Work Text:
“Hey Steve, in the off chance we actually make it out of here, what are you doing Friday night?” Eddie had asked him, in between hammering nails into garbage can lids and making Molotovs.
“Nothing.” He says quickly, doesn’t think about his work schedule, if he has plans, he’ll cancel. He’ll make sure he’s free on Friday night.
Eddie smiles at that, and Steve’s heart is pounding wild in his chest. “Cool, I’ll pick you up at 8, show you some real music.”
He hears Dustin ask if Eddie really thinks he should be the one driving, laughs to himself when he sees Eddie push at the boy not enough to be mean, but enough to tell him to shut up. As he walks off, trying to be cool, handkerchief swinging in his back pocket as he goes.
“Well, at least someone’s lucking out on their journey of self discovery.” Robin says beside him, raising an eyebrow at him. He tries to shrug it off, but he keeps looking back at Eddie, meets his eye across the field from where he’s roughhousing with Dustin. The older boy gives him a wink, and Steve just grins dropping his gaze a little.
“It’s just hanging out,” he lies to her.
They don’t all make it out.
He hears Dustin. They’re running back. Heard the fourth ring of the bell, there’s a new urgency to them. They lit up Vecna like they’re suppose too, did everything they were supposed to. But the fourth ring, the fact that the earth is shaking being ripped apart, something went wrong. The only thing that is on his mind is Max and getting back to her and the rest of the kids, he momentarily forgets about Eddie and Dustin. Assumes they’re long out, that they’re safe.
That’s what he believes at least until he hears Dustin’s sobs, Dustin’s screams. He doesn’t hesitate before he’s sprinting over to the kid, axe in hand, brain switching through possibilities over what happened to the kid, terrified over what he’s going to see.
He’s expecting to see something awful, people don’t sound like that if it’s good. But if Dustin can still yell that’s good right? He can get to him, get him. Keep him safe.
When he makes it to the boy, it’s not Dustin that’s in danger. Eddie lays under him, bleeding out, torn up, ripped apart. The closer he gets the worse it is, sees his legs, the bone peaking through torn up skin, makes him gag, dry heave even as he stumbles over to the other boy. Axe dropping to the ground as he goes.
“Eddie…” he whispers, dropping down beside Dustin, whose too young to be seeing this. They’re all too young to be seeing this.
“Hey Harrington,” he hears, it’s mumbled, Eddie’s blinking at him, he’s still breathing. It’s slow, his chest is moving as if it’s fighting it, stuttering. Reminds him of how some of the geeks would look after running laps, bent over gasping for air, lungs fighting it. Remembers Fred Benson once, red face, grasping an in hailer in his fist, as he tried to force air into his lungs, how erratic he seemed to be breathing as Steve ran past him, didn’t offer any help. Laughed at a rude comment from Tommy, doesn’t care about the other teen struggling to breathe not too far away from him. He wonders if he would have been kinder if he knew the kid wouldn’t have made it to his graduation.
“Least I get to see something pretty…” Eddie’s mumbling, bringing him back from his thoughts of Fred, and back into what’s happening in front of him.
“Eddie, w-we have to get you up…” he’s saying, “get you back, you were suppose to be back.”
His eyes are blurry, “why?”
“Couldn’t let the bats reach Hawkins.” Steve’s grabbing for him, applying pressure to the bleeding coming from his throat. As if he can help, as if he’s doing anything, his brain is reminding him that holding his neck is doing nothing for the rest of him, from where the fucking bones in his legs are poking through.
“I told you not to be a hero!” He hears himself crying out, “you were supposed to be safe!”
“Couldn’t run away this time…” Eddie whispers, he’s looking at him and Dustin in leaning against him, holding Eddie’s other hand as the boy cries into his shoulder, “don’t think I’m gonna make our date, Stevie.”
He’s shaking his head, “no, no you are.” He’s not making sense, he’s arguing with a dead man, “you have to show me that loud shit you listen too.”
Eddie huffs a laugh, wincing as he does, “It’s good music… you’d hate it, be all pouty.” He smiles.
“I’d listen to it,” he hears himself say, trying to blink away tears, or bring himself to pull his hands away from Eddie to wipe at his face, but can’t take his hands off him, but also can’t have them screwing with his vision. Not now. “I’d hate it but I’d listen to it.”
Eddie blinks up at him, “never thought king Steve would be crying over me…”
“We’ll you can see it more if we can just get you out of here,” he doesn’t feel like his voice is coming from him.
“He didn’t run,” Dustin’s saying, to his side.
“Not this time,” Eddie whispers, he’s smiling even though there’s blood on his face, blood all over him, it’s soaking into Steve’s pants, “not this time… Dustin promised to watch over the sheep, you gotta look after him.”
“He always does,” Dustin’s saying.
He’s leaning forward, pressing a shaky kiss to Eddie’s forehead. It’s not how their first kiss was supposed to have gone.
“Could be worse ways to go,” Eddie says, “than to have the pretty king’s eyes on me,” he’s reaching up, grabbing his necklace pulls at it. “Take it, Stevie. Gotta make up for Friday somehow.”
He does, will do anything Eddie tell him. The necklace is twisted around his fingers cradling his face as the other boy staring up at him.
For someone so energetic so loud, he doesn’t pass like that, Steve stays there, watches as he fades. As Dustin begs, he knows he’s saying something, it’s probably nonsense. Can’t remember the words, as he strokes over Eddie’s forehead, other hand still applying pressure to his neck, in some strange attempt at helping. He can feel Eddie take his last breath because of it, will later wish he didn’t have to feel that.
He hears a footstep getting closer, blinks up at Nancy. Had forgotten about the girls.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, he’s not sure who to. She reaches for Eddie, with gentle hands closes his eyes that were previously staring up at him. Further cementing the fact that the boy is gone. That he’s not coming back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, he’s squeezing his eyes shut sobbing out as arms wrap around him. Holding him back against a chest, can smell Robin’s perfume as she holds him. He wants to reach for Dustin, tell him he’s here. He can’t let go of Eddie though, can’t do it.
He left Eddie’s body in the upside down. Dustin was hurt he finds out soon after. Had to carry the boy out through the gate. And has to leave the body behind to do so. He planned to go back, drag him to where he’s meant to be. But with Max and everything he never got the chance. So here he is. Back in Hawkins, head in a fog. They say it’s an earthquake. They don’t say hell opened up and tried to pull Hawkins in. Everyone knows nothing. People died from it, there’s missing people all over town, he sees the posters being hung up. People asking for their loved ones. It could have been worse. Could have been so much worse had Eddie let the bats get to Hawkins. They will never know the sacrifice he made. Or what max had gone through, if she ever opens her eyes.
He’s driving to Nancy’s, back of his car filled with boxes of donations. When he spots him, hanging a poster outside of Joyce’s old convenience store.
He’s pulling over on the side of the road, jumping out of his car leaving it running, “Mr. Munson!”
Eddie’s uncle looks back at him, hits him with a nasty glare as he squeezes his stack of posters between his hands and shoves them in his bag. “Enough with you!” The man is snapping, “enough with all of you in this town!”
Steve shakes his head his hands up, “Please, Mr. Munson can we talk?”
“I have nothing to talk with you about. Any of you. My nephew is not a devil worshiper, and you-“ he turns pointing straight at Steve, “and all of your groupies that continue to go after him, have nothing to say to me. He’s innocent, and he is still missing, and you can destroy his posters as much as you want but I will not stop putting them up.”
Steve shakes his head at him, “I wasn’t apart of them.”
“You’re the Harrington boy are you not? I know about you and your group, I know about your father.” He spits, “just like him, quick to judge and doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Sir please!” He yells, “please, it’s not me. I graduated I’m not with any of the basketball team anymore, and I’m not my father.” He says quickly, “I know Eddie is innocent.”
Wayne Munson turns to him, stares him down. “How?”
“I was with him.” He says, “when everything went to shit.”
He takes a step foreword, “where is he then?”
Steve just stares at him, tries to control his breathing. “I’m so sorry Mr. Munson.” He whispers, reaching up and pulling on the necklace that’s been tucked under his shirt. Holding it up to his uncle. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why would he give this to you?”
The street is empty, no one’s around with everything going on, it gives him some safety for what he’s about to say, “We, we had a date, today.” He still whispers it, can’t be too loud in Hawkins, a part of him wonders if he should say it, if Eddie was keeping that from his uncle, if it’s wrong to say anything. “He can’t make it.”
Wayne doesn’t look angry at that, doesn’t look disgusted. “Didn’t think rich boys were his type…” he says his voice is rough.
“I didn’t think he was mine.” He whispers. “I didn’t know him for long,” he starts, “we never got too…But what I did get to know…. I cared for him; I really did.” He sniffles, blinking back tears. “He, um.” Steve shakes his head as if to clear it, “he had this thing about him, felt magnetic like I couldn’t look away sometimes, I- I don’t think I’ll every meet someone like that again.”
Munson takes a step forward, takes the necklace from him, fingers tracing over the edge of the pick. “He annoyed me, and never listened,” Steve sniffles, “but he was kind, and sweet and made me feel safe. And if people knew him, really knew him. Everyone would know he’s innocent. And I just wished I had gotten to know him more Mr. Munson, because I know I really would have liked what I found.”
Steve’s fingers are digging into his palms, nails creating small crescent indents into his skin. “He didn’t run. That was important to him, and he was brave and metal and called me Ozzy but that was him. He saved so many people that didn’t deserve him, that hated him and would have hated us. But he didn’t care, and I hate him for it. But he was a good man, you raised a hero.”