(You’re just) too good to be true
For @astrangersummer week 3 prompts, flowers and/or hugs. Thanks to bananas and yesdanger on discord for the extra prompts to get me going. I have tried to get as many in as possible.
Summary: Steve wakes up in hospital after everything is over and can’t quite believe how well everything has turned out…
Rating: T. WC: 1460 CW: None. Other tags: Steddie, platonic stobin, angst, sickfic, hurt/comfort, temporary amnesia, fix-it fic, everybody lives.
…
Steve flutters his eyes open and spies Robin sitting by his bed. Mascara streams down her face, and her hair’s a literal disaster zone.
“Steve! You’re awake!” She grabs his hand. “You’re gonna be okay. The doctor should be here any minute.”
Doctor!?! Where the heck am I?
His throat proves too dry for words. Robin garbles way too fast for him to understand and she’s wringing his fingers ever tighter.
If she’s touching me, I guess it can't be rabies.
His memory triggered, the shitshow slams back. First, the bats, the bites. Then everything that happened after, until they journeyed again into the Upside Down to try to kill Vecna.
Oh hold on, scratch that.
To fail to kill Vecna.
Staring blankly through Robin, he fixates on the terrible parts. Eddie lying bloodied and dead in Dustin’s arms. Dustin sobbing his eyes out. Max was pretty much lost too, and Vecna was alive, gone to ground, and…
What happened next? Why am I in a hospital bed? Jesus, I was fine!
There’s one of those IV thingies in his arm. He shivers though can’t tell if he’s cold or hot. The doctor arrives, jostles him, talks at him, shines lights in his eyes. He’s not in pain, but his brain is all woolly, and he’s confused and weak and lost.
He needs a hug more than ever in his life. Robin peeps at him over the doctor’s shoulder, bouncing like a spooked bunny-rabbit, then she’s gone.
It’s all too much.
He quits, sinking back into the darkness.
…
When Steve next pries an eyelid open, he spies Eddie breezing into the hospital room. Eddie joins Robin, who has moved to the window to pick at her nail polish.
Eddie is gone, which means… Oh, no, no, no, no, no! I’m dead too? Or dreaming?
His throat is achy and tight. He closes his eyes again, hot tears welling. More memories trickle back.
“Make him pay,” Eddie had said.
He recalls that last, lingering look between them. The one that slammed him like a freight train, because... Wtf? For some strange reason, that moment doesn’t feel like the end of a story anymore.
It feels like a beginning. Which is just dumb.
Eddie is no more.
He peeps again, watching a dude who is very definitely Eddie pouring bottled water into a vase of flowers on the windowsill. Robin seizes the bottle from him: “What are you doing, shit-bird? Those are silk—his mom brought them. They don’t need water.”
“Riiiight.” Eddie pulls a silly face, which Steve finds freakish levels of adorable. Suddenly, he wants to crush Eddie to him, tell him that he’s insanely happy he’s here, even if this is some crazy dreamworld, and…
… he wants to shove his tongue into Eddie’s mouth and kiss him stupid.
Huh?
Steve licks dry lips. Most bewildering of all, he somehow knows how awesome kissing Eddie is. As if they’ve done it before.
More than once.
Eddie sneezes dramatically. “If those flowers are fake, I’m allergic to WASP chintz. Which checks out, I guess.”
Robin laughs, though it’s sad and nervy. He catches a glimpse of Eddie’s bambi eyes, and they’re anxious, haunted, too. Then Lucas and Max walk in.
MAX? She’s in a coma!
Steve’s head throbs miserably from trying to make sense of this mad place.
He quits and drifts back to the darkness.
…
When he next peeps, Robin and Eleven are sitting by his bed, sharing a packet of cool ranch doritos.
Which makes less sense than ANY OF IT.
Robin’s gotten real picky lately about sharing food. At least, with anybody but him. He’s vaguely pissed, because these two hardly know each other. The way they’re huddled on the same chair, like close buddies, suggests otherwise.
Yeah, he’s vaguely pissed. And kinda jealous. He sort of hates himself for being needy... but he really wants that hug.
Then another memory flashes back. Some alien desert landscape, with Eleven blasting Vecna with everything she’s got. Eddie sprinting toward him—tailed by what looks like a medium-to-large demogorgon with at least a dozen extra flailing limbs—and Robin yelling, “Steve! El’s got this—help Eddie!”
He finally forces his eyes wide enough for them to see he’s watching. “R-Robin?” he croaks.
“Steve!” She leaps to her feet, nearly knocking El and the chair flying. “You’re really, actually awake this time? Please say yes.”
There’s noise and confusion. The doctor arrives again, checks Steve’s vitals, then bitches that there’s too many kids in the room: “It should be family only,” she says.
“We’re his family,” argues Robin. “His parents only come during official visiting hours.”
Robin is allowed to remain. She helps him sip water, and then he says, “Look, I think was dreaming earlier, or off my head on meds, because I saw you with Eddie, and I know that’s impossible, because…” He swallows hard, mumbles the hateful words: “He's gone, right?”
“Oh my God, you don’t remember?”
“Jesus, Robin! Remember what?”
“We won, Steve. Everyone lived. We even got Crissy back. Vecna’s the only one who’s history. If you hadn’t got hurt, it would’ve been the perfect revenge.”
This time, he manages to take more of her story in. He gets lost in the part where Robin and Dustin figure out time travel—some crazy shit about the proximity of alternate dimensions causing rumples in the space-time continuum. The rest of her tale unleashes a slew of badass memories that squish all the terrible ones into the dirt. Instead of Eddie being dead, he recalls…
“You and Eddie totally slayed this nasty-ass demo-squid-monster,” says Robin. “It got pretty intense, and when you survived, you had, like, an EPIC hug. Aaaand might’ve kissed. Then, later, you threw yourself at Eddie to save him from flying debris, then you rolled into a crater, and he wound up on top, and…”
Steve suddenly recalls that moment vividly. Eddie straddled his hips, and his own hands landed not entirely accidentally on Eddie’s butt. Once they’d gathered their breaths, Eddie leaned forward, swiped hair from his face, and whispered:
“About what you said to Wheeler. If you still want to win her back, that’s fine, I’ll back off, but… just so you know, six kids is cool with me, Stevie. Not like we need to adopt. When you’re around, they simply rock up.”
“So, yeah,” Robin says, ripping Steve from these mind-blowing revelations, “it took us half a dozen attempts to get things right. In the final boss-fight, it was just you, me, Eleven and Eddie. We were lost in the Upside Down for weeks, before we exploded Vecna into a billion disgusting pieces. Because you're you, you were closest, got caught in the blast. You lost a lot of blood, but all important appendages are still present and correct, including, um… any important appendages you were particularly worried about. Not that I’m saying you were, but… Ugh!” She facepalms. “This so isn’t where I meant to go with that.”
He faintly smirks. “You dug that hole, not me, Buckley.”
“No need to gloat. You’re gonna be fine. Everyone is going to be just fine.”
It’s still too much to take in. One question bugs him the most: “Eddie and me, erm… How far did we..?”
“I didn’t stand there and count the bases, Dingus! He’ll be back in five. Ask him. But, you know, there was talk of picking out rings, getting matching tats and—”
“You’re kidding?”
“A bit. Seriously, by the third week, you two seemed chill. Happy. I really hope you remember it all soon.”
He takes a beat. Warmth pools in his chest, because everything Robin says sure as heck feels true. He gives her hand a little pulse, and their fingers intertwine.
“Robin,” he says. “At the risk of sounding downbeat, it’s all a bit too perfect. I’m kinda worried I’m dead.”
“Oh! You’re really, really not. I’m all sticky and gross 'cos I was here all night, but… would a hug help?”
He nods, levers himself up a little, suppressing a wince at the effort. He wraps the arm unencumbered by the IV around her, and she awkwardly cuddles him. He rests his cheek on her bony shoulder, and breathes deeply, while she rubs juddering circles in his back.
She’s sweaty and clumsy and real.
“You’re not dead, I promise,” she whispers. “If you were, I’d be so mad with you, after all that effort to fix things. Besides, you still got hurt, and we were all out of time travel opportunities. Long story. Anyhow, it's been hell, till the doctors said you’d be okay, and even then… We’ve been so scared.”
Her trembling shakes through him. He tries not to sniffle, but he can't seem to help it. Everyone survived. Eddie’s alive. Eddie and he are…
His heart gives a crazy squeeze that says everything he needs to know.
“As soon as you’re out of here,” whispers Robin, “this summer is gonna be the best ever.”
(also part of my steve whump fic series on AO3)
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