#msb2024

[runraerun]

Goodbye Neil

Written for the @metalsandwichbingo event! Filling my B1 square: “Do you think it’s going to fit?”

AO3 • Rated: M • WC: 6.6k • Tags: MurderBoyfriends!AU, Injured!Billy, Dark!Eddie, SupportiveBoyfriend!Steve. Lots of pet names. • Beta: @dame-zoom-a-lot

Summary:

After Neil finally goes too far and lands Billy in intensive care, his boyfriends rush to his side.

Eddie and Steve hold Billy’s hand and they work out a plan, and it doesn’t take them long to decide:

That Neil had to die.

[ihni]

Hole talk

For the @metalsandwichbingo, square C1, prompt "Stuck". Rating: General (I think), 6,7K.

Summary:

Billy, Steve and Eddie fall down a magical hole, and talk about stuff. Yup, that's the fic.

(On AO3 here)

”How the hell do we always end up in these situations?” Billy said, kicking angrily at the stone of the walls around them. The stone walls between which they’d been trapped for half an hour now, since they were swallowed by a hole in the forest floor while checking out some weird markings on some trees that someone had discovered and started spreading rumors about. After they’d dusted themselves off and made sure there were no broken bones, they discovered three things in quick succession: that the hole above had almost grown over with foliage once more which only let in a tiny amount of light, that there were some strange vaguely glowing markings on one of the walls, and that there didn’t seem to be a way out.

“Bad luck?” Steve suggested while feeling along the walls for the fourth time, looking for something he’d missed on the first three rounds.

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Billy grumbled, glaring at the opening above them. “It’s this fucking place. Hawkins fucking sucks, guys, I’ve been telling you –“

“Yeah, and you never shut up about it,” Steve mumbled, as if Billy wouldn’t hear him in the enclosed space they were in.

“Guys,” Eddie said from where he was running his fingers over the markings on the stone. “No fighting.”

None of them acknowledged him, but instead of continuing their argument they both turned their attention to where he was trying to get a good look at the symbols etched into the wall. “Have you figured out what those mean, yet?”

Eddie made a face. “No, but I’m pretty sure Steve was right when he said it’s some kind of magic.”

Steve turned to Billy with a smug smile, while Billy threw his head back and groaned long and loud.  “Fucking magic? This fucking place, I swear – isn’t it enough with monsters and Russians and human experiments and alternate dimensions?”

“Hey now,” Steve said, trying to placate him. “You can’t just lump magic in with all that stuff, magic can be used for good –“

“Oh shut the fuck up, just ‘cause your grandma was a witch –“

“Hey!”

“Guys,” Eddie tried to interject, but again he was ignored.

“What? You just told us she was, like ten minutes ago!”

“I said she used to dabble in magic. We don’t say ‘witch’, that’s … offensive.”

“Oh yeah?” Billy said, walking up to him and getting too close. “How about bitch then? That a term you can relate to?”

“Guys!” Eddie tried again, and when Steve gave Billy a shove so he stumbled back and Billy made to retaliate, he got between the two of them and put a hand on each of their chests to keep them separated. “Goddammit, this isn’t helping. Why are you like this? If this thing is magic –“ He motioned to the space they were in and the vaguely glowing symbols on the wall, “– and I mean, it sure seems like it, then we need to work together. Fighting won’t get us out of here, okay? So just …” He gave them both a little shove so they took a step back. “Keep it in your pants, yeah? You can pound each other into the dust – or just pound each other – when we’re out of here.”

“And just how do we get out of here, oh wise one?” Billy said, sarcastically.

“Well, we obviously can’t climb,” Eddie said, managing to not look pointedly at either of the other two, who had spent the first ten minutes of their captivity trying to scale the walls and had nothing but scraped hands and knees to show for their efforts.

“’We’, he says,” Billy muttered. “I didn’t see you try.”

“Oh, like I would have succeeded where you two failed?” Eddie said. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the athletic type. You’re the jocks here, okay, so you’re the brawn in this scenario.”

“That would make you the brains,” Billy said with a smile that was more a show of teeth than an expression of joy. “So brain us out of here, genius.”

Eddie glared at him, but continued. “Like I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, we can’t climb. No one is likely to come look for us any time soon.” He turned to the symbols on the wall. “The answer must be there, somehow. But … I don’t know what it means.” He looked down, as if loathe to admit that.

“So what do we do, then?”

Silence followed, and then Steve spoke up. “I guess we … wait for something to happen.”

“Oh, awesome,” Billy deadpanned. “Because waiting for something to happen in Hawkins has worked so well for us in the past.”

~~~

Hours passed. The light from the overgrown opening above grew dim, and then disappeared entirely when the hour approached midnight. Strangely enough the space they were in still allowed enough light for them to see each other; it could be due to the glowing symbols on the wall, or the fact that they’d gotten used to the darkness. They’d tried and failed and tried again to climb out of the hole, and had even tried standing on each other’s shoulders to reach higher, to check for handholds or something hidden that they might have missed – all without anything to show for it but short tempers and bruises. So now they were sitting on the floor (which was solid stone under the layer of dirt, and which they could not dig through – because yes, they’d tried), their backs against three different walls. No one had chosen the wall that held the symbols.

The space was just large enough that their feet didn’t touch in the middle when they all sat with their legs splayed out.

Eddie was fiddling with the scrapes on his elbow – which he’d gotten when he’d been talked into climbing on top of the other two, courtesy of being the lightest – and he yelped when Steve threw a pebble at him.

“Stop that,” Steve said with a frown. “It’ll scar.”

Eddie let out a hoarse laugh and patted his sides. “Like one more would matter! If you haven’t forgotten, Stevie-boy, I’ve got a torso full of ‘em.”

Raising his eyebrows, Steve pulled down the collar of his shirt somewhat and motioned to the marks around his own throat. “Yeah well, at least you can hide yours.”

A beat, then they both turned their heads as one to look at Billy. Billy, who was wearing a Henley under his jacket; who hadn’t worn an unbuttoned shirt since he got out of the hospital. Who was now resting against his chosen wall looking as casual as if he was lounging on a couch. He didn’t even look up as he said, “Yeah, we all know that if we’re having a scar-off, I win.” For a second, there was tension in the air, until he huffed out a laugh and said, “Besides, Eddie’s little boo-boo won’t scar.”

Eddie’s face split in a grin. “Great.”

“It’s way more likely that it’ll get infected and he’ll die from that.”

The smile fell. “Come on –“

“Or maybe tetanus. Have you taken your shots, Eds?”

“You are such an asshole,” Steve said, arms crossed over his chest but not without a hint of wonder in his voice.

Billy grinned. “That I am, and just imagine – you guys are lucky enough to be stuck in here with me.”

His comment dissolved the last of the earlier tension as all of them smiled a little at that, momentarily amused. A minute or so passed in silence, before Billy let out a deep sigh.

“Okay but seriously,” Steve, who also seemed to have had enough, said. “What do we do?”

“Sleep?” Billy said.

“I mean, what do we do if …” Steve licked his lips and looked down at his lap. “If we can’t get out. If no one comes for us.”

“Die,” Billy said bluntly, raising his hands defensively when the other two glared at him. “What? Those are the options. We get out, or we die.”

“You don’t sound too worried,” Steve said, still with a disapproving frown on his face.

“Let’s just say I’ve been there, done that.”

While he winked at a scowling Steve, Eddie buried his face in his hands. “Ugh, this sucks.”

A pause followed, as at least in this, they seemed to agree. Then Billy spoke up. “There’s one thing we haven’t tried yet …”

“What’s that?” Eddie asked.

“I mean,” Billy said with a considering look. “If it really is magic we’re dealing with …”

He was quiet for long enough that Eddie had to prompt him into speaking again, a hint of impatience in his voice. “Yes? What?”

“Hey, pretty boy,” Billy said and stretched out his leg to bump his shoe against Steve’s. “Your grandma ever say anything about sacrifices?”

“Sacrifices?”

Eddie groaned. “I do not like the sound of that.”

But Steve’s eyes lit up and he worked his way to standing. “Oh wait, shit, that makes sense actually.”

“What?” Eddie snarked. “There are no goats here to sacrifice, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Well, we have you,” Billy snarked back. “And last I heard, virgin sacrifices are high in demand.”

A growl. “Fuck you.”

“For our freedom? Sure. You offering?”

“Shut up, both of you!” Steve interjected. “First, I feel like I should point out that that’s offensive to the magically inclined and my gran would smack you over the head if she heard you talk like that. Second, from what she told me, there actually is an element of sacrifice to magic –“

“Your time to shine, Eddie.”

“Shut up!”

“I swear if you two don’t stop it, I’ll sacrifice you both right now!”

Eddie and Billy snapped their mouths shut as Steve raised his voice – and then glanced at each other and started giggling-

“Careful Stevie, I heard that kind of language is offensive to the magically inclined,” Eddie said smoothly while Billy guffawed.

Looking heavenwards, Steve sighed. “I hate you both. Can I finish?”

“I don’t know. Can you?”

“I swear to god …”

“Sorry, sorry,” Eddie said and gestured widely with his hands. “Please, continue.”

”Balance, okay? She said it’s almost always about balance.”

Eddie frowned, in confusion this time. “But you said ‘sacrifice’ …”

“I think she meant it as the same thing,” Steve huffed, and then deflated. “But I don’t know. It’s not like we talked a lot about it. My parents thought she was mad, and she died when I was ten. I just remember her saying that there had to be balance, and that all magic was basically a matter of give and take, in equal measures.”

“So, what?” Eddie said. “We need to use magic to get out of here, but to be able to do that, we have to … give something? Is that what it means?”

“Well at least you have something to bargain with,” Billy said. “Mr. Virgin.”

“I swear I will smack you.”

“Don’t,” Steve commented dryly. “He likes it.” While Eddie raised his eyebrows in incredulity and Billy grinned lewdly, Steve stood up and walked up to the glowing figures on the wall. He put his hand on them and frowned. “Maybe they’re instructions?”

Billy, who was busy warding himself against the pebbles Eddie was throwing at him, was momentarily distracted and asked, “Instructions for – ow! – Instructions for what?”

“I don’t know.” With a deep sigh, Steve went back to sit back down. “It was just a thought.”

~~~

Another half-hour passed without anything eventful happening.

“We should try to do something,” Billy huffed.

“We’ve already tried everything,” Steve sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Not everything –“

“I swear,” Eddie snarled, suddenly on his feet and looming over Billy, fingers like claws as he pointed at Billy’s face, “If you’re about to crack one more virginity joke –“

“Jesus, Munson,” Billy murmured, hands up in surrender. “Chill out. It’s just a joke.”

“Maybe it is to you!” Eddie yelled. “Everything’s a joke to you, huh? Well guess what, for some of us, it’s not something to joke about. For some of us, getting laid isn’t just something that just happens! Some of us has gone through school a fucking loser, okay, and if you weren’t aware; no one wants to fuck a loser!”

Steve and Billy glanced at each other, and Billy made a face. “I didn’t mean –“

“And the thing is that Hawkins isn’t exactly a cultural hub, so if one person thinks that you’re a loser, suddenly everyone thinks that you’re a loser. And even if you really, really like someone, you can’t make the first move because if experience has taught you anything, it’s that you don’t have the social standing to approach them without people laughing at you or pushing you down or throwing you into lockers!”

Now both Billy and Steve winced. “I’m sure –“

“So naturally, it doesn’t happen, and then it continues to not happen, even though it happens to everyone around you, and by now even if someone does show any interest in you, you’re pretty sure it’s a goddamn trap and they’re going to use that opportunity to make fun of you or, or hurt you somehow!”

“Hey!” Steve said, standing up too. “No one would –“

“And then of course you start hanging out with fucking jocks,” Eddie continued, sneering, and motioned to Steve and Billy both. “And they’re gorgeous and confident and they can get anyone they want, and they prove it, like, all the time so they fuck their way through half the school, and then they start hooking up because why not, right? And then, then they start flirting with you, and you start to really wonder what the hell their angle is, since you’re such a fucking loser!”

By now, all three of them were standing up, but where Eddie was still pointing at Billy in a rage, Billy was just standing back by his wall, a gobsmacked expression on his face.

“Eddie –“ he said, but didn’t seem to find anything else to say. “I’m –“

“Don’t, Hargrove,” Eddie said, a bitter note to his voice. “Just …” A deep breath, as if trying to calm himself. “Lay off the virgin jokes, okay?”

“Okay.”

Steve walked up to Eddie and put a hand on his shoulder, face falling when Eddie shrugged out of his grip and backed up a step. “Hey, Eds. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I didn’t,” Billy confirmed in a low voice, not moving from his spot by the wall.

When Eddie just huffed and refused to look at any of them, Steve wet his lips and bent his head to try to catch his eye. “Hey. Eddie. Is this … Is this why you don’t wanna …? You know. Fool around with us?”

Eddie gave a half-hearted shrug and refused to meet his eye. Meanwhile, Billy raised his head up in his corner. “Wait, that’s why you don’t wanna have sex?”

Steve facepalmed and let out a sigh. “Billy …”

“No, wait, let me get this straight,” Billy continued, drawing himself up where he was standing. “Eddie here thinks that no one wants to fuck him because he’s a loser, meanwhile we’ve spent months trying to make it abundantly clear that we would both gladly fuck this particular loser!” He gestured between them and then added, as an afterthought, “Or, you know. Get fucked by, whatever.”

“That’s not the problem!” Eddie bit out. “Didn’t you listen?”

“I did,” Billy said with an unexpected wrinkle between his eyebrows. “And I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

Steve took that opportunity to put his hand back on Eddie’s shoulder, and turn him so he was facing him. When Eddie looked up, he was met with Steve’s wide and earnest eyes. “Do you really think that we would do something like that? Trick you, or … try to hurt you somehow? After everything we’ve been through, the three of us?”

It was Eddie’s turn to sigh, the air leaving him along with the rest of his anger. “No. Of course not, I – No.” He dragged a hand down his own face and leaned back against the rock wall, letting it support him. “I just … Listen. I haven’t had a lot of good experiences with jocks before you guys came along, okay? And I haven’t had a lot of good experiences with … people making sexual advances. And you guys have to admit that the setup is pretty … unusual.” He motioned between the three of them once more. “Not exactly a normal constellation, here, you know?”

“Fuck normal constellations,” Billy murmured from his corner, which made the corner of Eddie’s mouth tick up in a ghost of a smile.

“I just. I want to trust you guys,” Eddie said, but even as he said it, he shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean I do trust you guys. I do. And I wanna be with you. Both. I just. Have some … issues, I guess.”

“Well,” Billy said, “Welcome to the club. We all have issues here.”

Steve, meanwhile, had put his arms around Eddie and pressed a kiss to his temple. “You should have said something earlier, Eds. I’m sorry if we’ve ever made you think –“

“You haven’t.”

Billy came up on the other side of Eddie and punched his other shoulder, albeit a considerably weaker punch than he was capable of. “We wouldn’t do that to you. You may be a loser, but you’re our loser, and we want to fuck you.” He was pinned by two incredulous looks, and rolled his eyes as he added, “Or get fucked by you. I already said.”

“What Mr. Sensitivity over here is trying to say –“ Steve started.

“Hey!”

“– is that hurting you is the last thing we wanna do.”

“Yeah,” Billy piped up. “Unless you like it. We wanna make you feel good.”

“Not everyone’s a masochist, Billy.”

“Some of us are.”

“Oh my god, please stop talking,” Eddie interrupted, face flaming. “I trust you guys, okay? I trust you not to hurt me. And I’ll probably want to have sex with you at some point –“ he pointed at Billy when Billy opened his mouth to speak, “– not while we’re stuck in a magic hole in the ground in the middle of the woods –“ he ignored Billy’s disappointed little ‘aw’ and continued, “– so now that that’s all, you know, out there, can we please talk about something else now? Literally anything else?”

“No, wait, go back to the magic hole–“ Billy said with a mischievous smile, and backed off giggling when both Eddie and Steve reached out to smack him. “Hey!”

Steve followed after him, but Eddie stayed where he was and stared straight ahead, not even looking at the others as they play-fought only a few steps away. His eyes were wide and his mouth fell open.

“Guys?”

The grunts and giggles from beside him abated, and when he repeated himself, they stopped altogether.

“What?”

Eddie just pointed at the glowing text on the wall. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”

Steve and Billy looked to where he was pointing. “The glowy symbols on the wall? Yeah.”

At that, Eddie tore his gaze away from the wall. “What do you mean? You can’t read it?”

“Wait, you can?”

Walking up to the wall, Eddie dragged his fingers over the first part of the symbols. “Not all of it, but this part? I can read this.”

“Well, spit it out! What does it say?”

“It says, ‘Shed your masks’.”

~~~

They spent a long time discussing whatever this new development meant, and whether it had any impact on their chances of getting out of here. But after going through their confinement again and finding that nothing else had changed, and after emptying their ideas of what this new information could mean without getting anywhere, they ended up where they’d started; each one sitting with their back to their chosen walls, occasionally glaring at the glowing symbols. The night was at its darkest, and no light at all was coming in from the hole above them.

“I fucking hate magic,” Billy grumbled for what must have been the twentieth time.

“We know,” Eddie and Steve said in chorus, without moving.

“Cryptic goddamn motherfucking runes –“

Perhaps in an effort to get Billy to shut up, Eddie spoke up. “Okay, let’s go over this again. If it’s not about a sacrifice, and it’s not literal – because we’re not wearing any masks – then maybe it’s instructions, like you said, Steve. Or a … riddle?”

“I’m terrible with riddles,” Steve commented while Billy just huffed.

“It has to mean something,” Eddie said. “It has to mean something that I can read it, and you guys can’t. Are you sure you can’t –“

“Yes,” Billy and Steve said at the same time.

“Only you seem to have acquired the magic rune-reading ability,” Billy added, slightly sarcastically. “Lucky you.”

“I can only read the first part, though,” Eddie said, frowning and fiddling with the hem of his jacket. “And that hasn’t proven to be very helpful.” He turned to Steve. “Is there anything you can think of that your grandmother might have said? Anything at all, maybe something you didn’t know was useful or –“

It was Steve’s turn to huff out a frustrated breath. “For the hundredth time, no! I’ve already told you, she died when I was ten and my parents thought she was mad so we didn’t even go there that often in the first place.”

“Yeah, but maybe they’ve said something or –“

Standing up and pulling at his hair, Steve growled out, “I don’t remember, okay? I last spoke to my grandmother almost ten years ago and I cared more about her cookies than her magic, okay? Sorry to be such a disappointment but I don’t remember me and my grandma ever discussing how to escape magic people traps in the middle of the forest. I guess my memory isn’t all that it should be after all those hits to the head I’ve taken!” Billy winced from his corner, but didn’t interrupt. “ So I’m sorry that you’re stuck down here with such a useless descendant of a witch!”

“I thought ‘witch’ was offensive,” Billy piped up, and threw his hands up and mimed zipping his mouth shut when Steve whirled around to glare at him.

“Hey, now,” Eddie said, also with his hands up. “That’s not what I meant at all. I just … You’re the only one who’s had any kind of experience with magic. The two of us,” he motioned between himself and Billy, “we don’t know shit.”

“Well neither do I!” Steve exploded. “I never know shit!”

“That’s not true –“

“I’m slow, I can’t read properly, and I only barely graduated. Dad wants me to work for him but I can’t even hold down a minimum-wage job. The only thing I’ve been somewhat decent at is fighting monsters and getting us out of bad situations but in case you haven’t noticed, there are no monsters here that I can hit over the head! I can’t get us out of this, because I’m stupid and useless!”

For a couple of seconds after his outburst, silence reigned in the space they were in. At least until Billy spoke up. “You’re anything but stupid and useless, pretty boy.”

Steve snorted self-deprecatingly. “Yeah, that’s why you call me ‘pretty boy’; because I’m smart. Clearly my best quality.”

“No,” Billy said, getting to his feet too and walking up to Steve, taking his face between his hands. “I call you ‘pretty boy’ because that’s what you are. You are pretty. But that’s not all you are. Where the fuck is this insecurity coming from, huh?” Steve gave a half-hearted effort of escaping his grip, but Billy held on. “Who cares if you can’t read? Fuck reading! That has nothing to do with how smart you are. And you are smart, you’re the one who thought that this thing might be magic in the first place.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, getting with the program, “and at least you graduated on your first try. I failed twice before I graduated, and even then I only made it because you guys helped me. Both of you.”

“But I –“

“And!” Eddie added, “Losing the job at Scoops was so far from your fault, it’s not even funny. Remember the big meat monster? Because that whole mall thing was the meat monster’s fault.”

“Of course I remember the meat monster,” Steve grumbled. “I was actually there for it.”

“As was I,” Billy added. “You, however, weren’t.”

“My point still stands,” Eddie said, ignoring them. “And besides, you don’t want to work for your dad and you got a new job after that all by yourself anyway so it doesn’t matter.”

“Thanks to Robin.”

“Okay, so? You work well with other people. You’re a good team player or whatever. Billy, say something motivating about team players and sports metaphors and shit.”

“What?”

“Like, I don’t know. Isn’t it important to be a team player instead of … running the ball yourself or something? To score … goals? You win if you work together? Go team? Shit like that?” He rolled his eyes. “Come on, you’re the jocks here, you know what I’m trying to say!”

“I really don’t,” Steve said.

“Nope,” Billy agreed, “but please continue, it’s very amusing to listen to.”

“I hate you guys.”

“No you don’t.”

Billy pulled Steve into a one-armed hug and then let go. “I think he’s got a good point somewhere in there, though. No man is an island.”

“What?”

“Forget it. Point is, you’re smart.”

Steve sighed and took a step away from the others. “You don’t have to say that.”

“Yes I do,” Billy insisted, “because you obviously don’t hear it enough. There are many ways to be smart, and book smarts is not for everyone. Who cares about that anyway? You are people smart, and rational smart, and fighting monsters smart. You care so much, and you always want to help, even if … even if people don’t deserve it.”

“I can’t help now, though.”

“And that’s not your fault,” Eddie said. “Who in their right mind could have predicted we’d fall down and get trapped in a magical hole?”

They were silent for a heartbeat or two. “I mean,” Steve said, “this is Hawkins, so we probably should have expected something like it.”

Eddie snorted out a laugh, and next to him, Billy cackled. “Right on,” he said. “Fuck Hawkins.”

“Or maybe fuck in Hawkins?” Eddie dared, grinning when Billy’s eyebrows shot up on his forehead and his face split in a delighted grin.

“Now that’s the spirit, Munson!”

Steve didn’t join in their banter, instead he looked over Eddie’s shoulder at the glowing symbols on the wall. “Hey Eddie, I thought you said it said ‘Shed your masks’?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, throwing a look at the symbols. “It does.”

“No,” Steve said, “It says ‘Acknowledge your real selves’. Right here.” He pointed at a section of the wall, and Eddie walked up next to him, frowning.

“I can’t read that. It’s still gibberish to me. Up here, though, it says ‘Shed your masks’.”

“Huh,” Steve said. “I can’t see that. But down here, it says ‘Acknowledge your real selves’.”

“It’s all still gibberish to me,” Billy said, scowling at the symbols. “But I’m happy for you guys. Apparently, all that’s needed to be able to get partial magic-reading powers is to have a meltdown.”

“Should be easy enough for you then,” Eddie grinned. “You dramatic bitch.”

~~~

Unfortunately, this new readable section wasn’t any more helpful than the first one had been, and they were still no closer to figuring out a way out of there.

“Maybe it’s less about the … well, meltdowns, and more about … opening up?” Steve suggested.

Eddie, who was back in his spot by the wall, raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean … You and I, we both … revealed something about ourselves, I guess?”

They were silent as they thought that through, and then they both surreptitiously glanced at Billy, who startled a bit and then splayed his hands out on his chest. “Hey, I’m an open book!”

“M-hm,” Eddie said.

“Sure,” Steve added.

“An open book, written in a language no one can read,” Eddie said, and both he and Steve snorted while Billy glared at them.

“That���s bullshit. You know everything there is to know about me.”

Eddie actually laughed out loud at that. “Are you kidding? Just getting you to admit your favorite pizza topping was like pulling teeth!”

“It’s ham and pineapple.”

Steve let out a gasp. “You said it was pepperoni!”

“… I lied.” Billy made a show out of peering at the glowing symbols, and then fell back against the wall. “Nope, still can’t read it. So that’s strike one against the ‘opening up’ theory.”

Eddie pointed a finger in his direction. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

“Oh I am,” Billy assured them. “But I’m not about to air all my dirty laundry on the off chance that this magical cell will let us go if I say the correct secret out loud.”

“Aha!” Eddie exclaimed. “So you admit you have secrets?”

“Of course I have fucking secrets,” Billy scoffed. “Everyone has secrets.”

“Well then it wouldn’t hurt you to share with the class.”

“It might.”

“Come on!” Eddie said, frustrated. “If it’s really about balance like Steve says, then it must be up to you! Steve and I have both already shared something about ourselves.”

“Yeah, your low self-esteem. I don’t struggle with that.”

“Fuck you, Hargrove. You’re the only one who’s left!”

“Well tough shit, Munson. Guess we’re stuck down here for the foreseeable future, then!”

“Shut up, both of you!”

They fell silent at Steve’s shout, and turned to look at him. He sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Fighting won’t help us, we know that much. Listen. It’s almost morning. We’re tired, and no one’s gonna come looking for us until the sun is up anyway. What do you say we try to get some sleep, and try to figure out a way out tomorrow? Who knows, maybe there’s something we’ve missed in the dark that we’ll be able to see in daylight?”

He didn’t sound like he particularly believed what he was saying, but none of the others argued with him about it. Or, more probably, they didn’t want to argue with each other, so decided to give in.

But when Steve tried to get them to cuddle up together – “Come on guys, it’s to conserve heat” – they promptly refused.

“I’m fine over here,” Billy said and laid down by his wall.

“I’m not that cold anyway,” was Eddie’s reply, and did the same.

“Come on guys, you’re being ridiculous.”

No answer. Sighing, Steve laid down on the dirt floor by his own wall, and closed his eyes.

~~~

Judging by the grey light that was filtering down from the overgrown opening above, it was just after dawn when Steve blinked his eyes open and stretched. He froze when he saw that Billy was no longer curled up at the wall where he’d previously been, but was now hunkering down next to Eddie’s unmoving form. Billy was staring at Steve with wide eyes, like a deer in headlights, having stopped in the middle of tucking his own jacket around Eddie, and at Steve’s raised eyebrow he shuffled back, pulling his shoulders up and licking his lips.

“He was shivering,” he said, defensively, in a low voice as if trying not to wake Eddie.

Steve, likewise, kept his voice low when he answered, “That was … nice of you.”

“Whatever,” Billy shrugged and went back to his spot by the wall, where he sat back down. “You know I run hot. I don’t really need it.”

Sitting up, Steve remarked, “Still nice.”

Billy glared at him. “What? I can be nice, you know.”

“I know, I know,” Steve backtracked. “I just meant, it’s nice to see that you care.” He winced, probably realizing how that sounded, and Billy’s gaze darkened.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, just …” A sigh, followed by a helpless shrug. “Sometimes, it’s not the easiest thing, to know what you’re thinking. I care a lot about you and Eddie, and I know he cares a lot about me and you as well, but … well. Sometimes, it’s hard to know where you’re standing with this whole thing.” Steve winced, and added, lamely, “Is all.”

“Well, fuck you too.”

Eddie suddenly sat up and pulled Billy’s jacket closer around him. “Why do you always do this?”

“You’re awake?”

“Obviously,” Eddie said with a roll of his eyes. “Just like I was awake last week when you put that blanket on me at Steve’s place. Just like I was awake when you touched my hair the week before that and you thought I’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. Just like I only pretended to sleep that time in the trailer last month and you carried me to bed. Hell, you said that Stevie must have imagined that noise his car was making, but I saw you working on it for a whole afternoon when you thought I wasn’t home!”

“Wait, you did?” Steve interjected, and was ignored.

Billy stared at Eddie with his mouth open, shoulders at his ears. Eddie continued, “So why do you always do this, Billy? Huh? Why do you only show that you care when you think we won’t notice?”

“I care!”

“Well how are we supposed to know that, when you hardly ever show it and never tell us?”

“Well excuse me for not being the lovey-dovey type of guy that you apparently want! Well guess what, if you want someone to buy you flowers and make you candle-lit dinners, you’re shit out of luck because that sure as hell ain’t me! You want someone to say ‘I love you’ all the time, you better find someone else!”

He crossed his arms over his chest – showing off his biceps, since he was just wearing a T-shirt now – and scowled at them both. After a minute or so of silence, during which no one seemed to find anything to say, his shoulders dropped a little. He pressed the heel of one hand to his eye and murmured a quiet “Fuck” before taking a deep breath. “But I do.”

Eddie glanced at Steve, who shrugged. “You do … what?”

“Love you guys,” Billy murmured, voice so low that they could hardly make out the words.

Steve’s eyebrows flew up in surprise, and Eddie’s jaw dropped. Billy didn’t see any of that, though, because he still had his eyes closed.

“Of course I fucking do,” he continued. “I just shouldn’t have to … fucking say it all the time.”

Eddie turned to Steve and mimed ‘wow’, before speaking up. “I can’t believe this.”

“What?” Billy growled and opened his eyes, already frowning. “Not good enough for you? You need me groveling and on my knees?”

“I mean,” Eddie said, momentarily distracted, “I wouldn’t mind you on your knees, but that wasn’t what I meant. I meant,” and here he nodded to both Billy and Steve, “I can’t believe you’re the one who said it first.”

“Said wh–“ Billy began, and then snapped his mouth shut when realization dawned.

As the color drained from Billy’s face, the smile on Eddie’s face grew. “Why, the L word of course! To be honest, I wasn’t sure we were there yet –“ Steve gave him a shove and a warning glare, but Eddie continued his teasing, still grinning, “– but since you’ve so bravely taken the leap into the next phase of our relationship, I guess I can say it too; I love you too, Billy.” He kissed the air in Billy’s direction, and then turned and pressed a real kiss to Steve’s face, since Steve was closer. “And I love you, Stevie.”

“I fucking hate you,” Billy murmured, face beginning to redden.

“Ah, but that’s not what you said a minute ago!”

Billy buried his face in his hands and let out a half-strangled scream while Steve did his best not to laugh. Eddie continued to have the time of his life, and said smoothly, “Hey, Billy, that was one hell of a confession actually. Does the magic hole allow you to read the symbols now?”

He said it jokingly, but when Billy looked up to glare at him and threw a glance at the glowing runes, he froze and his eyes widened.

“No shit?” Eddie said, teasing forgotten. “Really? You can read it?”

Billy got to his feet and approached the stone wall. “Not all of it,” he said and traced the bottom part of the symbols. “Just this.”

“Okay?” Steve said and waited. When Billy didn’t speak, he prompted, “So what does it say?”

“What difference does it make?” Billy murmured, face flaming.

“Uhh,” Eddie said and gestured wildly around the hole they were in. “Maybe all the difference in the world? Maybe it’s an … incantation, or something. Wait, let’s try it! This first part that I can read says, ‘Shed your masks’.”

Steve pressed two fingers to the part that he could read, and continued seamlessly, “’Acknowledge your real selves’.”

They both looked at Billy, who sighed and looked heavenwards, but ground out the part that he cold apparently read: “’Open up and share yourself with others’.”

Eddie gave him a grin and Steve smiled proudly even though Billy refused to look at any of them. Instead he looked around the space they were in. The others did, as well.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then something started glowing on the three other walls as well; more symbols. The boys all looked around, and Steve frowned. “I can … I can only read that one,” he said and pointed at the symbol that had appeared on the wall he had slept against.

“I can read that one,” Eddie said and pointed to his wall.

Billy’s shoulders sagged as he nodded to the wall where he had been sleeping, “And I can read those.”

Eddie, licked his lips and seemed to decide to go first. “’Show trust’,” he said.

“’Show weakness’,” Steve read.

“’Show feelings’,” Billy bit out.

As the last words were spoken, the intensity of the runes increased until they were shining so brightly that the boys had to shield their eyes against the light. It continued until everything around them was a bright white and they had to screw their eyes shut –

– and then it stopped, and they were left to blink the remnants of the bright spots out of their eyes.

“What the –“ Steve said, as he was the first to regain his senses and look around.

They were no longer in the hole, but in the woods where they had fallen in the night before. In fact, there was no indication of a hole ever having been there in the first place.

The early morning sunlight came down through the trees, birds were chirping in the branches above, and drops of dew glittered on the foliage around them.

“What the fuck?” Billy said, eloquently.

“Huh,” Eddie said, just as expressively. “Guess there’s something to be said about that whole balance and sacrifice thing, after all.”

“I still think we should have worked the virgin sacrifice angle,” Billy grumbled, backing away from and glaring at the space where they’d fallen through the night before.

“There’ll be time for that later,” Eddie said. “Besides, I’d rather my first time be in an actual bed. Call me old-fashioned.”

“High-maintenance, more like it.”

“Aw, but you apparently love that about me,” Eddie grinned, all teeth, and ducked under Billy’s half-hearted swipe.

“Guys,” Steve sighed, but he was smiling too. “Maybe we should save all this for later and get the hell out of here? Before anything else happens?”

“Good plan, pretty boy,” Billy said.

“Smart boy,” Eddie added.

“Very capable boy,” Billy nodded.

“Shut up,” Steve said, and got to hear the other two cackle delightedly as they turned and walked in the direction where they’d left the car the previous day.

A couple of seconds passed, and then Eddie let out a loud snort. At his boyfriends’ questioning looks, he said, “I can’t believe we got couples therapy:d by a magical forest hole.”

[talanashta]

Bidding on a Dream

For @metalsandwichbingo square C3 "omega auction"

Rating: T | No CWs | Word Count: 1,037 | Pairings: pre-Steve/Eddie/Billy | Additional Tags: Omegaverse

Summary: Steve puts himself up for auction through a reputable omega auction house, hoping to find the one. He wasn't expecting to find two alphas that were well-suited.

While omega auctions were slowly falling out of standard, they did still occasionally happen. Due to newer laws on omega protection, though, they were far divorced from their old methods of operation. That wasn’t to say omega exploitation didn’t still happen, but when it was caught, the people in charge were arrested for their crimes. Most omega auctions nowadays featured omegas who put themselves on the auction block or who at least consented when their family wanted them to do it.

When Steve was looking for a company to work with to put himself up for auction, he asked around to learn the reputations of the companies he was considering. A few he ruled out due to sketchy practices – nothing illegal, Hopper told him, but they were skirting the line. A couple he ruled out due to their policies – particularly the limited ability to turn down alphas and a penalty fee for doing so. Finally, he’d narrowed it down to one.

He’d gone through the process of getting registered with them, answering their questionnaires, getting a physical, sitting for photos, and scent-marking fabric swatches. In the end, the whole thing seemed like an expensive matchmaking service, all paid for by the alphas looking for an omega.

They’d explained to him that he’d keep most of the money from the bid as a bride-price, while the auction house made their money off their percentage fee from that bid. He hoped it would end up being a decently sized nest egg – not for himself, but so he’d have money to spoil his future pups.

His profile information reflected his desires too. Every alpha who bid on him would know he wanted a large family, and he’d turn down anyone who ignored that and thought they could have him anyway.

He needed this, but not at the expense of his hopes and dreams.

Come the day of his first auction, his nerves were a little jittery, but it wasn’t anything too unmanageable. Honestly, he thought Robin was more anxious about this than he was. He’d ended up having to reassure her multiple times the night before that everything would be okay.

He pulled up in a nice outfit sans scent blockers or colognes, as the people running the auction had told him to do. Quickly, he was set up in a side room with a few other omegas all waiting nervously to be called onto the small stage to be auctioned off.

One-by-one they were called out of the room; none of them returned after their auction. Even though Steve knew that was what was supposed to be happening, it still put him on edge, waiting for his turn.

When there were only two of them left, his name was called, and he was ushered into the wings.

“Just go out there with a smile and wave when they say your name,” the assistant whispered to him, before giving him a nudge on his cue.

He barely registered anything the host was saying as his portion of the auction occurred. All he could focus on was the undercurrent of one of the most alluring scents he’d ever smelled. It took all his effort not to drop his smile as he stood frozen on the stage, enthralled by the scent. One of these people in here was his scentmate, but he couldn’t make out who with all the other scents in the air.

He hoped more than anything they won the bid.

Soon, he realized the bidding was slowing down, the host calling out, “Sold!” and he was guided off stage by another assistant.

The beta led him to a small sitting room, containing only a small loveseat and an armchair. “Wait here,” she told him. “I’ll be back with the alpha who won.”

Steve paced the room a few times before finally seating himself on one side of the loveseat.

After only a couple more minutes, there was a soft knock on the door. When it opened, instead of the beta from earlier, an alpha with dark curly hair stepped in.

“Hey,” the man said softly.

“Hi,” Steve said back. He covertly scented the air to see if this man was the one he smelled during the auction. The first whiff he got smelled so good, but he realized it was only half the scent he had smelled. Did he have two scentmates? It wasn’t unheard of, but it certainly wasn’t common.

“My name’s Eddie,” the man introduced himself, still standing awkwardly by the door.

“I’m Steve,” he said back. “You can come sit next to me.” He patted the cushion next to himself.

“Well, I’d love to,” Eddie said shyly, pulling a lock of hair in front of his mouth, “but I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, if you don’t like what I’m about to tell you.”

Steve’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I…” Eddie hesitated. “My partner and I bid on you together.”

“What?” He had no idea what that could mean for him.

“His name’s Billy; he’s an alpha, too. We’ve been looking for an omega and decided to try this when the whole dating thing wasn’t working out,” Eddie said tentatively.

Steve thought it over for a second. “Was he the other one I could smell during the auction?” he asked Eddie.

“You could tell too?” Eddie responded, starting to look excited.

He nodded.

“We were pretty certain you’re our scentmate, but we wanted to be sure first.” Eddie had a broad grin on his face. “He’s just outside. We figured I was the better one to break it to you,” he said. “Can I let him in?”

Steve was starting to feel a little bit like a bobblehead with how fast and hard he was nodding.

Eddie turned and pulled open the door, sticking his head through and saying something that Steve couldn’t quite make out; he’d spoken too quietly, but Steve could make assumptions. As soon as he pulled back into the room, another alpha followed him in, this one broad with beautiful blond hair.

“Hi, Steve,” the man said with a wave. “I’m Billy.”

And now, with both of the alphas in the room, it smelled like home.

[dame-zoom-a-lot]

@metalsandwichbingo prompt fill - free space based on a tiktok Rae sent me :'D I got Eddie's corset design from here

[metalsandwichbingo]

Bingo has closed for 2024!

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Metalsandwich Bingo 2024 has now closed. Find all the lovely works from links below and give them some love because they so deserve it!

AO3 collection >>

Art and Fics on tumblr >>

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Stay in the lookout for the 2025 bingo...

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Metalsandwich Bingo is a sibling event to @harringrovewinterbingo and @harringrovesummerbingo.

[alicetallula]

Metalsandwich Bingo 2024 - B1 - Rockstars AU - 'For those about to rock' - Female Harringroveson - 15.12.2024

Here's my first drawing for the @metalsandwichbingo

A1 - Collecting weird stuff / A2 - Creature transformation / A3 - Spanking // B2 - Free Space / B3 - Bonds forged in trauma // C1 - Winning/losing/making a bet / C2 - Blindfolded / C3 - "You're alive !" "Astounding powers of observation."

'For those about to rock' - Female Harringroveson - 15.12.2024

I was hit with the thought of Female Harringroveson as rockstars, I had a lot of fun with their outfits 😊💕

Done using watercolors, ink pens, colroed pencils, metallic ink pens, alcohol markers, gel pens, graphite pencils, acrylic paint pens and Photoshop for the title

AO3 post / Bluesky post / DeviantArt post / Instagram post / Pillowfort post / Twitter post

Done using watercolors, ink pens, colroed pencils, metallic ink pens, alcohol markers, gel pens, graphite pencils and acrylic paint pens

AO3 post / Bluesky post / DeviantArt post / Instagram post / Pillowfort post / Twitter post

[starkstruck27]

My next fill for @metalsandwichbingo !! This might be the first time I've ever done two withing 24 hours without having them pre-written. Also, as much as I love Steve and Billy, in this one, I went with the idea that when they met, instead of going 'I can fix him', I went with 'I can make him worse'. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys, and title comes from the song MUD by Dorothy. Title: You Ain't Living Life til You're Down in the Mud Square + Prompt: A2, On his knees, Mouth open Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4774 Words Major Tags: Chose Not to Use* Additional Tags: Crushes, Extremely Dubious Consent, Consensual non-consent, Bullying, Billy Hargrove being an asshole, Steve Harrington being an asshole, Face-fucking, Hair-pulling, Choking, Restraints, Marking, Eddie Munson has a piss kink, Wet & messy, Dacryphilia, Name-calling, Dirty talk, Humiliation Kink, Consensual but not Safe or Sane Summary: Eddie Munson is seriously fucked up. It's fitting that everyone calls him a freak. He doesn't exactly know why he has a crush on the two guys who have made his life a living hell for the past month, but here he is. As long as no one finds out about it, though, he should be fine. But one day, after Billy trips him in the hall, he loses his journal, the one where he writes down every disgusting, filthy thing he wishes they would do to him. And unfortunately, he can't find it anywhere. Also on: Ao3 *TW for this one, I didn't use any major tags because none of them really apply, but when I say things like "extremely dubious consent" and "consensual non-consent" I mean them. Consent is not explicitly given for most of the story, but it is there. If these or any other tags bother you, please don't read. Stay safe and sane out there, lovelies!!

It had only been a month since Billy Hargrove moved to Hawkins, a month since he met up with Steve Harrington and become his best friend, a month of nothing but torment and suffering for Eddie Munson. He didn’t know why, but Steve and Billy had decided to make him their own special project, picking on him relentlessly and making his life a living hell, as if it weren’t already bad enough being the super-senior who’s dad was in jail and who’s mom was dead, so he had to live with his uncle who was always working just so they could afford to live. Add on the claims that he worshiped the devil and the fact that he hung out with losers and freaks, and you’ve got the recipe for the easiest target in the history of American high school. 

And of course, it didn’t help that Eddie knew he had a fucked up life, so when he started to develop a sick form of attraction to the people who constantly bullied him, he almost didn’t question it. It still kinda freaked him out a little, but at this point, he’d just accepted it as another thing that was happening in his stupid, fucked little head. Besides, he knew there was absolutely no way anything would ever happen there, so he figured, if his brain was gonna make him think that was what he wanted, he would rather just enjoy it instead of working himself up about it.

So he did what any person would do when they had no one to talk to about this sort of stuff, he wrote it down. He kept a journal anyway, so why not put down his fantasies and when he could one day afford a therapist, scar them for life with it so they could figure out what exactly was wrong with him? He never wanted anyone else to find it though, so he always kept it on his person, and when he went home at night, put it in the very back of the drawer in his nightstand. If anyone else ever got ahold of it, he wouldn’t even be run out of town, they’d probably just kill him on the spot, and that was unideal to say the least, so it was safer just to keep it with him at all times. 

It was a relatively small journal, one that he could fit in his back pocket, and that’s just where it was that day when the bell finally rang and he was able to head to his last class of the day. So far he’d been able to avoid Steve and Billy enough that there were no major incidents, and he was so close to going a whole day without having to endure their shit, but just as that thought entered his head, he rounded the corner only to run smack into Billy. He then found himself face-planting into the linoleum, his stuff flying everywhere and everyone around them laughing. 

Eddie sighed as he picked himself up, less upset about being tripped than he was about having to gather up all his shit. He’d had all kinds of notes for his next campaign with the guys, and now they were all over the hallway, getting stepped on and ignored by his peers. Except for two nice girls, nobody helped him to get his stuff, and instead they went about their days as if nothing had happened. 

“Billy’s such a jerk,” the one girl said as she handed Eddie his notebook stuffed with papers. She was wearing a cheer outfit and had a nice smile. “He’s always making rude comments to us when we practice. I swear, one day, I’m gonna tell him off.”

“All five foot three of you?” The other girl asked, smirking at her before helping Eddie up. She had a flannel shirt on and glasses and her hair was a fiery red. “But seriously, she’s right. Don’t let him get you down.”

“I never do,” Eddie replied, dusting himself off and smiling, “Thanks for the help, ladies.”

The two girls walked off and Eddie let his smile fall. He’d really been hoping for just one day without anything happening, but that was out the window now. Still, there was only one class left in the day, so he just had to sit through that, and then he could go home.

It wasn’t until he got home that day that he realized his journal wasn’t in his pocket. A cold shock hit him square in the chest as he ran out to his van, praying that it had just fallen out onto the seat. He searched the entire car, but there was no trace of it, so he went back inside and tore the place apart trying to find it. He was close to crying as he realized it was nowhere to be found, and he had to splash cold water on his face to get himself to calm down enough to think rationally. He remembered being tripped earlier in the day and figured that must’ve been when he’d lost it, since that was the last time he remembered having it. And as he got in his van and sped back to the school, he prayed that it had just slid under some lockers and he could go and get it with little to no resistance.

When he got to the school, he ran through the halls until he got to the one where Billy had tripped him, and he got down on his hands and knees to check under each locker, but he came up with nothing. He felt like the world was closing in around him, and he started to cry as he sank down and curled into a ball against the lockers. He sat there for a while, but finally he realized there was nothing he could do about it, so he made a plan to check the office tomorrow and see if anyone turned it in, and if not, he’d figure out his next steps later.

Meanwhile, across town, Steve and Billy were hanging out at his house, enjoying his heated pool and more than a few beers. They were fucking around and shootin’ the shit when eventually, they started talking about Eddie.

“He’s getting pretty good at avoiding us,” Steve said, “I didn’t even see him hardly at all today, and when I did, he was too far away to do anything.”

“Yeah, he’s a slippery little fucker,” Billy agreed, shaking water from his hair, “But I managed to trip him earlier today, so not all hope is lost. Oh! And I almost forgot,” Billy hoisted himself out of the pool and went over to his bag, drying his hands quickly before rooting around and pulling out a small green notebook. “This fell out of his pocket earlier today. Whattaya say? Wanna read the freak’s diary? I took a quick peek earlier and there is some fucked up shit in there.”

“Like what?” Steve asked, sitting up on the edge of the pool as Billy tossed the notebook to him. He caught it and waited for Billy to come sit next to him, and then the two of them started to read. It started out tame enough, mostly just a lot of questioning as to why his life was so messed up, and a lot of insecure thoughts. But just when they were getting bored and were about to stop reading, it got interesting. 

They read all about how Eddie was somehow fixated on them, how he had wet dreams sometimes about the two of them and how he hated that, but as they kept reading, how he finally just accepted it. He detailed everything he ever thought about them doing to him, from choking him and making him cry to forcing him and marking him like a dog. It was a treasure trove of everything he’d ever fantasized about, and it was all pure gold. There were so many new possibilities, now. Blackmail, humiliation, exposure, and the list just went on from there. By the time they finished reading, though, they’d come up with something far more rewarding than anything else, and they couldn’t wait to put their plan into action.

The next day was bright and sunny, although still a little chilly for the beginning of November. The weather was the last thing on Eddie’s mind though as he got to school, heading straight to the principal’s office before going to homeroom. He talked to the front desk lady and asked if he could look through the lost and found, but after ten minutes of going through every item in there, he had nothing. The pit in his stomach sank down deeper, but he thanked the receptionist and trudged off to class, shoving his palms in his eyes to try and keep from crying again.

The day went surprisingly well after that, all things considered. He got a math test back that he didn’t fail, and Billy and Steve seemed too concerned with the big basketball game tomorrow to be bothered with him, so as long as he kept to himself, Eddie managed to get through the day fairly easily. He still felt anxious, though, and every time he saw Cheer girl or Flannel girl in the hall, he hoped they’d come up and say they got his notebook by mistake and give it back to him, but no such luck. There were no whispers in the halls or anybody coming up to humiliate him with it either, though, so he had hope that maybe nobody had found it yet and he still had time to get it before anyone did.

That was still the only thing on his mind at the end of the day when he went back to his locker to get his stuff, and it only went away when he saw a post-it note sitting on top of his jacket. He picked it up and read the message, and sighed as he crumpled it up and stuck it in his pocket. It only had one word on it, ‘picnic’, and anybody who was in the know at Hawkins high could tell you what that meant. As much as Eddie just wanted to go home and relax for the night, he also needed the money, so he grabbed his lunch box and started making his way to the table just beyond the treeline where he always went to sell. 

When he got there, though, there was no one else in sight. He couldn’t hear leaves or sticks crunching, so he figured maybe in the time that they’d left the note and now, whoever wanted to buy from him had chickened out. He decided to wait for a few minutes just in case, but when nobody came after five, he cut his losses and started making his way back to the parking lot. 

He only got halfway there when someone grabbed him by the jacket sleeve and yanked him backwards, using one hand to hold onto him and the other to cover his mouth. He tried to struggle, but it was no use, whoever this was was a hell of a lot stronger than he was, and they were holding him at just the right angle to keep him from getting a solid footing. He had a pretty good idea of who was behind this, and a sense of dread crept up his spine and into his throat as he stopped struggling and tried to think of an escape plan.

“Here?” He heard Billy say, and tears sprang to his eyes.

“No, I heard the track team is running this trail today, one of them could see us. I know another place, c’mon,” Steve answered him, and Eddie could feel him talking from where he held him against his chest. At that point, any sense of wanting to escape had left him, and was replaced with a sense of panic so strong, he couldn’t think straight. He wasn’t even in control of himself, really, and when Steve started dragging him back to the parking lot with Billy in tow, Eddie didn’t even put up a fight. He didn’t like this, he wanted to run away, but his mind was so frantic it couldn’t send the signal down to his legs, and so he just let Steve manhandle him, all the way into the back of Billy’s car.

“Wh-what are you doing?” He finally got the nerve to ask as Steve climbed in the back with him and Billy started to drive. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere nobody will find us,” Steve said, a wicked grin on his face.

“What are you gonna d-do to me?” Eddie asked, hardly noticing that Steve was taking his jacket off of him as he heard Billy laugh in the front seat. He held up Eddie’s missing notebook and his eyes went wide as he tried to lunge for it. He didn’t even get halfway there before Steve grabbed his arms and wrestled them behind his back, tying them together a little too tightly with an old shoelace.

“Give that back!” He tried, but it only made the other two laugh.

“Listen, Freak, it doesn’t matter anyway, we already read it,” Steve said, “So if you want us to keep this between us and not plaster the pages all over the school, I suggest you shut up and do what we say, capisce? Now drink this.”

Eddie was too stunned to do anything but comply. He opened his mouth as Steve held a water bottle for him, and he made him drink the whole thing plus a second one while he gave Billy directions. By the time he was halfway through the third bottle, the car finally stopped, and Steve let him stop drinking so they could get out of the car. They were at the top of the cliffs surrounding the quarry, one of the most secluded places in all of Hawkins, nobody would think to look for any of them up here. That was all Eddie could think about as he was helped out of the car, and it did nothing to help his nerves, or his bladder. He felt like he was about to burst, he’d already kinda had to pee before any of this started, but now with two and a half bottles of water in him, he was desperate. Still, his hands were tied. Literally. 

“Get on your knees, Freak,” Steve spat, pushing Eddie down on the rocky ground and smiling as he winced.

“Why are you doing this to me?” He asked, his heart racing and his body starting to feel restless. It kinda felt good, now that he’d gotten used to it, but he had no idea what was gonna happen, and that was the only thing that made him nervous.

“We read your little diary,” Billy said, “And we thought, we could do a lot of fun things with this, but we decided this was the best idea we had. So here’s the deal, you do what we tell you and keep your mouth shut, and we give you exactly what you want.”

“And,” Steve chimed in, “If you behave and act like a good little slut, we won’t accidentally leave this open in the library for someone else to find. Sound fair?”

Eddie wasn’t sure how to respond for a minute, he still had no idea what Billy meant when he said they’d give him ‘exactly what he wanted’, but if he were being honest, he’d rather do what they said and maybe get his journal back rather than refusing and it getting out to everyone. Besides, the morbidly curious part of his brain wanted to go through with it, so finally he nodded.

“Wh-whatever you say,” he said, and Billy and Steve both smiled.

“Good choice,” Steve said, then walked over and grabbed Eddie by the hair, making his mouth fly open from the painful grip and making the pressure in his groin build. “That’s a good slut, you like it when I pull your hair? I bet you like it whenever I do anything to you, huh? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me lately? Afraid you’re gonna pop a boner if I hit you hard enough?”

Eddie couldn’t deny that this was starting to feel better than it should have. The names, the insults, the pain, the desperation, it was all strangely provocative, and his head was starting to get a little foggy as Billy came over to add fuel to the fire.

“That must’ve been why you scurried away so fast last week when I pinned you to the lockers,” he said, wrapping a hand around Eddie’s throat, but only adding enough pressure to make sure Eddie could feel it. “You’re such a dirty little freak, getting off on fucked up shit like this. Did you touch yourself after last week? Did you jerk off or shove a couple fingers up your ass, or maybe both? I bet it was both, and I bet you wished it was one of us that was fucking you instead of just your hand, isn’t that right?”

“Y-yes,” Eddie mumbled, but it mustn’t have been good enough, because next thing he knew Billy was digging the toe of his boot into his stomach, right where his bladder would be. Eddie started to breathe heavier, his eyes starting to feel wet again as he did everything he could to keep his composure. He had to go so bad, and the other two just laughed as he started to whine like a toddler. “Yes, okay?! You’re right! I was horny and I fucked myself in the school bathroom and I wished it was you, okay?!”

“Good job, slut,” Billy smiled, finally letting up and taking a step back. Steve followed and stood next to him, and the two seemed to tower over him as they stared him down.

“Piss yourself,” Steve said, and Eddie almost cried.

“What?” He asked, his voice small and pathetic.

“You heard me, now do it. Piss yourself,” he repeated.

“You can’t be serious,” Eddie whined, a couple of tears escaping. This was so humiliating.

“I’m dead serious, now fucking do it,” Steve demanded, getting in Eddie’s face and grabbing his hair again, pulling hard. Eddie let out a cry of pain and Steve let up, stepping back again and watching as Eddie cried.

He couldn’t believe this was happening. It felt so good to be used like this, but it was also the most mortifying ordeal he’d ever been through in his life. He couldn’t believe they wanted him to do this, but finally, he just couldn’t hold it anymore. He started crying harder as he started to go, sobbing a bit as he soaked his jeans. He suddenly regretted wearing the blue ones today, since the black ones would’ve made it harder to see, but with the blue, it was easy to tell what he was doing. He knew the other two could tell, he could hear them laughing and mocking him, and as much as it hurt, it also heightened the thrill a little bit. And when he finally finished, his jeans soaked through and his face red from crying, they made their way back over, grinning widely.

“Can’t believe you actually did it,” Billy said, licking his lips. “Now, sit up and open your mouth.”

Eddie nodded and sniffed a little, leaning his head to the side to try and wipe his face on his shoulder, but then he did as he was told. He sat up and opened his mouth, and then he waited, watching as the two of them unzipped their jeans and got their own dicks out. Then, without any more warning, Billy grabbed him by his hair, shoving his dick into Eddie’s mouth, and holding his head down until he started to choke.

“Does that feel good, slut?” He asked as he let him up, barely giving him enough time to take a breath, much less answer, before pushing him back down. He fucked his throat hard, already reducing him to tears again and barely giving him any breaks except to breathe. Steve egged him on, encouraging his buddy to hold him down longer, to really give it to him, and if Eddie whimpered or made a noise, he’d mock him, making him feel even more ashamed and making him enjoy it more and more with each insult hurled his way.

Eddie was crying harder as Billy kept it up, until finally, he stopped. He pulled out of his mouth before finishing, and as Eddie coughed and finally managed to catch his breath, he just stood there, watching and laughing. It sent a wave of embarrassed excitement shoot through Eddie, and if he hadn’t been hard before, he certainly was now. He could feel the ache against his wet jeans, which were cooling rapidly and making him shiver, which didn’t help his desperation to come right then and there. But before he could get himself composed enough to do it, Steve noticed, and he grabbed Eddie by the face this time as he spoke to him.

“You better not even think about coming until I say you can. Otherwise I’ll leave you here tied up and by the time you find a way to get back home, the entire town will have read your little diary, understand me?” He asked, and as much as it pained him, Eddie nodded. “Good. Now open your fucking mouth again.”

Eddie once again did as he was told, and Steve wasted no time in giving him the same treatment that Billy had. He fucked his throat mercilessly and Eddie just took it. It wasn’t as hard this time, he’d gotten kinda used to it, and even though it was still rough, he was starting to like it that way. This was what he’d been fantasizing about for over a month now, anyway, and it was being presented to him on a silver platter. He might as well enjoy it, right?

Once he’d gotten used to the intrusion in his throat, it didn’t seem to take quite as long, and before he knew it, Steve was pulling out of his mouth, too, he and Billy standing over him and stroking their cocks, and finally, coming all over him. He let them take their time, his clothes were already ruined and his face was a mess, so they couldn’t do much more damage now than they already had. When they were done, he waited patiently for their next orders, a twinge of fear still twisting in his gut as Steve smirked at him. He didn’t do anything, though, just traced his fingers over his ruined shirt and then lifted his hand, shoving his fingers into Eddie’s mouth, covered in come. 

“Swallow it,” he commanded, and Eddie did, his throat burning a bit from being used so harshly.

“Good slut,” Billy said, grinning widely. “Now, that little book of yours said that if you were ever in a situation like this with the two of us, you’d want us to mark you like a dog, isn’t that right?”

“Y-yeah,” Eddie swallowed, his voice thick. “P-please.”

“Aww, look at that, the bitch is begging,” Steve laughed meanly, then looked at Billy, “What do you think, Bill? Is the little freak worth claiming as ours?”

“Fuck yeah, why not? Not like he can do much about it, and I like the idea of being able to fuck him up like this any time I want, don’t you?” Billy replied, grabbing his now limp dick and winking at his friend as he started to piss all over Eddie. Steve nodded and did the same, the two of them covering him from head to toe. Eddie couldn’t help but make a noise of pleasure as they did, the warmth of their piss almost a comfort in the chilly November evening. Not only that, but it was unbelievably erotic to be claimed by someone like this, animalistic instincts taking over and making them act so filthily, and Eddie couldn’t get enough of it. He was so close, and this just added another layer of desperation that he liked, but he was so ready to toss that feeling aside and let himself blow.

When they were finally done, Steve and Billy tucked themselves away and straightened themselves out, making sure they looked normal, and completely ignoring Eddie for a minute until they were satisfied with themselves. Then they turned their attention back to a squirming, whining Eddie, ready to leave him with one last indignity.

“You wanna come now, bitch?” Billy asked, licking his lips again as Eddie nodded vigorously. “Then you’re gonna have to work for it like the fucking dog you are, come here.”

Eddie listened easily and shuffled forward on his knees until he was at Billy’s feet, and once he was, he looked up for further directions. Billy didn’t give any, instead he just stuck his leg out, and Eddie got the hint right away.

“You s-sure?” He asked, still a little nervous to make a wrong move. 

“Yeah, go on. Be a good fucking dog and get yourself off,” Billy said, and Steve nodded along, clearly holding back a laugh. Eddie didn’t care if they laughed anymore though, he was too wound up to give a shit, so he didn’t let himself even think about it as he settled Billy’s leg between both of his and started to hump it like a dog. It felt so damn good, the humiliation mixed with the actual physical sensations feeling like the most perfect blend in the universe. He knew it had been less than a minute before he finally came with a moan, even thirty seconds was being generous, but it was the best orgasm he’d ever had, and as concerning that probably should’ve been to him, he just didn’t care right then. 

Once he’d ridden out his orgasm as long as he could, Eddie fell over on his side. His knees were throbbing from him kneeling on the gravel for so long, and his arms and hands were tired from being in the same position for so long. His throat felt like it was on fire, and his eyes were burning, too, from crying so much. He was tired and dirty and getting cold, and he could hear the other two laughing at him, but he was too blissed out to care about any of it. 

After a minute or so, Steve came up behind him again and untied the shoelace from his wrists. He must’ve gone back to the car at some point as Eddie had laid there, because he tossed his jacket and the unfinished water bottle from earlier down next to him. Eddie finally found the strength to sit up and was about to thank him, but before he could, Steve spoke first. 

“Remember our deal, Freak. This stays between us, or we show that book to everyone, understand?” He asked, and Eddie nodded.

“Yeah, I hear ya,” he rasped, a goofy smile on his face. These two really weren’t so scary, now that he thought about it.

“Good. And maybe if you keep yourself in line like a good little bitch, we can really ruin you, just like you want,” Billy added, grabbing Eddie by the hair one last time and staring him down. “Remember, you’re ours now. We own you.”

Eddie felt a strange tingle in his stomach when he heard that, and he looked back and forth between the other two for a moment before nodding. They nodded back and then let him go, the both of them going back to the car and climbing in, leaving Eddie there without even a glance back in his direction. 

Eddie sighed as he watched them drive off. He should’ve known that they weren’t going to start being nice to him, even after all this, so it shouldn’t have surprised him when they left him to find his own way home. He drank the rest of the water they’d left him with and tossed the bottle off the cliff, then braced himself to stand up. He cringed in pain as his knees straightened out after so long, and his feet were still kinda numb, but he’d have to walk it out eventually, so he might as well get a move on before it got really dark. He could worry about picking his van up tomorrow. At least Forest Hills wasn’t too far from here.

[lorifragolina]

The Metalsandwich arts and sports camp - a year after

The second work for @metalsandwichbingo card, the second part of it The Metalsandwich arts and sports camp

Title: The Metalsandwich arts and sports camp - a year after

Square & Prompt: B3 "I'm so proud of you!"

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 2170

Summary: After the first year at Arts and Sports Camp, Eddie and Steve lose contacts with Billy, and they are heartbroke. But when a stranger, beautiful, hot new guy makes his appearance at the Camp, they know that they are really lucky!

Read it in AO3!

[runraerun]

Re-Birth

AO3 | Ship: MetalSandwich | Rating: T | 1k | Tags/Warnings: Blood drinking, Alt Universe: Vampires, Character Death but not really.

Summary:

Eddie and Billy sit by Steve’s grave and lament over his tragic passing.

** Written for both the @metalsandwichbingo & the @harringrovemicroficandart challenge, since both of the prompts were: Birthday 🎂 &Both the min and max word count for each was 1k, so this is me threading the needle. 🪡😄

[ihni]

Miracles

For @metalsandwichbingo, square B3, prompt: "Religious imagery". 3,6K, no major warnings.

Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson

(Additional tags: mentioned religion, mentioned temporary character death, guilt, hospitals, polyamory mention)

Summary:

Eddie's not a religious person. But then Billy comes back from the dead.

(On AO3 here)

Eddie has never been a religious person, despite all the religious texts he consumed when he was younger. No one in town would believe it with the reputation he has nowadays, but he has actually read the Bible – twice. He supposes that it’s because he has always been thirsty for information. Unfortunately, not the kind of information that they would spoon-feed him back in school, but rather anything and everything that would tickle his imagination. Not math, not grammar, not boring history or biology or physics. But the interesting things? The things that he could use as an inspiration for music, for art, for his campaigns? He would devour it. And that included religion – and not only Christianity either – because religious text were shock full of interesting stories and people and gods and metaphors and colorful imagery.

But while he had read about it, and frequently used it in his work, he never found himself believing in any of it. Because it seemed insane to him that people actually believed that God and the devil and angels and demons and saints were real. Only sad and lost people needed to put their faith in something larger than life, and Eddie would pity them if he didn’t detest them so much. He believed in what he could see and touch and smoke, thank you very much.

Then again, up until recently he hadn’t really believed in monsters either. And now he bears the scars on his own body that proves that monsters are, in fact, very real. And if monsters exist, perhaps all those other things do, too? Maybe the Bible had some truths in it, after all?

That is – insanely – his first thought when Billy (his Billy) comes back from the dead, because people just don’t do that. They don’t die and then come back alive. (Eddie should know. His mom sure never rose from the grave, no matter how much little Eddie prayed under his blanket at night before he decided that religion was only bedtime stories for adults who needed something to cling onto.)

The thing is, that while Eddie believes in what he can see, he never actually saw Billy die. He wasn’t there for it. But he did see his body.

He wasn’t supposed to, of course – but when has that ever stopped him? He’d been a little high at the time and overcome with a mixture of grief and disbelief, as well as a healthy refusal to believe that Billy – his Billy – was really gone until he saw it for himself, and so he had broken into the funeral home the night before the funeral. He’d found Billy in his coffin – just a simple wooden box, painted white – and it had been such a surreal experience to see him so pale and still and unmoving. Because Eddie had never known Billy to be so unnaturally still; even when he wasn’t moving, he had a kind of energy buzzing underneath his skin, and even when he slept, he twitched and sighed and scrunched his nose up in the cutest way. Eddie knew all these things intimately, because he had loved watching Billy when he slept, for those blessed months between April and July when they’d … ‘hooked up’ might be the go-to term, but yet it didn’t describe the depths of what Eddie had been feeling. They hadn’t really been dating, with the flowers and the chocolate and the actual dates – because this was Hawkins and Billy’s dad was a threat and generally a violent shitstain of a person – but it had been more than just sex, too. They’d listened to music together and smoked and talked until the early hours of the morning whenever Billy stayed the night. They’d watched movies and eaten bad takeout food and kept a list of the best pizza combinations Hawkins had to offer. Sure, they’d had sex (glorious and mind-blowingly good sex if you asked Eddie) but they’d also driven around Hawkins at night and talked about books and held hands in comfortable silence under the stars. Billy had spent hours on Eddie’s bed, listening to Eddie ramble on about his campaigns, and Eddie had made a point of making sure that Billy ate something, no matter what time he showed up at the trailer, or what shape he was in.

Point was, the two of them had been something, something more than fuckbuddies, so when Eddie heard about the tragedy at Starcourt, he refused to believe it at first. He had to see him. If only to be able to wrap his head around the fact that he was gone.

He had expected … worse. The mall had burnt down, after all, so he had half-expected only unidentifiable charred remains to be in the coffin. Instead he was met with Billy. Eyes closed, skin cold and pale. Could have been asleep, if it wasn’t for the way he was too still to look real. He looked … empty. Like a shell. Like whatever had made up Billy simply wasn’t there anymore.

Eddie had looked at him for a long time, without feeling much of anything. This was undeniably Billy’s body, but it wasn’t his Billy. Not anymore. So he left, feeling oddly off-kilter.

The day after he’d attended the funeral without really understanding what the priest said, and that night he had proceeded to get spectacularly drunk and had woken up at noon the following day with a raspy throat, tear-swollen eyes, the worst headache of his life and no memory of anything past the halfway point of the stolen bottle of gin.

He wished the gin could have taken the memory of Billy’s unmoving body in that coffin, too, but unfortunately that particular image seemed to be burned into his brain forever.

Unexpectedly, he wasn’t alone in being haunted by an image of a dead Billy Hargrove every time he closed his eyes. Even more unexpectedly, the other person with that particular problem was someone he would have never thought he’d willingly hang out with, or would willingly hang out with him. But Steve Harrington proved to be different than Eddie expected, in almost every way. Eddie found that out when he bumped into the guy at the quarry a week after Billy’s funeral, and they started talking.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, Eddie found that Steve was not just a dumb jock, which he had previously assumed. That he cared a lot about his dwindling number of friends (which included a bunch of loudmouth kids), and perhaps more importantly; that he was a real person underneath that shiny surface, with real feelings and problems just like everyone else. Eddie also learned – and here’s where things got interesting – that Steve had been at the mall the night of the fire. That he had, in fact, been right there when Billy died. He wouldn’t go into details – not even after he and Eddie grew closer; first as friends and then eventually as more than friends – but he let a few things slip. Eddie knew that Steve was frequently having nightmares and that many of them had something to do with the night that Billy died.

It didn’t make much sense, at the time. Because why would Steve be having nightmares after the days when they’d talked about Billy, and wake up screaming as if scared out of his mind? Why would he wake up in a cold sweat mumbling Billy’s name, and why did he sometimes cry and ask for forgiveness in his sleep? He and Billy hadn’t been that close, from what Eddie had heard. Quite the opposite, in fact.

He and Steve were way past the friends-stage at this point, so Eddie finally asked him about it – but Steve just shook his head. Scrunched his eyes shut and looked almost pained when he said he couldn’t tell him. Eddie was curious by nature and he wanted to know, of course he did, but he cared a lot for Steve and he didn’t want to poke at that particular bruise since it was so obvious that Steve didn’t want to talk about it yet.

And then suddenly one day, he got his explanation and learned why Steve hadn’t been able to talk about it. Thrown into the mess, he quickly found out about the monsters and about the dark version of Hawkins that existed just a dimension away, and everything that had happened before fell into place with some broken explanations as they hurriedly brought him up to speed on human experiments and monster dogs and children with superpowers. He freaked out of course, but there was no time for his questions as he was pulled into a plot to save the town – and, in extension, the world. It was a whirlwind of fear, fighting and adrenaline. When it was all over, they’d succeeded in besting the monsters and close the gate to the other side – hopefully forever this time – but Eddie wasn’t around to celebrate with the rest of them, because he was in a super-secret hospital, recovering after being chewed on by a pack of monster bats.

The thing is, though, that he wasn’t the only patient there.

He finds out about Billy being alive from Steve, the first time he comes to visit. His boyfriend bursts into the room with wide eyes and shaking hands, looking like he’s seen a ghost, but it isn’t until he’s made sure Eddie is alive and whole – well, mostly whole at least – that he collapses into a chair and drops the bomb.

Billy is alive.

Despite apparently having been skewered through by a huge monster made out of melted people and bleeding out on the floor of Starcourt mall, he is somehow alive. After having sacrificed himself and fought said monster with his bare hands to save a kid he barely knew, perhaps saving all of them in the process. And all that, after having been possessed by some kind of interdimensional parasite who used his body as a puppet to lure others do their deaths.

Eddie is not a religious person, but as Steve haltingly tells him all of this, he can’t help drawing parallels to the stories he has read. Jesus on the cross, willingly sacrificing himself for the sins of others, and also the history of the sacrificial lamb, willingly given up by others. He wonders which is more apt – and then he wonders which is worse.

When Steve gets to the point in the story where Billy died apologizing, they are both crying. Eddie because … well, he loved Billy, and then he lost him, and now he’s back but he’s been through so much, and Steve because –

Eddie’s actually not entirely sure why Steve is crying.

It takes some prodding, but it turns out that Steve had one hell of a night himself, the night at the mall. He’d been running from Russians who tortured and drugged him (which, yeah, Eddie’s going to need to come back to that particular trauma), and had personally witnessed Billy’s ultimate sacrifice, while being shot up with a cocktail of drugs that made sure it etched its way into his brain in full technicolor. And he’s been dealing with a truckload of guilt since then.

Because apparently, sometime in the spring, Billy had tried apologizing for the fight they had – the fight that the whole school knew about – but Steve had refused to hear him out. It was only after Billy died (died protecting them, died sacrificing himself, died not knowing what was happening to him because no one had told him anything) that he even learned what Billy dealt with at home on a daily basis, and got some nuance as to what happened the night of their fight. Steve has been living with his regret ever since, which only got worse when he found out that Billy and Eddie had been a thing – because Eddie never kept his previous relationship a secret – and Eddie unthinkingly started telling him all about Billy’s softer sides.

“He said he was sorry, but I didn’t wanna listen. I should have listened to him,” Steve mumbles, leaning his head against Eddie’s shoulder. “Hell, I should have told him about everything the night of the fight.” A pause, then, “Fuck, Eds, I should have forgiven him.”

Eddie can do nothing but pet his hair in silence, because there is no use thinking of what they should have done and what could have been. What happened, happened, and to his knowledge it isn’t possible to change the past. It is, however, possible to change the future – and it’s not often that one gets a second chance with someone who has died, and Eddie says as much.

Steve looks up at him with teary eyes and looks so hopeful that Eddie aches with it as he says, in an effort to soothe, “It’s not too late, Stevie.”

It takes some time before Steve gets his chance, though, because Billy is in a medically-induced coma. It turns out that getting taken over by an interdimensional monster and then surviving for more than a year in a toxic alternate dimension takes a toll on a human. Eddie doesn’t have all the facts, because the goddamn doctors won’t tell him shit, but the transition back to the real world had been difficult on Billy’s body, and he is now kept under, with a drip in his arm to help his system adapt to the right kind of nutrients, and a mask over his mouth and nose which is to help him get used to the cleaner air here in the real world.

The first time Eddie sees him – when a tall male nurse wheels him into his room in a wheelchair after half a day of outright begging – he can barely believe what he’s seeing. Billy, right there. He looks like he’s been through hell – with his hair longer than before and sunken cheeks and ashy skin – but he is alive. Eddie remembers the way his body (or whatever it was that they buried; huh, they should look into that actually) had looked in the coffin, and even though Billy now looks like shit, he is there. Whatever had been missing in the body in the funeral home – his soul or whatever, if you wanted to get spiritual – is no longer missing. It is right here, in this broken body.

Billy is back.

As previously (and often) stated, Eddie has never been a religious person. Despite this, he spends hours next to Billy’s bedside that day, holding his hand and silently thanking God, Lucifer, Allah, Mohammed, Buddha, Odin, Zagreus and every other deity he can remember for this miracle.

(Just to be on the safe side. Monsters are real, after all – maybe the gods are, too.)

Neither Eddie nor Steve – or Max, for that matter – are allowed in the room when they bring Billy out of his coma, but it’s not for a lack of trying (or nagging). Someone comes into Eddie’s room after, though, to let them know that it worked and that they will be allowed to see him in the morning.

Steve doesn’t go home that evening, but instead spends the night in Eddie’s room. Mindful of Eddie’s injuries, he curls up next to him in the hospital bed. But instead of sleeping, they talk. In low voices and hesitant murmurs, they talk about what this means; what it might mean for them that Billy is back.

It’s easy enough for Eddie: Eddie is over the moon that Billy is back, because he loved him and he was a mess after he lost him. Eddie also loves Steve. He has enough love in him for more than one person; it’s not like he’s going to run out.

Steve, in turn, says that he loves Eddie, which Eddie kind of knew but enjoys hearing nonetheless. When it comes to Steve’s thoughts of Billy, though, that’s where things get … complicated.

They spend the night holding each other close, quietly talking and reassuring each other. Despite everything, Eddie can’t do anything but be hopeful. Because a complicated situation where everyone is alive beats an easy situation with one of them dead, every time.

In the morning, they get to visit Billy. In order not to overwhelm him, they decide to go in separately. Eddie goes first.

Seeing Billy blink his eyes open does something to Eddie’s heart. The world is blurry all of a sudden and he finds himself letting out a laugh that sounds more like a sob, and when Billy’s raspy voice croaks out “Eddie?”, he can’t help himself; he wheels his way over to Billy’s bed and leans his head on Billy’s arm and cries and cries and cries.

Distantly, he feels Billy’s hand fumble to pat at his hair, but if there are any words said, he cannot hear them over the way one single thought is blaring through his brain in beat with his pulse.

Alive alive alive alive alive

Eddie has never been a religious person, but suddenly he can understand all those people who fell to their knees to worship at the feet of a resurrected Jesus. It is the miracle of miracles. Because death is definite, and it should not be possible to come back from it; yet here Billy is.

Impossibly, undeniably alive.

He cries until he’s all out of tears and his sides are aching from the power of his sobs, and by then Billy has fallen back asleep, too drained to stay awake for more than a couple of minutes at a time. His hand still rests on Eddie’s head, like a blessing.

Over the next couple of days, Billy manages to stay awake for longer periods of time. Eddie visits him again and they actually talk a little that time, and Max comes to visit along with El and Chief Hopper. Steve goes in alone one day and stays there for a long time, and when he comes out his eyes are shiny but there’s something lighter about the way he moves. He hugs Eddie long and hard, and Eddie has to ask, so he does:

“How did it go?”

“I apologized,” Steve says, voice trembling. He offers a shaky smile when he adds, “So did he.”

And that’s that.

Only, it’s not. Not really. Because while Billy may be back, he is different. Not counting the obvious – the physical changes after being possessed and dying and spending a year starving in the Upside Down – he is … quieter. Seems to hesitate before speaking, more often than not. Eddie can’t pin down the reason why it bothers him so much.

Is he bitter because no one told him about what was happening? Is he angry because no one came looking for him? Is he sad about his father leaving town without seeing him – or is he sad about the same? Is he simply unused to speaking, after having spent the better part of a year on his own?

Turns out, it is none of those things.

“I miss you,” he says in a small voice one day, when it is just him and Eddie in the room.

Eddie looks up, but Billy is looking down at his hands, not meeting his eyes.

“I’m right here?” It isn’t supposed to be a question.

Billy takes a breath, as if steeling himself. “I know you’re with … Harrington, now.” A little laugh, that doesn’t sound all that happy. “I get it. You know, I used to have the biggest crush on him when I got to town.”

“I know,” Eddie says, strangely calm. “You told me.”

“Mm.”

After a while, Eddie feels the need to say, “I do love him.”

“I know,” Billy says, voice small.

Eddie adds, “I still love you, too, you know.” It’s the first time he says it to Billy. They never got that far back in the spring.

There is silence for a long while. Then, “How can you?” And his voice is full of self-loathing and pain, and his face reflects that in the grimace he makes before he can school his features back to something neutral.

Eddie could have listed reasons until his voice grew hoarse, because he’s got all of them in his head ready to go and he’s good at talking and he’s goddamn excellent with lists, but despite that, his answer is a shrug and a simple “I just do.” Because some things just are.

And Billy looks at him with wide eyes that are so, so blue, and Eddie is so grateful that he gets to get lost in them once more.

It’s not a big thing, that changes. It is not a small thing, either; but rather a trickle of tiny things, one after the other, day out and day in. Eddie visits Billy daily as they both heal up. Steve visits Eddie almost every day, and they go together to visit Billy. Talking gets easier, the awkwardness lessens. Then one day, Eddie walks – because they have finally let him out of the wheelchair, deeming his healing torso strong enough for him to start walking around – into Billy’s room, and stops in the doorway. There, in the light coming in from the window, Steve is sitting in the chair at Billy’s bedside, and Billy is sitting up in his bed, propped up on pillows. None of them have noticed Eddie yet, and both of them are smiling.

Their fingers are touching on top of the bedspread.

Now, Eddie has never been a religious person. He doesn’t really believe in gods or devils, angels or demons. But he suddenly finds – in this moment when he watches both of his loves alive and well and smiling at each other after everything they’ve all been through – that he might just believe in miracles.

[talanashta]

(Initially) Unwilling

For @metalsandwichbingo square B1 "(initially) unwilling roommates"

Rating: T | CWs: Lots of Swearing, Mentions of Injuries | Word Count: 1,161 | Pairings: Steve/Eddie, pre-Steve/Eddie/Billy

Summary: Steve wakes up in the hospital after the events of S3 to find he's sharing the room with a... very unexpected roommate.

A/N: First time making a moodboard-thing to go with my fic, so if you have any tips to make them look better, shoot them my way!

When they’d brought Steve into the hospital room after getting his head scanned, his temporary roommate’s curtain was wide open, and the bed was empty.  The nurse, however, warned him it wouldn’t be for long.

“He’s in surgery, right now,” she told him.  “We’ll try to keep it down when we bring him in, since you need your rest.  Might not be ‘til morning anyway,” she added with a sweet smile.

Steve’s head hurt, and he was exhausted, so he just nodded and let her leave.  He really wanted Robin or Eddie right now, but Robin was sequestered away in a room somewhere else, fine but needing to be observed from the Russian drugs, and Eddie had been sent home once they admitted Steve, promising to come back at the start of visiting hours the next day.  Eventually, he managed to fall asleep.

He sort of remembers the couple times the nurses came and checked on him in the night, waking him up for a few minutes and asking him some questions before letting him doze back off.

When he properly woke up the next morning – 7:42 according to the clock over the door, almost visiting hours – he saw the curtains around the bed next to him drawn shut now.  His roommate must’ve gotten out of surgery while he was sleeping then.

He didn’t know what to do with himself to kill time until Eddie arrived.  His concussion meant his head felt like it was being split in two, the little light coming in through the blinds and the cracked door was like looking into the sun, and his face felt like it was on fire, probably from the swelling causing pinched nerves.  There was nothing to look at or distract him either, so he spent the next twenty-or-so minutes just staring at the speckled ceiling tiles until he heard the scuff of sneakers running on linoleum.

The door slammed the rest of the way open, smacking into the rubber bumper and causing a thud that made Steve flinch.

“Sorry, Stevie, sorry,” Eddie whispered frantically, re-closing the door to a crack and coming over, hands waving around Steve but not coming down to touch him.

“’s okay,” Steve mumbled to him.  “Glad you’re here.”  He tried to smile at his boyfriend, but the cut on his face and the swelling soon had him stopping.

“Yeah, I’m glad to be here,” Eddie said with a soft smile.  He started to lean in for a kiss before looking up at the neighbor’s curtains, pulling back with a grimace.  Instead, he tapped his fingertips to his lips silently, then ever-so-gently tapped them to Steve’s.

After he pulled his hand back, Eddie began looking around for a chair, but Steve knew there weren’t any in his room – probably to discourage guests from lingering.

“You’ll have to go steal one from the waiting area,” Steve slurred out weakly.  His head started to roll to the side, but he forced himself to keep looking directly at Eddie.

Eddie nodded to him.  “Kay, Stevie.  I’ll be right back.”

While he was gone, Steve let his eyes drift shut, just for a minute…

Only to wake to a soft thud and a whispered “Fuck!” from Eddie coming back.  It looked like he bumped the chair right into the door frame.

“I just have to keep apologizing, don’t I?” Eddie asked him bashfully as he set down the chair at Steve’s bedside.

Steve heard a groan from behind the curtain next to him, and both his and Eddie’s heads shot over to look in that direction.

“Would you two shut up?” a familiar voice said angrily.  “I’m trying to recover from almost dying.”

“Hargrove?” Steve asked incredulously.  They put him in the same room as Hargrove?  Hargrove who beat the shit out of him one time Hargrove?  Hargrove who was just possessed and should probably be under government surveillance Hargrove?  What kind of massive fucking oversight was this?

“Fuck off, Harrington,” Billy said.  “They just reconstructed my abdomen, and I’m feeling pretty pissy there’s not a nurse here with more pain meds.”

Eddie gave him a look and touched his hand, so Steve nodded.

“I’ll go get the nurse for you, Hargrove,” Eddie said, standing up.

As Eddie left, Steve heard sheets rustling on the other side of the curtain, then Billy said bitterly, “Thank fucking God.  These nurses didn’t bother to put the fucking call button within reach of the guy who just had fucking surgery.”

Okay, sure, Steve kind of hated the guy, but he didn’t exactly wish bad things on his enemies, so he felt a little bad for Billy.  “Sorry, man,” he apologized.  “I’d come help if I could, but the room starts to spin when I sit up.  Eddie will be back soon with the nurse.”

The room was silent for a few long moments, until Steve heard a barely there, “Thanks,” that honestly, he might’ve imagined hearing.

Soon, Eddie came bursting back in the door – his boyfriend had such an overinflated sense of drama, but dear God, did he love that guy – with the nurse in tow, who promptly bustled off behind the curtain to help Billy.  Eddie returned to Steve’s bedside, squeezing his hand quickly once before pulling away.

“Uncle Wayne’s supposed to be by later today,” Eddie said in a promising tone.  “He really wanted to come sooner, but I told him he needed to sleep first.  He looked dead on his feet.  I hope that’s okay.”  He looked unsure.

Steve tried to pat him on the knee, but he was still feeling a little uncoordinated, so it was more like mid-thigh.  “It’s okay.  Wayne needs his rest too; he still has work tonight, right?”  It was a rhetorical question; Steve knew all three of their schedules like the back of his hand.  “I don’t want him to get hurt at work because he was too tired.”

He could practically see the hearts in Eddie’s eyes the way he was looking at Steve softly.  “Yeah.  I promised him I’d be here the whole time to make up for it, but I’d be here anyways.”

He looked like he was going to say more, but he was interrupted by the nurse sliding open the curtains around Billy’s bed then coming over to Steve.

“Just need to check your pupils real quick, sweetie,” the nurse said softly, pulling out a small light.

It took everything in him not to pull away when she shined it in his eyes multiple times.

“Looking much better than last night,” she told him.  “Meds will be in about an hour.  If you need anything before then, press your call button.”

After she stepped out the door, Hargrove turned his head to look at Steve and Eddie.  “Did I just hear that I’m stuck with you hanging around all day, Munson?” he asked them.  Then he said sarcastically, “Great,” and rolled his eyes.

Well, fuck you too, Hargrove.

[talanashta]

Running Away (and Coming Back)

For @metalsandwichbingo square A1 "punch first and shrug it off later"

Rating: M | CWs: One use of f-slur, Lots of Swearing | Word Count: 1,030 | Pairings: Steve/Eddie/Billy Additional Tags: Billy's POV, Light Angst, Fighting

Summary: Billy gets in a fight with a guy after one of Eddie's shows and runs. Then he comes back.

Tonight had been going so well. Eddie killed it at his show, performing like he was born to be on a stage, and looked super hot while he did it. Steve came along, too, and actually wore something other than his usual preppy-ass clothes, also looking smoking.

None of the others tagged along, which was awesome because they could be annoying as shit. He may tolerate Robin since Steve liked her so much, but she was too much of a chatterbox for his tastes. (At least when Eddie started rambling, Billy could kiss him to shut him up.)

He looked extra good today, too, if he did say so himself. His skin was finally starting to glow again after a long winter, his hair laid just right after drying, and this shirt fit him really well.

Which is why, of course, it all had to go to shit.

After the show, he went to pull out a smoke, but he couldn’t find the pack in any of his pockets. Steve really tried to avoid smoking when he could, so he couldn’t bum one off Boyfriend One, and Boyfriend Two was busy packing up all his cables and shit from his show. He decided to go grab the spare pack he had in his car’s glove compartment instead of waiting for Eddie to get finished.

It took him some fishing through the cassettes he had stuffed in there, but he finally found it after a couple minutes. Lighting up right there, he stood around near his car waiting for the nicotine to hit him.

A guy came up and asked him about his car, but after that was a bit of a blur. He didn’t a hundred-percent remember what all happened, honest, but he remembered getting into a conversation with the guy and then all of a sudden throwing a punch.

Okay, wait. That made it sound like he punched the guy for no reason. It must’ve been the way he phrased what he’d said or something because the next thing he knew, the guy said, “Don’t be a fag, man,” and all his pent up rage just spilled out of him all at once.

They were tussling on the ground, throwing punches, when, suddenly, Billy was yanked off the man.

“What the hell’s going on?” Steve shouted, pulling Billy back to put the car between them and the man.

Groaning, the man tried to push himself off the ground. “That psycho attacked me for no good fucking reason.”

Steve looked like he didn’t know who to believe. Billy hadn’t even said anything in his own defense and his boyfriend was already ready to believe this stranger? Fuck that.

He pushed Steve away and slid into his baby, throwing the key in the ignition and revving the engine. The two on either side of the car barely had time to jump back before he was pulling out and away from there.

He drove for… a while. He wasn’t sure exactly how long, since he couldn’t remember what time Eddie’s band’s set ended, but it’d been at least a couple hours. He didn’t go far, driving around town, out into the countryside, then back again, just trying to clear his head.

Looking back, he could admit that maybe, just maybe, he overreacted a bit and maybe misinterpreted Steve’s facial expression. If he came across Steve just fighting some random guy, he probably wouldn’t know what to think either.

Sighing, he turned the car around one last time and headed to Steve’s house, since that’s where they’d been planning on spending the night tonight and hopefully that meant the other two would be there.

When he pulled into the driveway, he saw both the BMW and the van, so that was at least something. He’d never admit it, but it took him a while to force himself out of the car. It was time to face the music.

He didn’t see any lights on in the house, so maybe, hopefully, the other two were already asleep, and he could deal with this in the morning.

It took him a minute to get the spare key in the dark and unlock the front door, and it took everything in him not to jump when he opened the door to see Eddie sitting on the stairs just inside.

“You really worried Steve,” Eddie told him in a disappointed tone.

Billy just shrugged, not meeting his eyes.

“Look, man,” Eddie deeply sighed. “I don’t know what happened, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is you ran off without saying anything.”

Billy felt his jaw clench. This was it.

“We love you, Billy. Both of us were scared. I’m just glad you came back safely.”

Wait, what? His eyes shot over to Eddie, who offered him a soft smile.

“C’mon,” he said, holding out a hand to Billy and standing. “Let’s just go to bed. We can talk about it in the morning.”

Billy hesitated. “That’s it?”

Eddie kept his hand out, waiting for him. “Yeah, man. You look like you’re punishing yourself enough. Plus, I’m super tired. I just want to go to bed with you and Stevie.”

He slowly reached out and took Eddie’s hand. “Okay.”

“Steve’s not mad either,” Eddie said as he led him up the stairs. “I promise.”

Billy still wasn’t sure, but Eddie was proven right when he pushed open the bedroom door. Steve’s head sleepily popped up from the bed, his eyes barely focusing. “Is Billy home?” he slurred. Finally, his eyes caught on him, still in the doorway. “Good,” he said, sleepy yet firm. “Come to bed.”

Steve was already back out again before Billy took another step.

“You heard the guy,” Eddie whispered to him, stripping off his performance clothes and shucking on a worn tee.

Billy slowly shed his clothes too and crawled into bed with his boyfriends, barely daring to breathe and disturb them. He never thought he’d have this. Two people who cared for him so much that they waited up when he disappeared and stayed out. Who loved him and worried about him.

As he fell asleep, he hoped he’d always have them.

[ihni]

Out of the flames

For @metalsandwichbingo, square B1, prompt: "A walk in the woods".

Word count: 3,5K Tags: Fire, minor injuries, burns, fear, relief, hospitals

Summary:

“There’s a fire,” Eddie said, obviously still struggling with whoever was arguing with him on the other end of hte line, “At Billy’s house.” Steve’s mind blanked as his body froze. “What?” The voices in the background were louder now, and Eddie cursed at whoever it was. “Listen Steve, I gotta go. Just, get to Cherry, alright? Get to Cherry.”

(Read on AO3 here)

Steve’s house always seemed particularly empty when his boyfriends had just left. Too big, too quiet. The emptiness wasn’t that noticeable when they were there with him, filling up all that empty space with their presence; their voices, their banter, their laughter.

It was strange in a way, that the house he had lived in for his whole life never really felt like a home until Billy and Eddie entered it. They made it into a place where Steve wanted to actually be and spend time, in a way that not even his own parents had managed.

But now the house was empty again, his boys having gone home to their own places for the night. Steve had offered for them to stay the night, like he always did. Sometimes they’d take him up on it; Eddie more often than Billy, since Eddie had more freedom and his uncle was way more laid-back regarding his nephew’s whereabouts and the company he kept.

Tonight, though, Eddie had apparently promised to have dinner with Wayne before he left for work, and Steve didn’t want to get between them like that just because he didn’t want to spend the night alone.

Billy had, of course, been the first one to leave. After all, he had to make sure that Max was home and in bed at light’s out, since it was apparently somehow his responsibility even though Max was fourteen years old – something Steve had never understood, because when he was her age, he had been spending nights on his own for two years already. But then again, Billy’s dad was a right bastard. Billy never said anything out loud, but Steve and Eddie had both seen the marks on him and discussed the badly-kept secret between the two of them. They had unanimously decided to let Billy take the lead and tell them when he was ready. In the meantime, they would simply be there for him and make sure they were ready to do everything in their power to get Billy out of that house as soon as possible after graduation.

Steve was startled out of his thoughts when the phone rang, its shrill ringing cutting through the silence and making him jump. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he frowned, a tendril of fear racing down his spine. It was a quarter past ten. Too late for anyone to call on a weeknight; something had to be wrong.

He picked up on the second ring and didn’t even have time to open his mouth for a hello before he heard voices on the other end.

“– it’s an emergency, Jesus Christ! I’ll be out of your hair in one minute, I just have to –“

Eddie. Why was Eddie calling this late when they’d just seen each other just a little while ago, and why was he sounding so agitated?

“Eddie?” Steve said, breathless.

“Steve! Shit, Steve, I’ll – let go!” A scuffle could be heard in the background, as well as angry voices.

Wrong wrong wrong.

Steve’s heart was in his throat when he asked, hoping Eddie would hear over the ruckus, “What’s going on?”

Eddie’s voice was pinched when his answer came. “It’s Billy,” he said, and Steve’s heart plummeted into his stomach. In the time it took for him to grip the phone tighter and press it harder to his ear, he imagined a hundred different scenarios, all involving Billy being hurt, being gone, being dead –

“There’s a fire,” Eddie said, obviously still struggling with whoever was arguing with him on the other end of the line, “At Billy’s house.”

Steve’s mind blanked as his body froze. “What?”

The voices in the background were louder now, and Eddie cursed at whoever it was. “Listen Steve, I gotta go. Just, get to Cherry, alright? Get to Cherry.”

The line went dead.

Heart racing, Steve fumbled to hang up the phone and then almost tripped in his haste to get out into the hall, yanking his jacket off the hook with trembling fingers and shoving his feet into his shoes without tying them. He was out of the house in record time, and only realized once he reached his car that he had forgotten his keys inside.

Fuck it. It would take too long to retrieve them and then drive through the narrow streets of Hawkins anyway. It would be faster to go through the woods.

They had discovered, a while ago, that driving between Steve’s house and Billy’s house on Cherry Lane took them in a wide arc almost all the way into town and back, and that there was a much shorter distance between their houses if they went on foot through the woods. This discovery had been used on many occasions when they didn’t want a car to be seen or heard, and many were the times when one or two or all three of them had made the trek through the woods at a leisurely pace, talking and laughing the whole way.

Now, though, was no time for an unhurried pace. Steve raced through the trees, not caring about the roots he was slipping on or the branches that were whipping at his face and body. His mind couldn’t form coherent thoughts, it was all drowned out by a sense of panic so strong that it overwhelmed everything but the urgency to get to Cherry as fast as he could.

Later, he wouldn’t be able to recall anything from his mad dash through the woods, at least not up until he neared his destination and smelled the smoke in the air and saw the orange glow through the trees. When he emerged onto the badly-kept lawn in the Hargroves’ backyard, he was met with the sight of a house ablaze. He had to shield his face against the light and heat of it, and saw the bulky figures of the firemen only like dark shapes against the roaring flames. This close, the smoke was overwhelming and he started to cough, which alerted one of the firemen to his presence.

“What are you doing back here, kid?” a gruff voice said. A gloved hand grabbed his shoulder and forcibly turned him in the direction of the neighbor’s yard, giving him a push. “Get out of here.”

“Billy –“ Steve said, but the fireman had already turned back to help his colleague with the hose. As in a daze, Steve jumped the fence between the houses and jogged alongside it until he got to the front, not taking his eyes off the burning house once.

Flames and smoke were billowing out through the windows, and a crowd of dark figures had gathered in the street in front of the house, their faces lit up by the fire and the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles parked haphazardly here and there. Steve’s heart sank when at first he couldn’t see the ones he wanted to see, but then there was a commotion by the back of the ambulance, and when he looked over he briefly locked eyes with Eddie. He was running before he knew it, and not until he got closer did he see Billy there, too.

The relief was instantaneous and took Steve’s breath away, at least until it registered how Billy looked; his face was sooty and his hair a mess and – if Steve’s eyes didn’t deceive him – slightly burned, and there were two EMTs by his side; one trying to hold a plastic mask over his mouth and nose, and the other attempting to wrap his hands and forearms up in crisp white bandages.

‘Attempting’, because despite his obvious disadvantage, Billy was fighting them, by all accounts trying to get out of their grip and back into the flames. Eddie was standing in front of him, his hands on Billy’s shoulders, trying to keep him seated.

Steve came to a halt next to him, and couldn’t help the way his hands shot out and gently grabbed Billy’s head by the sides of his face, mindful of any injuries but needing to feel for himself that Billy was all right. Billy, in his turn, turned wild eyes (the whites of his eyes startlingly white against his dirty skin) to Steve, and at the sight of him he let out a whine like a dying animal.

“Please,” he gasped, “let me go, she’s in there, I have to go –“

Steve didn’t understand, but he joined Eddie in holding Billy down because there was no way he was letting him go anywhere without getting the proper treatment. As Billy’s feeble struggles weakened, Steve finally looked to the side and met Eddie’s eyes and was surprised and terrified by the devastation he found there.

“What –?” he started, needing to ask even as he felt his stomach sink.

He didn’t have time to let out the full sentence, though, before there was a tumult off to the side, and a shout. “Billy!” someone shrieked. Billy froze in their grasp, and a second later Steve and Eddie were both shoved aside by a small but surprisingly strong red-headed blur, who threw herself at her brother seemingly without a care for the onlookers or Billy’s potential injuries.

If it hurt Billy, he didn’t let on. Instead he rasped out a breath that more resembled a sob, and yanked his arms free from the EMTs’ grasp just so he could wrap them around her body, pulling her in tight against him. Steve, mind whirling, met Eddie’s wide eyes a few steps away and raised his eyebrows in a wordless question. Eddie walked up to him and took him by the elbow, walked a couple of steps to the side – Steve noticed distantly that Eddie had placed them between the back of the ambulance and the burning building, as if he was trying to shield Billy from the sight of it.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Eddie said, voice hoarse. “I … Oh God, fuck –“

“What happened?” Steve finally asked, tearing his eyes away from the sight of Billy and Max clinging to each other to look over his shoulder at the fire. “What the fuck happened, Eds?”

“Don’t know,” Eddie said, and Steve could feel him shaking from the grip he had on his arm. “I took the long way home, heard the sirens. Followed them, and found Billy’s house on fire. His car was there, parked out front, so I … I didn’t think, just ran up to the house, but the firemen wouldn’t let me pass. Then one of them was dragging Billy out, he was –“ Eddie’s voice broke with emotion, and tears welled up in his eyes. Without thinking, Steve placed a hand on his cheek, feeling Eddie lean into the touch. “He was screaming for Max and trying to get back in. I saw him punch a fireman straight in the face and run under his arm, but they caught him and dragged him off. I helped, fuck –“ He exhaled and blinked at the sky for a moment, collecting himself. “He begged me to let him go, but I didn’t. Couldn’t. Fuck.”

Steve could feel his pulse in his throat, and tried to will his heart to slow down. “Good,” he said. “You did good.”

“You don’t get it, he said Max was still in there and I –“

They both turned as one to look at the scene at the back of the ambulance, where the Chief Hopper had now walked over and was attempting to gently pry the siblings apart, with little success. What they could see of Billy’s face was scrunched up in a mixture of pain and relief, and Max’s shoulders were shaking with sobs they couldn’t hear over the roar of the fire.

“She’s okay,” Steve said, just to hear the words. “They’re both okay.”

“I don’t understand,” Eddie said, sounding bewildered. “He was so sure she was in there.”

“But she wasn’t,” Steve said, half to convince himself. “That’s the important thing.”

It wasn’t until much later that night, in the early hours of the morning, that the events of the evening became clear. After reuniting with Max and learning that she was okay, Billy had finally let the EMTs do their jobs, and it wasn’t long after that they loaded him into the ambulance to be brought to the hospital. One person was allowed to go with him, and while Billy met both Steve’s and Eddie’s eyes over the heads of the assembled people, he couldn’t speak up with the oxygen mask over his face. Besides, Max had jumped into the back of the ambulance without a word, with a scowl that said she would fight anyone who tried to stop her from going with her brother.

Instead, Steve got in the front of Eddie’s van, which had been abandoned halfway up on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, and collapsed into the seat, more than content at letting Eddie be the one to drive. They talked very little on the way to Hawkins General, but Steve learned that once Eddie had been shoved out of the way by the EMTs, he had raced over to the closest neighbor and burst in without so much as knocking, probably scaring the shit out of them while he looked for a phone to call Steve – which had caused the commotion on the other end. Apparently the neighbor in question had wanted Eddie arrested for breaking and entering, but luckily the Chief had explained to the irate man in no uncertain terms that this was an emergency and that he had more important things to do.

Once Steve and Eddie got to the hospital, they had to wait for quite some time in the waiting room, until eventually Max herself came out to talk to them, having been gently shooed out when the nurses took Billy away for a shower and to inspect the parts of him that had been hidden under his sooty clothes. Max sank down in the uncomfortable plastic chair between Steve and Eddie, and didn’t look any of them in the eye as she haltingly told them her side of the story.

They’d been home alone, her and Billy. Apparently, Mr. Hargrove had been sent to a conference out of town instead of a colleague who had fallen ill, and he had taken that as an opportunity to bring his wife on a little outing. He had left Billy with stern instructions to make sure that Max was in bed by ten o’clock each night, but Max hadn’t felt the need to obey those rules since the man himself wasn’t home to enforce them. She’d been sure that Billy would see it her way, so after their early dinner when Billy drove off to meet with Eddie and Steve, she had snuck out to be with her friends – because she didn’t see a reason why she had to stay home, when Billy got to go out. While at Lucas’ place, she had quite forgotten about the time and had to race home, and once she got home and realized that the house was on fire, she had promptly elbowed her way through the crowd and then she’d seen Billy all hurt and promptly panicked.

No one had managed to get a hold of either of their parents yet – there had been a note with the phone number to their hotel on the fridge, but that was obviously ashes by now. Joyce Byers showed up at the early hours of the morning, no doubt called there by the Chief, and offered for Max to stay with her and her boys until their parents could be located.

At first, Max refused to go with her, but Steve eventually convinced her, saying that he and Eddie would bring Billy home with them as soon as they released Billy from the hospital, and that she could come visit at any time.

Max must have known more about what they were to each other than they had previously thought, because she narrowed her eyes at them in deep thought before glancing down the corridor to where Billy’s room was, and only then reluctantly agreeing (on the terms that they would call her at any time, if something changed or if Billy got worse somehow).

Finally, when the night was well and truly over and early morning sunlight shone in through the windows, Steve and Eddie were let into the hospital room where Billy was. He looked better now, fresh from a shower and with his arms and hands wrapped up in new bandages, but the skin on his face was red in places and his hair had been singed. He looked exhausted, but smiled tiredly when they were shown into the room by a nurse, who then left them alone.

“Baby,” Eddie said before the door had even closed properly, and hurried to Billy’s side. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Billy rasped, voice like he’d been gurgling broken glass, and taking short breaths as if he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. “But it’s not … so bad. Mostly second-degree burns … on my hands and arms, a third … degree one on my shoulder where I … bumped into a doorway. They gave me oxygen for the … smoke inhalation, and some pain pills. The good kind. So …” He raised one bandaged hand and made a show out of using the other bandaged hand to raise the thumb on the first one, in a clumsy rendition of a thumbs up, and grinned tiredly at them.

“Fuck,” Steve breathed out and sat down heavily next to him on the hospital bed. “You scared the shit out of us.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed unsteadily. “I thought you were dead there for a while.”

Billy sobered, and lowered his arms into his lap. “Sorry.”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Steve growled, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the line of his jaw. “We were just worried. Thought …” He trailed off. He hadn’t had time to form his terror into a particular fear, but seeing Billy’s house aflame and not knowing if his boyfriend was safe or not had caused an overwhelming panic to spread throughout him. And he could only imagine it must had been even worse for Eddie, who had been first on the scene.

“What were you even thinking, rushing into a burning building? Just had to be the hero, huh?” Eddie said, by the sound of it trying to lighten the mood.

But at the question, Billy just looked at him, shrugging helplessly. “I thought Max was in there.”

Nothing else needed to be said. Billy had to be dragged out of a burning building, and had punched a fireman and tried to get back inside, because he thought Max had been in there and he’d been desperate to get her out.

Steve was pretty sure that neither of the siblings would be insisting that they were just step-siblings after this.

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie said, voice small. “Please try to refrain from doing it again, though?”

“You’re the one to talk,” Steve muttered. “As if you weren’t trying to fight your way in when you first showed up and thought Billy was in there.”

Billy turned wide eyes to Eddie, mouth open in awe. “You did?”

Cheeks rapidly coloring, Eddie pointed accusingly at Steve and pointedly refused to answer the question. “You say that as if you wouldn’t have done the same thing if you’d gotten there first!” Which was, of course, an answer in itself.

“I mean, probably,” Steve admitted with a smile. “I’m glad I didn’t have to though. I like both of you much better outside burning buildings.”

“Same,” Billy said and leaned his head on Steve’s shoulder, while reaching out to pull Eddie down on the other side of him. “That sucked.”

There was much to be done, Steve knew. The Chief and his men would surely want to talk to both Billy and Max, and they would no doubt want to investigate the cause of the fire. Not to mention the fact that Billy and his family were now practically homeless, and that most of Billy’s belongings (not counting what he had already pilfered away and left at Steve’s and Eddie’s places) had gone up in smoke. They had to locate and tell Mr. Hargrove and Max’s mom what had happened, and that would probably be a whole different can of worms. Billy had once – after showing up at Steve’s house after a fight with his father – sneered that his dad found a way to make everything his fault, and Steve had no doubts that the man would end up blaming Billy for this too, somehow. But he met Eddie’s eyes over Billy’s head and saw in them the same determination he himself was feeling; they would not let Mr. Hargrove take this out on Billy. Perhaps considering last night’s events, they wouldn’t have to wait until graduation to get him out from under his father’s thumb.

Unspoken promise made, they made themselves comfortable on either side of their brave, reckless boyfriend; holding him and each other, and reveling in the knowledge that they were all alive and well and together.

[ihni]

Is it a betrayal if it was always inevitable?

For the @metalsandwichbingo, square B2: Free Space (ie Mafia AU)

Rating: Mature for violence, I suppose? Word count: 4,4 K Tags: Violence, Interrogation, Physically hurt Eddie, Emotionally hurt Steve & Billy, betrayal, undercover work, mentions of murder

Read it on AO3 here

~~~

The sound of flesh hitting flesh was loud in the windowless room, as was the groan of pain that followed. Steve stood shoulder to shoulder with his father, overlooking the proceedings, even though he found it hard to keep his eyes trained on the person tied up in the chair who was getting the shit beat out of him.

Eddie, who has been working for the Family for six years now, let out a cry of pain as he was hit again, and Steve schooled his expression so he didn’t let on how difficult this was for him to witness. After all, he told himself; Eddie deserved this. He betrayed the Family – or at least that’s what they were here to determine. Lately, there had been too many slip-ups. Too many mistakes. The police had shown up when they weren’t supposed to, acting on information they couldn’t have gotten from anyone outside the Family. Someone’s talking to the cops, Steve’s father had said, a couple of weeks ago when he called Steve into his office, for once without anyone else being there. We need to flush that rat out. You take point. It’ll be a learning opportunity for you.

So they’d set a trap. Planned an operation and given different dates and times to different people, and then kept a lookout for when the police showed up to raid the place. The cops had shown up on a Thursday afternoon, which narrowed their suspects down to four people. Two of those had been at the compound for most of the time between them receiving the information and the time of the fake-operation taking place, and had been able to account for where they were for the rest of the time. That left two people who, incidentally, Steve had really hoped it wouldn’t be:

The first one was Billy Hargrove, son of Neil Hargrove who had been working for Mr. Harrington for over thirty years. Billy, like his father, was useful for his brawn, but he was brighter than his father had ever been and he showed great potential. Steve and he used to get drunk together as teenagers, and Billy had acted as his impromptu bodyguard even then. They’d been close back then – very close – but as they got older and Steve’s father started molding him into his successor, Steve had felt the need to put some distance between them.

And then there was Eddie Munson. His father had been a part of the Family way back in the day, but he hadn’t exactly been a family man while he was alive so Eddie had grown up with his uncle out of state. It wasn’t until his uncle fell ill and Eddie needed help paying the hospital bills that he contacted the Harringtons, looking for work. That was six years ago. Steve had taken him under his wing and found that he really liked the man’s carefree disposition and general outlook on life. If Steve was honest with himself, he might have developed a bit of a crush, which he of course did his best to squash, as it wasn’t fitting for someone in his position.

None of these two men could account for their whereabouts for the period when someone must have leaked the information to the police; there were gaps in both of their stories, and periods of time where they hadn’t been around anyone else in the Family. But where Billy’s gap was easier to believe (“I was home alone, having dinner and then crashing on the couch��), Eddie’s was as an outright lie (“I was … uh, with Billy. Uh, I mean … I was at the diner. We were … at the diner.”). When asked, Billy frowned and shook his head, denying spending any time with Eddie that night.

At that point, Steve knew that both men were lying, and green-tinged anger twisted around his heart. Because he’d seen them, that night – had stayed late at the warehouse downtown to finish up some work, and when he’d been about to leave, he’d happened upon the two of them in the dark alleyway outside the building. They’d been kissing. Steve had watched them for long enough to make sure that he hadn’t misjudged the situation, and then he’d backed away, unseen, into the shadows.

Now, he could understand why Billy wouldn’t tell the truth, especially since it wasn’t just Steve there when he accounted for his whereabouts; Billy’s father was not a nice man, and he wasn’t exactly discreet about his opinions on the ‘dirty fags’ that ‘plagued the city’. Steve knew about Billy’s proclivities from when they were teenagers – they’d been each other’s’ firsts, after all – and he also knew how scared Billy had been back then about his father finding out about his preferences. So he could understand the reason why Billy would lie about spending time one on one with another man, so while it left something bitter on his tongue, something – perhaps the memory of the moments they’d once shared – kept him from letting his father know about the lie.

Eddie, though? His lie was easy enough to prove – no one had seen him at the diner he claimed to have visited that night. He also had the misfortune of having his uncle – who had pulled through, after his illness six years ago – work for the district attorney’s office two states over, which might not mean anything, but didn’t exactly work in his favor in this case. And so the suspicions focused on Eddie.

It had been Steve’s idea to have Billy be the one to help in the interrogation that followed. He’d been fueled by anger – and yes, jealousy – and had thought it a fitting punishment for the man’s betrayal. Not for betraying the Family, but for betraying him. He couldn’t really rationalize it – Billy wasn’t his to lose, hadn’t been his for years – but a base instinct in his brain said that Billy had been his once and that he was, still. So the fact that he’d apparently hooked up with Eddie of all people – Eddie, who Steve had been laughing with, shared secrets with and had started opening up to lately – it hurt.

It hurt even more that Eddie might have used his closeness to Steve to betray the Family, but Steve didn’t want to think about that. He used his anger to harden his heart, and harden the look in his eyes, and he stood side by side with his father as Mr. Harrington asked Eddie questions, and nodded for Billy to hurt him every time he failed to give a satisfying answer. And Billy did, mechanically, each time, his back to the Harrington men.

Not once did Steve’s indifferent mask falter, not even when Billy broke Eddie’s nose, or when Eddie howled in pain as his little finger was bent backwards until there was an audible crack. Not even when Eddie turned tearful eyes on Steve and sobbed “I wouldn’t do that, please, I wouldn’t betray you like that,” and then, after a quick and seemingly fearful glance at Billy, “any of you.”

By the time Eddie started crying, Steve was biting the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood. He was angry and hurt, but at the same time it was difficult to watch someone he … someone he had cared for … be hurt, right in front of him. He had never shared his father’s penchant for violence, something the older man was well aware of and which was probably the reason why Steve was standing here, now.

Eventually, a knock on the door interrupted them, and Martin, Steve’s father’s right hand, stuck his head in.

“Mr. Harrington, sir. You’re needed upstairs.”

Mr. Harrington gave a sigh as if he was being terribly inconvenienced, but then gave a sharp nod. He brushed invisible dust off his hands – almost as if he had been the one to lay his hands on Eddie, even though he hadn’t touched him once since he’d entered the room – and turned around to leave. Just before he walked out, however, he gave Steve a cold look and indicated the room with a tilt of his head.

“I trust you to take care of this?” he said, and raised a meaningful eyebrow. “And clean up the mess, after.”

Steve knew exactly what that meant, and suddenly had to fight an urge to be sick. “Yes sir,” he ground out instead, between clenched teeth, and dug his nails into the meat of his palms instead of outwardly reacting.

His father nodded again and turned his back on them as he left. The door slammed shut, and left the three of them alone in the room together. Only because he was looking for it, did Steve see the way Billy’s shoulders sagged with momentary relief. He suddenly wished that Billy was turned his way, so he could see his face, but Billy was facing Eddie, like he’d been for most of the session.

Moments passed without anyone moving or speaking, the only sounds heard being Eddie’s labored breathing. “Billy,” Steve eventually said, just to break the silence. He hadn’t meant it as anything but a way to get Billy to turn around, but Billy must have interpreted it as ‘get on with it’, because he flinched at the sound of his own name.

Glancing at Steve – for a fraction of a second only – Billy’s shoulders tensed again, and he drew himself up. Clenched his teeth, swallowed, and drew in a shaky breath. He turned back to Eddie in the chair – whose face fell behind the bruises, but who looked resigned for what was to come – and raised his fist to continue where they’d left off before Steve’s father left.

Steve’s hand moved without him consciously deciding to move it, shooting out and grabbing Billy’s wrist before his fist could make contact with Eddie’s face again.

“Stop,” Steve said. No, ordered.

Billy had never obeyed an order from Steve faster. He was a good henchman, good at obeying orders, but often with Steve, he would deliberately take his time just to prove that he could, a challenging look in his eyes or a little smile on his face as he kept eye contact to see how Steve would react to his barely-there defiance. It was like he pushed just to see what he could get away with – a remnant from the times when they used to be close – but Steve had always seen it almost as a form of flirting rather than actual defiance, which was why he had never openly addressed it. Now, though? Billy let his arms down and stood up straight, backing away from Eddie and Steve both as if he wanted nothing more than to remove himself from the situation entirely. If that wasn’t enough to confirm Steve’s suspicions that the two of them were closer than mere hook-ups, the look in Billy’s eyes as he looked at Eddie was.

The anger that Steve had been filled with – the irrationally hurtful feeling of having been betrayed, somehow – fizzled out and died at the open devastation and regret that was painted onto Billy’s face, and Steve was suddenly so tired. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, before straightening up and addressing the two other men in the room.

“I know,” he said, voice low.

Billy’s face visibly paled and his hand twitched at his side. It wasn’t his reaction that Steve focused on, though; it was Eddie’s. Eddie, who looked between the two of them with one eye rapidly swelling, looking more worried than he’d been when they’d first dragged him in here and tied him to the chair.

“What is it that you know, exactly?” he hedged, voice raw and blood running down his chin from a busted lip.

“I know about the two of you,” Steve clarified, and then froze with his mouth open as his brain whirred. He watched relief flash over both their faces, and two things occurred to him at once: Why would they be relieved to hear that, when they’d looked so stricken just a moment ago? And why did Eddie ask what he knew – did that mean that that wasn’t the only thing they’d kept a secret?

The puzzle pieces snapped into place and Steve almost groaned at the realization. But he collected himself, and added – giving the impression that he’d merely been quiet for dramatic effect, instead of having just made the connection, “And I know that you –“ He nodded to Eddie, “– are not our mole.” He turned to Billy, who was just a little bit too late to hide behind his blank mask. “And I know that you are.”

It was a gamble, but even as he spoke the words he knew them to be true. First, because Billy went very, very still, and second, because Eddie made a move as if to try to yank himself free.

Curious. Steve couldn’t help noticing that Eddie hadn’t tried to get out of his bonds when it was just him in the line of fire.

Billy was staring at him, and Steve met his eyes and didn’t look away, which was why he saw the way Billy’s eyes flicked to the gun at Steve’s side. Steve was the only one in the room with a weapon, and for a second he tensed, expecting Billy to try to grab it. To avoid this, he took it out of the holster himself and held it loosely in one hand, ready for action but without pointing it at anyone. “You won’t make it out of the house,” he advised, just in case Billy was desperate enough to be stupid. “Not alive, and especially not with him.” He nodded to Eddie, still tied to the chair, and raised a challenging eyebrow. Billy’s shoulders sagged, and he wet his lips as he made an aborted movement to Eddie in his chair.

“If you knew …” he said, voice hoarse with anger, or maybe plain misery. “If you knew the whole time, why make me go do all of that to an innocent man?”

Steve looked between the two of them, and considered his answer. In the end, he decided to go for the truth. “I didn’t figure it out until just now.”

Swearing, Billy threw his head back and pulled at his hair. “And now?” he said. “Now that you know, what are you going to do?” He didn’t look to Eddie and – Steve was surprised to realize – he hadn’t looked at Eddie once since Steve had first spoken. Meanwhile, Eddie had barely taken his eyes off of Billy this whole time, apparently trying to will Billy to turn around and make eye-contact.

At that, something else clicked into place. Steve looked at Billy, wide-eyed. “You didn’t tell him.”

Billy’s face scrunched together before he put himself together with visible effort. “No,” he said, voice raw, still refusing to turn around and look at Eddie. “I didn’t tell him. He didn’t know anything, so please, if –“

Billy never said ‘please’. It sounded wrong, coming out of his mouth. Steve held up a hand to quiet him, and turned to Eddie. Because Eddie had been the one to ask what Steve knew, so Eddie had to have known something. “Is that true?”

Eddie sagged in his bonds, but met Steve’s eyes head-on. “He didn’t tell me anything,” he confirmed, and then seemed to steel himself. “But I knew.”

“What?” Billy gasped, whirling around and closing the distance to Eddie’s chair. His hands hovered over the other man, as if afraid to touch. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You didn’t know!” He turned his head and looked at Steve, almost frantic even as he planted himself in front of Eddie, shielding him from Steve’s gaze. “He didn’t know shit! It was all me!”

“I didn’t know before,” Eddie rasped, uncaring of Billy’s protests. “But I figured it out. Started to suspect it at the raid … and I heard you sneak out, a couple of nights ago. When you thought I was asleep.” And oh, Steve’s heart gave a painful tug at the implications of that statement.

Billy fell to his knees, hard, on the cement floor, making Steve wince. But what was more surprising was that Billy had tears trailing down his cheeks now. He was crying, and Steve watched it with fascination. He had only seen Billy cry once – one time when they were teenagers, after his dad had laid into him – but even then, Billy had never sounded so devastated.

“I’m sorry,” he cried, grasping for Eddie with shaking hands. “I never wanted to drag you into this.”

“How long?” Steve asked, voice colder than he’d intended. When Billy didn’t answer, he hardened his voice. “Answer my questions and maybe I’ll consider letting Eddie go.” He didn’t say that he planned on doing that anyway. Right now, he needed answers. “How long?”

“… two years.”

Steve gasped out a breath, as did Eddie. “The whole time …?” Eddie breathed.

“Yeah,” Billy said, sounding miserable. “I couldn’t tell you, Eddie, I’m sorry, it was too dangerous –“

“That’s why you made me chase you in the beginning?”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to drag you into it –“

“A fine job you did with that,” Steve said, cruelly, and watched as Billy ducked his head further. The betrayal made Steve want to lash out, hurt Billy as Steve had been hurt. “Look at him.” It was a demand, rather than a suggestion, and Billy followed the unspoken order. “That is on you.” Billy’s lip wobbled as he took in the damage his hands had caused, and once again he reached for Eddie with his hands, placed them lightly on his thighs, palms up as in offering.

“I’m so sorry Eddie, I’m so sorry …” and then, to Steve’s great surprise, he turned to Steve and said the same, “I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t … I wanted to but I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why?” Steve said, choking on unnamed emotions. Why did you do it? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me, I could have helped you, we could have –

“He killed my mom.”

Everything stilled in the room, and Steve frowned in incomprehension. Billy’s mom had left when he was ten, sick of being Neil Hargrove’s punching bag. As far as Steve knew, Billy hadn’t heard from her once since then, as no one knew where she disappeared to.

“What?”

“Neil. He tracked her down, a year or so after she left, and he killed her. And your dad helped cover it up.” As if knowing that there was no turning back now, Billy shrugged. “I was approached … a little over two years ago, by … my contact in the police department.” Even now, he seemed determined not to say too much, too soon. “They’d found her remains, and he provided me with the evidence they had of what had happened. I … He needed my help getting more evidence, enough to get my dad put behind bars.” He looked at Steve imploringly from his place on the floor. “You know how he is. You know why I had to do it.”

Steve knew. Billy’s father was not a nice man – especially to his son. Everyone knew it, but it was just one of those things you didn’t talk about.

“But then,” Billy continued, “I found out that your dad had helped him. Helped him find her, and … helped him get rid of the body, after.” He swallowed. “And my contact … asked me to do … more.” He closed his eyes, which caused fresh tears to roll down his cheeks. When he opened his eyes again, he swallowed determinedly. “Do you remember what we used to talk about? Before?”

Steve nodded, dumbly. When they were young and dumb, and cuddling up to each other in the dark, they used to talk about their hopes for the future. How Billy wished to get out from under his father’s thumb, and Steve admitting to his dislike of the way his father ran things. Billy had been the only one who knew that Steve didn’t particularly want to take over as head of the Family. That he wasn’t cut out for the violence of it.

“I figured … maybe if I did it, it would get you out of it, too. I never … I never gave them anything that would implicate you in any way. I never gave them any intel on things if I knew that you’d be there, never gave them anything that would get you in trouble.” He glanced at Eddie, too. “Either one of you.”

Steve backed up until his back was against the door, and then slid down to the floor. He was still holding the gun in his hand, but his grip was slack and he barely noticed it. Both Billy and Eddie followed his motions without saying anything, but as soon as Steve was sitting down, Billy swallowed again and spoke up.

“I’m sorry, Steve. And I’m sorry, Eddie. I just … I wanted to bring my dad to justice, and it spiraled out of control. I never wanted to hurt either one of you, never wanted to involve you.” He shuffled around so that he was turned to Steve, but still kneeling. Holding his head high, he said, “I’m willing to … take responsibility for my actions.”

Steve huffed out a humorless laugh. He recognized Neil’s teachings in those words, and for some reason a wave of rage washed over him at that.

“You think I’m going to kill you?” he asked, gesticulating vaguely with the gun. “Shoot you, while you’re on your knees?” Billy didn’t speak, just watched him with wide eyes. Eddie opened his mouth to speak though, but Steve spoke over him. “Or do you maybe think I’ll hand you over to my dad, so he can do that to you –“ he said, motioning to the mess that was Eddie’s face, “– or worse?”

Without noticing it, tears had appeared in Steve’s eyes as well, and he had to blink them away. “Fuck, Billy, you should have come to me. Why didn’t you come to me?”

“I couldn’t ask you to act against your father.”

“But you expect me to act against my friends?” He gestured to Billy, and then to Eddie, who watched them both with an open mouth (possibly because he couldn’t breathe through his nose). “You really think I can hurt you? You or Eddie?”

Instead of waiting for an answer – with half of him not wanting to hear what Billy’s reply would be, because he had just stood there, ten minutes earlier, and watched as both of them got hurt in different ways – Steve got to his feet and started walking to and fro in the little room. He was still holding the gun in his hand, but he was well-versed in how to use it and the safety was on. He was quiet while he walked, letting his mind rush through everything he had just learned. As his father would often remind him, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but while he couldn’t plan a heist to save his life, he was good with handling people, and getting them to do what he wanted.

“How far are you from getting whatever evidence you need?” Steve asked. “To get your dad put away and … and mine, too?”

Billy hesitated before answering. “We have gathered … quite a lot. But we need something that’ll stick. That they won’t be able to bribe their way out of. And we don’t have that … yet.”

“This contact of yours,” Steve said after yet another moment of silence, still walking. “Would he be willing to meet with me, you think?”

“I …” Billy said, surprised. “Yes? Yes, I think so, why?”

“Your father is a bad man,” Steve said, stopping in place and turning to look at Billy. He swallowed, almost afraid to say out loud what he was about to say next. “So is mine. It’s been getting worse, in the last few years. People are getting hurt, killed. I never –“ He took a breath and licked his lips before trying again. “I never wanted that. You know that.”

Billy nodded slowly, something like hope shining from his red-rimmed eyes.

“You,” Steve said and pointed at Eddie, “are a good man. You don’t deserve what has happened to you today.” Not giving any of them a chance to speak, he turned to Billy and pointed a finger in his direction, too. “And you, Billy Hargrove, are a good man too, despite everything. A hundred times better than your dad could ever hope to be.” Taking a deep breath, he exhaled loudly, and straightened up. “I … want to be a good man, too. And I think that this might be my chance to prove that I can be one. At least, a better man than my father.”

“What are you saying, exactly?” Eddie said from his chair, doubt tinged with hope in his voice.

“I’m saying …” Steve started, even as the last pieces of his insane plan fell into place in his mind. “That it’s time I start picking up more slack in the Family, like my father has insisted on for long.” He looked at Billy meaningfully. “And I’m saying that I’m going to need someone I can trust by my side.” Turning to Eddie, he shrugged apologetically. “And unfortunately, I’m saying that you will probably need to die here today, to get rid of the ‘mole’ … How are you at playing dead, Munson? At least while we get you out of here.”

Eddie positively lit up where he was tied to the chair. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then you might as well call me Eddie ‘the Possum’ Munson!”

That drew a huff of laughter from Steve, and even Billy’s lip twitched in the ghost of a smile.

Steve looked over his shoulder to the door, even though he knew it was soundproof and that no one would be able to hear them in here. “I think that we need to talk more about this, somewhere that is not here, but … I’m in, if you guys are.”

“I’m in,” Billy said, his voice thick with emotion as he added, “Thank you.”

“Well, if my two bestest boys are in,” Eddie said with a hint of humor, making Steve flush with warmth at his words, “then I’m in too. With the three of us working together, we can do anything. But …”

“But what?”

“Can someone please get me out of this chair first? And I could really use a Tylenol.”

[metalsandwichbingo]

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[metalsandwichbingo]

Last day to sign up for Metalsandwich Bingo 🎶🎸🤘!

Metalsandwich Bingo is a low-pressure, fun fandom challenge with the goal of creating new fanworks for Metalsandwich / Harringroveson / Stedilly ship.

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-> You’re given a bingo card with 8+1 prompts you can interpret in your own fanwork (art, fic, playlist, fic rec list, podfic etc) any way you like (as long as it includes the prompt and the boys somehow)

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