Chapter Text

Art by ArsTyrannus

··Playlist··

-Prologue-

He misses the daylight.

It’s been gone a long time. He’s not sure how long. There’s no scale. No difference between weeks and years. Without the daylight, it’s all one terrible night. Never ending, there’s no change in the skies save for the occasional flash of dull red.

And he misses it, the memory of daylight because he thinks, isn’t sure, but he thinks he was happy in the daylight.

Whatever that word means.

Before is a fractured, filthy window. It’s cracked and broken, transparency lost, but in the jagged gaps, he finds little pieces now and then. Tiny slivers of blue sky, of how it felt to smile. People are there in those gaps sometimes, but he never lets himself reach for their names, for any part of them.

That would be a mistake.

In the inky grey lands cast in shadow, he wanders.

There is no water in this wasteland, but there is blood and blood, he knows now, is everything. Rotted, foul skin gives way to sharp objects and superior hunger. He drinks blood and for a little while after, he feels alive.

He wears that blood around his mouth and it drips from the sharp points of his nails that retract, no longer needed but for the kill. He walks around the place that lives inside him and he dares reach for abstract things that come through the cracks.

Daylight.

Rain.

The long lost thing called music.

All else he might wish for, he keeps buried.

He can’t risk them seeing it. He won’t.

As he wanders, weeks, months, years, it’s all the same, he grows stronger. He kills with ease now. He hunts. The dead moon that waxes and wanes in the sky whispers things to him, it tells him where the best prey can be found, it tells him secrets.

Whenever he kills the creatures that stand tall and scream loud with wide, rounded mouths, he feels a sense of forgotten victory.

He feels like he did a good thing, even though that word is hard to grasp and hold.

The bats avoid him.

He can feel when they swarm; a sensation that brings forth a deep shudder and he hates it when they swarm. He would kill them if he could catch them, he’d rip them apart by the wing joints and not even drink what spills out because they are kin and he despises the word as it is formed inside him. They avoid him as he walks and hunts and then runs, then climbs. They leave him alone, they fear what they made.

He misses the daylight the way he misses his own name. That, like so much else, is simply gone. A tether cut, string slipped through fingers and now lost. He wishes he knew it, like he knows the names of those he sees sometimes through the cracks. A handful of names are precious, even as he buries them beneath what earth he can gather inside himself. There is something interwoven in those names and faces, he can’t recall, but the feeling resembles daylight.

So he wanders and he hunts and he kills. Sometimes he kills for pleasure, not even to feed from because these larger ones that walk upright elicit a deep sense of injustice within him. He kills savagely, he takes pleasure in it and by the time he comes to a place he is undeniably drawn to, he knows he is a killer.

He is a monstrous thing.

It cannot replace the lost name or the daylight, the handful of faces he buries, the abstract knowledge of the great before, but it’s something. He holds onto it as he stares up at the ruin of a place he’s never seen.

He hears the faint echoes of… music.

The taste of something forms on the back of his tongue, unknown enough to raise his hackles for the unknown is dangerous. Better to grip it, to pierce, bite and drain.

It’s a home, he realises as he circles. Someone lives there, or they did once, in the other place. Daylight, sun, happiness through the cracks, though he can’t quite recall what it meant to be happy. He does not know what that involves.

There is music in the air, though. It’s loud and it calls to him and when he peers through the broken windows, he hears a voice.

Eddie.

He goes still, frozen there by the glass as the music echoes inside him and that word reaches down deep to yank on the divide.

The fractures widen. The cracks become webs.

What is Eddie? He doesn’t know, but it feels like daylight, like the faces he keeps safe from them. It makes him yearn, a different hunger from the one he knows best.

Hunger that cannot be slaked with death and blood.

Eddie, I miss you, the voice says and it breaks beneath some unseen weight.

Now he is caught, he is tangled in this voice. In the words, in the downward dipping spiral of dangerous familiarity he thinks he cannot bury in time. He knows this voice.

He parts his lips and speaks for the first time.

It comes naturally, without thought.

‘Steve.’

And that, like so much else, is a mistake.

Because he does not know what Steve is, he can’t take the splinters and make a whole, but he knows they see it.

They hear it.

And after wandering in this place without daylight, after consuming foul blood and learning where best to hunt the biggest prey, they finally see him.

The twin eyes of terrible shadows lock onto him from above. Something pure black grips his insides, holds him tight and lovingly purrs, there you are.

The building vanishes and he is lifted, yanked, brought to kneel before the gruesome shadow and the intangible thing his insides call Master.

The intangible thing has no body. It has no feet to walk on, no hands to deal damage, but it is still powerful. Master of the shadow monster, of this place.

He is made to kneel, his body is malleable, pliable for the hands that craft horror and he… he is something horrible, so like all else in this wasteland, he kneels.

I wasn’t always horrible, he dares think in the furthest recesses of his mind. I was happy in the daylight.

The intangible thing is everywhere and nowhere, but he feels the force as it slips inside his mind, into the slipstream of his thoughts. Instinctual violation that comes naturally.

I almost forgot you, it says, voice deep, masculine. How strange you are now, how rare.

He feels the phantom sense of touch rubbing the wrong way through his insides, carelessly playing with his bones, his muscle, his organs.

Sometimes, even I am surprised by what this place can create. Beautiful abomination, I think I will keep you.

He thinks of the house. The music. The voice.

The name. It was a name, he knows now. Eddie is a name. Just like Steve. People have names. They have voices and smiles and they laugh in the daylight.

The shire is burning, he had once said, daylight version of the world, of himself. So Mordor it is.

‘Eddie,’ he gasps, eyes opening, seeking to repel the hands that violate, that play with a sense of ownership he detests even more than the kinship of the bats. ‘M-my name is Eddie.’

The intangible thing smiles. Evil, cruel, it lovingly reproaches him, refuses by gripping his insides harder, making them still like stone. Obedient, servile.

No, it corrects, this masculine voice, the evil with no body. Eddie was sure it had a name once too. All things have names and if they don’t, people give them one. To name a thing is to take its power. No, rare thing, you are mine and your name shall be Kas.

You're Divine

Art By Sam

Chapter One

"The Book of Fate"

Long was the night and you never looked back
I fell for you once
And your eyes they were rivers of black
Your hair was like rain
In the heart of a deafening silence
that clung to your wrist
like the mark of a terrible tyrant
My eyes are like his.

-Luca Wilding

Steve thinks it’s crystal fucking clear.

Of all the losses, the let-down’s, times he’s been too slow, missed a fucking step because everyone else is so smart… this one will live on inside him, ripe with irony, as the loss he’ll never be able to shake.

The time he wasn’t there.

Always the god-damned babysitter!

All times but the ones that mattered.

A week passes after they leave Eddie behind, then two, then it’s a month and Dustin is falling apart. Kid’s missing a core piece of something he loved, something he trusted would always be there.

It is loss, carved deep, no different than any scar, any broken skin that comes together to form anew where blood runs thick and fast. But for Dustin it’s new. Kid’s never known darkness cut through all his sunshine like that before, it’s his first time, Steve knows.

Eddie Munson is dead, gone.

The bathroom mirror is filthy, it’s spattered with watermarks and condensation tracks, but he’ll be damned if he calls a cleaner until he absolutely has to, likes the way he can barely fucking see himself in this thing. It’s better that way.

He shaves rough, feels around and uses his fingers to find the stubble. It’ll be a patchy job and more than once he feels the razor snick skin as well as hair, sees red swimming with white foam in the sink, like something melting from Scoops, but it’s neither sweet nor good, just his blood.

When he rinses, he adds to the water marks, leaves the place a state, like he found it. This is his house now, he owns it, he lives there alone. It’s big and empty and he is slowly letting it fall to ruin, because why not? Hawkins house prices dropped hard and then the bottom fell out. Steve’s parents left him to it, gave him what they consider his and wished him well.

It’s silent. Empty. Negative space in every corner, room and place he tries to fill with light and electronic noise.

But he can’t fill it. He can’t throw a party. No one wants that these days. No one wants to play games anymore. The town is holding on by a thread.

So, he’s just sort of there, he’s existing there alone.

Nothing new, he’s good at it. He knows all the tricks. TV on all night, in more than one room, radio in the kitchen, exterior lights left on always.

That’s essential.

That’s the thing his sanity hinged upon as a kid. Making sure all the outside lights were on so he could turn a few lights off inside. Sometimes when he was younger, he’d put the radio outside by the glowing pool, and pretend his parents were having a party.

The mirror doesn’t show his face, only his outline, blurred by filth and neglect and that’s great. That’s fucking perfect.

Steve Harrington doesn’t want to see himself these days, sick of who he sees looking back.

*

The phone lines have been reconnected since last Monday, but the connection on his end is thin, unreliable. When he calls Dustin, he gets Mrs Henderson and it’s choppy at best.

‘Hel—Stevie,’ she answers, happy to hear him asking for her son, but sad because… because her son is knee deep in grief. ‘I’m—honey—said he still doesn’t wanna—to anyone.’

Steve grips the phone tight, swallows over the rocky lump in his throat and nods as if she can see him.

‘No problem,’ he says slowly. ‘Tomorrow I’ll come by, see if he wants to go anywhere.’

Where? Where would he want to go?

‘Th—lovely,’ she says. ‘How—make—lunch?’

Food. He grimaces. ‘’Perfect, thanks.’

‘Great—you then.’

Steve hangs up, ignores how his fingers tremble. He thinks that the world does not end with a bang, no generous surprise or sudden boom. It goes slow, it fills the air with ash and makes the skies grey. It isolates people with individual grief they feel duty bound to shoulder alone.

It comes in through the cracks.

Steve leans against the wall where his stupid phone hangs, long cord bouncing.

‘Fuck.’

It’s an understatement, honestly.

He presses his head to the wall, closes his eyes and thinks maybe this time, maybe this time he won’t see it.

All he hopes for is darkness. The absence of light behind thin skin, that’s all he wants as he closes his eyes.

But it’s there. It is all still there.

Eddie Munson is smiling up at him from the driver’s seat of that big-ass RV, he’s in Steve’s personal space and he’s so comfortable there, happy to be near him.

Eddie Munson is walking through the wastelands of the upside down with him, he’s making conversation that hinges around Steve, makes him central. Eddie Munson is trying to make Steve Harrington’s life better and isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just fucking… unbelievable?

No. Not really.

Steve opens his eyes. They’re wet and his throat is thick with intrusive weight, with dense, useless emotions he can’t source without admitting shit.

Eddie Munson is dead and gone, but he’s always there when Steve shuts his eyes. The man has imprinted himself onto the blank canvas that is Steve Harrington. He came onto the scene vivid and unforgettable, hell of an impression and now that he’s gone… Steve doesn’t know how to wash him away.

He grits his teeth, fists the wall and tells himself tomorrow it’ll be better. Tomorrow he’ll see black when he closes his eyes. Tomorrow, he’ll eat food and be whatever Dustin needs him to be.

‘Tomorrow,’ he says aloud, like it’s binding that way, like any fucker is around to hear it and hold him to it. ‘OK, tomorrow.’

But tonight, he thinks, shoving away from the wall, tonight he’s getting fucking smashed.

*

Steve gets near blackout drunk more than he likes to admit, especially the last few weeks, once it’s clear no one really needs him at night. No one wants to come all the way out to where he is and there is no cohesive whole to the group, not right now.

Families are moving, they’re leaving, the parents are paying attention to where their kids are going for the first time. Max still won’t wake up.

Steve’s parents handed him the deeds and his inheritance and fucking booked it to some sunny place with bottomless gin and tonics.

He has a big, empty house he’s terrified of and a bank account in a town where the shops are all shutting down. He has a nailed bat by the front door, but he doesn’t need it.

So he gets drunk.

Drinks until he starts doing stupid shit, like turning the music up loud as it goes, dancing around the kitchen, pure throwing shapes and screaming along with the lyrics and it feels good right up until it doesn’t, until it catches up to him and his eyes burn, his chest goes tight and whatever he thought he could shake off, sinks deeper into his dark places.

‘Eddie,’ he says, not for the first time that night, certainly not the last. Palms on the cool marble of his kitchen, Bruce Springsteen blares, and Steve is shaking all over. He closes his eyes, sees him.

He fucking sees him like he’s there.

It chokes a sob loose, strangles it right out as minor keys run riot through his fucked up feelings, alcohol making it all liquid and loose.

He sees Eddie wrestling with Dustin, he thinks of every time they talked about him. That little sense of recognition Steve had felt but not acknowledged. The oh, you love this kid too, huh, feeling.

His shoulders hunch, bare feet cold against the dirty floor and he is spinning, Steve Harrington is tail spinning, but he has nowhere to land, no safe zones.

And it’s fucked up that he’s wearing the jacket, he knows that. It’s just…

There’s no one else.

Nothing else.

It feels special in the way that a kid finds a rock, thinks it’s the coolest thing ever, expect their parents will keep it forever.

Like, Steve knows it’s just a jacket. It’s rough denim, weighty and unwashed. It probably wasn’t even that special to Eddie, he just handed it over without thinking, but Steve doesn’t have anything else.

Eddie’s trailer is gone, all his things destroyed.

This is the only little piece left of the man that Steve cannot unsee, cannot forget. All else is a fucking warrant.

Steve runs his hand over the front, feels every nuance of it as he takes a deep breath. He’s drunk, but not numb.

Not yet.

‘Eddie, I miss you,’ he says aloud, lets himself say dumb fucking shit when he’s this drunk because tomorrow (he hopes) he’ll forget.

He’ll forget the way he shrugs out of the jacket, keeps his eyes closed as if that makes any difference, and then bunches the material, brings it to his face.

It smells of the upside down. Of sweat, the sharp, male kind. Steve thinks that’s him, not Eddie. Beneath that, though, he finds little trails of life lived in this denim. Cigarettes, weed, cheap shit cologne, basic soap.

Skin. Hair. Eddie.

Steve drops his face into it, cradles it in his arms on the counter-top and screams into the fabric.

He’s a fucking mess, unable to pinpoint the cause beyond Eddie and the absence of him. It makes no sense.

He can’t make it make sense unless he’s honest and honestly, fuck that.

So he drinks more.

Atta boy.

*

It’s around two or three in the morning and Steve is not blackout drunk, he’s something else. Maybe it’s an energy spike from all the dancing, but he feels more awake than usual. He’s still drunk, absolutely, but not in the way he set out to achieve.

Not face down in the bed, shut the fuck up, brain.

More like the, ‘Why the fuck is all my music so shitty?’ kind.

And he won’t drive, obviously because that could end up with some poor fucker spattered all over his windshield, no.

So Steve yanks on a pair of beat up old sneakers, laces tucked in the sides because fine motor skills are out the window, and then he goes outside.

With alcohol in his blood, he feels immortal.

It’s not a good feeling, but it cuts through the fear, burns away all the weak rot around the edges. Insecurities, worries; piddly shit compared to the end of the world. To real fucking loss.

To Dustin Henderson’s grief.

The woods are dense and dark, abundant light from his house draining away the further he gets until he’s walking through the trees, vaguely confident in his ability to navigate because this is his home, this piece of shit podunk town, and he’d know the layout anywhere.

He knows this tree from that, knows the way the ground curves up, leans into a bank and then verges right, no… no, that’s left, shit, wait.

‘Shit,’ he says, wants to laugh at how calm he sounds.

Steve turns around and realises he is completely lost. It’s pitch black. Only the full moon above provides any light whatsoever and even that only serves to drive home how lost Steve is.

He turns around a bunch of times before he realises what a huge mistake he’s making because now he can’t even go back the way he came.

And when he starts laughing, it comes hard.

It’s the funniest fucking thing because where was he going? What was he thinking? That he’d find a record store in the woods outside his house? Open this late and he’s got no money.  

Steve Harrington thinks he’s the biggest idiot alive and it’s so funny it hurts his sides, makes him feel like he’s splitting and only his arms wrapped around his middle can hold him together.

Then he’s on his knees and it’s cold, leafy, damp.

It’s not so funny anymore.

‘Just wanted,’ he says aloud, to the woods, the world, the moon, to the one person who’s gone. ‘To hear the kinda shit you liked. Lotta stuff you said and I thought, what’s that? Sounded cool, I dunno.’ He shrugs, suddenly defensive and the woods, the world and the moon absolutely do not care about his monologue, but it’s not them he’s defensive against. ‘Doesn’t matter anymore, does it? No record store, no one to ask who the fuck Osbert—Oz—the fuck you said, I dunno. Doesn’t matter cos you’re gone now and I was just…’ Steve’s hands move up into his hair to pull like he’s a child throwing a tantrum. ‘I wanted to know more.’

Steve Harrington should know better than to bare his throat to the dark of Hawkins. He’s seen what hundreds of teeth look like crammed into a single mouth. He knows, yet there is freedom in it too. Something sick and satisfyingly weightless.

He closes his eyes and sees him so clearly, despite the alcohol, the bone-deep exhaustion, he just sees him like he’s alive.

Eddie has broken glass to Steve’s throat. He’s holding him flat to the wall, dark eyes moving between Steve’s, seeking threat, eventually finding none.

‘I wanted to know you better,’ he confesses, on the back of a quiet sob.

He’s there a minute or two, just kneeling in the woods when he hears something. Crack of twigs from weight greater than a deer. Rustle of undergrowth, intrusion into the area.

Steve scrambles up, another mistake because his vision goes sideways, it’s all fucked up in nought to ninety, but he gathers his strength and calls out, ‘Who’s there?’ like every other asshole before him who expects a monster to politely reply.

The sounds cease in response.

Steve is going to die, he’s going to get fucking eaten. The very word makes him sick, makes him want to purge every last thing inside his stomach in helpless, demented empathy of the way Eddie Munson died. Steve hasn’t been able to finish a meal since that night, can’t quite make it past a forkful or two before his body is protesting and his ears are ringing.

Eaten alive.

‘Steve.’

He freezes, goes rigid, eyes scanning around while his dumb slut of a heart gets in a fine frenzy over the voice it thinks it just heard. Things like common sense and logic are dampened beneath the sly enabler that is vodka, so Steve turns frantically.

‘Ed-Eddie?’

The turning is another mistake (clusterfuck, Harrington) because then the world starts spinning like a tilt-a-whirl. He staggers to the left, smacks into a tree. His cheek grazes the rough bark, hurts only a little as he clings and struggles to stay upright, but he thinks he’s snagged a few places where he cut himself shaving.

A low snarl comes from too close behind him.

Every hair on the back of his neck stands up.

This is it, he thinks. This is where I die.

And it’s exactly like he imagined, in all the worst ways.

Confirmation that he really is just meat, that he’s stupid as all out fuck, that no matter the narrative he weaves for himself, he is just food to something bigger, stronger.

And that he will die alone, is maybe the worst of it.

His peripheral senses run wild, he can feel whatever it is behind him; he feels breath, the heavy gaze of a superior creature.  

Then he remembers the voice.

Hope is a dangerous thing and Steve Harrington knows that better than most, but he can’t help reaching for it every time. Like desert shimmers that mimic water, he is eternally, idiotically naive when drunk and so he slowly turns.

It sounded so like him, distinctive voice, he thinks he’d know it anywhere.

But then another low snarl fills the air and his survival instincts refuse him agency, they won’t let him turn and see what is about to eat him alive.

‘Please,’ he simply says, doesn’t quite know what he wants.

He says please and he waits, blood racing too hard, too fast through his veins. It’s starting to hurt, making him dizzy in a way he doesn’t understand because he’s been drunk plenty and it’s never… fuck, never done this to his body.

Steve has one hand on the tree, the other slightly raised as the back of his neck breaks out in a shiver, delicate appreciation of the attention. He’s shaking, mind jarred.

It sounded like him. Why did it sound like him?

When he feels breath run over his skin, he lets out a shuddering gasp, fear spiralling and clashing with other things, with overwhelm and heat and something uncomfortable he will not examine.

It is in this proximity, prey before predator that he feels his name, in breath and voice, he can feel it more than hear it.

‘Steve.’

His heart flips over, his mind short-circuits.

And though he wants to say his name back, he wants to turn and check, wants to scream, what actually happens is that he passes out.

*

Steve wakes up with his face on concrete, with sunshine on his skin and some fucking bird doing everything it can to give him a migraine.

‘Ugh.’

‘Steve? Shit, Steve!’

From the depths, he drags himself into unwilling consciousness, bones hurting from… oh for god’s sake, from sleeping on his front door step, like the asshole he is.

Steve pushes himself up, blinks hard. He winces at how dry his mouth is. He’s sick, achy, his head… fuck.

‘Robs?’

She kicks up the gravel as she comes running over, skidding to his side.

‘Shit, are you—? You hurt, what the fuck, Steve? Sit up!’

‘I am.’

‘Well sit up better!’ she yells, feeling him all over for injuries and yeah, he’s achy and in pain, but he doesn’t think there are any holes in him.

His eyes go wide, hand flying to the back of his neck.

Fuck.

‘What? Did you break your neck, what the hell Steve? Why are you asleep on your doorstep?’

Steve whirls around, is hit in the face with the fucking sun which has chosen today to go full on cheery. He winces, light stabbing the back of his eyes but he needs to see, he needs…

‘Eddie,’ he utters, scanning the woods that surround his house. It’s bright, sunny. He can see blue sky for the first time since this all happened. Robin is looking at him like he’s certifiable and she’ll carry the weight of concealing it from everyone else. ‘Eddie, fuck.’

‘What?’

Steve swallows, his throat is like sawdust and his head hurts with every little jog of movement, but he remembers.

‘I heard Eddie,’ he blurts out. ‘I was… in the woods and I heard him, he…’

He sees the pity, he hates to see it in her, his Robin, but he gets how he sounds. He literally woke up on his doorstep, he probably smells like a brewery.

He is wearing Eddie Munson’s jacket for god’s sake.

‘I uh,’ he sighs, swerving. ‘I got really drunk.’

She just nods, helps him up. ‘It’s OK.’

It is not. They both know it, but she’s his best friend and they love each other, so she helps him inside. She makes coffee amid the sheer fucking mess he’d made last night.

‘Had a party and didn’t invite me, huh?’

‘Just me and Bruce,’ he quips, staring out through his kitchen window at the woods. The trees look more green today, somehow. He wants to go out there, knows he will as soon as she leaves. He has to get back to where he was, scout for evidence, for… ‘Oh,’ he blinks. ‘You look beautiful.’

She’s stirring his coffee, shitty instant stuff since he broke the big expensive machine last week, when she looks up and smiles. It’s weak, faint.

‘You look like shit.’

He chuckles. ‘Did I miss something?’ Her birthday was in March, they celebrated her eighteenth by going shopping (which Steve is excellent at) and then lunch and then drunken karaoke where they pretended they were a couple just to fuck with people.

That was before he ever met Eddie Munson.

‘Vickie’s birthday,’ she says. He feels like shit, so abruptly.

And because he’s still a tiny bit drunk, his brain isn’t working like it should, so he says, ‘Is she here?’

Robin drops two sugars into his coffee and fixes him with a look.

‘OK,’ she says, passing him the cup across the kitchen island where they lean on opposite sides. ‘We need to talk.’

Steve hides in the safety of a scalded tongue, of searing liquids running through him, denying him nourishment but gifting energy.

‘We do?’

Robin takes a deep breath, nods to herself.

‘You’re not doing so great, babe.’

Steve blinks slowly, outwardly neutral.

‘I’m seeing Dustin today.’

‘That’s good.’

‘And I’m sorry for…’ he gestures behind him, towards the door. ‘I don’t even remember how that happened.’

‘You were in the woods, that’s what you said.’

‘It was a dream.’

The lie is sour, painfully bright in his darkest places. Steve knows he isn’t smart, knows he’s not the go-to person for brilliant plans or whatever the fuck, but he knows he didn’t dream whatever that was last night.

Robin squints at him, like she can tell.

But she’s a good friend, the very best, so she lets it go.

‘I miss him too.’

Steve looks down at his coffee, jaw working.

‘What’s the plans for Vickie’s big day?’

‘Steve—’

‘Taking her out for a fancy meal, dancing and shit?’

‘Steve, we’ve never really talked about it.’

‘Or maybe like,’ he says, trying to smile, wrapping his hands subtly around the mug, taking sanctuary from the burn. ‘Just stay in, rent a movie or-or something?’

The shit he’s saying has no place in the current world. The video store was swallowed in the split, there’s nowhere to go out in Hawkins, the town is falling into the grip of a dull, grey apocalypse.

‘Babe,’ she says seriously, undeterred by his rambling. ‘We need to talk about it.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. Dustin—’

‘Dustin and Mike aren’t the only ones grieving.’

Steve gets up, can’t take anymore. He smiles, gives it his all. It’s a cold thing, like the sun at the highest point on earth. Bitter, unreachable, but bright.

‘I gotta shower,’ he tells her, taking the coffee with him.

*

He showers hard, scrubs his skin and avoids the mirror again. Steve thinks he must look a mess, wonders what his hair is doing at this length without any of the required attention and care he’s bestowed upon it throughout his teen years. It curls against his lower neck, makes him think of last night.

Eddie.

And see, Steve knows there was something out there, but he can’t let himself think or hope with any degree of certainty because that’s dangerous. It’s fucking lethal, so he sets the thought aside. He knows he needs to go check later. So far, the end of the world has been pretty boring, but if monsters are coming in now, they need to know.

He needs to know.

*

He can’t drive, is still fucked up and it’s later than he realised, so Robin drives him to the Henderson’s, drops him off with stern assurances that later, they’re going to talk, but it’s Vickie’s birthday and Steve thinks he can get himself together enough to avoid it come tomorrow.

‘Thanks,’ he says, kissing her cheek. ‘See you later.’

She grabs his hand before he can get out of the car.

‘It’s OK to miss him.’

‘No, it’s not,’ he answers automatically, too true for too many reasons. He barely knew Eddie, didn’t have the bond the kids did, he has no right to miss him. ‘Tell Vickie I said happy birthday.’

*

Dustin is forlorn, he’s moody. Steve thinks it’s like the difference between full colour and black and white. He picks at his food, answers only when prompted.

Steve doesn’t know what to do.

He sits with Dustin and his Mom, he wants to lead by example, clean his plate and say, ‘See, if I can do it, so can you!’ but that’s impossible. Food makes him sick, it makes him think of little mouths, rows of teeth, the way they’d gnawed into his side, how much it had hurt, to be consumed one bite at a time.

He thinks, helplessly adrift in vague horror, how it must have felt for Eddie.

But he’s a pro at moving food around, at hiding shit under salad leaves.

Afterwards, Steve sits on his bed beside him and feels around the awkwardness.

‘You can talk to me,’ he quietly tells Dustin. ‘I’m here.’

It’s so inadequate. It’s like he’s half of what Dustin needs at very best. He is sitting in the negative space of the kid’s loss and it’s fucking awful, not being enough.

Dustin stares ahead. Everything about what he isn’t… is tied to that loss. Steve knows him well, has always loved how animated he is, how confident, how sunny.

Now he’s still, quiet.

Eddie died in his arms. No one should have to experience that, least of all a child.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Steve says, just to break the silence after it stretches. ‘I wish—is there anything I can do?’

Dustin shakes his head, but then after a beat or two he nudges his hand toward Steve’s own. Fingers interlock, Steve holds his hand tighter than he means to, desperate to offer whatever he can give Dustin, no matter how it falls short.

‘I just miss him,’ Dustin says, words strangled, everything thick and shaky.

‘Of course you do,’ Steve says in a rush, eyes stinging. ‘Course you do, man, that’s normal, that’s—I’d feel the same.’

‘He didn’t deserve to die like that,’ Dustin whispers as tears fall, his expression pinching. ‘He had nothing to prove.’

Steve closes his eyes for a moment, buying himself time, but it’s not helpful when all he sees is Eddie. He sees the moment they last spoke, that strange tug in his middle when Eddie had called his name, everything suddenly hesitant between them. The impression left behind is too vivid, Steve does not know how he’s ever going to forget him.

But this is the most Dustin has said about it since it happened, so Steve swallows down everything that isn’t about the kid, leaning into what parts of him can still nurture.

‘You’re right.’

‘And we just…’ Dustin chokes, shakes his head. ‘We just left him there.’

‘The gates were closing, we couldn’t—’

‘We should have tried harder! We should have been there for him more than we were!’

Steve feels warm, wet salt sliding down his nose as he stares at Dustin’s floor. His jaw is clenched so hard his back molars hurt, but he nods calmly.

‘We should.’

I should.

The one time he’s not there, one time he’s not the babysitter, and look what he let happen.

But Steve had wanted to be with Nancy.

He’d wanted to be one of the adults, resentful of being left behind time and again, insecure in ways he can’t analyse.

He wasn’t there for Max. For Dustin. For Eddie.

He was selfish, and the price is glaring.

It is crystal fucking clear.

‘I wanna go back there and get him,’ Dustin whispers, tight confession that causes Steve to swallow over the lump in his throat.

‘For now, we can’t. We have to—’

Dustin flings his hand away, pushes off the bed and storms away. The door slams and Steve flinches, but he doesn’t mind, deserves it and worse.

*

He can’t bring himself to go visit Max in hospital again, he’s tired of seeing people hurt. He is sick with it. Everywhere, the things he counted on are falling apart. He doesn’t call Robin to get him, he’ll walk, it’s fine.

The sun is out.

Summer rays from above feel tactless, like doesn’t the sun know this planet is about to crack in half? No clouds, no smoke in the sky, no red rumbles. Just a beautiful day that Steve Harrington resents so deeply it makes him sneer.

All he wants to do is get drunk.

Through trees and woods, he trudges, avoiding the roads because he has time to waste. That’s what he does, right? He wastes things. Money, opportunities, friendships. Why not waste a little time too? He has it in spades since the world began this dance, since the group started to splinter and Steve lost the ability to close his eyes without seeing Eddie fucking Munson.

In a dense copse, he pauses, rests his head against a tree and feels hidden enough to let out some of the noises that are smacking around inside him.

Just the smallest, the weakest.

He’s so fucking weak it makes him sick.

And there in that circle of trees, in the woods where bad things are known to hunt, Steve closes his eyes and lets himself think of what he never does.

He lets himself think of how Eddie made him feel.

Not the impression, not the shape of him, but the things he stirred in Steve. A strange newness, a thing he didn’t even get was attraction until that last moment, until Steve realised he was disappointed when Eddie swapped out whatever he was going to say, said, ‘Make him pay,’ instead.

Hindsight is so clear and cruel.

Steve drags an arm over his face, doesn’t even want the woods to see him crying in this way, grieving something he never even had. It’s unworthy, this grief. He has no right to it, not like those who knew him.

‘Eddie,’ he says again to the brightly lit world. His bottom lip wobbles and there’s warm salt stinging his eyes, a sucking sensation in his chest. ‘Eddie, I’m so sorry.’

Like all else, it’s woefully insufficient.

*

As punishment for what happened with Dustin earlier, Steve doesn’t play music, he keeps the TV off. He hardly drinks and he just… exists there, in the spaces he despises. Hollow places inside expensive walls that have no good memories beyond what other people trudged through the front door.

The sun sets and it’s so quiet he can’t think straight. He’s alone, painfully and deservedly so, but he thinks he can’t make it past nine in this state, no way. It’s either blackout drunk or every electronic device he owns on full.

And maybe it’s because it was so quiet, maybe because he’s looking out the windows already, but he both sees and hears something that makes his heart stop dead in his chest.

Steve is out the door in seconds.

He saw… fuck, he’s not sure, but he knows it was upright, a figure, something. The sound was unmistakably that of snapping twigs. He grabs the bat, tears out into the twilight, where it’s milky and pale, true darkness a few hours away yet.

‘Hello?’ he calls out, knows how he sounds but he can’t think of anything else. Steve grips the wood and casts around.

Nothing. But… oh, shit.

There’s something in the thicket, right there. He can see the leaves trembling, unnatural movement. Whatever it is there, it’s alive.

Barefoot, he makes his way there. Bat raised, senses on full alert, he’s ready for whatever it is.

He thinks he’s ready, isn’t that funny?

When he yanks the bushes back, he sees a person with their arms around their knees, head on their bare arms. He sees pale skin, bloodied up and filthy He sees… a mop of dark hair and it is here, in this moment, that Steve drops the bat.

It falls from his fingers, hits the ground with a soft thump.

The world stops turning.

‘Eddie.’

Those arms tighten, they contract, like a frightened animal, trying to be small, unobtrusive.

And Steve… he’s slowly trying to build walls around his weakest parts, he’s trying to make it so he can survive if this is not Eddie fucking Munson cowering in the bushes. His heart is thrashing. Riveted, terrified, Steve thinks he might know the look of him anywhere, but he can’t trust it yet.

‘Eddie, can you hear me?’

The silence is broken by a soft, shaky, ‘Steve?’

Jaw lax, trembling all over, Steve’s knees give out. He kneels before him in the leaves and the dirt, the mulchy grit of woodland grounds and it’s a lovely evening, it really is, but to Steve, it’s all gone dark around the edges.

‘It’s me,’ he manages to say, hoarse and rough. Then he swallows thickly. ‘Is that… really you?’

Painfully hesitant, the tightness of those arms lessen, the posture relaxes just a fraction. Armour coming down enough for dark brown eyes to lift, to meet with Steve’s own.

Eddie Munson only seems to know one word. ‘Steve.’

That’s more than enough.

*

He won’t let Steve touch him, flinches the first time Steve (thoughtlessly) tries to help him up. Steve trips over himself apologising, feels terrible, feels displaced and unsure of himself because Eddie had been tactile before, he’d been easy with touch and upper arm smacks, with proximity and casual kindness.

Eddie doesn’t want him to touch him now, so Steve gives him space, talks to him softly.

‘You can come inside, if you like,’ he says, offering it desperately because it feels like if he can just get Eddie inside, it’ll be real. It’ll be real and somehow the end of the world will have reversed itself. ‘Or we can stay here.’

Eddie has not moved except to lift his head, and even then, not by much. Steve takes in his appearance, silently cataloguing what he can in an attempt to be practical.

His hair is matted, his skin has black and grey all over it, especially around his hands. His mouth has trails down it, like he’s been drinking ink. His chest is bare, shirt gone, jeans and belt remaining, boots covered in filth.

His skin, what little Steve can see that isn’t dirty, is scarred all over. He’s pale, taut and visibly terrified.

And he doesn’t seem to want to move, so Steve crosses his legs, gets comfortable on the woodland carpet of moss and mulch, leaves and bugs. He relaxes his posture, sits there with Eddie in the hidden enclosure of the bush, trees above them rustling with white noise from gentle winds.

‘This is the first nice day in a while,’ he comments, kind of can’t believe how relaxed he sounds. ‘There hasn’t been a whole lot of sun until today.’

Until you came back.

And it’s pretty dumb, because the sun has nearly set all the way now, it’s practically night, the early kind Steve remembers as a kid, riding with his friends, begging them to ignore their curfew because he didn’t have one. It’s the kind with all the stars, it’s beautiful, really.

Eddie’s eyes move around; he’s skittish, rigid.

‘Daylight,’ he utters, voice low.

‘Yeah,’ Steve says, taking whatever he can get. ‘Yeah, it’s been a lovely one today.’

It’s Eddie, no doubting it (unless Steve’s had a full mental break) but he’s not… he’s like not doing so great, as Robin would say of Steve.

Steve will help him. He’ll do whatever he can.

Because Eddie is alive, he’s here.

That changes everything.

‘Are you hungry?’ he offers, thinks of the kids and the best way into their hearts. How nine out of ten times they were definitely hungry when asked because saving the world is no joke. ‘I’ve got food inside.’

Eddie goes so still he’s trembling with it. Steve wonders where he went wrong there.

‘N-no.’

‘OK, no problem. Me neither. We’ll just hang out here. It’s kind of nice, not being al—well, getting some fresh air. The moon’s nice too.’ God, Harrington. ‘What about water?’

Eddie frowns deeply. ‘Water?’

‘Yeah, can I get you some? I could bring it out. Bring out whatever you want. Clothes, towels, blankets. We can camp out, if you like.’

There is a fragile sense of childlike euphoria inside Steve. It’s bright and hopelessly nourishing, but it’s dangerous too. It’s so fragile, that if shattered, it could cut him to ribbons. He knows he needs to temper it, make it strong, stable. He needs the reality of realising that something is very wrong with Eddie, he has to let that in rather than simply bask in the joy of having him back.

So he takes a deep breath, tries to calm himself down.

‘Or you could tell me what you need, man,’ he says, sounds more like himself. ‘Whatever it is, I’ll get it.’

Eddie breathes slowly, but it’s the kind of thing where he’s controlling it. He rocks slightly, back and forth.

‘Inside,’ he says at length. It’s dark enough that only his outline is visible to Steve. The world is fuzzy in darkness, like a poorly tuned TV set, but he sees it when Eddie looks towards his house.

‘Y-yeah,’ he says, pushing up onto his knees. The sudden movement makes Eddie flinch and Steve curses silently, tells himself to move slow next time, obvious moments that give no alarm. ‘Sorry. We can go inside, yeah. Do you need help?’

Eddie eyes him warily, like he’s waiting to see what Steve does. His eyes are bright in the dark, like a cat’s, they reflect what tiny slivers of light there are, collecting them.

Steve stands slowly, he steps back once, but that’s as far as he can bear to go, terrified that Eddie will vanish if he leaves.

Eddie’s arms come down from his knees, he lifts his head and looks around before he stands.

‘Inside,’ he simply says again and Steve forces down the urge to offer his hand.

‘Yeah, this way.’

He follows a few steps behind and Steve feels like that guy in whatever story he read as a kid, the guy who went to hell to get his girlfriend, was told not to turn, but couldn’t help it.

Steve doesn’t make the mistake of turning his back in the first place. He walks backwards, watches Eddie the whole time. Eddie walks cautiously, scanning the area. As he draws nearer to the light from within Steve’s place, he squints, looks up. Steve sees more scars, more blackish grey all over him. He sees his tattoos, his skin.

‘In here,’ Steve says and he’d left the door wide open when he ran out, so he doesn’t have to look away then either. He steps backwards onto the step where he slept last night and waits. Eddie is too far, it feels like he’ll bolt at any moment. ‘Take your time.’

Eddie does take his time. He is inherently wary, like this place could contain all the evil in the world and he won’t know until he’s stood there a few minutes. The skies are dark purple by the time he steps forward.

Steve smiles, breathlessly relieved. He walks backwards into his house, heart beating fast, foolish. Eddie steps up and then in and then he’s inside Steve Harrington’s fucking place.

In the bright, harsh lights, Steve can see everywhere he’s been hurt. It’s a detailed map of pain and suffering and isolation. They stand with six feet of distance between them in the lobby, door wide open in a way that makes Steve feel irrationally worried.

‘Can I uh, can I shut the door?’

Eddie frowns, glances back.

‘Door.’

‘Yeah. Can I close it?’

Casting about the residence, Eddie moves away from the entrance, each step measured and slow. He nods and Steve doesn’t hesitate.

He shuts the door, locks it, rests his head there for a stolen, selfish second and gives thanks to whoever had a hand in this. Knows better than to think it’s god, but he’s grateful enough to let his thanks slop over the sides, to let it spill into the world that for one day, gave him a fucking break.

He locks up and then turns, following Eddie’s progress through the ground floor of the Harrington residence.

It’s… well, it’s a shit hole, really. Steve is aware for the first time of just how messy it really is. He’s treated the place like a dump but it’s not been this obvious until now, as Eddie’s boots step over party cups, over paper towels and trash and glass in places. It’s harshly bright and a total wreck.

‘I’m sorry about the mess.’

Eddie either ignores him or doesn’t care. He goes into the kitchen. Steve is following slowly, giving him space, watching where he treads, feeling the frankly insane urge to start cleaning up.

When Eddie cocks his head, Steve wonders what he’s looking at. Then Eddie picks it up, blue denim atop the dirty marble. His jacket.

‘Yeah, I uh,’ Steve says, coming around the other side of the surface, facing Eddie, just drinking in everything about him. ‘I kept it, but you can have it back now.’

Eddie brings it to his nose, scents it with a weird little expression and then he awkwardly slips his arms into it, bare chest beneath. Steve’s stomach knots hard, strange tug of emotions he can’t untangle in the moment, but it makes his armpits sting, his palms burn.

‘Yours,’ Eddie just says, continues looking around, wearing it still.

He is, Steve realises slowly, quite wild. It’s there in his stilted movements, in the wariness etched into every expression. He moves the way an animal would in captivity for the first time. Purposefully slow, primal caution in his bones, assessing the situation, the scenery.

Steve doesn’t know what he’s been through. He can’t imagine, but he knows it was bad.

His fingernails are jet black.

Steve can’t tell if it’s nail polish or dirt, hard not to stare when Eddie lifts his hand to the shiny handle of a cupboard door, opens it.

Inside he reaches for something. Steve gets closer to see, maintaining the space between them, determined to respect the boundaries.

Eddie pulls out salt. It’s a big white shaker, been in there for years. Steve watches as Eddie sniffs the salt and then pulls the cap off, dips his index finger inside.

Steve is transfixed as Eddie licks the finger when it comes out, when he makes a low sound and repeats the gesture, sucking salt from his wet finger like a kid with sugar.

Then he sets it down, pulls his finger from his mouth and turns. He seems better somehow, more himself, but still a far cry from the last time Steve had seen him alive.

‘Steve,’ he says, sounds more level. Dark eyes grip and hold the lighter shade of brown. ‘You’re… Steve.’

And Steve had known something was wrong, but this compounds it. This is the grim confirmation that Eddie is not OK.

Still.

He’s here.

He’s fucking alive.

That is, Steve decides with iron resolve that does not waver, more than enough.

‘Yeah,’ he answers easily, smiling as he leans into the acceptance, adjusts all his expectations. ‘Yeah, I am.’

*

Eddie explores the house and Steve goes with him, distance between them like a rope. Steve doesn’t infringe upon the space, but he also doesn’t pull it. He can’t let Eddie go far, certainly not out of his sight, not yet.

Together, they seek out every room and Steve sort of feels like he’s seeing them all for the first time. He tells Eddie what each room is, what he uses it for, a little joke here and there, each time failing to draw anything resembling a smile from the other man.

But Eddie listens, sometimes he nods. He touches things, runs his fingers over points of interest. He likes shiny things, Steve realises, as he plays with the tacky crystal knobs of the basin taps. He seems to like the way the light catches them. The mirror before Eddie is clogged and unclear, so he can’t see himself, but he sees the outline, the mass of himself and he looks away like Steve does, uninterested in the distorted reflection.

‘Water,’ Eddie says when he gets to the bathtub.

‘You’re thirsty?’

Eddie, for some reason, flinches.

‘N-no. Water,’ he says, gesturing to the tap, to the wide, ostentatious tub.

‘Oh, yeah, totally. You want me to draw you a bath?’

He spoke too fast, too eager, can see it in the way Eddie’s brow rumples, eyes narrow like he’s doing math. Steve silently berates himself, tries again.

‘Shall I fill the bath with water, so you can get clean?’

Eddie looks down at his arms, his hands. He touches his own chest and then looks at Steve, expression wide open for the first time.

‘Yes.’

‘No problem,’ Steve says. ‘Can I get close?’ He gestures to the bathtub and Eddie nods, but he doesn’t move away. He lets Steve narrow the six foot gap between them. This close, Steve can smell him. There’s something sickly sweet, the tang of rot combined with sweat and sludge. He doesn’t smell like the jacket, not like the time he came into Steve’s intimate space in the front seat of the RV.

He smells like death.

Steve runs both taps at once, sets the plug firmly in. The hot comes quick, scalds his hands as he mixes the water.

‘Do you want bubbles?’ he asks before he can stop himself, before he can curse his fucking idiocy because Eddie is back from the fucking upside down, he probably does not want bubbles.

Eddie just blinks at him, not quite blank. There’s a hint of something vulnerable for the first time. His lips part, shaping words that don’t come out. Then he shakes his head, like he can’t say what he wants, shrugs instead.

Steve adds a tiny amount of bubble-bath, just enough to help the water be extra soapy for Eddie. While it fills, he looks around. He hasn’t used the bath since he was a teenager, but his Mom liked it whenever she was home. He opens a little cupboard nearby, finds good shit like fluffy loofahs and expensive shampoos, combs, brushes. He makes a little pile on the upper ledge of the tub and then casts around for clean towels.

He definitely doesn’t have clean towels.

‘Um,’ he says, thinking of the towel he’d used earlier, which had been left to dry several times previous, utterly gross in retrospect, but he didn’t know Eddie Munson was swinging by to use his tub, so. ‘I’ll just grab a towel.’

He starts forward and Eddie flinches, but not away this time. He quickly moves into step with Steve, following him, matching and even upping the urgency. It’s like the rope between them again, only this time pulling Eddie with him.

Steve stops, looks at Eddie. He doesn’t seem afraid, but it’s a near thing. So Steve just smiles, represses the urge to offer his hand again, and says, ‘Come with me?’

Eddie follows him to the cupboard where the clean, unused bedding is stored. He pulls out sheets, covers, quilts and even spare pillows. The sheets are a little musty from lack of use and airing, but they’re dry and clean.

‘This’ll have to do, sorry.’

Eddie looks down at the fabric, the expensive kind. Egyptian cotton, it’s all silky soft in Steve’s hands, off white colour. Then he lifts his eyes to Steve, like he doesn’t know why he’s sorry.

This is the closest they’ve stood so far. There’s only balled material between them, the careless luxury of expensive sheets chosen by Steve’s mother in his hands to keep them apart. Steve can see all the detail of Eddie in this way. He sees his eyes, his lashes, his skin.

And Eddie is looking at Steve too. He does not shy away, doesn’t avert his gaze. No, it roams. He drinks in Steve the way Steve thinks he might be doing in turn. Eddie looks Steve all over, dark gaze dropping to his mouth, to his jaw, his neck.

A light flush of muted red spreads through Eddie’s cheeks, his breathing hitches.

‘Smell good,’ he says, utterly rough, the baseline baritone of a man who’s voice is naturally low. Steve is ninety percent sure he’s talking about the sheets.

‘Great, then it’s OK to dry with?’

Eddie lifts his gaze and some of the heaviness that was coming over him eases. He moves back, putting space between them again. Steve feels oddly bereft.

‘S’OK,’ Eddie says.

*

The bath is nearly full when they return, close to spilling over the side because the water runs thick and fast. Steve turns the taps off quickly, sinks his arm in to pull the plug and let some of it drain. The water is a little too cool for his liking.

‘Do you like it hot?’

Eddie hovers nearby, watching the water with a strange sense of fascination.

‘Hot?’ he echoes, blinking and frowning at the same time.

Steve plugs the flow, lifts his wet arm from the bath.

‘Yeah, do you like the water to be hot or cool?’

The frown deepens, like it’s confusing. Steve gestures to the water and kneels down beside the tub.

‘Why don’t you try it, see if this is OK?’

Eddie mirrors him, gets on his knees beside the tub, rests his arm on the side like Steve does. Steve dips his fingers into the surface of water and Eddie mimics him perfectly.

The temperate touch of the water, however, jogs a little smile out of him, like he’d forgotten about warm.

Eddie swirls his fingers around a bit and Steve just watches, tries to ignore the feelings in his chest.

‘You like it, yeah?’

Eddie nods, still smiling a little. ‘Like it, yeah,’ he echoes, minus the question mark. Then he looks at Steve. ‘Hot?’

‘This isn’t really hot,’ Steve explains, patting the taps. ‘This is warm.’

‘Warm.’

Now it’s Steve who mimics Eddie, who feels the smile form helplessly, this man’s small joy his own.

‘Perfect. Are you ready?’

Eddie is still swirling the water around, watching as a little of the black comes off in light grey waves. ‘Ready?’

‘To get in.’

Eddie peers so close, his nose touches the surface and Steve’s instincts overwhelm his newfound knowledge that Eddie doesn’t like to be touched and he reaches to gently pull him back.

The flinch he gives is violent. Eddie doesn’t quite scramble back, but he grips the side of the tub so hard the ceramic cracks at the very top.

‘I’m—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ Steve blurts out, holding his hands up, away, fucking idiot. ‘I’m sorry, Eddie, I didn’t mean to. I won’t do it again.’

Eddie is taut again, rigid and wide eyed, but he didn’t go, he didn’t flee and Steve watches, guilt stinging in his guts, as Eddie calms quickly.

‘Steve,’ he says, nods to himself, forcing his eyes shut in a hard blink. ‘You’re Steve.’

‘I am, I’m Steve.’ He feels like the worst person alive.

Eddie frowns and eventually releases his death grip of the rim. It’s definitely cracked, thing’s so old and unused.

Then he nods, like that’s it.

He looks at the water, clearly wants to get in but he’s going nose first again.

Steve says, ‘How about you get undressed and then get in feet first?’

Eddie looks up at him, eyes narrowed again, didn’t quite understand.

Steve stands up, nice and slow. ‘See, it’s easier to get in with your feet. Like this.’ He mimes getting in, but keeps his bare foot from the pristine surface, scattered bubbles slowly popping. ‘Then you can sit down.’

It’s a suspicious look he gets for that explanation, it almost makes him want to laugh.

‘Show.’

Eddie’s fingers are in the bath again, playing with the surface. He likes it, he’ll like it even more once he’s in it, Steve is certain, even as he thinks a shower might have been easier.

‘OK, um.’ His bare foot is not clean, he ran outside without shoes to find Eddie, but… but the water is going to get ruined either way. Eddie is literally black and grey all over. Steve rolls his jeans up to the knee and then slowly, demonstrating each step of the way, he steps into the lukewarm water. ‘Like this, see.’

Eddie watches, lips parted with fascination. Then when Steve just stands there, he gives a tiny frown and nods down.

Steve blinks. ‘Right, OK.’

And then he sits down, fully clothed. The water rises close to the top, but it doesn’t spill over. Eddie watches it, brightly interested. He smiles to himself.

‘In.’

Steve’s clothes stick to his skin, t-shirt and jeans sopping wet below the water line.

‘Think you’ve got the hang of it, buddy?’

Buddy, the fuck?

Eddie scents the water a final time and then stands up, lifting his knee. Steve sees the sheer amount of yuck in the tread of his boot, winces.

‘Maybe,’ he says lightly. ‘You could take your boot off?’

Eddie pauses, wrinkles his nose.

‘Off?’

‘Yeah, see your boot? You could take it off before you get in, but you don’t have to.’

Eddie rests his boot on the side, right near the cracked ceramic, and he feels over the boot.

Steve extends his hand, hovers it and asks, ‘Can I help?’

Dark eyes latch onto his, shockingly lucid, seeking in a way that Steve doesn’t think he’s ever been on the receiving end of before.

‘Help?’

‘To take the boot off. I’ll just loosen the laces, if you want.’

Eddie considers, then nods. Steve plucks the middle band of undone laces, pulls each wrung loose, gets black on his fingers each time.

‘There, it should come off easily now.’

Eddie shakes his foot, seems surprised when the boot comes off, like he didn’t realise they could. Steve keeps his thoughts very much in the moment, he doesn’t compare Eddie before to Eddie now. This isn’t the time for it.

‘That’s so great,’ he praises earnestly, frankly relieved that boot isn’t coming anywhere near the water. ‘Can I help with the other?’

Eddie lets him, shakes it off. When it skitters across the tiled floor, it leaves a trail of mud.

Then Eddie steps into the water. He climbs into the bath, mimicking Steve’s motions from before perfectly. He sits slowly and Steve scoots his knees up to his chest to make room. It’s a big, showy tub but it’s likely not meant for two grown men to stretch out in.

Eddie settles in the water and his smile grows slowly, some of the tension in his eyes lightens too. The water rises until it spills over the sides, crashing noisily against the tiles. Eddie follows the progress of it, tries to catch some of it with his hands, but can’t, seems mystified as to why.

Grey pools around him immediately. Steve should have used more bubbles.

Then the water settles, only dripping over the sides now and Eddie’s dark eyes seek out…

‘Steve.’

‘I’m here.’

They are, in fact, in the bath together, fully dressed. The water is already filthy, but Eddie seems happy, he seems relaxed.

Slowly, Eddie begins to stretch his legs out. They can only go either side of Steve’s

‘Do you want me to get out, to give you space?’

Eddie shakes his head, focused on extending his legs. His ankles brush against Steve’s hips, rest there and Steve tightens his grip around his knees. He can feel Eddie’s toes flexing, sees the water steadily turning dark grey, but it doesn’t matter.

‘Warm,’ Eddie says, a little breath on the end. ‘Like it.’

‘I’m glad. Would you like to get clean? We can use soap. I can show you.’

The taps are on the side, so Eddie can lean all the way back. Water spills anew as he sinks slightly lower.

‘Show.’

Steve smiles, reaches for the shit he’s stashed on the upper shelf. Luxury lavender and geranium, it’s still in the packet, so he unwraps it, tosses the wax paper aside and then dips the bar into the water, making a lather. Eddie is watching his every movement.

‘So, like this.’

Steve smears the thick, creamy white up his wrists, over his skin, all the way to his elbows and then he rinses it in the dirty water. It’s not right, not how to get fully clean, but it’s where they begin, so it’s fine for now.

Then he offers the bar to Eddie.

Who then takes it, but grasps too hard and it slips right out of his grip. Eddie scowls, betrayed as it plops into the bath. Steve chuckles.

‘Don’t take it personally, soap is slippery like that.’

Eddie feels around in the bath, trying to find it, but each time he finds it, the fucker gets away. He sort of growls at one point, and Steve bites his lips into his mouth, finds it ridiculously cute, but doesn’t want Eddie to feel mocked.

‘Can I help you?’

Eddie nods, sulking slightly.

Steve cups his hands together, pretending to scoop the soap up. ‘Some stuff you can’t grab, you have to… cradle it.’

Mistrustful, Eddie copies him, sinks his cupped hands into the murky waters and feels around. Steve watches, just so helplessly fucking charmed as he fumbles for the soap and then, a minute or so later, emerges triumphant.

Eddie cups the soap in his hands, smile back in full force, eyes glittering.

‘Cradle.’

‘Yeah, that’s it, you’ve got it.’

But when he tries to grip, the soap threatens to slip away again and concern pinches Eddie’s brow, like it’s a little animal he found that’s trying to get free, like a tiny friend he can’t bear to be parted from.

He looks up at Steve. ‘Help.’

Steve leans forward, plucks the soap from Eddie’s grasp.

‘You want me to help you get clean?’

Eddie nods.

‘OK, well, to do that, I’d probably have to touch you.’

‘Touch?’

‘Like, uh.’ Steve thinks of the mistakes he made before, determined to undo them. He gently rubs the back of his own fingers against the skin of his forearm, back and forth. ‘Like this. Touch. I would probably have to touch you, to get you clean, but very gently and you can say stop whenever you like, so…’

He trails off because he sees that confused expression again, the narrowing of the eyes, and knows he lost Eddie somewhere back there.

‘Touch,’ he tries again, starting fresh. ‘Is my fingers on your skin.’

He hovers his free hand over Eddie’s wrist where it rests on the side, doesn’t move it all, waiting.

‘Can I touch you, Eddie?’

Dark eyes move between his, seeking, searching.

It feels like forever until Eddie nods. Steve thinks he actually would have waited forever.

Then he carefully lowers his fingertips to brush softly over Eddie’s skin. The other man jumps slightly, but he doesn’t flinch. He stares raptly at the point of contact, cocks his head and then lets out a little noise, a shallow, muted sort of laugh, like he’s forgotten about touch, which…

Which he obviously had.

‘I’ll be very gentle the whole time,’ Steve assures him, moving the pads of his fingers back and forth over Eddie’s upturned wrist, over a thick scar, more than one.

‘Gentle?’

‘This is gentle. It’s soft. Slow. Not hurting, not fast.’

Eddie actually nods, seems to get that.

‘Gentle.’ He looks back at Steve. ‘Touch gentle.’

Then he nudges the soap.

Steve starts small. He trails the creamy scented lather over Eddie’s hands first. He does them one at a time, rubs the soap bar carefully into Eddie’s palm and then smooths the soap out, giving him a sort of hand massage at the same time.

Eddie makes little sounds throughout, half formed sighs of surprise, little bits and pieces of voice; responsive, yet non-verbal.

Steve tries to clean under his fingernails, but Eddie doesn’t seem to like that, he makes a tight sound in warning so Steve leaves them, smiles to show it’s fine, and moves up to his wrists.

He washes away the grey, the sticky black and well-healed scars that Steve wishes he didn’t recognise. Bite marks, the radius of the teeth, the shape. He gets up to Eddie’s elbows and pauses to check in.

‘How are you feeling?’ Eddie blinks, doesn’t get it. ‘Is this still OK? Feels good?’ A small happy sound, followed by a nod. ‘All right, let’s clean your arms.’

He has to cup water in his hands to rinse away the soap over Eddie’s bare shoulders. Eddie watches, mutters, ‘Cradle,’ when Steve makes the same motion for the other side.

Steve smiles. ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

When he works the soap into Eddie’s shoulders, his arms start trembling with the effort of reaching in this way, giving Eddie as much space as he can. It brings them into intimate territory either way though and if Steve wants to reach the back of his neck, they’ll be nose to nose.

‘Eddie,’ he says, pulling away. ‘Can I get out to clean your back?’

The little frown is expected, it’s why he asked in the first place. Eddie gives him a look that’s half why? half no. Steve nods to himself, biting his bottom lip.

‘OK, can I sit behind you, then?’

‘Behind?’

‘Yeah,’ Steve gestures to the space between Eddie’s back and the wall of the tub. ‘If I can sit here, I can clean your back a little easier without getting in your face.’

Eddie sort of cocks his head, studying Steve, like he’s trying to work out why that’s bad.

He shakes his head, frowns. ‘Stay.’

‘I will.’ It comes out involuntarily, so honest it requires no thought. ‘I will, but I want to give you space so, uh.’ He looks at the shelf, brightens. ‘Ah!’ Steve grabs the loofah, rips the tag off and dunks it in the dirty water. ‘Can I use this for your back?’ The handle isn’t really very long, barely ten inches, but it’s worth a try.

Eddie looks doubtfully at the loofah, then at Steve. Another nod gives the go ahead.

But right away, he doesn’t like it. He flinches, hisses. Steve thinks it’s the texture, too rough, no matter how lightly he brushes it once thick with soapy suds.

‘Sorry, sorry, no problem.’ He sets it down, but Eddie actually grabs it and flings it lightly out of the tub, glaring. Steve laughs. ‘Yeah, fuck off, loofah.’

Eddie looks smug. ‘Fuck off, loofah.’

And Steve feels like he’s at the end of his rope a bit, but it’s fine. He doesn’t mind, just wishes he had better options for Eddie’s sake.

‘OK, man, I’m gonna need to get close to do this.’

Dark eyes latch onto his. ‘Close.’

‘Yeah.’ Steve gestures between them, the central space. ‘Close, like this.’ He leans in, expression light, earnest while ruthlessly ignoring all the things happening inside the traitorous cavity that surrounds his heart. ‘Is that OK?’

Eddie doesn’t respond at first, he tilts his head, watching Steve, reading him as seems second nature and then he leans in close, too swift for Steve to do anything beyond take a sudden breath. Eddie doesn’t touch him, but the peripheral heat of his skin brushes up Steve’s neck, phantom sensation across his jawline, over his mouth as Eddie… scents him.

Then Eddie simply says, ‘OK,’ and sits back.

*

Steve loses track of time.

He washes Eddie and the soap slowly darkens, the water loses all visibility. It’s just for now, he tells himself. Just to get this layer off.

He washes Eddie’s entire torso and as he does, he catalogues the injuries and scars he finds. Each one is gruesome, some are gnarled and twisted. He washes them with reverent care, gets the healed skin as clean as it can be.

Eddie’s hair is a priority.

‘Can I wash your hair?’ he asks, sitting back to rest his strained arms for a bit, they’re shaking.

Eddie feels his own hair, considers. ‘Show?’

Steve briefly debates with himself, does not know how to show Eddie how he’s going to wash his hair because he hasn’t actually figured it out yet. Not without leaving the cool, muddy water, not without moving.

‘OK, so it’s sort of like,’ he says, improvising. He cups water, splashes it over his head a few times. His hair is long and it sticks to his face until he pushes it back. Eddie watches with fascination. ‘Then it’s like uh.’ He gets a tiny bit of the special shampoo in his hands, rubs it into his hair. It’s not really enough for the thickness and length, but it’s fine for demonstration purposes. ‘And then!’ he declares brightly, feeling vaguely like he’s losing his mind. ‘I’ll just…’

He cups his hands again, but while it was enough water to get his hair wet, it is nowhere near enough to rinse with.

‘OK, I’m just gonna lean back, to get the soap out.’

Eddie seems unconcerned, like he’s watching a pretty good TV show. Steve shifts, grips the sides and pretends he’s about to submerge himself in lovely clean water instead of the veritable bog it really is, and then he goes under.

He is only under a single second before frantic hands are grabbing him, yanking him up, pulling too hard on his shirt so that it gives and tears and Eddie obviously miscalculated, because he pitches forward violently, knees slipping. His full weight crashes forward, pushes Steve down, actually comes fairly close to drowning him, but then both his arms scoop beneath Steve, and he lifts him easily, cradles him.

Like he’s soap.

Eddie pulls Steve fully out of the water and Steve gasps. Watery suds run in his eyes, stinging. He catches his breath as Eddie holds him, as he says, ‘Steve,’ over and over, like he’s mad, like he was scared.

‘Sh-shit, I’m sorry,’ Steve splutters. ‘I should have—I’m sorry.’

Eddie’s hands take hold of Steve’s face, trailing all over, feeling him. His index and middle finger move over Steve’s lips, seeking to verify breath.

His brow is all furrowed, cheeks red, eyes unnaturally bright, something like some crystal thing Robin wears that Vickie gave her, Steve can’t think, but it’s the same.

‘Steve,’ Eddie says, rough and tight. ‘Here.’

‘I’m here, I am.’

Eddie’s eyes flutter shut and he leans in to press their foreheads together. His exhale trembles, it comes from a deep place in his chest and Steve realises he can feel it because…

Oh god.

He’s in Eddie’s lap.

To bring him upright, Eddie pulled him into his fucking lap and they are bare chest to bare chest.

‘Shit,’ he says calmly, quietly.

Eddie sort of nuzzles him for a moment and breathes deeply.

‘Smell good.’

Steve very determinedly tells himself he’s talking about the lavender and geranium.

‘Th-thanks, buddy.’

It’s a weird thing to say when he is effectively straddling him with the strong arms of the other man around his middle. Steve’s tee remains only around his shoulders, middle chest part all ripped away and so they’re skin to skin where it matters most.

He starts to feel dizzy, it begins to feel like it did in the woods last night. Blood running hot, thick and syrupy with things that Steve Harrington won’t name and shame. Exacerbation of the pre-existing, but so incredibly heightened like this. Touching, being touched, oh god.

Eddie draws back, strokes Steve’s hair out of his eyes.

It is he who sobers, not Steve.

‘Show bad.’

Steve cracks a grin, still feels lightheaded, but it’s draining away like the fade of a sugar rush.

‘Yeah, that was bad, I know.’ Steve looks down at where his tee has been mauled. ‘Did I scare you?’

Eddie’s eyes move relentlessly between Steve’s own, like he can read his mind, or he’s learning to.

‘Scare…’ He nods, still so alert. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Eddie strokes his back up and down and then gently pushes Steve off which is both a tremendous relief and sort of disappointing.

‘Sit behind,’ he says, gesturing over his shoulder. ‘Hair.’

Steve takes a slow breath to find his bearing.

‘Great idea.’

*

Able to sit behind Eddie, perching on the upper ledge, he washes Eddie’s back, then his hair.

It takes a while.

The water is pretty much stone cold by the time he’s untangled it with his fingers and a lot of patience. Three passes of shampoo and careful rinsing with a small jug he finds in the cupboard of shit his parents left behind, and Eddie’s hair is clean and free of grime.

The bathwater however is fucking disgusting.

‘OK,’ he says when he gently wrings out the excess water from Eddie’s curls. ‘I think we’ve sort of done all we can here for now.’

Eddie looks up at him, upside down with wide eyes.

‘Done?’

‘Yes, I think we are done,’ Steve explains, pretending he doesn’t see that bit of something gross on his ankle. ‘Finished. Time to get out.’

Eddie let’s Steve help him up and they emerge together. The floor’s ruined already, flooded, so it doesn’t matter that Eddie’s jeans bring half the water out of the bath. In truth, he couldn’t care less, fucking hates this room anyway.

‘There we go.’

Eddie looks around at the mess, the water. He touches his own chest, feels his hair and then does the same to Steve’s.

‘Clean.’

‘Much more than before.’

Then Eddie wrinkles his nose, looks down at his still rotten jeans.

‘Not clean.’

‘Yeah, but we can wash them,’ he says, means throw them the fuck away. ‘And then you can wash…’ Steve gestures very vaguely. ‘The rest of yourself.’

Eddie looks up at Steve with what Steve thinks is his calm/blank/curious stare. Before he can ask anything, Steve pulls the plug, wills the filth to drain faster and then reaches for the clean sheets.

‘OK, so,’ he says. ‘We’ll get you dry, then I’ll get clean clothes for you.’

Eddie nods, takes the sheet when Steve hands it to him, tracking his every movement. Steve decides to lead by example. He very obviously wraps the sheet around his middle after he roughly swipes the insufficiently absorbent material over his damp skin and hair. Eddie copies him.

‘Now, I’m gonna take my pants off,’ he says, feels like a fucking moron performing a morally gross magic trick. ‘And the sheet will stay around to protect… my modesty.’

He gets another doubtful look from Eddie, but the other man mimics him all the same. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite so hyper-aware of each movement, of every little motion of his own body because he sees it there in Eddie.

Eddie, to his credit, actually manages to do it. He undoes his jeans, pushes them down and keeps his sheet around his waist the whole time. Steve, however, nearly loses his sheet twice. Laughs to cover it, cheeks fire-engine red.

It is perhaps the blush that draws Eddie’s attention towards the end. Steve is drying his upper thighs when Eddie stops mimicking him, when he drifts closer into Steve’s orbit. His eyes are dark, his lips very red when he scents the air. Those lashes flutter and he makes a warm, happy sound.

‘Smell good, Steve.’

OK, well. No mistaking the cotton or shampoo that time, but Steve can style it out. He can roll with the—

Eddie’s fingers glance down Steve’s cheek, the touch too delicate, it leaves trails of lemony sour delight and makes Steve shiver. Eddie smiles to see his reaction and Steve notices the way his teeth glint.

His teeth…

‘Oh my god.’

The moment he says it, Eddie sobers again. He steps back swiftly, grips his sheet around his middle and frowns.

‘I’m sorry.’

Steve knows that Eddie is mirroring, he’s mimicking and copy-catting him, it seems to be his learning process, so he knows Eddie might not really understand what sorry means, but fuck if he doesn’t sound like he means it.

Steve shakes his head, swallows hard.

‘It’s OK,’ he says at length. His insides have gone a little bit numb, there’s something in his head that he has to strangle, thinks it might be his well-dampened survival instincts. They’re quietly telling him to move away, to get distance between them, get help. ‘It’s fine.’

Doesn’t matter if it’s not actually fine, he’ll make it fine. Steve will make it all be fine, somehow, because Eddie is back, he’s not dead. That’s worth everything.

Eddie nods, but keeps his gaze downcast. He’s dripping all over Steve’s floor. He is two thirds clean.

‘We should uh.’ Steve loses his train of thought, he can only think of teeth. Sharp at the tips, but still human enough at the root. Thick, only a fraction longer than expected, but just so fucking sharp. ‘You should probably shower the rest of it off.’

He points at the built in shower, the glass doors, the shower head. Eddie looks confused again, hesitant. Steve wants more than anything to just get them dressed. To get out of this fucking room, but he can’t let Eddie be unclean, he just can’t.

So he takes a deep breath, sets aside all his bad thoughts, and begins again.

*

The shower is somehow more difficult than the bath, but it’s quicker and he can turn his back while Eddie, entirely bare, washes himself in the enclosure after Steve very briefly (efficiently) demonstrated on himself. He won’t let Steve shut the doors, but that’s fine. Steve gets a fine, warm spray up his back as he explains, as he gestures and slogs through what he now thinks he just should have been upfront and brutally blunt about.

Wash your junk, he wishes he’d said at the start, but he doesn’t think Eddie would have understood.

Eddie is, however, gleaming clean when he steps out and Steve politely keeps his gaze firmly up as he wraps a brand new sheet around his middle.

Eddie grins, says, ‘Clean.’

‘You are,’ Steve agrees. ‘And you smell great too.’

In response, Eddie leans close and brushes his nose along the column of Steve’s throat. It’s only for a second, just a moment and then he draws back, nods.

‘And you smell great too.’

Steve doesn’t let it faze him this time. He helps Eddie get dry, secures the toga and then they go to get clothes.

As soon as they step into Steve’s bedroom, one of the last Eddie hasn’t seen yet, Eddie looks around and says, ‘Yours.’

‘Yup, this is my room. So,’ he says, heading for the drawers where his ever-decreasing supply of clean clothes are stuffed. ‘We’re not gonna be especially fashionable, but I’ve got a few things here that’ll fit.’

He find sweatpants, a clean, baggy tee, but the underwear situation got critical yesterday and so it’s commando or nothing.

‘Here,’ he offers them to Eddie.

The fingernails are still black. Must be polish, he thinks, but it’s not… it’s not chipped anywhere. Steve ignores it, puts it right at the back of his mind beside sharp teeth. Eddie is watching him the whole time, dark eyes that stare intently, unencumbered by any insecurity.

‘These are mine, but they should fit you. We’re roughly the same size.’

‘Size.’

‘Yeah. See?’ Steve puts his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. ‘We’re the same.’

Eddie frowns and shakes his head, but he takes the clothes anyway. He lets Steve help him get the t-shirt on, his hair lightly dripping. Steve double checks the strength of the sheet around his middle before he bends to help Eddie step into each leg of the joggers.

‘Here, you can pull them up the rest of the way,’ he says.

Steve feels oddly proud as Eddie undoes the sheet, lets it fall away. He’s clean all over, he’s dressed.

‘Perfect.’

Eddie gets the curious look, the happy kind.

‘Perfect?’

Steve rubs the back of his neck, buys himself a second with an awkward chuckle. He rummages around in his drawers for his own shit, knows he gave Eddie all the good stuff. He only finds a vest and shorts for himself.

‘Perfect is uh,’ he begins, stepping into the shorts, nearly losing his balance entirely but styles it out by smacking his elbow into the drawers. ‘Ow, fuck, it’s uh. Perfect is when there’s nothing wrong or bad. It’s good, lovely, beautiful, everything you want.’

His cheeks are absolutely aflame when he yanks the sheet off his waist, pulls the vest overhead. He feels weirdly pinned by the stare Eddie gives him. It feels knowing.

And his elbow is throbbing when Eddie’s gaze begins to drop slowly, moving over Steve’s body like a physical touch. It goes down, down, down until it hits his bare feet, bounces right back up again and now… now there’s that strange glint again, the one Steve knows but can’t quite recall.

‘Perfect, Steve.’

His lips part, he actually kind of gasps which isn’t great, is it? Not very fucking ideal when all that blood rushes down, mercurial and traitorous with inconsiderate priorities that get all fucked up in the space between adrenaline and praise.

He tells himself that Eddie isn’t saying he is perfect, he’s just echoing the word with the other word he likes, Steve’s name.

But that little lighthouse in the stormy dark comes under siege when Eddie steps forward, lifts his hand and those black nails trail lightly over Steve’s lips.

Feather-light, it elicits something akin to the tickle response and Steve gasps again, despite himself.

‘Gentle,’ Eddie says, though his voice is anything but.

Steve doesn’t know what to say. He’s still a tiny bit hungover, he hasn’t eaten anything all day except the two forkfuls at the Henderson’s. His body feels wrung out.

He’s… maybe a little bit in shock.

So, he doesn’t really know what to say, but he offers Eddie the best smile he has in the moment, hopes it says what he cannot.

I ’m so happy you’re here.

I ’ll do anything to keep you safe.

I should never, ever have left you behind.

Eddie’s lids are half lowered, lashes thick and full as he surveys Steve, a hint of something wild there.

‘Steve.’

It’s just his name, not a precursor, but the habit of having his name called and answering is deeply ingrained. Steve catches his verbal response in time, but his eyes go wide, expectant.

Eddie smiles, likes the response, maybe.

‘Are you uh…?’ Steve asks, having to physically shake himself from the strange lull they were falling into. ‘Are you tired?’

‘Tired…’ Eddie says slowly, feeling around the word. ‘Sleep?’

He got that on his own. Steve doesn’t let the excitement show, he keeps it fiercely beneath his strictly non-existent expectations, but he can’t smother the fleeting thrill that maybe things will come back to Eddie in time.

‘Yeah, we can sleep, sure.’ He looks over at his absolute state of a bed. Covers rumpled, sheets askew, pillows on the floor. ‘Here, I’ll make it nice.’

He does a bad job really well, doesn’t know how to make a bed properly because he’s been a spoilt brat for most of his life, but he neatens things up and smooths the quilt.

‘Here,’ he says, pulling the cover back, snagging a single pillow for himself. ‘I’ll sleep on the floor.’

Eddie puts one knee on the bed, testing it, then he crawls across, pushing his palms into the surface.

‘Gentle?’ he asks, poking the mattress.

‘Soft,’ Steve agrees, feeling what Eddie feels. Never really noticed before, but yeah, it feels pretty great. ‘This is soft.’

‘Soft,’ Eddie says, nodding. He lays down in a kind of ball, head not on the pillows, knees to his chest.

Steve has a brief internal debate about how to proceed. While he wants Eddie to be comfortable and sleep however is best for him, Eddie also tried to get into the bathtub headfirst.

‘That looks cozy,’ he says, debate over. ‘Is that how you like to sleep?’ Eddie sort of shrugs, frowns. ‘Do you wanna see how I sleep?’

The frown vanishes. ‘Yes.’

Steve climbs carefully onto the bed, feels dark eyes track each movement along the way. Eddie watches him in a way that makes Steve feel physically held.

He lays his damp hair onto one of the pillows, the bed wide and spacious. ‘Like this.’

Eddie comes out from his ball, unfurls to mimic him perfectly and drops his head onto the next pillow.

‘Like this.’

‘That’s right,’ Steve smiles. ‘Perfect.’

The little sound that comes out Eddie’s mouth is like a soft sort of moan. Steve feels it like he made that sound himself, it turns his ears red, makes his breath catch hard.

‘OK, so I’m gonna sleep on the floor.’

‘No.’

The frown is back.

Steve leans on his still sore elbow and deliberates. He supposes… it’ll be fine. He can make a pillow wall. They have all the blankets and spare stuff from the cupboard.

It’s fine.

‘Sure, no problem.’ He gets the covers and the quilts, not surprised that Eddie follows him out of and then back into the room. Eddie sits on the bed and watches as Steve constructs a wall down the middle. ‘Pillow wall, what do you think?’

Eddie scowls at Steve’s construct. Then he flings one of the pillows away, says, ‘Fuck off, pillow wall.’

Steve bursts out laughing, it’s so fucking cute he can’t stand it. Eddie’s smile seems natural too, real when he makes little low rumbles of laughter.

‘All right, suit yourself, Munson,’ Steve mock-complains, too tired to do anything else. ‘It’s just because I move a lot in the night.’

Eddie copies him as he lays down, facing one another on separate pillows.

‘Move a lot in the night.’

‘Yeah, I’ll probably end up the other end, upside down, so if I move and it wakes you up, just tell me.’

Eddie nods. The nearby lamp is still on, but Steve doesn’t mind. The pillow is deep and his mattress is soft.

Eddie Munson isn’t dead.

‘OK,’ he sighs, letting his eyes flutter shut. For the first time, he sees only blissful dark. ‘G’night.’

‘G’night, Steve.’

*

He wakes before he opens his eyes. Consciousness comes slowly, brain sluggish from the first bout of decent rest he’s had in a long time. Steve makes a sleepy noise, stretches luxuriantly, feels like a cat and then…

Then the memories hit.

His eyes fly open, terrified beyond what he can stand that it was all a fucking dream, no, no, no, please—

But Eddie is right there.

He’s exactly where he was last night, when he fell asleep.

And he’s wide awake.

Steve sits up fast like a kid on Christmas day.

‘Holy fucking shit.’

Eddie does the same.

‘Holy fucking shit.’

Steve laughs loud, claps his hand over his mouth and tears burn in his eyes. It’s another gorgeous day outside, thin, fancy curtains doing fuck all to keep the radiant sun out, but he doesn’t care.

Eddie… is alive.

It’s like a delayed reaction. Like last night wasn’t even real, except he knows it was.

Steve takes a shuddering breath, tears spilling as he croaks, ‘Can I hug you?’ Then he thinks of last night, of unwanted, unexpected touches and how Eddie had recoiled. He sobers, wipes his eyes, still smiling and says, ‘Sorry, ignore me. I’m so… so fucking happy you’re back, man.’

Eddie’s expression brightens. ‘Happy?’

‘Yeah,’ Steve says, laughing at himself. ‘This doesn’t look happy, but it-it is.’

The other man glances at the bright window full of sun.

‘Daylight,’ he tells Steve, expression earnest. ‘Happy.’

‘Damn straight, buddy.’ That word again, he sounds like a fucking little league coach. ‘Did you sleep OK?’ Eddie doesn’t understand, so Steve adjusts, says, ‘Was your sleep nice?’

Eddie cocks his head, thinking. ‘Pillow,’ he answers slowly, very focused on his words. ‘Was nice.’

Steve might be dumb, he may not have gotten into a single fucking college, but he can tell the difference between Eddie’s mirroring and Eddie communicating independently. There’s a thread, he thinks. Like things are coming back to him.

And it apparently means Eddie didn’t really sleep much, but he seems OK.

‘I’m really glad. So.’ Steve makes a weird little face, a kind of nervous tic almost. It’s not necessary because no one else is here and Eddie, it seems, isn’t really prone to awkwardness. ‘Do you want breakfast?’

‘Breakfast?’

*

Eddie spits the tap water out, nearly drops the glass. Steve catches it in time, he’s right there when Eddie retches over the sink, dry heaving the last of the water out.

‘Shit, I’m so sorry. We’ll get something filtered today, go to the store. Who knows what shit’s in these pipes, huh?’

Though Eddie recovers swiftly, he doesn’t really try anything else after that and Steve sort of… panics. Food for other people is his go-to, one of them at least.

For his part, Steve takes a single bite of toast and tells himself it’s fine to swallow because Eddie did not get eaten alive, except… except that he sort of did.

Eddie hops up to sit on Steve’s counter-top, playing with the lid of the cookie jar, which is iridescent and shiny.

Steve finds solace in coffee.

And it’s quiet in the kitchen, but it’s kind of nice. Companionable silence, Steve thinks, draining the cup and adding it to the small ceramic mountain in the sink.

‘OK,’ he says, nodding to himself. ‘We need to uh. I think we need to talk.’

Eddie looks up, doesn’t quite stop playing with the lid.

‘Talk.’

‘Yeah. About you.’

‘About… Eddie.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’ Steve smiles, pleased when he gets one in response. ‘I need to maybe ask some things.’

But Eddie’s smile dims quickly, he blinks rapidly and returns his attention to the lid.

‘No.’

‘Oh. Right, OK. That’s completely fine. It’s just… I don’t know what to tell the others.’

Eddie goes still. ‘Others.’

‘Yeah.’ Steve treads carefully, reads the body language. ‘Robin. Dustin. Everybody.’

Something in Eddie’s expression cracks. ‘Dustin.’

‘I want to tell him,’ Steve says slowly. ‘But I think maybe I should wait until things are…’ Dark eyes lift to meet his waiting gaze. ‘More clear.’

Eddie sets down the lid and hops off the side. He folds his arms tight across his chest, gripping the flesh of his upper arms. It’s familiar, it’s of before.

‘Talk gentle?’

‘Of course,’ Steve promises. ‘Anything you don’t want to answer, just say no, like you already did.’

Eddie nods, gaze averted.

‘How did you get back here?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Um. Did you…’ Steve closes his eyes. ‘Did you die?’

‘No.’

Steve can’t tell which way that answer tends, blames himself for the poor wording. ‘Sorry, that’s on me. Can you tell me anything about the last month?’

Eddie’s lips part, the no poised and ready to fall, but then his jaw works, his arms tighten and he sighs through his nose.

‘Dark. No daylight. No water. Monster.’

‘You’ve been in the upside down?’

Eddie looks at him, eyes narrowing but not to question, like he’s remembering something.

‘Upside down,’ he echoes, nodding. ‘Bad place.’

‘Yeah, that’s it. You’ve been there this whole time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. You’re doing so great.’ The next question burns inside Steve. He wants to delay it, to crush it down and pretend harder than he ever has before, but he can’t take the risk, not with the kids. ‘Eddie, are you still human?’

They stare at each other for a long time and it’s Eddie who breaks first, who makes a complex little face, a sad kind of frown.

‘Human?’

Steve licks his lips, determined to be gentle like he promised.

‘Your uh, teeth,’ he says, tapping his own incisors. ‘Last night, I thought I saw them—’

‘No,’ Eddie cuts across. It is a refusal, not a denial.

‘OK, I’m sorry. That wasn’t gentle.’

Eddie shakes his head, looks down at his hands, lightly flexing his fingertips. ‘Not gentle,’ he says quietly. ‘Not human.’ Then he looks up at Steve and says again, clearer that time, ‘Not human.’

Steve doesn’t know how he should feel, thinks it ought to be something like horror, fear maybe. He just feels heartbroken for Eddie. He’d sort of known, really, from the first moment Eddie stepped inside last night. He saw the blood in the upside down, saw the chunks missing.

‘I’m so sorry.’

Eddie looks away. ‘Not same.’

‘You’re still the same to me.’

He hears Eddie’s breath catch in a jagged little shudder, can practically feel it in his own chest. ‘Monster,’ he breathes.

Steve can’t take it.

‘You’re not,’ he tells him, moving closer. Eddie stares down at his hands like they’re not clean, like Steve didn’t soap away all the bad last night. ‘You’re not a monster, and even if you were,’ Steve says, voice cracking and that makes Eddie look up. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Bad.’

‘No, no you’re not,’ Steve says, and he’s smiling, because the truth is, he believes it. ‘Can I touch you?’

Eddie gives a shaky nod and when Steve cups his face with one hand, he leans into it eagerly.

‘You’re not bad, I don’t care if you’re a little different, you’re still Eddie. You’re still my friend. I should have come back for you,’ Steve says, and the crack becomes a fissure as all that unworthy grief of the last month comes bubbling to the surface. ‘I should have brought you back home, here with us. You wouldn’t have been there when you… when you woke up, or whatever happened. I should have kept you safe.’

Eddie mirrors Steve, cups his face and then slides his hand into his hair, fingers fanning out, gripping lightly. It is a heavy, wretched thing between them, the very air dense as they share it.

‘I should have been with you.’

When Eddie shakes his head, their noses brush because they have drifted into one another’s orbit like silly little moons.

‘Steve,’ he utters, sounds wrecked. ‘You… are perfect.’

I want to kiss him. There’s no way to deny it, to bury it when he has no earth, no ground to go to. The acknowledgement hits like a meteor, smacking his previous sense of self around the face. I want to kiss him so fucking bad.

And it’s been there since he met him, really.

This weird sense of wary curiosity, of unwilling intrigue, then grudging respect then simply… respect. Then genuine curiosity. Intrigue just to stand close to him, to be in this man’s space because he’s not like anyone Steve’s ever known before.

It’s been there since he met Eddie Munson but this is the first time he really let’s himself feel it, all the way.

Eddie’s arms encircle Steve. They embrace, they hug close and tight and Steve lets out the last of his grief for a man he thought long gone.

‘Everything’s gonna be OK,’ he promises quietly, hugging Eddie. ‘You’re back, that’s what matters.’

*

Eddie doesn’t want anything to eat or drink and Steve is calculating shit in his head. He’s thinking about teeth and those black nails. He’s circling words and names while Eddie sits with him in the den and watches He-Man. Eddie sits with one knee pressed into his chest, the other dangling, he’s perched on the arm of Steve’s chair.

It’s around midday that Steve notices Eddie is falling asleep. He keeps slowly leaning forward, then waking hard, jerking upright.

After the third time, Steve looks up, rubs his shoulder and says, ‘Hey, you’re tired. Wanna sleep?’

Eddie seems annoyed at himself somehow, but when each blink comes slower and deep, he nods.

Steve gets up out of the recliner. ‘Here, you take the—’

Eddie yanks Steve back down into the chair with him, kind of squashes him so they sit side by side and Steve has to angle one leg over Eddie’s thighs to make it work, but then Eddie nuzzles into Steve’s neck, makes a happy, contented little sound and falls asleep, like, instantly.

‘Stay.’

‘OK,’ Steve whispers, has to swallow over a lump to make the word come out. ‘OK, I’ll stay.’

He means it, even as he circles closer and closer to one word in particular.

*

Steve doesn’t actually even realise he fell asleep too, cheeky fucking nap, until pleasure begins to curl through his blood, the phantom traces of a good dream slipping into his waking self. He smiles and arches his back, thoughts heavy and slow like treacle, like honey.

His jaw is lax, breath coming faster, making him dizzy before he’s opened his eyes, it’s like a fever dream of pure desire and he wants… oh god, he wants…

‘Eddie,’ he pants, the name crumbling in his throat, too heavy to hold under pressure of unreachable desires. He feels something hot against the side of his throat, warm like breath and then he thinks he’s going to come in his pants like a horny teenager, but he doesn’t care because he is swimming through hazy rapture, through warmth and possession and the threat of—

His eyes fly open.

Reality comes hard, just about beats his stupid dick to the finish line.

Eddie is… he is plastered against Steve.

He’s all over him, he’s in Steve’s lap, arms around his back, face buried in his neck. His hair tickles Steve’s chin as he tries to shake away the fever dream, the lust that hangs in his blood like a sugar high.

‘Shit,’ Steve croaks, doesn’t know when his mouth got so dry. ‘Shit, Eddie I’m-I’m sorry, man, you’ve uh…’

Eddie softly growls, burrows deeper, full on wrapped around Steve in a way that… oh god, fuck, yeah no ignoring that, is there?

Steve takes a deep breath, the air stilted and stifling, and then he pushes Eddie off him, hard.

‘Fuck, I’m sorry,’ Steve says, hand over his eyes as Eddie staggers to his feet, shaking himself awake. Steve doesn’t want to see his face, he can’t. ‘I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.’

‘Steve,’ Eddie says and for one moment, one stupid fucking idiotic moment, Steve lets himself think it’s Eddie from before, who stepped forward to say something and then swerved.

But it’s not.

Not quite.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Steve pants, feels the guilt inside him like sickness, even as he can’t pinpoint the source of what came over him. ‘I’m so fucking sorry, that was—’

‘Steve.’

When he opens his eyes and removes his hand, Eddie is kneeling before him. He’s kneeling there, looking up at Steve. And his hair is wild, his skin flush and radiant with a light sheen of sweat. His lips are red, his eyes shine, but the look of him… the way he’s so torn up.

He kneels there, not touching, but not going.

Slowly, voice trembling, he says, ‘I’m so sorry, Steve. You…’ He shakes his head, can’t find the words, so he mimes the shove. ‘Good.’

Steve’s bottom lip wobbles and he feels all fucked up inside, messed up from the dream, the fever, whatever it was, and then the fuck ton of guilt for even thinking it, wanting these things after what Eddie had been through.

‘I’m still sorry.’

Eddie sort of rolls his eyes, just a little, frustration creeping in through the cracks. It makes Steve laugh, tremulous and breathy, but it breaks the tension, the worst of it.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks Eddie, who rumbles in response, nods. ‘That’s good. I’m—I don’t know what happened.’

Eddie looks like he wants to explain, to try at least, but then a sound makes them both flinch hard. Someone knocks at the door.

Steve gets out of the chair too fast for his wobbly knees.

‘Shit,’ he gasps, throwing Eddie a worried glance. ‘Robin.’

*

She’s in the house before he’s had a chance to even open the door all the way and she has, to his subdued horror, a bunch of cleaning shit and what looks like a picnic basket.

‘OK, motherfucker,’ she prefaces, throwing her hand up in his face as he babbles useless excuses, pleas and various other word salad. ‘We are cleaning, then we’re talking, then we’re gonna eat some god damned fruit, OK? Because if you get scurvy from grief, I can’t be held responsible for—’

She stops dead. It really is the only word for it.

Robin stops dead in her tracks. Drops the mop, bucket, basket and just stares.

Steve rubs his eyes, headache blossoming.

‘Robin,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘No sudden movements, no loud noises, OK? It’s him, but he’s… been through a lot.’

Eddie is standing there in the door of the den and he’s rigid all over. Steve thinks if he was a cat, his hackles would be raised. Calmly, Steve walks between them, gets a glimpse of Robin’s face.

Her eyes are a little wide, lips parted, but it’s the way she’s stock still that shows her astonishment.

‘Eddie,’ Steve says softly, gently. ‘This is Robin. You remember her?’

Eddie furrows his brow, his dark gaze riveted on the woman before him but then he slowly relaxes, his shoulders unlock.

‘Robs.’

Steve’s whole face brightens into a grin. ‘Yeah! Robs! The Robster, Robin to my Batman!’

Eddie doesn’t quite smile, but he ducks his head, corners of his mouth curling just a little.

‘Robin,’ he says again, sounds almost normal. ‘Good.’

‘Yes, she’s very good. We like her a lot, definitely a keeper.’

Steve throws a glance in Robin’s direction, finds her slowly coming out of her shocked state, face screwing up into a perfect ball of confusion, maybe a little rage.

‘OK,’ she says, glaring at Steve. ‘What the ever-loving fuck, Harrington?’

*

He can’t not tell Robin everything. She’s his soulmate, his truest love. In the kitchen, Eddie sits on the side again, fiddling with the shiny lid he likes so much, but really he’s watching them both very carefully.

‘He was just there,’ Steve explains. ‘In the bushes. I… he didn’t want me to touch him, so I sat with him for a while and then he wanted to come in.’

Robin is extremely pale. She glances over at Eddie now and then, fingers rapping out a manic rhythm against her left thigh.

‘Get to the part where he’s not dead.’

‘I think,’ Steve begins slowly, forcibly neutral. ‘Maybe he’s a little different now.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning like, maybe he came back different, Robs, do you want me to spell it out?’

‘Yes, absolutely. Take me to the Harrington Spelling Bee and get me a front row fucking seat, thank you very much!’

Steve is hyper aware of Eddie in his peripheral vision, of his would-be casual movements. He can feel Eddie’s attention whenever Robin raises her voice.

So he clears his throat, says, ‘You’re good with languages, babe, you can read between the lines.’

‘Cool, because what I’m reading is that a bunch of fucking murder bats killed him stone dead and now—’

‘OK, there’s no need for that!’

‘—now, he’s in your kitchen. Alive.’

Steve leans in, he fronts.

‘Well, good. I’m glad he’s alive.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that.’

‘Robin, you’re not listening.’

‘Don’t give me the spiel, OK? I am not, much to my daily disappointment, Nancy fuckin’ Wheeler, you get me? I’m not gonna side-eye your bullshit and let it go uncalled.’

‘Babe, please.’

‘Is he still human?’

Steve closes his eyes, takes a deep breath that does not steady him, nowhere near.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You see the teeth?’

‘Did you?’

‘I saw some teeth, yeah. Nails too, for a split second.’

Shit.

‘It—it doesn’t matter,’ he says, sounds weak but it’s true. ‘Doesn’t matter what he is. He’s back, he’s here, alive, he’s right there!’

Robin brings her hands up to cover her mouth, like she’s praying almost but Steve knows she doesn’t do that.

‘Steve.’

‘Oh not the tone, c’mon.’

‘You’re not thinking clearly.’

‘I’m doing my best.’

‘What about the kids?’

‘That’s not fair,’ he warns.

‘You gonna bring Dustin round, huh? Let him get real close?’

Steve grits his teeth hard. ‘Robin.’

‘I’m saying what you need to hear. He could be dangerous.’

‘That’s why I didn’t tell anyone yet!’

She looks vaguely disgusted. ‘But you were here alone with him all night!’

‘I was… he came to find me.’

She crosses her arms, hits him with The Look.

‘And if it was me?’

He despises this logic.

‘I know.’

‘Then you know why we need to tell the others.’

‘Absolutely not!’

‘We need to at least tell Hopper!’

Steve is very much aware that their raised voices have had an effect on Eddie, who is no longer pretending not to stare. He’s close by, watching them both, very still.

‘OK,’ Steve says, holds his hands up, needs to de-escalate. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m tired, I’m stressed and you’re right. I’ll tell everyone once we’re sure of what’s actually happening.’

‘How are you going to ascertain that?’

‘Look, his speech is basic, it’s like broken English, but it’s improving, I think. If he can just spend a few days here, recover maybe, then we can ask him. He can tell us. Show us.’

He pleads with his eyes, desperate for her to give in just this once, to let his shitty excuses slide.

When it looks like she won’t break, he lowers his voice.

‘Please. Just trust me. I know what he needs. I get how it seems, but I do. Please.’

‘Three days.’

‘I love you so much.’

‘Three days, Harrington, and I’ll be dropping by for each of ‘em!’

‘Love it, can’t wait, we’ll brunch.’

She looks around his kitchen doubtfully.

‘You need to clean first, OK? You need to fucking eat something, Steve. Three days and we’re telling everybody, no matter what.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And if he’s a… not human,’ she adds, shooting Eddie a fair, but stern look. ‘Then you’d better get your ass to a butcher’s shop or whatever the fuck.’

‘We’ll figure that out as we go, but your advice has been heard.’

The two best friends survey one another for a moment. He sees all the doubt in her then, all the little things she worries about, the way he worries for her; like how he maybe thinks she and Vickie are too similar, that she’ll become bored, worries that Vickie won’t treat her like the fucking Empress she is. He worries about her shitty family who never call. He worries that she only takes her iron tablets when she remembers.

Her worries for him are greater, they’re bigger, but it doesn’t matter.

Best friends worry. They fret and they glare.

That’s how Steve knows she loves him.

‘All right you crazy motherfucker,’ she relents, pursing her lips. ‘Get this level, right?’

‘I will.’

‘You’ll call if you need any help.’

‘Definitely.’

‘And please clean up. It’s bad.’

‘I know it is, I’m sorry.’

‘All right.’ She draws herself to full height, looking at Eddie again. ‘You’re gonna look after him, yeah?’

Eddie cocks his head slightly, sifting through the words.

‘Look after… Steve.’

‘Damned right,’ she says, nodding severely. ‘He’s my boy, you hear? And he can’t take care of himself for shit, so I know you’ll keep him alive, right?’

Steve rolls his eyes while Eddie nods.

‘Right.’

‘That’s what I like to hear. OK. Well. I’m gonna go scream into a pillow and listen to Private Idaho a few million times.’

Steve rubs her shoulders. ‘You love Private Idaho.’

‘I love Private Idaho,’ she agrees morosely. ‘Then tomorrow I’ll be back with sustenance. I’ll call first, though.’

‘You don’t have to call.’

‘Oh, but I will. And if you don’t answer, I’ll be on your ass, Harrington, you get me?’

‘That’s vivid.’

‘That’s a promise. I’m taking the spare key.’

‘Love you.’

‘Love you more, asshole.’

*

Eddie doesn’t relax for a while after she leaves. It’s somewhere around five or six, the sun still warm and bright outside, frankly ridiculous weather for the slow-ass apocalypse. Steve thinks he should go into town, see what, if anything, is happening.

But he doesn’t.

He stays with Eddie.

He plays music on low volume and, against his will, he starts to actually clean up.

Eddie just kind of hangs out, sits in the kitchen with Steve, watches him clean dishes (so many dishes) and a few are so bad, Steve has to actually throw them away.

They don’t really talk at all. Steve will look over every now and then, check in. Eddie is already watching him, doesn’t seem to want to look anywhere else, but that’s fine.

It’s comforting.

He cleans, singing softly under his breath and when the tape ends, he pulls out a new one. He’s got a lot of music, none of it Eddie’s type, he thinks.

But when Dancing in the Dark comes on, Eddie says, ‘This.’

And Steve looks over, halfway done mopping the truly god-forsaken floors, wipes his upper lip. ‘Huh?’

Eddie is listening to the song, eyes slightly wide.

‘This song.’

‘Oh, you like this? It’s kinda my favourite,’ he says, never really told anyone except Robin who’d fiercely demanded confirmation just in case.

‘In…’ Eddie shakes him head, makes a frustrated face. ‘Upside down. This song.’

‘You heard this in the upside down?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s…’ Steve doesn’t know what to say. ‘Pretty weird.’

Eddie studies his fingers, frown deepening.

‘Pretty weird.’

Steve reaches for levity, continues mopping, doing the absolute worst job. ‘Maybe it’s Vecna’s favourite song too, huh?’

The silence stretches on, telling and empty.

‘Eddie, what—? Oh shit, I-I didn’t…’ He drops the mop, goes to Eddie whose skin is shock white, chest rising and falling swiftly. ‘Eddie, I’m sorry.’

Eddie reaches for Steve, grips him hard. Steve is maybe an inch taller, but he never really feels it. Fingers dig into his upper shoulder and Eddie leans into him.

‘Can I hug you?’

Eddie nods, moves closer, walks right into Steve. They hold each other tight and Steve… he sort of doesn’t know what he said wrong, thought he was just making a joke or whatever, but it’s upset Eddie and that’s not acceptable.

‘I really am sorry,’ he says, stroking Eddie’s hair as he feels the other man shaking against him. He’s warm and strong, but he shakes, he trembles all over and Steve caused that, idiot. ‘My fucking mouth, I swear.’

Eddie grips him harder, voice wrecked when he says, ‘Love your mouth.’

And Steve sort of dies.

It’s just a little death, a small dose that runs riot through his senses, fucks him up like he ploughed into a tree with his seat belt on.

‘Uh, what?’

Eddie pulls back, fingers sliding into Steve’s hair and they’re… oh, they’re much too close. Sharing breath and heartbeats, toe to toe, Steve can smell Eddie’s skin, the baseline he’s been longing for. It’s warm and alive and it makes him want.

Eddie doesn’t shy away, he looks Steve right in the eyes when he says, ‘Love your mouth, Harrington.’

And it’s the Harrington that does it, truly. It’s that little memory unlocked of all the times before. Yeah, maybe he heard Robin saying it, maybe it’s mirroring but Steve doesn’t think so. He thinks, as he lifts his hand to stroke Eddie’s face, thumb his tears away, that Eddie is coming back, piece by piece.

‘You do, huh?’ he whispers.

They are holding each other in a way that’s painfully undeniable. Friends don’t hold one another like this, do they? Friends don’t grip hair, they don’t drop their gaze to one another’s lips every few seconds.

They probably don’t want to taste the salt from their friend’s tears either, not how Steve wants to lick his thumb just to know the flavour.

Eddie nods, he swallows loudly and then closes his eyes, wet lashes that glitter.  

‘I do,’ he agrees, softly breathless; it runs in contrast to the gentle violence of how he holds Steve, how strong he is. ‘Perfect.’

The word hits like a kiss, like a fresh cigarette when he’s almost drunk. It knocks his senses all out of whack and leaves him unbearably, irredeemably horny for reasons that itch beneath his skin.

His desires are hungry things, they gnaw and craft aches to blossom and throb in his heart.

Eddie has this low-lidded look, it’s darkly possessive and primal. The kinda thing that makes Steve squirm because they haven’t talked about… well, anything yet, he’s got three days, but…

But the way Eddie scents him, breathes him in and let’s slip a low, velvety snarl… Steve is a little bit lost.

‘I’m n-not,’ he manages to say.

Eddie tilts his head, slightly pulls on Steve’s hair to make him tip too. Steve Harrington knows better than to bare his throat, but he can’t not, he wants to.

He fucking wants to.

He is dizzy with the desire to do so. Malleable and pliant in this man’s hands, it feels beautiful.

‘Perfect,’ Eddie insists with quiet ferocity, like that makes it law, rule set in stone. Then he leans close, nuzzles Steve’s throat, right in the no-man’s land of that curve, nose and lips rubbing lightly.

Steve’s eyes cross and his cock kick-throbs, it’s all fucked up, it’s so messy.

‘Do it,’ he breathes, pleads. ‘Do it, it’s OK.’

Eddie goes still again under his touch, he’s rigid but Steve won’t let it go that easy, he won’t quail.

He threads his hand through Eddie’s hair, fucking gorgeous hair, he just wants to play with it for hours. He locks them together and tips his head more, offering himself up in a way that’s obscene, it’s unholy and gruesome and it sears his insides, outlining the desire in red, crystal clear.

‘C’mon, it’s fine, I-I want you to,’ he confesses, fragile things slipping free when he’s stretched like this, feels pinned down, seen, desired. ‘Take what you need.’

Take what you want, he doesn’t say, but that’s what he means. It’s in his core, it is imprinted there, waiting for someone to look close enough and see it. To realise how much he’d truly give to anyone who asked.

He’s spinning.

Steve Harrington is tail-spinning as he feels Eddie Munson’s tongue on his throat, licks a stripe over his pulse point and Steve… he’s clinging to Eddie, pure gripping him so he doesn’t collapse, because this need leaves him weak.

But it’s beautiful.

It’s so beautiful he wants to cry.

He knows he’s making noises, knows they’re not the kind men are supposed to make, but he can’t control himself. He’s moaning and whining, it’s an orchestra of wanton fucking filth and Steve just wants… he wants that bite.

Wants to feel how sharp those teeth really are.

Take it, take it, take me.

Need me.

Want me.

It doesn’t happen, though.

Eddie lets him go, he moves away. Steve stumbles, knees giving out and he has to grab the side to catch himself.

‘No,’ Eddie says, leaves.

*

It feels… horribly personal. Steve rage cleans the rest of the kitchen, not angry at Eddie but at himself for throwing himself at his friend like that.

For wanting shit like that in the first place.

For wanting to cry when Eddie said no.

It feels like a rejection of the deepest, most awful degree. It’s twisted, it’s fucked, but the injustice of it burns inside him, it scalds.

He’s gross.

He’s a fucking monster, god.

So he cleans, wipes his eyes furiously, just ripping himself to pieces on the inside.

The kitchen is gleaming and Steve is an absolute wreck.

‘Fuck it,’ he says after delaying the inevitable too long, starts to feel sick with the absence, the distance. He drops the mop, heads upstairs. ‘Eddie?’

It’s quiet again in the house and Eddie doesn’t respond. He’s not in Steve’s room, not in any of the rooms and Steve has a brief little panic before he sees the door to the attic is slightly ajar.

It’s a place he hasn’t been in for years. Each step he ascends has a thick layer of dust, disturbed by Eddie’s bare feet. He tastes the stale sourness of space that hasn’t had fresh air in a long time, but the higher he climbs, the more he realises there is air.

There’s a breeze.

Steve follows it.

The attic has always been a weird place. It’s long, narrow like a ballet studio with a row of nine square windows. Steve’s Mom made it her summer project when he was nine, when her doctor stopped prescribing her whatever pills she was downing daily. She made it into a work-out studio, a place filled with natural light, with mirrors. Steve remembers watching people coming in and out, builders, contractors. She made it perfect, just how she wanted and then went to the Maldives with her friends, got a new prescription, and forgot all about it.

He steps inside, lets the door fall shut behind him.

Eddie sits on the ninth windowsill, furthest away. It’s the same sort of posture as last night in the bushes. Arms around his knees, kind of curled in a ball except his back is against the alcove. The window is open, swung wide like it’s not there at all.

The breeze drifts in, outside the oval moon sits in a clear, starry sky. Eddie doesn’t look over, but he knows Steve is there, tightens his arms, posture locking tight.

Steve comes closer. ‘Can I uh, come sit with you?’

Eddie stares outside, his eyes fixed unseeingly on some point in the dark distance. He gives a nod, nothing else. Steve’s bare feet pad over thick dust, but the room is clean otherwise. Untouched. The mirrors reflect the moonlight, bounce it around and give the room an ethereal glow.

He stops by the window. It’s wide, large. Near perfect construct that went entirely wasted and Steve thinks he hasn’t actually been up here since he was nine, a whole chunk of space he never cared about.

But it’s high, and there’s air, so Eddie seems to like it.

‘I’m really sorry.’

Eddie keeps his gaze fixed, expression almost entirely neutral except for when he shakes his head slightly, eyes dipping in a half blink.

‘No, I am and I deserve to be.’ Steve touches the sill, swipes the dust off, but all he really does is move it. Thick, evenly layered, it falls like a great big snowflake. ‘That was messed up.’

There’s a small frown between Eddie’s eyes, a little pinch there that Steve wants to smooth away.

His words fall short, he falls short.

‘Do you want to uh, be alone?’

Sadness splinters the frown, it penetrates everything like a single droplet of black in otherwise clear water. Small thing, but it creates such change. Eddie shakes his head slowly. He’s wearing Steve’s clothes, his hair is clean and curly. His eyes are dark. They’re like coals, reflecting all the moon and more in that weirdly iridescent shade. Like oil slick, like cat’s eyes, like crystals Steve doesn’t know fuck all about.

‘No,’ Eddie says, finally looking at Steve. He doesn’t move otherwise. ‘Stay?’

Steve is too eager, he wants to stay, doesn’t know what he’d have done if Eddie did want space.

‘Of course.’ He climbs awkwardly up onto the sill with Eddie, mimics his pose so there’s just enough room. The windows swing out, so there’s nothing between them and the night outside. Their bare toes are touching. ‘Course I’ll stay.’

Eddie swallows, looking at that single point of contact.

‘Dangerous,’ he says at last.

Steve lifts his gaze. ‘I know.’

‘No.’

‘OK, maybe I don’t know, but I want to. I want to learn about…’ Steve bites his bottom lip, trying not to stare at Eddie’s mouth, his fingernails. They’re so deceptively normal, all but the black. It’s not shiny, not the plastic glint of chemical paint. In the moonlight, Steve can see the shade of black is muted, it’s matte. He wants to feel them. Just to know.

Just to know Eddie.

‘I want to learn about you, Eddie. To help you.’

Eddie looks back out the window, expression somewhat shuttered.

‘Dangerous.’

‘I won’t do that again. I am sorry.’

And Eddie gets this look then, it’s so like Robin that Steve almost wants to smile. The incredibly specific type of disgust Steve Harrington tends to elicit from close friends. Eddie is angry with him, he can feel that and his disgust for Steve is fully expected, but he dares hope there’s something wry in it.

Steve can see his lips shaping words that don’t come, can’t come. He’s trying to say things, but it’s not happening. Eddie grips the tips of his fingers hard, he pulls on them.

‘Not sorry,’ he says at length, visibly frustrated. ‘Not bad. Dangerous.’ He holds Steve’s gaze, it’s hard to look away. ‘Dangerous for you.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

Eddie seems both knowing and somewhat brittle when he says, ‘You know why.’

They need to talk about it. Steve needs to ask, he has to understand. Three days and they need to get this together.

‘All right. You’re not completely human anymore,’ Steve says slowly, feeling his way with each word. Eddie bristles instantly, frown deepening but Steve reaches across between them, hovers his hand over Eddie’s (plenty of time for him to pull away, to scowl) and then rests it there. Eddie feels warm, he feels alive. ‘And that’s fine. That’s OK. But we-I need to know about the differences. The changes.’

He watches and he waits, rubbing his thumb over Eddie’s scarred knuckles. The skin there is thicker, rough.

Eddie says, ‘Monster,’ in a dead sort of voice.

And Steve Harrington is just not having that.

‘So like, show me?’

Ah, there’s the little scowl.

‘I’d like to see, if you feel like… sharing.’ The word is a miss, it’s not enough, but it conveys his message sufficiently for Eddie’s lips to thin, for him to glare at Steve.

‘Steve,’ he says and for once, it is a precursor. Eddie blinks a few times, gets his bearing and speaks slowly, reaching for each word individually. ‘Your body is… warm and smells good. Smells…’ He blinks hard, exhaling carefully. ‘Like food.’

Steve privately buries the tiny part of himself that brightened beneath the false sun of what hit like praise, but was definitely a death warning.

‘You’re afraid you’ll hurt me.’

‘Afraid… not stop. In…’ He squints, wading through the words. ‘Bad place, I never stop. Difficult.’

‘You think you’ll kill me?’

The subdued desolation he sees in those dark eyes that refract the moon… it wrenches things in Steve’s chest, plays havoc with his empathy.

Eddie doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t have to.

‘It’s fine,’ Steve tells him, trying to smile, almost succeeding. He’s still stroking his hand, still touching him. ‘We’ll get what you need somewhere else. It is… blood, right?’

Eddie nods, drops his gaze, like he’s ashamed.

‘That’s fine, you know that right? Like, Robin’s girlfriend, she can’t eat dairy. Everyone has requirements.’

The little look he gets in response is well worth it. Like Steve is a fucking idiot, like he’s lucky he’s cute.

‘It’s just blood, no big deal.’ It is a big deal, just not the way Eddie thinks. It’s a big, swirling thing inside Steve who cannot quite deny the desire to share himself on this most basic of levels, but can bury the fuck out of it. He’s good at that. ‘Do you need it every day?’

Eddie shrugs.

‘Does salt help?’

A nod.

‘Good, that’s good.’

The slow, subtle journey of Eddie’s gaze from the night outside onto Steve’s middle makes him break out into a shiver he can’t quite hide.

‘What?’

Eddie says, ‘Salt… in you. In your body.’

‘Yeah.’ It’s breathless, not good enough, get it together, Harrington. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

Eddie turns his hand beneath Steve’s, palm raised so they’re sort of just… holding hands. ‘Smell good.’

‘So do you.’

The soft little blink he gets, the way Eddie didn’t expect it, yeah, Steve likes that. He leans forward, brings their joined hand to his lips and dares press a warm, dry kiss to the back of Eddie’s hand.

‘You smell great.’

‘Great,’ Eddie echoes. He’d followed the progress of their hands together, but now his gaze seems a little stuck on Steve’s mouth. He stares, expression glassy. ‘Perfect.’

Heat flares at the back of Steve’s neck, desire spiking in his blood and Eddie… he sighs, his eyes flutter, gripping Steve’s hand a little tighter. When he swallows, Steve thinks he can hear it. He wants to touch the apple, to feel it swell and subside.

‘Smell you,’ Eddie tells him, voice dropping an entire octave. Low, rough, a little dark. ‘Your blood.’

‘You can?’ Steve squirms a tiny bit, awareness heightening the sensation, the feel, the flood. ‘What does it smell like?’

He tracks Eddie’s stare as it drops lower, over Steve’s throat, same place Steve had been thinking about. He brings his other hand up to cup Steve’s in both of his, to hold them like he’s holding soap, to cradle.

‘Like…’ Eddie tells him, rubbing his index finger, that black matte nail, over Steve’s pulse point. ‘Daylight.’

*

They clean together for the rest of the evening. Eddie helps, but it’s mostly handing things to Steve, being close, hanging out. Steve does laundry in the basement, folds what is dry, puts it away. He tidies the den, the dining area, his bedroom.

The bathroom, he’ll leave until tomorrow. It’s a big fucking job and his stomach is growling in protest.

‘Hungry,’ Eddie points out the first time it happens. He looks at Steve expectantly, then nods towards the stairs. ‘Food.’

‘Nah, y’know what, I’m doing OK.’

Eddie cocks his head, narrows his eyes. ‘Not true.’

Steve huffs, isn’t getting into it. ‘Fine.’

Robin, true to her word, has made a literal picnic with fruit, sandwiches, cheese, cucumber and a tiny jar of pickles. It’s all very small. Everything cut up like a buffet.

‘Want some salt?’ he offers Eddie, feels terrible about the fact he hasn’t eaten or even had water since Steve found him.

Eddie shakes his head, leaning on the counter with his arms crossed. He’s surveying the food with interest.

‘Little,’ he comments.

‘Yeah, it looks… nice.’

Steve takes a deep breath, exhales it messily, hand in his hair. This is going to sound so fucking stupid.

‘It’s um. Been really hard for me to eat, lately. I kept thinking about…’ There’s no good way to say it, is there? ‘About what the bats did to you.’ Steve’s guts clench tight, jaw aching as his skin turns clammy. ‘It’s been hard.’

He can feel Eddie looking him over, feels the attention like physical touch.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. It’s… I mean, you’re OK now, so I have to start. Trying. I know I do.’

Eddie speaks softly, when he says, ‘Need food.’

It’s all little chunks and he knows she cut them small to make it cute, to make it easy to pick at maybe, but to Steve, it looks like little mouthfuls.

‘I know.’

‘Steve,’ Eddie says, peering over the food. ‘Look.’

He scoops up the fruit, carries it over to the blender where he drops it inside and looks back, pleased.

Steve blinks. ‘Oh. Yeah, OK.’

*

He finishes almost the whole glass. It’s sweet and delicious, it makes his head spin.

Eddie looks content and Steve feels good, he feels like he took a good first step. Not a permanent solution, but like, something. His stomach is full, it’s all vitamins and shit. He’s practically glowing.

‘How did you know about the blender?’

Eddie plays with a bottle cap. ‘Remembered.’

‘Do you remember other stuff too?’

The slow incline of his head, the way he considers, Steve already has his answer, but Eddie puts it into words anyway.

‘Some, not lots.’

‘That’s still really good.’

Steve nervously raps his nails on the marble, novel concept circling and circling, insistently loud.

‘So, I had an idea,’ he forces himself to say, drawing Eddie’s full attention. ‘Kind of like, with the blender, but not. Definitely not, but um. Maybe.’ He laughs self-consciously, rubs his neck. ‘I could bleed into a glass and you could… drink it, from the glass.’

Steve can’t help but wince, wishes he’d put some more thought into that. It’s out there now and Eddie will either say yes or no.

Or he just won’t get it at all. ‘What?’

‘Yeah,’ Steve chuckles, blushing, hating himself. ‘That came out wrong, for sure. I just mean, like what you did with the blender, you made it different. I could make it different for you. Safer.’

A range of complex emotions runs through Eddie, starts out wary, lands on considering.

‘I just want to help.’

Let me help, let me help, please.

Eddie flatly says, ‘Dangerous.’

‘I know.’

‘Your smell… blood.’ That’s all he says and Steve gets it. He gets it, but it’s like another little knock back.

‘It would be hard to control yourself.’

Eddie’s eyes shine with intent to communicate.

‘Yes.’

And maybe it’s the heady rush from all the fruit, maybe it’s just the fact that Eddie is definitely paler than he was that morning, dark circles coming in under his eyes. Maybe it’s the fact that he said Steve’s blood smelled like fucking daylight earlier, but he opens his stupid mouth and says…

‘I could tie you up.’

Eddie stares, he just looks at Steve.

‘Restrain you, y’know? Your hands, so you can’t… if you lost control, you wouldn’t be able to hurt me.’

Slowly, hesitantly, Eddie is… he’s fucking considering it, Steve can tell. The way his eyes narrow around the corners, tip of his tongue running over the top of his teeth.

But then he shakes his head. ‘Not safe.’

Steve gives an easy, warm smile that doesn’t quite touch his insides. ‘Just an idea.’

*

Steve changes all the bed sheets. He makes it new, fresh. Eddie helps, mimicking Steve on the opposite side. He has his window wide open, lets all the air in. Eddie likes that, Steve can tell.

‘I can make up a guest room,’ he says, plumping the pillows. ‘For you. Or me, if you like it in here.’

Eddie glances up, had been focused on making the cover smooth. He cocks his head, the little huh? motion.

‘You don’t have to sleep…’ with me. ‘In here. You could pick another room, wherever you wanted.’

Eddie wrinkles his nose, looks around. ‘Yours.’

‘Yeah, but… we could find something that’s yours too.’

‘Yours,’ he repeats, like Steve is being dense. ‘Perfect.’

‘OK, no problem. Are you tired?’

Eddie doesn’t look tired at all. He’s not exactly keyed up, but there’s nothing slow in his looks, no traces of fatigue. He seems bright, alert.

But he shrugs, gets on the bed and lays on the same side as last night.

‘Rest.’

‘Yeah, we can rest.’

Steve feels exhausted. It’s like there’s cement in his bones, his blood is horribly depleted after the burst of energy from the blended fruit earlier. He just wants to lay there, sleep while Eddie breathes beside him.

He wants those dark eyes on him while he rests.

With effort, he yanks his top off, leaves the shorts on. Tomorrow, there’ll be underpants, freshly washed shit, the high life. The cool night air from outside brushes over his skin and he settles on the pillow, facing Eddie.

And his bones are heavy, his body aching for sleep, but he just watches Eddie for a bit. They stare, they watch one another without self-awareness, without cause to look away and blush. Eddie is absolutely not going to sleep and Steve thinks it shouldn’t be reassuring, shouldn’t make him feel safe, but it does.

Tomorrow, he’ll go get blood from somewhere. He’ll figure out how to take care of Eddie. He’ll play him the kind of music he loved, he’ll show him pictures. Bring it all back, the little pieces lost, the parts that are missing.

Tomorrow, Steve is going to save the world with just one man, but for now, he’s tired.

He’s so tired that when the backs of Eddie’s fingers trace his cheek, he doesn’t even open his eyes. He just sighs, mutters his goodnights and drifts.

*

Steve wakes up and Eddie isn’t there. It’s like a knife in his heart, foul man-made intrusion of metal that has him jerking upright, panicking.

‘Eddie? Eddie?’

He hears footfalls on carpet, but can’t relax until Eddie slips inside with something in his hands. A mug.

‘Here,’ he says, smiling almost shyly. Steve, whose had softer awakenings, puts his hand over his dumb heart, chastises himself and outwardly tries to appear normal.

‘Oh, that’s…’ Steve takes the mug, winces when it scalds a little. ‘You made me coffee?’

Eddie sits on the bed, cross legged, observing eagerly.

‘You like coffee.’

Three words he’s not mimicking, three words he put together by himself, an independent observation. Steve smiles as he blows over the hot surface of what looks like a very strong coffee. When he tastes it, he buries the grimace because it’s not good, but Eddie made it, so he loves it.

‘I love it, thank you.’

Eddie gives a playful grin, leans back on his elbows and looks smug again. One knee bent, hair falling down his back, he’s so fucking gorgeous.

‘I wish I could make you something,’ Steve says, takes another sip. ‘I feel bad.’

Eddie shrugs. ‘Had salt.’

‘That’s good, but I’m still gonna find what you need today.’

It’s subtle. Steve thinks someone else might not have even noticed the way Eddie tenses up, shoulders rounding ever so slightly. But Steve is keyed into him, his little reactions, the expressions, the body language.

He reads the hesitation, the worry.

‘Not from… me, well. ‘M gonna go to town, find a butcher if possible. Get you some blood.’

The last word elicits a swallow, a thick heavy contraction in his throat as he determinedly avoids Steve’s gaze. The bad coffee isn’t actually so bad and Steve drinks in earnest.

‘Others?’

‘Not yet.’

Eddie nods, looks around. ‘Stay?’

‘You should probably stay here, yeah.’

*

It fucking sucks.

Steve’s hands are rigid on the wheel, his knuckles white. His guts churn and writhe and twice, he swerves into a near U turn, but pulls out of it at the last second.

He needs shit.

He can’t stay there forever.

So he floors it, pushing his baby to the limits and she goes, glugs a lot of gas to get him into town in record time.

He’s all tangled up with Eddie, back there. Back in the place he’d cleaned up, made a bit nicer. It’s still early, he’s got a lot more to do. The bathroom, especially.

Eddie hadn’t been happy about him leaving, but like…

It just fucking sucks.

Steve parks badly, slams the door and looks around at what’s left of this corner of Hawkins.

Not a whole hell of a lot, really.

But a couple of places are still open. A few are even rebuilding. The skies are clear, they’re a vivid shade of blue and there’s not a fucking cloud to be seen. Steve stares at it for a moment, doesn’t wanna be the guy who gets suspicious about good things, but that sky has been well and truly fucked for a month now.

There’s coincidence, there’s summer rocking up early and then there’s literally the fact that ever since Eddie came back, everything’s been just peachy in the weather department.

He heads into the store, not much of a queue.

Perfect.

Steve struggles to fill the cart, doesn’t really know what to get but he does his best. Bread, milk, salt, the necessities.

In the meat section, he stands there feeling dumb. He eyes packs of steak, raw meat and wonders before he just decides to buy and try.

‘Hey, kid.’

His soul makes an excellent leap for freedom out of his fucking skin and his arms are full of meat. Steve holds onto both by sheer force of will, mildly glares at the intruder.

‘Hopper.’ He eyes the tall man who eyes him right back, slanting a brow at all the meat in the cart and in his arms. El is with him though, so Steve softens quickly. ‘Hey, you,’ he greets her with a smile. ‘Stocking up on the good stuff?’

Eleven offers a faint smile in return and he knows, without having to ask, that Max hasn’t woken up today. El looks tired, she’s too pale.

‘Not much left to get,’ Hopper comments casually and Steve surveys him coolly. Not like the older man ever did anything wrong, but Steve Harrington’s unease is born of mistrust for the fleeting nature of parental surety. It is universal, hard to shake. ‘Haven’t seen you around much.’

He’s doing the fucking detective shit - Chief of Police, what you got there, son? Steve is exquisitely not in the mood. He dumps the rest of the meat, affects a bright smile so shallow it may as well be a mirror.

‘Busy.’

‘Robin told us,’ El says and for a moment, Steve’s facade threatens to fracture, but his trust in Robin is iron-wrought. If there’s anyone he trusts on this earth, it’s her. ‘Your house.’

‘Yeah.’ To his subdued dismay, Hopper turns his cart and falls into step with Steve. ‘Parents let me have it permanently.’

‘Big place all on your own,’ Hopper observes and times like this, Steve has to remind himself that Jim is a good guy, he’s incredibly decent and protective, even if he doesn’t know when to fucking can his instincts. ‘You doin’ OK out there?’

‘Doing great. Place is a dump, but Robin’s helping me clean it up. Is there uh,’ he says in a lowered voice, grabbing a can of anchovies just for something to do. ‘News? Anything?’

Eleven is watching him evenly, calmly. It reminds Steve a tiny bit of the way Eddie watches him these days.

‘There is no change,’ she answers before Hopper can come out with anything grim. ‘We’re regrouping.’

Steve doesn’t know if that’s true.

Sure, he’s spent the last month drowning his fucking sorrows in an empty house, but he’s been around too, or at least he was for the first few weeks. Sure, Nancy and Jonathan are living together in a little place where the split hasn’t spread. Robin is Steve’s centre of gravity, she might as well be the earth incarnate for how he relies on her presence, but the Wheeler family outright moved, headed North to some place near Fort Wayne. The Sinclaire’s are watching Lucas’s every move. Max…

Max, who still hasn’t woken up yet, doesn’t have a Mom anymore. Hopper and Joyce were trying to get in touch with her father, last Steve heard, but it had been all dead ends.

It’s only Dustin’s Mom who seems determined to stay, to cling hard to what vestiges of normality they have left while her son grieves.

Joyce is packing up the house in Lenora Hills, moving back to shitty Hawkins. Will is staying with Hopper and El, Steve supposes. He hadn’t really asked, feels a nasty chill of guilt that he can’t quite source.

Then he feels a tiny little blossom of hope because Will… oh Will is gonna love Eddie.

But either way, it doesn’t feel like regrouping.

Only in the way he can’t tell anyone about yet.

‘That’s good.’ Steve reaches for milk duds because he knows she likes them and Hopper missed them on the shelf. He drops them into Hopper’s cart, says nothing. Hopper doesn’t take them out. ‘Let me know if I can help.’

‘We will,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s just hard right now.’

Steve nudges her, winks. ‘You’re doing great.’

At the checkout, Hopper watches the procession of meat as it’s scanned. Steve feels like he’s been pulled over for speeding but actually has weed in his fucking pants or something. There’s no way humanly possible that Hopper can know, and yet…

‘Having a cookout?’

Steve knows he’s expressive, overly so. He’s given away too much in the past, fucking terrible liar when he’s around people he (sort of) trusts, so this time he measures his reactions. Keeps himself level.

‘Promised Robin I’d do something with her and Vickie over the weekend. I dunno, I guess I don’t really remember how to host anymore these days,’ he says, just awkward enough to cover it, rubs his neck for good measure too, works to seem self-conscious.

Hopper’s eyes narrow, fucking walking lie detector, but Steve’s not completely useless and after a beat, he seems to lose interest.

Steve bags his shit, pays by credit card.

‘Take care, sweetie,’ he says to El.

He’s almost out the door, Hopper bagging food for himself, El and Will, when the fucker calls out, ‘What day you cookin’ out, Harrington? I’ve got a decent set of skills when it comes to burning meat.’

*

Steve seethes in the car, he curses himself and drives like it’s the Beemer’s fault, like the road somehow fucked him over and left him speechless but to offer a random fucking, ‘Saturday!’ for this entirely fake barbecue he’s now apparently throwing.

In the car, he says everything he’d have liked to say to Jim Hopper, he yells at thin air and smacks the wheel, furious at himself, the world entire, everyone older than him.

He’s driving so fast he almost misses the little butcher’s shop.

*

It’s run by two brothers and they stare at Steve when he outright asks if they have any blood he can buy.

All too late, he thinks about how the fucking town had been recently whipped up into an anti-occult frenzy, how it had come close to pitchforks and shit, Satanic Panic.

All too late, he thinks maybe asking to buy blood in Hawkins wasn’t the… best idea but now he can’t take it back and he’s still standing there, the scent of ripe, dead meat thick in the air, two full grown men frowning at him like he grew a second head.

‘What I mean,’ he adds, deciding to try. Styling it out has never really been his thing, but he’s gonna give it his all. ‘Sorry, what I meant is um, y’know. Blood… sausage.’ He nods sagely. ‘Blood sausage, if you have it?’

The older brother gives him some serious stink eye.

‘You said blood.’

‘Sausage.’ Oh, nice. ‘Blood sausage. I have an iron deficiency, my doctor told me to try blood sausage. For the iron.’

‘That’s not something we sell here in the USA, boy.’

Steve smacks the glass surface displaying all the meat. It quivers, the brothers glare. ‘Ah, well, can’t blame a guy for trying!’

He about turns before they can say anything and of course, of fucking course, Hopper and El drive right past at that exact moment, forcing him to give a cheery wave that he’s sure renders him mildly psychotic.

*

‘Never leaving the fucking house again,’ he snarls to himself, hauling brown paper bags from the car to the front door. They’re heavy, on the verge of splitting but he just has to make it to the…

Eddie is sitting in the doorway, a jagged jet of sunshine carved by the surrounding trees making him glow. His arms are wrapped tight around himself. He looks… not great.

Steve forces a smile that doesn’t quite land. ‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ he greets, shifting to better take the weight of the meat bag right on the verge of spilling. ‘Could you—?’

Eddie slams into him, knocks all the bags to the gravel. He takes Steve in his arms, embraces him with a sense of need that is absent of social construct, full on buries his face in Steve’s neck. Harsh, shallow breaths paint Steve’s skin, overly warm, damp and frantic.

‘Gone,’ he utters, and it’s threadbare. Steve can feel the tension, piano-wire tight, one delicate touch from snapping. ‘Y-you were gone.’

The groceries don’t matter, the bags don’t matter. With Eddie’s face against his skin, arms tight enough to lift him clean off his feet, the mess around them simply doesn’t matter. Eddie turns them in a small circle, like they’re dancing, like it’s a slow dance and Steve is a pretty girl. Eddie’s holding him under the thighs like it’s natural, like it’s nothing and Steve…

Steve slides his arms around Eddie’s neck, holds on, hugs him in return and lets it happen. He sinks into the contact, weird and new, this kind of friendship, but his basis is skewed, always has been and in all honesty, he finds comfort in the strange.

‘I’m back,’ he whispers, stroking Eddie’s hair where it curls at the nape of his neck. ‘I’m here now.’

*

‘Sunlight’s fine, then,’ Steve says, mostly to himself as they bring in the shopping. Eddie’s skin is pale and scarred, but then he was never really tan before. Point is, he’s not bursting into flames. Insistent curiosity winds around Steve’s heart. He wants to know more, to learn the specifics, know Eddie in this way. The more he knows, the better he can help.

Eddie sniffs the meat. He frowns, wary and suspicious, eventually tossing it aside. Steve hears him mutter, ‘Fuck off, meat.’

Oh well. More for this hellish gathering he’ll need Robin to get him out of. Eddie visibly fidgets while Steve unpacks, like he’s nervous after the hug.

So Steve looks over, says, ‘You wanna come close?’

Eddie’s smile is… well, it’s beautiful. It twists things up, it makes things hurt like that lovely ache after too much tickling, the swooping possession of happiness from a thoughtful surprise. Steve keeps his recognition of these thoughts abstract, but he’s not stupid. He knows he likes Eddie.

Likes him, likes him.

‘Yeah.’

Side by side, it’s not that difficult really and Eddie is much happier if he can reach out and touch Steve whenever he likes. They’re little things, incongruous touches, innocent enough. Steve doesn’t react, part of him wants to normalise it, even though he thinks maybe that’s selfish, unhealthy.

For now, though, it’s whatever Eddie needs.

At the end of the task, Eddie wraps his arms around Steve from behind and slots them close together like he’s been waiting to do it this whole time. Steve’s breath catches right in his chest, snagging sharp like thorns on pantyhose and his eyes flutter shut.

‘Missed you, Steve,’ Eddie rumbles, sincere and severe, like it’s an admonishment, like he isn’t rubbing his lips over the exposed skin of Steve’s throat where it meets the neck of his tee. Like he isn’t making Steve dizzy, filling him with heat, with heady sweet longing that runs south.

New.

It is unbearably new to be embraced in such a way.

It awakens a greedy, gruesome monster inside Steve, a thing that howls to be held. To be cradled and scented, to be admonished for leaving. Primal desires he has suppressed all his life are unfurling, blinking themselves awake as Eddie Munson touches him in ways devoid of mundane normality.

Steve can’t remember what he was doing, his hands are hovering in front of him, palms down, like he’s preparing for… for fucking what? He’s already tipped his head to the side, offering Eddie the full expanse of that flesh column. It feels so natural that it almost frightens him.

‘Missed you lots.’

He whispers it there into Steve’s skin, into Steve, who feels it like a brand, a promise that burns. Someone missed him.

And he’s so hard, so fucking gone for it.

‘I-I missed you too, Eddie,’ he says, helplessly honest because he did. It wasn’t just the worry of leaving him alone, the stressful human encounters in town, he really did miss him. ‘Glad to be home.’

Eddie’s fingers hesitantly lift the hem of Steve’s tee, no further though, and he asks, ‘Touch?’

Steve sort of sees white behind his eyes, has no idea which parts of him Eddie wants to touch, but he knows it’s fine, whatever he wants, he can have it.

Breathless, he says, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure.’

Eddie’s hand is warm and uncertain as he slowly trails up and up, grazing the guiding line from Steve’s naval, brushing through the thicket of chest hair and then settles over his heart. His whole palm is splayed there.

‘Glad to be home,’ Eddie utters in a rough whisper, right in Steve’s ear. It makes his body break out in riotous goosebumps, makes him prickle all over and his idiotic cock is getting the wrong idea, is getting ideas it never has before. ‘Steve.’

Steve is trembling.

He feels fragile, like a shattered vase held together with scotch tape and goodwill. He thinks if Eddie moves away before he can get his bearing again, he’s going to pitch forward, knees gone useless, mind and heart conspiring to leave him weak for this man.

But Eddie doesn’t let go. He just settles in, holds him and rests their cheeks together, humming to himself with a lovely, soft voice Steve hasn’t heard before.

He’s humming Springsteen, Steve realises very distantly. A slow melodic version of Steve’s favourite song. They stay there a while, until Steve has found his centre enough to turn, to smile and normalise what is absolutely not normal but is, he thinks, good for them.

For Eddie.

For Steve.

For this moment, their lives as they align.

He’ll fret later.

*

Eddie doesn’t mind the bottled water, but it’s not a hit by any means. Steve pours salt into it, offers it anew and when Eddie drinks, his reaction is more neutral. Steve hides his painful relief that Eddie can at least hydrate for now.

‘OK, what about if I uh,’ he says, thinking aloud, looking around the kitchen. ‘I could like… squeeze the meat?’

The flicker of humour he sees run through Eddie’s otherwise chill expression, it’s got a little innuendo in it. Steve realises what he just said, then his heart leaps because Eddie picked it up before even Steve. Each tiny bit of progress shines bright in Steve’s pit of worry, glints like a mirror playing with the sun.

‘Forget I said that,’ he grouses, playfully huffing. ‘I meant, to get the blood from it.’

Eddie wrinkles his nose with distaste, eyeing the stack of expensive meat. ‘Dead.’

Steve goes quiet with understanding, chews his bottom lip and acknowledges the inevitable. He knows it’s going to happen, just a matter of time.

‘OK, no problem. Well, I am gonna eat like a king tonight, then.’

Eddie cocks his head, sat in his favourite place in between the cabinets on the marble surface. He likes being higher than Steve, he likes to perch.

‘King Steve,’ he mutters, rolling a pair of rings around between his fingers. They’re Steve’s Mom’s; big, showy gems on solid silver bands, but it’s what she would call junk jewellery; gauche gifts from a well-meaning Hawkins friend that she’d tossed in a cupboard and forgot all about. Eddie likes them, though. He plays with the turquoise and the champagne coloured faux diamonds.

‘You remember that, huh?’

Eddie shrugs.

Steve is making toast and coffee. He’s thinking about grains and fields, the wholesome nature of where his toast began because that helps. Despite his bravado about the unwanted meat, he doesn’t actually think in a million years he’ll be able to eat it. Far too familiar, too connected to his own dark empathy of the last time he saw Eddie, Steve’s experiences with those fucking bats.  

Maybe Robin can take it, do something good with it.

‘I saw Hopper and Eleven in town,’ he says, stirs the coffee way more than is necessary but repetitive motions are soothing.

That draws Eddie’s attention. ‘Friends?’

Eddie never met them, he never got to meet any of them.

But he will now. Soon.

‘Yeah, they’re my friends. Sort of.’

‘Like Robin?’

‘Yeah. They’re good people.’

Eddie slips Steve’s Mom’s rings on and off his pinkie finger, quiet once more. Steve notices that the tips of his fingers are trembling. He wants to ask what Eddie needs, wonders if now that the thirst is slaked, perhaps hunger is bubbling to the surface.

He doesn’t ask that yet, he will, but it can hold for now.

‘So this weekend, I think people are gonna come by.’

‘Robin.’

‘And others, maybe. I want—I’d like to tell the others you’re not dead. To let them see you. Especially Dustin, your other friends. Gareth, Jeff, Lucas, Mike.’

Eddie looks away, stares to the side for a moment.

‘Friends,’ he says softly. ‘Before.’

‘That’s right,’ Steve encourages. He lifts his coffee to his lips, takes a sip while it’s still scalding. ‘They’d be really happy that you’re OK.’

But there, Eddie shakes his head. ‘Not OK.’

For some reason, Steve gets mildly defensive at that.

‘All right, well, not dead then. Not dead is a lot better than dead.’

Dark eyes slide over to Steve, land with expert precision on the lighter shade and lock tight.

‘Not always.’

The discomfort of such an assessment stings inside Steve. He can’t explain why, feels like somehow it’s his fault that Eddie isn’t the way he was before.

‘They’re your friends. They deserve to know.’

For the first time, Eddie’s expression goes cold with a strange kind of anger. It makes Steve reel, makes him feel ten years old in the presence of a disappointed parent whose approval he still sought.

Eddie holds him with that stare, distance between then vast and unknowable and he says, ‘You don’t know.’

‘So tell me, then.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? I’m here, I’m listening. I wanna know, so I can help.’

The gaze lowers, dark eyes have their hooks in Steve Harrington and he thinks he couldn’t look away if he tried.

‘You can’t.’

And that… that is unacceptable.

On a basic, cellular level, Steve is just not having it.

‘Like fuck I can’t,’ he says, digs in tight. ‘I can help, you just won’t let me.’

He sees the trembling fingertips, the dark circles beneath his eyes that speak of vague hunger. Steve has what Eddie needs, he has it in excess.

‘No.’

‘Eddie,’ he says, moving closer. Eddie’s back straightens, like he sort of wants to run, but he doesn’t. ‘Eddie, listen. Please, I’m—this is just difficult, OK? I want to help you, I want to make it so you can see your friends and no one has to think you’re dead.’

They’re not close enough to touch, not by a long shot, but Steve still sort of feels it when Eddie shifts, he’s too keyed into all his movements.

Eddie says, ‘Better.’

Steve’s jaw drops. ‘No, no, it’s fucking not, OK? You can go ahead and trust me on that one! It’s not better to have people think you’re dead when you’re sitting here in my god damned kitchen, all right? We’re gonna get you better—’

‘Steve—’

‘—then we can tell people, bring them here and-and then they won’t have to be upset anymore!’

 He’s out of breath when he stops, he’s gone stiff all over, lungs clenched, guts writhing with sickness he wanted to be done with.

Eddie cocks his head, studies Steve with narrowed eyes like Steve is somehow the weird one here, like Steve came back from the fucking dead.

He hops down from the side, moves closer.

Something has shifted between them.

Now Steve regrets his four steps. He retreats, doesn’t like the way Eddie is looking at him.

‘Steve.’

‘’Y’know what? Forget it. Just forget it,’ he says, whirling around, wants to leave, to get away to an empty room filled with dead space so he can breathe. ‘Do what you want, man.’

A strong hand whips out to grab him, to keep him there. Eddie pulls Steve back, makes him stumble, miscalculated strength or maybe just determination, but whatever the intent, Steve nearly smacks into the kitchen island.

Only Eddie Munson keeps him upright, holds him steady.

‘Steve,’ he repeats, stern and intent. He has him by the shoulders, hands moving inward to narrow their touch until he’s cupping Steve’s face, until he has him like prey. ‘You think…’ Eddie shakes his head, reaching for the words he needs while Steve just wants to wrench himself away, to run, fucking book it elsewhere, anywhere. ‘Your fault?’

Eddie’s dark eyes are wide as they study Steve, as they comb through all that he is to find the grains of terrible truth and Steve feels so small he wants to cry, lash out. The worst version of himself is unworthy, it’s ugly and volatile and he can’t bear it being this close to the surface when someone like this is holding his fucking face.

‘You think this… is your fault?’

The words come at cost, he sees the effort required for Eddie to dredge them, arrange them how he needs.

‘I know it is,’ Steve hears himself gasp, salt burning in the corners of his eyes like the first time he splashed into the sea as a kid, naively astonished when it stung.

Eddie’s reading him, he’s drinking every little expression, lips parted, brow furrowed deep. They are almost sharing breath.

‘You know it?’

‘I shouldn’t have left you two alone. I should have been there.’

Eddie’s thumb rubs over his cheekbone as the hold adjusts, as he invades what little remains of space between them, crossing the borderlands of normality in a way that feels final, irreversible. He is bright with directionless anger, Eddie is. This is the most lucid conversation they’ve had so far and for Steve, it’s one of the most painful of his whole life.

‘Not your fault,’ he tells Steve, words sharp, irritable that he can’t say more than that, maybe. ‘Mine.’

Steve scowls, he hisses low, tears streaking down his skin, more to follow once the tracks have been laid.

‘Oh, fuck off, no it’s not.’

Eddie lifts Steve’s face just a fraction, holding him like it’s easy, like all this strength is just second nature. It hurts, it hurts in more ways than one to be held by a creature whose strength Steve has not yet gauged. It makes his insides twist, his blood absolutely flooding through his veins.

It feels like a reprimand and Eddie makes sure to grip Steve a little harder, holds the gaze and lifts his brow for emphasis when he says, ‘Not your fault, Steve.’

It sort of sinks into Steve’s bones, there’s so much intent behind the words. He wants to believe it, of course he does. He wants to let the statement do what Eddie sought. Steve wants to feel better, to feel like he did enough, like he was enough to keep the group together, but all the failures happened where he wasn’t. Max, Eddie.

He’d wanted to go with Nancy Wheeler.

He’d had enough of being left with the kids.

It’s his failure and nothing will convince him otherwise.

All he can do is minimise.

If Eddie is OK… that’s one less failure.

Steve swallows thickly, it’s hard when his face is tilted up, when it’s Eddie who seems taller then. He’s exposed, he is seen and it’s a wretched fucking feeling because like the house, he hadn’t tidied his insides. Wasn’t expecting company, so it’s all bad in there.

‘I should have kept you safe.’

Eddie frowns again, shakes his head. Steve knows he doesn’t have the words again and it frustrates him.

They’ll come back, Steve tells himself, knows it. It’ll all come back.

The way Eddie holds him loosens, but does not relinquish. Eddie cradles Steve’s face instead of gripping, he sighs, deep and sad. Steve can feel their bodies pressing, feels everywhere they’re touching.

‘Can’t always,’ Eddie rumbles at length, caressing Steve’s cheeks with a thumb that wears the discarded gems of his mother. ‘Not always safe, Steve.’

Steve still recalls the first moment the kids needed him, years ago. It’s a formative thing, that realisation that he was the adult there when they needed one and found themselves lacking. He remembers how it felt to realise he could be what they needed, no matter how dumb or unwanted he was, he could be needed. He could help. He could keep them safe.

He grits his teeth, trembling all over as he sneers, ‘I should have brought you back here.’

For the very first time, Steve feels something razor sharp against the soft skin of his upper cheek, something like the flat side of a blade caressing his cheekbone. It sends waves of sensation through him, alarm bells clanging loudly against confused desires. He wants to see it, he wants to see what Eddie is stroking him with.

Eddie, whose nose brushes Steve’s own.

Eddie, who stares at Steve like he can see all the way down into him, into that messy, dark place, unfit for visitors.

Eddie, who whispers, ‘You did.’

They’re going to kiss, Steve thinks. Wants. Hopes. Dreads. Friends don’t hold each other like this, do they? Friends don’t bring their mouths close, they don’t share breath and shake with the effort of restraint.

Friends don’t have to hold back.

Friends don’t lie.

Steve just wants the pain to stop. He wants it to start, a new kind, anything to gut this ache inside him. This dismal, grey pollutant in his red, the bitter residue of utter failure. When the kids were with him, they were safe. It meant being left out, sure. It meant having no one to talk to, but they were safe, those little fuckers, those kids he loves. The bright lights of his life, with their chatter, their selfish demands.

They’d always been safe with him.

An immaculate balance he’d fucked up.

Max won’t wake up, that’s what the doctors quietly told Hopper and Steve had heard it because he was halfway in, halfway out, Styrofoam cups in his hands, dull burn and a sick realisation of information not meant for kids.

Max won’t wake up because Steve wasn’t there.

‘You brought me back,’ Eddie tells him, slides his nose into the wetness carved by Steve’s tears. ‘You, Steve.’

If we kiss, I hope it hurts, Steve thinks. I hope it fucking destroys me.

Eddie holds him like prey, like a benevolent predator who just wants to bask in the scent and sight of what it has in its claws. Beholden and beautifully inferior, Steve is spiralling in a clash of violent desires and merciless despair. He wants bad things, he wants the security of wild extremes because that’s when he felt the most like himself. Swinging a bat, making a bloody mess, yelling at the kids to move.

He feels safest in the woods with monsters.

And they don’t kiss.

But after a while, Steve reaches up to slide his arms around Eddie’s neck again, to find surety in plastering himself against this man. He hides there and sobs silently, grieving complex things that he can’t name.

‘I’m sorry.’

Eddie shifts to hold him better, to gather his weight in the same way he did outside, instinctive method of embrace that’s still new to Steve, who has only ever lifted others in this way, not been lifted. It is inherently romantic, with Eddie’s hands on the backs of his jean-clad thighs. Steve is weightless and it feels romantic in the worst possible way because he is not the protector here with Eddie. He is not the babysitter, can’t be if he is being held and comforted in this way that makes his heart scream for more.

This contact is like fresh water, it trickles into the wasteland of neglect. The greedy earth of Steve Harrington’s wayward desires soak it up.

Chest to chest, Eddie holds him and carries him and asks nothing in return. Steve clings and he lets himself be lifted, held, swayed.

‘You brought me back,’ Eddie tells him. ‘You.’

It sounds so broken, so childish when Steve croaks, ‘I did?’

Eddie hums Springsteen again, he sways in time and nods. Steve exhales shakily, not OK, not saved, but he lets them dance.

It feels too nice not to.

*

Eddie gets tired around mid-afternoon. Steve is ready for it this time.

He’s ready, he has plans.

From the first moment Eddie set him down, stroked his tears away and sucked them off his fingers (salt water, either way) Steve knew exactly what he was going to do.

They cuddled on the sofa for a while, TV playing, curtains drawn to make the room dim against the bright sunshine streaming happily outside and when Eddie fell asleep, Steve carefully untangled himself from the other man’s grasp.

In the kitchen, he buys himself a few seconds. He breathes deep, he builds what he can, shoulders what he can’t. He takes the phone off the hook in case it rings and wakes Eddie.

‘OK, he whispers. ‘OK, then.’

He gets a knife from the drawer, the sharpest he can find and a jug from the lower cupboards. He has string and kitchen towels and then Steve goes outside. He slips quietly through the back door, closes it after himself.

The scent of chlorine clings to the paving slabs, even though the pool is dry and empty, he’d never wanted it filled after what happened. Steve goes to sit on a sun lounger, finds it stiff and crusty, left out through the seasons.

There, he sets the jug between his thighs, holds the knife and studies his left hand.

He wonders where to cut.

In movies, they cut their palms. It looks painless and quick, easy enough to get blood flowing but Steve knows something about real blood. He knows about cuts that don’t close easy and he needs something that will keep him as whole as possible.

In the end, he cuts his thumb. It hurts like a bitch, wrong kind of pain that still doesn’t make him wince like it should. His tolerance for it is still fucked up from Russians pounding him, asking stupid ass questions, getting stupid ass answers.

His thumb bleeds quick, bleeds a lot. Steve puts his whole hand in the jug and bleeds. His thumb throbs, the cut stings. The jug is big and he knows he can’t fill it, obviously. He just… maybe he can give half a glass. That’ll be fine.

It’ll be fine.

And if Eddie is mad, if he doesn’t want it, then that’ll be fine too.

Somehow.

The sun gleams overhead, skies vivid and blue while Steve bleeds into a container he doesn’t think anyone’s ever actually used before. The glass is too pristine, the label beneath isn’t worn away at all.

And when his wrist starts to hurt, he pulls his hand out. It’s all streaked with ribbons of tell-tale red, the proper kind he thinks movies never get right. Steve ties string around his thumb at the base and then wraps his whole hand with paper towels. They’re white to red in an instant, soaking the excess.

Steve makes sure he’s not bleeding when he slips back inside, when he silently puts the jug in the fridge and then runs his thumb under the cold tap.

The string comes off and the cut is small, so he gets a band-aid that actually covers it all the way.

He’s feeling pretty fucking great about himself, truth be told, when he turns around and finds Eddie Munson right there.

*

It’s electrifying.

It shouldn’t be.

Steve gasps, heart lurching painfully.

Eddie hasn’t slept enough, not really. He needed more time, he needed a good few hours and Steve was going to slip into his arms again like a greedy child who wants it all, cuddle him close until he woke up and then… then he could have calmly explained about what was in the fridge.

Eddie looks… god, he looks so fucking wild. His eyes are glassy, but sharp. His hair is askew, his lips parted, gaze dark.

‘Steve.’

It’s a beautiful voice, all rough and rumbling.

It shouldn’t be.

‘H-hey, are you—did you wake up?’

Eddie’s eyes shine, they glint with some inner light, they’re not human, too lovely to be human and then…

Steve’s focus drops, he can’t fucking breathe.

Jaw going lax, Eddie’s teeth elongate. They reach down, they sharpen. Malleable enamel, white and lethal, Steve watches the transformation and it’s… oh god, it’s…

It’s what he wants.

It shouldn’t be.

But it fucking is.

‘Blood?’

He can smell it.

Steve is numb, he is tingling with the voltage of weakened survival instincts, desperately flaring to life as Eddie’s sharp teeth glint in the abundant sun from outside. Steve sees the black nails for the first time, he sees how long they are and oh, they were caressing him earlier, those beautiful weapons were moving over his face, gentle ministrations despite how easily they could have torn him apart.

They’re long and slightly curved at the tips, but not like cat claws more like… talons.

And at the tips, they are razor sharp.

‘Blood?’ Eddie says again. Eyes black but for the slice of iridescent white in the centre. His teeth are sharp, his hands are weapons and Steve thinks maybe he’s made a mistake doing this without telling Eddie first. Eddie’s focus lowers, it moves to his left hand which is…

Oh fuck.

It’s dripping blood onto the floor.

‘Shit,’ Steve says, takes a single step back, swallows. ‘Eddie, I’m so sorry, fuck.’

Eddie can’t seem to look away, can’t bring his ethereal gaze back up where it belongs. Steve thinks he should run, he should flee. A tiny part of him knows Eddie will chase him. Eddie will catch him, outrun him easily.

It's more than a little fucked up how that thrills him.

‘Blood, Steve.’

‘I know, I’m—I’m so—’

Eddie slams his eyes shut and that quiets Steve, it silences him. He can’t move, he can’t do anything but wait. Wait for the hammer to fall, for Eddie to decide.

‘You have to…’ Eddie says, a breathless rush of words that Steve can only catch because they’re so close again, always drifting into one another’s intimate space, always near misses of catastrophic collisions that would leave them both in pieces. ‘Steve, you—you—’

‘Tell me. It’s OK, whatever you need.’

‘Bite me,’ Eddie blurts out, eyes flying open. His chest is heaving, he is drawn in dark shades that the sunny day outside cannot conceive of. ‘Bite me first.’

Steve doesn’t think his eyes have ever been this wide, that he’s ever been quite so rabbit caught in headlights until this moment came calling.

‘Wh-what?’

Eddie turns his face, mouth twisted up, expression wrought with difficult things, little battles that Steve can’t see. He exposes his throat, it’s scarred and pale white.

‘Please.’

And Steve doesn’t actually know what’s going to fucking happen if he does, if he doesn’t. He can’t think straight, he’s in that head-space where big, bad things are chasing him, where everything is life or death. He is there in that head-space with someone he trusts and it fucks him up anew.

Which is why he leans in, why he settles his hands gently on Eddie’s shoulders, absorbs the flinch.

‘It’s gonna be OK,’ he tells him, shaking head to toe.

‘C’mon,’ Eddie urges, like it matters, like it’s important and Steve knows it is, he just doesn’t know why. ‘Please.’

Steve’s lips graze the side of Eddie’s throat. It’s an out of body experience, he can’t hold himself down, hold himself together, so he holds the only thing he can; Eddie.

‘Here?’ he utters, toneless whisper that makes Eddie shiver.

‘Yes.’

It’s fucking madness when Steve presses his lips there, when he opens his mouth and gets a small taste of Eddie on his tongue, just from the contact. Salt and skin, base scent of the person he is. He’s tasting Eddie Munson.

‘Bite me now.’

Steve doesn’t know what it will do, but he does it.

He widens his jaw, he fits his teeth where they need to go and then he bites. It’s not hard at first, he can’t do it that way yet, has to start slow. So it’s kind of a… a love bite.

Eddie’s sharp fingers drag lightly over his back, they sink into Steve’s hair and then push.

‘Harder.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Steve mumbles, lips against the imprint of his own teeth.

‘You can’t.’

Steve closes his eyes hard; he has nothing except this moment, this scene, this purpose.

He bites hard, he sinks his teeth and he forces them to penetrate, to break the boundaries of Eddie’s vessel. Eddie pushes at his head, makes clear he wants (needs) it harder, deeper. Steve sinks himself into the motion of intrusion. He gives Eddie whatever he needs.

And only when he tastes blood, does Eddie pull him off.

Steve is quivering, he’s rocked to his fucking core and he has blood on his lips. Eddie’s blood tastes like honey, like the ocean as a child, like greeny-grey skies before they open up and unleash wet hell.

Eddie is holding Steve’s face again, he’s shaking too, but Steve doesn’t think for the same reasons. Dark eyes drop to Steve’s mouth, to his rose red lips and then Eddie says, ‘Hold still.’

Steve obeys, wouldn’t know what else to do in the moment. Eddie tips his head into the kiss angle and Steve feels desire smack him around the face, how badly he wants that, needs it.

Eddie does not kiss him, but he licks the blood from Steve’s lips. His tongue is hot, it drags all that red away and takes it for himself, reclaims it. There is a serpentine monstrosity about the whole thing, about knowing the taste of Eddie’s fucking tongue before they’ve ever kissed.

Then Eddie pulls away, his eyes flutter shut and Steve can see the little bite, the tiny trickle of blood he drew with his human teeth.

Eddie drops to his knees.

Steve cannot get any fucking air in his lungs and it shouldn’t… it shouldn’t make him hot, it shouldn’t make him hard.

But it fucking does.

The other man licks the remaining blood from around his mouth, he tastes himself like it’s a drug and when he opens his eyes, there is no danger anymore. He seems…

Calm. Submissive.

‘Let me?’ he whispers softly, breathless in a way that seems less urgent now as he reaches for Steve’s thumb.

Steve wants them to be even, he kneels too, brings them face to face once more. He cups Eddie’s cheek, asks, ‘What’s happening?’

Eddie is sort of swaying, he can’t focus.

He slurs, ‘Let me, Stevie? I’ll stop, ‘s OK.’

Steve fingers the bite, the little droplet of red he tasted.

‘What did I do?’

‘I’ll stop,’ Eddie murmurs. ‘Not food.’

It hurts to swallow. His thumb is pulsing wildly, pushing blood out the same way his eager cock is pure bleeding precome. Steve’s heart is making things leak, it’s making mess everywhere he’s vulnerable.

‘OK,’ he hears himself say, feels a little dizzy, but less than before at least. ‘OK, I trust you.’

Eddie smiles with those teeth and it’s… it’s fucking divine and it should not be, but Steve is leaving one construct after another, passing them by like he’s on a road trip with a friend and he doesn’t know where they’re going, just wants to drive.

Steve brings his thumb up, pulls the soaked band-aid off.

Eddie groans, his tongue snakes out to taste the air, eyes crossing slightly. Steve just watches him, drawn to him this way. He wants to touch, stroke, kiss, he wants to give.

So he does.  

He gives Eddie his thumb. It’s slow and measured. Steve never thought he’d be the level headed one in a situation like this, and he’s not really, he’s about to feed himself to Eddie Munson, but of the two, it’s he who raises his thumb above Eddie’s lips and glinting sharp canines.

It is Steve who drips his liquid into Eddie’s mouth, bathes that long, pretty tongue with his wet red.

The first droplet makes Eddie growl. It’s inhuman, it’s dark and predatory and Steve smiles to hear it, fucked up response that makes him warm inside nonetheless.

‘That’s it,’ he says, squeezing his thumb to bleed faster, bleed more. ‘Here you go.’

His blood bathes Eddie’s tongue and he moves his thumb closer, lets it almost touch, so close to those teeth. The first time Eddie swallows, Steve knows he’s forever changed. The transformation is a silent, difficult thing. It happens inside, where his bones are bound in muscle memory, where his bodily reactions are stored.

He watches Eddie drink his blood and Steve just knows he’s so completely fucking fucked.

Eddie lifts his hands, Steve gets to see those jet black claws in all their glory as they wrap about his wrist, bring the wound closer. It’s closing up, hardly giving any blood anymore and Steve thinks vaguely, distantly of the fridge.

Not good enough, he knows. Eddie wants it warm. Living.

Their eyes meet before it happens. Steve is so fucking desperate for it, thick and foggy desires filling him to the brim. Desire to give, to have someone take what he is at the most basic level. No flash, no money, nothing but his red, his blood and essence.

‘Take it,’ he tells Eddie, fucking means it so much it leaves him split in two. His lips are numb and his head is spinning. ‘Take what you need.’

Eddie’s claws trail reverently over the thin skin of Steve’s wrist, over his palm, everywhere. The delicate touch of a benign killer makes Steve shiver, makes him feel cradled.

Makes him feel fucking loved.

He sees how much Eddie wants to bite his wrist, but that’s not what happens. What happens is that Eddie wraps his hot, wet lips around Steve’s thumb and sucks on the flesh.

Steve lets out a cry, mouth falling open. The pressure is so fucking good and it makes the cut sting again, but it’s all mixed up with pleasure. It’s cocaine cut with sherbet lemon, it’s fucking gross and it’s gorgeous and it should not, under any circumstances, make Steve want to come untouched, but he wants it, he’s so close it makes him whine.

Eddie sucks his blood out of the well-meant cut, covers his teeth enough that they don’t split the skin anywhere new. His grip around Steve’s wrist is cast in iron. Steve’s eyes flutter upwards, savage pleasure forming in his interior, gathering from all his dark places to form light.

Steve crawls closer, careful not to dislodge the process. Their knees brush and Steve leans forward, rests his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder, finds the scent of his hair.

‘Eddie,’ he moans softly, feels wrecked and reborn. ‘Remember to stop, OK?’

The hand not holding Steve’s wrist in place while he drinks, moves to encircle Steve, to hold him again. It is a monster’s embrace, with claws and teeth, with hunger for the liquids Steve Harrington takes for granted every day.

Eddie is a monster, there’s no way to deny it.

Steve smiles faintly, dizzy from the gentle destruction of all that was weak in him before. Rotten insecurities that upheld rusted self-hatred; a great, wobbling tower of Steve’s lowest self comes crashing down when Eddie’s talons slide into his hair, when the grip tightens possessively in his long mop, bringing Steve’s mouth back to that place where this had all started.

The bite.

The first bite.

Steve grins, kisses it gently, chaste; feels Eddie suck harder, drinking the last little bit of life he can take from Steve without taking too much, he thinks.

‘You’re doing so good,’ he tells Eddie. ‘So good for me.’

Eddie draws off with an obscene pop, breathing harshly.

He looks…

Holy shit.

Steve thinks… he thinks dangerous fucking things when Eddie looks like this. When he’s glowing and so beautiful it makes Steve ache. His skin is flushed and gleaming with a light layer of sweat, his eyes are dark brown, they glisten as tears spill and his lips are red, they’re painted with Steve’s blood, but not with waste.

And it’s when Eddie smiles, when he blinks fresh tears down his lovely fucking face and smiles at Steve… that’s when Steve knows it’s really started.

‘Steve,’ Eddie gasps. ‘Oh my god, I’m so—shit, are you OK?’

Dazed, falling, Steve manages to nod.

‘You?’

Eddie sits back and the motion pulls Steve into his lap. No way to miss the feel of him, the hardness there. Neither especially cares, Steve definitely doesn’t, he knows how hard he is.

‘I’m… fuck, man, I-I can’t believe…’ Then Eddie sobers quickly, the euphoria giving way to concern. ‘Shit, let me see it.’

Steve blinks, lets Eddie examine his thumb.

‘Are you…?’ he whispers, not daring to raise his voice in case god hears it, decides to play cruel. ‘Back?’

Eddie looks human as he studies Steve’s thumb. The teeth are gone, the claws have retracted. He seems focused and alert, but he’s… he is different somehow. More Eddie.

‘I can’t believe you let me do that,’ he says seriously, touching the cut with his index. It’s hardly bleeding at all. ‘Can’t believe you did that in the first place, you fuckin’ moron.’

Steve’s bottom lip wobbles. Eddie didn’t answer his question, but he did.

He's back.

‘Eddie.’

Their eyes meet. Steve is in his lap. Eddie has his blood inside him.

‘You washed it away,’ Eddie tells him, like it’s a secret. A flash of pain behind his eyes causes him to close them, to try and hide what Steve desperately wants to see, to soothe.  ‘All the black, the bad. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ Steve says, unable to raise his voice, not wanting to break the spell. ‘I bit you first.’

Eddie nods, drops his gaze.

‘There’s a lot I wanna tell you.’ Then he shakes his head, huffs self-deprecatingly, seemingly nervous for the first time as he looks back up at Steve. ‘A lot. Not just about—’

 The front door swings wide open with a heavy bang. Only one person has a key.

Steve grimaces. ‘Shit.’

*

This STUNNING FUCKING COLLECTION of Chapter Art brought to us by the incredible Andria