Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

March 20th, 1986

It’s annoying, having to wait like this.

Your leg is bouncing under the table and you can’t help but absently pic at the table’s flaking paint. You’d est up to meet after you were off work, which more or less coincided with when he got out of class. Which was apparently a bit earlier than you’d anticipated; you’ve been killing time at this stupid picnic table in the woods for almost half an hour now.

You’re about to cut your losses and prepare an apology call when something catches your eye, further off in the woods. It’s not like it’s eerily quiet; if you pay attention, you can hear squirrel scrambling up trees and birds flying around. But there’s something about that vague almost—shape you saw in the woods... You feel the hairs at the back of your neck rise. That’s probably a bad sign, right? You should probably leave. I should definitely leave.

“Sorry for keeping you wai—”

You shriek and clean fall off the bench with how fast you turn around.

“Fucking shit Ed! God damn warn a girl, holy shit!” You scream, catching your breath and brushing leaves off of you when you stand. “You scared the living hell out of me!”

Eddie raises his hands up in surrender and takes a few steps back. “Woah there, my bad. Didn’t mean to scare you. You alright?”

The genuine concern makes you groan and you drop yourself back onto the bench you’d fallen from. When asked, you were going to lie and say your shifts are work were just getting a bit aggravating, but it was a bit harder to justify being that jumpy.

“Dude, I don’t know. I’ve just been having these nightmares for a while and it’s been freaking me out,” you explain, putting your arms up on the table and resting your head on them. “I’ve been getting shit for sleep and it’s like I’m seeing things.”

“I’m pretty sure drugs are gonna make that worse, not better,” Eddie says slowly, leaning forward on the table after placing his box down. “You wanna, like... talk about it?”

You scoff and turn your head away. There was no way you were going to try and even begin to describe the fucked up shit that’s been playing in Technicolor in your brain the past few weeks. Nevermind the stuff you’re pretty sure was a dream but aren’t entirely convinced about.

Like that time you spotted Harrington and fucking Robin Buckley, of all people, in a movie theater together. Looking and acting absolutely blitzed out. That has to have been some kind of hallucination, because as soon as the movie was over you couldn’t see them anywhere.

Or that time a few years ago when Will Byers went missing and those kids—his friends, probably?—took to the streets like a band of thieves, looking for all the world like they were heading straight for the lab. No one else ever mentioned them or even gave any indication they’d seen a group of prepubescent boys taking up a whole street with their bikes and an ungodly time of night. So you just kind of assume you’d... dreamt it up, or something.

You’ve had weirder dreams.

“I appreciate the offer to be my impromptu therapist, Munson, but I think it’d just make me feel worse,” you eventually answer, sitting back up and running your hands down your face. “I just need whatever you’ve got that can knock me out. Shit you gave me last time barely got me to sleep like, an hour.”

Eddie audibly winces and crosses his arm.

“I hate to say it, but you might be better off with beer.”

You groan theatrically and let your head slam back down on the table. Slam it a few more times for good measure. Eddie hastily shoves his hand under your forehead.

“Hey there, woah, woah! Knock that out!”

“You’re shitting me right? I can’t do this anymore, Ed, I feel like I’ve actively gone insane,” you whine, bringing your hands up to the back of your neck. “You’re my best bet, no way I can see a doctor for this. I’ll get locked up or worse.”

There’s silence for a bit, before you hear the closure for Eddie’s box pop open. You sigh in relief and raise your head, pulling the hair out of your face. He’s not taking anything out, though; he’s putting something back in before closing the box again.

“Wait no, come on—” you start, but Eddie interrupts you with a hand help up.

“Ah, give me a second, I’m getting there,” he says, shoving his other hand in the inner pocket of his leather jacket. The small bag of weed he pulls out looks thoroughly and profoundly unremarkable.

“Dude I literally just said—”

“Have you always been this impatient, woman? Relax, this is from my,” Eddie pauses to clear his throat and leans forward with a grin. “Personal stash. Should be strong enough for you.”

“Are you saying you’ve been selling me baby’s first drugs until now?” You ask, crossing your arms. Eddie places a hand to his chest in mock offense and scoffs.

“I’m shocked and offended you would ever think so lowly of me. I thought we were cool!” You can’t help but at least chuckle at that and put your hands up in defeat.

“No, you’re totally right, my bad. I know you would only provide me with the finest wares. I had a moment of weakness, beg your forgiveness.”

Content with your playing along and the accompanying apology, Eddie pulls out a grinder from the box, rolling papers from a back pocket and gets to rolling. When he doesn’t immediately make a move to start a conversation, you decide to drown out the buzzing in your head yourself.

“How’s the Hellfire campaign going? Aren’t you having the party come up against a lich?” Eddie smirks and nods.

“Yeah, Vecna. They still have no idea though, they all still think he’s just a myth. I can’t wait to see their stupid faces when I tell ‘em he’s still alive when I tell them.”

“They’ll riot, I hope you know,” you laugh lightly, putting your chin in your hand on the table. You’d only sat in on one or two sessions, back when Eddie had been the youngest member of Hellfire. But if the theatrics and hysterics of those sessions were anything to go by, these guys got very emotionally attached to their games and characters.

“They can riot all they want, they’re gonna have to let the dice to the talking for them,” Eddie says, carefully rolling the ground bud into its paper. You open your mouth to say something, but stop yourself when you hear it.

The distant but unmistakable sound of a grandfather clock chiming.

“Ed,” you first say, apparently too quietly for him to hear. “Eddie. Hey, Munson,” you say, faster, tapping your hand on the table to catch his attention. Your eyes, meanwhile, are scanning the pathway you’d both come down for any movement. “Tell me you heard that.”

Eddie freezes and slowly brings his hands down to the table. When he doesn’t move or say anything, you turn back to him. His expression is... upsetting

“Dude no, don’t look at me like that,” you plead, leg bouncing under the table again.

“Depends what you heard,” he replies slowly, bringing the joint back up to his lips so he can seal it.

“I-I don’t know, like the chime of a grandfather clock? That thing they do every hour?”

Eddie shakes his head as he twists the end of the joint before putting it down on the table between you.

“I’m gonna be real with you, I don’t think this is gonna help you. You’re kind of starting to freak me out a bit, and that’s saying something.” Even the attempt at humour can’t really take the edge in his voice you refuse to acknowledge is a hint of fear.

“I’ll take my chances,” you mutter, reaching for the rolled joint with one hand and pulling a zippo lighter from your jacket pocket with the other. Thanks to Eddie’s rolling, it doesn’t take long to light up, and you can take your first actual drag almost right away. Your head already feels clearer by the time you take your second hit.

“Jesus slow down, you’re gonna suffocate,” Eddie cautions, reaching a hand out but not quite reaching you.

“If it knocks me out it knocks me out my guy,” you reply smoothly, blowing the smoke in his direction. You take a third, smaller hit before passing the joint over.

You can’t tell if it’s the weed that made it stop or if it stopped all on its own, but you’re relieved to find you can’t hear the stupid clock chiming anymore.

“...look,” you start, absently picking at the threads of a hole in your pants. “It’s not because I don’t trust you—”

“Hey, no, I get it,” Eddie says, cutting you off, passing you the joint back after a second hit. “No one wants to confide in the town freak, totally—”

It’s your turn to cut him off when you stand and reach over the table to slap him over the head.

“I told you to stop saying that shit, Munson!” You drop back down heavily onto the bench and take what’s maybe a bit too big of a hit from the joint before passing it back over. “I know I’m like, always the first person to say that if you think everyone else is the problem then you’re probably the problem but,” you take a second to cough lightly and clear your throat before continuing. “In this instance I think it’s perfectly justified to say that literally everyone’s an asshole to you for no damn reason.”

“It’s not for no reason,” Eddie replies lightly, and a bit too easily. “I run a cult, my dad’s in jail, I live in the bad part of town—”

“Yeah and none of that is your fault!” You frustratedly stomp at the ground under the table. “Come on! You don’t even actually run a cult. God forbid kids have fun doing shit, right? Jesus christ, don’t take that shit on for yourself!”

The joint burns between Eddie’s fingers and he just... sits there, staring at you like you’ve just confessed to murder.

“What. Why are you looking at me like that? You know I’m right!”

“Well, sure, I know that,” he replies, leaning back a little bit and taking another hit from the joint. “I’m just wondering what’s gotten into you that you’re this...” He gestures at you with both hands. “Whatever this is you are right now.”

“Whatever this is?“ you scoff, crossing your arms. ”Upset? Pissed off?“

“I was going for ‘slightly more unhinged than usual’ but that—yeah that works too.”

You twist your tongue against your teeth. You could probably talk... a little bit, right? You can probably spin it as just a weird run of the mill nightmare thing. Which just happens to involve people you happen to have seen around town when no one else did.

“It’s just...” you start, and when Eddie passes you the rest of the joint back, he leans his elbows on the table and rests his chin in his hands. “I’ve been having nightmares about people dying, man,” you whisper, taking the last hit from the joint before stubbing it out underneath the table.

“Like, people you know people? Or just random dream people?”

“People I know people,” you confirm, resting your head against the table gently, this time. “There’s—man, I really don’t know if I should be telling you this,” you groan, bringing your hands up over your head. “There’s like, your whole Hellfire club there dude. I saw Steve Harrington get like, half eaten alive once, that was fucking miserable.” You take a second to breathe. Thankfully, all Eddie does is fold his hands on the table and let his head rest on them.

“Are Harrington and that Henderson kid close at all?” The question is out of your mouth before you can think much about it. Eddie sits up straight and leave his palms face down on the table. When you look up, he’s got a brow raised at you.

“I guess? When I first picked him up, Henderson couldn’t shut up about him,” Eddie say, exhaling sharply like he’d found something funny. “Still doesn’t shut up about him actua... hey, are you good?”

No, you’re in fact very not good. There’s no way, right? There’s no way that what you saw was real, right? There’s no way there’s a weird blip in the spacetime continuum that let you see Dustin Henderson freaking out over a very bloodied and injured Steve Harrington?

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” You say weakly, turning around and away from the table to put your head between your legs.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Eddie mutters in a panic, and you can hear him trip over himself trying to get around the table do you. “You need a ride home? I can drop you off at the corner or something, you really don’t look too good.”

You wave him off to shut him up for a second, a hand over your mouth, desperately trying to control your breathing. Thinking about this kind of shit on an empty stomach and with a severe sleep deficiency wasn’t the greatest idea.

“I’ll be fine,” you eventually say, though a bit too quietly and not very convincingly. You try again. “I’m good. I just need to sleep.”

“Come on,” Eddie says, waving at you to get up. “I’ll take you home.”

You agree, with burning eyes and lungs that feel too small. You let Eddie help you into his van and close the door behind you. He does you the courtesy of keeping the volume low on whatever radio station he’d had one, and even if it’s not exactly warm out, lets you keep the passenger window down.

“You can drop me in front of my place,” you say, once you’re a few streets away. “My brother plays dungeons and dragons too, so they’re pretty acutely aware it’s not a satanic, baby-sacrificing cult.”

“You sure?” He asks, glancing over at you and gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter. Your attempt at humour clearly didn’t work. “I don’t want to—”

“Just shut up and take me home, damn.”

Eddie still stops three houses away. You notice that he doesn’t leave until you’ve unlocked the door and turned around to wave him off. You think you see him nod before he pulls a u-turn and drives off.

Blessedly, no one’s home yet; your parents are still both up in Canada for some business trip your father needed to do, and your brother likely skipped town to go see his girlfriend for the weekend. Which gives you free access to your dad’s beer stash, entirely obviously hidden in the mini fridge in the basement, behind the old couch your mom’s been promising to reupholster soon.

You still close and lock your bedroom door just in case, after making sure the back and front doors were both locked, chained and deadbolted.

You’re half asleep in bed, trying very hard not to think about the nightmares that have been showing up with undesirably increasing frequency, when you feel it happening. A weird kind of pull that makes you feel weightless for a second, makes your stomach feel like it just up in your throat.

When you open your eyes, everything is dark and thick vines are covering your bedroom window from the outside.

“Shit, no, no no no,” you mutter in a panic, jumping out of bed and running to the window. What you can see through the vines is exactly what you’ve come to expect from this place. Ash falling from the sky, ominous red lightning in the distance. And a damp, cloying cold that makes you feel like you’ll never feel warmth again.

Swearing under your breath, you run down the stairs, through the kitchen, down into the basement and in the far back of your dad’s workshop. Having turned eighteen over a month ago, you’re blessing your lucky stars your dad decided to give you the combination for the gun safe. Nervous fingers keep missing the right digits, but you manage to get the damn thing open after a few tries.

And there it is: the family’s prized Winchester model 23, with several boxes of ammo at the bottom of the safe. You’re clumsy when you loaded up and almost drop the entire open box of shells, but eventually you get the thing locked and loaded. You’re about to head upstairs with just that and the shotgun shells, but turn around and grab the handgun before bounding back up the stairs.

This isn’t entirely unusual by now; you’ve seen this place every time you’ve had nightmares. Being an active participant is new, though. You’ve never been able to move around or touch anything, always a passive observer of goings-on.

It doesn’t sit right with you.

You sit cross-legged in the corner of you room, wedged between a wall and the edge of your desk. You have a clear line of sight to your window—not that you think it matters much with how absolutely covered it is—and your bedroom door, which you’ve pushed your bookcase again. And you wait.

You’re counting your blessings with being able to check your watch for the time, having apparently fallen asleep with it. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty. You hear things outside, in the distance. Nothing close by. Somehow that puts you on edge even more. Check the time one more time: you’ve been holed up in your room for nearly fourty five minutes now with literally nothing happening.

You lean the shotgun against the wall next to you and get up to pace around your room. This isn’t normal. You screw your eyes shut as hard as you can and try to open them slowly, a trick that usually helps to wake you up. But it’s no good; you’re still in the twisted, decayed-looking version of your room with the peeling paint and decaying doorframe.

Growling in frustration, you go back up to your window to see if you can spot anything out on the streets. But somehow, the vines have covered even more surface and you can barely make out the outside at all. You slam your fist against the window to—

Oh no. Did those vines just move?

Just as you wrap your hand about the Winchester, you feel something wrap around your ankle and pull. You’re winded as soon as you hit the floor, can feel your skull hit the hardwood. Whatever it is starts to drag you towards the door—and ultimately, you assume, down the stairs and out the door—you twist around to see what it is that has you.

And it’s a vine. A fucking vine.

You don’t really think too long or hard about it. Take a deep breath, bring the gun up, aim about two feet beyond the tip of your toes, and pull the trigger.

The gunfire makes your ears ring and feels like it blinds you for a second, but when you look down you can see you’ve successfully shot the vine off. What was around your ankle falls limp to the floor.

“Oh my fucking god, what the fucking hell,” you say to yourself, standing up and looking around. “Where are you? Show yourself!”

Stupid. God what a stupid thing to say.

You bring the shotgun back up and switch between aiming at the window and the door.

Strange, you hear, and it’s both like there’s a voice inside your head and like it’s resonating everywhere all at once. You don’t belong here.

“Fuck you, buddy!” you spit, spinning around wildly in your room. “I didn’t choose to be here!”

Then leave.

Chapter Text

March 21st, 1986

You wake up when your nose hits the floor of your bedroom. Your brightly, warmly lit bedroom with Blue Öyster Cult playing quietly from the alarm clock on your desk. You’re pretty sure your nose is broken from the fall, if the blood dripping from it is any indication. You pinch your nose and tilt your head back, feeling around your nightstand from the floor for the box of tissues you know is there.

Once the bleeding is staunched after a few minutes, you move to get up, and feel your foot knock against something.

The handgun is right there. And just a bit above that, where your pant leg’s pulled up, you can see the very distinct vine-shaped bruise on your ankle.

“Oh no,” you whisper, sitting on the edge of your bed. “Oh fuck no, come on man,” you say quietly, tears burning at your eyes.

It was one thing to have absolutely batshit crazy horror nightmares now and then, and even acceptable to see people dying in them sometimes. But having that shit follow you into your waking moments is...

You grab the handgun and double check to see if it’s still loaded. It is. You hiss and throw your head back; this is way too much. But you have to know.

So you go down the stairs.
Through the kitchen.
Down to the basement.
To the back of the workshop.
Open the gun safe with shaking hands.

And there they both are. The Winchester and the Beretta, exactly where they’re supposed to be and exactly where you took them from. You crouch down to the floor and bring your hands to your head. There’s no way this is real. You must still be dreaming. You’re halfway through the kitchen when you hear the phone ring, and you just nearly shoot the thing clean out of the wall.

You try to level your breathing as best you can before making your way to the dining room and picking the receiver off the wall.

“Hey dad,” you answer quietly, hoping you sound more like you just woke up and ran down the stairs rather than having an existential crisis.

“Well if that’s what you want to call me–”

“Oh fuck off Munson,” you sigh, leaning against and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. You still have the handgun firmly gripped in your other hand. “To what do I owe the honour or whatever.” You hear Eddie clear his throat before speaking up.

“I was uh, I actually wanted to check to see if you were okay.”

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, bite your lip. It’s so tempting to talk about what just happened. About the fact that you’re white-knuckling a gun that’s already in its safe and that there’s a bruise around your ankle that shouldn’t be there. You settle for the easier part.

“Jump scared myself awake and got intimately acquainted with the floor.”

“Shit, sorry, did the phone ringing wake you up?”

“Nah, you’re good, it wasn’t you,” you say, but you can’t help the tightness that creeps into your voice. “I think I might’ve broken my nose though.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Shit, I’m gonna have to clean the blood off the floor before my parents come back.” And find a way to hide the carbon copies of the firearms that shouldn’t exist , you think bitterly.

“...how much blood is there?” Eddie asks after a beat, and it’s almost a relief to hear someone sound as freaked out as you are.

“It’s not a lake, if that’s what you’re worried about,” you answer tiredly, leaning your head back against the wall. “Hey, it’s still Thursday right?”

There’s a moment where you hear the rustling of clothes on the other end–Eddie probably held the receiver against his chest to look at a clock.

“Uh, technically we’re Friday, but it’s like, barely past midnight?”

“Dude you did not call my house at midnight.”

“You said your parents were out of town!” He sounds defensive when he says it. “And you were kind of really tweaking in the woods this afternoon so I just...”

“Thanks,” you sigh. “I’m sorry, I’m just going through it right now.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, quietly. “Yeah. No problem.”

The line stays quiet for a while; you can just barely make out something playing in the background. Sounds like Dio.

“Hey Ed–”

“You know if you–”

You both laugh and go back and forth for a second, insisting the other go first. Eventually you relent.

“I was just... Do you mind if I crash at your place for the next few days?” you ask meekly, wedging the receiver between your ear and shoulder, twisting the cord around a finger. “Is your uncle gonna mind? I just, I’m really not feeling staying alone here all weekend.”

“What–I mean,” you hear clattering and have to pull your ear away from the phone for a bit. “Shit, sorry. Are you sure? Don’t you have, like, other friends you can call or something?”

“Look, if you don’t want me around–”

“No! I mean,” Eddie grunts and you hear a thud. Did he just hit the wall? “That’s fine, but I have a game with the club tomorrow night.”

“Uh huh. Okay. I can just sit in or wait at your place.”

“Don’t you have a job?”

You can’t help the bark of laughter that leaves your mouth. “Fuck that, I’m calling in sick for the weekend.”

“Shit, that bad?” You hum in a way you hope is ambiguous enough. “Yeah, shit, okay. You need me to pick you up?”

“Considering my car’s still on the side of the road where I left it, yeah. I kinda need a ride.”

“Right. Right right. Okay, well I can come by in the morning–”

“No,” you interrupt, sitting up straighter and clearing your throat. “Not–now? Please?”

The panic in your voice must do it, because it barely takes ten minutes after you’ve hung up that you see Eddie’s van pull up in front of your house. You’ve packed your brother’s old duffel back with a few changes of clothes, the Beretta and a box of bullets.

Just in case. Not like anyone’s going to notice a gun missing.

“Thank god you’re a sleepless fiend,” is how you greet him when you open the passenger door. You don’t throw the bag like you normally would; you gently drop it at your feet before closing the door.

“Open 24/7 for your convenience, my lady,” He quips back, before peeling away from your house and heading for the woods.

The drive there is relatively silent, barring the music playing through the stereo. You’re pleasantly surprised to find that Don’t Fear the Reaper is playing at a reasonably quiet volume. You don’t say anything about it.

Once you reach your car, before hopping out of the van, you turn to Eddie to grab his arm–and his attention.

“Can you wait for me?”

He looks taken aback, but nods. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right behind you.”

You nod back, hop out, and throw the door shut behind you with maybe a little too much force if Eddie’s irritated muttering is anything to go by. Fish the car keys out of your jacket pocket before making your way in. You but your bag in the passenger seat, lock all the doors and take a second to rest your head against the steering wheel and breathe.

“Jesus Christ this is so fucked up,” you mutter, but twist the keys in the ignition and get back on the road to head to Forest Hills.

When you wake up the next morning, you’re profoundly disoriented. Mostly because you realize that you haven’t actually dreamt about anything this time, and also because for a second you have no idea where you are. Everything smells like... just about every kind of smoke you know about.

Right.
Eddie’s room.

When you take a look at your watch, you see it’s nearly noon. Part of you is almost ecstatic that you manage to sleep over ten hours without incident. The rational part of you is terrified about what that means.

Before taking the chance to wander beyond the bedroom, you double check yourself to make sure you’re decent. Fix the necklaces around your neck, give your hair a quick pat down, and eventually give into the fact that you’re probably going to look like a mess no matter what you do.

When you make it out into the living room, you find Wayne solidly passed out in an armchair. You dither on the spot for a second, before quietly making your way over to the couch, grabbing the blanket off of it, and slowly draping over the sleeping man. You back up slowly, hands up in front of you just in case, and make your way to the kitchen sink. Which is thankfully also right next to the coffee maker.

Which has a note taped to it.

‘I told him what’s going on. Food in the fridge, don’t touch the beer, you know the house rules’

You exhale sharply and smile. Yeah, you remember the house rules. Figures they haven’t changed even if you haven’t been around for a few years.

You go about making yourself coffee and sipping at your mug in silence leaning against the sink, and think.

In the quiet of the Munson residence, it feels a lot less scary just to think about things.

You still have no idea what happened last night, and you doubt anyone you know would be able to help you out much with that either. Beyond having you shoved into a padded cell, anyways, which you’re not entirely convinced would be much help either.

But you do remember seeing a bunch of kids on bikes, and Henderson, specifically, stands out to you. Him and Harrington both. Henderson’s still in school at this time, but Harrington...

You leave a note on the coffee maker before you grab your bag and keys to leave.

‘Thanks for the bed and the coffee. IOU’

When you walk into Family Video, it’s about as dead as you’d expect it to be. Buckley seems to be somewhere in the horror section switching out movies. Steve, thankfully, is leaning on the counter looking as bored as can be. Though he does stand up a bit straight when he looks up when the bell above the door lets him know someone walked in.

“Hey! It’s…” Steve flounders for a second. Clearly, he doesn’t remember your name. “…you!”

“Nice save,” you mutter, walking up to the counter and putting your hands down to lean forward. Steve takes a step back. “I have questions and I think you have answers.”

“Uh,” Steve looks behind him at Robin, who does her best impression of someone who absolutely doesn’t care. Shrugs her shoulders in a clear message of ‘you’re on your own buddy’. “Alright, I guess? What do you want?”

“I need you to tell me what you know about the other Hawkins.”

Robin very audibly drops a stack of tapes and Harrington gawks at you. When he turns around, the two of them share a look that apparently holds an entire conversation, because Robin gets up to lock the front door and flip the sign. Steve crosses his arms and looks more serious than you think you’ve ever seen him.

“Tell me what you know first,” he challenges, and Robin walks up behind him at the counter. “How do you know about the Upside Down?”

You sigh in relief and fold at the waist to rest your head on the counter. “Thank fucking christ I was right, god damn,” you groan, standing straight again and looking up at the ceiling. “I thought I’ve been going insane for years, holy shit.”

“Wait, hold up,” Robin steps forward, reaching a hand out. “What do you mean ‘for years’? How long have you known about this?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know anything,” you say, crossing your arms and looking off to the side. “I’ve just been having these nightmares for, like, a few years I guess? And it’s always you,” nod your head and Harrington. “And that Henderson kid and his friends. And yesterday when I fell asleep, I ended up there and—“

Steve uncrosses his arm and rushes forward. “What the hell do you mean you ended up there?”

When you pull the Beretta out of the back of your waistband and put it on the counter, both Buckley and Harrington go nuts.

“What the fuck —“

“Put that shit away, what the hell—“

“Are you insane ?!”

“If you could both shut up for a second, I can actually tell you !”

Both Steve and Robin have put a considerable amount of distance between you. You scoff and pick the gun back up, turning around to make sure there’s no one by the front windows.

“When I ended up in the other version of my house last night,” you start, tucking the gun back where you’d stashed it earlier. “I went to my dad’s gun safe to grab the shotgun and pistol. I’d already had nightmares of the shit that goes on in that place, I wasn’t about to be stupid about it.”

“So you brought a gun to a movie store to prove your point?” Steve asks, a hysterical edge to his voice.

“So I took the guns and shot the tentacle vines that tried to kidnap me, yeah.”

There’s a moment of silence while both of them seem to be absorbing what you said. Sighing in frustration, you hop on the counter—much to Steve’s dismay—and swing your legs around to put your feet up. You pull up a pant leg and—

“Holy shit,” Robin whispers, eyes on the purpling bruise wrapped around your ankle.

“Yeah, holy shit,” you repeat quietly, looking up at Harrington. “I shot it off with the shotgun. And when I asked for whatever it was to show itself, this—I don’t know, this sassy fucking voice basically told me to get lost. And then I woke up in my room, my actual room, with two guns from… From a fucking alternate universe?”

“Is the whole getting lost thing why your face is...” Robin motions vaguely at her nose.

“Oh,” you whisper, bringing a hand up to feel at your nose. Yeah, no, that’s still tender. “Yeah, I kind of landed face first on the floor and probably broke my nose.”

Harrington is already reaching for something under the counter—his keys, by the sound of it—and is heading for the back door. He stops with his hand on the door, looking back at Buckley and you expectantly.

“Well? You gonna just stand there and wait for an invitation? Come on.” He asks, while Robin ditches her oversized Family Video jacket and rushes to follow him.

“First of all, I can drive for myself, thanks,” you say, gesturing behind you to the car you’d parked out front. “Where are you even going?”

“We’re gonna go pay a visit to our favourite nerds.”

You’re pacing back and forth in the parking lot in front of your car. Henderson and Wheeler don’t look phased at all by the wild story they just spun you. Steve looks apologetic and Robin has the decency to look down and pick at her nails.

“So you’re telling me,” you start, stopping in front of Dustin and Mike, put a hand on your hip and pointing at them both with the other. “That when people started going missing and the crops were dying, that was–”

“The mind flayer and the demodogs, yep,” Dustin confirms, nodding for emphasis that really isn’t needed.

“And that time I saw all of you racing down the road toward the lab–”

“We were trying to figure out what was causing the electromagnetic field to go crazy,” Mike finishes for you.

“And that weird nightmare where I saw you ,” you point at Harrington. “Beat to a pulp, that’s the same day I thought I hallucinated seeing you two in the movie theater?”

“Yeah, we were kind of really high,” Robin says, sheepishly, shoving her hands in her pockets.

“Because Russians thought you were spies infiltrating their super secret underground facility where they had a giant laser to open a gate to the other–the Upside Down.”

Four heads nod. “What the fuck,” you breathe, turning back around and resuming your pacing. “So what, this whole time I’ve been privy to your wild fucking adventures? Why ? How?”

“Yeah, see,” Dustin starts, crossing his arms and looking at the ground. “I can’t figure that out. You’re not like Eleven–”

“That’s the Jean Grey girl, right?”

Dustin pulls a face. “Yeah, the one with the powers. Which you don’t have.” He pauses for a second to squint at you. “Right?”

“No powers, totally boring until three years ago,” you confirm. Bring a hand up to pinch the bridge of your nose. “So like, what? Eleven opens up this gate or whatever and suddenly I can just see shit? How does that even explain the plane shifting?”

Mike shrugs. “Maybe you just had dormant powers and El triggered them or something.”

“Oh, great, well that’s...” You trail off and look off to the side. “Do–none of you guys can hear that, right?”

There’s a moment of silence. While Henderson, Wheeler and Buckley look around, as if that would help them hear, Steve pushes himself off the hood of his car and take a few steps closer to you. You see the question on his face when you look up at him.

“It sounds like a grandfather clock chiming the hour,” you explain, looking around to see if you can figure out where the sound is coming from. “It’s... faint, and sounds far away, but I can definitely hear it.”

“It’s not chiming on the hour,” Dustin says, looking up from his wristwatch. “Can you tell how many times it’s chiming?”

“Three—no, four times,” you answer, frowning when the sound stops. “I think it was four times before, too.”

“Do you have any idea where it’s coming from?” Robin’s the one asking. You shake your head.

“No clue. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from before, either, but this definitely sounded closer.”

“Okay, well,” Steve starts, turning back to lean against his car. “We know literally nothing right now. Wheeler, your flight is tomorrow morning right?”

“Flight?” You ask, looking between the other four. “What flight? Are you all leaving?”

“No,” Mike says, raising his arm for a small wave. “Just me. I’m going to California to see El and Will over spring break.”

“You think there’s anything she can do?” Steve asks, gesturing at the space in front of him. “I know she doesn’t have her powers anymore, but maybe she can do that weird thing she does where she spies on people?”

“Wait, what weird spying thing?”

Mike sighs, clearly trying to find the right way to explain to you what exactly that’s supposed to mean, in a way that’s relatively easy to understand.

“She can do this... thing , when she’s in some kind of tank–”

“A sensory deprivation tank,” Dustin specifies. Mike throws him a look. “Sorry. All yours.”

“...right. And she can kind of see people? She can’t interact with anything and she usually needs some kind of connection with whoever she’s trying to see, but she can basically kind of like, turn into a ghost I guess?”

“Like astral projection,” you try.

“Yeah! Kind of like astral projection! But...”

“...but since she lost her powers you don’t know that she can do that either,” You finish, going off of everyone else’s frowns.

“Yeah.”

Well shit. Not exactly the kind of help that you thought you’d be able to get, but being able to get the background info on what the hell’s been going on in Hawkins the past few years at least confirms you’re going padded-cell insane. You put your hands in your pockets and fidget with your keys.

You all stay quiet for a bit. Harrington looks like he’s about to say something, but closes his mouth almost as quickly. With literally nothing to go on, it’s not exactly like you can start planning everything. Having Mike actually talk with Jean Grey Girl is your best bet as far as information goes.

The thought of how much a long distance call is gonna cost coming from California makes you cringe.

“Well, hey,” you start, voice a bit pitched. “At least no one died yet, right? That’s gotta be worth something.”

“Come on man,” Dustin whines. “You’re gonna jinx it.”

Chapter Text

You gave your phone number to the lot of them; Dustin, Mike, Steve and Robin. In return, you got their phone numbers as well, save for Mike’s. Not exactly like calling him in Hawkins would do much good if he wasn’t going to be around. The kids left for their club after that, and made sure they knew to let Eddie know you’d be waiting for him back at his place. You appreciate that they didn’t ask any questions, despite the fact that they had about a thousand of them written all across their faces.

“Anything happens,” Steve had said, putting a hand on your shoulder. “You call to let either of us know.”

Gripping the steering wheel of your car, you let your head fall forward at a red light. There’s a part of you that’s thrilled, sure; this is the most excitement you’d probably ever get in your life, living in a small town like Hawkins. But the knowledge of exactly how bad everything has been is equally terrifying. You didn’t bother asking, but it’s obvious that the lot of them have had way too many near-death encounters.

And then there’s Chief Hopper.

You nearly jump out of your skin when a car honks behind you. You hadn’t noticed the light had turned green. You floor it, making your way to the edge of town, toward the quarry. You need space to think, and barring the fact that the Fake Will Byers Body was found there, it seems to be the safest place to go.

Once you’re parked, you pull the walkman from your back seat, shoulder your duffel bag and make your way to the edge of the cliff overlooking the water. As you walk, you speed through half the tape to make it to The Killing Moon. That feels like it suits your mood well enough.

When you sit down, letting your legs hang over the edge of the cliff, you pull the pistol from the back of your waistband and hold it in both your hands.

From what you gathered from the extremely confusing conversation with the others, it doesn’t seem like a tiny handgun like this is going to be terribly useful if you end up plane shifting again. You kind of wish you’d brought the shotgun with you, though you know it makes more sense to have left it under your bed. There would be a lot of questions you’d have a hell of a hard time answering if someone spotted a god damn Winchester on your back seat.

You lean back to lie down, letting the Beretta rest on your chest and wonder if maybe you should try and find a way to rig, like, a flamethrower?

“God that sounds stupid,” you mutter to yourself, raising your arm to cover your eyes against the fading daylight.

What can you do if you end up in the Upside Down again? The only kind of fire you consistently have on you is a lighter, and you’re pretty sure that won’t do you much good against monsters with crazy speed and faces that open up like fleshy venus fly traps.

You let your fingers run along the barrel of your gun and try to decide what to do. The only real thing you feel would be useful is target practice, but you’re also not sure you want to risk someone hearing gunfire nearby and calling the cops. That, also , would require a lot of explaining you’re not sure you can convincingly manage.

By the time Ocean Rain starts playing, you still have no idea what to do with yourself and it’s got you on edge. You have no idea if you’ll ever end up in the Upside Down again, when the next nightmare is going to be, and if you should be trying to do anything right now. Whatever’s happening can’t be that bad, right? No one’s dead. That’s what you hold onto, for now.

Even if you can still feel the ghost of the vine wrapped around your ankle, you tell yourself that you didn’t die. You barely even got hurt. You don’t even know if you would have gotten hurt if you’d let it... well, yeah, being dragged down the stairs probably would’ve.

When the song ends, you feel around for your walkman and rewind the tape back to the beginning of The Killing Moon. For now, you can probably afford to kill time and chance a nap, while the afternoon sun still gives you some semblance of peace of mind. Then you can swing by your place, grab the shotgun, stash it in the trunk, and make your way to Munson’s place.

With that ghost of a plan in mind, you close your eyes and try to catch up on some of the sleep you’ve been missing out on.

Something’s off when you pull into Forest Hills. The hairs at the back of your neck are standing straight, and you can’t shake the feeling like there’s a hand always an inch away, ready to grab you. The dark of night was never really as scary as it is tonight.

And then you hear the clock chiming again.

You’ve just stepped out of your car when you notice that the front porch light is flickering. A quick look confirms that the lights inside are going crazy, too. You can barely remember Steve mentioning something about Christmas lights and the nightmare with hands coming out of the wall at the Byers’ place when you hear Eddie shouting from inside.

“Shit, shit, shit .” You use the wobbly railing to pull yourself to the door and jump over the steps altogether and burst through the door. When you race in, you can still hear him shouting.

“Chrissy, wake up now! Chrissy !”

“Ed, what the fuck is going on?!” You ask, finding him shaking the cheerleader with the shoulders.

She’s completely checked out, eyes milky white.

“Oh fuck, oh no,” you whine, rushing over and shoving Munson aside and grabbing the girl by the shoulders yourself. “What happened ?!”

“I don’t know!” He shouts back, trying to drown out the sound of the flickering light bulbs. “She wanted to make a deal and when I came back here she was–”

You both look at your hands rising on Chrissy’s shoulders, and then down at her levitating feet.

“What the fuck–”

“Get out,” you say, turning on Eddie. “Get out, get out! “ You shout, shoving at his shoulder and trying to get him to move.

“We can’t just leave her here!”

“ The fuck we can’t! “

You’re blessedly halfway to the front door when you hear a loud thud. When Eddie screams, you turn around to see him knocked to the ground  and there she is: Chrissy Cunningham is somehow stuck to the ceiling, her face still impassive, eyes open wide and unblinking. You only manage to watch one of her arms snap before you put as much force as you can into dragging Munson out the damn door.

“Come on, we gotta get out of here! “ You shout, stumbling down the front steps. You don’t have enough time to right yourself before Eddie slips down and crashes into you. Yell at him to get in your car, and when you manage to stand, you pull the Beretta from your waist band.

“Why do you have a gun?! “

“Shut up and get in the fucking car, Munson! “

You don’t turn your back on the trailer and backstep to the driver’s side. You blindly reach for your keys and flick the safety off the gun with your other hand. Eddie shoves the car door open for you, and in a handful of seconds you twist the key in the ignition and peel out of the lot.

“What the fuck, what the fuck! “

Your hands are shaking and you’re clenching your teeth so hard your jaw aches. Henderson what fucking right, you fucking jinxed it , god damn it.

“What the fuck was that–”

“I don’t know , Eddie! Would you shut up for a second, I need to think!”

The only sound in the car is the engine and both of your heavy breathing. The first thing that comes to mind is to call Harrington, so you do your best to drive at a socially acceptable speed straight for your house. You’ll call him and go from there.

“We’re going to my place,” you announce, as evenly as you can manage. “I’ll call Harrington, he’ll–”

“Harrington? Steve Harrington? Have you lost your god damn mind?”

“ Let me finish!“ You slam the steering wheel with your free hand, take a deep breath, and hand over the gun by the barrel. ”Turn the safety on. I’m gonna call Harrington, we’ll meet up with Robin and Henderson and we’ll figure shit out.“

“ Henders- what the hell is going on? What the fuck do they have to do with this?” You spare Eddie a quick look; he’s left the gun in his lap and has both hands pulling at his hair with his head as close to his knees as he can manage.

“Honest to god you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” you manage to say, through your teeth. With a hand on the wheel, you bounce your fist on your free leg. “I’m gonna have to ask you to just trust me on this.”

“I just saw a cheerleader fucking levitate and you’re asking me to trust you?“ He asks, with all the incredulity that, yeah, he’s entirely entitled to have, actually.

“Yeah, Munson,” you reply, taking a second to look at him head on. “I’m asking you to fucking trust me on this one.”

When you make it to your place, you don’t really park so much as you haphazardly get your car in the driveway. Tell Eddie, when you pop the trunk open, to grab the shotgun while you unlock the front door. Head straight for the phone and pull out the piece of paper with Harrington’s number and almost scream when you have to dial it a third time.

“Come on, asshole, pick up the phone,” you mutter, tapping your foot impatiently on the floor. It goes to voicemail after the eighth ring. “ Fuck !” you shout, slam the phone back on its cradle and reach for another piece of paper in your pocket. Check the time on the clock real quick and decide that Henderson probably won’t mind you calling at this time.

“Hello? Hend–”

“Hi Mrs Henderson I’m really sorry to call this late but I really need to talktoyourson,” you rush out, resting your head against the wall while Dustin’s mother shakily agrees. You hear her call for him in the background.

“Hel–”

“You were right, I fucking jinxed it! “ You scream into the phone. You hear your front door shut and the tell-tale sound of the deadbolt locking.

“Woah, hey, back up there, what happened?”

You slap Eddie in the shoulder when he tries to talk to you and motion at him to sit down at the table a few feet away while you tell Henderson what happened. Somewhere along the way you start crying, but do your best to keep talking.

“Shit,” Dustin whispers, and you can hear him ask his mother to grab a bag for him. “You’re both at your place right now yeah?”

“Yeah,” you breathe, using your free hand to wipe at your face.

“Perfect, okay, great,” he says, distracted, and you hear several things being thrown around. “I’ll go get Steve and we’ll go to you okay? Is Eddie okay?”

You take a second to look over to Munson. His hands are clasped tightly in front of him, elbows on his knees and head hanging between his arms. The gun and shotgun both sit on the table in front of him.

“No,” you eventually say, turning back to the wall. “I don’t think either of us are anything adjacent to ‘ okay ’. Just be quick about it, man.”

You rattle off your address and promise to sit tight and agree to only open the door if you hear the agreed-upon knocking pattern. It feels a bit stupid and a bit too much, but you can’t deny the mild sense of comfort it brings you.

Eddie stands up and follows you into the kitchen, where you make yourself busy pulling two mugs out of the cupboard and grabbing the tin of coffee.

“ Now are you going to tell me what the hell that was about?” he asks, throwing his hands in the air.

Pour water into the coffee maker.
Fold a filter and pop it in.
Try to steady your hands.
Scoop grounds in.

“ Hello? “

“Look,” you grind out, jabbing the power button on the stupid coffee maker and gripping the edge of the counter with white knuckles. “I don’t fucking know, okay? I just managed to talk about this shit with Harrington and the rest of your merry band of misfits this afternoon and they have no idea what’s going on either.”

“Again,” Eddie says, sounding progressively more exasperated. And entirely done with your shit. “What the hell does Steve Harrington have to do with any of this?!”

“Remember when the Byers kid went missing a few years ago?”

Eddie shuts up for a few seconds, and you don’t need to turn around to know that he’s looking at you like you just grew a second head.

“Wha–”

“He was taken to this–and you have to shut up and listen to me,” you caution, turning around and shoving a finger to his chest. “He was taken to this, like, parallel dimension by a demogorgon. And then they–no!” You slap at Eddie’s chest when he opens his mouth. “Shut up! Then they found this girl in the woods with fucking superpowers who could move shit with her mind and found out she opened this, this kind of gate or whatever to that parallel dimension.”

You take a second to breathe and run both hands down your face.

“Whatever happened to Chrissy has something to do with that. Harrington’s been there every time shit’s gone south. The Wheeler kids too, Henderson, the Sinclair kid. They’ve all fought this shit before.”

Eddie doesn’t speak again. Leans back against the sink and slides down to the floor. You don’t bother breaking the silence, just pour out the coffee when it’s done percolating and settle in next to him, holding a mug out. He doesn’t look at you but shakes his head.

“You’re gonna need the boost, man,” you say quietly, taking a sip from your mug. It scalds your tongue. Eddie eventually takes the mug and takes a sip, though he makes a face at the bitterness of it.

“You think she’s...” He starts asking, after a bit, but lets the question trail off. You have a hard time swallowing past the lump in your throat.

“Probably,” you croak, pulling your legs up to your chest and letting your mug rest on your knees. “They didn’t make it sound like this shit is prone to leaving any survivors.”

“ Shit, “ Eddie whispers, and his voice is hoarse.

You close your eyes and keep sipping at your cup of coffee, trying to focus on the sound of the clock ticking to keep yourself moderately present. You chug the rest of it when you’re halfway done and stand to put your empty mug in the sink.

“Woah, woah wait where are you going?”

“I’m getting the other guns from the safe in the basement,” you say quietly, taking a deep breath and rolling your shoulders.

“You have more ?”

You shrug him off because explaining is a pain in the ass right now and head for the basement door. The safe is still open, as you left it. You fit the Beretta in your waistband, grab the Winchester in one hand and as many boxes of bullets and shells as you can comfortably hold against your chest before making your way back upstairs.

You hear the patterned knock on the door just after kicking the basement door shut behind you. You can hear Henderson shouting from outside when he starts pounding on the door with his fist.

“Fucking relax, I’m coming, jesus!” You call, unlocking the deadbolt and pulling the chain out before opening the door. “Please tell me you have any kind of useful information.”

Henderson immediately makes his way to the dining room table, like he’s been here a thousand times before, and throws a heavy bag on the table. Harrington follows behind, looking all the world like he just got woken up, if his less-than-deliberately messy hair is anything to go by. You don’t pity him when you punch him in the shoulder.

“Hey, what the hell was that for?!”

“You told me to call you if anything happened and didn’t answer your damn phone , you asshole!”

“Yeah well I didn’t exactly expect for something to happen tonight !” He shouts back, rubbing at his arm and moving to sit down next to Henderson. You huff and slam the door shut, taking care to lock everything back up.

Dustin slams a handheld down on the table and effectively shuts everyone up. Looks at you and waves his hand at Eddie.

“How much does he know?”

“Just that you guys have done this before,” You start slowly, making your way back to the table. Motion to everyone to sit down, though Henderson stays standing. “Didn’t really have the time or patience to go through everything.”

“Steve, can you..?” Henderson asks, pulling the antenna on the handheld and wandering off. You can hear him checking if Mike’s still up.

“Is this the part when I find out why you’re not actually a massive douchebag?” Eddie asks, both hands on the table, fidgeting nervously with his rings.

Steve sighs, running a hand down his face and leaning back in the chair. But he launches into a shortened summary of what you were given earlier that day. Will’s disappearance, the Upside Down, the mind flayer, how Joyce Byers is in the know. Talks about Eleven and the other “psychic kids”, how she had and then lost her powers during the last fight at Starcourt.  

“It’s not like we were sure everything was done last time, but...” Steve trails off, looking down at the table. “Without Will here and Eleven without her powers, we didn’t exactly have a Bullshit Radar.”

“Wait,” Eddie says, looking at me for a second, before looking back at Steve. He’s been on the edge of his seat for the past few minutes. “Does that mean she’s one of the psychic kids?”

“ Hello , I’m right here–”

“Probably not,” Steve answers anyways. “Hell if I know. You said you only started having weird stuff happen to you when El opened the first gate right?” You nod to confirm. “Right. I don’t know, maybe she’s got a weird connection to the Upside Down like Will does.”

“Yeah but,” I cut in, scooting closer to the table. “Will was actually stuck there for like, what? A week? And he got caught by that big shadow thing. I’ve only been there once– probably –for less than an hour.”

Steve throws his hands up and lets them fall back down on the table. “Dude, I don’t know. It’s not like we ever know anything until it tries to eat our face.”

“Mike’s on his way over,” Dustin announces, walking over to stand by Eddie, and places a hand on his shoulder. “Lucas is gonna go see if he can grab Max before coming over.”

Leaning your elbows on the table, you put your head in your hands. Sincerely starting to wonder why Harrington even told you to call him when anything happened if they were going to be flying into this nearly as blind as you. You’re about to ask something when Henderson speaks up again.

“Think your parents are gonna mind a long distance call on their phone bill?”

Chapter Text

It’s a good thing your parents aren’t around for the weekend. You have no idea how you’d be able to explain the fact that people like Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson are all around your table and aren’t trying to one-up or kill each other. Even having a tenuous understanding of the situation makes it strange to see all these kids in your house.

Everyone’s mostly quiet while waiting for Lucas and Max. The radio has remained suspiciously quiet for the past twenty minutes. You’re tempted to grab the damn thing yourself and see if Sinclair will respond, but just as you start to reach out across the table, the door bursts open.

“What the—be careful!” you call out, standing abruptly. You’re about to nag at the kids more when the redhead you assume is Max nearly runs over to the table.

“You,” she points at both you and Eddie. “Are in huge trouble. Someone already called the cops.”

“Fuck,” Eddie breathes, turning around and running his hands through his hair.

“Double fuck,” you say, slumping back down in your chair. “How does anyone know—”

“Well for starters,” Max begins, putting her hands down on the table. “Eddie’s van’s still in front of his place, and one of the nosy old bats saw you ,” she nods at you. “ With a gun , yelling at Eddie to get in your car. That’s probably the worst look for you.”

Eddie groans and slams his hand against the nearest wall. Max is right—though it felt like the safer option to take the gun out just in case, you hadn’t even thought of the possibility that someone would see you and misinterpret the situation. Not that it can be helped; how the hell else is anyone supposed to interpret what they saw?

“Do you know if they found—if they saw...” You try to ask, biting at your thumbnail.

“No body reported last we heard,” Lucas answers. “But if someone called the cops, the first place they’re gonna check is the trailer, so they’re gonna see her sooner or later.”

Steve and Dustin immediately start picking up bags and packing up the walkie.

“You gotta get out of here,” Steve says, throwing your duffel bag at you, which you barely mange to catch. “They’re gonna be barging through your front door in no time, and you cannot be here when they do.”

“Where are they even gonna go? And how ? It’s not like she can use her car, they’re just gonna track it down wherever it is,” Mike says, waving at you and Eddie, though Steve is already at the door and pulling it open.

“Right now that doesn’t matter! We all need to get the hell out of here!”

The plan isn’t really so much of a plan as it is a very vaguely thought out ghost of an idea.

Steve keeps the lights off on his car when he drives off, you and Eddie in the back seat and Dustin riding shotgun with the radio. You gave your keys to Nancy, who promised not to bang up your car but also gave you no indication as to where she’d leave it, which isn’t exactly a huge reassurance.

You paid good money for that beater and you’d like to find it in one piece once everything blows over.

“Was there anything around Chrissy at all?” Dustin asks, halfway twisted around in his seat to look back at you and Eddie. “Particles or dust or something?”

“Nothing,” Eddie whispers, arms wrapped around himself, eyes set to looking out the window to his left. “It was like she–she was in a trance or something. I couldn’t wake her up.”

Dustin looks to you for confirmation. You manage a short nod.

“She started floating and then just... slammed up into the ceiling,” you continue quietly, twisting your fingers in your lap. “I dragged Eddie out of there when her–when she...”

“When her bones started snapping,” Eddie finishes through clenched teeth, and you’re relieved you don’t have to keep trying to talk around the lump in your throat.

“So it’s like she was under some kind of spell,” Harrington says, and you barely catch him looking back at you in the rearview mirror.

“Or a curse,” Dustin mutters, looking straight at Eddie.

“Vecna’s curse.”

“Wait a second,” you interrupt, leaning forward in your seat and looking back and forth between the two. “Vecna? The lich? That’s shit’s a game man I don’t–”

“They’re the best names we have for this stuff right now,” Dustin says, waving you off. “Demogorgons, demodogs, the mind flayer, Vecna; that’s probably not what they’re actually called but they look and act like it so it’s just kind of whatever.”

“And absolutely not the point,” Steve says, pulling over by the side of the road. He’s driven you out to Lovers’ Lake, though you’re not entirely sure why. “The point is that there’s something that’s starting to kill people and we have no idea how or why.”

Ignoring Steve, Eddie leans forward between the two front seats and points a ways ahead, to a dark house. “That one. That’s Reefer Rick’s place. He’s back in jail so we can probably crash there without anyone noticing.”

Steve nods and Dustin turns back around to face forward, grabbing the walkie talkie.

“We’re at Lovers’ Lake, we’re taking them to Reefer Rick’s place.”

“Copy that,” Mike’s voice crackles through. There’s the vague sound of a struggle, and Nancy’s voice is the one you hear next.

“Keep the lights off, don’t make any sound, and stay away from the windows. Got it?”

Dustin looks back at us both.

“Got it,” you whisper, and Eddie just nods his head.

“They got it,” Dustin confirms. “I’ll leave this walkie with them just in case. We’ll see you back at base.”

“Base?” you ask. “Where the hell is base?”

“Mike’s place,” Steve answers, pulling up next to Rick’s place and pulls on the hand brake. Turns back around to face the two of you. “If you need anything, if anything happens,” He grabs the walkie talkie from Dustin’s hand, and shoves it into yours. “You let us know. Anything , lights being weird, if you,” he points at you. “Hear that clock again, anything.”

“Aye aye, captain,” you mutter, and turn to Dustin. “Is he always this damn bossy?”

“Yeah usually he’s actually worse–”

“What the hell–”

The banter is interrupted by Eddie getting out of the car. You can see him pull out a pack of cigarettes as soon as he shuts the door behind him.

“...thanks. For everything,” you say, unbuckling yourself and opening the door. Wave the radio in front of you. “I’ll keep in touch if more weird shit happens. Can you let us know when you find anything?”

Steve and Dustin give each other a look. You don’t like the implication behind it.

“Sure,” Dustin eventually says, turning back to you. ”Just... keep each other safe?“

You nod, getting out and closing the door behind you. Steve doesn’t waste a second to back up and drive away the same way he came. You sigh and run both hands down your face for a second before turning to the house and making your way to the front door.

“Hey, woah, what are you–” Eddie trails behind you, tossing his smoke to the ground.

“Hold this,” you say, shoving the duffel bag into his arms. You dig through your jacket pocket for a second before pulling out a small leather sheath.

“Please tell me that’s what I think it is,” Eddie says, taking a few steps closer as you walk up to and crouch in front of the front door.

“If you’re guessing a set of lock picks,” you start, popping open the flap and pulling out the tension wrench and an angled pick. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“You know that’s actually kind of hot,” Eddie remarks, crouching behind you to try and get a better look at what you’re doing. You scoff and focus on trying to get the last two pins to click in place. You sigh in relief once you get the lock to turn smoothly.

When you turn the knob and open the door, you take a theatrical bow and motion for Eddie to walk in first.

“After you, my fellow wanted criminal on the run.”

Eddie snorts and shoves your duffel bag back in your arms. You lock and chain the door one it’s closed behind you.

It’s hard to navigate a house you’ve never been in when you can’t turn a single light on, but Eddie doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem. When you notice he’s easily several feet ahead of you, you throw the bag over your shoulder and grab onto one of his sleeves when you catch up.

“Jesus Christ, warn a guy!” He whispers harshly, caught off guard.

“I have no idea where I am and I can’t see shit, dickhead,” you whisper back, getting a firmer grip on the leather sleeve. “Lead the way.”

Eddie leads you down a hallway into what you assume is a bedroom. There’s barely enough moonlight for you to see by, but at least you can somewhat navigate on your own. You put your duffel down on the floor by the door and crouch down to pull out the shotgun, checking to make sure it’s loaded. Looking around, you stand and put it down on a cluttered desk wedged in a corner. Pull out the pistol from your waistband, double check the magazine, and put it next to the shotgun.

“I don’t like this,” you mutter, making it to the edge of the bed and sitting down with your elbows on your knees. “Wait no, I fucking hate this actually.”

“You’re telling me,” Eddie says, sitting next to you on the bed, shoulders nearly brushing. “You could probably get away with putting all of this on me, you know,” He continues, turning his head to look at you.

“Fuck that,” you bite, massaging your temples. “I’m not gonna turn you into a fucking scapegoat for my own sake, Munson.”

“I’m just saying–”

“What you’re just saying is that you expect me to treat you just like everyone else in this stupid fucking place does,” you spit, sitting up straighter and staring at Eddie. “Have you ever used a gun?”

“No, but–”

“Have you ever shot at anyone?”

No answer. He stays quiet when he turns his head up to look at you from his hunched position.

“Have you?” He asks, frowning.

You don’t answer him back, either. Instead, you lean back behind him to grab one of the pillows at the head of the bed and throw it on the floor.

“What are you doing?” He asks, slowly standing up.

“I’m taking the floor,” You say, nudging the pillow with your foot so it’s next to the head of the bed on the floor. Peel off your jacket and the hoodie underneath.

“The hell you are,” Eddie argues, stepping in front of you and very much getting in the way of your lying down.

“Get out of the way, man,” you complain, throwing your head back. “I just wanna lie down. Quit the chivalrous shit.”

“Take the bed.”

“I’m not gonna,” you insist.

“Why the fuck are you fighting me on this?”

“Maybe because I’m very much not in the mood to have another fucking shitty nightmare where I see more people die again ?”

You hate the way Eddie’s glare immediately softens at the mention of your nightmares. Curse under your breath and turn around to shove the palms of your hands into your eyes.

“Don’t pity me, dude,” you grumble, crouching back down to your bag, rummage through it to find the oversized shirt you... had originally planned to wear at Eddie’s place.

What a change of plans.

You throw your jacket and sweater at him and tell him to turn around.

“What? Why?”

The speed at which he turns away from you when you wave the shirt in your hands would probably have been funny in literally any other situation. You peel the Smiths’ shirt off and shove it back into your bag and pull on the looser, worn Metallica tee you’d stolen from your brother. Walk over to tap Eddie on the shoulder, and once he’s jumped out of his skin and turned around, grab your outerwear from his arms and nod your head for him to get out of the way.

“I still don’t like it,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed to toe his shoes off.

“Didn’t expect you to,” You reply quietly, pulling your hoodie out of your jacket and sitting down next to the pillow. When you lie down, you throw the sweater over your legs and pull your jacket over around your shoulders, and turn away from the bed.

“You don’t, like, snore in your sleep, right?” Eddie asks, after you hear him lie down in the bed.

“If I do, it can’t be worse than you.”

He snorts, and there’s a long moment of silence after. You don’t think he’s fallen asleep, yet. You probably won’t be able to sleep for a good while either. Not only does the fear of being projected into another bullshit extra-dimensional nightmare turn you off the idea of unconsciousness, but the thought that someone might, for some reason, track you down here while you sleep is equally terrifying. There’s no real way to exonerate either of you without sounding absolutely crazy.

People might believe you. Eddie’s right; if you decided to blame everything on him the cops might actually buy it. But there’s no way the “town freak” would ever get away with something like this. Regardless of whether or not he’s actually to blame.

“Why’d you stop coming over?“

Eddie’s voice is so quiet when he asks that you barely even register the question. You hear him turning over in the bed to face your back. You close your eyes and take a deep breath.

“It wasn’t just you,” you answer, turning around to face him. He’s pulled himself over to the edge of the bed to be able to look at you. “Do we really need to be doing this right now?”

“I mean, no, but,” he starts, and you can vaguely tell in the dark that he’s twisting his tongue. “We’ve got time to... we’ve got time, so I figured...”

You sigh and sit up, turning around on the floor to properly face Eddie, and cross your legs.

“Gimme your hand,” you demand, holding your hand out.

“Why..?”

“Just gimme your damn hand, Munson.”

He relents and extends his hand out to you. You grab him by the wrist with your right hand, and bring it palm-down on your left forearm. There’s a moment of silence while you let his fingers run up the scar, from your wrist to your elbow.

“You didn’t see me my graduation year because my mom decided to homeschool me when I got out of the hospital,” you explain quietly, pulling your arm away and closer to your chest. “I haven’t seen anyone from school since then.”

“I’m sorry, I had no idea.” You scoff.

“Yeah, no one did. That was kind of the point,” you answer,with a sarcastic edge, and can’t keep the venom from your voice. “Keep the family embarrassment away from the public eye. That’s why I work at the library. No one sees me there.”

It’s quiet again for a bit. If you really try, you can hear a toad or two croaking outside. A little bit early for them to be out, but the familiar sound eases the tension in your shoulders, even if it’s not by much.

“You should swing by Hellfire next time,” Eddie suddenly says, having laid back on the bed. “Jeff would probably be stoked to see you again.”

You almost laugh. “ Jeff ? He’s the one who tried to convince me that ‘blinker fluid’ was a thing.”

Eddie does laugh, now. Something in your chest feels a little looser.

“Yeah, he actually managed to convince Gareth one time. Dude was pissed .“

You can’t help but smile. “Yeah that sounds about right.” You take a deep breath and sigh, and close your eyes. “You wanna sleep in shifts?”

You hear Eddie hums while he thinks it over. “Probably not a bad idea,” he eventually says. You hear the mattress shift under him, and the sound of his feet hitting the floor. “Take the bed then,” he says, making his way over to the desk to grab the shotgun, by the sound of it. “I’ll take first watch.”

You don’t have it in you to argue. “Sure,” you agree when you get up. “But put the shotgun down, dude. Do you know how much sound that shit makes? Someone’s definitely gonna call the cops if they hear that go off. Emergency use only.”

“Fine,” Eddie grumbles, and you hear him very gently but the gun back down. “I’m assuming a baseball bat is an acceptably quiet weapon, mother ?”

You throw the floor pillow at his face and miss spectacularly. You hear him kick it away when it lands at his feet. “Shut up, asshole. Just don’t make too much noise. We’re trying to pretend we don’t exist, not imitate a fourth of July celebration.”

You hear crackling next to you on the floor.

“You two still up?” It’s Max’s voice. You rush to grab the walkie talkie.

“Yeah, yeah we’re both awake,” You reply hurriedly. “What’s up?”

“Bad news,” she says slowly. “The cops are at the trailer. Wayne stopped by for some reason and… They just found Chrissy’s body.”

Chapter Text

You don’t sleep.

You spend Eddie’s entire watch with eyes wide opened looking at the ceiling. Chrissy Cunningham is dead and some kind of inter-dimensional asshole is responsible for it. And for some god-forsaken reason, you and Eddie both have to rely on a bunch of kids and their glorified babysitters to keep you out of trouble.

It’s literally the worst idea you ever could’ve thought of, but considering you and Eddie are the ones the least knowledgeable about whatever the fuck is going on... you don’t really have a choice but to accept to be sitting ducks.

You can hear Eddie pacing in the hallways. Has been for the past several hours. Sometimes you hear him slide down a wall to sit on the floor, only to get back up a few minutes later to resume his pacing. You absently scratch at the raised scar on your left arm. You’re wondering if maybe you should give Eddie the full story behind it when you hear him walk in the room again.

“Hey, what’s up?” You asked, worried, sitting up and scooting back to have your back against the well.

“What, you mean besides the fact that I’m the prime suspect for the murder of a seventeen year old cheerleader?”

You pull your knees up to your chest, wrap your arms around them. “Shit, sorry I asked.” You mutter, resting your chin on your knees.

Eddie sighs, and you feel the foot of the bed dip when he sits down. “Fuck, sorry, I didn’t...” You see the shadow of his arm when he covers his face with his hand.

“I know,” you say quietly, drumming your fingers against your legs. “All of this is fucked.”

“Super fucked,” he agrees, and you can vaguely see him lay back on the bed. “We shouldn’t have run away.”

“Ed, there’s nothing we could’ve–”

“We don’t know that!” He shouts, and you can’t help but flinch at the volume. “Shit, sorry. Sorry I, fuck.”

You uncurl and crawl forward and feel around until your hand finds a shoulder. Grab it a bit more firmly when he flinches.

“Eddie, there’s nothing we could have done. We didn’t know anything ,“ you say, hoping that your voice sounds as firm as you want it to. ”You heard Max. Nancy’s gonna try and snoop around Forest Hills tomorrow to see if she can find anything out. Steve and the kids are gonna try and see if they can figure out why it was Chrissy. The best we can do is just...“

“Wait,” Eddie finished for you, after you trail off. “I know. I fucking hate it.”

You pull your hand away and pull your legs under you to kneel on the bed. Bite at the inside of your cheek for a second before you speak up again.

“I could try to do it,” you say hesitantly, and the uncertainty you feel makes it sound more like a question.

Eddie sits up and turns to look at you. “Try what again?”

“The whole plane shifting,” you say, digging your fingers into your knees. “If I bring the guns with me–”

“No,” Edide cuts you off, pulling a leg up on the bed to face you. ”Absolutely not.“

“I think Vecna’s the one who kicked me out.”

A second of silence.

“You what ?“

“When I did the thing earlier,” you continue, balling your hands into fists to stop the shaking. “There was a man who talked to me before I landed face first on the floor. I think that was Vecna.”

You can hear Eddie swearing under his breath. “And that’s not an even bigger reason to not do that again because?”

“Maybe I can talk to him again or something, I don’t know. I just...”

You feel Eddie getting up and off the bed before you see him.

“Fuck this, I’m too sober for this shit,” is all he offers in the way of an explanation before walking out of the room. You hurry after him the best you can, trying not to trip over anything or run into any walls. You slam your hand against the fridge door when he reaches for it.

“Are you insane? We’re basically wanted fugitives and your genius idea is to get drunk ?”

Eddie sighs and turns around.

“Look, neither of us can fucking sleep, I’m losing my mind, you’re suggesting doing the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard , so yeah, in comparison, getting drunk and passing the fuck out sounds like a fantastic idea,” He says, putting his hand back on the fridge door handle. “Get your hand off.”

You stare him down for a second. “Fine. Make sure the fridge light stays off.”

You take a few steps back. Eddie opens the fridge slowly, swats at your shoulder for you to hold the fridge’S light switch down while he grabs what’s left of a twelve back of beer.

“How did you even know that was in there?” You ask, once the fridge door is closed and Eddie put the case down on the counter.

“He’s a dealer?” Eddie says, that like that shoulder be self explanatory. He grabs your hand and places a cold bottle in it. You feel his hand cover yours for a second while he seems to use one of his rings to pop the cap off.

You stare down at the bottle with equal amounts of incredulity and suspicion. You hear Eddie pop the cap off his own bottle and knock it against yours.

“Cheers to the town freaks,” he says, before taking a very long and audible gulp.

“Cheer to that, I guess,” you say, and chug as much of the bottle as you can before the carbonation starts to hurt your throat.

“Woah there,” Eddie says, bringing your arm down. “Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick.”

You shrug him off and take another more reasonable sip of the beer, and turn around to sit on the kitchen floor, against the fridge door. You hear Eddie take another drink before sitting down next to you, legs stretch out in front of him.

“Wanna play twenty questions while we wait for this to kick in?” you ask, leaning your head back and turning slightly to look at him.

“Sure,” he snorts, putting the bottle down on the floor between his legs. “You start?”

“Alright,” you say, taking a second to think. “Okay. Favourite Band?”

He chuckles. “Corroded Coffin. Yours?”

“Hold up, who the fuck?”

“It’s my band,” Eddie shrugs. “Answer the damn question.”

“Blue Öyster Cult,” you answer, after some consideration. Eddie makes a sound you register as disgust. “Shut up,” you say, and punch his shoulder. “They’re a good fucking band. Do you still play guitar?”

“You know it baby,” Eddie says, and the pride in his voice makes you grin. He takes a sip of his beer and puts the bottle back down. “Do you still write?”

The grin falls from your face and you take a sip. “No. Not after I... not after what happened. Do you write your own lyrics?”

“Sometimes,” Eddie answers. You see him twisting one of his rings. “What... what happened? For that,” he asks, waving vaguely at your left arm.

“Pass,” you immediately say, chugging down another third of your beer.

“Hey, no, that’s not how this works,” Eddie complains, pulling the beer bottle away from you. “Answer the question or you don't get this back.”

“That’s bullshit!” You whisper harshly, leaning over to try to grab the bottle back. When you see that Eddie’s arms are clearly longer than yours and that there’s no way you can get it back, you settle back in your spot and cross your arms. “It’s... not something I like to talk about.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Eddie acknowledges. “How many people have you talked about it with?” You stay silent. “Yeah. Should probably get that off of your chest at some point. Might as well be now.”

“It was...” You groan, letting your head tilt back and smack against the fridge. “It was three years ago. I’d been having those nightmares so often I just... sometimes I woke up and I couldn’t tell if I was awake or not,” you start, closing your eyes against the sting of tears. “I thought—when it happened I thought that, if I just...” You clear your throat with the intention of continuing, but Eddie pats your knee.

“I’m good. Sorry for...” He trails off, and takes a second to chug the rest of the beer. You look on, speechless, as he reaches over his head for the case still on the counter. Clears his throat, too, and grabs another beer. Grabs a second one to put in front of you. “Your, uh, your turn.”

You sniffle and paw the tears from your eyes and clear your throat again. “Right. Um, okay.” Slap your thighs and lean back against the fridge. “Why do you wear your bandana like that?”

You can almost feel Eddie freeze mid-gulp. He sputters and covers his mouth for a second.

“Wear—my ban—what do you mean ‘ like that ’?” You can’t help but laugh.

“Wow, okay,” you take another sip of your nearly-empty beer. “I don’t know that I need a straight answer with the way you just reacted, damn.”

“No, seriously, what do you mean,” Eddie asks again, though it sounds much more like a statement and his voice sounds a little bit too steady. When you turn your head to look at him, you almost flinch with how intently he’s staring right back at you.

“Uh,” you flounder, hurriedly looking away. “It just uh. You—do you know what flagging is?”

You hear the bottle being put down on the floor.

“Do you ?”

“Is that your question?” you joke, drinking the last dregs of your first bottle and reaching for the second. Eddie stops you by putting his hand on top of the bottle. You slowly look back at him, and it feels like forever before he sighs and takes his hand back and nurses his own beer.

“Sure, that’ll be my question,” he says, and you’re not sure if you appreciate that he’s looked away if that’s what he’s asking you.

“...yeah,” you answer quietly. “I do. How’s Wayne doing?”

You chuckle along when Eddie laughs. “ That’s your question. How’s my uncle doing? Seriously?”

“Well yeah, what the fuck,” you say defensively, bringing the bottle closer to your chest. “I haven’t seen him in years, I wanna know how the old man’s doing. What’s so wrong with that?”

Eddie shakes his head and chuckles. “He’s fine, doing alright. As fine as he can be given that he’s housing the town f—”

“I swear on my father’s Elvis vinyl collection you better not call yourself the town freak again or so help me god,” you threaten, tossing the bottle back.

“Don’t need to since you just did,” he replies, and you can hear the smirk in his voice.

“Oh fuck right off. Ask your damn question.”

You go back and forth like that for a good while. Eddie keeps asking things about what you like, which bands you’ve been able to see live, which college you would’ve gone to if you had the choice, what your major would’ve been. You ask him music related questions, like what his favourite brand of amp is, which key he prefers to compose in, how he even goes about composing in the first place.

It’s the first time in four years you get the sense that this is how normal people your age are supposed to act. And feel.

As time wears on, you unfold your legs and, now that you’ve kicked off your own shoes, knock your foot against Eddie’s for a bit. You slow down on the drinking after the second bottle, so by the time you’ve finished your third, he’s already halfway through his sixth.

“Dude,” you breath, looking up at the kitchen window. “Fat load of good doing watches did. It’s fucking daylight already.”

Eddie groans and lifts his arm, shakes the sleeve up to look at his watch.

“Shit, it’s like, half past six,” he says, and lets his arm drop back to the floor. “Man, I’m dead.”

“No shit,” you snort, waving at the small crowd of bottles off to his right. “You drank half a pack, you raging alcoholic.”

“Yeah, uh huh, whatever,” he mumbles, leaning his head back against the counter. “If no one’s busted through the door yet I’m pretty sure we can sleep.”

“We should probably sleep,” you agree. But neither of you make a move to get up. Instead, you chug the rest of your third beer before leaning forward to put in on the floor with your other two empty bottles. “Problem is that I really don’t wanna get up.”

“Cheers to that,” Eddie says, lifting his bottle to chug the rest of it after you. “We gotta, though. Come on,” he continues, making a show of getting up, using the counter to prop himself up and extending a hand down to you.

You sigh wearily and grab his wrist. You very much ignore whatever it is that hits you in the gut when you feel his rings around your wrist in return.

You both stumble to keep your balance. Walking down the hall, though, you can’t help but laugh at how Eddie needs to keep an arm braced against a wall.

“No one asked the peanut gallery,” he grumbles, swinging himself through the door of the bedroom and heading straight for the bed.

You stall in the doorway, though. Suddenly, sleeping alone on the hard floor with just a pillow doesn’t seem as appealing as it did in the dead of night.

After orienting himself the right way up on the bed, Eddie lifts himself up on his elbows to frown at you. “Hey, you good?”

You open and close your mouth once or twice before finding your voice. “I, um. I’m not entirely sure...”

Eddie rolls his eyes and sighs before scooting over on the bed to get closer to the wall. He pats the space next to him.

“Come on you coward,” he says, though by the time you stand next to the bed, his eyes are closed and he already looks half asleep.

“...yeah, alright,” you say, sitting on the bed for a second before lying down. “Just don’t cuddle me in your sleep. I don’t need to deal with an awkward morning wood situation. I’ve got enough on my mind already.”

Eddie snorts in response, but doesn’t say anything.

He’s out like a light in minutes.

“It’s gonna be okay,” you whisper to yourself, pulling the pillow from the floor and shoving it behind your head. “I’m gonna be fine.”

And though it takes longer than you’d like—the sun’s over the horizon by the time you do—but you eventually fall asleep, too.

March 22nd, 1986

“...one of you guys please answer? I’m seriously about to hijack a car and drive over there myself. You know I’ll do it, Eddie.”

You groan and turn over in bed, turning away from the obnoxious sound. Though you try to block out the noise by hiding your head under the pillow, the constant static of the walkie talkie tuning in and out is starting to wear on your very last, tired, fraying nerve. When you manage to get yourself to sit up on the side of the bed, you’re about to grab the walkie and whisper some very unkind things into it. Eddie sweeps into the room with a… dishtowel? Thrown over his shoulder, for some reason? And snatched the thing up from the ground.

“Henderson I swear to Christ if you keep badgering us every half hour I’ll replace every single damn can of hairspray with contact glue,” he growls, pacing around the room with a hand on his hips. “Copy that ?”

“Jesus, no need to be touchy,” Dustin answers, and if you weren’t so annoyed you’d actually find his indignation funny. “Wait, no, fuck off! I’ve been trying to get an answer from one of you for like half an hour!”

“Yeah, uh huh,” Eddie starts, turning around to throw you a quick wave. “Ever occur to you that maybe we’d need to sleep considering we’ve just been exposed to fucking Hell 2.0 and couldn’t get a god damn wink ?”

The banter leaves with Eddie once he steps back into the hallway. You take a deep breath and let yourself fall back on the mattress. You’re not hungover, not really. But you’re also not exactly used to plane shifting, drinking and running from the law while being sleep deprived all at once.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot to contend with.

You throw an arm over your eyes if only just to avoid looking at the alarm clock on the desk. You don’t think you want to know what time it is. So, instead, after giving yourself some time to breathe and relax—as much as one can given the impossible scenario you’re in—you get up and follow the smell of freshly made coffee.

In the kitchen, Eddie is busy in front of the stove making pancakes, judging by the already sizable stack on a plate on the counter next to him.

“Siddown,” he says, though he doesn’t turn around to look at you.

“You can cook,” you say, a little slack-jawed, as you slowly sit down. You also notice that the table is significantly cleaner than you think you remember it being.

“ You can cook ,” Eddie repeats back, pitching his voice to imitate yours. “No shit, Sherlock,” he scoffs, taking a step back from the stove and perfectly throwing and flipping the pancake before it lands back in the pan. “How many you want?”

“Ugh,” you groan, sliding the chair back so you can rest your head on the table. “Do I really have t—”

“Yeah, no, eating isn’t negotiable, princess.”

“Did you just call me princess ?”

Eddie visibly freezes, though it’s only for a fraction of a second. He scoops the pancake up with a spatula before carefully dropping it on the increasingly large stack.

“Yeah, uh,” he clears his throat. Still hasn’t turned around to look at you once. “Sorry, force of habit.”

You frown but hum in acknowledgement, but remain quiet after that. Eddie doesn’t say anything else until he’s done making another two pancakes. There’s nine on the stacked plate now, and after he puts that down in the center of the table, he grabs two other plates from a cupboard and two forks from a drawer before sitting down in front of you.

“No maple syrup?” you ask, grabbing a fork and stabbing the pancake on top of the stack to bring it to your plate.

“I honestly wouldn’t trust what’s in that fridge,” Eddie says, stacking three pancakes on his plate and immediately going to town on them. “I had to use water for these cause the milk looked about ready to develop capitalism,” he adds, talking around a full mouth.

“Gross, don’t talk while you chew,” you laugh lightly, cutting a small triangle out of the pancake to taste it.

It’s not terrible , but the lack of eggs and milk does make a noticeable difference. Considering you’re basically a fugitive for the next however long, though, you don’t feel like you have too much room to complain. Taking a look around the kitchen, you figure that there are definitely worse places to be stuck hiding out in.

“And worse people,” you mutter to yourself, tearing another piece of pancake to chew.

“Hm? What was that?”

You cough when you try to swallow. “Not-nothing. What did uh, did Henderson give you any news?”

Eddie’s shoulders slump and the change of his expression would have probably been comical in almost any other situation. Puts his fork down and leans back in his chair with both hands flat on the table.

“We are, in fact, wanted murder suspects,” he replies slowly, drumming his fingers against the edge of the table. “Well, I’m a wanted murder suspect, you’re apparently wanted for aiding and abetting.” You stay quiet and nod as you look down at the table. “Wheeler’s—Nancy, she was headed to the trailer park this morning to see if she can find anything out. She was able to let ‘em know about some guy named Victor Creel, and Harrington and his Merry Hobbits are off doing god knows what.”

“That’s,” you start, taking a deep breath and scooting closer to the table. “That's a lot.” Eddie nods quietly and you try your best to eat the rest of the pancake despite the lump in your throat.

“You know...” Eddie’s voice trails off when you hold your hand up to him.

You can hear chiming.

“It’s happening again,” you say, slowly standing from the chair. “I can hear the grandfather clock again.” You wait for a bit, closing your eyes to focus on the sound. “Four. Four times. It’s coming from... that way, I think.”

Eddie turns around to look at where you’re pointing, in the general direction of the back of the house. You can see him frown when you sit down, and jump in your seat when he whips around.

“No fucking way, that’s Forest Hills.”

“Yeah, and the rest of fucking Hawkins,” you scoff, leaning back in with crossed arms and tapping your foot on the floor. “We’re at the edge of town basically. Everything’s going to be in that direction.”

Eddie grumbles but leans forward. You can already tell he’s determined not to let this go.

“How close was it? Compared to before?” he asks, sliding his plate to the side to clasp his hands on the table.

“I don’t know?” You frown, biting down on your lip to think. “Last time, like when I heard it driving to your place?”

“Y-you what,” Eddie stutters, and you let your mouth fall open. Had you not mentioned that?

“Shit,” you whisper. “I told—when I met up with Harrington and the kids, I heard the grandfather clock ching when I was with them,” you start, bringing your hands down to wring them in your lap. “But I... I heard it when I got to your place, too.”

The chair practically falls backwards with how fast Eddie gets up and rushes at the walkie talkie.

“Hey hey hey someone better answer because we have something really important going on here, ” he says, panic bubbling in his voice with every word, smashing the speak button repeatedly. “ Hello?! ”

“Oh my god, would you just,” You rush over to Eddie and snatch the thing out of his hands. “You’re gonna fucking break it, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“You heard the clock before Chrissy fucking died ,” he spits, and it’s in the shocked silence that the walkie crackles to life in your hands.

“Jesus Christ man calm down,” Steve says, and you slowly bring the device up to your face. “What’s so damn—”

“I heard the clock before Chrissy died,” you explain maybe a little too quickly, eyes locked with Eddie’s. “And I just heard it again now.”

“How many times did you hear it before last night?” Eddie asks, taking a step forward and putting his hands on your shoulders.

“I, uh,” you bite your lips and look off into space to remember. There was the time in the woods, there was the school parking lot... “I guess twice? I think? Two or three times.”

“How many times did you hear it before—” Dustin’s voice comes over the walkie, which Eddie snatches from your hands.

“Two or three times,” he answers, walking back until he can lean back into the kitchen counter. “I just asked.”

“How many times have you heard it today?” comes through the walkie.

You balk, because though you’ve heard it once today, you have no idea if you would’ve heard it more if you’d actually been awake.

“Just. Just the one time so far, she just woke up,” Eddie answers for you. You nod at him to confirm. “Yeah, just once.”

“Still no idea where it’s coming from?”

“Quoth the cleric, ‘ we’re basically at the edge of town, everything’s in that direction ’, so no. Just that it’s closer to you than us, probably.” You roll your eyes at his dramatic reenactment of your previous statement.

All at once, you frown and hold your hand up, stopping Eddie before he can open his mouth again.

“Wait, hold up. The cleric ?”

“Well, yeah,” Eddie starts, and despite the fact that you can tell his hands are shaking and his eyes still look a little wild, there’s a smirk growing on his face. “You got Detect Magic, Astral Spell and Plane Shift. What else are you gonna be?”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

March 23rd, 1986

It takes maybe a second, but for that one second, you feel like your body’s being pulled in every single direction at once. Your stomach rises up into your throat and lights burst behind your eyelids, accompanied by the worst, searing pain. The only thing you can think of is not letting go of Eddie’s hand.

And then it stops as soon as it starts.

You’re on your knees, doubled over on the road, gasping for breath. It takes a few seconds of jamming the palms of your hands into your eyes to start seeing again. You think you hear Eddie somewhere off to your right. You struggle getting to your feet, the cold like claws digging into your muscles and your thin sweater is doing nothing to help.

When you feel for your nose, your hand comes away bloody again. Snort and spit out the blood before making your way over to Eddie. He’s at least still mostly standing, hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath. He holds an arm out to keep you away while he straightens up.

“I’m good,” He croaks. “Just need a sec.”

“We don’t have a second,” you whisper harshly, moving forward to grab him by the arm. “We need to go.” You don’t listen to his complaints as you start dragging him towards the road. “Mind the vines.”

“The hell do you mean mind the vines ?”

“Exactly what I said,” you reply, picking up the pace once Eddie seems to be able to move on his own. “Your lich king uses them to track movement or something, it’s some weird kinda hive mind.”

“ Hive mind? You’re kidding me.”

“Wait, hey—don’t do that!” you shout, pulling him back from one of the thicker vines by the side of the road. “You wanna fucking die in this place cause that’s a good way to do it!”

Eddie turns around to look at you and his face is blank for a second. “You’re... really not kidding.”

“Look around you, Ed! Does it look like I’m kidding?” You put your arms out and take a few steps back. “Look, actually look. Does this look like home to you?” You scoff and turn back towards the road. “Come on. It wasn’t too far.”

It takes a bit before you hear Eddie jogging to catch up with you. He stays silent while he walks to your right. You flex your fingers around the handle of the gun and keep staring straight ahead.

“So you...” Eddie trails off, walking a bit closer to brush your shoulders together. “You’ve been having nightmares about this place the whole time?”

“Yep,” you emphasize the P with a pop. “November 1983.”

“Wait, isn’t that when the Byers kid went missing?”

You hum and shrug, take a second to jump over a particularly large vine crossing the road. “Yeah, well. Everything kind of all went to shit from thereon out. Clearly,” you motion vaguely around young. “It hasn’t stopped.”

“So like, how much further?” Eddie asks, and the nervous edge on his voice could probably be heard from a mile down the road.

You take a second to squint and try and look further down the road. There doesn’t seem to be anything for as far as you can see. You grab at Eddie’s arm to make him stop.

“It... it shouldn’t be farther out than this,” you say quietly, turning to look around. “Do you see anything?”

“Nah,” Eddie answers slowly. “I’m not... are you sure this is the right way?”

“I thought so...” you trail off.

When you turn back to face the way you were going down, you get the same creeping feeling at the back of your neck as you did earlier.

“Eddie, I think we need to go back.”

“Oh, now you’re agreeing that this is a terrible idea,” he scoffs.

You’re about to smack him when something snaps in the woods off to your left. You raise your gun and make sure it’s cocked.

“Hey, what the hell was that?” Eddie whispers, side stepping a few feet to get closer to you.

“I don’t know,” you whisper back, keeping your gun aimed at the woods but slowly stepping back. “We should probably—”

Something rushes out of the trees and skitters to a stop in the middle of the road, about thirty or fourty feet ahead of out. You stop breathing for a second, until the thing turns its head towards you, and its entire face opens up with a flower and a a deafening screech.

“Holy shit ,” Eddie breathes, grabbing your shoulder and pulling you back. “take us back, take us back! ”

You pull the trigger once and miraculously, despite shaking hands and the missing ability to breathe, you manage to hit the thing straight in whatever it has that passes for a mouth. It lets loose another screech before it starts running right at you.

“What the hell was that for?!” Eddie screams, dragging you back to start running. “ We have to go !”

“Shit, shit, shit I’m trying! ” you shout back, flailing to grab a hold of Eddie’s arm. “ Stay still! ”

“Are you fucking crazy?! ”

You dig your heels in to make Eddie stop and pull him back to you. You can hear the thumping of the monster running behind you, but you close your eyes against everything anyways.

The sound of feet hitting pavement fades away with the screech and Eddie’s screaming. And for a second, again, you feel that weightlessness and gut-wrench. When the ground meets your feet again, though, you don’t have any strength in your legs left to hold you up and you crumple in the middle of the road, boneless.

“Fuck, fuck! ” Eddie screams, and you can barely lift your head to look at him. When you do, your vision is too blurry to make anything out.

You do, however, see a body on the pavement, just behind him.

“Ed,” you whisper, pulling an arm out from under you. “Ed, be... behind you,” you choke out, pointing.

“Wh-what are you,” he starts, but stumbles back clean onto his ass after he turns around. “ Holy shit ,” he whimpers, twisting to look back at you. “He—Chrissy—”

“Ed,” you mumble, letting your cheek rest back on the road. “I’m gonna... I’m gonna pass out.”

“What? Wait, no, no , no— ”

The funny thing about unconsciousness is that it’s not quite a lack of consciousness. It’s like you can feel and hear everything in bursts, but only in some kind of periphery.

You can feel yourself being carried, kind of , and you can hear someone talking, almost , but none of it ever feels close enough to properly register, and you can barely remember any of it a few seconds after you almost feel it.

When you open your eyes again, it’s still pitch black outside if the curtained window is anything to go by, but there’s light coming from down the hallway from the bedroom. Your whole body aches—you can feel scrapes on your legs against your jeans and your palms are burning. There’s a headache blooming behind your eyes again, and it nearly burns every time you breathe in through your nose. 

When you groan and try to roll over, you entirely miscalculate how far the edge of the bed is, and fall clean off when you can’t get your legs around in time. The sound must clearly alert Eddie in whichever part of the house he’s in, because no sooner does your head meet the floor do you hear clattering, swearing, and furious stomping down the hall. You’ve managed to prop yourself up on your elbows by the time he reaches the doorway.

“H-hey, you,” you try to greet casually, but the migraine splitting your skull is making it hard to get anything else out.

“Don’t “hey you” me you fucking menace,” Eddie grumbles, moving over to reach under your arms to help you back up to sit on the bed. He crouches in front of you when you’re settled, elbows on his knees and head hanging with a sigh. “You mind telling me what happened and why you felt the unrestrained need —“ Eddie cuts himself off when his voice begins to rise and he sees you visibly wince at the volume. “Sorry, sorry. Just, what happened?”

You shrug and pinch your eyes shut. “I really don’t know. It’s like that second plane shift took it all out of me.” Eddie nods for a second, but seems to realize something and shakes his head furiously. 

“Yeah, okay, that’s good to know and everything, but I was talking about that freaky dog thing that ran right for us with the venus fly trap face.”

You snort at the description but stay quiet for a second, trying to think through the migraine. “Henderson called them, uh… Demodogs? I think? They’re like the Demogorgon but quadrupedal instead of bipedal.”

You can hear Eddie cursing Dustin under his breath before he puts his hands on your knees. “Anything else you can tell me?”

You frown and shake your head a bit. “Any-anything else? What—”

“I dunno, like, how to kill them? What they’re susceptible to? Literally anything ?”

You bring your hands up to your face and dig your fingers into your eyes. “I can’t-I can’t think. Can you get my painkillers or something? My head’s killing me.”

Eddie rushes out of the room without a word. You let yourself fall back on the bed. Try to recall the nightmares from before. There was that time two years ago when Chief Hopper was stuck in the tunnels and he managed to clear the vines with fire… so maybe your harebrained thought of making a flamethrower wasn’t too absurd after all. 

“Here,” Eddie says, entering the room while shaking a pill bottle out into his hand. He caps it back up and grabs the bottle of water he had wedged under his arm and hands it to you. 

You sit back up with a groan and whisper your thanks. Twist open the bottle, accept and throw back the pills, and drain half the bottle in one go. When you gasp and wipe your mouth, you take the time to properly look at Eddie. 

He’s pale, clearly shaken up. And now that you’re paying attention, you can see the trembling of his hands on his knees as he crouches in front of you, and you can make out a bead of sweat going down his neck. You reach out to wipe away a smear of something from his cheekbone with your thumb.

Your nose feels itchy and your eyes are burning. “I’m sorry,” you breathe. Swallow thickly. “I-I’m so sor—”

“Hey, no,” Eddie mutters, holding onto the wrist nearest his face and bringing his other hand up behind your neck. “Hey, none of this is your fault. We’re both just caught up in some bullshit, we didn’t ask for it. You’re good.” He gives the back of your neck a squeeze and you let yourself fall into his shoulder. “You’re good. We’re fine. We’re gonna be fine.”

“Man I’m sorry for crying you much,” you choke out between sobs, grabbing at Eddie’s denim vest. “I just—I can’t—”

“None of that.” The fact that you can hear the shaking in Eddie’s voice tears a desperate wail from you. “It’s okay, just let it out. Just let it out.”

And you do.

All the fear and the frustration, the confusion; you sob it out. The consuming rage of not being listened to, of being called insane; the confusion of never knowing when you’ll end up in that-that hellscape again, and whether or not it’s going to be real; the certainty that if you talk about what happens to you again that you’ll just be sent back to another hospital. Maybe permanently this time.

Worst of all is the knowing, now, that all your nightmares were real. Maybe the details were off, here and there, but the people you saw dead died. There is another Hawkins and there are monsters there. And, for some god forsaken reason, you can go there.

“Hey,” you hear Eddie whisper your name. “Can-can you breathe with me? Can you do that?” he asks, and the fingers at the back of your neck start to scratch lightly at your nape. It takes a second, but you nod; you know you’re hyperventilating, now that the crying has stopped, and you know you need to get a grip. “Alright, okay,” Eddie continues, resting his chin on top of your head. “In seven, hold for two, out for four. Got it? In seven, hold two, out four.”

You nod again, and try inhaling when he does. When you start coughing, he whispers that it’s okay, and you try again. After a few failed attempts, and once the burning in your chest starts subsiding, you finally manage to match your breathing to the rise and fall of Eddie’s chest.

“There you go,” he sighs on the exhale, giving the back of your neck one last squeeze before moving his hands to your shoulders and pulling you away just enough to get a good look at you. “Hey there.” 

“Hey,” you whisper back, doing your best to offer a watery smile. Take a deep breath. “Thanks. For helping.” 

“Well, hey,” Eddie chuckles, patting your right shoulder. “Thanks for not letting me get eaten by a freaky carnivorous plant dog.” You close your eyes and let yourself laugh, even if it’s still a bit shaky. 

“Yeah,” you nod, patting him on the chest. “Well. Can’t let my therapist die in a parallel universe. Who else is gonna listen to my bullshit?”

Eddie helps you to your feet once you feel like you’ve got a good enough grasp on yourself again. Mentions that he’s been poring over his books since he brought you back to the house for lack of a better thing. Has been checking in on you every other hour to make sure you were still breathing. Cleaned your face off, because it was ‘covered in blood like you’d walked straight out of Carrie or something’.

“Did you let the others know what happened?” you ask once you’re sat at the table with the rest of your bottle of water. Looking around you can see that Eddie’s covered the windows nearby with blankets, cushions and other fabric you think might be clothes. The lantern in the center of the table casts enough light to see most everything around you, including several books laid out and overlapping on the table. 

“Yeah,” he grunts, letting himself down on the chair. He waves you off when you frown in concern. “They’re all a little… occupied right now, but one of the brats should come with their designated escort later.”

“You mean Harrington,” you correct, a bit absently, pulling one of the D&D books closer to you. A quick flip of the cover tells you it’s the Dungeon Master’s guide. “Did you find anything interesting while I was passed out?” 

“ Actually, ” Eddie starts, flipping covers and going through the books on the table before he pulls one out from beneath the guide you have in front of you. It’s thin, and you never would’ve known it was there. “I felt so stupid not thinking of it first but… here.” He slaps his hand down and flattens the booklet before spinning it around to hand it over to you. “Right there,” he points to the page on your right. 

“This… is this a spell list?” you ask, a little bit incredulously. 

“The magic-user spell list yeah—that’s not the point. Look,” he leans over the table to tap at a column at the bottom of the right page. “The ninth level spells.” 

“Gate,” you breathe, frowning and leaning down closer. “Astral Spell, Power Word: Kill…” You bring your hand up to the book and look at the other columns. “Telekinesis, Wizard Eye, Projected Image, Dimension Door—”

“Everything you’ve seen,” Eddie starts, slowly lowering himself back down in his chair. “All of it, it’s all there. Even the monster shit, it’s all there.” 

You let out a quiet gasp, and turn the page. You zero in on the title at the top of the left page: 

SPELLS TABLE
Clerics

“Hold up,” up say, raising your hand over the table and motioning to be handed something. “I’m not seeing plane shift in here.” You look up at Eddie, who seems to take a second before registering what you’ve said before snapping his fingers and going through a few books on the table before picking up up and passing it over. 

“It’s, uh, I think it’s page fourty?”

You flip through the pages and land on the one mentioned, and there it is at the bottom. The cleric spell list. 

“There is it,” you exclaim, pointing down and looking up. “Plane shift.” You look back down at the page and frown, “This is level five shit though. I don’t know that…”

“Don’t, you don’t know that what,” Eddie asks after you stay quiet for a few seconds. You flip through a few more pages, take a second to read and lean back in your chair. 

“True Seeing,” you say quietly, gesturing at the book. “I mean, I definitely don’t need some kind of-of mushroom ointment for my eyes, but that sounds about right.” 

“Anything else sound familiar?” Eddie asks, clasping his hands in front of him over the book on the table. You bite your lip and look down again, sigh and shrug. 

“I-I mean I don’t know? Augury, maybe, I guess?” You let a hand trail down the columns. “I really don’t know, most of this shit just kind of happens to me, I don’t exactly try to do any of it.”

“But you tried with Plane Shift,” Eddie points out, taking the book back and flipping it around to take a look at it. “And you’ve basically done Astral Spell before even if you were kind of, y’know. Unconscious.” 

You cross your arms and narrow your eyes at the man sitting across from you. “You’re not actually suggesting I do what I think you’re suggesting I do.” 

Eddie’s grin could split his face with how wide it is.

“No. No, absolutely not,” you growl out, slamming your hands down on the table. “Are you forgetting that just the plane shifting almost got us killed ? How about the part where I passed the fuck out as soon as I got us back? The bleeding? Nuh-uh,” you conclude, crossing you arms again and kicking the table. “No fucking way.”

“Come on ,” Eddie pleads, putting his elbows and slapping his hands together almost supplicantly. “It can be something easy, totally inconsequential. Like,” he looks down between his elbows before looking back up. “Cure Light Wounds! You get a papercut—”

“Boy, are you stupid —”

“Or what about Silence? Speak With Animals should be—”

“ Eddie! ” 

He flinches back a bit in his seat, but otherwise puts his hands up in surrender. You sigh and pinch the bridge of your nose in irritation. 

“I’m not a test subject, Ed,” you whisper, letting your hand fall down in your lap and giving him a look you hope is just shy of begging. “Right now I just. Can we just like, get high and pig out on junk food or something?” 

Eddie sighs and has the decency to look apologetic. “I don’t have anything on me, princess. Kind of didn’t really have the time to grab anything when we…”

He trails off and you don’t need to hear the rest of the sentence. “Right, well at least we have beer,” you say as you get up and head over to the fridge. “You did put it in the fridge right?” 

“Yeah, but I mean, shouldn’t you be drinking, like, water or something a little more—”

“I just woke up from passing the fuck out after basically teleporting us twice and dodging a hellhound in literal, actual hell,” you call from the fridge. You pick up two bottles, scoff and put them back in the case before taking the whole thing out. “I deserve a fucking break from this bullshit.”

Chapter Text

“You gotta—you gotta slow down,” Eddie mumbled, pawing at the bottle you have tipped up at your mouth. 

“Shut—fuck off, I’ve earned this,” you slur, slamming the bottle back on the table. “Let me have this, fuck. ”

“M’hm, yeah, but you’ve been earning this for like, too many hours?”

You grunt and dismiss him, turning around in your chair and chugging the rest of the beer before letting it fall to the floor. Takes you a second to regain your balance when you almost tip your chair over. When the walls start moving on their own for a second, you start to wonder if maybe Eddie has a point. 

“Right, well, there’s no more beer left so—”

“You drank all of it ?”

“Well—I didn’t—you had like, four! Probably!” 

Eddie groans and slams his hands on the table before standing up. “Nah, that’s it. Bedtime for you, princess.” He’s already got an arm under your shoulder to start pulling you up before you can protest. 

“Don’t treat me like a toddler, jackass,” you spit, trying to slap him away.

“I’ll stop treating you like a child ,” Eddie grits out, fingers digging into your ribs to hold you still and pulling your head against his. “When you start behaving. Clear?” You swallow thickly and nod. “Good girl, come on.”

“Don’t say that shit, man,” you groan, letting your head fall back but managing to keep one foot in front of the other anyways. Eddie chuckles but doesn’t offer a reply. 

He puts you to bed surprisingly gently; pulls the covers back for you and practically tucks you in once you’ve settled in. Pats your head once or twice before turning around to leave. You fail a bit, trying to get a hand on him. 

“Wai-wait,” you call you, eyes closed. “The radio, don’t forget—the, the kids, you gotta—”

“Hey, hey,” Eddie cuts you off, walking back to the side of the bed to crouch down next to you. “Don’t worry about it, if those dipshits call I’ll be there, alright?”

“Promise to come wake me up?” Eddie snorts and shakes his head, but you grab him by the arm. “Promise.”

“Yeah,” he frowns down at you, slowly taking your hand off his arm and putting it on your chest. “Sure. But you’re gonna have to actually sleep, first. Okay?” 

You nod once or twice, and you’re asleep before Eddie even steps foot out of the room.

You wake up with a gasp from a completely dreamless sleep. 

“Thank christ,” Eddie sighs, grabbing you by the shoulders and propping you up. “We have to go , like, right now .” He drops your shoes on the floor by the bed and gets up to go grab the shotgun and pistol from the desk. 

“Wha—hold on,” you mutter, hunching over to shove your feet in your shoes. “What’s going on?”

“Walk and talk, come on,” Eddie orders, grabbing you by the arm and hoisting you to your feet. He keeps the shotgun in his other hand, and leaning back a bit you can see that he has the handgun shoved in his waistband at the back.

“I’m walking, please do the talking?” Eddie leads you through the house, out the back door, and down the hill to what is possibly the creepiest boathouse you’ve seen to date. 

“Carver and his goons are apparently on their way over,” Eddie explains quickly, throwing the door to the boathouse open and ushering you inside. “And, apparently , they really wanna cave my skull in. You,” he gestures at you. “Could probably get away just fine but I’d rather keep my life and also the party cleric.”

“Wait, Carver? Jason Carver, the basketball kid?”

“The very same one,” Eddie confirms, holding the shotgun out for you to grab before moving around to shove as many things in front of the door as he can manage. 

“I’m guessing that’s a very bad thing if you’re barricading us in here like we’re about to try and outlast a siege,” you say, slowly, giving your frantic friend room to move unimpeded. “What, is he part of some neighbourhood watch now or something? Why is he here and why’s that such a bad thing?”

Eddie finally stops when he’s managed to stack what seems to be three spare tires in front of the door, alongside some canisters full of god knows what, and dumping a whole container of fishing hooks on the floor right in front of everything else. You cross your arms but tap your foot, waiting for an answer. 

“Chrissy’s… she was his girlfriend,” is the quiet answer you get. Eddie doesn’t turn around to look at you. Which is just as well, because you don’t really have anything to say to that. “So he’s probably just,” he starts again, throwing his arms in the air before finally turning back around with a hand on his hip and another one coming through his hair. “Out for a Freka Hunt to get revenge, I guess.”

“He doesn’t even know that you’re the one who did it,” you reply, confused, brow furrowed. “Steve said neither of our names had been coming up anywhere last time. Why would he come snooping around here? Are we even sure he’s here for you anyways?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eddie grumbles, getting to work pulling the tarp off of what’s apparently a dinghy. “If he finds me we’re fucked either way.”

“Us,” you correct. “If he finds us . I don’t know what’s being said about me right now and honestly that’s perfectly fine, because I’m pretty sure it’s not any better.”

And at least now Eddie has the grace not to argue with you on that. You walk over to the edge of the boathouse and sit down, letting your legs dangle over the edge. You suppose it’s a waiting game now, to see whether or not you’ll have to contend with an angry sportsball kid and his goonies.

“...twenty questions?” 

You snort and lie down on your back, craning to look at where Eddie’s sat in the fishing boat behind you. 

“Sure, why not,” you shrug, as best you can while lying down. “You start.” 

“What was your favourite class? When you were still in school?” 

You hum and look up at the aluminium roof. “English, I think. I always aced the creative writing classes.” You hear Eddie make a sound of what you assume is disgust. You can’t help but laugh. “Alright. What’s your musical guilty pleasure?” 

“Madonna.” The answer is so instant it takes you a second to process. And then you have to cover your mouth to muffle the absolute guffaw that threatens to burst out of you. “You tell anyone and I’ll deny it until I’m dead. No one will believe you.”

“Dude,” you say, laughing as quietly as you can manage. “I’m not even sure I believe you right now. Which song?” 

“Nah, nope. One question at a time. It’s my turn now.”

When no question comes and Eddie stays quiet, you sit back up and turn around to have a look at him. He’s fidgeting with his rings and worrying at his bottom lip. 

“Well?” You prompt, pulling your legs back up onto the floor and crossing your legs. “Out with it.” 

“When you said you had dreams about what’s happened in Hawkins the past few years…” Eddie starts, pausing to sigh and look up at the roof. You don’t exactly like where you think this is going, but you stay quiet and wait. “You saw that like, that girl, right? The one with the powers?” 

“Eleven, yeah,” you answer, nodding slowly. “I saw her, sometimes. Is that your question or just clarification?”

“Clarification,” he confirms, and it’s starting to bother you how he seems determined not to actually look at you. “What… what was she like?” 

“Hmm… well, she was young. Like, Dustin and Mike’s age, if not younger,” you start, drumming your fingers on your knees. “Quiet, for the most part, I think. Unless she was using like, her powers, I guess? I think I remember something about her closing this like, this massive gate or something, and she was screaming her lungs out the entire time.” You take a second to clear your throat, bring a hand up to massage at your temple. “She’s uh, she’s nice, though. I think. And everyone else seems to think so. My turn?” 

As much as he can, Eddie bows dramatically and holds his arms out in invitation. 

“What’s something you wish you had the time to do before all this shit,” you gesture broadly around you. “Happened?” 

Eddie opens his mouth to answer, but whips around to the door. You’re halfway through taking a breath to ask what’s happening when he holds his hand up. Be quiet . You swallow thickly and wait for him to turn back to you. 

“We gotta go,” he whispers, getting up and moving to one of the straps holding the dinghy up. “Help me get this in the water.” 

Eddie guides you through the process of lowering the boat, after getting out of it to give you a hand. You take the tarp off and put it to the side as quietly as you can manage. Eddie lowers himself in the boat without much of a problem. You pass him the shotgun and handgun, looking around for the walkie and hand it over to him, too, before sitting yourself down on the edge. 

“I don’t like this,” you queak, trying to slide yourself down so the tip of your foot reaches the lip of the dinghy. “What if I tip us over?”

“You’ll be fine, I’ll lift you in,” Eddie says, reaching his arms out for your waist. “Come on, get in.” You sit still and look at him wide-eyed. “Get in, please? ”

“Uh-right. Okay, sorry,” you mutter, sliding forward a bit more, enough for Eddie to be able to get a good grip on your waist and ease your way down. You move slowly to sit down, desperate to avoid literally rocking the boat. You silently grab the handgun from when Eddie passes it back over to you.

“What exactly are we planning?” you ask in a whisper, watching on as Eddie double checks that the shotgun is loaded before snapping it shut again.

“We run the fuck away, obviously,” he replies, setting the shotgun across his lap and grabbing an oar from the bottom of the boat. He passes it over to you.

“Just one?”

“You see another one around here? Yes, just one.”

“The fuck am I the one rowing for,” you grumble, but start rowing on one side after the other, slowly getting the boat out of its house.

“ You’re rowing because both in game in real life your perception rolls are shit,” Eddie replies, distracted, leaning over in the boat to look around. “Someone’s gotta watch our backs.”

You scoff, indignant, but keep quiet. Rowing is the most frustrating experience, if only just because it’s entirely too slow. You’ve made it maybe 50 feet out into the lake when you hear Eddie swear. When you look up, he’s grabbing the walkie.

“Hey guys, we kind of have a problem,” he says, and it’s only knowing what’s causing the panic in his voice that keeps you moving. “Like, a basketball team sized problem.” There’s a pause filled with static. When you look up, Eddie’s slapping the walkie and growls. “Hello? Henderson? Wheeler? Anyone? ”

“ Hey Freak! ”

“Please tell me that wasn’t Jason Carver,” you plead, biting the inside of your cheek.

“Cool, I won’t,” Eddie grinds out, standing up and moving to reach for the motor behind you. You move out of the way to effectively swap places with him. “Keep rowing!”

In the waning daylight, you can barely see Jason and someone else running into the lake and start swimming.

“Why the fuck are basket ball players good swimmers?!” you shout, keeping an eye on the two shapes making their way closer dangerously fast.

Eddie kicks at the motor in frustration when it sputters out for the third time

“Stupid piece of shit! ”

“Shut up and row!” you order, and shove the oar at Eddie. You grab the pistol from your waistband, cock it, and point it out at the water. “ Hey asshole! ” 

“Hey, man, hold up,” the other boy calls out to Jason, and finally the two of them stop a few feet away from the boat. 

“Look at that, the freak murderer found himself a psycho tramp ,” Jason spits, and you need to bite your tongue and take a deep breath not to shoot. 

“He didn’t murder anyone , you waste of space,” you growl, finger stiff on the trigger. You bring your other hand up to brace yourself. “Just turn back and leave us alone, kid. We’ve got better shit to do and—”

“What, like kill someone else the same way you did Chrissy?”

When Jason goes to swim forward again, you shoot into the water in front of him. The shock to your arms makes you take a step back, rocking the boat, and you hear Eddie shout at you to be careful. 

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking ? Get away from the boat. Let. Us. Go. ”

Something knocks into the boat, but where you just fall back down onto the bottom, Eddie—who had entirely smartly decided to stay standing —promptly falls out over the edge. The time it takes you to turn around to see where he, Jason has managed to swim over and grab him.

“Jason, let him go!” You shoot into the water as close to him as you can, and make sure that the other player stays away.

“I’m not letting him get away with what he did to Chrissy!” Jason shouts back, still struggling to get a hold of Eddie.

“He didn’t do anything , you fucking moron!” Take another shot. If it grazes him, Jason doesn’t let it show. You’re only down to a few rounds in the magazine. “I’ll shoot you if I have to Carver, don’t make me—!”

Just like that, the sound of the struggle in the water seems like it’s miles away, buried under the sound of a clock chiming the hour. And it sounds like it’s ringing right inside your own head, it’s so close by.

“Eddie, it’s chiming!”

You’re turning around in the boat as much as you can without knocking yourself overboard. You think you can hear Eddie get some kind of distance from Jason. Somewhere on the shore the rest of the basketball team seems to be arguing whether or not they should jump in.

“Fuck— where ? Where is it?!”

“It’s here! ”

You’re about to help haul him back into the boat when you hear something in the water. You turn to Eddie when you hear him swear, and he’s pointing at something behind you. You turn back just in time to see one of the players lift clean out of the water.

“Get in,” you say, turning back and gripping Eddie’s arms to help pull him in. “Get in, get in! ”

“What the hell is going on? What have you done? ” you hear Carver say, but you’ve already started to paddle to the opposite shore when you hear the bones start snapping. Across from you, Eddie turns away. You can’t blame him. The sound is horrifying. You’ve managed to gain some distance by the time you hear the body hit the water. 

Despite everything, Eddie’s the one who has to drag you up to your feet and out of the boat. After you’ve managed to make it deep enough into the woods that you’re relatively sure no one would see you from the lake, you pull your arm out of Eddie’s hand and crouch low to the ground. You let the gun drop to the ground and wrap your arms around your chest. 

“No, hey, come on,” Eddie groans, walking back to you and crouching down to grab at your shoulders. “We gotta keep going, we can’t stay here.” 

“I just,” you start, taking in a shaky, gasping breath and shaking your head. “I just need to catch my-my breath. I’m free-freezing.”

Eddie swears under his breath; though you wish you could wear his leather jacket, he knows as well as you do that having the thing being soaking wet is useless. He peels it off his shoulders anyways and throws it over his right arm.

“Believe me, I wanna stop and breathe too,” he starts again, his left hand reaching out to cup the side of your neck. “But Carver’s gonna have this place swarming with cops in no time. Walking’ll warm you up.”

“Where are we—where can we go?”

“You still have the walkie?” 

You look down at yourself and spread your arms before looking back at Eddie.

“...I think it’s in the boat. Or it got knocked in the water with you,” you explain slowly, bringing your arms back around yourself.

Eddie swears under his breath but turns around to keep walking. “‘S fine. There’s construction somewhere. One of ‘em probably has something we can use.”

You follow Eddie without a word, though every time something snaps or moves in the forest… you can’t help but nearly jump out of your skin. It absolutely does not help that the sun’s basically set, and the only way you can navigate with any kind of consistency is holding on to the back of Eddie’s shirt. 

“We need to find somewhere to crash,” you eventually say, quietly, walking a bit faster to catch up and latch onto his arm. “You’re probably used to staying up ungodly late but some of us are used to working nine to fives.”

Eddie snorts but doesn’t answer right away. Probably thinking the same thing you are; even if there’s a hunting cabin somewhere nearby, neither of you would be able to navigate to it even if you knew exactly where it was. And though sleeping under the stars does sound very nice, if the cold seeping through your clothes is any indication, you’re probably going to want to find a way to stay warm.

It’s when you feel the goosebumps on Eddie’s arm that you pull on his arm and ask him to stop for a second. You tug the jacked off your sweater, then pull off your sweater to shove it into his chest. 

“It’ll fit you,” you explain shortly, shoving your arms back into your black denim jacket. “Not point in you becoming a popsicle before daylight.”

You think you see him bring the sweater up to his face for a second, but Eddie’s pulling your sweater on and zipping it up halfway before you can think too much about it. 

“Really appreciating your natural hatred of the colour pink right now,” he jokes, and you punch him in the arm before grabbing onto it again as you keep walking. 

“So where exactly are you taking us right now?” 

“Skull Rock,” Eddie replies, shoving his hands in your sweater’s pockets. “It’s not gonna be the Ritz, but you can catch some shut-eye there and I can head out when construction starts and… and hopefully come back with a way to reach the others.”

“Skull Rock, ugh,” you groan, throwing your head back. “Isn’t that like, the hot make out spot for kids these days? Are you trying to tell me something?”

Eddie’s laughter sounds a little tight, maybe just on this side of forced, but joking around like this—even if your fingers are starting to feel like popsicles—undoes a little bit of the knot that’s been in your stomach since you reached the shore. 

March 23rd, 1986

Skull Rock is a looming, imposing shadow in the dark of night. Not that you would’ve been able to recognize it during daytime, either, but something about tonight makes it feel like there’s no way anyone should be able to recognize it. From what you can tell, it doesn’t even really look like a skull, either. 

Eddie’s thrown his leather jacket, sans denim, over a rock protruding out of the ground a few feet away to dry. The jean jacket he normally wears on top is just next to it. His pants are still damp, but a far cry from the waterlogged mess they were when you started walking. His shivering seems to have died down for the most part, too. 

“Stop pacing,” Eddie calls from under the rock, his back against the stone’s smooth surface. “You’re giving me anxiety.” 

You huff but stop, as asked, and make your way over to sit down next to him.

“At least we probably won’t get fucked my morning dew,” you grumble, pulling your legs up to your chest and wrapping your arms around your knees. “This sucks.” 

Eddie makes a sound that feels like it probably would agree with you. Spending too many days as a fugitive—both from real world cops and interdimensional murderous litch kings—wasn’t how you would’ve preferred to spend spring break. 

Your parents are probably back home by now, too. Your brother definitely is. There’s no real way to know what’s happening at home; are your parents relieved? No longer having to worry about the blight on the family’s reputation? Does your brother, stoic and otherwise completely detached, even care that you’re technically missing? 

Are they saying you’re missing? Or is the narrative that you ran away? Harbouring the town’s currently most wanted not-criminal? 

You don’t realize you’re crying until Eddie throws an arm around you and pulls you in closer. You almost fall on your side, but another arm makes its way around your middle and pulls you right up against Eddie’s chest. 

“Uhh. Can—what are—” 

“Sleep,” Eddie says, wrapping both arms around your stomach and pulling you just a bit closer. The bent legs around yours knock your knees together. “I’ll wake you up before I leave if you aren’t up yet.” 

“M’hm, okay, but,” you start hesitantly, and you’re not quite sure how you feel about the lack of space between you right now. “What’s up with this?”

“You’re cold. I’m cold. And I’m probably comfier to fall asleep against than a rock.”

“Solid logic,” you mutter, trying to get your limbs to relax from their tense positions. You let your legs stretch out in front of you, and let your head fall against Eddie’s shoulder. “Should be a crime that you’re still this warm after getting dunked.”

Eddie’s laugh makes his whole body shake. Has he always been like that?

“To be honest with you, I’m pretty sure I’m running a fever.”

You hum, to acknowledge you’ve heard him, but that worries you. If he is getting sick, you’re going to at least need someone to get some kind of something to help with it. Last thing either of you need is getting massively sick and making it impossible to do anything but sit and wait to get caught. 

“Come on,” Eddie urges quietly, and you feel him resting his chin on the crown of your head. “Let me live vicariously through you and sleep.”

“Bitchass, get your own sleep,” you mumble, but you close your eyes.

You focus on your breathing for a while. Then you try to match it up to Eddie’s, just for something mindless to do. 

The last thing you can remember hearing is faint humming of a song you’re familiar with.

Chapter Text

You wake up with your left hip throbbing in pain. You try to wiggle around to get it to go away, but there’s no helping it. And all at once, you remember that you fell asleep under a giant rock formation the night before after having escaped a rabid basketball player and his…

And his very dead teammate. Fuck . 

When you push yourself up to sit, you notice that there’s a folded-over piece of denim under where your head had been. Eddie’s denim jacket, probably. You only appreciate the fact that it’s dry before you realize that means he’s awake. But a quick look around, while you rub the sleep from your eyes, does not magically produce a fugitive metalhead. 

You let yourself fall back down and roll over on your back. So much for letting you know when he was leaving. Asshole would probably say that you looked like you were sleeping too well, or needed the sleep—which is bullshit—or that he’d tried and you didn’t wake. Which, though plausible, is highly unlikely given the situation.

The sun’s up, at least, so you have a better view and grasp of your surroundings, if you wanted to go out and explore. Which… you really don’t, actually. You’re very content waiting here until Eddie comes back so you can yell at him about ditching you.

What if he gets caught? What if someone spots him? What if that sends people your way, and then you get caught? There’s another dead high school kid now, and both of you were at the lake when it happened. There’s no reasonable way to tie either of you to the boy’s death, but that’s the problem isn’t it? 

You don’t expect anyone in Hawkins to be reasonable about this. About either of you.

Not that there’s anything reasonable about you being able to plane shift, either, or about the fact that you’re counting on a bunch of high school freshmen and their babysitters to get you out of trouble and—what? Kill the lich king? 

Whatever anxiety you managed to shirk last night is back with a vengeance. You have no way of knowing how long Eddie’s been gone. If he left right around sunrise… maybe an hour? Two? How long would he even have had to walk to find a construction site? And how long would it take him to come back? 

You’re halfway out of your mind when you start to hear voices. They’re far away, and they’re not shouting, but it makes your heart leap up into your throat all the same.

You do the first thing that comes to mind: you look around in a rush to see if there’s any trace of your presence that you need to pick up—grab what is, in fact, Eddie’s denim jacket—and then pray that you’ve retained some of your younger years’ ability to climb up trees. 

Your arms burn and your hands have a few too many scrapes from the rough tree bark, but eventually you make it to a branch that seems sturdy enough to hold your weight, and lets you hide behind the trunk from whoever it might be that may be heading your way. You cover your mouth with a hand, keeping the other firmly on the branch below you for balance, and hope that you can manage to stay perfectly still. 

You stop breathing altogether when you hear a familiar voice saying ‘boom’.

“Even when it’s staring you right in the face,” Steve says. “You just can’t admit it. Can’t admit you’re wrong, you butthead.” 

You throw Eddie’s denim down first, and when you hear Henderson start wondering what the hell that’s doing there, you let yourself fall and dangle from the branch before letting yourself drop the last few feet to the ground. You don’t say anything while Dustin and Steve calm their nerves—apparently they weren’t anticipating a whole human being falling from the treeline.

“Wait,” Dustin interrupts, holding his hand up. “You’re here and that’s very nice and good, thank you for staying alive and uncaptured, but where’s Eddie? He’s the one who told us to meet you here.” 

“I—he. He left before I woke up. I have no idea how long he’s been—”

The end of your sentence is interrupted by something soft smacking you in the back of the head. When you turn around, you hear the commotion behind you before you see Eddie. You graciously give him a few seconds to let him hug Dustin, but promptly step him to give him a shove. 

“What the fuck was that about, you fucking jerk ? You said you’d wake me up!” You shove his shoulder again for good measure, but slap Eddie’s chest when he opens his mouth to speak. “ No ! You asshole, I have a—a god damn anxiety disorder and you think that now is the perfect time to fucking ditch me in the middle of the forest when I have no way of knowing if anything happened to you or how to even get the fuck out of here ?!”

“...that’s kind of messed up, dude,” Steve concedes. You turn around and gesture at him. 

“ Thank you , that is profoundly messed up!” 

When you round back on Eddie, both his hands are held up in surrender, but you’re still fuming. And you know that a lot of it is just the stress of the past few days catching up now that you can actually scream and yell and throw a fit, and that the rest of it is just extremely poorly managed nerves.

You punch Eddie in the shoulder one last time for good measure. “Don’t fucking do that again. I was losing my mind.” Your voice is weaker as your Anger Train runs out of steam. There’s an apology on the tip of your tongue, but you choke it back down when you turn to your audience.

“We, uh,” you start quietly, crossing your arms and doing your best to avoid direct eye contact with literally anyone. Wave vaguely at Eddie behind you before bringing your arm back in. “He went out to look for a walkie to, uh, commandeer since we kind of lost the one you gave us.”

“Do… do you know what time this was?” Nancy asks, and when you look over at her you’re both relieved that she’s looking down in thought but also a bit disconcerted at the question. “The attack.”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie starts. “Walkie wasn’t the only thing KIA.” You jump a bit when something flies by you, straight into Nany’s hands.

“9:27,” she reads and nods. 

“Same time our flashlights went kablooey.”

“I’m sorry what? Your what exploded?” you ask, but Steve steps in. 

“Which means what, exactly?”

“That that surge of energy was Vecna attacking Patrick.”

Patrick. You’re not sure if you like having a name for the body you heard snapping last night. When you turn to look at Eddie, he looks just as confused and discomfited as you feel. When you turn back to the other, you can’t help noticing that Dustin’s still pacing back and forth. Which he’s been doing ever since the lot of them got here.

“Well, we’re one step closer,” Robin sighs. “We know how Vecna attacks.”

“And where he attacks from ,” Lucas says, but you raised your hand.

“Which is where, exactly?” you ask, taking a step forward. “We haven’t really been in the loop here.”

“Victor Creel’s house,” Nancy fills in. “When Robin and I spoke to him at Pennhurst he said there was something in his house, and…” She trails off and looks back at Max.

“It’s the same place I saw when he cursed me.”

“ Excuse me? ” You uncross your arms, slack-jawed. “You’re what? ”

“Look, it’s fine.” It’s very much not fine, but Max continues before you can say anything else. “We just need to sneak into Vecna’s lair in the Upside Down and drive a stake through his heart. Problem solved.”

“If he even has a heart,” Robin scoffs.

“A stake? Is he a vamp? Is he a vampire.” 

“No, you idiot,” you groan at Steve. “It’s a metaphor, jesus christ.”

“A bullet should work on him, right?” Eddie offers. 

“I say we chop his head off.” 

“I’m with the jock on this one,” you say. “If he actually is like, some kind of lich, a bullet won’t do shit.”

“Yeah,” Nancy interrupts, holding a hand up. “I’d say all of the above except we can’t do any of that until we find a way into the Upside Down.”

“We need El to get her powers back,” Max laments, shuffling her feet.

“No you don’t.” You frown and turn to Eddie, and though he’s staring at you with wide eyes and shaking his head, you continue. “Last time I was able to—”

“Hey, uh” he interrupts you and puts a hand on your shoulder, pointing at a still-pacing Dustin. “Henderson’s not like, cursed, is he?”

“Cursed? No, no no no, he’s fine,” Steve brushes it off like it’s nothing. “Mental? Absolutely.”

When Dustin shouts loudly enough to echo through the entire damn woods, you jump enough to slam back into Eddie’s chest and stop breathing for a second. 

“Shit, fuck, sorry,” you whisper, but Eddie doesn’t let you go before whisper a quiet reassurance an rubbin your arms for a quick second. 

Steve frowns at you before shaking his head at Henderson. “The hell was that for?”

“ I was right,” Dustin declares, a little bit too smugly. “Skull Rock was north.”

“Seriously? You’re serious?” Steve sounds disproportionately pissed.

“What am I missing here?” 

“This little dipshit,” Steve starts, uncrossing his arms to point at Dustin, who still looks very proud of himself. “Led us on a wild goose chase with his stupid little compass for over an hour before I was the one who got us here.” When he turns back to Henderson, he gestures widely at the rocks behind you. “ This is Skull Rock.”

“M’hm,” Dustin nods, and you’re entirely confused about why his grin seems to be getting wider.

“You’re totally, absolutely, one hundred percent wrong. Right now.”

“Yes,” Dustin concedes, leaning in. “ And no. ”

“No actually I think he might be a little bit cursed,” you state, looking over at Steve who looks all the part like an exasperated parent at the end of his rope.

Dustin holds something up, and you have to squint to see what it is. “This compass worked correctly when we left the Wheelers’,” he starts, and you have to take a second to wonder why the hell everyone was at the Wheelers’ of all places. “It was correct when we got in the car on Curly, but it started to slip the further east we went. Now , it’s way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn’t wrong, the compass was.”

The mention of a compass brings up the flash of a memory, only for a second. You’ve seen that before—or, at least, you remember other people seeing that before.

“So you’re using faulty equipment, you’re still—”

“No,” you interrupt Steve. “It’s not faulty. A strong enough electromagnetic field can throw a compass out of whack,” you explain, looking over at Dustin. “That’s what’s happening, right?”

“Bingo.” You shouldn’t feel as proud as you do to have a high schooler acknowledge you. “Lucas, do you remember what had a strong enough magnetic field to disrupt a compass’ magnet?”

There’s a second of quiet before there’s a dawning look of realization on his face. “It’s a gate.”

“But we’re nowhere near the lab,” Nancy cuts in.

“But what if,” Dustin counters. “ Somehow , here’s another gate? A gate that we don’t know about. It’d have to be smaller, way less powerful.”

“Snack-size gate,” Robin says quietly, and you can’t help but snort at the term.

“Why?” Steve asks. “How?”

“No idea,” Dustin starts, but you clear your throat and put your hand up again.

“I have a… like, a fraction of a running theory,” you say slowly. When Dustin motions at you like you’ve got the floor, you clear your throat again and cross your arms. “I’m not gonna go in depth about why I know this so please don’t ask, but when Will was taken the first time, those things, the uh…”

“Demogorgons,” Lucas says, and you nod and thank him.

“Right, the demogorgons. They were making their own, like, temporary gates, right? You probably never caught those on a compass because the bigger gate you found in the lab was way stronger.”

“Where are you going with this?” Steve prompts, and you wave him off. 

“Shut up, I’m getting there,” you hiss. “My point is that if the wannabe foot soldiers could open their own gates and yank people through them, maybe Vecna’s been trying to do the same thing. Yank someone specifically to rip open a gate.” 

There’s a moment of silence where everyone else seems to be contemplating what you’ve said.

“Why not just use the demogorgons then?” Robin asks, and you hum as you think. 

“Those were temporary,” Dustin answers instead. “Maybe he’s looking for something more permanent.”

“Okay, but we still don’t know why ,” Steve points out. 

“Does it really matter?” Eddie asks, pointing over to Max. “If there’s some kind of gate to the Upside Down, we’ve got our way to Vecna. We can…” He trails off, clearly uncomfortable mentioning what the eventuality is if Max is kept under whatever curse is on her, now. 

“Kill Vecna, break the curse,” she finishes for him.

She’s barely done speaking before Dustin wheels around and takes off down a trail. 

“Hey, where are you going?” Steve asks. “Hey, hey hey hey!” Dustin stops and turns around, seeming extremely put out, the picture of impatience. “These two are still wanted. We can't just go for a hike in the woods.”

“I’m gonna agree with him on that,” you point out, taking a careful step back. “We practically got hunted down when no one was supposed to know where we were. Shit’s not safe for us.”

“This little steel capsule,” Dustin starts, and gone is the smug expression. “Might be the key to saving Max, Eddie and you.” When he turns to Max, she shrugs; she doesn’t really have to worry about getting caught. “What say you, then, Eddie the Banished?”

When you turn around to look at Eddie, same way everyone else does, he’s backed off and crouched low, screwing the cap back on to a catine of water you hadn’t noticed he had. Probably pilfered with the walkie, you figure.

“I say,” Eddie starts slowly, looking away. “You’re asking me to follow you into Mordor.” You sigh and pinch the bridge of your nose. “Which, if I’m totally straight with you? I think is a really bad idea. Been there, done that, it sucked.” 

“ Thank you , that’s what—”

“But uh, the Shire,” he continues, holding a finger up to quiet you. “The Shire is burning.”

“Oh my god,” you groan, and throw your hands up when you turn away. Close your eyes and run both hands down your face when you see Dustin hopping up and down excitedly. 

“So Mordor it is.” 

“You’re fucking kidding me,” you mutter, though you’re the first to walk after Dustin when he starts back down the trail again. “It wasn’t enough that we almost got turned into demonic dog food, but now he actually wants to fucking go deliberately .”

“I’m sorry, you almost got turned into what ?” Robin asks behind you, and you can hear her speed up to walk next to you.

You sigh and shove your hands into your pockets. “So when Vecna attacked, the day Nancy went around Forest Hills…”

“You said three !” 

“What the fuck Harrington , why the fuck am I left here too?!”

Steve has the gall to mouth a quiet ‘sorry’ while he, Nancy, Robin and Eddie coast off towards the center of the lake. Though the other kids don’t seem too fussed about the entire thing—probably used to the whole ‘the kids need to stay behind’ bullshit by now—you and Dustin both are fuming.

“It was my goddamn theory!” Dustin repeats again, throwing his arms in the air before turning around and walking off.

“And I’m the one with the fucking gun !” You shriek out, but all you get from the boat is a wave, and you’re not even sure whose arm it is. “This is bullshit!”

“Wait, you have a gun?” Max asks, and you pull it out of the back of your waistband maybe a little too forcefully. When she, Lucas and Dustin take a stunned step back, you put your arm down and sigh, annoyed. 

“The safety’s on, relax, jesus,” you grumble, stalking over to the leftovers of a fallen tree and sitting down in a huff. “What now?”

“Wait until they say something I guess,” Lucas shrugs, sitting down on the log with you. 

“Bullshit,” both you and Dustin mutter, and you lean forward to rest your elbows on your knees and your head in your hands. 

With a deep sigh, and for lack of anything better to do, you shove a hand into the pocket of the sweater Eddie has so thoughtfully thrown back at you earlier to fish out the one spare magazine you thought to take with you. Popping out the one that was in the Beretta, you inspect the amount of bullets left in it.

Only two. Seven more in the spare mag, and maybe a handful of bullets in one of your pant pockets. So much for trying to carefully arm yourself; you have no idea where the other Beretta is, and at least one of the shotguns is probably nice and settled in the bottom of the lake. 

You don’t stand to follow when Dustin asks Lucas for his binoculars and they both end up by the lakeside watching on. Max awkwardly takes Lucas’ place, watches you silently as you do the best you can manage to refill the near-empty magazine with five of the six bullets you’re able to fish out of your left pocket.

“Well?” You ask, keeping your eyes on the magazine as you try to load it. “Spit it out. I can practically hear you thinking.”

“It’s just,” Max starts, and you can see in your periphery that she’s wringing her hands. “I don’t wanna be a dick about it but…” When she trails off, you put everything down in your lap to sit up properly and look at her. “I mean, it was probably like, before I even moved here but. You’re—are you the one who got pulled out of school?”

You hum and nod. “Yeah. Pulled out of school cause I tried to off myself, yeah.” Max has the decency to wince at that, but you shake your head and wave a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. There’s no easy way to say it. It is what it is.”

“What,” Max starts, but clears her throat. “How did you, I dunno. Get past it?” 

“The wanting to die bit?” you ask, and when Max nods, you take a deep breath. “If you’re asking me cause you think it’ll help, you’re out of luck,” you say quietly, shoving the filled magazine back into the gun and making sure the safety is back on. “They drugged me up. A lot . I can’t really remember that year at all. My mom said I managed to graduate from home, somehow. She probably lied and falsified, like, so many documents to get me through.” 

Max huffs out what you think is some weird aborted laugh, but you can’t help but chuckle along, too. It’s definitely something a bit wild to imagine some mother of two trying to scam the government into getting her psycho youngest daughter a high school diploma. 

“But to answer your question honestly,” you continue, reaching around to shove the gun back into your waistband. “There wasn’t any getting past it, for me.” You clasp your hands in front of you and lean your elbows on your knees again. “The reason why I… did what I did, it was because I kept dreaming of what happened to you. To them.” You nod back, towards Dustin and Lucas, but also to the four on the boat. “I kept trying to tell people that what I was seeing was real, at first. When Will went missing. I saw about twelve different therapists until my parents got a psychiatrist to hop me up on a bunch of meds. And that helped, for a while. Until it didn’t. Until I—when I saw…” 

You trail off, choking up, and hating it. You should be used to talking about these things by now; for at least two years you’d repeated yourself until you were blue in the face. Maybe, somewhere along the way, you started bottling everything up to make other people think you were getting better.

Maybe the fact that it’s Max you’re talking to—about seeing people die in admittedly horrible and cruel ways, when her brother is part of those people—makes it a bit harder, too.

You can”t help but jolt when you feel a hand on your shoulder. 

“Sorry,” Max whispers, but you shake your head.

“It’s,” you try, but clear your throat to try and get rid of the lump there. “Fine. It’s fine.” You take a deep breath, though a bit shaky, and sit up a bit straighter. “You’re not gonna believe me, but for what it’s worth, you don’t—you have nothing to blame yourself for.”

Max looks stunned when you turn to look at her, but scoffs. Before she can say anything, you hear Dustin behind you bemoaning how hairy Steve is. You make an obvious gagging sound, but Max immediately stands up.

“Lemme see,” she demands, grabbing the binoculars and… Saying absolutely nothing. 

You can’t help but laugh. “Wow, peeping Tom over here.”

Max doesn’t say anything, but waves at you to be quiet. But then you realize: why is Steve shirtless? 

“Hold on, gimme that,” you mutter, taking the binoculars from her and looking out at the water yourself. You find them just after Steve’s taken a plunge, apparently. “That’s so fucking stupid,” you whisper, putting the binoculars down for a second before turning to the other three. “Isn’t it really stupid to go down there alone?”

Dustin shrugs. “The gate itself isn’t dangerous, as long as he doesn’t go through.” 

“As long as he doesn’t go through, uh huh.” You bring the binoculars back up. “Yeah, like he’s smart enough not to do that.”

You keep your eyes glued on the boat when you hear people behind you. You look to your side; Dustin, Lucas and Max all look like deer caught in headlights. When you look behind you, there’s the distinct, sweeping glow of flashlights through the trees.

“Shit, hide, hide!” You whisper harshly, motioning for them to hide behind the log you’d been sitting on. You press your back against it when you drop to the ground, but immediately bring the binoculars back up to look at the boat. 

Just in time to see Robin tip off the boat backwards into the water.

You shove the binoculars into Dustin’s chest and pull the gun from your waistband, flip the saftey off and cock it. 

“ What the hell are you doing ?” Dustin asks, motioning behind you. “You can’t shoot the damn cops!”

“I’m not going to,” you confirm, closing your eyes and taking another steadying breath. “Whatever you do, do not go into the lake, and do not let them know where we are. Clear?” 

“Copy,” Max confirms, and lifts her head a bit to look at where the cops are slowly creeping in on you. “I’ve got an idea.” She turns back to you, and puts a hand on your shoulder again. You don’t jump this time. “Stay alive.” 

You nod before you stand up, and take a few steps towards the lake. You turn back towards the three teens and, with the hand that isn’t holding the gun, wave at them. 

“See you later.”

You only hear the beginning of Dustin saying ‘holy shit’ before his voice fades away. Your stomach drops, and the ground disappears from under your feet.

Chapter Text

It’s a mistake to try and run as soon as you feel the ground beneath your feet. Your knees buckle almost instantly, and you find yourself tumbling down the slope leading to the lake bed. There’s a high pitched screeching in the distance ahead of you that makes your ears ring and eyes water. 

You also hear the distinct screaming of people. 

You scramble to your feet and grab your gun where it had skittered a few feet ahead of you. You’re not prepared for the sight in front of you: slimy creatures that look like bats taking turns diving in on Eddie and the others. You double check that the safety on the Beretta is flicked off, hit yourself in the forehead with your free hand to try and focus, and you make your way forward. 

You jog as fast as you’re able to with your stomach in knots and your lungs clenching, and when you’ve walked around the glowing red mass you assume in the gate, lift your arm up and aim and the highest flying bat.

The shot is deafening, and though it might not have been an instant kill, the sound of liquid splattering on the ground says you at least hit the damn thing. Before you can aim for a second shot, Nancy rushes toward you and, with what you think is an oar, hits a bat that has been diving right for you. 

You shoot the one coming up behind her, and it plummets to the ground with a squelch and a pathetic squeak.

You follow Nancy closely when she makes it over to Steve, in time to see Eddie spear clean through a bat with some kind of broken stick. You shoot the thing in the head for good measure when Eddie slams it to the ground. 

You turn just in time to see Steve fucking Harrington tear a bat clean in half. When you see him spit blood, you take the time to process what he looks like. And what he looks like is bloody . 

“Oh my fucking god,” you croak, putting your arms down and walking over to him. “You need to—”

“It’s fine,” Steve grunts, waving you off and taking a look down at himself before look back up to you. “Wai—What the hell are you doing here?” 

“You ditched me so I plane shifted, asshole,” you reply quietly, moving aside to let Nancy inspect the wounds left behind by the bats taking ‘a pound of flesh’. 

“Those things don’t have, like,” Robin starts, looking around nervously at the carcasses. “Rabies or something, right?” 

Nancy looks at her like she’s sprouted a second head. You scoff. “If they do have some kind of disease, I’m pretty sure it’s nothing we know.” 

“Fantastic,” Steve mutters. He opens his mouth to say something else when the now-familiar shrieking of the bats sounds behind you. 

There’s a sound like a wounded, pitched howl that sounds in the distance. When you turn to face it, you all get to see several bats land, annoyingly gracefully, around the gate. 

Clearly guarding it. 

“Alright, there’s not that many,” Steve speaks quietly, taking a cautious step forward. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s plenty enough,” you hiss, shuffling over to stand next  to robin, behind he and Eddie. 

“Nah, we can take ‘em,” Eddie says, with all the confidence of someone who has no idea what he’s looking at. “Right?” 

As if summon, there’s another wounded howl, distinctly coming from the woods beyond the bats, beyond the gate. The sound alone feels louder, like it resonates behind your eyes, but when you see the tip of what looks like a very black cloud, you nearly trip over yourself trying to step back. 

“No, no we definitely can’t take those,” you breathe, pulling at Nancy and Robin.

Nancy does a half spin, eyes wildly looking at the edges of the lake, before she points behind you, legs already carrying her.

“The woods,” she calls out, breaking into a run. “Come on!” 

You take off after her without a word.

Unlike the other four, huddled as closely to the edge of cover Skull Rock provides you, you stay huddled on the ground as hidden as you can possibly be. You can hear the swarm of bats pass you over, but you don’t breathe until everyone stands up.

While Robin sighs audibly in relief, you already notice Steve is slower to get up than the others. When he starts canting to one side, you call him out and lunge to catch him. 

“Woah, holy shit,” you breathe, helping Steve to slide down to the ground. “You—dude no offence but you look like shit.”

“Great bedside manners,” he groans, putting a hand to his wounded side. It looks… like a really angry racoon got to him. 

You’re vaguely aware that Robin’s going on about rabies while Nancy’s tearing the bottom half of her shirt. You can feel something tingling in your fingers, but before you can open your mouth to speak, there’s a throbbing in your head.

I thought I told you to leave.

“Oh fuck no,” you whisper in a growl, propping yourself up on your feet and leaning against the stone. “I really don’t need you in my head right now.” 

I could make it easy , the gravelling voice—probably Vecna, right?—says. I could teach you how to use your powers.

You guffaw and turn around, like that’ll help you find where the voice is coming from. You shrug off the hand you feel landing on your shoulder. You can still hear the bats in the distance. 

“Right, fuck off, buddy!” You shout, belling your hands into fists at your sides. “You don’t get to offer me a fucking job when you just tried to kill my friends !”

“We’re friends?” You don’t catch whose whispered awe you hear. 

It doesn’t have to be like this—

“For the last time,” you start, voice low, closing your eyes. “I told you to Fuck. Off! ”

The tingling in your fingers suddenly feels like starbursts under your skin, enough that you fall back into whoever had tried to grab your shoulder earlier. You can faintly tell that there’s a short gust of wind around you; whatever leaves were on the ground get blown away from beneath Skull Rock, in a neat circle.

You feel blood seeping from your nose, and your head feels like it’s full of cotton. 

It’s Eddie who lowers you to the ground, the back of your head braced against one of your shoulders. You feel sick, light-headed and weak. Eddie’s trying to keep your attention, keep you conscious, and though it’s hard to keep your eyes open, you double tap the arm across the top of your chest. He drops it in favour of grabbing both your shoulders.

You hear Steve groan behind you when Nancy tightens her makeshift bandage around him, and Robin muttering something panicked under her breath. 

“I’m fine,” you croak, pulling your legs out from where they’d folded under you and letting your weight sink back into Eddie’s chest.

“Yeah, sure, believable,” Eddie replies, and you can feel him turning around to look back at the other three before lowering his mouth to your ear. “Wanna tell me what that whole episode was about?” 

You scoff and, with a grunt, force yourself to sit up straighter. 

“Remember when I told you that Vecna was probably the one who kicked me out of here the first time?” Eddie rubs your shoulders, and when you turn to look at him, he nods. The other three still look shocked. “Yeah well, he kind of, like. Telepathically spoke to me then. And now.”

“He what? ” Steve asks, but Nancy shushes him and motions for you to continue. 

“You said he was trying to offer you a job?” She prompts. 

You tilt your head. “Kind of? He said he could teach me how to use my powers, whatever the fuck that means. So I guess…”

“Sanctuary,” Eddie breathes, helping you turn around so you can at least face him while you sit. “That’s what that whole,” he gestures at his nose. “Thing is about, right? Whenever you do something your nose bleeds.”

You frown and lick your lips, and wipe angrily as your upper lip and nose when you taste the unmistakable tang of iron. Spit off to your side to get it out of your mouth.

“Fucking probably,” you mutter bitterly. You move to get up, and accept Eddie’s help when he offers an arm to get up. “Never really thought about it but it makes sense. Eleven’s nose always bleeds when she uses TK.” 

“TK?”
You wave Steve off. “Telekinesis.”

“Wait, so if this is just like, Hawkins but with monster and creepy crawlies,” Robin starts, hands behind her head like it’ll help her stay calm. “That means everything from our world is still here, right? Except for people, obviously?”

You shrug with Steve while Nancy speaks up. “As far as I understand it, yeah.”

“So theoretically,” Robin continues, already sounding a little bit less frazzled. “We could go to the police station—”

“There’s no way we’d make it downtown,” you cut in, flexing your fingers. “We’d either get spotted by the bats again or get jumped by a demodog.” You pause for a second and glance over at Eddie. His eyes are round as plates. “If not just, y’know. A straight up demogorgon.”

“Well,” Nancy starts, staring at the ground. “We don’t have to go all the way downtown for guns. I have guns. In my bedroom.” 

“ Nancy Wheeler has guns, plural, in her bedroom? ” Eddie asks incredulously, when Steve steps forward. 

“Full of surprises, isn’t she?” Robin says, and there’s almost an excited bounce to her when she does. 

“A Russian Makarov and a revolver,” Nancy says.

“Yeah and you almost shot me with it.”

“And you almost deserved it.” 

You squint at them for a second and look over to Robin. She throws you a smirk like she knows something that you’ve just caught onto, but you roll your eyes and shake your head. There’s a sounding ‘thump’, and when you turn your head to look, Eddie’s tossed his denim vest at Steve. 

“For your modesty, dude.”

Steve looks like he’s about to say something in return, but before he can speak the ground begins to rumble violently beneath you. Robin stumbles forward into you, and you in turn fall back right into Eddie. A quick look confirms that Steve caught Nancy. The best you can do is try to keep breathing until the shaking subsides.

This would have been perfectly fine if you didn’t immediately hear some kind of horrifying braying in the distance, a sound you don’t recall hearing even in the nightmares. 

“Yeah so guns seem like a pretty good idea to me,” Eddie says, shakily, releasing what you now realize was a death grip on your upper arms.

“Yeah, me too,” Robin breathes, holding out a hand to help you up once she’s gotten back up on her own feet.

“Alright well, lead the way. I’m way out of my fucking depth here,” you state, taking a knee to tie up your shoelaces. You’d been able to run just fine with them undone, but if you’re going to have to avoid tripping over hive mind vines, you’d rather not leave yourself at a disadvantage. 

When you start walking, it’s easy for you, Eddie and Robin to stay a few feet behind Steve and Nancy. They are, after all, the only people who know where they’re going from here. You turn to Eddie as you walk and tap him lightly on the shoulder.

“What was that you said earlier?” you ask. “Sanctuary?” 

Eddie hums and nods, sticking his hands in his pockets and keeping his head down. 

“Yeah, like, the spell?” He turns to look at you for a second to see you nod and looks back down at the ground. “It protects you from targeted attacks and spells.” 

“Like scrying or TK.”

“Like scrying or TK, yeah.” The grin you’re gifted with makes you turn your own gaze to the ground and clear your throat. 

“Wait so you can cast actual spells?” Robin asks, reaching a blind hand out to hold onto your sleeve. “Like a witch?”

You can’t help but laugh a bit. “Not really,” you say, taking a second to carefully hop over a particularly large vine. “It’s kind of more… thought based? Will based, I guess? Like the whole plane-shifting thing, I can just think about the Upside Down hard enough and then boom, I’m here.” 

“And what about that thing Eddie said, sanctuary?” 

You twist your tongue in your mouth while you find the words. “It’s like… a fuck-off zone. If it works right, Vecna can’t attack me or use spells on me. Which, on the one hand, is great—”

“But leaves you open to anything that isn’t directed at you,” Eddie finishes for you.

“So if he sends an army of bats against us…” Robin starts, looking over at you. 

“They might not be able to attack me, but if one of them flies close enough that its tail hits me or just happens to wrap around my neck, that’s kind of fair game.” 

When you look up again, Steve’s stopped in front of you, Nancy a few feet ahead of him. Robin gives what you think is a reassuring pat on the shoulder before jogging to meet up with Nancy. When you and Eddie catch up to Steve, Eddie nudges him with his shoulder in passing. They seem to strike up an easy conversation—which is no surprise, given how masterful Eddie is in social situations, despite what people might think of him—and you give them a few feet of space.

You don’t really want to hear Boy Talk right now.

So instead, you look down at the palm you’d scraped when you first tumbled down the incline to the lake, and focus on the small, scabbed cuts.

You try to recall the tingling feeling from earlier in your fingertips, and the way it spread like fizzing soda throughout the rest of you. You’re not entirely sure if it’s even related at all to your… ‘powers’ , but given the fact that it seemed to contract and immediately release when you cast what you assume is the equivalent of Sanctuary…

You’re making a lot of assumptions, but spend most of the rest of your time walking trying to get the small cuts in the meat of your palm to close up.

“Might be time to get a maid, Wheeler.” 

“Robin, I doubt a maid can fix a parallel dimension vine infestation,” you retort offhandedly, stepping over said vines on the floor. 

“Come on,” Nancy calls, heading for the stairs. “I don’t wanna stay here longer than we have to.”

You shrug and follow up the stairs behind Robin, but when you turn at the top of the stairs, you can’t help noticing that Steve isn’t behind you. He’s, in fact, stood stock-still halfway up to the landing, pointing his flashlight out at the… kitchen? 

“Dude,” you start, but it stuns Steve enough to make him stumble down a few steps. “Holy shit, relax, are you good? Do we need to worry about Upside Down rabies.” 

“What? No,” Steve frowns, but immediately turns back to the kitchen. “No, just. Listen. Do you hear that?”

You huff but shut up anyways, and try to pay attention. And you barely catch it, at first; a sound like someone mumbling into a pillow two rooms down a hallway. It’s your turn to frown, and you push past Steve to continue down the stairs. When you walk into the kitchen, the sound is clearer.

“It’s… Henderson?” 

“Right? Right!” Steve almost trips over himself getting down the stairs. “Dustin? Dustin!” 

“Oh my god shut up!” You hiss, slapping at his shoulder. “He can’t hear you from here!” 

“Dus—! Wait, what do you mean he can’t—”

“Steve, what are you doing?” Nancy asks, flinching when Steve turns and shines the flashlight right in her face. 

Eddie takes a few steps toward you, walking out from behind Robin and Nancy. “You good?” He whispers, looking sideways at Steve while he talks about Dustin being in the walls. 

“I’m fine,” you whisper back, before taking a step in front of Steve and putting your hands up. “Oh my god I wasn’t kidding when I was telling you to shut up , he’s not in the walls and he cannot hear you .” 

“How do you know that for sure?” Robin asks, crossing her arms against the chill in the house. 

“When Will Byers went missing,” you start, turning around to face the other two girls. “Joyce only said she could hear him through the wall when there was kind of like a… that weird not-gate that happened when he tried to reach her when a demogorgon was after him right? But he could hear her all the time.”

“Like a two-way mirror but with sound!” 

“Exactly. That’s probably why Will used lights to…” you trail off, looking past them to the hanging lights in the living room. 

Nancy’s the first to turn around and try to spot what you’re looking for. Once she does, she immediately turns back round to you. 

“The lights, she said he was talking through the lights.” She turns back and rushes to stand under the light fixture and reaches up to it. It’s faint, but it does seem to glow, somehow. When you follow and look closely enough, it… almost looks like there’s a shimmering mist around the lightbulbs. 

“That’s… kind of funky,” you mutter, but reach your hand up too. When Steve walks up and shines the flashlight up, the damn thing practically sparkles. 

You pull your hand down and almost jolt when you feel a hand against your lower back. You don’t have to turn around to calm your nerves; you can feel Eddie’s hair brush against your ear. 

“It… tickles,” he huffs, looking down at you with a crooked smirk. 

“It kinda… feels good,” Robin adds.

Nancy slowly pulls her hand back down, and when she lifts her head and catches your eye, you already know you’re thinking the same thing. 

“Anyone here know morse code?” 

“We both do,” you answer, nodding back at Eddie. 

“Uh, since when?”

“We both know SOS, dumbass,” you sigh, batting Steve and Robin’s arms down and reaching back up. “Three short,” you start, making three quick tapping motions. “Three long, and three short. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

“How do we know it’s working?” Steve asks, looking down from the lights to you, then to Nancy. 

“When we hear them realize the lights are blinking, I guess,” Eddie replies with a shrug. “Might take a while.”

“I fucking hope not,” you grumble. “My arm’s already getting sore.”

And in fact, it isn’t so much the presence of conversation that lets you all know it’s working so much as the fact that there’s no sound at all after a few more seconds. 

And then you hear Hunderson speak up. 

“Hey uh, remember when I said the wouldn’t be stupid enough to go through Watergate? I overestimated them.” 

“Okay that’s just plain rude!” you explain in a huff, pulling your hand back and crossing your arms. “I didn’t even go through the gate?” 

“You know I think that might actually be worse.”

“Oh fuck off, Ed.”

Chapter Text

Running through the woods had been bad enough and left you with burning lungs. You did not expect having to steal a bike from Nancy Wheeler’s neighbour and booking it back to Forest Hills. (Though you’re pretty sure it’s not really stealing, considering there isn’t really anyone around to own it in the first place. Not here.)

Though you nearly crash your purloined bike a few times on the way, the lot of you manage to make it back to the Munson trailer… relatively intact. Robin leans against you at the bottom of the trailer’s steps, heaving just about as much as you. 

“This wasn’t supposed to be,” Robin starts, one arm on your shoulder and one on her knee as she doubles over to catch her breath. “This isn’t supposed to be gym class.” 

“Fuck, tell me about it,” you whine, opting to lean your head back and clasping your hands behind your neck. “This is torture, I hate this.” 

“Cheer up,” Steve says, a little too jovially for someone red in the face from exertion. “We’re almost out of here. C’mon.” He claps Robin on the back in passing and nearly knocks her off her feet. 

“Hey, you gonna be alright?” Eddie asks, coming up behind you to rest a hand on your other shoulder. Robin clears her throat loudly and skitters after Steve. You frown at her, but turn to Eddie to shake your head. 

“Yeah, no, I’m fine,” you huff, swallowing loudly and trying to measure your breathing. “Being a librarian isn’t like, a super active job. Not used to this anymore.”

Eddie snorts and squeezes your shoulder for a second before letting go. 

“Just. Lemme know if you need anything?” It’s your turn to snort when you walk past him up the steps, heeding an impatient Steve gesturing at you both to hurry up. 

“I know this song and dance already, big guy,” you say over your shoulder. 

Inside, flashlights pointed up at the ceiling, Steve is the first to speak up. 

“God damn.” 

“That’s,” Eddie starts, and you don’t have to look back at him to know you don’t like the expression on his face. “That’s where Chrissy died. Like, right where she died.”

“I don’t see why you’re surprised,” you frown, leaning forward to look at Steve. “Didn’t you guys like, come through one of these? Where Patrick died?” 

“Yeah, but it’s like, it’s actually here , y’know?” Robin whispers, taking a cautious step forward before roughly being pulled back by Steve. 

“Woah, wait a sec,” he says, taking a step forward instead and squinting at the gate. Behind you, Eddie grabs both your arms like he’s worried you’re about to topple over. “What’s—”

Something punches through the gate with a disgusting, slimy-cunchy sounds, and in fact if it hadn’t been for Eddie holding you still behind you, your jolt might’ve actually knocked you on your ass. You instinctively grab for the gun tucked into your waistband. Whatever it is wiggles around and… seems to clear the way? 

Though Steve is the first one to try and approach the gate, you grab him by the wrist and place the Beretta in his hand. He nods quickly before making his way closer, keeping the gun aimed up at the ceiling as he does. His arm quickly goes down though, and when you hear him utter ‘no way’, you quickly make your way to him and look up.

And there are the kids, all safe and accounted for. Dustin’s nearly cackling as he waves up—down?—at you from the trailer’s living room. 

“Well holy shit,” you whisper, feeling your face split into a grin. 

“Hi there!” Dustin greets, and you can’t help but slap Eddie excitedly in the arm. 

He’s met with a chorus of tired but enthused greetings

“Bada bada boom !”

“Please tell me he didn’t get that from you,” you whisper to Eddie, turning to look up at him. 

“Absolutely the hell not.” You huff out a short laugh before Steve and Nancy start directing the kids through the gate. 

Quickly enough, there’s a rope made out of the blankets Dustin and Erica can find throughout the trailer, and Lucas and Max unceremoniously throw a mattress down on the floor beneath the portal. With several quirked eyebrows directed at him, Eddie shrugs his shoulders and clears his throat. 

“Those stains are, uh,” he starts, frowning before shrugging again. “I dunno what those stains are.” 

“I’m showering after this,” Robin says quietly, and you can’t help but hum in agreement despite the elbow in the ribs you get in retaliation. 

When the makeshift rope falls through the ceiling, you can’t help but move to grab it. Dustin urges you to give it a good tug. When it stays put, you swallow what was sure to be a cackle and, once you’ve got a good grip, let yourself swing.

You don’t even try to stop the laughter that bubbles up your throat when you feel Eddie pull you down and away, arms tight around your stomach. He swivels around to drop you back on the ground. 

“Yeah no we’re trying to be serious here,” Eddie says, and though he’s probably trying to reprimand you for being a little too carefree, you can still hear the smile in his voice. 

“I’m absolutely being serious! I was testing to see if it would hold my weight!” 

“Sure dude,” he scoffs. Eventually, when Dustin voices his impatience, Eddie squares his shoulders and gives the rope a solid tug. “No objections to my going first?” 

“None here, have at it,” Steve answers, crossing his arms and taking a step back. 

“Just warn us if you start feeling woozy or like you’re being pulled apart by magic invisible hands,” Robin throws in, and you can’t help but worry at the skin of your lips. 

There’s… no chance you’ll get dismembered going through, right? The blanket’s perfectly fine, you reason with yourself, watching as Eddie pulls himself closer to the ceiling. You hold your breath until he lands with a thump on the mattress on the other side. 

“Thank fuck,” you sigh, taking a step back and motioning for Robin to go ahead when she puts her hand on the rope. When she makes it through equally unscathed and thrilled, you turn to look at Nancy and Steve in turn. 

“I’ll go last,” Steve says, a gentle hand on her shoulder pushing Nancy towards the rope. 

“Not really gonna object to that,” you say in turn, pulling the gun from your waistband. After flipping  the safety off and making sure it’s cocked, you pass it over to Steve, holding the barrel down. You open your mouth to say something when it feels like something, all at once, is trying to force your brian out of your eyes. 

The sound around you feels like it’s being filtered through cotton, and though you can make out Eddie and the kids shouting from the other sides, you can more clearly make out the fact that Steve is calling Nancy’s name. 

From where you’re crouched, nearly doubled over, on the ground, you crack open a sore eyelid to see Nancy stood stock still, eyes rolled back. You’re sure you make some kind of frustrated sound while you clench your jaw and force yourself to stand. You stumble forward to brace yourself against Steve’s shoulder, blindly reaching out for Nancy. Steve doesn’t say anything when he grabs your hand and puts it against her shoulder. 

And while the relief is immediate and you no longer feel like someone is trying to use your skull as a tube of toothpaste, you also lose all bearing and sense of space. One second you see a house with a beautiful stained glass window, the next it’s spiders, and then it’s the intensely loud, overwhelming buzzing of what you know is a tattoo gun. There’s nothing for you to do, like this; you barely feel your body at all. 

You can’t move. Much less speak. 

You can’t speak, but you can think, at least. And you’re pretty sure that you’ve still got your hand on Nancy’s shoulders. So, with what little focus and energy you have left, praying that no one’s decided to step on the mattress, you try to ignore the sights and sounds around you and focus on Eddie’s trailer.

You’re almost relieved when you feel your stomach drop, and when you start to feel Nancy’s knit sweater under your fingers, you think you grip it so tightly it might rip. 

You’re out cold before you even hit the ground.

You’re dreaming.

That’s the first thought that runs through your head.

Everything is black around you, as far as you can see. There’s water lapping at your feet, barely an inch deep. You kick your right foot up, then your left. You put your hands up in front of you and look at them. Flex your fingers slowly, one by one, before turning your hands over to look at your palms. You make fists as tightly as you can before releasing the tension and letting your hands fall back down to your sides.

It’s quiet here. Nice. Calm . You could stay here a while, you think.

So you sit down on the water-covered ground and pull your knees up to your chest. You tap your toes in the water. It’s not cold, you don’t think. If anything, it’s the exact same temperature as the air around you. The only real indication that you’re in water is the vague cooling sensation you get when it starts evaporating from your skin, and when it seeps up into your clothes. 

There isn’t even any ringing in your ears, you notice. 
It’s completely quiet. 

You find yourself wishing there was music, and no sooner do you think it, a small tape deck appears in front of you. In the time it took you to blink, it was just… there. You can almost feel all the muscles in your face when you frown. You can tell there’s already a cassette in there. Uncurling yourself,you slowly crawl a few feet forward and reach out to hit the play button. The familiar opening of Burnin’ For You fills the empty void you’re sitting in, and just the sound feels like a warm blanket around you. 

There’s a brief moment where you think you can hear another voice, just under the music. But you’re quick to ignore it; you’re comfortable here. No pain, no pressure, no obligation, nothing at all , in fact. Except for you and music. 

The obvious and discordant sound of a busy dial tone makes you sigh. You stab at the stop button with a little too much force, but the sudden silence lets you hear someone gasp behind you. 

You nearly trip and land face first in your hurry to get up. And when you turn around, water splashing around you, there’s a scream stuck in your throat. You shuffle back a few steps and put your hands down from where you had thrown them up in front of you .

“Are… Eleven?” 

She’s taller, obviously, and her hair’s buzzed short instead of the length you’d dreamt of it being at Starcourt. But there’s something about her expression that makes it almost impossible to mistake who she is. 

She frowns and turns to look behind her. When she does, it’s like whisps of smoke appear out of nowhere and rapidly coalesce into the inside of someone’s trailer. Or, part of it, at least. You’re not entirely sure how, but you get the impression that it’s Max’s. You can see the TV set and the couch, you can see the wall, and everyone gathered around Nancy.

Fear forgotten in lieu of concern and curiosity, to walk up next to Eleven and stare on at the scene in front of you. 

“What is this place?” 

“In between,” Eleven says, turning to look at you instead. “How are you here?” 

“I don’t know,” you answer quietly, turning to look at her as well. “I’ve never—this hasn’t happen before. Is it because of you?” 

Eleven doesn’t answer in favour of walking off towards everyone, walking briskly behind the couch Dustin is standing next to. She’s next to the television and looking around, confused, when she points at everyone. 

“You. Where are you?” 

“Wha-what do you mean, where am I? I’m right here.” 

“No,” Eleven says, with an edge of frustration in her voice. “There, with them. Where are you?”

Frown from and open your mouth in realization. She’s… you assume she’s right in thinking you should be around there, in the trailer, somewhere. You turn around on yourself once, trying to see if anything else will just suddenly materialize in front of you, but there’s nothing. 

“Eddie’s not there either, so he’s probably with me,” you say in a hurry, walking over to Eleven. “Do you know who he is? Mike probably told you, right? Long hair, about this tall—”

You move to put your hand up, but Eleven quickly grabs your hand and pulls you along with her with a nod. She pulls you back through the living room and, you imagine, through the trailer hallway, and just like magic, wisps of smoke appear again. And there you are, laid down on a bed, with Eddie cradling your head and pressing something to the back of your neck.

“That’s… really fucking weird,” you mutter, reaching up to touch the back of your neck when you feel something cool there. “In between… is this like, some kind of limbo? Are we having an out of body experience right now?” 

“Kind of, I guess,” Eleven says almost airly, moving to crouch next to your unconscious body on the bed. “What happened to you?” 

“I guess I passed out after I plane shifted.” 

“What’s… plane shifting?” 

You let out an amused huff and lower yourself to the ground next to Eleven. “I can go back and forth between home and the Upside Down by myself. I can just think about it and then… poof.”

“Poof,” she repeats quietly, reaching out for your body’s hand on the bed. You grab her wrist before she can touch you. 

“Wait, I can’t wake up yet.” You let her go when Eleven pulls her hand back into her lap. “What do you know about what’s happening right now? Do you know about Vecna?” 

“Henry.” 

“I’m sorry what?” 

“His name is Henry,” she clarified, holding out her forearm to you. You gingerly let your fingers rest below the 011 tattoo. “He’s number one.” 

“Fuck me,” you breathe, pulling your hand away in favour of running it through your hair. “So he’s like you? From the lab?” 

Eleven frowns but nods. “How do you know?” 

“I’ve dreamt about you. About everything that’s happened since…” You trail off and swallow thickly. “Since, uh. Since Will went missing. When you opened the gate.”

Though she turns to look away from you, you have a feeling you know what kind of expression is on her face. You clear your throat and wring your hands in your lap. 

“So what.. Did you hear anything they were talking about back there?” 

A nod. “They want to kill him. Kill Henry, when he’s trying to kill Max.” 

“I’m sorry what? ” 

“She’s going to stop the music and make him hunt her,” Eleven continues, and you hear the same anger beginning to bubble up in her voice as you’re feeling in your chest. “When he’s alone in the attic, they’re going to kill him.”

“That’s insane!” you shout, standing up and motioning wildly behind you. “They’ll get themselves killed ! There’s no way he’s not going to know they’re coming after him!”

“I know,” Eleven says curtly, getting up and turning to you, grabbing at your wrist. “But hey won’t be alone. I’ll get out. I can help.” 

“Get out?” You repeat,using your free hand to grab at her shoulder. “Get out of where? Where are you?”

“I don’t have time,” Eleven says, turning her head to look at the scene behind her that’s slowly starting to fade away. “I don’t have time,” she repeats more urgently, and pulls at your wrist when she turns back to look at you. “But you do. You need to help them. You need to hide them.” 

“What—man, you don’t make sense, how am I supposed to hide four grown ass—”

“ I have to go ,” Eleven cuts you off, releasing your wrist and stepping away. “Tell them when you wake up. Tell them I’m coming. Please. Hide them. Hide .” 

You’re gasping for breath when you wake up like you’d been unable to breath for the past few minutes. You don’t bother opening your eyes. You reach out and wave your hand around for a second before it finds and lands on Eddie’s face, effectively shutting him up, and push him away. 

“Quiet, nerd, I’m processing,” you croak, pulling the cold washcloth from beneath your neck and covering your eyes with your free arm. 

“ Processing ?” Eddie parrots incredulously, swatting your hand away and out of his face. “The hell does that mean ?”

You sigh wearily and groan as you try to sit up. When your arms buckle and before you can fall back down, Eddie’s sat down on the side of the bed and throws an arm around your shoulders and a hand beneath your collarbones to help prop you up. 

“How long have I been out?” 

“Literally hours , dude, it’s already morning . ”

You swear under your breath and gesture wildly at Eddie to get off the bed. When he does, you swing your legs over the side and, with a deep breath, get up and hold onto his shoulder for dear life. 

“Oh boy, being conscious doesn’t feel good,” you groan, wrapping your free arm around your stomach and swallowing down the nausea. “They got anything to eat? I need food before I rip Max a new one.”

With his arm now under yours, Eddie half-drags you to the kitchen counter, which you immediately slump against. He’s rummaging through the cupboard, and it’s only when you have your hand deep in a half-empty box of cheerios that you realize it’s eerily quiet in the trailer. 

You look up to find everyone doing their best to pretend they hadn’t been staring very intently at you just a second earlier. You slowly resume your crunchy chewing and swallow loudly before waving at the small crowd in front of you.

“I’m fine, you may resume your commiserating until I’ve eaten enough to bitch about how fucking stupid your plan is.”

Your comment is greeted with a cacophony of arguments—”It’s not stupid!” and “Do you have a better idea?” and, your favourite, “We don’t have our witch so what else can we do?”

You finish your second handful of cheerios and nod quietly, trying to untangle each upset voice from each other and clear your throat. 

“You don’t physically have your witch,” you specify, digging back into the box of cheerios. Eddie helpfully passes you a bottle of something to wash it down. Though you hope it’s beer, a quick sniff of it reveals that it’s just boring root beer. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Steve asks, arms crossed from his place on the couch. “El’s literally not here.”

“ Physically , no, you’re right,” you start, passing the box over to Eddie who eagerly shoves his hands in it with a quiet thank you. “We talked. She’s gonna—”

“You talked ?” Dustin cuts you off, incredulously, holding a hand out to make you pause. “You were just gonna move right on past that?”

“Yeah, Henderson, we talked . Shut up and listen,” you grumble, and with a grunt of effort, pull yourself up to sit on the counter. “She doesn’t like the idea of you,” you start, staring intently at Max. “Using yourself as bait. And honestly? I hate the idea too, it’s way too dangerous. Y’all seem to have forgotten that we don’t just have a couple bloodthirsty, hormonal sportsball players after us. It’s the whole god damn town. Anyone finds any one of us and we’re screwed.”

“No one’s looking for me or Robin, or even Steve,” Nancy retorts, almost too quietly for you to hear. She glances around at the other two and they both nod eagerly. 

“Yeah,” Robin chimes in. “I fly under everyone’s radar, no one’s gonna be looking for me.”

You shake your head and cross your arms. “Won’t matter, if you’re seen with any of the rest of us, you’re done. Right? Cause you kids got yourselves arrested ?”

Lucas, Dustin and Max have the decency to look down or away when you look at them. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” You sigh and throw your head back, looking up at the ceiling like it’ll offer some kind of reassurance or encouragement. Though it doesn’t come from the ceiling, you do feel a warm hand gently rest on your knee. You run your tongue along your teeth when you bring your head back and look at Eddie.

“You got a plan in there, Cleric?” He asks, turning to put the now-empty box of cheerios in the sink. 

“Eleven said she’s coming,” you start slowly, looking down at your socked feet as you swing them. “I don’t know where she is, she just said she’d ‘get out’, whatever that means.” 

“She’s in trouble,” Lucas says, looking over at Dustin. “That's probably why no one’s picking up the phone. No way Mike would just sit there and do nothing.” 

“And if Mike’s gone, so’s Will.” Dustin adds, and there’s a dawning look of realization creeping into everyone’s face. 

“And where Will goes—” Robin starts, looking over to Nancy. 

“...Jonathan follows.”

“Shit,” Dustin whispers, bringing both hands up to his head and turning away. 

“So I’m guessing that this is like, a really bad thing.” Eddie looks nervously back and forth between everyone, until his eyes land back on you. “Anything else?” 

“Well, I know Vecna is Henry,” you start, and Dustin and Lucas both say ‘One’ at the same time. “Right, whatever, Miscellaneous TK Asshole. Doesn’t matter. Point is that he’s just another lab kid like Eleven.”

“Absolutely not just like Eleven,” Steve grumps. 

“No,she’s right,” Dustin says. “We literally just talked about this.”

“Yeah and the conclusion of that conversation was fucking stupid ,” you reiterate, and don’t miss how Eddie’s fingers grip your knee justa bit tighter. “It’s reckless. If any of us get interrupted at any point, or if someone so much as spots us, we’re done for.”

“We haven’t figured out the distraction either,” Eddie adds, and you frown as you turn to look at him. 

“What distraction?” 

“One team goes to kill Vecna in the Upside Down and one team distracts the demobats,” Steve explains quickly, though it sounds like he’s starting to realize that yeah, it does sound like a dumb plan, actually. 

“Demobats, alright,” you mutter, rubbing your face with both hands before letting them fall into your lap. “The whole killing Vecna thing is the only good part about that. Using Max as bait is too risky. Using people as a distraction is also fucking stupid. Do none of you remember—”

The lump in your throat forces you to stop talking. You lick your lips nervously and look back up to the ceiling to try and dry your misty eyes. 

“...she’s not wrong,” Nancy speaks up, a little bit louder this time. “There’s already enough people dead. We don’t need to be taking unnecessary risks.”

You’re pinching the bridge of your nose to attempt to get your lacrimal glands back under control when it hits you. Hide them , she said. You start to snap your fingers and point to Eddie and Dustin in turn. 

“Quick, Cleric spell list, prevents evil damage or something.”

Dustin and Eddie both flounder for a second before Lucas is the one to answer. 

“P-protection from evil!”

“That’s the bitch!” You shout, hopping off the counter and bouncing off your feet. “For all intents and purposes, TK Asshole is a lich, right? I can just ‘Protection From Evil’ you before you go find Vecna and you’ll be good!” 

“That’s assuming you can even do that,” Steve points out, uncrossing his arms to gesture vaguely at you. “You can go to the Upside Down and apparently prevent someone from like, telepathically communicating with you, but that doesn’t mean you can do anything else.” 

You huff through your nose and, in an act of defiance, screw your eyes shut. 

This unleashes a wave of panicked screaming and you’re backed up into the counter by Eddie, whose hands have a vice grip on your shoulders and whose eyes are nearly wild with fear. 

“ Do not ,” he growls, actually growls , out at you. You put your hands up in surrender with a quiet whimper. He keeps you in place for a few more seconds as the room quiets down, but gives you a small shake before letting go. “Don’t.” You nod mutely before the room’s attention is drawn back to Lucas. 

“If he does work like a lich,” he starts, looking from Dustin to Erica before his eyes land on Eddie. “He’s gonna have a phylactery.”

“Please make sense,” Robin pleads from her place on the floor. 

“A phylactery is kind of like, a genie’s bottle, I guess?” You try to explain, looking over to Eddie for help. 

“Basically it won’t matter if we kill him if he has an object his life essence is tied to. He’ll just keep coming back.” 

“How do we know he even has one of those things?” Steve asks. 

“It’s actually not all that crazy,” Dustin says, motioning to you. “Everything she can do matches the cleric spell list. So far, almost everything we’ve encountered works just like some kind of DND mechanic.”

“Which is absolutely weird and insane.”

“Thank you, Robin, that is weird and insane,” Steve huffs, frowning. “What if it’s just a coincidence?” 

“Yeah, I mean, you can’t even use Cure Light Wounds,” Erica throws in, and you scoff and hold up your palms. She quirks a brow and looks at you like you grew another head. 

“I kind of crash landed and busted my hands when I plane shifted to find you bozos,” you explain, nodding over at Nancy, Steve and Robin. “I didn’t want to risk it on Steve, so I tried it on myself when we were walking to the Wheelers’ house. It didn’t really do anything on the spot, but,” and you shake your hands to bring the attention back to the smooth, unmarred skin of your palms. “It kicked in at some point. So yeah, I absolutely can use Cure Light Wounds, thank you.”

You’re getting really tired of the room’s decibel count obnoxiously rising almost every other time you open your mouth.

Chapter Text

“Y’know that’s actually kinda hot,” you cough, parroting what you’d been told when you had pulled out your set of lock picks.

Robin steps in before Eddie can say anything, and there’s a quick back and forth before Steve eventually replaces him in the driver’s seat, once the thing has been successfully hotwired. You let them figure out the rest on their own while you make your way to the back of the RV to sit on the bed.

‘Stuck in the back of a speeding trailer with the awning still attached after your childhood best friend hotwired it just like his male genetic donor used to’ wasn’t exactly how you would’ve imagined the latter half of your spring break to go. Then again, you hadn’t entirely anticipated dimension hopping, either, or having to deal with what might potentially be the end of the world. 

Nancy had briefly caught you up to speed before the lot of you left to hijack someone’s home—and you’re desperately trying not to think about that for too long—and the entire thing left a sour taste in the back of your throat. Not just the world-endy bullshit, but the fact that Vecna slash Henry slash One had access to something you weren’t sure you could do.

Fucking divination. 

You’re digging your nails into the palms of your hands when Steve peels out of Forest Hills at a speed the RV you’re all crammed in would consider breakneck. There’s so much you haven’t tried, actually. And the more you think about it, the more you think that maybe you should’ve taken the asshole up on his offer. Maybe you should’ve let the stupid lich king teach you. 

Beyond the regret, though, as little as it may be, there’s a lot of contemplation. Dustin, Lucas and Eddie are chatting away, concocting some harebrained scheme probably, and with Robin and Nancy up front with Steve, you’ve got some peace of mind to think. Because thankfully, unlike her brother, apparently, Erica Sinclair is capable of recognizing when someone shouldn’t be bothered.

The idea of a phylactery had occurred to you, originally, when Eddie first brought up the concept of a lich. That even if you tried to kill him, it would just be a matter of time before he came back. What would the phylactery be, though? What could he have attached himself to so wholly and completely that he’d be willing to risk using it as a respawn point? 

When you look up from where you’re sat cross-legged on the bed in the back, you open your mouth to call for Nancy. You barely mutter the first consonant of her name when you notice that she and Steve seem to be… discussing, pretty intently. 

“H-hey, Robin?” 

“Huh? Yeah?” Robin answers quickly, turning around and shuffling her way to you, quickly whispering apologies to the kids for getting between them. “What’s up?” She asks, letting herself fall heavily next to you. 

“You went to Victor Creel’s house with the others, yeah?” 

“Creepy abandoned mansion, yeah,” she confirms, nervously drumming her fingers against her thighs. “What about it?” 

“Was there anything like…weird about that place? Anything that stood out?”

Robin frowns and hums for a second, turning to look down at her feet. “Something that stood out, huh…” There’s another moment of pause before she slaps her thigh and points at you. “We found the clock! The one you keep hearing, it was right there in the main hallway.” 

“Okay yeah, that does stand out.” But not exactly the kind of thing someone would bind their soul to, you figure. Way too obvious and easily spotted. “Anything else? Something maybe hidden? Like, a lot better?” 

Robin chuckles but nods, letting her head fall back and crossing her arms as she thinks. 

“We kind of split up, so it’s hard to tell but I heard Steve screaming like a girl. Something about spiders?” 

“It was a god damn black widow!” Steve shouts from the front seat, and you can’t help but stifle your laughter. 

“A black widow, alright. Where was it, do you know?” 

“Yeah, it was on the second floor. In the bathroom, I think? It was like, hidden under a vent in the floor ro something.” You frown and open your mouth to ask another question, but Robin excitedly flaps her hands. “Oh, oh! And there was this freaky shrine in the attic with a bunch of jars with spiders in them too!” 

“Oh wooow,” you say, putting as much nasally sarcasm into it as you can. “Love that. Spiders. Awesome. Anything else?”

“I don’t think so, place was pretty run down. I mean no one’s lived there since the Creels were murdered and I don’t think ‘home to a demonic serial killer who pops your eyes from the inside out’ sells too well.”

“Yeah, probably not,” you mutter, bringing your thumb up to chew at the nail. 

Something related to spiders would be way too obvious as a phylactery, right? Anyone with any kind of knowledge about Henry would be able to guess something like that. And though the grandfather clock does feel like a decently significant item, too, that’s beyond obvious. No way that someone like Vecna would use that as a phylactery, either. It’s too flammable, anyways. 

You squeak in surprise when Eddy drops himself on the bed on your other side. Robin quickly excuses herself to move back up front with Steve. You’re about to pull her back and tell her to give him room, but when you glance ahead it seems like whatever discussion he was having with Nancy is over. 

“What was all that about spiders?” Eddie asks, letting himself fall back on the bed with his hands behind his head. “I thought you hated spiders.”

“Ugh, god do I ever,” you groan, letting yourself fall back onto the mattress as well. “I’m just trying to figure out like. If I was a lich that ended up in a parallel dimension, right? What would I choose as the one thing to bind my soul to and make sure I can respawn?”

“You’d probably have better luck asking Wheeler,” he replies, end of his sentence fading into a yawn. “She’s the one he gave his weird psychic visions to.” 

“And you’re assuming he has a phylactery to begin with.” Dustin has his has steepled in front of him on the small table, leaning out just a bit to be able to look at you. You left yourself up on your elbows to look back at him and frown. 

“There’s no way he’d be able to survive in that place for as many years as he has without dying,” you state, closing your eyes for a second to try and recall the small fragments of conversation you were able to catch when you were In Between with Eleven. “He took control of that thing, right? The thing you call the mind flayer? What if that’s what turned him into whatever the hell he is now?” 

“That doesn’t really matter,” Lucas pipes up, turning around in his seat and throwing his arm up against the back of the bench-like seat to look at you. “If we cut him off from the mind flayer, he won’t be able to do anything, right?”

“Yeah, and then all hell breaks loose, genius,” Erica scoffs, and you can tell without looking at her that her eyes are rolling. “If Vecna’s the only one keeping the monsters in check, we’re screwed if they all decide to do whatever they want.” 

You groan and let yourself fall back onto the bed Eddie pulls a hand from behind his heat to pat yours. 

“We’ll figure something out,” he says quietly, while the others continue discussing what to do about both Henry and the Mind Flayer. “You should probably take a nap while you can.” 

“I just got up from a nap like two hours ago!” you whine, kicking your feet. “I feel like all I’ve been doing is sleeping. I need to think while I’m awake. Shit gets weird when I’m asleep.”

There’s a beat of silence before Eddie turns his head to look at you with a brow raised.

“How weird are we talkin’ about?”

You groan again. “Being sucked into a weird not-dimension by someone else levels of weird.” When you turn your head to look at Eddie, you almost flinch at how close your faces are. You keep your eyes on his nose; nice, safe, doesn’t give any kind of weird impression. Right? Right. 

“That’s how you talked to their friend? Eleven?” he asks, quietly, and the breathiness of his voice makes you swallow thickly. You nod twice and clear your throat, turning your head back to look up at the ceiling of the RV.

“Y-yeah. Um, yeah she, uh, she said it was In Between. Whatever that means.” 

“Sounds more like dreamwalking to me.”

“You’re not wrong. Would be nice to know who was doing the walking though. Me or her?” 

Eddie shrugs, and somehow, without your realizing, he’s wormed an arm under your head and pulls you in. He’s extremely nonchalant about it, which you wish you could be. You try to lift yourself up on your elbows again, but he makes sure you can move, and in fact holds your head fast against his shoulder. 

“Sleep,” he said, an edge in his voice even though it’s nearly a whisper. “We’re going out of down to buy guns and traps. You need your rest.” 

With the rumbling of the RV, the constant bump and jostle of it, and the presence of someone warm next to you, you find that your eyes are starting to feel a bit dry and heavy. 

“Fuck you,” you grumble, but close your eyes and clasp your hands over your stomach anyways. 

“Sucks to sucks,” Eddie chuckles, and the last thing you register before falling into a light slumber is the feeling of fingers raking through your hair.

You wake up to the sound of the RV door slamming open and Eddie jumping out of his skin next to you. Nothing much happened—Erica making a quip to her brother, Steve shouting, everyone on edge and holding on to the nearest stationary object while Steve puts the RV in drive and bolts out of… 

“Wha—where are we? What hap-happened?” you mutter, sitting up on the bed, noticing that you’d been scooted up to lie down on it proper rather than just half-laid at the foot of it. “Did you move me while I was asleep?”

“We saw Hawkins’ star basketball team,” Robin says quickly, moving past you on the bed and kneeling by the window to peek out. “They didn’t seem super stoked to see us and honestly seeing a bunch of white boy jocks out for blood in a military surplus store doesn’t give me good vibes.” 

“Military surplus?” You ask, sleep still fogging your brain as you rub at your eyes. “That’s where we are—were?” 

“Yeah, Dustin and I stayed in here while they shopped around,” Eddie explains shortly, and there’s a tightness in his voice you don’t like. He’s sat with his back against the wall, Robin fit snugly between the two of you before she climbs back off the bed. “Did you grab anything good?”

“Oh,” Robin starts, turning around to face you two with a grin that feels just a little bit unhinged. “We grabbed something good. Nancy found a shotgun and, get this.” She leans in, and if you weren’t in a literal ride-or-die situation with this girl, you’d be a little worried about the teeth showing in her grin. “She’s gonna saw the thing off herself. Nancy Wheeler, illegally modifying a firearm. Amazing.”

“Amazing,” you mutter back, scooting yourself up on the bed to put your back against the wall, and leaning over to let your head fall on Eddie’s shoulder. “You were right. I needed a nap. I think I need a few more naps, actually.” 

“You can probably keep napping until we get there,” he says quietly. And again, there’s a warm arm around your shoulders that keeps you fixed to his side. You don’t even notice when your eyes drift shut again. 

“Where… when we get where?” 

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Just sleep.” 

Sweetheart? That’s a new one. You wish you could analyze the speed of your thrumming heart and the wings of the butterflies in your stomach, but again, you’re unconscious before you can make too much of it.

You’re sitting on the steps to the RV while Robin and Steve prepare, of all things, Molotov cocktails. Dustin and Eddie are off in the field to your left hammering nails into trashcan lids, and though you’re exceptionally doubtful of their efficiency—”Aren’t the nails just gonna pop right out the second something hits them? What’s gonna keep them from just popping out?”—they seem pretty content doing that. Max is holding onto the previously mentioned shotgun while Nancy is, indeed, sawing off the barrel as short as is probably safe to do.

You’re not doing anything at all. Rest, they said, you burnt yourself out for hours teleporting both yourself and Nancy out of the Upside Down, they insisted. Not that there’s much for you to do. Even looking off to your right at the Sinclairs, and to what even you can tell is a shit wrapping job from Lucas, you wonder what you place is here, right now. 

You take a particularly long drag from the one cigarette you were able to convince Robin to let you have. You’d agreed, if only verbally, not to get involved with any of the fighting. And that had been after you’d tried to argue with both Eddie and Dustin that acting as a decoy was a stupid idea. Stupid, dangerous, reckless, pick a descriptor. 

Roughhousing catches your eye, and you hear Dustin shriek about wedgies. You take another drag and hop off the steps. 

“Where’re you going?” Steve pipes up, making Robin turn around almost owlishly to be able to see you. 

“Something on my mind,” you say vaguely, waving Eddie down when he eventually looks at you. “DnD nerd shit I gotta run by him.”

“Ugh, have fun,” Steve says with a shudder, turning his focus back on the bottles in front of him and waving at Robin to pay attention. 

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Ed,” you say, once you’ve got him to follow you to the other side of the trailer. You keep walking a bit, though it’s more of a nervous pacing. “There’s no way this is going to be an ambush.” 

“You’re thinking about it too much man,” Eddie replies easily, hands in his pockets and slightly out of breath. “It’ll be fine.There’s no way he’ll see us coming.” 

“That’s the thing,” you say, a bit too loudly, rounding on him. You look around quickly before walking up to him and leaning over, clearing your throat and quieting your voice. “Did they tell you what happened with the mind flayer before? Two year ago?” 

Eddie frowns and shakes his head. “They mentioned something about one of their friends being like, possessed or something, but they didn’t really… explain anything.”

“Right, Will was possessed,” you reiterate, grabbing at Eddie’s upper arm. “By the mind flayer. Whatever Will could see and whatever Will knew, the mind flayer knew, too. That’s how—” You cut yourself off before you can mention Billy. Not my story to tell, you think bitterly. “That’s how all of them almost got caught. Will was leading the demodogs right to them. If El hadn’t come back in time they would’ve been screwed.” 

Eddie doesn’t speak, looks off in the distance. Slowly, he reached up to grab the hand at his upper arm to pry it off, but doesn’t let it go. 

“What are you trying to say?” 

“Max is cursed, Ed,” you whisper, balling your hand into a fist in his. “She’s cursed, and just last night he took a joy ride in Nancy’s head. I’m pretty sure he’s well out of mine, but can we really be sure that there isn’t some kind of—a fragment of him, in either of them?” 

You can see Eddie twisting his tongue in his mouth, clenching his jaw. It’s a possibility that makes for a very grim reality; one where nothing you do matters because there isn’t a way for you to keep anything secret. There’s no way anyone is going to want to exclude Nancy from what’s going on. Nancy wouldn’t want to be excluded, if the ferocious expression she had earlier was anything to go by. 

And Max…

When Eddie turns back to look at you, there’s something a little wild in his eyes. Different from last time. He looks… not feral, like this, with his hair all out of sorts and his knuckles bloodied and bruised. No, he just looks dangerous. You bite the inside of your cheek when you realize that maybe this is what everyone in Hawkins was seeing all along. Ridiculous to be scared of this Eddie; everything about him right now is about protecting people. 

Not an ounce of malice. 

“You got a backup plan then?” 

You take a deep breath and shake your head. “I haven’t been able to come up with something that makes sense, yet, no.” 

Eddie lets out a breath that’s almost a sigh and finally lets go of your hand. He lets himself fall down onto the grass to sit, cross legged, and gestures at the ground next to him for you to follow. You sit directly in front of him, hands on your knees, drumming your fingers on them. 

“What do we have so far?” Eddie asks. 

“We’re working under the assumption that Henry’s a lich,” you start, looking down at your hands to count on your fingers. “We know he’s a psychic kid, like Eleven. Nancy mentioned that he said something about keeping everyone he kills up in his head. Is power absorption even a thing?” 

“In ADnD? Sure,” Eddie answers, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the clouds. “There’s ways to take someone else’s abilities, so I guess it’s not impossible for him to have yanked the other kids’ abilities from them.”

You stay quiet for a moment. Max had also mentioned that Henry’s, his… whatever weird mind palace he has going on had the bodies of the three teens he’d killed all strung up. You can’t help but wonder if maybe the other people he’s killed are somewhere in that psychic sanctuary, too. You shake the thought out of your head and continue. 

“Right, okay. So he’s yanked abilities from kids before. He’s psychic, and somehow being shoved into the Upside Down turned him into a lich.”

“Or being in there long enough turned him into one.”

“Shit,” you mutter, bringing a hand to your mouth and frowning. “No, you’re right. Steve was choking on something when we got to your trailer in the Upside Down and I remember dreaming about them being in the tunnels. And Will…” You growl and wave your hand in front of you. “Doesn’t matter, point is that he’s acting like a lich so we should probably treat him like one. I’m still worried about the phylactery.” 

“When you were with Nancy, in there,” Eddie starts slowly, and he has the impression of someone who’s trying to describe a picture while he’s still putting the puzzle together. “When Vecna got in her head, you like, froze when you touched her. Did you, y’know?” He motions vaguely at his eyes and you snap your fingers at him. 

“Yeah, yeah! I did! I saw some of that!” you exclaim, slapping your knee excitedly. “Okay, okay wait. So I saw the house, and saw the spiders. Fucking hate the spiders,” you mutter under your breath, screwing your eyes shut and trying to recall more. “There’s… this weird shrine in the attic, for the spiders. There’s something—I know there’s something else there besides the jars but I can’t—it’s too, I don’t know. It was too out of focus, I can’t remember what it was.” 

You let the end of your sentence trail off and start tracing patterns in the grass. “If he has a phylactery, and I’m pretty sure he does because everything else is Dungeons and Dragons related, I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with that shrine.” 

Eddie nods and frowns. “He goes up there when he hunts people, right? It would make sense if he kept it close to him there.”

“But here,” you say, putting your hand out in front of you and pointing at the back of your hand. “Or there?” You flip your hand over and point at the palm. 

Eddie looks enthralled until something seems to click in his brain. He leans back from where he had, at some point, gotten very invested in the conversation and leaned into you. You lean back, in turn, frowning at him. He shakes a pointed finger at you at squints. 

“You’re going somewhere with this and I don’t like it.”

“Yeah well I don’t like the idea of you attracting a swarm of bats with fucking Metallica but here we are, aren’t we.” You slap his hand away and lean back in. “Look, if you can find a way to get me that disgusting ‘double the caffeine’ soda, like as many as you can.” 

“I’m pretty sure dying of a caffeine-induced heart attack is the opposite of helpful, y’know.” 

You can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes you. “No! God, no, look. Doing the plane shifting shit is draining, right?” He nods. “Right. So I just figure—”

“No, nuh uh, that’s a shit idea,” Eddie cuts you off, crossing his arms. “There’s a reason you pass out when you do it too much. Your body can’t handle it.” 

“When I’m starved, sleep deprived and freaked out of my mind, sure!” You exclaim, throwing your hands up. You clear your throat before lowering your voice again. “Look, it’s a—not a theory, fuck, uh. It’s a hypothesis, okay? We don’t have time to test it, I just have to trust that it’s gonna work.” 

“And what exactly is your backup plan?” 

“While you’re distracting the bats with Dustin and not getting yourselves killed,” you start, placing your hands back on your knees. “And while the other bozos are busy trying to blast Vecna back to whatever hellscape he crawled out of, I go looking for the spider shrine here and torch it.” You pause, and hold your hand up when Eddie opens his mouth to speak. “And if it’s not here, I’ll just plane shift and get it in the Upside Down.” 

“M’hm, cool, there’s a problem with that though,” Eddie says, and flaps his hands at you to quiet down before he continues. “No, shush. Vecna’s gonna be in that attic when you go there. And then there’s Max.”

‘Let’s use me as bait’ Max. ‘It won’t matter if it goes wrong if it’s me’ Max. You swear under your breath and bite down on your lip. Vecna being in the same room you don’t really care about; provided that Sanctuary actually worked, there’s not much he can do to you. 

Once he’s in Max’s head though, you can’t control that.

“Not on my own,” you whisper, and when Eddie asks you to repeat yourself, you feel your face splitting with a grin. “I can’t do it on my own, I mean—look, no one’s gonna be able to convince Max not to be the bait. She’s cursed, that’s how it is, and we don’t know whether or not Vecna’s looking through her head. But once he’s in there,” you pause, standing up and starting to pace. “Once he’s hunting her, she said something about hiding in her own head, right? Like, in a happy memory or something. I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t think that’s going to work.” 

“And you have the face of someone who somehow managed to come up with an even worse idea,” Eddie says, slowly pushing himself to stand up on his feet. 

“Right, okay, first of all, fuck you,” you spit, crossing your arms as you pace. “Okay, so scrap the idea of looking for the phylactery. For now. Eleven knows what’s going on, and I already ended up in that weird In Between place with her, right? So once Vecna starts hunting her I can just—”

Both you and your thoughts are interrupted when Eddie stalks over and grabs you by the shoulders. 

“Hey, stop for a second,” he says, quietly, to a point where it’s got you a bit concerned. “Look, I get—I don’t understand what it’s been like for you for the past three years, okay? But you have to stop for a second.” One hand goes to grab one of your wrists to pull your hand up into view. You frown at Eddie and look at your hand when he nods at it. 

You’re shaking like a leaf. 

“You’re trying to throw yourself at way too many problems.”

“I can’t do nothing—”

“And I’m not telling you to do nothing,” Eddie says, letting your hand fall in favour of cupping your jaw with both hands. “I’m telling you to use that giant brain of yours wisely. You don’t need to go looking for soulbound artifacts or fighting psychic wars,” he continues, a thumb coming up to rub at your cheek.

“What else am I supposed to do, Ed?” You whisper, bringing your hands up to grab at his forearms. His hands don’t move. “I-I’ve been having these nightmares for years, and all of a sudden I can—I can do all these things, and I just, I have to do something.” 

“And you can,” Eddie reassures you, and when he rests his forehead against yours, you can just barely feel his breath fanning over your cheeks. “Just, just stick with m—us, just stick with us.”

“And what, bail you out?” you huff, and Eddie snorts. 

“Yeah, yeah just be our getaway driver. Best one out there. You ever heard of a getaway driver that can dimension hop?”

You laugh quietly and shake your head. You don’t risk opening your eyes yet. 

“Yeah, no, not so much.” You breathe, clear your throat and lean your head back away from Eddie, “Okay. Yeah, I’ll stay with you and Dustin. Second anything goes south I’m getting us all out of there.” 

“Sounds good to me.” You get a finger pat on the cheek before you put a finger up. 

“I’m still gonna need that gross soda if I’m gonna survive shifting like, three people though.”

Chapter Text

The silence in the RV is practically deafening. Your skin feels too tight and your head feels full of cotton. It’s hard to think past the anxiety of it. For years, now, you’ve had to deal with nightmares, visions and horrifying knowledge that wouldn’t be believed. Years of being made to feel like Cassandra; bringer of prophecy and never believed. You’ve had to watch people die over and over again, without any ability to do anything about it. 

You haven’t had much time to stop and think about why you have powers now in the first place. It’s connected to Eleven opening the gate in ‘83, that much you know. Well, you assume. The timing is a little bit too convenient for these things not to be connected. 

What you’re not sure about is why all of a sudden you can do things now, instead of just having to spectate. You’re filtering through the events that you remember seeing, but nothing matches up with the timing. Nothing happened right before the night you first plane shifted. Even Chrissy was… even that was after.

A part of you wants to believe it’s just a reactionary thing; maybe some part of you is connected to the Upside Down, maybe it’s just nature providing its new predator with a foil. When you sigh, a hand comes down on your shoulder. You’re sat on the ground between Eddie’s legs; you don’t need to look up to know he’s wanting to ask what’s wrong. You shake your head and wave him off. 

You’re overthinking things again. 

When Steve hits the brakes on the RV, you slowly get up and follow Lucas, Erica and Sam to the door. You stop on the last step and look out at the house in front of you. 

“Well that’s… that looks safe.” 

Lucas snorts and Max turns around to look at you. 

“Welcome to Creel Manor,” Max says, extending an arm out towards the run down building. 

“Wait,” you say, when the three are about to walk off into the house. You reach out to grab Lucas’ hand and put your handgun, grip first, into it. “The safety’s already off, so be careful. Just…” You look from Lucas’ shocked face to the house, behind you to the RV, and back to the boy in front of you. “Anyone show up, aim for the legs, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lucas agrees, quietly, looking from the gun back to you. “Enough people dead already, right?” 

When you give him a pat on the shoulder, the thought comes to you. You run back in to tell Steve to wait for you for just a second, grab one of the soda’s from your designated pack by Eddie’s feet, and run back out, past the kids, straight to the front door. 

“Hey, what are you—” Erica starts, but you hiss at the lot of them. 

“Shut up, I need to focus.” 

You use the corroded knob on the front door to pop open the soda and chug it as fast as you can. It burns the entire way down, and when the bottle is empty you feel like you’re five seconds away from regurgitating it all back up. You take a few deep breaths to steady yourself, and place your hand on the panels covering what you know is a stained glass window underneath. 

You have no idea if this is going to work. You know this is at least an eighth level spell, and you have no way of knowing what can or can’t work with you. You’ve used different schools so far—alteration, divination, necromantic—so there’s no real way to know for sure. 

Nevertheless, you close your eyes, try your best to develop a mental image of the front porch you’re standing on, and take one last deep breath.

On the exhale, you whisper something low enough that you know that no one else could've possibly heard you. 

Immediately, the wooden panel under your hand splits, and you can hear the bushes around the porch rustle. You can hear the three kids calling after you behind you, mostly panicked. When you pull you hand away from the door and look at your palm, there’s a small gash where the splintered wood cut the skin open. 

You ball your hand into a fist and wipe the blood from your nose before turning around. You toss the empty bottle into the bushes and ignore Lucas and Erica in favour of walking up to Max.

“Remember what I said at the lake,” you say, sternly, clenching your jaw against the headache pounding behind your eyes. “You’re not responsible for this. It’s not your job to fix this alone.” 

“Yeah,” Max breathe, nodding shortly. 

You bite your lips and nod once before running back up and in to the RV. Steve speeds off before the door even shuts behind you, and Eddie is right there, grabbing you by the shoulders with a force that startles. 

“What the hell was that?” 

“Contingency,” you say quietly, slowly reaching up to pull his hands off your shoulders. “I don’t have to think about or do everything, but I can at least give myself a plan B.” 

“And what’s your plan B, exactly?” You hear Robin ask. You turn your head to look over your shoulder at Nancy before looking back up at Eddie. You let him reach up to swipe a thumb over your upper lip.

“Evac.”

“Okay,” Nancy starts, pushing herself away from the front seats to look back at the rest of you. “I wanna run through it one more time. Phase one.”

“We meet Erica at the playground,” Robin says, voice calm and low. “She’ll signal Max and Lucas when we’re ready.”

“Phase two.”

“Max baits Vecna,”Steve says, hands on his hips. “He’ll go after her, which’ll put him in his trance.”

Nancy nods. “Phase three?” 

“Me and Eddie draw the bats away.”

“And if anything goes wrong?” Nancy prompts, and you raise your hand from behind Eddie. 

“I plane shift them back, we take the bikes and meet up with Erica.”

“Four.”

“We head into Vecna’s hopefully newly bat-free lair and… flambé.” Robin says, holding up one of the Molotovs.

“Nobody moves onto the phase phase until we’ve all copied,” Nancy starts, before looking pointedly at you. “Nobody deviates from the plan, no matter what. Got it?” 

You just nod while the rest voice their confirmation and swallow thickly. It’s obvious she knows you’ve got a plan no one else is involved in, and she seems adamant in letting you know not to resort to it. 

And you can’t make promise like that. Not for this. 

When everyone moves for their gear, after you’ve picked up your bag from the floor, you grab Eddie by the arm and hold him back. 

“Hey, you trust me, right?” You ask, letting your hand slide down to his once he’s stopped to turn around to face you. He frowns but nods once. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, sounding unsure. “Yeah, of course. Why…” 

You take a second to bite your lip. “Word of Recall,” you whisper, tightening your fingers around his hand. “That’s what I used. Just… just in case.” 

“Hey, what’s the hold up?” Steve calls out, poking his head in through the door. “We’re on a time crunch here guys.” 

“Yeah, sorry,” you apologize quickly, dropping Eddie’s hand and bolting before he can say anything. You pull your bag around to your front and rummage through the contents to grab a switch knife and tuck it into your right front pocket. 

Inside the trailer, you move past the gate and head straight for the bathroom. 

“Hey, I get that this is really stressful and we probably won’t be able to use the bathroom in a while but,” Robin starts, following you and pausing in the doorway.

Your hand is deep under the sink’s cabinet, reaching for the two cans of hairspray you know are tucked in there. 

“Okay now I’m even more confused.” 

While you stuff the cans into your bag, you pull out a zippo with your free hand. 

“They hate fire,” you explain shortly, tugging harshly on the bag’s ties before getting up on the floor. “I know it’s not part of the Grand Plan or whatever but honestly I’d rather be safe.” 

Robin just stands there and looks at you for a second before shrugging her shoulders. “Suit yourself, as long as you don’t blow yourself up.”

Thankfully, going through the gate doesn’t bring or induce anything awful this time. When Nancy and Robin pull you up to your feet after dropping in, you stand to the side just to listen. Your head stays blissfully free of any lich telepathy. You glance quickly over at Nancy, who’s grabbing the weapons Eddie’s throwing up through the gate, and can’t help but wonder. 

You shake the thoughts out of your head and, once everyone and everything is through safely, you head out the door, behind Dustin. Eddie’s just put his hand at your lower back when Steve turns around. 

“Hey, guys, listen” he calls out, making his way back over to the three of you. He points at you. “If things here start to go south—”

“Abort, take them back,” you finish for him, heaving your back higher up on your shoulder. “We’ve been through that, I know.” 

“Right. Just, draw the attention of the bats, keep ‘em busy for a minute or two, and we’ll take care of Vecna. Don’t try to be cute, or, be a hero or something.” You notice how Steve seems to be looking more intently at Dustin, now. “You guys are just—”

“Decoys,” Dustin interrupts. “Don’t worry, you can be the hero, Steve.” You can’T help but snort. 

‘Absolutely, I mean,” Eddie continues, and vaguely gestures at the three of you. “Look at us. We are not heroes.”

Steve looks pointedly at you again and you put your hands up. 

“Hey, I’m not a hero either man, I’m just the party cleric.” 

Steve looks entirely unconvinced, though that might just be the nerves showing. He nods, and moves to walk away, but Eddie takes a step forward and calls out to him. He looks back at Dustin, then over his other shoulder to you, before saying, “Make him pay.”

Red lightning strikes immediately followed by a clap of thunder. You flinch at the sound, immediately followed by yelp when you feel something at your elbow. 

“Hey, sorry,” Dustin says, leaning away and putting his hand up. “You alright?”

“Yeah, sure,” you mutter, clearing your throat. “Come on,” you say a little louder, tapping Dustin’s arms and moving towards one of the other trailers. “Time to set up.” 

While Eddie and Dustin go through the Munson trailer to get the amp, wires and his beloved Warlock, you busy yourself with getting the ladder. You prop it up against the side of the trailer as best you can so it won’t be too wobbly, and make your way onto the roof. You let your bag drop and give a few thumps with your feet. When you hear Dustin shouting, you smirk and move to grab the length of rope you’d stashed in your bag. You work to loop part of it around your waist and tie it as tightly as you can manage, sit just beyond the ladder, and toss the rest of the rope down.

The front door makes you jump when it slams open, and you sigh when you hear Dustin whooping. 

“You ready for the most metal concert ever?!”

“I would’ve rather be at the Hideout to hear Eddie play for the first time but I guess this fuckin’ works,” you return, leaning back on your hands. “Hurry up losers, we’re wasting daylight.” 

“Yeah, calm your tits, woman,” Eddie grumbles, hitching the amp higher in his arms. “Isn’t even any daylight in this place anyways.” 

When they’re up next to the ladder, Dustin carefully ties the handle of the amp before making his way up the ladder. Slowly, the two of you pull the amp up along the ladder. You scoot back as much as you can while Dustin grabs the thing and heaves it up onto the roof. The larger amps nearly make you slide off the edge of the roof, but after the second one, the other two don’t feel as heavy.

“You’re good!” You call out to Eddie, quickly untying the rope from your waist. You’re about to just toss it to the side, but quickly ball it up and toss it back into your bag. 

Eddie tosses the aux cords up first, then the spears. He goes back down to get the makeshift shield and, when he’s high enough up on the ladder, pulls the guitar from his back and passes it over into your waiting hands. 

“You find the generator?” You ask, passing the guitar off the Dusting, who carey gingerly leans it up against the amp.

“Yeah, just gimme a minute to get it running,” Eddie says, strained, before letting himself slide back down the ladder. You cross you arms and worry at your lower lip while you start to pace. 

“So,” Dustin starts, and when you look over at him he’s got his hands behind his back and is rocking back and forth on his feet. “How long have you and Eddie been a thing?” 

Though you do your best impression of a blank stare, you feel your stomach drop and your heart leap into your throat. 

“What?” He whines, easing his back and forth swaying and brings his arms in front of his to gesture at you. “Have you seen  the two of you?” 

“Bullshit,” you spit, leaning down to grab your bag. “He’s like that with everyone. Besides, I haven’t even seen him in like, three years. We barely know each other.” 

“Uh huh,” Dustin nods, and you groan when he looks entirely unconvinced and very much like a little shit. “Look, I’m just saying! He doesn’t look at us that way!” 

“Look at you in what way, dude? He looks at me with eyes and a face like a normal human.” 

“He looks at you,” Dustin starts again, lowering his voice and walking up to you. “Like you’re a ghost he never thought he’d see again.” 

You scoff and turn your head away. “Yeah well, he’s not wrong.” 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“It means we’re different, kid,” you say quietly, pulling out a hand to inspect your suddenly very interesting nails. “A lot has happened since ‘83. Maybe he’s the same, but I’m not.” 

“No, you’re right.” And the shock of his agreement has you looking back at Dusting. “I mean, a lot has happened in three years, sure. And yeah, I mean look at you, you’ve got legit superpowers now.”

“And massive trauma from seeing people die all the time.” 

“And massive trauma fr—wait. You saw people die?” 

You turn away again and run a hand down your face. 

“Yeah. Yeah I did. I saw Nancy’s friend get caught by a demogorgon. Some scientist at the lab. Bob, all the people that got turned into—into goop. Fucking, Billy.” You take in a stuttering breath. Somewhere not too far away you hear Eddie swearing before the sound of a generator starting drowns him out. “Any time someone died because of the Upside Down, I was there. I saw it.”

“Shit,” Dustin whispers. 

“Yeah. Shit.”

The sound of the generator cuts out, and Eddie’s is audible again. You exhale sharply through your nose and turn back to face Dustin. 

“Can you promise me something?” 

“Uh,” Dustin takes a step back and frowns. “That depends entirely on what the promise is.”

You lick your lips and point at him. “No matter what happens, okay,” you start, pointing down at your bag. “And I don’t give a flying but about Wheeler’s plan. No matter what happens, once we get out of here, I need you to distract Eddie for me.” 

“What, why would you—”

“I’m expecting an answer, Henderson, not an interrogation. Will you or won’t you?”

The frown stays on his face a second longer before realization takes over his features. Not a good kind of realization. 

“When you were talking about evac,” he starts slowly, first turning to walk away before turning back to point at you. “You were talking about Max.” 

“Dustin,” you warn, voice low. 

“You were. You’re actually thinking about trying to be a hero.” 

“I’m not! I’m just, this is stupid!” 

“What’s stupid now?” Eddie calls from the ground, and no sooner you turn around to face the ladder does an extension cord come flying over the edge. You and Dustin both stand by and watch it slowly slide back over the edge. “Seriously guys, hello?” 

Dustin moves first to kneel at and look over the edge. You huff and make yourself useful and start plugging up the amps and the guitar. Once Dustin manages to grab the extension cord—after several almost-hilarious failures—it’s a quick fix to get the amps plugged in.

You barely have a second to breathe before the walking crackles to life.

“She’s in, move on to phase three.” 

“Fuck,” you mutter, turning to Eddie while Dustin confirms. “Remember, no funny business. THe bats show up, we go in, and we get the fuck out of here.” 

“And if shit hits the fan, we’ve got you,” Eddie confirms, surprising you by pulling you to him with a hand behind your neck, and knocking your foreheads together. “Get ready to have your mind blown.” 

You almost laugh and slowly take a few steps back when he lets you go. Dustin walks up next to you after turning the amps up as far as they’ll go, and nudges you with an elbow. You smack him upside the head with a scowl in return. Eddie whispers something you don’t quite catch when he rips the guitar pick from around his neck, and starts to play. 

Your whispered ‘what the fuck’ is lost in the opening bars of Master of Puppets. Next to you, Dustin seems to appreciate Eddie’s performance, but you can’t help the slack-jawed, shocked look you know is on your face. That song came out barely three weeks ago. 

Dustin smacks you in the arm, looking absolutely delighted while bobbing his head to the song. You frown and nod—yeah this is. For a once man show in hell surrounded by murderous everything, this really… this really isn’t that bad.

It’s not too long after, once Dustin’s taken a look through his binoculars, that the countdown starts. You throw your bag over your shoulder and run for the edge of the roof where you know a truck is parked and hop down. You can barely hear Dustin calling out for ten seconds by the time you’ve opened the door beyond the fence. You hear the clatter of the guitar against the roof and usher the two of them in through the fence. By the time you slam the door shut behind you and the three of you are in the trailer, you’re lightheaded from holding your breath. 

Slumped against the door, you can help but chuckle when both Dustin and Eddie start jumping up and down like excited kids. Though you’re glad they’re capable of having a good time about this, you really wish adrenaline could have the same effect on you.

You really just feel like vomiting, and the sound of a swarm of shrieking bats outside isn’t making things any easier. 

When you hear the tell-tale thump of bats landing on the roof, while Eddie and Dustin move to stand back to back just underneath the gate, you once again move past them to the bathroom. Reach under the sink, and pull… three? Alright, cool, three more cans of hairspray. You drop them onto the mattress when you walk back out, and grab the two from your bag to throw them down too. You pause from where you’re sitting on the mattress, looking up and Eddie and Dustin. Eddie shrugs, just as confused when the trailer goes silent.

“Hey dipshits!” Dustin screams, and you’re shocked at how guttural it sounds. “Give up that easy huh?!”

“Dude shut up!” You whisper harshly, fishing for the lighter in your jacket 

“Is that really necessary?” Eddie asks, but before Dustin can say anything else there’s a thump on the roof,

And another.
And the thumps are headed in… a specific direction? 

Spray in one and and lighter in the other, you slowly follow Eddie and Dustin as they make their ways toward—

“Tell me that’s not a fucking vent,” you whisper, nudging Eddie. 

“They can’t come in through there, can they?” Dustin asks. And you’re about to berate him for saying possibly the worst thing he could say in this situation when the plastic cover comes flying off.

You shove post Eddie and Dustin out of the way, flick your lighter and start spraying. 

The fire and heat shock you, but clearly not more than it shocked the bat who stuck it’s stupid little head inside. 

“Get out of the way!” Eddie shouts behind you, and though you back up a little, you keep the fire going until you realize what he’s. 

Eddie hops on the chair he slides over, hops on and jams the shield right into the ceiling. When it’s been quiet for a second, you let out a breathy laugh. 

“Would you look at that, the nails didn’t pop out.” You turn when the two high five each other, but frown and wave them down. “Wait hold up.”

“Are there any other vents?” Dustin asks, and Eddie doesn’t even say a word before he takes off for the other end of the trailer. 

You stay stock still under the gate, fingers gripping the can and lighter with sore fingers. You give yourself a moment to close your eyes in resignation when you hear a swarm of bats burst in through Eddie’s bedroom. 

“Come on!” You scream, motioning wildly at Dustin to get up and through the gate. “Get up there!” He swears the entire way to you, through the gate, and when he finally stands up on the other side, relatively safe and sound. You quickly grab your bag and scoop the hairspray back into it. 

“Leave that shit here!” Eddie yells, spear and second shield aimed at the slowly splintering door. “Get up there!” 

Tie the bag firmly shut and bring it to your front, pocket your lighter and jump up as high as you can to grip the rope. Just as unpleasant the third time around. You’re rolling off the mattress, clutching your bag for dear life and briefly wondering what the tipping point is for a glass bottle of soda to explode, when you notice Dustin’s shouting getting desperate. 

You scramble to your feet and trip over the mattress. When you look up,Eddie’s barely made it halfway up. 

And he’s just hanging there. 

“Eddie, please,” Dustin pleads, and the look on Eddie’s face makes your blood run cold. 

“Eddie,” you whine, grabbing the rope with one hand. “Edward Munson, I swear—”

“On your dad’s Elvis vinyl collection, I know,” he says quietly. But nevertheless, he lets himself drop back down and while Dustin is shrieking, Eddie.

Eddie cuts the god damn fucking rope. 

“No,” you growl. “No, no no no, no that lying piece of fuckign shit. Dustin, stop,” you call out, walking over and pulling him away from the table.

“What are you talking about, Eddie’s—”

“Eddie’s lucky he has a fucking plane shifting friend is what he is!” You shout, shoving Dustin toward the trailer door. “Go meet up with Erica, and don’t get caught. I’ll get us both back in one piece.”

“But—”

“Go!”

You’re fuming. Absolutely raging. You let yourself pace for a second before closing your eyes.

Your stomach drops.
Your breath gets caught.

And for a wonderful fraction of a second, there’s no sound. 

And then it’s right back into the shrieking swarm of bats. And though you’re almost loathe to recognize it, you were right.

None of them come even close to touching you as the few stragglers left in the trailer fly out the door. You run out the door after them just in time to see Eddie pull a bike up off the ground. 

“Eddie, you son of a bitch!” You scream, barrelling into him to knock you both down to the ground.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” 

“Saving your stupid fucking idiotic traitor ass!” You shout back, awkwardly shimmying the bag off. “They can’t get me but they can get you, god, fuck, why did you do that,” you grind out between grit teeth, looming over Eddie with both hands braced on either side of his head to keep you up. 

You feel the brush of sharp wings and serrated tails on your back as the bats swarm around you, until you don’t. A quick glance to either side of you confirms that the bats are, in fact, trying to get to Eddie by crawling on the ground. You don’t even have time to question why the hell they’re so intent on him.

Eddie shoves you off as gently as you figure someone can manage in this kind of situation, and immediately reaches into your bag to grab a can of hairspray. You lunge for the bag on the ground and dump everything. Pull the switchblade out and cut a few inches of rope and unravel it. 

Pull out your lighter.

Flick it on.
Carefully tie the rope around to keep the switch depressed and release.

Put the lighter down on the ground in front of you and reach for the hairspray.

Tie the rest of the rope down the length of the can to make sure the nozzle keeps spraying.

When you put it next to the lighter, it’s close enough to catch fire. 

You stumble back up on your feet and snatch the bottle of soda. By the time you have your free on Eddie’s shoulder to pull him back, he’s got the bats flying back up in the air, a column of fire keeping most of them away. 

“Count down to one for me,” you say, popping open the bottle of soda with your teeth. There’s a quick shot of pain before you take another swig, and you know you’ve chipped a tooth. “From five!”

“What the hell am I counting down to?” Eddie asks over his shoulder at you. 

“Do you trust me or not?”

You can see Eddie twisting his tongue. 

“Five.”

You close your eyes and take another swig of the soda. 

“Four.” 

Dry bushes, rotten wood, covered stained glass. 

“Three, and this better be good cause I’m running out!” 

You take a deep breath and think about derelict manors.. 

“Two!” 

“Cut the fire.” 

“What?!”

“You were supposed to say one,” you whisper. “Ravenloft.”

Chapter Text

There’s a second where you’re scared it didn’t work. You hear the beginnings of the can or hairspray exploding, even feel the heat of it on your feet. But then, just as you’re thinking that you’ve effectively just fucked the both of you over even worse than the bats could, there’s silence. 

You let go of Eddie’s shoulder and stumble back, sputtering through the blood spilling from your nose. You can’t see anything even when you open your eyes, bright spots covering most of your vision. Your ears ring so loudly you can’t hear Eddie at all; if it wasn’t for the fact that you could feel the floor board vibrating faintly with his voice, you don’t think you’d be able to tell if he was there at all.

Despite the splinters catching in your fingers, you make your way to the edge of the wooden porch. Whatever was in your stomach spills down into the bushes. You feel Eddie next to you; hands brushing hair away from your face, running down your back, holding you by the shoulder to keep you from toppling down over the edge. There’s a second where you find yourself thankful for the fact that you haven’t really eaten anything solid recently; this would have been so much worse. 

When you sputter and spit in the bushes, Eddie pulls you up to sit and braces you against his chest. He wipes your nose and mouth with something you can hear him throw away. You’re still trying to blink the spots out of your eyes and gasp for breath. 

“Jesus fucking christ,” you hear him whisper, holding your head against what you assume in his shoulder. “What, what was—are you okay?” 

Your tongue feels too thick in your mouth to articulate words properly, so you just groan in response. You fist a hand in his shirt and try to pull your legs under you. Your hands sting, your entire torso feels bruised and your head feels like it’s being fractured from the inside out. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Eddie says, slowly petting the top of your head down your neck. “Take however long you need, you’re okay.” 

“No,” you croak, trying to push yourself away. Though you can’t see much, you’re not too blind as to miss the fact that there’s a car in front of the house. You can’t tell if the doors are open or not, but the headlights are still on. 

It’s definitely not any of you.

Without being able to articulate, you flail trying to get Eddie to look at the car. It takes him a second, but when you feel him turn his head, you also hear him swear. 

“Fuck, okay, shit. Stay here, I’ll—”

“No,” you repeat, more forcefully. “Hel—help me up. I can, I just need help.” When Eddie doesn’t move, you hit his chest with as much strength as you can muster. “Fuck, I said help me up .” 

He agrees, quietly, and obviously reluctant. And it’s a struggle for you just to stand. You know you probably should just stay outside and wait, but you have no idea if anyone else is coming, or who’s even here to begin with. 

With an arm under yours, Eddie shoves the front door open, and that’s when you hear the distinct sound of a struggle. You shove yourself away and stumble into the entryway wall, do your best to take a few deep breaths. 

"Lucas,” you breathe, and you wish you hadn’t ditched the switchblade. There’s a lot of things, right now, you wish you’d done differently. 

“Lucas!” Eddie shouts out, and just the force of his voice makes your vision swim. You swallow down the resurging nausea and push yourself off the wall. Faintly, you can hear Lucas’ panicked voice trying to talk to someone. 

“Fuck,” you groan, taking one last deep breath and clenching your teeth before launching yourself up the stairs. 

Significantly less fucked than you are, when you loose steam halfway up, Eddie grabs your hand and drags you with him. When you finally reach the end of the stairs—landing in the attic, you hope—Eddie stops you. There’s an arm curled protectively around your shoulders. 

“Liar!” 

“Is that fucking Carver ?” you ask, and you stumble back with him when Eddie steps back. 

“He’s not lying, man,” Eddie says, and there’s an uncertain tremble in his voice. “Chrissy, your fucking—Andy, or whatever his name is, they were all cursed, possessed , that’s why Chrissy—”

“Shut up!” Jason shouts, and this time, when you try to blink away the fog, you can finally see most of what’s in front of you.

And it’s Jason Carver, eyes wide, with a god damn revolver pointed right at Eddie. Lucas is, blessedly, gripping your handgun in front of him, and in between the two, there’s Max. Cross-legged on the floor, eyes rolled back into her head. 

“You don’t— none of you knew Chrissy,” Jason spits through clenched teeth, and you can hear the gun rattle when he adjusts his hands around the grip. 

“That’s why she went to see Eddie,” Lucas tries again, desperate. “How could she have told you she was seeing things? What would you have done?” 

There’s more shouting; even in the state you’re in, you know there’s no reasoning with Jason. He’s too far gone. All the indoctrination, the panic, the grief. You know what that does to someone. You lived it. 

You’re entirely positive this is a bad idea. A horrible one. At best, you’ll probably be out for a few days. And at worst, well. 

You can probably heal yourself if you get shot, right? 

“Jason.” Your voice is low but steady. There’s a quality about it you don’t really recognize, like you’re hearing someone else’s voice, not yours. Eddie’s arm tightens around your shoulders, but you tap it twice to get him to let go. “Jason Carver, I need you to listen to me.” 

The gun shifts to you, and you can practically see down the barrel of it. You bite your tongue against the urge to laugh. It’s genuinely funny to you, knowing what’s been said about you, that this kid thinks that you could be intimidated by the threat of death.

“Why the hell would I listen to you, psycho?” He growls, takes a step toward you. 

“Because I don’t have a reason to lie,” you reply, holding your arms out and stepping away from Eddie. “You can aim and shoot that thing at me all you want, kid. Are you forgetting what got me in the hospital in the first place?”

“Don’t!” He shouts, tightening his grip on the gun. Lucas and Eddie both call out to you, but you ignore them. “Don’t fucking move .”

“Everything Lucas said is right, you know,” You continue, letting your arms fall back down to your sides. “Vecna, the other dimension, the monsters in there. You don’t think it’s weird, what’s been happening in Hawkins? You don’t think it’s weird how everything you’d about me rambling on about is being repeated by people who have nothing to do with me?” 

“That’s, that’s not,” Jason stutters, looking back and Lucas, down to Max, and back up to you. The gun lowers, just a little bit. “You’re all—you’re all in that, in that cult ,” he spits out. 

“I’ve never been in Hellfire dude,” you say softly, taking another step forward. “I haven’t seen Eddie in years. I didn’t meet the other juniors until a few days ago. I told them everything about what’s been happening to me since Will Byers’ disappearance. And you know what?” The gun lowers again, just a bit. And, just a bit, Jason’s expression starts to soften. “They told me I was right.”

Lucas lunges for Jason, and Eddie knocks you to the floor from behind. You barely have the wherewithal to brace you fall with your hands, and this time your ears are ringing from a gunshot that passed maybe a little to close to your head. 

Lucas has Jason in a chokehold, and before you can react or do anything about it, Eddie rolls to his feet and rushes at Jason, too. You scramble for the gun when it gets knocked to the ground, pull the hammer back and point. 

“Give it up man, please, ” Lucas begs, out of breath. “We’re just trying to save our friends.”

Jason starts to go on another rant when you hear Eddie mutter, “Fuck this,” and clocks the boy right in the jaw. He does limp against Lucas, who generously guides him down to the floor instead of dropping him like the dead weight that he is.

You limply hand Eddie the gun when you move between him and Lucas. You fall more than you kneel on Max’s right side and put a hand on her shoulder. 

“Where’s her walkman?” You ask, looking up at Lucas. He turns his head to the ground a few feet behind him, and you find… you see broken plastic. Your heart jumps in your throat and you nod. “Fuck. Alright, okay. Okay, we’ll figure this out. She’ll be fine.” 

“Wait,” Eddie says, moving to crouch next to the broken walkman. He tosses a few broken pieces to the side and, miraculously, holds up a perfectly intact tape. 

“Go,” you say. “Go, go to the car, run !” 

“What do we do?” Lucas asks, kneeling by Max’s left side. “Is there anything we can do?” 

“I don’t know,” you whisper, closing your eyes. “I’m not Eleven, I can’t do that—I can’t do the weird mind melding thing she does.” 

In the quiet between you, you can hear music coming from outside. Faintly, at first, and then loud enough to shake the floorboards under you. You’re not a huge Kate Bush fan, but there’s probably no one you wouldn’t have been absolutely overjoyed to hear right now. 

“Wait, you said you met El,” Lucas says, rushed and almost tripping over his words. “You saw her when she was doing the thing, can’t you do it again?” 

“Dude I was knocked the fuck out,” you explain, desperate. “That only happened cause she was already looking for you guys. I didn’t do anything.” 

Lucas swears under his breath and lets his head fall on Max’s shoulder. When you hear Carver groan on the floor, you groan and stand up. 

But your legs buckle under you and you end up sprawled on the floor. Lucas is the one who gets up and, with a quiet apology, makes his way over to pistol whip Jason in the face.

“Good night sweet prince,” you mutter, lightly hitting the wooden floor beneath you. Lucas quietly moves over to help you back up to your feet, and you wave him off once you’re steady enough. 

Eddie bounds up the stairs then, a very rough looking Erica right behind him. While Lucas rushes for his sister, Eddie immediately runs to you and grabs you by the shoulders. 

“Never do that again,” He says, sternly, shaking you a little. You try to blink away the dizziness when he does. “ Never put yourself in front of a gun ever again.”

“No promises,” You mumble, bringing a hand up to your forehead. “Can I, I should. I need to sit down.”

When Eddie starts babbling at you—telling you what you did was stupid, never do that again, what the hell were you thinking standing in front of a kid with a gun —but you slap your hand over his mouth to shut him up. 

“I’m gon…” you try, tongue thick in your mouth again and eyes unfocused. “I’m fuh… I feel like I’m gonna pass out.” 

While Eddie guides you to a wall and eventually down in until you’re sat on the floor, you try your hardest to focus. Once you’re settled, Eddie moves to stand up. You hold onto his sleeve and pull as much as you can.

“Hey what—what’s up?” He asks, scooting a little closer when he crouches back down. When you gesture vaguely as something behind him, Eddie turns around for a second to look at you with a frown.

He gets up despite his confusion and points down at the broken pieces of the Walkman. You shake your head and shake your hand a bit, clear your throat before you speak.

“The jars,” you say, leaning sideways to try and look past Eddie. “The ones on the boxes, the spider jars.”

“ Why do you want the spider jars?” Lucas asks, voice strained and both arms still around Max’s shoulders. 

“You’re arachnophobic,” Eddie adds, but walking back towards the stacked boxes anyways. “Is this—are you trying to get a material component?”

You grunt and look away. You can already feel the bubbling desire in both of them to yell at you and tell you to cut this shit out, that you’ve already done enough—and arguably too much—and that you need to rest . You’re worried, though. Scared, actually. You glance at Max, see the barely noticeable tremors going down her neck from the frantic movement of her rolled-back eyes. Something should have happened by now, you think. Either because of the music this blaring from the car outside, or from the other team’s attack on Vecna. But Max is still stuck, still cursed , and you know you don’t have it in you to be able to plane shift and stay conscious after that.

When you look back at Eddie, he’s got one of the jars in his hands, but he’s looking down at it with a strange expression. You think you understand it; you’ve seen that king of helplessness in the mirror before. When he quietly walks back over to you and leans down a bit, you grab the jar with one and and hold onto his wrist with the other. 

“Astral spell,” you answer quietly, biting at your lips when Eddie crouches down in front of you. He doesn’t pull his hand away. “I wanna know what’s going on, and I want to see if I can get myself In Between again.”

“Meeting up with the psychic girl?” You nod. Eddie closes his eyes and lets his head fall back with a sigh. “You’re not even gonna entertain the idea of not doing that right?”

“No.”

Another sigh. When Eddie brings his head back, he takes a second to make sure both your hands are wrapped firmly around the mason jar before leaning forward and resting his forehead on the crown of your head. His fingers tighten around yours. 

“Do you…?” 

Eddie’s question trails off, but you take a second to contemplate before answering. 

“Maybe, uh. Like. Hold my—“ You don’t have time to finish your answer before Eddie’s sitting cross-legged in front of you. You maneuver the jar around so you can keep one hand on it as it rests in your lap. Eddie hold your one hand in both of his.

“I’ll…” he starts, clearing his throat before patting your hand. “You got this.”

You can’t help but snort. When you look to Lucas over Eddie’s shoulder, you give him a short nod before closing your eyes. You stay like that for a second before cracking an eye open. 

“What’s uh, what’s the verbal component?”

Eddie sits there slack jawed for a second before turning to look at Lucas, who shares an equally deer-caught-in-headlights look. 

“We kind of just always wing it,” Lucas says, an edge of panic to his voice. “Eddie just gives us some random thing to say in Latin and we pass of fail if we can say it right.”

“Shit well alright,” you mutter, closing your eyes again and taking a deep breath. ‘Lemme just…”

You feel the difference in where you are before you hear it. Like someone pulling at an invisible string behind both your ears. You can feel the muscles in your neck contract. 

You didn’t do this. Whatever’s happening, it isn’t astral spell, and you’re not the one who initiated it. It is quiet, however, so you have a feeling you know what’s going on.

When you open your eyes, you’re not standing, like you were last time; you’re still sat cross legged. It takes you a second to register where you are, but when you finally look up you actually trip over yourself in your haste to get away. 

Because there’s Vecna, all strung up, in an endless black landscape. Your breathing speeds up and your heart starts to race. You startle when you hear a choked noise from behind you. When you whirl around you nearly topple over.

Steve, Nancy and Robin are all being held up at odd angles, like they’ve been stung up and tied to a wall.

“Oh god, no,” you whisper. You don’t know how much you can do, like this; a quick look around doesn’t magically reveal Eleven. You lose your eyes and swallow against the panic and try to get your breathing evened out.

Last time, things started to disappear in smoke, when El had to leave. Maybe… maybe it’s just like a dream. Maybe you just have to focus harder on what you want to see.

But when you open your eyes again, despite the fact that you’re very sure that you weren’t facing him before, your eyes once again set on Vecna. There’s a frantic almost-thought that passes in your head for just a fraction of a second. Something raw and feral and petrified , something that sends frozen sludge in your veins. 

You scowl and shake your head against the feeling. You close your eyes again and focus more intently. Try to recall her face, her hair, the colour of her eyes. The collar of the white shirt she was wearing. 

When you open your eyes again, ominously, you feel like you’re even closer to Vecna, despite not moving from your spot. 

“Fuck you,” you spit, taking several steps back. “Fuck you and your stupid, twisted little games. Fuck you and your fucking psychotic god damn lack of a copin mechanism,” you grit out. 

When you turn around, you don’t close your eyes, and stalk your way to the pinned trio. You can feel the muscles between your ribs shaking and your hands feel frozen. 

“Eleven!” You call out, as loudly as you can, voice cracking on the last consonant. You turn back to see if you’ve magically gotten closer to Vecna, again. You’re not entirely worried about his presence, but you’re also not entirely convinced that Protect From Evil extends to whatever this place is. 

You freeze when you see one of his fingers twitch, and nearly jump out of your skin when you feel a hand fall heavily on your shoulder. 

“What are you—“

“Oh thank god,” you breathe, grabbing eleven by the shoulders and pulling her in for a very quick but very firm hug before holding her at arms’ length. “They’re in trouble, Vecna—‘

"I know,” Eleven says hurriedly, flicking her eyes to look past you to Vecna. “I’m going to help.”

You release her shoulders and move to stand by her side. “How, though? What can we do from here? We’re not even in the Upside Down, and I don’t—I can’t make it there again on my own.”

Eleven turns to look at you and there’s an odd mix of a confident smirk and vindictive set in her jaw. “Piggyback. Come on.”

When she grabs your hand and tugs you forward, you can’t help but resist a bit as you head directly for Vecna. You put your free arm up in défense, but as soon as you think you’re going to run into him, everything turns into mist again, before disappearing. Slowly, several feet ahead, another image forms. As the mist solidifies, you can see the scene clearly; Lucas, still clinging to Max, nervously babbling back and forth with Eddie, whose hands are now clutching both of yours, looking about a second away from crying. 

And then there’s you, again. Sitting peacefully against the attic wall, body limp and. Leaned up against Eddie.

El pulls you to sit on Max’s other side, but doesn’t let go of your hand. 

“We’re going to get to Vecna through Max,” she explains, an edge of pride in her voice, reaching out for Max’s shoulder. 

“Wait, what do we—“

“We don’t have time,” Eleven cuts you off, though she sounds calm. You think you're getting used to kids telling you that you don't have time.

And before you can think much about anything else—about what you’re supposed to do if you can actually find Max in whatever cursed mindscape she’s stuck if, how you’re supposed to deal with Vecna at all—before wind howls from behind you. The harsh gust blows the lukewarm water on the ground up into mist, and the blackness around you feels to melt away. An eerie blue-gray glow takes its place, and the cloying smell of rotting flowers and iron seizes your lungs.

Eleven almost painfully tugs you behind her before you can even make sense of where you are. There are streamers, tables, stands… is this the gym?

“You.”

You snap your head forward grabbing onto Eleven’s arm. Vecna looks… horrible. Grotesque. His skin glistens with something , and vines slip and slide across his decayed, reddening flesh. Just the sight of him makes bile rise at the back of your throat. 

You think you could have tolerated the sight of him if he hadn’t been looking directly at you.

You don’t have a chance to react before Eleven shoots an arm out, and Vecna goes flying through the air, landing in the stands on the other side of the gym in a cloud and cacophony of dust and splinters. Tugging you along, she runs in the opposite directly of the now shattered stands. Eyes glued to the whole in the wood and wall beyond, you’re nearly knocked over when something barrels into you. 

You have never been happier to have a facefull of red hair before in your life.

Chapter Text

“You have to go,” Eleven says, hand on your shoulder while your arms are around Max. 

“How am I supposed to leave though?” Max asks, and she sounds miserable, three seconds away from crying. “I’m stuck here because—because of him ,” she bites, waving vaguely off in the direction Vecna still, for the moment, lies. 

“I can get him away,” Eleven says, and though you’re sure her voice doesn’t betray any uncertainty, her eyes do. She turns to you. “When you wake up, you’ll be able to wake up Max.” 

“That’s not a great idea,” you whisper, squeezing your hand on Max’s shoulder. You bite your lips before looking over to El. “But I might have something that works.” 

Both girls frown at you, but before you can explain yourself, or bat away their concerns, the sound of groaning and splitting wood fills the gym. You stand motionless with Max pressed against your side while Eleven slowly makes her way to the center of the gym. 

Vecna emerges from a mess of splintered wood in a nearly seamless, singular motion. It’s uncanny and it’s unsettling. He doesn’t move with the grace of any kind of predator you know; it’s unnatural, smooth, and achingly deliberate. 

That’s when you realize that he’s entirely confident, no matter what happens, that he has the upper hand. Vecna’s already convinced of your loss.

You swallow thickly and screw your eyes shut. The amount of confidence you have in this—your newfound abilities, let alone yourself—is laughably low to the point of non-existence, trying is the least you could do. So you slowly untangle yourself and put Max at arms’ length. You open your mouth to speak, but there’s another feeling at the back of your neck, like a string pulling at the base of your spine, that makes you turn around.

You see Vecna raise a hand, prompting the splintered wood on the floor to rise as well. You take a deep breath and turn back to face Max. 

“We have music playing from a car outside the house,” you say, quickly, and shake Max to quiet down when she opens her mouth to speak. “Focus. It’s Kate Bush. I need you to see if you can hear it.” 

You and Max both flinch at the sound of wood hitting wood, but Max closes her eyes and knits her brow in focus. You do the same thing, trying to block out the talking behind you.

You can’t make out anything beyond the roaring of your pulse. 

“Yeah, yeah I can—I can hear it!” When Max turns, just a little bit, to face the gym’s entrance, you follow her gaze. There’s something strange, under one of the tables. The air almost looks like the rippling mirage over a hot street. 

When you look back to Eleven, she’s suspended in the air, slowly rotating to face Vecna. You start shoving Max along. 

“Go, go go go, ” you urge, rushing ahead to throw chairs out of the way. “Run and slide!” 

You lift your head to glance at Vecna, whose cloudy eyes slowly meet yours. You bite your tongue against the scream burning in your throat. He begins to extend another hand in your direction—at Max, you’d guess—but as she’s dropping on her knees to slide under the table and, consequently, into some strange kind bird’s eye view portal of the Creel manor attic, you rush to interpose yourself. 

There’s a second where, when you no longer hear the sound of fabric on the floor, you wonder if Max hasn’t made it through. But the scowl on Vecna’s face is about as reassuring as it is terrifying. You feel suffocated, for a second, like you’ve been put in a vacuum and all the air’s been sucked out. But also just as instantly you gasp for breath, the nerves in your arms stinging and your eyes watering. 

You see the arm aimed at Eleven lower, almost imperceptibly, and El herself seems to realize that the pressure around her body seems to lessen. 

“You can’t—you can’t hurt me,” you stutter, looking back and forth between the monster in front of you and the dangling girl. “You can’t touch me.” 

Vecna stays quiet, but narrows his eyes. The hand still held up toward you clenches into a fist. You feel, for a second, like you’re being tucked in far too tightly. Again, though, as soon as the feeling appears, it vanishes. This time, though, your head throbs in a way that makes it impossible to ignore. You take a hesitant step forward.

“You can’t use anything against me,” you reiterate, swallowing past a lump in your throat and taking another step forward. “Keep trying.” 

Eleven makes a choked sound from where she still hangs when more sharp splinters of wood come up. Vecna audibly grunts when he sends them your way.

Not a single one hits. 
Every single bit goes wide.

Eleven drops to the floor in a heap, coughing, when Vecna puts both his arms down and turns to walk toward you. You stand your ground, but not because you’re confident in what you’ve been saying. You just don’t see how running is a good idea right now. 

When he stops mid step, you take a slow step forward. When he doesn’t move, you take another. And another. Slowly, you walk around a petrified Vecna, over to Eleven’s side. 

“What now?” you whisper, as El slowly twists her wrist to have Vecna facing her. The both of you. “Tell me how to he—”

You’re cut off when your vision goes strange. Like, for just a second, everything was in triplicate, slightly off kilter and overlaid. You feel yourself hitting the ground on your knees. When you blink enough to be able to see properly again, you can see the blood from your nose dripping to the floor. 

“ In…teresting… ”

You gather the bloody saliva in your mouth and spit before you slowly get back up on your feet. “He keeps trying to test me,” you explain to Eleven, voice hoarse, when you catch her concerned glance. “Nothing he does can actually land but I guess I can’t help the strain from blocking his bullshit.” 

“I have an idea,” Eleven says, through clenched teeth. And though she doesn’t move, to help maintain her focus you assume, she goes look off to the side at something. You do your best to ignore the disgusting, slithering sound of Vecna’s struggle against Eleven’s hold as you shuffle to look around and past her to what she’s looking at. 

…a balloon archway? You frown, at first, but then the understanding washes over you; a gate way. You nod slowly. 

“Where to?” 

There’s a moment of silence before El answers. “Me.”

You gape at her before speaking up. “You’re kidding me. You’re saying—you want me to put him ,” you start, gesturing widely at Vecna. “Into your head.”

She nods only once, eyes still glued on the grotesque excuse of a man in front of you. 

“Please tell me you have a plan.” 

“I do.” 

You look up at the ceiling for a second and shake your arms before you stalk over to the balloon archway. Again, a strange and sudden wave of vertigo hits you, but this time you catch yourself and manage only to stumble rather than fall. You bite your tongue against the urge to turn around and scream. Next to the arch, you place your hand on the nearest balloon and close your eyes. You have no idea what you’re doing, really, but you’re hoping that the blooming, sharp pain behind your eyes and the vague image of Eleven that you have in your head are going to be enough.

You’re only peripherally aware that you’re dreaming. There’s one errant thought of oh, this is a dream, before you’re whisked away into it. 

Though his hair’s still relatively long, you can tell that this Eddie is younger. Maybe still a little angry, and a little less touched by the people around him. There isn’t that set to his eyes that you know he has now. 

Dutifully, you follow the dream and sit at a large table in the drama room. You don’t comment about the smell—you have an older brother, you know the smell of weed by now—and you don’t make any sudden movements. You’re surrounded by a bunch of older boys and you’re trying to make a good impression.

You hardly ever spoke unless the senior DM spoke to you directly. To be fair, your quiet lended itself well to your cloistered cleric, though two hours in you got the feeling that the other guys around the table were getting a bit annoyed.

“The warlock doesn’t look surprised to see you,” Greg. the senior DMing for you, announces. You scrunch your nose at his self-satisfied grin. You could’ve seen that coming from a mile away. There was no way in hell that your party could’ve made it that deep without being detected. 

None of them were even sneaking! 

“He waves his hands,” Greg continues, slowly rising from his chair at the head of the table. “And the large double doors slam shut behind you. There’s a heavy thud, and you know that you’ve been locked in.” 

The other boys start off fairly excited; the ranger tries to shoot the warlock down, which doesn’t work. Fireballs won’t work either, and whatever the paladin tries also falls miserably short. The whole time, while the rest of the party tries and fails to attack, you go back and forth between cure light sounds and chant after your initial casting of sanctuary.

Another half hour and you, Eddie and the fluffy haired kid—Gareth, though you’d only learn his name the next day—are the only ones still in the fight. You’re biting and worrying at your lip and the insides of your cheeks like they’ve personally offended you. There’s not much you can do for either boys. But you slam the table when Eddie’s talking to Gareth about what he’s planning to do next. Your hit’s hard enough to rattle the near-empty coke cans on the table. 

“Sor-sorry! I just, Ed,” you rush out, a little breathless. “You remember when my brother was playing in the basement a few weeks ago and he had to make the saving throw against the dragon?” Eddie frowns at you like you’re speaking in tongues but nods. “The only way he actually made it was because the elf—”

“Rolled, he rolled!” Eddie finished for you, jumping up to his feet and snapping his fingers at Gareth. “You! Your strength is higher than mine! We’ll both roll to hit and if I get ten or more you add 2 to your attack roll!” 

“Hold up,” Greg grind out, holding his hands out over his screen. You can’t help but shrink back a little bit. “What the hell are you talking about? There’s literally no rule like that anywhere.” 

“Aid another,” Eddie answers for you, looping an arm around your shoulders and pulling you in a little too close. You blow his hair out of your nose. “It was added in the last revision. Did you not know about it?” 

There’s some fervent discussion and… in the end, Greg was too much of a sore loser and called the game before anything else could happen.

Waking up, for real this time, isn’t the breath of fresh air you hoped it would be. You’re crawling towards Max before you can entirely see or even coordinate your limbs terribly well.

“Max,” you croak out, trying to blink your swimming vision back to cohesion. You try to shove Eddie’s hands away. “She has t—we, we have to wake her up.” 

“Wh-what?” Lucas says, though his voice sounds a little watery. 

“Wake her up ,” you say again, reaching out and grabbing the back of Max’s jacket. “Shake her, scream, do something !”

And while Lucas roughly shakes Max by her shoulders and calls her name loud enough for you to flinch back, Eddie helps you back to your feet. You try to take an unsteady step toward the two teens on the floor but Eddie holds you firmly in place, hands almost vice-like around your upper arms. 

“What the hell happened,” Eddie grits out, and after blinking a few times, you notice that his… his eyes are maybe a little redder than they used to be. His nose too? 

“Hey, what—”

“Naaah, no,” Eddie sniffs, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose before putting it on your shoulder. “No, you answer my question first. What. The fuck. Was that. ”

“Eddie, please, I need to—”

“You need ,” Eddie cuts you off again, shaking you a little and vaguely nodding down to the jar that you’d been holding and had clearly fallen out of your hands. “To tell me what’s going on.”

“I… It’s.” you try, clearing your throat and rubbing at your nose before trying again. “Vecna had Max when I showed up. And then Eleven showed up. And she—I, fuck. Wherever I was, I made a gate to shove him into El’s head? Instead of his own mind palace? But I have to go back.”

“The fuck you do,” Eddie spits, digshis fingers against your arms, but eventually lets go. “Why?” 

“You remember the first Hellfire game you went to where Greg tested us? I barely said anything?” 

“And that was like, one of three times you ever showed up, yeah, what about it?” 

“Aid another, I need—I want to aid another for Eleven.” 

There’s a strange shift that happens on Eddie’s face. And for a second, you think you might actually see something that looks like resignation in the set of his brows before something else entirely takes over. You think, maybe, there’s something in that face you would’ve been able to see in the mirror the night you pulled him away from Chrissy.

“You’re halfway dead already.”

You huff angrily and you’re about to try and come up with a retort when you hear Lucas behind you. 

“Max..? Max? Oh god,” he sighs when you turn around, and you’re almost about to try something extremely stupid when you see one of Max’s arms come up, slowly, to grab at Lucas. 

“I’m good,” she whispers, choked. “I made it. I’m okay.”

You take a deep, stuttering breath; with the music playing from the car outside and how preoccupied Vecna probably is, you feel comfortable assuming Max is safe for the next little bit. That’s when you notice the lamp beyond both kids starting to glow more vividly. 

When you turn to Erica, dithering a few feet in front of the staircase, hers begins to glow brighter as well. 

“They’re here,” you hear Eddie say next to you. “We gotta move.” 

Erica helps Lucas to get Max down to the foyers. None of you are terribly fussed about Carver; he can wake up and figure shit out on his own. Eddie props you up almost the entire way down and out. You gently push him away and towards what you’re assuming is Jason’s car to lower the volume. With Max conscious and relatively okay, it really doesn’t need to be that loud. 

Meanwhile, you’re becoming fast friends with the front lawn. Though at first you just sit down, you eventually let yourself fall back into the damp brown-orange grass and sigh. When the music quiets a bit, you finally close your eyes and sigh. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Eddie mutters, kicking at your foot before you hear him sit heavily next to you. “What now?”

“Honestly dunno,” you breathe, letting your fingers run through the grass. Open your eyes and lean up on your elbows to take a look at where the kids are at. Max is half sat on the passenger side of Justin’s car, elbows on her knees and speaking quietly to Lucas and Erica. When you fall back down, you sigh. “We should legit leave, but I don’t think I want ‘grand theft auto’ hanging over any of us.” 

“Wouldn’t be a big deal,” Eddie shrugs, and you halfheartedly lift an arm to slap him in the ribs. 

“Shut the fuck up,” you grumble, letting your eyes close again. Eddie’s grabbed a hold of your arm and keeps it close to his chest. “You’re not your dad.”

“We shouldn’t leave,” he replies, ignoring what you’ve just said entirely. “We need to stick around if Harrington and the others need help.” 

You grumble quietly. He’s not wrong. But something feels like an itch under your skin, and you don’t like laying there doing nothing. Your brain feels sluggish when you try to think. All your mind can stick to is Aid Another and helping Eleven. 

Pull your arm away from Eddie and bring your hands up to your face and dig your palms into your eyes. You absolutely do want to pull a stupid stunt that would definitely get you yelled at, but the idea of potentially frying your brain into a perpetual coma is… terrifying. 

Is it any more terrifying that it would’ve been for Max though? 

When you peel your hands away from your face, you turn to Eddie to speak. But just as you open your mouth, two things happen at nearly the same time: 

You hear the kids start exclaiming about the lamp lighting up.

And you feel the hairs at the back of your neck rise with the bile in your throat. 

“That’s not Steve and the others,” you say quickly, sitting up a little too fast. The ground spins despite being so close, and Eddie almost instantly jumps to his feet to crouch next to you. 

“What are you—” he starts, but you wave him off before letting your hand rest on his shoulder. 

“That’s Vecna,” you grind out. There’s panic bubbling up in your chest. “I don’t think they killed him. I gotta—Eddie, I have to do something.” You almost let the end of the sentence trail off when you turn to properly look at him. 

You can see your panic mirrored in his face and you hate it. 

When you turn back to look at the glowing lamp, its blue glow slowly growing in strength, you figure you could do the only thing you know has been reliable. The one thing that you’ve actually been able to do in your sleep.

“Hey,” Eddie says, a frayed edge to his voice. He roughly grabs at your shoulder to get you to face him properly. You must have a glassy-eyed, determined look to you, because Eddie almost lets go. Instead, he gets his legs underneath him and, once he’s kneeling, grabs your face in both his hands. 

You close your eyes. They’re warm.

“You don’t need to be doing everything,” Eddie pleads, and though you shake your head, he doesn’t let go. “I told you to—”

“Use my brain wisely,” you cut in, parroting him, quietly. “I know. Go get Max for me.”

Eddie practically trips over the slick grass in his hurry. Max flies over to you and kneels by your right.

“Hey, what-what’s up?”

You turn to Eddie first, silently grabbing one of his hands and placing it on your shoulder. High enough that you can feel his skin on your neck. You’ll just go with the notion that the vibration you feel through your chest is… is whatever it is you’re about to do. Tell yourself that you absolutely didn’t need the contact for comfort, just. Y’know, how these things work? Borrowing energy or whatever? Doesn’t matter.

“Hands,” you tell Max when you turn to face her. She places her hands—cold, shaking—in yours. 

When you close your eyes and focus on your breathing, it takes a little bit. There’s a lot of noise going on; there’s the car stereo still playing Kate Bush, there’s both Max and Eddie’s breathing, there’s Lucas and Erica nervously chattering a bit further off, a dog barking a few blocks away…

When all the sound fades away, you know you’re doing something alright. Passable, at least. When you open your eyes, everything looks more or less the same. Colours feel maybe a little brighter, more vivid. But the most striking thing is that there’s clearly something that’s almost billowing out of Max’s nostrils. 

Eddie must feel you twitch, because he leans in to quietly ask what’s wrong. 

“You don’t see anything,” you say, and without looking away from Max, can feel Eddie shaking his head. You take another deep breath. “Right on. Don’t… worry about…”

You trail off and lean back.

Eddie’s chest is warm.

Chapter Text

It’s foggy, after that.

Dustin finally appears, apparently having had to adjust the bike chain five separate times on his way. He and Eddie help you to your feet and practically carry you over to Carver’s car. The strange feeling at the back of your neck feels like it’s spreading down to your shoulders. Whatever was flowing out of Max’s face has stopped, and the most you can think about is hope. Hope that she’s not cursed anymore and that your hazy mind and sluggish body mean that something worked.

You’re sat shotgun and, when everyone’s slammed the doors shut, Eddie hits the pedal to the floor. You think you hear Erica tell him to go back to his trailer. He’s even more reckless than usual; he swerves in and out of the lane and nearly manages to run a sign over. When you turn your head to try to focus on his face, Eddie’s brows are furrowed so low his eyes look nearly shut.

You swallow down the guilt. You had no idea how borrowing... what, energy? From people? How that worked. But if Eddie’s also tired, surely Max can’t still be cursed right?

The ground rumbles violently as you enter Forest Hills. It shocks Eddie enough for him to drive the car straight into a fencepost. The car’s barely still before Erica and Lucas are jumping out and running for Munson trailer. Next to you, Eddie sighs deeply and lets himself fall back against the driver’s seat. He takes a second longer to unclench his fingers from the steering wheel, hands falling limp in his lap.

With what little strength you can muster, you reach over to pat his knee.

“Never going shotgun with you ever again,” you breathe out. Eddie snorts and turns his head to look over at you.

“It’s fine, it’s Carver’s car. I treat what’s mine with the respect it deserves.”

The low and sure tone of his voice catches you off guard, and you just... stare at him. Eddie’s face seems to crumple a little after a second before he clears his throat and sits up straight, facing forward.

“Wait, Ed—”

“Right, sorry,” he cuts you off, giving the steering wheel one more squeeze before he’s opening the door to step out. “I’ll go see if they need help.”

You try to move to reach over the console to grab at his sleeves, but you nearly jump out of your skin when you hear the trailer door slam open. Lucas appears first, running right up to Eddie to ask if the car can still run. While Eddie confirms, uncertainly, that Carver’s shiny toy car can probably handle another run, it definitely can’t accommodate three more people.

The ground rumbles again, and you hear shouting from the trailer even several yards away. You’ve made your mind to try to get up when the ground rumbles again, worse this time. You can see a fault appear under the trailer just as the door slams open. Dustin and Erica come bolting out first.

You barely hear Eddie when he tells you that he’s going to go hotwire another car. The ringing in your ears is almost too loud to hear through, and your vision’s starting to swim. Your skin feels too tight, suddenly, and the air around you feels too hot.

There’s shouting, you think, closing your eyes against the blooming headache. It feels like the flu hit you out of nowhere all at once. The car’s moving, swerving out of Forest Hills. You feel another earthquake, but this one feels different.

The ringing in your ears in so loud.

There’s a hand grabbing roughly at your shoulder, one feeling your forehead. You do your best to shrug them away. You’re trying so hard to focus on anything than the cacophony in your ears. Your ankles still sting and itch from the heat of the exploding can.

And then you exhale, and everything is quiet. The throbbing behind your eyes is gone, the breeze from the open windows feels soothing, and you feel like you can breathe.

You also, somehow, can feel that something is missing. You’re about to speak up when the ground shakes again. Erica, Max and Robin shout in the back to go faster, and when you get yourself to look up in the rearview, you nearly choke. You twist yourself around as much as you can to stare out of the rear windshield, and you almost wish you hadn’t.

The ground is splitting open down the road, like it’s doing its best to swallow you all whole.

“Holy shit—”

“Oh god are you okay—”

“We thought you were dying—”

You throw yourself back in your seat and stare ahead.

“Steve, what the fuck is that?”

“Fucked if I know!”

“It’s the gate at Eddie’s trailer,” Max says, rushed, leaning forward between the front seats to talk to you. “It started growing—”

You gently shove her back to look at Steve.

“You didn’t kill him?!”

“We did!” Steve shouts, slamming the steering wheel. He doesn’t warn anyone when he jerks the car off the road to the right, down a winding dirt pathway. “He literally turned into like, ash in front of us! We don’t know what’s going on!”

“Where are we going?”

There’s beat of silence.

“Ch-Chief Hopper’s cabin,” Max says, shooting Steve a glance before looking back at you. “If El’s on her way, that’s where she’d go first.” You nod and swallow thickly.

Now that you’re practically navigating through the woods, the rumbling and cracking ground can’t be seen, but it still makes everything shake.

It stops with a loud, cavernous groan that sounds like it’s coming from everywhere. If you really force it, you think you can hear a few car alarms and sirens. You don’t try to see through the trees if there’s smoke.

Eddie’s already leaning up against the other car you assume he hotwired, the others hard at work behind him trying to pry off the wooden broads. Nancy’s the first one who manages to free and open the door. Everyone is quiet and seems tense—you can’t blame them.

You remember what happened here, too.

Eddie rushes over to you when you shove the passenger door open. When your legs give in under you as soon as you try to put any weight on them, Steve hurries out and over to help prop you up and take you inside.

The dust is horrendous, everything is in disarray, but... at least the kids seem like they’re having some modicum of fun trying to unfuck everything. Better for it; you’re not sure either you, Steve, Nancy or Robin are good for anything too terribly physical. The latter three all look like they’re a soft breeze away from toppling over.

When you’re installed on the dusty couch—after a very concerning plume of dust rushed out to greet you—Steve and Eddie join you. You almost laugh at how coordinated their sigh is when they sink into the old cushions.

“You guys good if I take a nap..?” You ask hesitantly, but almost immediately Eddie’s arm comes around your shoulder and pulls you into his side, before his hand gently guides your head down on his shoulder.

“Nap sounds nice” Steve says quietly, and when you crane your neck to see him around Eddie, he seems like he’s already halfway asleep.

“He needs to get actual bandages,” you mutter, but Eddie tightens his grip on you. You get the message.

You fall asleep to the sound of Max and Lucas arguing about the best way to patch the gaping holes in the roof.

You’re alone on the couch when you wake up, and it’s significantly less breezy. It doesn’t feel like too much time has passed, but looking around, there’s the distinct glow of almost-morning. The holes in the roof definitely aren’t patched up yet, but there are various fabrics covering windows, the boards that were pried off from the outside had haphazardly been used to cover faults on the inside.

Given that only one of you is legally allowed to drink—you think?—and that none of you have probably gotten a decent meal in literally days, it’s not bad work.

Well, it’s shit work, honestly. Any other time but now you’d sigh and redo it yourself.

You scooch yourself forward on the couch and find that standing up, though unpleasant, is finally possible on your own. Which is just as well; everyone else seems to have huddled together in a giant mass on what you assume is the living room floor. In font of you. You grit your teeth and do your best to navigate through everyone without falling or stepping on someone.

You’re pretty sure part of your shoe gets caught in Nancy’s hair, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

Once you’ve reached what’s left of the front door, you find Eddie sitting at the top of the stairs. A plume of smoke drifts away. Then another, before you decide to drop down next to him and hold your hand out.

“Sleep alright?” Eddie asks quietly, casting a sidelong glance at you.

You shrug, take a drag of the cigarette before returning it  to Eddie. You hold the smoke for a second to feel the burn in your throat before slowly exhaling.

“How long was I out?” You ask instead.

Eddie makes a show of pulling his arm in front of him and squinting at the watch before looking at you with a deadpan expression.

“Right,” you snort, grabbing the smoke back from him after he’s taken a drag. “Waterlogged, my bad.”

“Two hours probably,” Eddie answers anyway, pulling a leg up on the porch. “Steve told me you had an episode in the car.”

“In my defense,” you start, as hurriedly as your sleepy brain can manage. “I didn’t do anything. It’s like I experienced a week of a really bad flu in the span of a few minutes.”

Eddie hums to let you know he’s heard, and perhaps cursorily believes you, but otherwise stays silent. You don’t interrupt him, either; he’s got that face on like he’s trying to connect two dots but isn’t sure how. You vaguely gesture for another cigarette; his is almost down to the butt and honestly, you could use the distraction.

“What if,” Eddie starts, handing you a pack of matches he must’ve found and pilfered from the cabin. “What if your whole... cleric thing.” He huffs and shakes a hand through his hair. “No, wait.”

You frown for a second before you think you catch on. “Ah—like, you think it’s some weird kind of like, hive mind virus?”

“Something like that, but,” Eddie continues, twisting around to look at you. “Like something leaked out of the Upside Down and Got to you.”

You shake your head. “I never got close to any of the gates before.”

You’re about to tell Eddie to nevermind, that you’re pretty sure you still have some funky powers left over, but both of you clamber to your feet when you hear the distinct rumbling of a car engine. You stumble back towards the door and drag Eddie with you with a hand grabbing at his shoulder.

“Go, go wake everyone up,” you whisper harshly, running in after him. There are disgruntled groans that slowly turn into concern and panic while you tear through the cabin trying to find something—

Nancy calls out for you, and before you’re quite ready, tosses a rifle at you.

It’s you, Nancy and Steve on the front porch when you see... what is possibly the most confusing looking van you have ever seen in your life.

“Is that... a pizza delivery van?” Steve asks quietly, and though he and Nancy still have their respective weapons up and ready, you get the overwhelming sense that you’re fine.

When the van finally stops, you toss the gun behind you, much to Steve’s very loud displeasure. You carefully go down the steps one by one, pass by the driver, round back, and pull open the doors.

A very stunned Mike greets you, clearly having been a second away from opening the doors himself.

“Uh. Hey?”

You don’t reply, just scoff and step out of the way. First out is Mike, but when Will hops out, you barely recognize him. Wasn’t he supposed to be like, a foot shorter?

When El hops out, she looks about as worse for wear as you are. You can’t help but reach a hand out to her head.“

“Shame,” you whisper. El gives you a tentative smile and shrugs.

“It grows back,” she says lightly, before you pull her into a hug.

Someone clears their throat, still in the van, and you hurriedly step away from El and let her rush up to the cabin. Jonathan Byers climbs out last, and you already know from the glassy look in his eyes that he’s... a little blazed.

“Hey, you—you’re the one—” Jonathan starts, but you cut him off.

“From econ a few years ago, yeah.”

“No—I mean, yeah, but, no,” Jonathan tries to correct, shaking his head. “When Will was in the hospital, when we found him again, weren’t you in the cafeteria?”

You frown and open your mouth to try and find an answer, but a booming voice comes from beyond the cabin.

“What is up my dudes! This place looks like it got bombed.”

“That, he’s Argyle, uh,” Jonathan starts, and you step away to let him go introduce his loud and apparently equally blitzed friend to everyone else.

You give yourself a moment of alone time and sit on the edge of the van. You can hear everyone chatting excitedly, mostly on the front porch. Something about a helicopter makes it to you, and something about using a deep freezer as a bathtub?

Eleven reappears, but this time, though she does genuinely seem happy to see her friends right now, there’s something solemn about the way she holds herself. She hops up to sit on the edge of the van with you, hands in her lap.

“All good?” You ask, bumping your shoulder to hers.

“Mm, all good,” she replies, looking over at you. “He’s gone. Henry. Did you feel it?”

You shrug. “I mean there were earthquakes, but—”

“No,” El shakes her head, and gestures vaguely at... all of you? “Did you feel it?”

“I...” you start, clearing your throat and looking away. “I mean... I didn’t feel anything when the other where still in the Upside Down, but I did—when Steve was driving us here, I felt really sick, like...”

“Like something was leaving?” El hazards, and you nod slowly.

“Yeah, I guess. Like something was finally making its way out.”

It’s her turn to nod sagely. You’re about to ask if she happens to know what that means for you now, but something suddenly registers for you.

Will, Mike, El, Jonathan and Argyle all showed up in a pizza delivery van—of all things—and there’s been no trace or mention of Joyce at all. It’s been a while, so there’s clearly not another car coming, and you somehow doubt that Joyce would’ve willingly and knowingly let her kids be ferried around by someone who’s about as stoned as you are clinically depressed.

“Hey, uh, El, where’s Joyce?”

“Work trip in Alaska,” she says easily, and a little too solidly.

“...Alasaka, huh.”

Chapter Text

Even an hour after their arrival, you can tell that the Cali kids are breathing life back into everyone. It’s like everyone can suddenly function better, more coherently; like somehow a missing limb was returned. Though you can observe the effect, you feel like you’re maybe too far removed from everyone to experience it yourself.

You’re just... so tired.

You crash on the couch on and off. Occasionally, one of the girls will nudge you awake to drink some water. Max brings you a bag of chips. Eddie comes to lay a hand on your head almost every 15 minutes. Doesn’t say anything, just crouches by the couch, puts a hand on your head and frowns to ask if you’re okay. When you’re conscious enough to hum or nod. When you’re just teetering on the edge of sleep, he huffs and goes back to whatever he was doing.

When you muster enough discipline and strength, you force yourself to sit up and look around. The couch has been dragged back to where you assume it was meant to be. The holes in the roof have somehow been patched up, though only with tarps for now. Almost all of the dust, dirt, leaves and other debris have been cleaned out, and the windows cursorily cleaned. The kitchen looks somewhat useable now, and there are suddenly a lot more blankets and pillows than there were before.

“Welcome back, sleepy head,” Eddie says, nearly throwing himself down on the couch next to you. “Doin’ okay?”

Hum and rub at your eyes, still itchy and dry despite the rest. “I’m alright,” you start, covering your mouth while you yawn. “I think. I’m exhausted, my ankles itch like fuck and the rest of me feels sore but...” You shrug and Eddie nods in understanding. “Any news on what that earthquake was?”

“Oh oh oh!” Dustin comes rushing in from behind the couch. “You know about the mind flayer, right?” You barely open your mouth to confirm before he excitedly continues. “So we know that Vecna was using the Upside Down to try and jumpstart an apocalypse, but what happens when Vecna dies?”

“...nothing’s controlling the mind flayer anymore,” you answer slowly, with a frown.

“Boom! Right! So what happens when the mind flayer doesn’t have something to give it an actual shape? It goes all over the place!”

You wait for Dustin to keep going, but he just stands there, hands out in front of him like he’s waiting for you to actually complete the train of logic for him. Eddie sighs next to you and leans forward, elbows on his knees.

“What Henderson is trying to say,” Eddie starts staring pointedly at Dustin. “But is being too big of a showboat to, is that their little Jean Grey back there had to beat the mind flayer into submission before closing the whole town up.”

You gape at the two of them in turn.

“You’re telling me Eleven, still walking around and smiling like everything’s hanky-dory, beat the mind flayer and then immediately proceeded to force all the gates shut, and that the sheer, unadulterated force of her psychic whiplash caved half the town in on itself.” Dustin nods enthusiastically and Eddie shrugs. You settle into the couch and cross your arms. “That’s the epitome of unfair.”

“What do you mean? You think you could’ve taken it on yourself?” Dustin asks, aghast and looking at you like you’ve sprouted another head.

“Wha—no, fuck no!” You sigh and gesture vaguely at yourself before letting your hands fall in your lap. “I teleport a few times and I feel like I need to sleep for a week. And she just—and she’s fine?”

Eddie and Dustin both are already on their way to rip you a new one, for some reason, when Steve comes running in through the front door, heading for your pile of pilfered firearms and weapons while instructing Nancy and Robin.

Apparently there’s a truck coming up to the cabin.

“How do you know it’s a truck?” You ask, turning around on the couch. “And coming here?”

“Nothing out here,” Steve answers shortly, double checking that the rifle he has in hand is loaded. “Smells like shit, too. You can smell the exhaust.”

It doesn’t take long; Eleven is strategically hidden behind doors and furniture, Steve and Nancy are at the bottom of the front steps with guns in hand. Robin’s got a pistol that suspiciously looks like a Beretta, the kids—the kids have knives, right, that’s fine. Absolutely fine and won’t—alright.

You grab a knife for yourself—a paring knife, which isn’t much but at least is better than nothing—and take your place by the front door, opposite Jonathan. When you hear gravel crunching under heavy tires, you shoot him an anxious look. He glances through what’s left of the screen door and...

And does a double take?

You go to grab for Jonathan’s arm and spit something about being stupid and reckless but stop in your tracks when you see Joyce throwing the passenger door open and stomping out.

“Jonathan?”

“Mom? I thought you were in Alaska—is that Murray?”

“Please put your guns down!” A voice anxiously calls from what you assume is the back seat.

Steve and Nancy all but throw their weapons to the side. The truck’s engine is finally killed. You don’t even have time to process who the hell it is that’s stepping out of the driver’s seat before Eleven goes barrelling past you.

And right into Chief Hopper’s arms.

It’s... a lot to catch up to, once everyone gets around to it.

The explosion, Hopper surviving, Joyce getting a message from a turncoat proxy—it’s dizzying. Nevermind the fact that, apparently, the reason why everything went quiet in the Upside Down long enough for Steve, Nancy and Robin to kill Vecna was because some crazy motherfucker used a god damn flame thrower.

You pay rapt attention when Hopper talks about the tanks, though. Because you remember those, kind of. A piece of a fragment of a dream from a while ago. How some of the dogs and demogorgons were kept in suspension. You swallow past the uncomfortable lump in your throat.

Eventually, Joyce seems to remember who and what she is and starts corralling everyone into separate vehicles. Time to go home and let your parents know you’re all still alive. As you rush to get your shit together to leave, you hear Hopper mutter something about there never having been this many cars in front of this place before.

“Without a giant monster on the loose,” you quip back before you can help it, and you immediately freeze and go to offer an apology. But the Chief just chuckles and shrugs it off.

“Yeah. Without a giant monster trying to kill us all. Again.”

You take the dismissal—and maybe the feeling of being acknowledged..?—and run out the door with it.

Joyce gets the kids—Mike, Nancy, Lucas and Erica—and gives Will, Jonathan and Eleven hugs strong enough you think you can hear their ribs creak. She sets off with them after hesitantly taking the keys from the van from the stoner—Argyle.

(You like Argyle. He’s a nice, sunkissed reminder that the world isn’t shit absolutely everywhere or all the time. He hasn’t even freaked out a single time since he arrived with the rest of the Cali crew. Not once. You find yourself wondering just how much shit they’d all had to go through to make it back to Hawkins, for a bystander to be relatively nonplussed by everything going on.)

Jonathan, Will, Hopper and Eleven stay behind. Steve volunteers to take Dustin and Robin home.

And so you and Max clamber up into the truck after Hopper tosses Eddie the keys. Before he turns them in the ignition though, Eddie twists around to look back at Max, in the backseat.

“So where...” he starts awkwardly, and where you would’ve expected Max to shrug it off and say it didn’t matter, she takes a deep breath instead.

“The, uh, the high school. They’re using it as a shelter. She’s probably...” Max trails off and you bite your tongue and twist your fingers in your lap. Eddie nods, twists the key and the truck rumbles to life.

It’s old and clunky and the suspension’s shit. Driving out of the woods into Hawkins is miserable, and not much better afterwards. The faults that split open around town aren’t... as bad as you somehow figured they would be. The one that you assume is at lover’s lake can’t even be seen from where you are. Regardless, though, the earthquakes were enough to crack pavement in a few too many places. There are still water mains broken and spewing water on the edge of town, but as you drive in, towards the school, there’s less untreated damage.

Nevertheless, it sets a pit in your stomach you can’t shake. This could’ve been worse. Eddie pats the side of your side with the back of his hand when he catches your mind drifting a bit too far.

“I’m—”, you try, but your voice cracks. Clear your throat and start again. “Fine. ‘m fine.”

“You sure sound like it,” Max quips from the back, but it’s quiet and subdued, like she’s not sure that making a joke right now is actually the right thing to do. You turn to look at her and slap a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“Compared to this bitch and Harrington? I’m perfectly fine, unscathed, even!”

Max snorts and Eddie swats your hand away with a scoff. You smile a bit; the rest of the drive is a lot easier with a lighter mood. When Max eventually hops out of the car, you follow her without much of a second thought. When you notice Eddie doesn’t follow though, you walk over to the driver’s side and knock until he rolls the window down.

He keeps his eyes ahead and doesn’t look at you. He seems...

“Oh fuck,” you whisper, taking a quick look around the street. There thankfully aren’t too many people milling around, but that probably won’t last. You can’t believe you forgot he was on the hook for murder. You’re note going to think about how you were supposed to accessory to it, too.

“Yeah, so I’m just gonna...” Eddie drums his fingers on the steering wheel before suddenly pitching the seat back.

“...nap it out and pray no one looks in here?” you offer, and all you get in return is a grunt. You bite the inside of your cheek for a second. “I’ll be back in a bit. Max might take longer or stay here, I think.”

“She should probably stick around here.” You nod quietly, not that Eddie can see you. You take a deep breath and tap the door to announce your departure. You get the tiniest bit of a wave.

The second you walk into the gym, it feels like cognitive dissonance. You’re used to this place being too bright and too spaceous and too damn loud, but now it’s just... injured folk, displaced people, cots everywhere, a small soup kitchen off to the side, boxes coming in filled with god knows what.

You feel like you’re looking at the aftermath of a small natural disaster. You shake yourself back into focusing, just for a second, long enough to spot a familiar head of red hair half buried in someone’s arms.

Good.

You keep close to the walls to avoid getting in the way. More and more people seem to be coming in carrying boxes of various things—mostly clothes and toiletries, from what you can see. You let your eyes trail after the last person to walk in with a box. Watch them walk up to a set of tables near the back wall, directly opposite you.

And you watch the box be handed directly to your father. Next to him, your mother writes a few things down on a clipboard and smiles at the box owner.

You don’t realize you’ve started to move forward until your shoulder clips against someone making a hasty exit. You stumble forward a bit, but try to spin around as fast as you can when you catch the distinct sound of a stack of papers hitting the ground.

“Oh fuck,” you breathe, rushing over to the form hunched over the stack of papers spilled on the ground. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t...” You let yourself trail off when you take a look down at the few other papers you were able to get and stack together.

It’s grainy and the contrast is shit from being copied so much, but it’s very clearly Eddie’s face staring back at you. When you look up, Wayne Munson’s eyes look glazed over for a second, before he sighs, grabs the papers you’ve been holding, and stands back up with a groan.

Wayne puts a hand on your shoulder and seems like he’s got something quippy to say, but he stops with his mouth open. You see him look you over, from the top to the bottom and back up again. He frowns and looks back where he clearly knows your parents are, back down to you.

“Do your folks know?” You shake your head and keep quiet when you nod to the door. Wayne takes a deep breath and shrugs but nods.

A few steps outside, you point out the truck that Eddie is still inconspicuously lying down in.

“You’ll wanna knock on the driver side,” you add, clearing your throat and clasping your hands behind you. “I’ll, uh, I—”

“Your folks are worried sick,” Wayne says, placing a hand on your shoulder and turning you back towards the doors. “Get.”

Seeing your parents again after what feels like aeons is... honestly? It was wonderful. You finally felt like you did before this entire debacle. Your mother held you tight and your father held you both tighter. It was nice, for once in recent history, to be suffocated by someone’s kindness rather than the sick air of another dimension.

Your mother leaves your father and brother—who’d just come back from a supply run in Indianapolis—to take care of donations and whatever else it is they were doing in the school gym. She takes you straight home and practically shoves you into the bathroom on the first floor to shower and bathe.

The door clicks shut behind you and you stare down at the change of clothes—warm, fleecy sweatpants you know are your brother’s and an oversized sweater you know is your dad’s—and two of the fluffiest towels that are usually only reserved for guests at Christmas.

You put the clothes down on the console by the sink and let your fingers play with the towels. Pulling at threads. Pressing them against you, feeling their softness, squishing to feel the give.

Something so stupid and insignificant—you already feel yourself choking up. And then you look up at your reflection in the mirror.

You wish you could say you can’t recognize the person in the mirror as being you. But you can. Despite everything—the dried blood under your fingernails, the scrapes and scabs along your legs and arms, the oily hair, the bruises under your eyes from a broken nose faded to a pale yellow—it’s still you.

Your vision swims and your breath gets shorter. You made it. You made it. To the other side, or—or back from the other side. And no one else. No one else died.

Chief Hopper is fucking alive.

You let yourself sob into the towels for a few seconds before trying to kick yourself into gear. You need a hot shower, and you need to wash this all off. Distantly, as you undress and turn the water on, you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t be going through decon. If maybe you should be asking Hopper or Joyce or anyone else to call whoever the hell they know in the government or whatever to help... clean you up, or something.

But all that goes out the window the minute you step under the spray of hot water. You force yourself to breathe through lathering your hair, use your mother’s pumice stone to scrub at your arms, legs, chest and back, as far as you can reach. Lather everything again. The water starts to sting.

You think you can smell bacon cooking, even through the misty haze of bodywash and shampoo.

You spend the rest of the hot water tank sat at the bottom of the tub, knees pulled close as tight as you can manage, and you sob. Grossly, loudly.

Your mother doesn’t come knocking.

You call Harrington, and somehow, through some small miracle, it goes through. He’s home fine. Parents have been out this whole time. He’s about to head out the door; you hear Robin in the background complaining about rabies, again. Off to the hospital, then.

Through him, you find out that all the kids have reached home safe and sound. Nothing about Eleven and the Byers, but that’s to be expected. Not exactly like the cabin was still hooked up with phone service. Or electricity.

Your hand automatically reaches to dial the Munson household. You’re halfway through the number before you slowly put the phone back on its cradle on the wall. Your mother peeks out of the kitchen. Slowly, like she’s scared she might scare you.

“Everything... everyone alright?” You huff and try to offer a small smile when you nod.

“Yeah. Yeah I think so,” you reply quietly, turning to rest your back and head against the wall. “I just don’t know about the Munsons.”

“Oh, Wayne?” Your mother asks, and she throws a towel over her shoulder as she exits the kitchen to come stand next to you against the wall. “Your father and I already offered him the guest bedroom.”

“You what?”

You mother fumbles for a bit for an answer and does her best impression of someone who doesn’t feel profoundly reprimanded.

“W-well, when the earthquake—your father was...” Your mother shakes her head and starts over. “Things like this remind people of who they can count on.” You make a quiet “ah” and nod your head. “I don’t like the look on your face right now,” you mother says, and when you turn to look at her, she looks... sad. Desperate. You lean into the warm palm that comes up to cup your face.

You grab her wrist to keep her hand there and keep your eyes closed against the burning behind them. You swallow thickly.

“It’s been a week,” you choke out, trying to clear your throat of the lump in it.

Slowly, you mother pries you off the wall and into one of the chairs at the table. She pulls another chair in close to sit by you, a hand squeezing one of yours in your lap and another rubbing circles on your back.

(Crazy how over a week ago, this house and its people felt almost cloying. Right now you can’t remember the last time you felt so safe.)

“Do you... do you want to talk about it?”

You open your mouth to speak, but stop when you realize you don’t know what to say. Even if you told the truth, how—what way did you even have to prove it? Was that even legal? Did any of the kids’ parents know, besides Joyce and Hopper?

The look on your face must be something between shock and terror; your mother leans back with a concerned expression.

“Honey, what—”

“I don’t,” You try. Shake your head and try to blink yourself into focus. “I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk about it.” You end up whispering, pulling your hand away to rub at your eyes.

“Baby, what do you mean allowed?”

You bite your lip and take a deep breath. Wayne’s probably already been visited by whatever secret government group knows about El and the lab, if only just because he had a damn gate in his home. All the other kids probably... all of them probably know the song and dance by now, for having been through this so many times before.

You have no idea what protocol is for this kind of thing.

“I’ll talk about it when I can—when I’m ready,” you state quietly, and you do your best to make your voice sound firm. It must work at least a little bit, because though your mother sighs in that way that parents do when they’re not told what’s going on, she doesn’t press the issue.

You let yourself sit in silence for a few minutes before pushing yourself to your feet. Your mother makes a fuss about sitting down while she gets breakfast plated for you—though it’s really more of a late brunch at this point—but you put a hand out in front of you to stop her.

“Do we still have dad’s old radio in the basement?”

“Uh,” your mother flounders, stopping midstep into the kitchen. “I guess... I think it should still be hooked up, yeah. Hasn’t been used in a while. Why..?”

“I wanna see if I can reach—”

There’s a heavy knock on the front door. Your mother looks at you apologetically before rushing over to open it. You can hear her gasp and usher whoever it is inside. You wander down the hall after her but freeze when you see who your impromptu guests are.

Chapter Text

Eddie sits next to you at the top of the stairs, shoulder pressed into yours. He looks significantly better than he did when he walked in; as soon as your mother saw the sorry state he was in, she immediately ushered him into the bathroom with fresh towels and ordered you to get a change of clothes. Wayne tried to say that wasn’t necessary, but you and your mother both just kept talking like he hadn’t tried to turn down your hospitality.

Taking a quick glance at Eddie, you still find it unsettling. He’s wearing a pair of sweatpants you plucked from your brother’s room, and one of your old oversized Cocteau Twins shirt. Though he looks comfortable enough, you still think Eddie looks... out of place.

You take a breath and open your mouth to say something—anything, honestly, to break the silence—but Eddie clears his throat. Leans his elbows on his knees and lets his head hang low before turning to look at you.

“Carver’s dead.”

You blink twice. “Excuse me?”

“They found his—someone moved his car,” he says quietly, quickly glancing at the bottom of the stairs. You can hear your mother and Wayne talking. “They found his car at the Creel house. I dunno, someone reported a body, and...” Eddie clenches and releases his fists in front of him.

“You don’t,” you start, exhale sharply. “You’re not blaming yourself for—”

“Wha—no! Fuck, no, just...” Eddie sighs and brings his hands up to rub at his eyes. “I guess I figured if we could save Max, maybe...”

You nod. You understand. Maybe no one else would have to die.

“They’re pinning it on him, too,” Eddie whispered, running his hands through his damp hair before crossing his arms. “All of it. Cause of all the army surplus shit in the car.”

“Fuck, that’s...”

You don’t know what to say. Jason Carver was never someone you particularly liked; his behaviour was too strange, too erratic. You could never get a good read on him and, honestly, after seeing how he treated Hellfire—and pretty much anyone who remotely approached the punk vibe—you kept your distance.

Not that the hyper religiosity wouldn’t have been enough to keep you away, because it absolutely would have been.

But to know that he’s dead, now, probably because you’d left him in the damn house... and that he’s getting blamed for Henry Creel’s horrors in death? That didn’t. That isn’t fair. It’s a struggle to come to term with the fact that maybe this could’ve been avoided—

“Hey,” Eddie calls, turning a bit and placing a hand on your knee to grab your attention. “If I shouldn’t blame myself for it, neither should you.”

You huff and look away.

“Am I, uh,” Wayne starts, peeking out of the doorway to the kitchen, up the stairs at you. “Am I interrupting?”

“Wha—no, uh,” Eddie stutters, nearly tripping in an effort to stand up maybe a little too quickly. You clear your throat and shake your head.

“Where are you going?” You ask, craning your head to look up at Eddie. He gently pats his abdomen with a wince.

“Hospital,” he answers, carefully making his way down the stairs. “Now that I’m showered and been demoted back to town freak from murderer, y’know.”

You look down the stairs at Wayne for a few seconds, before getting up yourself to go down to see your mother. You lean into her side where she’s putting away the dishes.

“Do you mind if I take Eddie to the hospital instead?” You ask in a whisper. Your mother keeps a straight face and barely hesitates in her movements.

“Sure, why?” She asks quietly, stacking the plates and carefully placing them in the cupboard.

“Wayne looks exhausted,” You point out, stacking clean cups before passing them over. “Do you have any idea when’s the last time he slept?”

Your mother hums and puts her hands flat on the counter. She looks back at Wayne, still in the doorway, talking quietly to Eddie.

“I haven’t seen him sleep at all.”

Going through triage is easy—for Eddie, at least. One look at the few injuries he’d gotten in the Upside Down had gotten him into a small room with a doctor right away. One look at you had a nurse bringing over an IV to help with what was apparently blatantly obvious dehydration.

No one puts up much of a fight when you and Eddie insist on remaining together. There were enough injured because of the ‘earthquake’ that the small rural hospital was already way over capacity, and they wouldn’t squander an opportunity to save rooms and beds.

The few bites and cuts Eddie had gotten from the bats were thankfully small enough not to warrant stitches, but they’d done up half his chest. You can see a few patches on his arms, too. Without being able to identify exactly what bit him, Eddie had also been antibiotics, fed through the IV he was also sporting for dehydration.

You lean back in the chair you’d been sat in while Eddie’s perched on the edge of the bed next to you. You stay quiet for a bit after the nurse leaves, after informing you both not to move your arms too much.

“So that...” you start, unsure what to say. “That was one hell of a spring break.”

Eddie’s bark of laughter catches you off guard. He laughs harder when he sees you nearly jump out of your skin.

“It’s not that funny,” you mumble, but you can’t help but start laughing, too.

It doesn’t even take a minute for your laughter to calm down, but the next deep breath feels a little bit easier afterward. Like there had been a vice around your chest that’s just... gone, now.

“I’m just glad we basically wrapped up the Cult of Vecna campaign,” Eddie sighs, fiddling with the IV with his off hand. “Don’t think I’d be able to keep going with it after...”

“Hmm. Yeah, well, at least now you’ve got songwriting material, right?” You’re rewarded with a short chuckle. “No, seriously, you could—”

“Hey, sorry, can I ask you something?”

“What—I mean yeah, sure, any time,” you answer quickly, frowning.

Eddie’s moved from fiddling with the IV to cracking his knuckles. You bite your tongue to keep from asking what’s wrong and decide to be patient about it. He opens his mouth to speak a few times but shakes his head. The fourth time, he speaks up.

“If you hadn’t been... caught up in all this shit,” Eddie starts slowly. “Would you have, I dunno, like. Would you have believed it?”

“What, the whole thing about the Upside Down?”

“No, I mean,” Eddie exhales sharply before raising his head to look at you. “About me. That I—that I killed Chrissy.”

You’re honestly so shocked by the question that it takes a second for you to try and formulate an answer that conveys just how unbelievable that bullshit story was to begin with.

“I’d literally eat my own arm before I’d believe something that stupid,” you try to say evenly, voice cracking. “No one who’s bothered to talk to you for more than ten seconds would honestly believe that.”

“Would... would you have come looking for me? If you hadn’t seen me?”

You open your mouth to answer right away, but pause to actually take a second to think. It’s almost easy to imagine a world where you’d never spoken to Eddie when the nightmares came back with a vengeance. A world where you kept either to the quiet shelves of the library or the silence of your room. Where you hear about Eddie’s alleged involvement in the murder of a high school girl and couldn’t believe your ears. Where you grabbed your car and headed straight for Forest Hills.

“I would’ve wanted to,” you answer quietly, turning to look down at your own lap. “I would’ve wanted to help.”

You turn your head back up when you hear the hospital bed creak. Eddie’s sliding over to make room, and pats the space next to him. You breathe out a short okay before carefully getting up from the chair and hopping up on the bed, careful to take the IV pole with you and not jostle your arm too much. Eddie brings his good arm around your shoulders and pulls you in; gently, though, like he’s worried you’d pull away.

You let yourself be reeled in, let him guide your head to rest just beneath his collarbone, and let him rest his head on yours.

Your stomach feels like it’s full of static. You feel like running away and crying at the same time.

You stay like that until the nurse comes back to check in.

April 12th, 1986

You look around the apartment before dropping the last box on top of one of the stacks in Eddie’s room. Might not have been as big as his room in the trailer, but this is one of two rooms. Which means Wayne gets to have his own space for the first time in god knows how many years.

And Eddie is beaming. Not an ounce of care that the place is a bit narrower than he’s used to. You interrupt yourself mid-sigh when you notice that he’s already put up the Corroded Coffin flag and several posters. You can’t help but laugh.

“Dude, you don’t even know where the furniture’s gonna go yet!”

“Incorrect,” Eddie says, slapping the remaining corner of an Ozzy poster with a bit more force than necessary. “I know where shit’s not gonna go, so I know where it will go.”

You narrow your eyes and shake your head at him when he turns to look at you triumphantly. “Sure, bud. Come on, Pizza’s waiting.”

“I’m kind of weirdly happy those made it you,” you point at Wayne who, despite being at it since the crack of dawn, was still busy unpacking his collection of mugs, of all things. “Shame about the hats though.”

“Old man’s gonna have to live with the reality that he’s been balding since I was twelve,” Eddie quips, patting the man on the shoulder and trying to herd him into the kitchen.

You’re halfway through your first slice of pepperoni-bacon-onion pizza when you hear thumping and cursing from the direction of the front door. Eddie scoffs around his own slice of pizza and rushes to open the door.

“Thanks man, really appreciate it, super quick response time,” you hear Steve say, clearly through clenched teeth.

“Can we move, please?” you hear Dustin calling from behind the couch he’s apparently helping Steve carry. “Or did we forget I’m literally missing bones ?”

“None in your arms, numbskull,” you hear Steve mutter. “Wait, did you guys start eating without us?”

“ The fuck ?”

You decidedly ignore the sausage fest at the front door.

“How’d you find this place anyways, Wayne?” you ask, pouring yourself a glass of coke. “I didn’t think anything would be available in April, especially after what happened.”

“Strangest thing,” Wayne starts, putting his slice down and leaning back in his chair. “Some government agent showed up at your parents place while y’all were out. Said the government’s giving me paid leave and ‘providing accommodations’, on account of the earthquake.”

You freeze, glass of coke nearly at your mouth. “A government agent?” Wayne only grunts in confirmation. “You’re right, that is strange.”

“Eh,” Eddie interjects, hopping up to sit on the kitchen counter next to the pizza. “We’ve seen stranger things.”

You twist and throw your arm around your chair to look back at Dustin and Steve as they make their way to the joint kitchen and dining room.

“Yeah, I heard Mike saw Susie on their way here. Spending time in a Mormon household...” You shudder and turn back to your pizza slice. “That’s definitely weirder.”

You ignore Dustin’s indignant and shocked gasp when Eddie catches your eye. He nods toward his (new) bedroom before hopping off the counter. You don’t bother excusing yourself; Wayne’s already back to unpacking and Dustin and Steve are busy bring a shining example of unrelated siblings.

“What’s up?” you ask when you enter the room. Eddie’s already bent at the waist going through one of the boxes.

“Got something,” he says shortly, quickly picking up the box and putting it aside to look through the next one. He gestures at the other boxes. “Find the one with the records?”

“Uh, sure,” you agree, hesitant, but you don’t have the chance to open a single box before you hear a loud ‘aha!’ Eddie’s victoriously holding a record over his head, before letting his arms drop and holding it out for you.

“What... Frank Sinatra? Dude are you good.” You frown down at the records—Fly Me to the Moon, of all things. It’s always been one of your favourite, but... but it’s not like you’ve ever told anyone that. Much less Eddie.

Not that you don’t trust that he would treat you the same as he always had, but... but, jazz isn’t. It doesn’t really match the rest of your personality? You’ve very much been catering your more punk inclinations, and jazz is...

“Your mom told me,” Eddie explains quietly, taking a careful step toward you. He leans a bit over to the side, trying to get a better look at your face. “She, uh. She said your grandpa played it for you a lot when you were a kid.”

You can’t swallow the lump in your throat.

“I... thank you, but why?”

Eddie nods at the record in your hands. “Pull it out.”

You look up at him long enough to give him a confused look. You pull the record out nevertheless. And it, itself, is completely unremarkable. The envelope that falls out, however, very much catches your attention. You slip the record back in its sleeve and pass it over to Eddie without looking.

You crouch to pick up the envelope and flip it over in your hands. No writing, huh. You flip it open, and it just takes the quickest of glances at what’s inside for you to scream and throw the envelope to the floor.

Two tickets for Judas Priest stare back at you.

You vaguely register Eddie shooing both Steve and Dustin away.

“You’re uh, you’re makin’ me nervous here,” Eddie says eventually. You crouch back down to pick up the tickets in their envelope.

“How?”

“Hush money,” Eddie shrugs, and with the amount of frowning you’re doing you’re almost worried your face will stay stuck that way.

“Judas Priest. In August, in Indianapolis. For Turbo.”

Eddie bites back a grin and nods. You look at him, down to the tickets, and back up at him.

“You’re coming with me right?” You’re barely done talking and Eddie’s pumping a fist in the air. “Wait, did you not intend for me to take you?”

“Uh, well, y’know I didn’t wanna assume —”

“And you put them in a Frank Sinatra sleeve ?” You laugh, carefully tucking the envelope in the back pocket of your jeans before throwing your arms around Eddie’s neck and pulling him in for a hug. You almost pull away when you feel him tense.

But then Eddie sighs and wraps his arms around you, before promptly lifting you up just enough to spin you around once. When your feet are back on the ground, you look up at Eddie and can’t help but laugh again.

“We’re gonna see fuckin’ Judas Priest!”

May 4th, 1986

It’s movie night, and this time it’s at your parents’ place. In light of which day it is—and the fact that the host gets to pick the movie—you’re forcing Steve to watch Star Wars.

The house is blessedly empty, save for the invited few. Your parents’ wedding anniversary is, very conveniently, also May 4th, which means they’re out enjoying a lovely vacation far, far away from the gaping hellmouth that is Hawkins. Your brother, after the initial mess and organization post-quake, went back home.

Steve is comfortably reclined in your dad’s La-Z-Boy, Nancy and Robin are glued together at one end of your parents’ 4-seater while Jonathan tries to look like he’s not bothered by the distance, leaning against the opposite arm. You’re sat in your mother’s rocking chair with Eddie sitting with his back against your legs.

Just as R2 starts playing Leia’s message, you hit the pause button on the remote and clear your throat.

“Just wanted to say that I’m moving out in July cause Helen owns a place but her tenants hauled ass when everything went to shit so if y’all wanna help just scream.” You hit the play button.

You get about a second of hearing Leia plead with Obi-Wan before she becomes absolutely inaudible under the cacophony. Robin and Eddie both stand up in shock, Steve tries to argue that he doesn’t even know if he can help you move, while Jonathan and Nancy seem content to let the other three run wild with their questions.

You can’t help but laugh. “So you’re all helping then?”

Eventually, when everything calms down—which is to say, once Robin and Steve have calmed down—and you’ve paused the movie again, you take the time to explain. Properly.

“So Helen,” Robin starts, staring down at her hands to keep track. “Library Helen that didn’t like you two years ago, went to see you, first , to offer you a house.”

You make a face and lean your head back.

“I mean yeah , but like. It’s not too far from Forest Hills, so the guy who lived there with his brother just left the day that—the, when the...”

“Wait, so is it like, furnished?” Steve asks, and you can already see the shining beam of hope flashing in his head. So you nod.

“Yeah, pretty much. Sense of style’s gonna be horrible but it’s whatever, right?” You look down at Eddie, still dutifully sat on the floor in front of your legs, and playfully tousle the top of his head. “What matters is that I have my own place now.”

May 24th, 1986

“You didn’t have to come,” you say quietly, gripping your umbrella like it’s about to run away. Your shoes squelch uncomfortably with the rain. Your clothes feel damp and your left shoulder’s soaked.

“I know.” Eddie doesn’t say anything else, just occasionally bumps his shoulder into you to try and get you out of your own head.

And you were very, very deep in your own head.

It’s still hard to... to process , just. Everything that’s happened. There are three people dead . Three kids dead. And before that, there was—

Your throat still clenches when you think about what happened at Starcourt. Everything that led up to it—the progressively more imposing and suffocating feeling of something closing in. People going missing, the rumbling of the earth underfoot something massive.

Eddie bumps into you again. He doesn’t look worried or weirded out when you nearly jump out of your skin. When you look up at him, he just turns to look back ahead.

“We’re here,” he says, but gently puts a hand on your shoulder to hold you back. You can see Eddie’s gaze going from eye to eye to gauge your reaction—or maybe your current state of mind?—before gripping your shoulder a bit tighter. “If nothing happens...”

“Then I lose nothing,” you reply quietly, slowly reaching up to take his hand off your shoulder. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

Eddie swallows thickly but nods.
You don’t let go of his hand.

It was... maybe a little weird. It was probably a lot weird, actually, to want to come to a cemetery right around dinnertime. But with everything calming down, with no sign of anything extra-dimensional fucking with shit again, it was like there was a gentle pressure at the back of your neck pushing you forward. Nothing creepy, nothing unpleasant, just something like a hand trying to guide you somewhere.

You’d asked Eddie to come just in case.

You pull him along with one hand, first to Barbara Holland. Heavy in your other arm is a bouquet of carnations—two toned, the scarlet red edging the petals a contrast to the stark white of the rest. You place one in front of Barbara’s grave before taking a knee in the muddy ground. You put the bouquet down next to you after passing your umbrella over to Eddie. And then you just close your eyes and... and wait, for a bit.

You’re not sure you expect anything to happen. You’ve tried messing around with the cleric spell list, for lack of a better way to put it, but you seemed back to normal. No weird powers, no weird dreams. Back to being just a small down librarian.

You jolt back from a near-doze, and Eddie has to catch you—awkwardly, trying to manage two umbrellas—before you hit the muds.

“You good?” He asks, passing the umbrella back over to you once you’ve picked the bouquet back up.

“Y-yeah,” you stutter, looking back at the grave for a second. “Yeah, I’m... good.”

You go through several people like that; you find the grave, give a flower, kneel down for a second to... meditate? Only to eventually be shocked back into wakefulness.

The last person you go see is Chrissy Cunningham. If there’s a second of hesitation in his step, Eddie hides it well. There’s a moment when you feel bad, when you’re both standing in front of the grave. Eddie’s breathing sounds strained, even over the sound of the rain hitting your umbrellas. Your fingers bump into his when you blindly reach for his hand. You give his hand a last squeeze before taking a knee again.

You close your eyes, and when you let your fingertips brush against the headstone, it feels like a shock. The back of your eyelids are painted white, before everything gets eaten up by an endless black. This feels familiar.

When you open your eyes, you’re here —this strange in between place you’ve seen Eleven in. The headstone is still in front of you but there’s... something else, here. Something nagging at you.

You stand up to look around. There’s a feeling like knowing, in your bones, that there’s something else here. You take a deep breath and start by looking down at your feet. And then, slowly, outward.

There.
In the shallow waters, something... red?

When you make your way to it, there’s no mistaking it: that’s a whole ass rose bud. Just sitting there like it’s always been there and this is exactly where it should grow. So, naturally, you move to pick it up. The thing doesn’t budge.

So you kneel down by the almost-flower, and gently try to pull it up. Somehow, it’s like the entire plan is... beneath you? And this bud is the only thing that’s made it to the surface. You don’t want to just—well, no, you don’t think you should just pluck the thing. That... doesn’t feel right.

Instead, you start digging your fingers into the ground as best you can to try and unearth the would-be rose. When you’ve cleared enough of the stem to get a grip on it and pull, you have to take a second to warm your fingers.

You don’t think about why the water’s cold.

Carefully, trying to dodge and protect the rosebud, you wrap your fingers around the stem and tug.

Nothing.
Not that you figured a tiny tug would do it.

You flex your fingers around the stem a bit more firmly. This time, you take a deep breath, dig your heels in, and pull.

It’s slow at first, but as you keep the tension, the stem starts to budge. Then, all at once, it’s like an explosion of colours; like fireworks and paint flying everywhere. There’s a cacophony of sound, too; laughing, shrieking, popping corn and a crowd cheering. The sound of flash bulbs burning out, the smell of pine trees and ink and paper, the glint of glass.

You come too looking straight up at a very concerned looking Eddie. You’re having a hard time breathing; you’re not... entirely sure what just happened, there. You think you might understand, maybe. You hope that maybe you’re right. That maybe you just helped some people get... unstuck .

You only realize you’re crying when Eddie gathers you up in his arms and sighs. He doesn’t sound put out or upset.

“Your mom’s gonna kill me,” he says, nose in your hair. You laugh a little. “You’re gonna track mud all over the place.”

You appreciate that he doesn’t ask about what just happened. You don’t know that you’d be able to explain it even if you wanted to.

The two of you only spend a few more seconds like that before Eddie helps you back up to your feet. At arm’s length, he takes a look at you and makes you do a spin. He groans and pulls you along behind him, barely giving you enough time to grab the two umbrellas where they’d fallen.

“What the hell was that for?”

“My van doesn’t deserve this, man,” Eddie moans, looking down at himself before gesturing at you. “It’s gonna take forever to clean everything out! You’re lucky you’re cute.”

“...did you just—”

“Don’t. No . I didn’t say anything. Shut up and get in the damn van, you heathen.”

You return the kindness to Eddie; you don’t ask about why his ears are scarlet red the whole ride home.

Chapter Text

July 2nd, 1986
3:27AM

You don’t know where you are when you first wake up. There are no lights on, there’s a familiar but distant sound, and it’s too fucking warm. After a few seconds of tensely paying attention, you realize that the familiar sound is the compressor in the fridge.

Right. You moved yesterday.

When you bother to open your eyes and look around, you realize why it’s so dark. You never bothered to plug in your alarm clock and you can’t see the time on the stove from here, but it’s definitely still night. Quiet enough that it’s probably not even 4am yet.

You roll to turn around, but promptly end up yelping and falling right on your ass. The vague but bitter thought crosses your mind that you’ve somehow developed a habit of falling and injuring yourself in whatever bedroom you occupy.

Said bedroom door cracks open slowly. From your spot on the floor, you get to see a very tired Eddie—is he even actually awake?—slowly emerge from the opening door.

“Fuck was that,” he mutters, right before unhinging his jaw to yawn. You sigh and let yourself fall back on the floor, limp, staring up at a ceiling fan that refuses to work.

“Forgot where I was,” you say quietly, throwing an arm over your eyes. “Go back to bed dude.”

Eddie grunts, but you don’t hear the tell-tale squeaking and creaking of floorboards. Instead, when you move your arm out of the way just enough to see, you catch Eddie scratching the back of his head and looking back to the hallway. He clears his throat, and you cover your eyes again before he catches you staring.

He probably caught you staring way too much yesterday, so you’re not sure why it matters. It’s not like he’d make a big deal out of it anyways—not the way Steve and Robin did when they were helping you carry the sectional couch Mrs Henderson insisted you take from her basement.

(It’s fine, she had said, I can’t really look at that old thing anymore, she said. You didn’t ask, but you’d assumed that it was the same as everyone in Hawkins; just trying to get rid of all the leftovers from The Earthquake and what had preceded it.)

You’re jostled out of your thoughts when you feel Eddie’s shoulder—bare, from the cut-out Black Sabbath shirt he’s warning—against yours. He feels cool and clammy, like he’d been tossing and turning around in the heat, too.

“Ahh,” he sighs, folding his hands over his chest. “You had the right idea. Floor’s cold. Fuck this heat.”

You hum in agreement, and turn your head to properly look at Eddie.

“You could go back home,” you say quietly. When you don’t get an answer after a few seconds, you scoff lightly and turn to stare back at the ceiling. “At least he wouldn’t be boiling alive.”

You nearly squawk when you feel a hand taping on your hip. When you turn to look at Eddie again, his eyes are closed, still, but he’s very clearly frowning.

“Y’r being stupid,” he mutters, taking a deep breath before forcing himself to sit up, leaning back on his hands. He rotates his shoulders and—and he’s saying something else, you know he is. But there’s... there’s something about his shoulders.

Have they always been that wide?

You know your mouth is hanging open when Eddie turns to look back at you, and you only snap it shut with a click when you see him grinning.

“Didn’t catch a word I just said, huh.”

You try to speak a first time, but your voice cracks on the first syllable. Clear your throat and cough once or twice before trying again. This time you get yourself up on your feet and head for the door.

“Not a word. Too tired. Want a beer?”

Eddie blinks at you owlishly for a second before letting himself fall back to the floor. You’re about to take that as a silent refusal when he grumbles.

“Do you even know what time it is? Beer?”

You scoff again and cross your arms from your place at the door.

“What, like you do?”

Eddie simply raises an arm in response. You frown, open your mouth to ask why the fuck he’s raising his hand in your damn house, when you notice the watch still on his wrist.

(You try not to remember a very different, broken watch keeping time for the dead.)

“Right, well,” you dither, clearing your throat again. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Do you want a beer or not?”

Eddie sighs, putting on a show about being put out and disappointed and too tired, but the hand he rests low on your back to herd you out of the room is gentle. The quiet ‘sure’ he whispers also sounds far too caring and indulgent.

You practically inhale half of the first beer you pull from the fridge. If Eddie’s got any thoughts about that, he keeps them to himself. You sit down at the table—square, angular, nothing like the one that was in your hideout—and lean back in a chair that still smells like sawdust and campfire.

Leaning back in his own chair across from you, Eddie takes a slow look around. You see him pause to look at what you’ve already put up on the fridge. There’s a character sheet, a small pebble that’s been glued to a magnet, a note from your parents and a small magnetic photo frame. You can already feel your face heat up when Eddie points at it.

“That wasn’t there when we had pizza,” he says, slowly and a bit incredulously. You can only hold his gaze for a second or two when he turns to you for answers.

“I, uh,” you stutter, biting your lip and picking at the label of the bottle in your hands. “That’s—my mom, uh.”

It’s a polaroid.

By any other metric, completely unremarkable. Unnoticeable, probably, to anyone whose face isn’t actually on the damn thing. And if your mother hadn’t taken you aside yesterday morning to hand you a small, old and beaten-up looking shoebox, you probably wouldn’t ever have remembered that photo exists.

It’s Eddie, surrounded by trees, and wearing a cloak that had definitely been about twelve sizes too big. The hood swallows most of his head; the only thing that’s really visible is his smile. Honestly, most people probably wouldn’t even be able to tell that that’s Eddie Munson, in that photo.

But you remember taking that. Remember flapping the polaroid around madly while running away.

You shake your head against the memory. Those times are long gone, now. So why...

“Yeah,” you end up whispering, before taking a deep breath and letting out a deeper sigh. “I’unno. When my mom gave me an old box of pictures from middle school, I kind of...” You look over at the fridge and take another, albeit significantly more moderate, drag of your beer. “Dunno. Felt like it.”

Eddie slowly stands and walks over to the fridge. Takes a sip of his beer while he looks at the photo. Takes a quick look at you before taking a step back from the fridge to look at what all else you’ve put up there so far.

“You still got that box?” And bless him, you know he’s trying to be nonchalant about it, but there’s an anxious tone undercutting his voice clear as day. You chuckle and make your way back to your room and to your closet.

It’s only when you pull the small shoebox out and you’ve got it cradled in your arms do you realize the significance of this.

Almost everything that was in the trailer was lost; it’s honestly a miracle anything survived at all. But among the losses, you remember Wayne bemoaning the loss of the few pictures that he’d been able to take of Eddie over the years.

You look down at the box a bit more misty-eyed. You hope that there’s something helpful in here. Something nicer.

When you make it back to the living room, Eddie’s still standing in front of the fridge. His brows are pulled together and the sip he takes of his beer nearly dribbles down his chin. You hold the box a bit closer to your stomach when you move to stand next to him.

“What are we looking at?” you ask, and Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin. You put a hand on his arm and laugh. “Hey there, have a nice time up in the clouds?”

Eddie laughs a bit thinly, points up at the fridge. “I was just. You kept the—the lyrics. From middle school?”

You stare up at the piece of turns, crumpled up ruled paper. You remember carrying that everywhere with you, in middle school and high school. Carried it in your wallet for a while, too, though...

You turn back to the table to gently put the shoebox down. “I didn’t think you’d remember writing that,” you say quietly, pulling up one small stack of photos neatly held together with a rubber band.

Eddie scoffs. “Are you kidding me? You basically whined at me for weeks to come up with a love song for... what was—”

“Shanon,” you add quickly, blindly reaching for your beer bottle while sorting through photos. “Blonde, grey eyes. You were infatuated .”

You don’t see the sad, self-deprecating grin on Eddie’s face.

“Shanon... yeah, no, didn’t write that for her.”

You take a second to bring the bottle down from your mouth. Turn around to look at Eddie, but he’s still resolutely looking at the paper haphazardly stuck to the fridge. It’s at an angle. It’s starting to drive you crazy. Eddie chugs the rest of his beer, puts the empty bottle on the counter by the fridge, and turns around.

“Woah there pal,” you start, chugging your own beer with a wince. You put the bottle back on the table behind you. “What’s that look for?”

You feel like your heart’s beating a frenzy in your throat. You’re pretty sure you just felt a heart palpitation. The look on Eddie’s face is intense in a way you don’t recognize. Not like when he's DMing and he’s about to throw a real wrench in everyone’s plans, and not like in the Upside Down.

No, it feels a lot like how he looks at you out in the fields by the junkyard.

You would take a step back when Eddie starts walking toward you, but you’re already leaning against the table behind you. You try to straighten up to maybe attempt to look less frazzled than you feel.

The beer’s already making your head feel fuzzy and your lips feel numb.

Eddie stops about a foot away from you, and you’re not sure how to feel about the fact that you have to crane your neck up to actually look at him. He opens his mouth, looking down at your with a frown. He tries a few times like this, before sighing and just.

Letting himself slump over to rest his head on your right shoulder.

You stay like that for a bit. You can hear the hitch in Eddie’s breath when he tries, again, to say something. After the third or fourth time, it feels like something’s squeezing your chest. He’s clearly got something on his chest he wants to get off—something heavy—and you know how that feels. How that goes.

Your left hand comes up to brace the back of his head before you can think of the implications.

Whatever.
Fuck the implications.

“You can take your time, y’know,” you whisper, slowly slumping back to lean against the table behind you, forcing Eddie to take a step forward if he wants to stay in his spot.

“I can’t, I really can’t.” His voice sounds strained, and you flounder. You’ve never really had to struggle to get people to talk to you—not the people who actually give a fuck about you, anyways. And you can’t think of a single time, barring the obvious fuckery of the Upside Down, when Eddie was hesitant to talk to you.

He gently grabs the hand in his hair and pulls it away to straight himself out again. His eyes are closed when you can see his face again. He takes a deep breath and squeezes your hand.

“Listen—“

The phone rings.

You haven’t even put it up on the wall by the doorway yet. It’s still on the counter, where you’ve left it, right by the fridge.

The shock of it in the quiet of the dining room makes you trip over yourself. Eddie catches you and, practically in the same motion, spins to direct you to the phone. Out of breath, you pick up.

“Ye—hello?”

“Hey, hon,” comes Wayne’s tired greeting. “Sorry if I woke you up, but is Eddie still with you?”

You blink a few times, staring out into nothing. You only wonder for a second why he’d call so late when you’d likely be out cold, but when you turn to face Eddie—now leaning back against the table—the realization comes all at once.

“Ed—yes, oh my god, Wayne, I’m so sorry,” you rush to say, turning back to the counter and cradling the receiver. “Yeah, he helped me unpack and we kind of crashed, I should have had him call—”

“Hey, hey,” Wayne chuckles, and the lightness of the tone helps you breathe a bit easier. “It’s fine. Sorry I woke ya up.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” you reply quickly. “We’ve been up for a bit going through some stuff.”

“I won’t keep you then. Just tell that idiot son of mine to call next time.”

You let out a quiet bark of laughter and promise you will. You don’t think you’ve ever referred to Eddie as his son before. Guess the whole town going to shit changed a few things. Said idiot son has the decency to look a bit ashamed when you turn around and lean back against the counter.

“Probably shoulda called before we called it a night, huh,” Eddie says with a wince.

There’s a beat of silence that’s almost awkward before you clear your throat to speak.

“You uh, you were going to tell me something?”

Eddie stands there, expression not unlike shock on his face. He opens his mouth two or three times but eventually settles on a shrug.

“Don’t worry about it, I can’t even remember what I was going to say.” The end of his sentence almost trails off its so quiet. It’s clearly a lie, but you’re too fuzzy from the beer and fatigue from moving to push the issue any further.

You push yourself off the kitchen counter and brush your hands off on your thighs.

“Well,” you start, feeling a bit awkward while you amble toward the hallway. “I need to go back to bed. Let me know if...” It’s your turn to trail off, because you’re not sure how to end that sentence. Let you know if what, a demodog comes bursting in through the window?

You look anxiously over your shoulder at the window over the sink.
It’s fine. It’s nothing , nothing’s there, you’re good.
You clear your throat.

“Right, so. I’ll just.”

Eddie nods but doesn’t look at you.
Your room is bright with birdsong and the rising sun by the time you fall asleep.

17 July 1986
1:37AM

You’re not entirely sure what motivated you to get out of bed, climb into your car, and make it to the Munsons’. It’s not like you couldn’t have just grabbed the phone and dialed Eddie’s shiny separate number. (You’re beginning to think the hush money bit was real.) You’ve called each other at the worst times of night and day for dumber shit.

This time, though, the nightmare felt a little too real to ignore and sleep off. Like you usually would have done.

It was like you had never existed; like everyone had gone into the Upside Down without you, without an extraction team, without a backup plan. And you had to watch while Eddie sliced the blanket rope. Horrified, you watched Dustin sprain his ankle in his rush to get back.

Eddie, gasping and choking on his own blood, saying he hadn’t run away this time. Eddie, glassy-eyed and gone, torn to shreds by bats left motionless by what you now know to have been Chief Hopper’s own attack all the way in Russia.

You take a second to control your breathing once you’re at the squat triplex. Eventually you uncurl your stiff and sore fingers from the steering wheel and force yourself out of the car. Your legs feel like jello and your head like lead.

You consider trying to climb up to the third floor, somehow, if only for a second. You know Wayne’s likely to be up so you shouldn’t worry too much about either ringing or knocking but... Shake your head and hit the button for the third floor before you can think more about it and chicken out.

You’re let in surprisingly quickly. When you make it up to door number 3, Wayne’s leaning against the doorway.

“Bit early,” he says, uncrossing his arms once you’re near. Puts a hand on your shoulder and squeezes. “Everything okay?”

“Nightmares,” you answer quietly. You curl and uncurl your fists at your sides.

“Come on,” Wayne says after a beat of silence. “He’s in his room. Coffee?”

You shake your head. With one last squeeze of your shoulder. Wayne wanders back inside, and you aim straight for Eddie’s bedroom door. Your fist is up to knock when Eddie opens the door, looking disheveled but extremely awake.

“Hey,” he says airily, out of breath as he pulls his hair back into a low ponytail. “I was about to head out—you weren’t answering your phone so.”

He doesn’t wait for you to say anything or explain before pulling you in and shutting the door behind you. He throws his jacket—leather only, sans denim, as it has been for a few months now—over the back of the chair as his desk.

Nothing much else is said, which is how these nights usually go. Neither of you need to be rehashing what happened in the Upside Down, the earthquake, your constant passing out. Tonight, though, there is one thing that eats at you. Eddie has to nudge you, sitting next to him on his bed beneath the window, to pass the joint over. When you take it, he makes a point to lean forward to try and get a good look at your face.

“Did... did something happen? Before you got here?” he asks, and the concern in his voice twists your gut unpleasantly.

“It’s just—it’s nightmares. You know how it is.” You make a point not to take too deep of a toke of the joint before passing it back over, turning your head to blow the smoke out through the open window.

You can just barely see Eddie narrowing his eyes at you in your periphery. For a second, when he straightens up and leans back against the wall next to you, you think he’s dropped it.

“If it was just nightmares, you would’ve called.”

You snort and look the other way. Again, though, Eddie nudges you to turn around and take the joint. Carefully and, thankfully, not too quickly, he grabs your wrist as you grab the joint.

“Hey. Come on. Talk to me, please.”

Your eyes burn and you can already feel your nose getting red and itchy. Your whole face feels warm. Either to spare you the embarrassment of it or a second, secret reason, Eddie pulls you into his chest and you just start crying.

You’ve dreamt of people dying before. Tons of times. Even before El tore a massive hole through reality in Hawkins. But that—feeling powerless in a situation you know could’ve happened if you hadn’t just been around and stuck your nose where it arguably shouldn’t have been—and seeing Eddie die in a way you just couldn’t help?

That was brutal.

17 July 1986
9:12AM

You have no idea when you fell asleep. Your eyes feel sore and dry, your throat feels strange and your neck hurts. You’re cursorily aware that you’re in Eddie’s room—the smell of weed, incense and whatever cologne he wears usually gives it away.

Very quickly, you realize that you’ve fallen asleep on Eddie’s chest at an awkward angle. You’re both barely sitting up, still leaning back against the wall underneath the window. God, you drool on him. Fuck.

Okay, this is fine. You’ve literally had worse.

You take a deep breath and, as smoothly and quickly as you can, roll off the bed and onto your knees. It’s not graceful, but when you look back, Eddie still seems to be sound asleep. You pray to whatever’s out there that he stays that way until his shirt’s dry.

You tiptoe out of the room and turn the knob before shutting the door behind you. The rest of the apartment is empty, and with how late you heard Wayne ambling about, you’re sure he’s not ready to get up any time soon, either.

By the time you leave, there’s breakfast ready to be reheated in the oven and you’ve left a note on the coffee maker saying to just turn it on.

When you walk outside to your car, though the sun’s been up for a while, the fog still clings to the ground. You sit in your car for a few minutes, staring at the water droplets slowly evaporating on the windshield. When your heart rate has gone back down to something human and manageable, you start the car and head home.

13 August 1986
12:07AM

If you were bubbling with excitement before the concert, now you feel like soda that’s been left out for a few hours. Flat, maybe, but still just as sweet as it was before, if not moreso. You still feel all the enthrallment that you did before and during the concert, but now you feel...

Well, post-concert blues. That satisfied feeling of having witnessed something amazing, but the accompanying sadness and mourning knowing that you’ll never be able to relive this same experience again. It’s come and gone and now all you can do is remember it.

You slap your thighs to bring you out of your own head. This is going to be a good fucking night . Eddie literally bought you tickets to see Judas Priest and drove you both all the way out here. Refused to let you drive for a singular second, too.

“You still that hyped?” Eddie asks, laughing, holding his lighter out to you. You light up your own smoke and laugh.

“Nah, just trying to get my head back in the game. Too much shit rattling around in here.” You tap your head with the lighter before handing it back.  Eddie takes a second before grabbing it, though, and you have to wave your other hand in front of him to snap him out of it.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who’s out of it,” you laugh, bumping his shoulder with yours when he finally takes the damn lighter back.

Quietly, from inside the van, you can hear the opening bars for Wild Nights.

“Yeah, well,” Eddie grunts, crouching down to tie the messy laces of his right shoe. “I’m the one who drove three hours to get here, and had to convince your parents that I wouldn’t murder you and dump your body in the river.”

You can’t help but cackle. You know for a fact that neither of your parents called the Munson household, but you also know that it’s something that they very easily could have done. Looking out at the White river from your little spot at the state park, you open your mouth to say something about how overprotective Wayne can be, but then something catches your eye.

“They literally,” you start, reaching over to pluck the scarf from Eddie’s back pocket. “Did not do that.” You twist the scarf around in your hands a bit before trying to whip it at his ass. You miss horribly and end up snapping the tip of the scarf on his thigh.

You burst out in laughter, full bellied and unrestrained, when Eddie yelps and topples over to the right. You try to apologize and ask if he’s okay, but you doubt that anything intelligible makes it past you wheezing, squeaking laughter.

“Alright, that’s it,” Eddie grumbles, tossing his half-smoke cigarette into the gravel before stalking towards you. He’s clearly not upset, but you make a mad dash for the riverbank anyways.

The toes of your shoes have just barely touched water before Eddie’s arms wrap around your torso and pull you back. You shriek and kick once or twice before letting yourself go limp.

Half an hour later finds you in some park along the 36, hair and clothes still damp and cheeks sore. You’re both sitting in the back of the van, doors open, passing a joint between you and looking out onto the park.

“I like what you’ve done with this old bitch,” you comment, tapping the plush—carpeting? blanket?—that Eddie’s laid down in the back. “Is there a camping mat under this or something?”

Eddie laughs. “Yeah, been going out in the woods after work sometimes just to like... relax, y’know?” You nod; you ran to the woods a lot as a kid, too. “Right, so I kinda made it more comfy to get high in. That’s it.”

When he passes you the joint, you look back at the front where you’d left the scarf. Handkerchief? You’ve had the question in mind ever since March: is he the S or is he the M?

“Seriously?” Eddie balks. “ That’s what’s been on your mind this whole time?”

You turn to look at him and blink owlishly.

“Oh. Oh god, please tell me I didn’t say that out loud.”

Eddie laughs, and it almost sounds a little mean. You can feel the heat creeping up your neck and making its way to your face. Your cheeks itch with it.

“Right, you’re too baked and tired for this,” Eddie declares, and even to your ears he sounds way too composed and, frankly, sober. Though you guess he’s maybe had a bit more time to get used to smoking weed than you have.

“What, no!” You whine, trying to reach across him to snag the joint out of his left hand. Unfortunately, the best that’s done for you is get you splayed across Eddie’s lap once you inevitably lose your balance.  “Fuck you.”

Eddie’s almost unnaturally still beneath you. And you’d look up at him, if you could, but even fucking cooked, you’re very aware that you’re laid across a man’s lap.

Your throat feels too tight when you swallow. You move to brace an arm on Eddie’s thigh to prop yourself up, but his hand on the back of your head has you freezing in place. When the hand starts petting down your head, your neck and your spine, only to start again at the top, you start to go limp. This isn’t so bad.

“Yeah,” Eddie scoffs, and you get the feeling you’ve spoken out loud again. “You would think that.” The embarrassment is enough to make your eyes sting. There’s a beat of silence, and then Eddie leans over to whisper in your ear, “ Good girl .”

You swallow thickly. You had intended to follow-up by asking whether or not Eddie was even interested in the opposite gender. But you suppose that answers that.

There’s a tension in your gut and shoulders that makes you second guess yourself.
You get the words out before you can think too much about it.

“What do I have to do for you to say that again?”

The hand petting you takes its time reaching the bottom of your spine, and then stays there. Warm against your lower back, and just high enough to say he’s not actually touching your ass. Awfully cordial.

“Depends,” Eddie hums, and you hear him take another toke of the joint before crushing the tip of it between his fingers and chucking the extinguished butt somewhere you can’t see. “Why?”

This time, you do prop yourself up, both hands on Eddie’s thigh. If it had been anyone else, the distance between your faces would have been the epitome of discomfort.

“I want you to say it again,” you answer quietly. It’s getting harder to keep your eyes on his and not let them drift down.

“Say what again?” Eddie asks, and you don’t know if you love or hate the shit eating grin on his face. You should have expected this, though; putting you on the spot was part of the whole point, wasn’t it?

“I-I want you to...” you start, but your throat feels too small for the words that are trying to come out. Eddie’s hand at your lower back comes up to rub comforting circles between your shoulder blades. Your face and neck are on fire and everything feels itchy.

“Come on,” Eddie whispers. You realize that you’ve been staring at his mouth, and when you look, he is very much looking down at your mouth. “Won’t laugh. Promise.”

The sigh that leaves you almost surprises you.

“I-I want you to—I want you to call me a good girl. Again. Please.”

The hand between your shoulders makes its way forward to cup your jaw.

“ Good girl ,” Eddie breathes, and it’s like your whole body vibrates, shudders with the satisfaction of it. “Fuck,” he chuckles, swiping his thumb across your cheekbone. “You’re really into that.”

You want to say that you shrugged, but the reality is that the sound that comes out of your mouth couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a whimper.

“Can I—” Eddie starts asking, but you cut him off nearly right away.

“ Yes .”

You would think kissing your childhood best friend, whom you’d lost touch with for several years and had recently gone through several traumatic events with, would be somewhat awkward and clumsy. But, unlike when you were teenagers, you and Eddie both, clearly, had the advantage of some gained experience in the meanwhile.

There’s no chastity in the kiss; from the moment his mouth locks with yours, it’s open-mouthed and breathless. Eddie pulls you closer, helps you sit across his lap properly, and you fist your hands in his shirt. In his brand new Judas Priest shirt. You know he doesn’t even particularly like Turbo, as an album. Almost none of it is his preferred style.

You whine into the kiss, and you chase Eddie’s lips when he pulls away. He helps shift you off his lap and quickly instructs you to move back and lie down. The van is plunged into near pitch-black. You move back until you feel what you think is the back of the driver’s seat. You don’t lie back yet, instead reaching out for Eddie.

Your hand knocks into what’s apparently his arm. His mouth finds your again in the dark as your fingers find their way into his hair. You gasp when Eddie roughly pulls you down, firmly gripping your hips one second and cradling your head to make sure you don’t hit it the next.

“You sure this is fine?” Eddie asks, though his lips are moving down to your neck, teeth nipping at the skin.

“It’s fine, this is fine,” you rush to say, letting your hands wander up under Eddie’s shirt. You’re  sure to keep your touch light when you come across the scars. “This is so fucking fine,” you breathe.

Eddie’s shirt rises with your wandering hands, and he gives you a second to pull it over his head. You have no idea where you toss it and you honestly couldn’t care less. His hands, in return, take the opportunity to make their way under your shirt, and you want to scream. Your entire body feels like a coil being wound tighter.

It’s unfamiliar, how intense it is.
You don’t think you mind.

Eddie knocks your knees open to settle between your legs rather than straddling you, though you’re more preoccupied by your shirt—identical to Eddie’s, because you couldn’t help yourself—being peeled off and thrown into an equally unknowable direction. His hands on your ribs feel like irons smoothing out the trembling wrinkles of them, and the shuddering sigh that you let out makes Eddie chuckle.

“Poor thing,” he laments, one hand at your waist prompting you to arch your back, the other sliding up your back to somehow expertly undo the clasp of your bra. “Been holding out for a while, huh.”

It’s not a question. You twitch, about to bring your hands up to hide your face, but—there’s no real point, is there? In this kind of darkness, it’s not like he’d be able to see how red your face is. You have a feeling he’d reprimand you for trying to hide, anyways.

“Didn’t think you’d wanna look at me,” you breathe into his mouth. Saying it out loud makes it feel silly, especially here and now. You don’t hold it against him when Eddie laughs. You can hear the shock in it.

“We’re both idiots,” he mutters, trailing kisses from the corner of your mouth, down your neck, nipping at the collarbone on the way. He presses his lips to your sternum, hands gliding up your sides to palm at your breasts. Nothing like the fumbling messes of your first adult years; Eddie’s hands are slow and deliberate. He’s not feeling you up for his own sake—though you don’t doubt that it in no small way contributes to the hardening length you feel growing at the junction of your thigh—but for yours. This feels entirely like a massage for your benefit.

To his credit, it’s working. Whatever tension you were holding in your shoulders is slowly melting away under his hands.

His mouth continues its trail down, licking a stripe up your navel before he stops at the button of your shorts. You don’t let him ask, you just unbutton them for him. He doesn’t move until he hears you start to pull at the zipper. He doesn’t leave you time to pull it down all the way before he’s tugging your shorts off like they’ve personally offended him.

The cold air makes you realize he’s taken your underwear with them.
He lightly rests his forehead on your stomach and breathes in. It almost makes you choke.

“God you smell good,” he growls against your skin. While his mouth trails kisses back up your torso, you feel one hand sliding gently up your chest to rest at the base of your throat. The other slides two fingers through your slit.

Eddie groans like he’s in pain.

“I won’t—not here, fuck ,” Eddie mutters, nuzzling between your breasts, and you buck your hips into his hands when one of his slicked fingers finds your clit. “First time we gotta do it right but this, we can—I can give you this,” he whispers, so low you figure he must be talking to himself more than he is to you.

One finger prods at your entrance, and then he’s got two fingers inside of you. The first few pumps, though heaven, don’t do much. But then Eddie curls his fingers, and it’s like he’s a puppeteer who’s pulled on all of your strings all at once. He exhales sharply and sounds entirely too pleased with himself when he speaks.

“There she is,” he whispers, mouthing at the spot on your neck just below your ear. The warmth  makes you shiver and clamp down on his finger. “ Fuck , that’s it.”

Eddie’s hand practically turns into a machine. You don’t think you’ve ever been able to get yourself so close to cumming in less than a minute. The hand at the base of your neck creeps just a little bit higher. When you gasp at the pressure his fingers apply, you have to grab at Eddie’s wrist to keep his hand there.

“You’re perfect,” Eddie sighs, and you can feel more than see him toss his head back. “Fuck, wish I could see your face right now.”

“Next time,” you reply quickly. “ Please , fuck, I’m so close, please please please,” you whine, reaching your other hand down to rub at your clit.

“Holy shit that’s so fucking hot,” Eddie groans, and bites down on your neck, just above where his hand collars it nicely.

The sting is what sends you careening over the edge, cumming with a drawn-out moan. Your hips jerk erratically in spite of yourself, chasing Eddie’s fingers as he fucks you through your orgasm. When your arms go limp, you distantly register the sound of his belt coming undone and the distinct sound of him spitting. There’s a slick sound and it doesn’t take long for you to realize that.

That Eddie Munson is jerking off over your naked body.

“Fucking christ,” you whisper, out of breath, and force yourself to sit up.

“Fuck,” Eddie moans, and you blindly reach out for him. He grabs one of your hands on his chest, laces his fingers tightly through yours. Your other hand, however, makes it down to his, wrapped around and pump his cock.

You shimmy back just enough to be able to lean down to lick the tip.

“Jesus f—I’m gonna,” Eddie chokes out. He doesn’t finish his sentence when you bat his hand away and wrap your lips around the tip of his cock and suck.

You swallow more of him down as he cums, swallowing around him once or twice before he brushes a hand up your forehead and lightly pushes you back and away. You kiss his navel, instead, then his sternum, until he pulls you up with two hands cupping your face, and makes you kiss him , instead.

You didn’t think you’d be turned on by a guy kissing you after you’ve just swallowed his load, but there are apparently a lot of things you’ve yet to discover about yourself.

Carefully, mouths still touching but not quite kissing, Eddie maneuvers you both so that he can lie down on his back, and you can lay your head on his chest.

You throw a leg over his for good measure.

“I’m not moving anymore,” you groan, burrowing your face into his chest.

“Can’t blame ya,” Eddie says, breathless, and you can’t help but laugh.

There’s a moment of silence, and then both of you start laughing. The bouncing of his chest makes it hard to stop laughing. Your gut hurts, your cheeks hurt, and you are entirely too sweaty. You could not care less.

“So,” Eddie starts, once you’ve both been able to calm down and breathe like normal people again. “You mentioned a next time?”

You hum and close your eyes against the darkness in the back of the van.

“Mm, it did not escape my notice that the handcuffs were something you managed to rescue from the trailer,” you mumble, throwing an arm over Eddie’s chest and squeezing.

“...I don’t think I hate the idea of you in chains, actually.”

September 2nd, 1986
7:58AM

You’re woken up entirely too early by your phone ringing. You don’t need to look at the time to know it’s too early; if you can’t hear cars driving around yet, it’s too fucking early .

“Mmn, gmorning, what,” you slur, wedging the phone between your chin and shoulder and rubbing the sleep from your eyes.

“Morning to you too, sunshine,” Eddie greets you brightly, and the warmth that bubbles up in your chest at the sound of his voice feels almost euphoric.

“You’re a weapon,” you say fondly, moving from where you’ve finally wall-mounted the phone to the wall by the fridge and making your way to the kitchen counter, which you promptly hop up on. “Wait,” you whisper, leaning forward to look at the calendar you’ve stuck to the fridge. “It’s September 2nd.”

“Mhm, congratulations, you can correctly identify the date.”

You ignore the snark.

You have entirely forgotten to ask Eddie whether or not he’d been made to repeat his senior year—again—despite everything that had happened over spring break. It felt awkward to ask now, though.

“You, uh,” you stutter instead, trying to find the least offensive way to go about finding out. “You’re calling, uh, early. Special occasion?”

“Of course,” Eddie says haughtily, and you can almost imagine the expression on his face. The kind that says ‘I know something you don’t and I know you’re too much of a coward to ask about it’.

“Come on just say it man,” you plead, letting your head fall back and reaching up to keep the receiver in place.

“My lady, I’m sure I don’t know what you speak of.”

“Fucking dick,” you say under your breath. Take a deep breath, bring your head back up and square your shoulder. “Edward Munson, did they or did they not let you graduate?”

Eddie lets out a bark of laughter so loud you have to pull the receiver away from your ear for a second. His tone and demeanor make you want to believe that he’s finally been cut some slack, but...

You manage to get a single sound out before there’s a knock at your door. You hold the phone away from yourself again, narrow your eyes at it like it’s Eddie in your hands instead of the receiver, and put it back to your ear. You cut off whatever he was saying when you speak again.

“You wouldn’t happen to know why there’s someone knocking on my door at,” you pause, turning to look at the time on the stove. “One past eight in the fucking morning?”

“Dunno, sounds important if it’s this early though,” Eddie replies, a bit too easily, and you sigh.

“Whatever, I’m putting the phone down. Don’t hang up.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

You huff and put the phone down on the counter, making sure it won’t fall off. By the time you make it to your front door, whoever’s there has decided that knocking nonstop is clearly the best way to get your attention.

You honestly should have expected Dustin Henderson at your doorstep at eight in the morning on back to school day. He’s suspiciously got an arm behind his back. You sigh, again, and unlock the deadbolt and undo the latch before opening the door.

“Alright,” you say, one hand on your hip and the other hand held out. “Fork it over.”

“I have no idea—” Dustin starts to say, but the deadpan stare you level at him makes him clear his throat instead. “Right! Here you go.”

“Thank you kindly, now hold up,” you say, holding a finger up and quickly walking over to your fridge to pull a bottle of water out. When you’re halfway back to the door, you call out, “Heads up!” and toss the bottle over.

Dustin barely manages to catch the thing, but doesn’t do so without a comical amount of fumbling.

“Awesome, now that you’ve done your Dungeon Master’s bidding, go the fuck to school, nerd,” you chastise, flicking the bill of Dustin’s cap.

“Man, you’re mean, you know that?”

“Sure, that’s why I’m making sure you’re staying hydrated on that damn bike,” you retort, crossing your arms and leaning against the doorframe. “Go on now, shoo. Go get an education.”

You wait until you can’t see Dustin down the road anymore before closing and locking the door, and wandering back over to the phone.

“Alright,” you say, wedging the receiver under your chin again and tearing open the envelope you’d been handed. “This better be worth it. I was up until 3am and I’m fucking beat.”

Eddie stays quiet, but you can practically feel the frantic energy of him through the phone. You pull the paper—paper s , it’s a whole damn stack of them—and then promptly drop them all on the kitchen floor when you catch the title on the first page.

“Edward,” you start, tone harsh.

“Hey, woah, okay,” Eddie  rushes to start. “Okay, I graduated, right? Like, everyone was let through because of all the bullshit. That’s not really important right now though?”

“Ed,” you start again, lower and calmer. “That thing said ‘Thrasher Records’. I don’t fucking know who they are but there’s fucking record in the name, babe.”

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes. You can hear the face-splitting smile. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it.”

“ What the fuck ,” you whisper, and you know he can hear the smile splitting your face, too.

You don’t change out of your sleep shorts and Judas Priest shirt. You’re at the Munsons’ in just under five minutes—which, yes, is probably a little bit criminally fast, but it’s not like Hopper’s gonna care—only to find out that Edward fucking Munson hadn’t even told his own damn father.

You give your boyfriend just enough shit for him to want to make up for it.