Archive of Our Own

1. Sunday

The text says, hey can u pic me up, and Steve stares at his lock screen for a solid ten seconds before clicking on it.

At the top of the thread is ‘Eddie’, because Steve never bothered to block him. He’d deleted all previous messages, though. He’s not a complete idiot.

Despite that, he sits up and writes, where are you?, back.

Munson doesn’t respond. He clenches his hand around his phone and tries to ignore the tight feeling in his chest. Munson’s a dick, he’s not worth worrying about.

And then three minutes later a call comes through.

It buzzes and buzzes and Steve can’t bring himself to answer. Watches as it stops and turns over into voicemail. Hangs there long enough that it seems Munson’s actually leaving him a message. Text is… manageable, even though they haven’t exchanged any in over a year and a half. He definitely doesn’t want to talk to the asshole.

He sits with it for a while.

Then he calls Robin and says, “Eddie Munson called me.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, and Steve remembers that Robin doesn’t have the same trauma around Munson as him, and wouldn’t know why Steve has trauma either.

It’s a weird time period of his life that he doesn’t usually share, and Robin would probably be offended if she knew that.

Sticky.

Still, he perseveres: “He left me a message.”

“I’m having trouble figuring out why you’re telling me this, dingus,” Robin says. “Are we getting weed for Tuesday?”

Steve’s momentarily thrown. “What’s Tuesday?”

“Operation get Nancy Wheeler to like you?” Robin says. “You’re making me hang out with Tommy, dude, I really hope I don’t have to do that sober.”

Steve squints out his bedroom windows toward the pool. Still lit up, steaming, even though it’s November. His parents are gonna make him close it up soon, before snow starts moving in, and he remembers: Nancy, tiny and bossy, dark curly hair, unimpressed with Steve’s general lack of motivation. Everyone likes a pool party, though, right?

He clears his throat. “You can drink beer.”

“Ugh, gross,” she says, then, “What did he say, if it wasn’t an overinflated price for some grass?”

“I didn’t listen to it yet,” he says.

Robin’s silence is both judging and confused, Steve can tell.

He’s made a strategic mistake. He often does that with Buckley. They’d officially met two months ago, when Steve had finally gotten the balls to sneak into the back of a GSA meeting, and then Holland had promptly kicked both of them out for gossiping too loud.

Now she’s privy to all his bad decisions. Except this one.

She says, “What am I missing here?”

“Nothing,” Steve says. “Nothing. I’m. I. I should go listen to it now.”

“Hold on—”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He’s not dumb enough to think he’s getting out of this conversation altogether. He’s not even, like, trying to keep anything from her. It’s just that she’s going to wonder why he never said anything before, and she’s gonna think it’s a bigger deal than it is, and Steve doesn’t have any feelings about it anymore. Truly. It’s just going to be a thing. Ugh. “I promise,” he adds before disconnecting, and then ignores her immediate call back to click on his voicemails.

It’s only 12 seconds long. The transcription doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and he puts the playback on speakerphone.

“Hey, so, I’m just past Cornwallis on Kerley, got a fucking flat, and hang on,” Munson’s voice gets farther away, and he says, “wait, kid, you really shouldn’t, uh, go—holy shit, fuck,” there’s a high pitched, fucking terrified scream, and then some kind of roar, like a cross between a lion and an alien, and then his voice is a panting mess, like he’s running, when he says, “shit, I should call 911, Jeff, call—” and then the message cuts off.

Numbly, the first thing he thinks of is Munson thought he was calling Jeff, and he wonders what kind of name Steve’s saved in his phone as for him to fuck that up. Jackass? Jerk?

Then he thinks: if Munson didn’t have enough time to call 911 before something happened to him – what the fuck was that? – and Steve’s a dick who didn’t bother listening to his message for fucking twenty minutes, then Steve’s gonna probably be inconsolable if he’s dead.

*

He calls 911. He gets Flo, because they live in a podunk town, and Flo, just about to leave for the day, patches him through to Callahan, because he’s just that lucky.

Callahan says, “Uh huh,” a lot, like he’s doing a crossword instead of taking notes. Finally, he says, “Thanks, Harrington, we’ll check it out,” and hangs up on him.

Great.

Steve thinks about driving out to Cornwallis and Kerley himself. Then he thinks about the screaming and thinks twice about it.

Then he remembers Munson saying kid and hops down the steps two at a time and grabs his keys.

*

Steve doesn’t know whether to feel relief or panic at the sight of the flashing police lights, and his stomach settles on a weird in between that makes him nauseous. The chief’s truck is pulled up behind Munson’s van, with another patrol car angled at the front. The sick pit in his stomach widens as he watches Munson, arms cuffed behind his back, led toward the back of Powell’s car. Skin too pale, hair a mess of twigs and leaves, blood on a torn sleeve.

His eyes flicker toward Steve when he starts to walk over. There’s a flash of something across his face before his expression falls blank. He doesn’t even send a nasty look his way.

Hopper says, “Back it up, Harrington, this is a crime scene.”

“Fuck,” Steve says.

Callahan’s hefting a bike into the back of Hopper’s truck.

Steve says, “There was a,” he swallows thickly at the hard look Hopper throws him, “a kid?”

Hopper places a heavy hand on his shoulder. He says, “I know it’s late, Harrington, but we’re gonna have to question you down at the station.”

*

The station is a small square building with exactly four rooms. Flo’s empty desk is the first stop, for paperwork, then Steve’s shuffled past the deputy well and straight into Hopper’s office. He knows from previous experience that there’s a bathroom and two holding cells to the left. He figures that’s where they put Munson.

Steve can’t stop hearing that inhuman roar.

“How did you know where this happened?” Hopper says, ignoring his computer in favor of flipping open a notebook.

Steve doesn’t even know what this is yet, but he says, “I told Callahan.”

“Well, now you’re telling me.” Hopper clicks his pen pointedly.

“Eddie called me,” Steve says.

“Munson called you,” Hopper says.

Steve slumps back in his seat. “Yeah.”

Hopper stares at him. Finally, he says, “At what time?”

Steve shrugs, Eddie’s pale blank face, the drag of his feet against the asphalt replaying in his mind.

“Harrington,” Hopper says, “it’s not looking good here—”

“For who?” Steve straightens up with a bolt of anger. “What happened? Why did you arrest Munson?”

“He’s not arrested—”

“You put him in handcuffs!”

“—just detained.”

Steve flaps a hand toward the holding cells. “Do you normally lock not arrested people up?”

“Look,” Hopper carefully places his pen down on his notebook and leans back in his chair, leather creaking ominously, “we’ve got a missing kid, and we’ve got Munson yelling crazed shit in the woods with his van parked right by the kid’s bike.” He spreads his hands out. “It’s not looking good, Harrington, and you’re the only other person with any details at all.”

Hopper’s full attention is as heavy as his hand; Steve feels it pressing into his chest. Slowly, he drags his phone out of his pocket, and says, “He texted me first,” as he opens up his messages. “5:45 PM. He called a few minutes later.”

Hopper nods and picks up his pen again. “What time?”

Steve opens his recent calls list. “5:49,” he says.

“Okay,” Hopper says. “Okay. And you called 911 at,” he clicks a few keys on his keyboard, says, “6:15 why exactly?”

“Because that’s when I listened to his voicemail.”

Hopper briefly looks like he might want to strangle him. Maybe. “You have a voicemail,” he says.

Steve just opens up his voicemails and presses play.

*

Hopper says, “You’re not telling anyone about this,” and Steve thinks yeah, right as he follows Hopper’s lead and gets to his feet.

“I mean it,” Hopper says. “Not until I figure out what this is.”

“You stole my phone, who am I gonna tell?”

Hopper just eyes him narrowly, like he knows Steve’s going to tell everyone immediately anyway.

He’s not. He’s going to tell Robin, though. It’s probably going to come up with the whole Eddie Munson interrogation he’s going to get from her tomorrow morning.

And then Hopper drops the bomb: “I’m gonna need you to drive Munson home.”

“No fucking way.”

Hopper doesn’t say anything else, just walks toward the half of the building with the holding cells.

Steve hesitates a moment before cursing under his breath and following.

Munson looks miserable before he notices them; slumped on a bench, staring at his scuffed and worn sneakers. Then he straightens up with a smirk that doesn’t reach his eyes. He touches on Hopper before skipping to Steve.

He says, “Ah, the king,” with the slightest tinge of confusion, like he’s not sure what the fuck Steve’s doing there.

Steve’s still not entirely sure, to be honest. He could have walked out, and he doesn’t even think Hopper would have stopped him.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Cut the crap, Munson,” Hopper says. “I need your phone.”

Munson’s eyes dart from Hopper to Steve and back again. “I, uh, lost it. In the woods.”

Hopper nods. “You’re lucky I’m not in the mood to frisk you.”

“I feel like all of this is a violation of my rights,” Munson says.

“Yeah, well. Your entire existence is a violation of my rights,” Hopper says.

Steve says, “Are you allowed to say that?”

Hopper just unlocks the cell and motions for Munson to get up, jiggling his keys. “C’mon, Harrington’s not going to wait all day.”

Like a moron, Steve says, “I’m not?” at the same time Munson says, “Wait for what?”

Munson gets up, though, and spins when Hopper tells him too, and unhunches his shoulders when his arms are finally free, rubbing at the skin of his wrists with a weird expression on his face.

Hopper wags a finger between them when Munson steps out of the cell. “If I hear even one rumor of a monster in the woods, you’re both getting locked up again.”

Munson’s hand shakes when he flips Hopper off.

*

Outside the station, Munson veers to the right and starts for the curb, ignoring Steve.

Steve says, “Hey, I’m supposed to give you a ride!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Munson says, “I’ll walk.”

He should just let him go, honestly, but Steve jogs to catch up with him. Says, “You’re gonna walk. After… that.” He doesn’t say anything about fucking monsters or aliens or whatever, but he figures that’s implied.

Munson shrugs, head down. Blood’s dripping down past his elbow, where his sleeve’s shredded, and Hopper’s essentially, like, an animal for not giving him basic first aid care. Why the fuck didn’t they call EMTs?

Steve glances ahead, at the expanse of dark road, thinks about how Munson would have to pass by the same stretch of woods again to get to Forest Hills.

Steve says, “You, uh. You hate me so much, huh?”

Munson chokes out a laugh. Says, “Fuck you. I can call Jeff for a ride.”

“Oh, like you called him earlier?”

Munson gives him a sharp glance out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t say anything. He stops walking, though.

Steve says, “You told Hopper you lost your phone.”

“I lied.” He crosses his arms over his chest, winces, then uncrosses them. “Why the fuck are you here, anyway?”

Steve frowns. “What do you mean?”

Munson waves a hand. “Out for an evening drive? Thought you’d stop and gawk at the criminal delinquent?”

“What are you—” Steve shakes his head. “Eddie, you called me! You left me a fucking terrifying message. You didn’t think I’d, uh—” He cuts himself off, crosses his own arms, looks back toward where his car is still parked next to Hopper’s in the station lot. Of course he didn’t think that. He’d thought he’d called fucking Jeff. “Never mind.”

“Harrington—”

“Listen, do you want a ride or not?” Steve continues to not look at him, but he can practically feel Munson unwind. Just a little.

Munson sighs. “If you don’t mind all the blood, sure.”

2. Monday

It’s all over school the next morning. Eddie Munson murdered Byers’ younger brother and buried him in the woods.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Steve says to Tommy. “Munson didn’t murder anybody.”

Tommy shrugs. “That’s what Phil told Mom.”

“Callahan should keep his yap shut if he doesn’t want Hopper to shut it for him.”

Tommy gives Steve a weird look. “What the hell would you know about it?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, but Tommy already smells blood.

He sneers and says, “Tell me that’s not happening again.”

“Fuck off.” It’s none of Tommy’s business, but to be fair: he’s never been a dick about it before. Tommy’s been his best friend since second grade, it’s not like he can hide anything from him.

“And not because, like, he’s a freak and trash—”

“Classy,” Steve says, shoving his books in his locker, but he gets what Tommy means. It wasn’t pretty, afterwards. Tommy, stuck picking up the pieces, probably holds more resentment than Steve. He says, “It’s not happening again.”

“Sure,” Tommy says, not convinced.

Steve pushes him back with the flat of his hand, then spins to walk down the hall toward homeroom. “It’s not,” he says, flashing a grin he doesn’t totally feel, “but I am his alibi.”

Tommy groans.

Steve says, “Stop spreading rumors,” and thinks about Hopper and monsters and feels a chill go down his spine.

“It’s not just me,” Tommy says. “The Carvers heard it, too.”

Assface and his only slightly more tolerable younger brother, Jason. Steve stopped entertaining douchebags that weren’t named Tommy almost nine months ago, after he got over his spurned lover revenge plot. He’s the bigger man now.

Steve says, “Yeah, well, just tell everyone Steve Harrington said shut the fuck up.”

*

Robin says, “I’d be mad if I wasn’t so intrigued.”

Steve shrugs. “I have a salacious past.”

“Do you, though?” She swaps out the turkey and cheese her mom made her for Steve’s leftover cold pasta, while Steve splits the bag of chocolate chip cookies between them. If Tommy’s his best friend, Robin’s his soulmate.

Platonic, because ew.

“It was puppy love,” Steve says, because that’s what Carol said it was, and saying that makes other people feel better, even if it doesn’t really help himself.

Once upon a time, a fifteen-year-old Munson was everything to a sweet little freshy, and then the asshole ghosted him with a cryptic text, and it fucked Steve over so much he lost his seat on the varsity basketball bench. It’s not like freshmen even played in games, anyway.

Munson’s holding court at the freaks and geeks table, like usual. He’s got a leather jacket on, so Steve can’t see if his arm looks any better. He grimaces when he catches Steve looking at him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Tommy grab Assface’s shoulder and shove him back into his seat. Andy and Luke still look pissed, but they’re not the type of guys to do anything without someone else’s say-so.

“It’s weird how you, like, rule your little corner of the world from my loser table,” Robin says.

“You’re not a loser,” Steve says. Besides, Nancy and Holland sit at Robin’s table, and he’s still trying to get into her good graces.

Robin cracks open her water bottle and says, “It’s sweet that you think that,” in a way that implies she thinks he’s just dumb.

And then there’s shouting, and Steve shoots to his feet automatically, looking first toward Tommy – who seems thankfully removed but definitely gleeful – and then over to Munson… who’s getting yelled at by a red-faced, disheveled Jonathan Byers. Shit.

Steve doesn’t really realize he’s moving until he’s just there, slipping in front of Munson, holding his hands up.

He says, “Hey, Byers, relax,” and then nearly gets his shit rocked when Byers takes a swing at him.

Would’ve gotten his shit rocked if Byers’ eyes didn’t clear at the last second, checking himself – which means he would have hit Eddie – and only clipping Steve’s jaw with a half-assed fist that makes his teeth click.

“Shit,” Byers says, then flinches away like he thinks Steve’s going to hit back.

The only thing saving either of them from suspension for fighting in the lunchroom is Tommy’s table erupting up in chaos, and Robin leading the band geeks and book nerds in a similar fashion.

Steve palms his sore jaw and grabs the front of Byers’ shirt and says, “Run.”

*

They can’t leave campus, because security fucks them, nowadays, but they book it through the gym and out the doors to the back parking lot, the one where someone’s always throwing rocks at the fucking camera, and the school’s budget can only replace it so many times a year.

Byers pulls out a pack of cigarettes, because nothing sells loner loser more than nicotine and old sweat.

Byers says, “You should stay out of this.”

Steve says, “Oh yeah, sure,” but stops himself from going further when he thinks of the kid, and the monster sounds, and the way Munson looked with his hands cuffed. He deflates into the grimy brick and says, “I’m sorry about your brother.”

Byers takes a shaky breath, smoke curling up into the air.

“I’m sorry, but, man,” Steve shakes his head, “Munson didn’t do anything to him.”

Byers’ jaw clenches. “I know you’ve got a soft spot for him.”

Steve snorts. “Is that what we’re calling it?” And Byers was in middle school, how the fuck does he know about—scratch that. Loner losers tend to know about everything, right? It’s cold out, and Steve doesn’t have his jacket. He shoves his hands into his pockets and says, “I’m not allowed to talk about it. But it wasn’t Munson.”

“Who says you’re not allowed to?”

“Hopper,” Steve says. “He’ll get to the bottom of it, man.”

“Hopper will,” Byers says, skeptical.

Steve doesn’t exactly blame him. It seems like Hopper’s been on a constant bender for the past five years. “He’s a decent cop,” Steve says instead. “You know how he is with kids.”

“And you’re not allowed to talk about it,” Byers says, taking another drag of his cigarette before dropping the half-used butt on the pavement and grinding it out.

Across the lot is a line of trees. Not as deep and dark as the spread by Kerley, but almost as creepy.

Byers says, “There’s a search party out now. I’m going right from school.”

“You have CE this afternoon, right?” Steve asks. “What room?”

Byers nods, says, “With Click.”

“Okay,” Steve says, noting how Byers’ hair looks particularly lank today; dark smudges under his eyes, like he’s been up all night. “Okay, I’d say I’d text you, but Hopper has my phone. If you can slip out to the second-floor bathroom by Click’s, I’ll tell you what I know.”

*

Steve skips math and kicks two freshmen out of the second-floor bathroom before Byers shows up.

Byers looks even more wrecked, hair sticking out, eyes red.

Steve says, “I’m not sure why you even came to school, Byers.”

“Habit,” Byers says. “Mom’s, uh.” He shrugs. “I figured it would be better with me out of the way.”

Steve nods, unsure how to bring up the whole Munson, woods, crazy sounds thing. He kind of wishes Eddie was here, too, but he still doesn’t even know what Eddie saw. If he saw anything. He doesn’t know what he told Hopper, before Steve showed up.

And then the door bangs open and Robin stumbles in, waves a piece of paper over her head and says, “You slipped Vickie a note for me? That just says emergency and to meet you at the boys’ bathroom? Who does that?”

Two birds, one stone, Steve thinks.

“We’re gonna go help Byers look for his brother after school,” Steve tells her.

“I have band,” she says, but she’s got her I’m listening face on.

“Yeah, well. I’m not exactly sure what Munson saw,” Steve says looking from Robin and then back to Byers, “but I’m pretty sure he got taken by monsters.”

*

Byers doesn’t believe him.

Steve respects his skepticism, and it’s not like he can play him the voicemail now. He has a feeling once he gets the phone back from Hopper, the voicemail will be gone.

Robin thinks Steve believes it, even if she doesn’t, which is better than Byers telling him to go fuck himself.

After school, Steve sits in his car and clenches his fingers on his steering wheel and watches Munson slink across the parking lot to an idling pickup. Wayne still has the fading honor roll kid sticker on the bumper. Eddie told him it was from his single flash of brilliance, first marking period of freshman year, before he realized school was for suckers and conformists.

Robin opens his passenger door and says, “This no phone thing is a real bitch, Harrington,” as she shoves her trumpet in the back seat.

“I would’ve waited for you if you really wanted to stay for band,” Steve says. It’s not like Byers is chomping at the bit now for him to help grid search whatever part of the woods they’re on.

He’ll do it, because there’s a kid missing, but it seemed like a hell of a better idea earlier in the day. Now, they’ve probably got an hour and a half, tops, before it starts to get dark. Darkness and monsters in the woods. Fun stuff he’d rather avoid.

Robin says, “Do you know where we’re supposed to go?”

“I don’t know where everyone else is going,” Steve says, dread still settled like a stone in his belly, “but we should probably start on Kerley.”

*

Munson’s van is gone, and there’s crime scene tape everywhere. The lack of cars and people makes Steve think they started here early, and now they’ve moved on. Farther in, maybe, or taken another route from the side toward Cornwallis.

It’s not even sunset yet, but everything looks dark and spooky. Steve stands next to the car and tries to think of reasons why this is a good idea.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Robin says, moving to stand next to him.

“Nope.” He’s not even sure what they’re looking for – a body? Blood? If the kid was alive, he’d just go home, right?

Behind them, tires ease into the gravel on the edge of the road. Steve doesn’t bother looking. A car door slams, and then Munson says, “I don’t need you to stand up for me, Harrington.”

Steve still doesn’t look at him. He swears he sees shadows moving in the thick brush, and he shivers a little. He says, “What, with Byers? He’s just scared for his brother.”

“Yeah, I know that, dickweed.”

“Wow,” Robin says, voice low. “You were into that?”

Steve tilts his head, finally looks past where Robin is standing to see Munson, hair pulled back in a messy bun, denim vest shrugged on over the leather, ripped jeans baggy in all the wrong places, face flushed and scowling. “Unfortunately,” he says.

The package is a little different, but Steve knows deep down he’s the same protective, loyal, judgmental asshole he’s always been. It’s just, once upon a time, Steve was on the beneficial side of his personality disorder.

Louder, Steve says, “Got your wheels back, I see.” The van’s even got a shiny new tire on the front passenger side.

Munson rolls his eyes. He says, “We doing this or not?”

Steve thinks Munson’s the least likely person to want to tramp back into Mirkwood, or whatever the hell the kids are calling the woods around Hawkins these days. That’s what Eddie used to call it.

He says, “Sure. Did you bring a flashlight?”

*

Steve digs a flashlight out of his trunk, Munson hefts a massive Maglite that flickers ominously when he first switches it on, and Robin has her phone on a twenty percent battery, because she never remembers to charge it.

Stepping from the ditch of half-dead grass and brambles and into the first line of oaks makes the hair on the back of Steve’s neck stand up. He walks close to Robin, knocking shoulders. Munson’s ahead of them, long strides, and Steve kind of wants to grab onto the back of his jacket, stop him from moving too far away too fast.

Robin says, “This is creepy, right? I always thought these woods were creepy, but,” she holds up her phone, spins in a slow circle, “I’m not even getting any bars out here.”

Munson doesn’t say anything, shoulders tense.

In the distance, something screeches.

“We should turn around,” Robin says. “We should totally turn around, and maybe get some weapons?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in monsters,” Steve says, sweeping his flashlight up the length of a tree and back down again. It’s barely four thirty, it shouldn’t be this dark—for Christ’s sake, more than half the trees are bare limbs, but the angle of the setting sun hitting the hills around them leaves this valley of forest in twilight from mid-afternoon until the fire along the horizon stops shedding a single shadow.

It’s the fucking worst.

Eddie seems to get stiffer, taking stilted, ridged steps, the farther they get into the forest.

When bird song phases into muffled rustling, the snap of twigs and cold, dried out leaves, the three of them silently and collectively stop.

Steve can hear his own breaths, his heart feels like it’s pounding too hard.

Munson’s half turned around. Steve can just about make out the snub nose of his profile, slightly parted mouth and curve of his chin.

He says, “What did you see, Munson? What happened last night?”

Munson’s eyes flash to him and away again. He says, “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me, man,” Steve says. He knows what he heard.

Robin says, “Hey, so.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “Maybe we can have this conversation back at the car.”

*

They don’t have any conversation.

Munson picks up his pace as soon as they hit the shoulder of the road, swings up into his van before Steve can even get his trunk open.

Robin says, “Wait, Eddie!” but Steve just places a hand on her arm and says, “Let him go.”

He knows Eddie’s got his back up, like a cat, and pushing him now will just bring out his claws.

The van’s engine turns over, gravel spits as he presses it into a too-fast three-point turn. Steve slams his trunk shut and watches as he speeds off back toward Forest Hills.

He thinks about last September, waiting outside school for Hellfire to let out, propped up on Eddie’s bumper. How Eddie had spotted him, said, “Yeah, no,” and how Doug had laughed.

How Steve had said, “Can we talk about it?” and Eddie had inched his shoulders up around his ears, shoved hands through his half grown out curls and said, “There’s nothing to talk about, Harrington,” and, “Just leave me the fuck alone.”

Eight months after getting his heart ripped out, and just about two weeks before the birth of King Steve.

If Eddie doesn’t want to talk about something, he’s not going to be swayed by Steve.

*

“Okay, but seriously, what did you see in him?” Robin asks, tucked under a blanket next to Steve on the double lounger on his back patio.

Steve stares up at the dark sky. The clouds give the moon a hazy ring of light. Steve says, “He was nice to me.”

“Wow.”

“No, see.” Steve rolls over and drags her closer under the blanket, drops his forehead onto her shoulder. “He was so cute, right? And nobody looks good at fourteen and fifteen, Robin. Nobody looks good, but he was cute, and he made me laugh, and his uncle drove us to the movies and, like, first love, right?” Eddie had big hands and thin arms and a buzzed head and, like, the largest eyes on the planet.

“First love, huh,” Robin echoes, but not in a mean way.

Steve says, “I asked him out. After his nerd club. I didn’t even know who he was.” He’d missed the bus, and his dad wasn’t going to leave work early to get him. He’d stayed in the gym until coach kicked him out, then wandered the halls while the sky got steadily darker. Eddie’d slammed the drama room doors open right in front of him, clutching a pile of books, talking a mile a minute to some Junior chick, and Steve took in his grin and big brown eyes and couldn’t help himself.

Robin’s quiet. She absently slides her fingers through his hair, petting him. Finally, she says, soft, “What happened?”

“No fucking clue,” Steve says, voice tired. It makes him feel dumb. In his more disparaging moments, he figures maybe that was the point.

3. Tuesday

Tommy corners Steve at his car and says, “So. Tonight.”

“Maybe we should cancel.” Should they be having any kind of fun while Will Byers is missing? When half the town is freaking out, and Jonathan Byers looks like a stiff wind might turn him into a mass murderer?

“My brother got us the beer,” Tommy says, like Steve didn’t say anything at all. “I figure me and Carol. You and Nancy.”

“Robin,” Steve says, resigned.

Tommy makes a face. “Buckley.” He’s still sore he has to share him with her.

“Nancy’ll want to bring Holland,” Steve says.

“All right,” Tommy rubs his hands together. “That’ll make us even. Too bad Barb isn’t a gigantic gay like Buckley.”

“Holy shit, Hagan,” Robin says, falling in step with them as they pass the bike racks. “Watch it or I’ll shove my gigantic gay foot up your ass.”

Tommy’s gaze drops to her converse. “I think I can take it.”

“Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Robin says, then pushes the flat her hand into his neck in a bid to get between him and Steve.

Tommy retaliates by elbowing her in the gut, turns just in time to avoid a knee to the groin, and then Steve has to break them up by shoving his bookbag in between their faces.

“Children,” he says. “We’re going to be late.”

*

Byers is still at school, looking like hell.

Munson is, notably, not.

Steve’s worried. He probably shouldn’t be. Still, at lunch, he finds himself hovering behind Jeff while Gareth scowls up at him and Doug takes a bite out of his sandwich and pretends he doesn’t exist. He’s never done anything directly to them. There was that seven-month stint last year when he went on a douchebag bender, but all that really resulted in was keg stands, alcohol poisoning, failing Algebra, and winning Districts.

Steve says, “Do you guys know where Munson is?”

“Not here,” Gareth says.

Jeff twists a little to look at him, shrugs. “Said he was sick when I texted him—ow, Gareth!” He leans down to rub his shin under the table.

“Don’t engage with the enemy,” Gareth says.

“I’m not the enemy,” Steve says, hands in his pockets. He doesn’t understand this dynamic. Because of Steve, Tommy doesn’t bug any of them about their nerd game, and because of Tommy, nobody else does either.

Gareth scoffs. “An enemy of one is an enemy of all.”

Steve should feel irritated or pissed off, but he just feels sad. Shoulders slumped, he says, “I’m not Eddie’s enemy either.”

“Ah, but you knew who I was talking about,” Gareth says, finger to the side of his nose, like it’s some kind of gotcha. He’s a little shit.

Steve shifts his hips, uncomfortable. “Look, can you just tell me if he’s okay or not?”

Jeff looks apologetic at least. He says, “He sent me a pic of some soup twenty minutes ago.” He even unlocks his phone to show Steve—Eddie’s hand, familiar silver rings, chipped black nail polish, fingers curled around an enormous spoon over a bowl of watery looking chicken noodle.

It, strangely, doesn’t make Steve feel any better. He nods, though, says, “Thanks, man,” and slinks back over to Robin.

*

Three o’clock finds him standing outside Munson’s trailer while Robin waits impatiently in the car.

When he knocks, Eddie’s uncle answers the door. He looks the same as always; wiry, wizened, and deeply unapproachable.

“Mr. Munson,” Steve says.

Wayne Munson gives him a long, searching look that makes Steve a little self-conscious over his khakis. They really haven’t seen each other for a while, either. Finally, he says, “I thought I told you to call me Wayne.”

“Wayne, sir,” Steve says, ducking his head to rub the back of his neck, then he flicks his gaze over to where he knows Eddie’s bedroom is, door half-open, shadow moving. He says, “Is Eddie home?”

A voice from the bedroom shouts, “No,” and Wayne grimaces.

Wayne says, “He’s not fit for company right now, son.”

The hardest part of all of this, now and in the past, has been getting Eddie fucking Munson to just talk to him. He feels frustration deep in his soul, some shit he thought he’d already gotten over. He wants to grab Eddie by the shoulders and throttle him until he makes sense.

The shadow beyond Eddie’s bedroom door is frozen.

Steve stares at it as he says, “Okay, well. Tell him I stopped by.”

*

Barb Holland does not have the best impression of Steve.

“She thinks you’re a moron,” Robin says, sitting at his kitchen counter and flipping absently through her phone.

The house is big and empty and sleekly modern in a way that’s always made Steve’s skin crawl. His parents are away again. When he was little, his grammy would come and stay with him, but now he’s just trusted to take care of the house and not get arrested.

Robin says, “Why do you care if she likes you or not?”

“I don’t,” Steve says. He kind of does, but only because he figures getting on her good side would earn him points with Nancy. After the past couple days, though, scoring with Nancy Wheeler has taken a backseat to Hawkins’ crazy.

Hopper left a message on his landline earlier saying he could come get his phone. When he went to pick it up, though, nobody but Flo was there, and she had no idea what he was talking about.

So now he’s got a missing chief, a missing phone, a missing kid, and noises in the woods that are starting to keep him up at night. It doesn’t help that his house butts up against a chunk of Hawkins woods, directly opposite where Will disappeared.

Tommy never bothers ringing the bell, so he knows it’s him slamming the front door open even before he yells, “Let’s get wasted!” like a douchebag. Behind him is Carol, rolling her eyes and carrying a six pack. Nancy and Holland peek through the doorway next, Nancy like she’s not sure she’s welcome, and Holland like she can’t believe Tommy is a whole person that people voluntarily hang out with.

“Beer, pool, and pizza,” Tommy says, dumping two grocery bags on the counter. “I also brought snacks.”

*

Steve one hundred percent does not feel like hosting whatever the hell this is, but he also doesn’t have enough energy to argue about it with Tommy.

Which is how he ends up with a couple of broken beer bottles on the pool deck, Robin glaring daggers at Tommy for trying to toss her one – Robin probably hasn’t caught anything in her entire life, he definitely did that on purpose – and Holland dripping blood all over the concrete.

Steve sighs. The cut doesn’t look too deep, at least. “C’mon, Holland, I’ve got a first aid kit in the downstairs bathroom.”

“I’ll do it,” Nancy says, shooting a nervous glance at Barb before skirting around Steve. “We’ll be fine.”

“Smooth,” Robin says to Tommy after they’ve all retreated inside. Holland and Nancy directed to the bathroom, the rest of them milling in the kitchen, and Steve feels restless and just a little bit unhinged.

Tommy’s grin is sharp. “You’re the one that dropped it, Buckley.”

Steve’s just thrilled about the entire night, honestly. He pinches the bridge of his nose, says, “Okay, new plan. Everyone just go home.”

“You’re such a pussy,” Tommy says. “What the fuck is wrong with you this week? I thought you wanted in Wheeler’s pants, man.” He softens his words with a firm grip and shake of Steve’s shoulder.

Steve scrubs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Tommy, everything seems fucked right now.”

Tommy stares at him. He glances over at Robin, then over at Carol, who shrugs, then back to Steve again.

“Tell me this isn’t about Munson.”

“It’s not about Munson,” Steve says.

Carol narrows her eyes at him but doesn’t say anything.

“I swear,” Steve says, pressing a hand to his chest.

“Yeah, I’m not buying that,” Tommy says, leaning into the kitchen counter and crossing his arms. “You tell that freak if I find you crying—”

“Holy shit, shut the fuck up,” Steve says, frankly astonished.

Carol pops her gum meaningfully.

Robin says, “You know, I think I’m on their side for once,” and then Nancy says, “About what?” from behind him.

Steve freezes, turns to grin stiffly at her. “Uh. Nothing.”

“Where’s Barb?” Robin says.

“Oh.” Nancy startles and glances over her shoulder. “She said she was going to grab her coat. She left it on a lounger outside.”

It’s weird, Steve’ll think later, how they all turn to look out the sliding glass doors. The eerie blue light from the pool wavering over the concrete, steam rising like mist. It’s a clear night, and the moon is low and tinged orange.

“Where?” Steve says, too soft.

“I—” Nancy takes a step to the doors, and Steve grabs the back of her sweater to stop her, pure instinct.

“Call her,” he says.

She could shake him off easily, but Tommy’s frowning, and Carol says, “What could have happened?” lacking all of her usual sarcasm, and Nancy just pulls out her phone.

“This is weird,” Nancy says, voice slightly shaky. “She’s not answering.”

Robin says, “Would she have left without you?”

“I don’t think so,” Nancy says, eyes big and worried. She looks down at her phone, clutched tightly in her hand, and Steve watches her try calling her again.

A couple seconds later, she jerks back and drops it, hand to her ear, and says, “It’s, like, all high-pitched static.”

“Shit,” Steve says, and thinks about missing kids and horrible sounds in the woods and the darkness that’s on the other side of his fence. “We should call the cops.”

4. Wednesday

Holland disappearing isn’t as exciting as Eddie Munson killing Will Byers, so Steve doesn’t hear a word about it the next morning at school.

First thing, a note falls out of his locker when he opens it.

Robin picks it up, waves it around, and says, “You’re, like, the only person I know who could be without their phone for days and not even care.”

Steve grabs it out of her hands. “Whatever,” he says. “You’re the only one I talk to anyway. What am I missing? Memes from Tommy?”

The note is barely legible, but he thinks it’s from Byers. “This says Jonathan, right?”

Robin leans over his shoulder, says, “Uh. Do you think he wants to meet up to kick your ass?”

“Over what?” Steve grabs his morning books and slams his locker shut again.

“Well,” she hitches her bookbag higher on her shoulder and turns to follow him down the hall, “he thinks you were being a dick about his brother. Maybe he heard about Barb. Callahan was real suspicious.”

Callahan had implied things, because Steve was around for both disappearances, but all Steve can think is that maybe people will lay off about Eddie now. The rumors hadn’t really subsided; there’s only so much threatening Steve can do, and that doesn’t really fly with anyone outside of school.

Steve shrugs. “Wanna skip lunch with me then?” Byers wants to meet in the drama room.

“Of course,” Robin says. “Someone’s gotta make sure Byers doesn’t break your pretty face.”

*

Byers doesn’t break his face. One of the main reasons for this is because Byers is a creep.

“Seriously?”

Byers says, defensive, “I was looking for Will.”

Steve takes in his miserable expression and hunched shoulders and sighs. “Okay, so. Voyeurism aside, why did you want to show me this?”

This is Byers’ photo app—Steve scrolls through pic after pic of blurry, dark footage of his pool deck from the POV of a stalker psycho.

Robin says, “I mean. This doesn’t look great for you, Jonathan,” leaning into Steve’s side to see, too.

Byers grabs for his phone and groans when Steve jerks it out of his reach. “C’mon, man. I want to show you these, just let me—”

“Hang on,” Robin says, plucking the phone out of Steve’s grip. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?”

Robin shoves the phone back under Steve’s nose and pinches her fingers to zoom in. There’s, unfortunately, something besides Holland in his back yard. “Oh fuck,” he says.

Byers clutches the edges of his jacket together and says, “See?”

“What the fuck is that?” It’s big, and the shine of its skin from the pool lights make it seem wet, and even blurry and dark, Steve’s pretty sure he sees claws.

Is this what Munson saw in the woods that night? Is this what took Will?

“My mom’s going insane,” Byers says, slumping against the wall of the drama room. “She bought out Melvald’s entire supply of Christmas lights and strung them all over our house. She thinks she can talk to Will through them because, like, our cordless melted yesterday when it rang.”

Steve stares at him. Blinks. Says, “Talk to him from where?”

“I don’t know, man,” he presses his palms into his eyes, “but I keep getting missed calls from Will on my phone.”

“Wait,” Robin says. “Like you don’t pick up?”

“Like it doesn’t even connect.” Byers finally plucks his phone back out of Robin’s now loose hold. He scrolls to his recent calls list and shoves it back to them.

There’re a dozen or so missed calls from Will, and just as many from Byers out to his brother.

“It never rings,” Byers says. “I don’t even get his voicemail. And I can never catch him calling back.”

“Curious,” Robin says, eyes narrowed.

“We should show Munson,” Steve says.

“He hasn’t been to school since Monday,” Robin says.

Steve shrugs and says, “He’s got Hellfire tomorrow. He’ll have to show up for that. And in the meantime—”

The school loudspeaker cuts him off, and he hears his name being called down to the principal’s office.

“Great,” he says, running a hand through his hair. Then he points at Byers. “In the meantime,” he starts again, backing into the door to push it open, “you should probably show those pictures to Nancy.”

*

Outside the principal’s office is Chief Hopper.

He says, “C’mon, Harrington. I’ve got some questions for you down at the station.”

“Am I getting arrested?”

Hopper looks tired, irritated, frustrated and pissed off. He also looks like he really wants a cigarette. His, “No,” sounds defeated, like he really wanted to arrest him.

Steve puts his hands on his hips and says, “Then how about you question me here.”

“This isn’t something I want anyone to overhear, kid.” He places a hand on Steve’s shoulder and steers him into a turn. “I’ll even give you your phone back.”

Steve’s tempted to still balk, but it would be cool to be able to text Robin again. “Fine,” he says, “but I’m taking my car.”

“This isn’t a choice, Harrington,” Hopper says, giving him a little shove to get moving before dropping his hand. “If we can get to my truck without a scene, I promise not to handcuff you.”

*

Hopper sets Steve’s phone on the desk in front of him and says, “So. You know what your house, the Byers’ house, and the woods where Will went missing all have in common?”

“Uh.” Steve slowly tugs his phone toward himself, touches the screen. He’s surprised when it still lights up, flashing an image of Robin flipping him off, backlit by a sunset. He expected it to be dead.

Hopper says, “They’re all really close to that government shithole, Hawkins Lab.”

“Should you be telling me this?”

Hopper rubs a hand over his eyes. “Probably not. Walk me through last night.”

Steve cocks his head. “Is this gonna be a reoccurring thing where you don’t trust Callahan to do his job?”

“Harrington, I’ve got two missing kids and a fuckton of weird traffic at a lab that supposedly shut down ten years ago, so,” he spreads his hands out, “humor me.”

“We were out by the pool,” Steve says, glancing down at his palm, curling and uncurling his fingers. “Barb cut her hand on some glass, so Nancy took her back inside to bandage it. The rest of us went into the kitchen, and when Nancy came in a couple minutes later, she said Holland had gone back to the pool to get her jacket.” He thinks about Byers’ pics, and wonders if he should tell Hopper, but he’d probably accuse them of, like, faking them. Maybe he’d take his phone away again. “Holland never came back inside.”

“But you didn’t see her leave.” Hopper taps his pen onto his notebook. “Was the back gate open or closed?”

Steve doesn’t even remember looking, but, “Pretty sure it was closed.”

“And you didn’t notice anything unusual?”

Steve shrugs. He doesn’t think the woods feeling extra creepy is a good answer to that.

Hopper’s phone buzzes across his desk, and he sighs like he’s dying. He holds a finger up, answers the call with, “Yeah.”

Steve watches his expression crumble, just slightly, before smoothing out like stone. “I’ll meet you at the morgue,” he says, and Steve feels like he’s been kicked in the chest.

“What do you mean?” Hopper says, getting to his feet and skirting his desk, jerking his coat off the hook by the office door as he passes through.

Steve scrambles up out of his seat to follow him.

“They can’t just fucking confiscate a body, O’Bannon,” Hopper says, ignoring Steve dogging his steps past Flo and into the parking lot.

At the truck, he puts a hand on Steve’s chest and pushes him back. Says, “Well, tell them no,” into his phone. Then he swings open his truck door and tosses his phone onto the passenger seat with a groan.

Steve says, “What was that? Was that about Will?”

Hopper just says, “You got your phone back, Harrington. You’re gonna have to call someone for a ride.”

*

Considering it’s only 1PM on a Wednesday, calling someone for a ride is tricky. Even if Robin was willing to sneak out of school to pick him up, the only wheels she has are attached to a Huffy.

His phone, while alive, is hanging on at fifteen percent. He opens his text messages with a sigh and brings up Munson. Sees their brief exchange from Sunday night and, with an unamused snort, mirrors it.

Hey, can you pick me up?

A reply takes so long Steve thinks Munson’s just going to ignore him, but finally he writes back: where are u?

Police station

It honestly surprises him, he was fully expecting to have to walk back to school, when Munson texts: b there in 20

*

Closer to a half hour later, Munson’s van screeches into the police parking lot and pulls up right next to where Steve’s sitting on the curb.

Munson says, “Get in,” out his window, and Steve hefts himself to his feet, circles around to the passenger side, and tries not to feel like this was a massively bad idea.

Munson doesn’t seem quite as hostile as usual, though. Even has his music turned down to a reasonable volume.

Steve places his bookbag in between his feet and snaps his seatbelt on just as Munson steps on the gas.

He says, “Where to, your highness?”

“My car’s still at school,” Steve says. “Thanks for doing this.”

Munson shrugs, shoulders tight. “Nothing but time until this blows over.”

“Right. Still.” Steve watches his profile, watches his body grow more tense, the longer Steve looks at him. “I appreciate it.”

Munson hmms, taps his fingers on the steering wheel.

He’s grown, in the past year and a half. Steve doesn’t usually let himself look. Sometimes it’s hard not to see the skinny kid with the ready smile; the way he always seemed so happy to see him. Spend time with him.

They get to the school in relative peace and silence, and Munson idles along the curb out front.

Steve pops the door open and steps onto the concrete, keeping a grip on door handle.

Munson arches an eyebrow at him, quizzical.

“You wanna, uh,” Steve swallows hard. Goddamn it, Tommy, he’s definitely not doing this again. Still, he shakes his head a little and says, “You wanna maybe go get something to eat? It’s not like I’m going back to class now.”

Munson pulls a lock of hair in front of his mouth, worries it with his teeth. “Won’t Carver bitch about you missing practice?”

Munson doesn’t say no, and Steve feels an unsteady thread of relief in his spine. “You think Assface gives a shit if I miss? Besides,” he shrugs, “I’ve been skipping all week for this crap. What’s one more day?”

Munson looks at him funny. “You still call him Assface?”

“Yeah?” Steve says, a little incredulous. Occasionally he calls him Captain Assface. “He called you a slur, Eddie, you think I’m just gonna get over that?”

“I don’t know, Steve.” He bares his teeth at him, feral, like a switch flipped. “You seemed pretty pumped to get picked for varsity as a freshman.”

Yeah, Steve thinks morosely. And then he rode the bench for two months and didn’t give a single fuck. Did Eddie not even notice? “It wasn’t that important,” he says, voice low.

“Wasn’t it?” Munson drapes a hand over the steering wheel, then gives Steve a long look, up and down. His grin is fixed, and his eyes are suddenly hard. “Carver seemed to think it was. Seemed to think I wasn’t fitting your vibe, you know? Bringing you down to trash level.”

Steve’s not quite sure what he’s hearing. “What the fuck are you saying?”

Munson blows out a long breath, deflates a little. “I’m saying you probably wouldn’t have made the cut with a leech like me.”

“Are you—” Steve rocks back on his heels, drops his hold on the door. “Are you telling me you dumped me because Assface Carver told you he wouldn’t let me on varsity?”

“Yes. No.” Munson shoves his hands through his hair. “Harrington, I dumped you because you were becoming a raging douchebag.”

Steve flinches.

Takes a shaky step backward, away from the van.

Says, “Oh.”

Munson, for his part, looks almost stricken. “I didn’t mean that.”

Steve laughs weakly. “Uh, yeah. You definitely did.” It makes sense now. Why Eddie never wanted to talk to him about it. Shit, he must have thought Steve would do something dumb—mean, retaliatory, if he ever came near him again. Shit.

The thing is, Steve doesn’t remember being anything like that freshman year, not until the full reality of Munson hating him had hit him, that fall of sophomore year, but. He must have done something for Eddie to believe it.

They both thought Carver was a cunt back then. A little threatening from Assface wouldn’t have meant… this. “I’ll let you go,” Steve says, softly shutting the door, turning to stare off across the parking lot.

“Steve, wait.”

Steve shoves his hands in his pockets, moves further away. “Thanks again for the ride.”

5. Thursday

“Something happened.” Robin stuffs her trumpet and backpack into the backseat of Steve’s car, then hops into the passenger seat and gives him a pointed look.

“Nothing happened, Robin,” Steve says.

“You’ve been moping all day.”

Steve makes a face. “Have not.”

“Don’t be a baby.” She pushes his damp hair off his forehead – he actually went to basketball practice after school, hoping it would tire out his nerves – and says, “I would’ve confronted you earlier, but I didn’t want to make you cry at lunch.”

“Fuck you,” Steve says, but he doesn’t push her hand away. “Have I always been a dick?”

“I mean. I find you endearing.”

Steve rolls his eyes. He shouldn’t be asking Robin this shit. She was in eighth grade when he dated Eddie. He always figured Eddie was the catalyst that made him such an apathetic asshole last year, but what if he’s wrong?

He’d been put on JV after baskeball tryouts. He’d been so stoked about just making the team, and Eddie had seemed happy for him, too. And then Luke broke his arm halfway through January, and Steve got bumped up as, like, strictly a second string, just-in-case guy, and he couldn’t believe his luck. Invitations to parties, dinners, and weekend pick-up games started piling up. Steve always wanted to bring Eddie with him, even though Eddie usually said no.

“I’m letting this go for now, but only because we’re late to meet Jonathan and Nancy,” Robin says.

“We’re not that late.” Steve nods his head to where Gareth and Doug are propping open a pair of doors by the auditorium. “Hellfire just let out.”

They’re supposed to rope Munson into coming with them to the Byers’ house. Steve’s not exactly sure how he’s supposed to accomplish that.

“How do you want to handle this?” Robin says.

“Do you think Byers texted him?” Steve says, watching Munson stumble down a couple steps and onto the asphalt, shoving books in his messenger bag and shouting something to Jeff.

And then Steve sees Luke and Assface peel themselves away from Carver’s shitty Camry and make a beeline across the parking lot toward Munson’s van.

“Shit,” Steve says, and scrambles out of his car.

Robin says, “Oh, fuck,” and falls out of the passenger side to jog after him.

*

Steve thinks he might have a concussion.

He’s definitely got a broken nose.

But Coach gave Assface a suspension and Steve gave Luke a fat lip and a black eye, so the sore ribs, black spots in his vision and the blood in the back of his throat might be kind of worth it. Especially since Munson and Robin didn’t get hurt at all.

“Oh my god,” Robin says, cradling his head in her lap as Munson’s van jolts over a pothole.

Steve groans and says, “Your shocks suck, man,” and Munson says, “Shut up,” in such a high register that Steve suspects he might be panicking.

“Am I going to the hospital?” Munson says.

“No,” Steve says, just as Robin says, “Yes.”

“No,” Steve says again. “I just need some ice or something. We should just go meet Byers.”

“Why are we meeting Byers?” Munson says.

Robin says, “Uh. My vote is still for the hospital.”

Steve would wince if he could move any of his facial muscles without passing out. He says, “He has some… stuff. To show you. That you should see.” Slowly he forces himself to sit up, to look at Munson, who’s white knuckling the steering wheel and shooting him wide-eyed looks in the rearview mirror.

There’s blood dripping down from Steve’s nose and onto his pants. Robin rifles through Munson’s stuff and carefully presses a balled-up t-shirt onto his face.

“Okay,” Munson says, tight. “I guess we’re going to Byers.”

*

Nancy and Jonathan are down the front steps of the Byers’ house just as Robin slides open the side of the van.

Nancy, grim faced, says, “Change of plans. We’re going to mine.”

“Or how about you tell me what this is all about,” Munson says, “and then we drive Harrington here to a medical professional.”

Nancy says, “Why?” and Byers says, “He didn’t tell you?” and Steve says, “I don’t need a medical professional.”

Robin says, “When the hell would we have told him anything while Steve was getting the shit kicked out of him?”

Last week, Nancy was giggling at his attempts at flirting, blushing bright red. Now, mouth a flat line, she’s looking at him like an alien; like she’s never seen him before in her life. Maybe it’s all the blood.

“What happened?” Nancy asks. She makes an abortive move toward where he’s climbing out of the back with Robin’s help, stops to curl her hands into fists at her side.

“A couple of jocks tried to take out Eddie, and Steve here got in the way,” Robin says.

“Hey,” Steve says, getting his feet under him, “I got some good licks in.” He’s a little unsteady. Munson grabs his elbow as he gets out of the driver’s seat.

Munson says, “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why the fuck I’m here in the first place.”

Byers sighs heavily, tugs his phone out of his pocket. Unlocks it. Passes it over.

Munson narrows his eyes and says, “Why are you showing me your photos?”

Nancy moves closer, pinches the image and zooms in. “Because of that.”

Munson pales. His hand trembles a little as he hands Nancy back the phone. “Okay, yeah. Fuck. Jesus Christ. I was really hoping I just hallucinated that.”

“Do you know what that is?” she says.

Munson shakes his head, then shakes his head some more. “Nope, no. No way.”

“Munson,” Byers says. “We think this thing took Barb.”

“Sure. I mean, that’s likely, right? It’s, like, right there, and it was—” Munson cuts himself off, turns to look past them and into the brush and trees next to Byers’ house. His eyes are glassy.

“Hopper told my mom they found Will’s body,” Byers says, voice low, and Munson jerks back like he’s been physically hit.

“Oh fuck,” he says. He presses his palms to his eyes and takes a shuddery breath. Steve wants to reach out and touch him, but he doesn’t.

Byers says, “But he also said he doesn’t think it’s really him.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how they can get that wrong, but Mom believes him.”

“Do you?” Robin says.

Byers looks back at his house. “I heard something. Through the stereo. It sounded so much like Will.” His face is gray and tired and sad. “I’m not sure what to believe.”

“So we find out,” Nancy says, determined.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Robin says. “Find out how?”

Munson sounds vaguely terrified when he says, “We go back into the woods.”

*

Steve understands the urgency to find Holland and Will, but he’s not sure why they constantly have to do this after dark.

He says to Robin, voice low, “Probably would’ve been better to do this tomorrow.”

Robin scoffs. “You wanna tell Nancy that?”

“Absolutely not,” Steve says. He honestly thought Nancy was sweet and maybe a little shy, but really she’s scary as fuck.

His head hurts. His nose aches. He feels slightly better than right after it first happened. He’s no longer actively bleeding, and he’s got his balance back, at least, even though Robin’s walking so close to him that their elbows brush—just in case.

Munson’s hovering close, too, which is a little unnerving. Steve figured he’d be pissed that he got in the way, got involved, but Munson just seems… concerned. Steve’s not sure what to make of it.

Not that far up ahead, Steve sees Byers and Nancy’s bouncing flashlight beams and their dark silhouettes. Then Nancy says, “I think I found something.”

“Is it weird goo?” Steve says, light catching on some sort of gross gaping wound on a nearby tree. There’s a pulsing glow to it, like it’s something out of an alien movie.

“It’s a dead deer,” Byers says, right when Robin says, “Don’t touch it.”

Steve ignores Byers and says, “I’m going to touch it.”

Robin grabs hold of his jacket, hooks her hand around an arm in an attempt to keep him back.

He gently shakes her off and says, “Hey, this is the whole reason we’re out here, right? Figure out what the hell happened to Holland and Will. I’m just going to get a closer look.”

Munson says, “This is a bad idea.”

“This whole town is a bad idea, apparently,” Steve says, and steps close enough to reach out.

His hand goes right through the tree.

“Whoa,” Robin says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nancy and Byers’ lights come back toward them. He’s up to his elbow in whatever the hell this thing is. He can flex his hand, wave it around, and it doesn’t seem to be touching anything on the other side.

He says, “I’m going in.”

“No,” Munson says.

Steve throws him a grin, tries not to give away how fucking terrified he is, and says, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Steve,” Nancy says, staring at his disappearing arm. “What.”

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Steve says, and then sticks his whole upper body through.

*

It’s not what he was expecting.

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it really wasn’t this. Red sky, murky woods. It’s oddly not as dark as it is back home, but there’s dust or ash on the air, and breathing it in makes his lungs burn. It looks almost exactly like the woods they just walked through but it’s definitely not.

This is something decidedly Not Hawkins.

It’s not quiet, but all the sounds are eerily unfamiliar.

He steps away from the tree, almost immediately hears something large moving too close to him, and fear – even more fear – spikes up his spine.

“Jesus Christ,” he says in a hush.

Through the trees he sees… the something. The thing from Byers’ photos, maybe, looking ten feet tall, a misshapen, hunched figure, making chilling skittering noises; if it catches him, Steve instinctively knows it’s going to eat him.

He wants to look for Will.

He knows if he steps any farther away from where he came in, he’s never going to be able to find his way back.

A branch snaps, and the thing’s head comes up and looks right at him.

Or, actually, it doesn’t look right at him. Because it doesn’t really have a fucking face, Jesus. No eyes, just a weird, flaring mouth, like demented flower petals, and lots of fucking teeth.

He takes a hasty step backward and turns just in time to see a familiar hand shoot forward through the pulsing goo, silver rings, bitten nails, and he thinks, a little hysterical, at least Munson cares enough about him to not want him to die.

The hand jerks when Steve clasps it, like he wasn’t expecting it, but then another hand thrusts out, takes hold of Steve’s sleeve, and yanks him back through.

It’s just as disorienting as going in the other direction, but he’s rewarded with fresh air and Robin shouting at him.

He lands on top of Munson, who fell back onto his ass with momentum, and then Robin barrels into him from the side and topples him completely over into the leaves and brush.

She’s got him in a bear hug. “I’m going to kill you,” she says. “Oh my god, you’re dead meat when I can feel, like, my entire body again, holy shit.”

“I’m okay,” Steve says.

“I don’t care,” Robin says, in a way that Steve knows she definitely cares.

Munson sits up, hooks his hands over his bent knees, and lets out a litany of curses that would maybe make Steve blush if he wasn’t still numb with absolute terror.

Byers says, “What was it? Did you see Will?”

Steve shakes his head and says, “I’ll tell you if you get me the hell out of here. I’m not sure I can walk.”

6. Friday

Steve clocks Tommy’s expression as he barrels toward him through the crowded hallway and heads him off with a, “It’s not your fault. I’m okay.”

His nose is still swollen, slowly turning from angry red to purple black, and he’d downed four ibuprofen that morning to stop his head from pounding, but he’s pretty sure he got all the blood off his face.

“I should’ve been there. I should have waited for you after practice,” Tommy says. The furious blush of his face makes his freckles stand out more.

Steve rolls his eyes. “C’mon,” he says. “If they’d been thinking rationally, I would’ve been able to talk them down. You being there wouldn’t have made a difference, dude.”

“Evened out the odds, at least,” Tommy says with a scowl, arms crossed. He leans against the locker next to Steve’s. “It’s not like Munson was gonna punch anybody.”

“Coach suspended Carver,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Tommy says, still frowning. “I heard they’re both out for the first two games, too.”

Steve thinks they should be out for the season, but they’re seniors and Coach isn’t going to ruin any possible scholarships for them because of a fight outside school hours.

And then Tommy goes from pissed off to awkward; he scratches the back of his neck and says, “You going to that memorial? For that kid?”

Shit, Steve thinks. That’s gonna be fucking surreal, considering Byers and his mom both don’t believe Will’s actually dead.

After Steve had described what he’d seen, Nancy had admitted her younger brother and his little friends were acting squirrely, hiding a secret or three, and now everyone but Steve thinks they know something about Will and his disappearance that nobody else does.

Steve just thinks they’re upset about losing their best friend. They’re eleven, what could they possibly know about the fucked-up stuff Steve saw on the other side of that tree?

Steve says, “Yeah.” They’re getting out of school for it; everyone in town will probably show up, if only out of curiosity. “I’m taking Robin, if you and Carol want to tag along.”

“Full offense, Steve,” Tommy says, backing away as Steve flips him off, “but I’d rather get my face ripped off by a howler monkey than spend any amount of time in an enclosed space with Buckley and Carol.”

Tommy puts up with Robin because she’s his platonic soulmate; Carol doesn’t even try. To be fair, Robin doesn’t either. Steve’s house is one thing, trapping them in a car is like putting two raccoons in a pillowcase.

Tommy salutes him like a douche and takes off for the science wing.

Steve absolutely does not feel like being in school, but at least they get out at lunch.

*

“I agree with Nancy,” Robin says, hooking her arm around Steve’s. “Those nerds are up to something.”

Nancy’s younger brother and two other pipsqueaks are hiding behind a cluster of parents, whispering to each other furiously, and shooting everyone within ten feet of them dirty looks. They don’t seem like they’re mourning much.

“Do you think they know about the gate?” That’s what Nancy’s calling it—a gate. The hole in the tree. Steve had wanted to call it a goo portal but he got overruled.

His phone buzzes and he attempts, and fails, to pull it out of his pocket surreptitiously. To his left, Mr. Clarke gives him a disappointed frown. Somewhere behind them, a voice says in a hush, “Did you hear how they found Benny? Suicide, they said. Damn shame,” and Robin tightens her grip on his arm.

He’s got a text from Nancy, and he quickly looks up, scans the crowd. Catches her eye and frown from where she’s behind her dad. She shakes her head slightly, then turns back to the podium where the mayor is waxing poetic about a kid he never even met.

The text says: Mike caved. Meet @ my house after the ceremony

Steve just sends back: ok

*

Eleven is tiny and weird and freaks him the fuck out.

Robin leans into his side and whispers, “She’s freaking me out.”

Mike shoots them a dirty look.

Eleven just watches them, unblinking.

“So,” Steve says. “Hawkins Lab.”

Mike is hovering protectively behind Eleven. Lucas looks vaguely sullen about it all. And Dustin drags a notebook out of his backpack and holds it up, flat, in front of them.

Dustin says, “We’re calling it the Upside Down. It’s, like, this is Hawkins,” he points to the top of the notebook, “and then there’s a, uh, mirror image of Hawkins, directly underneath.”

Mirror image, Steve thinks. “You twerps haven’t been in there, right?” he says.

“No,” Lucas says, even more sullen.

“It is not safe.”

These are the first words Steve hears Eleven say. She’s got a lack of inflection that Steve supposes only happens when you grow up as a government experiment. Fuck.

“Let’s say we believe you,” Robin says—Steve already believes them, but he guesses he’s the only one that truly saw—“what makes you so sure Will is still… down there. Alive.”

“Eleven knows,” Mike says with a stubborn twist to his mouth.

Dustin says, “We heard him. There’s, like, places where the barriers are thinner, I think, if you’re both there at the same time. Lights flicker, voices, we’re not sure how it works, if it has anything to do with the monster being close, but,” he trails off, flash of excitement fading in the face of reality. Of Will and the monster being anywhere near each other in that other world.

Byers says, “Like my mom. With the Christmas lights. And the stereo, when I heard—”

“Plus,” Mike says, cutting in with determination and what Steve thinks is blind faith coddled by infatuation, “Eleven knows.”

Lucas snorts, and Mike sends him a glare.

“C’mon. She can move things with her mind,” Mike says.

“Move,” Nancy says. “Like levitate? Telekinesis?”

Dustin is nodding before she even finishes talking.

And then Byers says, soft, “We have to tell my mom. If she can,” he nods at Eleven, “if you can find my brother. We have to tell Mom.”

7. Saturday

Apparently, Steve can add ‘wanted by the government’ to his limited resume.

It’s probably not surprising, given the supposed fake death of Will, the little girl with superpowers, and the monster in the woods. Everything just screams government coverup.

Last Saturday, he went to the movies with Robin, then hung out at the quarry with a bunch of guys from the team, sitting on the hood of his car and bitching to Robin about how cold it was.

Now, he’s dodging government agents that may or may not want to kill them and breaking into the middle school with Jonathan Byers’ mom.

Dustin hacked into the security system with some doohickey his unsuspecting mom gave him last Christmas, and then Munson pulled out a set of keys he stole from the janitor three years ago in eighth grade.  

Surprisingly, they still work. He lets out a triumphant squawk as the back gym doors swing open.

Steve says, “I feel like if we pooled our resources in different ways, we could’ve made this depravation tank in, like, my parents’ jacuzzi bathtub.”

Mrs. Byers stares at him.

Munson nudges him in the shoulder so companionably that Steve does a doubletake. Eddie’s already moved past him and into the gym, though, and Mrs. Byers just shakes her head and coaxes Eleven inside, too, like she’s a nervous little mouse.

Steve supposes it’s apt, given her shorn head and big eyes; she seems scared, which baffles Steve. Sure, she’s a kid, but she flipped a few vans that afternoon with the power of her mind. He figures she’s badass enough to take on anything. Especially whatever vision quest Mrs. Byers asked her to do to find Will and Holland.

He’s there as muscle, to haul a bunch of salt bags out of the cafeteria—to be fair to Mrs. Byers, that probably would’ve killed his parents’ jacuzzi.

It takes about a half hour to set the baby pool full of saltwater up for Eleven, and then another twenty minutes for anything to actually happen.

Small and pale, half submerged in cloudy water, Bluetooth speaker set to loud, aggressive static, Eleven finds both Will and Holland in the Upside Down.

It sets Steve’s teeth on edge, makes his stomach feel hollowed out, slowly filling with dread. He’d been putting it out of his mind – the blurry photos, Holland bending over a lounger, the figures in the house in the background, even more indistinct. The five of them standing around the kitchen island beyond the sliding glass doors while some creature soundlessly ripped Holland from their entire world.

He wonders if he’ll ever be able to swim out there again.

Robin threads her fingers through his and squeezes, like she knows what he’s thinking.

He glances at Eddie, sitting to his right, one row below him on the bleachers, hunched over, leg bouncing, a lock of hair in his mouth. He catches Steve’s gaze, expression blank, dark smudges under his eyes.

He looks terrible.

Steve wants to hold his hand, too.

*

Mrs. Byers leaves to go track down Hopper again, with the crazy idea of breaking into Hawkins Lab and going into the Upside Down to get Will, wherever Eleven saw him hiding.

Steve feels at loose ends, watching Munson smoke outside the middle school gym.

Nancy slips out the door beside him and says, “I have a plan.”

Steve looks at her. She’s staring off into the late afternoon sun, hair pulled back, scowling. Steve would probably be more attracted to her if Munson wasn’t blowing absolutely gross smoke at them. He flashes Steve a toothy grin when he turns to give him a glare. Munson was smoking at fifteen, too. It kills him that he still finds that hot.

Steve clenches his jaw and says, “I thought the plan was to stay here and watch the kids while the chief and Mrs. Byers go and,” he waves a hand, “save the day.”

Nancy looks grim. She says, “Jonathan has his dad’s old shotgun—”

“Hey, whoa,” Steve says.

“—and I think we should set a trap.”

“A trap for what, Wheeler?” Munson says, flicking his cigarette onto the asphalt and straightening up, tugging down the ends of his leather jacket.

She gives him an unimpressed glower. “What do you think, Munson? The monster that killed Barb.”

*

In the Wheeler’s garage, Byers drops a bat and a jar full of long, rusty old nails in front of Steve. He holds up a hammer.

Steve stares at him and says, “What the fuck, Byers?” but he takes the hammer from him anyway.

“Metal,” Munson says from where he’s sitting on an upturned crate, sharpening sticks into spears and stakes with his pocketknife, like they’re taking on a vampire.

He’s shed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and Steve keeps finding himself staring at the line of bats on the inside of his elbow.

“Are those new?” he says, then immediately wants to kill himself.

Munson looks at Steve, then down at his arm. He shrugs. “A couple months.”

Steve nods, looks back down at his bat and nails. The nails have to be at least six inches long, and the bat is old-school wood, in decent shape, good for cold weather baseball; Steve’s reluctant to defile it, but Eddie’s right: after he’s got a half dozen nails into it, it is kind of metal.

Nancy’s showing Robin how to hold the shotgun, which Steve hopes everyone knows is a bad idea. He’d mention it, but Robin looks both thrilled and terrified with Nancy’s arms wrapped around her—he’ll wait.

Eddie nods his head toward them and says, “What’s the deal with you and Buckley?”

Steve furrows his brow. “Uh. Best friends.”

“Yeah, but how?” Eddie holds out a sharp-tipped spear, looping it from Robin to Steve and back again. “Pretty sure she’s taking college-level French. I heard they almost had you repeat last year, after you failed math.”

“My dad kicked my ass about that,” Steve says, and at Eddie’s startled look, adds, “Not actually. He said if I didn’t clean up my act, go to summer school, man up, he wouldn’t buy me that BMW I wanted.”

Eddie cocks his head. “You drive a Honda Civic.”

“The old bait and switch,” Steve says, nodding. “But by then I’d dried out, got a Trig tutor lined up for this year, and came out to my mom.”

“We dated for six months,” Eddie says, and it almost doesn’t hurt to hear that.

Steve says, “And look where that got me.”

“You can’t blame me for your douchebag trajectory,” Eddie says, shoving his array of pointy sticks into a duffel bag.

Steve thinks he probably can, but it’s not worth arguing about now.

“For the record,” he says instead, “you broke my heart.”

“Uh, no I didn’t,” Eddie says.

Steve gives an exasperated sigh, hand on his hip. “Pretty sure I’d know better than you, man.”

“Hagan said—” Eddie cuts himself off, bites his lower lip.

“You,” Steve says slowly, “you’re saying you listened to Tommy?” Tommy, who’s a douchebag with a protective streak a mile wide, and who, yeah, Steve can imagine telling Eddie all kinds of shit to get him to leave him alone. Steve had cried. He specifically remembers Tommy freaking the fuck out about that.

Eddie crosses an arm over his stomach, curls a fist under his lip, like he’s thinking about gnawing on his rings. “Clean break,” he says. “Carver and Hagan insisted.”

“You let Assface and Tommy Hagan tell you what to do?” He gets Tommy. Maybe. That was born out of trauma and panic, probably, and not wanting to see Steve spiral again. Assface has absolutely nothing to do with him at all.

“You seemed fine.” He gives Steve a tight and defensive shrug. “What did you want me to do?”

“Uh, not fucking dump me over a text in the first place, asshole! Maybe talk to me about it?” Steve presses his hands to his eyes, groans dramatically, and says, “Look, this isn’t the fucking time—”

“You brought it up.”

“—and we were, like, idiot baby teens, right? That means fuck-all now.” He doesn’t really believe it, but he feels like it should be true. Fourteen-year-old Steve had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

But right now they have a monster to kill.

Steve hefts his nail bat onto this shoulder. He was fourteen and a wuss and now he’s sixteen and only slightly less of a wuss, apparently, but he can do this. He can be the hero here. He can make sure they all don’t die.

“Harrington.”

“What, Eddie? What?” Steve flings his arms out, brandishing the bat. “Do you think for once you could trust me not to be a douchebag?”

Eddie stares at him a long moment, both hands gripping and twisting the strap of the duffel that’s pulled over his shoulder. Finally, he says, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re—” Steve cuts himself off, chest tight. He’s not sure why that hits him so hard. Or he is sure, and he doesn’t want to think about it. He nods and says, “Okay.”

*

Robin’s in charge of the fire.

Steve’s not thrilled about it, but Nancy’s got the shotgun, and Byers has a hatchet, and Eddie has at least six stakes strapped to his body with duct tape, so he figures fire might be the least dangerous weapon in this situation.

The inside of the Byers’ house looks exactly how Byers described, Steve shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s also somehow deeply disturbing to see in person.

There are Christmas lights hanging all over the worn and faded walls, strings of them pinned together over the living room couch to spell out the alphabet; the burnt shell of two cordless landlines sit on the coffee table; the kitchen is a harried mess, clean, hand-washed dishes piled in stacks next to the sink. Steve’s hands itch to start putting them all away, to straighten up the pillows, throw away trash.

Byers seems briefly embarrassed by the mess before resolutely squaring his shoulders and ignoring it. Flashes Steve a look, like he’s daring him to say something.

Steve’s not going to say anything.

“How do we know this is going to work?” Robin says.

“We don’t,” Byers says, as he drags a freaking bear trap into the hallway from a back bedroom.

“Okay, but, like. How are we going to get its attention?”

“I have a theory,” Nancy says from the kitchen, where she’s opening and closing drawers. Looking for something. She pulls out a big ass knife with a satisfied air. “Steve says it didn’t really have a face, right?”

Steve wants to point out that Eddie probably saw it, too, but he hasn’t been talking.

Nancy tests the sharpness of the knife with her finger like a heathen, then holds it up to the overhead light. “And there was that deer, near where Steve went through the gate, torn apart and eaten. What if whatever made it go after the deer is also why it went after Barb?”

Byers motions for the lighter fluid and Robin hands it over, watching numbly as he douses the floor all around the bear trap.

This is crazy, Steve thinks, and thinks that even more when Nancy slides the knife across her palm and cuts herself.

Eddie hisses and Steve winces in sympathetic pain as Nancy’s eyes screw up and she drips blood all over the floor.

Robin, a little hysterical, says, “Oh my god.”

Byers looks like he already knew exactly what Nancy was going to do, and then he takes the knife from her to do the same goddamn thing.

Eddie says, “Are we making a blood pact?” with an uneasy chuckle.

“No, Eddie,” Nancy says matter-of-factly. “We’re giving it bait.”

*

There are several long seconds, after the blood bait actually works, that Steve considers running out the front door.

Grabbing Robin, hopping into his sensible little car and just taking off for the middle of town, where crowds of normal people are heading out to a late Saturday night dinner, maybe a movie at the Hawk, a lazy stroll down main street with a hot coffee or cocoa to keep them warm.

Hawkins has always been ridiculously quaint, almost vintage, and now he can add fucked up and creepy to that.

He doesn’t run.

He takes his bat and gets monster gore all over it and helps Eddie shove a spear right up under its ribcage as it lets out an unearthly screech. Nancy blows a good chunk out of its arm with her shotgun, and Jonathan hacks off half its tail, but it phases in and out of the house like it can dig gates and portals out of the walls with its claws, and the timing gets tricky.

Steve’s got a cut on his forehead that’s shallow but bleeding heavily.

Robin drops the lighter three times while they try to get the thing close enough to the trap to spring it.

And when they finally set the fucker on fire, Steve thinks, thank fuck, and really hopes the whole house doesn’t go up in flames.

8. Sunday

Steve wakes up hot and sweaty, with Robin draped over him, snoring, and a persistent ache behind his eyes.

He’s too young to feel like death, but it’s a close thing.

Robin groans as he wriggles out from underneath her, because he needs to piss and it’s – he checks his phone – eleven thirty, and he’s got five missed calls from Dustin. Maybe giving that kid his number was a mistake.

On his way back from the bathroom, he peeks into the guest room. Nancy’s still a lump in the middle of the bed. He can see Jonathan’s mess of hair sticking out from the blanket burrito he made up on the floor.

There’s noise coming from downstairs, though, and only one other person in the house. Steve’s a little surprised he’s still there.

He smells coffee as he gets closer to the kitchen, and he walks in to see Eddie hugging a box of Honey Combs to his chest, munching on them dry while he blearily watches the pot fill up.

“I have milk,” Steve says. “And bowls.” He gestures to the cabinet behind Eddie’s head and opens the fridge. Gets the Frosted Flakes out of the pantry, spoons out of the drawer by the sink, and sets everything down on the kitchen table.

Eddie’s wearing the flannel pj pants Steve had shoved at him last night, a Hawkins High swim team shirt with a stretched-out neckline, and Steve can see a flash of another tattoo just under his collarbone.

Eddie yawns wide and pours each of them a mug of coffee before shuffling off to the table with two bowls.

Steve doesn’t know what to do with this silence. It doesn’t feel heavy, just tired

He takes the coffee and sits down across from Eddie. Watches as Eddie adds milk to both of their bowls without asking.

And then their eyes catch, and they’re both staring, and Steve can’t bring himself to look away.

The longer the quiet stretches, the more awkward Steve feels. Finally, he says, “I’m sorry, too, you know.”

Eddie smiles a little, says, “Yeah?”

Steve can’t help that they were dumb kids, that he must have made Eddie feel shitty somehow, and what makes it worse is that he can’t pinpoint exactly how that happened. “I know you don’t really know me now—”

“I know who you are, Steve,” Eddie says softly.

Steve huffs a laugh, shoves both hands through his hair. “I’m not sure you do.”

“C’mon.” Eddie nudges Steve’s cereal bowl with his fist. “You dropped everything this week to help save a kid you didn’t even know.”

“So did you,” Steve says.

Eddie shakes his head. “I dropped everything and hid at home because Mrs. Whitiker called me a murderer in the middle of Melvald’s.”

Steve grimaces. “Mrs. Whitiker is a toothless old hag.”

“Mrs. Whitiker gave me a butterscotch out of the bottom of her purse two weeks ago.” Eddie rubs a hand over his forehead, eyes dark. “The vitriol kinda spooked me.”

“Eddie.” Steve pushes his cereal aside, reaches over to clutch at Eddie’s arm.

Eddie heaves a breath, forces a smile. “The point is, Harrington, I know who you are. You’re the kind of guy who takes a nail bat to a monster fight.”

“Is that a good thing?” Steve’s honestly not sure at this point.

Eddie’s hand presses over Steve’s, warm and calloused. “Steve. It was the single hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Steve flushes, butterflies low in his stomach, throat dry. “Huh,” he says.

Robin stumbles in at that exact moment, hair flat on one side, wearing a pair of Steve’s boxers and his favorite yellow sweater. She says, “I smell coffee. Why aren’t there eggs, Steven? And toast? And bacon? I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week.”

Steve eyes their barely touched bowls of cereal and says, “Let’s wake up Nancy and Byers. We can order from the diner.”

*

They go for the Rooster that’s ten minutes out of town and tip the driver extra, because nobody wants to talk about Benny.

Jonathan and Nancy take their food to the hospital to check up on Will.

Dustin calls him for the sixth time, and when Steve finally picks up, it’s surprisingly good to hear his voice. He says, “Yeah,” and, “Wow,” and, “Uh huh,” in all the right places when Dustin tells him about being chased down in the school, and the monster—“Demogorgon, Steve”—in the walls, and how badass Eleven is. Was.

He’s not sure if it’s the same or a different creature that they tried to kill, but he likes to think they injured it enough that Eleven’ll make it back somehow.

Eventually, Eddie has to go home to check in with Wayne, and Steve absolutely doesn’t feel weird about it. He doesn’t feel weird about the hug Eddie gives him at the door, either, carefully folding him up and stubbornly holding on until Steve hugs him back, grips the back of his jacket with his fists and hooks his chin over his shoulder.

Robin mouths wow at him from the kitchen doorway, and he flips her off.

Late afternoon, he drags the double lounger as far away from the pool as he can manage.

Robin brings out two steaming mugs of hot chocolate and narrowly avoids tripping over a crack in the concrete.

The sky is a cool blue with the impending dusk.

“What a week, right?” Robin says, burrowing into his side as they settle down.

Steve pulls an afghan over them and says, “Let’s never do that again.”

9. Monday

School is disturbingly normal in the morning. Whatever went down at Hawkins Lab, the repercussions haven’t made it as far as the hallowed halls of Hawkins High.

The one glaring difference is Eddie Munson leaning against Steve’s locker.

Steve stops in the middle of the hallway to stare at him and Robin runs into his back with an oof.

She says a soft, “Huh,” and then noogies his spine with a fist to jolt him forward before flouncing away with, “See you at lunch!”

Eddie’s got on a black tee with a worn graphic under a denim jacket, jeans that look like they might actually fit his ass, and Steve’s eighty percent sure he’s combed his hair.

When Eddie spots him, he straightens up, fidgets with his rings. Says, “Hey,” when Steve finally manages to make his feet work again.

Steve says, “Hey,” and fumbles with his lock. Smooth.

“So, uh,” Eddie scratches the back of his head, “I wanted to see what you were doing after school tomorrow?”

“I’ve got practice,” Steve says, cautious.

Eddie nods, shifts his feet. “Right, yeah, but. After.”

“I don’t know.” Steve shrugs, crouches down to unzip his bag, pull out a couple of afternoon books and shove them in the bottom of his locker. “Nothing.”

“Okay, because we’ve got this gig, at that dive bar behind Roosters, and I was wondering—” He cuts himself off as Steve gets up, backs up a step, and Steve says, “You want me to hang out with Doug and Gareth?”

He gets that they’ve kind of bonded over this past week, but Eddie’s friends are the worst.

Eddie grins, body suddenly liquid, like he’s gained the confidence of a thousand suns at Steve’s words. He drapes an arm over Steve’s shoulders and says, “I want you to hang out with me.”

Steve’s mouth goes dry.

Then Tommy yells, “Steve!”, takes one look at Eddie leaning all over him and says, “Absolutely not. No fucking way.”

Eddie’s arm tightens around him and Steve’s throat clicks when he swallows. “C’mon, Tommy.”

Tommy marches over and jabs a finger in Eddie’s face. He’s red all over, eyes narrowed, and he says, “You make him cry and I will gut you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says. He wants to sink into the floor and disappear.

Eddie says, “Understood,” though, and then salutes Tommy with his middle finger, and Steve has half a second to shake off Eddie and tackle Tommy into the opposite side of the hallway before he goes ballistic.

*

At lunch, Steve ignores both Tommy and Eddie’s tables as they fling insults at each other.

Jonathan’s still out with his brother, but Nancy’s there, looking tired and harried, and Robin keeps eyeing her like she’s either a ticking timebomb or the sexiest woman she’s ever seen.

Steve kicks her feet to get her to stop staring. He says, “Eddie invited me to a gig tomorrow.”

“Oh, huh. Does he still have that band?” She digs out her phone, clicks through a few things, then shoves it under his face.

“Corroded Coffin?” he says, staring at an Instagram. There’s an artistic photo of a guitar and Eddie’s crotch. He’s not not intrigued.

“Are you going to go?” Nancy looks intense and sleep deprived and a little unhinged.

“Uh.” He’s definitely going to go. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

“No,” she says, but she sounds kind of down about it.

He nudges at her sandwich and says, “How’re the Byers?” Dustin has sent him an infinite amount of selfies with Will, Lucas, and a bitchy-looking young Wheeler, but he hasn’t actually told him anything.

“On government lockdown.” She glances over at Eddie’s table, then back to Steve and Robin. “They’re going to tell everybody that Barb ran away, and that everything else anybody might have seen were hallucinations from a chemical leak.”

“Son of a bitch,” Robin says.

Nancy’s mouth tightens. “Fuck ‘em,” she says, and then the vice principal comes on over the loudspeaker and calls all their names.

*

“Fuck ‘em,” Eddie says, after they’re finally forced out of the back of a black SUV, near the corner of Cherry Oak and Cornwallis.

They’re far enough away from the school and their cars that they’ll either have to walk through town, or through the woods. Steve’s convinced they did this on purpose, because Eddie was being so fucking annoying.

Steve puts a hand on his hip. “Couldn’t you have shut the fuck up for just, like, fifteen minutes?”

Eddie grins with all his teeth. “Absolutely not, princess,” he says. “Fuck ‘em.”

Steve sighs heavily. He can’t really blame him. They’d interrogated them for three long hours, both separately and together, and then they’d done a little threatening and menacing until they agreed to sign NDAs and never talk about what happened again.

“They could have at least given us hush money,” Robin says.

Nancy looks down the road toward Church Street, then over to the woods off Cornwallis that back up to the school. Absently, she says, “They did,” as she starts walking.

“Wait, what?” Steve says.

Eddie says, “I think I’d know if they offered me money, Wheeler.”

Nancy chooses the path through the woods; faster, but filled with more trauma. Steve’s torn.

She throws over her shoulder, “I made them put it in the NDAs. Don’t any of you read?” and then disappears into the tree line.

Eddie keeps pace with Steve, down off the side of the road, through the brush that borders the woods, watches Robin scramble to catch up to Nancy. He says, “I mean. Enough money might soften the blow of this entire nightmare.”

“There’s not enough money,” Steve says.

Eddie shoots him a sideways glance. “Yeah, but,” he bumps their shoulders together, so close their knuckles brush, “other things might make everything worth it, too.”

“Oh?” Steve says, not bothering to move away. If he twitches his fingers just right, they’d be holding hands.

“Oh yeah.” Eddie’s grinning when Steve looks at him.

When they stop just inside the trees.

Steve crosses his arms over his chest and says, “You know, it’s not Tommy you have to watch out for.”

“I know,” Eddie says, and, fuck, Steve’s missed seeing those eyes, soft and warm. “Your soulmate cornered me in the band room earlier.”

Eddie slips his hands over Steve’s elbows, like he knows Steve isn’t going to let him any closer right now. But when he leans in, Steve doesn’t stop him, either.

Steve feels like he’s fourteen again, standing on his front stoop, Wayne’s truck idling in his driveway, Eddie sneaking in to peck his mouth before taking off down the steps like a bat out of hell.

Eddie isn’t exactly chaste or nervous now, but he’s careful, hands moving from his elbows to cup his jaw, cool palms against Steve’s hot cheeks.

“You’re a good guy, Steve Harrington,” Eddie says, pressing their foreheads together. His eyes are closed and Steve stares at the tip of his nose, the pink, wet curve of his mouth.

Steve’s voice is hoarse on, “So are you.”

“I’m a freak and a loser,” Eddie says, “but I’m yours.”