Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve’s cell phone blared into the silence of his bedroom, waking him from a deep sleep. His head felt full of cotton as he numbly pressed the “accept” button.

“What?” he grumbled into the phone.

“Harrington.” Nancy’s sharp voice woke him right up. “Need you here ASAP. Motor vehicle collision, motorcycle on motorcycle.”

“Can’t it wait til normal hours?” Steve whined. None of the other pathologists would do this to him.

Nancy sighed. He could feel the disappointment coming out through the speakers. “It can’t. You know we’ve got a full day today, with the burn victims from that house fire. You come in, we knock these out before the day even starts, and we won’t have to stay late.”

Steve hated being the on-call autopsy assistant. He didn’t mind his job during the day, even though most people thought it was morbid. It was nice to work with his hands all day, and to feel like he was helping get closure for some families and loved ones along the way. He got used to the smells after a while, and the sight of gore had never bothered him. But getting woken up in the early hours of the morning and called in? That was sometimes more than he could take.

“Fine,” he said, knowing that Nancy called the shots here. He was paid to be on call; he couldn’t refuse to come in. “Be there in an hour.”

He hung up the phone and glanced at the time. Four am. He sighed. She really couldn’t have waited just another two hours? He pulled himself out of bed, stumbling to the bathroom.

A lightning-quick ball of fur dashed down the hallway and wove itself between his legs, nearly tripping him.

“Seriously, Igor?” Steve groused, bending down to pick up the ginger cat with the pronounced hunch in its back. “You trying to kill me?” Igor had been a rescue, a kitten born with a congenital spinal deformity that had gotten him stuck in the bottom corner at the humane society open house. Steve, lover of all strays, especially the fucked up ones, had been drawn to him like catnip. The name had been too good to pass up.

Steve took a detour to the kitchen and opened a can of Fancy Feast for Igor, spooning it out into his bowl and stroking down his tortuous spine. Igor purred and arched his back, calling even more attention to the kyphosis.

He took a quick shower while his coffee brewed, and was out the door and on his way to the morgue in less than half an hour. He’d learned to speedrun his morning routine when needed.

The hospital was always peaceful in the early hours of the morning. There were enough people around to keep it from being creepy, but not so many as to be overwhelming, like it was during normal business hours. He passed the night shift security guard on his way in, flashing his badge and getting a nod, and made his way to the morgue.

Nancy was already there waiting, changed into her scrubs and tapping impatiently away at the computer.

“Steve. Finally.” She stood without further preamble, and made her way from the observation area into the morgue proper. Steve paused in the locker room to hastily throw on a pair of scrubs, then joined Nancy in donning PPE—the thick gown that covered his arms and reached down to his ankles, calf-length booties over his nasty morgue sneakers, nitrile gloves that reached to mid-forearm, a mask with attached eye-shield, and a surgical bonnet to cover his hair. He hadn’t always worn the bonnet, but after an unfortunate incident with the suction vacuum container and a whole lot of blood in his hair, he’d made the addition to his routine.

Nancy was bent over a clipboard, furiously scribbling down notes. The bodies were laid out on gurneys already, body bags unzipped to reveal the mess. Most of the other pathologists wouldn’t dream of doing the legwork to get the bodies out like that, but Nancy was nothing if not efficient. Steve helped her position the gurneys next to the autopsy tables, and together they shifted the bags over.

“I think we can do these external only,” Nancy said, pausing over the body of a man with long, curly brown hair. “Get the clothes off and take pics, grab me some urine and blood for tox, then we should be good. Pretty obvious what the causes of death were.”

Steve approached the man on the gurney Nancy wasn’t currently looming over. His head had unfortunately taken much more damage than the first man. Steve could see hanks of blonde hair matted with blood and bits of flesh. One brilliant blue eye seemed to watch him as he moved toward the man, but the other half of his face was a pulverized mess of blood, muscle, and bits of bone.

He snapped a series of photographs of the man with his clothes still on, then reached for the fabric scissors. He cut a skin-tight white tee off the man. He was fit. Even more than Steve, and Steve spent a fair bit of time at the gym. Well-defined pectoral and abdominal muscles stood out on his body. Steve worked the tatters of the shirt off of his arms, which were still relatively limp.

“When did these guys come in?” Steve asked, surprised at the lack of rigor.

“Right about when I called you,” Nancy replied as she documented the bloody mess of the other man’s abdomen.

Steve felt a surge of annoyance. Even if this did make it easier to get the clothes off of them, it made it even more unnecessary that he’d been rudely awakened at four in the morning. At the same time, the freshness of the bodies tickled something in the back of his mind. Dustin’s request from a few weeks ago, to let him know if Steve came across any freshly dead, previously healthy individuals. A weird fucking request, but then most things about Dustin were weird. He’d been a weird kid when Steve had babysat him, and he’d just gotten weirder as an adult since he’d started medical school.

Steve shook his head, and turned his attention back to the decedent. The jeans were harder to peel off the man. They were tight, but the fabric was thick enough that cutting through it with the scissors was going to be a bitch. Steve huffed and puffed as he wriggled the jeans down the man’s legs, revealing a lack of any underwear. That can’t have been comfortable.

Once the man was fully undressed, Steve went back over him with the camera, documenting all of his wounds. His head and face were the worst, the left side a complete mess, with bits of brain leaking out the side from where his skull had been cracked.

His left arm and torso were a mess of lacerations, worst on his lower arm where the shirt hadn’t covered. His right deltoid sported a tacky tattoo of a skull smoking a cigarette. Steve snapped a picture of it for possible identification purposes, though he’d glimpsed a driver’s license lying on the table of personal effects.

Steve grabbed a syringe and a specimen collection cup. He pressed over the man’s pelvis, feeling the bladder, then pushed the needle in through the skin to a point he’d become intimately familiar with over the years. He pulled the plunger back, drawing up dark yellow urine, then dispensed it into the cup. He pulled blood from the femoral veins, some from the left and some from the right, dispensing them into their own tubes. Once he was finished, he moved over to the dark-haired man.

“Done with that one?” Nancy asked, nodding over at the blonde man.

“Yeah,” Steve replied. She switched places with him, taking her clipboard over to the blond.

Steve went through a similar process with the second man. He had more tattoos than the first—a ghoulish head, a spider, some bats, a few other things Steve didn’t recognize. His injuries were concentrated on the right side of his body. His skull was largely intact with the exception of one crater over his right temple, bone and brain matter leaking out through the hole. His right leg must have been trapped under his motorcycle, because it was crushed to a pulp, the bones broken in multiple places. The bruising on his abdomen spoke to internal hemorrhage, and the blood loss from his leg certainly hadn’t helped.

He finished with the pictures and gathering the toxicology samples. He turned to Nancy. She was still scribbling furiously away on her clipboard, oblivious to anything other than the body in front of her. Steve cleared his throat.

“D’you need me to open them, or are we good?” Steve asked. If the pathologist determined that the cause of death was evident without a full autopsy, they could do an ‘external only’, examining the bodies without opening them. In motor vehicle collisions like this, with obvious fatal wounds and young decedents, as long as they could get tox samples without opening they could typically leave it at that.

Nancy looked over at Steve, taking a few moments to come back from wherever her brain had been focused. “No, no need to open. I have what I need.”

Steve breathed a sigh of relief. That would mean he had time to grab some coffee and breakfast before starting in on the burn victims.

It wasn’t until later that day, well into the afternoon, that Steve remembered Dustin’s strange request. He walked into the cooler to release a decedent to a funeral home, and his eyes fell on the two body bags from that morning. Still there in the cooler, not yet claimed.

“Anybody contact next of kin on the two MVA’s from today?” Steve asked Deirdre, the head clerk.

“Yeah, ‘course,” she said with a frown. “What, you think I’m not doing my job?” She was a decidedly unpleasant woman, constantly sure she’d been slighted.

“No, no, not at all. I know you’re great at your job.” Things worked best with Deirdre if you buttered her up. She softened visibly. “Just curious. They were young guys. They have families?”

She leaned toward her computer, clicked on something, then typed. “Sort of. Munson had an uncle, who’s opted for cremation. Hargrove had a dad. Looks like he also chose cremation. Both going straight to the funeral home, no open casket for those poor bastards.”

Steve thought about what Dustin had said. “Anybody young. Unclaimed. Or going straight for cremation.” He had no idea why he was even considering telling Dustin about this. He couldn’t be up to anything good with that sort of a request. But Steve had an unfortunate soft spot for the little twerp.

He thanked Deirdre, and wandered back down to the cooler. He checked the toe tags on both of the men. Same funeral home. What was the harm in just telling Dustin? The little shit probably wouldn’t even be able to do anything before they were cremated.

Steve finally decided to call him that evening as he was sitting down with Igor to watch a riveting re-run of Survivor.

“What’s up, Stevia?” Dustin never greeted him normally.

Steve sighed. “Well, now I don’t think I will tell you.”

“Aw, don’t be like that,” Dustin cajoled. “Nicknames are just my way of showing love.”

“Sure,” Steve said with a snort. He paused, stroking a finger down Igor’s misshapen back. “There’s two dead bodies that came in today. Young, previously healthy, like you asked. Slated for cremation tomorrow.”

Dustin’s voice sharpened, now fully intent on what Steve was saying. “You serious?” he asked. “They badly damaged?”

Steve shrugged, even though Dustin couldn’t see it. “Motorcycle accident, so yeah. Lot of injuries.”

“Brain intact?”

“Eh, half intact.”

“What does that mean?” Dustin snapped.

“Well, one of them is missing the left side of his head, and the other had some serious trauma to the right side of his head.”

Dustin hummed into the receiver. “I think I can work with that. What about the rest of their bodies?”

“Not great. As I said, they were both in a motorcycle accident.”

“Hmmm. I might have some things I can supplement with if needed.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. That sounded ominous. “Dustin. What are you up to?”

“Something that could change the world,” Dustin said, his voice hushed and reverent.

“You say that, like, once a month,” Steve pointed out.

Dustin huffed. “Well, this time I mean it. What funeral home did they go to?”

“Smith and Hayes.”

“Oh, good,” Dustin said with a sigh of relief. “Frank works there. He can help me out.”

“Dustin.” Steve let his ‘mom’ voice out. “What the hell are you planning?”

“Nothing.” Dustin was a terrible liar. Steve could tell he was up to something that would get him into big trouble if anyone found out. He regretted telling Dustin about the bodies.

“I gotta go,” Dustin said. “Talk to you later, thanks man.”

Dustin hung up before Steve could press him further. Steve tried calling him back several times, but it went to voicemail. He sent an angry text warning Dustin to behave himself, then turned Survivor back on. There was nothing he could do if Dustin was going to ignore him.

Steve was awakened from a deep slumber by the sound of his ringing phone. He answered without even looking at who was calling.

“What?” he snapped. He expected another plea to come in early from Nancy, before he remembered that he wasn’t on call anymore. He had the day off tomorrow.

“Steve.” Dustin’s voice. He sounded panicked. “I really need your help.”

Steve glanced over at his alarm clock. It was two in the morning. “What the fuck, Dustin? It’s the middle of the night!”

“Yeah, but. I’ve got a situation here. You see, I didn’t quite think through the fact that I’m all brains and no brawn. And this particular project is going to require… a fair bit of brawn.”

“At two am?”

“It can’t exactly wait. I’ve got two dead bodies sitting on gurneys beside my car and I can’t lift them in.”

“You what?” Steve snapped, coming fully alert now.

“Look, if you don’t want me to end up in prison for body-snatching, can you please come to Smith and Hayes ASAP?”

“Why don’t you just wheel them back in?” Steve asked, unsure why he was attempting to reason with Dustin in this absurd situation.

“No can do. Frank already locked up, wouldn’t stay. I’m just supposed to leave the empty gurneys by the loading dock when I’m done.”

“But what are you doing with the bodies, man? What the fuck is going on?”

“Steve.” Dustin let out his long-suffering sigh, the one he used when he thought Steve was being particularly stupid. “I promise I will tell you everything eventually, but this is kind of an emergency. If someone drives by and sees me out here with two dead bodies, I’m toast.”

Steve groaned, but pushed himself out of bed. Dustin was basically his little brother, in every way that mattered. He couldn’t just leave him out there, even if Dustin had gotten himself into this mess. “Fine, fine. I’ll be there soon as I can.”

He only took the time to throw on yesterday’s clothes and take a piss before he stumbled out the door to his car. Thankfully, the funeral home was just a few minutes’ drive. He didn’t see anyone in the parking lot when he pulled in, and wondered if Dustin had just played another thoroughly annoying prank on him. If he had, Steve wasn’t talking to him for weeks. When he drove around the side of the building, though, he spotted Dustin’s hatchback parked near the loading dock. Dustin stood behind the open trunk, two gurneys topped with body bags positioned beside him.

“Steve!” Dustin cried when Steve spilled from his car. “Thank god. I was really starting to worry. Did you know how heavy dead bodies are?”

Steve snorted. “I am, in fact, very aware of how heavy they are, considering it’s part of my job to move them around.”

Dustin beamed at him. “Exactly why you’re the perfect person to help out here.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and leveled Dustin with a glare. “Just what, exactly, am I helping out with?”

Dustin glanced around nervously. “I promise I’ll tell you everything, but we’ve really gotta get out of here first. Help me load these up, then follow me to the old lab.”

Steve thought about putting his foot down and insisting on some information before helping, but Dustin looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. Steve sighed, and turned to the gurneys.

He made quick work of the transfer, while Dustin fluttered around him attempting to give him instructions but not actually helping with the lifting at all. Typical. Steve really considered telling Dustin he was on his own after the bodies were safely shut up in the car, but he was in too deep now. He had to figure out what the fuck Dustin was up to this time.

He followed Dustin’s car to the outskirts of town, where Hawkins Research Laboratory still stood abandoned. It was a huge building, and had once employed hundreds of people, but it had been shuttered for almost forty years. Vines grew over the facade, and trees had sprouted up where they shouldn’t be. Most of the windows on the first floor were broken; many of them had been boarded up back when someone still cared about this property, but the more recent broken windows had been left untouched.

The city council had talked about demolishing the building for years after the lab went bankrupt, but never found someone to buy the land. The council was unwilling to foot the bill for the demolition themselves, so they’d just left the building there to rot.

Steve regretted his decision to come with Dustin as soon as he stood behind the open trunk, staring at the bodies. “You’re gonna make me move them inside, aren’t you?” Steve asked.

Dustin ran a hand up and down in the air in front of his own body. “Well I certainly can’t do it. I’m the brains, you’re the brawn. I promise I’ll credit you on the eventual publication.”

“Please don’t,” Steve replied with a grimace. “I’d rather not go to prison.”

Dustin shrugged. “Your loss. This is gonna make me so famous. This is Nobel Prize shit, Steve.”

Steve rolled his eyes, and leaned into the trunk. He’d have to take them one at a time, fireman’s carry. He wished they’d brought the gurneys from the funeral home.

He dragged one of the bags to the edge of the trunk, squatted so he could lift with his legs, then hefted it up over his shoulder with a grunt. It must be the blonde man, it felt too heavy to be the stringbean brunette.

“That’s actually really impressive,” Dustin muttered, his eyes wide.

“Lead the way, then,” Steve said, gesturing to Dustin with his free hand. “This isn’t exactly comfortable.”

Dustin jumped into action, leading Steve around the side of the building. He paused beside a generator sitting near the building with a large extension cord running through a window-well, and pulled the cord to bring it to life. Then he continued around the building to where a glass door had been busted open. Dustin moved the plank of wood that covered the opening, and Steve shimmied in sideways with his cumbersome burden.

The inside of the building was in even worse condition than the exterior suggested. The floor was covered in dirt, leaves, and trash—chip bags, beer cans, even a few syringes. A raccoon skittered away from the beam of Dustin’s flashlight, chittering angrily at them. The walls were covered in graffiti and a suspicious-looking black substance that Steve suspected was mold.

“This way,” Dustin said, heading down a long corridor. Steve followed him into a twisting maze of hallways, deeper and deeper into the lab. The further they went into the building and away from the windows, the less detritus there was on the floor ahead of them. The graffiti became sparser, as well, as though people didn’t generally venture this far into the building.

Steve could understand why—the darkness around them was oppressive, barely disturbed by Dustin’s flashlight. All of Steve’s instincts told him to turn around and get out, but Dustin kept pressing forward. The small hairs on the back of Steve’s neck stood at attention. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched, but the sound of their breathing and footsteps was interrupted only by the occasional skittering of small animals. Steve hoped there was nothing rabid in here. He hated shots.

Dustin opened a heavy industrial door onto a set of stairs.

“Oh, I am absolutely not taking these bodies up any fucking stairs,” Steve snapped.

“Jeez, calm down, man. We’re just going down two flights. To the basement.”

“The basement?” Steve’s voice rose a few octaves. “Is this place not creepy enough for you on the main level?”

“Didn’t think you’d be such a scaredy-cat,” Dustin muttered, starting down the staircase. Steve let out a strangled cry of indignation, but followed him down.

Thankfully, they didn’t have far to go once they’d reached the basement. Dustin led Steve to a door just a few steps from the staircase. It let out a loud groan as Dustin shoved it open, and then something flew directly into Steve’s face.

He shrieked, jumping out of the way and waving his hands in front of him. The body dropped from his shoulder and slipped to the floor with a dull thud. Wings flapped, and Steve heard a high-pitched squeaking sound. His flailing hands brushed past a small, furry body, and then the thing was gone, leaving only Dustin’s flashlight shining in his face.

“Oh my god, relax,” Dustin said, barely getting the words out through his laughter. “It’s just a bat.” He glanced down at the body. “Hopefully you didn’t do any more damage to the body.”

“Fuck off,” Steve grumbled, squatting down to pick it up again. “Don’t see you helping with this part.”

Dustin continued to chuckle as he walked further into the room. He fiddled with something in a corner, and then two large floodlights clicked on, illuminating the room. It was cleaner than anywhere else in the lab. The floor had been swept and the walls cleared of mold. A large stainless steel table stood in the center of the room directly under one of the lights. Several pieces of unidentifiable machinery were arrayed around the table, as well as a tray full of all kinds of scalpels, saws, and suture.

“You can put him there,” Dustin said, motioning to the table.

Steve sighed in relief when he set down the body, rolling his shoulders and neck out.

“Alright, you go get the other one while I get started,” Dustin commanded.

“What? Hell, no! I can’t see a thing without the flashlight.”

“Couldn’t you, like, hold it in your mouth?” Dustin asked with that annoyingly innocent look on his face.

Steve put his hands on his hips and gave Dustin his best glare. “Absolutely not. If you want the second body down here, you’re lighting the way for me.”

Dustin sighed dramatically, but led Steve back up the stairs. No bats attacked him this time around, and the second body was much lighter. Once they had both bodies on the table, Steve grabbed Dustin by the shoulders before he could dive into whatever the hell he was about to do.

“What. The fuck. Are you doing?” Steve asked, punctuating each sentence with a little shake.

Dustin pushed at him. “Unhand me, you blockhead! I’ll tell you, you don’t have to shake it out of me.”

Steve let him go, but didn’t back up. Dustin wasn’t going to worm his way out of this.

Dustin turned to a corner of the room that was shrouded in shadow and called. “Mews! C’mere kitty!” He added a few psst psst noises on the end.

“Isn’t that your cat’s name?” Steve asked, wrinkling his nose. “The one that died a few weeks ago?” Had Dustin finally lost it?

The tinkle of a bell sounded as a small creature loped out of the shadows and into the light. It was a cat. An incredibly disheveled cat. The orange tabby was missing huge chunks of its fur, with large stitches sewn into it’s skin in the bald areas. There were a few patches of black fur and one area that looked almost calico. Most of its right ear was gone, and there was a large metal plate covering half of its skull.

“Astute observation, Steve. That is the name of my dead cat. And this,” he motioned to the cat with a flourish, “is my dead cat.”

Steve let out a nervous laugh. It did look a lot like Mews, but that was insane. “Good joke, Dustin. Is this another one of your weirdly realistic robotics experiments? Why’d you make it so fucked up?”

Dustin bent to pick up the cat, stroking it’s mangled fur. “Not a robot. This is Mews. The original. Touch him. He’s warm.” Dustin thrust the cat out toward Steve.

Steve reluctantly reached out a hand and pressed it to one of the bald spots. Dustin was right. It was warm. He could feel it purring, and breathing.

“So Mews didn’t die?” Steve asked. “You just decided to do some kind of experiment on him? Why’d you have to tell Claudia he died? She was devastated.” Dustin could be a dick sometimes in service of science, but that was pretty far even for him.

“Mews did die,” Dustin said with a wide grin that didn’t at all fit what he was saying. “He got hit by a truck. And then I brought him back to life.”

Steve’s mouth dropped open. “No.”

“Yes,” Dustin replied. He dropped Mews back on the ground, and the cat retreated to the corner. “I had to supplement with some tissue from a couple of other cats, but it worked. I’ve been working on this for years, ever since my first biology class in undergrad. Mews was my first mammalian success.”

“You’re fucking with me,” Steve insisted. “That’s just some other cat that looks like Mews.”

“It is not!” Dustin retorted with a stomp of his foot. “And I’ll prove it to you with my most impressive case yet. I’m going to bring these two,” he motioned to the two body bags, “back to life.”

Steve laughed again. “That’s not possible. They’re both missing really vital pieces. Like parts of their brains.”

Dustin shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers. There should be enough to combine usable parts into one body.”

Steve was beginning to realize that Dustin was serious about this. “Are you…” Steve tilted his head to the side and tried to put on his most sympathetic smile. “Are you doing okay, bud?”

Dustin sighed in annoyance and walked around Steve to the table. “I’m not crazy. This is actually going to work. And you’re going to assist.” Dustin unzipped the bags one by one, eyes roving over the corpses as Steve stood there in shock. Dustin poked and prodded at both men, then eventually nodded to himself. “I can work with these. Can you get them out of the bags?”

“Wh- no!” Steve yelled. “You need help Dustin! We need to call your mom.”

“Absolutely not,” Dustin replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Steve. Please. I know I haven’t always been the most level-headed individual, but I am serious about this. I just need a little help with the manual labor, and then I will prove to you that I can do this. Do you trust me?”

Steve stared at Dustin, and thought about it. Forced himself to really think about it. Dustin was actually kind of shit at pranks, and lacked any semblance of a poker face. If this was all some elaborate joke he was playing on Steve, there was no way he could’ve kept it together this long. That left two options—the stress of med school had triggered a psychotic break, or Dustin really could raise the dead. He owed it to Dustin to find out firsthand which it was.

“Alright, fine,” Steve said. “I’ll help.” Dustin whooped. “But on one condition,” Steve continued, talking over Dustin.

“Whatever you want, I’ll do anything!”

“If this completely flops, I’m taking you to the ER for an emergency psych eval.”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine, whatever.” He waved a hand like he was dispersing a bad smell, showing no sign of worry that the possibility may come to pass.

Steve nodded. He was all in now. “Okay, then, help me get these bodies out. You’re not getting out of the heavy lifting entirely.”

Dustin nearly made Steve regret forcing him to help, given the amount he whined as they shimmied the two bodies out of the bags, but finally they had both men out and prone on the table, side by side. Dustin looked them over in more detail, instructing Steve to help lift one or the other a few times, and then stepped back with a thoughtful look on his face. He nodded sharply to himself after pondering for a few moments.

“We’re gonna need to use the brown-haired dude’s head for the most part,” Dustin said, motioning to the body, “though we will need the right side of the blonde’s brain and a little of his skull, probably his right eye. The blonde guy’s abdomen is more intact, but his left leg is a mess, so we’ll take the other’s. We’ll need to open them both, though, to see which internal organs are salvageable.” Dustin turned to Steve with a toothy grin. “As luck would have it, you know a little something about opening up bodies.”

Steve groaned. “Dustin, please tell me you didn’t orchestrate this all fully knowing you’d ask me for my dissection help.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that.”

Steve rolled his eyes, and approached the table of tools Dustin had set out. Everything he needed for an autopsy was here, including an autopsy saw for opening the skulls. Steve didn’t want to know where Dustin had obtained all the supplies. He grabbed a scalpel, rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

Dustin had been right—the brown-haired man (Munson, Steve recalled) had sustained serious injuries to his torso. His spleen had lacerated and filled his abdominal cavity with blood. His pancreas had torn, and the spillage of enzymes had eaten into his liver, stomach, and kidneys, but the organs above his diaphragm were relatively intact. Hargrove’s abdomen was in better shape, the organs all intact, though opening his chest cavity revealed that his aorta had torn from his heart, and his lungs had been punctured in multiple places by ribs.

“Okay, I think here’s what we need to do,” Dustin said, rubbing a blood covered hand over his forehead without even grimacing. They were both far beyond the point of being grossed out by the gore of this situation. “We’ll need to attach Munson from the chest up to Hargrove from the diaphragm down. We’ll cut the spinal cord between T12 and L1 on both of them, use Hargrove’s from L1 down and Munson’s T12 up. Then we’re gonna need Munson’s left leg, since Hargrove’s is shit, and Hargrove’s right arm. We’ll do the brains and skull last.”

Steve stared at Dustin, then back down at the bodies. “How is that possibly going to work? Even if you could get the heart to start beating again, how in the hell are you going to get their spinal cords and joints and vessels and, and…. everything to fuse together?”

Dustin grinned. “The secret sauce.”

“I’m sorry, the what?” They were definitely spending tomorrow waiting for a psych eval.

“I found it when I was exploring the lab.” Dustin hurried over to a cabinet shoved into one corner of the room, nearly tripping over the reanimated Mews in the process. He grabbed a jar from a shelf and brought it back over to Steve. The jar was full of a slimy black substance that seemed to be moving, slowly undulating around in the confined space. “There’s a room in the sub-basement that was absolutely covered in these weird black vines. I’d never seen anything like them before. When I cut into them, they oozed this black stuff. I’d cut myself pretty bad on my hand while I was hacking through them trying to find out if there was anything behind them, and when this black stuff dripped onto the cut, it just… disappeared. Like it closed right up, the pain was completely gone, only a little scar left behind. So I started experimenting with worse and worse injuries, even broke my own finger. It healed everything.”

“You broke your own finger?” Steve couldn’t help but re-enter babysitter mode at that admission.

“Yeah, but it was fine! That’s the point! It’s, like, the ultimate healing serum.”

“So why haven’t you told anyone about it?” Steve asked. “What if it could cure cancer and malaria and shit?”

“I will. All in good time. But I don’t want anyone else getting a jump on the ultimate application of this good stuff.” He patted the jar affectionately. “I wanna be the first one to raise the dead.”

“How did someone as angelic as Claudia raise a legit mad scientist?” Steve asked under his breath.

Dustin pretended not to hear. He clapped his hands and said, “Let’s take a look at the brains!”

Steve opened both skulls with the autopsy saw. Munson’s skull was largely intact with the exception of the hole over his right temple. The right side of his brain was missing a large chunk from this area, but the rest of the brain, including cerebellum and brainstem, was in good condition. Pretty much all of the left side of Hargrove’s brain was missing. Dustin instructed Steve to scoop the remaining right hemisphere out of Munson’s skull, then replace it with the intact right hemisphere from Hargrove.

“Theoretically, if this works,” Steve said, hands on his hips as he surveyed the conglomerate brain in front of him, “this guy’s going to have two people’s brains. Isn’t that gonna be… difficult? Like will he—or they, I guess—have all of each other’s memories?”

“Quite frankly, Steve, I have no idea.” Dustin laughed gleefully. “This is a completely new frontier. They might have no memories at all. Though I’m going to guess they’ll at least retain their procedural memory. Mews still knew how to walk and meow and eat.”

Steve had a brief pang of conscience at the thought of playing with someone’s whole consciousness like this, but then he reminded himself there was no way it was going to actually work. He could finish this up, return the bodies to the funeral home, and escort Dustin to the hospital.

Dustin turned back to the bodies, both still open on the table with various markings in pen where they were supposed to connect. “Assembly time!” he announced.

It was more difficult work than Steve anticipated. He had to cut up the bodies in ways that were completely different from what he usually did during an autopsy. He tried to damage the tissue as little as possible, even though Dustin insisted his ‘secret sauce’ would fix everything. It was the principle of the thing. He wasn’t a butcher.

It took about three hours of painstaking work before they had a single conglomerate body on the table in front of them. Dustin had rubbed his black goop over all of the areas where body parts were joined, and filled the abdominal, chest, and skull cavities with the stuff. The various discarded parts of both bodies had been thrown into one of the body bags in a gory mess on the floor. Steve was not looking forward to the clean-up.

“I can’t believe this is finally happening!” Dustin looked like an upper middle class kid on Christmas morning. He rubbed his bloodied hands on his thighs and reached into a pocket, pulling out his phone. “You have to record it. I’m gonna need all the proof I can get.”

Steve grabbed the phone. He wasn’t sure filming this was a great idea, given the number of laws they had to be violating, but at least he wouldn’t be in the shot. He started recording. “Nothing is happening,” he announced.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Dustin called over his shoulder as he rummaged around on the shelves. He pulled out a defibrillator, and attached the electrodes to their respective places on the chimera’s chest. “The special sauce requires electricity. Someone who’s alive already has plenty of electricity flowing through their body, but someone who’s dead needs a little jolt. Had to rig this thing up so it would shock without scanning for a rhythm first.”

Dustin positioned his finger over the big red button on the defibrillator. He took a deep breath in through his nose, and glanced nervously at the body. Steve scolded himself when he noticed he was holding his breath, too, like he was actually expecting something to happen.

Dustin pressed the button. The body jumped on the table, then lay still. Dustin frowned. He pressed the button again. Another jump, followed by stillness. Dustin peeled an eyelid up while feeling for a pulse with his free hand, then rubbed hard on the sternum. No response.

“Well, looks like we’re headed to the ER,” Steve said.

Dustin glared over at him. “No. This is going to work. One more try.” He slathered a bunch of the black goop over the electrodes attached to the body, took a deep breath, and depressed the button for a final time.

This time, Steve could see the electricity as it coursed through the body, fine trails of white light zipping through the skin. The body shook violently for much longer than it should have as a low hum filled the air around them. Steve smelled burning hair as smoke rose from the body’s head.

Finally, the shaking and the lights stopped, and the body lay still. Dustin stared at it in wonder. Steve watched through the phone’s camera as the chest rose and fell.

Dustin turned to Steve with a wide grin. “It’s alive!” he yelled.

The body sat up at the sound of Dustin’s voice, opened its eyes, and roared. Dustin couldn’t take a hint, but when had he ever? He stayed right where he was, staring at the body with glee, until it grabbed him by the throat and started to shake him like a ragdoll.

Chapter Text

Everything hurt. Their body felt like it was on fire, pain lighting up all of their nerves in a way neither of them had ever felt before.

(Neither of them?)

Their hand was around the neck of a young man, his curly hair flopping over his bulging, terrified eyes.

(My hand.)

(Not my hand.)

They shook and shook, arm moving almost involuntarily, trying to shake out the pain.

Someone was yelling.

A motorcycle. Two motorcycles. The rush of fear as they collided. Then nothing. Now all of this. Noise, and bright lights, and pain, and that wasn’t his foot, yes it was his foot, that wasn’t his hand, no that was definitely his hand.

Another figure moved through the light. Pretty brown hair, big brown eyes, and a ferocious glare. He hefted a plank of wood and got ready to swing. They released their hold on the curly-haired man.

(Whose hand was that?)

(It’s ours. It’s mine.)

The curly-haired man fell to the ground, holding a hand to his throat and coughing.

“It’s alive!” he yelled with a maniacal laugh, not acting at all like he’d nearly been choked to death. The other man lowered the wood plank, but kept his eyes firmly on them.

(On him. Him, singular.)

(No, on me.)

“You gonna try that again?” pretty boy asked. “Or you gonna behave?”

(He was pretty. Look at those adorable little moles. That floof of hair falling over his eyes. The straining muscles of his upper arms.)

(You’re calling those muscles? But I guess, yeah.)

“Can you talk?” pretty boy asked, tilting his head to the side quizzically.

“Back off, Steve!” the curly-haired man said. “He was just resurrected. He’s probably gonna need a minute.”

“Don’t you mean ‘they’?” pretty boy, Steve, asked. “There’s two brains in there.”

(What?!)

“Well, I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to work,” the curly-haired man admitted. “It might just feel like one person in there. Or not.” He put a finger on his chin and regarded them. “I’m Dustin,” he said, loudly, like maybe they were some sort of idiot. “What’s your name?”

They both tried to speak at the same time. “Edd-illy.” They frowned, and coughed. “Bi-eddie.” A groan of frustration. “Mun-grove.”

“Whoa,” Dustin said, grinning widely. “That’s wicked.”

“Are there… two of you in there?” Steve asked. He’d lowered the plank to the floor and approached the table they were laying on cautiously.

How are we gonna handle this? one half of them thought. The half that called himself Eddie. We can’t both talk at the same time, it’s coming out garbled.

I’m not letting you do all the talking! the Billy half thought. I don’t even know who you are, you’re not allowed to use my mouth.

I don’t think it’s your mouth. Feels like it’s still mine, Eddie thought. He held up a muscular arm that was decidedly not his own, and looked down at a six pack he hadn’t worked for a day in his life.

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Billy thought. Eddie could feel Billy’s smugness. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, feeling another person’s feelings.

No shit, Billy thought, as he felt what Eddie was feeling in response to his feelings.

Steve and Dustin were still staring at them. Like they were some sort of zoo animal. They agreed on one thing—they needed to get out of here, before they got handed over to the circus or some shit. They attempted to heave themselves off the table, but only succeeded in unbalancing enough to fall off the side. Dustin yelped, and everything went black around them as their head hit the ground.

“Oh shit!” Dustin yelled, diving for the body as it fell from the table.

Steve winced at the crack that sounded through the room as the body’s head hit the concrete floor. “Hopefully that didn’t just kill them again. After all that work.” Steve put his hands on his hips. He was exhausted, and they still needed to clean up, and he didn’t even get to offload Dustin on a medical professional after this.

Dustin felt frantically for a pulse, then let out a sigh of relief. “He’s still alive.”

“You keep using singular pronouns,” Steve pointed out. “I’m pretty sure we just got ample demonstration that there’s two distinct people inside that head.”

Dustin scoffed. “Bungling a name isn’t ‘ample proof’, Steve. It’s gonna take a lot more experimenting to figure out what’s actually going on in his brain. Their brain,” he added when Steve gave him a look. “Its brain. Whatever!”

“Well, what are we gonna do with it?” Steve asked. “Leave it here and come bring it food scraps like it’s a stray or something?”

Dustin looked at him like he was insane. “Absolutely not. You’ve got a 2 bedroom apartment. He’s staying with you. We need to keep a constant eye on him, and see how this progresses.”

“No way.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m already far more involved than I want to be. He’s not staying with me.”

“He can’t stay with me! I’ve got three roommates, there’s no way they wouldn’t notice. All you’ve got is a cat.”

“Not my problem.”

The body moved and let out a pathetic moan. They both looked down at it. Steve was amazed to see that the large sutured wounds where they’d connected the parts of the body were already beginning to heal. That goop worked fast. It must’ve worked even faster on the inside; the body had moved, and talked, indicating most of the neural connections were complete and firing. And it hadn’t bled out, so the vessels had sewed themselves up nicely as well. Dustin really needed to tell someone about this goop. It was miraculous. It could change everything.

“Fuck,” the conglomerate man said, the first full word he’d gotten out. He sat up, wobbling from side to side, and raised a pair of jerky hands to his head. He pulled a handful of curly dark brown hair in front of his face and let out a shriek. “Horrible,” he said in a voice dripping with disdain. “It fucking isn’t,” he said in a completely different tone.

“You just want me to leave him here?” Dustin asked, staring at Steve with puppy dog eyes. “Because that’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t take him.”

Steve huffed. The man looked really pathetic, sitting there on the dirty floor, completely naked and cataloguing different parts of his body with very mixed reactions. Part of him seemed particularly upset about the penis situation, though Steve thought it was a perfectly nice dick.

“Okay, fine,” he conceded. Dustin whooped. “But only until he looks less like a zombie and can talk normally! Then you’re gonna need to find him a place of his own.”

Dustin nodded vigorously, in that way he did when he had absolutely no intention of complying with future requests. “Of course, of course. I’ll get him upstairs.” Steve was surprised that Dustin was offering to do some of the legwork, until he followed it up with a glance around the room. “You, uh, clean up a bit,” he added, pulling the man to his feet.

Steve was left alone in the poorly lit basement of an abandoned building with a mess of blood and gore and discarded body parts. Great start to his day off.

Steve sat across his kitchen table from the conglomerate man, too exhausted to even chafe at the absurdity of the situation. He and Dustin hadn’t managed to get him safely ensconced in Steve’s apartment until mid-afternoon, after a night and morning of intensive physical labor and no sleep. Dustin had left him with a notebook and strict instructions to record everything before he had to run off to an exam. Steve sat with the notebook open to a blank page in front of him as he engaged in a staring contest with Frankenstein’s monster. Well, Henderson's monster. One of his eyes was blue, the other brown. They were also very differently shaped. They’d used mostly the brown-haired man’s skull, but Dustin had kept the blonde’s eye attached to the half of a brain he’d implanted into the skull. The effect was disconcerting.

“So,” Steve said, breaking the too-long silence. The man jumped at the sound of his voice. “What am I supposed to call you?”

The man stared. He opened his mouth as if to speak several times, then shut it again quickly. He frowned. His eyes shifted rapidly back and forth, like he was following an argument.

“Are you guys, like, talking to each other in there?” Steve asked, motioning to the man’s head.

“Yes,” the man rasped out.

“Huh,” Steve said, sitting back in his chair. Dustin would almost certainly want him to make a note of that, so he didn’t. “Did you come to any conclusions? On what I should call you?”

“Billy,” the man yelled, then slapped a hand over his mouth. “Eddie,” came a muffled yell from behind the hand.

They didn’t seem to be getting along very well in there. “I guess I could call you Billy-Eddie,” Steve admitted. “But it’s kind of a mouthful. ‘Henderson’s Monster’ isn’t much better.” He hummed to himself.

The man looked like he was thinking so hard his brains might come out his ears. Steve really hoped they wouldn’t. He’d worked hard to get those brains in that skull.

“Mungrove,” the man finally said. There was no hesitation this time, no subsequent name yelled in a slightly different tone.

“You agree on that one?” Steve asked.

The man—Mungrove—nodded.

“Kind of a weird name.”

Mungrove shrugged. “Last names,” he explained. “Put together.” He tried to clap his hands together, but didn't get the coordination quite right. He mostly missed, one hand sliding off the side of the other with barely any noise.

So his coordination wasn't great. And it seemed hard for him to string more than a few words together. Steve wondered if they’d damaged the brains, or if that was just a side effect of two different people fighting with each other to decide what to say.

A low rumble emanated from the man’s general direction. It took Steve a moment to realize it was Mungrove’s stomach grumbling.

“Oh, shit! I guess you need to eat like a normal person, huh? You’re basically healed.” His eyes scanned over Mungrove’s body. The attachment points had healed already, forming thick white scars around the sutures. Now Steve understood why Dustin had insisted on absorbable sutures. Mungrove's abdominal organs, including his digestive tract, must have also healed.

“Do you think you’ll just eat regular food?” Steve asked.

“Don't. Fucking. Know.” He glared at Steve, as if he wanted to say more.

“Alright, alright,” Steve said. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. Let’s just start with some toast.”

Mungrove huffed in annoyance, and leaned back in the chair. Steve stared as he watched the fabric of the t-shirt he’d lent Mungrove gape wide around the man’s chest and left arm, but pull taut against the muscles of the right arm and his abdomen. Billy had been a lot more muscular than Eddie, and a bit more muscular than Steve.

Mungrove caught Steve staring, and smirked. Or, sort of smirked. It started out as a smirk then broke into a wide, goofy grin. Weird.

He busied himself with making toast, which Mungrove wolfed down voraciously, barely pausing to breathe.

“More,” he demanded as he pushed the plate away from himself. “Please,” he added in a gentler tone.

Mungrove wasn’t happy until he’d eaten 6 eggs, about a pound of fried potatoes, and four more pieces of toast. Steve hoped this was just an acute reaction to being resurrected; he couldn’t afford to keep feeding him if he kept eating at this rate.

After Steve cleaned up, he turned around to see Mungrove slumped over the kitchen table, cheek pressed to the firm surface.

“Shit!” Steve yelled. Dustin would be so mad if he’d killed him again by feeding him too much. What if he'd burst his stomach or something? He grabbed Mungrove by the shoulder and shook him. The man jerked upright and grabbed Steve by the wrist. His grip was tight enough to hurt.

“Ow!” Steve yelped, yanking himself out of the man’s hold.

Mungrove glared at him for a few moments, eventually softening into a look of mild contrition. His eyelids drooped. “Tired,” he whispered. He swayed in the chair.

Steve looked at Mungrove’s body, still covered in dirt and dried blood and black goop. He thought about the beautiful cream-colored linens in his guest bedroom.

“You need to shower first,” Steve said, hands on his hips. “You’re filthy.”

Mungrove looked at Steve pleadingly. “Seriously?” he grumbled.

“Seriously. C’mon, get up.”

Steve pulled Mungrove to his unsteady feet. He looked like he was on the verge of falling asleep just standing there, swaying on his feet, eyes drooping shut. Steve let him lean on his arm as they shuffled toward the bathroom. He had trouble moving his legs, frequently stumbling and tripping over his own feet. Steve sat the man down on the lid of the toilet while he got the shower going. When he turned back around, Mungrove’s head had lolled onto his chest and he was quietly snoring.

Steve sighed. “C’mon, up, up!” he yelled as he woke the man up and drew him to his feet. “Guess I’m gonna have to help you with this one, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” He helped Mungrove out of his shirt and sweatpants, now filthy. Mungrove had a hard time climbing over the lip of the tub, and nearly slipped on his way in. Steve knew there was no way Mungrove was going to be able to wash himself in this state.

“Ugh, just, hold on,” Steve griped. He tore off his own filthy clothes and threw them into the hamper. When he turned back around, Mungrove was wide awake, staring at Steve’s ass.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Oh, now you’re awake?” he asked. "Ready to shower on your own?"

Mungrove immediately let his eyelids droop shut and swayed on his feet.

“I don’t know if I believe you.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest.

Mungrove shuffled forward, then tripped over his own feet and fell against the wall with a groan.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Steve yelled, running forward to steady the man. Even if he was pretending now, he could really hurt himself. “I’ll help, I’ll help. Jesus.”

He let Mungrove lean on his arm as he guided them into the shower. It was clear he wasn’t fully pretending to need Steve’s help. The way his legs moved was awkward and jerky, and he never seemed to have his balance quite right. He gripped Steve tightly by the waist for balance as Steve maneuvered him under the stream of water.

Mungrove’s hair was filthy—full of bits of gravel and blood and brain matter. Steve took his time working shampoo into the long, curly strands, getting all the junk out. Mungrove groaned when Steve worked some conditioner into his scalp. Steve paused, worried he’d hurt him by rubbing over the scars on his scalp, but when he looked at his face there was a big dopey smile plastered across it. Steve smiled back, and directed him to tilt his head back to rinse.

Mungrove was able to help a little bit with washing the rest of his body, but he relied heavily on Steve for balance. He had a lot of trouble with coordination, and dropped the soap on more than one occasion. Steve had to wash most of his back, as Mungrove seemed to have trouble making his arms reach around behind him.

Steve took his own turn in the water, furiously rubbing away the grit and gore from the previous night and washing out his greasy hair, while Mungrove leaned against the wall for balance. When Steve opened his eyes after rinsing, Mungrove was staring down at his own dick.

“Not cool,” Mungrove muttered to himself, shaking his head morosely. He turned his head to the side with a grimace and said in a very different tone, “Fuck you! ’s a great dick.”

“Are you guys fighting about the dick you ended up with?” Steve asked, raising his eyebrows.

Mungrove looked up sharply and locked eyes with him. “Yes. It’s weird. Floppy extra skin bit, who needs that?” He paused, and a gruffer voice took over. “It’s uncut, not weird.”

There was a curious quality to Mungrove’s voice. Sometimes he sounded gruff and angry, sometimes he sounded more goofy.

“I think it’s very nice,” Steve said, glancing down. And it was. Nice and symmetrical, thick but not too long. If he wasn’t so exhausted, he’d be feeling some kind of way about it.

Mungrove’s face went through a series of different expressions so fast it nearly gave Steve whiplash—happy, annoyed, excited, pissed. It must be loud inside that head.

Steve reached behind himself to shut off the shower, then helped Mungrove out to towel off. The other man was quiet as Steve helped him rub his skin and hair dry. Steve rubbed ferociously at his own hair, and when he pulled the towel off his head, Mungrove was staring at Steve's dick.

“Yours is very nice, too.” That was the goofy voice. “You fucking kidding me? No game.” Gruff voice.

Steve laughed, delighted. Was the monster man trying to hit on him? Steve found he didn’t actually mind the thought.

The adjustment period with Mungrove was… difficult. The first few days, Mungrove had barely even been able to walk on his own, needing Steve's assistance to get around the apartment and do things like brush his teeth and shower. He was exhausted, and spent most of his time sleeping or satiating his enormous appetite. Gradually, though, he seemed to get used to his conglomerate body. By the end of the first week, he stayed awake for most of the day, his appetite calmed down, and he was walking and showering on his own, only needing Steve rarely for help with balance.

Mungrove was getting better at speaking, too. After a few days of frustration and garbled speech, something seemed to click for him. He started to let each half of himself speak in turn rather than attempting to speak at the same time. The overlapping speech still happened sometimes when he was agitated, or when the two halves disagreed particularly strongly. When that happened, everything came out a garbled mess, but mostly he could make himself understood.

It was strange to Steve how quickly it became easy for him to tell which one of them was speaking. Mungrove’s mannerisms would change drastically from one moment to the next, his whole face taking on different expressions, his voice adopting a completely new tone. Eddie had a goofy, friendly tone, and spoke quickly in run-on sentences, using plenty of big words Steve had never heard before. He also tended to use his hands more as he talked, and be more expressive with his face. Billy was gruffer, and spoke more slowly in short, choppy sentences. He kept his face neutral most of the time, peppering in the occasional smirk or sneer. He moved with a grace and precision that was lacking when Eddie was at the helm. Steve had slipped into using their previous names, rather than calling them Mungrove, when it was clear who was in charge.

Dustin came by every night, poking and prodding at Mungrove, asking questions and running tests on him. Eddie tolerated it a lot better than Billy did, so generally Eddie was at the helm during these interactions.

"What does Billy do when you're talking to Dustin?" Steve asked one night after Dustin had left. Almost all of Dustin's questions had been answered by Eddie that evening, with Billy only making an appearance with a resounding “no” when Dustin asked if he could do a rectal exam.

"I tune out," Billy replied. "Think about cars and tits." He smirked at Steve, the expression all Billy. "And pretty boys."

Steve felt a blush rise to his cheeks. They were both outrageous flirts. "And that doesn't distract Eddie or anything? You're that compartmentalized?"

"I can tell he's thinking, but I can tune him out pretty well, too," Eddie said. "It's sort of like when you're listening to the radio but also reading a book. If you focus on the radio, you can pick out the words, but if you focus on your book, they fade into the background." Eddie grinned at Steve. "But sometimes when he's onto a particularly good tangent about pretty boys in the area, I tune back in."

"Jeez, how many pretty boys have you been seeing in the area?" Steve asked, knowing full well he was fishing for compliments but feeling very little shame.

"Just one," they said, both voices coming together. Sometimes, when they fully agreed on what they were saying, there was a strange twinning of their tones, and he could pick out the gruff and the goofy blending together.

Steve grinned. “Well, I’m glad you have something around to help you pass the time.”

During their second week together, Steve tried to go to work a couple of times. He'd been using his accrued PTO, feigning illness and family emergencies, but was starting to run out of excuses. The first time he tried, he had to leave work early with an excuse about a family emergency when Mungrove started a fire cooking eggs. Mungrove’s explanation for the disaster had been that he “was having trouble working the body”. The second time Steve left him alone, Steve made it through his shift, but came home to find multiple holes in his walls and a broken TV.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Eddie said when Steve walked in to stare morosely at the TV. “We just reached out to try to move the TV a little, and it cracked!”

“We’ve got fucking super-strength!” That voice didn't sound the least bit sorry; it sounded elated. That was Billy talking. He walked over to the kitchen table, picked up Steve’s stainless steel water bottle, and crushed it in his grip.

“What the fuck, Billy!” Steve yelped, grabbing the crushed water bottle from his hand. There was no question that the gleeful bottle crusher was Billy.

Billy insisted on running through some tests with Dustin that night, to try to find the limits of his newfound strength.

"This must be a delayed side effect of the special sauce," Dustin mused as he watched Mungrove curl 100 pounds with Eddie's wiry left arm. They'd snuck Mungrove into the small gym in the basement of the medical school. "It doesn't even make sense. There's no way Eddie's muscles and tendons could handle that load."

"Doesn't need to make sense, does it!" Billy said with a gleeful laugh. "I'm a fuckin' superhero."

Dustin had assured Steve over and over that the gym closed at 10pm and no one else would be sneaking in, so Steve was unpleasantly surprised to hear the door clang open. A kid about Dustin's age walked in, but in every other way he was Dustin's complete opposite. He was tan and blonde, dressed in tight workout clothes that showed off his ample muscles.

"Henderson," he snapped, his expression curling into a snarl as he caught sight of Dustin. "Didn't know you even knew where the gym was."

"Carver," Dustin said with a long-suffering sigh. "What're you doing here? Gym's closed."

Carver's eyes darted to Steve, and then to Mungrove. "Non-medical students aren't allowed in the gym," he said. His eyes roved over Mungrove, taking in the nasty scars and the mismatched limbs and eyes. His brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you playing at, Henderson?"

"I'm not playing at anything," Dustin snapped. "I'm working out. You should try it sometime. These are my personal trainers—Bob and Jeb."

Carver huffed. "I don't believe you."

"Not my problem," Dustin retorted. "C'mon Bob, Jeb. We've got places to be." He grabbed the bag full of his testing implements and led them out the door. Carver peered nosily into the bag as they walked past.

"Shit," Dustin breathed once they were alone in the hallway.

"You said no one would be here!" Steve hissed.

"No one should have been here!" Dustin whisper-yelled back. "But I guess Jason Carver's too much of a jock to go to the gym only in normal hours."

"Is he gonna tell anyone what he saw?" Steve asked.

"He didn't see anything," Dustin insisted. "Just a weird-looking personal trainer."

"Hey!" Mungrove protested. "We're not weird-looking."

"Yes, you are," Dustin said, barely even glancing at him. "It'll be fine. He wasn't supposed to be there, either, so he's not gonna say anything."

"If you say so," Steve said. He felt weirdly protective of Mungrove after being his caretaker for the past two weeks. He didn't want anybody snooping around and fucking with him. He didn't want him to become some sort of a circus freak. The realization was uncomfortable. He knew Dustin was going to want to reveal his "experiment" to the rest of the world sometime in the near future. Steve wasn't sure how he was going to react to that.

"Steve,” Nancy snapped over the phone. “Carol told me you're sick again. Are you dying? Because that’s the only setting in which I will forgive you for your prolonged absence."

Steve sighed. He'd known Nancy wasn't going to let this go on much longer. She strongly disliked the other autopsy assistants who worked the day shift, Tommy and Carol, and tended to get cranky when Steve was out for too long. But he hated leaving Mungrove alone.

"It's, like, a really bad flu," Steve said to Nancy, trying his best to sound congested. He made a pathetic attempt at a cough.

"It's not flu season," Nancy pointed out.

"Every season is flu season somewhere."

Nancy huffed in annoyance. "Did you go to the southern hemisphere recently and neglect to mention it?"

"I don't think you're allowed to question my illness. Do we need to get HR involved?"

Nancy groaned. "Ugh, Steve. Whatever the fuck is going on with you, figure it out soon. I cannot be held liable for what I may do if forced to spend another day listening to Tommy's off color jokes about dead bodies."

“Alright, alright. I’m working on it,” Steve said. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.” He had to be back soon. He was almost out of PTO, and the rent on this place didn’t pay itself.

Steve heard a loud crash from the guest bedroom that had become Mungrove’s space. “Shit, I’ve gotta go, I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up before Nancy could ask him more probing questions.

Steve hurried over to the bedroom, nearly tripping over a yowling Igor on the way. Igor had not been pleased with the noisy addition to their household. He hissed at Mungrove every time he got near him, and had taken a swipe at him on a few memorable occasions.

Mungrove was sprawled across the floor amid the remains of a shattered mirror. He was clothed in only a pair of Steve’s boxer briefs, covered in tiny cuts that were rapidly healing before Steve’s eyes.

“What the hell happened?” Steve yelled, kneeling beside him.

Mungrove moaned and turned his head toward Steve. “Don’t kneel down here. Gonna hurt yourself.” Steve couldn’t tell who was talking, which meant it was something they both wanted to say.

“I’m fine,” Steve said with a hand wave. He had jeans on. “Why did you fall? You’ve been doing really well with motor control.”

A dopey smile flitted across Mungrove’s face. “Thanks, Stevie.” That was all Eddie. Billy’s nicknames for Steve were less cute and more insulting.

“Just lost our balance,” Billy snapped as he pushed himself up onto his arms.

“Because you were too busy flexing your arm in front of the mirror to pay attention to what our feet were doing,” Eddie retorted.

Mungrove held both arms out in front of himself, comparing. The left arm was skinny and pale, the right was tanned and muscular, with a tattoo of a skull smoking a cigarette on the upper shoulder.

“My arm’s nicer,” Billy said, flexing the right arm with a pleased expression.

“It’s got a fucking idiotic tattoo on it,” Eddie said. “My tattoos were much better.” He looked up at Steve. “What happened to that arm? You guys didn’t keep it, did you? Can you swap them out?”

“No fucking way!” Billy yelled. “If they were anything like the dumb spider and ghoul face on your chest I don’t want them.”

Eddie glanced down at his remaining tattoos. “Those aren’t dumb, they’re metal.”

Steve shook his head, cutting off their argument. “The arm was really messed up, Eddie, sorry,” he said. “Not usable.”

Eddie pouted. Billy quickly wrested back control of their lips and scowled.

“We gotta clean this up,” Steve said with a sigh. Mungrove walked out to the kitchen to get the broom and dustpan that had seen more use in the past two weeks than in its entire lifespan. Steve watched him walk. He’d improved drastically since that first day. He still had a limp, as his two legs were slightly different lengths now, but when he wasn’t flexing in front of a mirror he managed his balance alright. Steve hadn’t even needed to help him in the shower after the first few days. He tried not to examine his disappointment at this development too closely. He really shouldn’t be attracted to the mis-matched Lazarus Dustin had saddled him with.

Mungrove helped him make dinner after they cleaned up the mess. Or at least kept Steve company while he made dinner. He tried to help, but it seemed both Billy and Eddie lacked any knowledge of cooking. He’d at least regained enough coordination to chop the vegetables that Steve put in front of him.

“That was Nancy on the phone?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah,” Steve admitted, surprised that either of them had been paying enough attention to notice. They noticed a lot of things about Steve. He wasn’t used to being perceived this closely.

“You know you can go back to work,” Eddie said. “We’ll be okay.”

“Probably,” Billy added. “If Munson lets me take care of most of the body stuff. He’s not great at, like, being a body.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Eddie snapped, bristling. Steve reached out for his right hand just before he accidentally cut his left thumb off.

“Whoa, there,” Steve said, pushing the hand with the knife down to the counter. “Careful.”

“See what I mean?” Billy said.

“You were gonna let it happen, too,” Steve pointed out.

Billy huffed.

“I do need to go back to work,” Steve admitted. He let go of Mungrove’s hand after letting the touch linger for longer than he should have. “No more PTO. But I can see if Dustin can stay with you, when he doesn’t have class.”

“Fuck no,” Billy said, followed quickly by Eddie saying, “I love the kid, he’s got real panache, but I don’t think I can take many more of his experiments.”

Steve would allow Dustin had been a bit… relentless in his experimentation. He’d poked and prodded at Mungrove in every way possible, plus a few ways Steve hadn’t even known were possible.

Steve sighed. “Yeah, alright. Guess that would be cruel and unusual punishment. But can you please try not to break anything else?”

“Of course, my liege,” Eddie said, followed quickly by, “no promises,” from Billy.

They didn't break many more things over the next few weeks, so Steve considered that a win. He was able to go back to working full-time, much to Nancy and his bank account's delight. He felt bad leaving Mungrove alone in the apartment all day. The man was under strict instructions from Dustin not to leave the apartment, as Dustin didn't want anyone getting suspicious of his experiment before he was ready to reveal him to the world. But Mungrove seemed to be handling it alright, as long as Steve kept him well-stocked with beer, chips, and weed. (Dustin had thrown a fit about ruining his experimental integrity with mind-altering substances, but Steve hadn't been willing to deny Mungrove the only outlets available to him.) Mungrove spent most of his time alternating between watching trashy TV, lifting weights, or reading books, depending on who won the internal argument over what to do with their time that day.

He was handling the isolation as well as could be expected, but when Steve came home after getting called in for a holiday autopsy on the Fourth of July to find Mungrove staring longingly out the window at the late summer sun, he made a decision.

"Alright," he said, dropping his keys on the table by the door and grabbing an oversized hoodie from his coat rack. "We're going to the fireworks show."

Mungrove turned to him. "Really?" he said, in his unified voice. He stared at Steve like he'd just offered him a million bucks.

"Really," Steve confirmed. He threw the hoodie at Mungrove. "But you gotta keep that on, hood up, even though it's hot as balls. And wear pants. And sunglasses," he added, looking back and forth between Mungrove's mismatched eyes.

Mungrove nodded enthusiastically, hurrying toward the guest bedroom to change. He was moving so well now that Steve had gotten him a special pair of shoes to correct the length discrepancy in his legs. Not even walking with a limp.

Steve drove them out to the big park on the outskirts of town that hosted the best fireworks show every year. Mungrove didn't even complain about how hot he must be in his hoodie and jeans; it was still close to 90 degrees even though the sun was low on the horizon.

"Did you ever go to this fireworks show before? Either of you?" Steve asked. They hadn't talked too much about Billy and Eddie's previous lives. He knew Billy had grown up in California, and hadn't moved to the Midwest until his last year of high school. Eddie was born and raised in the area. Billy had been a mechanic, Eddie an aspiring musician who paid the bills dealing drugs and working at a gas station. They shared a love of motorcycles and risky behavior, which had culminated in the crash that had killed them both.

"No, wasn’t really my scene," Billy said. Eddie added, "I did a few times, mostly just to sell."

It took Steve forever to find a parking spot; the place was a zoo. Seemed like everyone in Hawkins had ended up here for the night. After he finally pulled into a spot, Steve looked over at Mungrove to make sure he was properly attired. With the hood up and his arms and legs covered, sunglasses on, Steve couldn't even tell there was anything off about him.

"Alright, let's go," Steve said, hopping out of the car. Mungrove followed. Steve felt like he was being trailed by a surly goth kid—Mungrove's jeans were dark gray and the hoodie was black. His hands were shoved in his pockets to hide the scars there, giving him a hunched-over posture.

As Steve led him through the crowds, his posture got increasingly more hunched. Steve glanced over at him worriedly, but couldn't tell anything about how he was feeling behind the sunglasses. He was frowning, but he often was when Billy was in control.

It got louder the deeper they plunged into the crowd as Steve looked for a place for them to sit. Loud patriotic music was blaring over the speakers that had been set up on a grandstand, and people were all yelling over each other to be heard through the noise. They were getting bumped and jostled from all sides. Mungrove grabbed onto one of Steve's arms after a particularly hard jostle. His grip was tight enough to bruise.

Steve paused in the crowd and turned to him. "Everything alright?" he asked, squinting at the man as though that would help him see through the sunglasses.

Mungrove gave him a tiny headshake. His tongue darted out to nervously lick his lips. Steve noticed that his breaths were coming fast and shallow, and his cheeks had lost all color.

"What's going on, man? Did you get hurt when that guy ran into you?"

Mungrove opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a soft wheeze. He leaned more heavily on Steve, who stumbled when he took the unexpected weight.

"Whoa, there," Steve said, like he was talking to a tetchy horse. He grabbed onto Mungrove's arm to steady them both.

"T-too much," Mungrove muttered. He was breathing so fast now Steve was worried he would hyperventilate. Steve was beginning to suspect he was having a panic attack.

"Okay, no worries, let's go back to the car." Steve tried to exude calm as he led Mungrove back through the crowd. Mungrove's stride wasn't as confident now. He'd reverted to his jerky, poorly coordinated movements, and leaned heavily on Steve. His breathing didn't slow, and Steve worried he might pass out before they could make it back to the car. Once they were back in the parking lot, though, the crowds thinned out. Mungrove began to walk a little more confidently, and let go of his death grip on Steve.

His breathing slowed down once they got into the car, so Steve was no longer worried about him passing out, but it was still way too fast. When he pulled his hood down, Steve saw the hair plastered to his scalp, probably from a combination of nervous sweat and normal heat-related sweat.

They were silent on the drive home. Steve didn't want to upset Mungrove further, and Mungrove seemed in no mood to talk himself. The first thing he said, as Steve unlocked the door to his apartment, was a sad, whispered, "Sorry."

"For what?" Steve asked. "I'm the one who should be sorry, I took you there!"

"Sorry because you wanted to see the fireworks. And we ruined it." That was definitely Eddie. Steve was pretty sure Billy was physically incapable of apology.

Steve laughed. "I was going for you. Thought you'd want a chance to feel normal again. I don't actually like fireworks that much."

"Oh. That's—that was nice of you."

"What happened?" Steve asked, as he watched Mungrove pull the sweat-soaked hoodie off.

"Not sure." He bit his lip, thinking, and took a seat on the couch. "Neither of us ever had trouble with crowds before, but now, there was just… too much. So many sights and sounds. Smells. Working all the input through two brains, I think we just short-circuited or something."

"Panicked," Billy added at the end.

"That sounds… really unpleasant," Steve said.

Billy snorted. "No shit."

Eddie rolled his eyes at Billy. "It was unpleasant," Eddie said. "Thank you for acknowledging our feelings, Stevie." Billy made a farting noise with their mouth.

Steve smiled, and looked Mungrove over. He still looked shaken, like he hadn't quite come down from the experience. "Anything I can do to help?" Steve asked.

Mungrove's brow furrowed, and his eyes darted back and forth in that way they did when Eddie and Billy were arguing internally. "Hug," he finally gritted out, and Steve was pretty sure that was Eddie talking.

Steve raised his eyebrows. "Is that a request from both of you? Would feel kind of weird to hug you if you're not both on board."

Billy rolled his eyes. "Fuck, just fucking hug us," he snapped.

Steve surged forward and wrapped Mungrove in a firm squeeze. His arms wound around Mungrove's waist, and Mungrove's arms went around Steve's neck. He buried his face in Steve's hair and took a deep breath.

Steve kept up a firm pressure on Mungrove with his arms, knowing that was what helped when he was overwhelmed with anxiety himself. He felt Mungrove's heartbeat against his chest, a rapid pace at first, slowly evening out as the embrace continued. He took a deep breath from where his head was tucked into Mungrove's neck. A part of him kept expecting Mungrove to smell like he had that day they resurrected him—like blood and gore. But he didn't. He smelled like Steve's soap and laundry detergent, like sweat and summer sun. He smelled alive.

Mungrove let out a long sigh and pushed himself away from Steve. A little bit of color had come back to his cheeks, and he looked less like he was about to implode.

"Th-thanks," he said. He looked embarrassed and confused, but also a little hopeful.

"Anytime," Steve said with a smile. He tried not to hope for another panic attack, exactly, but he did hope there would be more cause to hug in their near future.

Chapter Text

"I think you're ready," Dustin announced at the end of the evening's poke-and-prod session.

"Ready for what?" Billy snapped. Billy really wasn't a fan of Dustin.

"I want you to meet some like-minded medical students, and one professor." Dustin started talking fast, the way he did when he got really excited. "We're part of a secret group. We've all been working on resurrection, everyone kind of barking up their own trees in a race to be the first to figure it out. I've been dying to tell them, but I wanted to be absolutely sure you weren't just gonna die again, or, like, unravel."

"That was a possibility?" Eddie asked, his voice cracking. He patted at the scars on his abdomen and arms.

Dustin shrugged. "Of course it was a possibility. No one's ever done this before! Anything could've happened."

Mungrove huffed, and looked over at Steve with a glare.

"I didn't know it was a possibility either!" Steve said, holding his hands up in the air. The thought of Mungrove dying, or unraveling, made him feel physically ill. "Dustin doesn't tell me shit, I'm just the hired help. Actually, he's not even paying me." Steve turned to Dustin. "Why aren't you paying me?"

Dustin shrugged. "I don't have any money. I'll pay you back when I win the Nobel Prize for this."

"How many people do you want us to meet?" Eddie asked. "We don't exactly do great with crowds anymore." They'd told Dustin about the park on the Fourth. He hadn't seemed particularly worried about it, had just spouted off some mumbo-jumbo about neural processing capacity and sensory inputs.

"There's only six of us in the group, plus one professor," Dustin said. "And we're very well behaved. Real quiet and demure."

Steve snorted.

"Well, we can be," Dustin added with a glare in Steve's direction.

“Okay, and what do you need us to do?” Eddie asked. “A song and dance routine to Puttin’ on the Ritz?”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “No. I’ll do most of the talking, explain how I did the whole process, show them the video. I just want you to be there to prove you’re a functional human being.”

Mungrove stared off into space for almost a whole minute with a deep frown on his face, his eyes darting back and forth, following an internal argument.

"Fine," he eventually said with a sigh, in his conglomerate voice. "But we expect to get at least half of the Nobel Prize proceeds." That was Billy's voice. "It's our body you fucked around with, without our consent beforehand," Eddie added.

Dustin, who Steve was very sure didn't give a fuck about the money, just the scientific cred, agreed easily. "Of course, of course." He grinned and flapped his hands in the air. "They're all gonna flip out."

“You sure about this?” Steve asked quietly, eyes only for Mungrove. He reached for his arm and gave it a squeeze.

“We’re sure,” Eddie said. “We can’t stay cooped up in here forever making you take care of us. We need to get out into the world again at some point.”

“You gotta want that, too,” Billy added. “Get us out from underfoot.”

“Uh, sure. Yeah,” Steve said. It would sound really weird if he disagreed, but the ache he felt in his chest when he thought about coming home to a quiet, lonely apartment every night instead of to the joy and chaos of Mungrove made him question if that was really true.

Steve and Mungrove waited in a small, nondescript classroom in the basement of the medical school, Steve shifting nervously from foot to foot while Mungrove leaned against a wall with his hood still pulled up over his head and pretended not to be bothered. Steve was pretty sure that was all Billy exerting his force of will to keep Eddie from visibly freaking out. Dustin had led them to the room, then told them to stay put while he went to collect the members of his Resurrectionist Club.

Steve looked around the classroom in an attempt to distract himself. It didn’t look like it was used much. The chalkboard was covered in the ghosts of scrawled handwriting that wouldn’t come off completely with an eraser anymore. The desks were old, many of them in disrepair. There were cobwebs in the corners of the room, and a layer of dust on most surfaces. The walls were covered in life-size prints of Vesalius’s anatomical drawings. The overall effect was unsettling, and made Steve feel like a character in a horror film.

“You’re sure you’re okay with doing this?” Steve asked Mungrove.

Mungrove pushed himself off the wall with an annoyed huff. “Yes,” Billy snapped. “How many times do we have to tell you?”

“It’s really okay, Steve,” Eddie added in a gentler tone. He reached out to grip Steve’s arm and give it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s only gonna be a few people.”

The sound of voices drifted into the room from the hallway. They were so loud that Steve wondered if Dustin had lied to them about the number of people, but when the door opened it only admitted the previously agreed upon seven people to the room. Steve recognized Dustin’s roommates—Lucas, Mike, and Will. The other two students were girls Steve had never met before—a redhead with a skeptical look on her face, and a brown-haired girl with wide eyes and a serious expression. The professor who trailed them into the room was a skinny man with a bushy dark brown mustache and a friendly demeanor.

“Max?” Billy croaked. He pulled the hood off his head and stared at the redhead.

“How do you know who I am?” she asked with a suspicious glare.

“It’s me. Billy.” His voice shook. “Half-Billy,” Eddie added.

“What the fuck?” she whispered, her mouth dropping open. “Dustin, what the actual fuck?” She ran over to Mungrove, peering into his right eye. “You used my step-brother?”

Dustin’s eyes darted between Mungrove and Max. “No. No way. You don’t look anything like Billy! You don’t even have the same last name!”

Max darted her glare over to Dustin. “Do you not understand the concept of a step-sibling?” She turned back to Mungrove and punched him hard on the arm. “You fucking asshole! You were supposed to take me to California and teach me to surf over spring break and then you went and died!” She leaned back and ran her eyes over his face, then down his body. “Why does your face look so stupid now? And why are you all uneven?”

All the students started to talk at the same time, yelling over each other to try to be heard. Steve watched Mungrove, worried about how he would react to the noise, and to the revelation that one of Dustin’s club members was apparently his step-sibling. He seemed to be taking it okay, focused only on Max at the moment.

Dustin wrested back control of the situation by putting his fingers in his mouth and letting out a loud whistle. “Alright, alright, calm down!” he yelled. The others quieted. “Jeez, I had a whole plan about how I was going to explain everything and prove that he had been dead, but I guess I don’t have to now.”

He paused and took a breath. “Introductions first.” He pointed to Mungrove. “This is Mungrove. His brain is half Billy Hargrove and half Eddie Munson, hence the moniker.” He turned to Steve next. “This is Steve Harrington. A lot of you have met him already, but he helped with the assembly, and he’s been putting Mungrove up at his house.” Dustin pointed to the students one by one. “Lucas. Will. Mike. Max. El. The student members of the Resurrectionist Club.” Finally, he pointed to the older man. “This is Professor Clarke, anatomist and faculty skeptic willing to give me a chance to prove I’ve cracked this.” The professor nodded at Steve and Mungrove. He looked tentatively interested, but still skeptical.

Dustin turned to Mungrove. “Can you take off the hoodie?”

Mungrove nodded. He pulled off the hoodie Steve had lent him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath, as Dustin had wanted to show the scars from the joining points. The students and Professor Clarke moved forward, all peering at the scars on Mungrove’s body.

“They were both in a fatal motorcycle accident, so many parts of their respective bodies were unusable.” He pulled up photos on his phone of the bodies before he and Steve had disassembled them. “Thankfully, we were able to cobble together a fully functioning body pulling from the two of them. We joined the bodies here and here,” he pointed at the huge scar across Mungrove’s torso where they’d connected Eddie’s chest to Billy’s abdomen, then at the scar where they’d connected Billy’s right arm to Eddie’s shoulder. He reached up to the right side of Mungrove’s skull, tracing the scar there. “We had to use one half of each brain, which has led to some curious personality qualities.”

Steve snorted back a laugh. That was a very mild way of putting it. Dustin glared at him.

“But the two halves seem to have integrated seamlessly from a motor and sensory perspective,” he continued.

Professor Clarke stared at the scars, then up at the mismatched eyes. “But how, Dustin? How did you bring him back to life? Even ignoring the resurrection part, how could you possibly have gotten all of the nerves and vessels to connect to each other and function?”

Dustin grinned. He reached into a bag he’d left on the floor and pulled out a jar of the black goop. “The special sauce,” he said reverently. “I found it in these weird vines in the sub-basement of the old research lab. It has regenerative properties, like really impressive ones. Healing wounds, even broken bones. Knitting vessels and nerves together. If it’s placed around the vital organs, and an electric current is applied, it can even bring something back to life.”

Dustin unscrewed the lid on the jar, then pulled out a knife. He cut a deep wound into his own hand. Everyone in the room save Steve and Mungrove gasped in shock as blood welled in the cut and began to drip onto the floor. Dustin stuck the fingers of his other hand into the jar, gathered up some goop, and smeared it across the wound. Everyone watched, dumbfounded, as the skin sealed shut before their eyes, leaving only a thin white scar after Dustin cleaned away the goop.

“That’s wild,” Lucas said, grabbing Dustin’s hand and flipping it over several times.

Professor Clarke pulled a pocketknife of his own out, cut himself on his forearm with a wince, then walked over to the jar. He rubbed some of the goop onto the wound, and watched in fascination as it closed.

“You’re right,” Professor Clarke said, his voice reverent as he watched himself heal. “It works.”

Dustin pulled up the video of the resurrection on his phone, and showed it to the group. A stunned silence filled the room after he finished.

“Truly amazing, Dustin,” Professor Clarke said. “Of course, we’ll have to do more investigation, make sure we can replicate the results of the resurrection. But this could change everything.”

Dustin nodded excitedly and opened his mouth to speak. He was interrupted by the door to the classroom slamming open, revealing the blonde man who had seen them in the gym before, Jason Carver, followed by a couple of other beefy-looking young men.

“This is a private meeting!” Dustin yelled, stepping in front of Mungrove in an attempt to shield him from prying eyes. It was too late, though. They’d all seen the mismatched body and the huge scars.

“This is an abomination,” Jason snarled. “We were listening at the door. You can’t play God like this. It’s sick.”

Dustin rolled his eyes. “God doesn’t exist, Carver.”

Carver and his goons pushed further into the room, crowding around Mungrove and Dustin. It was a small room, and with the addition of the new arrivals, began to feel cramped and claustrophobic. Steve glanced worriedly at Mungrove. His posture was rigid, and he was breathing faster.

“Back up, please,” Steve said, stepping in front of Carver and his friends and holding his arms out to motion them back. “Don’t crowd him.”

Carver glared at Steve. “Get out of the way. This monster needs to be put back in the ground, where it belongs.”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “Absolutely not. Step back.” He could hear Mungrove’s breathing speeding up. He would be hyperventilating soon.

Carver stepped forward, placed a hand on Steve’s chest, and shoved him. Steve hadn’t been prepared for that. He stumbled, tripped over Dustin’s foot, and fell to the ground. Then the room erupted in chaos.

Mungrove roared out an unintelligible noise, one Steve had only ever heard from him before that very first day, seconds after he’d been resurrected. Mungrove plunged forward, yelling, “Don’t touch him!” He grabbed Jason by his upper arms, and threw him back into the crowd of his friends. Jason screamed as he crashed into the men. They sprawled to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs.

Mungrove loomed over the group of cowering men on the ground and roared at them even louder. He stepped closer to them and reached out.

“Mungrove!” Steve yelled from the ground. “Stop, please! I’m okay!”

The man’s head snapped around toward Steve. He looked wild, almost feral, his eyes wide with fear and rage. Steve pushed himself up from the floor and walked toward him. “It’s okay,” Steve said softly, reaching out to touch Mungrove’s cheek. Mungrove leaned into the touch and closed his eyes. When he blinked them open again, he looked calmer, back in control of himself.

“It broke my fucking arm!” Jason yelled from the floor. Mungrove flinched. “I’m gonna press charges. You’re gonna be in so much fucking trouble, Henderson.”

Mungrove tore himself away from Steve and bolted from the room. Steve tried to follow, yelling out his name, but the super-strength applied to running as well. He was out of the building before Steve had even made it up the stairs. Steve had no clue which direction he’d run.

“Fuck,” Steve muttered to himself, looking up and down the paths and walkways outside the building. There was dense forest all around the campus, and Steve wasn’t sure how he was gonna track Mungrove through that. First, though, he needed to make sure Jason wasn’t about to form up a monster-hunting mob.

“It was just a fucking prank!” Dustin was yelling at Jason as Steve walked back in. “I was pranking them!”

“I heard what I heard, and saw what I saw,” Jason said, cradling his arm against his chest. “It was covered in scars! It had different eyes!”

“Makeup!” Dustin threw his hands up in frustration. “Contacts! Have you never seen a good Halloween costume before?”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “It was too strong for a normal human.”

Max snorted. “Just because he was stronger than you doesn’t mean he’s supernatural. It’s not hard to be stronger than you.” She swept his body with a scathing look that signified how unimpressed she was with his physique.

Jason started to argue back, but Professor Clarke stepped in. “Jason, I’m sorry you got pulled into this prank, and that you were injured. That’s very unfortunate, but I’m sure Dustin and his friends will pay any medical expenses that are incurred.” Dustin looked like he was about to protest but one of his friends elbowed him in the side. “But think about this logically. Do you actually think Dustin could resurrect someone? That’s a power only God has, isn’t it?”

Jason frowned. “Yeah, it is,” he said, succumbing to Clarke’s rather transparent ploy. “I didn’t actually believe him.” Steve resisted the urge to laugh. This guy was backtracking so fast it was comical. “But what about my arm? He broke it!” He waved a very unbroken arm in front of Clarke’s face.

Clarke reached for his arm. “May I take a look?” Jason gave him a curt nod, and Clarke moved the arm around in several directions and pressed in multiple places as Jason winced theatrically. “It’s not broken. Just a sprain and a bit of a bruise.”

Jason pulled his arm back with a glare. “Fine,” he said, then turned to his friends. “Let’s go. Leave these dweebs to their lame little ‘pranks’.” They all filed out of the room, shooting glares in Dustin’s direction.

“Where is he?” Dustin whispered frantically to Steve after they were gone.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, unable to keep the worry out of his voice. “He’s too fast. He was gone before I could see which direction he went.”

Dustin groaned. “Shit. Shit shit shit.”

“I can’t believe you actually did it,” Clarke muttered as he stared at the jar of black goop. “This is insane.”

“Well, it’s not gonna matter if we don’t find him!” Dustin griped.

“Maybe he just ran back to my apartment,” Steve said hopefully. “I can go check there. You guys check the woods around here, he might not have gone far if he just wanted to be alone.”

Dustin nodded. “Yeah, good idea. Let me know ASAP if he’s at your apartment. We’ll start the search around here.”

Steve rushed out to his car, hoping for a moment that he’d find Mungrove there, curled up in his backseat waiting to go home. No luck. His car was empty. He sped back to his apartment, committing multiple traffic violations to get himself there in record time, but was similarly disappointed. His apartment was empty save for a very cranky hunchback cat who hadn’t gotten the midday snack he’d become used to with Mungrove staying at the apartment.

Steve slumped onto his couch with a dejected sigh, and checked his phone. Nothing from Dustin. Steve sent him a quick message to let him know Mungrove wasn’t at the apartment.

Dustin replied in seconds, dashing any hopes Steve had that they’d found the man: “fuck. haven’t found him here either. keep looking”

Steve groaned and dropped his head into his hands. He was surprised by the strength of the worry he felt for Mungrove, who was out there on his own somewhere, overwhelmed and scared. Where would he run, if not to Steve’s apartment? Would Eddie or Billy try to go back to either of their places from before? Steve was chagrined to realize he didn’t even know where either of them had lived.

Then it struck him. The lab. It wasn’t far from the campus, and Mungrove would know he could be alone there. Steve scrambled for his keys, leaving a very angry Igor treatless, and ran down to his car.

He didn’t see any sign of Mungrove when he pulled into the lot and walked around to Dustin’s entrance. His heart sank a little, but he climbed in through the broken door anyway, retracing his steps down to the room where this had all started. He was rewarded for his efforts by the sight of Mungrove sitting on the stainless steel table in the dark, his shoulders slumped and his head in his hands.

“Oh thank god,” Steve said, rushing toward him. Mungrove looked up, squinting against the flashlight shining in his red-rimmed eyes. “Are you alright?”

Mungrove sighed. “I’m a monster.”

Steve sat down next to him and reached for one of his hands, but Mungrove yanked it away. Steve frowned. Mungrove had never minded Steve touching him before.

“You’re not a monster,” Steve said.

“Yes, I am. I shouldn’t even be alive! I’m too strong. I hurt people,” Eddie said.

“That’s not true!” Steve said, raising his voice. “You were just defending me, you didn’t mean to hurt anybody. And Jason’s fine, anyway.”

“I look like a freak,” Billy interjected. “There’s no way we can still have a normal life. You should’ve just left us dead. The only thing we’re fit for now is the circus.”

Steve reached for his hand again, and this time Mungrove let him take it. “You don’t look like a freak. I like the way you look. And I’m really glad we didn’t leave you dead.”

Mungrove glanced over at him, mismatched eyes peeking out from behind a curtain of dark hair. “You like the way we look?”

“Yeah,” Steve assured him with a smile. He gave Mungrove’s hand a squeeze. “And I like the way you act, too. I like all of it, all of both of you. If you join the circus, I’m joining too.”

Mungrove gave him a weak laugh. “What would you do in the circus?”

“I always wanted to be an acrobat,” Steve admitted.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Seriously. Saw a Cirque de Soleil show when I was little, and it was all I wanted to do with my life for the next few years. But my parents would never pay for lessons. My dad said it was too girly.”

“Well, I think you’d make a great acrobat,” Eddie said. “We could throw you and stuff,” Billy added. “Then catch you. Of course.”

“There you go, then. We’ve got a back-up plan, if you end up needing to join the circus. But I really don’t think we’ll need to.” Steve let go of Mungrove’s hand, and reached up to push the hair out of Mungrove’s face and behind his ear.

Mungrove smiled at him, and somehow managed to make it look equal parts goofy and suave.

“Why don’t you come back home with me?” Steve asked, gently stroking over the scar on Mungrove’s right temple.

Mungrove closed his eyes and leaned into the hand. “What about—that guy and his friends? Are they gonna come after me with pitchforks?”

Steve shook his head. “No. Dustin and that professor managed to convince them it was all a prank.”

“But that’s how a lot of people are gonna react,” Eddie said with a sigh. “When they find out. People are gonna be pissed, think we’re an abomination. They’re gonna wanna kill us. We won’t be able to stay with you anymore.”

“I’m not gonna let that happen,” Steve said, with steel in his voice. “We could make Dustin keep your identity secret. Or we could keep him from telling anyone at all if we need to. But you’re staying with me. At my apartment, or at the circus.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Mungrove’s mouth. “Are you asking us to move in with you, Harrington?” Billy asked in a teasing tone.

“You already live with me,” Steve pointed out.

“Alright, yes, we’ll move in with you, sounds great,” Eddie said.

Steve rolled his eyes. In the silence that followed, he became aware of just how close their faces were. He could feel little puffs of air against his lips every time Mungrove exhaled. He should move back, get out of Mungrove’s space before the other man got too uncomfortable.

Before Steve could move, Mungrove closed the distance between them, and pressed his lips to Steve’s. Steve turned to meet him, angling his face so their lips could align properly. He moved his hand off of Mungrove’s cheek to wrap into the curls at the nape of his neck. Mungrove groaned as he wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist and pulled him closer.

Mungrove’s kiss was chaotic, veering between soft, tentative presses of his lips and confident, firm pressure from moment to moment. Steve loved every second of it. Mungrove slipped his tongue into Steve’s mouth in one of his more confident moments. Steve met it with his own. Mungrove’s hand inched under the hem of Steve’s t-shirt, cold fingers trailing over warm skin. Steve shivered at the delightful contrast. He felt his cock swell in his jeans, pressing against the zipper. He pulled his mouth from Mungrove’s, but kept his face close, their foreheads resting against each other.

“This is both of you, right?” Steve whispered. He needed to be sure, before they went any further. “Both of you want this?”

Mungrove nodded enthusiastically. “On this, we agree most heartily,” Eddie said. “Yeah,” Billy grunted. “D’you… d’you want both of us?” Billy sounded unsure of himself, a rare occurrence.

“Yes,” Steve said. “Absolutely.” He was just about to resume the kiss when he heard an ominous skittering noise from the corner of the room. He yelped and pointed his flashlight in that direction. Several pairs of eyes shined back at him. Rats.

“Okay, we gotta get out of here,” Steve said. “No way am I fucking in a dirty lab while rats watch.”

“We’re gonna fuck?” Eddie asked, voice bright with glee. “Jesus, you are terrible at this,” Billy muttered.

“I mean, I hoped that’s where this was going,” Steve said, motioning between their bodies.

“Yes, that’s absolutely where this was going,” Billy said, standing up from the table and offering Steve a hand. “If my liege would like to retire to the carriage?” Eddie said. “We can continue this at our humble abode.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Billy said with a groan.

“It’s okay, Billy,” Steve said with a laugh. “I like both of you. I know both of you. Neither of you are gonna scare me away.”

Billy harrumphed, but followed Steve out of the room, and took his hand when Steve offered it.

They sat silently in the car, surrounded by an expectant atmosphere. The day had seemed unsalvageable only moments before—they’d hulked out in front of a group of kids, Max included, and nearly killed that weaselly fucker Carver. Probably would’ve, if Steve hadn’t snapped them out of it. But now they were heading back to Steve’s apartment, and Steve wanted to have sex with them.

Have you ever even had sex? Billy teased. You’ve got real virgin energy.

Excuse you, Eddie replied. I’m a regular Casanova. A real Don Juan. Never had a single complaint.

Because you’ve never had sex. Billy knew this wasn’t true, given they were sharing a brain, but he couldn’t resist the urge to tease Eddie.

Oh, fuck off, Eddie snapped back at him, but it didn’t have much bite. I can see your memories. I know you’ve only had sex with a man once. I may not have you beat on overall numbers, but I’ve got you beat on the numbers that matter.

Billy could tell Eddie was nervous, all bravado aside. He could feel Eddie’s nerves himself. He was feeling nervous, too, but he honestly couldn’t tell if it was his own emotion, or just an echo of Eddie’s. This had all been such a mind-fuck. They were nearly a month in and felt like they were just getting a hang of things.

“Everything alright over there?” Steve asked as he pulled into the apartment complex parking lot. They’d been quiet for too long. Sometimes they forgot that Steve couldn’t hear them when they talked like this.

“Sorry, yeah,” Eddie said with a sheepish smile. “Just thinking.”

Billy let Eddie do the lion’s share of the talking with their new body, especially with Steve. Billy’d never liked talking anyway, and he tended to rub people the wrong way. He didn’t want to rub Steve the wrong way. Only the right way. He and Eddie disagreed on a lot, but they were always on the same page where Steve was concerned. He was special, and perfect, and he deserved the best parts of both of them. So Billy let Eddie sweet-talk Steve, and only interjected when Eddie completely lost the plot. Eddie knew exactly how to make Steve feel good with words, knew just what to say to bring that shiny smile to his face.

Billy’s contributions were different, but they didn’t make Steve any less happy. He was better than Eddie at noticing Steve’s physical tells—how he looked when he was getting too tired or hungry, or when he needed a neck-rub to stave off a tension headache. And Billy remembered the little things that Eddie could never manage to keep track of, like how Steve took his coffee and where he always put his keys when he “lost” them.

“You know we don’t actually have to do anything,” Steve assured them as he unlocked the door to the apartment. “I hope I wasn’t being too forward earlier, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Eddie opened their mouth to speak, no doubt to spout off a whole novel’s worth of thoughts and feelings, but that wasn’t what they needed right now. They’d been dancing around Steve all month, and this was finally their chance. Billy wasn’t gonna let them fuck this up. He moved, crowding Steve back against the door as it shut behind them. Eddie let Billy assume control, the transition seamless at this point.

Billy wrapped his right arm around Steve’s waist and raised his other hand to Steve’s cheek. He tilted Steve’s head to get the right angle, then kissed him. It wasn’t even that weird anymore, using someone else’s mouth. His half of the brain was so intimately entwined with Eddie’s at this point that it felt like his mouth. Our mouth.

They kissed Steve, gently at first, all soft lips, but Steve opened so quickly. His lips parted, and they would have been idiots to refuse the invitation. They dipped their tongue into Steve’s mouth, tasting the chocolate and coffee he’d had before the meeting. They felt the scratch of evening stubble against their chin. Steve’s tongue pressed against theirs. He whined into their mouth, and they drank it down as they sucked on his tongue.

They pushed Steve back against the firm wood of the door, pressing their hips against his. Steve was hard in his jeans, that delicious cock they’d been in love with since the first day they’d stumbled into a shower with him pressing against the fabric. They rubbed their own hardening cock against his, and moaned into his mouth.

Mungrove wanted Steve everywhere, wanted all of him. They pulled away from the kiss to tear Steve’s shirt up and over his head, baring his hairy chest. Steve tugged at their hoodie, and they ripped it off, then pressed back against Steve. This was so much better, skin against skin. The warmth of Steve’s body, the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart. They’d do anything to keep that heart beating. They’d have killed Jason for him, and wouldn’t have felt an ounce of remorse.

Their mouth moved to Steve’s jaw as they dragged their teeth lightly over his stubble. Steve panted heavily as they kissed down his neck, sucking over his pulse point, feeling the blood pounding beneath the skin. They sucked harder and harder, wanting to leave their mark on Steve. He groaned in pleasure, and rubbed himself against their hips, desperately chasing friction. They pushed back, frantic, needing to give Steve more.

It wasn’t enough, not like this. They dropped to their knees and made quick work of Steve’s belt and zipper, pulling his jeans and boxers down to reveal his perfect cock. It popped up once it was released from the confines of his pants, fully erect, the tip bright red with an aromatic bead of precum.

They bent forward and licked. It tasted salty and bitter. It should’ve been gross, but it wasn’t. They wanted so much more. Steve shouted out a curse and banged a fist against the door behind him as Mungrove drew the head into their mouth, licking and gently sucking, teasing. He whimpered and tried to thrust his hips, but they reached up and held his hips firmly against the door. They moved their tongue in quick circles, over and over again around the head of Steve’s cock, first one direction then the other. More precum leaked onto their tongue and they swallowed it greedily.

“P-please, Mungrove,” Steve whined. “Need more.”

Mungrove smiled around his cock, debating whether or not to keep teasing, but they were of one mind on this—Steve deserved to be spoiled. They took him further into their mouth, reminding each other to swallow to overcome the gag reflex. Steve wrapped his hands in their hair and tugged, pulling a moan of approval from them.

The smell of Steve was so strong here, musk and sweat and soap mixed together. It drove them wild. They never wanted to leave here, never wanted to stop smelling it. They held him firmly in place as they moved their mouth up and down his beautiful cock. He tried to thrust, tried to squirm, but they didn’t let him. There would be bruises in the shape of their fingers on his hips in the morning, and they’d kiss over each one.

“W-wait,” Steve stuttered out breathlessly.

They stopped immediately, pulling their mouth off his dick with an obscene popping noise.

“I’m gonna—you’re gonna make me come. I don’t wanna come yet.”

They licked their lips and sat back on their heels, looking up at him. “What do you want?” they asked.

“Want you to fuck me,” Steve answered, with no hesitation.

They stood immediately and held out a hand. “Then we’ll fuck you.”

Steve kicked his jeans the rest of the way off, tangling them in his shoes for a moment before managing to get it all off, shoes and pants, then took their hand. They pulled him against their body, wrapped their arms around him, and kissed him. Their hands moved down to grab handfuls of his ass, squeezing and massaging before hoisting him easily into the air, one hand on each thigh just below his ass.

Steve yelped, automatically wrapping his legs around their waist, just like they’d hoped. They kept kissing him, licking hungrily into his mouth as they walked him down the hallway and into his bedroom. They threw him onto the bed with ease, and he bounced back into the air with a delighted laugh.

“That’s—that’s really hot,” he said, between giggles.

They grinned, and followed Steve onto the bed. He spread his legs invitingly, and they slotted themselves in between them, holding themselves up on their arms as they kissed him. He was so noisy, and they loved it. Little whines and grunts and moans fell from his mouth and they drank them all up. He let them kiss him until they started to feel the beginnings of friction burn on their chin from his stubble.

Steve pushed gently against their chest. They pressed themselves up and looked down at him. His eyes were heavy and hooded as he stared up at them. His lips were red and swollen, slick with their combined spit. The sight made them involuntarily thrust against him. He winced and they stopped immediately.

“Did we hurt you?” they asked, concerned.

“No,” Steve said with a smile. “Just, take these off.” He tugged at their jeans. “They don’t feel great against my dick.”

They took the jeans off faster than they’d ever taken off a garment of clothing in their respective lives. They climbed back into the bed, fully naked now, and positioned themselves back between Steve’s legs.

“Better?” they asked, punctuating the question with a roll of their hips to rub their cocks together.

Steve stuttered out a sigh, wiggling back and forth to rut against them. “Much.” He pulled their face back down and resumed the kiss. It got heated fast this time, with Steve squirming beneath them and moaning into their mouth. Mungrove reached between their bodies and grabbed both of their dicks in one hand. They squeezed and stroked as Steve panted and writhed. Steve was such a delightfully responsive lover that they couldn’t wait any longer.

“Lube?” they whispered against his lips.

He nodded vigorously and waved a hand in the direction of the bedside table. When they turned back to Steve, he was splayed on his back with a hand behind each of his knees, spreading himself wide.

Mungrove chuckled, running a finger over Steve’s balls, and back down to his taint, then pressing against the skin there.

Steve closed his eyes and grunted with pleasure. “Unh.”

“You’re eager,” they teased.

“No shit,” Steve said. “Been wanting this since that first day in the shower.”

“Really?” they asked, dragging the finger down further to push against his furled rim. “When we were all covered in scars and blood?”

Steve nodded. “Really.”

“Freak,” they said with a grin.

“Absolutely,” Steve agreed with a returning smile.

Mungrove pressed their finger in slowly. Steve winced, and they paused, but then they felt the pressure of Steve bearing down, and the finger eased in. They worked the finger in and out as Steve’s face smoothed. Steve sighed and trailed a hand up the skin of his abdomen to his chest, gently tweaking one of his own nipples.

“Add another,” Steve instructed. “I like to feel it.”

Mungrove complied, sliding a second finger in. Steve hummed and shut his eyes, twisting harder on his nipple. Mungrove bent at the waist and moved their head to Steve’s free nipple, pulling it into their mouth and biting down.

“Fuck,” Steve muttered as he sucked in a sharp breath. They let the nipple fall from their mouth. “N-no, don’t stop!”

Mungrove bit down again as they continued to move their fingers in his ass. They moved their mouth to the side and bit the soft, squishy flesh of Steve’s pec. He yelped and squirmed beneath them. “Yeah, just like that,” Steve said, letting them know they should keep going. They bit and sucked a constellation of bruises into one pec, then the other, then leaned back to admire the art.

“So pretty,” they said.

Steve blushed. It went all the way from his face to halfway down his chest, and made him even prettier.

“Fuck me now,” Steve demanded. He didn’t need to ask twice.

Mungrove poured more lube into their hand, slicking it over their cock. And it was their cock, wasn’t it? They didn’t need to fight anymore about whose would have been better, because it didn’t matter. This was the one they had, and they were going to get to fuck Steve with it.

They grabbed one of Steve’s legs and draped it over their shoulder. Steve looked them in their eyes as they pressed into him. Their cock was on the thicker side, so they slid in slowly as Steve gradually opened up around them. They watched his face closely for any signs of pain, but all they saw was the slightest furrow of his brow as he concentrated.

“You feel… amazing,” they said when they were fully seated inside of Steve, dropping his leg and leaning forward to rest their forehead against his. Steve was so blissfully tight.

“You, too,” Steve whispered. “Fill me up so well.”

They kissed him, unable to resist those lips. As they slid their tongue into his mouth, they started to move their hips, fucking into Steve, who hummed his approval. The soft hair of Steve’s chest rubbed against the smooth skin of their own as their bodies pressed together. They barely pulled out of him with each thrust, desperate to stay as close to him as they could get.

They kept going like this for some of the best minutes of their combined lives to date, grinding against and into Steve as they explored every little crevice of his mouth, until finally he turned his head to the side with an annoyed huff.

“Need more,” he whined. “Harder.”

Mungrove begrudgingly dragged themselves away from his mouth and pushed themselves up to their knees, taking hold of both of Steve’s hips and tilting his pelvis up.

“Oooh,” Steve said, his mouth falling open as their cock brushed up against his prostate.

They fucked into him in earnest then, frantically pounding into his ass. He bounced against them with each thrust, letting out a little “unh” noise. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh filled the room around them. Steve’s ass was so tight around their cock. They weren’t going to last long.

Steve’s eyes were closed and his mouth hung open as he abandoned himself to the pleasure. His cock leaked profusely where it flopped against his belly with the force of each thrust. They grabbed it, pumping it in time with their strokes.

“Oh, shit, I’m gonna come,” Steve said, as though the fact had taken him by surprise. He was spurting cum over their hand and onto his own stomach before he’d even finished the sentence. The walls of his ass fluttered against their cock as he came. The sensation was enough to send Mungrove over the edge as well, burying themselves deep inside of him.

“Fuuuuuuuck, Stevie, princess, darling, baby.” They stuttered out a laundry list of their pet names for him as they rode the waves of the best orgasm of their lives. They let go of his hips once they’d regained full motor control, and slumped over onto the bed beside him.

They lay there as their heart rate and breathing slowed down, basking in the afterglow. As they came down from the experience, a subtle shift happened in their brain, and they separated once more into two minds, rather than the one mind that had been focused entirely on Steve.

They turned to face Steve. “What d’you think?” Billy asked with a smirk. “Best you’ve ever had?”

Steve laughed and punched him lightly on the arm. “I can’t tell you yes. I can’t be responsible for inflating that ego further.”

“Can’t tell us no, either,” Eddie said, reaching out to pinch Steve’s side playfully.

“I guess I can’t,” Steve agreed. “That would be a lie.”

They heard Steve’s phone going off from the other room. It had been ringing periodically this whole time, but none of them had paid it any attention.

“Shit, that’s probably Dustin,” Steve said with a groan, sitting up. “I never told him I found you.”

Billy shrugged. “He can wait.”

Steve turned back to them with his eyebrows raised. “Or I can tell him I didn’t find you. Keep you a secret so you never have to deal with him again.”

“No, Stevie, that’s alright,” Eddie said, pulling Steve back down to lay against them and kissing him on the temple. “We can do it. As long as you’re with us.”

“Also, we wanna be rich,” Billy added. “Gotta get our half of that Nobel Prize money.”

Steve snorted. “Can I be your kept man once it comes through?”

“Obviously,” they replied, voices together. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”