Chapter Text
He doesn’t realize it’s happening at first.
Now that he thinks about it, that’s the first tapestry-sized red flag.
Hey, he never claimed to be smart. Objectively, he’s kind-of an idiot.
But this is how it begins— the slow unraveling of Steve Harrington.
It starts on a Tuesday, the week before Robin gets off for spring break— or rather, that’s when he starts to notice.
The lights overhead flicker lazily in the mid-afternoon sun, their persistent hum drones louder in the silent video shop as the two current employees try to alleviate their boredom.
In the middle of the week, there’s a lull in customers; a bonus for those who don’t enjoy the company of others (Robin), and a loss for those that do (Steve).
Regardless, it becomes a very boring time to be employed at Family Video. It’s nothing but rewinding returns, taking turns putting movies on the battered television, and attempting to bring some sort of order to the chaotic organization of video tapes strewn haphazardly around the store.
Or their most recent way to pass time: people watching.
Across and a little ways down the street, there’s a record store that they watch sometimes, on super slow days like today. It’s a game almost, to guess what songs and bands that the customers walk out with, based on their clothes and attitude.
Robin points out the window, lethargic. “Hey, is that Eddie Munson?”
Steve peers around the display he’s working on, watches Munson exit the shop with a record tucked under his arm and a spring in his step. “Yeah. The new Metallica album came out a couple days ago, I’m surprised that he hasn’t bought it before now. He likes Metallica almost as much as Black Sabbath.”
His best friend cocks an eyebrow, smirks from across the store. “Wow, you sure know a lot about his preferences, Steve.”
“Shut up!” The babysitter feels his cheeks grow warm as he defends, “Dude, I don’t even talk to the guy— he stole all my mom’s medication at a party one time. There’s nothing attractive about a thief.”
She just hums, lets the slight curve of her mouth belie the little merit she holds for his protest as she pretends to tidy the stack of films on the counter.
If Steve didn’t love her so much, he thinks he’d hate her, just a little.
On the grimy bathroom floor of Starcourt Mall under the very potent influence of a mystery drug, they’d confessed things to each other that nobody else knew. Not everything, but the wide-eyed relief Robin slipped into after Steve had told her that he ‘liked guys just as much as girls’ was enough of a balm to smooth over any pre-existing resentments.
He might not have found a girlfriend that night, but he wouldn’t trade his best friend for anything— and that made all of the terror and nausea and pain of those few days worth it.
He’d gladly do it again, over and over, if it meant she would keep looking at him like this: all squishy and fond, a mirrored look of complete understanding and acceptance.
In spite of his urge to reiterate his earlier statement, Steve just huffs and refocuses on the crate of tapes that he’s been stuffing into the too-full shelves.
The titles printed on the cases swim before his eyes, and he once more squints to focus as he’s been doing all morning. There’s a familiar pressure manifesting behind his brow bone, the first indicator of the nasty migraine he’s in store for later. It’s not unusual, these days— more often than not lately he’s got a clockwork tempo of pain beating on the inside of his skull.
Midway through searching through the Rs to insert the latest movie— Rocky Horror Picture Show— his nose starts running; allergies, he assumes, right up until the blood starts dripping onto his hands, his thighs.
Steve tilts his head back, feels thick copper trickle down his throat where it pools in his stomach and makes him vaguely nauseous.
Looking back, it seems so obvious that he wants to scratch the warning signs onto his retinas, scream at himself until it couldn’t be ignored any longer.
But it hadn’t been anything particularly unusual, so he doesn’t think twice about it.
The nightmares have been worse, but that’s typical these days. As are the migraines and the not sleeping and the deep-set ache he can’t seem to shake off.
So when the nosebleeds start, it’s just another thing he adds to the growing list. He’s had worse; he can handle a bloody nose or six.
Steve could’ve put more effort into being concerned, if he had any left to spare. With all the “repressing everything” he’s been doing lately, his full length swimming pool of care is on its last dregs.
No time to worry about his own mental health when he’s got Robin’s band practice and dropping the nerds off at their Hellfire meetings. Endless shifts at Family Video and afternoon trips to the arcade with the shitheads, basketball prep at the community courts with Lucas.
He’s a pro at scheduling himself out every hour of the day, too booked up to sit for a second and relax.
It’s easy enough to ignore the tugging in his gut, the taut elasticity of his diaphragm. The dull headache that precedes the nose bleed, the empty cavern of his ribcage when he finally collapses for the night. The tick tick tick tick of a countdown, the building resolution of an atom bomb.
Something in the back of his head shrieks, a language and frequency he doesn’t understand.
It’s a last plea, an angry roar, a death rattle.
A howl of grief so vast and temperamental that nothing else could ever hope to drown out.
Despite his protests to Robin about the three-time-senior and local drug-dealer, Steve finds himself seeking out Eddie Munson after school the next day.
Normally he’s fine, stop-asking-me-what’s-wrong-Robin fine. He can manage, drag himself through the days and the nights and avoid acknowledging the presence of anything concerning about his mental state.
Steve is a performer: a pretty painting for dinner parties, dressed up and shown off like a valuable statue for appraisal. The class clown, the rule breaker— any attention is good attention, and god knows he’s spent his whole life an abandoned hobby. A discarded goldfish, a plant on a shelf watered just enough to stay alive.
Later, the keg king, borderline alcoholic; an every-so-often smoker and then a social smoker and then a stash-of-shit-in-his-room and a-pack-of-cigs-in-his-pocket-everywhere smoker. Deafening music and a full house, noise complaint and warning and cold handcuffs. A bystander to friends with sharp teeth and heavy fists.
The great King Steve, Mr. Cool, Mr. Popular, Steve “The Hair” Harrington himself.
And after his fall from grace, well—
It takes an entertainer to hide the nightmares and shaking hands and flinches, and Steve’s a damn good actor.
It’s easy to put on the jester hat, to slip on the most transparent armor he has.
It’s kind-of hard to manage, though, when he almost crashes his car into a bus after nearly falling asleep behind the wheel.
And yeah, he’d been tired, but when hasn’t he been lately?
But an opening shift at his job is enough of a catalyst to push him over that edge; he’d nodded off while staring at the road and had abruptly startled awake at the blaring horn of the other driver. A hard jerk of the wheel, a near-silent atrophy. No music playing through the speakers.
He rationalizes that Family Video could open a couple minutes late, and heads to Melvald’s to get some Jolt Cola to make him feel alive again.
And Steve’s not new to the world of reckless-endangerment, has done more risky things than this previously; but he’s not a drunk sophomore anymore, driving half-blacked-out towards the quarry because he can’t stand to be at home with his dad any longer.
The babysitter has his gaggle of kids to worry about, made promises to drive them home after school that afternoon. Has a town to protect from twisted hellspawn in from a different dimension, a watchful eye to keep on his friends and his kids and their families.
He can’t keep them safe like this.
So after he drops Max off, he heads over towards the Munson trailer, set on buying something to help him relax.
And although he’s thoroughly convinced himself that he’s only doing this for altruistic reasons, that small, miserable voice in his mind is a steady pulse that starts to leak selfishness into his neurons, the white-matter of his brain.
He just wants to sleep, wants something to dull the sharp edges of his paranoia and let him rest for the first time in months. Wake up feeling a little less like a corpse dragging itself from room to room, looking for a valid reason to abandon the motions of living and finally collapse into an expectant grave.
Steve knocks on the door to the trailer, hoping that Eddie’s actually home after school instead of spending his afternoon elsewhere. Doesn’t know what he’ll do if no-one’s home, other than maybe just give up the ghost on the Munson’s porch and leave his comatose body inconveniently on the lawn.
His silent prayer must be answered, some deity trying to preserve what little sanity he’s clinging to like a lost child, because the high-school senior shouts from somewhere in the trailer, thumps and thuds and oofs his way towards the entrance.
When the door finally swings open, Eddie Munson appears in the doorway as he usually does: the imitation of a rockstar, the joker outcast with a hint of bared fangs when his mouth splits open into a suave grin. He’s wearing his signature vest, a band t-shirt sequestered underneath, arms bare. He’s surprisingly muscular for such a lanky guy, not to mention his large calloused palms and his curly hair and the hint of eyeliner in his waterline and— focus, Harrington.
“Steveee Harrington, this is a surprise!” The metalhead bows, dramatic as ever, practically leers at him from where he stands several inches taller than the other boy. “What could I possibly have done to invoke your presence?”
When Steve stays silent— trying his damndest to not list off on the stoop of the guy he needs to buy shit from because Steve Harrington is decidedly not the kind of guy to pass out on someone’s doorstep, thank-you-very-much— Eddie loses some of his bravado, trades it in for hesitant concern as he assesses Steve’s peak physical appearance. “Uhh, you good Harrington?”
“Mhm.” The monster-fighter nods once, keeps nodding until he’s aware of the repetition enough to stop. “Yeah no I— I’m… good. Fine. Can you… um. Do you have anything— anything for— sleeping?”
Munson cocks an eyebrow, gives Steve’s pathetic appearance a once over. “Had a rough night?”
”More uh… more like a rough couple months?” He shifts his weight, shuffles back a step.
The drug dealer is quiet for a moment, fixes his gaze on Steve like he’s trying to figure him out, like he is the latest in a line of puzzles that he’s attempting to solve.
“Look, if you don’t have anything, I’m just gonna— gonna go.”
There is still no response, just a narrowing pair of eyes and a purse of lips.
Taking this as a confirmation, Steve starts back towards his car. There’s a profound weight that settles back on his shoulders, and he’s left feeling unmoored. As a last resort, it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it evokes a certain embarrassment in him not unlike a child being scolded, ostracized, for not understanding why what they’re doing is wrong.
“Wait!” Eddie’s voice calls after him, and Steve stops, contemplates leaving anyway. He ultimately staggers back toward where the other boy has retreated into his trailer. “Come’on, get in here.”
And Steve’s obedient when he’s basically out of his fucking mind, so he follows Eddie into the living room and collapses on his couch.
Eyes closed, he listens to the metalhead disappear, rummage through the other room. Wonders, distantly, how the other boy allows himself to be so loud and himself, and completely unapologetic about it, especially in his home.
Thinks of his own house to which he will inevitably return; the tomb of his ex-girlfriend’s best friend, the impersonal furniture, the vast empty space that gathers in the very foundation. Couldn’t imagine himself creating so much noise, taking up so much space, in the reminder of his parent’s abandonment.
He startles out of the mental image of his father’s last suitcase packed in the trunk, the wraith of his mother folded delicately in the passenger seat, by the drug dealer dropping a metal lunchbox on the side-table. On the floor by his feet, a dark-grey duffle bag.
“So what’cha looking for? Our friend Mary Jane? Or something stronger?”
He’d tried, once, to smoke a joint after the disaster that was Starcourt. Wanted to prove to himself that it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be, that he’s not severely traumatized by the whole truth-serum experience.
Steve had missed two days of work, forgotten somewhere between the overwhelmingly nausea and debilitating panic attacks and—
The current insomnia-induced delirium is suddenly too close for comfort; too similar to broken ribs and torn off fingernails and vomiting profusely in a mall bathroom.
“No pot, I don’t… um. Something, something stronger, maybe?”
“Don’t got anything too hard, sorry. Not in the habit of getting kids addicted to H or coke or some shit.” He hums. “You want special K? That should calm you right down.”
For the record, he considers it. Really considers it. And then Eddie brings out a vial and starts talking about needles and, he can’t, he really can’t—
“No. No, It’s gotta. It’s gotta be a pill or, or something. Just not… that.”
He almost expects the other boy to protest, tell him that he’s being too picky. But he doesn’t, just shrugs like he gets that needles aren’t for everyone.
“I don’t usually do this, but you look like you could use it.” Munson digs around his duffle, triumphantly pulls out a pill bottle tucked somewhere in the depths.
“It’s m- an old prescription; Xannies from about a year ago.“ He unceremoniously shoves the meds in Steve’s direction, rattles the bottle until the other boy takes him from his hand. “Here. Don’t take more than two at a time, never more than three in a day.”
The sleep-deprived teen accepts this information with a low hum, a half-coherent thanks, and lingers awkwardly in the Munson’s living room for a beat too long.
Remembering that this shit is actually a drug deal, he pulls out his wallet and drops a fifty into Eddie’s waiting palm.
The musician stares at both him and the money, most likely debating whether he should tell him that he’s paid almost twice the amount he owes.
Steve doesn’t exactly give a shit about the difference right now; Eddie probably needs the cash more than he does.
He turns to leave, makes a couple aborted steps towards the door actually, before something grabs his bicep. He turns back, shrugs off the hand. “Yeah?”
Eddie releases him, but Steve stills feel pinned beneath the weight of his attention. “Look… you’re not supposed to be alone when taking that shit, ‘kay? It’s got’a lot of bad side effects. You wanna crash here tonight?”
Steve thinks of his empty mausoleum of a house, the thick coat of dust adorning almost every room within its walls. The grave of his bed, always luring him back to the land of those condemned.
”Nah, I’ll be alright,” the younger boy lies. “My parents‘re home.”
To his credit, Eddie doesn’t look like he believes him. But he lets Steve escape with little more resistance, which the babysitter appreciates.
The drive takes a lot longer than usual, but he refuses to go over thirty miles/hour the whole way back.
When Steve returns to the house, he pops two pills in his mouth and collapses on his bed.
These better fucking work.
That night, despite his best efforts, he can’t wake up when the nightmares tear him limb from limb.
He is an unwilling Prometheus, flesh torn open and devoured by petal-headed dogs. Each time they devour him completely, he is rebuilt whole, unmarred, and once-again immobile on the altar.
There is no escape, just a relentless unraveling of muscle and tissue, tendons and nerves. The scrape and gouge of hundreds of razor-sharp teeth, carving and dragging him out of himself.
It is a punishment, an atonement for a crime Steve has yet to comprehend. There is no absolution in this.
He slips out of sleep, still waiting for the next wave of beasts to descend upon him.
Of course things go wrong; they always go wrong, and Steve’s left to fight his way through the calamity and ruin. Again.
Two days before the reckoning, Steve’s still miserable but at least he’s sleeping. Yes, he’s sleeping so he must be less tired, even though he wakes up after 10 hours unconscious feeling more exhausted than he had before he’d passed out.
He’s fine, fine— fine. He’s had worse, even if he hasn’t, even if that’s just a justification he’s using to keep himself from worrying too much.
There is little time to dwell on it, though.
While Steve was staring at his ceiling and trying to forget the bite of teeth, the drag of metal on metal on skin, a certain metalhead was getting his first real taste of blood-drenched upside-down horror.
He drags himself out of bed at the last minute before he’ll be late for work, stumbles into new clothes and his sneakers, grabs his keys, skips breakfast. Drives to Family Video blasting music to keep himself from drifting off.
When Robin slams through the front door two and a half hours later, he’s caught in the first wave of the weekend rush.
She throws on her vest, tells him he looks like shit, and bullies some returns into his hands so he can go shelve them.
They have no time to talk until the wave passes and each customer has paid and been promptly shoved out the door.
They’re able to collapse behind the counter for a minute to recharge; Robin spits hair out of her mouth as she rewinds a tape, and Steve stifles his millionth yawn that morning.
So when two of his kids burst in, demanding they surrender their computers and phones and turn on the news, it’s more of an inconvenience than anything. He’s actually feeling something other than tired, even if it is the first burning embers of genuine annoyance at their audacity.
Steve’s irritable, tired, and his bad mood feeds Robin’s until the atmosphere is just one big haze of discontent. The older two teens are snappy and reactive, and Dustin just keeps trampling all over their boundaries.
It’s a Saturday, not a Tuesday or Wednesday. They have customers, a store to run— they don’t have the liberty to surrender their methods of checking people out to whatever inane theory Dustin’s latched on to this time.
But suddenly Eddie Munson is part of the conversation, and Steve— miraculously— cares substantially more about what Dustin is prattling on about.
The news is already on the television instead of the usual movie; it had been one of the first things Robin had done when she’d come in. Steve, trying to fumble through social interactions with a growing migraine, hadn’t even spared a thought to the news or the happenings around Hawkins.
Maybe he should have cared a bit more about it, because Chrissy Cunningham died horrifically, tragically, in the middle of Eddie Munson’s trailer last night.
Eddie might be a lot of things— loud-mouthed, a drug dealer, thief, outcast, freak— but he’s not a murderer.
Despite the kid’s insistence to leave for Reefer Rick’s address immediately, Robin and Steve make them wait until the customers are all helped and gone before closing the store.
Sure, murder is important— but so is keeping his job. They can multitask.
It’s closer to nightfall, when they make it over to Reefer Rick’s place.
Max spots the boathouse first. Of course this is the place where Munson’s hiding out.
Steve’s just lucky that he didn’t have to spend hours driving around to different possible hiding spots.
Things move pretty quick after that, and somehow the babysitter is dropping an oar with a broken bottle scratching the delicate skin of his jugular, the trembling heat of Eddie Munson curled over him.
Why isn’t he scared?
Dustin’s spouting some bullshit in an attempt to diffuse the situation, and he can’t quite tell whether it’s working or not because the grip on his shoulder is only growing tighter and all Steve can focus on is Munson’s hands.
They’re the kind of hands that were made to pluck strings and coax out the right chords, and he wants this boy to hold him rough and play him like an out-of-tune guitar.
He should be scared.
It feels almost too soon, when Steve is released so that Eddie can cower in the corner. He files the moment away to process later, when he has more time to think about whatever the fuck that was.
The broken bottle slips from his fingers, shatters on the ground at their feet, and the drug dealer slumps over with exhausted, wet eyes. “You won’t believe me.”
”Try us.”
He huffs, scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I- I don’t know what I saw, but it— it wasn’t…”
”Normal?”
Eddie nods, once, twice. Stares off behind Dustin’s shoulder like he’s caught back in a memory. “Chrissy, she… she wanted drugs. I don’t know what was going on with her, but she was like, super freaked out. Came to me looking for something to help her sleep, something to help her calm down. So I took her back to my place, went to go grab her some Special K, you know?”
“She was— she started levitating, floating. God, her body was just hanging there— in the air.” The older boy’s hands are trembling, two earthquakes that leave aftershocks in their wake throughout the rest of his body. “And then her bones… uh— her bones started to snap, one by one by one and I just— stood there.”
Eddie isn’t just scared, he’s haunted.
“Her eyes, man. It was like there was… was something inside her head, like— pulling. And— and then she fell to the floor and I… fuck, I didn’t know what to do, okay? So I just… ran away. I left her there.”
“You, you all think I’m crazy, right?” When the expressions on the rest of their faces don’t change, he scoffs. “No way that sort’a thing happens in Hawkins. But I swear, okay, I swear on my life that I saw her…”
“We don’t think you’re crazy.”
”Don’t… don’t b-bullshit me, man!” He stumbles over the words like a child, unfamiliar with the shape of the curse in his mouth. “I know how it sounds.”
“We aren’t bullshitting you,” Max affirms.
Robin chimes in, “We believe you.”
“Yeah, man. This shit… there’s a lot of things you don’t know. About Hawkins,” Steve adds from his place behind everyone else. He tries not to let it hurt when Eddie appraises him, skeptical, and looks to Dustin for confirmation.
While the pre-teen explains the duality of Hawkins, the gears in his head start slowly grinding together.
It was only a few days ago when Steve himself ventured to the Munson’s trailer in search of some relief. Some distant part of him registers that it could have been him, strung out on the ceiling with all of his bones snapped like twigs. Knows with an unshakable certainty that it will be him— despite his lack of irrefutable evidence to support the claim.
A chill runs through him, and the throbbing of his temples seems to agree.
He refocuses on the conversation during the tail-end of Robin and Max’s questioning about dark particles, Dustin’s simplification of the tangibility of the Upside Down bleeding into their world.
”No, man, there wasn’t anything that you could see, or… or touch. No smoke, no nothing.” He glares at the ground for a beat, and raises his head to meet Steve’s steady gaze. “I— I tried to wake her up, but she— it’s like she couldn’t move. Like she was in a trance, or something.”
“Or, under a spell.” There’s an expanding understanding present in Dustin’s voice, the kind of excitement he only feels about one thing: his stupid nerd game.
“A curse,” Eddie mumbles, eyes wide.
”Vecna’s curse.”
And somewhere in that exchange, they’d officially lost Steve. “Who’s Vecna?”
”An undead creature of great power,” Dustin claims, too focused on Eddie to do his usual mockery of Steve’s questioning.
”A spell-caster,” the dungeon master echoes.
”A dark wizard.”
The whole world is blurry, that last proclamation suspended in the heavy air of the boathouse settles into the fibers of their clothes, their skin.
How the hell are they supposed to take this guy down?
“What— what are we going to do? How do we beat him?” Robin’s voice is shaky, like thin glass.
They start spewing out more DnD shit that he doesn’t really follow, mainly ways to counteract the curse. Potions and counter-spells and—
“None of that is real, though,” Nancy cuts in, always the voice of reason. “We need an actual plan.”
This time, no one has anything to say, they just let the underlying question pollute the space between them.
”We can get Eddie cleared as a suspect, find a logical alibi to explain what happened.” Nancy is matter-of-fact, and he used to love that about her— how she was able to remove herself, remove emotions and opinions and wants and needs, from the situation. How she finds the most logical solution and sticks with it. She’s stubborn, and none of the other girls he’d been with were like that.
In retrospect, that might be exactly why they hadn’t worked out. He has spent his entire life catering to the needs of his parents and his nannies and his friends and partners and the kids; he doesn’t know how not to.
Nancy always had to be right, and Steve was terrified of opposing her, because he knew that she didn’t need him in the same way that he needed her. It was one misstep and suddenly— Steve Harrington is at a Halloween party locked in a bathroom with his drunk girlfriend, and Steve Harrington is pretending to be in love with her, and Steve Harrington is capital-b Bullshit.
This far removed, he no longer has it in him to endlessly agree with her. She’s so focused on the legal aspect, clearing Eddie’s name— it’s like she doesn’t even care about the terror, the new killer on the loose.
”…and the rest of it?”
”Well… it’s not like we can fight off an invisible demon, Steve!” Dustin retorts, rolls his eyes. “There’s not much we can do about it.”
Nancy nods, jaw set. “Dustin’s right, it doesn’t seem like our kind of problem, and it might just be a one-off. It’s unfortunate, and we can try to come up with something later if we have time. But for now, let’s just focus on an alibi.”
Steve kind of hates her right now, actually. He should’ve realized that she only gets involved when there are personal stakes in the matter.
“I mean— I’m all for clearing my name, don’t get me wrong, but… someone else is probably going to die if we don’t do anything,” Eddie flits his gaze between all of them, becoming increasingly more distraught. Pleads, “Don’t we owe it to Chrissy to try?”
Robin switches her focus from Eddie to Nancy. “He’s right, we can’t just do nothing. We can figure out how the victims are being targeted, use that as a reference to figure out who’s in trouble.”
“Chrissy was seeing the school counselor,” Max chimes in, arms crossed defensively over her chest. “I saw her leave the office a couple times.”
It’s spring break though, not like they have a chance to get into the school any time soon.
But it’s something, and that’s better than not doing anything at all.
It’s when his parents come home, is when he starts to seriously consider that something might be off.
Their car pulls in the driveway shortly after Steve gets home from the boathouse, and he’s suddenly grateful that he broke off from the main group because of his intensifying migraine.
His parents are unpredictable at best, but even he’s mildly surprised at the lack of notice beforehand. Normally they call, leave a voicemail.
It’s been thirteen months since they last bothered to show up, eight since he’d heard either of their voices over the phone. Steve had just assumed that they were done with him entirely— just cut ties and left him, the way his father threatened to do when he was eleven and twelve and fourteen and eighteen.
He doesn’t hear the car door slam shut, but he hears the keys in the lock.
His mother floats in like an apparition, the way she always does. Martha Harrington is the definition of ethereal; long chestnut curls down her back and tumbling over her shoulders, delicate wrists and small ankles, the porcelain jut of her collarbone. Chin held high but gaze vacant, hazel eyes glazed over.
She looks through him, attention sliding around his still body like oil in water, attracted to everything else that shares her vacuous tendencies, her hazy impermanence.
She glides right past her son with little more than a brief glance, ascends the staircase up to her bedroom where her extra Percocet prescription is tucked in her shirt drawer.
He knows her routine by now— she’ll take a few pills, and then drift room-to-room, a listless ghost haunting the empty remnants of a house it used to occupy.
If Steve’s mother is a soft breeze, airy and unobtrusive, his father blows in like a tornado— all harsh winds, a thick, dark cloud enveloping the world into its own version of order. Each click of his heeled dress shoes on the linoleum echos like a gunshot, makes Steve instinctively fix his posture and stare intently at the floor.
The walls around Steve seem to double in size; either the house is getting bigger, or he’s shrinking into himself like a black hole. His cheeks are wet, tacky, even though it’s been years since he last cried.
Muffled voices in the dining room, the clink and clatter of silverware and fine china. The floor is polished, pristine. His mother’s high pitched laugh bubbles over from the next room.
Richard Harrington towers over him the way he used to when Steve was a kid, even though Steve’s almost as tall as he is. “You aren’t supposed to be up here.”
“—what?” He tries to ask, but nothing comes out but radio static, the lap of the water against the sides of a pool.
The man doesn’t bother to respond before his son is cowering away from his raised palm, the threat of discipline. This is his father: the closest thing he has to a cruel and capricious God.
Steve is wearing dress shoes and missing his suit coat, button-down opened and untucked, chest bared to the cold. His shirt is missing buttons, boxers sitting higher on his hips than his slacks are.
Steve’s lips are swollen, bruised, tongue coated with sickly sweet cherry. His hip throbs.
Oh god.
It’s wrong. This is all wrong.
”Dad, I— I can’t go back down there.” His voice is too wet, far too young to come from his own throat. “Please don’t make me… she was—“
He’s not supposed to be here.
His father sighs, impatient and annoyed. The older man side-eyes the dining room, the basement door. The stack of gifts, perfectly in place and wrapped with expensive paper to match the theme of the season. It’s all a facade though— Steven’s too unrefined to open presents in front of other people, has misbehaved too many times this year to deserve anything for the occasion, according to his parents.
“Steven—“ Richard steps closer until he’s right in front of his son, grabs both his shoulders. “—I don’t care if you don’t like her. You’re old enough to help her out, practically a man now. I’m doing this for you, how ungrateful are you to not appreciate everything that we’ve done for you? Just be happy that you’ve got an opportunity like this, especially on your birthday.”
The world becomes a waterlogged blur, and his esophagus burns as if he’d swallowed glass. His voice sounds similar, just a hoarse whisper. “Please?”
“Go back down, before she gets upset.” There’s some strange look on his face, a softening that Steve has never seen in his entire life. It almost seems like guilt, if his father was capable of feeling anything tangentially close to empathy. “I’m sorry.”
Steve realizes then, that none of this is real. He has to be dreaming, because his father has never apologized a day in his life— and if he had, Steve would be the last person he would ever concede to.
Richard straightens his spine, once again impassive and unyielding. From behind them both, the basement door clicks, swings open like a gaping mouth. At the edge of his peripherals, a dense shadow emerges; the silhouette beckoning down into the belly of the beast.
The silhouette calls his name, and Steve is all too familiar with this counterfeit siren song, this sharp pull beneath the current and into the jaws of a much more sinister leviathan.
His father has a vice grip on his forearm that was or is or has bruised— that he knows will bruise.
His father’s fingers are long, stained red. His talons draw blood, sink into his flesh like a serrated blade in margarine.
His father is some thing, and it’s body is miles long— Steve tilts his head back and back and back, and no matter how long he looks— he can’t find a face, or a head. Just thick, contorted, exposed muscle.
The monster laughs, low and distorted; an echo of an echo of an—
Between one blink and the next, Steve is alone.
He’s standing in the junction between his father’s office and the kitchen, no longer a prey animal on the cusp of being devoured.
The steel door of the basement glares at him, turns his stomach and his heel as he flees.
Only on his way out does he spot it:
There is a grandfather clock in the dining room, a dark oak eyesore with a long, swinging pendulum. Looming and unsettling even though it can’t be too much taller than he is, he watches it tick, jumps at the four loud chimes that reverberate throughout the house when the minute hand finishes its journey back to the apex.
Steve wonders how he’s never noticed it before.
When he looks down, he is met with four puncture wounds on his arm; red pools in the vacancy, sluggish veins working to repair the damage.
Blood beads, spills over and trickles down to his fingers, drips a steady metronome onto the floor.
The trail of crimson leads back towards that fucking door; the doorknob is coated in red iron residue, and it seeps from under the thick metal like something out of a horror movie.
This time, he gets in his car and doesn’t stop driving until he’s well on his way out of Loch Nora.
Steve, running purely on adrenaline, heads to the boathouse around midnight with an offering of beer, snack food, and a deck of cards.
It’s obvious from the moment he enters that Munson absolutely does not trust him, not one bit.
He gets it— even though he’s changed, most of the town still views him as King Steve, Eddie included.
Despite appearances, Eddie is not the type to get aggressive, physical, when backed into a corner. He’ll spit out sarcasm and vitriol, sure; try to get his opponent to leave with harsh words and defensive posturing.
But when it really comes to it, there’s only two defense mechanisms he turns to— flight, or freeze.
And Eddie has nowhere to go.
The door is unlocked when he gets there, all the lights turned off and silence blanketing the whole room like a heavy fog.
It looks abandoned, which is probably a good idea. But he’s not in the mood to get stabbed again by a broken bottle, so he tentatively calls out, “Eddie? You here?”
Some rustling, but no curly-haired metalhead. “It’s, uh, it’s Steve? I brought you… a couple things.”
A couple beats, and then Munson pops up from the other side of the boat where he was tucked against the hull.
Whatever he was anticipating— joy, fear, apathy— it wasn’t for the older boy’s face to twist into some imitation of pissed off as he spits out, “King Steve. What, come to drag me to your jock friends so I can burn at the stake?”
”Um,” he says eloquently. “No? I brought beer. And chips. And more cereal?”
It’s clear that the other boy doesn‘t quite know what to do with that, probably expecting him to call his “friends” in and poised with a sharp tongue to match.
In response, Steve just holds up the plastic bag like the peace offering it is, and that’s how they end up playing rummy on the dirty floor with half-empty beers at their elbows. Eddie opens the bag of chips, and shoves handfuls into his mouth often enough that half the deck is slick with grease and salt.
Somehow, it is the most fun he’s had in a long, long time.
There’s an ease to it, both boys able to shrug off their current concerns to focus on something as simple as a card game for a few hours.
It’s nice, and Steve doesn’t often get nice things, so it’s no big surprise that he can only fend off the darkness for so long.
So close to the lake, there’s a rhythmic slap of water against the wall, a beating reminder of his swimming pool. It wasn’t as noticeable at first, but the longer he sat there the more insistent it became, until he can barely hear anything over the slosh of water and a quiet tick-tick-tick.
Eddie must notice his changing mood, because he straightens abruptly, brandishes a chip in Steve’s direction. “Wait, Harrington— didn’t you have a migraine?”
The babysitter winces. “It’s not that bad, don’t worry about it.”
The other boy’s eyes narrow, and his face contorts into something that looks like forced nonchalance. But he doesn’t say anything, and they settle into a tense silence.
Eddie shifts in place across from him, tucks his legs up towards his chin. He gnaws on the side of his thumbnail, eyes stained red with wet irritated skin.
Now that he’s taken a minute to look at the metalhead, really look at him— it’s clear that he’s not doing well. He appears nerve-wracked, still pale and fidgety from the events of the prior days.
Steve remembers his own first encounter, recognizes the fear still stifling the other boy. It had taken him months to calm down from it, and that was without Nancy wanting to talk about Barb while he was trying everything he could to just forget the whole damn thing.
Even now, the seasoned veteran that he is of pushing through and suppressing trauma, he can still call forth that writhing mass of terror and gore and grief. Let it pollute his lungs, crack each of his teeth and leave a filmy residue on his tongue.
Chrissy is dead, and she died in the Munson’s trailer, their home.
Steve knows intimately the magnitude of guilt that such a loss carries, still feels the weight of Barbra Holland strapped to his back. The contamination of a once-safe space with irrevocable torment and—
He wonders if it’s different, worse, to watch someone die in front of you; to reach out and feel something permanent, to have that confirmation, that certainty.
Wonders if it’ll be the same for Eddie, the way that someone died in his house and he can only guess at the specifics, but still feels her presence, the itch and prickle of being watched even when he’s home alone.
He understands.
But he’s not sure that’s what Eddie needs, right now. It’s too fresh, too vivid, too present.
He knows that if it were him dealing with the onslaught of grief and trauma and anger and hurt and guilt, the last thing that he would want is a stranger to tell him that they get it. It’d be the equivalent of prodding at an open wound.
So Steve lets him pretend that everything is okay, lets him think that he hasn’t noticed the sniffles and stifled sobs after the older boy curls up in the boat to get some sleep.
It’s okay to pretend, for one night.
Steve leaves just after eight, heads over to the Wheeler’s to regroup.
He’s most of the way there when he sees the blocked off street, the abundance of cops and ambulances scrabbling over each other like rats.
Feels the dread sink into him like a heavy stone and settle in the murky river-bottom of his diaphragm. Heard the distant chime; once, twice.
Though it makes acid sting the back of his throat, he gets out of his car. Convinces an officer to give him a name— Fred Benson, Hawkins High resident journalist. Slaughtered in the middle of the street, eyes gouged out and limbs contorted. Exactly like Chrissy Cunningham, two nights prior.
Nancy takes the news surprisingly well, considering that she and this kid were at the trailer park yesterday trying to collect information. There’s finally that personal element, the one that convinces her to actually care about the presence of Vecna.
She recounts Eddie’s uncle explaining the similarity to the old Creel murders, and they brainstorm until Nancy and Robin have a plan to head over to Pennherst Asylum to talk to one Victor Creel.
Steve is stuck, once again, on babysitting duty. He’s supposed to stay with Max and Dustin at the Wheelers, and hang out in their basement until further notice.
He’d normally complain significantly more, and it makes everyone give him weird looks when he amicably agrees. There’s so much going on right now; Steve just wants to know that they’re safe.
Kids wrangled and Nancy and Robin on their way to the institution with plans to meet up with his the kids later, he focuses on the next priority: Eddie Munson.
If they were able to find his hiding spot in less than a day, it won’t take long for Jason to do the same. Someone should be with him, just in case.
His short-lived tentative plans go out the window when he goes to check on the younger teens and finds them missing.
Steve should know them well enough by now that it’s not a surprise that they’re sneaking off the do fuck all, but he still feels the first tendrils of irritation and panic when they’re not there.
So of course it’s predictable when they ditch him and find their way to sneak off towards the school, and he has to chase after them like he always does. He’s a street-turned-guard dog, still hovering at their heels in an attempt to be useful, wanted.
The trip to the school reveals very little, just some symptoms that the two sacrifices had exhibited right before their untimely demise. Symptoms that Steve, coincidentally, has been experiencing for the better part of two months.
On their way out, they pass through a hallway with a dead end, lockers caving in on each side. And right there, at the end—
He can no longer adamantly deny what is happening.
Tall, looming, embedded in the painted-brick, stands a grandfather clock.
I’m fucked, Steve realizes absentmindedly, at the sight of the clock the he remembers seeing in his house a few days ago. I’m going to die.
His chest tight with the budding ache of panic, he ushers the kids back down the hallway, towards the entrance. This is where they run into Lucas— bearing bad news about his basketball teammates. They want Eddie, and they’re out for his blood.
Somewhere in the chaos, the walkie-talkie sputters to life, and his best friend starts going on about music and how that might be the solution to breaking people out of the curse. Which would be, is, relieving information, but Steve’s too strung out to focus on much of anything at the moment.
He’s going to die.
The babysitter herds the kids in the direction of his car, starts the drive back towards his house so they can meet up with the girls when they return.
He’s going to die.
Dustin and Lucas are fighting in the back. Max puts her headphones in and sulks in the front seat.
Steve’s hands are shaking around the wheel.
He’s going to—
That night sprawled out on his bed, Steve slips into— what he thinks is— a nightmare.
Robin, fast asleep tucked into his side, doesn’t see the frosted over irises, opaque pupils. From where Steve is caught in the potent illusion of a demon’s spell, there is no one to witness his second journey into hell.
”Who do you work for?” Thick Russian accent, impatient and demanding and loud.
Green uniform, badges, walkie-talkie, gun. The bite of handcuffs, cold steel binding his wrists together behind his back.
The world swims, blurry around an eye swollen shut, the bitter tang of copper in his mouth. His head feels like a church bell, the haunting reverberation of a ceremonial gong. Just a slow and consistent pounding, an infernal ringing in his ears.
Tired, so tired. The deep-set exhaustion of the damned, the growing compulsion of one seeking a more permanent sort-of rest.
Robin. Can’t forget her, can’t leave her down here with them. Can’t let her get hurt. Can’t—
He’s gotta. Gotta keep them focused on—
“Scoops— Scoops Ahoy. Work f’r Scoops…”
Distant pain, the heavy blow of a fist to the gut. Good, thats good, that’s—
A fist in his hair, head forced back and up. Angry, such angry irises, the void of damnation contained within pitch black pupils. Steve can see the end of the whole world, imminent and bloody, in those eyes. “Perhaps we just need to find a better way to persuade you.”
Look at me. Please just keep looking at—
The metal of the bench groans under him, the walls of the cell still a dull, dreary grey under the dim lighting.
One by one, the fluorescents burn out around him.
The dark brings with it a deep, aching cold. Makes his muscles shudder, his teeth clench together under the onslaught.
Without the buzzing lights, the reverberation fades out slowly until the only sound is the hitching, wet wheeze of his lungs, the pounding in his head.
He waits in the dark for an eternity, holds his breath when footsteps echo in the hall behind the door.
It still takes him by surprise when the door creaks open, and something slips in with him.
Too murky to discern anything through, the pitch black is an oppressive weight on his chest, a thick blindfold obscuring his senses and stripping him of any conviction.
There’s no other breathing, no indication of movement, no displacement of the air around him that suggests the presence of another being.
But Steve can feel them, the heavy weight of a gaze fixated on him. The prickle on the back of his neck, the uneasy twist of his gut.
When it speaks, it’s hushed, syrupy-slow. Somewhere within the undertones of it’s voice, a clock starts tick-tick-tick-ticking; he’s never heard anything that sounds so much like the moment right before the detonation of an explosive.
“Y’know, I didn’t think much of you at first. Thought you were just another dumb kid, stuck in the same monotonous cycle as the rest of them.” The deep vibration slithers over the nape of his neck, slips smooth as honey into his eardrums.
A distant part of him thinks Vecna, and this makes enough sense to his addled brain that he can finally assign a name to this poltergeist. Steve can’t see him yet, but he’s here; lurking in the shadows like a predator.
“I was gonna take the redhead— she’s delectable, with all those different complicated emotions constantly eating away at her. She’s a special one, sure, but you—“ a fleeting touch at his elbow, unexpected enough to have the boy lurching away from the contact, “—you’re interesting, Steve. You have so much in this pretty head of yours that you don’t like to think about.”
When he finds his throat, his tongue, accommodating enough to allow him to speak, it’s slurred. Almost more effort than it’s worth. “Hey, I’m practically an open book. Ask anyone.”
”Liar,” Vecna hisses in his ear, a whisper that might as well have been a gunshot. “I’m going to enjoy cracking you open. You’ll be the perfect sacrifice to further our cause.”
“‘Further our cause’,” the babysitter mocks, “No one actually speaks like that. What do you really want?”
The only answer he gets is the reverberate chime of a clock; an echo of the fourth peal settling like a rock in the hollow of his esophagus.
He’s still choking on the residue when he startles into consciousness, heart pounding each stroke of midnight into the silent atmosphere of his bedroom.
His fingers are trembling when he reaches up, dabs at the blood leaking from his nose.
Next to him, Robin shifts and turns over, throws an arm over his abdomen; subconsciously searching for him in her sleep.
Steve contemplates waking her for a moment, wants to make sure that he’s still alive, still real in the aftermath.
Wants to tell her, desperately, about this newest realization.
He doesn’t.
She’ll need her sleep, for what’s coming— they all will.
Try as he might though, Steve can’t slip back under the cold depths of unconsciousness, and he hates himself for it.
Sure, he’s being hunted, taunted with, by a dark wizard with a penchant for weaseling his way into people’s heads.
But nothing’s even happened to him, really. Nothing he shouldn’t be able to handle.
It’s just a few bad dreams, a few vivid hallucinations. He’s— he should be fine.
Everyone else is.
Steve, with the slow drag of copper sliding down his throat, shivers into a new dawn.