#he's just here for shits and giggles | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

unfinishedslurs · 1 year

Text

Established Stoncy (Eddie POV) (ot4 stoncy+steddie)

“Have you heard from Jonathan lately?” She asks quietly.

“He’s been avoiding me as much as you, Nance.” He hears Steve’s hitched breath as she works, and sees her brush a soothing hand along his shoulder. Isn’t she supposed to be dating that guy they’re talking about? How can she talk about him with Steve so casually, like she’s not a hop skip and a jump from cheating on her boyfriend?

“I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Hey, you didn’t do anything,” Steve says, and there’s so much fucking love in his voice Eddie has to squeeze his eyes shut. “He’ll come around, you know that. He’s just got to work through…whatever he’s working through first.”

“I don’t get why he’s avoiding you too. It’s like…”

“He’s not. He wouldn’t.”

“He did before,” she says, sounding vulnerable.

“I think we all agreed he was being stupid back then,” Steve says. “Like, me level idiot, and he doesn’t even have the brain damage to back it up. He’ll talk to us.”

“That’s not funny.” She pauses, and Eddie can see her clinging onto Steve’s words like a lifeline. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him on the forehead, and Eddie turns away, pretending like he wasn’t eavesdropping on their private conversation.

"I don't know what happened between you two but... I'd get her back man. Whatever it takes. 'Cause that — that was as unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen."

Steve’s mouth quirks, and he looks almost amused when he glances at Wheeler. Before he can respond, the ground rumbles, and they both stumble.

“I’m not the only one who sees what's going on there, right?” He asks quietly, gesturing between the two lovebirds.

Robin looks…caught, all the sudden, like he found her putting itching powder in his underwear. He doesn’t understand it.

“Uh, yeah,” she says, strangled. “They’re, y’know, umm…”

He doesn’t understand why she’s acting so weird about this. Maybe Steve and Nancy had a bad break, years ago, but they’re clearly still into each other. It’s not like it’s out of the ordinary for two attractive, straight—

Ah.

“So, Nancy?”

“What?”

“She’s pretty,” he offers, and Robin nearly trips on her face.

“Do you—“

“No,” he says, and glances pointedly at Steve. “She’s, uh, not my type.”

“Oh?” She asks, and then comprehension dawns on her face. She looks between him and Steve, and her eyes widen. “Oh!”

“Yeah, oh,” he says. “So, like, I get it.”

“Get…it…” She blinks, and then realization settles across her face. “Oh, I don’t—-“ she cuts herself off. “I mean, yeah, no, Nancy’s like, super pretty. The prettiest. And a total badass, it’s like, insane. That’s why I’m…crushing…on her.”

She winces at her own awkwardness, and Eddie nods in support. It’s always weird to talk about it so openly. But hey, if you can’t do it in a hell dimension with no people, where can you talk about it?

“Maybe she likes girls,” he offers up, even though he doubts it. You never know.

Robin’s subsequent coughing fit is so violent both Nancy and Steve turn around to check on them.

“Rob?” Steve asks, hovering. “You okay?”

“I’m good,” she wheezes. Eddie awkwardly pats her back, and tries to pretend it’s not his fault. From the side-eye Nancy sends him, he only partially succeeds. Finally she takes one last gulp of air, and stands up straight.

“So, Nancy!” She says brightly. “Guns, right?”

She takes Nancy’s arm and scurries off without a second look back at him, which is understandable. It takes time to talk about things like this.

“What was that about?” Steve asks, falling into step with him.

“Nothing.”

“Right.” Steve gives him a look, which he pretends not to see.

Steve is on babysitting duty when the car pulls up to the extremely beat up cabin Eddie’s been forced to hide in.

They both tense, but Steve looks outside and sighs in relief. “It’s Nance’s car,” he confirms, and helps Eddie hobble outside. Eddie’s putting a hand on the bannister to balance himself when a vaguely familiar figure stumbles out of the drivers seat.

“Jonathan!”

Steve is practically a blur running past him, slamming into Byers and spinning him around. Wasn’t he just helping Nancy cheat on this guy? How can they just—

All his thoughts screech to a halt as soon as Byers takes Steve’s face in his hands and kisses him.

And keeps kissing him.

And Steve, King Steve, definitely not gay Steve, kisses back. Full on holding him by the waist, pulling him in until their entire bodies line up. As if letting go would make Byers disappear in a nice little poof of smoke.

Wow, Eddie thinks deliriously, holding onto the porch for dear life. These painkillers are no joke.

Nancy comes out of the car next, beaming as her boyfriend makes out with a man right in front of her. A man she was clearly cheating on her boyfriend with.

Unless he’s not actually her boyfriend. Is she a beard? Is she bearding Jonathan? Is Steve cheating on Jonathan with his beard?

He’s starting to think he’s missing a few pieces to this puzzle.

“Um.”

The two lovebirds break apart, and all three of them fix Eddie with a wary look as they register the fact that yes, he is standing there and has been the whole time, thank you very much. Byers is holding Steve’s hand like a challenge, glaring at Eddie like he’s daring him to say something. As if Eddie isn’t the gayest motherfucker in Hawkins.

“Right,” Steve coughs. “Jonathan, this is Eddie. He’s cool, he saved Dustin’s life. Eddie, this is Jonathan. My…uh. My boyfriend.”

Eddie stares. Nancy comes up and takes Jonathan’s other hand. “Our boyfriend,” she corrects. “We’re together. All three of us.”

“Oh,” he says. This is awkward. This is so awkward, Eddie can feel the trees wilting in embarrassment for him. Maybe if he’s lucky it’ll turn out he’s standing in quicksand or another portal will open up beneath his feet and he won’t have to deal with this awkwardness anymore.

Steve likes boys. Good! Great! It would be fucking amazing if he didn’t apparently have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who is standing there in the flesh, silently giving Eddie the biggest stink eye of his life like he’s ready to throw down if he says the wrong this and oh God Eddie still hasn’t said anything-

“Congrats?”

Byers blinks. “Congrats?”

“Yeah, man,” Eddie says, as if he wasn’t just trying to get Nancy to break this dude's heart for Steve like two days ago. God, that’s so embarrassing. They’re already together. “You’ve got pretty good taste. Your charisma stats must be off the roof.”

If he remembers anything from high school that’s definitely a lie, but a little flattery never hurt anyone.

Steve barks out a laugh, Nancy rolls her eyes, and Byers stares at him like he’s grown two new heads. “You’re Eddie,” he says, sounding it out.

Eddie spreads his arms. “In the flesh. Well, mostly. I’m missing some chunks of it.”

“DND Eddie? From Hellfire?”

“Did they not tell you anything? Harsh, Wheeler. I thought you liked me.”

“Wrong Wheeler,” Byers says. “Mike wouldn’t shut up about you. Two days straight in a pizza van after we got the news of what you’d done, and I was ready to rip my hair out.”

Aww, that’s cute. He honestly likes the kid, even though Dustin has been thrust firmly into the “favorite” category, on the basis of nearly dying in his arms and probably traumatizing the kid forever. He’s glad the sentiment is returned.

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Steve snorts as he starts dragging his partners towards the cabin. “Did you notice he only started growing his hair out after he met Eddie?”

“Wait, really?” Eddie asks as Steve snags him by the wrist and pushes him in front. Like a long, awkward, queer train. Is Nancy queer? Can he ask? Are they at that stage in their friendship? Does that come before or after fighting monsters together?

Nancy laughs harder than he knew she was capable of. “Oh my god, he did! I didn’t even realize!”

“Uh, yeah, because you didn’t have to hear day in and day out from that little shit how much cooler he is than me. Dude, did you know they thought you were scary? You?”

Eddie’s touched, honestly. He put a lot of work into terrifying the masses. “I am scary,” he says. “I fucking shredded along to Metallica to stop a demon from killing us all. I’m more metal than I ever was.”

“Yeah but you’ve also got those, like, doe eyes, man.” Steve waves a hand as if he’s not making every wire in Eddie’s brain short circuit, and tugs them all down on the couch.

“I have what now?”

Nancy giggles, leaning around her boyfriends to try and poke his cheek. He snaps his teeth at her.

“Don’t you know? Steve’s weak to big, soulful eyes,” she says, batting her own eyes in emphasis. Byers rolls his, which are also big and brown and kind of wet, now that Eddie’s paying attention.

“Nancy,” Steve whines, “don’t tell him that!”

“Sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry, grinning as she practically sits in Byers’s lap to give Steve a peck. He watches them with the kind of fondness that Eddie’s always kind of dreamed of having directed at him, and it punches deep.

So Steve isn’t cheating on anyone and probably never will, which is a relief and also a bummer to some of the more pathetic fantasies he’s whipped up in the past few days trapped in this cabin. He likes Nancy too much to ever actually get in the way of her true love, but it doesn’t hurt to dream.

“Yeah, okay, I have big ol’ Bambi eyes or whatever. You wanna talk kiddie crushes and hero worship, how about Sinclair?”

“What about him?” Steve asks, apparently oblivious.

“Uh, how about the whole basketball thing?”

Steve’s brow furrows. “He loves basketball!” He protests. “He asked me to practice with him when he first started thinking about joining the team, we still go out and play sometimes.”

“Uh huh,” Eddie says. “And how about the time I said something about your fight with Hargrove, and he jumped to your defense even faster than Dustin could about how badass and cool and handsome you were?”

“There’s no way he said that,” he says, turning bright red. “There’s—no. Billy was going to hurt him, he was, like, fucking twelve or something, I couldn’t just…he didn’t say that.”

“Might as well have. That entire speech had me clocking the kid faster than you can say ‘touchdown.’”

“That’s football.”

“I’ll tell you what he’d like to ball—“ he starts, and Steve screeches.

“Shut up, shut up, don’t say that! He’s a baby, what is wrong with you—“

“That ‘baby’ already experienced his first hangover, mom. Time for little birdies to leave the nest.”

“You calling me mom makes it so much worse,” Steve tells him. “I should have left you to rot.”

“Probably!” He says brightly. “But that doesn’t stop the fact that Sinclair has a crush on you the size of Texas.”

“Jonathan,” Steve whines, burying his face in his hands, “make him stop.”

Byers pats Steve’s shoulder sympathetically. “Sorry, man, I thought you knew.”

“It was kind of obvious, Steve,” Nancy agrees. “He does ask to play basketball a lot. Especially on hot days.”

“What does the weather have to do with anything?”

“Shorts,” Nancy and Jonathan say together.

“How short?” Eddie asks. He should probably think about switching pockets, if he’s turned into this much of a masochist.

“So short,” Nancy says. “And he usually takes his shirt off halfway in, when he’s all sweaty.”

“Jesus, no fucking wonder. And he can’t blush either, can he? I’m starting to think he’s the smartest of the bunch.”

“Well, Byers?” Eddie spreads his arms, ignoring the trepidation in his gut. “Am I everything you expected?”

Byers tilts his head, looks at him with a gaze that could cut through bone. Eddie has a feeling the guy is finding out what every single one of his organs looks like, and he can’t tell if it’s a good or bad thing.

Finally he gives a sharp nod, like he’s decided something.

“I think if you stick around, the three of us are going to have to have a repeat of that conversation we had when I went to California,” he says, as if Eddie should know what the fuck that means. “You’re cool, man. Call me Jonathan.”

He blinks, mouth half open, and Byers’s-Jonathan’s mouth quirks.

“Conversation about what?”

Byers hums noncommittally, because apparently their entire trio is bent on making Eddie’s sanity take a jump off the quarry. “A lot of things,” he sighs, and sends Eddie a wry little smile. “I haven’t exactly been a very good boyfriend lately.”

Eddie’s feeling magimous enough to be honest. “They think the world of you, man. I heard them talking about you. They…shit, they really love you, you know that? I think you’re gonna be okay.”

#ot4 stoncy+steddie #sorry for the ronance bait but actually robin is just taking one for the team #steve would ABSOLUTELY spin jonathan around like a romance movie try and tell me otherwise #this can be read as jargyle as well sorry my man isn't in here he's busy doing hot girl shit #(calling suzie 'sally' in front of dustin for shits and giggles)#established stoncy+steddie au #stranger things fanfic #nancy wheeler #eddie munson #jonathan byers #steve harrington

364 notes · View notes

somestorythoughts · 11 days

Text

Eldritch Echo Pt 8:

I'm pretty sure this is the longest section I've done for this fic. I'm not sure how that happened, one minute I was like "I'm kinda tried but I'll try to write a bit of this so I can say I wrote something today" and then next thing I know I'm in a writing groove. Not what I was thinking when I thought of Echo going feral earlier but I think it works.

Also, can someone who's seen more than a tiny bit of the Bad Batch confirm for me whether Crosshair sounds like Cad Bane? Cause I think he sounds like Bane.

@mezmatch , new part!

The Bad Batch’s mission doesn’t go well.

Hunter jerks awake in a cell to the sound of distant screams.

It’s not his brothers, he realizes. He can hear their heartbeats and see Tech in the opposite cell. Tech appears to still be unconscious and he can hear Wrecker grumbling to himself.

The screams stop.

“Wrecker?”

“Hunter! You alright?”

His head hurts and his ankle feels sprained, but that’s manageable. “Nothing too bad. You?”

“Bruises. Crosshair doesn’t look good, and I can’t see Tech or Echo.”

Echo Hunter realizes suddenly. Checking for the other three is habit, he’s still getting used to checking for four. “Tech’s unconscious. I can’t hear or see Echo, but someone was screaming earlier.”

“Do you think it was him?”

“No but they’re too far away to be sure. What the hell did they hit us with?”

“Nothing that would keep me down.” Is Wrecker’s grim response, meaning that whatever had been in that gas it wasn’t exceptionally strong. They called Tech and Crosshair’s names, trying to wake them up.

Four floors up, Echo is angry and working his way towards fully pissed off.

The Separatists who had caught them had brought him here to confirm that he was the trooper the Techno Union was hunting for and to get some information out of him. They had been straightforward about their plans to torture the rest of the squad for any useful information before killing or selling them, that detail was still being decided.

They had made two crucial mistakes. One of them was deciding this was a good idea in the first place.

The second was not asking the Techno Union exactly how they had managed to keep Echo down for so long.

The Techno Union got very, very lucky with Echo. He’d been in a state not too far from hibernation while his body recovered from the explosion, and then there were prosthetics and stasis chambers and things digging into his mind and one of the scientists had realized that they needed a very strong cocktail of drugs to keep him sedated. It had taken all of that to keep him under control, and even then he’d managed to cause trouble a couple times.

Your average sedative and some reinforced binders? Yeah, good luck with that.

Echo stands in a room with the remnants of five droids and three people. He walks to the terminal and turns on the security cameras with sticky red fingers. Blood drips from the knife at the end of his right arm and he narrows his eyes as the other Separatists hurry towards the cells where his squad is imprisoned, several droids with him. He taps another button.

“I would strongly suggest leaving my squad alone.”

He knows the way his voice sounds as it echoes, ha, through the intercom. Echo’s never called himself a sadist, but he won’t deny he relishes the way the Separatists jump out of their skin. He continues. “I’m coming for my squad. If you want to live, I suggest leaving now.”

He watches the screens just long enough to confirm his next actions, then turns and walks out the door.

He doesn’t have his armor or his blaster, but that’s alright. He’ll check for their location once he gets the others out, then he won’t have to try and carry everything. This trick Elevenses and Chomper had taught him and Fives during ARC training didn’t work with armor anyway.

In the cells, Hunter and Wrecker have managed to wake the other two up. Tech’s alright, but Crosshair has a concussion and a broken leg due to the sedative disorienting him as he was fleeing his compromised perch. They’d all been awake enough to hear Echo’s announcement and had almost immediately taken bets on whether the Seps would leave or not because some troopers would bet on anything, if only for the hell of it.

When the Seps arrive, they’re rushed. A minute later, the droids in the hall start blasting. There’s a sound like Wrecker ripping the hull off of a ship and the droids start yelling.

“Take him he’s the most injured.” The woman orders her companion, pointing at Crosshair. “I refuse to lose to a clone.”

“You certainly ran from him quickly.” Crosshair spat. He’s unsteady, but if he can get to the control panel for Wrecker’s cell…

He punches the man in front of him. There’s a shout, but Crosshair can only move so fast on a broken leg and finds a blaster leveled at his face, out of range. He puts his hands up and a stun baton hits his back.

He hears the others shouting as he goes down, tasting blood. They cuff him and drag him out of the cell and something on the ground catches his eyes. There’s too much light in the hallway between the cells for his shadow to be that dark, and he knows his shadow can’t grin.

“I told you to leave them alone.”

That’s Echo’s voice, if Echo was something massive and predatory speaking from the depths of a cavern too dark to see into. And those are Echo’s eyes, the violet golden color he’s grown familiar with. The handprint on his chest is Torrent blue, the 99 to the left of it in the same red the Batch uses. But the rest of him is black and white and something like armor. There’s a knife where his scomp should be, something shining on the ends of his fingers that could be claws and could be something else entirely. There’s too many teeth. Crosshair doesn’t have the words and doesn’t know how much of that is because of the concussion.

The woman keeps her blaster pointed at Crosshair’s head. The man points his at Echo, who sighs and raises his arms.

Something flashes. Someone yells. Something yanks Crosshair out of the way and he screams. When he stops, Echo has his teeth in the woman’s throat.

“Bleh. Never liked doing that.” Echo grumbles. He hurries to Crosshair, crouching down just out of arm’s reach with a face closer to what they’re used to. There are red lines over one eye much like Crosshair’s tattoo. “Are you alright?”

“When the fuck did you get a tail vod?” He croaks. Echo smiles, worry and relief plain as day even with the damn concussion. “Can we leave now?”

It doesn’t take too long to find their armor and weapons, even with Wrecker carrying Crosshair. Most of the droids had been in the hallway, and they clear out the remainder with ease as they get their stuff and swipe a speeder to get to the Marauder. Echo scomps into a terminal, he can practically hear Tech holding back questions when the blade changes smoothly back to a scomp, and retrieves the data they came for before they leave.

Crosshair’s gritting his teeth in pain by the time they get to the ship. While Tech and Wrecker are taking care of him, Hunter and Echo head straight for the controls. They don’t fully relax until they’re off the planet. Echo leans forward with a sigh, skin warping back into his usual shape.

“That could have gone worse.” Hunter groaned. Echo snorted. Something beeped.

“If that’s another mission we’re not here.” Echo grumbled. Hunter would have laughed if he hadn’t been so surprised. When his face is back under control, he answers the comm.

“Sir.”

“Hunter I’m glad I caught you.” The small blue form of Commander Cody says. “You boys alright? Is Echo there?”

He sounded stressed. “We just wrapped up the mission, only need to send in the data. Crosshair’s injured, he might be out of commission for a few days. Echo’s right here.” The ARC trooper waved one hand in range of the comm. “What’s wrong?”

Cody sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “The Chancellor was a Sith, he’s now dead, and Fives was involved.”

Echo’s in front of the comm in a heartbeat. “Fives is on Coruscant?”

“The Chancellor’s a Sith?” Hunter asks because that also sounds important.

“It’s been a long day.” Cody replies. “I’ll give you the rundown but first, how soon can you get to Coruscant?”

“About two days if nothing goes wrong.” Echo replied. Hunter steps in.

“Would it be easier to send us a report? I assume you need to send one out anyway, and we can get the full details when we arrive.” Echo opens his mouth. “I’m not going to stop you getting details about your twin, but Cody looks exhausted and I know the others will have questions.”

“Fine.” Echo grumbles as Cody agrees. “You tell that idiot I’m going to wring his neck when I see him okay?”

Far away, an ARC trooper blinked and looked up. Something had pinged across his mind, resonating in his veins and resting on his back like a weight.

“Something wrong?” One of the Corries asked. Fives grinned, tired and relieved.

“Somewhere my twin is pissed at me.”

#the two arc trainers mentioned here are a set of twins who occassionally borrow arc trainiees to make sure they know about twins #aka freak them out for shits and giggles #but also teach any younger twins useful tricks like this #elevenses has a lot of ones in his number and likes snacks chomper got his name cause as a baby he bit EVERYTHING #one of the alphas gave him that name after being bitten one too many times #and he just never stopped biting he's eldritch he can and has grown extra mouths #been thinking too much of a character I have biting people so echo gets to rip someone's throat out with his teeth #clone wars #writing #clone troopers #eldritch echo #arc trooper echo #tbb #bad batch echo #the bad batch

9 notes · View notes