Steddie Upside-down AU Part 25
Part 1 Part 24
“You mean blood draws this thing?” Hopper asks. He’s finally seated at the table, no longer looming over Eddie where he sits, like he’s just picked him up for possession and taken him in for questioning. Again.
“We don’t know,” Barbara says. Nancy chimes in, “it’s just a theory.” All three of them ignore Eddie’s shouted “Yes!” As if he isn’t the only one that’s seen the thing more than once.
Hopper steeples his fingers in front of his nose, looking like he’d rather be almost anywhere else. Eddie can’t blame him. He also wants Hopper to be anywhere else.
“We’ve got a plan,” Nancy says. “To test the theory.”
Hopper sighs, closing his eyes and pinching his brows, the same way he does when he catches Eddie selling pot outside of the high school. Or at the trailer park. Or at parties. “Let’s hear it then.” He doesn’t open his eyes. Nancy starts speaking anyway.
Eddie, having been mostly absent last time, tunes in for the conversation. She wants to jerry rig the house with bear traps. Like they’re in the Looney Tunes and she’s trying to catch the road runner. Hopper doesn’t seem all that impressed. Neither does Wayne.
“No,” Wayne says.
Hopper still hasn’t opened his eyes. Maybe he was so shocked by the slap dash plan that he gave up and went to sleep.
“Excuse me?” Nancy says.
Eddie bristles at her tone, but Wayne doesn’t even twitch. “You’re kids,” he says, like that’s all there is to say.
“But, Steve –”
Joyce jumps up from where she was still huddled with her sons to tower over the table in all her five foot nothing furry to shout, “this is not yours to fix!” It works to shut them all up. “It’s not you kid’s responsibility to save another kid.”
“But, Mom,” Will says.
Eddie wants to echo the sentiment. Wants to beg. Steve saved their lives, and they’d left him. She wants them to just leave him there? Again? “I know, baby. We’ll get him.”
“Anyone called the boy’s parents?” Wayne asks, but it comes out barely as a question. He already knows the answer, even before Hopper scoffs. Everyone at this table does.
“Like anyone even knows what country they’re in,” he replies while Joyce bristles, like the thought of anyone’s child being left like that leaves her seething.
“Enough of that,” she says, waving her ends in a cutting motion in front of her. “How are we going to get that boy back?”
Will stands up and storms out of the room. Eddie’s never seen the kid be anything but polite. Eddie stands to follow the tug at his sternum telling him to keep the kid in his line of sight.
“Will?” Joyce calls, trying to follow as well until Jonathan tugs her back by her arm with a quiet murmur he can’t make out.
The house isn’t large. He can hear the silence reverberating as he follows Will. The best plan they have so far is Nancy’s game of mouse trap. If it means saving Steve, Eddie’s ready to form an alliance with the devil he knows. If it means saving Steve, he’d be willing to do worse.
“I could go back to the lab,” Hopper says, voice barely carrying down the hallway.
Will’s sitting on a bed when Eddie finds him. It’s small with a blue comforter on it, covered in little cartoon planes. There’s a poster of Jaws on the wall, D & D minis on a bookcase. This might be the coolest kid alive.
Eddie takes a seat beside him, the mattress squeaking as he huddles into it.
Will’s hand is dangling between his knees, cradling a walkie talkie. He doesn’t look over at Eddie, just keeps staring at it like it’ll crackle to life at any second.
“Whatcha got there?” Eddie asks quietly as voices raise in the other room. Eddie wonders if this is what it would’ve felt if he’d had a baby brother back when voices were always raised in his house. He wants to scoop this kid up and bolt out the window.
Will barely seems to notice the noise. He’s still just staring down. When he finally drags his eyes up, it seems like it takes effort. “I want to call Mike.”
“Okay,” Eddie says. “Who is Mike?”
Will’s eyes shift back down. “He’s my Steve.”
Well, Eddie has no idea what that means, but he can glean some things: Mike is important, and Will wants to talk to him. “So, call him.”
Will’s shoulders curl in. He cradles the walkie talkie to his chest like it’s a baby. “He thinks I’m dead.” It comes out of his mouth bitter.
Eddie reaches out, clasps his shoulder gently. “Then, I bet he’d love to hear that you’re not.”
Slow as molasses, Will raises the walkie talkie up to his mouth, holds down a button and speaks. “Mike?” he asks. “Do you copy?”
He decompresses the button. The silence trickles back in as they both now stare at the walkie talkie, waiting for something to happen. “Maybe he didn’t hear yo–” Eddie starts to say, conjuling, when a frantic, prepubescent voice crackles through the little speaker.
“Will?!” A voice asks, overlapped by another saying , “–didn’t say over, Mike!” before the fuzzy sound stops abruptly.
Will waits a second before pushing the button again, and speaking, “I’m here, over.”
“Where are you?” presumably Mike asks. “We’ll come get you!”
Will smiles, eyes brimming. “It’s okay,” he says, voice lighter than Eddie’s ever heard it. “I’m home.”
The silence lasts longer now, until a new voice filters through. “Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you’re back, Will,” attitude dripping even over the static of the line. “Now, the bad men have got us pinned down, you gotta help us.” it says, before tacking on a quick, “over.”
“Bad men?” Eddie asks, looking over at Will, hoping this is some ill-timed inner-circle game.
But Will looks confused. Panicked. “I think we should go get Chief Hopper.” Will says.
Great. Another fucking problem. Eddie regrets ever being dragged back through that goddamn hole in the tree.
Part 26
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