Archive of Our Own ^beta

Camilla meets Steve on a Thursday in the middle of April when he walks through the front door of her bar to ask about the help wanted sign she hung in the window last week. She almost turns him down immediately. The Dive is, well, a dive, frequented mostly by the punks, freaks, and starving artists who populate Alphabet City. Every surface is sticky, half the overhead lights don’t work, she doesn’t sell any top label liquor, and the only music she plays is either classic stuff from the 70s or whatever record her most regular patron Jimmy demands she put on. And Steve – well, Steve is wearing a polo shirt and has what is probably a pound of hairspray in his hair. Her customers will eat him alive. She’s sure of it. So she should turn him away.

And she’s going to, really, she is, except – well, there’s this look in his eyes. It’s a little wide and a little manic, edging on desperate. The Dive is pretty deep into Alphabet City, and she can’t help but wonder how many other places he’s barged into today, asking this same question, getting this same rejection. Plus, he hasn’t flinched at her, isn’t backing off at all. She knows she cuts an intimidating figure – she’s tall and muscular and decked out in piercings, and he’s just looking at her like she’s not scary at all, like he's seen worse. And sue her, alright? She feels bad for the guy, who can’t be more than 21 if he even is that, so she doesn’t reject him outright.

It helps that he’s, objectively, very pretty. Even the punks in this part of town respond well to a pretty face.

“You got a resume?” she asks instead.

His face filters through a series of emotions before he says, quite simply, “no.” She waits for him for elaborate. When he doesn’t, she raises an eyebrow at him that she hopes conveys just how lucky he is that she’s even asking and hasn’t booted him out the door yet. He winces a little before continuing. “To be honest, I’ve never bartended before professionally — but I can pour beer well, and I learn fast. I worked at an ice cream place the summer after high school and a video store after that. But you can’t, uh, call them or anything. The ice cream place got destroyed in a fire and I sort of quit the video store without notice.” He pauses, frowning. “Actually, it might have also gotten destroyed. I didn’t really ask.” He scratches the back of his neck and shoots her a weak little smile.

Camilla props her elbows up onto the bar and looks at him. He’s quite baffling, she’s realizing, the longer she looks. He’s clearly from some sort of money — she’s always been good at sniffing out a rich kid. It’s not just the clothes and the hair, but the way he carries himself, the spread of his shoulders, the confidence — this is someone who believes, truly, that he belongs most places, that almost no one will turn him away, and he probably believes this because for most of his life it’s been true. But he’s also got giant dark circles under his eyes, purpling like a bruise, and his clothes are rumpled like he’s either been sleeping in them or fished them out of the bottom of a bag, and his hair is greasy from more than just hairspray. When she looks closer she can see an angry, red mark circling his neck — fading, but still there. Something has clearly happened in his life to put him here, in this bar, and she can’t help but wonder what. “Okay,” she says, finally. “You got a name?”

“Steve,” he says. “Steve, uh, Harrison.”

He falters on the last name, just a little. Like he was about to say something else.

Anyone else maybe wouldn’t have noticed, but Camilla is not anyone else. She was born in a shithole in southern Illinois that she hated with every fiber of her being, and when she was fifteen she snuck out in the dead of night with everything she could carry in a backpack and hitchhiked her way out of town to New York. Because she hated home, but also because she wanted to be somewhere where no one knew her and where there was music and adventure and life. She had no money, she had no skills, and she certainly had no legal form of identification. She spent the first weeks jockeying her way into shelters or sleeping on subway benches or in public bathrooms until one day she stumbled into a bar with a help wanted sign. And even though she was scrawny and angry and clearly underage and lying about it, the man behind the bar had simply smiled and offered her lunch and a place to stay. Davey. He’d let her barback, and he never charged her for the apartment she slept in upstairs, across the hall from his, never made her sign a real lease, never asked for legal documents, never questioned her obviously fake name. Years later when she asked why he’d taken her in, Davey told her that he could always tell when someone was running from something, and that he trusted his judgement in character, and that she seemed like a scared girl who needed a safe place to land and he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he turned her back on the street. So he took her in.

That had been a decade ago, and now he was dead, dead almost a year from stupid fucking AIDS and he’d left her his bar — this bar — and here she was, looking at what was clearly another scared kid running from something who needed a safe place to land.

“God damnit,” she says, and Steve’s face does a little somersault of confusion. “Look — fine, you can have the job. And I have a spare room upstairs, too, if you want it, since you’re obviously sleeping rough. Can you start tonight?”

Steve just says “what?” He blinks at her a second while his brain catches up and then shoots her a grin — this giant, megawatt grin that is genuinely very endearing. And then it falters, just slightly.

“Look I — I have a friend who I’m with, we’re sleeping in his van right now. Is it okay if he stays too?”

Camilla feels a pang of — well, of something, she can’t figure what. All those empty nights sneaking sleep in the Penn Station bathroom before she found Davey. Might have been nice to have a friend there, at least. To be a little less alone. She heaves a sigh. “Sure, yes, he can stay. I assume he’ll work for his keep too?”

Steve nods, eagerly. He looks so, so fucking hopeful and she can’t deal with the moment being too sweet, so she has to be a bit of an asshole. “Wait. You’re not a Packers fan, right?” she asks. And his face falls into a perfect little grimace of disgust — he snaps “god, no” — and that’s exactly when she decides she’s going to keep him, possibly forever.

And that’s how Steve and Eddie crash into her life.

---

The first few weeks pass shockingly smoothly. Eddie is more what she expected from a runaway than Steve — theatrical metalheads are a dime a dozen in New York, but she’s sure he was the only one flying that particular freak flag in whatever small town he and Steve fled from. She doesn’t have the whole story, but she’s getting bits and pieces of it, here and there, and she’s confident that it’s a small town, and that Steve and Eddie grew up together there but weren’t friends until more recently. She figures it’s Midwestern, too, given their accents and general demeanor and also that Steve seems to have a nearly religious obsession with the Indianapolis Colts, which should piss her off, but he agrees to root for the Mets with her, so, fine, they can split on football. (He rolls her eyes when she insists that ’86 is gonna be the year for the Mets, keeps razzing her on how good everyone else is, but she can feel it in her bones that it’s this year, baby, the series is theirs.)

For the most part Steve is charming and professional, and even though she thought all her regulars would hate him they take to him quickly. He learns all their names and drink orders and woos basically everyone within the first few days of his employment. Eddie, meanwhile, is flighty and flakey and has an even worse fake last name than Steve (Manson, really? But he and Steve had laughed like it was some sort of inside joke, so she just ignored it.) He takes shifts at the bar but is sort of useless at it, hands shaking too much to pour a good drink half of the time, eyes constantly darting to the door, startled easily if someone comes around a corner too fast or makes a sudden, loud noise. So mostly Steve helps her out behind the bar and Eddie sits on a stool by the door, waiting to break up fights that never actually happen.

There are so many pieces of the Steve and Eddie story that she doesn’t have, and they’re both fascinating and confusing. She’d never come right out and ask — she has manners, alright — but the picture that those two make together just keeps raising more questions in her head. Like, why are Steve and Eddie even friends? Eddie seems constantly annoyed by Steve’s music taste, his movie preferences, all the books he hasn’t read, his fashion. (And, okay, she did forcibly drag Steve to a thrift store the second week she knew him so he could stop wearing polo shirts to work out of fear for his safety — now he mostly wears plain t-shirts, which is better, really). From time to time Eddie refers to Steve as King Steve, alludes to high school popularity, general lady magnetism, and overall jock tendencies and there’s just no way they were friends in high school. Partially because Eddie has leaned so fully into being abrasively himself that it’s obviously a defense mechanism against years of bullying, but also because Eddie is pretty obviously and plainly gay.

Which she would have figured out even if she wasn’t constantly catching him checking Steve out when Steve wasn’t looking, if only because he once told her his favorite movie is Nightmare on Elm Street 2, which is just a blatantly obvious flag.

But they’re not together — at least she doesn’t think so. She’s not convinced Steve is totally straight, not with the way he mother-hens over Eddie, not with the way his eyes are always drawn to the man when he strolls in the room, not the way he looks almost embarrassed, sometimes, when he realizes she’s noticed him looking. But they never touch, not really — they do this fleeting, halfway thing, small nudges and almost touches, leaning into each’s other space but never fully committing, and it’s sort of ridiculous, honestly. So they didn’t leave in some sort of runaway love declaration, that much she can tell. And they clearly haven’t been friends for too long — one of them will sometimes say a pretty boring fact and the other will act strangely shocked to know it. Steve spent an hour mocking Eddie for being a boy scout when he learned (Eddie kept snapping back “it was only for a year,” but that didn’t help much). In retaliation, Eddie relentlessly teases Steve for weeks about Steve’s favorite song being Born to Run, calls it old man music, although Camilla notices Eddie slipping the cassette of the album into her collection a few days later. When he sees her, he just shrugs at her, says, “favorite songs can save your life, don’t you know?” It’s fucking weird.

The point is, there’s no reason they should be so wholly dedicated to each other, and yet they are, clearly. That they ran together at all is one sign of that; that they’ve stuck together since arriving is another. They are never really apart, at least for longer than a few hours. It’s a bit codependent.

She asks Eddie, one day, when Steve’s doing an inventory run for her offsite. “So what’s the story there, how did you two meet?”

Eddie laughs, and it’s bitter sounding. “We knew each other in high school kind of, but then, well. Some shit went down.” His voice shifts to something more sober, sort of sad. “Steve saved my life. A couple times. And for his trouble I went and got him run out of town, stuck with my sorry ass forever. The King and the Freak — makes a fun story, no?”

He sounds so miserable about it, so she decides to drop it, move the topic elsewhere.

Then there’s the even bigger mysteries, like just what Steve and Eddie are actually running from. One night when Eddie bolts after she accidentally drops a glass next to him, Steve looks at her, apologetic. “We, you know — some stuff happened, back home. It was pretty intense, hard to deal with. So he’s recovering. He’ll get better, I swear.”

It’s the closest she and Steve have ever come to talking about it, and Camilla would be lying if she said she didn’t want to pry a little. Eddie might be a closed book, but she can still try with Steve, right? “You gonna elaborate on what ‘stuff happened’ means?”

Steve shrugs one shoulder and pours her a beer. “Maybe one day. But not now.” Which, okay. Fair enough. She accepts the beer and lets it go.

They are definitely running from something, she knows, something more than just small town single-mindedness or homophobia. There’s the scar on Steve’s neck, for one. There’s also scars all over him, which she learns one night when some drunk asshole dumps an entire pitcher of beer on him and he goes into the stockroom of the bar to change. She grabs a shirt she keeps under the bar for exactly this reason and goes to toss it to him and sees him shirtless — and he’s covered in marks. Some scars that look like they’re from knives, and some mottled, vicious wounds that look shockingly fresh. It looks like he was mauled at some point in the recent past. He catches her eye and shrugs, boyish as ever. “Dog attack,” he says, which is such bullshit, the bites are too small, unless it was a pack of particularly brutal Chihuahuas who also somehow learned how to tie a noose, but she doesn’t press, doesn’t ask. Not her place. There’s also Eddie’s general skittishness, his shaky hands, his refusal to ever have his back fully to a door. Not to mention his night terrors. She’s in the apartment across the hall, where she’d lived the whole time — she’d given them Davey’s old place, which has two bedrooms and which she felt uncomfortable about occupying after he died. The building walls are thin and she can hear him, sometimes, screaming. Can hear when he stops, a low murmur of voices that must be Steve comforting him.

Between “shit went down” and “stuff happened” she has is a vague sketch of something terrible and violent. She has no idea what could cause nightmares like the ones Eddie keeps having. She’s not sure she wants to know.

Then there’s the fact that about a month after they show up, Steve asks to stick a baseball bat behind the bar.

She frowns at him. “Is someone giving you trouble?” Her patrons are rowdy, sure, but they’re generally harmless, and she can’t think of a time in the past few weeks when someone appeared to be hassling Steve.

Steve looks sheepish — embarrassed, really. “No, no, uh. It just makes me feel. Better? Safer?” He shrugs, not meeting her eye. “It’s hard to explain.”

Her eye catches on the scar around his neck again, still pink. She thinks about whatever demolished his chest. Thinks about Eddie screaming in the dead of night.

“Is whatever you’re running from gonna show up here, one day?” she asks.

Steve meets her gaze head on. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He clears his throat, straightens his shoulders — loses some of the youthful cockiness that he otherwise carries around. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No,” she says, honestly. “I just want to be prepared. You ever gonna tell me what it is you’re running from?”


And here Steve smiles, so bitter and angry, so unlike any other expression she’s ever seen on him. “Trust me. You’re better not knowing.”

“Okay,” she says, softly, and she lets him keep the baseball bat behind the bar.

---

Spring fades into summer, and by start of June New York is hot and sticky and unbearably humid. Eddie remains stubbornly in ripped jeans and his chewed up leather jacket, but Steve swaps for denim cutoffs that leave very little to the imagination. She catches Eddie staring at the line of Steve’s calves more than once, raises a cheeky eyebrow each time their eyes meet after. The first few times Eddie looked flustered and embarrassed, but now he just raises an eyebrow back, like well you were looking too, sweetheart.

Which, okay, she was. Steve is very far from her type, and also Eddie’s crush on him is clearly only growing sadder and more desperate, but she’s only human. And he’s hot, alright? She can look, it’s harmless.

Her and Eddie aren’t the only people who appreciate the view, it seems. As the summer goes on Steve gets hit on more and more. He’s always very polite about it, smiling and accepting compliments. He never really flirts back, not with women or men. In fact, the entire time she’s known him she’s never seen him accept a date when offered. It’s strange — Eddie’s stories about him being a ladykiller in high school and his whole general vibe really made her think he’d be more into it.

Sometimes she catches Steve glancing over at Eddie, something soft and a bit sad in his eyes, and wonders, not for the first time, if perhaps he’s too hung up to pay attention to anyone else.

She catches Steve looking at Eddie a lot these days. She figures that it’s partially because Eddie seems better. Not perfect, but better. He can pour a beer without dropping it now, loud noises startle him less, he’s more prone to smiling. She wonders if the baseball bat behind the bar was helpful, or if it’s just the passage of time. Whatever is gunning for Steve and Eddie has yet to show up, after all.

The better-ness makes him more himself, loud and goofy. He talks in exaggerated voices, tells clearly overblown stories, refers to them as Sir Steve and Lady Camilla when he greets them. Steve laughs at all of it like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. He’s often looking at Eddie with a soft smile, like he’s glad the other man is returning to whatever form he was in before they fled.

The two of them also touch more, longer. Steve clasps him on the shoulder and lets it stay there, lingering. Eddie nudges Steve with his hip and stays close by, neither of them getting immediately out of the other’s personal space. They make a lot of eye contact — it’s starting to get ridiculous how much these two fucking stare at each other, really.

And then there’s the flirting. She’s sure if she asked either of them neither one would own up to it, but it’s there, plain as day, for anyone to see. Eddie starts slipping in nicknames and pet names nearly constantly. Steve turns to Stevie turns to sweetheart turns to, worst of all, princess. And because he’s never looking at Steve when he says these things, confident in voice but not in action, he can never see the way Steve flames bright red at every single one, can only hear the other man snort with laughter, like it doesn’t affect him. Steve, meanwhile, can’t seem to stop complimenting Eddie. There’s laughing at all his jokes, sure, but then there’s also the comments on how he looks, like, constantly. Telling him he looks nice, complimenting his jackets, asking about the band logos on his shirts. Once, memorably, pointing out that Eddie has beautiful eyes, which truly nearly makes her puke.

There’s one day, before opening, when Camilla and Steve are cleaning the bar as best as they can and Eddie’s playing lightly on a guitar that he must have brought from wherever they ran from, because it’s just too nice to be something bought second hand on the shitty salaries she pays them. Steve has long since abandoned the charade of doing any of actual work to just look at Eddie, which she probably should fire him for at some point, but hey, she likes the music too. Eddie catches Steve looking after a while, frowns. “What’s that look for, Stevie?”

“I like watching you play,” Steve says simply. “You have nice hands.” And Eddie turns bright red.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Camilla says. “I’d tell you to get a room, but I gave you that room and our walls are too thin for me to encourage anything.”

Eddie splutters out an embarrassed sound and Steve just laughs, heartily from his chest. Steve’s reaction makes Eddie look even more confused.

A few weeks later, Steve brings it up, casual as ever. They’re closing — Eddie’s in the stock room doing inventory, so it’s just the two of them clearing out the taps. She’d gotten a girl’s number earlier in the night, is still riding the pleasant buzz it’s burning in her back pocket. Steve turns to face her, leaning up against the bar. “She was cute,” he says, easily, and she grins at him.

“Am I so obvious?”

“You seem happy,” he says back. Pauses, clearly choosing his next words carefully. Then, “you’ve gone out with guys, before, too.”

It’s not a question — she’d gone out with the drummer in some punk band a few weeks ago and promptly decided to never call him again, which they’d both teased her about for a few days. (“What, he couldn’t hit?” Eddie said with a laugh, and she’d flipped him off as Steve cackled in the background.)

In another context, she might be annoyed by the personal questions but Steve is young and haunted by demons she’ll never understand, and Davey was her fairy godmother, once, had walked her through her own confusing fear of the unknown, had told her she was normal and not wrong, or broken so she’s happy enough to pay it forward. “I try not to limit myself. I like funny people who don’t mind if I’m a little mean to them. Doesn’t really matter what else they’re packing.”

Steve nods, considering. “How did you know, you know? That what you felt for girls wasn’t just,” and here he chuckles, some inside joke she can’t catch, “platonic with a capital P.”

She laughs then, shaking her head. “Steve, babe, I don’t think straight people daydream about kissing their platonic girlfriends, you know?” Then, more serious. “It can be hard to tell. Especially — I don’t know, you can have these intense friendships, you know? Ones that sort of blur the line?” Steve nods, understanding. “But I always knew what I wanted. When it passed over from platonic.” She pauses, again. Tries to speak carefully. “I think if you’re asking the question, then you already know the answer, right? The line has blurred enough. Maybe not for the other person, but for you. And, look, it can be really scary to want things, you know? But in your case, I don’t think the thing you want is so far out of reach.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at her. “That obvious, am I?” he says back, and she smiles.

“Both of you, really.” She shrugs. “It can be hard to tell, but I think the chance at being happy is worth more than the temporary fear of rejection, right?” She smirks. “And I don’t really think you’ll get rejected.”

Steve nods, but there’s a faraway look in his eyes – like he’s considering whatever history they have that she doesn’t know. “I don’t want him to say yes because — because he feels like he owes me, you know?”

Honestly, she doesn’t. “I don’t think that’s why he’d say yes, Steve,” she says. “I think he’d say yes because you’re very nice and he basically drools over you every time you enter a room.” Steve lights up at that, grinning wide, the serious mood evaporated. She’s impressed by how he’s taking it. “You don’t seem to be freaking out too much about this. My crisis was, like, six years of hating myself and then four additional years of convincing myself I was faking it for attention whenever I tried to ask women out because I also liked men.”

He laughs a little, shrugs. “Trust me when I say I’ve faced scarier stuff than this. And also, I mean, I guess maybe I always knew? I was on swim team in high school — retrospectively I might have been a little too aware of how my teammates looked in speedos,” he says. “But I figured, you know, I also like women — hell, I was pretty sure I’d marry my high school sweetheart, for a while, so. Easy enough to ignore.”

“Hard to ignore now, though?” she asks, as Eddie re-enters the room in a flurry of movement, shouting about whatever music she put on the radio and how much it sucks.

Steve smiles, half to himself. “Hard to ignore now.”

Eddie frowns between them. “What are you two talking about?”

Steve throws a rag at him. “None of your damn business, Eds.”

She expects it to happen pretty fast, after that, but a full week passes without any news on the Steve-and-Eddie-romance front. Honestly, Camilla’s starting to get worried — she’s terrible at playing matchmaker, too mean and blunt for it. But for some reason she’s become invested in these two terrible idiots being happy, and the longer they dance around each other the more she wants to scream just kiss each other already.

It sort of happens without her, luckily enough.

Steve’s wearing those fucking shorts — seriously, she’s starting to think he’s making them shorter every week on purpose — and a ratty old Ramones shirt that simply must be Eddie’s, because there’s no way it’s Steve’s. And really, stealing shirts? How obvious can he get?

He’s talking to some guy she’s never seen before. The dude is leaning heavily into the bar, basically fluttering his eyelashes at Steve. Steve’s game enough — he’s laughing at the right points, he’s making eye contact, but he’s not really flirting back, he’s still making other drinks. But the dude is very clearly interested, and he’s not really letting Steve out of his sight, keeps roping him back into conversation, and Steve lets himself get roped back in, calm and collected.

Eddie’s also working the bar tonight, and he can’t stop looking between Steve and this dude, over and over again. Camilla wonders what he’s looking for — he doesn’t look jealous, not really, just uncomfortable. She can’t quite figure it out until finally the guy gives up and stumbles out the door and Eddie leans close into Steve’s space and says “you know that guy was hitting on you, right?”

Steve shrugs, cool as ever. “Yeah, I know. Not really my type, though.” He says this last part while looking at Eddie’s lips, and, okay, she’s starting to think Eddie might just be a bit dense if he’s not picking this shit up.

Then again, given all of Eddie’s stories about Steve, and Steve’s own admittance that he never really explored men before New York, it’s possible that he simply has no idea how obviously Steve is pining for him. Possible he just presumes Steve is straight. He’s also very pointedly not actually looking at Steve, right now.

It’s honestly a bit funny. Tragic! But funny.

Eddie’s frowning, expressively, still not looking at Steve. “That doesn’t, uh, bother you? That he’s,” and he stutters, a little, “gay?”

Here Steve frowns, like Eddie’s being a bit stupid. “I mean — Eds. This is a gay bar.” Eddie blinks in surprise. Steve turns to Camilla. “This is a gay bar, right?”


She shrugs. “It’s not explicitly a gay bar, but I mean, implicitly, yeah. We’re pro gay people, here. Davey was gay. I’m half-gay.”

“I don’t think half-gay is the right word,” Eddie huffs.

“Bisexual,” Steve says, instead. Then turns to Eddie again. “She’s bisexual. And, uh,” and he clears his throat a little, awkward, “so am I.”

Eddie stares at him. Like, mouth half open, wild eyed, stares.

“What?” Eddie says, after a long, terrible silence.

“Is . . . that a problem?” Steve says, and he sounds smaller than she’s ever heard him sound.

Eddie is spluttering, shocked, and Camilla can’t help it — she laughs. Eddie cuts a glare at her. “No, no, it’s not a problem, I just — I didn’t,” Eddie says, over the sound of her laughter. He drags a hand across his face. “Since when?”

“Eddie, you can’t just ask people when they turned gay,” she chastises, and Eddie’s glare becomes even harsher. She laughs again.

“I mean,” Steve says, “I guess always? If I think about it. Just easier in Haw — in Indiana, to not really embrace it.” He clears his throat. “Harder to ignore here, though,” he says, echoing their conversation from earlier.

And Eddie seems like he really wants to ask why it’s harder to ignore, but he doesn’t, clears his throat and looks away instead. Camilla would be frustrated but she knows, now, that it’s going to happen — Steve has knocked all the right dominos over. Just time for Eddie to pick up the ball and run it past the goal. Not to mix her metaphors, or whatever.

So it’s not a surprise when she catches them making out in the stockroom an hour later. She just rolls her eyes. “Boys, try to keep it off the clock, yes?” And they both look embarrassed but they also both look so happy, happier than she’s ever seen them look, so she lets it go, walks out, gives them a minute to adjust themselves. When they come back to bar Eddie is humming Metallica under his breath and Steve can’t stop giggling to himself.

It’s nice, she thinks. To see them be young for once.

---

The summer continues on. The Fourth of July comes and goes — she knocks on Steve and Eddie’s door to see if they want to join her on a friend’s rooftop down the block. Eddie answers, tells her cagily that Steve’s not feeling well. “It’s, uh, a bit of a rough holiday, for him,” he says.

Camilla thinks for a second, and then makes a decision.

“Fuck the party,” she says, “you two wanna come and watch movies in my place?” Eddie’s able to drag Steve out of bed — he really does look ragged, and he keeps doing a sort of thousand-yard stare thing that freaks her out. She pops popcorn and pulls a tub of ice cream from her freezer and a pack of beer from her fridge. Eddie complains loudly through Annie Hall, and Steve laughs at his jokes, comes more into himself. They keep going on — she forces them both to watch Caddyshack, which they’d never seen, and then they pivot to Indiana Jones, and by then Steve is joking along with them, dropping a deeply terrible Harrison Ford impression that has her nearly snorting beer out her nose. She doesn’t miss the fireworks, in the end, is happier for this companionship than for whatever small talk she’d be having right now without them.

It seems crazy to her, that she’s only known them a few months. She wonders if this is how they are — they’d been so dedicated to each other when they’d showed up, and she assumed that was special, an exclusive little club, but now she figures that perhaps Steve and Eddie just adopt everyone that way, pull people into their orbits and refuse to let them go.

The Mets really do have a good run, so a few days later she drags them up to Shea Stadium for a game. Eddie looks fucking miserable, keeps complaining about how hot it is and how dumb sports are, but it’s clearly all in good fun — they’re all sitting and laughing and drinking beer. He keeps knocking his knee into Steve’s, and Steve buys him cotton candy to make up for it, hand feeds it to him in a way that is maybe a little obvious in public, but no one seems to notice them at all. A prep, a metalhead, and a punk walk into a baseball game — that’s just New York, right?

Part way through the fifth inning Eddie decamps to get more snacks, and Camilla yells “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” after him, and Steve spends a whole minute just looking at her. “Something on my face?” she asks.

“Nah,” he replies. “Just. You remind me of my best friend, that’s all.”

Which is horrifyingly sweet, because she pretty sure Steve and Eddie are her best friends, so it’s nice to know it’s perhaps slightly reciprocated. She cannot let him know she’s having mushy feelings though, so she doesn’t say any of that, says “Oh? Is your best friend extremely cool and hot?” instead.

Steve laughs, shaking his head. “Yes, Robin’s both. A real basketcase too, talks a mile a minute, loves movies and Blondie and making fun of me. I think you’d get along.” His faces droops then, just a bit, sadness settling over him. “I haven’t been able to talk to her since — since Eddie and I moved. She must be worried.”

Camilla turns to face him, more fully. “You can’t pick up a phone?”

Steve shakes his head. “No,” he says, and okay. Another piece in the what are you running from puzzle appears. Someone is looking for them, sure, but someone is looking for them enough to monitor the calls of people they know? It’s a bit freaky. Not first the first time, she wonders what exactly these two have gotten themselves into, and how they managed to get into it in the first place.

“Maybe you can find another way,” she offers. “Something that . . . whoever is looking for you won’t notice.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at her, considering. Eddie returns in a blaze, holding hot dogs and beers, and the conversation drops.

But the next week, she walks in on Steve sitting behind the bar, cutting a Family Video ad out of a newspaper. He’s also cut a news story out of the paper — she glances at it, realizes it’s a review for a new movie, Aliens, which is hitting theaters in a few days. He sticks them both into envelopes, both addressed to some town in Indiana. The return address is a library a few blocks away. She pats him on the shoulder. “Good solution. Your friends will get it?”

He grins at her. “Oh yeah. They’ll figure it out. They’re smarter than I’ve ever been. And it’s far enough away that — well, if someone does show up, Eddie and I have time to get out of your hair.”

She’s a bit surprised. “Out of my hair? No fucking way, Steve.” He frowns at her, confused. “You stumbled into my bar and I’m not letting you stumble out. We’re lifers now, baby. Whatever’s chasing you is gonna have to go through me too.”

Steve gapes at that. “I mean — why? You don’t even know how dangerous it is.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, simply. “Family is family, hun.”

She’s not expecting Steve to stand up and hug her, but that’s what he does. It’s a nice hug — enveloping. She leans into it, squeezes him back. He pulls away to look her in the eyes, more serious than she’s ever seen him. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he says.

“Nothing is going to happen to me, Steve,” she says, but something about the seriousness in his expression makes it come out less lighthearted than she hoped.

He shakes his head, a bit sad. “Don’t say that. You have no fucking idea what we’re dealing with.”

Then tell me, she wants to shout. It’s only been about four months of time spent together, but Steve and Eddie have made a permanent home in her cold little heart, and she wants to help them. Wants to protect them from whatever the fuck is after them. But she knows Steve won’t answer, knows he’ll tell her she’s better off not knowing. So she lets it go. Waits for the day it shows up on her doorstep.

Because she’s not an idiot. She knows it will. Eddie and Steve know it too. The longer time goes on the more they relax, but they never truly relax, not fully. Eddie still looks very carefully at every patron who comes up to the bar. Steve still rests his hand on the baseball bat loosely some nights, as if to remind himself it’s there. They both never stop looking over their shoulders.

Whatever is gunning for them will catch up one day. She’s just going to be as prepared as she can for when it happens.

---

July fades into August. It’s hot enough that people go out less, the bar has slow nights. She gives Steve and Eddie some days off, which Steve uses to woo Eddie, apparently. He buys flowers for the man, a dozen pink roses, and Eddie turns so bright red she’s worried he might implode. She hears about it endlessly from Eddie, who keeps coming down to the bar even when he’s not on shift to complain about how Steve is just perfect and nice and how terrible it all is.

“I mean, he bought me dinner, who does that,” Eddie groans.

She laughs, shaking her head. “Babe, I love you, but I think you have to raise your standards a little. I mean, your boyfriend buying you dinner is the bare minimum.”

Eddie glances at her from between his fingers, where he’s buried his face in pure embarrassment. “Boyfriend?” he says, and it’s so shy.

She wants to kill any person who ever made him feel less than. She turns and props her hip against the bar. “Okay, well. One — he buys you dinner. Two — he buys you flowers. Three — he sleeps in your bed.” The last fact she is painfully aware of, the thin walls hiding very little. They have no idea how lucky they are that she likes them, really. “I’m pretty sure he’s your boyfriend. I’m pretty sure if you asked Steve, he’d be shocked you’re even questioning if he’s your boyfriend.”

A long moment passes. Eddie finally removes his face from his hands, looks at her fully. “I never had a boyfriend before,” he says. “Everyone where we’re from thought I was — well, a freak. A drug dealer, burnout, super-senior loser. No one ever looked at me twice.”

She wants to string everyone who ever made him feel less than up by the balls and flay their skin off.

“Well, seems like you could do a lot worse for your first one,” she says instead, and he smiles at her, wide and brilliant.

August is slow and sticky, and Eddie and Steve are so happy — Steve keeps kissing Eddie in public in the bar, and every time Eddie looks at him like he’s shocked that Steve is even giving him the time of day. The regulars poke fun, but she can tell everyone feels good for them, that their joy is contagious and blinding and brilliant.

And she’s happy too, lighthearted and giddy. When Steve and Eddie aren’t out together they’re with her — they go to matinee movies and sit and smoke in the park and they work the bar most nights, and it’s fun and easy and amazing. It’s the best she’s felt since Davey died.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise when shit hits the fan.

She’s opening the bar alone — it's Tuesday, never their busiest night. Steve’s on shift soon, but she’ll probably end up cutting him early — she knows Eddie wants to drag him to some show at CBGBs where they’ll both probably end up with black eyes, but she’s not one to stop their weird courtship shit or question why it tends to involve going to places where they both can get in fights.

The door swings open, and she looks up to greet whoever has entered but let them know they’re not quite open just yet when she pauses.

It’s two kids, flanked by a woman who can’t be that much older than them. One kid has a giant mop of curly hair and a Weird Al shirt, the other is a girl with bright red hair in twin braids who’s wielding two metal crutches and has a pair of black sunglasses on. The older woman is wearing a button down floral shirt and suspenders, hair cropped short, eyes scanning around like she’s terrified they’re going to get in trouble.

Camilla figures they must be lost — tourists looking for directions. She smiles at them. “No kids in the bar, sorry, but I can help you get where you’re trying to go?”

The curly headed kid stares at her, shaking his head. “No, uh, we’re — we’re looking for some friends of ours?”

She shrugs back at him. “Bar’s not open kid, sorry, your friends aren’t here.”

The younger girls speaks then, not quite looking the right direction — she’s blind, Camilla realizes with a start. “You might know them — Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson?”

A chill goes down her spine. Even with the different last names — their real last names, she supposes — that can’t be a coincidence. She tries to assess if this is a threat, if this is the bad thing finally coming to collect. But two kids and a teenager cannot be whatever terrifying thing Steve and Eddie are running from, right? Still, she has no way of knowing, not really. She reaches beneath the bar, grasps the bat that’s there with one hand. Just in case. “Why are you looking for Steve and Eddie?” she asks, calmly.

“You know them?” the older woman breathes, and her shoulders sag in something like relief. “Are they — are they here, are they okay? Are they eating enough, because Steve is terrible at feeding himself, I swear, it’s a miracle he hasn’t died of scurvy already like, fifteen times over.”

She wonders, suddenly, if Steve left a girlfriend behind when he ran. Takes another look at the girl — suspenders? Not his girlfriend, no way. Remembers his half-joke, from earlier, platonic with a capital p, remembers him saying his best friend reminded him of her. Blinks. “Wait. Are you Robin?”

The girl beams at her, wide and bright.

“Holy shit,” Camilla says.

And then Steve walks in.

“Holy shit,” Steve says. “Henderson? Robin, Max, what the fuck?”

The curly haired boy absolutely launches himself at Steve, nearly bowling him over in a hug. “Steve! We got your notes, the ad and the paper, we figured you had to be within a few blocks of that library but do you know how many places there are around here, we’ve been looking all day, how have you been, where’s Eddie?”

Steve’s holds onto the kid for a long moment, then moves on to clutch the redhead closely to him, whispers "Max, holy shit, Max," and girl’s sniffling like she’s crying but hiding her face like she doesn’t want anyone to know. He turns to Camilla, suddenly. “Cam, can you — can you go get Eddie, he’ll want to — what are you all doing here, what’s happened?”

Camilla’s feeling awkward seeing the reunion anyway, so she heads upstairs to collect Eddie. When she describes the people gathered in the bar, he actually bolts down the stairs ahead of her, faster than she’s ever seen him move. When she catches up, he’s clutching the curly haired boy to him while Steve picks Robin up and spins her in a circle, both of them laughing.

“You look great,” Robin says breathlessly. “Like, really great. I can’t believe it.” And then she blinks at his apparel. “Is that a Clash shirt?”

Eddie claps Robin on the shoulder. “Camilla over here had to force Stevie into some fashion sense so the patrons didn’t kick his ass. No more crew neck sweaters for our boy.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Oh? I thought you liked the sweaters?”

Eddie blushes furiously. Robin is glancing between the two of them like they’re speaking a foreign language. Camilla almost snorts.

“Okay,” Steve says after a beat, getting serious. “As nice as it is to see you all, I’m guessing this isn’t just a social call.”

The Weird Al kid — Henderson, she’s figured out — glances at her in a way he must think is subtle. “Maybe it’d be best if we talked about this somewhere else?”

“Oh, hell no,” Camilla says.

A bit to her surprise, Steve and Eddie both say, “no,” alongside her, at the same time. Henderson frowns at Steve. Eddie just shrugs. “Camilla’s helped us a lot,” he says.

“She’s family,” Steve adds. Smiles at her, soft.

Henderson is looking between them now, and honestly, she’s getting a bit sick of all these glances. He rolls his eyes expressively. “Oh, sure, you’re gone for five months and you adopt Elvira, makes total sense.”

Wow. Elvira? “Okay, firstly, I know that’s meant to be an insult, but that’s seriously very flattering. Elvira is hot as hell,” she says. Robin gapes at her in semi-awe and Henderson rolls his eyes again. She puts her hands on her hips, schools her face into its meanest scowl. “Listen up — it’s my bar, kid. And Steve and Eddie live rent free in an apartment I own. You say what you need to in front of me.”

Henderson just heaves the most world-weary sigh she’s ever heard from a kid who can’t be more than eighteen. “Okay,” he says.

The red-haired girl — Max — speaks up next. “Vecna’s back.”

And the mood shifts entirely.

“Fuck,” says Steve. “Since when? How do you know?”

“Will felt him,” Robin says. “A couple days ago. We drove here as fast as we could, Joyce lent us her car, we had to get you guys—”

“We don’t have much time,” Henderson adds. “We have to go, now.”

Steve and Eddie meet each other’s eyes. Have some sort of silent conversation.

“Okay,” Steve says, “okay.”

“We can be ready in a few. Fast as lightning,” Eddie adds.

“Wait,” Camilla chimes in. “Who the fuck is Vecna? And where are you going?”

Steve and Eddie look at her, then back to each other. Another silent conversation. Henderson rolls his eyes again. She’s about half a second away from telling him his eyes will stick like that, which, gross, when did she become her own mother? “You don’t need to tell her everything,” he snaps.

“She’s helped us, shithead,” Steve says. “We’ve put her in a lot of danger by being here and she’s never once flinched at it.” He turns to her. “Once you know, you can’t not know. Are you sure?”

Camilla has never been more sure of anything in her life. She’s been looking at the separate pieces of this puzzle for ages now, and she wants to see the full picture. “Tell me,” she says.

So they do.

---

It takes an hour, maybe, to recap three years of their lives. If it had been anyone else she would have laughed them out of the room. It’s just so absurd.

But it’s Steve and Eddie. Steve and Eddie with their strange scars and nightmares. Steve and Eddie with their constant vigilance. Steve and Eddie with a baseball bat under the bar.

She believes them. She believes them completely.

It turns out the reason they left is twofold — Eddie is still, technically, wanted for a bunch of murders he didn’t commit. On top of that, they’re both wanted for government testing — something about the demon bats that caused the bites on Steve’s abdomen (that Eddie apparently also has) and the potential side effects of their venom. Neither man wanted to enter government (or police) custody, so instead they made a plan, packed a van, and slipped away from Hawkins in the dead of night.

So that’s who’s been chasing them. The fucking US government. And also: interdimensional alien monsters.

“Holy shit,” is all she can say at the end.

“I know,” Robin says, grinning a bit manically. “It’s a lot, your first time.”

Eddie, meanwhile, is frowning at Steve. “You never mentioned the Russian torture before, Stevie.”

“It didn’t seem relevant?” Steve says, sheepish. Eddie glowers at him.

Henderson claps his hands together. “Okay,” he says, brightly. “Now that story time is over, the people who are participating in the final battle need to get going.” He gives a jaunty wave to Camilla. “Nice to meet you goth lady, see you later.”

Which – okay, that’s not happening. “I’m coming with you.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Steve sweeps in. “Absolutely not, Cam, no way.”

“Yes way, Harrington,” she sneers, hoping use of his real last name will make him flinch — which it does, a bit. “I told you already, you’re family, I’m not abandoning you at the home stretch. The bar can survive a few days closed, I’m coming with.”

“You could die,” Steve says, sounding distressed.

“You could die,” she snaps back.

“Oh,” Henderson says, suddenly, “I get it!”

Her and Steve both turn to face him. “Get what, Dustin?” Steve says.

“She’s your girlfriend!,” the kid says, bright and cheery.

There’s a moment of just — terrible, awful silence. Steve’s mouth has dropped open. Eddie has turned an ungodly shade of red. She almost bursts into laughter because — what the fuck?

“No,” Steve says, sharply. “She’s not my girlfriend, Jesus, Dustin—”

“But you like her!” Henderson says. “It’s obvious. You want her to know everything but you’re trying to keep her safe. You’re into her! I’m happy for you, man, honestly, it’s good that you finally moved on from Nancy.”

Eddie lets out a hysterical little bark of laughter. Steve looks at him. Really looks at him. Eddie’s not meeting his eye. “Eddie,” Steve says, very softly.

“Oh,” Robin says.


“Steve,” Eddie says, finally meeting his gaze, and it sounds a lot like you don’t have to.

“Oh,” Robin says, again.

“I’m not anyone’s girlfriend,” Camilla clarifies.

“Oh?” Robin says, and okay, that’s very flattering, but she’s one — too old for this girl and two — the world is ending right now. She wonders how any of these people managed to save the world multiple times if they were all always so horny, seriously.

Steve clears his throat, stands up a bit straighter. “Dustin, buddy, look — Camilla’s not my girlfriend. But I am — I am seeing someone. I’m, uh. I’m actually in love with someone.”

Eddie looks like he’s about the melt into the ground. There’s a small, gentle smile on his face. “Love?”

Steve shrugs, boyish again, back at him. “Yeah, man. I know it’s, uh. It’s soon, but. Yeah.”

Dustin is frowning, shaking his head, like Steve’s being an idiot. “Well, I mean — we can make a pit stop to see her before we leave, I guess? But I don’t get why you keep ignoring these perfectly good women right in front of you, Steve. First Robin, now her?”

Max scoffs. “You know, for someone so smart, you’re really fucking stupid,” she says. Camilla thinks Max might be her favorite.

“It’s Eddie,” Steve says, very slowly. “I’m, uh. I’m in love with Eddie.”

There’s a beat of silence. “And I’m in love with Steve,” Eddie chimes in. “For the record. Both of your records.”

Steve beams at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, soft as cotton.

Robin lets out a high-pitched squeal of excitement, throws her arms around Steve. “I knew we flocked together, I can’t believe it, when did you realize, did you totally panic, did you get all weird and quiet and manly about it, I know you did, you’re totally helpless, how did you even figure it out without me—"

Steve laughs at her, shaking his head. “I had some help,” he says, cutting Camilla a glance.

Max is grinning from the seat they put her in a while ago. “Eddie, come here, I wanna punch you in the arm,” she says, and Eddie obliges. She socks him, merrily. “I’m happy for you idiots,” she says.

“Thanks Red,” Eddie says back.

Steve’s eyes have returned to Dustin. The kid has been very quiet. It looks like the gears are turning catastrophically in his head. “Dustin,” Steve says, softly. “Buddy? You okay?”

“I—" Dustin says, shaking his head. “That’s not possible. You two can’t be dating.”

Eddie straightens up, looking more serious than she’s seen him in months. “Henderson,” he says. “Why can’t we be dating?”

“What part of this is bothering you?” Steve adds. He’s a bit softer than Eddie, but there’s an edge of panic in his voice — like he’d never considered that Dustin wouldn’t just automatically accept them. Like it never occurred to him that Dustin might take issue with it.

Dustin seems to pick up on this, shakes his head in irritation. “Oh, come on I don’t care that you’re gay, you idiots,” he snaps.


Both Eddie and Steve’s shoulders slump, fear leaving them in a woosh of breath. “Technically Stevie’s bisexual,” Eddie adds, grinning a bit manically.

Dustin still won’t look at them. Steve clamps a hand on the back of his neck, brotherly. “Hey. Dustin. What’s wrong?”

Henderson sniffles, and she realizes, belatedly, that he’s crying. Steve goes to pull him into a hug, and Eddie moves to join it. “I just — you’re my best friends, you’re basically my brothers, I’m supposed to know everything about you and — and I missed this,” the kid mumbles. He presses his face into Steve’s shoulder and really cries. “You’ve been gone for so long and it’s like I don’t even know you anymore, everything’s different.”

“Hey, kid, no,” Eddie says, softly. “You didn’t — you didn’t miss anything, not really. We’re not different. We’re still us. Just now we, you know, make out sometimes.”

“Ugh, gross,” Dustin whines, and Steve laughs. Pulls him away and forces Dustin to look him in the eye. 


“No one wanted to leave you,” he says, very seriously. “Eddie and I left because we had to, not because we wanted to. And we’re gonna make all that time up, I swear.”

Eddie grins again. “Your mother and I still love you very much,” he says.

“Oh, fuck off,” Steve says, lightly, but the comment gets Dustin laughing, and he’s wiping his tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just — I really missed you both. And I guess you took me by surprise.”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says, “took us a bit by surprise too.” He tugs at Steve’s ear, and Steve grins at him.

“Ugh, get a room,” Max says, but she’s smiling.

“You can’t even see what we’re doing!” Eddie protests.

“Yeah, but I can tell it’s gross,” she snaps back, with no real heat.

It’s all very sweet. Maybe too sweet, for the end of the world, but Camilla figures everyone’s owed some warmth.

“Anyway,” Camilla says, after a moment. “Now that we’ve established that I’m no one’s girlfriend — I call shotgun.”

There’s another round of loud protesting from Steve and Dustin, who both seem very convinced she’s going to get herself killed.

It’s Eddie who finally ends it. “Look — she’s going to just follow us unless we knock her out and tie her to a chair. And let’s be real, we could use all the hands we can get, right? I think she comes with.”

She grins at him, and he grins back. And well, that’s that.

To Hawkins they go.

---

They pile into two cars — Steve, Dustin, and Eddie in an old, beat up van Eddie has apparently had this entire time, and Max, Robin and Camilla in a hatchback belonging to someone named Joyce, who’s relationship to everything Camilla is getting quickly updated on. She’s glad to give the boys some much needed boy-time — Dustin was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement while they packed up, motor-mouthing about things he needed to tell them that happened in the months they were gone. Robin and Max, meanwhile, are glad to catch her up on everything — who everyone is, what they do.

There’s a lot of people involved in this thing, it turns out. A boy who vanished and came back; Joyce, who’s his mother; Eddie’s old D&D group; Steve’s ex-girlfriend and the guy she left Steve for who is now also her ex-boyfriend and also the vanished boy’s brother.

“Wait,” Robin says. She’s driving, clutching ten and two like if she lets go they’ll crash immediately. Camilla’s not 100% convinced she actually has a license, but no one died on the way to New York so she supposes it’s safe enough. “I was supposed to tell Steve that, about Nancy and Jonathan, shit, I forgot.”

“I’m not sure he’ll care,” Camilla says. “Don’t think he’s pining anymore.”

Robin grins at her. “Wait until you meet Nancy, my god, you can make fun of Steve so much, he’s got such a type.” And, okay — Camilla gets why she reminded Steve of Robin, sure.

The road trip is easy enough, eleven hours passing by in a shockingly breezy manner.

When they get to Hawkins though, it’s hell. Like, more or less literally. There’s giant, angry red fissures in the road and a terrible gray haze over everything. And there’s a feeling of oppressive dread that settles into her bones immediately, suffocating and thick. Robin circumvents most of town with a soft, “it’s not safe, there are monsters coming out of the gates,” and takes them to the outskirts.

They end up at a cabin in the woods — which, Max supplies helpfully, belongs to Hopper, the police chief who died and then didn’t die. Camilla’s catching on.


When they arrive, there’s a second giant reunion, which Camilla is mostly left out of. The kids are excited to see Steve and Eddie — Lucas, who’s Max’s boyfriend, and Mike, who’s Steve’s ex’s brother (god, she hates small towns) practically tackle the two of them in joy. The adults are happy to see Steve, mostly — Hopper clasps him in a long, very manly hug, and Joyce actually cries when she sees him, hands to her mouth.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Joyce breathes, and Steve looks embarrassed and sheepish but accepts her hug anyway.

“We’re fine, it was all fine,” he says, reassuring.


Nancy and her ex-boyfriend are standing off in the corner with a long-haired guy who Camilla’s not sure was mentioned to her. (“Argyle,” Robin whispers eventually. “He’s Jonathan’s friend from California, he also kind of got dragged into this.” Which, she supposes, makes them birds of a feather.)

Nancy does look like Eddie — curly brown hair, big eyes, a steely sort of confidence thrumming under her skin. It’s kind of funny. She’s also really looking at Steve, intently, which Camilla notices. Judging by the slightly upset scowl on his face, Jonathan has also noticed.

Steve, for what it’s worth, does not seem to notice at all. Classic Steve. He greets them both with a nod, a simple, “Hey Nancy, Jonathan, Argyle.”

“Hi Steve,” Nancy says back, and it’s soft in a way that’s almost sad. Steve moves on from her without noticing, and she frowns a little.

The last two people Camilla meets are Will (“got lost in the Upside Down for a week and now maybe has super powers?” Robin had said) and Eleven (“absolutely has super powers”). The girl considers her for a long moment.

“Steve says you are from New York,” the girl says, eventually. “I was there, once.”

“Really?” It maybe shouldn’t surprise Camilla, but it’s hard to imagine a superpowered child had much time for fun family vacations.

Eleven nods. “It was bitchin',” she says, and Camilla nearly doubles over in laughter.

“Oh, I like this one,” she says to the room at large.

Hopper smiles at her, faint. “Yeah, she’s a good kid.” An Eleven smiles back, huge and childlike. It strikes her, how young they are all. How unfair it is that the people who have to save the world are, by and large, literal children.

But she can’t wallow in it, because then it’s time for work.

There’s already a plan half-formed, and it involves them splitting up into three teams to do a bunch of shit Camilla can’t begin to understand. Something about sensory deprivation? Who knows. The teams get names — Team Fighters, Team Wizards, and Team Bards, which makes no sense at all to her or Steve, who’s brow wrinkles when Dustin says the team names out loud. Eddie buries his face into Steve’s shoulder to muffle the fact that he’s very clearly laughing at him. “I’ll explain later, Steve,” he says, when he’s done, and Steve rolls his eyes and huffs out a mock-offended sound. Nancy’s eyes narrow at the whole interaction. Camilla pretends she doesn’t notice — that’s a problem for later.

Team Fighters is going to go and fight the monsters who are, apparently, pouring out of the rips in the world at alarming speed. She supposes the name is appropriate. Team Wizards is doing the magic sensory shit that Camilla can’t quite grasp onto, and involves both superhero kids. Team Bards is doing some sort of radio set up to play music as a distraction. “The monsters have a hive mind, but they’re all also sort of blind — music really screws them up. Back in March Eddie played the most metal concert of all time to distract them,” Dustin supplies.

“Which went very well for me, ten out of ten, no complaints” Eddie says, airily. Steve glares at him. Eddie looks at him with a weak little smile. “Too soon?”

“You almost died,” Steve says, very severely. “I’d like to not repeat that, if we can manage.”

“Aww, I’ll do my best for you, babe,” Eddie says back, and Steve smacks him lightly in the side.

Nancy is still glancing between the two of them with a strange look on her face, like she’s trying to put together a puzzle but doesn’t know what it’s supposed to look like, at the end. Camilla gets it — she felt that way about Steve and Eddie for months, after all.

“Anyway,” Hopper says, finally. “Let’s do assignments, yeah?”

Team Fighters ends up being herself, Hopper, Steve, Nancy, Robin, Lucas, and Jonathan. Team Wizards is Eleven, Will, Joyce, Max and Mike. Team Bards is Eddie, Dustin, Erica (who is maybe twelve years old, which Camilla is trying really hard not to think about) and Argyle.

They go about building weapons and, in Dustin’s case, reviewing radio schematics. She ends up on the front porch with most of Team Fighters, helping Steve hammer nails into a baseball bat. “You and bats, man,” she says, with a sigh, and Steve laughs. Nancy and Robin have their heads bent together over some Molotov cocktails, and Jonathan and Hopper are sharpening knives and talking about, of all things, the upcoming football season. Eddie emerges from inside the cabin and drops himself dramatically onto the porch, half in Steve’s lap. “Your kid is losing it, man,” he says.

Steve shoves at him. “I think for the duration of this adventure he’s your kid, actually.”

“Nah, man, see, he’s my kid when he’s brilliant and he’s your kid when he’s annoying,” Eddie says, batting his eyelashes.

“That’s not a very fair split. I’d have him, like, 95% of the time.”

“Exactly!”

Steve shoves at him again and Eddie breaks into a peal of laughter. Camilla looks up from the bat and sees Nancy, once again, looking at them. But this time Nancy straightens up a little, steels her shoulders, and Camilla has half a second to realize what’s going to happen before it does.

Nancy clears her throat, and says, “okay, what’s — what’s going on, with you two? You’re both being . . .” she trails off, looking a little uncertain. “Weird,” she settles on, eventually.

Jonathan and Hopper have stopped talking, turning to face the group at large. Robin looks like she might puke. Eddie’s glancing at Steve nervously. But Steve’s just meeting Nancy’s gaze straight on, calm and collected. There’s a quality in him, Camilla realizes, that’s dangerous — the type of head that’s unwilling to blink in the face of something threatening. It’s why he has all the scars, she knows, suddenly. Because even when something terrible is barreling towards him, Steve refuses to back down.

“We’re dating,” Steve says, and his voice is very casual. Camilla can see the tension in the way he’s sitting, but he’s holding himself well. Brave, she thinks, fond. She can see the same look on Robin’s face, too. “Eddie and I are dating.”

After a second, Eddie leans over and intertwines his hand with Steve’s. Stays silent, but grounds them, together.

It’s quiet for a long moment.

Jonathan speaks first. “That’s great, man. Seriously. I’m happy for you guys.”

He sounds like he means it.

Steve smiles, shoulders relaxing just a little. “Thanks, Jonathan.”

Hopper stands up, crosses over to the two of them, and claps Steve on the shoulder. Again, it’s all very manly. “Harrington. You’re a good kid. You deserve to be happy.” Then he turns to Eddie. “Munson. I own a lot of guns. You break his heart, I’ll break your face. Got it?”

“Hopper,” Steve says in an embarrassed whine, but he looks a little pleased too, like he’s surprised someone cares enough about him to offer a shovel talk at all.

“Uh, I understand, sir,” Eddie squeaks out, and Robin laughs, light and giddy.

Nancy’s still quiet. It’s an echo from before, with Dustin. “I — oh,” she says, very softly. “I guess, I thought . . .” she trails off, shaking her head. It looks like she might cry.

“Hey, Nance,” Steve says, but she cuts him off.

“I just thought — I know what I said when we broke up but I really did think you loved me, at some point. Thought maybe you still . . .” she trails off again.

Steve furrows his brow, baffled. “Nance, I did love you. But I, mean — it’s over. It’s been over for ages.”

She shakes her head. “But, I mean — you’re gay, you don’t have to pretend that you felt—”

It’s a wholly and totally inappropriate thing to do, but Robin actually bursts into laughter. Everyone turns to gape at her, Nancy’s shoulders hiking nearly to her ears. “I’m sorry!” Robin’s nearly yelling, voice pitched to pure hysteria. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s just — Steve’s not gay. I have watched him hit on way, way too many babes and talk way, way too much about Fast Times for you to be sitting here and saying Steve’s gay.”

Nancy’s cheeks are flushed with something between embarrassment and indignation. “Robin, he’s dating a man,” she says, very slowly.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, “but I still like women. I like both.”

Something very complicated crosses Nancy’s face. “You . . . can like both?”

Oh. Well that makes sense, actually. Camilla really hates small towns. The world is so much more interesting than the manicured lawns of middle-American suburbia could possibly know.

“You can like both,” Steve says, maintaining eye contact.

There’s a long silence. Nancy’s eyes have slipped away from Steve, and she’s staring off into a middle distance. Then she clears her throat, shakes her head. “I’m, uh, I’m happy for you guys. Sorry for,” she waves a hand. “I don’t know.”

“S’okay,” Eddie says. “It’s kind of major news.”

She nods, then clears her throat. “Anyway,” she says, “we should probably get back to the important stuff.”

She drops it, but Camilla keeps an eye on her for the rest of the afternoon. Catches her glancing at Steve and Eddie a few times, then looking over at Robin, frowning to herself. She also sees how Robin sticks at her side, flushes any time Nancy compliments her, babbles her ear off. But Nancy just smiles, even when Robin is clearly being a bit annoying.

She bites off a sigh. She is not a matchmaker. And the world is ending. But if they don’t die, she might just have to have a conversation with those two.

If they don’t die.

---

They spend the rest of the day preparing. Joyce makes several boxes of mac and cheese for dinner, and Camilla manages to keep it down despite the roiling acid of anxiety in her stomach. A few of the kids try to catch some sleep, but she feels too wired, restless, waiting for something terrible to drop into their laps at any moment.

“Is it always like this?” she asks Eddie at one point. He hands her a mug of something warm — tea, she realizes, and she’s thankful for it, even in the terrible August Midwestern humidity. “Like, is it always so — calm before the storm, I guess?”

“It’s only my second time, honestly, but yeah, I think it’s always like this. Feels surreal, right?” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Like, it’s the end of the world and it’s somehow so quiet.”

She nods. “Are you scared?”

“Yeah,” he says, softly. “Back in March, it was like — you’ve seen Empire Strikes Back? How at the end, it’s like. They’ve lost. They’re alive, but they’ve lost. It’s a total downer ending, and you have no idea how they’re going to come back from it. That’s how I felt. Vecna broke Max’s whole body. She was in a coma for a whole week. We had no idea if she was even gonna wake up. I almost died — when we first met I was still missing like, chunks of flesh from where these bats ate me. I’m only here because Steve knows first aid and was able to hide me in his house for a few days to recover. And then the government wanted us to — I don’t know, turn ourselves in, and it felt like if we went into that hole we’d never get out. So he and I had to run and . . . I never felt good about that. I knew it’s what we had to do, but I was so sick of running, and it felt like abandoning everyone when they needed us most. Driving away from town, I really fucking felt like Luke Skywalker. Except, you know,” he wiggles his fingers, “both hands.”

She laughs. “So this is Return of the Jedi, then? That means we’ll win, right?”

Eddie smiles at her, but it’s a bit sad. “I hope it means that.”

She can’t stand the uncertainty, so she barrels past it, goes for humor instead. “Hey, if it’s Return, then maybe we’ll meet some ewoks!”

Steve appears out of nowhere, plopping himself on the couch next to Eddie. “Why are you two talking about those teddy bear things?” She and Eddie share a glance and then burst into giggles. Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re both so weird,” he says, but it’s all affection. Robin appears to join them, and then the kids show up too, all of them huddled around, and they sit in a little group for the rest of the night, telling pointless stories and stupid jokes. Mike regales her with details of Eddie and Will’s various D&D campaigns, and Steve tells her about Lucas getting the game winning shot at a basketball championship earlier this year, and Dustin recounts a long-distance date with a girlfriend in Utah. It’s almost normal. Like they’re just regular people catching up after a long time apart.

Then dawn breaks, and it’s time for the fight.

They split up. Hopper hands her an axe with a grim nod. Steve has his bat strapped to his back. Nancy’s carrying a sawed off shotgun, which is just completely wild. Before they go Steve clutches Dustin to him, whispers something she can’t hear in his ear. He kisses Eddie on the mouth, fully, in front of everyone.

“Oh gross,” Mike whines, and several heads whip to him — Jonathan looks like he’s about to smack him, fully glaring a hole in his head. Will just looks kind of sad. Mike rolls his eyes, petulant. “You guys are basically our dads, I don’t want to think about you having sex.” Everyone relaxes a little, Will shooting a small, shy smile at his feet.

“No one said you had to think about it, Wheeler,” Steve says.

“We’re your dads?” Eddie says, delighted. “I’m making fun of you forever for that, holy shit.”

Mike flushes red. “Not like that, don’t—"

“No, no, too late,” Eddie says. “You love us, dude. You want us to play catch together on the weekends. You want us to teach you how to drive. You want us to tuck you in at night and check your closet for monsters.”

“I hope a demodog eats you alive,” Mike hisses.

Steve scoffs. “Don’t talk to your other dad like that, son.”

Mike throws his hands in the air and groans. “Ugh, you’re both so annoying.”

“Alright, alright,” Hopper says. “Mike, say goodbye to your fathers, it’s time to get moving.” Mike nearly screams in indignation and stomps off.

Steve squeezes Eddie’s arm once more, smiles. “Don’t die,” Eddie says, soft.

“You either,” Steve says back.

And then they’re off.

---

It’s fucking brutal. Brutal and bloody. There are so many monsters. They’d described the creatures to her, but actually seeing them is so much worse. They’re weird and squelchy and horrifying, and then they’re on them, screeching, howling. Nancy’s firing into the air at bats that have descended upon them, Robin’s lighting a blowtorch in front of her. Camilla is swinging an axe, somewhat wildly. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Lucas nearly get taken down by a demodog, but then Steve’s there, swinging his nail bat, putting himself directly between the kid and danger. The dog clips Steve’s side, and blood pours from the gash.

“Steve,” Robin screeches, but Steve’s still standing and swinging.

“No time, don’t stop,” he yells back. And they don’t.

Somewhere in the distance, music starts playing from a speaker system. Team Bards, she realizes. And they’re playing—

Camilla almost laughs. They’re playing Born to Run.

Steve does laugh, strangely bright when there’s still a battle raging around them. “Fucking Munson, man.”

The music, much to her shock, works — the monsters are disoriented, swinging their heads blindly, less tuned into their every move. The fight gets easier. Not easy. Just easier.

They pour blood and sweat into it. Jonathan gets clipped in the shoulder, Camilla takes a stray claw to her cheek. A dog sinks its teeth into Hopper’s left arm and Camilla whips around and smashes its head in with the ax until it’s fucking void-mouth unclenches and frees him from its grasp.

They fight for what feels like a hundred hours. Then, without any real warning, the world shudders, ground beneath them shaking.

And everything in front of them drops dead.

There’s a moment of terrible, unreal silence.

“El,” Hopper breathes. “She did it.” And Camilla can feel it — the air is less ashy, the terribleness that had been hanging over everything less present. She can tell. Everyone shares a look and waits a tense moment. Just in case, in case it’s not over.

The walkie in Steve’s jacket pocket crackles. “This is Team Wizards,” Will Byers says. “Mission accomplished.”

Robin screeches with joy, flings her arms around Nancy’s neck. Nancy blushes tomato red. Camilla and Steve share a glance over that, Steve quirking an eyebrow. But then he’s wrapped up in his own hug with Lucas and Jonathan, of all people, and Hopper is clapping her on the shoulder, wildly enough. “You saved my life,” the man says. “Glad you were here.” Hopper turns to Steve, grinning. “You did always pick up good strays, Harrington.”

She squawks at that. “Hey, if anyone’s the stray here it’s him. He wandered into my bar like a little lost puppy and everything — adorable and totally helpless.”

Steve laughs, long and loud, and soon they’re all laughing, and it’s a wonderful sound.

They straggle back to the cabin to regroup. Everyone else is already there — Eddie is pacing outside with unrestrained nervousness and when he sees Steve he bolts into a run, nearly tackling him. Steve winces a bit, and Eddie notices the gash in his side, gaze turning concerned. “It’s fine,” Steve says, soft. “Just a scratch.”

“Always playing hero, Harrington,” Eddie says back, and kisses him.

Mike, once again, groans in disgust. Steve flips him off without breaking the kiss, and Dustin cackles with laughter.

Everything feels good and light and brilliant. Everyone is smiling.

They won.

---

They bandage their wounds in the cabin. Mostly everyone outside of Team Fighters is unscathed — El and Will are exhausted, and Argyle has a black eye from part of the radio tower falling on top of him, although he tells the story with a sort of detached, pothead amusement that makes her think it must not hurt that much. Jonathan presses an icepack against it anyway, with a mixture of fond tenderness and absolute exasperation, while Argyle haphazardly tries to wrap a bandage around Jonathan’s shoulder. Joyce pulls Hopper into the bathroom for stitches despite his protests that it’s not that bad, which she’s clearly not buying at all.

Steve and Camilla are deposited next to each other on the couch, Nancy tending the wound on her face while Eddie and Robin stitch the wound on Steve’s side. “Baby,” Eddie clucks, softly, “you know I think your scars are hot and all, but I think it might be time you retire from monster fighting, yeah?”

Steve grins back at him — it’s edging on manic, the adrenaline crash still working its way through all of their veins. “I think I might be forced into retirement, now that Vecna’s gone. Maybe I can take up a different dangerous hobby? Big game hunting? Free climbing? Bank robbing?”

“No,” Eddie, Robin, Nancy, and Camilla all say at once. Eddie pats him on the cheek. “I think retirement will look good on you, Stevie. As good as the scars, I promise.”

Camilla grins at him. “Enough about Steve, what about my new scar? You think it’ll be sexy?”

It’s a joke, but Nancy and Robin both say “yes” very quickly, at the same time. They look at each other and blush, and Steve bursts into laughter so hard that Eddie snaps “you’re going to rip a stich you idiot,” at him.

It’s nice. It’s all really, really nice.

After everyone is bandaged up and El and Will are tucked in to beds for a long rest, Joyce and Hopper make a call to head into town to assess the damage. (And, Camilla thinks, to scrounge up some food — the cabin’s running a bit bare.) Jonathan and Argyle offer to go with, and the Sinclairs and Max tag along to find their respective parents. Dustin, who’s staunchly refusing to leave either Steve or Eddie’s side, calls his mom on the phone line that is, miraculously, still operating to tell her he’s okay. She’s clearly screeching at him to come home on the other end until Dustin rolls his eyes and says “I’m with Steve, mom,” which quiets down whatever rage she’s on.

“Babysitter of the year,” Robin sing-songs.

“Shut up,” Steve sing-songs back.

Mike also stays behind, clearly eager to be around whenever Will and El wake up, even though it probably won’t be for a few hours. Nancy ducks to the phone when Dustin’s done to call their parents, grabbing the entire device and taking it into another room to have the conversation more privately than Dustin had.

“I should probably try to find Wayne, at some point,” Eddie says as he watches her leave the room. “Let him know I’m actually alive. Still a fugitive from the law, technically, but, you know. Alive.”

Robin sighs. “Yeah, I’ll have to go home tonight, I’m sure my mom’s in a panic.”

Steve doesn’t mention his parents. Camilla raises an eyebrow at him. He shakes his head, minutely, some sadness slipping across his features over the fact that he doesn’t have anyone to call. She gets it, but she also thinks it’s a bit silly. Robin is sitting on the floor in front of him, slipping her hand into his and Eddie is on the couch beside him, half on his lap, playing with his hair, and Dustin has shoved himself into Steve’s other, uninjured side so thoroughly that she’s given up and moved to the floor in front of the couch instead to let them cuddle. It’s a thought she could keep inside, but she hates that kicked-puppy look Steve gets, so she doesn’t. “Well, fuck your parents. It’s not like you’re lacking for family, Steve Harrington,” she says.

He smiles at her, that same big mega-watt grin from the first day they met, and kicks lightly at her ankle. “Don’t go soft on me, Cam, I can’t handle it.”

“Oh don’t worry,” she says back, “I’ll never stop being a bitch.” A thought occurs to her then, for the first time. “What are you, uh — what are you gonna do, after this?” She clears her throat. “I mean, like, when the dust settles. You two gonna stay here?”

Steve and Eddie exchange a glance, then turn to look at her like she’s an absolute idiot. “Dude,” Eddie says, sounding offended. “Absolutely not. I’m not letting you and your terrible music choices run The Dive into the ground.”

She scoffs, half because rude, and half to hide the blossom of joy that she feels knowing that they’re not going to run out of her life as easy as they smashed right into it. “I ran it perfectly fine without you two, thank you very much.”

“Hawkins will always be home,” Steve says, a bit soft. “But without all the monsters, I’m pretty sure the gremlins can take care of themselves. Right Henderson?”

“I could always take care of myself,” Henderson says haughtily.

“There’s not much left for me, here,” Steve continues, ignoring him. “Presuming you’ll all come to visit.”

“Uh, no shit, Steve,” Dustin snaps, and Steve laughs and ruffles his hair. It devolves into a shoving match between the two of them — Eddie eventually joins, again snapping at Steve about ripping his stitches, and Robin shuffles herself to the floor next to Camilla to avoid being collateral damage.

“I’d come too,” Robin offers, quickly and quietly, so only Camilla can hear it. “To New York. Obviously. To see you. I mean, to see Steve, and Eddie, obviously, but just, you’re really nice and pretty and, uh, I’m going to stop talking now before I have to kill myself out of embarrassment, great.”

Camilla smiles at her. “You should absolutely come, it’s very fun. I can take you around to some bars.” And then, she does something purely out of the goodness of her heart, because she has apparently become a sap for true fucking love or whatever. She blames Steve and Eddie for it entirely. “And look, I appreciate, your, uh, interest, but, one — I am decidedly too old for you. And two, I think your friend Nancy Wheeler might be having a bit of a crisis. She just learned about bisexuality, you know? And she keeps looking at you. So, you might, you know. Want to help her with that.”

Robin flushes bright red. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Camilla grins. “Everyone needs a friend in the tough times, kid. Just saying.”

Robin looks totally flabbergasted. “But, I mean — she’s Steve’s ex —"

In the background, Eddie has wrapped his arms entirely around Steve and planted his chin on the other man’s shoulder. They’re swaying back and forth to music no one else can hear, maintaining eye contact while Dustin rolls his eyes and makes fake gagging noises. Camilla raises an eyebrow at Robin. “And Steve is in a very serious and loving relationship and cares deeply about you both and wants you to be happy, I’m sure. So. You should go for it.”

Robin seems to consider this for a long beat. “Maybe. Yeah. Maybe.” She looks at Camilla very seriously. “But I still want to come to New York.”

She knocks their shoulders together. “My bar is your bar, baby. We’re family now, right?”

The other girl grins back, nearly as blinding as Steve’s. “Yeah, family.”

“Are you guys having a moment down there?” Eddie interrupts, suddenly in their space. Robin smacks him.

“Not anymore dipshit,” she snaps, and then they devolve into more play-fighting until Mike comes out and yells at them for being too loud.

---

In the end, they spend another week in Hawkins. There’s a big clean-up effort around town, and she winds up volunteering at a shelter with Robin, Steve and Dustin most days while Eddie hides up in the cabin or sneaks off to visit his Uncle, still not quite safe to wander around town in any capacity.

Two days after the battle a bunch of government people show up and pull them away for interviews, one at a time. The agents who get her seem generally baffled as to who she is and why she’s there, but don’t press too hard. They ask her some questions, force her to sign an NDA, and let her go with little fanfare.

The end of it is that the government decides to stop looking for Steve and Eddie. Someone named Owens raises an extremely unimpressed eyebrow at the two and says “well, I guess the bat venom didn’t kill you,” and that’s that. They also, officially, clear Eddie of all murder charges, but everyone seems to agree that him sticking around in Hawkins is a bad move — the people here aren’t likely to forget. Eddie doesn’t seem too sad about it — apparently his uncle is looking to transferring to a factory in Upstate New York, which means there’s really nothing much left for him here at all either.

Everyone decides to make moves around the same time. Nancy’s due at college for her first semester; Jonathan and Argyle are planning to return to California now that the threat is gone. The kids have to start school again, soon. And the bar’s been closed too long — she knows people will get worried if she doesn’t show back up. It’s strange, the expectation that they’re all just going to go back to normal, but it’s necessary. She thinks if she stopped too long to think about it she’d never really emerge from the void.

They say goodbyes on a bright, clear morning. Camilla stands off to the side with Argyle, both of them outsiders, while everyone clutches each other tightly, all hugs and grins. Robin and Nancy come up to say goodbye to her, and Hopper claps a hand on her shoulder and tells her to look out for Steve and Eddie, which is both hilarious and so sweet it makes her tear up. Dustin swears he’s coming to visit as soon as his mom lets him (“so when he’s thirty-five,” Eddie whispers to Steve, and he cackles) and Robin and Nancy both agree to come sooner — Nancy’s just in Boston, after all, it’s not too bad of a trip.

It goes quicker than imagined, and then her and Steve and Eddie are piled into Eddie’s van.

“Alright,” Eddie says, looking back at the cabin one last time.

Steve grins and grabs his hand. “Let’s go home.”