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The service is private.
There’s no grave, no stone, no body. No, they’d had to leave Eddie in the Upside Down, a decision borne of both necessity and safety. No one among their ranks trusted the townspeople not to vandalize or desecrate a grave, nor did they trust any funeral home to cremate him properly. Instead, they’re left with his guitar pick necklace, plucked carefully by Dustin and now worn like a rosary around Wayne Munson’s neck, a couple of his rings worn by his closest friends, and his vest, usually stored safely in the back of Steve Harrington’s closet but now draped thoughtfully over the neck of a guitar Jeff supplied.
Out in the woods, Steve is surrounded by trusted friends, dimly lit flashlights, tall trees, and flickering stars— things that won’t judge him for crying through his eulogy.
He’d been a de facto choice to speak. Steve spent enough time with Eddie over the course of their week from Hell to get to know him, Dustin is still inconsolable, and Wayne is nearly catatonic. The Corroded Coffin guys bring a spare guitar to smash in his honor at the close of the service, Erica says a few words that are brutally honest about the treatment Eddie endured and about how he was too good for this whole stupid town, and Mike manages to choke out a memorial in the style of a Dungeons and Dragons final scene.
Steve doesn’t hear everything Mike says, the thrumming of his own heartbeat and blood pumping in his ears drowning out the sounds around him, but he does hear the end. There’s something symbolic about that, he thinks. Always missing the beginning, but always catching the end.
“Dying a hero isn’t measured by blood shed, but by lives saved. By both measures, Eddie died a hero.” Mike’s voice wavers and cracks, but he gets through it with Will’s arm around his shoulders. Steve will never admit that now, both Wheelers have broken his heart in one way or another. Who gave that kid the right to be so well-spoken?
Will guides Mike from the spot in front of Eddie’s wrecked van, the place they use as a pulpit of sorts, and back to his place on one of the blankets they’ve laid out as Steve stands. There’s no microphone, no music, no flowers. None of this is how it’s supposed to be and the rage bubbles back up in Steve’s chest.
A few deep breaths and he starts.
“I can’t stand here and pretend that I know Eddie better than anyone here. I probably know him the least,” Steve starts, uncharacteristically nervous and sweaty with his friends’ eyes on him, all equally wet and red-rimmed. “But I can stand here and say without doubt that Eddie is—”
He stands stark still, the realization that Eddie is past tense slams into him like a hammer to the skull. Steve clears his throat and wipes a hand down his face, pausing at the bridge of his nose to pinch the place he’s learned after years of practice will hold back the flood. It doesn’t work this time, tears falling at too quick a clip, crashing over the levee.
“ Was, one of the bravest people I know. Not just for what he did for us, for this town, for the world, but for showing up as himself in a place like this. And it’s… it’s so fucked that we have to honor him here in silence, in the town he died saving to protect his goddamn memory. That we can’t memorialize him as loudly as he lived, that we can’t lov—”
A sob cracks his chest open unexpectedly, guttural and agonizing sounds spilling from his mouth.
Love.
He can barely say the word, can barely choke it out without giving it all away. Steve’s always fallen too fast, always fallen too hard, and this time, he’d speedrun through a sexuality crisis mid-apocalypse on his way to Eddie. But then he was gone. And he’s still gone, and Steve’s trying to put that into words without outright saying it, but how can say the word love now and not crumple to the forest floor under the weight of it? Of losing the possibility?
After a few long seconds, Steve manages to situate his metaphorical mask and continues as best he can.
“Dustin, you said it best a few days ago. That more people should’ve gotten to know Eddie, and now they just don’t know how much they’ll miss. But I do. We do. And we always will.”
A shiver runs through Steve, the wind and moonlight wrapping his scarred skin in what almost feels like an embrace.
Ghosts can’t cry.
Being a ghost is nothing like Eddie thought it would be. Not that he’d thought of it often, really, but if he had, he couldn’t have predicted this.
Eddie died a fucking hero’s death and now he’s tormented even in the afterlife, watching his own funeral from a seated position on the hood of his beloved van as his friends sob and clutch each other closer and closer still, and he can’t cry. He looks on instead, wispy in the wind– part of it now, really– and listens. He listens to Wayne’s labored breathing and to the sound of his nails scraping harshly against the chain holding his guitar pick. He listens to Dustin’s sobs, to Mike’s tribute, to Erica’s righteous anger.
Ghosts can’t cry, but they can apparently still feel because Steve’s words, his tears, his pain, strike Eddie in what used to be his heart. Guilt rears up like an angry stallion and its hooves would do him in if he wasn’t already dead.
“You shouldn’t have to do this,” Eddie whispers. All he wants from Steve, from all of his friends, is for them to move on and to forget about him. Or if they must remember him, he’d rather they dream sweetly of him than sob at the sepulcher of his van.
His voice foreign even to his own ears. He hasn’t spoken since finding himself in this new state and he wonders briefly if this is his actual voice, or if even that’s different now. No one reacts or responds, not a single movement or flinch, and Eddie realizes he’s destined to sit on the sidelines and watch others for, presumably, eternity. Maybe this is his punishment for not running, for not sticking to the plan.
Eddie waits for the anger, for the hatred, to spew but it never does. Not now. Steve just finishes his speech and stands awkwardly, staring at the guitar leaning against the side of the van with his battle vest draped over it, like he can’t bear to leave, like walking back to his seat on the blanket next to Robin is final.
He knows Steve won’t hear him, and imagines that he won’t feel him, but he hops down from the roof and stands in front of him anyways, directly between Steve and their friends looking on, and wraps translucent arms around his shoulders. He hugs him the best he can, the way he should’ve when they split up for the battle that would eventually kill him.
“I’m so sorry, Steve. I’m so, so sorry.”
He doesn’t feel the warmth he knows he would’ve had he stuck to the plan and been brave enough to hug Steve in victory, rather than in mourning.
Perhaps that’s part of his punishment, too.
Steve never stops visiting the van, not even when hoards of vines begin to consume and erode the metal siding, or when the tires flatten and become one with the forest floor. Teenagers occasionally frequent the oddity, rumors of it being haunted float about the new generation and Steve hopes beyond hope that they’re imagined. If Eddie had to die, Steve hopes he’s found peace– whatever that might look like for one Eddie Munson.
Months turn to years, years turn to decades, and Steve Harrington walks through life on auto-pilot. He marries a nice girl, works at his dad’s firm, and has two kids that he loves in a way he hadn’t known possible.
The visits to the van decrease, but never stop. Nor do his dreams of Eddie and the life he could’ve lived.
Steve and the nice girl divorce when both of their kids are in college, and he goes to the one place he’s always felt home after signing the final papers.
Sunlight beams down on him through the forest canopy, warming him from the outside in a true bid of cosmic sarcasm. He isn't warm right now, not yet. He feels frozen, his life having crumbled from beneath him, and he’s angry.
He usually starts out quietly, slowly, when he comes to talk to Eddie, to update him about himself, his kids, and their friends. Normally, it takes Steve a few moments to ease himself into the discomfort of talking into the void and pretending Eddie can hear him. This time though, his hand still icy from the pen he’d held to sign the divorce paperwork, he starts by punching the side of the van where no vines have taken hold.
“How fucking could you, man?” He grits out, shaking his fist and going again. “I’m divorced, Eddie. I’m fucking divorced. I wouldn’t be fucking divorced if you’d stuck to the fucking plan.”
His fist connects again and again, small dents forming from the force of his hits. Grief is a rumbling volcano and Steve is magma, his previous iciness thawing from the heat of his fury.
“None of this!”
“None of this would be fucking happening if it was you, Eddie!”
“I never would’ve let you go! Goddamn it!”
Steve’s knuckles are bloody by the time he stops and rests his head against the van. “Why did you have to go back?”
Wood chips and dirt cushion his landing as he sinks down to the ground, his head in his hands, traitorous tears threatening to fall over the edge of his eyeline. “I should’ve been faster,” he whispers. “I should’ve been there. I should’ve known. You’d still be alive if I’d been smarter, better–”
He can’t let himself fall over this event horizon, not again. Robin isn’t with him here in the depths of the forest to pull back out like she’s done time and time again over the years. Breathing hurts, almost as much as his hand which Steve starts to register without the flow of adrenaline, but he tries to focus on it anyways.
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
“I still dream about you, y’know.” He says it like a confession, and it sort of is. Not even Robin knows he still has The Dream, as it’s been coined.
With his eyes closed, Steve can visualize it. Eddie and himself, both young again, still bright and hopeful, no hint or trace of the scars they’d earned in battle, reuniting right here in this forest. It feels so visceral, so vivid, that Steve still swears it’s a message. And sure, the therapist Robin convinced him to see explained that these dreams are common with traumatic grief but this isn’t that. It feels like he’s dreaming for both of them, loving for both of them. He can feel Eddie around him even now, a phantom hug that he wishes he could fully appreciate.
But he can’t. Eddie’s gone, and Steve’s cursed to remain untouched forever.
Time passes strangely when you exist on the periphery of existence. Eddie only recognizes that it crawls on by the changing of kids who try to smoke and fuck in his van, by the growth of the vines over the only home he’s tied to these days, and by the ebb and flow of Steve’s visits.
They start out quietly, just a couple of days after Eddie’s makeshift funeral. Steve shows up and sits in silence for almost an hour before pressing one palm to the side of the cool, gray metal and leaving the way he comes. It’s sad, watching Steve go the first few visits, not knowing if he’ll return. Eddie screams so loud each time he arrives, hoping that one day he’ll break the veil between them. He never does, but at least Steve starts talking. It’s not quite companionship, but it’s the closest he knows he’ll get.
Steve visits as the kids graduate and move away, as he makes life choices that both Eddie and Steve know aren’t right but feel easy at the time. The night before his wedding, Steve cries at the van. He confesses everything– some things Eddie already knows, some things that he doesn’t– and pleads for Eddie to hear him, to know that if there’s any chance he can come back, he’ll choose him a million times over.
If there’s a way for Eddie to tear the veil with the force of his screams, this would’ve been it. A disembodied chorus of Steve! I’m here! I hear you! Steve! reverberates through the forest, but at a frequency only Eddie can hear. Unheard, he watches Steve wipe his face, inadvertently smearing dirt down his cheeks in the process, and walk out of the clearing.
It carries on like this for years– decades, actually. Salt and pepper grows in at Steve’s temples and he tells Eddie everything. Things he can’t tell his wife, or Dustin, or Robin. Eddie knows he wants a divorce before anyone else, knows his plan to wait until the kids go away for college to make it happen. Steve’s seemed at peace with it, so when it finally happens and Steve explodes, Eddie’s as surprised as a ghost can be.
Fists fly into the side of his van, peppering it with dents of various depths. Steve sobs, and blames himself, and blames Eddie, and only the latter of the two blame games feel accurate to Eddie. About time, he thinks, watching Steve sink to the ground. His knuckles are bloody and sure, Eddie knows it’s from wailing on the van but he also can’t help but think it’s from holding Eddie’s old heart in his bare hands.
“I still dream about you, y’know.” Steve’s voice is barely more than a whisper, barely more than the sound of a dying leaf falling from the Oak tree that shades the van. Eddie wants him to go on, to tell him about the dream, but he just closes his eyes and leans back, letting his head rest against the van as he pulls his knees in closer to his chest.
Eddie does what he’s learned to do best– he hugs Steve. He sits right next to him, their thighs pressed together as Eddie thumbs at his cheek and wraps his arms around his waist. Steve sighs and leans towards him. Eddie hopes he can feel him, that he can compete with the sunbeam through the trees.
Eddie’s van is barely recognizable, even to the newest crop of troublemaking teenagers walking through the woods. Steve still knows where it is though, even in his old age. He doesn’t come at night anymore, not after he’d nearly fallen when he tripped over a vine protruding villainously from the ground, but he visits during the daylight once or twice a month.
It’s fall when Steve makes his last journey to talk to Eddie.
“The trek in is getting a lot harder, Eddie. And the doctors, they uh, they think I’m pretty sick.” Steve leans against the shrubs that have consumed most of the van with a hacking cough. “They don’t understand what the Hell’s wrong with my lungs. Guess Vecna’s finally gonna get me too, huh?” He chuckles humorlessly under his breath before sobering up.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to come back after this one. Least not in this lifetime.”
Eddie wants to die all over again. He knows Steve can’t live forever, he knows it in theory, but in practice? How can he handle this horrific purgatory without Steve?
“I love you, Ed. Hopefully I see you soon enough.” He pats the small piece of rusty metal that pokes out from behind the forest and Eddie does what he’s done for the past sixty two years. He hugs Steve, and he hopes he can feel it.
Steve Harrington dies peacefully, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and his found family. When he wakes up again, he’s in the forest. It’s strange, seeing the forest alive and green when Steve knows it’s January.
For a brief moment, he thinks he’s simply having The Dream again– the one in which he’s young and spry, scar-less, running towards the man who’s held his heart for more of his life than he hadn’t. He thinks it’s a dream, until he hears Eddie Munson’s voice calling from across the clearing.
“Finally!” He beams, standing on the roof of his perfectly intact van with a tightly rolled joint in each hand. “Kept me waiting for sixty goddamn years, Harrington!”
Steve blinks once, twice, before he’s moving. He’s running, actually, something he hasn’t been able to do for the last twenty years. Long legs glide easily through the forest he’s come to know so well, dodging branches and hopping over vines in his path as Eddie hops off the roof, shoves both joints into his pocket, and braces for Steve’s impact.
Steve barrels into him hard enough to knock him backwards into the open driver’s side door, right into the front seat.
“You’re here, oh my God. Are you real? Is this real?” Steve rambles, hysterically brushing hair away from Eddie’s face, touching with all of the pent up touches he’d thought he’d never get but was apparently saving for later.
“Yeah,” Eddie smiles, winding his arms around Steve’s waist and pulling him closer. “It’s all real.”
Steve can feel him now— they can feel each other— and if this moment is all either of them get, they’re both content with this solitary slice of what feels like Heaven.
“I heard you, y’know,” Eddie mumbles into Steve’s hair, long and soft and bronze again. “Every word. And I love you, too. So goddamn much.”
Steve cups Eddie’s face with both hands, staring without blinking for as long as he can, afraid that he’ll vanish if he takes his eyes off of him. Never again. He’ll never lose him again.
“Good. Because I’m gonna kiss you, so if you have any objections—”
“Kiss me. Please.” He doesn’t stop to care that it might sound desperate, because it is. It’s six decades of desperation and if he doesn’t get his lips on Steve’s in the next ten seconds, he may finally become a poltergeist.
Eddie leans closer, their noses touching, their lips just barely grazing one another until Steve meets him halfway and presses them together properly. It’s desperate in its urgency but no less soft, no less intentional. Eddie parts his lips just enough to coax Steve to kiss him deeper and Steve responds in kind. Although Eddie has been the ghost all these years, it’s Steve who feels his soul awaken for the first time in just as many decades.
A familiar feeling in its nostalgia, Steve is wrapped in Eddie, and rapt in him all the same, his soul full to bursting. Each kiss, each movement, each soft caress of Eddie’s fingers against his skin push him one step closer to exploding into nothing but a cloud of stardust and nitrogen.
“I tried,” Eddie croaks, their lips still close enough for Steve to feel them move as he speaks. “I tried to talk back, to scream, to hug you so many times but I just… couldn’t. You couldn’t hear me or feel me, and it killed me, Steve. Pun intended.”
Eddie’s smile is just as bright as it's ever been, familiar shallow crinkles touching the corner of his eyes. Steve realizes belatedly that Eddie hasn’t aged, and that his scars— they’re gone.
“I think I did,” Steve brushes the side of Eddie’s cheek and then his own neck, surprised to feel no raised, gnarled scar tissue on either of them. “Think I felt you, at least. And hey, is this like… Heaven? We’re both young again and our scars are gone and the forest feels different.”
Eddie leans up and scoots down off the seat and back onto his feet in the forest. “One way to find out. I usually get stuck right,” Eddie keeps talking as he walks a few feet from the van towards the line of trees at the edge of the clearing. “Here.”
And then he takes a step further than he’s been able to in decades.
Freedom.
“Oh my God,” Eddie whispers, wheeling to turn and gesturing at Steve to join him. “We can leave!”
“Is that new?” Steve questions, striding over to where Eddie stands. Eddie outstretches a hand, taking one of Steve’s in his own.
“Very. I think it tethered me here, waiting for you. I can’t decide if that’s lame or romantic?”
Steve snorts and squeezes Eddie’s hand. “It can be both. So, where are we going?”
Earth and Forever are separated by nothing but an arbitrary tree line that Steve and Eddie can cross together, hand in hand, a happy ending neither predicts but will both agree is worth the wait.
Eddie looks out into the forest, into tranquility and peace with his entire world holding his hand.
“Into forever, I guess.”