#so we're headcannoning that eddie dumbed it down a LOT for steve it's really because wtf do i know

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 12

Part 1 Part 11

Steve’s starting to like Eddie the Freak Munson. It would be a problem if he thought they’d ever get out of here. He can almost hear Carol’s derision and Tommy’s violence should Eddie deign to speak to him in front of witnesses. They’d snicker into their milk cartons about torrid love affairs and queerness being communicable, as if there was no other reason for Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson to be seen together. 

It would take minutes for Carol’s whispers to grow sharp, teeth bared into listening ears until Steve joins Eddie as person non grata to the Hawkins populace. Tommy would find Eddie opening his locker and slam his head into it, using fists and nails and slurs to make his opinion known. 

Steve misses them. 

But, he has Eddie now. Eddie, who says what he means. Who’s bandaged Steve up, pulled him off bathroom floors and grocery store aisles, and vine-filled alleyways. And he’s so goddamn distracting, Steve sometimes forgets how scared he is.

“Dungeons and dragons is like, for the creme de le creme, Harrington,” he says, pacing the length of his shoebox living room, gesturing wildly with one hand while the other throws his fucked-up dice up and down with surprising dexterity. “While you jocks are playing your sports ball, the rest of us are learning the ways of the blade.”

Steve laughs. “No, fucking way, man.”

Eddie spins, waggling his finger condescendingly in Steve’s face, towering over him where he’s seated on the Munson’s springy couch. “The blade is metaphorical, my liege, but the mettle we test and the bonds we strengthen are not!”

Steve leans back in his seat, slouching away from Eddie’s closeness. “You’re such a nerd.” He means it as a joke, but the way Eddie’s mouth twists makes regret curdle in his intestines. “So how does this work?” he asks, gesturing to the die now clutched in Eddie’s palm.

Eddie smiles, still leaning over him, dimples popping, before dropping to sit crisscross in front of Steve with alarming speed. He holds his hand out, throwing the die into Steve’s lap.

“Now, we’re talking Stevie,” Eddie says, flapping his hands, before shoving them beneath his butt and letting his bent knees flap instead. “It’s easy.”

Steve looks down at the die. It’s white and translucent, the red of the light from the windows turning it a soft pink. The edges feel almost sharp as he turns it over in his fingers, counting the sides. The numbers aren’t like normal dice, with the dots. They’re just numbers, slowly counting up, 1, 2, 3, all the way to twenty. 

“There’s a dungeon master, moi,” he says, gesturing with grandiosity toward himself, “who spins a tale for the rest of the party.” Steve nods along, like he knows what a party means, or what a dungeon master is. “Alright, you ready, Stevie?”

“What? Munson, I didn’t agree to–”

Eddie jumps up, making Steve startle back, barely keeping hold of the die. “Sir Steven, arrives at the front of a castle. It’s covered in vines, they’re trailing up the windows, making it impossible to see the glass that covers them.” 

Steve glances at the windows of the Munson trailer, the way the vines have blocked out more of the light, leaving trailing shadows like vines to cast shapes across the stained carpet. 

“Sir Steven unmounts his horse,” Eddie says, miming lifting his leg off an imaginary beast and jumping down to the ground. Steve can almost picture it. “What do you do?”

Eddie’s making an almost uncomfortable amount of eye contact, eye’s shining with more life than he’s shown in what has to be days. “I go into the castle,” Steve replies, voice lilting in question. Is there a right answer?

Eddie claps his hands three times, quick and quiet, grinning as he drops back down, this time on the coffee table,  leaning toward Steve. “Roll the die.”

Steve looks down at the die in his hand. He leans to the side, rolling it on the table by Eddie’s side. The clatter it makes as it bounces sounds loud in the absence of this world. It stops. Steve leans over at the same time as Eddie, Eddie’s hair tickling the back of his neck with the way it trails down. 

“A nineteen!” Eddie says excitedly. “The door knob turns easily, both unlocked and well-oiled enough not to make a sound despite its apparent age. You walk into the castle. It’s dark in the foyer, but there’s a candle inexplicably lit, beckoning you up the stairs. Your armored feet clack loudly on the worn-down wooden floors as you walk up them. You reach the candle, what do you do?”

“I pick up the candle?” Steve asks. 

Eddie picks up the die, putting it back into Steve’s hands. He rolls it. “Three?”

Eddie clicks his tongue, shaking his head. “Just as you pick up the candle, it’s as if a breeze rolls through the whole castle. You keep a hold on the candlestick, but the flame goes out. You freeze. Sir Steven, you’re practically shaking in your boots! And then, a voice, dark and grating snarls out of the darkness in front of you, ‘who dares disturb my slumber??”

Steve looks down at the die, that damning three staring back at him. “So, low numbers make bad things happen, and high numbers make something good?” he asks. 

Eddie waffles his hand back and forth, “sorta,” he says, pickup the die up off the coffee table and throwing it in the air again. “It’s more like, whether or not you complete that one action you list correctly. Like, a one is going to make you miss your target if you’re firing at something, yeah, but it doesn’t say anything about whether you should’ve been firing the gun in the first place.”

Steve digests this. “It’s kind of like sports stats,” he says, thinking aloud. “A high number of assists means you’re helping get the ball in the hoop, but it doesn’t say anything about how the game’s gonna go.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Eddie replies. 

SIlence falls between them, the only sound the quiet slap of the die hitting Eddie’s palm. Steve waits. And waits. And waits. His impatience grows, “Well?”

Eddie snaps his eyes to Steve’s face, brow furrowed. “Well, what?”

“What happens with the sleeping dude?”

Eddie’s eyes open wide, more whites than pupil, as his mouth drops open, seemingly shocked by something Steve doesn’t understand. It takes him a second to continue, but he does.

Steve fights off some old magical wizard dude, destroying the castle and breaking the wizard’s curse in the process. He crumbles to dust. It’s kind of sad. He tells Eddie as much, only to get laughed at.

“He was tired, man,” he says. “All he wanted was for his nightmare to end, and someone to help him rest.”

Steve looks back at the vines crawling up the windows, and can’t help but empathize. 

“I don’t know man,” he says. “Sports seem easier.”

Eddie laughs. “Sports are boring, Harrington. What’s there even to like about throwing a ball through a hoop like a bunch of cavemen?”

“It’s like,” Steve starts, before stalling out. Staring down at his knees. He’s still thinking about the wizard and how sad and tired he must’ve been. There’s something to be said about a game that doesn’t leave you in a moral quandary, wondering if assisted suicide is okay if the dude is tired and old enough. 

“It’s like, when I’m swimming, or running the ball up the court, I’m so in my body that I’m out of it, you know?” Steve asks. “I don’t have to think about anything but the next step. Does that make sense?”

When he looks up from his knees, Eddie’s cheeks are rosy, and he’s holding a piece of hair in front of his mouth again. “Sure,” he says, voice almost squeaking out before he clears it, dropping it past his normal register, “That makes sense.”

Steve laughs. “Whatever, man.”

There are two feelings warring in Steve’s stomach. He’s more comfortable, here on a ratty couch playing a nerd game with Eddie Munson than he can ever remember being. He’s terrified of getting out, terrified of staying here, terrified of what waits for them outside these walls.

The feelings coalesce in his stomach, making him queasy. Or maybe he’s just hungry. He can almost smell the bacon frying on the griddle, can almost see Eddie in the booth across from him. 

Maybe they can play his nerd game while they wait for a coffee refill. Steve sighs, not thinking of Tommy and Carol at all. 

Part 13

#steddie upsidedown au #steddie fic #steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #my fic #psa that i dont know anything about d&d #so we're headcannoning that eddie dumbed it down a LOT for steve it's really because wtf do i know