Chapter Text
The autumn of 1987 stained Hawkins with rust and amber, but the air no longer belonged to the seasons. It smelled of not-quite-extinguished fires, of containment cordite, and the cold metal of institutionalized fear. The sky above Family Radio was sliced, every hour on the hour, by the low, menacing buzz of Q-17 Quarantine Zone Blackhawk helicopters. The town was an open wound, ringed with barbed wire and men in uniforms with empty expressions. Everyone was looking for someone. Mainly a girl. But in the shadows, a far more inconvenient ghost needed to stay hidden.
The back room of the radio wasn't just a stockroom anymore; it was an improvised bunker against prying eyes. Robin shot out of it like a silent alarm had gone off, her lanky frame tense as a violin string. The CB radio on the counter — a clandestine lifeline now — spat static laced with encrypted military codes.
"Where do you think you're going, Stevie?" Her voice was a low squeak, cutting through the heavy air.
Steve was already halfway through the radio, his Hawkins High jacket tied around his waist. The sickly yellow fluorescent light made the shadows under his eyes look deeper, more purple. He didn't even turn around.
"Henderson's not answering. You know where I'm going."
She swatted at the air, a frustrated gesture that made the The Thing and Poltergeist posters flutter on the wall.
"Steve, you have to stop going over there all the time! They're gonna find out! For God's sake." Each word was an urgent whisper, loaded with a fear they'd learned to swallow.
"And I'm just supposed to leave him alone all day?" Steve finally turned. His eyes, usually full of a hollow confidence, were now naked, vulnerable. The king's posture had crumbled, leaving behind just a tired boy, his shoulders bowed under the weight of a secret bigger than himself.
"Yes? YES! That was the deal — just until he can stand up without looking like he'll pass out on the carpet!"
Steve shoved his arms into his jacket sleeves in a jerky, almost violent motion. The zipper snarled in the silence.
"Robin, you saw his condition. You saw." His voice hitched, broke on the last syllable like a dry twig. That little crack was more devastating than any shout.
"I saw," she replied, the anger draining, replaced by a deep exhaustion. Now it was just urgency, the silent, desperate kind of someone holding the edges of a cracked universe together with duct tape and pure hope. "And that is exactly why you can't keep lurking around that apartment like a paranoid dad! Someone's gonna notice! Someone's gonna ask why the totally unsuspicious Steve Harrington keeps dropping off the map! You are not subtle, Steve."
He stopped in front of the glass door, where the reflection of a sun-drenched, blindly normal Hawkins afternoon stretched out. He took a deep breath. His chest puffed out under the faded Scoops Ahoy shirt. He exhaled even deeper, and his reflection fogged the glass. The military was on the hunt; one wrong step could unleash unimaginable questions. Especially for them, who were in it up to their necks.
"I keep thinking of him over there… in that room. With the lights off. In pain. Scared. With — " The words got lost, choked by a feeling too big for sentences.
"He's not in the Upside Down now," Robin cut in, firm, but the edge of her voice trembled, thin as a blade. "He's here. With us. He's breathing. He's alive, Steve. In a messed-up way, in a… his way. But alive."
"Exactly." He swallowed hard, the sound audible in the store's silence. "After all that… after I left him there…"
"You didn't leave him," she said, closing the distance and placing a flat hand on his chest, over the Hawkins High logo. The anchor attempt was physical, tactile. "You carried him as far as you could, remember? You bled yourself dry. Don't do this to yourself."
"Then let me take care of him now."
"Steve…" She closed her eyes for just a second. A second of darkness against the relentless fluorescent glare. "If you go over there now, he'll think he's getting worse. He'll think you pity him. And worse — they'll track you, Stevie. And if they find out Eddie Munson is alive? Do you have any idea of the scandal? The witch hunt that'll rain down on our heads?"
He didn't answer. Just opened the door. The bell above jingled, an absurdly normal sound.
"I'm just gonna check if he ate."
"YOU ALREADY DID THAT THIS MORNING!" Her voice echoed between the shelves of movies.
"Then it's just a follow-up." And he smiled. That stupid, lopsided smile that briefly lit up his worn face, the one he used as a shield when he knew, deep down in his soul, he was completely in the wrong.
"STEVE — "
"If he's sleeping, I'll come back."
"YOU WON'T COME BACK! YOU'LL BE SITTING ON HIS BEDROOM FLOOR HOLDING A BOWL OF SOUP LIKE A DEPRESSED STUFFED ANIMAL!"
He shrugged, as if that image was the funniest inside joke in the world.
"So you already know how it's gonna be."
"STEVE HARRINGTON, I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
The door slammed. The jingle of the bell sounded like a death knell.
Robin stood still, arms limp at her sides, staring at the sudden silence. The radio continued its symphony of static. They'd survived shadow monsters, bloody portals, screams that tore reality. But this… hiding a broken, stitched-together, hastily resurrected Eddie Munson in an apartment full of band posters and the smell of stale weed — this was the kind of mundane, intimate, terrifying chaos no '80s survival manual had prepared them for.
And she was alone on comms again. Just great. Alone with too many secrets to fit in a nineteen-year-old chest. Any minute, Joyce would walk through the door with her motherly, worried way, or one of those kids Steve had unofficially adopted — Dustin, with his quick reasoning — would pop in asking "where's Steve?". And she'd lie. She'd lie with desperate creativity.
Anything to keep them away from the truth. Away from the apartment. Away from him.
~
The key turned in the rusty deadbolt with a loud, treacherous grind, echoing in the silent hallway of the thin-walled apartment building. Steve was already holding his breath before pushing the door open, as if the air inside could be different. Saturated with pain, with waking nightmares, with the ghost of heavy metal and dried blood.
The apartment was quiet. An oppressive quiet, different from normal silence. It was the silence of convalescence, of contained pain. The living room was a museum of not-so-adolescent chaos: fake leather jackets tossed over the faded velvet couch, Iron Maiden and Dio LP sleeves scattered on the brown carpet, a 20-inch tube TV with a Beta tape blinking on standby. The smell was a mix of cold pizza, Lysol (which Robin insisted on using), and something medicinal and bitter underneath.
No sound from the The Evil Dead VHS Steve had left on loop for company. No muffled riff from the unplugged electric guitar Eddie sometimes plucked to see if his fingers still obeyed. No characteristic grumbling, no acidic joke whispered to the four walls.
Nothing.
"Eddie?" Steve called out, a hoarse whisper trying to sound casual and failing miserably, breaking on the name.
Only the ticking of the plastic guitar-shaped clock on the wall answered.
He closed the door carefully, let his jacket drop on the couch, and moved down the narrow hallway, walls plastered with magazine-cutout B-movie posters. Every step on the worn carpet was a "what if" hammering in unison with his racing heart.
"Eddie, I swear to God, if you tried to get up by yourself again I — "
The bedroom door was slightly ajar. Not fully closed, not fully open. A sliver of weak, yellow light — from a lamp with a black hooded shade — leaked into the dark hallway. And a sound too: breathing. Shallow. A little ragged, a little tight.
Steve pushed the door, and it gave with a soft groan.
And then he saw him.
Eddie Munson was sitting on the floor, his skinny back — even more pronounced now — leaning against the side of the unmade bed. His legs, in sweatpants, stretched out in front of him. The oversized black t-shirt slipped off one shoulder, revealing the pristine white edge of a bandage covering half his torso. His arms, once covered in homemade tattoos and leather bracelets, were now a map of purplish marks, dark scratches, and angry red scars that told a story of teeth and claws. His face, normally so expressive, was waxen pale, the skin almost translucent under deep-set, bruised eyes. Numerous scars. Many of them still wounds, with the skin not yet fully healed.
But the eyes… the eyes still had a spark. A low burn, dimmed by pain and exhaustion, but undeniably Eddie. A stubborn, ironic, alive spark. So alive it made Steve's chest lurch.
"You… should be resting." The words came out of Steve like a stolen sigh, more a statement of relief than a reprimand.
Eddie lifted his gaze slowly, as if moving his head required monumental effort. The curly hair, once a rebellious cascade, was dull and pulled into a low, sloppy ponytail.
"I was." His voice was raspy, rough from disuse and long-silenced screams, but it still carried that unique timber, that theatrical drawl that was all his. "Until my favorite babysitter decided to barge into my room again. Is there a line out there?"
Steve ignored the sarcasm — because seeing Eddie on the floor, in that vulnerable position, was a gut-punch that never lost its force.
"Did you fall? Did you feel something? Your ribs? Is the fever back?" The questions tumbled out in a torrent, and he was already crouching, his hands — hands that knew how to hold a baseball bat, that knew how to fight, that knew (he was learning) how to be gentle — hovering near the bandages, hesitant.
Eddie batted one of them away with a weak but decisive gesture.
"I'm alive, Harrington. You don't have to act like I'm gonna explode if I breathe too deep. Not yet, anyway."
"You almost did explode!" Steve blurted, his voice louder than intended, echoing in the small room. It was almost a rupture, a confession that had been suffocated for weeks. "You almost died. You… you did die, Eddie."
The silence that followed was thick, palpable. Then, Eddie laughed. A short, dry laugh that turned into a slight coughing fit that made him wince. When he recovered, panting, his eyes shone with a wet light.
"And yet…" He tapped his own chest, right over the heart, very lightly. "Here I am. In your arms again, big boy."
Steve looked away, annoyed at himself for feeling so exposed, so… hit.
"I didn't hold you."
"Sure you did." Eddie murmured, blinking slowly, as if seeing flashes of the memory projected on the dark ceiling. "You dragged me across the floor, Harrington. Like a bloody, flower-patterned sack of potatoes. With care, of course. I can tell you've got practice."
Steve felt a smile almost form on his lips. Almost. But the image — Eddie, lifeless, heavy, soaked in red — flattened him again.
"You shouldn't be sitting up. Let me help you onto the bed."
"I don't want to get up." Eddie took a careful, calculated breath. "Wanted to… stay here. Just for a bit. On the floor."
"Why?"
"Because up here doesn't feel like I came back." His voice lowered, became intimate, confidential, as if sharing a dangerous secret. "Down there… down there we lived on the floor, remember? In the cold. In the wet dark. This… it's the same angle. Just… no bats trying to turn me into a demonic shish kebab. And the carpet's uglier."
Steve swallowed hard. Moving with a caution that contrasted with his usually impulsive nature, he sat on the floor beside Eddie. Not touching, but close enough that the heat of their bodies met in the cold space between them. The weak lamp cast their long, distorted shadows on the wall, merging them into a single, misshapen silhouette. Eddie turned his head with difficulty and looked at him, his gaze scrutinizing.
"You came to check if I was still breathing, huh?"
"No." The answer was automatic, defensive. But Eddie just raised an eyebrow, the silver ring in it catching a sliver of light. Bluff called.
Steve sighed, defeated.
"Fine. Yes. I did. So what?"
"So I'm breathing." Eddie said, and for the first time since Steve entered, a real, if tired and crooked, smile touched his face. It was a fragile, beautiful thing. "And probably gonna keep at it. Even if you stop babysitting me every thirty minutes. Metalhead's promise."
Steve looked at his own hands, then at Eddie's profile illuminated by the yellow light. The scars on his neck, the dark stitches at his temple. And he said, so low it was almost whispered against the distant hum of the fridge:
"What if I don't want to stop?"
Eddie took a few seconds to answer. Seconds that stretched, filled only by the sound of two breaths trying to sync up.
"Then one of these times you're gonna walk in here and I'll be jerking off."
"My God, gross." Steve rolled his eyes, but the relief was so intense it hurt.
Now Eddie smiled for real, showing his teeth. "Since you're here, pulling unpaid shifts. At least put on some music, it's too quiet."
"You're getting spoiled, Munson.”
"My private nurse is excellent. Very dedicated. A little clingy, and a uniform would look adorable."
Steve just looked at him, a mix of exasperation, worry, and an affection so deep it was dizzying. The low light painted the room in sepia tones, turning the scene into a still frame from a movie that didn't exist — a warped coming-of-age story, a horror tale that, in the end, was just about two wounded boys sitting on the floor, sharing the weight of being alive in a world that insisted on being too cinematic, too dangerous, and, strangely, too quiet between scares.
The lamp light cut the dusty air like a dull blade, dividing the room into stripes of faded yellow and deep shadow. Steve got up slowly, every movement a deliberation, as if the simple act of standing could shatter the fragile equilibrium that had settled between them. His Nikes made a soft sound on the grimy brown carpet as he approached the dresser — a particleboard piece covered in band stickers, flattened beer can rings, and an overflowing ashtray.
His fingers hovered over the portable radio. The black plastic casing was cracked at the corner, marked by years of greasy, anxious fingers. A half-peeled Judas Priest sticker hung like a defeated flag. He pressed the power button. A satisfying click. The dial needle jumped to life, sweeping the spectrum through a storm of static and fragmented, enthusiastic announcer voices.
Until it found a frequency.
A hiss that smoothed into a clean, reverberating, painfully slow guitar chord. The Smiths. "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out." The melancholy melody filled the room like an odorless gas.
Eddie groaned, a deep sound born in the back of his still-raw throat. The groan was theatrical, but the pain behind it was real.
"Christ, Harrington…" His voice rasped, laden with a weariness the sarcasm couldn't mask anymore. "I asked for music, not a manifesto for eternally sad teenagers. That's the soundtrack to slitting your wrists."
Steve looked at him over his shoulder. The expression on his face was complex — a mix of exasperation, chronic worry, and an affection so deep it ached. It was the face of a young man who'd grown up too fast, carrying the weight of lives that weren't his.
"You got a better suggestion, Munson?" Steve rolled his eyes, an old gesture, a habit of a Steve Harrington that didn't exist anymore. "Unless you wanna listen to the static from Robin's CB trying to pick up signals of the apocalypse."
Eddie opened his mouth, pale lips readying a sharp retort. But then his eyes met Steve's — the exhaustion in them, the stubbornness, the raw vulnerability — and the snark crumbled. He closed his mouth. Defeated by a weariness bigger than his own ego.
"Fine. Okay." The surrender was a whisper. "The Smiths it is. But if 'Asleep' comes on, I swear by all the metal gods I'm ripping that radio out of the wall with my teeth."
Steve bit his lower lip. A small smile — not the wide, confident grin of before, but something smaller, softer, almost shy — escaped his lips before he could stop it. It was a secret shared only with the gloom.
He went back and sat on the floor again. This time, the space between his shoulder and Eddie's was smaller. Just a few inches. A distance that could be accidental, but that neither of them moved to correct.
Eddie inhaled, a careful, calculated motion that made his chest rise only a couple of inches before pain halted it. He let his head roll to the side until his temple, cool and a little damp with sweat, touched the curve of Steve's shoulder. It was a movement of such absolute weakness, such surrender, that Steve held his breath.
"Sorry," Eddie murmured, the breath of his words warm against Steve's t-shirt. "Head's heavy. Like it's full of cement and spite."
"Don't apologize," Steve said, his voice coming out hoarse. He was frozen, afraid the slightest movement might cause more pain. "Just… stay there."
He didn't dare lift his arm to wrap around Eddie. The geography of Eddie's pain was forbidden territory, a map of red lines Steve wasn't yet permitted to cross. The ribs were bound. The shoulder had been dislocated and reset. The abdomen… Steve didn't let his mind finish the thought. The memories of what they'd found in that trailer, of what they'd had to sew back together with common thread and a needle sterilized in Robin's vodka, were flashes of a nightmare he kept under lock and key.
But he could learn. Just a little. Just enough that his own weight offered a more solid support, a pillar for Eddie to slump against.
Eddie let out a long sigh that ended in a tremor. A fine, almost imperceptible shiver that ran through his skinny frame and was felt in Steve's shoulder.
"Hurting bad?" Steve asked, the question coming out in a whisper against Eddie's hair. The smell was of cheap shampoo and something medicinal, the smell of the almost-end.
"Everything always hurts," Eddie replied, his voice muffled by the fabric. "It's just… a volume thing. Right now it's at a manageable volume. Like Black Sabbath on headphones, not a live show inside my skull."
Steve almost laughed, but the sound died in his throat. It was a joke, but it was also the purest truth Eddie could offer.
Slowly, with a caution bordering on reverence, Steve raised his right hand. It hovered in the air beside Eddie's head, hesitant. He looked at his own knuckles, at the joints that had broken so many things, that had held so many improvised weapons. These hands were rough. They were dangerous.
"Okay," Eddie whispered, without opening his eyes. As if he could feel the hesitation hanging in the air like a ghost. "Just… go slow. Like you're handling a…"
"A what?"
"I'm too tired to think. Just be careful, Harrington."
Steve's heart thumped against his sternum. He lowered his hand. Not to the shoulder, not to the bandaged back. He brought it to the back of Eddie's head, where the dull, slightly tangled curls met his nape. It seemed like a safe place. A place that maybe wasn't covered in raw scars.
His fingers touched the strands first. They were coarse, lifeless. Steve began to run his fingers through them, with a pressure so light it was almost a thought. A touch that wasn't to fix, wasn't to mend. It was just to exist. To affirm: here is something that isn't broken. Here is something that is still you.
Eddie made a sound. A deep, shuddering sigh that turned into a muffled groan. Not of pain, Steve realized instantly, but of a relief so overwhelming it was physical. Eddie's whole body seemed to give an inch, as if an internal cord, stretched to its limit, had finally been cut.
"Fuck, Harrington," Eddie's voice came out slurred, thick. "That… no one's done that since I was a kid."
The statement hit Steve like a punch to the solar plexus. It was a piece of intimacy so vast and unprotected he felt his own eyes burn. He continued the motion, his fingers a little firmer now, tracing slow circles on the scalp, avoiding the tender spots — a swelling here, a scab of blood coming loose there.
"Then it's about time someone did," Steve murmured, and the simplicity of the phrase sounded strange in his own ears. It was a truth that needed no adornment.
He felt, more than saw, Eddie start to cry. Not sobs, not dramatic tears. It was a silent, exhausted weeping. A warm wetness that began to soak through the shoulder of Steve's t-shirt, and a deeper, more primitive tremor that shook the broken body leaning against him.
Steve didn't say "don't cry." Didn't say "it'll be okay." He just kept running his fingers through Eddie's hair, his touch becoming an anchor in the stormy sea of that old-and-new pain. He lowered his head until his own forehead rested lightly against the side of Eddie's head. It was as much as he dared. A skull-to-skull contact, a silent solidarity of bone to bone.
"I can't believe you're here," Steve confessed into the dark curls, his breath warm in Eddie's ear. "Every day, I wake up and think it was a dream. Or a nightmare. And then I come here… and you are. Broken. But breathing."
Eddie tried to speak, but his voice failed. He swallowed hard, a painful sound. When he finally managed, the words came out broken and wet.
"Sometimes… sometimes I wish I wasn't. The pain is… it hurts, Steve. But at least it proves I'm here."
The admission was a rupture. Steve squeezed his eyes shut, holding his own breath. The anger that rose in him had no direction — it was at the universe, at the monsters, at the small town that wanted to hunt this boy, at Eddie's own fragile body that insisted on feeling.
"I know," was all Steve could say. Because he knew. He had his own scars, his own aches that throbbed when the adrenaline faded. By now, everyone did. "I know, Eddie. But you're here. And I… I'm not going anywhere. The pain can be real, but so am I. Get it?"
He felt Eddie make a slight nodding motion, a weak bob against his shoulder.
"It's hard," Eddie whispered. "It's hard being… this. A thing that needs to be hidden. A broken thing you have to fix."
"You're not a 'thing'." Steve's reply was instant, firm. He pulled his head back just enough to look at Eddie's profile, lit by the dirty light. Tears had traced clean lines through the grime and pallor of his face. "And I'm not fixing you. I'm just… keeping you alive. Until you can get back up and annoy me properly."
For the first time since he started crying, a puff of laughter escaped Eddie. A tremulous, fragile sound, but real.
"I'm gonna annoy you so much, Harrington. I'll be a torment. A biblical plague."
"Can't wait," Steve said, and this time his smile reached his voice.
He rested his head against Eddie's again, resuming the slow, hypnotic motion of his fingers in his hair. The crying had subsided to occasional hitches. Eddie's breathing, once shallow and ragged, began to deepen, to grow more regular. The weight against Steve was total, an absolute and terrifying trust.
Steve didn't move. His arms started to tingle. His leg went numb. The ache in his own back throbbed in waves. None of it mattered. All that mattered was the rhythm of breath against his chest, the smell of salt and shampoo, the impossible miracle of the warmth of a body that technically shouldn't be warm anymore.
He stayed there, on the ugly apartment floor, holding a fragile, cracked miracle in his hands, silently swearing to anything that might be listening that he would never, ever let it fall again. The touch was all he had to seal that oath — a careful touch, full of fear and a tenderness so vast it was scarier than any Demogorgon.
The sound of a key in the deadbolt was like a lightning bolt cutting through the charged atmosphere of the room. Steve felt Eddie's body against his instantly contract, every muscle locking in a spasm of pain and alarm. The moan that escaped Eddie was muffled by Steve's shoulder, but Steve felt it reverberate in his own bones.
"Shit," Eddie breathed, his voice suddenly naked. "Is that Robin?"
"Must be," Steve murmured, his hand stilling in Eddie's hair.
Robin's footsteps in the hallway were quick, purposeful, and then they stopped outside the ajar door. She pushed it open slowly, her face appearing in the crack — first confused, then alarmed, then softening into an expression of deep concern and exhaustion.
"Oh my God," she whispered, entering the room and closing the door behind her. Her eyes swept the scene: Steve on the floor, looking like a soldier on vigil, and Eddie, a pale, broken figure glued to him like a shadow. "Brought dinner." She held up a wrinkled brown paper bag from the Hawkins Grill. "Got three half-dead cheeseburgers and fries that have seen better days. Figured maybe…"
She trailed off, taking in Eddie. The truth of his state was even more shocking in the harsh light from the open hallway door. In the gloom of the bedroom, he could pass for tired. Now, it was impossible to ignore the bruise-like purple hollows under his eyes, the almost translucent skin at his temples, the way each breath was a careful calculation.
Eddie lifted his head from Steve's shoulder, a movement that seemed to require Herculean strength. He wiped his face with the back of a trembling hand, trying to erase the tracks of tears.
"Robin. My french fry heroine," he said, but his voice was weak, the forced charm sounding pathetic instead of funny.
"You should be in bed, Eddie," Robin said, her voice soft but firm. She knelt on the floor in front of them, setting the food bag aside. "Steve, you should know that."
"I do," Steve replied, his voice gravelly. He began to move, the intent clear to help Eddie up, but Eddie placed a hand — hot, the thin fingers shaking visibly — on Steve's arm.
"Wait. A sec." Eddie closed his eyes, breathing deep. Steve could see the pain pass through him, an invisible wave that tensed every tendon, tightened every stitched muscle. He was bracing.
"Eddie, you don't have to-" Robin started.
"I do," Eddie cut her off, opening his eyes. There was a stubbornness there, a low fire that had survived the carnage. "I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life — however long that is — withering in this moldy room. And… and I want a cheeseburger. Even if it kills me."
“Eddie.” Steve tried. And Eddie pinned him with a glare.
“If you don't let me eat a cheeseburger I swear to God I'll kill you in your sleep, Harrington.” he said. Steve held up his hands in surrender.
He started to move. First, shifting away from Steve, a movement that made his face contort in a silent grimace. He put his hands on the floor, his arms shaking violently under the insignificant weight of his own torso. Steve moved instantly, his hands hovering, not touching, ready to grab, to cushion the fall.
"Let me, Steve," Eddie snarled, sweat already beading on his forehead. "Let me… I gotta do this."
It was agony to watch. Every inch gained was a battle. He got to his knees, one leg at a time, his body curled in on itself like a burnt leaf. His breathing was a short, wheezing whistle now.
Finally, after an eternity that lasted maybe a minute, Eddie was on his knees. He stopped, panting, his head hanging forward. The loose t-shirt slipped, revealing the top edge of the bandages on his shoulder — a smear of white gauze against skin mottled purple and red.
"You good?" Steve asked, his voice so tight it nearly cracked.
"Never better," Eddie lied, panting. Now, the big push: getting to his feet. He put one hand on the bed, the other on the floor, and began to push himself up.
Steve couldn't take it. He slid forward, putting one arm firmly, but with extreme gentleness, around Eddie's back, avoiding the rib area. His other hand went under Eddie's elbow.
"Let me help, you stubborn asshole," Steve whispered.
This time, Eddie didn't protest. He just groaned, a sound of pure surrender to pain and help, and let Steve take most of his weight. Together, in an awkward, intimate way, they rose. Eddie stood, swaying, his legs almost buckling. He clung to Steve, his thin fingers digging into Steve's muscled arm with desperate strength.
"Whoa," Eddie breathed, dizzy, his face pressed against Steve's shoulder for a moment. "Forgot what… vertical feels like."
Robin quickly stood, grabbing an improvised cane — an old broom handle — that was leaning against the wall. "Here. Use this. Please."
Eddie took the cane with a trembling hand, transferring some of his weight to it. The relief was visible on his face, but so was the humiliation. At least it was kinda fun, he felt childishly like a wizard.
"Slow," Steve instructed, his voice taking on a soft commander's tone. "One step at a time. No rush."
The journey to the kitchen was slow. Every step was deliberate, a negotiation between Eddie's will and his body's rebellion. Steve walked beside him, his arm still a fortress around his back, ready to intervene. Robin went ahead, opening doors, moving a kitchen chair to the center of the small space.
When they finally made it into the kitchen, bathed in the greyish late-afternoon light from the dirty window, Eddie was pale as a ghost. He practically fell into the chair Robin offered, a deep, shuddering sigh escaping his lips.
"Mission… accomplished," he panted, closing his eyes for a second.
Robin began unpacking the food on the counter, her movements quick and nervous. Steve remained standing beside Eddie's chair, his hand resting on the backrest, his knuckles white from gripping.
"You're an idiot, Munson," Robin said, but her voice was full of a tremulous affection.
"Aw, now you've hurt my feelings, Buckley. I'm gonna have to write that in my diary." Eddie opened his eyes. They were bright with pain and exhaustion, but also with a fierce triumph. He had walked. He was in the kitchen. It was a small, monumental victory.
He looked at Steve, who was still standing like a sentinel. The look they exchanged was long and loaded. No words were needed. And in the spaces between, there was something stronger than both of them.
Robin placed a plate with the wilted cheeseburger and cold fries on the table in front of Eddie, along with a glass of water. Eddie looked at the food, then at his own hands. They were still trembling.
Steve pulled another chair and sat down beside him, too close to be casual. Without a word, he picked up the hamburger, broke off a small, manageable piece, and held it up to Eddie.
"I can do it, Harrington," Eddie protested, weakly.
"Good," Steve said, simply. "But I didn't ask."
"Jerk." Eddie said. But he didn't fight anymore. And Robin huffed.
Each movement was slow, careful, a ceremony of care. Eddie ate, his jaw working with effort, but he ate. His eyes never left Steve's face.
It was insanity. Complete insanity. A boy who should be dead, eating a cold burger, fed by the hands of the ex-high school king who'd carried him out of hell. Eddie's scars, less hidden now by his clothes, were a mute testament to the obscene miracle of his survival. The pain in his eyes was real. But the life in them, stubborn and undeniable, was more real.
And for now, in that small circle of light in the dark kitchen, surrounded by the shadow of danger and the ghost of pain, it was enough. It was more than enough. It was everything. And it was almost okay.
~
One Week Ago
Finding Eddie was never the plan. Finding anything with a face that still resembled a human was a hope so remote it didn't even hurt anymore. It was a cold certainty: the Upside Down didn't leave remains, only memories.
The plan was reconnaissance. To map the new growth patterns of the Vines, to check creature activity around the remaining portals near the Q-17 Quarantine Zone. Routine stuff, or as close to routine as you could get at the end of the world.
But routine faltered. Hopper came down with a real bug — the human kind, lungs full of phlegm and a fever that could take down a bear. "Old man's a liability," he grumbled to Joyce, his voice raw, before a coughing fit that seemed to want to expel the very days he'd lived. No offense, Hopper. Just reality.
They couldn't stop. To stop was to cede ground. To stop was to let Vecna whisper in the dark corners with no one listening. So, Steve and Nancy went. The dream team. Jonathan watched, his expression grim, as the two geared up with flashlights, walkies, homemade salt-and-iron weapons. There was a lethal efficiency in the way they moved together, a silent language forged in fire and blood. They were capable of taking down a Demogorgon if they wanted. They'd done worse. Jonathan didn't like it — a knot of worry and something more acidic, more ancient, tightened in his gut — but he had to swallow his reluctance. The need was greater. Robin would stay with him, on overwatch from the right side up, listening to the radio as if every burst of static was their last.
The air of the Upside Down was a thick liquid, smelling of rotten eggs and wet rust. Five months. Five months since Dustin found him, cold and empty on the floor of that nightmare trailer. Five months. Pure, brutal logic dictated: a body didn't last five days here. The Vines would consume it, wrap its bones in their wine-dark tentacles. The Demogorgons would scent the still meat. The bats… the bats would have come back and finished the job, leaving only a stain on the other side's carpet and, here, perhaps just a darker smudge on the ground.
Steve stepped firmly, the nail-studded bat a familiar weight in his hands. His eyes swept the shadows, watching for anything that might attack them, or any trace of Vecna. But their feet, guided by Nancy and her fierce determination, moved toward the epicenter of the old horror: the clearing near Lover's Lake, where the portals had bloomed like wounds.
It was Nancy who saw the first sign. Not a body, it was a trail.
"Steve." Her voice, a cut through the heavy silence. She pointed her flashlight at the ground. Drag marks. Long, uneven, as if something — or someone — had been pulled through the slime and dead roots. And beside it, a dark, almost-dry stain that didn't belong to the place. It was brownish-red. It was blood.
Not Demogorgon blood. Human blood. Red. Venous.
Steve's heart hammered, a dull drum against his ribs. "Is someone here?"
"Looks like a trail."
"Could be a soldier."
"It's fresh," Nancy whispered, the toe of her boot touching the edge of the stain. "Relatively. Days, not months. Think it's worth it?"
"Could be someone dying."
"Then we should help."
"This could blow our cover."
"Or we could save a life," she said. And he inhaled. But he agreed. He couldn't leave someone behind. It was a life. That's what mattered.
They followed the blood. The trail led deeper into the forest of dead trees, toward a rock formation that looked like a low cave. The air seemed to grow colder, the constant buzz of the Vines sharper, a symphony of agony.
That's when it attacked. Not from inside the cave, but from the dead canopy above. A Demogorgon, leaner, faster than those from before, a second-generation beast adapted to the new landscape. It dropped onto Steve like a bolt of lightning, a blur of claws and teeth.
The fight was brief, brutal, and nearly fatal. Steve blocked a swipe with the bat, the impact warping the wooden handle and sending a painful shock up to his shoulders. Nancy yelled, her homemade rifle spitting nails and salt. The Demogorgon howled, recoiling, its flower-face sizzling from the salt. Steve took the opening, driving the pointed end of the bat into the creature's chest. A gout of something black and viscous spurted out. The creature staggered but didn't fall. It turned on Nancy.
"NANCY!" Steve screamed, desperate, wrenching the bat free with a superhuman effort.
It's what saved her life. The distraction was enough for Nancy to reload and fire again, this time hitting one of its forelimbs. The Demogorgon backed away, snorting, its blind, furious gaze alternating between them. Then, as if answering a call only it could hear, it vanished into the mist, limping.
Steve was panting, his hands trembling. Nancy leaned against a tree, her face pale. Adrenaline pulsed in their ears, drowning out the world.
"We have to go back," Steve said, his voice hoarse. "That'll attract more."
Nancy shook her head, not in denial, but to clear her vision. Her eyes were fixed on the cave entrance. The blood trail ended there.
"We can't go back," she said.
"What?"
"We have to follow the trail."
"Have you completely lost it?"
"It led us here," she said, almost inaudible.
"Who, Nancy? The Demogorgon?"
"The trail. The blood." She looked at Steve, and in her eyes was a gleam of pure terror and pure determination. "Someone made this trail. Someone who's still bleeding."
He huffed and followed Nancy, the two of them crawling into the low opening in the rock.
The cave was damp, dripping, lit only by the ghostly glow of bioluminescent fungi growing on the walls. The smell was worse here: rot, sickness, and underneath… a familiar metallic odor. Blood. And life.
And then, they saw him.
Wedged into a recess, wrapped in rags that were once his leather jacket, was Eddie Munson.
He wasn't a corpse. He was something worse, and at the same time, an obscene miracle.
Eddie was alive. Terribly, incontrovertibly alive.
His breathing was a short, irregular whistle, visible in the cold air. His body was a catalog of horror. The bat marks, now grotesque and still-red scars, crisscrossed his torso and arms. A deeper wound, a puncture in his abdomen, was wrapped in a filthy, makeshift bandage that barely hid the inflammation. His face was pale as the moon, smeared with dirt and dried blood, but beneath his clenched eyelids, his eyes moved rapidly, trapped in a nightmare.
Beside him on the ground lay a piece of a military dog tag, its chain broken. And in his clenched fist, even in unconsciousness, he gripped a rusted metal charm — a twenty-sided die.
Steve dropped to his knees beside him, a guttural noise escaping his throat. "Christ. Eddie."
Nancy knelt on the other side, her hand going professionally to Eddie's neck, feeling for a pulse. She found it. Weak, rapid, but there.
"He's burning up with fever," she whispered, horrified. "How… how is he alive, Steve?"
Steve had no answer. His eyes traveled the wrecked body, the signs of an impossibly long fight for survival. He took the hand holding the die. Eddie's fingers were icy. Steve wrapped them with his own hands, trying to transmit warmth, trying to anchor himself in that impossibility.
"He survived," Steve said, his voice choked with a storm of emotions — disbelief, terror, overwhelming relief, and beneath it all, a cold fear. "For five months, Nancy. He survived here."
Nancy's eyes met Steve's in the pale glow of the fungi. The unvoiced question hung in the damp air between them, more frightening than any Demogorgon.
Holy shit.
But in that moment, it didn't matter. The miracle, however dark, demanded action. Steve shrugged out of his jacket, wrapping Eddie in what little warmth he had. Nancy was already on the walkie, her voice low and urgent cutting through the silence:
"Robin, Jonathan… code red. We need extraction. Now. We found… we found Eddie. And he's alive."
"What?" Robin practically shrieked from the other side. Jonathan said something too, but he was too far away for them to understand.
"You heard right, Robin. Code red. It's him. And he's alive. We need to be out of here yesterday," Nancy said, her voice trembling but firm, cutting off any space for doubt or hysteria. Their training, forged in fire, held off the collapse. For now. "Prep the extraction point. And Robin… we need the kit. The whole kit."
On the other side, Robin swallowed hard. "The whole kit" meant the military-grade first aid kit Hopper had "borrowed," full of things no civilian should have. It meant lies ready to go. It meant risk. "Understood. On my way. Hold the line."
In the cave, Steve was already moving. Bloody survival logic had replaced the shock. "Nancy, help me turn him. We have to check his spine before we move him."
Together, with a morbid delicacy, they rolled Eddie onto his side. A new moan, this time conscious with pain, escaped his cracked lips. Steve almost flinched.
"Seems… stable. Everything's broken, but nothing seems pierced," Nancy assessed, her fingers probing with professional care. "But this wound in his abdomen… Steve, it's infected in a way that isn't natural."
Steve didn't want to look. He focused on Eddie's face. "Eddie? Eddie, can you hear me? It's Steve. Harrington. We're gonna get you out of here."
Eddie's eyes opened for a fraction of a second. There was no recognition, only a deep, animal panic, a glint of pain so absolute Steve felt it like a stab wound. Then, the heavy eyelids slid shut again.
"Enough talk. Let's go," Steve ordered, more to himself.
He slid his arms under Eddie — one beneath his shoulders, the other under his knees. The weight was frighteningly light, as if the months of starvation and agony had consumed everything except the pain and stubbornness. Steve stood up with an effort that made his own muscles protest, but Eddie was secure in his arms, an inert, feverish burden.
Nancy grabbed the weapons and the flashlight, illuminating the way back. The journey to the extraction point — an unstable fissure between the roots of a massive tree that led to the basement of an abandoned house on the outskirts of Hawkins — was a nightmare in slow motion. Every shadow, every crack, made Steve freeze, expecting the attack of another Demogorgon or worse. The heat of Eddie against his chest was a live coal, the irregular breathing a ghostly puff against his neck.
When the portal fissure — a weak, pulsating tear near the lake rocks — appeared ahead, a wave of relief washed over them like seeing a prison door swing open. Nancy went through first, securing the coast on their side. Steve followed, contorting himself to avoid bumping Eddie against the irregular, vibrating edges of the portal. The pressure changed, the air lost its smell of rot and gained the sharp cold of a Hawkin's autumn night.
Robin and Jonathan were there, hidden in the bushes. The look on Robin's face when she saw the broken human package in Steve's arms was one of absolute horror. Jonathan silently took up a watch position, his face a mask of contained shock.
"My God… Eddie," Robin whispered, her hand flying to her mouth. She moved closer, her fingers automatically going to Eddie's neck, repeating Nancy's gesture. The pulse was still there, a stubborn thread of life.
"We don't have time," Nancy cut in, already pulling out the thermal blankets they'd brought. "Jonathan, cover our tracks. Robin, wheres the kit?"
They worked with a frantic, silent efficiency. They wrapped Eddie in the silver blankets. Robin applied strong antiseptic to the worst visible wounds, her hand trembling slightly. Eddie didn't react, lost in an abyss of fever and pain.
"This isn't gonna cut it. He's gonna die if we don't get him to a hospital," Jonathan said.
"Damn it. And how do we explain that?"
"I don't know. We'll lie," Nancy said.
"No, we won't. Vickie's gonna take care of him," Robin asserted.
"Alright, alright. How do we get him there?" Jonathan asked, his voice low and tense. "We can't just…"
"Vickie's car," Robin said suddenly, her eyes wide with a desperate idea. "She's on night shift at the hospital. Nursing student. She… she can help. And the Chevette is discreet. I'll call her."
Nancy and Steve exchanged a look. It was a huge risk. Involving someone else. But the alternative was Eddie dying in a car trunk or them trying to stitch him up in the apartment without knowing what they were doing.
"Do it," Steve said, the word coming out like an order. "Tell her it's… tell her it's a life-or-death emergency. That it's a secret. That if she talks, we…" He faltered, not knowing how to finish the threat.
"She'll help," Robin stated, with a faith that sounded as fragile as glass. "She's good. I trust her." Please let me be right, she thought, the taste of fear bitter on her tongue. "She won't talk."
The extraction operation was a tense, claustrophobic affair. They carried Eddie, a silver-wrapped, trembling bundle, through the woods to the rendezvous point. Vickie's faded blue Chevette was already there, headlights off. Vickie herself was outside, wrapped in a coat, her face lit only by the weak moonlight. She looked scared, but determined. When she saw what they were carrying, her professional training seemed to override the shock.
Honestly, she didn't even know how she got there so fast.
"In the back. Lay him across the seat. Watch his head," she instructed, her voice firmer than they expected.
Steve squeezed into the back seat with Eddie still in his arms, Nancy beside him, cradling Eddie's head. Robin jumped in the front. Jonathan followed in his own car, a ghost escort through the deserted streets of Hawkins.
In Steve and Robin's apartment, which smelled of old pizza and anxiety, the real work began under the cruel light of the lamp. Vickie, with hands that stopped shaking the moment she picked up sterilized tweezers and a needle, took command. She cut away the filthy clothes, cleaned the wounds with a solution that smelled clinical, revealing the full extent of the damage. It was ugly. It was so much worse than any of them had imagined.
"These bat scars… they're almost closed. But underneath… something's wrong. The inflammation is intense, but it's not… it's not following a normal pattern," she murmured, more to herself, as she examined the abdominal wound with a small penlight. "It's like his body is… fighting the infection in a way I've never seen. And losing."
She did what she could. Drained, cleaned, stitched with sutures that were small works of precision art. Administered antibiotics Robin had gotten from who-knows-where and a shot for the fever. The whole time, Steve sat on the floor beside the sofa where Eddie lay, holding his cold hand, as if he could transfuse his own life force through the contact.
When Vickie finally finished, washing her hands at the sink with a grim expression, the silence in the apartment was heavy.
"I don't know if it's enough," she said, drying her hands. "He needs a hospital. For real."
"He can't," the four of them said almost in unison.
Vickie looked at them, seeing the truth in their eyes. The fear. The determination. The secret bigger than one man's life. She took a deep breath.
"Then I'll come back tomorrow. To change the dressings. To monitor the fever. But…" She hesitated, looking at Eddie's face, now clean but still deathly pale. "But you need to be prepared. For anything. His body is doing… strange things. The fever is sky-high, but his blood pressure hasn't crashed like it should. The healing in some areas is… too fast. In others, it's stalled. This isn't normal."
She left with a promise of silence, taking the bloodied rags and the smell of death with her to discard somewhere no one would find.
The door clicked shut. They were alone. The sound of Eddie's ragged breathing filled the space.
Nancy looked at Steve, then at Robin and Jonathan. "Now, the four of us know. And only the four of us. Until we know what… what he is now. Not Joyce, not Hopper, not the kids. No one."
Robin nodded, exhausted. Jonathan crossed his arms, a gesture of self-protection.
Steve barely heard. His eyes were fixed on Eddie, on every small, difficult rise and fall of his chest. The hand he held was still cold.
They had a secret. They had a sick miracle. And they had a deep, icy fear that they might have brought home something more than just a friend.
The tension in the apartment was flammable gas, waiting for a spark.
"Okay… this is messed up. We have to tell someone," Jonathan said, breaking the heavy silence. He crossed his arms, his gaze sweeping the group before settling on the feverish body on the worn sofa.
"No, we don't," Steve replied, his voice a rough sound of exhaustion and stubbornness. "For God's sake, Jonathan, think."
"I am thinking!" Jonathan shot back, his voice rising a notch. "We brought back a thing that died, that spent five months in that place, and is now regenerating like some… like some video game character! This is Hopper material! Owens material! It's too big for us!"
"It's Eddie," Steve insisted, but it sounded more like a prayer than a statement.
"Is it?" Nancy interjected, soft but piercing. She was leaning against the kitchen wall, her arms also crossed, but her posture was one of analysis, not confrontation. "How can we be sure? Vecna feeds on memories, on trauma. What's to stop him from… using an empty shell? Putting something inside?"
The word 'shell' echoed in the room, cruel and precise. They all looked at the sofa.
"It might not be," Steve tried.
"You don't know for sure. We were impulsive bringing him here," she continued.
"We weren't," he said.
Eddie was there, swaddled in blankets, under the yellow, trembling light of the lamp Robin had brought from the bedroom. His face, cleaned by Robin and Vickie, was pale as marble, speckled with the purple and red marks of the newest scars. His breathing, once a whistle of agony, was now a deep, irregular drag, narcotized by the potent painkillers Vickie—her eyes full of panic and determination—had administered with surprisingly steady hands. From time to time, he muttered. Wordless sounds, choked syllables that could be "no" or "fire" or "Dustin."
"Look at him," Steve pleaded, his voice failing. "He's suffering. He's not a monster. He's a guy who got torn apart and who, for some reason, hell spat back out. We brought him here. He's our responsibility now. It's done."
"So…" Jonathan began, before being cut off by Robin.
"And Dustin?" She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the armchair, hugging her knees. "Dustin is… he's barely left his room since it happened. If we tell him and this… if this is a trap, or if Eddie doesn't make it… it'll kill the kid for good, Steve."
Steve closed his eyes. The image of Dustin, his young face marked by a loss no teenager should carry, was a low blow. The strongest argument against his own will.
"And Hopper?" Jonathan pressed, seizing the opening. "Hopper came back from hell too, but he's the first to say: some doors can't be reopened. He has a protocol for 'contaminations.' He'll look at Eddie and he won't see Dustin's friend or… or your friend, Steve. He'll see an anomaly. And he'll… he'll have him killed. Especially if he's not what we think he is."
The room fell silent, the weight of the decision crushing the air. The only sounds were Eddie's heavy breathing and the distant buzz of a helicopter in the quarantine zone, an audible reminder that the danger outside was real and organized.
Steve opened his eyes and looked at each of them. At Nancy, the strategist, calculating risks. At Jonathan, the pragmatist, fearing for the little normality they had left. At Robin, his partner, split in half between logic and loyalty to a kid she barely knew, but who had become, by association, part of their strange family.
Honestly, he barely knew Eddie either. Except from their years in school. But Eddie barely… he and Eddie hardly interacted. He was a freak. No reason for Steve to interact with him. But… after everything. They fought side by side. And Dustin liked the guy. He was even part of the same damn club. They weren't friends, but they were never enemies. A thread of guilt still lived in his chest.
He turned to the sofa. He knelt, ignoring the ache in his own scraped knees. He took Eddie's hand, where Vickie's improvised IV was still taped in place. The skin was hot, but the hand was limp. Covered in small cuts.
"I didn't leave him there before," Steve said, not to the group, but to the hand he held. His voice was low, hoarse, loaded with a guilt they all knew but had never named. "I left him there, and he died. This time… this time I carried him. I brought him back. So, until it's proven he's a threat… he's under my protection."
He raised his gaze to the others, his eyes pleading, challenging.
"We hide him. We take care of him. We watch him. If there's a sign, one sign that it's not him… then we call Hopper. But until then, he deserves a chance. We deserve the chance to have him back."
Nancy was the first to relent. A long sigh escaped her lips. She looked at Jonathan, a silent dialogue passing between them. Jonathan closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and gave a slight, reluctant nod.
"The apartment is yours and Robin's," Nancy said, turning to Steve. "You two are in charge. Jonathan and I are support. Robin coordinates Vickie and the medical care. No one says a word. Not to the kids. Not to Hopper. Not to Joyce. Especially not to Dustin."
"And if he asks?" Robin whispered.
"We lie," Steve answered, the word coming out bitter in his mouth. "We make up a surveillance mission. A camping trip. Anything. Until we know what we're dealing with."
The pact was sealed. Not with a handshake, but with the shared weight of a colossal secret. They were four guardians of a ghost, a coven of liars trying to hide a sick miracle from the rest of the world.
The camera, if there was one, would hover over the scene: the four young adults, exhausted and terrified, frozen in their positions around the sofa. The lamplight painted their faces in amber and shadow, creating a Renaissance painting of modern anxiety. At its center, the object of their discord and devotion: Eddie Munson, asleep but not at peace, his body a landscape of interrupted violence. A low mutter escaped his lips, something between a moan and a lost word.
It was almost inaudible. Maybe a collective hallucination from exhaustion. But Steve heard it. His fingers tightened slightly around Eddie's hand.
Outside the window, the night in Hawkins was deep and watched. Sirens from the Q-17 zone sounded in the distance, a regular lament. Inside the apartment, a new kind of quarantine began. Not of barricades and soldiers, but of silence, fear, and a hope as dangerous as any creature from the Upside Down. Steve, for some reason, felt increasingly drawn to the idea of Eddie's return. He just doesn't understand why... yet.