Chapter Text
“Everything is true:
this pebble, its shadow,
the eye which observes the noise,
the impossible and the dream.”
Etel Adnan
April 22nd, 1986
26 days since
Eddie doesn’t come back.
The thought strikes Steve out of the blue, punches his gut and leaves him breathless. It is sudden, the feeling of hollowness that engulfs him, just like that. Eddie doesn’t come back.
He feels dizzy, the realization throws him off balance. He turns white, he thinks, since Robin notices whatever it is the betrayer body of his is doing.
“Hey, Steve, you okay?” She asks. They are alone at Family Video, just as they were for most of the last month. The earthquake had left Hawkins wounded, its people weary of the outside world. That, and they don’t even know what lies on their beloved town’s other side. Steve used to envy their obliviousness when he first got dragged into the Upside Down. He remembers the morning after his first encounter with the Demogorgon, back in ‘83. He saw people walking on the street, laughing mindlessly, and thought how he wished to be just like them. How he wished to have never known.
He nods at her, his movements snappy and short, and sits on the stool again. She doesn’t seem to buy it, though, being the incredible friend she is. She walks out back, and returns with a cup of lukewarm water. “Thanks,” he says with the full intention of speaking up. It comes out more like a whisper. Funny, how little control of himself- of anything- he has.
“Dingus,” she sighs, leaning her back against the counter. “Take your time. Do you need me to breathe with you?”
“No.” He drinks, slowly, sip by excruciating sip. “I’m good.”
“O-Kay.” she rolls her eyes, not unkindly. Steve doesn’t know why he wouldn't tell her what he's going through; he knows she’ll understand, he knows she won't judge him, so what’s he so scared of?
Maybe it’s the vulnerability of it, he thinks. The opening of a door. The act of letting her see that the solid rock he seems to be is actually made of dust.
He shakes his head then, as if he was a wet puppy in the rain, and takes a deep breath. “I’m peachy,” he says, and even though it isn’t true, he chooses to believe it. Robin shrugs, seemingly understanding what he was trying to convey, and goes back to rearranging the same pile of films she already had rearranged thrice today.
Eddie doesn’t, and won’t, come back. Eddie’s dead.
May 17th, 1986
52 days since
Steve and Robin are sitting next to his dining table, a third chair still unoccupied. There is an envelope laying on the table between them, addressed to Robin Buckley, from Emerson College. She seems to be staring daggers at it, as if it was physically threatening to her. That girl had fought literal monsters, but apparently found that one letter much more frightening.
“When did she tell you she’ll be here?” Robin asks, not lifting her gaze from the letter for a millisecond. Steve would have laughed if he wasn’t just as anxious for her.
“5:30.”
“And what time is it now?”
He looks at his watch. “5:28,” he reads. “She’ll be here any second now, Robbie.”
They wait just a bit longer, and at 5:32 Nancy enters the Harrington household without knocking. Steve had tried to make her stop knocking when she was expected for months now, and he’d make a snarky comment about it if she wasn’t even more anxious than him and Robin combined. She holds an envelope too, identical to the one Robin had gotten.
Steve has no envelope, obviously.
“Hey,” Nancy says as she sits on Steve’s other side. “Are you ready?” She asks, looking at the both of them.
Steve nods.
“Yeah, Wheeler, we’ve been waiting for you,” Robin snarks, but the kindness in her eyes cancels any bad intention behind it. Nancy laughs a bit, then breathes in deeply.
“Cool. Let’s get through with it, then.”
They count down from three.
The girls open their letters.
They’ve both gotten in.
You would’ve loved to be here, Steve thinks as he watches the girls squeal and hug each other. The air is buzzing with excitement, and Steve makes sure he lets it course through his veins, making sure that excitement sticks to him wherever. What would you have done, if you were here?
Steve jumps out of his chair and gets an expensive champagne bottle his Father had bought once out. He tries to channel Eddie’s energy as he pours champagne for the three of them. He feels like dancing on his dining table, so he does. The girls laugh as Robin gets on the table with him.
“We’re going to Emerson, baby!” She shouts. Nancy throws her head back as she’s laughing, in a way she hadn’t done in ages now.
He chooses to ignore the soft tiny pang in his chest, at least for now. Tonight’s a time for celebration; he has to reschedule the being sorry for himself part.
—
That night, when Steve tries to sleep, alone in his big and empty house, he thinks of Eddie. He’d tried not to for so long, but he can’t help himself now. He wonders if he’d been there with them today, watching them from whatever metal afterlife he’d gotten. Steve hopes Eddie found peace as he drifts off.
—
It’s dark, Steve notices.
Wait, not exactly. It isn’t dark . He sees everything around him perfectly. It’s just empty here. A void.
Then, he looks down at the water at his feet. They’re nice, just warm enough to make him comfortable in it. There’s nothing but water, and it seems like that nothingness stretches for miles and miles ahead, yet for some reason, Steve isn’t scared. Not a single bit.
He looks up, expecting to see the moon.
There’s nothing there either.
He blinks, then, and suddenly he isn’t there anymore. Instead, he’s sitting alone in a boat in the middle of Lover’s Lake. He knows that spot, knows what happened last time he was here, but he’s alone now. Safe. A strange feeling to have, being alone in the middle of a lake, hovering just above a gate to the Upside Down.
The trees around him rustle, and the sound the leaves make is soothing, somehow. He looks around, and sees a figure sitting on a large rock by the water. It’s too dark and he’s too far to make out any features of whoever it is there, but he feels safe enough to try and get closer to it. He’s slowly rowing towards the figure. It stands up, slowly, hesitantly, as Steve reaches it.
“Eddie?” He asks. I’m dreaming, he realizes. Eddie didn’t come back, he won’t come back, he’s dead.
The figure- Eddie- studies Steve for a long moment. He cocks his head left in confusion, and then-
He laughs.
Steve wants to etch this sound to his memory forever.
“Shit, Harrington,” Eddie says giddily. “Can you see me too?”
And with that, Steve wakes up.
June 10th, 1986
76 days since
Steve doesn’t dream of Eddie again.
Well, not exactly. He doesn’t dream of this Eddie again. He has plenty of nightmares about the body he’d seen in the Upside Down, covered in demobat bites, bloody and helpless and dead, dead, dead.
He doesn’t tell anyone of this one dream he had either. It feels meaningful to him, but not in the way that would be meaningful to anyone else.
It is the last day of school, and Nancy and Robin are about to get their diplomas. It feels as if no one’s excited as they should be; probably due to the long In memorial table at the entrance to the gym, where they held the ceremony. On the table laid pictures upon pictures, and a list of names. Chrissy Cunningham. Fred Benson. Patrick McKinney. Jason Carver. May they rest in peace.
Eddie, for obvious reasons, is not listed.
Steve hates it. His blood is boiling in a way it hadn’t in years , now. It was supposed to be his year, he kept talking about it. How excited he was to finally graduate. He didn’t deserve to be remembered as a killer, the one person whose name mustn’t be uttered. The one no one should miss.
Eddie was a hero, all along, and Steve couldn’t handle how he was remembered as the villain.
Next to the pictures was a notebook, where students wrote stuff for those who were gone. The writings varied from Chrissy, I miss you, hope you’re taking care of us, xo to Jason, you fucker, we need our leader back.
No one wrote for Eddie. Steve hates it too.
In a spur of rebelliousness, he takes the sharpie the school left on the notebook and adds another name to the list, just above Chrissy’s.
Eddie Munson.
Then, he writes on an empty page in the notebook, in big, bold letters, all caps:
MUNSON, YOU WERE ALWAYS A HERO.
He walks towards the bleachers, leaving it all behind and not caring if anyone saw him. When was the last time he cared for it?
Dustin waves for him from his seat, saying something to Lucas and Mike who are sitting right next to him. They saved him a spot, right there in the middle. That one small act of kindness caught him off guard. It’s not like he wasn’t used to feeling like he was wanted around; growing up as King Steve had its bright sides. He never experienced the feeling of not having a saved seat for him, never experienced being chosen last. But still, those kids made him feel as if he was yearning for it his whole life.
Is that what having a family feels like?
He smiles as he makes his way towards the kids. He can complain about being their babysitter for all he wants, but he loves those little menaces to bits. He’d gladly babysit them for the rest of his life, if they would only let him.
“You’re late,” Mike points out as Steve sits, folding his arms.
“I’m sorry, Mr. punctuation,” Steve retorts. “Remember last Monday? When I picked you and El up from the movies?”
“That was different,” he huffs. Dustin laughs a little, shaking his head. “It was! She wanted another slushie, I couldn’t just say no.”
“Yeah, obviously,” Dustin says, leaning back a bit. Mike seems annoyed, but in a not-really-annoyed kind of way.
Lucas was quiet.
According to her doctors, Max was still stable, and could, theoretically, wake up any minute now; they call it a miracle. Lucas is a realist, though, so he declared he doesn’t believe in miracles until she wakes. Steve reaches his hand over Dustin’s neck to give Lucas’ shoulder a tiny squeeze, one he hoped will make Lucas feel just a bit less alone.
“I have something to show you later,” Dustin whispers to him, as the Hopper-Byers clan enters the gym. Jonathan had already gotten his diploma in California, so he won’t be walking the stage tonight, yet he still came to support his class. And Nancy, obviously. Neither of them spoke much about their breakup, but it seemed like they ended their relationship on good terms and stayed (something similar but not exactly) friends. They both deserve it, really.
Joyce and Hopper walk in, hand in hand, then come Jonathan, El and Will. Steve smiles a little, half nodding towards Dustin and running a hand through his hair. Joyce ruffles his hair a little as she makes way to her seat, three seats down from him. He feels his heart fill up with pure, unadulterated love. He hopes nothing ever changes.
Well, except for the one missing face.
Principal Murphy says a few words, ones that Steve actively tunes out. It sounds exactly like the speech she had given last year, so he couldn’t care about it last. And besides, both Robin and Nancy are smiling up at him, and what could he care about more? His two best friends, and they are finally graduating, moving on to achieve their dreams. He’s so, so proud of them both. And so what if he stays behind? He chose this, after all, and his choices, apparently, have consequences.
Principal Murphy stops, for a moment, and clears her throat. “Before we’ll start giving out the diplomas our alumni had worked so hard to get, there are, sadly, four graduates who are not here with us today. Four graduates, whose names are forever written within this school’s walls, and are forever etched in our hearts. I am so, so happy to invite their families here, to receive the diplomas for their children.” She smiles softly. Four sets of parents walk on stage- Chrissy’s, Fred’s, Patrick’s and Jason’s.
Four graduates. Weird, Steve can count a fifth one.
He clenches his fist, then unclenches it when Dustin touches his hand softly, his eyes pleading. He sighs.
After the families leave the stage, the class of ‘86 are walking the stage, one by one. They cheer for everyone, but nearly jump out of their seats when Robin and Nancy are called. Robin does that weird little dance of hers as she’s getting her diploma, and Steve loves her so much it hurts.
After the ceremony is over and they all wait for Robin and Nancy outside, Dustin tugs a bit on Steve’s sleeve.
“I need to show you something,” he says again. He’s restless, anxious, and it worries Steve like crazy. But then again, Dustin worries him a lot these days.
Dustin took Eddie’s death hard . He barely left his room, at first, and he also wouldn’t sleep- said his nightmares had gotten so bad he’d rather be sleep deprived. He never spoke of Eddie, not with anyone, not even with Steve. Whenever Eddie came up Dustin would get this look in his eyes, like he was far away all of a sudden. Steve wishes he could take everything that is painful away from Dustin. He didn’t deserve that.
“What’s up?” He asks.
Dustin pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans.
“Will helped me make it,” he explains as he unfolds the paper. “I… I wanted something to remember, you know, him … to remember him by. And, I know you’re not legally my guardian or anything, but I didn’t feel right getting it without showing it to you first.”
He hands Steve the piece of paper. On it was a drawing of Eddie’s guitar, and beneath it the words so Mordor it is .
“I wanna get it tattooed on me. Over here,” he points on his left forearm. Steve stays quiet for a moment, and he can see the wheels turning in Dustin’s head. “I won’t do it if you think it’s a bad idea, that’s why I wanted you to see it first-“
“No, no, Henderson,” he says, and smiles at him softly. “I think it’ll look real cool. He would have loved it.”
“Right? I know he would. He’d say it’s metal.”
Steve laughs a little. “It really is metal. You cleared it with your mom, right? She’s okay with you getting a tattoo?”
Dustin nods. “Yeah, she is, and she said she’ll come with me to get it. But…” he shifts his weight between his legs. “I thought maybe you could come too?”
“I’d love that.”
—
He thinks of Eddie, again, as he falls asleep. About how he would’ve looked like, wearing this stupid gown, that dumb cap. How happy he could’ve been. As he thinks of Eddie’s smile, of his beautiful, beautiful dimples, sleep greets him like an old friend. It’s the easiest sleep he’d gotten in weeks.
—
This time, when all he can see is a black void and water at his feet, he isn’t confused. He’s bubbling with excitement. He walks ahead, slowly, and when he blinks he doesn’t find himself at Lover’s Lake this time.
Instead, he’s in his own backyard. It’s a sunny day, but he can’t feel the heat. It’s just warm enough to be comfortable.
Eddie’s already there, sitting cross-legged on the grass. He doesn’t seem to notice Steve as he leans back on his forearms, staring up into the sun. He’s so peaceful, Steve would hate to ruin it. He feels his stomach getting filled with butterflies. Slowly, he walks towards Eddie, and sits right next to him.
Eddie smiles at him.
God, had Steve missed that smile.
“I can see you too,” Steve said, answering the question that burned in his mind since the last time he dreamt.
“Yeah, I got that,” Eddie laughs. “What the fuck are we doing, Harrington?”
“I don’t know, man,” Steve laughs too. It is freeing, in a way, to laugh with someone you care about so deeply when you know they’re gone and it is all nothing but a dream. “You reached out to me, right? You should be the one to know stuff.”
“What do you mean I reached out to you? You got it all wrong, big boy,” Eddie untangles his legs and lies down on the grass. “I was chilling and your house suddenly appeared. I’m not the one calling the shots here.”
“Well, obviously, it’s my dream.” Steve shrugs.
Eddie closes his eyes, smiling softly. “Your dream ? Why do you think it’s a dream?”
“Because you aren’t real?” Steve tries. Eddie opens one eye and raises his eyebrow. “You’re not real. Eddie, you’re fucking dead.”
“I don’t feel dead.” Eddie says. “I mean, I feel weird, that’s for sure. But I feel very much alive.”
“Yeah, that’s because you’re a product of my mind. I made you up, Munson, and in my mind you’re real.”
“That sounds wrong.” Eddie laughs. “What do you think I did until you came here? Just waited around like a sad but adorable little puppy till you got back? Nah, man. Sorry to break it to you, but this isn’t exclusive. Different, but not exclusive.”
“What do you mean?” Steve asked, confused.
“I don’t have a fucking clue. All I know is when I think of people, sometimes I can see their… well, dreams, apparently. I don’t know much else, really. Oh, that and the fact no one usually sees or hears me, with you as an exception.”
Steve huffs. He feels high. “That makes no sense, Eds.”
“Neither does fucking demonic bats and people with superpowers who live on the other side of Hawkins, Indiana, yet here we are.”
Steve laughs. He feels high and crazy now. Eddie laughs too. Somehow, the fact he knows for sure none of it is real is grounding him. An alternative universe where nothing is ever wrong, it’s just him and Eddie Munson against the world. Oh, what a weird thing to long for.
“So, with that out of the way, how is everyone?” Eddie asks. “How long has it been?”
“76 days,” Steve laughs. “They’re doing fine. Max is stable, which is better than dead, and Robin and Nance graduated today, and… oh, Henderson is getting a tattoo to honor your memory.”
Eddie squeals. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. His mom’s on board?” Steve nods. “Jesus H. Christ. What’s he getting? A tiefling? Dice? Oh my god, is he getting a demobat tattoo? Please, Stevie, tell me he’s getting a demobat.”
“Nope. He’s getting your guitar, with a quote from… I don’t remember where Mordor’s from.”
“You are so, so dumb, Harrington,” Eddie says, with nothing but kindness in his tone. “One of my favorite things about you.”
“Should I be offended?” He asks, laughing, and as Eddie starts to reply-
Steve is woken up by the sound of his alarm clock.