#and when their time comes it’s eddie they see in the afterlife

[wheneverfeasible]

Because I’m terrible and the plots won’t leave me alone, I’ve now got an idea based on this post about a demon who feasts on pain and suffering being a medical practitioner for the chronically and terminally ill and the patients fully loving it. And then my brain rot had to say “make it Steddie” because I’ve lost all control of my life.

—

cw: terminal illness, minor and major character death (with a happy ending tho)

But imagine it. Eddie is a demon, a low ranking one at that originally. He gets a job at a medical facility for the chronically/terminally ill. Over time at the happy and consensual feasting he really does become one of the strongest demons because he’s constantly fed to the brim and he even has human worshippers, not that they’re traditional worshippers.

No, his followers are little old senior citizens who slip him butterscotch candies and other sweets they’re not supposed to have, which technically count as offerings. They thank him for his work, because he does actually take care of their bodies as well and even listens to their life stories, which count as praise and worship. They love and are devoted to him and they bring in their friends and family who are suffering too and Eddie’s accidental cult grows.

One day, things change. A young man, an anomaly in his youth, is brought in by parents who no longer wish to be burdened by their disabled son. Steve just shrugs it off and moves in with a smile, seemingly fine with being abandoned by his parents because he dared to be anything other than perfectly healthy.

He puts around the facility in his terry cloth robe and slippers on some days, others he dresses up in polos and slacks or even jeans when he’s feeling more casual, and always with a smile on his face. He makes those around him smile and laugh too, and his cheeks get pinched and he’s slipped candies too and he listens to others’ stories and he seems happy and content.

But Eddie feeds on his pain and suffering all the same, knows that behind that smile is a young boy who was told he probably wouldn’t live to see 30, who listens to the older folks knowing he would never get to live a life like that. Eddie knows that sometimes Steve cries himself to sleep at night.

Over time, Eddie and Steve grow closer. Steve hadn’t believed that Eddie was a demon at first, had thought it all just a joke, until one night Mr. Wozniak was laying in his bed, and Steve hadn’t meant to overhear, but he was passing by and the door was cracked open.

“Will I go to Hell now?” Mr. Wozniak was asking, but he seems peaceful all the same, like the thought wasn’t the terrifying ordeal so many people thought it was.

“No, sweetheart,” Eddie was saying, but his voice sounds a little off, huskier, like…like brimstone sat in his throat. “I’ve never claimed your soul. It’s still your own. Go find Irena. She’s been waiting for you for too long.”

Irena, Steve knew from speaking with Mr. Wozniak, was his young wife who had died decades earlier.

“Will I get to see you again?”

Eddie’s long fingers reach out, his nails long and sharp, dark in a way that was not nail polish. He lightly and gently strokes the papery skin of Mr. Wozniak’s cheek. “You will be at peace. You will find the afterlife is so much more than this Good-vs-Evil rhetoric so popular in this plane of existence. Go in peace, my child, and should you wish it, perhaps one day we might meet again.”

Mr. Wozniak smiles at that, and he closes his eyes with a softly whispered, “Irena, I’m coming…”

A moment later, he was gone.

Steve watches as Eddie seems to grow smaller, appear more normal, and though he knows he should be terrified, he isn’t. Instead he continues on his way, letting the knowledge of more percolate in his brain, though by the next morning when news of Mr. Wozniak’s passing spreads and Eddie assures everyone that he passed away peacefully and in no pain, Steve knows Eddie speaks the truth and he realizes that nothing has changed. Eddie is still Eddie.

They continue to grow closer. He spends more time with Eddie, lets Eddie in fully on how much he hurts, and tells the demon that he wished things had been different and that they could have met under better circumstances.

Eddie tells him that he never enjoyed the taste of regret. It was far too bitter.

They fall in love, encouraged by their friends in the facility new and old, who don’t seem to care that he is a mortal with a short life expectancy and Eddie is an immortal demon lord. What is all that in the face of true love?

And then it happens, and Steve is the one lying in bed, knowing his time has come. He smiles up at Eddie and decides not to regret any of it, not wanting their final moments to be flavored with bitterness.

“Stevie,” Eddie whispers mournfully, and he’s beautiful. It’s not his full true form, but his eyes are a dark blood red, his teeth elongated into sharp fangs, and his pale skin veined with reds and blacks. Horns curl out from his curly hair.

“You said once that I get to be with my loved ones after this,” Steve says, still smiling, and he reaches up to cup Eddie’s jaw with a weakened hand. Eddie nods against him, and Steve wonders if all demons can cry, or if it’s just his. “Then take my soul, darling. It already belongs to you.”

Eddie flinches back, like Steve knew he would, because souls are not little things. Eddie had explained before, after everything, that he didn’t even actually deal in souls, that that wasn’t the sort of demon he was. Steve had asked if he could, on a technicality, and Eddie had paused because saying yes, any demon could, but souls were priceless. When you gave one up to a demon, you gave up everything. You would be theirs until the end of days. Eddie had said he wasn’t that sort of demon.

“Baby, no,” Eddie breathes now, shaking his head gently enough not to dislodge Steve’s hand. “You would be—”

“Yours,” Steve interrupts. “But I already am. You already own my heart. I now willingly give you my soul. All you have to do is accept it.”

And Eddie protests, at first, because Steve is giving him complete control over him for eternity. Steve gives it freely with open arms, and in the end, Eddie can do nothing but accept it. He tells Steve that he doesn’t know if demons have souls or not, but his belongs to Steve just as assuredly as his own heart does.

Steve’s final mortal breath is gifted into Eddie’s crimson mouth, full of peace and love and the understanding that this thing between them will always beat eternal.

It turns out that, whether it was still unknown if all demons had souls, Eddie was the sort that does.

And it also turns out that, when you’re gifted a demon lord’s soul, you become a demon too.

Eddie’s cult ends soon after, disbanded into non-existence. In its place, however, rises a new one that worships not just one demon caretaker, but two as Eddie is soon joined by another with floppy brown hair and sparkling brown eyes that for once smiles without hidden pain. They take care of their charges, gently coax them into eternal rest when it’s their time, and together prove that true love is forever.

[undreaming-fanfiction]

Ghosts

Written for @steddieangstyaugust, inspired by Dead Boy Detectives if you couldn't tell.

Steve should have seen it coming, really. Despite dating, driving the gang around, and being silly with Robin, he'd known for a long time he wouldn't live long enough to amount to anything. Everyone had plans, had a future. But Steve? He'd be lucky if he could give his imminent death a meaning.

Turns out, he couldn't. Or at least, not in the way he wanted.

It didn't matter if it was the guilt he'd been feeling ever since Eddie died and Max ended up brain dead, poor judgment, or simply wanting for the wait to already be over. Whatever the reason, he pulled "an Eddie" in August 1986. He didn't even ask, he just ran out as a distraction while the rest of his friends were trying to evacuate Max from the overran hospital. He got a few swings in, they got a few chomps. Then more than a few. In the end, he way lying on the ground, bleeding out, but his efforts didn't seem to matter. As soon as he took his last breath, the monsters just turned around and went back to Max's room. Steve didn't even have enough time to pray he'd bought them enough time.

"Oh shit. Stupid. So stupid."

Steve froze, or at least got startled. Which was something, you know, for a dead guy. If this was the voice of an angel welcoming him to the afterlife, it sure sounded like-

"Did I look this dumb when I died? I hope not. Why the fuck would you do that, Harrington, huh? Thought they no longer needed you? Can you imagine what it's going to do to Dustin when he finds out?"

Munson.

Steve opened his eyes and sat up. Nothing hurt. Weird.

What was even weirder? He came face to face with Edward Munson, recently deceased.

Eddie shrieked and fell back on his ass. He'd probably been crouching over Steve, but now he was splayed on the hospital floor, gaping at Steve as if he'd seen a-

Oh. Okay.

Steve turned around and grimaced. He was sitting in his own mangled corpse, which he wasn't too thrilled about. He sprung to his feet and, after giving his bloodied face one last look - they didn't get the hair, phew! - turned to Munson. "Fancy meeting you here. Are you, like, my afterlife welcoming comittee?"

Eddie made a vain effort to close his mouth. "Uh, no. Not really. I mean, there probably is someone coming to get you, but if you don't mind, I won't stick around for that. I don't think Death likes me very much, after I bolted on her."

Steve blinked in confusion. "Death…is a woman?"

"Oh yep. Very nice. Didn't even chase me when I freaked out and ran. Um. But you might want to wait for her. I will stick around for a bit longer." Even in death, Eddie hadn't changed. He pulled a strand of his hair in front of his face, and Steve wondered if he could chew on it, now that he was a ghost.

"But why? What is there to do?" Steve paused, thinking. "Wait. Is there something we can actually do? To help?"

That made Eddie laugh, although it was weak and incredulous. "Uh. Harrington. You've just died in like, a pretty painful and sadly heroic way, and your first thought is that you haven't done enough?"

"Doesn't feel like I have. Look," he said, offering Eddie a hand to pull him up, "if Death is coming, I'd rather not be here. Can we go and check on the others?" He wiggled his fingers at Eddie when he didn't respond.

The wiggle must have jolted Eddie's brain awake because he took Steve's hand. It was weird - he could feel the pressure where Eddie's hand met his, but there was no warmth, no texture. Possibly no pain, he thought. Useful.

"Right," Eddie cleared his throat. "Let's go. Just a bit of a warning - I think Will can see us. At least he looked very suspicious when I tried to sneak into your house when you all were staying there, and when I told him to just pretend he didn't notice anything, he nodded. So, uh. I guess he's special or something?"

They would learn quite a few things in their new existence. First of all, Will wasn't special. He just fit the criteria of "nearly died in the Upside Down or the newly merged realities", not just by being in danger, but being so close to death he almost didn't make it. Turns out, Hopper could see them too after his near death experience under the mall, and Hopper couldn't just be shushed.

Half-corporeal hugs were exchanged. Tears were shed, especially by Dustin and Robin. But they were all still together, for now. The danger was near and their grief had to wait.

By not quite so safe experimentation, Steve and Eddie found out that only two things could hurt them - other ghosts and iron. Luckily enough, none of the Upside Down creatures qualified as either. And so the party gained an invisible and indestructible vanguard - Eddie and Steve, both wielding their weapons of choice (Steve was overjoyed that he could just pick up his nail bat, and maybe that was a bit of a giveaway, seeing the bat floating towards the party with no body to hold it). They scouted ahead and reported back, either to Will and Hopper, or just by angrily scribbling in a notebook provided by Nancy. They couldn't sleep, so they would watch over the party in the night, allowing them the so much needed rest.

The months dragged on. Eleven kept her promise and saved Max, and when the pale redhead saw Eddie and Steve even with her damaged eyesight, no one was surprised. And as Upside Down crept further into their world, there were more injuries, more near death experiences, more tearful reunions. After being bitten by a demodog and almost bleeding out, Robin flung herself at Steve the second she could move and babbled about him being the absolute biggest idiot there ever was. He didn't dispute it, but hugged her tighter.

They were making progress. Still not enough to fix things, but they were getting there. And Steve's brain started another countdown to his and Eddie's potential second demise.

"Do you think we'll still be around, when the portal is closed?" he asked Eddie during one of their night vigils. "What if it's just the Upside Down that's keeping us here?"

Eddie, scribbling in a notebook, shrugged. "I don't know, and for the first time in my life - well, death - I don't have enough information to panic about that." He chewed on the pencil, meeting Steve's eyes with caution. "Might be nice though," he said slowly, "to stay. Do some more good, make sure everyone's safe. If you're in."

Steve laughed. "Wait. Are you, Eddie Munson, the mortal enemy of jocks, asking me to join you? Even when we're not neck deep in shit?"

"Mortal enemy…I mean, I lost the mortal part, and it felt so mundane to just keep the enemy. So yes, one position if Eddie Munson's afterlife has just opened up. Will Steven Harrington join me in it?"

Steve thought about it, and maybe he should have thought longer. Maybe he should have considered that eternity is a pretty long time, but his infrequent visits to the church taught him that heaven would mean being with his loved ones. He'd still be around if the party needed him. He'd see Robin off to college. And then, when everyone left…it would be just him and Eddie.

Him and Eddie. What a thought.

He winked at Eddie who, for a ghost, looked like he was sweating bullets. "Take me to the movies first, Munson, and I'm all yours." And then, even if he know neither of them would feel it, he covered Eddie's hand with his. He might have been imagining the gentle spark of warmth, but he decided it was real. He knew it was real.

Eddie smiled at him and interlaced his fingers with Steve's. "I can work with that, big boy."

And for the first time in so many years, the countdown in Steve's head stopped.

[littlelioncub43]

Eddie Munson is always in the mood for nasty, slutty hickies. Doesn't care where you are. If your neck looks especially delicious, he's going for it, and he expects you to return the favor.

You're damn right, he is

With all that free relaestate 🤤

He makes time to give you hickies, weekly. As long as you're down and ok with it, the man is mouthing at your jaw nearly daily, it doesnt matter what you're doing. You could be washing your dishes, folding your laundry, or anything and he'll sneak up behind you, trap you in one of those intoxicatingly sweet back hugs and let his lips work their magic along your skin.

"Eddie, baby, what are you doing?"

"M'writing my name in hickies," he chuckles, "now, hush, I need to concentrate."

He has also totally cum in his pants from you giving him hickies. It was just a culmination of everything that was just too much, too perfect for him to take. You were in his lap, front seat of the van, going at him like a fucking feral animal and he was enjoying every second of it. He could feel you rutting into him, your hands caressing his jaw to hold his head to the side for you to kiss and suck and bite— he felt so exposed and vulnerable while also feeling unbelievably desired and consumed.

One well timed kiss/bite/suck combo to the special spot on his already marked up neck sent him to the Afterlife.

"JESUS CHRIST!" He arched his back, moaned like a wanton whore and then proceeded to cum in his pants. The way you cooed at him and cradled him to you did not help him at all, if anything it made him cum even harder.

But man, the look on Wayne's face when he sees the disheveled mess that is his nephew when Eddie comes home— priceless.

[salchica]

tender love is blind

In which Eddie dies, Steve lives, and the two of them finally get their happily ever after. -- For the Steddie ABO Valentine's Day Exchange!

Published: 02/08/2024 | Words: 5,462 | Rating: Mature | Link: x

Eddie doesn’t believe in the afterlife, not really. 

Years ago when the paramedics wheeled his mom’s body away, Eddie had sat at the window in their shitty little apartment building and stared up at the night sky. He didn’t even know what he was looking for-- a sign maybe, like a shooting star. Something to let him know that the heroin was worth it and Josie Munson was in a better place. 

There wasn’t anything, of course. Eddie’s Dad had stumbled into the apartment high off his ass, like the solution to his wife’s overdose was to follow in her footsteps. He shoved Eddie into a car and somehow got him to Hawkins in one piece. In hindsight maybe that was the sign, his mama’s way of doing him one last solid from the beyond. Wayne is the best thing that’s ever happened to Eddie, and if the grizzled Beta could be believed Eddie was the best thing to ever happen to him, too. He thanks a god he only sorta believes in that Wayne is safe in Normal Hawkins, that none of this shit will ever touch him. Eddie tries to smile, but then he remembers that he’s dying. 

“Please, Eddie--”  That’s Steve, fuck. He hadn’t wanted Stevie to see him like this. He tries to talk, but instead of ‘I love you’, iron and copper flood his throat. 

Eddie regrets a lot, but right now not mating Steve is the biggest one. Eddie had wanted to wait-- until he’d graduated, until he'd saved enough money, until until until. He regrets not taking his chance at happiness when he could. Steve had wanted Eddie’s bite, had made that abundantly clear every heat and rut they’d spent together over the last year. It had been Eddie that got hung up on wanting to give his Omega the best start at their life together… and now he’ll never get the chance. 

“He’s gone, Steve, we gotta go--” That’s Nancy, probably. She seems like the type to compartmentalize. 

“Eds, you can’t leave me, please baby get up. It’s your year, remember? You gotta just get up for me, just sit up--” Steve is spiraling. Normally Eddie would distract him, would have already pulled Steve into a hug and probably scented him a little. Make them both smell like clove-honey, cinnamon-vanilla. 

“Wakeupwakeupwakeup,” There’s pressure on his chest, but it keeps sliding off because from what Eddie remembers he doesn’t really have much of a chest anymore. He feels a mouth on his, realizes that Stevie is giving him CPR. “Nancy you gotta do something!” That’s Buckley. Killing Vecna must have gone well then, if all three of them are here and alive.  

“Shit,” Nancy says. And then she growls, “Steve, let’s go.”  All Alpha, a tone Eddie’s only used on Steve to snap him out of a panic attack. Usually Steve is thankful, but this time he makes a sound Eddie’s never heard before; a high, keening wail that breaks what’s left of Eddie’s heart. He hears a scuffle, like Steve is being dragged away. The wail doesn’t stop. 

Eddie really  hopes there’s an afterlife, if only so he can see Stevie again. He imagines them meeting in Heaven; Steve will be like 98 with crow’s feet and gray hair that’s full but maybe a little shorter and he’s been happy and they can dance and kiss, even though Eddie is frozen at 21. It’s a nice dream. Eddie really wishes he could smile. 

Robin holds Steve, after everything. 

She’s the only thing keeping him together when his body threatens to shake apart, and now that Steve is almost officially out of secrets he feels numb. The entire Party witnessed him trying to claw his way back into the Upside Down, screaming for Eddie to come back. They’d known he was an Omega-- it was hard to hide, after Starcourt and the Russian drugs-- but they hadn’t know about SteveandEddie. 

Eddie had thought it was funny, to keep them a secret. Dustin kept pestering them about meeting each other, and the kid was insufferable on a good day.  They’d wanted a big reveal; something to give the kid a heart attack when they finally told everyone they’d been dating for a year. Besides Robin and Uncle Wayne, no one had known, and now everyone’s found out in the worst way possible. In hindsight, Max probably knew the whole time. She’s a smart kid, and if the whole Vecna thing is any proof, really good at keeping secrets. 

Over the next few days the Party curls up in the pack nest in the Harrington living room, everyone filtering in and out in shifts so Steve and Robin are  never alone. Robin only gets up to make food and use the restroom; she pumps out a constant stream of calm and steady pheromones even though Steve can tell that she’s grieving, too. Steve hasn’t taken off his scent patches since before Vecna. They make his neck and wrists itch, and he knows wearing them this long isn’t healthy but there’s so much he’s not ready to face. 

Everyone talks to him, even though he can’t bring himself to respond. Max has a broken leg, but she’s fine. Dustin has a sprained ankle, but he’s fine too, at least physically. Hopper was never dead, just held captive by Russians. Eleven has her powers back. Erica and Lucas are rattled, Mike and Will are being awkward, and Jonathan has a new friend named Argyle. Nancy is busy as always, running around helping with the town’s relief efforts. 

They all pepper Robin with questions whenever they think Steve is out of earshot. 

“He smells like my aunt after my uncle died,” Mike asks. “He smells like a widow. Were they--  I mean I don’t see a bite mark, but… were they mated?” 

“No,” Robin says. “Eddie wanted to wait until graduation.” 

“Oh. ‘86 was going to be his year.” Mike makes a punched out noise, like it just dawns on him. 

That night, Steve burrows into Robin’s side. Her scent is lavender and lemon, soothing yet sharp. Steve knows he’s not going to like what she has to say when she starts smelling nervous. “Babe, look at me for a second,” She says. She pats his hair until Steve looks up. “Dustin said he saw Wayne putting up posters at the school, looking for Eddie. Looking for the both of you, actually. Someone has to tell him.” 

Steve closes his eyes against a wave of despair. It threatens to crush him, to pull him under until he can’t tell up from down. “I can’t, Robbie,” Steve says. He’s never been more at war with himself; his Omega feels far away, only mildly distressed even though Steve has never felt further from peace. “I can’t stand there and tell him I couldn’t bring Eddie home.” 

“I know for a fact Uncle Wayne would never blame you,” Robin tries. Steve doesn't answer, just wraps an arm around his stomach. Robin sighs. 

“I’ll ask Joyce, or Nancy.” Robin says finally. 

He nods. He shuts his eyes. He quietly wishes to float away and never come back. 

Steve has only been to two funerals in his life. One when he was eleven;  his Grandpa Otis passed away, and the Harringtons had thrown a memorial fit for a small-town king. The coffin was shiny, the food was catered, and the choir was hand-picked from among local unpresented pups. The ceremony was gorgeous, and at the end of it people came out of the woodwork to shake hands with Steve’s parents and tell them how much of a pillar of the community Grandpa Otis was. Little Steve had fixated on the flowers-- even though he was an alpha, Grandpa Otis always loved roses, and had had a huge plot for them in his backyard. He’d said they reminded him of Steve’s grandma, a society Omega that always smelled like roses and rainwater. Otis had taught Steve how to weed and pluck and prune his rose bushes, but at his funeral, there were only hydrangeas and gardenias.

“Where are the roses?” Steve’d asked his mom. 

Vivian Harrington rolled her eyes, “Roses are so… common.” She sniffs at the word, her perfect face wrinkling in disgust. “Don’t you want everyone to know how much we loved Grandpa Otis?” 

Even then, Little Steve had known to read between the lines, that what his mother was really saying was Don’t you want everyone to see how much money we have? He’d bitten his tongue, but later when his parents were away on another business trip Steve snuck into the cemetery with a handful of roses and spent the night curled up by Grandpa Otis’ headstone. 

The second funeral Steve had gone to was for Dustin’s cat, Mews. It was actually more like a candlelight vigil, and Mrs. Henderson had bawled, clutching at a guilty Dustin who’d  given a very heartfelt speech. It was all very moving if not a little uncomfortable, but Steve can’t imagine that Mews actually gave a fuck that in lieu of a body they’d buried a can of his favorite food. 

Both instances cemented one thing in Steve’s mind; funerals, they’re for the living. 

So when Wayne tracks Steve down two weeks after Vecna and asks if Steve will come with him down to the church to plan Eddie’s service, Steve can’t help but think of the way Wayne welcomed him into his home with open arms; the grizzled Beta rarely asked for anything, but gave Eddie and Steve everything in return. Of course Steve says yes. 

Wayne’s truck squeals as they pull into the church parking lot. His fingers grip the steering wheel, the white of his knuckles the only thing giving away his nerves. Like Steve, Wayne is wearing a scent patch-- Steve can’t pick out any of Wayne’s emotions, only catching  hints of tobacco and orange. 

Hawkins only has one church still standing, and it’s unfortunately been run by the Carver family for the last 70 years. Pastor and Mrs. Carver had gone on the morning news and invited all of Hawkins to use their church to say goodbye to their loved ones that died in the “earthquakes”. They were the picture of the perfect alpha omega couple, eyes red-rimmed and mouths spouting bullshit like ‘it’s what Jason would have wanted’. As if their kid hadn't died during a manhunt for an innocent person. Steve knows this whole thing is useless, but he respects Wayne for trying anyway. 

He thinks that if Eddie were here he probably would have insisted on the church, actually,  if only to scandalize the ‘fine upstanding hypocrites of Hawkins, Indiana’. Steve lets himself imagine it-- instead of hymns, they’d shake the walls with Metallica. The Party would all wear their Hellfire shirts, and Steve would wear the cropped prototype Eddie had made for him, even though it was cut right under Steve’s nipples and entirely inappropriate. Eddie had always loved Steve in that shirt and would always cut it incrementally shorter, and Steve would pretend not to notice. Maybe his ghost would appreciate the show. 

Wayne doesn’t move to get out of the car. The silence weighs down on Steve, this heavy thing that isn’t even being offset by the mellow croon of Dolly Parton on the radio. Wayne turns towards Steve, his mustache twitching oddly above his lip. 

“Steve--” Wayne starts. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve blurts out. “If I hadn’t… after Starcourt, if Eddie hadn’t found me, and then with Vecna it was Eddie’s first time with the Upside Down and if I hadn’t left Eddie and Dustin alone--” Steve hasn’t been able to stop crying in two weeks, and this time isn’t any different. It’s like he gets three seconds of peace before the fact that Eddie is gone slams into his chest and sets him off again.

Steve fists his hands in his sweater, rubbing harshly at the fat tears rolling down his face. His stomach somersaults but he holds back the nausea, not looking Wayne in the eyes. 

“Harrington,” Wayne says again. He clears his throat when Steve flinches at the use of his last name-- “Steve, please, can you look at me, son?” 

“You don’t have to say anything, Wayne, I know it’s my fault--” 

“Steve, I don’t blame you,” Wayne says. 

“You should,” Steve scoffs. 

It’s true; he’d had a bad feeling about their plan but he’d let everyone go through with it anyway. A not-small part of Steve was convinced that if Eddie had never met him, the Upside Down would have never come into the Munson family's lives. It’s like the Upside Down was a disease; once you’re a part of it, anything and everyone you get close gets infected. 

“You should hate me,” Steve says. 

“I don’t,” Wayne says. “I can’t.” 

Even though Wayne isn’t a man of many words, the Beta has always been kind to Steve. He’s never given Steve  a shovel talk, not even when he caught Eddie  sneaking Steve out of the Munson trailer more than once in the early hours of the morning. And when they were officially introduced around a dinner of pizza and Coke,  he’d welcomed Steve into their family with open arms even though he’d had no reason to trust a Harrington. Even when he seemed confused that Steve seemed to be sticking around.

“You should hate me,” Steve says again. 

With a frustrated growl, Wayne lifts his scent patch. The truck is a three-seater, so it doesn’t take long for his scent to flood the carriage with the expected citrus-tobacco-grief.  But underneath that… love-protectiveness-affection. Steve’s nose twitches, heart stuttering. 

“You made my boy the happiest I’ve ever seen him. The way Dustin Henderson tells it, Eddie went out a hero. Protecting one of those pups you care about so much.”   

“Yeah, yes,” Steve is quick to agree. “He was a hero.” 

Wayne nods and takes a deep breath. 

“Eddie is… Eddie was  used to people leaving,” Wayne says. “His mama, his daddy-- that boy was accustomed to giving people his heart and then watching as they stomped all over it. I knew as soon as I saw you two together that you weren’t like that.” He sniffs and clears his throat. 

“I knew that boy like the back of my hand, and I don’t know if I would have been able to put him back together, if he had lost you. I know you weren’t mated, but you’re still family.” 

Steve realizes, then, that Wayne probably understood. Mike was right-- Steve, when he lets himself take off his scent patches, smells like he’s been widowed. Eddie wasn’t Wayne’s kid, and he wasn’t Steve’s mate, but he still held those places in both of their hearts. 

“Thank you,” Steve chokes out. 

Wayne gives Steve a pat on the shoulder, rubbing his wrist against Steve’s arms before sticking his scent patch back into place. “You might be family, but I’ll thump you if you ever make me talk that much again,” Wayne laughs wetly. “Now let’s go.” 

-

-

In the Upside Down, Eddie Munson  opens his eyes. 

The line for the church moves agonizingly slowly because people keep jostling in front of them once they recognize Wayne. People shove past with barely concealed snarls, and Steve’s glad his scent patches are on; the scent of distress-anger-omega would have probably made the situation worse. 

As it was Steve already had to breathe through his mouth so he wouldn’t be able to smell the shock-disgust-confusion radiating off of the people of Hawkins as they wondered at Wayne’s audacity. Even though the government big-wigs had swooped in and cleared Eddie’s name, it wasn’t enough when people had already decided that Eddie had invited evil into Hawkins by simply existing. 

“Won’t be long now,” Wayne says.

Two hours pass. Wayne keeps his eyes forward, his scent never wavering beyond his stoic citrus. All the different scents layering over each other give Steve a headache. It bursts into existence from behind his eyes, and Steve isn’t sure if it’s a result of repeated head trauma or… well, something else.  

After that everything is blurry. 

Steve knows they get to the front of the line, remembers Pastor Carver baring his fangs and yanking the ‘Funeral Request Form’ out of Wayne’s hands. He remembers laughing, humorless; for all that Jason Carver Sr. preached about religion putting him ‘above his base instincts’, he was halfway feral at the very sight of Wayne Munson. 

Steve remembers Wayne tilting his head, submitting, and  snatches of a conversation-- 

 “I figured you know what it’s like, losing a son,” Wayne had said. “I’d like to bury mine, please. Near his mama, if that’s alright with you.” 

He remembers Carver Sr.’s fangs extending, eyes shifting into a bloody, Alpha red— 

“My son,” Pastor Carver spat, “was not a murderer.” 

“Neither was mine,” Wayne growls.

Steve remembers letting out a whine as a sharp pain shot through his stomach, accompanying the one in his head,  Wayne turning, looking at him with concern-- “Steve, are you okay?” 

And then, nothing. 

Eddie can’t tell if he’s in Hell or the Upside Down. 

He also hasn’t decided if he’s dead or not, but that seems like a secondary concern, honestly. He kind of hopes he’s in Hell, because at least then there’s bound to be other Damned souls hanging around if he looks hard enough. But if it’s the Upside Down that means that his friends left him. And if they left him, that means they didn’t think he needed a way out in the first place. 

Of course, there’s the possibility Hell only looks like the Upside Down because that’s where Eddie beefed it… he doesn’t know. Everything’s all jumbled together, and to be fair maybe-dying hasn’t left him a lot of time to parse through the maybe-Afterlife logically. 

Fact: He’d woken up surrounded by dead demobats. Their bodies were all twisted and broken, like they’d fallen mid-flight instead of landing. Point for the Upside Down. 

Fact: Eddie’s room in Wayne’s trailer is still stuck in 1983. It’s almost hard to notice-- Eddie has always been in the habit of adding more things to his room, layering posters on top of each other. Stevie used to joke that if Eddie added any more layers, he’d be boxing himself in.  The biggest difference, though, is the absence of Steve’s nest. It makes his Alpha panic, actually;  his instincts are screaming for him to find his Omega and make sure Stevie’s safe. 

Fact: He’s hungry. He feels like Tantalus, hunger fogging his mind until he can’t even fucking think. His fangs are longer than they’ve ever been, even for an Alpha, and combined everything is pointing to something Eddie doesn’t even want to think about. 

So he’s decided that he’s probably haunting a parallel dimension. Maybe. It’s still unclear. 

He’s doomed to live out his afterlife in a parallel dimension because he saved a fucking freshman. Not that he regrets it-- Dustin was Eddie’s favorite, and Steve’s favorite even though Steve claimed not to have any-- but Eddie can’t help but relive the moment he died over and over again. He can’t help thinking that instead of cutting the rope and trapping Dustin in the Rightside Up, he could’ve jumped down with him. Instead of standing on top of his trailer and playing Master of Puppets, he could’ve hooked his radio up to his amp and fucking blasted it. 

Luckily he has time, an eternity even, to really think about all the ways he’s fucked up. 

At some point, Eddie adopts a demobat. It’s rare to find one that’s alive -- all the ones that used him as his last meal were 100% dead, thankfully -- but this one’s a baby. He’s calling it Dustin II, because it’s annoying in a cute way, using its feet to bop along and walk behind Eddie instead of flying.  As the only other thing Eddie’s seen alive, he’s kind of attached to the little guy. 

“Never let society tell you that drug dealing isn’t good,” Eddie says. Dustin II flaps his ears, and Eddie takes that as a nod. “Nothing can be that bad, especially not when it introduces you to the love of your life,” Eddie says. 

“Stevie called me one day, just like super out of it. He said he got roofied by Russians. I thought he was kidding, but now I know he was most definitely not--” 

Eddie’s in Melvad’s, trying to find food he won’t throw up. He’s gone through cans of beans, cans of vegetables, bags of chips… nothing sates his hunger, and even though Eddie thinks it might help, he avoids the meat section entirely. It’s probably all spoiled anyway. He ignores the fact that it still sounds delicious.  

“He calls me over to get some strong painkillers, and asks me to stay with him in case he freaks out. Of course I do it-- King Steve calling me? I’ve been half in love with the guy ever since he was a fucking freshman, of course went over immediately. I show up with drugs, he actually does freak out. I talk him down, and as the kids say, the rest is history.” 

Eddie picks up an apple. It’s more than rotted, it’s practically mummified. He considers it, weighing it in his hand. His stomach revolts-- this won’t do him any good. Eddie shakes his head and throws it away. 

Dustin II chitters. “I know, man,” Eddie nods. “Finding out King Steve was actually Stevie, that he’s a good guy who takes care of a gaggle of kids and likes fucking ABBA-- it rocked my fucking world. Falling in love with him probably goes against the natural order, but I dare you to find anyone that wouldn’t love that man.”  

Somewhere an aisle over, there’s a crash. Eddie flinches and ducks into a crouch. He was stupid to think that Dustin II was the only thing to survive in the Upside Down-- what if it’s a Demogorgon or a Demo-something else… Eddie’s too hungry, he’s too tired, he can’t do this… 

He creeps up the aisle, peeking around the corner. He jumps out with a yell, claws and fangs hyperextended-- 

--There, in front of Dustin II, is a thick, reddish membrane.  Dustin II chitters again. If Eddie didn’t know any better, the thing would look fucking smug. “Holy shit.” 

--

The first thing Steve sees when he wakes up is Robin’s worried face. It immediately shifts to relief, and she goes to punch his arm before she hesitates, her hand spasming before she rubs his shoulder instead. She holds a glass of water up to his lips and he sucks it down, greedily. “What happened?” Steve says. 

“You passed out at the church, dingus. Apparently Wayne had to actually catch you before you got another concussion.” 

“Oh.” 

“Steve… They called the ambulance. The EMTs took off your scent patches.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah,” Robin says. She brushes her wrists over Steve’s neck, his sides, filling his nose with lavender. “Everyone’s waiting downstairs.” 

Steve Harrington is officially out of secrets. 

--

The thing is, Steve never planned on saying anything. When the pregnancy test came back positive, Steve had immediately gotten into his car and driven out of Hawkins. Not even twenty minutes later he’d had to pull over and throw up his lunch. 

His Omega wasn’t happy-- he could feel his instincts rebelling against his very human, very urgent need to get the fuck out of Hawkins, Indiana. Steve had looked down the highway, eyes roving over the Welcome to Hawkins sign. It mocked him in happy yellow letters, like Hawkins wasn’t a hellmouth that’s already taken everything from him. He’d leaned back against the cool metal of his car, letting the soft rumble of the idling engine sooth his sour stomach. Eddie’s battle jacket was warm around his shoulders, and Steve had stuck his nose in it letting Eddie’s clove-honey scent soothe and calm him down the rest of the way. His hands had passed over his stomach as he got back into the front seat. 

He makes a U-Turn and drives back the way he came. 

--

Steve walks downstairs.

As one, all eyes turn to him. Everyone’s there-- all the kids, Hopper, Joyce, Murray. Even Wayne. Steve turns to him, first. He doesn’t care if everyone hears, he needs to make Wayne understand. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “I wanted to tell you, but I figured you’d eventually want to leave Hawkins and I can’t be the reason you’re stuck here. This whole place, no matter how much they hated Eddie and the way Eddie hated them… He’s just, he’s all over Hawkins, and I can’t leave him when he’s here or in some version of here, and I know you don’t owe me anything because we weren’t bonded, not really, and we’d just talked about it--” 

“You’re carrying my grandpup,” Wane interrupts. His eyes are misty. 

“Yeah,” Steve says weakly. Wayne crosses the room and pulls Steve into a hug, passing his wrists all over Steve in a way more intimate scenting than they’d had in the parking lot of the church. This time it’s more than a light touch; it’s borderline parental, in a way Steve’s parents never were. 

He sees the happiness in Wayne’s eyes, his joy at having a piece of Eddie that isn’t locked behind the gate to a hell dimension. Wayne has said a million times over that he sees Steve as his own kid, but this is the first time Steve actively lets himself feel it. Wayne finally lets Steve go but hovers at his side as he turns and faces the rest of the kids. 

“So yeah,” Steve smiles sadly. “I’m having a baby.” The room erupts into cheers. 

Eddie Munson laughs as he bursts into the Rightside Up, taking huge gulps of fresh air. “YES! ‘86, baby, what did I say! It’s my fucking year!!!” At his side, Dustin II screeches, feeding off Eddie’s energy. 

So. 

Fact: Eddie Munson is a vampire. 

It’s the only explanation, really-- he survived for weeks in the Upside Down without food, raw meat is the only thing that sounds even remotely edible, and his fangs are so long they probably belong in a record book somewhere. His first instinct is to find Steve, to claim him right then, to make up for all the time he wasted. He lets himself imagines it: 

It’s the afterglow of Steve’s heat and they’re sweaty and practically glued together-- 

Steve looks at him, his face breaking into a smile that makes Eddie’s favorite moles scrunch together, practically touching, and Eddie will lick his lips, he’d be nervous, probably-- 

It’d be evening, hopefully sunset, so the sun can outline Steve in a halo of yellow light. He’ll look angelic and fucked-out. His blush’ll spread down his chest and over the sharp planes of his stomach, and Eddie will take his hand in his jaw and he’ll nuzzle at Steve’s throat, popping out his fangs--  

Sticky blood runs down his fingers, and he’s trying to prop Steve up and Steve’s eyes go from trusting to horrified and it’s too late and he can’t move and nothing he’s pressing his fingers to Steve’s neck but the blood won’t stop but instead of being horrified… His knot expands, pushing at Steve’s belly from the inside and he’s killing him and he wants to stop and he can’t, and he wants to save Steve but he can’t, and then. And Steve is lifeless,  a broken, bloody thing, contorted and dead in their nest.

Eddie shakes himself out of it. That can’t happen, that won’t happen. His laughs peter off into sobs… 

He doesn’t think he  can ever see Steve again. 

-

-

Steve’s Omega wakes him up that night. 

He shimmies out of Robin’s hold, steps over the pups and out of the backdoor of his house before he’s even fully shaken off the haze of sleep. He walks into the first behind his house, following the scent of clove and honey. Steve thinks it’s his mind playing tricks on him. It’s Eddie’s scent but something more piggybacking on it, something that smells like blood, an undercurrent of iron.  

He feels stupid, but-- “Eddie?” The trees in front of him rustle. 

Steve whips around, tiny fangs bared and hand hovering protectively over his stomach.“Stop,” The shadow growls. Steve can feel a whine in the back of his throat. His Alpha is ordering him away, doesn’t Eddie want him anymore? Logic is gone, there’s just sadness. 

“Eddie, is that you?”  Steve’s shaking, he’s unraveling, he’s coming apart why can’t his Alpha see that. “Eds, talk to me please.”

“Don’t come any closer,” He says, but his voice cracks on the command. Steve has fallen asleep to that voice too many times to not recognize it.  For the first time since Vecna his Omega and his heart are on the same page. Steve feels despair, but more than that he’s angry.  

The shadow moves further into the forest. Historically it’s the Alpha that chases an Omega, but Steve’s nose isn’t lying to him, his heart isn’t lying to him. He holds his hand over his stomach, the barely-there swell comforting him. He’s about to do something so fucking stupid-- 

Steve runs. 

The shadow is impossibly fast, almost teleporting through the trees, but Steve is determined. He ignores that he’s barefoot, even though the ache in his feet is already catching up to him. Maybe-Eddie might be fast, but Steve grew up in these woods, mapping them every summer since he was old enough to walk. Steve sniffs-- smells iron and blood, clove and honey-- there. 

He launches himself at the shadow, and they tumble to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Steve’s legs wrap around Eddie’s waist, pinning him to the ground in between his knees. It’s Eddie, but… the first thing Steve notices is that Eddie’s fingers are different, long and skinny and pitch black at the tips. Steve thinks it’s a trick of the light until they move to cover Eddie’s face. 

“Alpha, how are you here?” Steve says. 

“Surprise,” Eddie says. He moves his hands, finally, and Steve tries to catalog every change in his face. He’s skinnier, gaunt almost, the circles under his eyes making them look impossibly wide and dark. Steve brings his hands up to Eddie’s face, cradling it. They’re both crying. Salty tears drip down Steve’s nose and onto Eddie. “Why did you run from me?” 

“Stevie, you saw me die,” Eddie says. “You saw me die, and then I came back wrong.” Eddie’s shaking. Steve holds him tighter. “Nothing about you could ever be wrong, Eds,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure I’m a vampire now.” 

That gives Steve’s pause. But… it’s Eddie, impossibly kind, impossibly wonderful Eddie. The guy who takes spiders out in his palms even when it would be easier to kill them. Again, Steve and his Omega are on the same page. 

“Okay, so you’re a vampire. There is a literal child with superpowers in my nest as we speak,” Steve says. “I know you, Eddie. You’d never hurt me, and you’d die before hurting our baby.” 

A beat. Steve is just so happy now, and it bubbles out of him as he laughs at Eddie’s dumbstruck expression. “Wait, huh,” Eddie says. “Come again?”  

“You, Eddie Munson, would never hurt me or our baby,” Steve giggles. “I was thinking Winnie, if it’s a girl, and maybe Otis for a boy. What do you think?” 

“We’re having a baby?” Steve is right; even through all the changes, Eddie is Eddie. His hands flutter over Steve’s stomach, eyes searching Steve’s in the dim moonlight. Steve nods, grabbing Eddie’s hands and placing them over his belly. There’s nothing to feel, not yet, but  Eddie’s eyes are wide with wonder anyway. 

“You’re gonna be a daddy,” Steve says. Between one blink and the next, Eddie growls and pulls Steve down on top of him. They come together in a crash of teeth and tongues. Steve whines, a small thing in his chest that gets louder as Eddie’s attention shifts to Steve’s neck and chest, sucking and biting everywhere but where Steve wants him. 

Later, Eleven will go through Eddie’s mind and confirm what Steve already knew, that Eddie is still himself even if he needs a little blood once and a while. 

Later, they’ll welcome their baby girl, a sweet little thing with Eddie’s curls and Steve’s moles. They’ll give Wayne his ‘worlds best grandpa’ mug and he’ll get tears all over all of them. 

But right now, under the moonlight, they have all the time in the world. 

THE END. 

Notes: Dividers by @strangergraphics

[thefreakandthehair]

@eddiemonth prompt, oct 28th:  Ghost Hunting | Seven Devils - Florence and the Machine | Frantic read on ao3 + masterpost | tumblr masterlist

“Wait,” Eddie pauses and whips around, nearly knocking everything off of Steve’s kitchen counter. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

It just doesn’t make any sense– after all they’ve seen? After all Steve’s seen? How can he not believe in ghosts? 

Steve shrugs and pops another Pringle in his mouth as he leans against the counter next to Eddie. “No, why? Do you?”

Eddie’s eyes bulge and Steve rolls his own. “Do I believe in ghosts? The guy who got eaten alive by demon bats in a funhouse mirror version of our current waking world? How do you not?!”

“The Upside Down was created, Ed,” Steve laughs and eats another chip, speaking with his mouth full. “Ghosts though? Like, spirits and the afterlife and all of that? I just don’t buy into it.”

“That doesn’t make any kind of sense, Harrington. So you’d just walk into a haunted place or whatever, fearless?”

Crumbs fall from his chest as he brushes them off his shirt Like most things Steve does these days, it’s cute and Eddie wants to beat himself over the head with that Pringles can for the thought. 

Steve nods and licks the leftover Pringle dust from his fingers. Eddie tracks the movement subconsciously. “I guess so, yeah. Why, you wanna go ghost hunting or something?” 

Well, there’s an idea. Does he want to test the waters of the underworld again? No, not really. But does the idea of spending more time with Steve speak to his particular brand of impulsivity? 

It sure does, which is why he responds with glee. 

“Hell yeah!”

--

Dustin hooks them up with some sort of special camera and instructions that go way over both Eddie and Steve’s heads before calling them both idiots and sending them on their way. 

And as they approach the old cemetery, Eddie starts to agree with him. 

Barren trees wave hello with decrepit branches and the gate clatters in the wind. A cool breeze whips through them, cutting Eddie to the bone and he sees Steve shiver next to him out of the corner of his eye. 

“Place is bigger than I thought,” Steve says. “How many people do you think are dead here?” 

“Hopefully of ‘em,” Eddie teases. “Nervous yet, big boy?” 

Eddie bumps their shoulders together and turns to see Steve pull his jacket around him tighter. Like Eddie, the chill hits differently these days, something about the nerve damage from their Upside Down battle scars. It’s hard not to reach out and 

Steve scoffs with his arms crossed over his chest and nudges him back. “Not even a little. Let’s get this over with before we freeze to death.” 

--

Eddie manages to lose Steve in the supposedly haunted cemetery. He’s not sure how it happens– one minute, he’s tracking something that popped up on the camera and the next, he’s alone in a mossy, overgrown corner of the graveyard with nothing but tombstones for company. 

“Steve?” Eddie calls out into the wind. 

Nothing. 

He tries not to let panic set in. 

He’s just veered off course, that’s all. If he retraces his steps, he’ll find himself back to the main path and find Steve, probably annoyed that he’s been stuck waiting. An easy enough task, if he knew which direction he’d come from– the hyperfocus on the camera makes it difficult to reorient himself. 

“Steve?” He yells out again, louder this time as he walks back in what he thinks is the right direction. 

Eddie’s heart starts racing a bit faster, frantic energy thumping in his chest and down to his stomach as he turns in a circle. Nothing but gravestones and epitaphs as far as the eye can see. Another chill takes him by surprise and every hair on the back of his neck stands at attention, probably a placebo response but eerie and unsettling just the same. 

“Steve, where are you?” He yells again, marching forward and up a small hill he’s fairly certain he’d nearly stumbled down when watching the camera screen. 

As he clears the hill, Eddie looks across the bleak expanse of dead grass and dreary landscape, searching for a glimpse of Steve. 

“Steve! Can you hear me?” His voice breaks, quieter than the last few calls. 

When he finds nothing, he starts to walk a little faster, his feet crunching dried up leaves that litter the ground beneath him. Silence envelopes him, loud and consuming, broken only by the sound of his breath. 

Whirling around a tree, he finds himself at another deadend and feels the panic he’s tamped down into a shallow grave begin to claw its way out.

He knows that Steve can handle himself– he’s seen it for himself, after all– but even outside of ghosts, outside of the Upside Down, there are still certain consequences to being seen out in public with Eddie.

The town has been none too kind, even with his name being cleared, and Eddie knows all too well what they’re capable of. Images of Steve beaten and bloodied somewhere in the cemetery, whether by monsters or humans, plague him. Rage and terror seep into his thoughts as he shivers against the wind. 

--

“What the fuck!” Eddie screams and whips around, dropping the camera as his hands ball into fists when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s just me, are you alright?” Steve’s eyes widen and he puts up both hands in a faux display of surrender.  

He releases a breath he hasn’t realized he’s been holding and folds forward, one hand on Steve’s shoulder and the other bracing himself on his own knee. 

“Yep, all good here, never better, Stevie.” Eddie wheezes out, offering a thumbs up without looking.

“You sure? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost… that wasn’t supposed to be a pun.”

Eddie looks up at Steve to find him smiling down at him, soft and crooked, his absolute favorite– the only beam of light and color in this desolate cemetery. 

“Wow, that was lame, even for you.” 

Steve’s smile only grows wider. “Seriously though, did you see something? I turned around and you were just, poof. Gone.” 

“Didn’t you hear me yelling for you? I got caught up tracking what I thought was something worth tracking and got myself lost as shit.” 

Eddie watches as Steve’s smile turns to a grimace. “Hearing’s not great these days. Guess I uh, took a few too many hits to the head. Sorry.”

“Dude, I didn’t know that. And don’t apologize,” Eddie starts, standing up straight but not dropping his hand from Steve’s shoulder. “I’m the one that wandered off. Wayne jokes he wanted to put me on a leash when I was a kid because of it.” 

“You know, that makes sense.” Steve’s smile returns and Eddie mentally pats himself on the back. “Anyways, see anything worth the trip?”

Eddie steps closer, equal parts emboldened and weakened by the adrenaline, and pulls Steve into a hug. If Steve ever asks him why, he’ll write it off as the come-down from hysteria but he needs to feel Steve’s heartbeat more than his own right now. One arm around his neck, the other around his waist, and Eddie just… squeezes. 

He doesn’t expect Steve to hug him back. 

To his surprise, he feels Steve’s arms come up and pull him tight, one around his waist and the other wrapping around his upper back, one hand resting carefully on the back of his head. Eddie inhales the scent of what’s left of Steve’s cologne and lets himself rest, the throbbing of his heart synchronizing with Steve’s. 

It’s a lovely fantasy, pretending this isn’t just Steve being Steve and comforting someone who looks like Hell. 

Too soon, Steve pulls back, both hands still in place but their bodies just inches apart. Under the moonlight, Steve’s eyes sparkle and his hair glistens, shades of copper and hazel, two of Eddie’s new favorite colors. 

He swallows and nods in delayed response to Steve’s question. 

“Yeah, yeah I definitely did. You?"

Something different coats Steve's expression, something soft and fond– tender, even– and Eddie isn't sure exactly what to make of it. Or of the warmth that blooms in his chest. Steve moves one hand to brush a clump of Eddie's hair out of his face and cradles Eddie's cheek, far too delicate for him to understand. 

"No ghosts, but yeah. Definitely found something worth the trip." 

Eddie swallows and watches as Steve comes closer, and then closer still. Closer until his lips graze Eddie's, a silent question, one that Eddie returns without hesitation. 

When Eddie nearly kissed Steve in the Upside Down, he'd imagined it full of desperation and fear, terror and hopelessness. Now, still surrounded by ghosts but none that can touch them, their first kiss is vibrant– full of light, full of life in stark contrast to their surroundings. 

Like their hug, it's over too soon, pulling apart and resting their foreheads against one another. Steve laughs, a low rumble in his chest and shakes his head. "Please tell me we don't have to tell our friends our first day was in a cemetery?" 

Eddie smiles and nods. "Of course we do. Can't imagine anything more metal."

[asbealthgn]

okay I keep seeing posts about steve dying in season 5 and I simply do not claim that energy BUT it got me thinking about what would happen if he did? and uuuh this lil baby ficlet about steve and eddie in the afterlife happened

———

Steve opens his eyes and there’s no monsters, no Upside Down, no Robin or Nancy or Dustin. There’s just the soft sound of water lapping against wooden boards, filtered afternoon light, and the dusty interior of Reefer Rick’s boathouse.

The hell?

“Good to see you again, Harrington.”

Steve sits up so fast that he would normally see stars at the edges of his vision. Guess being dead means that doesn’t happen anymore. Eddie Munson is leaning back against the wall, smoking a cigarette and grinning at him.

“What are—why—” Steve takes a breath and tries to gather his thoughts, because there are too many questions swirling around his head that he wants to ask. “Why am I here?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “Here, like, in the afterlife?” he asks, “I hate to break it to you, man, but you kinda died.”

“Yeah, no, I got that,” Steve says, “I mean, why here? In the boathouse?” If the afterlife is just this shitty little wooden structure he’s gonna be so mad.

But Eddie just shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine, dude,” he says, “When I kicked it, I woke up in my chair at Hellfire. I think it’s supposed to be some place that was significant to you before you died.”

Significant. What’s significant about this place over any other place in Steve’s life? Unless… No. That’s ridiculous. 

“Was anyone there?” Steve asked. 

Eddie gets a sort of sad look on his face. “My mom,” he says, “She died when I was little.” But then his face brightens again. “She’s here! Not, like, here, in this moment, but around. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.”

“That’s really nice,” Steve says. He wonders how it happened that Eddie is his welcome wagon to the Great Beyond. Probably because the only people Steve’s really lost have been distant family he never knew that well. Eddie was the first person whose death cut him right to the core. 

Eddie pushes off the wall and crosses over to Steve, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him. “It’s so weird to talk about her,” Eddie says, “Because I’m so used to being sad about her being dead. But now so am I, and I’m getting to see her.”

“Where did your mom wake up, when she died?” Steve asks, wondering if maybe that’s too nosy of a question. 

“She said it was the little café down the road from our old apartment,” Eddie says. “She always loved it ‘cause it got so much sun.”

The image makes Steve smile. He imagines Eddie sitting on a woman’s lap in a big, sunny window, watching people pass by outside. “So is that what the afterlife is?” he asks, “Just a whole bunch of places from our lives?”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it all out,” he says, “I haven’t been dead that long, and anyway, time is funny here. I’ve explored a little, but there’s a lot to see. Mainly I’m trying to find some door that’ll let me go back to earth, because there are some people I would love to haunt the shit out of.”

Steve laughs. He could get behind that. Eddie reaches out and pokes him in the knee.

“So what makes the boathouse significant to you?” he asks, “I’ll be honest, I figured it would be, like, your house or something. I didn’t think you even knew Reefer Rick.”

“No, I didn’t,” Steve says, “The only time I’ve ever been here were those couple times with you.”

“So why…?” Eddie raises his eyebrows, waiting for some sort of explanation that would make Steve waking up in the afterlife in a place he’d spent a grand total of maybe two hours in make sense. 

The only answer Steve can come up with is pretty embarrassing. He lets his eyes drift to the wall, the spot where Eddie had him pinned with that broken bottle. With everything else going on, he’d barely even had time to acknowledge that all of that had made him feel some very confusing things, because they had to rush off and help Max and kill Vecna and then try to kill him again when the first time didn’t stick. Steve hadn’t taken the time to muddle through why he felt so much every time Eddie grinned at him or touched him or called him big boy. Then Eddie had died, and it didn’t matter anyway, because nothing could ever become of it. 

Except now Steve’s dead too. And Eddie’s here.

“Uh,” Steve says, stalling for time. Eddie follows his gaze over to the wall and then looks back at Steve.

“What’re you lookin’ at, big boy?” he asks. 

And fuck, who knew blushing was possible in the afterlife? Steve meets Eddie’s eyes that are so dark in the shadows of the boathouse but that he’s seen glow gold in the sunlight. Something crosses over Eddie’s face and it’s like he knows what Steve’s thinking. He opens his mouth and starts to speak. “Steve—”

“D’you wanna go out sometime?” Steve blurts. He’s already dead; might as well take some risks, right?

Eddie laughs and Steve doesn’t know if it’s a good laugh or a bad laugh. But then he reaches out and takes Steve’s hand. “Yeah, I do,” he says, “I’ll be honest, I haven’t really come across any good date spots in the afterlife yet, but I’m sure they’re out there.”

Steve stands, pulling Eddie up with him. He looks at Eddie’s face, his eyes that are sparkling even in the shadows, his smile that has been so inviting from the very first second Steve saw it. “Bet we can find something,” he murmurs.

Grinning, Eddie pulls him over to the door and grabs the handle. “C’mon then, big boy,” he says, “Let’s explore.”

[prosperdemeter2]

Teaser Tuesday - foundation

Nora yanked Eddie back by the handle on Christopher’s bag, her light eyes searching his with concern. “Maybe buy some ear plugs?” She always made it sound like they had been talking about things before they actually were - he's going to say yes. I'm worried about you. Your divorce was pretty tough, huh?  Eddie still didn't believe more than every fifth word out of her mouth. He adored her, though. Nora was quite an amazing woman, in his opinion. He rolled his eyes at her and relaxed the line of his mouth into a soft smirk. “I actually have those stocked in the bathroom.”  Specifically, in the first aid kit in the bathroom, but Eddie didn't know how well they worked or how old they were. Buck had taken over tracking and stocking it way back when he had first moved in, and he had crafted a whole spreadsheet for it (well, copied the one they had at the station) back when he was out of work. Nora tugged the backpack strap again, “Don't be smart with me, Eddie. Use them if you need them, okay?”  “Yes, mom.”  “Noise can be overwhelming.”  “Yes, mom.”  “Get to bed, son.” Joe teased with a winking laugh. “See you at the gym this week? Your PT cleared you to come back, yeah?”  His PT had, actually. Frank, though… was potentially dragging his feet on all angles and avenues. Give yourself time, Eddie. You don't have to rush back into any of it. It's not a burning building and no one needs to be saved. Except his fiance was working without Eddie watching his back, and Eddie trusted the entire 118 but he trusted himself more. “Yeah,” still, Eddie didn't know what real danger Joe’s boxing gym could pose to him. He missed it, and he had been holding off going back for a month longer than he should have for his physical well-being. “Send me the schedule?”  “You bet!” Joe bumped their knuckles together and eased his SUV into drive. “Congratulations, you two! We better get the first invite.”  “You'll get the fourth and thank me for it.” Buck yelled back from the porch and he seemed a little tired of all of it already, all of it being the instant question of plans and wants and ideas. Helena had been… a little much once she had admitted to knowing about their engagement. Eddie had told her to calm down, but Helena had countered with overcompensation. She hadn't been much of a supporter at all during Eddie’s first wedding, and as much as Eddie regretted the way things had turned out, apparently his parents had to. Helena had offered to take over planning the whole thing when Buck had tensely told her that he hadn't really thought much about the wedding at all yet.  That… hadn't really gone over well.  “You should take that thing off,” Eddie said in a joke, nodding down to the ring on Buck’s left hand. He rolled his eyes at him but his smile lost the majority of it's edge. “Everyone's just going to keep asking.”  “I'm not taking this thing off unless I'm dead.” Buck countered and quietly latched the door shut behind them, flicking the lock with ease.  “What?” Eddie teased. “You're going to want to marry someone else in the afterlife?”  “Find you and marry you again, maybe.”  Eddie flushed and bumped their shoulders together, carefully dropping Christopher’s bag on the couch and allowing himself to, thankfully, be wrapped up in a warm, full bodied hug. Home. 

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

North To The Future [Chapter 11: I Will Buy You A New Life]

The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, discussions of sex, sexual content, violence, this chapter has something you’ve been waiting for. 😏💚 (And some things you have definitely not been waiting for.)

Word count: 5.5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @ladylannisterxo​ @doingfondue​ @tclegane​ @quartzs-posts​ @liathelioness​ @aemcndtargaryen​ @thelittleswanao3​ @burningcoffeetimetravel​ @hinata7346​ @poohxlove​ @borikenlove​ @myspotofcraziness​ @travelingmypassion​ @graykageyama​ @skythighs​ @lauraneedstochill​ @darlingimafangirl​ @charenlie​ @thewew​ @eddies-bat-tattoos​ @minttea07​ @joliettes​ @trifoliumviridi​ @bornbetter​ @flowerpotmage​ @thewitch-lives​ @bearwithegg​​ @tempt-ress​​ @padfooteyes​​ @teenagecriminalmastermind​​ @chelsey01​​ @anditsmywholeheart​​ @heliosscribbles​ @elsolario​

Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

No one knows what to say to you: not Heather when you return to the Jeep with Sunfyre in tow, not your parents when you walk into the hushed house littered with glass bottles and wayward appetizer crumbs. Sunfyre immediately begins assisting with the cleanup effort, sniffing around the couch and under the dining room table, licking up the delicacies he finds there. Your parents look at the golden retriever, look at you, look at each other.

“Um…I’ll drive Heather home,” your mom offers. She finishes the Earl Grey tea she’d been sipping, sets the cup in the kitchen sink, and grabs her keys. They depart into the night together, Heather giving you one last long, sympathetic glance. But still, she doesn’t know what to say. You haven’t told her what you found in Aegon’s apartment, but all the same she can read the horror of it on your face. And perhaps that is more truthful than mere words anyway, unbound by the restrictions of jagged consonants and the curves of vowels, lexicons, syntax, ink.

In the silence, in the sunless dawn of the new millennium, your dad studies you, red dress and mascara-stained face and shoulders limp. He asks tentatively, like stepping through a minefield: “How long will Sunfyre be staying with us?”

“Forever.”

“Okay.” He nods, understanding. He doesn’t need to know the details. Addiction wears many faces—masks it peels off and discards until it finds the flavor you like best, the one that can knot itself around your throat—but its soul is always the same, grave-cold and grasping. “I’m sorry about Aegon. I’m sorry that you had to find out what this feels like.”

“He’s leaving. It’s over.”

Your dad smiles, profoundly sad, dreadfully patient. “I’ve heard that before.”

You’re so heartbroken and ashamed that you can’t meet his eyes. Jessie died twenty years ago, and now it’s all come back around again. He must feel like he’s seeing ghosts.

Your dad sits down at the dining room table, sighing deeply, rubbing his forehead with his thumbs. And he’s not talking about Aegon anymore. “I’ll never stop living in that man’s shadow. I know it. Your mother knows it. It’s not something we’ve ever discussed, but it’s there. And I can’t even resent her for it, because she would forget him if she could. I fully believe that. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me and the life we’ve built together. But it does mean there’s a part of her that will always be somewhere else. In another room, in another time. And I wonder sometimes…if there is an afterlife, if there is a cosmic Round Two where we all meet up someplace with harps and angels and cities made of clouds…who she will be standing with.”

The terror is overwhelming. Does it never end? This pain, this longing, this irrational hope? You wonder if there’s any cure for what you’re feeling. You wonder if your dad was ever some tedious, try-hard jock that your mom avoided at bars and parties.

“I know it hurts,” your dad says. “I know it hurts like hell. But I think it’s better if you can end things sooner rather than later. Because I imagine that once you start loving someone like that”—someone brilliant, someone broken—“it’s very difficult to stop.”

It’s too late, you know. You smooth the bloodlike satin of your dress, trying not to start sobbing again. It’s too fucking late.

“Jesse used to do things like that.” Remarkably, there is still anger in your dad’s voice: rusty, treacherous, decades-old anger. “He would make plans and make promises, and then your mother would be sitting there waiting with a suitcase and he’d act like it never happened. I don’t know if he really forgot or if he had to pretend he did because he’d blown all the money. And then of course he’d apologize and promise to make it up to her, buy her flowers, pour her tea. He was always saying they’d go to London together. They never did. They never got out of Alaska.”

The tea, you think, dismayed. The Earl Grey tea. Just like Aegon’s hot chocolate. It’s like looking at yourself in a mirror. It’s enough to drive someone insane. “I need to go to bed now,” you say, your words weak and splintering.

“Okay. Okay, ladybug.” He looks sorry, like he knows he’s said too much. He gets up to hug you goodnight. He’s immense and warm and strong, yet careful, yet benign, yet so palpably ordinary.

Why can’t I fall in love with someone like you, Dad? Why can’t I be happy here?

He helps you put out food and water for Sunfyre, and when you volunteer to gather up some of the trash in the living room he adamantly refuses. You climb the staircase in the high heels you hardly ever wear, your skull flooded with unwelcome reminders. Aegon was supposed to be here with me. In my house, in my room, in my bed. Now he’s nowhere. And he’ll never touch me again.

In your bedroom mirror, you stare at your reflection. You can’t explain it, but you don’t look like yourself. The red woman in the silvery glass is not self-possessed or pragmatic or wise. She is a frayed thread, and she is desperately, irrevocably sad. You step out of your heels. You unzip the back of your dress. And before you take it all the way off—Aegon was supposed to do that part—you tear the magazine cutout of the Mustang convertible flying down the Pacific Coast Highway off the mirror. You rip it in half over and over again until it is a flurry of unidentifiable scraps on the floor. You think of how you have never acted selfishly, never acted irresponsibly. You think of how far that dedication has gotten you. Not far enough. Nowhere near far enough.

You are trembling with exhaustion and fury. Your eyes hurt, your ankles hurt, you hurt in places so deep you can’t name them. You think of all the things about Aegon you were willing to overlook and how vanishingly little he could give you in return. You want him here, and because he’s made that impossible you want revenge; you want him to feel as viciously, nauseatingly betrayed as you do. You want to do something he could never forgive. You want to knock his memory out of you like the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

She’s hoping in time that her memories will fade.

You see it in a sudden, scarlet vision: how enraged Aegon was when he thought you had slept with Trent, how he tensed up every time Trent touched you, how he didn’t want you to be alone with him. You see how Trent has been throwing himself at you—like a skydiver out of an airplane—in a way that is somehow both frightening and shamelessly pitiful. You had once told Aegon that Trent didn’t want you dead. I know, Aegon had replied. He wants you to be his wife.

You pick up the phone on your nightstand, and then you pause. Can I do this? Can I really?

You couldn’t yesterday, and you probably won’t be able to tomorrow. But right now…

You dial the number for Trent’s apartment across town. He answers on the second ring. “Sup?”

“Hi, it’s me. Are you busy?”

“Hey!” There’s a boisterous grin in his voice. “Nah, not at all. You need something? Are your parents rearranging the living room furniture again?”

“I don’t need anything, but I’d like something.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

“What you’ve been waiting for.”

Stilted, silent seconds tick by as he puzzles it out. “For real?” He’s ecstatic, yet circumspect.

“For real.”

“Why? I mean, I’m not complaining, maybe I shouldn’t be asking questions, maybe I should just be sprinting for my truck, but I’m…uh…you changed your mind?”

“It’s not a marriage proposal, Trent,” you tell him. “It’s not a date. I just want to start out 2000 the right way.” Without Aegon. Without any threads still connecting me to him.

“Hell, I’ll take that,” he says, chuckling.

“You have to come here though. It has to be at my house.” Where your parents are just a few rooms away. Where Trent will have to be the best possible version of himself.

If he was really the Ice Fisher, why would he have saved Aegon from the channel? Why would he have been so unabashed about his anger, his strength, his size 12 boots? This killer is quiet, strategic, invisible. That’s the only way he’s managed to murder five people without getting caught. Perhaps Trent really does lack the requisite subtlety…the requisite intellect, to be perfectly blunt about it. But then who else could it be? Who the fuck could it be?

“Totally. On my way now.” Trent hangs up.

When he arrives, your parents are still downstairs cleaning up after the New Year’s Eve party. They greet him warmly and (seemingly) without much surprise. He flips his hair and offers to lift the couch so they can get the bottles that have rolled underneath. They gratefully accept. Small talk and festive merriment are exchanged, and you marvel at how seamlessly Trent blends into this family, into this house, into Juneau; he was made for Alaska. It’s in his strapping muscles and lumbering bones. It’s in his claustrophobically small mind. And then you lead him upstairs.

You don’t waste any time talking. Already you’re losing your nerve, already you have a voice surfacing in the choppy waves of your mind like a drowning man: You don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do this, you know you don’t want to do this. You tug off Trent’s blazer, button-up shirt, and khakis and shoo him onto the bed. Then you take off everything that you’d put on for Aegon, back when the Alaska Standard Time Zone was still living in the dark dwindling hours of 1999.

You’re in control the whole time because you don’t trust Trent to be. You don’t want him to be. You don’t even want to think about him. It feels like nothing. There’s no moment to get lost in, because it’s not a moment at all. It’s just logistical adjustments and premeditated reactions and flesh, heavy, crushing, bumping, artless flesh. Your thoughts are far from this room, drastically far. You hope Aegon drives by in the morning and spots Trent’s truck in the driveway, or he hears about it, or he reads it in the straightforward, chiseled lines of Trent’s face next time he sees him. You hope it digs its razored claws into him and never lets go. You hope it fucking destroys him.

As soon as it’s over you get into the shower and scrub off every remnant of what you’ve done. You regret it immediately. Aegon shattered any chance the two of you had and you ended it, so you don’t know why this feels so much like infidelity; perhaps because the reality of it is less like betraying Aegon and more like betraying yourself. In the foggy bathroom mirror, you notice that Trent left a darkening violet bruise on the side of your neck. You don’t even remember him doing it. You were so far away from him: miles away, years away, in the ambiguous future, in the lurking past. You can’t stand the thought of sleeping next to Trent. You suggest he claims the living room couch instead, complete with fresh sheets and several spare pillows. He gamely agrees.

You are optimistic that Trent will be long gone by the time you wake up. But when you venture downstairs at just before noon on New Year’s Day, you find him in the kitchen making breakfast with your parents, flipping pancakes and turning bacon and whistling along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers song that spills from your dad’s record player: not Scar Tissue this time, but Otherside.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Monday, January 10th when the green Nova skates into the vet clinic parking lot and slides to a slippery rest across three different spaces. As the engine dies, the song that was blaring is cut short: I Will Buy You A New Life by Everclear. Aegon steps out under the fading midday sun, almost falls on the ice, traverses slowly and cautiously towards the entrance.

“Oh no, not him!” Jennifer laments. You rush back into the exam room and slam the door.

You haven’t seen Aegon since New Year’s Eve, but you knew he hadn’t left Juneau. You’ve spied the Nova parked outside his apartment building, and Heather has run into him around town: the Foodland, the Gas ‘N Go, Ursa Minor. And then there are the phone calls. He left fifteen messages before your dad picked up and politely asked him to stop calling. Then he started putting notes in the moose-shaped mailbox.

You can hear Jennifer telling Aegon to leave. She must not be very persuasive. He bursts through the exam room door and closes it behind him. He’s wearing all black—parka, turtleneck sweater, jeans, combat boots—and his white-blond hair slicked back from his face. It gives the impression that he has no distractions, no secrets. You are suddenly acutely aware of your own, your skin crawling everywhere Trent touched you. The bruise on your neck has vanished, but the memory of it is still trapped there, heavy and scorching like shame.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” you say coldly.

“Then you should have picked up the phone.” Aegon throws it down on the metal exam table: not a thick, neatly-sealed envelope but a lump of mismatched crumpled cash—ones, fives, tens, twenties—knotted together with several rubber bands.

“What is that?”

“It’s your half of the money for the San Diego trip.”

“How—?”

“I picked up every shift I could and I sold the necklace.”

“You sold it? Permanently? It’s gone?”

“It’s gone,” he agrees. He looks good. He looks more than good: the shadows under his eyes are almost nonexistent, his skin is bright and healthy, he’s even standing taller. He moves so he’s not blocking the door, so you have an escape if you want it. You don’t leave. You wish you wanted to, but you don’t. You just don’t. “It doesn’t matter. It was the last thing I had from home, it was time for me to let go of it anyway. That was my insurance policy for anytime I needed quick cash…I’ve probably pawned it fifty times in the past six years. But this was important.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you say. “I told you I wanted you to leave Juneau and I meant it.”

He searches your face, his eyes blue and clear and wide. “You didn’t mean it.”

“I did,” you insist, lying.

“Look, I’m…” He presses a palm to his chest. He glances down at your right arm, then comes back to your face. “I am so, so sorry that you had to see me that way. I’m sorry for what happened. But it’s not going to happen again.”

“I don’t believe you. And I’m not interested in making plans and sacrificing so they can be a reality and then waiting around to see if you ever show up.”

“I’ll show up,” he swears. His gaze flicks down to your arm again.

“What are you looking at?”

He doesn’t reach for your forearm. Instead, he points to his own. “I remember grabbing your arm, but I don’t know how rough I was.”

“Oh. No, it’s fine. You didn’t hurt me. I don’t think it even left a mark.”

He exhales, relieved. “Good.”

There is a lull that is quiet and still but not awkward. You can hear the clock ticking on the wall, miserably prophetic. The way I feel about him hasn’t changed, you realize with disbelief. I still want him in a way that is helpless, all-consuming. I still love him.

“What happened was a mistake,” Aegon says, slowly and with great effort. “But it wasn’t random.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“This isn’t going to make any sense to you, it’s going to sound insane. But I don’t like New Year’s Eve.”

“Well I don’t like having a heroin addict boyfriend.”

“I’m not a heroin addict.” His voice is sharp and forceful, but not cruel. “It was a momentary relapse, I detoxed on my couch, I’m fine now.”

“Why don’t you like New Year’s Eve?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

You scoff bitterly. “More lies?”

“Not lies,” Aegon says. “Secrets. I haven’t lied to you.”

“Yes, you have. You said you’d be there.”

He shows you the palms of his hands, empty. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I want this,” Aegon says determinedly. “I’m not ready to give up on this. I want you back.”

“Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you just jet off to some new city and resume sleeping your way through the eligible bachelorettes of the world and then maybe I could try to move on, maybe I could—”

“Because you ruined me!” he shouts. “Because I used to be that guy who didn’t care, I used to be able to be content with meaningless replaceable flings and now I’m this idiot who doesn’t even see other women. I tried to replace you. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even invite a girl to come home with me, it was all too goddamn sad. I’ve been with one other person since I met you, and that’s Kimmie, and it’s been over for weeks, and you knew about it the entire time, and that was nothing like it is with you. I don’t want anyone else. I’ve forgotten how to want anyone else. I don’t know how you managed that. I don’t understand what kind of black magic you have swimming around in your blood, but whatever it is worked on me. I’m hooked, baby. I’m fucking hooked. I’ll do whatever you want to make this work, just name it. Please just name it. I’m giving you the money back to show you that I’m sorry and that I know I messed up. But I still want to go to San Diego with you. Hell, I’d go anywhere with you. I’d go to Omaha fucking Nebraska if that was the place you’d dreamed of, the place you hung pictures of on your bedroom mirror. I want you back.”

You don’t have to say that you want him too. Aegon can read it on your face, can see the fight bleeding out of you like the sea at low tide. He’s going to find out about Trent, you think with ice-cold dread. Sooner or later, he’s going to find out and he’s going to lose his goddamn mind. Since he left your house on New Year’s Day, you’ve avoided Trent. What Heather said must have made quite the impression, because he hasn’t tried to pressure you into inviting him over again; he has given you a wide berth of space, passing waves and smiles but no demands. Still, he has this glow. He thinks that night was a stepping stone to something more. He thinks he’s got a real shot now, and he’s basking in the gilded potential of it. I made such a mistake. It feels like everything I do now is a mistake.

“And besides, even if I was willing to go, I can’t leave yet,” Aegon says. In explanation, he looks to the flier on the wall, the one with the shadowy red-eyed specter in a trench coat. Report suspicious activity immediately! Beware of strangers! Help keep Juneau safe! The sixth and seventh victims were pulled out of Crystal Lake three days ago: a couple this time, newly engaged, mid-thirties, snatched while they were hiking in the Tongass National Forest. No one died while Aegon was in the hospital, you think randomly, vaguely. Is that a coincidence? Or is that a clue?

“Aegon, how could you possibly protect me from the Ice Fisher when you’re passed out drunk at night? Or when you’re working on a boat out in the channel, or when you’re singing rock songs at Ursa Minor? You can’t follow me around all the time. And honestly, I think if the killer really wanted me, he could probably get rid of you too.”

“If I leave and I find out later that something happened to you…that maybe, somehow, things might not have gone that way if I’d stayed, that the dominoes could have fallen in a different pattern…I’ll feel responsible. And I’d never recover from that.”

His tattoo flashes in your mind like high-beams: I’m a killer. It’s a strange thing to get inked just above your heart, even if it is a Johnny Cash lyric. It’s a little too dark. It’s a little too real. “Okay,” you hear yourself tell Aegon. “You can stay, I guess.”

“Great. Also, I need my dog back.”

“He’s happy where he is.”

“I don’t doubt that. But he’s mine, and I need him.” And when you hesitate, he adds: “If you’re so worried about Sunfyre, I would encourage you to stop by any time you’d like to check on him. And me too, obviously.” He takes his keyring out of his pocket and slips off the spare key for his apartment. Then he holds it out to you, a sliver of gold in his palm. You consider the key for a long time before you take it.

“Fine. I’ll bring him over in a few days if you’re still sober. Well…your version of sober.”

“Deal,” Aegon says. “You haven’t been at Ursa Minor recently.”

“Yes. Because I didn’t want to see you.”

Aegon shrugs, his hands in the pockets of the black parka you gave him. “Maybe you’ve changed your mind about that. Maybe you’ll show up tonight. I hope you will.”

You can’t decide how to reply. Aegon leaves while you’re still mulling it over, a vast silence stretching out between you like the void between stars.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your parents don’t want you driving alone at night. They convince you to carpool with Heather, a prospect which elates her. “You’re finally leaving the house?!” she exclaims when you call, the vibrations of her voice shrill in the phone receiver. “You’re finally going to be kind of fun again?! Hold on, hold on. I’m just sending a quick mental thank you to sweet baby Jesus. And Buddha, and Allah, and Brahma, and Thor.”

“Odin’s the king of the Norse gods.”

“Bitch,” Heather says gleefully, and hangs up.

When her Chevy Suburban rolls into Ursa Minor’s parking lot—the night indigo and starless, the ochre streetlights dim—Heather kills the engine and opens the driver-side door. Frigid wind gusts into the cabin. She glances back, realizes you haven’t even unbuckled your seatbelt, and pulls her door shut again.

“What?” she asks.

You look at her, miserable and mortified. “I made a mistake.”

“Yeah, you wore that ugly fucking grandma sweater instead of something hot.”

“No, Heather,” you whisper, tears brimming in your eyes. “I really made a mistake.”

She is concerned, mystified. “What did you do?”

“I slept with Trent.”

“You what?” She blinks. “You what?!”

“I called him after the New Year’s Eve party.” You speak quickly, like tearing a bandage from a weeping, still-inflamed wound. “I was upset and I wasn’t thinking clearly and I asked him to come over. It was horrible. He doesn’t seem to know it was horrible, but it was for me. I mean, he wasn’t aggressive or anything, he didn’t do anything wrong, he just…he wasn’t who I really wanted.”

“He wasn’t Aegon,” Heather says quietly.

“Right.” You swipe away the tears that escape down your cheeks. “And now Aegon’s going to find out. I know he is. At first I wanted him to because I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to hurt him as badly as possible. But I don’t feel that way anymore. And I can’t take it back. Trent thinks I like him and Aegon is going to hate me and I’m…I’m just…” You break down sobbing, covering your face with your hands. “I’m just so fucking stupid. My entire life I had meticulous plans and I checked every box and now I’m this fragile, illogical, aimless, stupid loser who can’t manage to hold on to anything she wants. I can’t fix myself and I can’t fix anyone else either.”

“So you fucked up,” Heather says casually. She’s not really casual, but she’s doing a good job of making it seem like she is. “So you slept with the wrong person or said the wrong thing or made a wrong choice, or two wrong choices, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand. Who hasn’t fucked up? I have, Joyce has, Kimmie definitely has. So what? It’s not like you killed somebody. You learned from it. You’ll be a better person in the future. Regret is a useless, poisonous emotion. It’s something evolution should have bred out of us eons ago. You don’t have to carry this weight around forever. You can let yourself bury it.”

Under the dim, yellowish streetlight luminescence like a sepia photograph, you give her a weak smile. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I love you.” And then you add, so she knows you’re okay: “Bitch.”

Heather laughs. “Let’s go get you drunk. Bitch.”

You hurry together to the front door, braced in hats and parkas against the wind. Inside, it is odd to see Ursa Minor stripped of all its Christmas decorations. The multicolored lights have been taken down, the ornaments removed from the taxidermy deer heads. From Dale’s stereo soars Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One. You hear Heather’s boots squeal on the hardwood floor as she stops dead, and then you see him too: jet black suit, spidery limbs, long silvery hair that is not unruly or tangled but pin-straight. He’s sitting at the bar with his back to you. The fingers of his right hand—elegant, willowy, uncalloused—are closed around a frosty Caipirinha.

“Oh my god,” Heather breathes. “There’s two of them. The Greek boys.”

If Aegon knows he’s been found, he’ll leave. And only now can you feel the true, unmitigated devastation of it. Had you really told him to leave Juneau just ten days ago? Had that really been you? No no no no no no. He can’t leave. He can’t leave.

“Don’t talk to him,” you order Heather in a whisper, then bolt to the usual booth. Kimmie, Brad, Joyce, and Rob are already there, eyes startled and darting from you to the stranger at the bar. “Kimmie, do you still remember Aegon’s phone number?”

“Huh? Yeah, um, I think so.”

“Here.” You root around in your purse for loose change and press several quarters into her palm. “Take this. Find a payphone outside. Call him and tell him not to come to Ursa Minor tonight.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t understand, but she’s obedient. Brad goes with her. When they open the front door, the stranger at the bar glances over to make sure no one new has arrived. That Aegon hasn’t. Because this is exactly where he’d be.

Another wave of horror crashes through you. He knows Aegon so well. We’re in such fucking trouble here.

As Dale finishes serving locals at the other end of the bar and returns to his section, the stranger begins asking him something. You have to shut it down; you have to stop Dale from telling the stranger that Aegon lives in an apartment building just down the street. You can see it from Ursa Minor’s parking lot. It’s a distance that could be closed in ten minutes.

You go to the bar and sit immediately beside the stranger. Dale—seemingly relieved—excuses himself, but not before raising his eyebrows at you. Crazy world, right ladybug? that look says. He sets an apple Bacardi Breezer on the counter and is gone. The stranger turns to you, and your jaw falls open before you can stop yourself; the gasp hisses free.

The stranger smiles, like he’s caught you in a lie. The right side of his face is pristine: angular, regal, beautiful in a way that is gem-rare. The left is bisected by a scar, gnarled and old. His left eye is gone. The scraps of his lids are ragged. In the useless, gutted socket is a gleaming sapphire stone, like what the ocean looks like in the pictures you’ve seen of California. “You must know my brother.”

I have to distract him. I have to get rid of him. “Oh yeah. Totally. He talked about you and Helaena all the time.”

The stranger’s lips curl into a sly smile. “Even he forgets about Daeron.”

Aegon, Helaena, Daeron…and at least one more sibling. This one. The determined one, the capable one. You don’t know what to say; you give him a vague smirk in return. The bells on the door jingle as Kimmie and Brad scurry back inside, cold wind chasing them and clawing at their hair. Kimmie shakes her head at you. No luck, she means. Aegon didn’t answer. Probably because he’s already on his way here. The stranger notices this exchange. He notices just about everything. And there’s no way for you to tell Kimmie or Heather what you need from them without him knowing. To stop Aegon from coming here. To stop him from being caught.

The stranger offers you his hand. “Aemond Targaryen,” he introduces himself. “Targaryen Enterprises.” His voice is unlike anything you’ve ever heard: low but soft, effortlessly dignified, beckoning you to lean in closer. Aside from the shade of his hair, he is very little like Aegon. He is tall and precise, every movement purposeful. Aegon slouches and flops and makes dramatic, unrestrained gestures; this man is a sculpture of marble and blue. This man is a work of art.

You shake his hand—cool and smooth—and tell him your name. “But Aegon always called me Appletini.”

“Appletini? Like the drink?”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, that sounds like him.” His eye sweeps over you. What he asks next doesn’t sound like a question at all. It sounds like a command. “Where is he.”

“Gone,” you say, perhaps too quickly. “He left last week. He’s in Chicago now. You’re a little too late.”

Again, Aemond smiles. He sips his Caipirinha. “Hm.”

The front door opens. You and Aemond both whirl towards the clanging metal bells. Aegon shuffles inside; he’s beaming, he’s humming brightly. He drags his boots on the doormat, kicking off most of the snow. And then he looks up. His face goes entirely blank; his eyes are mindless and panicked like a trapped animal’s, iron jaws snapping shut with such force they crack bone. A second passes, two, three. Then Aegon spins around and sprints out of the bar.

“Aegon!” you shout. 

Aemond knocks his Caipirinha off the counter as he leaps to his feet and races after him; glass and lime slices spew across the floor. You follow Aemond as closely as you can, running out into the frigid darkness, your boots slipping on ice and crunching through mounds of snow. Aegon makes it a hundred yards up the street before his brother catches him. Aemond grabs the hood of Aegon’s parka, yanks him backwards, slams him face-first into a green Dodge Ram that is parked on the shoulder. Blood gushes from Aegon’s nose and splatters against the truck’s icy window. His lower lip is split; his eyes will blacken. He struggles futilely.

“Let me go—!”

“Six years!” Aemond seethes, pinning Aegon to the truck by his throat. “Six Christmases, six birthdays, six Januarys since you left and not a single phone call, no letters, no postcards, no emails, nothing, and who had to be there to comfort our mother? Who had to be there trying to convince her that you weren’t an unclaimed body on a slab in a morgue somewhere?!”

“You’re all better off without me,” Aegon moans, his skin stained red. Aemond smashes his face against the truck again.

“Stop it!” you shriek.

“You don’t get to leave,” Aemond growls at his brother. “You don’t get to abandon your responsibilities.”

“I won’t go back,” Aegon wheezes. “You can break every bone I’ve got, but I won’t go back. If you kill me, you can take me home in a box, I guess. But that’s the only way I’m going.”

Aemond shoves him away, disgusted. His brother sinks down into the snow, groaning, feeling his face with trembling hands to assess the damage. “I saved you,” Aemond says with cold, black fury. “I saved your life and you’re just throwing it away.”

“She doesn’t know,” Aegon rasps, his voice choked with blood. “Let me tell her. It should be me. Please don’t say anything. Please let me be the one to tell her.”

Now Aemond turns to you, as if suddenly remembering you’re there. His remaining eye narrows. He is deeply, genuinely perplexed; you’re a brand new species, you’re a comet that hasn’t clipped by Earth in a millennium. He says to Aegon, still looking at you: “Your type must have changed.”

“No, my type is still groupies and strippers,” Aegon replies, and spits a mouthful of blood into the snow. “I just fell in love with this girl.”

[medusapelagia]

The siege - Part Five

written for steddiemicrofic

Rating: Mature Relationship: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Prompt: One TW: suicidal thoughts, mention of character death WC: 1111

Part one: I’ll make you proud, Part two: Battle cry, Part three: Stupid but brave, Part four: Sorry

Eddie holds his son tight to his chest while staring at the army lined up just above the hills in front of the castle. 

Thousands of men were waiting in an eerie silence for the order to attack. They are too far for the Consort Prince to see their expression, but if he’s sure they are grinning.

Most of King Richard's soldiers died in the last battle, and the few that managed to come back are in no shape to defeat such an army. 

And that without the dragons. 

Robin, who was badly injured but managed to get back home to raise the alarm, told him that Vecna had a dragon. A huge real dragon. A dragon that killed Prince Steve, his husband.

One solitary tear falls from Eddie's eyes at the thought of his dead husband. They were supposed to spend a long and happy life together. But no, his brave and stupid husband had to go to war to follow his crazy father's order, and now he is dead and Eddie is a young widow with an infant child. Not that this was going to be a problem for long, Vecna's army would definitely attack them at first light, maybe even sooner. 

The kid in his arms let out a little whimper and Eddie coos him softly, trying to soothe him. Jonathan, their personal guard, is standing at the side of the door, one hand ready on the hilt of his sword, but Eddie can tell that his thoughts are with his family. His mom and his brother are hiding in the kitchen.

"You should be with them," Eddie says, still staring out of the window at the numerous torches shining in the night.

"My place is at your side."

"Your place is with your family."

"I promised Prince Steve-"

"Prince Steve is dead. Whatever promise you made to him, died with him." Eddie snarls, glaring at Jonathan who lowers his eyes.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

I'm sorry for your loss. 

How many times did Eddie hear those words? Too many. Still, they burned like fire every single time. Eddie's heart was bleeding. If it was for him he would have let himself fall from the highest tower to be reunited with the love of his life in the afterlife where he could finally make flower crowns for the king of his heart and they would be young and in love in the land behind the mist, but he has a kid, and no matter how badly his soul ached, he has to protect their child.

He kisses the crown of the head of his kid, while chubby hands get entangled in his long black curls. Caramel brown eyes stare at him with a toothless drooling smile. The same caramel eyes Eddie loved so much.

Eddie hugs his child tighter, letting him rest his little head on his shoulder with a happy sigh.

If they survive the attack somehow he won’t be ashamed to beg for his son‘s life, but somehow he doubts that Vecna will ever pardon the heir to the throne of Hawkins. The kid lets out another happy gurgle and Eddie makes the hardest decision of his life.

“Take him. Take your family with you and run. Vecna wants the castle, once all that is left is just a series of burning ruins he’ll be satisfied. There are peasants out there that will hide you if you tell them you’re the King's guard. You have to protect him. And when he’ll be old enough tell him that his parents loved him very much and that they are very sorry they won’t be able to see him take his first steps or say his first word.”

Steve was so excited when the magic potion Eddie took magically made him pregnant. He used to tell stories to their unborn child when he was still inside Eddie. Stories about kings and knights, and witches and powerful mages, and he used to paint a great future for their kid, as the best ruler Hawkins would have ever had, but at this moment Eddie would be happier knowing that he will be a safe and happy peasant instead of a great king.

“I can’t.” Jonathan mutters, “I made an oath-”

“Take him! Jonathan, this is not a request! This is an order. Take him and keep him safe.”

Jonathan’s hands tremble when he takes the sleepy boy into his arms. The baby stirs a little but a humming song by his father makes him fast asleep.

“How? The castle is surrounded.”

“Ask Robin, there’s a secret passage that goes from the King’s Hall to the back of the castle. None used it in ages, but before leaving Steve told me he made sure the passage was safe.”

“Come with us.” Jonathan urges him, grabbing him by his arm, “Your kid needs a father.”

At least one of them goes unsaid.

“I can’t. Vecna will search for the royal family to have us executed in front of everyone. No one outside the castle knows that we had a kid with a magic potion, he won’t look for him. But he’ll definitely look for me.”

Eddie kisses his kid’s forehead, “Be brave, little one. Your Daddies love you very much.” he whispers, then he takes off the ring Steve gave him when he asked for his hand in marriage and one of the ribbons he wears in his hair and ties the ring, putting it around his kid’s neck.

“I want him to have one thing to remind us.” Eddie whispers, “Now go. In a few hours here it will be hell.”

“My King.” Jonathan kneels in front of him, “It was an honor being your guard. I solemnly swear to keep your son safe.”

Eddie nods, he knows he will and Joyce has raised enough kids that he’s not worried, even if his heart breaks a little as he waves at his sleepy child and when he closes the door behind himself his legs give out and he falls on his knees, his chest shaken by his suffocated wails.

And then he sees it. The bright fire coming from a dragon's nostrils lightens the night and for a single moment, Eddie sees a huge brown dragon flying over the castle before landing on the hill and roaring in the night.

Staring at the most deadly creature in the world Eddie can’t hide his astonishment in front of such an amazing creature made of ember and ashes. With a creature like that in Vecna’s possession, Hawkins Castle's destiny is already decided and Eddie is happy Steve isn’t there to witness their defeat.

permanent taglist: @katyawriteswhump

[hippolotamus]

Fuck it Friday 🏖️

Two snippets today because... fuck it, right?

First! from the unnamed Lutalia ficlet (it is not coming as easy as I'd hoped) [pun fully intended because, yeah, it's probably gonna get spicy] prev snippet here

It’s not like Natalia should even get emotionally invested, or worked up over the message. She and Lucy aren’t anything meaningful like partners or girlfriends. Lovers would be a generous description. They’re… something with benefits. Not friends, exactly. More like acquaintances. That term feels awkward as she turns it around in her brain. But saying ‘acquaintances who met through a guy they have in common’ is even moreso. So, yeah, something with benefits.

She chuckles to herself thinking about ever needing to introduce Lucy. Oh, Lucy? She’s nobody really. We just fuck sometimes. Somewhere in the afterlife her grandmother is probably cursing up a storm because Natalia didn’t marry a nice Catholic boy and have a houseful of kids. Sorry, Nana.

Second! From a published work, my baby, whatever may come (your heart I will choose). I heard the song this chapter was named for and I was overwhelmed with gushy emotions. So, from CH 21....

Eddie has been alone long enough to know he doesn’t want to always be that way. There’s a part of him that still equates romantic love with effort and disappointment, but he’s seen enough to know that some people get it right. Christopher is his priority and anyone he would even think to consider would have to feel the same - they’re a packaged deal, can’t have one without the other.

Much like Buck, Eddie has his fair share of women — and men — try to get his attention on calls. Someone might argue he’s missing out on a meet-cute opportunity, but a person who’s throwing themselves to see which firefighter will catch them isn’t what Eddie is looking for. Honestly, he’s not sure what his type is, or if he even really has one. He’s also not sure if it’s a surprise or not when the person he might want is his best friend. Buck, who became part of Eddie and Christopher’s lives so seamlessly Eddie didn’t realize it had happened until he almost lost him.

When Eddie comes home from his 24, it’s… different. It’s good, he thinks, but there’s definitely something new crackling in the air around him. Eddie had arrived at the station yesterday morning, and gone immediately into his usual routine, barely getting changed before the bell went off. He didn’t have time to think about leaving Buck behind. In his bed. Now that he’s home, however, there’s really no choice.

Buck is just walking out of the bedroom — out of Eddie’s bedroom — stretching so just a sliver of skin peeks out above the waistband of his joggers. There are still pillow creases on his cheek, and his hair is adorably sleep-mussed.

When Buck relaxes the stretch, he notices Eddie, giving him a soft smile before he says good morning. A warm, golden glow builds in the center of Eddie’s chest, filling up the usual beige of coming home to a quiet house. Eddie’s hands twitch at his sides, wanting to reach out, to pull Buck close. Just to see. Just to know. What it might feel like if Buck was his. Buck, oblivious to Eddie’s internal struggle, walks past, brushing their shoulders together.

He asks Eddie questions like ‘How was your shift?’ and ‘I was going to make eggs when Christopher wakes up. Want some?’. Buck prepares regular coffee for himself and decaf for Eddie, because he knows Eddie always wants coffee when he comes off a morning shift and the full strength keeps him too jittery for sleep. Nothing has changed and everything has changed. For Eddie anyway. He’s still Buck’s best friend and this is how they are together, how they’ve always been. Eddie is the only one that can see there might be more. He accepts the mug Buck sets down in front of him, and pretends not to notice when Buck’s fingers seem to linger under Eddie’s longer than they probably need to.

It’s easier once Christopher is awake and joins them in the kitchen. Mostly. Sort of. Because he gives Eddie a hug first then shuffles over to give one to Buck, wrapping his arms around Buck’s waist like it’s an everyday thing. Like it could just be that simple that Buck has been here for two nights and that’s just the way it is now.

(…)

Buck beams and gives Christopher a high-five. “Ready for breakfast?”

“Yes!”

“Me, too. Go wash your hands and I’ll start getting it ready.”

Christopher obediently walks toward the bathroom, while Buck washes up in the kitchen sink. Buck makes scrambled eggs and bacon, and Eddie sets the table. Eddie listens to Buck and Christopher tell him about their trip to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium yesterday and how excited they both are to go to the Heal the Bay and Roundhouse aquariums later in the week.

“Dad, there was a kelp forest inside! Did you know kelp can grow two feet in a day?”

Eddie doesn’t have a chance to answer before Buck is telling him some other fact.

“Yeah! And Eddie! There are these starfish called bat stars. If they bump into each other they have like a slow motion arm wrestling fight.”

“And,” Christopher adds, “they can turn their stomachs inside out.”

That information may have been a bit much for breakfast time, but he’s happy to listen. Buck and Christopher continue to banter back and forth, calling out every fact or exhibit they remember between sips of juice and bites of toast.

“So, what’s the plan for today?” Eddie asks when he’s finally able to get a word in.

“I thought we could take it a little easier, maybe go to the beach? It would get us out and still let you sleep.” Buck looks at Eddie, his blue eyes bright and hopeful. “Unless you wanted to come with us? I can drive.”

Eddie is tired from his shift, but not so exhausted he’s ready to collapse like some days. And with Buck looking at him like that – Eddie doesn’t know how anyone could possibly expect him to say no.

tagged by @callmenewbie @giddyupbuck @hoodie-buck @wikiangela @daffi-990 @jamespearce9-1-1 @spotsandsocks @eddiebabygirldiaz @exhuastedpigeon @lemonzestywrites thank you loves 😘

no pressure tagging @thewolvesof1998 @steadfastsaturnsrings @weewootruck @malewifediaz mi amor @disasterbuckdiaz @thekristen999 @loserdiaz @heartshapedvows @underwater-ninja-13 @fortheloveofbuddie @eowon @jesuisici33 @watchyourbuck @monsterrae1 @shortsighted-owl @stereopticons @elvensorceress @spagheddiediaz @chaosandwolves @wildlife4life @your-catfish-friend @buddierights @911onabc @the-likesofus @honestlydarkprincess @spaceprincessem @fionaswhvre @barbiediaz @pirrusstuff @messyhairdiaz @gayedmundodiaz @theplaceyoustillrememberdreaming @evaneds @maygrantgf @buckbuckgoose @statueinthestone and anybody else who wants to share 💖

[strangersteddierthings]

Steve, Gareth and Chrissy are cousins AU (sad edition) [prologue] [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Final Part]

He knows he promised Robin he wouldn't smoke anymore, but honestly, he thinks he's earned this one. Saving Eddie from his stupidity had been a full time job that still amounted to Steve getting a repeat chow down from the goddamn bats. Not that Eddie made it out much better, but fuck, if Steve hadn't been here to keep Eddie in the trailer for the extra five minutes, all of Eddie would look like hamburger instead of his sides looking like steak (all of those five minutes spent fucking wrestling each other while Dustin kept screaming at him to stop Eddie, don't you fucking dare let him out that door, Steve).

Not that Eddie had won the wrestling match, Steve wasn't joking when he said he knew Eddie wouldn't be able to overpower him. Instead, Eddie'd given up, rag-dolled in Steve's grip with a quiet sob.

"Steve, I have to. I have to make sure they have enough time. That's my uncle!"

And yeah, Steve was surprised to learn Wayne isn't his dad, but that took a backseat to the new issue wiggling its way into his brain. Vecna had taken Chrissy. Had threaten to add Gareth to that list. The fear of losing the only family you have... "Fine. But we go together. A loop around the park and back here. I swear to God, Munson, if you get us killed, I'm ruining your afterlife."

"What!? Steve, no! Steve!" Dustin screams above them.

"As if we'd end up in the same afterlife," Eddie had huffed.

And it had worked well, until the end there. Eddie went down, tripped over a dropped bike just yards from the front door of his home, and Steve couldn't leave him there to become bat dinner. They'd held their own, barely, and then the bats had started dropping.

They'd exchanged startled looks before bursting into hysterical laughter of relief that only slowed when Dustin came busting through door, screaming at them some more.

So, yes, Steve earned this cigarette, which Eddie had climbed the sheets to fetch a pack from the stash in his room. He'd offered to bring a joint back if Steve wanted but he'd declined that, citing Dustin as his excuse. He doesn't feel like having to explain why he doesn't get high anymore, especially since he used to be a frequent customer back in the day. Goddamn Russians under Starcourt.

Eddie and he sit on the porch, side by side, and watch the horizon for any sign of Wayne, Robin, or Nancy.

The monster falls from the attic, and they all advance to look down at the smoldering body. "You girls go down and confirm he's dead."

"Yes sir," Nancy says while he hears Robin mutter, "confirm!?"

He waits for the girls to be down the stairs before he draws his pistol and takes aim. The burning has slowed, and with as much buckshot is in the bastard, he should be dead. But Wayne follows his training anyway. He takes aim, and fires three shots in a row. The first lands next to Vecna's head, and he sees the body startle, but the next two land true, and there's no movement after that.

The girls appear soon after and he watches as Nancy pulls his matching pistol out with no hesitation and doesn't even flinch as she fires point blank.

Well, he's certainly dead now.

Wayne joins them shortly. Vecna's dead, for sure, but the girls hesitate. "What's wrong?"

"It always comes back," Nancy says, "I just. What if it's not done? What if Vecna wasn't the source? If there is something worse out there? What if he's just faking it?"

"Whoa," Robin says, placing a hand on Nancy's arm slowly, both girls tracking the movement, like Nancy's a wild animal. "I am the one who freaks out like this, so you can't be doing that, because then what will I do?"

That gets a laugh out of Nancy. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right."

"What'll make you feel better about this situation?" Wayne asks.

"I don't... How do we know he's dead?" Nancy replies.

"Well, he's a man, ain't he? Magic or not, ain't no man survivin' what we just did to him."

"Sure, he was a guy once but now he's. Look at him!" Robin flaps a hand in the direction of the body without looking at it.

Wayne does look down at him. He doesn't much resemble any person Wayne's used to seeing, but he's distinctly human. Still, the girl's going to worry. "Right. Well, someone give me a hatchet. I'll remove his head."

Robin reaches for her hatchet, the one Steve gave her, but something predatory reflects in Nancy's eyes and she reaches for the hatchet first.

"I'll do it," Wayne says, "you shouldn't have to. You already killed 'im."

Nancy just looks at him. The girl looking back isn't a girl anymore. She looks as hardened and haunted as any other vet he knows. "I got this."

Wayne reaches for Robin instead, pulling her into him so she doesn't watch. He does, though. Watches as Nancy raises the hatchet up and brings it down on Vecna's skull with a scream filled with grief and anguish and repeats that process again and again and again.

The ambulance doesn't have room for all of them, so Lucas, and Max shuffle into the back of Chief Powell's police car. Erica climbs into the ambulance with Gareth in it. Lucas doesn't know what Gareth did to earn Erica's loyalty and worry in such a short amount of time but he also isn't thinking too hard about it.

Chief Powell follows the ambulances to the hospital. Ambulances because there is one for Gareth, and one for Jason Carver.

Jason. Who had shown up with a gun and pointed it at him. Gareth, who'd taken that shot instead and-

"Hey," Max says in a whisper, squeezing his hand hard, pulling him from his own mind. "Hey. They said you did good. That you bought Gareth time. Like... like, hopefully, we did. For..."

"We had to of. It can't be for nothing," Lucas whispers back.

They arrive at the hospital, where Erica and Max are given a look over, since Erica was tackled by a boy twice her size and Max was limping down the stairs after the paramedics. Erica has a scrape on her arm where she landed on a rock, and Max's ankle is sprained, but otherwise they're fine.

They get shuffled into the waiting room, where Chief Powell stands guard while their parents are on the way to collect them. They do get left to themselves, so they brave talking in public.

"El was there," Max confesses, voice low. "She found me and was fighting him. I don't know if she got to finish him. Or if they did."

"I don't like not knowing," Lucas says.

"They had help," Erica says, causing Max and Lucas to whip their heads to her. "I followed Gareth to the payphone. He wasn't calling his mom. He called Eddie's uncle instead. Said he could help them."

"He what?"

"Shhh!" Erica shushes him, looking around the empty waiting room before leveling a glare at him. "I know, okay. But Steve's not a real adult and we needed a real adult."

"Steve's a real adult."

"Sure," Erica agrees, using the tone that Lucas knows means she doesn't agree. "He's also the guy that sacrificed himself to the Russians and had to be saved by Dustin and me, and it hasn't even been a full year since then. So, hopefully having a real adult made him not take stupid risks."

"Well, we'll just have to wait to find out," Max says, then adds, "do you think Chief Powell will let me go with you guys when my mom doesn't show up?"

Gareth is released from the hospital into his parent's custody two days after getting shot. He is a little surprised the hospital stay was so short -he was fucking shot- but with no organs hit, Gareth was released after minor surgery to remove the bullet and a full day of monitoring him.

It's been a whirlwind. Police wanting statements, and his parents screaming at the police every time they show up to get those statements, that they're pressing charges on Jason as soon as possible. (Which might not happen, because Jason hasn't woken up yet.) The kids come in and out, and he gets to learn that the only person dead in the Upside Down is Vecna. Robin looks very haunted as she says it, but he can imagine that killing a telekinetic wizard is a haunting ordeal.

Steve makes an appearance at his beside and lies to his parents, claims he was out of town and got back to hear the messages on the machine too late for Chrissy's funeral but just in time to hear about Gareth getting shot. Gareth lets him have the lie. How can he explain to his parents that Steve wasn't at the funeral because he was too busy hunting down Chrissy's real killer?

Before he leaves, he asks if Gareth wants to come over, once he's well enough to.

It takes Gareth three more days from his hospital release before his parents agree to drop him off at Steve's. They're worried for both him and Steve. They know there's been a rift in their friendship, and his mom sniffles when she says she's so sad that it took Chrissy's death to reunite them again.

He's not going to say it out loud, but Gareth's sad about it, too.

His dad doesn't walk him to the front door but it's a near thing. He does sit in the driveway until Steve answers the door and gives him a wave. Even then, Gareth doesn't hear the car leaving until he's beyond the threshold of Steve's house.

Steve lets him sit on the couch before apologies and explanations start pouring from him.

"Gareth, I'm so fucking sorry. For everything. For pulling away, and staying away, and also for ever agreeing to act like we weren't cousins to begin with. I should-"

"Steve, shut the fuck up."

And Steve does. Blinks at him, surprised.

"I don't care. None of that matters. You were- fuck, how long have you known about this? About monsters and shit?"

"Since, uh, since '83. With Will Byers and Ba-Barb Holland... They weren't just missing."

"Was that... related to the other dimension?"

"Yeah. A demogorgon took 'em. Will got away. Barb didn't."

"And it's been like... a yearly thing?"

"Yeah. I didn't want you or Chrissy involved, and look what good that did."

"Dude, I'm involved because of Eddie. I didn't go looking for you."

"Chrissy's dead because of me!" Steve shouts, "I pulled away! And we- I tried to reconnect and it wasn't enough. Chrissy was struggling and she didn't tell me."

"She didn't tell me, either," Gareth says, voice quiet and even. "Is it my fault she's dead, too?"

"What? No, of course not."

"We reconnected. Last year," Gareth confesses. "Hung out every weekend until she got with Jason. Then it was less, once a month about. But we talked, were friendly. And she didn't tell me what was bothering her. It's not your fault any more than mine."

Steve's pinched face says how much he wants to argue, and because he's Steve, he opens his mouth and argues verbally, too, "I knew about the Upside Down! I should have told you guys. Warned you about it!"

"Dustin said you guys didn't know Vecna existed until this year. What would you have warned about? The Demogorgon I've heard about but never saw?"

"Well, they were in Russia this time, apparently, so-"

"What do you mean they were in Russia!?"

"Oh, uh, not important right now. But. I just..." Steve huffs and deflates against the couch. "I thought I was doing the right thing. For you, and for Chrissy. By keeping you at arm's length. Pretending I didn't know either of you. And then it wasn't pretend! I don't know you, not anymore. But I... You got hurt anyway. And- and Vecna had said- Fuck!"

Gareth blinks at him. "Hey. You did your best. We were safe for years, and it's. This situation is shit, and fuck, we'll miss Chrissy the rest of our lives, but she'd want us to keep living, right? Even if you think you didn't know her anymore, you have to know that. So, fuck whatever Vecna told you in your head. Whatever it was, it's not true."

And that. That makes Steve sob. A full, loud, choked noise before he curls in on himself, shaking his head. "It is true. He said- he made all of you say- and it's true but the truth is-isn't e-even the worst of it."

Gareth scooches down the couch to rub awkwardly on Steve's back. "Um. It's. He lies, right? Twists things in your mind to make them worse. That's what Max said wh-"

The mention of Max brings out a whole other sad, wailing noise from Steve and Gareth is not equipped to handle this. He needs Robin. Or Dustin. "Hey, hey. It's okay. Shhh. Shhhh..."

He keeps shh-ing until Steve's sad noises gives way to a hiccuping laugh.

"You're shit at this comfort thing," Steve says.

Gareth snatches his hand back, offended. "Well, fuck you, too."

Steve looks at him, eyes red but otherwise looking like regular, snarky Steve. "Hey. Are we... okay?"

"Man, I forgave everything when Vecna was giving you that shit vision, or whatever. Nancy told me it was Vecna's curse and I just. I thought you were gonna die. All the anger left. I thought it might come back but I'm still just glad you're alive. So, yeah. We're okay. Friends again?"

Steve nods, smile a little watery. "Alright. Then, can I tell you a secret? I haven't even told Robin yet."

"Shit, dude, spill. I love secrets."

"I- I think I like guys, the same as girls."

"Good for you man," Gareth says easily.

Steve looks at him like he's surprised. "That's it? Your- it's okay? That I do?"

"I'm not the police of you," Gareth scoffs, "whatever makes you happy, dude."

"Cool. Cool," Steve nods to himself, then looks at the time on the clock. "Oh, shit. We're late."

"Late? To what?" Gareth asks.

"Well, just to going to the basement. But it's an important basement trip, so come on."

"Are you going to murder me now that I know your deepest secret?"

"I will if you keep talking about it," Steve says as he stands from the couch, heading towards the door to the basement. "Seriously. The surprise down there involves people so you cannot say shit once I open this door."

"Got it. Wait. People!?"

The surprise, it turns out, is Eddie and Wayne. Eddie, still wanted while someone works on clearing his name, has been hiding here with Steve apparently, and Wayne comes and goes, but is here to thank Gareth for calling him. Wayne seems to be under the impression that if Gareth hadn't, he would have lost Eddie forever.

Steve is avoiding Max. Hopper has come back from the dead. The Hopper-Byers have moved back to Hawkins. Eddie has been cleared of all charges thanks to government intervention and many eye-witnesses putting Jason Carver at the scene of all crimes (does not help that the police found him holding Patrick's body, nor that he can dispute the chargers, what with being brain-dead, possibly. Still comatose for sure). Wayne and Eddie have moved into a little duplex near the Hendersons.

All these things happened before Steve spoke with Max.

He'd still be avoiding her if it wasn't her on his doorstep currently, two months post-Vecna. He was expecting Dustin when he pulled the door open in annoyance. "Max."

"Steve."

"I-what-why are- do you want to come in?" Steve asks, wincing at himself.

Max rolls her eyes. "No. I just have something to say to you before I head to El's."

"Ah."

"I forgive you. But I'm still..." Max pauses, breathing harshly through her nose as if mad at the situation. Or Steve. That would be fair. "I'm still hurt, but I get it, so I forgive you."

Steve swallows. "He told you. Didn't he?"

"Vecna? Yeah. Said he asked you to pick, and you picked me," Max says it, so matter of fact. The grass is green. Sky is blue. Steve would rather Max die than Gareth.

"You shouldn't forgive me until I apologize."

"No, don't think I want to hear it. 'Cause here's the thing, Steve. I get it. Billy was awful, and I hated him, hate him so fucking much. But if he were still alive? If he were, and Vecna said him or you. I'd give you to Vecna. And it's fucked up, hell, it's worse than the choice you were given! At least Gareth is worth having a life, getting to live, and Billy's not but. Like I said. I get it."

Steve is stunned to silence. He doesn't know what to say, or if there's anything he can say. Doesn't really have it in him to call her on all her cussing either, because if any kid has earned swearing around him, it's Max. "Max. I am sor-"

"DON'T!" she shouts, "I'm not ready to hear it yet! I'm hurt, and I- that might take a while to change or whatever. But. I know you. So, I have to tell you that I forgive you. Or, like, I will one day. It was a shit choice to be forced to make. I get it. So, just take the forgiveness and quit avoiding me while walking around like a kicked puppy. It's unbecoming and I'm never going to really forgive you if you avoid me."

"Ok. Alright. No more avoiding."

"Good. You still got that letter I wrote you?"

"Oh. Uh, yeah. Do you... want it back?"

"No. I want you to read it after I've actually forgiven you, and not a second sooner. Okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

"Good," and she turns on heel and heads down the drive to a car Steve doesn't recognize, and realizes it's because he's never seen it. The driver is Max's mom, and she gives a small wave to Steve when they make eye contact. At least until Max bats her mom's hand out of the air and then must say something that makes her mom laugh.

Steve stands in his doorway and watches them drive away.

Max is hurt, and that's his fault. But she's not mad at him, so that's great. Max is a woman of her word, so Steve thinks that one day, they might be good again. One day, he'll be able to look her in the eye and not feel like the scum on the earth.

Until then, he'll be okay. Gareth's back in his life, he has a new crushfriend in Eddie Munson, and Robin and he have been gotten even closer since he told her he likes boys, specifically one boy at least.

Chrissy is gone, and Steve will always mourn that. Will probably always feel like it's his fault, deep down. But he's got reasons to make it to each new day, and that has to count for something.

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

i was possessed randomly so you all get this 😈 (i gotta keep my place in the angstflayer somehow lmao)

tw for mentions of death, nothing explicit! just talk of passing on/the afterlife

——————————

It was smoother than he thought it’d be, dying.

Passing on.

The moment of death.

It really was just like falling asleep.

He knew it was time; he was old now (decrepit if you ask his grandkids) but it was something he didn’t even realize he was so ready to welcome. Whatever illness he was saddled with the last couple years already fading out of his memory.

Stepping into his new…life? he’s not sure what to expect.

He floats along for a while. In nothing, being nothing, when suddenly, the nothing in front of him starts to solidify.

Instead of nothing, Dustin Henderson is a young man again. He can see his feet walking across pine needles and leaves. over hard-packed dirt and pebbles.

He knows this path, and starts forward confidently.

Skull Rock comes into view through a break in the branches, looming over him and coated in dappled sunlight.

So, he sits down. Settles in to wait for his friends, hoping they are far behind him, when he’s startled by a noise above him.

First, a leather jacket plops down in front of him, followed closely by worn white reeboks, ripped black jeans, a flash of a white shirt. All still wrapped around someone he lost way to fuckin’ soon.

Dustin’s chest and throat constrict, his eyes burn.

The figure turns, their insane brown curls frizz tossed away from his face when he does.

“Hey butthead.” Eddie Munson smiles at him for the first time in 70 years. “You have my vest.”

Dustin looks down at himself. The worn denim vest in question is, indeed, hung over his shoulders. Fitting just a bit bigger than he last remembered.

He huffs out a chuckle, the tears start to fall down his cheeks. “Thought you might want it, asshole.”

He’s crushed into a hug that lasts an eternity, finally pulling away from Eddie after a good eon or so.

Huffing out another laugh when he does, Dustin wipes the tears off his face and says, “Not that I’m not over the fuckin moon to see you, but is.. is he here?”

Eddie grins at him, “Is who here?”

“Henderson!”

Steve.

Steve’s here.

He’s actually fucking here.

“‘Course he is, little man. Been waitin’ for you, ya know.'' Eddie shakes his shoulders, spinning him around and starts to march him back down the path. “Well,” he feels Eddie shrug behind him, “You AND Robin, of course. She’s just real stubborn about leaving, I think.”

They’ve gone maybe four whole steps, when Steve Harrington breaks through the branches in front of them.

“Dustin!” Steve strides forward, wrapping Dustin up in a hug.

He mumbles everything and nothing into the tears that soak the cap atop his head. A good trade for the already soaked spot at the front of that yellow sweater of his.

“You’re here! I missed you so much! It’s too soon… it’s always too soon, but still! Your kids are all so beautiful, your grandkids too! I’m so so sorry I left before I could meet them, Dusty, I wanted to so badly.”

More and more (mostly repeated “You’re here!”s) until he can’t say anymore and falls silent around him for their own eternity.

“I missed you too, Steve.”

[jo-harrington]

Substratum (Eddie Munson x Reader)

Pairings/Relationships: Eddie Munson/Reader

Warnings/Themes: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Ideas of Afterlife, Allusion to Trauma, Injury, and other Character Deaths, Violence, Blood, Self-sacrifice, Reader Character Death, in a theoretical S5 world where Eddie returns and then I hurt him more, allusion to Kas!Eddie or some kind of resurrection where the UD/Vecna was responsible for his return, DEAD DOVE: ROMANTIC CANNIBALISM

Note: This is jarring and I will say beautiful but not for the faint of heart. Shout out to @storiesbyrhi who wrote an amazing AU of Bones and All that touches on a lot of these themes and is the person who got this ball rolling and @courtingchaos for saying the magic words "fingers sneaking past your teeth" to spark inspiration god damn you both for always knowing the way to my heart. Pun intended.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

---

Substratum - Definition

an underlying support

the material of which something is made and from which it derives its special qualities

It was a long and difficult fight.

Full of sacrifice.

But in order for it all to end, there would have to be an even greater one.

How it all came down to the two of you, neither of you knew for sure. But it did.

The Upside Down was ready to be cut off for good, but the closing of one world from another demanded blood.

Eddie, as one of the final beings in existence with ties to both worlds, needed to be the catalyst of said blood. Whether it was expelled or consumed.

Which meant one of you needed to die.

What a cruel irony that Eddie was seemingly resurrected only to be put in this predicament, and you who had to mourn for him once, facing the possibility that you had to do it all over again.

You argued for a while, as the world burned around you.

"It has to be me."

"No. I'll do it. You've already killed so many, let me be the last one. End this all now."

"I need to be the one, I was always meant to die to the Upside Down."

He swore up and down that he would die a thousand deaths for you, but it was your insistence that he could die a thousand times, but he'd never save you.

"I won't survive if I lose you again."

He's about to say the same, about to say that once you're gone, he'd be soon to follow, but you don't let him protest. You take his hands and place them softly around your throat, to snap your neck like the hundreds of other necks he'd snapped at Vecna's will.

But your love, your Eddie, couldn't let you go in such a cold and impersonal way.

His hands retreat from your neck, they climb upwards and settle on your face. So soft and alive; in mere seconds, he would never witness this again. He aches at the thought of your eyes cold and unstaring, of never hearing a laugh come from those lips again.

He leans in close, a whisper of a kiss as your lips touch for one last moment of worship before he destroys you; all the while, his thumbs collect the tears that escape from your eyes as you realize this might be the last time you see him too.

His first death had brought about some sort of hope for a great beyond, though. You threw yourself into books and myths and stories for hope that you would see him again. You'd told him so when you'd finally reunited, and you both grasp onto that same shred of hope at this moment, that there would be some palace of light where you'd sit and wait until he could join you.

Then he begins your undoing.

His fingers start to pry your mouth open, they explore past your teeth, they make your jaw go wide. You choke as he hand follows the fingers, into your mouth and down your throat.

A great sob escapes you but it is stifled as your voice box is crushed with the intrusion and you fight for air as your windpipe is squished.

Those fingers are searching, tearing through the delicate flesh within you that has never known the pressure of anything other than the weight of your consciousness and your soul. Meanwhile you’re silently enduring the torture; choking, asphyxiating, and focusing on one simple image: the ouroboros...eating itself.

It's fitting, because you have been and always will be one. Here you are consuming him...and soon enough he will consume you too.

Those searching, destroying fingers find their target as your body fills with blood. Their grip tightens, and then pulls, and that is your demise. Jaw snaps, eyes wide, heart quite literally broken as it’s extracted from the depths of you.

Eddie considers the ache in his own chest as he backs away from your broken, empty husk; what an odd thing, to have destroyed his own heart as thoroughly as he's destroyed yours.

His grip is soft now, delicate as the world roars around him; the sacrifice has been demanded and so close to being fulfilled. Still, he takes the time to hold and caress and worship your most vital organ.

He examines it with a critical eye. Ventricles and chambers and the trailing remnants of sinew that are just as beautiful as you, and he thinks it's fitting. Where else would your soul live, but in your heart; surely they both would be this complex.

And your carcass?

That's always just been the meat that kept the real you hidden.

Silly that you'd insisted he had always been the one to see the real you...and now he was.

"I'll be with you," he promises with one last, loving caress. "This will all be over and we can be together."

He kisses your heart, the last thing your physical form might feel, and then you're pushed between the sharpness of his teeth as the tear and gnash and funnel you down his throat.

Eddie swallows as the final gate closes and is sealed for eternity, one terrible world's door shutting swiftly on another.

At that moment, the recognition hit. He felt you you settle there, in the depths of him, for all eternity too. You filled him with golden light. And he realized you had been right all along. You had returned to each other again, and you didn't even need to wait very long.

The two of you.

Together as one.

Complete.

[non-cannon]

I may have come up with the saddest House of Anubis AU. It's based on the ancient Egyptian concept of a name having power and being part of someone's soul. And loosing your name and being forgotten was a bad thing (which is why so many pharaohs tried to literately erase the names of the pharaohs that came before them).

While I believe this was mostly in regards to the afterlife, what if you lost your name while still alive? What if Nina lost her name while she was alive? What if some demon stole her name the summer before season three, and everyone forgot her?

One day over the summer Nina gets into a fight with this demon, and loses. And the demon takes her name. Now she still remembers that her name is Nina Martin, so she doesn't really understand what it did to her until she gets home, and her gran doesn't recognize her. Her gran looks at her and sees a stranger. Nina tries to explain, but her gran insists that she never had a granddaughter, that her son and daughter-in-law tragically died before they could have kids.

Nina keeps trying, but every time she says her name, Evelyn forgets her all over again. Nina eventually gives up, and steals her stuff. Which is easy because every time Evelyn stops looking at the stuff she forgets it's existence.

Every email and message Nina tries to send her friends goes unread and only sometimes deleted because they don't know anyone with that name, and forget about the message the moment they stop looking. Every phone call goes to voicemail, on suspicion of being spam.

Nina tries to go to England directly in hopes that Sibuna could still help, and she is able to get her passport, but gets arrested for having a fake id. She walks out when they forget her. Her attempt to book a flight fail as the airline forgets her reservation.

For Sibuna's part they know something happened the last two years, but the details don't quite line up if they think about it too hard, but they never do. They still get involved in the mystery, though. Eddie can remember that a paragon/chosen one exists, but nothing else beyond that. And when the Osirian dies, he forgets that too. KT has too move Nina's stuff out of her room herself because she's the only one who can even remember the stuff exists after looking away. She asks about it, but no one understands.

Eventually Nina learns that she can use a fake name, and people will remember it and her. And after a couple of years she even manages to get a job and an apartment, but it's been a painful lonely struggle. She was only able to get the apartment with a roommate. Just to make it worse later, let's say the roommate is KT.

KT doesn't talk about Sibuna, and Nina doesn't talk about herself at all. Even with all the secrecy they fall in love anyway. KT knows Nina is hiding things from her, and isn't happy, but knows she would be a hypocrite to say anything, and lets it go. Or she does until KT meets up with some friends from high school (Sibuna) and Nina freaks out.

KT demands answers. Nina tells KT that she will forget if Nina explains. KT insists that she won't forget, and even if she forgets Nina's true name she won't forget everything that they had with the fake name. KT also insists that she and Sibuna can help. Nina breaks down crying, and whispers her names.

KT stares at her blinking for a couple of seconds, and then starts screaming, demanding to know why a strange woman is crying next to her on her couch. A heart broken Nina apologizes, and leaves, and gives KT her name again as she closes the door behind her. A confused KT doesn't remember standing up, or having anyone in her apartment at all.

A few more years later, Sibuna has reunited, and find themselves trying to solve a mystery involving the demon that took Nina's name. Nina is there, trying to get her name back. She only introduces herself as the Paragon to them. And does everything she can to not get close, to not let them know that while she's a stranger them, they're not strangers to her. It hurts though. It's not easy.

Eventually they come to the final confrontation. Nina realizes the only way to take down the demon would kill her too. And at she's fine with this, death would be better than being forgotten alive. But she doesn't want the others to be there, lest they try to stop it or get hurt. So she calls out her name, and then tells the others to run. And they don't know where they are, or how they got there, but this stranger just told them to run, so they do.

But they return, because they're Sibuna, of course they do. And they find Nina's body. And they remember her, and they remember forgetting her. They remember because the demon knew it was over and decided to do the cruelest thing it could think as its last action. It gave Nina her name back. It let her loved ones remember her, just in time to morn her.

[a-little-unsteddie]

tw: major character death (but like it’s happy i promise)

Most of the time, Eddie loved his job.

Eddie loved listening to the people’s life stories, loved learning about what they did for a living, what their favorite colors were, anything that they were willing to share with him. He knew the exact way to ask to get them to open up to him, loved that everyone had something to share with him as they passed. He walked hundreds, thousands of people into the afterlife, encouraging them to go into the Great Beyond, a place he was never going to see.

Eddie called it his job, but really, he kind of stumbled into his predicament unintentionally.

After he had died, he kind of just wandered, for what felt like eternity, but was likely only a few years—decades, centuries—aimlessly. In his wandering, he crossed paths with a myriad of different people, learned about their loved ones, their passions, their history. Eddie had figured out that he was dead somewhere along the way, but it wasn’t really something he was aware of until he helped a little girl pass into the Light. She was holding his hand as they walked closer to what awaited her in the Beyond.

“Will I see you there?” She asked, looking up at him with big, wide eyes that told more stories than half of the souls he talked to. Eddie smiled sadly, and shook his head.

“I’m not meant for what’s Beyond,” Eddie explained. He had tried to cross once, years—maybe decades ago.

The girl frowned, hugging him tightly. “One day I will see you there, and I’ll say ‘I told you so’.” She had said, which had shaken him to his core. She was adamant that he had his own Great Beyond to look forward to, and no matter how much he insisted he was okay, he secretly yearned for it.

Some days, the loneliness of his existence was overwhelming. When he bad one of those days, he would think back to what that little girl told him, and just hold onto it. He also thought of the boy who had told him that his soul wasn’t ready to rest yet. That it was still waiting. Eddie wasn’t sure what it was waiting for, but hoped that it would find it soon.

It was after one of those days—weeks, months years, maybe—that Eddie met him.

He was a boy with chestnut hair and eyes of milk chocolate or caramel or some other sweet thing because the boy was as sweet as any of them. If not more.

He didn’t remember his name right away, which Eddie knew, after years—decades, centuries—of this existence meant that he had died in a traumatic event, which just made Eddie ache for him.

“Your name will come with time,” Eddie assured him, refraining from touching the other soul, knowing from experience that it could be difficult to accept touch after dying. “For now, tell me what you do remember.” Eddie encouraged, heart in his throat. The boy began speaking, telling Eddie about anything and everything that came to his mind over the next few hours—days, weeks—they spent together. He spoke about a boy he knew, once, but the way he was talking Eddie knew that the soul was talking about himself. He knew it was easier to process trauma if you pretended it was someone else it happened to, and so just listened.

Eddie was told many stories about this lonely, lonely man. He grew and watched those around him find their people while he remained alone. Yet, he wasn’t lonely. Quite the opposite, it seemed. He told Eddie of the kids he used to babysit, a look crossing his face that was so heartbreaking Eddie had to take a deep breath to stop himself from saying anything stupid. He told Eddie about Dustin and then Max, who he vaguely recognized as the girl he had spoken to months—years, decades—ago. He moved on to tell Eddie about Robin and Nancy and Jonathan and everyone he ever knew. Eddie wondered how this man survived for so long, having lost so many close to him. It wasn’t all about loss, though. By the end of the week—month, year, decade, maybe—Eddie knew everything there was to know about this man, except for his name. The one bit of information he was still unable to recall.

So he asked about Eddie in return.

Eddie didn’t hesitate, knowing that sometimes it was helpful to just listen to the life story of someone to settle the mind. It was why Eddie did any of this. Eddie told the soul about Wayne, about Gareth and Chrissy, and everyone else he had ever loved, hated and felt absolutely nothing for. Told him about growing up so utterly hated, eventually hunted down and killed for a crime as stupid as being himself.

Even after the stories run dry, Eddie and the soul kept talking. He learned that his name was Steve Harrington and that Eddie was in love with him. Every little story or comment solidified this feeling in his soul and he knew that when Steve was ready to move on that it would completely wreck him.

Except. Except.

Eddie could see the Light.

That had never happened before. Even when he had tried to cross all those years—decades, centuries—ago, he hadn’t seen it.

“Do you see it, too?” Steve had asked, holding Eddie’s hand. “I won’t go unless it’s with you.”

“I see it.” Eddie breathed, eyes wide with awe. “It’s beautiful.”

Steve smiled.

With their hands laced, they both stepped into the Light.

[thefreakandthehair]

I have had A Thought and now I have the urge to write The Thought

Steve dies in season one

But hear me out! It’s where no one sees, he’s alone, abandoned by his friends, having pushed his girlfriend into a fight because he couldn’t control his own temper, and he’s concussed, but it’s worse than he thinks. He parks his car on the side of the road because he’s too dizzy and he’s mad, but he knows it’s not safe.

He closed his eyes just for a minute, to let his vision settle

But when he opens them, he’s not in his car anymore

The afterlife is a room, photos covering the white walls, memories and important moments in his life but it hits him at once as he looks around

There’s not a lot. He hasn’t lived long enough for there to be a lot, and he knows without knowing where he is. There’s two doors, one on either end of the room, one golden, one wooden. There’s light behind the golden one and he knows if he picks it, it’s over. But the gaps in the walls tell him he’s not done, so he picks the wooden door and wakes up in his car.

Now I’m a big fan of the came back wrong trope and this is just came back Different. He feels different. He goes to Jonathan’s house, needing to apologize, feeling a pull to it, and amidst all the Different feel he find the world turned inside out and you know, it’s all a lot to deal with

My favorite little snippet from the end of season one is Steve in the waiting room at the hospital because like. He didn’t need to be there. He could have gone home and I don’t think anyone would have blamed him, but he was there anyway

So he’s there, because there’s another pull, like an itch in his fingertips.

It takes him a while to figure out, that pull. When he does, it’s because there’s a curly haired kid making demands and looking up to him and it feels right to be there keeping him safe.

It hits as he patches himself up at home, an ache in his back that he doesn’t notice at first. It gets worse over the course of the night, until he feels like his back is breaking from it, and through the haze of pain and the disorienting ringing in his ears, he finds himself on the ground, a pair of glowing wings impossible to ignore. (I like the idea of them starting off black, lightening over the years as he works though his guilt)

Through trial and determination, he finds he can hide them, but it’s uncomfortable to do it for too long, makes him all anxious. And there’s no instruction, but he knows what happened, knows it instinctively. He died, but he chose to come back, so now it’s his job to protect people, it’s the price he paid for a return trip, and he knows who’s his to protect by that itch.

Along the way he picks up Robin, who he can tell is his from the first day, who strokes his wings, a bluish gray while his face is still healing, who never hesitates to tease him even as she trusts him to protect her.

And then they find Eddie, who needs all the protection he can get, who he aches with the need to protect, who he flies for the first time to save. His wings are dirty, closer to brown, ruffled and messy and it stings a bit how out of order they are but he can’t pay that any mind when Eddie is floating between life and death.

Eddie makes the realization first, or at least is the first to say it out loud, opening his eyes to see Steve smiling at him and the words come without thought

“I knew an angel would save me from the depths of hell.”

And well, Steve never really thought of himself as an angel even if he knows it’s what he is now, but with Eddie? He could start to believe that.

kat.

KAT.

I am (with consent) holding your hands and begging you to follow this thought.

There’s not a lot. He hasn’t lived long enough for there to be a lot, and he knows without knowing where he is. There’s two doors, one on either end of the room, one golden, one wooden. There’s light behind the golden one and he knows if he picks it, it’s over. But the gaps in the walls tell him he’s not done, so he picks the wooden door and wakes up in his car.

like?! this is ART. this is beautiful. this concept has so much meat to it? Steve as Eddie's angel?! I'm not above begging, I'm definitely not above it, and this is me b e g g i n g.