It's my birthday! 🎂
So here, have a snapshot of one of my WIPs. A Steddie vampire story with a twist!
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 AO3
There was a knock at the door.
Eddie recognised it immediately, drying off his hands on a nearby tea towel and walking through the house to open the front door.
“Hey Robbie.”
Robin didn’t say anything, she never did anymore. She didn’t even really look at him, just glanced up to meet his eyes, hunched in on herself before dropping her gaze back to the floor and shuffling inside, coming to a stop in the sitting room doorway.
“Wayne is asleep upstairs so I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with the cartoons today instead of your own personal Eddie Munson concert.” Eddie smiled, trying to force some levity into his voice but it didn’t work. Levity wasn’t something any of them were really capable of anymore.
Robin didn’t acknowledge that he’d said anything but just moved forward, lowering herself down into the side of the couch deepest into the room and curled into herself even more, waiting for him to turn the tv on and switch to the right channel.
It must be one of the really, really bad days. Usually she liked him to make as much noise as possible around her, to keep her brain from fucking her up on the inside too much but today? On days like this? He knew nothing would work. He just had to be there around her to make sure she didn’t get so lost in her head she couldn’t come back out.
Eddie didn’t want to think about where they would be if the government hadn’t provided him and his uncle the house directly across the road from the Buckleys by pure coincidence. He didn’t want to think about where she would be or what could have happened in the last month had he not been here to distract or just exist around her whenever she called.
He sat down gently next to her, not touching her but close enough if she needed him to reach out. Some days she just needed to be away from her parents house. They just didn’t understand the kind of trauma she’d been through. Not the way everyone else in their group did. Wayne didn’t know exactly what had gone on with the Upside Down either, but he didn’t push. So sometimes she just needed to get away.
Other times… other times she got so caught up and lost in memories and what if’s that she had to remove herself and be with someone familiar.
Eddie waited for Robin to move first. It didn’t take long. Barely two minutes into sitting together she slowly tipped to the side and placed her head on his shoulder. He glanced down at her but she hadn’t taken her eyes off the tv, her face was the same blank mask it always was now, void of emotion. He curled an arm around her and pulled her closer, settling in for a long afternoon being with her on the couch in silence.
They didn’t speak. Conversation wasn’t something that happened with Robin anymore. Sometimes he'd pull his guitar out and spend hours playing to her, or around her. Sometimes he’d ramble at her until his throat was dry, talking about DnD or whatever movies he’d caught on the tv recently, whatever books he’d been reading or music he’d been listening to. Just to fill the void. She always stayed quiet. She just needed distraction and someone around her to keep her from her worst thoughts and Eddie was happy to provide that.
And it wasn’t just Robin. Once they'd landed back in the Rightside-Up, he’d had to pull himself together and start taking care of their little fractured Fellowship because really he was the best candidate. He was the newest member so he shouldn’t have been as attached as everyone else had been.
But deep down he knew that was a lie. He might have had the least amount of time with him but it had been time enough for something to burrow deep into his heart.
A month ago they had all failed. The cracks in the earth had carved through Hawkins, making it almost uninhabitable. Having his name cleared wasn’t exactly the big shiny fuck you comeback he'd hoped. The town had mostly emptied and people had fled, never to look back. But hey, at least he could go outside again, right?
In the aftermath of everything, the Party, the Fellowship, the family was… destroyed.
Scattered.
Adrift.
They all stayed within Hawkins.
Just in case.
Because Vecna wasn’t dead. He hadn’t died. He was still alive, still kicking, still plotting their demise so they couldn’t leave. Eddie wasn’t sure how everyone had convinced their parents to let them stay, or convinced them to stay with them. He had only needed to share a look with Wayne.
He understood. Maybe it was something behind the eyes. They need to see this through to the end.
They had to finish it.
Robin was… broken. Afterwards she watched everyone move around her as if in a perpetual daze, wilting. A shadow of her former self. Eddie had a front row seat to her deteriorating state. Sometimes he’d come home from a gate patrol to find her sitting silent and dead eyed on his porch. Sometimes he was the only one who would be able to get her to eat, often something hot and fresh courtesy of Wayne and his own quiet worry.
Nancy had been enraged and vicious ever since. Throwing herself into research and action with military precision and no one was allowed to step a foot out of line. It scared all of them. She’d lash out at each of them with the barest of provocation, biting and angry and determined to eviscerate Vecna after what had happened.
When the California Crew finally arrived back and Eddie had to break the news to them all over again… that was the first night he’d gone to Loch Nora.
Dustin had joined Nancy in her anger for the first week, spitting and cursing at all of them in turn. Blaming himself, blaming Eddie, screaming and furious.
It had only ended after he’d punched Mike in the jaw in a fit of rage.
El had stopped him from beating Mike to a bloody pulp, holding him still with an outstretched hand, gentle but firm. Dustin had been frothing at the mouth, spitting at her to let me go, he deserves it! The prick deserves it, how dare he say that!
El had looked at him with wide, sad eyes before she whispered “Steve would be so disappointed.”
Silence echoed through the house in the wake of her statement before Dustin collapsed in on himself, wailing and screaming his anguish out into Eddie’s hair who held him through it for hours.
Nancy had stormed out, disappearing into the treeline behind Eddie’s house and coming back an hour later with rips and tears in her clothes, her knuckles bloodied and dried tear tracks down her face. She was still angry and driven after that, but not quite as dictatorial as she’d been before.
When he learned Will had named Mike the heart of the Party in some busted old pizza van, Eddie thought there was a bit too much bias there because he couldn’t see how. But it got him thinking because if Mike was the heart, Steve had been the soul.
And the soul of their Fellowship was gone.
None of them knew how to move forward, to keep going. Eddie could see from his distance as the newbie of the group and through the crumbling foundations of their friendships that all of them had always relied on Steve to keep them together. But they’d never told him. They’d never admitted it. They didn’t know if he knew. But he had to have known, right? Had to have known how important, how fundamental, how central he had been to all their lives.
Even Eddie who’d officially known him the shortest amount of time was fucked up over it. He’d known of him in school, but he’d only ever really gotten to know him in a few short days before it was all over. His perception of everything had been turned on his head. Steve is-
Was.
A good dude.
It had almost been unfair. He was unfailingly kind, overwhelmingly pretty, stupidly brave and incredibly loyal. It had felt like a gift to know him, even if it was just for a few days. He’d give anything for just a few more.
Mike, Will and El were getting to the stage where they could start telling stories about him. Funny, embarrassing, heartbreaking stories that made them laugh and cry in equal measure.
Lucas and Max were not there yet. They couldn’t be in the same room as the stories if they tried.
No one dared try to speak of him around Dustin. It was just too raw.
According to Hopper, his parents had just straight up abandoned the house and Hawkins. Their son was dead and they’d heard about it on the news. The story of the ‘earthquake fissures’ and the ‘plucky few who loved their hometown so much, they refused to leave’ had gone global along with a tribute to those who’d laid down their lives to keep the town safe. Steve’s name was at the top. Finally, something his parents could give a shit about.
The Fellowship tried, they all really tried to keep themselves together. Two weeks after Steve died and the most raw of all of the feelings had changed to an ever present and consuming dull ache rather than a sharp pain, they’d all had a sleepover. Like they always used to do, apparently. Eddie hosted. They all had keys to Steve’s house but no one could stomach even the sight of it. It hurt too much.
Nobody spoke much that night. As much as they could have pretended everything was back like it used to be, everyone felt the shift. Something within them had broken irreparably.
They didn’t have any sleepovers after that.
Eddie looked down as Robin shifted against him, getting to her feet. He wasn’t sure how long they’d sat in front of the tv together, but it had been long enough for the sun to go down. He watched her cross the street, only tearing his eyes away when her own front door closed behind her.
He glanced down at the keys to his van and was starting up the engine before he even realised he’d moved. He just needed a moment… away.
He wasn’t sure when he’d made it a habit to go to the Harrington house, but over the last month he’d found himself escaping there more and more often, courtesy of the upper classes' complete lack of common sense, hiding a spare key under the doormat.
It should feel weird being here but instead it just felt… hushed.
Familiar.
Steve was stained here, even if it was all concentrated in his bedroom. It was the only place in the world that still seemed to carry a shard of him.
He didn't want to think about how creepy being here was. He chose to simply ignore it. Pretend it wasn’t weird to wrap himself in a dead pretty boy’s duvet and stare at a dead pretty boy’s trophy shelf like it would contain the answers to the universe while he tried not to collapse under the weight of keeping everyone else afloat. The whole house would be perpetually still and quiet. It was a tomb of memories, unnervingly silent, holding on to echoes of him like a museum dedicated to him. Every time he touched something outside Steve’s bedroom, he felt like an alarm would go off and security guards would descend. Each time he looked to a corner of the ceiling he expected to see a security camera blinking down at him.
It was unexplainable and inexplicable, curling up in Steve’s bed, so he just did it, rather than dwell on it. He could feel bad about it later, when it no longer brought him comfort. Being here gave him the will to power through just one more day trying to keep the threads of the Fellowship together. It made him feel kind and loyal and brave. Like whisps of Steve were reaching out and lending him his strength. It was the only reason he’d gotten through the first week of Dustin blaming him for Steve’s death, of Robin staring blankly at nothing. He would have caved in on himself otherwise.
It wasn’t often that he allowed himself to fall asleep here in the dusty memory of Steve’s space but whenever he did it was fitful and thankfully, relatively dreamless.
Tonight was not one of those nights.
He knew he was dreaming as soon as he saw him.
It was the same dream he’d had for the last month.
But knowing and being able to change how it went were two different things and each time Eddie was forced to play his part exactly as he had the night Steve died.
It had been the thing Dustin had lashed out at Eddie for the most. Eddie was supposed to be the distraction with him. Steve had decided at the last second that he just couldn’t leave his baby brother out of his sight. Eddie understood, he got it. So he’d agreed to swap out. He went with Robin and Nancy to the Creel house. He’d thrown molotov’s harder than anything he’d thrown before, but it hadn’t mattered. Vecna had crashed through the attic window and disappeared when they went down to check.
The trudge back to the trailer had been tense and twitchy, only broken when they’d heard Dustin screaming through the treeline.
That sound was the most terrifying thing he’d ever heard because he knew that Steve would never have let Dustin get hurt.
So if Dustin was hurt, it could only mean that something had happened to Steve.
Eddie never ran harder in his life but in the end it hadn’t mattered. Dustin had Steve’s body clutched in his arms, begging his friend, his brother, his dad to come back to him.
There was so much blood. Red and black blood mixed around him, caked on the end of his nail bat, covering his hands and spilling out of his mouth like he’d torn into those bats again, the same as he had back at the lake.
One whole side of his neck was missing. Eddie had moved around, pressing onto the other side with two fingers, looking for a pulse he knew wouldn’t be there. Dark red blood that had coagulated into chunks had gushed suddenly out of the open wound and Dustin screamed, high and horrified and Eddie thought his skin was going to turn inside out at the sound.
Of course there was no pulse and no breath. His body was cold and unnaturally still, his wide open honey brown eyes were dull and unseeing.
Steve was dead.
So completely and utterly dead that no one tried to make the argument to save him because there was nothing there. Just an empty shell wearing Steve’s beautiful face.
Nancy stared down at him, ghostly pale and shaking, muttering to herself “Not again, please don’t take him too.”
Dustin fought, kicked and screamed, growled and bit when they tried to pull him away. He refused to leave him there, in the Upside Down, but what could they do? Steve was the strong one, he was the athlete. The large built tank. Eddie, Robin and Nancy were all skinny and completely muscle-less. The only reason they were able to get Dustin out was because all his thrashing had damaged his ankle further, the pain making him go limp and dazed long enough to pull him back toward the gate under Eddie’s arm.
Eddie had to pull himself together very quickly to try to usher these three out. He’d have to take care of them, he knew it empirically, he could see it on their faces. He didn’t know how he was going to do it. He’d just have to remember what Wayne had done for him and try to follow his lead.
One moment he was helping Dustin up the trailer stairs, the next moment he realised Robin wasn’t with them. He looked back and his heart fell out of his stomach at the sight that greeted him.
She had laid down on the ground next to Steve and taken his hand, still and quiet. A thought had entered Eddie’s mind, of how Quasimodo’s story had ended in the book and it terrified him.
Nancy had whispered to her for minutes though it felt like hours as he watched, eventually coaxing Robin up and leading her back towards the trailer, though not before they both tenderly kissed Steve’s cold face and Robin fixed his hair exactly how he liked it. She glanced up at Eddie with a watery sad smile as she passed.
“There is all that I ever loved.” She whispered to him with one final look back to Steve, confirming Eddie’s worst fears.
She would have been content to lie next to him, waiting for death to come to her, joining her soulmate in eternity.
She hadn’t uttered a word since.
But before the dream could continue into the agony of Dustin turning his rage back on Eddie, he awoke with a jump.
He wasn’t quite sure what had woken him from his slumber at first. He was surrounded by the smell of Steve that had long faded but he could still imagine it. The stillness of the house around him set him on edge and made him feel watched. But Steve’s room was always separated from that feeling. It felt safe and protected.
That feeling disappeared into dust as the bedroom door creaked.
Eddie shot up from the bed, swinging one of Steve’s nail bats at the dark figure looming in the doorway.
It was too broad to be Nancy or Robin or Joyce or Jonathan, too tall to be any one of the kids or Argyle, too short to be Hopper. Was this the Demogorgan he’d heard stories about? He hadn’t seen one yet.
Eddie brought the nail bat down with as much power as he could muster, which was not a lot considering his nerd arms, aiming right for the shoulder-neck junction.
A hand shot out, grasping the bat just above where Eddie’s fingers clutched desperately to it, stopping it dead in a strong, immovable grip.
Eddie yanked backwards, attempting to pull the bat with him but felt it ripped from his hands with incredible force and he braced, squeezing his eyes shut and tensing his body.
He was going to die. This is how he died.
“That’s mine.” A voice said to him with just the faintest tinge of amusement.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 AO3
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