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artiststarme · 10 months

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It's No Secret... Anymore

Thank you to @mx-jinxous for the prompt! This took a really long time to write but it was so much fun playing with everyone's dynamics. I hope you guys like it and please leave your thoughts in the comments!

~*~*~*~

Steve felt like he was dreaming. It felt like he was looking through someone else’s eyes, dissociating far from his own body. He couldn’t feel the weight of Eddie’s slowly-fading body in his arms or the burning of the wounds in his sides. He wasn’t aware of where he was or if anyone was following him. He was purely relying on muscle memory and muscle memory alone.

He didn’t see the speeding car in front of him that swerved into a nearby bush and fence post. He hardly noticed the hands pulling him backward and out of the road. He came back to himself though once he heard his brother’s voice.

“Steve? Steve-O? Come on buddy, you’re worrying me here. Where have you been? I haven't seen your ass all week. Come on man, are you… are you fucking bleeding? Brother, answer me. We can’t be out here, there’s an earthquake going on. Come with me.”

Steve blinked just to come face to face with Phil. He was shining his flashlight on Eddie’s face against Steve’s shoulder but his eyes were focused directly on Steve’s.

“You with me, bro?” His mustache twitched unhappily and Steve rushed to answer.

“Um, no. Not really. I think he’s dying and I kinda might be too. And I think my friends are missing? Where am I?” Steve couldn’t get his thoughts together cohesively. His mind was fractured, overcome with too much trauma in too little time.

Phil just looked more concerned at his words with his face becoming vaguely panicked once he looked at Eddie. He looked quickly up at Steve, down at Eddie, then back at Steve. “Is this Eddie Munson? The murderer Eddie Munson? The Eddie Munson that has been on the run all week? Good golly Steve, I’m trying not to curse but what the fuck?”

Steve just looked at the pinched expression of pain that Eddie held and murmured, “he’s my friend.”

“Oh my god, Steve. Fine, we’ll deal with this later. Think you can walk to my squad car? I kinda damaged the front end but I’m sure it's semi-driveable. Powell’s tied up with the gates to hell opening up, I have plenty of time to take care of you.”

“Yeah, I can- I can walk,” and he could with the support of Phil. He felt his brother supporting both his and Eddie’s weight until they were deposited into the backseat of the patrol unit.

“And uh, is the girl hiding in the bushes with you? She’s kinda been watching us for awhile. You might have a stalker, little bro.” He shined his flashlight over to the bush and saw a sandy bob duck behind the foliage.

“Robin?” Steve muttered, still out of it and only on the verge of consciousness.

“Buckley, is that you? Come on, you’re coming with us back to Steve’s place. Let’s go,” Phil waved the light between the two. He had both hands on his hips and stood like a disappointed middle-aged dad. “I don’t have time to be doing things willy-nilly. Let’s go!”

Robin poked her head out of the bushes and scooted gracelessly over to the car until she was able to bump elbows with Steve. They both relaxed a smidgen within the same space, the two brain cells reuniting after a stressful ten minutes apart.

Phil hopped in the driver’s seat and bumped his head against the steering wheel. What had this idiot gotten himself into now?

~*~*~*~

By the time Phil arrived at his house at the edge of the suburbs, all three kids were out cold in his backseat. He stood at the open back door for a moment before sighing and lugging first Robin, then Eddie, then Steve into his living room, huffing with exertion all the while. He would definitely have to cut back on the station donuts and start exercising again. Right after he dealt with the dying fugitive on his brother’s couch, the blood seeping through Steve’s shirt, and his brother’s unconscious best friend that was snoring atrociously.

Jesus Christ.

Well, he had plenty of practice with medical care from his EMT training so he got to work. He got the first aid kit out of the squad car and started with the murderous Munson. Phil didn’t know what had happened to these kids but it couldn’t be any good. Munson’s entire torso was torn apart like he’d been gnawed on by a wild animal. It wasn’t bleeding too bad but he was missing chunks of skin, so much so that Phil couldn’t sew him up with just sutures. Hell, this kid was going to need skin grafts. A lot of them.

He put gauze on the worst of the wounds then cautiously stepped over to Steve. What he’d seen on Munson made him hesitant to look at the damage but surely it couldn’t be worse than that. Right? As soon as he lifted Steve’s shirt, he came immediately to two conclusions.

1. Steve had a lot more chest hair than he did and that was totally unfair.

2. The wounds on Steve’s abdomen were deep, infected, and horrific.

Just like with Munson, there was nothing to close. All he saw were missing chunks of skin and muscle that should have been in his sides. The marred remains were covered in grime and yellowish puss that made the entire room smell of infection.

Fuck, he couldn’t help them here. He had to get them, all three of them because he wasn’t touching an unconscious girl for anything, to a hospital. But that begged the question; which hospital? Munson… Eddie was wanted all through the state of Indiana for at least three murders and an assault. If he took him to any nearby hospital, he would be arrested and surely there was more to the story if Steve was protecting him so much. He couldn’t let one of Steve’s only friends get arrested without hearing the story from the both of them.

He had to take these three up to a hospital in Illinois. Chicago was roughly four hours away, he knew from his and Steve’s annual visits to their great aunt in Evanston. It was a risk, both for aiding and abetting a wanted fugitive as well as hoping he survived that long of a drive, but his gut told him to trust his brother on this one. So that’s what he did. He loaded the three teens back into his patrol car and mumbled swears under his breath when he passed the “Leaving Hawkins” sign. He hoped to all that was mighty that he was making a good call.

~*~*~*~

Steve woke up to familiar voices; one hushed and one screeching.

“You kidnapped them?! You’re a cop, I thought you would help them but instead you drove them all the way to goddamn Chicago like some middle-aged pervert loser?” Steve came around to a loud argument between what sounded like Dustin and Phil. It was weird though because he’d never introduced the two.

“Hey, listen here shithead, words hurt. I am not middle-aged, I’m 28. And why would I kidnap my own brother? I can legally take him anywhere, it's practically my birthright. I don’t have to go through all the work of kidnapping him.” Phil shook his head at Dustin.

“Stop trying to trick me, I know Eddie is an only child!”

“Munson?! I’m Steve’s big brother, you little gremlin. Can’t you see the resemblance?” He gestured between where Steve was groggily looking up at him and then back at himself.

“No, but I can’t see anything past your outrageous mustache.” Steve saw Phil’s jaw drop and knew that Dustin had crossed a line.

“You short fucker, that is too far! I take a lot of pride in this ‘outrageous mustache’,” Phil put air quotes around the offending remake before pointing an aggressive finger in Dustin’s direction. “I will absolutely take you off the visitation list, toothless. Do not test me.”

“Don’t threaten me, I’ll report you to the authorities!” Dustin countered.

“I am the authorities!” Phil dropped all decorum and screamed at practically the top of his lungs.

Sensing enough was enough, Steve tried to push himself up to a sitting position before a burning in his sides caused him to fall back down. Both men (or one man and Dustin) stopped their squabbling and rushed to his sides.

“Steve, you’re hurt so don’t try to get up. Shit kid, let me get a nurse or something. You weren’t doing too hot.” With that Phil sprinted out of the room, presumably to the nurse’s station and Steve was left with Dustin, Nancy, Jonathan, and Robin.

He looked blearily at all of them before asking the most important question, “where’s Eddie?”

They all parted to reveal Eddie lying in the bed next to him. His neck and chest were covered with bandages but his face looked peaceful. There were no cuffs on his wrists as Steve assumed there would be. He laid back again and let out a sigh. Everything was as it should be, he could finally relax.

“Um so Steve, don’t be mad but your brother can be really persuasive when he wants to be and you never introduced him as your brother so I just kind of assumed that we were getting captured by the police and that it was going to be so much worse than the Russians because I always thought Officer Callahan was kind of psycho. But then I woke up here and he bought me Cheetos so everything is fine. Except it's kind of not because you and Eddie have been out for a couple of days and I told Big Not-Harrington about the Upside Down and now he’s really worried. Why did you have to stay asleep so long, dingus? I missed you!”

Steve honestly zoned out when he heard “Cheetos” and only tuned back in when Robin, the usual physical affection-hater, threw herself on top of him in a hug. He withheld the grunt of pain and held her back just as hard.

“What the hell just happened, bro? Like that was a lot of words, little bird lady. Woah.”

Steve didn’t know if he was hallucinating the long-haired surfer in a Hawaiian outfit or if Vecna had somehow managed to melt his mind after all but he had never been more confused in his life to see the new visitor make themselves known.

“Who the fuck is that?” He muttered in absolute bafflement.

Dustin sighed as he too wrestled a hug from Steve, “that’s Argyle. Come on, Steve. Keep up.”

“Like the sock pattern? How many drugs am I on right now?!”

~*~*~*~

“... and that’s kind of why I didn’t tell you about the Upside Down,” Steve finished from his seat beside Eddie, their hands tangled together as they both sat across from Phil.

He looked at both of them with a completely deadpan stare. “Again, but the truth this time.”

Eddie huffed in annoyance. “We are telling you the truth, man! An evil wizard guy named Vecna-”

“Slash Henry, slash One,” Steve and Robin interjected in unison.

“-possessed four teenagers to end the world or something and broke their bodies apart with his mind. Then the angry mob thought it was me but I would never kill anyone, especially not Chrissy. She was always really nice to me and remembered my band from the talent show in middle school. And then we got stuck in Hell where evil demon bats ate our flesh and tentacles ripped through the earth. Then we saved Nancy from the evil mind melt powers by playing her favorite song. After that, we made a plan and she shot Vecna and killed him while Dustin and I were decoys where I was attacked.”

“Then I went back for Eddie and carried him out where you almost ran us over. The end,” Steve emphasized the finale with a deliberate nod of his still-aching head.

Phil looked at them with the most exasperation Steve had ever seen in his life. He let out a pitying chuckle, his poor brother didn’t sign up for this. “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

Phil's eyes rolled so hard that Steve could tell he saw stars. He could almost see the scream being prepared in his throat and couldn't gather enough strength to escape it.

"STEVEN MICHAEL HARRINGTON, WHAT THE MOTHERLOVING FUCK?!"

"Look Philly, I'll say it one more time then I'm done, okay? It first started way back when Will Byers went missing in 1983..."

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#Phil gets Eddie's name cleared by walking into the station and telling Powell it wasn't him #Powell is so fucking stressed that he just drops it and blames Jason when Phil suggests it #As soon as they're all healed up Phil gives Eddie the shovel talk of all shovel talks feat. his gun #Eddie hands him a donut and all is forgotten #stranger things #steddie #fanfic #steve harrington #eddie munson #robin buckley #dustin henderson #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #officer phil callahan #officer callahan is steve’s brother #it took me so long to write this and I still don't know if I like it

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