Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

July 1986

"Have you ever tried talking to him?"

Steve gives his therapist a withering look. Dr. Jones—a name Steve is fairly certain is fake—is some government stooge. He looks like if corduroy was a person, like he presses his shirts to include the wrinkles. Talking to him is an endless game of rehashing various horror stories just so the good doctor can parry back with an, I'm sure that was very unsettling for you, or a, You're a very brave young man. It's exhausting.

But the g-men responsible for covering up the aftermath of Vecna had promised to pay him for his stories. Some sort of half-assed information mining. They'd barely even tried to disguise it as rehabilitation for everything he'd gone through, but Steve was desperate. He needed the money.

"He's dead," Steve says finally.

Dr. Jones shrugs like death is a non-issue. "That's hardly the point, Mr. Harrington."

Steve sighs and leans back into his seat. "Right. 'Course it isn't. And the point is?"

"Closure."

Steve narrows his eyes at him. "Closure for what, exactly?"

"You tell me." Dr. Jones mimics his pose, playing at nonchalant as he pulls from a cigarette that had been, up until that point, burning itself down to the filter in an ashtray beside him. "You're the one still having nightmares about him."

It's a low blow, but Steve knows how to dodge it. "I hardly knew the guy."

"Maybe you wanted to."

"The hell are you trying to say?"

Dr. Jones raises his eyebrows. "Interesting reaction."

The trap snaps closed. Though, honestly, Steve isn't sure what exactly he walked into. He rewinds to a point in the conversation where it felt like he had his footing. "What do you mean, talk to him?"

Dr. Jones flicks the ash off his cigarette. "I recommend it to many patients who are grieving. It's a good way to say all those things that went unsaid."

"Recommend what?"

"Write him letters. Poems. Songs. Make him art. Hell, find a photo of him and talk to it like he's going to answer. It doesn't really matter how you do it, just that you're getting it all out."

"I don't have anything to get out. He was alive. I made a selfish choice. Now he's dead. Nothing I could say can change that."

Dr. Jones mulls that over, then he says, "What about sorry?"

//

So Steve starts with sorry.

That night, he stands in front of the bathroom sink in the apartment he and Robin share, and he forces himself to make eye contact with his reflection. He’s lost weight in the past six months and it shows most in his face, in the way his skin seems to stretch over his bones. Something about the guilt and the grief makes food unpalatable and sleep unreachable. He hardly looks like himself, and he feels like a stranger. Like he’s borrowing someone else’s life.

So instead, he pictures Eddie Munson.

The last time Steve saw him alive, Eddie looked haunted. Actually, Steve can hardly remember when he hadn’t looked that way. They’d hardly interacted before Chrissy Cunningham died. Steve remembers passing him in the hall at school. More than once, Tommy had taken time out of his day to harass him, but Steve never really paid attention. By the time Eddie Munson had become a relevant person in his life, Henry Creel had already done his damage.

It feels like the least Steve can do to imagine him before all that. Imagine him without blood matting his hair, without stains in his shirt, and without days-old sweat on his skin. He pictures Eddie with an easy smile. He had seemed like someone who smiled easily. Steve had seen it once or twice, back in that field when Eddie was wrestling with Dustin, before he knew he was going to die. It didn’t feel then like his smile was rare, even if it did end up being one of his last.

And he’d probably be teasing Steve for doing this, so the Eddie in his head is raising his eyebrows at him, arms crossed, laughing a little. Steve's mouth twitches upward, but it feels so bittersweet.

“I’m—”

This is stupid.

No. He rolls his shoulders. If it was stupid, it’d be easy. He can do this.

“I’m sorry, Eddie.”

He wonders how Eddie would respond to that, if he were here. He’d probably scoff at him, shake his head, say something like, Bullshit, Harrington.

“I am sorry,” Steve says, knee-jerk.

No, you’re not, the Eddie in his head says. You were so excited to be in the big kids’ club, remember? To be close to Nancy Wheeler? Who cares about a little dead weight when you could get laid, right?

Steve swallows. “It wasn’t like that.”

Wasn’t it?

“You were never supposed to get hurt. You were supposed to be safe. The plan—”

Eddie laughs—or, well, Steve guesses that’s what his laugh sounded like. He’d never heard it before. The plan was to be bait. I’ve never been much of a fisherman, Steve, but I’m pretty sure bait gets eaten.

“That’s not—” Steve closes his eyes, but it’s not like that would make the image of Eddie fade, not when he’d conjured it himself. “I would never have—”

But you would. Because you did. And now I’m dead.

“I’m sorry—”

Bullshit! You're not sorry! You're guilty! We both know what your first thought was when you found us. Do you remember?

“No,” Steve lies.

You thought: thank God it isn’t Dustin.

Steve leaves the bathroom. His stomach sways and swoops and clenches. Bile burns at the back of his throat.

This was a mistake.

//

September 1986

So, okay, pretending to talk to him isn’t going to work, not when Steve’s own brain is out to get him. But the dreams aren’t going away.

Steve is lying in bed, spread-eagled and sweating and wondering if there’s real merit to the idea that sleeping with the lights on is bad for you. Because his nightmare had been bright, and yellow in the same way the bulb in his bedside lamp was. Eddie had been there, blood pouring steadily out of the corner of his mouth as he tried to hold his body together. His other arm was outstretched, reaching for him, and—

Steve had woken up when he thought he heard Dustin screaming.

So, no. The one-sided conversations aren’t working. He’s going to have to try something else.

He rolls himself out of bed. His room is tiny, the product of his and Robin's minimum wage salary at the Dominick’s grocery near the university, so he doesn't have a desk. He hobbles out to the kitchen and grabs the notepad they keep by the phone. It's covered in little doodles—smiley faces and the letters N an R in a heart.

Nauseating. Adorable.

He tears the page off, leaving it by the phone, and grabs a pen. He drops down into a chair at the small table they'd managed to cram into the combination kitchen/dining room space. The blank page stares up at him. He taps the pen against it.

This is… maybe less of a mistake. But it's no less stupid.

He pulls the cap off the pen and hunches over the table.

Dear Eddie—

Nope.

He slams the pen down.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He stares at the paper. Then stares at the pen. Then at the two words he'd managed. He pinches the bridge of his nose then scribbles out the word "dear". They weren't that close.

Dear Eddie.

I'm sorry I got you killed.

Jesus.

He tries again.

Dear Eddie.

I'm sorry I got you killed. I don’t know how to apologize to you in a way that matters. I don’t know how to talk to you at all. The doctor says I should, and Robin says I should. But neither of them have to do it. Neither of them get it. And sorry doesn’t really seem to cut it.

Because I don’t know you. Like, at all. That’s the real problem. And it’s weird because we’ve grown up together—all this time, just a twenty minute drive from each others’ houses. We had algebra together junior year, do you remember? We were both behind. Mrs. Gates kept showing the class our grades to like, motivate everyone else or something. I don’t know. She was such a bitch.

But that’s twenty years. Twenty years of almost knowing you and it only took me five days to realize I’d never know you enough. And now you’re gone and it’s my fault and you deserved so much better than to die because of someone who couldn’t be bothered to have a conversation with you until he had to.

I think about it all the time, you know? What I would do if I could go back and do it all again. Every night, I close my eyes and I play it through until I get it right. Given the chance, I know all the right moves to make, and it starts with not leaving you and Dustin alone.

Steve pauses. He digs the end of the pen into his forehead just to feel something.

Y'know, Max woke up a couple of months ago. She can't walk and she's blind, but she's alive and she's awake. It feels like a miracle but it also feels like God’s laughing at us. Vecna is dead but we are never going to get back to who we were before him. Vecna is dead but he is alive because I can’t forget.

Not that I would if I could. Don’t worry.

I’ll remember.

I’m sorry.

Steve leans back in the chair. He feels—

Like shit. He feels like shit. This did not help. It should have lanced the wound, but it feels more like he’d popped a stitch or two, like it had dealt damage instead of relief. Thinking about Eddie, about everything that happened, hasn’t felt sharp and pointed in months, but that doesn’t mean the ache is any less devastating. And this had ignited it.

Still, he tears the pages out of the notepad and folds them down the middle. He ambles back to his bedroom and tucks them underneath his mattress. He will not throw them away, because he promised he’d remember, but he isn’t sure he wants to look at them ever again.

When he lies in bed, he turns to stare at the lamp. He swears he can hear the buzzing of the filament in the lightbulb. He reaches out a hand and settles a thumb against the switch at its base. He glances to the nail bat where it sits propped against his bed frame. Then he squeezes his eyes shut and flips the light off.

That night, Steve Harrington sleeps.

//

November 1986

A few months ago, Robin got into UChicago. She strong-armed Steve into coming with her, despite protests from Robin’s parents—something about how they should get married first—and Steve learns, perhaps for the first time, the difference between a house and a home. He swore then that he’d never come back to Hawkins.

But it’s Thanksgiving, and Jonathan of all people had invited him back, so fuck it.

He’s over at the Byers’s new house, the one Joyce and Hopper had gotten once the dust had settled. As it turns out, Joyce is a terrible cook. Jonathan had heard through the grapevine (Will) that Steve knows his way around the kitchen, so he promised him mountains of Californian weed to come out and save them all the suffering. It’s a pretty thinly-veiled attempt to get him to celebrate the holiday with the Party, probably organized by Robin, but Steve appreciates it nonetheless.

The Sinclairs, the Wheelers, and Max are already there when he and Robin arrive, and Dustin’s on his way. Robin makes a bee-line to Nancy while Steve gives half-awkward side hugs to everyone except Erica, who Does Not Want One, and Hopper, who instead thunks a hand down on his shoulder before walking off. He finds Joyce in the kitchen, standing bug-eyed over a massive raw turkey and a very worn copy of something Betty Crocker.

“Hey, Miss Byers,” he says cautiously, setting down his bags of groceries.

“Steve! Oh thank God.” She rushes over to him and pulls him into a hug. “Jonathan said you’d be helping but I kind of, y’know, panicked about how long it’s gonna take, because I looked at the package and I—”

Steve gives her a squeeze and pries them apart. “No worries. I got this. Why don’t you go grab a drink or something and hang out in the living room.”

She purses her lips at him. “Oh come on, I’m not going to let you do it all by yourself.”

“Of course you aren’t. You’re going to tell the kids to come in and peel some potatoes. Tell ‘em I’ll even let them chop a carrot if they behave.”

“You’re so smart.” She smiles and pats his cheek and Steve feels warm for the first time in a while. “Thank you for coming.”

She heads into the living room and within minutes, the kitchen is full of helping hands. Erica is washing vegetables then handing them off to Nancy and Jonathan to be chopped. Will, Max, and Lucas start peeling potatoes, while Robin, who apparently has some secret family recipe, starts making stuffing at the stove. Steve is left with the turkey.

Dustin arrives in time to chop some potatoes. Steve stumbles over giving him directions. It’s hard to tell someone what to do when you can barely look them in the eye. By the time he’s throwing the chunks into water to soak, they’ve barely said more than ten words to each other.

After the bulk of the work is done and most of the Party clears out, Dustin hangs back. Steve busies himself with a can of pumpkin puree, pretending not to notice.

“Hey, Steve?”

Steve glances up at him. Dustin’s fidgeting with the hem of his nice button-up shirt, looking down at his hands. “Yeah?”

“Are you, uh, mad at me or something?”

Steve stops what he’s doing. Because now he has to look at him. He owes him that much. “What?”

Dustin shifts, uncomfortable, and Steve can’t help but think of Eddie, of how angry with him he’d be for making Dustin feel like that.

If he’s being honest, Eddie is never far from his thoughts anymore. Not since the letters. Calling it a habit is a bit generous, but Steve has a good handful of notes shoved under his mattress now. Some of them are short, scribbled apologies, but some of them are novels, products of more sleepless nights.

He would never, in a million years, admit that Dr. Jones had been right—mainly because he hadn't been. Nothing about the letters is helpful. Steve is, in fact, emotionally intelligent enough to recognize a crutch when he sees one. He’s just not smart enough not to use it.

And he wants to use it now. To use the specter of Eddie Munson to keep himself in line, to be someone Eddie wouldn't hate. Steve barely knew him, but he knows that he’d never stand for Steve’s special brand of assholery, especially if it was hurting Dustin.

“It’s just—” Dustin says. “I hardly hear from you anymore. Like, I feel like I only know what’s going on with you because Robin tells me. And then today, it’s like—it’s like I’m not even here.”

Nice going, says the Eddie in his head.

Steve sets down the can. “No—God—I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you.”

Dustin looks up at him and crosses his arms over his chest. “Then what the hell, man? Where have you been?”

"I, um." Steve grits his teeth and stares down at the counter so hard it hurts.

"I swear to God, if you say you've been busy—"

"I have been busy."

"Oh fuck off."

"Dustin—"

"Don't Dustin me. Robin calls once a week and she's got school and work. There's no way you're busier." Dustin takes a breath, visibly pulling himself together before he says, "If you don't give a shit, you can just say so."

"No, I swear, that's not it."

Dustin raises his eyebrows at him. "Oh, so it is something."

Steve starts to pick at the label on the can.

The thing is, he wants to talk to him. He wants to talk to him so badly, he can feel it pressing against his lips, but he can’t. He shouldn’t. So the words stay there, frozen. And he’s worried that anything he does say will somehow set them loose in an avalanche. So speaking at all is—

Hard.

When he thinks of Eddie now, he’s looking at Steve with disgust, saying, And here I thought I was the coward.

Eventually, Dustin sighs. He turns away, shaking his head and Steve knows he’s failed him.

“Right,” Dustin says. “Cool.”

“I don’t—” Steve manages, and it’s enough for Dustin to turn back around, so he tries again. When he speaks, his voice is awkward and stilted as he turns each word over in his mind, checks it for traps. “I don’t want to tell you things that you shouldn’t have to carry.”

Dustin furrows his eyebrows. “Meaning…?”

“Meaning—” Steve huffs. He wishes he was better at this. “You’re just a kid.”

Dustin rolls his eyes. “I’m not that much younger than you, y'know.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Steve, if you’re having a hard time with everything that happened, you’re in the right house.” He points in the direction of the living room. “Everyone in there went through the same shit and worse, and don’t pretend like we’re not here for you. You don’t wanna talk to me? Fine. But at least talk to one of them. And don’t shut me out because—I don’t know—I’m fifteen and you don’t want to like, burden me or something. Because I do get it, man. I get it. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

Jesus, he sounds so grown up. Did Steve do that? Did he let the world ruin him?

The Eddie in his head glares at him like the answer is obvious. What do you think?

“I’m sorry—”

“You should be! I could’ve really used you these past few months but you’ve been freaking AWOL.” Dustin shakes his head. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I am your friend.”

“You sure don't act like it,” Dustin says, but there’s hardly any anger left in it, just hurt. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“So call me every once in a while.” Dustin punches him in the arm and—motherfucker, that kind of hurt. “Don’t disappoint me, Steve, or I will tell Robin.”

"Oh, Jesus."

"Yeah, I'm not fucking around, here."

"C'mere," Steve says, and pulls him into a tight hug. They're almost the same height now and Steve's heart aches about that. Time is so indifferent, and it just keeps on passing him by. He buries his nose in Dustin's hair to plant a fat kiss to the top of his head. Dustin makes a retching noise but doesn't pull away, not yet.

Over Dustin's shoulder, Steve pictures Eddie watching them, his face neutral, not quite approving, but not as vitriolic as before. Maybe that's a win.

Steve looks away. "I am sorry,"

"I know." Dustin sniffles a little and finally draws back to swipe at his nose. "My mom makes me go to this shrink in Indianapolis once a month, and he keeps telling me that like, everybody grieves differently—yadda, yadda, yadda—Whatever. My point is, I'm here for you, okay?"

"I hardly knew him," Steve says, and Jesus, he's tired of saying that.

Dustin scrunches up his face like he's said something stupid. "And? You're allowed to have feelings, Steve. It's not like you're stealing the grief from the rest of us."

Steve considers that, turns the idea over and over. Because okay, sure, maybe he is allowed to have feelings but he hardly feels like he's allowed to talk about them. He is the last person who should have the spotlight right now. Especially after what he'd done.

"Yeah. Okay." He squeezes his eyes shut. "Alright. That's about my limit for emotional shit. We good?"

"Yep. All good." Dustin nods and squares his shoulders, putting on masculinity like it's a silly little suit, like he takes it seriously, but only kind of. He points at Steve. "You tell anyone we hugged, I will spill all your secrets."

Steve snorts and ruffles his hair. "Ditto."

Neither of them mention that the Party has seen them hug plenty of times. It doesn't really matter.

Steve shoos him out into the living room so he can finish the pie. When the door swings shut behind him, Steve's smile fades.

"I'll be better," he says into the empty air. "I promise."

//

December 1986

Eddie.

I'm sorry, but I think this'll be the last Christmas I celebrate for a while. I know I said I would try, and I swear, I did, but I don't think I can do it again. Next year, I'll have to find an excuse. I'm so sorry.

Don’t worry, it was exceptionally normal. Meeting up at the Byers’s, gathering around a tree, exchanging presents—it was all very picket fence. But I couldn’t fucking shake you. Everywhere I looked was a reminder. Erica buying Will a new set of dice. Max getting Lucas a copy of the Hobbit so he can read it to her. Dustin and Mike insisting on setting an empty fucking place at the table—

This is all fine. Or it should be fine. I should be sad and regretful, that's normal, but I shouldn’t be resentful or hurt. I shouldn’t miss you like this.

But you’re in my fucking head. I’ll catch glimpses of you sometimes and I feel like I’m going crazy, and I have conversations with you all the time but—but it’s not you. It’s my own fucking head. I’ve created this version of you to make sure I remember, and he’s fucking mean.

Were you mean? I don’t think you were. I think you were spiky and melodramatic and when I knew you, you were overwhelmed, but I don’t think you were ever mean, not when it counted. I hate that I’m doing that to your memory, that I can’t keep my own self-loathing in check long enough to remember you right.

So I’m going to have to remove myself from situations like that, like Christmas, at least for a little while. It’s too much. I need to get better. For the kids. For you. For me.

I hope you can forgive me.

I'm sorry.

Steve tears the page out of the notebook—he’s graduated to this spiral-bound thing—and folds it in half. When he tucks it under his mattress, pressing it in with the others, it feels like completing a ritual. He’s certainly soothed by it. Fucking Dr. Jones and his theories.

Heading out of his room, Steve grabs a beer from the fridge and collapses on the couch. Robin is still in Hawkins, spending New Year’s with her parents, so he has the place to himself for the week. He can’t be sober for that.

So one beer very quickly becomes two, becomes six, becomes blasting Tears for Fears at midnight, singing into the neck of a bottle of Jack. Things are very blurry around the edges. When he moves too quickly—which is often—the cheap wallpaper in their apartment seems to move a step out of sync with everything else. He’s not going to remember this in the morning and thank fuck for that.

The tape rolls into “Head Over Heels” and he shuffles over to the couch. He lounges back with an arm thrown over his eyes and the whisky barely in the grip of his other hand as it knocks against the floor. He mumbles along with the first verse, getting the melody but almost none of the words. He never could remember them. Songs kind of sound like pleasant nonsense to him unless he sits down with the lyrics, and he hasn’t had the opportunity with this one. It hardly matters.

“Steve,” Eddie says.

Steve slides his arm up and peeks out from under it. “Ugh. Not now.”

He takes a swig of whisky and shuffles back into position.

“Excuse me?”

Steve huffs. “Robin said I’m not allowed to hate myself and drink at the same time, so like, come back later if ya gotta.”

He hears Eddie shift, the brush of fabric on fabric, which is—odd? He can’t remember why. Whatever. “This is a hell of a welcome, Harrington.”

Steve drops his arm and gives him a flat stare. Eddie looks different, a little dirtier than how he usually pictures him, and his hair’s pulled back. Steve doesn’t know if he’s ever seen him with his hair pulled back. Imagination is a powerful thing, he guesses. “I think I’ve been a very gracious host, all things considered.”

“What things?” Eddie crosses his arms, and—what jacket is that? Eddie had a leather jacket, not a denim one.

The thought tries to stick in his brain, but his brain isn’t exactly the most reliable surface right now. God, he feels sick. “What?”

“You said, ‘All things considered.’ What things?”

Steve pushes himself up to sitting and the room sways around him. He thinks he might have left his stomach back on the couch because the wave of nausea that hits him is staggering. There’s the clink of glass hitting laminate and he realizes that he’s dropped the whisky. It’s making a puddle around his feet. “Oh no.”

But then Eddie is there with a dish towel, righting the bottle and wiping up the mess. Something’s wrong about that. Steve frowns at him. “Stop that. It’s weird.”

Eddie looks up at him, eyebrow quirked. “Not used to us peasants waiting on you, hand and foot, King Steve? Surprising.”

Steve groans. Of course he’d call him that. “I’m gonna throw up.”

“Alright, why don’t we try standing up.” Eddie stretches up from his crouch and reaches out to steady Steve’s shoulder and he—

He touches him.

He touches him?

He touches him.

Steve yelps—there isn’t a better word for it. He pushes himself backward into the couch, scrambling up and over the back of it. When he manages to get to his feet, he reaches out a hand between them. “Ohhh no. No, no, no. This is it, isn't it? It is. I'm losing it. Are you…”

Eddie grimaces at him, sheepish as he holds his hands up, as he seems to say: Caught me.

Steve backs up into the kitchen table. A novelty cup from a Frisch’s Big Boy topples over so he grabs it and chucks it at Eddie’s chest. Eddie doesn’t even flinch, just watches it hit him and then clatter to the floor. He looks back up at Steve. “Did that help?”

Steve swallows. “You’re real.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“You’re dead.”

Eddie winces. “Maybe at one point, yes.”

“But not anymore,” Steve says, and it’s not a question.

“No,” Eddie answers anyway.

Steve feels his whole body shudder, like it's just remembered that he’s actually very intoxicated. He staggers forward a little but Eddie meets him before he has to slump against the table. The room is spinning now so Steve grips him tight. And there’s a hand on his shoulder and a hand on his arm and those are Eddie’s hands, because Eddie is alive. He’s alive.

“Eddie.”

Oh no.

“Yeah?”

“I—”

Steve shoves him to the side and pukes on the floor. He doesn’t remember much after that.

//

The morning is not kind to Steve Harrington. It almost never is. He has this habit of waking up suddenly, pushing himself up to sitting, gasping for air like he hasn’t left fight or flight since March. But he doesn’t do that this morning. Instead, he sort of oozes into wakefulness.

Yeah, that’s the word: oozes.

He feels sludge-like. His head is pounding and he feels weighted, like each movement requires twice the normal effort, like his body is full of wet sawdust.

He groans, pulling the blanket over his head. The dark is nice, but oh God, now he can smell himself. He tugs the blanket back down and huffs. Oh well. It’s not like he was going back to sleep anyway.

He cracks open an eye. There’s a glass of water next to his bed and a bottle of aspirin. He blinks at it a few times. Did he do that? How uncharacteristically thoughtful of Drunk Steve. Too bad sitting up to drink it is literally impossible. The sentiment is appreciated though. He closes his eyes again.

Then something shifts at the end of his bed.

He shoots up, his hand flying to the side of his bed, to his bat—to where the bat would be, if it were there. Where the fuck is his bat?

“Steve.”

Steve’s head snaps up at the sound, because that’s—

“What the fuck?”

Eddie’s sitting, cross-legged, holding up both hands like Steve is about to attack him, which is pretty fair because Steve wants to, because what the fuck?

“Look, there’s clearly no good way to do this—” Eddie’s interrupted by Steve grabbing the thing nearest to him—in this case, the bottle of aspirin—and throwing it at him. Eddie snatches it out of the air before it can hit him. “Stop doing that!”

“You’re dead!”

Eddie sighs. “Not anymore. We did this already. C’mon, Steve, keep up.”

“What the hell do you mean, not anymore?”

“I was dead, and now I’m not anymore.”

“How the fuck did you manage that?”

Eddie shrugs. “If I had to guess, I’d say that Creel has some sort of psionic influence on the Upside Down.”

“Fucking huh?”

Eddie’s shoulders slump and he looks up to the ceiling for strength. “Vecna brought me back to life with his Superman mind control powers, probably. I don’t know. For a guy who clearly likes the sound of his own voice, he never says anything useful.”

“I—” Steve blinks at him. “Superman doesn’t have mind control powers.”

Eddie furrows his brow. “Did you just correct me on a comic book character, Harrington?”

“Maybe,” Steve says, feeling a little dazed.

“Wonders never cease.”

Steve scrubs at his face with his hands. “Am I hallucinating?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Uh-huh.” Steve throws the covers off and gets to his feet. The full weight of his hangover settles over him the second he’s vertical and he has to manually remind himself that yes, living is a good idea and he should probably not opt out of it. Once he’s capable, he says, “I’m calling Robin.”

He makes it all the way to the phone, to picking up the receiver and hitting the first three digits of her parents' phone number before Eddie's grabbing it out of his hand. He hangs it up. "Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea."

And it's a tight corner, this spot between the kitchen counter and the table. Eddie is crowding him into it, and Steve thinks, not for the first time, that this situation might be out of his depth. "Why's that?"

Eddie's eyes dart across his face. He seems like he's debating something. "Because I can't be sure Creel's not watching us right now."

"What?" Steve shakes his head, and there's a feeling like ice down his spine. "No, Vecna's dead."

"You sure? Did you see a body?"

"I—" Did he? God, it was all such a blur. He'd been worried about Dustin. Vecna fell out of a window, on fire. It was safe to assume he was dead. They all went straight to the trailer park, job well done.

Unless it wasn't.

"I don't know—I was more focused on yours."

Eddie looks away, and maybe it's just that he's so close now, but Steve can see the scars. A web of them stretches across his neck, subtle and silvery and fully healed, but there regardless. In Steve's dreams, they're always so vivid. He had felt them under his fingers when they were fresh, when they were red and slick with blood—he hadn't been able to eat meat for months. But now? It was almost like it had never happened.

Almost.

Steve leans his weight against the wall, taking a slow, steadying breath. God, his bones feel so fucking heavy. "Eddie, what the hell is going on?"

Eddie turns back to him. For a moment, the corners of his eyes soften, and Steve imagines him as a different man, one who would apologize, would tell Steve he was lying, and take care of the problem alone just to save him the trouble. And if Steve was a different man, he'd let him. But you can't ask someone to be a martyr for you just because you're tired of being one yourself. No, it's better if only one of them bleeds, and it might as well be Steve. He's so good at it, after all.

"Tell me what happened to you," Steve says.

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek but resolve settles over him. "Okay. But you might want to sit down for this."