Chapter Text
Eddie and Robin caught Nancy on the other side, collapsing together on that disgusting mattress, and Steve’s eyes fluttered closed as he sucked in the infected air, trying to calm his beating heart. The lifesaving powers of ABBA , he thought to himself. Who knew ?
More surprising was the lifesaving powers of Eddie . They had exactly one cassette at their disposal when Vecna tried to take Nancy, and that was Max’s, which surely wouldn't work. Aside from that was a collection of metal records in Eddie’s room that each of them knew she would hate.
That left Eddie and his guitar. Eddie, and his ability to play any song he’s heard, even if he’d only heard it once. When Robin shouted out Nancy’s favorite song, a fact that even Steve didn’t know, Eddie bolted to his bedroom, coming out with his electric guitar and playing without hesitation. The whole time, Steve had sat transfixed, unsure of where to look: at Nancy, with her white, glazed eyes, or through the hole in the ceiling at Eddie, who’s fingers plucked easily over the strings like it was the most natural thing in the world.
For the first time since this whole thing started, he almost looked at peace, and Steve thought it changed his look entirely. In a good way. In a distracting way.
He only managed to shake himself out of his thoughts when Nancy came back to him, collapsing to the ground, and Steve was the only one who could catch her.
Now, Nancy rolled onto her back, chest heaving, tears streaming down her face, while Eddie and Robin backed up to give her space, guitar abandoned on the floor several feel away. The kids shouted around her, Max falling to her knees at her side, whispering something Steve couldn't hear from the other side. The fear on Max's face now, it was almost the same as her expression when she'd almost been Vecna's. A horrible realization of understanding.
Max and Robin helped Nancy off the mattress while Steve’s vision faded in and out, and he swayed where he stood, clinging to the rope somehow dangling between one dimension and the next. All the adrenaline sapped out of him, and he left with almost nothing at all. He didn’t know whether the wooziness came from the injuries on his torso, or the simple relief that his three companions had made it back safely. He’d never been one to care about himself in these situations. Wasn’t that his job? To care for the rest of them, to keep them safe?
When the stars in front of his eyes cleared away, it was to see Dustin waving aggressively with a grin. “Steve! Get your ass down here before he gets you too! I swear to God, I am not coming in after you-”
Steve rolled his eyes, the kid’s quips bringing him right back down to earth (or, well, whatever you would call earth in the upside down). Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the makeshift rope and pulled himself up, biting down a shout in pain as he nearly passed out.
Yeah, he realized all at once. The headache was definitely coming from the bat bites.
" Come on," Dustin teased. "If Robin could pull her way up that thing, you have no excuse."
Robin punched him in the shoulder, and Steve normally would have thanked her, but he couldn't speak right now, too focused on getting out of here.
Bit by bit, he inched up the rope, until he felt the sickening shift of gravity that sent him plummeting onto the mattress, curling into himself and groaning. The impact ricocheted throughout his body, his bones vibrating and his skin twitching where pieces were missing.
“Jesus,” Eddie murmured, collapsing to his knees, reaching out like he wanted to touch the bandages. “That probably didn’t help.”
“No,” Steve gasped out. “It did not.” Wincing, he sat up, catching his breath as he tried to will the pain to go away. It helped a little bit, and he exhaled. If he's learned anything in the past couple of years, it's that you actually can build up a tolerance to pain. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine,” Robin said with wide eyes, that familiar panic setting into her voice. It was almost comforting. “You are missing so much skin .”
Stumbling to his feet, Eddie caught him, and this time his fingers did dig into his back, warm and firm. Steve didn’t have the brain power to process that at the moment. “Skin is only a moderately necessary organ at best. How’s Nance?”
But the change in topic only made things worse. The others were so busy helping Nancy into a nearby chair that Dustin, Lucas, and Max didn’t even notice the state of Steve, but when Dustin turned around, his jaw dropped open.
“Holy shit . What the hell happened to you?”
“Shouldn’t you be used to seeing me like this, Henderson?”
“No,” he said frantically, coming over to take a closer look, and the concern painted all over his face actually made Steve calm down a little bit, made his heart steady in his chest. “You’ve gotten punched a shit load of times, but no one has actually managed to stab you.”
“Yet.”
“Vecna did not stab Steve,” Robin said, moving to help him stand, but he just shook her off. “There were these horrible bat things with rabies-”
“They didn’t have rabies,” Eddie interjected. “Hopefully.”
“-and they were, like, eating him-”
Rubbing his temples, the mounting concern only made his headache worsen, the pain tormenting his entire body doubling. He always hated when other people worry about him, that he could ever add a burden to the shoulders of these people who already carried so much. It was his job to carry them, right? Right?
“Why does this always happen,” Dustin was saying, and Steve had just about had enough.
“I’m fine ,” Steve shouted over the bickering, effectively shutting them up. “You heard Dustin, this happens literally every time, and I’m always fine.” Pushing through them, he moved to lower himself in front of Nancy’s chair, but stopped when he realized that bending his torso was a horrible idea. He stayed at the awkward half crouch, asking, “You good?”
Despite the exhaustion tugging at her face, the tears still soaking her cheeks, she managed a weak smile. “I’m alive. My standards aren’t that much higher than that anymore.”
Steve gave the rest of the group a pointed stare, motioning to his ex girlfriend. “See? Get on this level or you’ll never survive this shit. Come on, we have to get out of here.”
On cue, Max pulled a jingling set of keys from her sweatshirt pocket. “Figured we might need these. Let’s go.”
Eyes nearly bugging out of his head, Steve swiped them from her fingers, ignoring her startled, “Hey!”
He just held up his finger. “ No . No way is that happening again. All the things we’ve faced, your driving is still the most lethal one. I’m driving.”
But then the keys are gone from his hand just as fast as he’d stolen them, Eddie tossing them in the air and catching them. “Cute, but no. Youd; get it if you looked in the mirror, and I won’t have you passing out at the wheel.”
“I won’t pass out -”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, bumping his shoulder. “You’re a badass monster fighter who can take a punch and handle some missing intestines, we’ll humor you. But I will be humoring you from the driver’s seat .”
Without another word, he jogged from the house toward Max’s mother’s car across the street, leaving the rest of them no choice but to follow. Eddie fell behind the wheel, and Steve guided Nancy to the passenger seat, insisting that she needed the most room, even though Erica had to sit on her lap. In the end, Max sat on Lucas’s lap, Dustin had half of his butt on Robin, and Steve endured the agony of squeezing into the middle.
He kept his eyes squeezed shut the entire way, his body stiffened so he wouldn’t jostle around and hit his wounds. They decided to head to Steve’s house, probably one of the one places that would be 1) empty, and 2) not on the cop’s lists of places to search. He tried to imagine the route in his head, not wanting to be that whiny asshole who asks are we there yet , but his mind had gone completely blank.
That is, until they hit a bump, and Dustin’s elbow lodged itself into one of the several holes in Steve’s stomach. He groaned, keeling over, biting down on his lip so hard the metallic taste of blood sprung into his mouth.
“Sorry,” Dustin hissed, and damn, Steve must look really pathetic, because Dustin normally would have never apologized.
“Fine, fine,” Steve waved him off.
They carried along in silence for a moment, until Dustin murmured, “At least it was an actual monster that got the better of you this time, and not, you know, a regular human person.”
Steve’s eyes flew open, glaring at his friend. “I beat up a Russian guard , Dustin, I think I’ve-”
The car slammed to a halt, and everyone flew forward, and then back against their seats at the impact. A spark of panic flew up Steve’s spine. Was it the cops? Did Eddie see something, would they have to fight, did they-
None of the above, apparently. They had just arrived in front of Steve’s dark, deserted house, but Eddie had other priorities. He twisted in his seat, gaping at Steve. “You what?"
Pointedly ignoring him, Steve elbowed the pairs on either side of him. “Let me out.”
They all stumbled out of the car, and Steve pulled the spare key out from under the matt. He had no clue where his car keys had gone, if they were even in this dimension.
Trudging to the living room, they all collapsed on the various chairs and sofa, Steve not even bothering to complain about the muck they were getting all over his parent’s expensive furniture. He couldn’t care less. He just took a moment to look at each person individually, at the dullness of their eyes but the color of their skin, the movement of their body.
They were all alive. It wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but for now… They were all alive.
He felt Eddie's eyes on him, even when Steve pointedly only looked anywhere else, and Steve crossed his arms over the bandages, hiding them from sight. When he managed a glance at the other man, Eddie looked like he wanted to stand, to come over here, but his fingers dug into the armrests of his chair instead, keeping him down.
They sat in silence like that for a while, nobody quite knowing what to say. They knew they should discuss next steps, but they didn’t know what they were, and they were all so, so tired. Erica and Lucas gathered snacks to pile on the coffee table, even though no one ate any of it. Max retrieved an extra Walkman for Nancy from a junk drawer, making a joke about how they could match that sort of fell flat, but Nancy laughed anyway.
Slowly, the kids started filling the older group in on what they’d missed, on why they’d run away from Lover’s Lake. On the cops, the questioning, on all of their parents breathing down their necks for the first time since they were babies. Robin spoke of Steve getting pulled into the gate, of the rest of them following him before those bats could choke him to death.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Dustin said. “I knew you wouldn’t be dumb enough to go through Watergate voluntarily.”
“For the record,” Steve said, eyes closed, “they all did go in voluntarily. I’m the only smart one here.”
Robin huffed indignantly. “We saved your life, asshole.”
Groaning, Steve forced himself out of the armchair that he definitely could have fallen asleep in, moving over to a nearby closet. He gathered up blankets and pillows, throwing them toward the kids. “Go to sleep. I’m going to shower.”
As if catching up, Robin looked down at herself, wrinkling her nose. “Yeah. You don’t happen to have another one of those, do you?”
They began to move, the kids setting up of the sofas and the older teens heading to the showers, ready to rinse for an hour to try to get off the feel of the Upside Down. Would it even go away? That stickiness to his skin, the particles in his throat? Had he been morphed from the Steve of this dimension to the Steve of the in between?
Steve took one step onto the stairs toward his bedroom before pain flared up his stomach, wincing at the way his torso bent with the action. Stars swam in front of his eyes as his swayed, and soft hands reached out toward his back, fingertips pressing through the denim jacket he’d forgotten about.
“Whoa, there,” came Eddie’s voice from behind him. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Steven assured him, even as he felt the rest of the group eyeing him, and then promptly blacked out.
He wasn’t out for long, fairly sure he woke up the moment his head connected with someone’s chest. Eddie caught him, hugging around his arms tight and lowering him to the ground. Shouts rang out around them, thumping footsteps shaking the floor as people hurried toward him, crowding around Steve collapsed in Eddie’s lap.
"Steve," a voice cried out.
“I’m fine,” he slurred out, his first instinct, insistent on it. They needed to sleep, not worry about him. “I… I…”
They ignored him, Robin and Dustin leaning over him, blurry at the edges. Robin’s concern had turned to fear, and Dustin just looked shocked. As if he never expected Steve to fall like this, as if it had never occurred to him to doubt Steve when he said I'm fine. A sort of shame fell into him, that he wasn’t strong enough for them. That he couldn’t stand on his own.’
Something skidded to a stop to his left, and Max appeared, bandages and towels and a bottle of alcohol from the liquor cabinet in her arms. She fell to her knees, glancing at Robin. “You have to take that bandage off.”
Hands shaking, Steve could feel it on his skin, Robin frantically untied the material that Nancy had draped around him, now completely soaked through with blood. He thought she might have even gagged, but then he could only focus on the air attacking the hole in his skin.
“Oh my God,” Dustin said, looking anywhere else but the wound beneath him. “Steve, there’s pieces of you missing, oh my god-”
“Is it bad?” Steve managed.
"Is that a serious question?"
The group got to work, Max pouring a generous amount of liquor onto the towel, clenching her teeth together as she said, "This is going to sting like a bitch."
"It already stings like a bitch."
Delicately, Max lowered the alcohol soaked rag to Steve's stomach, and his body convulsed to much that Eddie had to tighten his hold on his shoulder, pinning his arms to his side and holding it down. Steve groaned, head tilting back in Eddie's lap, trying to get away from the pain, to get out of his body, to get anywhere else-
Max finished cleaning the wounds, and the sharp pain ebbed away, replaced by the relentless ache that he'd become used to the past couple of hours. Hands flew around him, fresh bandages wrapping around him, and he sighed at the contact, relaxing that they were once against covered.
Dustin didn’t know how to help, but he gripped his hand like a lifeline, squeezing anytime Steve jerked in pain. “You’re gonna be okay. It’ll be okay. It hurts like a bitch, but who needs a stomach, anyway?”
The worry of his face was too much, the sadness hanging in the air around them, and Steve couldn’t stop the words. “I’m sorry,” he whispered out, tears pricking his eyes, and he would have wiped them away before anyone could see if both his hands weren’t being pinned down.
Dustin looked like the words sent him into a stroke. “Sorry? What? Why are you sorry?”
Steve just shook his head, and someone pressed down on the bandages, tying them tight, and the agony forced the confession out of him. “This isn’t your job. This is my job.”
Realization flickering behind his eyes, Dustin squeezed Steve’s fingers impossibly tight, poking him in the shoulder. “Oh, hell no. This is everyone’s job. Don’t you remember, Steve? ‘You die, I die?’ We’re in this together. If you protect us, we protect you. And any time it’s one of our turns to fall apart, the rest of us put them back together. It just happens to be your turn. Do not be sorry for that. You’ve helped us together at the seams enough times already.”
Watery eyes opening to look at Dustin, he managed a smile. "I'd prefer it if none of us died."
"Yeah, well, me too, which is why you have to let us patch you up every time you inevitably get your ass kicked."
"Don't act for a second like you would have won any of the fights I lost-"
"I'm fifteen!"
Shaking his head, Steve managed to relax further into the person holding him, some of the tension seeping from his shoulders at Dustin's reassurance. He knew it was absurd, knew that they didn't mind, but it still felt unnatural. To have so many people care about him.
Even more surprising was the soft way that Eddie gazed at him. He leaned over him with furrowed brows, the hair tumbling over his shoulders brushing against Steve’s forehead. His eyes fluttered shut, and somehow, the combination of pain, calm, and Eddie's firm grip made darkness surround him once more.
He woke up in a bed, a blanket tucked tight around him and several pillows shoved under his neck and back. Something wet dragged across his cheek, the mattress dipping slightly off to the left, and his head rolled to the side to find Eddie bent over him, a wet rag wiping away streaks of dirt from his face.
Steve cleared his throat, and Eddie jerked his hand back when he realized Steve was awake, face splitting into that manic grin that Steve had somehow become obsessed with. "He lives!"
"Barely," Steve chokes out, his voice scratchy and barely there. "How long was I out?"
"An hour or so," Eddie murmured, returning to cleaning off Steve's skin as Steve realized that meant the group of them had carried him up the stairs and tucked him into bed. What once would have made him uncomfortably made his heart warm instead. "The others are sleeping, I said I'd keep an eye on you."
Steve wanted to ask why. To question why Eddie of all people would stay up for him, cleaning away traces of the Upside Down when Steve hadn't had the strength to wash it away himself. But instead, he looked down himself, at the fresh bandages Max and Robin had wrapped around him. Blood had started to seep through, but not nearly as bad as before. And they were clean, despite the rest of Steve's body still being disgusting, and it made him feel a little bit better. A reassurance that they'd made it back to this side, to some sense of normalcy where they could find something as simple as a clean dressing.
"Thank you," he finally murmured. "For... you know, everything."
Eddie swallowed. "From what I've heard," he said slowly, "you've more than earned it.. Even though it still kills me inside that you don't completely suck." He paused. "Those kids... They all really love you, you know, Nancy and Robin, too. What this group has, what you've all survived together, it's unlike anything I've ever seen."
Steve managed a smile, and tried to convey all the weird things he was feeling with a simple sentence. "Welcome to the club, then. It's all downhill from here."
"I don't know," Eddie mused. "This all started when you were a Junior, yeah? You seemed to have almost... improved with the changes. I remember watching you, the subtle changes with no idea what caused them. Now I know, I guess."
"Yeah, well, nothing like nearly dying several hundred times to give yourself a little perspective."
Eddie collapsed onto the other side of the bed, shoulder a mere inch from Steve's, and Steve shifted until they were pressed together. Eddie sucked in a breath, but otherwise didn't mention it. "Now that I know you're not going to die in your sleep, I'm getting some shut eye, too. I've got to mentally prepare to almost die again tomorrow." Steve laughed, but just ended up coughing. Eddie reached out, fingers brushing over Steve's neck, and he stiffened, a mix of pain and pleasure washing over his skin. "They got you good on the neck, too. It's starting to bruise, I can't imagine what it'll look like tomorrow. You might want to wear turtlenecks for a little bit, otherwise people will start thinking you're freaky in bed."
"Who says I'm not?" The words were out of Steve's delirious mouth before he can fully process them, and he snaps his lips shut, flushing all the way from his forehead down to his mangled neck.
Eddie just looked like he won the jackboots, grinning maniacally. "Well, I think when this is all over, I'll need to hear more about that. Maybe test a theory or two."
Not knowing it came from, Steve said, "Let the neck heal. Then we can talk." Trying to keep his breathing in check, Steve shifted again, turning slightly onto his side to get more comfortable, and the movement made something slide along his back, grating over the scrapes that had resulted from being dragged over the jagged rock. he looked down again, noticing he still wore Eddie's jean vest, spots on the front darkened and stained with blood. Eddie's eyes flicked down, dragging up over Steve's abdomen, his chest, the lapels of the vest. Something about the way his gaze darkened made Steve want to stay awake forever, to wear this blood riddled vest for the rest of his life.
“I’m sorry about your jacket,” Steve murmured, eyes fluttering closed. He didn’t have the strength to keep them open anymore. “I’ll get it back to you.”
Eddie just laughed, and Steve wanted to open his eyes to see his face, but he couldn’t. “Keep it, man. It looks hot on you anyway.”
Normally, that would have made Steve sit bolt upright in bed, eyes wide, but instead his lips just curved up in a smile, a pleasant warmth spreading over his body. “Are you sure you just don’t want it because it’s completely soaked in blood?”
And if Dustin came by in the morning to find that the two boys had curled into each other in their sleep, confused at the way their limbs wound together, well, he'd just blame it on Steve needing some comfort for once, and he wouldn't say a word.