Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

cyclical (adjective): (1) of a line, returning into itself so as to form a closed curve. (2) belonging to a definite a fucking infinite chronological cycle.

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

loop one

the morning after Eddie’s world went to shit.

It hurts, to be jabbed with an oar.

It gets him right in that meaty part where neck becomes shoulder. If it were a little higher, Eddie wonders if it would’ve knocked him out, Vulcan-style.

But it doesn’t knock him out. Far from it. Eddie’s coiled muscles snap like a spring, launch him out of the boat he’s hiding in and toward the offending jabber. He gets one fist wrapped up in their shirt, holds the broken beer bottle he’s kept on him (as a very last resort) to the jabber’s neck.

Fight or flight, baby. And it’s far too late for him to run.

(He’s also got nowhere else to go)

It’s here that Eddie notices the mole on the neck where the bottle is. Sees another mole, another one, and christ alive, he knows these moles. This neck.

After all, he'd spent hours staring at it, at the face attached to it during his second round of senior English.

Some cruel joke of the universe, probably, that he's gonna die now by the beautiful hands of the boy he's spent so long pining after.

And Eddie can feel his heartbeat where they’re pressed chest to chest, can see the sheen of sweat on his speckled neck where he’s holding the broken bit of bottle, can feel his breath on his face, wet and scared.

It’s Steve Harrington who wields the oar.

And Eddie’s just as scared as he is.

Isn’t that funny?

Eddie only rips his eyes away from Steve’s when he realizes someone is saying his name. Screaming it. Hard to hear when your heartbeat’s in your ear, Eddie supposes.

But he turns, sort of jerks toward it, coiled-up as he is.

And it’s one of his sheep. Bleating madly, O great shepherd, we’ve found a wolf. And it’s not the boy you’re pinning, and broken glass has nothing on its teeth.

Dustin doesn’t actually say that. But he means the same thing.

And Steve, pinned between the wall and Eddie, is whispering that he won’t hurt him. Cowing like a dog, against the glass on his throat and the fist in his shirt. A sheepdog, Eddie decides, easily mistaken for a wolf when the stakes are as high as they are right now, when everything is just so dark.

Steve drops the oar, his stupid fucking oar, and the crash of wood on cement floor makes Eddie jump, press closer with his body and harder with the bottle.

Steve’s brown eyes go wide.

“I’m cool, man. I’m cool.” He says, voice strained, throat exposed. It comes out like a whine, and Eddie in his terror pictures him tucking a tail between his legs. Shaking. Afraid.

Eddie wants to trust him. Really, he does.

But what if he’s sided with the wolf?

“What are you doing here?” Eddie says, trying to sound strong but his voice cracks and the fear seeps through, flows over.

Not so great of a shepherd, huh?

Steve’s eyes soften just slightly at it, and Eddie thinks that maybe he can trust him. Them.

They’re swearing he’s safe, all the little sheep and the pretty sheepdog he’s stuck up against the wall, and Eddie wants this to be over, he wants help. So he lets go of Steve, who gasps and coughs (maybe he’d pinned him too hard, strangled him a little with his own shirt. Eddie’s stomach grows heavy with guilt) and slips low down the wall.

Eddie’s hand is shaking. He is shaking.

What the fuck. What the fuck?

Here, the sheep console the shepherd, tell him they know all about the wolf. And Eddie tells them just how the wolf kills, how it bloodies and mangles and doesn’t even feast.

A wolf who doesn’t eat? He thinks his sheep would say. Nay, it can’t be!

But the sheep simply nod and blink their sad, sage eyes. Say they’ve fought wolves like this before, wolves who kill just to be killing. Eddie shudders when they ask what happened next, tells of how he fled from the innocent dead lamb for fear of the wolf finding him next.

The sheep bleat in sympathy, you’re only a shepherd, we wouldn’t expect you to face down a wolf.

And it’s here that Eddie realizes just how shit of a shepherd he’s truly been.

Steve, loyal now he’s not being threatened, brings him cereal and a Yoohoo (the more expensive kind in a glass bottle, even. Eddie feels spoiled rotten) the next morning. He offers the bag with a sweet little wave, one that Eddie reciprocates because he feels kind of bad accepting it from him after pinning him to a wall not even a full day ago.

But Steve doesn’t mention it, so Eddie doesn’t either.

Coward.

It’s strategizing from here on out, it seems. The sheep need to learn how to bite back at the wolf. The shepherd needs to...do whatever the fuck a shepherd does when he can’t be seen protecting the sheep. The whole town thinks he’s a lamb killer, after all.

“Hunt the freak,” Eddie says, trying not to glance at Steve when he says it. ‘Cause that’d give it away, wouldn’t it? It’d no longer be his own private little double entendre if he looks at the guy.

Eddie fails anyway. Steve’s leaning against a support beam, hip cocked in that way it always is, arms crossed and jeans snug and eyes dark when Eddie meets them for that stupid half-second,

And Robin nods severely, says “Exactly,” like she knows him, like she saw the stupid glance he threw Steve’s way, knows why people hate him for more than killing lambs. And Eddie knows, in that moment, that they’re the same in that way. Same but opposite.

And amidst all the blood and nerves and worry, Eddie feels a bit warmer when he holds Robin’s eggshell-blue gaze and she smiles at him, crooked and soft.

It’s good to know he’s not alone.

The worst part about this, Eddie decides (besides the dead lamb and his worried uncle and the blood on the ceiling), is the waiting. They’re all doing it, the whole flock, while they figure out what to do about the wolf. But his sheep stick together as sheep tend to do, and so the shepherd’s left alone in the boathouse. It’s far away from the hills he’s used to, and too closed in for the loud thoughts that ricochet off the aluminum walls.

It’s wearing his nerves thin.

God, he hates waiting.

On the third day since Chrissy Cunningham floated up to the ceiling, seeming peaceful until her limbs all snapped, Eddie makes SpaghettiOs.

Another student, another lamb, had been found in the night. Eddie saw the report on Rick’s TV. Learned that that was where the cop cars were going when he hid under the tarp for the second time in twenty-four hours, spilling chocolate milk on himself in his haste.

So he stirs the red sauce and tries not to think about the blood in Chrissy’s eyes. And Fred’s now, too.

Later, Dustin’s staticky voice rouses him from some almost sleep (rare these days), tells him that one of their own, Red, has been cursed. Marked by the wolf.

Eddie’s heart sinks.

Fuck, he doesn’t know what he can do, rotting away in the boathouse like this. Shepherds are useless shut away.

On the fourth day (rapture), Eddie runs again.

But this time, to his credit, he is actually being pursued.

And isn’t it funny that it’s the same bastards who chased him all through high school, here to chase him again? For one final race of all he’s worth, which Eddie’s not sure is very much.

He’s terrified. His voice breaks like it did two days ago in the boathouse, only he knows more about what he’s up against now and it only makes him shake harder as he tries to start the stupid fucking motor on the stupid fucking boat.

And of course it never starts. Why would it, when he clearly needs it to. The jocks get closer and Eddie gives up on the motor, tries to threaten them with the oar.

How the tables have turned, and all that.

He’s saved, somehow, by some broken angel boy floating up out of the water.

Eddie can’t do anything but watch as his limbs snap and his eyes bleed into the water, too far below to reach him. He tries though, tries to swipe at this third lamb’s ankle, like he’s a helium balloon and if only, if only Eddie could reach him and bring him back down to earth, everything would be okay again.

But his efforts are in vain and the broken angel boy crashes as quick as he had risen, his body floating up to the surface of the water with the little bit of air still in his lungs, from that last unknowing breath taken moments ago.

A third victim, then, in this wolf’s flock of mangled lambs.

So it goes.

On the fifth day, Eddie steals a walkie and thanks a god he doesn’t believe in when he manages to remember the correct channel. And he’s touched, really, by how worried everyone is, how even Steve in his bright yellow sweater seems more at ease to see him, still alive.

At Skull Rock, they bicker about what to do next. Steve puts his hands on his hips and bitches to Dustin, who bitches back. Eddie finds the interaction adorable, he’s fucking smitten, and scolds himself for it.

So he just listens. Waits.

And it’s decided they’ll go to Mordor.

The Shire is burning, after all.

On the boat, on the lake where the broken angel boy was born, Eddie sees another kind of angel.

It’s like how they say your eyes will burn if you see an angel’s true form, and yet you can’t look away. Eddie can’t look away, and maybe his eyes aren’t burning but the rest of his face is. He’s staring, he needs to fucking stop, but Steve’s pulling his shirt off now, yanking it from the back of his neck like jocks do and balling it up and—

Well.

He tosses at Eddie. It almost knocks the cigarette pack from his hands, and god, he needs to smoke now after that. So he sticks the end of one in his mouth as he passes Steve his stupid flashlight-plastic bag creation.

All that does is make his skin glow yellow like the sweater in his lap, makes him look a little more holy.

Eddie goes to light his cigarette.

Then Steve’s diving smoothly off the boat. Eddie watches the ripples he made fade and smooth away. Wheeler checks her watch constantly as he searches the lake, from the center of the ripples out, Robin bites her nails beside him.

It’s been too long, something’s happened, he thinks, but Steve surfaces again at one-minute-thirty, grinning, victorious, golden.

So there’s a gate. A way to move forward.

But Steve gets dragged down, a falling angel, and they can’t wait one-minute-thirty again for him.

Nancy goes after him first, just tips over.

And Eddie doesn’t want to be left alone, so he pleads with Robin to stay, please, he’s terrified, but she loves Steve more than anything and follows.

He’s alone. Waiting.

Fucking again.

Eddie curses to the sky, to no one, and dives.

It’s chaos when he gets there, grateful he held onto the oar that sunk with him. Apparently, he fucking needs it to smack things out of the sky.

The oar breaks, but he’s a DM, he’s good at improv, and it’s a spear now, a wooden stake to drive through these creatures that won’t stop coming for them.

"Come on, you son of a bitch!" Eddie cries when his spear pierces through one.

He wants to get to Steve, to help him with the tail around his neck, but he ends up not needing it. Just sinks his teeth into the one that’s got him, stands and flings the monster into the ground, and again on the other side, stunning it, braces the head with his bare foot and pulls.

It’s disgusting. The creature rips and Eddie watches, sees Steve spit thick monster blood from his mouth and not even bother wiping off the rest of it.

Eddie feels like he can’t breathe.

See, he’s a little fucked up in the head. And that action, that little act of survival climbs the ranks in his mind to be the number one hottest thing he’s ever witnessed.

God, he’s so confused.

Eddie curses to the sky, to no one again, half adrenaline and half still adrenaline (but of a very different nature) and throws his oar on the ground.

Fucking oars, man.

There’s another swarm of creatures swirling above them. So they run for cover in the trees, through the lake that’s never known water. They’re out of breath when they reach Skull Rock, deemed their safe zone because it’s as good of a place as any in this world where anything goes.

Eddie climbs the rock because it’s familiar, at least, and he wonders if he could get a better idea of where the fuck they are with height advantage. But he’s corrected swiftly by the other three, something about a fucking hive mind.

He climbs back down again, unsure of where he can put his feet on the forest floor.

See, Eddie knows these woods, but he doesn’t know these woods.

And then Steve is falling, faint from the blood he lost to the bat creatures. Eddie’s arms extend to—catch him, hold him, something —but Wheeler beats him to it, props him against the rock’s smooth surface and rips her blouse into strips to tie around him, to keep his blood inside his body

Eddie, for his part, just tries not to stare.

It’s difficult though, really it is, because of the whole being fucked up in the head thing and Steve bites his lip and his eyes get starry and wet and Eddie can’t help but think of those things happening elsewhere, amongst pillows and sheets and other soft things.

So Eddie turns his whole body away, and Robin catches him and her eyebrows quirk.

It’s mortifying.

It’s wonderful.

Eddie counts to thirty Mississippis with his back turned in this world’s most awful game of hide and seek. As he counts, he watches one of the hive mind vines wrap tighter around the tree it’s slowly choking. And when Eddie turns he thinks they’ll be done and Steve will just be upright again.

He’s not.

Eddie’s body burns with envy at how Nancy is still patching him up. Steve’s arms are above his head and his teeth are bared in a grimace, short pants escaping from between them, dirty and gorgeous and golden.

Eddie mentally kicks himself, tries to hush and soothe the jealousy monster he carries with him, tucked behind his ribs. But the beast wakes and sniffs the air and then it knows.

She helps him stand and he leans on her, and it’s a sight really, his big frame against her bony one. Steve catches his eye (because Eddie is just staring now) and sends him a small little smile, and the jealousy monster swallows it, teeth and all.

With Steve no longer in danger of passing out, they plan.

They know this: the lake gate is surrounded by creatures, they can’t go through without reinforcements. But according to everyone except for Eddie, this blueish evil Hawkins is almost the same as the one he’s used to.

And Wheeler’s got guns in her closet. So they’ll head there, where they’d at least have something of a chance against the creatures.

And while Wheeler does most of the talking and the planning (she’s a fucking genius, Eddie knew that but now he knows it and he feels so bad for kind of hating her), Steve stands behind her, a little protective, a little grateful, fully shirtless. It doesn’t seem like Nancy even notices, her focus shifted forward now that he’s okay, and Robin doesn’t care, but Eddie does care, and he’s certain he’ll trip over a vine and fuck the whole thing up if Steve continues to be bloody and dirty and beautiful and shirtless.

The jealousy monster also hates how Steve’s bare skin keeps brushing Wheeler’s shoulders. There’s a lot of reasons for why Eddie shucks his vest off, balls it up super casually.

The denim takes Steve by surprise. Eddie did kind of throw it at his face.

"For your modesty, dude," Eddie says, which is so lame. As if Steve was the problem, giving him a little nod of thanks that makes Eddie's breath hitch. He’s awful at this.

Whatever.

Eddie’s first thought when the ground starts shaking, is that the earth is swallowing him for his stupid gay crimes. Throwing his battle vest at him, really? Might as well just kiss him then and there, strip naked and fuck against Skull Rock.

It’d be less obvious.

But it’s just an earthquake, and Eddie remains on the surface. It’s over just seconds later, leaving him sprawled out on the forest floor next to Robin. Steve and Nance remained upright together, having braced themselves against the rock when it hit.

Steve’s still clutching the vest, at least.

Eddie clears his throat, frozen there on the ground as he watches Steve swing the vest onto his shoulders. Steve’s broad, his shoulders filling the fabric like they’d tear it if he flexed.

Eddie wouldn’t mind, really. It’d be worth it.

Robin gets to her feet beside him, intent on following the other two now walking away. Eddie realizes that he’s been nervously rubbing his knee, still sitting on the blue forest floor like a freak. Slack jawed and stupid at the sight of Steve in his clothes.

So Eddie stands, dusts himself off, and follows. To Wheeler’s house, and to the fucking guns in her closet.

Bullets can do a lot more damage than an oar, anyways.

It’s a long walk. Made longer by how cautious they’re being, stepping carefully to avoid vines and throwing panicked looks over their shoulders and up at the sky. Eddie finds himself doing head counts every time he looks up from the forest floor, catching sight of Steve’s bare feet, blue and ivory against the dust and grime of this world.

Two in the front. Robin and Nance, leading them.

Him, in the middle. Three.

And Steve behind him. Four. Slow because of his injuries or purposefully hanging back so he can see them all.

Eddie figures it’s the last one.

“Eddie. Eddie! Hey, man,” Steve says, half jogging up to him.

Eddie stops walking, because Steve really shouldn’t move like that. He opens his mouth to tell him, please be careful, but Steve’s quicker.

“I just wanna say thanks,” he says, continuing when Eddie just looks at him, totally lost. “For saving my ass back there.”

Eddie laughs. “Shit. You saved your own ass, man.” And then, because Eddie’s fucking stupid and his heart controls his mouth, “I mean, that was a real Ozzy move you pulled back there.”

“Ozzy?” Steve asks.

“Um,” Eddie swallows. He’s grateful it’s dark in this universe, that Steve’s looking at the vines on the ground and not his stupid red traitor face. “When you took a bite out of that bat.”

I thought it was hot when Osbourne did it. You were hotter.

Steve does look at him then, but only briefly. Blankly.

“Ozzy Osbourne? Black Sabbath?” Eddie tries. He needs to fucking shut up. “He uh, bit a bat’s head off on stage.”

“I don’t—” Steve says, and he looks genuinely sorry.

“You know what? Doesn’t matter.” Eddie says. Real smooth.

A beat passes. Silent. It’s awkward, oh fuck, so Eddie fills the silence with more stupid fucking words.

“It’s very metal, what you did. That’s all I’m saying.”

And Steve laughs a little. “Thanks.”

Eddie loves his laugh. Wants to hear it again, as many times as possible. “Henderson told me you were a badass. Insisted on the matter, in fact.”

“Henderson said that?” Steve asks, voice a little brighter.

“Oh yeah. Shit. Kid worships you, dude. Like you have no idea. Kind of annoying, to be honest.” Eddie risks the joke. Gains a smile.

It only serves to spur him on, because he never knows when to stop, when to shut his fucking mouth.

“I don’t even know why I care what that little shrimp thinks. But I guess I got a little jealous, Steve. I guess I couldn’t accept the fact that Steve Harrington was actually a good dude. Rich parents, popular, chicks love him, not a douche? No way, man. No way. That, like, flies in the face of all the laws of the universe, and my own personal Munson doctrine.”

—stupid I’m so fucking stupid that was so stupid why did I say that why did I make him wear my vest oh christ—

But Eddie can’t stop.

Oh, no.

He’s weak and scared and stupid and Steve is walking next to him, next to him, arms brushing with each careful step and close enough to hear his slightly labored breathing, and it’s closer than Eddie thinks they’ve probably ever been when he’s not forcing him against a wall, the closest in all the miserable years he’s been hiding his hopeless crush, Eddie leans in.

Way in. Drinks in the way Steve’s brown eyes widen and his plush lips part in surprise. Eddie wishes he could kiss him.

“Still super jealous as hell, by the way.” And Eddie laughs like it’s all just some big joke, it’s so funny, I can’t stop laughing, why aren’t you laughing, Steve?

Steve takes a half-step away. He’s too much, Eddie knows it. But he earns another of those disarming smiles, perfect teeth and slightly bloody.

What he wouldn’t give to kiss him, Eddie wonders. Lick the blood from his mouth.

Back it up, Munson. “Which is why,” he drawls, “I never would have jumped in the lake to save your ass.”

A lie.

Deflect.

“Not under any, uh, normal circumstances. Nope, outside of D&D, I am no hero. I see danger and I just turn heel and run. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve learned about myself this week.”

“Give yourself a break, man,” Steve cuts in, with a light little touch to Eddie’s arm. It’s sweet, real sweet, but Eddie won’t linger on it or he’ll run out of steam.

“See,” Eddie says, pointing ahead of them toward Robin and Nance, “the only reason I came in here was ‘cause those ladies came in straight after you. And I was too ashamed to be the one left behind.”

Steve glances toward where he’s pointing, his eyes falling back on Eddie, watching him dig himself a little deeper into this verbal grave of his. Steve’s gaze on his mouth is a little startling, though not at all unwelcome, and Eddie tries to memorize how his perfect face looks in this moment as he barrels on.

“Wheeler, right there, she didn’t waste a second. Not one second. She just dove right in.”

Deflect.

“Now, I don’t know what happened between you two, but if I were you, I would get her back. ‘Cause that was as unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.”

Deflect.

When the ground decides at that moment to shake and send them falling to the blue forest floor again, Eddie does begin to wonder if it’s on purpose.

Maybe it’s some kind of benevolent gay god, trying to warn him to fucking hold it in each time he gets a little too close, flirts just a little too hard. Maybe it’s looking out for him, trying to save his face from being beat in by a guy that’s already covered in blood.

More would just be redundant, right?

Eddie’s grateful for it, at least, and grateful still that the quake didn’t send him falling into Steve. That’d just undo everything from the past few agonizing minutes spent playing matchmaker for a match he really doesn’t want to make.

It hurts when the ground’s done shaking and Steve brushes past him to check on the girls, but it’s Eddie’s own fault for directing his attention towards them, towards Nancy. It’s a shield as well as a knife for Eddie and his monster, guarding his ribs and stabbing his heart.

Eddie sulks to himself a little, mourning the loss of the pretty boy he’d never have anyways. The jealousy monster wails inside him, beaten back to woeful submission. Eddie’s feet feel heavy with the both of them as he and his monster catch up to the other three, picking their way across the Wheelers’ gross blue yard.

The inside of the house isn’t any better, hollow feeling even though it’s choking with vines.

And they learn a little more about this world flipped upside down, where Nancy’s guns are missing and her diary doesn’t read past November of 1983.

So they’re stuck here, and they’re also stuck three years ago.

It hurts Eddie’s head trying to make sense of it. So he stops trying, figures he’ll leave it up to Nancy the kid genius to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Eddie trips on his way down the stairs. He thinks to himself that it’s poetic, in a pathetic sort of way. Falling on the way to the boy he’s all but fallen for.

The boy in question meets his eyes feverishly, shouting the name of one of their sheep with a crazed look about him. His flashlight swings wildly, illuminating the room and all its rotting furniture until it falls on them, blinding in contrast to this dark, blue world.

“Dustin! He’s here, like, in the walls or something!” Steve’s still yelling, pacing around the room like he’s not just been torn open.

And then Eddie hears it, too, how his sheep’s bleat seems to ripple and echo through the hollow house.

It sets them off. Hope, after their plan was crushed by the nonexistent guns.

Eddie blinks away the afterimages of Steve’s yellow flashlight and aids in the search for the disembodied sheep voice. He tears back a curtain like he’d find him there, cups his hands around his mouth and shouts for him, too.

Eddie’s not surprised when it’s Nancy again who figures shit out. She leads them to the chandelier and its soft halo glow, and Eddie’s happy, at least, that he knows the bare fucking minimum of Morse code.

It’s enough.

It gets them out.

Eddie wonders to himself, as they’re uncovering bikes from the Wheelers’ garage, if Steve lost his virginity in the real world version of this house. If Eddie had sat on the very bed where it happened.

And Eddie remembers Steve’s...reputation in high school. How he got around more than Eddie could ever even hope to.

If he has his own little laugh about it, laced with self loathing as he mounts the too-small bike, well.

No one has to know, yeah?

Eddie worries that Steve will keel over during the ride to his trailer, finding himself throwing worried glances over his shoulder as he leads the group to Forest Hills, just to make sure he’s still upright.

But he’s fine. They make it.

Eddie hates seeing his home like this. Slimy. Hollow.

Blue.

The ceiling’s cracked open and glowing red where Chrissy died. It looks like the gate in the lake did. Dust swirls like snowfall around them, the faraway chittering of Upside Down creatures, echoes through the trailer’s thin aluminum walls. It all feels wrong, horribly so, and it’s nothing like the cozy, cluttered trailer he loves.

He wonders if Wheeler felt the same when she stepped into this version of her home. Figures she definitely did.

But feeling seems to weaken when a broom handle pierces the red grave, spilling yellow light into the blue room, reveals the faces of the sheep they’ve been desperately trying to reunite with.

And it’s go mode again, the kids tying sheets together and hauling over his old mattress so they get out safely, comfortably.

Eddie cringes when he sees that the mattress is bare, that the gross spilled bong water stains are fully visible. 

He makes it worse, of course, by pointing them out, "Those stains are, uh...I don't know what those stains are." 

Relish the day that Eddie Munson finally learns how to keep his mouth shut.

Robin’s the first to take the leap. She makes it through in one piece, giggling when she flips and lands in the world right side up.

And Eddie thinks y’know, ladies first, because even though he’s gay he’s still chivalrous, so he steps back and offers the rope to Wheeler.

But she’s making big worried eyes at Steve, like she needs him to help her through.

So fuck it. Eddie goes, propelled only by the knowledge that Steve is absolutely watching him climb and if he falls he’ll look like a total idiot.

Nevermind that he couldn’t ever climb up the rope in gym class. Gym Eddie has nothing on this Eddie, and he’s impressed with himself when he climbs up smoothly, flips like Robin did and lands. Face-up, even.

He bows after Dustin helps him up, expects maybe a whistle or cheer or two for his theatrics. His D&D sheep are there, after all, and they typically appreciate this sort of thing.

But he’s met only with dead silence.

Because Nancy Wheeler stands frozen on the other side.

It’s difficult, Eddie finds, to concentrate on Wheeler’s vision with Steve’s arm on the back of the couch behind him.

If he were to lean back, just a little, his shoulders would sit fully flush against it. If he breathed just a smidgen deeper, the back of his jacket would graze over Steve’s bare arm.

Eddie’s hands shake a little with the effort of not doing either of those things.

He’s also paying attention to Nancy. Also that.

She’s saying something awful; a dark cloud, the town on fire.

Steve’s hand slides off the back of the couch, brushes past Eddie’s side lightly, because Steve isn’t focused on how to not look gay in front of the people trying to help save his sorry ass.

Eddie shivers. Erica, on the cushion next to him, sends him an odd look. Eddie sticks his tongue out at her, receives an eye roll in return.

Fair enough.

Steve’s leaning forward now, elbows on his knees and his chin on his steepled fingers. He’s trying to soothe Nance, assure her that vision was just that. A vision.

But his little red sheep sees it for what it really is, explains how it’s a warning, how the wolf is just one more dead lamb away from killing the whole flock. And the flock over, the one after that, until every sheep and every shepherd lay slain.

“Jesus christ,” Eddie murmurs, as if the dead shepherd king he doesn’t even believe in could help him.

Steve shifts on the couch next to him, restless, stressed. He’s barking orders like anyone would really listen to the sweet friendly herding dog.

They’re trying to reach their supergirl again. Apparently, she’s been MIA since day three of all this. Eddie doesn’t know why they bother, she’s not even super anymore.

It’s hope, he supposes, for their little deus ex machina girl to just...fix everything.

She doesn’t pick up, though, and neither does the feisty black sheep who’s supposed to be with her. The line’s still busy. Something’s wrong.

Steve stands in all his sweaty sticky glory, starts pacing around Mayfield’s small living room, and Eddie watches the couch cushions return to their original shape now that Steve’s weight has left them. He splays his hand over the fading indent, notes how small it looks compared to the outline of Steve’s thighs.

“We have to go back in there. Back to the Upside Down.” Wheeler says.

Eddie’s hand snaps back to his body, attention sufficiently diverted. “No, no. Nope.”

Steve’s with him, thank someone, and he’s arguing with Nancy on the side of their lives. Robin stands and backs him up, and Eddie thinks to himself that he could kiss her.

Eugh. Maybe not.

But then Dustin starts to agree with Wheeler, the traitor, and the scales tip that way until Red’s offering to use herself as bait, until they all realize there’s not really any other option.

And Eddie doesn’t like it, don’t get him wrong, he really doesn’t like it. It makes his blood go cold to think of going back to that dead blue place.

But Steve’s going. All of their sheep are going. Robin and Nancy, too, and he really doesn’t have anyone outside of this little group right now.

So he might as well help them along, lead like a shepherd should.

“Check this out. The War Zone. I’ve been there once, it’s huge. They’ve got everything you need for, uh, well...killing things, basically.” Eddie points to an ad in the newspaper he found in Max’s kitchen, a little surprised but not really that the place is still open. A little surprised, too, that it’s actually real.

He might be lying about having been there. One of his old D&D friends said he went on a dare and Eddie might be extrapolating the details of that lunchtime story for himself. Straight guys like guns, yeah?

Steve probably does, anyways. He’s leaning fully over Eddie to look at the advert on the table below them. He’s warm and heavy against him, the pins on Eddie’s battle vest poking into his shoulder blade, all so real and heady it’s making Eddie’s mind turn to mush. He can feel Steve’s deep, labored inhales, how his arm sort of twitches at his side like he’s aware of its proximity to Eddie’s hips.

Or Steve’s probably just restless. Jocks are built to move, right? Not stand around tables.

People are arguing about getting there. How it’d take all day to bike there and back.

Eddie blinks, his mind returning to the present, a plan unveiling itself in his mind. “Who said anything about bikes?”

Steve’s weight on him shifts, lessens. Eddie badly wants to pull him back. Get that sweat smell all over himself, make it stick.

“You got some car we don’t know about?” Steve’s asking, brow furrowed enough that a sweet little crease appears between them. Eddie wants to like, bite it.

“It’s not exactly a car, Steve,” he says straightening up to meet him, flicking his hair back out of his face in a way that he hopes is super cool and smooth but knows is not, “and it’s not exactly mine, but uh...it’ll do.”

Steve looks bewildered. It’s...god, it’s adorable. And if Eddie looks for a second longer at his cute lost face he’s gonna put his lips somewhere real stupid and get his own face kicked in.

So he bounces away from the table, away from the temptation of Steve’s soft looking mouth, pursed in confusion. Asks Red for a mask or bandana or something (because he’s not going to draw attention to the one in his back pocket, oh no) to cover his face, both to hide from the law and to cover up the blush he feels creeping up his neck.

Proximity to Steve Harrington will do that to you.

Eddie feels like a proper shepherd as he leads everyone through the trailer park. Well, sans crook and with a Michael Myers mask instead of the keffiyeh thing they wear, but he’s got sheep following him and that’s what counts, for shepherds.

He feels real bad for what he’s about to do to his poor neighbors, sends a silent thank you their way and a prayer that they like, win the lottery or something after this. It’s too easy, really, to climb in through the back window, tear off the tight rubber mask, lock the door so his neighbors can’t get into their own home, sift through the hotwiring kit he made Dustin sneak into his trailer to get.

Eddie’s glad that he even kept the thing. Cheers, dad, he thinks, wonders what his dear old pa would think if he saw him using the very kit he stole to get away from him, drive (extremely illegally) to Wayne. Kept in a box in his room like some kind of trophy, debated throwing out several times but never following through. It’s good for getaways, runaways, and Eddie is a drug dealer. So he kept it.

Steve’s leaning on him again, and it’s horribly distracting. Asking him about the hotwiring, where he learned to do it. Eddie keeps his breathing even, inhales through his nose and out through his mouth, around the wire strippers he’s holding with his teeth.

But Eddie manages to explain and connect the wires at the same time. It’s muscle memory that moves his hands, for his mouth it’s self loathing and desperate, stupid flirting. He leans back into Steve’s chest, like the closeness will help him understand, steals the inches of space between them, grins big and probably wild at Steve’s sweet, concerned face.

“Uh, Eddie? I’m not sure I love the idea of you driving,” says Robin, resting her arms on Steve’s broad shoulders in a halfway hug thing that Eddie finds himself envious of. The jealousy monster knows she’s not a threat at least, and it stays quiet.

“Oh, I’m just starting this sucker,” he says, finishing the job and brushing his hands together with a stupid little flourish. And he leans into Steve, close like they were in the boathouse, like in the dead blue woods. Lets his eyes flick down to the adorable lips pinched into a frown, just for a second. Back up to where Steve’s nose is crinkled up, where the crease between his brows has reappeared, a little deeper. He feels manic, crazed. They might all die in a few hours. He wants, suddenly, badly, to steal a kiss from him before that happens. So Eddie doesn’t die unkissed.

“Harrington’s got her,” Eddie says, moves like he’s going to, gets close enough that their noses nearly brush, lets the mania show in his smile, in his eyes that probably look crazy.

“Don’t ya, big boy?”

He lingers there, in Steve’s very personal space for half a second longer, tries to commit Steve’s perfect, beautiful face to memory. How his lips part a little like he’s going to ask Eddie what the fuck that was, the crease between his brows deepening by the millisecond, the dirt streaks on his cheeks, the thick lashes that bat when he blinks at him, a picture of confusion.

Eddie’s heart is in his throat, his ears, blood making everything go a little quieter when he pulls back like he’s just been shocked, clicks the wires together that’ll make the Winnebago go, releases the breath he’s been holding when it works, when the machine lights up around them and the engine turns over and Eddie’s neighbors pound their fists on the window that contains everything they have, and there is no time, now, for Steve to question what just happened, for him to do anything other than scramble into the driver’s seat and floor the gas with his blue ivory feet.

It’s not that long before they reach War Zone. Eddie tries to stay toward the middle back of the Winnebago during the drive, away from Steve who’s talking in hushed tones with Wheeler, their laughs floating toward him and bile rising in his throat at the sound of it. The jealousy monster rears its ugly head, digs its claws in Eddie’s insides, makes them twist painfully.

So the flirting wasn’t enough to feed it.

Eddie blinks rapidly, fingers twitching where they’re wrapped around his knees. Robin’s looking at him, he can feel it, and he levels his gaze with hers, sees how her bottom lip is jutted out like I’m sorry, how her eyes say I understand.

She’s sweet. Eddie would like to have been friends with her in some other way than this.

He gives her a watery smile, a little shake of his head that means he’s okay, that he’ll get over it. Like you’ve gotten over it for the past five years, the jealousy monster supplies.

Eddie squishes it down, drags the heel of his palm over his eyes and swallows down the bile.

He’s fine, really. Will be, at least.

Steve pulls into the lot, leaves Eddie to watch over Dustin and Lucas. Takes the rest of the sheep with him.

“You alright, man?” Steve asks, lingering at the door to the Winnebago, always the last to leave, first to enter.

God, he’s sweet. “Fine, dude.” Eddie says.

Steve doesn’t buy it, makes like he’s going to hug him or something, demand to know what’s got him sulking like this.

“Just, y’know,” Eddie says, gesturing to the air around them, because a hug would be bad right now, would make the jealousy monster purr violently and shake loose the water in his eyes. “It’s a lot. Guess it’s catching up to me.”

Steve laughs softly. Lingers in the doorway a little longer. “Tell me about it,” he says, drumming his fingers against the screen like he’s considering what to say next.

“You’ve got us, though, y’know? We all get it.”

Eddie smiles genuinely. “Yeah, man. You’re right.”

“Don’t forget it,” Steve tells him, and Eddie nods. As if he’d disagree with anything this golden boy says.

“Hang in there, Munson.” Steve says, knocking on the door twice before leaving, a swish of filthy denim, a flash of bare skin, and then that’s it.

Eddie sighs, stretches out his legs, scrubs at his dumb leaking eyes. It is all sort of catching up to him, the guilt of what’s already happened and the fear for what comes next. It’s also just a crushing sense of loneliness. Jealousy that has no place existing when he could never have him anyways.

Just comes with being queer in a small town in rural Indiana, just a sick part of the fucking welcome package that’s full of dates and flowers and kisses for other boys, mostly empty except for the sad little monster for boys like him. Eddie knows this.

But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

Eddie refuses to dwell in his own self pity for much longer. Steve and the sheep are taking too long, enough to be annoying but not quite enough to worry, not yet.

Unless you’re Dustin, who keeps pacing up and down the Winnebago and checking his watch every time he remembers he has one. Which is often.

He and Lucas haven’t paid him much mind, Dustin’s restless energy being enough for the both of them and Lucas too focused on worrying about Max to notice much else.

Eddie wonders if it’s worse to be loved and to love and to lose it than to never be loved at all, and his heart lurches for the poor kid. He wishes he’d been kinder to him about the basketball game, wishes he’d gotten his head out of his ass and rescheduled the session, wishes he’d fucking showed up, cheered him on.

Eddie wishes a lot of things.

“She’s gonna be alright, y’know.” Eddie says, dragging himself out of his own funk to try to ease Lucas’s. He makes his way to the bench he’s sitting on, still in the same position he was while they drove here, while he talked to Max.

“I hope so,” Lucas says. His voice wobbles.

Eddie pauses, slips an arm around the little sheep’s shoulders (who is taller than he is, christ, they grow fast), squeezes his arm.

“I see why you guys wanted her to join Hellfire. She’s quite the spitfire, yeah?”

Lucas laughs, his head drops to Eddie’s shoulder. “She is.”

“What class do you think she’d be, if she joined?”

“Fighter,” Lucas says easily. “You should’ve seen her when she first moved here. We called her Mad Max, and it was ages before we became friends.”

“Why’s that?”

“She didn’t want to be. I mean, we probably freaked her out at first, but then she...well, she sort of involved herself in the Upside Down stuff. We tried to keep it from her, keep her safe.” Lucas pauses, Eddie feels him stiffen. Safe. She’s very much not that, right now.

“But anyways, she was a badass. Still is. We bonded over that, got close because we liked each other.” There’s a little hint of smile when he says it, that little bit of immaturity. Eddie wants to weep, it’s a sharp reminder that they’re all just kids.

“Sounds to me like she only does what she wants to, huh?”

Lucas laughs again, nods into Eddie’s shoulder.

“So I think, if she wants to kick Vecna’s ass, she’s gonna fucking do it.”

“She’s just...so scared, though. I know she thinks we can’t tell but I can.”

Eddie hums, rolling his tongue around in his mouth while he thinks of what to say, of what would help this sad little sheep.

“People are only scared when they fear for their lives. If they’ve got nothing to live for, they’re not gonna care if they make it out. So if she’s scared it means she wants to live, Lucas, and that’s the most important thing. Red always does what she wants, yeah?”

Lucas is quiet. Then he hiccups. “Are you scared?”

“Terrified.”

“Me too,” he says, sitting up and squaring his shoulders like a soldier would, like a child shouldn’t.

“This thing we’re about to do,” Eddie says, and he wishes he could guarantee it, “is insane. It’s a death wish, except no one wants to die. Because we’re all terrified.” He claps his hand on Lucas’s shoulder, squeezes for emphasis.

“So we’re gonna be okay.”

But as he says it, Eddie gets the sense that he’s lying.

When Steve and everyone else returns, it’s in a hurry. Steve’s barking orders again, a flurry of movement and energy. He tosses a bag of shit to Eddie, hopping over the armrest to start the Winnebago.

Eddie shouldn’t think such a lame display of physical strength is attractive, but here he is. Eddie replays the stupid little jump over and over again as they careen out of the parking lot, and it’s then he realizes that Steve’s not wearing the vest anymore.

Ah.

It hurts more than it should to find the denim balled up at the bottom of the bag. Eddie finds other things in there: a pack of nails, a hammer, a protective vest with a million pockets that he shrugs on over his jacket. The battle vest he drags out, smooths the collar and rests it on the bench next to him.

The jealousy monster is just a little sad thing, now. Steve’s on the other side of the seat Eddie’s leaning on, talking quietly with Wheeler again. Eddie closes his eyes and the monster whimpers like it’s been injured, and he thinks of how pathetic he looks, sitting back to back but not really with someone who’d never be even able to give him the time of day.

And Eddie opens his eyes, annoyed with himself for slipping into that same funk again.

He can’t really help it, is the thing. Not when he wants so terribly.

Eddie’s eyes rove between the occupants of the Winnebago, trying to focus on them instead of Steve. Max and Lucas sit together, their foreheads nearly touching. They’re sweet, Eddie decides. He hopes they make it. Stay together forever.

Erica’s got her chin resting on her palm, staring out the window. She’s so little. Eddie feels sick.

Dustin’s watching him. Eddie sends him a smile he hopes is comforting, gets a toothy grin in return.

And, oh, there’s Robin.

She’s almost an exact reflection of Eddie. Her wrists link loosely ‘round her legs where she sits, temple to her knee. She looks small and sad and like maybe she has her own jealousy monster.

Eddie’s cries out for hers, a member of its own kind when the thing’s been alone its whole life, and it pulls him toward her. He keeps his head low to avoid the windows, slides down the fake wood siding to sit next to her.

“Heya Birdie.” Eddie says.

“Hi, Eddie.”

“So...” he says, not quite sure how to say it, not sure who’s listening, who would be okay with overhearing.

“What’s her name?” he asks eventually, barely a murmur. No one but her could hear it over the rumbling of the road beneath them.

Robin laughs. “Figured me out, huh?”

Eddie smiles. “Could say the same about you.” It’s light. Friendly.

“Steve?” she asks, barely even voices it. Just mouths the syllable in her over-expressive way.

Eddie nods, sort of winces. “Yeah. Him. Sad, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, no. He’s such a sweetie. I’d feel the same if...if he was—”

A girl.

“Or maybe not. Platonic with a capital ‘P,’ he and I. She and I? Dunno.” Robin laughs and wipes her eyes.

Eddie stays quiet but knocks his shoe against hers.

“Her name is Vickie. We have band together.” This, Robin whispers. Tilts her head so she can say it right into his hair, hide her mouth behind it.

“She’s got a boyfriend, apparently. Never talks about him, though, so I started to get hopeful, I guess.” She’s looking up at the ceiling now and her blue eyes sparkle beneath their watery shield.

Eddie’s monster croons, sings something slow and sorry.

It hears her.

Robin sniffs, loudly, wetly.

Eddie reaches behind them, produces the handkerchief that’s spent so long in his pocket.

Robin laughs out loud. “Oh, I definitely don’t want that. Thanks, though.”

Eddie grins, feels his face flush red. “Was only being chivalrous, my dear Robin.”

“Appreciate it,” she hiccups, uses the inside of her shirt to wipe her running nose.

“Look at us,” Eddie says, tilts his head so he’s looking at the water stained ceiling with her.

“Look at us,” Robin says.

She knocks her shoe against his.

There’s a lot less time to mope and wish for things when preparing for battle.

Eddie hammers nails into a trash can lid, only smacks himself once with it, and even then it hits his ring and isn’t too bad.

Still smarts a little, though, and he sort of babies that hand now.

He goofs off with Dustin in this field they’ve chosen, a sort of leap frog wrestling game happening between them, one that ends with him cradling the little sheep’s face in his hands.

“Never change, Dustin Henderson,” he says. “Promise me?” And Eddie knows, deep down, why he’s doing this. Why he keeps talking to people like he’s saying goodbye.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Dustin says, voice confused and a little worried.

“Good.” Eddie says, leaves it at that.

Robin sits next to him on the ride back from the soft green field. Dustin’s on his other side, both of them leaning on his shoulders and he feels like a real proper shepherd in this moment.

He goes over the plan in his mind, over and over again until he’s sure he could recite it in his sleep.

It should work, in theory.

But Eddie knows that the odds favor the wolf more than they ever will the shepherd, the sheep.

Something’s got to give.

Max, Lucas, and Erica leave first. The Winnebago slows to a stop outside the old murder house, and the kids (kids) take big deep breaths and hoist their lanterns and step out, one by one.

Eddie remembers coming here once, years ago, to throw stones and try to break glass. He’d seen it in an old black and white movie once, how one shattered window pane gets you one wish.

There hadn’t been any glass left on the house, though, besides the stained glass front door.

And it seemed like asking for a curse to break something so beautiful.

Wheeler makes them go through the plan again before they leave for his trailer. Eddie’s positive that they all did the same as him and memorized it on the ride here, positive that Wheeler knows this, too.

It is a comfort, though, to say it all together.

They’re parked just slightly hidden, behind the first few sapling trees of the woods behind the trailer park. Come morning, his neighbors will be able to see it. Eddie hopes they didn’t damage their home too much. Hopes it’s insured or something.

He knows that it’s probably not.

He doubles back as they’re leaving to grab the vest on the bench. Wishes sort of, that Steve was still wearing it. He holds it close as they sneak through the silent park, smells his cigarettes and Steve’s sweat, his dried blood.

It’s disgusting. Eddie finds that he kind of loves it.

Steve leads them to the trailer. First in, last out. God, Eddie kind of wishes he wasn’t so perfect and golden and wholly unobtainable.

He’s the first to climb the sheet rope, too, makes it look easy despite all his injuries, even does a stupid flip landing, gesturing up at them like did you see that? Eddie wants to cry because it works on him, it fucking works. God damn it.

Eddie chucks his vest onto the couch in his fury. He probably won’t be able to collect it, but at least it’s back here where it belongs.

Nancy’s next, aided by a knee from Robin, offered a hand from Steve after she lands. He hauls her up and they stand so close together for so long.

Robin knocks her shoe against his.

Then it’s his turn and the rope is all the more difficult to climb when he’s moving toward that dead blue place instead of away from it.

Steve offers him a hand, too. The jealousy monster sniffs it, approves, and he hauls him up.

Eddie backs away immediately, though.

Robin starts chucking their weapons up through the ceiling, and it makes him laugh to see her awkwardly lob a spear, how it bounces on his filthy mattress.

Once she’s through, he offers her a hand at the same time Steve does.

She takes them both, and Eddie knocks his shoe against hers when she’s upright.

A bag, next. A few more weapons. Then Dustin climbs up, falls down.

He and Steve just grab him by the shirt, yank him upright that way.

Steve skips the last step to his trailer, lands on the barren blue ground below with a dumb hop.

Eddie hates jocks.

“Hey, guys, listen,” Steve says. “If things start to go south, I mean at all, you abort. Okay? Draw the attention of the bats, keep them busy for a minute or two, we’ll take care of Vecna. Don’t try to be cute or be a hero or something. You guys are just—”

“Decoys.” Dustin says, his eye roll evident even in the dark. “Don’t worry, you can be the hero, Steve.”

“Absolutely,” Eddie says, because he feels the need to lie, to soothe. “I mean, look at us. We are not heroes.” He smiles at Steve, hopes it’s convincing.

Steve wets his lips, his eyes searching his face, then Dustin’s, nods to himself like he approves of what he finds there, walks toward the girls.

Eddie thinks of how he’s gonna die unkissed.

“Hey, Steve,” he calls, before he’s even had a chance to think of all the many reasons not to do that.

Steve stops, turns toward him. He’s beautiful, even in this dead blue world, even in the brown jacket he’s got on instead of Eddie’s vest.

Eddie wishes he could kiss him. Thinks how it might be the last time out of many that he does so.

“Make him pay,” he says instead of anything, instead of dragging him in by the collar like he wants to.

Steve nods again, his face lights up red from some kind of otherworldly lightning storm.

And then he’s gone.

There’s a pit in Eddie’s stomach as they board up the trailer. It’s not like he wants to die. He’d take the choice to live if if were offered to him.

It’s just that no one’s offering.

So when it comes down to it, Eddie thinks, lugging a strip of chain link fence behind him to drill over his bedroom window, when it comes down to it, it’s the shepherd that puts himself between the sheep and the wolf.

Just how the world works, really.

Besides Steve, the only beautiful thing in this place, Eddie finds, is his guitar. His sweetheart.

“It’s like she was destined for an alternate dimension,” he says, mostly to himself. She’s gorgeous, always is.

“What do you say, Henderson?” Eddie asks, sees a big toothy smile on the kid’s face. “Are you ready for the most metal concert in the history of the world?” he asks, lifting his sweetheart off her perch on his mirror.

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Dustin says.

Eddie’s gonna miss him.

When they get the signal for the third phase, their phase, Eddie’s just glad the extension cord from War Zone is long enough to reach between dimensions.

Also glad that no one had shut off the electricity to the Munson trailer yet.

He dedicates the song to Chrissy, sorry that he ever tried to sell her drugs, sorry that she died like that, sorry he couldn’t help. He hopes she’s okay, wherever she is.

Hopes she likes Metallica.

He can almost forget, as he’s playing the song he spent the two weeks prior to her death learning, that he’s in another universe. That here, everything is cold and empty, that all the creatures want to kill you, that everything is coated in thick dust and bathed in blue light.

It just feels like another Tuesday night at The Hideout.

It’s that good of a song.

He might tear up during the guitar solo.

Shh, don’t tell anyone.

At Dustin’s cue, he’s flinging her onto his back, scrambling down the junk they piled to get up there, following the sheep to safety.

They’re both panting, thrumming with adrenaline and back to back beneath the portal. The creatures claw and screech around them, and Eddie thinks that all the siding and fencing is working, that they sound angry that they can’t get in.

Only, they'd forgotten about the vents.

One of the creatures bullies the metal grate off the thing, starts squeezing its way into the trailer.

They’re stupid at least, Eddie thinks while they stab at the bat’s face. There’s several trying to come through at once, making it so none come through at all.

This won’t keep working, though. There’s so many of them, and Eddie’s really really not okay with Dustin getting eaten, too.

And here he uses a nail shield, forces it into the ceiling with everything he’s got.

The creatures quiet, stupid but not quite stupid enough to ram their deadly little bodies into nails.

There’s a vent in his room, though, and when Eddie goes to seal it there’s actually a swarm in his room.

Eddie's bedroom walls are thin, the door thinner.

“Come on, quickly,” Eddie says, trying to keep the urgency in his voice and the sobs out. Dustin’s climbing the rope and he can’t help him, can’t put down his second nail shield, his spear, in case the bats break through.

And then he’s through. Eddie breathes a sigh of relief.

He makes like he’s going to climb, like what he’s gonna do just came to him in the moment, like he didn’t decide this forever ago.

Dustin’s terrified bleats when he drops and cuts the rope break his heart, and Eddie wishes it didn’t have to be like this.

But it’s shepherd before sheep, when it comes to wolves.

Or bats.

It’s some consolation when they do follow him. The child’s bike he’s on squeaks in protest of his harsh treatment, of him being a lot larger than a child.

Eddie just pedals for his goddamn life, because that’s what it is now.

He doesn’t even get out of the trailer park before they catch up, force him down.

It knocks the wind out of him, he’s not able to get a good breath in before they’re biting into the leather jacket, the vest, his dumb thin jeans.

He thinks of Steve when they get to flesh. God, it hurts. And Steve had this same thing happen and brushed it off like it’s nothing.

It’s not.

Eddie wills himself to not think of all the little teeth, the claws, how now there’s parts of him inside them, to leave his mind blank. That’s what animals do when they face pain. Ignore it and do what they need to survive.

Eddie’s just not surviving this one, so it doesn’t really work.

He thinks of people, instead, of what separates them from animals, about the people he really cares about, wonders if thinking of something else is a better way to distract oneself from pain.

He hopes Robin meets a girl with no boyfriend who’s as sweet to her as she deserves, hopes Steve gets married and gets six kids like he wants, hopes Max and Lucas are okay, that they stick together, that Erica keeps with D&D. He hopes his uncle’s alright, that he won’t miss him too much.

He hopes he buys them enough time, he hopes they kill that motherfucker.

He hopes Dustin knows he’s sorry.

One of the bats lands on his chest. It goes for his face, his cheek, sinks its claws into flesh that’s already missing skin.

Eddie tries to turn his face away, coughs weakly at it, because he’s been crying since he cut the rope and the salt stings.

He feels sick. Genuinely sick, sicker than he’s ever felt in his life. It’s so difficult to breathe, and he coughs again to try to clear his airway, realizes, when he tastes iron, that it’s because there’s blood in his lungs.

At some point, the bats drop.

We did it, he thinks. We won.

He’d like to just go now, fall asleep and not wake up again.

It doesn’t happen that way.

Dustin finds him. He’s crying. It breaks Eddie’s broken heart just a little more. He wants to say he’s sorry, since he never did say it. Wants a lot of things here, in his seconds before dying. Wants to wipe the tears from Dustin’s face, only his arms don’t work. Wants to be remembered as someone, not a murderer. Wants to have been loved, kissed by someone who meant it.

There’s one thing he needs to do, though.

Pass on the title.

“You’re gonna have to look after those little sheep for me, okay?” he tells Dustin.

“No, no, you’re gonna do that yourself.” Dustin doesn’t get it.

Eddie needs him to get it.

“Nah, man.” Eddie says. Words are so difficult. So precious. Why did Eddie never realize how precious they are? “Say, ‘I’m gonna look after them.’ Say it.”

Dustin’s face grows fuzzy. His voice sort of echoes. “I’m...I’m gonna look after them.”

“Good,” Eddie says. “I love you, man.” He wants his last words sweet, since they’re so precious.

“I love you, too.”

It’s muffled, but Eddie hears it. It feels like there’s sand in his ears. Sand in his eyes, blocking out the sheep—no, shepherd, from his view.

He’ll make a good shepherd, Eddie’s sure of it.