#still no guarantee when the next update will come. my brain is a balloon waiting to burst

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 97

Part 1 Part 96

Perkins and Barb are already there when Eddie wakes up. Perkins hushed laugh grates at his brain, shredding it like cheese until he has no choice but to open his eyes. 

“What the fuck?” Eddie murmurs, rubbing dust bunnies from his eyes.

They’re sitting huddled together at the side of Steve’s bed, Wayne at their side in his own chair. 

“Mornin’, boy,” he says, sipping at his shitty cup of free hospital coffee as he looks down his nose at Eddie’s prone form. “You done hogging your friend's sick bed?” He puts a weird inflection on the word ‘friend’ that has Eddie’s cheeks blooming.

“Shut up, old man,” he hisses. 

The bed’s a tight enough fit that he can feel Steve’s warmth radiating all up his back and up his ribs where his arm’s partially wrapped around Eddie. He tries to shuffle free, movements slow and furtive so as not to interrupt his sleep. 

It doesn’t work. Steve’s arm tightens, the metal splint on finger painfully into Eddie’s ribs as he mutters, “where you going Eddie?” but he slurs it altogether and trails off so it comes out more like, “wherego, Ed.” 

Eddie smiles, helpless and aching with it as he settles back onto the hospital's shitty cardboard mattress.

“You’ve got visitors, angel.”

Steve’s hand leaving his waist feels like a loss. His elbow digs into Eddie’s back as he props himself up enough to be able to see past Eddie’s wild hair to who’s sitting beside his bed. 

“What the fuck?” 

Wayne huffs. “Mornin, kid, reaching past Eddie to ruffle Steve’s hair. “How ya feelin’?”

“I’m fine,” Steve lies, voice turning distant and small as he asks,  “Carol?”

Unable to stand not seeing Steve’s face for a second longer, Eddie shuffles within tight quarters to lever himself up, back plastered to what passes as the bed’s headboard. Steve’s still propped up on his elbows, arms shaking as he tries to hold himself up.

Eddie reaches over, pulling with all his strength until Steve’s settled upright beside him. Steve doesn’t turn his way, but he reaches over and takes Eddie’s hand like it’s instinct, and that’s even better.

Steve’s eyes are big as he looks over at his best friend. “What–” he starts, word cracking dryly in his throat.  “What are you doing here?”

Eddie reaches over to grab the pitcher of water on Steve’s bedside table, glowering when Barb beats him to it. She pours it into one of the hospital's flimsy paper cups, holding it out to Steve like an offering.

He takes it, gulps it down, doesn’t look away from Perkinsl’ washed-out face. 

She’s not wearing any make-up, and her hair’s gone all greasy and flat. Most damning, she’s wearing one of Steve’s Hawkins swim team hoodies that Eddie knows for a fact was folded up in his own dresser at home. It swallows her, hanging past her hips until she’s shapeless.

She looks worn down and tired. Still, she rolls her eyes as Barb settles back down beside her. “What, you think I was gonna miss the show?” she asks. Her lips are quirked up playfully, eyes glossy.  “It was like King Steve all over again” 

Eddie looks away from her to watch that land on Steve. Steve who has always somehow been more and less than those around him make him out to be. Steve who’s always been more than a simple high school king. He furrows his brows the way he does when he knows there was a joke but the punchline hasn’t landed for him. 

“Wha–”

“You know because you were out of your mind and lost control?”

Eddie whips his head around, ready to strangle and snarl, rend flesh from bone. Barb sighs, dropping her face in her hand. Perkinss just sitting there, biting her lip on a laugh as she keeps her gaze trained on Steve. Like she hadn’t just said the most insensitive fucking thing Eddie’d ever heard come out of her mouth. 

Eddie feels Steve’s whole body tremble where their pressed hip to overlapping hip in the small bed. The rage boils inside Eddie until he’s shaking with it.

Behind him, Steve Harrington laughs. Eddie turns. Steve’s shoulders are shaking as he bites his own lip against his own helpless laughter, eyes shining as he looks over at his morbid, fucking up best friend. 

“Personally, I think this is an upgrade,” Steve says because even in this, these two are fucking freaks about everything.

“Beer pong to dropping bodies?” Perkins asks.

Eddie can’t help the way he gasps, clutching at his chest like he’s a suburban Mom that just caught sight of some ruffian in the grocery store. Perkins shifts her eyes over to Eddie, and somehow looking at his beat up face is what gets her crying.

It’s less that she stands up and more than she tries to stand, lunges forward, knees hitting the metal edge of the bed with a thwack as she crawls over the safety railing and falls partially on top of both their mangled bodies. 

Eddie tries to squirm out and away, but she’s got her face buried in Steve’s shoulder, arms wrapped around both of their necks. “I’m sorry I got lover boy's face beat in!” she warbles.

Steve snorts, snotty and wet. “That was you?”

They’re both messy, crying and laughing, refusing to let Eddie off this fucking bed and away from whatever the hell has infected it. He raises his head in desolation to meet Barb’s resigned gaze. 

She shrugs at him, chin cradled in the palm of her hand as she watches the two idiots in the bed lose their shit over something that should’ve never been funny. 

Eddie squints at her. She looks so ready to accept fate, like of course Perkins would be like this, and of course she’ll stay anyway. Somehow, after such a short time, they’re already a package deal.

Well, she could do worse. They both could 

“Carol, you–” Eddie starts before stalling, staring with wide eyes at Barb’s amused face. He clears his throat, starts over even though it’s too late. Names hold power, and now Carol’s gonna have ownership of his soul. Or however it goes. “Perkins, you’re a fucking freak.”

Carol sniffles and snorts, like a pig in a bog before lifting her head from Steve’s neck. Her face is covered in snot and saltwater, eyes puffy and ruined, but she’s smiling when she flings her arms around Eddie, rubbing her face into his own shirts despite his protests.

“Takes one to know one, darling,” she says, hugging him tight. 

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Part 98