Chapter Text
It’s stupid to try to predict the ending from the very beginning. Like, take Steve’s whole fucking life. If you told the story of where he stands now—not the ending ending but the present endpoint to start from—to little Steve in his T-ball uniform? One, he’d probably cry, but also: two? Fucking whiplash.
Telling freshman Steve the story probably wouldn’t have worked out much differently, either, so.
Steve usually goes with the abridged version, as best he can, when he does have to explain.
Basically: after he swung a bat at a petal-mouthed hellbeast, he felt weird for days after. He got, like, a rash, and he tried not to scratch because even he knew you shouldn’t, but he woke up for a good week with the hardest scabs he’d ever seen anyway, kind of less blood colored and more like pebbles, if anything.
Steve was mostly trying to bury the entire experience deep in his chest to pretend it didn’t happen, or at worst, accept that it did and never acknowledge it again so: when it all cleared up by the second week like it was never there at all? He was happy to shove that in the ‘pretend it never happened’ box.
The second time, in hindsight, was probably what made it…worse. Like, as in: longterm worse. The dust, or else, no: dust is the thing that was foreign to Steve until he started going to friends’ houses because god-for-fucking-bid a Harrington ever have a speck of dust in their homes, Jesus god the world would end—but the stuff in those tunnels? That was…thick. It felt alive, like it got in your lungs to burrow and rot and choke with intent. And Steve’s little bandana-mask was better than nothing, he guesses, just…
Not better enough.
He hates that any part of it makes him laugh, but the first morning he couldn't pass it off as a bruise anymore, he brightened up thinking maybe he'd had a real beard on his hands.
The beard popped off of him in the almost-shape of a petal like…four hours later so. It was a short-lived victory.
It was between Halloween and the next July 4th that Steve came to realize that while the Upside Down maybe started this…transformative experience, it wasn't the only way to nudge petals—with fangs, Steve’s pretty sure the hard-scab-rocks the first time were, like, baby teeth because of course they were—but Steve figured out that it was not just the Upside Down that triggered it. Stress, actually; he was pretty sure.
Considering it was his parents who managed it when they dropped in unexpectedly in January.
It’s also how he found out there was a delay period: about twenty-four hours before he started going demogorgon, and so far, the other times included, it didn't last for more than a week.
The whole Russian thing is a bit of a mindfuck, and losing Hopper doesn’t make it any better, honestly Steve’s impressed he’s able to process anything, but: the change fits the mold. And it’s the same extent of change as the last time: smaller flippy-flaps than the real deal but he gets to keep his face, even if his teeth get sharper, which, why does that hurt the most out of everything? But anyway, flippy-flappy-fanged-up face petals, with mouth-fangs behind his own teeth—and okay, the whole thing is weird but the real thing having no face, versus the maw where the no-face was between the petal flaps, being Steve’s face, now?
Mindfuck, man. He’s heard that word, he thinks. He doesn’t remember where. But wherever it was: those people had no goddamn clue.
But it’s also weird that Steve gets taller, not bulkier, like he’s stretchy, like…like Gumbo, right? But it’s weird because you see his ribs and Steve’s not…that’s not his look, y’know? He gets greyer in his skin but it’s not like the genuine article, it’s like him in the dark when it’s just bad lighting coming in from a window; but that’s about it. It should also probably be the most painful part, but maybe he’s more like Gumbo than he thought, so hey.
Oh, also there are the…claws.
So far he gets them only on one hand, and it’s mostly the middle three fingers. That’s doable. It’s his dominant hand that gets claw-like which is…difficult, but.
He’s managed worse.
He’s lucky Robin’s parents won’t let her out of their sight for days after the ‘fire’ and everyone’s shell shocked after Hopper. Steve’s religious about checking in on the radios, calls Robin’s house since she doesn’t have one yet and does absolutely nothing to discourage the suspicions of her family that they’re involved in the process, and hey: by the time he’s back to…fighting form (or would the other form actually be better for fighting? It’s like a half-baked abomination thing, probably not, but maybe he should practice next time, work on the bat with his other hand in preparation): but once he’s back to himself, fully?
He drives around to see everyone, hugs whoever needs it so very tight with two unclawed arms, and he’s taken aside by Joyce, puffy-eyed and most in need of a hug, to make sure he’s okay before she praises him for his sensitivity, the way he gave everyone space to grieve but checked in the whole time on their terms, never pressured anyone to respond (they all did, every day, but some of them took time, mostly Mike and El), but she’s so…she looks proud of him.
He feels a little uncomfortable under any praise not related to a sport as a rule but: he’s also dealing with secretly turning into half-a-demogorgon sometimes so. He takes it as a learning experience. And also—this he likewise feels kinda bad about—but he also does stick it in his back pocket as a strategic approach that has proof of helping everyone.
Steve hopes like hell he never has to use it, of course.
Which was—of fucking course—dumb of him to even waste energy thinking at all.
Once the next time comes, though? Steve’s done some of his own non-monster transformation-ing. Working and driving and hanging out with and loving his platonic soulmate has of course shifted Steve’s general just, outlook. Having this person in his life, even as he loses the Byers family to the West Coast just as he’s getting on better terms with Jon, and loses El just as she’s feeling like a proper little sister—there’s Rob, and Rob is…she shares some of his brain cells, y’know? And she doesn’t even mean to, it’s not intentional.
But it’s through her just being in his world so certain and, like, everywhere, that Steve realizes half-demogorgon isn’t the only thing he’s kinda…halfway into. Like…that’s what ‘bi’ means, right? Like: two, half, something?
Whatever. Steve’s revelation regarding it not being a universal male experience to appreciate a hot guy also shifts Steve’s general outlook, is the point.
It’s from that…outlook that Steve ends up held at broken-bottle-point in a dingy-ass boathouse by what turns out to be a particularly hot guy.
Being able to throw himself into helping protect the particularly hot guy is maybe more gratifying than it needs to be, Steve knew he had a thing for keeping the people he cares for safe but maybe he also has a thing for keeping certain people safe—whatever. Walking through the woods with the particularly hot guy getting up in his personal space and leaving him feeling hot and tight in his skin, plus add on top of that particularly hot guy directing Steve to look at his ex and realize…yeah. He loves Nancy.
But not like that. Really not like that.
When the particularly hot guy runs around with the kid who’s basically your brother, showing the same kind of care and joy and love? It’s almost unfair, save that it bursts Steve’s heart a little bit.
(A lot-a-bit.)
But then if the particularly hot guy tries to die on your ass in a blaze of idiotic glory as he doubles down on the heroic self-sacrifice?
Steve makes the fucking most of the 24-hours he’ll have until he starts out with the rash that’s not a beard, that’ll flop out like a petal shortly after that.
Eddie’s hanging on, not quite stable but no longer barely still there by a thread; Robin buys his excuses of a migraine to not answer the door—too bright, Robs, but I’ll call every night to check in, swear—and his leaving donation boxes on the porch for her parents to drive with her over to the community center; Erica is a skeptical but perfect go-between for checking on Max. She’s smart enough to also keep him posted on Eddie.
Steve hates that he’s not there, but he tries to focus on being grateful for the fact that whatever crazy shit made him half-demogorgon when he goes through life-threatening bullshit (or sees his fucking parents), at least he has his own face, his own mouth: his own voice.
The minute that the only thing left is the claws, he’s in his car on his way to the hospital, and he runs to Max’s room, takes her hand for a couple minutes, squeezes and wishes whatever influence the Upside Down has left in him could connect him to Max, give him some power to pull her back. He leaves her to Lucas, squeezing the kid’s shoulder in support and he does look up, asks in genuine concern if Steve’s feeling better—he’s such a good kid, fuck. Steve pulls him in a little closer, because he looks like he needs it.
But then maybe he runs to Eddie. Goes to his side alone—why is Eddie alone?
He’s beat to hell, if clearly drugged into the peaceful set of his features for all the lines and tubes running from his bed. He’s…
Still a particularly hot guy, that Steve’s feeling…
Okay, look. Steve’s had a lot of shifts in perspective and worldview and self-understanding over the past years. Just because one of his less dramatic transformations—no fangs involved, practically a nothing-burger—but just because Steve is now aware and can be reflective, even, about the fact that he doesn’t idly or hollowly use the L-word (which would be easier) but just falls dumb-fast into the L-word, head over heels and whole-fluttering-heart-on-his-sleeve about it instead (which is harder and stupider to boot): just because Steve’s got some perspective on this character…trait (not a flaw, love isn’t a flaw, Steve, Robin’s voice, and her hand rubbing up and down his arm echo every time): well.
Perspective doesn’t mean it changes anything.
So Steve grabs a chair and scoots it so close and reaches out to hold Eddie’s hand—with the one he’s got that’s not still a little…slashy.
But then Steve can feel where he’s hiding them in his pocket the exact moment his claws retract in full: and then he doesn’t hesitate.
He holds Eddie’s hand in both his own, and focuses on how it’s warm. So warm.
It’s gonna be okay. Eddie’s going to be okay, Steve knows it.
Everything gonna be okay.
And it is. It is okay. Eddie has a road to recovery but the government’s footing the bill, the rehab facility Steve maybe loudly insists upon after doing his fucking homework into the topic is more homey than most houses, and maybe Steve bullies them into putting Wayne up in one of the rooms without the treatment outfitting, one of the transition-suites where people prove they can cook for themselves and shit before discharge, so Eddie and Wayne get to wait on a replacement housing option together, and as comfortably as possible—Steve’s less inclined to pressure the Feds on that waiting game because Eddie’s making progress and Wayne’s closer to the plant for when he insists on still taking shifts to put into savings because he don’t trust them suits, and Steve can respect that, but everyone is happy enough for now and that’s what counts—while Eddie chinks away at what everyone marvels to genuinely expect as a full recovery.
And maybe Steve hangs out. A lot.
All the time.
He isn’t putting his payout to savings; he’s got like a year before his grandpa’s inheritance check gets popped into his bank account, even if his parents ever make good on cutting him off for good. He kinda figured that’s on the way, given that…
Steve is on hand for Eddie, because he protects the people he cares for, the people he loves.
But, umm, well. Heart-on-his-sleeve and whatever.
It’s not a wholly selfless dedication, is the point.
But, here’s the kicker. Steve’s always been pretty good with noticing when someone’s interested in him. He’s made moves without that on his side before, banking wholly on earnest charm and racking up the tallies in the You Suck column…pretty consistently. But it wasn’t as new as Robin had liked to harass him with.
Not the point, though. Point was knowing pretty reliably when the interest was there already.
And it turned out, the longer Steve stuck around, the more he learned about Eddie, listened to the stories—real and imaginary, once he started toying with the idea of a campaign, and Steve asked to hear about the new ideas and some old ones, maybe then he’d better understand what the shitheads liked about it so much but regardless it was warm in Steve’s chest when Eddie’s whole face lit up to share, when he proved yet against that he was no runner, was braver than shit when he wanted to revisit names and ideas associated with, you know, almost fucking dying—but, coming to know Eddie, and being pleasantly surprised when he quickly became Steve, rather than Harrington, and his interest in Eddie as a person, as a friend was returned, probably tenfold because Eddie’s brain was way more creative; as they spent all the spare time they had together, including Eddie whining when Steve ‘abandoned’ him to watch a game with Wayne, only to follow and join them and petulantly comment on rules he didn’t bother to understand, like a comedy sideshow—when they were together all the time, and the kids would come, and Rob would come with him when she wasn’t trawling for a two-or-nothing job for them again, seeing as Family Video went through a fucking crack in the ground, and it felt like family in a way Steve didn’t have words good enough to describe any better?
Throughout all of that? Steve, who was good at picking up on interest, didn’t suddenly miss it, and fast. Didn’t miss how it grew, either.
Turns out he’s not the only person who moves quick, with his heart on his sleeve.
It’s the middle of summer when he kisses Eddie for the first time. It is inarguably the best first kiss he’s ever had.
It is also without doubt the best kiss he’s ever had, period. And there have been a fair amount to compete with, save that nothing’s even in the same league.
Steve, based on prior experience and all that self-reflection, knows not to say the L-word so soon, even if he feels it.
Eddie’s Munson Doctrine must not include that rule because, well.
For the very first time, someone says the words to Steve first. And Steve thinks that means his own rules no longer apply.
They’re happy, too. They’re so fucking happy, and Steve’s just…he’s maybe never actually felt happy before, like all the other things he thought were happiness before were just stand-ins for the time being, until this came to prove them all lacking.
They’re happy as Eddie wraps up rehab, plays his guitar and walks a quarter mile—torture, in his not-quiet opinion—and climbs two flights of stairs up and down—more torture!; they’re happy when he goes home to a double wide that he and Wayne both agreed was maybe not everything the government could have given them but it’s decked out as nice as it can be, brand new and top-of-the-line fixtures, and feels familiar enough to be what they need.
(Maybe Steve asked before they settled on the new trailer what the budget was, and maybe he threatens to breaks his NDA if the price difference doesn’t make its way into Wayne or Eddie’s bank accounts along with their hush money—throwing around his last name’s gotta be good for something, after all.)
But they’re happy, and they’re home, and Steve starts to kinda feel like this is his family-within-a-family, plus Dustin and Robs, of course; but it’s happy.
The Upside Down comes for them one more time within the month.
And Steve tries so goddamn hard to get Eddie to sit it out, to focus on healing but it’s a lost battle from the word go; what were all the months in rehab for then?, Eddie keeps as his go to line when Steve tries to persuade him, up to and including him lacing his Reeboks tighter and layering up to the neck this time, lesson fucking learned, before he grabs a Molotov and his wooden sword thing that’s definitely doubling down on the boat-paddle defense.
And so Steve does the only thing he can do: he makes them plan around Steve and Eddie not being separated this time.
Because lesson fucking learned.
And Steve takes the brunt of the attacks they see before they get the signal to blow their quadrant of the hellscape, the indicator that El’s done her job and has the enemy on the ropes—they’re not just here for Vecna and his toadies, though. This is an endgame battle; they want the whole place leveled.
So they light it up and run.
And they do it. They’d learned and they’d lost and they’d rallied and they’d prepared better and harder and they fucking win this time. This last time.
Steve hugs everybody hard, checks them all for wounds and sees there’s nothing stitches and maybe a brace for a sprain can’t fix. He breathes easier.
Eddie’s checking him over the same way and insisting on the hospital for the big ass gash on his forehead but: no. Head wounds just bleed bad, it’ll be fine.
Eddie’s got the bigger vehicle—another beater van because honestly, all the money in the world couldn’t upgrade my taste when it’s already perfection, Stevie-baby—so once they’ve sorted what needs it, and eaten something before they pass out, he packs the kids needing some medical intervention into Eddie’s van, makes sure they’re buckled in, and sends Eddie on his way.
He doesn’t like lying to his boyfriend, so he doesn’t say out loud that he’ll be there soon. Because they’ve eaten up sixteen hours with the fucking suits, this time.
And Steve caught his reflection in the rearview mirror; his neck’s bright red for no reason. With not-scabs at the collar of his jacket.
He’s out of fucking time.
He makes it to the garage and parks the beemer inside because he’s already hunching to fit anywhere, already feeling the flaps pull from the skin of his face. He’s trying to think how the hell he’s gonna keep Eddie away: migraine won’t work, he’ll come and he’ll try to help; same with the head wound, which was nothing anyway.
Steve takes his parents’—is it theirs anymore when Steve hasn’t seen or heard from them in over a year?—but whatever, he takes the master bath when he’s like this, needs the room, so he washes the battle off with his unclawed hand and tries to think how to radio in and let everyone know everything is fine! He’s fine! Don’t come by—
Because no one can see him like this; he can only fucking imagine the nightmares, the way he’s tried so hard to be safe and to mean safety, how he will come to factor into all the nightmares on autopilot, because he looks like this, and he can’t allow that to happen, not to his kids.
But then there’s Eddie.
And Eddie can’t see this because Steve is in love with him. Steve thinks of the future and it’s never not with Eddie. Eddie is…Steve is pretty fucking sure Eddie is it for him. Forever. Whatever the cost. Whatever comes.
And he cannot fucking see this because anyone with eyes and working legs would run from this screaming, and never look back. And for all he fears for the kids, Eddie’s the only one other than Max they almost lost to the Upside Down—the trauma’s so much bigger, so much deeper; Eddie’s brave, but he faced this shit again so he could kill it, not so he could love it, or make love to it, or make a life with it.
And Steve can’t lose him. So.
He needs a plan.
Could he…fake a visit from his parents? Eddie would respect that, knows the whole story, and the backstory, and the generational back-and-forth of hateful-decent-hateful that their bloodline seems to go through. Might work.
Might.
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, though. Not in the plan, and certainly not before he checks in with something but: if the adrenaline was more than enough to spring his demo-self into gear so fast, he probably should have expected the crash on its heels.
It’s how he wakes up to knocking at the bedroom door he at least remembered to lock. On instinct, apparently.
“Stevie, please.”
Steve can’t hold back the whine that escapes him, the visceral pain alongside full-blown trembling panic in Eddie’s voice but, but Eddie can’t see him, he can’t, and a plan—
Fuck.
“Stevie?” Eddie calls out again, obviously having heard the noise but interpreting it wrong, as pain of a different kind because he sounds hopeful on the edges to have found Steve, presumably, but now the panic is louder, and Steve, he can’t—
Maybe there is one thing that’s worse than losing Eddie and it’s staring Steve down through a bedroom door.
It’s being the cause of Eddie hurting. At all. Ever.
Steve breathes out slow, heart-on-his-sleeve slipping, ready to crash.
“I’m in here,” Steve tries to speak steady, tries not to wince when the way Eddie’s lets out his breath is loud enough to hear from where Steve lies, his worry that fucking big.
“Steve,” Eddie huffs out, the relief tangible. “Open the door, baby, I was so fucking worried, everyone’s—“
“I can’t.”
And there is silence. Steve's heart pounds louder, it seems, like it’s called to fill the quiet.
“Steve,” Eddie says carefully; “what’s wrong, sweetheart? Come on, let me in and we’ll figure it out, just unlock the door.”
Steve’s eyes are leaking, the tears catching in the petals stretched out from his face. Jesus fuck.
“Eddie, I,” Steve tries to find words—
“Eddie, I love you,” because that’s always true, and first; “but I can’t.”
Those are the only words he has.
“Can’t, like you’re hurt?” Eddie asks, doesn’t follow with the other side of the coin, not in words: or won’t, because…
As if Eddie could imagine this.
“I’m gonna break the door down in thirty seconds if you don’t unlock it.”
Eddie’s tone is so serious. So…just matter-of-fact. Steve’s sitting up, putting his feet to the carpet, scrambling for words, an excuse—
And then there’s the crash of someone’s whole weight against the door. As promised.
“The fuck,” Steve squeals a little; he didn’t doubt Eddie exactly but, but…
“Sounds like I just cracked it a little,” Eddie muses; “wanna help me out, babe, or should I go again?”
Steve does the math in his head as quick as he can, and he’s standing before he processes the choice: he’s never wanted Eddie kept away from him. Ever.
He didn’t want to lose him but. That part’s looking unavoidable now, so, maybe he can get one line out, before Eddie processes the grotesque thing Steve has become, even if it’s only temporary, it’s latent, it’s inside him always and…maybe if Steve unlocks the door he’ll have one last chance to speak to the man he loves before he runs.
He turns the lock and cracks the door open. He can see it, the way Eddie’s eyes adjust to the lack of light, make sense of the impossible monster in front of him, Steve has a second to plead his case, to say one thing:
“No way in fuck that was thirty whole seconds.”