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anthotneystark · 4 months

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One taste of your life (And I own your soul)

So I heard it was @thefreakandthehair's birthday and then I finished writing this, so Lex this is basically just for you now!

The day starts like any other.

He wakes up screaming, shaking, a cold sweat trailing down his spine. He takes a few minutes to pull himself together, reminds himself it’s all over, ignores the feeling of heavy, dark air on his skin. He ignores the sound of screaming in his head, the tightness in his chest. Before he’s really ready, but after he should already have been moving, he pushes himself up and drags himself into his routine.

He showers, feels like he’s trying to scrub the fear and pain off of himself, and hopes that one day that will actually work. He catches himself looking around as he gets dressed, an uneasy feeling prickling at the back of his neck. It’s the feeling of being watched. But there’s no one in his room, so he shakes it off and moves on.

He has his morning phone call with Robin as they both make breakfast. His heart aches at the thought of her being so far away, just the same as he knows hers does, but he’d refused to let her put off school just because he wasn’t ready to leave yet. She comes back when she can, he’s made trips to visit her, but it’ll never feel right until they can live in the same place again. He won’t make her feel bad for getting out, not when he wanted her to, not when he’s so happy that she’s out there doing things she loves and having fun.

When it’s time, when he can leave too, they’ll get a place together and never have to be apart again.

For now though, instead of gossiping during a morning car ride, he tells her all the drama she’s missing out on and lies about how he’s definitely eating over the sink so his bagel crumbs are contained.

When she has to go, her classes beckoning, he lets her go and tells her he’ll update her with the next schedule his boss puts out. He’s on days right now, but he’s hoping he’ll be on nights soon.

With Robin gone, and Family Video destroyed back in March, he hasn’t bothered to go back into the rental business. He opted to follow a different career path, and with the amount of people who fled the town, the fire department had gladly taken him on. Turns out, for someone who likes to take care of people and is willing to take on tasks like herding a group of rambunctious pre-teens, being a paramedic has been the perfect fit.

He throws on his uniform, laces up his boots, and ignores that feeling pricking at the back of his neck as he walks to his car. He looks around, but it’s a calm day. There’s barely a breeze in the trees; the leaves are still, the world is quiet.

There’s no one there.

The drive is easy, navigating the new roads built from his house to the center of town. Once everything started being rebuilt, mostly by the people who were convinced it was worth it to stay, things settled down. With the cracks in the earth closed up, with homes rebuilt, it looked almost like nothing had happened.

He lost count of how many times he wished nothing had happened.

He let himself get lost in the boredom of no emergencies throughout the day, let himself be distracted by the adrenaline of people needing help. There’s a kitchen injury on Maple Street, a ladder incident on Avalon Court, even a legitimate kitten in a tree call just down from the high school. Being the youngest, and thus the one thrown into the grunt work more often than not, he’d been sent on up to get it. It wasn’t his first kitten rescue, not with more than a few displaced pets, but the kitten only scratched him a little as he pulled it into his arms.

Back on the ground, kitten back in the arms of its person, he’d made quick work of cleaning up the blood that welled up on his hand. His movements stilled as he went to bandage it, his eyes darting up, looking around but seeing no reason for the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. He brushed the feeling aside.

There was no reason to be on edge.

If anyone had asked him back in high school, he’d have said that 24 hours was a long time, plenty of time.

If anyone had asked him after he found out monsters were real, he’d have said 24 hours was an eternity when the chips were down.

If anyone had asked him today, he’d say 24 hours is a blink, a breath, it’s nothing, a blip of time that only carries meaning once it’s over, once you can feel the loss of it.

Loss or not, he’s more relieved when it’s over and he can go home again. The feeling has stuck with him, the hair on the back of his neck, the on edge, the vigilance. It happens, he’s aware, but he’s also aware that today he’s just being dramatic, just being paranoid. As he waits for his shift to end, his 24 hours nearly up, he watches the bats finish their hunt in the almost-dawn light. They’re a mix of swooping and flailing, graceful and clumsy, and not for the first time, he thinks of a boy who was the same.

He thinks of curly hair and a devilish smile, kind eyes and loud laughter. He thinks of rough hands and the gentle curl of smoke from his lips.

It’s not the first time he’s stolen his thoughts and made his heart ache, and it won’t be the last.

The sting lessens the fear that’s shadowed him all day, and he looks up at the approaching dawn with the phantom hand on his shoulder.

The alarm doesn’t ring in the time he’s got left. He shares the easy camaraderie he has with his team, familiar but not family, because even if he doesn’t love them like his kids, he has to love them enough to have his back when they’re out on the truck. Trusting them enough is easy, he’s used to relying on partnerships and love has always come too easily to him.

But that love isn’t the same as what he’s built through much more real dangers. They know him, but they don’t know him enough to see the struggle of pulling on a smile. They know how to read him in the smoke but they don’t know how to read the emotions he shoves down under bravado and jokes.

It’s fine, they don’t need to. But knowing they can’t does nothing to ease the ache and alarm under his skin.

His whole drive home, he sees shadows out of the corner of his eye. A fleeting movement there. A noise here. He doesn’t run from his car into the safety of his home, he knows better. He knows what lurks in the shadows.

As he steps through the door, the feeling fades, vanquished by the safety of a space that’s his. He slips out of his uniform, puts off doing laundry for later, and drops into the couch in nothing but his undershirt and boxers. He closes his eyes and flicks on the TV, the sound just loud enough to drown out the noise of a creature approaching.

Without warning, with only the briefest sense of alarm flaring up, a small weight comes out of nowhere and lands squarely on his chest.

He doesn’t flinch.

Instead, he lifts his head, lifts an eyebrow, and pulls on his most unimpressed look.

“If I was standing, I’d be doing the Mom Pose.”

The bat, fluffy and almost too dark, just chirps happily at him before crawling up to hide in the crook of his neck.

He doesn’t try to move it.

It doesn’t take much longer for that telltale poof-flash-pop of time and space and whatever else is involved in the transformation, and then he’s left not with a clingy flying rodent, but a clingy metalhead with too-sharp teeth and an unusual diet.

Eddie yawns and settles into his side, nosing at his neck until Steve sighs and tilts his head away.

“You didn’t get enough mosquitos this morning? Or throughout the day when you were following me around?”

“How did you know I was following you around?”

“Survival instinct, I felt you,” Steve retorts. He feels Eddie’s grin against his neck before the sharp sting of his fangs, the sticky-warm feeling of pleasure kicking in moments later. A moan escapes him, but he’s long since given up on being ashamed of enjoying this moment too. Eddie doesn’t take much before his tongue is sealing up the wounds, pulling off of him with a wet pop.

“I’ll have to work on being sneakier then,” Eddie says, using Steve’s blissful relaxation to turn his head toward him, stealing a kiss much the same as he’d stolen lunch; with zero complaints and Steve wholeheartedly on board.

“You do that,” Steve laughs, the words muffled against Eddie’s lips. His own yawn interrupts the next kiss, but he doesn’t need to worry about being too tired. It’s a perfect excuse for Eddie to scoop him up and carry him to bed. The curtains are pulled closed, the covers pulled back, and there, in a bed that felt hostile just 24 hours earlier, Steve sinks into the safety of a man who any sane person would be terrified of just by reputation alone.

There, in arms that are stronger than any human, looking up into eyes that are red when the light hits them just right, Steve lets himself surrender into the sleep that calls his name. There are no screams in his head now, just whispered words about hobbits and dwarves and an adventure that Steve never manages to stay awake to hear in full. That’s okay though, Eddie will read those words to him as many times as needed, with a devilish smile and the occasional curl of smoke from his lips, with rough hands so gently brushing through locks of chestnut hair.

All is right with his world, the weight in his heart has lightened, and there’s no need to be afraid.

Posted on Ao3 too!

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #kat writes #stranger things #Happy birthday Lex!#mwah ilusm

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