Steve kept finding himself seeking out Eddie with his eyes. It felt like part of him was sure Eddie was going to disappear if he couldn't see him. The whole morning was surreal. He still didn't quite believe it. Any minute he was going to wake up and it was all going to turn out to be a crazy dream.

He had powers, well at least one power. He wasn't supposed to have powers. He was the tank as he'd heard Dustin refer to him on more than one occasion. As he had told numerous people since the final battle, he hit things, he did not do the psychic stuff. The more he thought about it, the more totally insane it seemed.

If the evidence wasn't napping on his couch, he would be positive it was a post-Vecna delusion.

Robin was being supportive by not chewing him out for failing to mention anything that had been going on while he slept for the past three days, but he could tell she was exasperated with him. It wasn't his fault he found the whole situation inconceivable so had assumed it was all a dream.

"You okay, Steve?" Joyce asked, perching on the coffee table and giving him a small supportive smile. "You look a little spacey."

"Trying to make myself believe this is actually happening," he admitted.

"Oh, honey," Joyce said, reaching out and patting his arm beneath his blanket, "is it one step too far?"

He nodded.

"Seems like the Upside Down has to go bigger every time, doesn't it," she added. "Never thought I'd have a superpowered kid, let alone two. If you can think of any pointers for dealing with superpowered teenage tantrums, I'd be really grateful."

He found himself smiling, despite his deeper thoughts.

"Hate to admit it, but I'm considering some teenage tantrums myself," he told her.

"Maybe you should all head down to the quarry, see who can throw around the biggest rocks," Joyce suggested with only a smile.

"Don't even know if I can do that part," he said. "Sounds like fun though. Damn, if only I'd been able to do things like that while I was still playing basketball."

"That's the spirit," Joyce said, patting his arm again. "And in the same vein, have you noticed your stomach's been growling for the last five minutes?"

To prove the point something of a loud protest came from his midriff.

"Now I do," he replied.

He'd been so focused on everything in his head, he hadn't even noticed he was hungry again.

"Mind if I take over your kitchen?" Joyce asked. "I think there are going to be more hungry people too very shortly."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't think," Steve said, going to stand up, "I can put something together."

Joyce stood before he could and put a hand on each of his shoulders so he couldn't even shuck off his blanket.

"Steve, you're still pale as a ghost," she told him gently. "Let me handle lunch, okay?"

"Don't worry, Mrs Byers," Robin said, plopping herself down on the couch, "I'll sit on him if I have to."

"We've fought the apocalypse together, Robin, are you ever going to call me Joyce?" Joyce replied with a smile.

"Sorry, Joyce," Robin said with a grin, "force of habit."

"I can carry you, you know," Steve said, giving Robin a look.

"Then I will just ask El to help," Robin replied and when El gave him a beaming smile from across the room where she and Will were talking about something, he knew he was defeated.

"Okay," he gave in. "Thank you, Joyce. If you need any help finding anything, just let me know."

Joyce gave him a much bigger smile for that, before she headed off to investigate his kitchen.

He was pretty sure Robin was going to remind him about looking after himself first, when the doorbell rang three times in quick succession and then a banging on the door interrupted them. Steve shared a look with Robin.

"Dustin," they concluded at the same time.

"Make sure he's out of sight," Hopper said apparently having not heard them and indicating Eddie, before heading towards the front door.

Steve carefully threw his blanket over Eddie's sleeping form so that only a shock of his dark brown hair was visible.

"Is everything okay?" Dustin's voice carried into the room as soon as Hopper opened the door. "Did you find Steve? Why is no one answering their walkies? Why are there so many people here? Is something wrong?"

Dustin hobbled into the room still talking.

"Everything's fine," Robin said, standing up. "As you can see, we found Steve."

"Wait, how did you get here?" Steve asked as Dustin limped towards him.

"I rode my bike," Dustin replied. "Where were you?"

"Your ankle is still healing," Steve said, "you were told not to use your bike for another two weeks. Sit down."

He stood and shepherded Dustin onto the opposite end of the couch to Eddie.

"It only hurts a bit," Dustin said, "and if certain people kept their walkies in easy reach, I wouldn't have had to cycle all the way here."

"Dustin, we've been busy," Robin told him in no uncertain terms.

"Henderson, you are excessively loud," Eddie said at almost the exact same time, pushing down the extra blanket.

The look on Dustin's face might have been comical had it not been for the way he whispered, "Eddie."

Dustin looked at Steve with wide, dazed eyes. Steve nodded.

"It's really him," he said, because he knew just what kind of unreality Dustin was feeling.

"You can check if you like," Eddie said, pushing off his own blanket and vaguely opening his arms.

That was all the encouragement Dustin needed, throwing himself into the offered hug.

"You bastard, you died," Dustin cried into Eddie shoulder.

"Sorry, didn't mean to," Eddie replied, clinging onto Dustin just as hard as Dustin was clinging to him as far as Steve could tell.

He was never going to admit it, but Steve felt tears prickling the back of his eyes. Holding it together through everything else had been second nature, but the way Dustin was reacting made it very hard.

"Wait," Dustin said pulling back. "But how? Did we leave you and you were alive?"

There was panic in Dustin's tone.

"No, no, Dustin," Eddie said very quickly, "you weren't wrong, I died. Vecna brought me back to do his dirty work, but then you guys ended him, so I got my mind back."

"But the gates are closed," Dustin said, frowning. "How did you get through."

Eddie looked up.

"Steve pulled me through a gate in his pool," Eddie said, giving him a smile, "right after he used his level twenty cleric powers to put me back together."

Steve wasn't sure of the terminology, but he could guess, and Dustin definitely got it. The kid turned confused, red rimmed eyes towards him.

"Huh?" was an unusually ineloquent question from Dustin.

"Will and Steve have powers now," El said, coming to stand beside him. "Steve seems to be very good at biokinesis. We have not yet had a chance to see what else he can do."

"I can do this," Will said in his incredibly cheerful tone, holding out his hand and moving the ashtray again.

"That is so cool," Dustin said and then looked excited. "So the Void stuff with El, that was both of you, not her?"

"Kind of," Will answered. "We think El called and we answered."

Steve just shrugged because he claimed no understanding of any of it.

"We have not had a chance to find out what else both of them can do," El said. "It should be fun to find out."

Doing his very best not to show just how much that idea did not sound like fun to him, Steve gave a tight smile.

"How did you know Eddie was alive?" Dustin asked turning all his attention to Steve.

"I didn't," he admitted.

"He thought it was a dream," Robin put in, her tone just a little snarky.

"I didn't know I had powers," Steve protested. "How was I supposed to know it wasn't just my subconscious?"

"It was the Void," Nancy said unhelpfully.

"Which I had been to once and thought it was all El's doing," he defended himself. "How many times do I have to say it, I hit things with a bat, I do not do the psychic stuff. Am I the only one who thinks just about anyone else would be better at this than me?"

"Seemed pretty good at it to me," Eddie said with a small smirk.

"Ugh," he said, throwing his hands into the air, "I'm going to go and help Joyce with lunch."

"She's going to send you back," Robin called after him, but he chose not to listen.

Joyce almost bodily ejected him, in a very polite way, five minutes later. At least Robin didn't say 'I told you so'.

He walked over and sat on the end of the couch he had vacated previously where Dustin was talking animatedly to Eddie, even though Steve was pretty sure Eddie was not really following. The way Eddie was blinking slowly and nodded at not quite the right times was kind of obvious. Keeping his eyes open seemed to be something of a struggle.

"Hey, Dustin," Steve said, "how about we let Eddie go back to his nap. Rebirth is kind of hard on the body."

"Oh shit, I'm sorry," Dustin apologised, so miracles did sometimes happen.

"No worries, Dusty-Bun," Eddie replied, "just having a little trouble staying awake at the moment."

"Want a proper bed?" Steve offered. "My Mom and Dad's room is just through that door."

He pointed down the hallway.

"Kind of like being with everyone," Eddie said after a moment, a spark of vulnerability in his eyes.

"Just thinking of your back," Steve replied, playing it off as a joke, "but whatever you want."

"Your couch is spectacularly comfortable," Eddie replied, "so my back is deliriously happy."

The way Eddie was already curling back up and closing his eyes was kind of adorable, but Steve wasn't dwelling on that.

"So how does this healing work?" Dustin asked with his scientific investigation face firmly in place.

"I don't know," he replied, because he really didn't. "With Eddie I wanted to, so I did. I was using dream logic at the time."

"Then how did you heal me?" Robin asked. "I know when Dustin woke us up for lunch that first morning, I felt better than I had since the last time I got a good night's sleep."

"Um," was as far as he got, but he did think about it, even as Dustin swung his legs into his lap.

"Sorry, it's aching," Dustin apologised, "you don't mind, do you? Elevating it is the only thing that works."

"Fine," he said in his best bitchy tone, not that he was really bothered.

At some point Dustin had taken his shoes off and his ankle did look swollen.

"Back to my question," Robin distracted him.

"Well, I remember just drifting and I had this whole mental image of a fire that I was feeding," he said as he thought about it. "I didn't know I was doing anything."

"I think you healed me as well," El piped up.

"What?" was the best he could do to that.

"I have been thinking about it," El explained, "and I believe when we were in the Void, you healed me before Will led us out. I sensed something at the time, but I did not realise what it was. Now I think it was you."

"Really?" he asked as he brought up the memory.

El nodded.

"When Papa started to train us, he would teach us to trust our instincts first, before bringing everything to a conscious level," El revealed. "It seems your instincts lead you to heal above all else."

"Mom mode activated," Dustin said.

"Thank you, Henderson," Steve said, giving the kid the best glare he could manage considering how his thoughts were spinning.

"You have been protecting all the kids since at least 84, Harrington," Hopper put in from where he seemed to have taken up sentry duty in an armchair.

"Maybe it's inbuilt, my dude," Argyle suggested with a bright smile.

The guy looked stoned again, but when he had time to smoke Steve couldn't have guessed. Steve kind of wished he had the soft cushion of a good joint right about then too.

"If it is, I wish someone would explain it to my higher brain," he said, "because it makes no sense to me."

"You will learn, and it will," El promised him with a smile. "I will teach you."

Steve couldn't quite decide if that was comforting or terrifying. The things El could do were kind of scary. She had taken out an interdimensional madman with the power of her mind after all.

"The three musketeers," Will said with a grin.

"I am not taking up fencing again for anyone," Steve said. "My mom thought that would be really cool when I was eight, and I sucked."

"You did fencing?" Robin asked with glee in her voice, and he realised his mistake instantly.

"My mom saw the movie, the one with Michael York and Richard Chamberlain, and thought it would be a great idea," he said in a tone he hoped would put an end to the matter. "I proved her wrong very quickly."

"Sword fighting might have been really useful in the Upside Down," Dustin mused.

"I don't think a Demogorgon stops when the buzzer goes off," Steve countered.

"Bet you looked adorable in your little white outfit," Robin teased him.

"I destroyed all photographic evidence," he said, giving her a cool stare.

"Ooh," Robin said, "another thing to add to the list for when I finally meet your mother."

Steve knew he shouldn't rise to the bait, but this was Robin, so of course he had to. The conversation devolved into swapping jibes back and forth as everyone else in the room who was awake, watched them like a tennis match. El seemed to find it especially fascinating.

"Are you sure you two aren't married?" Hopped asked eventually.

"Perfectly," Robin said with a grin. "Platonic with a capital P."

Steve actually felt a lot calmer after their little exchange. Not exactly calm, calm, but better than before. This was why he loved Robin. She knew what he needed, even when he didn't and she was a little mad at him.

"Platonic love is so cool, brochachos," Argyle said.

"I still think they should be dating," Dustin said with his usual stubbornness.

"Do you want to suddenly be sitting on the floor?" Steve asked with a cold smile.

"I'm just saying..." Dustin said.

"Then stop," he countered.

"How's Suzie?" Nancy asked and Steve sent her a look of thanks. "Did you manage to get through to her when you got home?"

That gained Dustin's attention like a hawk on prey. Steve took the opportunity to sit back, rest his head on the couch cushion and just relax now that the conversation was not about him. He might have tuned out for a while.

"Lunch is ready, come and get it," Joyce's voice dragged him out of his mindless listening.

"Did I hear there's food?" Eddie asked, sounding vaguely awake.

"Yep," Dustin said, dragging his legs off Steve's and standing up. "Well that's one theory proved," Dustin said as he shifted from one foot to the other.

"What?" Steve asked as he stood up as well.

"Healing is definitely instinctive for you," Dustin said, patting him on the arm. "You fixed my ankle right up. Thanks, dude."

Steve was left standing there with his mouth open as Dustin strode towards the kitchen. It only then occurred to him he had been sitting there with his hand on Dustin's leg the entire time.

"Dustin," Nancy said in a chiding tone, "running experiments on people without their express permission is unethical."

"It wouldn't have had the right parameters if Steve had known," Dustin defended himself.

"He's supposed to be resting, Doofus," Robin all but growled.

Honestly, Steve had no idea how to react, especially when Will handed him a Kleenex.