Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment.
Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.’
— Zhuang Zhou, as mistranslated in Ursula K. Le Guin

He jolts awake out of a grey sort of half-sleep, dim and feverish, almost. Maybe the bites are infected. Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears is playing way down low, which was what woke him, he thinks, a sudden burst of it like the person putting it on didn’t know how loud it would be.

“You sleep well, asshole?” Dustin looms out of the corner of his sleep-filled eyes, looking scared and small and irritated.

“Asshole?” he questions groggily, straightening up. It was one of those naps that really sucks the life out of you. He can’t have been asleep for more than twenty minutes. “What’s with the Tears for Fears?”

“Testing the boombox,” Robin says, from her position crouched by the item in question, which is on Max’s coffee table. Lucas is cross legged next to her, feeding her tapes. “You like Tears for Fears, right?”

“Of course he fucking does.” And that’s Eddie’s voice, and Eddie himself is only on the other side of the couch, scarcely two feet away.

“Language,” Erica says snidely. She’s perched on the arm next to Eddie, and Eddie takes the opportunity to dig an elbow at her.

“Anyway, the boombox makes more sense. Right? If more than one person gets Vecna’d at once. Or, like, as a distraction.” Robin’s doing that thing where she applies the entirety of her brain to a problem and leaves no space for the emotional side of it all; she reminds him a little of Nancy, actually, in that. Which makes him feel weird.

His eyes catch on Eddie again. He’s hunching into himself on the end of the couch, ducking his face behind his hair, knee bouncing interminably and his hands knotted together. Poor guy. First time always sucks the hardest.

“You wanna tell me why I’m an asshole, Henderson, or do I gotta guess?” he says instead, and Dustin scowls.

“You were snoring! And I really don’t get how you can sleep right now, I really don’t.”

“It’s been a long day,” Eddie offers, quietly, more like he’s talking to himself than anyone else.

“You can say that again,” Steve mutters, and then Eddie looks at him and he looks at Eddie, and he’s not sure who looks away first, actually, only that one of them does and then they’re not looking at each other anymore.

Something taps against the window and he jumps about a foot in the air — but it’s just a crow, he sees, all dirty black wings and tapping, sinister beak. He bangs his fist against the window and the crow shoots off.

Then Nancy emerges from the bathroom, tears dried, a determined set to her chin, the determined set she always gets when she’s put her mind to something and won’t be turned away, the set Steve loved, when they were dating, and then they’re talking about it. Erica moves to the couch proper and Eddie shifts up to give her room, his knee brushing Steve’s. Steve looks at Nancy and feels his heart squeeze into a vice at the pain in her eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie lets out, when the thing becomes all of Hawkins consumed and one kill away; “Jesus Christ,” putting his head in his hands.

“Try them again,” Steve urges, succumbing to the desire to also put his head in his hands, because fuck. Eddie’s whole frame is jumping with sort of nervous energy next to him, sending tremors through the couch cushions.

No answer. Predictably, forebodingly. Then Nancy’s voice picks up and she’s saying, “We have to go back in there. Back to the Upside Down,” and everyone is yelling and Steve doesn’t think this is a good idea at all, like at all, until Dustin starts talking and Max takes over and really, no one can say no to Max, not anymore. Steve would handcuff her to her own radiator if he thought it would prevent her martyring herself; but he knows her too well. Knows she’s too determined. And there’s nothing Steve can do against that, even if he hates himself for it, because she doesn’t deserve to die. None of them do. But if it’s the only way–

So the argument sort of runs out of steam.

“Army surplus store,” Eddie mutters, after a while. Steve looks at him uncomprehendingly until he wipes his nose and picks himself up and grabs a broadsheet ad page, taps a ringed finger on War Zone, and Steve really has to wonder what he bought there, but he doesn’t wonder too hard because Nancy really is so gung-ho for this, no pun intended, and her eyes are bright and alive again and it relieves him, that she’s left the pain behind.

Eddie weaves around the trailer park like he’s paid to do it, like he’s born to do it, agile and careful and ducking out of sight instinctively. Steve feels clumsy, suddenly, behind him, in Eddie’s ragged denim vest and still with the pain of the bites pulsing through him. He hovers by the van as Eddie clambers up, half-offering a leg-up, which Eddie ignores. Steve follows him in.

Then he’s swinging into the driver’s seat and plucking expertly at the wires in the dashboard like he’s done this a thousand times, which okay. “Where’d you learn how to do this?” Steve wonders out loud, leaning closer despite himself.

“Well, when the other dads were teaching their kids how to fish, or play ball, my old man?” Eddie’s got a grimly efficient look on his face; he doesn’t look away from his task as he speaks. “Was teaching me how to hotwire. Now, I swore to myself I wouldn’t wind up like he did,” which Steve takes to mean his dad is probably in prison, which is disappointing, somehow, in that it’s exactly what everyone says about the trailer park kids, that their dads are in prison and their moms are crack whores, “but now? I’m wanted for murder, and soon, grand theft auto. So, uh, yeah, I’m really living up to that Munson name.” And as he says this he looks back at Steve, hair swinging over his shoulder, face only inches away. Steve resists the urge to step back.

Then Robin’s there, pressing into Steve’s back, and he can’t move away now, Robin sandwiching him against Eddie’s shoulder as she tells him she doesn’t want him to drive.

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m just starting this sucker.” Then a grin, a close, crooked grin: “Harrington’s got her. Don’t ya, big boy?” and for a second Steve’s brain does a little malfunction, because uh. Eddie’s less than an inch away for less than a second but it feels like a long time, it feels like an eternity, Eddie’s big eyes and cynical smile and hair getting everywhere, the way he smells like sweat and dirt and cigarettes, the same smell as the vest.

Steve is frozen for a good thirty seconds. Which is approximately twenty-nine seconds too long, because, uh, Eddie’s started the engine and the camper van’s rightful owners are hammering on the door and Eddie’s laughing maniacally and right, fuck, Steve has to actually drive this thing. And he’s still got no fucking shoes on.

“We’re definitely talking about that later,” Robin hisses, when they’re out of the metaphorical woods (and driving through the literal ones).

“Talking about what?” he hisses back.

“That little brain freeze moment you had when Eddie–” she drops her voice, “–flirted with you? That. We’re gonna talk about that.”

He blanks out a little bit again. “What the fuck, Robin, what are you–” But she’s already ducked back into the depths of the van and Nancy is coming to sit in the passenger seat, asking how it handles, and okay. He lets himself be drawn into conversation. Because why not, right? She’s here and everyone’s been telling him it’s true love, conveniently forgetting Jonathan exists but also when it’s armageddon it’s pretty easy to forget anyone outside of the eight people in this camper van exist. And it’s stupid. But he can’t help it. Six kids, and all that. Which is true. He wants to be a good dad. A dad who cares.

(A dad who cares more than his own dad, which, hey. Not that hard. Then he thinks about I swore to myself I wouldn’t wind up like he did and feels kind of bad, for reasons he doesn’t dig into too deeply.)

“That sounds nice,” she says, and they look at each other. For a long time. “Well, uh, except for the six kid part. That– sounds like a total nightmare.”

And he laughs a little, like an idiot, and waves at the back of the van, like an idiot, and says, “If only I had some practice.”

And she doesn’t laugh. Which he can’t really blame her for, because it isn’t really funny. “All right, fair. That’s fair.” And he keeps his eyes on the road but he can feel her looking at him, and he really wants to look at her again but he doesn’t, because that would be stupid. And he knows it would be stupid, knows the whole thing was stupid, when they’re deciding who should go into War Zone and Nancy’s hand is hovering somewhere near his elbow and Dustin and Eddie and Robin are looking between them like they’re connecting the fucking dots, which, fuck that.

Robin brings it up, when they’re making the molotov cocktails together on the edge of the field. He’s feeling tense and unhappy — it might not work out for us this time, she said, and he sort of believes her — and she nudges his arm and smiles at him like she’s trying to get him to lighten up. “You and Nance had a nice chat when we were driving, right?”

He scoffs and looks at his hands. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah, sure, I guess.”

“Steve,” she says, and he looks at her. He was wrong; she wasn’t getting him to lighten up. Her face is serious. “If I’m right — and I’m praying to whatever fucking god is out there that I’m not, but if I am — then surely it’s better to say things. Whatever things those might be. Rather than to leave them unsaid?”

He looks out at the field. Dustin and Eddie roughhousing, smiling and laughing at each other with their makeshift shields. Erica and Lucas binding long, brutal knives to longer sticks. Nancy and Max sawing off the end of a shotgun barrel. The thought that in a few short hours all of this might be–

It’s never felt this real before. Not quite. Close, but not quite.

“I mean, sure,” he says faintly. He feels a little sick.

“Like I said,” and her voice dims, and he knows she’s torn up about Vickie even if she isn’t saying it, he knows, “romance is the last thing we need to worry about. But also — I think it would be pretty horrible to die with something like that unsaid. Right?”

“Right.” But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, much less how to say it before the apocalypse comes.

Eddie doesn’t seem to have the same trouble. Steve feels a little like shit, actually, leaving the two of them to act as bait, and when he tells them not to be heroes he means it. And Eddie laughs it off, “Look at us. We are not heroes,” with his glib little smirk and the easy casual melodrama about it, that melodrama of his that patterns everything he does, and Steve isn’t sure he believes him. But he turns away anyway, and then Eddie says, “Hey, Steve,” and something about it makes Steve’s heart jolt in his chest, though he’s not sure why. Eddie looks at him then looks away, eyes darting with the anxious energy Steve’s beginning to get used to. “Make him pay.”

The words ring in the Upside Down’s musty silence. They look at each other for a long moment, a moment that doesn’t need words, before Steve nods, and Eddie nods in return.

The words must sum up just about everything Eddie’s feeling, Steve thinks, because this Vecna guy’s ruined his life completely and he’s gotta be a little vengeful, right, though Steve’s never actually seen him angry. Not once. Which is interesting, actually, because Steve’s been angry a whole lot throughout this supernatural process and before it, and where does Eddie get off, just being so tired and self-deprecating and almost kind about it? How does that even work?

But he goes. He tells Nancy it’s always been her, though it’s a stupid thing to say and he doesn’t even get an answer. He goes to Creepy Creel’s house, gets pinned to a wall and the life squeezed out of him, nearly, and then all at once the vines are shrinking away and Robin is gasping, “I don’t believe in a higher power or divine intervention — but that was a miracle,” and then they’re going upstairs and setting Vecna’s decaying body ablaze and Vecna just looks at them, just looks and Steve gets this sinking feeling in his chest like this hasn’t worked like they planned, like this isn’t over yet. Nancy with the sawn-off shotgun, sending him flying through the wall, only he’s not there when they look at the ground.

And a shriek in the distance. The bats, right, the sound of dying bats — Dustin. Fuck. Dustin and Eddie. Steve feels his heart do a horrible little swooping thing and he scrambles for the walkie they brought just in case, though they weren’t sure it would work down here at all — he scrambles for the walkie and gasps desperately into it, as the ground shakes with another gut wrenching earthquake, “Dustin? Eddie? Are you there? Are you good?”

A crackling silence.

“Dustin? Eddie? You good? C’mon, guys, c’mon, you–”

“Steve?” Dustin’s voice is faint and weird-sounding, watery, like he’s talking through water or else he’s–

Or else he’s crying.

A further crackling silence, and yeah. He’s crying. And Steve feels like crying too, then, and it also feels like hours but really it’s something like a millisecond before Dustin gasps down the radio, “Eddie’s dead–” and Steve feels like he’s falling — and then he is falling, everything inside him looping inside out and then Nancy and Robin disappearing from his side and then the radio dropping out of his hands which he can’t even feel he can’t feel his hands or any part of himself it’s just numb pins and needles as he falls and then and then and then–

“You sleep well, asshole?”

He jolts awake out of a grey sort of half-sleep, dim and feverish, almost. Maybe the bites are infected. Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears is playing way down low, which was what woke him, he thinks, a sudden burst of it like the person putting it on didn’t know how loud it would be. He blinks and listens to it for a moment, getting the weirdest sense of deja-vu. He doesn’t respond to Dustin. He’s too busy trying to shove the gruesome horror of his dream out of his mind, the flares of molotov cocktails and Eddie’s dead, fuck, and the dream isn’t going anywhere, actually, it’s not disappearing into haze like the memory of a dream usually does. It’s just– sticking around. Like a memory of something real.

“What’s with the Tears for Fears?” he asks absently, mind on other things.

“Testing the boombox,” Robin says, from the floor, Lucas next to her. “You like Tears for Fears, right?”

The deja-vu is getting stronger. He looks at Eddie, and Eddie notices, so his eyebrows are creased together in a confused frown when he says, “Of course he fucking does,” and at this point Steve can recite the interaction like a script: language, he mouths along with Erica, and what the fuck. What the fuck.

“Uh, guys, I think– I don’t know, I had a really weird dream,” he says. It’s Vecna. It’s gotta be Vecna.

They all look at him sharply. “What sort of dream?” Max says, coming to stand by the arm of the couch, arms crossed over her chest, headphones slung around her neck. “Like a nightmare? Have you had the headaches, the nosebleeds–”

He shakes his head. “Just a dream. But like– I dreamt this. At least, the start. The Tears for Fears and the boombox and, like, everything you’ve all been saying–”

“That’s called deja-vu, Steve, it’s not uncommon,” Dustin says, rolling his eyes, and he doesn’t get it. This is different.

Nancy emerges from the bathroom, tears dried, a determined set to her chin. Then she slows, and frowns, looking between them all. “What is it? What happened?”

“Steve’s being– I don't know what he's being.”

“I mean, you weren’t in a Vecna trance or anything, so.” Max shrugs apologetically. “I don’t know what to suggest. What kind of dream–”

“But it was exactly-” He breaks off. He’s not getting anywhere.

“Okay, Steve, if you’ve dreamt all this exactly before, what am I gonna say next?” Robin says, and it’s not exactly cynical, the way Dustin is, more probing, like she wants him to be right but can’t help it if he’s not.

He doesn’t have an answer. “It’s– it’s already different,” he mumbles, and the group’s attention wanders. Because how can he explain what’s happening to him? He can't, and he knows that's his fault, but he can't put it in a way that doesn't sound insane. Besides, it is different now, a totally different interaction, and Nancy’s words are different as she explains what Vecna showed her, and maybe it was just a weird deja-vu in the twilight between sleeping and waking.

When they’re mobilising to go to War Zone, Eddie bumps his shoulder. “Y’know, if you’d suddenly developed precognition, that would have been real useful.”

“Precognition?”

He rolls his eyes. “Knowing the future, Harrington. Christ, those kids have got to educate you.”

Steve thinks about Eddie’s dead and feels his insides shrivel up. He can’t bring himself to respond to Eddie’s little banter; Eddie gives him a strange look when he doesn’t say anything, and then moves off to take the Halloween mask Max found in her closet.

When they creep out through the trailer park under a heavy clouded sky, something swoops overhead and he ducks, heart pounding, thinking of the bats. The bites twinge. But it’s not a bat, just a crow — an ugly, cawing crow. He shoos it off and follows Eddie to the van. He doesn’t offer a leg-up this time, knowing it won’t be accepted.

And this time he’s prepared, when Eddie leans back into him with dancing eyes and a crooked grin and says, “Harrington’s got her. Don’t ya, big boy?” and feels less, but still a little bit, like his stomach’s tied itself in knots. Because he knew it was coming. Why did he know it was coming?

Clearly he doesn’t do quite a good enough job, because Robin still leans over and hisses at him “We’re definitely talking about that later.”

“No, we’re not,” he says firmly, and she rolls her eyes and sits back.

He doesn’t talk to Nancy this time. She settles in the passenger seat and tries to draw him out — “How’s it handle?” — and he just smiles a little, politely, and says, “Okay. It’s okay,” and nothing else. He thinks about the six kids thing and feels embarrassed, he’s embarrassed about telling her that, about telling her she was always the one he pictured it with and her not saying anything in response.

Granted, they were interrupted. But what would she have said? That’s nice, Steve? I don’t see you like that anymore, Steve? Six kids is way too many, Steve?

It’s embarrassing, even as he looks at her lips and looks away. Besides, he has too much to think about right now. About Robin’s terrible, gnawing feeling that it might not work out for us this time, about the way Vecna was dead but not dead, necessarily, about his shape disappearing off the ground like he was never even here, about Eddie’s dead–

If Eddie’s right. If it is precognition. Even if it’s Vecna fucking with him. Then he has to do something differently, surely. Because they didn’t win. It didn’t work out for them. And he’s not letting that be a foregone conclusion, he’s not, they’re not losing. So he spends the drive staring at the road and trying to think about it, where it went wrong. Leaving Eddie and Dustin to distract the bats alone, right? Because Robin and Nancy didn’t really need him, at the Creel house. Not really. It was Nancy with the sawed-off shotgun, and Robin’s not that bad an aim, really, to throw a molotov or two. They were fine. They weren’t really in danger, not mortal danger, not the same way as Eddie–

So he decides. He’ll go with Eddie and Dustin instead.

Before they go into War Zone he stops them. It feels ridiculous, almost, stupid, to think about the way he knows what they’ll find in there. Who. But still, he pretends to look over at the parking lot, pretends to spot something there: “Hey, I think that’s Carver’s car, right?”

And Lucas gives a grave nod. “Yeah, it is.”

“Shit,” Eddie says, hissing it between his teeth and ducking down lower towards the floor.

“Who does he know?” Nancy says. “Eddie, Lucas, Dustin, you’re all out of the question. Erica, too.”

“You too, right? I mean, he knows who Mike is, and you’re known around school, like, he’ll make the connection between you,” Steve says, and she looks at him for a moment, as if she wants to challenge him, which. He knows how protective she is over her guns. “Why don’t you write me a list, okay?”

So in the end it’s Steve and Robin and Max alone who go into the store. With a long-ass list. But Steve has done this before, so it’s not all that hard, going aisle by aisle and finding the wackest shit the American public can buy, dodging the assholes in letterman jackets. What he doesn’t remember to do, like an idiot, is pull Robin around the corner before she can see Vickie and her boyfriend.

So. Again, Robin stares for a while, silent and frozen, mouth forming silent, unknown words, and then Vickie’s looking over and Robin’s disappearing and fuck, Steve can’t go get her this time, not with this huge cart of stuff, ammo and explosives and spiky bits of weaponry, so instead he goes right to the counter as quick as he can.

“Harrington, my god. Stocking up for the good fight, are we?”

He turns slowly, pressing his lips together so he doesn’t spit something like you fucking piece of shit at Jason Carver, who looks haggard and desperate and alive with a horrible, vengeful fire. He’s got a pistol in his hand, which he’s waving around carelessly, threateningly. Steve swallows his disgust and manages to say, “Yeah, y’know, these are rough times, right?”

“Right,” Jason says. Steve knew him a little in school, a year younger, a damn decent player on the basketball team. They got drunk together a few times, in groups. Steve never went to the den at what used to be Benny’s. Found it kind of vile, actually, knowing what he did about how Benny died, and actually even if he didn’t — why would you want to party where some guy killed himself? “Say, you after some blood? Could use a strong guy like you on the hunt. An athlete.”

Steve smiles tightly. “Yeah, thanks, man, but I gotta get home. I’m, um– I’m sorry about Chrissy.” That, at least, is not a lie. He imagines he’s apologising to someone, anyone else, to make it look even a little bit sincere.

“Thanks. You sure you don’t wanna join us? You’d be doing the town a real service, y’know, ridding it of this evil–”

“No, thank you,” Steve says, and his voice is louder than it should be, but he can’t help it. Can’t contain it. He’s almost shaking with fury right now. His hand trembles with it as he hands over a folded wad of cash.

Jason steps into his way before he can leave, and Steve grinds his teeth together. “If you change your mind, Harrington, fancy living up to that name we used to give you — King Steve, right? — you know where we are.”

King Steve. He hasn’t been called that in years. “Yeah. Thanks.” Finally, Jason lets him go. He almost runs out of there, loading the shit into the van and finding, to his relief, Robin hunched next to Eddie with her arms crossed over her chest. Eddie is talking to her lowly, comfortingly, it seems, which maybe shouldn’t be surprising but is, somehow. Whatever. Steve will figure that out later.

This time, they don’t have to hightail it out of there. They’re not being chased, or anything. But Steve still feels uneasy, Jason’s haunted eyes following him out of the store, so he drives maybe faster than is advisable.

“You okay?” Nancy says, again riding shotgun.

He flexes his hand on the wheel and shrugs. “Jason fucking Carver. He’s totally lost it. Wanted me to come play hunt the freak with him.”

“Aw, and you didn’t accept? Coulda been fun.” Eddie’s voice is almost totally humorless. Steve spares a glance back over his shoulder and finds him curled into the wall, fiddling with his rings, always a hub of anxious energy but it’s more this time, somehow. Steve thinks about the first time he drove them away from War Zone and doesn’t remember what Eddie was doing at all. “I know I’m pretty and all, but why don’t you keep your eyes on the road, huh, Harrington?”

Steve looks back at the road. Cheeks strangely warm.

He parks up in the same field as before — no point in fixing what’s not broken, right? — and sits down by Robin again as they mix molotov cocktails.

"Have you recovered from your dream?" she says, and she's not joking, actually, she's genuinely asking.

For a moment he thinks — opens his mouth — to tell her. To tell her he's been here before, done all this before, and last time it went so fucking wrong and he can't let that happen this time, if any of this is even real– but. He doesn't know how, is the thing. How to explain it. He doesn't even know what it is. And if he goes with Eddie and saves Eddie and everything goes right then– it'll be fine. Surely. It will be fine.

So instead he says, “You and Nance,” and she looks at him with a frown — “You two can take Vecna. I mean, that shouldn’t be the hard part, right? With Max, like, immobilising him and Eddie distracting the bats. It’s just– in and out, set the prick on fire, run.”

“What are you saying, Steve?”

“I’m saying, I think– yeah, I think I should go with Eddie and Dustin. Just in case, y’know?”

Her eyes soften. She pours another glug of kerosene into the bottle as she speaks: “Yeah, you don’t have to explain it.” She looks over at the field, and he follows her eyes to Dustin, Dustin roughhousing with Eddie, the two of them happy and oblivious and with no idea what Steve saw last night (yesterday? a different today? he can’t explain it, and if he thinks too long about it his head starts to swim). “I know what that stupid kid means to you, of course I do. If you feel like you need to protect him, then I get it. Of course.”

He opens his mouth to deny it because it’s not really about Dustin, is it, it’s about Eddie, but he can’t say any of that without sounding insane. So he nods. His eyes are stinging, actually, as he watches them, with the improvised spiked shields that did nothing to help, in the end, because Eddie still died. He wipes at them and mutters, “The fumes,” like Robin won’t understand, which of course she will, but also she won’t. Not entirely.

“I get it,” she says again. “I’m having this terrible, gnawing feeling that– it might not work out for us this time.”

The words strike something cold in his chest. He doesn’t say You think we shouldn’t be doing this? He says instead, “I know. I have the same feeling.”

“But we have to try, right?”

He thinks about Eddie’s dead. “Yeah. We have to try.”

And they do try. They drop Max and Lucas and Erica off at the Creel house, the right-side-up Creel house, though Steve feels the sting of foreboding in his chest as they do it. Then they go to Eddie’s trailer, go through the gate, and this time it’s Nancy looking at them carefully, saying, “You don’t need to be heroes, okay? Any of you. Just do what you need to do and then get the hell out of there. We’ll take it from there.”

They all nod shortly. Though Steve knows none of them have any intention of listening. He wonders, not for the first time, how it ended up happening. Eddie dying. How he can prevent it this time. Just by being here, surely, that’s gotta be enough. It’s gotta be.

He thinks about what Eddie said to him. Hey, Steve? Make him pay. Eddie doesn’t say it to Nancy. Which is weird, maybe. That he even said it to Steve in the first place, instead of Nancy, because she was the one carrying the sawn-off shotgun and Steve was just sort of there, and it’s weird that he doesn’t say it to Nancy now, when Steve’s on the other side. But whatever. They have bigger things to worry about.

The three of them hammer sheets of metal over the trailer’s windows, any gap, any opening. Eddie is suddenly strangely calm, strangely still, where he’s usually twitchy and frantic. He holds up a sheet for Steve and brushes against his shoulder when he moves away, hair tucked under that bandana of his. Then they carry all his music gear up to the roof, heavy-ass amps and shit, and Steve mutters, “This better fucking work.”

Eddie smirks at him in the blue half-light. “It will, don’t you worry your pretty head about that. No one can resist a guitar solo, not even demonic bats.”

Steve feels a bit like his head is spinning. He just swings his nail-bat once, in a loop, to get his hand used to holding it again — a trusty favorite, he couldn’t leave it behind, not this time — and then stands there to watch, and to listen, as Eddie does something totally fucking insane, which is play Metallica on the roof of his trailer in an alternate dimension to distract some demonic bats while Nancy and Robin kill a wizard–

Not only is it totally fucking insane, but it’s also… intense. Is the only word Steve knows how to use. Watching Eddie swing that guitar around and bang his head up and down, send his hair flying with a manic grin on his face, the way he looks at Steve as his strong, deft fingers shred (is that the word?) up and down the neck of the guitar, and yeah. Steve can’t stop staring. Because Eddie is so in his element, is the thing. So good at this. It’s– yeah. Intense.

That’s the only word he has for it.

“T-minus five seconds, Eddie!” Dustin is shouting, and Steve keeps the countdown in his head, five, four, three, two, one– and on zero he grabs for Eddie’s wrist without hesitating, yanking him down into the cage around the trailer as hundreds of bats slam into it with force enough to rip metal apart and then they’re in the trailer, panting for breath, euphoric and terrified in equal measure and it’s Dustin who cracks first, whooping with joy, and then Eddie and Steve too, looking at each other in the dim glow of the gate, they yell too, pure adrenaline, pure fuck, we survived that, and Steve’s still holding onto Eddie’s warm, bony wrist, and–

And then the bats start coming through the vents.

They hold the first load off. Then there’s a second load, another vent in Eddie’s room, and they just manage to slam the door shut on the horde but it won’t last long, they gotta go, now, and Steve gives Dustin a leg-up through the gate and turns to offer Eddie the same but Eddie shakes his head, Eddie says, “Nah, man, you go ahead,” and that’s when Steve knows. That’s when Steve knows how he dies.

But that isn’t happening today. Not today. Not this time. “No, you go,” Steve insists, but Eddie’s clearly chosen right now to grow a spine (who is he kidding, he’s had a spine all along), because he shakes his head and doesn’t budge. There’s a jaded, humorless grin on his face.

“You and I both know someone’s gotta draw them off, Harrington.”

Steve shakes his head. Wishes Eddie would call him Steve. “So we– we hold them off, we fortify the–“

“Fortify what? We’ve got nothing to fucking fortify, no time, nothing to– you let a fifteen year old girl play the martyr. At least I’m above the age of consent.” And that’s a cheap shot, really, a low blow, and it stings as it hits, because Steve is fucking terrified for Max, has been since that first night in the school, and if he could prevent her doing her martyr thing he would–

“Fine. But I’m coming with you.”

Eddie nods, picks up his weapons, goes to the door.

Then he bursts out of it and slams it behind him, shoving something heavy across that Steve can’t shift, what the fuck, and Eddie shouts, “If you think I’m letting you leave Henderson an orphan you’re out of your goddamn fucking mind–“

And then he’s gone.

“Steve!” Dustin is shouting, clambering back down the rope through the gate, and Eddie is out there shouting and drawing the bats away and they’re not coming into the trailer anymore, they’re following Eddie, and Steve’s heart is in his throat and he’s thinking No, not again, this isn’t happening again, so he shoves at the door and gets Dustin alongside him, pushing with all their strength, but it takes them too long, it takes them too fucking long, and when they finally break out they can see Eddie in the distance, a lonely figure in the field of decaying blue weeds with a whole storm of bats around him, and as they watch he gets dragged to his knees and then down, so they can’t see him anymore–

Steve runs.

He runs towards Eddie and the bats, heedless, even as the bats crumple to the ground as one — just like the vines, what the fuck, another miracle? but this miracle might be too late — and then he’s dropping to his knees by Eddie’s mangled body, Dustin a few paces behind, enough paces to give Steve time to be the one to pull Eddie into his arms. He’s choking on his own blood, paler than he’s ever been, chest a mess of sticky dark wounds and hair matted together with filthy red, and his eyes slide off Steve’s sightlessly so he’s looking somewhere like the sky when he says, “I didn’t run,” and Steve can’t fucking handle that right now as Dustin drops down beside him and starts to sob–

Eddie is slipping away from him, eyes on the far distance beyond the world that Steve’s living in, that anyone’s living in, and everything is sticky with his blood and Steve is feeling Eddie’s blood that’s his fucking blood and there’s too much of it on the outside and not enough on the inside and he’s dying right here, Steve registers abstractly, Eddie is fucking dying on the ground in his arms and it’s not like it is in the movies, there’s no cinematic final words or last goodbyes or apologies or confessions or anything except a ragged choking and a stupid joke like finally my year he can’t even get past the blood on his lips as everything that makes Eddie Munson Eddie Munson decays out of the world never to be seen again–

–until the next time.