#i slipped in some sneaky dustin/erica how do we feel about that here on tumblr.com?

[livwritesstuff]

uh so i was feeling like writing something angsty and ever since i wrote this a little bit ago i can’t stop thinking about the idea of what the upside down coming back decades later would look like, however it’s a bummer and not the vibe i want for my steddie!dads verse so consider this an au for an au or whatever idk

It’s a normal, average, mundane, regular Wednesday when Dustin calls.

They don’t talk as much as they used to, but that’s adult life, Steve supposes. 

They both have entire lives now, spouses and children and jobs that consume pretty much every waking hour. The near-1000 miles that separates Steve and Eddie in Massachusetts from Dustin in Indiana doesn’t help things either, and seeing as how Dustin had long-since inherited the Hawkins Lab research from Owens when he retired back in the mid-2000s, that won’t be changing any time soon.

Steve is home when Dustin calls, and between counseling clients, so when the phone rings and lights up with his name, Steve picks it up with a grin.

“Hey man, what’s goin’ on!”

Nothing but silence comes through Dustin’s end for a while – such a long time that Steve checks to make sure that the call didn’t drop or his phone didn’t die or something (and neither had happened, so it’s definitely a Dustin thing).

“Dustin?” he asks, “You there?”

Silence, still.

Then –

“Steve.”

Dustin sounds…not normal, and Steve feels the grin slide off his face.

“What?”

“Steve,” he chokes, “It’s…it’s back.”

Steve feels his heart stop for a second, feels it like all the blood in his veins came to an abrupt halt for just a moment.

“The Upside Down,” Dustin continues, “It…all of…it’s back.”

He sounds like he’s underwater, or maybe Steve’s the one sinking beneath the surface, just like he’d done forty years ago when he’d taken Dustin’s place on that boat and got dragged into hell through the depths of Lover’s Lake.

Steve hangs up the phone, his hands shaking.

His knees feel shaky too, like they can’t support his weight anymore despite doing so for nearly sixty years.

They’ve been giving him problems lately – his knees. Nothing too crazy; he can still go on his runs and putter around the yard and all that. It’s just a part of aging, he supposes, and he hadn’t minded aging before – liked it, even. Liked his greying hair and the crow’s feet around his eyes and his achy knees, because there’d been a period of time many years ago when he wasn’t sure he’d make it long enough to experience that inevitability of life.

Right this second though, he hates it, hates the way it makes him realize he’s not as nimble as he used to be, the way his reaction time isn’t the same anymore, because he knows that’s what had gotten him through those horrible years back in the mid-eighties.

He lowers himself down, and as his ass hits the tile floor of the bathroom – his daughters’ bathroom, the one they’ve shared practically their whole lives, the one Moe lost her first tooth in, the one Robbie pierced her own ears in, the one Hazel will be getting ready for prom in soon – Dustin calls him again.Steve doesn’t pick up, too busy kicking himself for not considering sooner the possibility of this sooner, for not having a plan ready to execute to keep their daughters safe the way no adult had done for him.

He can feel an old instinct – the urge to gather his loved ones close – starting to kick in, his mind starting to race as he catalogs the people who make up his small corner of the world. 

Hazel is easy – she’s at the high school just down the road. He can have her back home, back within arm’s reach, in a matter of minutes.

Robin and Nancy are next closest, still living in Boston after all these years. Steve would wager a guess that they’ll be hearing from Dustin soon if they haven’t already, and then they’ll probably head Steve and Eddie’s way, and then they’ll all regroup. 

They’ll figure out what their next moves are.

Moe and Robbie are trickier with both of them living in New York City and likely unwilling to leave their school and their jobs and their friends without any warning whatsoever. Moe is getting more and more reasonable the older she gets, so Steve may have to start with her and hope that Robbie follows.

Moe is twenty-two now. 

Moe is older than both of her dads had been when Eddie had nearly died, when Steve had carried him out of hell and made sure he didn’t. All three of their daughters – even seventeen-year-old Hazel – are older than Steve had been when he got sucked into that horrible mess, and they’re still so damn young. 

With two decades of parenting under his belt, he finds it kind of unbelievable that anybody had looked at his sixteen-year-old face and seen anything but a child, nevermind actually asked him to do the things that he’d done.

Dustin calls him two more times before he gives up. Only a moment later, Steve hears Eddie’s phone ring downstairs, and then he hears Eddie’s jovial tone as he answers the call. 

He goes quiet real quick after that.

Just as Steve is deciding who to call first – Hazel’s school or Moe – his phone vibrates, two quick buzzes that can only indicate a text from Robin.

He opens it.

did dustin call you?

Steve lets out a heavy breath because, fuck, it’s real.

Yeah, he texts back, then adds –

This fucking sucks

40 years

As Steve watches the bubbles of Robin’s incoming response, he can vaguely hear Eddie’s ascent of the stairs, still on the phone with Dustin. 

The bubbles disappear.

“Fuck you, Dustin,” he hears Eddie snarl, “This is on you.” There’s silence for a while, and Eddie seems to pause in the hallway just in front of their bedroom door. Then, “Yeah, I’ll talk to him…I know…later, man. Love you. Be safe.”

Steve looks down at his phone to see that Robin is still typing, only for the bubbles to disappear again a second later.

Finally –

nance is going back

i’m going with her

Steve could throw up.

He almost does, he’s pretty sure, although he’s not positive because he might be having an out of body experience, or maybe he’s dissociating, or maybe it’s a fucking PTSD flashback or something. He doesn’t know.

He should know, or so his handful of psych degrees would suggest, and he probably would know if it was happening to someone else, but then again, he’s always worn blinders when it comes to himself.

That was true about him when all this shit started in 1983, and it’s still true now, almost forty years later.

Forty fucking years.

He doesn’t look up when Eddie comes into the bathroom, joining him on the floor with his back against the bathtub.

“Dustin took offense to you hanging up on him,” he says, and Steve can hear the way he’s forcing humor into his tone.

As if any of this shit is funny.

“Erica and the kids left with Claudia,” Eddie continues, answering a question Steve probably would’ve gotten around to asking Dustin himself if it weren’t for the whole hanging up on him thing, “Erica went kicking and screaming, obviously. I offered up our house, but they’re still deciding where they want to camp out. And everyone has agreed not to say a word to Jim and Joyce.”

Yeah, that makes sense, seeing as they’re both in their eighties and perpetually acting like they’re thirty years younger – at a minimum.

Not that Steve would know anything about that.

Definitely not.

“He said he’s one-hundred percent positive that it’s all still contained to Hawkins, so…” Eddie pauses, “We don’t have to, like, track down the girls or anything. Just make sure they don’t go anywhere near Indiana.”

And that, at least, is an actual relief.

“Robin’s going back,” Steve tells him, because there’s no point waiting to address that particular issue in this whole fucking mess.

The so I’m going too is implied, because that has never needed to be said when it came to Steve and Robin.

The way Eddie’s face changes evades Steve’s ability to describe. It makes him regret saying anything – that’s for fucking sure. Makes him wish he’d just snuck away in the dead of night.

“C’mon man, we’ve picked up a whole fuckin’ litter over the years,” Eddie says, and he’s still forcing humor into his tone, “You can’t leave me to fend off the masses alone – the years have made me weak-willed, I’ll surrender immediately.”

Steve manages a snort, but he still looks down at the floor all the same.

Eddie doesn’t say anything else for a while, but his hand wraps around Steve’s ankle as if there was enough brute strength in the one appendage to keep him rooted to the bathroom floor.

(Strangely enough, it feels like there might be).

“Steve,” Eddie finally says, his voice stiff and hard in a way Steve doesn’t think he’s ever heard before, “We are way too old for this shit – Robin and Nance too.”

Eddie pauses.

“Steve,” he says again, “I know how important Robin is. I know, but our children would be fucking devastated if anything happened to you. Don’t think they wouldn’t – and something would most certainly happen to you.”

“Eddie.” 

He’s still avoiding his husband’s eyes.

“Steve,” he pleads, something desperate in his voice, “We talked about this. Remember? Last spring, when we watched that stupid zombie show with Hazel? And there was the episode with the old gay guys? We talked about this. You told me not to let you go if this shit came back.”

Steve makes no response. Ed lets out a heavy breath, looking to the ceiling.

They have this conversation every now and then – one of those conversations that always teeters on the edge of an argument – in which Eddie insists that Steve could be fine if their relationship ended in a way that Eddie himself would not. It’s a conversation that Steve hates, because he hates the idea that Eddie – his husband of twenty years and the love of his whole entire life – could still be thinking so low of himself, that there’s any part of him that doesn’t think Steve would be fucking wrecked by losing him.

Still, it had always been a hypothetical. It had never been real.

Suddenly, Steve feels claustrophobic sitting on the floor of his daughters’ bathroom. He gets to his feet and, as he heads for the door, Eddie scrambles up after him.

Halfway down the hall, Eddie lunges for him and catches his arm, wheeling him back around to face him.

“Steve,” Eddie says one more time. 

Then, because he apparently has no words ready to follow with, he stops.

“Steve,” Eddie starts again, “Please. You’re everything. I love the girls and I love our life, but Christ, Steve, you’re my entire world. You changed everything for me. You showed me how life could be worth living, and you keep showing me, and I’m not ready to let go of you yet – not even fucking close. Please don’t let this be the way we leave each other.”

Steve finally lets himself look at Eddie’s face, the face he’d fallen in love with decades ago, the face he’s still in love with decades later. He looks at his big eyes and the hint of grey at his hairline and his crows feet and the scarring that creeps up his neck from underneath the collar of his shirt (it’s a shirt he’s had for ages – since before even Moe was born by the looks of it, but so is the rest of his half of their closet).

And he finds himself nodding.

Eddie’s exhale is all desperate relief as he tugs Steve into his arms and wraps them around his shoulders. Steve immediately reciprocates the hug, pulling him in even closer, surprised to feel tears pin-pricking his eyes

“I love you so much, Steve,” Eddie tells him, gripping the back of his t-shirt so tight he feels the collar pulling taut against his throat, “I don’t say that to you enough.”

“You say it all the time,” Steve replies with a wet laugh.

“Not enough,” he shakes his head, and Steve decides there’s no point in arguing.

A minute goes by.

“Fuck,” Steve half-laughs, half-chokes as he lifts his head to meet Eddie’s eyes, “This fucking sucks.”

“I know,” he says. 

Again, he reels Steve in, and again, Steve lets him, holding onto his husband like a lifeline, like they’re standing somewhere far more perilous than the carpeted floor of their upstairs hallway.

“I know,” Eddie repeats, “And we’ll…we’ll talk about it but for now, just – can I just hold you for a bit, okay?”

Steve nods again.

“Okay.”

read the extended version on AO3 (i.e. feat. added “flashbacks” so it fits the formatting of the rest of the series)