#what if vecna allows will to see that ??
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update: 🐺werewolf Steve, 🦇bat Eddie completed on Ao3 here
How to survive a werewolf attack, Eddie mentally repeats to himself in a determinedly bright manner, channelling every nature documentary he’s ignored. His resolve does little to quiet the jolt of fear that had run through him as it turned into— that.
“How to survive a werewolf attack,” Eddie mutters to himself as it pads one giant paw towards him in the middle of Steve’s living room, hoping that speaking aloud will clear the bees buzzing in his brain, focusing all his thoughts in one direction: he should run.
“How the fuck do I survive a werewolf attack?” Eddie frantically yells at Dustin standing by the couch, grinning a gummy smile back at him with his hands casually thrown in his pockets.
The wolf growls lightly at his tone and Eddie’s head snaps back, alarmed that he’d allowed himself to look away from those intent yellow eyes for even a moment. But as scary as the predatory look is, the size of its head is just as terrifying. As large as Eddie’s torso with a wide, fanged mouth to match. Faintly, Eddie mentally compares one long tooth to the length of his hand.
This is how he dies Eddie realises with a thumping heart.
Not the bats.
Not Vecna.
No, a giant, golden mahogany werewolf nearly as tall as his fully grown adult body is going to open that massive mouth and swallow him down whole.
The beast stops, gaze narrowing to the pulse pounding in Eddie’s neck and he quickly slaps a hand over it, trying to limit the temptation of the tasty blood slash fresh meat vibe he must be giving off. It sits back on its heels; a movement Eddie feels shudder through the carpet at his feet and turns its head to Robin with a slight whine.
She scowls at Eddie, stepping forward to bury her hand comfortingly into the plush at its furry neck. “Don’t listen to him, Steve. He’s just being a big baby.” Shifting her fingers to scratch under its ears, the werewolf—Steve, Eddie hastily corrects himself as Robin continues to glare at him—half-closes its eyes in bliss. Though, he notes that it—he—still keeps his gaze steadily trained on Eddie.
Swallowing, Eddie tries to remember what they had just been talking about, but it’s lost in the chaotic whirlwind of his thoughts and the adrenalin urging his heels back. All of it consumed by the conviction that Eddie is prey in front of predator and about to be fed to what used to be Steve Harrington.
“Oh my god,” he moans, hands coming up to pull his hair down to hide behind, “Am I a sacrifice?”
Lucas sighs in exasperation, “I told you we should’ve showed him photos or something first.” Max makes a derisive sound and sits cross-legged next to Steve’s wide chest; he gently leans against her with a small thump of his tail. “He was always going to freak out, may as well get it over with.”
Eddie would really like to get the small child away from the massive beast right now; despite the fact that Max is a sophomore and would likely rip him a new one at even the suggestion. But it does help, seeing her casually play with the fur under her hand, and the bees die down a little, just enough to remember why they had called him here.
“You wanted to show me this—” Max squints at him and Eddie changes tack “—show me Steve turning into a wolf because you’re concerned about me.” The ridiculousness of it strikes through him, bubbling over into half-hysterical laughter. “Shouldn’t you be worried about the massive fucking fangs near Max’s head right now.”
The wolf lets out a gusty sound that Eddie can only imagine is a sigh and thumps onto his belly, stretching his head out to rest on crossed-over paws as big as dinner plates. The position should look less threatening, but all Eddie can see is how the jaw of the creature has been thrown into sharp relief, emphasising how far it could probably unhinge if given an incentive. He slaps his hand back over his pulsing neck again.
El appears by his side and he nearly jumps a foot, not having noticed her approach while focusing so fiercely on the wolf. She takes his hand, gently saying, “It is okay, Eddie. He’s only Steve and he would never hurt you.”
He keeps a hold of her hand. The Steve he’s come to know since Spring Break has seemed like a pretty good dude, sure; but, the one thing he does know, is that the guy would take a bullet for every kid in this room.
It's not cowardice to hide behind a kid, he reassures himself. Not when the kid isn’t in any danger. Max shoots him a dark look again and he suspects that she’s seen through his intentions. He clears his throat, focussing on El’s kind and reassuring squeeze of his hand, “Right. Why is Steve a werewolf?”
“Good question,” the bill of Dustin’s hat bobs in his approval, “Back in ’84 we were in these tunnels, you see and —”
“Short version, Dustin,” Robin interrupts, which is frankly ironic of her Eddie thinks, knowing she falls into extended explanations herself.
Dustin screws up his face, but condenses the story, “We were attacked by dog versions of the demogorgons and since then Steve has gone all furry whenever he wants.” He waves a hand at the prostrate wolf who continues to placidly watch their conversation, “I see where you went with werewolf but technically, he’s not forced to turn at a full moon.”
Will exchanges a look with Mike as they lean against the opposite wall, “Not technically, no. But he does get weird around it.” El tugs him to sit down with her and Max, but Eddie lets go of her hand, unwilling to let cede the high ground when it’s the only thing keeping his feet ready to run if Steve decides to demonstrate how weird he can get.
“Shouldn’t he have…” Eddie waves a hand over his face with a splaying motion of his fingers. He hasn’t seen a demogorgon yet, but the kids had described them to him, and the demo-bats apparently had the same set-up of gaping maws exploding like a fanged cross over their face.
“Another great question, Eddie,” Max rolls her eyes, “Let me just consult my instruction manual on the Upside Down and get back to you.”
“It’s a fair question, Max,” Lucas says softly and she relents, “Yeah, but he looks like he’s about to throw up and Steve would hate the mess.” The wolf snorts and nudges her with his muzzle; she lightly strokes the top of his nose with a responding smile.
“Our best guess is that the demo-dogs and demo-bats are a weird mix of actual animal and Upside Down creepiness,” Robin says, letting go of Steve to sit on the couch behind him, “And Steve got infected with the actual animal part but the woo-woo creepiness is what helps him turn into the wolf.”
Eddie’s guts turn to liquid, and he hovers suddenly uncertain hands over his body; right beside the areas still scarred from his own demo-bat bites. “Wait a second,” he rasps, “Steve got bit by the dog version and he turns into this. So if I got bit by the bat versions…”
“That’s why we’re telling you,” Lucas explains frankly, “It didn’t happen straight away with Steve so we thought that you should have a heads up at the very least.” Dustin gestures down Eddie’s body with a demanding hand, “And you can tell us if you notice any weird changes.”
“What?” Eddie asks a little wildly, “Like if my voice drops and I get hair in new and wonderful places?” Robin and Dustin exchange worried glances and the latter falls back on a soothing tone that he hasn’t managed since cornering Eddie in the boathouse while he was on the run, “There’s no guarantee that you were infected…” Robin winces at the word choice as Eddie’s eyes widen. “…but you should tell us if you notice anything different, just in case.”
Eddie wants to collapse onto the floor. Just crouch there with his hands pressed comfortingly against his eyes to shut out the insanity this afternoon has turned into. But eyeing how close Steve with his monster fangs is, Eddie refuses to get any closer. He may as well lay on his back and strip for good measure. That way Steve won’t get any denim stuck in his teeth; he thinks the last thought with a small hiccup.
The massive head raises and turns to look over its—his—shoulder with a questioning whine. Robin’s faces hardens slightly, and her arms come up to cross over her chest. “You go for a run or something, I’ve got this.”
Eddie watches those tree trunks for legs rise and feels something quake inside, doing nothing for his pounding pulse that had only just started to subside. Steve looks back at him one more time before licking Dustin’s hand and butting his head against Robin’s knee to trot through the living room towards the backyard.
Chapter 1
#steddie#werewolf steve harrington#bat eddie munson#steve harrington#eddie munson#robin buckley#stranger things#paperbackribs writing
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Clean (Eddie Munson x Reader)
Summary: After the battle in the Upside Down, you and Eddie try and get clean.
Tags: Angst, hurt/comfort, smut, happy ending, no use of y/n, reader is not described, unprotected PiV sex, light choking, pet name, barely beta'd
7.7k words
You weren’t completely sure how you ended up back in the right side up, in your home with Eddie. After the fight with Vecna, everything was a blur. You remembered sirens, and an earthquake, and you and Eddie being arrested, refusing to be separated from each other but being forced apart anyway. You remember being bailed out somehow, Eddie’s name being cleared and waiting outside the police station for hours until he stumbled out and looked at you.
Both of you stared at each other for a long time outside the station, battered and bruised and covered in cuts and bite marks, but alive. It was a fucking miracle considering Eddie had thrown himself into a suicide mission. He’d run, distracted the bats and had you not managed to grab him and tackle him into another trailer he’d be dead, you were sure of it.
Looking at him outside of the station, you were about ready to kill him yourself. Your eyes burned with tears and if looks could kill, he’d be dust. It took everything not to slug him right then and there for daring to think that he could throw his life away like that, for a town that hated him.
How could you? Your look said.
I’m sorry. Came the silent reply as he dared to take a step closer. When you didn’t step back, his arms wrapped around you tightly.
The two of you held each other for a long moment, and each passing second your anger dissolved as the emotions you’d been ignoring and repressing over the past few days started to surface. You couldn’t do this here. You couldn’t allow yourself to process this outside of the police station, not when the two of you were covered in sweat and blood.
His hand gripped yours tightly, as if you were the last lifeline he had in this world. There was so much more that needed to be done. He had to tell his uncle he was alive, you had to check on Max and the others, Eddie probably needed some sort of lawyer. You had to see Steve and Robin and see what happened with Vecna while the two of you were in holding.
But it was late, nearly midnight and neither of you had a walkie talkie anymore and the weight of what the two of you had been through was starting to catch up.
Your apartment was small, cozy even. Eddie walked in with you, having followed you blindly back home. You couldn’t let him go, even when you dropped his hand to get you both some water from the kitchen you were constantly looking over your shoulder to make sure that he was still there, that he was still real.
The whole time, he was looking at you, too.
The two of you sat on your bed, hands clasped together tightly as you both tried to figure out what to say or do. You’d won, Vecna was dead and the gates were closed. You were alive, Eddie was alive and his name was cleared. If this was Eddie’s campaign, you two would be heroes, celebrating and drinking and would be standing tall and proud.
Instead, the two of you were holding hands on your bed. Staring down at the floor as you both tried to sort through the horrors you’d seen in the past four days. Your eyes closed, and you saw everything; the news of Eddie being suspected of murder, the bats attacking, the upside down, Eddie’s back as he ran away-
A tear slid down your cheek and you gripped his hand harder, and in response he squeezed back. You took a deep, slow breath-
“We... stink.” You weren’t sure you meant to say that out loud but it broke the silence between the two of you. Eddie was silent for a few seconds before letting out a breath that almost counted for a laugh.
“Yeah... yeah we probably do. I haven’t showered in... shit. I don’t want to think about it.” He said.
“We should shower.” You said, not meaning anything by it.
“We should.”
The two of you were quiet for another few minutes, neither of you moving. Having Eddie out of your site, even though you knew he’d be in a room that he wouldn’t be able to disappear in, made your stomach twist unpleasantly.
But he needed a shower, he fucking deserved to hog all the hot water he wanted after what he’d been through. So you stood up, still holding his hand. “I’ll... show you how the shower works.”
He followed you wordlessly to the bathroom, and you rummaged through your cabinet and pulled out a spare toothbrush for him. Eddie grabbed it and the two of you made your way over to the sink, brushing your teeth as the first step to feeling like a human again.
“The left one is the hot water.” you said, turning the shower on for him. “And this button makes it a shower and not a bath.”
He was staring at you, and you had the feeling that what you were saying was the least important thing going through his mind right now. You didn’t blame him.
“There’s clean towels right there.” you pointed to the towels on the hooks by the sink.
The water ran, and it was already starting to get a bit foggy in the bathroom. You turned to look at Eddie, who was still staring at you. His mouth partially opened as if he wanted to say something but for once lacking the words.
“Take all the time you need.” you said, and started towards the door. His hand grabbed yours, stopping you from moving forward.
“I...” Eddie said, his large doe eyes were looking at yours with a million different emotions. He didn’t want you to go. You didn’t want to leave.
There had been an underlying tension between the two of you through this whole week. From the finale of his campaign with Hellfire to you saving his life there was something there. You would have always easily admitted that you found Eddie attractive but had never let yourself move past that.
The moment that he’d disappeared, you felt like your world had blacked out, only returning to your senses when he’d had you pinned against the wall of Reefer Rick’s boathouse with a broken beer bottle against your throat. You’ll never forget the fear in his eyes, like a wild animal cornered as the glass poked at your neck as his gaze darted between you and the others.
What a terrible time to realize that you might be in love with Eddie Munson.
You had been swallowing your emotions all week, focusing on the task at hand. Dustin brought Eddie junk food, you made sure there was something of substance in the grocery run. At least something that he could heat up so he wasn’t surviving on pure sugar. When the others were busy trying to piece together Vecna, you’d kept your own walkie close, updating him every step of the way.
You don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up to Reefer Ricks as the basketball team seared for Eddie. You’d given him just enough time to escape without suspicion, and as thanks you had been witness to the gruesome murder of Patrick in the water of Rick’s boathouse.
The memory was pushed down as far as you could, and you were brought back to reality by Eddie taking a hesitant step closer. You had never realized how badly you needed him in your life, the freak who’d given you a place to feel safe in a town where a toe outside of normalcy was seen as a crime.
You needed him, and by the look in his eyes, he needed you, too.
There wasn’t anything to say, words wouldn’t do anything in a time where actions meant everything. So you squeezed his hand and pulled it away, reaching up to his shoulders to start pushing off both his battle jacket and leather jacket. The heavy garments fell to the floor and he pushed them away with his foot to a corner. You reached up and pulled off his bandana, freeing his hair and tossing it as well.
Eddie kneeled down and unlaced his shoes, as well as yours. Your shoes and socks were both discarded as he stood back up. You took his hand again, removing each of his rings carefully followed by his bracelet and watch and setting them on the counter. There was blood in the mouth of the pig ring that made your stomach turn and you looked back at Eddie instead.
His Hellfire shirt was stained with blood and sweat and god knows what else, and he discarded it quickly. Small cuts and bruises littered his body, and you looked over each visible wound. Distress filled you, and you swallowed hard, trying not to think about the bats attacking and biting him just hours before. You’d been so strong up until now for him, and you’d be strong again until you could finally be alone.
You weren’t expecting him to cup your jaw and tilt your head up to look at him. His brown eyes looked straight into your own and he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against yours. Your eyes slid close, one of his hands moving to the back of your neck. You could feel the warmth of his skin, the slightly scratchy callouses of his fingertips, the way his hand would squeeze slightly on reflex reminding you that he was here and safe.
Safe.
That thought alone nearly broke you as it passed through your mind. Eddie was safe, and he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t going to jail for murder. He was alive and cleared and free.
You let out a choked sob and tried again to push down everything you were feeling but his hand squeezed tighter and his other hand wrapped around your middle and pulled you close. You let out a shuddering sob against his chest, holding his arm for dear life as you tried to calm yourself.
It’s... really hard to cry with the scent of blood and sweat and boy filling your nose and shocking your senses.
You met his eyes as you pulled away, but his hands remained firm on you, keeping you grounded. Eddie’s eyes were red and bloodshot, both of you were exhausted.
Just hold it together. You said to yourself as you pulled your shirt off over your head, and fought with the button on your jeans. Eddie reached down to help you, his thumbs brushing over the bruise on your hand you’d earned from punching a demobat. You stepped out of your pants and reached for his, dropping the bullet belt on the ground which echoed with an alarming clang.
“Jesus.” Eddie muttered.
“Why did Erica even grab that?” you asked, as you both stared at it. “Those bullets don’t even work with Nancy’s gun.”
It was a question without an answer, one of thousands from this week.
You went back to his pants, pulling on the belt and.. Well that didn’t work. There was a handcuff around his belt that you tugged on. You’d noticed it before a few times, and had always wanted to question this particular fashion choice. But you never did, not wanting him to know that you had ever glanced at his crotch, no matter how innocent the circumstances.
“Here, it’s uh... a little fiddly.” Eddie said, moving your hands away as he jiggled the cuff and it opened with a metallic click. You reached out again, removing the offending item and hesitated for a moment as your thumb and forefinger held onto his zipper.
You looked up at him. Are you sure? He nodded and you pulled down his pants, leaving you both in your underwear.
A gentle push on your shoulder had you turning around as he unclasped your bra, letting it join the rest of the discarded clothes before you slid your fingers into your underwear and pulled them down before you lost the nerve.
You could hear Eddie let out a shuddering breath and when you turned around there was a red flush underneath the layer of dirt on his face. But he didn’t look down at you, not yet, only focusing on your eyes as he also pulled down his boxers.
Neither of you made a move, only staring up at one another for a long time as the water ran. You took in every detail of his face, as if this was the first and last time you’d seen him. His long hair was a greasy mess, his fringe plastered to his forehead and covered in sweat. Dirt and blood speckled his face and there was a cut on his cheek.
How were his eyes so impossibly round and expressive? You had no idea how he could wear every emotion on his face and yet still not have a clue what he was thinking. You two stood naked in the bathroom, something that would have been laughable to imagine just a few weeks ago, but now it was the least crazy thing that had happened to you in even twelve hours.
Eddie made the first move, carefully placing his hand on your lower back and pushing you towards the shower. You stepped in, Eddie right behind you as the hot water hit your skin. You let out a hiss as it hit a cut on your shoulder, but other than that it felt... fucking amazing.
You reached out of the shower to the sink to grab the antibacterial soap that Eddie had left at your place months before after getting the black widow on his chest done. Your mind flashed to him leaning against the counter with his shirt off as you had carefully cleaned the fresh ink. He’d been making a fuss about how it burned and you had scolded him for going to a shady scratcher’s basement and that he was lucky that he didn’t get an infection.
Had that only been a few months ago?
Now his tattoo was healed, but there were new wounds to tend to, new permanent fixtures on his body that you wish were just from an illegal tattoo gun. You grabbed a clean washcloth and finally looked over his body.
It wasn’t like it was your first time seeing a man naked, and you’d seen Eddie shirtless plenty of times before. There was no denying this was different though, and your eyes wandered down between his legs for just a moment, curiosity getting the better of you in the moment because it was better than letting your mind stay trapped in the Upside Down.
He wasn’t hard. You didn’t blame him, you doubted you could get aroused in this state. You were both tired and gross. You pulled your focus away from his crotch and back to the washcloth, lathering it up and began to wash his shoulders and neck first.
Eddie’s hands made their way to your hips, unable to stop himself from touching you. Touching you meant that you both were real.
He let out a small noise in the back of his throat as you began to gently wash away the gime on his neck and shoulders. Dirt and sweat flowed down each of your bodies from the water stream, and you focused as best you could on cleaning each of the cuts on his body, even if he let out grunts of discomfort.
Your hands started washing lower, running the cloth against his chest and the black widow you’d cleaned a dozen times for him before. Eddie hissed as the cloth brushed over his hard nipples and you couldn’t tell if it was because it felt good or didn’t. You moved lower, washing his stomach and his hands held your hips tighter. It was becoming a game of chicken to see how far down you’d go.
You were staring at his dick as your hands hovered at his hip bones. It’s not like you could help it, well, that was a lie, you probably could. But it had twitched just slightly, and your mind had raced with a thousand dirty thoughts.
Not the time. You scolded yourself as you tried to figure out how to proceed.
Sensing your hesitation, Eddie reached behind you for another washcloth and turned you around.
“It.. might be better if I do this part.” he said in your ear and your skin erupted in goosebumps. “Between the lake water and the sweat and everything, yeah. Just, give me a second to do that part myself.”
Jesus Christ, he was talking about washing his ass and your body had still reacted. What the fuck was wrong with you? Well other than falling in love with your friend and Dungeon Master, nearly losing him to monsters, nearly losing him again to the justice system-
Something soft rubbed your back and the tension you’d been holding suddenly evaporated. While you were distracted, Eddie had finished his own business and had grabbed your loofah. He was washing your back in slow circles, getting the dirt off of you as well.
You let out a quiet noise and his hand froze for just a moment before resuming. Maybe in another timeline you would have been embarrassed about the noise you made, but not this time. Not when you were touch starved from him, not when he was naked and touching you, not when you two felt impossibly close and yet still so fucking far apart. It was a balancing act, a dance that neither of you knew the music to. Each movement was careful, hesitant, as if one wrong move might scare the other away.
There will be no more retreating from Eddie, the Banished. Did that extend to you? With the way his fingers slid down your spine you were assuming so. One hand was firmly on your shoulder to keep you in place (as if you were ever going to move away) while the other ran your loofah over your sides.
He turned you around, endlessly deep brown eyes meeting yours while his hand holding the loofa twitched just slightly. It was his turn to look down at your body fully, eyes raking down over your chest, your hips, and your legs. You saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, looking back up at your eyes.
When you gave him a nod, Eddie reached out again, working the loofah over your neck and shoulders. You tilted your head back, letting him get as much grime off you as possible before his hand moved lower, running over your breasts carefully. Eddie’s eyes darted between your chest and your face for any sign that this was too much, that he’d gone too far. But you only leaned closed to him, resting your hands on his forearms as he washed you. His hands drifted lower, not lingering too much on your breasts when getting clean was more important than the hormones that were starting to stir in both of you.
Just like you had, his hands stopped at your hips, just above your mound. You turned him around the same way he had for you, deciding that you could also wash your own ass for the time being.
You closed your eyes as you washed yourself, imagining a world where taking a shower with Eddie wasn’t the result of a week of trauma. Maybe he’d joke about how he’d make your tits squeaky clean and you’d respond with a joke about him dropping the soap. Maybe in another life the two of you would be blasting music and he’d be rambling about the latest song he was learning on guitar while you two swapped off who was under the hot water.
Your bodies were clean now, Eddie taking the free moment to wash off his legs and feet while you did the same. You pulled him back around and reached up to his face with a warmed washcloth, and his hands went back to your hips. Once you were satisfied with that, you grabbed the shampoo and conditioner.
“Sit down.” you said quietly.
The tub was comfortable enough for one person to lay in and stretch out but it was more cramped with two. Eddie sat down and you sat behind him, working the shampoo through his hair slowly, your fingers digging into his scalp. Eddie tilted his head back and let out a moan as you massaged and scratched at his head.
There was a small part of you that said that you shouldn’t be having a reaction to this, that you two had just gone through something terrible and this wasn’t the time to unpack those feelings.
You told that part of your brain to shove it.
You peered over Eddie’s shoulder as you worked the lather through his hair, and took in a deep shuddering breath as your gaze was met with his cock standing at full attention. The warmth inside of you was growing as well, made hotter by his constant groans and murmurs of enjoyment.
You rinsed his hair, and started working the conditioner through his ends.
“Let that sit for a bit.” you instructed and he made a noise of understanding. You quickly worked on cleaning your own hair, and as the last of the sweat, blood, and tears slid down the drain you were now faced with it being just the two of you, naked, raw, and alive.
Eddie turned around and leaned against the back of the tub and he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you in as well. He pressed your back against his chest, his head resting on your shoulder. You leaned back into him, letting him hold you as the warm water washed over you both.
Your hands reached down to his, and his fingers immediately laced with yours. Around you there was only the thick steamy air and the warmth and safety of the shower. Your fingers rubbed against his, unused to the bare skin without the heavy metal rings he wore. You wondered briefly if they were silver or pewter or some other metal.
Something soft on your shoulder brought you back to reality, A shiver ran down your back as Eddie’s lips placed small kisses along your clean, wet skin. You squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.
The kisses stopped after a moment, and he pulled you closer until you were completely flushed against him. His cock was pressing into your back, and you felt him shift his hips to try and find a way to have you close without bothering you about his physical reaction.
You shifted in his arms, turning around to face him. The porcelain dug into your knees, but you ignored it to look at Eddie. His eyes were wide and everything stood still. He reached for you again, placing his hand on your jaw, his thumb resting on your cheek. In return you held onto his shoulders, one hand on the side of his neck.
It didn’t matter who moved first. It didn’t matter if his hand pulled you in or if you had leaned after you looked at his lips. All that mattered is that Eddie’s grip on you tightened and his mouth was on yours and you were pressing up against him and his hands were moving around you and-
You slipped, your knee sliding against the soaked porcelain and your body was pressed fully against his. Eddie’s hard cock was pressed against your stomach, and he jumped at the sudden accidental movement.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sitting up a bit to check on you.
No, you weren’t okay. And you didn’t think you’d be okay until he kissed you again. So instead of answering you kissed him again, deeper than before. He didn’t hesitate in responding to the kiss, his hands were sliding around you again, rubbing your back as your fingers tangled in his hair.
The two of you stayed like that for a long time, meeting each other’s lips over and over again as the hot water fell on you. You’d occasionally shift and feel his cock rub against your stomach and he’d moan into your mouth in response. You liked that, and found every reason to squirm and rub against him as the two of you kissed.
Eddie’s tongue pressed into your mouth, as easily as if the two of you had kissed a thousand times before. You moaned as he did, the taste of your toothpaste still lingering in his mouth melded with the taste of him. The moan only encouraged him to keep going, exploring your mouth and licking against a spot behind your front teeth that made you shudder.
The water was getting cooler and it took everything inside of you to finally pull away. Eddie looked up at you with a hint of confusion on his face as to why you pulled back.
“Did I-” he started and you shook your head.
“Water’s getting cold. We should get out.” you said.
He nodded and the two of you untangled from each other and helped each other stand up. You finished rinsing the last of the conditioner from Eddie’s hair before turning off the water and stepping out, grabbing you each a towel. He took it from your hand and wrapped it around your shoulders, using it as an excuse to touch you and pull you into another kiss.
Your arms wrapped around his neck and he pushed you up against the wall, needing the closeness as much as you did. Each press of his lips was slightly different each time, as if he was trying to decide the best way to kiss you, or maybe to just have the chance to kiss you every way he could. Making up for lost time? Making up for the uncertain future? It was hard to tell.
“I’m here.” You don’t know why you said it, but those two words slipped out of your mouth in the two seconds that Eddie had pulled away to breathe.
He was panting, and staring intently at you, his look of surprise mirrored your own thoughts. Then his mouth was on you again, kissing you rougher, holding you tighter, his hands were grabbing at you in a near bruising grip. Eddie’s cock was rubbing against your hip now, and he groaned feeling your soft skin against him. You could feel your own wetness start to pool between your legs as you kissed back, trying to keep up with him.
“I’m here, too.” His voice echoed back.
Your hips rocked up against him, and up bit his lower lip, sucking on it hard. He groaned again, and grabbed at your breast, squeezing it before rubbing his thumb against your nipple. You squirmed at the touch, and all you wanted was to be closer, closer, closer.
When Eddie pulled back, it was your turn to look confused. You were dazed from the kiss, breathless with your heart pounding in your chest.
“Eds...?”
“Bedroom.” He pulled himself away from you like ripping a bandaid off. You followed his lips, kissing him again and he shuddered, stumbling back towards the door and reaching blindly for the doorknob.
With some fumbling, you both managed to stumble into your room, lips locked together. It was cooler outside of the bathroom, and you could feel goosebumps raised along his arms as you both fell back into your bed.
You wasted no time straddling him, pushing him down by his shoulders and giving him quick rough kisses.
“Don’t you-” you kissed him “ever” you bit his lower lip “run like that” another bruising kiss “again.”.
“I won’t” he replied, running his hand to the back of your neck and squeezing it. “I won’t. I won’t run.”
Before you could capture his lips again, he pulled you down by your neck and latched his mouth against your throat. Eddie wasted no time with soft kisses, immediately sucking hard on the skin and pulling the blood to the surface until a deep bruise bloomed on your neck. You cursed, and ground your hips down on his cock, feeling the length drag against your clit.
Eddie hissed and kissed the spot lightly where he’d been sucking. His hands gripped your hips, moving his own in rhythm with yours in a desperate attempt to get friction on his leaking cock. One hand slid down to grab your thigh, squeezing the back of it in a way that made your hips shudder and sparks of pleasure shoot right to your core.
“Fuck, Eddie.” you whispered.
Hearing his name had him grabbing you and rolling you below him, kissing your neck more. His lips trailed up to right below your ear, breathing in deeply before moving his mouth down to your chest.
Eddie latched onto one of your nipples and sucked hard, making you gasp and arch your back up. His hand slid down, lower and lower until it was between your legs, sliding a finger through your slit with a trembling hand. The touch to your sensitive folds made you let out a small giggle at the feeling and your hips jerked again before settling back down.
“Fuck, you’re soaked.” Eddie said, talking to himself more than he was talking to you. He played with your entrance for a moment as he kissed and sucked along your breasts, sliding two fingers through your folds and stroking your clit with careful circles.
You wanted to beg for more, roll your hips and tell him to keep going, but you couldn’t. If this was any other scenario, you would have. But when his head tilted back to look at you, all words died down in your mouth. This wasn’t something that you two could rush, not now, not after everything. This was more than just sex, more than a desperate quickie after the heat of battle. This was something you didn’t have a name for yet, but you two would figure out in time.
Eddie leaned over you more, resting one arm by your head. His wet hair ticked your shoulders, and looking up at him, you thought about how a few hours earlier, you were on top of him like this as well, shielding him from monsters. He leaned down and kissed you again as he slid a finger into your entrance.
Your hands gripped his shoulders, gasping into his mouth. He pumped his fingers in and out slowly, never letting your lips disconnect. Eddie was fingering you, Eddie who’d all but bullied you into joining Hellfire when you were the new kid. The same Eddie who you’d bickered and squabbled with regularly because you two loved to get on each other's nerves. The same Eddie who you’d seen cry when no one else was looking over the death of Chrissy Cunningham-
Another finger slid in carefully and this time he did pull back, looking into your eyes for any sign of discomfort. Instead he found your face warmed and your lips parted in pleasure. You let out a small moan as he moved his fingers again, your nails digging into his shoulder.
A quiet cry escaped your lips as he curled his fingers inside you, moving them back and forth until you gave him the signal that he had found the right spot. His name escaped your lips in a way he never dreamed that he’d hear. Eddie’s forehead pressed against yours again, taking in every reaction as his fingers explored your inner walls.
His thumb brushed over your clit, stroking it in shaky and clumsy circles. As unpracticed as it was, it felt good. It felt good because it was him, and because you needed him, and when the fuck was the last time you had even had a chance to get off with everything going on?
“Eddie,” you panted as you moved your hands to his jaw. You kissed him again, and he kissed you back. His fingers sped up, pressing more into that sweet spot that was turning your brain off, removing any thoughts of the Upside Down, or of the shared trauma you now held. Right now, there was only you and Eddie and a mind-numbing pleasure that was building up inside you.
“It’s okay.” he whispered, his hand shaking a little. “Tell me what you need, please.” Eddie looked at you like getting you off was the most important thing he could do right now. You’d only seen this look in his eyes once as he’d cut the sheet rope that connected the two worlds-
“Tell me you’re here.” you begged, the words spilling out without thought. “Fuck, Eddie- just tell me you’re here. That you aren’t going- oh... oh God, please-”
“I’m here.” His voice sounded desperate, looking down at you. “I’m here, I swear. I’m not going anywhere again I- I’m so fucking sorry. I’m here, I’m here, Sweetheart.”
It was that simple nickname that had you tumbling over the edge. That pet name that had always been reserved only for his guitar. His lips crashed onto yours as you reached your peak, swallowing your moans as your pussy clamped down around his fingers. Your body tensed up hard, and you tangled your fingers into his hair pulling at the roots. Eddie moaned at the feeling, his fingers faltering for a moment before slowing down and then finally pulling out.
Immediately you felt empty, the orgasm not enough to satiate the need to have him as close as possible. You could still feel your pussy contracting as you came down from your orgasm, and you realized he was still talking.
“‘M here.” Eddie whispered against your temple as he placed gentle pecks to your skin. “I’m here. I won’t leave again.”
“I need you, Eds.” you said, looking up at him. “Fuck, I’ve needed you for so long.”
You hoped that he understood what you were saying. This was more than needing him inside you, this was about everything you two had been through together over the past few years. Every Hellfire Club meeting, every Tuesday at the Hideout, every shared joint between the two of you, every shitty study session that never went anywhere because you two would get too distracted and end up talking to each other about everything and nothing.
You needed it, all of it, all of him. Eddie had made an indent on your life that you never wanted straightened out. You could not, and would not, conceive of a world without Eddie Munson in it. His death would have destroyed you in every possible way.
Friendship, romance, sex, you didn’t care. If he was willing to just exist in your life, that’s all you fucking wanted.
You didn’t even notice that you were crying again, until Eddie was wiping away your tears with his clean hand. He had a panicked look on his face as if worried that he’d done something wrong.
“Shit, I’m sorry. Did we take this too far?” he asked, grabbing a tissue from your bedside table and wiping his own hand off before offering one to you. You took it and shook your head, wiping your eyes and trying to take in a deep breath.
“No, not that’s not it.” you said. “I just... I was so scared that I was going to lose you, Eddie. I’m still scared that when everything is done you’re going to disappear on me again.”
Eddie looked down at you, and you could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “I thought I was doing the right thing, buying them more time.” he said quietly. “I thought if I could keep them distracted for just a few more minutes, everything would work out. If I had climbed back up, I thought- I was convinced the bats would either break in and attack you and Dustin or they’d go after the others.”
“You’re stupid.” you sniffed.
“I know.” he agreed.
“A total buttface jerk.” you added.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Eddie spread your legs more, putting himself into position. His cock was sliding through your folds now.
“Y-you’re a freak and my fucking hero.” you gasped out as he pushed himself inside you carefully. Eddies cock stretched you pleasantly and easily.
“I’m getting mixed signals here, Sweetheart.” he mumbled, kissing along your jaw. Your arms wrapped around his neck tightly, and you pushed your own face against his neck, sucking your own mark against the front of his throat. You didn't care if anyone else saw, you wanted to see proof of this night on him.
You wanted proof on him every night for the rest of your life.
“I'm never running away again.” he groaned in your ear as his hips started moving. Eddie held you tighter, nearly suffocating you as he did. How many times had he hugged you like this before, with you laughing and pushing him away, only for him to squeeze you harder telling you that your Strength stat sucked?
“I'll find you.” You whispered in his ear as he grabbed your thigh, lifting it to wrap around his hips. “I'll find you every time, I fucking promise.”
He moaned loudly, his hips pushing harder into yours. Eddie was as deep inside you as he could possibly be, and each drag of his cock inside you made every nerve light up in your body.
“Why did you come after me?” Eddie's voice was a near growl. His voice was strained, as if asking that question would snap the connection between the two of you. His lips never left your skin, kissing every inch that he could reach on your neck and face.
“I couldn't let you- ohh oh God... I couldn't let you go. Couldn't let you disappear again” your body shuddered under him as his angle shifted slightly, just enough that it was rubbing up against that spot again that made it hard to think.
“You could have died too.” Eddie's voice rattled around your head, frustration dripping from his lips as he sank his teeth into your shoulder. You cried out, dragging your nails down his spine in return, leaving raised marks down his back.
He hissed and smashed his lips to your again, biting at your lower lip and sucking hard. Eddie looked at you, frustration now in his eyes as he looked down at you.
It seemed like you weren't the only one processing your emotions through sex.
“You could have died too.” He repeated. One hand went to the back of your neck, his thumb pressing right below your ear. You met his eyes, suddenly feeling small under him.
Eddie had only ever looked at you like this once before. You two had a blow up fight the night that Chrissy had been murdered. You'd been so fucking mad at him for not moving Hellfire, having missed that whole conversation as you had a different lunch period.
You hadn't learned about it until Erica Sinclair had walked in with Mike and Dustin. You'd swallowed the fight until after the campaign, when everyone was celebrating and Eddie was sneaking towards the back of the gym.
It hadn't been pretty. You two had yelled at each other, called each other every name in the book. You were furious that he'd abandoned a party member and wouldn't budge.
Eddie had hated that you were the only one to really stand up to him, to call him out for refusing to budge this one time. His brown eyes had turned black as you said things that didn't even fucking matter anymore.
You saw him leave pissed with Chrissy Cunningham. You wondered if anyone else saw you two fighting that night which would have made him look worse when the cheerleader showed up dead in his trailer.
Another moan passed your lips and your eyes closed as he started thrusting faster inside you. His hand on your neck tightening and loosening rhythmically, the blood running to your head and cutting off over and over again.
“I can't lose you either.” He panted, kissing you again in a way that you were sure was going to screw you up forever. “You think I wanted to watch you die, too?” He demanded.
“Eddie, I-” you didn't know what to say, all you could do was lay there as he mercilessly pushed into you, watching as the anger turned to anguish as he leaned over you.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice low and firm. The same subtle husky voice he used when he ran his game, the same voice he'd conditioned you to listen to over the past year.
You nearly came again right there.
Eddie’s warm brown eyes bore into yours and you didn't look away, even as his pace hit that perfect stride that had your toes curl and made your eyes want to roll back.
“If I can't run away, you can throw yourself into danger.” He said. “I'm not losing you either.”
“Not gonna lose me-” you panted. “Fuck Eddie, I just-” your back arched as his lips sucked another bruise into your shoulder. “Don't put yourself in danger again and I won't have to.”
“We’re never doing that again.” he grunted into your shoulder. “No more monsters, no more fucking spellcasters, no bullshit alternate dimensions.” His hands were everywhere, as if he couldn’t decide where he wanted or needed to grab you. “Gonna get us as far away from this shithole town as possible.”
Us.
That word echoed through your brain. Us. That meant there was something more here, a future. A future with Eddie that he wanted you to be a part of.
You kissed him again, and any more words between you died down as it didn’t mean anything anymore. The Upside Down, the future, none of it. Eddie’s hand finally made its way down to your clit again and stroked it fast. You tangled your fingers into his hair and pulled at the roots, his hips were starting to falter with their thrusts. Each push making your brain grow hazy as the pleasure continued to build inside you.
Eddie pulled away from the kiss, pressing his lips against your ear again instead. “I’m here.” he promised. “Fuck, right- I’m right here.”
“I’m here, too” you repeated, your own voice breathy and desperate. “Eddie, I-”
“I love you.”
Those three words from his lips, had you seeing white. The whole world stopped and your body tensed up. Your nails sank into his back, and if you had been in a more clear state of mind you would have noticed you’d accidentally drawn blood. You cried out, unsure if you had managed to say those words back at all until the orgasm had started to subside. You felt dizzy, lightheaded and you breathed out the air that you had been hoarding in your lungs.
Eddie was staring at you with wide doe eyes, lips parted slightly in surprise. His hips were rocking slower now, as if unsure if he should continue after having apparently shattered your mind.
“I... love you, too.” you managed to gasp out, meeting his gaze. That was enough for Eddie as he picked his pace back up, rougher than before. He pressed his lips against your neck, breathing you in completely, listening to your overstimulated cries of pleasure as he pushed faster into you.
It didn’t take long before he was cumming too, his hips jerking and shaking as he finally slowed down his thrusts. His weight was fully on top of you now as he started to soften inside you.
You don’t know how long the two of you stayed like that, with him laying on you and with you stroking his back and matching his breaths. Maybe the two of you dozed off a few times, trying to savor the moment of peace between the two of you.
Eddie was the one to break the silence with a chuckle.
“What’s so funny, Eddie?” you asked, your eyes still closed.
“We’re gonna need another shower after that.” he replied, slowly getting up off you. It was cold without his warmth and you whined at the loss.
“Sounds like a tomorrow problem.” you mumbled, looking up at him. His curly hair was frizzing badly in its half-dried state. But he still got up and went to the bathroom, you heard the sound of running water and the a toilet flushing before he came back with a towel to clean help clean you up.
“Did you mean what you said?” you asked quietly, as he settled back into bed with you, the two of you getting over the sheets.
Eddie nodded, looking at your blankets before meeting your gaze. “Yeah, I did.”
“Good.” you said and gave him a reassuring smile. “Because I don’t want to fight anymore monsters either again.”
“Wait that’s-” Eddie stopped and laughed, shaking his head. “You know what I meant.”
“I know.”
“Did you mean it?” He asked.
“Yeah. I meant it.” you reassured him.
“Say it again?” he asked, cupping your jaw again. “I want to know it wasn’t just my amazing dick making you say it.”
You laughed. It felt so fucking good to laugh with him again. Had there been any doubt about your feelings for him, that would have sealed it.
“Eddie Munson, I love you.” you said, looking into his eyes. “And if you ever do something stupid like that again, I’m going to be the one to kill you personally.”
“I love you, too.” he said, and for the first time in a week, his eyes were clear. There was no haunted look in his eyes, no anger, no frustration. For this brief night before reality came back the two of you could just exist with each other. Neither of you knew what was going to happen after this evening, but you knew in your gut that the two of you were going to get through this together.
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Please comment and reblog <3
Alternative title: Use Your Tears As Lube
If you cried you have to legally tell me. I'm keeping count.
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“What’s the deal with you and Harrington?”
Robin Buckley glanced up toward the question asker, her brows slightly furrowed as she cast an inquisitive look toward Eddie Munson. He’s leant up on one of his elbows, chin cradled in the palm of his hand. His eyes are on her, large and curious, instead of the usual half-lidded expression he wears during the “adult” hangouts.
They’d all started hanging out ever since Vecna was destroyed, taking time away from the younger members of The Party to spend time all together. Herself, Eddie, Steve, Nancy, Jonathan, and Argyle. Sometimes, every once in a while, it led them all to feel normal. As if they hadn’t all been dealing with more Upside Down crap just a few months prior.
“What do you mean?” Robin instead asked, her eyes moving from Eddie’s to dart out toward the Harrington’s pool. Steve is sitting on the edge of it with Jonathan, the two boys heads bent together as Argyle watched on- a dopey almost lovesick expression curled on his mouth. A spliff dangled from Jonathan’s fingertips, rolled by Eddie but the weed supplied by Jonathan.
“You’re… not together.” Eddie’s voice is soft, and barely spoken above a murmur. Robin nodded slowly, and turned her head towards him to try and indicate him to continue. “Nancy and the kids all repeat platonic with a capital P, but I just… how did you and Harrington even happen?”
“Scoops A’hoy,” Robin grinned wide, barely able to stifle the laugh that’s on the backend of her words. She was able to catch the widened look that Eddie threw her way, before his eyes darted out to look towards Steve, before his eyes moved back to her own. “He and I worked there back when the mall was open.”
“And… what? You instantly became best friends?”
“No, actually.” Robin shook her head with another soft laugh, before she paused so she could rub her palms together. She allowed herself to twist one of her rings around her finger, brows pinched for a moment. “I actually thought he was like the worst, y’know?” Robin scoffed to herself, before she sent Eddie a look. She knew what she must look like, her eyes wet with tears and her gaze all permanently soft.
“You know how he was in school, King Steve and all that.” Robin continued on, and she flicked her tongue out of her mouth to wet the corner of her lips for a second. “And when my manager told me that I’d be working with a Steve, well… there was only one Steve in Hawkins I could think of.”
“So how did your opinion of him change then, Buckley?” Eddie cocked his head again, one of his hands coming up to twirl a strand of hair around his pointer finger. His brows were furrowed taut, creating a worry line in between them. “The kids told me about the Russians-”
“It was sort of before then,” Robin admitted with a small shrug, and she twisted the corner of her lip into a shy smile. “He raved to me, y’know? About uh, these kids. These five kids he’d babysit and shit, and it was so… soft?” Robin watched as Eddie mouthed out names to himself as he ticked his fingers, before he cast a look to her. “But he always talked about this one, Ellie, who he’d call his little sister.”
Eddie drew in a sharp breath, eyes wide as Robin let out a soft hum.
“Yeah, and I don’t know if you submitted yourself to Harrington family lore-” Robin gestured behind her toward the Harrington house with a flick of her hand, before she continued. “But I knew that Dick and Helen Harrington didn’t have more than one kid.”
“Supergirl?” Eddie asked softly, and Robin let out a soft confirming hum as she watched Eddie’s eyes dart toward Steve. Steve was still talking to Jonathan, though Argyle had shifted forward so he was able to join in the conversation.
“And then imagine my surprise when one day our stupid sailor ice cream shop is visited by none other than the Chief.” Robin shook her head with a small laugh, before she continued on. “And he was so excited to see Steve, Eddie. Like genuinely excited to see him, ordered a couple tubs of ice cream togo and then said he’d see him at home.”
“Fuck.” Eddie breathed out, and Robin let out another sigh of a laugh.
“And I asked Steve why the Chief of the Hawkins police force was visiting him at work, and Steve just…” Robin shrugged slowly, shaking her head to clear her thoughts before she continued. “He just gave me this look, like… like he didn’t actually know either.”
“Then later, he told me why he watched all of the kids. He told me that he would’ve given anything for someone to just… to just care about him when he was their age. That all he wanted was for just a person to give a shit about his wellbeing.” Robin shook her head again, before she carded a hand through her still chlorine sticky hair. “And after that my opinion just… it just changed about him.”
“Then the Russians?” Eddie asked softly, and Robin hummed as she dipped her chin in a curt nod.
“Then the Russians, and he didn’t… he didn’t even hesitate to take the attention onto himself when they started questioning us.” Robin shook her head again, sniffling. “And after I asked him why he would do that, and he told me it was because he knew I had a family waiting on me to come back home.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, and then afterwards when we were getting seen by the EMTs? He didn’t have anyone to call Eddie. Because Hopper? Hopper was just… just presumed dead.” Robin let out a soft bitter laugh, and she twisted a strand of her hair around her finger. “My parents decided to take us both home after, and he stayed with us for a couple of days- until his concussion was okay enough for him to sleep through the night.”
“And that’s when you became best friends?”
“That’s when I decided that, Steve? He deserved way more from people than he seemed to ever fucking get.” Robin shrugged, before she cast a soft smile toward Eddie. Eddie’s eyes were glassy, wet with tears and Robin just patted her hand soft against his forearm. “That’s when I decided that he was my best friend.”
“Platonic with a capital P?”
Robin cast a look toward Steve, where the older teen already had his eyes on her. He had a hand extended, fingers wiggling toward her in a small way to beckon her toward his side. Robin stood without responding to Eddie, and she left her towel on the lounge chair she’d commandeered as her own. She took a moment though, cast a softer look toward Eddie- even as the corner of her lip twitched into a nervous smile.
“He’s not exactly my type, y’know?” Robin kept her admission soft, even when Eddie’s eyes were quick to flood with confusion. She instead cast a look toward the sunbathing Nancy Wheeler, who had one of her arms strewn over her face across the backyard where she laid in the grass.
When Robin let her eyes move to meet Eddie’s again, he has a look of pure understanding on his face.
“I think I get what you mean.” Eddie murmured and Robin simply flashed Eddie Munson a shy smile.
Eddie Munson watched as Robin Buckley walked away from him, quick to tuck herself into Steve’s side once she reached him. Steve threw his arm around Robin’s shoulders, tucking her further into his grasp- though the flow of conversation that he was having with Argyle and Jonathan didn’t even pause.
It’s in that moment when Eddie Munson realizes something extraordinarily fucking crucial.
He’s in love with Steve fucking Harrington.
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this is gonna become a multipart fic i think btw! it will probably be on here / ao3, haven’t fully decided yet but hope you enjoyed nonetheless!
now with a part two! click here
#angeldreamsoffanfic#steddie#steddie ficlet#steddie fanfic#platonic stobin#background jargyle#background ronance#but it’s pre every relationship#steve harrington and robin buckley are bffs#robin would die for steve#steve harrington has bad parents#but jim hopper adopts him because i said so#steve and eleven have a sibling bond#he’s the only one allowed to call her ellie by the way#this is gonna become an ao3 fic i think
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Dancing with our hands tied | S.H.
Chapter three ⭐︎ So if you need to be mean, be mean to me
Warnings: angst angst angst! mean!Steve, bitchy!reader, slight allusions to unrequited love, mentions of Vecna and the upside down, argument, Steve being a dick to reader. and before anyone comes at me with the 'but your Steve is so ooc! he isn't mean anymore' this is a fic, this is enemies to lovers, you see the mean!Steve warnings, you know what you're getting yourself into.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x fem!reader
Summary: Steve had buried his past self, King Steve was dead, but all it took was a little push for him to make a small appearance again, to rain nothing but chaos upon his already weak 'friendship' with you. You pushed him, and you did it a little too hard.
Word count: 5k+
Author's note: Big big biggest shoutout to my bestie @hellfire--cult for helping me and writing those evil evil lines, you're the best
Series Masterlist ⭐︎ Previous Chapter ⭐︎ Next chapter
♡
He regrets waking up that day.
He regrets saying yes to Robin and the kids to hang out.
He regrets picking up Max’s phone call.
If he wouldn’t have done any of these things, he wouldn’t be where he is right now.
Parked in front of your house so he can drive you both to Robin’s.
It’s been a week since the day at his place, a week since you had stormed out of his house, a week since he had last seen you. It almost feels weird. He can’t even remember the last time he had gone without seeing you this long. If you’re not hanging out with the group, he sees you going into the coffee shop across from Family Video every afternoon. Sometimes you even run into each other at Bradley’s Big Buy, but since last Saturday, he hasn’t seen you anywhere – it’s almost as though you had disappeared. Maybe he would have worried if it wasn’t for Max and El gushing over your shopping trip to Indianapolis the other day, he panicked when they told him that, thinking that you were driving again when you still weren’t allowed to, but El had calmed him down, telling him that you used the train.
With a sigh, he gets out of the car. He runs his fingers through his hair out of nervousness. He rings the doorbell and takes a step back, staring at the wooden door.
How will you even react to seeing him here?
You’re surely expecting Eddie, not him.
The door opens after a moment, revealing you on the other side, looking as beautiful as always – unfortunately. You’re wearing a white top, the soft pink stripes matching the color of your glossy lips, your skin looking soft and glowy as the sun shines into your house, the fading bruises are almost all gone, finally. The scent of your perfume, something sweet and flowery invades his space, and he can’t help but inhale it, feeling warmth blooming in his chest.
He takes you in, the way you look beneath the sun rays, the way your dainty necklace lies so prettily on your chest, the way your lashes touch your skin as you blink at him.
The smile on your face instantly fades away when you lock eyes with him, the usual grumpy frown takes over instead, that pulls him back into reality.
“The fuck are you doing here?”
Yeah, you’re only pretty and cute when you keep your mouth shut.
He clenches his jaw, trying not to show how annoyed he is already.
“Picking you up.”
You furrow your brows at him, “what? Where’s Eddie?”
“He forgot about his Doctor’s appointment, he had to rush out. Max called me and told me to pick you up.”
“Oh,” you nod and you stare at him for a long moment before a smile appears on your face, “she told you, huh?”
Caught off guard by the smile on your face, he stays quiet, only nodding at your words.
You chuckle to yourself, turning away from him to pick up your jacket and your keys. Surprising him by not fighting him, you step out of the house and close the door. You look him up and down, eying the keys in his hand.
“Can I drive your car?” You ask, tilting your head, “I promise I’ll take better care of it than you ever could.”
He snorts at your words, looking at you with an expression that almost makes you laugh.
“With that head injury? Yeah, not a fucking chance, Blondie.”
Rolling your eyes, you brush past him, already making your way over to his car.
“It’s been like what… a month? I’m all healed, I’m feeling peachy.”
“A month and you still get dizzy and don’t even lie about it.”
Once again, you keep quiet instead of throwing a smartass remark back, it makes him furrow his brows at you. Instead of opening the door, he leans his elbow on the roof of his car, looking over at you curiously.
You open the door and put one foot in before you halt when you notice him staring.
“What?”
“Did you fall on your head or something?”
You shake your head at him, scrunching your face up.
“You’re not fighting me, are you feeling okay?” He smirks.
Scoffing at his words, you flip him off before you get into the car without a single word.
He taps his fingers against the car, looking up at the blue sky with a smirk that turns into a content smile, he thought the bickering would start the moment you opened that door. Maybe today won’t be so bad.
Though when he gets into his car and he glances at you, you’re already staring back at him with that certain look in your eyes, the one that tells him everything he needs to know. Your eyes are glimmering with that smugness, the one that’s always there when you’re about to tease him with something that you know will annoy him.
“Is Nancy gonna be there?”
“Huh?”
You blink at him innocently as you fasten your seatbelt.
“Nancy, is she gonna be there? You know, since you only get the chance to be around her during these group hangouts,” you smirk.
He squints his eyes at you, biting back the bitter words that he was about to throw at you. He turns away and starts the car.
He backs out of your driveway and without a single word, he starts driving.
“Must suck being in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same, huh?”
He stares at the road ahead, blankly. He could swear there was a hint of hurt in your voice. He doesn’t look at you, despite feeling your eyes on him, he doesn’t look and only grips the steering wheel tighter.
“But what would I know,” you snort and he hears you leaning back in the seat, the leather squeaking a little as you try to get more comfortable.
Yeah, what would you know? He thinks.
You’re cold and you’re mean – he is certain that there’s not a single trace of love in your heart. How you care that deeply for Max will always remain a mystery to him.
“Are you a grandpa or something or where is the music!?”
“You make enough music for us.”
He turns to you for a brief second, to see you scrunching up your face at him, shaking your head in confusion.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Lego head?”
“Your yapping and whining is enough for me.”
“Oh, so you’re saying my yapping and whining is music to your ears?” You smirk. “Just say that you love hearing my voice.”
“Shut up,” he murmurs, glaring at you. He clenches his jaw and flicks the button to turn on the music.
Material Girl by Madonna starts playing and he instantly feels his heart dropping, his cheeks start glowing red – at least, that’s what it feels like. He grows flustered underneath your stare the moment you start laughing.
“Oh wow, I knew you were a girly girl, Harrington.”
He changes the song, calming down when some Duran Duran song starts playing instead, but you are still laughing, and he can only groan in annoyance, pointing his finger at you, “shut up, Blondie.”
Your face only grows more amused, and this is where the teasing begins and the drive to Robin’s house becomes a torture for him and he practically starts counting down the second till he can finally get out of the car that he usually loves being in.
He bites his tongue, not saying a single word while you yap away the way you always do.
What a fool he was for thinking that this day could have been good, you manage to ruin every day of his.
He can only stay quiet for so long.
“Do you ever shut up or do I have to make you!?”
That seems to shut you up. At least, for a moment. When he glances at you with angry eyes, he notices the smug look on your face that still didn’t stray away from you, not even after his words.
“And how would you do that?” You ask, mockingly.
He stares at your lips for a moment, clenching his jaw and gripping the gear stick tightly. He looks away as he turns left, pulling up in Robin’s driveway, he parks the car.
“I have an idea or two,” he mumbles and gets out before you can question him. He almost thinks that his words have stunned you, when you take a moment longer to get out of the car, but when you do and your eyes meet his, you smirk again.
He starts walking backwards, taking in the sight of you as you walk towards him. Your jeans hug your hips and your legs so perfectly that he begins to hate them. He almost feels ashamed for wanting to see them from the back. His eyes move up to your top, without intending to stare at your cleavage but he does.. and fuck, he hates how attracted his body is to you.
“So cocky and for what?” You chuckle as you brush past him, not noticing his staring.
Steve’s cheeks are red, his eyes instantly fall down to your butt when he turns around to follow you onto the porch. You move your hips and he has to clench his jaw.
It’s really a shame that he can’t stand you.
You ring the doorbell and patiently wait for Robin to open, you don’t spare him a glance, you don’t even turn around to tease him any further, he doesn’t mind it though, it gives him the chance to keep looking at you. Your skin looks soft and he sometimes catches himself wondering what it would feel like to touch you, it’s glowing and he can’t help but ask himself whether it’s because of the body cream that you put on or if it’s just this pretty on it’s own – not that he ever imagines you putting lotion on your body after a shower, definitely not.
“Oh great, you didn’t kill each other!” Robin’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts and he quickly looks away from you, clearing his throat.
Robin grabs your hand and pulls you into her house, only throwing a glance over her shoulder at him, “come on in Dingus, you know the way.”
“Yeah,” he mumbles as he walks in, watching the way his best friend pays more attention to you than to him. Not only did you nestle your way into his friend group, you had also seemingly nestled your way into Robin’s heart. He watches the friendship between you slowly blossoming and he can’t help but feel jealous of that.
He stays back in the hallway for a moment, preparing for a long evening with you.
He hears Robin talking your ear off already, Max and Lucas are in the kitchen too. But no one else is around. Nancy and Jonathan are on a date, he knows that, Jonathan gushed about it to Argyle before he left the other day and Steve couldn’t help but eavesdrop when he heard them talking about Nancy. The other teens are off doing god knows what. So much for the weekly group hangouts.
He hears your laughter and he can’t help but roll his eyes. It’s not the kind of laugh that he ever gets, no, whenever you laugh with or at him, it’s like you’re mocking him or making fun of him – not that he cares, he does the same to you. It’s your thing.
But for some reason it bothers him to hear and see you laughing like this with the others.
You get along with Robin, you get along with Eddie, you get along with the teens – hell, you even get along with Nancy even though you glared daggers at each other that day at skull rock.
With him, you’re either grumpy and rude or you’re just a snappy smug brat – which seems to be the case today.
Steve walks into the kitchen, putting on a smile to greet Max and Lucas with.
“Hey,” Max mumbles grumpily, only shooting him a brief and very forced smile before she goes back to her deep conversation with you.
Another grump, he thinks to himself. It’s not a surprise that the snappy teen likes you so much, you’re both the same person.
Lucas greets him with a handshake and a friendly smile, something that two of the three girls in this room should learn.
“Are you coming to my game next friday?”
“Yeah, of course,” Steve nods.
“You can bring her,” Lucas wiggles his brows at him, gesturing to you with a wink, “as a date,” he whispers.
Steve scrunches his face up, as though he is disgusted by the thought of it – like he wasn’t just checking you out on the porch.
“You’re joking, right?” He mumbles as he looks over Lucas’s shoulder, glancing at you.
“No,” Lucas crosses his arms over his chest, shaking his head, “you are awfully mean to her, which means that you must like her.”
Steve’s eyes widen and he looks over at you again, in sheer panic, hoping that you didn’t just hear the ridiculous words that have left Lucas’s mouth. You’re too distracted by whatever story Max is telling you though, looking back and forth between her and Robin.
He looks back at Lucas to see him staring smugly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t that what you said to Dustin when he asked you for girls advice?” He snorts, shaking his head once again, “‘the key with girls is acting like you don’t care’” Lucas mocks quietly, chuckling after that.
Steve sighs, putting his hand on his hip, “he told you that?”
Lucas leans closer, “he sure did,” he smirks as he turns his head to glance at you before her turns back around, “I remembered it the other day, and it had me thinking–”
“Alright,” Steve interrupts him, he places his hands on his shoulders, “stop that, Sinclair.”
Lucas laughs, eying the flustered look on Steve’s face, who shoots him another glare before he steps away. He clears his throat, looking at the kitchen island where Robin had already prepared all the snacks.
He grabs two bowls, glancing back at Lucas, “help me carry the snacks over to the living room, man. These ladies are too busy gossiping,” he says, expecting you to turn around and throw a comment back at him, but you don’t.
Robin squints her eyes, nodding at him, “don’t give us the sass, Dingus.”
Lucas chuckles at her, he walks over to the kitchen island, reaching for the bowl of sour gummies and the M&M’s, “when is Steve ever not sassy?”
At that, you finally turn to face them, a smirk tugging at your lips, you don’t have to say anything to show him that you agree with Lucas.
He only rolls his eyes at you, no further words needed as he leaves the kitchen, stepping into the living room with Lucas trailing behind.
“Wow, you didn’t even say anything to her.”
Steve has to roll his eyes again, the teasing in his voice isn’t very subtle. He opens his mouth to speak when the doorbell rings and Lucas rushes out of the room before he can even move or say anything.
“Well, look at what the cat dragged in,” Lucas says after opening the front door.
“Found him on the side of the road.” Steve hears Eddie’s voice.
“Oh you two are such jokesters. You think I’d miss out on game night?” Dustin’s voice sounds through the hallway. “What are we even playing?”
Robin replies enthusiastically as she walks into the living room with Dustin by her side and Eddie tagging along, greeting Steve with a grin.
“Oh boy, the board’s definitely getting flipped today,” Dustin laughs.
Steve raises his brows, “you mean you will flip the board?”
Dustin tilts his head as he looks at his older friend, his smile turning into a playful frown, “hello to you too, Steve.”
“Henderson.”
Dustin claims the loveseat before anyone else can, slumping down with a grin on his face, he reaches for one of the sour gummies in the bowl.
“What’s wrong? Did your phone date not go so well with your girlfriend?” Steve teases.
“At least I have a girlfriend,” Dustin winks at him.
As you walk into the room, Lucas faces Steve again, with a teasing grin, “what do you mean, he’s got one too, she’s right there.”
Dustin gives him a funny look before he turns around with furrowed eyebrows, confusion flashing in his eyes before they widen and he turns back to look at a very unimpressed Steve.
“What!? You two are dating?” He shrieks loud enough for you to freeze in your spot.
Steve closes his eyes, shaking his head at him.
“Huh?”
Eddie rolls his eyes at Dustin, “Henderson, I think that Sinclair might have a little too much imagination over there.”
Lucas only shrugs, still grinning.
“You’re playing matchmaker with the wrong people,” Robin laughs, looking between you and Steve.
“Absolutely,” Eddie chuckles, sitting down on the couch next to her.
“Can we just play the game now?” You ask as both you and Max sit down on the ground in front of the board game that Robin had already put out.
“Ooh, we’re playing Ludo?” Dustin asks.
Everyone nods, everyone except for Robin.
“What?” She chuckles, cupping her cheek as she looks around, “that’s Wahoo.”
“Huh?” You tilt your head at her, “Wahoo?”
“That’s what the game is called,” Robin says, pointing to the board.
Steve watches the way you shake your head in confusion, slightly pouting as you stare at her. Fuck… you almost look cute.
As Eddie reaches for the dice, he throws it up in the air, catching it between two fingers, “this game is called Sorry! my friends,” he smirks, cockily. “We only need four players so who goes first?”
Lucas, who starts scarving down the snacks, waves a hand at Eddie, “I’ll sit this round out,” he says with a mouthful of chips.
“Don’t talk with food in your mouth!” Max rolls her eyes at him.
“Red, Dustin, Robin and Steve go first,” Eddie says. “The master has spoken, now let the games begin,” he says in his deep voice.
Steve rolls his eyes at him, “this isn’t D&D dude, we don’t need a master.”
“Still.”
“Okay!” Robin claps her hands together, “let’s play!”
And as the game started, everyone laughed, everyone was having fun, everyone was joking around, it was all lighthearted. Dustin was throwing tantrums in his team with Robin, while Eddie snickered. Robin was a loser, and she accepted that she sucked at this game, competing against a bunch of stubborn teens. She was the first to sit out and stop playing. Max and Lucas preferred to stay out after the first few rounds, amused by watching the gameplay.
And then, Steve and you were outright competing as if it were a championship. Neither of you even noticed that it was only you two left, everyone else stopped playing a while ago, watching this intense competition instead.
While you took it all with ease, teasing him with a few jabs here and there whenever he was losing against you, Steve took it all a little more seriously. Because the moment he lost against you more than once, the anger in him started rising – not because of the game, but because of the looks you were giving him, those smug and cocky looks, the comments that weren’t even that bad – but everything, everything about you was pissing him off this day.
Your attitude this morning, your comments, your jabs, your arrogance, you’ve been getting on his nerves from the moment you got into his car.
And right now, he can feel his chest heaving, burning in anger and frustration.
His jaw is clenched, his eyes are hurting from the intense glares that you start giving each other.
Neither of you feel the eyes of the others on you two, the nervous glances, the warning ones because everyone knows what will follow after this.
You both want to win against the other so desperately and currently, it’s a tie between the two of you. He won three rounds, you won three rounds – this apparently will be the last one, this one will decide who will win this very meaningless, stupid game.
But Robin can’t take it any longer, she can’t keep watching the two of you getting angrier each passing second, knowing that this round will only lead to another, and both you and Steve could sit here all night, because you are both stubborn brats when it comes to each other – as it seems.
“Okay!” Robin throws her hands up, snatching the dice from Steve’s hand that he was just about to throw, “can you two stop? It’s a tie, move on!”
You and Steve look away from one another, raising your heads to look at Robin who glares at the two of you.
“We’ll finish and then we’re done!”
Steve groans at your words.
“No!” Robin shakes her head, “because one will win and the other won’t, and then it’s a fucking mess, so stop playing! You fought interdimensional monsters together, for fucks sake!”
“Right, that doesn’t mean anything.” Steve rolls his eyes before he looks back at you, only to see your face fall.
He almost feels guilty. You risked your life out there, not only for Max and Lucas but also for him.
“That doesn’t mean anything!? Well aren’t you fucking grateful, Harrington.”
“Everyone fought, not just you, don’t think you’re all high and mighty,” he mumbles through the anger that he is still feeling.
A part of him is begging to just move on and keep his mouth shut, but he is frustrated, not just because of the game, but because of you, every small comment from you reminds him of how much he can’t stand you.
“Hey, hey, hey, break it up,” Eddie says as he gets up from the couch, raising his hands up as he takes in the hurt but angry look in your eyes.
You shake your head, “no, no, let him keep going! I want to hear what this bastard with his hero complex has to say to me.”
Eddie can see the way Steve is fuming, the way the anger in his eyes gets stronger and stronger. He stands up, moving closer to you as you get up as well.
“You fought with us once. Once! And you think that makes you equal to us!? You have no idea what we all went through, you have no idea the people we lost along the way, you know nothing!” He snaps at you, ignoring the way you draw back as your eyes fill with something he can’t read.
Max straightens up in her seat, already reaching for her crutches as her eyes widen, seeing the way your lips twitch as blink up at Steve.
“Steve, stop!”
If he wasn’t so angry, he would have heard the fear in Max’s voice, something that normally would’ve made him draw back in an instant.
You glance at her, shaking your head, yet again. “No, Max, it’s okay.” You turn back to face him, looking into his eyes coldly – that’s the only look he knows, that’s the one he cannot stand. “What does Steve Harrington know about loss!?”
Steve feels his gut twisting, he clenches his jaw but doesn’t answer your question, he keeps staring at you.
“What? Mom and Dad left you the whole house to yourself, and you consider that loss!?” You frown, lifting your arm, you gesture to the people in the room. “I see Robin alive, I see Eddie alive, I see all of the kids alive, so who exactly did you fucking lose, Harrington?”
Behind the anger and the emptiness in your eyes, is sadness and pain, something he can’t see through the haze that he is in, right now.
All he sees is something, someone he hates, someone who acts like she knows everything, someone who does nothing but bring chaos and anger into his heart and into a friends group that is so sacred to him.
He never felt this angry before, not even when he found Nancy with Jonathan, not even when she cheated on him and left, not during a single fight with his dad, nothing had ever made him feel such rage.
“You are so fucking horrible!” He snaps at you, not caring about anything, right this second. Everyone in the room disappears, Dustin, Max and Lucas are no longer there, and neither are Robin and Eddie, it’s just you and him now. “I hate the fucking day we ran into you at Skull Rock! You are the most despicable and cold hearted bitch I’ve ever met! I would be surprised if you ever loved somebody!”
He can’t see the shock or the pain that nestles into your features.
He doesn’t even hear the gasps from the others in the room.
“Steve!” Max yells, reminding him of the fact that she is there, that everyone else is here too.
The girl almost falls over when she jumps up. Lucas stands up as well, steadying her before she can fall. They both look at you, both of them see the hurt in your eyes, the way you helplessly stare back at the guy that you risked your life for.
Robin and Eddie stare at him in disbelief, not knowing the Steve that they are looking at, right now.
All that Steve can see is red though.
“No, Mayfield, let me fucking finish because she needs to understand how terrible she is.” He practically spits in your face, not tearing his eyes away from yours, at all. “I-I mean, don’t you ever ask yourself why you don’t have anyone? Why no one bothers to stick around because I’d be really surprised if someone did – even more, I would be surprised if anyone ever loved you at all. You’re not someone easy to fucking love, Blondie. Trust me on that.”
And the moment those words fall from his lips, the room falls silent, dead silent. His heart stops racing and his skin runs cold. Suddenly, he is brought back into the room, the haze fleeting away more and more and he can now see clear again.
And as he looks at you, really looks at you, his heart drops to his stomach and every trace of anger is gone, replaced by a guilt he had never felt before.
Your eyes are filled with tears as you stare at him with nothing but pain, not a single trace of coldness in them, not a single trace of anger or indifference or even hate for the man in front of you. All he can see is pain, pain, pain.. Your tears are welling up more and more, threatening to spill down your cheeks. Your throat bobbed up and down, like you are trying to gulp down the ball of nerves and sobs threaten to fall from your lips.
For a split second, he can see through you and he sees something there never was before – something that tells him that you would let him do this, until he’d get enough of hurting you, that you would let him break you, little by little. But, he had enough.
You look down as your bottom lip starts to tremble.
As he sees that, Steve feels like the most horrible person on the planet. Worse than his dad, worse than the monsters he had fought, worse than Vecna.
What had prompted him to throw such awful and vile words at you?
The guilt that takes over almost feels unbearable and the moment he wants to take back those words, to apologize, you are already gone.
Lucas calls out to you, but the slamming of the front door is all he gets back.
Before Steve can even look around the room, his back is slammed against the nearest wall and he is met by the sight of an angry Eddie, his eyes darker than ever, nose flaring as he grips the collars of his polo, pressing him harshly against the wall.
“I would fucking punch you in the face right now, Harrington. Don’t forget who was the first person to jump into the water to save your ass!” He yells at him, giving him one final push that knocks the breath out of him before Eddie lets go and leaves to go after you.
Steve looks down, closing his eyes as he takes a deep breath.
“Steve… what the fuck?” Dustin mumbles, softly, staring at his older friend in disappointment.
Robin looks around the room, before her eyes lock on Steve, she looks at him in confusion, not understanding where all of this came from.
“Dingus.. what the hell was that? Why did you–”
“Everyone leave the room.”
It’s Max’s voice that sounds through the room, awfully calm. So calm that it takes everyone aback.
Lucas stares at his girlfriend, completely confused.
All it takes is a single look from her though and he and Dustin scatter out of the room. Dustin pulls Robin along who protests at first but follows when she looks back at Max, who only shakes her head.
It’s silent for a long minute, and Steve doesn’t know what to feel.
“That was fucked up, Steve.” Max says.
Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, fighting the tears that threaten to build up.
Not only did he hurt you, something he never thought was even possible. He also showed his friends a side of him he wanted to keep buried. A side that surely makes them feel less safe around him now.
“I-I know, I don’t.. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
Max purses her lips, looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact.
“She may not have been with us from the start, hell, I wasn’t either. It doesn’t mean that she didn’t experience it just the same. She may not have fought monsters, Steve. But the monsters have gotten to her without her knowing about them.”
You fought monsters, you fought the bats off of him.
He snaps his head up, staring at her with a frown on his face.
“Max I–”
The redhead shakes her head, anger and disappointment still on her face.
“I’m not the one you have to apologize to. I will not tell you her story, I’m not allowed to do that. But you are wrong, you are terribly wrong about everything you just said about her.”
She reaches for her crutches, giving him one final look before she leaves the room.
He stares at the ground with a gnawing feeling in his chest, hating himself more and more as the seconds go by.
The look you gave him will haunt him for the rest of his life.
How could he ruin everything in the span of a few minutes?
How could he not see the hurt in your eyes after only the first words that he threw at you?
How could he not see the vulnerable side of you?
How was he so blinded by the act you had put on?
He judged a book by its cover, just like King Steve had done in the past. There is no excuse. No fucking excuse for what he had done to you.
♡
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#steve harrington x reader#steve harrington x you#steve harrington imagine#steve harrington angst#steve harrington fanfic#Steve Harrington#stranger things angst
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don't you forget about me (part six)
(part one)(part two)(part three)(part four)(part five)
Steve allows himself a brief mental breakdown in the shower when he gets home. He lets the water mix with his tears as he curls his arms around himself and wishes with everything he is that they were Eddie’s. There’s nothing he wouldn’t give right now just to be held by him again, just to feel Eddie’s arms around him one more time. All it took was a tiny kiss on the back of his hand for Steve’s skin to remember just how much it missed that feeling. Now Steve’s entire body craves Eddie’s touch, and he shakes in its absence like an addict in withdrawal.
Then he puts himself back together, gets dressed and styles his hair and heads off to work.
They’d defeated Vecna before he could split the world into pieces or whatever his diabolical plan had been. So while Steve’s whole world may have been torn apart, while Steve’s whole world lays bruised and bandaged and amnesic in a hospital bed, the rest of the world carries on none the wiser. The rest of the world still rents VHS tapes and has movie nights and date nights and no fucking clue that they were seconds away from being dragged down into a hell dimension a couple weeks ago, so Family Video is still open for them. Fuck that.
“You’ve gotta handle the customers today because if someone starts asking me stupid questions I can’t promise I won’t snap at them,” Steve tells Robin as he drives them to their shift.
“Aw, but it’s so funny when you snap at them,” Robin quips.
“Robin.” He gives her his best I’m so fucking serious look.
Her humor dries up immediately and she nods solemnly. “Alright, yeah. I got it.”
Steve sighs, pulling into the parking lot. “Thank you.”
He busies himself with cataloging and reshelving and rewinding returns while Robin takes over the customer service part of the job. It’s mindless - mind-numbing - the monotony of the tasks exactly what Steve needs to dull out the thoughts in his brain and distract himself from the way the back of his hand still tingles from Eddie’s kiss.
When the afternoon rush dies down after a few hours and the store is all but empty, Robin sidles up next to him where he’s putting away a stack of fantasy films. “Hey.”
Her voice cuts through his focus and nearly startles Steve out of his skin. “Jesus! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“Sorry.” She grabs half the stack of tapes and starts helping him shelve. “Just wanted to check in with you, we haven’t gotten much of a chance to talk today. How are things going with Eddie?”
“It’s fine. He’s fine,” Steve grumbles, glaring down at the tape in his hands. It’s got a dragon on the cover. He thinks Eddie would probably like it. “He still doesn’t remember me, but he’s starting to see me as a friend now at least, so.” Steve shoves the movie into its spot on the shelf. “That’s something, right?”
Robin raises her eyebrows at the sharp bitterness in his tone and how forcefully he put the tape away. “Okay. Yeah. So I see we’re in the anger stage of grief now,” she comments.
Steve scoffs. If this is a stage of grief, he thinks he’s been going through them in the wrong order, or maybe all at once - a neverending ebb and flow of denial and anger and depression all swirled together into one fucked up cocktail of grief. “I’m not angry,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m just tired- emotionally burnt out, I don’t know. I just miss him and it’s not fair and I’m so fucking sick of feeling like this.”
“Yeah, that’s anger, Steve,” Robin says, infuriatingly blunt. She slides the last tape in her stack into its place and then leans against the shelf. “Did something else happen to set this off, or are you just generally overwhelmed?”
Steve sags against the shelf beside her. “Both. I don’t know. It’s stupid, it’s so fucking stupid. He just- he kissed my hand this morning, that’s it, and it wrecked me.”
“He what?” Robin questions, curiosity widening her eyes.
“He kissed my hand,” Steve repeats. He sighs and adds context, gives her a full recount of the events of that morning.
“Oh my god?!” Robin practically squawks as she backhands Steve’s arm, which is definitely not the comforting words or touch he needs from her right now.
“Ow!” he yelps, rubbing his arm. “What the hell was that for?”
“Dude. He was flirting with you,” she tells him, eyes even wider now like she’s trying to explain to him something obvious.
“What? No.” Steve shakes his head, looking at her like she’s crazy. “He definitely wasn’t.”
“Ughhh,” Robin lets out a long, dramatic groan, dragging her hands down her cheeks and pulling down her eyes. “I cannot do this with you two again. He totally was.” She drops her hands from her face so she can use them to illustrate her point as she starts to lists off, “First of all, he literally called you daddy-”
“As a joke,” Steve interrupts to protest.
“Yeah, a flirtatious one,” Robin retorts. She continues, “Then he said you have a magic touch, and then his heart literally started racing for no reason-”
“Because I was stressing him out!”
“Only after his heart rate went up in the first place, which, as I was saying, was for no reason other than the fact that you were smiling at him and holding his hand-”
“That literally doesn’t-”
“And then, he kissed your hand - pressed his lips to your skin - and told you that you were his good luck charm,” Robin finishes, looking smug like she’s said something novel and not just completely reiterated exactly what Steve had just told her only with more emphasis.
He sighs wearily. “Your point?”
“He likes you, dingus,” she says, whacking his arm again. “Don’t you get it? His mind may not remember still, but his heart is starting to.”
Steve doesn’t know what to do with that. A lump rises in his throat, a rush of jumbled emotions chafing against his already frayed edges. “Don’t say that. You don’t know that.”
“I think you should tell him what you were to each other,” Robin suggests.
“Right, yeah, okay, sure,” Steve scoffs, somewhere between sarcastic and hysterical. “And while we’re at it, I think you should tell Vickie that you like her. Because telling people things like that is so easy, isn’t it?”
Robin gives him a withering stare. “That is not the same thing at all, and you know it.”
“No, yeah, you’re right,” he agrees. “Because I know Eddie, and he would not take that news well. He already gets a little weird whenever I seem to know too much about him - if I tell him I know him biblically too-”
“Ew, don’t tell him like that!”
“Doesn’t matter if I tell him like that; I say we’ve been together for 9 months, he’s going to assume we’ve-”
“God, okay, I get it!”
“See? It would freak him out,” Steve concludes, crossing his arms. “Even if he does…like me again or whatever, he definitely wouldn’t anymore and it would just generally make him uncomfortable. So I can’t tell him. I just have to keep waiting for him to remember on his own, even though it’s fucking killing me,” he says, his voice harsh as he tries to keep it from breaking. “It’s what’s best for Eddie.”
“Steve-” Robin starts, frowning like she’s only just beginning to realize she may have pushed him too far, but whatever it is she was going to say is cut off by the ringing of the bell that announces the front door being open.
“Customers.” Steve points his chin towards the couple who just walked in, a bitter jealousy boiling in his stomach as he watches them walk hand in hand towards the romance aisle. It’s not fucking fair. He shoves himself away from the shelves and mutters, “I’m taking my break.”
He stalks to the breakroom, closes the door, and sinks to the floor with his back against it. The tears in his eyes feel like they’re made of acid, like they would carve tracks into his skin if they were to spill down his cheeks. He wraps his arms around himself again. The thoughts in his head are made of acid too, bitter and burning and cursing everyone who gets to enjoy their lover's touch while he suffers without his.
Steve’s brain feels corroded, corrupted. “He likes you,” Robin’s words echo there too, “his mind may not remember still, but his heart is starting to.” Would Eddie touch him now if he asked? Would he trace his fingers across Steve’s skin, kiss more than just the back of his hand? Steve digs his own fingers into his sides. He feels gross, he feels rotten. It wouldn’t be right to ask that of Eddie without him knowing the truth, to take advantage of him like that. It wouldn’t be the same, anyways. The superficial touch of a boy with the beginnings of a crush is not the tender lover’s caress that Steve craves.
That is if Robin is even right about Eddie redeveloping feelings. Which she probably isn’t.
Steve’s just being stupid and selfish again. He wants to remove his brain from his skull so he can stop thinking, tear his heart from his chest so he can stop feeling; both so burned and decayed he thinks if he held them in his hands they would dissolve and crumble to dust and ash and sludge between his fingers.
Fifteen minutes pass, and Steve forces himself to be fine. He peels himself off the breakroom floor and returns to work, continues the tedious tasks that he hopes will numb him out again.
Robin catches his eye from across the room where she’s sorting a customer’s cash at the register. I’m sorry, her expression says, I didn’t mean to make you upset.
Steve gives a tiny shake of his head and a small smile. It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault, his own expression reassures her. You meant well. I’m not mad at you.
They don’t talk about Eddie again that day. The next time there’s a lull in customers and they’re able to chat again, Steve tells Robin he honestly just needs a distraction right now, and he lets her ramble on about Vickie and band and school and her impending graduation and the movie she watched last night and whatever other random thoughts are bouncing around that hyperactive head of hers. Her voice fills in the cracks in Steve’s brain, keeps it from falling apart completely. She’s always been good at that, and he’s grateful for it.
Then he drops Robin off after work and he drives away alone in silence because all the songs on the radio are love songs, and he drives back to the hospital - back to the source of his grief again and again like some sort of fucking masochist - because Eddie needs him. Because Steve loves him.
~
Eddie cannot help the way his face all but beams the second Steve walks back into his room that evening. “There you are, Stevie! How was work?”
Steve returns the smile, genuine, but there’s a tiredness to it. “It was alright. Bit boring, really, uneventful. How are you doing?”
“I’m good,” Eddie says, adding with a jaunty grin, “All the better now that you’re back.”
It comes out a bit more flirtatious than he intended, but thankfully Steve just laughs it off. “Alright, smoothtalker,” he scoffs through a chuckle as he takes his usual seat by the bed. “It’s nice to see you again too.”
“Oh, the actual doctor came in to talk to me today. Good news, don’t worry,” Eddie tells him, the last bit tacked on quickly before that concerned crease can appear between Steve’s brows. “She says I’m healing up nicely, and I might be able to be discharged soon. A few more days’ observation and then they're gonna see how well I can actually move since, you know, the bats chewed through half the muscles in one of my legs. But, yeah, I could be out of here by the end of next week.”
“That’s great, Eddie!” Steve brightens.
“Yeah.” Eddie smiles. “I can’t wait to be somewhere familiar, feel normal again. Or, well,” he amends, smile falling a little as he realizes, “as normal as I can feel given that I’ll probably be walking with a limp for the rest of my life and be covered in nasty scars all over.”
A strange expression crosses Steve’s face then, something happy and sad and sympathetic all at once, and his voice is soft as he says, “We’ll match.”
Eddie blinks at him. “What?”
“The scars,” Steve clarifies. “The bats got me too, you know. I was lucky, it wasn’t as bad for me as it was for you, but, uh- yeah, we’ll match. See?” He stands and pulls his shirt up a bit.
Eddie’s heart rate immediately kicks up again, blood growing warm, as his eyes snap to Steve’s stomach, to skin and muscle and body hair and- oh. Two giant, jagged red scabs cover Steve’s sides, the edges fading into skin bumpy and pink and white with the beginnings of scarring. The bite on Eddie’s own side twinges in sympathy. “That’s-” He swallows back the word hot, and breathes out instead, “Holy shit.” Without really thinking, he finds himself reaching out to skim his fingers over the ridges of Steve’s scars.
Steve gasps - full body shudders - at the touch, and Eddie instantly pulls his hand back, afraid he’s hurt him. “Sorry,” he mutters.
“No, it’s fine,” Steve manages, though it sounds a bit shaky. “You didn’t hurt me, I just- I wasn’t expecting it.”
Eddie tentatively starts to reach back out; Steve nods. He slowly traces the outline of the wound again, every uneven edge, feeling the evidence of hurt and the evidence of healing and the ripple of each breath Steve takes - breaths that echo in the quiet that falls between them. Eddie doesn’t realize just how intimate this silence has become as he runs his hands across Steve’s skin, until he glances up to find Steve just…watching him. It’s impossible to tell exactly what emotion is behind his eyes, but it’s intense and it’s devastating, and Eddie suddenly feels like he can’t breathe.
“Uh-” A nervous laugh stutters out of him. He rescinds his touch. “Twin scars, huh?” he remarks, cracking a crooked smile and attempting to change this strange, suffocating energy with a joke. “Hell of a matching tattoo. Next time let’s just exchange friendship bracelets like normal people do, yeah?”
Steve huffs, a short burst of laughter that escapes from his chest like it’s been punched out of him. “Since when have you ever done anything like a normal person?” he teases in return as he pulls his shirt back down.
Just like that, blown away by Steve’s playful smile, the weird tension lifts. Eddie grins back. “Alright, fair point.” He adds, “Those are gonna be some pretty metal scars, Stevie.”
“Not as metal as yours,” Steve says warmly, settling back in his chair and kicking one leg over the other. “You’re the one that literally survived death, Ed. It doesn’t get any more metal than that.”
“Now who’s the smoothtalker?” Eddie smirks, and he hopes he isn’t blushing. Steve Harrington calling him metal with so much pride and affection in his voice is doing numbers on his heart. Curse this stupid fucking crush.
Steve eyes divert briefly to the heart monitor, which has not once calmed down since the second he’d lifted up his shirt, and Eddie is so sure that he knows then, that he’s finally made the connection between what’s got Eddie’s heart racing, but he doesn’t say anything, just laughs it off again, smiling like everything’s completely normal as he looks back at Eddie and rolls his eyes and mutters in return, “Shut up.”
“Make me,” Eddie mumbles, not quick enough to bite back the words before they fall from his mouth, only managing to lower his voice enough that maybe Steve didn’t hear him.
“What?”
“TV?” Eddie grabs the remote, pretends like that’s what he’d said in the first place. Real smooth.
“Oh, sure.” Steve shrugs. If he noticed Eddie’s slip, he gives no indication of it.
Eddie turns on the TV and they spend the next hour or so laughing and making fun of the bad acting on the show that’s playing. Easy, normal, platonic. Eddie’s heart rate stabilizes, remaining even so long as he doesn’t look too long at Steve’s smile.
When sleep starts lapping at Eddie’s consciousness, he doesn’t fear it anymore. Silently, he holds out his hand, and Steve takes it, wrapping him in the warmth and protection that allows Eddie to let himself drift off undaunted.
And in his dreams his hands skate across Steve’s skin again.
(part seven)
taglist (CLOSED): @romanticdestruction @daydreamsandcrashingwaves @paintsplatteredandimperfect @hallucinatedjosten @mugloversonly @estrellami-1 @alongcomesaspider @thatonebadideapanda @tell-me-a-secret-a-nice-one @dragonmama76 @wxrmland @nuggies4life @sirsnacksalot @myguiltyartpleasure @lolawonsstuff @marklee-blackmore @vinteraltus @sebastiansstanswhore @0happyeverafter0 @scarlet-malfoy @hotluncheddie @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @emsgoodthinkin @alyelf @warlordess @stevesbipanic @lil-gremlin-things @rockandrolodex @badcaseofcasey @bat-outta-hel @fandomcartographer @manda-panda-monium @littlewildflowerkitten @giopandaonice @mightbeasleep @queenie-ofthe-void @krazyperson @worldofshea @marvel-ous-m @tartarusknight @a-little-unsteddie @xenon-demon @goodolefashionedloverboi @xxsky-shockxx @mc-i-r @bookbinderbitch @aspenshade88 @slowandsteddie @thedragonsaunt @daydreaming-mood @space-invading-pigeon @irregular-child @a-lovely-craziness (taglist continued in replies; please lmk if you'd like to be removed from this list. if you didn't make the taglist but still wanna follow along, you can follow the tag #dyfamsteddiefic to keep up with new updates!)
#giving steve mental breakdowns is my favorite hobby actually can you tell#one or two more parts i think i can't decide#should i resolve it in the next part or drag it out an extra chapter and write out some more of eddie's dream memories???#steddie#steddie angst#steddie fic#steddie fanfic#steddie fanfiction#steve harrington#eddie munson#stranger things#fanfic#mine#dyfamsteddiefic
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The Munson Jinx
rating: T | cw: Eddie’s near-death experience, blood, mention of anxiety attack | tags: hurt/comfort, happy ending, getting together | wc: 885
written for @steddieholidaydrabbles | Dec 10: First kiss
Eddie hates first kisses.
In his experience, kissing a stranger’s lips always goes wrong. You can ask Isabelle Thesault, the first and only girl he’d kissed who never spoke to him again after he threw up on her face in seventh grade and ruined her Barbie t-shirt. Or Riley Nicks, who immediately punched him in their freshman year. Or David Young, a drunk jock who threw up in Eddie’s mouth and ruined his appetite for two days. Or Mortimer Lee, who bit Eddie’s lower lip and tongue too hard. Or that one older guy at the Bloomington bar which gave Eddie an explosive anxiety attack. Or-
You get the gist.
Hence, first kisses have snuck into the Munson Doctrine. You shall not passionately make out with another man. Remember the Isabelle incident if you’re tempted.
That is not to say that Eddie still yearns for that kind of romantic connection. There’s really nothing more intimate than letting the barriers down and allow another person to come close and gently kiss you. But that’s all Eddie can do: imagine a perfect scenario where nothing happens and the Munson jinx doesn’t foil another kiss.
Then the Munson jinx seems to move on from let’s make Eddie’s every first kiss horrible to let’s turn Eddie’s life a literal nightmare where bone-breaking interdimensional wizards exist.
At least Steve Harrington’s in it this time.
To be honest, Eddie doesn’t have much to say about Steve. Sure, he thought the old King of Hawkins was a douche, but after seeing him try and help out with Eddie’s new life as a murder suspect and kill a demon bat with his bare hands-
To say that Steve is a nice guy might be an understatement.
But he squashes down the newborn puppy crush. He’s seen how Steve’s gaze lingers on Nancy recently, back on the boat and here as they walk through the Upside Down. He thinks about how lonely Steve had been a couple years back after the breakup. So Eddie tells Steve about going for that second chance and this time, Nancy Wheeler will stay.
Except while Eddie is talking, he notices that Steve’s just looking at him. His eyes are briefly unfocused, flickering twice to Eddie’s lips-
Oh no.
Eddie just stands there with wide eyes like an idiot, panicking internally, thinking back to Isabella and Riley and that Bloomington man as Steve starts to lean closer-
When a tremor sends them falling on their asses, Eddie’s thinking how lucky he is that this happened before Steve’s lips touched his.
They don’t talk about it. It’s been a blur of frantic panic and cold planning to kill Vecna once and for all that Eddie kind of forgets about the incident.
Until he lies bleeding on the frigid ground with Henderson weeping over him, only for Steve’s head to shove into Eddie’s blurry view.
The first thing he feels is Steve’s lips on his, breathing a lungful into his coppery mouth.
Immediately, Eddie jerks away. Stupid flashbacks of spoiled kisses flash before his eyes, which were way worse than his own life.
“Don’t move, idiot!” Steve shouts at him, hands pressing firmly against one of Eddie’s bite wounds on his side.
Eddie tries to say something back, but instead spits out a gross glob of blood and mucus and promptly blacks out.
—
“Any five’s?”
“Go fish.”
Eddie grumbles and drops the cards on his lap, “Now this is unfair. Taking advantage of a hospital patient like this.”
Steve gives an amused huff as he takes Eddie’s cards and reshuffles the deck. It’s been part of a weird routine once Eddie had woke up and slowly regained his motor muscles. Steve visits, they talk about whatever (mostly the kids or Hawkins gossip), play some cards, share a questionably tense staring contest, and Steve leaves.
This time, Steve breaks it and asks, “Are you still okay with me?”
Eddie blinks at him, fighting off exhaustion, “Hm, what?”
Steve just stares down at the cards. “You know that I tried to kiss you. Back at those woods.” He says with clipped words, almost like he’s trying to suck out any hint of emotions. “Just say you’re not comfortable with me and I’ll get out of your hair, man.”
Eddie stares at him. Steve, the man who tried to kiss him once and then again just to save Eddie’s life even as he nearly choked on his own blood. Steve, who does everything for his kids and friends, including Eddie who’s still too new to this shit.
Steve, who sees something desirable in Eddie and wanted to kiss him.
Before Steve can get up, Eddie shifts closer and cups the man’s face with his palm. He closes his eyes, barely catching Steve’s startled look, and leans in.
For a moment, nothing happens. It’s good because nothing is going to be ruined. But then it’s bad because Eddie can feel how stock-still Steve is. However, just as he starts to pull away, Steve seems to spark to life and his lips chases after him. His hand gently grips onto Eddie’s bicep, making Eddie smile at the contact.
As they safely make out in the sterile hospital room without either of them throwing up or freaking out, Eddie mentally gives the finger to the Munson jinx.
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Steve expected things to get a lot worse after the gates opened. But everything is… quiet. The few monsters that do come through are few and far between. Easily dealt with. And the spores aren’t as harmful if exposure if kept to a minimum.
There’s no overwhelming attack. There’s no end of the world. There’s no… Vecna.
El thinks he must be too weak after their last attack. He must be trying to heal, unwilling to attack again until he’s certain he can finally and truly overpower her, once and for all. But, as El insists, that won’t happen. She practices everyday to make sure, stretching her powers and abilities further, and further, and further. Until her nose stops bleeding at the smaller things.
Steves only task is keeping Dustin sane. It’s not an easy task either. He prefers to stay locked away in his room, all the time now. He’d struggled to help with the relief efforts at first, pushing through day after day. But after he told Wayne that Eddie… that he’s gone? Dustin seemed to just… wilt.
He still lets Steve visit. He seems to love the days where Steve can hang out with him for the whole day. He doesn’t mind the company. It’s… the idea of getting up, of actually doing something… even the idea seems to drain him.
Steve keeps visiting him, everyday, as long as he can. He always asks if it’s finally the day that Dustin feels ready to go out. It never is. But he keeps asking anyway.
Those visits are some of the rare moments that Robin isn’t glued to him. He had thought they’d been bad, in terms of their need to see each other and make sure they’re ok, but it’s worse than ever. The guest room is so full of her stuff that she practically lives there. She sleeps there more nights than she does her parents anyway. He’s sure that it’s just a matter of time until she finally moves in.
Just as he’s starting to let his guard down, finding a comfortable routine between visiting Dustin or Max and his work at the make-shift relief centre with Robin, things get… weird.
He’d been folding up some of the clothes they’d gotten in their last batch of donations. Robin was next to him, but too absorbed in her conversation with Vickie to notice that Steve just… stopped.
It felt like something in his head had clicked into place. Like there was some cord in the back of his head that had been floating, loose, but it had finally clicked into place. A buzzing he hadn’t known had been constantly thrumming in his ears finally going silent.
He feels confused. But that quickly turns into panic, distress. Which is… confusing. As weird as the sensation is, he has a lot of problems with his head. It’s not something to panic over. But he’s panicking. He can’t breathe. He has the urge to sweep his hands over himself, checking injuries that aren’t there.
“Steve?!” Robin screams, shaking him.
He blinks at her, dazed, confused. “What?”
“I was calling your name for like five minutes!” She looks close to tears. Even Vickie looks scared, hovering behind her. “What the hell is going on? Steve-”
“I think somethings wrong,” he manages to slur, before his eyes roll back.
But he blinks and he’s… awake? Dreaming? He feels disconnected, yet more attuned to the specifics of his body and its movement than ever before. Every twitch, shift, turn, feels wrong. Nothing feels like him, like Steve.
Lightning cracks, drowning the darkness in red.
The Upside Down.
“No, no, no,” someone mutters… he mutters… Steve isn’t sure. The voice is so familiar that he refuses, for a moment, to recognize it. The hand the points at a nearby demobat, angry and jabbing, only makes his denial harder to maintain. “If this is your hive mind, I’m gonna flip my shit, ok? None of you bitches are allowed in my head.”
Eddie.
He startles, before freezing. He slowly turns, looking around the dark and warped street. It’s empty. It’s just him. Just Eddie. Just Steve.
“Steve?” He asks- Eddie asks. “Wait- oh! Lights!”
No, Steve thinks. He tries to focus, tries to actively think at him. That won’t… I’m not here.
“What? Wait- can you hear me?!” Eddie starts looking around again, but with more desperation. He keeps turning.
Stop, stop, please, you’re making me dizzy.
Eddie stops, stills. One hand comes up, poking themselves in the head. “Is that… you? In my head?”
I don’t know. What the fuck is happening?
"How the fuck am I supposed to know?! Oh Jesus, man, I am freaking out here."
Calm down, Steve tries to make the thought sound postive- he's not sure he's successful. I'll... let the others know, yeah? And then we'll come get you. We can figure this... oh, that feels weird.
"What does? Steve? What's going on?"
I think I'm waking up? Don't panic, we'll figure this out. We're gonna
"What? We're gonna what?" Eddie turns around, desperate, as though he'll finally find Steve if he keeps trying. "Steve?!"
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the great divide (steve harrington x fem!reader)
Summary: (Post Season 4 AU, the sequel to orange juice) After your miraculous return to the land of the living, you aren't doing well.
Word Count: ~12k
Warnings: 18+ PLEASE!!!! for language, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. The reader has panic attacks and intrusive thoughts about Not Wanting To Be Alive. If that will be triggering for you please don't read this (read my happier bloom series instead). there's also an allusion to a relapse, slut-shaming, and allusions to sex (although there's no smut, it just gets slightly steamy). this fic is angst + hurt/comfort with an optimistic ending. inspired by noah kahan's music (including this amazing demo on instagram).
a/n: please let me know if i missed any warnings. please don't read this if you think it will be too triggering. the last thing i want is to make someone upset! but writing this was cathartic and helped me work through some things, i think. writing is magical!
🫀🫀🫀
THE GREAT DIVIDE
SOMETIME IN 1987
You aren’t sure how long it’s been since you last saw your friends. It feels like a fucking long time.
You woke up on the ground of the Upside Down, covered in dried blood and terrified at the sight of Vecna towering above you.
He brought you back to life. He wanted to send you back home and use you as a soldier and spy, the same thing he did to Will, Billy, Heather, and countless others.
“If you do this,” Vecna had growled, “You can once again see your family. Your friends. Your beloved Steven. Otherwise…you will die here.”
You refused, not interested in being his lackey. He tried to flay you anyway, but he was weak from the hell Nancy, Steve, and Robin rained down on him, allowing you to escape his clutches.
He stalked you for days, finally catching up to you—but you got the upper hand, using Eddie’s spear to stab him. Repeatedly.
Killing Vecna caused the gates he opened to sew themselves back shut before you could get through. You were glad that your friends no longer had to worry about Vecna and his army of monsters pouring through the four gates, but it meant you were trapped on the wrong side of the universe.
Vecna gone meant the Upside Down could revert back to what it was before he arrived. Now, the sky of the Upside Down was a buttery yellow, and it was much warmer. You saw patches of green grass and flowers starting to grow in various spots around town. But it still felt like a nightmare.
You wander the Upside Down each day with a routine: avoid monsters, forage for food and clean water, and visit the gates to see if any of them reopened. Food and water aren’t as hard to find as you feared, since the world isn’t so much of a poison, desolate nightmare anymore. But the gates stay staunchly shut, much to your chagrin.
You miss your life. You miss Steve. You miss his laugh, his smile, his kisses, his touch. You would do ungodly things to see him again.
You hope he’s okay. Any time you want to give up, you remind yourself that if roles were reversed, Steve would keep fighting to come back to you no matter what.
And, to your pleasant surprise, he does just that.
🫀🫀🫀
AUGUST 1987
It’s been three months since you returned to the land of the living. You’re not taking it well.
Surviving the Upside Down meant constantly being in fight-or-flight, scrambling to find food and clean water while avoiding demo-creature attacks. Without Vecna’s evil influence, the animals weren’t so bloodthirsty—but they still needed to eat.
You were able to avoid them, surviving yourself off disgusting canned food from the Upside Down’s version of the Big Buy and whatever houses you ransacked. It wasn’t very appetizing. It made the meal you were serving up today seem like a 5-star, 5-course delight.
It was neither of those things. It was for a church potluck that your mother had a hand in throwing. Lots of casseroles and carbs. She dragged you along to volunteer in hopes to get you out of the house.
Ever since you left the hospital in May, you’d only ever left the house to go to doctor’s appointments, therapy appointments, and Steve’s place. Your parents wanted to encourage more of a well-rounded life and schedule, and although they’d never admit it, you figured they hoped you’d turn back to your normal self. To the person you were before it all happened.
You think she might have died.
As you plate some macaroni and cornbread for your next patron, you sense eyes on you. You glance over and see two women at a table a few feet away. To your chagrin, they’re gossiping about you.
“I mean, it’s appalling,” an old bat named Shirley hisses. “She claims to have lost her memory after the earthquake and gotten lost, but it’s obvious that she just ran away.”
“Probably thought she was grown up, that she knew better than her parents,” Mildred says with a sniff, adjusting her too-big glasses.
“I can’t believe she left poor Steve Harrington high and dry,” Shirley adds.
Your heart clenches at the fact that these women see you as a villain, as an irresponsible idiot who up and left everyone who loved her out of spite. If they knew the truth…if they knew the nightmare you’d survived…
It only gets worse from there.
“You know what Cynthia told me?” Mildred says. “That her cousin’s roommate’s friend’s brother saw Y/N working a street corner in Manassas. It's just shameful.”
Anger burns through you, hot like hellfire. So, what? You’re not just a flake—you’re a slut to this people now, too? What happened to ‘loving thy neighbor’ and ‘forgiveness’ and all that shit?
“Can I get some more of that?” an elderly man says.
It snaps you back to your task at hand: dishing out food to hungry churchgoers.
“Ah, yeah,” you say. You dump macaroni on his Styrofoam plate. “Sorry. Here you go.”
The man smiles and ambles off. You take a deep breath and try your best to tune out the whispers of the chattering hens.
Your mother must notice the scowl on your face. She makes her way to you, practically floating, as graceful as ever. She’s totally in her element. She deserves a daughter who doesn’t clomp and stumble her way through life. Who doesn’t jump at every loud noise and sleep with a hunting knife under her pillow.
“Doing all right?” your mother asks you, giving you that sympathetic look that you think you might despise by now.
You muster up a smile of your own and nod.
Your mother can’t tell its fake and beams.
“See?” she says. “I knew getting you out of the house would turn that frown upside-down!”
She doesn’t know about the Upside Down. She thinks you got injured in the earthquake, stumbled through the Indiana woodlands, and got found by cops two states over. That you couldn’t remember where you came from due to amnesia, that since they pronounced you dead no one assumed you were the missing girl from Hawkins until your memories came back.
You let her comment slide and fake a smile, figuring it’s better to pretend you’re fine than feel it all.
🫀🫀🫀
That night, you chat with Steve on the phone. He’s gone back to college for the fall semester and you miss him terribly.
He promised he’d come back to Hawkins every other weekend. He knows how hard it’s been for you coming back. Or, he says he knows. Sometimes, you get the idea that he doesn’t really understand.
How could he? Every time he tries to get you to open up about what happened and what you went through, you shut down.
However, when he asks how your day was, you decide to be honest.
“It sucked,” you say. You blow out a huff of air. “These old crones were being total bitches at the church potluck. Apparently, the new conspiracy theory is that I was turning tricks in Virginia.”
“Ugh, I’m so sorry Y/N,” Steve says. For some reason, the sympathy in his voice makes you wince.
“But it’s fine,” you say quickly. “I don’t care what they say about me.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line.
“It’s okay if you do, you know,” Steve says, speaking slowly and carefully as if he’s worried about setting you off. (For good reason; you’ve been prone to outbursts of anger lately.)
“I know!” you say, defensiveness seeping into your tone. “But I don’t give a shit. Really.”
“Good,” Steve says. But he sounds unconvinced. “You shouldn’t.”
Another pause. It lasts a little too long for your liking. You clear your throat.
“I should probably shower and head to bed,” you say. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah, totally,” Steve says. You don’t understand why he sounds almost intrigued by the prospect of your boring nighttime routine until he says, “A shower with you sounds like heaven right now…”
Shit. You’re really not in the mood for phone sex. Even if that’s not what Steve is angling for, just slightly flirty banter doesn’t sound fun to you either.
Steve has been a total gentleman ever since you got back. You’ve kissed a little, but anytime he tries to take it further, you stop him. As much as you longed for him in every sense while in the Upside Down, you don’t feel ready to re-engage in those kinds of activities—like you’ve been shot back to the insecure, unconfident person you were before you started dating Steve.
He respects those boundaries and never, ever presses for more. But you worry he’s getting bored and wants to get back into old habits, possibly evidenced by his shower comment.
You’re a coward. You don’t tell him outright that you’re not in the mood, afraid he’ll have an out-of-character reaction and chew you out for being a prude or a tease.
“Huh?” you say. Steve starts to repeat his salacious comment, but you interrupt with: “Bad…connection…can’t…better…”
You hang up the phone and let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.
🫀🫀🫀
OCTOBER 1987
It’s a Thursday in October, and you’re taking a trip for the first time in a long time.
“You have everything you need?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Toothbrush? Extra socks? Lambchop?”
You huff and roll your eyes, crossing your arms like a petulant teenager.
“Mom! I’m an adult. I do not need a stuffed animal.”
“But you packed her, right?”
You mumble out a “Yes” as she pulls up to the parking lot near Steve’s apartment building.
You applied for spring admission at the University of Indiana. Your lovely boyfriend invited you to stay with him for a few days so he could show you around campus for homecoming weekend.
Tonight is the unofficial campus tour with “Tour Guide Steve.” Tomorrow, you’ll help him and his friends put the finishing touches on a homecoming parade float, and Saturday is the big football game.
Before your disappearance and assumed death, your parents were insanely strict about you staying the night with Steve and wouldn’t have allowed it. Now, they’ve mellowed out—but you hate thinking it’s because of some kind of twisted pity.
Steve must have seen your mom’s minivan pull up from his apartment window, because he jogs over to you before you’ve even grabbed your bag from the trunk.
“Hey, babe!” he says with a beaming grin; the picture of exuberance. You can feel his excitement roll off him in waves. You feel like an asshole for matching his energy. Even though you’re excited for time with Steve, you have a pit in your stomach at the thought of being away from home for so many days.
Of course, if you get accepted to U of I, you’ll be away from home for weeks at a time. You try not to think about that.
Steve hugs you tightly, and you hope he can’t sense your apprehension.
He seems not too, still smiling as he gives your mom a quick hug and then offers to carry your duffel bag for you.
You give your mom a hug goodbye, promising to call if you want to get picked up early.
You and Steve wave as your mom drives away. After dropping your bag off at his apartment, Steve takes you on an abridged campus tour that ends at the dining hall. He wants to introduce you to his friends.
He has friends here. Of course he does, you’re glad he does. No one should feel like they don’t have friends, or like their girlfriend is their only friend. But what does it mean that your boyfriend is your only friend lately?
Nancy’s off at Emerson. As for the Hawkins crew, Jonathan’s busy with family stuff, helping Joyce and Hopper renovate their new house. Eddie’s preoccupied with his band, trying to get Corroded Coffin off the ground after a he-was-accused-of-murder hiatus. And Robin’s a student at Roane County Community College, spending her days with marching band and classes and clubs and work.
They’ve started inviting you to things, and sometimes you go. You usually don’t have much fun, distracted with your own anxieties and unable to think of anything interesting to say.
So, the fact that Steve seems to have moved on from everything so easily and has a pack of friends at college makes you feel pathetic, even though it shouldn’t.
At the dining hall, Steve introduces you to his buddies. When Steve lived on-campus last semester, Gus was his roommate. Now Steve’s moved into his own apartment off-campus, but the boys still hang out often and play together on a club basketball team.
Jessica is Gus’ girlfriend. She has a kind smile and compliments your sweater.
The last friend in their clique is Rochelle. She’s tall and slender, like a supermodel. Apparently, she and Jessica grew up together and are good friends.
Everyone greets you happily when Steve introduces you—except Rochelle, who looks you up and down like she’s inspecting you. It makes you uneasy.
You immediately start to dislike her more when she laughs loudly at Steve’s jokes and squeezes his shoulder flirtatiously.
“You are tew much, Harrington,” Rochelle says, flipping her shiny hair over her shoulder.
It makes you feel tense and jealous and angry and sick all at once.
You’re completely content to listen in silence while the others chat, but then Jessica asks where you go to school.
“Oh, um, here, in the spring,” you say. “Uh, hopefully.”
“That’s awesome!” Gus says. “You get the full Hoosiers homecoming experience a whole semester before having to pay tuition.”
You chuckle and smile. Any good feelings you have about this interaction come crashing down when Rochelle asks, “So, like, if you aren’t a student right now, what do you do?”
“She’s working at Sonic,” Steve says. “Saving up money. Right babe?”
You turn to him, face falling. You’re not working. You tried to apply for a job at Sonic and had a panic attack when you saw the gap in your resume from your 15 months in the Upside Down, so you roller-skated your way home to unemployment.
Did you not tell Steve that? You suppose you “forgot” to tell him about that panic episode.
“Uh, actually no,” you say, furrowing your brow. “Not anymore. I’m just taking a semester off.”
Surprise flashes behind Steve’s eyes, but he recovers quickly. He throws an arm around your shoulders and says, “Right, of course.”
The rest of the conversation is mostly you smiling and nodding along to the funny stories and inside jokes the group shares. When you and Steve get back to his place later that evening, you apologize for not updating him on the Sonic situation sooner.
Steve waves away your apology.
“Don’t even worry about it,” he says.
“But I feel bad,” you say, fidgeting with your fingers while you sit next to him on the couch. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”
(You didn’t truly forget. You were embarrassed and didn’t want him to know.)
“These things happen,” Steve says. “I totally get it. For a few months after Vecna and…you, my brain was like scrambled eggs. I’d drink myself to a coma every other night. I definitely didn’t have the sharpest mind.”
You appreciate him for understanding. Except you feel shitty because you’re lying to him about forgetting. It’s a vicious cycle.
The two of you put on a movie, and while you’re lying on the couch with him, you start thinking of something you haven’t done in a long, long time.
You lightly trace your hand up and down the arm that’s wrapped around your middle.
“Hey,” you say quietly. “Would you want to…”
You clear your throat.
“What?” Steve asks.
You aren’t sure how to ask for what you want without sounding wholly desperate and/or pathetic and/or like the horniest bastard alive.
“Go to your room?” you say.
“Sure, if you want, we can go to sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
You laugh lightly.
“No, I mean. You know.”
You wiggle your eyebrows and Steve’s jaw drops. Mouth agape, like a goldfish, his brains seems to short circuit.
The air is charged with something you haven’t felt in a long time.
“Are you sure?” Steve says, a barely audibly whisper. His hand cups your cheek so delicately, and you feel cherished. Love. Seen.
“I am,” you whisper back, before pulling him closer to you for a kiss.
It’s the kind of kiss you dreamed about while you were trapped in another universe.
It makes you feel electric, the same way your first kiss had. That iconic kiss happened because Steve found out you’d never played spin the bottle. In his kitchen late, late at night, he took an empty soda bottle and spun it on the countertop.
He had maneuvered it just right and stopped it with his hand when the bottle neck pointed right at you, like a compass needle finding truth north.
“Well, what do you know,” Steve had said at the time, with a dopey grin on his face. “It’s you.”
“If you wanted to kiss me so bad,” you had quipped, “you could’ve just asked.”
And then you two kissed like crazy, amongst other things.
Back in the present, all your hesitancies and qualms about re-engaging in intimacy and sex with Steve are thrown out the window when you feel his lips on yours.
Giddy as if it’s the first time (because, in a way, it kind of is), the two of you break apart and practically race down the hall to his bedroom. Thank goodness for no roommates, because when you’re in there, Steve slams the door and presses you against it to kiss some more, closing the gap between the metaphorical great divide that you’ve placed between you both.
You tug at his shirt, and he pulls it off before the two of you stumble into his bed.
Things heat up, and they’re going great. Steve is kissing and biting your neck, probably leaving a hickey or two, but you don’t mind. His hands are gripping your waist, practically leaving scorch marks in their wake.
You’re loving this. You’re having a great time.
Until you’re not. The trains of thought in your brain all rush from the station at the same time, colliding at a junction on the tracks.
What if you give Steve an infection? Not an STD, but like, an Upside Down sickness. You could be a carrier and not even realize it. Is that a possibility? What did Dr. Owens say last time you saw him?
He advised you not to get pregnant. He said there’s a possibility your future children could have birth defects after your time in the Upside Down. Birth defects! You’re only 21 years old and your body is poisoned. Not enough to harm you in the short term, but the long term effects on you (and your progeny) could be terrible to deal with.
But Steve really wants kids. What if he finds out you can’t give him children and he leaves you? You really, really don’t want him to leave you.
You don’t realize it, but you start breathing a little harder. To Steve, it seems like you’re insanely turned on. Mentally, your brain is on a different plane of existence.
He’s going to leave you because he’s better off without you. He doesn’t realize it yet but one day, one day. He will.
Vecna was right. Vecna said Steve would get tired and bored of you. That’s why the monster tried to recruit you, to flay you. That’s why he pursued you across the Upside Down for days, hunting you like a dog until he cornered you at the quarry.
Steve finally takes notice of your erratic breathing pattern. You’re not reacting how you usually do to his kissing. He ceases the lovefest and leans up on his elbows.
“Y/N? You okay?”
You don’t hear him. You continue to hyperventilate, your eyes screwed tightly shut.
And when you stabbed the beast through the chest with the spear Eddie left behind, you didn’t even feel sorry.
Is that the kind of person you are? A sick, violent freak?
But it was self-defense!
But if you hadn’t tried to draw the demobats away, you wouldn’t have been in that situation. You went against the plan. You caused all the bad things that happened to you.
You’re a bad person. A bad omen. A bad girlfriend. A bad daughter. A—
“Hey, can you hear me? Y/N?”
Steve’s soft, slightly panicked, voice brings you back down to reality.
You nod, eyes still shut.
“Sorry,” you say. “I don’t—I don’t know what happened.”
“It’s okay,” Steve says, still speaking quietly as if he’s afraid to scare you. You don’t feel his hands on you anymore, but you sense he’s still close. “It’s okay. Can you sit up? I think you should drink something.”
You sit up slowly and open your eyes. Steve looks frazzled, but he musters up a smile when he hands you a glass of cold water.
“Sorry,” you mumble.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
You don’t respond, just take a sip.
“Can we just go to bed?” you say after a moment, voice cracking.
Steve nods and gives your knee a gentle squeeze.
“Of course. And, hey, listen, we don’t have to have sex anytime soon, okay?”
“But—”
“No, seriously,” Steve says, shaking his head vehemently. “I mean, of course I like having sex with you. Probably too much.”
You snort and shake your head, a small smile pulling at the corners of your mouth.
“But you know I don’t mind waiting. Right?”
You nod.
“Yeah, I know.”
But as you lie awake, tossing and turning, your brain continues feeding you lie after lie, and you find yourself believing the opposite. Prude, tease. Bad girlfriend. Bad person.
🫀🫀🫀
The next morning, you, Steve, Gus, Jessica, and Rochelle work on a homecoming float for the club basketball team the boys are on.
It’s fun at first. The parking lot is filled with floats for all different student organizations. Someone is playing music a bit too loud, but the energy is electric.
It takes a turn when Steve rushes off with Gus to get more supplies.
While you’re kneeling by the float trying to staple tinsel trim around the edge, you hear Rochelle and Jessica whispering conspiratorially on the other side. They can’t see you due to a large papier mâché basketball blocking you from view.
You're awash with embarrassment, feeling warm head to toe, when you realize they’re talking about you.
“You know what Mollie told me?” Rochelle said. “When she and Steve were hooking up last year, he called her Y/N, like, three times.”
Your heart shrinks. You didn’t know Steve had been involved with anyone while you were gone. In fact, he said the opposite.
“That’s kind of sweet though, when you think about it,” Jessica muses. “But I wonder what caused Steve and Y/N to break up and then get back together. I’ve never dreamed of breaking up with Gus.”
“I heard some other super freaky stuff about her,” Rochelle says. “My sorority sister, Tina, is from Hawkins too. Apparently, Y/N had, like, amnesia or some shit after that earthquake thing. And she was like missing.”
“Damn,” Jessica says. “That’s crazy. How’d she remember stuff and get back home?”
“Who gives a shit?” Rochelle scoffs. “That’s obviously a cover story. Tina said the real story is probably something much simpler. Like she ran away to become a stripper but couldn’t hack it because she doesn’t have a good body. And, well, we’ve seen that firsthand.”
Anger and shame courses through your veins, and you tug on the hem of your sweatshirt. You’re comforted only a miniscule amount when you hear Jessica come to your defense.
“Don’t be such a jerk. And we have no idea what really happened so stop making shit up, mkay?”
“I’m just repeating what I heard. But Tina’s right, her whole deal is so weird. I can’t believe she’s Steve’s girlfriend. He deserves better.”
Those words echo in your head. He deserves better. He deserves better. You’ve been thinking that a lot yourself lately.
You don’t care if Jessica and Rochelle see you when you toss your stapler onto the ground and stomp off.
“Oh, shit,” you hear Jessica say. “Nice going, Roche.”
“It’s not my fault! I didn’t know she was creeping around!”
As you beeline through the throngs of float-makers, you bump into Steve, holding a box of glittery something. He grins at you.
“Hey, where’s the fire?”
When he notices the grim look on your face, he sobers up.
“Whoa, what happened?”
“Who’s Mollie?” you ask before you can stop yourself.
Steve pales. He swallows hard, grip on the box loosening. He gingerly sets it on the ground next to him and shrugs.
“No one.”
“Liar.”
Steve glances around before leading you away from the crowd to a secluded spot on the outskirts of the parking lot.
“She really was no one,” Steve repeats. “Just some girl I had a class with. I was lonely and she liked me, so we went out twice.”
“I heard Rochelle say you hooked up with her,” you say. You cross your arms and try to keep angry tears at bay. “You told me you didn’t find anybody else.”
“I didn’t!” Steve says, a little louder. He clears his throat. “I meant that. We almost hooked up, but I couldn’t stop thinking of you.”
You sigh and shake your head. You want to believe him so badly. But the voice in your head that’s been so cruel to you lately isn’t convinced.
“Do you still think about her?”
Steve scrunches up his face, wholly confused at your line of questioning.
“What? No, of course not. Like I said, we hung out twice, had one near-miss, and then never spoke again. Babe, is everything okay?”
He reaches a hand to your arm and you flinch away. Your action makes him frown deeper.
You rub your forehead.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” you say. “Just tired.”
A beat. You think Steve’s going to accept your answer, until: “Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not lying!” you say, irritation creeping into your tone. “I’m just tired. Okay, Steve?”
Steve fidgets from foot to foot. He’s starting to look as agitated as you feel. With an annoyingly calm, even voice, he says, “I think you’re not being honest.”
“And I think you should shut up,” you fire back, before you can stop yourself.
Steve’s face contorts into a frown, the line between his brows deepening.
“Whoa, what the hell?” he says. “Why are you being like this?”
“Because I just found out you lied about not being involved with someone while I was gone!”
Steve rubs his face with his hands, as if he’s trying to scrub away whatever he’s feeling. He takes a deep breath, another one, and then finally speaks.
“Y/N, I thought you were dead,” he says, voice strained. “You can’t seriously be jealous of me spending time with someone else because to my knowledge, I was never going to see you again.”
You know you should apologize for your outburst. Tell him about your insecurities, now dialed up to 1000 thanks to Rochelle’s comments. Rejoin his friends at the float like the normal girlfriend he probably wishes you were.
But instead, you find yourself voicing one of the fears that’s been swirling in your brain since June.
“It would be so much easier for you if that was still the case, right?” you ask, softly.
“Excuse me?” Steve asks.
“Do you ever regret it?” you ask. “Bringing me back?” He doesn’t react, doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. You clear your throat and, louder, add, “Because it would be so much simpler for you to date a girl like Mollie or Rochelle.”
“Jesus, Y/N,” Steve groans. “Don’t bring Rochelle into this.”
“Why not? She’s obviously obsessed with you!”
“Yeah?” Steve scoffs. “Well, I don’t like her. I like you.” He shakes his head, as if he’s short-circuiting, and corrects, “I love you!”
Too late. You already heard the Freudian slip of your worst nightmare. He doesn’t regard you in the same way he did before your so-called death. You’ve changed too much.
You shake your head vehemently.
“No,” you say. “No. You loved the girl I was before it all happened.”
“You’re still the same girl!”
“I’m not!” you shout. You’re so angry, so upset, so emotional, you can’t stop. You’re floating above your body and watching yourself speak when you say, “I’m not. She’s gone, and sometimes I wish you’d never brought me back so I wouldn’t feel like this.”
Steve goes still once more. When he finally replies, his voice is dangerously quiet: “How dare you say that.”
You hadn’t expected that. You’d expected him to swoop in with comforting platitudes. To hug you and promise it would all be okay. To truly hear the words you’re saying—the thoughts you’ve been too afraid to voice in therapy, thoughts you’ve sugarcoated in your mind to lessen that bitter feeling on your tongue when you finally speak them aloud.
“What?” you whisper. Your eyes sting, unshed tears collecting on your lash line.
“How dare you say that,” Steve says, shaking his head. He’s angrier than you’ve ever seen him. He runs a hand through his hair and barks out a laugh so hollow, you can practically hear the echo in his ribcage. “That’s so fucking selfish that you wish you were still down there. I was miserable without you. I didn’t want to go on. I didn’t think I could!”
He's not getting what you’re trying to say. You open your mouth to reply, to apologize, to try and fix things, but Steve continues.
“So for you to be so callous, to think so little of me, to think I’d rather date some vapid airhead just because it would be ‘simpler’? To think I somehow can’t love you anymore because of what you went through? That’s just…bullshit!”
You heave out a sob as tears roll down your cheeks. Steve’s expression morphs into one of guilt. He swallows hard.
“Y/N, I—”
“You don’t get to tell me my feelings are bullshit!” you snap. You sniffle and roughly wipe your tears away, before jabbing a finger into his chest and pressing in. “Ever since I’ve been back, it’s all about how everyone else feels about it. You and my parents are so much happier, and you seem to think I can snap back to how I was before and forget it all happened and be grateful that I survived. Well, I can’t!”
Despite your distance from the parade planning festivities, you see a few curious students glance in your direction. You can’t be bothered to care.
“I don’t know how to go on with life like normal after 15 months in that hell, and no one understands what I’m going through!” you yell. “No one has been through that! And I’m miserable and scared and anxious and I’m lying to my therapist week after week because I can’t even verbalize what I’m thinking without feeling like I’m losing my goddamn mind. So sorry if sometimes I wish all this would go away.”
Steve’s facial expression cracks your heart in seventeen pieces. He looks devastated and confused.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, somewhat cautiously. “You’re right. I’m not handling this well, not seeing it from your point of view. But this is the most you’ve expressed how you’re feeling about it all. For the past few months, I—I don’t know. I thought you were feeling okay.”
You sniffle again and shrug.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Y/N,” Steve says. He clears his throat. “This is good, I think. Well, no, it’s not good that we’re screaming at each other in the quad. But getting our feelings out is—”
“I want to go home,” you say, cutting him off.
Steve closes his eyes, sighs softly, and nods.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll drive you back to Hawkins tonight.”
“No, I want to go now,” you say, voice cracking as you try not to cry harder. “I want my mom to come get me.”
Hurt flashes on Steve’s features. “Babe, are you sure? I really don’t mind. I want to, actually. The drive will give us more of a chance to talk.”
But you’re too tired and overwhelmed to talk anymore. Steve understands, though his shoulders are slumped as the two of you walk back to his apartment.
He offers to pack your bag while you call your house. Your mom picks up on the second ring.
“Hello, Y/L/N residence.”
“Mom?” you sniff. “Can you come get me?”
“Oh, of course sweetie!” You hear the jingle of car keys. “Wait, are you crying? What’s wrong? Was it another nightmare?”
“I just don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Did you and Steve have a fight?”
“His friends were really mean,” you say quietly, deciding not to disclose that you indeed got in an argument with Steve. “This girl, Rochelle, said one of her friends from Hawkins is telling everyone I was a stripper.”
“Oh, don’t you listen to that.”
You can’t hold back tears as you begin to cry harder.
“How come everyone makes up those dumb rumors?” you say through sobs. “And if people on campus already know them, how much worse will it be if I’m a student here?!”
Your mom soothes you over the phone before promising to get there as quickly as possible. As you hang up the phone, Steve comes in from down the hall, frowning and carrying your now-packed duffel. He doesn’t even try to be subtle about his eavesdropping when he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me Rochelle said that to you?”
You shrug and look down at your feet.
Steve closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I keep replaying our conversation in my head,” he says, “and I feel like an ass.”
“You’re not, Steve.”
“No! I am. I absolutely am. You were honest and vulnerable, and I immediately got mad. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” you say flatly. Admittedly, you’re not sure if you forgive him yet. But you know you didn’t treat him well either, so you say, “I’m sorry too. I was insensitive. I know you had a hard time while I was gone—”
“But it’s nothing compared to what you were dealing with,” Steve says. He steps closer to you and intertwines your hands together. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
“My mom’s already on her way,” you say. “And you should rest up. Tomorrow’s the parade, and the homecoming game.”
“I don’t need to go to the game.”
“Steve—”
“I’d rather come back to Hawkins this weekend,” he continues. “Spend more time with you. Talk things through, you know? Maybe I can just ride with you and your mom, and Munson can bring me back Sunday.”
He’s sweet. But you aren’t sure how to tell him that you really, really don’t want to be around him right now. You don’t want to be around anyone, really.
You take a deep breath, gently drop his hands, and say, “I think I need some space.”
You can’t look Steve in the eye, but you hear the pain in his voice when he says, “Oh. Um, okay. Yeah. Of course. Space.”
You two sit in awkward silence while you wait for your mom to arrive. When she gets there, Steve continues to be a gentleman, carrying your bag for you and politely making small talk with your mom. He gives you a hug goodbye, but it doesn’t linger the way his hugs usually do.
As your mom drives away, you watch your boyfriend get smaller and smaller in the side mirror.
Before leaving, you promised him you’d call him that night.
You conveniently “forget” to do that.
He leaves a message at 9:37 p.m., asking you to call him back.
You don’t.
🫀🫀🫀
NOVEMBER 1987
“Hey, babe. It’s Steve. Again. I know we agreed on ‘space’ but I haven’t heard from you in three weeks…I don’t want to rush or smother you, but I’d really like to talk, even if it’s for, like, five minutes. So please call me back. I love you, Y/N.”
-
“Hey Y/N. Are you doing okay? Robin says she saw you and your mom at the store the other day and you just seemed kind of…out of it. To be honest, I’m worried about you. Listen, even if you don’t…even if we…even if you’ve decided you don’t want to be with me anymore, or something, I still care about you. And I’ll always be here for you, no matter what. Please call me. Bye. Love you.”
-
“Hi Y/N, I’m coming back to Hawkins for Thanksgiving. Can I come by after you and your parents have dinner? I want to check in. On how you’re doing, and on how you’re feeling about ‘us.’ Let me know, okay? Bye, Y/N.”
-
“Hey. I’m going to swing by your place after I’ve finished Thanksgiving dinner with the Buckleys. Robin told me you’ve been avoiding her too. And Eddie, and Jonathan. I know you’re going through a tough time, but don’t try to do it alone. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way last year. I’ll see you tonight, all right?”
🫀🫀🫀
You’ve spent the past month and a half wallowing. All you really do is sleep, eat, shower, and take short walks around your neighborhood for exercise. Any time Steve calls the house phone, you tell your parents to let it ring and let it go to voicemail.
It’s shitty of you, but you aren’t sure how to dig yourself out of this hole that you’ve found yourself in. You’re still feeling rather undeserving of Steve.
So when he shows up on your doorstep on Thanksgiving, wearing that maroon sweater that you’ve always just adored, the first thing you do is apologize for your radio silence. Then, you offer him pumpkin pie.
“I won’t say no,” he says. “As long as you split it with me.”
While your parents cuddle on the couch and watch It’s A Wonderful Life, you and Steve sit on the kitchen counter and eat slices of pie with whipped cream.
For a few minutes, you exchange small talk and pleasantries. Then, Steve gets down to business.
“How have you been doing, really?” Steve asks.
“Fine. Just tired.”
“Y/N,” Steve says with a sigh. “Please just be honest with me.”
You suck in a breath.
“Okay. You want honesty? I’m having a really hard time.”
“I know,” Steve says gently. “And I want to help. Can you talk to me about what’s going on?”
You consider it. You consider wrenching your heart open for him and admitting all your fears and insecurities. But last time you broached this subject with Steve and tried to be wholly honest about what you were feeling, you didn’t explain it right and he took it the wrong way.
And you also hear what sounds like Rochelle’s voice in your mind: He deserves better. He deserves better.
You save yourself the trouble and say, “I need to get my shit together. And I’m not being a very good girlfriend while I do, so I think we need to break up.”
Despite your best efforts to stay strong, you feel tears coming on. Everything only worsens when you hear Steve whisper, “What?”
He deserves better. He deserves better. He deserves better than you.
“I have to focus on myself right now,” you continue as the tears roll down your cheeks. You stab your pie with your fork and say, “I’m sorry. I love you so much—”
“I love you too, Y/N, so I—”
“—but I need to deal with this on my own. It’s not fair of me to treat you like this.” You clear your throat and add, “You deserve someone who can give you everything you want.”
“You’re what I want,” Steve says. You can’t look at him, but you get the impression that he’s tearing up too. “I mean, if this is really what you want, I’ll respect your decision completely, but I just have to know—is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
You don’t want to do this—
—but he deserves better.
“I’m sorry, but no.”
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Steve says after a beat. “Even if we aren’t together anymore, I’m still here for you. You know that, right?”
You nod, still decimating your pie slice with your fork.
“Okay, good.” He sniffles.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“Sorry. Ah, I mean—”
Steve chuckles, despite everything. You two share an awkward hug goodbye before he leaves.
You stay in the kitchen and hear him wish your parents “Happy holidays.” As you hear the front door open and shut, as you hear his car turn on and drive away, you try to convince yourself this was the correct choice. That shutting him out means he’ll live a happier life without you.
The pit of emptiness like a chasm in your soul will go away eventually, right?
🫀🫀🫀
FEBRUARY 1988
It’s been 3 months since you broke up with Steve.
You decided to defer your U of I enrollment. Steve, being a good friend, calls a few days before the semester starts asking if you’d like help moving into your dorm, and you break the news to him. He understands but sounds disappointed. It makes you feel terrible.
But this is the right choice. You aren’t ready to be away from home, away from your parents, even if it’s just a couple hours away.
You start taking community college classes to fill your time and get some credits, along with working at Bradley’s Big Buy as a stocker. It’s mindless, monotonous work. It’s kind of perfect.
What isn’t so perfect is your therapist, Elaine. She’s nice enough. But she doesn’t seem to get it. You aren’t able to fully tell her what you went through, considering she knows nothing about the Upside Down, so she can’t really help you.
When you start opening up about the dark thoughts worming their way through your mind, Elaine advocates strongly and staunchly for putting yourself out there and making new friends to fill the void. You’re starting to wonder if you’re wasting your time shelling out $50 a week.
You do think a better social life would be good for you, so you invite Robin, Eddie, and Jonathan to come over to your place for a horror movie marathon. (Nancy would be invited too, if she wasn’t away at school.) You’ve rented a D-level slasher trilogy about a man in a hockey mask attacking pageant queens. It’s small potatoes compared to what you’ve actually been through.
Jonathan agrees, but both Robin and Eddie tell you they can’t make it. Robin because she’s got the flu. Eddie because he has band practice all afternoon and into the night.
It stings like a barb ripping you open when you swing by Melvald’s for cheap movie candy and spot the two of them across the street, laughing as they head into the Hawk with…Steve, who must be home from school for the weekend.
So they do want to have a movie night. Just with Steve and not you. Message received.
You wonder if Steve said something to sour you in their eyes. You thought the breakup was amicable. You know he was upset by it, but he respected your decision. And he doesn’t seem like the type to badmouth an ex, especially after all you’ve been through together.
But anxiety rolls through your nervous system the rest of the day. As you and Jonathan watch the crappy movies, you just feel numb.
“Jee-sus!” Jonathan yelps as the killer’s chainsaw hacks through someone’s limb.
He glances your way, eyebrows raising. “What? That didn’t scare you?”
You shrug. “I’ve seen worse.”
Jonathan’s brow furrows. He leans over and pauses the movie.
“Hey, is everything okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? We can watch something else. Or, if you’d rather be alone, I can head out.”
You pick at a loose thread on the pillow in your lap.
“Are Robin and Eddie mad at me?” you whisper.
“What?” Jonathan says with a laugh. “You’re, like, the nicest person in a fifty-mile radius. Why would they be mad at you?”
The old you was nice. The current you is moody. But Jonathan is also pretty moody, so maybe your moodiness is baseline in his eyes.
“They both said they couldn’t come tonight,” you continue, “but then I saw them just an hour ago in downtown Hawkins heading into the Hawk with Steve. Why else would they make up excuses not to come unless they were mad?”
Jonathan takes a long, slow sip of his grape soda and shrugs.
“It’s probably because they don’t want you to think they chose Steve over you in the breakup.”
“But that’s exactly what they did!”
“Maybe not,” Jonathan says. “Maybe they just made the plans with Steve before you invited us over and it’s easier to turn down your invitation than cancel on him.”
That’s a very logical way of looking at it, but it still stings feeling like you’ve lost two friends since you and Steve aren’t together anymore.
You and Jonathan continue watching, but his mom calls halfway through the second movie, forcing him to leave early—something about El using telekinesis to turn her bed into a bunk bed and it backfiring horribly.
You try to push your worries out of your mind, but paranoia takes a hold. As you toss and turn in your bed that night, clutching Lambchop for a semblance of comfort, your brain bullies you.
Robin and Eddie are pissed at you. Probably because you haven’t gone to any Corroded Coffin shows since you’ve been back. You’ve been a little preoccupied.
A little selfish, more like. It doesn’t matter what you’re going through. You should still support your friends.
But why? You don’t like drinking alcohol anymore because you don’t like feeling out of control. And the Hideout is the only place Corroded Coffin plays, and that place reeks of booze and cigarettes and bad decisions.
Maybe that’s why Eddie’s mad. Is Robin mad by proxy? Did Steve shit-talk you to her? How did he describe the events of the breakup?
Were you a bad girlfriend? Are you a bad friend? Bad person?
Yes. You’re a bad person.
🫀🫀🫀
You happen to run into Robin on the community college’s campus the following Monday. You can’t help but ask if she’s feeling better.
Her eyes widen and she plasters on a smile.
“O-oh, yeah!” she says. “I’m feeling loads better. Tons! Tons better.”
“Your sinus infection is gone?” you prompt, knowing full well she told you it was the flu.
“Yep! All gone. My sinuses are as healthy as can be. I feel like I could live to be 100!”
You exchange a few more pleasantries and shuffle off.
🫀🫀🫀
MARCH 1988
There’s a dark cloud hovering over your mind. Most days, you’re lethargic. You go to classes and go to work, and you do start going to the Hideout on Tuesday nights with Jonathan and Robin to watch Eddie play with his band.
But that’s the extent of your social life. You’re feeling lonely and drained.
Things take a turn for the worse in March. It was a cold, cold winter in Hawkins, and spring is shaping up to be warmer but just as gloomy. Really bad thunderstorms shake the windowpanes of your house most days, and the streaks of lightning remind you so much of the grayish-yellow Upside Down sky, it makes you sick.
You can’t help but find yourself thinking you want to disappear to escape it all. Not die, exactly. But fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Maybe when you woke up, things would be better.
You try to explain what you’re feeling to Elaine the Therapist, and she doesn’t understand what you meant in the slightest.
“Have you gotten checked for narcolepsy?” she asks.
You give her a tight smile and say you’ll ask your doctor about it at your next checkup.
A bright spot is when Robin invites you to a party at her apartment. You forgot her and Eddie’s little white lie from a few weeks ago and RSVP yes.
The party is going well. You’re having a nice conversation with Jonathan and Eddie when Steve walks in, and he’s not alone.
Your heart sinks to your feet, through the floor, and all the way to the core of the earth when you see Steve is joined by Rochelle.
You don’t even hear any of the conversations happening around you. You quickly excuse yourself to the kitchen for a glass of water—and because you need to be alone.
You get about 15 seconds of a reprieve before Steve enters.
“Listen, it’s not what you think,” he says quickly.
“Hello to you too, Steve,” you say. You can’t even look him in the eye, choosing instead to study the ice cubes in your glass.
“I’m not here with Rochelle,” Steve continues. He runs a hand through his hair. “I mean, yes, she’s here. And I’m here. And we’re here together. But not together together! God, I’m not making any sense, am I?”
“None at all.”
“She needed a ride to her parents’ house for the weekend,” Steve explains. “She lives just forty-five minutes from here. But I guess they were out of town, and she didn’t have a key, so she’s staying with me. And she didn’t want to spend all day in my house alone, so—”
“She’s here,” you finish for him. You finally look him in the eye and force a smile. “That’s fine, Steve. You can hang out with whoever you want.”
“Trust me,” Steve snorts. “I’d rather not be hanging out with her. I’m just doing her a favor because she’s friends with Jessica and Gus.”
Before you can respond, Rochelle saunters into the kitchen. She smiles like a shark—all gums and teeth.
“Oh, it’s you!” she says. “Y/N! How have you been?”
“Fine,” you say politely. “How about you?”
“Oh, just great. Really great. Sad to not see you around campus, though. I thought you enrolled?”
She has the impressive capability of making everything single sentence sound like an insult.
“I’m going to community college instead,” you explain. “But I really should get back out there.”
You give Steve and Rochelle a wide berth before stepping back into the living room.
The rest of the party goes by fine. Except you can’t quite contain your rage watching Rochelle throw herself at Steve all afternoon.
She sits too close to him. She constantly whispers in his ear and giggles, like they’re sharing inside jokes and secrets. While Robin’s putting on a movie for everyone to watch, you swear you even see Rochelle put her hand on Steve’s thigh.
The only thing that makes you feel better is that Steve blocks every one of these advances. While Eddie regales you all with a Corroded Coffin storytime, you even notice Steve's slotted himself in between Robin and the wall, forcing Rochelle to stand off to the side near a potted plant.
When the party’s over, you wish Robin well and try to slip out unnoticed. Unfortunately, Steve has a terrible habit of noticing everything about you, and he follows you out.
“Hey, wait up!” he calls, jogging behind you as you speed walk to your car to avoid the sprinkling rain.
“Sorry, I have to go,” you say, struggling to unlock your car door.
Before you can get it unlocked and make your escape, Steve places a hand over the driver’s side door handle.
“Hold on,” he says. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Well, I have to get home—”
“This’ll take five minutes,” Steve promises. He traces an X over his heart. “Cross my heart, hope to cry.”
You scrunch your nose in confusion. “It’s ‘die.’”
“Huh?”
“It’s ‘Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.’”
Steve’s eyes widen and jaw drops, affronted. “Jesus Christ,” he grumbles. “Why would anyone ever want to do that?”
“That’s the point!” you say, and you can’t help but laugh at the appalled look on his face. “You don’t want to do that, so you keep the promise.”
“Ah. Okay, well, I’ll be fast. I just want to see how you’ve been doing these past few months. I—I miss you, you know?”
You swallow hard. The rain’s starting to pick up now. You don’t want to wait too much longer to drive home, or else it’ll be too hard to see. And if you see lightning, you’ll probably have a panic attack behind the wheel, making you a danger to yourself and others.
“I miss you too,” you say. “But I really, really need to get home now.”
You think of leaving it at that, but your heart feels as sad as the look on his face, so you add, “But you can come by my house later tonight and we can talk? Uh, how’s 8 sound?”
Steve’s face brightens. He gives you that smile that always makes your stomach do a backflip.
“I’d like that,” he says.
You smile back and open your car door. Before stepping in, you turn to him and say, “Do not bring Rochelle.”
“Cross my whatever and hope to who-gives-a-shit!” Steve says as he walks backward away from your car. You give him a small wave, which he returns, before getting in the car and driving off.
As you suspected, the drive home is much, much too anxiety-inducing. Thunder seems to shake the whole frame of the car as you drive across town. Rain falls in pails, as if angels are taking buckets and throwing them on your car specifically. Your windshield wipers can barely keep up, and cars are honking and passing you since your fear is causing you to drive about ten under the speed limit.
You try not to let that bother you as your hands grip the wheel for dear life, the muscles from your fingers up to your shoulders impossibly tense. There’s a reason your mom drove you everywhere last summer and fall. Getting back into the habit of operating a motor vehicle isn’t easy, and everything seems to scare you now.
Despite everything, the drive is going fine—until one of the cars passing you cuts a little too close as they swerve back into the right lane. They almost clip your front bumper, which causes you to panic and swerve off the road near the now defunct trailer park.
Your tires squeak on the wet grass and you slam on your breaks, heart pounding. Shuddery breaths draw in, out. In, out. You try and collect yourself and turn your left turn signal on to merge back onto the main road. However, something gray out of the corner of your eye causes you to whip your head in the direction of the trailer park.
This is where you died and were resurrected—well, the version of this in the Upside Down. In Hawkins, the area is cordoned off. No one can live there anymore, thanks to the big cracks in the earth. Once gates, they were now sealed, but they upended some trailers and tore others in two.
You see a flash of movement between two broken trailers. The gates are supposed to be closed, and there aren’t supposed to be Upside Down creatures in Hawkins anymore, but you can’t help but wonder alternatives. You feel compelled to check it out.
You turn off your car’s ignition, grab the flashlight from your glove box, and clamor out, ducking under the “CAUTION” tape and jogging into the park. You squint in the rain, the beam of your flashlight scanning the surrounding area. You step over uneven earth, wondering if you’re wasting your time and should just—
“GRRRRRROWWWLLLL!!!!!”
You whip around and gasp. The gray creature you saw wasn’t a demo-creature, but a mangy, stray dog with muddy fur. It snaps its jaws and you see three little puppies cowering under a bush behind it.
An overprotective mama dog wouldn’t have scared you two years ago. You would’ve known exactly how to handle the situation without freaking out. But now, your fear spikes and you remember the few run-ins with hungry demodogs you had in the Upside Down. The dog is blocking your way back to your car, so you turn on your heel and run in the opposite direction, toward the imposing forest.
You can’t think clearly. Your mind is on fire. All you can think is Danger! Danger! Danger! And it’s keeping you from making any rational decisions.
You swear you hear the dog chasing behind you, snarling and ready to attack. You zig-zag between trees and glance behind to see if you really are being chased.
You lose your footing on slick mud, left ankle twisting painfully as you fall to the ground. Your flashlight skitters out of your grasp and rolls away, blinking out.
Now, you’re stuck in the rain, in the dark, with an injured ankle and no flashlight. Thankfully, the dog wasn’t following. But you feel powerless, hoping you can muster any survival instincts from your time in the Upside Down to make your way back to safety.
🫀🫀🫀
At 7:58 p.m., Steve parks outside your house.
He’s more nervous than he needs to be. He tries to remember that this isn’t a visit to win you back, as much as he wishes it was. No, he’s respecting your decision. But he’s glad he has the chance to just talk to you.
After you dumped him, he spent way too much time overanalyzing that fight you two had in October. It solidified the fact that he was an ass, completely misunderstanding you and getting mad for no good fucking reason.
Admittedly, he was tempted to throw away all his progress and drink away his misery. But he didn’t, channeling that energy toward more productive things. His mind is clearer than it was, and he’s going to make it right this time. Steve wants to check on you, the way his friends checked on him while he was having a tough time. Their support was invaluable.
Steve rings your doorbell, shaking out his umbrella.
The front door swings open. Your father looks expectant, before he frowns.
“Steve, hello,” your father says. “Is Y/N with you?”
Steve’s brow furrows. “Uh, no,” he says. “I’m supposed to meet her here.”
Your father curses and puts his head in his hands.
“Is it her?” your mother says, rushing around the corner with the cordless phone tucked under her shoulder. When she sees Steve, her shoulders slump. She speaks into the phone, “Hopper, she’s still not back.”
“What’s going on?” Steve asks, heart sinking. “Y/N’s missing?”
“She never came back from Robin’s party,” your father says, stepping aside to let Steve in. “You saw her leave, right?”
“Yeah,” Steve says with a nod. His mouth feels very, very dry.
Your mother continues murmuring on the phone with Hopper, and your father continues grilling Steve: “How was she? Did she seem upset?”
“A little nervous, maybe,” Steve says. He swallows hard. “I, uh, I think she was freaked out by the storm.”
You should’ve driven her home, Steve thinks. You idiot. If something happens to her, it’ll be your fault.
“She’s been so quiet lately,” your father says, voice strained. He clears his throat. “And so jumpy. But she said she wanted to start driving again. We thought she was getting better…”
Your father looks like he’s beside himself. Steve is unsure what to say to make things right.
Your mother hangs up the phone and sighs. “Hopper’s going to go look for her,” she says. She chokes out a sob. “Oh, Roger…she’s been so down lately. What if she…”
“Let’s not speculate,” your father says firmly, though he looks anxious about the possibilities.
Your parents decide to drive around looking for you, and Steve joins the search in his own car as well. He can’t sit idly by knowing you’re out there, possibly in distress, possibly in danger.
🫀🫀🫀
While you’re sitting against a tree trunk trying to shield yourself from the rain, there’s a morbid part of you that’s okay with this.
You wanted something bad to happen. You wanted to be in some kind of distress, because you being hurt means people have to care about you. Right? They have to really, truly see that you’ve been struggling but haven’t been able to ask for proper help.
You snap yourself out of that thought process, trying to remind yourself that people do care about you. But it’s hard to feel that way when you’ve put so much distance between yourself and the people you love.
You aren’t sure how long you sit in the rain having a pity party, watching your swollen ankle get bigger and bigger. You need to ice it and elevate it. And anytime longer in this rain, you’ll catch a cold.
So, you crawl on your hands and knees and find as sturdy a branch as you can on the forest floor. You use it as a pseudo walking stick to help you hobble back toward the trailer park. You know the way, thanks to your time traversing the forest daily in the Upside Down.
As you get closer to the break in the trees, you hear people calling for you. You shuffle there faster.
“I’m here!” you yell, stumbling through the tree line. “I’m here!”
It’s Chief Powell and Hopper, and they look relieved to see you. Officer Callahan and an animal control worker are trying to coax the mama dog and her three pups into crates.
“What happened, kid?” Hopper asks, sitting with you in the backseat of Powell’s truck while the other man radios for an ambulance and a tow truck for your car. The usual gruff timbre to Hopper's voice has a softened edge to it today, like he can sense your emotional fragility.
“Some jerk pushed me off the road. And I thought I saw…I—listen, the mud made the dog’s fur look gray, and I thought it was—”
“One of these hellhounds?”
You nod.
“I’m not sure if you realize this,” Hopper says. “But it’s been two years to the day since you…you know.”
You swallow hard.
“I didn’t remember,” you admit. “I mean, I knew the anniversary was coming up soon, I just…”
“We were all worried you…did something,” Hopper continues cautiously.
“I wouldn’t,” you say, much too quickly. “I mean, I feel like shit a lot of the time, but…no. I wouldn’t.”
Hopper nods, eyeing you. He doesn’t quite look convinced.
When the ambulance arrives, he rides with you to the hospital. Then, your parents meet you at the ER, while a doctor looks over your ankle.
It’s sprained, but not broken, thankfully. They send you home with a brace, some crutches, painkillers, and instructions to elevate and ice.
The whole drive home, your parents give you a speech about how much they love you and how they want to know how you’re doing, and that if you ever feel low, to talk to them because they can help. Normally, that kind of thing would annoy you, but after today—the fear of seeing what you thought was a demodog, of being back in the wilderness by yourself, even just for a few hours—you appreciate the gesture.
It's after midnight when you get home, and the rain has finally let up. Your dad helps you up the porch stairs, leaning the side with your bad leg against him the whole way. You almost don’t notice the note tacked to the front door until your mom points it out.
It has your name on it. You open it. Parts of it have been scratched out, but you can still read it all.
Hey, Y/N. I was driving around looking for you when Hopper found me. I’m so glad to hear that you’re going to be okay.
I’ll swing by tomorrow to chat, if you’re still up for it. If not, no worries. I know it’s a tough time. I just want you to know that I miss you I care about you more than you know I’m here.
-Steve
🫀🫀🫀
When Steve comes by the next day, he’s not alone.
You’re surprised to see him and Max Mayfield standing on your porch.
“Uh, hello!” you say. “How are you, Max?”
“Pretty good,” she says, “now that Steve is taking us for ice cream.”
You raise your eyebrows and adjust your stance on your crutches.
“Oh!” you say. You look to Steve. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Everything about his posture is tense, nervous. You wonder if this is an intervention or something—if you’ll arrive at the ice cream shop and be bombarded by the rest of your friends and a licensed professional promising a “safe space.”
You tell your parents where you’re going, promising a million times that you’ll be careful, and hobble down the porch steps to Steve’s waiting car. He’s a gentleman, one hand hovering behind your back and ready to catch you if you fall.
Max lets you have the passenger seat, likely due to your injury. On the ride over, you consider (politely) asking what she’s doing there, as you expected this conversation would be about the nature of your and Steve’s relationship.
A part of you deep, deep down had hoped he would beg you to take him back. A part of you deeper down felt selfish for that, but it was what you wanted.
You made a huge mistake letting him go.
Steve ends up taking you both to Sonic, pulling into one of the parking spots and pressing the “Order” button. Max leans up from the backseat, sticking her head between the two front seats, and rattles off a complicated order of hot dogs, fries, slushies, and ice cream into the speaker.
“I thought this was just ice cream,” you say with an eyebrow raised.
Max smirks.
“Moneybags Harrington is paying,” she says, patting him on the shoulder.
“I resent that,” Steve grouses. But there’s a sparkle in his eye.
When the food comes, Steve divvies it up amongst the three of you. However, he quickly comes up with a shoddy excuse to step out of the car—something about the fries being a medium instead of a large.
Max climbs over the center console to settle in the driver’s seat.
You aren’t sure what to expect when you’re alone with Max, but it’s definitely not, “Dying and coming back really sucks, doesn’t it?”
Your burger immediately tastes like sandpaper. “Oh, let’s not talk about that,” you say. “Let’s talk about fun things. Have you learned any new skate tricks recently?”
“Don’t deflect,” Max says, waving a french fry at you for emphasis. “Steve said you were having a hard time because no one could relate to you, and I’m probably the only person in the world who can.”
She’s not wrong. After your return to the right side of the universe, you learned that Max woke up from her coma, completely healed, after you killed Vecna and the gates closed. You hadn’t thought about how the two of you had similar, paralleled experiences.
“It does suck,” you say quietly, swirling your spoon around in your ice cream cup. “And I kind of feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“For me, it was a lot of anger,” Max says. She fidgets with her own food as she continues. “I couldn’t understand people’s priorities anymore. Like, what do you mean you’re worried about a chem test, Dustin? A few months ago, the world almost ended!”
“I totally get that,” you say, and your heart already feels lighter. “And my parents don’t understand what really happened, so they just don’t get me at all. Why I get so scared, so angry. So jumpy. It makes me feel like I’m a freak in their eyes.”
“I feel like my mom doesn’t even see me anymore,” Max says. She clears her throat and you catch a glimpse of tears gathering on her lash line before she roughly wipes them away. “Like to her, I’m a ghost.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” you say. She scoffs.
“And there’s another annoying thing,” Max says. “The empty platitudes to make us feel better. That shit doesn’t fix anything!”
You’re not offended by her outburst, because you honestly agree. The two of you lament a bit longer, and by the end of the conversation, you’re feeling on top of the world. Sure, nothing is really fixed. But you finally realize that you have a kindred spirit in all this.
You and Max make a plan to do things together more often. You’re seeing her as a de facto little sister already, and you’re hopeful that your planned meetings will be just as beneficial for her as they are for you.
Steve comes back after what seems like a millennium, shooing Max back to the backseat.
“Took you long enough!” she says.
He just smiles.
🫀🫀🫀
JUNE 1988
It’s the first day of summer.
And it’s been a year to the day since you returned.
You expect to feel more anxious than you do. Instead, you feel peaceful.
You’re doing a lot better, genuinely. You found a new therapist (sorry, Elaine) and since it’s someone who worked with Dr. Owens, you’re able to spill all the gory details of your past and your trauma. Healing isn’t easy, but you feel yourself slowly sewing yourself back together again.
You and Max stick to your word and take weekly trips to Sonic. You talk about the heavy stuff, but also the normal life stuff. You sometimes have guests. This past week, Lucas and Mike tagged along, arguing the whole time about what should happen in the Ghostbusters sequel that’s supposed to release next year.
You and Steve…ah, what’s there to say. You want him back, but you imploded the relationship and it feels selfish to waltz up to him and say, “Hey, hot stuff. Wanna get back together?”
However, you’ve officially enrolled for the fall semester at U of I. While he’s home from Hawkins for summer break, under the guise of asking for tips about campus life, you spend a lot of time with him.
You also spend time in the library, doing some studying to catch up before you start your classes in the fall. Your high school graduation was a lifetime ago. Literally.
Steve, Robin, and Jonathan join you for those summertime study sessions, although Jonathan and Robin usually bicker over the music theory books and Steve doesn’t get much done except for doodling in his notebook. But sometimes you catch him staring at you, and then his cheeks flush pink in that adorable way that makes you want to do something stupid, like beg him to take you back.
If only you knew if he really felt the same…
…which you find out he does, during the summer solstice.
You’re at the county fair with your friends, but they’ve all run off to watch the fireworks, so it’s just you and Steve at a picnic table downing sodas and cotton candy.
Your fingers wrap around the cool glass of a now-empty Coke bottle, and you place it on the tabletop. You attempt to look nonchalant as you spin it slowly.
Once it’s picked up momentum, you let it go, watching it spin a few more times before stopping it with your hand when the bottle neck points at Steve.
“It’s you,” you whisper, attempting to recreate that magical first kiss moment from years and years ago. You clear your throat at Steve’s dumbfounded expression. “Ah, sorry. You don’t have to kiss me. I was just…”
To your pleasant surprise, Steve’s face splits into a grin. “Well, gee, Y/N,” he says. “If you wanted to kiss me that bad, you could’ve just said so.”
A million canaries titter a love song in your heart as he leans forward.
The two of you kiss, for the first time in a long time.
The great divide in your soul is starting to seal. And everything feels right.
THE END
🫀🫀🫀
a/n please lmk what you thought 🩵
tags; @aloneinthehellfire @starry-eyed-steve @hollandweather @wisdomssdaughterr @huffledor-able541 @springautumn
@sunshinesteviee @curiositydooropened @crappymixtape
#st fic: oj#st fic: tgd#steve harrington x reader#steve harrington x y/n#steve harrington x you#steve harrington#steve harrington fanfic#steve harrington fic#stranger things fanfic
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If I Should Stay
Part 1 | . . . | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
Nancy gets back with Jonathan not too long after. He barges in and makes a beeline straight for Steve. “You know where Will is?”
Steve nods. “There’s a lot to explain.”
“Then you’d better start soon.”
Robin, his savior, steps in. “C’mon, Jonny-boy, let’s go for a walk.” She leads him outside, and Steve can hear her start. “What do you know about time travel?”
He smiles and looks around. He can hear Eddie upstairs, practicing the song. The boys are occupied with planning, Nancy’s looking over Mike’s shoulder, and El’s watching him with big brown eyes. He focuses on her and lets his smile grow. “Wanna help me make dinner?”
Her eyes widen a little, but she nods. “What are we making?”
“Probably sandwiches,” he shrugs. “I’m not sure what else I have. Can you find the bread in the pantry? And there’s butter knives in that drawer over there, we’ll need two.” He winks. “One for you, and one for me.”
She does so, and he pulls out the condiments and lunch meats, as well as the jelly. “And the peanut butter, if you can find it,” he calls from where his head’s stuck in the fridge. He looks around for anything else he might need and grabs the pickles before closing the door.
“Y’know the best part about making dinner?” He asks her, impish grin growing on his face. She hums inquisitively. “We get to make ours first and eat while we make the rest.”
She giggles and accepts the high five he holds out.
They get to work assembling sandwiches. She pauses, mayonnaise slathered halfway onto a piece of bread. “Steve?” He hums. “I’m scared.”
He sighs and puts down his knife. “I am too, El. Terrified, if you can believe it. But I have faith in us. I know we can do it.” He wipes his hands off and rounds the counter, taking her hands in his. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever met in my life. Even stronger than Vecna. And this time he won’t know we’re coming. We’ll have the element of surprise on our side, and we will defeat him. We’ll find Will and Barb, and after this we’ll never have to worry about it again.” He strokes a hand over her head and sighs. “There’s something else, too. I know where Papa is.”
She pulls back, eyes wide, posture stiff. “Whoa, hey, it’s okay,” he soothes. “I’m not going to take you back there. Ever. Okay?”
She nods hesitantly, but allows him to pull her closer again. “I was going to ask if you want us to take care of him,” he murmurs. “Lock him inside and set the building on fire, or something.”
She shakes her head. “He loves me!”
“Oh, El,” Steve whispers. “I thought the same thing of my parents for a long time. No matter how mad they got, how much they yelled, how much they hurt me… they said it, so it must be true, right? They must love me. I must be the problem.” He shakes his head. “That’s not love. You fear him, El, and for good reason. He made you into what you are, but you never asked for this, and it’s okay to be angry about it.” She looks up at him with wide eyes, and he sighs. “I’ll give you some time to think about it,” he murmurs. “If the answer is still no, that’s okay. But if you change your mind, that’s okay, too.”
She nods, steps out of the hug. He lets her go, feeling like he’s almost knocked a vase off a table. His heart’s still thumping oddly, eyes wide, scared to make the wrong move.
But then she looks up at him and offers him a small smile. “Thank you,” she says. “I know the way you treat me is different from how Papa treats me. I do not know yet if they are simply different forms of love or if you are right. I think you are, but…”
“You need to see for yourself,” Steve nods. Moves the metaphorical vase back from the edge of the table. “Let me know if there’s any way I can help prove it.”
“I will,” she says, and picks up her butter knife again, spreading mustard onto a piece of bread. He goes back to his side and smiles at her.
“Steve?” She asks after a second. “When my hair grows back. What does it look like?”
He thinks for a second. “It’s fluffy,” he says. “Very soft and light. Like cotton candy.” He puts his head to one side. “Floofy,” he decides, and grins.
She giggles. “Like you!”
He opens his mouth to tell her no, she’s wrong, except… he can’t. “Yours is even more beautiful,” he tells her. “And kids in school nicknamed me ‘the Hair’. That’s how famous this was.” He tilts his head her direction, and a lock of hair falls in his face. He splutters and shakes his head, grinning when she laughs again.
“I am very glad you came back, Steve,” she says suddenly, seriously, a little at odds with the smile still quirking her lips up.
His heart breaks and mends all in the same second. It feels like absolution. “Me too,” he says, and means it.
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#stranger things#if I should stay#steve harrington#eddie munson#eventual Steddie#slow burn#robin buckley#platonic stobin#eleven#jane hopper#this is just an excuse for me to write#Steve and el as siblings#i love them your honor#Steve and el#starambles
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Old face, new place
Written for @steddieholidaydrabbles warm up: High school or College AU
rated: t | cw: none | tags: disabled Steve Harrington, pre-Steddie | wc:1000
Steve and Eddie meet again in college. The Upside Down still happened, but Eddie was never involved.
Honestly, Steve never thought he would go to college. Between his average grades, lack of ambition, and just not knowing what he wanted to do, it just didn’t seem to be on the cards for him. But it all changed after the Upside Down turned his life upside down.
After it was all over, and he’d been disowned by his parents, he and Robin moved to Chicago together. It was there she encouraged him to start taking classes at the same community college as her, to try and get a degree.
And that was how he got here, facing down the door of an art room, trying to build up the courage to go in. He’d signed up to be a nude model for a figure drawing class. At $20 a session, it would really help stretch his and Robin’s lousy paychecks that bit further. As he opened the door, he could hear the teacher reminding the class to be mindful about the model's bodies. That made him feel a little more uneasy, because it reminded him that it was the first time anyone other than doctors or Robin had seen him uncovered since everything with Vecna, and then losing his leg in the final showdown. He stripped down in the cubicle at the side of the room, changing into just a bathrobe.
As he came into the main space, he could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on his prosthetic. He reached the stool set up for him, and slipped off the robe. A collective gasp rang through the room, and he knew it was because of the scarring from the demo-bat attacks.
He got into a pose, and tried to forget where he was. Whenever he took a minute to move because of getting too stiff, he glanced over the class, seeing if there was anyone he recognized. There was one guy who felt vaguely familiar, who would not stop staring at his scars, his gaze more intense than anyone else’s.
Eddie had always known that college wasn’t in the cards for him. Hell, it took him three attempts to graduate high school. And he was only successful the last time because everyone in the class of ‘86 was allowed to graduate without sitting their finals because of the freak earthquake, and the murders, that happened during spring break that year. Wayne had all but forced him into volunteering in the relief efforts, but as soon as he had his diploma in hand, he was hightailing it out of town, looking for something better.
He ended up in Chicago, working evenings in a bar, and getting an apprenticeship to become a tattoo artist. He was a few months into the apprenticeship when his mentor recommended that he take a couple of semesters of art classes at the local community college to help him with technique and to refine his style. He tried to deny it on grounds of cost, but it was covered under the apprenticeship program.
Which is how he found himself a few months in, sitting in a figure drawing class. He zoned out a little as the teacher brought up the rules that had been laid out on the first day of the figure drawing unit, about making the models comfortable and not saying anything about their bodies. That hadn’t happened before any of the other models came in, so it did make Eddie wonder. Maybe it would be a guy with a really interesting dick.
Instead, it was Steve Harrington, of all people, that limped into the room. Eddie couldn’t help but watch as he went into the corner blocked off for the models to change in. What had brought King Steve to be a model for an art class? Looking for more validation on how pretty he was? Trying to pick up girls?
He brought himself out of his thoughts as Steve came out in a robe and. A prosthetic leg. That explained the limp, but brought so many more questions about what had happened. Because Eddie clearly remembered Steve in those tiny gym shorts and he definitely wasn’t missing a leg at that point.
Then Steve dropped the robe. Eddie, alongside the rest of the class, gasped. And not for the reason he’d thought he would be gasping when seeing Steve Harrington naked. He had horrific scarring on his chest and sides. Just opening even more questions to what the hell had happened to him.
He did his best to complete the assigned drawing, but his eyes kept getting drawn to Steve’s scars. The curiosity kept building as the time went on, and he was unsure if he’d be able to keep it in.
He packed up slowly at the end, wanting to try and catch Steve. They’d never been friends, but he needed to know if he was okay. He waited until they were both out of the room, before he called after him. “Hey, Harrington.”
Steve turned around, and looked at Eddie for a moment before recognition flashed in his eyes. “Munson.”
“Are- are you okay?” He asked, feeling a bit lost, unsure if what he wanted to ask was inappropriate.
“You mean my-” Steve rested his hand on his side where the worst of the scarring was. “Animal attack during the earthquake. It’s fine now.”
“And your-” Eddie’s gaze dropped to Steve’s legs.
“An accident a few months later.”
“Damn. You’ve really been through it, Harrington.”
Steve gave a bitter laugh that Eddie couldn’t quite read. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Maybe you could tell me some of it? Over coffee if you’re free?” Eddie suggested.
Steve looked at his watch. “I’ve got class in like twenty minutes. But I’ll be free after eleven tomorrow?”
Eddie ran through his scheduling in his mind, he was in the shop in the morning. “I’m working in the morning, but I’ll be off about two. We could do a late lunch or something?”
“It’s a date.” Steve agreed.
#steve harrington#eddie munson#steddie#steddie fic#disabled steve harrington#steve harrington x eddie munson#steve x eddie#pre steddie#steddieholidaydrabbles#college au#atimeofyourwrites
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Dustin’s crying so loud, Steve can barely hear when Eddie speaks, “trust me, Stevie?”
Eddie’s never called him that before. Eddie coughs again, bloody, and it spatters his lips and stains in between his teeth, mutely, Steve nods.
Eddie grabs Steve by the collar of his own denim jacket, pulling himself up and Steve down. He’s surprisingly strong considering Steve is absolutely certain that Eddie’s about to die. That’s what makes Steve close his eyes and open his mouth; lets Eddie have whatever he wants. Invites it when Eddie invades with a wet and bloody tongue. It’s a battle of a kiss, and Steve soaks it up.
Eddie disappears from under Steve’s hands, and he almost falls forward, Eddie disintegrating into a cloud of fiery ash. It settles, and in the middle, there’s an egg.
It’s shocking enough that Dustin stops crying, “what the fuuuuuck?” Dustin reaches for the egg, pulls his hand back, hissing, sucking his fingers.
Steve reaches for it next, “it’s too hot,” Dustin tries to warn him...but it isn’t. It’s pleasantly warm in Steve’s hand and he lifts it comfortably.
They take it with them.
They have absolutely no fucking explanation for what the hell just happened. Steve, instinctively, refuses to put the egg down anywhere. He sits, staring at it, cataloguing the slightly speckled pattern, watching how it catches the light as he turns it in his palms, pale and diffuse in the lamplight of the lounge.
He doesn’t really like other people touching it, but allows Robin to brush it with her fingertips; she draws them back sharply, hissing, blisters already forming. He carries it with him, even going so far as to showering one handed so he can hold it. He curls around it that night in bed and isn’t even worried that he might accidentally break it; he knows he won’t.
They have a day to recuperate, the party all together again, and safe; Vecna is defeated.
Eddie has one living relative that everyone knows about; Wayne Munson. It’s the only possible place they may get some answers; the trailer is just...gone. They contact Hopper, who contacts Owens, and an hour later he calls Steve back. The trailer was impounded by Owens team to study the damage and now closed gate inside; Wayne Munson is in a Motel.
Everyone piles into the beemer.
Wayne looks sallow when he opens the door, distraught, but in a kind of worn in way. Like he’s already accepted it. No one speaks, they just watch as Steve produces the egg, cupped carefully in his hands. Wayne’s face crumples, his eyes well up, and he pulls Steve into a hug, “thank you. I thought I’d lost him, thank you.”
“Okay,” Steve replies, “but we have no idea what’s going on.”
Wayne shoos them into the room. There’s two doubles, Dustin, Robin, Nancy and Jonathan climb onto the still made bed; not the one that’s clearly been slept in. Wayne sits at the foot of his bed, Steve remains standing, carefully cradling the egg.
“He never told you what he is?”
Everyone on the bed is staring at Wayne wide eyed, Steve almost laughs at them, but he’s too busy shaking his head at Wayne.
Wayne nods, scratching his head, “so how long have you and my Eddie been seeing each other?”
Everyone on the bed turns to look at Steve instead, eyes, if anything, even wider, “we...aren’t. That’s not. We’re not…” The egg pulses hotly in Steve’s hands; for a brief moment, it’s unpleasant.
“You must be something, or you wouldn’t be able to touch his egg. Bound in blood?”
“There was blood, he was coughing up blood...when he was dying and he…”
“They kissed,” Dustin interjects, super unhelpful, “right before Eddie…” Dustin makes the form of an explosion with his hands, “you know, went poof.”
Wayne nods, “it’s enough, this time, for Eddie to come back. But if you don’t complete the bond, he won’t last long. Eddie must love you a hell of a lot.”
“Love me?” Steve asks weakly.
“Yeah,” Wayne says, “phoenix’s mate for life, and they won’t come back for anything less.”
There’s a long, drawn out silence, before Steve, finally offers a weak, “we hardly even know each other.”
“Eddie knows. A phoenix always knows. And you have to complete the bond, or he won’t be able to stay.”
“What?” Dustin asks, panicked, “what do you mean, stay?”
Wayne shrugs, “a phoenix, rejected by their mate, will burn up from the inside. He’ll wither and die unless Steve...reciprocates.”
Steve, weak limbed, just gives up and sits on the floor.
“What about you, Mr. Munson, are you a phoenix?” Dustin’s going to start in with fifty million questions. Steve’s kind of glad, gives him a moment to sit here and...stroke Eddie’s egg.
“Nah, I’m his dad’s brother. Him mom was the phoenix; that’s how she died. My brother wasn’t the best of guys and when he fucked it up...she died. Didn’t take long. Eddie’s a half breed, they can see it on sight, so the other phoenix, they rejected him. He’s been with me ever since. Not human enough to fit in here, not...good enough for them.”
Dustin looks affronted on Eddie’s behalf, “that’s not fair, Eddie’s a great guy. They’re...prejudiced, Eddie’s better off without them, anyway.”
Wayne hums agreeable, “they put a lot of stock in their feathers, what they look like. His mom knew at birth he’d never be accepted, but we had to try after she died. I’d hoped that they would take pity on him but...no. They said his colors were an ill omen.”
“What’s wrong with his colors? What colors? Eddie doesn’t even have feathers.”
“He will when he hatches, and they’ll be black as night.”
Steve figures it’s been around seventy nine ish hours when the first crack appears in the shell. He has no idea if there’s a significance to the amount of time, but he doesn’t interfere. He just turns the volume of the television down low and sits and watches, fascinated, as the crack widens and little, damp, black chick gets itself free. The inside of the shell shines like dark mother of pearl; like an oil slick.
Steve already knows he will hide the egg away and treasure it forever. He had sworn again and again to Dustin that the second Eddie showed signs of hatching, Steve would call him. He couldn’t though. He just couldn’t. Something in him screamed loudly that it would be wrong. It would be so wrong for someone else to be here.
He decides to let them have one night together, just him and the tiny, feather light ball of blackness sitting on his thighs. He’ll call Dustin in the morning.
Steve tries to put Eddie down to go to the bathroom before bed; Eddie chirps miserably the whole time. He walks around on top of the comforter once Steve is in bed, and Steve watches in the lamplight as the tiny chick negotiates the mountains and valleys of Steve's bedding. He falls asleep finally, bored of exploring, nestled against the side of Steve’s neck.
“You said you’d call!”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry, it’s just it was late and-”
“He’s so big!”
“Yeah,” Steve replies. Nothing else to say really. Eddie seemed to have quadrupled in size overnight. He’s now the size of a chicken, covered in long, sleek black feathers. He has a long neck for his size, and his tail feathers sweep along the ground as he follows at Steve’s heels.
“Are you going to go and see Wayne?”
Eddie tilts his head at the sound of his uncles name, watching from his perch on the kitchen counter. Steve had tried him with a bowl of dry cereal, but Eddie had merely pecked at it a couple of times before ignoring it. Steve had added milk and eaten it himself.
“Nah,” Steve replies absently. The thought of leaving the house is...well. Steve doesn’t like it.
The next day, Eddie is the size of a very large turkey and his head, thanks to the long neck, can almost stretch to the height of Steve’s shoulder. When Steve sits on the couch, Eddie flaps up to sit on Steve’s lap, long neck winding around Steve’s, his head looping around to rest on Steve’s chest. His eyes are warm brown, just like Eddie’s human eyes, and Steve isn’t even a little worried about the huge talons or wickedly sharp beak.
On the seventh day, Steve wakes to find a man in his bed with him. He sighs with relief, pulling Eddie closer and whispering, “hello sweetheart,” into his fluffy hair.
Steve assumed they had time, he had hoped they could get to know each other; that Steve could do this properly, but by lunch Eddie is looking tired and has gray hairs at his temples so Steve simply says, “I love you, too,” over coffee and toast and hopes that it’s enough.
#stranger things#steve harrington#eddie munson#the party#magic eddie munson#creature eddie munson#headcannon#steddie#steddie headcanon
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Will's anti-Vecna song should be David Bowie's "Heroes"
We know from the new BTS pic that he has headphones and a Walkman. Like Max, he might be fending off Vecna:
Max's anti-Vecna song was highly personal to her. It helped her through her guilt and depression and feeling like she deserved to die.
For Will, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" is cute, but it doesn't have emotional weight. It might have helped a child Will in the Upside Down in s1, when it made him think of home and Jonathan, but he's all grown up now. He's changed.
If Byler becomes realized, David Bowie's "Heroes" is the perfect song for Mike and Will's relationship that would help Will resist Vecna. It's canon that Will likes David Bowie: kid Mike prefers the androgynous rock star over Kenny Rogers (s2e1).
@surferbeto on YouTube comments:
This is a heroic love song. Bowie starts out crooning but pretty soon he ramps up and belts it out hard. This song is about risking getting shot by East German border police and dragged over barbed wire for love. This is about young love against impossible odds. It's about that gloriously tragic fantasy... of giving our life in some grandly romantic way to save the life of our beloved. Maybe by taking a bullet for them and dying in their arms in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.
Having David Bowie's "Heroes" in the show would call-back to Peter Gabriel's somber 2010 cover from s1, when Mike hugged his mom thinking Will was dead. But Bowie's original is defiant, triumphant, and bittersweet. (Seriously, if you haven't yet, listen to it before reading further. It's perfect.)
It would play when Mike and Will have their first kiss. Their song of losing each other is now of finding each other.
If Byler is realized, it could play as Mike and Will dare to hold hands in the school hall, as we fade out to the end credits.
Will would put it on his Walkman. If Will and Mike are bullied for their relationship, "Heroes" perfectly expresses their defiance and willingness to love each other despite the harm that might come to them.
It's the song that would most help Will in case he gets Vecna'd. It doesn't just remind him of Mike; it culminates his journey over the five seasons. As a kid he told Jonathan he's not a baby, not just a victim. Despite seeming shy and weak, he has a huge amount of quiet courage, but his struggle in s3 and s4 was largely internal. ("I'm not gonna fall in love.") Show creator Matt Duffer says about s5: "Will's going to be a big part and focus... We're starting to see his coming of age, really... You're starting to see him come into his own." If Byler becomes real, then his fight becomes external, confronting the homophobia in Hawkins and the literal hell threatening his friends. He will rise to the occasion.
"Will really takes center stage again in [season] 5," Ross Duffer told Variety. "This emotional arc for him is what we feel is going to hopefully tie the whole series together. Will is used to being the young one, the introverted one, the one that’s being protected. So part of his journey, it’s not just sexuality – it’s Will coming into his own as a young man."
In s2, Will only allowed Mike to protect him because he didn't feel pitied by Mike; Mike saw his strength. A stronger Will will pay him back and protect him from the twin dangers they face.
It's Will's turn to be the hero. His fight for others is his fight for himself. "Heroes" perfectly expresses his journey of defying all odds to fight for HIS RIGHT TO LOVE.
P.S. Follow me and read my blog! I have so much to say!
#byler#will defends mike with a gun#stranger things#vecna#speculation#song#should i stay or should i go#david bowie#heroes#headphones#walkman
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Imagine accidentally falling through the gate and straight onto Eddie…
You saw Eddie hit the mattress on the right side up. As the kids celebrated with fist-pumps, you were filled with excitement knowing that you were finally leaving the nightmare of the Upside Down. It was also what made you hurry forward and climb the knotted rope of sheets a little too quickly.
“Wait, Y/n - slowly!” Steve called out but it was too late.
You whispered a soft “shit” as gravity pulled you through the portal and down… right to where Eddie hadn’t cleared the landing pad.
There was some confused shouting from both sides and Eddie panicked, thinking that it was Vecna. He turned on his back just in time to see you hurtling through the ceiling.
Then you made contact, crashing hard and fast on the young man below. You heard him groan as you did something similar and lifted your head to see him directly beneath. Honestly, you weren’t really sure if it was the fall or the close proximity but it felt like the wind was knocked from your lungs.
His eyes weren’t always this beautiful, right?
…then you felt the light touch of his fingers.
“Um… Eddie?”
He was clearly smitten, letting out a small hum to let you know that he was listening.
“Your- uh- your hands are in… certain places.”
“Yeah… I mean - shit! Sorry, I-” Eddie frantically began to apologise as he removed his hands from your body, allowing you to roll onto your back beside him.
You laid there for a second and exhaled. Was it always this warm in his trailer?
Lucas stepped forward and helped Eddie off the mattress while Robin extended her hand to you with a mischievous smile on her face. You took the offer, gripped her hand and let her hoist you back up.
Now steady on your feet, you looked around the room but your eyes caught Eddie’s and it was like being drawn into a magnet.
“Kiss and get together already!” Dustin groaned as he walked in between to get to the portal, looking up at the remaining duo. “Hurry it up, you two.”
~ More imagines here ~
#theladyofmanyfandoms#theladyofmanyfandomsfanfiction#gif is not mine#eddie imagine#eddie x reader#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson imagine#stranger things imagine#stranger things x reader
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If you asked most people who know Eddie Munson, they’d tell you that he's a loud, theatrical man. They might tell you that he's always bouncing around, full of chaotic energy and wild ideas, eager to share what's on his mind with anyone who will listen.
And for the most part, they would be right.
But Steve Harrington knows that there's more to it than that.
Steve knows that Eddie is loud, most of the time, except for when he feels most comfortable.
It's a realization that comes to Steve slowly in the weeks following their final battle against Vecna and the Upside Down, during the time they spend sharing a hospital room while they recover from their bat bites.
Steve is there to witness Eddie's cacophonous reunion with the kids - rife with hollering and boisterous laughter and some very stern (if relieved) scolding from Erica Sinclair. But he's also there to see the way Eddie motions Dustin over once everyone settles down and begins to trickle out of the room. Steve watches as Eddie pulls Dustin into his arms and mutters something Steve can't hear into the kid's ear - something that makes Dustin smile with teary eyes.
It's the first time Steve has seen such a soft display of emotion from Eddie Munson, and he finds it strangely fascinating.
Then, it's the same with Wayne a few days later, when he's finally allowed to visit Eddie in the hospital. Steve expects something a bit dramatic from Hawkins' most notorious Dungeon Master, to be honest, but it's not dramatic at all. The reunion between the Munson men is soft and subdued, nothing but quiet sentiments Steve can't quite make out. Eddie is still as full of energy as ever, but with Wayne around, he loses that frantic edge. And so Steve eventually realizes...
The more comfortable Eddie is, the less jagged his edges get. Loud, raucous laughter becomes soft chuckles. Booming declarations give way to quiet promises. Eddie Munson is softer when he feels safest, and Steve quickly decides that while he likes any and all versions of Eddie, he's particularly fond of this one - the one who's shed his emotional armor in favor of comfort, and perhaps a little vulnerability.
He wants to see more of this Eddie - the one who seems closest to Eddie's truest self.
And overtime, Steve gets his wish.
It starts with quiet, late-night conversations filling the space between their beds in the hospital, when they finally begin to dismantle every misguided preconceived notion they've ever had about each other in order to forge a friendship from the ground up.
Once they're released back into the real world, it continues. There are soft, amused comments murmured into Steve's ear during movie nights, and cheeky observations about the kids they practically share custody of on days at the arcade. There are relaxed conversations over a joint passed back and forth on nights when neither of them can sleep at three in the morning.
The closer they get, the softer Eddie becomes, and it only becomes more obvious when they finally stop dancing around each other and start dating.
Eddie's voice is careful and kind when he asks, "Can I kiss you?" for the first time.
He's practically whispering a week later when they both admit to wanting more than just a casual fling with each other.
When Steve makes him come for the first time, Eddie is all soft gasps and quiet whimpers... breathlessly chanting Steve's name like a prayer. And when Eddie returns the favor later that night, it's with the sweetest, filthiest things whispered into Steve's ear, working him into a frenzy until it takes him over the edge.
And four months into their relationship, one of their most important milestones is said so quietly, Steve almost misses it entirely.
They're laying in bed together, chatting away just like they do almost every night. Steve is basking in the feeling of Eddie's arms around him...of Eddie's bare chest against his back as they trade warmth back and forth. He always loves cuddling with Eddie, but he thinks these nights are his favorites. The ones when he gets to be the little spoon, tucked safely into the arms of the boy he thinks of first every morning and last every night.
Eddie tells him about the way Mike wouldn't stop bitching about his sunburn during the D&D campaign Eddie ran with the boys earlier today, and Steve can't help but roll his eyes.
"God, I told him to use sunscreen yesterday!" Steve insists. Behind him, Eddie snorts. "I did! I told all of them to use it, and most of them listened to me, but did Michael Wheeler? Of course not, because that little shit is hellbent on giving me grays before I turn thirty!"
There's another snort from Eddie - this one louder than the first - and Steve playfully smacks his arm where it's wrapped around Steve's abdomen. Eddie just catches his hand and traces circles across the back of it with his thumb.
"This isn't some laughing matter, Munson!" Steve hisses. "We're talking about my hair, here!"
"Oh, woe be upon he who dares threaten the integrity of your glorious mane, my liege," Eddie drawls dramatically. He nuzzles into the aforementioned mane and presses a soft kiss to the spot just behind Steve's ear.
"Exactly, see? You get it," Steve scoffs, choosing to ignore the sarcasm in his boyfriend's voice.
Eddie buries his face in the crook of Steve's neck and makes a vague humming sound.
"Seriously, though, next time, I'm putting sunscreen in a spray bottle and ambushing him with it, or some shit. I’ll be damned if he survived the apocalypse just so his pasty ass could be taken out by the sun," Steve continues to vent.
Eddie just laughs softly. "You're ridiculous, sweetheart," he murmurs. Steve feels him brush his lips against Steve's pulse point and has to suppress a shiver.
"Yes, and?" Steve huffs, unable to keep the smile out of his voice.
"You're ridiculous," Eddie repeats. Then, his voice goes impossibly soft - barely a whisper, and a bit hesitant - but Steve feels the words ghost over the shell of his ear. "And I love you."
Steve's breath hitches just as Eddie seems to realize the gravity of what he's let slip. Eddie's thumb, which has been rubbing gentle circles into the back of Steve's hand ever since he grabbed it a minute, suddenly pauses. For a moment, neither of them move.
It's Steve who unfreezes first, slowly rolling over until he's facing Eddie, still wrapped in his boyfriend's arms. He takes in Eddie's wide eyes and vaguely anxious expression before reaching up to brush a stray lock of hair out of Eddie's face.
Steve's voice is raspy when he finally manages to speak.
"You love me?" he asks hesitantly, hating the half of himself that's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe he misheard. Maybe Eddie said something else. Or worse, maybe Eddie changed his mind immediately after saying it and is now regretting saying it in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time someone changed their mind about loving Steve, after all.
Eddie doesn't correct him, though, or take it back. Instead, he nods hesitantly, as though he's afraid Steve will hate him for it, and bites his lip.
"I- yeah," he says, still whispering. He looks terrified, and it makes Steve's heart ache. "Is that...okay?"
Steve wants to laugh. Or cry. Maybe both. Mostly, he wants to tell Eddie that it's more than okay - that he loves him, too, and has for a while now.
"Say it again," Steve begs, instead.
Eddie blinks, his gaze transforming into something so devastatingly tender that Steve doubts he'll ever recover.
"Stevie..." Eddie murmurs, bringing their foreheads to rest against each other. His lips curl into a smile. Steve smiles back. "I love you."
Steve is only slightly embarrassed by the way his heart is rabbiting against his ribs, surely loud enough for his boyfriend to hear.. "Really?"
Eddie smiles and lets their noses brush. "Yeah, baby. I really do."
"Oh," Steve breathes. His disbelief finally gives way to wonder as he allows his hand to move on its own accord - fingertips brushing against the soft skin of Eddie's cheek. Reverently, he traces the shape of Eddie's nose, of his eyebrows, of the little scar on Eddie's temple that's only just begun to fade.
Eddie presses a barely-there kiss to the pads of Steve's fingers when they finally drag across his lips. The action leaves Steve feeling so fond it aches.
"I love you, too," Steve whispers, because it's the truth. He's not sure exactly when he started to fall in love with Eddie Munson, but he does know that he's never stopped. He thinks he'll probably keep falling in love with Eddie until the day he dies.
It's a disgustingly sweet sentiment, and Steve can't bring himself to care.
"Fuck, Eddie," he laughs, breathless. Eddie's eyes are shining with joy. With love. Steve moves closer, until their lips brush against each other when he murmurs, "Love you so much."
Steve's heart has never felt as full as it does right now - as it continues to feel when they collide in a flurry of heated skin, soft lips, and quiet words of adoration. It's not the first time they've had sex, but it's the first time it's felt like this - like being wholly and completely cared for, for the first time in his life. Steve has tears in his eyes by the time they collapse against each other, sated and utterly in love, and Eddie devotedly kisses the tears away when they begin to fall.
In the aftermath, once they've both been cleaned up and caught their breath, Eddie pulls Steve into his arms so Steve's head can rest on his scarred chest. The soft thump of Eddie's heartbeat beneath his ear - proof that they survived everything they've been through, and that their reward is this beautiful, brilliant love - brings a smile to Steve's face.
He turns his head and presses his lips to Eddie's chest, just above Eddie's heart. Eddie's arms tighten around him.
"Love you, Eds," Steve murmurs, settling in and closing his eyes as sleep begins to beckon.
Eddie just holds him and runs nimble fingers through Steve's hair, bending to press a kiss to Steve's temple.
"Love you too, Stevie," Eddie whispers in his ear, voice perfectly, beautifully soft.
Written for the prompt "things you whispered in my ear" from this prompt request list I posted a couple of months ago! If you want to request another one of the prompts on the list, drop me an ask and I'll write it as soon as I can!
#steddie#steddie fluff#steve harrington#eddie munson#they're in love your honor#and i love that for them#prompt fill#send me a prompt request!#mcdynamite writes
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the prompt: rest | rating: G | cw: non-explicit trauma-related insomnia
The steady thrum of the engine is like gentle white noise that not only fills Eddie’s head and smoothes out the frayed edges of consciousness, but runs through his whole body as a comforting presence. It spreads from the hands holding the wheel in a loose, easy grip up his arms and to his shoulders, down his chest where it settles in his gut. That feeling of belonging, of comfort, of familiarity. It leaves him with a smile as he shifts the gear, accelerating a little on the open street.
No one else is out here tonight, and there’s no destination ahead, but his goal has long since been reached.
Part of him wants to roll down the window to feel the breeze in his hair, allow November in just for five minutes, just for the duration of this next song.
Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go and leave you all alone?
But he won’t, because this moment is not his.
He glances over to the side, catches the split second where the passing street lights make Steve glow golden, his breath even, his face relaxed. His eyes closed, his forehead void of pained frowns. He’s been asleep for an hour.
It mends something inside him, seeing Steve like this, but something splinters all the same.
“What do you need? What can I give you? Please, Steve, you need to sleep. You deserve to rest.”
He remembers asking, tears welling up in his eyes and desperation clawing at his insides, clawing to get out and tear at Steve, tear at him to find out what it is that Eddie can do.
“Can we just— Drive? For a while?”
“Where to?”
“Nowhere, just… Might help.”
And it did. It does.
It’s been a few months now, and sometimes it’s Wayne who takes Steve — or both of them — on a ride to lull him to sleep with a steady engine and a tape that Vecna never touched.
And every time, Steve wakes the second the car stops. But it’s fine, because he’ll smile, he’ll say, “Thank you”, he’ll say, “I love you,” and he’ll lie on Eddie’s chest for the rest of the night, listening to the steady thrum of his heart while Eddie hums a quiet melody until Steve is asleep again.
written for @steddiemicrofic, dedicated to @auroraplume because i can 🤍🌷
#steddie fic#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#steve x eddie#stranger things fanfiction#stranger things fanfic#stranger things#steddie microfic#hi reese this is for you idk#🤍#i wish i could enjoy car rides again. especially at night and with music. unfortunately my intrusive thoughts get in the way#they get really really bad and i don’t wanna watch people die anymore but the concept is still nice so here 🥺#dio words#dio’s steddie ramblings
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Daily Ficlet 7
I’m challenging myself to write a little ficlet every day, using the prompts from this list. Today’s prompt is recipe book.
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Steve finds Wayne in the hallway, pulling what items he can from the closet there.
"Need some help?" Steve asks as Wayne struggles with a bigger box that seems wedged in pretty good.
"Sure. Just get yer hands up here and ready to catch," Wayne answers, shimmying the box to and fro while Steve moves to follow his instructions. The box isn't by any means light when it falls into his hands, but it's not the heaviest thing Steve's had to catch -don't think about it, don't think about Eddie's limp body awkwardly shoved through a gate. Don't-
"Thanks, son," Wayne climbs back down the stepladder he was on and takes the box from Steve' hands, walking down the hall to place it on the counter. The front half of the trailer is missing, the gate took it, but a decent amount of of the trailer remains (Eddie's room remains) and the government has finally allowed Wayne to return to pack up what he can.
It's better than starting over completely.
"What's in the box?" Steve asks, because it's the only item Wayne hasn't just demanded he load into the moving truck outside.
"It was supposed to be Eddie's graduation gift," Wayne says softly. "'Suppose it'll have to be a 'glad you woke up from yer coma' gift instead."
"Yeah," Steve says, even if he doesn't believe it. Eddie's been asleep months now. They saved the world, killed Vecna, closed the gates, Max woke up, and the kids have started Sophomore year; Eddie remains comatose. "Can I get a sneak peak at the present?"
"It's not much, and ain't nothin' new," Wayne says, opening the box and beginning the process of pulling things out. It looks a bit like the contents of a hope chest. Things to start living on your own with. Robin's mom has one for her that Steve's seen, and even contributed to. There's an envelope of $500 tucked along the side of Robin's chest.
"This was his grandpa's. My dad's," Wayne says, pulling out a belt buckle. "And my ma made this, not for anyone in particular, mind you, but just because she liked to keep herself busy." It's a blanket, thick and a little scratchy when Steve touches it. "And this. This is the most important." Wayne pulls out a binder from the bottom of the box, handing it over to Steve for inspection.
He takes it carefully even though it looks sturdy. Holding it in one hand, he flips it open. He was thinking maybe it would be a photo album or something but it's not. It looks like a recipe book. All the recipes are hand written on looseleaf paper, with post it notes sticking out randomly. "What makes this special?"
"That's his mom's handwriting," Wayne smiles but he sounds sad. "Eddie lost her when he was five. She got real sick, y'know, and never got better. But she wrote out all them recipes. I'm amazed Al kept the thing, but I guess I shouldn't be. No real value in a binder of recipes 'cept to the people close to the author."
Steve looks back down at the binder. He still has both his parents, however distant they might be, so he doesn't know if he'll ever fully understand the significance of getting this piece of someone back. "Does he not have anything else with her writing on it?"
"No, not writing. We got plenty of things they used to own. Eddie's caseworker let us go through the whole house, after Al'd been shipped off to the penitentiary, to gather anything Eddie might want or need. Was supposed to just be his stuff, mind you, legally speakin', but I think that lady knew if we didn't take other stuff, Eddie'd never see it again.
"So, Eddie's got things that were hers. But nothing that's uniquely hers. There's jewelry, and a coupla blankets, but all that stuff is replaceable and not... Well, I dunno what I'm tryin' to say, but that's just stuff that was hers. But this. This was her. Y'understand?"
And Steve does. There's a difference between having something that belonged to someone once, and something that really feels like them when you hold it. Steve doesn't have anything like that, personally, but he knows there will come a time when the difference matters. When everyone grows up and scatters into the future. He imagines a hand written letter from Dustin will mean much more for him to find after a long time of no contact than it would to find his old Roast Beef t-shirt in the back of a drawer or something, moth bitten and musty.
"I can't wait to find out if Eddie's an angry emotional, or a sad one."
Wayne laughs. "He can be both."
#wayne and steve#daily ficlet#just a lil thing for if eddie lived but didn't like... live#bittersweet#my fic
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