Chapter Text
Dustin
It’s late when they pull into the carport. Dustin half expects Steve to be in bed, and he says as much to Mike.
“Just leave them here.” He nods at the last of Owens’ filing cabinets they just lugged back from the lab’s basement. “I’ll empty them and leave the cabinets outside.”
“So you’re going to paint a target on Steve’s door.”
“It’s Steve. He has a target on his door by virtue of existing. He’ll hate it if we bring the cabinets inside and scratch his floors. They’re hardwood, you know.”
Mike doesn’t. Or rather, he doesn’t give a shit about Steve’s floors, but he does care that Steve’s been sick for a week now, so he just stands silently with his hands in his pockets.
Dustin doesn’t budge. Not a single inch, until Mike gives Dustin his signature constipated look.
Mike thinks he excels at guilt trips, but he’s got nothing on Steve. Still, he perseveres; like Steve, he’s perfected the long-suffering tone of a pickup owner with freeloading friends, and he says now, “I do talk to Steve when you’re in Georgia, you know. I know what’s up. But if you only called me up to haul the cabinets away—”
“Fine,” Dustin says. “Come on in.”
“The light’s still on,” Mike says. “You can’t convince me Steve isn’t waiting up.”
“Yeah, well. He shouldn’t be.”
“It’s not like he’s dying. He’s a teacher. He gets whatever’s making the rounds and still shows up to practice, or so Derek tells me.”
Mike is privy to the runaway Steve’s stowing in his basement; Dustin would hardly guess from the cavalier way he talks about Steve’s “little cold,” but then again, Mike has become somewhat of a consummate actor when he thinks someone’s watching.
(And there’s always someone watching now, because he keeps faith in El.)
“Don’t just stand there then.” Dustin ushers him through the door. “And wipe your feet.”
Mike kicks off his shoes.
“I’m going to go talk to the kid,” he says. “See how much he knows about…” He looks embarrassed, like he’s been caught in the lie that his first priority is Steve when it’s always been just El, but he’s nothing if not consistent.
He’s a man of character, after all.
“Steve’s been trying to coax more details out of him,” Dustin allows. “But he’s probably preoccupied at the moment.”
It’s an understatement. Steve crashed hard when he heard the news about Tommy.
Dustin knows he’s being uncharitable when he says he didn’t expect Steve to be this torn up over the man, and yet—
Their lives are unfailingly a steady stream of shit. What did Steve expect?
Of course Tommy’s dead.
And naturally, he’s half-assing death because he can’t bring himself to let Steve go. The kid says Tommy just wants to look out for him, but Dustin knows better.
(He’d haunt Steve if he died. Why wouldn’t Tommy?)
Tommy Hagan made a U-Turn in life and died for his troubles, and now what’s left of his soul has ensconced itself in Steve. That Steve is a man and not a house to be haunted, that Steve was once his best friend and the object of his barely suppressed affections, that Steve’s body was put through the wringer and cannot hold a ghost—
Hagan accepts all these things with equanimity of the dying, which is to say that he is perpetually drowning, and Steve was once a lifeguard.
“I still can’t believe it,” Mike mutters after knocking on Steve’s door. It’s largely ceremonial; Dustin pushes through when they don’t get an answer. “I’ve always had faith, but to get a confirmation—”
So he does think she’s dead. Or perhaps the appropriate tense is did, because faith, as hope, springs eternal for Mike. Who’s to say it hasn’t been renewed once more?
(Mike—
God, Mike. Dustin hasn’t known what to say to him for going on six years now.)
They find Steve passed out on the pillows. It’s clear he did try to wait up for them; the lights are off, but the TV plays on, if muted.
(The light from the screen throws Steve’s features into stark relief; all the flickering and static do little for his pallor.
He simply looks ill.)
“He fell asleep about thirty minutes ago,” their stowaway reports. “He missed the best part.”
Thirty-nine, or so he claims to be, has a better grasp on grammar and pop culture and the vagaries of normal life than El ever did, and yet he’s still stranger in every conceivable way.
Dustin is hard pressed to believe a single word coming out of his mouth.
(Mike, on the other hand, is halfway to prostrating himself on the floor.)
“It’s a video,” Dustin says. “He can rewind.” He glances at the screen and winces; the warden’s just been dragged into the vents and killed by a facehugger. “Best part?” he echoes, despite his better judgment. “What do you consider the best part?”
“This,” Thirty-nine says serenely. “When Clemens got what he had coming.”
It’s the most unsettling thing Dustin’s heard in a long time.
“Why on earth?” he says, before realizing that a kid like El would naturally hate doctors.
(He privately thinks that he himself would have taken a perverse pleasure in feeding Brennan to a facehugger if he’d had the chance.)
It’s not the sort of sentiment he wishes to encourage, regardless, but he knows better than to jump down the kid’s throat for telling the truth.
(Steve, he suspects, thinks the same thing. Why else would he feign sleep?)
“It’s the Alien’s birthright,” Thirty-nine says, tripping Dustin up yet again. “It’s his duty to his own people.”
Dustin finds himself tongue-tied. After a beat—
“You like it?”
The answer is immediate: “Yes. I like him.”
“Even though he wants to murder everyone?”
“They were hostile first.” Thirty-nine tilts his face up just like El used to do. “If they stopped fighting—”
“That would require negotiations,” Dustin says. “And for the facehugger to speak English. And even then, promises made by conquering forces are rarely kept.”
Thirty-nine frowns. “That would make him a liar. And we don’t lie.”
The hair’s standing on the back of Dustin’s neck now, but he doesn’t let on. If there’s any question left of what flows in the kid’s veins—
(The Mindflayer’s blood, certainly, rendering it immortal despite Joyce’s best efforts—)
What possessed Tommy to die for him?
“Yes, I can see radical honesty is one of your virtues,” Dustin says. “Uh—” He draws a blank, because they’ve never really come up with a nickname for the kid. Then he thinks better of the whole endeavor. “Never mind. Perhaps they’ll hire you to write the fourth film.”
Thirty-nine shrugs. “Steve says Hollywood is hard to break into.” He gets up and turns off the TV without taking his eyes off Dustin, even as he walks to the door. “Anyway, now that you’re home, I can go to bed.”
Mike can no longer stay silent. “Thirty-nine—can I talk to you?”
The boy cocks his head and stares. Then he says, “Very well. Follow me.”
Dustin watches them disappear down the hallway, wondering what exactly Mike is going to say to El’s murderous little brother. But maybe it’s best to ignore the red flags—self-fulfilling prophecies and all that.
With a sigh, he kneels down in front of Steve.
“Hey,” he says when he sees Steve’s eyes flutter. “Oh, so you really did fall asleep. Really? With a human-shaped facehugger in the same room?”
“Dustin?” Steve just mumbles, still disoriented. He blinks up at Dustin and rubs his eyes. “When did you guys get back?”
“Just now.” Dustin presses his hand to Steve’s forehead and quickly checks it against his own temperature. “You’re a little warm. How are you feeling?”
“Okay. All things considered.” Steve runs a hand over his face, as if to clear his head, then sits up slowly, wincing. He knocks his knee into the cassette case, nearly toppling it over the edge of the bed.
Dustin catches it, surprising even himself, and sets it back on the nightstand. “Why were you showing him Aliens?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “But Tommy—God, what was Tommy thinking? He showed the kid the first two movies, so I thought I’d round out the trilogy.”
“He told you he was rooting for the alien?”
“Yeah. Can’t believe Tommy—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but Dustin knows he’s thinking the same thing.
“I don’t suppose you defended Ripley,” Dustin says.
“So he can rip a hole in the fabric of reality and sacrifice me to the next Mindflayer? Do you think I’m suicidal?” Steve looks away. “I thought he’d be more like El, but I think he’s worse than Vecna.”
Henry did grow up in their world. Thirty-nine—
“How old is he?” Dustin asks. He’s not morally opposed to taking out a kid, even if he’s underage, but he knows Steve’s bottom line.
“Sixteen.”
“So you want to save him.”
He supposes Steve does; a lifetime of heroism aside, there’s still Tommy’s sacrifice to justify. Steve has always fallen for the sunk cost fallacy, and all the training in the world can’t do anything to sway him.
“Nancy’s on her way,” Steve says.
They haven’t seen her in years.
(The Philadelphia meetings petered out.)
“I suppose she’ll want to talk,” Dustin says. “She’ll grill him. It’s not a bad idea. We should do that instead of crucifying him for his Alien opinions.”
Steve’s already shaking his head. “She’s bringing her guns.”
“She said that over the phone?”
“She said she was bringing supplies.” He blanches suddenly, clapping a hand to his mouth.
Dustin lunges for the trash can and gets it to Steve just in time for everything he’s eaten in the past few days to make a second appearance. Steve retches until he’s puking up clear water; it’s a long time before he pushes at the bin weakly and turns away, face pale and vomit-stained.
Dustin sets it on the ground, far away from where he’s standing, and wipes Steve’s face clean with his sleeve.
“God,” Steve moans. “That’s disgusting.”
“Are you up for a shower?”
Steve isn’t, but he still staggers into the bathroom, holding his stomach tightly like he’s trying to keep his insides where they belong.
Dustin tries hard not to think about what Tommy could possibly be doing to Steve to make him feel like this.
(And it comes back to him, the way they killed the Mindflayer—
He and Steve were below, and then El leapt into its mouth, like Jonah into the giant whale and Daniel into the den of lions, because El knew that she was everyone’s road to salvation.
She gave them grace. Do they extend it to the kid?)
He sticks his head into the bathroom, where Steve’s sitting under the spray. “Want me to help?”
Steve points wordlessly at the can of disinfectant.
“I’m not going to help poison you,” Dustin snaps. “Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll clean up the bed.”
There’s nothing to clean up. Steve’s always been proficient at aiming, even when it comes to projectile vomit (and what was there to throw up, when he’s been barely eating?), so the floor remains spotless.
Steve had the foresight to line his wastebasket with sturdy plastic bags—the kind Melvald uses to bag purchases—and Dustin’s never been more grateful. He knots the ends and dumps the bag of sick into the main garbage bin, then heads back to the bathroom, where Steve is emerging, damp and half-dressed, skin flushed from the hot water.
“I left some hot water for you.” Steve’s given up on styling his hair; he pushes the whole mop back as he pulls a white t-shirt over his head.
“I’ll shower in the morning.” Dustin watches him squeeze an obscene amount of toothpaste onto his brush. “This was, what, your second time puking today?”
“Third. It’s getting old,” Steve admits, words partially obscured by his toothbrush. He looks even worse under the fluorescent lights, the dark smudges under his eyes standing out like livid bruises.
“We should get Will to come and take a look at you,” Dustin says, unable to keep his worry out of his voice now. “We have to do something.”
“I don’t think Will would want to step foot in Hawkins again.” Steve spits in the sink and rinses out his mouth again. “I’m surprised Nancy’s willing to come back.”
“Then we can go to Montauk.” Dustin’s not going to let Tommy take away Steve’s life. “He can tap into his powers and exorcise Tommy out of you. I’m serious, Steve. We’ll even hit up the Catholic church if we need to.”
“Yeah, I think I can handle Tommy without the church’s help.” Steve wipes his hands on the towel and finally meets Dustin’s eyes. “He’ll talk to me eventually.”
It is nothing short of astounding to Dustin that Steve still has faith in his erstwhile friend. Death really does make the heart grow fonder, but in any case, Steve’s faith is, as it has always been, misplaced.
Steve doesn’t let Dustin belabor the point. “Where is the kid?”
“With Mike.”
“You left them alone?”
“We left you alone with him, didn’t we?” Dustin points out waspishly. “Anyway, we brought back everything we could find from the lab.”
It wasn’t even the lab. They found the files in a tiny two-story warehouse behind the main structure, more of an annex than anything notable, and the termite damage was so extensive that Dustin was afraid to climb the wooden stairs. But they held his weight in the end (while the door gave way after one good kick), and he hopes this is a good omen of sorts.
(He’s never been superstitious, and yet, given everything—
How can he discount luck?)
“I think we found another office,” Dustin adds. “Maybe Kay’s.”
“Kay never set foot in the old lab,” Steve says. “And we combed through every inch of the MAC-Z.”
But they never managed to search the lab in the Upside Down. Not as thoroughly as Dustin would have liked.
He can only make do with what they have found.
“I found the mothers of the psychic kids.” He never thought that they would merit more than a footnote, but then Mike came across a veritable treasure trove of information. “Every single one of them signed a contract.”
“For the Nina project?” He has the full weight of Steve’s attention on him now. “We searched high and low for those, but they never came up. You’re telling me that they’ve surfaced now of all times?”
“Yeah. And some of these contracts—Look, lots of women signed up, but it looks like they never participated in the project, even if their signatures are present.”
“Delayed deals, then.” Steve flicks off the bathroom lights. “I heard Kay liked to offer a twist on the classic deal.”
“A twist?”
“You’ve read our NDAs, haven’t you? They can come calling anytime.”
This is news to Dustin.
“This is bait,” Steve says. “What are you going to do with the contracts?”
The only reasonable answer is set them on fire, but Dustin is a pragmatist at heart. “Track them down one by one,” he says, resigned. “I guess I’m taking the bait.”
Steve doesn’t look surprised at all.
“Aren’t you going to talk me out of this? Tell me I should set them free?”
Steve shrugs. “A deal’s a deal. You think the military doesn’t have copies of those contracts? We can’t set anyone free.”
“I thought you’d try.”
“I know better.” Steve’s biting his lip. He looks pensive, like he’s given this matter a lot of thought. “We’ve always banked on being able to make a deal,” he says slowly. “Yeah, it’s bitten us in the ass more than once, but I’ve always liked having a last resort. I know I’m not supposed to think like that,” he adds. “But it’s the truth. And the only reason we were allowed repeatedly to make a deal instead of getting gunned down where we stood was that the deals hold. So no—I’m not going to rip up those contracts and tell these mostly free women that they can stop looking over their shoulders.”
“They can.” Dustin’s seen their ages. “They’re all menopausal by now. The ones who are still alive.”
“There you go then.”
“I still want to talk to them. Because the way the contracts are worded—Steve, we all thought it was just standard government boilerplate, but look. It wasn’t just their bodies or their firstborns they gave up in perpetuity.” He pauses, because it beggars belief that they would have ever agreed to those terms either.
But they did, and so here they are.
“There’s a formula,” Dustin says finally. It’s the most succinct way to describe the madness in the files. “A way of characterizing each woman’s soul, and how much of it she can share with the kid.”
Steve’s eyebrows shoot up into his hair, but he rallies quickly. “El did say something about a machine that could look into her head.”
“No, no—nothing so fancy. It’s a very simple formula. They were looking for women with particular souls. That’s the magic ingredient—the souls are what make those kids special. It’s not just Henry’s blood.”
He realizes how absurd he sounds. On paper, this formula is New Age psychobabble; it’s astrology, divination, hogwash.
Dustin has the utmost faith in it.
(To think that just a week ago, he wasn’t even sure that souls existed.)
Steve’s looking at him like he’s lost his mind. And Dustin supposes he has, because if these contracts possess the power he thinks they do, then it should be a no-brainer. Instant loan forgiveness for all the poor women who were desperate enough to make a deal.
Doesn’t matter how much everyone wants to find El—
Dustin’s certainly not in the business of soul trafficking.
And yet—
(If he could pawn off Hagan—)
It’s not that he’s having second thoughts about shutting down the whole enterprise. (To hear Steve speak, he wouldn’t have the power to do anything of the sort anyway.) But what is a soul?
Dustin doesn’t presume to know the mysteries of the universe, but he can say, with even an earned confidence, that it is information.
And information is preserved.
(It also obeys the rules of its own geometry, but that’s neither here nor there yet. All of this is to say—)
“Vecna killed the kids in the lab,” he says. “And he became stronger—strong enough to survive on an alien planet and mind-meld with the Mindflayer. That’s where those kids went.” He hopes that’s not where Chrissy went, but given the year Max spent running for her life in Henry’s mind, it would stand to reason that all of his victims became part of him.
And after he died—
“I know Joyce was the one who chopped his head off, but El was the one who killed him. El won.”
“So you think she’s alive.”
“I think she was there when Kali died, and she was there when Henry died, so—”
Thirty-nine certainly doesn’t possess the kind of power Henry did. The formula would say that he has a lighter soul, something flightier and less sturdy, but then again—
What is the weight of a soul? One of an innocent child’s? The mother’s?
It doesn’t matter. What matters to Dustin is the flow of these souls, and that’s what’s encoded in this mess of contracts.
If it points to El—
“Roger from the basketball team had a formula,” Steve says. “For estimating the weight of a soul. But he’s in Vegas now.”
Dustin has no idea who Roger is, but if he was sizing up souls in high school, then the pitchfork mob got the wrong guy.
(Naturally, he’s the one who makes it out of Hawkins, and Eddie’s the one six feet under.)
Steve’s looking increasingly uneasy at the turn Dustin’s thoughts have taken; he keeps picking at a loose thread dangling from his comforter. “Dustin—you can’t void the contracts, but you’re not planning on collecting, are you?”
“I don’t know,” Dustin says, honest. “When you say I can’t void the contracts, what do you mean? That I shouldn’t, because that sets a precedent we can’t control, or that I physically can’t? That the process of signing themselves over to the government set in motion something irreversible?”
He’s arguing in favor of fate. He’s arguing about the nature of fate.
Steve neatly sidesteps the metaphysics.
“We could swing by Nevada,” Steve suggests, like he’s in any state to drive. “I hear Roger’s got a fancy job as a casino mathematician.”
Dustin has no doubt the man is well-suited to the job.
“Do you keep in touch?” Dustin asks presently. “I know he was on the team, but he didn’t seem like your type.”
Steve doesn’t answer. He presses a hand against his temple and mutters, “Tommy, no.”
Dustin looks up sharply. “Did Tommy say something to you?”
Steve’s eyes have gone unfocused again. He’s swaying; Dustin catches him just before he crumples to the ground.
He’s about to rub his knuckles along Steve’s sternum when Steve comes to with a gasp.
“What was that?” Dustin demands. “Steve, did he hurt you?”
“No, no.” But Steve doesn’t manage to say anything else; he’s barely coherent. He’s not talking to Dustin—he’s staring at someone Dustin can’t see. “Tommy, it’s okay.”
It’s what Dustin wants to say to him—
That he’s okay. That he’s going to be okay, because Dustin’s going to yank Tommy out of him and send him packing to where souls are supposed to go. Dustin’s going to make Tommy rest in peace, and then he’s going to find El, find Eddie, find—
(Turning a blind eye because of the NDAs is one thing. Brokering the damn things himself—
There would be no going back.)
He tucks Steve back under clean sheets. Steve’s still murmuring to Tommy, whispering things that are supposed to sound soothing but only send chills down Dustin’s spine. He’s fading fast.
He’s a pale figure in a pale bed.
“I promise I’m not going to run a soul pawnshop,” Dustin says out loud.
He’s not.
“Since when do you believe in fate?” Steve asks quietly.
It takes a moment before Dustin realizes that he’s speaking to Tommy. Nevertheless, he answers: “Since it keeps happening.”
Which is an indisputable observation.
He’s found at himself at a crossroads. It’s a fitting metaphor; he’s never going to sell his soul, but he wants to know what it’s worth.
(He wants to know what that boy in the next room is worth.)
After ‘87—
After the military packed up, after El, after the Wheeler house getting gutted and rebuilt so it would no longer smell like blood—
They froze.
They were at loath to admit it back then, but that is precisely what clinging to normalcy is.
How does one go back, after looking into the abyss?
(Steve, of course, simply hammered a sheet of metal over it and called it a day.)
And now they’re moving again. Dustin casts around for words. How to explain, to justify, to plead his case to Steve that for once, they can take the monster by its horns, and so they must?
“It’s just that I spent so long being afraid,” Dustin says to Steve, because he knows Steve can’t hear him. “And I’m sick of sitting around and waiting.”
--
They are seven years away from a new millennium.
When 2000 rolls around, Dustin wants Steve to be free.