Archive of Our Own

4th of July, 1985

Jim Hopper arrives too late, as always, he thinks, bitter. No sooner had he seen the situation (four Russian soldiers, one beat-up icecream-hawker, one giant gate of a problem), than the Harrington kid had wriggled free, yelling, and thrown himself into the gate. 

There was no time.

He and Joyce had one shot, one moment to close the thing, or the soldiers would be on them and they’d be caught, and the gate wouldn’t get closed.

One shot, and there was nothing they could do about Steve Harrington.

Why did he do that? Was he just running scared? What was even on the other side, at this point? Could he survive over there?

We’re never going to see him alive, again. Are we.

And Joyce meets his eyes, and he realizes that she can see the guards, but hadn’t seen Harrington.

She’ll never do it, with one of the kids on the other side. But it has to be done.

So he says nothing, and they turn the keys, and they close the gate.

And doom Steve Harrington. 

Twenty-six minutes earlier

Robin thinks, as she’s sure she’s about to die, and her brain rockets up into overdrive, that she would have remembered the looks on Steve and Eddie’s faces for the rest of her life… if that wasn’t about to end.

She sees their desperate faces, bloody, tired, tears and snot and gross hair and fear, and then a uniformed man shoves her, and she’s falling back-back-back, vertigo taking her, knowing it’s going to hurt when she hits the ground on the other side of the… gate thing. 

But it starts hurting before she hits the ground, like fire, like falling into lava, so hot her bones are roasting, cracking, breaking- and then it’s like pressure, too, like being crushed under a mountain she thinks, and it’s too much too much she can’t stand it-

And then it’s less, and less.

She lays there, panting-

And then a horrible scream, a wail of pain and death, comes ricocheting from all directions. It’s so loud and so awful, and she scrambles to get away- but her eyes won’t open, or they are open but there’s no light, and her limbs aren’t working right, and she’s tangled in something, still tied up, and the sound gets worse somehow, more alien, more gut-chilling, with screeching up and down registers she didn’t know she could hear, and she rolls and shakes and fights until she can feel something solid behind her, beside her, a corner, and she fights through her bindings to get her hands up to her ears, to block out the sound, but her hands are- are wrong somehow, don’t work, feel heavy and slow and her fingers are caught in something, a web? Are there giant spiders down here or-

The noise stops, and she freezes, straining to hear.

She’s hearing things, but they don’t make sense. It’s like being tired, and having a midnight snack, where the sound of your own chewing, your swallowing, your own spit moving in your own mouth, echoes through your head. She can’t tell what sounds she's hearing are actually outside her, and if they are, where they’re coming from. She can’t tell how loud or quiet they are. There’s a moving, a scraping, something against rock, or maybe fabric against fabric or maybe her own nails against her own teeth, she can’t tell- 

But there is light, she thinks, she-she’s glowing, maybe, a little, in the dark, and there is more light, two sources, away from her, one a little bright, like her, and one SO bright, how had she missed it, and why didn’t it-

It’s so bright she doesn’t want to look right at it, but she can’t close her eyes, or her eyes are already closed? And it’s not lighting up the room, how-

And then the pain again, searing crushing, all consuming-

But over much faster.

And now she can feel her body, sore, but hers, like it was. She can move her fingers, and they move like they should, and she can feel her knee where it throbs from landing on it earlier, and her tongue where she bit it, and her ribs from where she fell, tied to-

She tries to sit up, and now she can open her eyes, and there- she’s still on the wrong side of the gate thing, can see the angry glowing red, but now she can also see the space she’s in from the little light it casts and she-

She’s naked.

She’s not fully naked, but her clothes are all wrong on her body, and she’s not wearing her shorts, and one arm is out the underside of her shirt and her bra-

She scrambles to right herself, feeling so vulnerable… and not a lot better once dressed-

“Ow fuck.” comes a voice from the other side of the room. Eddie’s voice.

“Eddie?” she says, quietly, tentatively.

“Buckley? You alive still?”

She almost sobs. 

“Yes! That was- something weird happened, but-”

“This is all kinds of fucked up, fuck. I couldn’t- I couldn’t move, and it hurt, and I couldn’t see-”

“And I could hear, but it was wrong, like, like sonar-”

“Yeah! Like sonar, all echos and I could fucking feel my own voice or something- Buckley, was I a bat?”

Oh wow- 

“Maybe? My hands were- like the fingers were really long and -”

And a roaring, crashing sound comes from the gate and they both freeze, staring, as it ripples.

“You think-”

“Oh god, if it closes-”

And they both scramble to their knees, feet, upright, lurching towards the gate. But just as they reach it, something comes out of it, back at them, and it’s Steve, and they all go down in a heap again, but Steve starts screaming, god, awful screams, like she heard before, like Eddie was making, and just like that, Steve twists, writhes, convulses, and robin scrambles again to get out from under him, to see what’s going on, and he looks wrong, his face looks wrong,  the shape changing, and and splitting and the screaming becomes that screeching terrible sound, and she hears- she hears his bones breaking she thinks and his face peels open and she feels dizzy and sick and terrified-

And he goes still.

A beat.

“... Harrington?” comes Eddies voice. “Harrington. You alive, man? You with us?”

The thing that was Steve twitches.

Robin almost pees her pants.

The thing in Steve's clothes shifts, moves, a little, then a lot. It starts making a new noise, a chittering, and Robin instinctively pushes back, pushes away, shields herself. She hears it get loud, thrash around, and then-

The sound is different.

It’s scared. 

She doesn’t know how she can tell, but she knows it’s scared-

And she finds herself eyes-open, approaching it again, holding her hand out to- to what. Defend herself? Help it?

“Steve- Steve, it's okay. Something happened to you, but nothing’s- it's okay-”

“Harrington- cool it, man, stop fighting, you’re fucked up but you’re not- you’re still-”

And the thing that’s maybe Steve… stops fighting. Goes limp. Is still shaking, trembling, but isn’t moving. 

Robin screws her courage to the sticking point, and, with all the bravery she’s been borrowing from Steve all night, all day, all the days of this terrible-

She touches him.

He flinches, and she flinches, but he doesn’t do anything else, and she rests her hand on him again.

His skin is weird almost slick, and he’s cool to the touch, and she can feel the twitching of muscle, but-

And the light changes, gets brighter, and she looks up and the gate is pulsing, brighter, brighter, and there’s heat coming off it, and she looks at Eddie and he’s looking at her, dark eyes just catching the light, and without speaking they both grab at the- Steve. Grab and shove and scoot, moving towards the far wall, which has an open doorway, through it, and maybe-Steve is on his feet, on four feet, coming just up to her waist, and she’s standing, they’re all standing, they’re stumbling, she grabs his clothes, fist clenched tight on ruined fabric, and they’re running-

An hour later

“Where are they?” Dustin asks, and the adults look at him with confusion (Mrs. Byers) and pity (Hopper).

“Where are they?!” 

“Steve went through the gate,” Hopper says, and Dustin shakes his head-

“You mean they put him-”

“No, kid, I mean what I said. We showed up, and Steve jumped into the gate, and-” he clears his throat, “and we had to-”

“Hop?!” Mrs. Byers says, clearly shocked, but Dustin can’t care-

“Eddie and Robin? Where are Eddie and Robin!?”

Hopper looks confused.

“Who are Eddie and Robin?”

“Steve’s coworkers,” Max says, quietly. Dustin’s trying to think, but he feels stuck. “His friends.”

Dustin feels his mouth open and-

“Did you leave them down there too?” Dustin hears himself accuse.

“We,” Mrs. Byers starts, “we never saw them, I don’t think, Hop?”

Hopper looks- Dustin can’t look at him.

“Never saw them.” Hopper agrees. “Only Steve. And I don’t know-”

“They were already in the gate.” Erica says. “Maybe- Steve would go through, if they were already-”

“No. No!” no, it wasn’t right! It couldn’t be… adults were supposed to be the solution. When Hopper shows up, that’s when Dustin’s supposed to be able to back off… although, they still had to go down in the tunnels and save the day last time, didn’t they? While the chief and Mrs. Byers did other stuff? Steve still went down there with the Party, even though Billy had gotten him good.

Steve…

Dustin knows that Erica is right, can almost see it, Russian soldiers marching Eddie and Robin in, and Steve going in after them…

“What good are you!!!” Dustin yells, throwing himself at Hopper, no caution left. “What good are any of you!?!” but it’s muffled as Mrs. Byers comes up and hugs him, pulling him into her even as he struggles. If Dustin could have seen through his tears, he’d have seen how gutted Hopper looked, how guilty. How much he would have preferred to trade himself, for the three teenagers who hadn’t come back up.

Erica looks shell shocked, confused, scared at the information. Her bravado had gotten her so far- it had gotten them out! Messed up, yeah, but she and Dustin had solved it, and gotten them upstairs! That was supposed to be it, but the nightmare kept going, and now… Steve owed her icecream. Eddie owed her movies! Robin owed her nothing, but she was a fellow working woman and-

Why-

Lucas pulls her into a hug, and she lets him, even though he’s smelly, because the world is suddenly so much scarier than it had been.

Eleven hours later

Three bedraggled mall employees sit on top of a hill, looking down at a ruined town, backs to a foreboding sky.

“So what now?” one asks. His hair is nearly matted with filth, and his formerly clean(ish) maroon vest (with its single cheerful pin declaring “starcourt cinema: Eddie”), is now torn, stained, and pretty gross looking. He likes the familiar weight, anyway, even as he wishes it was his beloved denim. “How do we get out of here?”

“His children said their supergirl closed all the gates, the last time. I think that the Russian one was maybe the only one? But maybe there’s another way,” the next employee says, picking at her nail polish, formerly a bright red contrasting her blue and white stripes. 

“Steve, other than the tunnels, were you even actually down here, before?”

The third (former) mall-employee huffs, and dejectedly lays his head on the probably fully shredded pile of what used to be his own uniform (sans hat- long since lost, good riddance). 

He doesn’t say anything, though- all that would have emerged was a horrible chittering sound like the one that had haunted his nightmares for years. 

The others reach over and, bravely, in Steve's opinion, lay their hands on him, petting at his head as if he was an actual dog, not a terrible gross monster thing. 

In silence, then, they sit there, watching as the quality of the light changes. It doesn't get darker, exactly, no sun setting, but the sky shifts to a colder hue- more blue-black, than the reddish, ultravioletish thing that had “lit” their way all “day”.

And then suddenly, all three of them are overcome, collapsing back, making little noises of pain… and then the moment passes, and they sit up again.

Steve is human, naked, holding his pitiful uniform. For a moment- elation! He is- he’s him again! He was- 

But where Robin and Eddie had sat, are now two creatures Steve had seen for the first time hours ago, at distance, and with different eyes, as the three of them had been thrown back from the explosion at the gate, and Steve had come to a stop on four legs instead of two.

The things confusedly thrashing with their own piles of clothing are much smaller than Steve had been, transformed, and crucially they also have wings, kind of like a bat.

And they are ruining their clothes.

“Wait, hold still, chill out guys, hold still-”

The… whatever, they do hold still, long enough for Steve to pull his pitiful shorts back on, and then Steve extracts them from their uniforms, feeling a bit like a voyeur to be touching the remains of Robin’s bra, Eddie’s boxers. 

Finally, despite the gloom of the awful place, Steve can see… 

Two bat-monsters tilt their awful faces up at him.

Well shit.

July 14th, 1985

The sound of his feet hitting pavement, and his (very labored) breathing seem to echo all around. Even human, it’s so fucking loud, Eddie’s sure it’s gonna call whole new monsters down on him, not just the one he’s running from. 

 Fuck fuck fuck. This is it. This has got to be it. Dad didn’t kill you, and jocks didn’t kill you, and Russians didn’t kill you, and fuckin nicotine withdrawal hasn’t killed you, so your ticket’s punched, like, ten times over. No more reactions, and it’s the monster’s turn.

Eddie rounds the corner, trying futilely to calm his breathing without loosing speed- fucking, for how long do I have to be a were-bat, before it fixes my fucking lungs!?-  and there it fucking is, anyway. 

Or a new one, fuck fuck. 

The ‘gorgon stands about halfway down the street, and it throws its head back in a triumphant screech- and is answered from behind Eddie.

There are two of them. Of fucking course.

Eddie is fucked. Eddie is lunch. Fuck, and he’d never even got to-

Eddie starts backing up, turning, stumbling into a run down the street, spotting the second ‘gorgon out of the corner of his eye, heading rapidly for him.

Eddie tries to put on a burst of speed, but he’s got nothing, there’s nothing in the tank. They’d barely been eating, drinking, surviving, and Eddie didn’t have this kind of stamina to begin with.

Will they know what happened? They’ll have to guess. Fuck, they’re gonna find my bloody vest or something, and Buckley’s gonna…. Harrington’s gonna… fuck fuck fuck-

A gray-green shape appears up ahead, near silent,  fuck, it’s coming right for him. A fuckin’ demo-

The thing rockets right past him, and skids to a halt.

Eddie almost doesn’t look, let the fucking monsters have each other, if it means he gets to live another day, except…

Except the dogs don’t confront the ‘gorgons. 

It’s gotta be Harrington.

Eddie spots a fire escape still hanging off the corner of what used to be an upholstery shop, and he makes a bee-line, leaping for it with new strength, and flailing his way up onto the little landing. He turns back-

And Steve’s running, both ‘gorgon’s in pursuit. He’s drawing them off. 

Fuck. 

Eddie wants to jump back down, because Steve’s fast, like this, yeah, but that fast? The bigger part of his brain, on the other hand, wants him to hide, and maybe throw up. 

In compromise, he just lays there, gasping.

Fuck. If we survive today, we’ve gotta find a homebase for our human shifts. We can’t keep getting this lucky. Unlucky. … lucky?

Eddie stays on the ledge until “dusk” comes, and his change with it, and then a bat takes off from the corner of the roof, little bundle of fabric clutched in claw.

The bat begins to sweep the sky, looking for its friends. 

July 28th. 29th? 28th. 1985

This time, no matter how they fly, they’re not getting away. 

Robin and Eddie had been scouting- in particular, they had been checking out a new thing they’d noticed, a particular house, up out of the way, in the woods, close to the radio tower. The radio tower itself was actually closer than they’d been able to get yet, because the thing that had drawn their attention had been the sheer number of other bat-monsters hanging in the area. 

When Robin and Eddie had failed to get much closer, they’d peeled off as agreed… and this one dumb bat from the swarm had followed them, instead.

Now, they are miles away, have to be, no other company in sight, and the horrible thing is still with them.

And they are getting tired.

The shifted forms seemed to have much better stamina than their human ones did, but it seemed likely that even for those forms, the restricted diet they’ve barely managed so far was taking a toll. One they couldn’t afford, if and when the local denizens figured out that they were interlopers and turned on them.

Robin feels the change in air currents as Eddie falters a little, drops for a moment, flaps hard to regain altitude and pace.

They have to land. Have to risk it.

There’s a decent sized roof up ahead- Robin thinks they might be close to a defunct factory. Roofs are preferred, they’ve learned, since there are almost never demodogs or demogorgons hiding five feet away, when you’re on a roof. And if this is going to get worse, they certainly won’t need any additional confounding variables.

She changes her pitch, and feels Eddie make the same change, following her logic, she thinks.

She’s so tired. And hungry. Flying is cool, sometimes, but it’s also so much more work than she expected.

Robin and Eddie land.

They still aren’t as smooth with it as they’ve seen the other demobats manage, but they’ve improved. However, though a lot of communication seems instinctual, they’ve also noticed that the baseline bats seem to… to speak a different language? Run on a different frequency? Something- long story short, they can’t really communicate with them, not like with each other or even Steve.

Which is a problem, when their tag-along lets out several vaguely inquiring type noises, which they try to return… but it’s hopeless.

The other bat makes a few more circles, chittering with alarm, before starting to fly upwards, and away.

And Robin and Eddie have a choice. Let it leave? Maybe it goes back to the swarm, maybe it doesn’t. But there’s a potentially huge increase in likelihood that their "camouflage" then stops working, if indeed it can communicate what it saw-

Or. It never gets back.

Robin and Eddie both leap for it, and pull it down with them. It fights back, struggles all the way down, and it knows how to use its body. It was born into this. Eddie and Robin have only been here a few weeks.

But they are desperate. And there are two of them.

They claw and bite and fight right back, and Robin’s glad she goes a little deaf in the struggle- she doesn’t think she wants to remember what the fight sounded like.

And then she’s got one arm and Eddie has the other, and they’re pulling in opposite directions- 

And it comes apart.

And all her senses are flooded like never before with a certain knowledge-

She is so hungry.

… she tries not to think about what happens after that.

An hour later, when she and Eddie shift back, she can’t look Eddie in the face. 

He gets in her way, won’t let her walk over to where Steve is waiting, almost certainly concerned by what he’s smelling from them.

“Buckley.” she doesn’t look up. “Robin. Hey. Look at me.”

She… does.

He’s covered in it. 

She feels sick, she wants to throw up, but at the same time- 

She won’t. It’s done.

It’s done.

“Robin.” 

She looks at him.

“Gotta eat to live.”

Gotta eat to live.

“Food’s food, and there’s too much our human stomachs can’t handle down here. If we can’t eat, we’re never gonna make it back.”

He’s right, she knows he’s right.

She nods, and they walk over to where Steve is waiting.

The demodog whines.

She’s pretty sure that’s a whine, even though she’s never heard it before.

Eddie kneels down next to it, him, concerned.

The face splits open, and before either of them can react-

It’s licking Eddie’s face.

What the fuck.

“Eurgh. Whoa, hey buddy. Uh-” 

He just keeps going, and Robin would honestly be a little worried Eddie was about to get eaten, except, this was clearly Steve, she was getting good at recognizing him, by now, and also…

Look, the ‘dogs didn’t have tails. But if Steve did? He would have been wagging it, whole back end shifting back and forth in obvious, clear enjoyment.

“Okay, okay! Alright, uh. So, I was worried you were gonna find this gross, but Robin and I-” 

Steve backs off, and lets Eddie speak a little easier.

“- thanks. Uh. anyway. I, uh, brought you… some.”

And Eddie stands, and pulls the tail off the porch roof, where he’d left it after landing.

Steve goes nuts, and when Eddie tosses it to him, his face opens wider than Robin’s ever seen it- 

you probably looked like that when you-

And it disappears completely, as his face snaps shut.

Eddie looks at her again, as he rubs Steve’s head a little where the guy is pretty clearly trying to thank Eddie for sharing, bumping and nudging him and wiggling…

“No shame.” Eddie says.

Robin… agrees.

“No shame.”

“Gotta eat to live, and we’re gonna live another day.”

Robin nods, joining them, and feels a little piece of herself, of the Robin who thought pistachio icecream was too revolting to exist, break off. Just like the petty piece who hated and envied Steve Harrington had, weeks ago, under the mall. That’s okay, she thinks, if we survive, it will be this Robin that survives. Russians, Monsters, Monster Meat. And if they didn’t survive? Then no one needs to know what we did to try.

Steve tries to lick her face, too.

She lets him.

Early September, 1985

It’s their best homebase yet… but Eddie’s been awake for hours, listening to something moving down the street. 

It’s probably a ‘Gorgon- they’ve been getting closer each time. Robin thinks it’s some kind of hunting pattern. She thinks the ‘Gorgons know there’s someone, something down here that shouldn’t be, and she thinks the Gorgons are looking for it.

Even when awake and both human, Robin and Eddie have been quiet lately. Steve’s hearing as a demodog is not as good as theirs, and they don’t think they could hear something in the houses, not from more than a house or two away, but they’re not sure where the big ones fall on that scale.

Eddie’s so tired of being terrified.

As they’re coming up on the last hour of human-time for the day, Eddie hears the quiet sounds of Robin moving, waking up, getting ready for the night.

Steve could be back any time in the next hour.

Finally, Eddie hears the sound of the big ‘gorgon drawing off down the road.

Robin walks over, and wedges herself into the love seat beside him. Eddie’s been pretty tactile, since a year or so after moving in with Wayne, wanting to hug and shake and mess with his friends, feel them there next to him, feel them push back. He doesn’t know if he’s more tactile since he’s been down here, but he thinks Robin and Steve might be. Really, Eddie’s just policing himself less. For years, ever since- well. Since he learned how… how people feel about boys touching each other (outside of Predetermined Feats of Sport), he’s been careful, as he can, not to overdo it with his friends, not where anyone can see. But here? Steve’s the only guy around, and Eddie figures he’s pretty safe when only one of them is human at a time. 

So the extra contact, from Robin most often, but from Steve too, as a dog curled up against them at the end of a day most often, the extra contact without need to police it has been good.

Robin doesn’t even seem worried that Eddie’s gonna misinterpret anything and, like, start making a move on her, which he appreciates (although he hopes that part is a result of of their upside down situation, and not her default, or she’s probably gonna get burned by some guy who’s actually into girls).

“Did you get any sleep?” she asks, quietly, as he budges up a little and lets her squish in.

“Some,” he says quietly back. Not untrue.

They sit there for a while, pretending to look out the window.

“Do you…" Robin asks, "are there things that you wouldn’t say to Steve, even if you could? If we could all speak at the same time for a while?”

There is a long list of things Eddie would like to say to Steve, starting with “you were such a dick in school”, and possibly ending with “can I suck your dick while I work through how I feel about that”, but Robin-

“Oh, ew, no, not about your big gay crush on him.”

Eddie feels the blood leave his face. She- She- 

“What d-do you-”

“Oh come on,” she says, voice maybe nervous, definitely… teasing? She thinks it’s funny that Eddie-? “I can see it, everyone can see it! Are you-” and she breaks off, maybe finally noticing how quiet and rigid Eddie's gotten. He tries to relax, very conscious suddenly of how close she is, how vulnerable he is, if she wants to-

“Oh crap. Eddie. I thought- I knew, or I thought I knew… you didn’t know? That I knew?”

Eddie shakes his head, just a little, looking away and hiding his face, but focused on every twitch of movement beside him, wary in a way he hasn’t been around her since they first were kind of coworkers.

“... about Steve, right? But you knew I knew you, uh- Don’t…. Don’t you, um, R-rocky horror?”

Eddie blinks, looks at her. What?

“What?” he finally manages.

“Rocky horror. You came to the- to Scoops, and you got a bunch of samples, and when Steve gave you some rocky road, um, you made that joke, and Steve didn’t get it, of course, but I DID.”

Eddie does remember that, maybe?

“And we made eye contact, and you did, like, this nod thing? because …” and it is her turn to look nervous, which calms Eddie down a little. “Because takes one to know one, right? Because I got the joke, that meant I knew the movie. And that meant… “

Oh.

“Oh.” he says, “I didn’t… I didn’t even think about who would have watched that movie. Does- “ and Eddie basically scoops up his courage with both hands. “Does that make you, um, a- a particular fan of the film? Or, uh, genre?”

And Robin bites her lip, but answers- 

“Um. Y-yeah. And I, um, I thought you knew? And that was why you were so, like, helpful and stuff? Nice to me?”

“Nope.” Eddie shakes his head, “never even occurred to me that-” cards on the table Munson, say it out loud, she clearly never has “-that you liked… girls?”

Robin nods furiously.

Fuck. The tension starts to leave Eddie, and he feels kind of shaky. 

And a terrible thought occurs to him, immediately ratcheting the tension back up-

“Wait, if everyone knows about my- about the thing I don’t have, does Steve-?”

Robin shakes her head. 

“I don’t think so. I don’t think Steve really even knows gay people exist, kind of?”

“... I mean, wasn’t the reason he got his clock cleaned a couple years ago because he called Jon Byers a queer? So he knows the word.”

“Was it?” she looks surprised “I saw him after it happened, but I didn’t know…” and she frowns. “But he was, like, hanging out with Jonathan and Nancy last year, I thought? Wasn’t that part of why… why Billy acted like that? Because Nancy left Steve for Byers, and then Steve was still friends or whatever?”

Eddie shrugs.

“Anyway,” she continues, “this summer, his little children were all having some drama, and I guess the one with the bowl cut-”

“Byers, I think. Pretty sure that’s Jonathan’s brother who went missing. Will.”

Her eyes get wide. “Oh shit. Okay. well, um, Will? He was on the outs I guess with one of the other boys, and both of the other boys have girlfriends I guess, ugh, children dating children-”

“They’re only like three years younger than you-”

“ - don’t remind me. But yeah, there was some dating drama, and Will was the odd one out. Steve was all concerned because Dustin was at camp, and usually he’d help… or maybe he’d  be the problem-”

“I think it was d&d stuff,” Eddie interrupts, not meaning to, exactly, but deep in thought about the various permutations the little group had taken over the weeks of movies they’d watched. Sometimes, it had been the three boys together, and the two girls separate, but he definitely noticed when there were clearly two couples, and little Byers was the odd man out. 

One time, on his way back to the theater from Scoops (from using his lunch break to harass Steve and Robin, and see how many free samples he could get Steve to offer him with that beautiful bitchy look on his face), he’d seen the kid alone, sitting at a table, drawing. He couldn’t help himself, and swung by just to peek, and ruined all his stealth when he exclaimed about the clear, evident, straight-out-of-the-monster-manual jackelwere. He’d chatted with the kid a little, after he got him to stop hiding his notebook, and found out that apparently the kid and his friends were supposed to have been playing a campaign all summer, but that that had been abandoned in favor of dating and Will was not interested in playing 5th wheel again, so he’d opted to skip his friends’ movie and just work on other stuff.

Eddie had ascertained the information that they were all about to be freshman at Hawkins High, and had informed him that not only did there happen to be a d&d club there, but that said club was newly short its most accomplished DM (allowing Will to assume Eddie had just graduated with the class of ‘85, instead of what had actually happened, that Eddie had failed again, but this time cut his losses to hopefully test for his GED at the end of summer. It wasn’t, he learned from the preparatory book he borrowed from the library, a lack of knowledge that was apparently holding him back in school, taking the sample tests at the end made that clear. It was just sitting still and doing his fucking homework).

“Will had been planning a d&d campaign for the summer, and the others ditched him,” Eddie explains.

“For their girlfriends,” Robin continues, “and Steve, like, got that Will didn’t have one, but he just couldn’t figure out why that meant the big mess with all of them had to be. But I watched little Byers watching Nancy Wheeler’s brother- it wasn’t just the game that had him upset.”

“Oh, shit, really?” Eddie thinks back to that day in the mall to see if he can clock it, but… well actually... had the kid spent kind of a lot of time on his jackal-man’s musculature? Maybe. Eddie wasn’t sure, as both an artist and a gay man, what the "normal" amount of attention to men’s anatomy was exactly.

Robin nods.

“I mean, obviously I don’t know, but it was… pretty obvious. And Steve was absolutely not putting that together.”

Eddie frowns.

“Robin?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the least conclusive bunch of shit I’ve ever heard.”

Robin just sighs, and tips her head back on the love seat.

“What’s much more conclusive," Eddie says instead, "to the point of whether he’s safe or dangerous on the issue of other people's sexuality, is the fact that he kept serving me even though I was at times, perhaps-”

And Robin jumps back in-

“extremely gay-”

“- over the top at him. He didn’t make you do it-”

“I wouldn’t have- it was too much fun to watch.”

“- and he didn’t say anything nasty and homophobic to you after I left-”

“Nope. He’d just watch you leave, and then pretend not to notice me watching him. Or actually not notice?” 

Eddie nods.

“For comparison, I once engaged in the lightest of banter with Billy Hargrove, while selling him weed, and he immediately offered to kick my teeth in for me if I ever did it again. And Steve put up with a lot more than that.”

Robin sits up excitedly, but Eddie’s not finished-

“- which could again be down to this paladin-like persona he seems to have been building after, I presume, the death of King Steve.”

“... golden retriever.” Robin says, immediately subdued again, and Eddie hadn’t meant to do that, had figured they could keep going in that cheerful shit-talking way for a while, “who really loves the family’s kid, and even though it’s embarrassing sometimes, and does dumb stuff, and has hair that’s way too fancy, and will, like, still fight a burglar even when the burglar is armed, and he isn’t, and all he has is- is shit talking! He- He knew he didn’t- there wasn’t anything he could do, or say, he couldn’t give them any more than I could but he- He’s so stupid!”

And Robin gets loud for the first time. Eddie hasn’t heard the gorgon outside for a while, but still. Not like they don’t know what else could be out there and listening. Eddie turns more fully toward her, and she’s staring, eyes faraway, clearly less in the room with him, so he pulls her into himself, in a hug, tries to comfort as well as muffle, by pulling her head down.

“He’d- Eddie I thought he died, He was gonna die and I know it was for me, and we didn’t even like each other! I was mean to him all summer- “

“Shh, hey, Robin, I know. And he knew. He liked you, Robin, clearly, and-”

“- I knew we were gonna die-”

“-but we didn’t, Robin-”

“-and when the Russians took us to the gate, I knew we were gonna die-”

“-and again, we didn’t-”

“-and I wanna shake him like a stupid doll, because- it’s gonna run out! His luck or whatever is gonna run out, if he keeps trying to defend m- us. But I can’t… how could I say any of that to him, Eddie?”

Eddie sighs.

“No, you’re right. Both about him being kind of reckless, and about… it’s different, because we're split up, like this.”

“... yeah.”

“Since he’s only… since you and I can talk to each other any day, but we can only talk to him… “

“That’s it, and I- He’s so optimistic. Still!”

“Golden retriever, “ Eddie agrees.

“And I just…” Robin’s face crumples. “Eddie, I’m not.”

Eddie pulls her close again.

“I know, Birdie.”

“But I’m afraid- Eddie, I think he needs that, he has to be like that, and I’m afraid if I tell him- I don’t want to take that away from him-”

Eddie agrees, Satan he agrees, and watching Steve, watching something in him grow thinner and thinner, not just his body but something inside… Eddie imagines… well. He imagines sometimes that he and Robin are Merry and Pippin, watching Frodo waste away from the Morgul blade. (He used to imagine being Frodo, sometimes, and having a Samwise, but now… god he wishes he could be a Samwise, could carry those burdens…)

“So we don’t tell him, Rob.” Eddie’s sure he’s right, “I think you’re right. Whether he’s actually optimistic, or whether that’s his way of… of getting through, I think you’re right. So, you tell me, and I’ll tell you, and we’ll listen, if he wants to tell us, but we won’t put that on him.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and then Robin says “I’m telling you: I don’t think we’re getting out of here alive.”

Eddie hums.

“I’m hearing you, Robin.”

“... do you think we are?”

Does he- Well, if she’s looking for honesty…

“So, I sort of have always figured I’d die young?”

Robin looks up at him with clear alarm on her face-

“No- Not that I want to, but that it’s just in the cards for me. Munsons die young.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Well, you tell me. My mom died when I was a kid- and her parents were already dead before she had me, to tell the true tale. My dad went to prison and then died. My Uncle’s still alive, but their daddy died before they were like 10..."

He goes quiet for a moment, and she doesn’t say anything, so he continues.

“I look at my Uncle sometimes, and I just can’t imagine ever being that old? And hes not even that old! He’s only like, not even 50… but my mom died when she was our age. Wayne might be the first Munson in generations to get older than like 35.

”So I never really… I hoped I’d live long enough to get to be a rockstar for a while, and maybe… maybe move someplace where they’re no gonna care about the… what I do in my private time,” he cuts a look back at Robin to make sure she knows what he means, and she does. “So, yeah, never really figured I was destined for longevity, and not really feeling more confident now.”

“I think,” Robin finally says, “I think Steve thinks he’s immortal.”

Eddie frowns.

“I think I hope that he is.”

September

Steve loses himself for a while in the rhythm of paws on pavement. 

He’s a little hungry, but not too much, and a little tired, but not too much, and he’s on a mission:

Better Safe House.

‘Gorgons are too active in the area they’ve been staying, and it is no longer worth the risk (not to mention the stress.)

He autopilots for a while, listening out for danger, but just kind of letting his feet carry him.

He likes the idea of how remote the old trailer park, Forest Hills, would be, but he doesn’t love the “none” protection the trailers themselves definitely have. He wants a house, he thinks, and ideally one built in block. 

He thinks, again, of Chief Hopper’s cabin, way out in the woods, but between the fact that whatever thing that possessed Will last year certainly knew about it, and the desire to be close enough to town to at least hope to know if a new gate showed up someplace…

Without thinking, his feet turn, and the next time he notes his surroundings, he realizes he’s done it again.

He’d been avoiding Loch Nora.

Similar to the justification about Hopper’s cabin, Steve figures that anything actually intelligent down here might be aware of locations of previous gates. And surely those sites would be more heavily populated.

But the other reason…

After Barb went missing (was killed), Steve hadn’t been… that bothered by his pool. Sure, sometimes he’d look out, at night, when it was lit, and remember the picture Jonathan had taken. He’d imagine her sitting on the diving board, blood dripping into the water. (he’d imagine it from a different angle, from his bedroom window- imagine what he might have seen if he had just looked out and the right moment-)

But he understood that while the demogorgon had been there, had taken her from there, she hadn’t actually been killed there, probably.

This was where she had been killed.

The first time they’d had a safe house where Steve felt he could reasonably leave human Robin and Eddie without supervision for a little while, Steve had come here. Just to see. Maybe he’d get lucky, and there would be a gate, still. (maybe he’d get unlucky and there’d be a body)

There were neither- instead, all there was was a reeking mass of vines- similar to the ones that crept all over town, growing more dense by the week, but at Steve’s house, in Steve’s pool? It was more vine than anything else.

The idea of it made him sick, and the once glance he’d taken haunted him, so he’d been avoiding the area.

Maybe I’m not the only one… he thinks as he trots up the road. It’s so quiet here. Why’s it so quiet? Like the trees are holding in the sound or something.

He slows, as he comes to his house again, even more choked with vines than it had been. No going in there… but Tommy’s house… Tommy’s room used to overlook Steve’s yard. The only one that did, with the forest so dense. Tommy wasn’t Steve’s neighbor, he was a few more houses down, but the road curved a little, and the Hagans' home was set far back on their property. One year, Tommy had gotten binoculars for Christmas, and he and Steve had been playing in Tommy’s room, and when they looked out the window, into the woods, they realized that there was one gap, just right, through the trees… With the binoculars, you could see all the way from Tommy’s bedroom, to part of Steve’s backyard, and Steve’s house.

It was why, actually, Steve had been in the bedroom he was in. It didn’t have an en suite- though there was a bathroom over the kitchen, just down the landing. But it was the best room, because when he, too, received his own binoculars, then he could see Tommy’s room.

Steve continues on to Tommy’s house.

Many fewer vines. 

Lightly, Steve hops over one that crosses the street, and makes his way up the steps to Tommy’s front door.

It’s locked, so Steve loops around the porch to the back, which is never locked.

A simple shove, and the back door pops open.

Inside, it’s quiet and sort of dusty, but not unpleasant. Looks like the Hagans went on vacation, and just never came back.

Cautiously, Steve pokes around the lower floor- nothing of note, fireplace cold, before continuing upward.

Both the master suite and Tommy’s bedroom are on the upper floor. Again, nothing of note (and the binoculars are sitting on the window seat).

Heading back down, he remembers they had a cellar, too.

That door is unfortunately locked, but the dust in front of it is undisturbed when Steve approaches, so he figures it’s probably fine.

Outside again, Steve does a few circles, made difficult as it always is by the density and proximity of the trees. Tommy’s mom had been harassing his dad for years about wildfire safety, and the importance of keeping a defensible perimeter, and Tommy’s dad had been calling her paranoid for years.

The front of Harrington house is visible, from the street, and the back is visible from the Hagan’s.

Tommy’s house, with so many trees between it and the street, is pretty much only visible from Steve’s house.  Even from above, he thinks, with all the tree cover, it’s pretty obscured. 

The closest vine to it was the one out in the street. 

There are no signs of forced entry around the exterior, as far as he can tell.

Robin and Eddie will need to check it out…  

Steve leaves, headed back towards their last base. 

He scouts as he goes, looking for a safe route, rather than a direct one. One set of humans is going to have to make the trip- hopefully him, with Rob and Eddie flying and scouting, so it’s got to be a route he can do on foot, without straying too close to any hotspots- tall order.

He uses most of the rest of his time shifted, and makes it back only maybe twenty minutes before change.

“Hey Steve,” Eddie greets him at the door, very quietly, “find anything good today?”

It’s mostly a rhetorical question, but Steve tries to nod anyway, realizes his butt is wiggling, like he thinks it might if he had a real tail instead of that little nub.

“Oh? You’ll have to tell us, after shift.”

Steve can see, coming further into the house, that Eddie and Robin had been sitting at the wobbly table in there and drinking extremely flat pepsi- a wonderful find from a week earlier. 

Steve tries not to be jealous, and wonders if they were chatting, what they might have been talking about. Did Eddie tell a funny story? Did Robin laugh so hard you could see her back teeth? (probably not- that would be louder than was smart.)

“Buckley- Harrington’s back, and he’s got something for us, after we change,” Eddie says, slightly louder, towards the back of the house. He pats Steve on the head as Steve passes him, and Steve tries not to lean into the touch too hard.

“That’ll be great news- after we change,” Robin says, drily.

They’re so sharp with each other, sometimes, but they’re never that way to him, not anymore. 

He doesn’t know how to interpret that.

November. October? November. 

They are presented with beer, when they emerge, dressed again, from the bedrooms.

Steve pops the top on one, and hands it to Robin, not looking at her. His whole posture seems defeated. Her stomach falls.

They’d found them, just a few unopened and unbroken, weeks (months?) ago when they sorted through the molder of Melvad’s, and Steve had insisted on saving them- to celebrate, when they found a way out.

For weeks, he’d been getting more and more keyed up, certain that it was going to happen any five minutes now, and back at their home base, even in dog-form, he would repetitively check on the bottles- ready for when they could pop them open and celebrate.

She knows he hasn’t found a gate back, not today.

“It was a long shot-,” she says, without thinking, “Even though the last two were November, July broke the pattern anyway…”

“Yeah…” Steve agrees, “but I... hoped.  Anyway.”

Robin takes her offered beer, and Steve pops the top on another, for Eddie.

Interestingly, the third bottle, sitting on the table next to him, remains unopened.

“Can’t hold off the change as long, remember?” Steve says, answering the unasked question.

She does remember. 

It hadn’t taken very long at all, to realize that the “day”/”night” (or what passed for it) cycles weren’t the only things that governed them shifting forms. She didn’t know if it was right from the beginning, and they’d just been so surprised by the first few shifts that they didn’t notice? The first few days were frankly still a blur for Robin- running, losing the boys, finding them again, dodging monsters so much bigger than she was, being hungry and thirsty and scared-

But gradually, the unrelenting terror had lessened (or they’d gotten used to it) and they could think more clearly, instead of just running (or flying, she could fly!) and hiding.

Eddie had actually been the first to understand that he could delay the shift-

They’d found some books in one of the houses they’d raided, and Eddie, grateful that his time with thumbs was in  the slightly-bright “daylight” hours, had taken to reading, a lot, when he was human and temporarily safe. 

One evening, straining to angle his book towards the window for the very last of the better light, Eddie had been so focused, that he hadn’t realized the shifting moment was almost on them. Robin had gone back into the bedroom she’d picked as hers and let the change come over her when it did… but bat-her quickly realized Eddie hadn’t done the same. She toddled back to the main room, and found Eddie- head still pressed up against the window, and Steve- head emerging from another bedroom, pulling his shirt on still. 

Both boys had frozen, staring at each other, and then Eddie made a high echo-location sound, and pretty much popped from one form into the other.

“Holy shit, man.” Steve had said, but later that night, once Robin and Eddie were back from their patrol, and had shifted back human again, and gotten dressed, they’d come out to the big room to find Steve, in nothing but basketball shorts, sweating buckets, but still human.

“Hey look!” he said, clearly shaking but also clearly pleased with himself, “Just like- “ and the change came over him, and then there was a demodog in their living room.

And that had begun Steve’s now weeks, a month?, long battle to resist the change.

From his initial 30 second success (and Eddie’s immediate attempting and then abandoning of that exercise) Steve had worked up to about twelve minutes, he could hold it off.

They’d found this place, a house among many on the street, but in better shape (some were wrecks, like some big animal had run through them, and one big one at the end of the street, backing the woods, was just heavy with vines) and chosen it for their home base. 

And it had had wine.

Well mostly what it had was broken glass from wine bottles, but there had been a bottle of wine, intact, which they’d split one evening, to celebrate Steve reaching the ten-minute milestone.

He started before them, and that night, he only held it about 75 seconds.

Steve now is well over 20 minutes, and he looks it. Tired, exhausted really, tension and pain held at the corners of his mouth and eyes. 

“Oh, Steve, you don’t have to do that-”

“Might as well practice.”

“Alright.” Robin agrees sadly.

The silence stretches, as she, as they both watch Steve fiddle with the corner of the label to his bottle. 

Eddie breaks the tension.

“Robin and I caught the aftermath of a ‘gorgon fight.” Steve looks at him, and Eddie takes another drink before continuing. “It was at that gas station, up on tenth? But the big one, the winner, was still eating. It didn’t stop until it was pretty much time for us to come back, so we didn’t touch it.”

“It was just leaving when we decided we couldn’t wait to come back here.” Robin agrees “But if nothing else has found it yet, there should be plenty for you today, if you want to try.”

Steve starts to nod, and then stands, suddenly, trembling a little, and both of them jump up, ready to help him-

He waves them off, stumbles to his room, disappears behind the door.

No one speaks, as the cracking sounds of the change drift back into the room.

After a moment, Dog-steve comes back, and waits beside the door to be let out.

Robin does go to him, then.

“Be safe,” she whispers, patting him a little, as she opens the door.

“Good speed, adventurer.” Eddie says, a little louder, from behind.

Steve turns his sightless face from one, to the other, and slips out the open door into the gloom.

Winter 

It’s as cold as they’ve yet experienced, in the upsidedown. No snow or anything, not enough stray water, Eddie thinks, but if there was, it would be. Their breaths cloud in front of them, as humans (though they run cold enough that it doesn’t really, in their demo forms).

Robin and Eddie are waiting for Steve.

They expected him back before now- they’d been taking shorter shifts, now it was so cold. They would sort of seem to slow down, outside for too long. They didn’t really heat the building just to heat it (since they seemed to see heat more than anything else while shifted, it was a good bet a lot of other creatures were the same, and making a big white target of yourself seemed inadvisable). But the trees were dense enough around this area, that enough fire once a day to boil water and cook some food (if they wanted to eat as humans) didn’t seem to attract much attention. It did mean that they’d been sleeping in the main room, instead of the bedrooms, though, most coveted place being as close to the coals as possible.

They sit on the bench in front of the window, curled against each other, watching the ever-twilight.

And there’s movement, out in the dark.

It’s Steve, they know each other on sight now in their shifted forms, every time pretty much, but he’s… he’s not moving like he-

Eddie’s on his feet in an instant, after that thought, and Robin’s right behind him, and they are out the door, Eddie not even remembering to arm himself, although he’ll remember later that Robin picked up the bat, at least. Steve turns his face towards Eddie, and he stumbles, and falls.

Eddie catches him, and immediately feels his sleeve soak through. Christ. That’s blood. But whose?

And thank fuckin Odin or whatever that Steve’s not that big like this, because Eddie scoops him up in a way he never could, even with new, less well-fed human Steve, and has him back to the house in a moment.

He is hurt, Eddie can see, lying him on the bare kitchen table, but not… he thinks not too bad? Hopefully not too bad. Hopefully he’s mostly tired.

“You led them on a big chase, didn’t you, Stevie?”

Robin starts handing him stuff, towel, alcohol, bandages, and Eddie washes and wraps the long gash, starting low on Steve’s side, traveling over his hip, around his flank, and down his thigh.

When he’s done, Steve, who didn’t make a sound while Eddie worked, lays there, panting shallowly. Eddie can see the rapid expand-contract of his rib cage, and only then, shushing himself to listen, does he realize he’s been murmuring the whole time.

“I’m gonna move you, Stevie, get you off the table so we can clean it, okay?”

Steve doesn’t react, but Eddie takes the initiative anyway, and scoops him again, carefully, and staggers them both over to the fireplace. Is Steve heavier? Or is it just that Eddie’s more tired?

He looks up, after he gets Steve down, but Robin waves him off, already wiping down the table, squeamishness about blood left far behind, good man, Buckley.

He turns back to Steve. There’s less than half an hour left, probably, before he and Robin have to change, but until then…

Eddie props himself against the wall, pulls Steve’s head gently into his lap, and starts… to pet him. He rubs kind of where a dog’s ears would be, and down his neck, and around the bases of the fanged flower petal things that make up most of his face… and he sings.

Eddie sings soft, sings… well, he thinks of it like a lullaby, even if most people wouldn’t, but it was one his mother used to sing, one of his earliest and most treasured memories…:

“Oh if I was a blackbird, could whistle and sing / I'd follow the vessel that my true love sails in. And in the top riggin' I would there build my nest / And lie the long night on his broad golden chest…”

Robin comes over, table clean, Robin clean, around the third verse.

“Oh if I were a scholar and could handle the pen / One secret love letter to my true love I'd send / I’d tell of my sorrows, my dreams, and my pains / Since he's gone and left me to sail once again…”

She sits next to Eddie, leans against him, and she doesn’t move Steve, but she starts to pet him, too. Along his back, across his chest, clearly wherever seems safe, never too close to Eddie’s poor attempts at bandaging.

And Eddie sings:

“My love’s tall and handsome in every degree, / But my parents despise him because he loves me; So let them despise him, and say as they will /  While there’s breath in my body I will love him still.”

The change does come, and Robin lets it take her first, while Eddie resists, slowly extricating himself from under Steve. While he waits for her little bat form to toddle back in, he considers whether it would be better to leave Stevie as he is, or carry him to the couch.

Better carry him now, if I’m gonna. 

Eddie crouches and scoops Steve up a third time- none too soon, as he begins to writhe and twist in Eddie’s arms.

Eddie gets him to the couch just in time, just as he starts to get heavy, and reaches for the big blanket, to cover Steve from the cold, and protect his privacy.

But, no, wait, he’s gonna have to check the bandages-

He’s never seen the shift in the others, not from this close up. He can feel the pressure, the compulsion, and knows hell have to follow soon, but for the moment, he just watches. 

He watches Steve get bigger, watches his legs stretch and bend, his hips shift, and, yeah, there went the bandages, and, oh-

Eddie looks away before he can violate too much more of Steve’s privacy, and watches his face instead, hair sprouting, flower petal mouth melting back into jaw and eyes and nose…

Steve blinks his eyes open, and Eddie knows he’s caught.

“Ah, just need to check your bandages, Steve.”

Steve looks bleary, out of it, but nods, and Eddie carefully tucks the blanket around him (covering the aforementioned golden chest- though it wasn’t so gold these days), leaving bare only what he had to, and the gash was better, smaller, either knitting faster through the shift, or just literally smaller on Steve’s now larger frame. 

“Wh’s singing?”

Eddie looks up, as he tightens and re-wraps.

“Who was? I was.”

Steve cracks an eye back open.

“Know that. I-” he clears his throat, “I know it was you. What… what was it?”

Eddie’s almost through.

“Um. Lullaby? Something my mom- She, uh, she sang a lot of folk music. Guthrie, American stuff, but, uh, traditional stuff too. Her people were from Scotland, I think. Over near that island, anyway.”

“I like it...” Steve says, and Eddie can tell he falls asleep before he even fully finishes the sentence.

Maybe he won’t remember it.

Robin’s back in the room, though, and she certainly will.

Eddie hurries into his bedroom, feeling the change gnawing at the edges of himself, and he lets it have him, stripping his clothes almost too late. Too late to fold anything, for sure.

He waddles back out, and as far as he can tell, Steve is still alright, a small glowing lump across from the still gently glowing hearth.

If Steve’s gonna be out of commission for a while, it’ll be on him and Robin to keep them all fed and hydrated.

She’s already at the door, pulling the string that lifts the latch.

As they take off into the night, Eddie’s still humming in the back of his head-

When I look to the high hills and my lad’s not there / When I look to the high hills, it makes my heart sore / When I look to the high hills, through tears I cannot see / for the lad I love dearly lies a distance from me…

Spring

Robin makes it back, long before Eddie, one day.

Normally they come back together, leave together, stay mostly in “sight” of each other, Steve’s been told, the whole time they’re out.

Steve tries very hard not to be jealous. It helps that he’s so fucking lonely some days that he can’t feel anything outside of that vicious hunger.

But Robin comes back pretty early one almost-morning, and Eddie’s not with her. 

“You two split up? Where is he?”

Robin obviously doesn’t answer, but she clambers back up onto the porch railing, after landing, and looks back out, down the street.

It’s quiet, normal, no indication of anything, but after a few moments, she hop-glides from the railing onto him, scratching him with her horrible claws, as he tries to boost her up to the roof, what she clearly wants, with the way she’s scrambling all over him.

She perches up there for a long time, while Steve fiddles with his bat on the porch step, quietly anxious. 

Finally, much closer to shift time than Steve is comfortable with (they’ve all been caught out a few times, and there’s nothing like that fear- the vulnerability of the naked, barefoot human, for which they’ve now got little gear caches all over town, shoes and some kind of weapon, etc… and the fear of the the ones back at base, shifting immediately, and starting the frantic search). Finally, Eddie’s small form appears in the sky.

He’s flying funny, like he’s not sure where to land, like he’s dropping-

Robin swoops up, and guides him down, and he lands in a heap, and barely moves.

Steve’s on him in an instant, but Eddie doesn’t seem hurt, so Steve instead just gently picks him up, and brings him inside (and Robin too, talons dug into his shirt to be carried, rather than suffer the indignity of their little bat waddle any more than she has to, apparently. What a pest. He loves her so much).

It’s extremely close to the change, so she drops from Steve’s back as soon as the get inside, disappearing into her room, and Steve hurries to Eddie’s, just getting him onto the bed before he starts to shift. 

Steve looks away, mostly, habit of long years of locker rooms, but he catches it anyway, in the corner of his vision, as he fishes around for the guy’s clothes. Eddie’s form stretches long and pale, broken up with tattoos. Not that many, not as many as Steve thought there might be, when they were first working at the mall together and Eddie pushed his sleeves above his elbows, baring the little cloud of bats. Ironic, in hindsight. Also stupid, to wear long sleeves in the summer. Even if black sleeves shoved back from his forearms was a look. Steve knows a style-over-comfort choice, when he sees one.

Steve folds some clothes for Eddie, sets them beside the bed, and don’t look don’t look pulls blankets up over him, so whenever he does wake up, he won’t be cold and… yeah.

He tucks them right up around Eddie’s neck, and, feeling bold, slides Eddie’s hair back off his face, making sure it’s not stuck uncomfortably under his shoulder or anything.

He thinks about what it might be like to brush it, especially after Eddie’d had a real shower, or something. He’d done that for Nancy, once, brushed her nice clean and soft hair while it was wet, gently, and then watched her squish the rest of the water out so it would dry into curls.

He turns his head to the door, hearing a little noise, and freezes, caught.

Robin’s watching him. Watching them.

She steps back, towards the main room.

Steve sighs a little, looks back at Eddie, who is obviously fine without Steve’s meddling, and Steve steps out too, closing the door behind himself.

There was a glass of water (boiled and cooled) sitting out for him, a mirror of the way he does it for them, sometimes, and he takes the hint, finds a spot to sit, and sips his water with her, as if they are drinking something more interesting. Christ, what he wouldn’t give for some orange juice. 

“He flew really far, today,” Robin says, “He’s gonna be hungry, I think, later.”

Steve nods. He’ll be on the lookout, so Eddie can eat immediately, hopefully, the next time he shifts. There’s some human-safe food in the house, but not a lot, and they try not to rely on it, when it’s so very scarce.

“There were four of them,” Robin continues, “and they caught him- spotted him up on the radio tower?” Steve scowls. Eddie was, possibly, a little obsessed. “He was scouting out that old house again, the one that the vines go to- and there are more bats than ever, over there.” The phrase perfect lair had come up a few times in Steve’s hearing. Dramatic nerd.

“He didn’t want to lead them back here?” It’s what Steve would have worried about.

“Yup. So he headed off down-valley. They must not have given up until he was nearly to Vicksburgh.”

Steve looks back at the room.

“Barely made it back before shift.”

Robin nods

Steve buries his face in his hands

“Stevie- what?” he hears her moving, standing, but he doesn’t look up. 

“Robin. It’s just… fuck. It’s so much.” 

-

Robin sits next to him, on the couch, and kind of cuddles up to him, enjoying his warmth, even though she knows it’s partly because it’s time for him to shift, and he’s fighting it, like always.

“I was scared this time, Robbie.” Steve says, into his hands “I thought- I thought, what am I gonna do if he doesn’t- if we never- if I never get to say-”

Oh, Robin thinks, oh. 

“Oh, Stevie,” she starts, cautiously, “Do you… like Eddie?”

She looks for a denial. She doesn't think he’ll react badly?

Both she and Eddie had been out to Steve ever since she let it slip accidentally one time when they were overlapped human, and talking about school, and who they all knew and didn’t, and she couldn’t help but bring up Tammy Thompson. Steve just kind of stared at her, and then Eddie came out too, in solidarity, and Steve shifted before he could say anything, so they had to stew all day over what that meant, only for Steve to force-shift himself early, just so he could “casually” tell her that her taste in girls sucked, and he hoped for all their sakes that Eddie’s taste in boys was better.

Eddie had stood on Robin’s foot in clear fear that she might further slip and let Steve know exactly what she thought she knew about Eddie’s current taste in men-

So, Steve had handled it all pretty wonderfully, but it hadn’t exactly been directed at him…

Steve slumps further.

“It’s… it’s not bad, Steve, if you do.” She bit her lip, nervous even still, “You… don’t think it’s bad for me to-”

Steve looks up, grabs at her hands, “No, of course not Robin, I didn’t mean-”

“So if it’s okay for me, why wouldn’t it-”

“Because I don’t know, Robin, how can I know?” Steve bursts out, almost too loud, louder than they almost ever were “I think ‘oh, no’, and then I think ‘well, maybe’, but we’ve never even been in the same room as… as people together, for more than twenty-seven minutes, not since Starcourt, since I can’t manage-”

And he bites off the rest of his sentence.

Oh, she thinks. Oh that’s why he’s doing it.

“I don’t know,” he says, quieter. “I’d like to know, but I’d like a lot of things that are-” and he’s cut off in a gasp as he shifts, clearly involuntary, and shreds his current favorite shirt.

Please, she thinks, putting it out into the universe, she hopes. Please let us… just. Please.

She helps dog-Steve out of his clothes, and doesn’t argue when he immediately beelines for the door. 

March 26th, 1986

Dustin’s going through that gate whether Nancy likes it or not. She’ll have to shoot him, or Jonathan will have to knock him out or something, to keep him away. 

He runs under the caution tape, and his headphones blasting Born in the USA fall off, but the cord is around his neck and he doesn’t care. He’s going into that gate. It’s what Steve would do. It’s what Steve did do.

He can hear the rest behind him, calling his name, but he doesn't stop-

And then he’s through. It’s cold and dark, and there’s a terrible screeching, chattering noise, and something knocks him over. He rolls, covering his head, but no more attacks come. When he opens his eyes…

It’s Steve. 

There are… there are bat things, in a big cloud, and Steve has- Dustin thinks it’s a baseball bat at first, and then he thinks it’s a sword, but it’s probably a machete, and he’s using it like a bat, but what he hits stays down.

There’s commotion, and then in sequence, Nancy, Jonathan, Max, Lucas, and Mike all tumble through the gate, and now Steve really has his work cut out for him, so Dustin casts around, finds a metal pole, and starts helping.

The bats don’t let up, driving them back, away from the gate, most concentrated there- but there’s more commotion in the sky, a screeching howling maelstrom, and blood hits the ground, and then a bat, and then another, and then the whole flock peels off them, back to the gate.

Panting, they look around.

“Steve!” Dustin takes his moment, running to him. He doesn’t care that he’s dirty, and smells, and looks like hell. It’s Steve and he’s alive and he kept Dustin alive!

“Dustin. Jesus christ, is it really you? Fuck, Max? Nancy?... hey Jon. Lucas! Mike!”

Dustin’s hugging him and Steve’s hugging him back, and Steve seems shorter, but no it’s that Dustin has grown, and also Steve is definitely thinner. He holds onto Dustin just as tight, though, and Dustin buries his face in Steve’s ratty, nasty shirt and he knows he’s crying and he doesn’t care because Steve is ALIVE he’s here and he’s ALIVE and Dustin told himself Steve was, but he doesn’t think he really believed, but now Steve’s here, and it seems impossible…

Dustin pulls back, suddenly afraid. He looks over to Max, and then she joins him, and she’s hugging Steve, and she looks at Dustin and nods, and Lucas is hugging him too, and then Mike- and Dustin thinks, maybe if the visions are this good… maybe he wouldn’t mind going out like that…

Dustin can't let go of Steve, but he starts counting his moles. It’s kind of hard, because Steve has some facial hair Dustin never saw before, and he’s definitely kind of dirty, but Dustin is counting fine, so hopefully he’s not dreaming?

Plus, if he was dreaming, then-

“Where are Robin and Eddie?” Dustin hears himself ask.

Steve frees one of his arms from the group hug, and reaches out to Dustin.

“They’re around. We can, uh, we can see them in a little bit.” Dustin lets Steve touch him again, and Steve runs his hand back and forth across Dustin’s hair, like he has to touch, too. Like he can’t believe they’re real either.

“Uh, we shouldn’t stay here. We should go.”

-

It is immediately obvious that they won’t be getting back through the gate in the junkyard- it continues to absolutely swarm with demo- bat guys.

“The other gates were like this too, at first, but as soon as there’s a new gate, a ton of the bats go there instead. We were going to try one of those first ones here in another day or so anyway, so. Uh. good timing.”

“We?” Nancy asks.

Steve nods, looking away, up to the sky, “Robin, Eddie, and me.”

Steve keeps doing that, looking away, up at the sky, but Dustin doesn’t see anything up there, except the occasional bat thing.

He doesn’t like it. 

If… if Robin and Eddie weren’t down here, how long would it have taken Steve to go crazy? To start making things up, to cope with how alone he was?

“Why aren’t they here, Steve? Why did you guys split the party?”

“They’re here,” Steve insists, still looking absently off, “You, uh just cant see them yet."

The sick feeling grows, and Dustin can almost hear that terrible voice whispering

Why can’t you see them? What happened to them- or him? Were they dead right from the beginning, or did they hang on? How long has he been alone really?

“What-” Steve starts, and has to clear his throat, “What, uh, day is it? Out there?”

“Wednesday.” Lucas says, 

“March 26th,” Max says, looking at Steve’s face.

Dustin is too, so he see’s Steve’s face fall for a second, before he collects himself and hides the reaction. Dustin puts his headphones back on, still listening, but also letting Dancing in the Dark play a little more loudly, just in case.

“Or it’s the 27th," Mike argues, “we might be past midnight.”

“You were gone for eight months,” Max says, quietly, her own headphones still in place.

“Sorry,” Steve says, looking at her for a moment, before looking back up at the sky and continuing, “We’ve been looking the whole time, but a couple days ago was the first time we’ve seen a gate since the one we came through exploded.”

“So what’s the plan?” Nancy demands, and Jonathan sort of looks like he wants to shush her, but Steve seems to take it fine.

“Not sure. Going back to home base to start. I don’t know if it’s better to try for another gate today, maybe surprise him, or hide out for a while and let it all die down. But the more time you’re down here, the riskier it gets, too, and we don’t have much food, or more importantly water, that humans can have, so that might be a problem too.”

"Humans?” “The other gates-” “Who’s ‘he’?” 

The last is Max, and Steve sighs, like he's disgusted with the whole affair.

“Big monster dude, Eddie calls him The Necromancer,” Steve says, and God Dustin wants to believe that, “Lives in a creepy house out in the woods. Controls the bats.”

“... and you’ve seen this?” Nancy asks, clearly also skeptical. 

“No, but Eddie and Robin did."

“Did they.”

“Yes.” Steve keeps moving forward.

Twice, Steve looks up at the sky, and stops, changing the direction.

Finally, the who group rounds the corner, and begins to head for-

“Your house, really Steve?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Not quite. Watch it, everyone, dodge the vines here.”

And there are Way More than there were at any other place so far, so Dustin finds his focus largely taken up there, tiny little piece of his mind still on the where are Eddie and Robin-ness and, almost too conveniently, c'mon rise up! c'mon rise up! playing in his ears.

Finally, they come up to a two story that’s hard to see from the street, and Steve turns and heads for it.

Dustin notices, finally, that the occasional bat he’s been seeing over head… there are two of them. There have been two of them, for a while.

The upside-down used mind control, both of the last two times.

“Don’t go in-” Dustin blurts, grabbing Mike’s sleeve, where he was about to follow Steve into the old house. 

“What, why?”

Everyone’s staring at him

“Just… don’t do it.”

Steve sighs.

“Come on, man. We’ve been walking almost all night. Let’s go inside-”

“Where are Eddie and Robin, Steve?” Dustin asks, knowing his voice sounds accusing, “Where are they?”

Steve shakes his head,

"I told you, they’re nearby, but they should be coming home, soon.” and Steve enters the house, forcing the issue.

No one else seems to feel what Dustin’s feeling, and one by one, they head into the house.

Max is last, and she first stops and grabs Dustin's wrist, no, his walkman, and turns up the volume. 

Dustin immediately feels better, even if just psychosomatic.

Inside, Dustin sees:

1. Weapons by the door. Another Machete. A bat like Steve had when they faced the demodogs. A series of bottles with amber liquid. A trash can lid, with spikes sticking out of it. The machete Steve had recently used on those bats- now leaning against the other one
2. A gallon of water, half full, and a gallon almost full. Some unidentified cans. A single bottle of beer.
3. Three cups in the sink, three bowls beside the sink, three spoons in the drying rack. 

Please. Please let them be here. Please don’t let this be… this can’t get any scarier. It really can’t.

“We’re pretty close to dawn,” Steve says “Do you want to try to get some sleep before tomorrow?”

“When are you expecting-” Jonathan, this time.

“Really, really soon-”

There’s a thump and scrabbling sound on the roof, and everyone freezes, except for Steve, who smiles. 

“Right on time,” he says, and Dustin tries very hard not to find it creepy.

They can hear the scrabbling move, to the edge of the roof, and then come in, on the floor above them. The noise changes, less sharp, but still moving, muffled now. On carpet? On furniture? And after a moment-

“Eddie!” Dustin says, louder than he should, he knows, “Robin!” Dustin rushes them as well, the others hot on his heels, and they grin with huge eyes and hug him back.

“Henderson! Fuck, you’re taller- oh hell, mike and lucas you are gonna be giants-”

“Dingus, I’m being drowned in children-”

Dustin knows he’s crying, but he can’t help it again, and when he lets go of Eddie, he goes back to Steve, so glad that Steve isn’t (probably) crazy.

He does notice, though, that Steve is shaking. It’s got to be a big night for them.

“How’d you do it? How did you guys survive?”

“Is there anyone else down here? How far have you explored?”

“Is there anything to eat? I know Will never found-”

“How many different kinds of demo monster do we now think there are?”

And, from Nancy-

“Why did you guys come in from the roof?”

That shuts everyone up.

“What, you haven’t told them yet?” Eddie asks, looking at Steve.

Steve shakes his head

“Didn’t want to be distracted.”

Robin nods.

“Well, now you get to play guinea pig, Stevie.”

Steve sighs, extricates himself from Dustin… and begins taking off his shirt.

“It’s a wild tale,” Eddie starts, and Dustin immediately feels like he’s at the d&d table, “ and we don’t know exactly why, and we don’t know exactly how-”

“But probably it was the Russian torture drugs.” Robin says, sagely.

Steve rolls his eyes “Maybe. We have no idea.”

“But when Robin and I rolled through the gate that fateful night,” and Dustin was paying close attention, like a test, like he was going to need to remember specific details later at night, they came through at night, “we found ourselves, shall we say, not entirely in our own bodies.’

“They are our bodies,” Robin rolls her eyes, “just different”. 

“Right, which is why I said not entirely-”

“They are were-demo-bats, or something,” Steve cuts in, “At night, they are bats, like the ones you saw today, and during the day, they are human pains in my ass.”

Squawks of protest come from Robin and Eddie, but Dustin doesn’t look, too focused on Steve being weird, stripping down to boxers now.

“But not you?” Max asks, and Dustin feels stupid for not noticing the wording himself.

“Not me,” Steve agrees, “I came through later, after they were already human again-”

“We think because the sun rose? Or whatever it does here. It was technically daytime.” Eddie cuts in.

“So… what happened to you, when you came through,” Lucas prompts, and Steve opens his mouth, presumably to explain, but Robin jumps in-

"Just show them, Stevie.”

And he does.

One moment, Steve Harrington stands in front of him, and the next-

“No fucking way!” Dustin says, way too loudly.

March 27th, 1986

The whole affair is much easier as a dog, Steve thinks, content as he so rarely is to be curled up against Dustin who, having once raised Dart, has absolutely just been petting Steve the entire time as he harasses the full story out of Robin and Eddie.

And the next plan is made. Rest. water. Trip to the gate like the trip to the house was- likely safer with Steve as human (and the only true jock next to Lucas) and with Eddie and Robin in sky, scouting. Then on to the gate about the time dawn is approaching. 

Decision is made to go after the second site, and the trip goes nearly without a hitch, except one dicey moment where Dustin trips and nearly face-plants into a vine.

They catch him, but it's close.

The site is deserted. 

“All right,” Steve says “you guys through first. If there’s cops on the other side, at least you all aren’t presumed dead. “ He can feel dawn pulling at his chest. Prefect timing. 

Robin lands behind a bush, and Steve lobs a bundle of fabric and shoes at her. 

“There are a couple of stragglers, but seems fairly clear,” she says, coming over. “Better take the opportunity. “

Eddie lands a moment later, and Steve tosses him his clothes as well, as he shifts human and curses. ”Whoops, almost left that too long. All our pedestrians alright?”

"Everyone’s fine."

“Alright,” Nancy says, “Lets go.”

And one by one they do.

She goes first, with Max. Lucas follows, and then Mike, and in the distance…

Steve can hear it, can hear the change.

He and Eddie and Robin make eye contact. Someone knows.

“Now or never,” Eddie concludes, and shoves Dustin (who was malingering, watching them) through “See you on the other side, babes.” and he steps through.

Robin takes Steve’s hand.

“Together,” she says, and Steve takes a deep breath-

-

Things don’t feel that immediately different on the other side. He’s still shaky, hollow feeling from resisting the shift. He wanted- they wanted- to walk through the gate human, if they could. In case it turned out the gate was gonna keep them in whatever form they were when they passed through.

But on the other side in the murky light of twilight, all three lost mall employees stand there, human.

And then something changes inside Steve, or maybe he just becomes aware-

And then he’s bursting out the seams on his shirt and shorts as he lets himself fall in a shift-

But he’s taller this time, and his skin’s different, and-

“Holy shit you’re a wolf”, Dustin says, but Steve’s not done, because this shift feels different and-

“My eyes!” Mike cries, as Steve shifts human again, grabbing his shorts and pulling them at least back into place.

“No way!” Robin says, delighted, and with a pop! Suddenly, there’s a great big bird, where she stood, Not a robin, not a bat, but a large dark bird, with a yellow face, and rust brown on her wings. And Eddie’s eyes get wide and then he also is a bird, the same species, clearly, though he has less rust on him, and the undersides of their wings are light, white and cream banded, and Steve laughs at them as they start screeching and flapping around, trying to get out of their clothes. Big but not as big, and sharp but not as sharp.

“Okay. Well, now you’re stuck unless you wanna flash Dustin while you change back.” Steve laughs, marveling that he can laugh, that he feels like laughing.

Robin squeaks indignantly, Eddie lands on his own pants like he’s gonna do it anyway, and Dustin hollers in offense, turning away… 

Nance grabs Robin's things, and takes them behind a bush, Robin strutting behind her, all dignity (and feathers)…

Eddie, (languidly, it seems to Steve) steps back, an air of “anyone who wants to watch is welcome to” before seeming to loose that arrogance. The change, it looks to Steve, is hard, and Eddie is panting at the end.

“Fuck,” Eddie says, once he can, “why was that so hard for me, and so easy for you?”

“I’ve been practicing, remember?”

Eddie huffs, but takes his pants when Steve offers them, respectfully not looking at his junk.

They get sorted out, and step back over to  rejoin Dustin and Max and a few moments later, Robin and Nance come around the corner.

The group of them look back over the orange-red wound of the gate, like some kind of pustule, considering bursting.

"It’s so weird," Robin finally says, "to actually be on this side of it, after... Were we gone seven months?"

“Eight, almost nine.” Dustin says.

“Felt longer,” Steve, says, and Eddie nods.

Robin suddenly lets out a sob, and claps her hands over her mouth- Eddie and Steve go to her- shushing, and tucking her up against themselves, Eddie turning her face into his skinny chest.

“Hush, Robbie, hush, it’s okay.” he says

Nancy, from the other side of the road where she’s starting to plan next steps, says “You don’t have to hush her- nothing can hear-” and looks at them, and Steve knows what she must see:

Eddie is white, like he’s gonna pass out.

Steve can feel that he has huge tear tracks coming down his face, cutting through the grime there.

We are out he thinks, and wants to sob, we got out. We are topside, and there are other people-

“We are not gonna die unknown”, Eddie says, also crying. Steve wants to lick Eddies face.

The whole group piles on, then, pulling all three of them, dirty and smelly as Steve knows they must be, hair like no one’s business, into the middle, practically smothering them in care.

“You-” Eddie sobs - “you don’t even know us.” 

“Yeah,” Max says,” we do.”

And no one says anything, even after the group hug ends, about how Steve end Eddie won’t let go of each other’s hands.