Chapter Text
Steve woke up at home in his bed, feeling rested and ready to start the day.
It would take him a few minutes to figure out why that was all wrong.
He stretched lazily and rose, rubbing at his eyes with one hand as he shuffled into his bathroom to pee. The house was quiet but then of course it was, his parents were going to be in Majorca for the next couple of weeks. Or maybe Malta. Whatever.
His business done, Steve leaned his hips against the counter and yawned as he squeezed toothpaste out onto his brush. It was getting down to the end of the tube, he had to roll it a couple of times to get enough. Time to add toothpaste to his next grocery run.
Steve stared into the middle distance as he brushed, his thoughts still mushy and sleep-slow. Did he have a shift this morning? Shit, he’d have to check the calendar taped above his desk. It was spring break so he didn’t have to drive Robin to school, but then—
The toothbrush fell and clattered into the sink. Steve looked up and met his own eyes in the mirror, horror written all over his face.
Spring break. Chrissy Cunningham. The dead kids, Eddie on the run, the Creel house. The Upside Down, the fucking demobats, the hole in the roof of a trailer. Vecna. Max. Molotov cocktails and shotguns, then running back to the trailer park to find Dustin, wailing and sobbing over—
“Shit,” Steve muttered. He hurriedly rinsed out his mouth and nearly missed spitting into the sink as he rushed out of the room. He grabbed his walkie talkie from his nightstand and turned it on.
“Hello?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Anyone getting this?”
Nothing but the faint hissing crackle of the open airwaves.
“Hello?” Steve tried again. “Anyone? Dustin?”
Nothing.
“Code Red!?” he tried frantically. “Hello! Hello! Dustin, come on, man!”
Only silence.
“Shit,” he muttered again, dropping the walkie. He started getting changed quickly, throwing off his pajamas and rummaging in his closet for new clothes. As he tossed off his t-shirt and reached for an undershirt he paused and stilled. He glanced down at his stomach and stared. Then he ran back to the bathroom.
The mirror confirmed what he saw. His gruesome bat bites were gone, no sign whatsoever of the way the demobats had used him like a chew toy less than 24 hours ago.
“What the fuck?” Steve said quietly as he ran a careful hand over his midsection. Nothing: no pain, no blood, no painful inflamed skin. And no scar either. Like it had never happened.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled, shaking his head. He finished getting dressed and sprinted down the stairs, grabbing his car keys as he raced out the door. He just had to find the others and figure out what the fuck was happening right now.
He jumped into his car and headed toward Dustin’s house, carefully keeping to the speed limit in case the cops were still out in droves. It took him about five minutes to notice, after he had left Loch Nora and was driving through the residential part of town, that he didn’t see any cop cars. In fact, he didn’t see any cars on the road at all. There were plenty in driveways as he passed, or parked in front of houses, but no one was driving.
As he turned onto the busier street that led to Dustin’s neighborhood, Steve was still the only car on the road. And not just the only car—he didn’t see anyone on the sidewalks or out in their yards either. He glanced at the clock on his dash; 8:30 am should mean folks heading to work and school, the closest to rush hour that a town the size of Hawkins ever got.
Steve wracked his brain. It wasn’t Sunday, was it? Maybe everyone was at church or something. Did church start this early? He hadn’t been since his parents stopped bothering to drag him along back in seventh grade.
He finally made it to Dustin’s house and hopped out of the car, glancing up and down the street. Nobody was outside, but he could see cars parked here too. Mrs. Henderson’s Volvo was sitting in the carport alongside Dustin’s bike, so he figured they were home. Steve rang the doorbell and waited impatiently on the front step.
After a couple of minutes with no response, he rang it again. Then he banged on the door. Still nothing. He walked around to the carport and peered through the big picture window into the dining room, trying to catch sight of anyone inside. He couldn’t even see the damn cat.
Steve went back to the door and pounded on it. “Dustin?” he yelled. “Dustin, come on, man! Open up!” He kept pounding and yelling for a few minutes, but no one emerged. He tripped back down the stairs, yanked open his car door, and leaned on the horn for a long time.
No one came out of the Henderson house. For that matter, no one came out of any of the neighboring houses either, even though Steve was definitely disturbing the peace. He let go of the horn and slumped against the side of his car.
What the fuck was going on? Steve was officially creeped out. He didn’t remember falling asleep at home last night; hell, he didn’t remember going home at all. The last thing he could remember clearly was coming back from the Upside Down version of the Creel house, Robin and Nancy at his side as they finally reached the trailer park, and finding Dustin stooped over the bleeding body of Eddie Munson.
Steve reached up and chewed on a fingernail as he looked around. This was all wrong. Something must have happened, something big. And he couldn’t remember what it was. Had he been Vecna-ed? Is this what it felt like? Shouldn’t there be more nightmares or something? Was he standing somewhere right now, eyes rolled backward in his head as his friends frantically tried to get headphones on his ears? Shit, had he told anyone his favorite song? Did Robin know? Robin should know. She knew where he kept his tapes…
He stood up and shook his head. If he was being Vecna-ed he would probably know it by now. Max had had nightmares for weeks beforehand, and Nancy had immediately seen Barbara Holland’s corpse at the bottom of the Upside Down version of his pool. Steve had never had any nightmares about Dustin Henderson’s empty driveway.
Steve pulled the radio out of the front seat and tried it a few more times as he thought about what to do next. The Wheelers, he decided; he wanted to see Robin, but Nancy probably already had a plan halfway finished and that’s where Dustin and all his friends would gather while they tried to figure out what had happened.
He turned to get back in the car, but something made him pause. There was something else off about today, and not just that everyone was hiding out inside their houses. Steve looked around the neighborhood, scrunching up his nose as he tried to figure out what was bothering him.
It was the sun, he realized after a moment. It was too bright, too yellow at this time of day for April, even on a sunny day. And it was too hot too, Steve was getting a little warm standing outside in jeans and two layers of shirts. He looked up at the trees behind Dustin’s house and scrunched up his nose in thought. The trees were too full, he decided. The leaves should have just started emerging, a little sparse and bright green, but all of the trees he could see were fully leafed out and dark green like it was already summer.
There was a mild breeze and distantly Steve could hear a wind chime a few doors away clinking merrily, but aside from that there were no sounds. No birds in the trees, no dogs barking. No engines or lawn mowers or people talking. Dustin’s neighborhood was pretty quiet, it was true, but nothing like this. Steve felt a little chill go up his spine. He hurried to get back into the car and drove away.
The more of town he saw as he headed to Nancy’s place, the weirder things got. Not a single other car was on the road but there were also no cars parked in front of Hawkins General Hospital as he passed. The stores in the strip mall on Washington St. looked open, but he couldn’t see anyone inside and the parking lot was empty. Every traffic light he saw was flashing yellow like it was 2:00 am instead of 9:00 am.
At the Wheeler house he banged on the door and rang the bell for ages, but there was no answer even though he could see the Wheelers’ cars inside their garage and Nancy's parked up on the street. No one came out to yell at him for making so much noise, even in Nancy's upper-middle-class neighborhood.
Steve put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips as he stared up at the house. No choice: he was going to have to bring out the ninja skills. He shimmied up the drain pipe and clambered over the roof to Nancy's bedroom window, which was thankfully unlocked.
Inside, Nancy's room looked a hell of a lot better than it had back in the Upside Down. And he could tell it definitely wasn't 1983 in here—everywhere there used to be a picture of him and Nancy there was now a picture of her and Jonathan.
Awesome.
“Nance?” he yelled as he left the room and started checking through the house. “Mike? Anybody home?”
He walked the whole Wheeler house top to bottom, but no one was there. He even looked in the master bedroom and Holly's room. Nothing.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered to himself. “Where the fuck is everybody?”
Steve headed for the front door—which it turned out was unlocked, so that was a waste of his ninja abilities—and went back to his car. Then he drove everywhere he could think of.
Robin's house: nothing. Lucas' house: nothing. The trailer park: nothing. The old Byers house: nothing. The police station, the library, Town Hall, Hawkins High, the creepy old lab, the burnt-out husk of Starcourt: nothing.
Everyone was gone. The houses were empty, cars in the driveways but nobody home. The stores were empty, even though the lights were on and everything was working as if the place was running. He even poked his head into the arcade and found every game on and ready to play but not a single kid in sight.
Eventually Steve got hungry, the sun high overhead now, so he drove back home and made himself a sandwich. He sat down and ate it mindlessly as he wracked his brain trying to remember what had happened. He remembered going to the Upside Down version of the Creel house, leaving Dustin and Eddie behind at the trailer park. He remembered the vines, then fighting Vecna, then heading outside to discover that he had disappeared. He remembered walking back to find Dustin hunched over in the middle of the trailer park, surrounded by dead bats and holding onto Eddie who was—he was—
He would worry about that later. Steve needed to figure out where everyone fucking was.
He stood up abruptly and went to try the phone; 911 always worked, right? Except there was no dial tone. The phone was dead.
“Fuck!” Steve yelled, his voice echoing in the empty house. He strode angrily over to the family room and turned on the TV, hoping to find some news. But every channel was just reruns or static, even the fucking Weather Channel. Steve turned off the TV and threw the remote down at the couch. He threw his hands up into his hair and pulled, forcing his own head back. He paced back and forth a little, trying not to panic.
“Fuck it,” he said after a minute. He went back to his car. He'd check the whole damn town if he had to, burn this entire tank of gas trying to find someone in this fucking hellhole. Entire populations don't disappear overnight. Steve had gotten used to weird over the years, but this was taking the fucking cake.
He drove for hours, methodically driving through the grid of Hawkins’ streets, up one road and down the other. All empty. He stopped randomly to check houses—he found all their doors unlocked, like the Wheeler house—or to pop his head into stores. No sign of anyone anywhere. He tried every payphone or home phone he found—all dead. Steve drove to the quarry and hollered, his voice echoing across the distance. He drove down to Lover’s Lake and stood at the shoreline, checking for boats.
By sunset he was doing a final circuit, driving along Cornwallis toward the center of town when he finally saw something. Another car coming down the road toward him. And not just any car: a familiar junker of a van.
Eddie.
Steve sped up until he was closer then stopped his car—in the middle of the street, because who fucking cares—and hopped out. The van skidded to a stop and Eddie motherfucking Munson stumbled out, looking a little wild around the eyes but otherwise completely unharmed, no sign of the blood he had been covered in last time Steve saw him.
They stood there in the middle of Cornwallis for a moment, just staring at each other in disbelief, until Steve blinked and then he was striding over, eating up the distance as rapidly as he could so he could throw his arms around Eddie Munson and find him real and whole and alive.
“Holy shit,” Steve muttered in Eddie's ear, hair getting in his mouth. “Holy shit, holy shit.”
Eddie just clasped him back tightly and tucked his forehead against Steve's shoulder.
After a second Steve pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “You're alive!” he cried. He looked down at Eddie but there were no bat bites, no wounds at all.
Eddie's hands were tight on his shoulders. “You're here!” he answered back. “I thought I was—everyone's gone, man.”
“I know!” Steve replied, a little shrilly. “I've been driving around for hours!”
“Me too!” Eddie said quickly. “Fucking—the whole town is empty!”
“I know!” Steve cried again. “Where—did you just wake up?”
“No, I've been up all day, woke up this morning at home, which doesn't have a horrifying portal to another dimension in the living room, by the way.”
“But I checked the trailer park!” Steve cried, finally backing up a bit and letting go of Eddie to run his fingers through his own hair.
“Well, I checked your house too, man, and nobody was home!” Eddie said hotly.
“Shit, we must have just missed each other,” Steve said, laughing a bit even though it really wasn't funny. “And you haven't seen anybody?”
Eddie shook his head. “Nope, you're the first.” He started tugging on a strand of his hair, twisting it around his finger. “I tried the town hall and the police station, the school, Wayne's factory, the damn hospital. Nothing.”
“Me too,” Steve replied, bewildered. “You find a phone that works?”
“Nope,” Eddie said bitterly.
“Shit,” Steve said, crossing his arms. “Something must have happened, there must have been a—like an evacuation, or something.”
“Vecna?” Eddie asked tentatively. “Like, the gates maybe?”
Steve shook his head. “I have no idea, man.” He shrugged. “I haven't seen any signs, but who the fuck knows.”
“Shit,” Eddie said, pressing his lips into a thin line. He gestured at Steve's stomach. “You doing okay, man? You find some real bandages or something?” he asked. “Like at the hospital?”
“What?” Steve asked, before remembering what he looked like the last time Eddie saw him. “Oh, no no, man, look,” he said, lifting up his shirt to show his stomach, completely unharmed. “Not even a fucking scar, dude.”
“What the fuck…” Eddie mumbled. He stared and reached out a hand for a second like he was going to touch, but then dropped it. “How is that possible?”
“What about you, man?” Steve asked incredulously. “The last time I saw you you were fucking bat food, dude!” He waved frantically at Eddie's torso. “And now you're all—hunky-dory again?”
Eddie squinted at him. “What?”
Steve raised his eyebrows expectantly. “You were, like, bitten like crazy when we got back to the trailer park. Dustin was freaking out, man.” He ran a hand through his hair, gesturing vaguely with his free hand. “It was pretty gruesome, he thought you were dead.”
Eddie looked bewildered. “I don’t—I’m not sure what happened. I remember… we got inside the trailer, but then the bats were coming through the—through the vents. So I had Dustin climb out and then I…” he trailed off, biting his lip and looking down.
“You what?” Steve asked, trying to be gentle.
Eddie shrugged uncomfortably. “I tried to lead the bats away from him. Left the trailer, grabbed a bike…I, uh. I don’t really remember much after that.”
Steve squinted at him, a little skeptical of that statement. “Pretty sure I told you not be a fucking hero, dude.”
Eddie grinned back at him a little bitterly. “You also told me not to be cute, but I just can’t help it.”
Steve snorted. “Whatever,” he said. “Glad you’re in one piece now, anyway.” He looked over at where the sun was setting. “Look, man, we should get out of town and figure out what happened. But I don’t want to be driving around at night without knowing what we might be up against. Let’s hole up for now and head out in the morning, yeah?”
“You think there might be something out here?” Eddie asked, glancing warily around them.
“Man, I got no fucking idea,” Steve replied with a shrug. “But I’ve seen enough Upside Down shit to want to stay the hell away from it.” He shook his head. “Come on, let’s head back to my place, I’m getting hungry.”
Eddie raised an eyebrow at him. “Uh, my place is closer,” he notes, jerking a thumb in the direction of the trailer park.
“Yeah,” Steve replied, crossing his arms, “and it also had a hole in the ceiling that led straight into Vecna’s backyard. What if it opens again?”
Eddie set his jaw. “Didn’t a girl die in your backyard?” he asked challengingly.
Steve pursed his lips, irritated. “You got a better idea?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Eddie replied loftily.
Eddie’s grand idea turned out to be his buddy Jeff’s house, which was on Cherry Avenue and about halfway between the trailer park and Loch Nora. It was a one-story mid-century ranch like Dustin’s place, but the inside looked like a farmhouse had vomited inside of it, gingham plaid and barnyard animals everywhere.
“Yeah,” Eddie agreed when Steve commented on it. He poked at the figurine of a chicken. “Jeff’s mom has a thing for, like, farm animals or whatever. She grew up in the boonies.”
Steve looked around doubtfully. “And you want us to sleep here?” he asked. “Cause like, I got a guest room. And premium cable.”
“Look, dude, you were the one who brought up things that go bump in the fucking night,” Eddie said, spreading his hands wide. “This is, like, neutral ground for monsters. No known sightings.” He dropped down onto one of the two ugly plaid couches, tossing aside a throw pillow shaped like a pig. “We can each take a couch, lock all the doors, and know we’re both safe. Then in the morning we skip town and find a phone or something, figure out why we got left behind.”
Steve sighed and ran his hands over his face a few times before sitting down on the other couch. It was lumpy. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “I don’t have any better ideas.”
“Cool,” Eddie said, popping to his feet. “Let me see if there’s anything to eat around here. You wanna find some blankets or something?”
Eddie managed to scrounge up a couple of Hungry-Man microwave dinners and he and Steve ate them on their couches while they watched a couple of old episodes of Three’s Company. After that they found a channel that was only 20 minutes into showing Temple of Doom so they decided to watch that too. They were just killing time anyway.
At first Eddie had a lot to say about the movie, lots of facts about the filming or whatever—Steve had only seen it once in theaters on a date, and he hadn’t exactly been paying that much attention to the screen—but after a while he quieted down and started chewing on his nails, one of his knees jiggling nervously.
“You okay?” Steve asked him after a minute. He waved a hand at the screen. “Pretty sure Indy makes it.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he said sarcastically. He blew out a breath. “I’m kinda worried about my uncle, is all,” he said. “It’s been a rough week for him, you know? And now he’s had to leave home and he has no idea where I am… It’s just—he’s all the family I got.”
Steve nodded in a way he hoped looked sympathetic. He could understand why Eddie was worried, but he couldn’t say he felt the same way. His parents probably had no idea that Hawkins had been evacuated or whatever; the last he had heard from them was a voicemail two days ago about how they were extending their trip and that Steve should remember that the lawn guy was going to start coming next week.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Steve said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to track down an entire town’s worth of people,” he added. “We’ll probably find him tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Eddie agreed a little reluctantly. They went back to watching the movie, which was a little more gruesome than Steve remembered. When the credits started rolling, Eddie lifted the remote and turned off the TV.
“Hey, man,” he said in the ensuing silence. “I know it’s kinda early, but it’s been a weird fucking day and I’m beat.”
Steve agreed with him, so they prepared the lumpy couches for sleeping. Not having any pajamas here—Eddie offered to lend him some of Jeff’s but that felt super weird—Steve just stripped down to his boxers and his undershirt and climbed into his makeshift bed.
“Night, dude,” he said once Eddie turned off the cow-themed lamp on the side table.
“Night,” Eddie replied. “Don’t let the bed bugs eat you from the inside out.”
“Dude,” Steve said angrily. Eddie just snickered in the darkness.
It took a long time for Steve to fall asleep, despite how tired he was from driving all day. He always needed time to adjust to sleeping in a new place, and even with the comforting sound of Eddie’s soft, even breaths only a few feet away, he felt nervous. Whatever the hell had happened in Hawkins—whatever the hell had happened to them—Steve had the feeling they were just scratching the surface.
The Upside Down, in his experience, never made things simple.
Steve woke up at home in his bed, feeling rested and ready to start the day.
He stretched, surprised the lumpy couch hadn’t given him a backache, then opened his eyes. He immediately squeezed them shut, then opened them again.
This was his bedroom.
Steve sat up, looking wildly around him. He hadn’t fallen asleep in his bed last night; he had fallen asleep on a stranger’s living room couch. He was sure of it, there was no way that had been a dream.
“What the fuck,” he muttered as he tossed aside the covers and got out of bed. He looked down at his own body and found he was wearing the same pajamas he had woken up in yesterday morning, instead of the clothes he had gone to sleep in.
“What the fuck,” he said again. He leaned over and picked up the phone on his nightstand. Nothing, dead, no dial tone.
Without bothering to change clothes or even brush his teeth, Steve rushed out of the house and hopped in his car. He tore through the empty streets—cars in the driveways but none on the road—toward the trailer park. He pulled up in front of Eddie’s trailer just in time to see him stumble out the front door, still in his pajamas.
“What the fuck!” Eddie cried as Steve climbed out of his car.
“I don’t know!” Steve yelled back. “How did I get back to my house?”
“How did I get back to mine?” Eddie replied, throwing his arms back toward the trailer behind him. “Did you see anybody?” he added desperately.
Steve shook his head. “No, still empty.” He threw his arms up, gripping his hands together on top of his head. “This is fucking nuts, dude.”
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “Did any of the Upside Down shit involve, like, fucking teleporting before?”
“No, man,” Steve sighed. “It’s all just monsters and vines and El using her superpowers.” He scrunched up his nose. “And the Russians, last year.”
Eddie, who had been pacing in a tight circle, froze. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Oh,” Steve replied. “Yeah, I guess we probably forgot to mention the Russians, huh? They built a secret base under Starcourt so they could open a portal to the Upside Down.”
“Fucking what?” Eddie asked again, turning toward Steve. Then he immediately shook his head. “Nope, no, it’s too early for this.” He started back toward the trailer. “Come on, come in and have some coffee, and then I’m gonna need you to tell me everything from the damn beginning, because this shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder and I need, like, context.”
Steve followed him up the sagging steps. “It could take a while,” he warned.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone’s gonna come knocking,” Eddie replied sarcastically. “Seems like we’ve got plenty of time.”