Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Eddie’s labored breathing sputters to a stop and he stills, lifeless, Dustin keels over.

He bawls into his hands, fists pressed angrily to his eyes with no actual efforts made to stop crying. Eddie said he loved him and Dustin said it back, but there’s nowhere for the love to go anymore, so it’s useless now. It’s an insect of a feeling, throwing itself repeatedly into a closed window and still trying to get out, out, out.

Dirt shifts beneath him, forming grooves beneath his knees and elbows. Isn’t that funny, he thinks dryly, about how the ground accommodates the weight of his grief. For a moment, Dustin can sense something in his mind shifting. There’s an uncanny kind of truth rattling his bones that this event is going to change him. He already feels older, which is rather devastating, because he never thought about age that way. Does growing up always have to mean losing someone?

The ground rattles. It shocks Dustin out of crying, survival instincts briefly overshadowing the grief. He remembers earthquake drills he’d done in the past, fleeting memories of hiding under desks to protect the skull, the neck, the spine. It almost makes him laugh, how he was once a small child, hands wound protectively around his head, and that seemed like the most dangerous thing that could ever happen to him.

They’re out in the open, but Dustin still ducks, shielding Eddie’s body from nonexistent falling debris. Distantly, chimes ring, but he can’t process the implications of that right now. 

He can’t tell when the shaking stops, because he’s shaking too. Grief is shuddering its way through his body like some kind of violent fever, so differentiating is really a matter of where the ground ends and his fingertips begin. Curling over Eddie’s body in a useless defense may feel secure, but he has to sit up; the adrenaline is wearing off and he’s slowly realizing the number that the fall did on his leg.

It’s the most self-centered he’s ever felt. His friend is dead next to him, skin cold and blood drying dark brown, but Dustin’s apparently the one in pain. 

“Dustin!”

Steve’s suddenly in his line of sight. Or maybe it’s not so sudden. You can never really tell, not when time is misery-warped like this, stretching and waning lethargically. Besides, Dustin’s watch got lost somewhere in the crossfire. Emotionally and practically, he has no way of knowing how long he’s been here.

All this to say, he blinks once and Steve’s crouched in front of him, saying something inaudible over the ringing in Dustin’s ears.

“Dustin.” Steve gives Dustin’s shoulders a light shake, and it’s so immediately grounding that he flinches. Dread creeps in when he hears his first name; something really bad must be happening if he’s Dustin and not Henderson.

Dustin finally meets his eyes. “Steve.”

“I’m here, I’m here,” he reassures, anxious hands squeezing his shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m…” Dustin trails off, mouth still gaping, directing his gaze toward Eddie because it doesn’t seem like Steve’s noticed him yet. Unless he has, and somehow remained calm enough to be pragmatic. Steve’s always been good at that: sidelining grief to make room for heroism. Dustin should really learn a thing or two from him, because currently, he’s never felt more useless in the face of death. It just paralyzes him.

Steve follows his gaze and grimaces. There’s an unmistakable familiarity to the expression, which confirms his theory that Steve did, in fact, notice. He must’ve seen their silhouettes from afar and put the pieces together. “I know,” he sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dustin.”

Something pangs in Dustin’s chest, and fresh tears pool in his eyes. He doesn’t even have to blink; with his head downturned they fall anyway, splashing onto the backs of his hands.

Trailing a hand up and down his back, Steve sighs like he preemptively regrets what he’s about to say next. “We can’t stay here.”

Though he agrees, Dustin shakes his head vigorously. Grief and rationality clash in real time. 

“C’mon, Henderson,” he encourages, patient as ever. There’s no judgement in his tone, only sympathy, but it feels like a gut punch all the same. “Can you walk?”

Nancy and Robin materialize on his left and right. They must have been here all along, but his mind scrubbed them out of the picture. Maybe one person at a time was all that his fragile psyche could handle. They haul him up by the elbows, firm but careful. He isn’t ready for it, the process of standing, moving, leaving, but if they weren’t there to force it, he’s pretty sure he might’ve just stayed there forever.

Dustin tries to take a step, but his leg buckles. Nancy and Robin’s supporting hands return in a panicked rush, catching him before he faceplants on the ground. His vision spins and he sees the body again, motionless and blood-soaked and wrong. Eddie.

He whines, but it isn’t really because of his leg. “I can’t,” Dustin gasps out. “I can’t just leave him here.”

“Dustin, we don’t have a choice,” Nancy tells him, her voice exhausted. “You’re hurt, Steve’s hurt, and we need to see if everyone else is okay. I wish we could take him with us, but it just isn’t safe.” 

“His uncle,” Dustin cries. “What am I supposed to tell his uncle?” He can already picture it: Wayne Munson searching for Eddie with no chance of ever finding a body, spending the rest of his life seeking impossible closure.

Older memories flood in. (Late autumn 1983, missing posters plastered on every lamppost in town, photos of his childhood friend smiling beneath 'HAVE YOU SEEN ME?’ scrawled in black sharpie.)

“It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, we can bring something of his with us,” Robin soothes. She turns to Steve, still maintaining her grip on Dustin’s upper arm. “Steve, can you…” she swallows thickly, overcome with an emotion that Dustin can’t place. “Can you grab something of his? Does he have anything on him, anything small enough to carry?”

Turning his head, Dustin watches as Steve searches Eddie’s body, then reaches forward as he apparently finds something worth taking. At that point, he has to look away. It feels too barbaric, like watching a vulture picking apart roadkill. Nancy wipes some grime off of Dustin’s face with her sleeve, perhaps as a comforting gesture, or perhaps just to have somewhere to look that isn’t at Eddie. It seems that no matter how old you are, corpses never get any less disturbing.

“Do you want to carry these?” Steve’s voice cuts through his thoughts. He holds a hand out, and Eddie’s four rings and guitar pick necklace are sitting in his palm. Dustin nods, but feels sick as soon as he takes them, the cold metal growing warm in his closed fist.

(Later at the school, when he returns Eddie’s necklace to Wayne Munson, he stalks away before Dustin can give him the rings, too. He thinks about calling after him, even opens his mouth to do so, but selfishly, no words come out. Whatever he was going to say turns to a mere exhale when he feels the same sensation he did two days ago, the once-cold rings heating up against his skin.

There’s a responsibility there, to the intricate metalwork pressing into his palm, but he just can’t place it yet.)

—

It takes Dustin until June to visit Eddie’s grave for the first time. It didn’t entirely stem from avoidance, but rather, practicality. The earthquakes—at least that’s what the media had been calling them, because everyone knows earthquakes split your town into glowing, bright red quarters—had pushed many people out of Hawkins. As for those who stayed, they became angry. Impatient, demanding answers from a town that’s been hit with tragedy after tragedy the past few years. Jason Carver’s death certainly didn’t help the matter.

(“He was torn in half,” Lucas had told Dustin plainly when they’d regrouped. Dustin breathed out a sigh that was equally shocked and relieved.

But he couldn’t mask the part of himself that cringed in entirely self-absorbed fear; everything was going to get worse from here. Jason had died a martyr because he told people what they wanted to hear: kill the freak/down the cult/save the girl. He was the golden boy of Hawkins: popular, rich, athletic, with a high school sweetheart everyone expected him to settle down with.

It’s terrifying, the way people react when the truth is something they don’t want it to be.

The way they see it, people like Eddie, and by extension, people like Dustin, were obstacles in the path Jason had started to clear. Now that Jason was gone, the rest of the town had even more of a reason to finish what he started. They already got Eddie. Dustin must be next.)

The point is, tensions are high. Dustin visiting the graveyard in broad daylight to see Eddie Munson of all people, the very same graveyard where Jason is buried, is something of a suicide mission.

So naturally, he goes at night. It’s probably safer. At the very least, Hopper will yell at him less than usual if he finds out.

It’s raining in sheets, which is always how it seems to pour in summertime. He sees his reflection briefly in a puddle before he bikes through it, ripples tearing the image apart. With one hand still on the handlebars, he reaches up to pull the hood of Steve’s hand-me-down raincoat over his head. He must be getting taller, because he isn’t absolutely drowning in it the way he was when it was first given to him.

When he hops off his bike and starts walking it through the graveyard, it doesn’t take long to spot Eddie’s headstone. Even in the dark, he can see the spray paint glistening. He can’t tell what it says from here, but Dustin figures it can’t possibly be anything uplifting.

The rain isn’t washing the paint off. Why isn’t the rain washing the paint off?

(The water isn’t washing the blood off. Why isn’t the water washing the blood off?

After Max was out of surgery and her vitals were holding stable, the party had decided to return to the Wheeler’s house for the night. Now, at forty-eight minutes past two in the morning, Dustin finds himself standing at the kitchen sink. There’s no soap, but the water’s as hot as it can go—so hot that it’s near-scalding. Still, nothing changes, and Eddie’s blood remains stubbornly caked on his hands, wrists, under his nails, everywhere.

He doesn’t really remember how they get scrubbed clean in the end. After a few minutes, Nancy leads him away from the sink, herding him back downstairs to be with the others. That’s how it’s been lately: nobody gets to be alone for too long.)

“Shit,” Dustin curses, dropping his bike in the mud and running over to the grave. “Eddie, I’m so sorry, shit,” He tries to use his sleeve to wipe it away, but it doesn’t budge, the paint long-since crusted onto the stone. “I should’ve come sooner. I should’ve been there.”

Maybe this isn’t just about the grave.

He lowers an arm, leaning back until he’s no longer squatting, but sitting down in the wet grass. “You…” Dustin starts, though it’s more of a noise than a word. “Hi,” he finally manages, embarrassed, but there’s warmth in the thought that Eddie would make fun of him for this. 

Really? He would’ve said. Three months of radio silence, and all you have for me is a ‘hi?’

“This is really hard, fuck,” he’s not crying yet, but wipes his eyes with sheer muscle memory. “I’m sorry about…” Dustin gestures to the defaced headstone. “This. Like I said, I wish I’d visited sooner. And y’know, stopped it before it ever happened.”

Neither of us have the power to stop these things, Henderson. When people hate something, they go out of their way to get rid of it.

“I’m gonna clean it tomorrow,” he resolves. “And I’ll make sure it stays clean, I promise.”

Sweet kid. This town is going to eat you alive.

“Oh, I just remembered,” Dustin reaches into his pocket and pulls out four rings. They glisten in the wet night air.

He’s been bringing them with him everywhere, a distinguishable weight in his pocket he never leaves the house without. He still has yet to try them on; doing so has always seemed immoral to him. They were never intended to be his, after all. But after months of deliberation, Dustin had decided that if he ever were to wear them, he should at least show them off to Eddie.

He slips them on: index, middle, and ring fingers, then the ring finger on the other hand, the way Eddie used to. They’re a little loose, but maybe he’ll grow into them.

He holds up his decorated hands parallel to the name etched in the headstone. “What do you think?”

—

He calls Steve the next morning, knowing there’s less of a chance he’ll sleep through the phone ringing; it’s a weekday after all, so he’ll be working at WSQK.

“Hey, this is Steve Harrington at WSQK 94.5 FM, our disc jockey is on break at the current moment, but what can I do for—”

Dustin decides not to bother with pleasantries. “Do you have any lacquer thinner?” 

“Henderson, is that you?”

“Lacquer thinner. Or paint thinner, at the very least. Do you have any?”

“What—yes, I have some in my garage, but care to fill a guy in? What are you doing, calling me at eight in the goddamn morning demanding lacquer thinner?” Steve is twisting the phone cord anxiously with his fingers, and Dustin can hear it crackling through the receiver.

And sure, Steve’s always been loyal; Dustin knows he still has that nail bat lying around somewhere, and that he would dust it off the moment he was given the word. But the infuriating other side of that coin is that he’s always curious. Sometimes he wishes that Steve could just be asked something without Dustin having to tell the story behind the question. Especially with this stuff—the Eddie stuff. It’s all so emotionally exhausting.

“Steve, I just need to…” he sighs wearily, brushing a hand through his hair, yanking with force when his fingers catch on a knot. “I just need to clean something up.”

It’s silent for a moment. “Okay,” Steve says slowly and evenly, like he’s processing something incredibly complex. “Okay,” he repeats more firmly. “I’ll pick you up after work today, yeah?” 

Dustin exhales, grateful for the silent understanding on Steve’s part. “Yeah, thanks,” he mumbles, and then hangs up promptly before the sympathy becomes overwhelmingly saccharine.

It’s like people don’t know how to talk to him anymore. Or maybe Dustin’s just bad at grieving, because he’s pretty sure kind words and gentle touches aren’t supposed to feel as sharp as they do. But every hug just makes him squirm, and every time someone says I’m here for you, his skin crawls. He wishes someone could force the grief out of him, maybe shake him by the shoulders until he’s dizzy enough to feel like a person again. But everyone loves him too much to do that. It’s so unfair.

Hours later, when Steve knocks at his door to pick him up, he has this look on his face that Dustin’s gotten very familiar with over the past few months. It’s a grotesque mix of pity/hope/fear. “Hey Henderson,” he greets cheerfully, like the sun shining on snow.

God, Dustin’s been an asshole to him lately, he doesn’t know how Steve puts up with it. Every time he tries to say sorry, it feels dangerous: too vulnerable, sickly-sweet and placating. It was the way he spoke when Eddie died.

To apologize to Steve is to perpetuate a loss, not happening yet but always in a state of could. Apologies are reserved for the dying, Dustin’s decided, and Steve isn’t dying. But Dustin’s not heartless; he’s sure to give him lots and lots of work to do, and today, it’s all about the lacquer thinner. Steve likes to be useful, to be needed. It’s the only olive branch Dustin can offer that isn’t sure to kill him.

When they settle into their respective seats of the car, Steve adjusts his mirrors and turns to face him. “Graveyard, right?” He asks, just in case he’d read the situation wrong over the phone.

Dustin presses his lips together and hums. “That’s right.”

The conversation dies pretty much immediately after that. They don’t really talk anymore, not that they don’t talk, but that they don’t talk. Their friendship has grown more cordial, like a mutual understanding between soldiers. It’s all survival, strategy, and heroism. When was the last time they’d watched a movie together?

But Steve being Steve, he always tries a little harder than Dustin does. He’s good-natured like that. While Dustin fiddles with the rings on his hands, twisting the metal skull forward-facing from where it’s slipped to the side, Steve watches him out of the corner of his eye. “Rings,” he muses, like he’s seeing them for the very first time. “Are you trying for a new look this next school year or something?”

And this confuses Dustin more than anything, because Steve was—

(—the one who plucked the jewelry off Eddie’s corpse in the first place, and while Dustin had turned away, nausea pooling in his stomach at the sight of Steve lifting Eddie’s quickly-stiffening fingers to pry the rings off, he knew how intentional it was.

It’s not something you could ever really forget, so why is Steve—)

“—acting like this?!” Dustin comes back to himself near-shouting, words moving faster than his brain can keep up with.

Though Dustin isn’t entirely sure what he said, Steve looks alarmed, and the hand that isn’t on the wheel is held up innocuously. “Sorry, Jesus!” He exclaims, shaking off the verbosity with hurried defense. “Just trying to make conversation, man. Didn’t realize it was such a touchy subject for you.”

Dustin says nothing in return, because he still doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. No point in engaging in a conversation he can’t remember starting.

“Seriously, you need to get your attitude in check. I’m doing this for you, you know,” Steve continues lecturing, and Dustin lets it fade into the background as he looks out the window. He’s pissed at how he soured the situation, but also mildly amused at how much of an exasperated mother Steve sounds like right now.

Are you trying for a new look this next school year or something?

He still doesn’t get it. It’s only been two-and-a-half months since Eddie died. Since everything. Steve was the last person to ever see him, and he’s already forgetting.

A horrible epiphany is turning itself over in his mind, containing swirled imagery of ornate rings and squeaky laughter and energy like a rabid animal: all Eddie. His likes, dislikes, handwriting, faded scars from childhood, the rips in his jeans—it’s all disappearing.

Sickeningly, Dustin realizes he might be the only one still in Hawkins who truly remembers Eddie. 

“Dude, are you listening?” Steve waves a hand in front of his face, and Dustin blinks, startling out of his spiral. Steve’s looking at him with an expression crossed between annoyance and concern. “You good? You look…freaked out.”

Dustin thumps his head against the back of his seat. “M’good, Steve. I just didn’t sleep well.” He briefly breaks his no-apology rule when he tacks on a sorry to the end of that sentence. He doesn’t want to fight; he’s too tired today.

Steve sighs, and lucky for Dustin, he doesn’t seem annoyed anymore. “I’m not trying to give you a harder time in an already hard time. I’m just worried about you, Henderson. You’re not yourself.”

It dissolves into another tirade, this time centered around his wellbeing, which is so much worse, so Dustin just nods and pretends to listen as they circle the block for parking near the graveyard. All he can hear is Steve’s forgetting, Hawkins is forgetting, they’re all forgetting on a constant loop in his brain.

—

The night before school starts again is hot, the kind of heat that lingers even hours after the sun sets, foggy and suffocating. Dustin thinks it’s a bad omen, but he thinks that most things are bad omens these days, so the thought doesn’t really stand out much. 

As he’s always done, he packs his bag the night before—the same backpack he’s been using pretty much his entire life—and picks out the clothes he’ll want to wear tomorrow. 

The Hellfire shirt is hanging at the front of his closet. He can’t reach for it, he’s not allowed to, but his hands twitch instinctively when he sees it.

(Hopper had gathered him, Mike, Lucas, and Will in his cabin earlier this week to talk about the transition back to school, and how it’ll affect their Crawl operations. Well, to be more specific, he talked about separating those two things.

“The safety and success of these missions depends on confidentiality. That means you lay low, don’t draw attention to yourselves, and follow the rules.” Hopper had said in that very serious inflection he always used when he was really hammering in that he was an adult and everyone else was a kid. But that tone made Dustin suppress an eyeroll, because things are already so bad. Why even bother with trying to be foreboding when this has been their life for the past four years? 

“Hey kid, Henderson,” Hopper droned, eye-level with Dustin. His tone was neither kind nor unkind, just resolute. “That means you too, capisce?”

Dustin lifted his head. He can never bear to meet people in the eyes when he’s lying to them, so he looked a little past Hopper when he said it. “Yeah, Hop. I get it.”)

He looks in the mirror and tries to think of little ways to protest, to subtly tell the world that Hellfire didn’t die with Eddie Munson. It’s still there, dim and smothered in a closed fist of lay low, but still there. Dustin still wears his rings, of course. Now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure he hasn’t taken them off since that night in the cemetery. His hair is getting longer too, slightly brushing his shoulders now. He tucks loose strands behind his ears, then muses fleetingly, maybe I should get them pierced.

One thing at a time. For now, he’ll settle for the hair and the rings. Maybe when more time has passed and Hopper’s eyes aren’t watching their every move so fervently, he’ll get to think about these things with less levity and more intention.

He’ll turn in early tonight, Dustin decides, because he doesn’t want to think about Eddie anymore and there’s nothing else to do today anyway. These days, the more chances he gets to be unconscious, the better. Sometimes he’ll take power naps in Steve’s Beamer while he’s at WSQK, though it never lasts long. He always ends up getting shaken awake to help troubleshoot the audio routing, or sort through the endless music curations Robin’s picked out for the week.

Being a friend is exhausting, he thinks as he flicks the lightswitch off. If he didn’t know the people he did, he’d probably get much more sleep than he does now. 

Sometimes he thinks it would be nice to be far away from their ongoing war with the Upside Down, living as a completely oblivious junior at Hawkins High. He wonders what he would even be doing. Maybe he’d still be playing Dungeons & Dragons. He’d definitely still be best friends with Mike, Lucas, and Will, but probably wouldn't have crossed paths with Steve or Robin. Maybe not even Max.

The past four years have brought great people into his life. That’s the problem.

He rolls over onto his side, knees to his chest and eyes wide open. Despite his rush to go to bed, sleep isn’t going to come easy tonight, he can tell.

Mindlessly, he fidgets with Eddie’s rings, spinning them around and around for hours until his vision grows fuzzy. It’s not quite as satisfying as sleep would be, but it’s the closest he’ll get, so he’ll take it.

—

Dustin gets about fifteen minutes of peace at school before things start to go awry.

First period hasn’t even started yet. He’s minding his business at his locker when a foot swipes at his ankles and he finds himself crumpling onto the ground. “What the hell is your problem?” He spits out automatically, before even bothering to look up at his assailant. With one hand against the lockers, he pulls himself back upright.

You have to remain at their level, Dustin’s learned from years of dealing with bullies. If they push you down, never stay there.

When he turns around, he finds himself face-to-face with Andy Harper, the rest of the basketball team lingering closely in the background. A swarm of flies, that’s what they are.

“Son of a bitch,” Dustin mutters under his breath. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with any of Jason’s cronies right now. Maybe over lunch would be more cordial; he’d definitely be more productive in this situation if it wasn’t seven in the goddamn morning. “What could possibly be the issue?” He asks exasperatedly.

“You were in Hellfire,” Andy says, matter-of-fact, like it’s some kind of earth-shattering discovery he made, and not a photo in hundreds of yearbooks. 

And there’s a million things that Dustin could say to him. He would be so, so easy to anger. Dustin’s not really scared of what these guys could do; when you’ve seen monsters from the Upside Down with faces that blossom open to thousands of jagged teeth, the threat of getting suckerpunched doesn’t really seem all that frightening. 

But it’s the first day, and Hopper said lay low, so he doesn’t say anything. Just exhales slowly and leans against the lockers. 

Dustin can tell Andy’s studying him. His eyes flicker, and there’s something expectant there, like he’s waiting for the opportunity to draw blood. “You proud of that?” Andy asks. “Being associated with that murderer?”

He knows Andy is saying it purely to get a reaction out of him, but he can feel it happening in real time, the words spoken with the surgical precision of a scalpel. “He’s not a murderer,” Dustin says out of instinct. And he’s not talking back, he’s not, because it’s just a fact. 

They don’t know that, he can practically hear Hopper reprimanding in his head.

“Oh, okay,” Andy turns to face his friends, a humorless smile on his face. “Enlighten me then, Henderson. What the hell was he? You know, aside from a drug-dealing creep.”

“You didn’t know him,” Dustin tries, though his voice suddenly sounds much smaller than it did a few moments ago. “He was…” a hero. “Good. He was good.”

But they aren’t listening. Andy’s shaking his head incredulously, as though Dustin’s started speaking in tongues. A fist meets the metal next to his head. A warning. “Eddie was a fucking killer,” Andy hisses. “You’re on the wrong side of history, Dustin Henderson.”

Here’s the thing about knowing how to rile people up: it doesn’t make you immune to it, it just means you can tell when it’s working. So Dustin sees the signs that he’s about to bite back before they happen: the anger burning in his throat and the tension rattling his hands. He has a split second to decide whether or not he’s going to disregard everything Hopper said entirely, and concludes, fuck it.

“Hellfire was a Dungeons and Dragons club. It’s a tabletop game, not a cult. You’re just mad because Jason died for a cause you know is complete bullshit.”

It takes less than a second after the sentence leaves his lips for Andy to kick him in the shin as hard as he can, and Dustin finds himself careening down to the floor a second time. “Jesus Christ, you’re just as bad as he was,” he hears Andy mutter as he and his friends stalk away, the warning bell screeching.

Dustin’s breathing is rapid and shaky, but as he watches as the letterman jackets disappear around the corner, he finds himself grinning. Triumph swells in his chest, and even though he’s the one who ended up on the floor with his leg screaming, it feels like he won something.

It’s atonement, he realizes, as he uses leftover adrenaline to stand up and start limping to his first period.  They can’t forget if I don’t let them.

The epiphany is thrilling. It’s the most productive his grief has ever felt. 

—

Getting on their nerves becomes a routine over the next few weeks. They usually start out just by talking, which is Dustin’s least favorite part. He’s a strategist, sure, but he doesn’t want to bother using brainpower on pointless conversation with Andy or his friends. Usually, he’ll say something vexing enough to shut them up and earn himself some kind of hit.

It’s this weird game of chicken they play: how far can you go before the fists come out? But it gets easier over time, because what he’s saying starts to matter less to them. They just hate the fact that he keeps talking, keeps pushing—how he makes a point to have one foot planted stubbornly in Eddie’s shadow. 

His friends are worried, which is a problem, because this routine is working fine for him.

It doesn’t help when he shows up to their lunch table with a shiner. The purple, mottled skin is impossible to hide from them, so he doesn’t even try. He just tells them he accidentally knocked his face against Steve’s car door, and though he’s not sure if they believe him, they wince sympathetically. Will runs to grab a soda can from the vending machine to hold against his eye. 

For the rest of lunch, Dustin leans into the cold metal of an unopened Coke and lets his other eye slide shut while the conversation blurs around him. His friends have no clue what’s going on in his head, but to be fair, he never gives them any. There’s no obvious fault in a situation that nobody knows is happening.

“Dustin?” Lucas taps his arm.

Dustin startles, though he wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t even close. “Hm?”

“I asked if you wanted to come with me to see Max at the hospital after school.” Lucas is staring at him with an indecipherable expression, but whatever he’s conveying, it seems serious. “You alright, man? You’re not concussed, are you?” He leans in to get a closer look at Dustin’s pupils.

Scoffing, Dustin pushes him away by the shoulder. “Christ, Lucas, I’m not concussed.” He snorts, though there’s nothing really funny about the situation. “And…yeah. Yeah, I’ll go with you. I haven’t gone to see her in awhile.”

(The last time he saw her was the last week of summer. Her casts had been removed, thank goodness, because seeing her all broken like that was miserable. 

Lucas is so much stronger than Dustin could ever hope to be. He was there when it happened, when her sneakers had lifted off the ground with a force he couldn’t see coming. Even during the ugliest parts, when her bones caved inwards until they snapped and blood streaked down her face from her sclera, he never looked away. He could never be scared of her, only for her.

He stayed by her side throughout the entire aftermath, visiting her every day through the worst of it: the bruises, the paleness, the ICU. It must be relieving for him too, to see her casts taken off. She looks more like Max now—their friend Max. Smart, headstrong, playful, snarky Max. A little less fragile.

Guilt surges, of course it does, at how he could ever consider Max fragile just for getting hurt. He isn’t as good as Lucas is at recognizing people past their pain, how there’s always a name behind a wound. All Dustin can ever see is the wound itself.)

When the two of them get to the hospital, Lucas sets up music the way he always does, slotting a Hounds of Love cassette into his tape player. ‘Running Up That Hill’ plays loud enough for Max to hear, but soft enough to save room for conversation. Dustin contributes nothing throughout this process, just lowers himself into the chair on the opposite side of her bed, reaching for the hand that Lucas isn’t already holding.

Lucas stares for a moment, squinting at Dustin’s hand. “When did you start wearing rings?”

“Oh,” Dustin says, releasing Max’s hand and standing up to give Lucas a closer look at them. “They were Eddie’s. I meant to give them to his uncle, but…anyway. I have them now.”

Recognition flashes in Lucas’ expression, and he smiles. “I thought they looked familiar!” Then, “they suit you,” he says more softly, like he really wants Dustin to internalize that.

He does. “Thanks, man.”

The room is lulled into near-silence again, aside from Kate Bush crooning in the background. He doesn’t really know why, but Dustin suddenly gets the urge to ask the question: “do you think they would’ve been friends? Max and Eddie?”

Lucas exhales, leaning back in his chair thoughtfully. “Well, they were neighbors, but I dunno. From what Max told me, I don’t think they interacted all that much.”

Dustin leans forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the bed. For the first time in awhile, without bitterness, blood-tinged adrenaline, or sarcasm, he smiles. “I think he would’ve gotten on her fucking nerves.”

A surprised laugh tears out of Lucas. “Yeah, probably. Maybe it’s for the better they never met.”

Eddie was hyper-expressive, obnoxious, and pushed people too far. A true Dungeon Master, always the loudest one in the room. He would march on top of lunchtables, dance around when he was excited, loved or hated and was always loved or hated in return. There were never any in-betweens when it came to knowing him. 

Max was going through something, the months leading up to spring break. She would barely talk to Lucas or respond to Eleven’s letters. She started missing school more and more. Nobody knew what to do, and the harder they tried, the harder she pulled away from them. It seemed like she just wanted to be alone all the time. Like she wanted everyone to leave her behind, reliving the same thing over and over until she was consumed by it.

Eddie. Max. They couldn’t be more different.

“Do you remember…” Lucas starts, his shaky voice ripping Dustin out of his thoughts, “that time where Max tried to teach Mike how to skateboard?”

“Holy shit, yeah. Then he fell flat on his ass and refused to touch the damn thing ever again,” Dustin recalls. “Imagine Eddie on a skateboard.”

Lucas throws his head back and laughs. It’s a sweet, rare sound these days. “Oh god, he would’ve been even worse. Probably would’ve had a bruise like yours.”

Dustin reaches a hand up to hover over his eye. Lost in conversation, he’d forgotten how it was still stinging. He tunes back into his surroundings, their current, shitty reality setting back in; ‘Running Up That Hill’ is on its fourth loop.

“Dustin, you can’t provoke them like this.” Lucas says, his voice suddenly steely and sad, lacking any of the playfulness from before.

Making a point to look confused, Dustin throws his hands up in surrender. “The hell, Lucas? It was—”

“—Steve’s car door? Seriously Dustin, I’m not stupid. I know what a bruise from a fist looks like. These guys, they aren’t…” Lucas swallows, then looks past Dustin like he’s remembering something harrowing. 

(After coming back from the Upside Down and reuniting with the others at the hospital, Dustin had distantly noticed how swollen and bruised Lucas’ face had been. Too caught up in his own grief and shock, he couldn’t muster up the energy to ask how it happened. The two of them just sat silently next to each other in the waiting room, trembling underneath the weight of loss.)

“These guys aren’t messing around. They could kill you.”

“No.” Dustin stands up, grabbing his hoodie off the chair and pulling it over his head. “I’m not having this conversation right now. Not in front of Max.”

Lucas grabs him by the sleeve before he can exit. “Then when, Dustin? I’m not trying to corner you, I just want you to talk to me. Talk to anyone. Mike, Will, Steve, c’mon. We’re worried about you.”

(“I don’t know how to get her to just talk to me,” Lucas had confided in the rest of the party during those terrible months Max had been so distant. “I feel like I’m losing her. Like we all are.”)

Dustin shakes his arm out of Lucas’ hold, storming off, even though he knows he doesn’t really have any right to.

He thinks he might be starting to get it now, why Max acted the way she did. Anger is so much safer to harness when you’re alone in it, when there’s nobody else around to get caught in the crossfire. 

—

Dustin really, really fucked up this time.

It’s the first coherent thought that breaks through when he finds himself clawing his way back to consciousness. He doesn’t fully make it there, so he just kind of exists between sleep and wakefulness for a moment, his eyes closed and his face pressed to cool grass. It’s still daytime; he can feel the sun on his neck.

He tries to recall what got him here, but the memories come in incoherent bursts, like an instant camera flashing in his face over and over. (The graveyard, being horribly outnumbered, fists from all angles, blood dripping on grass, dried out in the early autumn sun, his vision spinning as he fell.)

Trying to open his eyes is much harder than he anticipated, like there’s an oppressive force keeping him down. Everything is just so heavy. He finally manages to crack them open, peering at his blurry surroundings through bruised slivers. A groan forces its way out of his mouth, surprising himself; he can’t really feel too much right now, so what could have possibly elicited that reaction?

Groggily, he pushes himself partially-upright with his elbows, jolting violently when the pressure on his forearms sends pain racing through his hands all the way to his fingertips. He looks down at them, trying to piece the pain together like some kind of puzzle.

Ah.

His fingers are…broken, that’s what they are, bent at unnatural angles and bruised around his rings.

It comes back to him in another flash of memories. (Using his arms to break his fall before he hit the ground, combat boots coming down hard on his outstretched hands with an anger he couldn’t even remember provoking out of them, the awful sound of something crunching, a distant threat from Andy that sounded hazy as the pain reached an apex.)

He turns his head, looking for the bike. Where there’s a bike, there’s a radio, and where there’s a radio, there’s help. When he sees it laying on its side a few feet away, he army crawls over to it. He’s not sure if he trusts himself to stand up yet with his head still spinning.

Dustin thinks back to all the times he’s seen Steve concussed, blood trickling down his face and neck while he still manages to focus his attention on protecting everyone else. How the hell does he do it? Dustin can barely lift himself a foot off the ground right now without his vision flickering.

When he makes it to his bike, he wrangles the radio out of the rope securing it to the rack and makes sure it’s on a private channel before pressing down on the PTT with the heel of his palm. “Steve?” He croaks into the mic. “It’s Dustin, do you copy? Over.”

He doesn’t want anyone else to hear this. It would just be too much, having his entire circle of friends show up and seeing him in this state. He’s never really gotten hurt like this, and he’s not supposed to either, in the dynamic they’ve forged over the past few years fighting monsters. There’s comfort for the others, he knows, in the fact that Dustin isn’t one they have to keep a close eye on.

“Steve, come in,” He tries again, after all he’s met with is silence. Not now, don’t disappear on me now. “Do you copy? Over.”

“Yeah, Henderson, I copy. I’m at work, can this wait?”

He rests his head against the dirt again, the dizziness suddenly returning. “Steve, please,” he mumbles, and can’t find the energy to say more than that. Not even an over.

Steve must sense something is wrong, because there’s a long pause over the radio that sounds like he’s thinking. Then, “Dustin, where are you?”

“Graveyard,” Dustin mutters, vision shifting and swirling like a kaleidoscope. It’s not nearly as pretty; in fact, he thinks he might puke if he stays awake much longer. His fingers ache, the pain soaring as he gasps.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve hisses, and Dustin can hear footsteps and the jingle of car keys, as well as Robin’s unintelligible, confused voice over the line. “Stay there, okay Henderson? I’m on my way. Over.” The over sounds unnatural in his voice, like it wasn’t made for radio, and Dustin almost laughs because he literally works at a radio station. Well, Robin is the one who does all the talking, he supposes.

With the promise that Steve’s going to pick him up, Dustin finds himself starting to relax into the ground, drifting off. But he quickly shakes himself awake, trying to sit up as much as he can. If Steve saw him slumped over in the grass like that, bleeding and bruised, he’d probably think Dustin’s dying. Or maybe already dead.

He can’t do that to him.

Dustin thinks back to how Steve’s face looked, the day that Eddie died in the Upside Down. The way he’d rushed over to Dustin’s side, strong hands holding him securely by the shoulders and asking fearfully are you hurt? like Steve’s world would’ve shattered if Dustin actually was.

Is it too late to call Steve back and ask him to turn the car around? Now that he thinks about it, he’s really not looking forward to seeing his reaction to this. Panic starts to snowball, because he’s spent months trying to keep Steve at arm’s length, and all of it is about to come undone. When someone is willing to come running to you, for you, it feels like the kind of thing you can’t really reverse. 

Maybe making himself more presentable would help this all feel less significant, or at least, scare Steve less. Dustin uses his elbows to push himself the rest of the way into sitting upright, harnessing all of his focus into preventing himself from falling right back into the dirt. Clumsily, he uses his hoodie sleeve to wipe some blood off of his face, broken fingers hanging limply. He tries not to look at them.

That’s how Steve finds him, cleaning himself up the best he can in a pathetic kind of damage control. He skids to his knees in front of Dustin, grabbing his forearms to pull them away from his face with a “Henderson, stop, don’t touch it.”

It frustrates the hell out of Dustin, because he’s trying to do this for Steve, but Steve’s not letting him.

Steve cranes his neck, trying to get a look at his face. “Kid, you alright? Did you hit your head?” Dustin watches in horror as Steve registers the state of his hands, quickly loosening his grip and swearing emphatically. “Shit, your fingers—okay. Let’s go to the car. Can you stand?”

When Dustin gives a loose nod, Steve wastes no time dragging him back to a standing position, making sure to avoid jostling his injured hands in the process. He slings an arm around him to help him to the car when walking proves difficult, his vision spotting precariously and legs shaking.

They get to the car slowly, and Steve settles Dustin into the front seat while he circles behind the car to dig through the trunk. When he returns with a toolbox, Dustin eyes it precariously, something akin to dread building. He finally sits down in the driver’s seat with the toolbox balanced on his lap, then reaches for Dustin’s wrists to get a better look at the damage. “Alright, first order of business, let’s get these rings off. Your fingers are swelling up really quickly.”

At this, Dustin yanks his hands away protectively, saying probably his first coherent sentence since Steve found him in the graveyard. “No, no, Steve, you can’t do that.”

Steve meets his eyes, hands held up passively, aside from the pliers held in one of them. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll be quick, it won’t even hurt.”

Dustin shakes his head, hands still pressed firmly against his chest. Humiliatingly, he finds his eyes watering, and his voice watering alongside it. “Steve,” he begs. “Don’t cut them off.”

Steve makes a frustrated noise. He’s not actually angry, Dustin can tell. He’s just experiencing the innate annoyance that tends to surface when dealing with a delirious, injured, uncooperative teenager.  “Henderson, if we don’t get those rings off, you’ll lose blood flow to your fingers. That could get really fucking bad!” 

“They’re Eddie’s rings!” Dustin shouts, the emotion tearing through him with a desperation and violence that surprises even himself.

Steve freezes, looking down at the rings again, and a devastating kind of recognition flashes in his eyes. He breathes out slowly, letting go of the pliers. “Oh,” he says, looking like he wants to say more, but only staring. Dustin stares back, trying to plead everything he’s too incapacitated to say through his eyes.

For a moment, Steve seems frozen in thought. He turns away from Dustin, staring out into the graveyard over the dash, then abruptly starts the car.

Dustin gapes at him. “Where are we going?”

Keeping his eyes forward as they turn onto the main road, Steve sighs. “We have to get those rings off,” he starts, holding a hand up in a wordless hang on when Dustin’s expression turns to one of protest. “I won’t cut them off, okay? Not unless I absolutely have to. Let’s go back to my place, and we’ll figure something out there. Cool?”

Mirroring Steve by keeping his own gaze on the road, Dustin nods warily. “Cool,” he agrees, the wooziness returning in the wake of the conversation’s emotional flux. He lets his head fall back onto the headrest, wincing when the action reverberates pain. Steve’s hand lands on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze, and Dustin makes an effort not to blink so the tears will dry up instead of falling. 

“Try not to fall asleep,” Steve warns, using the hand already on Dustin’s shoulder to give him a cautionary shake when his eyes droop. “I still don’t know what we’re dealing with head-injury wise. It’s probably just a concussion, but I don’t want to chance it.”

Steve cracks the window open. The wind whips Dustin’s neck and he shivers at the suddenness of it: the juxtaposition of the cool breeze and the heat in the car cranked all the way up. Angling his head slightly to look out the window, he watches as the sun sets, slivers of light growing increasingly smaller on the pavement until they fully disappear into shadows. It’s beautiful, the way it always seems to be when these things happen. Another cloudless day, unnoticed in the smog of grief.

“M’sorry,” Dustin murmurs, without even thinking about it first. He doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for; there are too many things it could be.

Steve shakes his head as they turn into his garage. “No, no, I’m glad you called me,” he says, interpreting the apology to be about the inconvenience of it all—dragging Steve out of work, having him piece Dustin back together like a shattered vase. Well, Dustin is sorry about that, so he’ll take it. 

In a few vertigo-inducing motions, Dustin finds himself being pulled out of the car and walked into Steve’s house. He’s brought into the kitchen, bearing his weight on the countertop by the sink while Steve drags a chair in from the dining room table for Dustin to sit on.

“Give me your hands,” Steve directs, and guides them underneath the faucet, running as cold as it can. He looks hesitantly at Dustin. “Are you sure you don’t want me to cut the rings off? I’m only asking because this is really going to hurt.”

With his wrists draped awkwardly over the basin from where he’s sitting, eye-level with the kitchen sink, Dustin nods resolutely. “Do what you have to do.”

Steve sighs like that wasn’t the answer he wanted, and reaches for the dish soap beside the sink. With careful precision, he starts easing the rings off with soap and water. He’s as gentle as he can be, but you can only be so gentle when you’re trying to maneuver tight metal around broken bones. Dustin lets a groan seethe through his teeth, trying to suppress as much noise as he can as Steve manages to pull a ring off his pointer finger. If he's too loud, he worries Steve might call this off and retrieve the pliers from the forgotten toolbox on the floor of the car.

“Hang on, hang on, it’s coming off,” Steve reassures as makes progress on another ring, slowly easing the metal from side-to-side to get it over the knuckle, apologizing hurriedly when Dustin keens at the action.

(Dustin pressed an ice pack against a bump on Steve’s head that he hoped to be the source of the concussion; there were so many wounds, it was difficult to pinpoint a single one as the culprit. It could’ve been the plate smashed over his head, or the punches that just kept coming relentlessly, but it doesn’t really matter anymore. The point is, there’s a lot of blood, definitely more than Dustin is equipped to deal with. 

Max drove the way Billy drove: too fast, too wild, and with the determination of an auto racer. The only difference between them was that Billy had carefully honed his ability to drive like a maniac, and Max did it by complete accident. She looked scared, eyes wide with her hands white-knuckling the wheel.

Steve woke up a few minutes later, struggling to take in his surroundings in his dazed state. Dustin did his best to soothe him as he screamed about the thirteen-year-old behind the wheel. He never liked seeing Steve scared. It looked wrong on his face. Truthfully, Dustin was starting to get tired of worrying about everyone else all the time. Though it’s a shameful admission, he used to fantasize sometimes about being the most wounded one in the room. Where he wouldn’t be cognizant enough to witness everyone else’s concern over him, let alone be concerned over someone else.

Turns out, concern doesn’t stop just because you’re the one on the other end of it. All it does is become a feedback loop of worry, where you’re worrying about how much they’re worrying about you. There’s no peace on either side.)

Dustin’s heart pounds rapidly, synchronized with the pulse in his fingers. His vision starts tunneling, and whether it’s due to the memory or the pain or the concussion or some horrible conglomerate of the three, it doesn’t disappear after a few moments like he expected it to.

Panicking, he twists his wrists out of Steve’s grasp. “Steve, I don’t…” he chokes, voice swimming in his own ears. “I don’t feel good.”

It takes less than a second for Steve to shut the water off and kneel down in front of him, cupping his face in wet hands to check him over. He smells like dish soap. “Dustin, can you hear me?” He looks more like a kid than Dustin’s ever seen of him before—lost, worried, frightened.

If Dustin’s mouth was cooperating, he would know exactly what to say in this situation. He’s been exactly where Steve is; watching someone close to you hurting with no way to stop it.

Instead, he pitches forward. Some friend he is. Steve’s alarmed shout echoes in his skull as he blacks out completely.

—

In what feels like a blink apart from nosediving into Steve’s shoulder, Dustin wakes up in the living room. He takes a moment to familiarize himself with the space, curled up on Steve's couch with a heavy blanket draped over him. Cracking an eye open, he looks across the room towards the window. It’s dark out, so there’s no telling if it’s still early evening or the middle of the goddamn night.

His head is still foggy, but he feels…generally better, all things considered. Maybe Steve gave him some pain medicine? He can feel bandaids stuck to his face, piecing torn skin back together. His hands are numb, immobilized in ACE bandages.

The rings are gone. 

Shit.

“Steve?” He calls out into the empty room, not even knowing if he’s awake. As Dustin’s established, it’s a completely ambiguous time of night. The sound doesn’t travel very far anyway, his voice weak with leftover sleepiness.

But turns out, Steve’s got a sixth sense for whenever someone’s looking for him. He half-jogs into the room from the kitchen, butter knife still in his hand from whatever he was making. He flicks on the lamp in the corner, filling the room with pale, yellow light before darting over to the couch, hovering anxiously.

“You’re awake,” Steve says, smiling, even though his eyes are alight with panic. It’s like he’s expecting him to suddenly pass out all over again. But he looks so utterly relieved, it makes Dustin’s stomach twist. Holy shit, he realizes. He probably thought I died. 

“I feel better,” Dustin says quickly, because he worries Steve might have an aneurysm if he stays quiet any longer. 

Steve nods, placing the butter knife down on the coffee table and exhaling heavily. It looks like the world on his shoulders eases slightly.  “Good,” he says, carding a hand gently through Dustin’s hair. “Just…take it slow. You crashed hard earlier. Do you remember?”

Dustin ignores the question, but also sort-of answers it in a question of his own. “Where are the rings?”

He moves to sit up, much to the chagrin of Steve, whose hands spasm like he’s fighting not to push him back down. “Henderson, stop—stop moving. Chill out a sec, okay?” Steve pleads, something splintering in his voice. Is he crying?

It’s always hard to tell when Steve’s crying, because he’s so irritatingly subtle about it. His face never changes, never scrunches up or flushes red. He just stays stoic as his eyes gloss over, expression fixed on something far away. To even notice he’s crying, you have to really know him.

Unfortunately for Dustin, as hard as he’s tried, he’ll never unlearn that about him. So when he notices one of the tells—the tightness in Steve’s voice—he freezes where he’s squirming and squints to get a proper look at his face. “Steve,” he says, unearthing a discussion he’s not sure if he wants to have.

Steve scrubs his face with his sleeve, exhaling wetly. It’s an ugly sound.

“Steve,” Dustin repeats, because there’s nothing else in the conversation to latch onto.

Finally, Steve breaks. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” he says, half-muted by the fist he talks into.

He goes to sit on the arm of the couch, even though Dustin’s pulled his knees in to make room on the cushions. It hurts, more than the dull throbbing in his fingers or the pinpricks of pain dotting his face.

“You’re dragging it out,” Steve concludes. “The grief. You’re dragging it out.”

On any other day, Dustin would be offended to high heaven at the wording. But seeing how genuinely distressed Steve seems to be, he tries to sit with what he’s been told. Dragging it out. It’s definitely something to chew on.

“You don’t have to always be there,” Dustin says, helpless. “When I call, or if I’m hurt. You’re not, like…obligated.” 

“God, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m always gonna show up, you know that.”

“Okay,” he agrees, sarcasm-free, because he really does believe Steve when he says that.

Steve pulls the rings out of his pocket—all of them are still intact, no plier-torn metal. He must have continued with the sink method after Dustin passed out—but makes no move to give them back. Instead, he turns away, silhouetted in the lamplight. When he shakes his head, it kind of looks like a shadow puppet moving across the walls. “I don’t know if you even remember this, being as concussed as you were, but you were in so much pain, Henderson. I’m not forcing these rings off with soap and water the next time this happens.”

Dustin makes a point to stare directly at Steve, even though he’s not looking back. Talking isn’t some game to win, he knows that, but it still feels safer this way. Like he isn’t free-falling through the conversation. “You don’t get it.”

“Then explain it,” Steve demands. “That’s all I’m asking.”

And Steve might as well have asked him to cover for Sisyphus. To really, truly take the time to explain it would subject both of them to years and years of sitting in this living room. That’s the thing: Dustin’s still figuring it out. Every day he tries to wade through the grief, which has been tide-pooling itself into his landlocked brain for months. How do you explain something that isn’t even done growing? Do you make it up on the spot? “The rings were his,” he tries.

Faintly, he can see Steve’s eyebrow raise, as if to say we’ve been over this.

“They were his,” Dustin insists. “They were him.” 

(They were Eddie: ambitious, foolish, and kind, more than anything else—and yet, he still somehow managed to be the most animated person Dustin had ever met.

Before he died, Dustin doesn’t actually think he ever got to see Eddie’s rings up close. He was always moving, whether it was through talking with his hands, shredding guitar, or simply fidgeting, they were always just a blur of silver motion on his fingers. Never anything distinguishable.

Dustin never asked for a closer look, and looking back, it makes him want to scream.)

The rings were his. They were his. They were him. Dustin’s aware that on its own, it’s pretty much a nothing statement. In fact, he’s expecting Steve to storm out of the room at his pathetic explanation, given that it totals ten words.

But he doesn’t, because he’s Steve, and open to a lot more than Dustin gives him credit for. He turns his head, meeting Dustin’s eyes, and nods in quiet understanding.

Not approval. Just understanding. I’ve got your back.

—

Weeks later, Steve calls Dustin for a change. 

The wounds have mostly sunken into scars now, and his hands are what he’d call semi-functional. He can’t really lift anything over five pounds yet, and they didn’t heal pretty—not that his fingers ever were pretty, but they’re more skewed than they used to be, angled in ways fingers aren’t supposed to point.

And they didn’t have to be that way, not if Dustin was willing to wreck Eddie’s rings in the process of minimizing the injury. Oh well. At least they’re not bound in ACE bandages anymore; those things are a bitch to deal with. 

Steve still hasn't returned the rings. Dustin supposes that’s fair, considering how upset he was at the whole situation. Asking for them back now feels like pressing on a bruise.

“I’ve got something for you,” Steve tells him. “Come down to the Squawk when you can, okay?”

“And it’s not even my birthday,” Dustin drawls. “What a saint you are, Steven.”

He can practically hear the eye roll over the line, how he’s probably turned to Robin with a look of incredulity as they communicate telepathically: is this kid for real?

Dustin barks out a laugh, choosing to be merciful today and shatter the hostility this conversation could bear if he wanted it to. When you’ve spent the last half-year being mean to the people you love, sometimes you have to let them know you’re still capable of joking, too. 

“I’ll be there in ten,” he relents, already picking his bike up off the driveway. 

Steve and Robin are waiting for him outside WSQK, sitting in the grass and passing a sheet of paper back and forth with something drawn on it shaped suspiciously like a tic-tac-toe grid. They look like high school sweethearts, despite their mutual insistence that it’s not like that/drop it, Henderson/the word ‘platonic’ was modeled after us.

In unison, they stick their hands up and wave him down. They look happy to see him; it’s an uncommon sight these days. Most of the time, people look at him like he’s some kind of bomb about to detonate.

Dustin crashes down onto the grass next to them, shaking stray hair out of his face. “So, what did you guys lure me out here to troubleshoot this time?” He greets.

Robin whacks him lightly on the arm. “Yeah, because you’re nothing more to us than tech support. We—well, mostly Steve,” she corrects, “has something for you.”

He turns his head to look at Steve, who’s been ominously quiet this whole time, just staring down at the ground and uprooting blades of grass with his hands. “Yeah,” Steve snaps his head up like he’s just tuning into the conversation. He pats down multiple different pockets on his utility jacket. Finally, he reaches into one of the hidden zip-up compartments on the inner lining, having seemingly found what he was looking for. “Hold out your hand,” Steve instructs. 

He places two rings in Dustin’s palm, both of them silver with black stones embedded. Neither of them are Eddie’s. He looks up at Steve, something heavy twisting in his gut. “I don’t follow,” he whispers, even though he thinks he might.

“They were Robin’s,” Steve clarifies.

She nods, staring at Dustin with wet eyes. “I never really wore those ones. Steve thought they might suit you better.”

Dustin stares at the rings and they stare back at him, the metal less heavy in his palm than the bulky ones Eddie used to wear. “Oh,” he breathes.

Steve reaches over and ruffles his hair. “I know,” he sighs, like he can read Dustin’s mind, even though he’s not as good at that as he used to be. “They’re not him. But they’re still rings. I was thinking you could…I dunno. Wear them the next time you’re looking for a fight.” 

Tentatively, Dustin slips the rings onto his now-crooked fingers. He bends and flexes his hands, holding them up to the sun. The light reflects off the metal, the glare sending little spots of sunlight sprawling across the WSQK studiofront. “I like them,” he says, voice just a rasp.

Thank you, is what he would’ve said if he was just a little bit braver.

Steve’s face shatters into a smile, posture deflating. “Yeah buddy, you wear ‘em well.”

Dustin looks beyond the two of them, catching his reflection in the building’s glass door. There’s a leftover bruise on his cheek, healing into a pale lilac, and his trench coat has dried blood speckled on the collar. Day by day, he looks less and less like himself.

The sun, still shining even though it’s October, disappears behind a cloud. Never change, Dustin Henderson. Promise me?

Dustin turns back to face Steve and Robin. “Do you think he’s proud of me yet?”