Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Steve should feel more exhausted than this.

He knows it, deep in his bones - I should feel tired, why am I not tired, why am I so full of this strange, irregular static-

Everyone around him looks as they should, when they make their way back from the Abyss (as Dustin keeps calling it. Privately, Steve thinks it looks like some kind of desert planet, like a scarier version of a Star Wars setting), haggard and ten years older than they all are. Mostly uninjured, miraculously. He and Dustin are covered in some kind of… goop, and he’s also - well. Mostly uninjured might not really apply to him, but that’s fine, because he’s alive, they’re all alive, and Vecna is dead, and the injury will probably…

Steve’s never really worried about injuries like that anymore. Not the way he used to be, before their last rendezvous into hell, before the bats. 

He’s processing, too. Everyone is, mostly in mute shock. Dustin looks very war-torn and spacey, so Steve places a hand on his shoulder, wincing at how sticky it is, to try and guide him as they make their way out of one hellscape and into another. 

He tries to wrap his head around it all.

Not the Vecna dying bit. Or El being free, kind of, sort of. 

The feeling.

The feeling he’d had when it… happened.

The thing is - Steve hasn’t really talked to anyone about it (other than a minor mention to Robin, who agreed to keep her trap shut), but he’s had these bizarre feelings, side effects, for ages now. Nothing so effective as to force him to ask anyone about it - stupid stuff. Stuff you might not even notice. 

For one, there’s the injury thing. The scars. 

When Steve had been attacked by the bats, and whatever other slimy creatures in the upside down, he’d figured they would scar. He was kind of bummed out about his neck being all gnarly.

But then - they kind of hadn’t. They’d healed, much faster than cuts like that normally did for Steve. A week later, the skin on his neck was smooth again, save for - he’d noticed, that in certain light (under the moon, if you can believe that, how oddly supernatural), the ring around his neck where the vine had choked him out looked sort of… silvery. 

Same with his chest, his guts. The one over his stomach - he’d been seen in a hospital for that one. They’d gone to change his dressings a few hours after he’d been admitted, and the nurse had pulled them off and frowned. 

“Who put these on for you, do you remember?”

Steve had shaken his head, dazed and exhausted. It was a different nurse, he’d remembered that much, an older lady with black hair. 

The new one - young and kind of sour looking, had sighed and swapped them for lighter bandages, muttering under her breath about overuse of supplies, barely a scratch. 

He’d looked down where she’d been cleaning and -

Gone.

Not gone, he was still injured, sure, but - 

They couldn’t have healed that fast. They couldn’t have. The flesh was already knitting together, as though the wound was weeks old, rather than hours.

They’d discharged Steve shortly after that. No point in taking up a bed when he only had some light flesh wounds. And when it had fully closed up, less than a week later - same thing. Silvery patches, soft and kind of puckered at the edge when he was in a certain light.

Steve just accepts it for one more level of weirdness amongst the rest of the weird shit and counts his blessings.

There’s other stuff, too. 

After being hit in the head one too many times, Steve’s hearing on one side had been kind of shoddy. After the Russians, Jonathan, and Hargrove. He’d been meaning to see a specialist about it, because he was almost deaf on his left side. 

After the bats, that was no longer an issue. In fact, something even more bizarre had happened - Steve’s hearing had got, like, really fucking good. Crazy good. He could hear people talking outside, rooms away, muffled and faint. He could hear people breathing. When he was really, really close to someone - and this had only happened a few times, once when he’d hugged Robin, and once when he’d been sprawled in a girl’s bed after the end of one of his more successful dating ventures - he could even hear their pulse. He swears it’s that - what else could it be? 

So. Kind of super hearing, that’s fun. However, at the same rate that his hearing improves, his sight declines. Nothing crazy, nothing too weird - his dad has reading glasses to be fair, although he hadn’t had to get them until after his fiftieth, so. Steve’s just worse at reading now. He can’t see shit if it’s super far away. Robin teases him about it when he stops being able to read the sign on the store across from Family Video on their shift, and then when he struggles to read some of the labels on the tapes when they start at the WSQK, she drags him to an eye test, and he, Steve Harrington, has to wear glasses now. So that sucks.

He only does it when he absolutely has to. Working, sometimes. Not in combat, he’d growled at Robin, when they’d all been getting ready and she’d asked where his glasses were. He doesn’t need them right now. Not unless Vecna’s planning on putting up signposts to his location at inconvenient distances. 

Better hearing, shitty eyesight. Again, nothing too crazy. His sense of smell is also maybe slightly better - Steve can’t work out whether or not that’s a good thing. It’s good, when he can smell something nice, or when he smells smoke and realises Robin’s about to burn down the WSQK because she’d left something in the toaster oven for too long downstairs. He can smell Robin, too, which is strange, and creeps her out when he can tell what room she’s in when she’s nearby. Robin smells like her store-brand apple shampoo, whatever she’s had for lunch that day, and something undefinable that kind of reminds Steve of sweat, but not in a bad way. 

Dustin smells like his mom’s detergent and faberge organics, which is hilarious, but also deeply sweet, because Steve knows he uses it because Steve recommended it to him when Dustin was like, twelve, and a little twerp who knew nothing about hair care. Steve can smell other people too, probably better than most, but he can only do the recognising-trick with people he’s very close to. 

The final (and most bizarre part) - are the weird, static, buzzing feelings. 

It’s like… a pull. It’s not good or bad. It’s alien. And it’s constant, humming in the background, as though Steve is constantly being drawn to something like a magnet, like the needle of a compass, except there’s no source for him to follow, like something’s fucking with the compass and true north’s direction is ever changing, undefinable. It just becomes something he learns to live with, like how he learned to live with crippling insomnia after that year they’d fought the demo-dogs, like how he’d learned to live with tinnitus after the Russians boxed his ears in, and then after that he’d learned to live with weirdly sharp hearing after the upside down had maybe fixed that for him, in exchange for a whole other bunch of strangeness. Steve copes. He’ll keep coping, once this is all over.

Which is why he pushes down the feeling that surges up inside him when Vecna dies. Like a phantom limb, cut off at the root. The buzzing, and the static - it doesn’t fully go away. It just becomes muted, momentarily, as though adjusting its frequency. 

And then they go down, down, down, back into the normal upside down, back to Hopper and Murray and the lab - Dustin had had a frustratingly cut-off, shit-signal-laden conversation over walkie, and to their dismay, Hopper had told them that the truck he and Murray had arrived in had somehow broken down, leaving them stranded. There’s other brief snippets about the bomb, and the plan - it culminates in them all clambering into the Bradley’s Best Buy truck and zipping over to get to them.

Steve’s side aches. He’d been snagged by the end of one of those tentacle… pointy… alien… creature arms. Briefly, but it had got him, slash, and now he’s pretty sure he’s heavily bleeding, and it really is quite painful. He winces and wheezes, and pulls his jacket overtop, trying to conceal the gash through the fabric until they’re out of here, because to be quite honest he has no interest in slowing down any of this, he wants to get the fuck out of dodge before anything else goes wrong. 

“Bad news,” Hopper announces, after they’ve arrived and huddled indoors, situated in the lab area, and he and Murray and Joyce and Nancy have spent like ten minutes outside, talking and arguing. The kids are all huddled together in one corner, shivering. Steve wonders what the fuck is taking so long, why haven’t they started loading up the truck yet?

“Slight delay on the plan. Two problems -”

“Delay?” Dustin squawks, “what delay. We did it. We did our bit. Evil defeated, kaboom - I thought that was the whole idea.”

“Yes, kid,” Hopper growls, looking as though he’s seconds aware from strangling the next teenager who tries to interrupt, “I remember. It’s nothing big, it’s just - Murray needs more time rigging up this final kill switch. We want that to go right, don’t we?”

They all stare at him, exhausted. 

“Don’t we?” Hopper repeats, through gritted teeth.

There’s mumbled assent, and he sighs, hands on his hips. “Just - stay put. It won’t be long, an hour, tops. Look after all the…”

He waves a hand in the direction of the younger kids and sighs, shaking his head as he stomps back out. Steve slumps back against the wall, trying to swallow down the noise in his throat as his wound twinges painfully. He meets Robin’s eyes, and she blinks at him dully, staring into nothing until Nancy approaches her, and she snaps out of her reverie. Steve looks away.

“You think you’re subtle,” Dustin mutters, leaning back against the wall beside him. Steve ignores him, because he knows what Dustin’s on about, knows Dustin probably caught the wince of pain across his face as he’d leaned against the wall, and he doesn’t really want him to kick up a fuss.

“I’m fine, Henderson, chill. We’re both making it alive out of this one.”

He winces after he says that, because - bit thoughtless. Tact was never really Steve’s forte. Dustin doesn’t react though, except to nod his head forward, wiping goo and muck off his hands with his sleeve. Everyone around them looks close to sleep, or death from exhaustion. Steve kind of wishes he was in a similar state, so he could dissociate easier. It’s hard, when everyone else is catatonic, and you’re in a state of constant… energy, something strange and old thrumming through your veins. Something calling you, unidentifiable. 

“Steve.”

“Yeah?”

Dustin breathes out slowly, as if gearing up for something.

“I’m only telling you this because I trust you.”

Uh oh.

“And - and I’m going to do it anyway, but… if you want, you can -”

“Going to do what?”

Dustin kicks at the ground with his shoe. Those are ruined, Steve thinks absently. Never gonna be able to clean those after this, not really.

“Go and see Eddie,” Dustin whispers, and Steve closes his eyes, worst fears confirmed.

“No.”

“Steve -”

“Dustin - come on. I - I do get it, I do, but… he’s gone, man. You know he’s gone. It’d just be… you wouldn’t gain anything from it.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Dustin says, turning to him, determined. Steve struggles not to roll his eyes, because of course Dustin wants to do this, when they’re so very close to escaping it all. To leaving this mess behind.

“And - I was talking to El. Ages ago, I mean. About… the upside down. We were talking.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m just - I’m interested in the chemistry of it all, you know? Like - the way the vines operate. And the way the ‘victims’ are… preserved, without any kind of nutrition, or whatever.”

He makes air quotations in the air when he says victims, and Steve looks over again at the group of kids on the ground, sitting huddled together, small looking. Dustin has his scientist voice on, the one he uses to explain stuff. Explain his brilliant theories. 

“Okay?”

“Okay. So - El actually mentioned, when all of this first started happening… when the first people were taken-”

He pauses here, and it takes Steve a second to realise why. When he does, it hits like a gut wound from a blunt instrument.

“Barb.”

“Yeah, Barb. She was, uh. Her body. It didn’t… decay, the way normal bodies do. Living matter here - it’s so different from what we know, and what we understand - so it makes sense that the same goes for decaying processes.”

“Dustin -”

“Wait, wait,” he pleads, hands up, shushing Steve. He glances around, but they’re kind of alone in this corner of the room, segregated off. “I just - if there’s any chance -”

“Any chance of what exactly?”

Dustin swallows. “Recovering him. Eddie’s body.”

Steve closes his eyes, and puts a hand over his face, moaning softly. Jesus, this kid. He’s too much.

“For Wayne,” Dustin pleads, “I just - I can’t bear it, I can’t - the idea of all of this being destroyed, and sucked away, and Eddie - he - I just - he died for me, Steve, so if there’s any chance -”

“Dustin, he won’t… if there is a body,” (which Steve doubts), “we don’t know what state it’ll be in, man. You really want to carry back -”

“Yes,” Dustin blurts, “and I - I want you to help. I know it’s a lot, Steve, I know -”

“It’s a lot, jesus, Henderson -”

“But we aren’t that far from the trailer, anyway. We aren’t. We’re close, like - fifteen minute walk. And this is my only chance. We have the trucks, and it’s the last time…”

He trails off, looking as though the words are drying up in his mouth, strangled down by some nameless force Steve himself is too familiar with. 

He makes his decision. It’s the same one he’s made over the last couple of years with these stupid teenagers - every time he’d had to babysit, every time he’d not been able to say no, to put his foot down.

“If we do this,” he warns, “you gotta listen to everything I say, Dustin. Everything. Okay?”

Dustin nods, eyes shiny. Steve sighs, defeated. 

“C’mon then. Let’s… take a leak.”

Steve knows that making this into a big deal, or trying to rope other people into it is a bad move. Dustin’s right, they are close by - and he figures everything in this place should be dead or dying off by now. Still, he grips the spear as they slink out of the room, muttering takin’ a leak to Robin on his way out into the hallway as she eyes them, suspicious. Eddie’s spear. 

Dustin tells him he knows another exit as they slink down the main hall, towards the back of the lab. It’s quiet as they pick through the hall, and Steve spots the old green exit sign quickly enough, familiar from last time. The door has no give, and they both have to shoulder at it to make their way through, Steve first, jumping at it in frustration. The door gives, and as he looks back - he swears he sees a little figure at the end of the hall, staring at them both. In some kind of suit.

“El,” Dustin confirms. He looks tired, and his mouth is set. Steve grips his shoulder.

“She okay?”

Dustin nods. “She… she’s fine. She told me.”

Steve nods, and they set off. He wants this done as fast as possible. He’s pretty sure this is going to make shit worse for Dustin in the long run, mentally, like trauma wise, but there’s no fucking way the kid’s going to listen to him, so he just trots along to keep up with Dustin’s half walk/half jog pace, wincing as the gash across his side stretches and bleeds, agonising. He knows that Dustin knows he’s injured, but he’s pretty sure Dustin doesn’t know how bad it is, else he might not have asked Steve to come along. Steve doesn’t intend to let him find out.

He finds himself wondering (as he does, frequently), if Eddie would have been able to talk sense into Dustin in a situation like this. If it had been Steve who’d stayed back with him, Steve who’d died, in this cold and unforgiving environment. Eddie, who’d have to deal with the fallout, and who might have been able to help Dustin cope better. Steve swallows it all down like normal, bitter and aching. His footsteps feel too heavy, too loud in the stillness when they get close to the trailer park, and he realises too late that he’s breathing really heavily, arm wrapped round his wound, biting his lip and shaking. 

Dustin turns to him, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. 

“Steve -”

Steve shakes his head furiously, sweat beading at his temples. “No,” he huffs, “come - on -”

Dustin makes a small, frustrated noise, but they’re at the entrance now, the start of Forrest Hills trailer park, and Steve moves faster, groaning in agony as he does so. Dustin has to run to keep up after a second. As they approach the Munson's trailer - the earth cracked, but otherwise preserved as normal - Steve whirls on him.

“Stay here,” he tells Dustin, teeth gritted.

“What? No, I -”

“Dustin,” he growls, “you promised. Come on man, listen to me. Let me go first. Let me do this.”

Dustin’s lip quivers, and he folds his arms across his chest. For a split second, he looks comically young, and Steve wants to kick himself for even allowing this at all. It’s incredible that they haven’t seen any… creatures, yet. 

Dustin nods jerkily, and Steve turns, slow, and walks forward around the trailer, out of sight.

And there it is.

The place where Eddie Munson died.

Steve stops, breathing hard. 

There’s no body. 

Or maybe there is - it’s hard to tell, because rather than bones or decaying flesh or a slimy corpse - all there is is… what honestly looks like a cocoon. He approaches it slowly.

It looks a bit like the weird slimy cocoons Vecna had all the kids trussed up in in the abyss, which shouldn’t be that surprising. But Eddie was supposed to be dead. Why would Vecna want to do that to a corpse? Unless it wasn’t Vecna.

Because Steve knows, now. He knows, in the back of his mind, sure as the static in his ears - there is still something living here, in this underworld they stand in. Something nameless, something old. It’s weak, very weak - but it did not die off with Henry Creel.

He walks around the edge of the cocoon, which is bigger than the ones the kids were in. Figures. The vines here look as though they’ve started to decay, to rot. They look as though they’ve been-

There’s a hole. A recess. 

A body shaped void. 

Steve swallows, breathing shallow now. He peeks inside, moving the dead vines out of the way. 

Empty. 

The ground below, under the vines, where a… person, or a person shaped thing should be - it’s kind of… clean. Fresh, as though untouched by the ash and decay and gore that surrounds them. 

Preserved.

The vines at the top, around where the head and shoulders should be - they’re ripped apart. Torn asunder. It looks as though they’ve been wrenched apart, actually. 

“Jesus,” Steve whispers. He looks up, but Dustin is being obedient for once. He’s still alone.

Except.

He feels an odd kind of prickle over his skin. 

He feels as though -

He looks around, gazing frantically at the trees, at the trailer. For some kind of sign, some kind of movement. A shadow, a rustle in the brush. But there’s nothing. It’s just Steve, Steve and the dead vines and the space where Eddie Munson died, and the odd sensation of being watched. Of being observed.

There’s a glint of something on the ground, though. Something shiny, metallic. Steve bends for it, reaches too quickly - he hisses in pain as he doubles over, wounded, and there’s a trickle of blood coming out from below his shirt now. He pulls his hand away from where he’d clutched at it in fright and it comes away sopping with the stuff. He watches it drip on the ground, sighing. It drips near the metallic glint, which turns out to be a ring.

It’s a man’s ring. It’s chunky, with a cross on it. Very tarnished silver, with the top surface of it shiny, as though someone had rubbed at it over and over again. Steve pockets it. He has no fucking idea what to do. What to tell Dustin. They need to leave, need to leave soon, but if Dustin sees this -

“Shit! Fuck - jesus -”

He yelps, startling backwards, nearly tripping on a vine in his haste, and he hears Dustin run, run around the trailer, calling for him, hoarse and desperate.

“Steve? Steve?! Steve?”

“Here,” Steve calls, weakly. He’s still staring at the cause of his jumpiness, blinking in shock. He can’t seem to move away from it. He’s stock still, fixated on the creature that has crawled from the edge of the grass, dragging itself forward on limp wings, as though inches from death. Towards Steve’s blood, where it dripped on the ground. It moves slowly, feeble, weak. Dustin stares at it in horror as he joins Steve.

“Fucking bloodsucker,” Dustin hisses, and he’s shaking, shaking madly beside Steve. He can’t tear his eyes off the demobat, the way it moves, scrabbling at the ground, flailing and dying as it tries frantically to reach Steve’s blood.

All of a sudden, Steve realises.

“There’s more of them,” he says dully. “More. Here. Only here, only by this trailer.”

Dustin jerks back as if shot. 

“We should - we should kill it,” he breathes, gripping his spear tighter. 

“No,” Steve says softly. “Don’t.”

“We should -”

“It’s already dying, Dustin. It’s just… it’s weak.You shouldn’t....”

Dustin stares at him.

“We need to leave here,” Steve swallows. “Now.”

It feels wrong, being here. He feels wild and unmoored, fixated on the bat. It’s like the weird feeling in Steve has multiplied. The sensation of being watched has grown stronger too, insurmountable. As though hundreds of eyes peer at them from the trees, none of them visible in the gloom. The feeling isn’t exactly… bad, it’s just stronger than normal. It takes root in Steve’s chest, tugging at him to stay, stay here, stay. 

He feels corrupted.

“What about -”

Dustin glances at the cocoon.

“He’s - there’s no body.”

“What?”

“Dustin,” Steve says, turning away, “come on. He - I’m sorry. I guess… everything decays, right? Even here. It’s been a long time.”

“You really didn’t find anything? In that-” he gestures to the vines. Steve really doesn’t want him to start poking around in that. They need to leave, now. He slides his hand into his pocket, over the ring, squeezing it tight. 

“No.”

Dustin swallows. “Okay. Okay, let’s - let’s go.”

That, Steve can do.

He walks faster back to the lab, not because he feels any better (worse, he feels worse by the second, worse worse worse worse worse), but because he’s frantic now with the need to get out of here. His shirt pulls and stings against the wound, rubbing it, tight and bloody, and he's forced to stop, almost doubled over, breathing hard.

“Steve,” Dustin panics, “fuck, I didn’t - I didn’t know, I didn’t -”

“I’m - fine,” he wheezes, shrugging off his jacket and throwing it at Dustin. He peels off layers until he’s pulling the sticky undershirt away, groaning in agony. Dustin’s eyes are wide. He’s so very pale.

“Oh my god,” he utters softly, and Steve can’t look at him. He rips at the cotton shirt where it’s frayed, and together he and Dustin bind a strip of it, the cleaner bit, around his middle, over the gash, tight and agonising. There’s a horrific sense of deja vu about the whole ordeal, except when this happened the first time round, Nancy’s hands were firm and sure as she bound his injury, whereas Dusin’s shake frantically, and he cannot seem to meet Steve’s eyes. Steve hates himself. He drips blood everywhere as they clear the last section before the lab, and he’s delirious with pain now, staggering. He fastens up the jacket over his front, wiping blood off onto the rest of the soiled shirt. He really doesn’t want to frighten Robin with this. She’s probably already out of her mind with worry already. He and Dustin edge around the side of the building, spying Hopper loading kids up into the truck. He dumps the bloody shirt on the ground, then makes for the side door, Dustin following, whispering under his breath about suicidal maniacs. 

You’re one to talk, Steve thinks, and he limps up the hallway, wiping sweat from his brow. 

“Where the hell were you?” Robin hisses, when they come back in. “I - I told Hop you were taking a shit. Any longer and I would have called a code red, Steve -”

“We were,” he says, as straight faced as he could manage. “Just. We couldn’t find the bathroom.”

She stares at him, unimpressed. Nancy flanks her, glaring at the two of them.

“Uh huh. Both of you.”

“Yeah.”

“Spent like, forty minutes taking a shit.”

“IBS,” Dustin croaks, and Steve has to force himself not to laugh hysterically. God, he missed Dustin. He missed talking to him, normally. The kid is deranged.

“This isn’t over,” Robin hisses, as Hop re appears. 

Steve glances around suddenly, searching for El. For a frantic second he thinks she’s missing, still down that shadowy hallway - but then he spies her, and sighs in relief. She looks pale and wan, face drawn. She sits next to Will on the ground, talking softly. Maybe she really had been taking a shit. Even supergirls shit, Steve thinks. Then he feels the weird, crazed laughter bubbling up again like blood bubbling up in his mouth, and he has to stop, stop doing anything, stop thinking, stop thinking about - about anything other than the static, to try and calm down. He follows Robin out mindlessly as they file towards the truck, ready to drive. He glances down at the truck and frowns.

It makes no sense, but he’s suddenly gripped with the urge to… to check under the truck.

Which is insane.

Sure, it’s a lifted thing. The gap is big enough for someone to crawl under there, and yet why - 

The pull, Steve thinks. The tug.

He shakes his head, dazed. Just to be safe, he checks quickly in the back of the truck as Hopper does a headcount. Everyone there. Everyone is safe. Nobody is hiding under the truck. He shakes his head again, Robin staring at him. He figures she’ll write all this weird behaviour off later as pain and exhaustion. His wound aches and tugs as he makes his way to the driver’s side.

And then he freezes.

Stops.

Because -

He looks back, breathing heavily. 

The ground. The ground where he’d dropped the shirt, the bloodied rags - it’s… it’s bare. No shirt, no blood - he can’t see it anywhere. He stares, eyes roving over the ground, but there’s no sign of it. What the hell. 

He has a sudden vision of the dying, weakling bat crawling desperately towards Steve’s blood earlier, and swallows. Maybe one followed them here from the trailer. Maybe- maybe it dragged off Steve’s shirt. To -

“Steve?”

He blinks, and turns to see Nancy staring at him.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

He nods, fast and sharp. “Yeah,” he says, “sure I am, Nance. All good.”

“Okay,” she says, biting her lip. “Well - we’re all good here. And I think Hop’s about to… set everything in motion.”

Steve nods again, and then climbs in the front. He tries to shake off the sense of being followed. Of being watched.

Stalked.

It’s fruitless, but at least Robin is a good distraction. She’s tired out, Steve can tell, but she still chats away at him on the drive back. Still bitches at him over how badly he stinks. Steve relaxes, minutely. 

Maybe this really is the end, he thinks. 

The end of it all. The truck shudders and jumps as they head towards the gate, the exit, the opening.

And when Steve drives through it, out of hell, the world erupts.

There’s so much noise and chaos that he barely has time to register what happens as it actually takes place. The way the truck jumps, as if it had been shot, and lurches all funny, and there’s warnings and lights and it skids to a halt and suddenly there’s people yelling, guns in his face, in Robin’s face, the military everywhere. Steve groans and struggles to stay upright as they haul him around, he can hear Robin yelling his name, yelling he’s fucking injured, he’s bleeding, please, please, don’t hurt him -

And then he sees her, at the centre of it all. It’s like looking up at a beacon, his eyes drawn up there as if dragged against their will.

The pull.

The Pull.

“El,” he breathes, and she stares out, past him, into nothing. He knows, suddenly. What she’s going to try and do. Out of desperation. He struggles, but he can’t stop staring at her. Her face, blank and expressionless. Out of all of the kids, she looks like she’s aged the most. It’s not a natural kind of aging. It’s weariness. 

She looks tired.

Steve hears Dustin crying, Will yelling and yelling and begging, begging so loudly, Mike screaming her name. He cranes his neck in time to see Dustin wrench himself out of the soldier’s arms where he’d had Dustin pinned, and Steve aches. He looks back at Eleven. 

He remembers, suddenly, as if the memory is drawn up from a deep, dark well. The way she’d looked when he’d served her and Mayfield at scoops that one time, when Mayfield had broken rank and taken her out. Steve hadn’t really known her very well then. She’s been sort of… unfamiliar to him. Separate, a level above everyone else. The girl who saved the world, standing giggling in his store, ice cream smeared around her mouth. 

She had looked so, so young.

His heart seizes, but he can’t even bring himself to struggle, not really. He can’t look away, either, as the world implodes behind her, and he sees it all sucked back, as if drawn into a vortex like in a cartoon, like in one of the bad sci fi movies Dustin made him watch last year when they’d been holed up hiding away in Steve’s home. Like a black hole, he thinks. He feels the pull, unbearable, unbearable.

And then suddenly, the world around him starts to suck inwards too. Black hole.

Steve can’t think what causes it. He’ll ruminate on it later, but in the moment - all he sees is El’s face go from emptiness to surprise, blank shock, and then suddenly there’s debris exploding from behind him, half a wooden facade of a building ripped away into the portal, battering at the edge, soldiers screaming and yelling as they fall forwards, and she’s - is she there? Steve doesn’t see her, he saw a flash of something wooden at her back when the direction of the pull shifted, when shit starts spiralling out of control, a portal to an open storm, whirling madly as he feels the truck at his back creeeak as it moves, violent, catastrophic. He thinks he sees her crash forwards to avoid some of the debris scattering around the square, buffeted about as though the pull is causing some kind of whirling air pocket where they are. It’s hard to tell - he’s not sure if he can see her as he cranes his head around the side of the truck again, thinks he sees her face, shocked, broken from a dream, thinks he sees a flash of red as she vanishes in amongst what looks to be several trees, uprooted, and bits of a building, wooden planks, roof tiles. The soldier holding Steve lets go of him suddenly, because he has to - multiple of his comrades in the centre of the square have been flattened by massive chunks of what looks to be some sort of billboard, all rotting and corrupted in that specific upside down fashion.

Steve hears Robin scream his name, feels her hand on his shoulder, forcing them both down against the side of the truck. He can hear screaming, yelling, crashing, great gusts of wind and what sounds like the collapse of half a woodland behind them, a dying ecosystem breathing its final breath. He turns to the side as he squats there and sees Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Will all huddled next to Robin. Will in particular looks… he looks agonised, terrified. His mouth is open in a silent scream, his eyes rolled back into his head as he shakes. He almost looks - he looks like - 

Steve squints, shaking his head. It’s insane. It almost looked as though something was exiting Will. He stares at Mike, who has his eyes squeezed shut, gripping Will’s hand - and then realises who’s missing.

“Nancy?” he screams, terrified, and Robin yells back, at first not loud enough to hear, and then Steve catches snatches of it among the chaos, snatches of inside the truck, and the kids.

Robin holds his hand, which is all nasty and slidy with blood again, because he’d gripped his wound when he’d ducked down against the wheels of the truck again and the motion had torn something new. She’s shaking, as they watch soldiers run for cover, dragging people out among the ruins, and they feel the force of something smack-ing against the other side of the truck. 

And yet despite all of the insanity around him, Steve can feel only one thing.

The sensation of something - someone - behind him, on the ground, where they’re huddled together.

There’s something under the truck, he thinks. Oh god, there’s something here. I was right, and I didn’t check.

Something followed us out.

A minute later, when the upside down dies - and the debris being ripped and flung about madly has stopped, leaving a sea of garbage in its wake - Steve turns, slowly, ignoring Robin’s crying, and the yelled instructions of the men pointing guns at them. He has to see. He has to know.

When he peeks underneath, there’s nothing there.

Whatever was there has left. Snuck away, amongst the riot. 

You’re being insane, Steve thinks, there was never anything there, you’re just being paranoid, you’re paranoid.

But that feeling. The feeling of being watched. 

It’s lifted slightly. As though whatever was there before - whoever - has departed. Slithered off and out of sight.

Steve stands, shakily, and faces the barrel of the gun. Stares out into the aftermath, still holding Robin’s hand.

September, 1989

“Look at you,” Steve grins, pointing his fork at Dustin, egg yolk dripping off the tines as he waves it in the air while Dustin rolls his eyes. His hair is backlit in the sun as they sit in the cramped diner booth, and he stirs a packet of sugar into his coffee, looking agitated. 

“Back already, two weeks into being a college boy. You miss me that much, Henderson?”

“Sure, Steve. I missed you - not my mom, or her laundry machine.”

“You drove almost four hours from Chicago to do your laundry,” Steve says, deadpan. He scoops up another mouthful of potato hash-egg-sausage goodness. This diner does the best fuckin’ breakfast. 

“That, and I promised my mom I’d visit every month. What’s the harm if I do so a lil’ early?”

Steve knows better. He won’t push Dustin, because that’s not what he needs right now- and besides, it’s sweet, the fact he’s already back here in the proverbial slums of Hawkins. It’s cool that he asked Steve to meet him for breakfast when he’d clearly got in pretty late last night.

“So - first week of classes,” Steve comments, mouth half full. “How’d they go? Did you actually attend them all, or were you too busy par-tay-ing?”

Dustin rolls his eyes again, as he’s wont to do. Steve only says it because he knows it’ll get a rise out of Dustin - the kid wouldn’t skip class if you paid him a hundred bucks to do so. He’d been talking up his major to Steve for the two months running up to him moving out to Evanston for the first semester. Steve had even helped him move - drove the truck out with Claudia in the front, annoying Dustin by singing along loudly to Madonna with his mom. He’d helped unpack all of Dustin’s boxes of nerd junk, and then they’d all gone out for pizza after. Steve had stopped feeling weird about Mrs Henderson treating him as some kind of surrogate son years ago. She’d beaten it out of him with enough fawning over how good of an influence he was on Dustin, enough hugs and invites over for Christmas if his parents weren’t home (which they rarely were). It’s easy now, having this. It had felt good, helping Dustin move on, move away from Hawkins and all of its ghosts. Move on to the next step. 

Dustin starts blabbering about how cool his professors are immediately, and about how he’d signed up to some robotics extracurricular club, and about the DnD club he’d seen a flyer for, and how interesting intro to microbiology is. Steve nods and uh huh’s in all the right places, scraping his plate clean as sunlight spills in through the diner windows. Dustin’s in a Northwestern hoodie. He looks happy.

“You heard from the others? You guys call or whatever? Will or Lucas, Max?”

Dustin nods, cheeks moving furiously as he swallows down another mouthful of waffle. “Yeah,” he manages eventually. “We call. Me and Lucas are gonna meet up at the end of the month, Max too if she can get it off work.”

Steve shakes his head. “Can’t believe Mayfield. She - I should have expected she’d go for something crazy like that.”

Dustin frowns. “What, the job at the garage? It’s only part time. And she’s at vocational school for it anyway, why wouldn’t -”

“No, I know that,” Steve scoffs, “I just… I don’t know. It’s a big thing, jumping into school and work and whatever else after she spent so long… you know.”

“Yeah. But I think that’s kind of how she copes, y’know? Besides, means her and Lucas could move out together. Have you been out to their place?”

“Duh, I helped them move. And they’re home more often than you are to be honest.”

“Indy is way closer than Chicago!”

“I know, I know,” Steve grins, tone lightly teasing. “Not a competition, Dustin. Chill.”

Dustin pushes more waffle around his plate. “Will called.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s he settling in?”

Dustin shrugs. “He’s kind of... he acts like he’s fine, you know? Like there’s no issues. But I feel like he’s…”

“Lying?”

Dustin scrunches up his face. “Not lying, just… just not being entirely honest. With us. Or himself, even.”

Steve nods. “He won’t be back for a while, I guess.”

“No. Thanksgiving, I think - Mike wants to host a big DnD session.”

“Huh.”

“You see a lot of him? Mike mentioned you guys were hanging out.”

Steve cracks up. “Are you jealous, dustybun? You know I can only handle Wheeler in small doses. I just see him a lot around town, he’s the only one still here since he deferred college shit for a year.”

“He said you visit him at work!”

“Maybe I just like visiting the library, you ever consider that?”

Dustin blinks at him. “Oh.”

“What,” Steve narrows his eyes, “no joke about my reading ability? No wisecrack over my massive intellect?”

“No,” Dustin scowls. “That’s… it’s cool. If you’re visiting it. The library.”

Steve isn’t. Not really - he actually does go there to check in on Mike. Occasionally. When he’s very, very bored.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he says instead, reaching across to ruffle Dustin’s hair. “Anyway. Give baby Byers my love. Jonathan’s in town still, actually.”

“Thought he’d be back at NYU by now,” Dustin comments, and then he frowns, tacking on, “man it’s still so weird that you guys are like, friends now. Cool - but weird.”

Steve shrugs. “His classes don’t start till October, so I think he’s here to start helping pack up Joyce and Hop’s place before the move in the new year. And what can I say? Experiencing the apocalypse will do that to ya. Form lifelong friendships with your sworn rivals, etcetera etcetera.”

“Yeah,” Dustin snorts, “that and the fact Nancy Wheeler dumped both of you. Shared experience there, I guess.”

“Asshole. I don’t even think she dumped him, you know. Think it was amicable.”

“Big words.”

“Ah ha,” Steve grins, pointing at him. “Dig at my intellect!”

“Ugh. Whatever. You’re paying for this, right? You know, since I’m a broke college student now.”

“When do I not?” Steve mutters under his breath, and he stands, stretching his arms above his head, and asks for the bill.

He drops Dustin off at his mom’s house after, but before Dustin can leave the car, he hesitates, shuffling his feet in the footwell. He’s going to say it now, Steve thinks. Whatever he’s been wanting to say during the entirety of breakfast together.

“So,” Dustin starts, awkward. “You - you said you’re picking up the keys this week, right?”

Ah. 

“That’s right.”

Dustin nods, jerkily. Steve knows why he’s being a little weird about this.

“Is it that close to the trailer park?” he blurts out. “Your new place?”

“I guess. Yeah, it’s next to it. The little row of houses on the right when you pull in there.”

“Gonna be a big step down from Loch Nora,” Dustin side eyes him. “From your big palace.”

Steve stares out the front windshield. 

It’s not, really, he thinks. It’s not a big step down, because I sleep in the RV. I haven’t stepped foot in that ‘palace’ for a month now except to shit and shower.

But Dustin doesn’t know that. Nobody does. Not even Robin.

“I guess. I’ll make it work, Henderson, don’t worry about me. I’ll even let you crash when it’s done up nice if you really want.”

“Steve,” Dustin says, biting his lip, and here it is. “I went to visit Eddie’s grave last night.”

“Last night? Jesus, Dustin - didn’t you get in at like, one in the morning?”

Dustin nods. “I just - I wanted to check. To check on it.”

Steve sighs.

“People had, like, thrown a bunch of dirt on it again. All over the headstone, like a bucket of dirt.”

“People are fucking assholes.”

“I think - I don’t know, I just… I can’t go and check anymore. You know. I can’t go and see if people are doing stuff like that.”

“Yeah.”

“And - I just - I don’t want it to get left like that, to assholes ruining it. And if Wayne came, came to visit -”

“Dustin,” Steve says gently, “Eddie wouldn’t want you freaking out over this, man. He’d want you to… to move on. To be happy. You know that.”

“I am,” Dustin frowns, “I am happy, I just -”

“And he has other people here who… I know his other friends go to see the grave, remember? We saw them. After graduation last year. The other guys in Hellfire.”

“Gareth,” Dustin says absently, “and Jeff. They’ve both moved away, I think.”

Steve sits back in his seat, and closes his eyes.

“I’ll go.”

Dustin whips around to stare. “You will?”

“Yeah. I don’t mind. I’ll go and… I’ll check to see if anyone’s pulled some shit like that. Left it a mess. I’ll keep it nice. For you, and for Wayne.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously, don’t sound so shocked. I’m a nice guy, haven’t you heard?”

Steve’s aiming for levity here, but Dustin (as usual), doesn’t get the memo. He’s so heartfelt. He’s so sincere, it hurts sometimes to be around him, even when he cloaks it all up in sarcasm.

“I know that. I know you are.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve mutters, staring out the window, embarrassed now. Now he really does have to check. Now that he can see the tension bleed out from Dustin’s shoulders, the weight lifted off his chest. “I’ll stop by after work every week or something. Have a look in.”

“Okay,” Dustin mumbles. “Thanks, Steve.”

He climbs out of the front, and when the car opens, Steve pauses, frowning. There’s a scent in the air that makes his nose wrinkle up. Chemical, pungent.

“Dustin?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s… is your mom doing some yardwork or something?”

Dustin cocks an eyebrow up at him. “Uh… she is, I think. Why?”

“Just. Weird smell, I guess.”

“Ugh. You have a freaky nose, you know that Steve? It’s ‘cause Mrs Bradbury down the road got in everyone’s heads this week at their book club meeting about some new grass virus or whatever.”

“What?”

“Yeah, ‘cause a lot of the grass and greenery around town is dying off, like, way too early for the season. Must’ve been a cold snap. It’s all the way out from the playground to up here.”

Steve nods.

“Don’t sweat it,” Dustin rolls his eyes, “I was kind of suspicious at first, but me and Lucas took a closer look. It’s just dead grass. It’s just my mom being paranoid.”

“Yeah, I know. Now go on, shoo. I gotta get to my afternoon ‘shift’, as it were.”

Dustin salutes him as he walks backwards. “Good luck raising your mini jocks.”

“Good luck making your robot army,” Steve grins at him, waggling his fingers in a wave. “See ya, Henderson.”

Steve likes his Saturday sessions the best, out of all of the practices he oversees during his weekly rotations on shift as a little league coach. He has to work Wednesdays and Fridays after school finishes up from four till eight, and Saturday from twelve till six (not counting his other job at the High School teaching sex ed on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays during the school day), but Saturdays go the fastest for whatever reason. The kids are always better rested, less whiny, happier to be there. The parents are less often late for pickup.

“Again,” he calls out to the kid currently front and center in the bullpen, Sammy Jones, Jonesy, the other kids call him, a sandy-haired boy with buck teeth and a desperate need to prove himself. “Focus on your follow through, remember?”

He’ll make a decent pitcher at some point if he keeps on throwing like this, Steve thinks absently. He has a little row of them waiting to go outside, ready to throw, but none of them have Jonesy’s aim. His little face screws up in determination as he twists, arm back, ready to let fly. Steve checks his watch. Should go check on the ones running laps just outside, in a minute. It’s quarter to six, and they should really be cooling down now before the brigade of overly invested and anxious parents descend in masses upon the field for pickup.

“Good,” he cheers, when the ball thwacks into the net, “that’s good. Sorry guys, we gotta wrap this up - everyone back out onto the field to cool off, c’mon. Let’s go, go!”

The sun is still bright in the sky, the air warm for mid September. Steve squints across the field, tugging his hat down further over his hair. 

He feels a prickle over his neck. Over his skin.

He shakes it off.

“All right!” he calls, as they all line up in front of him, rows of sullen, sunburned cheeks and grass stained baseball whites. He starts them off on a cool down, and tries to push the pull down out of his mind. Lately, it’s been… well. It’s not been worse, per se. It’s his normal brand of static.

It’s just been more directed. 

It’s kind of like - before everything happened back in ‘87, when they were just living life under military lockdown and playing the waiting game- the strange, humming feeling didn’t have any real kind of source. Or it did, but the source was everywhere, so there was no specific way for Steve to feel pulled towards.

Now, it’s a lot weaker. It’s easier to shove down and ignore. But it feels like sometimes it changes, as though Steve is tuning into a radio station, and the signal gets stronger at certain points for no discernable reason. He sometimes hits the right frequency, as though the source of the pull is closer somehow, in a certain direction. It’s been worse… stronger, at least, over the last few months, since summer. Right now it feels as if it’s north of his location.

Well. The main source does anyway. Normally he feels that kind of change, that uptake in weird feelings activity later on in the day, but it’s not like he can ask anybody about what any of it means, so. He just tries to shrug it off.

There is actually another, different type of call Steve feels attuned to. A different kind of feeling, a different type of static, colder, crueler.

Deep, deep in the woods. The woods beyond the old Creel House, out near Hop’s old cabin.

But Steve doesn’t go there. He patrols around it sometimes. But something inside him tells him don’t, stay back, stay away. 

Like the normal hum inside of him recognises whatever occupies that territory, and is keeping him afar. Keeping him back.

The entire thing exhausts him. He has enough to deal with in his every day regular life, what with his continuing failed relationships, his living situation, the classes and little league training programs and the constant, ever-present fear that things might suddenly plunge back into chaos. So Steve ignores it, because he’s got really good at that. Ignoring problems. Especially ones that really don’t have any solutions, so why bother thinking about it at all, especially when it usually doesn’t affect him during working hours, only growing more intense later at night.

He waves off the last kid being picked up (six thirty, late but not terrible), and finishes packing away his equipment, locking up the batting cage and the field entrance as he leaves. He wipes sweat from the back of his neck as he climbs into his truck, parked in the cool shady area of the parking lot, and then decides it is worth swinging by the library on his way home. It’s been a minute since he’s seen Mike, and while they still aren’t exactly… close, the way he and Dustin are (or the way he and Lucas are, or the way he and Max are), Steve does kind of worry about the little twerp. He sort of relates to some of his struggles now, what with Mike deferring college.

Besides.

Not like he has anything better to do.

He grits his teeth as he parks up, a painful knot in his chest as he thinks about Kristen. They’ve been broken up for three weeks now, and it still stings, despite the fact it was Steve who called it off, and not her. It’s always Steve that calls it off. He’s not sure he’s ever going to find someone who he's going to really work with. But he really had wanted it to work with Kristen. So, so badly. On paper, she’d been perfect. 

She likes kids - she’s a pediatrician, for god's sake. She wants multiple of her own, and she’d been oddly upfront about that with Steve, something he’d admired in her during their early dates. She had been sweet and kind, but also strong and sort of no-nonsense tough in that particular way Steve finds himself drawn towards in women. She’d moved here from another town, so no issues about his whole King Steve asshole personality type in high school, and they’d actually had a lot in common- both outdoorsy, both very active, she’d been good in bed… 

Fuck. It’s just - it’s so stupid. Steve is so picky.

But there just hadn’t been that spark. 

It had sort of been there, when they’d first hooked up, after a first date arranged by a mutual friend of Vickie’s at the hospital. It had kind of worked. The sex had been good. They’d got along well. Things had been easy.

But the problem is obvious in the same way it had been obvious in all of his other failed relationships.

Steve Harrington knows what it’s like to be in love. 

And it’s just - it wasn’t the same.

The constant, ever-present want to see them, especially early on. The way your heart rate rises when you catch their eyes on you, the way your skin feels when they touch you. That crackling, electric tension that never really goes away, even after you sleep together- it just fades momentarily and then builds again, fizzling, warming up until the air feels molten, and you’d do anything, give anything, to touch them, kiss them, feel close to them. The desperate need to keep them happy, safe, warm. 

Steve has had it before. He knows there’s a genuine possibility he could have that again. So how can he settle for easy warmth when he’s experienced that burning, urgent desire?

He’s pretty sure Kristen had worked that out kind of early on. Their on-again off-again thing is still the longest relationship he’s had since Nancy (five months, to be exact), and yet - he’d never introduced her to Dustin. To anyone other than Robin, he’s pretty sure. And Steve had always stayed at hers after they’d been out on a date or whatever - she never came over to his (how could she, when Steve barely slept in that house? There’d be no room for her in the RV.) Sleeping at Kristen’s was nice, at least. He misses that, when he’s huddled up alone in the tiny RV bed. Getting the keys to his place on Monday feels like it might finally break that habit, make a move forward. And hey - at least Robin no longer has to deal with the issue of Steve dating her ex-girlfriend’s close work friend. Steve’s pretty sure Vickie and Kristen probably gossip about the two of them together, which - fair enough. He’s not sure exactly why Robin broke things off - maybe distance, she’s very avoidant when the subject comes up - but he does know that things didn’t exactly end on great terms, so. Steve just sort of avoids the hospital. Which any normal person does anyway.

He’s still deep in thought as he wanders into the library, which is due to shut shop in fifteen minutes, at seven on the dot. He glances around for Mike, but he isn’t behind the desk. Wheeler works four days out of the week here, and Steve is pretty sure he spends the other three stuck in his mom’s basement reading, or banging out shit on his typewriter. Mike won’t tell him what he’s writing, just rolls his eyes and tells Steve he wouldn’t get it, and that it isn’t anywhere near finished anyway so drop it, Steve, leave it alone.

He sits on the front steps as he sees the last of the public spill out before the doors lock up, chattering loudly and gripping piles of books, prancing about the parking lot. The sky is beautiful this evening - pale orange gold, streaks of pink and purple over the faint wisps of clouds in the distance as the sun dips below the horizon. He can tell when Mike approaches without having to look round - can hear his squeaky trainers yards away, and he smells the way he always smells - old books, and like something dusty, trapped indoors.

“Steve?”

He turns, and Mike plonks down next to him, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Hey.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“Can’t I just say hi? What, is my company really that painful?”

Mike snorts, stretching his lanky legs out on the steps. He looks very pale. Steve wonders if he’s actually spent any time outside this summer, or if the whole thing was wasted on re-shelving library books and typing out the next best American novel.

“You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel now that your girlfriend dumped you, huh?”

Steve groans, hanging his head. “First off - she didn’t dump me - not that it matters. Not sure why I even came here to get bullied like this -”

“Sorry,” Mike mutters, “my therapist says it's a defence mechanism. The… pushing people away thing.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. He knows Mike sees a shrink. Nancy told them all about it, the last time they’d all hung out - not in a mean way, just in a heads up kind of way. Their mom pays for her, threatening to throw Mike out if he didn’t agree to see her for weekly sessions. Steve wonders what Mr. Wheeler thinks of the whole thing. The guy had always come off as the kind of person to mock someone seeing a shrink, especially a boy - despite the fact that Mike is still a teenager, and has experienced worse horrors than most people twice his age. Despite the fact he lost his girlfriend almost two years ago, and Steve has no idea if Mike is really coping with that. 

“No worries,” Steve says easily. “I, uh. I saw one for a bit. After the whole shebang with the Russians.”

“Yeah,” Mike says glumly. “They all made us see one after that, right? Some Doctor Harlowe.”

Steve clicks his fingers. “That’s the one.”

“He was such a dick,” Mike snorts. “I was glad I only had to go, like, three times.”

“He was kind of an asshole,” Steve agrees. He glances sidelong at Mike. “Your new one. She any better?”

Mike shrugs. “Yeah. I think so. Took a few months to kind of… to get used to it. But - it does help, which is really annoying. You know,” he rolls his eyes, “everyone always tells you like oh, it’ll really help, it’ll help you process - and then when it actually does… I don’t know. It’s not better - but it’s like, it helps you work out better why you can’t… why it’s so hard.”

Steve is pretty sure the why it’s so hard is kind of easy to pinpoint. The death-of-girlfriend. The persistent nightmares from having to stop the apocalypse. That’s sort of a doozy.

“It -” Mike shakes his head, as though bewildered, like he can’t stop himself from speaking. “It was the guilt, y’know? The guilt. Like I’m still alive, when she - and I couldn’t even - we weren’t -”

Steve exhales. This is sort of - it’s a lot heavier than the stuff he and Mike usually talk about. It’s unexpected, but maybe he just - maybe he needs to just say it out loud, and Steve is an easy listening receptacle, ever constant and unchanging. 

“We kind of broke up,” he mumbles, “before everything went down. It was so confusing, but I just -”

“Hey,” Steve interjects, “Mike - it’s cool, man. I think she still knew how much you… how much everyone cared, y’know? Regardless of where you guys were at.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees, eyes downcast. “I guess. I don’t know - I just… I spend so much time wondering if things could have gone differently. If they did go differently… if she’s still out there, somehow. If all my weird theories have any kind of backing, or if it’s all just wishful thinking.”

Steve hums in response. “I get that.”

“I’d tell her - I’ll always be there for her,” Mike whispers, staring out at the sky, eyes unseeing. “No matter what. That she has me, even if it’s not - even we aren’t -”

Steve squeezes his shoulder, awkward. What the fuck. Mike is never normally this talkative, this open. Sometimes when Steve had dropped by before, even small talk had felt like drawing blood from a stone. This is the first time he’s been by in a few weeks, he supposes - whatever Mike’s shrink is doing, it’s definitely… it’s doing something. 

“Anyway,” Mike coughs, shaking his head, breaking himself free from his little ramble. “Sorry! Jesus. Went off on you there, and you’d barely sat down. Weird day, you know? One of those weird days.”

“It’s cool,” Steve smiles, “all cool. I really did just come by to say hi, anyway.”

Mike glances at him again. “So the breakup -”

“Ugh,” Steve groans, “can we not? Uneventful, uninteresting, finished, and I’m over it. Seriously. Too busy coaching brats and trying to move into a dilapidated shack.”

“Oh yeah,” Mike brightens, “the house! Dustin mentioned.”

“You seen him? You know he’s back this weekend, right?”

“Yeah,” Mike nods. “Lucas and Max are coming through from Indy tomorrow too. We’re gonna hang before he has to drive back out to Evanston.”

“In that basement of yours,” Steve says wryly. “You guys might have escaped Hawkins High, but the day you all stop playing that dumb dragon game in your mom’s basement is the day I’ll really feel like you’ve all grown up.”

“Ew,” Mike says, wrinkling his nose, “you sound so old, Steve. Whatever. Like you weren’t embarrassing as hell during graduation anyway.”

Surprised you showed up in time to see me be embarrassing, Steve thinks, but he makes no comment, just rolls his eyes as Mike continues.

“Although I guess we were all kind of loud when Dustin started up his big speech,” he adds wryly. Then he frowns.

“I actually...”

Steve looks at him, but he shakes his head, biting his lip.

“What?”

“No. It sounds fucking crazy, it’s nothing.”

“No, man, c’mon. There’s no crazy here, not after everything.”

“Just - I thought I saw someone that day - or something - near the woods, after graduation finished. I thought...”

Mike laughs, cutting off. 

“El?” Steve tries, tentative, but Mike shakes his head again.

“No. Not El. Someone - someone it really couldn’t be. Someone dead. I was just freaking out, man, it’s nothing. Just makes me weird thinking about it.”

Steve narrows his eyes, but he doesn’t press further. Mike changes the subject after that anyway, talking about the new ice cream place that had opened downtown, and the milkshakes they did there. He doesn’t bring up graduation again, or El, or visions of dead friends. Steve doesn’t bring up the fact that the pull had felt stronger that day, strong enough that it sticks out in his memory, and that the direction had been towards the woods. He just nods along to whatever Mike talks about, and lets him lock up and head off when the clock reaches seven.

Still - he decides that it wouldn’t hurt to do a quick short patrol. Laps around town, and the new rebuilt centre. A lap down by the quarry, eerie and quiet in the dusk. A long stretch out near the trailer park, by the woods near Hop’s old cabin (worse, it feels worse, leave, leave, stay away, get out -)

He slows the truck as he passes by the edge of the trees, heart hammering in his chest, because - is that -

There’s something there.

It’s almost…. Wedged into a tree. High up. He slows the truck a little more, crawling forward in first year, squinting out the window. He doesn’t want to open the door. He likes the barrier between himself and that place. 

It’s an animal. It’s… part of an animal, rotting, festering, decaying. Part of some fetid carcass. 

Steve can make out antlers, brittle looking. He can see the open eyes, shining eerily as his headlights flash by over them when he drives closer. Dead. It’s dead. There’s no point wondering how it ended up wedged in that tree. Some sort of sick joke. The call he feels towards the cold, eerie woodlands grows more intense as he lingers, and he jolts the car back up into second, third, fourth, speeding away -

And then up Cornwallis and through town, up towards Loch Nora. Towards ‘home’, the for-sale sign prominent in his parents yard, the one they haven’t set foot in in nearly four years now. Towards the RV, and his microwave dinner.

When he settles down for the evening, the warmer sort of hum gets stronger again, as though he’s tuning better into the radio station. Like another part of it is nearby. It’s not unsettling to Steve anymore. In fact - even admitting this to himself feels wrong at times, but it’s kind of… comfortable. It’s not like the weird prickling feeling he gets near the woods. It’s like a background, muted static, warm in his brain. Like he isn’t alone. Like there is an Other.

Steve sits on his bed, trying to empty his head of thoughts. He feels tired, weighed down with something heavy and difficult to name. His fingers stray to the little box he keeps tucked under his fold out bed frame, in a sliding pull-out drawer he fitted himself. It wobbles as he tugs it out, because Steve is kind of an amateur carpenter. His fingers dip in, and he feels it - alone in there, rattling around. Cool metal, little bumpy ridges. He picks up Eddie Munson’s ring and turns it over in his palm. 

Steve slides it on.

He’s done this countless times now. He knows which finger it fits best, and the way it sits most comfortable on his left pointer, nestled there on his skin.

He’s never worn it outside. He never will. He knows it’s weird, doing this. He should give the ring to Dustin, or Wayne, or hell, leave it on Eddie’s grave as some sort of offering.

But for some inexplicable reason he can’t. Maybe it serves as a reminder, a reminder of Eddie’s previous existence. It is penance, sitting snug on Steve’s body. On nights when the static in his chest feels extra ramped up, Steve sleeps with it on. Those nights have increased in frequency lately. Tonight definitely falls under that category, so he slips it on, rubbing over the shiny silver cross. He lies down, and tries not to think anymore.

Steve sleeps, dreamless and deep, as he always does on the nights when the static is stronger.