss. Instead, Steve laughs even though it must hurt and puts his whole palm across the guy’s face and pushes him away.

“He went after Lucas,” Steve says, waving his hand dismissively. “It was a whole thing.”

Will doesn’t know who Hargrove is. He doesn’t even know who the guy sitting at his bedside is. He doesn’t know a lot, right now, but none of that matters because someone went after Lucas and whoever it was fights dirty.

The stranger must catch sight of the fear on Will’s face because before he can open his mouth and ask, he says, “he was fine last time I saw him. All your little friends are.”

And then he smiles at Will, close-lipped with dimples on both of his cheeks. His eyes are warm, and Will can feel his heart kick in his chest, hears it echo embarrassingly around the room from the monitor at his bedside.

“And you got involved in all this, how?” Jonathan asks, sounding friendlier than he had with Steve. Maybe Jonathan has a friend that isn’t Nancy?

“Little Red crashed straight into my van, man,” he replies, mouth twisted wryly.

“Little Red?”

“Max,” Steve clarifies.

“You let Max drive?” Jonathan asks, and he sounds accusing now as he glares across at Steve.

When all Steve does is slump down into his chair, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, it’s the stranger who comes to his defense.

“To be fair, he was passed out in the backseat at the time.” Steve curls in on himself, looking guilty as sin. The stranger links his ankle behind Steve’s and wriggles his foot back and forth. “Harrington here had apparently played the knight in shining armor a little too well and got kidnapped for his trouble.”

Then he pauses, lips pursed like he’s thinking, eyes unfocused. “It’s not kidnapping if it’s the kids doing the napping, is it?” he asks, like that’s at all an important part of the conversation. It makes Jonathan laugh, and as the tension in the room eases, Will feels himself relax.

“Teenager-napping? Jock-napping?” He pauses, then grins leaning forward like he’s about to lay the answers to the world at their feet. “No, wait. King-napping!”

Then he leans back in his chair, crossing his arms imperiously as he grins. There’s a beat of silence before Jonathan starts laughing and Steve mutters “Eddie,” in such an exasperated voice that Will joins in.

Eddie. Will’s heart does that stupid noisy thing again as Eddie leans into Steve’s space and throws an arm around him, rocking him back and forth gently as he goads him good-naturedly. Their ankles stay linked even as Steve scoffs, and rolls his eyes. He winces right after like it hurts.

Eddie’s face immediately goes serious. “We should get you home, Stevie.” He reaches out, placing his hand on Steve’s dirty forehead like he’ll find it feverish. “Wayne’s probably done harassing the nurses.”

“But we came here to check on Will.” Steve frowns, but doesn’t pull away from his touch. “And Jonathan and Nancy?” He says the last part with an uptick at the end that makes it more like a question.

Jonathan’s the one to answer it. “We’re fine.” When Will glances over at him, he’s hunched in on himself, shoulders slumped as he looks down at his own restless fingers, not meeting anyone’s eyes. He looks just the same as he had in middle school when he’d gotten into his very first fight and had to tell their Mom: guilty. Will wonders who’s included in that ‘we.’ Him, Nancy, both of them?

“Good,” Steve replies. He’s looking at Jonathan, but he seems to droop into himself when Jonathan doesn’t meet his eyes. He looks sad. Will wishes he knew why. “That’s good.”

Eddie turns away from Steve, hand still plastered to Steve’s face as he asks, “And you? Are you alright, Baby Byers?”

His big brown eyes are trained right on Will’s face, boring into him with enough intensity that he can’t even think about lying. “Mostly tired,” he says, and it’s true. His body hurts, like he’d had three gym classes in a row, and his burns ache even past all the cream, but he doesn’t feel quite so hollow anymore. It’s hard to maintain while watching the pair of them. “Are you sure my friends are okay?”

“Not a scratch on them,” Eddie replies, smiling that same gentle smile.

“Worried about you, though,” Steve cuts in. Eddie’s palm is still pressed to his forehead, making his dirty hair stick up at comical angles. Will’s eyes drifting up to it must make him realize because he grabs Eddie’s hand, links their fingers, and pulls their clasped hands down to his own thigh.

“Worried enough that the shitheads kidnapped me–”

“King-napped, you mean,” Jonathan cuts in. Eddie laughs brightly, and the room seems to release a collective breath.

Steve continues talking like he’d never been interrupted, but Will can see the tension bleed out of his frame as he looks furtively toward Jonathan once more. This time, Jonathan is looking back, a small, almost-relieved smile on his face. “–and used themselves as bait to make sure you had time to be un-Mind Flared, or whatever.”

Will smiles down at his own lap, hoping the heat he can feel on his cheeks isn’t visible. They might not be here right now, but they’d helped save him. Even Max, who he barely knew, had driven a car for him.

“Do you mean Mind Flayer?” Eddie asks. Will looks up in time to watch Steve shrug, clearly unsure. “Tentacles on their heads, slimy skin, uses mind control to thrall their enemies?”

“Dustin said they were like the Nazis or whatever,” Steve said, nonsensibly. “I don’t know about all that squid stuff though.”

“You said it was like the Nazis,” Jonathan says, but he sounds amused now.

Will’s entirely lost. By the look on Eddie’s face, he doesn’t know what’s happening either. But– “You know what a Mind Flayer is?” he asks, ignoring the shiver that runs up the back of his neck as he says those words. It’s worth it when Eddie lights up, bouncing forward in his seat to get closer to Will, hand now trailing behind him so he can keep holding Steve’s hand.

“Of course I know what a Mind Flayer is!” he says, suddenly seeming almost manic with excitement. “I’ll have you know you’re looking at the leader of Hellfire, Baby Byers, Hawkins’ one and only D&D club.”

“So cool,” Will whispers. He’d already thought Eddie was cool with his long hair, unusual style, and flippant attitude. But he’s a Dungeon Master on top of that?

Maybe high school won’t be as bad as he’d always thought it would be.

Eddie’s grinning as he leans back into his chair. “Maybe once you’re out of here and Stevie’s face grows back, I can brew up a one-shot for you and the rest of your party.”

Jonathan snorts. “Now you’ve done it,” he says, voice overlapping with Steve’s wry, “don’t bring me into this.”

Will barely hears them. For the first time in months, he’s excited. “Really?” he asks, hope naked in his voice.

“Sure!” Eddie replies, sounding just as eager. “It’ll be fun to have some fresh blood to torment. All my guys are wise to my tricks by now.”

It’s not long until they have to leave, caught by a nurse visiting well after visiting hours. Eddie drags Steve out, spitting excuses from his tongue as they go, but he pauses in the open doorway to wink at Will before he’s fully out of sight.

The room’s quieter now, with only Jonathan to fill the silence until mom gets back from finishing up the hospital’s paperwork, but that buoyant feeling stays with him into the wee hours of the morning.

Chapter Text

They leave the hospital the same way they came: two Munson bookends to Steve Harrington’s mess of a body. At least now Steve is managing to hold his head up by his own power. Eddie tries not to miss the warmth of Steve’s head on his shoulder. He fails.

It’s so late that it’s early– the sun’s painting the road and trees in gold and pinks. He doesn’t get to see the sunrise often, too much of a night owl to wake up until he absolutely has to, and even then, it usually takes Wayne banging on his door and hollering until he springs up. But, it’s beautiful. So beautiful, he’s hard pressed to believe the kids’ stories about science experiments conducted on children, and monsters without faces, and a hell dimension beneath his feet.

Hawkins is a sleepy town– quiet, dull, boring.

Monsters don’t come from places like this. They belong in Mordor, caged in the pages of a book, eternally fighting the titular heroes of the tale, determining the fate of the world. But, this isn’t a book, and he’d seen the puckered flesh of that thing’s mouth open up like a flower toward the sun and display impossible rows of sharp, jagged teeth.

He’d seen it, and even then, there’s still a part of his brain straining against the visceral truth of it– the sight of their warped bodies, the slimy feel of their skin as they’d rushed past in the tunnel, and god, the smell. Like rotting flowers dunked in rotting blood. He can still smell it.

The morning light puts incredulity on the whole situation.

How can this be a place where real life monsters live, not just the kind wearing letterman jackets and shoving smaller kids into lockers?

Life used to be simple, even when it was hard. But now there’s DnD monsters that kill kids and some of the jocks are turning out to be knights, a la Steve Harrington who’s spent the past year knowing Demogorgons exist and still showing up to school like it’s no big deal.

It’s more than the Munson Doctrine that’s going to need to be rewritten after tonight.

“Where’re we going?” Steve asks, and Eddie jumps, shocked at the intrusion on their silent ride.

They’re on the corner of Peachtree and First, well past the turn off to Loch Nora. Eddie turns toward Wayne, that same question poised on his lips.

“Your parents ain’t home, are they?” Wayne asks, not looking away from the road, hands uniformly at ten and two because he’s still on a vendetta to get Eddie to be a safer driver.

Steve shifts at his side, shoulder no longer pressed to his own. Eddie follows his Uncle’s lead and looks out the windshield, giving Steve whatever privacy he can. After all, he’s not sure how no-parents-big-house Steve Harrington will feel about being alone.

“No, sir.”

“Then you’re coming home with us.”

Steve’s quiet for a minute. It takes everything in Eddie not to peek, desperate to see the expression on his face. Finally, he whispers out a quiet, “okay.”

Without looking, Eddie reaches down and tentatively grabs his hand. Steve clasps him right back, holding on tight. And even in this situation, with Steve concussed and Eddie preoccupied with the newly found horrors that lurk within the world, it’s Steve Harrington’s hand in his that makes his heartbeat kick up in his chest and nervous sweat drip down from his hairline.

“We need to pick up my van first,” Eddie says instead of the myriad of more embarrassing things he feels bubbling up in his mouth.

Wayne’s never been one to ask superfluous questions, and Eddie’s grateful for that now, as his uncle asks him where he’d parked it and nothing else. When they reach it, he does get one bushy eyebrow raised judgementally his way, but Eddie can’t blame him. The van’s not so much parked as stopped where he’d left it, ass-end sticking out into the road, headlights still damningly on, demonstrating for anyone who drives by that the keys are still in the ignition.

He’s lucky no one’s side-swiped it. Hell, he’s lucky no one hopped in and stole it.

Eddie turns toward the passenger side of the truck, ready to slide out and reclaim his van, but halts as he catches sight of Steve. He’s holding himself stiffly, shoulders hunched all the way up to his ears. Is it the pain that moving out of the way might cause? The thought of being alone with Wayne? The idea of going to the Munson’s home at all?

“Can you drive it home, Uncle Wayne?” Eddie asks, and watches in real time as Steve’s shoulders drop, and he sighs, visibly relieved. “I’ll make sure our precious cargo makes it home safely.”

And as Wayne slides out of the truck, grumbling all the way, Eddie squeezes Steve’s hand, just once, before shuffling into his vacated seat, and putting his hands on ten and two, just like Wayne. He drives more carefully than he ever has, hyper-aware of Steve’s silent presence still situated in the passenger seat.

It isn’t until he’s pulling into the trailer park and Steve makes a quiet humming noise that Eddie starts to wonder what no-parents-big-house Steve Harrington might think about staying the night (day, really) in a trailer small enough that he and Wayne live their lives practically on top of each other.

But as he helps Steve into the trailer, all he does is look around, smiling at all the mugs on the walls, pausing to look at the scattered pictures of Eddie and Wayne they’d bothered to hang up. Eddie lets him.

After the tunnels, and the demo-dogs, and all the shit Mike and Dustin had told him, he should have known that Steve wouldn’t care about the cracks in the plaster or the stains on the carpet. Hell, with the severity of his concussion, he might not even notice them.

For the first time in his life, there are bigger things to worry about than being poor.

“You have a lot of stuff,” Steve says as they push into Eddie’s room, and the guy’s still smiling, like even though there are dirty clothes strewn across his carpet, and so many metal posters up that there’s barely a sliver of bare wall in sight, he means it as a compliment. Steve Harrington of the preppy polos and what must be a metric ton of sports trophies.

No matter how hard Eddie tries to stuff him in, Steve isn’t fitting into any of his boxes.

“Thanks,” Eddie replies, voice upticking at the end like it’s a question. If it is, Steve doesn’t answer it. “You need to borrow some pajamas?”

When Steve murmurs his assent, he grabs what he needs from the meager offerings inside his dresser and splits the clothes between them. Steve starts stripping right there, acting just like a jock who spends too much time in the locker room. Eddie, who’d managed to skip gym all but once or twice, turns his back like a respectable person and changes as quickly as he can without tripping and adding another head injury to the mix.

Eddie’s bed is small, but they share it anyway, shoulders brushing as they lay side by side, staring up at the ceiling. He’s used to going to bed late enough that his room lights up from the sun’s rays filtering through his flimsy curtains. But, he’s not used to having the warmth of a body beside him, tossing and turning as they’re trying to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.

When he glances over at him, Steve’s eyes are wide open and staring at the ceiling, clearly too anxious or wired to close his eyes. Eddie can’t blame him; his world’s been rocked about ten times in the past few hours, and he didn’t even get a plate broken over his head.

As if he can feel Eddie’s eyes on him, Steve whispers, “Nancy and I broke up,” quietly enough that Eddie barely even hears him with the scant inches separating them. It feels even closer when Steve turns toward him, something undefinable in his eyes. “I think she’s with Jonathan now.”

Nancy and Steve have been the “it” couple since last year. Everyone’s seen them gravitating around each other in the hallways, leaving school in the same car, pressing their heads together at the lunch table like they’re sharing a lover's secret. It’s almost unbelievable that the whole thing could crash and burn that fast.

But now, with the hindsight of Demogorgons and alternate dimensions, maybe it wasn’t teenaged love that was binding them so tightly together. And more damningly, Jonathan was always there; on the other side of the lunch table, in the back of Harrington’s beemer, in the hallways between classes.

At the time, he’d thought they were dragging Jonathan around like an especially pitiable third wheel, but now he’s wondering if maybe Steve was the pitiable one all along.

That damn hindsight again.

“You think so?” Eddie asks, thinking of the weird tension he’d felt in Baby Byers’ hospital room that he hadn’t been able to put a name to. Now, he’s got a prissy name and a terrible fashion sense to pair it with.

Steve hums his affirmation, still just looking at Eddie like he’ll know what to do with that. “I think they’ll be good for each other.”

The words hit like a punch to the face. Or, even more topically, a plate to the head.

Eddie’s always noticed Steve. It’s hard not to. Even when he was a grade A douche, he’d had that air about him that all the popular kids have– like they know they’re the main characters and everyone should look at them. And like sheep to the chopping block, they all had. Even the freaks. Even Eddie.

Especially Eddie.

What he’s trying to say is, Eddie had seen Harrington smiling at Wheeler on Monday as he’d grabbed her by the waist and spun her around. He’d seen the way she’d laughed and looked up at him like they were in love.

He’d looked at her just the same.

Steve Harrington is pretty when he’s in love. Eddie remembers the thought flitting through his head as he’d slunk past the pair, mind already toiling away on his next campaign plans. He was in love, and now he’s here, beat all to hell in Eddie’s bed, girlfriendless. And he’d still asked the guy she’d left him for if he was okay.

Steve Harrington isn’t in love any more and Eddie’s fucked.

“Steve Harrington,” Eddie says, and the wonder he’s feeling must be audible in his voice because Steve smiles, small and bashful. Even with his face swollen and scabbed over, it’s the prettiest sight Eddie’s ever seen.

“Eddie Munson,” Steve replies, that same smile audible in his voice.

He’s stuck in this moment, staring into Steve’s pretty, swollen eyes, and he’s fine with it. Here lies Eddie Munson. He died doing what he loved best: staring at Steve Harrington’s pretty, unattainable face.

The moment stretches and snaps when Steve sighs.

“‘m tired, ‘die,” he mumbles, eyes closing, breaking Eddie from their hypnotizing spell. His breath shudders out of him, embarrassingly loud in the quiet of his bedroom.

“Then go to sleep,” he murmurs back, even quieter.

And then, because if there’s one thing Eddie’s learned about Steve in the last few hours it’s that he’s brave, so Steve shuffles across the scant inches separating them and lays his head on Eddie’s chest. Eddie feels like a bug, pinned down beneath Steve’s weight, arms flapping wildly in the air like fluttering wings.

He doesn’t know where to put his hands.

He lets them drop slowly, touch tentatively landing on the small of Steve’s back and between his broad shoulders. He waits, breath held in aching lungs, for Steve’s reaction, but all he does is sigh and burrow further into Eddie, head nested beneath his chin.

The breath Eddie lets out is ragged. Steve’s head bobs with each of his breaths. He stares down at his hair, something aching and fond bubbling up in his chest at the cowlick he can see from this angle, near the back of his skull. Without thinking about it, he leans down and presses a kiss right to the spot, lips lingering.

Steve hums, just once, as he snuggles even closer, arm going around Eddie’s ribs as he presses his swollen face into the crook of his neck. He settles and stills, the only sign of life the little puffs of air tickling his skin.

Eddie closes his eyes, and basks in the warmth, hoping it’ll last. They’re two kisses deep now, but they can talk about it later. Once Eddie’s grown some bravery and Steve’s face no longer looks like Hamburger Helper. Maybe then Eddie will be able put words to the emotions that have been building inside him since Steve had pressed him back into the tunnel wall and shielded him with his own, yielding flesh.

Maybe. But for now, he’s tired, and Steve’s warm.

Before he can follow Steve down to dreamland, Eddie hears his bedroom door open. He pries his eyes open, blinking the fog from them until he catches sight of Wayne hovering in the doorway, looking embarrassingly fond as he gazes down at them.

“Y’only got a few hours,” Wayne says, whisperingly gruffly so as not to wake Steve. “That boy needs his meds and you both need to get some food in ya.”

“Thanks, Wayne,” Eddie whispers back.

He pulls Steve closer to himself, pressing his nose into the other boy’s hair and settles back in. He’s asleep before he hears the sound of his bedroom door clicking closed once more.

It feels like no time at all has passed when he wakes up, but it’s not Wayne this time– it’s a chorus of prepubescent voices, all talking over each other, just the way they had in the tunnels.

“-derson?” Steve mumbles, face pressed into the mattress.

They’ve shifted in their sleep, Eddie ending up partially on top of Steve, chest pressed into his shoulder blade, head clinging to the empty corner of his pillow. So, when Steve attempts to spring up, Eddie gets flung off of him and goes tumbling off the side of the bed.

Eddie lays on the floor, fall cushioned by the dirty laundry strewn about, and watches as Steve stumbles out of his bedroom door, not seeming to have even noticed the predicament he’d left Eddie in.

“What’re you shitheads doing here?” Steve asks. “And how’d you find me?”

“You weren’t at your house,” Dustin replies, sounding mullish. Eddie can picture him, knocking repeatedly on the Harrington’s front door at the ass-crack of dawn. Knowing him, he was probably persistent enough to wake up some of the neighbors. “So we decided–”

“You mean you decided,” and that sounds like Lucas.

“–that you were probably still with Eddie, so I borrowed mom’s phone book and looked him up!”

“And dragged us with him,” Max cuts in dryly.

Dustin squawks, clearly outraged. “Like you guys didn’t want to come!”

Lucas and Max’s responses are spoken over each other, and then Dustin joins in until it’s a cacophony of whining, no distinct words intelligible beyond the wall of noise.

“I let ya in.” Wayne’s voice isn’t loud, but he has a way of speaking that demands to be listened to. Eddie’s abundantly familiar with the ringing silence as whatever hellspawn are out there all stop talking at once. “Don’t make me kick y’all out ‘for you can send Harrington here back to the emergency room.”

The quiet’s still lingering by the time Eddie levers himself off the floor and shambles out into the living room. Wayne’s at the breakfast table, coffee cradled between his palms and a severe slant to his mouth. Steve’s in the living room, hair standing on end in the worst case of bedhead Eddie’s ever seen. He’s got his hands on his hips like he was playing up the exasperated babysitter angle, but beneath all that, he looks tired, the bruises from Hargrove’s fists almost indistinguishable from the sleeplessness hollowing out his eyes.

In front of him, Lucas, Max, and Dustin are shuffling uncomfortably. Dustin’s vibrating, toes tapping up and down like even after the night they’ve all had, he’s having trouble tamping down his enthusiasm. In contrast, Max is staring down at her shoes, stock still, a grocery bag swaying back and forth in her tight fist.

“Are you okay, Steve?” Lucas asks. He’s the only one meeting Steve’s eyes, craning his neck back to look up at him.

“Nothing time won’t fix,” Steve replies, reaching out to clasp Lucas’s shoulder, squeezing gently.

“And meds,” Eddie sing-songs, snorting when all four of them jump. Taking that as his queue, Wayne reaches into the bag hanging off the back of one of their chairs and fishes out three bottles, pills rattling within them.

“He needs to eat first,” Wayne says firmly as he hands them over.

“I’ve got soup,” Max says, speaking up for the first time. She looks small and washed out in her too-big sneakers, bag raised in shaking hands. She sounds proud, for just one second before she slumps back into herself. “Or, well, Lucas’s Mom made it.”

“It was my idea,” Dustin chimes in, obliviously. “You’re supposed to make soup when people are sick. That’s what my mom does.”

“He’s not sick, Dustin,” Lucas hisses out, elbowing him in the ribs, hard enough to make him yelp, before unsubtly tilting his head toward Max who seemed to be trying to melt into the stained carpet.

From what Eddie’s seen so far, Dustin may be a bit oblivious, but even he doesn’t seem to miss the implications of Lucas’s statement. He loops his elbow in Max’s and shakes her back and forth, seemingly not noticing the girl’s glare growing fierce. “But Max cut all the vegetables.”

“Thanks, Max” Steve says, still sounding tired as he reaches out and ruffles her hair, further mussing her already messy braid. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Whatever.” Max scowls, shaking both Steve and Dustin’s hands off as she storms past Eddie and into the small kitchen, clearly having reached her threshold of touchy feely talk.

Eddie follows her in, watches as she rudely begins opening cabinets and peering inside. Guessing at what she’s looking for, he opens a different cabinet and grabs their best soup bowl from the highest shelf and hands it over without prompting.

“Thanks,” she mutters, immediately moving to grab the soup from the jar it’s stored in and pouring it carefully into the bowl, only a few drops dripping down the side and onto the cupboard.

Eddie grabs it from her and puts it in the microwave, plate overtop to keep any soup explosions contained to the bowl itself. Max is still frowning, back against the counter and arms crossed as she glares balefully at the microwave like that will make it work faster.

He joins her, feeling like a particularly stupid child poking his fingers into the enclosure of a rattlesnake as he asks, “you okay, Little Red?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps, but doesn’t move from her spot at his side, just out of reach.

Eddie keeps his eyes trained on the microwave, watching the numbers slowly tick down. He’s got personal experience being an angry little twelve year old, and said experience tells him both that she’s a flight risk and that Uncle Wayne would be a much better person to try to pry her out of her angry little shell. But Wayne’s still at the table, reading the paper and pretending none of them exist. So, Max will have to make do with the inferior Munson.

The microwave dings cheerful and goes quiet, but she makes no move to grab it, so neither does Eddie. As is swiftly becoming a dangerous habit, he seeks out Steve. He’s still in the living room, now settled onto the threadbare couch, Dustin pressed so closely against his side that Steve was forced to throw an arm around him. Dustin’s running his mouth, looking up at Steve like he’s the coolest person in the world, barely pausing his rambling long enough for Steve to hum in confirmation.

With the smile on Steve’s face, Eddie doesn’t think he minds.

Before he can even wonder where Lucas had disappeared to, he reappears with Wayne’s ratty lap blanket in his arms, clearly filched from his recliner. He shakes it out and settles it delicately over Steve, tucking the frayed edges around Steve like he’s putting him to bed.

It’s such a particular thing to do, that Eddie can’t help but think of Lucas’s mom doing the same thing for him whenever he’s sick, or hurt, or just tired enough to want his mom. The feeling lodges itself into his throat and refuses to be swallowed.

“Is he okay?” Max’s voice is quiet, barely audible even standing so close. Eddie glances over at her and finds her watching Steve just like he had been, little hands balled up into tight fists.

“He will be,” Eddie says, words carrying all the weight of a knight’s vow of allegiance.

Max looks over at him, squinting like she’s trying to wrestle up some anger but can’t quite grasp it past all that worry. “Promise?”

This fucking kid. Eddie doesn’t know her, doesn’t really know any of them, but they’re all good kids. From prickly little Wheeler who’d helped Eddie patch Steve up, all the way to these three who’d taken time out of their day, hours after facing off against monsters and almost losing one of their own, just to check up on the guy who’d protected them.

He looks away from Max, swallowing as that same feeling expands, sadness and hope all bundled together until he’s almost choking on it.

Steve’s looking at him this time, eyes soft, smile small as he mmmhmm’s at all the appropriate breaks in Dustin and Lucas’s chatter. He looks tired, and sore, and so unbelievably soft that Eddie wants to kiss him about it.

“Promise.”

And like that was all she’d been waiting for, she turns her back on him and goes to the microwave, no doubt burning her fingers as she fishes the steaming bowl of soup out. Eddie grabs a clean spoon and hands it over, watching as she places the bowl gently on Steve’s lap, careful to settle it in the seam of his thighs so it won’t tip over.

Max bullies her way onto the couch, shoving Lucas to the side until she can settle between him and Steve, leaving just enough room so Steve’s elbow doesn’t hit her every time he takes a bite.

Eddie doesn’t know them, not past life or death situations and their aftermath. Hell, he doesn’t even know Steve, no matter how much his heartbeat flutters when the other boy smiles at him. But he wants to.

There’s already campaign ideas flitting through his head, fit for children who’ve lived through the real thing. And mixtapes to be made, Dustin especially seems like he needs a lesson in real music. He wants to scoop them into his flock, teach them and protect them in turns. Just as much as he wants Steve Harrington at his side, teaching them his own lessons with the snark of a high school cheerleader.

He wants it with a fierceness that tastes like blood in his mouth.

One night can change a lot, and he might not know them, but he really, really wants to now.

“You coming?” Steve asks, words slurring around the spoon in his mouth, gaze trained squarely on where Eddie’s still loitering the kitchen.

This is one of those moments where he can feel the future unspooling out in front of him, full of shithead kids and Steve Harrington.

“Always,” Eddie replies, too softly to carry.

He grabs the meds from in front of Wayne and makes his way over to them, ready to squeeze himself onto the too-small couch by any means necessary, no matter how much the kids might gripe. It’s his couch, and his trailer, and his banged up Steve Harrington laughing as Lucas ends up unceremoniously dumped onto the carpet.

Steve’s laughing, and Lucas has his hand around Eddie as he tries to yank him off the couch so he can reclaim his spot at Max’s side, all of it drowned out by Dustin griping about how close they’d come to spilling Steve’s soup.

It’s warm on the couch with all their bodies stacked together so close. And maybe Eddie doesn’t know anyone’s favorite color, or what they want to do with their lives, but he knows that he’d die for every single one of them. The rest of it will come in time.

They’ve got time, and Eddie knows exactly how he wants to spend it.