and what are we going to do when the HP series comes out and we start seeing a resurgence of the fandom here including gifsets and fics. like are u guys gonna bring up your neurodivergence and cry "can we separate the art from the artist!!!!! you dont need to pay to watch it!!!!!its my comfort show and I'm DEPRESSED and AUTISTIC"
Reminder that "separating the art from the artist" is a sentiment that only works when the artist is dead and no longer profiting off the work in question.
JKR is still very much alive and very much openly devoted to spending as much of her money on efforts that increase transphobia. You cannot separate this artist from this art, because she is heartily using funds from that art to fund hate groups.
Do not watch it. Do not pirate it. Do not talk about it. Have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Transphobes aren't attacking bathrooms randomly. It's not about protecting women and children, it's about preventing trans people from participating in public life.
Access to toilet facilities are essential to being able to participate in public life.
It's why society was so reluctant to introduce public bathrooms for women, because before that all public bathrooms were for men only.
It's why society was so reluctant to desegregate toilets for Black people.
It's why society was and is so reluctant to create disability-accessible bathroom stalls.
If a person can't access a toilet, then it's extremely difficult to impossible for them to participate in society.
So, the best way to exclude a group of people from society without putting up a literal sign saying "x group of people not allowed" is to prevent them from accessing the bathroom.
“You look pale,” Jeff comments making Eddie snort loudly.
Of course he looks pale, he’s got vampirism, doesn't he? But then again, so does Jeff and he looks great.
“When was the last time you fed?” He asks.
Eddie sighs heavily trying to reign in his bad mood. He knows Jeff’s just worried and wants to help, and he’s grateful to have run into an old friend from high school as soon as he moved into the big city.
Because he’d be utterly lost without him.
He doesn't know where anything is, he gets lost in the subway, and he has no idea when he’s being charged too much for a muffin or suspiciously too little for a hotdog, or where all the blood markets are.
“Like, two weeks ago,” Eddie finally answers.
Jeff looks surprised but it’s not actually that bad, people with vampirism can go up to 4 to 5 weeks without blood.
It’s not the same as those vampires from movies and books, they still eat food and they can stand in the sun with just minor cases of sunburn. There’s also the light sensitivity, making them all look like assholes wearing sunglasses everywhere.
Also, they are not allergic to garlic. Which, thank the heavens because Eddie loves garlic, a lot.
There’re a couple of side effects that do come in handy sometimes, like augmented hearing and smell. And the healing spit is super weird but nifty. No super strength regrettably, that would’ve been awesome.
Anyways, it’s like they have super anemia or something.
“I went to a blood bar, hooked up with some dude but. I didn't have a good time, at all. I kind of don't want to go back to bars for a while,” He elaborates and when Jeff frowns worried, he shakes his head,
“No, not like that. It’s just… the dude was like way too into it, you know? It kinda freaked me out.”
“What do you mean? Don't you find it hot? When you feed?” Jeff asks him, curious.
Eddie nods quickly, “Yes, of course I do! It can be really sexy with the right person, but this guy, he was like- like way too loud and like, he was faking it? I don’t for who, though. And halfway through it, I started getting worried I’d accidentally hired someone instead of just hooked up and I didn’t have any money, and then I started thinking about money and my dick-”
“Ok! Ok, I get it.” Jeff thankfully interrupts him. “Dude, why didn’t you say something, I know of a place. I didn’t mention it before because it’s kind of boujee and handles itself a little differently.”
“Oh? Do tell” Eddie tells him excitedly, he loves going to new places, especially if they are weird.
“Well, it’s real private, like ‘can’t get in unless you are on the list’ private. And it’s run by this girl. Blonde little thing, super cute. Scary as fuck. Everyone calls her ‘The Boss’” he says doing air quotes.
“Dramatic, I like it.” Eddie smiles.
Jeff chuckles, “So the gist of it it’s you go there and just hang out normally, like any other kind of bar. The place is beautiful, the music is good, and the drinks are delicious. But what's interesting about this place is the hostesses,” he says and even does a little pause for effect before continuing, “Similar to a blood bar there’re people there willing to be fed on but what’s cool about it is they get to choose.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows, “That sounds kind of fun, actually.”
“Right? And it feels, safer somehow? For them?” Jeff agrees and Eddie nods and smiles at him, waiting for him to keep going.
“Anyway, the hostesses choose and then you get to go upstairs and talk through what you want to happen, just feeding, sex, talking, anything they agree to, it's on the table. I once ended up just playing a game of Uno with the girl I fed on and two other hostesses that hadn't picked anyone that night.” he finishes and Eddie laughs delightedly.
“Ok, this place sounds amazing, what’s the catch?”
“Well, you have to pay an entry fee, the drinks are expensive and there’s always the possibility you’ll leave empty-handed. The first time is free though,” Jeff says.
“Like drugs,” Eddie replies and Jeff nods solemnly,
“You know the hostesses can be kind of addicting.”
…
That night, on the way there, Jeff tells him they have to sign a guest list at the entrance,
“No one uses their real name, not because the place is shady or anything! But because they want to leave that choice to us and the hostesses if you ever get too close with one. It's not like, frowned upon.”
Eddie nods listening intently, he feels kind of nervous in a way he hasn't in a while, but he’s not sure why.
“Also, secret nicknames are fun! I’m known as Jay there. So please don’t dox me. Or yourself.” Jeff tells him.
After careful consideration, Eddie smiles and says, “I’ll be… Strider”
“Nerd”
“Shut up, you are just jealous you didn't come up with it yourself”
Jeff laughs, “You got me there,” he says, and then, “We are here” and he opens a big glass windowed door and vows to Eddie, inviting him in.
Eddie chuckles and enters and immediately almost runs into someone—a tall, massive guy with short curly hair and the shadow of a beard.
“Hey freak,” Jeff greets calmly, “He’s with me,”
Eddie cringes at the nickname, bad memories from high school bullying. But the dude just nods and gives Jeff the tiniest of smiles, so he figures it’s the nickname the bouncer chose for himself.
They enter and sign their name in the guest book, a girl about their age with dirty blond hair and hundreds of freckles on her nose and cheeks is there and she asks Eddie a couple of questions. Not in a weird way, but in a ‘you are new and I’m curious’ kind of way.
Eddie feels comfortable and excited as they go in.
Jeff was right, the place is beautiful. The lobby leads to a big room with high ceilings and fake candle-lit lamps. The chairs and tables are antiques and all different but roughly the same time period so they look good together. There’re old signs and posters from all kinds of drinks and different products adorning the walls. And the music is instrumental and oldie too, sounds like probably 40s or 50s.
It is incredibly boujee. But in a fun way, cozy and warm.
They get a seat at a small round table in a corner and Jeff lets Eddie look around for a while before asking,
“So? Weird right? It’s like stepping into another time,”
Eddie snorts, “Yeah, one that has no idea which time period it wants to repre- who is that?”
Jeff looks at where Eddie is looking and sighs, “Of course you noticed Sunshine,”
“Sunshine?” Eddie sighs.
“That’s what they call him. Because apparently he smells like flowers and summer and tastes like orgasms or something,” Jeff says amused rolling his eyes.
The guy, Sunshine, is probably the prettiest person he’s ever seen in his life, definitely the most beautiful man in this room. His face is a contradiction of sharp and round angles that is just absolutely perfect, and he’s wearing a black suit that clings to his body like a second skin, showing off his big shoulders and his tiny waist. He’s looking around the room with big, brown eyes that look bored as he leans against a wall like he’s above it all, he’s a fucking dream.
Eddie swallows audibly and looks smirking at Jeff for a second before his eyes drift back to the man, “Tastes like what, you said” he teases and Jeff snorts.
“Not that anyone would know, as far as I know, he’s never taken anyone upstairs,” he tells Eddie in a conspiratory tone.
That makes him incredibly curious, “Really? Why is he still here then?”
“I don’t know for sure, mostly rumors but he’s the boss’s favorite, that’s for sure. Oh!” Jeff exclaims and then nods his head to a girl sitting on the other side of the room, in a big fancy-looking chair that looks more like a throne than a simple piece of furniture.
She’s got blonde hair up in a ponytail and she’s wearing a flowery dress but there's something about the way she looks around the room, something about the way people walk around her and look at her, with respect or fear, or maybe both. She’s fucking intimidating.
While Eddie’s looking, the girl from the front desk, with the freckles, comes to sit on a small stool beside the “throne”, there’s another one on the other side that’s empty. The blonde girl moves her hand towards freckles and she kisses it and then her shoulder and smiles as she leans in closer and starts whispering to her.
It’s kind of surreal.
“That’s The Boss, and the girl from the entrance, that’s Sparrow. She’s her girl.” Jeff explains.
“Respect for looking scary in a sundress,” Eddie comments.
And Jeff nods, “Anyways my theory is, Sunshine is actually just a bodyguard and not a hostess but the people that come here like to think they actually have a chance with him, so no one says anything to the contrary.”
Eddie snorts and nods, it makes sense. It's actually very good marketing, just like the ‘the first one is free’ thing. That boss girl is really smart with her business.
Jeff and he get a few drinks and they chat calmly, Jeff isn't looking to go upstairs tonight, he only came by to accompany Eddie and Eddie knows he should be looking around, trying to make eye contact with someone, but he can stop staring at Sunshine.
He even looked at their table at one point, and Eddie thought he was going to faint. He was scanning the room as he apparently does every couple of minutes when he caught Jeff’s eye and Jeff lifted his hand in greeting.
And Sunshine’s face completely transformed, his bored calculating expression changed into a beautiful smile that made his eyes shine. He wiggled his fingers at Jeff cutely before going back to looking like fucking Droopy Dog. If Droopy was the sexiest motherfucker alive. It was amazing to see.
Eddie’s jaw almost hit the table and he turned to look at Jeff stunned and he just shrugged,
“Sunshine was one of the hostesses I ended up playing Uno with. He’s fucking vicious,” he says smiling at the memory.
Eddie chuckles as his eyes follow Sunshine moving across the room, he just can't. Stop. Looking.
But the thing is, Sunshine is looking back now. Keeping eye contact with him obviously and unashamed. It’s thrilling and it makes shivers run down his spine.
He watches as Sunshine sits on the stool on the other side of The Boss’s throne and grabs her hand and holds it, intertwining their fingers.
The Boss and her girl turn and look at him and the three of them start whispering, looking at him.
“Dude,” he says and turns to Jeff to see if he’s seeing what he’s seeing.
Jeff looks from him to the whispering party, “Un fucking believable, first time here and tonight is the night Sunshine is taking someone upstairs” he says looking fed up, but clearly in a joking manner.
“Is that what you think it’s happening? No way,” Eddie shakes his head as Sparrow says something that makes The Boss chuckle but Sunshine speaks up and she sobers up immediately. Curious.
“He’s looking right at you, he probably went to ask Sparrow about you,” Jeff insists.
“Maybe he’s looking at you”
“He’s seen me before,” Jeff scoffs.
He’s about to reply but their conversation gets interrupted by someone shily clearing their throat. A girl, a hostess, is looking at him with curious eyes, and shit… she’s cute and looks like a nice person but, Eddie can’t- he needs to know what those looks from Sunshine meant.
He needs him.
He looks back at the group quickly to see Sunshine and The Boss in deep conversation and Sparrow… is she glaring at him?
He rejects the girl, as nicely as possible and Jeff scoffs and murmurs ‘unbelievable’ under his breath again as Eddie turns to look back at Sunshine.
Who is walking toward them, holy shit.
“Holy shit,” Jeff says and then moves to stand. Eddie grabs his wrist and tries to pull him back.
“Wait what are you doing, dont-” But Jeff frees himself and starts walking away,
“Good luck!” He sings songs and then leaves him alone.
As soon as Robin and Nancy enter the room, the first thing out of Eddie’s mouth is a frantic, “What's Steve’s phone number? I need to—need to check something—”
His heart thuds in anticipation, an impatient buzzing sensation creeping across his skin, and he kind of gets it now, why everyone else was so quick to roll with the punches throughout everything while he was left reeling; having something to solve means that there’s somewhere for all that nervous energy to go. Means he isn’t just sitting around, waiting for...
Robin reels off the number with precision, and when Eddie hesitates in the doorway, glancing back, she adds, “We’ll keep watch.” She catches Nancy’s eye, and they exchange a look, as if they can sense what Eddie is feeling, as if they can feel it, too: a mixture of worry and hope.
Eddie nods, grateful, and runs. He wants the confirmation first before he tells them anything, can’t shake the fear that perhaps, alone and half-asleep, he imagined that flicker of awareness on Steve’s face...
His call is picked up after barely two rings. Max dully parrots the number back to him, along with an uncharacteristically formal, “Who’s speaking, please?”, and if the circumstances were less dire, Eddie would have the time to enjoy that: the idea of Steve teaching the kids how to answer his own phone, simply because they must be over often enough for it to be necessary.
“Hey, Red,” he says as gently as he can, but some urgency must still seep through; he can hear her inhale sharply.
“What is it? Is Steve—?”
“Wait, listen. I just need Dustin to take a look at something for me, okay? Shit, no, his foot—in Steve’s room, there should be a tape in a drawer. It’ll—” He has to stop talking suddenly, recalling the horror all over again of finding that empty cassette case. “It’ll just be loose in there, no case.”
He hears Max half cover the receiver, hears her shout, “Lucas!” She relays the information to him, and Dustin’s voice comes through, calling after them both: “What’s going on?”
“Just wait at the stairs for Lucas, Dustin. Oh my god, use your crutches!” Then she must be speaking properly into the phone again, because her voice is an undertone. “This is for Steve’s song, right?”
“I...” Eddie sighs. “God, I hope so.”
They both fall quiet, and Eddie listens to Dustin’s echoing complaints at Lucas taking too long; the sound of Erica running up the stairs to help in the search.
“I would’ve given him my tape,” Max says, barely above a whisper. “If it would’ve helped.”
Eddie is speechless for a moment, then quietly clicks his tongue in sympathy. “Ah fuck, Max. I know you would’ve.” He laughs a little, tries and fails to ward off another wave of emotion. “He wouldn’t have let you, though. Not a chance in hell.”
She scoffs, sounds a little teary herself. “Yeah, I know.”
There’s a distant shout of triumph. “We’ve found it!” Lucas yells.
The line crackles briefly as the phone is passed over, and then Dustin is speaking, chanting, “Holy shit, holy shit,” over and over again, clearly having made the same connection as Max. “Um, Breakaway by Art Garfunkel?”
Eddie chews on his thumb nervously. It sounds right, but... “Could you read out the track list?” He can't stifle a gasp when Dustin says, “My little town,” and that leads to an explosion of noise on the other end.
“Holy shit,” Dustin repeats. “That's his song, isn’t it?”
Eddie can’t speak. He nods uselessly, before finally managing a shaky, “Yeah.”
-
Things start to become a blur; it’s only thanks to adrenaline that exhaustion doesn’t bring Eddie to a complete standstill. Still on the phone with Dustin, he realises that it’s almost three in the morning and while he’s itching for that tape, he knows damn well that if he has barely slept, then neither has Dustin.
“Oh, ew,” Dustin says when he brings this up. “Get it together, Eddie, you’re not the babysitter.”
“But Steve gave me a schedule and everything,” Eddie says sweetly.
And that elicits a giggle out of Dustin (a proper giggle! After everything! Jesus Christ, he loves this kid), which makes him laugh, too; but he has to quickly stop himself before it dissolves into something else.
After a reluctant but genuine promise from Dustin to sleep for at least a few hours, Eddie then sprints back to Steve’s room to catch the girls up with everything.
He delivers a quiet snippet of the song to demonstrate, weak with relief when he sees that little crease of concentration return to Steve’s face.
Robin, who is holding Steve’s hand again, gives a breathy, near silent scream. “Oh my god, his finger twitched, oh my god.” Then, deadly serious, she adds, “Eddie, I could kiss you.”
Eddie, feeling like he’s pitching towards hysteria, only just stops himself from saying something like, “Well, that would be hilarious for two reasons.”
Instead he just laughs, tries to keep singing. But it quickly feels like every part of him is trembling uncontrollably, and Nancy clocks it just as his voice fails at the start of a verse.
“Get some rest, Eddie,” she says firmly. “You’re the only one who hasn’t had a break.”
But he hesitates at the hospital entrance. He’d had a vague thought of going to Steve’s house to check up on the kids but, after a week of hiding, he can’t really wrap his head around the idea of just calling a cab out in the open.
But then, as if he’d heard his internal dilemma, Wayne meets him by one of the front doors.
“Let’s go, kid. Got us a hotel a couple blocks away, they’re giving out rooms for free.”
They walk there together, Wayne guiding Eddie with an arm around his elbow, like he can sense his exhaustion. Their door is at the very end of a floor, a little distance away from the other rooms. It’s quiet. Peaceful.
When they get inside, the first thing Eddie notices is that it must be two adjoining rooms, a door embedded into one of the walls left slightly open. Then he looks around and freezes.
Because his guitars are there. There’s somehow hardly any damage, just a faint scratch on the surface of the electric guitar, and some of the paint spelling out ‘This machine slays dragons’ has chipped off on the acoustic—barely anything. Eddie would rather they both have been smashed to pieces, if it meant that Steve would’ve been spared.
“You... you went to the trailer,” he says, stunned.
“Sure did.”
“And...” Eddie tries to avoid Wayne’s gaze, knows that his face is probably cycling through too many emotions to count. “And it was... okay?”
Wayne sighs. “It was pretty banged up, Eddie.”
Oh, Eddie thinks, and this time he does feel more than hysterical. He thinks I've not seen it.
“But, like, that was... it?” He doesn't really know how to ask ‘no portals to another dimension? No gigantic cracks in the earth?’ without, well, asking about it.
He chances a glance at Wayne, watches him raise an eyebrow. “Why the hell you askin’ that? What else would there have been?”
“Oh, no reason,” Eddie says, high-pitched and strained. On the bedspread he can see a little bundle of his clothes has been salvaged, and he already knows in his bones that there’ll be significantly more of his own things rescued compared to Wayne’s.
Wayne gives a small, knowing smile. “It’s just stuff, Eddie.” He nods in the direction of the shower. “Go on, now.”
The shower is an arduous but therapeutic task: just taking off his bloodied shirt feels like he’s shedding just a little bit of the horror of the night behind. Afterwards, Eddie stretches out on the bed; through the wall, he can hear Wayne talking on the phone to one of his colleagues. He makes out something about an earthquake hitting, about the colleague’s daughter in a car wreck, and he holds his breath, listens closer... but it sounds like she’s okay. Jesus H. Christ, he can’t take another fucking tragedy.
He feels his chin dipping down to his chest, and he sniffs sharply, rubs a hand over his face. It’s as if when resting, his body has finally given itself permission to feel every ache: his knee throbs dully from where he had fallen in The Upside Down, and his limbs are as heavy as lead.
Eddie groans, forces himself to sit up. He reaches for the acoustic guitar, mutters a little, “C’mon,” when he catches himself drifting too close to sleep. He has work to do.
He gets the chords down in fits and starts, plays the song on a loop until it feels like it’s a case of muscle memory, ingrained into some deep part of him. Soon even his fingers feel too heavy to lift, and he swears he’s only stopping for a moment, just to rest, just for a minute...
He wakes under the blankets. His guitar has been propped up by the end of the bed, and he can faintly hear the phone ringing in the room next door, Wayne answering it gruffly.
Eddie sits up at the sound of a soft rap on the wall. He rubs at his eyes; he’s slept so deeply that he can feel the mark of a pillow crease on his cheek.
Wayne enters through the adjoining door, says, quietly bemused, “Mornin’. There’s a Dustin Henderson waiting for you at the hospital. That make sense to you?”
“Yeah. Shit.” Eddie stifles a yawn into the crook of his elbow. “What time s’it?”
“’Bout eight.”
Eddie pushes himself off the bed. Wayne watches him with interest, eyebrows raising when he grabs the acoustic guitar.
“You need that for the hospital?”
“Mhm.”
He's put on his jacket, ready to leave, when he catches Wayne still looking at him.
“What?”
“You always lose your words when you’re hiding something,” Wayne says mildly enough, but Eddie can still hear the worry underneath.
“Wayne, I’m not in danger,” Eddie reassures. “I’m not the one who…”
“That Henderson boy mentioned something about Steve Harrington?”
“Yeah. He—” Eddie has to grip onto the door handle for a moment. “He’s the friend who—he died trying to—to save us. All of us. But then, he—his heart started beating again, fuck, I don’t even know how, Wayne, he died in my fucking arms—”
“Shh now, take a breath. This was… in the earthquake?” Wayne asks delicately. He says ‘earthquake’ with the same skepticism he holds when repeating Eddie’s words back to him, whenever Eddie breezily says, “Oh, I just had a thing,” instead of, “I got a detention.”
Eddie nods slowly, makes a vague gesture with his hand meaning sort of. Close enough. “We’ve… we’ve got a plan. To bring him back.”
“Something the doctors can’t do?”
“Damn it, Wayne, I told you, there’s stuff I can’t—”
“All right, all right.” Wayne raises his hands slowly in placation.
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just… I don't know if it’ll work,” Eddie says, voice faltering. “Don’t know if I’ll—if it’ll be enough."
Wayne considers him with a long look. He crosses the room to squeeze Eddie’s shoulder and his hand stays there, a reassuring warmth. “You’re a smart kid, Eddie. Reckon you’d best see it through.”
-
They reunite in Steve’s room: Eddie, Robin, Nancy, Dustin. Robin has brought a few extra tapes from her parents’ collection, including the Paul Simon album that also features the track. Dustin has Steve’s original tape along with a casette player.
Before Eddie’s arrival, they had tried playing the song a few times over but, by the fourth play-through, Steve’s heart had started beating alarmingly fast.
“Shit,” Eddie says, his own heart plummeting. “What happened?”
“One of the nurses said it was like he was... having a panic attack,” Dustin says quietly. He exhales in frustration. “I don't get it, Max only had to hear a bit of Kate Bush before she came back.”
Through a nerve-wracking amount of experimentation, they work out a routine that doesn't send the heart monitor screeching in warning: every hour on the hour, they play through the song once via a cassette, then Eddie picks up his guitar and sings. Steve’s thoughtful expression gets the tiniest bit more pronounced each time, like an opaque window slowly becoming clear, bit by bit.
When Robin takes Dustin away for a late lunch, Eddie finally asks the question.
“Hey, Wheeler? Why’s it just... us here?”
Nancy is slowly rewinding one of the tapes with a pen, but at Eddie’s words, she stops. He can tell by her face that he doesn’t need to elaborate; she knows what he’s asking.
Because the thought that Eddie cannot get away from is the fact that, if he were in Steve’s position, Wayne would have been here, would have moved heaven and earth to stay by his side.
“I...” She sighs. “I don't think they've ever come, Eddie.”
They’re silent for a moment, as if they both need to take the vastness of that in.
“In ’83, he stayed at mine for Christmas,” Nancy goes on. “And at the time... God, I can't even remember, maybe I thought it was a little weird that he didn't even—like, there wasn’t even a phone call, you know? But he just made it out like it was normal, so I... I didn’t...” She sighs again. “You know how... like, at school, people would be like, ‘Oh, I came in drunk, my parents went crazy,’ but you could tell that they were fine, that they were just... playing it up?”
“Yeah.”
“I think he was the opposite,” Nancy says. She looks at Steve, her lips pressed thin. “I think he said just enough to... hide behind it, does that make sense? I didn't see.” She tuts at herself, raises her eyes to the ceiling. “I remember thinking, sure, he might say ‘my dad is an asshole,’ but no-one who actually says that is serious; look at him, how bad could he have it?”
Eddie thinks of himself saying, Rich parents, popular. He feels sick.
“I didn't see either,” he says.
Nancy smiles sadly. “That's the thing,” she says. “I don't think he wanted anyone to.”
-
Eddie stays overnight at the hospital. “I can't leave him,” he tells Wayne over the phone, and while he's waiting for Nancy to give Dustin and Robin a ride home, he finds that a bag has been left for him at reception, containing more clothes and his toothbrush, and his breath catches a little at the sight.
The staff have told him not to play any music past eleven at night, and Eddie almost fights them on it, like, oh yeah, well that didn’t stop that radio playing at whatever-the-fuck o’clock. But then he looks at Steve’s face, at the drawn eyebrows, and realises that he looks...
Pained.
Alone in the room, Eddie finally sets his guitar down.
“You tired?” he murmurs.
He tentatively reaches out, brushes a couple of his fingers across Steve’s forehead, as gently as he can. When he draws back, he finds that the lines of tension have dissipated, but the stillness doesn’t look so unnatural; it feels like Steve is still there.
It just looks like he’s sleeping, Eddie thinks, and he blinks hard.
“S’okay,” he says softly. “Just rest, Steve. I’m right here.”
-
“Mm, damn, I think that was pitchy, dude,” Dustin says, far too brightly for nine in the morning.
Eddie gives the guitar a warning strum and flips Dustin off. “That wasn’t funny the fifth time you said it, dude.”
But his tone is far too fond to even fake annoyance. Dustin is clearly in much better spirits today, largely helped by the fact that he’s brought in his walkie. Every so often, Lucas or Max will call in from Steve’s, crowing about some discovery they’ve made in the house.
“He has a VHS collection that's just musicals,” Lucas intones gravely, as Max cackles in the background.
“Tragic,” Dustin says.
And Eddie can’t resist his own curiosity. “Which ones?”
Lucas recites the titles and Dustin gives a wheezy laugh at, “The Sound of Music.”
“Imagine if The Lonely Goatherd was your song,” he says with pity to Steve—and Eddie counts that as a goddamn victory, because it's the first time Dustin has properly acknowledged Steve’s presence; speaking teasingly, as if Steve can hear him.
“I’d still sing it,” Eddie replies, and he means to sound light-hearted, but Dustin must hear something else, because he looks over at Eddie, and his expression softens.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, smiling. “You would.”
-
Some time after noon, Dustin leaves to raid the vending machines for the pair of them. Eddie has played through the song twice to mark the hour, feeling calmer than he has in days; something in him has settled through the ritual of it.
He’s doodling on the back of his hand with the biro Nancy left behind when he hears the familiar click of the walkie, but no-one starts speaking.
He picks it up. “Sinclair,” he says, “you’re pressing the—”
That’s when he hears it.
A faint crackle. Someone breathing, gasping and catching their breath at frequent intervals. They’re crying.
“Oh, God,” comes the whisper, and Eddie knows that voice. “I—I don’t know where I am.”
Eddie holds the walkie with a white-knuckled grip.
“I don’t know where I am,” Steve Harrington repeats, cracked and desperate. “God, please, I—I don’t—”
“Steve!” Eddie shouts into the walkie. “Can you hear me? Come on, man, I’m right—”
But then Steve’s voice is abruptly cut off, replaced with static.
Eddie swears vehemently, drops the walkie and flies to the bed. There doesn’t seem to be any change—if anything, Steve looks peaceful.
But no. He looks harder, feels a tug of doubt and follows his instinct, swipes his thumb underneath Steve’s eyelashes, feather-light. Feels a dampness there.
And then he sees two tears leak out of the corner of Steve’s closed eyes, trail across to his temples.
“Fuck,” Eddie says. “I don’t—Steve, I don’t know what to do.”
I can’t reach him.
The door opens.
“I got one of everything! But oh my god, Eddie, Nancy called and she says that Mike says they’re—what’s wrong?”
“I heard him,” Eddie says. He gestures to the walkie. “But I couldn’t—I couldn’t help—Dustin.” His voice breaks. “He sounded so scared.”
Dustin runs to the walkie, leaves his crutches behind with a clatter. He tries it multiple times, saying Steve’s name urgently, but there’s no reply.
The tears have dried on Steve’s face. Eddie sits down wordlessly and puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, Dustin is kneeling in front of him.
“El can reach him,” Dustin says, and Eddie doesn’t know what the hell that even means; but Dustin’s eyes are wide, and Eddie clings to the conviction in his voice. “She has to.”
[Top image description: Text reading “No. let me explain something. It’s beginning to dawn on me that you are treating me just like men treat women. You define my identity, my sexuality in relationship to what you want to think is true. You expect me to act in a submissive, subservient manner, then treat me as less than human. The idea that I might be the same as you threatens you, so you hold me down. You expect me to be satisfied with “feminine” clothes and mannerisms, and to stay in my place. I’m here to be exploited then discarded—SFDOB said that in print, publically. Well, I’m sick of it, and there are so many sisters who see through you. I will concede you one point on conditioning. Having grown up in Nixon’s America, you make a damned good fascist.“ End description]
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