Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Steve presents as an omega at sixteen, his grandfather is the only one who reacts with anything other than disgust or disappointment. Instead, he very stoically presents him with a wrapped parcel at the family Christmas that year with strict instructions to open it when there’s no-one around. 

Inside the wrapping is a small jewelry box about the size of one of his science textbooks from last year. It appears to be made of wood, with a simple starburst design inlaid on the lid. It reminds him of a page from one of his mother’s design magazines, something about decks? Arto Deck? Before he can think too hard about it, his eye catches on a note and a small box tucked inside the larger one.

This was my grandmother’s jewelry box, the note reads. She was a strong omega, just like you. Your father’s quite proud of the Harrington Alpha line, but it’s not quite as long and strong as he would have you think.

Steve stares at the box for a long time before reaching for the clasp with trembling hands. He’s not sure what he’s expecting when he opens it, but the small collection of baubles and shinies that greets him makes his breath catch in his throat. There’s only maybe a dozen pieces, and at least half of them are nothing but play jewelry, but something inside him surges at even this small bounty. Each piece is meticulously sorted into a section of the jewelry box. It’s clearly too big for the meager collection, but the anticipation of filling every slot with shinies of his own is intoxicating.  

It’s probably not quite as illustrious as you would imagine a Harrington Omega’s jewelry box to be, the note continues. But this was before the business really took off, and she treasured every piece. She wanted them passed down to the next Harrington Omega.

Steve smiles, touched beyond all reason as his eyes fall to land on a strikingly luxurious looking collar, studded with what look like real diamonds and sapphires. It’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time. 

I figure maybe you’re too young yet for the weight of an old woman’s jewelry, so I got you a little extra something to start making it yours.

Traditionally, Steve’s parents should have been the ones to give him a legacy jewelry box. Should have been the ones to give him his first set of shinies. But his father had dismissed the idea entirely at dinner just hours before on account of his being an alpha and having no head for such things. His mother had of course gone along with it, turning up her nose at the idea of a man of any designation wearing jewelry. 

Steve’s omega had wailed. Steve himself had stayed silent. 

Inside the smaller box is a simple set of shinies. It’s obviously meant to be a beginner’s set for male omegas, complete with pendant, ring, earrings, and a sturdy bracelet. The settings are all a little thicker than the ones he’s seen in jewelry stores, but the stones and designs are still delicately crafted, the perfect blend of masculine and feminine. 

Steve’s omega wails with joy as he turns his hand to see the rubies sparkle. 

Steve himself starts to cry.      

The day after Christmas, while his parents are still hungover and with a cheeky kiss to his grandfather’s stoically smiling cheek, Steve rushes off to the nearest tattoo parlor to get his ears pierced. 

Hiding the starter studs from his parents is painfully easy since they’re never around to see him anyway.  

He walks into school on the first day of a new year with rubies dangling from his ears and a cameo pendant pulled through the black velvet ribbon he bought with his Christmas money at his throat. He feels like a million bucks, like he’s the King of the World and the King of the School and nothing can touch him. 

And then Tommy takes one look at his earrings and laughs.  

And Carol smirks at the velvet ribbon around his neck. 

They ask him who the lucky alpha is. Snicker to each other about how well he must have put out to deserve rubies and velvet. Make a game of pointing at random alphas in the cafeteria and asking each other “Is it Munson? Do you think the Freak has a Shiny Fund stashed away? Trades joints for jewelry?” or “How about Holloway? Did you let her put you on your knees Stevie boy?”

He’s flushed and stammering by the time the bell rings for fifth period, but not for the reason they think. 

When Carol had come to school after her presentation wearing a silver bangle and a pair of star-shaped studs everyone had been all smiles and compliments, asking where her mom had found the little charms threaded through the silver loop at her wrist. 

Carol, Susan H, Amy B, even Chrissy from a few years below them had gotten nothing but compliments. Is it because it’s been months since his presentation? Is it because he’s a male omega? Is it… because it’s him?

He buys a new chain for his grandmother’s cameo, tucks it beneath his shirt. 

Switches back to the starter studs to keep the holes from closing, styles his hair in a way that hides his ears. 

Tries to ignore the way he wants to cover his fingers in his great-great-great-great-grandmother’s rings and punch Tommy Hagan in his stupid, smarmy face. But he doesn’t, because they’re friends. And at the end of the day, Tommy and Carol did him a favor.

When Nancy Wheeler, a sassy beta with a one-track mind comes around a few years later and decides that track should take a detour through Steve’s heart, he’s able to smile and laugh and almost believe the promises she whispers into his ear in the back of a dark movie theater. She says she can’t afford the kind of shinies Steve deserves, the kind of jewels she’s seen him wear before, the vintage pieces and shiny rubies. 

Steve insists that he doesn’t need that from her. Insists he’ll take anything she’ll give him. Promises that glass and pewter are enough for him if he’s enough for her the way he has every alpha who ever graced his heart with a smile. 

Unlike every other alpha before her, Nancy actually keeps her promises. She gives him a beautiful charm bracelet the first time she helps him during his heat. It’s dainty and gorgeous but Steve much prefers all the ways her mere presence soothes the needy, wailing thing his omega becomes during heat. It’s barely even sexual, for the most part. And it’s still the best heat he’s ever had. 

For their second heat, after Barb and Will and everything turning Upside Down, she gives him an anklet with a small charm, a tiny baseball bat, and Steve gives her his heart.

The heat after that, he’s bullshit, and the feeling of tiny chain links against his skin makes him nauseous. He stops wearing her charm bracelet, tucks the anklet back into it’s black satin bag and pulls the drawstrings viciously tight before tucking both pieces into a corner of his jewelry box.

Nancy seems happy enough with Jonathan, so she’s hardly around enough for the knowing looks and concerned side-eyes to bother him too much. Carol and Tommy make comments and sneer over his suddenly empty wrist but fuck ‘em, they’re assholes. God, he should have dropped them years ago.  

But the pups, with their soft, milky scents, barely notice any change at all. They call him for rides to the arcade after school, dramatically presenting him the kinds of cheap shinies they can trade tickets for or win from those rigged claw machines as if they were priceless treasures won from a great crusade. Steve insists they don’t have to, but he ends up with a small collection of them all the same. 

He wears them to school sometimes, ignoring the comments about how low he must have fallen to trade his attention for tin pendants and stick-on earrings. But it’s all worth it for the way Dustin’s eyes will light up when he wanders into the arcade to round everyone up with a mood ring on every finger and a half-eaten candy necklace sticking out of his mouth.   

A week into his new job at Scoops Ahoy, the appeal of working for his money has well and truly worn off. Fuck his dad, really. Before he’s presented, Richard Harrington had been avid that Steve’s future was already decided, but omegas simply don’t belong in prestigious institutions like Notre Dame or Harrington Interprises. A sports scholarship was right out given that a college team was no place for an omega , and the few universities that allowed his dismal GPA without it were no place for a Harrington . 

Fucking worst of both worlds, if you asked Steve. 

Instead, Steve was taking a “gap year” while Richard Harrington decided just what to do with his fuckup of a son. “I’ll still be paying the bills,” he’d said the day of Steve’s graduation, halfway to the car on the way to another business trip while his mother sat impatiently in the passenger seat. “Can’t have any of those bleeding hearts thinking you’re some Lonely Omega or whatever those crazies write on those signs outside Congress. But I’m halving your allowance.”

And that had been that. 

Steve could easily have lived off a halved allowance, he’s far less high maintenance than his parents like to complain, but that would mean cutting into his gas money, cutting down on the Idiot Fund for when the kids couldn’t rustle up enough quarters to escape from their problems for a few hours. 

So here he was. Minimum wage. Slinging ice cream to grubby-handed children and holier-than-thou adults. Alphas who take one look at his legs in the stupid sailor suit and think they can bully their way in between them. 

It’s miserable, mind-numbing work. But it’s not all bad. 

He passes the gremlins going crazy over an arcade machine on his way into work more days than not. Most days, like today, he’ll wander into the back room of Scoops Ahoy with something new hanging from a strip of leather on his wrist or, like today, a cherry Ring Pop sitting pride of place on his hand.

Robin Buckley, former classmate and current coworker, always gives him shit for coming in with them. 

“I feel like at some point this has to be overcompensating,” she rasps as he adjusts the stupid sailor hat and she makes another mark on the “You Suck” side of the whiteboard in her hands. “Are you trying to make your mystery girl jealous or something? Cause even I can tell your heart isn’t in it. Maybe if you like, tell her how you feel, you can stop failing at flirting and actually get something from her that won’t turn your fingers green. A win-win for all three of us.”

But Steve just sighs. “I’ve told you, Robin, there’s no secret someone, no mystery girl. I’m just. Trying to get back out there.”

Robin hums, eyeing the beautiful cameo at his throat, his ears where a pair of dangling plastic lizards - a gift from Dustin last Christmas to commemorate their bond over finding D’Art - are framed by two pairs of shining stick-on star earrings. As an alpha herself, it’s hard to put into words how absolutely baffling the mixed messages Steve Harrington has been giving off recently are. 

On one hand, he flirts with every cute girl or alpha that comes into their little shop, sending out available signals like his life depends on it and yet. He seems to have a never ending supply of shinies that he rotates through which clearly says, in some way, that he’s taken . But the nature of the shinies - cheap baubles contrasted with rich-old-lady antiques and a surprisingly simple set of rubies - says cheap and expensive , easy-to-please and high-maintenance , and she’s seen first-hand the whiplash effect it’s had on nearly every alpha Steve has tried it on with. 

It’s fascinating to watch.  

Never in her life has she ever been willing to say that liking other female Alphas was in any way easy, but she’d gladly take any female Alpha over whatever hot mess is going down with Hawkins High’s former King Steve “The Hair” Harrington. 

She watches another alpha eye Steve’s ears with interest before dropping to his throat and doing a double take. The poor omega puts up a good fight but damn. 

She draws another mark under “You Suck” and wonders if she should look into buying another white board. 

“Oh.” Steve says, days and years and hours later. Lifetimes, maybe? Sitting on the floor with bile at the back of their throats and fear still coursing through their veins and breaking through their blockers. The bathroom is filled with the sour bite of red wine vinegar and the musty tang of copper pennies. 

“Oh,” he says again, and Robin thinks she may have peed a little. Again. 

“Yeah,” she whispers. 

“Holy shit.”

She… expected more, if she’s honest. The King Steve of her memory certainly had no issues looking down his nose at the freaks and queers among his peasantry. She hadn’t given a damn what King Steve had thought about her back then. But this Steve… 

“Did you OD over there?” She asks, tentative.

“No,” he says, “I just, uh…” she watches him spin a mood ring around his pinky. “I mean, yeah,” he says finally after a deep breath, not quite looking at her. “Tammy Thompson, you know, she’s cute and all but she’s a total dud.”

The indignation is swift and instant. “She is not. She wants to be a singer! She has dreams!”

Steve straightens up, finally. Looks her in the eyes, finally. “Yes, she is,” he insists, “she’s tone-deaf. Have you heard her?” And then he launches into what she’s sure he believes is an accurate impression of Tammy Thompson’s singing voice but damn does he sound like a  fucking muppet.

“You sound like a muppet,” she says through her giggles, delighted at this turn of events.

“ She sounds like a muppet,” Steve insists, copper rings flashing as he waves his hands for emphasis. “She sounds like a muppet giving birth !”

They practically live in each other’s pockets for a few weeks after the Mind Slayer is dead and the dust is cleared, both waking from frantic nightmares looking for the other one, convinced they’re still stuck under the mall.   

She gets it now, why Steve’s shinies send so many mixed signals. He’d shown her, one of the nights they both couldn’t sleep for fear of waking up underground, pulled a beautiful Art Deco jewelry box out of his closet and sat it down on the bed. 

“I got it from my grandfather,” he’d said with affection, lifting the lid gently to display his box of treasures. “My parents didn’t see the need in giving me anything when I presented, but he wanted me to have this, his grandmother’s collection from before the Harrington name meant anything special.” 

She’d recognized some of the pieces, the delicately sculpted cameo pendant and the black velvet ribbon he’d taken to wearing it on when the chain had slipped out of his shirt collar when he’d bent over too far to scoop ice cream, the vintage rings and earrings, a stunning ruby set she’s seen him wear multiple times. 

“My beginner set,” he'd explained. “He wanted me to have a good start, something to make sure other alphas knew what I was already worth.”

And yet, sorted away with the same care as the other pieces was an absolute mountain of the cheapest jewelry she’d ever seen. Mood rings, the clean posts of Ring Pops, plastic pendants, leather cords, copper rings, and foil-backed plastic gems as far as the eye could see. Some of it was even handmade, and she'd recognized the chunk of rose quartz wrapped in copper wire as the one she'd seen him start wearing religiously the day after she met Dustin Henderson. The day after he'd come home from some nerdy summer camp.

“Pups have big hearts,” he'd said, oblivious to the way the gears had started turning in her head, “but very small wallets.” He'd pulled out a string of plastic pearls that were definitely won from a gumball machine and presented it like they were hand-harvested in France. “Dustin gave this to me after the second time we saved the world. Said helping them out and saving their lives made me pack. Said his mother told him pack omegas got shinies.” 

He'd smiled at the hoard and suddenly it had all made sense. The Party, she’d noticed, are like a little flock of ducks. Where one goes, the others are usually following close behind and every single one of them had imprinted on one Steve Harrington. 

“Monkey see, monkey do and all that,” Steve had said, nodding, when she'd pointed it out. “But they’re competitive as hell about it, too. I think they’ve got a tally running on how many pieces each of them have won from that fucking claw machine. Or anything shiny they can get their grubby little hands on, fucking mallards.”

Robin blinked. “I think you mean magpies.” 

Steve tilted his head, “No, I’m pretty sure it’s mallards.” 

God, she thinks, it’s a good thing I love this dingus. 

Robin figures sharing his bed every night for a month after a stint as a Russian prisoner while hopped up on truth serum and baring their souls to each other in the aftermath makes them pack, too. Figures it’s probably the closest she’ll ever be with any omega. Figures that means she should probably do her part, too. 

Their status as platonic soulmates is so well established at this point, she doesn’t even feel bad slipping a small box into his lap when he comes to pick her up for the first day of school. He frowns at it, but she refuses to let him move until he opens it. 

He laughs out loud at the earrings he finds inside, a set of stud earrings she’d made herself by copying an image of Kermit and Miss Piggy onto shrinky dink film and then glued to a pair of plain studs she’d found in her jewelry box.

He immediately tugs the dangling ruby pieces out of his ears, replacing them with Kermit on his left side and Miss Piggy on his right. His smile is practically blinding and Robin finally understands. 

It’s not that Steve is available or taken, cheap or expensive, high maintenance or easy to please. 

He’s simply… loved. 

Chapter Text

Eleven says the gates are closed. The Mind Flayer has been defeated. Hawkins is saved.

Which is nice and all, but Steve will fucking believe it when he sees it at this point. And until then, the bat’s staying in his trunk along with a small stash of lighter fluid and a goddamn fist aid kit. 

Mike rolls his eyes and calls him paranoid when he sees it but fuck Mike. 

And fuck the Upside Down and fuck whoever the fuck this Vecna creep is, too while he’s at it. 

Not even a year later, and they’re back in the thick of it. 

But this time there’s no Hopper around to run interference with the police.

There’s no Eleven to provide much needed mentalist muscle.

Steve is used to doing things on his own, used to being the one the kids turn to when they need help, but he’s not used to being anywhere near in charge of their Upside Down ventures. Fortunately for everyone involved, in the Byers’ absence, Nancy is the next most experienced and she seems to have most things well in hand.

He can’t help frowning after her each time she tries to go off on her own, though. Without Jonathan here, there’s no-one he trusts to watch her back if he’s not there to do it himself. Nancy is pack, and Steve keeps his pack safe. 

Robin is still new to the Upside Down and firmly in the same Must Protect category as the pups. She’s a capable alpha, sure, and nearly a legal adult, but she’s also his platonic soulmate. He’s the reason she got dragged into this mess last year. She’s his responsibility to keep safe. 

But he has to let them go together, has to sit on the ratty couch in the Wheelers’ basement, practically sandwiched between Lucas and Dustin as he swallows the whines that want to erupt from his throat. Because despite how much he needs to protect Nancy and Robin, his instincts are nearly going feral over how far away Max is. 

Honestly, if it weren’t for Dustin practically sitting on him to keep him still, he probably would have gone over there and scruffed her, dragged her back to the couch and built a really shitty nest around her, nuzzled her hair and purred in her ears until she’d relaxed enough to finally let them in. 

He should’ve done that months ago, if he’s honest, should have sat her down in his nest at home and forced her to feel safe but. His pups aren’t really pups anymore. They’re freshmen in high school, too old to be coddled and scruffed the way his instincts insist they need to be and he was… afraid of pushing too hard and pushing them away. Pushing her away.

A thready, pained noise breaks from his clenched teeth. Lucas shifts to lean heavier into his side, and Steve forces himself to breathe through the self hatred that he suddenly can’t avoid. 

Across the room, a chair scrapes against the floor. 

“You can look at me now,” Max says, and hands out envelopes that she insists they don’t open. 

They drive to the trailer park. More letters, more envelopes. 

They drive to the cemetery. Another letter, another envelope.  

Steve tries not to chew his lip to a bloody pulp as he watches Max read the letter to Billy’s headstone. It’s part of why he was so afraid to push, that terrible fear that she might think he was too much like Billy or not enough like Billy or trying to replace Billy. He was so afraid of being told ‘no’ that he never even asked.

“I’m calling it,” he says after she’s been still for a few seconds too long, “she can sue me if she wants but she’s gonna be alive to do it.”

And then there’s screaming, and crying, and Kate Bush, and Lucas barely manages to catch her head before it cracks against the ground. They’re all sobbing, terror and relief mingling into a bone-melting cocktail of emotional mush that has them all pressing closer to Max. 

Teenagers be damned, he thinks. If he turns into the kind of Oma whose kids complain about being overbearing and overprotective than so fucking be it. He’ll take that kind of ribbing, take Mike Wheeler calling him paranoid over this blood-freezing fear any day.  

From now on, none of his pups are being left behind like this again. No more giving them space to find their own way. No more letting them fall a little bit so they can learn to fly. No more letting them figure things out on their own, because apparently they’re all self-sacrificing little shits who learned how to martyr from the best of them. And he knows it’s hypocritical of him to say but it stops right fucking now. 

They can make their own way and learn from their own mistakes when the Upside Down is gone once and for all and their mistakes don’t put them at risk for ritual sacrifice by interdimensional dark wizards. 

Until then, Steve will do as he’s always done. And keep. His pack. Safe.

Steve can’t decide which is more distracting; the pain of lake-burn on his back and arms, the muscle-deep sting of the bat bites, the still-sore bruise around his throat, the way his mind had fuzzed out for just a minute when he’d bitten into the bat thing’s tail and ripped it in half, or the sparkling silver rings on Eddie’s fingers. 

He has no idea who Ozzy Osbourne or Black Sabbath are, but he knows what a compliment sounds like at this point so whatever ‘it was very metal’ means, he’s going to assume it’s a good thing. And focusing on this bizarre conversation is an even better distraction, so he tries to focus on Eddie’s words instead of his fingers. 

“Thanks,” he says, trying to keep the scent of Eddie’s vest out of his mouth. Or more like trying to keep the way Eddie’s scent makes him feel out of his own scent. Because it does, that is, make him feel things. Very nice things, all things considered. There’s the usual notes of musky tobacco and a slightly sour smokey smell Steve decides not to think too hard on. But under that, buried deep in the fabric is the surprisingly crisp and sticky scent of fresh pine and dark maple syrup. 

Surprisingly bright and clear, for an alpha. 

But the more time Steve spends with Eddie, the more true that becomes. 

Surprisingly shy for a man with handcuffs on his wall and a black hanky in his pocket.

Surprisingly willing to follow Nancy’s lead, for an alpha two years her senior.

Surprisingly… brave. Despite being the newest member of the group and a self-proclaimed coward..

Surprisingly talkative for a man with the whole ‘brooding and silent’ aesthetic going on but Steve doesn’t mind. 

“Henderson told me you were a badass,” Eddie continues, skipping and hopping to step around the vines with a flourish that Steve can’t quite keep his eyes away from. “Insisted on the matter in fact.”

“Henderson said that?” Steve says off-hand, trying to focus on stepping around a particularly spindly patch of vines in a way that doesn’t make his sides twinge.

“Oh yeah,” Eddie enthuses. “Shit, man, the kid worships you, dude. Like, you have no idea. It’s kinda annoying, to be honest but I uh, I guess I got a little jealous, Steve.”

Steve frowns, but Eddie continues.

“I guess I just couldn’t accept the fact that Steve Harrington was actually… a good dude.”

Which, fair. But also, ow.

“Rich parents, popular, chicks love him. Not a douche? No way. That, like, flies in the face of all the laws of the known universe,” he cocks his head, “and my own personal Munson doctrine.”

“That so?” Steve hums, supporting Eddie’s elbow as he jumps over a tall tangle of vines. He’s surprisingly limber and lanky for an alpha, but maybe Steve just spent too much time around jocks given that Robin’s built the same way. 

“Oh, totally,” Eddie affirms once his feet are back on the ground. He watches Steve take the far more sensible route around the tangle with a wrinkle in his nose like Steve’s being a spoil-sport. “Here ye, here ye,” he proclaims as they continue forward, sweeping his arms around him. “It is known to all that any person from a royal house upon whom the town’s favor lays shall be, henceforth, a total douche. Unless they be an omega by the name of Stephan Reginald Harrington, henceforward to be known as Defender of All Freaks.”

Steve chuckles at the pronouncement, trying not to stare too hard at the way Eddie’s rings glint in the dim light of the Upside Down as he gesticulates wildly, miming a trumpet call into one of his fists. 

“My middle name isn’t Reginald,” he counters, but Eddie just waves the complaint away with a smile.  

“Still jealous as hell, be the way,” he nearly whispers a few minutes later. “Of all of you, really. Jumping in to save each other, no hesitation. Some alpha I am,” he mutters. “Outside of D&D I am no hero. I see danger and I run the other way.”

Steve frowns, steeling himself with a deep breath that nearly chokes him with how strong Eddie’s scent is but he chooses to blame it on the bites instead. “There’s nothing wrong with running away,” he says, keeping one eye on the vines at their feet and the other on Eddie’s slumped shoulders. “The first time I saw any of this, I turned tail immediately. I was completely ready to run out of the Byers house and leave Nancy and Jonathan to it. They seemed to have had it handled.”

Eddie is silent, visibly hanging off of Steve’s every word. It’s a good feeling. 

“But when I got to my car, and I saw the lights flicker again, I just couldn’t leave them. So I went back, picked up the infamous nail bat and started swinging,” he catches Eddie’s eye with a soft smile, “and I just… haven’t stopped.”

Eddie nods, but Steve isn’t done yet. 

“Knowing when to run away is a good thing. Some fights you aren’t ready for yet, so you have to retreat and regroup before you try again and, well, some fights are better left to a teenage girl with super powers.” Steve chuckles. “And, I mean, you’re here now.”

Eddie smiles, tentative, and Steve feels a rush go through him at how soft it makes the alpha look. “You came back,” he finishes after a thick, syrup-flavored swallow to clear his suddenly dry throat, “that’s what matters.” 

Eddie nods, but whatever he was going to say in response is interrupted by Robin’s raspy voice calling for Nancy as another earthquake trembles across the ground. 

As he runs to catch up to them, he feels the denim of Eddie’s vest rub against the still-sore scratches across his shoulders. Something about the way the sturdy material covers the places he’s already bleeding and shields the vulnerable skin of his throat makes his brain itch . Something scratching against the walls of his skull as his omega stalks back and forth like a caged predator eyeing a meal laying just beyond the bars. Every time the denim of Eddie’s vest brushes against his exposed neck or still-stinging back, it perks its head up in interest. 

The adrenaline, as always, brings his instincts closer to the surface. Those same instincts that had roared and snarled with the need to protect when Billy Hargrove rushed his pups like a hurricane last year has him grumbling in the back of his throat with the need to scruff Dustin like an unruly pup and shake him until he starts making sense . 

“Jesus Christ,” he grits, fighting the urge to snap the air since Dustin isn’t actually there to fit his teeth around. “This kid needs to get his ego in check.”

“It’s his tone, right?” Eddie supplies from around Nancy. The scent of everyone’s annoyance is easy to pick up on, but Eddie’s scent, and even his tone, really, are tempered with a measure of… pride. Understanding. A flush of ‘this pup is ridiculously cocky and it’s gonna get him punched in the face one day, but damn if it isn’t impressive as hell’ that Steve feels flushing through his own body. 

“I know,” he says, somewhat shocked that someone else understands how proud he is of his pup despite how exasperated he is with the teenager he’s become. Subconsciously he’s always known that Dustin was a shoe-in for presenting as an alpha. He’s not as in-your-face about it as Mike is, but the kid’s a natural leader. He’d been worried, months before, when he’d smelled Eddie’s scent on his pups, that the alpha would be a bad influence on them. 

But maybe he was wrong about that. 

He catches Eddie’s eye as Nancy and Robin rush to the garage to get the bikes, and smiles ruefully. Eddie’s eyes light up and the alpha’s face crinkles into a charming, nervous smile in response.

He feels his face heat ever so slightly, tucks his face into his collar and takes a calming breath full of maple and pine. 

Maybe he was wrong about a lot of things. 

The more Max talks about what she’s been going through, the more he wants to build a great big nest and drag her into it, run his tongue over her face and whine and purr and knead at her until she tells him all the things she’s been hiding from him so he can soothe them away. Wants to collapse into a mournful heap over all the things he missed, all the ways he thought he was helping by giving them all space to find themselves as teenagers. But it seems like he’s just failed them instead. 

His omega howls and growls and crashes against the bars of its cage as Max volunteers herself as bait. No, he wants to say. You’re my pup, I keep you safe. 

The War Zone is a hairline fracture that spreads with every forced smile and hidden frown.

“I have this terrible, gnawing feeling,” Robin says, “that it might not work out for us this time.”

Crack. 

They drop off Max, Lucas, and Erica at the Creel House.

Crack. 

He hops through the Trailer Gate, watches them come through one by one.

Crack.

“Don’t try to be cute, or be a hero, or something,” he says.

Crack. Pop.

“Absolutely,” Eddie says, “I mean look at us, we are not heroes.”

Pop. Crack.  

“Hey, Steve?” Eddie calls. “Make him pay.”

Crack…. Crack…… Crack ………

When the vines wrap around his throat for the second time in as many days, something inside Steve finally snaps with a metallic clash and a deafening, animalistic roar. He remembers the taste of black sludge as his fangs ripped into the vines and tore them from around his own throat, hands coming up in claws to do the same to the ones holding his friends, beta and alpha but not… his alpha? Pack. His pack.

Keep them safe.

There’s shouting behind him as he barrels up the stairs, mindlessly tearing at vines and tendrils, spitting black blood from his mouth as his ears keep ringing. His pack is behind him, as it should be, but there’s a predator ahead. And he means to fix that .

Vecna is right where they knew he would be, held up by a number of vines, face slack and serene as he hangs limp. Steve should be scared, should rely on the gun in the beta’s hands and the bombs held in the alpha’s grip but now, well. Now it’s his turn. 

Steve pauses just a moment at the top of the stairs, looks at this monster and thinks just one thing. 

Prey. 

This creature hurt his pups. This creature hurt his pack. 

He catches the barest whiff of alpha scent over the rot of the Upside Down, dust and musk and spider silk and oh, he thinks. He’s going to enjoy this. 

The beta reaches to stop him, but her fingers barely brush his side before he’s taking three vaulting steps across the attic and launching at the beast in the center of the room. He expects to feel resistance, but whatever plan they have in place must be working well because Vecna puts up almost no fight.

By the time the beast has managed to open his eyes, Steve’s jaw is closed around his throat. 

By the time the beast has managed to lift a hand up , Steve’s fangs have ripped down into his jugular and before Vecna can even begin to push him away, Steve pulls . 

He rips a chuck out of Vecna’s neck, turning his head to spit out his mouthful in disgust as Vecna howls below him. 

Another bite crushes the beast’s windpipe and the room dissends back into silence. 

Another bite nearly separates his unseeing head from his now-limp body. But Steve’s a firm believer in third time's the charm. 

He’s panting and spitting, knelt over the dead body of the thing that has been the source of his nightmares for almost four years. 

There’s blood under his hand. But for the first time in four years, it isn’t his.

There’s blood in his teeth. But for the first time in four years, it isn’t his . 

Victory tastes like musty blood and dust and spider silk. 

Victory smells like maple syrup and crushed pine. 

Steve takes a deep breath, luxuriating in the scent of it. Maple and pine and blood. 

Blood?

Steve perks up, sniffing the air and ignoring the way the alpha and beta titter behind him in concern. There’s blood in the air. Tinged with pine and maple. 

Pine and maple. Eddie.  

Blood? Eddie’s blood!  

The omega in Steve surges, growling as he rises to his feet and pounds his way back down the stairs three at a time. Something isn’t right. 

He doesn’t remember the trip back to the trailer, but Robin will tell him later that she and Nancy had had to haul ass on the bicycles to keep up with how fast he was running across the twisted hellscape of the Upside Down. Any attempts to talk to him, ask him what the fuck he was doing, were met snarls and growls and hisses. 

He’s gone feral, and a small part of him knows he’s gone feral and scared of what he’ll do, but an even larger part luxuriates in the feeling of running full tilt toward the scent of blood and wrong. An omega pushed beyond the limits of personal injury and protective instinct into a place of primal, adrenaline fueled rage. 

They make it back in time to see Dustin sobbing over Eddie’s bloody form, but Steve can smell that the blood seeping from his sides is still fresh, can hear that Eddie’s heart is still sluggishly bleeding. Centuries of instinct and evolution tell him that keeping the blood inside Eddie’s body is priority numero uno, so that’s exactly what he does. Eddie’s shirt is shredded to ribbons around his waist so Steve doesn’t even bother with it. He doesn’t have enough time to rip anything into bandages so instead he pulls Eddie’s leather jacket tight around his waist and cinches it closed with both of their belts. 

It’s not a perfect tourniquet, but it barely shifts when Steve lifts Eddie into his arms so it’ll have to do. Jumping through the portal into the trailer is a blur of lights and shouts as Steve stumbles up and over and down onto the mattress but he needs to move . 

He refuses to let go of Eddie long enough to drive so the beta, Nancy , herds him into the backseat and then takes off like a shot. Dustin is seated next to him, supporting Eddie’s feet as the alpha, Robin , chatters nervously from the passenger seat. 

Dustin smells like pain, but Steve can’t scent him well with Eddie in between them, so he whines plaintively to catch the pup’s attention, grumbling in reassurance as Dustin meets his eye. “I’m fine, Steve,” Dustin insists, but it’s a bold faced lie. 

Steve growls a little more forcefully, nuzzling into Eddie’s neck to soothe the alpha back down when the noise alerts him. 

Steve’s eyes bore holes into the side of Dustin’s face the entire way to the ER, but the pup refuses to crack and Steve can’t smother him. Yet. 

When they get to the ER they make it twenty feet before they’re stopped by a nurse who takes one look at Eddie’s face and refuses to admit him. 

Steve sees red. 

A primal, wall-shattering growl bubbles up from the depths of his chest, rattling behind his teeth as he snaps at the nurse and continues forward, growling deeper and deeper with every person who tries to stop him. 

“Sir,” A doctor tries to insist, “he’s a wanted man.”

And Steve is a feral omega whose packmate, whose alpha is injured and bleeding and dying in his arms. 

The sound that leaves Steve’s throat has blood bubbling up between his teeth with the force of it, ripping his throat and vocal chords to pieces. “Treat him,” he booms, blood on his tongue, and finally a nurse steps forward to do just that. 

They take Eddie from his arms and lay him on a gurney, try to take him back but Steve doesn’t trust them not to wheel him back and leave him in a corner so he plants a hand on the bed and follows right along, snapping his bloody teeth at anyone who tries to stop him. 

He stays by Eddie’s side the whole way, lurking in the corner as they operate and refusing to let the alpha out of his sight. The nurses notice his bandages at some point and insist he let them take a look but again, he refuses until they bring another bed into Eddie’s room and sit him up in such a way that his eyes can still track the steady rise and fall of Eddie’s chest. 

Slowly, once the nurses have left and the monitors stay steady, his awareness refocuses and he realizes he’s not alone in the room. Robin is sitting at his side, chair pulled up to the edge of his bed and head resting on the sheets next to his hip. Nancy is slowly pacing the floor just inside the door, occasionally opening it to peak out and relay or receive a message. 

Slowly, the scents of the room filter through and he can finally pick up on more than Eddie’s blood. 

Nancy’s stress is pungent, Robin’s dreams are good for once, his own mulled wine scent is all bitter citrus and burning cinnamon. 

The door opens again and Steve gets a whiff of the person outside. 

It’s Mike, and clinging to him are the pleasantly surprising scents of El and the Byers. His omega perks up in joy for just a moment before another coppery growl rattles through his chest. Lingering on the edges of Mike’s scent is pain . 

Eleven’s pain.

Mike’s pain.

Dustin’s pain.

Lucas’s pain.

Max’s pain. 

Max’s blood .

And just like that, his omega surges again, the bars of its cage still broken open and jagged.

He tries to get up and get to Max, soothe her pain and lick her wounds and wipe away her blood and her tears, oh god her tears, no no no not his pups . His pups are in pain and he’s not there. He’s not there, he needs to be there for his pups! Where are his pups!?

His growling turns to whimpers as he shakes apart, strains against the hands that come to hold him back as voices shout around him, some near and some far. 

“Steve you need to calm down,” someone says into his ear, and the scent says alpha but not his alpha, but he doesn’t need his alpha right now he needs-

“My pups,” he says, and his voice is like sandpaper and his throat clicks around a swallow as another whine rips from his throat. “My pups,” he repeats and the hands voices change and oh- oh- oh-

“My pups,” he says, as soft, milky pup scents wash over him. Nowadays, as they get closer to their presentation, notes of their future scents have been lurking in the corners. There’s Dustin, with his hints of peppermint and Lucas’s clean leather scent. Mike’s spicy chili notes and Will’s woodsy myrrh. Eleven’s buttery scent and Max’s…. Max’s…. 

Where was Max?

Max was in pain. Where was Max?

Steve buries his face into Dustin’s hair and wails . 

His pup. Max.    

She’s gone. She’s gone. He was too late.  

Max. 

Something soft and warm is pressed against his face and oh. Oh. There it is. Max’s bright berry scent notes, sleepy and confused but not hurt. No pain. 

No pain. 

Max.

He lets the wave of adrenaline crash over him and take him deep as the soft scents of his pups pull him under, purring like a thunderstorm as the world fades to black. 

His pups are safe. 

No pain .

Chapter Text

“You’re a fucking genius,” Robin whispers to Nancy once they’re certain Steve is finally deep asleep. One by one the pups slowly extract themselves from the puppy pile that had formed on Steve’s hospital bed, save for Dustin who stays nestled against Steve’s side, fast asleep. Hoarse grumbles erupting from his throat in response to Steve’s purrs, the beginnings of his alpha cords coming in.

As the others pass, Nancy rubs them down with another washcloth, ruffling through their hair and over their necks and wrists before dropping the now scent-soaked cloths back onto the bed near Steve’s face. He nuzzles into them with a soft huff, hands kneading absently at the sheets and Dustin’s hair as his purrs kick up again.  

“Should’ve thought of it before,” Nancy grumbles, rubbing harshly through her own hair with another cloth once she’s run out of pups. “What goes up must come down, should’ve known Steve would crash like a motherfucker.”

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Robin waves away, ducking down and only wincing slightly as Nancy rubs the cloth through her own hair. She draws the line at letting Nancy’s anxiety-heavy hands anywhere near Eddie, though. 

As she gently wipes another cloth over Eddie’s neck and hair, Nancy begins to pace once more. 

“Will he be alright?” Eleven asks. Lucas has returned to Max’s room next door, afraid of what would happen if she woke up without someone there, but Mike and El and Will stay lingering in the corner. Robin wouldn’t be surprised if this latest Upside Down adventure and Steve’s feral episode doesn’t push them all into presenting in the next few weeks. The veil of their milky pup scents has been fading fast as more and more of their true scents break through ahead of their presentations. 

Already, Mike’s spicy chili notes are taking on a hint of chocolate, competing with the nutty musk of walnuts mingling with the buttery maple of Eleven’s scent. Robin would be surprised if they aren’t both alphas, but she’s learned a thing or two about underestimating Wheeler Betas in the past two years. 

Will, on the other hand, is practically blooming with the scent of soft lilies and woodsy myrrh. Gentle, but undeniably present and engaged, just as vibrant as his friends. Omega through and through. Robin can’t wait.   

“He’ll be fine after a while,” Robin consoles as she tucks the Eddie-scented cloth in between Dustin and Steve and smiles as they both relax, nuzzling closer to the source of the scent. 

“A feral episode is really just an adrenaline spike that goes so high so fast the human brain can’t cope and shuts down,” Nancy says as she continues pacing back and forth, “allowing for more primal instincts to take over.”

“But what goes up…” Robin repeats. 

“…must come down,” El finishes. 

“So he’s in shock, a crazy adrenaline crash.” Nancy picks up again. “The doctors say he Dropped, and without his pack it’s going to be a nightmare to get him regulated again.”

Which. Huh. 

Robin pauses, chancing a glance at the tweens lingering in the corner to see if they’re just as confused as she is, which, yep, nope, those are definitely some Puzzled Faces going on over there. What the hell?

“What the hell are you talking about, Nance?” Mike asks, face screwed up in a judgemental sneer, like he can’t quite decide whether to be angry or concerned about Nancy’s words. “He’s got a pack.”

Nancy waves her hands, “I know that,” she says. “And you know that, but the doctors…”

She sighs. “I’m worried the doctors won’t let us stay with him past visiting hours,” she admits. “I’m worried that they won’t accept that the pups are the core of Steve’s pack and that he needs them here and if they aren’t here then…”

“Then he won’t get better,” Eleven finishes, brutally solemn and earnest. 

“Why wouldn’t they let us stay?” Mike asks, “we’re pack, they have to let us stay.”

“Hospital policy,” a voice supplies from the doorway, a nurse by the look of it who bustles into the room and over to Steve’s side to check his vitals, no doubt responding to the alert in the machines from Steve’s prior panic. She wrinkles her nose at the lingering scent of distressed omega but nods in satisfaction at the scented cloths clustered around Steve’s bed. “Unpresented pups aren’t usually allowed to stay past visiting hours because they’re not usually considered next of kin, even if they are in the same pack.”

The statement is met with immediate objection but the nurse continues. “ However ,” she says, loud and pointed. “Given the severity of the Feral Episode and subsequent Drop, the hospital is allowing any member of Mr. Harrington’s pack to remain at his side as long as is needed to keep him stable for the next 48 hours or until he comes Up enough to be released.”

The air goes out of the room immediately, and Robin almost staggers with the relief of it all. 

“Now,” the nurse continues. “We weren’t able to get ahold of Mr. Harrington’s parents but since he’s over 18, do any of you know how to reach his pack alpha?”

Robin looks at Nancy and meekly raises her hand like she’s back in class. “I think I’m technically pack alpha,” she starts and then can’t stop , “but, like, only because I’m the only actually presented alpha in the pack right now. Except, like, Hopper and I guess, like, Eddie now, but Hopper’s… dead and also Hopper , and Eddie is still new so we’ll have to figure that out eventually I guess but even then I’m still probably pack alpha since I’m so close to Steve. Platonic soulmates, you know? But even then, Steve’s pretty certain once Dustin presents he’ll give me a run for my money for the spot so we’ll see when that happens but yeah. What was the question? Oh, yeah, in the pack. I’m an alpha. So I’m pack alpha? No wait, that sounded like a question. Yes. I am pack alpha.”

Nancy looks shell shocked. The nurse looks concerned.

Which is. Probably not good. 

Oops.

The doctors are confident that Steve should wake up within the next 24 hours, but warn her that he’ll probably be groggy and needy for another few days after that as his hormones level off again. His sides needed a few stitches which should come out in a week. They recommend a soft diet to help his throat and neck heal quickly, and advise that he refrain from speaking too much in the coming days to prevent the scabs near his vocal chords from opening up. 

They ask about the cause of his injuries and Robin sticks to the cover story as best she can in her frazzled state, rattling off the facts that Nancy and Dustin had managed to cram into her hamster wheel of a brain. 

Eddie, they say, is another story entirely, and one they can’t tell until his next of kin Mr. Wayne Munson arrives. 

But with the phone lines being down and no one really knowing where exactly the government grunts had relocated him to after they discovered the gate opening up in his ceiling, that might take a bit longer than anyone would really like. 

But seeing as there’s no way Robin is leaving Steve’s side for the foreseeable future, that’s not really a problem. What is a problem is the way Steve starts to grumble a few hours later, not quite awake yet but conscious enough to voice his displeasure. 

“Wher’sit?” he mumbles into Dustin’s hair, his voice still rough and gravelly from being choked twice and his stunt in the lobby. He distracts himself for a moment, nuzzling into Dustin with a satisfied purr and audible sniffs.  

“Where’s what?” Robin asks, standing up to be closer to his line of sight so he doesn’t jostle Dustin too badly. “What do you need, Stevie?”

“Mmm,” he hums, turning his head and snuffling around him, bringing up his one free arm to pat around his head before he finds the cloth covered in Eddie’s scent. He runs his fingers over it and frowns, chuffing in displeasure. “S’not it,” he murmurs to himself. “Wher’sit? Need it. Safe.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Stevie,” Robin tries, glancing around the room to see if there’s any clues lying about but she doesn’t- oh. Oh . 

The nurses had released Steve’s things to her once they’d changed him into a hospital gown with the idea that giving him back the various shinies he’d been wearing would be a comfort to him. The clear plastic bag is still sitting in the chair next to hers. There’s no shinies left in the bag by now, but she gets the feeling that’s not what Steve’s asking for. 

She nearly rips the cheap vinyl in her haste to open it and retrieve the denim vest Steve had been wearing non-stop for the past day. It’s grimy from Upside Down particles and rusty red from Steve’s blood, not to mention whatever grime Eddie Munson encountered in Reefer Rick’s boathouse, but it still smells like Eddie underneath the more recent notes of Steve. 

And, when she gently lays it next to Steve in the hospital bed, the omega practically swoons over the heavy material, dragging it closer to his pillow so he can tuck it into his neck and rub his cheek against the worn denim with a hearty, throat crackling purr. 

Robin shoves a fist in her mouth to smother the urge to squeal at how cute Steve is, and that’s the picture that Wayne Munson walks in on, pausing just a moment in apparent confusion before his eyes catch on Eddie’s prone form and he hustles into the hospital room and to his nephew’s bedside. 

“Eddie,” he whispers, relieved and heartbroken. 

Robin tries to give the older man a moment, focusing on Steve’s slightly rattly breathing and the little whistling snore that Dustin lets out on every other breath. 

She looks over when she hears him clear his throat pointedly. He meets her eyes and then turns his gaze to Steve with something assessing, almost wary in the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t speak for a long time, and Robin knows if she tries to break this awkward silence there’s no way she’ll be able to stop herself. 

“I hear,” Wayne starts, “that my boy would’ve bled out in the lobby of this fine hospital if it weren’t for that omega over there goin’ near feral over it.”

Robin nods. “He, uh,” she begins, making a conscious effort not to let her mouth get away from her brain just this once. “He was, kind of, already feral when we uh, when we came in ‘cause of, uh…” she trails off, suddenly unsure of just how much Wayne Munson knows and how much he would believe. 

“It was Creel, wudd’n it?”

Oh thank god. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah it was, uh, the same thing that killed the Creel family.” She looks up at him, eyes darting across his haggard face as she struggles to make eye contact. “You were right.”

“He almost got my boy, too, did’n he?”

“Um,” Robin falters. “Uh, yeah, I mean, you could… you could say that? But it was less Creel and more, uh, more of an animal attack that got Eddie but, um, Mr. Munson I’ll be honest with you I don’t know just how much of this craziness you’d be willing to believe unless you heard it from Eddie himself and, uh, I’ll be honest Eddie would probably tell the story a lot better because he was actually there and I was, well, we were sort of. Doing something similar somewhere else but like, still in the same. Like. Area? Uh,” she trails off again. Dammit her mouth definitely ran away from her. 

“Mr. Munson,” a new voice supplies, and Robin nearly jumps as Dustin shifts so he’s slightly more upright and looking at Wayne Munson. “Eddie saved all our lives.”

Wayne nods, smile creeping like vibrant moss across his granite face. “There’s not a whole lot about the past week that’s made a lick of sense but,” he smiles, “that sounds like my boy alright.”

Dustin smiles. “Saving him was the least we could do,” he continues, “and, uh, you don’t know Steve but he’s got a whole Thing about keeping people safe.”

Robin nods enthusiastically. “Total hero complex, this one.”

Wayne chuckles, nodding along. “I see,” he says, “well then, it’s no wonder he gets along with my boy, then. Birds of a feather, I’d say.”

“He’d be pleased to hear that, sir,” Dustin says. “He was… Eddie was so scared, the whole time. Kept calling himself a coward who only ever ran away but you know him, sir. If Eddie wanted to run he could’ve been in Chicago days ago. But he kept coming back, kept fighting.”

Wayne nods, wry smile on his face as he finally collapses into the chair nearest Eddie’s bedside, reaching out to tuck an errant curl behind his nephew’s ear and cup his pale cheek. “My boy won’t ever be a brawler,” he says with a conspiratory smile towards Dustin, “he ain’t built that way, never has been. But he ain’t no coward neither, and I’m just glad he,” Wayne takes a deep breath.

“My boy coulda dropped outta high school years ago. Coulda cut ties with this town, got his GED and ran off to find his fortune wherever it pleased him. But he stayed. Said his old man never finished high school, and he’s bound and determined not to end up like my no good brother. He fought that system and lost and got back up the next school year to fight it again. He ain’t a brawler, my boy. But he’ll fight when he’s got somethin’ worth fightin’ for.”

Wayne looks over at Dustin, flits his gaze over Steve and Robin and the open door where the faint sound of Mike’s nasally voice can be heard complaining about something to Nancy. “I’m just glad he finally found people willin’ to fight for him, too.”

Robin nods, a little overwhelmed, but she’s saved from having to break the moment by Nancy appearing in the door. She’s obviously taken the opportunity to shower and change, but her hair is slightly frizzy from air-drying. In her hands are bags that Robin assumes hold the changes of clothes she’d run to go get for Steve, Dustin, and Robin herself. 

There’s also an angular, distinctly not-clothing shaped object in one of the bags, but Robin has a good idea what it could be. 

“Oh,” Nancy says, distracted as she gently deposits the bags into the seat next to Robin. “Hello again, Mr. Munson, I’m glad they managed to get a hold of you.”

Wayne Munson nods, eyeing Nancy only somewhat distrustfully. “Nice to see you again too, Ms. Wheeler,” he says.

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” Nancy continues, turning to face Wayne and adjusting her top from where the bags had pulled her sleeve out of alignment. “There’s a government agent in the hall, making the rounds, and before they get here with the papers-”

“Now, I told you Ms. Wheeler, I’m not talkin’ to no more reporters,” Wayne interrupts but Nancy simply changes course. 

“Apologies, Mr. Munson,” she says, “poor choice of words. Not papers like newspapers, papers like NDAs. They’re gonna want you and Eddie to sign some things, promise not to tell anyone about the things you know.”

Wayne blinks. “Ms. Wheeler, I can assure you I don’t know much of anything other than what I already told you.”

Nancy nods. “I know, Mr. Munson,” she says, stepping across the room to sit in a chair near Wayne but not right next to him. “Which is why I’m going to tell you everything , so you can know what, exactly, you’re promising to keep secret and who, exactly, you’re going to be protecting by doing so.”

Wayne Munson, a blue collar kind of man who works third shift at the plant on the other side of town has no love for this kind of nonsense. Knows enough about powerful people to know that if the US government wants him silent he’ll sign that paper or they’ll make him silent. 

But the story Ms. Wheeler lays out for him, the horrors and triumphs that had been going on in this town for years under everyone’s nose. Well, it’s a hell of a story for certain, and one that he has no issue keeping to himself if only because who in the hell would ever believe him? 

But he’ll keep it to himself not because no one would believe him. And he’ll sign that paper not because he has no other choice. 

He’ll keep it secret. He’ll sign those papers. 

He’ll keep that little girl safe. 

“And,” Nancy adds, once she’s finally finished the tale, “they probably won’t offer you much the first time, but we’ve worn them down when it comes to negotiating for better deals. If we push them enough, we can usually get them to cover our medical bills plus a sizable payoff for emotional distress. If you want someone in there while they go over it, I can be there.”

“You should get them to pay for a new trailer, or a whole house if you want one,” Dustin supplies. “Tell them to cover the taxes on it for the next few… decades or so.”

Robin chuckles. “I think Joyce and Hopper worked it out that all the kids have massive college funds by now, but I’m terrified to know what Erica bullied them into giving her this time around.”

Wayne smiles as they continue to talk amongst themselves, tuning them out in favor of the soft rise and fall of Eddie’s breath and the calm beeping of his heart monitor. 

Yeah, he’ll keep that little girl safe. 

But a double-wide with a patio does sound nice. 

The agents come for him about half an hour later, just as Ms. Wheeler promised. Wayne Munson ain’t too far up his own ass not to accept help from the nosy young beta, but this is something he needs to do on his own.

The agents are everything and nothing like he imagined, dressed in very formally starched business casual clothing and walking with the kind of military posture that took him nearly two decades to undo from his own spine.

“Mr. Munson,” the woman in charge says with a tone he’s sure she thinks sounds sympathetic as they escort him down the hall, “I was glad to hear that your nephew was found.”

Wayne hums, eyes tracking the exits and entrances and they turn a corner down another empty hallway. There was a major natural - or unnatural, if you prefer - disaster just a few days ago. There should be nurses and doctors running every which way and patients streaming in and out of the empty rooms. The fact that an entire hallway has been reserved for the half-dozen injured kids says more about how serious this is than anything coming out of the woman’s mouth.

And then they open the door.

And Wayne Munson comes face to face with a ghost.

He’d never much hung out with Jim Hopper when they was both kids. Hop had been a few years younger than Wayne, and a little more clean behind the ears for all that they both hid the same kind of bruises under their clothes. 

He probably never woulda known Jim Hopper as anything other than the police chief who was needlessly kind to his nephew if it weren’t for the way pain recognized pain. They’d both left things behind in jungles halfway across the world, had things taken from them by the people higher up the ladder who took a sick kinda pleasure in having boys like them under their heel. 

Neither of them ever came out and said anything about it, and really what was there to say? All of Wayne’s losses went up in a singular, glorious blaze on a beach whose name his Southern mouth could never hope to pronounce while Jim had come home with hope only to watch it die a slow and painful death on the toxic soil of the good old US of A. 

Eddie had brought joy back into Wayne’s life, pulled him slowly and surely out of the bottle so he could be the kind of positive influence the kid needed when he’d come to Hawkins with a too-light duffle and a buzzed and still-scabbed head.

Wayne doesn’t know what to say, eyes flying over Jim Hopper’s still-scabbed face, the buzzed brown locks of the little girl tucked into his side. Eleven, he’d bet the farm on it. 

“Hey, Munson,” Hopper says as Wayne nearly collapses into the seat left open for him at the table, the agents having already settled while Wayne had reeled. “Seems like your boy’s gotten himself into a bit of trouble, huh?”

Wayne laughs, because what the hell else is he supposed to do? How the hell else is he supposed to respond to such a massive fucking understatement?

Hopper chuckles along with him, and the girl lets out a few soft, nervous giggles of her own, but the agents are unmoved. Typical. 

“You could say that again,” Wayne finally relents. “But I get the feeling it wasn’t his fault this time,” and he means it as a dig towards the agents who - if he understood the story correctly - were supposed to be the ones keeping everything contained, but the little girl flinches ever so slightly. 

“No, sugar,” Wayne immediately softens, lowering his shoulders as he tilts his head to look her in the face, “it’s not your fault either. You was just doing your best, I don’t blame you one bit and I’m sure my Ed don’t neither and he’ll tell you so once he’s awake to do so.”

Eleven seems unsure of this, and she reminds him so much of when Eddie first came to him, a slip of a thing full of fear and anger, a feral little alley cat who didn’t know what to do with the hand that fed him so he lashed out. Wayne looks up and it’s like looking in a mirror through time, a look he recognizes from his own face painted across Jim Hopper’s. 

“Knowing Eddie Munson,” Hopper says, “he’ll probably write a whole ode to your greatness, El. Probably have to sedate him again to get him to stop talking.”

Wayne nods seriously when El looks to him for confirmation before bursting into more giggles, relaxing ever so slightly against Hopper’s side. It’s a fucking beautiful moment, but, as always, it’s interrupted by a stately clearing of the throat. 

“Yes,” the woman agent says, “well, touching as the idea may be, there’s still the question of how exactly we plan to explain your nephew’s involvement in this.”

“My boy didn’t do nothing,” Wayne immediately protests. “You know it, I know it, and I’ll not take kindly to any kind of attempt to blame him for your fuck up.”

The agents shift nervously with pinched faces. Wayne Munson nearly levitates with how quickly he stands up. 

“You’ve got to be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” he bellows, well able to put two and two together to get four. “You’re really going to sit here and tell me that you’ll let my nephew, my boy, take the blame for a serial killer that you created? ” 

“It’s the easiest solution,” an agent interjects, “but we’re willing to offer you both new identities and a relocation. Similar to witness protection. It would be in both of our best inter-”

“Fuck your best interest!” Wayne shouts, wheeling around to look each agent in their smarmy little eyes. “And don’t pretend like you’re doing this for any reason other than covering your own asses. If you want me to help you, pretend I don’t know exactly what you slimy fuckers allowed to happen to that girl,” he gestures to Eleven, “and dozens like her, and god knows how many other children in this cursed town, then you’re gonna fucking well make it worth my while.”

Wayne takes a breath before sitting heavily back in his seat.  

“You don’t understand the gravity of the situation, Mr. Munson,” the lady agent says, like he’s a fucking child who don’t understand why he can’t have cake for dinner. “You don’t understand just how much you risk losing if you don’t work with us.”

Wayne looks at her, and her sharp-cut hair and her perfectly done make-up, the starched lines of her suit still flawless. He snorts. 

“You know what I think, ma’am?” he says. “I think that you don’t know just how little I have to lose. I think you don’t know just how much I’ve already lost because of ya’ll.” He leans forward, pointing over his shoulder back towards the hospital room they escorted him out of less than an hour ago. “That boy in there? The boy you almost got killed, the one you want to frame for murder so you don’t have to face the consequences of your own actions? That boy is my boy . That boy is worth more to me than a government payout and a shiny new job in fucking Who Cares, Montana.”

Wayne leans closer, dropping his hand to lean up on his elbows. “And if I let you blame my boy,” he says, low and slow and with just a hint of growl, “If I allow you to let this town think he’s a serial murderer who killed three people in ritual sacrifice and drag him away to live a silent life of hiding and fear and guilt and shame,” Wayne trails off. 

“That boy, my boy, will die inside. A slow and painful death. My boy, for all his chains and metal and scary faces, may look dangerous, but he’s a soft little thing on the inside,” Wayne leans back. “And if you let him take the fall for these murders, you’ll be killing him too.”

There’s a moment of silence as Wayne stares down the agents, but he’s interrupted by a soft sound. He looks over to see Eleven sniffling ever so softly as she hides her face in Hopper’s shoulder, his large hand cradled protectively over her head. Hopper nods when their eyes meet, before turning to the agents with a smug look on his face. 

“I told you dipshits he wouldn’t go for it,” Hopper says, slow and proud like he’s rubbing their noses in it. He shifts just enough to liberate a slip of paper from his pocket without jostling the girl still-pressed into his shoulder.  

“Now,” Hopper says, “let’s talk actual plans for clearing Eddie Munson’s name without ruffling too many of your stupid bureaucratic feathers.” He flicks the paper a few times to undo the folds before sliding it onto the table for the agents to look over.

“The munchkins have ideas .”

When the agents come to talk to Wayne, Nancy is called away by a nurse who has more questions about how to get in contact with their families. No one had been home when she’d gone to fetch everyone a change of clothes, likely out searching for their children. With the phone lines still down there was no telling when they would be able to contact anyone’s parents but, if she was honest, Robin was less concerned with that and more concerned about the omega that’s been left in her care.  

Robin turns to the suspicious bag and very gently removes a very familiar box. Steve’s jewelry box. 

“Holy shit,” Dustin whispers, “is that Steve’s?”

Robin nods, clearing a little area on the bed next to Steve’s legs so she can set it down gently and open it up. “I told Nancy to bring it over when she brought his clothes. He was wearing a few of his favorite pieces already, but I know he’d feel a lot better with more.”

Dustin nods, peaking into the box and snagging a simple leather cord with a blue glass pendant. “This one,” he says. “It was the first shiny El gave him. We were using it as treasure during a one-shot campaign with the girls and instead of returning it to the king, she gave it to Steve. I thought he was gonna cry.” He snorts. “I thought Mike was gonna cry with how angry he was over trying to appease the kind without the treasure.”

Robin understands some of those words, but gestures for Dustin to go ahead. Steve’s neck is still bandaged, so Dustin wraps the cord twice around Steve’s wrist instead. 

She considers doing the same, but she figures just one necklace should be fine. Robin picks out the long chain fairly easily and slips the cameo pendant and slightly soggy velvet ribbon from the pocket she’d stashed both in when Steve had handed them before jumping into Lovers Lake when she’d, rather prophetically, called it a choking hazard.

The ribbon is probably toast by now, but she lays it out to dry before feeding the cameo pendant onto the long chain and then gently looping it around Steve’s neck. 

Between the two of them, they load up Steve’s wrists with bracelets and his fingers with rings, physical weights to remind the omega that he is loved and cared for as he comes up from his drop.

Chapter Text

Wayne Munson leaves that little pow-wow feeling lighter than air and heavier than his old bones can handle. A strange feeling to match a fucking batshit insane day, but his Eddie is alive and that’s all that matters. 

Wayne eases open the door, casting his eyes around the room before he fully announces himself. It’s much the same as he left it, a fairly standard two-bed hospital room. Theoretically it can be divided for privacy using the curtain tracks criss-crossing the ceiling, but they’ve been pulled back, leaving the entire room open. 

His eyes land first on his nephew, still sleeping peacefully as the monitors continue their steady rhythm. He can imagine Eddie’s musician fingers restlessly pressing out a guitar solo to match the rhythm, can easily guess that the steady beeping will drive his nephew crazy once he’s awake to hear it. The thought makes him snort, amusement dancing in his head as he turns to take in the other bed. 

Wayne’s no medical doctor, but he’s fairly certain under normal circumstances alphas and omegas aren’t supposed to share a hospital room. But, Wayne is slowly learning, the omega that tore his vocal chords to shreds growling over his Eddie is a far cry from normal. 

In more ways than one, it seems. 

It takes Wayne a moment to realize what, exactly, he’s looking at, because it’s just so… incongruous with the omega he expected Richard Harrington’s son to turn into. He’s nuzzling a pup, for one thing, though he’s less surprised by that and more surprised by the denim vest he’s also nuzzling. 

Wayne knows that vest. Helped stitch some of the patches on that vest. Got into arguments with Eddie about washing that vest. But Steve Harrington presses his cheek against the fabric like it’s cashmere. Well, damn. Alright.

Wayne shakes his head ruefully, but pauses. Because Eddie’s vest isn’t the only thing pressed into Steve Harrington’s skin. Lining his wrists and fingers are… shinies. 

Wayne expected Steve Harrington to be covered in shinies, that’s not the surprising thing. 

It’s… well, it’s not the kind of shinies Wayne expected. There’s rubies dangling from his ears, sure, but they’re framed by miniature hand-drawn portraits of muppets, and pressed up the shell of his ear are a mismatch of shiny stick-on sequin earrings like his Eddie used to buy to lay on his mama’s grave. 

And the more Wayne looks, the more the pattern continues. The rubies still gleam at his ears, clearly a well loved set, but the rings that decorate his fingers and the bracelets and necklaces looped around his wrists are… well. 

Something to think about. 

The female alpha, Robin, Wayne thinks her name was, rouses as he closes the door behind him. She startles awake, looking frantically around the room before she settles. “All good?”

Wayne hums in assent as she cracks her jaw on a yawn that makes Wayne realize just how heavy his own eyes are. He tries to step lightly on his way over to the chair by Eddie’s bedside, ready to lay his head next to his nephew’s hip and sleep for a week. 

“Oh, ew, Stevie,” Robin says, so soft Wayne barely hears it. He glances up over Eddie’s blanket covered lap to see the alpha wrestling something away from the omega’s mouth. “Come on, Stevie, let go, you can’t chew on that, it’s not yours.”

The omega whines as whatever it is is finally removed from his mouth and Wayne nearly loses it to see the shine of one of Eddie’s silver band pins clutched in the alpha’s hands as she sets it down on the hospital table beside the bed. 

The omega whines like he’s been shot.

“I know,” Robin soothes as she undoes the other pins on the vest, just in case, setting them on the table as well, “I know, but you can’t Stevie. Gimme a second.”

A suspicious pause, and then, “No, Stevie! No! Do not suck on that vest, you know where it’s been! Oh my god you’re going to get fucking rabies , I swear just wait five seconds!”

She opens one of the bags next to her, one with a suspiciously box-like lump pushing against the fabric and fiddles for a moment before returning with what looks like a leather cord with a chunky piece of tumbled rose quartz threaded through it. “Here,” she says. “It’s the one Dustin made at summer camp. Remember? Just for you! Wouldn’t you like to chew on this instead of Eddie’s vest? Hm?”

The omega whines again in a distinctly ‘no, but I’ll take what I can get’ kind of way, but trills happily once the pendant of the necklace is tucked behind his teeth. There’s a few disturbing clacks from the omega’s teeth against the stone and metal fastener before he falls back into silence. 

Well, Wayne thinks as he settles back against Eddie’s hip. 

Something to think about.

Max knows that she should be awake already. When she was admitted, all of the scans and tests were fairly conclusive. Two destroyed arms, one destroyed leg, but her brain activity had been completely within the realm of expectation. “Her body is just healing,” the doctors say, because of course she can still hear some of the things going on around her comatose body, “she’ll wake when she’s ready but we’re not concerned.”

“It’s weird,” she says, “to be able to hear them talking about me out there.”

Because the doctors aren’t exactly right when they say her brain is fine. 

Having a serial murderer run amok in your psyche for a few hours would scramble anyone’s brain, but to then have an epic showdown between herself, said murderer, and her psychic bestfriend… well, that’s taking some time to sort out. 

“It is even weirder,” Eleven says, “that you can see and hear me in here. That is not normal.”

Max hums, turning to look at the somewhat wispy outline of said psychic best friend as they lay sprawled on the floor of Hawkins Middle School, done up a la the Snow Ball ‘84. With her mind still in disarray, this is still the safest place to be. “So you usually just… watch? Nobody notices you?”

Eleven hums, her fingers up as she concentrates on repairing the damage done to this mindscape by Vecna. “Not usually, no,” she says as the streamers regain their luster and reattach to the supports in the ceiling. “I usually just watch. But I am usually not in people’s minds, just… viewing them.”

Max nods, closing her eyes in concentration as the blood stains on the floor slowly disappear. She’s not like Eleven, but this is still her mind and if she has power anywhere, it’s here. “Like watching television,” she says. “But this time you were part of the cast.”

“Exactly,” Eleven says. “It is a new ability. I am glad it worked.”  

“Me too,” Max admits. If she’s honest, the most destructive thing about Vecna infiltrating her mind was actually when he’d suddenly vanished and the pressure behind her eyes had released so suddenly she’d thought they’d fly out of her skull. She and El and Vecna had gotten so tangled together in her mind, his sudden absence was like a souffle falling… if that souffle weighed a thousand pounds and landed on her brain.

Eleven had been able to untangle their strings and separate their minds fairly easily, but Max’s psyche was still in shambles. Eleven, welcome and warm as she is, was safe to come and go from Max’s mind with no problems but Max was… still scared to leave the safe place she’d built without sorting it back to rights. What if she needed it again? What if leaving it this way caused a snag that worsened into a tear that ripped her mind apart at the seams? 

Eleven, usually a font of knowledge about these things, hadn’t known either. “I’ve only been in three minds,” she’d admitted. “Mama’s, Billy’s, and yours. Mama’s mind was already broken. Billy…” 

They both knew how Billy turned out. 

“Then we fix what Vecna broke,” Max had decided, “and when it’s fixed, we’ll take it slow. Do you think you can guide me out of here? Back to the land of the living?”

Eleven had nodded, resolute, and so for a few hours every day Eleven showed up and they tidied up Vecna’s mess. 

Max stands up, eyes tracking over the room, searching for anything they’ve missed, any small speck of blood or rot or Upside Down dust hiding in a corner. But there’s nothing. 

Her safe place is clean, Every Breath You Take playing on repeat at the DJ booth. After days of it, she can't decide if she detests it or if it's her new favorite. Either way, the lyrics are so freaking creepy. 

“It is fixed,” Eleven reports, her eyes sweeping the room the same way Max herself just did. 

Max should be happy, excited at the idea of being able to leave her own mind and wake up and kiss Lucas and punch him for mispronouncing characters’ names just to try and annoy her into waking up. 

But she’s frozen, her heart hammering like a jackrabbit in her chest. 

Eleven tilts her head, eyebrows pinched. “You are scared,” she says, looking around the room to see if there’s something she missed. “Your safe space is clean, the path is safe.”

And yeah, Max knows that. Knows that she should be jumping for joy, relieved beyond belief, but a small voice in the back of her head that sounds suspiciously like Vecna puppeting Billy’s mouth says, what if this isn’t real?

And oh, how she’s tried to ignore that little thought but what if?

“What if this isn’t real?” Max feels herself whisper, the words torn out of her mind, mouth suddenly beyond her control. “What if Vecna isn’t really dead? What if you’re not real? What if you’re him trying to lull me into a false sense of security so I’ll willingly leave this place and step right into his hands?”

Eleven frowns, like she’d never even thought of such a possibility. “I don’t know,” she says, after a moment of thought. “But I know I’m real. I know I can hear Will and Mike and Lucas. They are worried about you.”

Max can hear them too, though not as clearly as Eleven can. Today, they’re just an unintelligible whisper at the corners of her hearing. Three distinct voices clashing together in indistinct words. 

“Tell me something,” Max says. “Tell me something that Mike or Lucas would know, something that Vecna couldn’t have taken from our minds.” It’s a long shot, and a desperate hope, because she doesn’t know what Mike or Lucas could possibly know that she, El, or Will don’t. Something that she would believe came from them. Not just a taken memory or a lucky guess. 

Eleven is silent for a moment, eyes closed in concentration before she speaks again. 

“Max,” she says carefully, eyes blinking open as she slowly shakes her head. “I… I do not think there is anything we could say. To make you trust us.” 

Max’s vision blurs, but whether it’s from welling tears or the sudden, involuntary slow-shaking of her head she couldn’t say. 

“You have to trust me,” Eleven insists, stoic and serious, “You trusted me before. When Vecna was here. I kept you safe then, I will keep you safe now. Trust me again.”

“I’m,” Max takes a heaving breath, “I’m scared to leave.”

Eleven nods, reaching forward to hold Max’s elbows in a gentle but insistent grip. “I know,” she soothes. “I am, too, but,” Eleven takes a breath, closing her eyes to concentrate and then speaking slowly as if she is reading off a page, “life is… moving, always moving. Whether you like it or not. And sometimes it is… painful. Sometimes it is sad. And surprising.”

Eleven’s eyes flutter open again, looking around them and taking it in before leaning back in to look Max in the eyes. “But this is… a cave. Safe… but dark, and… lonely. And life should not be dark or lonely. And life will hurt!” Eleven’s grip tightens, her words and face growing in intensity. 

“But the hurt is good!” Eleven insists. “It means… you’re out of the cave. Out of the dark and lonely.”

Max looks around her, at the glittering tinsel and dim lights. A moment, frozen in time, exactly how she remembers it but… the thing that made the memory her favorite wasn’t the tinsel or the lights or the music, it was Lucas. Dancing with Lucas and all her friends, the rush of being free from the Upside Down and free from her step-brother’s shadow. The thrill of finally feeling like she belonged in Hawkins in a way that she never really did, even back in California. 

The cavernous gym is safe, reminds her of both her best and worst memories, but Eleven is right. It’s a cave, a safe place to hide but… no place to live.

“Not safe,” Max repeats. “But not dark,” she eyes the shadows lingering outside the halos of the gym lights, “and not lonely.”

She nods, resolute. Takes a deep breath and turns back to Eleven. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Eleven beams. 

“Will it hurt,” Max says, suddenly nervous all over again, excited and antsy at the idea of finally waking up again. “Will it hurt when I come up?”

“I don’t know,” Eleven answers, blunt and honest as always as she holds out her hands for Max to hold. 

“Let us find out together.”

It takes Steve a little less than a day of purring and whining and scenting anything remotely pack before he’s Up enough to be released from the hospital. 

He goes home long enough to take a long, luxurious shower and pack a bag before he’s back at the hospital. He’s still a groggy, needy mess, but if the feds are gonna cordon off an entire hallway of the hospital, you can bet your ass he’s going to take advantage of it. 

He brings the most important pieces of his nest from home and sets up shop in an empty room across from Eddie and Max since he can’t choose between the two of them. The lingering agents and handful of nurses allowed onto their floor give him strange looks as he ransacks the other rooms, pulling the mattresses off the beds and dragging them into his room to form a giant nest that takes up practically the entire floor. They’re not particularly comfortable mattresses, but he’s got enough that he can stack them three deep with no problems, and he spends half an hour scenting every sheet he could get his hands on, tucking them around him with little hums and rumbles. 

Okay, so, maybe Steve wasn’t as Up as he’d led the doctors to believe. Sue him. 

Once his nest is finished, he hovers by the door, waiting. He doesn’t have to wait long before a door opens and Steve lunges, reaching out and ignoring the yelp of alarm before leaning back to drag his unsuspecting prey into his nest. 

Oh, it’s Lucas! Perfect! 

Steve purrs like a diesel engine, tucking Lucas into his nest with a pleased chirp before running his cheek over Lucas’s temple. 

“Uh, guys!” Lucas calls, making small movements to get away that Steve puts a stop to by gently resting his teeth at the scruff of Lucas’s neck. He’s never actually scruffed his pups, they’re good pups, but he won’t hesitate.

There’s a small earthquake of pounding feet before the door is crashing open and oh! Oh his pups are here! Perfect! Dustin! Will! Eleven! 

Steve looks up from Lucas’ neck to chirp at them, inviting them into the nest to scent and rest and be good pups. 

Robin’s head pups up around Will’s suddenly very-tall shoulder, and she sighs. “Oh my god, dingus, finally! I’ve been looking all over for you what the hell are you doing here?” she says, pushing past the pups to come into the room and yes! This is perfect! Robin in his nest! Oh! That’s funny! 

“The doctors said you were Up, Stevie,” Robin says, not amused by his chuffing laughter despite how damn cute it is. “What happened?”

Steve shakes his head slowly. Tricking the assessment was stupidly easy, but that’s not what’s important. “Too small,” he says instead, “big pups.” He gestures to Lucas’ sprawl across the sheets and the growing boys at her back. “Big pups, big nest.”

Robin sighs. “Yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense. Your hospital bed was too small for a nest so you needed a bigger area.” She pauses for a moment before dropping into a crouch, hands balled into fists in her hair. “Holy shit, you absolute moron! You fucking drove home! You drove your car! We let you drive! Oh my god, guys,” she turns to the pups, and is pleased to see Joyce and Hopper lingering in the hallway outside. 

“Oh my god, did Steve do a crime? Does this count as a DUI?!?!”

Hopper takes a deep breath and holds it for a few seconds before letting it all out in a rush. “No,” he says, eyes closed as his hands come up to press into his temples. “No it doesn’t count as a DUI, but it does count as a fucking stupid ass desicion and I’m tempted to cuff him to the nearest solid surface if it’ll get him to chill out.” 

Steve just chuffs and goes back to nuzzling Lucas’s temple before being distracted by one of the necklaces wrapped around his wrist. It’s a spikey… something, and Steve shoves it in his mouth without hesitation, running his tongue over the dips and edges and raised designs. It soothes something in him, but it’s not… quite what he wants. 

None of this is quite what he wants. He wants metal in his mouth, denim under his chin. He wants maple and pine on his tongue. 

He wants his pups to scent like peace and calm and safe, but their on-edge scents are putting him on-edge, making it impossible for him to settle down and come Up all the way. Even now, tucked into his nest and safe and warm, Lucas’s scent is bitter with worry and fear. Something is wrong, something the omega can’t fix. 

He can’t calm down until he fixes it. 

“I think,” someone says, a soft pup voice that has Steve lifting his head. “I think maybe he’s picking up on something we’re not,” and oh, it’s Will. So tall, so sad. He needs to be in the nest, too! 

Steve reaches towards Will and the pup acquiesces easily, stepping into the nest and snuggling into Steve’s free side, careful of his bandages. “I think he’s still running on instincts because he’s picking up on something we’re not,” Will continues, leaning into Steve’s nuzzles.

“He’s always been weirdly perceptive,” Robin agrees. “He figured out the message was coming from the mall because of a stupid song,” she looks up at the group, “and he pointed out the clock thing first. Granted, he thought Vecna was a clockmaker but he was on the right track.”

She kicks off her shoes, crawling over the pups and Steve to sit at his head. Steve looks up at her, upside down and grinning like an idiot. “What’s the matter, Stevie?” she asks. “What’s keeping you Down, hm?”

Steve frowns at the question, spit-slick pendant falling from his mouth as he looks around the room, eyes tracking from one person to another before he settles back down, looking up at Robin with a confused quirk in his brows. “Worried,” he says. “Pups are worried. Pups are…” he frowns. “Scared. Pups are scared. Have to protect the pups.” 

Steve shifts, “Keep us safe.” 

Dustin sucks in a breath. “Oh, Steve,” he says, crawling into the nest and nearly kneeing Lucas in the balls as he clambers to be close to Steve. Steve thrills at this, nuzzling aggressively into his cheeks. “Steve,” he says, trying not to laugh as the older boy’s hair tickles his neck. “Steve! Steve, listen!”

Steve draws back ever so slightly, trilling inquisitively. 

Dustin reaches forward, framing Steve’s face with his hands. “Steve,” he says again. “Vecna is dead. You killed him.”

Steve nods. This is true. 

“We are. Safe.”

Steve tilts his head. This he is not sure about.

“Yes,” Dustin insists, moving his hands to make Steve’s head nod along with him. “We are safe, Steve. You kept us safe.”

Steve’s eyebrows furrow. “Not safe,” he says. “Scared.”

Dustin nods. “Yes,” Dustin agrees. “We are worried, we are scared. But we’re worried that Max won’t be able to skateboard anymore. We’re scared that Hawkins won’t believe that Eddie is innocent and they’ll come for him. We’re worried that Mike won’t ever get his head out of his ass. We’re scared that you’ll never come Up.”

Steve whimpers. 

“But you kept us safe ,” Dustin insists. “The things we’re worried and scared about, you can’t fix them with your teeth. We need your brain, to see the things we overlook. You can’t keep us safe from those things if you’re Down. So keep us safe, and come Up.”

Steve… pauses. 

Robin holds her breath as Steve seems to mull this over before nodding, once, face set hard in determination. 

“Safe,” he agrees, “Up.” 

And Robin sighs. 

It feels like hours and days and no time at all before Max wakes with a gasp, and oh god it does hurt, a solid persistent ache in her limbs and head. She jolts, ever so slightly as she’s suddenly returned to consciousness and then jolts again when she feels her limbs restrained, both arms and one of her legs held in a steadfast grip. 

She thrashes, once and then twice before a face emerges in her sight and she practically collapses back into the bed with a relieved sob.

It’s Lucas, and over her shoulder she can see Mike supporting Eleven as her eyes flutter open, Will ready with a tissue to wipe away the drop of blood slipping down her lip. 

“You’re awake,” Lucas gushes, and she strains with the need to be closer to him because oh god, Lucas. 

Eleven stands up, and she and the boys crowd around her hospital bed, leaning into each other and over each other like a cluster of sunflowers drawn towards the sun so that she doesn’t have to turn her head too far to be able to see them all. 

“It worked ,” she sobs out, and then there’s blubbering and tears, all five of their voices clashing and crashing over each other as she asks about everything she’s missed and they try to fill her in and answer all of her questions, overwhelmed and overjoyed.

“El wouldn’t tell me what happened to Vecna,” Max says a few minutes later, voice starting to go hoarse despite the ice chips that Lucas keeps pressing against her lips. “Only that he’s dead.”

Lucas snorts. “Yeah, Dustin claimed dibs on telling the story, but you should really hear it from Robin or Nancy too since they were actually, you know, there when it happened.”

There’s a clatter at the door, and speak of the devil there’s Dustin himself, limping ever so slightly and attention divided as he runs interference on Steve but whether he’s trying to herd Steve into the room or out of it is anyone’s guess. 

Steve, for his part, looks barely conscious and rough in a way she’s not sure she’s ever seen before but his tired eyes practically glow when they land on her. “Max,” he breathes, voice hoarse and strained, and he stumbles towards her. Will is quick to intercept, guiding Steve to sit in a chair that Mike helps push closer towards her. 

She’s not quite sure what she’s expecting Steve to do, but she’s really not prepared for the way he seems to go boneless, like a puppet with it’s strings cut as he all but buried his face into the pillow next to her head, nuzzling as close to her neck as he can while being mindful of the cast enclosing most of her shoulder. 

After a few moments, his breathing evens out and he begins to purr on every other inhale. If she had the mobility to do so, she’d run a hand through his hair but a pointed glare at Dustin and the same result is achieved. 

“What’s up with him?” she says softly. Eleven had been hesitant to tell her too much about anyone’s injuries, in case it made it more difficult to escape her own mind. 

“During the fight with Vecna,” Dustin says, “while Steve, Nancy, and Robin were in the Creel House, they were attacked by the vines again. They were choking and it didn’t look good.”

Max winces, fairly certain there’s a welt around her own neck from similar treatment. 

“So Steve went feral.”

“Holy shit,” Max breathes. Dustin nods. 

“Nancy and Robin said he just went berserk, ripped off the vines with his teeth and hands and then… went for Vecna.”

Max can’t look away from Steve’s back, tracking the steady rise and fall of his breathing. 

“Steve took Vecna out, all by himself, didn’t wait for Nancy or Robin to catch up, he just… went for him.” 

Even without looking, Max can tell that this is a story Dustin usually likes to tell with a little more dramatic flair, but he’s being somber in deference to both Steve and herself. She hates to admit that she’s grateful, doesn’t think her heart could handle anything more intense than this.      

“And did he get him?” Max whispers. 

Dustin blows out a breath. “Steve jumped Vecna, brought him to the ground with zero hesitation, and ripped his throat out.”

Max nods, impressed. 

“With his teeth.”

“ Jesus Christ, ” Max breathes. 

“Bitchin’,” El agrees.

Dustin nods, solemn and proud, fingers still achingly gentle as they card through Steve’s uncharacteristically unkempt hair. 

She looks up at Dustin, around at all her friends as best she can without moving her shoulders. “And now? Is he going to be okay?”

“He is coming Up,” Eleven reports. “Slowly.”

“He’s been stuck in a heightened protective state for a few days,” Will adds. “His instincts think that we’re still in danger, so they don’t want to give up control just yet.” 

“But he’s getting better,” Dustin insists, shifting his weight. 

Max nods, and there’s a moment of somber silence before they’re distracted by another topic, filling Max in on the cracked open gates now crossing Hawkins like the X on a particularly grotesque treasure map. How everyone has their own theory about what happened and nobody believes the official military story. All the various covers stories they came up with to explain the three murders and clear Eddie’s name and insisted Hopper take with him to the meetings with the stuffy agents. 

“We’re obviously the best at making plans,” Dustin insists, “but I’m still not sure why we let Robin contribute.”

“I liked the aliens,” Eleven says, innocent,  and there’s a moment of awkward silence before the line of thought is dropped. Max catches her eye and makes a funny face, and when they both explode into giggles, they both pretend to ignore the boys’ demands to know what they’re laughing at.

Steve continues to sleep peacefully at her shoulder, rising up into a dose every now and again before the sound of his pup’s laughter and their joyful, not at all worried scents lull him back down again. 

He’ll have to go back to his nest at some point, leave Max to her own sleep once the pups are sent home for the night. He wants to drag part of his nest into her room the way he had Eddie’s, but he knows she’d never go for it. 

But that’s okay. 

He falls asleep, nestled back against Robin’s chest, listening to the steady beep and deep, even rasping of Eddie’s heart and breath. 

Maybe, when the sun comes up in the morning… 

“They’re not babies, you know,” Robin says into his shoulders as he breathes into her hair and works his jaw, trying to remember how to form words into coherent sentences. 

“They… deserve to be protected and kept safe,” she concedes, “but they’re growing up and even normal kids don’t have the best time growing up. Being a teenager is an endless drudge of fear and worry and all kinds of emotions they don’t know what to do with yet, but you gotta let them feel them, dingus. You can’t bundle them up in your nest and not let the world touch them. ‘Cause if you don’t let the world touch them, you don’t let them touch the world and,” she takes a deep breath, “fuck, Steve. Those kids are gonna touch the world . They’re gonna go so far, but you’ve gotta let them leave the nest at least a little bit first.”

Steve takes a deep breath, and she’s not sure he’s fully conscious yet until he speaks. “I tried,” he admits. “I tried to give them space, let them grow. I pulled away, let them take chances and make mistakes and get messy. They’re teenagers, I know that but…”

Robin sighs. “But they’re not normal teenagers.”

Steve shakes his head, burying his nose into her hair. “I gave Max space,” he says, “and it almost got her killed.”

Robin nods. “It’ll be okay, Stevie,” she says, reaching around to clasp their hands together, tight and firm and grounding. “We’ll figure it out.”

She hears his voice even back out into sleep, and smiles to herself in the dark. 

Maybe, she thinks, when the sun comes up in the morning, he will too.

Chapter Text

Eddie is pretty sure he’s dead. 

He remembers the most metal concert in the history of the world. 

He remembers looking Dustin in the face as they realized they’d forgotten to fortify the vents. 

He remembers Dustin’s horrified face as he cut the sheet-rope. 

He remembers fighting. 

He remembers screaming. 

He remembers pain. 

He remembers holding Dustin’s hand. 

He remembers struggling for breath but needing the pup to know he was going to be okay, that he loved him. 

He remembers the slow, dizzying fade into nothingness, punctuated by a far-off feral screaming that he’d originally thought must be the screams of the damned welcoming his soul below. 

But hell is not fire and brimstone, or the kind of ice so cold it burns. 

Hell, he’s discovered, is a steady, incessant beeping and a persistent tickle at his nose that he can’t seem to raise his hand to scratch. 

He tries to ignore the itch as best he can, matching the lyrics and melodies of his favorite songs to the rhythm of the beeping. But every time he settles into it, the rhythm shifts or hiccups, stutters and speeds up or jolts and slows down. Irritatingly steady, infuriatingly inconsistent.

Truly, Lucifer has outdone himself with this torture chamber. 

There’s a scent, too, lingering just outside of his perception, an omega’s scent. It comes and goes, strong and sleep-soft, weak and worried, sharp bursts of contentment and anxiety that make Eddie’s head spin. 

And if that weren’t bad enough, he could swear that he knows that scent. It’s right on the tip of his tongue, the knowledge teasing his brain as it darts around his gray matter but refuses to be pinned down. Infuriating. 

And then, a sound filters through, clearer than the mumbled sounds that had been teasing him for as long as he’d been Belzebub’s bitch, voices he couldn’t begin to place and those he would know deaf and dumb. He hears Wayne the most, tries not to let the barbs of his torment dig too deeply. It’s eternal, after all, wouldn’t want to spoil the fun too early. 

But still, these voices are familiar in a way that makes something deep within him perk it’s ears up, attentive for the first time in his life. He takes a deep breath, hears the beeping rhythm stutter again, hears the voices stop.

There’s silence for a moment, and then, tortuously clear, “Eddie?” 

And the beeping rhythm lurches as Eddie takes a deep breath, heavy eyes fluttering and tearing up immediately as a sliver of light peaks through his lids. It hurts, it burns, but he fights the pain, struggles against the sting as he forces his eyes open, looking towards the source of that welcome voice. 

“H’nd’s’n,” he slurs, and his throat is as dry as the Sahara and his vision swims but Jesus Christ he’ll take all that pain and more if it keeps that too-wide scraggly smile on Dustin Henderson’s face. 

“Eddie!” he cries, lurching forward to wrap surprisingly gentle arms over Eddie’s bandaged chest. The little twerp’s back heaves with relieved laughter that quickly morphs into sobs and Eddie lets his eyes fall closed again, grunting with the effort of lifting a hand to pat against the boy’s back. 

When he opens them again, he’s met with a vision of loveliness. “Oh,” he breathes around a painful, rasping chuckle. “Oh, ‘m d’ed af’r’all?”

The vision cocks his head, waves of auburn locks swishing with the movement as the scent of confused omega hits his nose and oh. That’s the scent he’s been smelling. His guardian angel, watching over him in Purgatory. Eddie snorts, and it hurts but what does pain matter in the face of perfection. 

“H’r to take m’ to H’ven, ang’l?” he slurs, lifting his hand from Dustin’s back to reach for the angel. 

The omega steps closer, and Eddie tries to cup that beautiful cheek in his palm but barely makes it to his chin before his weak arm gives out. His angel, godsend as he is, seems to understand what Eddie was hoping for though. Before Eddie’s hand can fall too far, a warm, broad palm is cradling it and drawing it back up, pressing Eddie’s palm against their cheek and nuzzling into it with a happy trill. 

“Mmm,” Eddie hums, the sound crackling in his throat. “S’ prett’, goo’ ‘mega.” 

Beneath his hand, the sweetest purr rumbles to life, and Eddie sinks back into the dark with a smile on his face.

Dustin waits a moment, taking a deep breath to clear his throat as he straightens up, careful not to put any weight on any of Eddie’s bandages as he levers himself up. He avoids Steve’s eyes, trying to subtly dry his cheeks before he faces the soft concern he knows will be there. 

“Wayne will hate that he missed it, but that’s just like Eddie to wake up literally the second after he left,” he says, trying to stay casual as he turns but he needn’t have bothered, Steve’s not listening. 

Instead, his eyes are closed, entirely fixated on the cool rough of the alpha’s gently curling fingers and the warm soft of his broad palm against his cheek. His fingers spasm, ever so gently in sleep, and Steve relaxes into it, purrs providing a lulling melody to go along with the sporadic rhythm. 

A part of him wants to slip one of those fingers into his mouth, feel out the calluses on the alpha’s fingertips with his tongue, but he’s Up enough to ignore the urge, contenting himself with nudging further into the alpha’s lax grip and nuzzling his nose close to his wrist, where the sleep-soft of his scent is the strongest.

He hears the door open and close, Wayne returning from a bathroom break and a run for coffee, but the sound doesn’t disturb him from this soft place he’s found against the alpha’s palm.  

It’s been seven days since he tore Vecna’s throat out, the phantom tang of his blood still lingering in the crevasses of his gums. In the same way, the Drop still lingers in his head, tarlike and tempting but Vecna is dead. Max is awake. Eddie is coming around. 

There’s no reason for him to stay Down, and every reason to come up. 

The past few days have felt like a blur or half-memories, acting and reacting without conscious thought. He doesn’t remember Dustin going to get his ankle looked at, though he knows he must have. He doesn’t remember if the suits made him sign anything or if anyone even bothered to explain the latest cover story to him yet. He doesn’t remember where Robin said she was going this morning as she and Dustin tagged out on Steve Watch because apparently Feral Him can’t be trusted not to stage a jailbreak and a kidnapping. 

But, as he burrows closer into Eddie’s palm, slowly syncing his breath with the steady push and pull of Eddie’s oxygen machine, he wants to remember this. Wants to remember the look in Eddie’s eye when he’d seen Steve and called him an angel. Wants to remember every appointment and recommendation the doctors make because Eddie is part of his pack now and that means he’s Steve’s to take care of. 

So with every breath of Eddie’s scent that he pulls down deep into himself, he feels himself come slowly, slowly back up, like a flower hesitant to blossom on the first day of Spring.  

After a while, the voices murmuring at the edges of his consciousness become clearer and clearer, but he still startles when a rough, drawling voice at his side says, “here, son, sit down a spell.”

Steve blinks his eyes open to see Wayne Munson offering him one of the cushier hospital chairs, moved from its line on the other side of the bed. With a fluttering blink and a deep breath, Steve slowly lowers himself into it, looking around the room slowly to see Dustin sitting in a chair across from him but slightly catty-corner, leaving the seat closer to Eddie’s head for Wayne, presumably. 

“Thank you, Mr. Munson,” Steve says, voice still croaky and sore. 

Wayne merely nods as he returns to his seat. “S’no problem, Steve,” he says, “way I hear it I owe you for saving my boy’s life and, can I say, it’s mighty nice to see you up enough that I can give you my thanks for it.”

Steve shakes his head, lowering Eddie’s hand from his cheek to his lap and tucking both his own around the appendage, weaving their fingers together as tight as he dares, worrying his thumb over the smooth, pale stripes of skin at the roots of Eddie’s fingers where his sparkly shiny rings usually lay. 

“It’s no problem,” Steve repeats, and they lull into a soft, anticipatory silence. Eddie could wake again in a matter of minutes or hours, but all of them want to be there when he does. 

For once, fortune seems to smile on them because it only takes a few dozen minutes before Eddie’s eyes flutter again, his lips smacking together over the dryness of his mouth and Wayne is quick to slip an ice chip in between his teeth. 

He’s incoherent, mumbling at Wayne and Dustin and Steve himself, asking about the rest of the party more than once, having to be reassured multiple times that everyone is safe each time he wakes. 

And wake he does. Over the next twelve hours, Eddie flutters in and out of consciousness over a dozen times, staying awake for longer and longer each time, slowly regaining old memories from before he came to the hospital and building up new ones of his actual stay. 

Dustin refuses to tell him the Epic of Vecna’s End until Eddie’s conscious enough to sit through the entire theatrical version. Eddie only pouts at this a little bit, but Steve can tell by the way his hand jitters that the alpha can’t wait to be regaled with the story of their victory. 

More and more as Eddie wakes up, Steve can feel something inside himself settling, staying pricked at attention but Up and Alert and consenting to stay that way. Until he finally feels like he can fill his lungs with a full, unlabored breath. 

Still, Steve stays by Eddie’s side all twelve hours, vigilant even after Dustin has to return home and Wayne has fallen asleep in his chair. He stays up with Eddie, Up and awake, because he can’t stand the thought of Eddie waking up to a dark room, all alone. 

So Steve sits, and waits, and whispers softly the few times Eddie rouses from his sleep, asking after his guardian angel. Steve reminds him every time. 

“You’ve still got business in the land of the living, no angels for you yet Eddie,” and then softer, “Just me Munson, no angels here.”

Eddie snorts in disbelief before he drifts away, but Steve won’t hold it against him. 

And if, ever so softly, the deep breath he lets out before fully drifting away sounds suspiciously like “my angel, such a good omega,” well… 

Steve won’t hold it against him. 

Eddie stays in the hospital for a few more weeks, until the doctors are certain his body is accepting the skin grafts and his blood pressure is staying at a normal level. He’s sent home in a wheelchair, still, with strict instructions not to overexert himself or lift any heavy objects which Eddie agrees to wholeheartedly. 

“I’ll leave the heroics to Stevie from now on,” Eddie jokes to the nurses as he’s wheeled out to Wayne’s truck, Steve on his heels to help with the wheelchair and Henderson suspiciously absent. 

And sure enough, when Wayne’s truck trundles into the driveway of their shiny new double wide, bought and paid for with fancy shmancy government hush money, there’s a suspicious cluster of shadows in the front window that resolve themselves into a cluster of shouting teenagers when Wayne opens the door. 

“Surprise!” they shout, and Eddie’s eyes fall on a surprisingly artistic banner declaring this his Welcome Home, We’re Happy You’re Alive party. He tries not to cry, but there’s no helping the waterworks when Dustin scrambles forward to practically fall into his lap, arms thrown over his shoulders in a tight hug. 

It’s a good day. 

Max is stuck in the hospital for almost two months on account of having to stabilize both her shoulders so her arms heal right. When she’s finally released, casts exchanged for softer braces that she still needs help putting on and taking off, her arms and legs are sickly pale and thin. 

Steve, mother hen that he’s trying not to be, insists on helping her on the days her mother works double shifts, which are decidedly less frequent after the government money from their trailer being destroyed and Max’s injuries, but still happen on occasion. 

Plus – and Steve refuses to admit this to anyone except Robin – Steve isn’t quite sure that he trusts Susan Hargrove to look after Max the way she needs. Some deep-seated omega instinct insists that Susan Hargrove, as Max’s mother and an omega herself, should have realized that something was wrong with her daughter and been there to support her emotionally, even though his logical brain knows that Susan was going through her own problems and very nearly burned out from trying her best to support Max financially. 

He doesn’t say anything about it, tries not to make any snide remarks or haughty faces when Susan smiles and lets him in to babysit for the day while she goes to work. He tries not to keep track of how many beer cans and wine bottles he can see clogging up the recycling bin. Tries to breathe deep and let it go, but the indignation lingers. 

Slowly, things return to normal. The X-shaped scar across Hawkins remains dormant. Homes are rebuilt. Businesses reopen. By the fall, the high school is ready for the 86-87 school year but the classrooms are noticeably sparser than they have been.

Some of the people who had fled Hawkins after the initial earthquake returned after a few weeks when it became clear that the earth was done quaking and the satanic panic they thought was cleaving their town in two was just an overreaction to a perfectly human occurrence. But some had left for good, and the already-small town of Hawkins felt their absences. 

“It’s kinda creepy,” Dustin says one day, crammed into Steve’s backseat with the rest of the Party and a box stuffed full of cassettes balanced on his lap. “How empty the halls are now.”

“Yeah,” Will agrees from the front seat. “I’m just glad they let Eddie graduate, could you imagine the kind of shit he’d get into if he were there now?”

Steve laughs along with the little shits, because he sure as hell can. Something about the kind of people who were willing to stay behind in the madhouse that Hawkins has become basically took the top off of the bell curve of normality. Dustin’s words, not his. 

Perfectly normal nuclear families and their perfectly normal kids had booked it, leaving behind the likes of the Carvers – who refused to leave and “let the devil win” – and the Sinclairs – who figured life in Hawkins was no less weird than life anywhere else for people who were different – while families like the Harringtons jumped ship as soon as they could. Their kind of life could be lived anywhere, and Hawkins was easy to walk away from. 

Steve, it turned out, was easy to walk away from. But they’d agreed to leave him the house and a small allowance to take care of it and hadn’t even shown up to collect their things when they asked Steve to pack them up. They’d sent a service, and Steve had watched the men carry away every ugly piece of furniture his mother had gushed over with a primal sort of satisfaction at the idea of replacing every single piece with something hideously ugly, exceedingly comfortable, and covered in the scent of his pack. 

It was a good feeling. 

“Eddie would have staged a revolt by now,” Steve muses, shaking away his father’s voice as he focuses back on the conversation happening in his back seat.        

The boys laugh and agree, reminiscing and recounting the best of Eddie’s lunchroom rants as they debate how long he would’ve gone before getting beat to shit by one of the sports teams. The jocks, according to the kids, have been extra twitchy recently now that the school barely qualifies for the lowest divisions despite still having enough players to fill the sports rosters. 

Steve had tried to explain to them why that was a problem, how all their prior rivalries and the known quantities of previous competitions had gone so thoroughly up in smoke and probably had all the jocks stressed and off their game. But they’d understood the situation about as well as he’d understood a statistical bell curve, so. That’s that.

When they pull up to Steve’s house, he7s glad to see Eddie’s van already pulled into the driveway and Eddie himself opening the front door with a flourish to welcome them all to Casa Harrington. One day, Steve would regret giving everyone keys to his house but as he saw a peak of red hair lingering at Eddie’s hip he figures today will not be that day. 

“Did you get everything set up?” Steve calls as he exits the beamer, opening the door behind him so Dustin could hand over the box and start the awkward shuffle of unloading his clown car full of nerds. It’s Friday, so that means DnD night, now held at the Harrington House after the school had somewhat ruefully informed the Hellfire club that they weren’t allowed to meet on school property. 

Eddie and the kids were still trying to convince the rest of the club that DnD at Steve’s was perfectly safe but they were, understandably, still hesitant to trust King Steve after getting their shit rocked by the late, great King Jason a few months ago. 

Lucas is the last to slide out after untangling himself from Mike who always ended up middle-seat because of his scrawny waist despite his gangly, too-long limbs. Steve helps him out before handing the younger boy the box of cassettes with a reassuring smile. Lucas looked only vaguely nauseous. 

You see, Max, for all that she was whip-cord smart like the rest of the Party, couldn’t exactly take good notes with two broken bones so the boys had been photocopying their notes for her which was a tenuous arrangement. Despite how much Max needed the help, she was a proud woman and was still getting used to accepting it. 

Recently, she’d had to miss a few days of school for migraines that, she assured them, had everything to do with having a Mind Fight in her brain and nothing at all to do with Vecna returning from the grave. But the migraines meant she couldn’t handle bright lights or small text, so instead of photocopying the notes from the classes she’d missed, they’d recorded the classes and then pared the information down to the important bits, adding their own commentary and additional information as needed. 

It was unbearably sweet and the boys were, understandably, unsure how she would take the offered assistance. Lucas, currently on-again boyfriend, had been unanimously elected as the sacrificial lamb in that he was the least likely to be sacrificed for presenting her with the tapes. 

Steve thought the whole thing was hilarious. Despite having three still mostly-immobilized limbs that left her wheelchair bound for the foreseeable future, Maxine Mayfield still had the entire Party by the balls. Hilarious. 

“Are you two idiots just going to stand there or are you coming in anytime soon?”

Steve looks over to see Max, lounging as best she could in her wheelchair in the doorway as Eleven giggles behind her. Eddie and the other boys are nowhere to be seen. 

“Sorry ladies,” Steve calls, heading over after sending Lucas one last reassuring look. “Is my kitchen still standing?”

Eleven and Max smile at him as he passes them in the doorway, reaching out to subtly scent them both as he heads through the doorway and into the kitchen which was, yep, still standing. 

“I feel like I should be offended by that look,” Robin says from the stove where she’s gently shaking a popcorn pan as the aluminum shell expands. 

“Tell that to the kitchen towel you burnt last week,” he says, stepping towards her and snagging a piece of orange from one of the bowls on the island. There’s the usual assortment of junk food typical of a teenage get together but Steve insists on having easy fruits like grapes and apples and orange slices available too. He draws the line at a veggie platter, though. Gross.

“Did you guys already order the pizzas?”

“Yup,” Robin chirps as she very carefully cuts open the aluminum popcorn balloon and tips the contents into a large bowl. “Should be here in about ten.”

The Buckleys, like the Harringtons, were normal, statistical bell curve people who had cut ties and jumped ship with the rest of them once Robin had gradated. They’d tried to get her to come with them to Indy, had tried to stay local so that she could still commute to Perdue and not pay for housing but she’d refused. 

The Buckleys had still moved to Indy, still called Robin all the time to check in. Robin still went to Perdue, got her license over the summer after a harrowing few weeks of lessons in the Beamer, studied linguistics and music and whatever-else her genius little ears could desire. But she lived with Steve now, in one of the guest suites upstairs. It was nice. 

He could hear Max in the other room quietly thanking Lucas and the other boys, deflecting her gratitude with quips about having to listen to their cracking pubescent voices to pass Chemistry but the insults were noticeably dull compared to the vibrancy of her steadfast, “but thank you ” tagged on the end. 

His house was a fucking madhouse with almost a dozen teenagers coming and going, taking turns pushing Max around, filtering through the kitchen to grab a handful of snacks on their way into the dining room to try and sneak a peak behind Eddie’s screen thing. Steve had no idea what they were looking for, but Eddie got very protective over it and screeched at them every time he caught them attempting to look over his shoulder.

The table was a mess already, covered in miniatures and an assortment of papers, but Steve much preferred it to the sterile centerpiece that used to be the table’s only occupant. The thing was massive, built of solid wood and able to seat about twenty but Eddie took at least three of those spots for himself at the head. 

“Pizza should be here soon,” Steve calls into the dining room, “any word from your other goons?”

“Grant and Jeff are almost convinced,” Eddie reports, looking up from behind his screen. “But they won’t show unless Gareth does and he’s being complicated about it.”

Steve hums, kicking his heels against the cabinets under the counter in a way that he hopes gives his mother heart-palpitations wherever she is. “Jason did a number on him, right?”

Eddie nods, face semi-obscured but the bob of his curly head clear to see. “Yeah, and apparently he’s the one who told Jason that Henderson had been looking for me. So he’s pissed and guilty which is. An interesting combination.”

“An understandable one,” Steve concedes. One he’s definitely felt before. Pissed at Nancy, guilty about what he let Tommy do. Pissed at himself for what he did as King Steve, guilty for what he did as King Steve. It’s a lot to process.

“Henderson said they might come,” he says, trying to keep his tone neutral as he turns his eyes away. “Think they will?”

In the living room, he can see Eleven braiding Max’s hair into pigtails for her while Erica stands over them both, braiding Eleven’s hair. The girl had been lamenting how her hair wasn’t long enough for braids yet earlier in the day but Erica had convinced her that she knew a way to braid short hair. Mike is making dumb, back-handed comments and silly faces over the whole affair and Steve doesn’t miss how Max eyes his shoulder-length hair with a devious glint in her eye.

Steve turns back to Eddie and sees him shrug, but whatever he’s going to say is interrupted by the doorbell ringing. There’s a moment where he thinks one of the kids will answer it, but they’ve devolved into chaos in the blink of an eye. From the looks of it, the combined force of Erica and Max have convinced – read, blackmailed – the boys into letting the girls braid their hair.

Steve rolls his eyes and pushes off the counter to stand, walking past the tangle of limbs in his living room to answer the door. 

“Steve!” Dustin cries, reaching out from where he’s ended up sprawled across the couch with Erica sitting on his back. “Steve, help us! Our hair, Steve! You gotta save our hair!”

The omega snorts, lifting one hand to rake his hair to the opposite site and expose where Erica had done a trio of small braids close to his scalp, the test dummy to show Eleven the style of braids that Erica could do with her short hair. “Sorry bud,” he says, “I’ve already been converted to the Braid Brigade.” And then, deadpan, “save yourselves.”

Dustin howls in pretend agony, and Steve cackles as he opens the door. He’s expecting the pizza delivery guy, but standing on his porch is a trio of teenagers wearing a very familiar baseball tee. “Oh,” Steve breathes. 

And then pauses long enough for the interaction to become awkward, suddenly frozen with indecision as to how to welcome the rest of the Hellfire Club in without making it awkward and, in the process, definitely making it awkward. 

Whatever bravado the boys on his porch had had before Steve opened the door is slowly and noticeably fading the longer the silence goes but Steve does not know how to break it. 

“Dingus what the hell are you doing?” 

Good old Robin, breaking silences is her specialty. 

She bullies in next to him, just as surprised as he had been by the boys on the porch but, unlike Steve, her surprise is short-lived. “Oh, hey,” she says, immediately. “Gareth, Jeff, Grant, welcome to Casa Harrington, are you here for the Alphabet Adventures?”

And she’s off, welcoming them in while Steve beats a hasty retreat back to the kitchen and stuffs half a dozen grapes in his mouth to wash the taste of awkward out of his mouth. 

“I see no pizza,” Eddie comments, but his face lights up when he peeks his head up and sees his friends trailing into the living room, only slightly awkward as they greet the boys and Erica and are introduced to Will, Eleven, and Max. 

“Guys!” he cheers, jumping up from behind his screen to rush at them, leaping into a hug and expecting them to catch him. “You made it!”

Steve tunes out the conversation the same way he tunes out how Eddie’s hands on their arms and shoulders and hair makes something in his chest want to growl. He’s saved by the bell. 

“That’ll be the pizza,” Robin comments, nudging his elbow. 

Once the pizza is paid for and rapidly devoured, DnD night can truly begin. The Party take their places around the table, assembling in a random formation on either side of Eddie as they resume their quest. Jeff, Gareth, and Grants characters are presumably added to the story but as usual Steve struggles to keep up with exactly what is going on. 

Eleven takes great pleasure in acting as various NPCs rather than as an adventurer, sitting directly at Eddie’s left. Max, in contrast, takes even more pleasure in sitting at Eddie’s right and acting as the various enemies the party faces. It’s a good way for them to participate in the game without being overwhelmed by all its moving parts.

Steve and Robin sit at the end of the table, merely observing. Steve tried to make a character sheet once, but was overwhelmed by all the floaty numbers and things he had to keep track of, but he like watching the story unfold. Robin had played once and through a series of truly unfortunate events had, in one day, uncovered the main plot twist that Eddie hadn’t planned to reveal for at least a dozen more sessions and rolled so terribly she’d killed her own character while trying to climb a ladder. 

Needless to say, they work better as a peanut gallery. Steve has never seen behind Eddie’s fancy screen, but with Robin whispering in his ear he doesn’t have to.

Chapter Text

Steve Harrington is cool.

Steve Harrington is a badass. 

It makes no goddamn sense, flies in the face of the laws of the universe and his own personal Munson Doctrine.

But, turns out, it’s true. 

Steve Harrington is a badass.

“I didn’t see him do it, obviously,” Dustin says, “but I got the story from Robin and Nancy.”

The kid is scooched up close to Eddie’s bedside, having swapped seats with Wayne. Steve is asleep on his other side, still clutching Eddie’s hand like a life line and purring under his breath. Every time Dustin raises his voice, Eddie’s afraid he’ll wake the poor, exhausted-looking omega but so far it hasn’t happened yet. 

“They made it to the stairs, and Robin swears that they didn’t touch a vine so maybe Vecna knew about our plan the whole time and was just baiting us, you know? Letting us think our plan was working so we’d let our guard down but, like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, you know? Steve never lets his guard down when it comes to the Upside Down.”

Eddie had gathered that. 

“So, yeah, anyway,” Dustin shakes his head as if to clear it before leaning forward a bit more, tone dipping into a cadence Eddie is flattered to recognize holds pieces of his own DM voice. “Vecna had all three of them against the walls, vines choking them out and then Steve just,” he snaps his fingers, “snapped.

“He tore the vines off with his teeth and hands, and then just went for Vecna. The plan was to hit Vecna with ranged attacks, right?” Eddie nods, and Dustin smirks. “Steve went full melee. Robin said he just launched at the guy, tackled him to the ground and didn’t even give him a moment to react before he just,” Dustin gestures to his own neck, “ripped his throat out.”

“Ripped his throat out?” Eddie breathes, willing the image of Steve with his hands around some crazy fucked-up looking dude out of his head. 

“Ripped his throat out,” Dustin confirms. “ With his teeth .”

Eddie’s brain fills with white noise overlaid by the sound of every gear in his head grinding to a halt as that image… processes . 

“Holy shit,” he breathes. He glances over to Steve, who is still sleeping, steady purrs and rumbles coming with every inhale and exhale like the cutestest fucking snores he’s ever heard in his life. “ Holy shit .”

Dustin is nodding frantically, curls whipping as his eyes glow with vindictive glee. “I know, right?” he gushes. “Fucking metal . He ran all the way back to the trailer, just pounding the pavement and he looked wild . Like obviously he’d gone feral and he totally acted like it, grumbling and rumbling and all that shit but he looked absolutely feral, too. Mouth covered in Vecna’s gross dusty blood and his eyes were insane . Like, uh, like Abigail.”

Abigail was Jeff’s barbarian who, after entering a rage in the final fight against the original Vecna, had taken out half of his followers and almost killed the dark wizard himself before she’d succumbed to her injuries. Eddie was suddenly glad the campaign was over, he wasn’t sure he could continue it otherwise. 

“Jesus H Christ,” Eddie breathed. Abigail had been glorious, so obviously Steve must have been magnificent. 

There’s a moment of silence, Dustin’s mouth moving like he’s trying to put the words together but can’t quite breathe them to life. “I thought you were gonna die,” he eventually admits, voice soft, eyes darting from Steve’s fluffy head, to Wayne’s silent presence, before landing back on Eddie. “I was pretty sure you were… gone.”

Eddie remembers, vaguely, making Dustin promise to take care of his sheepies. Remembers, vividly, telling the little twerp he loved him and meaning it with every fiber of his being. 

“And then, there was Steve,” Dustin all but whispers, “just, pounding feet and then he was there like he’d appeared out of the mist and he took one look at you and,” Dustin trails off. “He just started moving . It’s kind of a blur, really,” he says, fist against his eye as he wipes away a stray tear at the remembered pain. “One minute you were bleeding out in my arms and the next, there was leather around your waist and fabric pressed everywhere to stop the bleeding and Steve was moving .” 

Dustin sniffles, face pinching with anger as he reveals in a vicious whisper, “they almost didn’t admit you.”

Which, huh. “Guess the hippocratic oath means as much around here as the presumption of innocence does.”

Wayne snorts, but Dustin just looks miserable. “They almost let you bleed out in the lobby, refused to even touch you, like you were a leper or something.”

“Hey,” Eddie soothes, “hey, it’s okay. I’m here now, I’m okay now. Somebody in this place must have a heart ‘cause I’m here now.”

Dustin shakes his head ruefully, “no,” he says. “No, that’s on Steve.”

“I’ve heard this part from ‘bout twelve different people, I swear,” Wayne supplies, “your boy put the fear of God into this place.”

Dustin nods. “It was terrifying,” he agrees. “Nobody would take you, so Steve made them .”

“Made them?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dustin says, “made them. He was growling like he could start another earthquake through sheer force of will. I swear I could feel it in my bones, he was growling so loud. I’m pretty sure if somebody didn’t come forward to help you Steve was gonna start going for throats again.”

“Jesus Christ. Is that why his voice is so fucked?”

“That’s exactly why his voice is so fucked,” Dustin confirms. “He was basically spitting up blood when they finally took you back. There’s scabs on his throat now from where he tore it open,” and Eddie’s face must be a sight because Dustin rushes to reassure, “He’s an omega, you know? He’s capable of making those sounds, sure, but his body just isn’t really designed for it the way an alpha’s would be.”

Makes sense, but still. 

“That’s metal as fuck .”

So yeah, Steve Harrington. Badass. 

Makes no goddamn sense but, there it is in black and white and indisputable fact.

He should dismiss it as a fluke, a hiccup, a flaw in the fabric of reality that’s neat to look at but doesn’t compromise the integrity of the design. But his interest has been piqued by this anomaly. It makes him curious, makes him wonder what else the Former King of Hawkins High is hiding in that gravity defying hair of his.

It especially doesn’t help that Steve sees fit to insert himself, almost seamlessly, into aspects of Eddie’s life that he would have never imagined. 

Steve insists on taking him to all of his doctors’ appointments so that Wayne can go back to work. He pushes Eddie’s wheelchair around the grocery store, insisting that cereal and beer are not food groups and resolutely standing his ground whenever someone looks at Eddie weirdly. 

Eddie graduates from a wheelchair to a cane, and Steve still tags along on whatever errands need doing. Partially so that the hicks who can’t keep their eyes of Eddie’s back will at least keep their hands to themselves, partially because they’ve actually grown to enjoy each others’ presence. 

“It’s nice having another guy friend my age who knows, you know?” Steve says one day while he debates what vegetable to force Eddie to eat this week. “Jonathan’s great but there’s always been a bit of tension with the whole Nancy thing and Nancy is Nancy , so. It’s nice. How do you feel about asparagus?”

Eddie has no particular feelings about asparagus, but he spends a good twenty minutes trying to riff it into a rhyme scheme that will make Steve laugh so hard he snorts, so maybe he likes them a lot. 

If he plays up getting tired of walking halfway through the store, leaning heavily on his cane so that Steve will tuck Eddie’s free hand into the crook of his arm to stabilize him, well. That’s between Eddie and whatever God made Steve Harrington smell like mulled wine and built like a brick shithouse. 

“Do you want to come over to my house this weekend?” Steve asks as he’s unloading the groceries onto Eddie and Wayne’s fancy faux-marble countertop. “The kids are coming over for a pool party.”

“Sure,” Eddie agrees, stumbling over to the couch to settle for a moment before he cracks open a can of beer. “What are we celebrating?”

There’s another can sitting on the table in front of the couch that Steve snags as he flops down next to Eddie.  “End of summer?” Steve says, sighing as he takes a large sip. “Start of Max’s physio now that all the casts are off and they’re sure her bones can take it?”

Ah. Yeah, Eddie remembers hearing about that, and he’s pretty sure he knows what Steve isn’t saying. “Pool party’s a front, isn’t it?”

Steve sighs, all but melting into the cushions of their second-hand sofa, a hideous forest green thing that’s inexplicably comfortable as all hell. “Yeah,” he says. “Docs tried to start hydrotherapy to help her build muscle back but she’s being weird about it.”

“Watergate?”

Steve nods, “I think that’s part of it,” he confirms. “But Billy was working at the public pool when he was flayed, you know?” 

Eddie has vague memories of Hargrove working at the pool but he’d never been much of a swimmer himself so he can’t say for sure. “Did something happen at the pool?”

Steve shrugs, head leaning back on the sofa as he tilts his head back and forth to make a comfortable divot in the overstuffed cushion and push his scent deeper into the fabric. “Yeah, kinda,” he says. “There was a confrontation in the locker rooms? They called it the sauna test, ‘cause the flayer likes it cold. And she feels vulnerable, you know?”

Eddie, who has only just gotten some of his independent mobility back, knows . 

The party, as Eddie had figured it would, starts out a little rocky. Max is proud to a fault and has her hackles up from the get go, but Steve hands out cheesy superhero-themed arm floaties to every member of the party so she doesn’t feel singled out in her Wonder Woman Water Wings, and slowly but surely she relaxes and plays along as the kids run through a series of games that are just thinly disguised hydrotherapy exercises. 

Eddie, in his all-black batman arm floaties, plays along as well, moving slowly and trying not to laugh so hard he loses his breath. 

Steve, despite his superman arm floaties and preppy swim trunks doesn’t even touch the water. Eddie files the thought away for later. 

When the kids go back to school, he’s not surprised to find that Hellfire has been forcibly disbanded. He’ll miss his throne and the various props and costumes available to them in the drama club’s supply closet. 

Still. There’s something grand about holding court beneath the stupidly gaudy chandelier hanging in the Harrington Family dining room.  

“I think that went well,” Eddie says, waving as the Corroded Coffin boys drive away. The kids are all settling in for a sleepover, combining their bedding into one huge nest in the sunken area of the living room. 

Steve is standing to the side, fidgeting and making abortive movements, like he wants to reach out and adjust the architecture being laid out in front of him but keeps stopping himself at the last minute. He turns to Eddie at the sound of his voice, ever so slightly startled. “Hm?” he says, and then, “oh, yeah, I think so too. I’m glad they decided to come.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, sighing. He’s not looking forward to the ribbing he’s going to get tomorrow at band practice based on the way Jeff had eyed him as they were packing everything up. 

Joyce would probably kick his ass if he ever admitted it out loud, but sometimes Jim Hopper thinks he would prefer the freezing cold drudge of Soviet Prison over the mind-numbing slog of menial tasks given to him by the people of Hawkins. 

Any hero worship they’d had for his heroics in the Starcourt fire and his triumphant return from his “undercover” assignment all but vanished a month into his reinstatement as Police Chief as people returned to their normal lives and their normal problems. Noise complaints, suspected trespassing, and a notable instance of stolen sheep that had turned out to just be lost. All manner of petty crimes that had at first seemed novel in their simplicity, but now just grate against his nerves. 

“And I’m telling you, Mrs. Hartford,” he repeats for the third time, “your neighbor having a party and not inviting you is not illegal.”

“Well, it’s certainly rude!” Mrs. Hartford insists, voice shrill. “Can’t you do something about that? Disturbing my peace? Public insult?”

“No, ma’am, that’s not really my jurisdiction,” he says for the second time, “but I’ll make a note that you called in case something happens.”

Mrs. Hartford begins to protest, but the phone is already away from his ear and her shrill shouting is blessedly incomprehensible as he slams the phone into its cradle with a huff. 

It’s still early in the day, but he already can’t wait to go home and spend a good half hour with his face buried in Joyce’s riotous curls. 

He gets barely a moment to luxuriate in the fantasy before the phone rings again.

“Hopper speaking,” he says, not even bothering to tamper his foul mood. 

“Ah, Jim, glad I managed to catch you,” a smooth voice answers, and Hopper’s hackles rise. 

“Owens,” he says, trying his best to keep a growl out of his voice. Dr. Sam Owens may be the best of the many government types he’s had to deal with over the years, but he’s still a government type and therefore in part responsible for all the shit that El and Will have had to go through. 

Plus, Jim doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive the man for letting Dr. Brenner anywhere near his pup. 

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Doc Owens laughs lightly on the other side of the phone. “Seems you’re a hard man to get a hold of, Jim,” he says. “The boys have been trying to reach you for weeks.”

“Not my fault they want to be all shady about it,” Jim says with a huff, because it’s true. He’s been dodging men in shadowy alleyways and women passing him cryptic notes at the diner across town for weeks now. “If they wanted me to keep things quiet they should’ve kept their shit out of my town.” 

The deal had been simple enough, and they’d failed, so no. Jim Hopper would not follow strange men down shadowy alleyways or follow the directions written on those cryptic notes. He would answer a phone call, he would have a chat in his usual corner booth, or he would not talk at all. 

“I understand,” Owens says, because he does. Owens had understood that the NDAs weren’t as ironclad as most of the suits liked to believe. But most government types don’t like to believe that they’re negotiating at a disadvantage, or acknowledge who really had the most to lose if someone decided to blab. 

Jim has always respected that about him. Owens was one of the good ones. 

“Which is why I’m calling you,” he continues, with a refreshing amount of honesty. “I figured I could catch you at the diner for lunch but I’m halfway across the country and can’t get there in time, so a call will have to do.”

Hopper leans back in his desk chair, swiveling from side to side ever so slightly as his eyes trail across the room, gliding over old maps and a framed photo of the entire Hopper-Byers clan. Will has promised to paint him something to hang behind his desk, but won’t tell anyone what of until it’s done. 

“It’s like this, Jim,” Owens continues after a few moments of silence when Hopper doesn’t respond, “it seems your pups have been putting their noses in where they don’t belong.”

“As they do,” Jim acknowledges, completely unsurprised by this piece of information. “What are they poking their sticky fingers into now?”

Owens chuckles. “Well, I’ll be honest with you Jim, our boys don’t really know yet. Can’t make heads or tails of it.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Indeed. The boys have motion detecting cameras set up along the perimeter of the X-site, and every few days one or two or a group of your pups trips the censor and gets caught on camera. They don’t appear to have gone beyond the perimeter tape or tampered with the scene in any way. Not taken anything or left anything behind, but the boys are starting to get twitchy.”

“They’re teenagers,” Jim says, striving for the kind of know-it-all brand of oblivious confidence that Karen Wheeler has mastered whenever she’s asked about her own kids. “They’re curious teenagers,” he adds. “They’re curious teenagers who probably have a healthy dose of PTSD from dealing with this shit for so long. They’re probably just making sure nothing’s changed.”

Owens hums over the phone, appeased and curious, because Owens is probably the only one of the government goons who actually knows just how involved the kids were in the Upside Down. All the adults and young adults had unanimously decided that very first year to downplay the kids’ involvement wherever possible to keep their names off the record and the agents off their backs as much as possible. 

“I hope you’re right,” Owens says, “but just in case, can you… talk with them?”

Sam Owens is a traditional kind of alpha, and Hopper has spent enough time around those types to know exactly what he’s implying. 

He can’t help it, he laughs. 

Because Sam Owens is implying that Hopper should use his authority as an Alpha to keep the pups from snooping around the X-sites. Which is just… hilarious. On so many levels. Not least of which because in no world would he actually do such a thing unless he wanted a Wheeler-shaped revolution to take place under his watch. But mostly because he’s pretty damn sure he couldn’t even if he wanted to. 

Maybe he would’ve tried, two years ago, but now? Well, Jim Hopper is not stupid. 

He’s never been nor will ever be the kind of genius that can build a super radio or crack a Russian code, but there’s a reason he was made Police Chief before he found every way possible to smother the part of his brain that couldn’t stop thinking in an attempt to cut out the part that wouldn’t forget .

But that was before Will went missing and El came into his life and remembering became less painful. 

Before Joyce wove her way in and out of his heart in a way that frustrated him to no end before, but has now cinched into something so tightly wound into his very soul he doesn’t think it could ever come undone. 

Before he came back from a Russian wasteland and spent nearly three months in the Harrington’s guest suite - not room, suite - while arguing with government grunts about just how much surveillance they were allowed to put in his and El’s new home, read: abso-fucking-lutely none.

So no, Jim Hopper is not stupid. 

Before the Mind Flayer and Russia and that freaky Vecna character, Hopper had been dreading the day when the Party members - because Ellie insisted her little friend group be called by their official title - presented. Mike Wheeler was a nightmare of teenage hormones and rebellion before he factored in whatever fuckery his secondary gender would add to the mix. 

But that was before he’d spent almost two months watching Steve Harrington ride herd on the nerds like he was born to do it. He’d heard from Eleven that the Party was a pack, but he’d honestly thought she had just misunderstood something. Had thought that maybe they were just weird kids in this as in everything else. 

But no. 

The Party was a pack.

And Steve Harrington was the Party’s pack omega.

The kid spent weeks coddling and fretting and purring and chirping right alongside Joyce as the two omegas fought to convince themselves that their pups were safe to exist outside of their direct line of sight. 

Most times they succeeded, but sometimes they didn’t, and Henderson seemed pleased as punch every time he ended up folded into the large nest Steve had built in the recessed area of the living room. He’d sit and read or chat with Will and El or whoever else from the Party had come over to hang at the Harrington house and gotten pulled into the nests by one or both of the omegas. 

Even when Eddie and Max had been released, and the Hopper-Byers had finally reached an agreement over and finished moving into their new place, and their house became the new Party Hub because it was on the same street as Eddie and Max, Harrington is still there. He gossips with Joyce and talks sports with Jim himself, does the rounds checking on Will and Eleven and Max and Eddie, sits in on the Dragon Game and forces them to stop for meals and bathroom breaks. 

It’s nice, honestly, refreshing if only for the way Mike Wheeler shows Steve Harrington respect in a way that Hoppe’s pretty damn certain the boy doesn’t even show his own father.

It’s… vindicating to watch. 

And by this point, Hopper has gotten every variation of the End of Vecna possible. Gotten first, second, and third hand accounts of how Harrington had taken a flying leap at the murderous freak and ripped his throat out. 

So yeah, before all that, Jim Hopper may well have tried to use his Alpha authority to get the pups to cut it out. But that was before. 

And Jim Hopper wasn’t stupid. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” he tells Owens, “but I make no promises.”

“See that you do,” Owens says, but his genial tone doesn’t do much to disguise the clear threat hiding behind the words. And then, to drive home the point, “the boys are starting to get a little… froggy, and I’d hate for anything to happen if they jump.”

Hopper hums, a dubious, drawn out noise he’s heard Joyce make whenever Jonathan or Will got close to testing her patience. “You tell your boys to stand down,” he growls, finally allowing the itch in his throat to tremble into a low, warning rumble. “If they so much as touch a hair on those pups’ heads,” he says, letting the warning linger, “then they’d better be prepared to face the consequences.”

There’s silence on the other end for a moment, before Owens says, “I’ll let them know,” and then hangs up. 

Saturday morning, Steve Harrington wakes up to the sound of the phone ringing. He’s face down in the nest the pups had built the night before, nose smushed into someone’s neck and mouth full of thick, curly hair. He sits up slowly, blinking blearily and shifting under the weight of, he looks over his shoulder, Henderson sprawled across his legs. 

The early morning sun is only just starting to creep across the floor towards the nest, and the air is still filed with the scent and sound of a half dozen pups sleeping deep and sound. He can hear Robin’s deep, nasally snores rumbling from beneath a tangle of fluffy blankets and Erica Sinclair. Mike and Lucas are back-to-back further down. Lucas has a hand around his sister’s ankle, and Mike is spooning up behind Eleven who is, in turn, spooned up behind Max.

Will is nowhere to be seen, which would be concerning but when Steve turns his head, there Will is, not even a foot away, tucked securely under a thin, pale arm and tucked into the same chest that Steve himself had wound up pressed against. 

“Morning, sunshine,” a raspy voice whispers, and Steve looks up to catch Eddie’s half-lidded eyes crinkled with a sleepy smile. 

A soft, pealing chirp stumbles sleepily over his lips, and he lets out a happy purr. His pack is in his nest. His whole pack. In his nest. 

With a happy rumble he settles back into Eddie’s side, mind hazy with the pure bliss of knowing his pack is safe and sound in his nest. 

The phone rings again, and Steve grumbles. 

“Sorry, sunshine,” Eddie murmurs. “I’d have gotten up to get it myself but I didn’t want to wake anyone up.” 

A herd of demogorgons could thunder through the dining room and none of the pups would even stir. With another annoyed grumble, Steve gently extracts himself from the nest and almost steps on Robin’s outstretched hand as he stumbles, sleep-blind, to the phone. 

“M’ello?” He says. 

“Sorry to wake you, kid,” the familiar baritone of Hopper’s voice soothes from the other side of the line and Steve immediately snaps into wakefulness. 

“Hop,” he says, slow and suddenly terrified, “what’s happened?”

“Nothing major,” Hopper soothes, immediately, “everything is fine and nobody is in danger, but I got a phone call this morning that I think you’ll want to know about. How many gremlins am I grabbing breakfast for on my way over?”

Steve sighs and does a quick headcount. 

So much for a good morning.

Chapter Text

Steve has learned a lot about himself after everything. Nancy and Barb and Robin, Dustin and Jonathan and the Party, demogorgons and demo-dogs and Russians, every single one of them a hit to the head that helped him turn himself around. Slowly but surely figuring out how to crawl forward. 

Learning that maybe there’s a difference between popularity and genuine connection. Maybe there’s a difference between the Alpha his parents wished he was and the Omega he’s slowly learning how to love being. 

Maybe he’s not as good at pretending as he thought he was. 

Maybe he doesn’t have to pretend at all. 

He’d told Dustin, almost two years – and what feels sometimes like lifetimes – ago to “act like you don’t care” and the girls would fall at his feet. Now he sometimes wonders who exactly in his relationship with Nancy was acting like they didn’t care, and who was falling all over themselves to please them. 

The answer to that is probably written somewhere in the scuff-marks on Nancy’s window sill.

Either way, he should probably apologize to Dustin at some point for lying through his teeth. 

Shedding the mantle of King Steve took off more layers than he’d thought it would at the time, all the indifference that he’d built up under that name like armor to protect the soft, squishy bits of himself that just wanted so badly to be loved. Removing that indifference left him open to genuine connection, with Robin and Dustin and the Party and, eventually, Nancy and Eddie and Jonathan. But it also left him open to the realities of how he, Tommy and Carol really treated other people and, most importantly, each other. It had hurt, then, the realization that his friends weren’t really his friends. 

And it hurts now. 

His feral episode has left him more vulnerable than ever to the tug and pull of his pack bonds with the Party. Before, it was a plucking sort of tug that was easy to filter into background information but now, it’s like every thread is rooted deep in his heart and mind, buzzing like Eddie’s guitar chords when he goes for a complicated riff. 

And even now that they’re safe, and they’re home, and Vecna is dead, there’s a part of him that refuses to let it’s guard down. 

He promised Robin he would give the kids space, but it’s like putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Now that his inner omega knows what it’s like to sink his teeth into someone’s pulse and  bite until the blood wells up and that pulse slows down… 

Well, there’s a reason nobody has tried anything with Eddie. Taking care of the injured metalhead had been a welcome outlet for his omega’s newfound desire to tuck the pups into his nest and brood . Instead of sitting on Henderson until the little fucker stopped squirming and stayed safe, he’d sat in with Eddie while he was recovering. Instead of following Max around like an anxious hen until she was steadier on her feet, he’d followed along on errands with Eddie, scenting him to hell and back and glowering at anyone who so much as looked at them funny.

And it had worked. 

Maybe a little too well. 

There’s something Other about him now, something in his stance or his scent that’s a little more wild. Something that your average Midwestern Lookie-Lou knows to stay clear of. There’s a door in his mind made of iron bars that took months to place back on their hinges, with a broken lock that refuses to stay latched.

And Steve has no problem popping his teeth at suburban pearl-clutchers, but there’s something… else going on, too. 

It starts a few weeks after Eddie had been discharged from the hospital. Steve had taken to coming around the Munson place as much as possible to help Wayne tend to the healing alpha. For the most part, that meant helping Wayne lift Eddie into and out of his wheelchair as he started to put on more weight, or just generally being another pair of hands whenever Wayne’s spry but still significantly older frame couldn’t manage a task on his own. 

On this particular day, Wayne had been called in to cover a shift – something that the man technically no longer needed to do, but still liked to do on occasion to help out one of his work buddies – leaving all of Eddie’s care in Steve’s capable hands. 

“Your hair is filthy,” Steve says when he enters the house, apropos of nothing but absolutely justified given that Eddie’s hair is an absolute mess of tangles and grease. It’s kind of impressive, honestly, considering Steve had been by less than two days ago and the alpha’s signature mane had been clean and relatively tame then.

“Nightmares,” Eddie explains, tiredly, with a helpless sort of shrug that Steve feels in his own exhausted shoulders. “Wayne was going to help me with it tonight but he got called in, so you’ll just have to put up with it tonight.”

As he’s speaking, Eddie’s hand drifts up into the mess of curls, self-consciously fiddling with one of the tangles and only really making it worse. That simply won’t do. 

“Nah, man,” Steve says, walking further into the house to start running a warm bath. “It physically pains me to leave your hair like that.”

And after a brief exchange where Eddie insists he’s fine and Steve insists he’s not, they end up in the master bathroom, Eddie sunk in a tub of water in his boxers and a loose t-shirt while Steve sat on a stool behind his head, sleeves rolled up and shampoo at the ready. 

It should have been a normal experience, washing Eddie’s hair. Nothing sexual or romantic about the way he nearly broke a sweat trying to tease out tangles and loosen the kind of sticky panicked sweat that Steve was unfortunately familiar with washing out of his own hair in the mornings. It should have been fine. 

But something about the way Eddie’s neck flexed and stretched over the rim of the tub. 

Something about the way Eddie slowly relaxed into the water, shoulders going lax and trusting, the weight of his head in Steve’s hands. 

Something about the way Eddie’s scent tilted calm and relaxed and peaceful.

Something about the way his pulse beat slow and strong and steady beneath Steve’s fingertips anytime he dug into Eddie’s scalp. 

Something about all of that and more sent a rush of something that felt suspiciously like a fragile sort of power up Steve’s spine and made his mouth water. 

It would have been so easy to lean down and sink his teeth into Eddie’s shoulder or neck, rip and tear and maim and mark for all to see the imprint of Steve’s teeth in Eddie’s skin. 

Steve didn’t even realize how deep into the thought he’d fallen until Eddie shifted just slightly and suddenly his body was frozen, every muscle joint and bone quivering with the need to lean forward and bite. Quivering with how hard he was forcing himself not to. 

He’d finished washing Eddie’s hair, must have, but he has no memory of doing so. 

As soon as Wayne had returned from his shift, Steve had bolted back to his own house with no memory of getting there and the absolute certainty that something was terribly wrong with him. 

Over the next few days he’d been able to convince himself that it was nothing, just one of those random stray thoughts that everyone got from time to time. 

Crash your car into that tree. 

Smack Mike upside the head for being a punk ass bitch. 

Bite your new friend until he bleeds. 

Completely normal. 

But unlike the car-crash thought, the urge to bite never really goes away.

He tries to keep it low key around the pups, this newfound need. They already like to joke about Steve and Eddie going from “divorced dads trading custody” to “making their marriage work for the pups” regardless of how many times Steve and Eddie have to remind the little punks that they don’t actually hate each other anymore. If they ever really did. 

So he ignores it when he can and keeps a firm grip on it when he can’t, forcing himself to keep his shoulders relaxed and his scent pleasant but he feels it still, bubbling up his spine like his blood is boiling out of his veins. 

But as always, he can’t hide anything from his other half. 

“Are you sure you don’t have rabies?” Robin asks immediately, after a solid minute of silence as she processed Steve’s absolutely unhinged and not-at-all coherent explanation of why exactly he was acting so strange all of a sudden. He’d thought he’d been hiding it pretty well, but it had taken her exactly twenty minutes, one cup of coffee, and three bites of belgian waffles before she’d picked up on his ‘weird vibes’ and commenced interrogation. 

And then, without giving Steve time to even consider answering her first question, she continues, “Do you think that you could be turning into a… were-bat? Were-demo-bat? Some sort of Upside Down Vampire?”

“I sure fucking hope not!” Steve all but shouts, pressed against the counter across from her while he waits for his second cup of coffee to finish brewing. “That would be like, the literal worst case scenario Robin, could you imagine how many fucking tests they’d run on me?”

*The government? I have some ideas.”

“Forget the government,” Steve counters, coffee mug full once more as he returns to the table, “Henderson would never let me know another moment of peace.”

She nods, conceding the point. 

“Sometimes it’s like I’m feral again,” he continues to confess after a few moments of silence, “All fight or flight. No rational thought.” He gestures with his fork, “Just the absolutely insanely out-of-nowhere need to just,” he gestures at his face, “stick shit in my mouth.”

Robin sighs, pointing a syrupy fork in his direction as he adds more melted butter and syrup to his diminishing stack of waffles. “Steve, I hate to break it to you,” she says in the dry kind of tone she likes to use on Dustin when he’s being a brat, “but you have a bit of an oral fixation. Literally how many times have you almost chipped a tooth from putting your shinies in your mouth, huh? How many of Erica’s friendship bracelets have you broken by chewing on them?”

“This isn’t the same,” Steve insists, despite the fact that she’s made an annoyingly valid point, “this isn’t like that. Yeah, I put shit in my mouth all the time, sure, but Eddie isn’t a necklace or a bracelet, he’s a person! I’ve never wanted to chew on a person before!”

Robin blinks. “Haven’t you?”

 “What do you mean?”

“Well,” she drawls, “I agree that at some point I don’t think he still qualified as human, but you have put a person in your mouth before.” She looks at him pointedly, and Steve just stares at her until she takes another bite and gestures pointedly with her fork at her neck. “Pretty violently, too. Definitely did some chewing.”

“No way,” Steve immediately denies. “I mean, I know me and Eddie didn’t really get along but, like, wanting to rip his throat out is a bit much.” Or, it would be, really, except for all the ways that it… makes sense. In a terrible kind of no good, very bad way.

“I mean, think about it,” Robin says, putting down her fork to lean on her elbows and start counting off on her fingers. 

Point one, “Eddie is an alpha.”

Point two, “Eddie is an alpha that your pups look up to and spend a lot of time with.”

Point three, “In traditional conservative cultural norms, packs are led by alphas, not omegas.”

Point four, “But our pack, aside from me and Hopper, has never had a pack alpha, so the one in charge has always been you, our pack omega.”

Point four-point-five, “And even if we challenged you for it, there’s no way on this godforsaken earth that the Party would ever accept Hopper or me as Pack Alpha, but…”

Point five. “The kids love Eddie.”

“If Eddie tried to challenge me, or tried to take over as Pack Alpha….” Steve trails off. 

“Then it’s possible,” Robin says as gently as she can, “that the Party would accept him as Pack Alpha.”

Even the idea makes his teeth hurt. 

“I’m not saying it will happen,” Robin says quickly, in what he’s pretty sure she means to be a reassuring tone, “but if you’re wondering why you suddenly have the urge to bite him, then that might be why.”

Steve tries to imagine it, Eddie pushing him out and taking over as Pack Alpha. Sure enough, it makes that thing in the back of his head perk up with the sense of wrong-ness. It’s not a logical thought, because for all his grand gestures and figure-head personality, Eddie hadn’t so much as growled at Nancy or Steve himself when push came to shove in the Upside Down. He’d been downright docile with the pups and Steve himself, like the male lions in that documentary Dustin had made him watch a few months ago. Big gestures and gentle hands, protective and playful and perfectly content to mind the cubs while the lionesses took care of business. 

But there's been nothing rational about his thought processes lately, nothing normal about the way he wants to lick Dustin’s hair back into place or smother Mike in his nest, so he tries not to dwell on it. 

“Maybe you’re right,” Steve concedes, “but I doubt he’d ever actually make a play like that.”

“Munson?” Robin scoffs, “yeah, no, you’re fine, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

As the months go on, the thoughts don’t disappear, but they do settle into the kind of background worry that Steve has gotten distressingly good at managing over the last four years. 

Demogorgans might come through his walls, the floor might open up into a portal to hell, evil monsters might possess his friends, and Eddie Munson might try to steal his pack. 

No problem. 

“I got a phone call this morning that I think you’ll want to know about.” Hopper says. 

Ugh. Okay, so, maybe there’s a problem. 

The coppery scent of blood at his wrist floods his mouth with saliva.

“Shit, Stevie,” a voice says in a horrified tone. 

He comes back to himself, sitting on the couch in Eddie and Wayne’s new house, tucked close to Eddie’s side while a movie plays on the television. Wayne had insisted he stay for dinner after a particularly harrowing day of physical therapy – where Eddie had come away with very little progress and quite a lot of pain – and errands – where Steve had almost bitten the cashier for how she’d been eyeing Eddie. Dinner had turned into a movie, and somewhere in the last thirty minutes Steve had gone to chew off a hangnail and… gotten distracted. When he opens his eyes he sees the small stream of blood running down his thumb. He licks his lips. 

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Wayne approaching with a fistful of napkins, but before he can get any closer his wrist is in Eddie’s grip, a familiar black bandana pressed firmly against the stinging wound in his finger. “Nope, none of that,” Eddie says like he’d read Steve’s intent, the sudden hungry longing to shove the wound in his mouth and suck . 

Eddie’s rings, thick and silver and clickity clackity, catch Steve’s attention.

Steve Harrington is many things. Some he admits willingly, some he keeps close to his chest, and some he’d deny until his dying breath. But he’s long since accepted that in his heart, Steve Harrington was a bit of a Jealous Omega. It’s not that he’s jealous of other people’s things, so much as it’s not hard to long for a kind word or proud touch when he’s lived his whole life without them.  

But recently and with increasing vigor, he’s found himself rabidly, ferociously jealous of the rings on Eddie’s fingers. Rings on an alpha aren’t exactly unheard of, and the rings Eddie wore most regularly – snarling animal heads, intricate crosses, and jewel-eyed skulls to name a few – were appropriately masculine. 

Steve is jealous of those heavy rings, how reassuring their weight must be, how good it must feel to throw a punch with them on, like a beautifully detailed and far more nimble – and legal – set of brass knuckles. He imagines throwing such a punch and feeling the weight of them carry it through, breaking bone and splitting skin. He imagines cleaning Eddie’s knuckles after throwing such a punch, tracing every intricate line of flesh and metal alike to clean away any trace of violence. 

But there were a few more delicate pieces in Eddie’s collection. Ones he wears less often, but enough that Tommy had noticed and immediately insinuated that they must have come from a fellow Alpha, because why else would a Freak like Munson be wearing such dainty pieces.

Steve finds himself jealous of those dainty pieces, too, at the idea that it was an Alpha that gave them to Eddie. That maybe the Alpha that gave them to Eddie will come back one day and take him away from Ste- away from the Pack . Henderson and Wheeler needed Eddie. That was all.    

“Jesus, Steve,” Eddie sighs, his always-cold palm pressing against the omega’s cheek and forehead, fingers fluttering across his vision in a way that makes him want to snap at them. 

He might still snap at them, or something, or anything. Because that small, soft thing in his chest that he’s been ignoring and repressing for weeks flares up again, fluttering and shimmying in his chest like a kitten lining up to pounce without really knowing how to. Steve is used to the urge to bite, terrified of how often he has to hold himself back from doing just that anytime a situation turns stressful.

He starts absently scratching the thumb of his free hand against the skin at the base of his fingers where a ring would sit against his own skin, scraping and stabbing and scoring into the thin skin.

He’s at it long enough that it starts to hurt in a far-off way that feels disconnected from the rest of his body. Eddie notices the motion when he releases the handkerchief and the alpha tuts softly. There’s a low voice nearby but not too close as his injured hand is given over to Wayne, the crinkle of a Band-Aid wrapper, and a pressure around the wounded finger but those sensations take second place to the arresting feeling of cold metal against his palm. 

Steve looks down in time to see Eddie slip one of the rings off of his finger and slide it onto one of Steve’s. “Next time, just fiddle with that instead, Silly Omega,” Eddie murmurs. “No need to hurt yourself.”

“Okay,” Steve hears himself say, but he doesn’t say anything more, keeps his hands in his lap for the rest of the movie, and only nods a short goodbye and goodnight before fleeing back to his nest once the movie is over. 

He doesn’t return the ring.

He needs to call Robin. 

“How many gremlins am I grabbing breakfast for on my way over?”

Steve sighs and does a quick headcount. 

So much for a good morning. 

The little shits have been sneaking out. 

The little shits have been visiting the gates. 

His pups have been sneaking out of their very safe houses to visit the very unsafe sites of very unsafe murders that may or may not still connect to the very unsafe hell dimension lurking beneath Hawkins.

There’s a rumbling growl filling the room as the pups talk over themselves, trying to defend themselves and their actions, sticking up for each other and throwing each other under the bus in equal measure as they’ve always done and - Lord willing - will always continue to do. 

The most surprising thing, though, is that the rumbling growl isn’t coming from Steve. 

“Sit down!” Eddie shouts, voice deep and gravelly in a way he never is, frame tense and eyes flinty as he looks around the room at the pups. They’re instantly quiet, all falling back into their seats to look at Eddie with shocked, but not – Steve is glad to see – frightened, faces. 

Dustin and Robin both cut glances at Steve, for different reasons, as Eddie’s tirade picks up steam but he can feel Hopper’s stare the heaviest. He ignores it, focusing on keeping Eddie from getting up onto the table. It’s a solid piece of furniture, but he’s not quite sure it could handle Eddie’s usual level of theatrics. 

The fluttery feeling is back, but his muscles stay loose, relaxed but ready for anything. Like Tews laying in a sunbeam, soft stomach exposed and unbearably tempting, if it weren’t for the ever-present threat of claws.  

He’d thought if any alpha ever tried to yell at his pups in this way, asserting any kind of authority over the pack structure and hierarchy, Steve would be on them like white on rice, teeth in neck with no time to second guess. But this feels different. 

He can’t quite pin down how or why yet, but it certainly seems to be worth figuring out.  

Eventually, Eddie loses steam and settles back into his seat with an exasperated sigh, turning to look at Steve in a conspiratorial ‘do you believe this shit’ kind of way and the realizations strikes like lightning, buzzing from his head all the way down to his toes. 

Eddie is different because he’s not setting himself above Steve in the pack hierarchy. He’s not putting himself between Steve and his pups. 

Instead, Eddie has placed himself firmly at Steve’s side, a united and immovable object ready and willing to temper the pups’ unstoppable force.

Eddie smiles at him, nose scrunching in an adorable little moue of confusion as he brings one hand up, whittling the fingers in front of Steve’s face as he says, “Hello? Earth to Stevie?” 

The urge returns, but something about it feels different, this urge to take Eddie’s fingers into his mouth instead of his throat. He doesn’t want to hurt Eddie, he doesn’t think. That would certainly go against every other instinct inside him that insists that Eddie is his to protect, just like the pups or Nancy or Robin.  

He wants to taste Eddie’s skin, not his blood. 

Wants to feel the cool metallic tang of his rings, not the warm iron must of his blood. 

Want to hold Eddie in his mouth, and keep him safe behind the walls of Steve’s teeth where it’s safe and warm. 

“Stevie?” Eddie calls again, and Steve’s eyes flutter as he gasps like he’s coming up for air and as quickly as that feeling had come, it’s gone, and in its place is the kind of rational thought and conscious thinking that makes him realize just how absolutely weird he was just acting. 

And how many people are in his dining room. 

Robin’s eyes are so wide he thinks they might pop out of her skull. 

Fuck.

BLOOPERS AS A TREAT BECAUSE I'M SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG:

First, a scene that canonically happened but I could never find a good place to work it into the story but I still adore it so it will probably be referenced, brought up, or worked in later.

When they make it to highschool, they pool their funds for a Christmas gift and nobody even thinks to argue over who gets what percent of the credit, but they can’t quite agree on what to get him. 

“We have enough for something good,” Dustin insists over lunch, a few weeks before school gets out for Christmas break. “So we need to get him something good.”

“And we agree,” Lucas insists. “But there’s not a jewelry store in the world that will have what you’re wanting to get him, no way.”

“Yeah, man,” Mike drawls. “It’s all fucking tennis bracelets and the kind of shit my mom wears.”

“Looking for something specific?” A new voice supplies as a tray clatters at the head of the table. “Something… shiny for someone special?”

All three freshmen look up, and Eddie wiggles his eyebrows at them suggestively. Dustin’s eyes fall to Eddie's neck and where his hands are folded attentively under his chin. 

“Eddie!” Dustin chirps. “Eddie you might know!”

Their Dungeon Master blinks quickly in surprise, chin flinching back ever so slightly at the sudden attention. “Me?” he drawls, languidly adjusting his posture to recline back ever so slightly a lay a hand over his chest. “Why, Henderson, I’ll have you know I’m a veritable font of knowledge, information, and secrets beyond your comprehension. Whatever could you need to know that I don’t have the answer to? Ask! Ask and receive my knowledge!”

Dustin beams, leaning forward eagerly. “Okay, okay, this is perfect,” he gushes. “We need to know where you get your jewelry. We need something special this year, and we’ve pooled all our funds and-”

“Wait, Eddie interrupts, leaning forward so his booted feet fall back onto the floor with a thud. “All of you?” He rests an elbow back on the table and points between the three freshmen. “All of you pooled your money for a gift? A jewelry gift? A jewelry gift of what I’m assuming is going to be the shiny variety?”

Dustin nods. “Yeah, us and the whole Party.”

“For… an omega?”

“Yeah, our pack omega.”

Eddie’s eyebrows crinkle. “Okay, yeah, sure, that makes sense. Jewelry. For your pack omega. Whatever man, I’ve said weirder, what were you looking to get?”

“A nail bat.”

Eddie blinks. “A nail bat? Like…” he wiggles his fingers, “bats for… their nails?” 

Mike sighs dramatically. “No man,” he says. “Like a bat, like a baseball bat, with nails in it.”

“For your pack omega ? The one who sends you to school with cookies and makes you eat your vegetables? That omega?” 

“Well yeah,” Dustin says. “He’s a badass.”

Eddie sits in silence for a few moments. “Jewelry. For your pack omega.” He mutters under his breath, head tilting from side to side as he finishes every statement. “For your badass pack omega. Nail bat jewelry.” His eyes go far away for a moment, mulling something over. 

“Yeah, sure, I know a place,” he finally says, only slightly spooked by the loud wave of cheers that erupts from the trio of freshmen. “But it’s a little ways outside Hawkins…” the cheers die down slightly as they look frantically at each other. 

Eddie smiles. “... you guys need a ride?”

The trip outside Hawkins happens about a week later, and somehow the three freshmen have grown to four when he wasn’t looking. “Did somebody take a dip in the pool when I wasn’t looking? I swear I only invited three of you on this trip.”

The redhead, the new girl, rolls her eyes and Eddie decides he likes her. 

All told, the trip is fairly uneventful. They make it to the jewelry shop without anyone committing murder. Eddie only has to stop the van once to break up a fight, which was one less time than he’d had to do it the last time he took Corroded Coffin to Indy so... There’s that. 

The jewelry store itself is kind of seedy looking, but despite his many piercings and visible tattoos the guy behind the counter is a friendly sort who Eddie’s seen many times over the few years he’s been coming here.

The kids fan out, eyeing the pieces critically but clearly on the hunt for something special. Eddie himself isn’t looking for anything specific but an almost delicately scrolled band with a round black stone in the middle catches his eye. There’s a good chance it’s going home with him.

“Holy shit!” One of the freshmen calls, and the others flock to their position like homing pigeons, pushing up on their toes to see over each other’s shoulders. Eddie, a good few inches taller than even the redhead, has a clear view of exactly what they’re exclaiming over. 

It’s a necklace. 

The chain is plain and a sturdy kind of thin that Eddie himself wouldn’t be too worried about wearing around his own neck. But hanging from the chain is a pendant about an inch and a half long. 

It is, in fact, a nail bat. 

Fucking knew it . 

Eddie does a little happy dance in his head at being right, because he’s pretty sure if they hadn’t found what they were looking for the redhead would’ve had no problems hiding his body. 

“This is perfect,” Dustin enthuses. “Steve’s going to love it.”

And the fireworks in Eddie’s brain stop. “Steve?” He says, and has a vague flash of why the mulled wine scent that lingers on the freshmen had seemed so familiar. “Steve Harrington ?”

The group turns to look at him, eyebrows slightly furrowed as if they’re confused by his confusion, which. Rude. 

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “Steve Harrington.”

“He’s your pack omega?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mike says, one eyebrow raised as if Eddie is being slow on purpose.

“He’s a badass ?”

“A total badass,” Dustin affirms, oblivious to the trainwreck going on in Eddie’s brain as he tries to reconcile the King Steve of his memory with this new, Pack Omega Steve. “And he’s gonna love this , thank you so much for bringing us, Eddie!”

Eddie can only nod, robotically going through the motions as he watches the freshmen pay for the necklace in a mishmash of bills and coins that they continue to apologize over but the cashier merely shrugs. “You’ve got the right amount and I don’t have to do the math to give you change, guys, that’s all I give a shit about.”

Eddie goes ahead and buys the ring he was eyeing too, while he’s at it. He figures he’s earned it for the absolute mind fuck of a day this has been. 

The drive back to Hawkins is chaotic, but a bomb could have gone off in the backseat and Eddie wouldn’t have noticed. 

King Steve. 

Pack Omega. 

With a nail bat?

King Steve.  

Badass????

No, Eddie decides. The freshmen are talking about another Steve Harrington. Or they’re hallucinating. Or they’re lying. To be honest, they’re probably lying, but a trip outside of Hawkins to buy jewelry from a punk with a hole in his cheek seems like a bit much for a practical joke. 

His musing is cut short a week after Christmas when he goes to the video store and runs into none other than King Steve with muppets in his ears and a fucking nail bat hanging from his neck under his usual black cameo. 

Well.

Fuck.

Second, an alternative scene where Steve is still a little too feral and either a. genuinely sees Eddie as a threat to his position in the pack or b. his fight or flight in the face of his new Feelings For Eddie get twisted up in the lingering trauma from Nancy and crank that Fight Response to a 12. I didn't go with it because it felt a little too forced and inconsistent with previous chapters and interactions. Steve confusing the need to nom with protective aggression? Perf. Steve genuinely feeling aggressive towards Eddie, someone he has very strong Protect feelings for? Less Perf but still fun. 

In an instant, Eddie is no longer a packmate. 

Eddie is a challenger . A threat to Steve’s position. Eddie wants to be Pack Alpha, a role that until now has never officially been filled by anyone – save, perhaps, Robin, in a solely administrative capacity. 

Hopper must read something about Steve’s sudden shift in posture or scent, because the instant Steve has decided on a course of action, the older alpha is shouting at Eddie to get away. But Eddie hesitates, and Steve strikes. 

The only thing keeping Steve from going for Eddie’s throat is the knowledge that the alpha is a threat to his position , but not to his pups . Instead, Steve takes advantage of every millimeter of his compromised reach to lunge forward and sink his teeth into Eddie’s shoulder. 

The fabric of his sleep shirt keeps the bite from digging too deep, but it’s still savage enough to draw blood, the scent filling Steve’s head with a coppery sense of satisfaction. 

There are shouts around him, and the clatter of chairs falling over as bodies rush in to separate them or out to stay out of the way. “Hopper!” Someone shouts nearby, a female voice that Steve vaguely connects to Robin’s presence at his side, gangly limbs attempting to pull him away from Eddie. “Holy shit, what do we do?!”

Hopper nearly vaults the table as he scrambles to separate them, but when his boots hit the ground and he manages to get a look at what he’s dealing with he’s a little baffled. Harrington is absolutely 100% biting the shit out of Munson’s shoulder, and there’s a suspiciously coppery wet spot slowly growing on the dark fabric of the shirt that’s clenched under Harrington’s jaw, but neither of them is engaging beyond that. 

Harrington’s teeth are latched in a firm hold, but not grinding down. 

Munson’s hands are up in a way that Hopper had originally thought were meant to pull Harrington off of him, but they’re staying up and away in a submissive position. Munson’s whole body is in a submissive position, muscles lax and head tilted as far to the side as possible without pulling on the bite. 

“Easy, big boy,” Munson says after a moment, once it’s clear that they’re locked in a stalemate. “I didn’t know that your pups weren’t talking to you,” he soothes, “didn’t know I was stepping on  your toes.”

Harrington growls, but it’s a chirping kind of thing that lilts high at the end like he’s unsure. His hands are still tangled up in the bandana, but the fabric shifts rhythmically in a way that Hopper would be willing to bet money means that Harrington’s hands are curling and uncurling into the fabric. Making biscuits, Joyce calls it. 

“There, there,” a rumbly voice says. Steve can feel it in his mouth, vibrating through the skin held in his teeth. He’d expected the alpha challenger to, well, challenge. But the second he’d sunk his teeth in, the flesh had gone lax rather than tense, and the scent in his nose is coaxing and calming, no hint of anger or challenge or defiance. 

He’s… confused. 

“It’s okay,” that voice says again, “you stay there as long as you need. You’ve been worried, right? Because your pups were hurting and wouldn’t just talk to you like normal people?” Something about that statement seems pointed, but Steve just chirps and nods and hums because yes, yes, he’s been so worried .

He feels telltale wetness blossoming between his eyes, pressure against his brow, and whines as the tears begin to fall. There’s a hushed voice and shuffling steps but before Steve can worry about it too much that voice is back, “It’s okay, oma,” it says. “You’re a good oma,” and the words send a thrill though Steve’s soul, “but your pups were worried about you too .”

Steve shakes his head, paying no heed to the shoulder still stuffed in his mouth and the wince that accompanies the movement. He grumbles and growls. 

Not their job. Not their job to worry about him. 

“No?” That voice says again. “Who worries about you then, Oma? Who takes care of you? Don’t your pups take care of you? Give you shinies for being a good Oma?” 

Steve hums in reluctant agreement.

“I noticed you’re not wearing any of your shinies, oma,” Eddie croons, and Steve whines sharply with the realization that no, actually, he’d taken them all off last night so they wouldn’t get tangled in the nest. He’d been so distracted by Hopper’s call that he hadn’t put any of them back on. 

Steve whines at the realization, finally unlatching his teeth from Eddie’s shoulder. The sound coming from his throat is long and sharp and droning but Eddie coos and rumbles, soothing the sound away. Steve’s eyes roll frantically across the room, absentmindedly noting that the dining room is empty, but none of his shinies are in sight. 

“It’s okay, Oma,” Eddie says, shifting to detangle Steve’s hands from the handkerchief now that he can move his neck enough to see what he’s doing. With a flick of his wrist, he throws the handkerchief over his bloody shoulder and starts fumbling with Steve’s hands. 

“Here you go,” he says, and it’s like someone has struck a tuning fork in Steve’s soul. Everything coming into focus on the same frequency as his omega processes the warm, solid weight of Eddie’s rings sliding onto place on his knuckles. 

Steve runs a little warmer than Eddie, so while the metal is skin-warm, it’s still slightly cool against the thin skin between his fingers. 

The buzz beneath his skin rattles up his throat into a heavy, guttural purr.

Chapter Text

The first, last, and greatest gift Eliza Munson nee Hammond ever gave her one and only son was their shared love of reading. Eddie’s grandmother, Eliza’s mom, had been illiterate until the day she died, and had insisted that her daughter would not be the same. Eliza had fallen in love with reading, and had a particular fondness for reading aloud, since it was the only way to share her love and passion for the written word with her dear mother.

Eddie has fond memories of sitting in his mother’s lap as she read to him about gods and goddesses and destiny, running her finger along the words so he could follow along. In his memories, her gentle alto voice easily drowns out the beeping of the various machines and the voices out in the hallway. The sights and smells of the hospital’s oncology ward are easily cast aside in favor of the images conjured by her storyteller’s voice. 

She taught him how to read in that hospital room, sounding out consonants and vowels and pitching his voice to match her tone and make her laugh. In those final days, when her voice had gone and her laugh was little more than a rasping cough, Eddie had slipped the book from her too-thin hands and started reading to her instead. He’d stumbled over more than a few words, painstakingly sounding out the words and stumbling over unfamiliar turns of phrase. 

His voice had gone hoarse with the reading and the crying, but his mother breathed her last with a smile on her face, and that memory is far more important. 

It hadn’t seemed fair to little Eddie, that his mama had to pass before she got to hear the end of the story, so after her funeral was held and her body was buried, he’d started sneaking out at night with the book and a flashlight tucked under shirt. He’d sit on the still-fresh earth in front of her headstone, and he’d read. 

Wayne had to have known he was doing it – Eddie has never been particularly stealthy, even when he was small – but he let Eddie get away with it for about a week. 

“And where do you think you’re going?”

Eddie had frozen, with the brief thought that if he didn’t move, Wayne wouldn’t notice him. 

“Well boy? Where’re you headed at this ungodly hour, huh?”

“I’m gonna see mama,” Eddie had eventually answered, slowly turning around and pulling the book out from under his shirt. “She needs to hear the end of the story.”

Wayne had read the title of the book and then sighed, gusty and resigned, before nodding firmly and kneeling down to take Eddie into his arms. “She always did hate a cliffhanger, huh?” he’d murmured, running a hand over Eddie’s short curls. “But hey, didya know that book was yer mama’s favorite?”

Eddie nodded. He had. Mama had said so. 

“Yer mama loved this book, ‘specially when she was little.”

Eddie nodded.     

“So, she uh, she know how the book ends, baby.” Wayne had said gently, like he was afraid this piece of information would break Eddie’s heart. 

But Eddie just nodded. 

“I know,” he’d said. “But it’s her favorite.”

And Wayne hadn’t known how to argue with such infallible logic, so they’d reached an agreement. Eddie would stop “sneaking out” and Wayne would take him to the cemetery every Sunday to read to his mama. 

Now, Eddie settles, legs criss-crossed, in front of her headstone and runs his thumb over the tape holding the tattered little book together. The title is faded to an almost illegible degree, but by this point Eddie knows almost every word by heart. 

He’d read her many different books over the years, usually whatever he was interested in or anything he thought she would particularly enjoy, but at least once a year he would read her this story. 

“ The land of the dead, ” Eddie reads, picking up from where he’d left off, “ was nothing like the horror stories the Naiads and nymphs had told her. And Hades himself was nothing like the alpha brute her mother liked to complain about in the way that life always seemed to despise death… ” 

He continues to read, mouth on autopilot in a way that would surprise no one who knew him, his mind wandering as Persephone explored the dark and peaceful, almost drowsy realm of Hades’ kingdom. A cynical part of him wants to scoff at the description now, having been to an actual hell dimension, but the romantic side of him is happy that her experience was so different from his. 

“He’s not my dad,” Max says.

“So you’ve said,” Steve murmurs into Robin’s neck. “But I still have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.” They’re lying front-to-front in the pack nest, Robin’s back against the plush floor of the nest as he sprawls across her chest. Her bony thighs are pressed into his waist with how deeply he’s settled against her. Any other time, Steve might have been worried about suffocating her, but he’s currently serving as her human hot water bottle, soothing that stabbing pain in her core.   

Steve, even while on suppressants, has never been anything close to regular when it comes to his heat cycle. Before 1983, he’d averaged out at about four heats a year, roughly one every three months give or take a couple weeks either way. From ‘83 to ‘85 his cycle had come and gone in fits and bursts. He’d only had one heat from November of ‘83 to October of ‘84, and nearly one every other month there for a bit after Billy beat his face in.

Now, about a week after his heat, his body is punishing him for his failure to get knocked up. His body is a fucking bitch.    

Robin, as a female alpha, gets her cycle at about once every three months. It’s the kind of thing that he’d always been aware of, in the sense that they all had to take the same Sex Ed classes in junior high, but he’d never really understood it until he and Robin started living out of each other’s pockets.

“Eddie,” Max clarifies, shifting closer in the nest to start running her fingers through Steve’s hair to make the post-heat-addled omega start purring like a diesel engine. “He’s not my dad.”

“Eddie is not anyone’s dad,” El supplies from the other side of the puppy pile, wincing as a cramp hits her and then trying not to flush too hard when Robin makes a soothing noise. The blankets of the nest are swelteringly hot and tangled with the cords of heating pads draped over hips and backs and stomachs. 

“Of course not,” Robin murmurs, completely out of it, “You already have a dad.”

That’s the thing about packs that no one had ever thought to mention. Once your pups got their periods… well. Steve had learned more about the female menstrual cycle in the last year from Robin, Nance, and Max than he’d ever thought possible. The female body was a fucking nightmare of a medical marvel and it had taken very little persuading for him to open up the nest to a dedicated ‘Ga’s and Gals Nights whenever anyone needed it. Max and El’s cycles won’t really settle until they present, but it would seem that there’s some truth to that old wives tale about Omegas and women of any gender. It took less than half a year before Robin and Steve’s cycles synced up. And once the ball started rolling, well. 

“I know, right,” Max snipes, shifting to tug a heating pad further up her back before struggling tighter up against Steve and Robin’s side. Robin lifts an arm to tuck around Max’s shoulders and they all sigh. Eleven doesn’t like to be touched when she’s cramping but Max becomes a downright leech. 

“Can you believe they would disrespect you like that, Robin?” Max continues, “The boys were practically falling all over themselves the other day. And for what? Eddie? He’s not my dad.”

“If anything, he’s your step-dad,” Robin agrees. 

Max nods violently, scrubbing her hair into Robin’s side, “And you know how I feel about step-dads!”

Steve, through the fuzzy haze of pre-heat and the drugging effect of so many warm scents in his nest, begins to wonder if this conversation is happening in another language.

“Did your mother marry Eddie?” Eleven asks, and Steve is so fucking thankful he’s not the only one with absolutely no clue what the fuck is going on. 

“Nah,” Max says, “it’s the pack, you know. It’s like a little family. Steve is the mom,” she nuzzles into the side of his face, which makes him trill muzzily, “and Robin is the dad,” Robin rumbles, pleased. “And I figured Eddie was the cool Uncle, like Nancy and Jonathan, but the boys have started calling him dad . He’s not my fucking dad.”

“Oh, I see,” Eleven says, “that makes sense. Eddie is our step-dad.”

“My kids from another marriage,” Steve supplies, absolutely mindlessly. “You guys and Erica. But there’s no way Robbie and I had sex to make you.”

Robin hums in agreement, “They can be our brain babies. Like Athena. Just had to take an ax to your skull,” she taps him on the temple, “and they sprung out fully formed.”

“Mmm,” Steve grumbles in thought, shifting away from her poking finger and snorting a small laugh at the idea. “Why are you splitting my head? I think I’ve had enough head trauma, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but they were your headache before they were mine,” Robin counters, and he has to admit she makes a good point. He makes a vaguely agreeable noise in the back of his throat and settles back into the curve of her collar bone with a deep sigh. 

“Exactly,” Robin confirms, resolute. 

“You’re all Loopy Ladies,” Nancy laughs from the doorway, hands full of shopping bags. There’s no telling if it’s because she’s a beta or if it’s just a Nancy thing, but her cycles are always easier than the rest of them, practically no pain or symptoms aside from some cravings and stiffness.  She tends to be the one to volunteer for food runs and Steve can practically smell the chocolate hiding in those plastic bags. 

She comes over to the nest, socked feet slipping almost soundlessly over the hardwood as she pads over and sinks down to sit next to Eleven’s shoulder. She begins to pass out her bounty, chocolate bars, sour candy, and bottles of sports drink being passed around the nest like loaves and fish from the hands of Jesus himself. 

“Do you want your waffles frozen or toasted, Ellie-Bellie?”

“Frozen, please,” El says, and then, before she’s even taken a bite her face crumples. “Thank you, Nancy,” she says. “You are very nice. I am sorry we cannot be sisters.” 

Steve looks up from where he’s buried in Robin’s chest at the sound of one of his favorite pups in distress. He makes a whiny sort of chirping noise as he lifts a hand towards El. She doesn’t take it, but does shuffle closer to the tangle in the middle of the nest. 

“What are you talking about, sweetie?” Robin asks, voice strained by Steve’s weight, her own pain, and the soft grumble starting up in her chest. 

“Is it Mike?” Max all but hisses from the other side, and Steve lifts his other arm towards her, patting clumsily at the crown of her head to soothe her. 

“It wasn’t… not Mike,” Eleven admits, taking a small bite of her frozen waffle as Nancy settles in next to her with a soothing sound. 

“Did you and Mike break up again?” Nancy asks, gentle. 

Eleven nods, scent miserable as she nestles closer into Nancy’s chest.

“Well that’s alright,” Nancy reassures, “I know you’re still new to all this stuff, but you don’t actually have to marry Mike for us to be sisters. Plus,” she leans down to pet over Eleven’s still-short hair and buss a kiss to her forehead, “Mike’s been a bit of a dickhead ever since he… well, since he was born, really. He’ll grow out of it. Eventually. Maybe.”

“I do not want to wait for eventually,” Eleven says. 

“I talked to Joyce,” she continues, “about what happened in California. Mike… in his letters he never said ‘love’… almost a year and no ‘love’. Not even once. And we argued about it, and… well, everything. But then, in the Pizza Freezer, he said he loves me. That I’m his super hero. But since then, he hasn’t said it again. And Max said that I should want someone who treats me like a person, not a hero.”

Nancy makes a sympathetic noise and Eleven smiles at her. “Dad says, if he cannot say it now, if I have to be in a trance while the world is ending for him to say it, then he’s not ma-choor enough to have me for his girlfriend.”

“Mature, honey,” Nancy corrects gently. “It means grown up and responsible.”

“And he’s right!” Robin supplies, voice grumbly as her hands dig into Steve’s hair. 

Steve snorts. “Yeah,” he says, too slurred to really be biting despite the harsh tease of the words. “You deserve to be loved by people who actually tell you they love you.”

“We love you, El.”

The thing is, Eddie gets it, the underlying tension and OCD-level need to constantly double check that the gates are still scabbed over and still. Every now and then he’ll wake up from a nightmare and have to double check every ceiling in their new house for cracks or dark stains, just in case.

If this were a campaign, and Eddie’s villain of the story had come back like a bad penny three times before, what would be stopping him from pulling a twist to go for four? Certainly by that point no one would be expecting it, Rule of Threes and all that.

But fuck the Rule of Threes, really. It’s a stupid number and reality is rarely so neat and tidy as to obey it. So yeah, the bad penny coming back is totally still on the table. 

And if he runs with the idea, playing around in this hypothetical scenario in which he is the Dungeon Master of this fucked up unreal reality, there’s no way he’d be able to help himself from dropping hints. There’s a certain kind of sadistic glee that comes from watching his little sheepies overlook the seemingly unconnected hints he likes to drop in his monologues. A certain pleasure to be found in watching everyone but the impressively shrewd-minded but even more tight-lipped Lady Applejack completely disregard – or, in the Lady’s case, make note of for later but choose not to comment on – the clues he can’t help but wave in their little faces every now and then. 

At his heart, Eddie is a little bit of a sadist and a lotta bit of a “dramatic little rat bastard” but the realm of fiction has never quite carried over into reality in the same way. He likes testing his sheepies, taunting them and challenging them and putting them through the wringer so that the spoils are all the sweeter for the struggle. But he’s not a fan of a Total Party Kill, doesn’t like the way it makes him feel like he’s failed them the few times it has happened in the past. 

The Freshmen think him a ruthless DM who would salt the earth and dance on their graves, but Jeff and Gareth and Grant know better. Eddie had cried the first time Jeff had failed all three of his saving rolls and had to say goodbye to Gwendolyn the Mighty. It had been his first PC death as a DM, and he couldn’t help but think how she probably would have survived if he’d given them slightly better items or more chances to take long rests. 

Not to say that she had been the only PC death to happen at his table, but now he makes sure his players are as prepared as possible. Now, any such fates are purely up to the whims of the Dice Gods or the choices of the players themselves. The boys have a tendency towards bullheaded heroics when playing Paladins or Clerics that often makes them ignore the chances to rest or run away in favor of martyring themselves for no good reason. 

Eddie used to not understand it, but he thinks he gets it now.  

Still, the shit Vecna pulled in the past wasn’t foreshadowing. It wasn’t hints and clues and helpful nudges that they’ll laugh over missing later. 

It wasn’t narratively driven or well thought out or meant to challenge them without crushing them.

Henry Creel was a sadist of the highest order who engaged in years-long physical and psychological torture of the people Eddie now considers to be his good friends and came dangerously close to destroying the town he can begrudgingly admit he calls home.

So fuck that guy and the shallow grave they didn’t even bother to dig for him. 

Eddie gets it. 

But that doesn’t mean he condones it. 

“So,” he says, stern in a way he learned from Wayne, “what do you have to say for yourselves?”

There is silence at the table for a moment, all of the pups frozen, probably in shock at his outburst despite the fact that the boys should know better by now. 

And then one by one, their eyes drift to his left, and Eddie suddenly remembers where he is and, most importantly, who is sitting next to him. 

Jesus Christ.

Steve. 

The pup’s pack omega. 

The pups who he just spent a good five minutes reprimanding. 

Steve’s pups. 

Steve was going to kill him. 

Eddie takes a deep breath. 

“Don’t look at me like that, Max,” Steve says into the tense silence, almost painfully nonchalant, “you heard your step-father.”

And then that silent vacuum bubble bursts, and all the pups rush to fill the void with their voices, talking over each other and throwing each other under the bus.

Eddie sinks back into his seat, watching as Steve starts up a volley with Dustin debating how much safety can be disregarded for the pursuit of knowledge, and letting the sound of so many voices buzz out into white noise. 

“...Kore sank her fingers into the dark, humus-rich soil of the Land of the Dead and shuddered. Despite her new friend’s resigned insistence on the impossibility, she could feel the pull as the roots beneath her feet surged upwards and began to sprout. 

‘Impossible,’ Hades whispered behind and above her. ‘This should all be impossible, the land is dead.’

‘Yes,’ Kore hummed, ‘very dead indeed. Thoroughly decomposed…’ she trailed off, watching with no small amount of awe as a particularly eager tree twisted into existence a few feet away from her. The leaves shuddered in anticipation as they unfurled around palm-sized fruits that flushed into a ripe garnet hue. ‘... and full of nutrients.’

With a flick of her hands to clear the soil from under her nails, she stood and took a few tentative steps towards what she now recognized as a proud pomegranate tree. ‘Even here, in the Land of the Dead, the cycle of birth and life and death is a circle,” the pomegranate tree rustled in a non-existent breeze, a particularly beautiful branch arching down towards her ever so gently as if to offer its finest fruit.

Around her, she could sense the plants and flowers sprouting and growing and blossoming into a particularly lovely garden, but her eyes were entranced by that single fruit. 

Before she could reach up to pluck it, a larger hand came across her vision and practically dwarfed the pomegranate in its grasp. ‘Be careful, my lady,’ Hades’ voice rang from over her shoulder, his rich fruity scent overpowering the cloying perfume of the tree before her, ‘if a single drop of juice from this fruit were to pass your lips, I fear you may be bound to this land that it sprang from and unable to return to your realm.’

Persephone blinked, and that hand turned in a graceful move, open palm face-up and no longer holding the pomegranate, but a length of metal chain in a dark, earthy black with six garnet teardrops cut in the shape of pomegranate seeds hanging along its length. 

‘Take this, instead’ Hades murmured, and avoided her eyes when she turned to look at him. ‘To, ah, remember this realm fondly.’

Kore hummed. ‘Of course,’ she said, and bit her tongue around any insistence that she would have done so regardless as she swept her tumble of dark hair away from her neck. ‘Will you put it on me?’...”    

Wayne Munson is not an idiot. 

He may have grown up poor on the slopes of the Appalachians, the oldest son of three children - four, if you counted the sister who’d only managed to take a handful of breaths before she’d passed. 

He may never have done well in what had passed for school in that little mining town. 

He may have run off to the army as soon as he was able, with no hopes of promotion or station. 

His father may have called him an idiot for enlisting.   

But it was always in the mining company’s best interest that nobody in that town could do the simple math that their paychecks would never pay their debts. And his soldier’s salary, paltry as it was, was at least paid in actual US currency and not fucking scrip . 

He’d known it was dangerous, knew enough from the veterans in town that the army was more likely to chew you up and spit you out, that there was very little chance of gain or glory. 

But Wayne Munson wasn’t an idiot. 

He knew the risks of joining up. Knew what he could lose if he left. 

But he also knew the risks of staying in that fucking town. Knew exactly what he would lose if he stayed. He’d seen enough of it around town, black hands and black lungs and red, red, red in handkerchiefs and teeth and written in harsh lines on their bank balance.

Red on his father’s face. Red in his mother’s eyes. Red on his older sister’s letters until they stopped coming all together.

After he was discharged, he’d gone home long enough to put his boot between his father’s legs and press his gun between his eyes and plant the words “next time, I won’t miss,” between his ears. 

But when he heard word of his parent’s death, “a drunken accident”, he’d known what happened. 

He’d prayed that Al, for all that he’d taken after their father in so many other ways, would be spared that particular tendency. Unfortunately, when it came to Al Munson, that red, red, red blood ran true. 

But Eddie. 

Wayne smiles, watching his boy comfort the omega shuddering back to awareness on their sofa, breaking out of the kind of thousand-yard stare that Wayne himself is achingly familiar with. The kind he finds himself falling into whenever he sees fireworks and all he can see is the spray of tracer rounds across the night sky in a jungle that’s still so close for all that it’s years and miles away. 

There’s napkins in his hand, but he doesn’t worry about offering them because his boy’s got it handled, applying pressure to the cut and soft words to the omega. Wayne couldn’t be prouder of the man his boy is turning out to be. 

Eddie Munson is nothing like Al Munson in all the ways that count, but that dumb-struck smitten look on his face sends Wayne back in time to his highschool days, when Al fell in and out of love like it was breathing. The way his nose crinkles and his eyes go molten, that’s all Al. 

And Wayne Munson isn’t an idiot. 

Neither, really, is Eddie. Kid wasn’t really any good at school, of course, but that had less to do with Eddie and more to do with the fact that Eddie liked to ask questions. And the things Eddie liked to ask questions about just so happened to be the kind of things Hawkins High expected to not be questioned on. Or at least that was what Wayne gathered based on how many times the school had tried to get him to “control” his nephew’s “insubordinate inquisitions” over the past few years.

So no, Eddie knows exactly what he’s doing when he slips that ring on the Omega’s finger. 

Steve and Robin watch from the window as the entire Party tries to pile into Hopper’s blazer. They’ll manage it, they always do, but something about watching Max, El, and Erica heckle the boys trying to untangle themselves in the back seat never fails to pull a laugh out of Eddie. The girls very reasonably commandeered the front seat and one back seat for themselves, Erica up front and El settled in Max’s lap in the back. The boys, however…

“This configuration worked last week!” Dustin complains, his head stuck between the two front seats as he tries to twist out from under Will’s left arm. Eleven snorts as she dodges Mike’s flailing elbow. 

“You’re teenage boys,” Erica drawls from the front seat, eyeing Hopper’s police scanner, “you get ganglier by the minute, somebody probably had a growth spurt.”

“I still don’t understand why you don’t just stick two in the back,” Steve calls from the front step. “Or just sit on each others’ laps!?”

“No!” a handful of pubescent voices choir, and Steve sighs. He turns to Eddie, who was inexplicably not offering to chauffeur one or two of the hooligans back to their houses to put an end to this suffering.  

He meets Eddie’s eyes when he turns, surprised to find the alpha already looking at him but refusing to give any indication of it. “You see the shit I put up with?” he says, feeling increasingly wrong-footed the longer he makes eye-contact with Eddie, neither of them looking away. 

“You’ve been a single mother too long,” Eddie commiserates, shuffling and fidgeting with his fingers as he brings a hand up to pull a lock of hair in front of his face. There’s a scream from Hopper’s blazer that startles the pair of them for just a second, looking over in time to see Lucas’s leg stick out of the back hatch at an awkward angle before wiggling back inside. 

“I, uh,” Eddie’s voice pulls Steve’s attention back to the alpha, trying not to be distracted by the endearing stray curl now stuck to his cheek. “Speaking of, I uh, wanted to apologize for…” he pauses for a moment, “speaking out of turn, I guess. I know you’re real protective of those pups, Oma, I didn’t mean to overstep or anything at breakfast I just–”

Eddie’s nose and mouth scrunch up, like he’s searching for the words. 

“I get it,” Steve says, fighting past the sudden and overwhelming urge to lean forward and close his teeth around the flush slowly blooming across the freckled apple of Eddie’s cheek. “I get the same way when the kids do dumb shit that puts them in danger. Makes me angry that they can’t seem to understand basic self-preservation but,” Steve chuckles a bit, “I’m not angry at them for it, really. And I know you’d never hurt them. I trust you.”

Eddie makes a choked-off unidentifiable sound in his throat that makes something inside Steve want to chirrup in curiosity. “I’m glad,” Eddie says, shifting his shoulders once and then twice before he reaches forward with both hands to grab one of Steve’s in a warm, dry, comforting grip. “I’m glad you trust me with your pups, Oma,” he says, slightly in a rush like he’s trying to get the words out faster than he can talk himself out of saying them. “And I hope it’s not rude of me to say, but, I don’t like the idea of you doing any dumb shit that puts you in danger, either, so I hope… if, you know, you ever need any help or… anything like that you…” Eddie frowns, seeming to run out of steam. 

“Well, I hope you can, maybe, if you wanted to, you could trust me to take care of you , too.” 

Steve blinks as Eddie starts fidgeting with the finger that's still wearing the alpha's ring, but before he can muster a reply, Eddie has dropped the Omega’s hands and is bolting down the driveway and waving his arm in a grand gesture towards his van, inviting the ladies to leave the Clown Car Crew to their own devices so he can escort them home. 

Hopper, who had been sitting in the front seat and alternating between white-knuckling his steering wheel and batting Erica’s hands away from his various pieces of – sanctioned and decidedly unsanctioned – Police Equipment while pretending not to see the boys forming themselves into human pretzels in his backseat, agrees to this plan wholeheartedly. 

In less than five minutes, both vehicles are gone. 

Steve waves them off, and then stops with his hand frozen in the air, eyes trained on his middle knuckle. There’s a new ring on his finger that hadn’t been there before, stacked on top of the ring he'd been given by Eddie the other day. It's a beautiful black and silver band with what look like vines etched onto its surface and small leaves carved out of the band. Slowly, he brings his hand down to his face and just… stares. 

“He’s a sneaky fucker,” Robin says from his left and Steve screams, startled, because for a moment he’d genuinely forgotten she was there.

“Stevie, you’re an absolute disaster of an omega, you know that?” she says, a smirk growing on her face as she takes in his wide eyes and flushed cheeks. 

Steve has no idea what she’s talking about and is in no way lying to himself. 

“Still want to bite Munson?”

Absolutely no idea.

“Yeah,” he breathes, entirely without conscious thought, the sound trailing off into a soft, thready hum in the back of his throat that’s caught somewhere between a coo and a purr.

Fuck.

“Fuck,” he says, still soft but no less heavy with feeling. “I want to bite him.”

“ ... ‘I cannot… No,’ Hades took a wet, shattered breath, ‘I will not keep you captive here, I will not doom you to my fate. For all that you have made my realm bloom with life, your domain is on the surface, your purpose more valuable to the living. They will worship you in the way you truly deserve. In the way I cannot.’

Kore shuddered at the declaration, not with sadness or pain, but with a sudden feeling of covetous rage like she had never felt before. ‘No man can keep me captive,’ she all but hissed, the earth trembling ever so slightly beneath her feet as the roots of the world shuddered alongside her. ‘No sacrificial wine will be sweeter than your kiss. No beseeching prayer more compelling than your laugh. No shrine or temple or sacred rite more empowering than being your queen. None other than I would dare dictate the value of my domain, nor what I deserve. I say I deserve happiness and peace. I say I deserve my choice. I say I deserve you. What say you?’ 

‘I say… I… I say that you enthrall me.” Hades breathed, ‘That your scent, so like a funerary wreath, is more entrancing than the Mists of Delphi. That I could scarcely deny you a thing, that I would give you my kingdom and my throne and the breath from my lungs.’

‘Then give me your neck,’ Kore asserted, ‘and let us not be parted.’

And so Hades knelt before his queen and tilted his head, filling the air with the scent of ripe pomegranates. 

And Kore opened her mouth and the fangs of his sweet omega, of Persephone , pierced his mating gland like her very being had pierced his heart.…”