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Chapter Text

When Eddie Munson woke up, he knew he’d gone to hell. 

Eddie wasn’t religious. Never had been. He’d endured enough of Hawkins’ God-fearing bullshit that he knew he never would be. He got told enough that he spat in the face of God by playing that satanic game, by naming his club Hellfire, by smoking weed, by listening to metal, by being a queer – pretty much anything Eddie actually was or liked seemed to be condemned by God. 

And while he was alive, Eddie didn’t believe in any of that bullshit. 

But he knew the demobats had gotten him. Killed him. He’d bled out in Dustin Henderson’s arms. 

Jesus H. Christ, he’d probably scarred the poor kid for life. 

Eddie knew he had died. And when he opened his eyes, everything, absolutely everything was red. 

So naturally, he made the only easy conclusion. He was in hell. It was where he belonged, according to half the town. 

He didn’t expect hell to be so slippery, though. 

As he lay there on the ground, staring up through red fog into a red sky, he was vaguely aware of some sort of liquid under his hands. 

For a moment Eddie thought it might be blood. Rivers of blood and all that hell shit. Maybe even his own blood, but no, Eddie was pretty sure he didn’t have that much. But when he brought a hand up into his field of vision, it was clean. Wet but unstained. 

Eddie slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. His body ached all over. Deep, throbbing, stabbing pains in his neck, shoulder, sides. A bruising pulse from his wrists and ankles, and around his throat from where the demobats had wrapped their freaky tail things around him to hold him down. 

But he didn’t seem to be bleeding. His shirt was stained with blood, but when he lifted the hem near his waist, the wounds were just… weird, empty divots in his skin. 

“Okay,” he said aloud, very slowly. Hell was a weird place. Things were weird. He should expect that. Not as much fire as he’d expected. 

He staggered to his feet, looking around. Clumps of rock and earth hung in the air, far above him. The ground was covered in a thin layer of not-blood liquid, shining. It wasn’t bright red, either, not fire red. But this deep, earthy red, like clay or the color of the sky when they’d pulled the demobats off of Steve, the first time Eddie had ever seen the upside-down. 

Really, this place looked like it could be a weird offshoot of the gate in Lover’s lake. Which was super discomforting. 

Well, shit. Maybe this wasn’t hell as the assholes back home described it, but maybe this was his personal hell. Maybe he was going to spend eternity in a place that looked vaguely like where his life had begun to end. Maybe he’d be picked apart by demobats every day for eternity like Prometheus. 

Oh god, maybe he’d be forced to watch Steve be attacked by them again. With no Nancy or Robin to help him, Eddie wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to watch Steve be strangled, his flesh torn and dug into like the demobats had done to Eddie, no more Ozzy Osbourne tricks or joking about how Steve totally would have died if the ladies hadn’t been there – 

Eddie shook himself, trying to shove the thoughts down and away, away into that hidden little corner he’d been using the moment Chrissy died called not fucking now because he just couldn’t handle that. He was always too focused on not dying to freak out. 

Of course, now that he was dead, he supposed he could freak out all he wanted. 

But the idea of figuring out this new place was way, way more interesting than his own fucky memories, so Eddie focused back in on the red. 

There were black, twisty spires scattered around like dead trees. Husks. Snags, that was the word. Snag. They were fucking creepy, was the point. It wasn’t dense enough to feel like an actual dead forest. The spires were just close enough together to make Eddie uncomfortable but too far apart and too spindly to feel like they provided any sort of shelter. Awesome. 

Eddie decided to pick a direction and just – walk. His footsteps splashed in the water, soaking the bottoms of his beat up white sneakers. 

He walked for a long time. His watch was still broken, so that didn’t help. He felt exhausted, sore all over, but he wasn’t hungry or thirsty. He kind of wanted a smoke, but that wasn’t exactly practical at the moment. 

Everything just kept going, and going, and going. 

Eddie was exhausted, but the idea of just laying down in the middle of this infinite open space made him feel nauseous. He wished more than anything that he had someone with him. Anyone. Literally fucking anyone. Which made him feel guilty, because he didn’t want to drag anyone into this hellscape with him. But Christ, having Steve, Nancy, and Robin at his back right now would really make this less miserable. 

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that meant the three of them made it out alive. Or maybe it meant they were each in their own, separate, personal hells. 

He really hoped Dustin was okay. 

Nancy, her dry wit and calming, controlled demeanor. Robin’s ramblings and sarcastic humor. Steve and his unwavering confidence and optimism. 

Those were the people Eddie had chosen to follow into Mordor. And now he was completely, mind-numbingly alone. 

Maybe he would just walk and walk and walk until he went insane. 

“Alright, Munson,” Eddie mumbled, and he would be freaking out about already talking to himself if he hadn’t done that before things went to shit, too. “Just gotta find a place to hunker down.” 

Literally any landmark would be nice. 

For all he knew he was going in infinite circles. 

Distantly, he heard screeching. Gut-wrenchingly familiar. 

He took off. He didn’t have any weapons, no hand-made spears or shields, no trailer to hide in. The last time he’d stood his ground, played the hero for his friends, he’d literally died. So he ran. Absolutely booked it away from the sound. 

The splashing of the water under his feet didn’t echo. There was nothing, anywhere, for the sound to bounce off of. He just kept running, and running, because there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide, nothing to protect himself with, just open, wet, red air. 

He could still hear the screeching, just as far off, when his legs gave out. 

Eddie went down hard, sprawling in the thin watery layer with a cry, fresh bruises adding to his injuries. He scrambled towards one of the spires, dragging himself across the ground, pushing himself up to sit against it with his knees tucked into his chest. 

It wasn’t big enough to hide his whole back. He was still visible. They’d find him. But he just couldn’t get up, couldn’t run any further. 

Eddie sat there, eyes screwed shut and breathing hard, and waited for the bats to get him. 

He couldn’t form any proper thoughts, really. Just sat there, aching and trembling, clutching his knees and breathing, breathing, breathing, fuck he did so much of that. His heart was in his throat. He could hear them, the bats, screeching, fluttering, thick fleshy leather and long sinewy tails. His feet hurt, his weirdly not-bleeding injuries throbbed and his jeans were soaked through from when he fell, his ass damp from sitting in half an inch of water. 

He waited. 

And breathed. 

And waited. 

Thought about Dustin. Thought about Robin and Steve and Nancy. Thought about Dustin. Thought about how he was going to die again. 

The sounds were still so far off. 

He remembered something his uncle had told him about Vietnam. Wayne hadn’t served, but he’d had friends who got drafted. Too many. 

That’s what they say about war, Eddie. They say it’s mostly boredom. Ninety percent boredom. Ten percent horror.  

Eddie’s heart rate had gone down. He wasn’t freaking out anymore. 

He could still hear the bats in the distance. 

It was like his body just couldn’t keep up the fear response. The adrenaline could only last so long, his lungs could only take so much hyperventilating. 

He sat there with his arms around his knees and his head leaning back against the spire for a long time. At some point he must have drifted off, because he startled awake when his head tipped forward, jolting, heart racing again. 

The bats hadn’t gotten any closer. It was like having a floater in the peripherals of his vision. No matter what he did, it never went away, but he couldn’t look at it straight either. 

Eddie sighed and put his head on his knees. 

He had no plan. He’d walked for god only knows how long. Hours, at least. He’d ran until his legs gave out, until his body was so utterly exhausted he managed to sleep even in this stressed state. His body hurt so damn bad. He still wasn’t hungry or thirsty. 

He was so alone. 

Slowly, Eddie laid down on his side, still curled into a tight ball. The water was uncomfortable but not cold, soaking his hair and seeping up under the cuff of his jacket on his left arm. He was still out in the open, in nowhere, but he didn’t know what else to do. 

Maybe the bats really would show up. At least then he’d have some direction. 

Instead he laid there and thought about his friends until he fell asleep. 

Briefly, Eddie dared to hope it had all been some sick dream.

Hoped he’d wake up in some hospital bed, with Dustin or his uncle, or his bandmates. Anyone from Hellfire. Anyone he’d gone into the upside down with. Steve. Robin. Nancy. Dustin. 

Because it was a fantasy and Eddie could do anything he wanted, he put Chrissy there too. 

He knew he wouldn’t wake up in a hospital bed. But maybe he’d wake up in the upside-down, where he’d died. He hoped he would, honestly. At least then he’d know what to do. He’d slink back to his trailer and figure something out. He’d be in Hawkins, at least. He’d just hunker down, hold out and survive and wait until a gate opened again. Or maybe the gate in his trailer would still be there and he’d be able to pull himself through. 

Even a life spent running from the cops sounded better than this right now. 

But he opened his eyes, and found himself staring sideways out at endless, glistening red. 

The water really was uncomfortable, and his side ached from laying on the hard ground, and his wounds hurt. He hurt all over. Screeching and chittering and sounds of leather, endless in the distance. 

Eddie closed his eyes and ran through the fingerings to his favorite songs in his mind. 

The next time Eddie woke up, he cried for a long time. 

Hugged his knees into his chest and sobbed, because he was still in this damn place. 

Empty and endless and alone. 

He cried. 

He ached from laying on his side, but his wounds didn’t hurt so bad anymore. They were starting to close over. The skin never bled, still, and the tissue was puckered and scarred, but they were healing in some weird way. 

That was almost worse somehow. At least when he was in pain he had something that throbbed, something inconsistent. With that fading, everything was endless. 

He thought about Chrissy and cried. Hoped beyond hope that she was somewhere nicer. 

Eddie tried drinking the water on the ground. 

It was stupid, and he knew it, but he just needed to do something, anything, besides walking and thinking. 

It tasted weird. Like a rusty water fountain at school, that was also pumping mildly salty water instead of fresh. It was bad, and now he had the taste of salt and some sort of metal in his mouth but it was better than nothing. 

He didn’t do it again, though. 

Eddie Munson had been in hell for what he had randomly and probably incorrectly decided to be four days when something happened. 

It wasn’t a big something. But it was something. 

It felt huge. 

Eddie had taken to following the clumps of earth hanging in the sky. Just wandering with his face tilted up into the red fog, wondering if any of them would fall. Or move. Or if a little bit of dirt would crumble off and break up the smooth surface of the water. 

They didn’t, but his foot did connect with something and send it skittering across the hard ground. 

Eddie froze, gaze flying to the ground, trying to pick out whatever it was in the vastness he had kicked it into. 

He scrambled forward, dropping to his knees and picking up a pen from the half inch of water. 

Eddie cradled it in his hands like it was fucking gold. 

It was a simple ballpoint, with a spring and a clicky bit at the end. Grey and sleek, with black ink, the tube inside about half-full. It was the most ordinary object Eddie had ever seen and he was sick with it. 

He crouched there on the ground and clutched the pen, laughing hysterically. 

There was a damn pen. 

A pen! 

It had to mean something. Random objects didn’t just appear in hell for no reason, right? Unless this was some weird trick to make him go insane even faster, but – pens belonged to people. A single pen was someone’s. It wasn’t Eddie’s. 

Someone other than Eddie had owned this pen at some point. Now it was here, in Eddie’s personal hell. It had made it into his realm of endless nothingness. 

Eddie tucked the pen into the breast pocket of the stupid green vest thing he was wearing over his leather jacket. Dustin had made him wear it, for some reason, to fit the weird gilly suit theme thing he had going on when they’d gone into the upside-down for the final time. 

He could feel the weight of it there, a tiny little spark of hope. 

He really hoped he wasn’t going insane. 

Eddie cried a lot. 

He sort of did it because he didn’t have anything better to do. 

He would walk until his legs gave out, and then he’d lay on the ground and cry until he fell asleep or until he could walk again. 

It felt pathetic. 

But there was no one here to laugh at him for it, so he kept doing it. 

He didn’t cry that much, actually, when he was alive. He just didn’t have time for it. He’d shove down the uncomfortable feelings in favor of playing guitar, or planning a D&D campaign, or hiding from the cops. He had too much going on to focus on releasing the tension in his chest. He could usually make it go away by playing guitar, anyway. 

He didn’t have his guitar. Or anyone chasing him, or anywhere to run to. 

He cried. 

Eddie talked to himself a bit. Nothing of substance, because there was nothing to talk about, but he rambled. He recited his favorite songs and babbled about anything that came to mind, just to hear something. Just to use his voice, so it didn’t shrivel up or something. 

He didn’t know if it was actually helping or not. Maybe he was just driving himself even further insane. 

He thought a lot about writing. About scribbling something on his skin with the pen tucked into his pocket. But he didn’t want to waste the precious ink, and he didn’t feel that desperate yet, and it would just wash off when he laid down anyway. 

He took out the pen a lot, just to look at it, feel it, click the end. It was nice to remind himself that something had happened, once, however long ago that had been. 

He wished he had someone here. Literally anyone. He didn’t care much anymore if that was morally wrong or something, if he’d be condemning someone else to death by having them here. He just needed someone. 

Eddie thought he understood how pirates felt, now. 

He’d read some book as a kid about pirates going crazy out on the open ocean, unable to see land for days and days. He’d thought it was dumb at the time, because, like, pirates! If you’re a pirate, you were way too cool to go insane from boredom or wide open spaces. 

Of course, pirates had other pirates to hang out with, and rum to drink and food to eat. And they could run into other ships. Pirates had a lot more going on than Eddie did, even in the open ocean. 

For the millionth time, Eddie thought about Dustin. 

But as Eddie walked endlessly and his gaze finally caught on something different, he immediately understood why the pirates in the book lost their shit upon spotting land in the distance. 

Eddie screamed and took off running in the direction of the something. 

The clumps in the sky hung closer together. The ground shifted beneath the pounding of his feet driving him forward, cracks and layers and little sloping pieces starting to form, some spots high enough to be dry. 

The spire tree snag things drew closer together. 

Eddie realized with a jolt that he was running towards a building. 

It had been too far away, too foggy to see for so long but – there it was. A building. Intact, at least mostly, it seemed. 

It was a house. Old, and small, kind of falling apart. Single story. It looked jarringly out of place amongst the red sea of nothing. 

“HELLO,” Eddie screamed into the air, still sprinting head on towards the house. “HELLO! ANYBODY!” 

Eddie’s feet skidded and slipped on the wet ground and he stumbled, crashing full-bodied into the side of the house with a shout. 

Panting, Eddie dragged himself up again and scrambled for the door of the house, slamming his open palms against it desperately. “Please, is anybody there, anybody, hello – ” 

The door was wrenched open so hard Eddie fell straight inside, collapsing to the ground in a heap of exhausted limbs. Gasping, he tried to push himself up but couldn’t, his arms trembling too hard. 

Something clattered to the ground next to him. A weapon, maybe? A stick? Eddie was so focused on trying to get himself off the damn ground he couldn’t process it. After so long of the exact same stuff, the feeling of hardwood under his fingers was dangerously overwhelming. 

Pressure on his shoulder, then, as the person who had opened the door nudged their foot under his arm and pushed, shoving Eddie roughly onto his back. 

Eddie lay there, panting, staring up, eyes flickering around uselessly because there was simply too much new to look at before he caught on what he’d been really looking for. A person, another fucking human being thank god, the person who’d opened the door, whose boot was digging into his shoulder and keeping him pinned down. 

Eddie blinked up at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Briefly, Eddie considered the possibility that he was finally going to get out of here, because he found himself staring up at what had to be an angel. 

The other man stared back, looking just as shocked. Probably definitely another man and not an angel, no matter how he looked. The pressure of his boot on Eddie’s shoulder was starting to hurt, actually. 

“Eddie Munson?” 

A shaky sob tore from Eddie’s throat, because he hadn’t heard another person speak in so fucking long and he was in this weird ass house and his shoulder hurt so bad but it was good because it was real and it was contact. 

He just laid there on the ground and sobbed uncontrollably, unable to close his eyes against the tears because he refused to look away from Billy Hargrove. He wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it, there was another fucking human. He wasn’t alone. 

Slowly, the pressure on his shoulder eased as Billy removed his foot. 

“You’re dead,” Billy said. 

Eddie nodded vigorously, still sort of hyperventilating but starting to regain control of his faculties. 

Billy heaved a long sigh. Slowly crouched next to Eddie. “You been here long?” 

Eddie nodded again, lip trembling. 

“Yeah.” Billy eased himself all the way onto the ground, sitting on the floor by Eddie’s shoulder. “Me too.” 

Chapter Text

Steve Harrington was good at compartmentalizing. 

It was sort of what he did. He knew he wasn’t smart, so what. It just meant he had to be strategic about what he spent his mental energy on. And when they were all running for their lives, or Steve had to protect an entire hoard of literal children, well, it came in handy to not be freaking out all the time. 

He’d learned that lesson pretty quickly after that first run-in with the Demogorgon. 

He remembered going out to his car, remembered turning back and seeing the lights. Panicked, terrified, because holy shit, his girlfriend had just pulled a gun on him. 

And monsters were real, apparently. 

He remembered his brain going absolutely haywire, trying to process too much at once. Part of his brain was freaking out about what mattered – monsters were real. One of them was in that house. Nancy was also in that house. And a big, very stupid part of his brain just couldn’t get over the fact that he’d gone to apologize to Jonathan and Nancy had been there. Right after they’d just fought about her maybe cheating on him. The inside of that house had been so fucked up, too, like unbelievably fucked up. 

He was scared. And he was panicking. And he didn’t want Nancy to cheat on him. 

But he also really didn’t want her to die. 

And something hard sort of – shifted. Clicked. Like radio static. Turned off a good chunk of his brain, just enough to let him move. Shutting down the fear and panic just enough so he could run straight back into that fucking house, pick up a bat with nails, and swing. 

In fact, it wasn’t until it was all over and they were standing there in the Byers’ house, trying to figure out what to do now, that Steve even registered that he’d let Jonathan Byers grab his hand. 

He thought about it only once. How Jonathan had reached to tug Nancy out of the way, arm around her waist, and then snatched up Steve’s hand – with his injured one, no less – and hauled Steve after him. 

He put that fact away into a little shoe box, because he didn’t want to forget it, exactly, but he didn’t want to think about it just yet either. Didn’t label the box just yet. 

These days he had a lot of shoe boxes. 

He had a lot of locked safes, too. 

Robin tried to convince him it was unhealthy. Maybe it was. Steve just didn’t really care. It was the only way he’d managed to move on with his life. It was the only reason he hadn’t broken down screaming when the lights went out in Starcourt that day, though a good part of his brain wanted to throw himself to the ground behind the counter and drag Robin with him and just wait because they’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming. 

Instead he was able to fiddle with the light switch like an idiot, like King Steve, all smug and stupid. 

They talked about it once, behind the counter of Family Video, sprawled out together because it was noon on a fucking Tuesday and no one came in to rent movies at noon on a fucking Tuesday. They just didn’t. 

Robin had sort of started it. Mentioned offhandedly that she hated the massive circles under her eyes, that they made her look like a corpse, that she couldn’t sleep. 

“Do you get, you know.” She looked at him expectantly. “The nightmares.” 

Steve had looked back. “No.” 

“Oh.” Robin tapped her foot the way she did sometimes when she was anxious. Steve had a little filing cabinet for Robin. He needed two drawers – one locked, one open. That was important. “Really? Because I dream about it like, all the time. The Russians, getting drugged. Hiding behind that counter in the mall while those creeps hunted us.” 

Steve nodded. “Yeah. I get it. I just… don’t have nightmares that much.” 

He did have them, sometimes. It seemed like Nancy and Jonathan had them more, though. Steve usually put the nightmares in a safe. 

“Huh.” Robin frowned at him a little. “Why not?” 

Which was a weird question, if it had been anyone else. Because, like, ‘why don’t you have nightmares about your trauma’ was an insane thing to ask. But it was Robin, and it was Steve. 

“I have a system.” Steve leaned back against the counter, hands propped up behind him, like this was as casual a conversation as discussing the latest film. “I put all the scary shit in boxes in my brain. That way I don’t ever think about them if I don’t need to.” 

Robin had looked at him like he’d completely lost it, which wasn’t unusual, but he felt a bit uncomfortable with how she was looking at him like she truly didn’t understand. They could always understand each other. 

“Look, it’s like this.” Steve had picked up a few tapes, wandering around the store. “It’s like shelving tapes. You know? There are some tapes that are out on the main display thingy, like hey, come get these ones, they’re new and cool. Those are my good memories.” He’d slid a few tapes into their homes on the shelves lining the store. “Everything else has a labelled spot. Right? Like these movies are all sci-fi. They get their own section. You can still take them out, but you gotta look for them. They’re not just out front with the new hits. Shoeboxes.” He’d wandered back to the counter, put his elbows on it, leaning forward. “Then there’s the tapes in the back. The ones that are – broken, or old, or… whatever. People can’t rent those. Locked away.” 

Robin had nodded, slowly, like she understood what he was saying but she still wasn’t on board. “Steve, that’s… not normal.” 

Steve shrugged. “Our lives aren’t normal, Robs.” 

“I – I know,” Robin frowned. “But… Steve, if you ever need to talk about the… the tapes in the back, I’m here. You know that, right?” 

Now it was Steve’s turn to feel confused. Of course he knew he could talk to Robin about anything. But why would he need to talk about what he’d already locked away? 

“Yeah, for sure,” he’d said instead. 

Robin looked unconvinced. “This really doesn’t seem healthy, Steve.” 

That had made Steve laugh. 

“I’m serious!” 

“Healthy?” Steve shook his head, still smiling, because what did that even mean? “Do you know how many times my system has saved our asses?” He tapped his temple. “Hate to remind you, Robin, but I’m not smart.” 

“Steve – ”

“I’m serious,” Steve said this time, dropping his hands back to the counter. “It’s okay, Robin. I’m over it. The important thing is, it helps me sort out what matters. Some shit just doesn’t matter, or it stops mattering.” He snapped his fingers, pointing at her. “Like with you!” 

Robin stared at him. “What?” 

“That came out bad.” Steve drummed his fingers on the counter. “You, Robin, have a filing cabinet. It’s got two drawers. Top drawer is everything I know about you. All our fun memories.” 

“Okay…” Robin looked a bit wary, but let him keep talking. 

“Bottom drawer has a lock. That’s all the scary shit, and,” Steve held up a hand like this was important, because it was, “My old crush on you.” 

Robin tipped her head. “You put your crush on me in a locked filing cabinet in your brain.” 

“Yes!” Steve snapped his fingers again, smiling, because she was getting it. “Yeah! How do you think I moved on so fast? The moment you told me you were gay I was like, okay, so all of the crush-feelings are irrelevant now, right? Like there’s no world in which they matter, now that I know this about you. So I put them away. Not important.”  

“You did have like, an entire speech for me,” Robin said slowly. “Like, off the dome. Which was pretty impressive.” 

“And then thirty seconds later – ”

“You were bullying me about Tammy,” Robin finished. “I’d wondered about that.” 

Steve nodded, gave a little thumbs-up. “Locked down tight.” 

“You’re so weird.” It was kind of affectionate. “Well – hang on, why are you still hung up on Nancy, then?” 

Steve paused. Tried to figure out how to explain that. 

That was the other thing about Steve. He loved really easily. He had a lot of it. It was like, always trying to claw through his chest and he didn’t know how to deal with it, so he adopted a bunch of middle schoolers and fell in love with people who were gay, and sometimes people who achingly weren’t, and usually people who tried to kill him. 

There was definitely something wrong with him. Maybe he was more fucked up than he thought, because nearly every time a shoebox had started overflowing to the point that he realized oh god, I know way too much and it wasn’t just interest, it wasn’t just friendship, wasn’t just a crush, he was collecting fucking data – nearly every time the owner of that shoebox held a weapon to his head or beat him bloody. 

Nancy with her finger on the trigger, saying, Steve. You need to go, now. 

His nose crumpling under someone’s fists, looking into blazing eyes, and Steve couldn’t decide if they were soft squinty brown or devastatingly blue. 

“Well… she has a locked drawer, too,” Steve said slowly. “But it’s still open. It’s like I’m waiting for something to happen so I can close it and it’ll lock. But she’s never… I mean, even when we broke up, the lines were so unclear. It was like she told me everything was bullshit because we were fucked up, and then all of a sudden she was dating Jonathan. She didn’t – I mean, it was weird. It’s not like she cheated on me or anything. It was just… she never said she was done with me. Not directly, not sober. And now we’re sort of friends again, and she doesn’t really talk about Jonathan much at all, and he’s not even here… and so my brain just can’t close that drawer yet.” Steve sighed. “Honestly it would be a lot easier if she’d just tell me I had absolutely no shot. Zero, fat chance. Maybe then I’d just move on.” 

Robin looked at him a little sadly. “Steve… how many of these boxes are locked?” 

Steve blinked. “I… I don’t know.” 

The tunnels under Hawkins, scrambling to get the kids out, the dogs rushing towards him and knowing he was about to die, ready to sacrifice himself for the kids before they just sped right past, leaving him grappling with the fact that he was still alive. 

Nancy putting a gun to his head and counting down. Nancy looking him dead in the eyes and telling him they killed Barb. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. 

Looking over at Dustin and Erica as they hid behind the counter from the Russians searching for them in the mall, guns raised, knowing they’d find them, knowing he’d just killed two children. 

Billy Hargrove laughing, blood on his teeth as Steve punched him. A plate shattering over his head. Billy Hargrove, bleeding out on the floor of Starcourt mall, his body completely destroyed, the guilt that settled in Steve’s bones because they’d freed Will from the Mind Flayer, once, and maybe if they’d just tried hard enough – 

The way his heart had thundered when he’d realized there were more dogs than just Dart in that junkyard. Twisting the bat in his hands and whistling, putting himself between the demodogs and the kids, beckoning death to just come and get him already. 

“A lot.” 

Robin had promised they’d talk about it more. 

They never did, because then things went to shit and Steve had to compartmentalize, had to focus on not dying, on saving Max, on saving Eddie, Hawkins, the world. Had to reckon with monsters being back. 

Eddie put a broken glass bottle to his throat and Steve thought about the wild look in Jonathan’s eyes when he’d beaten Steve into the pavement. 

He made it through without losing his shit. Hadn’t panicked, even when he almost died like, twice. 

Eddie Munson died. 

His shoebox had been weirdly close to where Hargrove’s once was in his mind. Maybe it was because they were kind of the same, in a way. 

Both of them pretending like they didn’t need the world to like them. Like any attention, even hatred, even fear, was just as good as love. 

In the end they’d both died saving things that hated them. 

Plant your feet. 

I didn’t run away this time. 

Steve put Eddie’s shoebox into a safe and locked it. 

Chapter Text

Billy Hargrove was still there by the time Eddie stopped shaking. 

Probably a good sign that Eddie wasn’t hallucinating, but he couldn’t say he was completely convinced yet. 

Eddie laid there on the ground. Things had stopped spinning, and he didn’t want to push his luck by trying to sit or stand or anything. So he lay there and stared at the popcorn ceiling, tinted red through the fog in the windows. 

Eventually he let his eyes slide around the space again. He took in everything that was already in his field of vision first, not ready to turn his head. 

There was the ceiling. A plain, round fixture further into the house, no light. Windows on one side of the room. Some absolutely nasty wood panelling, with scuff marks along the baseboards. The front door, painted white and closed. A flat handled doorknob and a deadlock. 

Then of course there was Billy Hargrove. 

He was watching Eddie with a cautious, not-yet-hostile-but-sure-as-hell-ready-to-be expression. An axe was leaned up against the wall beside him. He still wore his hair down in a mullet like Eddie’s. He was wearing black boots, and blue jeans, and a dark blue polo shirt that looked jarringly out of place on him given what he’d worn when he was still alive. 

Still alive. 

“How did you know I was dead?” Eddie managed to ask. His voice felt grating in his mouth, scraping free after crying so much. 

Billy frowned at him. He had a split through one of his eyebrows. Eddie hadn’t ever really seen the guy up close before. He wondered absently if he’d gotten it when he died, or if he’d had it for longer. 

“I just, you’ve been dead for like, almost a year, man,” Eddie continued, “so you don’t even know I’m wanted for murder, or that I died to these freaky bat things.” 

Billy regarded him curiously. “Wanted for murder?” 

“Vecna killed a bunch of people and the cops thought it was me,” Eddie said. Paused. “Wait, do you even know who Vecna is? One? Henry? They’re all the same dude.” 

Billy shook his head, apparently just accepting all the words coming out of Eddie’s mouth as if anyone else wouldn’t look at him like he’d gone insane. “I’ve been stuck here since I died.” 

“Shit, dude,” Eddie said quietly. 

Billy gave him a terse little smile that definitely meant shut up. He did. 

Carefully, with both his hands, Eddie pushed himself to sitting. Scooted himself awkwardly backwards on the floor until his back was pressed to the wall near the front door. Immediately he breathed a sigh of relief, because he finally had something that felt solid and protective, real shelter in the open empty nothing of this place. 

He looked around the room. It seemed like a pretty standard living room for a house this small, not much bigger than Eddie’s trailer, although definitely dated. A couch, an armchair, around a little coffee table. A big bookshelf. 

“I knew you were dead because you’re here.” 

Eddie’s gaze slid back over to Billy. He was still sitting on the ground, too, by the axe. 

“Everyone here, they’re all dead.” Billy regarded him with an expression that felt far too calm for what he was saying. “Or at least, we think we are.” 

“Right,” Eddie whispered. “Um. Everyone?” 

Billy nodded slowly. “I’m the only one you’ve met.” It was more of a statement than a question. The way Eddie had reacted to seeing another person was a pretty clear indicator of his isolation. 

“Where… are they?” Eddie dared to ask. “The others?” 

To his surprise, that earned him a wry smile. “Trying to get rid of me already, Munson?” 

“No,” Eddie said, way too quickly. Felt his face heat, because for fuck’s sake, Billy Hargrove was exactly the kind of guy to call Eddie a freak and beat him up for nothing less. “Sorry. I’m just really freaked out right now. And you’re – this whole place – ” Eddie gestured vaguely, feeling like he probably looked crazy as he tried to explain himself. “It’s been just endless for so long and talking to someone feels insane.” 

Billy sort of just nodded. Stood up, picked up the axe. 

For a brief moment, Eddie was alarmingly aware of the fact that he was still sitting on the ground, and Billy Hargrove, who wasn’t exactly known for being stable when he was alive, was standing over him holding a fucking axe. 

Nothing happened. Billy just walked away, down a little hall to the side of the living room past the couch. Came back a minute later, axe gone, a stack of clothes tucked under his arm. 

“Here.” Billy tossed them at Eddie’s feet. “Your clothes are disgusting.” 

And then he left again, back down the hall, presumably to give Eddie privacy or something. 

Eddie stayed on the ground for a few deep breaths, pressing his back hard against the wall so he didn’t feel like he was drowning. 

Finally, he reached for the clothes. Plain jeans, boxers, and a black polo shirt. 

“What is with the polos,” he mumbled to himself, hauling his ass off the ground and standing on still-shaky legs. 

He did feel better when he was done. He draped his leather jacket and the green vest over the back of a little wooden chair to dry, and tossed his blood-stained t-shirt and jeans in the seat. He felt weirdly glad he hadn’t been wearing his battle jacket, because he was proud of it, the big Dio patch on the back, the pins he’d collected that rattled from the front pocket. It probably would have gotten ruined, either by blood or the bats tearing into him. 

The only reason Eddie didn’t have it with him was because he gave it to Steve. 

He gave his precious jacket to Steve Harrington, because Eddie had something wrong with him, clearly, and he just needed Steve to cover up so Nancy would stop ogling him and doing a shit job of hiding it. He’d interrupted their moment, for Christ’s sake, just to throw it at him. They’d been all close and staring into each other’s eyes like weirdos and Eddie just had to hurl it at his stupid face with the excuse of for your modesty, dude, which wasn’t exactly false but wasn’t the whole truth either. Because it was also for Eddie. Because he didn’t like Wheeler’s ogling and because he did like Steve wearing the jacket that Eddie wore every damn day, with Dio printed across the back. 

Yeah, there was definitely something wrong with him. 

He wandered down the hall and found Billy there, in what had to be the master bedroom. It was small and plain but had clearly been lived in, once, in whatever frozen-in-time bullshit was going on like back in Wheeler’s room. 

A queen sized bed, little flowers on the comforter. The window was shuttered, thank god. A decent sized closet for two people, little nightstands. It was almost cute. 

Except for the axe leaning near the closet doors, within reach of Billy’s hands as he rummaged through. 

“This your house?” Eddie wondered aloud. 

Billy laughed, a sharp, quick sort of sound, like Eddie had said something so stupid it had actually slapped the sound out of him. 

“Okay, Christ,” Eddie mumbled, looking away from him and back around the room, because yeah, Billy Hargrove was the only human interaction he’d had in god knows how long, but he was also an asshole. Common knowledge. And fuck Eddie for forgetting, really. 

Eddie poked around the room a little more and immediately decided maybe he was that stupid, actually, because there was a family portrait right there on the dresser. 

“Jesus H. Christ,” Eddie muttered, staring at the portrait. “These are the Creels.” 

Billy grunted some sort of agreement and Eddie nearly jumped out of his skin because the guy was suddenly way closer than he’d been a minute ago, peering at the portrait over Eddie’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, the old lady said this fucker killed them all or something,” Billy said, pointing out Victor. 

Eddie coughed slightly, but then Billy was moving away and plopping down on the end of the bed behind him. 

Jesus, this guy was weird. It was like he was trying to freak Eddie the fuck out. Like, who was the old lady? 

Eddie suddenly remembered the way Steve’s eyes had sort of glazed over for half a second when he’d told the rest of the party about Max’s little excursion to Billy Hargrove’s grave. It really had only been half a second. Honestly, if Eddie wasn’t constantly looking at the guy, he would have missed it, but something was decidedly wrong with Eddie, so he hadn’t. 

And honestly, Steve was the guy Eddie asked for explanations. He loved Dustin, but the kid just could not talk in a straight line. And Nancy always made Eddie feel a little stupid for not picking up on things that she had, and Robin – Christ, could that girl ramble. She might even be worse than Eddie. 

Steve, though, was always so damn calm. 

So calm. 

To the point that it was a bit unnerving. The way he’d just… spat out the chunk of bat he’d bit off, and took a few deep breaths, and then been ready to go. He’d nearly died, and got over it that quickly. The only time Eddie saw him get even close to actually upset or angry was when one of the kids was in danger. 

Jeez, the guy really was a mom. Not Henderson’s, though. Steve played mom for all the kids, but he played older brother for Henderson. 

But that slip – that fraction of a second where Steve had looked unnerved, uncomfortable, un-fucking-something was – a lot. 

It was a lot. 

Eddie took a deep breath and sat down on the end of the bed next to Billy Hargrove. 

“The little guy is Henry.” Eddie passed the portrait to Billy, who took it with a raised eyebrow. “Also known as Vecna, or One.” 

Billy’s eyes flicked over to Eddie for a moment. “One.” 

“Uh, yeah.” Eddie’s leg started bouncing a little, couldn’t help it. “He’s the real killer. Killed his mom and sister with his dark wizard shit, tried to kill his dad but he’d run out of juice or something at that point because he ended up in a coma. This creepy guy Dr. Brenner got ahold of him and started running tests, then started making more, so Henry here is number One.” 

“Dark wizard shit?” 

“Telepathy, telekinesis, possession, dimension hopping, et cetera,” Eddie said. 

“Eleven,” Billy said, and Eddie looked over to see him staring at the portrait like he could burn a hole in it with his eyes. 

Eddie nodded. “Do you – did you know her?” 

“No.” 

Eddie waited, leg bouncing. Eventually, he realized Billy wasn’t going to elaborate at all. 

Great. 

So fucking helpful, Hargrove. 

“Um, anyway, he… Eleven put him in another dimension. But then he sort of reached into our world and started killing people again,” he said, and he was really going for Steve’s calm, Steve’s casual, Steve’s yeah I’ve almost died a dozen times, but no big. He failed. His voice was shaking anyway. “I kind of got framed for the whole thing because the first murder was, um, was my friend, and she was in my – my trailer, and – ” 

Eddie’s voice broke and he had to stop because he was not going to cry in front of Billy Hargrove for a second time. Absolutely not. 

Billy had a shred of decency, apparently, because he didn’t push. Just sat there, still holding the portrait sort of gently. He wasn’t a patient guy, but he sat there in silence while Eddie collected himself. 

“Anyway,” Eddie said shakily. Realized the next part of the story was going to suck absolute ass, sitting next to Billy Hargrove. He didn’t even know if Max was okay. “Nancy had a weird vision and figured all that out, and – ” 

“Wheeler?” Billy frowned. Billy liked to interrupt Eddie by just saying names, apparently. Jesus. 

“Yeah, Wheeler.” Eddie looked at him, trying to gauge what exactly was going on in that weird, wired brain. “Me and her, and this girl Robin, and Harrington – woah.” He cut himself off because Billy’s shoulders tensed so suddenly Eddie thought he might crack the portrait frame. “Hargrove?” 

“What,” Billy snapped. Clenched his hands, stood up, walked away from Eddie to the dresser. Set the portrait down. 

Eddie stared at his back for a moment, trying to figure out what exactly was going on before Billy just turned around and sat back down next to him like nothing had happened. 

Eddie took his fucking cue. 

“We knew if Henry, One, if he got a fourth kill he’d… break the dimension barrier or something,” Eddie continued. “So we tried to stop him, and that’s how I died.” 

Billy nodded slightly, just a weird downwards jerk of his head. “You win?” 

“Unclear,” Eddie admitted quietly. “I died before…” 

“Right.” Billy nodded to himself again. “Anyone else die?” 

Eddie let out a shaky breath. “Um, the first three victims were Chrissy Cunningham, Fred Benson, and Patrick McKinney. It’s… I think we stopped him before he… before the fourth.” 

“Spit it out, Munson,” Billy gritted, and yeah, Eddie was doing a shit job of hiding the fact that he was avoiding telling him the name. 

“Your sister,” Eddie said before he could spook himself too bad. 

If Billy had still been holding that portrait, it definitely would have shattered. As it was, his hands just sort of curled into fists on his knees, his shoulders a tense line, and Eddie waited for him to snap. 

“We’d figured out how to stop the curse by then, though, so there’s a really good chance she’s totally – ” 

“She’s fine.” 

Eddie forced his leg to stop bouncing, because he was worried if he even breathed wrong he’d shatter whatever Billy was thinking right now that was keeping him from slugging Eddie in the face. 

“She’d be here if she was dead,” Billy said then, and Eddie thought his logic might be a bit flawed before he finished up with, “Everyone else he killed is.” 

Eddie stared at him for a long, hard second, trying to decide if he was joking or something. 

“Chrissy’s here?” he said eventually, and he couldn’t help the way his voice broke. 

Billy finally looked at him then, and sighed, but not in the way that made Eddie feel stupid. He just sounded tired. “They tell you much about what happened before I died?” 

Loaded question. 

Technically speaking, Dustin said Eddie knew everything. Will Byers, the Mind Flayer, Starcourt Mall, the Russians. Mind Flayer part two, fleshy boogaloo. Eleven and her powers going poof. Billy Hargrove being possessed, then having a seemingly random moment of lucidity and fighting back, just to die. The gate being sealed, Hopper gone. Dozens absorbed into the flesh monster, covered up as being a mall fire. The facts, plain and simple. 

Realistically, though, Eddie felt like he knew nothing. He didn’t understand Steve and Robin’s secret code language, or why they laughed their asses off at the mention of Fast Times or Back to the Future, which was a weird fucking combo. He didn’t understand why Steve was so willing to die for a gaggle of random high school freshmen. He didn’t understand why Nancy and Max got really freaked out when Dustin mentioned spending a lot of time at the pool last summer. 

He really didn’t understand Steve’s calm, controlled, slightly smarmy demeanor telling him the whole story of the Russian lair, all jokes because they all made it out fine, only for his eyes to kind of stray into the distance when Nancy brought up Steve saving her life, and the life of the kids, by hurtling himself in a car at full speed into the side of Billy Hargrove’s Camaro. 

“Kind of,” Eddie said, because he couldn’t say all of that, and he desperately wanted Billy to keep talking, to tell him where he could find Chrissy. “Why?” 

“I was the last person the… the shadow killed before…” Billy cleared his throat. “When I got here, everyone else the shadow had killed was already here. And lately I’ve seen others, too. The three you mentioned.” 

“How? How do you see them?” Eddie demanded. “I need to see them.” 

“Yeah, well, bad news, Munson.” Billy stretched his legs out, heel digging into the carpet. “Haven’t seen anyone in a while. The shadow’s… taking a break, I guess. Usually we don’t spend this much time in the Wastes. You know, the…” he gestured vaguely towards the window. “Red soupy bullshit. The shadow’s always grabbing us, throwing memories and nightmare shit into our heads. Sometimes you sort of… bump into other people’s brains, I guess.” 

“You enter the memories of the other victims,” Eddie translated. “That’s huge.” 

“I guess.” 

“What exactly is the shadow?” Eddie pressed. “Like, the Mind Flayer? Big spider-looking thing – ” 

“There’s the shadow, which is up here.” Billy tapped his temple with two fingers, holding Eddie’s gaze. “Then there’s the real thing, which was out in Hawkins. The shadow made me do things, the flesh spider killed me.” 

“Right,” Eddie said slowly. He had a feeling he was going to get pretty good at translating Billy Hargrove. He knew the flesh monster was made up of melted people, and that the shadow monster Will had been possessed by was the same thing, just before melting all the people it possessed. “The Mind Flayer – shadow – whatever. It’s controlled by One. I think… if the shadow has stopped messing around in here, maybe that means One is weakened. Maybe that means Eleven beat him,” he theorized aloud. “Or – or maybe it means the shadow is back in the real world, in Hawkins. Busy doing what One wants, no time to torture us.” 

Billy grunted noncommittally, like he wasn’t entirely convinced, but didn’t have a better theory either. “If it starts again… you should know, the shadow just wants to hurt you. Some stuff is real memories, but if you start… seeing things, it’s not all real. At least, we don’t think it is.” 

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, Vecna – One’s whole thing is torturing his victims with visions before he kills them.” 

“Just, if you think you’re back in Hawkins, you aren’t,” Billy insisted. Like it was really important that Eddie be skeptical. 

“Right, I got it,” Eddie said quietly. 

There was an awkward, tense pause, Billy’s eyes trained somewhere that wasn’t quite the ground. Then he stood up, looking at Eddie with a frown. “Wanna sleep?” 

Eddie blinked up at him for a moment. The exhaustion of everything had been weighing on him for however long he’d been stuck here, but now, with walls around him and another person watching his back… 

“Yeah, please,” he sighed. 

Billy jerked his head to indicate Eddie follow, and led him out of the master bedroom and into the hallway. Across the hall was a small room with two twin sized beds. 

“Oh, cool,” Eddie muttered. Must have been where the little Creels slept before the move. 

Billy kicked the foot of one of the beds. “I usually take this one.” 

Eddie nodded and went to the other bed. He was suddenly so aware of how desperately tired he was. He thought about taking off his shoes, but then he thought about the screeching bats outside and just laid down. 

“I’ll be around,” Billy said. “Nowhere to go.” 

Eddie watched him leave the room. 

He pressed his face into the unfamiliar pillow and was out before he had time to think too much about it. 

Chapter Text

Life wasn’t exactly good. 

But it wasn’t exactly bad, either. 

There was a new kind of monotony to it, even if it was objectively fucked up. 

He’d still get prickles on the back of his neck sometimes, like the feeling he got when Eleven visited him in the void. Something watching him, just from… the other side. 

He got pretty good at tuning it out. 

Steve’s parents were freaked out enough about the ‘earthquake’ and all the deaths that they were letting him just volunteer for a while, even though the chasms had closed up. He didn’t have to worry about finding another job with Robin yet. They just went to the school, or the hospital, and helped out. The chasms had closed, but the houses they’d torn apart were still ruined. Families were still rebuilding. Hawkins wouldn’t recover for a long time. Robin did a lot of food prep, and flirted awkwardly with Vickey. It was cute. Steve was happy for her. 

He visited Max in the hospital. Updated her on what the other kids had been up to, since his own life was pretty boring, and she probably wouldn’t care much about that anyway. 

He got the prickling feeling a lot in the hospital, so he didn’t always stay too long. He felt guilty about that. 

He let Robin ramble a lot. Whenever they hung out or volunteered together she was always talking. She’d go on and on about movies or nerd shit or college applications, or Vickey. It was like if she talked fast enough, maybe she could distract herself from thinking about the bad memories. Steve let her, because he loved her and didn’t want her thinking about the bad memories either, but also because he didn’t have much to say these days. 

Robin still hadn’t gone on a date with Vickie yet, but it was so obvious to Steve that they were inevitably going to get together. It was just a matter of time, honestly, to see which of them finally broke first. Back at Family Video, before Vecna, Steve went on a date maybe once a week, and Robin was pretty pleased with herself to have ‘reignited his flame’, whatever that was supposed to mean. 

He still felt like he was failing on the dating front compared to her. 

“It never got any better,” he told Robin offhandedly, when she’d asked him why he’d kind of given up on dating after Vecna. “It’s like they’re all the same. No one ever stands out.” 

Robin was sympathetic. She was cool like that. “At least it’s not like back at Scoops. At least you were actually going on dates. You’re welcome. The least you could do is find some cute girl who volunteers with us.” 

True. But they just kept blurring together. Maybe if one of the girls put a gun against his head. Or a broken beer bottle. Maybe then he’d remember them. 

He didn’t tell Robin that. 

“Maybe you’re just… I dunno, moving in the wrong direction,” she said casually. 

“Wrong direction how? I feel like I’ve tried every direction,” Steve frowned. Because he’d tried the girl with the gun to his head, and she’d broken his heart. And there weren’t exactly a lot of girls like that. 

“Well…” Robin glanced over her shoulder at the food station. They’d taken their lunch break together, because Robin was the best friend Steve had ever had and she was hanging out with him instead of Vickie right now. She was so cool. “Except maybe one.” 

Steve followed her gaze, watching Vickie make a sandwich. 

“…Robs, hate to break it to you, but the last time I tried to date a gay girl – ” 

“Not Vickie!” Robin said immediately, horrified. She didn’t even glance around to see if anyone had heard, like she trusted Steve to be careful enough. She really was the best friend he’d ever had. “I just mean… well, Steve… when I was first figuring out myself, I tried to make myself like a ton of guys. Like, a ton.” 

Steve blinked at her slowly. “Okay…?”

“So – so maybe if you’re trying to date every girl you meet and nothing’s working, maybe that’s a sign,” Robin hissed softly. “You know?” 

“Do you think I should take a break or something?” 

Robin was staring at him like she was trying to fax words straight into his brain. Sometimes that worked, but it wasn’t right now. 

She sighed sharply. “Men, Steve.” 

Steve blinked at her. 

“I mean, have you ever thought about it? Ever tried it?” Robin pressed gently. 

“I’ve never tried it,” Steve said. 

“But you’ve thought about it,” Robin finished, looking somewhere between cautiously optimistic, mildly concerned, and straight-up gleeful. 

Steve took a deep breath. 

“The first box I made in my brain was for Jonathan.” 

Robin’s eyebrows disappeared beneath her bangs. “ Byers ?” she clarified, flabbergasted. “The guy who stole the supposed love of your life?” 

“Christ well when you put it that way – ”

“No, no no no that’s great,” Robin said quickly, all wide eyes. “Why Jonathan?” 

Steve frowned at the floor just above his feet. “He beat the shit out of me for being a dick to Nancy.” 

Robin nodded slowly, her eyes getting impossibly bigger. “And that… that was a good thing for you.” 

“Yeah.” Steve tapped his foot idly. “One of the biggest bonks to the head in my life.” 

He didn’t tell her about driving to the Byers’ house late at night just to apologize to Jonathan, not even knowing Nancy would be there, and how that was the reason he got into this mess in the first place. He didn’t tell her about the camera he’d bought for her to give him, the exact same model as the one Steve had broken. He didn’t tell her about the press of Jonathan’s hand clutching his own, the feeling of the bandage around his palm on his skin. 

He didn’t tell her a lot of things. But he told her some. 

He told her about the way Billy Hargrove’s pendant felt beneath his fingertips just before he got his face beaten in. 

He didn’t tell her about how it felt to watch the chest beneath that pendant get torn open. Or how for several long, agonizing moments in the Byers’ house, he’d known the weight of Billy Hargrove on his hips while his fists split his cheek open. He didn’t tell her about the way he’d driven that beautiful, ridiculous convertible straight into the Camaro to save Nancy and the kids without a second thought – he didn’t have to, she had been there. But he also didn’t tell her how his mind had filled with static watching Billy slump against the door, watching the dash go up in flames, watching those damn eyes close and wondering if he’d just closed them forever. 

He told her about Eddie Munson’s denim battle jacket, and that dumb thing he did where he pulled his hair across his face to hide a smile. 

He didn’t tell her about how when he’d slammed Steve against the wall of the boathouse and pressed a broken glass bottle to his throat, the look in his eyes had reminded him of Jonathan. She’d been there, too, for the last moment Steve had seen Eddie alive. He didn’t tell her about the way it had felt to hold his gaze, to feel somehow that Eddie had meant to say something different after he’d called out to him, wanting to give him another chance to say it, not ready to look away but knowing it was time to go. Not knowing there would be no more chances. 

He didn’t tell her about how Eddie’s shoebox had slid right beside the empty space where Billy’s had been, once, before Eddie’s got locked away as well. 

He tried to only tell her nice things, or at least funny ones. But he was reaching into the safes for those, and once they were open anything could come out. 

For the first time since Nancy had broken his heart, Steve cried. 

He told Robin nice things and he cried. 

They were outside the school, somehow, and Steve didn’t know how they’d gotten there. But Robin was holding him like a child and letting him cry into her shoulder while he told her every last nice thing he could think of. Nancy’s soft eyes when she realized Steve really would help her study. Jonathan grabbing his hand despite his fresh wound. The brief, gentle twist of Billy Hargrove’s lips outside the gym, when the rest of the team had gone home and Steve was the only one left to see it. The way Eddie’s thumb would move to spin his rings around his fingers, the way he seemed to sway close to Steve at any given chance. 

“So yeah,” Steve choked out when the tears had finally dried. “I’ve thought about it.” 

“It’s just never been more important than saving all our lives, so you’ve never had a chance to do anything more than think about it?” Robin finished, still kind of rocking them both back and forth. “Maybe you could think about it now, since, you know, things are calming down?” 

“People just keep dying,” Steve whispered, not ready to pull away from her shoulder. 

“Oh, Steve,” Robin murmured, like there was nothing more to say. 

“I don’t want a random guy,” he continued quietly, clinging to her. “Hell, clearly I don’t want a random girl either. But everyone I’ve ever really, really wanted is…” 

“Dating each other or dead?” 

“Something like that,” Steve agreed softly. “I just don’t like thinking about things that are impossible.” 

“Yeah, that… that makes sense,” Robin said, her fingers absentmindedly playing with his hair at the base of his neck. “I’ve been so caught up in the terrible feeling of not being able to tell Vickey everything, you know? Like… if we… if something ever happens. I can’t tell her why I’m so messed up, I can’t tell her that Eddie wasn’t a bad guy, I can’t…” she trailed off, then sighed and rested her cheek on top of his head. “I never even thought about how hard it would be if she did know. If she was involved. Having someone’s life on the line like that… oh, Steve, I’m just so sorry.” 

Steve closed his eyes, because he was out of tears anyway. He closed his eyes and hoped he’d be able to shove all the memories back into their safes and lock them all back up as easily as he’d opened them and watched them spill out. 

Chapter Text

Waking up in an unfamiliar bed wasn’t a great feeling, but it was a hell of a lot better than waking up out in the middle of the endless red nothing. 

His body ached from slamming into the side of the house earlier, and from hitting the deck when Billy had opened the door. 

But he had four walls around him, and the mattress was actually pretty comfortable. He had a blanket to pull tight around himself, could close his eyes and focus on feeling warm for the first time since before he died. 

Opening his eyes, Eddie found himself facing the little boarded-up window, soupy red light streaming through from the wastes outside. He rolled over, peering through the dim light at the little bed across from his own. 

He exhaled in shaky relief, inexplicably comforted by the sight of Billy asleep on his front across from him. Billy’s face was hidden in the pillow, but just knowing he wasn’t alone was enough to settle his nerves. 

It was also nice to know that Billy wasn’t afraid of sleeping in Eddie’s presence. Clearly the guy didn’t view Eddie as a threat, which would normally be kind of embarrassing but it was such a welcome change of pace from the last week of his life that it just felt nice. 

He pushed himself up to sit against the headboard, pulling his knees in, and stared at Billy. 

Billy was real. 

He wasn’t going to disappear on Eddie. 

Eddie wasn’t going to be left alone out here, not again. Even if he would be stuck in hell forever, at least he wasn’t alone anymore. That’s what he’d wished for, right? Anyone. Anyone. Even Billy Hargrove. 

Billy was laying on his front, and Eddie couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t see his chest rise and fall. 

Eddie was scrambling out of the little bed before he really processed what he was doing, grabbing Billy’s shoulder and shaking him. “Billy. Billy. Billy wake up.” 

Billy startled, his hair whipping around his face and nearly headbutting Eddie, he sat up so fast. He had a wild sort of look in his eyes – fear, almost. Fuck. Eddie didn’t want Billy to be scared of him. He hated that. He hated that. 

“Jesus, Munson,” Billy exhaled, shoving Eddie’s hand off of his shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“Sorry,” Eddie managed. “Sorry. I just – needed to check you weren’t dead.” 

Billy looked at him. “I am dead.” 

“No I know just – sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry.” 

“Munson. Shut up.” 

Eddie closed his mouth. Fidgeted with his rings, watching Billy drag a hand through his hair and recenter himself. 

“Okay.” Billy sighed. “We don’t die here. Okay? We’re already dead. I know you’ve still got the heebie-jeebies but no one here has died twice.” 

Eddie nodded. His knees suddenly felt really wobbly, so he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Okay.” 

Billy sighed again. Shifted a little where he was sitting, and then there was a hand on Eddie’s upper back, between his shoulder blades. 

Eddie held his breath. Breathing would mean moving and Billy wasn’t moving so he wasn’t gonna move. Billy didn’t rub his back or anything, just let the weight of his hand settle. 

Eddie took one slow, deep breath, focusing on the warmth, the contact. It felt like when Billy had jammed his boot down on Eddie’s shoulder, except this was better. 

Even before he’d been wandering around the wastes for days, Eddie had been touchstarved as fuck. He knew it was obvious. He was always getting close to people, trying to bump into them, to roughhouse. Dustin was really the only one who ever entertained him, who played with him. Who gave him hugs. Mike would let Eddie grab him and push him around a little, but the kid never initiated like Dustin did. Towards the end, there, even Steve had stopped flinching away from him every time Eddie got up in his space. Bumped shoulders, got his face right up next to Steve’s. He’d started letting Eddie get close, but Eddie hadn’t ever been brave enough to touch. Stupid. He’d been such a coward about everything that mattered until he went and got himself killed. He should have been braver about smaller things. He should have hugged Steve. 

Billy’s thumb moved in a little arc, sweeping up just above the collar of the stupid polo Eddie was wearing and just brushing the base of his neck, skin on skin, and Eddie choked back a sob. 

All of a sudden it was too late, and Eddie was hauling his knees up into his chest again so he could hide his face while he bawled, overwhelmed and terrified and filled with so much regret he thought it would just swallow him. 

Billy didn’t say anything while Eddie heaved out sobs, which wasn’t a huge surprise. The guy didn’t seem like the sensitive type. But he did leave his hand there, high on Eddie’s back, and that was more than Eddie would have dared to ask for, so that was fine by him. 

Eventually the tears dried up and Eddie was left kind of just gasping, trying to get his body to calm the fuck down so he could breathe properly. 

Billy didn’t say anything then, either, eventually dropping his hand. He stood up, then, and Eddie briefly thought that was it. He’d cried in front of Billy Hargrove again, and Billy was going to ditch him. 

Eddie sat on the bed alone for what felt like eternity, trying not to hyperventilate, when Billy gave back with a hand towel and tossed it into Eddie’s lap. 

Okay. So he wasn’t ditched yet. 

Eddie wiped his face with the towel, feeling gross and embarrassed, but at least Billy wasn’t gone. 

“Look,” Billy said eventually, when the silence had become unbearable. “I was freaked out of my mind when I got here. It’s fine. You’re fine. Just, if you’re gonna wake me up, don’t shake me. Got it?” 

Eddie nodded miserably. “Got it,” he echoed, his voice thick from crying. 

Billy nodded back. “I’m sure you won’t be stuck with me much longer.” 

He said it like it was meant to be reassuring, but Eddie looked over at him and immediately wanted to start bawling again. 

“Shit.” Billy must have picked up on Eddie’s distress. “I’m no good at this. I just mean the Shadow will probably start fucking with us again, and maybe you’ll get to see whoever you’re looking for.” 

“Chrissy,” Eddie said weakly. 

“Yeah.” Billy went quiet. “You’re the only one who’s found me first. So I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

Eddie looked at him. “When… you said you’d been stuck here since you died,” he said cautiously. “Did the rest of the people… who got melted… come with you?” 

Billy grimaced, making a so-so motion with his hand. “There are three of us. The people the Shadow got inside of.” 

“The Flayed,” Eddie said. “That’s what we were calling you guys.” 

“Great, okay,” Billy rolled his eyes. “Whatever. The point is, only three of us are here, even though I… I gave the Shadow a lot of people.” He won’t look at Eddie. “A lot of people.” 

“Why… why you, then?” Eddie asked softly. “Why not everyone?” 

Billy shrugged. “There were a few of us that the Shadow kept – lucid. Almost. In the warehouse, everyone I took, they just stood there like toy soldiers. Ready for the Shadow to pick them up, but… dormant, otherwise.” He had a faraway look by now, and Eddie almost wanted to tell him to stop talking about it. “But I knew. I always knew. Everything I did, I… I had moments where I was halfway there. When it… when I took Heather… she had them, too. We sat in the warehouse and… talked to each other. Bandaged each other. If the Shadow had us completely, we wouldn’t need to talk, because… we’d both just be the Shadow. But we knew what was happening, we just couldn’t stop it. I think that’s the difference.” 

Eddie watched him talk, watched his shoulders tense. His voice was even, calm in that way Steve got when he talked about almost dying. 

Eddie felt sick, a little, hearing him speak. When the kids had described being flayed, they hadn’t gone into a lot of detail. Eddie hadn’t realized any of the Flayed had been at all aware of what they were doing. This was so much worse. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie whispered, though it felt incredibly inadequate. 

Billy just shrugged. “They’re all dead now, anyway. At least all the people I killed probably went somewhere better than here.” 

Eddie hesitated. “Billy… you do know that you didn’t kill them. That was the Mind Flayer, the Shadow. Not you.” 

Billy gave him a strange look. “Sure,” he said eventually. Then he slapped his knees and stood up. “Wanna play cards?”