Chapter Text
Come down with fire
Lift my spirit higher
Someone's screaming my name
Come and make me holy again
- Rainbow, “Man On The Silver Mountain”, 1975
Operation Cheer Up Dustin was falling apart before Steve had gotten a chance to start.
He’d begrudgingly gotten Dustin to agree to a movie night and sleepover at Steve’s house. Steve had amassed an extensive movie collection after he and Robin had finally heard from Keith that Family Video wouldn’t be reopening, leaving them free to pilfer from the stock still in the store. Steve had pulled some of Dustin’s favorite movies from his collection: all three Star Wars movies, Ghostbusters, Dragonslayer, Blade Runner, The is Spinal Tap, Real Genius, Jaws, The Goonies, Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien…(Before spring break, Dustin had been excited to see the sequel that came out over the summer, even if the director wasn’t the same, but with the Hawk closed and Hawkins cut off from the rest of the world, he’s not going to be able to see it for a while.)
Movie nights with Dustin used to be fun. They’d go to the Hawk on half-off-ticket days, when it was just them in the theater, and heckle the bad ones, like that weird Santa Claus movie that was playing to an empty theater by December 1st. And with the Hawk shut down, what better movie screen than the ridiculously expensive 35-inch TV set of the Harrington Family home entertainment system?
Steve had dug the air-popper out of the cabinet, and has two large bowls of fluffy popcorn ready for Movie Night, drizzled in melted butter and lightly dusted with salt. He also made nachos, covered in gooey melted cheddar cheese, onions, and salsa. He’s debating on if he needs to thaw out the chocolate cake in the freezer or if that would be too much when the doorbell rings.
Dustin’s mom drops him off at Steve’s house, cutting it close to the military curfew time of 8 PM. She watches Dustin from her old sedan until he reaches the front door, her hands tight on the steering wheel. She doesn’t wave back when Steve waves at her from the front steps of his house. All the kids’ parents are low-key (maybe high-key) freaking out over the military quarantine. The Sinclairs almost left Hawkins right before the military began to construct the fence around Hawkins, only staying because both Lucas and Erica refused to leave.
Dustin’s carrying his backpack, normal for a sleepover, and a plastic milk crate full of stuff, which isn’t.
“Hey, man,” Steve says, holding the door open for Dustin.
Dustin doesn’t meet his eyes, walking through the doorway and into the foyer with no acknowledgment of Steve. He strides into the living room and dumps the crate’s contents out on top of the wooden coffee table before shrugging off the backpack and letting it drop to the carpet.
“What you got there, Henderson?” Steve says, locking the front door.
“Eddie’s uncle dropped off some of his things at my house today,” Dustin says flatly. “Stuff that was in his van or his locker at school when the trailer got destroyed. Guess the cops had been holding it since March and finally released it back to him.”
That’s more words than Steve had heard out of Dustin in a while.
“I found this one notebook of his ideas for a fantasy novel,” Dustin continues. “At first I thought it was more DnD stuff for Hellfire, but it’s about this demon named Dardew. He used to be a normal human guy but made a deal with a demon that corrupted him and he became a demon too.”
Steve glances at Eddie’s stuff strewn over the coffee table. Notebooks, Dungeons and Dragons books, some dice, a few thick paperbacks, some cassette tapes, those weird dice, Eddie’s guitar pick necklace. There’s one hardcover book, relatively slim, that Steve finds his hand reaching out to grab.
The dustjacket is black, with an illustration of a pale-skinned shirtless man on the front, several sets of black wings sprouting behind his shoulders. Above the man is the book’s title: THE DARKANGEL.
Steve frowns. Doesn’t really look like the kind of book he’d thought Eddie’d be into. He flips to the dustjacket’s back flap, reading the last paragraph of the plot summary:
“Can Aeriel resist the allure of her terrifying new master, the darkangel, and steel herself to do what she knows she must? Even as the hour approaches when she must act or perish, she glimpses the spark of goodness remaining in the him – goodness that makes the darkangel’s own salvation both possible and paramount.”
Yeah, not what he’d expected at all. That sounds like one of his mom’s Harlequin novels, not something Eddie would read. But it was one of his, not a forgotten library book, mixed in with the thick doorstopper ‘Lord of the Rings’ knockoff novels and the Dungeons and Dragons books.
“Hey!” Dustin says, and swipes the book back from his hands. “Can you not grab stuff? Are you five?”
“What?” Steve says, confused. “I was just looking.”
“Well. Don’t,” Dustin sniffs as he awkwardly stuffs the book underneath a stack of notebooks. He has one of the notebooks open on his lap, skimming the pages. “It’s distracting.”
“How?! How is it distracting? I’m literally just standing here,” Steve protests.
Dustin scoffs and rolls his eyes, but doesn’t answer, ignoring Steve to focus on whatever’s written in Eddie’s notebook. Typical.
Steve can feel the anger rising like bile in his throat and tries to stuff it back down.
He knows he’s not thinking rationally, that Dustin’s still reeling over Eddie’s death back in March, and the fallout of most of the town thinking Eddie was a murdering Satanist cult leader. All of the schools in Hawkins reopened in September (without some of the teachers and any other staff who lived outside Hawkins), and he knows from the others that Dustin is having a rough time with that asshole Jason Carver’s goons from the Varsity Basketball team. He knows that.
Steve’s anger at Eddie has been simmering, ever-present, since March. It feels wrong to be angry at someone who’s dead, who died trying to protect Dustin. But Eddie didn’t fucking listen to Steve when he told him not to be a hero, and then Eddie got eaten alive by demobats and Dustin’s emotionally scarred, and Steve doesn’t have any goddamn idea what to do. Dustin’s drifting away from his other friends, he broke up with Suzie, he’s intentionally provoking the idiot jocks by wearing a Hellfire shirt to school, his mom is a nervous wreck about everything and whatever Steve does to try and support Dustin is always, always, always wrong.
What makes it worse is that Steve’s been down this road before with Nancy the year after Barb died. Trying to pretend everything was A-OK didn’t work back then and won’t work with Dustin now, but he just doesn’t know how to talk to Dustin about Eddie without his own anger at Eddie’s sacrifice bubbling over.
“Do you want to talk before we pick the movie?” Steve says, trying his best to stay calm.
“Talk about what? That you’re too dumb to know how to read?” Dustin mutters darkly.
Steve freezes.
He’s used to the toothless “ha ha dumb jock, no brain, all hair” jokes from the others. Sure, his grades in high school weren’t amazing, but he could’ve gotten into a college if he’d really wanted to go. He just didn’t. (The only reason he applied to any college was because of his parents and Nancy pressuring him, and maybe that was his big mistake, doing something he didn’t want to do because it was easier than refusing.) Being a jock, caring about his appearance, having average grades in high school and not wanting to go college apparently means to some of his friends that Steve has one remaining brain cell rattling around inside his head that hadn’t died from hairspray fumes. But it doesn’t matter. He can deal with that.
This feels different. Crueler. Like Dustin actually means it.
“Henderson, that’s out of line.”
That finally gets Dustin’s attention. “Oh, did that hit a nerve? Sorry,” he sneers.
The last fraying thread of patience in Steve’s brain snaps.
“What is your deal, man?!” Steve shouts. It’s a good thing Steve’s parents got caught outside Hawkins when the fence went up because that would’ve brought them downstairs in a hurry. “You don’t treat people like this!”
Dustin stands up, clutching one of Eddie’s notebooks in his trembling hand. “You, of all people, are asking me that? Seriously? You know damn well what my deal is!”
“I just want to know what I can do,” Steve says, deflating. “I want to help you, man.”
“You can’t do anything!” Dustin bellows at him, inches from his face, spittle flying out of his mouth.
The scarred bat bites on Steve’s sides suddenly flare, burning and cold at the same time, and Steve doubles over. His head throbs like it’s being pulled in two, his heart thudding against his ribs, thud, thud, and against his skull, thud, thud, and he’s seeing through two sets of eyes, the living room’s spinning…
Is he sick? Dying of sepsis? The doctors at the hospital said that was something he’d have to watch out for, that the bites might get infected…
No, no, no, he can’t, he can’t die…not like this.
Everything goes red.
When the world re-establishes itself, Steve’s not in his house anymore.
He’s standing in a field of sunflowers he’s never seen before. The wind is warm and clear in a way Steve hasn’t felt in a long time, not since the rain of spores and ash from the Upside Down poisoned the air.
Not Hawkins.
Steve flinches when something roars overhead. He looks up, expecting to see a military helicopter, hopefully not about to shoot him for breaking quarantine, and his jaw drops open when he sees a large, honest-to-God dragon fly above him instead, its smooth green scales shimmering in the sunlight.
He drops down to the ground, his legs suddenly giving out on him.
“What the fuck?” Steve whispers to himself, his entire body trembling. “What the fuck, what the fuck…”
He pokes his head up above the sunflowers, trying to get another look, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Nope, that’s still a dragon. Looking closer, it’s got something clutched in its talons. Probably its dinner for the night.
Definitely not Hawkins.
“Well, well, isn’t this fascinating! Where’d you come from, buttercup?” says a voice Steve never thought he’d hear again.
Sprawling across a large rock nearby is Eddie. Or a nightmare wearing Eddie’s face. Two bone-white horns stick out from Eddie’s dark hair. When he gives a wicked smile at Steve, his teeth are pointed. Sprouting from his back are two enormous reddish bat-like wings, which twitch slightly as Eddie moves, extending slightly and then pressing closer to his back. A reddish barbed tail, similar to the dragon’s, flicks idly on the rock. Eddie is holding a wooden medieval guitar – a lute? Steve thinks that’s what it’s called – which he sets down on the rock to get a better look at Steve. Eddie’s eyes are bright red, glowing like embers, instead of dark brown. He’s wearing a black, all leather outfit, spikes covering the gauntlets on his arms and sticking out from the greaves over his shins. How he’d be able to play his lute without the spikes or his long, wicked-looking claws destroying it is a mystery.
“…-ddie?” Steve says, the name thick and clumsy in his dry mouth. He’s going to pass out again, isn’t he?
Is this a Vecna curse? Dustin being a dick to him bummed Steve out enough that Vecna was able to wriggle his way into his brain, presenting him with a vision of Eddie transformed into a demon before he breaks all of the bones in Steve’s body? Shit, shit, okay, think of a song…
“Here we stand, worlds apart, hearts broken in two, two, two,” Steve sings under his breath, closing his eyes. “Sleepless nights, losing ground, I'm reachin' for you, you, you.”
He’s still standing in the sunflower field when he opens his eyes. “Shit.”
“Interesting ballad,” ‘Eddie’ says, one eyebrow raised, and then clambers to his feet. “Well met and pleased to meet you! I won’t keep you guessing on my name. I am Dardew the Banished, a demon infamous in story and song!” He gives Steve a showy, sweeping bow, his bat wings fully extending behind him.
Dardew. Just like Eddie’s book that Dustin’d been talking about.
Jesus. “Dardew” is just an anagram of “Edward”, isn’t it? Eddie’d been writing about a fantasy version of himself.
“What,” Steve says, his brain still reeling. Eddie’s novel is real? He’s somehow inside it, like Gumbo?
“Hm, I think I see the problem! What’s puzzling you is the nature of my game, right?” Dardew says with a sly smile.
“Uh. I guess?” Steve says, momentarily thrown. That was from ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. Huh, he didn’t know Eddie liked the Rolling Stones. “I’m going to be honest, I have no clue what’s going on right now.”
“Well, I’m interested in bargains, buttercup,” purrs Dardew, dropping down from the rock.
“What, what kind of bargains?” Steve stammers, a pit starting to develop in his stomach. “Like, a two-for-one sale at The Gap...?”
Dardew smiles at him, wide and insincere, and Steve hates it. “See, people come to me with their big, burning problems – they want love, or power, fame and fortune, anything, really! And in exchange for a liiiiiiittle something they won’t even miss, I graciously bestow upon them their heart’s desire. The answer to their prayers!” Dardew throws out his arms. He inherited a lot of Eddie’s overly-theatrical showmanship.
“Huh. That’s what happened to you, right?” Steve says, remembering what Dustin had said.
The toothy grin freezes on Dardew’s face.
“You were a human, until you were corrupted into a demon after a deal with a demon in exchange for your soul. And now you’re doing the same thing that demon did to you?” Steve says. “Trying to trick people into giving up their souls?”
Now Dardew’s the one looking confused, his eyebrows knitting together and his wings dropping behind him. “How could you kno…” He shakes his head. “Never mind. Not important. You want to cut a deal with me or not, buttercup?” His voice is colder than before, his tail flicking behind him like Dustin’s cat does when he’s annoyed.
“Uh. No,” Steve says. “I like my soul where it is, man.”
“Peachy,” sighs Dardew. “Then this has been a waste of my time.” His wings snap open and beat twice. Not looking at Steve, Dardew lifts into the air. He grabs his lute from the rock before flying away from the sunflower field.
Panic grips Steve. “Hey, wait!” he shouts, running after Dardew through the rows of sunflowers. “Get back here! Edd--Dardew!”
Dardew keeps getting smaller in the sky above him. Maybe he’s too far away to hear Steve or maybe he’s just ignoring him. After all, he’s right – Dardew wants souls, and if Steve doesn’t want to sell his, there’s really no use in talking to him, is there?
Steve still runs after Dardew until his foot catches on a root and he’s falling. He tumbles down to the soil with a shout, swallowed up by the leaves of the sunflowers. His knee and hands throb where they slammed into the ground, but Steve makes no moves to get back up. There’s no point. He lies in the cool soil with his eyes squeezed shut, the tall stalks and leaves of the sunflowers blotting out the sunlight and sky above him. Steve’s chest heaves from running after Dardew, who’s probably flown far, far away from Steve and this goddamn sunflower field.
Why does he feel like he just lost Eddie again?
“Aw, you miss me already?”
Steve blearily opens his eyes, looking up.
Dardew is crouched above him, tail and wings extended to keep him balanced, with what appears to be a genuine smile that actually reaches his glowing red eyes.
“You came back?” Steve says.
“Wel-l-ll, you seemed rather distraught. I wondered if perhaps I was too hasty leaving, buttercup,” says Dardew. How anyone in Hawkins could’ve thought Eddie was a murderer is beyond Steve. Even with Dardew’s giant horns and all the spikes on his outfit saying ‘don’t touch’, he still looks … vulnerable, is the best Steve can come up with.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” he says hoarsely, sitting up and trying to wipe the dirt off his face. He knows it’s a little weird for another guy to nickname him “Buttercup”, but Eddie had been the self-proclaimed king of the freaks and weirdos in Hawkins and hadn’t hesitated to call him “Big Boy” in the RV. It makes sense that Eddie’s self-insert character would be the same. Surprisingly, Steve doesn’t mind it at all. It’s…kind of charming, honestly. Almost sweet.
“Buttercup?” Dardew laughs and points at Steve’s chest. “’Cause of your tunic. Don’t see many that color around here.”
Steve looks down. He’d almost forgotten he’s wearing his yellow sweater today, although it’s now dingy and smeared with dirt from Steve’s fall.
“Huh,” says Steve. “Uh. Where is here, exactly?”
“The fair and just kingdom of Westhawk,” Dardew drawls, and Steve can feel the sarcasm dripping from those words. “How do you not know that?”
“Not from around here,” Steve says. “Obviously.”
“Oh, obviously,” says Dardew with an amused grin, a clawed hand reaching out to lightly flick a lock of Steve’s hair curling over his forehead. “Never seen someone with such perfectly coiffed hair as yours who hadn’t made a bargain with someone like me.”
“How do you know I didn’t?” Steve asks, curious. “Maybe I really did sell my soul for great hair.” When he was a freshman in high school he probably would’ve. It’d taken him a lot of trial and error (and hairspray) before he’d found a hairstyle that really clicked with him. And shortly after that he’d had to fight off an otherworldly monster with a baseball bat full of nails.
“I know you didn’t because I can tell if there’s an infernal claim on your soul. Don’t want someone selling their soul to three different demons, makes things messy when it’s time to collect.”
“You can see my soul?” Steve says, suddenly sheepish. He was a miserable asshole for a lot of middle school and high school. He’s not like that anymore but 1983 was only three years ago, even if it felt like three lifetimes at this point.
“Oh yes. I have to know what exactly it is I’m being offered. And yours…” Dardew gets a distant look in his glowing eyes, like he’s seeing past the layers of skin and muscle and looking directly into the core of what makes up Steve Harrington. Steve tries not to fidget from nerves. He knows he’s not the best person, but he’s not sure he needs a demon to tell him to his face that his soul’s like a stinky block of moldy cheese or whatever.
Dardew’s eyes soften even more, his lips falling open in surprise. “Oh. Buttercup, your soul…it’s beautiful. So good and courageous and full of love. I’ve seen righteous paladins whose souls couldn’t hold a candle to yours.” Dardew’s face (Eddie’s face) is suddenly inches away from Steve’s. He reverently lays his hand on top of Steve’s chest like it’s something precious, his claws lightly curling into the fabric of his sweater. “You’ll have every god and demon in the Cardinal Kingdoms tripping over themselves for your soul.”
Steve feels his cheeks and the tips of his ears flush and he turns his face away from Dardew, staring down at the dirt. “C’mon, man. I’m not that special.” He hasn’t exactly felt 'good, courageous and full of love' since Eddie’s death and Max’s coma eight months ago. Now it was usually 'rotten, frustrated and always tired'.
(Goddamnit Eddie, why didn’t you just listen--?!)
Dardew pulls his hand away from Steve’s chest slowly, reluctant to separate himself from Steve’s apparently incredibly awesome soul. “You really have nothing you want to bargain for?” he asks, his voice soft.
Steve glances at Dardew, Eddie Munson’s face looking back at him, and sighs.
“The one thing I’d ask for, you can’t give me,” Steve says and then pushes himself up to his feet.