#and Eddie's story in particular brings me back to my Walking Dead roots which is so nice for me

[katytheinspiredworkaholic]

WIP Wednesday

Dreamwalker (Eddie's Story)

Summary: Steddie Canon compliant/fix-it fic paired with a corresponding story in Steve's POV, each chapter happens in tandem with the other. Eddie wakes up alone in the Upside Down, not knowing how he survived, and unable to reach anyone topside in Hawkins. Wounded and alone, he finds shelter at Steve's house (the place is a damn fortress after all), and while hiding out there discovers that he has gained the ability to walk into other people's dreams. As long as they are asleep in the same place on either side of the gates. He just happens to find this out after sleeping in Steve's bed, now to figure out how to get himself rescued...

(unbeta'd snippet from Chapter 04, because that's what I'm working on right now. Eddie just spent over a week away from Steve's house using his newly discovered gift of Dream-Walking to gather skills he needs to survive however long he's stuck in the Upside Down. Nancy Wheeler taught him how to shoot a gun, Gareth helped him raid Mr. Emerson's toolshed and commandeer his four wheeler, and Wayne taught him the basics of surviving in a warzone. But Harrington House is Home Base, and has been since he'd woken up post-demobat massacre...)

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"Honey, I'm home!” 

Eddie calls out into the empty Harrington house, and his voice is rough – scratchy from not being used and his newly healed parts of his neck and chest. But it’s still him, and it feels good to speak out loud once more. Even if no one answers him. Which is both a relief (nothing moved in while he was gone) and a disappointment. It’s not like Steve was going to just magically appear out of the blue, with a four course meal and the ability to procure hot water from the faucet. But a guy can dream.

The multiple bags of supplies he’d gathered get thrown onto the Harrington’s kitchen table, and Eddie starts to sort through it all as he hums to himself a song he’d been plucking out over the past few days. His guitar is still across his back, the weight of it as comforting as the house surrounding him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the towering manor until he’d seen it sitting proudly like a castle on a hill this morning. Now he had some things to help liven it up a little. Clothes, weapons, food and drinkable items, first aid (that was sorely needed), as well as his miscellaneous items of guitar maintenance and D&D books and hair ties (Erica could never know). He also grabbed a calendar, and outright nailed it to the wall in the kitchen. Ruining that beautiful paint job and sprinkling drywall dust all over the expensive tile floor. 

He has no idea when he’d woken up compared to when he’d died, and the calendar is from 1983, so he takes a sharpie to it and makes his own timeline. From the moment he woke up on the ground outside the trailer park to today, back home after dream-walking with a handful of friends and loved ones. By his count, he’d been awake about six weeks. He thinks. He couldn’t have been unconscious on the ground for that long, could he? And Will said time moves differently in the Upside Down, so for all he knows years have passed out there. He really hopes not, otherwise that would mean all his friends stayed stuck in fucking Hawkins. He wouldn't wish that on anyone.

But he knows for a fact that Steve is still in this house. His parents’ house, even though his parents haven’t been here in all the time Eddie has been hiding out in it. He would have heard another voice, unless they were also just as insanely quiet as Steve was – which is a very sad and depressing thought. He moves about the kitchen, still humming, but also keeping an ear out for Steve. It’s the middle of the day, he’s usually not home during the day, but when he is there is always a person with him. Robin, the majority of the time. She at least could make the guy laugh, and God did he have a nice laugh. 

He catches himself smiling at nothing and smothers it, returning his focus to the clothes he’d found and brought with him from Jeff’s place. He’d been wearing Steve’s clothes the past few weeks, and they needed to be cleaned – he’d stolen a couple bars of Fels-Naptha and taken a few gallons of distilled water from the convenience store. There was more where that came from, but he could only carry so much even on Mr. Emerson’s four-wheeler that Gareth had helped him steal via scouring the dream garage. He’d get on that sooner rather than later, because the guest bathroom upstairs had been turned into his make-shift laundry hamper and it needed to happen badly.

But also, Eddie really liked wearing Steve’s clothes. They were close to the same size; Steve had broader shoulders but Eddie was a couple of inches taller, so it evened out. Jeff was the only other person he visited that had clothes that would even fit Eddie; poor Gareth was about as tall as the freshmen, and probably wasn’t going to be getting any taller. Steve was kind of perfect to steal T-shirts from, and didn’t that just send super inappropriate butterflies tumbling through his stomach. He wondered what the other man would think about that, and decided (out of self preservation) that it was best not to think about it too much.

Except, that was kind of hard. Not thinking about Steve. Eddie is practically surrounded by him on a constant basis, except when he leaves the house to go on his little adventures – but even then, he’s wearing Steve’s socks, or Steve’s shirt, using Steve’s backpack and Steve’s old school notebooks. As much as he has SO MUCH ELSE going on around him and on his mind, Steve is a constant presence that Eddie really doesn’t mind one bit. He thinks about the other more than he really should, or admits to himself. 

That way lies madness, after all.

So he finishes setting up his new pantry of barely spoiled foods, and turns the guest bath tub into a giant washing machine and does an insane amount of laundry by hand, which is then hung on a clothesline inside that he ties to the staircases because that’s the most open-aired area he has that he can reach.

It’s a long fucking day, of chores. Wayne would be speechless, if he could see him now.

So, needless to say, Eddie is bone-tired when he finally, finally crawls into Steve’s bed that night. And it feels more like home than it has any right to. He buries himself in the sheets and blankets, Steve’s pillows, in his jock-themed room doused in shadows and now has bits and pieces of Eddie mingling in all the once vacant places. His rings, his bandana, his sweetheart and all her fixings (those strings needed some help after all the rust), his notebooks and pens and random sheets of paper with drawings of town and creatures of the Upside Down. It’s Steve’s room, but it feels like their space, and Eddie likes the way that makes him feel. A little too much.

He can’t help but sigh as he drifts off to sleep, not worrying about his safety, not needing to go through the house one more time or check out the windows for what might be lurking. He knows the inside of the Harrington house now as much as he’d known the inside of Wayne’s trailer. Thinking to himself that…

It feels good to be home.

The one home he has left.

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tbc

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Series Snippets: - Dreamwalker (Eddie’s Story) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) - Subconscious (Steve’s Story) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)