Bullshit [Stancy]

Chapter 7

This took so long to write and edit! I'm so sorry for making you wait. This is a longer chapter than usual so I hope this will make up for the wait.
I can't express how happy I am to keep writing this story and to see that it's still first in the Stancy tag. Really, huge thank you to everyone reading this ❤️❤️❤️
If you want, let me know what you think❤️

Eddie was no longer there.

One moment he was here and the next, he was simply gone. Or at least that was what he was able to make out from Dustin's choked sobs as he cried against his chest. He had never seen him cry like this, and no matter how hard he tried, he felt he could not hold him tight enough.

He looked for Nancy's eyes, then turned his gaze to the sky, which was gradually changing colour. They had to come back. Something was happening: not only here, but in the real world, in their world. And whatever it was, he had the strange feeling that it was something terrible.

He wished he knew more about what had happened to Eddie, so he could understand where he might have ended up, where they should be looking for him. But Dustin kept sobbing hard, and with each sob it was as if a knife was being pushed against his chest.

He sought Nancy's eyes once more: her gaze confirmed that something was wrong, and then her lips mimicked a word, which plunged that knife even deeper into his heart: Max.

They had heard the clock, which could only mean one thing: if their plan had gone wrong, then it was Max who had lost out. Her, their bait. And so the idea solidified in his mind that the only thing they could do now was to leave. They'd come back here to look for Eddie once they'd recovered some weapons. With a plan, a lead, something to follow. But not like this, not now.

With his heart in his throat, he stopped clutching Dustin and leaned forward, bringing his hands to his shoulders. 

"Dustin," he began, shaking him so that he opened his eyes. The boy seemed to barely calm down, stopping sobbing and breathing heavily. "Listen to me now. We have to get out of here. Something is going on and Max might be in danger."

"But-but- Eddie" sobbed Dustin again.

"We'll come back," Steve blocked him, searching his eyes and not letting go of his grip on his shoulders. "Okay? We'll come back, as soon as we can, and we'll find him, I have no doubt about that."

Dustin seemed to listen to him, calming himself. The rhythm of his breaths slowed further. Steve straightened his back, meeting the girls' gaze, and all at once they started running, as fast as their tired legs would allow, towards Eddie's trailer. As his feet dragged him away from there, his mind kept replaying a series of different scenarios involving Eddie being left alone down here, but he knew that right now staying would make no sense, so he just kept going.

 However, as he closed the queue, walking behind everyone else and making sure they reached the trailer safely, he kept looking around, still hoping that Eddie would pop out in front of them at any moment. Because that was the way he was: despite the years he had been involved in all this, he had always tried to be optimistic. Maybe that was his general approach in life, the optimism, since well before all this started. 

When Barb had disappeared, he had been confident that nothing bad had happened to her, and that maybe she had simply run away. When her parents had hired that private detective to investigate, he was sure the case would finally be solved.  When Nancy had jilted him by saying that their whole relationship was bullshit and that she didn't love him at all, he had still shown up at her house with a bouquet of flowers, after his optimism had convinced him that indeed she was just drunk and that she would tell him she loved him when the right time came. Still, it never did. There was even a small part of himself that after Chief Hopper's death naively continued to believe that he might still be alive. After all, Will Buyers had returned from the dead after the body had even been found. Could an undiscovered body really convince everyone that he was gone?