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Somewhere between don'tcha, big boy? and the concert at the end of the world, Steve Harrington falls in love. It goes like this:
~~~
They fail the first loop. Of course they did, Steve muses later, blowing someone else’s long, curly hair out of his face. They didn’t know.
Nobody did, the first time. Not even Steve, who would go on to know everything.
And so, without much fanfare, Max Mayfield and Eddie Munson die, and Steve’s eyes roll back and he wakes up back on the Winnebago, and Eddie is turning around with a grin and a don'tcha, big boy? and Steve can’t decide if he’s been Vecna’d or what but he blinks and shakes himself off a little and takes the wheel.
The second and third loop go much the same as the first, because Steve is still mostly sure he’s dreaming.
The fourth time, he’s less convinced.
~~~
By the fifth loop, Steve knows that this is real, and so, of course, the moment he starts the fifth loop, he collapses to the floor and has a panic attack.
Because Eddie dies. and Max dies. and he is the only one - the only one - who knows. It’s up to Steve to fix this, and honestly he doesn’t know if he can.
But he has to try.
And so he hauls himself off the floor of the van and lets Nancy drive because everyone keeps shooting him weird looks and yes there are tear tracks drying on his face but he would’ve been fine to drive, he swears it.
The skeptical look on Nancy’s face silences him anyway, and so he contents himself with sitting next to Eddie, pressed against him from knee to hip to shoulder for reasons he isn’t quite ready to confront yet aside from the fact that Eddie’s wounded expression tells Steve that he thinks it’s his fault, that Steve reacted that way to him because of the big boy thing and that is not what happened.
Eddie’s confused by the touch, Steve can tell, because he keeps shooting glances at Steve, but he doesn’t move away so Steve counts it as a win and presses in a little harder and decidedly ignores whatever look Robin is giving him across the van.
Eddie still dies. So does Max.
Steve is going to fix it.
~~~
He goes into the sixth loop with a plan. He convinces Nancy to let him go with Dustin and Eddie, and for her to go with Max and the Sinclairs, because he’s pretty sure Jason shows up there - or at least he can’t think of another reason they wouldn’t be able to save Max - and he’s also pretty sure that Nancy would be as willing to shoot a person as she is to shoot a Demogorgon, so long as they’re trying to hurt her friends.
It almost works. Max lives, Max lives and all she has to show for the possession is a broken arm.
But Eddie locks Steve inside a trailer and plays the hero and dies anyway and so Steve resets.
He has another panic attack. Except this time he gasps Eddie’s name so many times that Eddie is forced to pull him into his arms and run his hands through Steve’s hair while Nancy drives and they’re on the floor of some shitty old camper but Steve doesn’t think he’s been touched like this since he and Nancy broke up. It makes him sob all over again when he realizes.
Steve dies first this time. Jason finds them in the camper, snarls something homophobic but Steve is too busy calculating how they can escape this - how Eddie can escape this.
But he was never good at math, and so Jason shoots them both in the chest. Steve has never been shot before, and so he screams. Eddie curls around him even as he bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.
~~~
Loop number eight, Steve doesn’t start having a panic attack, because he’s already having one the second he wakes up. But he learned to hide them a long time ago, he’s just been a little taken off guard by this whole thing, and so he grins and takes the driver’s seat and says something vaguely charming and vaguely flirty back as he does it, and he doesn’t allow the panic to set back in because that would make it hard to drive.
He does stay back in the van, though, with Eddie, holding his bat.
“What’s with the bat?” Eddie asks, and it’s the first thing Steve’s heard him say in almost three loops that isn’t necessarily… soothing, he supposes.
“I saw Jason’s car,” Steve informs him tightly, though it’s not actually true.
“So if he comes in here you’re gonna hit him with that thing?”
Steve shrugs. “I’d rather hit him with it than have him kill you.”
“What if-” Eddie swallows hard. “What if it kills him?”
Steve shrugs again. “I said what I said.”
He’s pretty sure he sees Eddie mouth something along the lines of what the fuck out of the corner of his eye but he doesn’t have time to respond because the others are returning, no Jason.
Steve takes his seat again, glancing at Eddie every so often in the rear view mirror.
He tells himself he’s just in case he needs to brake before he disappears. But that’s not the real reason.
And anyway, Eddie still dies, because Steve is so distracted with Jason that he forgets to convince Nancy or anybody to change the plan, and it doesn’t matter anyway.
He needs help.
~~~
On the next loop, he gets it. The second he wakes up, he stumbles backwards and sits down.
“I have to tell you guys something,” he rasps, and God but something is wrong with his voice, he sounds so much older than he did yesterday.
“I have to- It’s… gonna sound crazy. Crazier than anything we’ve seen.”
The Winnebago is silent for a solid fifteen seconds. and then Eddie smiles, cautious. “Crazier than monsters from DnD suddenly coming alive to kill us all? I’ve got to hear this.”
“I’m in a time loop,” Steve blurts out. “Of today. From right now - from when Eddie says- He says don'tcha, big boy? and that’s when I wake up. and then it ends when-” Steve can’t say it. He really can’t.
He has to.
“It ends,” he says, almost choking on the words, “when Eddie dies. and when Max dies. and I’ve been trying- I’ve tried so hard, Eddie, you’ve gotta- you’ve gotta believe me, I’ve tried so fucking hard to save you but every time something goes wrong or you- you run into danger to protect me or Dustin or somebody and I can’t- I can’t watch you die again, man, I can’t, I really fucking can’t.” The last bit of it comes out as a whine that Steve would be embarrassed about if the situation was different.
and it’s Eddie who asked and so it’s Eddie who believes him first, who makes a torn-up sound in the back of his throat and stares in a way that tells Steve he believes.
But it’s Nancy who asks: “How many times?”
“This is the eighth,” Steve admits. “It’s- I’ve only seen six battles. One time Jason saw us - me and Eddie - outside the army supply and shot us both.”
Robin makes a choked sound and throws her arms around Steve, who buries his face in her shoulder and sobs because, like, fuck it. He’s earned the right to be weak for a little while.
He gives himself all of thirty seconds before he takes a deep, shuddering breath and pulls away from Robin, taking her hand.
“Okay,” Steve says. “What do you need to know?”
“The others should know this too.”
And so they take the Winnebago and they go to Steve’s house and hide it in the backyard and they don’t go to the War Zone and instead they just…
Talk. about what Steve’s done, about what they could do different, about what works and what doesn’t, about everything and then some that could possibly happen. Steve feels like they’re wasting time.
As it turns out, they are, because actually it turns out worse this time, because Dustin and Robin, the distractions, die together to the bats. Max dies to Vecna.
And Eddie dies to Jason.
~~~
Loop nine is when Steve decides to get drastic. So he drives them to the War Zone, where Nancy makes him a list and then sits in the driver’s seat while Steve runs in by himself. He buys everything on her list plus an extra handgun and then he goes to the checkout counter and slides a crisp hundred dollar bill over to the guy at the counter, who finishes checking Steve out and then disappears to the back.
Jason comes up to him just as he’s loading that pistol. “Well, if it isn’t King Steve.”
Steve hates that nickname. “Jason,” he says curtly. His hands are shaking.
“Stocking up? I hope you’re fighting on the right side, Harrington.”
“You know what? I think I am.” and without preamble, Steve raises the gun and shoots Jason in the face.
And then he runs, diving into the Winnebago. “Drive!”
Nancy, thank God, kicks the thing into high gear and screeches out of the parking lot.
“What the fuck just happened?” Dustin demands. “Why is there blood on your face?”
Steve wipes his face off with his hand, peering at the wet blood there. He’s like eighty percent sure there’s some brain matter in there, which he decides not to think about and wipes on the seat next to him. “It’s not mine.”
“Who’s- Who’s is it then?” Lucas asks, as if he’s not sure he wants the answer.
“Jason’s,” Steve says curtly, and then he promptly vomits onto the floor.
He explains, again, what happens. Nancy is the only one, he thinks, who gets it. Who gets why he killed Jason, why he had to.
It saves Max.
It doesn’t save Eddie.
~~~
Steve spends the next loop watching. Everyone, but mostly Eddie. He watches the way Eddie moves, the way he talks, the way he curls into himself when he’s scared.
Steve presses up against him again in the Winnebago, letting Nancy drive.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Hey,” Eddie replies.
“How’re you holding up?”
Eddie laughs, halfway hysterical. Steve thinks he can relate.
“What the fuck, man. I mean really, what the fuck? How long-”
“We’ve been fighting monsters since ‘83. Last year it was mostly Russians on our end, though, if that helps. They were trying to open another gate under Starcourt.”
“Right,” Eddie says, and then he’s having a panic attack too, and Steve pulls him close because apparently they do this now, even though Eddie doesn’t remember it.
“You’re okay,” Steve says, “you’re okay, I’ve got you. I won’t let them hurt you.”
This time, he sits in the Winnebago again while everyone else, sans the kids, goes inside. He holds Eddie’s hand with one of his own and uses the other to hold Nancy’s gun. He ends up having to shoot Carver again, but he doesn’t quite make it before a bullet buries itself in his shoulder. He doesn’t scream so loud, this time, only grits his teeth and uses the strip of fabric someone offers him to wrap the wound tightly.
“I’ll take care of it later,” he says.
He doesn’t get the chance.
~~~
The next loop (ten? Maybe? He’s losing count) Steve tells them again, begs them, gets on his knees before Eddie and goddamn begs, for help. He begs Eddie to not play the hero. To go back when he’s supposed to. To follow the plan.
Eddie promises.
He breaks his promise.
~~~
Okay, Steve thinks, in the driver’s seat once more for loop… whatever the fuck. He’s going to play the hero. No matter what I say.
That’s the only thing keeping Steve trapped in this loop, right? So they pick up the weapons and they go to Steve’s and Steve drags Eddie upstairs under the guise of checking on his wounds and he offers him ibuprofen and gives him his mother’s sleeping pills instead, the ones that knock you out for twelve hours, minimum.
The loop resets twenty minutes later. Apparently, Eddie’s allergic.
~~~
More loops pass, at least twelve. Steve fails again, and again, and again. He’s pretty reliably saving Max, now- she isn’t the issue. It’s Eddie. He always dies, and he always dies saving someone. Steve has tried every possible combination, and it’s still not enough.
Shamefully, he spends a few loops drifting. It’s here, in this time, that he realizes why Eddie is so important to him, why he has been since even before the looping started.
Steve is drifting, and he finds himself looking at Eddie. Looking at him in a way that- Well, there isn’t another way to say it really, except that Steve is watching him, because those big brown eyes and narrow hips and long, curly hair all come together into a picture Steve can’t really seem to take his eyes off of.
Eddie sees him, catches him watching.
“Take a picture,” he says, “it’ll last longer.”
“Maybe I will,” Steve says, the words slipping out before he can stop them. But, like, those pretty eyes widen even more, and Steve can’t help but smile, and Eddie smiles back, a little tentative, and Steve is going insane, he thinks.
~~~
The next loop after that, he’s ready. He hears the don'tcha, big boy? and he grins and leans in real close and says, “You know it, baby,” and he has never seen someone make a face anywhere near as pretty as the one Eddie makes then but God. God.
He goes with Eddie, this time, instead of Dustin, and he watches the concert and holy shit, Eddie’s hot. He’s so beautiful, long fingers dancing up and down the fretboard almost faster than Steve can track.
When he dies, because of course he does, it’s with a confession on his lips.
“I really like you,” he rasps, head cradled in Steve’s lap. Steve’s crying already, sobbing over Eddie’s body before he’s even dead. He throws Eddie’s vest over his wounds so neither of them has to see, and so he can pretend for one second that he hasn’t seen Eddie’s fucking intestines.
“You’ve gotta let me save you,” Steve cries. “You have to, I’m trapped here, please don’t make me do it again, don’t make me watch you die again, I can’t do it again.”
But he does. and he will.
~~~
Maybe Steve should be looking at it differently. Because Jesus Christ, clearly whatever he’s doing now isn’t working.
But in between, he gives himself one self-indulgent run. He presses up against Eddie in the Winnebago, stays behind with him and the kids. They go to Steve’s house and Steve tells him they need to talk, just for a minute, and promises to show him where the shower is.
“First of all,” Steve says, sitting across from Eddie on the floor, “I like boys.”
“Oh,” Eddie says. “I- Oh. But why-”
“Second of all,” Steve says, interrupting because he won’t get this out otherwise and he really wants to, “I’m falling in love with you.”
Eddie stares, wide-eyed. “What?”
“I’m trapped in a time loop, and every time I loop I get to know you a little better and it’s been-” Steve’s voice breaks. “It’s been so many loops but all that means really is that I’ve had that much more time to get to know you and- and I know you haven’t known me for that long but for me it’s been- months? So I’m sorry but I am.”
Eddie shakes his head, disbelieving. “Do you know,” he says, “how long I’ve been waiting to hear those words from you?”
and so they kiss, and they shower together (to save water, Eddie says with a wink) and after, Eddie borrows Steve’s clothes (holy shit) and they spend some time laying side by side in Steve’s bed.
“What’s the trigger?” Eddie asks eventually, turning to look at Steve. “For the loop?”
Steve doesn’t want to talk about it.
“You are,” he says after a minute. “You- Your… death. You die, every time, and then it resets to the Winnebago.” Steve rolls to bury his face in Eddie’s shoulder, because he’s so fucking tired of crying. Eddie’s hand drifts into his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp.
“I’m so tired of watching you die,” Steve says, whimpering. Pathetic. “I’m so fucking tired of it, Eddie.”
“I’m sorry, Stevie.”
“Will you stay home? I haven’t tried that yet, we can- I think we can do it if we just- if you just stay home, please, you can crash here if you want I just really- I need you to-”
“Okay.”
Steve looks up at him, and he’s crying too but he’s going to stay home, he’s staying home thank God.
This loop is the first one where Eddie lives.
It is the second loop where Dustin dies.
as Steve’s eyes roll back, as he collapses into Robin’s arms, all he can think is: thank God for second chances.
~~~
This time he wakes up, and there is no Eddie. Or- there is Eddie, but he gets the engine started without a word. No don'tcha, big boy?. Nothing at all.
and then he turns and those beautiful brown eyes are missing. Just- just missing, gone, leaving nothing but the holes where they were, and Steve stumbles back as Eddie raises into the air and his bones snap and his jaw and his spine and Steve tries to turn away but behind him the same thing is happening, all of them, Robin and Dustin and Lucas and Nancy and Max and Erica all lifting impossibly high and the Winnebago seems to stretch to fit them all and Steve turns and runs, tripping out the door, and he’s-
He’s in his living room, and he knows what’s happening even as his father emerges from his study upstairs and he can’t help but scramble away away away because his father is home and that can never be anything but bad news but then- But then his father rounds the corner and it’s not his father is it, it’s Vecna and Steve only knows this because his father’s face is rotting off and-
and then there’s music.
Who’s gonna pick you up when you fall?
Who’s gonna hang it up when you call?
Drive. It’s not the original, but it’s… enough. It’s enough, and a portal opens just as Steve’s rotting father steps off the stairs, and he hurls himself through it and he’s crying, crying, crying, back in the Winnebago, and he doesn’t know when the vision started, or if the vision’s ended, or if he’s alive or if he died months and months and months ago and this is his purgatory. Maybe he died the day Eddie did, just- just keeled over right there on the spot, because it’s too much, it’s too much.
And so Steve has his third fucking panic attack in Eddie’s arms and he explains everything again and Max tells him that Vecna doesn’t toy with you for that long, he can’t hold the realism well enough, and Steve only feels a little better.
It doesn’t stop Eddie from running at the bats.
~~~
Steve falls into a new rhythm:
Wake up.
The vision, the same one every time. His dying friends and his rotting father.
The music.
The portal.
Explaining.
Eddie running into battle.
Again:
Wake up.
The vision.
The music.
The portal.
Explaining.
Eddie leaping in front of a gun.
Again:
Wake up.
The vision.
The music.
The portal.
Explaining.
Eddie tackling Dustin to the ground and dying on top of the kid, blood between his teeth.
~~~
The next loop that Steve really registers, he avoids Eddie, except to say that he’s going with him instead of Dustin.
Eddie dies for him anyway.
~~~
Finally, Steve gets fed up. He makes an excuse for going to Eddie’s trailer, once they’re stocked, and he does it again.
Comes out.
Confesses.
He presses Eddie up against the wall, not kissing him but almost, and while Eddie’s distracted he reaches up, snags the handcuffs on the wall, and cuffs Eddie to the bed frame.
“What the fuck,” Eddie says. “Harrington, what the fuck?”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, pressing a quick kiss to Eddie’s other hand. “I’m sorry, it’s- it’s the only way, okay, I have to- I can’t- I can’t watch you die again, okay, I’m so sorry, Eddie, I’ll be- I’ll be back, I’m so sorry, I- I love you.”
and Steve ignores Eddie’s shouts as he hurries back over to the others.
“Where’s Eddie?” Dustin asks.
“Safe,” Steve tells him. “Hopefully.”
One hour later, Steve’s eyes roll back.
~~~
Steve has another idea. With the handcuffs. He does the same thing, except this time he cuffs Eddie to himself.
“What the fuck?” Eddie asks, but it’s not quite as angry as the last loop.
Steve gives him a wry smile. “I’ve tried everything else. You won’t kill us both.”
And Eddie doesn’t.
But the cuffs do.
Because just as they’re climbing up, a bat comes in and wraps its tail around the chain connecting them and flies up in the air and Eddie is screaming and Steve is yelling his name and he just barely reaches out with his free hand to pull Eddie into himself.
They fall together, and Steve rolls them over mid-air to make sure Eddie lands on top and they land and Eddie cries out and Steve says nothing because Steve is dead.
~~~
He decides that might be the way to go, for a bit. He dies for Eddie three then four then five times. He wakes up anyway, but at least he can delude himself into thinking that there are five Eddies who are alive.
Six, seven, eight sacrifices.
He makes it to fourteen before he decides it isn’t working and fuck it and goddammit Eddie.
~~~
He spends another loop avoiding him. Doesn’t do anything to change the outcome except ignore him.
Eddie dies faster that time.
~~~
So in the next loop after that, he sits down and he thinks. Max dies because of Jason. He can kill Jason, or Nancy can take care of him. That part is fine.
It’s Eddie. Eddie chooses to die. Every fucking time, every fucking loop. He chooses it.
So Steve goes with him and Dustin, and when Eddie tries to run, Steve scoops him up, throws him over his shoulder kicking and screaming, and climbs up the ladder.
The bats come through less than a minute later.
~~~
Fine. That’s fine. Steve grabs an RC car from his room and tapes a speaker to it. When Eddie goes to run, he scoops him up again and sets the car off, passing the remote wordlessly to Eddie, who finally quiets down and steers the car off into the distance.
The bats don’t follow.
Steve and Eddie are ripped away from each other, and Steve can’t help screaming himself hoarse- until, of course, he passes out again.
~~~
He tries again with the handcuffs except this time when he cuffs them together he collapses into Eddie’s bed and doesn’t move, and Eddie was never a jock even before he spent four days or however many it was (it seems so long ago now) in hiding, and so when he pulls it does nothing. Eventually he sits down on the floor with a huff. For a while there’s no sound in the room except for their breathing and, eventually, Eddie’s soft singing. Steve doesn’t know the song.
“I’m in love with you,” Steve says, staring up at the ceiling. “I said I was falling but that was only because I didn’t want to scare you.”
“You’re scaring me,” Eddie says softly.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do it again.”
Twenty minutes later, Eddie lifts into the air - for real, this time - and Steve doesn’t know his favorite song, and it’s real real real when Eddie’s bones snap and his eyes disappear from his head and his jaw cracks as it jerks to the side independent of the rest of the skull and it’s real real real that Steve is chained to a corpse and Steve is screaming screaming screaming screaming s-
~~~
It’s scary again, this time. The vision. Because he’s seen it in real life now and so he can’t convince himself anymore that that isn’t what it sounds like, what it looks like. The second part isn’t so bad, it’s the same, and then-
And then the music. and yeah Steve knew it was coming from outside, same as Max, same as her Kate Bush, but he hadn’t really thought about what it meant that it was different from the original, hadn’t been able to identify it and hadn’t thought it had mattered.
He hadn’t, after all, heard Eddie sing before the last loop.
So when he crawls out of the portal back into his body, he turns to Eddie with a tired smile. “You saved me,” he rasps.
“I… guess. Are you okay?”
“I need you to do it again.”
And so Steve explains again, and then he pulls Eddie outside and explains the part he didn’t want the kids to hear, and then he gets on his knees.
“Eddie,” he says, “you are the only one who can save me. And I’m sorry, and it’s not fair, but if you die again I don’t know what I’ll do. This is my Hail Mary. You have to go up when Dustin does, okay? Everything will work itself out, but you have to listen to me. Please. I have tried- I have tried everything. I’ve begged you and I’ve cried and I’ve dragged you and I’ve drugged you and it never works. You have to choose it. You have to choose to live, because I- I don’t know what’s causing this but I can’t live without you, not anymore, and I-” Steve’s voice breaks, and he buries his face in Eddie’s stomach and he’s so fucking tired.
“Okay,” Eddie whispers, deft fingers playing gently with Steve’s hair. “Okay, Stevie.”
~~~
They approach the battle with the original plan, and so Steve and Eddie have to part. They press their foreheads together and Steve used to hope but he thinks he lost that ability around loop fifteen. So he knows it’s a resigned expression that Eddie finds on his face when they pull away from each other.
Still, Eddie smiles. Just a little. “I’ll see you soon.”
“I love you,” Steve replies.
And then Eddie disappears through the portal.
According to Dustin, later, Eddie is transcendent. Steve believes it. He’s glad he didn’t have to see it again.
Because Eddie is beaten and bruised but his eyes are bright and wide and alive when he crashes into Steve, a mere few hours after they parted, and Steve sinks to his knees and sobs and Eddie follows and Max is alive and Dustin is alive and Robin is alive and Eddie is alive.
The loop doesn’t reset that night.
Nor the next.
Or the next.
In fact, the loop doesn’t reset at all, and even months later Steve always has the sneaking suspicion that it might- but it doesn’t and it doesn’t and it doesn’t.
And nobody remembers - how could they? But Steve learns to accept it, even when he wakes up screaming from things that nobody else in the world has experienced because they didn’t happen, not here, and when he remembers he’s nearly a year older than everyone else, mentally, and when he doesn’t sleep for days because he’s afraid he’ll wake up back in that fucking Winnebago again.
But Eddie is there, always, his arms and his voice.
And so it turns out okay in the end.