Friendly Fire (Fell in Love with the Fire Long Ago)
Steve stumbles on still unfamiliar feet towards the outcrop of rocks and the caves hidden beneath that he’s come to call home. Early morning light flares across the sky. He won’t sleep but he’ll rest. Has to if he has any hope of being able to fight tonight.
The first time one of them had crawled out of the lake he just knew he wouldn’t stray very far. Their chittering calls and the beat of hellish wings keep him close, alert. Every night, the moment the sun dips below the horizon, he makes the rounds. One gate to the next just to be sure. He can hear them on the other side as the barriers between this world and the next all grow thinner. The monsters beyond growing restless. So far Watergate is the only one thin enough to let anything through. Not that they get much further than the shoreline. Steve won’t let them. The feeling of cold blood against his teeth has become more familiar than he cares to think about.
He can’t say how long he’s been here, this way. Only that he can’t work out how to stop. It takes everything in him not to look too closely at the fur that covers his arms or the scales that shield his soft underbelly. Claws that shred flesh just as easily as swiping greedy fingers through icing on a cake. Teeth meant to wrap around the throats of the things that go bump in the night, that threaten his friends – his tribe.
As he lays down on his bed of dead leaves and dirty ground, try as he might to avoid it, it’s thoughts of them that lull him into the closest thing to sleep that he allows. It’s been some time since El has gotten close. Steve feels her on the edges of his consciousness sometimes, when the exhaustion gets to be too much. It’s been longer since he’s seen them with his own eyes. He wants nothing more than to drag himself to the edge of the trees and find them all waiting. But he knows that in the state he’s in they would hardly be waiting with open arms. More likely, they’d be there with fire and bullets and fear. He can’t see that. He wouldn’t be able to take it. He’s as much a monster as the things that crawl out of the murky lake at night.
He won’t put that on them. He can’t. But what he can do is fight.
Steve can do what he’s good at – taking the hits so they don’t have to.
According to the State of Indiana and the Hawkin’s Police Force, Steve Harrington is presumed dead. At least that’s the pictures their statistics paint no matter what their missing person flyers say. Eddie can see it on all their faces. John and Claire Harrington arrived in town just long enough to play the part of concerned and then subsequently grieving parents. Just long enough after to sell the house and fuck off to whatever corner of the globe they actually call home. Eddie and Robin had barely had time to salvage the pieces of Steve they knew he would want before the sale had been finalized and a cleaning crew trampled in. The BMW was reported missing not long after the assholes had swept back into town, though they both know it’s sitting in the junkyard under tires and tarps. Eddie thinks it’s this that fuels the theory Officer Callahan recites every time he runs across one of them: that Steve left of his own accord. He’s trying to give them hope, they all know. Still, it grates on all their nerves. Their hope doesn’t lie in the idea that Steve left because he simply wouldn’t do that.
No, their hope lies with El. Every morning, without fail, she pulls that bandana over her eyes and leans against the flimsy table that holds Eddie’s television. The Wheelers were quick to grow tired of early morning visits. But El has gathered that that is when Steve sleeps so that’s when she tries. Every day for five long months she’s recited the same six words.
“He is still in the woods.” Sometimes she can see the trees. Sometimes she can see the lab in the distance. Sometimes she paints a picture of water lapping at the shore of the lake or rocks overhead.
No matter how many times the party breaks out into groups and fans out into the trees, they come back empty handed. Every time. Not a single sighting of Steve. El seems particularly optimistic this morning however.
“He has been awake for a long time.” She declares in their direction, as if this is good news. As if the thought of Steve keeping himself awake for days, nearly weeks, on end will bring Eddie and Robin some sort of comfort. Dustin turns on the TV and tunes it to an empty channel.
“Great.” He mutters, voice dull.
“It means he is tired. Yesterday I was close and he did not see me. I think today he will sleep and I will see more.” She’s never waned in her surety that they’ll find him. Not once.
Eddie feels that now familiar cramp in his gut: guilt, hope, and the neverending fight between wanting to find him and not. Because what they’ve gathered in the pages of a notebook with worried edges, lines upon lines of clues that Dustin is always poised to write down even now, isn’t pretty. That Steve is tired but doesn’t sleep. That he’s hungry but doesn’t eat. That he’s Steve but maybe he isn’t. That he’s afraid and determined and angry and alone-but-never-alone.
Eddie wants more than anything to find their friend. He’s desperately clinging to the hope that there’s a friend to find. He hates himself in the moments when the thoughts that there’s only a monster at the end of this rope get too loud to ignore. He cringes at the few times he’s packed everything he owns into bags and boxes, piled into his van, and very nearly left. Run away. It’s only the thought of warm hands holding his and warmer eyes catching his own, shared smiles and cups of coffee, that keep him from crossing county lines. Because if Steve is out there Eddie sure as fuck isn’t going to leave him behind. It was Steve that had dragged his bloodless body out of hell. He can’t just not be there when they eventually do the same for Steve.
So here he sits for the 157th morning in a row, watching as El tugs the bandana over her eyes and Dustin sits with a pen at the ready. Her shoulders fall, relaxed as the white noise pulls her into the liminal space she’s described to Eddie countless times. He can feel Robin beside him on the small couch matching El breath for breath. The rest of the party comes and goes as much as they can. They had all gathered for weeks when Steve first went missing but life didn’t stop for any of them. Today it’s just the four of them: Eddie, Robin, Dustin, and El. Hopper is waiting outside with his truck running. Max is undoubtedly sitting on her stoop – their one demand when the government was in the business of handing out houses was that they stayed neighbors. It’s been a while since she could muster up the will to come inside with them. Both of them, Hopper and Max, are waiting to take Dustin and El to school as soon as they’ve wrapped up for the day.
“Oh.” El breathes. “He is asleep.”
Dustin wiggles where he’s sitting. Eddie can relate but they know not to press for more in case it pulls El too close to the surface to get back to where she is now.
“I am looking. I can see Steve. I have to look around.” She whispers. “The lake. Very close. The- place. Lots of rocks. Tall rocks. There’s holes in them. Deep holes. He sleeps in one of them. They are very hard to see. Hard to find. Oh. Oh, there is something in the water. Something- shit.”
Eddie spares a second to feel bad about the illustrious lessons in vocabulary El has clearly taken from him but this is good. Better than good. El tugs the bandana off of her eyes. Dustin is bouncing beside her. He knows what the kid will say before he opens his mouth.
“The quarry! Just like we thought but we didn’t look for caves. I didn’t even know there were caves by the lake but that’s got to be it. We’ve been there dozens of times but if there’s caves, if he’s hiding then we wouldn’t have found him. Hiding in plain sight! I have to call the others. We have to look right away.” Dustin is already scrambling for the walkie in his backpack.
Eddie looks to Robin and sends her wobbly smile right back at her. Deep down, they know that no matter how they find Steve, they will find him if it’s the last thing they do. They’ve talked each other down more times than either of them will ever admit. Hushed admissions down a phone line or across a cold bed made colder by the space they leave for him between them. Eddie confesses that there are still boxes in his van that he never gets around to unpacking. Robin whispers about wanting to walk into the woods and just… lay down until he comes for her. She’s sure he would. She spends more nights in Eddie’s bed than she does her own just to make sure that she never misses a morning search. He welcomes her every time just to make sure she doesn’t wander away.
A plan forms quickly. There’s a hesitancy to go right away despite how desperately Dustin argues for it. They don’t want to frighten Steve even further by catching him asleep. If he runs there’s no telling how long it will take to find him again. There’s also the concern for the something that El felt in the lake. So they’ll wait until the evening drawls closer when it’s more likely that Steve will be awake. El will check in throughout the day to ensure he’s still asleep until they’re ready.
Robin leaves reluctantly to work her opening shift at Family Video with a walkie clutched tightly to her chest. Eddie promises to come in and wait with her once the afternoon rush is over before she climbs into the back of Hopper’s squad car alongside the group of kids heading to school. They had both graduated, not with a bang but with a heavy sigh of relief. Though Eddie thinks his diploma was more of a restraining order than the result of any effort on his part: Please leave and don’t come back that slip of paper had said. He was all too happy to do exactly that. He gets by just fine despite living in a town that hates his guts. His weekend shifts at the Hideout and the under the table work he does at the tire shop in town keeps cash in his pocket. Wayne certainly doesn’t seem to be in any rush to give him the boot. He’s been party to more than his fair share of morning searches. Eddie never told him the finer details of what had happened last spring break but just one morning watching El dip into a trance to find a lost man is enough for the older man to put some pieces together. He doesn’t ask and Eddie doesn’t tell but on mornings when clues were less than forthcoming, Wayne was always waiting with hot cups of joe and a plate of hash browns for Robin and Eddie to push around for a bit.
The day crawls by like the universe knows how much they yearn and dread for sundown. Dragging minutes are chased by hours hurtling past until finally they’re all pulling up to the quarry. They’re spread across several different cars.
“There.” El points toward the far end of the quary where the roads won’t take them. The evening light is dwindling as the sun inches lower and lower. “He is still asleep.”
“Let’s get walking.” Hopper announces. “Don’t stray from the group. We stick together this time.” He doesn’t need to say that El hadn’t been able to suss out what lingers in the lake. They’d all heard her walkie updates throughout the day and spent quite a lot of time imagining the horrors that could be lurking all on their own just fine, thanks.
They move forward in unison. Nancy holds her shotgun in a tight grip. Robin has cans of hairspray attached to a utility belt she’d put together for this very think and several lighters in her pocket. Jonathan and Argyle both carry torches in either hand. Eddie himself tightens the grip on the bat he’d pulled from underneath Steve’s bat, nails dark with long dried blood but still sharp. Their trek is a quiet one. There’s something off about the woods tonight. Eddie is almost as familiar with them as he is the rest of Hawkins at this point but there’s this feeling lingering in the back of his mind that they’ve gotten turned around somewhere.
They haven’t. Everything around them technical looks just as it should but the darkness that falls around them feels foreign. Unwelcoming. Unkind.
“Guys.” Will whispers and everyone comes to a stop. “Fuck. I think we should go back.”
Eddie glances over in time to watch the lanky teen rub an uneasy hand across the back of his neck.
“No way dude.” Dustin growls. “Not a damn chance.” He takes a step forward, twig snapping beneath his feet when it happens.
There’s a rustle beyond the clearing they’ve found themselves in. The caves are just up ahead. Eddie can see the dips in the rock face of the cliff now that he knows to look for them. They’re so close. From the brush up ahead comes a rapid clicking noise that Eddie’s never heard before. It seems familiar enough to the rest that they all start to spin on the spot trying to catch sight of its source.
“Everyone back-to-back! Eyes sharp!” Hopper calls out.
“Demodogs.” Lucas breathes beside him, their shoulders pressed together as the group starts to move into a tight circle.
“How?” Max demands behind him where she’s been pushed into the middle of the circle along with El, their hands firmly clasped together. Her milky white eyes almost glow in the dark but she holds her bat with a sure grip in one hand and her cane in the other. Her eyes track the darkness in a way that says she’s following sounds more than anything.
“The gates are closed.” El insists. “I check. They are thin but-“
“El, don’t.” Hopper orders gruffly. “We’ll handle it. We’ll figure it out later. Just stay on your toes everyone.”
As if in response to Hopper’s words, a loud screech sounds from the edges of the lake to their left. It echoes across the quarry. The silence that follows is heavy. At least until the sound of heavy feet, not feet but something else entirely perhaps, starts charging right toward them. Soon Nancy is firing her shotgun into the darkness. Hopper is firing his gun in the opposite direction. The small clearing catches just enough moonlight now that Eddie can see the unnatural gate of something crawling, circling around them just beyond the tree line.
Make that several somethings.
“Demogorgon! Two o’clock!” Jonathan yells before lighting a torch and jabbing it at a monstrous scaley creature Eddie couldn’t have imagined in his dreams. Nancy swings around and fires.
“Demodogs! Over here!” Robin has broken away from the group slightly so that she can aim the flames of her ignited hairspray towards the smaller creatures, their faces splitting open on screeches each time they get too close. Eddie starts swinging at the ones that edge closer and closer to Robin’s feet. They’re quickly becoming outnumber if the frantic shouts around him are any indication.
Ringing out clearly above the mayhem is a high pitched chittering that sends Eddie’s already racing heart into his throat. He turns to the group, ready to gather in the direction of the hellish sound. Instead, he watches as the Demogorgon rearing to tackle Jonathan is yanked from behind and back into the dark cover of the trees. It screams long and loud until it suddenly doesn’t. It’s squeals are cut off with a dull thud that Eddie can feel in his chest.
The pack of demodogs seems distracted by the commotion. Soon they’re crowding together and- and backing away. There’s an easy dozen of them and they all seem to cower backwards from the group. Or rather, not from the Party, but from whatever just demolished that Demogorgon. That same sound, a cackling, is quieter now but still audible. It pitches low as it travels around the edge of the clearing. Eddie can’t see much except fur. Fur and scales that tower among the trees. Because whatever it is, it’s big.
One of the demodogs seems to get fed up with it all, leaping out towards Lucas and Erika. Lucas swings the machete he’s clutching with both hands but it misses. The other demodogs catch on and give up on their retreat. Just as they start advancing, a thunderous growl fills the space around them.
A lumbering beast bursts into the clearing, lunging forward on four legs. It’s arms and legs are covered in fur. Tufts of it flare up along its head until it trails down it’s back. Dark green-gray scales run along its spine and down it’s legs where the tawny hair lays flatter. Its tail is almost dog like but its head looks nothing like a dog at all. The face is right, canine in shape with its mouth baring sharp teeth, but the neck is just this side of too long for any dog Eddie’s ever seen. The thing is yipping as it moves forward. There’s no other word for it. If he didn’t know any better he would call it laughter with the way it seems to grab at the demodogs with wild glee. Eddie is suddenly reminded of the nature shows that come on Saturday afternoons when the bunny ears on their set cooperate. Grainy and out of focus shots of some far-off place depicting a pack of wild animals swarming their prey, laughing as they go.
Its massive hands catch the demodogs as they leap towards the party, placing itself between them and the mindless little shits that just keep coming. Everyone is pivoting in place waiting for impact that never comes. This new monster seems determined to keep itself in the line of fire. Teeth tear into flesh and pull it apart. Claws sink into slinking, slimy bodies. One demodog gets close enough to try and wrap its wide petal-like jaws around Dustin’s leg but before it can sink its teeth in, the larger creature grabs it by the tail with a five fingered hand. When it stands on its hind legs its height is bone chilling. It towers over them, the flailing monster that had tried to snack on Dustin in one hand while it squeezes the skull of another until it cracks. It adjusts its grip on the struggling, screaming demodog it has clutched by the tail and swings it with all it’s might.
The motion looks so familiar. The Thing stands tall, slamming the demodog against the ground over and over until it’s lifeless body is slinging blood and viscera with each impact. Soon it drops the lifeless body with a dull thump and staggers a bit on its feet. Just as quickly as chaos came, the quiet falls around them. The clearing is still aside from their heaving chests and this creature’s breath pluming in front of it with every panting exhale.
“Steve.” El pushes through the group, closer to the tense thing. It looks moments from springing back into action. Eddie is so focused on the subtle movements being telegraphed by every flicker of muscle beneath fur that he nearly doesn’t catch what she calls it. When he does, he flinches with his whole body.
The movement has the creature spinning on its heels towards the group. Nancy raises the muzzle of her gun but Robin stumbles right into the line of fire.
Nancy yelps at the motion. “Robin, move.”
Robin doesn’t answer, just takes two more uneven steps toward the creature as it starts to fold in on itself. The laughter it had been emitting has turned to low whimpers.
“Steve.” She breaths and when she does, Eddie see’s it too.
It’s in the eyes. Golden, brighter than before, but still sprinkled with green. A hazel that Eddie’s dreams have tried and failed to recreate more times than he can count.
“Holy shit, Steve.” Eddie chokes out.
“Guys, stop. We don’t know it’s him.” Erika stutters but even she’s lowering the mallet she’d raised just moments ago.
Eddie stumbles forward on weak knees, letting the bat fall away from his hand. He’s only feet away, reaching out toward the furry thing that he now knows is Steve when it starts backing up.
“No, Steve. Please.” Eddie begs.
“Don’t leave!” Robin urges beside him, racing forward with outstretched hands but as fast as they can possibly be, Steve is clearly much faster. In a flash of dark fur and darker scales, he’s disappearing into the trees. They stand surrounded by the gore and torn bodies of the monsters that had attacked just moments ago.
Hopper’s old cabin is rattling with raised voices.
“We can’t leave him out there!” Robin’s voice is hoarse. The room is divided into factions and one of them is blocking the damn door.
“No one is suggesting we leave Steve anywhere but we don’t know that thing was Steve.” Nancy presses. She’s standing shoulder to shoulder with Hopper and Mike.
Eddie can feel the way Jonathan shrugs beside him. When the elder Byers had rallied alongside Eddie, Robin, and Erica it had been mildly shocking. The quiet man just didn’t seem like the sort to care all that much about Steve. Not in a bad way just- the both of them seemed indifferent to the other outside of life-threatening scenarios. But Jonathan had just stared down Nancy’s cautious doubt with a stern eye.
“If he’s stuck, and he obviously is, this isn’t even a fight. Steve would never leave any of us behind.” Jonathan said like it wasn’t a weirdly moving sentiment to hear coming from him.
The rest of the party is gathered in the living room watching the chaos, apparently having silently agreed to act the part of Switzerland if for no other reason than not wanting to add to the yelling. Except for Dustin and Will. They had raced back towards El’s room and hadn’t come back. Eddie gets it. He sort of wishes he could do the same. Maybe crawl under the bed and tug on his hair until image of the monster - Steve curling in on himself stops flashing through his mind. He’d looked so… defeated? Resigned? Whatever it was, it was as if Steve was anticipating some kind of blow.
Joyce is standing right smack dab in the middle of it all. She speaks up for the first time since they returned. “Jonathan’s right. Steve needs our help. This sure as shit isn’t helping.” She waves her hand between the face off. “Either way, you’re not going back out at night now that we know monsters are squeezing through the gates.”
At this Hopper waves a hand as if to say ‘See? Someone’s talking sense now!’ Which, to be fair, that’s been his only real objection this whole time.
“I’m not waiting.” Robin says flatly. “He’s been alone all this time. El said he hasn’t been eating or sleeping right. He’s probably been so-“
“Robin, we don’t know that it’s Steve.” Nancy almost growls.
“It is.” El speaks up for the tenth time that night to reaffirm what half of them are already convinced of.
“Okay, fine. Maybe it’s partly Steve but you all saw it. We don’t know enough to go chasing it down. How would anything like that even happen?” Nancy clenches her trembling fists against her stomach.
“Bat venom.” Dustin speaks up from the hallways. He’s moving with purpose. “Duh. Those little shits pumped Steve full of the stuff. So far he’s the only one of us to be bitten like that by something from the Upside Down and live long enough to see the consequences.”
“Hate to be that guy but uh” Eddie waves his hand towards the scars that litter his chest beneath his shirt. “So did I and I definitely didn’t have a big, hairy growth spurt.”
“Yeah, but they basically had to replace all of your blood when we got you back through the gate dude. Whatever got in there didn’t stick around.” Dustin points out, waving a dismissive hand towards Eddie’s belly which… rude.
“We already know the demo-creatures adapt quickly. We know that however they do it, it’s unpredictable. I mean what exactly do the Demogorgons and the demobats have in common except they’re from the Upside Down? Their whole physicality is completely different from the other. That’s not the important part though. At least it isn’t a question we need to answer just yet.” Will opens the book in his hand, the corners of the monster manual are bent, and the cover discolored with use.
“We figured out what Steve is.” Dustin declares. “We thought werewolf at first since lycanthropy is transferred with a bite or maybe some other lycanthrope but last night wasn’t a full moon. Then we saw this and- well it just fits the mold a lot better. Not exactly, obviously. It never fits exactly right but it would explain some of the characteristics we saw.”
“What is it?” Mike asks, easily leaving his post beside Nancy to read over Will’s shoulder. Lucas leaves Max’s side to join them, the four of them leaning over the pages like it might spit Steve himself out from between the words.
“A gnoll.” Dustin sighs heavily.
Will takes a deep breath and reads aloud from the passage on the page he’d opened up to. “‘There is a great resemblance between Gnolls and hyenas. Gnolls have greenish grey skins, darker near the muzzle, with reddish grey to dull yellow manes. Eyes are dull black and nails are amber colored.’ It doesn’t say much else. It does mention that they’re subterranean though which would explain the caves.”
“How can we be sure?” Nancy asks.
“God! What is wrong with you?” Robin screeches. “It’s like, like you don’t even want this to be Steve. It’s like you don’t want to find him.”
“Of course I don’t!” Nancy yells right back. Where her hands had been trembling before, the tremors have worked their way up her arms. Her lips don’t tremble. Her breath doesn’t falter. Even so there are tears making tracks down her cheeks and dripping from her steady chin. “If that thing out there is Steve, then it means he’s been alone and scared and stuck in a body that isn’t his this whole time. It means he could have been out there fighting upside down creatures by himself. I’m sorry if I just want to- to hope that maybe, just maybe Steve hasn’t actually been there for all of that. It is really so horrible that I hope he’s taken a backseat for it or that we’re wrong?”
All the tension, lankly limbs poised for a fight like she might actually throw a punch at Wheeler, drops like lead out of Robin’s body. Nancy swipes a defiant hand at her wet cheeks. “No. That’s not bad. I’m sorry. We really shouldn’t fight among ourselves.”
“It’s fine. I know you want to get Steve home. We all do but I learned a long time ago that not everyone we lose gets found safe and sound and I just don’t want to set myself up for that, okay? I’m not trying to be a bitch. I’m not-”
“But someone has to say the hard things or none of us will think this through.” Robin finishes for her. Neither of them being overly fond of displays of affection means their tentative peace is sealed with a brief squeeze of hands before they’re turning back towards Dustin and Will.
“Does it say anything useful other than just giving this creature a name?” Robin demands.
At this both boys’ faces fall. “Not really. Just felt good to figure something out.” Dustin replies.
“You did good. Maybe it will help in the end.” Mike bumps his shoulders against them where he’s edged himself between the pair. For a moment it’s easy to imagine the four of them far smaller than they are, standing here in this quiet cabin.
“How did he go from a demobat bite to that?” Lucas prods, pointing at the simplistic drawing of the creature on the page.
“We’ll have to do more research to figure that out I think. Look into like, how things adapt. We’ll hit the library tomorrow.” Will snaps the monster manual closed with a definitive nod.
“I am going to try to talk to Steve.” El announces. “Maybe he will listen know that we know what he was running from.”
Her words seem to shake some of them up a bit, spurring movement throughout the group.
“I gotta get some of you kids home. Do your research. El will try to get in touch with him. We’ll meet back up tomorrow, okay? He’s been alright this long. One more day won’t” Hopper stops himself and shakes his head like he can erase the end of that sentence from existence but it’s hovering between them all just the same. “We can’t be unprepared. Come on.”
Jonathan and Argyle start divvying up passengers despite the protests coming from the majority of the younger party members. Eddie rubs at his eyes, feeling untethered by the thought of going home now that they’ve finally made real progress.
“Do you mind if I stay?” Robin snags Hopper's sleeve with her fingers briefly. “Like, what if he comes here? He knows we’d meet here, you know?”
“I’d like to stay with here too.” Eddie offers.
Hopper looks at Robin and then Eddie in turn before releasing a long breath. “Sure kid. Don’t do anything stupid, either of you. We won’t leave him out there.”
“Me three. And Will if he wants.” El proclaims. “I think he might be able to help me talk to Steve. I want to try first thing and we’re a lot closer to him here.”
Will looks a little befuddled at that but nods just the same. “Whatever you need.”
Joyce sighs beside but relents. “Alright. But the older kids are in charge and nobody leaves the cabin no matter what. Lord knows where you’ll all sleep.”
Once everyone has left, the four of them pile together on El and Hoppers old mattresses. They pull them out into the small sitting room and pile all the blankets in the cabin on top. Joyce had wondered how they’d sleep. The answer is restlessly.
