#this keeps growing woops. probably 5 parts then 😅 will put on ao3 most likely once it’s all done. new chapter of you know what next ❤️

[loveinhawkins]

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

When they reach his house, the first thing Dustin does is switch the shower on until the water runs hot, because Steve started shivering on the drive over, and Eddie kept glancing over at him in deep concern whenever he gave a more intense shudder, his wet clothes sticking to the back of his seat.

After agreeing to stay over, Steve had slipped into an eerie kind of calm, drifting upstairs to his room to get some dry clothes, doubling back for his toothbrush with a self-directed sigh of exasperation.

He’s quiet as Dustin shows him the shower dial, and even though he nods and smiles, at least, his eyes always land just to the left of Dustin, not quite looking at him.

Dustin tries not to let it sting.

He just blasts a hairdryer in his room to warm himself up, hasn’t got as drenched by the rain as Steve did.

He’s heading to the living room when he hears voices—

“…long has it been like this?”

—and stops.

“I—I don’t. Not. Not all the time.”

“So long enough then. What, are we talking weeks? Months?”

There’s a horrible silence.

“Oh, Steve. Fuck, man, don’t say it’s been years.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Eddie’s voice wavers when he asks, “On your own?”, like he’s fighting tears. That’s just his way, Dustin thinks. Heart on his sleeve.

“Well. Yeah.”

Steve’s words are clipped, as if he’s irritated, but Dustin gets the feeling that it’s more Steve forcibly trying to stop anything more from spilling out.

“Eddie. Come on, don’t look at me like that.”

Eddie laughs, shattered at the edges. “Can’t control my face, Harrington, ‘fraid I can’t help you there.”

“I mean it, it’s not like—it’s not been that bad all the fucking time, you know? Just. Lately, it’s. Got worse.”

Dustin silently presses his back against the wall and sinks down to the floor. A part of him feels embarrassed that he’s eavesdropping like a little kid, but he can’t help it. If he reveals himself now, he has the sudden fear that Steve will stop talking for a long while.

Eddie breathes in. Out. “In what way?”

“Like. Nightmares and stuff.”

“So walk me through it?”

“Eddie…”

“What? Didn’t know I had the monopoly on sharing fucked up dreams.”

“It’s… I don’t remember all of them. Just… just the feeling when I wake up, it’s…” Dustin hears Steve take a shaky breath, muffled like his hand is briefly covering his mouth. “It’s spreading.”

“…Spreading?”

“I can’t stop it anymore.” Suddenly it’s as if Eddie’s simple prompting has made something inside Steve snap; he’s really talking now, rapid-fire, like he’s running out of time. “I wake up, and I can’t—I just know that I’ve… I’ve fucked up somehow. That I’ve… I’ve lost. Someone. Everyone. Feels like the fucking walls are closing in. It’s—it’s when I’m awake, too. I can’t stop thinking—a-and it’s not even Upside Down shit, not all the time. It’s… Robin was late to work once, and something told me that she—she was dead, and I…”

A creak of someone sitting down on the couch. The soft rustle of fabric. Dustin doesn’t need to see to know that Steve and Eddie are sitting next to one another—that from the fragile way Steve exhales, Eddie is hugging him.

“Christ, Steve. That’s… no-one can just—just deal with that alone, okay? That shit’s poison.”

Steve laughs brokenly. “I can’t just—what else am I supposed to—Eddie, it’s everywhere, it’s—I wake up and I check every fucking car wreck on the news, ‘cause I just—I just have this awful feeling that. That the kids, they’ve…”

Dustin thinks of Steve jokingly scolding them whenever they’re late for him to pick them up, his routine call of, “Hey, shitheads! Seatbelts on or you’re walking.” He feels sick.

“But last night, it…” Eddie sounds tentative. “It was worse?”

“Just… nightmare. Upside Down.”

But the return of the clipped tone to Steve’s voice betrays that there’s more to it.

“Steve.”

It’s kind of amazing, Dustin thinks, how just by saying Steve’s name, it somehow sounds like Eddie is saying, Please tell me and I’m here—and probably more.

“I’ve…” Steve inhales sharply. “I’ve never dreamt that you—that you made it before. You’re always… I’m always too late, and you’re dying, or you’re already dead, but…”

Eddie sounds a bit shaky, too. “But?”

“Not last night. I thought—I fucking thought it was better, it was all quiet, and there were dead bats on the ground, and I was at your trailer, and you were opening the door, you’d made it, and… And then you. You said.”

“Okay, take a breath—”

“You said, ‘One got in.’ That’s all you kept saying one got in, and I was fucking shaking you, trying to help you snap out of it, and… Then I saw what you meant. That. That Dustin.”

“Oh God.”

“It had sliced through his neck. Eddie, he wouldn’t. Wouldn’t stop bleeding.”

“All right. Hey, I’ve got you, just—”

“And then I woke up. And I… I thought. And when I-I went to check—”

“The phone wouldn’t work.”

“Yeah. Think I lost it, a bit.” A deep, weary sigh. “Embarrassing.”

“It’s not. Steve, I fucking promise you that it’s not.”

“Then I… I don’t know. Think I threw up, maybe twice. Drove until I. Until I couldn’t.”

Another creak. Eddie getting off the couch. Footsteps. Running water.

“Here. You’re probably dehydrated to hell.”

Slow sips.

“Hey, Steve. Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For telling me.”

A silence goes on for long enough that Dustin feels he wouldn’t be intruding, if he entered. But he waits. Just in case.

There’s a little miaow by his feet. Tews, blinking slowly up at him.

Dustin gently nudges him towards the living room until he obligingly trots inside.

The reaction is instant.

“Baby,” Eddie says reverently, and Dustin nearly laughs because oh, that’s right; they’ve not met before.

Steve chuckles, makes a soft, encouraging clicking noise. “Hey, bud.”

Dustin stands up. His mom told him once that cats can sense when someone’s in pain, even if they’re silent about it.

When he enters the living room, Tews is curled up in Steve’s lap, purring loudly. Eddie’s got one arm flung across the couch, resting just behind Steve’s head; with his other hand, he’s scratching Tews—the favoured spot, right under the chin.

Steve looks like he might—not sleep, not exactly, but that he might doze off a little.

Dustin doesn’t bother being that quiet, remembers one time when they’d all taken over Steve’s couches, watching movies, and he’d made fun of Steve for his eyelids drooping within the first thirty minutes.

“Can’t help it, dude. When you little shits talk, it’s like white noise,” Steve had said—which at the time, he’d made it sound like an insult, but now Dustin can see that there’s some truth in it.

He lifts a take-out menu off the fridge, folds it into an aeroplane and throws it at Eddie’s chest.

“I’m starving.”

Steve sinks a little more into the couch. His head tips back slightly, and then Eddie’s fingers are lightly skimming through Steve’s hair.

Eddie laughs quietly, takes the menu and says, all hushed and theatrical, “Why, boy, you’re naught but skin and bone!”

Then he smiles, and his head tilts just a bit in acknowledgement—like he knows Dustin had given them the time alone.