Archive of Our Own

Steve survives the night, and it’s only the beginning.

As Eddie and his friends tear away in an unfamiliar car, the adrenaline coursing through Steve’s whole body ebbs and disappears and he sits down hard in the doorway of the break room at Family Video, exhausted. He stays there, in the dark, part of him certain that it’s a trap, that if he leaves the safety of this room they’ll appear out of the shadows, looming and monstrous, to murder him.

But it’s late, it is so very late, and between one slow blink and the next Steve feels his head getting heavy, his body feeling like it might sink through the floor. After fighting it for long minutes he gives in and shuts his eyes for just a second.

He’s woken by someone shaking his shoulders.

Steve jolts up with a strangled scream and starts throwing punches before he even realises what he’s doing. It’s the way he usually wakes from a nightmare, monsters still lurking in the shadows of the waking world around him, his mind reliving the worst parts of the last four years over and over.

‘Hey!’ says a voice. Hands catch his fists, hold them tight so Steve can’t keep fighting. ‘Hey, hey, it’s alright! You’re okay, son, no one’s going to hurt you.’

Steve’s vision clears and Sheriff Powell is kneeling in front of him, firmly holding Steve’s wrists, looking undercaffeinated and like he’s already seen enough for the day. Through the door, weak morning sunlight is shining in from the storefront.

Steve is still breathing harshly, panting from waking so violently. He pulls his hands back, and Powell lets him, and sits there for a long moment trying to figure out what’s going on. Eddie’s alive – or, he came back. He and his friends attacked the store. Somewhere out there, amongst the trash heap they left behind, is Keith’s body, cold and drained of blood.

‘Steve, right?’ says Powell gently, and Steve’s eyes snap to him, wide. Powell raises his hands as if to show he’s not going to harm Steve. ‘It’s me,’ he says. ‘Sheriff Powell. You fell asleep here, didn’t you?’

Steve takes a moment to look around the room a little more now he’s not actively scanning for danger. If there’s police here then it’s day time and that means Eddie and his friends are long gone. Things from the Upside Down don’t like the sunlight. He’s okay. He’s safe. Probably.

He sees, from his position, the chair he threw across the room lying on the floor on its side by the kitchenette. The shredded remains of his work vest are in a heap on the floor by the locker bay. Underneath him are drag marks from the filing cabinet, still sitting a good couple of feet out from the wall. It’s daylight. He’s okay.

‘Yeah,’ says Steve, and wipes his face with one hand. ‘Yeah, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I locked the door when they – when they killed – K-Keith –’

He stops, panting, and a wave of nausea rolls over him, strong enough to make him gag. He claps his hand over his mouth, and Powell must see him turn a sickly shade of green, because his eyes widen a fraction. He puts a hand on Steve’s elbow, helps him to his feet. Once he’s up Steve rushes to the kitchenette, hangs his head over the sink and throws up into the drain. All he coughs up is bile, bitter and astringent, and then turns on the tap to rinse it down. When it’s gone, he sticks his head under the stream of water from the faucet to rinse out his mouth, spit into the sink, and then swallow more water. The fluorescent light in the staff room flickers – Steve tries not to wince, hunching his shoulders – and then sputters on, so bright white Steve’s olive skin looks green.

‘Everything alright in here?’ asks another voice, and Steve doesn’t turn but he recognises Callahan. He grips the edge of the kitchenette counter, unmoving.

‘All fine,’ says Powell in return. ‘He’s just a little shaken – it sounds like he saw what happened.’

‘And then fell asleep here?’

‘I locked the door,’ says Steve again. ‘Barricaded myself in so they couldn’t get in. Spent the night trying to convince me to come out, and then left when it didn’t work. Was too afraid to leave once they left in case they were waiting.’

‘Take a seat, son,’ says Powell, and Steve turns around, leans hard against the counter. Powell moves forward, picks up the chair that’s still lying on its side. He puts it down by the table, offers it to Steve, and moves to the other one to sit down. ‘We just want to know what happened here.’

What happened here? What happened here is a nightmare. What happened here is going to haunt Steve until the day he dies. He thinks once he’s allowed to leave here that he’s never going to want to come back, never going to want to work in a shop ever again. He knows he got lucky when the earthquake hit and the Family Video was still standing, still needed to stay open, still letting him make money where other people’s livelihoods got eaten up when the gates tore up Hawkins. But after this he couldn’t care less. This place is a stain and Steve needs to scrub it off himself.

‘I don’t see how that’s going to help,’ says Steve.

‘If you tell us what you remember, it’ll help us catch who did this,’ offers Callahan from the doorway. He looks like Powell, both of them speaking in slow, soothing tones, both of them moving deliberately and showing their hands so Steve doesn’t spook.

He’s not going to fly off the handle at them. It’s daylight. He’s okay. This is okay, right? He’s still breathing, that surely counts for something.

Steve slumps to the seat offered and sits down but feels ill at ease because the doorway is behind him. He finds himself glancing over his shoulder despite himself, and Powell is smart, Powell sees it.

‘You can leave us to it, Phil,’ he says over Steve’s shoulder, and then inclines himself slightly towards Steve, head tilted. ‘No one else is going to come in, Steve. It’s just you and me. We’re going to have a little chat, and then afterwards we’re going to go to the station so you can sign a witness statement and your parents can come get you.’

Steve can’t find it in him to look up and meet Powell’s eye. He wants to go home and sleep. ‘Sure,’ he says, dismissive. ‘Whatever.’

Powell pauses, reaches into a pocket to pull out a pen and a small notepad. He flips it open to a blank page, letting the silence settle between them, and then finally he says, pen poised and ready. ‘Start from the beginning for me. What happened first?’

‘We’d closed the store,’ says Steve. ‘I was cashing up the register, and Keith was vacuuming the floors, and the lights went out.’

He can remember it, being plunged suddenly in darkness and quiet, the spike of alarm that zinged through him. The sound of the bell over the door, the figure in the doorway with their face covered, long, razor-like claws, and red, inhuman eyes, and teeth, so many teeth, and –

Steve’s chest suddenly feels tight. He sucks in a breath, and when he can’t breathe all the way in he does it again, and a third time, gasping because his lungs won’t fill. Panic spreads through him, makes his hands and feet rush with pins and needles, his stomach drop into a pit. He feels hot all over, and then cold, and then he feels nothing at all.

It’s like watching himself from a distance. Like a switch has been flipped and his body is falling apart but his brain has disconnected, absent from reality. He should be freaking out still but instead he feels blank.

It makes it so much easier to talk. And so he does, stilted, his story full of holes, and he thinks he might be crying. Not in sobs, but in a constant stream of tears that just pour from his eyes, unending. But he talks and he talks and he tells Powell all about how Keith died in the Family Video after close last night.

-

They take him to the station, and Steve doesn’t question it. He sits in the back of Powell’s police car, in the spot where they put criminals, but no one’s said anything about him being arrested and he’s not in handcuffs. Maybe because he’s not protesting, not questioning. He doesn’t want to. His mind feels like it’s been scooped out, like everything has poured out of his ears and been left clean. He wants to stay this way, just letting everything pass him by. He probably should be alarmed by the feeling, but he isn’t.

He stares out the window as they drive through town and he watches the wreckage of Hawkins pass him by. He can hear Powell and Callahan talking in the front in low voices but he doesn’t pay attention, makes out words like, “shrink,” and, “trauma,” and lets it go. It’s daylight. He’s okay. He’s going to give his witness statement and then go home, call a code red, maybe sleep for eight or nine hours. He’s okay, he’s sure of it.

When they arrive at the station there’s very little fanfare. He’s led to the sheriff’s office, and he follows along numbly. He’s been here before so he doesn’t look around, just keeps his eyes down and trudges along behind Powell, only pausing when the sheriff stops to open the door.

‘Take a seat,’ he says, offering the chair on the other side of his desk. Steve sits, or more like his legs go, and he slumps bonelessly down. His head feels fuzzy still, like his brain has built a glass wall between him and the world. He thinks in passing again that he should be panicking, or worried or something, but instead he just kind of feels removed.

‘Can I get you some coffee?’ asks Powell.

Steve looks up at him, and the man has an eyebrow cocked, thumb pointed behind himself. ‘It’s just what we have here, so nothing fancy. How do you take it?’

‘Cream,’ says Steve automatically. ‘Three sugars.’

‘Okay,’ says Powell, calmly. ‘I’m just going to the kitchen to grab it. Why don’t you make a phone call to your parents and let them know where you are.’

He shuffles forward and, slowly, telegraphing his movements, reaches across Steve to drag the phone towards them both. Steve watches as Powell swivels the phone around so the number pad is facing towards him, and then picks up the receiver to hand to Steve. Steve takes it.

‘I’ll give you a few minutes,’ says Powell, ‘take your time.’ And then he leaves the room, and Steve is swallowed up by the quiet of his office.

He looks down at the phone. He’s not sure who to call.

His parents are away – they left last night before Steve was even due to get home, off on another couple’s retreat for the weekend to try and rejuvenate their tedious marriage. Steve knows they would have left the number of the place they’re staying at on a note on the fridge, but he hadn’t checked before he left for work yesterday afternoon. So he can’t call them.

He doesn’t want to call Robin, because god only knows she either knows what happened to Keith already and is going out of her mind, or she doesn’t know yet. If it’s the first, Steve doesn’t think he has enough in him right now to calm the torrent of emotion she’d likely offer him. If it’s the second, he doesn’t want to be the one to tell her. He’s not sure she’d know how to help, anyway. How is anyone supposed to help?

He can’t call the Wheelers. He’d only want to talk to Nancy and there’s only a 25% chance she’d pick up the phone. And trying to explain to Mike or Karen or Ted as to why he’s calling so early in the morning and asking to speak to his ex-girlfriend isn’t something Steve thinks he can do.

He wants to call Hopper, but mostly because he wants to warn him if he doesn’t already know. He can’t remember right now if anyone in town, if even Powell knows that Hopper is alive. He assumes so, because otherwise the Byers wouldn’t be in the process of a semi-hasty exit from California to resettle themselves back in Hawkins. But even if it is public knowledge, he doesn’t know Hopper’s number, doesn’t have a way to even contact El and give her the heads up because he doesn’t have a walkie talkie to call a code red.

But Dustin does.

Steve leans forward and tugs the phone to the edge of the desk, taps in the Henderson’s phone number without a second thought. It’s early enough that perhaps neither Dustin nor his mother will be awake, but hopefully they won’t mind the hasty intrusion. Hopefully Steve can find a way to charm himself out of Claudia Henderson’s bad books for waking the household at seven on a Saturday.

The phone rings for a long moment – Steve thinks it’s almost going to ring out – before someone picks up, and there’s a pause where the person on the other end clears their throat. Claudia says, ‘Hello?’ in her usual cheer, but it’s very clearly underlined with annoyance. Steve has dragged her out of bed. Oh well.

‘Mrs Henderson?’ he says. ‘I’m sorry to call. It’s Steve.’

‘Steve?’ says Claudia, and her tone immediately shifts, morphs into concerned mother. She carries that tone a lot around Steve, especially when his parents come up, so he’s used to it, he can bypass it without too much thought. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks. ‘Did something happen?’

‘I’m at the police station,’ says Steve thoughtlessly, and then claps his hand over his mouth.

‘What happened?’ asks Claudia, growing steadily more alarmed. ‘Are you in trouble, dear? Do you want me to call your parents? You sound strange, honey.’

‘No, I –’ Steve swallows. ‘No, I’m fine, I promise, I’m not in trouble. I just really need to speak to Dustin.’

‘Did your parents not answer the phone?’ asks Claudia, and that tone is back, the quiet judgement. She’s never met Steve’s parents, not in the way you’d introduce your friend’s parents to your own. He’s not planning on ever introducing them. ‘Do you want me to come and get you?’

‘No, Mrs H,’ says Steve, ‘I’m fine, I promise I’m okay, but I really, really need to speak to Dustin.’

There’s a pause, a long, heavy one, and Steve knows Claudia is going to be deeply, deeply suspicious, and very concerned, and Steve can’t even find it in himself to be anxious. He still feels disconnected from his whole body, hollow. He thinks about just hanging up the phone, sneaking out of the office to find a walkie talkie he can steal instead. He thinks about just hanging up and putting his head in his hands. He should be panicking. Why isn’t he panicking?

‘Dusty bun is asleep,’ says Claudia at last.

‘Well, can you take a message?’ asks Steve. ‘Tell him code red. Tell him – tell him it’s the cult of Vecna. It’s an inside joke, he’ll know what it means.’

‘Steve,’ says Claudia, and her voice goes hard. ‘I know what a code red is. And I heard Dustin talking about Vecna before Easter break, it’s from that Hellfire club he was in.’

Steve sighs. Fuck.

‘Steve,’ says Claudia, ‘what is going on? You can tell me.’

Like a miracle, Powell wanders back in, two mugs of coffee in his hands. Steve takes a moment to weigh up his options and decides that he’s going to get cross examined by Powell anyway, so he may as well face the music.

‘I gotta go,’ he says to Claudia, and he can hear her protesting as he hangs up, but he puts the receiver down with a click and pushes the phone back a couple inches.

Powell sits at his desk, bemused, and places both mugs down in front of him. He slides one across to Steve, and Steve picks it up, wraps his hands around it and starts swilling it immediately. It scolds his mouth and throat, but he pushes through, swallowing down half in one go, hands cradling the burning warmth.

Things feel a little clearer for it. A little less distant. He stares down into his mug and realises he’s starting to feel like he’s behind the wheel in his own body again.

‘You didn’t have to hang up,’ says Powell. ‘I could have given you more time.’

‘I said what I needed to,’ says Steve.

‘Are your parents on their way?’ asks Powell, and Steve shakes his head.

‘They’re out of town. I called a friend instead.’

‘Oh,’ says Powell, ‘sure. And that friend is…?’

‘Am I in trouble?’ asks Steve.

Powell pauses, eyes narrowing. That soft, quiet way he was moving shifts, ever so slightly. ‘No,’ he says, lightly. ‘No, I just need to take down your statement. I was hoping I could ask a few more questions first.’

The first stirrings of annoyance spark in the back of Steve’s mind. ‘I’m really tired,’ he says.

Powell nods. ‘We’ll get your home soon. Just gotta dot some I’s and cross some T’s. You understand.’

Steve gets it. He does. Powell’s just got to do his job. But he’s being asked to recount a story that he can’t truthfully tell and he already can’t remember exactly what he said back when he first woke up at Family Video. He doesn’t like the thought that he has to lie. He’s vaguely worried he’s going to be caught out lying and won’t know how to cover his ass, that they’ll blame him for this like they blamed Eddie for Chrissy. But Powell’s not going to believe the truth if Steve tells him that Eddie and his friends are fucking vampires, so what the hell else is he supposed to do?

Steve sighs again, rests his chin in his hand, coffee mug balanced on his knee. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he says. ‘What do you want to know?’

Powell nods, reaches into his pocket and pulls out the notepad, the one he was writing on back at the store. He flips through a couple of pages and then back again, picks up a pen from his desk. ‘You said “they” broke in,’ he starts.

‘Yeah,’ says Steve, thinks about it, and then realises that this is something he doesn’t have to lie about. ‘Corroded Coffin.’

‘Is that a gang?’ asks Powell, shaking his head.

‘The band?’ says Steve. ‘High school band? They play metal music. Gareth something, and Jeff, and Ray – I don’t know their last names.’

Powell pauses at this, and his brow furrows. He reaches for a desk draw and starts shuffling through manilla folders stacked inside. ‘Jeff,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘Jeff – Jeff Bryant? Gareth Gardner? Ray Kelley?’

Steve shrugs.

‘These boys all went missing three and four weeks ago, Steve,’ says Powell. He pulls files out of the drawer and puts them on his desk. ‘All of them high school students taken in the night. All of them associated with the Hellfire club.’

Finally Steve feels the panic he couldn’t feel before, a sharp stab of it in his gut. ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

Powell nods again, takes a note on his notepad. ‘Was Eddie with them?’

Steve sits back up again. He can’t remember the official story. He can’t remember what the police know and what they don’t. ‘Isn’t he dead?’ he says.

‘You tell me,’ replies Powell, and Steve feels like he’s being challenged.

‘I thought –’ starts Steve, ‘Dustin said –’

‘Dustin Henderson?’ asks Powell, one eyebrow raised. ‘He’s a friend of Eddie’s isn’t he? He was part of that Hellfire group too.’

Steve sits, stewing. He can’t believe he fell right into this. He can’t believe he opened his stupid mouth. He should have stonewalled, should have refused to say anything else.

‘How do you know Dustin?’ asks Powell.

Steve blinks. ‘I’m his babysitter,’ he says.

‘Seems a bit old to need a babysitter,’ replies Powell, his eyes narrowing.

Steve feels pinned down, and his stomach is slowly tying itself in knots. He puts the cup of coffee down on the desk, and when he realises he doesn’t know what to do with his hands he folds his arms up, shoves his hands under each arm. ‘I was his babysitter when he was in middle school,’ he says. ‘Now I’m just kind of – I don’t know, like a brother. I look out for him.’

Powell hums. ‘But you didn’t think there was anything of concern about him joining the Hellfire club?’ He leans forward in his chair, and Steve rolls his eyes.

‘Come on, man, you don’t seriously believe that nerd club is a satanist cult?’

‘I don’t know,’ replies Powell slowly, ‘depends what it has to do with the cult of Vecna.’

Steve can’t breathe. He can’t think.

That bastard was listening to his phone call, fuck.

Steve doesn’t know what to do, what the hell he can even say. His breath starts to saw in and out of his lungs and the thinks, distantly, that he might throw up again.

‘Tell me,’ says Powell, lifting his pen to his notepad again. ‘How do I spell that, exactly? For the report.’

‘V-E-C-N-A,’ says a voice from behind them. ‘And don’t put it in your report or Owens will have your ass.’

Steve turns, and stood in the office doorway is Hopper, thin and tired. He’s started putting a little weight back on, slowly but surely, since his return, and his hair is mostly grown back. He still looks strange though, his clothes fitting wrong and the bags under his eyes never really going away. He winks at Steve, and Steve feels like passing out, he’s so relieved.

‘Cal,’ says Hopper, folding his arms, ‘did I not ask you to wait before you started interrogating suspects? The kid’s in the know.’

‘Shit, well how was I supposed to know that?’ replies Powell, throwing up his arms. ‘I got a dead body with its throat cut, covered in weird bites, and a Family Video employee taking a nap in the next room. This shit isn’t exactly textbook, Jim.’

‘Which is why you called me,’ says Hopper. ‘I’ve called for backup, just keep things running until they get here, alright?’

Powell does not seem even the littlest bit impressed with that brush off. He stands, glowering at Hopper. ‘Who is the sheriff here?’ he asks, flat.

‘You,’ snaps Hopper. ‘Now do your damn job.’ He turns to Steve and tips his head back towards the exit. ‘Come on, Steve, let me buy you some real coffee.’

Steve doesn’t have to be told twice. He launches himself out of his seat, not even giving a second to glance around at Powell, and follows Hopper out into the hallway, through the bull pen, the lobby, and then out the front to the car park. He doesn’t stop or think until he’s sat in the passenger seat of Hopper’s pickup truck, Hopper easing them back out onto the street.

‘You okay?’ asks Hopper, glancing in Steve’s direction.

‘Not really,’ replies Steve, and his voice wobbles dangerously. He sucks in fresh air and tries to push down the urge to cry. God, he’s so tired. ‘I think I fucked up in there.’

‘Cal knows what’s going on now,’ says Hopper, ‘so don’t worry. The whole county have El’s back.’

‘No,’ says Steve, ‘I mean I called Dustin thinking he could get a warning to you, but his mum picked up and I said too much.’

Hopper nods, eyes on the road. ‘You mean the cult of Vecna.’

‘Yeah,’ breathes Steve. ‘She knew it was from D&D and she immediately suspected something.’

Hopper hums at that, seems to take a minute to consider while he drives them towards the local diner. ‘And what is the cult of Vecna, exactly?’ he asks.

‘It’s something Eddie said last night,’ replies Steve. ‘A warning of what’s coming.’

‘Eddie,’ says Hopper. He frowns. ‘Eddie with the guitar? The one who took the blame? I thought he died in the Upside Down.’

‘He did,’ says Steve, nodding. He thinks about Eddie’s fangs, that wide, horrifying mouth, the red eyes, the claws. ‘He didn’t stay dead,’ says Steve. ‘He came back. He came back and he’s working for Vecna.’

-

El has her walkie talkie switched on on the kitchen table when they get back to the cabin and it’s already chaos. Steve can hear Dustin entirely flipping out when he and Hopper get inside, Mike cutting in occasionally to argue with him, El’s face clouded over in that very serious frown she wears too often. She’s sat next to it, chin resting on her folded arms, but she sits up when she sees them.

‘Dustin?’ she says into the walkie the instant he pauses in his ranting, ‘Steve is here.’

There’s a pregnant pause, and then Dustin says, ‘Can he hear me?’

El lifts her walkie again, her eyes on Steve. ‘Yes,’ she replies.

‘I am going to kick your ass, Steve. What were you even thinking, telling that stuff to my mum?’

‘Did she tell him about the code red?’ asks Steve to El.

‘Yes,’ says El.

‘And the bit about the cult of Vecna?’

‘Yes,’ says El again.

‘May I?’ asks Steve, nodding towards the walkie talkie in her hands. She passes it over and Steve presses the button to talk, holds it up to his mouth. ‘Code red, Dustin,’ he says, and his voice starts shaking again. ‘Really, really red.’

There’s another long pause, and Steve feels the anxiety starting to churn in his stomach. He still has a tight grip on the walkie talkie, stood next to the kitchen table, El sat at his right, Hopper standing just behind him. After a while there’s some static and then a voice says, frightened, ‘Steve?’

It’s Robin.

Steve feels like a knife has been lodged into his gut, an easy slide like it’s burning hot and he’s a pad of butter. Steve’ breath hitches, and he lifts the walkie up again. ‘Rob,’ he says. ‘Do you know?’

‘About Keith?’ she replies. ‘Yeah. Are you okay?’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ says Dustin’s voice in the background, and then, ‘Give me that, Robin.’ There’s some shuffling and then he speaks up, voice clearer. ‘Steve,’ he says, ‘I believe you. We’re all going to come to the cabin right now, we’re going to get on our bikes and –’

No, no that’s not okay. Will was last seen riding his bike when he went missing, anything could happen when a kid is riding around alone on a bike. Steve swings around towards Hopper and holds out the walkie talkie desperately. ‘It’s not safe on bikes,’ he insists. ‘You have to tell them it’s not safe.’

Hopper is holding a bag of takeaway containers in one hand and a paper tray of coffee in the other. He looks bewildered at Steve, but then nods and passes the plastic bag to El, takes the walkie offered to him. ‘Kids, it’s Jim Hopper,’ he says. ‘Nix on the bikes. Mike, get Nancy to drive you and Lucas. I’ll come and get Dustin and Robin – I’ll be ten minutes. No bikes, no funny business, no leaving the house without a car to take you somewhere, no exceptions. If you’re not here in thirty I’m calling your parents. Over and out.’

With some finality he turns the walkie talkie off and then sets it down on the table next to where El is pulling Styrofoam containers from the bag. He stoops down to press a kiss to the top of her curly head and she leans into it, smiling. He hands her a takeaway cup which she takes, sets down.

‘There’s waffles in there for you,’ Hopper says kindly, and taps one of the containers. ‘The eggs are for me. Try and get Steve to eat some toast so he has more than coffee in his stomach?’

‘Okay,’ says El, and then looks towards Steve, tilts her head towards the other side of the table.

Hopper puts the paper tray down between containers and takes his coffee cup out. He pauses by Steve as he moves away, puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder before he can sit down. Steve looks to him, and Hopper’s gaze is solid, kind, fatherly in a way that’s almost too much. Steve isn’t used to fatherly.

‘You did enough by surviving the night, kid,’ he says gently. ‘Let me take it from here.’

Steve feels breathless, frightened, like a little kid. He’s just the babysitter, though. Jim Hopper is an actual adult who knows how to deal with this. So he nods, his head bobbing jerkily, and feels Hopper squeeze his shoulder once more before the man turns back towards the front door.

‘Same rules apply to you two, you hear?’ he says, and opens the front door. ‘You both better be clearing your plates and nothing else when I get back.’

‘Okay,’ replies El, already stuck into her breakfast, and Steve thinks, that’s right. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s daylight and it’s okay.

-

Mike is insistent Steve is wrong when he tells them. He keeps interrupting, saying, ‘It can’t have been Eddie though! It can’t!’

Nancy is resolute, jaw tight, but her eyes look glassy. Eventually she grabs Mike in a hug as he’s huffing and puffing and holds him, mouth twisting as Mike sobs loudly into her shoulder.

Erica cries, her little shoulders shaking, her mouth trembling. Lucas pats her on the back, seemingly shellshocked. He nods his head a lot but his eyes are glazed over. A little after he asks for them both to be taken to the hospital to see Max. Steve thinks that maybe he wants some alone time to process but doesn’t know how to leave his sister, and he doesn’t blame him.

El spends the whole time frowning, her hands clenched. She smiles sadly at Nancy when Nancy helps Mike, though.

Robin sits with her hand over her mouth and doesn’t say anything. At one point while Steve is still explaining she reaches out unthinkingly with her other hand and grabs at Steve’s knee, her nails digging into his thigh, and it makes Steve jerk hard, his heart hammering, his voice cutting out mid-word. After he recovers from the fright he realises she’s escaped to the back of the room where she stands next to Hopper, pale and drawn.

Dustin sits on Steve’s other side and cries silently. It’s so unlike him, so alien for loud, unflinching Dustin. He took some of Eddie’s rings when they left him behind – when Steve left Eddie behind in the Upside Down – and Steve has seen him wearing them sometimes. He’s wearing them today, on his right hand, and while Steve talks he twists them around his fingers. When Steve finishes, when there’s a huge, aching pause left after his words dry out, Dustin quietly gets to his feet, takes each ring off, and then goes to the front door. Steve watches him move to the end of the porch through the window. Dustin looks down at the rings in his hand, and then out into the woods around the cabin. His face morphs from careful blankness to something raw, something full of grief, and he pulls back his arm and then throws both rings with all of his might. Then he comes back inside, walks through the house and past everyone to Eleven’s room and shuts the door behind him.

Steve feels like his insides have curled up and died.

-

This is the plan:

Curfew at sunset. No one goes anywhere without a buddy as much as possible. Bikes are allowed but only to and from school as needed, so as not to alarm any unknowing parents, and only for short distances elsewhere or where a ride is unavailable. Radio to let the others know where you are, where you’re going. Try to congregate as much as possible.

The Byers will be back from California in two weeks, and Hopper updates them on everything over the phone, lets them know that trouble is already brewing again. He’s already connected a half dozen missing cases, near a dozen more strange murders involving exsanguination around the county. How the police are keeping it so quiet is anyone’s guess, but assumedly after the nightmare that was the last string of frighteningly gruesome deaths they don’t want another mob situation on their hands. Probably Owen’s people have something to do with it too, but they seem to be very few and far between these days.

Steve makes it clear to the assistant manager that he’s not coming back to Family Video, and she tells him she isn’t surprised. He doesn’t even want to go to Keith’s funeral and he didn’t even see the body. He ends up going with Robin, but they leave early and don’t go to the wake after the service.

Instead he spends a lot of time ferrying the kids around. He drives Robin to school, and Dustin, mostly, but sometimes it’s a combination of them all. He’ll often do the pick up as well, because he hasn’t got another job, at this point isn’t even looking. He’s noticed some of the parents have been giving him strange looks. Claudia Henderson keeps trying to bring up the phone call at the police station and Steve keeps having to shut her down by lying and saying he can’t say anything about an active police investigation. He’s at least convinced her it’s got nothing to do with Hellfire club, so that’s something.

Not that the Hellfire club even exists anymore. It was Eddie’s baby, and now with most of Hawkins still conscious of gross satanic activity, and the rest of Corroded Coffin slaves to Vecna’s plan for world destruction, it’s easier to play D&D on the down low, in the Wheeler’s basement. It’s on one of these nights, a week after the code red was first called, that Steve picks up Dustin, El, and Lucas – Dustin to take home, Lucas and Eleven to the hospital.

Despite being mid-May, the days getting longer and warmer, the sky is overcast, brimming over with black clouds, a summer storm having spent the better part of the week brewing. As Steve pulls into the Wheeler’s front drive the clouds finally open up, and fat, heavy rain drops streak Steve’s windscreen. Steve ducks his head as he trots to the front door and then is let inside by Karen Wheeler as the drizzle becomes a sprinkle, rapidly becomes a shower, a downpour, a deluge.

By the time he’s collected his three passengers from the basement the road is slick, the sky is dark, and the air is thick with heat and humidity. The kids pile in the back, all three of them in a rush as Steve clambers into the front seat. Dustin shakes his head like a wet dog, sat right behind Steve.

‘Dude!’ cries Steve, disgusted, looking over his shoulder. Dustin only grins cheekily, Lucas, sat next to him, vaguely amused even as he wipes water off his cheek.

‘Are we going?’ asks Dustin and puts his thinking cap back onto his head. The little shit.

‘You idiots are gonna owe me big time when you’re finally old enough to drive,’ grumbles Steve, like he has a problem playing taxi driver, and takes off in the direction of Dustin’s, since it’s closer.

There’s two ways to Dustin’s from the Wheeler place, but one way – the faster way – now has a gate to the Upside Down through the middle of it. So Steve goes the long way, and because it’s just after five in the evening he’s caught in peak hour traffic (which of course in Hawkins is about five to ten minutes of more than three cars waiting at a stop light at a time, and sometimes people honking when merging lanes goes poorly). They’re stopped at the one stop light on the way when Steve glances across the intersection and sees him.

There, on the side of the road by the florist, getting drenched in the storm: leather jacket, ripped jeans, hair sodden, bandana on his face, sunglasses perched on the end of his nose.

Eddie.

Steve’s heart stops for a moment. His mouth hangs open and he watches, in abject horror, as Eddie tilts his head to the side, raises his sunglasses to look under them with one hand, and waves, fingers wiggling, with the other. He’s waving at Steve. How the hell is he even here? Are the kids seeing this?

Before he can turn around and double check the car behind him honks, and Steve judders out of his reverie, waving in apology to the driver. The light is green, it’s probably been green for a while.

‘How do you even have your licence?’ snarks Dustin, and El snorts but then bites her lip like she’s trying not to laugh.

Steve glares daggers at Dustin in the mirror. ‘I was distracted, thank you. I thought I saw something.’

‘What, a hot babe?’ asks Dustin. ‘In this weather? Is there something about galoshes that gets you going, Steve?’

Lucas is the one to crack this time, letting out a bark before slapping his hand over his mouth.

‘Don’t encourage him,’ says Steve, ‘he’s not funny and his head is big enough as it is. And no, it wasn’t a “babe”, Dustin, it was –’ But he stops, because he can’t have been right. It was a fluke, a trick in the light. He probably saw someone who looked similar and jumped to conclusions. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘It was nothing.’

-

It happens again, two nights later.

Steve is at the Henderson house for dinner. The news of Keith’s untimely and violent demise is now public knowledge, as is Steve’s night locked in the next room, so the pointed questions from Claudia have stopped, but the offers to effectively mother Steve have doubled. And she cooks a mean Salisbury Steak, so Steve isn’t exactly complaining. Not to mention, Steve is kind of worried about Dustin.

He has moments where he’s fine. Moments where, when his friends are around and paying attention, he’s as obnoxious and weird and unflinchingly himself as he always was. But Steve keeps catching a look in his eye, when he thinks no one is paying attention, and it bothers Steve to see him look that way. He knows Dustin took Eddie’s death pretty hard. The kid had started listening to Eddie’s music after they lost to Vecna, even talked his mum into buying him an electric guitar so he could teach himself to play. In the lead up to Eddie’s return Steve had heard him butchering the opening of Master of Puppets on the regular when he came to pick Dustin up to drive him somewhere. Steve figured it was Dustin’s way of keeping his memories of Eddie alive, and so he’d not said a word about it.

So to see that look on Dustin, part grief, part fear, part anger, it breaks Steve’s heart. He wants to be near, be close. Hence, dinner at the Henderson’s.

After two enormous helpings of dinner and then a too-large portion of store-bought tiramisu (Claudia goes all out when Steve comes over for dinner despite the fact that he keeps insisting she really doesn’t have to), Steve volunteers himself and Dustin to wash dishes. Dustin only really puts up enough protest to suggest he’s phoning it in, which becomes increasingly more obvious after his mother settles in to watch television in the other room and Dustin starts prattling Steve’s ear off about school.

They chat easily, laughing about one of Dustin’s teachers, Steve with his hands turning to prunes in the sink and Dustin drying and putting everything away. It’s easy and disgustingly domestic, but kind of nice given that Steve didn’t grow up with an actual sibling to share chores with. Turns out housework is a little easier when you can distract from it by sharing your mutual confusion over Mrs Copley’s inexplicable obsession with Of Mice and Men.

It’s as Steve is listening to Dustin recount Mrs Copley’s recent lecture on the American dream that he finds himself staring out the kitchen window into the dark back yard. He can’t make out much – it’s still dusk, the days drawn out so long – but it’s dark enough that the tall trees on the edge of the woods leave everything outside a dull, flat, deep blue.

So it’s a little bit alarming when he sees eyes from the edge of the clearing.

Steve blinks, drops the plate in his hands. The sound of it is muffled by the water in the sink.

He leans forward, hands on the edge of the counter until he can almost press his nose to the window glass. He thinks he must be mistaken, that he’s seeing something strange in the shadows, something not quite right and his brain is making things up to fill the gaps that don’t make sense.

But it’s there. Clear as day in amongst the trees. A tall, human-shaped shadow and reflective red eyes. Blood red.

The shadow takes a slow step forward, then another. It moves until it’s stood between two trees on the very edge of the Henderson’s backyard, the shape more pronounced. It’s Eddie.

‘Fuck,’ says Steve. He swings around, eyes wide.

‘What’s wrong?’ asks Dustin, but Steve doesn’t have time to explain.

‘Flashlight!’ he shouts and makes a beeline to the back door. ‘Get a flashlight!’

He rushes out into the yard and charges for the edge of the trees. There’s nothing there. Steve glances around, and he can’t think. He knows what he saw, he knows Eddie was here only a moment ago. He’s sure that’s what it was. But he’s not here.

Steve reels back around and goes for the rickety old garden shed, wrenches the door open. He’s met with garden tools, and his heart rackets up in tempo, because he has to be here. Steve saw him, he did. He could have sworn.

‘Steve?’ comes Dustin’s voice, a little breathless from the rush. He jogs forward, the beam of the flashlight bouncing around as Steve, determined, turns back towards the trees.

‘He’s here!’ he cries, dashing back to the same spot from before. ‘I just saw him through the window – he’s here!’

‘Wait!’ cries Dustin. ‘Who?’

But Steve isn’t listening, he’s plunging into the crop of trees beyond the yard, stumbling through the undergrowth blindly. He sees Dustin’s light scan across the woods but he ignores it, marches back in another direction when he gets nowhere. He’s here, he could have sworn, he could have –

Steve turns again and walks straight into Dustin. They both cry out, Dustin’s voice high and shrill. Dustin drops the flashlight and it rolls away, the light bleaching the undergrowth white. Steve grabs his elbow when Dustin wobbles.

‘Steve!’ he shrieks, panicked, voice high, ‘what is going on?!’

Steve is panting, his heart racing. He realises, horror dawning, that he just raced unthinking into the woods at night without a second thought, Dustin trailing after him, like he has any hope of fighting a vampire with nothing but his fists. Even now they’re breaking the rules they all set out, risking their lives. If Eddie was really here they’d be fucking dead.

But Eddie was here. He saw him, through the kitchen window. Steve doesn’t understand. ‘I thought,’ he says, and then sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair. ‘I thought I saw – I think I’m seeing things. Sorry, Dustin. Jesus.’ He looks back through the back yard, to the back door hanging wide open, the kitchen window with the dishes half finished. What the fuck was he thinking?

Dustin gives Steve a long look, and Steve knows he looks hysterical and loopy and tired. ‘Are you okay, Steve?’ he asks. ‘You’ve been kinda weird since –’

Yeah, since that. Since he spent a night locked in Family Video. Since he discovered vampires are real and they’re working for the psychotic mass murderer living in the alternate dimension with a doorway running through Hawkins. Since Eddie came back.

‘I think I need a lot of therapy,’ admits Steve, hands on his hips.

‘Yeah, no shit,’ says Dustin.

Steve shakes his head, grins lopsided despite himself at his idiot friend. He reaches out and puts a hand on Dustin’s shoulder. ‘Laugh it up, asshole,’ he says, ‘but I don’t think there’s a single one of us left that doesn’t need a shrink. Now let’s get inside before Hopper figures out we broke curfew and gets Eleven to kill us with her mind powers.’

And it’s fine, it’s all good. But he pauses in the doorway, glancing back out into the woods, and he could swear, could absolutely swear, that what he saw was real.

-

He feels mad.

He feels like he’s completely losing his mind, like after all these years of fighting monsters and soviets he’s finally cracked and his brain has been scrambled. Nothing is making sense. Steve is so terrified, afraid that anywhere he goes, any corner he turns, is going to reveal Eddie to him, alive and laughing and monstrous. He dreams of too big, gaping mouths full of rows of crowded, yellow fangs, of long, long fingers with talons for claws raking down his body, of being pinned to the dirt by the bats in the Upside Down and being feasted on, bleeding sticky pools of black blood into the cracked earth.

He thinks he sees Eddie hanging in his bedroom window before he closes the curtains and goes to bed. Thinks he sees him on the side of the road when he takes Robin home from her movie date with Vickie. Thinks he spots him smoking outside the hospital when he goes to pick up Lucas from his daily visit to Max. But it’s always flashes, always little glances that his brain pours his worst fears into. Always makes him panic for a moment, heart skipping a sickly beat, before he can breathe easy again.

It’s only a matter of time, then, before it happens again. And when it does happen for real he knows he’s not imagining it – and then he’s sure he is.

He’s sat out the front of Family Video after closing. He doesn’t want to be here, really, desperately doesn’t want to, but Robin’s parents couldn’t pick her up after her shift, Nancy has one last massive final to study for, and Hopper is working. So he has to sit out the front while Robin finishes help with the store’s stocktake, one extra step in getting it up and running to open again to the public.

She’s fifteen minutes late. It wouldn’t bother Steve, not usually, but even sitting in the parking lot just makes his skin crawl. He feels like he might shake out of his own flesh, body full of so much anxiety it’s making him jittery.

So of course he all but passes out in fright when he hears a noise.

It’s a metallic sound, an empty jangle coming from behind the car, cutting through the low buzz of the car stereo. As soon as Steve finishes having a minor heart attack he looks up at his rear-view mirror to see if he can spot the source – only to feel incredibly foolish. It’s an empty can of New Coke (gross), aluminium rolling across the asphalt. Steve watches it come to a slow stop, rocking back and forth on one slightly dinted side. It was nothing. Steve had just entirely wigged himself out over nothing.

Only, a second later Steve sees it launch itself into the air, the sound of crinkling metal ringing out, and then it soars in a short arch before bouncing away like it had been kicked.

It’s impossible. Totally impossible.

Steve swivels around in his seat, peering between the head rests. Eddie is standing just beyond the back of his car, waving beatifically.

Steve looks back at the rear-view mirror. There’s nothing there. He turns back to look at Eddie and Eddie hasn’t moved. His smile is wide, toothy. Holy shit, Eddie has no reflection.

More importantly, Eddie’s here. He’s here and he’s coming towards Steve’s car.

Steve watches Eddie’s approach with mounting horror, unsure of what the hell he should do. The car doors are locked, he made sure of that when he parked – done nervously as he pulled in outside the front of the store. So Eddie’s only way of getting in is through a window, or if he’s strong enough – and god knows every other vampire folklore rule about him seems to be the case, so why not include inhuman strength? – ripping open the door.

But Eddie’s not aiming for the driver’s side door, he’s just coming straight for the back of the car, and with swift athleticism – the kind Steve would only expect of someone like himself – Eddie nimbly launches himself up to stand on the trunk. The car shifts under Eddie’s weight, the metal thudding hollow underneath him. From there Steve watches his feet lift and then he’s stood on the roof of the car, the car’s ceiling protesting.

Shit. Holy shit, Steve is gonna die.

Steve swivels back in his seat and thinks, fuck it, nothing to lose. He leans on his car horn, slamming it over and over to get Robin’s attention. He doesn’t know what the hell she’s going to do, but hopefully more people being aware that Eddie is here and he’s taking it out on Steve’s poor abused beemer is going to spook Eddie or at least make him get the fuck off. Instead Eddie starts fucking jumping, making the car’s suspension start to jerk.

Steve can hear him laughing. What the fuck, what the fuck.

It takes a handful of seconds but then not one but three people gather in the window of the store, peering into the parking lot. Robin, and then the assistant manager and the casual that only works late nights. The instant they appear Eddie’s jumping stops, the car’s rocking halting, but Robin doesn’t look alarmed or scared or anything like he expects her to look.

Steve takes his hand off the horn.

She looks annoyed. She raises her hands in question, her face saying very loudly, “what the hell, Steve?” and Steve thinks, can she not fucking see Eddie? He’s standing on the roof of the BMW, how can she not see him?

Robin and her co-workers turn around and wander further back from the windows, and Steve sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. None of this makes sense.

And then there comes another bang from the roof.

The whole car shakes, and Steve automatically reaches to grab at whatever he can to steady himself – the passenger seat, his door. ‘Shit!’ he yelps, ducking his head from the noise coming from immediately above him, and then he looks up like he can see through the car. There’s a pause, a beat where nothing happens, and then Steve can hear footsteps disappearing towards the back before Eddie jumps down onto the trunk, reaches down with one hand to steady himself, and then kicks off to stand on the ground again.

Steve puts his head in his hands. He’s going to lose it.

A moment later there’s a knock on the driver’s side window, and Steve very reluctantly looks up. It’s Eddie, one hand on the top of the car, the other making a motion requesting Steve roll down his window. His smile is too big and sharp. Steve rolls down the window because the night can’t really get any worse at this point.

‘Hey man,’ says Eddie, like he’s going to start a conversation about the weather. ‘Saw you parked, couldn’t help but take the opportunity to fuck with you just to see the look of terror in your eyes. Anyway, I’m still working on the whole ability to fly –’

Ability to what, sorry?

‘– and when I landed just before I think I dented your roof a little bit. Sorry about that. I’m sure it’ll buff out.’

With that, Eddie knocks on the roof of Steve’s car, turns on his heel, marches to the edge of the road and just – just jumps into the air and flies away. Steve thinks about driving himself to the loony bin right now. This is absurd.

He’s still staring at the empty road when the front door of Family Video opens, its employees filing out. He turns just in time to see Robin walk around the side of his car, jiggle the passenger side handle, knock on the window like Eddie did. Steve unlocks the doors, turns the car on as Robin climbs inside.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I know we were like, twenty minutes late, but you can’t just do that, Steve! It’s embarrassing.’ But then she turns to look at Steve, and Steve just feels tired again. He’s always tired these days. Whatever expression he’s wearing, it makes Robin’s eyes go wide. ‘What –’ she says, ‘– Steve, did something happen?’

There’s no point in lying. Every other time he’s seen Eddie while he’s been with someone else no one has seen anything and Steve has brushed it off like it didn’t matter. But he feels unmoored, unhinged. He feels like he’s being pulled in two direction at once. Part of him is determined that everything is seeing is real, is happening, and Eddie is just doing whatever he can to torture Steve. There’s a lot of evidence in favour of that. But another part of Steve – a part that’s really loud right now, after the fucking flying – thinks maybe Steve has lost his mind completely. He doesn’t know which one is real anymore. And Robin can tell something is wrong, is the kind of person that won’t stop bugging Steve until he coughs up the truth, because she can probably tell by the worn look in his eyes that he’s impacted pretty badly by this.

‘Eddie was here,’ says Steve, and then it all starts to spill out – all the sightings in the last small handful of days, Steve’s terror at every shadow, every unchecked corner hiding Eddie in waiting, of the feeling like he’s always got to be vigilant, waiting for the inevitable. He talks about how each moment felt, all the little details that made him swear up and down it was real – Eddie’s frame drenched by the rain, the way his eyes glinted in the dark, Steve feeling for a terrible moment that the roof was about to buckle when Eddie landed on it.

When he finishes Robin is quiet and contemplative for a moment, eyes on the dash as she chews over everything Steve said. Steve waits, his stomach twisted in knots. Robin has a brilliant, unexpected brain. She’s the kind of genius to come through at the last second with an idea that no one else could come up with. She’ll find some explanation, some answer Steve has never considered.

After a long moment Robin looks up, determined, and Steve thinks, I love her so much.

‘I’ve been researching vampires,’ she says at last – and that makes a whole bunch of sense. Robin wants all the details to paint a picture, will find comfort in having every last stone turned over. Steve you can point in the direction of the monster and say, “aim for the legs,” but Robin likes to tackle things strategically.

‘We all assumed that it was the demo-bat bites that caused Eddie to come back to life, but the association between vampires and bats isn’t nearly as old as the myth, so I couldn’t really find anything prior to the twentieth century that might back up that idea. But we’re not working with myths here, we’re working with – something else? But if we were to go off the theory that the reason Eddie came back was because of how he died – which would kind of make more sense than Vecna-slash-Henry-slash-One reanimating him – then potentially there could be something said for… your bites. Right?’

Steve glances down at his stomach. The bites have healed – a little messy, the scarring isn’t cute. But they’ve long since healed. He looks back to Robin. ‘What does that have to do with me seeing Eddie everywhere?’

‘Well I was thinking,’ continues Robin. ‘Vampires have, like, mind control and stuff, right? They can compel you to do stuff. What if you’re connected mentally? Eddie’s probably connected to the hivemind, so he’d have some connection with Vecna. Maybe you’ve been convinced that you’re seeing something that isn’t there?’

‘So I’m imagining it?’

‘No!’ says Robin. ‘No, because someone else is putting the image in your head.’

Like Vecna can do, is what she doesn’t say, but Steve hears it loud and clear. The secret third option – and one that Steve is somewhat inclined to believe. Max and Chrissy and everyone else that Vecna got in the mind of had visions of horrible things, things that frightened and haunted them, things they carried with them wrapped up in layers of guilt. And Steve feels pretty damn frightened, and pretty damn guilty.

‘I think we need to go see Nancy,’ says Robin.

Steve blinks. ‘Nancy?’

‘She’s smart!’ says Robin. ‘Smarter than both of us. And she’s not a dick about it like Dustin, either. Plus she’s the only person we can speak to who got Vecna’d and lived to tell the tale, so she’ll be able to tell you if I’m right.’

Robin is brilliant. Robin is Steve’s favourite person in the whole world. Steve starts the car.

-

It’s a little before ten when Karen Wheeler opens the door to Steve and Robin, her brow pinched in confusion. Steve feels a little bad about the hour, that it’s so late, but they were already in the car, and sometimes Steve gets swept up in Robin’s energy of now now now, and if Robin is right – and part of him hopes she is somehow, at least so that they have an answer – that Vecna or Eddie or the whole damn Upside Down is in Steve’s head, then they need to do something about it sharpish.

‘Mrs W!’ says Robin as soon as Karen opens the door wide enough, and immediately shoves her way inside, Steve dragged along behind her. ‘Sorry about the time, Steve was driving me home from work and I remembered about a thing I needed to get from Nancy from school, so we’re just going to go up and get it from her and then be right out of your hair – are those new shoes? They are so cute, where did you get them from? My mum has a pair kind of similar, but yours are nicer. Anyway, we’ll be right back!’

And then she barges forward, Karen not having had a single chance to get a word in edgeways, and hauls Steve bodily towards the stairs by his wrist. Karen shuts the door behind them, bemused. As they’re on the stairs going up Robin leans into Steve and says, ‘It turns out saying everything that ever passes through my brain sometimes has its advantages,’ and Steve just snorts at her.

Robin barely knocks before she’s shoving Nancy’s door open once they get upstairs. Nancy is sitting in bed listening to a Walkman, and she pulls the headphones down around her neck when Steve and Robin walk in, the tinny sounds of INXS spilling out.

‘Nancy!’ says Robin brightly, and Steve braces himself for round two of Robin’s particular brand of bafflement. Robin snaps the door behind Steve and makes a beeline for the bed, plops herself down on the end facing Nancy. ‘We need your enormous brain and to delve into your traumatic experiences. And we have to be quick about it, because I told your mum I was just picking something up from you.’

Nancy looks at Steve with that big, doe-eyed expression of hers, and Steve knows it well enough to know that it looks all innocent, but she’s meticulously assessing. He probably looks insane right now – he’s certainly spent enough time tonight pulling at his hair and working on his thousand yard stare to convince her a screw or four are loose. But then Nancy’s gaze turns back to Robin, and Nancy clicks the tape in the Walkman off, takes the headphones off completely, and settles her hands primly in her lap, entirely focussed and shrewd.

‘What’s up?’ she asks.

‘Steve got Vecna’d,’ is Robin’s immediate response, and Nancy’s head swivels around so fast she must give herself whiplash.

‘What!?’ she cries. She launches off the bed towards Steve. Her mouth is hanging open, and she looks horrified and frightened, her hand fluttering slightly like she’s going to reach for Steve’s forehead, a gentle, motherly touch, or on his cheek like she used to, perhaps, but she drops it, hand balling up into a fist. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ she demands of Steve. ‘When did it start? How much time do we have?’

Steve blinks and then looks to Robin, annoyed. ‘Did you really have to scare her like that? We don’t know that I’ve been Vecna’d.’

‘It’s a logical conclusion,’ replies Robin tartly.

‘You called in a theory in the car.’

‘Wait,’ says Nancy, drawing back to stand between the two idiots in her bedroom. ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘Steve’s seeing things,’ offers Robin.

‘You need to stop doing that,’ snarks Steve, hands on hips, and then winces apologetically at Nancy. ‘She didn’t mean to scare you, Nance. What we mean is, I’m seeing stuff that doesn’t make sense. And I think it’s real, I’m pretty sure it’s real, but it keeps happening when the witnesses are distracted or can’t see, and I have no concrete evidence of whether it’s actually happening or not. And so Robin thought that, since you’ve had Vecna, you know, up here – ‘ and here he pauses to tap his temple, ‘ – maybe you could give us some insight on what it was like for you. To see if it’s anything like what I’m seeing.’

Nancy frowns again, all pragmatism and seriousness. Her eyes are on a patch of carpet between Robin and Steve for a long moment while she thinks, her arms crossed across her chest. Finally she says, ‘What are you seeing, exactly?’

‘Eddie,’ says Steve. ‘Everywhere, no matter where I go. Like he’s haunting me.’

The frown softens a little, and she looks up at Steve again. Steve feels a little raw under her gaze, a little like the pity in her eyes is just a hair too much. ‘Headaches?’ she asks quietly. ‘Nose bleeds?’

Steve shakes his head.

‘What does he do? Does he turn your world into a waking nightmare, or…?’

Steve shakes his head again. ‘Not in a literal sense. He just taunts me. So I’m always looking for him, always afraid he’ll come back and do to me what they did to –’ his voice cuts out, breaks into little pieces at their feet, but he knows that Nancy knows what he means. That he’s afraid of having the same end as Keith, buried six feet under, slashed to ribbons, blood staining the Family Video carpet so thick they had to cut out the section where he died and replace it.

Nancy sighs through her nose, a quiet drop of her shoulders, her eyebrows bunched with concern. She looks hesitant, and Steve can see the minute she’s made her mind up, that she doesn’t think this is – that she thinks that Steve is –

‘I don’t know, Steve,’ she says, gently, the same way Powell and Calahan were gentle. Frustratingly, gratingly, enragingly so. ‘If it was the curse there’d be more symptoms, and even then he has all the access he needs to Hawkins with all the other gates wide open. Do you think maybe this is – possibly – a reaction to what happened?’

Steve’s mouth twists. ‘Nance,’ he starts, but she raises a hand to cut him off.

‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you,’ she insists, and she moves closer again, puts her hand on his arm this time. ‘I believe you saw Eddie. I just don’t think it’s Vecna.’

‘But what if it’s Eddie?’ says Robin. ‘Like, vampire mind powers?’

Nancy opens her mouth to speak, but then pauses, gaze flicking back and forth between Steve and Robin. He thinks he sees her resolve, cautious like she’s keeping it to herself, and so he doesn’t believe her for a second when she says, ‘Maybe that’s it. It’s not impossible.’

It’s not what Steve wants. He wants something crystal, something concrete. Maybe isn’t going to cut it when he’s walking through life scared shitless of something that might not even be there.

It’s as he’s driving Robin home, the solemn silence between them looming and uncomfortable, that he realises Robin was wrong. There’s one other person he knows who’s had Vecna in his head, has had the hivemind crawl up inside him and make him see nightmares.

He’s just going to have to call Lenora to speak to him instead.

-

It’s too late to call anyone in Hawkins when Steve gets home, but California is a good few hours behind Indiana, so it should still be a reasonable hour if he calls now. The house is empty, his parents away again like usual, this time off on another tedious business trip. It’s fine though – better than fine, really – because this way he can make a phone call stood in the hallway and not have anyone snooping or interrupting like it would happen if his mother and father were here. There’s no privacy in this house – there never was for Steve. He turned thirteen and one little argument with his father saw his bedroom door removed for eight months, and ever since there’s not a fragment of his life his parents don’t feel welcome to. Its why he keeps his nail bat in the trunk of his car where his mother won’t look.

Honestly, it’s better when they’re not here.

Steve toes his shoes off at the door, doesn’t bother turning lights on in the house. He’s going to call Lenora, ask his questions, hopefully get his answers, and then go straight to bed. He dials the number he knows off by heart now in the dark, stood by the kitchen archway, one arm braced against the wall so he can lean over the sideboard the phone sits on.

The phone rings a couple times, buzzing, and then the call gets picked up.

‘Hello?’

Steve winces, because it’s Jonathan, and considers hanging up. If he does that though he risks Jonathan calling back. So he clears his throat and eats the frog. ‘Jonathan, hey,’ he says, and wipes his hand over his face. ‘It’s Steve.’

There’s a pause, as if Jonathan is confused or suspicious, and then he says, ‘Harrington?’

‘Yeah man,’ replies Steve.

‘Has something happened?’ asks Jonathan, and worry colours his voice. He must think something horrible is happening, that something just got worse and for some reason Steve has been given the responsibility for passing on the news.

‘No,’ he says, ‘no, um, everything is fine. Or, you know, as fine as it can be. No, I, um –’ he pauses, swallows nervously. This might be about to blow up in his face. ‘I wanted to talk to Will?’

There’s a long moment of silence on the other end of the line, and then Jonathan says, suspicious, ‘Is it about –’

‘I’d rather not say,’ cuts in Steve in a rush. His stomach twists. ‘I just – I just need to speak to him, Jonathan. Please.’

There’s another long, long moment, and Steve feels the anxiety screwing up inside of him, sick and impatient. He knows Jonathan doesn’t trust him outside of keeping each other alive, and Steve hasn’t made an effort to try to change that, but this feels a little more personal than “I don’t much care for you”. Or maybe he’s imagining it, long-held panic and frustration making him short.

‘We’re back in like, three days,’ says Jonathan at last. ‘Can’t this wait?’

‘No,’ says Steve, unwilling to explain his concerns about what having a vampire in his head might mean as far as life expectancy. ‘Please, man –’

‘If you upset him I’m going to drive back to Indiana tonight to kick your teeth in,’ barks Jonathan suddenly, and Steve reels back a bit, alarmed. He’s always known Jonathan is super protective of his little brother but that response seems totally over the top.

‘Jesus, relax!’ He chokes out in reply. ‘Why would I want to upset him? He’s my –’ what, friend? Not exactly. They’re acquaintances at best. ‘I’m the babysitter,’ he offers instead.

Jonathan huffs. He seems to consider for a minute, so loud Steve can all but hear his brain ticking over as he fights with himself, and then he can hear a whispered conversation, but it’s muffled like Jonathan has his hand over the receiver, just hissing. Eventually he hears Will say, loudly, ‘Give me the phone, asshole,’ and Steve thinks, finally.

‘Don’t call me asshole, shithead,’ snaps Jonathan, and then there’s some shuffling down the line as the phone changes hands.

‘God, you’re such a –’ and then Will giggles, bright, and Steve feels like a dick because obviously Will is in good enough spirits and he’s about to shit all over that by asking him to clarify his trauma to a guy who saved his friends a couple times but basically hasn’t said three whole things to him in the four years they’ve known each other.

‘Hey, Steve,’ says Will.

‘Hey,’ says Steve back around the lump in his throat. ‘How’s California?’

‘Fine,’ says Will in that kind of dismissive way teenagers do small talk with adults. You ask the questions and they just grunt and shrug. Steve still does it with his own parents. ‘How’s Hawkins?’

‘A shit show,’ admits Steve a little honestly. ‘So nothing's changed.’

Will snorts good-naturedly. ‘Remember when you used to think that being in a monster movie would be cool?’

‘No clue, man,’ says Steve easily. He’d be disarmed by how easy it is to joke about how messed up their lives are now, but it’s setting things at ease, making it feel like less of a task to ask the bit that comes next. ‘I am never going to watch Dracula the same way again though.’

‘Yeah?’ says Will. ‘Dustin said you make a pretty bad ass Van Helsing.’

‘Was that before or after I ran into the woods unarmed the other night?’ Steve’s mouth says before his brain can properly register. As soon as it catches up he cringes miserably, but Will’s response isn’t what he’s expecting.

‘Bad?’ He asks, softly.

Steve takes a breath in and it shakes. He releases it and it’s still just as unsettled. ‘Yeah, I – yeah. Pretty bad.’

‘How can I help?’ Asks Will immediately, and Steve could kiss him, he’s so grateful. God, why did he have to go and bond with Dustin when there was a sweet, soft member of the gang that wouldn’t mock Steve and would take him seriously? (Because Dustin is a hilarious scamp and the best little brother Steve’s never had, even if he is a little shit, and because Will has Jonathan and that’s why he’s allowed to be all gentle, unbroken edges where Steve and Dustin are a little jagged.)

‘I just – ’ Steve pauses, considers his phrasing before he tries again. ‘I’ve been seeing things. Eddie. Everywhere, like he’s stalking me, just constantly. But no one else can see him, and Robin thinks – she wondered if it was maybe Vecna? And the only people I can ask that have experienced something like that are you and Nancy, but when I tried to ask her about it she got real suspicious and implied that I was just, I don't know, traumatised by Eddie, and that Vecna would have no reason to start haunting me. Which makes sense, maybe, because why would he open more gates? But Eddie said he had a plan for me - for me specifically - so I have to - I have to know. I need to know what’s going on in my head, if it’s like what you saw.’

‘Well, he wasn’t exactly preying on me,’ says Will. ‘I was possessed by the hivemind.’

‘But you saw stuff,’ says Steve, trying to explain his logic. ‘And Vecna is part of the hivemind too, right? So it would be connected.’

‘Maybe,’ says Will. ‘I could see the Mindflayer. What are you –’ he pauses and then his voice drops like he’s trying to give himself some privacy. Maybe Jonathan is hanging around in the background. ‘What are you seeing?’

‘Eddie,’ says Steve. ‘In Dustin’s backyard and in my bedroom window and on the side of the road and, and, and outside the hospital and stuff. He jumped on my car while I was waiting for Robin earlier tonight and I couldn’t see him in the mirror but he was there.’

‘Okay,’ says Will, thinking. ‘Okay. And how long for?’

‘Six days straight,’ says Steve. ‘So if it is Vecna we’ve got a deadline.’

‘Okay,’ says Will again. ‘But are you - when you see him is there, um, Upside Down stuff? Are you transported there or are you here?’

‘Here,’ says Steve, ‘but Max only started going to the Upside Down at the end.’

‘She heard a clock chiming too, right?’ says Will. ‘Are you hearing that?’

Steve pauses, fingers absently fiddling with the phone cord. ‘No,’ he says eventually, hesitancy choking him a little. ‘No, it’s just - just Eddie.’

He’s met with more silence on the end of the line. He wonders if maybe he's convinced Will he’s nuts. He knows what he saw though - he knows. ‘I mean, I still think he’s actually real, that’s he’s really there when I’m seeing him, so maybe it’s not –’

‘Steve?’ says another voice on the line. It’s Jonathan again. Steve’s heart jerks and he feels nauseous. Did Jonathan just listen in on the whole phone call?

‘Yeah,’ says Steve, flat.

‘Don’t be upset,’ says Jonathan, ‘but this doesn’t really sound like Upside Down stuff. I think maybe your brain is trying to deal with what you saw the night Eddie and his friends killed Keith.’

‘I don't think –’ chokes out Steve, but he can't finish his sentence, he can’t, and Jonathan keeps talking but Steve can’t hear him – can’t hear anything past the rushing of blood in his ears because something –

Something just triggered the flood lights in the back yard.

His head pounds to the tempo of his racing heart, and he can’t look, he doesn’t want to, but he has to – he can’t ignore the spill of bright white light across the side of his face, down one side of his body, pooling at his feet.

Steve turns to the left. He can see from the hallway into the kitchen, once bathed in shadows. Now it stands bleached pale against the light from the outside, the sliding doors letting light in through the gap in the lace curtains. From where he’s standing he has a clear line of sight straight outside all the way to the pool, barely touched by Steve since Barb died. The flood lights were installed only weeks ago, Steve’s parents conscious of a possible murderer on the run in the local area.

The swimming pool is lit from the inside, the eerie blue water still, the tiles around it outlined strangely. But Steve barely focuses on that, because stood on the deck right at the edge between the outdoor dining set and the steps down to the pool, backlit like an angel, light around his hair like a halo, like a painting, clothes in shadow, features obscured, is Steve’s haunting nightmare. Tall and lithe, muscles all loose now but bristling with power, stance casual, hands in his pockets. Eddie.

Steve stares unblinking for a long minute. Eddie stares back, and Steve can barely breathe, is too afraid to move. He waits, and waits, still as he knows how. And then Eddie tilts his head.

‘Steve?’ says a voice on the phone. ‘Steve, are you there?’

It’s Will, Steve thinks distantly. Will is calling for him, has been for a little bit.

‘Gotta go,’ says Steve, calm, but his voice sticks a little, his mouth dry and tacky. ‘He’s here.’

He’s being spoken to again, someone is saying something from the other line, and their voice is urgent, worried, but Steve isn’t listening. He hangs up the phone with a click, the noise of plastic meeting plastic loud in the unsettling stillness. He can’t take his eyes off Eddie.

He feels oddly serene as he moves to the kitchen, socked feet padding over shiny tiles. Eddie stays where he is, stood back a ways at the end of the deck, loose and lethal, patient. Steve gets to the glass door and reaches to slide it open. He stands in the doorway, just this side of the open night, and despite the shadows over Eddie’s face, Steve can see the shape of a smile forming, close-mouthed, eyes narrowing.

‘Are you real?’ asks Steve.

Eddie’s smile grows wider, teeth glinting through, eyes bright with mirth. He is, in this moment, as close as he can look to human - teeth blunt, eyes dark, nothing wild or animal about him, even if he makes Steve shiver at just the thought of how dangerous he can be. His smile is all malice, though, slow and cruel, a little mocking. ‘Sure am, lover boy,’ he says easily. Steve doesn’t know what to do with the vague flirting - even when Eddie was still alive he was vaguely flirting with Steve, pushing to see how much room he’d be given, how far he could go. It makes Steve as nervous as he is about this man standing in his back yard in the first place. ‘Why,’ continues Eddie, faux innocent, ‘do you think I’m some figment of your imagination that you dreamed up?’

Steve frowns, unwilling to admit that he doesn’t even know what he thinks anymore. But it doesn’t matter what he thinks, what he might suggest in response, because Eddie gasps, eyes wide, and then that grin is enormous, full wattage on display, all teeth and arching eyebrows and cheek dimples.

‘You think Henry’s in your head!’ He crows, obviously delighted. ‘Oh, that’s cute, he’s gonna get a real kick out of that.’ And then the smile dims, grows more towards a smirk. ‘No, Harrington,’ he says, ‘it’s all me. It’s been me from the very beginning.’

Steve huffs. He’s not sure whether to believe him or not. And besides, as much as knowing he’s not seeing things might be some relief, the knowledge that he’s being stalked by a monster wearing his sort-of friend’s face isn’t exactly comforting. Steve feels suddenly exhausted, so tired of having spent the past week on his metaphorical toes for the fear. ‘What do you want?’ he snaps.

Eddie rolls his eyes. ‘Ugh, always straight past the small talk.’ He waves his hands in Steve’s direction and his nails are those long, dark claws, the first real hint of what’s lying under his face. ‘Come on! Shoot the shit with me a little bit, Harrington. It’s so much more interesting when you give me a chance to get a rise out of you - pun intended.’

He winks, and Steve rolls his eyes. Eddie was never quite so brash as this before, never so open. His impulse, if he weren’t so pants-wettingly afraid, would be to automatically banter back. Steve is good at flirting. He likes it, likes the easy back and forth, likes watching someone get flustered from what he says, feeling the exciting thrill of the effect of someone else’s words on him. But he’s not going to flirt with Eddie and he’s not even going to offer him anything bordering on a response. Besides, he has pressing questions - a whole volley of them. If he plays his cards right it might even get him some answers.

‘What are you doing here?’ He asks.

‘I wanted to see you,’ purrs Eddie, and slinks a little closer. He hooks his thumbs through his own belt loops, sways a little on his feet so his skinny hips jut forward. ‘I like seeing you, Steve. You're fun.’

‘To torture?’ asks Steve.

Eddie shrugs. ‘Sure.’

‘And where exactly is the torture supposed to be leading?’

Eddie pauses, and his eyes glitter. That either means Steve has asked the exact right question or entirely the wrong one. Eddie’s slow, silky smile, fangs extending in his mouth, offers no further answer. ‘Depends,’ he says. He tilts his head sideways so his hair all cascades over one shoulder, still all flirtatious and come-hither. ‘Henry has a plan for you, of course, but I’ve been given the all clear to put my little spin on it. And I plan to, trust me.’

Steve crosses his arms. ‘So, what's the plan?’

‘Mine or Henry’s?’

Steve meets Eddie’s gaze evenly. Eddie’s enjoying this, toying with Steve like cat and mouse. He likes leading Steve on, making Steve twist himself into knots to get answers. But he is giving Steve answers, even by dodging questions. Vecna has a plan and Eddie’s adding colour to it. That means there’s chance for a flaw, for Eddie’s manipulation to leave them with a weak spot. Steve hedges his bets, decides he’s going to play the game. It’s not like his friends are going to get hurt just by Steve talking.

‘I'm not calling him that,’ he says in order to see Eddie’s reaction.

Eddie shrugs, but he looks unbothered. He raises a hand to study his nails, sniffs. Coy.

Steve groans. ‘Okay fine, tell me Henry's stupid plan.’

It gets exactly what Steve is looking for – a reaction. Because Eddie’s eyes flick back up to Steve, black claws forgotten, and then he looks like the cat who got the cream, incredibly smug. He tuts loftily and taps at the side of his nose. ‘That's need-to-know business, I'm afraid,’ he says. ‘Sorry, Steve.’

‘Okay then,’ says Steve, and lifts his chin, ‘so what's your plan?’

Eddie smirks. ‘Invite me in and I'll tell you,’ he says.

Steve smirks back. ‘Tell me and I'll consider coming out.’

There’s a pause, and Eddie’s eyes burn, staring deep into Steve like he’s trying to peer inside his head and see the cogs ticking away. Steve waits him out, watches the sharp expression on his face morph again, watches him shift gears. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I don’t have to tell you all my secrets to get you out of that house, Harrington. I could have you eating out of the palm of my hand if I wanted to.’

Steve squints at Eddie in disbelief. ‘Uh huh,’ he says, the corners of his mouth curling in distaste.

‘Sure,’ says Eddie lightly. ‘I mean, I’ve been driving you mad for days, seeing me out of the corner of your eye. You think I can’t just do that to one of the others? I know where Dustin lives, Harrington. Robin and I were in a school play together in her freshman year and we ran lines together one time, so I know where she lives too. I don’t know where Sinclair or Wheeler live, but I know they’re next door neighbours, and thanks to your taxi service, I know now that Sinclair is at the hospital visiting Max every day. So all I have to do is follow him home sometime and now not only have I got big Sinclair and little Sinclair in the bag, but big Wheeler and little Wheeler too. And – and here’s the really great part –’ he pauses, face bright with mania, hands out in front of him as he showboats. ‘- little Wheeler is still dating the girl with superpowers. All I have to do is follow Mike once to go see his little girlfriend, who lives with Sheriff Hopper, who, if Mike’s overzealous blabbing is correct, is dating Byer’s mum, and suddenly I have the whole set. Every… last… one of them.’

He punctuates his last sentence with a dramatic raise of his eyebrows, and he’s moved closer and closer, now only arms distance from Steve who is frozen in the doorway.

Fuck.

Fuck, he’s right. Calling the code red might have made sure that everyone is safer, that no one’s going to be singled out by Eddie or his band mates, but it also means that Steve has been giving Eddie everything. He’s been making everyone unsafe, because Hawkins is small, and there’s only so many places any one of the gang can be.

‘Just imagine,’ continues Eddie, and rolls his hand on his wrist, fingers loose. ‘You can’t be with the kids all the time, Steve. At some point, there’s not going to be an adult to drive them somewhere. Summer’s right around the corner, they’re gonna have whole days with nothing to do but ride their bikes around town. They’re teenagers, so they’re not going to want to sit inside and sweat. And eventually, one day, one of them is gonna be late. Or stuck without a ride. And they’re going to think it’s fine – it’s just down the block, it’s just down the road a little ways. It can’t hurt to walk, to ride their bike. It’s a five minute trip. And the sun won’t set for ages, right? The sun is low, but it’s not that low. But they’ll be wrong, Steve. The sun will set on them, and they’ll be alone in the road in the dark. And when that happens, no one will be there to stop me. No one will even know until it’s too late.’

Steve swallows down the panic clawing up his throat. He feels sick, his chest squeezing tight. This is all his fault. His friends are all going to get killed and it’s all his damn fault.

Eddie sidles forward again, so close that Steve stumbles back a step. He leans on the sliding door, shoulder against the glass, head tipped back the other way so he can keep eye contact. He peers at Steve, eyes dropping down to watch the way Steve’s pulse is fluttering in his throat.

‘Listen to that heart of yours going,’ says Eddie, almost in awe. ‘It’s like a rabbit, it’s going so fast.’ His eyes flick up again, to meet Steve’s. ‘D’you think if it keeps speeding up it might give out?’ He tuts. ‘Can’t have that, Harrington, I have so much planned for you.’

‘Leave my friends out of this,’ Steve chokes out, and it sounds brave, but he’s terrified. His hands are balled into fists at his sides, and he sets his jaw so Eddie can’t see either of them tremoring.

Eddie rolls his eyes. ‘God, you’re so predictable.’ He waves a hand and then the more monstrous of his features start to recede, his eyes turning brown again, his fangs drawing back until his mouth is human but his canine teeth are still sharp-edged and long. ‘Your friends are in this, whether they want to be or not. You made sure of that when the lot of you stood in Henry’s way. And you’ve all been doing it a lot longer than me, so don’t think he’s going to be quite as forgiving to you.’

Steve screws up the little courage he can find in the corners of himself. ‘So?’ he asks, like he has a hand left to play.

Eddie sighs, like he thinks Steve is stupid. ‘So, I can’t stop what’s coming for all of you. But if you were to do something for me, Stevie,’ his eyes glitter, ‘maybe I can turn a blind eye on the comings and goings of your friends for a little while. Let you, I don’t know, get a good night’s sleep for once?’

It’s a trap. It has to be. ‘You’ll back off?’ asks Steve, incredulous.

Eddie tilts his head to one side and then the other, considering. ‘I’m a little wounded you don’t want me around, honestly.’ He claps a hand over his chest, stumbles back a step or two, wincing dramatically, eyes scrunching shut. He tips his head back like he’s calling out to the heavens. ‘Is it really so bad that the cute boy doesn’t want me around?’

‘Don’t call me cute,’ snaps Steve automatically, and Eddie drops his chin to give Steve a look.

‘Don’t pretend I didn’t have you on tenterhooks ever since I called you “big boy” in the RV,’ he tosses back. ‘You like it when I flirt with you.’

‘I also like not being stalked by vampires,’ offers Steve, voice full of acid. It leaves them at a stalemate, Eddie’s exuberance squashed out into something that looks more like annoyance.

‘Well,’ he says, a little loftily. ‘I suppose that means you don’t want to take that deal on the table.’ He nods with some finality, turns away from Steve. ‘No problem, Steve-o, I guess I’ll see you around. Tell your pals to watch their backs!’

‘Wait!’ calls Steve, despite himself, taking a step towards the back yard, his hand outstretched. He watches Eddie pause, sees him turn his face back towards Steve, in profile, hair shifting enough so Steve can make out the outline of his close-mouthed smile.

Steve scrunches his eyes shut. Fuck. Fuck it, he’s just played into Eddie’s hand again. He feels unbelievably stupid.

‘You’ll turn a blind eye?’ he asks eventually, voice low.

‘Maybe,’ says Eddie, unmoving.

‘For how long?’ asks Steve.

Eddie twists sideways, face still in profile. He’s outlined again like he was before, a heavenly angel, an eldritch monster.

‘Once or twice,’ he says, eyes flicking across to Steve. ‘Any more than that and we’d have to renegotiate.’

Steve hesitates, because the next question is the big one. The one he doesn’t really want to know – but he has to. This could change everything. ‘And what,’ he says, ‘do you want from me in return?’

Eddie turns again, smile turned sharp, cat-like. His eyes seem to slide over Steve top to toe, slippery as he assesses. By the time his gaze meets Steve again Steve feels utterly debauched, as if he has been slowly, carefully undressed and then promptly redressed and put back on his shelf. Eddie puts his hands back in his pockets, boyish, and then tilts his head again, all that hair swinging over the sharp tilt of his shoulders.

‘I want to taste you,’ he says, slow and dark.

Steve can’t help it. He cannot help the high pitch giggle that bursts forth from his mouth unbidden, the way it drags on, manic and breathless. He can’t get his lungs full but he doesn’t even care, it’s the most absurd thing Eddie’s said all night, it’s the stupidest thing he’s said maybe ever. Tears start to leak out of his eyes, Steve’s laughing so hard.

Eddie just glares at him.

‘I’m sorry!’ Steve wheezes eventually. He clutches at his aching stomach, wipes the laughter tears off his cheeks. ‘Sorry, sorry, I’m taking his seriously.’ He heaves a sigh, tamps down an errant snicker. ‘I just – sorry, dude, but did you even hear how that sounded? You want to taste me? Take a guy out to dinner first.’

Eddie’s lip curls in a sneer. It seems for a moment he’s not going to respond, is just going to let Steve get his hysterics out of his system. But then, quite suddenly, he rushes forward, a blur. He slams his hands on either side of the open door, glass shuddering, and his face is a graphic, vicious snarl. He’s at once as monstrously vampiric as he has ever been – eyes like rubies, mouth a gaping maw of crowded fangs, face contorted. He roars and Steve stumbles in fright, collapses onto his backside on the tiles. He gasps up at Eddie, heart racing.

‘I AM GOING TO FUCKING EAT YOU,’ screams Eddie, mouth snapping, teeth clenched.

The flood lights go out, nothing left around the edge of the patio and the pool to trigger the sensor anymore, and they’re plunged into neon-tinted darkness, only the pool lights left on. Eddie is like a phantom, a dark figure looming over Steve, hanging over the doorway, an ever-constant threat.

‘But sure,’ says Eddie, voice low, ‘keep laughing. It’s so funny, thinking about how I’m going to murder all of your friends.’

Steve feels a chill run all the way down his spine, settle like curdled milk in his gut. For the second time since Eddie came back Steve feels grim determination to die for his friends. To give himself up so that they can keep going. It’s what he does, after all. He’s the babysitter, he stands in between the monster and the kids with determination and a pretty decent swing and usually takes a beating. That’s what he’s good for. This is no different than facing down a pack of demo-dogs with a baseball bat full of nails.

‘You,’ starts Steve, and his voice comes out in a croak. He pauses, swallowing around his heavy, dumb tongue, and tries again. ‘You want to –’

‘To bite you,’ cuts in Eddie. ‘Yes.’

Steve nods, once, eyes in the middle distance because he can’t actually bring himself to look at Eddie anymore. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ he asks.

Eddie draws back, barely by inches, his hands still griping the door frame, the closed door. ‘I need you alive,’ he says in answer. ‘For now, anyway. I plan on your dying by my hand eventually.’

It’s just posturing, but Steve feels that threat like it’s been whispered in his ear, like it’s been promised to his timeline, his string of fate being given a final cutting point. He can feel the shears hovering near, waiting for the opportune moment to cut down and end everything. With Eddie so close it feels almost inevitable, especially when he goes making threats like that. Steve wants to die an old man in his sleep – but maybe these things were never meant to be. He was going to die for Nancy Wheeler just recently. He’s almost died for Dustin before, for Max and for Lucas. Maybe in the end he doesn’t die for anyone but himself, drained until the last drop. Maybe he dies for Eddie.

‘Romantic,’ says Steve glibly.

A laugh bubbles forth from Eddie, surprised. ‘You’re a sick fuck, Harrington. You sure I can’t convince you to make you like me?’

‘I’m good,’ says Steve.

Eddie nods. ‘Suit yourself. And what of our deal? You down?’

Steve pulls himself to his feet, eyes on Eddie the entire time. He knows Eddie can’t come any closer, that the barrier of the doorway into the house won’t let him without Steve’s express permission, but the part of his brain that’s all fight or flight won’t let him look away.

‘How do I know you’re not just going to kill me the minute I walk through the door?’ Steve asks.

Eddie opens his mouth, seemingly to retaliate, but then he stops, lets out a huff. ‘Fine,’ he says, and draws back a handful of steps, lets his vampire features fade way, hiding under the surface. With a flourish he lays a hand over his heart, over his dark t-shirt. He raises his voice with dramatic flair, a true dungeon master playing a character. ‘I do solemnly swear that on this night your death shall not come to you, Steve Harrington. At least, not by me.’ He raises his other hand in a three-finger salute and grins, boyish. ‘Scout’s honour.’

Steve scoffs. ‘You’re no boy scout, Munson.’

Eddie grins wider. ‘I’d be insulted, but coming from Mr Scout Leader himself…’

It’s easy to pretend he’s offended, even though he feels oddly fond to Eddie’s teasing. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he says.

Eddie shrugs. ‘I saw you working in that ice cream shop last summer, Steve,’ he replies. ‘With the sailor uniform? Real cute.’

‘Yeah,’ says Steve automatically, ‘and I looked real cute in it too.’

Eddie makes a face, and it’s dark, so its hard to read, but Steve could swear, he could just swear, that that face is a quiet agreement. It feels warm, feels real. Feels like Eddie from before, throwing Steve his battle vest, complaining about Dustin’s tone, leaning back in the driver’s seat in the RV to call Steve “big boy”. Something about that sets Steve at ease, as much as it can. Steve resolves himself to wearing turtlenecks for the next week, despite the mounting heat.

He steps over the threshold, out onto the deck, socks catching on the rough texture of the paving stones. Eddie is stood stock still just feet away, the smile frozen on his face, dining set between them, but Steve can see the way he’s buzzing, excitement bubbling up inside of him. Steve walks to him, drawn in, heart fluttering in his ribcage.

‘Where do you want me?’ he asks once he’s stood an arm’s length away.

Eddie’s eyes narrow slightly in consideration, and then he reaches out, hooks his fingers into the belt loop of Steve’s shorts and tugs so they’re stood toe to toe. He looks human now, like himself from before if not for the pattern of waxy scars that start near his jawline on one side, travel down his neck and under the collar of his shirt. It’s a scar from the demo-bats, from when they ripped him apart, from when he died to save them all. Steve has a cluster of moles on his jaw in that same spot, and he can see Eddie trace his eyes over them as he considers where to bite down. Maybe he already knows, but he’s eying the line of Steve’s throat all the same, openly staring. Anticipation builds in Steve’s chest. This doesn’t feel like something dangerous, it feels kind of like a surrender. Like a kindness. It’s strange, strangely intimate. He swallows nervously and Eddie’s eyes follow the way his throat bobs.

‘Hurry it up already,’ says Steve, but his voice comes out a whisper, apprehension lining the edges. Eddie’s eyes flick up to him, catalogue Steve’s expression. Steve feels rooted to the spot.

‘Don’t move,’ says Eddie, a sharp, quiet warning, like Steve could right now, like he isn’t frozen solid.

Eddie reaches up with one hand to push back Steve’s hair from one side of his neck and Steve feels the tips of his claws light up along his skin like trails of fire. Eddie edges closer, hot breath on Steve’s throat.

Steve breathes out unevenly. He’s broken out in goosebumps everywhere. His hands are shaking. It feels like the moment of still before a first kiss, tension strung tight.

Eddie bites.

Steve’s mind whites out. He jerks, his body immediately protesting, grabs at Eddie’s arms, tries to twist out of his grip. The bite is a sharp, bright pain leeching through Steve’s right side, hot and throbbing and horrible, and Steve’s throat makes an ugly, choked out sound in agony, guttural and raw. His fingers scrabble, clawing at Eddie, reaching up, ripping at Eddie’s face, his hair.

Eddie growls low and then he’s moving, shoving Steve backwards, so fast and strong that Steve is forced along, feet dragging, his whole body limp like a ragdoll. Eddie shoves Steve hard against the glass of the fixed panel, sending the frame shuddering again. One hand tears Steve’s fingers from his hair, pins it to the metal siding. The other goes over Steve’s mouth, thumb hooked under Steve’s chin to keep his head tilted upwards and out of the way. Steve gasps into Eddie’s fingers, squeezes his eyes shut. Eddie’s grip is like iron, unbending and painful. His hips and chest are pressed firmly against Steve’s, legs crowded together.

It goes on forever. It goes on too long, Steve pressed hard against the door, pinned by Eddie’s body and hands, his mouth burning against the wound he’s made in Steve’s neck. Steve can feel his own blood pumping out onto Eddie’s tongue, sliding past the seal of Eddie’s lips and into Steve’s t-shirt. His mind reels, boggles, because despite how much it hurts, despite knowing how close he is to death, there is something electric about the curl of Eddie’s body over him, the way he was manhandled and held in place where Eddie wanted him. Arousal pools low in his belly, and isn’t that just messed up? Steve must have been hit too many times in the head in order to find this attractive. But he does, and god, it’s devastating, so shameful and wrong, and it still makes him simmer with want.

When Eddie finally unlatches, his tongue runs over the bite mark to sooth, and it goes straight to Steve’s core. Steve whimpers, flooding with humiliation. He doesn’t want to open his eyes, but Eddie hasn’t moved entirely away, is still holding Steve against the door. Eventually he has to, pries his eyes open, and Eddie is staring at him, so close Steve can make out the way his pupils are blown wide, his mouth open. ‘Careful making noises like that, Steve,’ he says. ‘It might make me think you like it.’ There’s blood on his mouth, on his chin. A voice in the back of Steve’s mind tells him to lick up the mess, and he shoves it down, horrified.

‘Get off,’ he whispers.

Eddie raises an eyebrow.

Steve reaches up with his free hand and tugs at the hand mashing his head into the door. ‘Get off,’ he says again, this time with conviction.

Eddie slithers backwards, untangling himself from Steve. As he steps backwards Steve finds himself weak-kneed. He would say it’s the blood loss but his mind is suggesting otherwise, suggesting lewd, gross things he doesn’t want to consider. Either way he grips the side of the door to steady himself, and watches Eddie back away, wiping the blood off his chin casually. He licks his fingers. Steve wants to die a little.

‘Nice doing business with you,’ says Eddie after a beat. ‘If you ever want to do it again, I will gladly take you up on the offer, Harrington – especially if you moan all sweet like that next time.’

Steve feels himself blush, and of course that’s when Eddie steps back into the range of the flood light sensor and the light switches back on. Eddie sees Steve’s face colour and he smirks. There’s blood still lingering on the corner of his mouth. Steve adds the word “handsome” to the handful of words he’d use to describe Eddie and tries not to think too hard about why.

‘See you round, big boy,’ says Eddie in departure, and then turns and waltzes across Steve’s backyard and into the trees. Steve watches him go, fingers clamped over the bite mark on his neck. He’s absolutely going to let Eddie bite him again if the opportunity arises. It’s so fucking stupid, but he will jump at the chance without a second thought.

Nobody can ever know about this, not if Steve can help it. If he’s careful, no one will.