Reading Time: 100 Minutes

Title: Sing a New Song
Author: Twigen
Fandom: Stranger Things
Genre: Drama, Family, Future Fic / Post-Canon, Horror, Paranormal/Supernatural, Romance, Time Travel
Relationship(s): Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, minor/background pairings
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Violence-Graphic (Canon Typical)
Beta:
Alpha: GalahadsGurl, CorgiQueen14
Word Count: 67,454
Summary: He couldn’t leave him. No matter what Nancy said, Steve couldn’t leave Eddie’s body in the Upside Down. And like hell was his best friend, Robin, letting him go alone. She was his ride-or-die for a reason! Somehow, Eddie was still alive, but when they finally got out, they found themselves somewhere they never expected to be. Hawkins, 2016. Well, crap.
Artist: NotSally

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Chapter 1

Steve Harrington’s life ended on a beautiful spring day.

With each passing moment, their last stand against the Upside Down loomed ever closer. Ensuring Vecna’s downfall was their only goal, one the small group of the resistance left in Hawkins had spent the day preparing for to the best of their ability and resources. They would know soon enough if their preparations were sufficient or not.

Steve looked out across the field where Dustin Henderson and Erica Sinclair were schooling her brother, Lucas, on how to craft some kind of spear from a knife and a long stick. Nancy Wheeler and Max Mayfield were still preparing a shotgun, which was terrifying on multiple levels. Robin Buckley, the best friend he’d ever had, sat with him on the steps of the RV they’d stolen as they built Molotov cocktails for the evening ahead. They were just finishing their assigned task, something Steve had never anticipated doing before getting involved with the Upside Down.

Eddie Munson ambled across the grass toward where he and Robin were seated, a look on his expressive face that Steve couldn’t interpret. For all that he’d only known the other man for a short time, Eddie was distractingly vibrant, and rarely did he keep his feelings to himself.

“Hey, uh, Steve? Can I…Can I talk to you for a minute? In private?” Eddie asked, head twitching at the back side of their stolen RV.

Steve exchanged a bewildered glance with Robin. She shrugged back at him but pushed off the step of the RV to head out to where Max and Nancy were prepping their gear for the task ahead.

“Uh, sure?” Steve climbed to his feet and followed Eddie around the back of the RV.

The other man was pacing back and forth in a tight circle, practically vibrating out of his skin with whatever was on his mind. Eddie’s fingers abused a long strand of hair as he tugged at it, occasionally pulling it into his mouth.

Steve couldn’t help but be transfixed by the motion.

Right from the start, he had felt an immediate surge of attraction to Eddie when he’d been pressed against the boathouse wall with a broken glass bottle pressed to his neck. There had been something exceptionally wild and fierce about Eddie, something that spoke to his ability to protect even in the midst of gut-churning fear, that had called to Steve. He’d experienced that feeling every time he’d slotted himself between his friends or his kids and the dangers presented by the Upside Down. The appeal had only grown with each interaction they’d had since that moment.

Eddie finally stopped his frenetic pacing, standing in front of Steve a bit closer than most people did. But Eddie wasn’t a fan of personal space. The gentle rustle of the wind in the trees was the only thing that broke the silence as Eddie stared at Steve, large brown doe eyes limpid in the growing dusk.

“We might die, and there’s something I’ve gotta do first. Please don’t punch me,” Eddie blurted in a rush of words.

Before Steve knew what was happening, Eddie had reached up and cupped Steve’s face in the palm of his hand, dipping forward to drop a light kiss on Steve’s lips. It was over before Steve had a chance to process anything. All he could do was stare open-mouthed at Eddie as the other man backed away slowly.

The worry in his eyes belied the soft smile on Eddie’s face, which quickly morphed into resignation as Steve watched. Eddie nodded slowly and turned to walk away.

The movement woke Steve from his shock, and he reached out to grip Eddie’s arm, pulling him back around.

The flash of fear that crossed Eddie’s face hurt Steve’s heart. His hand curved gently against Eddie’s cheek, much like Eddie had done to Steve moments earlier. After the space of a moment staring searchingly into Eddie’s eyes, Steve leaned in, slotting his mouth over Eddie’s and pulling their bodies close together. He put all the practice he’d acquired over the years to work, devouring the other man’s mouth with a kiss that instantly grew passionate. Steve’s hand drifted up to bury in Eddie’s wildly glorious hair. He’d been dying to get his hands on it, so he wasn’t about to miss a prime opportunity.

Everything about the moment narrowed down to the lips beneath his own. He almost couldn’t believe he was finally doing this. He’d been thinking about it almost nonstop since Eddie had leaned closer in the stolen RV and called him “big boy.”

At least Eddie was kissing him back. If the other man hadn’t taken the initiative to press the first kiss to Steve’s lips, they both would have missed out on this moment.

Steve moved them until Eddie’s back was pressed against the side of the RV. He leaned all of his weight against the other man’s body, relishing in the sensation of being close to another person. Eddie’s arms had wrapped around his waist at some point, holding him close, and they kissed until Steve’s lips tingled with numbness, and they were both panting for breath. Leaning back, Steve looked at Eddie, searching his eyes to make sure that everything was all right.

“What was that for?” Eddie asked breathlessly.

One corner of Steve’s mouth curled upward in what he knew from experience was a sexy smile. “I just figured, if that was going to be our last kiss before we face Vecna, we better make it a good one.”

“Mission accomplished,” Eddie said on an exhale.

Steve grinned and leaned forward to steal one last kiss. “If we make it out of this, we should do this again sometime. Maybe, uh, hang out?”

“Hell yeah! I am totally on board with that, Stevie,” Eddie said, grinning at him.

The expression on his face was so appealing that Steve couldn’t help but push him back against the RV’s side once again, slotting their mouths together for another round of kisses. He would take advantage of whatever time they had left to enjoy this moment. Everything had been so incredibly stressful lately that he couldn’t help but find comfort in the press of lips against his own as he eagerly sank into the kiss.

Eventually, Steve pulled back and reached up to brush Eddie’s hair away from his face. The other man’s lips were enticingly kiss-stung, but Steve resisted the urge to dive back in for another round. There was little chance they’d be left undisturbed for much longer, and it would probably be better if they didn’t look like they’d been making out.

His heart was still pounding as he impulsively dipped forward to drop a kiss on the tip of Eddie’s nose.

“We should probably get back out there. It’s getting dark,” Steve murmured.

Eddie nodded slowly, hands still lingering on Steve’s hips. He was playing with the hem of Steve’s shirt, gently pushing it up and letting his fingers trail in slightly ticklish touches along the skin beneath. “Yeah, they’ll be missing us if we don’t go now.” He swallowed, glancing away, before looking back at Steve. “I know we have to do this, but I really don’t want to.”

“I don’t, either. But I want this to be over more,” Steve agreed. He smiled at Eddie, trying to be reassuring. “I want this to be over so we can get to that hanging out we’re going to do.”

Eddie opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Robin’s voice cut him off.

“Steve? Hey, Dingus! Where are you?”

They sprung apart as Robin came around the RV and stopped short, staring at them. Her eyes darted back and forth as she examined them with a raised eyebrow. “Everything all right?” she asked slowly, turning her gaze to Steve with a deeper question in her eye.

He didn’t really want to talk to her about it just yet, so he grinned. “Yep, everything’s as good as it can be. We packing up?”

Robin didn’t look too impressed with the diversion, but she nodded. “Yeah. Nance’s marshaling the troops. We’re just about ready to hit the road.”

***

Everything happened far too quickly.

“Make him pay,” Eddie said, staring earnestly into Steve’s eyes.

Steve nodded solemnly, wishing he could lean in for one last kiss but knowing it wasn’t possible. A frisson of foreboding was skittering across his nerves as he glanced between Eddie and Dustin. Part of him desperately wanted to stay behind with the pair of “not-heroes,” but he knew he needed to go with the girls to take on Vecna directly.

Dustin and Eddie would be fine. All they had to do was be a bit of a distraction for just long enough to pull the bats away from Vecna’s lair.

With one last look at Eddie, he turned away and headed toward Creel House with Robin and Nancy.

They walked through the woods for what felt like a small eternity. It was long enough for Robin to decide that they had passed the same tree multiple times and dart ahead of them, leaving Nancy and Steve alone for the moment.

Walking beside Nancy in the creepy darkness of the Upside Down woods, carefully stepping over vines, was surreal. This was the first real one-on-one time they’d had, other than the drive in the RV earlier that day. At that point, he’d still been partly hoping for something he wasn’t entirely sure he’d even wanted. The attraction to Nancy was still there. He still loved her, but when he wasn’t around her, Steve was pretty sure he missed the possibility of what they’d had together rather than the reality of it.

“I shouldn’t laugh,” Steve said, doing it anyway. “When I was a baby, I actually crawled backwards.”

Nancy looked at him, confused. “Crawled backwards?”

Steve shrugged. “You know, I’d push with my hands like this,” he said, gesturing with his hands in front of him like he was crawling on hands and knees. “Beep. Beep. Always in reverse, you know? Come on, it makes sense. You push to move, right?”

“No, no, it doesn’t make sense,” Nancy scoffed, smiling at him with what Steve could now recognize as her condescending expression.

“Well, it did to my tiny little Harrington brain. That is, until I reversed my baby butt down a flight of stairs and thumped my head really good. Yeah.”

“Wow. That explains so much.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a chuckle. “I think it kinda does.” He paused momentarily, contemplating how to word what he wanted to say. “I think, like, right out of the gate, like, I’m super confident. But I’m also, like, an idiot. Which is just…I mean, it’s a brutal combination.”

Steve shook his head, wondering why he’d decided to say all this to Nancy. He had a point. He just had to get to it. “But, I mean, the good news is, I get a big enough thump on my head, I can change, you know? I can learn. I can crawl forward,” he said, thoughts flashing to a pair of big doe eyes he’d left behind at the trailer. That’s what he wanted to move forward to now.

He sighed. “Listen, I guess what I’m trying to say in a really stupid, roundabout way is, um…is thank you.”

Nancy looked at him incredulously. “Thank me?”

“Yeah.”

“For…?”

“Thank you for giving my head the biggest thump of its life two years ago. I needed it,” Steve said with a self-deprecating shake of his head. “It’s changed my life. And now I’m crawling forward. Slowly.”

He really had been the biggest asshole at one point in his life. Being with Nancy had made him a better person all around. Their relationship had taught him so much about people and the world and who Steve wanted to be in that world. Their breakup had taught him nearly as much.

So much of his life had been wrapped up in bullshit. Expectations from other people, from his parents, and from himself. Expectations that he always managed to fail at somehow. Even when he thought he was putting every ounce of himself into meeting them.

So he stopped.

He stopped living for other people and started living for himself. Meeting Robin had only allowed him more room to grow into who he wanted to be when almost everyone else kept him confined to a small box of expectations.

Robin had also helped him realize and fully accept that he was attracted to men as much as he was attracted to women. It was just way easier to date girls in small-town Hawkins, Indiana.

It took him a moment to realize Nancy had stopped walking.

“Steve,” she breathed, her eyes shining in the darkness when he turned back to look at her.

“Oh, hey, no, Nance. It’s all right,” Steve said. He closed the distance between them. “I thought, maybe, if some other girl had given me a proper thump before we met and you and I were just meeting now, maybe we could have made it, you know?”

He shook his head. “But I don’t think we were ever meant to last. We just want…like, very different things in life. And that’s not a bad thing!” he rushed to add when she frowned. “Just, like, my six nuggets story earlier? That was all true. And I know you want something else, right?”

Almost reluctantly, she nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I want something different.”

Steve smiled at her, reaching out to grip her elbow. “I know. And that’s great. I want you to have the life you dream about. I want you to be happy, Nance. But I know now that’s not going to be with me.” He leaned forward and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “I will always love you, and you will always be part of my family, right?” He shook his head and huffed a laugh. “This crazy family we made because of interdimensional monsters threatening reality.”

Nancy smiled and glanced down briefly before meeting his eyes again. “Yeah, Steve. We’ll always be family.”

The moment was broken as Robin crashed through the underbrush back to them, hopefully missing any of the vines connected to the hive mind.

“Hey, guys! You guys! Awesome news!” she yelled as she neared them. Her breath was coming in heavy pants by the time she stopped running. “Looks like we weren’t going the wrong way after all. Come on. Let’s go!”

With that, she was off again, and Steve hurried after her.

They climbed through the opening in the tree line and stared at the nightmare version of Creel House that stood before them. After a long moment, they exchanged glances and began picking their way over to the playground equipment that Erica was on in the real world.

“So far, so smooth,” Robin murmured.

Steve nodded. “Yeah, and we’re not even at the hard part yet.”

The wait began.

***

The signal came through, and moments later, Steve could hear the faint strains of a guitar far in the distance. The flock of bats started screaming calls of agitation, lifting off from the house’s roof and out of the trees surrounding it, taking to the air in a screech of flight.

“Okay, it’s working,” Nancy said from where she was crouched next to Steve and Robin under the slide. “Let’s go.”

They crawled out from the equipment and hurried toward Creel House. The door opened easily, but the next challenge loomed before them.

The hallway and stairs were absolutely covered in vines.

“Oh, shit. That’s not good,” Steve said.

He then started attempting the world’s worst game of hopscotch, nearly losing his balance a few times as he moved from one blank space to the next. The girls followed behind him, and he spared a thought for Robin, hoping she didn’t have too much trouble. The small movements the vines kept making as they moved didn’t make the situation any easier.

They got up the stairs to the first landing, stopping to pull weapons out, when the house shuddered around them.

The vines grabbed Robin first, pinning her against the wall.

“Steve! Help, Steve!”

Nancy immediately started bashing the vines with the butt of her shotgun, Steve following a moment later as he cut into the vines with his axe. He could only get a few swings in before more vines wrapped around the axe, ripping it from his hands.

They grabbed Steve next, twining around his neck with a force that felt like a thousand demobats choking the life from his body. More wrapped around his arms, snaking under his armpits and pulling him up against the wall. The strain on his neck was immense, and his fingers scrabbled uselessly at the vines, trying in vain to get them to release.

Nancy was last, the vines scooping her up and pining her to the wall. The three exchanged desperate glances as they struggled to breathe with the vines wrapping around their necks, slowly smothering the life from them.

***

Eddie stared up at Dustin through the gate in the ceiling of his trailer, listening to the bats screech and throw their bodies at the flimsy wooden door that was all that separated the bats from Eddie…and Dustin.

That door was the only thing standing between the demobats and getting out into the regular world. They had no way to close the gate or block it off sufficiently to keep the bats at bay.

And Eddie.

Eddie was standing between Dustin and the bats – literally.

He dropped off the rope, ignoring Dustin as he kept screaming his name over and over. The spear he’d used to beat back the bats was in his hand a moment later. Hesitation stayed his hand for a moment longer as he stared at the rope, trying to come to terms with what he was about to do. There was no other choice.

Eddie couldn’t run away again.

He scooped up his spear and severed the sheet rope with one swift sweep, each half falling to the floor of a trailer.

“Eddie, no!”

But Eddie couldn’t do anything other than what he was doing. He pushed the mattress away from the gate, hoping it would deter Dustin from trying to follow him, and then ran through the front door, praying for whatever speed he could find that he would outrun the bats long enough for the others to finish Vecna off, once and for all.

***

Nancy’s first bullet pierced Vecna’s face, where it was wreathed in flames. The monster’s body fell to the attic floor with a thump that rattled through the floorboards and up Steve’s legs.

Was this it? Was it over?

Two Molotov cocktails and a bullet to the face and Vecna was done?

It almost felt anticlimactic.

Steve stared, Nancy and Robin on either side of him, waiting for some sign of life from the architect of all the nightmares they’d experienced over the last four years. But nothing stirred beneath the flames roiling off the body as the fire slowly started to consume the structure around them.

Before the flames could get out of control, Steve stepped forward and swung the axe down with all the energy he had left in his body, severing Vecna’s head from his body in one swift movement. The flames flared brighter momentarily, consuming the body entirely and leaving only a pile of ash behind to mark where the creature had once been.

They waited a moment longer to ensure nothing else happened, then took off toward the trailer. Steve led the way at a fast clip as sudden desperation to make sure Dustin and Eddie were all right surged through him.

They were not all right.

***

“We have to go, Steve,” Nancy urged.

Steve stared at Eddie, lying motionless on the ground with blood darkening his exposed skin and clothes in patches where the bats had managed to bite through.

Dimly, he was aware of Nancy gripping his arm, tugging on him to get his attention. “Steve, we have to go. Dustin can’t put weight on his ankle, and he’s too big for me and Robin. We need your help.” She paused and pulled again. “Dustin needs your help.”

That last was what finally got Steve moving. He staggered back to his feet, pushing his hair back with his hand. “We need to take Eddie with us,” he said.

Nancy shook her head, looking at him with stern sadness. “We can’t, Steve. We need to get out of here, and Dustin needs your help. There’s no way Robin and I can carry Eddie or Dustin.” She swallowed thickly. “The living take priority, and we need to get to the Creel House and check on the others. Max, Steve. We have to go,” she insisted.

Steve’s gut twisted at the thought of leaving Eddie behind. The other man didn’t deserve to be left to the Upside Down, but he couldn’t ignore Dustin’s sobbing form in Robin’s arms, barely keeping his balance on his one good leg. They did need to get the 15-year-old out of this place as soon as possible.

Robin’s eyes met Steve’s, and he could see the tumult of emotions she felt in them. They’d developed the ability to speak without words sometimes, and he knew he was begging her to find a way to take Eddie with them, but all she could do was give the slightest shake of her head.

Resignation swamped his body, and the weight of another lost person settled on his shoulders. And Eddie wasn’t just another person to Steve. They’d only just started to pluck at the potential between them, something that was now lost forever. He stepped away from Eddie’s body toward Robin and Dustin, scooping Dustin’s arm over his shoulder and propping him up with an arm wrapped around the teen’s waist.

Without another word, Steve left Robin and Nancy behind.

***

The facility was only supposed to monitor the micro-gate that the original breach had left behind when it nearly closed.

A woman stepped up to the console and looked through the window into the room beyond. Her lips were pressed together tightly as she tried to make sense of what was happening. They’d all thought this was over and buried years before.

And now, the gate was opening once again.

The room beyond had taken on a dark and foreboding tint, swallowing up and dimming any light they tried to shine into it. The breach hadn’t fully expanded, but it was only a matter of time now. Tiny flecks of ash drifted through the air in the sealed-off chamber, and vines began to twine their way across the floor and walls, spreading away from the breach like an infection.

Someone stepped up next to her, breaking her out of her reverie. She glanced over and saw her old friend, his hair as tightly curled as ever, though now it was streaked with grey, and he’d finally worked out how to style it to best suit his face. The sleeves of his pale yellow dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and he had his hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks. He heaved a sigh.

“Here we go again.”

The woman touched his arm gently as she thought about what had been taken from them the last time they’d faced this threat. From the look on his face, she imagined her friend was thinking much along the same lines.

“We beat this before,” she said, smiling grimly. “We will do it again. We always knew this was a possibility.”

“I know. I just…I’m too old for this shit,” he said, sending her a small smile. “What if we’re not up to the task this time? We were kids the last time this happened.”

“Exactly. We were kids. We have much more experience, training, and knowledge this time.” She glanced at everyone working around them, calmly taking in what was happening. None of them had been here the last time this had happened, but they had one thing working in their favor. “At least this time, we are calling the shots when it comes to the government reinforcements.”

The man rocked back on his heels and nodded. “Right.” He paused again and nodded, mostly to himself. “Right. We’ll handle whatever new horror comes through this time and deal with it. Do we have people checking for tunnels?”

She nodded. “Yes, we have teams using ground radar to look for any that might form. There are also teams watching the other locations for activity.”

“I guess that’s all we can do for now, then. Just keep watching and waiting for something to happen.”

Chapter 2

Steve Harrington felt like part of him had been carved out and left behind. The four of them had gotten back to the trailer, Steve practically carrying Dustin, who was inconsolable in his grief over Eddie and unable to put much weight on his ankle.

As soon as they’d all gotten through the gate, Dustin had reeled on him, finally breaking free of his stupor and clutching Steve’s arms like they were the only thing keeping him tethered to reality. “Steve! Steve! You have to go back! What if Eddie’s not really dead? He might still be alive! Did you check for his pulse? What if he’s just unconscious? Steve, please!”

Steve stared at Dustin, uncomprehending. He shook his head. “What? Dustin, come on, man. Get off that foot for a minute, okay? Let me think.”

He guided a protesting Dustin over to the sofa and got the teen seated. All the while, his thoughts tumbled in circles. Steve’s mind kept returning to Eddie’s body, lying on the ground, covered in blood. He’d been so still and pale, and Steve couldn’t get his brain to make sense of what he’d seen.

How could he be dead?

They were supposed to hang out after all this was over. Steve had really wanted the opportunity to see what could have developed between them, even with all the difficulties being with another guy would have created. There was just something about Eddie Munson that captured his interest in a way none of the girls he’d dated in the last year had managed. None of the boys that had caught his eye had kept it, either.

Vecna was dead. They’d won. Finally, they had a chance to be normal young adults, even if the dregs of their childhoods had been ripped from them.

How could Eddie be dead?

What if he wasn’t dead like Dustin said?

Either way, how could they leave him behind? In that forsaken place, surrounded by the bats that had killed him. If only they’d been just a touch faster. Would Eddie still be alive? (Was Eddie still alive?) Would the bats have fallen dead before they could do enough damage to kill the other man?

This was going to haunt him in ways that nothing else had.

Rationally, he understood why Nancy had insisted they leave Eddie behind when they did, but Steve couldn’t just abandon him in there to rot. Reaching the bedraggled trailer that had been the man’s home with his Uncle Wayne drove that point home to him with a startling finality. Seeing again how everything had been tossed around only reminded Steve of how the Upside Down had ransacked Eddie’s life. Not only had he been accused of murders he didn’t commit, then hunted by a vigilante group led by one of his classmates, but now his dead body lay abandoned in the Upside Down…it was just too much. Steve wouldn’t do that to someone like Eddie, especially not after what they’d shared earlier in the day.

“I’m going back for Eddie,” Steve said. The others all turned to stare at him.

“Steve,” Nancy started, stepping forward and holding her hand out toward him. “It’s too dangerous.”

He stared at her. “We shouldn’t have left him there in the first place, Nancy! He’s one of us! He didn’t deserve to be left behind.”

Robin stepped up next to him. For a half second, Steve expected her to agree with Nancy, but then he felt guilty as she gave him a reassuring look and put her hand on his arm.

“I’m going with Steve. We’ll be in and out before you know it,” she insisted.

Steve wanted to hug her, his best friend, his platonic soulmate who somehow just got him in a way no one else ever had. “Right. Robin will come with me. We’ll go in, get Eddie, and be back out. You need to check on Max, Lucas, and Erica, then come back for us. All right?” he asked, praying Nancy wouldn’t argue with him, just this once.

She was silent for a long minute before she reluctantly nodded. “Fine, but be careful.”

“I’ll grab some stuff, first aid supplies, and whatever. Just in case,” Robin said and moved to do just that.

“We will,” Steve said, then moved to start restacking the furniture under the gate that Dustin had put together.

The mangled rope made things more challenging on the outside, but Steve couldn’t blame Eddie for doing it. Steve thought he would have done the same thing if he’d been in Eddie’s position. Ensuring Dustin’s safety from the bats would have been the only thing that mattered. Whatever category his feelings for Eddie fell into, they swelled at the idea that he’d put Dustin’s safety at the forefront of his mind. Luring the bats away from the portal to the real world…His mind shied away from the thought as the rush of emotion overwhelmed him.

Robin stepped up to his side, effectively pulling him from his thoughts as she dropped a bag and canteens of water at his feet, another bag slung over her shoulder. The others wouldn’t need any of it now that they were out of the Upside Down. She had more than Steve expected her to have, but he couldn’t say he blamed her. The Upside Down was a truly inhospitable place. Robin willingly going back inside with Steve was all he needed, though. They had to go back, and they would take as many first aid supplies as they could with them, just in case.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t come, too?” Nancy asked, watching as Steve boosted Robin up the rickety contraption of stacked furniture they’d built to get back into the Upside Down.

Steve looked at the woman that was his ex-girlfriend and couldn’t entirely dismiss his resentment at that moment. They wouldn’t have to go back in if they’d just brought Eddie’s body out in the first place. They could have found a way to do it, and he was angry with himself for not pushing harder. He wasn’t sure he could keep his grief-laden anger at bay if she came with them now.

“Yeah, I need you to take Dustin to go check on the others while we take care of this,” Steve said, thinking about the task ahead of them. He wished their task wasn’t to drag Eddie’s dead body back through to the real world.

But he had to go back in for him. Steve wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he left someone else in the Upside Down. Saving Barb or even just retrieving her remains for burial had never been an option. The guilt always teased at the edges of his mind that her parents had been left to bury an empty casket. The guilt flared higher every time he saw the pool in his backyard.

And if Steve had been on the cusp of seeing his daydreams from the last week of something beyond friendship between him and Eddie, well, that was his to deal with. The ever-increasing pile of what-ifs and might-have-beens that made up the bulk of his life could handle one more item.

Steve sighed at Nancy’s torn expression. “Nance. It’s fine. Robin and I will go get Eddie. You go get the kids, come back and get us, and then we’ll figure out where to go from there, all right?” he said, giving her an expression that pleaded for cooperation.

Finally, Nancy nodded. “All right. We’ll be right back,” she said, moving over to Dustin’s side.

Dustin was another dilemma, but one that Future-Steve would have to deal with. The poor kid looked gutted, his face wet with tears still trickling from his eyes, though the sobs had tapered off when they’d dragged him back through the portal from the Upside Down. After his initial outburst, he let himself be ushered to the sofa where he sat, staring at them numbly from where he was a small figure huddled on the sofa.

With a deep breath, Steve looked up at where Robin was precariously perched on the furniture stack leading back up to the gate. He stared at her for a long moment, hands resting on his hips, as he let the weight of everything wash over him.

“Let’s get moving,” he said, reaching down to grab the backpack with the supplies they were taking. While Steve doubted there was enough luck in the world that they’d somehow find Eddie still alive, Dustin’s words kept nagging at his brain.

What if they had been too hasty and Eddie was still alive? Steve hadn’t felt a pulse when he checked, but it wasn’t like he was a paramedic or something. What if his fingers had been in the wrong place? What if it had just been too faint for him to catch with all the adrenaline still running through his system from their encounter with Vecna? There could be a reason he’d missed it, and only going back in to double-check would answer those questions.

Steve reached out to grab the furniture stack, carefully pulling himself up onto the table and then onto the chair on top of the table. Robin had already fallen through to the other side and was waiting for him.

“Catch!” he called, lobbing his backpack up at the ceiling with as much force as he could to make sure it made the journey to the Upside Down. Someone – probably Nancy – had had the foresight to pick up a few canteens while they were at War Zone getting their battle supplies. They followed the backpack quickly through the opening. Once they had fallen through, Robin grabbed it all out of the way, and Steve crouched, poised to jump up and grab the cut end of the original sheet rope that they’d cobbled together. Dustin had said that Eddie cut it before dashing off to be a dumbass hero to give them more time.

If that idiot was somehow still alive, Steve was going to kill him.

With one last deep breath, Steve leaped up, gripping the rope and pulling himself into the other side’s gravity well. His fall was quick, and he let out a yelp as the landing jarred his wounded side, hoping he hadn’t ripped any of his own injuries back open.

“You okay, Steve?” Robin asked as she leaned over to help him up.

He took her hand and sat up carefully. “I think so. Only way to know for sure is to take off the bandaging or bleed through it, and we don’t have time to check, so I’ll just wait to see if that happens till we get back out of here,” Steve rambled, letting her act as his counterbalance while he got his feet under himself. The pain was sharp and throbbing, but he’d had worse, and at least he didn’t have a concussion this time.

“Please don’t start bleeding on my account,” Robin said with a quirk of her lips and a raised eyebrow as she slung the backpack over her shoulder and passed the other bag and the canteens to Steve.

He got everything situated, and Steve nodded at her. “I’ll do my best. Let’s go get Eddie.”

With that, the pair hurried out of the trailer and headed in the direction they’d left Eddie’s body. Steve was hoping with everything he had in him that they’d been too hasty in judging the other man dead and that they’d find him merely unconscious and potentially bleeding to death on the ground of the Upside Down. It wasn’t a pretty picture, no matter how it was sliced.

Steve really couldn’t wait to be done with the Upside Down. It was creepy as hell, the air was hard to breathe, and it was just…gross. When they’d been here before, after he’d got pulled through the gate in Lover’s Lake, Steve hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of being watched, and he’d been grateful to have Eddie there to distract him with his banter that seemed to border on flirting.

This time, though it took a few minutes for Steve to notice, there was no feeling of being watched. In fact, everything about the Upside Down was weirdly still and quiet. Drawing to a stop, he looked closely at some of the vines that they were carefully but quickly, maneuvering around as they made their way to Eddie’s last location.

“Steve?” Robin asked from a few feet away.

Still staring intently at the vines, Steve shook his head as he glanced at Robin briefly and then looked back at the ground. “Does it seem quieter now than it was earlier?” he asked.

“Um…” Robin paused for a moment. “Maybe?”

“And these vines aren’t really moving as much as they were.”

“Huh.”

Steve blinked and looked at her. Disquiet was niggling at his brain. “Something’s not right,” he said finally and picked up the pace as he started moving back in the direction they were going. “Or, maybe something is right, and Vecna is actually dead. But I feel like we should get Eddie and get out of here.”

The pair lapsed back into silence as they hurried along. It wasn’t too much further before they finally spotted Eddie lying in the middle of a bunch of dead demobats where they’d left him. Grief skittered up Steve’s spine as they dropped down next to Eddie. There was so much blood everywhere. Steve couldn’t imagine how Eddie could possibly still be alive…and if he were alive, they’d just left him here to bleed to death all alone.

“Steve!” Robin said urgently. “His hand twitched!”

Trying not to get his hopes up, Steve looked down at Eddie’s hands. There was some movement, but that didn’t mean anything, right? Leaning closer to Eddie’s face, Steve reached a hand back out towards his neck to try to find a pulse. They’d been taught to find a pulse in training for lifeguard certification, but he’d never had to do it on someone else in an actual emergency. He could do this on himself; surely, it wasn’t too much different on another person. Gently pressing his fingers to the area on Eddie’s neck where he thought a pulse should be felt, he tried to feel something…anything.

“Am I doing this right?” he muttered, glancing at Robin before looking back at Eddie.

“How should I know?” she asked, then leaned down to put her face in front of Eddie’s mouth to check if he was breathing.

“Oh,” Eddie’s body breathed.

Robin and Steve both jumped back, startled.

“Eddie!?” Steve called, leaning closer and putting a hand on his shoulder.

There was no response at first, so Steve reached out and cupped Eddie’s cheek, feeling blood smear under his fingers as he angled Eddie’s head to face him. At least the blood he was touching was still warm. He hoped that was a good sign.

“Eddie?” he called again, gripping Eddie’s chin gently in his hand and wiggling his head back and forth slightly. “Please be in there…” he muttered under his breath.

Deep brown doe eyes were staring back up at him, and it took Steve longer than it should have to realize Eddie had opened his eyes.

“Holy shit!” Robin crowed. “You’re alive!”

Steve could only stare, transfixed by the eyes still staring into his. It took Robin shoving a handful of cloth at him to break his focus. “Dude, what are you doing? We need to try to get this bleeding stopped,” she urged and set to work on her side, ripping his shirt away and pressing wads of cotton against the skin of Eddie’s abdomen.

With a shake of his head, Steve set to do the same thing on his side. Eddie moaned in pain as they put pressure on the sluggishly bleeding wounds. As he moved the shirt to see the extent of the damage, Steve was more glad than he could say that they’d actually come back. Now that he had the time to examine the wounds, they didn’t look much worse than what Steve had suffered after being dragged down through Lover’s Lake and into the Upside Down. And he had survived that. Eddie had probably passed out from shock or something.

“What happened?” Eddie mumbled, still groaning at the pain. “Dustin? Did we get Vecna?”

“Yeah, man. Dustin and Nancy are heading back to the Creel house to get the others. Vecna’s dead, as far as we can tell. Not entirely sure what happened there at the end, but there’s no chance his body survived, at least. Not sure if that means he’s actually gone, though,” Steve said with a grimace. He paused before focusing back on the wounds he was trying to bandage. “We thought you were dead.”

“I’m not, right?” Eddie asked, seeming genuinely concerned that he hadn’t actually survived.

Steve smiled despite the grim situation. “Not yet, dude. This is gonna hurt like a bitch, though,” he added as he and Robin started to carefully maneuver the long strip of the disassembled sheet rope that Robin had decided to bring under Eddie’s back and wrapped it around the padding they’d laid over the wounds. Eddie let out a low moan as they jostled him. “We just gotta get you patched up enough to get out of here.”

“Right,” Eddie breathed.

Looking at his face, Steve was concerned at the paleness of his skin and the sheen of sweat that had appeared. He was definitely not doing well. “Hang in there, man. We’ll get you out of here.”

Eddie nodded and let them finish what they were doing without another word. After they secured the strip of sheet tightly around Eddie’s waist, Robin grabbed the rest of the supplies that had spilled out of the bag and shoved them back in before slinging the bag back over her shoulder.

Between the two of them, with some minimal help from Eddie, they managed to get him on his feet. The trek back to the trailer would take a good several minutes at the rate they were moving. Steve tried to nudge them along just a bit faster, taking as much of Eddie’s weight as he could and ignoring the burning pain in his own abdomen for the moment.

There would be time for him to collapse later.

The three of them had no extra air for chatter, and they made their way through the Upside Down terrain, huffing as they went and trying to spare Eddie as much pain as possible. With his focus on his feet, Steve couldn’t help but notice again how still all the vines were. He hoped it was a good sign.

Finally, they made it back to the trailer, and Eddie was still conscious, at least. Dustin would be so relieved to see his beloved Dungeon Master still breathing. Steve took the lead going up the steps and pulling Eddie with him, propping the door open so they could get through.

They managed to get inside the door without ramming Eddie into the door frame, and Steve had turned to take most of his weight. He was trying to figure out the best way to get Eddie back through the portal and to the other side when Robin made a dismayed noise between a sigh, a sob, and a wail.

“Wha– No!”

Steve startled and gripped Eddie tighter than he meant to, causing the other man to grimace at the pain, but Steve wasn’t too concerned right that moment. He’d looked over his shoulder at whatever it was that had caused Robin’s reaction, half expecting to see a demodog or something hanging out in the room, waiting for them.

When he saw the real problem, Steve wished it had actually been a demodog instead. The ceiling where the gate had been was solid. There was an oddly shaped blank area, free of vines, in the middle of the ceiling, but no opening showed the real world that had been their goal.

The portal was gone.

“Well, fuck,” Steve said succinctly.

Chapter 3

Eddie had his eyes closed again, trying to keep himself as still as possible to avoid causing himself any more pain than he was already feeling. Right at that moment, a part of him wished he had actually died, if only to spare Robin and Steve the trauma of being stuck in the Upside Down with him.

A far larger part, though, was still stunned and grateful that the pair had come back, even if they had feared it might only be to recover Eddie’s lifeless body. That they cared enough to come back and not just leave him to rot for eternity in this hellscape was so much more than he’d ever expected anyone to do for him. His Uncle Wayne was the one possible exception to that, but not two people he’d only just started getting to know, even if his knowledge of one of those people had already progressed to a much more intimate level.

It stunned him, and he hoped he would have done the same for them if their situations were reversed.

Eddie forced his eyes open and his attention back to Steve and Robin, who were both perched precariously on top of yet another stack of furniture to get up to the ceiling. The remainder of the sheet rope had been lying in a crumpled heap on the floor beneath where the gate had been opened.

Lying right where Chrissy had last stood before Vecna killed her.

He swallowed roughly past the lump that thought brought to his throat. The energy for tears just wasn’t there, but he still felt the terrible wrenching sadness and terror that had coursed through him as Chrissy’s body floated into the air. He knew the sound of her bones snapping would haunt him for a very long time.

Robin and Steve were still bickering like an old married couple as they inspected the ceiling as though that would do anything to reopen a portal into another dimension. If he weren’t getting a certain kind of vibe from Robin, he would have thought they were a couple, not to mention the fabulous make-out session he’d shared with Steve prior to being snackfood for a cloud of bats.

“What do you want me to do, Robin?” Steve was asking as he tuned back into the conversation. Steve gripped the back of the chair Robin was standing on, knuckles white and face drawn into the most serious expression Eddie could remember seeing on the other man.

“I don’t know, Steve! But it’s not like this is a freaking Russian elevator! We are in an alternate dimension!” Robin screeched.

Russian elevator?

Eddie thought Robin was more obviously panicked between the two of them, but he knew Steve was feeling it, too. If Eddie’d had the energy to really think about it, he knew he’d be completely freaking out. As it was, everything he had left was going toward trying to ignore what was happening, most especially the pain in his abdomen.

“Children!” Eddie rasped, and both stopped instantly to look back down at him. “Could you guys come down here and talk to me instead of yelling at each other?” he asked from his seat, slumped on the decaying Upside Down version of his sofa.

The other two stared at him for a moment before Steve nodded and scrambled down off the table. He held his hands up to help Robin hop down after him.

“Sure, Eds,” Steve said as he and Robin moved over to him.

“Thank you,” Eddie said, his head rolling back against the sofa. He closed his eyes. “So, what options do we actually have?”

A long silence met his question, and when he opened his eyes to look between the other two, he saw they were exchanging meaningful looks, doing that thing where they appeared to be communicating telepathically. Both looked worried.

“Hello?” he said, interrupting the silent conversation. “Want to share with the class?”

Steve cleared his throat and ran a hand back over his head. “Uh, we don’t think we really have any options.”

Eddie blinked. “You’re saying we just sit here till we die?” he asked, incredulous.

“The gate is closed,” Robin said, and her eyes were wide with how freaked out she was about that statement.

“What about the other gates? We should check to see if one of those is still open, shouldn’t we?” he asked, looking between them.

Steve and Robin exchanged glances, and Eddie’s head bounced back and forth between the two. Slowly. It took a lot of energy to stay as upright as he was. The pair seemed to have another eerily silent conversation consisting mostly of eyebrow dances and shoulder movements. It was actually kind of creepy. He was sure his confusion and curiosity would have been much higher if he hadn’t been in so much pain.

“Yeah,” Steve said, drawing the word out as his eyes remained locked onto Robin’s. “We should check the other gates. The second one was pretty close to here, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Didn’t Nancy say her newspaper friend was killed on a road near here?”

Robin frowned. “Yeah, on the other side of the woods.”

“Think you can make it there?” Steve asked, his gaze lingering on Eddie. “We can use that gate to get out if it’s still there.”

Eddie thought about it for a long moment. His close brush with death had made him keenly aware of just how much he wanted to live. Despite all the pain he was feeling and the lynch mob and murder charges waiting for him back in the real world, Eddie did not want to die in this hellscape.

But he also didn’t want to be the reason these two people who’d come back for him were trapped here with him for eternity, either.

He swallowed and glanced away from Steve’s concerned expression. “You guys should go without me.”

There was total silence for a long moment, and Eddie could feel the gazes of the other two burning a hole in his head.

“Dude!”

“Seriously?!” Steve shouted. “We are not leaving without you. That would make this whole trip a waste, and we are not just going to leave you here to die! What the hell, Eddie!”

Flinching from the volume, Eddie curled into himself a bit before mumbling, “I just don’t want to be the reason you guys die here.”

“Eddie…” Steve said, a strange note to his words. “We’re here because we wanted to be. It’s not your fault if we’re all stuck here. We shouldn’t have left you in the first place,” he said, voice choking up a little, and Eddie looked up in time to see his face clench with a surge of anger. “We should have gotten you out of here when we left.”

“Steve,” Robin said gently and touched his arm. “You’re right. We should have.” She looked back to Eddie. “He’s right. This is not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, really, except Vecna. And he’s dead. So, now, it’s just us, and we get to decide what we do from here. And Steve and I say we’re not leaving you behind. Got it?” she demanded.

Eddie swallowed and wondered what he’d done to deserve this treatment. His life had been a series of unfortunate events. He hadn’t had it easy between his dad flaking out before he was old enough to have memories of the man and his mom’s accident. If it weren’t for his Uncle Wayne shouldering the burden of a sister showing up out of the blue with a toddler and tears, becoming more father to him than the man who’d contributed to his existence, Eddie was sure he’d have been in for something even worse.

Robin was still waiting for an answer when Eddie looked at her. A slight sheen of moisture in his eyes made the room blur momentarily. He blinked it away and nodded. “Okay. Then, yeah. I can make it,” he said, and determination filled him. He wouldn’t hold them back, no matter how much pain rolled through his body.

“All right, then,” Steve said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get going.” He reached out a hand to help Eddie up off the couch.

Once again, Eddie was struck by the thought that Steve was so much more than he’d ever imagined. He had layers to him that his King Steve persona could never have hinted that he was hiding. Eddie wondered what it was that had inspired the change. He wanted to know so much more about the beautifully intriguing man helping him up off the couch, and he was very much looking forward to having the chance to hang out with him.

Wincing in pain as his arm was draped over a broad shoulder, Eddie sucked in a deep breath, leaning into Steve as he tried to get his balance. “Ouchie. Phew. Wow. Okay.” He was a talker, and even serious injuries didn’t seem to be able to stifle that trait.

Steve looked at him, somehow managing to combine both concern and amusement in his expression. “Okay there?” he asked as his hand moved to Eddie’s hip to avoid putting pressure on the bandaged area of his stomach.

Eddie pressed his lips together as the wave of pain ran through him. “Yup, doing good,” he gritted out. “Let’s get moving. This is going to take so much longer with me…”

“Suck it up, man,” Steve said, rolling his eyes without sympathy. “You’re getting out of here with us.”

“Yup. You said,” Eddie responded, staring into hazel brown eyes for a long moment before Robin cleared her throat.

She’d pulled on the backpack of their supplies and draped the three canteens of water they’d brought with them across her body. She’d also apparently decided to pick up the pile of twisted fabric they’d made of the sheet rope. It was everything they currently had that could potentially be of use to them getting out of here.

“If you two are finished chit-chatting, maybe we could get going?” she asked sardonically, head tilted and an eyebrow raised, as she looked between them.

Eddie really liked Robin. He hoped he got the chance to know her better.

Shaking the thought loose – now was not the time – Eddie nodded. “We’re ready, fair lady,” he said. Eddie would have added a courtly bow to his speech if not for his current position. The injuries to his side were really cramping his style.

And, so, their trek through the Shadowlands began again.

***

Their trek was going to be never-ending.

Eddie knew the journey through the wooded area would be difficult, but he hadn’t thought it would be quite as bad as it was. The walk felt like it would never end, and Eddie wondered at several points if they would just wind up lost in an endless forest of the Upside Down. That, or he would pass out from the pain at some point. Every step felt like it was ripping his skin apart…which, for all he knew, it might actually be doing.

The only silver lining to this was having Steve’s arm wrapped around him for the journey.

He knew Steve and Robin would have been so much faster without him. They wouldn’t even be in this mess if they’d just left him behind in the first place.

And honestly, Eddie had to wonder just what kind of life he would have after all this was said and done, anyway. As it stood, he’d been accused of multiple gruesome murders. How was he going to clear his name? Was he going to leave this place behind only to wind up on the run or in jail? He’d definitely need to visit the hospital after this lovely jaunt. No way he would just waltz back out of the hospital as a free man.

There was a set of handcuffs looming in his future, and it was not in a fun way.

Even if he did manage to get out of this situation with a life worth living somehow, with the way his luck ran, Eddie knew the deaths of a bunch of teenagers and being accused of murder were going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

I would have been better off dead. The thought flashed through his mind, and he winced, knowing he didn’t want to die. All the same, he felt overwhelmed at the thought of what he still had to get through to find some semblance of a normal life, a normal life that likely wouldn’t end up in Hawkins, either. The townspeople would never forget that he was the freak they’d hunted. Eddie had a feeling lynch mobs didn’t quite work that way.

What a mess.

Eddie stumbled over a vine, and Steve gripped him tighter to keep him from tumbling to the ground. It also caused the pain to ricochet across his nerves like hail on the trailer’s roof.

“You all right?” Steve asked, loosening his grip once Eddie was stable enough that he wouldn’t faceplant.

Eddie sucked in a breath. “Relatively speaking, yes. Realistically, I don’t know if I’ll ever really be ‘all right’ again after all this,” he admitted.

Steve nodded as they walked behind Robin, carefully stepping over vines and helping to ease Eddie over the obstacles in their path. Other than the sounds of their passage, the woods were completely silent and still. Eddie hadn’t noticed until Robin and Steve had mentioned it when they first set out.

After all the chaos before, it was super creepy.

“Do we think Vecna is really dead, then?” Eddie asked, breaking the silence.

Beneath his arm, Steve shrugged. “I dunno, man. We hope so. There wasn’t much left of him except a pile of ash by the time we got outside. If Nance got to the rest of the kids, maybe she knows what happened. If we can get out of here, hopefully, we can find out.”

“That’s a lot of ‘ifs’ there, Steve-o.” He nodded anyway. “Hope for the best and all that.” Eddie breathed out harshly as the next step twigged his side, making pain spasm across his stomach.

He didn’t want to think about Vecna anymore today. Or ever again if he had his way, not even for a campaign. To distract himself from the pain and Vecna, Eddie gave his mind permission to think about Steve’s body where they were braced together. In the freezing cold of the Upside Down, Steve’s body heat was like a beacon in the darkness. The strength he could feel in Steve’s arm wrapped around him made Eddie long for the same in vastly different circumstances.

Abruptly, he regretted letting his mind dwell on Steve. Eddie wasn’t unfamiliar with crushing on straight boys, as he’d originally thought Steve was, but there was usually some flaw he could poke at to sort of temper his attraction. With Steve, it had always been his reputation as a douchey jock. If this last week had done anything except give him a new set of scars, it was to show him that Steve was genuinely a good guy. A good guy that wasn’t exactly straight, as he’d discovered instead of getting punched. That did not help with the aforementioned crush.

After what felt like hours, they reached the road on the other side of the woods. There was no gate immediately visible, and next to him, Steve released a gust of air in frustration.

“No gate,” Steve murmured.

Eddie nodded and looked longingly at the ground. He desperately wanted to be horizontal for a while.

Robin looked at them, a frown marring her face as she clutched at the canteen straps crossing her chest. “Maybe we’re just not in the right place. There’s a lot of road, and Fred might not have gone in a straight line?” she suggested.

“Yeah. Let’s hope that’s it,” Steve said and sighed heavily again.

Robin glanced between them, something hesitant about her movement. “Maybe we should split up, and each take one direction of the road.”

“I don’t know, Robin,” Steve started, but Robin cut him off before he could say anything else.

“I know, but seriously,” she said, waving her hands around as she spoke. “If we let Eddie rest here, you and I can just walk for ten minutes, then come back.”

“What if it’s further out than ten minutes?” Steve asked, but he was already moving Eddie towards a fallen log back in the tree line.

Eddie assumed this was where he would be parked while they scouted. He shook his head slightly in aggravation but didn’t say anything. No one had asked his opinion…but it made sense, much as he hated being left behind. Plus, he desperately wanted to sit, even though it meant being alone in this creepy place while they walked.

At least it would save him from backtracking if Steve went the wrong way.

Assuming one of them found the gate, that was.

He grimaced at the thought and struggled to think optimistically as Steve gently helped lower him to the ground. Eddie closed his eyes, breathing through the fresh wave of pain as he leaned back against the log. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to get back on his feet.

As he stood, Steve let one hand run down the length of Eddie’s arm in something that might have been called a caress and gripped his wrist briefly to squeeze gently before letting go.

“I’ll just wait here, then,” Eddie said. As much as he tried, he couldn’t keep all of his irritation at being moved around without consultation out of his voice.

Steve winced and let his hands rest on his hips as he caught his breath. “Sorry, man. Robin’s right, unfortunately. It’ll be faster this way. The sooner we find the gate, the sooner we get out of here.”

Eddie sighed and tried to hold onto the aggravation, but Steve’s open expression said he got it. Plus, Steve’s hazel eyes were just stupidly pretty, and Eddie couldn’t be held totally accountable for his actions when they were gazing at him imploringly.

“I know,” Eddie said and adjusted slightly, wincing as he did. “I know. Go ahead and go. Just don’t forget to come back for me.”

Steve just shook his head. “Of course not, man. We’ll be back in twenty minutes. Try not to move too much.”

With that, Robin pointed one way, and Steve nodded before they took off, walking away from each other down the road.

Eddie let his head fall back and rest against the wood of the tree trunk. He had a passing thought about the stuff that might get into his hair from the action but figured it wouldn’t add much, given the general state of his body at that moment. Besides, he hadn’t seen anything move other than Robin and Steve since they left the trailer.

His thoughts drifted, and he tried not to think too hard about what would be waiting for him in the real world. Staying optimistic that they would even find a gate was difficult enough. He didn’t need to add fuel to his anxiety fire by thinking about his future legal woes.

The time passed excruciatingly slowly, but it did give Eddie the opportunity to really look at their surroundings. He was positive now that nothing was moving in the area around them. There wasn’t even a breeze. The air was just still. No ash, no bats, nothing. Did that mean that the Upside Down was dead? Was that a sign that they’d gotten Vecna?

Was it really over?

With how still and silent everything was, it was easy to hear the footsteps coming from the direction Robin had taken. She was jogging back, breath a bit labored.

“Found it!” she yelled to him, and a grin split her face. “I’m going to get Steve. Be right back!”

She was gone again before Eddie had time to do more than holler hoarsely in cheer. They might get out of this place yet. Anxious to get on the way and be out of there, Eddie carefully curled his legs under him and used the tree to help push himself from the ground. He slumped over the trunk, breathing harshly as pain gripped him in a tidal wave.

Maybe that had been a bad idea.

Still, he managed to get himself back to his feet all on his own, something he was irrationally proud of, even if he was almost in tears. It also took as long as Robin had taken to get to Steve, and then they were both jogging back to him. Steve was lagging behind Robin a little, a testament to his own pain.

“Oh, you’re up!” Robin called as they got to where they’d left him.

“Mmmhmm,” Eddie managed through clenched teeth. “Not sure it was the best idea I’ve ever had, but it’s done.”

Steve came up next to him, holding an arm out towards him. His gaze was soft and filled with concern. “You okay, Eds?”

And where had that cute nickname come from? No one had ever given him a nickname he actually liked. Wayne usually just called him Ed, which was fine, and bullies usually called him Freak or another word starting with the letter F that he really didn’t appreciate. Yeah, he was gay, but he hated the derogatory term that so many homophobes used.

Eddie realized his thoughts had drifted when Steve repeated his name. “Yup. I’m good. Ish. Good-ish. I’ll be better when we get out of this place. Maybe,” he said, devolving into nervous babble to hopefully cover up that he’d been staring at Steve’s face.

“Let’s get out of here,” Robin said, still grinning at them as she came up under Eddie’s other side.

“We’re going to go faster than we did through the woods, Eds, so it’s not gonna be comfortable, but Robin said the gate looked smaller than she thought it would be, so we feel like we need to hurry,” Steve was saying as they started off at a much faster pace than they had done earlier.

The pain made Eddie’s vision blur slightly, but he nodded anyway, gritting his teeth through it. “Yup, got it,” he managed.

What followed was a haze of pain as Robin and Steve practically carried and dragged Eddie down the road to the gate. Eddie’s memory of the time was pretty hazy. Still, he remembered Steve’s repeated encouraging words and increasingly concerned and guilty expression as they moved faster than was good for Eddie’s wounds.

Finally, though, they made it to the gate in the road, and it was a good thing they’d hurried because the gate was much smaller than the one in the trailer’s ceiling had been.

“Oh, yeah. That’s definitely getting smaller,” Robin said, urging them toward the gate in the middle of the road.

“I’ll go through first,” Steve said, shifting Eddie’s weight back onto Robin. “I’ll make sure no cars are coming, and I’ll be able to help haul Eddie out.”

Robin nodded, and Steve knelt on the road next to the gate. He leaned over and took a deep breath before plunging his head into the middle of the thing, pausing for a moment before the rest of him followed through.

Eddie was next, and Robin helped him kneel so he could lean over the edge and go through head first like Steve had. Going through head first into the slimy red pulsing blob in the middle of the road was a disgusting experience, and Eddie wondered idly if it was something similar to what being birthed felt like. He was glad he couldn’t remember the experience.

Before his thoughts could wander into any other weird directions, Eddie’s head was through the gate and sticking up out of the middle of a road draped in the darkness of a Hawkins night. Steve leaned forward to help haul him out of the slime and to the side of the gate just as Robin’s head started poking through.

“This thing is shrinking as we’re using it!” she called, pulling her arms through and bracing herself on the edge of the gate. Steve lurched back to help pull her the rest of the way through.

And then they were out. Back in the real world and out of the hell-pit that the Upside Down had been. Eddie just needed to focus on staying alive until they could get to the hospital. The ground beneath him was hard and solid and thankfully not covered in vines, so he was happy to sit there for as long as he could.

Moving over to stand behind Eddie, Steve leaned down and slid his arms under Eddie’s, somehow managing not to press on any of the wounded areas on his torso. He used impressive strength to lift Eddie to his feet with much less trauma than he had experienced alone. While Eddie was in Steve’s arms, the other man pressed his head to Eddie’s, brushing a kiss to his temple while Robin was otherwise occupied.

Before he could react, Steve was guiding him away from the road and onto the grassy area alongside where there was another convenient tree to prop him against. Instead of resting against the tree like Steve no doubt intended, Eddie used Steve’s arm to lay back against the grass, glad to take the tension off his abdomen. He was in so much pain that it consumed his thoughts.

A deep breath escaped him as his body relaxed, and he let his eyes slip closed as Steve and Robin gathered beside him.

Chapter 4

“We’ve got activity in Zone B,” one of the soldiers serving as a watcher reported, looking up from her monitor to the woman in charge of this operation. “There’s a gate opening in the middle of the road at the original location. I’ve dispatched a team to close the road in both directions and reroute any traffic.”

The other woman nodded and stood behind the soldier for a closer look at the monitor. They’d had cameras trained on the spot since the last time activity had been sighted in the area. And, now, there it was again.

“After all these years,” the woman murmured to herself and frowned as she crossed her arms over her stomach.

If she were the praying sort, she’d be praying that this didn’t mean One had somehow survived their last encounter. There should have been no way for that to be possible. They’d checked and rechecked, and there had been nothing for decades. Only the smallest opening into the other dimension remained, and they’d monitored it closely for activity.

Yet, here, out of the blue, it was happening again.

The important thing now was to figure out why it was happening. All of their past attempts to discern what activity, if any, was on the other side of the gate had failed horribly. They couldn’t send a team inside without some assurance that they would come out alive again. Her preference was to keep from sending humans into that toxic environment at all if she could.

“Let’s prepare a drone to send inside. See if we can get any information about what’s happening. In the meantime, keep an eye on the gate. Let me know if anything else happens.”

“Understood, ma’am,” the soldier said.

She’d long since grown accustomed to being called ma’am by these fresh-faced young soldiers that were assigned to the old lab for a rotation. She knew it was considered a boring punishment by most and a cushy bit of downtime for others, especially those on light duty due to some sort of wound or other medical reason for a reduced workload.

The woman wandered away from the soldier’s station, checking on the other areas that had previously supported gates and the one that was monitoring for tunnels from the original portal in the lower sections of the lab. So far, nothing else had sprouted anything, just that one area.

Why?

She let herself get lost in thoughts of the past, thinking about the last time they’d ventured into the Upside Down and what they’d recovered. The wave of grief was never far behind those thoughts, and she thought she would always mourn what had been lost so long ago.

If she could change just one thing about the past, it would be that final hit to the group. That loss of life that they’d never really gotten over.

“Ma’am?” the same soldier from earlier called. “We have…something is emerging from the gate,” she said, and there was a quaver to her voice that ran counter to her usual demeanor.

The woman looked over, alarm etched across her face. “What is it?” she demanded as she hurried across the room.

“It’s…it looks like a man?” the soldier reported.

The woman frowned, leaned closer, and pulled the reading glasses that dangled from a chain around her neck to her face. She always felt so old when she needed to wear the damn things, but they did help. Still, in this case, she couldn’t quite comprehend what she was seeing.

“Can you make that bigger?” she asked, squinting at the screen and wondering if she’d gotten detached from reality somehow.

The soldier complied, and the image on the screen of a man dragging himself from the muck of the gate and onto the empty stretch of the road got larger. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked.

“It can’t be,” she whispered, staring at the image on the screen as the man turned back to the gate after looking both ways down the road. He scrubbed at his hair, which was covered in gate gunk.

Another figure started to emerge from the gate, also covered in the sticky muck of a portal beginning to close. This figure was also male, and the hair matted against his head was much longer than the first. He also seemed to be having a much more difficult time pulling himself free, and the first man, one she didn’t dare name yet, reached out to help drag him free. The two made it to the side of the gate mainly through the efforts of the first.

While they were doing that, a third figure emerged from the gate. This one was slighter than the other two, and the first man stumbled back to help pull her from the gate that had started to contract. There were some words as they finished getting out of the gate, and both slumped to the ground for a moment to catch their breath before they all moved over to the side of the road.

The woman blinked at the screen as her eyes started to water. “You see two men and a woman, right?” she asked the soldier, just wanting to verify at least that much of what she was seeing.

The soldier nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Get a med van out there to collect them,” she swallowed, tearing her eyes away from the screen as she pulled out her cell phone. “I want them in isolation until we can verify who they are.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the soldier replied, her voice much more confident now that she had something concrete to do.

Turning away, the woman hit call on her phone and pulled it to her ear as it rang.

“Yeah?” a man answered.

“You need to get down here. Three people – two men and a woman – just crawled out of the gate in Zone B,” she said, trying to keep herself calm.

“FredGate?” the man asked, surprised.

The woman nodded and glanced back at the station showing the gate. “Yes, that one.”

“Three people? Is it…?” he started to ask, voice trailing off as he was just as hesitant as she to name the people they’d lost.

The woman paused for a long moment. “I think it might be.”

“How the hell have they managed in there this long?” he asked incredulously.

Again, she paused, trying to get her thoughts to form some kind of coherent pattern. “I…I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t…I don’t think they’ve been in there all this time.”

“I’m on my way,” he said, hanging up without waiting for her to say anything else.

The woman stared at the monitor for another long moment, the phone still pressed to her ear despite the call ending.

Steve sank into the grass next to Eddie. Everything hurt like hell. His bite wounds were nothing but a pulsing mass of pain, and every movement sent another jolt through him. Steve didn’t want to think about the kind of pain Eddie was probably in after their walk down the road. It had been too fast for him not to be in excruciating pain, but other than the occasional grunt or small whimper, Eddie had managed.

It left Steve a bit in awe of the other man’s ability to press forward despite the circumstances.

There hadn’t been any other option, especially not after Robin had noted that the gate looked smaller than she remembered the gate in the trailer. The gate in the road had opened second, meaning it was probably closing at the same pace as the trailer gate…which likely indicated all the gates would close. Steve knew they wouldn’t have made it to the gate site in Lover’s Lake in their condition, especially Eddie. And there was no way he was going to be left behind again.

No, better to endure the pain in the short term than get stuck in the Upside Down forever, which honestly wouldn’t have been very long. Steve knew that both he and Eddie needed medical attention for their wounds. He was pretty sure there was an infection brewing under the wrap that Nancy had hastily constructed for him, but there just hadn’t been time to deal with it yet.

They were out, now, at least. That was one thing going for them.

“So, should we just wait here until someone goes by?” Robin asked as she slumped down next to Steve. “Or should I see if I can find someone to help?”

Steve leaned over and rested against her for a moment. He was so glad she’d gone with him to get Eddie. Having her there, even freaking out as they both had been, had given Steve something else to focus on while they worked out what to do. Without her, he and Eddie would probably still be spinning their wheels in the trailer while the FredGate closed up without them getting through.

“Someone’s bound to go by soon, right?” Steve asked. The prospect of getting back onto his feet at this point was so daunting that he didn’t want to think about it. Trying to bring Eddie back to a standing position at this point would probably be next to impossible, and he didn’t want to torture the guy like that, anyway.

“Do we really want to wait?” Robin asked.

Eddie was lying in the grass next to them, staring at the sky. He hadn’t said anything in a while, and Steve looked over at him. “You doing okay, there, man?” he asked, reaching out to rest his hand on Eddie’s jean-clad leg.

Rolling his head in their direction, Eddie tried to smile, but it came off as more of a grimace than anything else. His face was covered in scratches and a couple of smaller nibbles that they’d covered in the bandages they had brought in with them, but he definitely needed the hospital.

“Yeah. We can wait,” he said.

Steve frowned at the other man. His words had come out mumbled and slurred. “I’m not so sure we should wait, actually.”

Robin nodded next to him and started to push herself to her feet, dislodging Steve from where he’d been leaning up against her. “Yeah. I’ll head back towards the park and see if I can get into Max’s place. The phone in there should work, hopefully.”

Steve was torn and glanced between Eddie and Robin. He didn’t want them to split up, especially having Robin strike off in the darkness alone, but Eddie needed to get to the hospital.

“I’ll be fine, Steve,” she said, scruffing her hand through his hair before looking at it with a grossed-out expression. She’d clearly forgotten that gate-goo was embedded in the strands, and Steve didn’t feel any sympathy for the hair messer.

He sighed and nodded. “Okay, but be careful,” he said with a serious expression.

Robin laughed a little. “Yes, mom.”

Steve rolled his eyes, and she winked at him before setting off along the road. He looked over at Eddie, who was still staring in his direction. “Just hang in there, Eds. Robin will be back with the cavalry before you know it.”

Eddie sighed and closed his eyes in a long blink. “The cavalry’s going to arrest me, Stevie.”

Steve scooted over so he was sitting next to Eddie’s shoulder and reached out to brush the hair back from his face. The light touch turned into a caress as he let himself pet Eddie’s hair for a minute. He thought it was offering both of them comfort. “Maybe, but we’ll do everything we can to get this cleared up, all right? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Don’t think that’s going to matter much, dude.” Eddie sounded resigned to his fate, and it broke Steve’s heart to think he’d already given up.

“You can’t think like that, Eds. We’ll get it sorted out, I promise.”

Eddie opened his eyes and turned his head to gaze at Steve. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Thanks, Stevie. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, though.”

The sound of an engine cut off anything else Steve might have said as a white van came around the bend in the road. The headlights blinded Steve for a moment, and he raised his hand to shade his eyes as the van abruptly stopped at the side of the road. The side door and the back of the van opened up, and people in what he thought were hazmat suits spilled out. Beyond them, he caught a glimpse of Robin sitting in the van with another person in a suit, taking her blood pressure.

“That was fast,” he said, mostly to himself, as he stared at the van. Something about it was poking at his brain, but he was tired and in too much pain to think about it as the people crossed the small distance to them.

One person had a board of some sort that they brought over to Eddie’s side.

“Hey, you guys got here quick,” Steve said to the man in the suit that knelt at his side.

“We got dispatched as soon as you showed up,” the man said distractedly as he looked Steve over. “You injured anywhere?”

Steve nodded and shifted to raise the edge of his shirt to show the bandages underneath. “Yeah, I got chewed up by some demobats yesterday. Haven’t really had time to do anything about it, though.”

Steve looked over to where two people in the suits were talking to Eddie as they slid him onto the board. Robin must have given them a heads-up on how he and Eddie were doing if they’d come prepared to carry Eddie back to the van.

He desperately wanted to reach for Eddie’s hand as he was loaded onto the board. The resigned air of defeat on Eddie’s face tugged at his heart again. Before he could reach out, the pair of suits lifted the backboard and carted it over to the van. The guy leaning down next to Steve was trying to shine a light in his eyes, and he flinched away as he started pushing himself up off the ground.

“You okay to stand?” the suit asked, and Steve nodded even as he accepted the help getting his feet under him.

“Yeah. I can make it,” he said, stumbling to the van. With how wobbly his legs suddenly felt, he might have overestimated his ability to walk.

Still, he made it under his own power, and the guy helped him in and over to a seat next to Robin. One of the other suits tapped on the wall dividing the front from the back, and the van started moving. The sound of voices came from the front, but Steve couldn’t tell what was being said through the partition, which he thought was kind of odd.

Something about the van and the people’s suits was still bothering him, but Steve was so drained he couldn’t spare the brainpower to figure it out. He leaned his head back against the side of the van and closed his eyes. The next time he opened them, Robin was nudging his elbow, and the van had stopped. He realized he’d fallen asleep for the trip and wondered where they were.

The van’s back and side doors opened, revealing more hazmat-clad figures with three gurneys. The group that had picked them up from the side of the road helped him and Robin out, then transferred Eddie to one of the gurneys. Steve looked around and frowned, feeling like he’d been to this building before but couldn’t place it. They definitely weren’t at the hospital.

“Here, hop on this, bud,” one of the new guys said to Steve, pulling his attention away from their surroundings as he guided Steve to one of the gurneys.

Steve frowned as the niggling sense of wrongness grew. Something about this whole encounter was just…off, but he didn’t know what it was. “I can walk,” he insisted, not wanting to add the vulnerability of laying down on the gurney to his already unsettled nerves.

The guy in the suit shook his head and held his arm out towards the gurney like he would herd Steve there. “We’ve got a bit of a trip through the building, and we want to get you all to treatment as quickly as possible. Especially your friend,” he added. “And, no offense, buddy, but you look like you’re about to keel over yourself, so hop on and let us give you a ride.”

Steve backed away another step and shook his head. “No. I really just want to go home and get cleaned up,” he said, glancing around and trying to figure out how far from home he was.

The sight of the building triggered a memory of being in this same place once before at night, with the kids and his hackles raised. They were at the lab.

The lab that was supposed to be inactive and shut down, but the parking lot around them was filled with cars. Only…the cars didn’t look quite right. The shapes he was used to were nowhere in sight, and it suddenly dawned on him what had bothered him about the van. The van’s body was really weird, boxy in the back but still rounded in a sleek way, while the front angled down in steep lines but still had that less boxy look, just like the other cars around them. Something was not right.

“Bud, I really need you to lay down for me,” the suit said, causing Steve to focus back in on him.

Robin was seated on one of the other gurneys but looked at him worriedly. “Steve?” she asked, pushing forward like she was about to jump off the bed.

Eddie was dead to the world, he realized, and he fervently hoped that that was just figuratively speaking.

His worry spiked again, and Steve took another step back. He debated the merits of making a break for it and figuring out how to rescue Eddie and Robin later when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone else in a suit stepped up next to him. A tiny prick of pain in the side of his neck was all Steve had time to register before the world started going hazy as the drugs he’d been injected with began to take effect.

Robin was twisting off the gurney, and he saw two blurry suits grab her before injecting her, too.

Why are we always getting injected with stuff? Steve wondered as he sagged into the arms of the suits holding him up.

He frowned and tried to protest again as they dragged him towards the gurney, but his body was no longer responding to his commands. The suits maneuvered him onto the soft gurney bed, and his head rolled to the side, the weird cars spinning in his field of view as he drifted. Part of him was surprised at how gently he’d been treated while being taken prisoner, and his last thought before darkness consumed him was of a movie the kids had forced him to see last summer about a kid who’d fallen down a ravine and ended up a long way from home.

***

“Dustin, it is them, isn’t it?” the woman asked, unable to take her eyes off the three figures lying unconscious on the other side of the observation window into the lab’s infirmary.

Next to her, the man with curly hair who’d been her frequent companion over the last thirty years as they tackled schooling and the U.S. government to let them have control over the Hawkins lab, nodded, mouth slightly agape as he looked at them, too. “I don’t know how, but yeah. I think it is.”

The silence stretched as both of them looked on as the wounds Steve and Eddie had obtained were treated. The woman had insisted that the medical team only treat what was necessary to keep the three stable before they woke back up. She hated the thought of waking up in a strange place only to discover that people she didn’t know had undressed her without her knowledge. They would still have some of that experience, but the woman wanted to make their treatment as unobtrusive as possible.

Unfortunately, the medical team had insisted that Eddie was the worst off and needed more extensive treatment than the other two to stabilize him, as his wounds were much more pervasive. Steve’s wounds had become infected, but they were hopeful that they got to them early enough to prevent a deep infection from setting in and causing more serious problems. Robin was in the best shape of the three, with only minor scrapes, cuts, and some deep bruising.

Dustin shook his head, befuddled disbelief still etched across his face. “They look exactly like they did the last time I saw them…just alive. How is this possible, El?”

“I don’t know. There’s so much about the Upside Down that we were never able to work out, but this is beyond anything I could have imagined happening,” El responded.

“But what difference will it really make? It’s not like we can send them back,” Dustin said.

El looked at him for a long moment, seeing the grey streaking his short-cropped hair. They were all showing their age these days. Young adulthood had long since passed, and the original party was all in their mid-to late-forties.

If seeing their former babysitter tumble out of the Upside Down like he’d only just gone in after thirty years was shocking to her, she wondered how the trio on the other side of the observation window would handle the people they’d once known as children suddenly being old enough to be their parents.

“We’ll talk to them,” El said, nodding mostly to herself as she looked back through the observation window. “They’ll be out for at least another couple of hours. Once we know more, we’ll talk to them and try to work out what happened.”

Dustin made a noncommittal noise. “Then I guess we better get to work. I don’t know how they’ll take being captive after everything that happened.”

Chapter 5

Steve’s first thought as he returned to awareness was that he was too comfortable to be awake. For a moment, he wondered if everything that had happened had just been a terrible dream. A dream that had let his imagination run away in terrifying directions. The longer he lay still, the more he realized that his comfort was only on a surface level. A deep ache ran through his entire body. As his focus lingered, his side started throbbing, right where the demobats had torn into his flesh.

Not a dream, then.

His eyes popped open as he tried to remember what had happened before he fell asleep, but only hazy images of being in a van surrounded by people in hazmat suits came to him, and then…nothing. Steve had a vague impression of Eddie on a gurney and Robin looking at him with fear in her eyes as the suits surrounded them, but other than that, the memory of how he’d gotten into this bed was just not there.

The room he was in was very bare. Within his field of vision were plain cream-colored walls, a small table with four chairs, and a door. Steve pushed himself upright and looked around the rest of the room. The whole situation was causing him to panic slightly, but the feeling settled somewhat once he saw Robin lying in a bed beside his.

Only Eddie was missing, and Steve’s heart clenched with a renewed wave of panic as he wondered what that might mean. Was he okay?

The movement caused his torn side to twinge in pain, and he pressed a hand against it, realizing as he did that a hospital gown had replaced his shirt and jacket. The pants he remembered were still on his legs, at least. He shoved the gown aside to see that his wounds had been freshly dressed and treated.

Steve swung his legs over the edge of the bed, gripping it tightly as a wave of dizziness swept through him. Whatever drugs they had given him and Robin had left him with a bit of a hangover, but beyond the lingering exhaustion, he felt all right for the most part. There was none of the nausea that had accompanied the drugs the Russians had injected them with, at least.

Once he caught his breath and the room stopped moving, Steve eased off the side of the bed and stumbled over to where Robin appeared to be resting in normal sleep. She was making her usual little snuffle-snort snore that he’d always found kind of adorable. Reaching out, he gripped her shoulder gently, and Robin startled awake, eyes popping open and confusion clouding them as she stared up at him.

“Steve?” she asked, grogginess tingeing her words.

“Hey, Rob. You okay?” he asked, leaning his hip against the side of her bed.

She didn’t respond for a moment as she seemed to take stock of herself in a quick assessment before she nodded. “Yeah. I think so. Everything feels all right,” she said, pushing herself upright to look around the room. “Where are we?”

Steve shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I feel like I remember us being at the lab. But everything’s hazy.”

“Where’s Eddie?” Robin asked, voice going alert in a way it hadn’t been as she realized their third person was missing.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, frowning. “He was a lot worse off than we were, though, so maybe they’re treating him somewhere still?” Steve hoped that was the case. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Eddie had to have made it. They couldn’t have gone through all that only to lose him once they got out.

Robin hopped off the bed and looked down at herself. “At least we’re still mostly dressed, right?” she muttered as she walked over to try the door.

Steve grimaced as the thought hadn’t occurred to him that she was right. He mentally sent a thought of thanks to whoever decided to leave them dressed, even though it left them still covered in Upside Down gunk. The idea of how vulnerable they’d been while unconscious made him profoundly uncomfortable, and he was sure it would have freaked Robin out completely to wake up and find herself undressed by strangers. It would be one thing for it to happen after an accident and wake up in a real hospital, but here, in what he suspected was the Hawkins lab, it would have been something else altogether.

“Door’s locked,” Robin reported after trying the handle and moving around the room to the other door in the wall. She opened it to reveal a bathroom. “Oh good, at least we won’t have to pee in the corner,” she muttered and went inside, closing the door behind her.

Steve stared for a moment and realized she’d decided she needed to use the toilet or something, and he nodded to himself. As he looked away from the bathroom, he saw a large cabinet on the far wall and moved over to see what was inside, if anything. He opened the doors to find several sets of gray sweatpants, t-shirts, and a few sweaters.

Behind him, the door opened while he was pulling out a pair of sweats, and Robin came over to stand beside him.

“There’s stuff to shower in the bathroom, too,” she said, reaching in to grab a set of sweats for herself. She checked the size on the first set and put it back to grab another.

“There’s a bunch of sets in here. Do you think that means they’re keeping us for a while?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to know her answer.

Robin sighed and nodded. “Probably. You want the first shower?” she asked, looking at him as she pulled out a t-shirt and a sealed packet containing underwear. “This is so creepy.”

Steve shrugged. “What else do you expect from the people that started this mess in the first place? If it’s even them.” He sighed. “You take the first one. I’m not sure how to take one without getting the bandages wet.”

Robin nudged him with her elbow and pointed at one of the room’s corners near the ceiling. It looked like something electronic had been removed because a wire dangled loosely. Next to that, though, something that looked like a surprisingly tiny camera with a red light was glaring at them steadily.

They were being monitored.

“Do you think we need to literally climb the walls before they send someone in here?” she asked, still staring at the camera with an unimpressed expression. She huffed a disgusted noise and took the bundle of clothes into the bathroom, closing the door firmly behind her.

Steve moved over to the table and pulled one of the chairs out, slumping down into it and putting his head in his hands. His worry for Eddie was at the forefront of his mind, and he wanted to know what was happening with the man who had very quickly turned into a friend and, hopefully, much more.

Lost in thought as he was, Steve was startled when the door opened, and he jumped out of the chair. The abrupt change from sitting to standing made the wounds in his side pull painfully with the movement, and his head swam momentarily. He reached out to steady himself on the back of the chair.

A hospital bed was wheeled into the room and pushed against the wall in the space left for it. Eddie was lying unconscious in the bed, but his face had the relaxed look of pain-free sleep. A pole with IV bags hung on one side, and some kind of hospital machines were pushed in next to the bed. Wires and tubes connected Eddie to everything.

A tension Steve hadn’t been fully aware of released suddenly at the sight of the other man, and he gripped the back of the chair he’d been sitting on to brace himself against the sudden weakness in his knees. At that moment, Steve realized he’d truly thought Eddie might be dead, and only seeing him alive convinced him of his survival. The rush of relief that swept through his body at the sight of the other man was nearly overwhelming.

“Mr. Harrington?” a female voice, distorted slightly from the interference of the hazmat suit she wore, came from next to him.

Steve met her eyes and blinked at her for a moment while he tried to gather his thoughts. “Uh. Yeah,” he muttered.

“I’m Jackie Floyd, and I’ll be your primary nurse while you’re here with us,” she said, smiling gently at him.

“While we’re here with you…” Steve repeated slowly. “How long are we going to be locked up here with you?” he asked, skepticism seeping into his tone. “And where, exactly, is here?”

Nurse Floyd’s gentle smile never wavered, and Steve supposed she was trying to be reassuring. After being sedated into unconsciousness without his consent, he had to admit he wasn’t feeling it just then.

“You’re in the Hawkins lab,” she started, “but you’re not prisoners.”

“Kinda feels that way,” Steve interjected lowly.

Floyd finally grimaced slightly and tipped her head to the side in acknowledgment. “I understand, but it’s for everyone’s safety. We’re keeping you isolated for a few days so we can make sure you weren’t exposed to anything toxic that could infect other people. Once you’re cleared, we’ll get you out of here, okay? Until then, get some rest and let yourself heal.”

The bathroom door opened before Steve could respond, and Robin stepped out in a puff of steamy air. “Eddie!” she called and rushed over to his bedside briefly as if to make sure he was really there before she joined Floyd and Steve at the end of the bed. “Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

Floyd nodded. “Yes, he’s going to be fine. He just needed a bit more treatment than you both, and he’ll need a bit longer to recover, but he should wake up soon. He’d lost a lot of blood by the time we got you here.”

Steve glanced at Robin from the corner of his eye before pinning Floyd with his gaze again. “Here being the Hawkins lab, and, apparently, we’re not prisoners, they just want to keep us isolated for a bit,” he reported, and his tone said how much he believed it.

Robin snorted and leaned against his side. “Right.” She rolled her eyes. “At least they let us shower, and we’re not tied to chairs this time.”

Steve snorted. “Yeah, that’s a plus.” He turned his attention back to Floyd. “Look, do you know what happened with the other group? Nancy Wheeler and the kids? Dustin Henderson, Max Mayfield, and Lucas and Erica Sinclair?”

Eyes darting briefly to the camera in the corner of the room, Floyd grew visibly tense. “As far as I know, everyone’s just fine.”

A long moment passed, and Steve raised his eyebrows. “That’s it? As far as you know?” He shook his head and dropped his hands to his hips. “That’s not good enough. I need to talk to Nancy and Dustin.”

Again, her eyes darted to the corner. “I’ll, uh…see what I can do,” she said, and the gentle smile that was now obviously fake returned to her face. “In the meantime, you should all get some rest. Food will be delivered shortly, along with an assortment of things to help keep you entertained while you’re here.”

“Can we get a radio or a TV or something?” Robin asked.

Floyd looked at Robin and nodded slightly. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said again and then turned back to Steve. “Here,” she said and held out the large, flat object that Steve had thought was a folder. “This is for your shower.”

Steve took the folder from her with a confused frown. He had no idea what the object had to do with his shower. “What is it?” he asked, opening it up. Was he supposed to rebandage himself after the shower or something?

“It’s a water guard,” Floyd said, reaching out to grip one of the corners with a loose edge. She started peeling it back and showed Steve the transparent film inside. “It’s sticky around the edges. It should be big enough to cover the bandages over your abdomen.”

“Huh,” Steve said, vaguely impressed. He’d never heard of something like it before. “Okay. Thanks.”

“Crap!” Robin yelped, and Steve jumped slightly. “I need to call my mom!”

The nurse was startled, too, and her eyes widened as they darted back to the camera again. “Right! I’ll see what I can do about a phone,” she said.

Steve frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but the door opened again, and a cart was pushed in with three trays. Behind him was another person carrying a plastic box that was quickly deposited on the floor next to the table before he turned and left, closing the door behind him. The guy with the cart started to unload it onto the table.

“Well, your food is here!” Floyd said, overly bright. “I’ll let you eat and shower while I see about those other things you asked for, and then I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.” She started backing towards the door as the guy finished with the cart. “If you need anything else, just press the buzzer here,” she said, pointing to the box next to a slightly raised panel next to the door that Steve hadn’t paid much attention to yet.

Floyd and the guy with the cart were gone before Steve could process what had just happened. He was left staring at the again-closed door with Robin standing beside him doing the same.

“That was weird, right?” she asked, turning to look at Steve.

“Dude, this whole thing is weird,” he said, scrubbing his free hand over his face.

Robin nodded next to him before crossing over to look at the trays on the table. “Yeah. Do you think we should try to wake Eddie up to eat?” she asked as she lifted the lids from the trays.

“Let’s try after I get out of the shower,” he said. “Will you help me get this plastic thing on?”

Robin agreed, and they moved over toward the bathroom. It took a bit of fumbling, and Robin managed to fold it on itself for a moment, but in the end, they got it over the bandaging. Steve climbed into the shower and let the hot water run over him for a few moments, just enjoying the feel of the heat. He quickly finished up and used one of the new toothbrushes by the sink before returning to the other room.

Eddie began to stir as he dumped his dirty clothes in the pile Robin had started in the corner. Whatever drugs they had given him clearly left him groggy as he stared up at the ceiling for a long moment.

Steve moved over to the side of the bed and reached out to place his hand on Eddie’s forearm. “Hey, man.”

Eddie’s eyes shifted to Steve’s at the sound of his voice, and his expression turned warm for a second. It was swiftly taken over by fear, though, and Eddie looked around the room again before trying to raise his arms. The injuries and subsequent treatment probably made him feel pretty weak, and he didn’t raise his arms very far before they dropped back down. His big doe eyes started filling with unshed tears.

“How’d you get in here?” he asked, voice raspy.

Steve frowned, wondering what was going through Eddie’s mind. “They put us all in here together.”

“Are you in trouble, too?”

A tear trailed down Eddie’s cheek, and Steve reached out to knuckle it away before gently cupping his face. “No one’s in trouble, Eds.”

Eddie shook his head once, clearly not understanding. “But they arrested me,” he said and made a feeble attempt to lift his arm again.

It dawned on Steve that Eddie thought he couldn’t lift his arms because they were handcuffed to the bed. He reached down and took one of Eddie’s hands in his, raising it far enough so Eddie could see it without straining. “No, Eds. You haven’t been arrested. No one’s said anything about arresting you, either. We’re in the Hawkins lab. They got you patched up and stuck us all in this room to keep us under observation for a few days to make sure nothing else got to us in the Upside Down.”

Eddie stared at him for a long moment, eyes flicking over to the hand Steve was gripping before returning to his face. “Are you sure? What about when we get out of here?”

“We’ll figure it out, Eds. The government people here know what’s going on, so we should be able to use that to clear your name. For now, just focus on getting better. You got really torn up.” Steve smiled at him. “I’m so glad to see you awake. I didn’t think it would happen for a bit, there.”

Eddie gave him a shaky smile back. “I didn’t think it would either…part of me didn’t want it to,” he admitted in a hushed whisper. “I’m glad I did, though,” he quickly added after Steve’s face fell in dismay.

Steve had been worried about Eddie being physically all right, but this statement made it clear to him that he also needed to worry about Eddie’s mental health, as well. He remembered that Eddie had always been a target of jerks in school, including the crowd that Steve had hung around with until his relationship with Nancy and the first encounter with the Upside Down. While he’d never been an outright bully – he hoped – looking back, Steve knew he hadn’t done enough to derail the assholery his so-called friends had engaged in, which he would always regret.

With Eddie, though, he’d taken the word “freak” and made it his, made it something he reveled in and used as a sort of armor. But there had also been other words that started with the letter F that were far worse than freak, words that had always made Steve feel uncomfortable for multiple reasons. For one, he didn’t think it should matter who you loved as long as it didn’t hurt anyone. Love was love at the end of the day, and the world would always need more. Whether that was between two men or two women or whatever, it didn’t matter to Steve.

Meeting Robin had only solidified the truth of the matter for him. Robin was his best friend, besides Dustin, and one of the best people he knew. That she was attracted to women didn’t make her less of a wonderful person, and he was a better person for knowing her. Being Robin’s friend, knowing someone in person who was queer and seeing the truth of the matter with his own eyes had settled something in Steve, allowing him to explore his own feelings with honesty. He’d looked at the things he’d always pushed down as being wrong because of how his father and most of his friends acted when the topic of homosexuality came up and realized that, while he would always love women, Steve was also attracted to men. It had confused him until he talked to Robin about it. Discovering that bisexuality was a thing made everything click into place for Steve.

Steve could only admire Eddie’s bravery in making the first move. If he hadn’t done that, Steve wouldn’t have acted on his feelings for Eddie, and they would have missed a gorgeous makeout session. A makeout session he desperately wanted to repeat when Eddie was up for it.

If Eddie was up for it. Steve was fully aware that their encounter might have been borne from end-of-the-world vibes and wouldn’t survive the end of Vecna, no matter how much he wanted otherwise.

While he had been lost in thought, Robin had come over to talk to Eddie now that he was awake. Steve tuned back into the conversation and smiled back down at Eddie. “Think you can eat something?” he asked.

Eddie nodded slightly, looking less confused about what was happening. “Can I sit up?”

Robin fumbled around with the controller hanging off the side of the bed. “Yeah, this will raise the back,” she said and toggled the bed to raise the back.

Eddie’s feet started raising instead. “Um…”

“Whoops, wrong button!” Robin said and started hitting the other buttons on the thing, causing the head of the bed to rise but leaving Eddie’s feet still elevated.

Steve hurried around the side of the bed and looked at the device. “Dude, get his feet back down before you do anything else.”

They finally managed to get Eddie in an upright position and pulled the bed table over Eddie’s lap for his tray.

In the usual way of their telepathic communication, Robin was on the same wavelength as Steve when he started wrestling the middle bed next to Eddie’s. By the time it was lined up, Robin had pushed the other bed over and slotted it in next to the middle bed while Eddie looked on with raised eyebrows. Robin held her hand up to Steve, and he slapped it as they high-fived each other over their ingenuity.

“This is so much better,” she said, climbing aboard while Steve pulled the box of “distractions” they had been brought onto the bed to start digging through it.

Steve sighed. “If we don’t get a TV and some movies, this is going to be a very long few days,” he said, grabbing a copy of The Stand by Stephen King and dropping the playing cards back into the box.

The rest of the day passed slowly as they tried to entertain themselves. All three of them slept on and off as their bodies continued to recover from the injuries and stresses of the last week. The semi-welcome respite was nice, Steve had to admit, and the food brought to them at regular intervals wasn’t the worst he’d ever eaten, so it wasn’t too bad. It was not knowing about the others that gave him the most worry.

He was most assuredly not a fan of being locked away in a hospital-type room in the Hawkins Lab, though. If Eddie hadn’t been so severely injured, Steve would have been trying to find a way out of their enforced stay.

Eventually, though, the time came for them to go to bed for the night. At least, the clock in their room was telling them it was nighttime, and dinner had come and gone. Robin had gone to brush her teeth after Steve finished.

And now Steve was left staring at the bed next to Eddie or the bed on the end.

The altogether surprising urge to tuck in next to Eddie as close as he could was becoming overwhelming, but he wasn’t sure it would be welcome. He also didn’t want to hurt Eddie. Something of his desires must have shown on his face because Eddie extended an arm, beckoning him closer.

“Come on, Stevie,” he murmured, voice barely louder than a whisper.

Steve dithered, frowning as he considered the space on the bed beside Eddie. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he admitted.

Eddie scoffed. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine,” he insisted.

Robin came out of the bathroom and somehow figured out the situation at a glance. She marched over to the middle bed and climbed in, leaving enough space for Steve between Eddie and herself. She looked at Steve with the same commanding raised eyebrow. “What are you waiting for, dingus? An engraved invitation?”

How she knew what Steve wanted was still a mystery, but he was grateful she did. Eddie’s arm swung open again once he got settled, and Steve had to hold himself back from diving in head-first. Instead, he eased into place, being careful of the wounds littering his own abdomen and aware of the ones encased in bandages on Eddie’s. A pair of warm, dry lips brushed across his forehead as he settled, and Robin curled into the space against his back. Steve closed his eyes, trying to let the events of the last few days fade away for at least a moment. His muscles slowly relaxed as the combined warmth from Eddie and Robin seeped into him.

***

The group of middle-aged scientists and administrators sitting around the conference room table was a serious group, to say the least. The unprecedented nature of the situation had thrown them all for a loop, and no one was entirely sure what to do with three people who’d long since been declared deceased tumbling back into the land of the living.

“They’re not going to be happy cooped up for long,” Dustin said, tapping at the table with barely concealed jumpiness. “Do we need to test them for anything else?”

Dr. Jamison, their medical officer, lifted one shoulder in a shrug as he answered. “We took samples while they were out. We’re running an analysis on the blood and testing what we can. The results have been inconclusive so far. I’d like to get some MRIs, CTs, and a few other scans, but I don’t think we’ll find any answers in these tests that will tell us how they ended up here.”

“Are we able to see if they’re from our…dimension? Universe? What are we assuming?” Brad Reyes, the Chief Administrator for the lab facility, asked from the seat he’d claimed at the head of the table.

“We’re assuming they’re from 1986. We don’t know how or why they ended up here instead of when they should have when they left the Upside Down, though,” Dustin said.

Eleven leaned back in her chair, face naturally blank as she let the discussion flow around her. There was little for her to contribute to the conversation at that moment, and she didn’t make a habit of speaking when there was nothing to say.

“Are we able to send them back to the correct time?” Brad asked, clearly displaying his lack of scientific background.

Blank faces met the question.

“All of this is purely hypothetical, Brad. We have no idea if our assumptions are correct and no way to test the variables at play. The road gate closed up almost immediately after we collected them.”

Silence greeted Dustin’s words as the other scientists around the table nodded while they waited for Brad to digest the statement.

“So, what are we going to do with them?”

El and Dustin exchanged glances. “Well, we’re going to have to integrate them into modern life.”

“Woah, do you know what kind of paperwork that’s going to take?” Brad objected, hands waving wildly through the air. “And…and, what, they just lose the last thirty years?”

El nodded. “We have limited options, and we do not know how or why they are here. Anything we might try involving the Upside Down is a dangerous gamble at this point, purely because of how much we do not know.”

“Can’t we just send them back in?” Brad asked, frowning at the group around the table.

The silence was thick as the actual scientists around the table traded subtly appalled looks. “Uh, no?” Dustin said, voice thick with sarcasm. “Why would…you know what? Don’t answer that. No, Brad, we cannot just ‘send them back’ into the Upside Down. One, we haven’t had any success sending anything inside in thirty years. Two, the gate they came through has already closed up. Three, we can’t assume that the Upside Down is running in any direction but forward through time,” Dustin explained with more calm than Eleven would have been able to muster in his place.

“And since time travel is still a sci-fi concept, we’ve got no way to do anything else,” Dustin finished, shaking his head in exasperation.

Brad looked at El, ignoring Dustin’s comment for the moment. “You said it’s a dangerous gamble to go back in, but if they went back in, could we figure out how to send them back?”

El frowned and shook her head, trying to unravel what Brad had meant. “I…did not say that, Brad,” she finally said. “There are a few more tests we can try, but at this point, I agree with Dustin’s assessment of the situation. We should assume they are here to stay.”

“Let’s look into that. I want to be able to give them all the options we can.”

El and Dustin looked at each other again. “It’s a long shot that we’ll be able to do anything other than keep them here in this time, Brad. It might be false hope to tell them anything else,” El objected.

“Still, find out so we know for sure,” Brad said. “Or as sure as we can be, anyway. Besides, the more we know about the Upside Down, the better, right? Right.”

El’s face remained impassive, but she nodded once. “All right.”

“They’re asking to call their parents,” Jackie Floyd added.

Dustin sighed. “Well, that can’t happen, unfortunately. We should tell them now what’s going on so they can start getting used to the idea of staying while we figure things out,” Dustin said. “It might also make them more cooperative if we need to run more tests. I don’t want to have to sedate them again,” he added with a grimace.

Brad nodded. “Fine. Keep them confined, though. If we can send them back, we don’t need them exposed to any more future tech than they already have or will be.”

El was very skeptical but nodded, her face pinched in frustration. “We should talk to them soon.”

Dustin looked at her and nodded. “Right.”

Chapter 6

The next time Eddie woke up, he wasn’t sure what was happening. He was warm and comfortable for what felt like the first time in longer than he cared to admit. The last week, in particular, had been the worst he could remember since he was a kid.

He didn’t know how he’d gotten from Bat Bite Central to Comfy Town, and he hesitated to open his eyes and break the spell.

Curiosity pushed Eddie over the edge, and he carefully opened his eyes, not moving his head as he took in his surroundings. He was in a hospital room, but instead of being alone in a bed, Steve was resting along Eddie’s side in the middle of what looked like a franken-bed.

Memories came rushing back when he saw Steve’s face pressed against his shoulder. He wanted to reach out and brush the hair back from his forehead. A moment later, Eddie’s fingers were doing just that.

Steve twitched slightly in his sleep, and his eyes blinked open sluggishly as Eddie watched. Steve jolted up in the bed when he realized Eddie was staring at him.

“You all right?” Steve rasped, voice rusty with sleep.

Eddie nodded once before he paused and thought about the answer to that question. How did he feel?

“Uh, yeah. Surprisingly good?” he asked rather than stated. He wasn’t sure why, but Eddie had expected his entire body to be one giant throb of pain. They must have him on some strong drugs.

Steve’s eyes dipped closed for a long moment, and he ran his hand back through his shockingly limp hair. It was clean, at least, but Eddie assumed the current state of things was due to a lack of styling products.

“Good,” Steve said on an exhale. He slumped back down to brace himself on one elbow, looking down at Eddie with soft eyes.

“Are you okay? Robin?” Eddie asked, his voice just as quiet.

“Yeah, we’re both fine. We were most worried about you. Do you remember waking up earlier?”

Eddie thought back, searching through his memories. “Kinda. I remember thinking I’d been arrested. And eating something?”

“Yeah, that happened. You weren’t arrested, though. None of us are in trouble. At least not yet,” Steve said. He glanced over his shoulder when Robin stirred slightly but looked back to Eddie a moment later, giving a slight shake of his head. Robin was still sleeping.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asked. “How long was I out?”

Most of what had happened since they’d gotten out of the Upside Down was a blur in Eddie’s memory. He remembered getting picked up by the lab, but he must have passed out at some point on the way back because the next thing he remembered was waking up to Steve and Robin in the room they were still in.

Steve shook his head. “Not sure. They haven’t really given us a lot of information. Just that they patched us up and wanted to run some tests.” He glanced towards the room’s door for a minute, then looked up toward one of the corners.

Eddie followed his gaze and saw the camera in the corner of the room. “That’s fun,” he murmured. The urge to kiss Steve was strong, but now that he knew they were on camera, he wouldn’t risk it. And…he wasn’t entirely sure how Steve felt about kissing him now that they were out of the life-threatening situation of the Upside Down. Finding him curled into Eddie’s body was reassuring, though.

Pushing that thought aside, Eddie gripped the railing next to him and started pulling himself upright.

“Woah, woah, woah. What are you doing?” Steve asked, also sitting up.

This time, he jostled Robin, who grumbled and sat up behind Steve, her hair flopping over one eye. “What are you idiots doing? Go back to sleep. It’s too early for whatever this is. I think.”

“Unless you want me to wet the bed, I need to get up,” Eddie snarked.

He gripped the railing and sat all the way up, twisting to slide his legs over the edge of the bed.

“Be careful! You’re like…held together with stitches, dude,” Steve hissed, hurrying down the bed and off to stand in front of Eddie.

Eddie frowned but accepted Steve’s help with standing. His legs felt a little weak, but the pain from his middle was marginal. Which, based on what he remembered from the bats, didn’t seem quite right, even with drugs to dull the pain.

Steve insisted on holding onto Eddie’s elbow and helping him to the bathroom. As soon as he was through the door, though, Eddie stepped away.

“Thanks, Stevie. I’ve got it from here,” he said, tossing a jaunty wink over his shoulder.

His expression was mildly confused, but Steve nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be here when you’re ready?”

Flipping the light on, Eddie nodded as he closed the door. He did need to pee, but he also wanted to look at the damage the bats had done. Quickly taking care of necessities, he washed his hand and pulled off the hospital gown he’d been draped in to stand in front of the mirror over the sink.

Bandages covered both sides of his torso, parts of his neck, and chin. His legs were more or less untouched, probably from how much he’d been squirming when the bats had descended on him. There was some pain from the areas under the bandages, but not nearly as much as he’d expected.

Carefully, he peeled back one of the large bandages covering his left side.

And then his jaw dropped.

Stitches covered his skin, holding it together so it could heal. The only problem was that it looked like it was mostly healed already. The injuries looked way older than they should have unless he’d been unconscious much longer than he thought.

He quickly put the bandage back in place and then peeled one off his face. The same thing appeared there – numerous stitches where the bats had bitten, but the skin under the stitches looked like it had already mostly healed. The bandage went back over the stitched area of his face as his mind spun.

That…was definitely not right.

Swallowing harshly, Eddie tried to keep his breathing steady as panic started to claw at his throat. What the hell was going on? Why would he already be that healed? More time must have passed than he realized, but the only way to know was to get out of the bathroom and talk to Steve and Robin for more details.

And to do that, he needed to pull himself back together.

Eddie took a few deep breaths and pulled the hospital gown back into place. He jumped as there was a knock on the door.

“Eddie? You okay?” Steve asked, voice slightly muffled by the door.

“Uh huh,” Eddie called back. “Yup. No problem here.”

Silence greeted that response for a long moment. “I’m coming in,” Steve said eventually. He didn’t wait for another answer, and the door quickly swung in, followed by Steve. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes were wide as he stared at Eddie. Eddie stared back with eyes equally as wide.

“Um. It’s more that…something isn’t wrong?” Eddie said, words tilting up into a question at the end.

“I don’t know what that means?” Steve asked with the same inflection.

Instead of saying anything else, Eddie just pulled the top half of the hospital gown off and then slowly peeled back the bandage on his torso again. Steve’s eyebrows shot into his hairline, his hand reaching out like he was going to touch the stitched area, but he stopped short of doing so.

“What the hell?”

“Steve, how long have we been here?” Eddie asked, urgency lacing his words.

“They picked us up last night. It hasn’t been…anywhere near long enough for those to look like that,” Steve said, shaking his head as he gestured at the stitches. The expression on his face was confused and concerned.

“They were like this when I looked at them,” Eddie said. “I don’t know what’s going on, either.”

“Well, keep them hidden for now,” Steve said, still shaking his head in disbelief. “The lab has been weird, I guess. They’ve kept us locked in this room and haven’t really given us much information about what’s going on, but that’s par for the course. And they’ve got a camera aimed at us, so just act like you’re in a lot of pain.”

Eddie nodded, covered the wounds back up, and pulled the hospital gown back into place. With one last exchange of glances, they left the bathroom and returned to bed. Steve helped Eddie climb back in and situated himself in the middle.

“What’s going on?” Robin mumbled.

“We’ll tell you later,” Steve whispered. “For now, let’s get some sleep.”

Robin didn’t argue. She just rolled over and went back to sleep with a huff.

The rest of the night passed slowly. He didn’t know what his quickly healing injuries meant, but he was grateful to be alive. Steve was restless next to him, and Eddie wished they could be more open about what was happening between them. Or, at least, what had happened. But with Robin in the bed next to them and the camera trained on them from the ceiling, he knew it wasn’t a good moment to bring it up. Eddie finally managed to get back to sleep after letting his thoughts drift for a while.

***

The gentle, steady breath brushing against his face and the warmth suffusing him from head to toe created such a comfortable moment that Steve couldn’t bear to move. He was peripherally aware of Robin stumbling out of bed and talking to someone in a low murmur of voices. If his stomach hadn’t chosen that moment to rumble angrily, Steve thought he might have gone back to sleep. As it was, biology demanded his attention, and he forced himself away from the comfort in which he was immersed.

Carefully, Steve extracted himself from a still-sleeping Eddie and climbed from the bed. Robin was investigating the delivery of food that had been brought, her attention fixed entirely on the tray she had pulled the cover from as Steve crossed the room to stand at her side.

She jumped slightly when she noticed him. “Make a little noise!” she whispered.

He bumped into her gently with his shoulder by way of apology and dropped into the chair next to her. “Sleep okay?” he asked, voice quiet.

Robin nodded. “Yeah, actually. I had some weird dreams, not unlike our life, though.” She paused and looked over at him, grinning. “And then I woke up and saw the cutest little cuddle puddle happening right next to me.”

She lifted an eyebrow and sent Steve a speaking glance as she darted her eyes back at Eddie. Steve felt his face flush with heat, and Robin grinned at him, tossing in a little eyebrow wiggle for good measure.

“We will be discussing that a bit later, bub.”

Steve stared at her for a long moment before he nodded and sighed in resignation, knowing it would do no good to argue, then started picking at the eggs on his plate. He took a bite and glanced back at Eddie. “We should wake him up to eat. This is already starting to get cold, and I can’t imagine it will taste any better than it does right now.”

Robin grimaced at her own eggs and nodded. “Yeah. You do the honors,” she said, winking at him.

Steve rolled his eyes but did as she’d suggested and walked around to the side of the bed. Resting his hip on the edge of the bed, Steve ran his hand lightly over Eddie’s forehead, gently pushing the hair back and away from his face. He looked vastly improved from the day before, with actual color in his face instead of the washed-out pallor he’d sported since they found him leaking blood in the Upside Down. Eddie’s eyes opened, and the sleepy smile he gave Steve made him smile softly back. He didn’t care if he looked besotted. That was how he felt.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“Hey, yourself,” Eddie replied.

Steve grinned. “Breakfast is here. Want to eat? It’s not as good as yesterday, and it’s starting to go cold.”

Eddie nodded, and Steve raised the head of the bed. Robin dropped the tray carefully on the over-bed table, and Steve pulled it closer for Eddie to reach.

“Bon Appetit,” she said with a dramatic flourish as she whisked away the cover over the mediocre hospital-style food.

“Yum,” Eddie drawled. “Actually, it looks good.”

“You must be feeling a bit better if your appetite is coming back,” Robin said, hopping up to sit at the foot of the bed with her tray.

“I am,” Eddie said, carefully scooping up a bit of the egg. After a moment, he made a face. “These are terrible.” Still, he reached for another bite.

“Just imagine if we’d let you sleep in,” Steve joked, making a face at his bite of the eggs. “They could have brought ketchup or something,” he grumbled.

They passed the rest of breakfast with inconsequential talk that was more about getting to know each other than anything to do with their current situation. It was too much to think about constantly, and they all needed to get their minds off it for at least a moment.

***

Time moved slowly while they waited for something to happen. They filled the time between lunch and their next meal with the cards and books from the box that had been brought the day before.

Eventually, there was a knock on the door. It was opened again without waiting for a response from the room’s occupants, and a cart was wheeled in, filled with covered trays. The nurse, whose name Eddie still didn’t know, greeted them with a smile and started unloading the food onto the table. She looked over at Eddie and, after she finished, walked over to his side, grabbing a clipboard from the cart on her way.

“How are you doing today?” She asked.

Eddie shrugged, feeling his heart start to race. He didn’t want them to know about the stitches, so he tried to act weak. “I feel like I’ve been eaten by a bunch of bats,” he joked.

She gave him a sympathetic smile and took his temperature. “Don’t worry; we’ll get you back to normal in no time,” she said.“The doctor wants to leave the wounds undisturbed for now, so he’ll be in sometime tomorrow to take a look and ensure everything’s healing well. For now, are you in a lot of pain?”

Eddie shrugged. “It’s manageable,” he said, not wanting to have a haze of medicine when he didn’t need it, especially if they were going to try to escape.

She nodded. “I’ll get you some Tylenol. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Eddie replied.

With that, the nurse left the room, closing the door behind her. Eddie stayed where he was in bed as Steve brought his food over to the tray table and set it down before swinging it into position over Eddie’s body. He climbed back into bed with his tray and settled next to Eddie again while Robin climbed in after Steve. They both sat cross-legged on the middle bed with their trays balanced on their lap.

As they started to eat, Robin looked between them. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “I know something happened last night.”

Steve shrugged and looked at Eddie. Eddie rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to think of what to do if a doctor arrived to check out his wounds at some point. He knew there would be issues when they saw how fast they were healing. “I think we need to get out of here,” Eddie said under his breath.

Steve nodded. “But we’re locked in,” he whispered back, looking over at the door.

“I may have a solution for that,” Eddie murmured. “But it’ll take some planning and some luck.”

Robin looked between them, clearly confused and unaware of what was happening. “Why do we need to leave?” she asked in the same low tone.

Steve leaned closer to her and whispered into her ear. Robin’s eyes widened in surprise. “Holy shit,” she whispered.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, exactly,” he agreed before looking back at Steve. “We need something small and really thin that we can slide in between the door latch and the jamb. Maybe a piece of cardboard from one of the books?” he suggested.

“I might have a better idea,” Steve murmured, then stood from the bed, taking his and Robin’s empty trays back over to the table. Before returning to the bed, he detoured by the small wardrobe in the room and rummaged inside.

He climbed into the bed, settled with his back to the camera in the corner of the room, and flashed his wallet at them before quickly looking through the cards. The one he pulled out was laminated but thin enough not to cause a problem with the door closing.

“Will this work?” he asked, holding his Family Video membership card in front of his chest.

Eddie and Robin grinned at him. “Perfect,” Robin said in approval.

They quickly hashed out the rest of the plan in whispers, then settled in to wait for dinner.

Finally, the time came.

They’d eaten their dinner, and the orderly had returned to pick up their trays. Steve, as planned, followed the orderly over to the door and held it open while he wheeled the cart back out. Steve slid the Family Video membership card over the latch, smoothing the tape stolen from Eddie’s bandages to hold it in place, as he closed the door behind the orderly. The card held, and Steve looked back at Eddie and Robin gleefully. It looked like they could enact phase one of the plan, at least.

Luckily, the door was heavy enough to stay in place, even without being latched. They continued playing cards and keeping each other occupied until it was late enough that they could go to bed. The lights went off, and they settled in, fully dressed in sets of sweats under the sheets, with their shoes tucked next to the bed for easy access. They weren’t worried about trying to take anything with them. The goal was to escape the lab and try to meet up with the others so they could figure out what had happened.

They waited until the wee hours of the morning to ensure the rest of the building settled into the regular evening routine. Eddie drifted to sleep for a while. He was still healing from his injuries, even if they did seem to be on an accelerated pace. The wounds had also hit that itchy phase that healing skin underwent, and he was doing his best to ignore it. Sleeping helped with that.

Finally, when it was closer to dawn than dusk, Steve gently shook Eddie awake as he crept out of bed and went to stand underneath the camera out of sight. He reached up and draped the shirt they’d left there earlier in the evening over the camera, just in case anyone was watching. Hopefully, all they would see was the darkness of a windowless room. They’d agreed not to speak unless they couldn’t avoid it until they were out of the building.

Once Steve was done, he nodded at Robin and Eddie. They got out of bed carefully to avoid any noise and pulled their shoes on before heading to the door. They only had one shot at this and needed to make the most of it.

Steve slid the door open slightly to look down the hallway. It was deserted.

He eased the door open, and Robin followed, with Eddie bringing up the rear. They ran quietly down the hallway keeping close to the wall and looking out for anyone that might be passing. Eddie glanced at the ceilings frequently, looking for cameras. Luck was with them. There were only a few cameras in this area, and they managed to creep past underneath them.

They got to the door without incident. With every step, Eddie waited to run into someone who would sound the alarm and send them sprinting down the hallway. While his wounds were vastly improved, he didn’t quite think he was up to being chased yet.

The entrance to the stairwell was at the end of the hall, and they managed to get downstairs without anyone noticing. They were at the side of the building when they came out of the stairwell. A door with a glass window looked out into the parking lot. The dark forest loomed behind it, tantalizingly close for all that the prospect of running through the woods in the darkness didn’t appeal.

The trio exchanged glances, smiling briefly at each other. Eddie didn’t understand why they hadn’t triggered any alarms yet with their sneaking around. He could only thank Bahamut that they were this close to freedom. He hoped that would extend to getting past the fence and away from the lab.

Eddie half expected the alarms to finally trigger when they opened the door to the parking lot, but the building remained still and quiet. They got through the parking lot, which was mostly empty at this time of the night, and managed to make it over to the fence.

The barbed wire fence surrounding the lab was an obstacle, but they were as prepared as possible. Steve climbed up first and slung the towels he’d brought over the barbed wire before he pulled it down and sat carefully, holding it in place.

“Okay, come on up, Robin,” he said, holding one hand down toward her as she started climbing up the chain links.

He reached down to help her up and over the top. Her pants caught on the barbed wire that wasn’t covered as she slung her leg over. They tore slightly, but she didn’t break the skin. She got down the other side, dropping slightly to land quietly on the ground. Eddie started after her, gripping Steve’s hand for support as he reached the top. The healing wounds covering his body pulled uncomfortably as he made the climb. At the top, he met Steve’s eyes, and they stared at each other briefly, exchanging small smiles before Eddie climbed down.

Once Eddie was safely on the ground, Steve swung his leg over the top and climbed down, pulling the towels with him as he moved. He dropped the last couple of feet, landing with a quiet thump.

At almost the same moment, alarms started to sing out across the lab grounds.

“Shit,” Steve hissed. “Let’s go!”

The night was dark around them as they ran towards the forest’s edge. The trio dashed into the woods, moving as quickly as they could to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the lab personnel. If Eddie’s wounds had been in the state they should have been in, he knew he wouldn’t have made it far.

“Where are we going?” Robin asked, voice breathy as they ran through the woods.

Steve glanced at her, reaching out to stabilize her as her foot caught on a root sticking out of the uneven ground. “We’re not too far away from Loch Nora. We should try to get to my house and see if we can get in touch with the others.”

“You don’t think that’s kind of obvious?” Eddie asked, slightly incredulous.

“Hide in plain sight or something, right?” Steve returned with a shrug.

Eddie stared at him, mouth slightly ajar. Steve was a gorgeous sight with his devil-may-care attitude in the moonlight. Shaking his head, Eddie sighed and followed the others. “I’m not sure that’s how that works, Stevie.”

Their pace naturally slowed down as they moved due to the low light. The terrain was hidden in shadows, and unseen dangers kept tripping them up as they moved. Robin seemed to have a special knack for finding things to trip over, and her claim of being a total klutz was borne out in the darkness. Eventually, Steve grabbed her hand, wrapping her arm through his to offer more support and guidance as they moved through the woods.

Eddie wondered if they were going in the right direction or if they would find themselves halfway across town from where they wanted to be. He had only the vaguest idea where they were or where the lab was in relation to Loch Nora. They were completely reliant on Steve’s knowledge and sense of direction. He seemed confident in where he was going, at least.

Finally, they came to the edge of the forest and emerged into a residential area. To Eddie’s unfamiliar eye, it looked like the more affluent part of town.

Steve let out a sigh. “Yes,” he hissed. “We made it.” He looked around furtively, and Eddie followed his lead, looking for any signs of movement.

“Can we stay behind the houses?” Eddie whispered.

“Yeah, for most of the way, we should be good,” Steve agreed. “The longer we can stay out of sight, the better, right?”

Eddie nodded, and he and Robin followed Steve as he led the way behind the neighborhood houses, weaving through the edge of the forest as needed to avoid being seen. The neighborhood was sleeping peacefully in the middle of the night, and most had back porch lights on to provide more light than they’d had running through the woods.

After some point only he knew, Steve led them from the forest’s edge and through the large side yards between two houses, depositing them onto the sidewalk. Being so exposed made Eddie uneasy, but there was also something just…off about the neighborhood that he couldn’t quite discern.

They finally got to Steve’s road and turned onto the sidewalk, but Eddie’s sense of discomfort grew.

“Something’s wrong,” Steve said, mumbling under his breath as they walked.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, but what?”

“I dunno. It’s…It’s just…I don’t know what it is,” Steve said, shaking his head in frustration. “Something isn’t right, though.”

They finally reached Steve’s long driveway and started towards the house. The windows were all dark, so it was likely that, as he’d suspected, Steve’s parents weren’t home. They got to the front door, and Steve kicked over the rock that held their hide-a-key, exposing the little box with the key tucked away inside. He quickly scooped it up and put it into the door.

It opened without any trouble, and they followed Steve inside. They hadn’t gone more than a few steps, though, when Steve came to an abrupt halt.

“What’s wrong?” Robin asked.

Steve looked around again, shaking his head and frowning in confusion. “This isn’t how I left the house. These aren’t our things. I don’t know what is going on, but this is not my house.”

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