Wayne was extra protective of Eddie. He was a type of special that most of Hawkins didn’t even know about. So when Steve Harrington started comin’ around, he made sure to keep an eye on him. Eddie reassured Wayne that he was a good guy, he wouldn’t hurt Eddie or do anything stupid like give him an Eddie Jr.
Still, Wayne watched. He noticed Steve’s odd behavior: watching exits, jumping at noises, always on the edge of his seat. Behaviors that were more suited to an old fart down at the Hideaway rather than a middle-class suburban teenager.
Wayne picked him up once. Found him in the middle of the night on the side of the road, not jogging, not headed anywhere, just… walking. Said he couldn’t sleep. Wayne took him back to the Munson apartment for a hot chocolate.
Eddie joined them as they watched TV. The only time Steve seemed to relax was when he had a thumb on Eddie’s inner wrist, like he was checking for a pulse. Wayne left to shower and rest, but between the bathroom and his bed he caught a glimpse of them dead asleep on the couch, curled around each other.
Wayne had a feeling Steve’s quirks were connected to the twin scars marking both Steve and Eddie’s skin. He didn’t know what went down that week in March, but Steve brought Eddie back to him mostly in one piece.
They both would tell him when they were ready. If they ever were. But for now they had each other and that was more than most would get.
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It’s only once everything is okay that Dustin starts thinking there’s something deeply wrong with him.
They’re out of the danger zone, where hospital visits have almost become normal hangouts rather than something to sit through on tenterhooks. Eddie’s getting the all clear to go home soon, and Dustin feels like he’s finally, finally able to take a deep breath, and blow it all the way out.
Steve must feel it, too, because he starts drifting off halfway through one of their last visits, while Dustin’s telling Eddie how Tews got up on the roof last night.
Dustin’s not offended by Steve falling asleep—for one, Steve already heard the story on the ride to the hospital and, more importantly, Dustin’s pretty positive that he’s barely been sleeping, only just enough so he can safely drive his car.
Dustin pats his knee fondly as he gets up.
Even though he’s steadily swaying towards the end of the couch, Steve tries to rouse himself.
“Mm, Dustin, jus’… jus’ need ten minutes, then… give y’ride home…”
“It’s okay,” Dustin says. He gently pushes Steve’s shoulder, snorts when Steve’s head tips right onto the arm of the couch. “I’m gonna go call my mom.”
He knows Steve really must be exhausted when he doesn’t attempt an argument to counter that, just sighs with a murmured, “Hmm? If tha’s… ‘kay.”
From the bed, Eddie looks on with a smile. “Thanks, Henderson,” he says softly. “Wayne’s gonna come later, he can… give him a ride home.”
He yawns through his words, like just looking at Steve is making him sleepy, too.
They’ve been like that a lot recently, Dustin thinks, like their breathing falls into sync without them even trying.
He slips out of the room quietly. There’s something between Steve and Eddie, he can feel it—and although he can’t quite put a name to it yet, he knows it’s something delicate, like spun glass. He’s not going to be the one to disturb it.
When his mom comes to pick him up, it happens.
“Put your coat on, hon, it’s freezing out.”
Dustin rolls his eyes—it’s hardly that cold—but as he steps outside, the air hits his bare skin and—
He’s in The Upside Down, and the cold is in his throat, in his lungs, he can’t stop shaking with it, and Eddie, he’s—he’s not breathing—
“Dustin? The car’s parked this way, baby.”
Dustin breathes in, short and sharp. For a moment, he can still see it all: the lightning, the blue tint, the particles hanging in the air, and then, like blinking away a camera flash, it’s gone.
His mom frowns, steps closer. “Dusty? Oh, you look pale. Hope you’re not coming down with something. Early night tonight, okay?”
“Yeah,” Dustin says. Blinks. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
-
He tells himself it’s a one-off.
Then it happens again—inside the hospital this time.
Steve opens a window in Eddie’s room before heading to the vending machine—just a crack. Barely anything.
But the cold is so intense that it takes Dustin’s breath away.
He hears the bats. Feels the pain in his foot, burning white-hot as he runs, he has to run. Eddie. Screaming. He has to get to him now or he’ll—he’ll—
Dustin shuts the window with such force that the pane rattles.
Eddie glances over from where he’s standing, right in front of the tiny mirror on the wall; he’s been wringing out his still damp hair with a clean T-shirt that Dustin highly suspects belongs to Steve, unless Eddie’s suddenly taken to owning a Hawkins Phys. Ed uniform.
“Woah, that’s the window shut, I guess,” Eddie says lightly. “You cold?”
“A bit,” Dustin says, hopes it comes out normal.
It must do, because Eddie just shrugs and goes back to the mirror, fiddling with his curls, and Dustin would usually give him so much shit for that, but his chest is tight, and although logically, he knows he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, he can still feel the dampness of the ground, the dirt under his nails, Eddie’s blood…
“Did you just close that?” Steve says, jerking his head towards the window with a bemused look.
“I live to piss you off,” Dustin says.
Eddie laughs.
“Yeah, it’s your special talent,” Steve shoots back, monotone, but he’s grinning as he throws a candy bar at Dustin’s head.
3 Musketeers.
Dustin isn’t hungry, not even for nougat.
But he tears the wrapper anyway, takes a sizeable bite just for the sake of appearances.
Steve is catching Eddie’s eye in the mirror, and Eddie’s smiling, looking at Steve’s reflection; and although Dustin can hardly hear what they’re saying through the thud of his own heartbeat, their joy is obvious without words.
Because it’s over. It’s all over.
Dustin’s not gonna be the one to ruin this for them.
He won’t.
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I keep thinking about Arthur's regression at the end of Season 2 and then into Season 3. I keep thinking about how victims of trauma tend to get worse once they escape their traumatic situation. How their body and mind start to crack and shake under the weight of the horrors, now safe enough to escape the survivorship mindset but now forced to endure the fallout.
I keep thinking of how hard Faroe's death hit Arthur. How his guilt and grief were so intense that he wanted to kill himself, so low that he drank himself into a stupor for who knows how many years to just dull the pain. I keep imagining how hard it was to pull himself out of that, to work with Parker and find a new meaning in life, to walk away from his guilt of killing his daughter, and instead to help people.
(I keep thinking of how Arthur finds a vial of alcohol in the Dreamlands. How he sniffs it and recoils in disgust.)
I keep thinking of how long it took for Arthur to build himself back up from his lowest point, to tuck the guilt of Faroe in the deepest corner of his mind just so that he has enough room to breathe, to live, to be a better person. (And yet, Faroe is every facet of his life. It's his first memory in Season One, when he plays Faroe's Song, when he doesn't even remember his own name. It's the last name on his lips when he dies on that boat. It's his only memory when John is torn away from him.) I keep thinking about how Arthur is consciously repressing her every second of every day just so that he can keep going.
And then John pushes, and asks, and asks again. And finally, after almost dying twice with this entity, after surviving time and time again, he thinks he can trust him. He thinks he can share his deepest secret, to pull open the wound he keeps stitching over to protect himself. How he risks feeling the grief he's suppressed for years to trust someone. I keep thinking how John seizes it and, because he is ancient and young and inexperienced, childlike in his tantrums and his fears of responsibility and consequence, he uses it as a weapon the moment he's backed into a corner. I keep thinking of how not only the trust is torn away from Arthur, but how his wound is stretched and torn, and not only does his guilt and grief come back, but it's like a tidal wave that he cannot suppress this time. He's opened that wound and John has pried it wider, and now Arthur can't shut it. He survives in those pits, but she is all he thinks of. He escapes those pits, and ("Goodbye, Faroe.") she is all he thinks of. He slits his throat and she's all he thinks of.
He enters at icy cabin (a small gurgle, a bundle of blankets in his arm, a warm hum rumbling in his chest as he lulls his whole World to sleep) and he thinks of her to keep going.
And then Yellow enters, a blank slate, a John before he was John, and the pain is too fresh. This is the thing that tortured him. This is the thing that starved him. This is the thing who asked who his daughter was, and when he told him, the thing called him a killer. John and Yellow and the King are all the same in that moment, and Arthur's too fucked up and traumatized to separate them tangibly, as much as he insists that he can. His hatred grows and grows, all from himself, until it bleeds into Yellow, and he remakes this entity in his image, in his self-pitying hatred.
So when Yellow finally calls him a monster (and Arthur knows, he's called himself that the moment he saw the water spill from the bathtub onto the tile below), Arthur holds it close to his chest, and becomes it.
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