Steve’s not paying attention. He’s in his head thinking about who knows what, when he hands Eddie a can of Coke.
“Thanks,” Eddie hums while Steve plops down beside him on the couch.
And then it happens.
Steve, without a thought in his head, leans over and presses a kiss to Eddie’s temple.
Before he’s completely pulled back he realizes his mistake.
“Uh, thanks?” Eddie’s lips are pursed like he’s fighting back saying a whole lot more.
“Shit,” Steve’s still positioned halfway between sitting down and leaning in.
“It’s ok, dude.” Eddie tries to hold his soda casually. “We’ve all done it.” But Eddie scrunches his face like he doesn’t even believe his lie.
“No, uh, I don’t-I don’t know why I did that.” Except he does.
He’s been thinking about kissing Eddie for months. He’s been wondering how soft the man’s lips are, or if he’d be gentle or rough when kissing Steve back.
The lie feels like a lead balloon in his gut.
“No big deal, Harrington. In fact, I’ll kiss you. Even the score.”
“Wha-?” Eddie’s lips cut Steve off with the most awkward kiss Steve’s ever experienced.
But.
It’s Eddie’s lips pressing against Steve’s and Steve doesn’t want to waste this insane opportunity so he kisses back. The action must surprise Eddie because he stalls his lips for a brief second before he’s surging forward like a man starved for more.
They’re interrupted by a clearing of a throat.
“Wha-what is happening here?” Robin stands at the end of the couch, returning from the bathroom with her arms crossed.
Eddie’s eyes widen and he pulls away from Steve’s lips slowly.
“Uh, well? I owed Steve for…” he looks around for any kind of answer, then notices the can in his hand. “My soda!”
Robin stares at him incredulously. “I’ll get my own drinks from now on.”
1K notes
·
View notes
About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning
If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:
These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:
But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.
Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.
If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.
Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.
Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.
Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.
29K notes
·
View notes
Part One
Steve’s bedroom door is open. He’s perched on the edge of the bed, pretty much everyone else wedged in here with him. Rob is on the bed too, leaning against him. Jon and Nance are sitting at the bottom. All the kids are sitting on the floor.
Everyone's quiet. Waiting. Straining to hear.
El and Eddie are next door.
And Steve has no fucking idea what the hell is going on.
The gates are all closed. Hawkins is a mess, but within the first twenty four hours there was a big push to start repairs. The government is probably pouring cash on this to tidy it up, clean it up, cover it up; make sure everyone knows it was an earthquake.
Gas main damaged in the quake leaked; if anyone saw anything weird, they’re already convinced it was a hallucination. So there’s that.
Everyone got out of hospital within hours; the worst off was probably Steve himself. His wounds from the bats, from their first run in with Vecna, still hadn't healed and one of them had been growing steadily more infected. He has fresh injuries from this time around; all of them inflicted by Eddie. Steve has two broken ribs, and he sounds like he's been smoking 100 a day for sixty years from where Eddie nearly choked him out. He needed twelve stitches in the nasty gash he picked up on the back of his head, but luckily no concussion this time. He's covered in scratches and bruises, but the hospital were happy to let him go with antibiotics and firm instructions to rest.
Eddie, surprisingly, has a clean bill of health. He was filthy, and the scars were bad but...otherwise, he didn’t have so much as an open scratch on him. Everything healed up completely. Which makes...no sense. Steve literally saw him die.
But that also means while they were preparing...planning...working to take down Vecna...he had Eddie the whole time. Potentially, that was nearly a week. The shock they had all had, seeing Eddie again. Obviously they hadn’t planned for that, hadn't factored it into their plans, and it completely and utterly fucked everything up.
They were done for. They were all going to die, no question. But something happened. Something changed. Steve was convinced he was about to get choked to death by Eddie, or maybe impaled on that ridiculous sword but...no. Eddie had blinked awake. And then he’d cut Vecna’s head clean off...which, unexpected, but still a win.
Eddie had dropped the sword, stumbling along after everyone else to get out before the gates closed on them.
Since then, Eddie's been silent. Going where he's told, stumbling through the examinations, sitting on the periphery of the group, staring into space. He looked broken, even to Steve, who realistically didn't know Eddie that well. Eddie had the vacant stare of someone who's just been though something traumatic.
When Dustin had tried to hug him, even, Eddie had flinched away.
No one tried to touch him after that, giving up talking to him pretty quickly. Eddie wasn't going to answer. Steve could practically watch Dustin getting more and more distressed over the state of Eddie. Everyone was aware; all they could do was sit and watch it happen.
Once they were out of the hospital they could look after him; try and figure out what the fuck was happening.
Eddie had disappeared pretty much the moment he had opportunity. He’d mumbled something about finding a bathroom, pretty much the first words he;d spoken, and as the minutes ticked by, it became increasingly obvious that Eddie wasn't coming back. The hospital was a mess, and they were supposed to wait for Owens.
Obviously the kids weren’t willing to let him out of their sight that fast. Vecna’s done something to him, controlled him somehow, that much is obvious. Just...nobody knows what.
When Owens finally showed, it was done and dusted fast. They confirmed Henry/One was dead. Owens had a lot of other shit to sort out; they were no longer his priority and they knew it. Dustin had been ball of barely contained anxiety the whole time, clearly wanting to track down Eddie but...by some sort of group mutual understanding...no one mentioned Eddie was alive. No one said he'd come back with them.
In the confusion, no one seemed to question it. Owens clearly hadn't bothered to look at the hospital's records, or whatever it was he could do. They left as fast as they could without raising suspicion.
The kids had found Eddie again pretty quickly, more through luck than anything, but finding Eddie sitting on the porch of some random house, nursing a bottle of vodka was...well. Everyone’s got their own coping mechanisms, Steve guesses.
Eddie still hasn’t spoken about what happened, but he was pretty quick to pass out on the spare bed.
El’s got that look on her face when she comes back, like she’s thinking big thoughts.
“Is he okay?” Dustin asks first. Obviously there were concerns. Vecna had Eddie for days, there could be anything in Eddie’s head. What if there’s something...lingering...from Vecna? Could be a risk.
El shakes her head, “he is very sad.”
“Sad about what?” Nancy, this time.
“When Eddie was…” she makes a face, she doesn’t have the words, for a moment, to convey what she wants to say, she puts the fingertips of both hands together, making bars, “Vecna put Eddie’s mind in a cage, he doesn’t remember what his body was doing, I don’t think.”
“So Vecna had him as a kind of puppet? He couldn’t get out of the cage?” Robin clarifies, “that’s good right, he didn’t see himself hurting us?”
El tilts a hand from side to side, “he did not want to leave the cage. Vecna made him…” she purses her lips, “love. He was in love. They had a baby, she grew up, she was going to college.”
“That makes no sense, he was there less than a week?”
“Time is different in dreams.”
“Yeah,” Dustin chimes in, “even if a dream feels long, it actually happens really fast.”
Steve huffs, “right, but he knows now, right, that it wasn’t real? So it doesn’t matter, right?”
“It matters to him,” El tells him so firmly Steve feels like he fucked up, “it was real to him.”
“Steve,” Nancy turns to him, “imagine if you got married, had...I don’t know, six kids and a Winnebago,” Steve winces because, yeah, okay, he might have deserved that, “and you come home after years and years of living that, being happy, only to find out it wasn’t real, how would you feel?”
“It’d be like they died,” Robin says next to him, suddenly gasping and making a pained noise, “oh that’s horrible. Poor Eddie.”
El’s nodding, and everyone else is silent, clearly letting that sink in.
And, yeah, Steve figures...that’s got to be pretty awful.
The kids have gone home, but Nancy, Rob, Jon and Argyle have all stayed. They promised the kids they would watch over Eddie, which wasn’t hard since Eddie’s been asleep pretty much since they got back. Steve doesn’t know if is the most of a bottle of vodka Eddie had downed, or the week he’s had but...he’s still asleep.
They take it in turns to check on him, every half an hour, someone comes up. Just to check.
Steve doesn’t know what woke him, but he needs to piss. Robins passed out next to him, snoring her wheezy little snore. Steve gets up and goes to the bathroom, figures he should check on Eddie.
And Steve finds himself suddenly very awake at the sight of an empty bed and an open window.
They split up, heading for likely places. Nancy, Argyle and Jon pile into Jon’s car, heading for Wayne first and then with a vague plan to work through town on the way back if he’s not there.
Steve and Robin strike out in the opposite direction.
“Lets head for the place the kids found him.”
“You think he would have gone back there?”
Robin shrugs, “why did he go there in the first place?”
“You think it means something to him?” A horrible feeling starting to form in the pit of Steve’s stomach, even as Robin shrugs ‘maybe’ at him.
They can’t see Eddie, but Robin insists they check it out. Steve’s glad Robin has half their brain, because she was dead right. There’s smashed glass on the porch and the door is open; someone has broken in.
Part Three
@autumncrocusandladybug @duckyreads @neonfruitbowl @slv-333 @starlight-archer @skys-archive @justdreamersdream @moomkin77 @prazinos
529 notes
·
View notes