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apuckishwit · 1 year

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“I appreciate the effort but this is all wrong.” For whoever you choose

(also I know I send a request in last time so feel free to ignore this if you have too many💜)

Bruh, I don't even KNOW where this came from. But I like it. Little bit of Steddie, but this mostly ended up being a Steve and Eleven bonding ficlet. Also, word could got away from me, sorry!

“I appreciate the effort, but this is all wrong,” Eddie sighs, flopping onto the couch beside Steve and making a gesture that seems to encompass Steve’s entire body.

Steve hides a tired smile behind his drink—some unholy cocktail Hopper’s friend Bauman cooked up that seems to be mostly straight vodka. “What do you mean?”

“This! You! We just beat Vecna, man! Won the day, saved the world! And you’re sitting here in a dark corner, brooding over your drink.” Eddie leans close, his expression shifting to something dramatic and serious. “A strange-looking, weather-beaten man, sitting in the shadows near the wall,” he intones.

Ah. Steve remembers this one.

“I am not strange-looking,” he says, and then tips his cup towards Dustin, who is dramatically recounting some part of the fight to Lucas and a bored-looking Erica, as though they were not right there with him. “I am, however, listening intently to the hobbit talk.”

Eddie reels back, a shocked, delighted smile lighting his face. “Stevie! Stevie! Did you, Steven Timothy Harrington the third, king of Hawkins High, dreamiest of the all-American dreamboats…just quote Lord of the Rings at me?” Eddie’s got a bruise on his temple, blood and dirt crusted in the creases of his skin because he hasn’t had a proper shower yet. Steve wants to kiss him, wants to bury his hands in the wild mass of Eddie’s curls, wants to curl into the warmth of his body and never leave.

“My middle name’s not Timothy you weirdo, and I’m not even a junior, let alone a third.” He dares a nudge of his knee into Eddie’s and leaves it there, their legs touching from knee to mid-thigh. He watches dark eyes dart down to where their bodies are touching and holds his breath, only letting it out when Eddie lets his weight shift a little closer so that their shoulders are brushing as well.

Not the closest they’ve ever been on this night, at this party—and it is a party this time, a celebration, he loves it when they are celebrating and not clinging to each other in broken, sobbing huddles, too many empty spaces in between their reaching arms—but close. Close enough that he can feel the other man’s heat through the layers of their clothes, feel the solid weight of him. Eddie is hardly ever a casualty anymore, but nothing is foolproof and he never takes Eddie’s presence at his side when they get here for granted.

He lets himself sink against the couch in his living room, closing his eyes and tipping his head back. Eddie’s eyes will follow the motion, he knows, those quick, clever eyes flicking over the line of his throat before landing on his lips and darting away again. There’s something between them, now. Something curious and fragile, but crackling with electricity. Heat. Possibility. He wonders, when he’s feeling particularly self-destructive, how far they could run with that possibility, if they ever get the chance. He’s kissed Eddie. More times than he can count anymore. Hell, he’s slept with him—quick and desperate fucks in hidden corners, longer, slower explorations when they manage to buy more time than usual. He knows Eddie’s body in a way that should feel wrong, he thinks, because Eddie never, ever remembers.

Steve’s past pretending he’s not desperately, stupidly in love with him.

His chest aches at the thought—pain that has become so familiar he barely notices it anymore. He opens his eyes, the ache turning a little sweeter when he catches Eddie’s gaze darting away from his lips and looks out over the people crowded into his house, helping themselves to his food, his alcohol, his bathrooms and blankets and guestrooms. Everything. They’re welcome to everything, he’d give everything in this cold, cold house if they could just stay here. Now. In this moment.

They’ve all made it through this time. All of them. Max is slumped tiredly against Lucas’s side with nothing worse than a broken arm. Robin is curled up on the loveseat just across the room, fast asleep, but not pale and limp and dead. Dustin’s excited voice carries above every other conversation and Steve could listen to it forever because now he knows what it sounds like when it trails off into a wet, gurgling rattle. They’re all winding down, eyelids drooping, shoulders slumping. Nancy and Jonathan have already wandered off to the guestroom he pointed them to, Hopper and Joyce having long ago vanished into his parents’ room. The kids are gathering blankets and pillows to just create a giant nest right here on the living room floor and Steve is debating whether he wants to carry Robin up to his room or take the risk that sometimes pays off and invite Eddie to follow him to bed when he catches Eleven’s eyes across the room.

“Hey, I’m gonna go get some air,” he says, reaching down to grip Eddie’s knee. Wants it to be his hand. “I’ll be right back.”

Eddie just nods tiredly, his eyes kind of glazing over with exhaustion despite his earlier brightness. Steve stands and stretches, slipping from the room while the boys are arguing over the truly hideous (but very warm and fluffy) knitted blanket his great-grandmother made right before she died and that his mother refuses to get rid of, even though she won’t allow it to sit out anywhere it can be seen. He steps out onto the back deck, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he makes his way to the edge of the empty pool. He’s never gotten around to covering it, but he never keeps it filled when he has the choice in the matter.

He is unsurprised when he hears the door slide open behind him a few moments later. Tilts his head up to stare at the brightly gleaming moon and just lifts one arm in invitation. El burrows into his side seconds later, her thin arms winding tight around his waist as she presses her face into his chest. He doesn’t speak, holding her tightly as she just breathes. She never cries, but somehow the deep, shuddering breaths are worse.

“I’m still good to go again,” he whispers, when the shuddering breaths quiet, and he can no longer feel her shoulders trembling. He ruffles a hand through her short, bristly hair, his heart hurting at the feel of it, the way it always does. El loves her long hair. Loves what having it long represents to her. He hates to see her lose that so often.

She nods against his chest, but makes no move to let go. He bites his lip, resting his chin on top of her head. “We’re getting closer. You felt it this time, right? He almost…he almost let go of Will.”

“He did,” Eleven agrees, her voice no louder than Steve’s had been. “Almost.”

Eddie is wrong, is the thing. They haven’t beaten Vecna. Not for real. Not for good. The Upside Down isn’t gone.

It’s not over.

As a matter of fact, in just a few short hours it’s all going to start over again. All the way over again.

Steve is going to go to sleep tonight, eventually. Maybe curled around Robin, clutching his best friend’s hand and counting her breaths as he struggles to calm his own. Maybe tangled with Eddie, sweaty and sated and biting his lips bloody against all the things he wants to say, all the things he’s discovered and realized and come to know for truth as he’s come to this point over and over and over. Maybe this will be one of the times he and Eleven won’t be able to bear to go back in to the people they love knowing their happiness and relief is about to be ripped away all over again, one of the times they’ll sit and talk and try to keep each other awake for another hour, another minute, another second. It won’t matter.

When he wakes up again, it’ll be 1983. Eleven will be waiting for him in their prearranged meeting spot so he can bring her food and some warmer clothes before she leaves to find Mike and the others, so small and young again, with eyes that grow more and more haunted each time he looks into them. Will Byers will be missing. Max will be somewhere in California. Eddie will hate him, if he thinks of him at all. His kids won’t know him.

And he will be standing right back at the beginning of a path he would sell his fucking soul not to have to walk again.

And again.

He’s lost count of how many times they’ve done this. Lost count of how many times they’ve lived through this hell, lost count of how fucking old they are at this point. Does a year really count against your age if it’s erased over and over again? He tries not to think about it too hard. It might drive him crazy.

Maybe it already has.

They can’t change anything, they’ve discovered through more trial and error than he cares to try and recall. Nothing more than tiny differentiations. He can’t just cancel that goddamn party and save Barb. They can’t open another gate and bring Will home themselves. They can’t bring the lab down before Nancy and Jonathan get to it. Can’t warn Hopper about the tunnels and the mayor and the fucking Russians. Can’t tell Joyce how to break the Mind Flayer’s hold over her son. Can’t stop Hargrove from becoming a puppet, can’t save his life and at least spare Max that complicated, complicated pain. Can’t avoid the Russians. Can’t keep Hopper from being kidnapped. Can’t save Chrissy Cunningham. Can’t stop Eddie from becoming involved.

Can’t, can’t, can’t.

Things…wobble…when they try. Eleven feels it more than him, understands it better than him, but when they try to change things, it felt like the time he and Tommy decided to go ice skating on the pond near Tommy’s grandpa’s house too early in the season. He’d gotten out onto the ice first, had skated away from the edge as fast as he could, but as he got further out he could feel the ice change under his skates. Had felt it grow thinner. Weaker. Start to splinter under the blades. He’s lucky he’d still been small at that point—thin and bony and small. If it had been Tommy who raced out first, he probably would have fallen through. But that’s how it feels to him—like something is weakening and thinning and breaking around him and it would be a very bad thing if it broke all the way.

Things aren’t completely the same, of course. They’ve learned to skirt that breaking, thinning, weakening—but the little bits of pain they’ve been able to spare their friends and family are tiny. Crumbs. Nothing in the face of all the things they have to let happen.

The things they have to let happen over and over and over…because they know how to close the Upside Down, now. They know what they have to do to make sure it can never hurt anyone ever again. They know what they have to do to free the people they’ve come to love like family.

They know the price they have to pay. And they know they will never, ever take that step.

It has to be purged, is the thing. Every scrap, every bit, every awful, disgusting spore has to be cleaned from their world before the opening can be closed permanently. Every bit of it.

Even the bits that have infected people they love. The bits that have infected them.

It all has to be in the Upside Down when the gate is closed for the last time. If they can’t find a way to sever the connections between them and Vecna, Will and Max have to be left behind in the Upside Down when the gate is closed for the last time.

He and El are both in agreement. That isn’t a price they’re willing to pay, unless the only other choice is to let Vecna completely loose to rampage across the world. In his heart of hearts, Steve isn’t so sure they’d even be willing to pay the price then.

Will is El’s brother in every way that matters. They might as well be twins. And Max…

Well.

Neither of them are willing to live in a world without Max Mayfield in it.

Steve doesn’t know why he and Eleven remember all the times they have come to this point before, but Will and Max don’t. He has his suspicions. Theories that he has had ample time to turn over in his mind…and he knows he’s not the smartest person in their group, but even he can solve a puzzle if you give him enough time. He thinks it has something to do with how their connections to the Upside Down formed vs. how Will’s and Max’s were forced. El didn’t mean to, didn’t know what she was doing…but she was the one who ripped into the Upside Down in the first place, kicked up the hivemind like a hornet’s nest. And he…

He thinks of the thick, rotten-tasting fluid that fills his mouth every time he bites that fucking bat to get it to let go of him. The way it always slides down his throat before he can spit it all out. He’d forced his way into a connection too, hadn’t he? Even after all this time, he can’t decide if he’s glad he accidentally took part of that fucking place into himself that first time or not.

He’s glad Eleven isn’t alone in this. Glad he can be there for the girl who’s just as much a little sister to him as Max is, now. Glad he can remember all the moments he’s had with Eddie in all these endless loops. But oh sometimes he’d give anything to have his blissful ignorance back.

He’s lucky in some sick way, he thinks. He has the choice. Will is already infected every time they start over. The thing that makes Max vulnerable to Vecna is something they cannot change. Steve, though, can choose not to take that mouthful of rotten, rotten blood. He can suck in an extra mouthful of air before the things bring him down, give himself those few extra seconds for Nancy, Robin, and Eddie to come charging to his rescue. He can release himself from the knowledge he’s living these same hellish years over and over again any time. El has begged him to, many times.

He glances down at the girl in his arms, clinging to his waist and trying to brace herself for yet another round. Knows he never will. They’re in this together, no matter what. He can’t let her carry this burden alone. He’s going to sink his teeth into that fucking bat every time, until they’re sure they’ve figured it out. Until they know how to free Will and Max. Until they can save everyone. Then he’ll let himself out of the loop. Only then.

Then maybe he’ll finally get to see what the possibility that hovers between him and Eddie will grow to be.

“What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?” he asks, like the sun is going to come up on them here. Like he’ll stumble down to the kitchen, carefully stepping over sleeping bodies to start coffee and pancakes. Like it really is over, instead of about to start again.

“Breakfast burrito,” El says, and they both ignore how tired she sounds. How defeated.

There has to be a way to save them all…there has to. They just have to hang on until they find it. He closes his eyes and thinks of Robin’s laugh. Dustin’s loud voice. Eddie’s pretty, pretty eyes. One more time. He can do it one more time. They’re close. They have to be.

“Breakfast burrito. Bacon, eggs, cheese, peppers, no onions.” He squeezes her tighter, and her fist tightens on his shirt. “And something soft and pretty to wear.”

“Pretty,” she agrees.

“We’ve got this,” he says, and wishes harder than he has ever wished for anything in his life that he isn’t lying. “One more time.”

El takes another deep breath. Straightens, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She slips out from under his arm, but keeps hold of his hand. “One more time,” she says solemnly. He doesn’t know how many times they have made this promise to each other.

He lost count a long time ago.

#stranger things #stranger things fic #steddie #background but it's there #Steve Harrington #Eleven (stranger things)#jane hopper #I don't have the patience for a real time loop fic so have a condensed one #my writing #fic prompt

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