Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts with the cold. This awful chill that’s been following him around ever since they’d crawled their way back into their dimension. An unnatural coolness set somewhere between his bones and his flesh that feels distinctly supernatural. So strong he begins to feel his joints swelling or his fingers freezing straight as if he’s been out in the snow for hours, and despite being able to feel them on every inch of his body he never seems to have noticeable goosebumps. It’s like the air of the upside down has burrowed and made a home in him. He tries to ignore it, there are far more pressing things to worry about. Bigger things that should be pressing on his brain almost constantly instead of a cold. Just a cold. Except, whenever he isn’t deliberately concentrating on something else his mind flicks back to informing him that he is freezing. Pointing out how the lady, Mrs. Olson he thinks, behind the food donation desk had flinched when she’d accidentally touched his hand reaching for the same box the other day. Steve doesn’t mention to anyone that his jaw aches from trying to stop his teeth chattering, or how when he’s alone he lets them, lets the shivers and the chattering overtake him as he lies under every blanket in the house with the space heater from the attic sitting dangerously close to him. Refuses to meet Robin’s gaze when she raises her eyebrows at his four visible layers of clothing. Lets Dustin tiredly make fun of him for standing with his hands tucked in under his armpits because otherwise, he feels like they might fall off. It’s almost six days since they failed fucking spectacularly at playing superheroes when it clicks that actually, something might be seriously wrong with him. He’s not been sleeping, can’t, for the life of him, which isn’t all that surprising seeing as he was in what could easily be considered literal hell a week ago. Not just the old three hours a night if he’s lucky that he’s been scraping by on since fall of ’83, no, he’s talking not a single wink of sleep in a week. Of course, it’s starting to catch up with him, he’d be more concerned if it weren’t even if he dreads the moment his eyes close. When it finally does he’s sitting on the steps up to his front door wearing his ski jacket and a goddam hat, smoking a cigarette even though he quit for Nancy and then again for Dustin. He feels it in his arms first, that heavy exhaustion that has him draping them over his knees for support, knows he should go inside and at least sit on a comfortable surface but he’s too tired to move. Then his eyes are fluttering and his head is drooping and he’s dancing with consciousness for a minute or two. When he finally manages to roll his head upright again and keep his eyes open for more than a second, he goes to stand - to push himself up by the arms - but his cigarette is dangling between the fingers of his right hand, burning a hole into his left, just below the knuckle of his index finger. And he can’t feel a thing. Just the icy-cold numbness from before. 

He’s transfixed by the sight of it for a while until the smell of burning flesh, his flesh, hits his nostrils. He considers taking one final drag but stomps it out beneath his shoe instead. Brushes a finger over the burn, slipping away some of the ash, presses down on it a little just to see if he can make it hurt. He can’t. His brain supplies him with a memory of being about six and sitting in his room while his parents had a one-sided screaming match downstairs and sitting on one of his hands until it went numb and then closing his eyes and holding his own hand pretending it was his mother’s. He takes his lighter from his pocket (a Christmas gift from the dweebs), twirls it twice before holding it to first his left palm and then his right. He feels impossibly colder when he can’t feel the heat against his skin. He holds the flame against his neck, feels no heat there either. Tries jabbing at the lines of bruising poking out the top of his jacket and feels only a faint touch of skin against skin. His throat had been insensately throbbing for days and now he can’t even place the moment it stopped. He scrambles to his feet and skids into his mother’s reception room where he’s made his nest of blankets, turns the space heater to the highest setting, and holds his hands out to it. Then presses both palms flat against the metal grills when he can’t feel any heat. In the downstairs bathroom, he stares at the panicked eyes in the mirror for a second before he remembers what he’s doing there. Fumbles with deadened fingers and the zipper on his coat then wrestles his way out of sweater after sweater. His nails scratch away at the bandages he was supposed to change yesterday, or maybe the day before until they peel away. His stomach is bruised black and purple around each bite mark, the flesh finally darkening red in scabs that are struggling to form and harden. Even looking at them makes him vaguely aware that there is some pain there. He presses the heels of his hands hard into two of the bites. Finds himself gasping with pain and relief when he feels the phantom sensation of teeth ripping flesh out of him. Then gags into the sink. He cries. Maybe from pain or relief or the new and different kind of dread that has filled him. He cries himself to sleep, or perhaps more accurately to unconsciousness, his scraped and bruised back pressed bare against the towel rack. Body still thrumming with fear and praying to a God that he’s fairly certain doesn’t exist that he won’t dream. Just this once. 

He does. He always does. He wakes up wracked with shivers and a blue tinge under his fingernails and images of girls drowning his pool, and pre-teens being shredded by flower-faced monsters, and deranged basketball players trying to kill people and bats and ex-human squid men intent on murdering everyone. He turns the shower to the hottest setting and hopes that whatever the fuck happened earlier that night was just the sleep deprivation getting to him. Only, he can’t feel the heat that’s turning his skin red, just the pelting of the water against his skin. For the first time in three years, he considers getting into the heated pool outside, just to test his theory. Then he remembers that Barb had hidden away in this very bathroom like half an hour before she died out there. Like we didn’t kill Barb? Echos around his mind and he shuts off the water, struggling for breath. He finds himself sitting on the doorstep again, trying not to crush his cigarette between his shaking fingers. Teeth crashing against each other so hard he thinks he might be giving himself another concussion or something. When he finishes one he lights another. Then a third in the hopes that the sun will rise soon and dispel the awful red glow that has settled over Hawkins. He wishes the stars at least were visible, anything more comforting than the yellow spotlight of their front porch lights and the weak streaks of moonlight breaking through the black smoke-filled sky. If he wasn’t sure that all his neighbors had fled town by now he might be more concerned about how mad he looks sat chain-smoking dressed for subzero temperatures with his nailbat tucked under his legs. His last string of sanity is hanging loosely from the pain of the bites. Just present enough to let him believe he’s still vaguely human. 

He has to drive into town and then double back on himself to get to Robin’s house due to the fact that half the roads in town have turned into fire pits. She gets into the car all quiet and keyed up, Steve idles on the curb for a second to see if she wants to explode now or later. She taps the dash twice, “Let’s go, dingus.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m going.”

They drive in tense silence the long route towards Dustin’s house. 

“Okay, Rob, I can’t take this. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“My parents want to leave town. My dad’s boss is leaving and ya know, they were talking about rebuilding but apparently, the government is gonna bring in their own people, which, like, makes sense because obviously my dad is used to building houses right, and not like paving over portals to another dimension. And my mom, well, she kind of wants to stay? Because like, the drugstore is staying open and like pretty essential. But then I think she’s also really terrified and they want me to finish my senior year and graduate and stuff and it’s pretty obvious that the school isn’t gonna be re-opening any time soon. And, and I don’t want to leave but I think I kinda maybe also really really wanna leave. Or at least, I want them to be safe. And we can’t really afford to stay if my dad’s not working? But I’m also not really sure if we can afford to start somewhere new and they keep arguing about it. And I’m so confused and the world is literally falling apart around us and — what happened to your hand?”

He swears that she gives him whiplash in about fifty percent of their conversations. 

“What?”

“You’ve got a burn on your hand.” She says reaching across the steering wheel to try and grab it. 

“Hey! Hey! Hey! I’m driving!” He swats her hands away while desperately trying to keep his eyes on the road and in control of the wheel even though the streets are pretty much deserted. She eventually returns her hands to her lap with a roll of her eyes. 

“How’d you do that?”

He considers trying to tell her it's from the upside-down, a rogue flame from their Molotov cocktails but she’s too observant for that to work. “Relax, Rob. I fell asleep holding a cigarette and—”

“I thought you quit.”

“Yeah, well, I did but now I’ve un-quit.” She gives him this look, all analyzing and caring, and ‘I know something is going on with you’, it makes him shudder, “I’ve looked after it, it’s fine. We were talking about you.”

“Dingus.” A reluctant pause. “I just- I just feel like I’ll never sleep again while he’s still out there. We have to finish this, right, or I won’t be able to carry on with my life. Like, college seems pretty meaningless in the face of an inter-dimensional psychic serial killer, ya know? And Max, she’s all alone now and… but I’m so tired of fighting, Steve.”

Any thought of ever telling Robin that something might be wrong evaporates straight out of Steve. She sounds so exhausted and sad and guilty, so un-Robin-like that it breaks his heart a little. He wishes, like he does most days, that he’d never dragged poor, kind, funny, good Robin into this world. 

“It’s okay to go. If your family does leave, you should go with them. Don’t feel- shit, don’t feel guilty about it. You shouldn’t have to fight this guy, none of you guys should. You don’t, like - we all want you to be safe and it would suck, sure, like really suck. But it would be for the best.”

“Steve…” She says in that pity-guilt way that she does when he’s said something more intelligent than usual. 

“Robin, it’s okay. Whatever you decide it’s okay.” 

“But—”

“If you’re itching for a fight that badly, I can swing by Chicago or Kansas or where ever you end up and pick you up for round two.”

She smiles at him with that ‘you’re ridiculous’ smile. His favorite smile of hers. Okay, maybe second because actually, when he was working a dead-end job in a mall after two straight years of night-terrors and barely graduating her big toothy grin had kind of turned his life around. So yeah, toothy grin first, you’re ridiculous second. 

She’s settled in herself a bit by the time they pull up to Dustin’s house, his mom’s car already gone for the day. Robin catches his hand just before he can lay it on the horn.

“Steve,” She says quietly, really searching his face for a second before she seems to glance at the place her fingers are meeting his skin in shock, “You didn’t, like, do that yourself, did you?”

“What?”

She swallows, squeezes his wrist a little, “Burn yourself on purpose?”

Steve stares at her blankly for a second because it’s not like he’s never thought of doing some fucked up shit over the years, but not that. The image of him holding the lighter against his neck flickers for a moment before he shakes his head. 

“No, Robin. I swear it was an accident.” 

She seems to calculate his response for a second before nodding and letting go to press down on the horn herself. And if she goes to turn up the heating as she pulls herself back over to her side of the car neither of them addresses it. But her question has unsettled something in him. Woken a beast or perhaps an element of self-awareness that has been dormant. One that makes ignoring the chill in his skin a little more enticing. Satisfying even. God, he’s so fucked up.

Chapter Text

He pretends not to notice the way Robin has begun to hover around him. Always assigning herself to the same station as Steve at the school, even when it means that she and Vicki have to exchange glances from opposite ends of the basketball court. Tries his hardest not to be frustrated by it. Tells himself that he is just tired, that really, he’s grateful to have someone who cares so much for him. To be looked after. He is grateful, but he’s also functioning on what is more likely to be minutes rather than hours' worth of sleep. And more often than not so cold he can barely function. Sometimes he forgets he even exists until Robin appears at his elbow eyeing him suspiciously. Dustin is sticking in closer orbit too, a shadow of his former self and shadowing Steve too. A step behind and one to the left. His ankle finally in a cast and a pair of crutches holding him up and only allowed out of the house under Steve’s watchful eye because poor Claudia Henderson had almost had a heart attack when he’d finally showed her the swelling after two days. Steve loves Dustin; loves them all kind of, has, embarrassingly, allowed himself to think of them as sibling-akin things; but the quiet way the kid is following him around like he doesn’t know himself is making the world flake out of existence around Steve. The same thing happens when they switch out with the Sinclairs for the evening shift by Max’s bedside and he has to tear Lucas away from her. Has to sit and stare at Max who is looking more and more like a brain-dead mummy every day and realize over and over that he failed. El’s shorn hair and Mike’s almost complete retraction from the world and Will’s constant terrified eyes and Erica being too afraid to be in a separate room from Lucas. He failed. He didn’t protect a single damn one of them. Good babysitter his ass. Steve’s never had a way with words. Never known how to get them out of his head into a sentence and it’s never bothered him more than it does now. Now that he’s surrounded by these hollow versions of these kids he’s learned to love and he has nothing to say to them. Can’t even get past ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s like he’s being seeped constantly in his failures. His idiocy for letting them go through with a half-baked, stupid-ass plan. For helping with it. For failing at it. It’s such a consuming feeling that he’s struggling to feel anything else, other than the goddam cold which just keeps getting worse and worse. The guilt, the cold, the lack of sleep, one or the other of them are giving him a headache. Or the ghost of one. There’s that awful bloated feeling under his skull but no actual pain. And there’s a low grade, sporadic buzzing in his ears. Not so familiar in itself, not without the stabbing tendrils of torture, but the concept is the same. It isn’t anything like the on again off again ringing and whistling his ear canals had subjected him to after Billy Hargrove smashed a plate into his head but irritating noises only he could hear? That’s nothing new. He never thought he’d see the day he wished for a migraine but the real thing would be so much better than this terrible farce of one. 

He’s fairly certain he’s going crazy. The way he seems to be coming and going from himself. The way the cold is getting worse and his skin is starting to take on a greyish tint around his extremities. The way he can’t bring himself to touch anyone in case they confirm that this is a real… he doesn’t know what word could even begin to touch this thing. Symptom? The way the buzzing is getting louder every time he thinks about it. Nancy would probably say something about trauma or the brain's ability to process stuff but Steve knows those are just fancy words for what he’s saying: crazy. Mad. Looney tunes. He’s drawn from his thoughts by the slam of the back door of his car.

“Easy, dude. What did my doors ever do to you?” He says as he and Robin both turn to look at Dustin in the back seat. The kid is glowering and Steve thinks that anger is one of the phases of grief or whatever it was he’d heard. He doesn’t want to touch that with a bargepole. He’s pointedly not thinking about Eddie. Feels so far out of his depth he’s drowning. 

Dustin crosses his arms across his chest and pointedly does not pull his seatbelt across his chest. “Why does Robin always get to sit shotgun?” Like it’s literally the most offensive thing that has ever happened. 

“Seriously, that’s what’s got your panties in a twist?” Robin asks sharing a look of utter confusion with Steve. When they turn back to Dustin he juts his chin out in a way that Steve knows they’re not getting out of this stupid argument anytime soon. Only, when he opens his mouth it twists downwards squarely and then Dustin is crying. Steve loses himself for a moment to the memory of finding Dustin howling over Eddie’s mauled body, of grabbing at blood-soaked hands and pulling, of trying to carry the body despite his own injuries and the way the blood s— he’s hit in the face with Robins jacket as she climbs into the back seat, dirty converse leaving a footprint on the leather of the car and he can’t help but make a noise of protest because he’s sentimental and his dad gave him this car and he cares about it. Robin shoots him a venomous warning look and he shuts up because he cares a hell of a lot more about Dustin. Uses the doors to get himself into the back seat. Dustin sits there sandwiched between them bawling his eyes out and Steve still doesn’t know what to say. Robin is whispering, “It’s going to be okay, dude,” over and over like a mantra and Steve is too numb to even put his arms around the kid. The bites littering his abdomen make themselves a little more known, taunting him. Reminding him that he lived and Eddie died and now Dustin is broken and he’s too useless to do anything to fix it. Dustin turns to bury his head against Steve’s shoulder and he almost expects him to ask why couldn’t it be you, Steve? Except Dustin’s too good for that. Too kind to ever admit that he wished that, maybe to even think it. Steve finally thinks to raise his hand, runs his fingers through the curls in a much more affectionate way than he’s ever let himself do before and he wonders if he’s overstepping. Crossing some boundary, but his worries are distracted by Dustin shivering the second Steve touches him, then disproved when an arm is thrown around his chest and he’s being clung to. Steve remembers clinging to his mother’s dress when he was too old to be that upset about being left, she’d scolded him, it was designer. He rearranges them so Dustin can lean fully against his chest and Steve can wrap both arms around him. Robin drapes herself over Dustin’s back, rubbing at his arms. They lock eyes over the top of Dustin’s curls, Robin has tears in her eyes too, and looks just as lost and hopeless as Steve feels. He lets himself entertain the thought that it would have been better if he had died instead of Eddie. At least then there’d be someone less emotionally inept to deal with all this. Dustin eventually eases himself out of their grasp.  

“Take shotgun, just this once,” Robin says waving her hand dismissively as if they’d just played Rock, Paper, Scissors for it instead of having a group breakdown. Dustin huffs a half-hearted laugh but follows Steve back out the door and into the passenger seat. 

“You sure you still wanna volunteer today? We could bunk off.” 

“Can we go to the cabin?” Dustin’s voice is small and croaky after crying for so long. 

“What’d you say, Robin? Fancy visiting a creepy cabin in the woods full of people who don’t legally exist?” 

“Sure, sounds like a hoot.” 

Steve slots a tape into the stereo to try and distract from the heavy atmosphere of the car. Tries very hard not to think about the fact that he’s fairly certain it’s a mixtape Max and Lucas made before their last (more final) break up, or acknowledge the depressingly odd route he has to work out to get out to the cabin. 

“Why’d you have to open the door, Steve?” Robin groans from the back seat.

“Because that’s what doors are for, Buckley.” 

He catches her rolling her eyes in the rearview, “Yeah, well you let in a bug, asshat.”

“I think you’ll be okay, you’ve dealt with worse.” 

But now she’s said it he can hear the buzzing behind his headrest. It makes his mouth go dry. Robin winds the window down. 

“Ugh! It’s not leaving.” She complains swatting at it wildly.

“Maybe it likes the air freshener.” Dustin mumbles and Steve shoots him a smile. 

“Or maybe you smell like shit.” Steve throws over his shoulder because even though the buzzing is drilling straight into his skull and is impossibly loud, he’ll do anything to make Dustin smile. It almost works.

“Pretty sure bugs can’t smell, idiots.” 

“Obviously they can smell idiots, Robin.” 

Dustin’s lip twitches into a half smile and Steve ignores that it was probably at Robin kicking his chair. They lap back into silence, well, relative silence what with the incessant fucking buzzing and Robins huffing and puffing. And if Steve can still hear the stupid fly after Robin announces that she’s killed it and winds the window back up, well he manages not to pull over and rip his ears off to stop himself from going round the proverbial bend. He’s fine. And even if he’s not, nothing he can do in front of his two best friends who are being eaten alive by guilt, so he’ll just pretend it’s not happening. Lucky for him the Harringtons’ are particularly skilled at pretending. When he was younger he thought his mother was stupid. A total airhead, just this brainless pretty thing, arm candy to pair with his father’s chosen Rolex of the evening. His dad was always telling her so, always making heated jokes about how Steve got his smarts from his mother. You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington. The older he got the more he suspected it was all a ruse. That she knew exactly what she was doing every time she put her foot in her mouth at the dinner party and said something that made John Harrington lose his shit. Sometimes he’d catch the way she’d look at his father when his back was turned - with this sharpness in her eyes and understand that there was a person in there that neither of them knew. He’d listen to her speak in quick, fluent Italian to his Nonna on the phone for hours when his father was out of the house. At the time, he’d eavesdropped for the comfort of her voice, entranced by how animated, how emotional she sounded. She never sounded like that when she spoke English. Now though, he understands that she had been saying things, speaking passionately and happily for hours at a time. She was not an idiot just an actress and he would never know who she really was. So no, he did not get her brains, but her ability to act the fool, that he very much did inherit. 

The universe must love him because the Wheeler’s car is already parked outside when they arrive. He wonders briefly how Karen is so fine with her children hanging out in a mysterious cabin when the world is collapsing at their doorstep. Wonders why they aren’t hightailing it out of here? He gives Dustin a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before they get out of the car. El comes running out as soon as the car door slams and practically knocks Dustin off his crutches with the force of her hug. Steve bows his head to give them a moment of privacy. Will and Mike aren’t far behind, Steve feels Robin come up behind his shoulder again, she lays her head against his arm and he resists the urge to step away. Tells himself he’s wearing enough layers that she won’t be able to feel anything and she’ll definitely know something’s wrong if he retracts. When Steve looks up Will is staring at him over Dustin’s shoulder. It makes a prickle run up Steve’s spine and he feels the urge to swat at the buzzing that restarts behind his head. Mike pulls them all inside and Steve can’t help but be relieved when the piercing gaze disappears inside. Mrs. Byers comes walking across the scattered leaves. 

“Steve, thanks for driving Dustin over.”

“Of course, Mrs. Byers.”

“Joyce, please.”

“Right. Sorry. Joyce.”

“Got anything you need a hand with? We’re sort of undisposed for the day.” Robin pipes up from behind him. 

“Oh, that’s so sweet of you. You know, I think Jim’s struggling with a leak in the roof if you really want something to do. But you’re welcome to just relax, it’s been a hard few weeks for all of us.” She smiles gently at them.   

Robin turns out to be much more useful at fixing leaking roofs so Steve ends up mostly just passing tools up the ladder and carefully not thinking. 

“Jesus, Chief, you got a mosquito problem or something?” Steve says after swatting away the hundredth thing flying at his neck. 

Jim looks down from the top of the ladder, he looks like shit. Steve supposes Russian torture will do that to a guy, he should know. “Land’s dry as bone, kid. No ‘skeeters ‘round here.” 

“Yeah, tell that to the hole in your roof,” Steve mumbles eyeing the thunderstorm brewing in the distance. 

“There are a lot of flies around, must be the time of year,” Joyce says coming round the side of the house making all three of them jump. Steve’s just glad he’s at the bottom of the ladder. 

“More likely to be the gates,” Robin calls down and Steve wonders if she means all the people that died when the gates were open. 

“Probably,” Joyce agrees quietly into her mug. “Nancy and the boys are back from their food run, come eat something.”

He and Robin eat lunch on the porch, the cabin not really designed for eleven people and their elbows. They manage to satisfy Hopper with their patch-up job, and exchange pleasantries with the ex-girlfriend he panic love-bombed and her boyfriend and the guy they kidnapped from California. And if every so often there’s a fly in his eye line surely it’s nothing to do with the lotus-Esque buzzing he has to fight just to pick up on the conversation around him, well, it’s like Mrs. Byers said - just the time of year.   

“Hey, Dipshit, we need to get going if we’re going to get to the hospital on time,” Steve calls into the den of sheets the kids (excuse him, teens) are huddled in. Dustin emerges from behind the curtain they’ve built after a few minutes of what Steve made out to be teary goodbyes. He sits in the front passenger seat and fiddles with his shirt hem. 

“Do you think Max would mind if I didn’t go today?” He asks quietly. 

Steve swings his head around to look at him and he looks so much younger than he should, more like the kid that Steve met in a hospital waiting room years back than a high school freshman. 

“I think she’d understand. It’s not like she’s particularly fond of, like, feelings and emotions and shit. I’ll take you home.”

“You’ll still go see her right?” He asks swinging his head between Steve in the front and Robin in the back. 

“Yeah, of course.” Steve soothes.

“Depressing hospital visit is my favorite part of the day. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Robin chimes in and Dustin almost smiles. 

“Hey, I think I’m gonna spend the night at the hospital if you want me to drop you home first.” He says to Robin as they’re watching Dustin limp to the front door of his house. 

She looks at him for a moment and nods, “Sure, that’d be great.” 

“Hey Max,” He calls as he enters the room. Flicks through the book Lucas has been reading to see how far they got today before he puts the mixtape he’d played in the car earlier into the cassette player by her bed. “No Kate Bush, but I figured you might like this one.” He says while dimming the lights. He locks his fingers into hers that poke out the bottom of the cast as he settles in the chair. Doesn’t worry about them being too cold for her. A fly settles on her IV bag and he swears he feels its eyes on him. Can hear it flying even though he’s watching it rub its legs together. There’s another one on the wall beside him after a while. He doesn’t need to look up to know a few are flicking around the light bulb. He can barely hear the music over the sound in his ears. It reminds him of the wasps’ nest they found in Carol’s backyard in fifth grade. Begins to feel his eyes droop a little. He doesn’t want to sleep. Doesn’t think he could bare it. 

“I thought I was going to be a professional swimmer when I was your age. Youngest swim captain Hawkins High has ever seen. Coach said I was a shoo-in for a scholarship to any college I wanted when I was in freshman year. And then the first semester of junior year… after Barb, I just couldn’t face getting back in the pool. Any pool. Once that was gone it all seemed pretty pointless and impossible, but I’m still here. I think what I’m trying to say is that if you’re in there, Red, it’s okay to… sometimes you just survive and that’s enough. So, even though it might not seem worth it, you should. If you can.” Steve wishes he was good with words like Nancy or even knew enough like Robin to eventually say something meaningful. 

He excuses himself to the little bathroom. The flies follow. He stares at the complexion of the boy in the mirror and thinks that maybe he didn't make it out of the upside down after all. Thinks he might be dead. The For list is certainly longer than the Against list. The idea doesn't seem so unlikely after everything he's seen these last few years. Adds himself to the pile of bodies that has been steadily growing in his periphery.  He watches in the mirror as a fly lands on his cheek and he thinks of the moniker that got thrown around the middle school before it was tossed around the high school. Little Will Byers. Zombie boy. Says it aloud to the fly.

"Zombie Boy.”

The words sit too comfortably on his tongue to be anything but true. There’s a burrowing pain in his stomach and it feels almost like his body is replying. Agreeing. He lifts his shirt, the movement failing to dislodge the flies from their places, stares at the scabs which have blackened. Thinks in the flickering of the over sink light that it looks as if they are moving. Lets his hand glance over one, snatching it away when he feels squirming. He steps closer to the mirror, lifting his shirt again. Watches in morbid fascination as tiny black maggots, each smaller than a grain of rice, writhe across - into - his skin. Steve Harrington is dead and he is so incredibly fucked.

Chapter Text

He spits the stupid bagel straight into the trash can. Doesn’t know if not even being able to bring himself to swallow is better or worse than not being able to keep anything down. Knows the answer is probably worse, but at least it’s mildly more pleasant. Can’t help but feel like he’s feeding the fuckers feasting on him. He doesn’t want to encourage them to eat through into his stomach or something. They’re not growing so he figures it’s okay. Well, not okay, more: absolutely terrifying, The Shining level, what-in-the-ever-loving-fuck-is-happening on par with normal. But, even if the blacks and greens that he had assumed were bruising are actually decaying flesh, the larvae are uniformly staying within the indents of the bites. He knows he should tell someone, maybe the super-powered girl who could do something about it, or Nancy who saw Vecna’s ultimate plan, or Robin because he desperately wants someone to tell him it’ll be okay, but he’s not even sure what he would say. Thinks his brain checked out on the whole thing sometime between Max’s hospital room and making it back to his mound of blankets in the reception room. Each time he tries to combine his words one way or another he remembers Robin’s tired voice saying she’s tired of fighting. Steve is pretty tired of fighting too. Doesn’t think he has another round in him, and definitely doesn’t want to be responsible for anyone else having to step up either. And maybe that’s stupidly self-sacrificial and obviously on the wrong side of fucked up but he figures he’s probably already as good as dead and maybe he can just slip away quietly. He used to hate the quiet. The constant, lonely quiet. Never thought he would crave it, but hovering over his kitchen trash can watching flies land on his saliva-covered bagel, he longs to be a sixteen-year-old whose biggest problem is being a little lonely. Steve straightens, rinses his mouth out in the sink, and stares at the open packet of bagels on the counter. He works methodically then, opening cupboards from left to right and pulling out the meager pickings of groceries. He’d been really trying to be better before everything went to shit for the fourth time so the island looks decently full. Pulls the refrigerator apart next. Then the freezer. Stares at his winnings, gags into his elbow at the very thought of it. He bags them by category: breakfast foods, canned goods, long shelf-life, condiments, snack foods, etc. He searches the cleaning cupboard as the last resort for where he’s put the thermal bag he ordered off late night TV. Finds it behind the bleach and the laundry detergent; swings around to fill it with the chilled foods. Then loads all the bags into the trunk of his car. 

Robin is nowhere to be seen even though his little grocery mission has made him late. He lays on the horn until she comes barrelling out, all limbs and jacket flying around, coming to a screeching halt in his passenger seat. 

“Here!” She says thrusting something into his hands still wrestling her jacket sleeves which have found an ally in the seatbelt. 

“What’s this?” 

She pauses to stare at him incredulously, “It’s a thermos, Harrington. With coffee in it.” 

“Right,” He says trying to hand it back across to her. 

She pushes his hand back towards him, shivering slightly when they touch. “For you.”

“Robin—”

“Shut up. I don’t wanna hear it, Steve. Not until you’ve made friends with The Sandman again.”

“Yeah, ‘cos you really look like you’re raking in eight hours,” He says jabbing the flask towards his under-eye area (which, yeah, okay, he knows he looks like he’s smeared some of Munson’s stupid eyeliner around). 

“Still better than you. And put a fucking sweater on before you die of hypothermia,” She says like she can’t see the bulge of the two sweatshirts he’s wearing under his jacket. 

Steve stares at the Snoopy flask in his hand and almost bursts out ‘Hey, Rob, I think I’m dead.’ Instead, he presses it against his chest, as if to remind his heart that it has something to beat for after all. He almost chokes on his first conciliatory sip because he hasn’t even tried to check his heartbeat. Files it away for later when he’s in private. The coffee sits heavy in his stomach as he drives, the burrowing sensation seems to increase a fraction. Tries to focus on the road instead of the image of his pulsing, pet-filled wounds. 

He redirects Robin towards Vickie when they enter and sets Dustin up at the daycare center in the old geometry classroom, tells him to impart some of his infinite knowledge on those less fortunate (and younger, he adds when Dustin implies that bracket includes Steve). Then hauls all the bags over to the food donation table in one go. The lady behind the desk stares up at him with bug eyes as he explains how each bag is sorted. When her shock seems to veer towards what Steve hopes is confusion but knows is suspicion he says, “From my parents, they asked me to buy a bunch of food to donate. They really want to support the town as much as they can.”

“That is so kind of them. This is so much, too much! And, you’re already here every day. Please, thank them for us.” 

“Of course, I will.” 

He lets himself be corralled into helping out in the make-shift food bank, soon finds Dustin has abandoned his own post to be close to Steve and he can feel Robin’s eyes on him every few minutes. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation but he finds it exhausting. The whole thing: the room full of terrified, displaced people desperately trying to keep some normalcy; the children wearing their classmates' clothes because their homes have been destroyed; the stacks of tomato soup in shoeboxes; the ever-present storm always on the verge of breaking; the eyes of the girl he used to ignore in Mrs. Click’s class checking to see if he’s keeled over yet. He doesn’t know how to understand it all. For years he’d been able to justify his involvement, it was penance, for Barb and how he treated Jonathan, how he treated everyone. That the kids had just been dragged in by bad luck, and pure love for a friend. When it was just them, their small group in the know, it felt digestible, he was spoon-fed the unbelievable, now, with their town in flames and the military no longer on their side it feels heavier. An unbearable weight of guilt he must carry. 

He sits in his car outside his empty house and tries to feel for a heartbeat. Feels nothing in his wrist, nothing in his neck, but a faint thrumming between his collarbones he thinks. His fingers are too cold to provide his brain with much sensory information. Can’t exactly as someone else to check without giving them frostbite. He scrubs his hands down his face. Collects the nail bat from the trunk of his car, sits on the steps to the house, and smokes. Tries not to think about the fact that he’s going to spend hours alone in his cage of a house, considers heading back to the hospital so he and Max can be alone together but it feels too public with the nurses and the doctors. He tosses the butt onto the growing collection of them on the driveway. Flicks on the TV he’s moved into the reception room and sighs at the episode of St. Elsewhere that buzzes into life, slumps down to watch it. A boy comes onto the screen covered in blood and Steve stands, collects the growing pile of clothes from the floor, and heads to the laundry room. The kitchen is a mess from his clear-out this morning, crumbs on the counter, cupboard doors left half open. He sets about cleaning. Wipes down any surface that food had touched, puts bleach in the sink, sweeps the floor. He’s returning the products to under the sink when he sees it. Eyes picking up on the white, cartoon upturned bug like they’ve been clocking flies for days.

RAID

HOUSE&GARDEN 

BUG KILLER

NONTOXIC TO HUMANS AND PETS

He locks eyes with the canister and instead of putting the bottle of bleach down and closing the door he lets his hand reach deeper in. Leaves his pile of shirts and sweaters where they land on the kitchen tiles. Watches as the bandages float down to land atop of them. He braces his back against the refrigerator and curls down for a better view. Holds the canister close to avoid spraying it all over himself, aims it at the largest of the bites. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Hears the can drop to the ground as he gasps. It’s excruciating. Like he’s just driven a hot poker through himself. If it wasn’t for the invigorated way the critters were somersaulting over each other he’d be glad for the first bit of warmth he’d felt in weeks. He lets himself slide to the ground, socks against tile. His fingers search out the can on the ground around him. Considers launching it across the room when he finally feels metal against his finger pads. Glances at the jerking things and knows he’s angered them. Feels a sharp smile form on his face at the knowledge. He holds his breath this time, head already dizzy with the smell of the stuff and sprays. Doesn’t release the button as he moves from bite to bite. His legs kick out as his stomach muscles spasm in protest - wrestling himself further onto the floor. He drops the Raid, hands coming to clutch at his stomach as if he could somehow stop his insides from ripping themselves apart. He dashes his head against the plastic of the refrigerator door desperately hoping for some reprieve. Thrashes on the floor. Jaw clenched so hard he swears it’ll break if he releases the shout he’s holding in. Can’t draw a breath in. Can’t do anything but focus on the searing. Branding. Corrosive pain. Feels his skin bubbling like wet wallpaper. His mouth breaks open, finally, and he gags. Chemicals hitting the back of his throat and making him double over. He thinks his skin rips as it folds over itself. The world grays out as his forehead presses against the kitchen floor. Tile slick with sweat. 

There’s a hand, frosty and just glancing his cheek. There’s no one there when he blinks his eyes open, just the orderly checks of the wallpaper his mother chose for him. His bed is cold despite the way he is cocooned in his comforter. He can hear the nasal hum of Carol’s laugh and the deep lull of Tommy’s voice somewhere in the depths of the house. The soundtrack of his life. And quieter, much quieter, the sound of the side door sliding closed. Even though he’s kept it locked for years now. He clambers out of bed and draws back his curtains to check. His room is flooded with an icy blue hue from the pool lights below. With shaking hands he pries apart the blind slats and presses his face to the gap. There doesn’t seem to be anyone there at first, just the scattered deck chairs and beer cans, the dark woods rolling backward. Then, through the steam rising from the water he sees something bobbing, the clear plastic that held their six-pack together maybe? The lights seem to glow brighter and the steam clears in a wisp of wind. They’re glasses. Pale and round and almost invisible. Steve swallows a lump in his throat. The safety of Tommy and Carol’s voices has disappeared at some point.  What he had assumed was the shadow of the diving board is now clearly something else. A dark blue coat, a gaunt face bruised like a peach. The black veins of the upside down binding her to the side of his pool. Tendrils of blood bloom into the water around her, swirling away like synchronized swimmers. Despite the unhinged angle of her jaw, the vine making itself at home in her mouth, he swears she’s calling him. Screaming for him, for Nancy, for help. He does too.

“Nancy!” He’s frozen in place, unable to tear himself away from the window and do anything. “Tommy! Carol! Nance!” 

He can’t look away, can’t release the blind and run and save her. Can’t swing his head around the room and search for Nancy or evidence of her clothes on his floor. Can only stare. Can only stand as he becomes aware that his hair is damp, dripping down his neck and into his shirt which is already wet. Soggy with salt water - because chlorine dries his mother’s skin out. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, he begs his brain as he drips a wet patch onto his carpet. Please, he thinks. “Please,” Barb calls from down below. 

He blinks the salty water from between his lashes and shudders with the damp chill running over his skin. The blue glow gives way to his mother’s blue kitchen tile pressed against his face. His stomach is still fizzling with pain. More pressing, though, is the lure of the pool. He’ll admit he rarely knows what’s going on but he knows that there’s a body in his pool right now. Knows that she’s calling to him. Please. He uses the counter to pull himself up. Legs frozen stiff. He can still hear the chatter of the TV coming from the other end of the house. Walks himself to the door to the lounge. Opens it for the first time in three years, the yellow panel walls look sickly in the red-gray filter of night. Turning on the light thrusts the world beyond the sliding doors into complete darkness. Speculation. Steve takes a strangled breath. His first since he woke up a little voice that sounds suspiciously like Henderson whispers to him. He moves over to the old VHS cabinet; pulls from the back Superman: The Movie and opens the case. Stares at the three sets of side door keys he’s not laid eyes on since November ’83. Hears how the tremor in his hands makes them rattle against each other. Mocking him. The door shudders against its running tracks, squealing in protest at the sudden use. He fumbles with the switch for the pool lights before he crosses the threshold. A dull light shines out around the side of the pool cover, he pictures desperate fingers clawing their way out through the gap. Winds the hand crank to pull the cover back, feels his stomach bottom out with fear. The water is murky, cloudy with mud and leaves. The lights shroud him in a brown haze. Somehow it’s worse than the blue of his dream. He can’t see the blood, not for certain, he knows it’s there, spreading within the muddy depths. The longer he stares the more he feels the water, not clear, but becomes translucent until he can make out a form. She’s folded like a figure torn from the middle of a paper doll chain, just a little to the left of the diving board. She stares at him the same as in the dream. Mouth agape, jaw forced impossibly wide, but the vine is missing. And despite being able to see the black of her hollowed eye sockets she is staring up at him, fixing him with that same reproachful gaze she had when she accused him of changing her best friend’s nature. There’s still a little bit of eyeball clinging to her left eye socket. Her skin is pruned from being trapped down there for so long. He stands for hours gazing at her. Can’t break away from her stare. From the unnatural comfort it provides, a kindling of warmth in his chest that he’s so dearly missed. Can push aside the guilt of having trapped her down there for years. Wishes he’d pulled the tarp back before the stars had disappeared so she could look at them. Can ignore the vicious, biting pain of the still angry bites. He feels the pull of her gain strength as the sun comes up. Stands so close to the edge of the pool that his socks begin to soak up the coppery water. Wonders if he should turn the heating on to keep her warm. Them warm. There’s a noise from in the house. She tells him to ignore it. Stay here. The second ring of the phone breaks through to his mind and he turns his head towards it, towards the only comfy room in the house that he can’t bear to be in, to the phone in the hall shouting for him. And when he turns back there are only dead leaves skimming the surface. He walks inside, tracking water and soil into his mother’s cream carpet and he leaves the pool uncovered and the doors open. 

“Hey, Rob,” He says into the receiver. Chilled to the bone and losing feeling in his extremities once again. Even the bites have dulled their complaining. “No, you didn’t wake me.”

Chapter Text

He feels like he’s got a third body following him around. Robin, Dustin, and Barb. Feels the way her eyes had fixated on him without any goddam eyeballs. The way she spoke to him without ever saying a word. Dustin at one shoulder, Robin at the other, and Barbara Holland just behind him. Non-existent breath on his neck. Feels sure everyone else can see her too. The eyes of all the ladies who are on whatever committee it is that’s running things staring at him, at the decaying body of an innocent girl he’s dragging behind him. Wonders how Eddie survived those days as a wanted man. Thinks how unfair it is that Steve got off scot-free after killing a girl, and Eddie got dragged to his death, his name ground into the dirt for being absolutely innocent. Every set of eyes in the room, every tickle of air at the base of his neck makes the air he’s consciously forcing in and out of his lungs feel suffocating. Like he’s a balloon being filled to the point of popping. Forgets the system he’s supposed to be using to sort the stack of messages in front of him. Can manage about five pieces of paper at a time before Robin is reaching over and correcting them into different piles, re-explaining the system again - shoulders setting themselves more tensely each time. Steve finds himself desperate for a moment of quiet, he’s so used to going insane in private that to do it in front of all these people, all these eyes, makes him feel somehow raw. The comforting numbness of the last couple of weeks is being corroded from all sides. He finds himself stumbling away from the school gym, mumbling some excuse about needing to piss, limbs locked in ice, and fingers slipping off door handles he can’t feel until he shuts himself away in the old utility store behind the bleachers.

“What the fuck, man?”

He spins, hands already fumbling with the door behind him to get out, get out, get out. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was-“

“Harrington?”

The all-consuming panic recedes just for a second, washed away by first clarity then confusion.

“Tommy?”

“You look like shit. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at college?”

“Yeah, I—“ He brings a hand up to wipe at his face quickly, and even in the dim light Steve can tell he’s been crying, “Carol hasn’t been able to get ahold of her folks and she insisted on coming back to look so…”

Steve feels a fantom stab in his abdomen.

“East street…” he hears himself say as he pictures it in his mind.

“Yeah,” Tommy swallows thickly, “The house, it’s - gone. Completely wrecked.” 

Steve feels himself sink to sit on whatever is to his right. He feels empty, in a way that’s so different from the numbness it almost makes him feel human. Wants to rejoice for just a second before he remembers that the house he spent the majority of his pre-teen years in has been swallowed into a hellscape. The woman who taught him how to make lasagna because her daughter refused to learn the family recipe vanished into thin air - probably burnt to a crisp. Steve sees his childhood, those miserably boring years from before his world was turned upside-down catch alight, melting away into a nightmarish red crack in the ground. He watches as the Upside Down soils every inch of his life. 

“Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ.” Like he hasn’t known for weeks that all of East Street was destroyed, known for years that the Perkins lived at number seventeen. 

Tommy stifles a sob, fresh tears catching in the light spilling from the wired window above the door. 

“What about your parents? Tony? Troy?” 

Steve used to lie in bed and pray that when he opened his eyes in the morning he would be the fourth Hagan brother, called Toby or Tucker because Clive and Annette had a thing about T names. Used to dream about how they would wrestle each other down the stairs and kick shins under the dining table and turn the hose on each other and never have a moment of silence between them. 

“They all got out. They’re staying with my uncle out in Hammond. Carol and I are gonna head up there. Soon.”

“Good.” There’s an itching pressure behind his eyes that tells him he too is crying. “Jesus.”

“What are you still doing here? I would’ve thought the parents woulda sent in the helicopter to fly you out by now.”

Steve blinks. He stopped expecting them to show up years ago, and part of him is startled that Tommy would expect differently. They haven’t been home since Barb’s disappeared, and they hadn’t even spent the night. He can’t remember if they’ve even called to see if he’s alive, to find out if their house or any of their wealth of belongings were destroyed in the ‘earthquake’. 

“I think they forgot about me.” He says with a stunned chuckle. 

“Oh,” Tommy says a little choked up like he is remembering that they spent twelve of their nineteen years attached at the hip. “Well, you should get out man. Go to your lake house or whatever.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He replies dully and Tommy gives him this, this almost hurt look because after all this time he knows Steve and he knows that tone means no. Means he’s shutting that conversation down. Like so many others over the years. 

“Okay, man. Look, I’m gonna go find Carol.” He stands in the tight space and reaches for the door. 

For a moment they’re freshmen smoking their second ever spliff after swim practice in this very same building and Steve feels unnaturally full of emotion. “Tommy-“ He calls after him. The door stops ajar - not yet open to the abysmal real world. This weird little in-between not yet broken, an echo of a voice complaining about smoking being bad for swimmers bounces in the space between them.

“Yeah, Harrington?”

“I’m sorry for…” he trails off, not quite sure what he’s actually trying to apologize for but he is sorry. Deeply sorry. “Just, I dunno, that it didn’t work out, I guess.”

Tommy turns back to the door, “Yeah, me too. I guess.”

“Tell Carol? That I’m sorry.”

“Sure,” He says without looking back then the door is swinging closed behind him and Steve almost misses his quiet, “Try not to die, Harrington.” 

Steve thinks it might be too late for that. He sits in the dark and he doesn’t pretend to breathe just thinks about how Tommy’s voice sounds so different now, so adult. Thinks about how Tommy is an adult in a way Steve isn’t; he got out like he always wanted to do. They always wanted to do. Steve thinks of climbing onto Tony’s top bunk, how they’d traced the lines of where his posters had lived before he took them with him to college. How they’d imagined what their rooms would look like when they finally managed to grow up and skip this shitty town. Except Steve never did. Still has his stupid tenth-grade posters and certificates up on his bedroom walls. Still lives in the same house, in the same town, in this weird limbo between adult and teenager but without any of the freedom, the fun of college. Thinks about how Carol has had those years ripped from under her, her life in tatters, and it’s because of Steve. Steve and the party and their stupid fucking plan. Knows exactly what it is he was trying to apologize for. He lets his head thump back against a stack of hardened gym mats. Lets himself cry for Jane and David Perkins. Lets himself cry for Carol. Like he has any right. Maybe even a bit for himself. Too tired to do much more than let the tears stream down his face. 

The door is yanked open. A pale-faced Robin ducks her head in for barely a second before retreating. Then before Steve has a chance to wipe his tears away she’s back, hands on his shoulders.

“Dickhead! You scared the shit out of us!”

“Sorry, I just needed a minute.”

“A minute? Steve, you’ve been gone nearly an hour.” She says and her voice is screeching all over the place. He wants to lay his hands on her shoulders, hug her, and tuck their faces into each other’s necks. But he’s too cold to move. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you, I just- I bumped into Tommy, and Carol's parents are dead.”

“Oh.” 

“I’ve known them since I was like nine.” It comes out sounding a bit like a question. Like he’s seeking permission.

“Oh, Steve.” She brings her hands up to wipe his tears away, but he shifts his head away. She steps away from him, arms crossing, suddenly self-conscious. 

He wipes them on the sleeve of his jacket and stands for the door. Robin snakes a hand around his side and slams it closed in his face. 

“Tell me what’s going on with you. Right now.”

“Nothing is going on with me.”

“Bullshit, Steve!” She’s got watery eyes looking up at him and it’s a little too familiar. He flinches. 

“Sorry, bad choice of words. But. But there’s clearly something wrong and I don’t understand why you won’t just let me in! Do you not trust me? Are you trying to protect me?”

“No.”

“Then what? Do you want to self-implode? Is that what this is?”

“There’s nothing wrong, Robin.” He says quietly, tucking his hands under his armpits, hunching away from the stabbing, squirming in his stomach. Counts his breaths.

“No, Steve. You’re obviously sick. So what, are your wounds infected? Are you starving yourself? Tell me!” 

“Robin, there is nothing wrong with me!” He’s raising his voice too now. Thinks about his parents. His father pacing the length of the kitchen, while his mother swirls her glass of wine pretending for all the world that she has no idea what she’s done. Hates himself for repeating history.

“You’re good at faking it, dingus, but not that good. What happened to us? Why have you shut me out? I thought we had an agreement. Fall apart together, remember?” 

“I’m not shutting you out, Rob. I’m just, I’m adjusting.”

“No, you’re not. That’s the exact opposite of what you’re doing. You won’t let me stay over anymore. You barely let anyone touch you and you never touch anyone. Half the time you’ve got this look on your face, like, your eyes go all glassy and you look— it’s terrifying. And I am terrified. Every morning I’m terrified that you’re not gonna show up. That today will be the day that you don’t show and I have to walk to your house and I’ll find you dying from a fever or, or… That’s where we’re at. Do you get that? Do you understand how worried we all are?”

“You don’t need to be worried.”

“Well clearly, you’re not.” 

“No, because there’s nothing to-”

“Do not finish that sentence, Harrington. I mean it. We care about you, even if you don’t, so get your head out of your ass and talk to somebody. It doesn’t have to be me, but I’d really like it if it was.” 

“I’m sorry, Rob.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just get help.”  

She steps forward tentatively, they could both pretend she’s going for the door. She’s letting him choose. He drops his hands to the side and she throws her arms around his chest. He tucks himself around her shoulders, careful not to touch her with his hands, his neck, his skin. Commits the smell of her cheap 2-in-1 strawberry shampoo to memory. Slaps a hand over Dustin’s hat when they dump into him searching the hallways. Spends the rest of the day sandwiched between them, twiddling his thumbs and letting Robin’s words marinate in his brain. Looks at Max in her hospital bed in the early evening darkness and thinks about surviving being enough. About how he’s a fucking hypocrite. About whether or not he wants to survive this too. About what he’s going to put his friends through whatever he chooses. About what he’s already putting them through. He lies on his mother’s sofa which was only ever meant for guests and thinks about how he only has wrong options. How ultimately, he will always choose to minimize damage to just himself if he can. Thinks about sleep. Decides that last night was a chemical-induced hallucination. Weighs the options: a) he gets some rest, maybe even feels a bit better, or b) he doesn’t wake up at all. Thinks about Robin waiting at her kitchen window for him to pull up tomorrow morning. Lets his eyes drift closed. 

His Adidas are soaked through, the suede is never going to look good again. He’ll have to throw them away he supposes. His socks too. Bright lights blur as he moves his vision downward. Finds himself standing in the fountain, still spitting a stream of water despite the destruction around it. He can hear a clamor of voices, shouting, planning, fighting but there’s no one else around him. Just smashed storefronts and flickering neon lights. Hears the wet, slurping thumps of the mound of flesh that they fought against that night, whips around to face it. His sneakers slide against the basin and he goes down in a splashing crash. He thrashes, surprised to be fully submerged when the fountain only has about a foot of water. Quite suddenly can no longer feel the cold of the stone basin against his back, under his arms. Finds nothing but water to push against. Instinct kicks in and he wades his way upwards towards the swimming bright lights. Breaks the surface unexpectedly soon, hot sunshine boring into his eyes. Reaches blindly for something solid. Hauls himself over a concrete rim, bracing to tumble down onto the floor, except he rolls straight onto flat land. He shakes the water from his hair and eyes. Squints at his surrounding, the shape of the sun still stenciled against his retinas. Feels no need to gasp for air. Finds himself staring up at the bottom of a lifeguard’s chair. Despite the sun, the concrete beneath him is cold, too cold to touch his bare legs and arms against. He scrambles to stand. Eyes casting around him, he’s never been to the pool, never had any reason to with one in his backyard, and unlimited access to the school pool. There’s a hum in the air, something calling to him, back to the water. He sees the eyes first, the same bright, fake blue as the water. Mouth slightly open as the water pulls the tracks of black blood away. Mixing with the rest of the blood flowing out from where he lies, arms out like the crucifix his mother keeps hidden next to her rosaries, in the middle of the pool floor. The gaping hole in his chest lines up almost perfectly with the circle of the plastic filter he’s lying over. 

“What’re you gawkin’ at, pretty boy?” The voice comes from all around him. Breathy the way Billy’s taunts were when he was pressed flush against Steve’s back in basketball practice, whispering menacingly in his ear. 

Steve feels his body thrumming with adrenaline. Feels a trickle of blood and a faint throbbing sensation from his temple. Hears the tinkle of broken china hitting the ground around him. Watches as Billy’s hand seems to twist into a fist at the same time he feels the collar of his stupid sailor shirt scrunch around his neck. Watches as the body drags its arm deeper into the water, and then he’s being pulled, headfirst into the water beneath him. 

He lands on his wrist, head bouncing off the wooden floorboards. Feet still tangled in his comforter on the couch above him. Heartbeat suddenly in existence and thrumming against his chest. He rolls onto his back dragging his legs down to the ground to meet the rest of him. He’s damp, shirt and flannel pants sticking incessantly to him, covered in what should be a cold sweat but has a distinct chlorine smell. He lays there and imagines for a second that he will turn the TV on, drink some milk from the carton and ignore the faces of missing children as if this isn’t how all of this started, just like he has after every other nightmare since he encountered the supernatural in the Byers’ living room. But just as soon as he’s untangled his feet he’s padding towards the front door instead of the kitchen. Car keys clenched in his hands so hard they’re probably drawing blood. He scales the chainlink fence to the pool, it would have been easier if he’d stopped to put shoes on, instead, he makes halting - sliding process in his extra-thick ski socks. The pool hasn’t been maintained at all, which makes sense. There’s a layer of dusty ash skimming the top of the pool, like unmixed cement. He can feel Billy’s intense gaze through the gray of the water. Can see his spread arms and bloody torso long before the water ripples the surface clear. Can feel that warmth in his chest again, the stilling of his churning bites. Can hear himself being summoned, softer than he ever heard Billy say anything before, gaze still as electric as ever though. Cmon, King Steve, bet you won’t join me. Sits himself in the gentle familiarity of the interaction. In the peaceful silence that washes over the world around him. The muted lightning in the sky. He sits, lets his legs uncross, and dangle into the water. The shallow end hugging his ankles. His shins. And Billy Hargrove keeps staring at him with his cool, dead eyes and Steve stares back. Feels more real than he has for weeks. Maybe years. Doesn’t notice the sorry excuse for sunrise happening behind him. Lowers himself into the water that laps tarry ash onto the flannel of his pants just above his knees. Feels the purr of delight from the body below, the sunny heat of water in the summertime. There’s a sound in the back of his brain. Ignore it, it’s not important. Except fear lurches into his chest when police sirens sing out behind him so loudly he feels like he’s touched a live wire. He crouches down suddenly remembering he’s trespassing. Head ducking back towards the water and the body is gone. 

He is squatting in a closed pool at like five in the morning, in his pajamas, like a fucking lunatic. He hauls ass out of the pool. Drenched from head to toe and feeling colder than he’s ever felt. He can’t even hear the rumble of his engine over the chattering of his teeth. The fancy shower in his parent’s en suite only makes him feel worse even though it’s as hot as it can go. He throws his sodden pajamas in the trash. Nostrils still blistered by the smell of chlorine. He sits on the front step smoking a cigarette and thinks of Robin’s words from yesterday. Thinks of the quiet comfort of Hawkins pool. Of Hargrove's black coated teeth winking at him through the water. Thinks of trying to put any of it into words. Tries to think how she’s worried out of her mind but telling her could only ever make things worse. An unsolvable problem is worse than an unknown problem, right? He thinks of his dad’s words after graduation: C learly, I’ve coddled you, Steven. Time to learn how to clean up your own messes. You have until Tuesday to find a job, anything, I don’t care if it’s sweeping the streets, whoever will take a college reject. Or you’re out. Do I make myself clear? It’s a hell of a mess, but it’s his to clean up. He goes to Robin’s early, just to prove a point. To cut down her worrying time. She sits in his front seat with a scowl that’s a little teary to be effective. 

“Your hands are blue, Steve.” She says quietly. Angrily. Sadly. But worst of all, tiredly. Then she turns away from him, kicks her foot up onto the seat because she knows he hates that and stares out the window even after they pick up Dustin. 

It’s not until they’re sitting at Max’s hospital bed and he’s disgustingly glad that her eyes are closed because they’re too similar to Billy’s; even though they’re not related, too blue, too sharp, too jaded; that it occurs to him that maybe he’s being targeted by Vecna. You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington. Feels a wisp of relief at the idea for a second. Then Dustin carefully shoos a fly away from Max’s face and his stomach dips. No headaches, no nose bleeds, no clocks, and he’s way past the time frame. He’s not sure what good he’d be to Vecna or One or whatever the motherfucker is going by these days. What driving Steve off the deep end is going to achieve. He doesn’t write it off completely but it’s not a strong enough theory to take to anyone. Robin has scratched an itch, poked a bear, he knows he should tell someone. Knows that they’d probably even believe him, they’ve dealt with weirder shit than the living dead. Probably. He’s not actually sure where that one lands on the scoreboard. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with him a spell in Pennhurst wouldn’t fix, but the idea still sickens him. 

He turns every light in the house on. Turns the TV right up and plays tape after tape as loud as the boombox will go. Paces. Runs laps of the house. Laps of the block. Drives from house to house. Only sits down on the most uncomfortable carved wooden chair in the house. Manages to stay awake for two nights in a row. On the third night though, he finds himself unable to bring his arm away from the steering wheel to shut his engine off. The image of his driveway lit by his headlights blinks in and out of reality as his eyes shutter closed. He lists sideways right out of consciousness, car still shuddering underneath him. 

He blinks against the cold breeze blowing in his face. His heart his rocking side to side in tandem with the boat beneath him. Nancy and Robin’s torches light up the water around him from where they’ve been abandoned on the slats of the boat. Steve pinches himself. Can’t do this again. Can’t see another one. Can’t bear the icy feeling in his veins. The acrid smell of blood already mixing with the moist air. He gets it, he’s dead, he gets it. Now, wake up. Wake up, before he sees what he can already feel is down there. Please. He gags. Instinctively aims for the water, but finds himself in perfect diving form, shirtless and shoeless, and heading straight for the murky depths of Lovers Lake. Eddie’s body is waiting for him just like the others, backlit by the red glow of Watergate, like some hellish halo. Steve mouths ‘Hail Mary,’ like his mother taught him, mouth filling with tangy water. His hair flows around his head as he glides slowly towards Steve. Chunks of bloody muscle float away from where his legs have been bitten down to the bone, catching in the streams of torch light from above. Like some sick Sea-Monkey rip-off. His guts are spilling out of his torn-up stomach, bobbing in time with his strands of hair. 

“I didn’t run away this time, right?” The words twist his stiff, blood-stained lips. Cause a few mocking air bubbles to rise towards Steve. 

He’s still in diving position, arms pointed above his head, still descending painfully slowly towards Eddie. Eddie, who is still floating steadily upwards, trail of blood and bits swimming behind him. Steve tries kicking his legs, spreading his arms, twisting desperately to no avail. His body is frozen in a perfect arc, heading straight for Eddie’s body. It seems to take an eternity, he wonders if they’ll ever even touch or if he’ll just be stuck in this endless dive, getting always closer, but never touching. Can feel the slick of Eddie’s endless blood over his hands, his shoulders, his torso, just like that night. The way it had dripped off him there was so much. Can feel the weight of his lifeless body that was too heavy for Steve to get through the gate pressing on him, pushing him down faster. Desperately wants to hear the splash of Nancy or Robin jumping in after him. Even the feel of a vine tugging his ankle towards the gate would be welcome. Steve’s outstretched hands pass between Eddie’s shoulder and head, tangling in his hair like it’s seaweed. He tries to close his eyes but they don’t respond. Eddie’s shoulder thumps into his chest, knocking their courses together. He feels their bodies jolt against each other like boats in a harbour. Feels the way the water and blood vacuum their naked torsos together. The flick of Eddie’s intestines against his back as they sink together towards the open gate. The press of Eddie’s teeth against the side of his head as he mumbles, “I think it’s finally my year.” They hit the lip of the gate, tumbling as one through that gravity-less flip, his body finally allowing him to close his eyes before they hit the slick rocks.

He opens his eyes with a jolt, springing against his locked seatbelt. A shout crackling out between his lips. He squirms, fighting his way out of the car, trying to shed the sensation of blood and skin from off of him. Face slick with sweat and fingers shaking so hard they’re starting to blur. Slides to the ground against his car and pukes up bile that’s not quite the right color. He pulls himself up on the door handle. Slams the door shut and leaves the car running. Makes it all of two steps towards his front door before he’s feeling the pull. More instant than before. Turns himself around and gets back in the car. Drives in autopilot out to the remnants of the lake. Stomps through the underbrush without much thought about direction and comes to a muddy bank, the water lapping up his shoes. He could feel him long before he even broke through the tree line, but it still takes a second for the water to clear. For the eyes to lock onto his. There he is, in the middle of the lake, right above the crater splitting it from end to end, above the gate that must still be down there. Body buoyed up by the rippling of the water below. His hair flows around him, just the same, face bloody and leaking insides hidden by the red glow of the water. His eyes are blank, but Steve sees the spark behind them. It’s less wrong this time. Less unnatural. The comfort of seeing him. The lull of his voice in Steve’s head. The warmth spreads further than his chest. Out into his arms and his stomach and his legs, releasing his joints from their cold stiffness. He steps towards him, into the water, walks until he’s chest deep. The water spitting up to his neck, spreading the warmth. The longer he looks the less dead Eddie looks. His bones are still showing and his face is still slack and his insides are still floating away from him in the water but it looks less wrong somehow. Conflating itself with the image of Eddie alive, until they are one and the same. Until it is just Eddie he is looking at. Eddie reassuring him that he didn’t fail. That it can still be alright. He lets his head dip underwater. Isn’t bothered by the water against his eyeballs, isn’t sure he even feels it. Is about to push off, to swim out. He’s a good swimmer, a fast swimmer, it wouldn’t take long to get to the middle of the lake. Eddie agrees. Steve’s foot slips as he rocks onto the ball of his feet, the surface below him slimy. He doesn’t mean to look, knows it’ll just be an seaweed-covered stone. But he does. Flicks his eyes downward for half a second. His Nikes are pressed into a dead fish. Scales a little charred and fins blackened, bones visible through the skin. He looks back, seeking Eddie again, that warmth and reassurance, but he’s gone. Eddie’s gone and the bottom of the lake is covered in fish carcasses, glowing red from the crack in the ground. He kicks upward. Head breaking against the calm surface, spewing out rancid water from his nose and mouth. 

Chapter Text

He’s shaking so hard he can barely see the road ahead of him, headlights seemingly unable to distinguish road from verge. The image of Munson’s bloody body floating towards him is seared behind his eyes like sun spots. Feels fish guts underfoot when he pushes down instead of the gas pedal. He almost forgets all about the damn trip wire, occupied with trying not to tear at his wounds in case his hands come away covered in larvae and rotting skin, or worse, thick with blood that doesn’t really seem to wash away. He stands outside of the cabin and doesn’t know what to do. This whole seeking help from adults is new to him. Help is for the mentally deficient, Steven. The door creaks open and a silent shadow is slipping out and Steve plants his feet in case this is a foe. It’s Jonathan, he can make out the shaggy mop of hair and tired face in the bleak light, the sky a little clearer this far out of town. He descends the steps and tucks his hands into his pockets as if he expects Steve to speak. Which, yeah, makes sense because he’s just turned up at his house at fucking witching hour.  

“Steve?” Jonathan says quietly, just above a whisper, and it sort of registers that everyone is most likely asleep and there’s probably nothing they can do for him anyway. 

“Uh, sorry. How did you know… I mean, shouldn’t you be asleep?” He wonders if this is part of it too. Thinks perhaps he’s still laying on his mother’s sofa, eyes turned milky white and slowly rising towards the ceiling. 

“I’m on the couch. Saw your headlights. Are you okay, man?”

His teeth feel like they’re shaking out of his gums, his gums off of his jaw. Every so often he feels the itching of fly legs against his skin, the buzzing coming from somewhere deeper inside him now, he thinks of the fact that he is rotting, thinks he’s starting to smell it. 

“Yeah, I - no.”

“Come inside, I’ll get m—“

The light on the porch sputters on, startling them both. Steve nearly cries. Nearly closes his eyes and weeps and begs for a mother that isn’t going to come. Instead, he watches as Hopper lowers his shotgun, clicks the safety back on, and takes a breath. 

“What’re you doing here, Harrington?” Hopper asks at the same time Jonathan says,

“Why are you wet?” 

Steve flounders for a second. Can’t even think of why he came here, let alone what he should say. Registers that he’s void of shaky breath or an erratic heartbeat to match the swollen pressure of adrenaline in his chest. Thinks of Robin waiting at the kitchen window. Of Munson. Of Hargrove. Barb. 

“I think I’m dead.” 

Hopper paws at his beard, “What?”

Jonathan reaches out a hand to steady Steve’s quaking form. 

“Hop, he’s freezing.” 

“Get inside, both of you.”

Steve doesn’t even bother freeing himself from Jonathan’s grasp, just lets himself be pushed up the stairs. Lets Jonathan catch the towel that Hopper throws for him. Lets them both stare at him until it becomes obvious he’s not planning on moving. Hopper takes the towel back from Jonathan. 

“Go wake your mom. Grab some clothes while you’re in there.” He instructs quietly. 

Hopper drapes the towel over the back of a chair and peels Steve’s jacket from his shoulders, throws it towards the kitchenette. Instructs Steve to lift his arms and does it for him when there’s no response. Wrestles off two sweatshirts before he mutters, “Jeez, Harrington, what are you wearing?” 

Steve wants to say something, say he’s cold, but his brain is a bit busy wishing they were Munson’s hands. That he’d carried on swimming. That he was warm again. Peaceful. He’s so tired of being scared. Of being crazy. Joyce comes out and helps with the rest of his shirts. They struggle with the thermal he’s wearing, glued to his skin by lake water. 

“Come on, kid. Don’t make me take off your pants for you,” Hopper slaps the side of his face a little and Steve catches two sets of eyes poking around a door. Lets his fingers drift to his jeans button, ends up needing help from Joyce anyway when his hands are trembling too much to latch on. She wraps the towel around him and guides him to the bathroom. Looks at the stack of clothes Jonathan’s found and asks if he needs help. He shakes his head and the door shuts behind him. He half-heartedly dries himself off, kicks his boxers and socks to the corner, rips the peeling tape of his soaked bandages away. Tugs on the clothes, that are slightly too big, with uncooperative hands. Can’t manage the buttons on the flannel shirt so leaves it open. The bugs in one of the bites seem to have collected some lake sludge in-between them. Rolling in it. They hurt more than ever. More than when the fangs sunk into him, more than when Nancy tried to stem the bleeding, more than when he sprayed them. There’s a light knock on the door.

“Steve?” He hears Mrs. Byers through the door. Casts his eyes away from the mirror to open it for her, “Honey are you— oh. Oh my God.”

“What? Joyce, what is it?” Hopper says coming to stand in the doorway too. They’ve turned on some lamps, glowing over their shoulders just like the bathroom light is glowing over Steve’s. 

Hopper presses into the bathroom, puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders, eyes never leaving his exposed abdomen. “Sit, Kid.” He guides Steve to the closed toilet seat, pushes him down. Crouches on cracking knees. His hands leave his shoulders, moving to shift the shirt out of his way. A shiver runs the whole length of his body when he presses his fingers near one of the bites. Joyce has pulled the door closed behind them and there’s hardly enough space for the three of them in the tiny room. 

“You see them too?” Mrs. Byers looks like she’s trying not to ralph. “Oh. I guess they’re real. I thought after Billy that maybe I was Vecna’d. But I guess, I guess they’re real. Unless this is part of it too. I’m dead either way though, right?” He lets out a mad laugh.

“Slow down! Billy? Billy Hargrove?” Steve nods. “Start at the beginning, what are these?”

“From the bats.” 

“In the Upside Down?” Steve nods again, “Have they been like this the whole time?”

“Only a couple of weeks. Right after those started following me around.” He points at the fly on the tap rubbing its legs together.

“Holy shit. Joyce, there’s a first aid kit in that cabinet, we should disinfect these.” 

Steve chuckles, the sound is reverberated by his shivering before it bounces off the wooden walls, “Bit late for that.”

“Shut up, kid.”

“How old is this thing, Hop?” Mrs. Byers asks handing him a bottle of iodine.

He shrugs, pours some out onto a ball of cotton wool, “This might hurt.”

“Probably,” he mumbles. It does. Makes them angry, makes them dig deeper. Consuming him tiny chunks at a time. Hopper hesitates before deciding to tape gauze over each of them. Does the shirt buttons for him. Mrs. Byers disappears and comes back with a blanket that gets wrapped around his shoulders. 

“What else? What about Hargrove?”

“I keep seeing bodies. It’s, it’s like a dream and then I wake up and they’re there. I thought it was, like a hallucination from the bug spray the first time. With Barb.”

Hears Joyce whisper, “Bug spray?” Into the Chief’s ear but now he’s started talking it feels like he can’t stop.

“And then it was Billy in the pool and it was like he was telling me to get in but then the police came and then it was Eddie in the lake and it was so warm, Hop, and I’ve been so cold but then all the fish were dead and he was gone and I came here. And now I think I’m really dead, man. Like, this doesn’t feel like Vecna, because like, surely it would stop for a bit? Like I’d come back to reality but I’ve been cold for weeks and there are no clock chimes or nosebleeds, but I keep forgetting to breathe and I don’t think I even have a heartbeat half the time. And I can’t even feel anything, like, at all. Like I can just do anything and nothing but the stupid fucking bites hurt. You could punch me in the face and I wouldn’t even feel it. Go on punch me!”

“I’m not gonna punch you, Steve. Calm down.”

But he can’t calm down because now he’s said it all he can’t take any of it back and it’s all real and solid now. There’s no going back, no pretending he’s fine, so he’ll have to prove he’s not. He squirms past the adults and out of the bathroom, finds Jonathan pacing just outside the bathroom door.

“Punch me in the face, man!” 

Jonathan blanches and looks between his mom and Steve, eyes wide and confused, “Why?”

“Just do it. Deck me! Cmon, it’s not like I don’t deserve a hit or two.”

The front door clatters and Hopper reaches for his shotgun resting against the wall again. 

“My dudes!” Argyle whistles at the sight of the barrel he’s facing down, “Having a midnight party without me? That’s harsh.”

“Hit me, dude!” Steve gestures to his face. 

Argyle looks between the pale faces of his friends, the gun, and the madman for a minute, “Nahh, man. I’m good.”

“Fine!” Steve lunges for a mug on the coffee table. Manages to smash it against his head before Jonathan or Hopper can stop him, “See, don’t feel a thing.” He pushes two fingers into where he’s broken the skin of his forehead. 

“Okay, Harrington, we believe you!” Hopper approaches, pulls Steve’s hands away from his head, trapping them at the side of his body. “We believe you, take a breath.”

Steve feels tears prick at his eyes, embarrassment curls his spine as he looks at the shocked faces around him. 

“Gnarly,” Argyle whispers into the silence of the house. Hopper shoots him a glare. 

“Boys go out to the van. Take the kids with you and don’t smoke anything. Understood?”

Jonathan and Argyle nod in tandem, Hop calls for Will and El to stop eavesdropping and leave. He sets Steve on the couch and wraps the blanket from earlier back around his shoulders. Joyce presses a cup of something steaming into his hands, and Steve wants to laugh because were they not listening to him? 

“Sorry about your mug.” 

“It’s just a mug, don’t sweat it. Let's worry about you. What happened tonight?”

“Eddie was in Lover’s Lake and I tried to get to him but…”

“Okay, kid. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna get some sleep and in the morning we’ll go out there have a look and figure this all out.”

“No!” Steve latches onto Hopper’s wrist. Barely registers the man flinch at the temperature difference, “No, I can’t sleep. I can’t do that again. Please.” 

“Okay,” He shares a look with Joyce over Steve’s head, “Okay. No sleep.”

Hopper brews a pot of coffee, Joyce rearranges the bedrooms, Will and Jonathan in El’s room, El and her in Hopper’s. Hopper sets two cups of coffee down on the table in front of Steve.

“How tired are you feeling?”

“Exhausted,” Steve replies, but he thinks he’s too wired to sleep. Knows better than to trust that feeling. 

“Five minutes it is,” Hopper says putting a white plastic kitchen timer down between them. He flicks the TV on, “Rest kid, I won’t let you fall asleep.”  

He doesn’t. Re-sets the timer every five minutes, makes Steve drink most of the pot of coffee. Makes commentary on the old black and white movie playing. It’s, it’s not quite comforting, but something close. He lets himself think of all the sleepless nights he longed for someone to sit with him. Of being twelve and spending the night on the loveseat in his parent’s bedroom because he missed them but was too scared of wrinkling the sheets to sleep in the bed. Wonders if either of his parents would ever have done this for him. Knows they wouldn’t. Thinks about being fifteen and Hopper catching him at a house party, tipsy if not flat-out drunk, sitting in the back of the cruiser and worrying himself sick because there wasn’t going to be anyone to answer the door when they got home, couldn’t ask to be dropped off at Tommy’s without getting the other boy in a whole pile of shit. Remembers stumbling over some half-baked story about them visiting his grandmother as he retrieved the spare key from the pool filter. Wonders if Hopper believed him. Thinks about the screaming match he had with his father at eleven over moving to New York, imagines what his life would be like if he’d never said anything at all. No monsters. No dead-end jobs. No small town blues or ghosts of teenagers past. Or paralyzed freshmen. Probably no parents. No Robin. No Dustin. No party. Maybe just nothing. And when the sun rises Hopper throws him a coat, pulls the newspaper out of his shoes left next to a radiator, and tells him to get up. 

“We’re gonna check the lake like I said.” 

“I’m supposed to pick Robin up at eight-thirty.” 

“Jonathan will take care of it don’t worry.”

So he doesn’t. He puts on the coat and the shoes even though they’re still a little damp. Runs a hand through his crusty, dirt-filled hair. They take Steve’s car but Hopper takes one look at Steve’s shaking fingers and plucks the keys out of his hand. The lake is empty, there is no floating body but Steve can still pinpoint exactly where he was, can still feel the pull of the spot. The idea of warmth. Hopper clamps a firm hand on Steve’s shoulder when he steps too close to the bank. 

“Well, you were right about the dead fish.” Steve follows his gaze to the shallows around them, fish bodies stacking up with the waves. It reminds Steve of the Coin-Pusher in the arcade. 

“How does this help us figure this out?”

“Don’t know, Harrington. Figured it was as good a shot as any.” The Chief huffs and turns back towards the woods and the car, “You coming?”

The Wheeler’s station wagon is parked behind the Pizza van when they pull up. Steve shoots Hopper a tired glare. Tugs on his arm when halfway to the porch he can hear the kids arguing inside. 

“Chief, you shouldn’t have involved the kids.”

“Trust me, I wish I didn’t have to. But the sad fact is they’re the experts here, Harrington,” He says sounding just as displeased as Steve is. He looks towards the cabin, runs his hand over his shaved head, “And they’re your friends too, aren’t they?”

“That’s not fair.” 

“Yeah, well, life ain’t fair.” He replies continuing back to the house. Steve scoffs, like he hasn't figured that out by now, but follows anyway. What choice has he got?

There’s a tense silence when they enter. Then, Dustin and Lucas are rushing to him, clamoring, asking what’s wrong, why is it a code red? Nancy turns from where she’s talking to Jonathan and Robin in the corner. Robin, Robin gives him this lopsided smile from across the room, because she’s proud but she’s still upset. More upset than before maybe. El pats the sofa next to her and Steve fights his way through little bodies to sit there. Mike leans around her to scowl at him and Joyce puts a plate of food in his lap and he feels himself just kind of check out. 

“Well tell us, what’s the big emergency?” Erica demands from in front of the TV.

So, Steve does, more calmly, more clinically than he had the night before. With a timeline and a few missing details that he thinks it might be upsetting for the kids - leaves out the maggots, the horror of the bodies, the strange comfort they brought him. 

“Will, can you feel the mind flayer in him? Or One?” Mike asks.

Will’s eyes have been boring into the side of Steve’s head from between Argyle and Lucas the whole time. Unnerving, but Steve would never tell the twerp that. 

“Not exactly. It’s, there’s, I feel something weird, but it’s not like he’s got you. I dunno.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.” He snipes. El swats his arm, “Sorry Byers,” he ducks his head at Will.

So, Steve sits on the musty couch in Hopper’s very overfilled cabin, knees higher than his waist because this thing must be eons old and the springs have lost any will to live, and listens to Mike Wheeler monologue about vampires and bats and other Monsters and Myths (or whatever it’s called) bullshit; wishes he had just died like a normal guy. 

“Don’t you dipshits ever think about effect and cause?”

“Cause and effect,” Dustin immediately corrects him, “Why?” 

Steve shifts a little so the couch doesn’t swallow him completely, “Well, don’t you ever think it’s weird that the big bad of the month always matches your little game exactly? It’s not like One or Henry or whatever the douche is called played this thing or… I dunno, I just - it’s a little convenient right? So can you not like, talk me being a vampire into existence.” Dustin looks like he’s short-circuiting and Steve doesn’t think he’s ever seen Wheeler’s eyebrows furrow so aggressively before. 

“Cause and effect?” El asks in that slightly stilted way and Steve can’t remember what grade they learned that in but he finds himself hoping that El doesn’t feel as out of her depth in school as Steve had. As if that’s the most pressing issue right now. 

“Cause is like the reason something happens and effect is how it happens,” Lucas explains from his position next to Will. Will who has gone white as a sheet. 

“We haven’t played D and D in weeks, we’re not willing anything into existence.” Dustin decides firmly.

“Eddie already wrote Kas into the campaign though,” Erica points out. 

“But why would Steve of all people be Kas?” Mike and Dustin have started pacing in opposite directions around the coffee table, it’s making Steve dizzy. 

They spend the whole day talking in circles and get nowhere. The best explanation they can muster is Robin’s bat-rabies theory, which isn’t actually that encouraging because he’s pretty sure rabies shots don’t cover inter-dimensional variants. She does at least forgive him a little, but he was right, she’s more scared than she was before. They all are. The brief respite they’ve all allowed themselves has been shattered. By him. He can’t help but wish he’d crawled into the lake with Eddie after all. Certainly would have beat the way Will keeps staring at him. Steve escapes onto the porch once the others have left, pretends he can enjoy the fresh air.

“Steve?” He startles at the voice behind him. 

“Yeah, little Byers?” He rests his head in his arms against the railing, heavy with tiredness again. 

“Do you really think… think that we caused all this? The Upside Down?”

Steve looks up, the kid is almost as tall as Steve now but his eyes are still impossibly large and filled with guilt. Look a little too like Steve’s do when he looks in the mirror, and he knows that Will Byers blames himself for all of it.

“No. I don’t think a bunch of twelve-year-olds created the Upside Down, Will.” Although the thought had crossed his mind a couple of times over the years, “I just didn’t want to listen to Mike telling me I was some monster-eating vampire.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man, you’d have to be mad to think you kids were anything other than the victims here. Especially you. It’s not your fault. Or El’s or whatever bullshit you’ve got brewing in that big brain of yours.”

Will looks a little teary-eyed. “Thanks, Steve.”

“No problem, kid.” He mutters to the tress after Will’s gone back inside. Steve retrieves the spare pack of cigarettes he’s kept in his trunk since the first time he quit. Sits on his taillights and lights one.

“Hey, we were just looking for you,” Jonathan calls, emerging through the trees. 

He holds out the pack, in offering or explanation he’s not sure. 

“Wanna upgrade, mi amigo?” Argyle produces two perfectly rolled spliffs from seemingly thin air. 

Steve thinks of the utility store, with his best friends and the weed Tony Hagan scored for them. Thinks of how much he preferred the world when it was a bit slower. Suddenly Jonathan’s passion for the stuff has vanished, he tries pushing Argyle’s hand away. Steve pushes past him, climbing into the pizza van, Argyle grinning behind him. No sooner than he’s collapsed down onto the pile of cushions and blankets masquerading as a bed he’s being handed a lit spliff. He breathes it right down into the bottom of his lungs. Holy shit, this is way better than the Indiana shit. 

“Steve?” Jonathan says uneasily.

“Cmon, Jon-boy, hang ten,” Argyle says brandishing the other joint in his direction.

“Yeah, Jon-boy, take a load off.” Steve goads inhaling once more. 

He can almost imagine the heat filling his lungs. He wonders if he’s actually feeling anything, capable of feeling high when he can’t feel anything else. Maybe it’s just, like, the placebo effect. They smoke in silence and Steve starts to forget, a little. The buzzing quiets to a dull fluttering and he can’t see any insects in the van, the pain from the bites becomes muddled, and the body-stopping fear of dead eyes surrounding him floats out of his reach. 

“Guess it’s been a year for befriending drug dealers, huh?” Steve says to Jonathan, head rolling back against the van’s interior. 

“What?” He says with a confused smile. 

“Munson.” Steve clarifies and he could kiss this weird pizza boy for making him able to say the name without unraveling completely. 

“You actually became friends with Eddie Munson?”

“Hmm,” Steve forces himself to exhale, “I guess, kinda. Dustin and the nerds though…”

“He didn’t ever deal to them, did he?”

“No, man. He just played that stupid Snakes and Ladders game with them. I like to think Dusty thinks I’m cool enough that he’d come to me if he wanted to try drugs.”

“Would you give him drugs?” Jonathan stares at him bug-eyed. 

Steve mulls it over, “I don’t know. Probably not. Would you give Will drugs?” 

Jonathan seems to think it over too, “No.”

“Those muchachos are plenty old enough, I started chewing the devil’s lettuce when I was like twelve,” Argyle tells the ceiling of the van. 

Steve catches Jonathan’s eye only to find the same expression of ‘that explains so much’ waiting for him. They burst into laughter, falling forward into each other’s shoulders in the small space. He remembers somewhere in the back of his mind that this is the first non-emergency conversation they’ve had since Christmas ’83, thinks this should feel weirder than it does. But, his body is too relieved to be feeling something vaguely positive that he can’t bring himself to allow the thought to bloom. Not quite the comfort of the water, but nice.

“Why are you sticking around for the end of the world, man? Don’t you have people waiting for you at home?” Steve asks after collapsing down to lie on the comforter spread over the floor. 

“Oh yeah, my mom thinks I’m on this sick road trip and my boss thinks I’ve got appendicitis.”

“But don’t you wanna go home?”

“Sure, I guess, but I don’t have enough gas money to get me back to Cali, so I’m sticking it out here. This is like, way more interesting than Lenora, dude.” 

Steve pats himself down clumsily until he finds where he put his wallet after retrieving it from his glove box. Fishes out a stack of cash and hands it across to the younger boy. 

“Woah! Holy smokes. This is a lot of bills.” He fans himself with them, “Thanks, my man.”

“Why are you carrying around so much cash? It’s the apocalypse.” Jonathan asks through what can only be described as giggles. 

Steve feels his chuckle reverberate through the floor of the van, shrugs, “For Rob. Think she’s leaving soon and they need it more than me.” 

They meander into silence.

“Hey, do you think that having so many near-death experiences before you’re twenty-one fucks you over?” Steve finds himself asking.

“Like developmentally? Absolutely.” Steve wonders about pointing out that he was being far more literal but decides to let it slide. Not to air the little theory about borrowed time he’s been working on. 

He lets himself rest after that, not quite sleep, thank God. But rest. Let his eyes reduce to slits, raking over the ceiling of the van. Thinks that if he’d known smoking pot would have solved his issues he could have saved himself a few gray hairs. Lets the idea that this is all in his head after all make roots again. He’s fine. Just crazy. All he has to do is smoke some pot and he’ll be just fine. No more dead man walking shit. Jonathan and Argyle’s quiet conversation floats around him. He doesn’t notice them nodding off against each other. Doesn’t notice the number of flies landing on the window above him. Just watches the shadows of evening make their way across the roof. Bliss. Maybe this is heaven. 

He thinks of stars. Pictures them clearly. Traces the constellations seared into his memory from spending too much time staring at the poster in the science room instead of listening to Mr. Hamberg’s droning voice. Picks out Big Bear because it’s his favorite, usually takes him a while to find because the thing looks nothing like a damn bear but there’s still something so comforting about it. Something soothing about the idea of people from the old days looking up at the sky and picturing a bear. He’s sure Nancy could word it better with some speech about the fickle nature of humans. But that might ruin the simplicity of it. Steve just likes the bear. The big bear made of stars that has watched over him since grade school science class when he started catching onto the fact that no one else was going to.  Steve looks up at it now, with the last of the winter winds glancing at his face. He’s more than glad it’s spring, always feels lonelier in the winter. In hibernation season where everyone burrows in with their families and Steve is left to hunker down alone. He lets his head rock back, an uncomfortable pull on his neck but it makes him feel somewhat more at one with the sky. Kicks his legs out over the ledge beneath him because it makes him feel a little bit more alive. Tomorrow when Tommy asks him what he did last night he will say he came out to the quarry and Carol will spend three periods trying to guess which girl he’s fucking this time. He won’t tell them he come out here alone. Won’t tell them that sometimes when he’s failed another English test or had a fight with his dad he’ll sit a little too close to the edge just because the idea of the Chief calling his dad when he gets found in the morning makes him feel better. Won’t tell them about how he doesn’t want to die, but he thinks it might be worth it if it means John Harrington hangs his head in town from the shame of his son offing himself. He looks down at the water, the bear blinks at him as he moves - telling him not to. But he does. The starlight makes the pale speck in the water stand out against the blue-black of the water at night. He knows before his eyes fix on it that it’s a body. Wonders if he’s dreaming. Curses himself for falling asleep. Wants to tear his eyes away because he doesn’t have it in him. Cannot look another dead person in the face. Curses the bear for not watching out for him. The body looks small. Remembers Nancy quietly explaining the decoy body in the front seat of his car on the way to the hospital. Thinks of Will Byers’ kind, guilt-sodden eyes. But it’s not Will looking upwards. The body’s not that small, the legs just haven’t bobbed to the surface like the rest of it. The legs and the height made it look small, like a child, but it’s not. He knows that yellow sweatshirt. And he knows the marks on the neck. The pale fleck on his cheek from learning to shave. Knows the brown eyes that are fixed on the bear in the sky. Watching over him. 

He feels frozen in place. The light in the front of the van is flickering and his legs are tangled with Jonathan’s and Argyle is snoring and Steve can still feel the last of the winter’s wind on his face and the cicadas singing from the grass beneath the pines. He’s not sure which world he’s even in. He climbs out of the van, the other boys shifting but not waking. His keys are in the cabin. With Hopper. Hopper who will stop him, who will sit with him all night to keep him from sleeping but it’s too late because he already has. Sets out on foot. Somehow knows which way through the woods to pick out. Knows that it’ll be faster than walking the roads. Doesn’t feel so rattled as he did the last few times. Maybe he’s getting used to this. Thinks that’s fucked. Thinks walking toward his own dead body should be the most horrifically terrifying thing he’s ever done. Face-eating monsters and Russian torture be damned. He doesn’t know how far he’s walked, what route he’s taken but he emerges from a line of trees onto a rocky ledge and he’s looking down at the quarry. There are no stars, no moon, no big bear, but the pale skin still stands out against the water. He’s standing on the opposite side from where he sat in the dream, the body further away. His face is turned towards him this time, gray hollows around his eyes and cheeks. Hair plastered to his forehead by the water. Dark patches on the yellow of his sweatshirt where he was bitten, not quite the shade of blood. His eyes are dead and glassy - droopy when they were once doe-like. He’s hit with the warmth. With comfort. A child returning home to freshly baked cookies and laughter from the kitchen. A magnet sticking itself to the refrigerator door. He peers over the overshoot, needing more of it. To be closer to it. To return to it. Feels the pebbles roll under his rubber sole. Then the rolling turns to crumbling. Sliding. Breaking.

Chapter Text

He lands hard. Side grating against cliff edge until his fall is abruptly ended. Loose gravel kicks up in a spray around him as he rolls to a stop. He clenches his eyes shut and tries to work out if he’s still falling. The tinkering of falling rocks continues around him but he is stationary. When he opens his eyes, he is staring up at the outskirts of storm clouds and raining rocks. He can see the dusty trail down to the ledge he’s landed on looming above him. He doesn’t look down. Doesn’t look for himself. Simply rolls onto his feet, ignores the angle of one of his ankles, can’t feel it anyway. There is no way up. There is only one way down. The sweet invitation of his own body now missing, just like the others. Steve wants to stamp his feet against the ledge like a toddler, to tear it from its support for stealing his opportunity. He tries to recollect a fraction of the feeling that had been glowing within him and comes up blank. Just a festering, throbbing pain from the bites answers his call. He shouts. Screams. Curses. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. Fuck the Upside Down. Fuck the government. Governments plural. Fuck the monsters and the murderers. Fuck Henderson and Byers and the rest of them for getting wrapped up in this shit. Fuck Nancy Wheeler for breaking him out of his despondent stupor. Most of all, fuck him for kickstarting it all again. And fuck the stupid cliff. 

The ledge is hardly wide enough for a person, dipping in and out of existence, but he thinks that he could climb onto the dirt track of a road about a quarter of the quarry away from where he’s landed. He presses his back to the rock and shuffles sideways. Looks up to the sky to avoid the water, from fear or temptation he’s not so sure. Seeks out where the Big Bear should be in the sky but can’t place it. Never could find it first try. Hopper’s shirt is shredded, stuck to his back by tacky wetness which he knows must be blood. Hums something, can’t place the song, to cover the sound of his path disintegrating behind him. His bum ankle rolls as he swings around to face the rock front. Nearly sends him plummeting, foot once more meeting air instead of solid ground, but he manages to grab onto the foothold he’d been aiming for. He rests his forehead against the cold stone as he swings with the momentum. Lets a few tears drip down, droplets meeting below his chin to make their final descent together. He’s so tired. He clenches his fist around the root, unsure if he wants to brace to haul himself back up or to let go. To feel the air rush past him and the water envelop him and maybe he is still somewhere down there. Maybe he just needs to know he’s coming and the other him will reappear. Greet him with open arms and a tidal wave. Robin is no longer waiting for him at the kitchen window, the Wheeler’s station wagon will be parked outside instead. And one of them will have to sit alone in the trunk because Max won’t be there. And they will pull up to the cabin and find Steve gone. Find the problem solved. And maybe they will cry. Robin might even fight, might throw a fist or a hand into Hopper’s chest, and kid herself that any of this was preventable. Maybe she’ll aim at Jonathan, at his pot-head sidekick for sharing their weed. For letting him fall asleep. And Jonathan’s shoulders will slump as he adds the weight of another body on his shoulders. The same way Steve can still feel Eddie slumping limply down his back, sliding right out of Steve’s bloody hands as he tried to pass him through the gate to waiting arms. He readjusts his grip and pulls, levers himself up to the bulge of rock that shoulders the road. 

His ankle rolls every few paces as he walks. He wonders if it would be quicker to make his way through the woods again but he has no idea which direction he should even begin to head in. Thinks maybe his best bet would be to walk back to his house, easier to find than the cabin, even if it would take hours. Maybe Nancy would pick him up in the morning. He thinks while he walks. Tries to stave off the fatigue that has him swaying like a drunkard as he stumbles from the quarry track onto the road. Finds himself thinking of his mother’s record player. The one hidden in her dressing room upstairs. That only ever gets played when his father is out of the house. The stacks of Italian records kept behind her hat boxes - the ones Steve is never to touch and never to tell his father about. The sleeves of which smell of her perfume, the paper soaking it up as she ran her hands through them before selecting a track. He thinks of the way it would fill the house. The thick, curling words that he didn’t understand encasing them both in their safety, their comfort. Thinks of how when he stood outside the door he could hear her mutter along, not quite singing, not quite that brave even when John was gone. Steve thinks of Fridays. The salty aroma of fish waiting to meet him when he returned from school. Of the only home-cooked meal of the week, the only time his mother seemed at home in the kitchen. Still floating just above reality but her hands would move over the food with ease. Confidence. Care. Steve thinks of sitting at the dining table at the Perkins and asking why they were having beef on a Friday, telling them you always ate fish on a Friday. Recalls the way Jane had put her hand on David’s wrist when he opened his mouth. Remembers how she explained that that was a very catholic thing to do, and they were protestant, and Steve’s parents must be too because they went to the same church. The leading nod she’d given him. Thinks of the quiet stiffness of his father at the dinner table each week, which at the time hadn’t seemed so different from all the other evenings but looking back seems distinct now. Reminds himself of eating frozen fish sticks the first Friday he spent by himself. Thinks of his mother’s hidden music, her rosaries and crucifix locked away drawer of her vanity, her careful American pronunciations, of her Sunday best pulled out for a church that she is not a part of. Thinks of her Friday fish meals - the one thing she shared with him. He thinks of the only time she ever raised her voice back: the first time his father had come home, suit smelling of another woman’s perfume. The way her accent had vanished, the way she had shouted and smashed his good scotch against the door to his office. He wonders if she has something with her, wherever they are now if she has her scraps of home, her music, her Friday fish meals, or if she has wiped herself clean in order to stay with his father. 

The glass of his watch face is shattered, glass pressed right into the hands, trapping their movement. It’s sometime after midnight, but he thinks it must have been hours since he fell. Lets his tired feet end their restless movement against the tarmac whilst he registers the fact that the gold Hamilton is really destroyed. Thinks if he had a heart it would give a pang. Steve’s always been sentimental about things. For a long time, Steve was more sentimental about things than people and even though he’s not now, he still thinks that the watch is the thing in the world he is most sentimental about. He decides to sit. To rest and mourn for the stupid watch that he loves too much. Observes as the night prepares to become early morning. Or maybe early morning prepares to become regular morning. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have a watch. He looks up as a lone car drives past him, lights soaking him for a second before they’ve moved over him. Hears it screech to a stop just behind him. Greets it as it reverses back into his line of sight. It’s his car. He winces as the driver's door slams closed. You don’t need to close it that hard. 

“Harrington!” He lets his eyes roll up to meet the Chief’s, not as hard as his voice would have indicated. Ringed with worry and raking Steve up and down, taking in the skin that’s been scraped away, the blood, the shivers, and adding another fold to the pinch of his skin. 

Hopper crouches, thumbs at the cuts on Steve’s forehead, “I was waiting up for you, kid.” He says and it sounds weirdly like a scolding but too gentle. 

“Fell asleep,” Steve mumbles, watching Mrs. Byers use a radio as she hovers by the passenger door of his car. 

“Yeah, I guessed. I’ll save the don’t do drugs spiel til we’re home.” Hopper says and now it’s not so gentle, definitely angry. He grabs Steve under the shoulders and hauls him up. 

“It was me.” 

“Oh, I know. And you’re in a lot of shit, but there’s no point trying to cover for Jon and Argyle on this one.”

“No. It was me. The body. It was me this time.”

Hopper freezes their journey to the car and looks at him, concern all bundled up with abject terror. 

“It was nice. Like going home.” He whispers it. Knows he shouldn’t say it at all. Knows it’s wrong. But he thinks he wants Hopper to understand. 

“Stop talking now, Steve.” He says gruffly. Stop thinking about it. Stop worrying about it. So Steve does.

He stops talking, thinking, worrying, and he lets Mrs. Byers open his car door for him, lets himself be pushed into the backseat, a big hand cradling the top of his head to save it from the door frame. Only hums with surprise when Joyce gets in the back with him. Arms full of something Hopper hands her from the passenger footwell. They brought blankets. She wraps them around him. Behind his back, over his legs, under his arms. She clasps the lump of his hand under the blankets tightly and tutts at his scrapes. Steve wants to ask her to stop, to tell her that it’s too much. Explain to her that his own mother probably wouldn’t have answered the phone if tonight had gone differently and can’t she see he doesn’t deserve to be mothered. Smothered. That he’s not one of her children and in fact, he’s an adult, so she should stop rubbing at his arms and running her hand through his hair for injuries. But he can’t bring himself to say it. To stop her.

Jonathan and Argyle are sitting on the steps when the trio makes their way towards the cabin, Steve propped between the two adults still shrouded in blankets. Jonathan launches to his feet, muttering a quick “Thank God,” and stumbles into an awkward embrace, uncaring of Steve’s hands trapped beneath the blankets or Joyce and Hopper’s support. Steve’s shoulders tense when he catches Hop turning his face away, mustache twitching. Steve knows that disappointed anger, knows the shouting matches it leads to. He’s too tired for that. Hopper tersely commands them inside. El and Will sit, knees up and a radio between them, on the couch. Joyce shoos them to the sides as Steve is lowered into the evacuated space. 

“Go to your room kids,” Hopper says, voice quiet from stamping down his anger. 

“No.” El sets her hands on her hips in a way that is just so Hopper that Steve can’t help but snort.

They both cut him the same glare. 

“Fine, Jonathan get the first aid kit. El get him some clean clothes,” He points a finger in Argyle’s direction, “Pot of coffee.” 

He sheds the blankets. Wants to think of butterflies and cocoons but instead, his mind thinks of Dart’s abandoned skin in the storm cellar. With no instruction of his own Will comes to sit next to Steve, he leaves enough room for Hopper and Joyce to start working his shirt off. Steve can’t help but be relieved that Hopper covered the bites yesterday. That Will isn’t bearing witness to another horror. Jonathan and El return at the same time. 

“Forward, kid.” Hopper gestures and Steve peels himself off of the couch cushions, scoots forward far enough that he has to support his own weight. 

Hopper starts handing out iodine swabs like their tokens at the arcade. They cluster, like flies to a body, around him. Hopper behind the couch cleaning at his back, Jonathan wedged at his side, dabbing, peeling shirt thread from flaps of skin. El folds onto the floor taking his hand with a small smile and starts disinfecting, carefully studying Jonathan’s actions and repeating it on his flayed palm and wrist. Joyce stands between his knees, chin cradled in one hand as she wipes the blood and grit from his forehead, his cheek. She’s angled his face to the left, leaving him looking at Will. Steve’s never wanted to cry more in his life. Never wanted to not cry more either. Not in front of the kid who was kidnapped to another dimension or the government experiment girl or gulag survivor. He closes his eyes as Will reaches out and gently swipes the cotton bud across his palm, then slides his smaller hand into Steves. He feels Will tremble against him. He likes it cold. He thinks about Will’s terrified voice from two years ago. Dreads the picture of Will’s face right now, the kid who always wears an extra sweater, breaks the gloves out a month early, holding his ice block of a hand because he knows Steve is scared. Nearly loses the battle on his tears when he feels Will begin to clean a scrape at his elbow without ever letting go of his hand. Tries to push away the memory of unwanted hands on him, of doctors and generals. Tries to remind himself that it’s the Byers moving in sync against him. It’s Mrs. Byers’ hands on his shoulder and El who has shifted her attention to his knees. It’s only Jonathan’s needle-like fingers pressing on his side. Feels a few tears slip as Argyle flicks on the record player - coffee presumably brewed. 

“Is that bad?” El asks and Steve snaps his eyes open, hands coming to hover over the bites but she’s still on the floor pointing Joyce’s attention towards his ankle. 

As he watches his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s mother prop his ankle up on the once-dead chief of police’s coffee table he misses the solitude of this mother’s reception room. The vast, empty spaces that make up his house. The echoes in the corridors. The ankle is struggling to swell, trying its best but it seems like he’s not got enough blood going around to do much for it. It’s more purple than red and not quite too big for his shoe but definitely too small for his sock. 

“Surfer boy, there’s a bag of peas in the freezer.” Hopper barks. 

And Steve can’t stop the onslaught of tears, the way every muscle in his body coils itself back toward his spine.

“No! No ice. Please.” His voice cracking like knuckles. 

The flurry of movement stops for a second, spooked by the tears streaming down his face. Hopper’s hand comes to rest at the nape of his neck. 

“Okay. No ice. Let’s all get some shuteye.”

“But-”

“Bed, El. Now.” 

She huffs, climbs over Steve’s outstretched leg, and shuts herself into her room. Will says a quiet goodnight as he lets go of Steve’s hand. 

“Not you,” Jim growls at Jonathan, an authoritative finger pointing to the armchair. 

Steve dries his tears on the cuff of the new shirt.

“What happened tonight, Harrington?” He sits himself on the coffee table between the two boys. 

“I…” Steve glances at Jonathan, “I fell asleep in the van.”

“Where did you go, honey?” Joyce prompts. 

“The quarry,” She takes a sharp intake of breath, hand coming to rest on Jonathan’s shoulder.

“That’s where you saw your body?” Hopper asks, and either he’s adapting to this situation even more calmly than Steve has or he’s still seething with anger. 

“Wait, what body?” Jonathan pipes up only to be shushed by Hopper.

If Steve was a bit sharper, he might have cottoned onto the fact that Hop was punishing Jonathan, teaching him a lesson, earlier. He feels any comfort he’d allowed himself to consume be washed from him. He’s been taught enough lessons like this to know he hates the men who fancy themselves teachers.

“He tried to stop me, Hop. If anything you should be blaming me for getting him high.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about here.”

“Yes, it is.” Steve gives him a tired look. He’s so fucking tired he feels like he’s dissipating into the air around him. 

“No, I’m trying to hel—”

“The ridge gave out under me while I was staring at my own dead body floating in the quarry, I fell a few feet before I landed and had to climb my way back out,” Steve looks Jonathan dead in the eye before swiveling his head back to face the Chief. “Think that’s good enough to scare him straight? You think he feels guilty enough now? Do you feel guilty enough, Jon-Boy?” 

The man at least has the decency to look abashed, and Steve should feel wonderful, should have the wonderful satisfaction of snapping at a father adjacent figure the way he’s always wanted to. He just feels tired. Tired and afraid. 

“Okay, kid. Point made,” It’s quite possibly the closest to an apology he’s ever gotten from someone, “You two head to bed, Steve and I have some TV to catch up on.” 

Chapter Text

“You want to try sleeping?” Steve shakes his head, tries to bring himself back to full wakefulness. “You’re gonna pass out any minute, might as well get comfortable. I’ll be right here.”

Steve knows he’s right. He can barely keep his neck up. He’s almost certain he’s nodded off a couple of times already, that or there are an increasing number of time jumps in this version of Casablanca. The new and increased fear of sleep is losing its strength against fatigue. He’s weepy and half delirious, and not even in a fun seeing-dead-bodies kind of way. Just keeps hearing snippets of conversations that aren’t happening. His brain stumbles over itself every time he contemplates a thought. 

“I don’t want to.”

“Honestly, I’d rather you didn’t either, but this seems like a losing game. So, you want me to move to the other couch, or do you want to just stretch out here?”

This is beyond mortifying. Being asked questions like a four-year-old by a man that used to pull him over because he was bored and wanted to humble a stupid-as-shit teenager (Steve’s pretty sure that’s why he was doing it). It makes fresh tears flood his waterline. Hopper seems to take that as a hint and relocates to the armchair. Steve stretches out and closes his eyes, a faint thrum of anxiety buzzes in him, loud enough to drone out the noise of Hop drawing his seat close enough that he can put his hand on Steve’s swollen ankle. 

“Right here, Harrington.” He says with an awkward pat. 

Steve barely has time to think about how this feels weirder than the concept of the Upside Down, how messed up that is, before he’s free-falling into sleep. Bracing for whatever terrible dream he lands in this time. Except there’s nothing. No dream. No body. Nothing calling for him. Not even any rest. Just inky blackness, so thick it feels like he’s swimming in it. A chasm of nothingness. He blinks his eyes open against the light trickling through the slatted windows of the cabin. Joyce is sitting in the armchair, El on the floor in front of her watching TV while Mrs. Byers styles and restyles a headband around El’s tufty hair. There’s a fullness to this house that makes Steve uncomfortable. It’s all he ever wanted, a house full of people who stand within three feet of each other. And he’s in the middle of it now. The center focal point of the cabin, but he still feels like he’s on the outskirts. Like he’s been stuffed into the picture. Cut from the yearbook and glued into a gap that isn’t really a gap. 

“Sweetie, you’re awake.” Mrs. Byers says softly, abandoning an awful bow in El’s hair to come to his side. “Are you okay? Any… dreams?” She sort of hisses the word out, like it’s a particularly nasty curse word that shouldn’t be said around youths. 

“No. No dreams, Mrs. Byers.”

“Oh! Well, that’s good. Isn’t that good? Do you want some breakfast? I think we only have cereal. And I’ve told you before, it’s Joyce.”

“No. I, er, I’ve not really been able to you know…” He flails his sleep-addled hands around as if that would get the word he’s completely forgotten across. 

Somehow, the miracle that is Joyce Byers understands, face bopping in and out from behind her fringe as she nods seriously. She brushes the scabbing skin on his face and tells him to go shower. Tells him to take as long as he needs. As much as the past few days have changed his opinions on water, or at least bodies of water, and actually - bodies in water, it feels beyond good to wash off the dirt. He stares at himself in the mirror, a hard, bobbly towel wrapped around his waist. The skin around the bites is worse, black smoothing out to grey and green as his skin rots. He’s so pale he’s practically translucent where he’s not been dyed orange by overzealous Byers equipped with iodine. He digs around for the first aid kit, but it clearly didn’t get put back last night. He can hardly walk out like this with El and Will in the house. Thinks Jon’s probably been tortured enough by his horrors and as far as he can make out Argyle is yet to see anything worse than a government-issued gun. He sticks his head around the door, keeping his body as concealed as he can, and comes face to face with Robin’s fist. He manages to rear back just before she gets his nose. 

“Sorry! Sorry. Hi.” She exclaims, fist still raised to knock.

“Hi.”

“Can I come in?” She wiggles a bag Steve recognizes as his own in her other hand. 

“Sure. Can you, er… can you grab some bandages first.” 

He hoists the towel so it covers his stomach as much as possible. He’s not sure what would scar Robin more, getting a good look at the bites or accidentally seeing his junk. He sits on the edge of the tub and waits. She announces her entrance with a scattered collection of knocks on the door. 

“Please tell me you’re decent?” She says closing the door blindly. 

“As I can be.”

“Okay good.” She opens her eyes and takes him in. Huddled strangely in a towel. 

“Please tell me you brought me some underwear?”

“Yes, but I closed my eyes and stuck my hand into the drawer so I have no idea if I’ve picked up your jock strap or speedos or something.” She says with a subdued smile. 

“I’ll make it work.” He takes the bag from her and riffles through until he pulls out a pair of perfectly ordinary briefs. 

“Collection of girl’s thongs!” She blurts as she stares at the underwear in his hands.

“What?”

“I just — it would have been funnier. Than speedos. It was a better joke.”

“Yeah, a real side-splitter. You mind turning around?”

“Oh! Right. Yes.” She turns herself into the corner while he wrestles under the towel. He wonders if he has time to redress his wounds before she turns around but she’s holding the box of gauze in her hands. “Can I turn back around now?” 

“Uh, yeah.” He hikes the towel higher, trying to stave off the inevitable. 

“Hi,” She waves the bandages at him.

“Hi, Rob.” He can’t help the small smile that finds itself on his face. Feels himself relax even though there’s still tension between them. 

“I’m sorry. Steve, I’m sorry for being mad at you. I was just so worried and so frustrated and you don’t look after yourself and it’s so annoying! Because you know, I’ve never really had a friend like you, like I’ve never been this close to anyone before and I got really scared about losing you. And then I realized that was stupid because I know that you would never leave if you could help it.” 

Steve thinks of the quarry. Of the idea of it and swallows around the lump in his throat. 

“Right, Steve?”

“Robin, I have to show you something.” 

“You’re not answering my question,” He drops the towel, then she drops the bandages. “Holy shit! Holy shit! What the fuck is that?” 

“Don’t freak out.”

“Don’t freak out! Don’t freak out? There are maggots in y—” He slaps his hand over her mouth smothering her words.

“I know. I know. But just shh, okay? I don’t want the kids to know. Okay?” 

“Mhy,” Comes out from behind his hand. 

“Good,” he says releasing her. 

“Hey, Steve?” 

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m going to puke now.”

The deja vu of sitting on a bathroom floor watching Robin puke her guts out is almost reassuring. He holds her hair, too short to be tied up, and reminds her that he said the fringe was a bad idea. When she’s finished they stay on the floor, Steve pressed against the sink and Robin against the tub. He wonders if they’ll have every life-changing conversation on a bathroom floor next to a sick-covered toilet. Kind of hopes not. She’s holding her head in her hands, fringe splayed in spikes between her fingers. It makes her look like an emperor penguin he thinks. 

“How are you so chill about this?”

“I’m not. Not really. I’ve just had a bit of time to get used to it.”

“No, shithead,” She kicks him hard in the shin, and so what if her voice is a little stuffy, “How are you so chill with dying?”

“I’m not dying, Rob.” It sounds a little like he’s begging.

“Well, it looks like you are!” She lets her eyes fix on the biggest of the bites, still visible despite his folded position. “This is so much worse than you let us think. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“You can’t be fine with this, Steve. I can’t —”

“What you were saying earlier, Rob, about never having a friend like me? I just, I feel the same. You’re like, you know, my other half. I just, I need you to know that. That you’re probably, like, the best thing that ever happened to me. And I hope I’ve been as good a friend to you as you have to me. You know, dragging you into this bullshit notwithstanding.” 

“I swear to God, Steve, if you’re giving me a goodbye speech right now I will kill you myself!” She holds her sneakered foot threateningly over his bare toes and he gives a snotty laugh. 

“I just—”

There’s a knock on the door.

“Steve, honey? Robin? Are you okay in there?”

Steve looks at Robin’s red-rimmed eyes, at his greying skin. Thinks no, Mrs. Byers, we are not. But before he has a chance to say that, or perhaps something more reassuring the door is opening and she is staring at them sitting on the floor, legs slotted around each other and Steve in just his underwear.

“Oh! Oh gosh! Sorry, I thought you might need—”

Steve and Robin both scramble to their feet, knees, shoulders, and temples colliding in the small space. 

“Mrs. Byers, it’s not, that’s not what was happening. We were just-”

“Talking…” Robin finishes for him. 

Mrs. Byers smiles tentatively like she’s not sure she believes them, “Steve, honey, if you call me Mrs. Byers one more time I’ll set Dustin on you. Do you need help with your…” She flaps her hands at his abdomen, eyes thinning when she takes in how much worse it looks.

“No, thank you, Mr—Joyce, Rob and I have got it. We’ll be out in a minute.”

She nods and backs out of the room. Steve and Robin turn to each other and burst out laughing. Robin falls into the bathtub when she throws her head back too enthusiastically, bumping her head against the wall and sending them into another wave of uncontrollable hysterics. Steve wants to bottle it up, wants to live in this feeling forever. Reduce himself down to this one single moment in time. Until he realizes that Robin's gasping breaths have turned into sobs and she is crumpled in the bathtub, legs sticking up in the air, crying. He wonders if it’s worth it, the kind of friendship they have as wonderful and life-saving as it is, he wonders if it’s not worse to have it and lose it than to never have it at all. Feels like he’s betraying her. Torturing her. All because she was stupid enough to like someone like him. He can’t imagine a day in his life without her and it looks like he’s gearing up to make her spend the rest of her life without him. A year of friendship for a lifetime's worth of pain. Hardly seems like a fair deal. He sits on the lip and doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know what to say, just picks the bandages up from where they landed on the floor and starts wrapping himself up. And she cries. And she rearranges herself, slipping around more than a foal with new legs, kicks him a couple of times before she manages to get her arms lined up along the edge, head resting against them. Steve smoothes out her hair, brushes it back into something presentable with his shaking fingers. He pulls out some more clothes from the bag, an old Hawkins High shirt and some sweats, wriggles into them without ever leaving where her elbow is pressed into his thigh. 

“Come on, dipshit. We’ve got the Hawkins Middle School AV club to entertain.” He hooks an arm under her, mutters something about how sweaty her armpits are, and pulls her to stand. Ends up lifting her bridal style out of the bath and to the door. It makes her squawk in surprise and at least it stops the tears.

“Put me down!” 

“Steve!” Dustin hollers as soon as they leave the tiny bathroom, “Finally.” 

“Hey, man. Where’s the rest of the nerd brigade?” He says looking at the two Wheeler siblings sitting next to each other on the couch looking very much like they’ve forgotten their significant others live here and they should be comfortable. 

“No one was with Max yesterday so Lucas and Erica are with her.”

“Oh right. Yeah, of course.” Like he doesn’t already feel like the worst person in the world. 

“Hey, Steve, buddy, it’s okay. She wouldn’t mind, you know she’d probably rather we were all here sorting your shit out. I mean, she’d never let it slide if she found out we let the Upside Down fuck us so we could hold her hand.”

“Language, Henderson.” Comes a gravelly voice from the kitchen.

Hopper looks exhausted, his bags have tripled in size since Steve first stumbled up to the cabin he’s sure. Dustin rolls his eyes and Steve flicks his shoulder with a warning look. 

“Can we please get started on figuring this out?” Mike pipes up. Steve loops an arm around Dustin and leads them into the sitting room area. 

“What have you got then, mega brains?”

“First, you need to tell us what happened last night,” Mike says like Steve is the stupidest person to have ever lived. 

“Mike!” El scolds, “Steve, you do not need to tell him.”

“El! How are we supposed to figure this out if you’re keeping secrets?”

“El, it’s fine,” Steve says giving her a little nod. “I had another dream and I saw another body in water, and it was me.” 

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, you saw your own body?” Nancy asks this time. 

“Yeah. But, you know it’s probably not that big of a deal, right? It’s not like I’m a profit or anything, the others were already dead.”

“Prophet, Steve.” Nancy corrects at the same time as Mike says: “But, what if that means you’re already dead?”

There’s a long and heavy silence. Steve can feel the way everyone takes a collective breath around him. Watches Robin put a hand around Dustin’s wrist. He throws a coaster off the coffee table at Mike’s forehead. 

“Do I seem dead to you, asshole?”

Mike rubs angrily at the point of impact, “Look, all I’m saying is that the common link here is people killed by the Upside Down. It has to mean something.”

“What if the link is deaths Steve feels guilty about?” Robin asks hopefully like that is somehow a more appealing option. Like she hasn’t just seen his decaying flesh.

Nancy looks at a wall with shame and Steve thought he was past that, past all their relationship bullshit but he can’t help but feel a little victorious. Because even if he already knew he killed Barb, Nancy was the one who said it out loud.

“Why would Steve feel guilty about his own death?” Dustin scoffs and Steve forgets sometimes that they’re still kids in the big ways. That they’re still unaware of some of the bleak horrors of adult life despite everything they’ve seen. Well, some of them, the other three teenagers in the room have all stiffened in a similar way to the adults. 

“The world’s a tough place, little dude,” Argyle eventually offers up from where he’s eating a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. 

“What?” Dustin asks though he sounds more shocked than confused. 

“It doesn’t matter, it’s a weak link.” Mike decides.

“Not if Vecna targets people with things to hide,” Robin argues. Steve can hear from the tone of her voice that she’s sunk her teeth into this idea. 

“Nothing about this matches what you’ve told us about Vecna at all!” 

“He created the Upside Down as it is, Mike, I think he’s probably capable of changing how he operates,” Nancy says. 

“That brings us back to why Steve?” Jonathan says, “No offense.”

“I mean, I wasn’t offended until you said that.” He mutters with a furrowed brow and a swipe of his arms that takes more out of him than he’d like to admit. 

“Right, sorry. I just meant-”

“Stop digging!” Will exclaims with a huff and Steve’s never liked the little man more. 

“What Jonathan meant, is why would torturing Steve help Henry?” Nancy takes the reins of the conversation. 

“And slowly killing him. Don’t forget slowly killing him.” Robin says from where she’s leaning against the wall next to him. He elbows her in the ribs. 

“Is that, like, confirmed?” Dustin asks quietly.

“Yeah, it’s pretty confirmed,” Steve says at the same time Robin lets out a breathy yes of her own, Jonathan nods, and Hopper and Joyce share a look. Dustin seems to get the message. Steve is so tired the edges of the room are losing focus. 

“He killed people to open the gates,” El offers.

“But he needed four of them to generate enough energy.” Nancy points out. 

“Steve saw four dead bodies. He was the last,” Hopper adds. 

“Yeah, but they all died over the space of like four years, and not even consecutively.” 

“Well, four of you came out of the Upside Down after trying to kill him? Maybe it’s revenge.” Will thinks out loud and then seems to realize what he’s actually said and blushes a bright red. 

There’s a long hush and a lot of intense eye contact between Robin and Nancy, “I think I would be seeing their bodies if that was happening. And besides, I’m pretty sure it’s to do with the bites.”

“Are you having any hive mind symptoms?” Mike asks.

“Uh, I knew the way to the quarry through the woods last night? It’s kinda like a spell or something when I wake up and I have to go check it out.”

“You saw yourself in the quarry?” Dustin stage whispers. 

“Yeah, it’s fine though,” Steve says and keeps his hand on Dustin’s shoulder. 

“But like, Will you’d be able to feel if Steve was part of the hive mind, wouldn’t you?” Dustin looks hopefully at his friend.

“I… I think so. But, One he’s not, it’s not like I feel him all the time, since we came back I just get these flashes.” 

“Have you ever had a flash around Steve?” El asks and Steve and Robin can’t help but snort, “What? What did I say?”

“Nothing, honey.” Joyce shoots them both a look that has Steve’s skin crawling. 

“Yeah, once the other day,” Steve thinks of bringing Dustin here and Will’s eyes burning a hole in his head, “But it’s more like how it is with you El, he’s interested in you guys.”

“Oh good, the devil has a crush on me.”

“Well, at least someone does,” Robin says with a small smile. 

“Who wouldn’t, buddy?” Dustin adds, patting the hand on his shoulder. 

Steve wants to laugh but he’s so tired that he can’t feel his legs underneath him anymore and the idea of stretching his mouth away from his teeth makes him feel like he’s melting. He tries anyway because he wants to make Dustin smile. 

“Steve? Hey, Steve?” At some point, everyone has rearranged themselves without him noticing. He’s now somehow looking up at Dustin, Robin, and the Chief’s slightly fuzzy faces. 

“What?”

“You okay, Harrington?”

He looks at the Chief’s knees directly in his line of vision, does some quick maths.

“Yeah. Tired. I had to sit.” He’d been thinking about that earlier. About how leaning against the wall was getting too much for him.

“We all just watched you pass out.” 

“Nu-uh, real men don’t pass out,” Steve repeats the voice in his head, exhaustion letting it slip passed into his mouth with almost no protest.

“Ugh, could you be more of a cliché?” He hears Mike snort somewhere behind the wall of bodies in front of him.

“Let’s find you a proper seat. Wheeler, off the couch.” 

“No, Jim, he needs to rest properly, put him on our bed,” Joyce says already turning to re-jostle the sheets.

Steve doesn’t think he’s ever been more relieved to be in a bed, even if it’s the most uncomfortable bed he’s ever been in. He didn’t think anything could be worse than sharing Robin’s spring-loaded single mattress. 

“I’ll stay with him, you guys keep brainstorming.” She says already sitting next to him. 

“Don’t you dare put your filthy shoes on Joyce’s bed,” He tells her when they’re alone and she goes to lie down next to him. He’s asleep before Robin can formulate a reply. 

The endless blackness returns and he’s pretty sure he’s lying down but it’s the same all around him so he can’t quite tell. Just feels himself existing which isn’t the most relaxing or rejuvenating. He wakes to Robin straddling him, shaking him hard. He harrumphs in question, words not yet within his capabilities. 

“Don’t scare me like that! You stopped breathing!” She collapses on the bed next to him, his wrist squeezed tightly in her hand. 

He takes a conscious breath that sits uncomfortably in his lungs, “Sorry, been doing that a lot recently.” 

“Well, stop doing it!”

“I’ll get right on that, Buckley.” He says, eyes drifting closed again.

“Are you guys okay? We heard… screeching.” Nancy puts her head through the curtain. 

“We’re fine, Nance.”

“Have you come up with anything yet?” Robin asks when Nancy doesn’t immediately leave. 

“Um, well, since El stopped Max from actually dying we thought maybe it didn’t work properly. And he wants to use Steve’s death to somehow complete it. You know, the bites.”

“That’s a hypothesis and a half, Wheeler,” Robin mutters. 

“Yeah. Obviously, we have no evidence.”

“We’ve never had any evidence, just Daggers and Dinosaurs,” Steve says eyes still closed.

“Dungeons and Dragons,” Nancy corrects him as Robin sputters with laughter. 

“Nerd,” He directs at Nancy earning him a heatless glare. He pushes himself upright against the pillows, “Hey, Rob, give us a minute?” 

She looks extremely reluctant to let go of his wrist but eventually, she gets up and shuffles past Nancy through the curtain. Nancy comes to sit on the edge of his bed. 

“What do you want to talk about?” She looks nervously at the curtain, her boyfriend somewhere on the other side. 

“I wanted to apologize,” She looks at him with a furrow to her brow, “For the whole, I want you to have my six children speech.”

“Steve it’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I mean apart from the fact that we broke up and you have a boyfriend - both of which make it super not-fine - I… it’s also not true. I just, I’ve had some time to think and I realized that my brain scrambled a bunch of stuff together. I’ve always wanted a big family right, you know, only child syndrome or whatever, and recently, I’ve been struggling to, um, think of a future? Like, I just can’t imagine myself as old, or honestly ever even getting out of Hawkins, not while the kids are here. And sometimes, I think they’re the only reason I have to stick around. And I think, that, that I got so scared of not being scared of dying that I turned that into this weird like future dream so I’d have something to fight for. And um, you were just there, so I reverted back to like, ya know, old stuff. No offence,” He gives her a small smile, “But, I don’t imagine you by my side, is what I’m trying to say. As far as I can imagine anything. I do love you, Nance, probably always will, just not like that. Not anymore.”

“Oh, well that’s- I mean… I don’t love you either, Steve.” She gives him a tentative smile and lets her hand come to rest on his ankle. She scrutinizes the floor, mouth pinched, “You really can’t picture a future?”

“Honestly, even before all this, most days I’d wake up convinced that I’d died in Jon’s living room in ’83 and everything else was just some DMT-induced hallucination.” 

She winces, “So, all the college applications and parties and things you talked about when we were together?”

“Bullshit, like you said.” The bitter taste of shame sits on his tongue, “I was just… I dunno, hoping it would all go back to normal if I just carried on pretending. I’m sorry for that too.”

“I’m sorry I never thought about how hard all of it might have been for you.” 

“It’s okay, Nance. Just, don’t make the same mistake twice.” He nods towards the curtain, towards the life and boy, the future that’s waiting for her. She nods with tears in her eyes, pats his ankle once, and then she walks away and Steve feels that it’s right somehow. 

The next few days are filled with tension. However good their theories get they all have one major fault - there’s nothing they can do about it. El tries to seek One out, tries to get close enough to the gates to feel for him. Will too, and whilst they agree they can sense him sometimes, they can’t track him down. Can’t find him in the Inbetween or town. Not in the remnants of the Creel house. More often than not Will says that it’s more that there’s no lack of his presence for him than anything else. Which is perhaps more reassuring than anything else that’s been said in the last few weeks. Steve’s nightmares and body hunting have ended, which would be promising if his fatigue wasn’t increasing in scary measures. Four days after he passed out during their meeting and he can’t make it from the couch to the cars without having to sit down, his body trying to drown him in unconsciousness once more. Will and El have taken up permanent residence on the floor between the couches. Robin is usually there too, she brings El the season one box set of Growing Pains, Steve thinks she might have used her keys to family video to get that. Knows that she chose it just to torture him into staying awake, but can’t resent her because El loves it. Watches it for hours, makes them all watch it for hours. Will draws mostly, sketchbook turned away from Steve the entire time. Says he’s practicing drawing hands anytime Steve asks. Dustin brings him a box of books on the second or third day. Dumps them on the coffee table which makes the whole cabin shake. 

“What’s this?”

“The complete Lord of the Rings collection,” Steve raises an eyebrow, “Don’t worry it includes The Hobbit.”

“Oh, good. I was worried.”

“Dick.”

“Shithead.” Then after a pause where he wonders if he will cry, “I’m too tired to read, Dustin.”

“That’s okay. We’ll read to you.”

Chapter Text

Will nudges his shoulder with a boney foot, “Keep breathing, Steve,” He says before he returns to his coloring and Steve takes a couple of practiced breaths to kickstart the process again. 

Lets himself tune back into Erica’s voice as she reads. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them that between the silly names and the weighted blanket of sleep that is constantly on him he actually has no idea what this Tolkien guy is on about and they haven’t even started the big ones yet. But El enjoys them, sits, and plays with Steve’s hair while she listens. Complains bitterly every time someone reads him a chapter and she’s not there, but Dustin has promised to lend them to her next. Today El and Joyce are the ones with Max, Steve had asked to join but had passed out just before they’d reached the car and Hop had to carry him back to the couch. He’s in a sour mood because of it. As much as he has the energy to be in any kind of mood, he’s always in a sour one. What Steve is learning is that he does not take help with grace. Somehow, he’d thought that being the center of attention would be the most mortifying aspect of this whole ordeal, and whilst being carried inside like a baby by Hop ranked pretty high, having to be helped to the bathroom and pissing sitting down takes the cake. He barely consumes any liquid but it’s still somehow an issue. 

“Are you scared?” Will asks him when everyone has returned to their own homes. 

“Hmm?”

“I’m just saying I know what it’s like to be scared all the time.” Steve thinks that Will had it so much worse than him. Thinks drifting between barely awake and unconscious is probably nothing compared to having the Mind Flayer living in your head. Even if he does think every time he closes his eyes it will be the last time. 

“How’d you deal with it?”

“It’s easier when you’re not alone.”

Steve doesn’t mean to scoff. Will doesn’t look offended, just says, “It’s better when you’re all scared together. You’ll see.”

Steve looks at the compact mirror sitting on the coffee table, the one that Joyce puts on his chest while he’s sleeping so she can keep an eye on his breathing. Feels like an ass for being so ungrateful. For finding this so hard. Waits until Will has gone to bed and it’s just him and Joyce left awake to let the tears slip down his cheeks. She hums as she wipes them away. Sits on the couch cushions the kids have covered the floor with and leans across him to pull El’s clips out of his hair. The nights Joyce stays with him are his favorite. Her soft, murmuring stories about Will and Jonathan when they were younger, about her and Hopper in high school - carefully leaving out the basketball team and its captain: John Harrington. Rubs his chest gently when she has to rouse him to breathe again. She keeps their hands entwined until Hopper or the kids wake him up in the morning. 

“You know, I always wanted a brother,” Steve says to Dustin as they listen to the rumble of Hop’s voice from inside the Pizza van from the porch steps. 

“Robin warned me about this.”

“About what?”

“She said you were going to give me a sentimental speech like you did with her and Nancy.”

“Yeah, well, Robin sucks.”

Dustin snorts, “Eddie gave me one too.”

“He did?” 

“Yep. In the field while we were making weapons.”

“What’d he say?”

“Told me never to change.”

“That’s good. I might steal that, my brain’s not really at a hundred percent right now.”

“Your brain’s never at a hundred percent.” Dustin squeezes his hands together in his lap, stays carefully looking ahead. “I always wanted a brother too.”

“Well, that’s settled then.”

“Cool.”

“Cool. You know how much I care about you, right?”

“Of course, man. You don’t even have to ask.”

“I feel like I do, ‘coz I’m not the best at… saying stuff. You guys are, like, really really important to me and I’d do anything for you.” 

Dustin is quiet for a long time, sucking whatever it is he wants to say around his mouth, “Including not giving up?”

Sometimes you just survive and that’s enough, “Including not giving up.”

“I really don’t want to lose you too,” Dustin mumbles wiping his face with his shoulders.

“I’m doing my best.”

He ruffles Dustin’s hair, thinks about all the things he wants to say but doesn’t know how. All the things he hasn’t said because Dustin is fifteen and already keeps way too much on his shoulders. How maybe, if Steve doesn’t make it, they’d both feel better if they were said. About how it still feels wrong to ladle his shit onto a kid. 

“I’m gonna tell you something, and I need you to let me say it and then keep it for later and not worry about it.”

“I thought we’d already done the speech?” He doesn’t say it with his usual fire, he says it more like he’s begging for a saving grace moments before a violent impact. 

Steve doesn’t acknowledge it, can’t change the course he’s on now. Doesn’t know if he wants to, just closes his eyes, presses down on the gas pedal, and takes his hands off the wheel.

“I was jealous of Eddie. When you first started hanging out with him I was, like, embarrassingly jealous of how cool you thought the guy was.”

“Steve—”

“I really fucked up this time. I shoulda stepped up but I froze, and I was relieved that I didn’t have to be the one looking out for you all. Because you guys are the only thing I really care about and sometimes I get, like, all tied up in knots because I can’t protect you guys from shit when it comes down to it. So, I checked out. And I don’t know how to be okay with that.”

“Steve, we’re not kids anymore. You don’t have to protect us. You can’t.”

“It’s my job to keep you guys safe!”

“You did your best. This one was just too big for us.”

Steve sighs in frustration, “You’re missing the point, Henderson. I did not do my best. I should never have let Max and Lucas and Erica go to that house alone. Or let you come to the Upside Down. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was— what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dustin. I shoulda been there, man. For you, for Max.”

Dustin brings one of his hands up to Steve’s shoulder, “You’re allowed a life outside of us, Steve. We want you to have a life outside of us.” He doesn’t think it should hurt as much as it does to hear that. “All I need you to be is my friend, dude. I don’t need a babysitter anymore.”

You’re still a kid, Steve thinks. I’d wrap you in bubble wrap if I could because you’re still so young and you’ve seen more than anyone should in their whole life, Steve thinks. He doesn’t say it though. Doesn’t say that he wishes he could go back to every time he’s ever said no to hanging out with Henderson. Back to every movie night he canceled because he was too tired from work and nightmares. To every car ride where he turned the music up because he wasn’t in the mood to talk. To every call on the radio he ignored. Wants to take every single time back and spend every minute with the kid that he possibly can. The regret sits heavy on his chest, pushes him down into the planks of the porch. He feels himself drifting towards sleep again. The pull that is becoming scarily irresistible. 

“You okay to make it inside on your own?” Dustin asks when Steve brings it up, he nods. “I’ll be right behind you, man.”

“Why is Henderson crying on my porch?” Hopper asks door slamming on the tails of his anger from his serious chat with Jon and Argyle - the reason Steve and Dustin had ventured outside in the first place. 

“Told him how much he meant to me,” Steve mumbles from where he’s slumped in the armchair because the couch was too far. 

Hopper stops his trek to the kitchen and rounds on Steve.

“Now listen here, kid, what you’re not gonna do is start talking like a dead man. I don’t want any more crying children in my house. You’re not saying any more goodbyes to anyone, you’re digging your heels into the ground and you’re fighting against this thing. Do I make myself clear?”

Steve stares at him wide-eyed. 

“Yes.”

“Good, now take a fucking nap. I’ll be right here.”

Robin offers to stay over, to give the Byers-Hopper family members a break from the night shift. She brings Doctor Zhivago, “Come on, Steve. How could I pass this up? You’re literally a captive audience.”

He threatens to tell Keith that she’s been using her keys to steal from the store but she just rolls her eyes and puts the first tape in the player. He falls asleep twenty minutes in, the image of falling snow rotting into his eyes. The snow comes with him to the darkness. He feels himself be buried beneath it. Body hardening with cold. It’s more peaceful than his sleep usually feels. Less lonely than endless black. He wonders, as he always does, if this is really it. Thinks that Robin chewing at her thumbnail as she sits on top of his shins, screen flickering colors against her face, wouldn’t be the worst last thing to ever see. Thinks it's better than he thought he’d get. It’s not alone. He feels the snow be jostled from him. It’s painful to pull his eyes open again, has a few false starts before his eyelashes part and he can see Hopper and Joyce staring down at him. It takes a while to muster the energy to turn his head, looking for Rob. She’s retreated to the arm of the sofa, feet tucked either side of his, eyes swollen with tears and the skin around her thumbnail chewed raw. The buzzing in his ears is too loud to hear any of the words being said. He watches her lips form his name. Wants to reach for her but can’t lift his arms. His attention is brought away from her when Joyce’s knuckles come to rub at his sternum. Steve stares at the hand first, then Joyces’s moving lips. Understands finally that he’s being told to breathe. Lets out a pathetic pant that clears some of the buzzing away. The next breath not much stronger. Nor the one after. Later, Robin will tell him that he stopped breathing in his sleep, nothing new, only this time she couldn’t wake him up. That she’d tried everything, eventually screaming bloody murder which hadn’t worked but had woken everyone else in the house. That it was probably five minutes that he was not breathing and not waking. She’ll say quietly that it felt like hours.

The icy weight of the snowbank doesn’t leave him after that. Can hardly even lift his hands the rest of the day. Rob stays with him, tucked into one corner of the couch or the other, she has to be practically wrestled home by Jon in the evening. 

“Hey, Hop?” Steve cuts Hop off mid-sentence. Hates the way his voice sounds so weak when he’s putting so much effort in, “I know you’ve done a lot for me already. I need a favor. A couple.”

Hopper puts the book face down on the coffee table and Steve’s almost expecting Dustin to magically appear and complain about them ruining the spine. 

“This isn’t gonna be some kind of goodbye, is it? Because I thought we had an understanding.”

“No. No, not exactly, more like a backup plan.”

“Sounds like thin ice, kid.”

“If things start getting worse, which it kinda feels like they will, I need you to do something for me.”

“Steve,” Hopper growls. Steve thinks of the Big Bear. 

“Please, Hop. Just in case.” He waits for Jim to nod, “If I start to head south, can you… can you get someone to do last rites? I don’t even know if she’d care, honestly, but I think if she does, it would mean something to my mom.” 

“You’re not dying any time soon, Harrington.” Steve lets out a half laugh half sob. “You said a couple?”  

“Yeah, um, Max wrote letters-”

“I’m not writing your goodbye letters for you. No goodbyes, that’s the deal.” 

“No, can you read it to me? If it looks like I’m not gonna make it. I’ve been saving it for when she wakes up, but if I’m not gonna be around for that - I want her last words to mean something if one of us kicks it.”

“Fine. But you’re not dying.”

“Thanks, Hop. It’s in my glovebox.” 

“Can we get back to the stupid Hobbits now?”

“Mmhm,” He lets his eyes drift closed.

Chapter Text

Hopper stands in the middle of the cabin, between Steve laid up on the couch cradled in his friend’s lap, and the kids brainstorming across every kitchen surface. Watches as Robin strokes at his cheeks and encourages him to breathe, to stay awake, say alive. Turns back to look at Henderson and Wheeler snatching pens from each other over the increasingly illegible mind-map. Thinks life was easier when he was just some deadbeat alcoholic dealing with stolen garden gnomes. Joyce’s hand comes to sit in the small of his back, her other tracing the lines of her lips with worry. El is talking lowly with Will, pouring over something in Will’s sketchbook. Easier, not better. 

“We need to take him to a hospital, Jim. He’s getting worse.” Joyce says quietly behind her hand. Just for him.

He shakes his head no. Can’t quite believe that spending a year in a Russian prison isn’t the worst of it. 

“Hop.” She says a little sternly.

“If we take him to a hospital, they’re not going to know how to treat him. He’s rotting, Joyce. He’s got no heartbeat, and now he’s barely conscious if they don’t hand him over to the military for testing they’ll just pronounce him dead.” He’s vaguely aware that the chatter of the room has come to a halt around him. 

“Testing?” El mutters, squeezing Will’s hand around the edge of the book.

“Okay, no hospital,” Joyce crosses to lay a hand on her children’s shoulders. Behind the heat of her gaze on him, Jim can see the same lost look he feels on his own face. “But we’ve got to find some way of keeping him alive because this isn’t going to work much longer.” 

“They had Max on a ventilator at the beginning, right, Lucas? That might help.” Erica nudges her brother in the ribs. He nods. 

“Dustin, what about your mom? Maybe she could help us sneak Steve into the hospital or something.” The older Sinclair asks.

“No. No way, dude. My mom can not get involved in this shit.”

“Dustin, it’s Steve.” Will sounds a little confused. Soft and inquisitive like he did before Hop left.

“Guys, my mom has the brain capacity of a chipmunk,” Hopper shoots Jonathan a look, who dutifully reaches out to whack Dustin’s arm, “Ow! Sorry, okay! I just meant that she found Ghostbusters scary, like nightmares for a week, if she knew about any of this her brain would explode.”

“She’s a nurse, Dustin, I’m sure she can handle a bit of gore.”

“Yeah, maybe! But not an alive decaying body in Hopper’s - who is supposed to be dead by the way - living room, okay? We’re not involving her.” 

And the kid has a point, Claudia Henderson is not exactly the solution he was hoping for. Any trust he had in Sam Owens had evaporated the moment he saw his daughter’s shaved head and he will not subject another kid to the government’s mad scientists. He curses the universe, himself, for not folding someone more useful, a doctor or a nurse, he’d take a goddam vet at this point, into their rag-tag crew. No, just children. More and more children every year. 

“Our mom took nursing classes in college,” Nancy announces, resting her hands flat on the table and looking around the room. Jim has, unfortunately, spent enough time with Wheelers to know this is one of their I’m-going-to-die-on-this-hill poses. 

“We’re talking intubation, feeding tubes, IVs, catheters. I don’t think a nursing class twenty years ago is going to cut it.” He strides to join the huddle in the kitchen. 

“Well, she’s the best we’ve got.” Mike shoots back mirroring his sister's stance over the kitchen counter. Jim rubs his head, why did his kids have to befriend the most stubborn siblings Hawkins? Hell, probably Indiana. 

“Great we’ve got a nearly-nurse. How are we supposed to get any medical supplies?” Erica crosses her arms. 

“We could raid the hospital?” Lucas throws out. 

God, he hates these kids. Why can’t Will’s friends be more like Will or Jonathan? 

“The lab probably has all kinds of medical supplies,” Jonathan suggests, and you know what he takes it back. 

“No! No lab, not with the town crawling with military and we have no idea if Owens has even tried to clear El’s name. Being here is dangerous enough without going knocking on their door. Let me make a call to a friend, see what he can get us.” Hopper pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to dispel the headache knocking at his temples. 

He pulls the phone into his and Joyce’s cupboard room, cord stretched tight. Pretends the curtain offers any kind of privacy. Decides not to question how quickly Murray says he can get them stuff. Tries not to wonder how much of it he already has lying around in this ‘safe house’. Touches the top of Steve’s head on his way back through.

“You’re gonna be fine, kid. Just sit tight.” He murmurs. Robin looks up at him with tired eyes. He gives her a small nod, hopes it seems more confident than he feels. “My contact can get us everything but a ventilator by tomorrow. Says it could take a few weeks to track one down.” 

“But we don’t have a few weeks!” Henderson shouts and Hopper ignores the hot glare Mike sends his friend. 

“Then we’ll find another way, won’t we, Hop?” Joyce holds his gaze across the room. 

“Sure. Let’s look at our options.”

It feels almost normal - the planning stage. They decide that the hospital is their best bet. And even with his knowledge of the Upside Down, if you’d ever told Jim he was going to be planning a heist on a hospital with a bunch of preschoolers he would have laughed his ass off at you. Maybe even referred you for a psych eval. But, here he is. 

“He needs a bed,” Jonathan says, “There’s no way we can hook him up to all this stuff on a couch.”

“We can take him back to his house,” Robin suggests, “His parents aren’t home.”

“They left without him?” Nancy asks, mouth pulling taut.

“They never came back, Nancy,” Robin says like she doesn’t know if she should pity Nancy or hate her. “There’s plenty of rooms there and we can take shifts staying with him. His neighbors are, like, all gone.” 

“No, it’s too close to town and it rules out me and El looking out for him.” He barely spoke to the kid before Starcourt but the idea of him being out of his sight makes his stomach flip now. 

“We have a futon,” Mike says eventually, “My mom won’t mind, we’re already involving her.”

Nancy drops Lucas, Erica, and Dustin off at the hospital to do some digging. Again, he can’t believe he’s sending children on reconnaissance, can believe they’ll probably do a better job than any of the officers he used to work with. They return late in the afternoon, Nancy produces a plan of the hospital she’d copied from public records at the library and what looks like a lifetime’s supply of medical textbooks. 

“Okay, so we found out from Max’s doctor that they got a new model of ventilators in a couple of months before Vecna. They kept a few of the old models in a storage room in case of emergencies.” Dustin says all in one breath, once they’re gathered around the kitchen table once more. 

“Do you know which one?” Nancy draws out the floor plan, pages overlapping on the kitchen table and Jim can’t help but think of Will’s scribbled drawings covering the floors and walls. 

“He said it was downstairs. I bet it’s one of these near the delivery bay because of the service elevator.” He points to a row of rooms on the map. 

The plan is piss poor in his opinion, not to mention the immortality of raiding the hospital of a town in crisis. Not that they really have a choice here. He’s not letting anyone else die. Besides, it’s not like they’re using the ventilator. Tomorrow, as it starts to get dark Erica and Lucas are to create a distraction in Max’s room so Dustin has the opportunity to kill the power, Jim cuts him off before he can explain exactly how he plans to do it. Plausible deniability. Jon, Will, and Robin are to sneak in through the delivery doors once the power is out and find which room the ventilators are in, sneak it out to Argyle’s getaway van in the delivery bay. Nancy, Mike, and Joyce are tasked with heading to the Wheeler’s to collect and indoctrinate Karen Wheeler. And, Jim and El are staying behind to look after Steve. 

Jim hears the sound of wheels on the dirt track outside. Glances at the clock on the wall ticking past three am, checks Steve’s breathing, and grabs his shotgun. Cocks it ready to shoot as the car rolls up, headlights off. He looks down the pointer as the car door opens. The figure stops, dressed in all black, and whistles like a bird. Hop keeps the gun ready, in case he’s wrong, and starts walking towards the car. 

“Bald Eagle reporting for duty,” Murray announces with a small solute. 

Hopper flicks the safety on, “It’s three in the morning.”

“My people work best at night and you did say it was an emergency. Traffic was a nightmare on the way here, by the way. Deadlocked all the way in, you’d think it was Disneyland or something.” 

“Har-Har,” Hop deadpans signaling for Murray to open the trunk. “How’s our mutual friend?” 

“Living the American dream, kids and picket fence still pending.” He opens the trunk to reveal two large suitcases, he opens them one then the other, “You’ve got your needles, your tubing, your intubation kit - harder to get ahold of than you’d think but my people are good - you’ve got saline, glucose drip, you name it.”

“I don’t even want to know where you got all this.”

“Good, because if I told you I’d have to kill you.”

“I’m already dead, remember?” Hopper says throwing a smirk over his shoulder as he grabs the larger of the two bags. “You staying?” They work their way towards the house. 

“Thought I might. I’ve got some vacation time saved up.”

They tuck the suitcases as out of the way as they can. Jim gestures to the smaller of the two couches and takes his place in the armchair next to Harrington’s head. Ignores Murray clattering around in the kitchen in favor of watching the mirror fog up with Steve’s breaths. 

“Keep going, kid,” He murmurs, arm coming to rest across the two chair arms, hand landing on Steve’s shoulder. 

Murray sets down two mugs on the coffee table, producing a flask from inside his jacket. He pours them both a shot and hands one to Jim. Lets his eyes flick to the hand on Steve then back to the coffee cup. He holds his mug out and they clink them together, “Congratulations, it’s a boy.” 

He can’t stop his hand from squeezing a little on the kid’s shoulder. Knows Murray is joking but Harrington feels like his responsibility now. He can’t back down, however much the suitcases of medical supplies eyeing him from the corner make him want to.  He knows from experience just how messy this is going to get, feels that he is too frayed to go through it again. But the kid’s got no one and he chose to come to Jim for help and that means something. He’s letting it mean something. Murray’s chatter turns to snoring after a while and Jim gets to town on a book of crosswords he got for El their last Christmas together. Rouses Steve a few times, tries not to get agitated at the way Murray’s breathing is too loud to hear Steve’s over. Joyce comes out early, before the sun, hums at the sight of Murray passed out on the couch, and sends Jim to get some sleep. Despite his exhaustion and access to a proper(ish) bed, he sleeps fitfully. 

He manages to contain his growing uneasiness until the house clears out, Murray tagging along with the hospital party. He desperately wants a cigarette, to step outside and slosh some of his boiling-over nerves onto the grass. He doesn’t though. Doesn’t leave the kids alone. Stares at the boy laid out on his couch and can’t believe that he’d been fighting a war when he was that age. Can’t believe he didn’t realize how young nineteen was when he was nineteen. And despite all the peace marches and all the men lost on both sides, the government hasn’t learned a thing. Is still drafting kids to fight in wars they crafted in boardrooms and laboratories. Just because it’s just a different breed of war, doesn’t change who gets actual blood on their hands. 

“You should read,” El says turning off one of the endless number of VHS tapes that keep appearing in his house.

“What?” 

“I can hear you thinking,” He has no idea if she’s picked up that phrase whilst he’s been away or if she’s being literal. “So,” She hands him the book from the coffee table, “You should read to us.” 

His reading is choppy, eyes drifting away from the page to the phone on its hook or the door or the clock. He has no idea how he would bail a bunch of children out of jail if the phone does ring. Maybe he could harness the shock factor of him being alive and slip them past Powell. His eyes cast themselves around the room they land on Steve’s fingers twitching, his eyes are fixed on Jim’s face, open for the first time in days. He reaches without thinking for the hand, almost scrabbling over the furniture. He can feel shaky letters being drawn against his palm. M - A - he turns his eyes back to the book still in his other hand. Keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the page, can’t bring himself to start reading before the third and final letter is drawn. X - there’s a car door slam outside and Jim looks up. Catches Harrington’s glassy eyes, slitted and blinking back closed but insistent all the same.  

“Nancy! Nancy!” He hears moments before his attention is drawn to the door clattering open and Nancy walking through, Mike not far behind. “Joyce, seriously? How can you be encouraging them with this? I know Mike has a big imagination but you and Nancy-” Karen Wheeler cuts herself off as soon as she lays eyes on Jim. Joyce puts a comforting arm around her when she stumbles backward. “You’re alive?” She says after a while. 

“Yes.” 

“We told you, mom! He went through a gate into Russia!” 

“Michael, enough!”

“They’re not making it up, Mrs. Wheeler.” He tries but her eyebrows are still knotted with disbelief. 

“El, show her your powers,” Mike demands. 

She looks to Jim and then to Joyce, both of who give her a nod and he really hopes that this isn’t a huge mistake. El stretches her hand out and a coffee cup comes flying out of the cupboard and flies across the room smashing against the wall nearest the door. 

“That was my favorite cup,” He says looking at the shards dusting the TV. El shrugs and wipes the blood from her nose. 

Karen is silent for a minute. “Michael Edward Wheeler, did you keep a Russian spy in our basement?” Her voice is shrill. 

“I’m not a Russian spy,” El says solemnly as a chorus of “She’s not a Russian spy,” echos around the room. 

“Look, if you want to be technical, she’s an American spy, but the point is everything we told you is true. See!”

“Oh my God,” Joyce guides her to a chair. “So all these years you’ve been… you two have been fighting monsters? I can’t believe… I thought it was puberty! I- I…” 

“It’s okay, mom. You couldn’t have known. We signed a lot of NDAs so we couldn’t tell you.” Nancy says taking her mom’s hand in her own. 

“But you’re children. You’re just children!”

Jim looks away guiltily, eyes drifting to Harrington on the couch, eyes once more closed.

“Karen, I know this is a lot, and I know that it’s terrifying so take a minute to get used to the idea, but then we need you,” Joyce says gently.

“Me? What on earth could you need me for? I’m a- Joyce, I’m a housewife!”

“Steve’s sick, remember, mom? We need you to help him because we can’t take him to a real doctor.” 

“Nancy, did you not hear me? I am a housewife, not a nurse! I can’t help him, I don’t know how.”

“Yes, you do. You know how to insert an IV and set everything up, and what you don’t know we’ll learn.” Nancy grabs one of the medical textbooks off the kitchen table, “You’re not just a housewife. I need you to do this, mom.” 

Karen Wheeler stares at her daughter like she’s a stranger and Jim feels responsible for that too. Karen scoffs in protest or disbelief but takes the book from Nancy’s hands. After she’s drunk a cup of coffee and Jim’s pretty sure she had a little cry in the bathroom, Karen Wheeler straightens her shirt, tucks her hair away from her face, and begins checking Steve over, muttering long-forgotten instructions to herself under her breath. Something about it makes the image of Nancy Wheeler grabbing a gun from him and shooting with precision make sense. Karen takes another moment to collect herself after seeing the bites on Steve’s stomach. Joyce follows her outside. 

“Are you okay?” Joyce asks, a pack of cigarettes open in her hands. She doesn’t know where they came from, thinks they might be Steve’s, doesn’t know who else would buy Marlboros. She offers one to Karen who shakes her head. 

Karen laughs a little, “You know, I’m almost relieved. I thought I was just a terrible mother. I thought my children just, I don’t know, hated me or didn’t trust me and that’s why they never told me anything. I know teenagers lie to their mothers, I know that, but they just shut me out completely. But this… all this, I— they’re a hell of a lot stronger than me. Than I ever realized they were.” 

“They’re kind too,” Joyce adds because she thinks Karen needs to know this, “Mike has always been such a good friend to Will and Nancy, Nancy is a force of nature. You should be proud to have raised kids with such big hearts.” 

Karen puts her head in her hands, tries to hide her tears. When she’s composed herself she gestures for a drag of Joyce’s cigarette. 

“I’m way out of my depth here.” 

“We all are. But somehow we usually come out on top.”

“I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a nurse.”

“I know, but you’re here and you’re willing and that’s more than anyone else. Besides, Steve can’t really feel anything at the moment so you don’t have to worry about doing it well.” She smiles through her fringe. 

Karen lets out a shocked laugh, “Jesus. What would John and Maria say if they knew I was doing backstreet medicine on their son?” 

Joyce laughs but thinks not much probably. 

“Joyce?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for thinking you were crazy,” She says quietly, full of shame. 

Joyce smiles, tucks their arms together, and steers them towards the door, “That’s okay, hun.” 

El stands next to Mike, watches his mom and sister pour over medical textbooks, watches the way they figure the motions out, stethoscope and needles, and all sorts of medical contraptions passing from hand to hand. 

“Bitchin’, huh?” She says with a cheeky smile, side nudging against him. 

“Yeah, bitchin’,” He replies, an attempt at a smile on his face. She turns back to the sight of Steve, now on the Wheeler’s futon, and tries to remind herself that there are bigger issues than this gap between her and Mike. 

“Do you think this will work?” 

He shrugs, “I don’t know. I hope so.” 

She smiles tiredly. 

“We did it! We did it! We got it!” Dustin comes barreling in.

“It was so cool! Some real MacGyver shit!” Lucas trips after him. 

“You literally just unplugged a machine and shouted for help, it was not that cool.” Erica chides from behind him. 

“Yeah, okay, so did you!” Lucas frowns. 

“It was pretty cool.” Will declares. 

“Do you know what would be cool? A little help!” Robin’s voice drifts in from the porch and Hopper steps out to help the four adults carry the heavy machine inside. 

El stares at it for a while, all gages and nozzles and vacuums. It looks like one of Dustin’s robots. Karen stares at it for a moment before she squares her shoulders. 

“Oh, you’ve already started?” Robin says forlornly. 

“Yeah, we figured there was no point in waiting for you to set up the rest,” Nancy says.

“Yeah, of course. I just, he’s afraid of needles…” She eyes the bags hanging off the coat stand behind him.

“He was asleep, Robin. And we were all here.”

“Right. Yeah.” She goes to move the coffee table so they can move the machine through, stops when she sees his watch lying on it. “What happened to his watch?”

“I don’t know. It was just like that.” Nancy says. 

“It probably broke when he fell the other day,” Joyce says soothingly. 

“He really loves this watch. Like, he loves this watch more than anything else.”

“It’s just a watch, Rob,” Nancy says almost defensively. 

“No, you don’t understand, his grandfather bought him this watch the day he was born or some other rich people shit and he, he really really loves this watch, Nance.” 

“I’m sure we can get it fixed,” Jonathan says coming forward to help her move the table. 

Anyone under the age of seventeen is banished to the porch, now decorated with a couch, so Karen Wheeler can figure out how to intubate in peace. They pile onto the couch and sit in silence. 

“He has maggots growing out of his stomach,” Mike announces after a long silence.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Jonathan tells him. 

“Not supposed to see it? Dude, I watched my mom scrape them out of him.” Mike snaps back. 

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with T.” Argyle cuts in. 

“Seriously, man? We’re trying to have a serious conversation!”

“’ N I’m trying to play eye-spy, amigo.”

“Is it a tree?” Will asks flippantly from where he’s squeezed between Lucas and Jonathan. 

“Dude, how’d you guess so fast?” 

“Jesus Christ,” The younger boy mutters into his hand. They lap back into silence.  

“Did your mom keep the larvae?” Dustin asks after a while. 

“What?” Mike asks.

“Did she keep them? So we can study them.”

“Oh, because you studying things always ends well for us, doesn’t it, Dustin.”

“Mike, you of all people should understand the importance of scientific exploration. How do we know if these are regular maggots or Upside Down Maggots?”

“Uh, I think it’s pretty obvious they’re Upside Down Maggots, given that they are growing out of his bat bites and he’s half alive!”

“Why are you even so mad? He’s my friend, you don’t even like him!” Dustin pulls himself off the couch, spinning to face Mike, who does the same. 

“Exactly, he’s your friend and you had the chance to help him and you didn’t!”

“It’s my mom, Mike!”

“Yeah, well now it’s my mom! You could’ve helped and you didn’t. You had an opportunity to save him and you didn’t take it. You didn’t save your friend! I never thought you’d be so selfish? What if it was Will? Or El? What if it was me?”

“It’s my —”

“Your mom, I know!”

“No, you don’t! You don’t know, Mike! Because you have Nancy and Holly and your mom and dad! You have a family and you don’t even like them! Your sister is a total badass and your mom just completed medical school in a day for Nancy’s ex-boyfriend. I don’t have that, I had two random high schoolers that I dragged into this goddam thing and now one of them is dead and the other one is dying! I only have my mom and I cannot drag her into this too because she’s not brave and she’s not cool like yours. I already have to look after her, okay, she’s been a wreck since my dad left and I,” He has tears streaming down his face, “She’s all I have, Mike. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t!” 

Mike stares wide-eyed at his friend. At another person he loves whose suffering he’s just completely blocked out. Stares at the faces of everyone on the couch. At the adults standing in the doorway now, watching them tear each other apart like a spectator sport. He seeks Nancy out in the crowd, not El or Lucas, but she turns her head away and goes back inside. His mom and Robin step forward at the same time. Robin crashing into Dustin, rocking them both back a few steps.  

“He’s not gonna die. He’ll be fine. It’s Steve, he’s always fine. You did the right thing.” She’s babbling talking all in one breath the way Dustin does when he’s excited. She pulls him back into the cabin. The crowd parting for them. 

His mom puts her hands on his shoulders, gently turns him to face her. He catches Will’s crumpled face amongst the rest. Looks his brave, cool mom in the eyes and cries. 

He throws himself at her like he’s twelve and only comes up to her stomach. Sees Hopper and Joyce herding the onlookers back indoors out of the corner of his eye. Clenches them closed and cries, wrapped in his mom’s arms, a wet patch growing on her shoulder. 

“Why can I never do anything? Why can I never help anyone?” 

He wants to tell her how he wishes it was him, him that went missing, him that was tortured, him that was possessed, just so that he doesn’t have to stand back and watch his friends save themselves. That he feels like a paperweight. Heavy and burdensome. That he doesn’t know how to tell anyone he cares, that he’s scared, that he loves them. That he can’t feel anything unless he’s angry. That he feels himself turning into his stony-faced father every day, a misty glass separating him from the world like a newspaper held in front of his face.

Chapter Text

“He’s sleeping,” El tells her one night that is probably technically morning. She’d come out of her room and tucked herself under the blanket Joyce is using. 

Joyce tries not to crinkle her brow. She knows El is a little behind in some matters, that she is not a child anymore and she’s not stupid. But, she also knows that she has yet to experience a lot of the world that other fifteen-year-olds probably absorbed without even realizing. 

“What do you mean?” She settles for because often El’s greatest issue is communication, not understanding. 

“In his mind. He’s still there, he’s not gone like Max, he’s just sleeping.”

“That sounds like a good thing. Right?” 

“Mmh. Most people think of things when they are sleeping. They dream or remember, but he is asleep inside his mind. It is weird.” 

“Well, you know, honey, this whole thing is a bit weird so I think it’s still probably a good thing.” After a pause where she draws El closer against her side, hands brushing against the curls starting to form in her hair, “Thank you for checking.” 

She means it. Lets it soothe one of the many streams of panic she has running through her. She’s glad that Steve came to them, asked for help, and she’s angry that he doesn’t have anyone of his own. She knows that he couldn’t have gone to them even if they were the most loving parents in the world but she has this righteous anger for anyone who fails to love the people they’ve promised to. Has done ever since Lonnie. Maybe since her mother, who was always too harsh and too punishing. Whatever the reason, she can’t help but care. Can’t help but want to usher another child into her horde just to prove a point of how easy it is. Wants to even though spending night after night watching a body on the couch is hard. There are moments, moments when she’s tired and close to sleep and the kitchen timer is about to go off and the TV is no longer distracting but rather soothing, that she looks at him and she sees the small and swollen body of her son being dragged out of the water. Or, when her hands have a little extra heat in them from taking the IV bag out of the microwave and swapping it the way Karen showed her, she thinks of trying to boil the mind flayer out of Will’s body, his sweat dripped over her hands and his screams shattering her heart. Can’t help but think of Jonathan planning a funeral when he was the age Will is now every time she catches Jim circling priests' names in the phonebook. And she doubts herself, not whether she should be doing this, not even when she realizes that her children have become very attached, Jonathan seemingly included despite their history and if they lose this could hurt them, that this might have been a bad idea for their sake. No, she doubts herself, because she isn’t sure she has it in her. Doesn’t know if she has it in her to get attached properly to anyone else, whether or not he survives. Thinks of the boy in her living room and wonders if she can give him what he deserves. She feels her body is so given to others, an open, frayed wire running out from her for each of the people she loves, for each of her children. All live, charged with every worry her brain and heart can think of. Hot and consuming. Even as she feels another one forming she doesn’t know where she’s going to get the energy. 

As El curls into her side, warm and asleep, she tries not to think of what this means for them. What the soft sound of the machine breathing life into Steve promises for her daughter, for her son, for all of them. Tries not to let the panic of an impending battle eat her from the inside out. Tries to treasure the feeling of El’s puffs of breath against her shoulder as a normal mother would. Tries not to wonder whether she’ll wipe away blood from the very same nose tomorrow after her daughter fights for a world that’s out to get her. Or the day after. Week after. Jim joins them a few hours later, a soft smile on his lips. He doesn’t try to get her to go to bed. Knows better than that. Instead, he plants a kiss on the top of El’s head then her own, draws his thumb over the heavy bags under her eyes. His way of telling her that he knows what she’s been worried about. Telling her that it’s okay. That she should rest. She mourns, sometimes, for what they’ve missed. For the first date that they have yet to have despite the fact that they live together and co-parent three children and a body. For all the small moments that should have existed before this silent communication was possible. Yearns for all the awkward miscommunications that they skipped over, for every hug that was supposed to be a kiss or fumbled confession of feelings. Wishes they had been able to watch their worlds merge starting at a restaurant table and ending in a nice house somewhere like Kennedy Street. Wonders, as he settles on the other side of El, barely fitting on the couch, with his arm slung around the both of them, if this isn’t better. If the difference between this and all her other relationships doesn’t make it mean something more. 

“I’ve been thinking…” He whispers but seems to chicken out.

“Well, that’s never a good thing.” 

He lets out a huff, a thing of comfort, a tired smile graces her face. 

“He asked me to sort out last rites if things looked bad. Apparently, his mom is catholic.”

“And you think things look bad.” It should be a question but they both know it doesn’t need to be. 

“I think they’re not looking better.”

“El says that he’s asleep inside his mind. That he should be dreaming or something, but he’s not.”

He hums in thought. 

“I thought you said no goodbyes?” She prompts when he gets a little lost in his head. 

“We did. I know, and he’s not going to die not if I can help it, but it’s starting to feel like I can’t help it. I promised him, Joyce.”

“But you don’t want to jinx it.”

“Uh-” He objects, “Yeah, I guess, something like that.”

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

“So, what do I do?”

“I think you do what you promised him. Then, we figure out how to save him. We’ve gone up against worse than a jinx.” She doesn’t tell him that the very thought of it makes her stomach churn, her heart rate pick up. She doesn’t have to, because his hand tightens against her shoulder and she knows that he feels the same.  

“Just this way, Father,” Jim says leading the priest up the steps of the Cabin. 

He sees the man tense and can’t exactly blame him. He’s led the guy into a town supposedly torn apart by the gates of hell and into a cabin in the woods. It’s a little serial-killer-esque even without the dying kid lying on a futon surrounded by stolen hospital equipment. Father O’Hara stops just inside the door. He looks at Steve with a tube in his mouth and IVs hanging off a coat rack. Eyes flicking up to where Will and El sit on either side of him, at Joyce and Jonathan hovering between the kitchen and the bed. Hopper wonders if he’ll report them to the police. Hopes it will be the least of Powell’s worries if he does.

“When you said your son was sick I didn’t realize you meant… what is wrong with him?”

“He drowned.” Will blurts out, ears going red with the lie almost immediately. 

“Drowned?” The man asks, face going slack. 

“Yeah, they brought him back but there was…um, brain damage.” It comes out sounding a little like a question. Jim prays the priest mistakes the nervousness in Will’s voice for emotion. 

“Excuse me if this is rude, but shouldn’t he be in hospital?”

“He was,” Jonathan replies quickly, hands in his pocket as he steps forward, “But what with the earthquakes they can’t offer palliative care so they sent him home.” 

The Priest opens his mouth but Joyce comes forward and brushes some hair from Steve’s face, “He’s too weak to travel far, we don’t think he’d survive the trip out of Hawkins.” 

Hopper wonders if they practiced this cover story in his absence. Hopes so, the idea of them being such great liars is a little concerning, however helpful. 

“So, please read him his rights,” El says seriously. 

Hopper has to bite his lip to stop a startled laugh from escaping, an effort only made harder by Joyce covering her mouth to do the same. Jonathan whispers Miami Vice just loud enough for Jim to hear and he has to stifle his laugh into a cough. Can’t help but think Harrington would find this whole charade hilarious. Hopes to hell that Maria Harrington would care that her son - that they had gone to this much effort, the whole lying is a sin thing aside.

“I can administer the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Do you know when his last confession was?” 

“Recently,” Hopper says a little too quickly, “Before the accident.”

They gather on one side of the bed, the priest on the other and they watch. Joyce squeezes his hand, tries to communicate to him that he’s done the right thing. She thinks it’s rather beautiful, she’s never been particularly religious, never took her boys to church, was too busy trying to save him to pray much when Will went missing. Had rather stopped being able to believe in much of anything after what they’d seen, but the Latin and the cross and all the oils, she understands the comfort of it. Hopes Steve can feel it too; is half tempted to ask El if he can, but knows that all she will be able to say is that he’s asleep.  

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Father O’Hara says as he takes her hand before leaving. Something heavy crawls into her. She wonders if this white lie might have been a mistake. If her brain is too tired to play the mourning mother without meaning it. 

She hopes that the rites have helped Steve, have given him some of the promised strength and peace because there is a growing unease in the air in the days that follow. The storm clouds darken, the thunder deepens, the flashes of red in the sky are sharper. Robin says some of the rifts have started burning again. She tells Joyce and Karen quietly while they clean Steve’s bites, scraping the larvae away before bandaging them and covering his stomach in cling film in an effort to stop them from growing or contain the rotting in some way. 

“Something’s coming,” She says quietly as she squeezes Steve’s hand. Joyce feels each of her tendrils of worry catch alight, the way it burns her heart, chokes her breath. 

She excuses herself outside for a moment. Lets herself cry for a moment, just a second because she feels it too. Sees the way Will is tensed, always looking over his shoulder. It’s coming and she’s not ready. She sees the pizza van pull up, tries to wipe at her face. 

“You okay, mom?” Jonathan asks, pulling away from Nancy and Argyle.

“Fine. I’m fine, honey. It’s just all a bit scary.” She tries to arrange his hair so you can see his eyes. Wishes he’d let her cut it. 

He catches her hands, brings them together, “I know, mom.” He smiles at her, still so tentative just like he used to after Lonnie left. She thought he’d grow out of it at the time. Thought she’d see his toothy grin again, but it never came back. Just the tightlipped curve, that constant reminder of her failure to protect him. “Come inside, mom.” He leads her by the hand. 

“Robin,” Nancy says, hands behind her back. “We’ve got something for you.” 

Robin looks up, chewed thumb still in her mouth and the other hand wrapped around Steve’s hand, goosebumps be damned. 

“What is it?” 

“Come see,” Nancy holds out a box. 

Robin bounds over, brows furrowed with curiosity. 

“His watch,” she says, fingers running over the new glass. “How’d you guys afford this? The guy I called said it would be like eight hundred dollars!”

“I had some spare gas money,” Argyle says with a loopy smile.  

“We thought maybe you’d want to look after it for him until he wakes up.”

Robin looks down at the watch, at Steve on the couch, then back at Nancy.

“Would you mind… I think Henderson should have it. Until he wakes up.” 

Nancy nods, and then Robin is hugging her, chest heaving a little like she might be crying. She hugs Argyle and Jonathan too. Whispers thank you in each of their ears. 

“The money was for you,” Jonathan says as they’re making their way out to the Wheeler’s station wagon later.

“What?” Robin turns sharply almost tripping over a root. 

“Steve gave the money that we paid for the watch with to Argyle to get him back to Cali. He’d been saving it for if you had to leave Hawkins. We thought you’d want the watch fixed so we spent it but, I thought you should have the rest,” He digs his hands into his pocket and hands her a wad of cash. “I thought you should know. I… I know he means a lot to you, Nancy says you guys aren’t—”

“We’re not!” She says still staring at the cash in her hands, “Jonathan, this is like four hundred dollars.”

“Like I said, you guys clearly mean a lot to each other. I hope I get the chance to get to know him. He seems… better.” 

“He is.” She’s still staring at the money. 

The thunderstorm finally breaks that night. Sleety rain pouring down over the entirety of Hawkins, reaching out further than the clouds it seems to be coming from. Joyce and Hopper both choose to stay awake with Steve, a swirling feeling in both their stomachs that say, this isn’t natural. Jonathan and Argyle take their room, trying to escape the heavy thuds of hail against the roof of the van. They turn the space heater on, pad Steve’s blankets with old heating packs, and hope that he just feels colder because they’re worried. 

“El?” She jolts awake. 

The room is dark, the occasional flash of lighting fights its way through the trees and curtains but other than the lump of Will asleep next to her she can’t see much. She’s about to shake him, ask if he heard that too, if it was him. 

“El? Please?” 

She knows that voice. Knows it’s not Will. She scrabbles, grabs the radio off the bedside, turns it to a static channel, feels for a t-shirt on the floor, wraps it tightly against her eyes. 

“Max?”

“El!”

She squints around her, lets the black water take shape into something else. Remembers this place. Draws back the curtain of the changing room. There’s no one there.

“Max!” El spins trying to find her. 

“What’s going on, El?” The voice is coming from the corner where wall meets mirror. 

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I remember… I just was with Lucas and I thought I was dying and then… and now I’m here.”

“I can’t see you. Where are you?”

“I’m at the mall. I can’t see you either. El? What’s happening? Did I die?”

El doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. She should call the hospital.

“El, am I dead?”

“I don’t, I don’t think so. You’ve been in the hospital. You’re in a coma, but I haven’t been able to find you.”

“A coma? For how long?”

“It’s been nearly a month. How are you here? Does he know you’re here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I was, I was with Lucas and I heard your voice and then I was here. A month?” 

“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much! I’m so sorry, Max.” 

“Wait you said he. We didn’t win?” 

El shakes her head, tears spraying out, “No, we didn’t. We think he’s still out there. We can’t find him. Where are you in the room?”

“I’m… I’m on the floor, in the corner.” 

El crawls into the corner herself, “I’m with you. I’m right here, we’ll figure this out.”

“Did everyone else make it?” 

El stays silent for a minute, she thinks of the boy Mike is always talking about. She thinks of Steve on the couch. 

“El? Are you still there?”

“Yes. Eddie died.”

“Oh.”

“And Steve is…”

“Dead?”

“He is in a coma, like you. We think it’s the bat bites. Maybe One. We’ll figure it out. I will save both of you. You should stay here. Stay in your memories and hide from him.”

“You’re leaving?” 

“I’ll find you. Just stay here.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Max says instead of agreeing. 

“I’ll find you and I’ll save you. I promise. Maybe, you should not call me again. In case he hears you.” 

“Okay. You’ll come back?” 

“I will come back.”

Will is sitting up staring at her when she tugs the t-shirt away from her eyes. 

“Checking on Steve again?”

“Max.” He goes to reach out, to comfort her as he usually would, “She’s there. She’s in a memory. I could not see her but I could hear her.”

“What? El, that’s amazing!” He rushes to hug her, she lets her tears seep into his shoulder. Finds herself laughing a little until the room is once again found by the lightning. 

“El? Will?” Joyce’s voice floats through the door, followed by some light knocks. 

El tugs the door open, “Max is awake!”

“In her mind,” Will adds as they spill out into the living room. It’s somewhere between night and morning and Steve looks gray in the light of the lamps. 

“What does that mean?” Hop asks, shifting over so there’s room for them on the couch. 

“I spoke to her, she’s not gone anymore.”

“But what does that mean, El?” He says more seriously. Draining her of some of her joy. 

“Maybe he’s dead?” She says quietly, “Or maybe she just got better.”

“He’s not dead,” Will says, eyes on the windows. “He’s angry.” Joyce winds her hands into his hair, pretends he smaller than he is. 

“Maybe because Max escaped.” 

“How’d she do that?” Ever the police officer.

“I don’t know. She didn’t know and she’s not all the way back.” 

“Maybe he’s losing control,” Will says, eyes still on the windows being pelted with rain. 

They get sent back to bed after they’ve called the hospital, made sure Max is okay. Joyce doubts they’ll sleep, but there’s nothing they can do now. She curls back into Jim’s side and prays that this is a good thing. That this isn’t part of One’s next attack. The rain persists through the next day, doom in the sky and making the roads slick, especially the track in and out of the cabin, preventing the others from coming out. They spread the news about Max over the radio. Jonathan writes down each theory as it comes through muffled and contorted. Dustin calls and Joyce holds the phone, cord stretched thin to Steve’s ear for nearly twenty minutes before her hand cramps. She forces Hop to try and get some sleep, his cheeks quickly turning gaunt once more despite the way she’s feeding him. 

“I saw her! I saw her and I touched her!” El comes running out of her room so late in the night it is technically morning. She has tears in her eyes, conflicted joy and sorrow. “She’s getting stronger. Better.”

Joyce hugs her tightly, sees Will’s shadow in the doorway, and knows he’s thinking the same thing. If Max is getting stronger then perhaps Henry is too. She wonders if it has settled at the top of his stomach, cold and painful the way it has in hers. 

“El, have you checked in Steve’s mind recently?” Will asks her after another session on the radio. Another chorus of baseless ideas. 

“No.”

“I think you should.” 

Joyce’s hands grip around the plate she’s drying. She doesn’t move, doesn’t put it down or stop its dripping as she listens to El fiddle with the TV, or the shifting of fabric as something is tied around her head. 

“El? What is it?” Will says after a long time and Joyce puts the plate down in the rack. Turns to look at the scene across the room. At Argyle and Jonathan's abandoned card game on the couch. At Jim asleep in the armchair. At El’s arm clasped in Will’s hand. At her wide teary eyes. 

“I can… feel him, but I can’t see him.” 

“He’s not in his head anymore?” Jonathan voices her thoughts for her. 

El shakes her head, eyes brimming with tears. 

“But you can still feel him?”

“I- it’s not empty, like Max.”

“Well, what’s there? What’s in his head?” Will presses. 

“The storm. It’s black but there is the storm. And it is cold.” 

Will shivers and looks out the window. Joyce only lets herself breathe when his hand stays firmly rooted on El’s arm, doesn’t drift up to his neck. Tugs the cloth she’s still holding tightly around her hand. Max is coming back and Steve is disappearing. That thought, that moment, and she realizes she’s attached. That the thought of losing Steve starts to plant its seeds, thorny roots digging into her bruised heart. Lonnie used to give her ultimatums. Do this or there’ll be consequences. You wouldn’t want the boys to come in here, would you, Joyce? No? Well, then we’d better be quick and quiet. She’s always hated them. This or that. Steve or Max. She’s sat vigil at both their bedsides. Knows how much they both mean to her children. Lets the cloth pinch her hand numb so she doesn’t have to think about choosing. Doesn’t have to acknowledge that she already knows her answer, just like always did. Feels the weight of this clamp down on her shoulders like two hands, controlling and urgent. A choice that isn’t a choice. 

Jonathan and Argyle offer to stay up with Steve so she and Hop can have one night together. She’s been trying to put less on him. To ask him for less. To spoon a little less onto his plate, let him be a teenager. Look past the pot and the dangerous driving because she’d been up to a lot worse at his age and had earned it a lot less. But she takes him up on it because she is tired. She feels raw and tired and the idea of a night in a bed with a man that she’s trying to let herself love seems like a nice reprieve. Even though they hardly ever sleep the whole night together and more often than not she wakes in a sweat to find he’s moved onto the floor. There’s a weak part of her that just doesn’t want to look at Steve. To watch over him. To worry over him, when the outcome seems so certain. She goes to sleep thinking of jinxes. 

“Will, you okay, buddy?” Jonathan asks as the door facing him opens.

Will doesn’t reply, instead walks toward him. Jonathan moves over, clearing a space on the tiny couch for him. Will stops by Steve’s head, seems to stare at his face in the dim light, at the machine breathing for him. A habit Jonathan’s caught himself doing a few times. He turns his head towards the TV, the moment seems somehow private. Or perhaps, Jonathan doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to see his brother's open affection for someone he has such mixed feelings about. Steve’s voice in that alley floats behind every thought and feeling he attaches to the guy. Like a ghost. There’s a soft whoosh, a quiet silence in the room that doesn’t feel right anymore, like the empty space on the couch next to him. He turns back to find Will still looking at Steve’s face, fingers on the dials of the ventilator. His brain clicks at a hundred miles an hour. The lack of the airy pumping of the machine suddenly feels like a vacuum in the room. 

“Will, what did you do?” He springs from the couch, fingers reaching for the machine. 

Will grips his wrist with bruising strength, head turning to his brother, eye’s rolled up into his skull. He uses the contact to pull Will away, backing them toward the bathroom. 

“Argyle turn it back on!” He says, pulling Will into a firm grip against his chest, “Will, wake up. Wake up!” 

Joyce and Hopper come stumbling through the curtain. 

“Jon, what’s going on?” His mom mumbles, voice addled with sleep. 

Hopper is already pushing Argyle out of the way, setting the machine back right. The hand on his arm goes slack. 

“Mom? Jonathan?” Will’s voice asks, sounding years younger with fear and half asleep.

Chapter Text

She knocks on the door, thinks it’s more polite than ringing the doorbell at this hour. Will tucked into her side like he’s still small enough to fit under her wings. Karen opens the door, robe pulled around her waist. 

“Joyce? Is Steve alright?”

Will turns his head into her neck and she can feel the heat of tears against her skin. 

“Steve’s fine. We need, could Will stay here?”

“Of course, come in.” 

“I’m so sorry to disturb you guys, it’s an emergency.”

“It’s fine. Holly and Ted left for his sisters before the rain started, I thought it’d be safer for her. Not that I wasn’t tempted to take the others too, but I didn’t think I’d win that battle.”

“No, probably not,” Joyce says and she’s tempted to try and smile but she doesn’t have it in her. 

“Will, sweetie, why don’t you go have a shower, you look freezing. I’ll set up the trundle bed in Mike’s room for you.”

He seems reluctant to pull himself from his mom’s side but he agrees. 

“Joyce, what happened?” Karen asks more seriously, peeling the soaked jacket from around her shoulders and pressing a hot cup of tea into her hands. 

Joyce tries to gather herself, the shaking of her hands creating riptides in her tea. Her first attempt at speech comes out breathy and incomprehensible. She sits at the dinner table. 

“He was possessed again,” She lays her head in her hands, heavier than it’s ever been. “He turned off the ventilator,” She hears Karen’s sharp intake of breath, “He doesn’t remember, he doesn’t…” She chokes on a sob. “It’s not safe for them to be in the same place. It’s probably not safe for Steve at the cabin anymore but—”

“We’ll figure that out. You can stay here. I’ll go make up a bed for you both.” 

Mike and Nancy are sitting at the top of the stairs. Shoulders touching and faces that tell her they were eavesdropping. A lifetime ago she might have scolded them for it. 

“Nancy help Mike make up the bed. I’ll be in Holly’s room.” 

They stand, Nancy pushing Mike ahead of her and all three of them pretend that it’s not a flimsy excuse to offer him comfort. 

“Have you got something warm for him to wear?” She asks as he pulls the sheets out of the closet. He nods and slowly digs out one of the fleeces their grandmother gives them for Christmas each year, adding it to the pair of pajamas he has scrunched in his hands. “Go leave them outside the shower, Mike,” she says with a huff as he stands listlessly in the center of his room. 

She makes the bed, a winter blanket on top. Mike returns, he looks ash white, hands hanging limply at his sides. Expression blank. Like most of this year. Nancy turns to leave, to check on her mom or maybe Mrs. Byers. Puts a hand on his shoulder as she passes, she lets out a surprised squeal as he grabs her. Hands curling around her waist and head dropping to her shoulder. 

“Nance…” He whispers. 

She finds herself at a loss, they rarely do this, only in moments of crisis, at the end of a long fight where they’re both glad to be alive. She supposes they’re heading that way. That maybe it’s just caught up to him early. She finally unfreezes her arms, securing them around his shoulders. Holding him up in a way that she hasn’t done since she started school, lost interest in the brother she came home to, when he became annoying. She thinks of the picture that lives on the mantlepiece, the one of them at their grandparents' house, her chubby arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders and his baby fingers locked around her sleeve. Thinks of her mother’s words. You’re just children. 

“Mike,” She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say, doesn’t know what he needs to hear, doesn’t really know him at all these days, “I know it’s hard but you need to be strong. For Will.” For Steve, she thinks but doesn’t say because she doesn’t know what it is that she’s let him mean to her.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. If there’s one thing you have always done, it’s be there for Will, for all your friends. Just be there for him now.” 

She thinks of his baby fingers squeezing her sleeve, pulls them apart. She looks him in the eyes, waits for a second until she sees them harden with stubbornness. She gives him a small nod, reassurance or approval she’s not quite sure but it’s enough to bolster him. To leave him standing on his own. He thinks about Dustin’s words, he thinks about his mom and sister who are staying in a dying town to fight a battle for his friends. Clenches his hands as Nancy walks out and prays that he’s made up of his mother not his father. He sits on the edge of his bed and waits for Will. Listens as the pipes stop their thrumming and the bathroom door creaks like it always does after someone’s had a long shower. Hears the soft padding footsteps of someone who has always been so unsure of their existence. The sound is one he’s known since he was five, as familiar as his mom’s or Holly’s. He listens as Will lingers outside the door. As he turns the handle. As he lets himself in. As he closes the door behind him. Only looks up when he doesn’t hear Will turning around to face him. 

“Will?” He doesn’t answer and he doesn’t turn. “Will you’re shivering. Get under the blankets.”

Will does, keeps his eyes fixed on the carpet, and slides under the layers of bedding Nancy made laid out for him. Curls so his back is still facing Mike. 

“Are you okay?” He watches as every muscle in Will’s body tenses before he nods, “Friends don’t lie, Will.” 

“Are we still friends?” He whispers. Mike thinks of the thousands of whispered conversations they’ve had in this room. Thinks of how not a single one has ever sounded like that. 

“Of course. Why would you say that?”

“I tried to… to kill someone tonight, Mike! Not just someone but Steve.”

“No, you didn’t. Will, you were possessed, that wasn’t you. And, besides, my girlfriend has killed multiple people, so, even if you had it wouldn’t stop m— I wouldn’t care about you less.”

“This is serious.”

“I’m being serious. Nothing could stop us from being friends, Will.” 

Will makes a sound that is smothered by his pillow. 

“I don’t want to lose control of my mind again.” He says it quietly, the way he had when he’d first told Mike that he was scared of his dad. 

 Mike feels that same helpless feeling open pit in his stomach. He can’t promise that it won’t happen. Can’t stop it. 

“We’ll save you again.” 

“What if I don’t deserve it?”

“Don’t say shit like that, Will!”

“No, I’m serious. What if I don’t? What if we started all this with our campaign, what if I’m the reason that monsters came into the real world, what if it’s my fault that Bob died? That Barb and Billy and Eddie all died? What if it’s my fault that Steve is dying?”     

“What if it’s mine?” Mike blurts out. A thought that has been slowly building in the back of his mind since the words cause and effect were muttered. 

“What?”   

“I’m the dungeon master, Will. I wrote the campaigns. I introduced the Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer. All of it, it would be my fault, not yours.”

“But—”

“What if it’s El’s fault? She’s the one that opened the gate. She’s the one that sent One there in the first place. What would you say if I blamed her?”

“She was tortured, Mike. It’s not her fault. She was made to do all that.”

“Exactly! So were you. Any of the bad stuff you’ve done was because of the Mind Flayer. Because of One. None of this is your fault.”                                                                                                                                                                      

“It still feels like it.” 

“Well, it’s not.”

They slip into silence. Mike goes to lie under his covers. 

“I like him.”

“Who?”

“Steve, I - he’s a really cool guy. He’s a good listener, I get why Dustin likes him so much.” 

“Yeah, I mean, he’s okay, I guess.” 

Mike thinks he sees Will’s ears rise as he smiles. 

“I can’t imagine the house without him. It feels like he’s always been there. Kinda like El and Hop.” 

“What you want to, like, adopt him now or something?” 

“No. I dunno, Hop has a tendency to pick up strays.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Do you think he’ll forgive me?”

“I don’t think he’s got anything to forgive you for. And, he’s an asshole, but he’ll agree with me. But if he doesn’t then I’m sure he’ll forgive you. The dude’s a total wet blanket.” 

“El likes him,” If his voice wasn’t so tired it’d sound teasing.

“Yeah, but El likes most people.”

Will turns over, looking at the throw on Mike’s bed instead of at him, “Thanks, Mike.” 

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.” 

Will hikes the blankets higher around his head, “How? We’re so far behind. We don’t even know what’s going on. We barely know who we’re going up against.”

Mike feels his fingers tingle with fear, “I don’t know, but we always figure it out.”

“He can see everything we’re doing, Mike. He can use me. He can get to all of you through me.”

Mike thinks of Will in a hospital bed with electrodes all over barely able to recognize his own mom. Thinks of Max in head-to-toe casts. Of El with a shock collar around her neck. Of his mom picking maggots out of Steve’s guts. Of Nancy’s description of Henry. 

“Do you think you can get to him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you guys are connected, right? With the Mind Flayer or the Hive mind. Do you think you could, you know, spy back through him?” 

Will finally looks at him. Eyes are, and darker than Mike remembers them being. His brows are puckered slightly with fear and mike wishes they were younger, smaller so he could reach out and hug him. Wishes he’d never suggested it so Will would stop looking at him like that. 

“I can try.” 

“Really?” Mike sits up, scrambles to the edge of the bed. 

“Yeah, I’ll try, but you have to knock me out if anything goes wrong.”

“How will I know if it’s gone wrong?”

“If he takes over me again.” Will averts his eyes. 

“Do you… do you think it would help to have static like El?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

They creep downstairs, the lights are off, the murmured voices of their mothers talking are inaudible by the time they reach the basement steps. Mike has left it mostly unchanged since Will left. Entirely unchanged actually. The only differences are the clear marks of Holly being down there when she shouldn’t be - a doll left between the sofa cushions and scribbled drawings on some of the plans of campaigns that mike has never moved off the sideboard. Will gives him a look, a little questioning and hopefully, a little accusatory. He ducks his head and b-lines for the TV flicks it to static and digs around in one of the costume boxes for something to use as a blindfold. Ties it for him as they sit on the couch, feels the way Will stiffens when he’s left in the dark. 

“Can…”

“Yeah?”

“Can you hold my hand?” Will asks, voice shaking. 

Mike doesn’t reply. Just slides his fingers into Will’s. Hopes, perhaps extremely selfishly, that it makes a difference. Mike doesn’t know where to look. Doesn’t know what to focus on other than staying still and quiet. Bites into his own fist when Will’s grip on his fingers tightens. Starts looking for something to knock him out with when his head starts twitching, nose wrinkling and unwrinkling. He’s sure that under the blindfold his eyes are flying from side to side. Decides he could reach the lamp on the table if he really tried. His hand is squeezed impossibly tight. His teeth draw blood from his knuckle when he bites down harder to stop from crying out. Stays quiet. Keeps an eye on the speed at which Will’s chest is pumping air in and out. Wonders, like a scared child, if this was a mistake. If they should have told Nancy or Joyce or anyone. If he’s just persuaded his friend to walk into his death. Feels tears prick at his eyes when he sees a trail of blood drip from Will’s chin. Lets them fall when he realizes it’s only coming from his mouth and not his nose. Hears his bones creak as they scrape together in Will’s hold. 

“Will! Will?” He leans over, tearing the blindfold away as Will collapses back against the couch. His blood mixing with Will’s across his cheek. Their hands still tied together, more loosely now. “Will?” He taps at his face, brings their interlocked hands to cup his other cheek. 

Will’s eyes shoot open, and his face looks tired, bags worse than they were minutes ago. 

“Will? Did it work?”

His eyes flick to Mike’s hands on the side of his face, before finding a landing place in Mike’s gaze. 

“It worked,” His voice is raw as if he’d been screaming. Mike doesn’t want to think about that. 

“You could see him? You found One?”

“Not exactly. I… I think I went into the Mind Flayer’s mind?” His voice wobbles like Holly’s just before she starts crying over her dinner. 

“Like the hive mind?” 

“No, not exactly. They’re all connected but it, it has its own mind.”

“What was it thinking?” 

“I don’t know. It wasn’t, I — I could understand it but it wasn’t human. It didn’t have thoughts. But, the, the hive mind isn’t One’s. It existed already— he’s joined it but it’s…”

“He’s a parasite!” 

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly. A parasite.”

“Did he know anything about One’s plan?”  

Will scrunches his face in pain, tries to draw his hand to his forehead only to find Mike’s still attached. 

“The quarry,” Will sounds exhausted, “He’s in the quarry, and he’s got all these, like, tentacles connecting him to it.”

“The quarry? Where Steve saw his body?” 

Will nods, eyes hollow with exhaustion, “He’s feeding on him.”

“A new host. In our world.”

“Except unless he can drain his host completely, he’s not strong enough to stay in control of the Hive mind.”

“He needs Steve to die to come back.”

“He needs Steve to die,” Will confirms, tears lining his lashes.

Chapter Text

“Will?” 

“Micheal?” Their mothers’ voices call from the top of the stairs. Shortly followed by their footsteps. “Boys?”

“We’re here,” Mike says, dropping his hands from Will’s face, stepping back so they’re not pressed so close.

“What are you doing down here? What happened?” They step toward Will in unison, the blood still smeared on his cheek. 

“I bit my tongue. I’m fine.” He says quietly, using the sleeve of Mike’s fleece to rub it away. 

Joyce looks pale and tired. Tears of fear mirroring Will’s own. He wishes he could be someone else, someone who caused her less worry. Less grief. Less pain. Wishes he was a boy instead of a vessel. 

“We figured it out.” He says in the morning, sat around the Wheeler’s breakfast table, his mother in Holly’s usual seat, and him in Ted’s. 

“Figured what out?” Nancy says as she picks at the crust of her toast. 

“What’s happening with Steve. Something is linking him to Vecna, he’s draining Steve’s energy to recover, but we’re keeping Steve alive so it’s not working.”

“How on earth did you figure that out?” Karen asks, eyebrows knitted into the curls of her fringe. 

He looks at Mike across the table, wonders if this should be one of their secrets. He’s always been good at secrets. Good at secrets, bad at lies. Wishes it could be. That he could secret away this facet of himself along with all the others that pile shame onto him. Wishes that he didn’t have to admit to anyone ever that he’s a freak. In every sense of the word. Knows that he can’t hide this one. That it’s too much to ask Mike to hide it too. He doesn’t like to think about if he can even still trust Mike to hide it. Mike who can keep his girlfriend hidden from his family and the government but constantly tosses around Will’s secrets like they mean nothing. 

He opens his mouth a few times, tries his best to admit it and when he can’t he finds himself turning to Mike again. 

“I thought that Will’s connection with the Mind Flayer might go both ways, so we tested it out and it did.” 

“That’s what you were doing in the basement?” His mom says and gone is her frantic energy, instead, she sounds almost shell shocked. Will can’t swallow his toast, the jelly is too sweet and the bread too burnt.

He manages to mutter yes, but not to look her in the eye. He lets Mike tell the others over the radio, stays silent, fingers squeezing the material of Mike’s sweats that are slightly too big on him. When the doorbell rings suspiciously soon after their radio conference, Will is half expecting the military to be on the other side waiting to drag him away. Drag El away. Instead it’s Dustin, crutches nowhere in sight and soaked to the bone. 

“Dustin? What are you doing here? How did you even get here?”

“My mom dropped me off on the way to the hospital. I came to check on you.”

“Why?” Will replays Mike’s awkward and stilted account of him trying to murder Steve in his head.

“Why? Dude, you’re my friend.”

“But… I ne— Steve!” Is the best that he can articulate. 

Dustin looks at him, and Will thinks if they were younger - if this was less serious - he’d be pulling that face where his jaw hangs and his eyebrows disappear under his cap. The one he used to make when someone said something really stupid in science class. Now though, his jaw is clenched and his eyebrows are furrowed. 

“Will, that wasn’t you. You would never.” 

Will thinks of Mike’s words from last night, the ones he let him say for a bit before it hurt too much to hear. He thinks that he must have all these people brainwashed. That none of them have looked at him since he was twelve, that none of them have noticed that he’s grown into a thing with a rotten core. That he is made up of the same slimy substance that he was rescued from. He feels as fake as the body Hop pulled from the quarry all those years ago. 

“I wish people would stop saying that.”

“Stop saying that you’re not a killer?” 

“No, that I’m good or innocent or whatever it is that you’ve all gotten it in your head that I am. You all think… you’ve put me on this pedestal where I can never do anything wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s like, like you all went out and you fought all these monsters because you had to save me… I just had to be saved and I dragged you all down with me and now, now you all treat me like… like I’m still the kid who went missing and you all grew up without me.” 

“Will… I - you fought more than any of us. And you did it alone. You’re braver than all of us put together. I did what? Stood behind El, stood behind Steve, you fought all the monsters. And, I don’t think you’re some innocent kid. I think you’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met and my best friend and I think you don’t enjoy hurting people because for as long as I’ve known you you’ve gone out of your way to avoid doing it. So, you’re not a kid but you’re also not a killer.” 

Will doesn’t quite believe him. Doesn’t quite let the words perforate the surface all the way. But Dustin has always told it how it is, he’s never been one for flattery or lies or in all honesty, tact. So maybe it means something. Maybe it means that Steve will forgive him if Dustin can. 

“I’ve been thinking about Kas.” He says because he can’t acknowledge it, can’t give Dustin the reassurance he deserves. 

“You think it could be Steve? Because he was bitten?”

“No, I mean, he’s supposed to be a loyal servant that betrays Vecna, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, Forget the whole vampire thing, I don’t think that’s important. What if… if I could persuade the Mind Flay to betray Vecna?” He says it quietly, partly because it sounds stupid even to him and Dustin is probably the smartest person he knows, but mostly because he’s not sure he can actually do it. Dustin’s wrong - Will's survived plenty, but maybe that’s all he is, a survivor not a fighter. 

“Do you think he would?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, One came in and re-landscaped their home, forced them all into this crazy revenge plot, and got a bunch of them killed, I wouldn’t be too happy about it.” 

“But, is it safe? Can you do it without him finding out through the Hive mind?”

“He’s pretty weak at the moment,” they look away from each other instead of lingering on why that is, “I don’t think he’s really in control.”

“Then, I say we fight some monsters.” 

The Wheeler’s living room feels full and too exposed for the conversation they’re going to have. Will sits in the middle of it all: of Lucas pacing from the tv to the recliner and back again, of Robin making the coffee table shake with her bouncing feet, of Nancy tacking poster paper against the wall, of his mother’s hand on his knee, of Dustin and Erica bickering about something, of Mike leaning against the window watching for the others. 

“They’re here!” Mike says causing everyone in the room to halt and wait for the front door. 

“What took you so long?” Robin squawks at the sight of her drenched friends. 

“There’s a lot of military rolling in, we had to hide the van,” Hopper says shouldering past the crowd. Will can’t quite suppress the shiver that runs up his spine.

“Who’s with Steve?” Will hears himself ask.

“Murray, so let’s make this quick,” Hop says, accepting the towel Nancy throws his way.

“Will has a plan!” Dustin announces. 

“What plan?” Jonathan asks and Will can see him cataloging Nancy’s pinched lips, their mother’s folded arms and tired eyes. 

“I’m going to get the Mind Flayer to betray One.”

“What? How?” Robin joins Lucas in pacing. The dance of it all makes Will a little dizzy.

“The way he got me to… you know, everything that he, I—”

“Your plan is to possess the thing possessing you?” Erica raises an eyebrow skeptically. 

“Kind of yeah, maybe more of a conversation…” He’s not a fighter, he’s not a fighter, he’s not a fighter, he can’t do this. He can’t save anyone. Not even himself. 

“Okay, so you get the Mind Flayer to turn. Then what?” Nancy asks, voice hard and a marker squeezed tightly in her hand. 

“I kill One while he’s weak,” El says locking eyes with the older girl. 

“How! How are you going to kill him? We need a real plan this time, we can’t just go barging into the Upside Down again! It won’t work!” Nancy says face flushing red. 

Will thinks of Steve’s gaunt cheeks, of his haunted eyes, his rotting skin. Thinks of him trying to muster enough energy to cry when he thought no one was watching. Thinks of Max wrapped up like a mummy and the way Mike had swallowed himself down a little more when he heard about Eddie. He looks at the way Nancy is squeezing the life out of the marker in her hands. 

“El can fight him in his mind again. If I can turn the Hive Mind against him, they can kill his physical form. Then when he’s dead El can seal the gates.” 

“That’s a lot of work for—”

“She can do it, Mike.”

“We both can.” She gives him a small nod. 

“What about Max?” Lucas asks, hands twitching where he’s shoved them into his pockets. “What happens to Max if you kill him?”

“She’s still in her memories,” El says, “He hasn’t followed her yet. If she stays in her head she is probably safe.” 

“Probably?” Lucas echos. El responds with a shrug, a surprisingly comforting one. El’s always good at that. At communicating on a better level than the rest of them. Of saying, or usually showing, what she actually thinks. Feels. 

“I will talk to her.” 

“Can you get into his mind without going through Max?” Mike says, and Will can’t help but fixate on the way he is clenching his hand behind his back where he thinks no one can see. Fixate on the split skin begging to reopen. 

“We know where he is hiding.” 

“Right, but you have nothing to piggyback off of this time.” He presses.

“If Steve and Vecna are connected you can piggyback off him, right?” Dustin adds. 

“You got any pizza freezers in this town?” Argyle asks the Wheeler’s cookie jar somehow in his hand.

A chorus of confusion ripples through the room.

“He’s right, we need a sensory deprivation tank.” Jonathan’s usually quiet voice cuts above the noise.

“The schools out, this town is about to be crawling with military and I’m bettin’ they’re looking for El.” Hopper rubs his face in his hands. 

“If we can get the salt our bathtub is pretty—”

“Steve’s pool is saltwater,” Nancy calls out abruptly. 

“Nance,” Jonathan whispers in the silence that follows. 

“The house is abandoned, it’s far enough out of town that there’s not likely to be any military and you can’t see the pool from the street if there is.”

“He hasn’t used it in years, it’s probably more dirt than salt,” Robin argues, twisting her ring around and around. 

“It’ll do.” Hop decides. 

“What about the rest of us?” Mike mumbles.

“Someone with Steve, El, and Will. And Max. The rest of us should guard the gates, make sure nothing comes out,” Nancy begins.

“What? No!” Karen pipes up. 

“Mom, if we don’t fight this no one else will. I know, you’re scared, but trust me it’s a hell of a lot less scary than the alternative.” 

“Nancy…”

“We can end this, Mom. We’re going to end this.” She maneuvers her mother’s hand from around her wrist and into her palm. “You’re going to stay with Steve, Mom. Joyce and Mike, you go with Will and El to Steve’s. Dustin will stay with Max—“

“But I thin—” Lucas starts.

“He’s got a bum ankle, he can’t fight, you can. Robin and I will take the Creel house gate, Murray and Hopper the lake, Lucas and Erica you’ll take the trailer park and Jonathan and Argyle can guard Fred’s gate.”

“Fine, but I need to get something from my house,” Will has never heard Lucas’ voice so grown up. So world-weary and desperate. 

When Lucas returns, dripping onto the Wheeler’s hardwood entryway he leaves the front door wide open and makes a bee-line for Will. Presses something small into his hand. Does the same to El. 

“What’s this?”

“Cause and effect,” Lucas says dryly.

Will turns his attention to his palm, finds a shoddily carved D20 staring up at him. He turns it over, the wood rough and unfinished, the numbers carved in with a ballpoint pen all reading twenty. 

“Did you make this?” El asks holding hers up. 

“Yeah, I’ve, uh, had a lot of sitting around to do and I just figured we, we need all the wins we can get. Right?”

“Dude, that’s so—” Erica starts.

“Lame, I know!”

“Smart, I was gonna say smart, asshole. About time we started playing dirty.” She kicks the back of his knee in. 

“Thanks, Lucas,” Will says quietly as he pulls him in for a hug. 

As they’re leaving he sees Lucas press something into Dustin’s hands. For Max. He clutches the die tightly in his hand, feels the sharp press of wood in the soft of his palm. He keeps it there, squeezed tight as they drive to Steve’s house. As they find the spare key exactly where Robin said it would be. As they pick their way through the house, cold and hollow. As they step over the dirty footprints that lead in from the pool. The glass doors are wide open waiting for them. Runs his thumb over every scratchily etched twenty as Joyce wraps a scarf from the entryway around her eyes. As El squeezes each of their hands before she steps into the pool, her die tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. As Mike taps him on the shoulder another scarf in his hand. As his mother brushes his hair from his face and kisses his forehead. As he steps into the pool. As he closes his eyes and focuses on the pressure that is always building in the back of his neck. Feels the rest float away from him. Feels the cold of the water become neutral. The pull of his clothes against his skin recedes. The hands holding him afloat. The feel of the twenty beneath his thumb. It was a seven. The roll - it was a seven. He feels it all at once. The sensation of climbing inside another being. Of existing within a consciousness. For a second he’s overwhelmed by the thickness, the darkness of the swirl of skin he’s in. Wants to crawl back to his mother. Instead, he focuses on the feeling. The pressure no longer in his neck, swirling in his stomach instead. Hot and hungry and not his own. He pulls at it until it grows until it consumes him. Until he hears the beast unleash a silent raw. Its own anger overtakes it. Feels his brain light up, fizzle and melt into thousands of the same thoughts igniting at once. 

The sky is black, holes of light appearing for a second before being swallowed in the storm of bats. The cliff of the quarry is full of demogorgons, demodogs, things Will has never seen. Screeching with pained anger. Clinging to the sides of the cliff as they maul at One’s tentacles. He is in the center of his web, writhing. Eyes wide and face slick with black wetness. Will feels a sick sense of satisfaction consume him, indiscernible from his emotions and the Hive. More tangible than anything else he’s felt since entering the pool. He hopes, in a moment of terrifying clarity that One knows he’s here. That he can see his eyes staring down through the Mind Flayer. That he knows Will is bearing witness to his pain. Causing it. That El is. That he will see their faces as they stamp him out. Wants to reach out and rip the thing apart with his own hands. Watches on as a leg made of dust cuts through One’s shoulder, feels the muscles being torn through as if it was his own skin. Tastes charred, acrid flesh on his own tongue as a demogorgon folds its petals into his stomach. Feels an overwhelming glee fill him as the man’s eyes roll back into his head, as the gush of black blood flows from what was once a nose. As the vines holding him up collapse and he crashes to the bottom of the quarry, into the waiting jaws of his former army. As he is ripped limb from limb, skin from skin, bone from bone, cell from cell. Watches a tiny black spider, not from this world, skitter out of his scull seconds before it is cracked. Tries to track it across the battlefield but it is lost in the sea of shimmering black bodies. There’s a moment of collective release. Of victory and peace. Will feels something shift. A stomach-lurching falling feeling. Feels his own body reform itself as the one he’s inhabiting does. Feels his limbs stretch out and dismember themselves as the sky around him fills with ashy swirls. Somehow, catches the spider below, catches it being smeared into the ground - guts spilling - as the vines retreat away from the splintered remains at the center of the quarry. 

He draws a strangled breath. Mouth filling with salt water. A buzzing in his ears and a hollowness to his chest. To all of him. There are hands on him, twisting him and pulling at him. He feels his side scrape against the side of the pool, rib by rib. Feels nimble fingers tug the scarf away. His eyes focus on Mike’s face. On his shaking blood coated fingers. 

“Did it work? Will? Did it work?”

His tongue doesn’t feel like his own. Not enough to form words. So he nods. Nods and squeezes his hand around the D20. Hears the splashing of El being pulled from the pool next to him. He reaches blindly for her hand. Breathes a little more like a human when she finds his. When his mom scrapes the three of them into her arms. Peppers their salty hair with kisses. When he locks gaze with his sister and knows that they will never be the same. 

“Code red! We have an emergency!” Murray’s voice crackles through the walkie-talkie somewhere behind them in Mike’s bag. 

“Murray, what’s going on?” Joyce breaks the embrace to scramble for the radio

“Uh, Uncle Sam is about to land in the eagle's nest!”

“What?”

“A lot of men with guns are about to storm the lake, Joyce!” Hopper’s voice comes through.

“Fuck! They’re here too.” Lucas chimes in. Shortly followed by Nancy and Jonathan. 

“Everyone get out of site. Get as far as you fucking can. And stay off the radio…” Hopper commands. 

Will clenches his hands hard, El’s fingers bending with him. 

“Uh, these guys are packing some serious gear!” Jonathan’s voice comes out panting, Will can imagine him running through the trees. 

“El, close the gates! Close the gates!” He’s shaking her. The feeling of freedom, of the Mind Flayer retaking its natural form, echoes through his body. “El!” 

“I’m trying!” She already has watery blood smeared all over her face. Congealed where it was trapped by the blindfold. He feels his own trickle a little as he holds her hand tighter. Wills the gates to close a little faster. 

“Our guys just tossed a backpack into the gate?” Erica’s voice comes through behind them. Will can hardly hear it. 

“Thought I told you shits to run.”

“We’re hiding!” 

“Close the gates, El!”

Chapter Text

She thinks of Kali as Will’s fingers squeeze around hers. She thinks of anger and pain and Max and Steve and this endless loss that seems to follow her. Of blackholes. Of terror and pity. Of standing in a white room with a man she trusts and doing what is asked of her. Of standing on a metal walkway with a man she trusts and doing what is asked of her. She thinks of skin breaking itself apart. Of skin being knitted back together. She feels it, the pop pop pop pop just seconds before the last of the gates closes in on itself. Feels Will feel it. The wave of concussive heat that gets swallowed back by the mouths into the other world. And just before she loses feeling altogether, she feels the ground beneath her tremble, try to shake itself right as she rushes to meet it. 

When she wakes it's to the familiar grumble of her dad’s voice, the one that has been in every dream she’s had since last summer. The one she’s heard every day before she opened her eyes and remembered. 

“Don’t go any closer, they’ve swarmed the cabin. I’m going to go check on Steve, you keep Will and El far away.”

“Wait— dad…” Her tongue doesn’t feel quite right, heavy with sleep and her eyes refuse to open all the way. 

A hand reaches through the seats, lands on her head, soft and stroking, “Good job, kid.” She leans into it. Listens as he does the same to Will. Thinks: this is nice. This is what I always wanted.  And then she slips back under, head resting on someone’s shoulder. 

Hands. There are hands on her. Under her arms, her knees. Pulling her, pushing her. She comes up kicking. Arms flailing. 

“Woah!” It’s just Hop. He readjusts her in his arms. Tells her it’s safe now. That he dealt with it. Carries her into the cabin, past a ghostly pale Karen Wheeler being held up by Nancy. Past Steve still sleeping on the futon, she twists to look at him, his bleary pale face no different than it was yesterday. Perhaps they failed after all. 

The next time she comes to she wakes fully. In her bed, her head still slightly stuffy with exhaustion, but mind churning with anxiety. She stumbles from the bed, the early light of morning spilling in through the curtains. She stops halfway to the door, fumbles back towards the window, legs loopy and uncooperative. The storm clouds have cleared. A dull spring sky blinks back at her, a low cloud of grey dust the only remaining sign of months of pain lingering over the town. She feels tears prick in her eyes. 

“Hey!” Joyce and her dad spring from their seats the second she slips through the doorway. They consume her for a second. A veil of flannel and ever-present cinnamon folding over her. She thinks for a second it is over. 

Then there is Mike. Mike who might love her, but he doesn’t know and neither does she but he is clutching her in his arms so tightly and burying his face into the spikes of her hair that have not quite turned to curls yet. And then there is Dustin, barrelling into her, wrapping his arms in the gaps left by Mike and they are children on a cliff-edge again. There is Lucas, a smile so wide it looks like his face will split in half, and she catches his eye from the side and he forgoes waiting his turn and flings himself into the bundle. Words are being chanted in her ear, and she is too tired and too relieved to work them out. To force them to take shape before they’re ready to. Her head collides with Dustin’s chin when they finally filter through. 

“She woke up?”

“She woke up! Only for a minute and she wasn’t very with it and actually, they made me leave the room, but she woke up!” Dustin rambles, chin bumping into the top of her head with each word. 

She squeezes her way out, surfaces for air. Can’t quite believe the swelling feeling in her chest. Then she sees. Sees Will fast asleep on the futon, squeezed into Steve’s side. Steve who is still attached to the machine breathing for him, still pale and gaunt and dead looking. Steve who is not awake. Her stomach pits out. She kneels at his head. Threads her fingers through his hair, closes her eyes.

“Jane, don’t—” Jonathan tries, she shrugs his hand off her shoulder. 

The rain is hard and cold against her skin, pooling into the ever-growing pool of water she stands in. It reminds her of the in-between, except the freezing water sloshes at her knees, heavy like a weighted blanket. The consuming storm clouds shroud her in inky darkness. 

“Steve?” She calls, trying to spin against the tug of the water. “Steve!” She screams. 

Jonathan catches her as she falls. A dizzy tiredness pulling her down like the water. She looks out the window. To the dry breeze blowing the trees. 

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It is still raining. In his head, he is still gone and stuck in the storm.” 

She looks to Will, wants to meet his eyes to confirm that he felt it too, the moment One ceased to exist, the moment she imploded his mind from the inside out. He is still asleep, the crust of blood around his nose and ears that forces her to wipe at her own. She sees Hop lean heavily on the back of Joyce’s chair. Sees the weight of cold disappointment settle on Robin as she lays her head over Steve’s hand. Hears Dustin crumple into the wall behind her. 

She sits by Max’s hospital bed and looks out at the building opposite, windows smashed in by the earthquake the closing of the gates caused. Wonders if this victory will feel like enough. Wonders if she will ever stop feeling so tired in her bones. If her head will ever stop aching or her mind ever stop switching off mid-thought. If she will ever be human. Her attention snaps away from the windows when a small groan makes her jump out of her skin. 

“Max?” She feels it in her throat, the balloon of hope waiting to be popped. 

“El?” She mumbles, eyes cracking open.

“Max!” 

“I can’t… I can’t see!” 

She brushes Max’s hair from her face as best she can with the neck brace. 

“It is going to be okay, Max. It is going to be okay. You’re alive.”

She never thought she’d be so pleased to see a friend cry. To witness her heave painful sobs of fear and relief. To see someone she loves in so much pain. To watch someone cry out for a mother that is not coming. But she is. Relieved. Beyond relieved. Thankful and proud and overjoyed. Under it all, she is terrified. Terrified that it is not enough. That Max will live her whole life in pain because of El because she wasn’t strong enough. Good enough. But right now, Max is alive. Max is alive. She will never forget the feeling of mangled fingers weakly curling around hers. Warm and soft and alive. Can still feel them in the air around her as she lies on the couch in the cabin and tries not to fall asleep to the hum of the television, Robin’s snoring, and Will’s eyes that look all wrong staring out the window. Can pretend that the fingers on her left hand are still a little warmer than the ones on her right. 

Robin wakes with a scream. Something they are not unaccustomed to in the Hopper-Byers household. It takes a second for El to realize that it’s not the echoing kind of scream that comes after a nightmare. Not the throat-scratching terror-drenched crackle that haunted the halls of the house in Lenora. She scrambles to sit as Robin flings herself off the mattress, arms flailing as she continues to shriek. 

“Get it off! Get it off!” The small black spider is flung to the ground with a sweep of her arm. 

El watches, eyes wide with tired confusion or maybe shock as Will grabs a glass off the coffee table. As he slams it down, smears the spider into the wooden floor, black entrails spraying up against the thick ring of glass. She stares for a moment. They all do.

“Oh my God, Oh my God! That was disgusting!” Robin scratches at her face and neck. Dramatically gags a little as she stamps her feet. 

El stares at Will. Will stares at the guts of the spider magnified through the glass. She thinks of Will opening the window to let the flies out even though it was cold and they all knew they would stay inside to flit about Steve. She thinks of him cupping the lizards out of the bathtub in Lenora for her, the way he’d walk around ant trails, and lift snails off the sidewalk. Joyce comes over with a cloth to wipe the floor and Will excuses himself to their room. El follows. She sits next to him on the bed. She waits. 

“They killed them all.” He says, quiet anger in his voice that unsettles something in her.

“Who?”

“You felt it, I know you did. They threw bombs in there. They probably nuked them.”

Hop has refused to tell her what happened with the army. Simply said a deal had been made and used a tone of voice that was harder than anything she’d ever heard before. She thinks he probably won’t ever tell her. 

“They were free, El.”

She doesn’t point out that they were monsters. That she can still remember the feeling of the flesh of her leg being pierced. She doesn’t point out that they followed the scent of blood, or remind him that he was hunted by them. She rubs his back as he wipes his eyes with his sleeve and holds in his hiccups. She thinks of him cupping lizards out of the bathtub in Lenora for her. 

He feels himself being tugged down with a swaying force. His lungs feel unnaturally full and he is choking. Drowning. The rocks gave out under him and he is drowning. Icy water pulling him apart from himself. He kicks, he throws his arms, he twists trying to figure out which way is up. Which way is down. He swims despite the fact that he is beyond tired and his guts feel like they’re tearing themselves apart. Kicks even though the water is so frigid he feels like he’s swimming through a snowbank. His head breaks the surface, eyes blinking painfully at a crack of blue sky between the hail and the clouds. Stares at it for all of a second before his head seems to split down the middle, a crack in the clouds. A mouthful, a lungful of water. 

He chokes around the intrusion in his mouth. His mind is muddled with dark confusion but the image of Barb with a vine down her throat floats to the forefront and he chokes harder. Tries to flail but his body doesn’t respond. Tries to fight. Tries to open his eyes. Is met with a kaleidoscope of colors instead of clarity. He can feel his heart beating out of his chest, can’t hear anything yet. His hearing always takes the longest to switch back on. Suddenly the shapes lurch and bleed into something new. There’s someone leaning over him. His mind short circuits. Jonathan. Billy. A Russian doctor. The image doesn’t clear to reveal the true culprit, he tries his best to cower back but only sinks further into the softness behind his head. There are hands and he manages a small buck. Kickstarts the ringing in his ears. Then there’s an awful sliding in his throat, pulling from somewhere too deep inside him. It makes him cough. It makes him gag. It makes a few tears muddy his slowly clearing vision. He feels himself being propped up against something, feels the way it relieves the rubber band around his chest. Can’t quite get in a proper breath but it’s better. It’s less work. He thumps his head back against the thing behind him, not so soft as before. More solid. A hand comes up and pushes his hair back, another circles around his chest. Not tight - heavy, heavier than his chest can bear but warm. So fucking warm. Through the buzzing and ringing and the patter of rain somewhere far away he can’t make out the words being muttered into his ear. The voice is on the wrong side, cutting in and out. He hums, and maybe it comes out more like a moan of pain. He pulls in another weak breath that pushes painfully at his lungs. Dislodges some other part of him that has the world buzzing back out in a TV static of pain. 

Eyes. He wakes up to eyes. Eyes and a pulsing, bruising pain in the throat. The eyes blink at him before crinkling into a smile. Soft and tired. El. He’s fairly certain he’s dead. Thinks he remembers closing his eyes and knowing. Remembers the feeling, the way his stomach had bottomed out. The feeling of falling, endless and swooping, right out of existence. The blurry haze of El’s face seems more dreamlike now. The yellow light and the way his vision shudders in and out, El’s face disappearing like a shaken Etch A Sketch. The idea seems to solidify then. That he is dead. Finally. Only, there is a soft tap against his face and El is there again. And he is aware of his breathing. The way each puff of air wiggles its way down his throat. The way it burns in his lungs. The rotten feeling in all his limbs and joints. The cotton-dry scratch of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He feels a sob building, confusion, or relief, or something else better not figured out. Hears its sad execution through muffled, uncooperative ears. El pets his face, smiles at him all teeth and unshed tears and he feels like he’s missed a step. A few maybe. Wonders how he got a concussion this time. He tries to sit up, to shake the blanket of lethargy off of him. There’s a searing, tearing pain in his gut and as his brain fumbles over itself, everything comes rushing back. The earthquakes, the bites, the cold, the flies, the bodies, the cabin. He struggles harder, wants more desperately to be sitting, to be up, to be alive. He’s pushed back down, not that he would have made it up on his own anyway. The wooden ceiling he finds staring back at him makes more sense now. Eleven makes more sense now. 

“Easy, kid,” Hopper says, towering in Steve’s vision, a hand on his shoulder and one on El’s head. “Good to see you awake. Thought you might have thrown the towel in for a minute there.”

Steve hums in response, mind too tired to decipher what that could possibly mean. Too focused on the burning heat of Hopper’s hand on his shoulder. So hot it’s almost painful. The arm underneath it is burning slightly and when he manages to get his neck to move his head he sees an IV. Can feel the liquid scorching the inside of his veins. Can’t help but relish the feeling. Can’t help but shudder when a straw is slid into his mouth, when cold water assaults his senses. The brief relief on this throat is washed away by the memory of drowning. He can’t pick where the memory comes from. Knows he’s never drowned. Only swallowed a small mouthful of foul water in Lovers’ Lake, but the sensation is so fresh, so heavily pressed on his mind that it must have happened. Spits the straw out with his newly released tongue and twists it to make a word. 

“Cold.” It’s probably not the coolest comeback from death. He should perhaps have tried to say something more emotional or more heroic but it’s all his brain can really focus on. The fact that he is still cold, colder than he should be. The fact that he can feel heat again. He feels the glow of the space heater against his side, the hot press of someone pressed against his side. The near-boiling tears that run down his face in a humiliating show of relief.  

It’s unnatural. Being alive feels so unnatural. Breathing stings, something sour floating around his respiratory system. It reminds him of the aftertaste of snorting his mom’s ground-up pills with Tommy and Carol, the way it had lingered at the back of his throat and in his saliva for what seemed like days after. The pain, all the pain, the burn of muscles that haven’t been used in weeks and the wretched tugging of the bites, the swollen itch of the bubble of skin that has miraculously formed over them. The dull bruising of flesh trying to recreate itself. Everything seems so much more after months of numbness. It feels wrong. It feels like he wasn’t meant to survive. But he can’t voice it. Not with how painful it is to talk. Not with how tightly Robin hugs him. Or the way Dustin swallows a gallon of tears because he’s too happy to stop smiling but too emotional to stop crying. Not with the way there’s always a pair of eyes on him, Hopper, Joyce, Will, El, or Jonathan. Not with the way that they all stare like he’s going to disappear any second. Doesn’t even know what words he would try and say. I wish you hadn’t? Because even though it had taken three separate renditions of the story for him to remember anything he was told he understands that if he had died, Vecna would have won and they would all have died. He’s not sure how to explain that he had always been prepared to die for the others but living for them, well, it feels so much worse than he thought it would. He knows it’s barely been two days but he doesn’t think his own body should feel so foreign to him. That he flinches when he’s touched because he doesn’t expect to feel it. Not as much as he can. He wants to be thankful, as thankful as they are. In reality, he feels guilty, guilty to have missed the fight. To have put so much pain, so much responsibility onto their shoulders. 

“I want to see Max.” He says on the third morning since he woke up. He’s made it from the futon to the armchair. A bowl of hot, watery oatmeal searing his hands despite only being lukewarm. 

“Ask again when you can walk to the bathroom on your own,” Hop says disinterestedly flipping a page in his newspaper. 

Jonathan snorts and Steve cuts him a glare, but he doesn’t catch it. 

“I know Joyce is taking El later,” He says stubbornly. Like sitting up isn’t sending grey spots across his vision. Like talking doesn’t make him panic he’s dying again for a minute. 

“There’ll be plenty of opportunities to see her, kid. Focus on getting yourself better.” 

“I’ll feel better when I see Max.” He grinds out, teeth catching mid-sentence with a wave of pain. 

“Don’t you ever know when to give up, Harrington?” Jon says quietly, always so quietly it pisses Steve off. But, at least it’s a little softer than it he thinks it should be. The exasperation seems at least a little fond. 

Will you stop pushing, Steven? Don’t make a maybe a no. He thinks of how at least two of his encounters with the Upside Down came about from him not knowing when to walk away from Nancy. From his idea of her. Of what she could mean for him. To him. 

“No, it’s kind of my thing.”

“Yeah well, saying no to stupid ideas is mine,” Hopper says abandoning his paper for another cup of coffee. 

Steve eyes his car keys on a hook by the door. Tries to think over the last few days, if there was ever a moment that he was unsupervised for long enough to sneak out. Wonders if Robin would help him. If Nancy would. 

“Bedrest for two days and I won’t complain if I can see her today.” 

“You’re already on bedrest, seeing as how you’re too weak to get out of bed.” Hopper dismisses picking his paper up again. 

“Three days.”

“A walkie conversation today and you can visit her when you can walk,” Hopper says with an air of finality. 

Steve clenches his fingers, exhaustion seeping into its closest ally - anger. He pushes himself up using the arms of the chair.

“That was not an invitation to try. If you fall you’re on your own.” There’s an angry lick to the turn on his paper. 

Steve feels Jonathan’s eyes on him, beady and crow-like, can feel him assessing. And yeah, his legs shake and his lungs burn and he can’t get his breath to twist right but he makes the four or so steps to the futon. Huffs like a tantrum-throwing toddler as he lies down, covers his eyes with his arm so they can’t see the tears of frustration building up. Falls into his pitiful excuses of sleep. 

He wakes twenty or so minutes later certain that he’s drowning and heart beating painfully. Registers that the rain echoing in his ears is only the shower running in the bathroom. Can’t make his heart slow down. The curtain to Joyce and Hopper’s room is pulled closed, the door to Will and El’s room ajar but the main part of the cabin is blissfully empty. He rolls up, careful and embarrassingly slowly. The few mouthfuls of oatmeal he’d stomached making itself known again. He swallows it down. He will not spew all over Joyce’s floor. He makes it to standing, loses a few seconds there. Wishes, as he shuffles to the door limbs decidedly unattached to his mind, that there was a wall between the futon and the door for him to lean on. Presses his entire body against the doorframe when he finally reaches it. Misses his keys on the hook a few times. His hands are sweaty as he tries to flick the lock system to his favor. Doesn’t close it all the way behind him because there’s a ringing in his ears (just ringing not buzzing) that is making it hard to tell how quiet he’s actually being. He leans heavily against the porch support, he’s not tried stairs in a while. Hell, it’s been weeks probably since he’s stood for this long. It jolts at the gouges in his stomach. The ones that keep hurting more and more but the rot is slowly looking more like bruising and the blisters look so much better than the squirming maggots. Which is saying something. He doubles over on the last step, gags, loses a little of the oatmeal. Wonders if he’ll ever be able to use his throat again. Propels himself off of the banister and stumbles forward a few paces. 

“Steve? What are you doing?” 

He turns, feels a sweat break out across his skin and the keys slip from his grip. Watches as Joyce flies down the steps mockingly fast. Shudders against the cold sweat on his skin, panics at being cold. At the way the spring breeze turns cool to freezing. Joyce’s hands on his shoulders are too hot, burning, the way there were too many lines in the wood of the railing and too many fibers in the sweatshirt he’s wearing. 

“What were you thinking?” Her voice seesawing in his bad ear as she tries to tuck herself under his arm. 

Max. Before the cold. Max. He can’t get the words out, throat too swollen and painful. She pulls him toward the steps he only just managed to get down. He tries to pull away to get the keys and go to the car. Joyce is surprisingly strong. Or maybe he’s surprisingly weak. Either way, his efforts do nothing to stop their journey to the stairs. She tries to guide him but it ends up being more of a hauling motion to get him up on the first step. There’s a bursting pain in his stomach. Something that comes from deeper inside of him than the bites go. A gush of frigid liquid down his front. Somewhere between crying out and his mind blanking out, he wonders if he’s pissed himself. If he has, he hopes this kills him like it feels it's going to. Through dying vision, he looks down in time to see Joyce lifting his soaked sweatshirt. In time to see rivulets of grey, murky water streaming from one of his bites. In time to see the other blister pop as his stomach spasms. As he tips backward, every nerve in his body exploding with pain, he thinks of a pool untouched for years.

Chapter Text

He’s not awarded the luxury of unconsciousness. Instead, he floats just above the chaos around him, but just under the pain. Feels the torturous jolt of his body hitting the ground. Is aware of Joyce and someone else hauling him up, wants to tear the patches of skin they touch from his body. Wants to lash out like a rabid dog because it all burns or stings. Detachedly hears his mewling sounds of agony, the ones that get the hands to halt him and set him against the outside of the cabin. Pushed against the wood that feels like it’s clawing his back to pieces. He doesn’t know if he has his eyes open or not. Can’t see a thing. Just floating lights that remind him a little too much of the air in— Dustin told his once about leeching. He wonders if this is what that’s like. To be emptied through an unnatural hole in you. Spewing. To have something spew out of your guts. The water collects under him, seeking every gap between him and the world and smothering them with freezing cruelty. His shoulders feel like they are being wrenched apart from each other as he’s slung between two people. He feels beyond drained. Like a can crumpled against a forehead after being shotgunned. He near screams when disinfectant is pressed into his wounds. Thinks he might actually scream when small hands stroke through his hair, burning and grating on skin unable to handle anything more. Finally is rewarded with his crutch of unnatural sleep. Of blissful darkness however terrifying it is to fall into.

“Cold,” he mumbles in response to his name being called. 

“I know, honey, but you have a fever.” Her fingers pepper through his hair, light and tentative. 

“I do?” He asks, finally managing to pry his eyes open. 

She nods at him, fringe flapping around her intense eyes. Steve wonders what it would have been like to grow up with a mother who had eyes like that. Steve fails to picture his mother’s eyes. Thinks with certainty that they were clouded and distracted most of the time. Never crinkled with concern. With quiet relief. Tender. Joyce Byers is tender and he is cold. 

“Yeah, it’s not a bad one though. How’re you feeling? You want to take some Tylenol?” 

Steve groans, his stomach cramping painfully. He nods into the pillow, pulling his head away from her hands. They return, helping him sit up, putting two pills into his hand, and holding a glass of water. It hurts like a son of a bitch. Scrapes all the way down to his stomach. She wraps a blanket around his shoulders and stands back, hands twitching to do something else. His hands float to the fresh bandages on his stomach, to the muscles pulsing with pain there. 

“Don’t touch. They’re bleeding.” Hopper’s voice comes from somewhere on his left. He has to turn his whole head to see him through the clusters of floaters in his vision. 

“They’re bleeding?” He repeats, words tumbling off his tongue in confusion. 

“Yep.” Hopper pops the p. “So don’t touch them. Even if they hurt.”

“They’re bleeding?” He says to his hands.

He misses the look the two share over the top of his head. “Yes, honey, after the — water from the… blisters stopped they started bleeding. Not badly, just seeping.” 

Hopper comes forward, presses his hand to Steve’s head the way parents do in movies. Gives Steve a second when he flinches away before pressing his hand back again. “We’re hoping it’s a good thing. Wounds are supposed to bleed. So I’m figuring blood is better than mystery liquid, right, kid?”

Steve shrugs, but only one shoulder really responds, “I guess. Where are the kids?”

“Jonathan and Argyle took them to see Max. They’re gonna bring Henderson and Robin here on their way back so no complaining.” 

Steve hangs his head in his hands. The thought of Max, terrified and blind sets a heavy stone in his stomach. 

“Is her mom still missing?” 

“There’s still no sign of her, no.”

“The trailer lights were off.” Steve tells the floor. 

“What?”

“When we went in through the gate at Eddie’s the lights in Max’s trailer were off. I thought she wasn’t home.” 

He feels the mattress dip as Joyce sits next to him. As she carefully puts one of her hands on his knee. 

“She might not have been. There are lots of places she could have gone missing. It’s not on you.” She rubs her thumb against his sweatpants and it makes him feel nauseous. 

Steve can’t help the choked laugh that comes out. Grinds his hands into his eyes to feel the familiar burst of pain. 

“I was supposed to be looking out for her. I was supposed to keep her safe.” 

“I know what you’re feeling right now, and I’m telling you to focus on the win. She’s alive. That’s what matters.” Hopper’s gravelly voice comes from above.

“Have you managed to get a hold of her dad?” He asks instead of acknowledging that one. Can’t bring himself to shrug off Hop’s heavy hand on his shoulder. 

“No, I’ve got an old address but that's it. We’ve, uh, we’ve been talking about taking her in.” 

Steve thinks of the way there’s barely enough room in this place for all the Hopper-Byers already. Thinks about how Jonathan sleeps in the back of Argyle’s van most nights. 

“I’ll go back to mine.” He finally manages to look up at them. Catches the hard-pressed look that adults always give each other when he doesn’t understand something. 

“Steve, honey, we were going to wait for another couple of days - until you were a bit better to talk about this, but, Max is going to be in the hospital for a while, it’s going to be a long recovery, maybe months. There’s no reason for you to go anywhere.”

He thinks of his house. Of his white checked walls that he barely saw anymore. He thinks of all the quiet. Thinks of emptying his cupboards and the nest of blankets in his mother’s reception room. Thinks of the pain in his stomach and the endless hot water and the pool that he could barely face before all this shit. And he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to say because he wants to run. He wants to flee and hide under the blankets that were never meant to leave the airing cupboard. Wants to crawl out from this weird hold that these two have over him. To escape the endless chatter and hum that fills this place. From the touches and the concern and all the things he’s never dealt with. From the people that treat him like a child even though he’s not been one for years. He wants to tell them that he’s an adult and they’re focusing on the wrong person and he doesn’t need all this and he knows he went to them for help but he sort of feels weird about it now. And he thinks the help should stop. They’ve saved him, maybe a couple of times, and so they’ve paid their dues and Steve should stop consuming their very limited living room. He feels Joyce’s hands on his knee and Hop’s on his shoulder and he thinks they might not take that all that well. But the more he thinks about them the more it makes his skin crawl and he doesn’t know how to say that he feels more alone than he ever did in his empty house, being here in the middle of a family that loves each other even though they don’t have to. That maybe, if every inch of his body wasn’t having a crisis over whether or not it is supposed to be alive or dead, then he could begin to act like a human of some kind. 

“I want to go home.” He somehow ends up saying. Somehow ends up thinking. 

Hopper sighs, pats him on the shoulder and Steve can’t help but flinch, can’t help but forget that he’s going to feel it. The man moves away, tangles himself with Joyce who doesn’t move. Doesn’t stop stroking little patterns against his knee, even as she folds against Hop. 

“Okay, kid, but give it a few days? Let us make sure you’re okay first?” Hopper sounds much less gruff than he did that morning. 

Steve nods. Thinks he probably owes Hop more favors than he could ever repay and maybe he’s a little more willing to wait on going home than he is on seeing Max. Wants to ask them if they think she’ll ever forgive him. If they think that she’ll resent him as much as he resents himself. He’s pretty sure he wants Hop to turn around and say he never would have let the kids go ahead with the plan if he’d been there. Wants all this churning his brain is doing to be justified. Acknowledged. Confirmed. Joyce announces she’s going to make some more broth. Steve thinks if he weren’t so intensely hungry he’d hate broth. Thinks if he could keep literally anything else down he’d hate broth. Hopper flicks the TV on. Steve doesn’t recognize the show despite having a pretty intimate knowledge of daytime television. 

“Glad you and Mayfield woke up,” Hop says quietly while two old ladies argue on the screen in front of him. 

Steve hums in agreement. Jim rubs the back of his neck, shoots a cautious glance at Joyce humming to the radio in the kitchen. 

“Wasn’t sure you would.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He twists in his seat to look at Steve, “Brought a Father O’Hara out from Bloomington like you asked.”

Steve feels tears prick at his eyes, looks carefully at the screen instead of Hop. “Irish,” He says with a wrinkled nose. And it comes out a little like thank you. 

Hopper huffs, crosses his arms over his chest, “Brat,” he mumbles under his breath, mustache twitching into a smile. “Your glovebox remains unopened though.” 

His mind takes a minute to catch up, to figure out what that means. And when he does, the relief is crushing. The way his brain finally seems to untangle the greater meaning here. Max is alive and her final words mean nothing because she’s going to have a hundred more. A thousand. A million. And he is here to make sure it stays that way. It takes him a second to recognize the pounding pressure in his lungs, the uncooperative tangle they’ve got themselves into. Something old and practiced but always just as terrifying. He clenches his hands, lets his nails dig into his palms. Only instead of grounding him like it usually does, it makes it worse. Too painful, too sharp, too pricking to bring him back to himself. Someone’s counting in his ear, it takes a while to follow it. He keeps missing some of the numbers but eventually, his breath is his again. 

“You good, kid?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just—”

“It happens, don’t sweat it,” Hop says sternly. A little too knowing. A little too seeing. 

Steve nods. Continues to concentrate on his breath. Feels a little lost because honestly he’s been dealing with his little moments of panic since long before he fought horrors from another dimension. Usually, he smothers them with a little more composure. Desperately wants a cigarette. 

“My jacket around here somewhere?”

“Why? Are you cold?” Hopper reaches forward to press his hand against Steve’s forehead once more.

Steve ducks, “No, I uh… wanted a smoke?”

“Oh, I think Joyce smoked all yours. I’d offer you one but think mine might just kill you when you’re like this.” 

“Right.” 

“We’ll get you some more soon,” Joyce calls over her shoulder.

“No, it’s okay.”

“You should probably quit anyway. It’s bad for you, you know.” Hopper says turning back to the TV. 

“Come in, Steve. Over.” Crackles over the radio, interrupting the hazy peace of the cabin that has been making Steve’s skin itch.

“‘Sup, baby Byers?” Steve says, the cold of the buttons on the walkie making his fingers ache. 

“Hi, dipshit.” Her voice is much less certain than it should be, but he can hear the smile nonetheless. And the fact that he can hear it at all makes his hands squeeze until the metal creaks in protest. 

“Nice to hear from you, Mayfield.” 

“Heard you tried to steal my spotlight?” So that’s how they’re doing this. Fair enough. He thinks, despite their differences, he and Max are cut from pretty similar cloths. 

“Tried? Think I won the sleep off by a good few hours.” 

“My advisors are telling me that a had a couple of weeks head-start so you lose.” 

His tongue goes sticky and sour at the reminder, “Right. How could I forget?” And he wonders if he will ever tell her that he camped out at her bedside most nights. Or that he visited every day, and not just to drop Dustin off. He wonders if she would let him or if it would make things as complicated and weird as the letter in his glove box might. 

“Anyway, I have to go now, shithead. Feel better soon.” 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll see you soon.” As soon as I can he doesn’t say but he thinks she hears it because there’s a huff of breath over the radio that would normally be accompanied by a roll of her eyes. Steve wonders if she can still roll her eyes. 

He’s woken from his nap by the distant noise of Henderson and Robin. He wonders if it’s a coincidence that he picked the loudest people to be his. Thinks psychologists could have a field day with that one if they dug deep enough. He has himself sitting and wrapped in a blanket by the time they bang through the door. Steve holds his hand out through the cape of the blanket to do his handshake with Henderson only for the kid to ignore it completely and throw himself around Steve’s neck. 

“Steve, buddy!” He steps back, hands on Steve’s shoulders, and gives him the appraising look he gives his nerdy engineering projects when they’re not working right, “You’re looking much better, man.” 

Steve ruffles his hair, shoves him off in the same motion, just before the feeling of hands on his shoulders sends him over the edge. 

“Thanks, man. Think I feel better too.” He doesn’t think that. At least, not a lot. He’s pretty sure he still has a fever judging by the exasperated roll of Hopper’s eyes, but Hop was right, blood is better than mystery water, so he’s fine. 

“Okay, my turn.” Robin shoves Henderson aside to plaster herself at Steve’s side. 

He can’t help but hiss a little at the intensity of having something press the thread of his clothes into his skin all the way down his side. At the swell of Robin’s warmth, she always did run hot. Wants to push her away but he’s missed her so much, which he didn’t know was possible considering he was only vaguely aware of being gone. Dustin sits on his other side. 

“How’re you feeling really, dingus?” Robin asks head on his shoulder. 

“Weird,” He settles on eventually. “It’s, I don’t know, like, I’m not used to being able to feel things. It’s… it kind of hurts.” He keeps his eyes on where Robin has wrapped her fingers around his without thinking. 

She carefully unlinks them, takes her head off his shoulder, scoots away - close enough that he can still feel her, but not touching. 

“Did you just admit to being in pain? Dustin, has this ever happened before?”

“No, no, Robin, I don’t think it has!” He says with his stupid shit-eating grin that Steve wondered if he’d ever see again after Munson. And maybe both their bravados are a little false, a little forced but he’s not going to call them on it.

“Mark the day, May first, 1986,” Steve’s face goes slack, “Oh! Oh my God! Steve—”

“Rob, it’s okay.” He says quietly, aware of the number of people packed into the tiny room. 

“What? I hate it when you guys do this.” Dustin’s head swivels between the two of them. 

“Steve,” Robin says, hand outstretched to take his again but she stops herself. 

“Seriously, what?” Dustin repeats, practically crawling over Steve’s lap to be in the middle of the conversation. 

“May first, dude…” Robin hisses. 

“He doesn’t know,” Steve tells her. 

“Know what?” Dustin and Hopper ask at the same time. 

“Dustin, give me the watch,” Robin says holding her hand out.

“What? Oh!” He pulls his sleeve up to reveal Steve’s watch sitting proudly above his own. Steve swallows the ball of nostalgia-love-pain that bobs in his throat. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

Robin cups the watch into Steve’s hands, “Happy Birthday, Steve.” She whispers even though the room is too small to stop it from carrying to all the other ears. 

“You got it fixed?” Steve asks and he wants to run his hands over the new glass, over the engraved letters of his name on the back. He doesn’t, the feeling of warm leather already making him feel queasy without adding cold glass to the mix. 

“Jon and Nancy did.” 

“Don’t forget about me, Hermana!” Argyle says from somewhere behind him. 

“Thank you.” He looks up to meet Jon’s eyes, “Really, thank you.” 

Jon just shrugs. 

“I’m sorry we’re late,” Robin adds, nudging her shoulder against Steve’s without maintaining contact. 

“We can make a cake!” El says. 

“I don’t think I could eat cake just yet, El.” 

“That does not matter, we should make it anyway.” She looks towards Joyce hopefully. 

“Cake and birthday broth, what could be better?” Joyce laughs. 

It’s an ugly cake. The frosting is watery and makes the whole thing soggy and structurally unsound. And El tries to make it purple but it turns out more gray really and Steve struggles to swallow his one mouthful but it’s the first time since he stopped being friends with Carol that someone’s made him a cake and he’d mostly stopped celebrating his birthday after that so maybe it means a little bit too much to him. And maybe he’ll let a few tears slip before he goes to sleep tonight because it feels a hell of a lot more like they’re celebrating him being alive than they are him turning nineteen and he’s too overwhelmed to open the pandora’s box of emotion that brings with it. 

By the time he’s been on this earth for nineteen years and a week he can walk on his own and think without getting tired and while it’s still a little unnatural to touch things, to feel things, it feels less like his skin is being burned off. He’s working up the courage to say he’s ready to go home. To leave the haven of soft, thoughtless comfort and homemade broth and return to his mausoleum house. 

“You know, you’re a little too good at that,” Joyce says to Steve when he retreats to the kitchen after winning a game of Bullshit carefully renamed ‘Bull’ at Hop’s insistence. 

Steve looks at her sideways, tries to smile, “Well, I did teach them the rules so that doesn’t hurt.”

Joyce hums, watches her children play cards and Steve knows that she’s thinking how nice it is to see them acting like teenagers. To see Will laugh as El holds the cards down to prevent Jon from calling her bullshit. 

“I got you something,” She leans next to him on the counter, touching their shoulders slightly. They’ve all been slightly more reserved with their touching and partly Steve is thankful and partly he feels like he is being torn open. He puts his glass of water down and Joyce retrieves something small from her back pocket. “It’s a shit gift really, but it was pretty much between the gas station or the drugstore, so…” She places a small Pacers keychain into his palm. “Happy birthday, or thank you for letting me steal your car or whatever you want it to be for.” 

He traces the metal ‘P’ shape with his thumb, feels his chest devour itself with yearning. Wants more than anything to feel at home in this place. With these people. Tastes something sour on his tongue when it doesn’t click right inside of him. 

“Thanks, Joyce.” 

“I would say they come with a set for the door, but there’s nowhere in town to get new ones cut,” Her smile has a little challenge to it, “S’pose that doesn’t really matter though, because you’re not staying, are you?” It’s gentle if a little disappointed. A nudge to get off his chest what he’s been carting around. An invitation, not an eviction. Or you’re out. Do I make myself clear? 

“No, I’m not staying.” He mutters, tucking the keyring into his back pocket. 

She nods, turns away from him, starts putting the dry dishes away in the cupboards with hands a little less steady than usual. He’s used to disappointing adults, doesn’t think he’s ever done otherwise but this case feels particularly unfair. As he watches her throat bob he’s not sure he’s ever felt so lost, because he doesn’t belong here, he doesn’t need to be here and he doesn’t know if he wants to be here. Because it’s nice and no one has ever done this for him. Except for Robin. And he doesn’t think Joyce would understand how backward this all is. He’s literally just started his second decade and she wants to baby him. He thinks of all the years he wished for that, of all the birthday wishes that were about his mom coming home or loving him or remembering it was his birthday at all. But, she’s got four actual minors to look after, to raise, to care about and he understands it’s her nature. She’s this strange, sweeping force that is capable of loving anything, but he’s spent more time with her unconscious than he has awake and they don’t know him. Not really, and he doesn’t know them and it will all be much much easier once he’s home on his mother’s sofa. 

“You can always come back.” She tells him without taking her head out of the cabinet. 

Chapter Text

“You look like shit.”

“You’re blind, Mayfield.” He says slumping into the chair next to her bed. He wants to take her hand but he’s not sure if that’s something reserved for when she’s not conscious to make fun of him for it. Instead, he kicks his feet up onto her bed. “Cute mummy costume.”

“Low blow,” She’s got a pretty good attempt at a smile on her face. 

“Hm, sue me, I hear you know a good lawyer.” He picks at his scab from the IV. The one he keeps peeling off before it has time to heal so he’s always dealing with blood on his hands. Nothing new. 

“Look, I don’t want to get all emotional because I’m sick of crying—”

“Me too—”

“But, thanks or whatever.” 

“Thanks?” He can’t help but gawk at her. At the way she’s looking down at the blanket to avoid eye contact even though her eyes are covered with patches and bandages and all sorts. 

“I told you I don’t want to make a big deal, don’t be a dick.”

“No, I’m- just, what exactly do you think you have to thank me for?” 

“Steve,” she says. You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington. “You, you looked out for me, you know? At the graveyard and the school.”

“Max, you died. You were clinically dead. You’re only alive because of El. I had more to do with you dying than I do with you living.” 

“Thanks for the reminder,” and great job, Steve, wonderful soft approach with the traumatized teenager there, “But you know, Chrissy and Patrick they didn’t have anyone… fighting for them. I did.” 

“Oh, right,” he spreads the blood across the back of his hand in stripes. “You’re welcome then.” 

There’s a long pause.

“You don’t really think what happened to me is your fault, do you?” She says with a voice way too old for a fifteen-year-old, even if that fifteen-year-old has faced monsters and complex grief and death itself and life-altering injuries. 

“What? No.” 

The conversation laps. 

“I can hear you thinking.” 

“I shoulda gone with you, I should never have left you three alone and maybe if I’d been there Carver wouldn’t have fucked everything up.” 

“Yeah, maybe. But maybe if you’d been with us Nancy and Robin wouldn’t have made it. And Maybe if you’d been with Dustin, Eddie would’ve made it but I wouldn’t have or you wouldn’t. It’s a stupid fucking game to play. Trust me I’ve been playing it for a year and look where that landed me.”

Steve squeezes down on his hand as a fresh bubble of blood blooms, “Think I’m the one that’s meant to be comforting you here.”

“Yeah, probably, but I’m wiser so.” 

“You know what, Mayfield? I’ll give you that one but only because you’re all laid up in bed and shit.” 

She sticks her tongue out at him and Steve huffs a laugh that feels a little like his lungs are being squeezed against a lemon juicer. 

“Hey, congrats on not dying.” 

“Yeah, thanks.” He tries to breathe, tries to slow his racing heart. 

“Did he show you things?” She asks tentatively, on a breath’s edge. 

“Nah, not really. Not like… he, uh, pretty much just put me to sleep.” He doesn’t tell her about Billy’s body, about how he nearly joined him in the pool, or how for the first time ever the guy didn’t seem totally psycho. Steve is aware of the irony of that statement. Maybe it’s because he thinks a few fake dead bodies isn’t exactly comparable to the psychological torture Max went through. Partly though, he can’t say it because Billy feels like Max’s nightmare, her shit, and somehow telling her that he’d seen him would feel like he was stealing something of hers. Trampling the significance of their weird fucked up bond. 

“Oh,” is all she says. 

“Yeah. I mean, I know you’ve got El and Will but if you ever wanted to talk about it? I might get it a bit better than some of the others.” She swivels her head, now free of the brace, upward, “What are you doing?”

“If I cry they have to change the stupid bandages,” She says in a voice that really sounds like she’s already lost that battle. 

“Oh. Don’t cry.” 

In response, she just heaves a strangled breath, leaden with emotion. He circles his fingers around hers without even thinking. They’re still like that when Robin returns with Lucas and Erica. 

“I kept them away for as long as I could,” Robin says but she gives him a stern look and jiggles the wrist with her watch on.

“You guys gonna be okay on your own for a bit?” Steve asks. 

“I think we’ll survive without you,” Erica says with a raised eyebrow but she does nothing to extract herself from Robin’s arm wrapped around her shoulder. Her words stab at his chest. He ignores it

“You know that means I’m taking Robin with me right?”

“Duh, you guys are like ridiculously codependent.”

“You do know you’re eleven, right? Talk like a normal person.” 

“Thank you! That’s what I’m saying,” Lucas says as he and Steve trade places in the room.

“Sorry, am I too literate for you?” 

“Yes, actually, Sinclair, you are.” He calls as Robin drags him out by the collar. 

They stop off at the gas station to buy food after Steve had quietly admitted to donating every last crumb in the house when he was doing his whole dead-man-walking bit. She makes him wait in the car but accepts the wad of cash he hands her. Tosses him a bottle of Tylenol as she gets into the passenger seat, forces him to take two before they pull out. 

“You got clean sheets on your bed?” She asks the second they walk through the door. 

“Honestly, no clue.” 

She rolls her eyes, tells him to start unpacking the groceries and that she’ll be back. The door to the lounge is open. He can’t help but stop and stare, the cover of the pool rolled back and the blinds against the French doors open, and his own footprints marring the cream carpet. The Superman: The Movie case is lying open on the floor, the keys hanging from the lock like they used to. He closes the door and carries on to the kitchen, breath a little acrid. He puts away the groceries, mostly cans of soup, gives the Tupperware of broth Joyce gave him pride of place in the fridge. He sees the Raid can out of the corner of his eye, the lid and bottle on opposite sides of the kitchen floor. It makes his stomach turn. A ghost of excruciating pain passes through him. Robin comes in just as he’s hiding it away under the sink again. 

“C’mon, I need a nap and you look like you’re about to pass out.” 

Lying in his bed with Robin makes him forget for a second. That there’s a whole new chapter to their endless suffering. For a minute, just a minute, as he drifts off they’re teenagers trying to pretend that being tortured by Russian spies is normal. He sleeps better than he has in months. Since before Vecna. Robin in her usual position: wrapped entirely around one of his arms, head resting on his shoulder. He wakes to dusk light filtering through the blinds and Robin whimpering.

“Rob,” He uses the hand she’s not got a death grip on to rub at her shoulder, “Robin, wake up. It’s just a nightmare. You’re fine.” He keeps rubbing her arm, keeps murmuring in the soft gentle voice that they’ve both got down to a T. She wakes with a wet inhale and bleary eyes. Stays firmly latched onto his arm, forehead pressed into the bone of his shoulder until her breathing is normal. 

“‘M good,” She mutters eventually, breath puffing through the fabric of his sweater. “I’m good now.” 

“Take a sec.” He stares up at the checked walls of his room. Only bearable because she is here. 

“Okay. If you insist.” 

They drink soup out of mugs for dinner and Robin gets a Dr. Pepper from the fridge even though he specifically told her to get Coke, not like he’d keep either of them down any way she points out to him. End up watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the thousandth time. Robin gives him that Stee-ve look that’s all disapproving eyebrows and pitying eyelashes when she sees the mountain of blankets on the sofa. He calls Dustin before dinner, then the Sinclairs, knows it’s after when they give Max her sleeping pills so he only taps the extension for her room into the phone, doesn’t call. Tries very hard not to think about the fact that there are zero missed calls blinking up at him from the answering machine even though he’s not been home in weeks. Despite Robin falling asleep next to him mid-sentence, he finds sleep doesn’t come so easily this time around. He sleeps in fits. Tries taking some painkillers to ward off the headache he feels building behind his eyes. To dampen the itching and cramping of his still-healing stomach. His aching limbs. His hammering heart. He drifts, wakes when the moonlight catches on the still-uncovered pool, and sends a wave of light against the wall. Tries not to cry like a fucking baby over it. Drifts again. Dreams of decaying hands reaching for him. Tries to focus on Robin’s snoring in his ear. Takes more Tylenol. Drifts. Wakes to the sound of an engine outside. He untangles himself from Robin’s limbs and pads downstairs on socked feet. Glances out the window to see Hopper pacing up and down the path to the door, a car he doesn’t recognize parked on the street. The hall clock reads sometime after two a.m. as he opens the front door. Waits for Hop to turn on his latest leg, to notice. He falters when he does and he has that slightly unsettled look in his eye that Steve knows from the mirror. He thinks of those first few days after the tunnels, of getting in his car even though he could barely see with his one functioning eye and seeking the glow of Dustin’s nightlight through his blinds so his breath would sit right in his chest. Picking out the porch lights at first the Wheeler’s then the Sinclair’s. Checking for Max’s bedroom window that was always open when she was sleeping despite the November weather. 

“I, uh… didn’t wake you did I, kid?” 

Steve shakes his head no, “Robin snores.” 

“Right,” Hop says awkwardly, and Steve knows he and Joyce think they’re dating, hell - they all do probably. “Well, I just…” He fishes a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket, “Joyce owed you a pack. So.” 

He tosses them at Steve. Turns to leave once Steve catches them against his chest. 

“Hey, Hop!” Steve calls stepping out onto the doorstep. Hop turns sharply, “You got a light?” 

Steve settles himself down, pulls one from the pack, and accepts the lighter. Takes a few tries to get it to light with the fine tremor that still plagues him. Manages to do it just before Hopper steps in to help. 

“You want one?” He holds the pack up in offering. 

“No.” Produces a pack of Camels from one of his pockets. 

He doesn’t sit, doesn’t even lean against the wall of the house. Just stays facing Steve. They smoke in silence. 

“New car?” Steve asks when it starts to feel oppressive.

“Karen got us a rental now we can’t use yours.” 

Steve hums, doesn’t say anything about how much he hates people touching his car. Can’t really explain to the man who just took him into his very overcrowded house for three weeks that sometimes Steve gets weird about people touching his things. Knows how that sounds, the rich prick doesn’t like to share, but it’s not like that, it’s just, it’s that he cares about his stuff. About his car and he can’t trust other people to look after them. Not like he does. Just like he can’t say anything about how the idea of Dustin wearing his watch makes his stomach squirm even though it’s fine and the whole thing should have been cute and sentimental and shit. 

“You feel better for seeing Max?” Hop asks when Steve stubs his cigarette out. There’s a thin line of frustration somewhere in his tone.

“Yeah, much actually.” Like he and Robin didn’t have to sit for twenty minutes in the parking lot until he felt well enough to drive afterward. 

“Uh-huh. And the—?” He gestures to his own abdomen.

“Yeah, peachy.” He doesn’t say that he thinks they’re deeper than they were before. That there are more chunks of him missing. That that’s pretty much a perfect metaphor for how he feels about all of this. “Night, Hop.”

Hopper grinds the butt of his cigarette under his boot, rubs tiredly at his eyes, “Yeah night, Kid. Get some sleep.” 

Steve throws him a small salute before shutting himself back into the safety of his house. He stays, right ear pressed to the wood of the door listening for the sound of the engine driving away. It takes a few minutes. Robin is half awake when he crawls back into bed. 

“Nightmare?” He whispers.

“No. You?” 

“No.”

“You stink of cigarettes,” She mumbles just before she captures his arm and slips straight back into snoring. Steve drifts. 

He struggles to get out of bed the next day. Eyelids forcing themselves closed when the exhaustion of a lost night catches up to him. Each time his heart jolts just a little harder than the time before. Each time he’s convinced if he goes to sleep that’ll be him. Robin stays with him, sits at the end of the bed, and promises to wake him, to watch over him. She flips through one of Steve’s old textbooks, says she’s studying for finals and Steve wishes he had her optimism. Wishes he could see past the next time he closed his eyes. He sleeps a little easier with sunlight streaming into the room. Wakes to find Dustin sitting on his bed too, a dog-eared book clutched in his hands, Erica pressed against Robin’s side, a magazine between them. 

“You guys are such nerds,” He forces himself to sit up. Rubs the grit from his eyes. 

Dustin looks a little too relieved to see Steve awake for the moment to be normal. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“Max and Lucas were being all sappy and I needed a break,” The girls have their feet tucked under his comforter. 

“Sounds about right,” He bites his tongue to stop a groan, herds them all to the reception room, and lets them choose some film with a plot way too complex to get his brain around. Ends up driving them both home as soon as it starts to get dark. 

There’s an engine idling outside, Robin pauses reading the silly Tolkien guy when Steve gets up. 

“’S just Hop. I’ll be back in a minute,” She nods, eyes blinking tiredly and Steve knows that she’ll be asleep by the time he makes it back upstairs. Probably by the time he makes it downstairs. It is three in the morning after all. 

He’s holding two bags brimming with groceries, eyes a little less frantic than the day before but Steve sees it just the same. Can’t fault the guy for not really keeping it together, a year in a Russian gulag on top of everything they’ve seen, all that shit has to fuck you up pretty badly. Steve just doesn’t get why he’s fixated on him instead of one of his kids. Can only guess Steve is the equivalent of crying over an empty carton of orange juice when your wife’s just left you. The human straw on the proverbial camel’s back. Whatever, he’s not gonna be a dick to the guy about it even though it’s a little painful on his end. And old ache poked at with a stick. 

“Henderson ratted you out,” He raises the groceries. Steve knows he should invite Hop in, maybe make him some coffee or something. Instead, he takes the bags, puts them down on the doorstep, and sits in between them. Fishes out the pack and a lighter from his pocket. Jim follows suit. 

“You look tired,” Hop says after a while. 

“Yeah,” He takes a long drag, his lungs feel hot. He used to love that. That almost pain. He’s not so sure now but the nicotine sure fucking helps soothe something or other in his brain. The bitchy part of him, the asshole, wants to say something like then stop showing up at my house in the middle of the goddam night. “You looked in a mirror anytime recently?” 

“Don’t you start too.”

They don’t say anything else for the rest of their smokes. Steve thanks him for the supplies, turns inside, and locks the door behind him. They’ve got him kinda childish stuff. Twinkies and after-school snacks as well as some actual vegetables and bread and coffee - all stuff that Robin had clearly not thought of. She is asleep when he gets upstairs, book splayed across her chest and hair in her mouth. He leaves the lights on. 

“Steve,” She says seriously from the passenger seat as they both stare at her house. At the shadow of her mom in the kitchen window. 

“It’s fine, Rob. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Are you sure? Like a thousand percent sure? Because they do think that you had appendicitis so they might actually be okay with me staying another night?”

“Appendicitis?”

“You know, my mom was asking why you stopped picking me up and she thought we’d broken up but then I was spending nights at the cabin and I just panicked and I’d been talking to Argyle and it just kind of came out and it was stupid really, because she started asking all these questions and offering to drive me to the hospital and sending like a fruit basket even though I don’t think anywhere is making them at the moment and also we can’t really afford it. And let's be honest fruit baskets are like the worst possible gift for someone who has appendicitis because you probably can’t even eat anything let alone a whole basket of fruit—”

“I’ll be fine, Robin. I promise.”

He sees Hopper pull into Loch Nora behind him when he’s driving home. He pulls into the driveway next to Steve instead of parking on the street like he normally does. 

“You’re a little early,” Steve says closing his car door carefully as Hop slams his shut with his boot. 

“NDA squad are on their way. Wanted to give you a heads up.” 

“Robin and the kids,” He says turning back to his car. 

“Joyce and Karen are on it.” 

“I should be with Robin.” Steve insists, opening the door but there are already three black Chryslers turning the corner, sticking out like a sore thumb even though they shouldn’t. “Shit, man. Shit.”

“Kid, keep your head on. They’re just going to make you sign the forms you know the drill.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. She just, she gets freaked by feds and she’s pretty riled up this afternoon anyway.”

Steve ignores Hop’s mumbled: “She’s not the only one.” 

He signs the microwave-size pack of documents in the back of one of their cars because Hopper refuses to let Steve let them in the house. He stands outside the car, arms crossed watching Steve try and fail to read page after page and side-eyeing the six apparently necessary agents. His head is pounding and he’s pretty sure his eye is twitching by the time he’s finished. He stretches his neck, nearly pukes when a ray of sunset hits him dead in the eye. 

“Couch at ours is free.” Hop lights a cigarette, leans against the trunk of the rental. 

Steve lights his own even though the heat makes his headache more aggressive and the smell sears itself up his nostrils right into his brain. They watch the taillights turn away from town. 

“‘M good.” His voice sounds all wrong but he can’t do much about that. Just squints his eyes against the smoke. 

Jim makes one of his grumbly noises that could mean anything. 

He pictures the couch back in its rightful place, no longer banished to the porch because of him. The futon back in the Wheeler’s basement. Maybe Karen burned it. “Why’d it take so long for them to show up?” 

“Internal disagreements,” His lips curl sourly around his cigarette. “You even know what you just agreed to?” 

Steve takes a shallow inhale that he doesn’t let touch his lungs. His fucking hearing is getting patchy with the dolling of the big ‘fuck-you’ bell in his brain. “Keep my mouth shut, it was an earthquake, blah blah blah, otherwise they hunt me down with a sniper.” He honestly has no fucking clue what anything past page three said. 

Hopper’s nostrils flare sending twin waves of angry smoke around him, “Hilarious, Harrington.” He grinds his cigarette under his boot. Steve’s barely smoked his, just let it burn. Fucking waste. Hopper stomps to his car. Yanks the door open. “They cleared Munson. Copycat killer from out of state. They caught him on some surveillance footage at a gas station day before the first murder. Heard his apartment was just covered in clippings about the Creel fellow.” Slams it closed behind him. Winds the window down once he’s reversed out of the driveway, “Oh, and they’re giving a few thousand in hush money.”

Steve waits until the car is out of view to gag. Nicotine and exhaust fumes hit him like a punch to the face. Stumbles into his house. Keeps the lights off, rings Robin first. She assures him that she didn’t answer the door until Nancy showed up, signed them in the back of a car, and had an argument with her mom about being late for dinner. Joyce was with Dustin who brushed it off, just happy that somehow Susie’s name had not been whispered into anyone’s ear. Karen was with her children and the Sinclairs, not a single agent stepped foot in a single house. Steve breathes a little easier. Not too deep, because his head is trying to explode. Thinks he probably passes out more than he sleeps. He’s not sure if Hopper comes by that night. Is too lost to either the darkness or the never-ending thump thump thump in his skull. 

In the morning there is a flyer on the welcome mat. Hawkins Relocation Scheme. There’s an invitation to a town meeting on the High School football field at three p.m., followed by an explanation that the town is no longer geographically safe or something that Steve squints at a few times but can’t puzzle out with the gentle knock knock knock still happening in his head. The paragraph about resettlement funds is in smaller font yet. He goes to the town meeting, stands next to Claudia, who squeezes his cheek and tells him that Dustin had been so worried when he was ill and she’s glad he’s better. A lot of the speech part goes over his head. He zones in for the things he thinks are important, like Roane county schools allowing graduating students to join senior classes for their final semester, and offering summer programs to help students catch up. That some schools in Indianapolis and even other states have joined this scheme. Listens to the part about having a month and special estate agents to help find people homes, but doesn’t understand the stuff about mortgages. Returns home to find three missed calls and a phone ringing off the hook. 

“Hello?” 

“Steven, finally.” He feels his shoulders pull him up a little straighter at the sound of the voice.

“Hi, dad. I was at a town meeting.” 

“Yes, we saw on the news and Cynthia got in touch with someone who could tell us what was going on.” 

Cynthia has sent you some money for your birthday, Steven. Cynthia showed me what you’ve been spending on the card. Yes, yes, Cynthia told me you called but I didn’t have time to get back to you. Cynthia said something about the police, a party, and a missing girl, Steven!

Fucking Cynthia. 

“Okay.”

“We’ve organized some removal men to come and get the furniture. You’ll be there on Tuesday to let them in and keep an eye on them. They’re supposed to be experts in vintage furniture, but you know what people like that are like. Watch what they’re putting in their pockets.”

“Where are they taking it?” He sits on the Norwegian puzzle table next to the phone. 

“A storage unit up here until we can sort through it and decide what we want to keep for the brownstone.”

“Brownstone?”

“We’ve just completed on a house in New York, if you ever called your mother you would know these things. A pity it’s sorted before the stipend from the government but I guess we’ll have to buy somewhere else with that.”

“You’re in New York?”

“No. Chicago. Your mother’s been worried about you, you should have called.”

You should have called, Steve thinks. I was as good as dead a week ago, Steve thinks. You missed my nineteenth birthday, Steve thinks. You missed that I missed my nineteenth birthday, Steve thinks. 

“Sorry,” Steve says. “Is she there?”

His father hums non-committedly, “Where do you plan on going, Steven?” He asks and Steve can hear the scratchy noise that comes when his father has put him on speakerphone to do work at the same time. 

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you need to make a plan. I won’t have you moping around in New York, you’re nineteen years old for god’s sake ,” he had remembered, “If you refuse to get into college you can damn well forget about lounging around our house.” 

“What do you want me to do?” It comes out less angry than he expects. Less like a fuck you. More like: please, please tell me what to do. More like, you’re my dad. Help me. 

John makes this disgusted scoff-laugh that has Steve flinching away from the phone. “Ideally, Steven, I want you to make something of yourself. But, I gave up on being an idealist some time ago. You’ll be there Tuesday, don’t forget.”

Steve can’t tell the dial tone from the ringing in his ears for an embarrassing amount of time. The phone rings almost immediately after he’s hung up. He was supposed to pick Robin up after the meeting. He lets it ring. Sleeps in an empty bed and tries not to think of Robin doing the same. Of her angry huffs as she rolls over, of the tears that she’ll hate herself for blinking into existence. Keeps his room dark for the sake of his lingering headache. Sleeps in a terrifying inky blackness that’s too deep and too consuming not to be reminiscent. Wishes he’d let Rob come over just so he could see her one last time. Wakes to a knocking from downstairs. Is almost surprised to find Hopper on the other side of the door. 

“Why’d you knock?” He asks as he sits on the doorstep and lights a cigarette. 

Hopper has retreated to his car, a foot kicked up against the radiator. He shrugs, lights his own cigarette. Steve runs his hand through his hair on what feels like every inhale. It’s long now. Too long. it’s touching the back of his neck, tickling the greying scar there. 

“How’s it going with Max?” He asks, eyes looking up to the stars. Seeks out Big Bear. 

“Turns out it’s easier to come back to life than it is to foster a kid, paperwork-wise,” Hopper says. He lights a second. This is new territory. 

“You’re not gonna give up are you?” He sounds young, way too young and scared, and everything a nineteen-year-old man should not. 

“No kid, we’re not. I’ve got people working on it.” 

“Good.” Steve doesn’t light another one. Just sits on the step waiting for Hopper to finish his. Stares up at Big Bear. 

On Monday he packs his mother’s secrets, her records, her rosary, her bible, into boxes labeled ‘Dressing Room: Fragile’ and prays that she’ll appreciate it. He checks his bank account, finds out a couple of thousand is more like a couple hundred thousand. Takes burgers from the diner on the outskirts of town to the kids at the hospital. Lets their chatter wash over him as he turns the number in his bank account over and over in his head. Lets his food go cold. Go untouched. He’s always kind of hated money. Money was always there in the absence of something else. Usually a person. Or love but he prefers not to prod at that. It’s too much money. It feels dirty. Smeared with Eddie’s blood, with Billy’s and Barb’s and Mr. and Mrs. Perkins. He stops letting Robin come over after Tuesday. After the house has been gutted of everything that isn’t his. Of everything. Sits on the doorstep and smokes with Hopper every night. Sometimes he brings an excuse. Food from Joyce. A comic from Will. Groceries. Mostly he’s empty-handed. Comes back from the hospital to two voicemails. 

“Steven,” he pictures Cynthia’s wonky front tooth as her voice fills the hallway. Knows which words make it catch on her lips, “Your father wanted me to let you know that he and your mother have talked and decided that they will help you with a deposit on an apartment somewhere you like. But he said to make it very clear that you are to pay for rent yourself. Let me know the details when you have them.” He thinks for a moment about the money in his bank account. Then he thinks that maybe his parents owe him this. Maybe, he should let them pay for this because so what, he’ll still be in debt to his dad, under his thumb, but it feels a little like the shiny new car waiting on the drive the morning of his sixteenth birthday instead of his parent’s car. Feels a little like it's the least they can fucking do. 

“Steve. It’s Robin. Answer your fucking phone. You promised me you douchebag. You promised me you wouldn’t shut me out again. Please. I can’t sleep.” She comes over, he makes her promise not to freak out at the lack of furniture. Makes her promise not to tell anyone else. Smokes a cigarette with Hopper. Feels rested after he sleeps for the first time in a while. 

Hopper throws a bottle of beer at him the Tuesday after Steve’s things leave him. Is already sipping from one of his own, cigarette between his fingers. 

“Make yourself at home,” Steve mumbles, rubbing grit from his eyes as he lights a smoke. 

“Max is officially under our care. We’re celebrating.” Steve clinks his bottle against Hops. Lets himself smile a little into the bottle. 

“Your parents relocating?” Hopper asks after they’ve finished their smokes but not their beer. 

“Staying in New York or Chicago or something.” Steve closes his eyes, leans against the door. 

“You gonna join them?” 

Steve shakes his head. It’s silent for a long time after that. Hopper sits on the step next to him, shoulders a hairsbreadth apart. He’s never sat down before, leaned on the car, the wall once, but never sat. 

“We’re thinking of moving somewhere warmer. We’ve found a house out in Cali.”

“Oh?” Steve says. His heart trashes against his ribcage. The idea of losing them. Of losing Max and El and Will and Hop and Joyce and hell, Jonathan. It hurts. Physically. He wonders when his heart will stop doing this. Stop overcompensating for being MIA for a while. 

Hopper takes a swig of his beer, clasps his hands around it in between his legs. “Seven bedrooms. But, we figured that we only need one guest room.” 

“What are you saying?” Steve asks lighting another cigarette after a pregnant pause where Hop refuses to look away from Steve and Steve refuses to look away from the porch light above his head.

“I’m saying,” he makes his swiping motion at his nose, “There’s a room for you if you want it.” 

Steve wants to ask why. Why on earth they would do that? But he doesn’t think hearing the answer would help him understand any better so he doesn’t bother. Doesn’t say anything. Finishes his cigarette and his beer.

“You’re lookin’ a little cold,” Hopper stands, offers a hand to pull Steve to his feet. Somewhere warmer. “Just think about it,” Hopper says to his back. 

They sit around Max’s hospital bed, and the mood is drenched in sour soberness. 

“My mom’s transferring to a hospital in Indy,” Dustin starts, shadows under his eyes. “New house in Smith Valley.” 

“Hey! At least it’s south too, we’re moving to Shelbyville.” Lucas says.  

“Wow, guys, you’re practically neighbors.” Mike drawls. 

“Well, where are you going?” Dustin grumbles and it’s just a bit too angry for Steve. Lights a fire in his temple. 

“Goddam Bloomington,” He replies with clenched fists. He shoots Nancy a glare over the top of Steve’s head. The drummer-boy starts up his marching song on Steve’s brain as he turns to catch the tired roll of her eyes. 

“We’re going to Sandy Ego,” El adds quietly. 

“San Diego.” Will and Jonathan correct at the same time. Lucas squeezes Max’s fingers, lip caught and chewed between his teeth. 

“Where are you going, Robin?” Erica asks, and she sounds so hopeful it’s almost nervous. The hospital lights are too bright, even dimmed for Max. 

“Bum-fuck Kentucky,” And that’s news. Steve twists to look at her, she’s waiting for him. A bitter, sorry smile twisted onto her lips. Her arm pressed flush against his. 

“Steve?” Nancy asks. Steve thinks of a seven-bedroom house somewhere in San Diego. He thinks of a brownstone in New York. Of Kentucky. Of Indianapolis. Of Max. Of Robin. Of Dustin. Lucas and Erica. He thinks of Hopper and Joyce, protective and peaceful. Of Karen Wheeler Fierce and accepting. Of the pounding behind his skull. Strangely, he thinks of Dustin clutching Eddie’s body. Of a plan with badly split up groups. Of kids left without a babysitter. 

“Indianapolis.”

Chapter Text

The apartment is shitty. A one bed, that is more closet than room, above a laundromat. A corner slice of the building with one big window and one little one both of which catch every single headlight of every single car that passes over the junction below. He can see the tall grey darts of the city buildings. A twenty-minute drive to Dustin, thirty to the Sinclairs, and an hour or so to Bloomington - a trip he makes every Sunday so the boys can see Mike. He spends most of his time working at the diner down the block. Applied for floor staff but ended up being put in the kitchen, Sid likes girls on the floor, they get better tips. Steve thinks it’s because he’d worn a shirt to the interview, only realized when he got home that without the top button done the lines around his neck were obvious. But, Sid’s a nice guy, lets Dustin sit in one of the good booths on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Claudia has to work the late shift, lets Steve go early to drive him home. Always says that he’ll take the milkshakes out of Steve’s paycheque but never does, not even on the Saturdays that the Sinclairs get a lift into the city and the three of them sit at the counter the whole day and talk at Steve through the window. And it’s okay. It’s fine. He hasn’t got Robin, just a phone bill the size of his rent from calling her every evening. 

“How is the valley of fried chicken?” He asks as he chews on the cold fries he brought back from work, thinks this might be his first meal of the day but can’t remember. Can’t remember if he ate anything yesterday either.

“Ugh, honestly, I don’t even know how to convey to you just how Small Town this place is. Like it’s full of meatheads and hicks. We thought Hawkins was bad but this is actual torture. And I’d know Steve, I’d know.”

“You are the expert. You’ll be free in the fall, got any of your acceptance letters yet?”

“After a month of summer school! I’ve not had any rejection letters yet, I’ll tell you that.”

“Why are you being so secretive about this?” He is getting a headache from the flickering bar sign across the street. 

“Because I haven’t made my mind up about anything yet, because my life is all over the place. Literally, it’s like all over the country and I don’t, I don’t know how to…think. So, I can’t tell you because… I’ll tell you when I’m ready. I swear. Have you asked Rachel out yet?”

“No. And I’m not going to.”

“Why not? Dustin says she’s totally sweet on you!”

“Yeah, but…” He stares at his bed, the one he can see from where he’s sitting on his kitchen counter. The one he hasn’t had more than a few hours of sleep in for the three weeks he’s lived here. He thinks about the fact that he’s started wearing tank tops even though the things make him think about Billy and how Ernesto is constantly giving him shit for wearing a sweater in the kitchen. “She’s not my type. Besides, he’s only telling you that because he’s worried I’m going to cheat on you or something.”

“Dingus, you don’t have a type. You’re a desperate, desperate man remember?” 

“It’s not like I’d have time to date her anyway, we’re always at work. And when I’m not at work I’m talking to you. What about you, any hot hick chicks?” 

“As if! Think I’d get hate-crimed for just walking into the girls changing rooms, this place is the worst.”

He looks at his bed, “You can come live here when you’re finished with summer school.” 

“I’ll be there, the second school’s out. You will have to come pick me up though.” There’s a long silence and Steve can hear her breaths in his ear, he closes his eyes and pretends they’re in his childhood room that he always hated and she is wrapped around his arm. “Steve, can I say something stupid but you have to promise not to laugh?”

“Everything you say is stupid and I never laugh.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“This town sucks, obviously, totally and completely sucks ass, right?”

“Right.”

“We have stairs.”

“Okay?”

“I’ve never lived in a house with stairs before,” he can hear the tentative embarrassment in her voice. He thinks of her wide eyes the first time she stayed over. Thinks of how he would almost always find her sitting at the top of the stairs when she’d wandered off. 

“Well, as far as redeeming qualities go, it’s not great.” 

He hears her release a breath, “That’s a big word, Harrington.” Then, “ I knew you’d understand.” Then, “ Do you need to call the Byers?”

He twists to check his watch. “Nah, it’s too late, I’ll call them in the morning.” 

He doesn’t sleep. Not really, just lays on the lumpy mattress and closes his eyes, and tries not to feel sick with the thought that he might not open them again. Can’t seem to convince his brain that that is no longer an issue. He thinks the nightmares have gotten worse since he left. He has a theory, not one that he’s voiced to anyone, but a theory nonetheless. The theory is that the city is too ordinary. That in Hawkins, even during the quiet patches things were weird: he didn’t feel so unjustified walking around seeped in paranoia and fear when the woods had always retained a thicker air after ’83. One that everyone could feel, even the people who were beautifully ignorant of why. His brain’s refusal to believe that it was over was a comfort in a town that was haunted by strange happenings. The city is normal. Bland and grey and blissful in its endless churn of traffic and minor crime statistics. And Steve is a goddam freak, with his eyes perpetually sliding over his shoulder and his scarred, bloodstained skin. His feet sink a little deeper into the sidewalk than everyone else’s, a burden that sinks him. In Indianapolis Munson’s eyes are a little more compelling, Billy’s teeth a little more bloodstained, and Barb’s jaw a little more broken. The image of Erica’s teeth being yanked out by a faceless soldier who might be wearing a Russian uniform or might be wearing a FED suit stays on the back of his eyelids for days instead of hours. He feels it like a ‘kick me’ sign on his back. A murmur of endless whispering behind his back. 

“LuLu, are those bruises or bags? You think it’s their old man?” Rachel had whispered about Dustin the last Tuesday, or maybe Thursday he’d been in. Steve hadn’t corrected her on the brothers thing. 

So, Steve is fine. Indy is okay. Steve is okay. Even if he is a walking mar on this earth. He’s fine. He really, honestly is, because Dustin is part of some nerdy robot club at his new school and he will at least talk about it for the whole journey home without lapsing into a grief-ridden silence. Soon, Steve hopes to find a topic of conversation that will make him smile. Lucas refuses to try out for the basketball team, is seemly completely uninteresting in joining any extracurriculars but Steve is hoping to change that by the time his sophomore year rolls around. Erica has found a group of friends that she says Steve is not cool enough to know about but she still smiles every time he asks. Will’s voice sounds lighter, less strained by the weight of two worlds on it when he talks on the phone. He’s doing more for Steve’s understanding of Catcher and the Rye than Mr. Douglas ever did. El and Max sound like actual teenagers when they complain about Joyce and Hopper’s inability to explain any of the homeschool materials logically. There’s a hint of excitement about rejoining school in the fall. Mike is Mike so that’s a lost cause, but it all means that Steve is fine. Fine. Dandy. Great, really. He is not falling apart at the seams. 

“What time do you finish on Saturday?”

“Eleven-ish. Why?” He flicks his eyes across the dashboard at Dustin’s sudden change of subject. He’s looking out the window, Steve’s unable to make out any more than his ear when the streetlights bleed sporadically into the car.

“Just thinking that maybe you should stay over at ours. You know… mom’s been asking about you.” 

“You’d both be asleep by the time I got there after work.”

“Well, are you working Monday breakfast? What if you stayed over Sunday?” 

“What is this about, Dustin?”

“Mom’s just really worried about you.”

“Well, tell her I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

Steve runs his hand through his hair, almost misses their turning, “What if I pick you up first instead of the Sinclairs? I’ll come by early and the three of us can have breakfast together.”

Dustin crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Are you fine, Steve?” 

“Yes, man, I’m fine. Are you?”

He hears Dustin turn in his seat, body fully facing Steve.

“What would you do if I said no?”

Steve tries to give him a proper once-over without careening off the road. 

“I would, I dunno, I’d try and make you feel better?”

Dustin narrows his eyes, in that bitchy way that Steve knows means he’s found something to sink his teeth into. 

“Well, Stee-ve, I’m not doing so good at the moment. See, I got this buddy, right? And he’s got a bit of a history of keeping important things to himself when he really shouldn’t, and I’ve just got this feeling that he’s doing it again. My feelings are never wrong.”

Steve tries his hardest not to roll his eyes, “You know what, Henderson—”

“Shut up. This buddy of mine, he seems like, like maybe he’s not sleeping. I guess, what I’m asking is, how do I bring it up with him because I want to make him feel better? And, I want him to feel like he can talk to me because otherwise, I feel weird talking to him about things. Like, maybe if he told me he wasn’t sleeping I wouldn’t feel weird going to him when I had nightmares.”

“You’re having nightmares?” Steve feels like a bit of an idiot. Which is nothing new, but somehow it feels worse every time. He’d assumed that Dustin had stopped radioing him in the middle of the night because he wasn’t getting nightmares anymore not because Steve is like, a useless piece of shit or whatever. 

“Seriously? That’s your takeaway? You’re such a dick sometimes, Steve.” He says it like You’re such an idiot sometimes, Steve, you know that? The way Tommy would sometimes right before he’d shove him, hard, his fingers curled around Steve’s shoulders and his face a little closer than normal. It makes Steve feel nauseous. It makes Steve feel like maybe he should pull the car over. 

“You can talk to me, Dustin,” he says, mouth dry as a bone. 

“But only if you talk to me!” Steve, we’re not kids anymore. You don’t have to protect us. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. 

“I sleep as much as I can, Dustin. My brain just doesn’t like it that much anymore, there’s nothing either of us can do about it.”

“Do you know how dangerous sleep deprivation is, Steve? Should you even be driving right now?”

“I am not sleep-deprived. I’m just a little tired. I’m fine to drive, I wouldn’t have you in the car if I wasn’t.” Steve’s not a hundred percent sure what side of the line that lands on. Whether it’s a lie or not. 

Dustin seems to decide that it’s true, Steve feels like he’s done something right for the first time in about a year. If Dustin still trusts Steve with his life that implicitly.

“Why’d you work so much? It’s not like you need the money.”

“Because I want to make something of myself.”

“Oh yeah, and you’re really gonna do that by killing yourself flipping burgers.” 

“Jesus, Dustin. Do you ever know when to shut your goddam mouth?” 

“What?”

“I think your buddy would find it a lot easier to talk to you if it didn’t end with you insulting him every time. I know you’ve got a stupidly big brain but there are things in life that you don’t understand.” 

“So then explain them to me!”

“It’s not something you can fix, Dustin.” 

“That’s what you thought when you didn’t tell anyone you were dying and we fixed it! We saved you!”

Steve swallows around the thought that things would be so much easier if they hadn’t. Shoos it away because of course it wouldn’t, not for the important people. “You can’t fix me though.”

In the silence that follows Steve wonders when they became this. When they stopped being an escape from all the horrors they’d lived through and instead became an extension of it. Can feel Dustin, wounded and disconcertingly unsure of himself, wondering the same thing. Knows it happened sometime between Dustin’s last growth spurt and Christmas. Though, maybe that’s just when he became aware of it, because if he really thinks about it, the kind of thinking that makes his eye throb with the effort of it, he knows that it was the moment that Steve told some jumped-up murderous general Dustin’s name and realized that his tendency to stick his foot in it was liable to do damage to someone other than himself.

After his fight with Dustin, things slip from him slightly. It starts on the drive home, he loses his ability to distinguish one streetlight’s glow from the next. The color of the world is leeched. The streets greyer, the lines of tile behind the fryer at work blurred from existence. The blues and red of his dreams sharper, brighter. The sensation of falling asleep more swooping but the acts of waking, walking, talking are less palpable. He thinks almost constantly of telling someone. Of acknowledging Robin when she says he sounds tired. Of filling the awkward silence of his car journeys with Dustin. Of saying something other than thank you when Karen presses a box of leftovers into his hands each Sunday. Of taking Nancy up on her offer to hang out with her instead of the boys. Of acknowledging the awkward silence over the phone where one of the Hopper-Byers wants to say something but doesn’t know how. He never does. 

“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” He’s leaning against the side of the diner as Steve pulls his jacket on. 

“You didn’t make me mad. I’m just not good at, like, feelings, ya know?” He pushes Dustin’s cap down over his eyes and wants to scream. “Let’s go before your mom kills us both for missing curfew.” 

He carries on like this for a while. Until it feels normal. Until it doesn’t feel quite so unsettling. So terrifying. Until they all get a bit more used to him being that way. Until they try less hard to find out if something’s wrong. Until they decide there probably isn’t and it’s just normal. He goes to Nancy’s graduation. He sits between the boys and Karen and listens as she tells him that they’re going to New York as a family during summer break. Thinks about the fact that he always saw himself at her graduation but it was nothing like this. He’d imagined her making the speech at the end, she’s too anonymous here, at this city school that she’s only attended for one semester. They go out for dinner the nine of them, he somehow ends up sitting between Holly and Erica, watching from some faraway plane of existence a six-year-old figure out the word search on the kid's menu faster than he can. Sleeps on the sofa, well, lies on the sofa, and stares at the plasterwork of the ceiling. It’s a nice house, eerily similar to their old one on Maple Street. He hears Erica before he sees her. 

“Steve?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I didn’t want to wake the boys.” She has tears running down her face, snot glistening in the lamplight. 

He sits up, shifts the blankets over so she can curl up in them too. He forgets sometimes how young they really are. How his brain used to stretch shadows into something horrifying when he was eleven before it even had the knowledge of actual monsters. She sits next to him and they both ignore the way her ribs quiver against his arm every few breaths. Ignore the fact that they are both wishing Robin was here instead of him. 

“This is my first sleepover since spring break.” She tells him once he’s flicked on some late-night shopping channel. 

“Sleeping sucks.” It doesn’t feel like the right thing to say. He’s aware of that much. 

“My mom doesn’t understand why I don’t want to stay at my new friends’ houses and they’re gonna stop inviting me if I don’t go to one soon but if I can’t even sleep here I definitely can’t sleep there and… I feel like a wimp.”

Steve snorts and stares at the necklace spinning on the TV in front of him. “You are the last person in the world I would call a wimp. You’re a fucking badass.” 

“I don’t feel like one.” 

“Well, you are. And… I’m sorry that you have to be. I’m sorry that you’re not just… like a kid. But you gotta remember that you’re not scared of sleepovers, you’re scared of real shit that you should be scared of. You’re not a wimp you’re a survivor.” 

“Are you scared?” 

He looks down at her, at the dig of her brows that is slightly more accusing than it should be, at the giant gleam of her eyes. 

“Yeah. Terrified.” 

She hums, eyes refilling with tears, and pushes herself against his side. Eventually falls asleep drooling against his arm. Steve stays awake, likes to think he watches over her but he knows that he goes where ever it is he keeps going at the moment. Blinks against the burn of eyes left open for too long to find Lucas pressed against his other side and Mike at his feet watching silent cartoons, Dustin in the armchair watching Steve, and Erica still sound asleep. And he spends that month's paycheque on a stupid plastic trophy with ‘Survived 1st Sleepover’ printed on the base, promises his cash tips to Rachel in exchange for her sneaking it into Erica’s backpack while they’re distracted at the diner. Still doesn’t know how to fix things with Dustin. 

Steve is fine. He is, even if everyone keeps complaining about the summer heat, about how the kitchen and the fryers trap it in. He listens to LuLu berate Ernesto about his leg hair making the kitchen unsanitary, wears a T-shirt for the first time in a while, and thinks about the fact that the last time he felt this warm was because he was covered in Eddie’s blood. Next thing he knows he’s being carefully but firmly held against Ernesto’s chest out by the dumpsters. 

“Breathe, man, breathe,” is being chanted in his ear. He hears in the echo of his ears the pant of his breaths. Knows his lungs are twisting around themselves but can’t feel it the same way he usually would. Talks himself down the way he has a hundred times before until the arms around him finally let him go. 

Ernesto signals to the chair they’ve been using to prop the back door open. 

“Sit, don’t come back in the kitchen ’til you’re good. And don’t ever scare me like that again.”

Steve wants to ask what he did. Wants to say that the last thing he remembers is Ernesto flipping LuLu off over his shorts. But somehow he thinks that wouldn’t make the beady panic disappear from his eyes. So he sits. 

“Here,” LuLu hands him a glass of water, she’s filled it with ice and it makes his hand shake. She doesn’t like him much. He’s not sure why, she just never really warmed up to him. Was a bit nicer once the kids started coming around, always gave them extra ketchup. “You didn’t burn yourself did you?”

“What?” He says. How can he have burnt himself when there’s ice in the water? 

“Your hand? Ernie wasn’t sure he’d grabbed you before you put it on the grill.” She reaches for it and looks at it with far more scrutiny than he manages. “Looks fine. You should go home. We’ll tell Sid you spewed everywhere or something.”

“I don’t want to leave you guys with the lunch rush.”

“Lunch rush ended like half an hour ago. You’ve been out here for a while. Go home.”

“What happened?” She screws her face up, kind of like Max when she’s trying to decide if she needs to verbally assault you or not. 

“I dunno, you kind of spaced, but you do that a lot, and then you just freaked. Started breathing all funny and you went to catch yourself on the grill but Ernie grabbed you and then you freaked out more.” 

“Sorry.” 

“It’s fine. We all have our shit.” She eyes where he has pulled at the collar of his shirt, at the looping grey of scarred flesh. 

He drives to the Henderson’s and sits in his car outside the house until Dustin rocks up on his bike. Smokes most of a pack of cigarettes.

“Steve what are you doing here?” 

“You were right.”

“Obviously, what about?”

“That buddy of yours… he’s— you still wanna have that sleepover?” 

And for one brief second, there’s that smile that he used to have when he was thirteen and the death and gore of it all didn’t feel so familiar. 

“Yeah? Yeah, come in. You don’t have to work?”

“Got the afternoon off.” 

Ends up dozing on the couch while Dustin does his homework. Wakes when Claudia gets home and throws a blanket over him. Slips again as she clatters around the kitchen. It’s not quite sleeping, not so deep that he’s worried about closing his eyes, but it’s rest. It’s so much more rest than he’s gotten in a while. It makes him dopey and hazy through dinner, his usual ability to at least keep track of which Henderson is talking alludes him. He hasn’t gone to bed this early since he was in middle school but Mrs. Henderson ushers them both to their rooms at exactly ten p.m. Doesn’t say anything when they both leave their doors open and Dustin moves his pillows to the foot of his bed so he and Steve can see each other through the open doors. They don’t say anything either, just turn towards each other, blankets pulled up to their necks, and smile at the absurdity of the image of the other. Until Dustin’s eyes start protesting his blinks, until he starts softly snoring and Steve is left alone. He thinks he might want to cry but can’t seem to summon the tears. Just a hollow scratching in his chest, the knowledge there should be something more there. Keeps watch of Dustin’s sleeping face as the doorframes stretch away from each other in the night. Can’t place what emotion he’s evading. Fear perhaps, and he thinks of Erica, of being scared of things you should be scared of, but he’s honestly not sure what it is he’s afraid of anymore. Wonders if he’d sleep easier if he could find something less abstract to be petrified of. Something less conceptual. Something fixable. 

In the morning he finds he has slept. Wakes to Tews or Mews or whichever cat it is now sitting on his pillow, clearly disgruntled at having someone else in its favorite sunbathing spot. There’s a note on the kitchen table: Didn’t want to wake you, Mom’s taking me to school. There’s bacon in the oven for you. Stay as long as you like! :) p.s. See you at Sid’s tonight. Steve eats exactly three bites of the bacon before he’s sure he’s going to puke on Claudia’s hideous yellow tiles. He wraps the rest up in a paper towel to throw in his own trash so as not to offend Claudia. Washes the plate and locks the door behind him. As he’s stuck behind a moron going way too slowly and staring at his watch telling him he’s fucking late to his shift  Steve realizes that he feels worse. Not just the hangover-like worse that comes after a panic attack but, like, truly worse. Like somehow, in going to Dustin’s he’d shown his belly, and in return, he’d been gutted. Sliced up the middle and dug about in. Tony Hagan had described it once. Gutting a fish. They’d been sat around the dinner and it had made Troy cry so hard he puked his dinner right back onto his plate. Steve and Tommy made fun of him for it for years. Rachel refills his coffee for the second time and Steve feels something squirming and destructive grow in him. Cramming itself into all the corners of his body it could find. He feels a little sick, the smell of gherkins and burning onions sticking in the back of his throat. He wonders if this is what Billy felt like, itching for a fight to make his skin feel less foreign to him. It feels achingly similar to having someone press into his brain. He finds himself pacing the length of his apartment after he’s driven Dustin home. Then when that proves to be too small, he paces the length of the hallway. The stairwell. The street. Around the block. Ends up walking to the national park. To the river bank where he stops and stares. Half expects a body to jump up out of the water. Half wants one to. Thinks of the cool reassurance of Barb’s rotted gaze, of how it would calm his hummingbird heart, and has no idea what to do with himself. What kind of person longs for horrors like he’s seen? Wonders if maybe he didn’t wake up the same person he went to sleep as. The same thing. Goes home. Dreams of a bloodstained thunderstorm. 

The walking helps, for the next few days. He avoids the river, instead finds ‘less desirable’ areas, as his father would say, places where his constant uneasiness makes sense even if it’s not quite right. Then he sleeps, however badly. That’s the deal. He tries his best to exorcize whatever demon in himself he’s woken by escaping the safety of his apartment, but in return, he has to sleep. For Dustin, because he’s worried about sleep deprivation or whatever. It gets him through Dustin leaving for camp. Helps him distinguish the sensation of sweat sliding down his back in the kitchen from the ever-present feeling of being coated in Eddie’s blood. It’s not better. The world still feels like it’s drawing away from him. His lapses in concentration are getting longer. He’s pretty sure he misses all of Wednesday. Probably some of Thursday too if he thinks about it. He doesn’t go home to sleep on Friday, just keeps walking, keeps trying to satisfy the overwhelming hum stuck under his skin. Knows he looks awful at work on Saturday.

“Are your brother and his friends coming in today?” Rachel asks almost as soon as he walks through the door. 

“No, I don’t think so. He’s at camp.” 

“Are you still sick from last week?”

“Nope.” 

“Sorry. You just look really… tired.” 

He doesn’t feel it. Not as he fries tray after tray of fries. Not when the orders haven’t let up by nine pm. Not when Ern, face flushed red from the heat and the kitchen takes a nap on the chair outback, dishtowel draped across his eyes and a stern instruction not to fuck things up. He feels wired, too much blood pumping around his veins for his body to know what to do with. 

“Let go of me,” there’s something in Rachel’s tone, even as it barely carries into the kitchen and over the buzz of the radio. Something that has Steve reaching for a bat that isn’t by his side but is in the trunk of his car. 

The guy is probably in his forties, younger than Sid but probably not Hopper. One meaty hand wrapped around Rachel’s wrists, the other digging into her hip so hard her skirt is bunching. 

“She said let go, man.” The door between the kitchen and the diner keeps swinging in his wake. 

“We’re just having a bit of fun, aren’t we, honey?” The man says and squeezes her hip tighter still before letting go. 

Rachel doesn’t manage to laugh it off. Just ducks her head, rounds the other side of the counter, and collects her coffee pot. Refills two cups with shaking hands before she puts the pot back down again. 

“I’m fine, Steve. Go back in the kitchen.” She says as she squeezes past him to take an order from one of the booths. 

The guy swings his head to watch her ass as she goes, mouth hanging open as he gnashes at his fries. Steve swings before he’s even registered balling his hand into a fist.

Chapter Text

“He’s had enough!”  

The words cut through like the skin of a bubble popping. Sharp and punctuating despite how far away they sound. How muffled and incomprehensible. He turns his head to spit the blood out of his mouth, watches as Ernesto hauls the man off him. He’s not sure when he stopped fighting back, maybe after his third punch, maybe on the second. He can’t help but shoot the man a shark-toothed smile, can’t help but think he understands Hargrove just a little better now. 

“Walk it off,” Ern pushes the man down the street, stands guard over Steve still curled on the ground until he’s walked out of view. 

Steve pushes himself up off the sidewalk, can feel the bruises on his back from being pushed through the door of the dinner. Can feel the hands bunched in his shirt even though they are long gone. Cradles his ribs on instinct as he gets himself to standing. Catches the ashen face of Rachel in the window, along with just about every customer in the place. 

“The fuck is wrong with you, man?” Ernesto grabs the side of his face, not tender, but not exactly rough either. Steve just smiles again. Lets a little huff out, something that would probably have been a laugh if he wasn’t sure he’d cracked a rib or two. “Get in the back. Sid’ll be here soon, he’ll take you to the hospital and probably fire your ass.” 

“No hospital,” Steve mumbles as he’s manhandled down the side ally to the kitchen door. 

“No insurance? It’s fine there’s a clinic not far, they’ll treat you.”

Steve shakes his head, sees white for a second, “Don’t like doctors.”

“Shoulda thought about that before you got your face beat in.” He pushes Steve into the chair he’d been napping in not ten minutes ago, reappears with an ice pack, “Stay fuckin’ put.”

Steve does not do that. He waits until he can hear the spatula against the grill and sways his way to his feet. Despite the whistle of his breath in his nose that screams broken, or the way his ribs creak in protest, and the woozy dipping of his vision, the muffled filter of his hearing, he gets behind the wheel of his car. He doesn’t stop by his apartment. There’s nothing there, just the clothes that his mother bought him when he was sixteen and an asshole, seventeen and an asshole, eighteen and trying to be better. His bat is in his trunk. The walkie in his glove box. He’s supposed to pick the Sinclairs up for lunch with the Wheelers tomorrow, promised to take them bowling or something to make up for the total lack of Dustin. Promised himself he wouldn’t keep letting the shits down because he’s incapable of not fucking up. Promised Robin he’d call when he got off work tonight. Promised his doctor he would be careful about head injuries. Promised a  lot of shit to a lot of people and he breaks every single one of them as he follows the signs for the interstate. 

Only pulls over when he’s low on gas. Pukes up gas station coffee and the two bites of the granola bar he managed to swallow. Steals a stack of too-thin serviettes to wipe at the blood he’s left on the driver's headrest. Gets back behind the wheel. The sunrise gives him a headache so bad he stops being able to hear the radio, hugs the guardrail because it’s the only distinguishable feature on the road, and thinks that he’s probably going to die before he even figures out where he’s trying to go. As the day claws itself into the evening - air still so hot that he can’t breathe - he starts to comprehend just how stupid he’s being. Considers pulling over. Stopping this bullshit now before he gets himself and every other driver on the road killed. His body ignores the idea completely. His headlights cut into the night around him and create a sparking film behind his eyes. He can piece together the notion that he’s missing most of the day, and not just in a boring-drive-blends-together way. Manages to swallow down the tide of stomach bile each time it soars up his throat. The pressure of it makes his nose bleed again, only weeping this time. The blood down the back of his neck, on his face, under his shirt is tacky in the hot evening air. He gets the vague feeling he had in the back of Billy’s Camaro that there is something irrevocably wrong inside his body. That something more integral than a rib has been punched out of place. The idea makes him tear up, ducts swelling with bruising pressure. He struggles to figure the signs out, vision too blurry, head too muddled and headlights too bright. Can only form the thought that he is lost and it’s the middle of the night after he’s driven around town three times. He doesn’t even know the address, doesn’t even know which end of town it’s at. Doesn’t even know which end of town he’s at. Pulls over, wheels hitting the curb and he feels the humiliating pain of tears once more. Lets his head fall forward against the wheel. Longs for his bed, the real one, in his stupid checked room that he has always hated with the glow of the pool thrown over him and ‘Bitch Boy’ carved into the bedpost in Tommy’s middle school scrawl. Cuts the engine, and feels a thrum of relief when its shuddering dies down. Knows that he shouldn’t sleep, that his brain might turn to mush or whatever the science behind it is, but his brain feels beyond mush and it’s been days since he slept. 

He’s awoken by the hollow thud of his headache. Groans and leans back in his seat only to have an actual heart attack when he sees a face pressed against his window. The man taps on the window once more, mouthes something that doesn’t translate through the glass, Steve winces. It’s still pitch black. He opens the door. Pukes hot bile over the guy's boots. He says something, asks Steve something maybe, but it passes through his head like a murmur. Then he’s gone. Then back. He presses a cold water bottle into Steve’s hand. Steve takes small sips. Panics for a second at how cold the water feels against his tongue, against his palms. Steve doesn’t like the cold. The man takes the water away from Steve after he spills some in a whole body shiver. Steve tries again to get out of the car. Manages to plaster himself against the back door. 

“What’s your name, son?” Steve can just about make out the features of a sun-hardened face in the light from the car behind them. 

“Steve,” He says, or close to it, his mouth feels drier than it did before the water. The taste of copper stronger. 

“You know where you are, Steve?” 

“Olive…” Is all he manages because they chose a neighborhood with way too many fucking letters in it even when he’s fully functional, although, it comes out more like a-live, “I don’t remember their address.”

“Indiana plates, you looking for Jim and Joyce by any chance?” 

Steve feels like crying at the sound of their names. Wonders from the way the guy's hand squeezes on his shoulder if it’s more than a feeling. Thinks this man must be some kind of miracle. 

“You know where they live?”

“We don’t get all that many newcomers round here. I’ll take you there, get in the car,” Steve slides himself back towards the gaping mouth of the driver's door. “Not your car,” the hand on his shoulder pushes him away with concerning ease. 

He finds himself in the passenger seat of a truck, being driven back the way he’s pretty sure he just came or had circled at least once. The street is lined with dried-out trees and dead grass that pass by in a sickening swirl of headlights. Steve feels himself protest when they head back towards the city, back towards the way he came, towards Indiana and a world balanced on top of a rotten underworld. 

“Nearly there,” The guy soothes, clearly mistaking whatever embarrassing noise Steve let out as a sign of pain. 

He turns onto a side road that’s more of a track than a road and Steve must have driven past it, but he never stood a chance in hell of seeing it. The track never seems to end, just curls endlessly around a small hill. In his next blink, there is a long, low ranch house staring at them with glowing windows. Steve finds himself opening the door before the car’s fully stopped. 

“Jeez-”

Steve doesn’t hear the rest of the guy’s sentence, not after the door’s opened and El comes barreling out, slams her body directly into his broken ribs. He doesn’t even give a shit, barely comprehends that it’s painful, that it folds his body in half over hers. And as soon as Hop’s calloused hands land around his shoulders, as soon as he mutters a gravely, “Ease up, Jane,” Steve regrets it. Literally, a second later there’s a swirling pool of shame in his stomach. He’s eight years old being shouted at in the hallway, and his leg is bleeding but his dad doesn’t care because he’s too old to be crying and he shouldn’t be stupid enough to run down the stairs. His cheeks burn redder and hotter than the California air because this is humiliating. he’s so fucked up he can’t live by himself and he’s gone running to someone else’s mom and dad like they’re his own and it's Mr. Hagan complaining about the number of evenings Steve spends at their dinner table and all he wants is Robin. He doesn’t know why he came here. Why didn’t he just go to Robin? Robin was way closer than these people who have their hands full with some of the most traumatized kids in the world and who don’t need Steve running to them because he’s scared of a world that actually makes sense. He tries to step back but Hopper's grip is firm and holding. 

“What happened?” He flicks his eyes to the man when Steve looks to the ground like a guilty toddler, “Ray?”

“Found him asleep on the side of the road near the firehouse on my way home. He said he was looking for you, I didn’t think he should be driving around,” He steps forward and holds out Steve’s car keys and when had he even gotten those? El steps forward and takes them.

“No, he shouldn’t. Thanks, Ray, we’ll take it from here - I owe you one.”

“Don’t worry about it, just make sure he gets checked out. Tonight. He’s got a head wound and there was blood in his car.” 

“Jane, go get my car keys, tell the others he’s here and we’re going to the hospital,” She stares up at Steve for another second before she twists her lips unhappily and scurries inside. 

“Don’t need the hopsit’l,” Steve insists at the same time Hop asks, “What happened?” 

“Don’t be fuckin’ stupid here, kid. Where’d this happen, hmm? You drive from Indiana like this? You get in a car accident?” 

He lifts one of his hands to turn Steve’s head into the light spilling from the house and Steve uses the moment to pull himself from Hopper’s grip. The world falls away a little as he does it. 

“I’m serious. No doctors,” there’s a pulse in his throat beating at an entirely different pace to his heart just at the idea of it. It makes him more nauseous than the idea of blood on his precious upholstery, or just how hard he’s finding it to keep track of the conversation. He just wants sleep. “I’m fine, I just, I just need to rest, man.”

“No, you need an MRI and a couple of X-Rays and some good painkillers. So we're gonna go to the hospital.”

“No.” He wants Robin and he wants to run. He wants to run all the way back to fucking Hawkins, Indiana, and never have to think about anything else. 

“You came here for a reason, right? So, let me hel—“

“No, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t come here for help?” The patience in his voice is wearing thin. 

Steve thinks of his bleeding knee and his shouting father, “No, I just got in my car and drove I didn’t… I didn’t even realize where I was going until I hit, like, Phoenix.”

Hopper scrubs at his face, covers his eyes and his hands have a tremor to them and Steve wants the earth to swallow him whole. Thinks it might soon, he’s feeling a little spacey. 

“Well, you’re here now and you need help. Professional medical help, so let me get you that. ” 

“I don’t—” It’s like, his knee is bleeding and his dad is shouting and this is the most humiliating moment of his life and he can’t stop fucking crying, and his head is bleeding and Hop is getting annoyed at him and this is the most humiliating moment of his life and he’s about to start fucking crying. 

“What if I took you?” Both Hop and Steve jump at the sound of Jonathan’s voice. He’s brought the car keys instead of El. Steve goes to protest, but Jonathan just gives him this nod, makes rare eye contact and he’s just as embarrassed about the whole thing. And Steve agrees. 

Jonathan doesn’t touch him. Just turns the radio down as Hopper packs Steve into the car even though he could probably have done it by himself, mostly. The drive is short, surprisingly so, and they spend it in silence apart from Jonathan telling him not to go to sleep when he rests his head against the window. The nurse at the triage desk eyes Steve’s swollen face and Jonathan’s nervous eyes and nods to the bench closest to the emergency room doors as she hands the form to Jon. Steve knows he should be an old pro, should probably know the order of the questions alone off by heart but either his stupid head or the panic that is starting to thrum through him means he keeps getting them wrong. 

“Steve, concentrate, are you allergic to anything.” 

“I dunno, clams. I think.”

“Well, I’m not gonna put that down. How many concussions have you had?”

“Uh… three, maybe four. I— can we just go, man? I'm fine.”

“No,” Jonathan mutters something under his breath but Steve can’t hear it. He scribbles something in the notes section that Steve can’t make out either, the lights are too fucking bright. Jonathan hands the form back in. 

“They’re gonna see my fucking scars,” He’s gripping the arms of the bench with white, stretched knuckles. 

“Relax. It’ll be fine.”

“Shut up, Byers.” This tongue is thick and his head is assaulting him. 

He finds himself rooted to the seat, heart coated in icy terror when a doctor comes out and calls for him. Can’t bring himself to stand. To think. Not even to run the fuck away. Can’t do anything but tuck his fingernails tighter around the armrests so they’re not so visible. 

“Steve, it’ll be fine. I promise.” Jonathan says quietly, face peering through his hair with the concerned eyes of Joyce Byers. Jonathan looks between the doctor and Steve, “I’ll stay with you the whole time.” 

The thought actually pisses Steve off for a second. That fucking Jon who he’s pretty sure still hates him despite the weird truce they called when Steve was dying in his living room is willing to do that for him. That he thinks Steve deserves that from him. And that second is all it takes for him to stand. The fucking fear doesn’t go anywhere, he thinks it might be more responsible for his vision swaying the wrong way every other step than the concussion, but he gets up and he walks. For all of three paces before he’s pushed into a wheelchair. He lies in the creepy machine and they take pictures of his brain and he tries to breathe but he’s not supposed to move and he keeps thinking there’s rope cutting into his wrists and there’s not. There’s not. Jonathan can’t come in the room for that bit. Or for the X-rays of his ribs.

“I see here that you’re not a fan of needles,” the nurse says and Steve shoots Jonathan a glare that would kill if one feature on his face was distinguishable from the next, “But you’re very dehydrated and we need to get some fluids in you and some antibiotics to prevent infection. Do you want to look away? Maybe your friend could distract you.” 

“No, I… I want to see what you’re doing.”

“Okay, do you want me to talk you through it?”

He feels himself nod but his tongue is swelling and he has a thrumming thought that he needs to keep Robin safe. Jonathan stands on the other side and Steve can’t help but feel relieved that his neck isn’t unguarded. 

“You’re doing great, man,” Jonathan says when Steve is wheezing at the feeling of cold fluid entering his vein. 

“Fuck you.” Steve grinds out but when he’s no longer swallowing air instead of breathing it he finds Jon’s shirt is clenched in his hand. 

“Get some rest, I’m gonna update mom and Jim, I’ll be right back.”

Steve has no idea what the verdict is, but now the fear has washed from him a bit he finds he can’t really keep his eyes open. “Robin,” he calls after Jonathan. 

“Yeah, man, don’t worry about it.”

Steve feels like he doesn’t breathe for the entire twenty-eight hours he’s forced to stay there. He sleeps through most of it, waking only to answer nurses' questions and freak out about the needle in his arm. Jonathan doesn’t leave. Sleeps in the chair next to Steve’s bed and doesn’t say much. 

“You ready?”

“Yeah,” Steve strides towards the car. Jonathan jogs to catch up, hands Steve a pair of sunglasses. They’re big, red, plastic heart-shaped things, and Steve can’t tell if they’re a fuck you from Hopper or Max. The sun is fucking drilling into his eyes so he has no option but to put them on. Flips Jonathan the bird when the dude tries not to laugh. 

“Yeah, yeah, hilarious. Don’t remember you all finding concussions so fucking funny the other day.” 

“You know, I could just drive around for a bit if you want. Everyone’s been very worried and you know what they’re like when they worry.” 

Yeah, Steve does, they’re exhausting. And they’re kind and caring and they tie him up in knots. 

“Thanks, man. But the sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can go back to Indy.”

Jonathan just shakes his head.

There’s a banner hanging from the wooden supports of the porch. Right over where the stairs have been covered with a ramp. It reads Welcome Home Steve! The writing, neat and intricate with shadows making it look three-dimensional is most definitely Will’s work, the copious amounts of glitter and stickers has to be El’s, and the chicken-scratch font at the bottom that says ‘ concussions: 5, Steve: 0’ screams Max. He thinks he probably should have taken Jon up on his offer of a drive. Jonathan leads him to the kitchen and Steve’s heart is jackhammering in his chest. The house is cool in the sickly sweet heat of a summer’s morning. He stops in the doorway, the blinds are mostly drawn and Steve lifts the sunglasses away from his eyes to take in the scene; they are sitting around the kitchen table, surrounded by slits of sunshine, Hop is sipping coffee while he reads the paper and Will is crowding over his shoulder to read the comic strip, El is chewing a rasher of bacon straight from her fork, elbows on the table and tracing the lines of a book with her other hand - Steve would have had the food knocked from his mouth if he’d tried that at fourteen. Joyce is braiding Max’s hair as Max uses her one unbraced limb to eat from a plate of pre-cut food, Jonathan slides in, kisses his mother on the cheek, and pours himself a cup of coffee as he takes his place at the table. Standing in the doorway in Jonathan’s clothes Steve feels something acidic and jealous set up camp in his throat. When Steve makes no move to step into the room Hop stands, guides him to the seat he just vacated between Will and El. Facing away from the windows. 

“Hey, Steve, how’re you feeling?” Will asks, his small smile.

“I’m fine.”

“Sure,” He says with a barely contained scoff. 

“Dad says we’re not supposed to make a big deal,” El tells him seriously. Despite how natural it all feels there is definitely a forced calm in the room. 

“Yes, thank you, Jane,” Hop says as he sets two slices of buttered toast in front of Steve. “See how you do on that and if you keep it down I’ll get you some eggs. Maybe bacon, if you’re extra good.”

“Am I a dog?” 

“Shut it and eat.” Steve takes a bite of his toast, “Good dog.” 

“So, thanks, for… um, ya know, breakfast but I should really hit the road. I’ve got a job to grovel for so…” He breaks the ungodly silence that he’s been eating his toast in. 

“Honey,” Joyce navigates the cluster of jam jars and mugs and dishes that are filling the center of the table to grab his hand, “We want you to stay here. You gave everyone a real fright and we’d all feel a lot better if we could keep an eye on you. At least for a few weeks.”

“But—”

“I’m not giving you an option. We’ve had the room made up for you since we moved, like Jim promised, and it doesn’t sound like you’ve been doing well in Indianapolis. I talked to Karen and she’s going to go by your apartment and mail some of your clothes and things.”

“No, I mean, I really appreciate the offer, but I’m fine really I just got into it with a customer and—”

“And drove to the other end of the country concussed to hell. Lucas talked to your boss you know? He said you started the fight with the guy on purpose.” Max’s glare has only been made more formidable by the slight milky color of her eyes. 

“Lucas spoke to my boss?”

“You didn’t show up to pick them up on Sunday, they got worried and their mom drove them into the city to check on you. You weren’t at your apartment.”

“I could not find you, we don’t know why, but we thought…” El says quietly beside him and then she smiles, “Then I heard the car outside and you were in it.” 

“At least, stay here for the two weeks Henderson’s at camp?” Hopper ends the spiral Steve’s brain was taking him on. 

He thinks of his empty bed that he can reach his kitchen from. Thinks of the empty booth where Dustin normally sits, of Sundays at the Wheelers. 

“Yeah. I’ll stay.” 

“Great!” Joyce says, “You should call Robin, that girl is pulling her hair out over you. And then you should get some rest, you look exhausted.” 

She takes him to the study, “I can’t believe I live in a house with a study! It’s completely ridiculous. We’re thinking about calling it the den but honestly, I don’t know how I feel about living in a house with a den either, God, if my mother could see me now,” She laughs and Steve feels something that has been squeezing his gut or maybe his soul loosen its hold on him. “She’d hate this place I think, no person needs this many rooms, young lady, she’d say, and you know, I don’t think she’s wrong but, well, there’s a lot of us and we’re trying to make it cozy.” She turns to leave the room, give him some privacy, “Steve, honey?”

“Yes, Mrs. Byers?”

She rolls her eyes, “I’m really glad you came to us.”

They let it hang in the space between them. Until it has filled the whole room and doesn’t feel so heavy anymore. 

“Me too.” 

She smiles, wild and twinkling, “I’ll let you get to it.” 

 “Hello?” Robin picks up after the first ring.

“Hey, Rob.”

“Steve? Oh my God. Thank God. You utter asshole. You dick, you absolute penis. I was so worried.”

“Sorry, I was a little concussed. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“You’re literally incapable of thinking straight, but driving off and disappearing for like thirty hours is a new low even for your brain.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m fine now.”

“You’re not. You’re so, so not fine. But you are safe. You’re going to stay with Joyce and Hopper, right?”

“For a little while, yeah.”

“Promise me you’ll at least try to make it work. Try and get better?”

“I’ll try, Robin.”

She takes a big inhale, “You know in March when you were, look, I really thought I had lost you. That I was going to lose you. And sometimes, when I wake up and I’m not in your bed or I can’t see you, or I don’t want to call you just in case you’re sleeping I think that I have. Lost you. And then we talk on the phone and it’s not really enough but it helps. It makes me not feel like I am the only person in the world that is losing my shit with all of this. And the thing is if I’m finding it this hard - if you nearly dying has messed with my head this much then I know, I know it has to have really fucked with yours. So, I’m not mad or disappointed or whatever but I was terrified. I am terrified. I need you to take better care of yourself, even if it's only for me. And I need you to ask for help and fucking accept it. And I need you to let Joyce fucking Byers wrap you in bubble wrap and baby you even though I know it fucks with your mommy issues because I’ve spent the last two days thinking you were dead all over again and I cannot do that a third time. So please, I am literally on my knees begging you to try and see this as a good thing, to let a real goddam adult help you because I am so tired of us being the only people trying to keep each other afloat.” 

“Robin, breathe,” he listens for her wet inhale, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. And I promise I will let Joyce swaddle me like a baby if it makes things easier for you. I swear. Are you okay?”

“No. I mean not really, but the image of you as a giant baby helps, it really does.” Pause, “I love you, Steve. Platonically.” 

“I love you too. With a capital P.” 

Hop is smoking on the porch with the door open when Steve leaves the study. Steve joins him. It’s hot and heavy and Steve doesn’t mind. 

“Picked your car up, it’s in the old barn to keep it cool. Cleaned the blood up too.” 

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He waits for Hop to finish his cigarette. “I’ll show you to your room.” 

It’s at the back of the house, they pass through the kitchen and lounge, one of four bedrooms at this end of the house. The walls are painted a pale blue, the floor is terracotta tiles like the rest of the house, but there’s an orange and yellow rug sticking out around the bed. 

“The kids picked out the color and stuff, seemed to think you liked blue. We can change it if you don’t.” 

Honestly, Steve’s been a little iffy on blue since the whole dead bodies in water thing, but it’s a nice color. Soothing. There’s a glass of water and a bottle of pain meds on the bedside table and some clothes folded on the bed. 

“How’s the face feeling?” He asks turning, hands on his hips. 

“Fine, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

“That’s because you didn’t ice it for two days.”

“I get it, it was a dumb move.” He tries to shape it as a joke as it leaves his mouth, isn’t fully successful. Turns away from Hop. 

“Hey, kid,” a hand on his shoulder turns him, and the next thing he knows Hopper’s arms are around him. He stiffens for a second, face pushed over Hop’s shoulder. Hot tears swim around the swelling of his eyes to reach his lash line. And he’s grabbing at the back of Hop’s shirt, balling it in his hands. Steve heaves a breath, and Jim’s arms only tighten around his shoulders. He tucks his head against Hop’s shoulder and cries and thinks of his promise to Robin. Jim is whispering something in his bad ear, the one that hasn’t stopped ringing yet, he can’t hear it but the rumble of his chest against Steve’s feels more real than Steve’s heartbeat has in three years. Steve’s tears run out. The feeling of crying doesn’t. Hopper’s hand is warm against the nape of his neck. He pulls back. Straightens Steve’s shirt out for him. Sweeps his hair away from the bandages on Steve’s nose. 

“Get some sleep kid. We’ll be right down the hall.”