#steve stays with eddie to prevent his untimely demise

[hitlikehammers]

steddie ✨soulmarks✨ except that they spell out your soulmate’s last words 💔

(‘make him pay’ = epically lame iteration of this heartbreaking phenomenon)

From the minute he learned about soulmates as a kid, Steve knew not only that he wanted one—of course he did—but that he was absolutely going to get one. Didn’t matter that they were rare as hell, didn’t matter that every year fewer matches were reported: nope. Steve Harrington had a soulmate, and he was going to find them. When he eventually found out the tragedy of it all, the reason people were celebrating fewer instances of soulmates finding one another, Steve’s feelings on the matter didn’t change. At all. The words that appear to signal your match being the last words they’re meant to speak, before they die? Fuck that.

rating: m ♥️ tags: mid-s4 final battle, canon divergence, eddie says the soulmate words on steve’s skin that double as his last words, steve is having absolutely none of that, canon fix-it, romance, steve stays with eddie to prevent his untimely demise, dustin henderson: surprisingly good with molotov cocktails, happy ending ♥️

for @steddielovemonth day twenty five: “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.” ― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

Steve hears it, nods even and makes to step away—he hears it, but like, it takes a second to sink in.

But once it’s all sunk in, saturated in his cells, his bones?

“Change of plans,” he calls out, and gives a total of no shits if anyone has an objections.

“Henderson.”

Dustin perks up; he might have been playing tough about rolling his eyes over not being a hero but he’s predictable—he likes being important enough to get singled out.

“You think you can hit a target with a flaming bottle while a vine, or a tail, might be trying to strangle you?”

Steve wouldn’t have even had to look to know Dustin’s up for it—suspicion, confusion, those too of course but at least not outright resistance because, again.

Predictable.

He does look at Dustin anyway, though.

Mainly because he knows he won’t find such easy acceptance in any of the other faces gathered around, but like…

Here’s the thing.

From the minute he learned about soulmates as a kid, Steve knew not only that he wanted one—of course he did—but that he was absolutely going to get one. Didn’t matter that they were rare as hell, didn’t matter that every year fewer matches were reported: nope. Steve Harrington had a soulmate, and he was going to find them.

When he eventually found out the tragedy of it all, the reason people were celebrating fewer instances of soulmates finding one another, Steve’s feelings on the matter didn’t change. At all.

The words that appear to signal your match being the last words they’re meant to speak, before they die?

Fuck that.

They said you got the words the year it’d happen, first day. No sense of when, just before the year was over. So, like, it was super simple. Steve would just find them, protect them, make sure they say something else as soon as possible to negate the…the curse of it, save them, and then ride into the sunset. Easy.

And actually, he thought it was pretty fucking stupid that people really bought into the whole thing being, like, a guaranteed recipe for heartbreak. If even Steve could figure out how to navigate the rules that easily.

By high school, he learns that people have tried—which is reassuring, that everyone through all the ages wasn’t that stupid or unimaginative, or so easily resigned to the worst—and they’d failed.

All of them, apparently.

Allegedly.

That part is more of a bummer. But Steve Harrington has known he’d find his soulmate his entire life. And he will. So while now he knows he’s up against almost impossible odds, if the stories are to be believed?

He spends high school practicing. Knowing none of these girls are his forever but learning the long way what works and what doesn’t, how to treat someone with care, how to please someone without question. He gets his reputation: Casanova, but not for keeps. He’s good with that.

By the time the Upside Down had entered his world, it was both the worst thing, and the bestthing. Because alternate dimensions were impossible.

Yet here they were.

And what else had he always been told was impossible?

So it could—would—be possible, too.

Steve wasn’t sure he realized how thin of a thread his hope had been hanging on until it rebuilds in chainlinks the more he sees of the impossible, the more he knows again with all of him that when the time comes, he’ll save them.

Make Him Pay was a weird mark to find on his skin in the early hours of 1986, but it meant that he was right. He had a soulmate.

And he had a whole year to find them. And save them. And ask if they’d like a forever, too.

And how fucking lucky, that it barely takes two months.

Impending apocalypse aside, of course. But those were just details. Practically routine, at this point.

So, again: it takes a couple seconds to sink in. For it to make sense alongside the fluttery feeling he’s been having off and on from the base of his throat to the pit of his stomach, since probably somewhere around the boathouse. He almost gets a full step away, even.

But he doesn’t.

Because this, this right here?

This is what Steve Harrington has been preparing for his whole goddamn life.

Robin—the only other person in the world who knows what’s scrawled on his skin—was too far to hear for herself but he taps the inside of his elbow where the words are branded when she looks at him, flooded with questions but her eyes go wide, she picks it up fast as the answer to basically all of them, then turns to Eddie and they stare at each other, exchanging unspoken confirmations for more wonderings until Robin squares her shoulders, nods at Steve more than once so he knows she’s not just committed to figuring this out with him, but that she supports him, maybe even approves of these cards he’s been dealt to save the beautiful curly haired weirdo standing between them.

Fuck, but he loves her. So much.

“He’s soft on you, Henderson,” she cuts in, takes the reins; “convince me. You any better than you were last summer with squeezing out of tight spots? Particularly, you know,” she flicks her eyes meaningfully over to the angry red lines on Steve’s neck; “those involving psychic sorta-vines, or bat-tails trying to hang you?”

“I…” Dustin still looks a little thrown by the team shakeup but he’s a smart fucking kid, and a quick study when he wants to be: “hypothetically?” He chews on his lip, strokes his chin like he’s putting in real thought, here. “Like, with my cleidocranial dysplasia—”

“Your shoulder blade thing?” Nancy pipes up, a little incredulous, and Steve almost feels for her; she hasn’t spent enough time with Dustin to not only know that she’s wrong, but to know how he reacts when people whose intelligence he respected at least a little bit are the ones who are wrong.

“Collarbone,” he eyes her ruthlessly, wholly unimpressed, then turns back to Robin alone; “but, might be able to wiggle out better?”

Robin nods, considering-like, but Steve can see she’s trying not to laugh a little at how Nancy’s now incredulously gaping at them.

“And how’s your aim?” she asks, a little doubtfully—Dustin doesn’t exactly strike…anyone on-sight as being particularly good at throwing shit and making sure it hits a target.

As in, an intended target.

“I smoke everyone at Front Line,” Dustin announces with absolute confidence before twin snorts come from Steve and Eddie in near-tandem, and he glares hard but admits: “except Max.”

“Oh my god, are we seriously,” Nancy can only be heard if you’re listening close and know what her under-the-breath-disbelief sounds like, not just that they’re having this conversation but that they’re having it, as she says, seriously. And Steve would have missed the sound of it too, save that try as had might have in the most awkward days following the implosion of…everything, with them—he hadn’t forgotten.

But honestly, kinda just…screw her. He won’t pretend it’s not a little fucked that they’re playing a life-or-death battle like it’s picking teams in gym class, but it’s only flippant on the surface. Steve would never, would never trust Dustin where he really didn’t think he could handle himself—maybe it’s not ideal, but he does trust the kid, much as he wishes he could keep him from the frontlines, protect him and let him be exposed to the worst of the horrors as little as possible; but Steve also wouldn’t ever risk Robin, or hell, even Nancy, to himself being as distracted as he’d be not knowing that Eddie was safe.

None of it’s ideal. But what about anything with this monster-mash-realm shit ever has been?

And it’s not like Nancy knows that Steve even has a soulmate. She definitely doesn’t know that he’s just found said soulmate, on his way to the gallows on a coin-toss—and sure, yeah, they all are. But there…it’s just…

There was nothing in this dimension or any other that was tearing Steve away from him, and making damn fucking sure he got to ask that question.

Would he also be interested, as in—would he, too, like a…like a forever.

With Steve.

“Also very much top-three at skee-ball,” Dustin’s adding to his battle-resume; “including Max, there.”

Robin pretends to consider; she looks to Steve—reassures him. She understands, and believes they can do this. That they’ll all be okay. He even thinks—beyond wishful thinking—that her bad feelings about all of this aren’t in play right now in this shakeup. He…breathes a little easier.

“You’re with us,” Robin snaps her fingers and waves Dustin over to her and Nancy; “get ready to light the fucker up.”

“Dustin,” Steve calls the kid back before he can scramble away too quick—way too enthusiastically. He turns, still confused about the change at large but in the moment confused why Steve needs him back but he’s gotta say it, one more time:

“Don’t be a hero,” he says, gripping Dustin’s shoulders and shaking him just a little, squeezing tight before he leans in, stares eye to eye before he pulls the most important card he’s got:

“You die, I die.”

He holds Dustin’s gaze until the kid seems to get that Steve’s as serious as Dustin’s ever been and likely more; until he nods, slow and deliberate and says solemn, like a oath form his dweeb books:

“Okay.”

Then, just as he makes to let go, Dustin’s clamping a hand over one of Steve’s on his shoulder and narrowing his eyes:

“Same goes for you, remember that,” he scolds in advance, because of course he does; “plus, on top of that,” he squeezes Steve’s hand as he uses his free one to shake a pointed finger at him:

“If you told us nothing cute, you can’t change the rules now that you’re staying behind.”

Steve wants to laugh. Wants to bend the rules of the universe so none of them have to separate from each other. But…he trusts the others. And he trusts Robin to understand that he’s not just staying with his soulmate, he’s staying because the die was cast to fight for him, against the end for him, and Eddie’s green to this bullshit where they’re all seasoned vets—he trusts her to take care of herself as he’d take care of her, as half his brain cells and the better half at that, and to make sure the rest of them are as safe as they can be, too.

“Noted,” is all he ends up saying with as reassuring a grin as he manage before giving Dustin a shove toward Rob and Nance that definitely isn’t halfway just so he can keep hold of him a millisecond longer. “Get going,” and he tells himself it’ll be okay; doesn’t know if the toothy grin and the snarky double thumbs-up he gets helps or makes it harder to swallow.

He forces himself to toss a salute toward Robin and turn the fuck away before he ruins his own fucking plan of action by demanding that they all find a way to stick together, restructure from the ground up but really fucking quick—

He forces himself to turn back.

To Eddie. Who is staring at him, a little gape-mouthed. A little fast-blinking.

“The fuck was that?”

Which, okay. Okay, that…that is very fair.

But Steve needs a second. He needs a second to soak in the words, from Eddie’s mouth; to pretend to itch near his elbow to see if the words had changed: no.

No, they’re still the same, and he…right. The words were said. His soulmate’s last words had been said, and now his soulmate has said more words.

Right. He’d managed this much—the hardest part, and he had thought it’d unclench the vise in his chest a little more than this but: fine. Fine, he’s over the biggest hurdle. Keeping Eddie safe is in hishands, now, like he always planned—how could you not save your soulmate—and now he just, he…

He just has to make sure Eddie doesn’t fucking say them again before this is over, and then maybe they’d have a chance.

Maybe…maybe they could even have a forever.

He can fucking do this. He was goddamn born to do this.

Steve takes a deep breath and meets Eddie’s questioning gaze.

The fuck was that, he’d asked. Ha.

“You want the heavy version now, or after?”

Eddie narrows those dangerous fucking doe eyes at him, looks him up and down: sees him.

Steve kinda wants to give in to the urge to shiver for the way that gaze sweeps down him across maybe twenty whole heartbeats and Steve feels more deeply known than he thinks he’s felt…ever. Like this.

Eddie heaves a very deep breath and concedes:

“Guess ‘after’ is fine, given we appear to be on a time crunch.”

That’s the right answer—and it’s enough to spur Steve into immediate motion.

He’s already grabbed Eddie by the frayed edge of his vest and is dragging him into the trailer where he lets go, pauses, zips Eddie’s jacket up all the way to the chin, then starts making his checks.

“The hell are you doing?”

Eddie sounds genuinely baffled, more than anything. It would sound adorable in any other moment.

(Goddamnit, but it still sounds adorable, now.)

“You’ve lived in a trailer,” Steve says as he jumps from one side of the very trailer they happen to be in—one that maybe Eddie used to live in, or maybe just a shell, an echo, a carbon copy—fuck if Steve understands what the Upside Down really is on that level;

“But I used to dream of buying an RV,” he tries to underscore the was of it, the used to: the very intentional past tense.

What he wants now is…a future. Almost any future. With this man. With his soulmate.

Eddie.

What he wants is for Eddie, to want to be his Eddie.

And to want Steve, to be Eddie’s Steve.

“They’re not entirely different, but,” Steve pulls furniture out to aid his manic quest, hears Eddie’s voice stop and start around words, mostly only settle around befuddled noises and squeaks; “one thing all the magazines said to watch for is—”

And then he sees it. Grins like he found the…holy-cup, thingy. World Cup?

The really important thingy.

“The ventilation.”

He points and turns to Eddie with what has to look like the grin of an absolutely crazy person but he doesn’t care one fucking bit.

He is somehow more relieved than he thinks is probably necessary to have found them, but like:

“The vents are often overlooked.”

All the RV magazine made comments about ventilation somewhere. He even read about improperly cleaned vents causing a fire, once.

But now he can cover all the bases. Now, he can protect Eddie. Now he has a fucking shot.

But first:

“We fortify this thing like Fort fucking Knox.”

Eddie takes him to where his uncle keeps most of their home improvement type supplies, which turns out to be under the couch and in various random places in the kitchen. He carries an arm full of tape and scissors, hammers and nails over toward the vents before going back for trip number two.

Eddie’s pulling another roll of duct tape out of another mystery drawer in the kitchen—Steve would ask what they needed so much of it for in ‘83 but it’s working for them, so he keeps his mouth shut—for them to block all possible creases and crevices, top to fucking bottom.

Which is exactly what Steve makes damn fucking sure they do.

“Do you really have to play, like, live? Outside, I mean,” Steve asks from focusing on his tape-job, before he starts boarding up the last possible point of entry, as Eddie starts hooking up the audio for the, y’know, the original diversion part of the plan; “or can you rig it to play like a tape, or something,” he’s grasping at straws, pulling too violently at the tape as he sticks another layer on, maybe the fourth by now and it still feels inadequate; “or can you play from in here—”

“Steve.”

He doesn’t expect Eddie so close, close enough for him to grab Steve’s elbows and still them.

To move his hold down Steve’s forearms. Like…deliberately.

“Let me lure them from out there, at least to make sure they’re taking the bait,” Eddie says, those eyes like the ocean in the dark, near-black and fathomless, but also safe and true and right; “and then we can swap a tape in, we can set that up now real fast, so it’s a quick-change?”

Steve blinks, stares down at Eddie’s hands on his, unexpected but right in a way Steve hadn’t even thought to anticipate, for if he ultimately found that soulmate he was after.

“I need you to stay safe. Please.”

The words catch in Steve’s throat, entirely unplanned, and rip rough over gravel on the way out as he looks up, then, and holds Eddie’s gaze with a level of intent he wasn’t sure he had in him before this very moment:

“Promise me.”

And there’s a second where Steve thinks that’s too much, that it goes too far—

“I swear, Steve,” Eddie barely breathes, but those depthless eyes almost seem now to glow: “I don’t understand, but I promise.”

And they let go of one another, and get back to work but…it all feels more vital now. More charged and absolute.

So when Eddie picks up his guitar, fiddles a little and checks the amps, ensures that this’ll shatter eardrums like it’s meant to—Steve pulls him by the collar, and re-zips every layer on him straight to the top.

“No being cute,” Steve reiterates, but even firmer this time; “no trying to be a hero.”

“Told you that wasn’t my area of expertise,” Eddie smirks enough to hollow a dimple.

“Fuck off,” Steve shoves at him, but not toward the door; not yet; “but you’re already plenty cute, so,” he reaches and straightens Eddie’s battle gear one last time as he takes a breath, clears his throat:

“Stick to the plan.”

It must feel as real in this moment to Eddie as it does to Steve, as final and as much of a risk as anything could ever be—or maybe Steve hadn’t cleared the heart in his throat, seizing up a riot, well enough to hide because Eddie stills, goes very suddenly very deathly pale, and blinks too fast to a long stretch of seconds before he’s the one clearing his throat, stumbling over words at a pitch at least an octave too high:

“Which was?” he asks, shaky, like he’sgrasping at straws now, or else: maybe just grasping.

“Umm,” “Eddie fumbles, and Steve can see the pulse heavy in this neck when he swallows; “just to remind me?”

Steve…Steve always knew whoever his soulmate was, he would love them. It’s just how he’s built. But like, soulmate or not, in this moment?

Steve thinks he’ll walk out of this with his heart on a fucking platter for this man, words on his arm or not.

He moves on instinct, and pulls Eddie into a tight hug, the bracing type to steady him as he whispers close to his ear, maybe too intimate by anyone else’s standards, but honestly?

Everyone else can go fuck thensleves.

“Play until they’re maybe…two minutes out,” Steve bullet-points the plan as clear as he can, wills himself not to be distracted by how Eddie seems to shake with the force of his own pulse. “Then get your ass back in here. We lock down and start the tape.”

He dares to squeeze Eddie close, so tight, just once, before moving his hands to Eddie’s shoulders and searching his eyes for questions—and yeah, also maybe just looking at those eyes.

“Roger that,” Eddie exhales so soft, and swallows hard, grabs for one of Steve’s hands on his shoulder still and squeezes it tight kinda out of nowhere, then they moving.

Steve takes another deep breath to steady himself and, after checking every nook and crack and cranny, and starts getting the tape and nails and boards set up to quick-fire seal the door once Eddie’s safe inside.

He’s freaking out, he’s not gonna sugarcoat or downplay it: but the way his heart’s pounding is kinda split for cause because…even though he knows every note his soulmate plays from the goddamn roof is meant to coax the apocalypse to turn their way—fuck, but Eddie’s good with that fucking guitar.

Steve doesn’t have to be into the genre to appreciate that it’s hot and yeah, okay—there’s no more he can do until Eddie’s inside so maybe he…takes a peek.

Oh yeah. Fucking hot.

He makes himself turn, check the sky: the bats are taking the bait.

They’re close e-fucking-nough.

“Eddie!” he yells it but it’s not enough over the amps so he guesses where a break will come and whistles between his fingers, startling Eddie enough to nearly drop his guitar.

“Inside! Now!” he snaps his fingers as Eddie scrambles down and into the trailer, setting his instrument aside as Steve flips the tape to play, more muted but still ear-splitting enough to take over before he starts taping the door once, twice, cross-cross, a third time—then he grabs for the nails and the panels they’d ripped from anywhere they served a purpose that wasn’t fucking structural, and starts hammering them in, decides another layer of duct tape can’t hurt, then, well, there’s more wood so, again, can’t be too careful—

He’s not expecting the hand reaching out to stop him.

“This the heavier version, then?”

Steve turns toward the rough, shaky words, means to tell Eddie to just wait, let him finish this, they don’t have time, but—

The arm Eddie’s grabbed…his sleeve has runched up. To show the words near his elbow. In…

The words come in your soulmate’s handwriting, right, so Eddie would…would recognize that, even if he forgot saying…

“I,” Steve thinks his mouth moves more than it makes actual noise, and this time his heart pounding isn’t split for its reason in any possible way, no, it’s all tangled up: terror and want and nerves and resolve all mixed together. He tries to read anything from Eddie’s face, from the way he stares at Steve with those wide, wide eyes.

“Yeah?” Steve kinda chokes around it a little—maybe he’s hoping something telling, something readable will shift in Eddie’s expression: no dice. Just staring, and breathing a little heavy, and the chittering of the bats getting ever-closer outside.

Steve breathes out, nails the last panel in and straightens up, looks Eddie straight in those big gorgeous eyes that he desperately wants the chance to drown in later, when this is over.

He really hopes being honest right now doesn’t cost him a chance at later.

“Yeah.”

And in what feels like the last fucking second left before Steve’s heart fucking rips through his skin, Eddie’s face flickers and gives…everything away.

He fucking glows.

“Good,” and Eddie’s breathless with something other than the fear of dying, despite the circumstances, despite the incoming flood of creatures out for their blood; he’s not wholly absent of nerves as he rolls up his own sleeve, but he’s vibrating almost, more than he’s shaking, and it comes through in the words that spill forth in a rush:

“Because this one’s mine.”

And there it is, thrust into Steve’s eyeline, in Steve’s very familiar scrawl:

stick to the plan

He…he remembers saying that. And he remembers Eddie paling so fast Steve would have been scared if they weren’t awaiting a fight for their lives but…

Maybe that hadn’t been it at all.

“Seriously?”

It comes out of Steve breathier than he wants, or expects because…he guesses he never really processed, in all the years and in all the yearning, the planning, the wanting, the…the all of it.

He didn’t really process the soulmate he’d find, finding him back.

“Couldn’t let you stop talking there,” Eddie says, a little small, almost shy; “whether you’d want me or not, I couldn’t—”

And Steve, who had wondered just how bad the nerves were for Eddie to have forgotten the pretty straight forward plan they’d both been working on pretty single-mindedly since they’d split from Dustin and the girls, but now, now he—

The bats will be here in a fucking second.

But fuck it, Steve leans in.

And fuck but Eddie meets him halfway without a second’s hesitation.

Steve maybe hears the bats start to hit the trailer; might be his heartbeat in his ears. He knows he hears Eddie moan and tease Steve’s lips, hears that moan go deeper when Steve’s mouth opens and their tongues find each other and, well.

There’s nothing left for them to do, really. They’ve played their role—and Steve hadn’t battened down the hatches on this place for nothing, after all.

This is a hell of a lot better way to wait out their end of things, by a fucking long shot, regardless—and Jesus.

Steve couldn’t ever have expected Eddie to taste this sweet.

♥️🦇🦇♥️

✨also on ao3

For @stuftzombie (to whom I apologise 1) for completely misreading your prompt and writing this first, and then going back and reading it RIGHT—so like, please tell me if you want a second CORRECT fill now that I’m back online to post one, I can absolutely write the original prompt no problem—I feel both very stupid and also TERRIBLE for somehow making THIS THE PROMPT, and then 2) I also apologise PROFUSELY for the EGREGIOUS delay—I had a folder of prompts that I saved twice, but didn’t realise was a separate file 🫠) who requested SOULMATE AU at my HOBBIT-STYLE BIRTHDAY MONTH PROMPT FEST

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