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It’s a no-brainer. Like: it’s just a fucking given.
This is literally the only way things could ever have shaken out.
Eddie’s breathless—like, the kind of breathless where his lungs feel close to collapsing, on fire and self-immolating, ready for collapse as the foundations burn through and he can’t get any air, his vision’s tunneling at the edges and getting fuzzy in the middle: he’s frantic and he’s running faster than he thought he was even capable of and he’s not sure how much longer his body’s going to be up for cooperating but it’s not gonna matter either way because this is how it shakes out, this was always how the story went and how ends if need be, because Eddie will kill himself over getting where he’s headed before he lets his body fail him in completing the task at hand:
The only thing that matters.
Because again—obvious, no question—as Steve had watched them all get to their feet after climbing through the gate for the last time, actually—finally—the last fucking time, and his eyes had shifted to the impossible width of the closing-searing crevice that’d just taken off some of Nancy’s curls, it’d grown so razor-thin; as he’d made eye contact with Eddie while avoiding doing the same with Robin which was the best way to make sure they both knew what he was about to do, about to let happen; as Robin screamed and Nancy shouted and the kids started in at a pitch Eddie’d never heard before because no one could imagine a world without Steve Harrington, Jesus fuck, what the hell, even, how can the earth fucking turn without Steve Harrington—but in those moments: again.
There was never any question.
Eddie had read the truth of loss and apology, and then no-fucking-apology-at-all in Steve’s gaze because Steve Harrington would and was always going to give himself for the rest of them. Always.
It’s who he is. It’s who Eddie loves.
Even if it fucking kills him.
The moment the gate had closed, though, and Steve was lost, out of sight, and Robin wailed as much as she screeched over what could be done, because something had to be able to be done—
The moment he couldn’t see Steve anymore, the moment his Stevie was gone: of course Eddie’s heart had fucking stopped.
But from there, the rest of his body took over as his brain maybe died a little without enough oxygen, without a real pulse, without a rhythm pumping any help its way, at least not with any meaning. Because where was no meaning, now that Steve was—
The rest of him knew that, though. Muscle memory: find Steve. Go to Steve. Be with Steve, in all things.
Always.
So when he got where he was going, and felt a violent lurch behind his ribs when he saw the glow still there—barely, but there—his heart didn’t start straight up again, not yet, but that lurch was enough: he knew it was barely a step from suicide, but there wasn’t any question in how he dropped down to the hard-packed ground that’s got worrying crevices in it, now, but nothing too deep—nothing like the tax extracted from their own world in the aftermath of tearing every last vestige of Henry to shreds small enough to grind into dust and burn anyway, just to be sure.
But that’s all peripheral—the world here could be caving in actively upon him, breaking ribs left and right as pieces tumbled and knocked him sideways: no fucking problem.
He knows where he needs to go—it’s farther than it would have been, but if it weren’t farther, then he wouldn’t be here anyway. If Eddie had been able to fit through the gaping apocalyptic maw in the ground he’d started at, electric crimson and terrifying as a rule, then he’d have been able to reach down and draw someone up through it the opposite way, too, and then they, he, Steve—
He runs, now. His body’s still mostly running the show but his heart’s been inspired back to fighting, maybe with the momentum of the fall, the swift landing and the immediate takeoff: he’s on his mission. He’s close. He can feel that he’s close, there’s a fluttery feeling under his ribs because it knows it’s close to things being put back to rights, its meaning and reason to keep pumping after everything, after fucking everything—the hands that didn’t just coax it back to rhythm the first time they ended up here together but demanded, slammed and pressed and broke ribs and left bruises and fought like hell: hands that tended him even at his lowest point, the darkest days, and embraced him when he could have done anything but, held on and hadn’t yet let go—
Eddie’s heart keeps pounding, relentlessly pushing forward, because like fucking hell he’s letting go.
Ever.
The wasteland looks familiar—impossibly given how it’s been distorted by the fight but Eddie knows it, Eddie feels it, the cracking of lightning and the bitter stench of ichor like ozone where it strikes and burns: his heart shivers.
He sees an outline silhouetted when a red bolt splits the sky. He can’t tell if it moves.
His pulse stutters—it will have come back online here for nothing if that outline of everything Eddie values in this world, in every world, doesn’t fucking move.
His body wrenches back the reins and everything in him burns as his feet shrink the distance—and fuck if he doesn’t collapse of his own volition when he gets to his destination, when then silhouette is before him—when it’s more than an outline in the dark.
It’s a body. He falls down upon a body.
He feels his heart kick hard, though, as he feels the warmth, and the breath—tickling his sweat-soaked hair and his blood-caked skin; lifting beneath his weight—and proof; it wasn’t a mistake to start beating again. It wasn’t for nothing.
Familiar hands slide to splay against Eddie’s back, familiar arms wrapping tight around him, and oh. Not for nothing. His pulse stutters again, but more for overwhelm than anything because this is…
Everything.
Because now he’s here. They’re both here.
Steve’s heart’s beating catty-corner to Eddie’s where he landed and is still clinging, overlapping at the base for how Eddie landed on top of Steve and blanketed over him: possessive, desperate.
Un-fucking-yielding.
And he relishes that for a few seconds as his body and brain, heart and hands and head all get realigned on the same page.
Then he dares—and it is a dare, a gamble, he’d watched Steve disappear with the closing of that gate and he will never have the words for how everything that had weight or mass or meaning in the universe didn’t just drop out in that moment, but fucking ceased to be—but he does dare to lift up enough to look, to see Steve wide-eyed and a little breathless; enough to frame Steve’s face and feel how it’s warm, the tease of his pulse near the jaw as real-real-real—and he looks, takes it in for a good stretch of time, until his brain and his heart both are convinced, and then?
Then he descends.
“You,” he kisses Steve’s lips, hard; “stupid,” he kisses Steve’s cheek, the warm pillow of it on the left; “perfect,” then the line of the bone cut glorious to the right; “reckless, self-sacrificing,” he presses lips to the tips of Steve’s brows on the back of both accusations; “moronic,” he kisses down Steve’s nose and can’t help the curve of his own mouth when Steve starts to chuckle, a little incredulous but so warm, so alive; “heroic,” Eddie kisses the bow above his top lip carefully before he draws back, looks at Steve seriously even as the laughter still in Steve’s expression is building like molten honey, a joy of some sort he’s never felt before, so tangled with relief as he frames Steve’s face again with not-wholly-steady palms as he declares:
“Level-18 barbarian, paladin, barbaradin,” he says the last like a eureka moment, like it’s a real word but also only applies to Steve and his impossible idiot heroics, of all the people in all the world.
He has to kiss him again, harder, straight on the lips until they’re both breathless enough for Eddie to have to gasp after he nips Steve’s bottom lip and hisses:
“Level fucking 20 asshole.”
Then he lets himself collapse back onto Steve’s heaving chest, and Eddie did that, Eddie threw Steve’s heartbeat into wild raucous: all of it real under his head because Steve is real.
Steve is real.
“I was, I was,” Eddie tries to explain, to say anything—only one thing comes out, and it’s honestly all that feels relevant:
“Steve.”
“I’m here,” Steve murmurs low, tightens arms around Eddie’s body, presses Eddie tighter to his own; “I’m right here.”
“But you weren’t.”
And it comes out broken because those moments had done that and more besides; Eddie tries to focus on Steve, to narrow his world down. Tries to hear the way his blood rushes like it’ll solve the world.
“If there was a way to come get me, I knew you’d find it,” Steve finally exhales and Eddie honest-to-fuck whimpers because the words themselves say more for what they don’t say at all:
If there wasn’t a way, then it went how it always needed to.
And that part is why Eddie’s still fucking shaking.
“Robin’s a mess,” Eddie finally shoots back—it’s a truth that’s underscored by the one in the flesh, here, and how so is Eddie.
“You left her?” Steve asks, as if he was maybe wondering if she was just slower in getting here.
“Of course I did,” Eddie almost scoffs because he loves Robin but…there was no other thought in his mind than getting to Steve. “She’s not gonna stop until they figure a way to get you out.”
In truth it was almost an insurance plan, to leave her screaming and panicked, for exactly that reason. He’s not particularly concerned about them getting rescued. If a way exists, Robin Buckley will find it.
And if it doesn’t, she’ll sure as shit strong arm everyone around her to make a way.
“Us out,” Steve pokes Eddie’s ribs; “the fuck were you thinking?”
Eddie knows what he means—his tone tells that much plain: what were you thinking coming back to this place? They’d been escaping for a reason and while the earthquaking seems to have subsided for now, it’s not like it’s safe, here.
But that wasn’t what Eddie’d been concerned with. What he’d been thinking, when his whole world fucking shattered. When his soul slipped through to the other side of forever, out of reach; what he’d been thinking—
“That I’m not your platonic soulmate,” Eddie answers, honest as he can; “and that when I slid my heart under your ribs the moment you made me feel like I could?”
He turns a little to kiss through the unzipped but filth-thickened layers of gear that Steve’s still wrapped in, right where he knows his heart beats, his heart—this heart is Eddie’s whole fucking heart.
“I meant for it to stay there,” he drops his head back down hard, close, tight; “I wasn’t leaving you down here alone, risking you.”
And if he closes his eyes and focuses and maybe stretches his imagination, he thinks he can hear the kick in Steve’s pulse that matches the catch in his breath.
“And I’m selfish, as you well know,” Steve scoffs, but it’s not untrue, especially not in this: “wouldn’t have made it another fucking second without my heart.”
He wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t. He nearly didn’t. He’s not sure how he got down here, physically speaking, save that there was no other option.
No. Other. Fucking. Choice.
“You’re insane,” Steve breathes close enough to shiver through Eddie’s hair.
“You love it,” Eddie nuzzles closer; “you love me.”
And he gets to feel Steve’s hard peck to the top of his head and the frustrated growl that draws an uptick to Eddie’s lips—it’s become a real obvious tell for not only Steve’s undying affection, but a wordless concession.
Nearly losing everything, so long as it’s only nearly, doesn’t erase the sense of satisfaction Eddie feels not just for the vindication, but all the more for the unwavering love.
“Goddamn it,” Steve huffs into his hair; “I don’t love that you ran back down here when the whole fucking purpose of me staying down here was to hold the gate open long enough to get you out,” he tries to scold but stays buried in Eddie’s curls:
“Kinda shits on my whole big sacrifice moment a little.”
Eddie snorts at the played-up petulance, tries to reframe the thrust of it all in his mind from tragedy to…failed-comedic almost-tragedy.
“Deepest of apologies, my liege,” Eddie throws his voice into the one he uses for courtiers in campaigns; “know that the tales of your unmatched bravery and battle-hardy mettle will stand wholly unbesmirched in the legends, regardless.”
“By the antics of my idiot boyfriend?” The sheer height of Steve’s raised brow is fucking audible.
“By the lovesick need of your idiot romantic soulmate with a capital ‘R’.”
“Fuck you,” Steve knocks the bridge of his nose against the crown of Eddie’s head as he shakes his own back and forth because he can’t fucking argue. “Fuck you.”
“Not totally sure it’s sanitary, but,” Eddie lets a hand reach and stroke down Steve’s side; “you know I’m never opposed.”
Steve full on cackles for that, and it does feel…it does feel softer now. It feels…
Eddie feels like he can breathe again. For real.
“How did you even get back down here?” Steve asks, honest curiosity in him, but Eddie also can’t help but snort a little because it’s better than maybe sobbing, the whole thing’s absurd, he honestly can’t believe now that it worked, in his blind desperation he hadn’t entertained the prospect of failure because the only thoughts he could think were just Steve and need and no.
Mostly: Steve.
“Spatiotemporal anomaly,” Eddie croaks out what he’d heard Dustin babbling about while they’d trekked through down here earlier, about other gates, about what else needed attention after they made it back out—before all hell broke loose and they had to run because the Upside Down was where the earth was shaking, cracking this time.
Which was good, in theory—fucking place needed to die.
Just not with them in it.
Steve’s looking at him blank, blinking, before he smirks and deadpans with a quirked brow:
“Just because I think the one movie with the teddy bears is neat does not mean I have a single fucking clue what you just said.”
And Eddie huffs a laugh, something so normal, so real in this moment, in this hellscape that’s not hell for real because Steve, Steve is here, Steve is breathing and he’s teasing with Eddie like always, like normal, fuck.
Fuck.
“I don’t think I do either,” Eddie admits with a little wondering laugh, tries to form an answer around how heavy his pulse is just pumping Stevie, my Stevie, he’s okay, we’re okay on repeat. “I think because the Hawkins here is stuck how it was years ago, and then, one gate literally got jostled, spatially,” he’s guessing, he’s totally riffing but like—
“The trailer,” Steve says and, yeah, that was his thinking because once the government took possession of the trailer but failed to successfully quarantine anything if they were gonna stick to the ‘unprecedented earthquake’ story—
“The monument they put up,” Eddie nods, the one for Chrissy and Patrick and everyone who died in the quake later, too. “The flower garden around the base of it? You know how it all keeps dying?”
Eddie knew. Eddie walked past the memorial once a week at least, just…it felt important even if he didn’t always stop. And he’d banked on it, he’d ran to it hoping Dustin wasn’t spewing total bullshit and that Eddie understood the barest fraction of enough for it to slot into place.
“Oh shit,” Steve exhales low; “they put that memorial on top of a literal hellhole.”
And it should sting, but it can’t, not right now. Because it got him here, to Steve.
“Plus they kept putting new flowers in,” Eddie adds, kinda speculating out loud to distract from the lingering, in fact now-growing terror of the what-ifs where none of it worked and he didn’t get here; “so not only did the original gate in the trailer being moved fuck with being able to properly close it, I think the flowers also just kept, reopening the wound?”
Steve’s still in that way he gets when he’s mulling over the crazy shit they have to deal with; that Eddie hopes they never have to deal with again.
“Hence the state of,” and so Eddie lifts his hands—kinda with the intention of tying off the train of thought now that it’s unnecessary to dwell on, now that Eddie’s here; that they’re both in the same place and breathing the same air again like it always should be—but he lifts his hands, which are caked in dirt and cracked with dried blood from how he’d torn through anything in his goddamn way, and Steve startles, makes to sit up but Eddie doesn’t move and Steve doesn’t force him to, at least not yet.
“Fuck,” Steve half-gasps, gathering Eddie’s hands close to inspect them; “Eddie,” he shakes his head, mournful and incredulous and aching and full of so much care, at the very core of it all.
“There’s a first aid kit inside,” his eyes dart toward the house—the biggest gate that had been left at the time had been in the Harringtons’ pool, in the end. And if they stay in Hawkins after this?
Eddie’s gonna need to insist that they fill that fucker in. He knows he won’t be able to look at it and not just feel the void coming for him again as Steve’s eyes slipped from view—
No. No: he’s here now. He’s here and maybe it’s not the ideal setting, but it’s the ideal place. Always.
Because Steve’s hand is in his. Steve’s here next him: alive. Alive.
“Eds, come on,” Steve starts to sit up again; “we gotta get—”
“Gimme a minute.”
Eddie remains plastered to his chest. Doesn’t think he could move just yet if he tried.
He fucking needs the minute.
Steve—because he’s Steve—gives him what has to be that three times over at least, plays with his hair, wraps an arm tight again to keep him close, sensing the need of it.
“You okay?” he finally asks, rumbles more than speaks, something Eddie feels through his chest more than hears through the thick air.
“I’m more than okay,” Eddie says, and he’s honest with it: that’s not why he can’t move.
“I was scared,” understatement of the goddamn millennium; “even though I knew I was running to that gate and prying it fucking open with my bare hands, the second I lost sight of you,” and his pulse trips a little just saying it, reliving it by reiterating it in words:
“I was still so scared.”
Because what if it hadn’t worked. What if the thing he really hadn’t wholly understood wasn’t waiting under the soil for him to throw himself through to get here, to get to Steve? What if—
“So I just wanna,” he nuzzles Steve’s chest needy, and almost without thought beyond that need: “just a little longer.”
He feels Steve’s lips crush his already messy curls with a gentle kiss to the crown of his head as he breathes:
“Long as you need.”
And Eddie knows he means it. Relaxes, still, to hear it said for sure.
“They’ll figure it out,” Eddie eventually says; “even if it takes a little while.”
Steve sighs, and Eddie relishes the strength of it lifting him up, easing him down.
“That wasn’t the point.”
“I know,” because of course it wasn’t the point—Steve didn’t throw himself into the jaws of danger every goddamn chance he got for fun, he did it so others didn’t have to. He didn’t do it on the guarantee there was a way back from the brink.
That’s what drove Eddie fucking insane, really. Steve was too good, but the on top of that, much as he was learning how much he was worth all on his own, just for breathing, and all the bigger for doing that next to Eddie, now, in Eddie’s arms—the fact that it had grown to be just so Steve to step up first, no matter if he was starting to see that that wasn’t the thing that made him irreplaceable—it was going to give Eddie a goddamn heart attack if he kept at it like this.
Or else: leave him with a heartbreak that landed even worse, somehow more destructive, still.
“They know, too,” Eddie tacks on—the kids, the kinda adults like them, the real adults even—Robin, in her own special category: they know.
“They’re still gonna find you, and scream at you for doing it, even if it was necessary.” And Steve chuckles, a bright thing in the darkness here, under Eddie’s ear. “They love you too much for anything less.”
Steve sighs, and Eddie finds it all kinda bleeding out of him, now, the franticness. The unwavering terror.
“Not the only ones who love you past the point of any logic or sense, either,” he flips a little to prop his chin on Steve’s chest and bat his eyes as he makes unmistakable who loves Steve the farthest possible amount past any logic or sense because it’s not about logic or sense. What Eddie feels.
It’s honestly the most of both he could imagine. It basically the only real thing he thinks he knows, without question.
“But it’s not like we can’t make the best of being alone here while we wait,” he waggles his eyebrows and gets the laugh from Steve he was angling for.
Sweet goddamn music.
“Not like you don’t know where I keep all the lube,” Steve rolls his eyes as he eases Eddie to sit up with him. “Not as if I moved it around like fuckin’ hide and seek over the years.”
Which: point.
“But first we clean these,” Steve shakes Eddie from the wrists where he’s still holding on; “yeah?”
“You do drive a hard bargain, Mr. Harrington,” Eddie bites his lip as they get to their feet, and Steve doesn’t let go as they make for the house and…it feels okay. Like, maybe not everything is fixed yet, or solved, and they are currently a little bit stranded and stuff, but.
Steve’s here, taking him to clean his wounds. Steve’s here.
Of course it’s okay, now.
“Hey,” he gets shaken from his own head by Steve’s voice, and one broad grip straining to hold both of Eddie’s wrists as he points with the other hand:
“Look.”
And…huh.
“That’s new, yeah?”
It looks like a little cluster of sprouting things, but the biggest tell is that they’re green.
Bright fucking green, here. Like…life coming back. Like maybe there was another world inside this one, before Hawkins, 1983 was thrust upon it.
For some reason—or maybe no single reason, but more the fact of it on top of Steve’s touch on his skin—it makes Eddie smile.
“I have a feeling we’re gonna do just fine until they come up with a plan to get us,” Eddie whispers, and leans to capture Steve’s lips, and yeah.
S’ganna be just fine.