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Chapter Text

Chime I - Dulce et decorum est pro partia mori

It is sweet and fitting to die for the party

The sky was red, like somebody had driven a knife into the sun. It was biblical end times shit, and he had the strangest thought that some part of him was glad that–as much as he wished no one had to know about the nightmare world beneath their feet–at least the people who did wouldn’t start a cult or fuel the Satanic panic already infecting the world that was right side up. 

People like him had it hard enough. 

And fuck, all he was ever guilty of was thinking life shouldn’t have to fit between beige walls and a picket fence. Even if sometimes beige walls and a picket fence were exactly what he wanted. Safety. Security. Hands around his waist in the kitchen. 

Then again, even with beige walls and a picket fence, they never would’ve let him have those hands. The wrong kinds of hands as far as they were concerned. He would’ve had to fight for those hands, and he’d never thought he was the type of person who could fight for anything. 

He supposed he'd been wrong on that one. 

He wished he’d known that before. 

Too late. 

He’d always worried about death, like some part of him had known it would come early. Sometimes he’d been right on the verge of sleep and he’d remember he would die someday, and what would happen then? Would it be dark? Would he cease to be? Or, fuck, what if it was some kind of eternity shit? Forever, going on and on and on and–

(The sun would explode eventually. If he was a ghost, would it take his spirit with it? The universe would collapse into itself. Would that take heaven too? Would it hurt? Would everything he ever was even matter in the end? And did it even need to matter, actually?)

Too much thinking, and his heart would kick up. He’d suck in a gasping breath and, inside his soul, he’d yell at the god or gods or whatever the fuck was out there. About how it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to have to know death was coming and not know what was coming after, if it was good or bad, if it was even real. 

Teeth gritted together, hands curled tightly. Not fair, not fucking fair. 

He always thought he’d die begging, pleading, clinging to life with both hands because the unknown terrified him. He never thought it might be almost easy, to look at two roads unfurling–one possibly safe, one definitely not–and simply choose. To die. 

And now the sky was dripping red and he was dripping red and the kid was crying and, somewhere, the hands that might have been around his waist, that he’d certainly spent almost a year wanting there, were hopefully stopping the end of days shit once and for all. 

He’d never know those hands now, not that he ever would’ve.

And hey, how was that for un-fucking-fair?

Chapter Text

They lost the battle in the end, and Steve watched in horror as the space between worlds ripped open, killing their spirits and their exit strategy in a single blow. 

“We have to find Eddie and Dustin,” he said. “We have to find them and get out of here.” 

"Yeah. Maybe Eddie's trailer didn't get..." Robin gestured at the glowing red fissure that led from the house. 

"Two birds." Nancy reloaded her shotgun, and they set off. 

The desolate landscape of the Upside Down meant they spotted Eddie and Dustin long before they got to them. Even from a distance, it was clear something was wrong, Dustin hunched over Eddie, Eddie so very still. A sinking feeling settled into Steve's stomach and tugged at his limbs, growing heavier with every moment that Eddie didn't so much as twitch. The short walk felt like endless miles.

Maybe Eddie was just unconscious, Steve thought, but he couldn't get the hope to actually take. Maybe it would be better if he never got to Eddie (and Dustin) at all. If he never had to know. 

But he did get to them, finding Eddie just as still up close, his eyes open and lifeless. The wrongness of that hit Steve like a nail bat to the chest. At times, Eddie’s eyes had seemed bottomless, full of laughter and mischief, of fear and anxiety, of dreams and stories. 

But they had never–not once–been empty. 

Steve looked at Nancy and Robin. Nancy and Robin looked back, like all three of them had come to the same silent conclusion that it had to be Steve. 

So Steve gently put his fingers on Eddie’s eyelids and guided them closed, trying to remember his eyes as they had been, to forget what they looked like after. 

Dustin went willingly when Steve picked him up, until Steve started to walk away. Two steps and Dustin realized Nancy’s and Robin’s hands were empty except for their weapons, their eyes scanning the skies, the remaining demobats hovering nearby in wait. That was when the kicking and screaming started. 

“What are you doing?” Dustin’s head whipped back toward where Eddie lay. “No! We can’t leave him! We can’t fucking leave him!” 

Dustin beat against Steve’s chest with his small fists. He cried and swore and demanded they go back, and all Steve could do was let him take out his rage and grief on him. Because he could do that. He didn’t have time yet to do his own raging, but he could be there for Dustin. What were a few more bruises in the grand scheme of things anyway?

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, looking in Dustin’s eyes, glancing back at Eddie Munson. “I’m sorry.” 

Steve wouldn’t get the details until later, but a thousand miles away, El sobbed into a phone line.

“You have to radio. They’re trapped and the phones are… And I’m so sorry I couldn’t… I- I failed and- and- You have to– Please.” 

In Hawkins, Erica listened to Suzie’s relay, climbed the tallest building still standing, and shone the brightest flashlight she could find into the sky, blinking it on and off again and again. 

In the Upside Down, three people gasped and started walking faster. 

“We can’t leave him,” Dustin said again, crying, his voice falling like a radio running out of batteries. And somehow hearing him say it so softly, so defeated, was worse than the yelling and the hitting. Steve cleared his throat, sniffed, and pressed on. 

When the flashlight started flickering at their nearness, Erica led them out. 

Back at home base, it was Robin who calmly got on the radio, hands shaking. “Tell El she saved us–me and Steve and Nancy and Dustin. She needs to know that.” 

No one mentioned Eddie. El didn’t know him anyway. She didn’t need the weight of his death, not that night. And, oh, what a weight that loss was. Steve thought all their knees might buckle with it, that the world might collapse in on itself for the vacuum Eddie left behind. 

“I guess there’s one upside of this,” Robin said with a wobbling voice, frantically wiping tears from her face. “Family Video definitely fell into hell.” 

Steve let out a hollow, strangled laugh. “Yeah.” His words cracked like glass. “Yeah, I guess it did.”

Chapter Text

Chime II - Sidere mens eadem mutato

Though the constellations change, the mind is universal

He opened his eyes to blackness, to cold and wet seeping into his hair and clothes.

Ah, so that had been the theory that held true in the end. After death, there was Nothing. Just existing forever in the dark with no promise of an end. Fuck though, why was it wet?

Maybe he really had been a freak destined for hell, then. Maybe this was it. Because what were fire and brimstone compared to this? If this was it, then it was like a oubliette for the soul. And didn’t the men thrown into those dark, damp pits usually slowly go mad under the weight of their own thoughts?

“Quite a reward for self-sacrifice.” He forced himself off the ground, feet sloshing through the water. To where? To what end? 

To make sure, he guessed. For all his macabre thoughts, he couldn't believe this was all there was. God, he really hoped not anyway.

Maybe heaven had never bothered to decorate the foyer. Maybe his angels were late, his train delayed. Maybe the gods of various religions were arguing about him. “We want him for our afterlife.” “But you got Hendrix already.”

At that, he smiled and jumped, splashing in the dark like a child playing in rain puddles. He almost missed the voice. 

“Mr. Munson…”

In his body–if he could still call it that–Eddie Munson jumped and swung his head toward the sound. 

“Mr. Munson, I’m not trying to give you shit, sir, I swear.” 

That voice. Harrington. Eddie picked up his feet and ran like hell–a meteor streaking through the pitch. 

Two figures appeared in the dark. Eddie let out a strangled sound.

“Uncle Wayne, Harrington, please tell me you can hear me.” Eddie reached out a hand, but it was like smoke, dissolving around his uncle’s arm, reforming when he pulled it away. “Oh fuck no, that’s… Harrington, Steve , please tell me you can hear me right now. I think I’m dead. I probably should be, but I don’t know, man, nothing is as it should be, is it? Fuck. I gotta tell you, if this is the afterlife, it really fucking sucks.” 

Oblivious to Eddie’s presence, Uncle Wayne finally looked up at Steve, tear tracks on his face. They led to bags that nested within bags, all settled under red-rimmed eyes. “What do you want, son?” 

“I just…” Steve jogged to his car–the vehicle sitting in the blackness, wetness licking up its tires–and tore open the backdoor, pulling out Eddie’s vest. “You should have this back.” 

Part of Eddie wanted to agree. Because the look on Wayne’s face made Eddie want to die all over again for having put it there. His uncle deserved any memento he needed to help him get through. 

Another more selfish part of Eddie wanted to say no. If Eddie had to wander the world as a ghost or a shade or whatever this was, he deserved to see his vest hanging off the toned shoulders of Steve Harrington. He might keep his sanity that way. For a little while longer anyway. 

A beat of silence stretched out between Steve and Wayne. Steve swallowed like something massive had wormed its way into his throat and made a home there. “I know Dustin told you what happened. I won’t make you hear it again, but I’m sorry. God, I told Eddie not to–” A deep breath. “I want you to know Eddie had friends, people who believed him and knew he was better than what everyone says. We'll do what we can to make sure people know. Who he was and who he wasn't.” 

Wayne looked at Steve and then the vest. “Does half the town have my nephew’s things?” In his hand, Wayne ran a thumb over Eddie’s guitar pick like a worry stone. In the Nothing, Eddie reached for it around his neck and found it gone. 

Dustin…

“Keep it,” Wayne said, closing his hand around the pick like the dog tag of a fallen soldier. “Eddie wouldn't even let me wash the damn thing and he gave it to you. Keep it.” 

Steve pulled the vest back, clutching it tightly. “If… If you need anything, Mr. Munson, get in touch with me, Nancy Wheeler, or Robin Buckley. Please. Even- even if it seems strange, especially if it seems strange, we’ll be there.”

Wayne nodded. He took a step and then stopped. 

“Harrington, right?” 

“Oh, yeah, probably should’ve led with that.” 

Wayne grunted. “That goes for you too. Whoever you were to Eddie, it’s okay that you were. Anyone else takes issue with that or with you…” His voice broke. “Have a– Be careful out there.” 

“Uncle Wayne,” Eddie whispered, his own eyes wet. He tried to touch Wayne's arm again, to offer the comfort of a ghost, the love of a son who knew exactly how lucky he was. Eddie remembered his first junior year, Wayne finding him on the living room floor in the middle of the night, half-catatonic. Wayne had quietly put down his lunch box and gone to the bathroom to get a soft washcloth. He’d returned and carefully wiped at Eddie’s cheeks.

Eddie had told him who he was, spilling out his fears and doubts in broken, disjointed sentences. But, in the end, all the weight fell on those two monumental words: I’m gay. They’d rattled in his chest and fallen heavy in the tips of his fingers, until he thought he’d sink into the earth for the fear of facing them and all they'd mean.  

And all the while, Wayne had been there, still cleaning away his tears, calmly waiting for Eddie to finish saying what he needed to say. 

“Listen to me Edward Munson,” he’d said. “You’ve gone through enough of your life already without the love you deserve, and I won’t add to that now or ever. There is nothing wrong with you, Eddie. There’s not a bone in your body I’d change a damn thing about. When, not if, some fella sees that, you take that love with both hands. And if people try to pull it away and you need me to help you hold onto it, I’ll be there. No matter what, I will always be there.” 

Steve probably had no idea what Uncle Wayne meant, probably thought it was about being friends with the town hell-raiser. 

It had likely never even occurred to Steve to notice Eddie’s eyes on him or think too hard about them. And that was okay, wasn’t it? In this version of reality where Eddie would never get that love Uncle Wayne had so boldly sworn to defend. 

From the Nothing, he watched Steve mutter an unheard “you too, Mr. Munson” before running his thumb over one of the patches on the vest. Quietly, he unfurled it and slipped it on. 

And then it was Uncle Wayne and Steve’s turn to be smoke, dissolving in a mist before Eddie’s eyes. Eddie watched the space where they’d been for a long time, then sat down in the water for some time more. 

Maybe this wasn't heaven or hell at all, Eddie thought. Maybe it was an in-between, a place for letting go of regrets. 

It was another figure in the dark that brought Eddie out of his thoughts, Eddie turning to find a little boy with angular bones. The figure flickered like a bad light–a man with the same high cheekbones, the boy again. Man, boy, man. They took turns looking down at him, observing him quietly like someone might watch a spider caught in a jar. 

Eddie squirmed under the scrutiny, biting his nails, waiting.  

When the entity finally spoke, it was with the boy’s voice, wearing the man’s face and a subdued smile. “Hello, Eddie Munson.” 

Goosebumps prickled up Eddie's arms and across the back of his neck. Maybe this was why the angels had to tell everyone not to be afraid.

Chapter Text

Steve lounged in the McCafferty’s living room, his feet up on a scavenged coffee table. Like much of Hawkins, the McCaffertys had decided to pack it up and leave after the “earthquake.” He’d volunteered half-jokingly to house sit when they saw him at the gas station and tried to hand him a video tape. 

“Keep it. Hey, you need someone to watch the place?”

He’d been surprised when Rich McCafferty actually gave him the key.

"Why not? No one's buying real estate in Hawkins right now."

It was a small house with only one bedroom. It felt cozy. It felt easier to defend.

Steve’s own house, well, his parents hadn’t even bothered to show despite everything. A moving truck had come with a tow hitch for Steve’s car. There’d been a bittersweet satisfaction in knowing that, by the time his folks realized Steve hadn’t gone with that truck, they wouldn’t even know where to call him. 

That satisfaction grew more bitter with every new patch of dead grass, with every dust mote that caught in the air filter he’d zip tied to the back of a box fan. With every nightmare of Dustin beating against his chest and screaming that they couldn’t leave Eddie. 

And those nightmares never stopped. Eddie’s lifeless eyes. Max barely clinging to life. Hawkins on fire and sirens that wailed for days on end. Dustin screaming, the nightmare version of him telling Steve he hated him, pointing out all of Steve’s failures. 

You couldn’t even save him. What good are you, Steve?

Sometimes, it was so bad, Steve put on headphones. Just in case the dreams were something else. 

“Steve, please move once in a while.” Robin sat next to him, feet also on the table. Her family had stayed until the Upside Down started bleeding through, and then they’d taken off too. They hadn’t understood why she chose to remain, why she even wanted to. Steve didn’t care. He’d tied her mattress to the top of his car and given up the bedroom, throwing his own mattress onto the living room floor. 

“You wanna go for a drive?” Steve asked, standing up, adjusting the vest over his tee. 

“Depends. You gonna let me drive your precious car?”

“Why the hell not?” Steve chucked the keys at her. 

Every turn Robin took steered them away from the decimated parts of town. They passed one of Hawkins’ many churches, the usual bunch out front with picket signs. The town’s religious had given up on their panic about the kids and the devil, sliding hard into everything being clear signs of the End of Days.

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake...

Steve couldn’t say he blamed them. The government tried hard to sell the damage as an earthquake and subsequent gas leaks, but the grayness of the Upside Down had steadily spread, and at the right times of day, the Hawkins sky was a sickly red. If Steve didn’t know the real truth, well, he might have been on his knees at night too. Just in case. 

“Hey. You only ran three stop signs so far, Rob. You’re improving.”

“I saw them." Robin shrugged, parking the car in front of Bob and Betsy Swanson’s house. Well, not their house anymore. Now, it was empty, a for sale sign hanging by the curb.

“And the word ‘stop’ means something different now?” Steve asked, following her on foot down the driveway, both of them opening the gate and slipping into the backyard. 

“Doesn’t it?” Robin looked off toward the center of town, dust motes swirling and catching the glow of the fissures between worlds. Steve didn’t bother answering. In his back pocket, a bulky walkie-talkie spat out static. 

“Harrington, I assume you and Buckley aren’t looting the Swanson’s,” Hopper said dully. “Got a call in from a neighbor. Is there something going on I need to worry about?” 

Steve pulled his walkie from his pocket. “Did they leave anything to steal?” There weren’t even curtains in the windows. “Negative. Nothing freaky. Just enjoying somewhere that isn’t dead. Yet. Uh, over.” 

“Copy. Be careful.” 

And the walkie went silent again. Steve sank onto a bench beneath an arbor crawling with climbing roses. 

It was well known that Bob Swanson and Betsy Wall had fallen in love over the last yellow rosebush at the Hawkins Nursery, Bob buying it and giving Betsy a cutting right there in the parking lot. Their backyard rose garden had been in magazines many times and had even made it on PBS once. 

And there it sat, abandoned, the clock almost certainly ticking down to when the roses would wither away. 

Steve reached for a nearby rose–white with splotches of red, as though it had been stained. 

“You know, Eddie had a rose tattoo,” Steve said. Robin shot him a look. 

“What? Where?” 

“On his ribs. Here.” Steve touched his back on his right side. 

“How do you even know that?”

Steve thought about a party after senior year, Eddie Munson out back dealing party favors. Steve had bought a joint, made his way somewhere quiet and secluded from the noise, and smoked it. Trying to–not forget, though he wished weed could erase specific memories–but to not care. Just for a minute. 

About the secret world and the things from it and the way his life felt directionless because how the hell could it not after everything? He’d fought things from another place. What was he supposed to do after that? Learn accounting? Get a degree in fucking communications? Have six kids and buy a house on a cul-de-sac? 

He cringed at the fact that he’d talked about that old dream. To Nancy. Like he’d meant it and it was something he still wanted. Like it hadn’t been the dream of some kid in high school who had no idea what the real world was like even without monsters. The only reason he even thought of that dream at all anymore was because it represented Before, when things had been so much easier. 

“Again, you need to move every now and then if you’re gonna zone out, dingus.” Robin elbowed him softly, and he swayed, blinking. 

“Sorry.” He played with the hem of Eddie’s vest. “I saw the tattoo at some party. Don’t remember whose house, but someone passed out into the pool and no one was going in. I was high as hell and I remember thinking, 'oh shit, I was a lifeguard. I need to get up and go in the water.' But…” Steve shook his head. “Weed. Reaction times.” 

Eddie had looked around the backyard, loudly asked “ any of you motherfuckers planning on saving your friend?” When no one answered, Eddie had cursed and pulled off his shirt before diving in. 

“Who’d he pull out of the pool?” Robin asked. 

Steve laughed, horribly. “Jason fucking Carver.” 

“Jesus Christ.” 

“But I guess, if I’d thought about it, I always knew who he was.” Steve remembered Eddie with his guitar, declaring that he wasn’t a hero. And he remembered him fishing Jason out. 

And he remembered that Jason punched Eddie in the jaw when he woke up in the middle of mouth-to-mouth. 

Steve had gone to find Eddie out front after. 

“He still had his shirt off, sitting on the front steps, smoking a cigarette.” Steve pulled a loose thread from the vest and gave it to the wind before gesturing lazily. “Rose tattoo.” 

“Did you talk to him?” 

“Eddie? Yeah. Jason was a dick, et cetera.” Steve scrubbed a hand over his face and stared down at the grass, already a little long from the owners’ absence. “He was always gonna do it, wasn’t he? He took his guitar, Rob, his equipment. I should’ve realized. But I wouldn’t, would I? Everything was easily replaceable when I was growing up. Break it, leave it behind in the hell world, just buy a new one, no big deal. What would I know about what it meant to lose something important?” 

Next to him, Robin took a deep breath, quiet and weighty all at once. She reached over and laid her hand on Steve’s, forcing him to realize he’d clenched his fist so hard around the end of the vest that it hurt. His nerves screamed from the tension, his nails biting into his palm. 

“Steve,” she said softly, carefully, “did you…?”

“Did I what?” Steve forced his hand to relax. 

“It’s just…” She paused for several seconds. “Can I ask what Eddie was wearing that night? At the party?”

“He was… I remember the jeans with the chain, a Black Sabbath tee with the band on it–red lettering, all the usual Eddie Munson accessories–the pick necklace, the rings, the chain around his wrist. Why?” 

“What was Jason wearing?” 

“Fuck if I know,” Steve said. “Probably a Hawkins shirt or some preppy bullshit, same as me. Why?” 

“Do you remember what anyone else at the party was–”

“Rob, for the love of God, what’s your point?”

She went quiet next to him, her hand still resting on his, a comforting weight. “Nothing. I’m glad you kept the vest. It suits you, kind of like armor.”

Above them, the leaves on the Swanson’s old oak tree flitted in the afternoon breeze. If Steve ignored the slightly-off color of the sky and a few dust motes, it felt almost normal. Robin leaned onto his shoulder. 

Her voice was hoarse when she talked again. 

“Steve…”

“Yeah, Rob?”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault for not knowing what would happen or what he’d do.”

Steve swallowed. “That’s the thing, Rob. No matter how much I tell myself that, it still kinda feels like it is.” 

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Chapter Text

Interlude I - Mike Lewenski’s Party

Steve doesn't belong with this crowd anymore, not at all, not even a little. He knew that already, of course, but wow was hanging out with them a mistake. 

Steve’s high as hell on Munson's weed and the world feels a little like a waking dream. Even out of it though, he knows what happened to Munson isn't right. By the pool, Jason Carver holds court, surrounded by his admirers. A king who probably won’t get any sense knocked into him by his ex’s new boyfriend and an interdimensional encounter. No, Carver's likely on the path to being a jerk forever, one who'll never appreciate that night he almost died at a party and survived.

Why would he? Guys like him are untouchable. They forget to be afraid. 

Instead they act like fake royalty and shit on people like Eddie Munson. Steve would know. 

Eddie Munson–the image of him lingers in Steve’s mind long after he walks away–water falling from his hair and clothes, running down his chest, beading along the tattoo of a black widow. Blood seeping sluggishly from his split lip, turning into watercolors on his wet chin.

Munson had wiped it away with the back of his hand, had spit a line onto the concrete around the pool. It's still there, people carefully sidestepping it.

Steve passes it when he walks to the front yard, a little dazed, a lot sick of Hawkins' finest. He's pleased to find Munson didn't leave. He's sitting on the steps of the front porch, shirt still off and draped over the stairs next to him, half-covering the lunchbox. 

Steve stares, for a long moment, at the glowing cherry on the tip of Munson’s cigarette. 

“Munson.”

He looks up, and Steve does his absolute best to focus on him and act normal. Munson chuckles around his cigarette, shaking his head. “Fuck, Harrington, did you smoke the whole thing?”

A yes or no question. You got this, Steve.

“Yes.”

Nailed it. 

Steve sits down on the steps beside him, and Munson holds out the cigarette in a casual offering. Steve takes a drag and passes it back, blows out the smoke and slumps. 

“God, I hate these people,” Steve mutters, and Munson jolts next to him like he’s been slapped.

“You, King Steve Harrington, hate these people?”

Steve slowly rotates his head to look at Munson. He notes that the pool water and summer humidity have made Munson’s hair even wilder. Steve wants to touch it. It’s probably a little rough and dry from the chlorine. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s still soft. If it was even soft before, that is. Maybe Munson loads it with gel or enough hairspray to poke another hole in the ozone layer. Steve wouldn't know. 

Too many thoughts about hair. Which, okay, Steve is a bit of a hair guy. It’s like how car guys open up their hoods and talk about pistons or whatever. 

“You floating away on me, Harrington?” 

Right. Eddie asked a question.   

“Can’t stand most of them.” Steve leans back on his arms, staring at the stars that haven’t been eaten by the neighborhood lights “They don’t get it. That the world isn’t high school. That the world’s pretty fucked up, actually.”

“Jesus, Harrington, since when are you a pessimist?”

Steve hums and chews on the word. Pessimist. “I don’t think I am.”

“No?”

“A realist in a pessistic–pessimystical–fuck. Munson, you ever feel like you know more about shit than anyone should know?” Steve looks at him again, feels his hands twitch under his own body weight. There are goosebumps on Munson’s skin. Steve’s eyes fall on the fresh scab on Munson’s mouth, and he wets his own lips in sympathy before saying, “Jason Carver is an asshole.”

Munson huffs a laugh. “Now that,” he says, “is something I do know.” 

“Not like you. You’re a good guy for going in after him, Munson,” Steve says. “Good hair. Those jackasses don’t deserve to share the same air as you.” 

Munson raises an eyebrow, something Steve can’t place flitting across Munson’s face before an amused grin chases it away. “Moi? Good hair? Well, well, well. That’s high praise from Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington.”

“Eh, I call ‘em as I see ‘em.” 

“I’ll be sure to put it on my resume. I'll wedge it right there between spending six years in high school and selling drugs.” 

Steve grins back. “If you need a reference… For the hair or the drugs.”

“If this is you trying to get free weed, Harrington, flattery will get you absolutely everywhere. Go on. Talk about my eyes next.” 

“They’re pretty eyes. Very Van Morrison, but you know, a brown-eyed guy.” Steve licks his lips again. “I think if I smoked anymore though, I’d melt into the lawn.” 

“Aw, Harrington, do you need a babysitter?” Munson asks, and Steve can’t help it. He throws his head back and laughs, so loud and so hard that Munson startles. 

“Fuck, Munson, you have no idea how funny that is. Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, I think you’re definitely cut off. No more green for little Stevie Harrington tonight.”

Steve trades grins with Munson. It’s hard not to let his eyes wander back to the split lip. Munson probes at it with his tongue and Steve imagines the taste of copper, frowns. Steve should say something, just in case Carver or any of the other regional assholes just happen to be right.

“You know, Munson, it would be pretty fucked up to kiss Carver,” Steve says, and Munson stiffens. 

“Wha–”

“But only because he’s a total asshole, not because he’s a, you know, dude or whatever.” Steve smiles warmly. “You could do a hell of a lot better.”

Munson’s brows furrow inward, his eyes staring into Steve’s like he’s trying to decode messages from Russian spies with nothing but a Spanish-English dictionary. 

“I’m not accusing you of being…” Steve hears Robin’s voice in his head. Just say ‘gay,’ dingus. It’s not a dirty word. It’s who I am. Don’t, like, out me to the whole fucking town, but you can say gay or lesbian. “I’m not accusing you of being gay or anything just because you're, uh, unique. I just, if you were, it’s not wrong or fucked up like a lot of people say it is. People should be who they are, you know?” 

Munson looks like he’s been slapped. He blows out a breath. “Fuck, Harrington.” 

Steve casts his gaze back to the sky. He knows about three constellations, and he finds Orion’s belt and one of the dippers (he’d honestly need to see both to know which one.) Next to him, Munson shifts to look at the sky too, resting on one elbow so he can smoke another cigarette. His knees angle toward Steve. 

“Want another drag?” Munson asks, and Steve accepts, blowing a cloud of smoke across the stars. 

“I like that you’re different,” Steve says. “Shit, I mean, like the clothes and the music–”

“I know what you mean, Harrington.” Munson reaches over to pat Steve’s thigh before drawing back and tapping the side of the lunchbox. “I need to head out. As fun as this little gathering is, I am expected elsewhere to provide goods and/or services. You okay?” 

“Yeah, man, it’s just weed. At worst, I’ll fall asleep on the porch.” 

“Driving home?”

“Walked. It’s, like, two blocks. Probably the only reason I even fucking came. I hate... well, you know.”

Munson nods. With a slight frown, Steve watches him shrug his shirt back on. Munson gives Steve another long look before digging out his cigarettes, removing one from the pack. He bends down to tuck it behind Steve’s ear, fingers brushing against Steve’s skin. Steve shudders.

“A thank you for providing a decent fucking conversation to a weary traveler, my good sir.” Munson draws back and bends into a dramatic bow, flourishing his hand. “Enjoy life amongst the local fauna, your majesty.”

“Don’t remind me,” Steve groans. He glances at Eddie’s split lip one more time. “See you around, Munson. Be careful out there.” 

Later, months upon months later, Eddie will find out about the Upside Down and Vecna. Biting his nails bloody, he’ll ask, “This is what you meant, isn’t it? About knowing more about shit than anyone should know?” 

“Yeah. God, I wish you didn't get it now, Munson. I really do.”

"Yeah, well..."

Even later still, after Eddie barely survives a brush with Jason and has to watch someone else die, Steve will ask, “Do you regret saving him?”

And Eddie will look down at the ground and say softly, miserably, “No.”

Chapter Text

Chime III - Arcana imperii 

The secrets of power

“Do you like it here, Eddie?”

“I can't exactly say it's top on the list of favorite places I've ever been. But it's not at the bottom, so there's that. Where is here exactly?”

“Everywhere. Nowhere.” The man said his name was Arthur. “We always called it the Mindscape.”

“We?”

“There were others who could go into Mindscapes like this one. Most are dead.”

“Aren’t we dead too?” Eddie asked. “Because it kind of feels like I’m dead these days.”

“Oh no, this isn’t a place for dead things,” Arthur said. “The Mindscape exists outside of both worlds. It can take from either, but it is somewhere else, somewhere new.” 

“Both worlds? Hawkins and the Upside Down?” 

Arthur regarded him. “The Upside Down.” A small smile. “That's a good name for it.” 

“Ah, so you've been there? My sincerest apologies.” Eddie slid an arm under his knees and pulled them close, curling up where he sat. Across from him, Arthur sat stiffly, his legs folded. He seemed unbothered by the water. 

“Many have been to the Upside Down, Eddie. It can be scary, but I ask you, is a den of snakes evil or is it simply their home? Is a place’s friendliness toward people the only indicator of its worth?”

Well, when he put it that way… 

“Snakes don’t usually brutally murder people in my living room,” Eddie said. “If we aren’t dead, what are we?” 

“You and I are what everything in a Mindscape is. Minds outside of bodies.” 

“And that doesn’t make us, like, ghosts or whatever?”

“If our bodies were past saving, our minds would not remain.” Arthur stood, offering Eddie his hand. “Here, let me show you.”

Eddie mentally braced himself for the moment his hand might turn to smoke, when Arthur might realize he’d been wrong, that Eddie was truly dead after all. It never came. Arthur’s hand felt solid, and Eddie let him help him off the wet floor of the Mindscape. 

“This way,” Arthur said, and the two of them moved through the black. “This might be unsettling for you to see, but it’s important to remember that what can harm us can also heal.” 

“What m–” A distant shape came into view. Eddie didn’t have to ask what it was. He knew the leather jacket, the shape of his own hair, the handkerchief atop his head. When they moved closer, he saw the evidence from the demobats, a prominent fresh, pink scar on his jaw, several more beneath his destroyed Hellfire shirt. That alone was almost too much, but the vines... Fuck, there were so many. They curled around him, inside him. Tendrils shot into his ears and up his nose. The worst, though, was the large vine that had pushed itself down his throat. It undulated, the movement pulsing through the skin of his neck. 

Eddie turned away from the sight and retched, doubling over and dry heaving. 

“What the fuck?” Eddie said, afraid to look back at his… at the empty vessel that had once been his body, that Arthur suggested still was his body and could be again. “Jesus fucking hell. No. What the actual fucking fuck, dude?” 

“A knife can be a weapon, Eddie,” Arthur said, resting a hand on Eddie’s back. “It can also be a surgical tool.”

“Nothing in that place wants to help anyone. Nothing. Especially not with Vecna there.” 

“The one you call Vecna is not in the Upside Down, not exactly,” Arthur said. He leaned down to touch a tendril leading into Eddie’s ear. “You did die, actually. For a moment.” 

Eddie let out a strangled noise, near hysteric. “What?” 

“Humans are so limited in their scope of death. I felt you die. I was…distracted, but I saw your potential. Your willfulness. How the world thinks you strange and punishes you with cruelty and indifference, and yet you push on.” Arthur stood back up. “You remind me of someone. I decided you were worth saving.” 

An inkling of understanding bloomed in Eddie’s mind. 

“You’re like her, aren’t you? That girl the kids know with the superpowers. Eleven.” 

Arthur flinched and reached for the button on his sleeve. He rolled it up and offered it to Eddie.

001 

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said, splashing wildly in his effort to scramble backwards. Before him, Henry Creel calmly put the sleeve back into place. 

“You fear what you don’t understand, Eddie Munson. That’s okay. Most do.”

“Stay back.” 

Henry smirked. “Or what? You cannot harm me in my own mind, Eddie.”

“What the hell do you want from me?”

Henry shifted faces–the boy, the man, Vecna. He stayed in the form of the latter that time–leathery skin and the suggestion of muscle and sinew–looming over Eddie where he sucked in panicked breaths. 

“I want what Eleven has, what almost defeated me. An ally, Eddie.” Vecna stepped closer. “The Upside Down is healing us both. I am healing us both.” Vecna waved his hand and Eddie's body faded away, replaced by the mutilated once-human who was Henry Creel. There were even more vines than there’d been on Eddie, some boring right through the skin. Eddie turned away. 

“I am also making you better, unlocking a part of you that you didn’t know you have,” Vecna said. 

“What?”

“What I can do. What Eleven can do. You can transcend humanity too, Eddie. You can hurt the ones who hurt you. Jason Carver is dead now, not worth saving as you were. I’ve made the mistake of using someone like him before. But there are others who have harmed you besides Jason, aren’t there? So many others. You could kill them, make them suffer beyond their wildest nightmares.” 

Eddie trembled, briefly imagining Tommy or Andy floating in the air, limbs bent akimbo. He fought the urge to retch again. They were assholes, but at worst they deserved to walk across hot Lego or have their cars tossed in the lake. Not to have their bones broken and their eyes–

“I don’t want to be you,” Eddie said. “I don’t want to hurt people. My friends…”

“Friends.” Vecna laughed. “People who will leave in the end. Especially when they find out what you are. That’s what people do to you, isn’t it, Eddie? Your parents. Two years of friends who graduated before you could, most of whom barely look at you anymore. People always leave you. They didn’t even take your body.” 

Eddie blinked, and in that split second of darkness, he found himself back in the Upside Down, staring down at his lifeless corpse. Dustin cried. Nancy and Robin stood nearby, tears streaking ashen faces. Steve Harrington… 

“Steve… Dustin…” Eddie knelt down, trying not to look at his own dead eyes, his own dead anything. 

Steve glanced back at Robin and Nancy, then at Dustin who sobbed so violently Eddie thought he might shake apart. 

Gently, so gently, Steve ran his fingers over Eddie’s eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.” 

He pulled the pick from Eddie’s neck and tucked it into Dustin’s hand. 

Steve did walk away, carrying Dustin in his arms. They all did, leaving Eddie behind just like Vecna said. But… 

The scene dissolved, Eddie back in the Mindscape. He bit back his own tears. God, it hurt like hell to watch them go, the best friends he'd probably ever have all lost when he'd just found them. And, yeah, Eddie was used to believing the worst in people, especially when it came to him. Rejection was a bitch and he knew her so very well. 

But no level of doubt his brain or Vecna could throw at him could overtake the fact that he knew better. They'd made endless sacrifices. Just for him, little old burnout freak Eddie Munson. And even if he somehow still had his doubts, he’d been to the Upside Down. He’d fucking died there. If he had to make the choice between Dustin or a lost cause? Well…

“What was he supposed to do?” Eddie asked. “They had no choice.” 

“A real friend would carry you too.” 

“A real friend would know I would’ve wanted it to happen exactly like it did. Steve got Dustin out. Nancy and Robin watched over them. Whatever you’re trying to convince me of, it’s not–”

“That’s enough." Vecna put up his hand. “I do not have to convince you.”

“What?” 

“You’re stirring,” Vecna said, the Mindscape shifting, taking them back to Eddie as he was, vines and all. He was indeed stirring, his fingertips twitching. Vecna watched that with interest. 

Eddie’s eyes went wide. No, he didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. 

“What the hell do you mean you don’t have to convince me?” 

Vecna turned to face him. Henry Creel flashed into place, smiling. “Memories are what you actually remember, Eddie.” 

The vines retreated from Eddie’s body, until it appeared to lie all alone, dark water creeping up its sides. 

“What did you do?” Eddie asked, something heavy pulling on his limbs, ripping him away from the dark. “No. No, you son of a bitch. What the fuck did you–?”

Henry winked at him and faded into...

Pain. Thirst. Cold. 

Wake up.

So cold. 

Wake up and find me. We are not finished. 

Gasping for breath, Two opened his eyes. 

“One…”

Chapter Text

Interlude II - Hawkins Lab, September 1979

They have been prisoners so long, Two can’t remember being anywhere but the lab. He watches the children, plays games with them, encourages them to grow stronger. 

He watches One too. Henry. Unlike the rest of them, Henry knows his real name. Sometimes at night, Two whispers that name, like a secret. 

“I could probably find it if you wanted it, your name,” Henry tells him, the two of them secluded in the employee break room, as though they work there. Two thinks of his employee badge, the one that won’t even let him leave the building. 

Edward Munson. 

A fake name, a joke. Hasn’t Brenner taken enough?

“It’s okay,” Two says. Because it is okay. Two is enough of a name when it ties him, forever, to Henry. Sequential. Perfect.

Henry is older than Two. Too old, Two knows, for the way Two feels about him. That doesn’t stop him from wishing, for wondering about the day when those seemingly long years will feel shorter. Will things change then? 

He imagines sharing a cigarette beneath the night sky, watching Henry’s lips curl around the filter. He imagines tucking one behind Henry’s ear, an excuse for one faint whisper of Henry’s skin. Two has never smoked, but he could. They could. 

They, too, could try all those drugs Brenner used to force into their veins on purpose. See what the limits of their powers really are, then bend the world beneath Henry’s knees.

“I would kill him for you,” Two says, scratching at his neck, wishing he knew where the Soteria was so he could dig it from his skin. If either of them had their abilities, they would burn the lab to the ground and dance in the ashes. 

“I know you would,” Henry says. “You’ll get your chance, Two. Soon.”

Henry smiles at Two, and Two thinks, I f you are the hammer, then I am your nail. If you are teeth, I am the venom inside. 

"Soon" comes a day later, the alarms sounding. Two knows what they mean when he hears them. He runs.  

He finds a massacre.

Eleven has killed the kids, and Two nearly buckles at the sight of their broken bodies. The kids had been cruel, but they were products of Brenner and his methodology. And they were kids . 

“Two, run!”

Henry is the strongest of them. He should be able to defeat her. 

“Take it out of me,” Two yells. “Take it out of me so I can help you!” 

But Henry can’t stop fighting her long enough to free him. And so Eleven pushes Henry from one world to the other. 

And if you were thunder, I would be the lightning which followed. One and then Two. And so it is. 

Two doesn’t hesitate before jumping into the Unknown.

It’s horrifying, the world they find. Henry uses the last of his strength to free Two’s abilities. While he rests, Two guards him, staring at the wounds Eleven inflicted, knowing he won’t hesitate when the time comes.

She’s a kid too, but too dangerous. Too strong. Past saving, and God knows Henry tried so hard with her. 

“You’re awake,” Two says, watching Henry sit up. He looks different–awful and barely human. Beautiful just the same. 

“Do you need sleep?” Henry asks. 

“No, not yet.” 

They explore the horror together. They make it curve and bow around them, until Henry is its only master.  

Years pass. They scheme to get free again and again, and Eleven is there at every turn. Keeping them in prison, just like Brenner. 

They make their final play for freedom, and she and her allies kill them.

Nearly. 

But not quite. And their world, for all its horrors, knows Henry, knows Two. It saves them and brings them back from the brink. 

Alive and awake, Two kneels at the feet of Henry Creel where he rests in a mockery of the home Brenner stole from him. Vines suspend him, feed him, heal his hurts. Just like that first foray into the unknown, Two watches over him dutifully. 

Henry has survived everything–the murder of his family, the years in the lab, Eleven’s massacre.  

She cast him into the dark, and he made it his home. Their home. And now, despite everything, Henry holds the upper hand. 

Two is in awe of him. Two doesn’t care about the disfigured skin, about the vines that emanate from him. He loves him still. 

“I would kill her for you." Two bows his head. 

“I know you would,” Henry says. "I know you will." 

Releasing himself from the healing vines, Henry steps toward him. 

They leave the other world together, all of Henry's monsters in tow. 

Chapter Text

Maybe it had been naive to expect a warning shot of any kind. A single demogorgon. A flock of bats. Another member of their team forced to walk around with a non-stop soundtrack. 

There was no warning, not really. 

Steve, Robin, Nancy, and Jonathan were in the middle of a movie when four different walkies crackled on the coffee table. 

El’s shaky voice came out of all four. “He is coming.” 

“Fuck. Oh God.” Robin jumped up, smashing her knee into the coffee table. It would have been funny any other time. No one laughed. 

“He is here,” El said. 

“Jesus Christ,” Steve scrambled toward the trunk in the corner, pulling out two backpacks and his trusty bat. Nancy and Jonathan had already gone for the door, practically knocking each other in their haste to get to Nancy’s car and get their own weapons. 

Another crackle. 

“Someone is with him,” El said, and she sounded confused. “Helping. Someone like me.”

Steve and Robin looked at each other. 

“Helping him? What, like a sidekick or something?” Mike asked. 

“Yes.”

Lucas, Erica, and Dustin all talked at once. “Kas the Bloody-Handed!”

“Who?” Robin asked. 

“In Dungeons and Dragons, Kas is Vecna’s, like, sidekick, at least until Kas betrays him.” Steve watched three faces turn in his direction, all in various states of surprise. “What? I thought it might be a good distraction to read up.” 

“Unbelievable,” Robin muttered, but Hopper interrupted any other conversation they might have had. 

“Doesn’t matter what his name is,” Hopper said. “He’s dead tonight either way. Alpha team, fill up the gas cans. Meet me at base camp. Beta team, hunker down. Over.” 

“Hunker down? Hunker down?! That’s bullshit and you know it,” Dustin said. “Over.”

“You can ask me if I give a rat’s furry little ass later, Henderson. Hunker. Down.”

The kids wouldn’t follow that order. Steve knew it. Hopper probably knew it. Steve switched to another channel, one he knew Dustin had set up on a separate radio.

“It sounds like we’ll need bombs,” Steve said. 

“First off, this is Suzie's channel. For Suzie. You aren't Suzie, Steve. You aren't even cute. Second of all, are you giving me busywork like we don’t have years of experience with this, like I wasn't there with Eddie unt–”

“Dustin. Please.” Steve threw his keys at Robin and slid into the passenger seat, lurching backwards when she took off at breakneck speed. “If–Jesus, Rob–if anything, that means you know the stakes. Besides, if we all die, Hawkins and all of planet Earth are gonna be really glad we saved the best for Beta team.”

“Bullsh- Bullcrap,” Dustin grumbled. “But fine. We’ll commandeer the Gas-n-Go and make molotovs. When we’re done though, dude, we’re coming to help.” 

Steve exhaled in relief. “Walkie first. You should know what you’re getting into and what the plan is.” 

“Fine. But only because it's a good idea.” 

Steve sighed in relief. There was one crisis averted for the time being. He could stall the kids more later. If he survived long enough to do anything. 

“Holy shitting hell,” Robin said.  

From the gas station, they could see the swarm of demobats hanging over the center of town, Robin fidgeting wildly while she poured gas into cans. 

“Breathe, Rob.” Though Steve felt just as ready to walk out of his own skin. There were so many of them, and who even knew what was on the ground? God, it felt like their own numbers were impossibly small. A ragtag group against an army. And, yeah, Hopper had recruited a few more members, plus the National Guard was in town. But was it enough? Especially when the Guard refused to even listen to any of them about what they were up against. 

“Why should I breathe? We’re all gonna die.” Robin glanced back toward the town and let out a quiet scream. Five soldiers hung in the air, high enough for the world to see. When five arms all bent in identically wrong directions, both she and Steve both looked away. 

Please stay home. Please, Dustin. Steve willed it as hard as he could and got in the car. 

They were about a hundred feet from the gas station when Steve heard it, a deep voice that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere all at once.  

Harrington. A clock ticked. 

“Fuck, fuck! I hear him.” Steve slammed his hand against the play button on the car radio. Iron Maiden poured from the speakers. 

“Since when the hell do you listen to Iron Maiden?” Robin asked, before screaming and cutting the wheel to slam into a demobat, then screaming more when it splattered the windshield in viscera. The wipers squeaked. 

“Eddie loved them. I was curious. Sue me.” 

“Kas is Vecna’s, like, sidekick. Steve Harrington, I am livid that we have yet to have time for a discussion I think we really need to have.” 

“Well, you said it back there, right? We’ll be dead soon. May as well do it–shit!–now.” Steve launched himself into the back of the car, swinging at a demobat that had hurled itself through the back windshield. The nails ran it through, vile substances dribbling onto Steve’s seats. “So much for my upholstery.” 

“Fuck your upholstery. Steve, I think,” Robin said over the music, glancing frantically between the road and the rear-view mirror. Steve caught her eyes in the reflection right around the time she yelled, “I think you might be bisexual.” 

Steve didn’t have time to react to that right away. A demobat careened through the hole in the back glass, sinking teeth into Steve’s wrist, tail whipping wildly.

“Son of a bitch!” Steve grabbed it by the neck, forced it onto several rusty nails, and then threw it violently out of his car. 

Robin kept talking, her voice pitching higher. “I think you were in love with Eddie, Steve! Or… or like you could’ve been. Eventually.” 

Another demobat flew right into Steve’s chest, forcing the air out of his lungs. And, oh, wasn’t that fucking appropriate? He wrestled with it, grabbing the whipping tail before it could wrap around his throat. 

“Maybe you weren’t though," Robin said. "I- I could be wrong. I can’t tell you who you are, only what it seems like. And it seems like you wear his vest and listen to his music and read about things he liked. And you remembered his tattoo and everything he was wearing and…and…” She was rambling, her mouth going like a tape at double speed. He couldn’t blame her. She did that when she was nervous and stressed and, well… He’d probably be more worried about her if she was quiet. 

No, with Vecna around, he’d definitely be more worried about her if she was quiet. 

Steve struggled in the backseat, doing everything he could to avoid another bite. The less blood he lost early on, the more he had to lose later. Right? Right. 

Another demobat flew in before he could deal with the first, and Steve caught one of its wings on his bat, swinging up at the roof of the car to impale it. Blood dripped onto his knee. One down, one to go. Steve fumbled for a mesh pocket on his go bag in the floorboard, fishing out a knife. 

Efficiently relieved of its head, the demobat went limp in his hand and finally stopped trying to eat him alive chest-first. 

Steve took several deep breaths. 

“Are you okay?” Robin asked. “I just realized that no matter what you said about having the conversation anyway since we might die, maybe now wasn’t the right time to potentially throw you into a full identity crisis.” She cringed in the rear-view. “I mean, if not now, when? But…”

Steve sent another flying hell demon spiraling away from his car by lining the bat up like a pool cue and popping the sucker right through the hole in the windshield. 

I think you were in love with Eddie. 

No, that didn’t sound… 

Bisexual… Steve would’ve realized…

It all played over in his head. The same events. A different perspective. The metal tapes and the DnD books and the party and how he’d… Fuck, he’d…

“I flirted with Eddie Munson under the goddamned stars,” Steve said. “Rob, I… Oh my God.” 

“You froze up in the RV. When he… Steve, fucking Iron Maiden is keeping Vecna out of your brain.” 

Steve laughed, high-pitched and frantic. 

“You know this really fucking figures,” Steve yelled, because if he let his brain keep processing, if he turned over the word ‘love’ too many times–whether it was already true or just might have been in some future that no longer existed–he might honestly fall apart. Instead he killed three demobats with vicious precision. “Hey Rob, we’ll leave striking out because they’re fucking dead off the metaphorical Scoops board, won’t we?” Steve asked, his voice sounding every bit like something had torn out half his throat. 

“Steve,” Robin said, with as much sympathy as someone could manage while screaming over metal music and a cacophony of shrieks. “God, I’m sorry.” 

And at that, the tires squealed to a stop outside of Hopper’s makeshift base camp. Hopper was waiting, he and Joyce emerging from glass doors covered in thick pieces of metal, both of them wielding flamethrowers. 

A few recruits came out behind them, bodies ducked low and hands covering their heads. The recruits helped unload two cars worth of people, weapons, and gas cans. With another blast of fire, Hopper and Joyce closed the doors, sealing everyone inside. For a minute, everyone was safe. The sounds of things beating against the building reminded them it was only temporary. 

There you are Steve Harrington. Did you think you could hide? 

Tick, tick, tick.

“Shit. Fuck. The music’s gone,” Steve said, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, moving like a thousand tiny compass needles orienting themselves toward a single point. Fuck, was this what Will had felt all those times? No wonder it freaked him the hell out. 

“Oh shit.” Robin ripped open the backpack at his feet and thrust his Walkman into his hand. Loosely resting around Steve’s neck, his headphones churned out the garbled sounds of Black Sabbath. He met Robin’s eyes. Her lip quivered. 

“Rob, don’t.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said hoarsely, but she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him close. 

“Seems a good time to remind everyone they should have a tape player on them at all times,” Hopper said. “Secure it well. Run cords through your clothes so they aren’t vulnerable.”

Steve followed that missive, carefully working the Walkman under the collar of his shirt. 

“Harrington, if you’re being targeted, you’re staying here,” Hopper said. 

“What? That’s not ne–”

Hopper put up a hand. “It’s not a bullshit assignment. I need fighters here as much as I need them out there. Someone has to protect her while she’s under. You’ve got experience, plus I know you and trust you.”

Someone has to protect her. Eleven. Going back into Vecna’s mind to fight for them. 

Steve nodded. 

“Buckley, you sticking with Steve?” Hopper asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Great, so here’s the plan.” 

It involved a great deal of fire. Hopper was listening in on the radio frequencies of the National Guard, keeping tabs on Vecna and Kas. 

“Do not get close to either of them until you’re given specific instruction,” Hopper said. “Do not attempt to engage. You have no idea what they’re capable of. Our job is to keep distracting him while simultaneously eliminating other threats. Remember what I’ve taught you about the best ways to kill each thing you might encounter. Suit up and move out.” 

Someday, Steve was going to have to ask where Hopper acquired multiple flamethrowers. 

“Harrington, Jonathan, Buckley, Wheeler.” Hopper motioned for them to come closer. He opened a metal briefcase, revealing several things that looked like pills nestled into a foam casing–eight in total. A second row held just as many injection needles, the size of which were–Steve shuddered. 

“I have no idea what Owens had to do to get these,” Hopper said. “But he and El both say they’ll render Vecna close to powerless. This Kas guy too, I guess. I figure the more of us who know about them, the more of us who have them, the better our chances.” Hopper took two, then handed two more to Nancy. “Both at once if they’re together, or El says they’ll just save each other.” 

“What do we do after?” Nancy asked. 

“Like I said, we’re eliminating threats. Vecna had one of those things in him before and he got away. He’s smart and manipulative. No goddamn chances.” Hopper’s jaw clenched. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick and fucking tired of dealing with Upside Down shit.” 

Nancy nodded. “Yeah, no kidding.” 

“We’re leaving the other four here,” Hopper said, shutting the case and looking at Steve and Robin. “I trust both of you to make the right calls if you have to.” He moved in closer, talking low. “And I know this is selfish to ask and to ask it like this, but please please keep her safe. At all costs.”

Steve answered with a jerk of his chin, and Hopper pointed to a side door. 

It led to a basement, where Will Byers and Argyle sat next to a cattle trough filled with water. Inside, El floated, a pair of spray-painted pool goggles over her eyes. Blood trickled from her nose. 

Will looked up at them. “She hasn’t said anything in a while.” 

“Is she okay?” Robin asked. 

Will curled a hand around the back of his neck. “I guess we’ll find out.” 

“I’m staying topside so I don’t distract her with…” Steve gestured to his headphones. He scanned the basement to see how secure it was before he went, satisfied with what he found. The only way in was through the door they’d just come through, and someone had sealed all the slit windows at the top with cement and bricks. Nothing was getting in there, not without Steve getting a shot in anyway. 

“Yeah, I’m staying up there with dingus here,” Robin said. “Walkie if you need us?” 

“Got it, my dudes.” Argyle and Will both gave them thumbs up. 

Up top, he and Robin sat in straight-backed chairs, weapons laid out on a table in front of them. Ready. Waiting. A few of Hopper’s other volunteers sat against the opposite wall, their faces pale, their hands shaking. 

It felt like a lifetime since Steve’s first encounter with the Upside Down. Had he looked like that after the demogorgon? Hell, had he looked like that after Eddie? Did he look like that now? 

Minutes ticked by, and it felt too quiet even with the music and the walkies chirping out updates and chatter. 

“I like Black Sabbath a lot better than Iron Maiden,” Steve said just to break the tension. 

“Yeah?” Robin flinched at a particularly loud thump from outside. “What’s your favorite of the stuff you know he liked?” 

“Oh, um. So far, Dio.” Steve pointed at the back of the vest. He rubbed circles on the handle of his bat. “You know, a new Slayer album came out last week. Van Halen has one out in October. He’ll never hear them. I won’t get to ask what he thought about them or if he even cared.” 

Robin leaned over onto Steve’s shoulder, her knuckles white around the machete in her lap. 

Steve kissed the crown of her head. “I’m sorry Vickie left town.” 

Robin took a minute to answer, sighing quietly. “I’m not.”

Another loud thump made both of them jolt against each other. 

“Yeah, no, I guess you wouldn’t be,” Steve said. “Hey, we could do a road trip after this is all over, go see her. I hear Cleveland’s pretty underrated.”

“A road trip sounds nice,” Robin said, nodding. “We should try not to die so we can go on a–”

Several loud thumps hit at once. 

Robin finished weakly, “–a road trip.” 

The sound of metal groaning made them both bolt upright, gripping their weapons. Steve’s gaze shot toward the front door, where the thick sheets of metal had started to buckle like a falling bridge. 

“Oh dear God.” Robin gripped Steve’s thigh with her other hand. He looked at her. Together, they looked toward the briefcases before shooting out of their seats. 

Robin let out a nervous laugh. “If it’s Vecna, we’re so dead.”

“Vecna?” That was one of the recruits, following behind them both. “Do you think it’s him?”

“Not likely,” Steve said. 

Fuck, he hated to let his bat go even for a second, but he dropped it to grab a pill and load it into an injector. 

Robin loaded another, and the two of them made the decision together to hide the rest. 

“That metal cabinet in the basement,” Steve said. “Go!” 

Robin took off. 

Steve picked up a walkie. “You got eyes on Vecna, Hop? We’ve got company.” 

“Still in the town center. Must be the other one. Hold the line, Harrington. Wheeler, Jonathan, double back.”

“We could help,” Lucas chimed in. 

“Absolutely not.” 

The metal on the door continued to whine. Steve watched it fold further and then looked at the three other people in the room. 

“Mind the tails on the flying ones, but otherwise they’ll die easy if you cut them open.” Steve dropped into fighting stance with his bat.“Anything coming through that door…” He pointed at a pile of lighters and a line of aerosol cans–spray paint, hairspray, WD-40. “Fire will kill or at least hurt them.”

“Even Kas?” 

Steve thought it over. He doubted they’d get anywhere close to him if he had Eleven powers, but it might at least distract him long enough for Steve or Robin to jab him.   

“Even,” Steve said. “Just–”

With a loud boom, the metal blew off the front door and crashed against the wall opposite it, landing in a shower of glass. 

Framed in the doorway with one arm out, Steve got his first glimpse at Kas the Betrayer. On his legs, he wore pants in a deep black. Over those, a leather jacket in a dark burgundy, zipped asymmetrically on one side. A dark scarf hid his hair and mouth, casting shadows that obscured his eyes. Everything he had on was dingy, frayed, torn–like Kas or the clothes or both had been in the Upside Down for years. 

Something unidentifiable twisted in Steve’s gut. 

And then Steve lost sight of him, demobats swarming through the door. Steve thought fast, grabbing one of the chairs by the leg and swinging it hard, clearing enough space for him to sweep his bat in a long arc. 

But, fuck, the air was full of them. Steve felt like he was driving through fog, if the fog was made of a thousand living nightmares. He heard one of the recruits scream and looked for them to see if he could help, but he couldn’t see more than various limbs flailing, different weapons glinting. 

While beating the hell out of a tentacle lashed to his ankle, Steve almost missed the demogorgon. 

“Fuck!” Steve struck it with the bat and ducked down, sliding on his knees toward the weapons, shield-chair out in front of him like a snow plow. He ran into the table, several cans falling to the floor, one leaking happy pink paint all over the linoleum. Steve swiped for it and grabbed a lighter. He felt the absence of his bat as soon as he set it down, a tentacle curling around him from behind and tugging hard. 

He needed about six more arms. Six more arms, and he could win the apocalypse. 

He flicked the lighter once, twice, and then unleashed a ball of flames toward the head with too many fucking teeth. Burning, the demogorgon shrieked and retreated. 

Knife. Knife. Steve struggled against the pull around his middle, groping around on the table. One clean cut through the tentacle and he fell to the floor, not even hesitating to grab his bat again.

God, he hoped they really would be done with the Upside Down someday. But if they weren’t, he was making a fucking nail bat holster. 

Another tentacle wrapped around his wrist, squeezing around the bite from earlier. Steve growled and bit through it like an animal, spitting blood. 

Fuck, where was Rob? Had her weapon been one of the ones glinting somewhere inside the hoard? He tried to look for her again, for anyone. 

Through the fray, he caught sight of the mangled metal door. And he knew they had to get it back in place. If they didn’t, no amount of fighting mattered. Unless they could somehow exhaust an entire Upside Down’s worth of monsters. 

He doubted it. 

“Rob?” Steve yelled. “Rob, can you hear me?’ 

No one answered, which figured. Steve could barely even hear himself think, let alone hear anything else but the occasional scream of terror. He grabbed the chair again, hesitating to move away from the weapons. Two aerosol cans would fit in his back pockets. A switchblade in one front pocket. A lighter in the other, that injection needle sheathed and tucked in beside it. 

Armed and ready, Steve attempted to gain ground. It felt like a lifetime before he gained a foot on the encroaching army, but he took it, demobats falling, the burning demogorgon helpfully catching several of them on fire and dragging them outside as it fled

Swing by swing and step by step, Steve advanced toward the door. He thought he saw a flash of red leather here and there, but Kas hadn’t tried to kill him yet personally. 

With a flare of anxiety, it occurred to Steve that Kas probably had his own strategy to play out. Vecna’s strategy. And none of them had any idea what it was. 

Steve gained another half step before something sank–sharp and painful–into his ankle. 

Steve hadn’t missed the demogorgon. 

But he had missed the demodog. 

It yanked him off his feet from behind, his face slamming into the seat of the chair. The taste of his own blood spread across his tongue.

"Son of a bitch!" Like a cat, he managed to flip onto his back and kick the demodog in the face enough to dislodge it, but that only left him open to attack from above.

Stuck on his back, Steve watched the demodog grab for his foot again, a swarm of demobats diving for his ribs, tentacle tails holding every limb like the world's most fucked up Stretch Armstrong. 

It was just like fucking Lovers Lake. 

Like Eddie.  

Fuck, he hoped Robin lived so she could be the one to close his eyes. That would be nice. To see her one more time. 

Steve kept struggling, but even as he did, he knew.

For him, at least, it was over.  

Overhead, the lights in the makeshift bunker flickered. 

Someone shouted “No!” and Steve thought he heard Eddie's voice. Hey, maybe he would get to see him after all. Maybe in the next life, they could pick up where they left off, see about that whole love situation. Steve smiled with blood staining his teeth, running down the back of his throat.

It took him a second to realize the bats had stopped swarming, their tentacles loosening until they dropped free. 

At his feet, the demodog sat in a daze, one of Steve’s shoes in its mouth. Steve sat up slowly, wincing and looking around. The lights kept flickering. 

Eleven.

Gritting his teeth, Steve scrambled to his feet. He took advantage of the situation, knocking down demobats left and right, limping through smoke. He looked for Kas and wondered how much he was tied to Vecna. Maybe he was just as affected as–

A flash of skin registered in Steve’s line of sight, and then something blew him backwards, pinning him to a wall. 

From within the stagnant pond of horrors, Kas emerged, one hand held high. A headache shot through Steve’s skull, sharp and unbearable behind his eyes, and he shut them tight like that might save him. 

Fuck, he would’ve preferred the other death to having his whole body twisted like a pretzel. To the pain in his skull–the squealing of train wheels made flesh. 

“Jesus Christ,” Steve choked. 

“Surprise, you superpowered son of a bitch,” came the response. 

In Robin’s raspy, nervous voice. 

What…?

Steve opened his eyes right around the time he slid back down the wall, landing with a thump, clutching his temples and gasping for breath.

Across the room, a injection needle protruded from the shoulder of Kas's red leather jacket. Steve watched him rip the zipper down several inches, fingers clawing at the skin around a pinprick of blood. 

Steve’s eyes fixated on Kas’s chest, not at the claw marks on his skin where they turned redder with every scrape. 

But on something black and inky. 

Steve inhaled sharply. 

You remembered the rose tattoo . 

Steve remembered the spider too. With nothing but a glimpse at sharp, spindly points, Steve fucking knew it like he knew his own hands. 

“That’s not possible,” Steve said, the words a hoarse whisper that broke in his throat. But he was already crawling across the mangled bodies of demobats, through his own blood, reaching out to grasp Kas’s ankle. 

Kas tried to kick him in the face, but Steve caught his calf and clawed his way up Kas’s body. Despite all attempts to stop him, Steve grabbed for the jacket zipper, desperate to see the rest of the tattoo, desperate for a confirmation. 

Kas’s fist caught Steve in the nose; Steve’s fist tightened around the end of a red scarf. 

Behind Kas, Robin raised her machete, and Steve rolled Kas away from her blade.  

“Rob, don't!” Steve yelled, and he gave the scarf a rough and desperate yank, pulling it away. It tumbled through the air like a bullet casing and landed like ashes. 

All the air left Steve’s lungs, his heart lurching sideways. 

And maybe it had been love or maybe it hadn’t, but now it was. Oh, it was . Steve didn’t really know if it had happened before that horrible night, if had happened since, if it mattered. 

Could a person fall in love with someone when they were gone? Could he listen to their music and smell their scent on worn denim and learn them and love what he learned? Could he remember all the cadences of their laughs, all the shapes of their smiles, and wish he could be the cause of a million more of each? 

Could he think of a night of flirting beneath Orion’s belt and wish he’d realized then that he’d wanted to twine his fingers through chlorine-soaked curls and hold on? That he’d wanted to lean over and take a kiss that probably would’ve felt a lot like sunlight? 

And could a person wish, so long after that night, that he’d actually done it? That he’d opened up a reality where that night had been a beginning instead of just an interlude?

“Eddie…” Steve felt like the marrow of his soul had been punched right out of his ribs. And there it sat, bleeding in red leather–Eddie Munson, a nasty scar on his jaw, but Eddie Munson nonetheless.

Beautiful. Whole. Alive . 

Eddie stared at Steve for a long second, eyes unreadable. And then, with a feral growl, he launched himself forward and wrapped two hands around Steve’s throat, squeezing like he had nothing–or maybe everything–to lose. 

“Take it out of me,” Eddie said, showing too many teeth, slamming Steve’s head into the linoleum. “I’m not going back, goddammit. I’m not yours.” 

“Eddie,” Steve wheezed. “Eddie, it’s Steve.” 

Thumbs pressed harder into Steve’s Adam's apple, Eddie’s eyes wild and untamed. “That’s not my fucking name. It was never my fucking name, and you people damn well know it.” 

A gunshot rang out, the bullet clipping Eddie’s bicep. Steve clutched at his own throat like he could feel the marks of Eddie’s fingers. He tried to force Eddie’s name past his lips again. What could he say? What could he say when Eddie didn’t even know himself? 

“Eddie, I…”

Jumpy as a feral cat, Eddie Munson got to his feet and looked to Nancy Wheeler where she held a pistol in a bloody, trembling hand. At the sight of him, she gasped quietly, the gun drooping toward the floor. Eddie took the opportunity, shoving past her shocked form and sprinting out into the night. 

“Shit, shit !” Steve got to his feet and tried to go after him, hop-stepping with one shoe off, his foot screaming at every step. “Eddie!” 

But outside there were only more demobats, demogorgons, and demodogs–all of them docile, trance-like. Steve wanted to scream, wanted to rage at the whole world and personally fight God. Because what the hell? He’d only realized an hour or so ago how he felt about Eddie, only to have him come crashing back into his life like a ghost.

And he was gone again already. 

Steve took another look at the monsters and glanced at Robin, standing beside him in a daze, her machete hanging loose by her side. Steve took it from her hand, took a step forward, and started swinging. Over and over again.

Tears falling like acid rain, a wounded sound ripped its way out of Steve's chest. Blood splattered across his face and in his hair. It stained the denim of the vest and ran off his fingers. He kept swinging. 

Until his arm ached and his leg threatened to buckle for the pain radiating from his foot. 

Until… 

“Steve?” Nancy spoke softly, leaning against the building for support. “El said she doesn’t think she can hold Vecna much longer.” 

Steve slid the machete through the neck of another demogorgon. He turned to her, chest heaving. 

“Why aren’t they taking Vecna out? If El has him down, they don't even need the damn pills. Just light him up until there’s nothing left, finish what we failed to do.” 

“Because the fucking National Guard won’t let them through the perimeter.” Nancy cradled her hand to her chest. 

God, Steve was so tired. 

“You need to come in, Steve,” Robin said. “So we can secure everything before it starts again.” 

Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath and then looked off at the sky. Red. So red. 

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah, okay.” He limped back into the building. He helped them put the metal back up. 

“How long?” he asked. 

Jonathan paused his efforts to bandage Nancy's hand and glanced at his watch. “Half an hour, tops.” 

Steve looked at all the ashen faces, relieved to find they hadn't lost anyone. 

“We should make sure everything in here is dead.”

And so they did.

Chapter Text

Chime IV - Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo 

No day can erase you from the memory of time

Eddie Munson, for all he had tried not to, really did take after his old man. 

After all, Eddie had lived most of his life in prisons. Prisons of systems. Prisons of convention. Prisons of fear–his own fear, the fear others had about the freaks and the weirdos. About guys who looked at other guys the way most guys look at girls. 

So much experience in being shut away. 

What was another?

Prison. 

Oh, Two knew a prison when he met it. Brenner had made sure of that. 

But Two wasn’t as deep in the hole this time, was he? He knew exactly where the Soteria was. He didn’t even need to get to Henry. He just needed to get away from those people. From earnest eyes that looked at him and called him by that stupid fucking name, the one that had been on his stupid goddamn badge.

“Eddie.” 

It filtered through the bars, into all those dark corners where he’d been tucked away. Where he’d been lost. 

Or whatever it was when someone was forced to be lost. 

Not missing, not quite abandoned either. 

Done away with. Left alone somewhere with no map, with no idea which roads would take him home. Disposed of. Like a litter of unwanted kittens, like an enemy, like a threat. 

“Eddie, it’s Steve.” 

Steve. Who the hell was Steve? 

You know, don’t you Eddie?

Memories pushed through the cracks in the bars like life forcing its way into cities no matter how much concrete they poured to try and keep it out. 

Steve was… 

A steadying hand on the small of his back, a warm laugh, an easy smile. 

Steve was…

A bare chest beneath Eddie’s vest, begging to be touched with a soft caress or a flash of teeth. 

A warm night shivering from an unexpected dip in the pool, a pair of lips that begged to be kissed but never asked, a quiet reassurance that Eddie was allowed to be Eddie. 

Steve was not, as Steve thought, just a babysitter. 

Steve. Was a guardian. 

Blocks away from the people with the Soteria, Two dug through the garbage on the sidewalk until he found something glass. He broke it and pushed the jacket aside, digging into his skin. 

He felt strangled without his abilities, leashed like a hungry animal. 

Back in that place, begging. 

Let me out. Let. Me. Out.  

No, let me out. 

A flash of images flooded through his mind, all of them featuring the man in the vest, the one who helped imprison Two again.

Another Brenner. Another goddamn warden.

Flash, flash, flash. The man looked at Two fondly, looked at Two’s mouth, licked his lips. 

Two startled. 

Not his memory. Then where the hell did it come from? 

Did it matter? Did it matter when Henry needed him to help him get Eleven? God, the things she’d done. 

Two dug the glass deeper, wincing, breathing fast to keep himself from crying out for the pain of it. It didn’t take long after that, his fingers curling around the capsule. He pulled it free and shoved it deep into his pocket where no one could use it on him again.  

With his powers, it was easy to get past the soldiers, the ones who shot their weapons like fools, as though bullets could stop a god and all his angels. 

A ring of Faceless Ones surrounded Henry, keeping him safe while he battled Eleven. Two slipped between their ranks and found Henry deep in his Mindscape, his eyes distant, determined. 

“Henry.” Two reached for an ankle where Henry hovered off the ground, vines leading from him into the other world and into the earth beneath Hawkins, Indiana. Such a short time, and Henry was already making this place his, making it pay for letting them rot in the lab. 

Two closed his eyes and reached out, looking for the Mindscape, for Henry and the hive, for her. 

He found them, stepping into a world of red skies and broken pieces. To some, it would appear to be desolate or terrifying. But Two saw it for what it really was–adaptation, survival. 

“When will you recognize that I’ve already won, Eleven?” Henry asked. 

“I’m here,” Two announced, slowly raising his hand against her. He pushed with his power. Eleven screamed.

Quietly, from somewhere deep in Two’s mind, a thought wormed its way through the sidewalk. 

If you kill her, everyone and everything we love dies. 

Flinching, Two’s arm wavered.

Chapter Text

Steve needed a moment. Just one single fucking moment. 

He submitted to the burn of isopropyl alcohol, to the painful pressure of tight bandages. He helped put the weapons table back in order, checked and rechecked the security of the building and the basement.  

Then he tucked himself into a storage closet, hugging a pack of paper towels to his chest. 

He wanted to go on another rampage. He wanted to rip the paper towels apart and scream. 

Eddie was alive and he’d been right there. 

What if they never got the chance to save him? What if the soldiers killed him, or Vecna decided that if he went down, he was taking Eddie with him? 

Could Steve handle losing Eddie a second time, especially now that he knew what he knew? 

He tried to catch his breath on the floor of the closet, inhaling deep, counting, exhaling. 

He lost the pattern quickly, breaths going erratic again. Between the injuries and Eddie, all he wanted to do was curl up on the floor and cry. Fuck, did Steve Harrington need a good cry. 

Steve .

Tick, tick, tick. 

Steve flung his arms and the paper towels into a pyramid of toilet paper, toppling them into his lap.

Shit. Shit shit shit. 

He hadn’t noticed the music dying out, too focused on other things. He fumbled with the tape, turning it over and hitting play. 

Nothing happened. Batteries. He needed… He reached for the door handle, grimacing because fuck, his foot felt like it had, well, been fucking chewed on by a demodog. 

A cruel laugh rang through Steve’s mind. 

“Robin! Nance!” 

From behind him, Steve heard a familiar voice say, “Too late.” 

Slowly, he turned toward the sound. Where there had been shelves of cleaning supplies and copier paper, Steve found an endless expanse of gray earth, spread beneath a red sky. 

And Eddie Munson’s body, head turned to stare Steve in the eyes. 

“Too late.” Eddie Munson taunted him from the ground where they’d left him, sitting up with a face that was half-skull. “Oh, Harrington, you honestly think I’d ever want anything to do with you? You left me here to die that night. You should have known I’d do it, should have tried to save me. But you’re just a spoiled little boy from suburbia, and that’s all you’ll ever be. King Steve, lord of the goddamn cul-de-sac. You're bullshit, Steve. Bullshit.” 

“You were dead. I checked.” Steve crawled, trying to get to him, the distance spreading wider and wider. “I fucking checked!” 

“Did you?” Eddie ran his fingers across his cheek, across exposed teeth and bone. 

“You’re right,” Steve said. “I should’ve realized what you’d do, but I would’ve saved you if... If I had known there was a single chance, I would have done everything, man. Everything.” 

“Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve, Steve.” Eddie sneered at him. “You don’t deserve to wear that vest.”

Steve flinched at the cruelty.

Vecna. This was Vecna, not Eddie. 

“Who I am doesn’t change your guilt, Steve.” And Eddie’s face gave way to another’s. 

“I thought you already won, huh?” Steve said. “Why this?” 

A cruel smile. The world shifted.

This was the Mindscape Steve had heard about. Broken pieces of the Creel house, spires, bits of reality floating away.  

“Steve,” Eleven said, spotting him across the battlefield. He looked at her, her face screwed up in concentration. On the ground, if it could be called that, her feet slid across loose bits of earth. 

Steve faced Eleven's assailant. No, not assailant. Assailants. Plural. 

Eddie had his hand raised, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose. He gave a long grunt of effort and pushed. Eleven slid again. 

“Eddie,” Steve said, trying to run toward him. “Eddie, this isn’t you, man. You have to–”

Something slimy attempted to wrap around Steve’s ankle. He kicked at it and side-stepped. 

Help. He had to help Eleven. He picked up a thick piece of rock and hurled it hard in Vecna’s direction.

Steve missed his nail bat already. The weapons table too. But he picked up more rocks and sprinted toward Vecna. Toward them both. 

At least his foot wasn’t a problem here. Steve closed the distance fast. He sailed a rock past Eddie’s face and nearly hit Vecna in the jaw. 

Oh that got Eddie's attention. 

With a deep growl, Eddie dropped his attack on Eleven and threw himself bodily at Steve, toppling them both to the ground. Steve was ready, catching Eddie’s wrists, forcing them both to roll so Steve could sit on his upper thighs and pin him down. 

“Eddie, Eddie, listen!" Steve struggled against him. Fuck, why was he so strong? "Eddie, I don’t know what Vecna did to you, but you are our friend. Eleven, she’s on our side.” 

Wrong thing to say. Eddie hissed through his teeth and then launched his face toward Steve’s, cracking their skulls together. Steve lost his grip, tumbling away. 

“Two, I need him,” Vecna said. 

Two? As in Two out of Eleven (or however damn many superpowered kids Hawkins Lab had produced.)

“Lies!” Eleven said, sobbing. “You are lying to him. Two is dead. You killed him, Henry.”

Eddie shook his head violently. “Lies? You wanna talk about lies with a thing like that?” Eddie scrambled to his feet, kicking a boot into Steve’s ribs. “You killed every last one of the others. You did. Slaughtered your own damn kind. Children, Eleven. Fucking kids !” 

“Is that what you told him, Henry? That it was me and not you?” 

“He didn’t have to! I was there at the lab that day. I saw you do it.” Eddie raised his hand against her again. 

Steve curled in on himself, wheezing. What? What did he mean, he'd fucking been there? Eddie wasn't...

He grasped Eddie’s ankle. 

“Eddie, please. Something stinks here.” Eddie kicked his hand away, aimed another blow at Steve’s stomach. Steve grunted, and grit his teeth. “Eddie, you weren’t like Eleven before. Vecna did this. Whatever you think you know, it's not right. Man, we’re in his mind right now. You think he can’t be in ours?” Steve kept trying, reaching out to wrap his hand around Eddie’s leg once more. Steve squeezed, hard and desperate. Everything he had, everything he felt, he poured into a single word. “ Please. ” 

Eddie’s brow furrowed, something like fear flickering through his eyes. It didn’t stop him from kicking Steve in the ribs a third time, tearing his hand loose in the process.  

“Enough of this,” Vecna said. “Two knows the truth. He knows where his loyalties lie, Steve Harrington.” 

Eddie stood up taller and inclined his head toward Vecna. Subservient. Loyal. 

On the ground by Eddie’s feet, Steve held himself, shaking. But he hadn’t been lying to the Eddie that Vecna used to torment him. He would have done everything had he known. And now he did know... 

And Steve still had one more piece of ammunition. He thought of a smile playing upon a split lip and of how it felt to run his fingers across lifeless eyelids. He thought of “Don’t ya, big boy” and broken bottles. Of pretty curls and life’s blood. 

Steve spoke. 

“If this is how it ends, I should tell you. I wish I’d figured it out before you died, you know, that I had a thing for you. But it doesn’t matter because I figured it out anyway. That somewhere between that party last summer and now, I kinda fell for you.” Steve clutched his ribs where they throbbed, probably broken, at least in this version of reality. “I… I realized I wanted to kiss you back then, at that party. That I’ve probably wanted to kiss you a ton of times. I realized that it’s not Nancy, that it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s you, Eddie. Eddie, it’s you.” 

Steve swallowed past the lump in his throat, past the fear in his soul. “I love you, Eddie. If you’re in there at all, you should at least know that. Steve Harrington loves Eddie Munson. There it is. There's the truth.” 

Steve curled tighter around his aching ribs, around his aching heart. But he never took his eyes off Eddie. He needed to know. He needed to see if there was even one spark, one confirmation that Eddie–whether it changed things or not–knew. 

What he got was Eddie’s head whipping like he’d been slapped. He looked down at Steve with eyes that were both wide and narrowed all at once. Steve watched his brow furrow, his nose wrinkle. Eddie opened his mouth to speak. 

But whatever it was, good or bad or neither, Eddie didn’t get to say it. 

A vine whipped violently around Steve’s body, yanking him upside down against one of the spires. 

Steve screamed in surprise, that sound cut off when the vine wormed its way into Steve’s mouth, jamming itself down his throat. 

Steve gagged, choked, his lungs trying to expand-contract, stoppered like a bottle of wine. 

It didn’t matter that Steve knew his real body was breathing just fine back in the supply closet. This body wasn’t breathing at all. Steve clawed and pulled at the vines, flailing wildly.  

On the battlefield, Eleven said Steve’s name and let out a near-primal scream of rage. The vine retreated long enough for Steve to draw a breath, but then it returned, going down just as viciously the second time.

Down below, Eddie stared up at him, watching him die. 

And even knowing it probably meant nothing, Steve couldn’t help but reach out his hand. Toward Eddie and what might have been. Toward Eleven and hope. Toward Robin and Nancy and Dustin and everyone else. 

Steve’s eyes watered, his mind swimming, but he reached and reached and fucking reached. 

“You forgot something, Henry,” Eleven said, tears in her eyes, strength rippling through her like thunder. “You forgot we are the same and that I am strong. You are not the only one who can bring people here.” 

And with the world going fuzzy at the corners, Steve watched as, one-by-one, the Mindscape started to fill with people–Hopper, Mike, Joyce, Nancy, Robin, Will, Lucas, Dustin, Erica, Jonathan, Argyle. 

Max. 

Jesus, she’d fucking found Max. 

Better yet, there was a stark difference between Steve Harrington and the rest of his friends. Where Steve had been pulled in without his bat, Eleven had brought all their friends with their weapons in tow. 

Without hesitating, Nancy Wheeler cocked her sawed-off shotgun and fired. 

Almost immediately, the vine down Steve’s throat retreated again, and Steve took several breaths. 

God, it was the best air he had ever sucked down in his life even if it wasn’t real. 

But he was still up on the spire, still upside-down, the blood slowly pooling in his head. He watched the entire group exchange glances, asking each other silently, “Okay, how are we playing this?” 

“Well, ho-lee shit,” Argyle said, taking a look around. “This place is fucking trippy, man. Guessing that’s the Vecna dude? Totally sick.” And like he’d been running with them for years, he picked up a large piece of splintered wood and slammed it hard into Vecna’s face. 

All hell broke loose after that. Robin saw Steve and tried to get to him before being whipped backwards by a piece of debris. Dustin spotted Eddie and ran for him, a vine intercepting him on the way. Erica sliced it in half with a Bowie knife, pulling Dustin free. 

“It’s not him, idiot. He’s Kas the damn Betrayer.” 

“But…”

“Focus, dummy.” Erica pointed at Vecna, picking up stones, chucking them like mad. Dustin followed suit, lighting molotovs and arcing them through the air. 

Near Steve, Eddie stood, watching in shock. 

Doing nothing. 

“Eddie?” Steve asked, hoarse and whisper-soft. 

Eddie turned back to look at him, and Steve swore he saw something in those dark brown eyes. 

Something a lot like a spark.

Chapter Text

Interlude III - Family Video

Eddie has no illusions about why he drove to Family Video. 

None. Zero. 

The facts are these: Two weeks ago, Steve Harrington licked his lips while staring at Eddie’s mouth, and now Steve Harrington occupies all of Eddie’s thoughts. 

And that’s okay. Normal. Eddie can have a crush. Given that he’s about to hit his twenties, it’s hardly the first time.  

The bell rings when Eddie steps inside. He’s relieved to see Harrington working. Better yet, he’s working alone. 

“Oh hey, Munson.” Steve smiles warmly before glancing at Eddie’s mouth. Why does he keep doing that? “Lip looks good, man.” 

Oh. Right. That’s why. 

Steve touches two fingers to his own bottom lip, right where Eddie’s nearly-healed scab would be if their positions were reversed. It makes Eddie dream of putting his own fingers there, of tracing the curves of Steve’s lips, of seeing if they’d feel as soft as they look like they would. 

Jesus, no wonder Harrington had a reputation as a great kisser. He’d been positively blessed with the best tools for the job. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Eddie says. “Guess it’ll take something a lot more powerful than Jason Carver to take me out.” 

“Guess it will. So, what’s your poison today, Munson?” Steve sizes him up. “Breakfast Club?”

Eddie bristles, tries to stop his mouth from running away, fails. “Ah, yes, yet another film that says if you want someone to like you, girls, just let him treat you like garbage or get rid of everything interesting about you and…”

Steve presses his lips together in an amused line, his eyes sparkling. 

“You’re totally fucking with me,” Eddie says. 

“I was, but keep going. You went from, like, zero to sixty there, Munson. It’s adorable.” 

Adorable. Eddie’s stomach flutters. He can feel the confession bubbling, riding the wave of butterflies. He looks around the store. Still empty. 

“I’m gay,” Eddie blurts. Some part of him panics immediately. Sure, Steve had said it was okay if he was. But Steve had also been stoned off his ass. What if he hadn’t quite meant everything he said? 

Or what if he, like, had meant it when it wasn’t a tangible thing but now that it’s true, now that Eddie might give him gross gay cooties, it’s not quite as true as Steve thought? “Like, guys are just…” Stop. Stop talking. Eddie slides his tongue between his teeth and bites down. 

“Oh.” Steve drums a quick beat on the counter. “Well, cool.” A tiny smile, a nod. “Cool.” 

Eddie doesn’t know what he expected. For the world to shift under his feet? For Steve Harrington to launch himself across the counter, grab Eddie’s vest, and kiss him like the cover of some bodice ripper novel? 

Eddie knows what he’d wanted. He’s fantasized about it plenty, that's for sure. 

It would go like this. Eddie would confess he was gay, and Steve would take a beat to process it, and then he’d turn that famous Harrington charm on Eddie and say, “Yeah, Munson? You doing anything Friday?” 

And they’d go out and do something two guys could get away with, and then Steve would kiss Eddie like he meant it. 

Or, if Eddie’s fantasies were feeling frisky, Steve would fuck Eddie senseless. 

Or , if Eddie’s fantasies were feeling sappy as all hell, they’d make love to Eddie’s secret (embarrassing) lovemaking mixtape. That he had made and had yet to actually use because it was, very strictly, for lovemaking and not just plain old sex. 

Steve doesn’t do any of those things, obviously. Instead, Steve just stares at him. “You okay, man? I know that probably wasn’t easy to say even after I said it would be fine if you were gay. It is, by the way. Fine. Great. Totally normal.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Eddie says, before Steve can run out of adjectives. “Honestly, it’s nice to tell someone besides Wayne. I should experiment with opening the closet doors a little more often.”

“Well, I don’t know your friends, but Robin is, uh, very progressive,” Steve says. “Wayne’s, like, basically your dad, right? He cool about it all?” 

And, God bless Harrington, he actually seems to care about the answer. Like he’ll personally be the first one to do something about it if Eddie says Wayne isn’t.  

“Yeah, he’s uh, he’s very cool.” Too cool, sometimes. 

“Good.” 

“So…” Eddie bites his lip. He fidgets in place, thumb absently rubbing at the backs of his rings. “Right, so movies. The real reason I came here, as much as I enjoy starting all my transactions with panicked gay confessions.” Yeah. The real reason. Uh-huh. “So, Steve Harrington, Hawkins’ okay-est purveyor of fine films, what’s the last thing you watched?” 

Steve half-smiles, half-cringes. “Honestly, dude? Muppets Take Manhattan.” 

Eddie laughs. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah.” Steve drums his fingers on the counter again, his eyes going distant and haunted for just a second–so fast Eddie might imagine it–before he turns his charming smile back on. “Sometimes I need to watch something where nothing can go horribly wrong, you know?” 

That, Eddie does know. “Fair enough.” 

“For you though. Feels like slim pickings on new stuff. Um…” Steve glances at the display of newer movies. “I didn’t hate Starman. God, Robin is so much better at the kind of stuff you freaks like.” 

Freaks. 

But Steve says it differently than the way everyone else does. It’s affectionate and warm. Friendly. It settles in Eddie’s chest, in that place where he’s tucked Steve Harrington and labeled him: friend, crush, safe. 

And if we were going to watch something together, Harrington, what would you choose? 

But Eddie can’t quite get himself to say it, to attempt to lean casually closer to Steve’s space, to flirt and hope that maybe the licked lips weren’t just all sympathy. Empathy. Which is which again? 

“Yeah, why not?” Eddie shrugs. “I’ll give it a shot. But you owe me a refund if I hate it.” Eddie winks. And a date, he wants to say. But he can’t get that out either. 

“I can probably swing that,” Steve says. He goes to grab the tape from the shelves. 

“Hey, I’ll take the Muppets too,” Eddie calls, and Steve laughs. “What, Harrington? A guy should know what his friends are into.” 

“Oh, is that how it works, Munson? Should I be listening to Iron Sabbath?” 

“Iron…Sabbath?” Eddie could weep at the words alone. “Oh, you better be fucking with me again, Harrington.” 

Steve slaps two tapes down on the counter and asks for Eddie’s phone number to pull up his account. There’s that smile again, the one Steve tries to keep under wraps, like he can’t give away his joke too easily. 

“What are you saying?” Steve doesn't look up from the computer screen. “Iron Sabbath is my favorite. You’ve never heard of them? Wow, Munson, didn’t know you were such a poser.” 

“Oh, school me, great one. What’s your favorite song by Iron Sabbath?” 

The keys on the keyboard click, click, click. Steve’s lips twitch. Eddie wants to grab him by his stupid Family Video vest and kiss him until neither of them can breathe.  

Steve glances at him, meeting his eyes. “Maiden in Black.” 

“I’m going to kill you.” 

“Yeah, well, make it fast. Every time I almost die, it seems like it takes forever.”

“Hilarious.” 

Steve looks at him with a crooked grin and slides the tapes toward him. “Due back by 8 p.m. tomorrow. Be kind, rewind. Blah blah blah.” 

Eddie takes his takes, pretends to tip an overly large hat, and goes. 

Months pass. Eddie crushes. Eddie thinks he’s done crushing, and then something draws him back in.

Steve dropping the kids off for DnD and laughing with Henderson, ruffling his hair like an older brother. Steve giving Eddie shit every time he goes to Family Video–and he always goes to Family Video. Fuck Movies-n-More. It might have that rent-two-get-one-free special, but it doesn’t have Steve Harrington.  

More months.

Steve Harrington shows up while Eddie’s hiding from the cops, the town, and goddamn Jason Carver. And Eddie freaks out because he couldn’t handle it if he looked in Steve’s eyes and found that he thought Eddie might be the guilty Satanic cult freak murderer everyone says he is. 

Everyone else, Eddie can live with because it’s expected.

But not the Hellfire Club and not him. Not Steve. 

Steve believes him though, has apparently been living in a different reality than Eddie for years. He finds out what Steve meant at the party all those months and a lifetime back. Eddie feels it too now–knowing too fucking much, wishing he didn’t; seeing too fucking much, wishing he hadn’t. 

“I can see why you watched the Muppets,” Eddie says. 

“Yeah.” Steve pats his arm, squeezes. “I’m sorry, Eddie.” 

Do you want to watch it together when this is over? 

Eddie needs something to look forward to after all, to help him through. But he sees the way Steve flirts with Nancy Wheeler, and he knows what the answer would be. 

And later, Eddie dies. 

And later still, Eddie is reborn. And it takes him a while to wonder why he only remembers flashes of Two’s time in the lab. And it takes Steve beating at the walls of his memories to break through to months upon months of poorly-hidden jokes and genuine concern. And God, those lips and all the many ways they can twist and pucker and turn. 

“Somewhere between that party last summer and now, I kinda fell for you.”

Wake up, wake up, wake up. 

“Memories are what you actually remember, Eddie.” 

“It’s you, Eddie. Eddie, it’s you.”

It’s everything you wanted and you can have it and all you have to do is wake up, WAKE–

“Eddie?” Steve says, uncertain, hopeful. So goddamn hopeful. 

Heart thrashing in his chest, Eddie Munson turns.

Chapter Text

Chaos. Beautiful, Vecna ass-kicking chaos.

Even hanging upside-down, miserable, Steve loved to fucking see it. 

Hopper and Joyce emptying their flamethrowers. The kids exhausting their molotov supply. Vecna choking, wounded, shoved hard onto the back foot. 

“Anybody wanna lend a weapon to a girl in need here?” 

“Take it.” Lucas thrust a tire iron of all things into Max’s waiting fist, and without even discussing it, he made a bridge of his hands, Max running and jumping, Lucas launching her. She swung the iron hard. It connected, Vecna’s face whipping sideways. 

“Two... ” 

Eddie’s hand twitched, but he didn’t move, his face still turned toward Steve. 

Behind him, Max held on to Vecna’s neck, hitting and hitting and hitting. An eye popped free like a loose marble and rolled across the ground. 

“Gross!” Dustin yelled, but he was doing his own pummeling at Vecna’s legs. “Let. Steve. And. Eddie. Go.”

“Two, do you want her to walk free or do you want her to pay?” The voice floated through the air like it was coming over a PA. 

Brows curling toward one another, Eddie glanced at Vecna one more time before raising his arm in Steve’s direction. 

So this was it then. Steve braced himself. Swallowed.  

He waited for that sharp shock of a headache. Instead, the vine released him, Steve tumbling onto the ground.

Scrambling to his feet, he met Eddie’s eyes. And he found something far beyond just a spark in Eddie Munson's eyes.

Those baby browns were lit up like fucking fireworks on the Fourth of July, half-feral and so very alive. 

Steve laughed, joyous, full to bursting. God, he felt giddy, near hysterical. 

And then Eddie Munson winked before taking off, running right for Steve. Arms wound their way around Steve’s middle, the momentum launching them both through the air. 

When they connected, he heard Eddie's voice in his ear. “Find me.” And then Eddie threw them both out of the dark. 

Steve landed on the floor of the storage closet with a jolt. And ow. God, fuck, dammit, he had not missed his fucked up foot. 

“Eddie?” 

Find me.

He needed to… Fuck, he needed to get to Eddie. He threw open the closet door and froze. 

“Okay, that is freaky and not cool.” 

Nancy and Robin and Jonathan sat pretzel-style on the floor, eyes rolled back in their heads. They each had tape players on their hips, but no music filtered from the headphones around their necks.

“They went on purpose. We were told not to help unless they…” A recruit made a gesture that suggested bodies rising from the floor. 

“Yeah, definitely not until then,” Steve said. “They’re, like, psychically kicking his ass or whatever.” 

He fished for batteries in his backpack so he could turn on Black Sabbath again. Some little voice in his brain wondered what Eddie would think about his newfound taste in metal music. He felt his stomach tingle and pushed it away. 

Not the time. 

Mind secured, Steve dug gingerly through Robin’s pockets for his keys. He patted down his own pants. The needle was still there. He hobbled down the stairs and took the last two as well. 

“Harrington?” Eddie’s voice crackled out of Steve’s walkie. “Uh, Steve?”

Peeling out of the parking lot, Steve almost broke his own walkie in his haste to answer.  

“Eddie?” 

A nervous laugh. “Yeah, it’s me. Hawkins’ favorite love-to-hate-him member of the undead, reporting for duty.” 

“Where are you?” 

“Watching him. If he figures out what we’re up to, he’ll throw everything at us. He can heal himself so long as he has his abilities.” 

“So we’ve got about one shot at it. But, hey man, you have superpowers now.” 

“Perks of dying, I guess.”

“I gotta get past the perimeter,” Steve said. “Any ideas?”

“That, I can help with. The clothing store on First and Cedar. I’ll meet you.” 

Steve almost wrecked his car getting there, and he most definitely kissed the curb parking, but he made it in just a few minutes, weaving around the monster-cluttered streets of Hawkins. 

“Hey. You look like shit,” Eddie said, throwing himself into the passenger seat. 

“Hi to you too, Eddie,” Steve huffed. “We’re taking the car?” 

“It’s four blocks and your foot has so many bandages on it, it looks like it’s about to be looted from a pyramid and thrown into the British museum. Did you wanna walk?”

“No, what I really wanna do is drive out of town with you so nothing bad can happen. Because, honestly, if I lose you again after I realized I don’t exactly want to live without you, I will probably, maybe, definitely die, dude.” 

“We’ll have an action hero kiss when Vecna’s dead, Harrington. I swear it on all the months I pined for you on the other side of the Family Video counter.” Eddie drummed his hands on the dash. “Hit it, baby.” 

Steve backed out of the parking space and drove, eyes darting between the road and Eddie Munson, like he’d disappear again.

“Why didn’t you tell me, man?” Steve asked, gunning the engine. 

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I figured out I was bisexual and also in love with you, like, today.” 

“All of that? Today.” 

“Yeah. Pretty ridiculous considering I flirted with you like crazy at that party. And at work. I told you that you have pretty eyes . Which, you do.” 

“You did say that.” Eddie nodded. “I think there was something about Van Morrison. And liking that I'm different. Which, I guess must be true if you meant what you said back there in Vecna’s fucked-up little head.” Eddie laughed in disbelief. “Steve Harrington likes weird little freaks, everybody. You heard it here first.” 

“You literally got back from the dead a few hours ago and that’s what you’re gonna say to me?” Steve shook his head. 

“And curly brown hair. A type.” 

“Eddie.” Steve smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Shit. Perimeter coming up. Do you have a–”

Eddie thrust his hand toward the front windshield and forced the Humvees to part like a drawbridge. 

“Yeah, sure, that works,” Steve said, blinking. That was gonna take some getting used to, the whole dating a superhero thing. Maybe he and Mike could start a club. Might be an awkward fucking club since Mike still didn’t like him, but hey… 

“What are you listening to by the way?” Eddie asked, leaning his head closer. “Steve. Steve . Is that Black Sabbath?” 

“I fucking missed you, okay?” 

“So you listened to Black Sabbath?” 

“Yes. I know about Mordor now too.” 

“Stop the car,” Eddie said, and Steve hit the brakes without hesitation. 

“We’re not there yet.”

“I know. But I changed my mind.” Eddie reached across the center console and took hold of both sides of the vest, jerking Steve toward him. “Action hero kiss now.” 

And he pulled Steve’s mouth to his and kissed him like the world was ending, just in case it actually was. 

It was everything. It stole Steve’s breath, made him forget for just one second that his whole body hurt and they were about to face Vecna again in the flesh. 

It was also too short, and by the time Steve tangled his fingers in Eddie’s stringy hair, it was over. 

But it happened. It happened and Steve could still feel the echo of Eddie on his lips, in his veins, in his bones. He floored the gas again and felt like he, too, could move mountains. 

Next to him, Eddie jerked his head once, twice, like someone trying to force water out of their ears. 

“Eddie?” 

Another jerk. “Vecna, I think he knows I... ”  And Eddie’s eyes rolled back in his head. 

Fuck. That. 

Steve slammed his hand into the play button on the car radio, music filling the air. He cranked up the speakers to an ungodly volume. Eddie blinked awake and groped for Steve’s hand on the gear shift. 

“There you are,” Steve said. 

“Iron Maiden.” Eddie laughed wildly. “Fuck.” 

Lacing their fingers together, Steve pulled to a stop at the edge of the vine tangle where Vecna hovered, suspended. He caught Eddie’s brown eyes, used them to steady himself. 

“So, Kas the Bloody-Handed, you wanna kill the lich king with me?” 

Eddie turned his head sharply. “Oh Steve, we... are having such a long conversation about that sentence later. But hell yeah, Steve. Let’s make Vecna regret ever giving me a sword.” 

Together, they got out of the car, Iron Maiden still blasting into the night. Eddie looped Steve’s arm over his shoulder, helping him move closer and avoid the vines. 

“This feel too easy to you?” Steve asked, the two of them getting closer to Vecna by the second.

“No, but only because I’m fairly sure the second he realized he lost me, he…” Eddie waved back in the direction they’d come from. Sure enough, every demobat in Hawkins was flying their way. “Yep, there it is. But I guess I survived the first time. Kind of. So there’s that.”

“Yeah, how about we don’t repeat the first time,” Steve said. “I’d like to kiss you again. I’d like to do a lot of things with you, actually.” 

“Pretty ideal,” Eddie said. “All of that.” 

The bats closed in, demogorgons and demodogs racing at them overground. Fuck, how had Steve gone from fighting that one monster all those years ago to this? He squeezed Eddie’s arm. “Okay, fuck the vines, Eddie. We should make a run for it.” 

“No, you should,” Eddie said, separating from him. Steve opened his mouth to protest, but Eddie cut him off. “Go, Steve. I’ll handle this.” 

Steve stared at him, a figure against a red sky, the bats swarming behind him. He felt a dizzying twist of deja vu. “You’re not doing it again, are you?” Steve asked, fear sticking hot and sharp in his belly. “You’re not giving yourself up?” 

Eddie pulled him into another quick kiss, just enough to buoy Steve’s nerves. 

“Steve, did you forget about the sword already?” And Eddie turned toward the fray, raised his arm, and yelled into the night, shoving Steve onward with his other hand. 

Across the vines Steve went, knife in one hand, a syringe clenched between his teeth.

Please be distracted enough, please be distracted enough. 

Steve was almost in range when Vecna opened his eyes. 

“Hello, Steve.”

“Ah, fuck.” 

Steve shot into the air. And, shit, he had to be in awe of Eddie even if Steve was terrified out of his mind. The ground was littered with dead nightmares, Eddie cutting them down like weeds. He looked like a god. He looked like he’d always been meant to play this part in the grand scheme of things. 

Vecna started by breaking Steve’s leg, Steve’s scream echoing into the night, the needle falling away. Somewhere in midair, Vecna tore it apart, pieces falling like confetti. 

“No, I don’t think so.” Vecna forced the other two out of his pocket and destroyed those too. 

Below, Eddie watched on in horror. Steve wanted to apologize to him. He'd fucked it all up again, hadn't he? 

He should have given Eddie one of the pills. All of them. He should have been the bait this time, but he never learned, did he?  

Eddie reached for him, his powers tugging on Steve’s good leg, trying to get him back on solid ground. 

But Vecna resisted Eddie’s pull. In the air, Steve’s arm bent sideways and threatened to snap. He could feel Eddie trying to stop it, warring forces meeting and pulling in opposite directions. 

They needed a miracle. Where were their goddamn flying eagles? 

Staring down at Eddie, Steve forced his lips to move. “It’s okay.” 

“No, Steve, it’s really fucking not.” With an agonized sort of sound, Eddie stopped fighting Vecna for control of Steve, scrambling over the vines instead. Grunting with the effort, Steve turned his head to watch. 

Vecna dropped him in a painful heap, attempting to force Eddie back. But Eddie used his own powers to knock Vecna sideways, grabbing hold of Vecna’s ankle, groaning through his teeth from the effort to hold on. 

Eddie needed help. 

And helping was Steve Harrington’s strong suit. 

Ignoring a tremendous amount of pain, practically hopping on one foot, Steve scrambled for his car, for the aerosol cans he’d abandoned. The lighter sat in his pocket still, not important enough for Vecna to destroy. 

“Hey! Asshole!” Steve yelled, Vecna’s eyes snapping to him. “Eat shit.” And Steve blasted a tangle of vines with flames. 

Still holding Vecna’s leg, Eddie sank his teeth into Vecna’s flesh, tearing into it like some kind of primal beast.

He fished into his pocket and shoved something into Vecna’s broken skin. A pill. One of the ones that would stunt Vecna’s abilities. Eddie had dug it out of his shoulder and kept it on him the whole damn time, and Steve was going to kiss the living daylights out of him later, fuck. 

With a triumphant yell of a laugh, Eddie let go, raising both hands to the sky, one blasting Vecna with power, the other giving him the finger. 

Vecna fell to the ground right around the time a slew of other cars showed up. 

“Hey,” Dustin said, limping past Steve. “Good call on the molotovs.” He tossed one through the air, threw his head back, and screamed. “Vecna is dying and Eddie Munson lives!” 

Steve couldn’t help but laugh, waving people past him, giving them thumbs up. He’d be okay. He needed penicillin, stitches, and about a whole hospital supply of morphine, maybe one of Eddie’s joints. But he’d be fine. 

Excluding Max, they were all there. Back from the Mindscape, all loaded to the gills. Hopper and Joyce closed in with flamethrowers. Nancy took shots with her left hand. Erica stabbed at the tentacles connecting Vecna to the other world. Molotovs flew. 

“I’m so over fighting monsters,” Robin said, whipping her machete through the air, separating Vecna’s head from his body. 

In the end, there was nothing left except shriveling vines and ashes. Not a hand. Not an eye. Nothing. 

“You are you again, Eddie Munson?” Eleven asked. “I need to close it for good. It would be easier with another.” 

“Hey, anything you need, Wonder Woman,” Eddie said. She linked one hand with his, shut her eyes, muttered something Steve couldn’t hear. Two arms went up into the night. 

The ground rumbled and sucked vines back into the earth. In the distance, bats shrieked, diving into the breach. 

“You are doing great, Eddie,” Eleven said. “Hold on. Keep your focus.” 

Blood dripped from both of their noses, but Eddie held on just as she said, the massive gate that Vecna had opened knitting itself together like a zipper being pulled across the earth. Creatures from the Upside Down disappeared into the glow before it was too late. 

When it was over, when there were no sounds except for heavy breaths and Iron Maiden, Eleven and Eddie both collapsed to the ground. Steve crawled for one of them. Mike, Hopper, and Will ran for the other. 

“Eddie,” Steve fell against him, his head on Eddie’s belly, the leather feeling too sticky and too hot beneath Steve’s sweaty face. Steve didn’t care. 

“I’m okay, Steve. Just wiped the hell out.” Eddie dropped a hand onto Steve’s back. “You need a hospital, hot stuff.” 

“Eddie.” Dustin barreled to the ground beside them both. “Steve. You’re alive and you’re both okay.” 

Steve laughed. “I thought for sure one of us would die too. Probably me. But we’re all alive. We even got someone back.”

“Two someones,” Dustin said. “Max walkied on the drive over. She’s awake.”

“That’s great,” Steve said, sitting up. He looked down at Eddie, both of them smiling at each other. “Eddie, you were incredible, dude.” 

Eddie smiled wider, pushing up onto his elbows, eyes flitting to Steve’s mouth. 

“Hey Dustin,” Steve said. 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m really sorry about this.” And Steve put his hands on either side of Eddie’s face and kissed him. 

“What the–oh my god.” Dustin gasped. 

Robin screamed. “Oh fuck yes!”  

“Oh shit, brochachos.” Argyle said. “Are we all doing the, like, ‘we survived an encounter with an evil entity from another world, so we should totally kiss about it’ thing now? Jonathan, my dude. Is it time?” Argyle looked at him hopefully. 

“Yeah, okay,” Jonathan said. “Fuck it.” And he pulled Argyle in by the shoulders and smacked a kiss right on his mouth. 

“I thought you were with Nancy!” Robin shrieked. 

Jonathan shrugged. “We broke up.” 

“Why didn’t you invite Argyle to movie night?” Robin asked. 

“We weren’t together until just now! Plus, you invited me and Nancy.” 

“Because we thought you were together!” Robin looked like she was ready to scream. 

“Well, it's not like you and Harrington are together either.”

Laughing, Steve watched it all unfold from where he sat leaning against Eddie, one of Eddie's hands absently tracing patterns on his arm. 

“Hey, Harrington, you wanna get out of here?” Eddie asked, voice sultry. 

“Okay, now it’s gross,” Dustin said, shuddering. 

“What’d you have in mind, big boy?” Steve asked, echoing Eddie’s line from the RV (and okay, maybe being a little over the top to be a jackass to Dustin, but what were babysitters/adopted older brothers for?)

“Oh, you know, Stevie baby. Just a super hot date to the emergency room.” 

Steve nodded against him. “Please. I want the good drugs.” 

“Hate to break this up,” Hopper said, “but I think it might be a good idea if I throw cuffs on Eddie.” 

“No!” Dustin said. “No, what the hell, Hopper? He’s himself again and you know he didn’t–”

Hopper put his hand up. “Shut it. I’m not actually taking him in, Henderson. They’ll be cleaning this up this little mess for a while before anyone even thinks to look for him. I get him past all those soldiers and agents over there, get in touch with our contacts, get the right people pressing the right buttons.”

“We need to sell it,” Nancy said, still holding her hand tight to her chest. “We all need the same story.”

“Why not the truth?” Steve asked. “We can make the government come up with the bullshit story they tell in the cover-up, like the damn 'mall fire.' The people who are still here know the town is fucked up considering there were actual monsters in the streets. Eddie saved us, got left in the Upside Down because we thought he was dead, and then he came back to help us defeat Vecna. He’s a victim. Better yet, he’s a goddamn hero.”

“Do you want us to leave out the part about, you know…?” Robin asked with a downturn of her lips.  

“About Vecna giving me superpowers and convincing me I was Two and also half in love with Henry Creel? Yeah, I’m totally good with us keeping that one to ourselves.” Eddie looked around and found Eleven, leaning against Mike. “Did he really kill all of them that day?” 

Eleven nodded once. “To be stronger.”

Eddie’s gaze fell on the burning pile that had been vines and Vecna, his face twisting in disgust. “Someone should check it when the fire’s done. Make sure.” 

“I will be looking for him everywhere,” Eleven said. “But yes, someone should." She shook her head. "No more.” She looked at Hopper. 

“I’ve got us, kiddo.” Hopper gently held out a pair of handcuffs, Eddie nodding and standing so Hopper could cuff him. “Alpha and Beta teams, roll out. I’m taking Eddie to the cabin first, but everyone else to the hospital.” 

“I guess this is as good a time as any to announce I’m a lesbian,” Robin said, walking toward the cars. Steve tossed her his keys again. 

At least four people said, “That’s why they wouldn’t date!” at once. Steve hated these brats so much, and he would absolutely fight to the death for them every single day of his life. 

“What?” Nancy turned sharply towards Robin. “Oh God, you can’t tell me that.” 

“Why?”

“Because I thought I could just get over you since I could never have you, and so me having feelings wouldn’t…” Nancy cringed at her word vomit. “Wouldn’t matter.” 

Robin made a noise that sounded a lot like she was being strangled. 

“I’m gay,” Will said. 

“Is everyone in this group fucking gay?” Dustin asked. “I mean, it’s fine but I feel left out, dudes.” 

“I like Max,” Lucas said. “But I think it’s because she’s awesome and not because she’s a girl. Like if Max was a guy, maybe.” 

“And not all of us are gay, Dustin,” Steve said, hopping to the cars between Robin and Nancy, his eyes falling on Eddie every other step, to make sure he was still there, that he was still okay. “Some of us are bisexual.” Steve grinned. 

“Oh my god .” Dustin threw his hands up. 

“What Harrington said.” Jonathan curled an arm around Argyle. 

“And some of us transcend the confines of, like, labels and gender, my little dude,” Argyle said, a lit joint hanging from his lips. “I fall in love with people like I fall in love with the way the sky meets the mountains, man. The essence and shit. And like, I'm a dude most of the time, but sometimes I'm totally not a dude at all. You know what I mean?” He blew out a puff of smoke and passed the joint to Jonathan. “Plus I like skirts anytime, anywhere. A breeze on your ass? Count me in, man.” 

“Speaking my language, Argyle,” Eddie said. “Skirts fucking rule.” 

He winked at Steve, mouth quirking into a crooked grin. Steve thought he might combust. 

“I’ll have to give ‘em a try some time,” Steve said, because he could fire back as easily as he could take a hit.

It was worth it for the blush that spread across Eddie’s face before he ducked down into Hopper's car. 

Groaning, reluctant to let Eddie out of his sight, Steve let the girls lower him into the passenger seat of his own vehicle, calling out and demanding to be walkied as soon as Eddie was settled. 

“Oh, you’ll never be rid of me now, Steve Harrington. Don’t you worry your pretty little head over that.” 

“I’ll hold you to that, Eddie Munson. Every fucking day.”

Chapter Text

The Munsons got a trailer and two new vehicles in the government hush money parade. 

The back of Eddie’s shiny new van made an excellent camper if they threw in a futon mattress and enough pillows and cushions. 

The national forest south of Hawkins made a great place to park it and stay the night.

In chairs outside, Eddie and Steve passed a joint back and forth beneath the stars. They talked about music and fantasy books. Steve somehow carried on a whole conversation relating organized sports to DnD. It was terrible and so damn perfect Eddie could cry. 

Eddie couldn’t stop kissing him, couldn’t stop letting himself be kissed. The stars spinning slowly spun over their heads, their lips collided again and again. 

Until soft, tender kisses gave way to desperate hands and nipping teeth.

“Inside." Eddie gestured at the van. “You’re fucking killing me all over again here, Steve.” 

Steve left his crutches leaning against his camp chair, using Eddie instead. Eddie knew he could’ve sat on the edge of the van and gotten in fine on his own, but then he wouldn’t have Eddie’s hands on his hips. And Eddie had learned that Steve really, really liked Eddie touching him.  

“You sure about this?” Eddie asked. The boombox in the corner softly played Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan,” making the world feel small and infinite all at once. Or maybe that was just the peace settling into Eddie’s bones. The world quiet and the nightmare over, leaving Eddie with something good for once. 

Steve Harrington: boyfriend, family, safe. So safe.

“Eddie,” Steve hummed against his palm. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life, man.” 

And so in that van, beneath the trees and the stars, Eddie and Steve kissed again, not like the world was ending. But like it was beginning again. 

They both shed their shirts, softly caressing scars that matched and scars that didn’t. Steve thumbed at the gnarled patch of skin on Eddie’s jawline, tracing his tattoos with lips and tongue. Eddie kissed the fresh pink marks on Steve’s wrist. 

When Steve went for the button on Eddie's jeans, his wallet chain jingled.  

“Just… One more time,” Eddie said, holding Steve's wrist, feeling the echo of his racing heartbeat. “Are you sure?” 

Steve laid back and beckoned Eddie to him. “Eddie, you're the only thing I've been sure about in years.” 

“Good.” Eddie nodded, nervous, sweating, so swept up in Steve’s eyes that he could drown. “That’s good.” 

Between Steve’s legs, Eddie took his time. He moved with intention, like he meant it. Like he loved Steve to the very depths of his soul. Like he wanted to both kill for him and die for him. Like he wanted to eat him alive, to never ever let him go. 

Because all of those things were true. Every single fucking one. 

Steve cried out with his fingers tangled in Eddie’s hair. He cried out with his lips against Eddie’s, with his mouth open against Eddie’s neck. Groaning, clawing, rocking. 

“Steve,” Eddie said, lips running across Steve’s chin, slipping behind his ear where he’d tucked that cigarette so long ago. “Steve,” he gasped, shuddering, finishing, sailing into endless skies. 

Lips on Eddie’s, Steve groaned into Eddie’s mouth and joined him in the glow.

After, they shared a cigarette, passing it back and forth, Eddie flicking the ashes into the air, using his powers to send them out into the night like dandelion seeds. 

“You trying to impress me, Munson?” Steve asked, watching. 

“I don’t know. Is it working?”

“Yes.” Steve rolled over and wiped the blood from under Eddie’s nose. And they went again, mouths and hands drawing moans and sighs into the night air. 

“You know, I was thinking,” Steve said. 

“You do that more than I thought you would.”

“Hilarious.” Steve kissed him on the nose. “So Robin and I talked about a road trip after we saved the world. Of course, we were supposed to go to Cleveland and see if she could make something happen with Vickie, but...” 

“Yeah, I give it about two weeks before her and Nance are worse than us. Three weeks, tops.” 

Steve grinned, full of joy. And why shouldn’t he be? He was happy and they were finally done with the Upside Down forever. And Robin had Nance and Nance had Robin. And Steve…

Steve had Eddie. 

And nothing was as it had been. Steve was still waiting to see if he’d walk the same when his leg and foot finished healing. The government had (after Joyce Byers lit into them) gotten Max a guide dog and private tutors, but she had a long road of adjustment ahead of her. And Nancy’s hand–she had to learn to write and type all over again. 

Plus all of them, every last one of them, needed so much therapy it wasn’t funny. Thank God Joyce Byers had bullied the government into giving them their own private psychiatrist too.  

“No, you make this right. Who the hell are we gonna talk to about all this if you don’t give us someone who will actually believe us?” 

So much mending and healing and adjusting to be done. But Steve was allowed to bask in the glow of it all for now, to look at Eddie openly and feel like he’d found a life to be treasured, even if he didn’t have a fucking clue where it was going. 

To be so happy Robin had found some love and peace of her own for the time being. To be glad they’d all found a little family where they could exist and be safe. 

“This would be a great van for that road trip. The six of us.” 

“Six?” Eddie asked. “Jonathan and Argyle?” 

“A nice, long time away from Hawkins. Nights in cities at those bars you and Robin talked about. Other nights outside like this. Maybe we grab a couple of tents so the van doesn't get too crowded. Think about it, Eddie, because I sure have. You and an acoustic guitar around a campfire, man. S’mores and hot dogs or whatever.” 

Eddie reached over and splayed a hand on Steve’s chest. “You can admit you get off on me playing guitar without having to plan a whole trip around it, Steve.” 

“Hey, I like a guy who’s good with his fingers. Sue me.” Steve caught Eddie’s hand and kissed his knuckles one by one. 

“It’s a good idea,” Eddie said. “A post-graduation trip.” 

“The graduates and their token Steve. Summer of love 1986, baby.” 

“Summer of love.” Eddie lit another cigarette, taking a drag and passing it to Steve by pushing it between his lips. “The first of many, I hope.” 

Steve smiled around the filter and reached up to cup Eddie’s jaw. "So damn many."

-Nunc scio quid sit amor
Now I know what love is.