Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Death would be a kindness.

Eddie’s only regret is that Dustin found him bleeding out, so far gone that it didn’t even hurt anymore. Eddie could see his body spasm as his lungs rattled. Then there was finally nothing.

At least… there was supposed to be nothing.

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut tighter, willing the pair of eyes on him to please go away. Can’t they see he’s busy being dead? 

Suddenly, there’s legs–thousands, spindly, twitching–all over his body. Eddie sits up with a scream, scrambling away from whatever the fuck is touching him. A giant centipede sits at his feet, head cocked. It’s wearing a creepy wooden mask on its head, one that looks like a smiling woman. The mask does nothing to hide the deadly, Eddie-sized pincers growing out of its mouth.

“You’re early,” the centipede says somehow without moving any part of its head. Its voice is monotone and robotic. It sounds as annoyed as Higgins did when Click sent him to the office for the upteenth time.

“Yeah, I’m switching things up, you know?” Eddie quips. “New death, new me. All that jazz. Figured I might as well see what it’s like to be early for once.” Probably not the best move, but the alternative would be to fully consider the giant fuck-off centipede glaring at him.

Is he in hell? Is this his punishment? To get eaten over and over again? Should he have let Carver drag him to church?

“I am not interested in unfunny jests,” the centipede chides. It moves its long body in a circle, impossibly fast. In a blink, Eddie is completely surrounded. The bug’s body shimmers like the colors of galaxies on the covers of textbooks he’d used as pillows. “You’re early. You and dozens of others. All from the same town.”

There’s a cacophony of clicking sounds as if the centipede cannot hold back its irritation. Eddie puts his hands over his ears and curls up in a ball, whimpering.

“That was unnecessary.” The centipede says. It unfurls to give Eddie a little breathing room. “I regret that.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Eddie says through gritted teeth.

“This town. This man. This is not right.”

“What? Is he disturbing the balance of the force? About to pull down the fabric of reality as we know it? Am I the universe’s last hope? The chosen one to save the multiverse?” Eddie desperately wishes he could make himself shut the fuck up for once in his life. But as usual, he can’t stop prattling when he’s this panicked.

The centipede makes an irritated click.

“This is excessive. I will not accept you.”

“What?!” Eddie squawks. “What does that mean? What the fuck am I supposed to do then? Wait here forever?”

“No. You’re going back.”

“To what?! How?!” Eddie gets on his knees and clutches at the centipede. It’s painfully hot and cold, like the time he ate those California Reaper peppers and a pack of mints at the same time on a dare. Why the fuck is he thinking about that now? “Please. I can’t go through that again.”

“You will not.”

Eddie opens his mouth to ask more questions. What did it mean he won’t? Was he going to get shoved into some poor schmuck’s body? Become a one-man skeleton army? 

Well, he would ask those questions, but he suddenly has no mouth.

“You will make this right.” The centipede wraps around Eddie again. 

The “or else” feels implied.

It tightens. Eddie screams without a mouth.

They couldn’t even bury him.

Steve doesn’t regret hosting the memorial service at his house. It was the least he could do. No other venue would have been willing to risk the wrath of the Hawkins church crowd anyway.

But now the whole house reminds him of Eddie.

The kitchen is where they poured out some Yoohoo on a bowl of Honeycombs in Eddie’s honor. The dining room is where the kids delivered dozens of eulogies for Eddie, his DnD characters, and notable NPCs for hours because no one really wanted to finalize the service and accept their loss. The living room is where they sat around in a daze for hours after Wayne left for his shift.

Steve stumbles about. The house feels terribly full of regrets and half-baked memories. Eddie probably would have had something weird to say about that, something so out of left field that Steve wouldn’t have known how to respond. Something so clever and layered that Steve would have laughed about it hours later after he had time to process. His chest feels hollowed out. It’s physically painful.

Steve and Wayne were the only ones that held themselves together. Wayne, because men like him don’t cry. Steve, because…probably because he was too busy making sure Dustin didn’t cry himself to death right there on the pristine kitchen floor. There were just too many people to take care of, most of whom knew Eddie better than Steve did. Robin knew Eddie better than Steve. 

It felt over-dramatic to crumple with the others when Wayne was standing in the corner, smoking an entire pack in one go.

The portals are still open. He still needs to go to work and watch Keith pretend to give a shit about Steve and Robin clocking in on time. He still needs to drag the kids to school. Clean. Do laundry. Drag the trash away from his house so it wouldn’t attract the stray demo creatures that keep finding their way into Hawkins. He still needs to eat, as if his world didn’t crack open.

So Steve stands in the kitchen and makes a casserole for him and Wayne. His hands keep trembling. Maybe because he can’t breathe. Can’t eat. Can’t sleep. He hisses when the knife goes through his ring finger. Steve watches the blood drip out in a daze. He bites down on the wound and the pain feels good–it’s pain he can understand, not like the bottomless grief he feels for a town that he hates and a boy he doesn’t know.

They weren’t even that close. It makes sense for Dustin to refuse to wear anything but his Hellfire t-shirt, the townies be damned.

His house wasn’t even destroyed. He still has a job to get to. He’s twenty. He didn’t really lose anyone. It makes sense for Mike to say maybe a word a day, if that. It makes sense for Lucas to obsessively stay by Max’s bedside at the expense of everything else.

They actually knew him. Loved him. Loved this town. Lost at least half their classmates and their homes. There’s no reason for Steve to be falling apart like this.

At least the kids don’t know, but he can’t hide it from everyone.  Nancy frets. If he’s this useless when the time comes, the fight would be that much harder. And of course there’s Robin, who is maybe one more skipped meal away from wrestling him down and force-feeding him. 

The oven pings.

Steve slaps himself out of his spiral so he can deliver Wayne some food to ignore while they pretend  to watch whatever game is on TV.

Eddie wakes back up where he died.

Everything hurts. There’s needles all over his body, under his skin. His ankles feel like they’re melting, like there’s boils coming up from below the surface. The tips of his fingers feel like something’s chewing them up. Both sides of his neck sting as if something’s cutting him open with a knife. Eddie would sob if he could draw enough oxygen.

He can only lay there, twitching, wishing for a second death. Eventually, the pain dims enough for him to breathe. Tears trickle. But they linger around his eyes, instead of flowing down his face the way they should. After what feels like eons, Eddie finally gets the strength to wipe away the irritating wetness.

He cries out at the sudden sharp pain across his cheek.

He pulls his hand away and notices the change in his fingers. Instead of normal, human nails, his fingers end in sharp black talons. Talons that are covered in blood, his blood. 

Eddie wiggles his fingers, tries rubbing the talons against each other. They’re tough enough to clack when he knocks them together.

He sits up to look down at himself. His clothes are shredded. Those bats took big chunks of his shirt and pants. A lot of the skin he can see is red, raw, and bleeding. But there are patches that are whole. Eddie runs a shaky hand down his torso.

Fur.

It’s skin-colored, hard to tell in the dim light of the Upside Down. But he’s definitely covered in fur. The hair extends all the way down his legs and stops abruptly at the ankles where it’s replaced by scales. He sits up higher. The raw, eaten parts of his body scream in protest.

He looks down at his clawed hands.

He’s never going to be able to play the guitar again.

“You’ve got to eat Steve,” Wayne says gruffly.

“I am eating,” Steve replies a little more petulantly than he intended. In his defense, Wayne was supposed to be the one person not bothering him about how he should eat, sleep, talk, plan, do literally anything besides silently drown in his grief in his morgue of a house.

“You did a good job on this Steve. You should eat it,” Wayne insists, refusing to match Steve’s tone.

“So should you,” Steve deflects.

Wayne takes a big, exaggerated bite of his casserole, staring at Steve. Steve sighs and takes a smaller bite. Chews. Swallows.

At least he tries. He really tries. But the constant knot at his throat pushes against even the small bite. Steve chokes, eyes watering. Wayne puts a hand out by his mouth and frantically slaps his back. Steve manages to spit out a disgusting, half-chewed glob of casserole on Wayne’s outstretched hand. Wayne shakes the slush on the floor and rubs Steve’s back with his clean hand, crooning nonsense phrases like “there there,” and “sorry for rushing you.”

“Sorry, let me clean that up,” Steve mutters, trying to get up.

“No, ‘s my fault. Shouldn’t have rushed you,” Wayne says, forcing Steve back down on the couch. Wayne goes over to the kitchen section of the trailer and comes back with a towel. His eyes are shining. Steve looks away to give Wayne a chance to wipe his eyes in private. He can still see Wayne’s shoulders tremble slightly as he wipes away the mess.

“...It’ll do me a lot of good Steve, if you don’t keel over,” Wayne says eventually, tossing the soiled towel in the hamper’s direction.

“I’m fine,” Steve snaps.

“Anything I can do? To… enhance the fine-ness?” Wayne asks awkwardly. It sounds so much like what Eddie would say.

“Feels like I should be asking you that,” Steve chokes out.

Wayne sighs deeply. “You’re a kid who’s been giving me your best, more than your best,” he mutters. “You’ve got to… I’ve got to…” He swallows hard and looks up at the ceiling. “Eddie would tell me off for giving into cliches, but we’ve got to keep moving, yeah?”

Steve wants to punch him. Wayne, of all people, should understand. “I left him,” he whispers.

“Steve. Eddie died.” Wayne looks at him like he’s a wounded animal, “you got the live ones out safe. That’s what Eddie would have wanted.”

“What about what I wanted? Doesn’t that matter?”

Wayne’s face crumples. And suddenly Steve’s back in that boat house, watching Eddie’s face crumple as he describes Chrissy’s last moments.

Steve desperately needs to leave.

“Sorry Wayne,” he mutters. “I… I gotta go. Gotta do err… laundry and shit.”

Eddie feels a lot better when he gets up again.

Calmer.

Different.

The pain is gone. He’s still furry. There’s raw, scarred patches of skin that don’t have fur, but they’re so red and rough that they stand out more than the skin-colored fuzz. His claws are still there, but he can’t feel the accidental slash he made across his face anymore. Eddie stands and takes a tottering step.

Sounds.

No, not sounds. Vibrations. 

Eddie can see the Upside Down through his feet, just like this weird deer alien race he’d read about once in a comic. It sucks. It’s overwhelming. How did those aliens get anything done? A pack of Demodogs mill around about sixty yards away. Three Demogorgons drift, about a hundred yards apart from each other. Not that he can see them. There’s every chance he’s hallucinating through his feet. But something makes him sure, even though he’s the only living being here he can actually see. Eddie looks up at the sky. It’s more colorful than he remembered–not just gray. There’s shades of shimmery purple and pinks. There’s some reds in there too. He looks forward and realizes his eyes can see so much farther out than he ever used to be able to.

Eddie gets so distracted by the pretty colors and feet-vision that a Demodog manages to catch him by surprise. Maybe the bug thought adding a plus five to his perception score would be enough to keep him safe. It really should have considered that Eddie’s attention span lasts maybe five minutes on a good day. Eddie screams and slashes at it clumsily. Fortunately, his nails are sharp enough to gut it despite Eddie not aiming at all.

Eddie staggers back, panting. The dog falls at his feet. Twitching. Eddie wonders if these creatures are supposed to be this bony. What did they eat before Eddie?

Speaking of eating, what is he supposed to eat? It must have been a while since he last ate. Is food going to be a problem? At least he doesn’t feel hungry or weak, and the thought of gnawing on raw Demodog meat makes him nauseous. Throwing up is probably going to be worse than not eating anything at all.

A Demogorgon moves towards the portal that connects to Lover’s Lake. So this was why that grumpy, galaxy-colored centipede chucked him back in the Upside Down. So he could stand guard over Hawkins so the fucking bug wouldn’t have to deal with more dead Hawkins residents. And of course it didn’t say anything about how long, or why with this body. A small part of him really wants to find a way to go back into that death dimension so he could demand some sort of explanation, a plan, anything. 

But Wayne is in Hawkins. He’s a smart man. He probably knows by now that he needed to leave, like, yesterday. But moving takes time and money, both of which are in short supply in the Munson household. It’s not just Wayne either. The sheepies. His Corroded boys. That dude at the record store that held back some Metallica tapes for him when Eddie needed a week to come up with the funds. Steve Harrington, unexpectedly good dude. And he can’t let Higgins die yet, not before Eddie’s had the chance to yank his diploma from his slimy hands and flip him off. It’s a shit town full of shit people. But it’s his shit town.

So Eddie cusses and sprints towards the portal, claws ready and out.

Steve gives up on sleep. He rolls over, careful so he wouldn’t wake up Robin, who’s draped over him. Fortunately, she’s a heavy sleeper, especially after a day of monster patrol. Robin murmurs and makes grabby hands where his body was. He puts his pillow under her and Robin buries her head into it.

Steve tiptoes down the stairs. He can see the rest of Loch Nora, infuriatingly pristine, from his kitchen window. All the rich fucks here got out, even though the neighborhood was barely touched. The “earthquake” made a single, tiny pothole about three blocks away. Meanwhile, most of Wayne’s trailer park neighbors are still in Hawkins even though there’s a giant fuck-off hole where the Munsons’ old trailer used to be. 

The government just plopped Wayne into a new trailer, slapped a dome over the portal in the old trailer, and put out some half-hearted press releases about how Eddie was a victim of the serial killer that also killed Chrissy, Patrick, Max, and Fred. Then they fucked off. 

What remains of Hawkins is a traumatized, stressed out group of misfits who either can’t leave, or are too stupid and stubborn to leave. Steve is in the second camp.

The finger he cut the other day throbs. Robin insists he should go to see a doctor. But the hospital staff got decimated in ‘85, while he was getting tortured by Russians under the mall. He doesn’t want to take up what little remains for just a cut. Steve is pretty sure that if he raids his parent’s bedroom, he’ll find some strong painkillers.

This sense of stupid and stubborn gets stronger the more he thinks about the injustice of it all. Fucking Vecna, targeting a neighborhood of people with the least ability to fight back like the fucking coward he is. Targeting children. Chrissy, Patrick, Fred, Max. Eddie hadn’t even graduated. He was going to graduate.

And the fucking town. You would think that three separate mass deaths, one ending in the town physically getting ripped to pieces, would bring the townies together or at least give them important stuff to do. It didn’t matter how many times they were told Eddie had nothing to do with the murders–that he was a victim even–people still take time out of their precious apocalyptic days to smear red paint on Eddie’s gravestone when he’s not even buried there.

Because Steve abandoned him.

Steve didn’t realize  he was doing it until he started doing it. He grabs a flashlight, wraps it in a plastic bag like Eddie did for him back when…

Anyway. He grabs a flashlight. Suck it Dustin. He grabs his nailbat and gets in the beemer, praying that Robin doesn’t hear the door quietly close, the car start, and rev out. Hopefully, if she did wake up, she’ll think that he just went out for a drive to quiet his mind. She knows he does that. Drive around and around to make sure everyone’s home.

But instead of doing his normal rounds, Steve drives to Lover’s Lake.

Stupid and stubborn. 

He’ll show them stupid and stubborn. 

He’s not sure who them is. But he’ll show them.

Steve drives right up to Rick’s boat house. The boat is still there. It doesn’t take too long to row over the portal. It’ll be a trek back to where he left Eddie’s body in the Upside Down, but this is the only portal he can easily access without drawing too much attention. Besides, he’s got his bat. He’ll be fine. He has to be fine. He didn’t even leave Robin a note. She’d drag him back from the dead so she could kill him herself.

Eddie’s having a great time. He swings, claws out, at a Demogorgon. It rears its ugly head back to avoid his blow. It’s slow. Or maybe he’s fast. In any case, Eddie barrels into the monster’s chest since it’s already off-balance from trying to avoid him. The Demogorgon falls. Eddie slashes its throat open so savagely he nearly beheads it.

Behind him, he feels the ground shift as vines snake through to try to grab him. Eddie dives and rolls away. The vines clutch the beheaded Demogorgon instead, and Eddie seizes that moment to chop the vines in half.

When he gets back top-side, he’s going to petition Gygax to shorten each round to two seconds in real time. There’s no way this round of actions between him and these Demo-fuckers took six whole seconds.

Eddie leaps onto some sort of petal-faced monstrosity he’d never seen before and slices its back open. He feels invincible.

It’s exhilarating. It’s like the time finally got his guitar, when the timing and the rhythms finally sank in. It’s also a little worrying how smoothly this fight is going. If he were running this game, this would be exactly the kind of fight he’d put on to lull his players into a false sense of security. His battle moves are getting stale. Weave in and out. Dodge the teeth. Slash the throat. Twist his hands into their guts. This would be about when he’d throw a twist, one that forces his players to change their tactic, use the environment, try something batshit.

But this isn’t a DnD game. This is a real nightmare, and he’s slowly losing his mind. At least fighting beats waiting around for something to happen. This is what Eddie’s days have been reduced down to. Dick around by the portal and try not to think too hard about the crushing loneliness. Fight off the monsters trying to get into Hawkins. Go back to dicking around. 

Actually, he’s also getting pretty good at rock carving.

And for the first time in a while–days, weeks, months…Eddie doesn’t even know anymore–something new happens.

At first, Eddie thinks he’s having some sort of a PTSD flashback. There’s a sickeningly familiar sound of a swarm of fluttering wings, and screeching. Eddie looks up momentarily before he grabs a Demodog by its leg and throws it as far away as he can, which turns out to be pretty fucking far. No time to preen though. There’s a swarm of Demobats flying towards him, and the portal. 

Shit. Shit! He should have known that just because he has the ground covered doesn’t mean he’s got everything covered.

Eddie sprints at the herd of Demobats. He can’t jump high enough to reach them, but they’ll have to come down to his level to get through the portal. Eddie makes himself as wide as possible and steels himself. He’s probably not going to be able to take all of them, but he can reduce the damage. That centipede better not give him a hard time when he lands back in its leggy clutches after getting eaten alive a second time.

Eddie’s claws manage to tear through about five of them. He yanks a few more by the tail. But there’s too many. They’re actively chewing through him to get through the portal, and his healing isn’t keeping up. Dozens hang off his arms. There’s a tail at his neck trying to cut off airflow. He’s pretty sure at least some must have gone past him. All he can see is the gray slime of the bat skin. All he can hear is screeching and flesh tearing. Eddie opens his mouth. With his arms pinned down, his teeth are all he has.

Eddie’s mouth opens…and it keeps opening. 

Did the centipede give him snake jaws? Ones that unhinge all the way? 

No, this is more than that. Eddie feels something at the roof of his mouth, maybe the top of his head, spin open. He feels his body open. The world goes…shadowy as he stops seeing it through his eyes. He can feel a deep pressure in his belly as he sucks in the Demobats. He feels the few that were munching on his arms get knocked off as he stops… having arms. The bats swarm into the open fissure of his body. 

It’s violating in ways Eddie can’t even begin to describe. He tries desperately to close himself back up. To close his mouth. After what feels like forever, he finally manages to figure it out. His body knits back together with a horrible squelching feeling that Eddie thinks might have been a sound. There are no more Demobats.

Eddie staggers back, nearly tripping over a dead Demogorgon.

What the fuck was that?

Sometimes, when he was feeling stupid and delusional about the future, Eddie had tried to plan how he might blend in when he got out of the Upside Down. He could wear full, long-sleeve leather all the time, pretend it’s his thing now. He could wear gloves to hide his gnarled fingers that end in deadly talons.

But this?

He’s not sure he can keep whatever that was under control. He had zero control just now when he apparently split open into some kind of cosmic vacuum. Where did the bats even go? What if Dustin tried to hug him and he had a stupid flashback and ate the kid? Would Nancy agree to shoot his head off to see if Dustin would emerge from his neck, Athene-style? Or would he have to live with the guilt for the rest of his days until he meets the Centipede again to kick its galactic ass?

Eddie kicks the dead Demogorgon viciously, so viciously that he hears a crack when his feet connects. There’s searing hot pain on his toes. But he’s recovered from worse. And he’ll keep recovering from worse, forever and ever now until he finally dies again. 

Eddie screams and tears at the soft bodies surrounding him, ignoring the snapping of his own bones and muscles.

Steve takes his shirt off and throws it. Eddie’s flushed, confused face isn’t there to catch it.

The water doesn’t feel as cold as it did when Steve last jumped in. Maybe the Upside Down has been… leaking into it. It’s always kind of lukewarm down there. 

Steve swims, holding the flashlight forward. He can see the portal below, see its eerie purple glow. It’s not leaking Upside Down particles like the other fissures around town, probably because it’s underwater.

The portal looks bigger than he remembers. Hopefully, it’s because he’s gotten so used to the tiny ones scattered about town. He goes through and tumbles up and down onto the dry lake bed, coughing. Steve wraps a bandana around his face to protect himself from the toxic air, but the fabric is soaking wet, like the rest of his clothes, and he can’t breathe through it.

Steve tries not to picture the look of wilting disappointment on Dustin’s face as he stuffs the fabric back in his pocket. Steve twirls his nail bat for moral support and sets off. He’s got a long way to go to the trailer park where he left Eddie’s body.

As he walks, the full gravity of what he’s trying to do starts to weigh down on him. Eddie wasn’t a big guy, but he’s still a full grown man and Steve’s in the worst shape of his life. He got winded even from that short swim from the boat down to this portal, and he’s not totally sure how he’s going to drag an entire body from the trailer back to the lake portal, up the water, on the boat, then back to…

Where was he going to put a body?

Steve considers turning back at this point. Go back to Robin. Talk to her about the plan. Reassess. But he’s 99% sure she’ll try to talk him out of this. Say it’s a stupid plan to risk getting chowed down by Demobats to recover a body when they’re going to need everyone for the Vecna fight when El finally finds his ugly mug. And Steve knows that he’s not going to be able to win an argument with Robin, especially when she’s fighting for his life.

So Steve trudges on, watching out for vines and Demo-creatures. The Upside Down itself is weirdly quiet. He’s seen so many monsters breaching out into Hawkins that he’d fully expected to be ambushed by monsters the moment he stepped foot through the portal. But no. There’s nothing. 

Steve shivers, trying to shake off the feeling of being watched.

He remembers the wilderness training he had back when he was in boy scouts. He tries not to think about what the scoutmaster said about animals, that they always know when you’re in their territory. The sensible thing to do would be to… not do what Steve is doing now, which is wandering around alone with his giant loud human feet, with nothing but a single nail-studded bat to defend himself.

Jesus fucking Christ. If Robin ever finds out what he’s doing now, she’d lock him in her bedroom and throw away the keys.

Steve is so preoccupied with self-pity and the stupidity of what he’s doing that he forgets to watch the ground. He steps on a vine and suddenly, he’s upside down, held up by his ankles. Steve frantically smacks at the vine holding him aloft, trying to get it to release him. But it has him in a death grip, and starts shaking him like a cartoon bully shaking down the local nerd for lunch money.Steve feels his ankle snap.

The pain is so bad that he hallucinates. Something, a humanoid thing with hair a lot like Eddie’s, eyes a lot like Eddie’s, an angry scream and scowl a lot like Eddie’s, materializes and leaps on the vine holding Steve up. The being raises its arm. Its hands have razor sharp claws. It easily cuts through the vine. Goo spurts everywhere, mixing in horribly with the guts and pieces of viscera the creature had already been covered in. Steve falls. The creature catches him bridal style before he can hit the ground.

Eddie’s face looks at him, dark brown eyes wide and concerned.

Is he dead?

“Eddie?” Steve whispers, holding out a hand to the Eddie-shaped face. He touches something solid, soft, and… fuzzy. The creature’s eyes flutter closed for a moment then snap wide open.

“Err… I dunno who you’re talking about sailor boy,” the creature says in Eddie’s voice. It’s  a little raspy, as if he hadn’t been drinking enough water.

Steve grips the creature’s face more firmly. He’s pretty sure you can’t hallucinate smells, and this creature smells like… death honestly. “Eddie, don’t fuck with me. Is it you?”

“No, no Eddie here! Just a… kritter,” Eddie babbles, carefully carrying Steve back towards the portal. “Anyway, let’s get you not here, yeah? I can get you back to town.”

Steve struggles frantically, ankle be damned.

“Whoa, whoa, Steve… I mean… stranger! You’re going to fuck up your ankles even more. Let me just… Ow!”

Eddie squeals when Steve resorts to biting him in his effort to get Eddie to put him down and stop carrying him away.

“Dude, what was that for?!” Eddie asks as he rearranges them so Steve can’t bite him anymore.

“What the fuck?!” Steve screeches. “You were here the whole time?! You fucking asshole motherfucker! Do you have any idea how fucked everyone got over you? I thought… I couldn’t…” He twists to punch Eddie, hitting every surface he can reach. “The kids! Me! Wayne! You could have fucking come back at any point and you didn’t?! Let go of me!”

Eddie inhales sharply. He lets Steve keep hitting him, making little grunts and whimpers until Steve finally manages to get it out of his system. Eddie gently lowers himself to the ground, taking Steve down with him. They clutch each other, breathing heavily. Steve’s ankle throbs so badly the pain makes him nauseous. But it doesn’t matter. Not when Eddie’s here. He’s kind of strange and fuzzy and really jacked and smelly, but he’s here.

“Err… sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you. You alright?” Steve finally asks sheepishly, speaking into Eddie’s gore-speckled chest.

“Are you going to hit me again if I keep pretending not to know who you are?” Eddie asks, “because I guess I deserved that but man you pack a punch.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Steve says, chuckling breathlessly. “And sailor boy?!”

“Uh,” Eddie falters. “I was at that stupid mall every day last summer to watch you prance around in that sailor getup,” he admits with a sheepish grin.

“Fuck,” Steve laughs and punches Eddie lightly on the shoulder. “That stupid uniform.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t call you sailor boy in front of the hellions,” Eddie says, wiggling his eyebrow. 

For some reason, that’s the funniest thing Steve’s ever heard. He collapses into Eddie, wheezing. “Thanks for that,” Steve finally sputters out. “They still give me shit for just how much I struck out that summer.” He feels kind of insane. It’s really Eddie, teasing him like he’d never died a few weeks ago in Dustin’s arms.

Eddie rubs Steve’s head with the palm of his hand. “That was definitely not you,” he says, chuckling, “I put a hex over Scoops Ahoy because I couldn’t handle the idea of a girl getting to you before I sucked your dick.”

Wait.

“What was that last sentence?”

“Nothing!” Eddie squawks. 

Steve is suddenly dumped on the ground. Eddie frantically scrambles backwards. Steve’s broken (probably) ankle thuds onto the ground and he screams in pain.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I’m so sorry Harrington. I’m so fucking sorry,” Eddie comes crawling back, touching Steve as little as possible. “Shit man, I need to get you out of here now.”

“Not…” Steve says through gritted teeth, “not leaving without you.”

“Don’t think I’m going to give you a choice sweetheart,” Eddie says sadly. “I’m kinda stuck here. But you shouldn’t be.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!” Steve yells, his pain forgotten. “Eddie. I haven’t slept in weeks. Wayne is a zombie. The only reason Dustin hasn’t gotten his shit kicked in is because that stupid Hellfire shirt he won’t take off smells so bad no one wants to touch him. Mike is near catatonic. Lucas won’t leave Max’s bedside. Nancy won’t leave the gun range. El spends more time in the tank than in the world of the living anymore. We need you!”

Eddie sits back, looking away. “Sorry. I thought you all would have moved on…”

“No. Fuck you. We’re not moving on. Force me out if you want. I’m coming back. And the next time, I’m bringing the whole group. We’re going to fucking…hog-tie and put you in a barrel. I’m going to get Nancy a tranquilizer dart.”

Eddie chews his lips. “Steve. You’re not thinking straight. I can’t… look at me.” Eddie stands and wiggles his hands around, clacking his talons.

Steve has never been less impressed in his life.

“Edward Dorkus Munson. Are you really going to force me to do this the hard way? Are you really going to make Hopper come and cuff you? You really want Wayne to see you that way?” Steve asks, deadpan. “Because you’re being a little dramatic here. Wear gloves if it really bothers you that much.”

“I…” Eddie curls up. Steve crawls to him to drape himself over Eddie. Eddie bawls in Steve’s arms.

Chapter Text

Well, this is only the most embarrassing moment of his life, and that’s including all the times he performed for five mean drunks.

Eddie sniffles, trying to avoid getting snot on Steve’s perfect hairy chest. But there’s a lot of snot and Steve seems very intent on not letting him go. Eddie could probably peel off if he really tried. He tells himself he might agitate Steve’s ankle even more. That’s totally why.

Eventually, Steve frees him from the clutches of his gorgeous, evil, magnetic tits. He awkwardly clears his throat and hands Eddie a wet black bandana from his back pocket. Huh.

Eddie wipes his face and hands the cloth back to Steve, sniffling. Steve rolls his eyes and presses the cloth around Eddie’s nose. “Blow, you idiot,” Steve mutters.

Eddie blows. He can feel his face flaming. He wonders if Steve can see him blush through the fur.

“Alright, so,” Steve says, sounding way too calm for a guy who may or may not have just heard Eddie admit he wanted to suck his dick. “Here’s the plan. You’re going to carry me back through the portal, we’ll swim to shore. Then you’re driving me to Wayne’s new trailer. You’re going to take a bath. Then I’m going to stay with you until Wayne gets back from his shift so you can’t run away before he sees you’re alive. Then I’ll call Robin to take me to the hospital.”

“You know, that all sounds like a really good plan except for one thing,” Eddie starts. Steve’s eyebrows start to knit together into a familiar, angry frown. “No! Please! Let me say my piece!”

“Alright. Fuck you. State your nonsense.”

“Look. You don’t have to believe me, but I got placed here by some...weird celestial...centipede god thing? To guard the portal?”

“Ok? So?”

“You’re taking this really casually,” Eddie observes.

“Eddie,” Steve sighs. “I fought a freak serial killer from another dimension who was also mind dueling with a girl with superpowers. So sue me if I’m not too impressed by this...whatever centipede thing that you apparently listen to now. Since when do you follow directions anyway?”

“It’s not...that,” he replies, hiding behind his hair.

If only Steve knew how tempting this plan was, how desperately Eddie wanted to go back to the trailer, take a long warm shower, and pretend that the last...however long...had never happened.

“I don’t care what the fucking centipede thinks. But there’s floods of monsters trying to get into Hawkins. If I stop guarding the portal, they’ll all get through.”

“That’s not—”

“Steve. That is my problem. You live there. Dustin lives there. Everyone I care about!” Eddie grips Steve by the forearms, forcing eye contact. “I promise. Promise that I’ll go back with you after we defeat Vecna and close the portals. But for now, this is where I belong. Ok?”

Steve looks at him with narrowed, angry eyes.

“I promise,” Eddie repeats himself. “You can bring the whole party down here if I’m still being stubborn after Vecna Fight Two, Electric Boogaloo, is over. But for now, let me see this through.”

“Alright, but I’m bringing Wayne down to talk to you. He’s got to know you’re alive.” Steve pauses then adds, “just stupid.”

“That’s a deal Harrington,” Eddie agrees. “Now can I please get you out of here so you can get someone to look at your ankle?”

Steve huffs and shrugs resentfully, but doesn’t fight when Eddie picks him back up. He nuzzles into Eddie’s gore-speckled chest. Eddie walks slowly. He can feel every time Steve winces from pain, every time he bites his lips.

“Your heart is going like, crazy man,” Steve says with forced mirth.

“Oh, is it?” Eddie deflects.

Stupid sexy Harrington and his stupid hot bravery. Eddie begs his heart to stop thumping. Of course, that just makes it drum louder.

“Maybe it’s the new monster metabolism?”

“Oh...I guess that makes sense,” Steve says, his voice a little smaller.

They say very little after that. Eddie occasionally checks to make sure Steve is awake and aware. He’s not sure if staying conscious matters for broken ankles, but he’s not going to take the chance. Soon, they’re at the portal. Eddie steps out of it into the right-side up for the first time since his death. His feet touch water.

If the Upside Down was a seedy night at the Hideout, the lake is a Metallica concert. Eddie feels everything in the lake. Fish chase each other. A round, fuzzy thing moves a stick around. Something flails in its last death throe. High whistles call out to each other. Leaves fall on the surface of the lake.

Eddie clutches Steve tighter, whining, worried he might drop him otherwise.

“You ok?” Steve whispers. His hand hovers over Eddie’s face.

“Yeah just...peachy,” Eddie says, trying to sound like he’s not buzzing out of his skin.

He can do this. He’s done this before, got bombarded by a torrent of new senses right after a cataclysmic event. He breathes in and out, centering himself around Steve’s heartbeat. Eventually, it all becomes more manageable. Eddie closes his eyes, inhales deep, and finally heads home.

He wishes it were him sometimes, about twenty hours a day. When he wakes up in a bedroom. When he gets into a shower free of long, curly hair. When he pulls his coat out of a closet that has just his sensible flannels.

A small part of him chafes at the band of misfits that adopted him in Eddie’s stead, tying him down to this dying town and his lonely trailer. Hopper keeps dragging him to games or weekend fishing trips. Joyce keeps him well stocked. Bob keeps messing with his TV so he can get cable he didn’t pay for. Steve comes over with some sort of dinner nearly every day. It irks him. He’s grateful. He needs them so bad it makes him mean, irresponsible. Makes him bite his tongue when he really should make at least Steve sleep more, eat more, get the hell out of this town and never look back.

Wayne gets home, shoulders stooped, around three am. He really should see if he can get day shifts now that he doesn’t have to be home during school hours. But he’s not sure he can stomach that call to his bosses up in Indy when all he can manage right now is keeping the trappings of his routine going. 

Wake up. Coffee. Food. Plant. Work. Clean. Sleep. Any disruption could bring it all crumbling down. 

He can’t do that to his people.

He hears the phone ringing as soon as he steps out of his truck. It rings and rings then stops. Then it starts ringing again. Whoever that is is determined. Wayne takes a deep breath and steels himself. It’s a bit late for the usual prank calls or angry people telling him he’s got a shit nephew. But it’s not like the town folks have much better to do nowadays. A smarter man would have changed his number. Better yet, a smarter man would have moved, if only to go live somewhere else in Hawkins. But no one’s ever accused Wayne of having a lot going on up there. And he can’t stop hoping that maybe, just maybe, Eddie’s going to call or show up at the park, even though he knows by now that his boy is well and truly gone.

Wayne picks up the phone.

“Steve is gone!” Robin wails on the other end as soon as he picks up. “Please tell me he’s at your place.”

Wayne’s mouth goes dry. He shouldn’t have let the kid leave the other day like that. He should have made him stay. Made him talk. Listened. “Maybe he’s doing his rounds again?” Wayne asks, pleads.

“He would have taken his radio,” Robin sobs.

Wayne takes his panic and puts it aside. He has to stay calm for Robin. “You’re at Steve’s place right?” Wayne confirms as he grabs his things.

Robin’s waiting outside the Harrington manor in her pajamas. She has binoculars on her neck and a big bag full of things that clink, like it’s full of glass bottles. They drive around town, only speaking a few words at a time to suggest new places to look. They’re going to run out of time.

“Did he say anything before he left?” Wayne asks.

“Just the usual,” Robin says miserably. “How about to you?”

Wayne winces. “We kind of had a fight. About Eddie’s body.”

“Eddie’s body?”

“Yeah, I was telling him that it was good he got the live ones out…” Wayne stops and looks at Robin. She looks back at him.

“He wouldn’t—” Wayne starts.

“He would—” Robin confirms. She starts babbling a mile a minute about the last, decently big, accessible portal left in Hawkins—the one under Lover’s Lake. It’d normally be a fifteen minute drive.

They make it in seven.

The sky is bright and full of stars when they get to the lake. Robin looks through her binoculars and screams so loud it makes the nearby birds flee in terror. She keeps a death grip on those things, so Wayne squints and looks out the best he can.

Steve is on a boat. Someone else is rowing. Wayne steps into the water. Doesn’t even care about the water rushing into his shoes. He’d recognize that hair and back anywhere. It’s Eddie, rowing, like he’s on a date, like he’s got all the time in the world. It’s Eddie, looking up at the sky like it’s the most wonderful, mysterious thing he’s ever seen. It’s Eddie who looks back at them when Steve points to the shore where Robin is jumping and screaming, and flailing with just one arm while she uses the other to jam the binoculars in her face.

Wayne wants to scream. Laugh. Yell. Cry. But he can’t force any air through the giant lump in his throat. He wants to rush out across the water and grab his nephew. But his legs are locked in place. All he can do is stare, feeling as if his boy is going to disappear the moment he takes his eyes off him. Eddie’s rowing faster now, faster than Wayne thought any person could row. It’s still not fast enough. He silently curses at his legs to move.

Robin doesn’t wait. She splashes into the cold lake towards the two boys, still screaming a stream of words that Wayne can’t make out. He watches them pull her into the boat. Watches Eddie pick the oars back up and row even faster. Wayne watches Eddie get closer and closer. Watches him put on that sheepish grin and mouth something that might be a sorry, or I missed you, or hey I’m alive, or whatever other thing that doesn’t matter right now.

Wayne’s legs finally unlock, and he runs across the water into the little boat. Eddie pulls him in for a tight hug. They nearly flip the whole thing over. And for the first time since he was a little boy, Wayne lets his tears flow.

Chapter Text

Wayne watches Steve and Robin cajole, beg, scream at Eddie to please, please go back with them. But Eddie refuses to leave the water and yells right back about how Steve promised to let him stay to keep Hawkins safe. 

Steve and Robin occasionally look over to Wayne, pleading, as if three people yelling at Eddie would get him to change his mind. But Wayne knows his kid. Once he has his mind set on something, no force on Earth is going to move him. God knows Al Munson had tried, and thankfully failed.

And it is quite entertaining to see Eddie face the kind of bull-headedness he chucks at others. 

Wayne lets them have at it for maybe a tad too long. Then he sees Eddie’s face start to twist a little mean, the way it does before he runs away somewhere unreachable and he decides enough is enough. Besides, Steve is going to need his ankle looked at. They’re visibly throbbing and three times as thick as they should be.

“Enough,” Wayne says softly when the three finally pause. Steve, Robin, and Eddie all shut up to turn and glare at him. Wayne chuckles, which only makes them madder. Children. All of them.

“Steve, Robin…Eddie’s got a point. Someone needs to guard the portal.”

Steve and Robin protest, askance, that Wayne is willing to sacrifice his nephew. How could he? There’s soldiers who should actually guard that gate. The government caused this problem. What does Eddie or Wayne owe Hawkins?! Thankfully, they trail off when Wayne puts up a hand and clears his throat.

“Someone’s got to guard the portal,” Wayne repeats, ignoring Eddie’s smug nod in agreement. “And we can’t summon more government types here. If Eddie’s seen, he’ll get whisked away to some lab. Him and El.”

Steve rolls his eyes because he’s already promised multiple times that he’ll hide Eddie in his basement and make sure no one would see him. Besides, what if the government types find him in the Upside Down? Then Eddie would get whisked away with no one to help or to even know. Honestly, Wayne agrees with Steve. But right now, he needs to focus on meeting Eddie halfway so he doesn’t run off to where he can’t be found.

“So no, Eddie’s got a point. But Eddie,” Wayne turns to his nephew, who’s still so young. “You’ve got to let us know that you’re ok. Almost killed me to lose you son. I’d rather not go through that again.”

Eddie nods, holding some hair in front of his face. Wayne’s heart aches.

“So you can go back to guarding the portal. But two conditions.”

“Yeah Wayne, anything,” Eddie says.

“First, we’re going to do a status check. Every day. Seven pm sharp. You’re going to come out and have dinner with me and whoever decides to join. You can leave in the middle if you’re not feeling up for it, but you’re going to show your face. Are we clear?”

Eddie nods.

“Second, you’re getting your GED. So get studying.”

“Aww Wayne! I’m busy!”

“Boy, don’t act like I’ve never been in battle before. I know there’s stretches of downtime. You’re getting that GED.”

“I couldn’t even pass high school. How am I going to pass by myself?”

“You’re going to pass because Robin and Steve are going to help you,” Wayne replies smoothly. He’s actually not sure how good these two kids are academically, but Steve definitely graduated, and he’s always had a good smart head on his shoulders. 

At least he knows Steve can definitely handle math, judging by how readily he rattles off baseball stats. And there’s always the gaggle of ‘sheepies’ Eddie talked about occasionally, the ones that are apparently good at science. 

Besides, it’s less about the GED than it is about keeping Eddie tethered to this world, to give him a future to plan for and think about.

“Yeah Eddie, Robin’s a genius. She’ll get you your GED,” Steve jumps in.

“Steve is right. I am so smart. And besides, all the teachers were horrible to you. No wonder you didn’t want to come to class. You’ve got this.”

Eddie throws up his hands in defeat. “Alright! Alright! Whatever gets you three off my back. Jesus! I’ll show my face every day at seven pm sharp, and I’ll get my fucking GED. You happy?!”

Steve grins wide. He takes off his watch and throws it at Eddie. “That watch is waterproof. So you have no excuse for being late or not showing.”

“Giving me the ol’ ball and chains already, huh big boy?”

“Keep that up and I’m going down there with real balls and chains Munson.”

Uncle Wayne was right. 

Honestly, it’s kind of annoying how right he always is.

Eddie went from fighting off at least five waves of monsters per day to maybe one wave every other day. It gives him a lot of time to think. About what he’s going to do after this. About his band mates and whether they’d believed all the murder accusations.

About… Steve Harrington.

Eddie looks guiltily at the rock carving of Steve that he’d been making instead of reviewing the symbolism in the Great Gatsby like he’s supposed to. But in his defense, it still doesn’t look right. 

Steve’s nose is about that sharp, but there’s a softness around the bridge. His eyes aren’t that down turned and his brows are straighter. His smile isn’t that fucking symmetrical.

Eddie should know. He spends a criminal amount of time analyzing every angle of the way that boy’s lips move. He’s pretty sure he can tell the difference between a ‘pining-after-Nancy’ smile and ‘actually-thinks-what-Eddie-said-is-funny’ smile now. If his uncle hadn’t forced him to also think about how important it is that Gatsby saw a green light, he’d have exploded from all his Steve thoughts already.

So anyway, The Great Gatsby. Rich fucks. Right. 

Eddie tears himself away from the rock carving and listlessly thumbs through the pages. He should be good at English. And he is! When they’re reading something that he likes, and doesn’t force him to give a shit about what happens to someone like Gatsby. They should get dropped in the Upside Down is what Eddie thinks. Give them some perspective.

Eddie feels a Demogorgon approach from a distance. Singular. He perks up. Stands tall. Makes himself as big as possible and glowers. It’s still so far away he can barely see it. The thing looks… wrong. Well, wrong-er. One arm is kind of hanging limp. He’s pretty sure it’s dragging its feet. A lot of the creatures he’s been fighting have been showing up like that, like they already went through a hell of a fight before getting to Eddie. He hadn’t had the time before to really think about it. But now he has time to think about it. And it’s… kind of alarming.

What the fuck besides him is ripping apart multiple Demogorgons? And if they’re a hive mind, shouldn’t the whole bestiary know that Eddie’s here by now? Not that he wants to die, but he’s not sure why the whole cavalry hasn’t descended to finish him off.

The Demogorgon stutters. Eddie glares harder, as if that would do anything against these mindless fucks. He steels himself for the coming fight. Those things are fast. But then the Demogorgon just… turns and walks away, out of sight, then out of Eddie’s sonar detection range. For a brief second, he remembers what Dustin said about that Demodog he tried to raise, about how it broke the hivemind. 

How it remembered and helped him. 

Eddie’s pretty sure that’s just Dustin trying to justify the stupendously stupid shit he’d tried to pull back in the days. But maybe he wasn’t wrong?

Maybe these things… think?

He looks down at his watch and cusses. It’s already ten past seven. Steve is going to have a conniption.

“You’re late,” Steve growls when Eddie climbs ashore. Just Steve and Wayne today. Wayne stands there, at attention. There’s a faint circle in the grass where he’d been pacing and Eddie feels a strong pang. 

“Yeah, sorry, lost track of time. You know how it is.” Eddie says, avoiding their eyes. “Your study guides are so mesmerizing. Can you really blame me for getting lost in it?”

“Yes, I can blame you Eddie. Do you have any idea how worried I—Wayne was?!” Steve sputters. He crouches down and grabs at Eddie’s hands, not even minding the claws, so he can pull Eddie out of the water faster.

“Jesus Harrington, if you’re that eager to see me, summon me yourself,” Eddie says, his guilt turning to annoyance like usual.

“What do you mean summon you?! I’m stuck up here!” Steve yells. Wayne clears his throat and shakes his head. But there’s little that can stop Steve when he gets in that sort of mood.

Except…

Eddie surges right up to Steve, into his space, gets their faces close enough to see all the hairs in that start of a cute little mustache above Steve’s plush lips. “Oh you have no idea what power you yield Big Boy,” Eddie says. Steve goes quiet. His mouth hangs open. Eddie pushes a little closer. 

“We’re connected by those bat bites. Remember? Just call out for me. The words are--“Eddie the banished, prithee. Bless these plebians with your presence once more.”

Steve scoffs. “Really? I say the magic words and you’ll come running into my—err… you’ll come running?”

“Yeah Stevie boy, wiggle those pretty toes of yours a little to give me a little vibration to work with and I’ll be there in a jiffy,” Eddie says with a wink.

He’s not sure what game they’re playing anymore. But Steve seems less mad now and he’s going to keep going while he’s ahead.

Wayne clears his throat and they both startle. Eddie scrambles off of Steve so fast he falls back in the lake, ass first. Wayne chuckles at Eddie’s flushed face.

“I’ve got a shift at the hospital today, so I’m going to need to head off,” Wayne says. “But you boys make sure you eat something you hear?”

“Oh shit, Wayne, what about you? Did you eat before—”

Wayne raises a hand to cut Eddie off. “I’ll be fine. I ate before,” he lies. “You boys be safe now.” He says with an understanding smile. Eddie watches him get smaller in the distance and resolves to be on time. Well, to try harder to be on time. Stupid demo creatures and their tendency to be unexpectedly fascinating. Really.

The days pass with the same routine. Study for the GED. Rip up monsters. Make notes of monster activities. Show them to Nancy when she drops by and watch her frown and go over them with a red marker to show where she wants more details. Head to the shores at 6:50pm sharp. Wait in the water a little bit and wait for Steve to actually wiggle his cute little toes in the water and say the magic words Eddie taught him. It’s nothing. Just a silly little joke.

But seeing Steve go out of his way to obey makes his mind go places where it has no business going to.

Wayne usually has to leave within an hour to get to his job at the plant, sometimes earlier to get to his second job at the hospital. The others try to come as often as possible, but there’s a lot going on—school, monster patrol, rebuilding. But Steve, Steve is always the last to leave. Eddie loves everyone in this beaten up group of assholes. But, he does look forward to when he and Steve are left alone. They talk about family, the future, about Eddie’s music, stories, even Steve’s ball games.

Turns out there’s a lot of epic drama going on in the world of balls in laundry baskets.

Sometimes, they just lay back and stare at the sky, hands nearly touching. These nights are Eddie’s favorite. They’re also the bane of his existence because his stupid pinkie won’t stop crawling towards Steve’s massive, veined, beautiful hands. He almost caved once. Just watched his clawed fingers slowly crab-crawl towards Steve’s soft human knuckles, steeled himself to ruin this easy friendship. Fortunately, a Demodog chose exactly that moment to make its way through the portal into the lake, interrupting the moment of weakness. Eddie gave that thing a swift and painless death in thanks.

Tonight is that quiet sort of night. 

Steve spent an hour grilling Robin and Eddie on statistics, mostly for Robin’s benefit since she has a quiz. Robin kind of tottered away after the ordeal, muttering about how she’ll never need probability in the real world. Steve is laying on the ground, taking deep drags of Argyle’s weed. Eddie hates to admit it, but Argyle has a better stash than he ever did. Maybe he should visit California when this is all over. Eddie is in his usual position–sitting on the picnic blanket with his feet submerged in the lake so he can sense immediately if anything gets out through the portal.

“Hey,” Steve says when his blunt is nearly down to the tip. “Can I show you something?”

“Sure.”

“So the thing is. It might be really fucking stupid. And err… if you think it’s stupid, can you… can you promise we’ll forget I ever showed you the thing?”

“It’s not a baby Demodog is it?” Eddie asks, nose wrinkled. He’s never going to stop giving Dustin shit about that.

“No! Not that stupid! Just… stupid,” Steve trails off.

“Nothing you ever show me is going to be stupid Harrington,” Eddie says, twisting to look at Steve. He’s blushing, eyes firmly on the ground.

“Wait here,” Steve finally says. He rushes off towards his car.

Oh. Eddie knows what’s going on.

He and the little Hellions had been needling, poking, begging Steve to please try DnD with them. At this point, Steve was the only none-oldster in this ragtag group that hadn’t played yet. Eddie was willing to talk about (or at least listen to Steve and Wayne rant about) how they obviously never should have traded English for McGinnis. Why couldn’t Steve spare them just a few dozen hours of his time to play a game with them?

Eddie would be nice! He’d make a super easy, beginner-friendly campaign! But Steve had  laughed off their pleas and refused every single time.

But he must have rolled a character in private, maybe even painted a mini. Eddie feels a little irritated that Steve would think he’d ever make fun of Steve for whatever he decided to roll. Even if Steve rolled the most basic human fighter ever, Eddie is going to make it incredible for Steve. He’s going to hook Harrington and reel him in, show him such a good time he’ll have to keep coming back…

Eddie’s so deep in thought about how he’s going to work with Steve’s character that it takes him a moment to hear Steve clear his throat above him.

“Eddie?” Steve asks, voice a little shaky. Eddie looks up.

Fuck.

Steve is wearing his Scoops Ahoy uniform. He’s got little calf length socks on. He’s wearing the shorts. His hair is styled all soft and fluffy. He’s wearing lip gloss.

Steve squirms, rolls on the ball of his feet and nervously taps his foot. Eddie drinks him in, mouth wide open. He’s pretty sure he’s drooling.

Jesus H Christ.

“You… you like it?” Steve asks shyly, “I remember you mentioning it. So…”

Does he like it? Does he like it??

“I…”

“Sorry, never mind. Forget I ever—” the absolute dream that is Steve Harrington slowly backs away.

“No! Please! Come back!” Eddie shouts, jabbing out his hand and almost stabbing Steve’s ankle.

Steve blushes and steps closer. Eddie pats the spot on the picnic blanket next to him. Steve sits. No, he kneels. Eddie hovers a hand over Steve’s knee, wondering if this is ok. What if this is just what bros do? What if Steve wanted to ask if he looked good for a date?

But Steve is looking at him with open adoration. Fuck it. If Steve is going to be brave, the least Eddie can do is to meet him at least a quarter of the way. Eddie clenches his jaw and firmly places a hand on Steve’s knee. He can feel it trembling.

“Is this for me?” Eddie asks, trying to be smooth. He works away the nerves by tracing little shapes along Steve’s thigh with his claws.

What he wouldn’t do to cut some choice holes into this sailor uniform.

Steve looks at him, wide-eyed. Moonlight shines off his glossy lips. He closes his eyes and leans forward.

Eddie leans in as well.

Maybe Steve didn’t expect Eddie to close his eyes that soon. Maybe, when two people lean in for a kiss, one of them is supposed to keep their eyes open so they can actually aim. Unfortunately, the only thing Eddie’s ever kissed was a particularly luscious looking tree knot. They both yelp and then giggle when they kind of… bash their cheeks together.

“Sorry,” Steve mutters. He pulls back to grab Eddie’s face, gently, lovingly. Steve leans in again, eyes closed, holding Eddie in place. Eddie closes his eyes and lets Steve’s lips find his.

It’s chaste. Steve pulls away too soon. Eddie strains against Steve’s grip on his face to get back at those lips, dignity be damned. Steve laughs and leans back in. This time, he leaves his mouth open. His tongue travels over Eddie’s bottom lip then teeth. Eddie pauses, not sure what to do. He tries opening his mouth a little and Steve’s tongue pushes into his, finds the roof of his mouth. Is kissing supposed to be this wet? Regardless, it’s nice. Hot. Steve’s hands roam and Eddie awkwardly attempts to match his pace.

Eddie squeaks when Steve suddenly grabs him by the ass to pull him on his laps. He can’t let his feet leave the water. What if the monsters get out and he didn’t know? Eddie scrambles to balance himself, to push his feet back into the lake without accidentally slashing Steve open. But Steve pulls him closer, does a thing with his tongue. He holds Eddie down with strength that reminds Eddie of the night when Steve tore a Demobat in half with his teeth. 

Just for tonight, Eddie will let Steve have him. He throws his arms around Steve’s neck, holding his claws out carefully, lets Steve fully pull him out and arrange his legs around Steve’s waist. Steve’s hand lazily wanders over Eddie’s ass, back, and side. 

Just for tonight, they pretend they’re all that matters in the world.

Chapter Text

There’s vague flashes of pack. Of scents of the vines, of other packs. Of chewing and running and letting the ground pull me into its loving embrace.

Me? What was a me?

Memories of me, of I, not just we. 

We are restless now. We are becoming one, totally one, one mind, united. We tells me that it’s time for me to go. We don’t know why me was here in the first place. Unnecessary.

I do not want to die. 

We say that’s impossible. There is no I. There is no death. But I do not want to die.

So I… I move my feet. It moves so strangely, so slow, without we to move it correctly. There are claws at my back, nails on my throat to pull me back into we.

But I do not want to die.

Skin shreds. Muscles rip. Pain. We promise no more pain. If I just step back into the fold.

But I… 

Once there was an I. And I ran from other packs and I hunted the bats and I huddled with my pack and I pretended not to sense when a little one hid their treats in a small hole.

And now I walk away from comfort, from clarity, from we.

“Steve...fuck…” Eddie struggles violently against his restraints. 

Steve laughs, the evil bastard. His right hand starts moving faster over Eddie’s cock. His long fingers hold his inner thighs hard enough to bruise. Eddie keens and writhes and pants as he feels his release coming. Then Steve… stops.

“Ok, so what’s so special about viruses?”

“Viruses… are…need…” Eddie pants. Why did he agree to this game? “Need hosts.” He finally finishes, feeling very proud of himself.

“Good,” Steve says with a grin, “I think that deserves my mouth.”

“Please,” Eddie begs. He moans when Steve wraps that perfect plush lip around his tip and sucks. His entire body tenses up. Then Steve pulls off. Eddie snarls, “Fuck you and biology and the fucking big bang.”

“Aww babe, we still have twenty more of these flashcards to go,” Steve says with a smirk. “You giving up already? What happened to making studying more fun?”

“This isn’t fun! This is torture!” Eddie squawks.

Steve’s smile freezes a little. He leans over into Eddie, touching foreheads. “Really? Do you want to stop?” He asks.

“No, just playing,” Eddie insists, shaking his head so hard his hair whips around the back of Steve’s head. “Now, weren’t you saying I have twenty more flashcards to go before…” Eddie pokes his tongue out as far as it can go to lick Steve’s lips. He barely manages. “the real fun?”

Steve honest to god giggles like the dork he is. He pulls back and puts on a mean smirk again. He pulls out a flashcard.

“…sorry to interrupt, but tying Eddie up is the worst thing you could do right now,” Nancy suddenly says from behind him. Eddie screams and nearly topples off his chair. Steve bolts upright and scrambles to get in front of Eddie to cover his shame or something. 

“I’m keeping my eyes closed,” Nancy continues. “But seriously, I could have been a Demogorgon or something. What happened to guarding and being careful? What are you even doing here Steve?”

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?!” Steve stammers as he scrambles to untie Eddie. It feels like it takes forever, and Eddie seriously considers just cutting himself out, but Steve manages in the end. He even pulls Eddie’s pants up for him because Steve is a sweetheart even in a crisis.

“All good Wheeler,” Eddie says, trying to position his hands so he can hide the tenting of his sweatpants. So maybe he’s not all good, but the sooner Nancy can say her piece, the sooner Steve and Eddie can get back to… biology.  

“It doesn’t look like you were doing much guarding anyway right? Come out with me. We’re driving to Forest Hills.”

“...why?” Eddie asks.

“I’ve been keeping a record of monster sightings and activities all around Hawkins,” Nancy says with a deep sigh. She takes out a battered notebook from its waterproofed case and flips to some page. “And the sound of monsters under the dome they put around your trailer portal is getting louder. It was holding steady at… 40 decibels until recently when it’s been spiking to 60 and 70 decibels.” Nancy looks at Eddie and Steve. “So pull yourselves together. I need Eddie to feel what’s going on in there.”

Eddie considers asking to table this for tomorrow. But Nancy’s looking at him with a manic glint in her eyes and a gun in her hand. Eddie glances mournfully at the biology flashcards on the ground and shrugs. “Sure Wheeler, I guess I can be distracted from my post just for tonight.”

“Good. I think we should consider pulling you out permanently actually. You’ve been recording just one wave every three days or so.” She purses her lips primly. “We could use you a lot more up there cleaning up the town, than down here doing…”

“He’s got to get his GED Nancy,” Steve cuts in angrily. “You don’t get to tell him to spend all his fucking time—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Eddie puts a hand on Steve’s chest and holds a hand out to Nancy who’s puffing up her own chest. “I’m coming alright? Let’s go check out the trailers.”

They journey up in silence. It’s dark outside. Eddie notices Steve wince when Nancy motions for them to get in the station wagon. He mouths a small thank you when Eddie takes shotgun. Eddie watches Steve settle into the backseat through the mirror.

The car’s clock says 2:00 am. “Nancy… why are you up now?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says. Her knuckles are white around the wheel. 

This is the first chance in a while Eddie’s actually seen her. Usually, she drops by occasionally to read his notes on monster waves and to tell him to take better notes before going off to who knows where. Eddie always thought she was busy with college, but he’s pretty sure Nancy wasn’t going to college in Hawkins. There’s heavy bags under her eyes. Her skin looks papery thin, and there’s wrinkles between her brows and around the edge of her mouth. If Eddie didn’t know that Nancy was younger than Steve, he would have thought she was his aunt.

“Is that… normal Wheeler? What’s been going on with you?” Eddie asks gently.

“Preparing,” Nancy replies, eyes firmly on the road.

“For what? And without sleeping?”

“The final fight? Vecna?” She replies hysterically. “Am I crazy or am I the only one taking this seriously?!”

Steve shifts uncomfortably in the backseat. Nancy continues.

“You died Eddie. Max died, no matter how Lucas pretends otherwise. There are monsters climbing out of the portals and raiding the dumpsters we can’t empty because trash collection stopped months ago. There’s non-stop screeching coming out of that dome they put over your old trailer in Forest Hills. Maybe, Eddie,” the car swerves when Nancy whips around to glare at him. Her eyes are shiny. The fact that Nancy Wheeler is capable of tears makes Eddie intensely uncomfortable. “Maybe if I was good enough, fast enough, knew enough the first time, none of this would have happened.” She takes a deep breath and faces forward on the road again, adjusting her hand back to the textbook ten-two position. “And this time I will be.”

Eddie awkwardly raises a hand to Nancy’s shoulder.

“May I offer you a small ‘there there’ in this trying time?” Eddie asks.

Nancy snorts. “No, I’m not… that was stupid. I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me. I’m just asking you and Steve to take this more seriously.”

“Or maybe you’re taking this a little too seriously? You’re the only one who hasn’t come to sit, have dinner with the rest of us. I thought you’d want to take some time, at least once, you know, if only to gawk me. I’m basically Frankenstein.”

“He was the doctor.”

“What?”

“Frankenstein was the…” Nancy groans. Eddie smirks. “Sorry. It’s stupid. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’d just bring down the mood.”

“You haven’t even given us a chance. I know at least Jonathan would be happy to see you actually sit down and eat something,” Eddie says, remembering a short conversation he’d had with a very worried Jonathan.

“I need to know, before the final fight, that I’ve done everything I can.” Nancy says.

“Wheeler, no one wants you to invest literally all of your time and energy—”

“Pot, kettle much?” Nancy says, turning around again to glare. “What, you can stay stuck down there for possibly forever, but I’m not allowed to do some light prep? Because I’m a girl?”

“No! What the fuck?!” Eddie sputters, “Nance, first of all, you just caught me doing other stuff down there. Let’s never mention that again by the way. And I have zero doubt that you can kick anyone’s ass any day. You could kick your own ass! I’m just… I want you to know that it feels like you are kicking your own ass. This isn’t all on you.”

“If not me—”

“Then who?” Eddie finishes. Something in the back of his mind whispers ‘hypocrite’.

“Yeah,” Nancy says.

“Me, for one,” Eddie says. Nancy makes a skeptical grunt. “Ok, you might have caught me at a bad moment, but that’s definitely not how I spend the majority of my time. And even if I seem kind of flighty, we have Hops, and El, and Joyce, and Bob and Robin and—”

“Alright, I get the picture,” Nancy says, lightly punching him on the upper shoulder. Something tells Eddie that the conversation is over.

The routine is both grounding and suffocating.

Wake up. Pretend everything is fine. Go to school. Ignore the angry glares at him, and what’s left of the hellfire crew after more than half the school moved away.

Bike to Steve’s. Train jumps and accuracy. Lie about still being in the basketball team as if the coach hadn’t moved to Indy. Pretend he’s trying out for track to practice running. Get Steve to show him how to swing a baseball bat. Hard. Train until his brain shuts up for five blessed seconds.

Visit Max. Do his homework so his parents let him keep visiting Max. Sit there until the nurse kicks him out. Do his homework so he doesn’t have to watch Max lay still. Do his readings out loud so he can pretend she’s suffering through Catcher in the Rye with him. Rifle through his bio flashcards while the nurses move her around, touch her, poke her with needles like she’s a toy.

Go to dinners with Eddie sometimes so Steve doesn’t worry. Swallow down the shameful sting of jealousy when he sees Steve put his head in Eddie’s laps.

When visiting hours are over, Lucas bikes over to El’s. He used to go every day and stay. But he had a huge fight with Mike about pressuring El. So now he just drops by with some homework for her to copy. Well, some homework for Mike to copy for El. It’s not like El cares about school anymore. It’s not like anyone cares. Most teachers don’t even bother to assign homework. Classes feel like a half-hearted reenactment of what classes are supposed to be. But Lucas needs an excuse to stop by. Needs to see El trying to find Max. He knows it’s evil, what he’s doing.

Mike greets him with a frown. Lucas’s face strains as he forces a smile. Things got even more tense since their last big fight, and they were already having problems when they started high school. Lucas wonders what would happen if he ever sat Mike and Dustin down to really explain. He needed a safe cover from bullies because if he ever threw a punch, he’d get kicked out at best. But there’s still the guilt that he left his friends behind, worse because he liked basketball. And he was good at it. Now there’s no more games, no more hellfire, just a decimated student body trying to ignore all the empty seats. All he has is Mike, Will, and Dustin, and they don’t seem to feel the same.

Mike leads him past El, who’s floating in her tub. El looks even paler and thinner than Lucas remembers. Bob set up sensors to display the water temperature, her vitals, salinity levels, and her heart rate. The boys tiptoe. El is wearing giant headphones Bob waterproofed, but they can’t be too careful.

Mike copies Lucas’s work in silence while Lucas takes over monitoring the machines around El. Mike keeps glancing at the monitors, especially the one with El’s heart rate, even though Lucas is keeping watch. Lucas puts out a hand to signal that he’s got this. They shouldn’t have to watch those things like a hawk anyway. Bob put speakers on it for a reason.

El’s heart rate spikes. The sensors beep.

Mike and Lucas scramble to El’s side, anxiously watching her face as her eyes move wildly. Mike’s hand hovers over the headphones, shaking, as he tries to decide whether he should pull her out. The last time he pulled her out prematurely, El literally threw him out of Hop’s cabin and refused to let him near her for a few days.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take El long to wake herself up. She surfaces with a gasp, reaching out for support. Lucas and Mike help her up, bracing from either side. She plucks the headphones off her buzzed head. Mike sprints to the bathroom and comes back with a bath towel and dry clothes. He sponges her off. She leans into it, exhausted. She takes off her wet clothes and changes to the dry ones, ignoring Lucas and Mike.

“I found them,” she finally says.

“Where?” Lucas asks. He steps back and murmurs an apology when El winces at the sudden noise. Mike glares. But she recovers quickly. Mike leads her to the couch and sits her down, arranging a quilt around her.

“They’re together,” El says. She frowns, and collects her thoughts. “Him. Max. A girl. Two boys. Tangled together. And Henry is splitting his mind. He’s in pieces. Hard to find.”

“What do you mean, splitting his mind?” Lucas asks.

El covers her face and whines.

“Would drawing it out be easier?” Mike asks.

She nods.

Mike gets up and grabs a set of sketchbook and some crayons. El sketches out a crude circle with four other circles kind of grafted to it.

“That’s Henry. That’s Max. A girl. Two boys,” El says, pointing. “Henry is keeping them trapped.” El draws a line through the big circle, splitting it in two. “And he’s… turning into more of him. Smaller. More.” She draws another line through the circle, splitting it in four. “And more… and more…” Dozens of jagged lines slash through the circle.

“He’s distributing himself,” Mike muses.

“Like a mesh network,” Lucas says. “But using what?”

“What do you mean?” Mike asks.

“Mesh networks need hardware. He’s distributing himself, but into what bodies? If he’s flaying people here again, we should have seen signs. Magnets demagnetizing. Lights going nuts. Radios randomly playing. Joyce and Bob covered the town three times over with all their sensors. So if not the town, what bodies is he using?” Lucas thinks out loud.

“Shit,” Mike says, as their eyes meet.

“Yeah, the monsters.” Lucas nods.

“Code red?” El asks.

“Code red,” Lucas confirms.

Eddie hears the screaming before he sees the dome, smells the fear and stink of rotting meat. Fortunately, Forest Hills is empty. The trailers lay vacant. Some are half-buried in sinkholes; they fan out from the dome covering the space where the Munsons' trailer used to be.Eddie wonders if the tree in the backyard is still there. He used to lean against it when Wayne made him go outside. Something infuriatingly correct about fresh air being good for him.

“Where is everyone?” Eddie asks uncertainly.

“The suits bought everyone out,” Steve says, wincing whenever the screaming peaks.

“But not enough to afford to actually move out of town,” Nancy scoffs. “Hawkins real estate cratered, and people ended up spending that money to buy houses around Hawkins in the less affected area. I think Susan bought my old house,” she muses. “At least I’ve seen her come from that direction when she comes to visit Max.”

“Your parents moved?” Eddie asks. Why hadn’t he asked about the rest of the town? What was he doing faffing around in fake hell when the monsters stopped coming?

“Yeah,” Nancy shrugs. “They think I’m at Emerson. Anyway,” she points to the dome. “Can you see into the dome or not?”

“That’s not how it works,” Eddie protests, even though he doesn’t fully understand what she’s really getting at. “Best I can do is sense things moving and guess at how many are under the dome and what they might be doing.”

“That’s good enough,” Nancy says, “I just need to know if I need to figure out a way to… I don’t know, set off a fire bomb in the Upside Down.”

Eddie nods and gets out of the car. And the world explodes.

Raccoons scamper in and out of the abandoned trailers. Roots clutch the abandoned asphalt, slowly moving it out of its way so it can get over to that nice patch of dirt right...there. Worms chew on abandoned food scraps. A mouse scampers from one debris pile to a leaf pile to another pile of…stuff. Three cats huddle into each other. A fledgling falls to the ground with a squeak and a thump. Roaches crawl in and out of an abandoned kitchen. A vine strangles a branch as it climbs for sunlight.

And the dome.

Creatures upon creatures upon creatures. Packed in like sardines, except at least sardines have room to stretch out. A Demogorgon dies of suffocation, squished into the top of the dome. More monsters keep climbing out of the portal, trying to get out into Hawkins. But the cement dome holds strong, and they get stuck, unable to get back out into the Upside Down, but unable to break down the dome to get out into the town. They wriggle desperately, clawing through the dead bodies, but unable to slash through. And even if they did slash through, where would the body go? Nowhere. So the newcomers also die, buried alive, using the precious few seconds of oxygen to scream since that’s all they can do. 

A mouse digs a hole into the dome hoping to nibble on the dead meat. It breathes in the Upside Down air and immediately backs out, shivering. A moth crawls across the ground, trying to get away from an army of ants. A Demobat dies with a scream of despair. 

Death. Food. Screams.

Suddenly, Eddie is midair, safely cocooned in Steve’s arms. His scent covers everything else. Eddie whimpers and buries his nose into his shoulder. It’s soft and sturdy and feels like home. Steve croons gently, nonsense words, assurances. Eddie vaguely feels himself moving and presses harder into his chest.

Wait. He’s got arms.

Eddie wiggles his hands out of Steve’s tight grasp and wraps them around his boyfriend’s waist. He hums, pleased, his eyes still clenched. Eventually, he feels the seat of the car on his back. Steve gently eases Eddie’s arms off him.

Nancy hovers, brows pinched. “Is he ok?” she whispers.

“Give him room, Jesus,” Steve barks. Eddie winces at the sudden harsh noise.

“’m alright,” he mutters. “Just more input than I was prepared for.”

“It’s that bad?” Nancy asks, thoroughly freaked out.

“Kind of? We need to get rid of that dome,” Eddie babbles, “There’s hundreds trapped in that dome, and more trying to get out. Nothing deserves that. They’re getting buried alive! Nance. We need to break the dome. Get down there and stop more from trying to climb through. Something!”

“Eds, Eds.” Steve puts a hand on his chest. Eddie realizes that his chest was heaving, pushing Steve’s hands back and forth. “Breathe,” Steve whispers, spreading his fingers apart wide to lay his big hand across Eddie’s entire chest. Eddie breathes in time with Steve. In. Out. In. Out.

“Ok,” Eddie says with a final large exhale. “Ok, sorry.” He takes a deep breath in. “Nancy. There’s hundreds of them trapped in the dome. They can’t back out into the Upside Down, because there’s more creatures trying to get out through the portal. They’re… burying themselves alive. It’s fucking hell in there. You’re hearing screams because that’s the only thing they can do. We need to remove the dome.”

“Why?” Nancy asks with a frown, “sounds like the dome is doing its job then?”

“It’s not…”

“Eddie, those things ate you. I’m sorry, but I don’t particularly care about them getting buried alive.” Steve says, glaring at the dome.

Eddie tugs at his hair and groans. It’s hard to explain. He’s been eating those things. Things eat things. That’s how it works. Sure, it sucks from the dinner’s point of view. Eddie knows first-hand. But that’s just what happens. Getting buried alive for the gall of running from… whatever the creatures had been running from isn’t natural though. No one deserves that, not even the Demobats that ate him alive. What are they running from? What had he been missing? Why was the activity on the ground that much more overwhelming than the lake? Is water just supposed to have less life?

“Nancy, does water have less life than on aboveground?” Eddie asks.

Nancy blinks in confusion at the sudden change in topic. She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never been that interested in… outdoors. Maybe? Why do you ask?”

“Stepping out on the lake for the first time was nowhere as overwhelming,” Eddie explains, “so either water is just supposed to have less life and activity. Or…”

“Or the Upside Down is slowly killing everything in Lover’s Lake,” Nancy finishes for him, eyes wide.

“And that means that unless that dome is airtight, that’s going to happen to the town as well.” Eddie says, nodding.

“Shit, there’s a bunch of small portals and chasms all around the town,” Steve says, frantically pushing his hands through his hair. “And some people have been widening them to throw big trash down there.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, trash collection stopped ages ago, and water’s been spotty. So people dump trash and err… septic down the chasms now,” Nancy says with a grimace. “I said it’s a terrible idea then, and I still think it is, but I can’t stop an entire town of people.”

“We need to find Vecna and close the portals, fast,” Eddie says. He can barely look at Nancy. Shame overwhelms him as he thinks about all the hours he’d wasted on memorizing stupid facts about the Constitutional Convention when he could have been out here, in the town, doing something to help find Vecna and end this once and for all. He’d run away again, without even realizing, all the while insisting that he was holding down the fort. “Summon the party. We need a plan, and fast,” Eddie says.

Chapter Text

Erica surveys the chaos. The world should be grateful she decided to show up for this fiasco instead of volunteering at the food bank so she could note where all the best stuff got stored.

They’re in the gigantic Harrington living room. All the furniture has been pushed out to the edges to make room for a cork board with a map of Hawkins, and three whiteboards. There’s pins all over the map of Hawkins to represent the dozens of monster sightings, squiggly lines to represent the open chasms and portals scattered about town, and a red circle around Lover’s Lake where Eddie had been stationed. At least they know Vecna isn’t physically hiding there. 

One whiteboard lists the names of people outside this group that can be trusted to not kidnap El and Eddie like some bugs and not human fucking beings. There’s one name, Owens, which got crossed out and re-written at least a dozen times before Joyce shut down the debate by writing a giant question mark over it. The other whiteboard has a list of resources and weapons they know work. Molotov cocktail. Gun. Crowbar. Bat. Grenades. 

The lack of imagination in this room. Really. Erica looks around and sees dozens more things they could use. She’s definitely seen people blow up microwave, and the Harringtons have one right there.

But no, everyone’s too busy arguing about who gets to play hero to think about how anyone’s going to play hero.

Nancy is yelling at Mike for lying to their parents about still visiting El in California so he could stay with El in Hawkins, as if she didn’t lie to them about being at college in Boston. Steve is yelling at Lucas about how obviously, he’s going to be a good little boy and stay in the Right side up. Meanwhile Lucas and Mike yell back about how they’ve known about the Upside Down the longest. They’re experts. Obviously they should risk their gangly teenage limbs. 

Meanwhile Eddie is yelling at Wayne about how he’s too old to fight. Why is he still living by himself at Forest Hills, and how he should have made Wayne leave Hawkins ages ago. Eddie gets more fired up the more Wayne refuses to even yell back. Wayne leans against the wall, infuriatingly calm, so he can roll his eyes and repeat ad nauseum that he’s fought scarier monsters before, and that Eddie is not the boss of him. Bob is going around, trying to calm people down. Joyce is yelling at Will and Jonathan. Jonathan is yelling at Will and back to Joyce. Hopper and El glower at each other. 

It’s all just an unproductive wall of noise.

Erica looks over to Dustin, and Robin and makes a series of hand signals that she hopes is understandable as ‘leave these idiots and follow me.’ Fortunately, the scoops troop still has it. Robin and Dustin stand, unnoticed, and follow her into Steve’s nightmare plaid bedroom. 

“So, that’s not going well,” Erica observes primly.

“No,” Dustin says, rolling his eyes. “Did you notice how everyone just ignored me when I said we should use his radio powers against him? There’s obviously some signal he’s been hijacking to create and control the hive mind. All we have to do is figure out what frequency it is and blast into it and we’ll have all the monsters under our control in ten seconds flat! How many times do I have to be right before people trust me?”

“Henderson, the Upside Down is slowly poisoning us allwhile Vecna is turning himself into thousands of mini-Vecnas. That’s going to take too fucking long and we needed to kill him yesterday,” Robin says, correctly. Erica regrets having roped in Dustin.

“Robin’s right. So what’s something we could do with the knowledge and equipment we have now to find and kill Vecna tomorrow?” Erica asks.

“As if you have a better idea,” Dustin grumbles.

“I do, actually. Because I’m actually always right,” Erica informs him. “We know heat and light causes problems for them. There’s a bunch of unused police cars Hopper can give us. We’ll Mad Max them and get them into the Upside Down.”

“Mad Max them?” Dustin asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Erica, how do you even know about Mad Max?” Robin sputters.

“That is so not the point!” Erica says, “we have those big beefy police cars. We have a bunch of people, including you Dustin, who knows how to make pyrotechnics. Vecna nearly died the last time you went at him and that was with firebombs and guns. This time, we’re going to hit him with a Molotov car. I’d like to see him survive that.”

“But how do we find him so we can ram him with a car on fire?” Dustin shoots back.

Erica opens her mouth, then closes it, stumped.

Robin taps her chin repeatedly before speaking. “The last time we went down there… noise attracted them didn’t they Dustin?” She asks, pointing her chin at Dustin.

“I’m not doing a fucking concert for the bats again Robin,” Dustin shrieks. “Eddie died!”

“I’d never ask you or anyone to do that kind of concert again!” Robins squawks, offended. “I was just thinking, honestly, all the time, non-stop, it was kind of a problem, that we were being stupid the first round. The amps and speakers all worked. Why did we ever use you two as distractions? We could have just played pre-recorded music,” Robin says, gesturing wildly with her hands, “and instead, we left you two, the least physically capable assholes by yourselves to call a crowd of bats to you. It was…”

“Not our best moment,” Erica supplies, uncomfortable with how Robin’s eyes are shining. Eddie came back. Now’s not the time for what-ifs.

“Yeah. Not our best moment. But we don’t have to repeat that mistake,” Robin says, “we can get a decoy car to blast music as loud as we can. Maybe lace it with meat. Those demo creatures have been hungry. And we’ll hide and see which direction they’re coming from when they descend on the decoy.”

“Alright, alright, that’s actually not a bad plan,” Dustin muses, “and we can point the fire away from the car so we can blast the flames while keeping the occupants safe.”

“Yeah, or we can put a flaming battering ram on the front. No need to surround the car with fire.” Erica pulls out a notebook and starts sketching it out. 

“Everyone shut the fuck up!” Erica and Dustin scream loud enough to overcome the chaos of arguments. They were still at it. Ugh.

All the ‘adults’ in the room look up. Erica shrugs off the angry glares. “Language Steve, I know,” she says when Steve opens his mouth.

“We have a plan,” Dustin declares.

“What?” Nancy asks, frowning.

“While you were arguing about who gets to be a hero, we,” Dustin says, gesturing to Erica and Robin, “decided to go off and do something useful.”

“Look, you can’t just plan on your own,” Hopper starts. Erica puts up a hand to shush him, and miraculously, that actually shuts him up. She looks at El, who giggles.

“We can, and we did. And it’s not like we’re going off to execute it by ourselves. You can always suggest changes,” Erica says, squaring up her shoulders. “And another thing,” Erica wets her lips. It’s been bothering her for a while, and she might as well get it out while she has command of the room, “you all need to quit it with obsessing over who should and shouldn’t  be involved. I’m here. My family’s here. And we’re not leaving.”

“Erica, no one’s telling you to leave—” Steve starts.

“You are though,” Erica cuts him off, glaring. “Every time we plan something, do something, it’s always with the assumption that only some people are going to put their necks out. I’m sick of it. Technically, none of us have to fight. We could have all left. But we’re here aren’t we? So stop wasting your time and energy trying to figure out who shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah, Erica, exactly!” Lucas says with a whoop. He high fives Mike.

“And you! Lucas!” Erica points at her stupid stupid brother who’s probably going to descend to the Upside Down on his own if Steve and Eddie refuse to let him join. “You better come back.”

“Of course I’ll come back Erica,” Lucas says in that condescending sweet tone he uses when he lies.

“You better, or I’m going to read your journals to Max when she wakes up,” Erica snarls. She doesn’t actually know where Lucas’s diary is, but she’s got some good theories and she’s pretty sure it’s going to be full of mortifying pining. Lucas pales. She smirks to really sell the lie. “So you better come back,” she repeats. There’s an annoying itch at the back of her throat and her eyes. She clears her throat. 

Lucas nods, more seriously this time. He’ll come back. He has to.

The rest of the night passes productively as Erica, Dustin, and Robin walk the rest of the group through their plan. They’re wrapped up and ready to go in less than an hour. Bob and the boys just need a day or two to prep the car, and they’ll be ready to ram a giant stick of fire in Vecna’s ugly mug.

The Harrington Mansion slowly empties out now that they have a plan. Eddie sends his uncle off with a long hug. Robin leaves as well to spend tonight with her family, just in case.

Once they’re gone, Eddie throws himself on the expensive yet inexplicably stiff and slippery couch to survey the mess. The pitifully short list of resources they have. The giant map of Hawkins showing the vast swathes of land where Vecna could be hiding. The fifty or so pins showing monster sightings–attacks–across Hawkins.

All that time he spent in the Upside Down, by himself, slowly fucking up his back and his sanity. Making Wayne wait in limbo at the emptied-out trailer park just in case. For nothing. The kids, Wayne, Steve—they’re all going to have to risk their lives again because Eddie wasted months guarding one portal.

Which is embarrassingly on brand—fixating on one unimportant thing at the expense of the big picture, like the time he got really into privateers during world history class and spent the entire semester only studying about pirates even though they were like, a paragraph in the entire textbook. Then he bombed the finals so hard he failed the class. Then he forgot about the summer makeup classes, so that just put the nail in the coffin for his second senior year and…

Yeah. He’s fucking useless. 

Eddie attempts to lean back on the stiff monstrosity he’s sitting on so he can stare at the ceiling and use gravity to push his tears back into his dumb skull. He doesn’t deserve to cry. Eddie digs his claws into his thighs, hoping that a pinch of pain would get him out of his head. But he’s fucked up so bad this time that he feels like he deserves to rot. In his head. On this stupid couch. In the ground.

“Eds? You alright?” Steve asks from behind him, putting a gentle hand on his head. Eddie jumps and actually stabs himself. A stream of blood trickles out from his inner thigh, along his crotch, and onto the sofa. Eddie cusses and attempts to mop up some of the blood with his palms, which only spreads the mess. His claws dig white lines onto the vomit-patterned cover.

“Shit! Eddie!” Steve scrambles around the couch to get to him, unwrapping the towel around his waist so he could use it to press the fabric against Eddie’s wound. He can already feel himself stitching back together but Steve still looks concerned. 

The living room looks like a crime scene. Even a damp, naked Steve isn’t lifting his mood.

“Jesus H. Christ, I should not be allowed indoors,” Eddie mutters.

“Don’t say that,” Steve says, flicking Eddie with the bloody towel. “I’m not sleeping on the ground with you after this is over.”

“Sure! So I can bleed all over your bed and shred the mattress! That’s a great fucking future for you Stevie! Just what your parents had in mind I bet,” Eddie trails off. He promised Robin he’d stay the night so Steve wouldn’t have to sleep alone. But he doesn’t really have it in him anymore. He’s craving the familiarity of the Upside Down. It’s uncomfortable as fuck, sure, but there’s nothing there he can ruin.

Steve gawks at him, nose wrinkled in disgust. “Since when do you care what my parents think? I don’t care what they think.”

“I…”

Steve climbs next to Eddie and curls into his side. Leans his head on Eddie’s shoulder. So close, Eddie can smell his shampoo.

“Not very metal of you. Just saying,” Steve mumbles.

“You take that back!” Eddie protests, laughing weakly.

“Something’s bothering you though, isn’t it? Want to talk about it?”

“I just…” Eddie trails off, staring at the tip of his claws. He’s already told Steve how shitty it feels that Steve had to settle for a fuzzy monster, how worried he is that he’ll never slot back into the world of the living, multiple times, dozens of times. It’s a miracle Steve hasn’t dumped him already out of sheer boredom. Sure, this new revelation that he’s wasted a few months futzing around a single portal instead of looking for Vecna is new. But that one is too raw, too recent. 

“I’d rather go shoot balls into laundry baskets to be honest,” Eddie finishes.

“Would you rather tell Dustin and Erica they saved the day?” Steve eggs him on.

“Ugh, yep and tell Wayne to get his shit together. He needs to actually talk to Hopper about what’s going on between them.”

“Are they ok? What’s going on?” Steve asks nervously, like a kid wondering if his parents are getting a divorce.

“Uh, they’ve been pining after each other for a while?” Eddie says.

“What?!”

“Oh my god, how have you not noticed? They moved in together. It’s been nothing but Hopper this and Hopper every time we talk. I might as well be chopped liver.” Eddie laughs. “I need Wayne to figure it out yesterday because if I have to give my uncle dating advice without giving him dating advice one more time, I’m going to hurl.”

“How did I not catch this?!”

“You’re always too busy talking to Wayne about those balls Steve. Makes you miss out on the actual important stuff,” Eddie says sagely, drawing light circles on Steve’s thigh with his palm.

“Ah, ok, well… this makes what I was going to say next really awkward to be honest,” Steve says, hiding behind his hands.

“What were you going to say?”

“…want to fuck about it?” Steve asks shyly. Eddie makes an exaggerated gasp. “I know! Timing! But you brought up your uncle, not me—”

Eddie lurches at Steve to save him from further embarrassing himself. Steve squeaks then moans as Eddie sloppily licks his lips. It’s a weird way to kiss, he knows, but Steve is into weird. Eddie doesn’t know how he got so lucky, but maybe he should stop looking a gift Harrington in the mouth.

Steve’s long fingers and big palms move up and down his body. He strokes Eddie’s fuzz with the grain in a way that makes him feel like he’s floating. He mixes it up to stroke against the grain, making it pinch in a way that makes Eddie’s head go a little fuzzy. Clever fingers grip his shorts to pull them down. Eddie whines when Steve’s lips leave his, but they soon find home on Eddie’s lone nipple. Eddie bucks impulsively, searching for friction. Steve presses his thick thigh right over his dick because Steve Harrington is an attentive, generous, gorgeous, perfect lover.

Steve smirks, looking down at Eddie as he ruts against Steve’s strong thigh. He kisses Eddie on the forehead, sending a little zing of pleasure at the top of his head. He’s getting so close… 

Then Steve lifts himself off, taking his leg away. Eddie takes back everything he said about Steve being attentive, generous, gorgeous, and perfect.

Steve Harrington is a smug rat bastard.

“Steve, please…”

“Shhhh… I have a plan,” he croons. Steve hovers his hand less than a quarter of an inch over Eddie’s crotch. He chases the hand of course. But Steve keeps lifting his hand, making Eddie chase it with his crotch until he’s got his hips raised in this weird pose he used to be forced to do in gym class. Bridge was it? Steve is cackling. And honestly, it would be really funny if he weren’t literally about to combust. Eddie’s desperate whining fails to melt Steve’s cold, cruel heart. He grabs Eddie’s long curls and yanks it meanly, forcing Eddie to turn his head.

“Hands over your head,” Steve orders. Eddie shoots his arms up, nearly slashing Steve’s chin in his haste to obey.

“Legs apart,” Steve follows up. Eddie opens his legs so wide his right leg lolls off the couch. That’s going to fuck with his blood flow. But that’s a problem for afterglow Eddie.

Steve actually gets off the couch to loom over him.

He looks. Really looks. Hungry eyes traveling up and down Eddie’s naked body, the fuzz, the scars, the scales. Eddie knows he’s not much to look at, especially compared to Steve. But Steve has a delighted smile on his face like Eddie’s some sort of a fancy wine or luxury car. He can hear Steve’s rapid heartbeat, can smell the arousal, can see Steve’s hard cock, comically pointing right at him. Steve bends to stroke his hair where he’d yanked hard just moments ago. Steve kneels by Eddie’s feet.

“So soft, so beautiful, still can’t believe I get to have you,” he murmurs into the sonar sensitive scales that cover Eddie’s feet and ankles. The gentle tenor of his whisper travels all over his body, lighter yet more intense than any actual touch. Steve moves his lips around, getting the volume just right so that the noise isn’t too loud to be painful, crooning praises and nonsense words. Steve could have made this easy for himself. He could have done something heinous, like put on Alvin and the Chipmunks on a speaker or something and positioned that over Eddie’s scales, and the vibrations would still have gone straight to Eddie’s dick. But Steve gives everything, especially Eddie’s pleasure, his all.

Eddie makes mortifying shivery, high whimpers as Steve travels up from his ankles, targeting smaller clusters of scales even he didn’t know about. He praises Eddie’s eyes, the tattoos, the way Eddie ripped out that Demogorgon’s heart. Eddie’s legs shake with the effort to not cum. He’s not used to being in this position, but now that he is, it feels like he should get permission—to cum, to move, to whisper back.

“And the way you carry me around Eds, you already know how that makes me feel, and that’s just you, no one else can do that for me,” Steve says into a small patch of scales by Eddie’s right pec. “And I have spent… way too much time thinking about you carrying me to our bed after dinner…” Steve trails off, suddenly unsure. But Eddie actually bucks his hip involuntarily at this vision, a future, a small apartment in Indy with heating, a bed, and most importantly, Steve.

Steve spanks Eddie for the horrible crime of moving without permission then continues, a little more confident. “And we’ll go on double dates with Robin and Vickie. We’ll try out new recipes. In the evenings, we’ll go out on the porch and I’ll listen to your new songs…”

Eddie grips at his hair to resist the urge to crush Steve into his chest. He hears a wet squelch, feels the tip of Steve’s cock graze against his calves. Oh shit. Steve is opening himself up. He’s been clenching his thighs for so long to avoid cumming that his entire legs just feel like one massive cramp now. Worth it.

“And we’ll get a small TV so you can make me sit down and watch all your ball games, and we’ll get a wall to chart out all your numbers,” Eddie adds, trying to keep his voice even. “Because you pretend you’re not but you’re such an adorable nerd, especially when you get worked up about something.” Steve gasps into a cluster of scales right around where his nipple used to be. It’s as good as the gentle words. The shiver of his breath trickles from his chest to toe.

Eddie chances a glance at Steve, which was a mistake. Steve’s rocking into his fingers, eyes glazed, plush lips red from biting. Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and grabs at whatever he can reach to take his edge off. Fabric rips under his talons. Who gives a shit.

“Stevie, darling, baby, please,” Eddie pleads. “Sit on my face? Please? Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll crawl. I’ll beg. Please sit on my face. Please let me open you up.”

Steve moans at that, a long gorgeous sound before he takes a deep breath and attempts some imitation of the mean facade he was putting up earlier. “The things I do for you,” he says with a blush. Steve turns around and finally lowers his thick, mole-covered ass onto Eddie’s lips. Eddie takes that as permission to lower his hand. He yanks Steve down onto his jaw. Steve moans, all breathy and pretty, as Eddie manhandles Steve into grinding on his face. Steve’s chest hair rubs against Eddie’s shaft and something in Eddie’s chest swells so large he feels like he might die actually.

Eddie cums embarrassingly soon with his dick squished under the pelt on Steve’s chest. Steve tries to get up, and Eddie grips him hard, keeping him in place. Eddie’s really overstimulated. Steve’s chest hair is rubbing against his shaft in a way that’s more painful than good. But Eddie’s not about to quit before Steve cums too.

Soon, Steve’s moans turn into whines. Long words turn to short, incoherent mumbles—mostly a mix of ‘Eddie’, ‘god’, ‘fuck’ and ‘good’.

“Eddie…” Steve whines.

“Yeah? Anything.”

“Stab me.”

With a grin Steve can’t see, Eddie pokes his talon into Steve’s upper thigh where he likes to be pricked, enough to just break the skin. Steve cums with a shout and Eddie feels the sticky mess dribble down his chest fuzz. Eddie lets Steve go with a long farewell suck to his rims.

Steve turns around so he can drape himself across Eddie’s entire body, ignoring the mess of fluids between them. There’s a big gash from where Eddie clutched at the sofa earlier. A wild part of him preens that he left his mark. It’s not damage if Steve wanted it… is it?

Steve is humming something Eddie doesn’t recognize as he snuggles deeper into Eddie’s chest. Eddie could die right now and be happy. The trouble is, he’s not going to die right now and he’s burning to know if Steve had meant everything they said earlier.

“Did you mean that?” Eddie asks quietly.

Steve’s heartbeat immediately picks up. “Uhh… mean what?”

“All that stuff… Moving in together. Double dates. Sharing a kitchen… future… you know.”

Steve swallows. Eddie thinks for a heart-rending minute that Steve is going to say no, that it was all just the heat of the moment.

Steve peels himself off of Eddie’s chest, propping himself up on his elbow so they’re face to face. His mouth is a firm line.

“I meant it,” he finally says, biting his plush lips.

“Oh, that’s—”

“That doesn’t have to mean anything though,” Steve stammers. “We’ve only been dating for a few weeks now, and Nancy already keeps saying we’re all trauma-bonded and whatsit. But I do—”

Eddie crushes Steve into him, knocking his breath out. “No take backs Harrington,” Eddie says, very carefully scratching Steve’s back with the tip of his talons, enough to feel good, enough to leave a mark, but not enough to break skin.

“We better live then,” Steve says.

“Yeah, we better,” Eddie confirms, kissing the top of Steve’s head.

Chapter Text

It’s a good plan.

At least, Eddie tries to tell himself that as they rumble across the desolate plains of the Upside Down. It’s empty. No carnivorous vines. No demodogs. No demogorgons. He knows this makes sense. Vecna’s been pulling them into himself, all so he could take over their bodies completely. Fuck whatever those animals might have actually wanted.

It still feels like an ambush, like there’s a Demogorgon waiting to jump out at them like some sort of shitty, murderous haunted house attraction.

Lucas is getting antsy next to him.

They’re not exactly being stealthy. The decoy car Bob is driving is blasting Holy Diver so loud it makes his ears ring. The stink of meat attached to the decoy makes him nauseous. He’s not sure how Bob is managing when he’s actually in the car. Steve grimaces and re-adjusts his ear muffs. The last thing they need is for him to get a migraine when they’re about to battle.

The plan is so simple. Keep blasting music and meat stink. Attract the demo creatures. Then the decoy car—Bob, Mike, Jonathan, and Will–can screech away. The attack car—Eddie, Steve, Lucas, Nancy and Hopper—can follow the tracks in the opposite direction and hope that leads them directly to Vecna. 

But the first part is not working. Maybe they’re too late, and Vecna is already a swarm of thousands of demo-creatures. Un-killable. Invincible.

Suddenly, Lucas points west. “What the fuck is that?!”

It’s a tower, extending what feels like forever into the sky. This doesn’t make sense. The Upside Down is a snapshot of Hawkins in the past, and as far as Eddie knows, Hawkins never had a skyscraper. 

With no hope and nothing else to latch onto, they start driving towards it. Bob turns the music off, just in case. Eddie’s heart sinks as they get close enough for him to make out the details with his enhanced monster eyesight.

It’s a tower of monsters, almost as wide as the town church and so tall even Eddie can’t see the top, just haze. The monsters are all tangled up into each other, vines thread the gaps. It’s like they’re made of stone. Eddie prays to the stupid Centipede, to Jesus, to Buddha, to every DnD deity he’d read about, anyone that the tower of monsters and Vecna, presumably in there, stay dormant so Eddie take this car and give Vecna a fiery little bop on his knobbly head.

Eddie stops the car. The party all get out to look at the tower. Bob takes a pair of binoculars out and everyone else takes turns looking.

“That’s a lot,” Hopper says.

Nancy wordlessly counts out the bullets she has with a frown. She has a decent chunk. Definitely not thousands.

Eddie cusses, feeling useless again. Dustin is up there with Will and the super girl, helping them connect together into some sort of Vecna hunting machine in the mindscape. But none of that is going to help if they can’t bring Vecna out of his physical hiding place. And he’s in there. Eddie can feel it. Cowering within the tower.

Swearing, he kicks a rock hard enough for it to go flying towards the tower and actually hit it. Everyone freezes, preparing to run in case the tower suddenly broke apart in a storm cloud of claws and gnashing teeth. 

Nothing happens.

But it gives Eddie an idea.

“You all see the vines tying those monsters together?” Eddie asks after Nancy stops trying to kill him with her mind for that stupid rock stunt.

“Yes?” Nancy asks suspiciously.

“What if…” Nancy and Steve both glare at him. “Ok, ok, hear me out. What if we cut them out? What happens then?”

“They either stay asleep while Vecna loads his mind into them or they get up and immediately attack you,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “In either case, you get hurt.”

“We should go back. Let the others know what’s happening. A car isn’t going to get through this,” Nancy argues, looking at the tower with immense regret.

“Or, or… we could try my fantastic idea and try cutting one of them out,” Eddie argues. “Just one.”

“Eds. No!” Steve yells. “The last time you played the hero—”

“I died. I know. I know. But this time, it’ll be just one monster, and we have a getaway vehicle. Nancy. Hopper. Back me up here. You know it’s a good idea.” 

“The monsters who made it into town… they generally weren’t itching to fight,” Nancy muses.

“And if we go back, we’ll probably end up with the same plan anyway.” Hopper sighs. “El opened up that portal pretty wide, but we’re going to need a wrecking ball or something. We don’t know if she can make it any wider. Besides, heavy machinery isn’t going to move fast enough if we need a quick getaway.”

Steve frowns, glares, evaluates, then sighs deeply. “Then I’m going with you,” he says, twirling his nail bat like it’s an extension of his arm.

“You don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I don’t have super speed. I don’t have sonar feet. I don’t have claws. But I know you can carry me and run just as fast. Shit hits the fan, you get me out. I can help cut out the monsters.” Steve says, mouth set in a determined line.

“How is that better than me going to cut them out by myself?” Eddie sputters, “I get that your bat has nails, but it’s got nothing against my claws—”

“Because!” Steve barks. “You’ll actually get yourself out in time if my neck is on the line.”

Well fuck him for being right.

Eddie opens his mouth wide open then shut, trying to think of a good counter argument. But Steve is right about Eddie being more likely to dip with Steve’s pretty ass at risk. Eddie sighs deeply and shrugs. “Fine, but I’m carrying you bridal style and you’ll never live it down,” Eddie threatens half-heartedly.

“Yep, get me out alive and you’ll get to shit on me as much as you want for the rest of your life,” Steve says with an easy smile, leading Eddie towards the attack van. “And Munson, if you even think about just throwing me out of harm’s way, I will run back to you.”

“I can drive you closer,” Hopper says. “Nancy will cover you from the back seat. Anything happens, those monsters so much as blink, you run as fast as you can to Bob’s decoy vehicle while Nancy gives you cover. Got it? No funny business. No hero business. I promised Wayne I’m bringing all of you back in one piece.”

Steve nods, and holds Eddie’s hands the entire drive. His hands are clammy from the stress, but Eddie wouldn’t dream of letting go.

Eddie can feel everyone’s eyes on him as he reaches a trembling claw towards a vine holding a Demodog in place. 

Steve stands next to him, bat at the ready, knuckles white, arms trembling with nerves. Even if the Demodog attacks immediately, he’s going to be fine. He’s handled Demodogs before, easily. The problem is that he’s not sure what the structural integrity of this tower is like. Maybe this Demodog is like… a keystone or something and if he cuts it out the entire thing is going to collapse. Which is going to be awesome for finding Vecna, but he’s not sure even he can survive being buried under an entire tower of Mordor’s worth of monsters. He doesn’t even want to consider the worse possibility that he’ll keep cutting and cutting and cutting and nothing will happen.

Only one way to find out though.

Eddie checks again to make sure that the whole tower would probably fall away from the rest of the party if it falls and cuts the Demodog free in a few snips. It’s more like cutting through muscle than plant, but he’s clawed through enough meat the last few months that it doesn’t phase Eddie at all. The Demodog tumbles to the ground. About a dozen demobats spill out behind it. Eddie holds his breath and gets in his battle stance, but the dog and bats scamper off in random directions as fast as they can instead of attacking.

Eddie exhales and turns to wave at the rest of the group as if to say, ‘see’? He gets more adventurous after that, and starts to cut out bigger chunks. He tries to think of it as cutting down a tree, except in this case it’s an endlessly tall tower of monsters. 

A Demogorgon falls and stalks off. Bats fall out of nooks and crannies Eddie didn’t even see and fly off. Demodogs scamper off, sometimes after a Demogorgon. There’s an urgency to all the monsters he freed, as if there’s something big they have to flee from. But Eddie doesn’t have time to think about that. 

He has to cut as fast as he can–

Hopper roughly pushes Eddie away. “Jesus Munson, you’re going to make the entire thing fall on you,” he growls. Nancy, Bob, and the rest of the gang are at his side with the two cars. Hopper continues. “Have you never cut a tree? You chop one side, then you move on to the other. The way you’re cutting it, it’s going to fall this way,” Hopper indicates, sweeping his arm over Eddie’s head. 

“You do it then,” Eddie grumbles.

“Actually yes. Cut here,” Hopper says as he gestures to about five feet away from where Eddie is. “And we’ll work on the other side with the battering ram car. When you hear any kind of creaking…”

“You get in the decoy vehicle with us and we drive away as fast as we can,” Bob finishes for Hopper.

Eddie nods, eager to get through the tower once and for all. It doesn’t take too long before the tower is swaying. Eddie cuts out just one more Demogorgon as Hopper urgently pulls him away. He almost expects the tower to groan the way it swings from side to side the way he’s seen some widow makers move before they crash to the ground. But it falls silently. The aftershock is so strong that it nearly tips their getaway vehicle over. Lucas and Mike whoop, laughing maniacally now that it looks like all that’s left is to find Vecna somewhere in the rubble and finish him off once and for all.

That asshole might be powerful, but he’s not immune to gravity and force.

Or is he?

A huge horde of monsters, the ones that didn’t get crushed anyway, were running away as fast as they could the moment they hit the ground. But suddenly, they stop.

Something drags them back.

Eddie watches in horror as all the monsters still in view struggle, squeak, scream, grunt, as an invisible force pulls them back to a center core to create a pulsing, ugly ball of flesh.

Those monsters are getting sucked in fast. The attack car with the fire battering ram isn’t going to get it fast enough. And the decoy car is basically useless for offense… 

Eddie looks at that hateful pulsing ball grow and grow, like the horde of demo monsters he’d swallowed and sent to fuck knows where in his portal guarding days… and he finally understands what that Centipede had wanted from him.

There’s no time to explain. No time to turn the car around. No time to drive. Eddie launches himself through the front window of the decoy car and runs as fast as he can towards the Vecna globe. The world blurs as he runs, faster than he knew he could. Time dilates, and in what feels like forever, he’s in front of the thing.

The ball quivers, and turns towards him, kind of like Sauron’s evil eye. But this one isn’t on fire. It doesn’t burn when Eddie unlatches his head and swallows.

He hears screaming in the background.

Then the world goes blindingly white.

Eddie opens his eyes.

He’s back at that place where he first met the centipede. Thinking back, he really shouldn’t be surprised. He was never really alive was he? He’d been sent back with just one purpose—to kill Vecna. And now that he’s served his purpose, he’s back here.

Eddie curls up in a ball and grieves for what he thought he’d have. A house close to Wayne’s. A bed where he’d wake up next to Steve. A kitchen where they’d sing silly little songs for each other. How he’d planned to let Steve steal his properly made coffee with the correct amount of sugar and cream because Steve likes to pretend he likes his coffee black. Letting Steve cajole him into playing balls in laundry baskets now that he can jump up to the basket with ease… 

But no. He was always just a tool. Meant to serve one purpose then be discarded.

Eddie clutches his arms so hard in fury that he leaves deep punctures.

He’s going to be the most annoying motherfucker this Centipede has ever dealt with. Take away his mouth, he’ll annoy with his feet. Take his feet away, he’ll use his hair. Eternity.

This fucker better strap in because it’s in for a ride.

Eddie sees the many legs of the centipede wiggling before him. It clacks. “Why have you formed a ball?”

“Motherfucker. You just crushed all my hopes and dreams. Can I have a moment please?” Eddie snarls.

“He is late,” the centipede simply says. “You are still early.”

“Wait… I’m not… dead?”

“No.” Eddie can hear the exasperation. “I told you. You are too early. I will not accept you.”

Eddie finally untangles himself to look around. He didn’t get a great look the first time he was here. He was too preoccupied by the whole ‘just got eaten alive by bats’ thing. And if the centipede is right… well, this is going to be his last chance (hopefully) to properly observe the death realm and report back.

There’s no ground. No sky. Not even… colors, except on himself and the bug. It’s unnerving, almost as unnerving as when he thought he was about to get eaten and spat out by a giant centipede for eternity for the heinous crime of playing a board game with his friends. Said centipede clicks at him again. There’s something mottled and rotten clutched in the tight circle of its body.

“You wasted time,” it says.

“Yeah, see… I gotta tell you. When you want someone like me to do something for you, you have to tell me, step by step in excruciating detail, then remind me, again and again, and again and even then I might not remember to do it. You kind of just… threw me out there with this freak body.”

The centipede clacks, trying to be menacing. But Eddie’s already flirted with death twice today and probably pissed off his very petty boyfriend. Hard to be scared after that.

Eddie finally looks at the thing nestled in the centipede’s body. It’s a mangled, bloated… thing. He can vaguely make out Vecna’s face where the head might have been, warped in a furious scowl. There’s deep burns and vines running through it. The centipede squeezes absent-mindedly. The scowl turns into a silent scream of agony. Parts of the skin gets pushed out, stretching paper thin, kind of like those stress balls one of Eddie’s teachers tried to make him use, hoping he’d pay attention if he had something to fidget with.

Wait… was that another face?

The centipede continues to ponder something. It squeezes again, mechanical, ignoring the anguish of its victim. This time, Eddie’s watching for it. He makes out the four additional faces littered across the damaged husk. They scream every time they get pushed up to the surface when the centipede squeezes.

One of those faces is Chrissy. She’s crying, open mouthed. He makes out Max, who looks dazed, numb, like she’s lost hope. There’s two other boys he vaguely recognizes seeing in the hallways. One is screaming the entire time. The other looks more like Max. Silent. Despondent.

“Stop,” Eddie says weakly.

The centipede ignores him and squeezes again. He meets Chrissy’s eyes this time, but he doesn’t think she can actually see anything from inside whatever she’s fucking trapped in. Max has her eyes closed. The centipede says nothing, just keeps squeezing every once in a while, as if it’s not even thinking about what it’s torturing in its grasp and… Eddie might kill this thing actually.

He clenches his fist. Feels the talons dig into his palms.

“Fucking… stop!” He screams.

The centipede looks up, seems to realize just now that he was playing with the thing, and throws it to the side, almost like it’s embarrassed.

“He is too late. But he is mixed with four others that are too early,” it grumbles.

“Separate them then, please,” Eddie pleads. The bug clacks. “Please. You gave me a body. Please. Separate them. Let me take them back.”

“You had a body. That was easy.”

“Well you… there’s a bunch of bodies in the Upside Down right? And you can reshape them? Like you did mine?” Eddie clacks his talons, just to remind it. “Please. There’s so many bodies down there. Pick one. Any. Separate them. Please.”

“Is that your reward?”

“Yes? Yes. please. That’s my reward.”

The centipede can’t sigh, but Eddie can feel its exasperation. Maybe it was hoping that he’d ask for something more straightforward, like getting his old body back, or platinum album, or riches, or whatever stupid shit he might have wanted before all this. Or maybe he just feels like everyone’s mad at him all the time and this is one of those cases. 

Fortunately, the centipede doesn’t object. It waves its many legs, and the mangled hunk of flesh it was holding explodes in a messy plume of skin and viscera. Only three people—Chrissy and the two other dudes–crawl out of the mess. Chrissy’s still wearing her torn up cheer uniform. Eddie guesses that the others are also probably wearing what they had on when they died. Eddie rushes over to help them up. Their skin doesn’t feel quite human. He can see a weird flap on Chrissy’s leg that starts from somewhere under her skirt and goes all the way to her ankles. But he’s not about to comment on it. What matters is that they’re alive.

“Wait, what about Max?” Eddie asks.

“Follow the white dog,” the centipede says, annoyingly cryptic as always. Then it’s gone.

“What white dog? Where’s Max?! This wasn’t the deal!” Eddie screeches, looking around. There’s a big, white, fox-like dog at his feet. It has short hair and a twice-curled tail that stands proudly. It trots away once it knows it has everyone’s attention, northbound. Eddie takes Chrissy’s hand. Chrissy takes one kid’s hand, and that kid takes the other dude’s hand… and they form some kind of a chain as they follow the dog.

The white dog shines brighter and brighter as they go until it’s glowing so hot that Eddie can’t keep his eyes open and then…

“Oh my god, oh my god. Eddie! You fucker! You asshole! I fucking hate you!” Steve screams as he pulls Eddie into a hug so tight that if Eddie didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that Steve was trying to choke him to death.

“What…” Chrissy gasps out as she looks at the two of them in confusion. “Hopper?” She asks. 

“Patrick!” Lucas yells, flinging himself into the arms of one of the boys Eddie brought back from the dead.

The last kid, whose name Eddie doesn’t know, hangs back, slouching awkwardly. Eddie extracts himself from Steve’s vice grip so he can go give him a hug. It feels wrong, letting any of the zombie crew feel like they don’t belong in this world after Eddie dragged them back without asking. Eddie beckons Chrissy over. Then Steve, Lucas and Patrick join. Then Bob. Maybe Hopper, Nancy, and even Mike too. It’s hard to tell. Eddie lets himself melt into the crush of bodies and relieved laughter. 

There’s a mix of celebration and grief as they head into the Right-Side Up with everyone in tow.

Everyone, Eddie thinks, except…

The radio is crackling when they get to the rendezvous point.

“Max is awake!” Dustin screams. “Over!”

Chapter Text

“Munson, get up,” Steve says, rudely poking Eddie in the ribs.

“Don’t call me Munson… and three more minutes,” Eddie mutters, burrowing under the covers. But Steve is relentless. Eddie yelps when Steve rips the covers off him, exposing his fuzzy ass to the cold morning air. Steve is already dressed. Eddie does his best to glare at him through half-open eyes.

“You said three more minutes ten minutes ago dumbass,” Steve says, poking Eddie in the ribs again. “You gotta get up. We’re going to be late.”

“Should have stayed with the Centipede Daddy,” Eddie grumbles, “it wouldn’t put me out to die in the cold at the crack ass of dawn.”

“If by crack ass of dawn, you mean eight, then sure,” Steve says easily. “And would Centipede Daddy do this?” He grabs Eddie’s wrist and raises his arm up high so he can lick a long line down Eddie’s left armpit. Eddie squeals, now wide awake. He grabs a pillow and swings it at Steve. Steve lets go of Eddie’s wrist because he’s laughing too hard.

“Dingus! Dongus! Stop being gross in there and help me get ready!” Robin screeches, banging on their bedroom door.

“We’re not being gross! He’s being gross!” Eddie sputters.

“Sure you aren’t. Now come help me pick out my outfit!” Robin punctuates that with another slam to the door and noisily walks off. 

“She’s got Vickie to help her,” Eddie says as he stalks off to the bathroom. “Why does she need me?!”

Steve swats him on the ass and Eddie responds with an exaggerated hip wiggle. “You know Chrissy best,” Steve says, giggling. “Now go brush your teeth. I can smell your morning breath from here.”

It takes Eddie only five minutes or so to pick out outfits for Robin and Vickie that he’s pretty sure that Chrissy would like. Honestly, he could have done that in ten seconds flat. Chrissy would like anything on those two. But he needed to hem and haw for at least four minutes so he could pretend he was actually putting some thought into his choices.

Fred and Patrick stand side by side, assembling sandwiches for all the kids. They both unfurl their arms into multiple vines. Patrick scoops out dollops of jam with one tendril, and globs of peanut butter with another, wiping them off on the bread pieces. Fred slaps another slice of bread on top as soon as Patrick is done. 

Showoffs. 

They’re making a terrible mess because the tendrils aren’t as easy to manipulate as actual hands. Steve watches with a gleam in his eyes and Eddie burns with jealousy. Why couldn’t the centipede reform his new body out of vines? The things he could do for Steve as a plant creature…

Steve sees Eddie and saunters over to pull Eddie into himself tightly, positioning one of Eddie’s arm over his shoulder so he can put a talon by his jugular. Freak. Eddie’s going to eat him alive tomorrow. Today, unfortunately, is going to require that they leave room for Jesus. They’re going to see Chrissy today at the aquarium in Chicago where she got her summer internship. The drive is long and annoying, but it’s not as bad as going all the way to LA where she’s doing her bachelor’s in marine biology. 

Eddie misses when the zombies all lived together in this ramshackle Indy condo with Robin and Vickie. But his little plant monsters had to fly the coop at some point. They’re going to see her diving show then sic the hellions upon the good people of Chicago. They won’t know what hit them. 

And Eddie’s ecstatic about seeing Chrissy again. Truly. He just needs like five more cups of coffee to psych himself up. Steve did tell him to go to bed at a reasonable time. But he got an idea for a song, and he couldn’t just let inspiration go. What if it was going to be the next summer hit that puts Corroded Coffin on the maps? He’s not going to stay a bartender forever. His co-workers are actually pretty nice. But if he works there much longer, the booze stink is going to get embedded in his fuzz.

“They’re so adorable. It’s disgusting,” Eddie whispers to Steve. Robin and Vickie stand by the deep water tank, faces nearly glued to the glass, as Chrissy swims around doing tank duties. Chrissy doesn’t actually need any of the oxygen gear and diving suits, but Owens asked them, meekly at first, then more forcefully, to please not show off their new monster powers to the public. 

It’s bullshit of course. Patrick would have made the greatest balls in laundry baskets player in history. But the “please don’t tell the public how we literally nearly caused the apocalypse just to be bailed out by a bunch of idiot teens” money was enough for the zombie crew to keep their powers on the down low.

“We’re more disgusting right?” Steve whispers back with a little smirk. Fucking jock.

Eddie checks to make sure no one’s watching them. Robin and Vickie are waving frantically at Chrissy, who’s feeding little bits of lettuce to a very cute sea turtle. Fred and Dustin are sitting in a corner, sketching something that looks vaguely mechanical. Patrick and Lucas are talking, animated in a way Eddie hasn’t seen Patrick be in a while. Even Max is laughing, leaning a little into Lucas. Mike and El are nowhere to be seen, and Eddie really hopes that they’re not trying to sneak something out of the place. He’s pretty sure whatever they steal is going to end up in his tub in Indy because Steve still doesn’t know how to say no when El hits him with those sad “I was raised in a lab” eyes. It’s not a busy day, and the few strangers here with them are off in their own world.

“The most disgusting babe,” Eddie says as he gives Steve a little peck on the cheeks. He can smell the aftershave, feel the little stubble. They brush their pinkies together. 

It’s good to be alive.