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Chapter Text

It’s only once everything is okay that Dustin starts thinking there’s something deeply wrong with him.

They’re out of the danger zone, where hospital visits have almost become normal hangouts rather than something to sit through on tenterhooks. Eddie’s getting the all clear to go home soon, and Dustin feels like he’s finally, finally able to take a deep breath, and blow it all the way out.

Steve must feel it, too, because he starts drifting off halfway through one of their last visits, while Dustin’s telling Eddie how Tews got up on the roof last night.

Dustin’s not offended by Steve falling asleep—for one, Steve already heard the story on the ride to the hospital and, more importantly, Dustin’s pretty positive that he’s barely been sleeping, only just enough so he can safely drive his car.

Dustin pats his knee fondly as he gets up.

Even though he’s steadily swaying towards the end of the couch, Steve tries to rouse himself.

“Mm, Dustin, jus’… jus’ need ten minutes, then… give y’ride home…”

“It’s okay,” Dustin says. He gently pushes Steve’s shoulder, snorts when Steve’s head tips right onto the arm of the couch. “I’m gonna go call my mom.”

He knows Steve really must be exhausted when he doesn’t attempt an argument to counter that, just sighs with a murmured, “Hmm? If tha’s… ‘kay.”

From the bed, Eddie looks on with a smile. “Thanks, Henderson,” he says softly. “Wayne’s gonna come later, he can… give him a ride home.”

He yawns through his words, like just looking at Steve is making him sleepy, too.

They’ve been like that a lot recently, Dustin thinks, like their breathing falls into sync without them even trying.

He slips out of the room quietly. There’s something between Steve and Eddie, he can feel it—and although he can’t quite put a name to it yet, he knows it’s something delicate, like spun glass. He’s not going to be the one to disturb it.

When his mom comes to pick him up, it happens.

“Put your coat on, hon, it’s freezing out.”

Dustin rolls his eyes—it’s hardly that cold—but as he steps outside, the air hits his bare skin and—

He’s in The Upside Down, and the cold is in his throat, in his lungs, he can’t stop shaking with it, and Eddie, he’s—he’s not breathing—

“Dustin? The car’s parked this way, baby.”

Dustin breathes in, short and sharp. For a moment, he can still see it all: the lightning, the blue tint, the particles hanging in the air, and then, like blinking away a camera flash, it’s gone.

His mom frowns, steps closer. “Dusty? Oh, you look pale. Hope you’re not coming down with something. Early night tonight, okay?”

“Yeah,” Dustin says. Blinks. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

-

He tells himself it’s a one-off.

Then it happens again—inside the hospital this time.

Steve opens a window in Eddie’s room before heading to the vending machine—just a crack. Barely anything.

But the cold is so intense that it takes Dustin’s breath away.

He hears the bats. Feels the pain in his foot, burning white-hot as he runs, he has to run. Eddie. Screaming. He has to get to him now or he’ll—he’ll—

Dustin shuts the window with such force that the pane rattles.

Eddie glances over from where he’s standing, right in front of the tiny mirror on the wall; he’s been wringing out his still damp hair with a clean T-shirt that Dustin highly suspects belongs to Steve, unless Eddie’s suddenly taken to owning a Hawkins Phys. Ed uniform.

“Woah, that’s the window shut, I guess,” Eddie says lightly. “You cold?”

“A bit,” Dustin says, hopes it comes out normal.

It must do, because Eddie just shrugs and goes back to the mirror, fiddling with his curls, and Dustin would usually give him so much shit for that, but his chest is tight, and although logically, he knows he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, he can still feel the dampness of the ground, the dirt under his nails, Eddie’s blood…

“Did you just close that?” Steve says, jerking his head towards the window with a bemused look.

“I live to piss you off,” Dustin says.

Eddie laughs.

“Yeah, it’s your special talent,” Steve shoots back, monotone, but he’s grinning as he throws a candy bar at Dustin’s head.

3 Musketeers.

Dustin isn’t hungry, not even for nougat.

But he tears the wrapper anyway, takes a sizeable bite just for the sake of appearances.

Steve is catching Eddie’s eye in the mirror, and Eddie’s smiling, looking at Steve’s reflection; and although Dustin can hardly hear what they’re saying through the thud of his own heartbeat, their joy is obvious without words.

Because it’s over. It’s all over.

Dustin’s not gonna be the one to ruin this for them.

He won’t.

-

Eddie’s coming home from the hospital today, and Steve is quietly singing along to love songs like they’re on the radio, but they’re not; they must be just in his head.

Dustin wants to enjoy it, wants to simply look forward to calling the others; they have an ongoing list of songs Steve has sung unconsciously, ranked according to various degrees of embarrassment, the current winner being his butchering of German in Rock Me Amadeus.

But he can’t. He can’t enjoy any of it.

There’s a window open in the car.

Steve keeps it down unless it’s crazy bad rain, ever since he found out that Erica can get motion sick sometimes.

Dustin grips onto his knees.

He’d tried to convince himself it was all centred around the hospital. That he could contain it.

But now he’s in Steve’s car (Steve’s car! Familiar and safe, where there’s still that streak of mud along the inside of the door from Dustin’s sneakers); he’s in Steve’s car trying not to breathe, because every time he does, he sees those damn particles floating in front of him.

“Okay, what?” Steve says, sounding both amused and resigned.

Dustin sucks in the slightest amount of air that he can manage. “Hmm?”

“Dude, I know you. Whenever you’re this quiet, you want something from me.”

“That’s an erroneous conclusion,” Dustin says.

Steve is meant to say something like oh yeah, erroneous, blah, blah, blah.

But Dustin knows his delivery is off when Steve just gives him a sideways glance while they’re stuck in traffic—knows that Steve misinterprets whatever look is on his face, because the driver window is being quickly wound down, too.

“Hey, do you feel sick? I can pull over.”

“I’m good,” Dustin says, only just managing to suppress a shiver as more cold wind seeps inside.

Steve doesn’t seem particularly happy with that answer, but the traffic starts moving again, leaving him with no choice but to drive on.

“Okay, just—we’ll be five minutes tops, all right? Just look at the, uh, horizon.”

Dustin looks ahead.

Doesn’t mention that all he can see is what the sky looked like from the trailer roof.

-

There’s a stack of books at the end of Eddie’s hospital bed—Steve’s gone back to the car to get a cardboard box for them. Dustin spots Nancy’s copy of Little Women on the top of the pile.

(During a visit where Nancy had driven him over, Eddie had made them wait in the corridor for a full five minutes before telling them they could come in, and when they did he was clutching the book with red-rimmed eyes, staring at Nancy so accusingly that Dustin couldn’t help but laugh.

“Beth?” Nancy had said, fighting a smile at Eddie’s melodramatic sigh.

Eddie mimed throwing the book at her, careful not to actually damage it. “Fucking Beth.”)

Another book’s in danger of slipping off the edge of the bed; Dustin catches it before it can fall. Peter Pan. He flicks it open, sees a childishly crooked Property of Steve written in pencil on the title page.

Eddie’s pressing some folded clothes into a bag on the other side of the bed. He looks up.

And Dustin suspects that when he went to the bathroom, Steve and Eddie must’ve had some sort of conversation about him, because Eddie says, “Go sit down, I’ve got this,” like Dustin’s the one who’s been recovering in hospital.

“What, scared I’ll rip your books?” Dustin asks, and this time he knows he’s hit just the right tone of normality, just the right mixture of teasing and petulant, because Eddie snorts.

“Shuddup,” he says, and then he lunges for Dustin, ruffling his hair. His hand lingers for a second, tilting so the back of it touches Dustin’s forehead.

“What the hell?” Dustin says, shoving him off playfully.

Eddie’s still grinning from their tussle, but it fades a bit as he gives Dustin a once-over.

“Thought you looked a little peaked,” he says with a shrug.

Dustin forces an eye roll. “I’m fine.”

Eddie seems to accept that, but he pours an extra glass of water and leaves it on the table; and when Dustin takes it, his mouth opens, and Dustin silently pleads inside his head don’t ask me, don’t ask me, and—

Steve’s voice echoes down the corridor, soft and lilting: Islands in the Stream.

Eddie chuckles. “That’s another one for the list,” he tells Dustin, but his eyes glitter like he doesn’t find it embarrassing at all, and when he’s bundling up the books, his fingers trace the front cover of Peter Pan like it’s a rare gem.

Oh, Dustin thinks. Then: You’re so happy.

Steve enters the room with the cardboard box held aloft like it’s a trophy, and Eddie laughs, makes a quip: “Jesus Christ, we’re not at one of your basketball games, Steve.”

Steve grins, briefly bends his knees as if on the basketball court. “You wish.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, shoots Dustin a look as if to say who does this guy think he is?

But his eyes are saying something else.

He passes the books over to Steve, chatting easily about whatever chapter he’d got up to, and their hands touch with such casual intimacy.

There should be no space for them to worry here, Dustin decides—and so, for the rest of the day, commits to being the most carefree, boisterous version of himself he can manage.

-

It gets to the point where the window in his room is permanently shut.

Where he suddenly has this awful feeling of doubt—that this is something he should’ve called a code red over long ago.

He calls Will, twisting the phone cord around his fingers over and over, so tightly that it hurts.

“Will, you know when. Your—your episodes. The Mindflayer. What. What did it feel like?”

The ensuing silence makes shame run down his spine, cold as ice.

But when Will speaks, he doesn’t sound hurt, or even the slightest bit frightened.

“Why?” he asks.

“It.” Dustin grits his teeth. “I’m worried it might. Might be happening again.”

Another silence, and then Will says, very gently, “Dustin, it’s all closed off. I can’t feel anything anymore.”

“Okay.” Dustin blinks back the sudden burning in his eyes. “Okay.”

“You… you know you can talk to me, right?” Will says, tentative and kind, too kind, because Will is the kid who disappeared, who’s had to deal with all this shit for years, stuff that Dustin could never—

“Yeah,” Dustin says.

“My mom, she’ll be home soon,” Will says, rushed suddenly, like he can sense Dustin’s about to hang up, “if you wanna—”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ve gotta go,” Dustin says all in one breath, and ends the call.

And he realises something—kind of hates himself for it. That if The Upside Down was really back, he would’ve felt terrified, sure, but also…

Relieved.

Because the alternative is that the problem is him.

-

At night, the shivers start for no reason.

Dustin changes into his thick winter PJs, gets blankets from the linen cupboard as quietly as he can so he doesn’t wake up his mom.

His room is stuffy, but he can hardly feel it—knows that by all rights, he should be suffocating in the heat. There’s sweat on his forehead, his chest, dripping down his back, but as he wraps himself up tight in the thick cotton layers, he can’t stop himself from shaking.

His dreams are vivid, feverish.

He’s sitting with his shield next to him, blades of grass scratching at his palms. He can hear Erica laughing, but it sounds wrong. Distorted.

Then he lifts up one hand in front of his face. It’s drenched in blood.

The gasping sound of someone choking.

“D-Dustin.”

Eddie. Eddie lying on the grass, staining it red, there’s—there’s so much—

“Dustin, p-please.”

There’s an awful gurgling noise from Eddie’s throat. Dustin feels sick.

“You—Dustin, you—you’ve gotta keep it in. Please, please.”

Eddie’s crying, his hands weakly grasping at the ground, slipping in the puddles of his own blood.

“Help,” he sobs. “Help me.”

Dustin tries. The blood runs through his fingers.

“Steve,” he whispers—tries to scream, but the fear has stolen his voice. “Steve.”

Steve isn’t coming.

They’re alone, and Dustin can only watch, frozen, as Eddie convulses, gasps for air; he’s dying, he’s dying, move, do something—

He wakes with a start to his mom knocking on the door.

“Dusty, have you overslept? Can I come in?”

Dustin sits up, runs the back of his hand across his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, but it comes out hoarse; he has to stop, clear his throat. “Sorry. Yeah.”

The door opens.

His mom takes one look at him and says, “Oh, honey. No school today.” As she gets closer, her eyes flicker over the bed, the blankets, his PJs. “Are you cold?”

Dustin nods. The sheets cling to his skin, damp with cold sweat.

His mom gently runs a hand through his hair, checks his forehead. “How about I run you a bath, huh? I’ll call the school.”

Dustin’s too exhausted to bring up the fact that she’s going to be late for work if she stays much longer.

He takes the bath—once his mom has left the room, drains some of the tub so he can fill it up with scorching hot water.

When he gets out, there’s multiple tins of soup, fresh bread, and crackers on the counter; his mom’s bringing a couple meals out of the fridge, some microwave ones, too.

“Just giving you options, hon,” she’s saying, “eat whatever you’d like, I’m going to the store later. Oh, I filled up Tews’s bowl so if he complains at you, the sweet thing is lying.”

Dustin makes a wordless noise of thanks.

His bed has been stripped; new sheets and blankets have already been put on, which makes him feel a pang of shame. The window’s been left open the tiniest bit, just to let some air in, but his stomach immediately drops at the sight.

“Dustin?” His mom’s looking at him searchingly. “Honey, I can call off work—”

“No,” he says quickly. Subtly digs his nails into his palm to try and stop himself from shaking. “No, mom, m’just gonna be boring and sleep.”

She’s still frowning, but he’s gotten good over the years at knowing what expression to pull, putting just the right inflection in his voice that silently says don’t look any closer, don’t worry. She leaves him with a gentle kiss on his cheek, with her work number written down on a notepad, makes him promise that he’ll call over even the smallest thing.

He makes the promise knowing that he won’t.

Closes the window as soon as he’s alone.

-

The phone rings early afternoon. He sluggishly does the math in his head for Steve and Robin’s shift patterns this week. They always try and call if he’s sick, whenever the store is quiet: when he had tonsillitis last winter, miserable with it, they gave running commentary on the day’s most ridiculous customers, passing the phone between them until he fell asleep.

Pick up the phone, Dustin thinks.

But he feels inexplicably heavy, lets it ring and ring and ring…

The nightmare seems to flicker in front of his eyes, a lingering unease deep in his gut. He thinks of Steve, of calling for him and not getting an answer, which would never happen, which could only mean the very worst—

He stumbles out of his room and picks up the phone, interrupting Robin’s breezy customer service spiel to mumble out, “Sorry, think I missed a call from—um, is Steve there?”

“Afternoon, Einstein! You just missed him, he’s getting lunch, but he’ll be back in, like—”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Dustin says, feeling stupid and abruptly, mortifyingly young. “Just… just checking.”

There’s a fraction of a pause.

“Hey, Dustin?” Robin says, quieter now. Gentle. Dustin wants to cry. “You can wait with me, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Are you—”

He hangs up.

-

Time slips away from him. It’s only after the school day’s over that he realises his mistake: that when he’s sick, he usually whines and complains, asks for updates every class, even if it’s just whether Mike’s added to their drawings left underneath their cafeteria table.

He’s kept his walkie off all day.

He searches for it, clumsily turning in his bed, and when he switches it on, it’s to hear Mike repeatedly asking, “Dustin, do you copy?”

“Here,” Dustin says blearily, then remembers himself. “I copy. Over.”

“God, finally,” Mike says in that short way that means he’s been desperately worried. “You okay? They marked you off sick in home room, but I didn’t—”

“M’not really,” Dustin says—doesn’t know what he is, honestly. “Just. Kinda tired. Over.”

“Okay,” Mike says, after a pause. “Um, Nancy says if you feel better, she can pick you up tomorrow. And we can—you don’t have to do anything, we can just, like, chill in the basement. I was, uh, talking to Will, and he thinks he knows what Eddie’s plot twist is, and I think he’s got it, honestly, I—”

“Tell Nancy thanks,” Dustin says, “but I… I don’t think I, um—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Mike says. “No problem.”

The walkie falls silent, and Dustin gets the feeling that a few other conversations are happening on another channel. Then there’s a click, some static, and a voice again.

“Hi,” Lucas says. “Didn’t wanna wake you up if you were sleeping, so I, uh, used the spare key under the flower pot to drop off some stuff. Not—not homework, don’t worry.” A tiny chuckle. “I’m not a sadist.”

There’s some space left there, deliberately so. Dustin knows he’d normally make a joke. He can’t.

“Just some assignment marks came back,” Lucas says. “Hey, you got an A on that paper, the one about—”

“Thanks,” Dustin says.

He sounds blunt. He hates it.

“You don’t need to thank me, Dustin,” Lucas says softly. “But you’re welcome. Hope… hope you feel better.”

Dustin swallows.

More quiet. Another click.

“Hey,” Max says, as if nothing’s happened. “I’m behind on English, so I’m just gonna read out loud, I need to know there’s an audience or it’s not gonna stick. No complaints, my education’s on the line, Dusty-Bun.”

Max isn’t behind; Dustin knows this. He doesn’t complain.

She reads The Outsiders for at least twenty minutes. Things get hazy after that, because Tews comes in and settles on Dustin’s chest, purring, and Max’s voice fades into background noise.

Perhaps the phone rings again, but it sounds so far away, he could’ve dreamt it.

He wakes up at the sound of his mom opening the front door, the soft jangle of her house keys. He vaguely hears her play the answering machine, and he’d recognise the rise and fall of that voice anywhere.

Eddie has this rambling way of leaving a message, like he’s really having a conversation with someone rather than just talking to a machine. Dustin can’t make out the words from here. Wishes he could.

His mom enters with a fresh water glass and soup on a tray.

“Eddie called,” she says, with that warm tone of voice she’s used ever since she truly met him—when he watched her with wide eyes from a hospital bed and choked out, “I-I’m not—it’s just a stupid board game, I swear.”

“Hmm?”

She smiles at him. “He was just calling to say hi.”

Dustin smiles back weakly—knows that Eddie would’ve taken at least five minutes to even get round to that point.

-

This time, the terror comes when he’s wide awake, when it’s three o’clock in the morning and his heart pounds for no reason at all, breath catching like he’s been dumped into a cold, cold lake.

Dustin’s felt frozen before, but when Eddie…

It wasn’t like Max in the graveyard, where Steve shouting for him to call Nancy and Robin helped him snap out of it, gave him something to do.

He was alone.

He was alone, and he didn’t know how long it had been since Eddie had stopped breathing. He tried to count, and the numbers turned to static in his head.

Stop the bleeding. Help him breathe. Move. Fucking move, you’re killing him, you’re—

A light on in the hallway.

“Dusty? Oh, baby, breathe.”

Dustin tries. Chokes on it.

And his mom is leading him to her room like he’s five years old.

“There, sweetie, that’s it. Shh, breathe, breathe.”

Dustin half-collapses into her bed, and her bedspread is thick, but he’s so, so cold, and he can’t catch his breath—

“Shh, Dustin, shh, you’re okay, baby. Oh, honey, it’s… it’s the earthquake, isn’t it?”

His mom is holding his hand, guiding his breathing. In. Out.

“There. There you are, well done, baby. I’m going to call Steve, okay?”

Dustin tightens his grip on her hand. Gasps out an urgent, “No.”

It could be a bad night, could be a night that Steve needs all the rest he can get—

“Oh, Dusty, shh. Okay, honey, I won’t, won’t. Not right now.” She hugs him. “You know you can tell me anything? Always.”

Dustin closes his eyes.

I can’t.

-

He pretends to sleep. Feels his mom leave the bed. Hears her on the phone—can’t make out the conversation.

His heart’s beating rapidly again. Breathing short and sharp.

He slips into his room. Opens the window. Crawls out.

Shock of cold air. Rain on his skin. In his eyes. Blinks it away. He’s on his bike with no memory of deciding to do so. Lungs burning. Pedalling faster, faster—

He hits something, something stupidly small, a pathetic rock, but he goes down, like a kid freshly off training wheels.

Dustin wonders if this is how Eddie felt. If even while on the bike, he could still sense how close to death he was.

And it’s stupid, it’s so stupid, it’s not remotely the same, but as Dustin lies there in the rain, his palms and knees stinging, he kind of feels like he’s dying, too.

A car horn sounding, over and over. Like a desperate shout.

Dustin can’t breathe.

Clunk. A door opening. Footsteps. Running on gravel.

I didn’t run away this time, right?

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey. Dustin, look at me.”

Steve. Steve’s hand on his shoulder.

Dustin shudders, exhales. “I-I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“Jesus. Woah, woah, take your time.”

Steve lifts him up so carefully, avoiding Dustin’s hands from digging further into the dirt.

Dustin blinks, sees Steve’s frown, the way his eyes are darting all over him until they land on his knees.

Oh. He’s bleeding.

“Come on,” Steve says. “Here. Lean on me. I’ll drive you the rest of the way.”

And it’s only as Dustin hobbles over to Steve’s car that he realises what he’s done.

He’s biked almost all the way to Forest Hills.

-

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