Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Don’t look back, them days are gone

Follow me into the endless night

I can bring your fears to life

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine

Meet me in the woods tonight

- Lord Huron

*****

Steve wakes with a gasp, his eyes adjusting quickly to the dark surroundings.

He’s still lying where he fell. Propping himself slowly up on his elbows, he jumps at the sight of the motionless demogorgan lying a few feet away.

“It’s ok, it’s dead.”

Eddie’s voice comes from his other side and Steve’s head whips around.

“Welcome back.” Eddie grins, all teeth and dimples.

Steve’s vision swims.

Eddie’s alive, he’s here, he’s safe, he’s…

Different.

He’s…wrong.

His skin is ghostly pale, dark eyes ringed with black.

The Upside Down has always been freezing cold, and yet Eddie is in just his ripped jeans and tattered Hellfire tee, looking perfectly comfortable. He’s sitting cross-legged next to Steve, his chin resting on intertwined fingers.

Next to him sits a fox.

Not an ordinary fox - this one is all black, fur shifting and waving in a non-existent breeze.

Steve is reminded of the Wolf, and he glances around to see the large creature sitting nearby, flicking its tail casually.

Steve’s gaze quickly returns to Eddie.

“Eddie,” he breathes, sitting up and reaching for the other man.

Eddie smiles, something soft and familiar, and scooches forwards. “Hey, Steve.”

He falls into Steve’s arms easily, like he’s meant to be there.

They’ve never done this. Never had any physical contact outside of Eddie shoving him against the wall of the boat shed, Eddie’s shoulder nudging against his own, keeping his balance as they traipsed through the Upside Down, a brush of hands while exchanging a plastic bag-wrapped torch. Necessary touches, most of them - to the outside eye anyway.

But here, there’s no one to see them, no one to question the way Steve accepts Eddie’s touch so readily.

And any hesitation, any bullshit about masculinity he’d learnt from high-school locker rooms, from the cruel hands of his father was long dead; it had died months ago, had slunk away in the middle of the night as Steve lay awake and gasping and desperate for Eddie.

Steve clings to him now, arms wrapping around a skinny waist and squeezing tight.

“Eddie, how -” Steve starts, but Eddie hushes him, brushing a hand over the back of Steve’s head. “I’m so sorry,” Steve’s voice hitches with a sob and he buries his face into Eddie’s neck. His skin is cold, but Steve barely notices. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Eddie pulls away a little to look at Steve’s face. “Why are you sorry?”

For leaving you here to rot. For letting you come in the first place. For making you be a distraction. For allowing you to be a sacrifice, when it should’ve been me, fuck, it should’ve been me…

The Wolf yips quietly, dragging Steve from his thoughts, and he locks eyes with Eddie again.

“I left you here,” Steve chokes out, “I left you in this fucking place, and I’ve thought about you every day, and all the ways I could’ve fixed it, and -”

“Steve,” Eddie whispers, “none of it was your fault, you hear? I made a choice that day, and I’d do it again. Besides, I think you’ve punished yourself enough.” Steve frowns at that, and Eddie continues. “I heard you. At night, sometimes, I’d visit your house. Well, this version of your house,” Eddie gestures to the gloom around them. “And I’d sit by your bed and I’d hear you crying out at night, and I wanted to help you, I wanted to talk to you somehow, but I couldn’t get through to you, I wasn’t strong enough.”

The Wolf pads over, sitting next to Steve.

“Wolf could, though,” Eddie explains. “He’s…connected to you. It’s a long story, I’ll explain it all in time.”

A little overwhelmed, Steve brings a hand up to his forehead, feeling for the wound that must’ve been there after the demogorgan hit him. To his surprise, he feels nothing but a small scar, the skin having closed over already.

Pulling away from Eddie, he grasps at his t shirt, dragging the hem up and tugging the stained bandages aside. His bites are in a similar state – the scars much larger and more jagged, but healed, black gunk dried and sticking to the skin around them.

Steve looks back up at Eddie, his eyes questioning.

“…yeah, so that happens,” Eddie lifts his own shirt up, displaying the myriad of scarred flesh on his abdomen. The scars had faded to white, the skin crudely pulled back together and sealed. “Look, don’t worry, I know it’s a lot, but I’ll explain as best I can, ok? Just…we should probably move first.”

“The gate, we can go back through, we can go home.” Steve gestures to it, to the small orange slit glowing in this version of the Munson trailer.

Eddie shakes his head, jaw clenched. “We can’t. I’ve got somewhere we can go, though. You trust me?”

Yes.

“Where to?” Steve takes the hand Eddie offers him, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

The Fox springs into life, pressing itself up against Eddie’s leg and flattening its ears. The Wolf was standing again too, shadowy fur bristling along his hackles.

“More coming.” His voice, the one Steve is learning belongs to the Wolf, sounds in Steve’s head, clearer than he’s ever heard it so far.

At the same time, Eddie nods at the Fox, an exchange unheard by Steve passing between them.

“We need to move.”

He takes Steve by the arm and pulls him away from the murky trailer park, heading into the trees.

Following Eddie through the damp trees, Steve hops easily over vines, stepping where Eddie does. The Wolf trots along behind him, and the Fox darts ahead of Eddie, scampering silently through the undergrowth.

As they walk, the forest lightens a little, the dark not so heavy here, not so cloying. The thick particles swirling around them give way to cleaner air, and Steve notices the vines growing smaller and thinner, until finally there are hardly any at all. He stays close to Eddie, not wanting any distance between them, not now, not when he’s finally gotten him back.

After walking for some time, Steve decides to risk opening his mouth.

“Where are we going?” he asks quietly.

“Almost there,” Eddie answers, reaching behind him for Steve’s hand. Steve takes it without question, and Eddie guides him forward into a small clearing, and points at a familiar-looking cabin.

It’s Hopper’s.

Steve had only been there a couple of times, helping to rebuild it in the week after the gate had opened. It’s intact here, and while the odd vine or two still coils around the nearby trees, the cabin itself looks completely clear of them. It’s still dark and dingy, but there’s a sense of warmth surrounding the cabin – or as close to warmth as one could get in the Upside Down, anyway.

Steve frowns, glancing at Eddie. He has so many questions he isn’t sure where to start.

“Is it…safe?”

Eddie squeezes his hand. “As safe as you can get, here.”

“It’s OURS.” A female voice echoes in Steve’s head, full of venom, not as clear as the Wolf’s had been.

The Fox is staring at Steve intently, and he raises an eyebrow at Eddie, feeling that tell-tale scratch at the edge of his consciousness – this time lighter, but sharper.

“Yeah, that’s Fox,” Eddie says with a smile. “Don’t fight it, just let her in. She’s pretty persistent.”

“Doesn’t belong to Him,” Fox hisses, louder this time, and Steve gives her a nod.

“Yours, not his, got it,” he said shakily, not having a clue what she meant.

Fox slinks away towards the cabin, seemingly happy with his answer.

Still holding Eddie’s hand, Steve allows himself to be led inside, the Wolf lying down in the doorway and watching the surrounding trees quietly. Fox curls up into a ball on the tattered couch, bushy tail tucked over her nose, and Eddie pulls Steve into the bedroom and sits him down on what he supposes is now El’s bed back in his world. There’s junk everywhere, furniture tippled over, the floors thick with grime – it’s not how Steve remembers it from the normal world – this version of the cabin looks like it’s been empty for a long time.

“Eddie,” Steve starts, bringing their linked hands to rest on his knee. “I’m so happy you’re here, but what the fuck.”

Eddie chuckles. “Yeah, look, I don’t have all the answers, but I can give you some. Go ahead, hit me.”

“What?”

“With questions, big boy.” Eddie smiles affectionately, and Steve bites his lip and looks down at his lap.

“Right, um…” Steve thinks for a minute, not sure where to start. “How are you…alive? No offense, but when I last saw you…you were dead.” The last few words come out hoarsely and Eddie rubs a thumb over the back of Steve’s hand.

“I don’t really know the answer to that one,” he says softly. “It’s something to do with the bat bites, I think. I woke up, and everything had gone to shit, there was a huge gate, Vecna was nowhere to be seen. Thank fuck for Fox, I don’t know what I would’ve done without her.”

“What are they? Fox and the Wolf?”

“From what they’ve told me, they’re a part of this place,” Eddie waves a hand, gesturing to their surroundings. “They were here long before Vecna, and they want him gone. Everything here’s connected, right, like a hive mind?” Steve nods along. “Well, they’re part of it. And so are we now, somehow. That’s how we can talk to them.”

“Do they…have names?”

“Not ones you could pronounce,” come’s Fox’s haughty reply, and Steve jumps, not realizing they were being overheard.

“I go with Fox and Wolf, they seem happy enough with it,” Eddie tells him with a shrug.

“Why didn’t you come home?” Steve absently pokes at one of the rings on Eddie’s fingers. “There’s a massive gate, couldn’t you come through?”

Eddie shakes his head sadly. “I tried. Fox stopped me every time. Said I was a part of this world, now, and I couldn’t go back.”

“But what happens if you do?” Steve persists.

“I got halfway through the gate, once.” Eddie inches closer to Steve, pressing his leg up against Steve’s and bumping their shoulders together. Steve’s heart sings at the contact. “It wasn’t easy to get to it, they’re usually swarming with bats, or some other thing, but one day I got there. It was painful as fuck, like nothing I’ve ever felt. Like every part of me was being ripped apart. Fox dragged me back and I didn’t wake up for days.”

“How did Wolf come through, then?” Steve questions, glancing out the doorway to where the creature was lying, clearly guarding the front door. “I mostly saw him in dreams, but he was definitely physically there a couple of times.”

Eddie shrugs. “They’re different to us. But it took a huge amount of effort for Wolf to get to you, it nearly destroyed him.”

“He’s bigger, here,” Steve points out.

Wolf had been the size of a large dog when Steve had seen him outside his house, and he’d been blurry, malformed, weak perhaps. But since arriving in the Upside Down, Wolf was larger than any dog Steve had ever seen, easily standing a little above waist-height against Steve, his form much more solidified and definite.

“They’re much stronger here. They’re not meant to be in our world.”

“He called me brother.”

“Fox calls me that sometimes, too. Like I said, they’re part of us now.” Eddie looks to where Fox is sleeping on the couch and smiles softly.

“What about Vecna?” Steve asks. “We fucked up, we didn’t kill him, has there been any sign of him?”

“He’s still here,” Eddie confirms, and Steve feels a cold tingle down his spine at that admission. “He’s injured, still, and he’s weak, that’s how Wolf and Fox broke free from his control. But he’s not gone, no.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah. How’s everyone back home? I visit their houses sometimes, like I did yours, I went to the hospital too. I can’t hear any of the others as easily as I could hear you, but I picked up on some bits…” Eddie trails off. “Max,” he whispers, his face drawn in sadness.

Steve clutches at his hand. “She’s still in a coma, they don’t know if she’ll wake. The kids, they miss you so much. Dustin especially, the kid’s a mess. I could barely get him to leave the house the past few weeks, he…he’s not doing well.”

Eddie is quiet, and Steve sees an overwhelming sadness in his eyes.

“Eddie,” Steve murmurs. “I…I missed you, too. So fucking much.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie crumples next to Steve, free hand coming up to rub over his face. “I just wanted to help, I wanted to do something, I needed to protect Dustin, I didn’t really care what happened to me, but I didn’t mean to put you all through that.”

Steve winds an arm around Eddie’s waist, tucking him into his side, and Eddie leans his head against Steve’s.

“It’s been so fucking lonely here, Stevie,” Eddie whispers. “Fox kept me going, and Wolf joined us later, but for a long time I would just sit in your house and cry whenever I heard an echo of you.” Eddie chuckles sadly and swipes at his face. “I’d visit other places too, follow these…shadows of everyone. The kids, Gareth, and I looked for Wayne but I couldn’t find him. But you…I kept returning to your house. It felt like…like I was meant to be there. Kinda pathetic, I know.”

“It’s not,” Steve assures him. “I don’t know how much you heard when you were in this version of my house, but…I wasn’t ok.” Eddie presses himself further into Steve. “I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t eat, I…I just wanted you…I wanted you back. I felt so fucking bad, and I didn’t know how to help the others, nothing I said or did could bring Dustin out of the state he was in. I stopped visiting Max, because every time I did it just reminded me how badly I fucked up.”

“Stevie,” Eddie interrupts, tilting Steve’s chin to face him. “It’s not on you, ok? It isn’t. And…although I’m sad that you’re stuck in this place too, I…I’m glad you’re here with me. I’m so fucking glad.”

Steve twists so he can wrap both arms around Eddie now, running a hand up and down his back .

For a fleeting moment, Steve wonders what his dad would say if he saw him like this. Cuddling up with the town freak, seeking comfort in the arms of a man he barely knew but wanted to know, so badly it hurt.

He’s not entirely sure what his dad would do - knows it would be nothing good.

But his dad isn’t here, and they’re just two boys hiding in the dark.

“Eddie?” Steve asks after a while.

“Hmm?”

“Am I stuck, too? You said...” Steve’s voice fades, and Eddie plucks absently at the hem of Steve’s t shirt.

“Oh, I just meant, with the gates being guarded and everything, it’s really not easy to get to them,” Eddie says eventually, not meeting Steve’s eye.

“Well, I’m not leaving without you, anyway,” Steve tells him, and Eddie glances up at him from under messy bangs. “Not again.”

They sit in silence for some time, Eddie clinging to him, open in his relief to finally have another person there with him. Steve’s going over everything Eddie has told him, replaying it in his mind and trying to make sense of it all.

Eventually, he breaks the silence.

“So…what do you eat around here?”

Eddie looks at him, a little surprised. “Are you hungry?”

Steve ponders that for a second. “Well, no, but I guess I will be eventually…”

“Well, we’ll worry about it then,” Eddie says dismissively, and Steve decides not to push.

“Are there…clothes, here?” Steve gestures down at his ruined t shirt and pants, the once blue and grey fabric now almost completely black. “I know a shower’s out of the question, but I wouldn’t mind getting changed.”

“Yeah, it’s old stuff of Hoppers, though. Most of it’s all moth-eaten and damp.” Eddie stands, rifling through some of the drawers. “I, um, I should change too, I guess.” Eddie glances down at his blood-stained Hellfire shirt, appearing suddenly self-conscious. “I never saw the need, you know, because it was only me and Fox for a long time, and I’m quite attached to this shirt, and -”

“It’s ok.” Steve squeezes Eddie’s wrist gently as he joins him next to the drawers, looking through the pile of flannel shirts. “If you want to keep wearing it, then you wear it. Don’t you get cold, though?”

“No,” Eddie says, handing Steve the smallest pair of jeans he could find. “Are you cold?”

“…no. I should be, though, right? I was freezing my ass off last time I was here.”

“Don’t think about it too much.” Eddie gives him a grim smile. “I’m gonna find you a belt. I’ll just, ah, I’ll just wait in the lounge while you change.”

“No.” Steve grips Eddie’s arm, stopping him when he goes to leave the room. “Um, sorry, just…don’t go? You can just…turn around?”

Eddie’s eyes rake over Steve’s face, taking in his wide eyes and desperate expression.

“Sure, ok.” He runs his fingers briefly over Steve’s hand and sits on the bed, facing away from him.

Steve’s shoulders drop in relief, even though he feels a little embarrassed. He’d spent three months without Eddie, and now that he has him back he can’t bear to even be in a separate room to him.

He makes quick work of his soiled clothes, tugging them off and throwing them in a soggy heap. He screws his nose up a little at the thought of borrowing a pair of Hopper’s briefs, but it’s better than the chafing that would no doubt occur if he goes commando in jeans in this damp place. They’re too big, the same as the rest of the clothes, but Steve rolls the jeans up at the ankle and folds the sleeves of the soft flannel shirt several times. His Nikes are a bit of a lost cause, but they’ll have to do for now until they can find some more shoes that fit.

He gratefully takes the belt Eddie had found in the wardrobe, doing it up on the tightest hole to keep the jeans above his ass.

“We could do a run to your place, sometime,” Eddie says once Steve is dressed, “grab some of your clothes and stuff.”

“I’d like that,” Steve replies gratefully. He pauses, looking to where he’d left Eddie’s vest on the bed, and Eddie follows his gaze.

“Keep it,” Eddie tells him after a moment.

Steve shakes his head. “It’s yours.”

“I like seeing it on you. It seems…right.”

Steve grabs the vest from the bed, shrugging it on over his shirt, relaxing under the familiar weight of it.

Eddie’s eyes crinkle at the edges as he smiles softly.

They leave the bedroom for the lounge, Steve’s hand firmly in Eddie’s, never straying far apart. Fox yips grumpily when Eddie shoos her off the couch, making room for him and Steve to sit, and she deposits herself in Hopper’s arm chair instead.

Wolf quietly enters the room, sitting next to the arm of the couch.

“Wolf?” Steve asks tentatively.

“Brother,” comes the response.

“Um, can I…” Steve holds a hand up curiously, reaching towards Wolf. His fur still had a smoky quality to it, but Steve can make out individual hairs now, unlike when he was in the normal world. Soft whorls break up the pattern of his coat, muscles rippling and shifting with every movement underneath it.

Steve’s fingers meet cold fur, and Wolf twitches under his touch, eyes watching Steve closely but calmly. Where he had felt only cold mist previously, Steve now feels coarse hair, and he buries his fingers into the thick coat on Wolf’s neck. Wolf tilts his head, allowing Steve to run his hand further down his neck.

*****

Eddie watches, his gaze soft, as a small smile spread over Steve’s lips.

Fox lifts her delicate head, glancing between Eddie and Steve. She hops lightly off the chair and makes her way silently to sit on top of Eddie’s feet. Her muzzle nudges at his hands and Eddie laughs quietly, taking one of his rings off and handing it to her. Fox takes it in her teeth happily, lying down and placing it between her two front paws, watching the way the faint glow of their surroundings flickers over the metal surface.

Wolf has his head on the arm rest now, his eyes heavy-lidded as Steve strokes behind his ears.

Eddie draws gentle circles on Steve’s palm with his thumb, feeling safe for the first time in what felt like forever.

He knows this won’t last, that there’s so much more he has to tell Steve eventually.

But for now he just basks in the moment, shamefully relieved that Steve is with him again.

Everything else could wait.