Steve's Got a Date with a Vampire!
part one of seven | 4.9k | AO3
Now Complete!
Where Eddie wakes up a little bit different, Steve is obsessed, and Dustin gets his Meddling Kids Platinum Badge™.
I know I posted a couple teasers from the last chapter of this over the weekend, but friendly reminder that this is primarily an idiots to lovers fic, and they take their sweet ass time getting there.
Warnings: None for this part, except the obvious mentions of blood.
Steve didn’t ever really leave Eddie’s bedside, while he was sleeping. The only breaks he took were to shower or go visit Max down the hall. Most nights he stayed past visiting hours, the nursing staff having long given up on trying to stop him falling asleep in an uncomfortable hospital chair—oftentimes with Lucas's head resting on his shoulder.
One of those nights, with Steve already leveled with exhaustion and barely holding his own head up, Robin came in to sit with him.
“Steve,” she all but whispered.
“I’m okay, Rob,” he said automatically. “Just gonna rest my eyes for a bit, then I’ll drive you home.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Robin said, sounding fondly annoyed. “Nancy’s gonna drive me. But—don’t you think you should go home and get some rest?” she tried.
They’d had this conversation every day for the last three, now. Steve hadn’t yet relented.
“I’m just gonna worry if I go home,” he said honestly. “I won’t sleep. At least here I know they’re both still breathing.”
Eddie had made strides in that regard, at least; they’d extubated him earlier that day. There still weren’t any signs of him waking up, though, and there was no change at all with Max.
Robin sighed, apparently having expected that answer. She was quiet for a minute, as they both listened to the slow beep of Eddie’s heart monitor.
“Can I ask you something?” Robin asked, voice still low. “And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, to be clear.”
Steve had an idea of what was coming next and let it happen anyway.
“Sure,” he said.
“This,” she started, gesturing towards Steve slumped in his chair, “is more than just guilt, isn’t it?”
Of course Robin knew. She always went on about how she couldn’t read social cues very well, but Steve couldn’t ever get anything past her. Maybe it was their “telepathic brain thing” that Dustin always complained about them doing. Sometimes it weirded Steve out a little, but right now he was just grateful for it. For Robin.
“No,” he said. His voice sounded small. “It’s hardly guilt at all, really.”
Robin just made little humming noise to herself. Steve took that to mean she wanted him to keep going.
“I mean, I wish we’d done things differently, obviously” Steve said, laughing bitterly so that he wouldn’t cry instead. He’d go back and do things over a thousand times not to end up here again. “I wish I’d stayed with him and Dustin, maybe. Or dealt with Jason when we’d had the chance…” he trailed off, thinking of Max down the hall, Lucas’s swollen face, and the way Erica jumped at every loud noise now. “I’d do a lot differently—or I wouldn’t do it at all. But I blame Vecna more than I blame myself, believe it or not.”
He couldn’t quite figure out what Robin was thinking, or what the look she was giving him meant. Her eyes were soft, a little sad, but also something else.
“I just,” Steve started, but he didn’t know how to say it out loud. Except he knew Robin was waiting for him to, and that she’d be proud of him if he did. The promise of that propelled Steve forward. “I can’t lose him, Robin. Not when I just got him.”
Steve didn’t think he had Eddie, not really. He just knew how Eddie’s teasing grin made his insides warm. How whichever pet name for Steve fell out of his lips at any given moment made him almost forget the apocalypse they were fighting together. Steve didn’t need to have Eddie as his own, he thought. He just needed to know he was alive, that Steve had more days ahead of Eddie invading his personal space, and leaving Steve breathless when he left his scent of smoke and something spicy in his wake.
“You won’t,” Robin said, something steely in her voice now as she grabbed Steve's hand and squeezed. “Neither of them are going anywhere. Not if I can help it.”
Steve did his best to believe her.
———
On the seventh morning of Eddie’s hospital stay, Steve dragged himself into Eddie’s room like usual. Coffee didn’t really do much to quell his exhaustion these days, but he sipped on some anyway as he got to his new routine. He played one of Eddie’s cassettes—quietly, as he’d gotten plenty of dirty looks from the nurses for being too loud before—humming along as he pulled a chair up next to Eddie’s bed. He was so still, Steve couldn’t help reaching out to thread his fingers around Eddie’s wrist, just to feel his pulse still beating away.
This time it stuttered under Steve’s touch. That was new. Steve looked at Eddie’s face, confused. He looked peaceful, like this. His skin was still cool to the touch, but his breathing was even, pulse slow and now jumpy. Was that a good sign?
“Hey, Munson,” Steve said, settling in. He let his grip around Eddie’s wrist loosen, leaving his hand to cover Eddie’s own instead. “It’s been seven days in here, now. Three since you’ve been breathing on your own again. Max is still asleep, too. I wish I had better news. Dustin misses you. I miss you,” Steve sighed and tried to think of something cheerful to share.
“The press does seem to be buying the government’s alternate serial killer theory, since it’s simpler than ’Satan did it,’ I guess. Wayne said the police are working on closing the case against you, so that’s a relief, at least.” Steve dropped his head into his free hand. What good was clearing Eddie’s name if he wouldn’t wake up to see it himself?
“I was wondering why I wasn’t handcuffed to the bed,” a surprisingly smooth and awake voice said above him.
Steve’s head snapped up so fast his neck cracked. Eddie was looking down at him already, his brown eyes darker, somehow. But they were open, bright, and alive. Steve felt his mouth stretch into a wide grin. He didn’t know what to say for what felt like a long time, just smiling stupidly at Eddie.
“Disappointed by that?” Steve finally replied, then immediately felt like kicking himself. Here Eddie was, waking up from a coma, and Steve couldn’t even figure out how to say something normal. Something like, how are you feeling or can I get you some water, sprang to mind too late. But apparently all Steve’s stupid little brain could manage was something not-so-vaguely flirtatious under Eddie’s gaze.
But Eddie didn’t seem to mind. In fact, if Steve wasn’t totally deluding himself, it seemed like Eddie liked it. He didn’t blush, but he looked flustered. Hungry. Steve let that revelation settle deep into his bones, warm and pooling like syrup.
Then he got his shit together.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, squeezing Eddie’s hand. He was still cold. Eddie’s gaze flicked down to Steve’s neck and back. If Steve hadn’t been analyzing Eddie’s every move—for any sign that he might break, might fall back into a coma, might leave again—he’d have probably missed it.
“Starving,” was all Eddie said with a devilish grin.
Steve watched, somewhat dazed, as Eddie let the doctors marvel over his recovery for about forty-five minutes before checking himself out against medical advice. His bites had already scarred over, completely healed in somewhat miraculous fashion. The doctor’s seemed mildly concerned about Eddie’s circulation, given how much blood he’d lost and how slow his pulse still was. But all of his tests were normal, had been for days now. He didn’t seem to have any muscle atrophy, no loss of brain function. He was just Eddie.
So Steve didn’t argue when Eddie asked him to drive him home as soon as possible. Steve wheeled Eddie down the hall to visit Max before he took him back to the motel where Wayne was staying. Eddie had complained loudly about the wheelchair, only relenting when Steve gently laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Humor me.”
They sat with Max for a while, sobering Steve’s giddiness at Eddie’s complete turnaround. But Steve knew if anyone had the strength in them to do the same, it was Max Mayfield.
No one was here visiting yet—it was still early by anyone but Steve’s standards. So they took their time talking to her, Eddie giving her the daily update like Steve had done for him. He gave Steve a knowing grin as he said, “We all miss you, Red.”
Steve was too busy looking at his feet in embarrassment, so he didn’t notice Eddie hopping out of his wheelchair at lightning speed.
Then Eddie was in his space again, quicker than Steve had time to even account for. Eddie turned into Steve’s neck and whispered, “Cover for me, Stevie.”
Then he dipped down the hallway and into the stairwell.
Steve fumbled to recover for a minute, wondering what on earth had just happened. He looked to Max’s sleeping face as if maybe she’d know. Steve imagined her usual lazy shrug and his heart ached.
Sure enough, a minute later one of the younger nurses came looking for Eddie with discharge paperwork. Bewildered as he was, Steve could handle this part. He leaned against the door frame next to her and grinned.
“I think he went back to his room for something,” Steve said, before putting on the most convincing show of fake flirting he could muster. It still wasn’t his best—Steve was mostly still thinking of Eddie whispering into his neck and ear—but it worked well enough to distract her. Steve was actually surprised to see her face fall when he brushed her off for Eddie’s return.
Take that, Robin, he thought, picturing her damned tally board. Steve thought this whole endeavor probably warranted a point in the ‘You Rule’ column, but he didn’t care much. He was too busy watching Eddie saunter over to his side with his now-zipped jacket suspiciously full looking, and his grin bright.
“Let’s blow this popsicle stand, shall we?”
Steve was too busy caught up in the thrill of Eddie—alive, probably healthy as Steve had ever seen him, laughing breathlessly as they made their escape to Steve’s car—to even ask what he’d been covering for. He wondered if they’d just robbed the hospital pharmacy.
Eddie seemed to wilt a bit once they got outside and the sun peeked out from behind a cloud overhead, hitting him straight in the face.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, ducking back into the shade by the doors. “Didn’t think of that.”
“What?” Steve asked, offering his sunglasses over. Eddie accepted them with a grateful smile, then took a tentative step back into the sunshine.
“It’s nothing,” he said, seeming to relax a little once the sunglasses were on. Steve couldn’t help but notice they looked good on him. “Help me to the car, would you?”
So Steve did, offering Eddie an arm to lean on as they made their way through the parking lot. Steve eyed him carefully, but didn’t ask questions.
Well, at least not until they got into the beemer. That’s when Eddie immediately pulled something out of his jacket—was that donated blood?—then tore into the bag and sucked its contents down like, well, water.
Then Steve had questions. The first of which being a hearty, “The fuck?”
Eddie drained the bag and let his head fall back to rest on the seat, exposing the column of his neck. Steve swallowed, cursing his brain to pay attention to what the hell was happening instead of being a slut for once. Eddie lolled his head to look at Steve and gave him a gleaming, bloody smile.
“So, funny story,” he paused. If Steve had to guess it must’ve been for dramatic effect. “I think I’m a vampire.”
———
Admittedly, the whole vampire revelation made Steve a little anxious in a what-in-the-Vecna-fuckery sort of way, but he didn’t trust Eddie any less over it. Just because he was on the slithering asshole’s radar, Steve didn’t understand why he’d have to worry about Eddie being mind-controlled by Vecna anymore that he did for Max or Will. The whole vampire bit was admittedly a curveball, but so was the rest of Steve’s life at this point.
All the same, Eddie himself had insisted that they give it a few days before letting him around the kids, to be sure. Dustin only gave it twenty-four hours before calling a “family meeting” and inviting everyone over to Steve’s. Steve had not been consulted, but what else was new?
So there he sat, Eddie sandwiched between himself and Robin on his couch, while Mike, Lucas, and Dustin took turns pacing in front of them.
The kids eventually devolved into having a rapid-fire debate about some dude called Kas—who apparently destroyed things? Steve wasn’t sure it really mattered. Dustin kept yelling something about Kas and betrayal, whatever that meant, but Mike was countering with something about evil and alignments. Steve guessed it wasn’t about any dark desires from a chiropractor.
Eddie had finally had enough of their bickering and whistled for them to shut up.
“Look, kiddos. I want a Vecna-free brain just as much as you guys. Well, more than you guys do,” he paused to fiddle with his rings. Steve wondered if they weren’t real silver, or if that was just a myth. Then he realized he’d thought all vampire-related things were myths up until yesterday. He shook himself out of his thoughts as Eddie continued. “If he is secretly hanging out in the ol’ noggin, I can’t tell. But don’t you all keep telling me about a girl with mind-reading abilities? Think she could suss him out?”
The room went silent, blessedly, for maybe one-and-a-half seconds.
“Genius!” Dustin exclaimed.
“Where’s El?" Mike asked Lucas at the same time.
“Will that work?” Lucas questioned over everyone else.
“One at a time, Jesus,” Steve cut in, rubbing his eyes. When he stopped, Eddie was looking at him with some emotion Steve couldn’t quite interpret. He stopped trying and turned back to the kids, who stood there staring at him like they were waiting for assignments. Steve sighed, and pointed at Mike. “You first, Wheeler.”
Mike turned to Lucas. “Was El still at the hospital when you left?”
She spent most of her time with either Hopper or Max these days, so it was a fair assumption.
“She was,” Lucas confirmed. “Is that something you think she can do?”
“Probably,” Mike shrugged.
“Definitely,” Will amended, speaking up for the first time in a while.
And so that’s how Steve ended up going to get El so she could “do a proper seance” on Eddie’s brain, as he’d put it.
“I don’t feel him,” El said about an hour later. “Your mind is strange.”
Robin failed to hide her snickering behind her hand.
“Believe me, kid, I know,” Eddie agreed with a grin.
With everyone more relaxed after that, Eddie regaled the kids with his tale of evading tipping off the nurses to his being awake while he pieced together that he’d woken up not quite…human.
“So I played dead,” Eddie told them and flopped on the floor like a sack of dead weight, letting his tongue loll out of his mouth and everything. Steve watched the hem of Eddie’s shirt ride up just far enough to give him a glimpse of the worst of his scarring. They already seemed to have faded again since the day before. “And hoped like hell I wouldn’t eat anyone before I could figure out how to get down to the blood bank. Then Stevie came to my rescue.” He flashed Steve an exaggerated wink and whisked himself back to his feet as he told everyone how waking up felt.
Eddie apparently had a lot of weird dreams while he was still under, too. When Dustin asked, Eddie explained how most were like watching his body turn cold, like steel—or dreams about blood. He recounted waking up and being overwhelmed by feeling almost everything around him, of being able to hear the heartbeat of the patient in the next room over before the monitor even registered it with a beep.
As an added bonus, Eddie also enjoyed showing off the fangs.
Steve had to work to control his face every time Eddie popped those out. Steve thought the fangs should be freaking him out, but they didn’t in the slightest. To the point where Steve thought maybe there was something wrong with his fight or flight response after one-too-many trips to a different dimension. A normal person would be scared, not inexplicably turned on by the thought of them sinking into the flesh of their neck.
In the interest of not exposing himself as a lovestruck idiot to absolutely everyone in the room—Robin absolutely already knew, based on the looks she’d been shooting him all afternoon—Steve excused himself to the patio for a smoke break. He didn’t usually smoke much anymore, unless he was drinking, largely due to Robin’s incessant nagging about it. But Steve was pretty sure if he had to keep his blossoming crush on his friend the vampire in check, he’d need a lot more nicotine to distract himself.
Except Eddie slid out of the patio door to join him. Steve offered him one from his own pack wordlessly. Eddie accepted with a toothy—but thankfully fang-free—grin.
“Do these do anything for you anymore?” Steve asked, suddenly curious.
“Not really,” Eddie shrugged. “I just wouldn’t know what to do with my hands if I quit. Or for an excuse to leave the room when I’m uncomfortable.”
Steve huffed out a nervous laugh, unsure if that was meant to be Eddie calling him out. Unwilling to really find out, Steve stayed quiet and stared up at the few stars that were starting to show themselves.
“Are you sure you wanna let me drive them home?” Eddie asked after a minute, staring determinedly at his shoes. Steve didn’t know what the hell to make of that question.
“I’m not your mother, Munson,” he tried for a lighter tone.
“True,” Eddie smirked, “but you’re kind of theirs, though.”
Fair, Steve thought. But he still wasn’t sure what Eddie was actually getting at. “What’s this about?”
Eddie sighed and stubbed out his cigarette with a frustrated flourish. “I guess I’m asking if you’re sure you trust me to be around them. By myself. When I’m like…this.”
Steve almost laughed, but managed to hold it in once he saw that Eddie was being serious. He was tucking into himself like a pill bug, like he was expecting the fear and revulsion to finally come rolling off of Steve in waves.
Steve had wondered if it was a delayed reaction on his part, as well, and if eventually he’d be disgusted or freaked out by the whole situation. So far those feelings showed no threat of surfacing, and Steve didn’t really think that they would, either.
Instead, all he felt was relief. He was relieved that Eddie was still alive. Or, well, kind of alive. He never really mastered the logistics of all the vampire movies Robin has made him watch. And really, after all of the Upside Down creatures that had tried to eat them over the years, Eddie seemed positively tame.
Most importantly, he seemed like himself.
So, gently, Steve reached his hand across the empty expanse between them and laid it on Eddie’s forearm. Eddie’s eyes snapped up to meet his own.
“I trust you,” Steve said, putting every ounce of sincerity he could muster into the look they shared. Eddie seemed to believe it, because after a moment he deflated, melting back to lean against the house. “And more importantly, so do they,” Steve added, jerking his head back towards the kids inside.
“Your trust is pretty important to me, too, Harrington,” Eddie admitted with an almost shy smile.
Steve sucked whatever he could out of the last dregs of his cigarette and prayed for the strength to survive being a total goner for Eddie Munson.
———
Max seemed to be improving physically, but there were still no signs of her waking up anytime soon. The longer she slept, and the more things deteriorated in town, the more everyone wanted to find Vecna and finish the job.
Soon enough they all coalesced around a plan to end the Upside Down nonsense once and for all. With El and Will back in town, and Eddie’s newfound enhanced abilities of his own, it didn’t take much. Especially once they realized their old friends the demobats were now more inclined to follow Eddie’s lead than “Old Slitherfuck,” as he called Vecna.
One spring night they snuck into the Upside Down one last time and ended things for good. Max woke up in Lucas’s arms the moment Vecna was done and dusted, and El closed the gates for what they all hoped was the final time.
And now? Well. Now everyone was trying to get back to normal. Or as normal as they could be when they had to figure out ways to steal blood for the vampire in their friend group.
So on they went, trying to settle into yet another new set of skin. Eddie was still wary of himself, Steve could tell, but he never withdrew into isolation or tried to convince everyone they were better off without him.
Which was good, because everyone wanted Eddie around that much more.
Dustin wanted nothing more than to test his abilities, and did test whatever Eddie would let him get away with. Robin asked if they could have vampire movie nights, or if Eddie would find that insensitive (he heartily agreed to it). Nancy had a million questions like the good reporter she was, and she and Dustin often piggybacked off each other’s ideas. Mike tended to go between staring at Eddie in awe and wondering if maybe his sexuality was just “people with superpowers.”
Or at least that’s what Steve and Robin assumed when no one else was listening (and Robin wasn’t pointing out Steve’s own crush on a certain vampire).
Steve was just doing his best to cope. He was getting used to the whole “Eddie Munson is now an undead vampire” situation. Really, he was.
Was he sometimes inexplicably a little bit jealous that he apparently didn’t get enough demobat venom to also be turned? Jealous that he wasn’t the one with superhuman strength and outright awe from the kids at his mere existence? If he was, Steve wasn’t willing to admit it out loud. Because he knew where the jealousy was really coming from, and he certainly wasn’t going to admit how attractive he found Eddie’s new set of pearly whites, no matter how many times Robin tried to get him to.
With everyone’s support (and curiosity), it didn’t take very long for Eddie to finally relish his adaptation into an immortal being either. They’d determined that the sun was hard on him—it made him feel sluggish and itchy, “like Kryptonite"—but he didn’t burst into flame under its rays. Usually he just wore sunglasses and carried around an umbrella like an old-timey gentlewoman who didn’t want to accidentally gain a freckle.
Eddie had been a night-owl before, anyway, so nothing much had really changed there either. Silver didn’t hurt him, mirrors still worked on him, and garlic only made him sneeze. No one was willing to check if a wooden stake would do anything, and Eddie seemed as glad of that as Steve was. Other than the commanding an army of bats, invulnerability, and the obvious diet changes, Eddie didn’t seem all that different.
It was driving Steve wild.
The simplest of flirtatious remarks sent him into a tailspin most days. And Eddie was full of flirtatious remarks by default. The more Steve let on that the flirting flustered him, the more elaborate Eddie got with it.
Eddie’s retelling of his and Steve’s escape from the hospital became more embellished, as well. Steve didn’t exactly know what had happened before he’d arrived to visit that morning, but he was pretty sure it didn’t involve a ravenous Eddie hanging upside down from the hospital ceiling to avoid being caught out of bed while he looked for the blood bank, like Eddie claimed.
Once, he was regaling Will and Dustin with his harrowing journey down into the basement on the “hunt for blood,” as he stood on top of the coffee table in Steve’s living room. (Steve did not have it in him to object to this, a bit of a double standard that Robin mocked him mercilessly over.) Steve was only half paying attention—he’d been there, thank you very much, he remembered what actually happened—from the kitchen while dumping a bag of chips into a bowl.
He perked up though when Eddie said, “Steve was pitifully flirting with a nurse for my benefit—“
“Hey!” Steve protested as he made his way back to the living room. He shoved the bowl into Eddie’s chest and flopped on the sofa next to Will. “She was into it.”
“I could tell your heart wasn’t in it, sweetheart,” Eddie said, and shot Steve a wink. It was so simple, barely even a blip on anyone else's radar, but it had Steve feeling heated through.
Steve tried not to melt into the floor as Will gave him a sideways glance. He did his best to ignore it. The last thing he needed was for someone other than Robin to needle him about his ridiculous behavior.
That particular desire was quickly snuffed out by one Dustin Henderson, though.
———
One day in May, Dustin cornered Steve on their way out of the Henderson house.
“Do you have a problem with Eddie?” Dustin asked him, point blank in his hallway. Steve was suddenly very grateful that Claudia was not at home at the moment.
“No?” Steve couldn’t help but let it become a question. Dustin narrowed his eyes.
“Well, it seems like you do. All you ever do is stare at him, you barely talk, you act like you’re going to jump out of your skin if he even looks at you. Are you afraid of him or something?” Dustin’s face softened, like he was trying not to be quite as harsh as usual. There was still a fierceness there, though, that Steve knew was just born of protectiveness over Eddie.
“No,” Steve replied without hesitation. “Even though you might think that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to have to our friend the newborn vampire, I’m not afraid of him.”
“Well that’s just it!” Dustin half-yelled, throwing his hands in the air. He just barely missed clipping Steve’s nose. “He’s our friend, but you’re back to treating him like some kind of freak. So if you’re not afraid of him, I’d like to know why you’re being a dick.”
Steve flinched. Dustin wasn’t outright saying it, but he got the implication all the same; you’re acting like King Steve again.
He so violently wanted to reject the accusation that he considered telling Dustin the truth.
It wasn’t like Dustin didn’t accept queer people. He knew about Robin now—thank god—and practically mooned over her for weeks with how cool he found it. Steve was pretty sure Dustin wouldn’t react any differently to finding out he was also a member of the fruit basket, as Robin had dubbed them.
Steve took in the sheer disappointment on Dustin’s face and sighed. He retreated into the living room and plopped on the couch, restlessly running his hands through his hair. Tews came up to him and rubbed her cheek against his pant leg. He gratefully scratched her ears.
Steve knew if he just admitted to the jealousy, Dustin would feel better, but wouldn’t entirely lose that kicked-puppy look. ‘I just want my dads to get along,’ he’d taken to whining whenever he felt like Steve and Eddie weren’t bonding to his specifications. Steve tried not to spontaneously combust each time any of the kids referred to him and Eddie as such.
Fuck it, Steve thought. He knew Dustin would latch on to his confession like Dart with a Three Musketeers, and Steve dreaded the conclusions he’d jump to. But he couldn’t stand to disappoint the kid. He took a deep breath in as Dustin sat beside him. For once, he’d kept his mouth shut instead of berating Steve into submission. He waited patiently, quiet.
“I’m not afraid of him,” Steve said again. “I don’t think he’s a freak. I’m not turning back into King Steve.” He gave Dustin a pained look, who had the grace to look a bit sheepish in response. “I like him, okay?”
“You don’t seem like you—“
“No, Dust,” Steve interrupted. He held Dustin’s gaze this time, hoping he’d connect the dots without too much explanation on Steve’s part. “I like him. I stare and barely talk and tense up because he makes me nervous. But in the butterflies in your stomach kind of way, not the oh god he’s going to kill us all in our sleep kind of way.”
Dustin stayed silent, but his eyes were wide as saucers. Steve wondered if he should give himself a pat on the back for rendering Dustin Henderson speechless for possibly the first time ever.
“You okay?” Steve asked instead, picking at his pant leg. Steve was nearly certain Dustin wouldn’t care that he was bisexual, sure. But he couldn’t help but worry that Dustin still wouldn’t approve—that Steve wouldn’t be good enough, not for Eddie, not in Dustin’s eyes.
Dustin had a knack for surprising Steve, though.
“This is amazing,” he said, eyes practically fucking sparkling with delight.
[PART TWO]
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