#they are finally Sort Of getting along!!! maybe someday they'll even be on a first name basis!!!

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-down AU Part 4

Part 1 Part 3

We should go to the store,” Steve says. 

He says it mostly to get Munson’s blood up. The silence is digging into his head, making every breath the other takes sound like the ragged wail of that fucking monster.

The longer he stays there, crouched in the trees, the harder it is to tell how much of the ache in his stomach is fear, and how much is hunger. They should find food, water, shelter, a way out of this bullshit.

Munson scoffs. “Looks like you’re getting your way, huh King Steve?”

Steve stands, legs unsteady. His feet are cold and bare in the dirt, gone numb around the ants under his skin. His hand aches from clutching the other boys. He drops it, shaking out the clenched nerves. “Yeah,” he says, channeling all the bitchiness Carol had hammered into his head over pseudo girls nights, “I summoned that thing into my bedroom just because I really wanted to go on a shopping date with you Munson.”

He starts through the woods in the general direction of the store, smiling at the sound of Munson sputtering incoherently behind him before the other boys jogs to catch back up.

“Careful there, big boy.” Muson leans into his space, smile saccharine around all its cracks. “I might just go and catch feelings.”

Steve rolls his eyes, shoving the other boy a few steps away. He can’t stop looking around for a threat, or some tear in the air that’ll lead them back home. He wants to be warm.

The rest of the trip to Melvald’s is quiet, but every time Steve glances his way, Eddie’s biting his lip against the words practically bursting from him.

He’s always been a talker. In the hallways, on cafeteria tables, even beneath the bleachers when he’s trying to keep a low profile. His voice carries. It’s almost painful to watch him try and suppress it. 

No wonder teachers are always cursing his name.

Prying the door open is louder than Steve wants—metal creaking on hinges aged decades in a matter of hours. It echoes off the vacant shops loud enough that both boys stop, staring into each other’s panicked eyes as they wait for a sign that something is coming. The silence echoes around them, bouncing off the storefronts like a physical force.

Nothing stirs.

Steve pries the door open a tiny bit more, gesturing Munson inside. He does a dorky little curtsy on the way, pulling the gaping knees of his jeans like they’re the hems of a skirt. Steve rolls his eyes, but follows him in.

The door resists closing, but Steve pulls it shut, around the sounds of its own groans. The illusion of safety and all that. Munson must feel the same because he immediately starts chattering.

“Is this how you feel, all the time, Harrington?” he asks, bounding over to the cereal aisle and pulling a luridly orange box down from the shelf. He pries the box open, pulling at the seams of the bag like an impatient child on Christmas morning. “No budget, no coupons, just—shit.”

He drops the box around his startled expletive before immediately ripping into a new one.

“What?” Steve asks, but he’s already following in Munson’s wake and reaching down for the abandoned box. Before he even pulls the plastic bag out, he can smell the stench of food gone off. He pulls it out anyway.

Just like the door, and the street, and the water in his tap—the cereal in the bag has seemingly aged years in a matter of hours. Each wheaty bite has shriveled into itself, turning an off-putting grey and smelling like a stack of cardboard left to mold in the rain.

Munson’s still picking up and discarding boxes, movements growing more frantic with each new discovery.

In a state beyond horror, Steve wanders over to the water aisle. There’s no light on in the store, but the bottles almost seem to glow—an unholy green, murky and brackish in their pristine bottles, still lined up like it was opening day. It looks like some sort of gone-wrong science experiment from those science fiction movies Carol pretends she doesn’t like to watch. They look just like the sludge in his pipes back home.

Munson is cursing up a storm as he rounds the aisle, but he goes quiet when he sees Steve. He’s not sure what he looks like, but Munson’s hand reaches out and lands on his shoulder. Steve can barely feel its warm squeeze—can’t bear to tear his eyes away from those bottles.

It’s becoming a pattern, the way they’re always stuck together in horrified silence. It’s also becoming a pattern that one of them breaks said silence with some convoluted bullshit.

“Where’s your shoes,  man?” Munson asks, like he’s only just noticed the flesh beyond the caked-on mud.

Steve sighs, shrugging off the other boy’s hand. His toes are numbed past the point of pain as he limps to the first-aid aisle, Munson trailing in his wake.

He ends up on the ground, clutching a roll of bandages, staring down at the bottoms of his feet. The bandages are soft and spongy. Clean. But he can’t even see the abrasions on the bottoms of his feet past the dirt and mud. There’s no water. There’s nothing. So, he just sits there, feeling nothing.

He’s still on the ground. Time must be passing but he doesn’t feel it, can’t see it in the dank light of the store.

He blinks and Munson’s sitting in front of him, Steve’s right foot in his lap. There’s a crumpled pile of used wet wipes beside the other boy’s hip, the brown and red from his own feet smudged across their normally pristine white surfaces.

The package crinkles as Munson pulls the plastic lid open to tear off a fresh wipe. He’s gentle enough that it tickles slightly between the toes and on the arch of his foot as Munson scrubs the last of the dirt away.

Steve clears his throat.

Munson snaps his gaze up, fingers twitching flightily on his foot, but doesn’t stop his ministrations. “You back with me?”

Steve nods. He wants to ask where he was before but can’t force the words past his constricting throat. He feels alarmingly close to tears.

He feels like he’s been sucked out of his body and into a very small tube, compressed until his breaths come in short, punched-out bursts that never fully enter his lungs.

“I think you’re having a panic attack,” Munson says, voice even. He’s looking down at Steve’s foot again, stroking it almost soothingly with the dirtied towelette. “I need you to breath with me, okay?”

Munson’s breathing gets loud and purposeful—long breaths in through his nose, longer breaths out through his mouth. Steve stares, enraptured, and gasps along.

Time passes. Steve’s shoulders slump. His fingers are tingling like they do sometimes at the end of a long basketball game. Sweat dripping down his face, body buzzing with excited adrenaline, fingers buzzing with the need for the ball.

The squeeze of Munson’s hand around his ankle catapults him out of the tube and back into Melvald’s.

Embarrassment crashes into Steve. He crawls to his feet, using the shelving behind him to steady himself. He stands, with creaking knees and hobbles stiff-legged out of the aisle, tossing “I’m going to to find some shoes,” over his shoulder.

“Okay,” Munson replies, so quietly Steve can barely hear it. 

There’s a thank you stuffed deep in Steve’s throat, trying to crawl its way past his mortification. There’s gauze wrapped around the soles of his feet, containing the damage. He’s not sure when Munson even did it.

There’s not a single fucking shoe in any of the aisles–not even a fucking pair of slippers. He’s three seconds away from duct taping the bottom of his feet and calling it good when there’s a tap on his shoulder. He whirls, slipping as his gauze, covered feet try to keep traction. Munson steadies him with a hand to his elbow.

There’s a pair of ratty sneakers clutched in his other hand, and he’s smiling dimples popping. 

“Where’d you get those?” 

Munson beams, skipping in place like a kid playing hopscotch. “Found them in the breakroom,” he says. “Do you think your highness can lower himself to wear a poor, lowly worker man’s shoes?”

His eyes are fucking twinkling. Steve’s heart fucking twitches. This whole thing is too fucking derranged for him to handle.

“What size?”

Munson cackles tossing the shoes into Steve’s chest. 

Steve bends down, pushing his feet into the shoes sockless, hoping the gauze will do enough to keep blisters at bay. They’re a little loose, so Steve ties the crumbling shoelaces tight, hoping against Munson’s fucking dimples that they don’t break. He double knots them. They hold.

“Thanks,” he says, still looking down at the ratty things. 

“Gotta clothe our knights properly for battle!” Munson says. Steve looks up just in time to see that same goofy curtsey.

“I thought I was the King?” he asks. “Have I been demoted?”

Munson laughs again, bringing a curl to his face, as if to hide his grin. “I don’t see any of your subjects around,” he says. It should be mocking, but the elbow he drives into Steve’s side is good-natured. Playful. “Besides, knights are way cooler.”

Steve sighs, can’t believe he’s devolved to playing along with this level of nerdom. “Where’s my sword then, huh Munson?”

Munson sweeps his arms wide encompassing the entirety of Melvald’s in his gesture. “You’re down on your luck, Sir Harrington. You’ve lost your noble steed and your enchanted sword to a suductress from a rival kingdom. Now you’re on a perilous quest to reclaim your property, and regain your rightful place by the King’s side!”

“And where are you in this whole mess?” Steve asks, already kicking himself for playing along.

“Well, I, Sir Steve, as the King’s devoted jester, am on this quest with you to save you from a fate worse than death.”

“Oh, yeah?” Steve asks, inching closer to Munson, unsure of why. “What’s that?”

“Boredom, of course!”

Munson’s hair is a mess. It’s more fly-away than contained. His skin looks a little oily around his forehead, and he looks absolutely ridiculous with Steve’s clothes on. But his eyes are shining, and his smile is beaming, and Steve wonders how someone can be that bright in the literal bowels of hell. 

“Shove off, Munson,” Steve laughs, shoving his shoulder lightly as he walks past.

Munson skips up to keep in pace. “Now, what, my liege?”

“So what, I’m the King again?”

Munson puts a hand over his heart, gasping dramatically. “You’ll always be a King to me.”

Steve feels warmth in his cheeks, pushes it down, doesn’t think about it. What now, he says. What now? 

“Now,” he says, thinking aloud as he eyes the aisles around them. “We collect anything useful around here and go.”

“But–”

“We’re not going to last much longer without water, man.” he replies.

Munson sighs. “The quarry?” he asks, sounding like he’d rather say anything else.

“The quarry,” Steve agrees, feeling just the same. 

Part 5