Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 92

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 92

Part 1 Part 91

Eddie laugh cuts off with a snotty scoff directed toward Carol when she’d immediately walked to the thermostat to crank it up. Eddie’s face is a mess of blood and bruising, and he’s listing slightly as he walks. Will wants to grab the phone and call for an ambulance. Have all the doctors in their white coats scan Eddie’s brain for damage, his knuckles for breaks.

He clutches Steve tighter into his side, and stares at Carol as she whirls toward Eddie, brow furrowed as she mutters out a tired, “what?”

Her face is just as bruised and swollen, but there’s no blood clotting along her hairline or pouring out of her nose. And her steps are steady as she moves through the house.

The years of friendship and history trail her every movement in this house. The way she fished the key out of its hiding spot, the way she works the Harrington’s fancy thermostat with minimal fiddling. The way she moves with such purpose, like she knows every spot the floorboard creaks and what every cupboard contains.

It makes Will ache somewhere deep, where Mike and Dustin and Lucas live within him.

Did Steve and Carol have sleepovers, performing late-night missions for forbidden snacks and risky science experiments? Did they grow together, here in the Harrington’s empty mausoleum – elementary, to middle, to high school – chained at the hip until the chain snapped?

Will knows Steve in the way he’s a sword and shield. In the way his words take shape, and his body holds space. But he doesn’t know what haunts him through rooms, trailing behind like a ghost he can’t shake.

He knows the shape of his parents, looming in unreturned calls from hospital rooms, and the way sometimes other high schoolers will walk up to Steve around town, clapping his shoulder and shaking his hand like he’s someone they recognize, even while Steve’s smiles turns fixed and blank.

He knows what he’s observed from the edges of ghosts Steve hasn’t been able to hide.

Will wants desperately to know what’s knocking around inside Steve’s head.

They’ll get him back, so Will can ask.

“You really think that’s going to be enough?” Eddie asks, scowling at Carol with crossed arms.

Carol hits the button a few more times before turning back toward Eddie with a raised eyebrow. “What would you suggest?” She says it calmly, sweetly, but Will’s known enough scary people to see the murderous intent in her eyes.

“We run him a bath!”

Carol scoffs. Apparently, they’re trading them back and forth. “You think that’ll be hot enough?”

“The Harrington’s heat their pool in the winter. I should know, I got dragged into Hell through it!” Eddie gestures expansively at the closed blinds blocking their view of the pool.

“What are you—”

“I think they’re boiler can handle a measly bathtub!”

His Mom chimes in agreeing with Eddie’s plan, but Will barely notices. He stares out at the pool past the closed blinds, trying to capture the scene. The Demogorgon getting it’s claws into Eddie and dragging him through the pool. Steve, ever the hero, jumping in after to save his friend.

Had the chlorine burned? Had they been scared?

Will pulls their connection into himself, desperate to feel their liveliness pulling back. Eddie whips his head around, meets his eyes as he tugs back. Steve doesn’t stir at all.

He’s docile at Will’s side, something else holding Steve’s body upright as he’s trapped in his head. It should be a relief, not to have to lug Steve’s weight up the stairs, but it’s not.

Will wants him to settle his hand on one of Will’s shoulders, let go of some of the burden, show he’s still a person somewhere in there, with limits and needs.

But he goes where Barbara and Will prompt him, nudging him forward with a branding hand on his

“How are we going to keep the headphones and blindfold dry?” Carol demands, but she’s following closely behind, hand brushing Will’s side every now and then, like she’s got her palms raised to catch Steve if he stumbles.

“How hard do you think it’ll be to keep his head above water?” Eddie calls from a few steps above,  not turning around but shaking his head hard enough that his frizzy curls fly around, almost smacking them in the face. “Babies manage it.”

Carol doesn’t reply, but when they reach the second floor, she shoves past them all to lead down the hall, past the plaid bedroom where they’d found Steve curled up in his closet last time.

The room she leads them could fit the Byers entire living room and kitchen in it. It’s large and airy, but empty aside from a soulless painting of a cityscape across from the largest bed Will’s ever seen and a chest of drawers with nothing but a vase and a bouquet of fake flowers arranged atop it.

Will stops for a second, gaping around at the lifeless husk passing as living quarters until his Mom clasps his shoulder, pushing him along.

Carol leads them to a bathroom. It’s sterile and white, lighting like a hospital, tub large and deep enough to fit three grown men.

Will stops, staring down at the empty tub, bubbling with trepidation.

Steve’s vulnerable, possessed, and vacant, and now they’re, what? Throwing him into the fire?

This house is already so vast and empty, swallowing Steve back up like it’s been starving for him since he left. Should they do this here, of all places?

Will’s hesitation doesn’t stop anything. Steve’s placid enough that Barbara can lead him on her own. Once she reaches the lip of the tub, she leads Steve’s foot up and over the lip, settling it in. He follows with the other on his own, foot raised at the exact same height before he lowers it to join the other.

Once both feet are in the tub, Barbara pushes on his shoulders, urging him down in the bath, fully clothed.

Eddie’s shuffled up beside Barbara, reaching into Steve’s pocket and fishing Jonathan’s Walkman out, setting it gently on the porcelain tile below the tub. The headphone chord stretches taught, but the jack stays firmly in the port, just barely reaching its destination.

Carol reaches around Barbara, hand on her shoulder to keep steady as she reaches down to stopper the tub. Eddie reaches down, hands on Steve’s shoulders as he pushes him down until he’s prone, head propped up on the lip of the tub to keep the headphones and blindfold dry and in place.

“I’ve got you, Stevie,” Eddie whispers, but his voice carries in the confines of the bathroom. “You’ll be just fine.”

Everyone stares down at them for a moment, stalled at the threshold. Steve’s skin’s turning pink where Eddie’s hands are still holding Steve’s shoulders, pushing down with force, like he’s a mother getting ready to drown her young.

What will the hot water do to his skin?

It’s Mom that moves first. She turns the knob of the tub as high as it will go, and water cascades down.

It only takes a moment for the steaming water to reach Steve’s feet. He gasps, curling his feet into his ribs until he’s in the fetal position.

Eddie just keeps holding him there, whispering things into Steve’s ear that Will can no longer hear over the sound of the water filling the tub and Steve’s own whining gasps.

Everyone else stares, watching his skin turn a vibrant pink, darkening to red as it crawls up the back of his calves.

It’s not until the water starts raising, engulfing his back and ribs that the screaming starts. It’s guttural and loud, deep in Steve’s throat. It’s reverberating, like static from a misfiring radio, echoing strangely off the walls of the bathroom.

It sounds wrong, like nails on a chalkboard. Like the Demogorgon, screeching before it devours its prey. Like the Demodogs howls echoing from beneath the earth.

Something not Steve is calling out its pain from within him. Will hopes, fervently and with all he is, that Steve’s untouched somewhere in there.

Steve jackknifes up, back lurching out of the bathwater as Eddie does all he can to keep him down. Will rushes forward, dropping to his knees hard enough on the stone tile floor that he feels the reverberations all the way through his teeth. He sinks his own hands into the hot bath beside everyone else’s, pushing him back down.

Even with all their hands pushing, it’s a struggle to keep him under. Steve thrashes his head back and forth, Jonathan’s headphones falling off into the water and floating away on the waves made by his struggle.

Eddie’s sobbing, open and loud, tears trailing down his bloody nose and dripping saltwater and blood onto Steve’s own face.

They trail down Steve’s own cheeks, leaving bloody tears that look as if they’re leaking from his own eyes.

It reminds Will of the one time he’d gone to church with Mike, Christ on the cross, dripping tears and blood, a martyr of his own making as he slowly died.

Steve’s been dying by inches. Will latches onto their connection and yanks. Like he can pull him free from all that smoke, off the cross, into the boiling tub.

Beside him, Will feels Eddie doing the same, still weeping. He’s not pushing Steve into the water anymore, the rest of them strain harder against Steve’s thrashing to make up for it.

Eddie’s cupping Steve’s face, fingers digging into his cheeks like claws, opening scratches that mix with the blood already dripping down his face. “Get the fuck out of him,” he snarls, digging his nails in harder. “Do you hear me?”

“Is it working?” Carol demands, breathless with strain.

No one answers. The bathroom is growing hot even for them. It’s filling with steam and sweat and screams. It’s suffocating. Will wants to flee. To curl into the fetal position and wait for Steve to come back. His Steve. Not this thing.

But then he feels Steve pull back. It’s fluttering against Will’s ribs, like a caged bird straining against its constraints. Feathers flying until it’s free.

Eddie gasps, hand slapping against Steve’s face hard enough that the sound of skin against skin echoes even past Steve’s continued screams.

“It’s working!” Eddie cries.  

Will pushes harder against Steve as his thrashing grows stronger, more desperate.

The tubs full now, overflowing and flooding into the bathroom. Only Eddie’s iron-clad grip on Steve’s face is keeping him out of the water and breathing.

“Not fast enough,” Carol says, voice gravely like her throats all clogged up. “Aren’t you the one that said that the little punk girl doing whatever she’s doing could hurt him?”

“What do you want me to do?” Eddie demands shrilly. He’s leaning forward so far over the tub that his hair’s trailing into it, ends wet.

Will wants to tie it up in a ponytail for him the way he does for Mom sometimes when her hands are wet with dish soap. But then Carol lets go of Steve, storming out of the bathroom with a frustrating shriek down low in her throat, and Will’s got other priorities.

“Shit, hold him, hold him!” Barbara calls, and all three of them press down hard, Eddie fighting against them with his clutching hands.

Steve’s still screaming, and crying, and flailing. He doesn’t know it yet, but his oldest friend just walked out on him, just like his parents and every other friend besides those crouched over him now.

It's going to hurt, once he’s back.

Steve’s flailing more now, like that thing inside him can sense the weakness in their ranks.

Will stays and holds his friend down as he shakes. It’s not a surprise when he shakes them free, sending everyone sprawling down onto the wet tile with a splash.

It is a surprise when the first thing Steve does is lunge forward to wrap his hand around Will’s throat and squeeze.

Will gasps, fingernails raking against the back of Steve’s hands where it’s choking him. Around them, everyone screams. 

Taglist: @deany-baby @estrellami-1 @altocumulustranslucidus @evillittleguy @carlprocastinator1000 @hallucinatedjosten @goodolefashionedloverboi @newtstabber @lunabyrd @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @manda-panda-monium @disrespectedgoatman @finntheehumaneater @ive-been-bamboozled @harringrieve @grimmfitzz @is-emily-real @dontstealmycake @angeldreamsoffanfic @a-couchpotato @5ammi90 @mac-attack19 @genderless-spoon @kas-eddie-munson @louismeds @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @pansexuality-activated @ellietheasexylibrarian @nebulainajar @mightbeasleep @neonfruitbowl @beth--b @silenzioperso @best-selling-show @v3lv3tf0x @bookworm0690 @paintsplatteredandimperfect @wonderland-girl143-blog @nerdsconquerall @sharingisntkaren @canmargesimpson @bananahoneycomb @rainwaterapothecary

Part 93