Archive of Our Own

Something happens to Steve Harrington in October of 1984 in the junkyard while protecting those kids. 

Something that he’s afraid of. That he doesn’t know how to control. 

It starts with rows and rows of razor sharp teeth digging their way into his flesh, ripping and tearing their way through the layers of jeans and tall socks. A scream erupts from his throat at the hot burning sensation that trails its way up his leg. He’s trying to kick it with his other foot, but the demodog doesn’t even seem phased. Its flowered face never opens to release him, no matter how much force he uses behind his kicks. It uses its grip on Steve to start pulling him down the staircase of the bus, one by one, and Steve knows that if he lets himself get pulled all the way out, it’s over. 

And unfortunately for Steve, he had thrown his nail bat just out of reach when the dog knocked him down. 

So, he braces his arms on one of the seats and the edge of the stairs, screaming again in pain as he tries to hold himself up. He can hear other demodogs crawling around the bus, can hear Dustin and Lucas screaming, but he doesn’t hear anything from Max. He wants to look over, to check and make sure that everyone’s okay, but looking away from the beast that’s trying to tear his shin from him could be a fatal mistake. 

Luckily, he doesn’t have to worry about Max for long. 

Because she comes up over the edge of the seat that Steve had been using to keep himself up with a piece of wood in hand, screaming as she drops it point blank on the demodogs head. It doesn’t do much beyond scare it, but it makes the creature release its grasp on Steve, meaning he can use his good leg to kick it through the open door. 

“Close the door! Close it!” He screams, and Max scurries over to the rusted handle, slamming the door shut as quickly as she can. 

Steve is barely able to push himself to his feet, but he forces himself to do it anyways. He scoops his bat back up, pushes Max behind him, and backs them up slowly until they’re beside Dustin and Lucas. Steve can feel hot blood dripping down his leg, pooling at the top of his shoes, and that racing pain hasn’t gone away. If anything, it continues to get worse the longer he stands there. He shouldn’t be putting weight on it, he knows that, but his own pain is the least of his worries. He needs to keep these kids safe. They’re too young to be a part of this, to know and see these horrors. It makes his stomach sick to think about. 

So, despite the pain, he stands his ground when he hears the monsters crawling on the roof. He holds the bat tightly, fully prepared to put every last bit of energy he has into this swing, but he never has to. Because right as he’s about to, all of the monsters stop. The growling and click ceases for a moment, and then they’re all running away. 

“Holy shit. Holy shit!” Dustin says, “Where are they going?”

“No idea. But, it can’t be good.”

“Steve, you’re bleeding. Like. A lot.” Max shakes her head, crouching down beside his leg, “How’re you even standing on this?”

“It’s fine. I’ll be okay.”

“Steve, there’s a puddle of blood under your leg. Like, a puddle. I'm not a doctor, but I don’t think that’s supposed to be happening.” She rolls her eyes, and then Dustin and Lucas both crouch down beside her to examine his leg. 

“Holy shit, Steve. This is gnarly.”

“Guys, we don’t have time for this-“

“We need to make something to stop the bleeding, right?”

“Yeah, like a tourniquet! Do either of you have any extra fabric laying around? Medical bandage? Anything?”

“Guys-“

“No, but-“

“Wait! I might!” Dustin shouts, slinging his backpack off of his shoulders and onto the ground in front of him. He unzips it fast, rummaging through it while the other two peak inside like they’re helping. 

“Guys, I’m serious-“

“Aha!” He exclaims, throwing his hand up in the air with a small wrap of bandage, “My mom told me that I always need to be prepared in case of an emergency. She may not know that emergency included flesh eating monsters, but-“

“Steve, sit down.” Max says, and Steve shakes his head.

“We need to get mov-“

“Do you even know how to wrap a leg properly?” Lucas asks, and Max rolls her eyes.

“It can’t be that hard."

“I know! I learned first-aid at camp last year, I can take care of it.”

Steve’s head feels like it’s swimming the longer that he just… stands here. The pain from his leg has traveled all the way up to his abdomen, making him nauseous in a way that he didn’t think was possible before. His heart is racing, there’s blood pouring down his leg, and the children arguing at his feet aren’t making anything any better. 

“Guys!” He shouts, looking down at them. All three of their heads whip up at him at the exact same time.

“What?!”

“I don’t know if you guys forgot, but there are bloodthirsty monsters running through the woods right now towards Hawkins to do god knows what. We don’t have time for this. I’m fine. My leg is fine. Let’s go.”

“Uh, no. Because I don’t think any of us can carry you through the woods when you pass out from blood loss.” Dustin rolls his eyes, “So, let us fix this and then we can go chase the monsters. Plus, how good of an idea is it for you to go running into the woods bleeding like this when the monsters were chasing love blood. Huh, Steve? Did you think of that one?”

In the end, Steve lets them wrap his leg. It’s probably the most painful thing that’s ever happened to him, making his stomach turn upside down and his vision go white when they start to pull his socks down, untangling the threads from his flesh. He’s holding onto either side of what’s left of a seat, gritting his teeth, trying not to scream out in pain. 

“Jesus Christ, they turned your leg to ground beef.” Lucas says, and Steve breathes out heavily through his nose. 

“Thanks, Sinclair. Really helping.”

Once his leg is wrapped, he finally convinces them to follow in the direction of the demodogs. They didn’t lose much time, but enough that could be detrimental to the people the monsters are heading towards. Despite the pain, Steve moves as fast as he’s able to. 

He tries to keep a straight face when they get to the lab, but the burning sensation has made its way all the way to his chest, spreading down his arms and up his throat a little bit. He knows that he should probably tell someone that something is wrong, but he can’t bring himself to make this about him. This is about saving Hawkins. Steve’s stupid demodogs bites don’t matter. He’s sure that he’s overreacting. 

Except, when they get back to The Byers house and plans are made, the burning sensation makes its way to his head. It makes him feel even dizzier than before. The whole room starts spinning, it’s hard to keep his balance, and he’s suddenly burning up. The clothes on his body feel like they’re suffocating him, and he can feel the puddles of sweat dripping down his face and back. 

“… Uh, Steve? Are you okay?” Lucas asks as Steve leans up against a wall. 

“I-.. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You’re visibly not fine.” Dustin says, “It’s that demodog bite, isn’t it? God, I knew we should have done something about it sooner. There’s no telling what kind of bacteria live in those things, or if they have poison in their teeth.”

“You got bit by demodog?” He thinks it’s Mike that says that, but the world is spinning and it’s hard to focus. 

“Yeah, he did. It’s gnarly.” Max snorts as Steve lets his head lull forward a bit. His eyelids feel so heavy. He just wants to go to sleep. He wants to take all of his clothes off first, because it’s way too fucking hot in this house, but he wants to go to sleep. 

He can vaguely hear the kids going back and forth with each other about what to do with him, but all the conversation cuts quickly when a car pulls into the driveway. One that Steve doesn’t recognize right away, but Max does. 

Because it’s her brother, Billy. 

Which turns out to be an even bigger problem for Steve. Despite feeling like he had a head injury before Billy showed up, he didn’t. He was just tired and in pain from his leg. After Billy showed up? Well. Steve’s injuries match the pain that his head is in. 

Something shifts inside Steve for a moment while he’s fighting with Billy, trying to hold his ground. Something that tells him to hurt Billy. To dig his teeth into Billy’s throat and tear until he’s left a blubbering mess of his own blood and tears. 

Steve has never had thoughts like that before. Sure, he’s been in fights before, but he’s never wanted to hurt someone like that. To kill them. 

It scares him. 

That fear is just enough to knock him off of any upper hand that he had on Billy, landing him on his back as punch after punch lands on his jaw, his nose, his orbital bone. After a while, he doesn’t feel any kind of pain for the first time in hours. Not from his leg, not from the punches, and not from the awful burning sensation that had been covering every square inch of his body before this. 

It’s kind of nice. To be numb. 

Another punch, and the world around Steve goes black. 

It’s only like that for what feels like a blink of an eye, but when Steve wakes up, he’s in the backseat of a car he doesn’t recognize, with Max driving. The thirteen year old. 

The worst part is the numbness didn’t last. The pain comes back, and it comes back with a vengeance. He lets out a painful whimper, leaning his head back against the seat, clenching his fists so tightly together that he’s sure his fingernails break the surface of his palms. The voices around him all melt together, and the only thing he can truly hear is the sound of his own heart behind his ear. He tries to focus on his breathing, to calm himself down just a little bit. He needs a clearer head. 

In. 

Out. 

Despite how much pain he’s in, he still follows the kids into the tunnels, because he told everyone he would protect them. He meant it. So, despite the fact that the pain from the bite makes it almost impossible to put any weight on his leg anymore, and that his face is throbbing from where Billy beat him within an inch of his life, and that the burning sensation has made its way to his brain, he keeps pushing. 

In. 

Out. 

The first time that Steve doesn’t feel like he’s being burned alive is when they step foot into the tunnels. 

It’s still not cold enough, but it’s colder than it was above. 

That peace only lasts a few minutes though, because when the fire is started, Steve swears that it’s burning him. His skin feels like it’s being lit on fire, every part of his body feels like it’s burning off, and he all but screams from the pain. He needs to get out of here. He needs the fuck out of here. 

But, being the babysitter means taking up the rear. So, he lets himself burn a little longer to make sure all of the kids are safe. Once he’s above ground again, he all but throws his jacket off, trying to check and see how bad the burns on his skin have to be.

Except, there aren’t any. 

The sensation is still there, it feels like he’s on fire, but nothing is wrong with him physically. 

Steve is so, so confused. 

He is in so, so much fucking pain. 

“Uh, Steve? What’re you doing?” Dustin asks, and Steve whips his head over to look at him. His eyebrows are furrowed, concern and cojnfusion written all over his face, and Steve just shakes his head. 

“Nothing. I just- Thought my jacket might have gotten a little…. singed. It didn’t. All good.”

He doesn’t feel good lying to them, but they have so much worse stuff to worry about. Like making sure if Will’s okay. If they got the monster out of him. If El shut the gate. 

Once everything is said and done, Steve goes home alone. 

He’s able to slip out without anyone noticing, without having to let Joyce or Hop look at his leg, and the whole drive home, all he can think about is going the fuck the bed. His body aches. His head hurts. His leg hurts. Everything fucking hurts. 

And maybe he would have gone to bed as soon as he got home, if everything didn’t change. 

Walking through the door, the first thing he notices is that the house is hot. He could have sworn he turned the A/C on this morning. He strips off his jacket again, letting it fall to the ground by the door with a thump, trudging through the main hallway to where the thermostat is, only to find it set on what is normally a very comfortable 68. 

That’s weird. Maybe it’s busted. 

He flips it way down, all the way to 55, just to try to get some cold air flowing through the house. It’s so hot. He’s still sweating, and the next article of clothing he strips off is his shirt. He isn’t sure where he tosses it to, all he knows is that he needs it the fuck off of his body. 

Then he makes his way to the bathroom, where he sits down on the toilet seat to start the painstaking process of taking his shoes and sock off of his injured leg. He used a washcloth to bite down on so that he doesn’t scream out in pain, but it isn’t like anyone would hear him. His parents aren’t home. They never are. 

The kids had wrapped his leg well, he had to admit. He didn’t think that any of the wounds were bleeding under the gauze anymore, but it was hard to tell when the fabric was already blood soaked. He slowly undoes it, row by row, preparing to see the horrifying wound that he was going to have to try to figure out how to explain to be people who didn’t know what the fuck the upside down was. 

Except, it’s not as bad as it was earlier. 

It looks like the teeth marks are already starting to close and scab over. 

His eyebrows furrow together as he tosses the bandage to the side, leaning down to get a closer look at the incisions that had been there before, and sure enough, they’re healing. They’re smaller than the had been before, some of them are already scarred over, and Steve is so fucking confused. 

Something is wrong with him. 

Like, really, really wrong with him. 

When he finishes cleaning all of the blood off of the wound, it looks more like he fell into multiple rows of thorns than almost got his leg torn off by an interdimensional monster. It’s even weird when he stands up, and he can put almost all of his weight on his legs again. 

It’s not normal. 

He knows it’s not fucking normal. 

Steve doesn’t put his pants back on, choosing instead to walk around in just his boxers because even the layer of jeans was too much. He was still so hot. Even now, almost completely naked, he’s sweating. 

And while the pain might have gone away, that inside burning sensation hasn’t. It’s different from being hot. It feels like he’s being shocked by a taser over every single one of his nerves over, and over, and over again. 

He’s also starving. 

He feels ravenous. Like he’s never eaten before in his life. 

Going into the kitchen was his first big mistake, though. 

Because the moment that he opens the refrigerator door and sees the two steaks he had laid out in hopes of winning Nancy Wheeler back today, something happens. Everything changes. Steve changes. 

His mouth starts watering at the sight of the uncooked meat, at the blood that has seeped from it into the bags that hold them, and Steve falls to his knees right then and there. He stares tentatively at the two slabs of meat, drool practically dripping out of his mouth, and that’s when the worst pain that Steve has ever felt in his entire life sets in. 

It’s through his entire body, and it’s impossible for him not to let out blood curdling screams. It feels like all of his bones are breaking at once. It feels like his skin is too tight for all of his insides, like they’re swelling in size until they’re going to pop. He feels his fingers elongating. They crack, snap, and grow longer until it feels like there are claws where his nails used to be. 

Steve thinks he might be dying. 

The worst part of it is when the skin on his face starts to feel like it’s tearing apart. He brings his hands up to try to check, still screaming, but all he ends up doing is scratching himself with his new fucking claws. 

He’s so scared. He’s going to die alone in his kitchen.

When his face does split open, the screams slowly dissolve down into loud chirping noises. Trills. Noises that Steve’s never made before, that he didn’t know he could fucking make. The split goes all the way down his neck. 

Then he can s mell the steaks in the refrigerator. 

They smell like nothing he’s ever been around before. Almost sweet. He thinks that they could have been replaced with nectar instead of blood with how delightful they smell. 

And god, is he hungry. 

The next few minutes are kind of a blur. The bags of steak are ripped open with claws, and then he’s shoving the raw meat directly where his mouth used to be. On either side of it are two petal shaped, ones that close in while he devours the meat. The blood dripping from them is sweet. He’s sure he’s making a fucking mess. 

He can’t bring himself to care, though. 

All he cares about is getting more of this sweet, sweet nectar. 

It makes him feel better. 

It makes him feel stronger. 

Once there’s nothing left but shredded plastic, Steve falls back on his back on the hard kitchen floor, staring up at the ceiling. It’s only then that he realizes his vision is different. It’s sharper. He can see dust flying around in the air. 

He doesn’t have time to worry about that, though. He’s so tired. 

It doesn’t take long for the world around him to go black. 

___________________

The first thing that Steve sees when he opens his eyes is that the title of his kitchen floor is stained in dark red smears. It takes a few moments for his eyes to really focus on what it is, but once he does, he shoots up into a sitting position. 

Which was a mistake, because the pounding in his skull and face comes back full force. He bends in half, head between his knees, a loud groan escaping his lips. He brings his hands up to hold his head, sitting there until the throbbing passes and he’s able to sit up straight without feeling like he’s going to pass out from doing so. 

It’s only then that he notices the dried specks of blood that coat his arms and hands. He holds them out in front of his face, turning them over slowly, trying not to panic. But, it’s hard not to when there’s blood all around him, but he doesn’t seem to be hurt. 

He doesn’t know where the blood is coming from. Did he hurt someone? Did someone hurt him and he just can’t tell? Was it Upside Down related?

Steve’s eyes dance carefully along the room for any sign of what happened. Just a single clue to fill him in. 

What they land on is a plastic ziplock that has been torn to shreds. 

When the memories from last night come back, they come back hard. 

The steaks. His nails and fingers turning into claws. His fucking face splitting open. The pain from that. Shoving the raw meat into his face like he needed it to live. The rows and rows of sharp teeth that had coated the skin attached to his throat, razor sharp, ready to kill. 

Slowly, he brings his shaking hands up until they’re  brushing against his skin, and a quiet gasp escapes his lips when he can feel the healing skin from where his face separated. He traces it down to between his collarbones and up to his mouth, then out along his cheeks from the corner of his lips. 

He doesn’t even want to l ook at his face right now. 

Something happened to Steve when he was bit by that fucking demodog. 

He’s not the fucking same anymore. 

Getting to his feet is a struggle. He sways side to side, grabbing onto the counter for some kind of stability, and he stumbles towards the bathroom. He needs to see how bad the split marks are. He knows that his face is already fucked up from Billy, but he’s sure that that will pale in comparison to the new wounds he’s received. 

When he gets to the bathroom and flips the lights on, he isn’t sure what’s more alarming. 

The fact that his face is almost healed from the beating he received less than twelve hours ago, or the fact that the slits where his face had split are almost completely scarred over already. Thin pink lines trail from his mouth and out, but nowhere near as badly he expected them to be. Cleaning the blood away only makes them look better. 

The human body doesn’t heal this fast. It isn’t possible. How could his face fucking open up like that and just heal a few hours later?

He wants to scream. 

He wants to cry. 

He wants to fucking call someone and tell them what’s going on with him, but there isn’t anyone to call, and even if there was, he doesn’t think they would believe him. 

Steve wouldn’t believe himself. He barely does now staring at his own reflection. 

He doesn’t know what to do other than slowly sink to his knees on the bathroom floor, hands on his own face, feeling the new scars that reside there. 

___________________

Steve goes M.I.A. for a week. 

Sure, he calls Dustin to let him know that he’s at least alive, but he doesn’t leave the house the entire time. He can’t. He’s scared that he’ll hurt somebody, or maybe even himself. 

Plus, it’s too hot to leave his house. 

Not really. It’s barely 68 outside, but it feels like it’s roasting Steve alive. His home A/C has been sitting on 50, but even then, he needs to be in shorts and a tank top to not just sit there and sweat. He knows that it’s going to run the electric bill up, but he can’t bring himself to care. It’s not like his dad does more than glance at the bills before he pays them. 

He spends the week learning how his new… body works. Or, at least, trying to. He tries to figure out what causes those senses to start tingling, what makes his face split open like a demogorgon, and how long it takes for the scars to fade down to a pale white. 

Steve discovers pretty fast that anything with blood is a no-go for right now. He can’t keep track of how many times he loses control at the slightest smell of blood for that first week. It’s something he’s going to have to work on. He can’t be a functioning member of society if he can’t even smell a paper cut without his fucking face splitting in half. 

He starts to become more aware during the moments that his… monster side comes out. At first, he was blacking out, coming back to healed up with no memory of what just happened to him. But, by the end of the week, he’s able to stand and walk after the split. He doesn’t have to learn how to control the petals of teeth, it comes naturally once he’s able to stay aware of it. 

The first time he sees himself like that, he swears he’ll never take a look again. It’s too much, seeing himself look like that, like the monsters that he’s been afraid of for the last two years, like the monsters that have tried to kill people that Steve would consider friends. He hates how pale his skin gets, almost looking gray up to his fingertips which look like the claws that reside there have been dipped in black paint. He hates the hundreds of rows of teeth that live inside his skin now, and how he’s convinced himself that he can feel them when he runs his fingers along his throat. 

A week after he transforms for the first time, he makes himself go back to school. 

It’s terrifying. 

His heart is thrumming in his chest so hard that he can hear it in his ears, and the school is too fucking hot. He knows that he has to look ridiculous showing up to school in shorts the first week of November, but the idea of putting jeans on when he’s already so hot made his skin crawl. It’s fine. He can pass it off as needing them for gym or some shit. 

Billy Hargrove doesn’t say anything to Steve on his first day back, which is more surprising than if he had shoved Steve up against the lockers as soon as he walked in. They make awkward eye contact from across the cafeteria one time, where Steve can see that Billy’s face is still a little fucked up, but it’s healing. Compared to Steve’s face, which has been completely healed since the night after the altercation happened. 

Being a freak did have its perks, apparently.

A week of school passes without incident. His face doesn’t split open during class, revealing his dirty secret to everyone, and he’s able to start getting back to almost himself. Sure, he doesn’t really have the friends that he used to have, and he doesn’t have a girlfriend anymore, but he’s less scared of himself every single day. 

Until the following week, when Jenny White gets a pretty gnarly paper cut in the middle of 3rd period. Steve’s sitting in the second row of the classroom, near the door, while Jenny sits almost on the complete opposite end of the room from him. He can smell her blood the moment that it happens, and God… It smells divine. 

Nothing in the entire world has ever smelt like this. It’s like walking into a bakery. Like opening the oven while cooking cinnamon rolls. Her blood smells like honey, and Steve feels like a starving man the moment that it hits his nostrils. 

Which is bad. Very, very bad. 

There’s a low pitched clicking noise that vibrates in his chest, one that he tries to pat away before it draws any more attention to him. He can feel the corners of his lips starting to crack and bend the longer that Jenny’s wound is left unattended, and he moves his hands to cover his face. 

This can’t be happening. 

He can’t fucking monster out in the middle of class. 

He can’t attack his classmate. 

But, fuck, it smells so good. He’s practically drooling. 

In. 

Out. 

He takes deep breaths, trying to keep himself under control. It’s so hard. It’s so fucking hard. His hands over his face could start cracking and shaping into claws at any second. 

He needs to get the hell out of here. 

‘You’re okay,’ He tells himself, ‘You’re in control. You’re okay.’

The moment the bell rings, Steve bolts. He barely even remembers to grab his backpack with how fast he’s running to get away. He runs, and runs, and runs through the hallways until he gets to a bathroom that’s empty. He flips the lock, and then slowly slides down the wall as the corners of his lips start to unfurl even more. 

“No, no, no,” He whispers, hands still over his mouth, “Not here. Not now. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m in control. I’m in control.”  

He doesn’t know how long he sits there talking to himself, begging the monster to not come out, but in the end? It doesn’t. His face doesn’t split, his claws don’t crack and come in, and he feels like he won. He kept it inside. He can be in control of it. It’s just going to take some time to figure it out properly. 

___________________

The first and only person to find out about Steve’s new… side, is Dustin. 

And that’s only because Steve tells him, swearing him to secrecy. 

It isn’t ideal to drag one of the kids into this, but all of them, the best choice that he has in Dustin. Plus, he owes Steve for dragging him back into this mess in the first place. This wouldn’t be a situation that Steve was dealing with if it wasn’t for Dustin deciding to keep a demodog as a pet. It’s a fair trade. 

The hardest part is convincing Dustin of what happened to him without going full Demo. Because it’s one thing to tell someone that you were infected with some kind of interdimensional thing that makes you turn into a hybrid of the monsters that you’ve been fighting for the last two years, and it’s another for them to actually believe you. 

And if there’s one thing that Steve has learned about Dustin during the past few weeks, it’s that he loves to argue, and he loves to question everything that someone tells him.

It’s the first week of December when Steve tells Dustin, they’ve been hanging out more because Claudia asks Steve to watch Dustin when she works late, and he doesn’t mind being around him. A lot of the times, they end up back at Steve’s house, and Dustin always complains about how cold the house is without fail.

“Dude, it’s like-... negative five outside. Why is your heat not on?”

“I think it feels fine in here.” Steve shakes his head, shucking off the coat that he’s been making himself wear for longer periods of time lately. The longer he can expose himself to higher heats that he’s comfortable with, the better it’ll be in the long run.

“What is your thermostat set on?”

“Dustin, we’re not doin–”

“What is it set on, Steve? Cause, I swear to god if it’s on fifty five again, I’m going to scream.”

“If you don’t like the temperature of my house, you’re more than welcome to go home. Oh, wait… You can’t. Because you’ll freeze to death before you make it across town unless I drive you. You’re fine, Henderson.”

“You’re a dick.” Dustin rolls his eyes, but it’s more playful than anything. 

They spend the majority of the time that they hang out watching Star Wars, because Dustin has been beyond mortified that Steve hadn’t seen it before they became friends, which led to Steve promising that he would at some point. He just didn’t think that it would be so soon, or that Dustin would bring the VCR over himself. He makes pop-corn for Dustin, listens to him every time he decides that he needs to explain something that happened in the movie even though Steve just watched it happen. And as much as it pains Steve to say, he really likes the movie by the end of it. Sure, he doesn’t think he remembers much of the plot, but it was still a good movie regardless. 

“Thoughts? Opinions? Do you understand why it’s one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces of our lifetime? Do you want to watch it again?”

“I mean, it was-... Good? I liked it. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it the greatest of our lifetime, but-”

“What movie do you possibly think is better than that? Did we even watch the same movie, Steve?”

“I said it was good!”

“Good doesn’t describe Star Wars, Steve. Not even a little bit. That would be like calling The Mona Lisa just some painting.”

“… I-“

“Do not even finish that sentence. Do not. Anyways. We’re watching the second movie too, by the way. Surprise!”

“Dude,” Steve groans, leaning his head back against the couch, “I agreed to one movie.”

“Too bad. I waited forever to get my hands on this VHS. In the cold. And my mom won’t let me watch it on our TV, because she needs it for her relaxing time, so your TV is my next best bet. Plus, I need to condition some taste into your system. I think you’ll like this one more. It’s got more action.”

“Whatever, Henderson. You’re making the next bag of popcorn.”

One thing that Steve is forever grateful for is the ability to still enjoy normal foods. Sure, he can’t eat cooked meat of any kind, but he can eat popcorn and candy bars, and they all still taste remotely the way they did before his transformation. It makes hiding it a little easier when he doesn’t have to come up with a thousand different excuses as to why no one ever sees him eat anything. 

He thinks that the perfect time to try to have this impossible conversation with Dustin would be between the two movies, sandwiching bad news between two things that Dustin clearly loves, but the words die on his tongue as fast as they’re born. They feel like poison in his mouth. He’s never said it out loud before, and even though he knows about this part of himself, saying it out loud makes it… more real. Permanent. If he tells someone else about it, then it’s a part of him that’s never going to go away. 

But, this is Dustin. He’s one of the smartest people that Steve’s ever met, and if anyone would be able to figure out a cure for whatever is going on with Steve, then it would be him. 

The best chance he has is to just… tell him. 

“Hey, Dustin?” Steve says, voice a little shaky, but he tries to shake it off when Dustin plops back down beside him.

“What?”

“I-..” He starts, but he trails off, fidgeting with his fingers in his lap. Dustin’s brow raises suspiciously.

“Dude, you’re acting weird. What’s wrong with you?”

He knows that this is the perfect moment to just say it. To get this off his chest, to tell Dustin about the horrible secret that Steve’s been holding onto. He just… can’t.

He’s too scared. 

He doesn’t want Dustin to look at him differently. He doesn’t want to think that he’s a monster, even though he is. He doesn’t think that he could take it.

“Never mind,” Steve shakes his head, “Just start the movie, yeah?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Henderson. We don’t have all night.”

So, Dustin starts it. Steve tries his best to pay attention to the movie, but his mind keeps wandering away from it. There’s too much on his mind. He doesn’t know if telling anyone will actually help, or if it’ll just make everything worse. What if there’s no cure to what’s wrong with Steve? What if he’s stuck like this for the rest of his life? Unable to turn the air up or wear a sweatshirt without feeling like he’s dying? 

Is there even a chance for him to live a normal life again? Have a job? Fall in love?

He doesn’t know. 

As much as he can, Steve watches. He likes the movie for what he can focus on, but he wasn’t expecting it to change his view of his life in just the span of a few minutes. 

“There’s something not right here.” Luke’s voice echoes through the speakers, “I feel cold.”

Steve’s attention is immediately captured on the screen. An uneasy feeling settles in his stomach, like the movie somehow knows what Steve is feeling, experiencing, living. 

Cold. 

He watches with intensity as Yoda, who was goofy and a little annoying in the beginning suddenly turns apprehensive as Luke is drawn to that unsettling place. Steve leans forward when he jumps into a cave, when the music turns eerie, when everything around him doesn’t seem right. He explores with hesitation and curiosity, but Steve can’t shake the lingering feeling that something awful is about to happen. 

And it does. He jumps a little when Darth Vader appears from the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere and starts to duel with Luke. Is this the end of the movie? Is this the big moment? It can’t be, right? How did Vader manage to sneak up on him when he thought he was safe? 

Steve doesn’t notice that he gasps when Vader’s head is sliced clean off of his shoulders. The shock hasn’t quite set in when his helmet suddenly explodes in a plume of smoke, eventually fading out to reveal Luke’s very own face staring back at him. 

“What the hell?” Steve says out loud. 

“What?” He knows Dustin has a shit-eating grin on his face. He can feel it. 

“I don’t get it.”

“Uh, okay? What’s not to get?”

“Luke doesn’t know Vader’s his father yet, right?”

Dustin smacks the side of Steve’s arm, eyes going wide. 

“Dude!”

“Oh, come on. Literally everyone on the planet knows that by now.” Steve picks up the VHS remote, hitting pause much to Dustin’s annoyance. “But I don’t get it. If he doesn’t know Vader is his dad, and this is supposed to be some fear thing from the Dark Side, why is he afraid of becoming like his dad?”

Dustin sighs deeply, squishing his face with his hands and groaning obnoxiously. 

“It is a miracle that they let you in senior level English with those critical analysis skills. He’s not afraid of becoming like his dad. That’s not the point.”

“Okay, then enlighten me, Einstein-“

“Einstein was physics, not English. Or film.”

“ Whatever.” Steve doesn’t know why he’s so invested in this, why he needs an answer so badly, but he does. He needs to know why. “Tell me what it means, then. This is confusing as hell.”

Dustin lets out another long sigh, one that Steve almost considers charging him for by dollar every time he does it. He sits up and meets Steve at eye level on the couch, trying to mask how eager he is at explaining something nerdy and failing.

“It’s not that he’s scared that Vader is his dad. He’s afraid because Vader fell to the dark side. The Force is one being, y’know? Light side and dark side. And this, while it’s foreshadowing the Vader reveal, sure, is trying to show Luke’s fear of the dark side of himself taking over. Of being too far gone that he becomes, well… the monster he believes Vader is. That he knows Vader is, at this point, I guess.” 

“So, he’s scared because of what Yoda said earlier, about how The Force is both good and bad?”

“Exactly. Luke is good. He knows he’s good. But, Vader has the same powers as him. They both use The Force, but they use it for different reasons. If Vader is able to use this part of him that they share for evil, what’s stopping Luke from doing the same thing? How is he supposed to stop the evil from overtaking the good? Can he be both? Where does the line lie? It’s about knowing what you’re capable of, but wanting to be better than that.”

As silly as it sounds, tears start to well up in Steve’s eyes at Dustin’s explanation. That there is a chance to be both good with the capability of evil living inside of you. That the decision on which side wins, at the end of the day, comes down to the individual. You can choose to be bad when it lives inside of you, or you can choose to let that goodness shine through and become something helpful. 

Steve didn’t choose for this part of him to exist. He didn’t want there to be a world where he’s part monster, but that is his reality now. And at the end of the day, it’s up to him how it’s used. 

And maybe, just like Luke, Steve needs a helping hand. 

“… Dude, are you crying?” Dustin asks, turning his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed together.

“Shut up,” He shakes his head, “No, I’m not. Or, maybe I am. Yeah, a little bit.”

“I know that it’s deep, but I don’t think it’s that-“

“I have to tell you something,” Steve says, a little breathless, “But-… It’s our secret, okay? You can’t tell anyone. And I mean anyone, Henderson. Life or death.”

“You’re freaking me out, Steve. You’re acting weird.”

“Do you promise not to tell anyone?”

“I’m not promising anything until I know what the hell you’re talking abou-“

“No. If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else, Dustin. I mean it. There’s-… There’s no telling what could happen to me if you told someone and it got to the wrong person, okay?”

“Why are you acting like you’re being hunted by the government or something?”

“Because I could be.”

The look on Dustin’s face morphs into further confusion. His nose scrunches up, his eyebrows are nearly touching from how hard he’s creasing his face, and he sighs.

“Did you kill somebody? Because Steve, I can’t be an accomplice to murder-“

“Yeah, Dustin. I killed someone and I’m asking a thirteen year old for help with the body. No, man. It’s-… Can you please just promise me that what I tell you stays with you?”

“Fine!” He throws his arms up, shaking his head, “But if it’s illegal and we get caught, I’m lying. I don’t know anything.”

Steve nods, rubbing his hands together in his lap. Okay. He can do this. He can tell Dustin. He has the potential for goodness despite the bad. He can be brave. He can be like Luke.

“… Do you remember when I got bit in the junkyard?”

“Uh, duh. You were bleeding everywhere. If it hadn’t been for me, you would have bled out. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He shakes his head, “Well, uh… Something happened to me after that. That I can’t really… explain? I just- I’m not… the same, anymore.”

“Not the same? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that I can't stand it when it’s hotter than sixty degrees in my house anymore. That I can’t… smell meat without feeling… wild? It’s so much harder to say out loud than it should be.”

He doesn’t look over at Dustin, not yet. It’s too hard. He’s scared that when he does, he’ll be met with a face of disgust and betrayal for not telling him sooner. 

“I just-… I changed. Whatever was inside the demo dog changed me, and I’m different now, but I-“

“What do you mean different? What happened?”

“I mean that I think I’m-.. I’m part-… There’s-… I’m a monster now, Dustin.” His voice is barely above a whisper, “It made me like them. But… not? I’m still me, but there’s part of me that’s a monster now, and I-… I don’t know what to do. I’m scared of it, but I want to be able to-.. Control it? Be in control of the bad.”

The silence that fills the room is nearly deafening. He waits, and waits, and waits for Dustin to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. It takes every bit of courage that he has in his body to look over at Dustin, only to see his mouth is agape, staring at Steve like he just grew a third head. 

Or, that his mouth split open to reveal hundreds of rows of razor sharp teeth. 

He brings his hand to his face just to check, traces along the faded scars, and he sees Dustin’s eyes focus in on them. 

“What do you mean that it-… It made you like them, Steve?”

“That uh,… My face splits open like the demogorgan’s face sometimes. And that I-.. Have other weird Upside Down traits.”

In seconds, Dustin is leaning across the couch, grabbing onto Steve’s face with his hand, aggressively turning his jaw both directions to get better looks at the scars. At first, Steve’s panic rises quickly, and he feels that familiar bubbling pain start to form that he feels before he transforms. He wants to pull away from Dustin, but he can’t because of how hard he’s holding onto his face. 

“Are these scars from that?”

“Yeah.”

He’s silent again for a minute, tilting Steve’s head back and forth. Surely, he’s disgusted by what he sees. By what Steve is. He’s going to run away and tell every-

“That’s so fucking cool!” Dustin shouts, too loudly, “I mean- It’s not cool that you’re a monster, but that- You’re! That’s! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“It’s not exactly easy to say, Dustin. It’s a lot.”

“It’s badass is what it is! Dude, what other kind of powers do you have? Can you move shit with your mind like El?! Can you open your face up on command? I want to see!”

“Dude. No. It’s gross.”

“It’s gross.” Dustin mocks, shaking his head side to side, “It’s not gross! It’s cool! Are there like, teeth in your throat? Can you feel them? And can you control it?”

“I can’t feel them anymore, no. And I can only do it on command sometimes, most of the time it just… happens to me. I can open and close the uh,... flaps? That’s as far as I’ve gotten with it.”

“Screw the movie! We need to run tests! Experiments!”

The thing that Steve expected the least was for Dustin to be this excited about it, but it makes him feel weirdly… better. It’s strange that the thing that brings them closer is the thing that they’ve been running away from for so long, but over the next few weeks, months, Steve and Dustin get closer and closer. They run tests, figure out what some of the triggers for it are, and he’s able to help Steve figure out how to be better at doing it on command. Not that he plans on ever showing anyone else, but just in case. They might need it one day.

Because, as Dustin points out one day, the fact that Steve’s demo-side popped up after El apparently closed the gate doesn’t look good for them.

But, if it comes back, maybe Steve will be able to use the bad for good. 

___________________

As sad as it is to say, Dustin ends up being Steve’s only friend for the remainder of his senior year. 

It’s just easier that way. He doesn’t know if it was luck or something else that he lost the majority of his popularity and friends prior to becoming like this, but it works out in his advantage for the last few months he has left. He doesn’t have to try to break off friendships, doesn’t have to come up with excuses as to why he can’t hang out anymore, because there isn’t a reason to. Billy’s presence was enough to kill any remaining cool points Steve had. 

Which is fine. It’s fine. Steve doesn’t need popularity to be happy. 

His parents come home for a little bit towards the end of his senior year, and Steve does his best to keep a good face on for them, even though the first thing his dad does upon walking in is turn the air up to seventy. 

“Jesus H. Christ, Stephen. Why is it so damn cold in here? Do you have any idea how expensive that is?” Is the first thing that his dad says to him when he walks through the door, beelining to the thermostat before Steve can even protest. 

It’s fine. He knew that he was going to have to turn it back up eventually. 

“Sorry,” He says, “I turned it down after my run this morning and forgot to turn it back up.”

James eyes him from across the room, before shaking his head, “Well, don’t forget again. You’re not the one who pays the bills around here, Stephen. I am. And I don’t appreciate you running up my electric bill. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Steve says, even though he doesn’t understand. The bills barely put a dent in his parents bank account, especially not one that they would ever notice. And it’s not like they’re home enough for the temperature to affect them any. 

“Your mother and I are going to get settled, and then it’ll be time for dinner. I expect you to be at the table at 6:30.”

“Yes, sir.”

Once he’s dismissed, Steve makes his way upstairs to his bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. It doesn’t take long for the house to start to heating up, which means in turn, it doesn’t take long for Steve to start feeling like his skin is going to peel off of his body at any second. 

He paces back and forth across his room, which he knows is only going to make things worse, but if he keeps moving, then he won’t think about the searing pain traveling through his entire body. He’s so hot. He ends up stripping down to just his underwear in the time that he’s waiting for dinner to be ready, laying in the center of his bed with his eyes closed. 

Usually, Steve hates when his parents are gone for long periods of time. He still has that meek childlike need for his parents to be around living deep inside of him, despite the fact that he’s never felt like they liked him very much. It’s nice to have noise in an otherwise hauntingly silent house, it’s nice to sit at dinner with other people even if he knows that they’re going to have something negative to say about him and his life. Most of the time, Steve would take being berated by his father over them being gone just so that he didn’t have to spend as much time alone. 

Now?

He wants them to leave as fast as possible. He needs them to go on another business trip that takes them away for months at a time, so that he can turn the A/C back on and be comfortable in his home. The fear of exposing this new side of himself to his parents is also high. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t let him explain. They would send him away without a second thought to be experimented on. 

Around 6:25, Steve forces himself to get out of bed and get dressed again. Luckily, he knows his parents won’t question it if he comes downstairs in shorts and a tank top, considering that’s what he’s been wearing around them for the majority of his life. The walk down the stairs feels an eternity long.

It only gets worse when he crosses the threshold of the kitchen, which smells like cooked steak. 

Which used to be one of Steve’s favorite smells, coming home from a long day of practice to a home cooked meal and perfectly cooked steak from his mom.

Not anymore. 

It makes him want to gag. 

The smell of blood doesn’t circulate in the air from the perfectly cut pieces of meat. It smells burnt. Rotten. 

The kitchen is also entirely too hot. 

He wants to turn and run back upstairs, fake being sick or something, but just when he’s about to leave, his father enters the kitchen. He gives Steve a once over, eyes narrowing into a glare, before nodding his head towards the dining room table. 

“Go. Your mother worked hard on dinner. We also need to have a conversation about your plans after college before your mother and I leave for Seattle this weekend. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Steve nods, trying to put on his best face, even though he feels like he’s about to drop to the floor at any second. Sweat is beading up on his forehead, but he forces himself to sit at the table and wait to be served.

The smell is worse when the steak is in front  of him. 

He’s a little lucky that before his transformation, he liked his steak medium, but it isn’t anything close to the raw meat that he finds himself salivating over these days. 

His mom, Stephanie, gives him a half smile when she sits his plate in front of him. 

“Here you go, Stephen. Enjoy.”

“Thank you, Mom.”

Steve and Stephanie’s relationship has always been a little… rocky, to say the least. It’s better when James isn’t around, but it was never perfect. But, Steve thinks that his mom did the best with the hand she was given, and he tries really hard not to blame her for the lack of her presence in his life. 

So much of it comes down to the fact that his dad is an untrustworthy asshole that doesn’t care about the vows he took with his wife when they got married. One affair could have been forgiven, but after the third one, Stephanie stopped letting him out of her sight. 

But, that meant that she started leaving more often than she ever did when Steve was young. He misses her, sometimes. Most of the time. 

When James joins them at the table, Steve keeps his head low, trying not to do anything to piss his dad off more than he already has by just… existing in the same space as him.  

“So, Stephen,” James starts before the first bite of food has even been taken, “Have you heard back from any colleges? We’ve been waiting for you to tell us which ones you were accepted into.”

Except, Steve hadn’t been accepted into any. 

Besides his grades, Steve had been going through more than the normal American teenager. It wasn’t every day that you were turned into an interdimensional monster while still trying to be a high school student. The essays he sent in weren’t nearly as good as they could be, mostly because he couldn’t focus on them anymore. Going to school was more a game of self control than trying to pass these days. 

He had been rejected by three of the four colleges that he applied to, and he can feel it deep in his soul that the fourth one will be coming any day now. 

At least his father was getting this out of the way now. Maybe he could get away with not eating if they fight enough. 

“I-..” He starts, tapping his nails against the table, “I haven’t been accepted to any. I was rejected three times.”

“Unsurprising.” 

“James.” Stephanie lightly scolds, earning her a tight glare from her husband. 

“What? You want me to lie to him? Pretend like I had high hopes he was going to make it into any school, let alone ones of his choice? I told you from the beginning that him getting a higher education was a joke.”

In one ear and out the other. His fathers opinion doesn’t matter. It’s fine. 

It still hurts.  

“I’m still waiting on one more letter,” Steve says, “Hopefully it’ll have better news.”

“Well, when it comes in as another rejection, we need to have a conversation about you joining me as an intern until I can train you to take over the business after I retire. It’s the better option anyways.”

He doesn’t know how many times he’s told his dad that he doesn’t want to follow in his footsteps. The idea of ending up miserable like his father makes him sick to his stomach, especially in a line of work that he’s loathed for taking his parents away from him so often. 

“I was actually thinking of getting a part time job instead,” Steve says, picking up his fork and stabbing it through a piece of broccoli on his plate, “Take a gap year. Try to apply again once I have more real life experience.”

“Real life experience doesn’t erase the fact that you chose to slack off in your classes, Stephen.”

“No, but I still think it would be good for me.”

“I don’t think you would know what’s good for you if it slapped you in the face.” 

“And you do?” Steve says, feeling that anger bubble in his chest, making him talk to his dad in a way he would have never dared before. “You know what’s good for me? You don’t even know me. You’re not home enough to know what’s good for me.”

“Stephen James,” His father scolds, “Do not talk to me that way, you understand?”

He scoffs, rolling his eyes, “Or what? What’re you going to do? Ground me? Hit me? I’d like to see you try.”

“Stephen-“ His mother starts, but a large hand slaps against the top of the table, hard enough that every piece of silverware and plate shakes. Steve jumps, eyes going wide for only a second, before he makes himself stand his ground. He isn’t scared of his dad. Not right now. Not when he knows that if this escalates, he has the upper hand. 

That boiling anger keeps bubbling towards the surface, turning into pure unbridled rage like he’s only felt once before when his dad laughs at him. 

“I can do both of those things, Stephen, and you wanna know why? Because this is my house. You’re my son, living under my roof, and I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

When his dad pushes himself out of his seat to start rounding the table towards where Steve is sitting, that’s when he starts to feel like he’s going to lose control. The monster inside of him is begging to be let out to play, and Steve doesn’t know if he has the restraint to stop it from doing exactly that. This part of him is wild, it feels threatened by his dad right now, and wild things are known to flash their teeth when they’re scared. 

Steve, unfortunately, has a lot more of those now than most wild things have. 

“Stay the fuck away from me.” He says, scooting his chair back as his dad advances on him. 

“No, you want to talk like a grown man, then we’re going to settle this like grown men.” 

“I said, stay the fuck away from me.” 

Stumbling out of his chair, Steve tries to back up towards the door while the corners of his lips

start to split. James is right in front of him, trying to grab at his shirt and shoulders while his mom screams at them both to stop. Steve wants to yell that he isn’t doing anything. His dad is the one attacking him, he’s the one coming after Steve, but all of his self control is going into not monstering out and killing his dad. 

Because that rage keeps building. He feels almost like he did when Billy was beating the fuck out of him at The Byers house. That urge to kill living deep inside of his bones, except this time is worse, because Steve knows where it’s coming from. Before it had been scary because he didn’t know why he felt like that, but he knows now, and he knows that he has the capacity to kill his dad right here and now without a second thought. 

And honestly?

He would be lying if he said that he didn’t consider it. 

The next few seconds are kind of a blur for Steve, but he knows at some point, his dad gets ahold of his shoulders and tries to pull him in close or swing on him, something of the sort. Then, it feels like Steve blinks, there’s a loud crash, and then his dad is on the floor with his mom at his side. 

Luckily, when Steve blinks back into reality, his dad isn’t bleeding anywhere. He clearly isn’t dead by the way he tries to stumble back up to his feet, a broken dining room chair laying between them, and Steve doesn’t know what happened. His hands are shaking, the tips of them threatening to turn into long claws. 

A quiet chirp travels from his chest.

“You ungrateful fucking brat!” James screams from the floor, trying to crawl up off the floor and over Stephanie to get another swing in on Steve, “This is how you want to treat me?! After the life I’ve given you?! You wanna get a job? Fine! Get a fucking job, Stephen, because after this little stunt you pulled tonight? You’re done. Done! Do you hear me? You’re cut the fuck off. Whatever is in your account is it.”

“James,” Stephanie tries to reason with him, but Steve knows it’s worthless, “He didn’t mean it-“

“Bullshit! He shoved me over a damn chair! He broke it. And he’ll be replacing it with whatever fucking job he gets. Go to your room, Stephen James. I don’t wanna see you before we leave tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.” Steve snaps back, making brief eye contact with his mom, who looks… remorseful. There’s regret in her eyes, but Steve doesn’t know what for. 

All he does know is that he needs to get the hell out of the kitchen before he ends up really hurting someone. 

Or worse. 

He doesn’t need to slam his door, but he does for the effect. He can hear his parents arguing through the walls, even when he grabs the walkman he had bought himself for his eighteenth birthday a couple weeks ago and plops his headphones on. 

Tomorrow, he could start looking for jobs. Ones that didn’t require a lot of movement or heavy uniforms, ones that had good A/C, and where he didn’t think that he would find himself in a situation where he was going to snap. 

Tonight? Steve curls up in his bed with Billy Joel’s album The Stranger playing through his headphones, trying to drown out the sounds of his parents screaming like he’s done so many times before. 

____________________

“I got it!” Dustin shouts, smacking his hand on the table, making Steve jump.

“Got what? Jesus Christ, Henderson. Warn a guy, next time.” He sighs, shaking his head.

“Your job! I figured it out!”

“Dude, if it’s not a legitimate idea-“

“It is. Listen, I heard from someone at school that there’s an ice cream shop opening in Starcourt next week. That would be perfect, right? It would have to be cold in the store for the ice cream to not melt.”

And despite how much Steve hates to admit it, Dustin’s right. He usually is.

He’s surprised when he gets the job at Scoops Ahoy, and he’s even more surprised when he doesn’t feel like he’s dying as he works. The store is kept a comfortable temperature for him, and the fact that the uniform is shorts is even better. He’s unexpectedly excited to go to work every day. It’s strange how nice it feels to be the person providing for himself.

His dad hadn’t been kidding when he said that Steve was cut off. 

That was almost two months ago, and Steve hadn’t seen a single penny drop into his account since then. His parents kept the bills paid, but his dad didn’t give him the same allowance for food or fun as he had before. Steve had been smart enough to not blow through the money his parents gave him weekly, which meant that he had money to keep himself afloat for a while, but it would run out sooner or later.

He didn’t make a lot working at Scoops, minimum wage at best, but it was better than nothing. 

It’s also easy work, for the most part. Scooping ice cream isn’t hard, the most difficult part of the job ends up being dealing with customers, and his co-worker Robin.

She isn’t the worst person in the entire world, Steve actually thinks that she’s pretty funny most of the time, but she loathes Steve at first, and he doesn’t even know why. On their first day, she stared at him with wide eyes, mouth agape, before saying, “What are you doing here?”

“… Uh, I’m here for training?”

“What? No. You’re Steve Harrington.”

“Yeah? I am? What does that- I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

An offended look washes over her face, and she crosses her arms across her chest, propping her converse up on the table of the booth that she’s sitting at. She looks familiar, but Steve doesn’t think that they’ve ever had a conversation before. Hawkins isn’t exactly a big town, so he’s sure that he’s seen her around somewhere, he just doesn’t know where.

“We go to school together. Or, did. You graduated, right? Is that why you’re here? Summer job before you ship off to college? I can think of about ten other jobs that you would be so much better suited for than this one, so maybe you should look at those. Plus, it isn’t going to be fair to everyone else that works here if you’re only here for like two months, and then leave-“

“I’m not going to college this fall, so you don’t have to worry about that. I’m Steve, by the way. But, you already know that…?”

She puffs her cheeks out a little bit, flexing her foot back and forth, tucking a piece of her sandy blonde hair behind her ear. It’s only then that Steve notices how… pretty she is. Freckles dance along her cheeks and nose, eyeliner smeared messily around her insanely blue eyes. 

Very pretty.

“My name is Robin. Buckley. Robin Buckley.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Robin Buckley.”

Of all the hires, Robin ends up being the person that Steve likes the most. Everyone else gets on his nerves, and while Robin does too, it’s in a different way. She’s tolerable, even if she doesn’t seem to think that Steve is. The thing that Steve dislikes the most about her is the mixed signals that she sends him almost every day.

He can’t tell if they’re friends or if she only puts up with him because she has to.

Some days, she shows up after school and talks his leg off. She tells him about all the progression of school drama that he remembers, talks to him about band even though he doesn’t have a single clue what she’s going on about, and she even laughs at some of the jokes that he makes. It’s moments like that where Steve thinks they might actually be… friends.

But, other days, she comes in and will barely talk to him. And he won’t lie, the cold shoulder from her fucking sucks when they’re the only two people running the store together. It usually ends up with Steve running front of house while Robin works on getting everything closed down, and them just working in silence. 

Usually, not being friends with someone wouldn’t bother Steve as bad. But, losing all of your friends at once, becoming an interdimensional monster, and having your only friend be a 13 year old gets pretty lonely, pretty fast. So, yeah, part of Steve was really hoping that him and Robin could be real, genuine friends, and part of him is disappointed every time that she shuts down whatever progress he thinks that they’ve made.

Despite his initial hesitation about working with the public, Steve hasn’t had a single moment where he thought that he might monster out. Sure, customers make him mad, and he has to fight the angry little chirps that want to escape his throat, but he doesn’t feel like his face is going to split open and he’s going to tear them apart. He would count that as a win.

One thing that people don’t tell you about becoming like Steve though is that your ability to flirt flies out the fucking window.

It isn’t like Steve is trying to get a date or a girlfriend, because the idea of truly having any of that flew out the window in October, but it’s still nice to feel wanted in some way. He misses flirting. He misses making girls get flustered with only his words, making their cheeks turn a rosey red with shy little smiles on their faces. He misses the quiet giggle, or the tickle of their hair against his face when he leaned in to kiss their temple. 

He used to be good at this.

He used to be the best at this.

Not anymore.

Whatever coordination he had before this has flown out the fucking window. His voice is too loud, his steps too heavy, his movements are clunky. He can see girls' faces scrunch up in disgust before he even gets halfway over to them, which instantly makes him fumble even worse. Robin gets a kick out of it, though. 

At least someone gets some enjoyment out of it. 

Life is as normal as it can be for the first few weeks of Starcourt being open. Dustin leaves for summer camp, Steve goes to work and mostly enjoys his days, and he even learns how to cover up his face scars a little better with some makeup he found left over in his moms room. No one ever really noticed them before, or, if they did, no one ever points them out. Steve’s grateful for that. He doesn’t have a fake explanation for them. 

Normal ends around the time that Dustin comes back from camp. Around the time that they find out that Russians are running a secret base under the mall that he’s been working in, and even more so around the time that they get trapped in said basement.

It isn’t until they’re in the basement that Steve starts to feel that part inside of him bubble up a little bit. It’s calling to him in a way that it never has before, begging him to go somewhere, but he doesn’t let himself follow it. 

The further that they get into the secret Russian underground, the worst that feeling gets. Something is begging him to come to it, to come home, and it’s terrifying. 

Every bit of self control that he has is used to keep himself focused on making sure that Dustin, Erica, and Robin are safe. He can do that. He can take care of them. He can protect them if worse comes to worse. 

It turns out though, that being part monster has its advantages. Because of his heightened senses, he’s able to loosely map out the hallways of the underground pathways, and he can smell people coming before they even turn the corner. It saves them some headache when they’re able to hide before someone walks by. 

Between him and Robin, they’re able to make sure that Dustin and Erica get away from The Russian’s chasing them, but it isn’t without sacrifice. Him and Robin are captured, dragged to separate rooms, and that’s when the interrogation starts. 

It doesn’t matter how many times he tells them that it was an accident that he ended up here, they don’t believe him. 

At first, they’re just asking him over and over. It isn’t until about the fifth time of asking him why he’s here that they start using force. The first fist that collides with his face takes him off guard, snapping his head to the side, and a loud groan escapes his lips. He hasn’t been hit like this in almost a year, and The Russian guard definitely packs more of a punch than Billy Hargrove did. 

The first hit makes the monster inside of him growl loudly, the anger starting to bubble up with a need to defend himself that he pushes down. He can’t let it out. Not here. 

Hit after hit lands on his face, until his eye starts to swell shut. His face is throbbing, the monster is screaming to be let out, but he fights it.

There’s no telling what The Russians would do to him if they knew about that side. 

“Who do you work for?” A Russian officer asks, and Steve shakes his head.

“I work for Scoops Ahoy. I work for Scoops Ahoy.” Steve shakes his head once his arms are tied behind his back, “I just scoop ice cream. That’s all I do. I swear-”

A fist collides with his face, and Steve lets out a yelp as his head snaps to the side. Pain erupts from the side, and he feels that bubbling feeling growing further and further towards the surface. He knows that he could get out of here if he wanted to, but the fear of losing control is too high. If he lets the monster out and he can’t control it, he could hurt people he cares about. Dustin. Robin. Erica. 

He can’t let that happen. He bites his lip. 

“I am going to ask again. Who do you work for?”

“Scoops-” Another hit cuts him off, and he groans. 

“How did you get down here?”

“It-.. It was an accident. We- Our delivery didn’t show up, so we.. We went looking for it. It was an accident. We won’t tell anyone, I promise. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t-”

The next punch is to his gut, and it knocks the wind straight out of him. He chokes, tries to catch his breath, but he can’t. Every attempt at regaining any kind of composure just makes him gasp worse, and the officer doesn’t let up this time. The first hit becomes two, becomes three, becomes four before he’s taking a step back.

“How did you get down here?”

“I told you already-”

The guard who’s speaking looks at the one who won’t stop hitting him, and just nods his head. From there, Steve loses track of how many hits to the face and stomach he takes. His whole body hurts. The monster inside of him is ripping the bars of its enclosure off, it’s crawling towards the surface, and Steve doesn’t think that he has the energy to fight it anymore.

Maybe he shouldn’t. 

Maybe he should let it out. 

This part of him exists for a reason, right? 

It could protect him. 

It could save Robin.

All he has to do is… let go.

When the last punch is landed on his face, his head falls forwards, and the world around him goes dark. 

______________________

When he comes to, it’s to Robin screaming in his ear. Her voice is ear piercing, and it makes his already throbbing head worse.

“Can you-.. Can you stop yelling?”

“Oh my god,” She rushes out, leaning her head back against his shoulder, “Steve, are you okay?”

He isn’t sure how he got here. He tries to look around, but his eye is still swollen shut, and his head is pounding in a way that he’s never felt before. The last thing that he remembered was… trying to let the monster take control. He runs his tongue along the inside of his lip, trying to see if he can feel the split, but there’s nothing there.

The more he thinks about it, it wouldn’t make much sense for them to tie him to Robin if he had monstered out. There’s no way they would let him go, then. 

It was probably for the best that he passed out before he could let it take over. 

“My ears are ringing, I can’t really breathe, and it feels like my eye is about to pop out of my skull, but apart from that? Yeah, I’m doing pretty good.” Steve sighs, trying to make a joke, but it doesn’t land. 

Together, they are able to hop two full spaces towards a pair of scissors on the table that they could use to cut their binding, but on the third one, they fall over. Steve is trying to come up with a plan, some way to push themselves back up without being able to use their hands or feet, but then Robin starts laughing, and Steve thinks that she has a nice laugh, all things considered. 

“Are you.. laughing?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, it’s just-… I can’t believe that I’m going to die in a basement with Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.” Robin says, and Steve’s heart drops when she starts talking about how they had class together. That she sat behind him every Tuesday and Thursday for a whole year, and he didn’t even recognize her. 

“The day you met me,” Robin whispers, “You asked if we knew each other. And I just… I don’t know what I expected. Of course you didn’t recognize me. Why would The King of Hawkins high remember someone who sat one seat behind him for an entire year? You were an asshole. But, I was obsessed with you. All of us were, even if we didn’t want to admit it.”

When Robin starts talking about how people would die for what he had before, he doesn’t know how to tell her that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That deep down, becoming unwanted by the people who used him was one of the best things to happen to him. He’s been on both sides of the coin, and he prefers being mostly unnoticed. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” He says, trying to find all the right words, “Having those things isn’t all that great. Seriously. It just.. Baffles me that everything people tell you that you should care about is just… Bullshit. But, I guess you have to mess up to figure things out, right?”

“I hope so,” Robin’s voice is quiet, “I feel like my whole life has been one big… Error.”

That makes Steve laugh, because that’s how he’s felt since he was seven years old. Like his life was a mistake, like he couldn’t be anything that he was supposed to be because he wasn’t good enough. He’s always felt like he was alone in feeling like that, but Robin is here, and she’s proving to him that he isn’t alone.

“Yep.” He says, and he’s still laughing. She laughs too, and he feels her press her back against his.

“At least it can’t get any more messed up than this, huh?”

“You know, I really wish I would have known you in Clicks class.” He says, and he means it. If he had met Robin in that class, she could have helped him be better sooner.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They lay there on their sides for a little bit, just… talking. Getting to know each other. Steve’s still trying to come up with a plan between their quiet talk, because he refuses to let this be his end, but especially not Robin’s. She’s too good for this, too good to be caught up in the bullshit that is The Upside Down and stupid Russian soldiers. 

The monster inside of him is begging him to let it help. The bindings around their hands and legs are tight, but he could definitely slice a claw through them if he tried hard enough. Steve also knows that if worse comes to worse, if they get the bindings off, he could fight their way out. 

He’s just so scared of losing control and hurting Robin. 

Sure, he’s never lost control around Dustin, but he was never in danger. This part of him feels like a wild animal sometimes, and when wild animals are provoked, they attack anything and everything in their space. 

Aside from the fear of hurting her, he’s afraid of… losing her. 

Which is stupid. He knows that. Before The Russian thing even started, they weren’t friends. They were co-workers who tolerated each other, but Steve thinks that they could be friends if they make it out of here alive. 

And the number one way to ruin a friendship before it even begins could be to transform into a flesh eating monster in front of her. Could be. He doesn’t know for sure. 

So, for a few moments, they lay there on their sides, just talking. When the door opens, a bunch of people all speaking Russian walk in, and The General who was in-charge of Steve’s interrogation tsks at them. Their chairs are lifted back up, and the man stands in front of Steve with a sickening smile on his face, reaching out to hold Steve’s chin between his index finger and thumb. 

“Let’s try to tell the truth this time, yeah? To make your visit with Dr. Zharkov less…” He says, the smile on his face slowly dropping as he runs his fingers along the scars on Steve’s chin. He can see him studying them, if only a little bit through his limited vision, so he jerks his head to the side despite how bad it makes his head throb. “… Painful.”

The needle that they stick in his neck hurts. It’s big. The fluid that they pump into him courses through his body like hot lava. When they do the same to Robin, he tries to knock it away with his head, but it just ends with him getting the blunt end of the machine against the center of his forehead. He groans, letting his head fall to the side for a second, and once they’ve both been injected? The doctors… leave. 

Steve doesn’t know how long they’re gone for. 

All he knows is that whatever they injected into them isn’t… poisonous. He isn’t being eaten alive from the inside out, which is a positive, he thinks. He also know that he feels… good. 

Like, really good. 

Full body tingles from his toes to his ears, his heart is racing a little bit, but he likes it. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s dying from being away from his incredibly air conditioned house, and the pain in his face is subsiding with every passing moment. 

He doesn’t know if it’s because of the drugs, or because of his super monster healing. 

Either way, the pain going away is good. 

“… Honestly, I don’t really feel anything. Do you?” He asks, leaning his head back against Robin’s. 

“I mean, I.. I feel fine. I feel normal.”

“Yeah, I feel- I feel fine. I kind of feel… good.” Steve says, making Robin giggle, which is turn makes him laugh. 

And then they just can’t stop laughing. 

Which is nice. It’s nice to laugh. It’s nice to hear someone laugh, especially when they’re in this situation. He feels good, her laugh makes him happy, and he doesn’t know why, but he knows he can trust her with anything and everything. 

The plan from earlier is in his brain again, but this time? It’s a much better plan to him. He knows he won’t hurt Robin if he lets himself shift. He’ll protect her. 

Through their laughter, Steve shimmies his wrists to up his thighs as best he can. The bindings hurt against his skin, it feels almost like rope burn, but he just needs to get his fingers close enough to snip the rope around his legs with his claw. If he can move his arms freely, he should be able to snap the rope around his wrist, and then the ones holding them together. 

If he can manage to do all of that before the doctors come in, he could get the upper hand and take them out. 

He would just have to be quick about it. 

“Hey, Robin,” He laughs, “When those doctors come back in here, I’m gonna do something crazy, okay?”

“Crazy?” She giggles back, “What’re you gonna do, charm them to death?”

“Can I tell you a secret?” He whispers, still laughing, pulling his wrists right up where he needs them to. It takes a second of concentration to only grow one claw to snip through these, which is hard in his drugged state, but he can do it. He knows he can. 

“Duh.”

“I- I’m a-..” The amount of laughing he’s doing makes it hard to talk, but any fears and nerves that he had before this is long gone. He feels like he could tell anyone this secret, but especially Robin, “I’m a monster.”

“What?”

He doesn’t get a chance to explain when he means when the door opens again, and The General and doctor walk in. Steve stops his movements around the leg bindings, tucks his claw into his palm as best he can, still giggling as Dr. WhateverHisNameIs starts laying out tools beside them. 

“Is this a good time to mention that I don’t like doctors?” Robin says, and Steve leans his head back against hers. 

“Let’s try this again,” General Dickhead says, “Who do you work for?”

“Scoops,” Steve says, because it’s the truth. “ Scoops Ahoy.”

“How did you find it?”

“Completely by accident.” Not a total lie. When they started trying to decode the secret message, there was no way that they could have known where it would actually lead them. 

Apparently the answer isn’t good enough, because The Doctor walks over with some kind of tool in his hand, grabbing at Steve’s fingers, despite how hard he tries to keep them tucked into his palm. At least he doesn’t grab the one that’s still all gross and elongated. 

Robin is the only reason that he doesn’t get his fingernail ripped from his nail bed, because despite the fact that she already doesn’t stop talking, the drugs make it worse. Both The Doctor and The General walk over to face her instead of him, and Steve uses this as his chance. He tucks his claw up under his leg binding, waiting for the perfect moment to slice through it. 

Even though he knows he need to shut the fuck up about Dustin, he can’t. Because he knows what he’s saying is true. His best friend is smart, and Steve knows the minute that he got out of here, he went and found help. 

The smug smile that spreads across his face when he hears the alarm going off is one that couldn’t be beat. 

He uses the momentary distraction to cut through the leg binding, but he keeps himself as still as a board until The General leaves the room, leaving only Steve and Robin with the doctor. Steve can take one guy. Easy. 

“Hey, Rob?”

“Yeah, Steve?”

“I’m about to do something crazy,” He says, giggling a little bit, “But, you just gotta trust me. Okay? Don’t be scared.”

“What’re you talking about?” She asks, but he doesn’t respond. 

Steve closes his eyes for a brief second, searching for that longing feeling of his monster begging to come out to play, and once he’s got it? He lets his head fall forward, facing the ground. He takes a deep breath. 

In.  

Out.

The transformation process now is a lot faster than it was before him and Dustin started working on it. It isn’t as painful anymore either, not when his fingers crack and elongate, and not when his face splits open. It just… happens. 

In the matter of seconds, Steve jerks his arms as hard as he can, effectively snapping the binds attached to his and Robin’s shoulder in an instant. The perks of being part monster is super-human strength, he guesses. 

“Steve? Steve, what’re you-“

When he lifts his head back up and makes eye contact with the doctor, the fear in his eyes is real. It’s genuine. The tool in his hand falls to the ground, and Steve lets out a quiet trill before snapping the ropes around his wrists. 

The man starts cursing at Steve, saying something to him in Russian that Steve doesn’t understand, but he snaps the petals of his face at him, just to make him scream again. If Steve could laugh like this, he would be doubled over with laughter at his reaction. 

Behind him, he can still hear Robin freaking out. Her legs are still bond, and so are her wrists, but he knows that she can turn around at any second and see what he looks like right now. 

He needs to make this quick. He needs to-

The door of the room flies open, someone runs in with a battle cry, and then the doctor has a shocker to his chest until he falls limp to the ground. When Steve looks over, it’s Dustin, panting heavily, still holding the weapon in his hand. When they make eye contact, Dustin sighs, rolls his eyes. 

“Close your face. We don’t have time for this, Steve. We have to run.”

He doesn’t really remember the next little bit. It all passes by in a blur. He knows that they get out of the base, that they’re running all over the mall, and that he can’t stop laughing. He can’t help it. Robin is probably the funniest person that he’s ever met, and he’s ecstatic that she doesn’t seem phased by him being a monster. 

Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe it’s a sign that he can be what he is and still be worthy and deserving of love. Maybe it’s a good sign that someone can see Steve for what he really is, and see past it. 

When they end up in the bathrooms, puking their guts out, that’s when the nerves start to creep back up on Steve. The guilt of exposing Robin to something like that, exposing her to The Upside Down, getting her caught up in all this Russian shit. He feels horrible about it. 

When they’re sure that they’ve thrown everything up, and Robin shares her deepest secret with Steve, he’s positive that they’re bonded for life. Sitting side by side in a dirty bathroom, laughing quietly to themselves, and he hopes that after all of this, she sticks around. 

“Hey, can I-.. Ask you another question?”

“Shoot.”

“… You said you were a monster earlier.”

Steve nods.

“And then I-.. I saw your face do that thing.”

“Yeah.” Steve nods, pulling his knees a little closer to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. He expects at this moment for everything to fall apart, the dream of having a real friend by his side other than Dustin. He’s preparing himself for it. 

“Does it hurt?” She asks, tapping her feet on the ground next to him. He glances up at her, eyebrows furrowing together, a quiet laugh bubbling up his chest.

“That’s what you’re worried about? If it-.. Hurts?”

“Uh, duh. It looked painful! And your fingers got all long and claw-like, and that can’t feel good either! Dude, your face opened up, and there are rows and rows of teeth in there, and that’s! It has to hurt, right?”

Steve laughs, throwing his head back until it hits the stall behind him, his shoulders shaking and eyes welling up with tears from his happiness. 

“You aren’t freaked out?” He whispers after he calms down, and Robin shakes her head. 

“I mean, it’s crazy. It’s like, crazy, but… I’m not scared of you. You’re a good person, Steve.”

_____________________

Robin becomes Steve rock. 

He thinks he becomes hers too. 

From the time that they escape Starcourt, they don’t spend a day apart. Robin all but moves in with Steve by the end of summer, her parents seemingly just happy that she’s spending time with a boy, and Steve’s parents are never home to question the random girl sleeping in his bed every night. 

For the first week or so of their inseparable bond, Steve tries to make sure that his house is comfortable for Robin. He turns the air back up to around 70, opens the blinds up, cooks her dinner the exact way she likes every night. He feels like he has to prove himself to her, that if he can make himself useful, she won’t consider leaving him like everyone else has. 

Part of him knows deep down that she won’t leave. That if she was going to, she would have directly after Starcourt, after she had seen his monster. If Robin was going to leave, if she was freaked out or scared, she wouldn’t be willing to be here, alone in a house with him. 

That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t worry. 

So, he makes the house as comfortable for her as he possibly can. 

But, it comes at the cost of his own comfort. 

For that whole week, Steve is in physical pain every day. His wounds from being interrogated have healed thanks to his super healing, but every day, he feels like he’s on fucking fire. The house is too hot. His clothes are too tight, and there’s too many of them, even when he’s only wearing a tank top and shorts. 

He pretends that he doesn’t feel like he’s dying, and he thinks that he’s doing a pretty good job at it, until Robin sits down beside him one day with a stern look on her face. 

“We need to have a talk.”

“..  I don’t think a single good conversation has ever been started like that, but sure. What’s up?”

“Why do you look like you’re in pain all the time? Is it the monster? Is it me? I can’t tell if you’re in pain or if you’re uncomfortable or a mixture of both, but I’m concerned because I don’t know how to fix monster problems.”

Steve stares at her for a moment, a quiet laugh bubbling up, and he shakes his head.

“Have I really been that obvious?”

“To other people? Probably not. But, we’re bonded. We basically share one brain, which means I know discomfort when I see it. How do I help?”

“It’s not really something you can… help with. One of us is going to be uncomfortable either way.”

“What do you mean? Listen, I don’t know about your monster stuff. I know you don’t like talking about it, and trust me, I get it! That’s why I haven’t pried. But, I wanna help. And to help, I have to pry. So. Tell me everything.”

She shifts on the couch so that they’re sitting knee to knee, and Steve sighs quietly to himself. His head is resting on his palm against the back of the couch, and he tells her everything he can. Just like she asked, because he knows he can trust her.

He tells her about how he became like this, his weird eating habits, and how he needs it to be cold all the time. That when it’s even remotely hot around him, he feels like he’s dying. He isn’t even half way through the explanation before she’s pushing herself up and off the couch, marching over to the thermostat, turning it up. 

“What’re you doing?” He asks, even though he can see her clearly. 

“Turning the air down, duh.”

“You don’t have to do that-“

“If you think that I’m going to let you sit in discomfort and pain just so I’m not cold, you’re insane. I can wear a sweatshirt, Steve. It’s fine.”

And she does. 

Every single day that she comes over, Robin brings herself a sweatshirt and sweatpants, an extra pair of socks, and sometimes if she’s being dramatic, a beanie. A lot of them end up getting left at his house, a small collection forming in one of his drawers, but he likes it. It reminds him that she really isn’t going anywhere. That she’s happy to be here, with him, despite the fact that her fingers constantly feel like ice cubes. 

Before becoming a monster, Steve never had a friend like this. Not one who enjoyed his company just to enjoy it, who didn’t want anything out of their friendship. With Robin, there’s no social hierarchy for them to climb. With Robin, it’s just two hearts intertwining into one in the most innocent, platonic way possible. 

There aren’t a lot of things in life that Steve thinks he was made for or that were made for him, but he thinks that Robin is one of them. 

_____________________

Steve knows that in the grand scheme of things, he is incredibly lucky. 

He can’t think of many people who could tell not only one, but two different people that there’s a part of him that craves blood and death, and them barely even blink an eye at it. That despite the monster that lives inside of him, they keep him close like he’s the same as he was over a year ago. Robin and Dustin have both seen this part of him up close, but still choose to be close to him, to love him, and he should be grateful for that.

He is grateful.

But, he’s also incredibly lonely.

It’s not that Dustin and Robin’s company isn’t enough. He’s rarely without one or the other, and that’s great, but it isn’t what he craves.

Because deep down, all Steve Harrington has ever wanted, was to be loved.

He looked for it in Nancy, thought that he had found it, but he hadn’t. He doesn’t blame Nancy. Too much stuff happened during their relationship for them to be able to go on pretending that everything was okay. Too much pain, too much death, and he knows that they were doomed to end before it even began. 

That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t miss her.

Or, at least, the relationship part. 

He misses holding her hand while they walked down the street, he misses feeling the warmth of her body pressed against him, the feeling of her lips against his. He misses the way she would hold his face in her soft palms, rubbing under his eyes before she kissed him, and how she would tell him that she loved him. He misses being involved with her family, invited to Christmas or birthday parties, because it wasn’t as if his family spent any time together. 

He misses feeling like he was important to someone like that. 

The love that Steve has longed for has always felt so far away, but adding into the mix the fact that he’s not even fully human anymore, it feels even further. He can’t think of anyone who would be willing to live in a house that they have to be bundled up in all the time, someone who would be okay with the fact that sometimes his face splits open, or the fact that he doesn’t like when his meat is cooked anymore. He can’t even fathom having to tell someone about the horrors of The Upside Down, to ruin someone else's life with the knowledge that there’s a whole world under their feet that wants humanity dead. 

Steve didn’t realize how lonely this existence was bound to be now until recently. Until Robin started talking to him about the girl that she has a crush on in band, Vickie, and how he didn’t even realize that he stopped looking at girls around him after the bite. He had resigned himself to a life of loneliness when he woke up on his kitchen floor covered in blood that wasn’t his own that first night. 

Maybe somewhere out there, there’s a chance for Steve. Someone who can look past the bad and see the good that Steve has been trying so hard to be. That despite the fact that he’s a monster, he has so much love to give. More than he knows what to do with. Enough love that it feels like it’s building up in his heart until it’s about to explode, just begging to be given to somebody. 

But, for now, that person doesn’t exist. So, Steve pushes that love towards his friends. The ones who know and the ones who don’t. He takes Robin to school every day even though he’s already graduated, he never tells Dustin or the rest of The Party no when they ask him to take them places, because it gives him purpose. 

They need him, and that’s enough for now. 

__________________

Life is easy enough for Steve for some time. 

After Starcourt, he and Robin get jobs working at Family Video, because it ended up being one of the only places in town that would both hire Steve, and was kept at a cool enough temperature for him to exist comfortably in. They move through the motions of day to day life together, Steve doing everything he can to keep his monster in check, and Robin doing everything she can to help him do that. 

They have a good routine. Steve feels the most normal that he has in years. He has very few instances of wanting to monster out and lose control, but thanks to Robin and Dustin, he has an arsenal of breathing techniques and grounding tools to keep himself normal. 

Life is good.

Until March of ‘86. 

Until he and Robin are in Family Video when the news of a murder in the local trail park breaks on the TV.

Until he feels something calling and begging his monster to come home. 

There’s a voice in his head, one whose words he can’t make out, but he knows is there. It whispers in his ear all day long after he sees that news report.

Robin can tell. She gives him concern looks all day, but he brushes it off. He’s fine. He can get through this.

And he is feeling kind of back to normal until Dustin and Max come rushing into Family Video, talking about how they need to get ahold of Eddie Munson, the one who’s trailer the body was found in, because he didn’t do it. Because It’s Upside Down related, and that they have to save him. 

If possible, Steve’s body runs colder at the mention of The Upside Down. It makes sense. That pulling feeling he’s had all day.

Steve isn’t someone who can judge anyone on being a freak, not anymore, but he knows the rumors that used to fly about Eddie Munson. That he’s a satan worshiper, that he sold his soul to the devil, that he’s gay. Everything and anything that someone could come up with to ruin his reputation, it’s been said. 

But the thing that Steve has never understood about Munson was how he just lets it roll off of his shoulders. He can turn anything into a joke, plays into it because it’s funny, and Steve’s tried for years to understand how he does it. Even more so after he became a monster. How does Munson not bat an eye to the weird looks? To the hateful speech?

He’s always felt a little bad for Eddie, if he’s honest. 

And now he knows that once the news breaks that Chrissy was found at Eddie’s trailer, it’s going to be a witch hunt.

So, he helps them track him down.

Or, he stands there while Robin figures it out. 

They try calling all of his friends, but they’re met with dead end after dead end, until Reefer Rick’s name comes up in their search. They find his address in a matter of a couple of minutes, and then everyone’s pilling into Steve’s car to go track him down.

They can only hope that they get to him before the cops do. 

____________________

The boathouse, all things considered, is a very smart place for Eddie to hide. It’s on a low traveled road, and it’s almost completely blocked from those who would be driving past it. The back of the boat house has an opening towards the lake, which means that if someone did stumble upon him when he was hiding, he had an easy out. 

At first, Steve really is convinced that Eddie isn’t here, though. It doesn’t matter how many things they move, how many things he pushes around with the boat oar he picked up off the wall, there isn’t any sign of him. 

It isn’t until he starts tapping inside the boat himself that they get their first sign that they were right about his hiding place. 

Steve gets about a two second warning before he’s being shoved back and pinned against the wall with a bottle against his throat. 

The fear that he feels makes his monster stir, begging to be let out to protect their body. Steve can feel the corners of his lips wanting to split, but he fights it as best he can. 

Not here. 

Not like this.  

He can’t attack Eddie. 

It isn’t his fault. He’s just scared. Everything he’s known was ripped from him in an instant, a girl died in front of him, he’s just scared. 

But, so is Steve. So is his monster. 

“Eddie! Whoa, whoa, whoa! It’s us. It’s me! Dustin. You know me. You know me. Remember?”

“Steve,”  Robin whispers, and his eyes barely glance over at her, “Don’t. Don’t do it. You’re okay.”

“Steve isn't going to hurt you, Eddie. I promise. He won’t hurt you. You just gotta let him go, okay? Let him go, and we’ll figure all of this out.”

A low chirping noise rattles Steve’s throat, but it startles Eddie, making him shove the bottle up harder against his throat. The fear creeps higher and harder, and it becomes even more difficult to fight the beast from coming out. 

“Steve.” Robin says, shaking her head, “Don’t.”

“Eddie, we just want to help, okay? Steve’s a friend. He wants to help. But, you gotta let him go, okay? Let him go, tell us what happened, and we’ll help.”

“You won’t believe me.” Eddie says finally, voice shaking and scared. Steve’s been there. He’s felt that before. His heart breaks a little for him.

“Try us.” Max says, and it takes Eddie a moment, but he finally drops the bottle from Steve’s throat. When he takes a step back, Steve all but falls directly into Robin’s arms. She meets him half way, holding him up, cradling the back of his head. 

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” She whispers, holding him close while he breathes heavily. It’s the closest that he’s gotten to losing control on another person. He’s only ever used his monster to scare, never to hurt. 

He doesn’t think he would have been able to forgive himself if he had just lost control. 

So, he stays close to Robin, lets her ground him, because if she’s near, he won’t hurt anyone. 

______________________

The next day or so is a blur. 

They start tracking down The Upside Down again, Eddie gets ran from the boathouse, two more people die, and the voice in Steve’s head only gets clearer. 

“Stephen.” Is the only word he can make out, but it sends shivers down his spine every time. He hates it. 

He keeps it a secret. 

It’s easier that way. They don’t have time to worry about him, not when Max has fallen under Vecna’s curse. 

Because Steve will not let any of his friends die in this, but especially not one of the kids. 

So, he protects her as best he can. When she floats off the ground in the graveyard, he tries to hold her down. They save her with music, which Steve couldn’t be more grateful for if he tried. 

They find Eddie at Skull Rock, and they realize there’s a gate nearby. An entry way to The Upside Down, putting them one step closer to ending this forever. 

______________________

Steve really thought that the best course of action when it came to investigating the gate in Lover’s Lake would be for him to be the one to go down and check it out. The Upside Down is part of him, he’s felt called to it the entire time, which means that he shouldn’t have a problem finding it once he’s under water. Plus, Captain of the swim team means that for years, Steve has been training and practicing for a moment like this, having to condition himself to hold his breath longer than the average person. 

So, he strips his shirt, shoes and socks off. The relief that he feels taking those clothes off is insurmountable, the cool air above the lake and the gate feeling even more like home than anything ever has. He leans his head back, enjoys the breeze for a moment, before smiling back at where Eddie is sitting.

He doesn’t miss the eyes that are glued on him. It makes him feel a little better about himself, because he doesn’t remember the last time that someone looked at him like that. It was long before he became a monster, maybe even before Nancy. There might have been a time that she looked at him like that, but he doesn’t remember it anymore. 

So, maybe Steve puts on a little show of getting to the edge of the boat. Sue him. It’s nice to have someone’s attention, even if he isn’t completely sure if it’s attention that he wants. Eddie could just be staring at him because he looks dumb, but he chooses to convince himself it’s because he looks attractive to someone. 

Finding the gate once he dives in isn’t the problem. He swims straight down until he’s staring at red flashing from the gate below him. 

The problem is how he can’t stop staring at it. 

How he can feel it calling him.

“Come home, Stephen.” A voice says, startling him, causing him to have to start his ascent sooner than he was planning. Whatever air supply he had been saving disappeared when he gasped, meaning that by time he emerges from the surface, he’s gasping for air. It feels like there’s water in his lungs, and it doesn’t matter how many times he’s gasps for a breath, they never feel full enough. 

“Did you find it?!” Robin asks as Steve swims over to the side of the boat, still trying to catch his breath. He nods, holding onto the side, kicking his feet under the water to keep himself a float. 

“Yeah. It’s not a full sized gate, more like a snack sized one. But, it’s right under us.”

“Stephen,” The voice from earlier says again, sounding like it’s right in his ear this time, “You’ve fought this for long enough. It’s time to come home.”

He turns his head, looks behind him for the source of the voice, but there isn’t anything there. 

“… You okay, Steve?”

“I-.. Yeah. Sorry.” He says, turning back towards his friends, shaking his head, “Thought I heard something. Anyways, we need to-“

“Stephen, come home.”

This time, as the voice speaks, something wraps around his ankle, pulling his head under the water without time for him to catch his breath. Water fills his mouth, he breaks through the surface once more, only long enough to give Robin a horrified look before he’s pulled back under once again. 

When he ends up under the water, he is pulled down, down, down. It doesn’t matter how hard he fights back towards the surface, nothing can stop his quick descent down. 

Fear rushes inside of him in a way that he can’t stop. The petals of his face open faster than they ever have, and it hurts. His skin rips apart, his fingers crack and grow, all in a matter of seconds. Once he’s pulled through the gate, landing on the cold Upside Down ground, he is in full monster mode. 

Creatures swarm over his head, and his monster feels threatened, low growl and clicking noises escaping him in an attempt to intimidate the bat like things flying overhead. It doesn’t seem to work as they fly down and start attacking him. 

The next few seconds are a blur. There’s a pain in his side, one that he thinks are from the creatures attacking him, and then all he remembers is the thick black ooze of their blood in his mouth, one that tastes rotten and dead, but he knows the more of it that he tastes, the closer he is to winning. 

So, he never stops. 

He rips and tears at the creatures, grabbing them with the rows of teeth within his flesh, using his claws to cut them down before they even get a chance to get close to him. Noises that he’s never heard himself make bubbles out of his mouth, and he fights completely off of instinct. 

It isn’t until he hears Robin shout that he whips his head away from the bats to see that his friends have followed him down here. 

He wishes that he would have never looked over at them. 

Even in his almost crazed state, he can see the shock and fear that cover Eddie and Nancy’s faces. Nancy screams, hand coming up to cover her mouth, and she takes a step back. A step away from him because she’s scared. And then Eddie stands there, almost catatonic, just… staring.

Like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. 

Like he wants to run but he can’t.  

It makes Steve’s heart break in fucking half. 

His friends are scared of him. 

The only person who isn’t is Robin, who picks up a boat oar and starts swinging on the bats coming in their direction.

“Steve!” Robin shouts, “Behind you!”

When Steve whips his head around, there’s a bat coming straight for him. He grabs it out of the air with his fist, digging his claws into its fleshy stomach, stopping it mid flight. He brings it to the petals on his face, closes them around it, and pulls as hard as he can until the bat splits in half. The two sides of its body are tossed to the side, and that’s when he looks back over to check on his friends, only to see everyone in motion now. 

They fight and kill bats until there aren’t any left, and once it’s done, Steve falls to his knees with the death of the last bat. He’s exhausted. His face and hands hurt, and he bends himself in half as he tries to get it to heal back up, because he doesn’t want to hurt or scare his friends anymore. 

A hand lands on his back, someone crouches beside him, rubbing up and down his spine. He jumps at the touch.

“… Steve,” Robin whispers, “Are you okay?”

He shakes his head as an arm wraps around his back in an awkward side hug. 

“It’s okay. You saved us. Thank you.”

“Um,” Nancy’s voice cuts in, “What the hell was that? Steve?”

“He can’t talk after it happens.” Robin holds him closer, “Not for a while, anyways.”

“What was that?” She repeats.

“Something happened to Steve a couple of years ago, which made him like this. He’s not a monster, he’s just a little different. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”

Another person crouches down beside Steve after a moment, another hand on his back.

“… Why didn’t you tell me?” Nancy whispers, and Steve shakes his head. He wanted to. He was just too scared of that reaction. The one that he got from her when she looked at him. 

“He didn’t exactly tell me. I saw it during Starcourt when he was protecting me.”

“Uh, guys.” Eddie says, and Steve finally lifts his head to see Eddie standing with his back towards them, head pointed to the sky, “Not to break up this moment, but uh… We should probably get going.”

Above them is another hoard of the bats, coming straight for them. Except this time, it’s not a couple dozen. It’s hundreds, maybe even thousands of them coming right at them. Robin helps Steve to his feet, gets him steady, and then they take off towards the woods without a second thought. She keeps him close, like she’s protecting him in case Nancy or Eddie decide to try to take him out or something.

He likes it. Feeling protected. He always feels so vulnerable after his monster comes out. 

They run and run until they find Skull Rock, where Steve’s head starts throbbing and he has to sit. It ends up being a perfect place to hide from the bats, tucked up under the rock until they fly overhead. 

“Steve, your side.” Robin says, and he glances down to see that his side is bleeding, but it doesn’t hurt. “We need to get that covered.”

He waves his hand off, shaking his head, but before he can stop them, Nancy is crowding in his space, tearing off the bottom of her sweater to wrap around his side. Eddie shucks his vest off, hands it to Robin, who holds it until his side is tightly wrapped in the sweater material. 

“He heals really fast because of the whole monster thing, but I also know that those things here are attracted to blood. I don’t know about Steve’s blood since he’s like… part of them, but better safe than sorry, right?” 

Slipping Eddie’s vest on makes his heart race a little bit. It smells so distinctly like him that Steve doesn’t know what to do being completely surrounded in it. 

They come up with a plan to go to Nancy’s house and get the guns, one that Steve has to just sit and nod his head along to. He doesn’t know how bad his face looks, how much blood and gunk is covering his skin, but he knows that he can’t look good. 

He has to look scary. Like a monster.

It’s how he feels.  

___________________

The guilt and fear that Steve feels in his body as they walk through the woods towards Nancy’s house is immeasurable. The petals of his face are still closing and scabbing over, he can only barely say a few words as the skin grows back together, but he keeps his head down as they walk, towards the back of the pack.

All he can see in his head is the fear that was written all over Nancy and Eddie’s face when they saw him for the first time. He’s only see that look on Nancy’s face a couple times before, and all of them were when she was face to face with danger, with things that would hurt her, with creatures with features that Steve now shares.

He can’t blame her for being afraid of him, no matter how many times she tries to tell him that she’s not. That she was just surprised. 

He doesn’t miss the way she keeps glancing over her shoulder at him, eyes dipping down to the split that goes down his throat. 

So, he stays in the back. Tries to ignore that insistence gnawing feeling in the back of his head that keeps calling to him, begging him to follow it, to go home. His monster whines and begs too, but he keeps walking. 

If he wants to be better than the monsters around them, he can’t look back. He can’t follow the call. 

He barely even notices at first when Eddie falls back to walk in line with him. 

“You know, when Henderson told me you were a badass, I didn’t have that in mind.” Eddie says, trying to lighten the mood with a joke, but it doesn't make Steve feel any better. 

“Yeah.” He says quietly, mouth still too sore to speak in full sentences. “Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing, man? You like, totally saved our asses back there.”

Steve shrugs, wrapping his arms around his own midsection, “… Scary.”

“Nah, it wasn’t scary. I mean, okay, maybe a little bit at first because I wasn’t expecting it, but once I knew you were still on our side? It was badass.”

The thing that Steve’s learned about Eddie in the few days that he’s been getting to know him is that he has no sense of personal space, and now is no different. He gets in close to Steve, elbows him playfully, all while throwing his arms around while he talks. Steve doesn’t mind it, though. 

He likes being close to someone. To feel their warmth. It reminds him of before. 

“Plus,” Eddie continues, bumping his shoulder against Steve’s, “It makes you a freak. Which, I don’t know if you know this, but freaks and weirdos are my kind of people. So, maybe Dustin was right this whole time. Kid’s been telling me this whole time that we would get along, but I just couldn’t see how. I mean, The King and The Freak? In what world would we have any similarities? Little did I know, lying just beneath the surface, was the answer to my question.”

Steve lets out a puff of air, rolling his eyes, “… Not King.”

“Maybe not the way you’re used to, with all the preps and jocks that bowed at your feet. But, after that? What you did back there? With your face? That was pretty metal, Harrington. Beyond, actually. Might be one of the top three most metal moments in history. And you might be coming for my crown as King of The Freaks.”

When Steve looks over at Eddie, there’s a small, happy, playful smile on his face. He’s still in Steve’s face, shoulder to shoulder, and even though he’s covered in Upside Down muck, Steve can’t help but think about how weirdly… pretty Eddie is. 

And how his heart skips a beat being looked at like that by someone as pretty as Eddie. 

“… Edd-“

“Hey, Dingus!” Robin calls out, making Steve jump away from Eddie, heart leaping to his throat, “We made it Nancy’s yard! Hurry up!”

Steve looks back and forth between where Robin’s voice was coming from and where Eddie stands beside him, but the moment they were having is clearly dead. So dead it isn’t even funny. A squashed bug under a shoe kind of dead. Eddie’s soft expression isn’t as easy as it had been before, but he still gives Steve an awkward half smile, nodding his head towards the small opening of trees. 

“Come on, King Freak. Let’s go get Wheeler’s guns.”

———————————-

There are no guns. 

Much to everyone’s disappointment, it turns out The Upside Down is stuck in ‘83, back when all of this shit first happened. The only good thing that happens to them is that Dustin, Lucas, Erica, and Max happen to be at The Wheeler House on The Right Side.

So, they’re able to get out pretty fast after that. It only takes a little bit of planning to get them back to their world. 

Except for when they get back to Eddie’s trailer, that feeling comes back. The one begging Steve to stay, telling him that he belongs here, that everything will be so much easier if he just stays. No more fear, no more running, no more hiding. 

He would be lying if he said that his defenses against it wasn’t weakening. That every time he heard the voice or felt the feeling, that he wasn’t one step closer to being convinced to stay. 

Because it really would be so much easier, wouldn’t it?

This is the first time in almost two years that Steve’s felt comfortable. That he hasn’t felt like a stranger or a ghost in his own home, just moving through the daily motions of a normal life, while in constant pain. The temperature of The Upside Down is perfect, even with the sweatpants and vest he has on, which hasn’t been the case in years. Steve can’t remember the last time he wore sweatpants just to wear them. The only reason he’d had them on when they went back to the boathouse was because it was the only thing in Robin’s closet that would fit him. 

Part of him doesn’t want to go back. 

The other part knows he has to. 

It’s his monster talking, wanting to stay here. Of course it does. It was created here. This is home to half of him, but not the half that matters. 

The human half of him has to go home, has to be with his friends, has to save the world so that everyone he loves can be safe. He knows that, so he keeps pushing. 

Steve’s known fear in his life. A lot of it. From his dad, to The Upside Down, to being a monster. There’s always been fear there, lurking, but he’s learned how to deal with it over the years. 

Nothing in the world could have prepared him for the fear that overcomes him when Nancy’s eyes rolled back in her head and she started levitating off the ground when they were the only two people

left in The Upside Down. He grabs ahold of her, tries to wake her up, but it doesn’t work. Her eyes keep rolling back, her body is shaking and rising, and Steve can’t do anything to fix it. 

He can hear the commotion above them as everyone tries to figure out what the fuck to do. How to save Nancy from Vecna’s grasp when the only music in Eddie’s trailer isn’t going to be anything Nancy likes, let alone her favorite song. 

But, through all that noise, through his own voice in his head and his fears, he hears someone whispering in his ear. 

“Stephen,” The voice says, “It’s time for you to come home.”

He jumps, screams, almost falls to the ground, but manages to catch himself just in time. 

“My plan is almost complete,” The voice purrs, “The only thing missing is you.”

“What the fuck?!” He says, trying to scramble to his feet to get ahold on Nancy again, “Who the fuck are you?!”

“Soon enough, Stephen. You will see. As will they.”

The voice disappears after that, and Nancy falls limp in his arms. She gasps, clings to him for a second as she tries to catch her breath, and he holds her close to him because he needs to keep her safe. She’s safe in his arms. He can keep her safe. 

Except, she only relaxes in his hold for a second before weakly pushing him away. He doesn’t want to let go, but it’s clear that she doesn’t want to touch him, so he does. 

When she looks up at him, the fear is still there. 

But, it’s worse. 

There’s more. She’s looking at him like he’s a real monster. Like he tried to attack her, like he was going to kill her. 

“… Nance?” He whispers, and she shakes her head. 

“Help me up,” Her voice is quiet and broken, “I want out of this place.”

Once they’re both up and out of The Upside Down and at Max’s trailer, Nancy tells everyone what she saw. 

At least, Steve thinks she does. 

She talks about seeing Hawkins split into four, of the town on fire, of people she loves and cares about dying in front of her and how scary it was. She hesitates every once in a while, stumbling over her words while glancing at Steve, before darting her eyes away like he didn’t see. 

But, he did. Every time. The fear and confusion in her eyes is so easy to read. 

He doesn’t push. No matter how much he wants to. He seems to be the only person who notices that she’s only telling half truths. 

They have to end this tonight. Plans are made, one that Steve is sure they can pull off. 

Robin and him share a look from across the room, because he knows they’re both thinking the same thing. 

They don’t know how this ending is going to affect Steve. If he can still live without The Upside Down. She’s scared and he can tell, but he gives her an optimistic smile anyways.

Because at the end of the day, Steve Harrington would die to keep his friends safe. 

___________________

Steve thinks Eddie might be flirting with him. 

Or, he knows Eddie is flirting with him. He knows all the signs like the back of his hand. The way that Eddie’s gaze lingers on him, the way he smiles shyly when he and Steve stand close together, the fact that he won’t stop complimenting him. Steve knows it’s flirting. 

He just doesn’t know if Eddie knows he’s doing it. Or, if he does, why he’s doing it.

Steve is a monster. Eddie’s seen that in full force, but he still leans in close to Steve’s face and whispers, “Dontcha big boy?” to him with a flirty smile on his face. 

A face that Eddie saw split open. He saw the rows and rows of teeth inside of Steve’s skin, and he still willingly put his own face close to Steve’s. 

Like it doesn’t bother him. 

Like he isn’t scared of it. Of him. 

It’s weird. It makes Steve spiral a little bit, if he’s honest. 

Is Eddie doing it because he feels bad for Steve? Is he doing it to mess with Steve? To get back to him at him for the way that he behaved in high school? Steve knows that he was an asshole. He knows that he was a bad person, and nothing proved that to him more than becoming like this did. He can’t think of any times that he was particularly terrible to Eddie, but maybe Eddie remembers something that Steve doesn’t.

He just doesn’t understand how someone could be attracted to him like this.

Once they get everything that they need for the plan, and end up at the hill for preparation, Steve can’t help but watch the way that Eddie and Dustin interact. The way that Eddie laughs, how Dustin smiles at him, and the way that they can match each others energy the entire time. Steve doesn’t miss it when Eddie glances over at him and Robin, not when he makes eye contact with him across the field, and especially not when that shy smile spreads across Eddie’s face.

Steve isn’t even sure if he likes guys. Eddie or himself. 

But, he does know that he really loves Eddie’s smile. It’s so nice to see him look happy, because just like Robin said a couple days ago, he can’t stand to see his big doe eyes break again.

“… Hey, Rob?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, world’s ending, might as well ask everything we can, huh?”

“The world is n ot e nding. We’re going to figure this out like we always do.”

“Yeah, yeah,” She laughs, rolling her eyes, shoving a rag into the bottle she was working on, “What’s your question, Steve-o?”

“How did you know you liked girls?” He asks, and she looks over at him with her eyebrows furrowed together.

“How did you know you liked girls?”

“I don’t know? I just… Knew?”

“Exactly. I just… Knew. When all of the other girls were talking about boys, I just… wasn’t? I wasn’t interested. And at first, I thought maybe it was that there just weren’t any boys in my class that I was attracted to, but I could look at them objectively and realize that yeah, they were pretty, but I didn’t feel anything towards them. Then, I saw Jessica Wallins for the first time, the day she transferred, and my heart dropped to my butt with how pretty she was. I fought it for a long time, you know? Thinking that yeah, she was gorgeous, and yeah, I wanted to hold her hand and do all the things that girls want to do with boys, but surely all the other girls had felt that before. Nope! Just me. I tried kissing a boy once just to make sure that I wasn’t attracted to them, and no joke, Steve, I almost threw up after.”

He listens to her talk, taking in every word, and then he tries to put it into his own perspective. He’s always liked girls. He’s always liked how soft and sweet they are, how they feel under his hands, against him. He likes how pretty they are, how they smell, and he’s never questioned that. He knows he likes girls. 

But, he also likes the way Eddie smells. The distinct musk of his cologne, the way his hair falls messily around his face, the way that none of his curls are defined like a girls would be. He likes the way Eddie looks at him like he’s something to want. The way that Steve knows he’s looked at girls before. He likes how rough his hands are the few times that they’ve touched, or how he could shove Steve up against a wall without a second thought. So many small things that are all so different from girls, but still so good. 

“… Why are you asking?”

“Oh, I-.. I don’t know,” He lies, “I was just wondering.”

“For no particular reason?”

“Nope. None at all.”

“Not even big doe eyes and unruly curly hair?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Robin shrugs her shoulders, “I just-… If you were having feelings for someone that you usually wouldn’t, that’s okay-“

“You think I like Eddie?” Steve says, heart jumping to his throat, almost choking on his words.

“I didn’t say Eddie. You did.”

“Well, I don’t. I- No. No, I don’t. Why would you say that?”

“I just-…. I saw the way you looked at him when he got all up in your face. How you’ve looked at him this entire time, really. And I mean, I don’t know for sure, because you’ve been all about solitude the entire time I’ve known you, but he just seems to make you happy in a way that I’ve never seen before.”

“Well,” He clears his throat awkwardly, “No. I don’t like Eddie. I don’t like… guys, Rob.”

He doesn’t look over at her, but he can feel her scrutinizing gaze on him the entire time.

“Okay. That’s fine. You don’t have to like Eddie, I guess I just got confused.”

Steve stays silent, keeps his head down as he works on his Molotov Cocktail, thinking about all of the small moments that he and Eddie have shared. Big boy. The talk in the woods. How Eddie gave Steve his jacket after the demobat attack. Him shoving Steve up against the wall with a bottle against his neck. Things that shouldn’t be attractive to Steve but have been this entire time.

He thinks about after all of this, when everything is said and done, when they win, if Eddie is going to stay around. Steve wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t, not after the mob that’s formed around finding Eddie, blaming him for Chrissy’s murder. Steve wouldn’t blame him if he left and never looked back at this fucking town.

Steve wishes he could too.

He wishes he could follow Eddie wherever he decides to go after this. 

To start a new life. One where he isn’t constantly looking over his shoulder. Where he isn’t scared. 

That can’t happen, though.

At the end of the day, Steve is still a monster.

While Hawkins might not be safe for the normal person, it’s safe for monsters. 

And Steve isn’t a fool. He knows even if it was safe for him to leave with Eddie, there’s no guarantee that he would want him to.

Because who could love a monster?

“… It’s not like if I did have feelings for him, which I don’t, that it would even be… possible. I’m.. me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know, the whole… Monster thing. It’s not exactly… I don’t know. Dating material.” Steve laughs, trying to pass it off as a joke, but he doesn’t think it lands with the way that Robin is looking at him.

“Wait, do you really think that?”

“I mean… Yeah? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone would really want to… love this. Or all the baggage that comes with being a monster. Which, I get. I understand.”

“Steve,” She says, lowering the bottle she was holding onto, moving even closer to him, “That’s not true. You are beyond lovable, despite that side of you. You’re a good person, Steve. Such a good person. And if someone can’t look past a part of you that you can’t change, that’s not on you. Somebody is going to be beyond lucky to be loved by you some day, Steve. And I mean that.”

He knows she means it.

He does.

He just doesn’t know if he believes her.

But, he smiles, shrugs his shoulders, “… Thanks, Rob.”

“And you know that I love you, right?”

“Yeah. I love you too.”

The conversation dies a little after that. They talk about the plan a little bit, and then it’s time to board up and go. 

As Robin and Steve stand, Steve can’t shake the feeling of eyes on him. He follows it, sees Eddie still standing in the field where he and Dustin had been playing with a small smile on his face. The eye contact that they hold is meaningful, Steve thinks. Because no one has looked at Steve half the way that Eddie is in so long.

__________________

The relief that washes over Steve when they step back into The Upside down makes him feel sick, if he’s honest. 

The cool air, the overwhelming sense of home, the familiar but unfamiliar look of everything around him. It’s exactly what he’s been afraid of this entire time. Being comfortable in a place where he doesn’t belong. 

They separate into two groups, Robin, Steve, and Nancy, then Dustin and Eddie. The plan is simple. Dustin and Eddie will distract the bats, Steve and the rest of them will defeat and destroy Vecna once and for all. 

Right before they split ways, Steve pulls Dustin to the side, giving him a stern look but a caring smile. 

“Okay, Dustin,” Steve says, putting his hand on his shoulder, “I mean it when I say that you need to be safe. Okay? No putting yourself in danger. Your job is to distract the bats and call it a day, no hero shit. I can’t just-.. I can’t just run to you and save you, okay? So, no hero bullshit.”

“Okay, dad. No hero shit. Are you going to give Eddie this same speech?”

“Eddie’s a grown up, you’re a little brat who likes to run head first into danger.”

“I am not. I happen to have super smart plans that get us out of bad situations a lot.”

“Yeah, by putting yourself at risk. You remember what you told me at Starcourt? You die, I die?”

“… Yeah?”

“Well, I mean it too. You die, Henderson. I die. So keep your ass safe until this is over, okay?”

Dustin stares up at him for a moment, lip wobbling, before the entire weight of him crashes against Steve’s chest. Arms wrap around him, Steve leans his head on top of Dustin’s as he hugs him back. They rock side to side for a moment, Dustin squeezing him as tight as he can like it might be the last time he ever gets to.

“You have to come back too, Steve.” He whispers, “I-I know this place is calling to you. I can see it. But, you have to come home, okay?”

His heart breaks a little bit, because he doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to, but he won’t say that to Dustin. He just hugs him closer.

“I’m going to come home, Dustin. Don’t worry.”

“If you die, I die.”

“I know.” 

When they regroup, Eddie is standing there with his hands in his pockets. He’s watching them closely as they come back, and Steve can’t help it when they make eye contact the closer that he gets. That longing, pulling feeling that Steve has felt towards Eddie the entire time makes it impossible to look away from those big brown eyes, full of every emotion that Steve thinks he might be too scared to say out loud. Fear, sadness… want.

They stand in front of each other, only a few feet apart, and Steve tries to find the words to tell Eddie everything that he’s wanted to say for the last few days. That Eddie is strangely beautiful and so funny. That for some reason, he would do anything, be anything, if it meant that Eddie would stay in Hawkins after they defeat this shit. The words live and die on his tongue as they stare, mouth opening and closing, until Eddie breaks the silence. 

“Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“When we beat this, I gotta tell you something. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Walking away from Dustin and Eddie is hard, but Steve knows that he has to. To end this, they have to walk away. But, he’s going to come back. He promised Dustin. 

And he needs to know what Eddie was going to say. 

______________________

Nancy takes the lead as they walk to the Creel House. Her shotgun is held close to her chest, ready to take the head off of anything she has to in order to protect them. Steve keeps his monster close, ready to spring at the last second in case things go sideways before they can take care of the plan. 

Steve knows that it isn’t the smartest idea for him to be going to the house they’re going to set on fire, but he’d be damned if he let his friends take this on alone. He knows Nancy is more than capable of taking care of both herself and Robin, but it’s for his own sake of mind. 

Him and Robin walk side by side, not saying much. It’s rare for both of them to be quiet when they’re together. He doesn’t suppose there’s much to say going into this, though. Life or death. 

His mind keeps wandering back to Eddie and Dustin and all of the things that could’ve gone wrong leaving them to fight the bats alone. He thinks about Max, Lucas, and Erica, all too young to be dealing with this alone. There was no good way to do this, not without leaving people vulnerable. 

That’s why they have to be successful. One last chance to save everyone involved from a horrible and gruesome end. 

“You doin’ okay over there?” Robin asks once the silence seems to be too much for her, bumping her shoulder against his. “Cause I’m not. I’m freaking out, Steve. Just a little bit. Not like.. freaking out. I got this. I know the plan. We went over it like ten times, but I’m still scared-“

“I’m scared too, Rob. It’s okay.” Steve whispers back, reaching between them to grab Robin’s hand and lace their fingers together in a tight embrace, because it feels better to be this close. “But, we’re going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine.”

“I know it is. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.”

“Exactly.”

“But, after this? I’m living life with no regrets. I’m taking chances, because man, I can’t stop thinking about dying without having ever done anything… crazy. I’ve never even kissed someone, Steve. When we get out of here, once all this is done, I’m gonna- I’m going to tell Vickie how I feel, and maybe go on a date, and maybe get to kiss her, because I’m tired of living in fear of the ‘What if’s?,’ you know? You tell me you think she likes me, and I also think she likes me, so I should just be brave, right?”

Robin’s ramblings don’t usually spark such big ideas in Steve, not because he isn’t listening or doesn’t care, but because most of it is what he’s told her. Advice he’s given, or that he would have if he was given the chance. 

Not this, though. 

This ramble makes Steve’s head perk up a little bit, making him realize that he used to be a person who took chances, who was brave, and he’s not anymore. One thing in his life has stopped him from being brave time and time again, even when he’s so sure that taking a leap would be a soft place to land. 

Like, with Eddie. 

Eddie, who has been flirting with Steve every chance he gets since they officially met, even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Steve knows flirting, and Eddie is definitely doing it. 

Eddie, who saw Steve’s face split open and still smiled at him like it didn’t bother him. Who told him it was metal. 

Eddie, who told Steve that they have to win, because he has something important to tell him once they do. 

Eddie, who’s been brave while Steve’s kept his guard up, because being a monster is hard, being rejected for being a monster would be even harder. 

The scary part isn’t even that he has feelings for Eddie, another guy, because Steve’s had fleeting feelings for men here and there his entire life. He never took them seriously, but it’s always been there. A little flutter of his heart when Tommy would wrap his arm around his waist or shoulders. The way that Steve trained himself to look above the belt way before other guys did, because the idea of seeing another man’s junk did things to him. So, no, feeling romantic feelings for Eddie doesn’t even phase him. 

Being rejected does. 

He doesn’t know what he would do if he put his heart in Eddie’s hands, only for him to crush it like dust beneath his fingers. 

But, isn’t that what Robin’s talking about?

Being brave?

Taking leaps?

Being willing to be wrong and get hurt? 

Steve used to be brave. 

He could it again.

“Steve?” Robin asks, and the words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them. 

“I think I like Eddie.”

“I know.” 

“I think I’m going to tell him when we get back.”

“If you tell Eddie, I’ll tell Vickie.”

“Deal.”

______________________

Walking into The Creel House shouldn’t feel like coming home, but it does, and it makes Steve sick. Whatever has been calling to him since he stepped foot back in The Upside Down is here, and his monster is so happy to be in its presence. He hates it. 

He hates how close he gets to losing Robin immediately in the house. He hates that he can’t take her and run the fuck away before they even have a chance to put the plan into action. 

He hates seeing Vecna’s fucking body hanging there in the top room. He wants to kill him. The violent feeling that Steve usually pushes down continues to bubble its way to the top, and he lets it. He lets the anger fester. He lets it become real and malleable. 

Because he’s standing face to face with the thing that controls The Upside Down. 

That made Steve the way he is. 

That took his life away from him. 

And even though his monster feels at home here, Steve’s anger outweighs that. This is one of the moments where Dustin’s training comes in handy, because he’s in control of it. The badness is his, and he can make it good. 

They can save the world as long as they do this right. 

“Stephen,” A voice says, the same one that has been popping into his head the last couple of days, but so much closer, “We’ve been waiting for you. Welcome home.”

“Steve?” Robin whispers, still beside him.

“You’ve been gone for such a long time, young Stephen. There wasn’t a chance for us to properly introduce ourselves before this. You’ve ignored all of my calls to come home.”

“This isn’t my home.” Steve shakes his head. 

“It was a gift. A gift of power, because I could see the potential for great things long before you could. Powerful doesn’t even begin to describe you and the new state that you find yourself in. I gave you a gift, Stephen. A gift that should not be taken lightly.”

That anger bubbles more and more as Vecna speaks, fist clenched around the Molotov Cocktail even harder, shaking his head. A gift? He calls this a fucking gift? The thing that’s ruined his life? A gift?

“A gift?!” He says, arms shaking with that anger, “You call this a gift?! You- You ruined my life!”

“I made you stronger. I gave you the opportunity for power and greatness. I created you to be my greatest asset as I destroy the world as you know it. You will become my right hand man, and together, humanity as you know it will crumble. You will be better for it.”

“Go fuck yourself, how about that?”  

“You were created in my image, Stephen. Whether you choose to believe me or not, we’re the same. You were chosen for a reason. Reasons beyond your comprehension. Evil lives in you, handcrafted by the people who were supposed to care and protect you, because they never thought that you were important enough. I have given you the tools to make that hatred that lives inside your soul something bigger. Better. All you have to do is trust me.”

“Steve,” A hand lands on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. He thinks it’s Nancy, but he isn’t sure, “Don’t listen to him.”

“All I have done is give you the tools that you needed to reach your full potential. I’ve seen it, Stephen. The world that we will create together. So has your friend, Nancy. I showed her.”

The blood in his veins runs cold, his body tenses up, and Nancy’s hand on his shoulder tightens.

“… What?” Steve whispers, just under his breath. Nancy’s seen it? She didn’t say anything. She never said anything. 

Except, when Steve thinks back at it, maybe her silence said everything. Maybe her silence was worth a thousand words. The way that she was looking at him after she came back down from her vision in the trailer, the way she walked ahead of him the entire time as if to keep him safe from something he couldn’t see. The fact that she had argued for him to go with Dustin and Eddie, or with Max and Lucas. She didn’t want him here. Because she knew that he would be a danger. That he would be bad.

“Steve, he’s lying-“

“I do not lie, Ms. Wheeler. I showed you the world that would come to be once Stephen takes his place beside me, did I not?” Vecna, Henry, says with a smug tone to his voice. It makes Steve feel sick to his stomach.

“… Nance?” He whispers, begging and pleading for her to tell him it’s not true. That she wouldn’t keep that from him, that she would have just told him so that he had the chance and choice to make this decision for himself. 

“Steve- I-.. I didn’t tell you because it isn’t true. You’re not bad. You’ve never been bad.”

“How does it make you feel that she kept that from you, Stephen? That she brought you in here, knowing that my goal was to bring you here all along? To make sure you came home to me?”

“Steve, that’s not-“

“You’re good, Steve.” Robin whispers beside him, “You’re good. I’ve seen it. You’ve protected me, all of us, because you’re not evil.”

But, isn’t he?

Such a huge part of him is rooted in evil. A part of him that he can’t shake. Evil that his friends have seen up close, that they’ve been afraid of, that they are still afraid of. If they weren’t, maybe Nancy would have told him about this from the beginning. She kept this from him because he’s destined for it. There is no changing what’s written in his fate.

“I am sure that you feel betrayed, Stephen, by those who were supposed to be closest to you. Supposed to protect you. Care for you. All your life you have been let down. Forgotten. Throw aside. Not here. Not anymore. Together, we will rule the new world. I will teach you what it is like to have someone by your side who doesn’t let you down. All you have to do is take my hand, Stephen.”

As he says that, Vecna reaches his hand out in the space between them. They’re standing on opposite ends of the room, but everything between them seems to tunnel out the longer that he stares at the creature in front of him. He can’t feel the warmth of Robin and Nancy beside him anymore, can’t see the vines that cover the room, all he can focus on is the hand outstretched to him in a manner that he’s never experienced before. 

Trust. 

Companionship.

Control.

His monster purrs at the idea of living in a world where it can be free, where it doesn have to hide or live in fear of hurting those around him. If he takes Vecna’s hand, then he’ll be safe.

“Steve.” He hears a voice beside him say, but it’s distorted. He can’t tell who says it. 

He takes a step forward, towards Vecna, and the hand on his shoulder tightens, trying to pull him back, keeping him in place.

“Steve, Steve, listen to me. This isn’t you. You know it isn’t. You’re a good person. I didn’t tell you because I knew you would let it get in your head, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t tell you because you’re stronger than him, because I know you can overcome this. He’s playing with your head.”

“Is it playing with his head to tell the truth, Ms. Wheeler? Everything I have said is true. You’re scared of Stephen, of his potential, because you’ve seen it. You’ve seen what he’s capable of, and now you live in fear of it.”

“I’m not scared of him. I’m not.”

“You are.” Steve whispers, because he can feel it. Her fear. Robins. Everyone around him all the time. They’re scared of him.  

“I’m not.”

Another step forwards, closer to Vecna’s outstretched hand, and Steve feels closer to home. No more fear. No more pain. 

“Steve. Steve, don’t do this.” Robin, he thinks, begs. “You’re better than this. I know you are. You know you are. You’re the one who told me you wanted to be good, right? You have a choice. You have a choice. There’s always a choice, and you’ve always chosen to be good. Please, don’t do this.”

The hand on his shoulder falls off when he takes the next step, until he’s standing half way between his future and his past. Between goodness and evil. The monster hums, Vecna’s hand closer than ever before and only getting closer. 

“Steve, I’m- I’m begging you not to do this. Think about us. Think about the people who love you. Me, Max, Lucas, Mike, Dustin, Nancy, Eddie. People who need you around. We need you. We love you. Henry doesn’t know you like we do. He’s feeding into the badness inside of you because he-.. He feeds off fear. He’s trying to take your fear and make you bad, but you’re not bad.”

He’s only a few feet away from Vecna as Robin’s speech goes on. His hand is still extended towards Steve, while his own hand stays firmly beside his side. 

“Join me, Stephen. We will become one.”

“Steve, don’t. Please don’t. Please. Please, I love you, I love you, we love you. Please.”

One step closer to Vecna, and Steve starts to feel his face split. The petals open slowly, but it isn’t painful anymore. Vecna doesn’t look at him with disgust, his hand still outstretched for Steve to take. 

Being good with this potential for badness has always been Steve’s biggest struggle. Something he has to be completely aware of all the time. There’s never a moment, a day, a second where he doesn’t have to think about keeping himself in control. 

If he does this, there won’t be any more of that. 

He’ll be free. 

He raises his hand, just barely. Hovering right above his waist as he thinks about it. 

He doesn’t know what’s worse. 

The fear of himself, or the fear of losing everyone he loves. 

If he takes Vecna's hand, that’s the end of everything he’s ever known. No more Robin. No more Nancy. No more Max. No more Lucas. Mike. 

Eddie.

If he takes his hand, he’ll never know what could be. There won’t be chances to take. There won’t be times to be brave.

He thinks back to when him and Dustin watched Star Wars and the conversation that they had after. About goodness. About being able to choose.

He thinks about all the times that his friends have seen this side of him and not been scared. Of when he used it to protect them. He’s saved lives before. 

He stops between them, stares at Vecna for a long moment, and just thinks. He feels the petals of his face flex and close, and he turns his head to make eye contact with Robin for what feels like might be the last time. She’s begging him with her eyes, holds the Molotov Cocktail up a little higher, and if Steve could talk like this, he would tell her he’s sorry.

Because she’s right. 

Her and Nancy are both right.

Vecna is just trying to get in his head, trick him, and then use him in his army. 

The best thing about Robin is that she and Steve don’t need to use words to communicate. So, when Steve glances down at the homemade bomb in her hand once more, he thinks she knows what to mean by the scared look that enters her eyes. She shakes her head, but Steve turns back towards Vecna. 

She’ll do it if she has to.

Steve needs to be good.

He needs them to win.

And maybe, just maybe, the key. to that is being like this. 

So, he extends his claw towards Vecna, stops just shy of grabbing his hand, and then moves without much of a plan. 

He slices through the vines that are holding Vecna up, making him call out in pain, and then Steve attacks. 

Rows and rows of his razor sharp teeth start tearing through the vines, through Vecna’s flesh like the demo dog had done to him that night in the junkyard. His blood tastes rotten. It tastes like bile in his mouth, but he keeps going. He mauls, attacks, rips at him until he thinks maybe they have the upper hand. 

It’s then that the rest of the plan moves into motion.

Despite how badly she must not have wanted to, Robin throws the first Molotov Cocktail until it explodes only feet from Steve. The fire hurts him, more than anything ever has before, and he only has a moment to jump backwards, landing with a thud beside Robin’s feet, before Nancy starts firing her sawed off shotgun at Vecna.

One, two, three. And then Vecna is falling through the window of the house.

Robin is on her knees beside Steve, pulling him against her chest, rocking him side to side. His face is still open, but he turns his head against her chest, breathing heavily for just a moment.

“We have to go. We have to get out of here, but I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you.” She whispers, cradling his head in the palm of her hand, before coaxing him to his feet. Together, him, Robin and Nancy stumble out of the house. At the bottom of the house, where the window broke, is Vecna’s body. He doesn’t move.

Steve doesn’t feel him anymore. 

Once they’re a safe enough distance from the house, Steve collapses again. Robin and Nancy are right there beside him, arms around his body, hugging him as tight as they can.

Because they love him.

Despite everything, they love him.

A single tear falls down his cheek as he tries to let his face close back up, enjoying the warmth of his friends. 

______________________

There is still blood and Upside Down guck on Steve’s face when he, Nancy, and Robin stumble back towards the trailer park. 

His face is still healing back up, the light throb of pain still radiating from the split. It dissipates every few seconds, but the split still makes it hard to speak. He’s never done it so many times in a row before. Robin stays right beside him, hand on his back, keeping him steady the entire way through the woods while Nancy takes the lead. 

The entire walk back, Steve’s head is full of worries. 

Did they defeat Vecna in time? Is Dustin okay? Is Eddie okay? Are they hurt? Was he too late? Are they going to be able to get out of here before The Upside Down crumbles?

Will he even be able to leave?

Part of him is connected to this. Part of him exists because of this, and he doesn’t know if it ceasing to exist means that he will too. He doesn’t know if he’ll fall over dead the moment they close the gates that Vecna opened. He doesn’t know if he’ll even be able to step foot outside of The Upside Down now that he’s come back inside of it, because his monster feels at home here. It doesn’t want to leave. 

Maybe this side of him will fade once they leave. Once The Upside Down is gone. Maybe he’ll be normal again. 

He doesn’t know. 

He doesn’t bring it up, either. Not just because he can’t talk right now, but because he doesn’t want to worry Robin. Or Dustin. Or Nancy. Or Eddie. 

Because deep down, he knows his friends won’t leave him here without a fight. Robin would probably die right beside him in The Upside Down if he couldn’t leave. Dustin said he meant it when he said “If you die, I die.” 

So, he doesn’t say anything. He stays close to Robin, opening and closing his mouth every couple of seconds to stretch the healing skin, and they move fast. 

When they clear the trees and see the trailer park, Eddie and Dustin are sitting on top of Eddie’s trailer, just…. talking. 

As if nothing happened. As if they didn’t just save the world. 

Eddie has his guitar in his lap, there’s an amp on the roof, and he looks fucking beautiful, even from this distance. His hair is framing his face, frizzy and messy, bandana tied around his bangs to keep them in place. When they finally meet eyes from across the small field, Steve swears that Eddie’s eyes light up like he’s never seen before. 

“Steve! Nance! Robin!” Dustin calls out excitedly, before him and Eddie both climbing down. They run to meet them halfway. 

Dustin gets to them first, knocking into Steve with a bone crushing hug that almost sends them tumbling to the ground. He holds onto his friend tightly, rocks him side to side, beyond happy that he’s just safe. 

“Dude! You missed the most metal concert in the history of ever. Eddie played Master of Puppets. That song only came out like… Three weeks ago! And he played it!” Dustin says, still hugging Steve, staring up at him with big excited eyes. He laughs, nods. 

“His mouth is still kind of wonky.” Robin says, patting Steve on the back, “He did the whole… Blah! thing.”

She uses her hands to mimic the way that Steve’s mouth unfurls, and Dustin rolls his eyes. 

“You mean the super awesome badass thing that he does where his face splits open and he can protect us from anything? That blah thing?”

“Bingo!”

Behind Dustin, Eddie stands. Steve can feel his eyes on them, so he drags his attention away from his two best friends to him, and everything stops. 

Big brown eyes look at Steve with… admiration. Love, maybe. He isn’t sure. No one has looked at Steve like this in so long. Maybe he’s making it up. Maybe he’s not. 

All he knows is that standing there in his green puffy jacket, Eddie Munson has never looked more beautiful to Steve. 

Especially with a shy little smile spread across his face the longer that the eye contact goes on. 

When Dustin lets go of Steve, they walk towards each other. No words shared, just a pull towards one another like they’re magnets, and maybe they are. Negative and positive. Good and bad. 

Inches separate them before the stop. Nearly chest to chest, toes bumping against each other, and that shy smile is still spread across his face. 

“… Hi.” Eddie whispers, and Steve nods. 

“Most-.. M-Metal ever?” Steve tries to speak, despite how sore his throat still is. Eddie laughs, shrugs his shoulders. 

“I mean, Dustin said so. I would like to think so. I got to perform that song live before Metallica did, so that’s pretty badass if I do say so myself. Not as metal as your face opening up. Sad you missed it.”

Between them, Eddie fidgets with his fingers. It’s small, just turning his knuckles over themselves time and time again, but it’s enough to get Steve’s attention. He can’t stop himself from reaching out between them, at first grabbing Eddie’s hand just to  still it, but it quickly becomes so much more than that.

Because he’s holding Eddie’s hand. 

And he doesn’t look disgusted by it. 

In fact, Steve is pretty sure that the tops of Eddie’s cheeks go pink, as well as the bridge of his nose. Slim fingers slip between his own after a beat, rings bumping against his knuckles. 

The world around them is gone. It’s only them, standing in the moment, covered in dirt, grime and blood that proves they survived. 

“Y-.. You’ll have- play.. sometime.”

“You wanna hear me play?” He asks, soft and quiet, like he doesn’t believe it. Steve nods, squeezes his hand between them. 

“Yes.”

Another small beat of silence, a shy, awkward shuffle from Eddie, and Steve thinks that maybe he’s still got it. The Harrington Charm. It’s been so long since he’s seen someone get flustered just under his gaze, but he doesn’t think anyone looked half as pretty as Eddie does. 

“Hey, Steve?”

“Hm?”

“I-.. I said earlier that if we made it out of that shit, that I had something to tell you.”

As he speaks, Eddie lifts his head back up to meet eyes with Steve, and the look in his eyes tells Steve everything that he thinks he needs to know. Eddie feels it too. The pull between them, the spark that Steve’s felt since that first moment that Eddie pushed him up against the wall in the boat house. Steve’s never felt this way about a guy before, but with Eddie, it’s so easy. It’s natural. 

So, he doesn’t wait for Eddie to tell him whatever he was going to say. 

He just… takes a leap. 

Steve pushes himself toward Eddie, pulls their intertwined hands into himself, and presses his lips against Eddie’s for the first time. 

It’s magical. 

Eddie responds immediately, lips pressed firmly against Steve’s, free hand coming around and all but clawing at Steve’s jacket to get a better grip. One hand is still tucked between them, the other around him, and they pour every ounce of themselves into this kiss. 

If it wasn’t for Robin clearing her throat beside them, Steve doesn’t think he would have been able to stop kissing Eddie. 

“Alright, lovebirds. Plenty of time for this after we get the hell out of here!”

“Ew. It’s like watching my parents make out. I hate it. But, we need to get the hell out of this place before it like collapses on us or something.” Dustin says, and Steve only barely catches the eye roll from him as he pulls back from Eddie. 

Eddie, whose head fall against Steve's shoulder with uncontainable laughter.

“What the fuck is my life right now?” He mumbles, shaking his head, “Crazy other world under our feet, flesh eating bats, kissing Steve Harrington. I think I need to be put in a crazy house.”

Steve laughs, kisses the top of Eddie’s head, before they all start towards the gate to get out. 

Silent prayers repeat in Steve’s head over and over again as he helps his friends up, that he’ll get to leave, that he’ll get to be with them, with Eddie in the real world again. 

‘Please,’ He begs, ‘ Please let me leave.’

And luckily, it does. 

Steve lands on the mattress, smiling up at all of his friends smiling down at him. 

‘No more Upside Down,’ He tells himself, ‘ We’re never going to have to do this again.’

It’s true. 

When El lands in Hawkins, she closes all the gates permanently. 

Max was just barely saved from being Vecna’d, but not without injury.  Her leg is broken, she has a cast and crutches, but she’s alive. She hugs Steve and thanks him for saving her life, but he doesn’t know how. 

He hugs her back anyways, just happy she’s alive. 

For the first time in nearly four years, everyone in Steve’s little found family takes a deep breath. Because it’s over. 

No more looking over their shoulders. 

No more waiting patiently for the next strike. 

No more protecting the world from its demise. 

The kids can be kids. 

The adults can live life. 

Hawkins can be a home again. 

__________________

Three months after Vecna is defeated and The Upside Down is gone, Steve’s other side starts to fade. 

It starts with small things. The pain fades, his head feels lighter, there isn’t anyone inside his mind banging on the walls to get out and hurt people. Day by day, the temperature of the house can get higher. Robin cooks a steak medium and he’s able to eat it without gagging. He wears a sweatshirt for the first time in nearly two years. 

He had almost forgotten what it was like to be normal. 

Living inside a body that had felt foreign to him for so long had changed his perspective on the world. By default, his life had to become harder. Colder. Darker. The monster inside of him didn’t like the things that Steve had deemed as good, so he lost all of those things all at once. But, now, as that side fades, Steve enjoys the little things. 

A dip in the pool on a hot summer day, laying in the sun to get his tan back that he had all but lost, having his friends over and listening to laugh and play like everything is normal again. 

At least, as normal as it’ll ever get for them. They’ll carry around these scars and painful memories until they die, but there won’t be any new ones . No more flesh eating monsters, no more alternate reality, no more pain, or death, or hurt. 

Because when given the choice between good and evil, they chose good. They let the good outweigh the bad. All of them. 

Steve likes to give himself a little more credit, but he thinks he’s earned it. Him, Will, and El all deserve more credit than he thinks anyone except for them realize, because they’re the only people who truly understand what it’s like to be a part of that horrible world. To have it live inside of you, beg and plead for you to pick it instead of goodness, and how loud those voices could be. 

But, he also knows that he could’ve never done this by himself. Not in a million years. 

Without the love, warmth, and kindness that had been shown to him by the people he holds dearest, Steve thinks he would have lost the battle. If it wasn’t for Dustin’s fascination with Steve’s other side, his determination to figure it out, Steve would have never gotten it under control. He would’ve ended up locked inside his room until he died from fear of hurting other people. 

If it wasn’t for Robin, Steve would have never known what it was like to have someone live inside your head. To be the other half of your heart. To know what you’re thinking before you can even say it out loud. 

And, if it wasn’t for Eddie, Steve wouldn’t know what it was like to be loved unconditionally and without bounds. 

To be loved by Eddie Munson is to be held in the highest regard. He loves the same way he writes music, from his soul and beyond. In the scope of all of his imagining, to be loved this purely, this deeply, this truly, was never in the cards. Especially not after he became a monster. 

But, Eddie loves him despite it. 

Maybe because of it. 

Steve doesn’t know. 

All he does know is that he wouldn’t survive a single day not being Eddie’s anymore after being lucky enough to experience it. To be held, cared for, loved, and wanted by one person from the deepest part of his soul. Eddie, who kisses Steve like it’s the first time every time. Who never seems to get enough. One always turns into two, into three, and maybe even then some. 

Eddie, who for the first two months of their relationship froze every single day to just be close to Steve. 

Who holds his hand over the center console when they drive because they can’t bear to be apart. 

Who holds Steve’s face in his hands lovingly, inspects his scars, and kisses them every. single. fucking. day. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Eddie whispers against his skin every night without fail, “So, so beautiful. Love you so much. Every part of you.”

And the weird part is?

Steve believes him. 

He never questions it. 

Eddie loves him, and he loves Eddie. 

When the monster side of him fades, even months and months down the line of it being gone, Eddie still holds his face and kisses the faint white lines that aren’t noticeable to anyone but them anymore. 

Having the potential of badness but choosing goodness isn’t easy. Moments of temptation had always sunk through the cracks, where the darkness threatened to overtake him. But, if going through that gave him this? Love, family, support, and stability?

Steve would fight through it a thousand times over. 

Because at the end of the day, to be good is to be loved, and to be loved is to be home.