Work Text:
Steve isn’t fully there for a lot of what happens next. It’s in and out, like swimming laps.
He’ll dive somewhere deep in his subconscious, where his body isn’t aching and he doesn’t taste blood in his mouth, and kick through water, heavy and solid, until his lungs are screaming for air again.
He comes up panting, scrabbling for the side of the pool, or really anything concrete to hang on to, but his fingers won’t quite close when he tells them to and
“Shit you’re awake!”
“Steve?”
And then “Wow, hey, it’s ok.”
There are fingers against his wrist, like someone’s checking his pulse, which Steve has to admit is fair, given how run over by a truck - by 2 trucks and a stolen RV - and gnawed to death by bats he assumes he looks. He’d probably be doing the same thing if it was someone else.
Above him, Eddie is still talking.
“Nancy and Robin are fine, by the way. Well, I assume they’re fine. Not sure how much you’ve been following. They went to get help.”
The fingers are still steady against his skin, a large palm nearly covering the back of his hand, warm and comforting.
“We all kind of assumed they’d be safe from the evil hell bats since…well, you know.”
They’ve already eaten what feels like half of Steve’s organs straight from his body. Yeah, he knows.
-
“Ok let’s see.” Eddie’s talking again the next time Steve’s lungs demand reprieve from the depths of his subconscious, but he sounds less panicked, which Steve assumes is a good thing. “Slayer’s too thrashy….”
Steve has no idea what he’s saying, but the cadence of Eddie’s voice is comforting in a way he’s certain he would never admit to himself in any normal situation. There’s still a hand on his wrist.
“King Crimson, probably too heavy. Diamond Head, too niche. Dude, you’re such a jock, we need to start you with something more mainstream.”
Am not, he tries to say, but the words get caught somewhere in his throat and come out more as a ragged gasp of air.
The way Eddie says it, it sounds like an insult and Steve promises himself that he’ll use the next bit of strength he finds to argue that he is totally not that mainstream, come on.
If Eddie notices his struggle to express annoyance, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he keeps talking at Steve like he’s not even there, but there’s something in his voice that makes Steve want to listen, some strange combination of passion and stress that lulls Steve through the pain like a drug.
“Maybe ACDC? Or something like Deep Purple, ok…”
-
He comes up again a while later, with less of a dramatic gasp for air and more of a hint of confusion.
There’s still pressure on his wrist but it’s gone strangely rhythmic and Steve might not know much about the human body but he’s pretty sure it’s not his pulse doing that or he’d have much bigger problems to worry about than, well, all the problems he currently has to worry about.
“- ‘Number of the Beast’, right?” Eddie voice says, still somewhere vaguely above him. “Is where Iron Maiden became the band. Like, they had a singer before and yeah, he was good, but this one is next level. This song has basically been stuck in my head for years, man! You need to listen to the guitar work in this, the way the two of them play off each other is just…”
Steve lets himself fall back into a sort of sleep, the words in and out of his brain, but the tapping on his wrist stays strong and sure.
“And that bass line…”
-
He feels more alive the next time he wakes up, and he’s not sure if it has something to do with the fact that Eddie’s fingers are tapping a strangely intricate rhythm now, something that uses his index and middle finger at separate times and Steve can’t help but be distracted by it. Maybe that’s the point.
Possibly it also has something to do with the fact that he’s pretty sure he was awake for almost 48 hours before this whole “almost dying from bat attack” setback happened and maybe passing out from pain or blood loss, or whatever the fuck this was, has at least helped him get in a much-needed nap.
Steve wonders when he got so boring.
Steve wonders again how Eddie’s fingers are so freaking dexterous, especially given the ridiculous number of rings he insists on wearing. Then he wonders why he’s spending so much of his limited brain power thinking about Eddie’s fingers.
“…’S that?” He tries to ask, and for the first time, his mouth produces something that actually resembles words. He tries again. “What’s that?”
For a moment, the tapping stops and Steve almost wishes he hadn’t said anything, figures that’s a whole other something for him to unpack after they get out of this mess.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Eddie sounds surprised and Steve hopes it’s the pleasant kind. “Actually, I’m not sure what counts as morning in this Mordor, uh, upside-down, whatever.” Steve can just make out a blurry version of Eddie above him looking around over his shoulder, as if taking in more of the scenery will teach him anything about its climate oddities if he stares at them hard enough.
“What?” Steve asks again, confused, but just glad enough to be talked with rather than to for the first time in what feels like hours.
Eddie’s head snaps back to look at him and the ends of his hair swing over his shoulders to frame his face.
“Mordor? You know, home of Sauron, land of shadows? To the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin?”
If Steve had more energy, he would roll his eyes.
“Not Mordor,” he says. “This.” He shakes his arm once, wincing slightly as the movement jerks his torso.
“Oh.” Eddie taps his fingers again, lightly, like he’s asking permission.
“The last one,” Steve prompts.
“Like this?” Eddie starts up the two-finger rhythm again. His hand feels warm against Steve’s skin. “It’s called syncopation.”
“What song?” Steve tries again, wondering how anyone could be both so smart and so dumb at the same time. And his vision seems to be focusing again because he catches Eddie doing what might have been a sheepish smile.
“‘Holy Diver’ by Dio. So fucking good, man.”
“Mhm.” Steve settles back into the feeling of blood pumping through his limbs – and, to be honest, probably out of his chest - and taking breaths that are only slightly shallower than they should be. “I’m sure it is.”
Steve’s not diving anymore, he’s made it to the surface and he’s floating.
“It’s not my favorite of their songs though. It’s maybe the most popular, but between you and me I think ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ is better. It just has this depth, there’s something more to it, you know? And it’s not overplayed as shit, so there’s that -”
-
Steve opens his eyes next when Eddie stops talking. There’s a hush around him, but Eddie’s hand is still on his arm and Steve forces his pounding head to focus enough to narrow in on Eddie’s head, his face, eyes fixed on something behind them that Steve can’t see. A small frown creases his forehead and looking up at him from below, his hair looks wild, splayed out around his shoulders and covered in flecks of ash.
“He’s not really awake,” Eddie says. “But he is conscious, sometimes.
“Sounds about normal for Steve then,” a new voice chimes in and Steve’s heart jumps despite the fact that he’s being talked about like he’s on death’s door because Robin is right next to him.
She’s close and she’s making fun of him with the lamest insults possible and it makes Steve feel just the smallest step back to normal.
“We have to carry him then,” Nancy says from somewhere further away and even after all this time, just the sound of her voice, gentle and determined, is enough to make Steve feel safe.
“He’s pretty heavy,” Eddie says, doubtful. “I’m not sure if I can –
But he breaks off when a new pair of hands grabs Steve’s other arm and suddenly his torso (and to be honest, most of his body) is screaming in pain because he’s being pulled into a sitting position.
“Sorry, sorry,” Robin’s voice is much closer now. “This really isn’t the place to get your beauty sleep in, though. You gotta get up.”
Eddie shifts closer to him, gets a hand on Steve’s upper back.
“She’s right,” he says, practically in Steve’s ear and Steve braces himself for more pain, does his best not to think too hard about any particularly physical part of himself as they hoist him to his feet.
Instead, he thinks Deep Purple, ACDC. He feels his feet being dragged along rocky, uneven ground, tries and fails to make his legs move.
He thinks Holy Diver.
He thinks dark water rising up to meet him and the faint red glow of the gate below getting brighter, wider, louder, swallowing him whole.
He doesn’t think much more after that.
-
Steve is swimming, surrounded by concrete on each side and dark, glinting tile below him. He’s a strong swimmer; he took his team to nationals his senior year. And, well, they didn’t even come close to winning, but Steve’s decided to cut himself some slack with that one, given that he was pretty preoccupied at the time with literally saving the world.
Anyway, he’s swimming, swimming harder than he thinks he ever has in his life, feels the muscles in his arms burn as they reach forward, straining against some non-existent current.
He’s aiming for the sides, really any of them will do. He wants to grab the edge of the pool, drag himself up, shake the water out of his hair like a dog, and breathe in air that doesn’t clam up his lungs with a sticky darkness like wet ash. And after what feels like far too long fighting, he’s at the edge, reaching out for it with his fingertips and straining with everything his poor muscles have left.
He’s just about to touch the wall when everything around him starts to darken, starts to grow, to writhe.
Steve knows he can’t scream underwater, but he thinks he might because the next moment, he’s sinking, being sucked down again towards a pulsing red light and there’s water whooshing in his ears that sounds like a wave, or maybe it’s the screaming of bats, and Steve’s certain he’s been down here too long. He’s going to drown;
he’s going to drown.
Someone catches him by the hand, and everything stops.
-
“He’s awake!”
“Yeah, I can see that, I’m sitting right here.”
“Steve, oh my god, you scared the shit out of us.”
“Shut up, he’s just waking up. Give the man a second!” And then, the same voice, quieter: “You did scare the shit out of us.”
Steve is smiling when he opens his eyes.
He’s lying on a mattress in what looks like a living room. Dustin and Eddie are sitting side by side on the floor, leaning over him. He can see Robin splayed out on a couch a little way behind them. She looks fast asleep.
“Sorry we took so long,” Dustin is saying. “We got a bit held up on our end. Literally, the police were there; it was a whole thing. But Nancy and Robin found us. Or, really, we found them.”
“Of course they did,” Steve says, not finding it in himself to care if he sounds too fond or too cheesy.
“I figured it out though,” Dustin is still talking. “It was the lights…”
And it’s not that Steve isn’t paying attention, he really does care how they managed to get out, but he’s also just noticed that Eddie is still touching him.
It’s not just fingers on his wrist this time, Eddie’s full on holding his hand. Steve thinks back to the water, to the darkness pulling him down and the feeling of someone catching his arm and guiding him back towards the surface.
“I don’t think he’s listening to you, man,” Eddie says, amusement coloring his words.
“I’m listening!” Steve retorts at the same time as Dustin narrows his eyes and confirms, “He’s not listening.”
Now that they’re back in the real Hawkins and Steve is relatively less passed out from blood loss – speaking of, he notes a makeshift bandage around his chest – he feels like he can properly see what’s going on around him for the first time.
Up close, Eddie looks exhausted. There are dark circles under his eyes and his bangs cast a slight shadow over his face as he leans forward, making him look even older than someone who’s failed high school as many times as he has should.
It’s a kind of tiredness that Steve recognizes all too well from his own first time dealing with all the upside down, Demogorgon, mind flayer, Vecna – shit.
Before he can think too hard about it, he squeezes Eddie’s hand. It’s an almost mindless gesture, meant to convey that he understands, maybe better than any of them.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Dustin says, in a softer voice than Steve’s been used to the past few years he’s known the kid. “He always is.”
“He better be. We’re just at the beginning of his education.”
He watches as Dustin sags sideways to lean against Eddie and surprises himself by feeling little to no jealousy about it.
“What education?” Dustin asks, and Steve closes his eyes again, lets their voices roll over him in soft waves of sound.
“Music,” Eddie says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He literally knows nothing, I had to start him right at the beginning.”
“ACDC?” Dustin prompts, clearly at the beginning of a lecture he’s gotten a thousand times.
“Exactly, man, exactly! It all starts with…”
Steve’s asleep by this point, and this time he’s anchored to reality by two soft voices and a hand full of rings.
Holy diver, you’ve been lost in the masquerade, no need to look so afraid.