Archive of Our Own

Wayne’s on the road when the quake hits.

There’s a fresh pack of smokes in the cup holder, a six pack in the footwell. He’s holed up at this shitty motel on the outskirts of town while the trailer’s a crime scene, a cop posted up outside his room 24 hours a day. They say it’s in case someone comes looking for him, but Wayne’s not stupid. He knows it’s because they think he knows where Eddie is, which is one hell of a joke. If he knew where his boy was hiding, there’s not a single member of the Hawkins P.D. who could survive getting between them.

But Officer Daniels’ replacement had been late, and Wayne had taken the opportunity to go and find himself some refreshments. He’s sure Officer Whoever’ll chew him out for it once he’s back, but he really can’t bring himself to care.

So he’s cruising down Dearborn when the truck starts to shake. For a second he thinks he’s popped a tire and starts to slow down but the shaking gets worse, and worse, and then he sees a tree wobbling back and forth and power lines sparking and -

“Shit,” Wayne curses, slamming his brakes on hard. The stretch of road he’s on is clear aside from one oncoming sedan, and Wayne watches the telephone pole sway and buckle and thinks brake, goddammit, brake -

The driver must see it coming, but they’re just a touch too slow. The pole comes down right on the hood of the sedan, crumples it like it’s made of paper. The lights flicker and die, and Wayne grips the wheel and counts and waits for the tremors to stop.

It takes forty-seven seconds before the truck stops rocking on its wheels. Wayne waits another ten before he throws the door open and runs for the sedan. There’s steam coming out from under the hood, but the driver is already staggering free of the wreckage by the time he draws level with her.

Wayne recognises her immediately - Jill something-or-other, one of the cashiers at Bradley’s Big Buy. There’s blood pouring from a cut on her face as she wobbles forward on unsteady legs, and Wayne reaches out to catch her before she hits the ground.

“You’re alright,” he tells her, wiping some of the blood away with his sleeve so he can get a look at the gash on her forehead. “You’re alright, you’re okay.”

It’s not too bad, all things considered - but she looks stunned, probably has a nasty concussion. Dearborn goes straight through a whole lot of nothing, all empty lots and half-built houses, and Wayne doesn’t feel like rolling the dice and hoping one of them will have a working phone line.

“Alright, Jill,” he tells her; bends at the knee and hooks her arm around the back of his neck. “I’m gonna get you to the hospital, okay? You hang in there. It’s gonna be alright.”

His knee complains at the added weight on the way back to the truck, but Wayne grits his teeth and ignores it. They’re seven minutes from Hawkins Memorial - five, if Wayne speeds - and he gets her in the passenger side, tosses the beers in the back unceremoniously, and makes sure she’s got her seatbelt on before he pulls the sharpest U-turn of his life.

It takes twelve minutes to get to the hospital, mostly because a hole has opened up across the middle of Fairway. There must be a broken gas line somewhere in there because it’s emitting an unholy red light as Wayne hangs a tight left turn and continues down Oaktree. His heart’s beating an uneven pattern against his ribs, a growing sense of panic making his shoulders tight and his breathing fast. Hawkins has never had so much as a minor quake, let alone one that downs power lines and opens up ten foot wide rifts in the earth. The gnawing sensation of wrongness that’s been deep in his chest since opening the door to the trailer five days prior just gets more and more urgent as he drives, past fallen trees and collapsed houses. Jill groans in the passenger seat, and Wayne can’t find the words to comfort her.

Hawkins Memorial is already starting to fill with people by the time he pulls into the parking lot. There aren’t a whole lot of other cars so most of them must have come on foot, and Wayne tries to tell himself that walking wounded are a good sign as he helps Jill out of the truck. There’s a nurse handing out blankets near the entrance to the emergency room, and she takes one look at the pair of them and tells him she’ll be right back with a wheelchair.

“Are you hurt, sir?” she asks him as he eases Jill down onto the chair, knee screaming at him the whole time. He’d busted it hard on the steps of the trailer that morning, nearly cracked his head open when he’d seen that girl -

No, he tells himself. Not now.

“‘M fine,” he tells her, “Just a passerby. Telephone pole came down on her car.”

The nurse can’t be older than about twenty. Her eyes are wide and panicked, and her hands shake as she takes hold of the wheelchair handles. She’s got a spray of freckles across her nose, and they stand out like ink against her ghost-pale skin.

“Her name’s Jill,” Wayne offers, just about keeping pace with the nurse. “She’s got a husband - uh, Liam somethin’, I think. Don’t know his last name.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says, and her voice trembles. “We’ll take care of her.”

Then she’s gone, moving at a brisk pace through the throngs of people. Wayne watches until she disappears back towards the emergency room, and then he staggers sideways into an empty seat and lets his head drop forward into his hands.

Something ain’t right here, he tells himself. Something ain’t right.

The waiting room is loud, filled with crying and shouting. There’s one harried looking cop by the entrance and two state troopers by the main desk, neither of them lifting a finger to help the three other nurses who are trying to make their way through the crowds, doing their best to triage. He watches as a woman grabs the sleeve of one of their white uniforms and leaves a smear of blood.

Wayne thinks about the first aid kit in the bed of his truck, and he gets to his feet.

One of the nurses catches him on his way back in - sees the big red box in his hands and tries to stop him, mumbling something about not needing any more supplies. She’s older, closer to Wayne’s own age, with a deeply lined face and exhausted eyes.

“I was a medic,” Wayne tells her, and finds his voice comes out calm and stable. “Figured y’all might want some help?”

He figures she’ll say no, really - send him out to the parking lot, and then he’ll get in his truck and drive ‘til he sees the first downed house before he tries again. But she sniffs and looks him up and down for a moment, jaw tight. “You better not be bullshittin’ me right now, ‘cause I ain’t -”

“No bullshit, ma’am,” Wayne says, and puts his hand over his heart. “Did a tour in Vietnam, but now I work down at the plant. Name’s Wayne Munson.”

He realises a beat too late that giving his last name might have been a mistake because her mouth thins just a little, her eyes narrowing. Wayne shifts his weight off his bad knee and stares right back at her, nothing to hide.

“Alright,” she says after a beat, and Wayne just about manages to hide his surprise. “I want you over in that corner, and you only help the patients I send to you. Don’t treat anything worse than minor lacerations, bruises and sprains. If you suspect a more significant injury, you send them straight back to me. Clear?”

“Crystal, ma’am,” Wayne says, and she nods.

“Good. I’m Sheila. Go and wash your hands. I’ll have someone bring you a box of gloves.”

Wayne washes up in the handicapped bathroom, scrubs all the way up to his forearms like they do on M*A*S*H. He sheds his jacket and rolls his sleeves up past his elbows, and when he makes it to the corner with his first aid kit and his gloves there’s already two people waiting. A mother and daughter, he thinks. The little girl’s got dark curly hair and big, worried eyes. Green eyes, sure, but aside from that she could be the spitting image of -

No. Not now. There’s work to do.

It’s not like it had been in the war, not even close. There he’d just been putting out fires with tourniquets and morphine, and now it’s a slow but steady trickle of gashes and scrapes. There’s nobody screaming or howling or cursing God at him, far more whispered thank yous and quiet tears. Wayne bandages and splints, sends one person back to Sheila with a broken finger and another with uneven pupils. His adrenaline’s not pumping quite like it had been when he got in, but there’s still enough of it to keep him focused, keep him sharp.

That is, until someone comes through the doors and screams for help in a broken, trembling voice.

Wayne’s looking for the source of the cry before he even thinks about it. There’s a girl standing in the doorway, wearing a quilted jacket over a dirty striped sweater, and she’s got both hands braced on her knees as she drags in a ragged breath. It takes a moment for Wayne to recognise her, what with all the grime and the blood smeared down her front, but then it clicks - the reporter who’d asked for his side of the story, in the trailer park. She looks real different now without the sweater vest and the pastel skirt, and when she swings around to look back at the entrance Wayne swears he sees a handful of shotgun shells tumble free from her pocket.

Then four more people come stumbling through the doors - a short-haired girl in camouflage with a kid wearing what looks like the top half of a ghillie suit on her back, the kid hollering at the top of his lungs for a doctor like he’s on the brink of death. The reporter grabs the short-haired girl, stopping her from running directly into a frozen onlooker because she’s busy looking over her shoulder at a boy in a leather jacket right behind her, his face pulled tight with pain as he carries a limp, unmoving body, their head tipped back, pale face smeared with blood in the unforgiving halogen lights -

“Help him!” the kid is screaming, “Somebody, please -”

Oh, Wayne thinks, oh, oh, oh.

He’s on his feet before he can even think about it. Moves through the crowd slowly to start off with, until the boy in the leather jacket swings around and the painfully familiar design on the torn-up shirt just barely clinging to the person in his arms is in view, and then Wayne’s shoving people out of his way, barging through the crowd as fast as he can, heart slamming in his chest, tears burning in his eyes -

Someone tries to push him back, grabbing at his sleeve. Wayne shakes them off, realises it’s one of the state troopers and just about holds himself back from decking the guy, chokes out “That’s my - that’s my kid, that’s my fuckin’ kid, get the fuck off me -”

The trooper lets him go and Wayne stumbles four more steps and then he’s there, he’s right there, Eddie’s right there, his boy, his boy.

“Oh,” Wayne says, “Eddie, no -”

The kid clutching Eddie in his arms starts to rear back, the grimace of pain turning to something more determined, more angry. He’s moving away, taking Eddie away, and Wayne’s not above punching someone, not right now - but the reporter girl is putting a hand on the boy’s arm and whispering “It’s okay, Steve, it’s okay.”

The boy - Steve? - staggers, letting out a harsh gasp. He’s losing his grip, Eddie starting to slip from his arms, and Wayne reaches out - gets one arm around his back, the other under his legs, and lifts. It takes a moment before he has Eddie’s full weight, before the kid holding him will fully let him go, but once he does. Once he does Wayne can start to see the damage, and the tears that had been stinging at his eyes finally slip free.

“Oh, bug,” he whispers, “Oh, kiddo -”

There’s more blood than Wayne thought Eddie’s frame could ever hold. It’s everywhere, pulsing from an injury on his throat that’s been hastily bandaged with Eddie’s favorite bandanna, oozing from his stomach - and Wayne’s seen battle, seen limbs blown off and shrapnel-torn skin and more gunshot wounds than he ever thought possible, but this. He’s never seen anything like this. Eddie’s torso is a mess of mangled skin and improvised bandages, his goddamned Hellfire shirt ripped open to expose the wounds extending up his chest and wrapping around his sides. Wayne swears he sees bite marks around the edges of them, far too small and numerous to have come from a human, and there’s a line of bruising around Eddie’s neck that looks a little too much like someone tried to garotte him, and Wayne thinks -

Something ain’t right, his mind screams at him, but he ignores it. Hefts Eddie up a little higher in his arms and starts towards the double doors they’d taken Jill through, heart in his throat, and then -

“Wayne? ‘S tha’ you?”

Eddie’s voice is so soft that he barely hears it. Wayne looks down, meets his nephew’s bleary, pain-filled eyes, and almost sobs.

“It’s me, bug,” he says, voice taut with barely-contained emotion, “It’s me. You’re okay, you hear me? You’re at the hospital, you’re gonna be fine.”

Eddie makes this awful little sound low in his throat, somewhere between a cough and a moan. He’s got blood in his teeth, trickling down his chin. His eyes screw shut for a moment, an agonized groan escaping before he sucks in another breath and fixes Wayne with a desperate, pleading look.

“Wasn’ me,” he whispers, “Wayne, you gotta - I d-didn’t do it, I swear, I didn’ - k-kill her. Didn’t kill any’f ‘em.”

And Wayne wants to weep, wants to fall to his knees and cry at the fear in Eddie’s voice, the tremor that runs through it, the blood that bubbles at his lips as he speaks. All he can do is gather him closer, let Eddie’s unmarred cheek fall against his shoulder and say, “I know, bug. I know. I know you didn’t.”

“It j-just happened,” Eddie’s saying, and his teeth are starting to chatter, eyes slipping closed again. His voice cracks, and he sounds so goddamn young, like the kid who’d shown up at his door with a social worker all those years ago. “‘m so sorry, Wayne. Didn’t wan’ any of this.”

Wayne’s knee is starting to buckle but he keeps going, teeth gritted in determination. The doors burst open and there’s Sheila and another nurse with a gurney. The relief that floods Wayne’s body is enough to make him stagger the last few steps to draw level with it, leaning down to deposit Eddie’s frame down on the clean white sheets.

The cry that rips from Eddie’s throat is animal in its intensity. He rolls onto his side, knees curling up to his chest as he clutches at his stomach, and Wayne almost falls to his knees at the sound. Only his white-knuckled grip on the rails at the side of the bed keeps him upright and moving as the gurney reverses direction and heads back through the double doors.

“Breathe, kiddo, just breathe,” he manages to choke out, and Eddie’s red-rimmed eyes find his own, tears streaking through the blood and the grime on his cheeks.

“Wayne, I -” he has to pause to cough again, and on his side like this Wayne can see how deep the wound on his jaw is, the pink-washed shine of teeth visible. “‘m scared, I don’ - wanna die -”

And Wayne - his voice gives out, because what can he say to that? Eddie’s bleeding from what seems like everywhere, and there’s a goddamned tourniquet around his right thigh that Wayne hadn’t even noticed, and he wants to tell Eddie he’s going to be fine, that he’s going to live, but he doesn’t -

He doesn’t know if -

“You’re gonna be okay, sweetheart,” Sheila says as they pull into an empty trauma bay, and Eddie’s eyes flick to her for long enough that Wayne can duck his head and let out one pained, silent sob. “We’re gonna take good care of you, alright?”

And that jump-starts Wayne’s brain. He takes Eddie’s face in his still-gloved hands and looks him right in the eyes, swallows down the knotted-up panic in his throat and says, sure and steady, “You’re not gonna die, bug. I’m not gonna let you, y’hear me?”

And that’s a load of bull, because Wayne can’t actually do shit about anything, but Eddie’s eyes fill with tears all the same. He makes a small, miserable little noise, bottom lip trembling. Wayne’s chest aches. He wants to scoop Eddie up like he’s four and sniffling with a grazed knee, kiss the top of his head and make everything better with a band-aid and candy.

“I’m not gonna let you,” he says again, and if Eddie hears the way his voice breaks he doesn’t show it.

One of the nurses has cut away the remains of Eddie’s shirt, and the look of barely-concealed horror on her face makes Wayne feel sick. He ducks his head, swallows back the bile in his throat. Forces himself to breathe.

The curtains surrounding the gurney swish back and a guy in scrubs who Wayne assumes is the doctor rushes in, snapping on a pair of gloves as he strides up to the side of the bed - and stops dead, his face blanching abruptly.

Oh, god, Wayne thinks, no, no.

Because the recognition creeping across the doctor’s face is mixed with fear and disgust, and Wayne had never considered that they wouldn’t treat him, that they’d turn his boy away, let him bleed out alone -

“Is he -?” the doctor’s saying, and then Sheila knocks her shoulder into his, barging him out of the way.

“A patient?” she snaps, starting to place an IV in Eddie’s arm, and Wayne could kiss her, he truly could. “In need of our help? Yes, doctor, I’d say he is.”

And that seems to be enough, because the doctor shakes himself a little, blinks twice and gives a little nod. "Right. Okay. I want, uh. I want a unit of O-neg hung - scratch that, two units. Two units of O-neg, and run some ampicillin, too. Did the EMTs give him pain relief?"

"No ambulance." Sheila's taping the IV to Eddie's arm. "Some kids brought him in."

"Then he needs morphine." The doctor squints, leans closer to Eddie's abdomen. "Is - Sheila, does that look like a bite mark to you?"

Below him, Eddie lets out a noise that sounds almost like a laugh. Wayne hushes him, strokes his damp hair back off his forehead. "Shh, bug, shh. Just lay still, okay? Let ‘em work."

"Sir," the doctor says, pitching his voice louder, "Sir, can you tell me what happened? What did this?"

Eddie's eyes have closed, and his mouth hangs open slightly. Wayne can hear the rasp of his breathing, shallow and slow, but he's still. He's so still.

"Hey," he tries, tapping Eddie's uninjured cheek lightly. "Hey, kid. Eddie. Wake up, kiddo."

But there's nothing. Someone's finally clipped a monitor to one of his fingers, and the beep-beep of his heart rate is far too slow.

"Okay," the doctor says, looking for all the world like a kid out of his depth, "Fuck it. Call the OR, tell them we need a theater right now. Unknown animal attack with massive blood loss, query vascular damage, anything mid-priority has to wait - page trauma, have them get a surgeon down here - and I want him intubated, I don't like that airway -"

Wayne stands frozen, the torrent of medical jargon swirling around him. The doctor’s still barking out instructions when Wayne's shouldered aside by some new guy in a white coat, who’s prying Eddie's mouth open, and his boy is spasming, reaching up with bloody hands to claw at his own face, gagging and coughing and -

"Put him under, now!” the doctor orders, and then someone else is putting a needle in Eddie’s arm, and Eddie’s going lax and quiet under gloved hands, and Wayne’s pressing the back of his wrist against his mouth and crying, quiet as a mouse.

This is where Sheila finds him, once they wheel Eddie back out of the trauma department and off to an OR. He’s crouched on the ground, back against the wall, gloves discarded on the floor as he weeps into his palms. All that remains of his kid is a discarded pair of combat boots tossed to the side, and Wayne looks at them and thinks, did I tell him I love him?

He can’t remember. Clasps his hands in front of his face and prays.

It takes a moment for him to register that Sheila’s kneeling there with him. She’s got her fingers laced together, eyes closed, and it takes another moment before Wayne realises she’s praying, too.

He has to pull himself together, then. There’s other people that need treatment, people that need help. So he swipes a hand over his eyes and pushes himself to his feet, hand on the wall to compensate for his bad knee. Clears his throat to apologize, but before he can Sheila puts a hand on his elbow, her face set and determined.

“I’ll let you know when he’s out of surgery,” she says, and Wayne can’t do anything but nod. She says when, like she knows Eddie’s going to make it, but he knows it’s just a platitude. But they need the bay, and so he has to leave.

He stops over in the same bathroom he’d washed up in before to splash some water on his face. The face that stares back at him from the mirror looks a decade older, hollow and exhausted, even as his heart thrums double-time in his chest. He doesn’t think it’ll slow down until he’s got eyes on Eddie again.

He goes back out to the waiting room, figures that’s where Sheila will look for him first. It’s packed to the gills, apart from one small corner of the room, where Wayne had been patching people up.

The kid in the ghillie suit is there, along with the two girls and the boy in the leather jacket. There’s a nurse, too - knelt down at the level of the kid, speaking quietly, but Wayne can hear the kid’s answers from halfway across the room.

“I don’t give a shit,” he’s saying, “I’m not fucking moving until he’s back.”

“Dustin,” the boy in the leather jacket tries, “C’mon, man, your ankle -”

Shit, Wayne knows that name. That’s one of Eddie’s kids from Hellfire, he thinks - one of the freshmen, the new kids that he’d taken under his wing at the start of the school year. And then he’s wondering what the hell the kid was doing with the reporter girl, and why he’s dressed like an army sniper, and why they were all with Eddie in the first place -

“Mr. Munson!”

And the kid - Dustin - is calling his name, and Wayne’s close enough to hear the desperation in his voice. Close enough to see the tears shining in his eyes as he tries to get up, as the boy he’s with shoves him back down. His feet are carrying him closer before he can even think about it.

“Mr. Munson,” Dustin says, and his voice cracks and breaks. “Is he - is he okay? Is Eddie okay?”

And it’s not just Dustin. The reporter, the girl with the short hair, the boy in the jacket - all four of them are looking at him with the kind of hope that makes his heart want to crack right down the middle. He doesn’t know what kind of mess Eddie got himself into, but whatever it was must have forged some real strong bonds.

“He’s okay,” Wayne says, and is surprised at how even his voice sounds. “They’re taking him back for surgery, but he’s - he’s alright. He’s alive.”

Dustin’s face crumples at that, and he drops his face into bloodstained hands. Wayne watches his shoulders shake, sees the comforting hand the boy in the jacket lays on his back. All four of them are just as dirty as Eddie had been, and Wayne swears he can see bruises just like Eddie’s around the three older kids’ throats.

Something ain’t right, his mind screams. Something ain’t right here.

“Dustin,” the short-haired girl says, “Will you go get checked out now? Please?”

Dustin’s head snaps up. He looks like he’s about to tear into her when the boy in the jacket lays his hand on his shoulder and says softly, “Henderson. C’mon.”

The kid caves. They’re not letting any visitors back into the ER, and while she’s waiting on a wheelchair to become available the nurse asks if anyone else is injured.

“No,” the boy in the jacket says, just a beat too quickly. “No. We’re all fine.”

They’re not fine, and Wayne’s not stupid, but he’s not getting involved any further. He sits himself down on a chair, fixes his eyes on the doors they’d taken Eddie through, and settles in to wait.

The nurse wheels Dustin away, and Wayne expects the other three to disappear too, but they don’t. They take their own seats in the bay of chairs opposite, and the girl with the short hair leans forward and makes eye contact with him.

“Mr. Munson,” she says earnestly, “My name’s Robin Buckley. I’m friends with Eddie.”

Wayne sincerely doubts that. He knows every single one of Eddie’s friends, takes pride in the fact that he can put faces to names in a way his little brother never bothered to.

“This is Nancy Wheeler -” she gestures to the reporter girl, who nods “- and Steve Harrington.”

And that gets Wayne’s attention, because he knows that last name. Knows it real well, considering Russell Harrington had been all tied up in trying to bust the steelworker’s union back in ‘79. His distaste must show plainly on his face, because Harrington’s shoulders hunch ever-so-slightly. He looks at the floor, chin tucked down against his chest, arms folded tightly.

He looks like his father, is the thing. Wayne’s not sure why he didn’t figure it out sooner. They’ve got the same build, the same jaw, the same nose. He’s never had much of a chance to meet Mrs. Harrington, but he guesses that Junior got his hair and eyes from her.

“We’ve been - helping Eddie, the past few days.” The Buckley girl looks at him, and she can’t be much older than eighteen, but for a moment Wayne swears he’s looking into the eyes of someone ten times older.

Then what she said clicks in his head, and he sits up. Something ain’t right.

“Helping him?” he asks, and she nods, seemingly encouraged by his response. But that doesn’t make sense to Wayne, because the entire goddamn town had been baying for his nephew’s blood, and this girl wants him to believe that Steve Harrington wouldn’t have been at the front of the pack?

“We -”

But Wayne doesn’t even let her finish her sentence. He laces his fingers together, leans forwards over his knees, and says as quiet as he can, “You call that helping?”

The tired smile disappears from the Buckley girl’s face. She stares at him for a moment, then whispers, “What?”

“You helped him?” And Wayne’s so angry, he’s so goddamn angry that he doesn’t think before he speaks. “You helped him end up like that, you mean? What’d you do, throw him to the wolves and watch?”

She’s gone pale. “Mr. Munson, we wouldn’t -”

“If you really helped him,” Wayne spits, “He wouldn’t’ve been torn up like that.”

And then all of a sudden Steve goddamn Harrington is shifting in his chair, a hand reaching out for the Buckley girl. “Don’t talk to her like that,” he says, staring at Wayne with hollow, exhausted eyes. “You don’t know anything.”

“And you do?” Wayne wants to laugh. Russell Harrington’s son, sitting there and telling him he doesn’t know anything. “Hell, all kids like you know is what your daddy taught you.”

Harrington’s face goes white. His jaw clenches so hard that for a moment Wayne thinks he might have bitten right through his tongue. He gets a sick sense of satisfaction from that, Lord forgive him.

Then Nancy Wheeler gets to her feet, walks over, and sits down next to him. Wayne’s taken aback enough that he doesn’t say anything as he turns to look at her, and the cold determination on her face is striking.

“Mr. Munson,” she says, and Wayne gets that feeling again, that he’s looking at someone who has seen things beyond their years, “Steve saved Eddie’s life.”

Wayne wants to laugh at that, too. Almost does, but she keeps talking before he can even open his mouth. “He used to be a lifeguard. He put the tourniquet on Eddie’s leg, and he carried him out of the - he carried him out. Made him keep talking to us on the drive back, so he wouldn’t pass out.”

It’s difficult to believe, but Wayne’s always been good at spotting liars.

“There’s a lot we can’t explain right now, but you have to trust me that we - we did our best to help him. We really did.”

Her voice cracks on the word help. Like it hurts her that she couldn’t do more.

Wayne exhales slowly. Sits back in his seat and observes all three of them for a second time. Nancy Wheeler, who carries shotgun shells in her pocket. Robin Buckley, with the guts to reach out and tell him that his boy hadn’t been alone the past week.

Steve Harrington, who had carried Eddie out of whatever hellhole did that to him and brought him back to Wayne.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t do more,” Nancy says. She looks exhausted. “But we tried.”

He nods, and when he finds his voice it’s gravelly and rough. “Alright,” he says, “Alright.”

And he doesn’t get a chance to say anything more, because a trembling voice that he doesn’t know says, “Robin?”

All four of them look around. Wayne sees a little Black girl in a dirty pink dress and turquoise leggings standing a few feet away. One arm is in a sling, and Wayne watches the blood drain from Robin’s face.

“Erica?” she asks, “What - what happened? What are you doing here?”

“Dustin told me where to find you,” she says, bottom lip wobbling. “I - I -”

“Where’s Max?” Harrington asks, a note of panic in his voice. “Where’s Lucas?”

Erica’s face crumples, and then Robin is wrapping her up into a hug, shushing her as she starts to cry. Harrington follows, then Nancy, and the little girl disappears completely behind a wall of barely-adults, but Wayne manages to catch a few words that tell him all that he needs to know.

It was Carver, she’d said.

Wayne thinks of the family who live in the trailer across from them, the Mayfields, and the tall Black boy who used to visit the daughter all the time and then, gradually, stopped. He remembers, one day, the door slamming in the kid’s heartbroken face as the Mayfield girl yelled, “I don’t want to talk to you, Lucas!”

He’s putting it together, is the thing - not what’s actually happened, not in any significant way, but the people involved in it. His gut feeling that something ain’t right doesn’t go away, but it’s joined by the inkling that whatever that something is, these kids have had a hand in it.

So Wayne sits there, waiting for Sheila to come get him when Eddie’s out of surgery. He keeps one eye on the door and one on the huddle opposite him, where Erica (“Sinclair,” she’d introduced herself as, chin tipped up despite her reddened eyes, “Newest and best member of the Hellfire Club,”) had apparently caught everyone except him up to speed. She’d been speaking quietly, and Wayne’s ears weren’t what they once were, but he’s always been good at lipreading, so. He knows it’s something about a vecna, which he’s pretty sure is a character from Eddie’s campaign, and a curse of some sort, and he manages to decipher most of a story involving Jason Carver, Andy Turner, and a gun, which -

Well. Wayne feels sick to his fucking stomach, is what. Because from what he’s gathered most of this has taken place at the Creel house, and goddammit, he’d been the one who said that damned name to Nancy Wheeler in the first place. So now he watches this little girl with her arm in a goddamned sling, whose feet barely scrape the floor, who as far as he can tell got threatened at gunpoint in the Creel house, doing her best not to cry as she talks.

He’s so focused on listening without appearing to listen that he almost doesn’t notice when the Harrington boy stands up. It’s the way that he stumbles slightly that draws Wayne’s attention, the way he keeps his head bowed so low that Wayne only catches the slightest glimpse of his face as he walks away.

He says something to Robin as he goes, and whatever it is must reassure her, because she nods at him as he goes, calling out, “Don’t take too long.”

Harrington raises his hand in acknowledgement, and Wayne’s vision also isn’t what it used to be, but he can still see the way it’s shaking.

Erica seems to run out of things to say after that. She curls her legs up onto the seat, rests her head against Robin’s shoulder and appears to fall asleep. Nancy takes off her jacket and drapes it over Erica’s legs. They flank her, faces grim, eyes flicking around the room like they’re waiting for something.

Wayne goes back to watching the doors. The flow of people into the hospital has slowed down to a trickle, and he can see people gathered outside under makeshift shelters. The number of cops has skyrocketed, and he swears he sees a couple folk in slick black suits that scream fed.

He’s watching one of them, a ratfucker lookin’ guy with a startlingly narrow face, when Robin sits forward and says “Where’s Steve?”

Wayne glances at the clock briefly before his eyes return to the ratfucker. He hadn’t checked the time when Harrington went off to do whatever it was he wanted to do, but -

“He’s been gone for twenty minutes,” Robin’s saying, shifting enough to dislodge Erica’s head from her shoulder. “He said he was only going to the bathroom, and it’s been too long even for him.”

“Maybe he’s doing his hair,” Erica says, rubbing her eyes. It’s a clear attempt at a joke, but it falls flat.

“I’m gonna go find him,” Robin says decisively. Nancy opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but she’s too late. Wayne watches as Robin walks away, shoulders squared as she cuts a determined path through towards the bathrooms.

She’s back no more than three minutes later, shoulders slumped and shaking her head at the silent question on Nancy’s face. “He’s not in the ladies’ room,” she says, “And some jerkwad in a cowboy hat stopped me from going into the men’s.”

“What if he’s hurt?” Erica says, her voice soft. “Should we try and get a doctor to go find him?”

“No,” Robin says quickly, “No, he doesn’t like - he wouldn’t want that. Maybe I can just wait until there’s a distraction or something -”

It’s at this point that Wayne decides he’s gotta do something.

“I’ll go,” he says, getting to his feet with no little effort, “If Sheila comes lookin’ for me, one of y’all just come knock on the door, alright?”

Nancy turns to look at him with round, startled eyes. “Mr. Munson -”

But Wayne’s already heading in the direction of the men’s bathrooms, only limping a little. It’s not exactly what he wants to be doing, but if Nancy’s not lying to him and Harrington had saved Eddie’s life, it’s really the least Wayne can do to make sure he’s not passed out from dehydration in a urinal.

He’s mere feet from the bathroom door when a guy in a crumpled, dust-covered suit emerges, halfway through buckling his belt. “Wouldn’t use this one if I were you, man,” he says on his way past, “There’s some kid freaking out in there.”

Uh oh, Wayne thinks. He doesn’t dignify the guy with a response, just walks right on past him and shoulders the door open.

The first thing he hears is water running. There’s a familiar figure hunched over the sink furthest from the door.

“Hey,” Wayne says, “Harrington, you okay?”

No response. Harrington doesn’t even look around. He’s washing his hands - scrubbing them, his jacket discarded on the floor beside him as he rubs soap over the backs of his hands, up his wrists and his forearms and then back down.

“Harrington?” Wayne lets the door swing shut behind him, advancing a few steps into the bathroom. “Hey. Harrington.”

The closer he gets, the more his concern builds. Harrington’s not just scrubbing at his hands, he’s practically scraping a layer of skin off with his fingernails, and the water pouring from the faucet is hot enough to send up tendrils of steam. His breathing is fast and uneven, and by the time Wayne’s close enough to reach out and grab his wrist, he can see how the scalding water is turning his skin a bright pink.

“Alright, that’s enough -”

Wayne’s hand barely even brushes Harrington’s arm, but he reacts like it was a punch. The boy recoils so violently that he ends up smacking into the wall, eyes wide and red and -

Oh, Christ, Wayne thinks. The kid’s been crying.

“Don’t,” Harrington spits, “Don’t - don’t fucking touch me.”

“Alright, okay.” Wayne lifts his hands, taking a step back. Harrington’s chest is heaving, his eyes flicking around the room like he’s expecting something to come through the damn walls. “Just checkin’ in on you.”

Harrington doesn’t seem to hear him, so Wayne ventures a little closer. “That water’s awful hot. You wanna turn it down?”

Then, like Wayne had reminded him what he was doing, Harrington is back to washing his hands - no soap, just hot water and his nails digging into the creases of his palms, scratching and scratching until Wayne’s certain he’s gonna draw blood, so this time he reaches straight for the faucet and turns it off.

Harrington freezes. For a moment Wayne thinks he might have had some kinda episode, but then the kid is wheeling around and jabbing a finger at Wayne’s chest, his face twisted with rage.

“What the fuck is your problem, huh?” he snarls, “What the fuck do you want?”

Wayne lifts his hands again, makes his voice calm and soothing despite how much he wants to snap right back. “Hey now, calm it down. Just take a breath.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Harrington chokes out, “Don’t - do not fucking tell me what to do -”

“Alright,” Wayne says, like he’s talking to a spooked animal, “Okay. It’s okay.”

“No it fucking isn’t!” Harrington’s breathing is harsh, his voice thready. “It’s not - it isn’t, it’s not okay, I wasn’t - I didn’t -”

“Hey, hey.” Wayne’s starting to get more than a little worried, now, watching the way Harrington is clutching at his chest. “Harrington, you gotta breathe -”

“Don’t call me that!”

Wayne takes another step away, taken aback by the rawness in the kid’s voice as he staggers back against the wall on shaking legs. He watches as Harrington slides down onto the floor, buries his face in still-wet hands, and cries. Without the sound of the water running, Wayne can make out what he’s saying in between each sob.

“I wasn’t there,” he chokes out, “I wasn’t - I should’ve - I should’ve fucking been there, I should’ve helped them, why didn’t I -”

Wayne’s heart aches. The person crumpled up against the wall in front of him is so far from his idea of a Harrington that all he feels at that moment is pity.

“Kid,” he says, keeping his voice soft, “It’s alright. Harr - Steve. C’mon, take a breath for me, okay? You’re gonna be alright.”

“But - but Max,” Steve hiccups, one hand sliding up into his hair and gripping tight enough that Wayne’s scared he’ll start yanking it out. “Max, she’s - if she dies, I can’t - and - and Eddie -”

He cuts himself off abruptly, panicked hazel eyes peering out at Wayne from between trembling fingers. Wayne can’t help the way he flinches at the mention of his boy, the memory of the blood and the torn flesh and the fear on Eddie’s face -

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers, and at that moment he looks so much like a frightened child that Wayne swears he’s sitting across from his nephew almost a decade ago. “Mr. Munson, I’m so - if I’d known he was going to - to do that, I wouldn’t - I never would have let him, I swear, I never -”

“Steve,” Wayne manages, his voice unsteady. “Steve -”

“I told him not to be a goddamn hero,” he says, “I told them, you have to believe me, I - I told them, I fucking told them -”

And he’s perfectly aware that it might get him kicked in the chest, but Wayne drops down to his knees, reaches out and puts a hand on Steve’s wrist. He feels the kid flinch, but he doesn’t pull away.

“I believe you,” he tells him, and Steve makes a horrible, pained noise, like something inside him just broke. “I believe you, kid, okay? I believe you.”

The skin underneath his palm is hot, so much so that it draws Wayne’s attention. The water on Steve’s hands has left only a residual dampness, and the warmth doesn’t dissipate when Wayne moves further up his forearm. If anything, it only intensifies to the point where Wayne can’t convince himself it’s anything to do with the temperature of the water.

Steve’s face is flushed, his eyes glassy. He’s shivering like he’s cold despite the heat that Wayne can practically feel radiating off him.

“Steve,” he says, “You ain’t hurt, are you?”

The way the kid freezes answers the question right there. He shakes his head, but he’s a beat too slow, and before Wayne can press him further Steve’s back on his feet, back at the sink, reaching for the faucet as he mumbles “‘m not hurt, I’m fine, I’m - I just gotta get rid -”

Wayne watches as the blood drains from his face, as he staggers and has to catch himself on the counter. He’s slow getting up, his knee twinging when he puts weight on it, and by the time he’s standing Steve’s turned away, his breathing rapid as he tries to keep his balance. One hand goes to his side, pressing hard like he’s trying to hold something in.

It’s then that Wayne sees the darkened patches of fabric over his stomach. The camo shirt he’s wearing is a deep green, but Wayne knows what an abdominal wound looks like.

“Kid,” he says again, this time with a little more gravity in his voice. “We need to get you to a doctor -”

Too late, he remembers Robin’s words when Erica suggested sending a doctor to fetch Steve. He flinches away, eyes going bright and wild with panic. “I don’t - I’m fine, I don’t need -”

“You’re bleedin’,” Wayne continues, stepping forwards - he’s got Steve trapped against the far wall, and he would feel guilty about it but the kid looks like he’s thirty seconds away from passing out, and Wayne can’t move fast enough to catch him if he does. “I can see it, and I ain’t stupid. You need help, alright?”

Let me help, something in the back of his mind pleads. I wasn’t there to help my boy, but you were. Let me help.

“I don’t,” Steve says, but his words are mumbled, slurring together in a way that makes Wayne even more nervous. “Don’t need - I’m s’posed to help them, okay, I don’t need help -”

He says it with the surety of a kid who’s been telling himself that for years, one white-knuckled hand gripping the sink to keep himself upright. It reminds Wayne of Eddie at ten, so certain that he had to take care of himself because nobody had done it for him in so long.

“Yes, you do,” Wayne says, keeping his voice level and calm. “C’mon, Steve, you gotta -”

He’s cut off, because Steve crumples like a house of cards.

Wayne’s just fast enough to catch him under the arms, stopping his head from bouncing off the sink on his way down. The kid’s heavy, and Wayne’s knee buckles too, sending them both down onto the ground in a heap. Steve groans at the impact, which is a good thing - means he’s not dead - but his eyes are half-closed, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his head lolls to the side.

“Shit,” Wayne mutters, “Steve? Hey, kid, look at me. Steve, look at me.”

Steve doesn’t. He’s mumbling, half-formed words that don’t make any sense, and Wayne is just about to start hollering at the top of his lungs when the door swings open to reveal an exhausted-looking orderly in dirty scrubs. He takes one look at the scene before him and twists around, yelling, “Doctor!” at the top of his lungs.

But the first person through the door is no doctor. Robin Buckley shoves past the orderly, her freckled face pale and wan, and makes a low, broken noise at the sight of Steve sprawled out on the floor.

“No,” she gasps, “No, no - he said he was fine, he said -”

“What happened to him?” Wayne barks, his voice sharp as a knife. Steve’s face has gone an awful shade of grey, his eyes rolled back until only the whites are showing. The dark patches on his shirt have widened, and Wayne sits back on his heels, seizes the fabric and rips it back -

There’s a patch of gauze beneath the shirt, clumsily taped at the edges, and it tears away from the raw wound beneath. Steve jerks, back arching off the floor as he cries out in pain, and faintly Wayne hears Robin say his name, sees her fall to her knees beside them out of the corner of his eye, but he can’t do anything. All he can do is stare - at the torn flesh, the half-congealed blood, the horrifically familiar bite marks imprinted into skin. There’s a sickly sweet smell in the air, not just the scent that comes with infection, but something earthier, something that reminds Wayne of rotting vegetation.

Something is very, very wrong.

“It’s okay,” Robin is whispering, “It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be fine. It’s been worse, right? It’s been worse, so you’re gonna be fine.”

Wayne stares. There’s another dressing on the opposite side of Steve’s abdomen, too small to fully cover the wound that pokes out from the edges. Suddenly, he pictures this kid - because Steve Harrington is a kid, despite his shitty father, despite the silver spoon he was born with - pressing gauze to his own stomach with shaking hands. Ripping the tape with his teeth, closing his eyes against the waves of nausea. Washing the blood from his skin and telling himself it’ll be fine.

He thinks of Eddie, ten years old and crying silently on the floor of the bathroom in the trailer, knees scraped bloody. Some kids had shoved him over after school and he’d missed the bus because of it, walked two miles home with his new jeans all torn and tears running down his face. Wayne had found him like that, trying to summon up the courage to upend the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, surrounded by bandaids far too small to cover the raw skin.

There’s people surrounding them now, a cacophony of voices clashing together into this awful symphony of panic. Wayne is lost for a moment, overwhelmed in the chaos, caught between past and present as he tries to put all the pieces together.

And then the same orderly is back, crouching at Steve’s head and grabbing him under the arms. He looks Wayne in the eyes, offers him a terse nod, and says “You got his legs?”

Fifteen years earlier and Wayne would’ve been able to haul the kid half a mile alone. Instead he nods, hooks a hand under each of Steve’s knees. “On my count. Three, two, one, lift -”

A dead weight between them, but thankfully there’s a gurney waiting right outside the door. Wayne’s knee howls with pain at each step, all his focus on putting one foot in front of the other, not on the limp swing of Steve’s arms, the way his head lolls backwards. Twelve steps to the door, then the gurney comes to them and all he has to do is lift.

They barely wait to get Steve on the damn thing before they’re moving again. Wayne has to stumble out of the way before he gets run down, then lunges forwards again to intercept Robin Buckley when she sets off after them like a bat out of hell.

“Let ‘em take care of him,” he says as she tries to tear her way free of his grip, “Y’gotta - Christ, kid, you gotta let ‘em work, we’re no good to him in there.”

She’s wailing, howling, these great, gut-wrenching cries that sound almost otherworldly. He can catch fragments of words between each one, Steve and no and why, and then her legs give out and she slumps against him, all the fight gone as the double doors swing shut.

“S’alright,” Wayne says, and lies through his teeth for the second time that night. “He’ll be alright.”

They’re ushered away by one of the state troopers not long after, a still-sobbing Robin clutching Steve’s discarded jacket, supported by Nancy. Not back to the bay of seats they’d occupied before, no - this time to a little room just off the main corridor, one that Wayne thinks may have been a break room before the quake. He sinks into the closest chair, stares without seeing at the peeling linoleum floor. He thinks of Eddie, surely still clinging to life on the operating table. Wonders whether Steve’s going that way too, or if it’s too late for him.

As if he’d spoken aloud, Robin hurls the jacket across the room with a wordless shriek of grief and rage and collapses into a seat, Nancy and Erica at her side. The dirty, ragged thing glances off the chair opposite Wayne and flops to the floor in a heap at his feet. He hears Robin hiccup something like “Stupid fucking idiot, he said he was fine -”

“He will be, Robin, he’s gonna be okay.” Nancy’s voice is unsteady. Wayne thinks he should offer them some sort of comfort, but all he can think of is empty platitudes. He’s seen his fair share of infection-riddled wounds, and he knows that beyond a certain point there’s nothing medicine can do. All he can do is clasp his hands in a meagre prayer that Steve Harrington has not reached that point.

The leather jacket has patches sewn onto the sleeves. The inside, streaked with mud and blood - Eddie’s blood, Wayne realizes with a surge of nausea - has a small pocket at the breast, and from within it he can see a scrap of white paper poking out.

Wayne’s a lot of things, and a busybody usually ain’t one of them. But that creeping feeling of wrongness won’t leave him, so it’s with no shame at all that he leans forward and picks up the jacket, sliding the slip of paper free and unfolding it carefully.

At the top of the page, in a surprisingly neat and clear hand, it reads: The Last Will and Testi Testement of Stephen J. Harrington.

Wayne stares at the paper. It’s lined, the edges ragged like it had been ripped from a schoolbook. The following words are carefully printed, his fingers tracing over the indentations where the pen had dug in.

If I don’t survive, I, Stephen James Harrington, appoint Robin Mae Buckley as the executer of my stuff estate. Anything not listed below should go to her.

Back when their father passed, Wayne’d been named as the executor on his will. There hadn’t been all that much for Elijah Munson to bequeath upon his two sons - the dilapidated house that they’d grown up in, an old rustbucket of a Ford, what was left of his pension. What Wayne remembers, though, is how Elijah Munson didn’t waste time listing and allocating each and every one of his earthly possessions to his sons. The split was simple: the house to Wayne, the car to Al, the pension to the VA.

This attempt at a will is nothing like that. It’s more of a goodbye letter than anything else, and it makes Wayne feel sick as he reads through the carefully itemized list of Steve Harrington’s most precious belongings. He leaves his car to the Mayfield girl, his watches and an ice cream scoop to Dustin Henderson, his letterman's jacket and collection of basketball tapes to Lucas Sinclair. His entire goddamn trust fund to Robin Buckley, with the caveat that she uses some of it to spend a summer in Europe. It’s a mess, a kid’s impression of what a will should consist of, and Wayne feels a sudden wave of emotion crest over him at the thought of Steve writing it. It reminds him of the kids he’d fought with, Steve and Eddie’s age or maybe a few years older, lining up to speak to the Legal Services office, too young to have anything more than a car to pass on.

He reaches the end of the page and flips it over, but there’s only two lines left. One is written hastily, crammed into the margins at the top of the page like an afterthought.

To Mom and Dad Elaine and Richard Harrington, there’s a nail bat under my bed. Burn it.

Then there’s a scrawl that Wayne takes to be a signature and the date. March 26th 1986.

Yesterday. The hairs on the back of Wayne’s neck stand up. Before the earthquake, before rifts opened up in the ground, and surely long before something descended on his nephew and tried to rip him apart.

What could be so bad that a nineteen-year-old feels the need to write a last will and testament?

Stupid question, he tells himself, because Steve had been carrying just the same bite marks as Eddie under his shirt - bites that didn’t look like they belonged to any animal Wayne knew of, old bites, left to fester long enough to turn him from fit and healthy to a heap on the floor of a hospital bathroom.

He thinks of the shotgun shells in Nancy Wheeler’s pocket. Of the thousand-yard stares he’d gotten from each of those kids in turn. The mentions of Carver, of the Creel house, there’s a lot we can’t explain right now, but you have to trust me -

“Mr. Munson?”

His head snaps up. Nancy sits across from him, one arm around Robin’s shoulders. She offers him a tight, exhausted smile.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice quiet. “For helping him.”

Wayne should say thank you. He should offer those empty words of comfort that won’t do anything to ease their pain. He should get up and find someone, anyone, who might be able to tell him whether Eddie’s okay.

“What happened to him?” His voice comes out as a croak. “He was - he was all torn up. Just like Ed.”

Nancy’s face pales. Before she can even open her mouth, Wayne ploughs onwards. “Those were bite marks, I saw ‘em, I know that. But what - how - there ain’t nothin’ in Hawkins that bites like that.”

“Mr. Munson.” Nancy glances over at Robin and Erica, both conspicuously still and quiet. “I - I really can’t -”

“Don’t start with that, now,” Wayne warns, “You - you came to me, on Saturday, askin’ questions ‘bout that poor girl, and I gave you Creel. I know he’s got somethin’ to do with all this, so you owe me the truth, ‘cause it looks like whatever y’all are involved with is out here doin’ more than just breakin’ bones.”

Erica flinches, and Robin shoots him an angry look through the tears still running down her face, rubbing a comforting hand over the young girl’s shoulder. Wayne remains resolute, his fist clenched tight around the last will and testament of Steve Harrington.

“Somethin’ ain’t right in this town,” he says, “And if my boy’s part of it, so am I. So you either start talkin’ now or I’ll go out and find the truth myself.”

Something changes in Nancy’s expression. Her jaw tightens, her mouth setting into a thin, determined line. She leans forwards, clasping her hands over her knees, and says, “Eddie said you’re a good man. Was - is he right? Can I trust you?”

Wayne swallows against the lump in his throat, the tears that so desperately want to break free. “Ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do to help him.”

Her knuckles are white. She looks at him for a long, long moment, and then nods.

“You’re right,” she says, ignoring Robin’s elbow jabbing into her ribs. “There’s something wrong in this town. There’s been something wrong here for a really, really long time.”

“Nancy -” Erica hisses, but she waves her off, blue eyes fixed on Wayne with the kind of conviction he’s only ever seen on men fighting for their lives.

“There’s something growing under Hawkins,” says Nancy, “It’s what attacked Eddie, now it’s attacking the whole town. And if we’re going to kill it, then we need your help.”