Chapter Text
Can't you hear that scratching?
There's something at the door...
- The Amazing Devil
*****
The Wolf visits him again tonight.
Thrashing and clawing at the sheets, Steve whimpers.
It sits before him, deep blue eyes fixed on Steve as he dreams. Never fully corporeal, the Wolf is blurred at the edges, hazy and as elusive as smoke. It trembles sometimes, as if at the effort it takes to hold its form, to tame its shape into that of a beast.
“What do you want?” Steve drops to his knees in the dreamscape, tugging at his hair in frustration.
The Wolf flicks its shadowy tail and cocks its head to one side.
The scratching is back.
That familiar sensation in the edges of Steve’s mind, an annoying persistence that has plagued him for weeks now. It’s getting stronger, that insistent tug, that scrape of invisible claws against his psyche, and he shakes his head to try and dislodge it.
The ringing in his ears only increases, and the Wolf pads closer to him.
Steve sucks in a breath, tipping back to lean on his hands. He holds that breath as the Wolf pauses just inches from him, its cold snout reaching towards Steve’s throat.
At first, Steve had run whenever the Wolf invaded his dreams, but that hadn’t helped – the Wolf never chased, but would always be waiting for him whenever he fell asleep again, just as it is now.
The ringing in his head dials up to a shriek, a thousand cicadas screaming in his ears, and Steve grabs his head with both hands and squeezes.
The Wolf just looks at him, black fur rolling and swirling like an inky sea.
“Go away,” Steve whispers, then repeats it, his voice increasing to a shout. “Go away, go away, GO AWAY!”
The Wolf lets out a low growl, then turns on its haunches and slinks back into the darkness.
Steve wakes with a start, gasping for air and damp with sweat. Rolling over, he switches his lamp on and sits up in bed just to breathe for a minute. His head is throbbing, the ringing quieter now but still there, always there.
Wincing, he brings a hand to his side – the bites from the bats are on fire, pulsing with agony, despite should have being healed weeks ago.
Out of habit, Steve glances out his window. The light from the moon bathes the edge of the trees in a soft glow, and sure enough, there it is.
A small movement, a flutter of leaves, and a patch of swirling darkness, somehow blacker than the night.
When Steve’s eyes fall on it, the Wolf disappears into the trees.
Steve sighs and lifts the hem of his t shirt, looking down at his bites. The edges are ringed with a fiery red, the holes not fully closed. Curiously, he brings a finger down to one and cautiously pokes at the skin, regretting it immediately when a burst of agony nearly sends him collapsing back into the pillows.
Panting, Steve waits for the pain to fade back to its ever-present dull throb.
Robin had told him a thousand times to go back to the doctor, but Steve had waved her off every time. He’d spent enough time around doctors and hospitals recently – he’d swallow some painkillers and push through it, as he always did.
They’d heal eventually, right? Everything did, with time.
Not everything.
Steve’s gaze is drawn to Eddie’s bloodied vest. It hangs over the top of his wardrobe door - its home for the past few months.
He needs to clean it. Needs to do something with it, gift it to Dustin maybe, but he can’t bring himself to touch it. To wash it would be like washing away the last reminder of Eddie, the last reminder of the sacrifice he’d made for them. Steve needs it there as a visual reminder that Eddie’s body still lies cold and alone in the Upside Down – that they’d left him there to rot.
That Steve had left him there.
He needs it there to punish himself.
And it works - every morning for the past three months when he wakes and stares at it, he feels a little colder inside.
He looks at his watch – it’s nearly six a.m. If he’d still been working, he’d have to be up soon to get ready and pick up Robin before their Family Video shift started – even with a gate to hell running through town, Keith had kept it open. But Steve had stopped turning up weeks ago, barely able to drag himself out the door between his lack of sleep, headaches, and the agony deep below his bites. Sunny days were particularly bad; his eyes would throb and blur in the light, and a migraine would hit him like a freight train if he was outside for more than a few minutes at a time.
He can’t bring himself to care.
Not with Max still in a coma, Dustin deep in a depressive haze, and Eddie fading from their lives a little more every day.
Eddie, who’d held a bottle to Steve’s throat and awoken something inside him he didn’t know existed. Eddie who’d called him big boy and grinned at him, all dimples and warmth; Eddie who’d followed Steve into hell when he barely knew him; Eddie who’d promised not to be a hero and then gone and given his life to protect everyone else – and goddamnit, that was Steve’s job, he should’ve been there, it should’ve been him…
Steve’s spiralling again, he knows. Maybe if he can just get up and eat something he’d feel a little more alive, a little more human, but food tends to make him vomit and his appetite had fucked off weeks ago.
And so there was little else for him to do but sink back into his pillows, tugging the sheets up over his head and silently begging for some proper sleep.
After several more hours of fitful tossing and turning, his dreams plagued once again by the Wolf, Steve is woken by the phone ringing from the kitchen.
Groaning, he kicks the covers back and stumbles towards the sound, only cracking one eye open slightly to guard against the daylight pushing through firmly closed curtains
“Hello?” he mumbles into the phone, voice hoarse.
“Hey dingus, just checking you’re alive,” Robin’s voice greets him, Steve recognizing the ding of the bell above the Family Video door in the background.
“Mmm,” Steve grunts.
“Bad night?” Robin guesses, her tone sympathetic. She knew he’d been having headaches and trouble sleeping, but Steve hadn’t told her the rest.
About the Wolf.
His friends deserved some peace.
“Yeah,” Steve says with a sigh.
“I’m out with Vickie tonight, but I thought maybe I could come over tomorrow and -”
Steve zones out after a moment, frowning as he feels something wet trickle over his belly button.
Ignoring Robin’s chattering, he lifts his t shirt again, freezing when he sees the black gunk oozing from his bites.
“I’ll call you back,” Steve croaks and hangs up, cutting off Robin’s protests.
He lurches to the bathroom, nausea roiling in his gut, and makes it just in time to hurl into the toilet, tears prickling at his eyes as the action strains his abdomen. Shakily, he reaches for a clean towel and wets it, dabbing at the mess on his sides, unable to hold back a whine as agony ripples through him.
More black liquid bubbles out. Steve blindly fumbles in the cabinet for the first aid kit which had been well-stocked for several years now. He quickly wraps a bandage around his abdomen, hissing at the pressure on the bites, and ties it off, hoping it’ll be enough to stop the flow of whatever the fuck that is.
At this point, he knows he should call someone.
But the kids would be at Max’s side, and he can’t dump this on them anyway. Robin would panic and drag him to hospital, and Steve just can’t right now, he wouldn’t be able to stand seeing her worried face, he doesn’t deserve her concern, damn it.
Hopper? Steve briefly considers it, but shakes his head angrily. Hopper had been through enough recently, and he had his own family to worry about now. The bandage would help, and then maybe he can clean the bites better, he just needs to wait a bit for the pain to die down, he needs some fucking sleep…
Steve’s stomach rolls again, and he staggers out his back door, dropping to his knees and taking some long breaths of fresh air in an attempt to keep the nausea at bay.
A growl makes his head shoot up, and he scans the tree line behind the pool anxiously.
The Wolf is sitting in the shade.
It looks smaller than when Steve had previously seen it, and its outline is blurrier than usual, paws almost merging with the dirt, hazy and ever-shifting.
Steve freezes, fists clenched on his thighs. The Wolf had never appeared during the day before, and until now Steve had been able to dismiss it as a reoccurring dream, a phantom that occasionally spilled into his jumbled waking moments.
The ringing in his ears increases, and the itch deep in his head returns, a single claw running over the outer wall of his consciousness.
The Wolf regards him coolly, and Steve stares back at it, heart pounding in his chest.
“What are you?” Steve whispers, and the Wolf perks its ears towards him, mouth falling open to reveal rows of shadowy teeth just as black as the rest of it.
That spurs Steve into action.
He scrambles to his feet, pushing back through the door and reaching for the nail bat he keeps next to it.
Frustrated and fucking tired, he strides towards the Wolf, gripping the bat tightly with both hands, preparing to swing.
The Wolf stands calmly, facing Steve, and growls deep in its throat.
Steve’s pace doesn’t falter, and he raises the bat with all the strength he has left.
The bites pulse under the bandages, and Steve feels the gunk soak through and drip down his waist.
The ring in his ears is now a roar. Steve’s head spins.
“Leave me alone!” he yells at the Wolf, who still stands its ground.
Sweat trickles down his back and Steve gasps for air.
The claw that had been tickling at his mind before now tears at it mercilessly.
Merely feet from the Wolf, within striking distance, Steve swings with all his might.
“Steve.”
Eddie.
It’s Eddie’s voice, breaking through the cacophony in his head.
Steve buckles, the bat sailing harmlessly past the Wolf and sinking into the ground with a dull thud.
The Wolf watches as Steve collapses into the dirt, a sob wrenching from his throat as his abdomen makes contact with the hard ground.
“Eddie?” Steve gasps.
The Wolf stands over him now, muzzle lowering to Steve’s throat, and Steve tips his chin back.
This is it, it has to be.
This is death, and he welcomes it like an old friend, one he’s met and evaded too many times in his short life.
He has no interest in evading it any longer.
But the Wolf’s jaws don’t close over his jugular like Steve was expecting.
Instead, its nose continues downwards, pausing over Steve’s bandaged sides and letting out a huff.
The Wolf backs off, glancing up at Steve one more time before turning tail and vanishing into the undergrowth.
Steve isn’t sure how long he lies there in a feverish haze, tears streaming down his cheeks as the pain in his sides only increases.
He calls out for Eddie several times, but no response comes. Steve starts to question whether he’d ever heard him at all.
It was him.
He knows it was him.
And if there’s any sort of chance that Eddie is alive, that he’s still here, then Steve has to find him.
It’s dark again by the time Steve drags himself to his feet, propping himself up on his bat, his brain full of nothing but Eddie.
“Harrington’s got her, don’t ya big boy?”
Steve inches himself back towards the house, every step a marathon.
“Look at us. We are not heroes.”
His chest heaving, Steve makes it to the back door, leaning against it for a moment to try and get his breath back.
There’s dark stains on his t shirt and top of his pants, the bandages all but useless now.
“Henderson told me you were a badass. Insisted on the matter, in fact.”
Steve takes the stairs one at a time. Forces his legs to cooperate until he reaches the bedroom.
With a grateful sigh, he allows his knees to give out and falls face-first onto the mattress, not caring about the mess from his bites soaking into his sheets. Any position is agony; he’s long past trying to get comfortable.
The room swirls around him, and Steve’s eyes fall shut, unconsciousness taking him immediately.
The Wolf is waiting for him.
This time, Steve sits cross-legged in the dark across from the creature, his pain faded in his dream but not entirely gone. The claw is back in his mind, pushing and scratching, and Steve watches as the Wolf’s front paws twitch.
Exhausted, Steve allows his mind to relax for a moment.
The buzz in his head becomes deafening.
“Let me in,” a voice whispers, and Steve startles.
That had come from inside his head, much like Eddie’s voice had earlier, but this wasn’t Eddie.
The Wolf sits across from him, only shadows between boy and beast, its dark blue eyes boring into Steve.
“Brother, let me in.”
Tears streak down Steve’s cheeks and he nods, his eyes falling closed, and any barriers he’d unknowingly formed in his mind come crashing down.
The buzzing in his head disappears, giving way to blessed silence.
The Wolf pads forward until its nose brushes over Steve’s cheek. Steve thinks he should be afraid, but he isn’t.
Perhaps he’s just too tired to care.
But to his surprise, all Steve feels is cold air against his face, like a wisp of fog.
He opens his eyes and his gaze locks with the Wolf, brown meeting blue.
The black room Steve had found himself sitting in disappears, replaced by the familiar vines and shadows of the Upside Down.
He looks around, realizing with horror where they are.
“No, please, not here,” Steve whimpers.
But the Wolf only sits next to him, looking to Steve and then to the spot where Steve had wrenched a sobbing Dustin away from Eddie’s lifeless body.
Steve had dreamt about that moment every night for the past three months, seeing Eddie’s corpse lying there, cold and alone, and he’d woken up screaming more often than not.
But Eddie isn’t there now - the ground is empty.
The Wolf touches its cold nose to his shoulder, and Steve looks at it, dumbfounded.
“I don’t understand.” Steve’s voice trembles. “Why are you showing me this?”
The Wolf huffs, almost sounding frustrated. It walks over to the spot where Eddie’s body should’ve been and sits pointedly.
“Come.”
The voice is back in his head, muffled and distorted, but there.
“You want me to come over there?” Steve questions, confused.
The Wolf growls, low and guttural, and Steve jumps.
“Come through,” the voice says again, more insistent this time.
“Through what?” Steve hisses, and the Wolf waits. “The gate?” Steve’s eyes widen in realization. “You want me to come through the gate?”
The Wolf’s ears prick up.
“But…why?”
A flash of Eddie erupts in his mind, taking over the scene in front of him. He looks…different, his skin paler, his t shirt tattered and bloodied, his eyes hollow and dark, but it’s Eddie.
Steve scrunches his eyes shut firmly and clenches his jaw till it aches, a trick from childhood to pull himself out of dreams.
It works. He forces himself awake.
His crash back into consciousness is violent, and Steve thrashes as pain slams back into him full-force.
In a daze, he stands, shuffling to his wardrobe and pulling Eddie’s vest over his shoulders.
He doesn’t know why he does it, but it feels right.
Grabbing his nail bat in a shaky hand where he’d dropped it by his bed, he makes his way slowly to the front door.
As he staggers along, Steve leaves a trail of black gunk along the white carpet. Numbly, he thinks about how much his mom would hate that. How she’d yell, she’d scream herself hoarse, the stain on the carpet more important than the ones on her son’s bandages.
The black gunk is almost pouring from him now.
He imagines his parents coming home, if they ever do, and finding the mess he’s left behind.
From far away, he hears himself laugh.
He passes the phone in the kitchen, resting there for a moment and distantly noticing the blinking voicemail button. He doesn’t listen to the message.
He knows it’ll be Robin, and she can’t help him where he’s going.
He fumbles for his car keys on the bench, gripping them tightly and making his way outside.
The darkness is dulled by the glow of the full moon, but Steve knows there’s no one around to see him. The Loch Nora street is all but empty now, most of the residents having left Hawkins months ago when the doorway to hell ripped through the middle of it.
That main gate would be guarded and swarming with soldiers, Steve knows, so he turns the beemer in the direction of Forest Hills.
As he drives, the remaining pain in his bites fades away.
Steve feels his heart beating sluggishly, his blood feeling ice-cold as it’s forced through his veins. He doesn’t even realize he hadn’t turned the headlights on – he can see just fine after all, even when the moonlight is mostly blocked by trees.
He rolls into the now-abandoned trailer park, stopping the beemer in front of Eddie’s ruined trailer.
There had been guards here at first, but when there was zero activity detected at this small gate they had given up and joined the patrols of the main gate in the middle of town.
Police tape tied haphazardly across the door flaps in the cool breeze, a dull orange glow emanating from the sliver of a gate inside.
The trailer had been split in two when the main gate had formed, the contents spilling out onto the surrounding ground.
As he approaches, Steve spies a novelty mug lying in the dirt, an acoustic guitar in several bits strewn around nearby. Shredded band posters cling to the sorry remains of a bedroom wall.
Echoes of Eddie’s life, left here to rot. Just like Eddie had been.
Steve walks easily up to the trailer, frowning briefly at the black stain that now covers him from stomach to ankle, but it doesn’t bother him for long.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks it should bother him, it should bother him a fucking lot.
But it doesn’t.
The pain has gone, his head is quiet, and Steve feels more at peace now than he had since the moment he’d walked away from Eddie in the Upside Down.
As he approaches the gate in the trailer ceiling, kicking his way through the rubble, the Wolf walks alongside him, cold air enveloping Steve’s hand as its nose nudges at him encouragingly.
When did the Wolf arrive?
Steve doesn’t know, doesn’t care.
The roof is badly damaged but the gate is still visible, a thin crack splitting through the night sky and running into the remains of a wooden beam.
Steve steps up onto a chair he found propped up the by the gate, and looks down at the Wolf.
“This is what I’m supposed to do?” he asks aloud, but he already knows the answer.
The Wolf inclines its head, and Steve reaches above him, fingers curling into the vines that wound their way around the edge of the gate.
He tosses the bat through first, listening as it lands with a thud. His shoes squelch as he jumps up, black ichor squeezing out of them like a sponge, and he drags himself through the gate and into the Upside Down.
He feels his bites tear open at the exertion, but there’s no pain.
With no sheets to cling to this time, Steve slams heavily into the ground on the other side, the Wolf pouncing delicately through and landing easily next to him.
“Show off,” Steve mutters, and the Wolf blinks at him, sitting and waiting for Steve to roll to his feet.
As soon as he has, however, the Wolf is growling, hackles raised, black teeth bared threateningly.
“What is it?” Steve murmurs, grasping his bat and scanning the blackness for danger.
The demogorgan charges at him with incredible speed, materializing out of the darkness so quickly that Steve barely has the opportunity to raise his bat.
The Wolf dives at it, shadow meeting flesh, and the demogorgan lets out a shriek as teeth sink deep into its arm.
The Wolf tugs it away from Steve, giving him the chance to swing the bat hard into the demogorgan’s gut.
Chortling gutturally, it spins to Steve, face opening up and displaying endless rows of teeth, preparing to close around Steve’s head.
Steve braces himself.
But the bite never comes.
The demogorgan pauses, open mouth just inches from Steve, and it breathes heavily, scenting the air around him. As if confused, it recoils slightly.
Steve swings again, aided by the Wolf still dragging the creature backwards.
Shrieking at the impact, the demogorgan lashes out at Steve, clawed hand connecting hard with his head and sending him flying backwards.
Steve hits the ground heavily, head smacking back into damp dirt.
His vision spins, and he tries to lurch to his feet, but finds himself unable to move.
Distantly, he hears the Wolf snarling and grappling with the demogorgan.
And then his blurry eyes pick up a third figure joining the fray.
A familiar figure, armed with a crude spear, jabbing furiously at the demogorgan’s head.
Steve’s head swims and he loses sight of anything after that, the sound of his rapidly-slowing heartbeat thudding in his ears.
“Steve, you with me, big boy?”
Eddie’s voice, but whether it’s out loud or inside his head, Steve doesn’t have a clue.
He tries to open his mouth to respond, but no sound comes out.
Steve loses himself to blackness, the sound of the Wolf howling the last thing he hears before he exhales heavily and goes still.