(the dive pt. ii)

｡･:*˚:✧｡THE KIDS, TURNS out, did bring them stuff. There are snacks, a few cola cans, one single bottle of water and that infamous six-pack. Eddie and he silently agree not to drink any alcohol, going for some chips and cola instead.

As Eddie struggles with a bag of chips before giving up and reluctantly handing it to Steve to open it for him, Raymond sits down against his recently established favourite rock and opens up his own bag before putting a handful of chips into his mouth, grimacing at the salt. It's not a fancy meal, doesn't come near his cooking, not even Eddie's, but it's food. It seems to weaken the ridiculous headache that's grabbed ahold of him at some point.

That's when a nudge to his shoulder makes him look up and he's eye to eye with Dustin Henderson.

"Hey, Ray." Dustin offers a smile.

Raymond raises an eyebrow. "Hey?"

He frowns down at the boy's hands. There's a plastic wrapping and he struggles, trying to unwrap it, before he sighs in defeat and gives up, simply holding it out for Raymond to take.

"My mom made it for me, but I don't really like cheese. There's cheese. Take it."

"You want me to... take the cheese your mother made?"

"Jesus, it's a goddamn sandwich! Take the sandwich."

Eyes wide, Raymond immediately takes the wrapping from the boy, confused by the sudden yelling, but then he remembers who this is and who his favourite people are — Dustin is an odd combination of Eddie and Steve and Raymond isn't sure how he feels about that.

"Never fucking yell at me again." His eyes slip down to the sandwich. "Thanks, mate." He adds and Dustin grins as if he wasn't just screaming at him, before walking away to play with his compass some more.

"I brought you some stuff," Max speaks up. "Bandages, a shirt. I assumed yours would be all... gross."

He doesn't even have the energy to think about the blood and mud that's collected on his favourite sweater, choosing instead to focus on the sweet gesture.

Eddie, however, frowns. "What about me? You guys didn't— Nothing?"

"Sorry, man," Steve mutters. "Max's house was on the way and she, uh, improvised. I would've got you something."

Eyes narrowed, Eddie dismisses it. "Doesn't matter, Harrington. Doesn't matter."

After finishing his sandwich (and giving Eddie a piece with faux reluctance), Raymond puts some distance between himself and the rest of the party, clutching Max's backpack to his chest. He finds a nice spot by the other big-ass rock to clean himself up the best he can in this environment. He takes his jacket off and hangs it onto a branch, but before he can open the backpack, Robin pops up out of nowhere and sits down beside him.

"I'm literally about to change," he states.

"Go on, you don't tickle my pickle." She grins.

"You're disgusting."

"And you're bleeding again."

Raymond frowns. "What?" Feeling warm liquid dripping down onto his top lip, he reaches up to touch his skin, seeing blood on his fingers, and quickly takes the tissue Robin offers. His nose must be all fucked up. No wonder his head's throbbing. "Fuck, that's not good..."

"Nasty shit, am I right?" Robin grabs the backpack and takes out a few bandaids and bandages. She grabs something that makes her grin and takes it out. Raymond's unprepared heart drops to his fucking feet. "What a fancy shirt! She knows your taste, huh?"

The shirt is a little too big for him. He knows because he's worn it before. It's blood red and silky and soft. The edge of the left sleeve was burned with a cigarette. He saw it happen.

"It's Billy's," he whispers, lowering the tissue.

He sees the smile slip off of Robin's face slowly, but he misses her panicked expression because the tears blur it. "Shit, shit, she must have— here, you can, uh... take mine. We can trade, Ray, I'll— I'll take it and you take this one, is that okay?"

"No, no." He shakes his head. "It's fine, I'll take it. I need to grow the hell up."

"Ray, it's fine to feel things. You don't have to be okay with it."

"I am," he insists, looking up at her finally. He gives her a nod. "If I don't start somewhere, I'll stay like this forever. I don't want it to be like this forever."

She doesn't seem convinced, but smiles lightly nonetheless, before offering to help him. A bandaid here, some bandage there and he's as good as new, except cleaning up some cuts makes his eyes sting and his shoulder hurts more than before now and he can barely lift his arm above his head.

He's perfectly fine.

Billy's shirt comes next, though, and Robin leaves him to deal with it alone because he insists.

It's huge on him, like he remembers. The sleeves cover his hands almost completely and the hem reaches his mid-thighs. The silk is cold against his skin. It's baggy, a bit too baggy, so he unbuttons the first few buttons to make it less bland. He successfully goes through it without staining it with tears, even as he realises that he can still smell him — that the shirt smells like that disgustingly strong perfume Billy always wore and smoke. Mostly, smoke.

When he's around alive human beings again, they're already indulged in a conversation he doesn't want to interrupt. He feels Max's eyes on him as he sits down next to Eddie and attempts to catch up. Eddie is crouching down and following the conversation closely. He offers Raymond an uncapped bottle of water, actual, clean water, and he takes it wordlessly, drinks a little over a third of what he got.

"Well, we're one step closer," Robin says. "We know how Vecna attacks."

"And where he attacks from," Lucas adds before turning to Raymond, most likely to help him keep track. "The attic at the Creel house, but in the Upside Down."

"Fucking hell."

Max gives him a sympathetic glance, the one she offers when she knows the worst is yet to come. "So now we just need to sneak into his lair in the Upside Down and drive a stake through his heart."

"If he even has a heart."

"A stake? Is he like a vamp?" Steve's eyes widen comically, voice lowering, as though saying it out loud might attract the creature. "Is he a vampire?"

"I mean, at this point, would it be surprising?" Raymond asks no one in particular, but Max prevents anyone from answering.

"It was a metaphor."

"A bullet should work on him, right?"

Lucas one-ups Eddie's lost little suggestion, hands on his hips in Steve-like fashion. His grin is confident, a little too confident for a kid built like a fucking branch. "I say we chop his head off."

"Yeah, I'd say all of the above, but we can't do any of that till we find a way into the Upside Down," Nancy states firmly and with that, this part of the conversation is done. Raymond knows because Nancy Wheeler always gets what she wants, whether it is by whining about it to her daddy or working her ass off to get it herself.

"We need El to get her powers back," Max whispers.

Raymond is still curious about that El person. He received an explanation, at some point during their drive to the trailer park the other day, but it's still unbelievable.

As expected, Steve is there to re-explain it all. "Everything was way easier. We had this girl. She had—"

"Superpowers," Eddie interrupts, unimpressed. "Yeah, you mentioned her."

"Like, fifty times," Raymond adds, before something behind the kids catches his eye. Dustin is pacing around, similarly to how Eddie was last night, all lost and crazy-looking. Only, his pacing isn't coming from fear, Raymond's sure. That brilliant little demon has an idea and it's cooking up in that curly head of his. "Henderson, you'll step into my vomit."

He doesn't hear it. Steve and Robin grimace at the comment, but Eddie only narrows his eyes at Dustin before looking up at Steve.

"Hey, Henderson's not, uh, cursed, is he?"

"Cursed? No, no. He's fine. Mental? Absolutely."

Right on cue, the boy stops his pacing and screams. "Boom!"

Raymond blinks, utterly confused. Eddie raises an eyebrow. The others don't seem all that surprised. Instead, it's almost as if his scream has brought back years and years of trauma induced by his existence. They flinch, give him a glare or two, but take it pretty well.

"Bada... bada... boom." Dustin's voice drops to a quiet murmur as he takes a few steps towards the group, abandoning his previous pacing. "I was right. Skull Rock was north."

This is obviously something they'd discussed before, probably on their way here. Raymond isn't sure he wants to get involved, but a determined expression on the boy's face doesn't falter, not even when Steve stands up straight and takes his famous hands-on-hips stance, prepared to fight.

"Seriously? You're serious?"

"Mm-hmm."

Steve's jaw clenches and Raymond holds back a snort at how seriously this man takes toddlers. "This is Skull Rock, okay? You're—"

"Mm-hmm."

"—totally, absolutely, one hundred percent wrong, right now."

Dustin raises a finger. "Yes," he admits, but Steve's victory doesn't last long, "and no."

"Oh, my God."

"They always like this?" Raymond asks quietly.

Lucas and Nancy reply simultaneously, "Worse."

Exasperated, Dustin raises his compass. "This worked correctly when we left the Wheelers'. Correct when we got in the car on Curly. But it started to slip the further east we went. Now it's way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn't wrong. The compass was."

"So you're using faulty equipment, dude." Steve is insistent. "You're still wrong."

"Except it isn't faulty," Dustin corrects before turning to the rest of them. "Lucas, you remember what can affect a compass?"

"An electromagnetic field."

"Yep."

"Sorry, I must've skipped that class," Robin blurts out with raised eyebrows, visibly awaiting an explanation and Raymond can't resist it.

"Well, magnetic forces normally cause the needle to orient itself toward the north," he speaks up and he can feel all the eyes (except for Steve's, he just cackles) turn to him in surprise. "If it's off, there's a stronger force interfering. A magnetic field, to say."

All Dustin does is blink at him, eyes round and still. He looks like he just peed his pants. Lucas, Max and Nancy simply raise their eyebrows. There's a proud grin on Robin's face.

Eddie raises a single eyebrow. "That was so sexy right now."

Dustin proceeds to gag as Lucas merely grimaces at the two of them. Robin seems impressed, rather than disgusted. Steve doesn't look all that surprised because he probably isn't.

"I'm not dumb, I'm just lazy," Raymond reasons, avoiding Eddie's gaze as his skin heats up. He's aware of the kids all gawking at his reaction, waiting for him to brush Eddie's comment off casually, as a joke between bros. He doesn't.

"Anyway, Ray's right," Dustin continues awkwardly. "In the presence of a stronger electromagnetic field, the needle will deflect towards that power. So either there's some super big magnet around here, or..."

"There's a gate."

"But we're nowhere near the lab," Nancy points out.

Raymond tilts his head. "Can't there be another one?"

"We don't know," Dustin answers. "It's not impossible. There could be another one, one that we don't know about. It'd have to be smaller. Way less powerful."

"Snack-size gate," Robin suggests and Steve doesn't seem pleased with her idea.

"But how? Why?"

"No idea. All I know is that something is causing this disturbance, and the last time we've seen anything like it, it was a gate." Dustin straightens up. There's that look on his face, again, of someone who's seen too much for their age. "And I hope it is because then we'd have a way to Vecna and a shot at freeing Max from this curse."

And with that, he turns his back to them and starts walking.

"Where are you going? Hey, hey, hey!" Steve attempts to intimidate him by raising his voice, but it honestly seems to be in vain. "Eddie's still a wanted man. Ray's literally his accomplice. We can't just go for a hike in the woods."

"This little steel capsule might be the key to saving not only Max, but also the two of them." Dustin grins a knowing little grin, and turns to look at Eddie. His voice drops and his accent changes and Raymond figures out what he's trying. "What say you, Eddie the Banished?"

Eddie, still crouched down in his little corner, rubs the back of his neck. There's a slight pinch to his brows and a purse of his lips as he stares up at the sky, at the sun peeking through the green leaves.

"I say you're asking me to follow you into Mordor, which, if I'm totally straight with you, I think is a really bad idea, but, uh, the Shire... The Shire is burning."

Raymond exchanges a look with Nancy as Dustin starts jumping up and down with excitement, already aware that Eddie will say yes.

As expected, Eddie stands up. But before he says anything, his gaze slips to Raymond. He steps forward, voice low enough for Raymond to realise the words are meant for his ears only. "Whatcha say, doll?" he whispers. "You wanna do this?"

Raymond has no clue what Mordor is, but Eddie is looking at him, only at him, and Raymond sees that all his fears were pointless. Eddie still looks at him the same.

So he nods. "Sure."

Lips tugging into a smile, Eddie nods back and ruffles his hair. Completely oblivious to the absolute fucking zoo going wild in Raymond's stomach, he turns to Dustin, clearing his throat. "Mordor it is."

That's all Dustin needs to hear, it seems. Grinning wide, he simply turns on his heel and starts walking, followed by Lucas and Robin. Nancy sighs, but follows suit, with Max by her side. Raymond grabs his water bottle and some snacks before rushing over to join them.

He hears Steve's faint, "What is Mordor?" before he and Eddie catch up, hands full of bags and bottles. Smiling awkwardly, Eddie grabs the snacks from Raymond, attempting to hold them, too, the gentleman that he is, but Raymond notices the way Steve rolls his eyes and grabs some from Eddie, helping him not embarrass himself.

"You two would make such a cute couple," he exclaims with faked enthusiasm, seeing both Steve and Eddie stop in their tracks, Steve disgusted and Eddie straight up betrayed, and leaves them to exchange awkward glances as he joins Max's side.

🖇️ 🎬 🕷️ 🕸️ 🎸

｡･:*˚:✧｡RAYMOND MAKES SURE to check on Max. It's a short conversation, pretty simple and curt, but he's grateful nonetheless. Something in him wants her safe.

Of course he wants everyone safe. Well, maybe Steve Harrington doesn't have to be, but he'll take care of him himself. He needs them all alive. Yet, there's a connection to Max he can't quite explain. That's probably how missing the same person can make people.

He couldn't save Billy. He couldn't be there for him, understand him. But he'll be there for Max. He has to be.

("And you say you knew in advance? Like, you expected it to happen?" he asks.

Max shrugs, arms wrapped around herself. "Kinda. I mean, not right away, but when I saw all the files — Chrissy's, Fred's... it made sense, the way I've been feeling lately."

Raymond asks, "And how is that?"

"Not like myself," she mumbles, eyes on the trees around them. "And every moment is just... I feel out of place. Like I'm not supposed to be here. Like I belong somewhere else. And then the little symptoms, it just— it started making sense at some point, that I would..." she trails off, looking back up at him, "be next."

Raymond's pretty sure all this storytelling has taken a toll on him and he's suddenly overly sensitive to every mention of the supernatural, of the world below their own where they have no control over what happens, over who survives, because the skin of his arms and the back of his neck prickles with goosebumps, with a cold he's not sure he can explain. It's a shiver of sorts, a shiver that shakes him to his very core because this is real. This could happen to anyone. This happens to everyone.

"Can he reach you now?"

"Not exactly." She shakes her head, the cable of hear headphones flapping around promptly. She looks cute. Young. Her own age. Not like someone who's grown up too early. One of her ears is, Raymond notices, completely covered, while the other is out, red and freckled, but listening to him nonetheless. "Kate Bush to the rescue. Playing one song on loop."

"What if you, like, get sick of it?" He blurts out. "Songs can be overplayed after a while."

"Do you have a favourite song?" He nods. He believes is one thing only and that thing is the pure masterpiece that is Master of Puppets. Suddenly, the familiar guitar riffs ring out in his ears and he gets the sudden urge to listen to them. Or play them. Or both. "If you had to play it over and over and you knew it would save your life, would you get tired of it?"

His eyebrows furrow and he offers a sincere shake of his head. "Not really." I wouldn't have a choice.

She seems to figure it out even though he doesn't say it. "Exactly.")

"Oh, fucking hell, this mud..." He grimaces at the nasty stuff stuck to the bottom of his shoe, attempting to rub it against some moss and take it off. That turns out to be a mistake because Max is left alone with Nancy, Robin and Eddie follow, seemingly having a pretty serious discussion as Dustin and Lucas tail them, so that leaves Steve fucking Harrington, who slows down to wait for Raymond.

"You'll step into more of it anyway, it's pointless," he comments, useless as ever, and Raymond supresses the urge to roll his eyes. He straightens up and clears his throat before adjusting the straps of Max's backpack and brushing past him. "You know, you don't have to ignore me when I say something random. It's not like I'm saying anything wrong, I'm just trying to have a normal conversation here, Ray."

"Keep trying."

He hears a sigh, then a few quick steps and suddenly fingers wrap around his wrist and he's held back.

"Don't do this," Steve mutters.

"I have a knife, Harrington," he warns casually. "I stopped Eddie from killing you back in the house the other day, but there's no carpet to be cleaned here. I don't mind spilling blood."

Of course no one notices how far behind they are. It's unfair, honestly, how important conversations get interrupted while the ones he can't wait to end seem to stretch out endlessly.

His jaw twitches when Steve only laughs at him. "Ray, I know you, okay? You can drop the tough guy act with me."

"I think that the fact that I can't should indicate enough for you to back off." He jabs a finger at the boy's chest. "You have terrible timing. I'm incredibly moody and all bloodied up and I crave music and a nice, warm soup. I almost died last night and I most likely will, today. Don't come bothering me when I don't need you if you can't be here when my life's in danger."

He seems to have hit a nerve because Steve laughs, again, this time less impressed than the first, head shaking. The disappointment makes Raymond's blood boil because who is Steve Harrington to be disappointed in him like this? It's Steve's fault. All of it.

"Ray, we're going through stuff, all of us." He runs a hand through his hair before temporarily recovering from his usual slouched stance to tower over Raymond. "I wanna say I'm sorry. I know I messed up and you can't get over it like nothing happened, but I don't want us to hate each other if something happens."

Can't get over it? Raymond almost laughs himself because it's definitely not him not getting over it, it's Steve not giving him the reason to.

Raymond cranes his neck up, not giving up despite how Steve is looking down at him. "Should've thought about that sooner."

"Oh, yeah? How come you don't blame the others, huh?" Steve raises one bushy eyebrow at him. "Robin was with me. Dustin, too. Hell, even Nance or Lucas or Max, since you two are best friends now, apparently. They didn't reach out, either, so why do you keep blaming me—"

"Because it's not your first fucking time!"

Steve falls silent. He doesn't fight back, not anymore. He keeps completely quiet, letting Raymond say it all.

"It's not the first time you couldn't be there for me," he spits out, accentuating every word with jabs to Steve's chest until the back of his yellow sweater is pressed against the nearest tree. "I needed you. Not Robin, not Henderson, not Nancy Wheeler, I asked for you because a part of me hoped that you actually changed. That I was being stupid and stubborn and too bloody proud, but guess what!" His smile is so out of character, so terrifying to feel on his face in a situation like this, but he can't stop it from appearing. "Whenever I need you, you step back and let me take the fall because you don't want to risk it. To be involved in anything that also involves me, even if it's all your fault. And that's the lamest thing ever."

He's out of breath. He forces his gasps to seem like normal breaths, humiliated and exhausted as Steve's fingers wrap around his wrist to lower his hand. "Okay."

"Okay?" Raymond laughs. "How the fuck is it okay? Don't you have something to say?"

Steve sighs, head shaking. "No. Nothing I say will change your mind. I won't try anymore." Raymond opens his mouth, but it closes on its own, with nothing to say. Steve's hand slips into his pocket, then out again, and slaps something into Raymond's palm. "Mints. Your breath smells like vomit."

That's not the only thing he's given him. Raymond's chest feels unusually tight at the sight of a Walkman and a thin grey cable connecting a pair of earbuds, the back of the left one painted red, the right one black, to tell them apart. He knows because he's the one who did it, using his nail polish, back when Steve was the most important person in this shitty world.

He looks up, but Steve's already walked off.

The next few hours pass by in a blur of fighting off hunger and the urge to kiss Eddie's stupid mouth. Steve's words seem to have caught onto Raymond like thorns, not enough to hurt, but enough to bleed, prickling constantly, with no chance to be removed — and Eddie provides a unique kind of distraction.

Being out in the open in the daylight makes Raymond fidget a lot. The sun is setting, yet its glow is still present, still illuminating everything around him enough for him to think a little too much about how familiar every tree appears. It's shining down on them in all its golden glory, making Eddie's eyes all sparkly and shit.

It doesn't help that they've made quite some distance between themselves and the rest. The kids, led by Harrington and Henderson, are far ahead and Eddie and Raymond are all the way in the back, with no one to keep Raymond's mind off of the way their knuckles brush together as they walk. There's a soft repetitive song playing in the one earbud he has in, and he's pretty sure this is Steve's favourite mixtape.

"Jesus, the sexual tension between these two!" Eddie exclaims and Raymond looks ahead, noticing Steve and Nancy at the front, laughing together. "I swear, I'll handcuff them together or something."

"Not sure Nancy's boyfriend would appreciate that. He's... away, apparently. Lenora or something."

Eddie laughs, nudging him. "Look at you, Park. Full of gossip on the people you apparently don't give a shit about. That's definitely interesting."

Raymond isn't entirely sure how to bite back. He does occasionally throw in some oddly specific comments and jokes, proving how he's always aware of what others are going through.

The truth is, making fun of people can be done right only when it's partially true. That's why Raymond always makes sure to keep up, at least on the surface level, just to be prepared.

"They're things you just hear. Like relationships, break-ups, drama, you know." Raymond sighs. "Speaking of, I don't remember ever hearing about you being involved in any."

"Drama?" Eddie snorts. "Then you probably don't even know me—"

"Relationships, Munson."

It's a little bit of revenge. Revenge on Eddie for provoking him with his stupid comments about Nancy Wheeler's love life, his stupid smile and that stupid pretty mouth that Raymond has to mentally slap himself for staring at.

"That's 'cause I've never had any," he replies smoothly. Whatever he's feeling, he's not letting it show. "Nothing, uh, consistent. People usually assume I'm too much to deal with."

Raymond gasps, pressing a hand to his chest. "You? Too much? No way, how dare they!"

"Hey, I'm being serious! If you're not gonna be serious, let's just change the subject."

There's no heat to Eddie's comment, no real anger, but Raymond knows he means it, means it for everything Raymond's joked about so far.

"Alright, alright, sorry." He raises his palms, places one on Eddie's arm for good measure, keeps it there. "What do you mean by too much?"

"Too complicated, overall. My lifestyle." He sighs. "I live in a crappy trailer with my uncle who works his ass off to pay the bills, I sell drugs for a living so he wouldn't have to support me, too, I'm way too old for high school and can't seem to go one year without skipping weeks of classes so I can finally graduate." There's a chuckle slipping past his lips, nowhere near that warm burst of loud noise Raymond wants to hear. It's dry and bitter, the way it's been lately, more and more often. "Plus, girls don't exactly swoon when they realise I'm into dudes, too, while dudes just... don't swing my way and, when they do, they suffer through all the judgement that comes with it. Everything about me makes a person just stay as far away as humanly possible, doesn't it?"

"Didn't keep me away," Raymond says straight away, cringing at the way his voice wavers, at the hitch of Eddie's breath and the silence that follows.

"It should have."

The reply comes out low, so low that Raymond isn't sure whether it's actually real. Maybe it's all in his head, or the whisper of the singer's voice as the song playing finally comes to an end. Maybe it's not supposed to make his tongue feel like soaked cotton, all gross in his mouth, the way it does.

That's another thing he's not sure he can help.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He slows down until they're stopping again, Eddie's eyes on the kids ahead. "Hey, don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about."

Eddie's smile is tense, lips tight. "I do, Ray. It doesn't make it any less stupid."

He doesn't get to find out anything more because Lucas is running towards them, eyes wide. Master of Puppets comes on next, thundering over his earbud and, when Eddie's hand lets go of his, his palm is suddenly oddly cold.

a/n:

this chapter is pretty much a filler lmao. it's because the next two need to be all compact and chaos-packed, so this one is a little more flat. plus, the whole episode is just them meeting up, walking, finding the boat and stuff. most of the episode doesn't even revolve around this group of characters so i needed to improvise a lot, fill some time gaps with useless yet useful conversations

thoughts?? it was about time for a stay (ha! steve x ray lol) conversation. it wasn't much, wasn't that life-changing, but i think it gave you a little more insight into what might be happening here. it will all be cleared up pretty soon, i can't wait for them to be friends again!!

also i'm sorry for not updating!! i'll try and be more regular now!! most of the leftover scenes are prewritten, so all i need to do is fill in the gaps with more stuff. i hope you enjoyed it!! love you all and tysm for 1k reads <3