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desiccatedwithering · 1 year

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we live in troubled days (oh, my friend, we have the strangest ways) — ch 3/6?

(4k || read on ao3) (ch1 || ch2 || ch4)

“Ahoy,” Eddie says upon his return to the kitchen, compelled to keep pushing this button until it kills him. This is why he prefers to be the DM instead of a player.

Harrington just sighs and asks, “Everyone good?”

“Who?”

“Your bandmates? Are they good?”

Eddie freezes. Is this a trick question? Was Harrington eavesdropping on his phone call? No, he’s probably just trying to pretend to be a normal, friendly person who doesn’t kill people every year. Eddie forces his shoulders to relax and lets out a high pitched, awkward chuckle.

Harrington stares at him, eyebrows steadily climbing. Fuck. Right. He asked Eddie a question, didn’t he? Those usually require answers.

“Uh, kinda?”

Harrington’s eyebrows furrow, which is fair, because what the hell does that mean?

“I mean, I didn’t get through to everyone,” Eddie says, finally remembering how to string words into coherent sentences, thank god. He shrugs a little. “I’ll have to make some more calls later. If you don’t mind.”

Harrington waves a hand, turning back to the counter. “Yeah, no worries.”

Great. Time for another awkward silence.

He should’ve spent more time investigating Harrington’s room, done more than a cursory search of his desk. He’d been worried about spending a suspicious amount of time upstairs, but if he’d known that this was the alternative—

Eddie jumps a good foot in the air when someone behind him mumbles, “Cookies?”

He whirls around to find Robin Buckley standing right behind him, in a Hawkins High swim team hoodie and reindeer-patterned pajama pants, hair mussed, blinking at him with bleary confusion. “Jesus Christ,” he gasps, clutching at his racing heart. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

“I’ve always been here?” Robin says, frowning. Which is an extremely unsettling sentence.

“She took a nap after her shift this morning, so she’s been conked out upstairs for the last few hours,” Harrington explains, reaching out to grab her hand. She lets herself be reeled in, tucking herself into his side and accepting a mug of coffee with a pleased hum.

“Oh.” Eddie jams a hand into his back pocket, crossing his fingers. “I didn’t wake you up with my phone call, did I?”

Robin obnoxiously slurps her coffee, eyeing him with what Eddie feels like is an unwarranted amount of suspicion, given the fact that he was invited to this dinner.

“Don’t worry; she sleeps like the dead.”

“Except the nightmares,” Robin mutters.

Harrington rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah, obviously, but it’s pretty clear when you have those, ‘cause you wake up screaming.”

Jesus Christ. Was she a witness or (unwilling?) accomplice to Harrington’s summer rampage?

Wait, has Eddie been thinking about this all wrong? Is it possible that he managed to earn himself the freshmen’s seal of approval, and now he’s going to be inducted into the cult by participating in Robin’s murder?

No, she doesn’t fit the pattern (which does exist; fuck you, Gareth). She may be weird and nerdy in her own way, but everyone knows that she and Harrington are connected; the whole school was abuzz with gossip when the fallen king dropped her off on the first day. The most believable rumor Eddie’s heard is that Buckley is a succubus who learned how to control her powers over the summer and now has Harrington under her thrall. (Ok, yes, he was the one to suggest that, and no one else is talking about it. But the girls who’d “overheard” him had only rolled their eyes and not even bothered to call him a freak, so who knows. It might just be getting off to a slow start.)

There isn’t as much gossip circulating about them these days, but pretty much everyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows that they’re an item or whatever. Way harder to buck suspicion if everyone knows that you’re the victim’s best friend slash coworker slash boyfriend.

Eddie squashes the tiny spark of hope—not that he wants Robin to die; he’d just really rather not be murdered himself. Plus, it’d be easier to rescue someone else from being sacrificed, especially if he’s expected to participate and therefore has a knife; he doesn’t really think he’s athletic enough to save himself when he’s strapped down to an altar.

Harrington steals her mug to take a sip, then says, “Robin always wakes up on the second to last tray of cookies.”

“That’s how long it takes the smell to fill your stupidly big house. Also, I notice that you’ve failed to provide me with said cookies.” She holds her hand up expectantly.

Harrington rolls his eyes but dutifully reaches past her to grab a cookie and move it the whole five inches from the cooling rack to her hand. God, straight people are insane, Harrington especially.

Eddie heaves himself back up onto the island, and Robin perks up and asks, “Ooh, are we sitting on Steve’s counters today?”

“No,” Harrington says.

“Yes,” Eddie retorts, swinging his legs.

Robin grins at him and hops up beside him, fully ignoring Harrington’s aggrieved sigh.

“Fuck, there’s two of you now,” he grumbles. He glares at them for a second then inexplicably hands Eddie a glass.

Eddie accepts it cautiously, squinting at the contents. It looks like perfectly normal water, but honestly, who knows? There could be some sort of poison in there. Cyanide is water soluble.

“I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you,” Robin declares, “so there’d be no reason to complain if there were two of me.”

Harrington smirks at her. “Wanna try repeating that in front of Dustin?”

Eddie sniffs his glass surreptitiously. He doesn’t smell almonds, but with his luck, he probably doesn’t have the gene that allows you to smell cyanide, so he’d have no idea it was there until it was too late. The safest option is to not drink it. After all, it’s way easier to poison a person with a glass of water handed to them than with a batch of cookies that anyone might eat.

“Uh, no. I value my hearing, thanks.” She rolls her eyes, then tilts her head, looking towards the counter. “Hey, why’s your murder knife out?”

Ha! Eddie hasn’t been overreacting; that insane cleaver is a murder weapon. …Oh no, it’s a murder weapon. Should he be running now? No, he still needs evidence. Which means finding a way to get back into Harrington’s room and actually snooping around, rather than getting caught up in giving Gareth an extremely important status update.

“Eddie asked to see my favorite knife.”

Robin furrows her brow, glancing from Harrington to Eddie and back again. “Steve.”

“What?” Harrington turns to meet her eyes, and his brows shoot up. “Oh. You think?”

Robin nods, hands fluttering.

Eddie stares at her blankly, waiting for her to say actual words, but Harrington just hums thoughtfully and says, “Huh, I totally missed that.”

“What?” Eddie asks, but he’s completely ignored as Robin huffs a laugh and makes another indecipherable series of movements. Cool. Eddie will just listen to half an incomprehensible conversation, then. Like a game of charades but infinitely worse.

“Hey! Not yet, at least,” Harrington says. “And I mean, yeah, obviously.”

Robin raises her eyebrows and bites her lip, drumming her fingers on her thighs. Harrington tilts his head, sets his hands on his hips, and says—

Nothing.

Fantastic.

Alright. Theory one: Harrington and Buckley are cyborgs, sent back to the past to ensure their successful overthrow of the human race. Admittedly unlikely, given the fact that he’s been in school with them for long enough to know that they definitely age like normal people—unless they were recently replaced with cyborgs or their design is so advanced that they can convincingly mimic human growth. Not to mention the number of times Harrington’s wandered into class with his face all bruised and bloody, not a hint of metal in sight. And Eddie seriously doubts he’s some sort of Sarah Conner; there’s no way he’ll ever be a vital part of fighting an apocalypse.

Theory two: Telepathic powers. Telepathy doesn’t really strike him as the sort of power that’d lead to a person becoming a murderer—though maybe he’s just biased from reading X-Men. ‘Cause, like, what if you heard something awful, like someone thinking about the best place to plant their bomb? Then it’d be your moral obligation to stop them, right? Kill one person to save many.

Though Eddie’s not really sure how Harrington’s probable victims fit into this scenario. Sure, Eddie’s thought some nasty things about the jocks at school, but he’d never actually hurt anyone. Just thinking about something doesn’t mean you’ll actually do it. There’s no way Barbara Holland or Bob Newby would’ve gone around setting buildings on fire just because they were bored and wondered how easy it would be to get away with. (Which is a question that Eddie’s never had, for any mind readers listening in right now.) And Hargrove’s thoughts were probably just as terrible as his actions, but the fact that he would beat people up for fun is what really matters, not whatever was going on inside his head.

Surely the first rule of telepathy is judging someone on their actions rather than their thoughts, right? Because most people have enough self restraint to not give in to their worst impulses.

Maybe instead of wanting to kill him for some sort of thoughtcrime, Harrington wants to kill him because his thoughts are inherently a crime. Like, maybe Eddie’s brain is just too loud and chaotic, and Harrington can’t tune it out, so murder is the only option if he wants to ever have peace again. He’s heard the kids mention Harrington’s headaches in hushed, secretive voices. And if they’re Eddie-induced headaches, then obviously they’d want to help Harrington kill him. He doesn’t have any illusions about where their loyalties lie first and foremost.

Can you hear me? Eddie thinks as loudly as possible, imagining the sound traveling straight from his head to Harrington’s like a phaser beam.

Harrington scratches just behind his ear, which isn’t very conclusive.

Hey, Harrington. Harrington. Harrington. Are you listening?

Harrington jolts and snaps his fingers. Is that a yes? He pulls something out of his pocket—probably a switchblade—and says, “Oh, hey, Rob, I got you an ornament for the tree.” He tosses it over to her, and she lets out a delighted gasp.

“Holy shit, Steve,” she says with actual human words, “he’s beautiful. Where did you find him?”

“At the thrift store,” he says, pleased as punch. “The woman who owns it gave him to me for free.”

“God, who would put a treasure like this at the thrift store?”

Harrington shrugs. “Some people have no taste.”

“What is it?” Eddie asks, leaning closer.

Robin hold it up so he can see better, and Eddie is confronted with the most fucked up Rudolph he’s ever seen. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t be recognizable as any sort of animal, let alone a reindeer, if not for the bright red nose on its sorry excuse for a head.

“Fuck, that’s incredible,” he breathes, reaching for it without thinking.

Harrington preens.

“Don’t even think about stealing him, Munson,” Robin growls, clutching melty Rudolph to her chest protectively and hopping off the counter to put some distance between them. “I’d fight to the death for him.”

He holds his hands up placatingly. “I wouldn’t dare, Buckley.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Harrington starts, glancing at Eddie. “I didn’t want the kids to see this, so—” Harrington turns away, rooting through one of the cabinets for his sacrificial blade.

Does Eddie have time to make a run for it? He takes a surreptitious glance towards the doorway, only to find Robin oh-so-coincidentally in between him and his path to freedom.

So this is how it ends. Stabbed to death, throat slit in Steve Harrington’s kitchen at the tender age of nineteen.

He’s had a good run of it. Sure, he’s failed to graduate from high school twice, and he’s about to die a virgin, murdered by his crush, but— Yeah, he doesn’t have an end to that sentence. This whole thing absolutely blows.

“Here you go!” Harrington says brightly, spinning around with all the enthusiasm of a hyper puppy.

It’s genuinely unfair that he still looks this unfathomably hot when he’s literally stretching his arms forward to stab Eddie in the gut with—

Eddie frowns. Unusual weapon choice.

“What is that?”

Harrington rolls his eyes, propping one hand on his hip. The other gives the thing he’s holding a little jiggle. “Maybe you’ve never gotten a gift before, but the whole point is that you don’t know what it is until you unwrap it.” Then a second later, he winces. “Shit, that was— Sorry.”

“I thought we weren’t exchanging presents,” Eddie says warily.

Harrington shrugs. “I wasn’t going to invite you over and then force you to get me something, dude. That’d be a dick move.”

Dumbfounded, Eddie takes the present. He shakes it automatically; Harrington snorts but doesn’t protest the investigation. Nothing rattles, and it feels solid. Eddie’s fairly certain that it’s a book rather than something deadly. He still holds his breath as he breaks the seal of the tape, slowly peeling the paper away.

“Oh,” he breathes, blinking rapidly like that might change what he’s looking at.

“Do you like it?” Harrington asks, anxiety clear in his voice. Eddie’s fairly certain that he’s wringing his hands right now, though he can’t manage to actually look at him to check. “Will said it was published this year, but if you already bought it for yourself, I have the receipt, so you could get something else. Sorry, I don’t really know what you like other than Dungeons and—”

“Uh, no,” he croaks. “I mean, this is— I don’t have it yet. Didn’t. I—” Jesus, he feels like he’s going to vomit. He makes the mistake of glancing up, catching sight of Harrington, yes, wringing his hands, brow furrowed, putting on an Oscar worthy show of concern, and—

“I have to go call Gareth bye,” Eddie blurts, words probably unintelligible with how fast he spits them out. He darts for the stairs before Harrington has a chance to react.

“Gareth, he bought me Unearthed Arcana,” Eddie hisses the second the line connects.

“Um. Gareth, it’s for you,” a woman who is very much not Gareth says hesitantly. She hasn’t even bothered to cover the receiver, which is rude, frankly. “Some weirdo talking about digging? Dirt? I don’t know.”

There’s a muffled, “Oh, Jesus Christ,” and then Gareth says, “Yes?”

“Gareth, it’s me, your friend Eddie who is not a ghost yet but will be soon.”

He sighs, like dealing with Eddie in mortal peril is the greatest hardship of his life. “Yeah, I figured. It’s been, like, fifteen minutes; what could you possibly be having an issue about already? You freaked out my cousin.”

“Unearthed Arcana,” Eddie repeats. “Harrington bought a D&D book. Dungeons and Dragons.”

“Yes, I am aware of what ‘D&D’ stands for,” Gareth says drily.

“He bought a D&D book for me.”

Gareth lets out a low whistle. “Shit, now I kinda wish I was invited. Seems like a better party than my family’s having right now. Do you think I could’ve gotten a new drum out of him?”

“You are not helpful,” Eddie says, gritting his teeth.

“Oh, sorry. It’s so tragic that a cute boy bought you the book you’ve been whining about for months. Do you think you’ll manage to survive this ordeal?”

“Do you have memory issues? Obviously not because he’s planning to murder me.”

“Why would he buy you a present before killing you?”

“It’s actually for the kids, and he just gave it to me to lull me into a false sense of security? Or maybe his deity requires happy sacrifices. I don’t know! I’m not in his head!”

Gareth sighs again and asks, “Why am I the one who keeps having to deal with you?”

“Because you’re my nearest and dearest friend,” Eddie replies, voice saccharine.

Gareth scoffs.

“And because I didn’t want to piss off Jeff's mom, and Frank would just get me even more riled up. I need to keep a level head if I want to make it out of here alive.”

“This is you keeping a level head?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Eddie shrieks.

“God, I hate being one of the only sensible people you know,” Gareth groans.

Eddie rolls his eyes. Like he’s not sensible. What does Gareth even know? He— Holy shit what is that?

“Hold that thought,” Eddie says, though he honestly doesn’t know what Gareth was just saying, so it might not have been a thought that merits holding. Much more important at the moment: “I’m being stared at by some sort of demon.”

“What.”

“It’s like some sort of fucked up cat?”

“Fucked up how?”

“I don’t know, it’s just creepy? And it’s staring directly into my soul. Like, you know that awful lemur that you had to do a project on? The one you complained about for weeks because you said it was giving you nightmares?”

“You said you would never bring it up again!”

“Well, anyway, picture that in cat form and then increase its evilness by approximately a thousand percent, and you might have a decent idea of what I’m looking at right now.”

“Christ, and this lives in his house?”

“Apparently. Unless it crawled in through whatever portal to hell he’s planning to shove me through.”

The sudden knock on the door would’ve given him a heart attack if it hadn’t been the familiar tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap pattern that the freshmen are always using. God, they’ve conditioned him, like one of Pavlov’s dogs salivating when it hears a bell. Have they trained him in other ways that he just hasn’t noticed yet?

“Uh, hey,” Robin says, hovering awkwardly just outside the room.

“Gare, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.” He just barely catches himself before saying hopefully.

“You really don’t have to. I—”

Eddie sets the phone down, then turns just enough so that he can face Robin while keeping the demon in his peripheral vision.

“Are you ok?” Robin asks and then gives him exactly zero seconds to answer. “Listen, I told the dingus down there that he shouldn’t buy you a present because it would make things awkward, but he’s, like, infuriatingly stubborn when he gets an idea in his head. So I get it. Or, I think I do. I don’t actually know what upset you, exactly. Is he coming on too strong? Or is buying books for a DM after they hit high school some sort of, like, nerd faux pas?”

“What? No, it’s not. Why would—?”

“Look, I don’t know what Steve did to you in high school, but I can promise that he’s not trying to buy your forgiveness or, like, flaunt his wealth or anything like that. He really does just genuinely enjoy getting people gifts. And I think it makes him feel better to use his Pawn Fund to make other people happy. Otherwise it just sits around, collecting dust and making him miserable.”

“Pawn Fund?”

“My name for it, not his. His asshole dad cut him off as soon as he graduated high school. But his mom and dad have… issues, so whenever his mom wants to piss his dad off, she sends Steve money. It’s fucked up and manipulative, but at least it means that Steve can spoil the kids at holidays.”

“Right,” Eddie says faintly.

“If it helps, you can just think of it like a gift he’s giving the kids, with you as his middle man or puppet or something.” She winces. “Ok, phrasing it like that makes it sound bad, but you get what I mean!”

Eddie honestly isn’t sure that he does. “I— Sorry, I can’t focus. Are you aware there’s some sort of hellcat in here?

Robin follows his line of sight, then lets out a horrified gasp. “Oh, Steve’s gonna kill you for insulting his baby.”

Fuck, what Eddie wouldn’t give for the ability to summon his DM poker face in times of crisis.

Whatever expression he makes sends Robin backpedaling furiously: “Kidding! Steve doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. Unless you threaten to hurt the kids, and then he’ll hit you with a car. But there were extenuating circumstances there, and he didn’t, like, enjoy it. Honestly, I think it sucked for him because getting into a car crash when you already have a concussion can’t be fun. But if he hadn’t, the kids and Nancy would be, like, definitely dead, so—” She finally stops for a breath and seems to take note of the fact that whatever that was didn’t help the situation even remotely.

“Okaaay,” she says, eyes darting around the room. She claps once. “Forget literally everything I just said! The point is that whatever you think you know about Steve, you’re wrong. I know what he and his friends used to be like in school, and I know what all the nerds and outcasts thought of him. But he’s nothing like that, ok? He’s honestly the best person I’ve ever met, so if all this—” She gestures at all of him “—is because of your preconceived notions about Steve? Knock it the fuck off. I’ll kill you before I let you hurt my soulmate.”

“Um. Noted,” Eddie says, because that honestly feels like the only safe response he could give.

“Ok, great!” Robin claps again and grins at him. “Now that that’s sorted, you should come back to the party. Steve just heard through the walkie chain that Mike is finally off his phone date, so the kids are actually on their way now. Come on. You, too, Keys.”

Eddie watches as the hellcat jumps down from the bed and trots over to Robin. “Harrington’s cat is named Keys.”

“Her legal name is Carmilla—”

“Like the vampire?”

“Yep.” Robin scoops the cat up, and she immediately perches on her shoulder like some sort of bizarre gargoyle. “But Steve has a friend in Indianapolis named Camilla—without the r—and he thought it’d be weird for her. Which she thought was weird, since she’s never been to his house and never plans to, so why would it matter, right? But Steve thought it’d be an issue or whatever, so we usually call her nicknames. I like Keys—or Car Keys—because I think it’s hilarious that she always tries to steal Steve’s keys to stop him from going to work.”

“Right,” Eddie says again. “Why not just name her something else?”

“Because she was pretty feral when he first got her and kept biting him hard enough to draw blood.”

“Ah.”

Robin frowns at him. “You still seem weird.”

“I’m not being weird!”

She gives him an unimpressed look. “I watched you pour an entire glass of water into a plant.”

“It looked dry!” It did not. It was probably the most vibrant and colorful thing in this awful house.

“A fake plant.”

Ah. Well, that would explain why the water just conspicuously pooled on top of the soil. He curls his shoulders in, tugging some hair across his face in a futile attempt to hide his blush. “Oh.”

“So, again, why are you being weird?”

“I’m always weird?” Eddie gestures to himself. “Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, remember?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, yes, you’re bizarre and off-putting; we get it. What’s actually up, though?”

“Nothing.”

She tries to set him on fire with her mind.

“Fine! I just— Has Harrington been replaced by a pod person or something?”

“Ugh, is he doing that thing where he doesn’t want to seem like a bully, but he overcorrects and is way too agreeable and it’s creepy?” Once again, she doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll deal with it. Now come back downstairs.”

Eddie casts one last forlorn look around the room, then trudges after Robin. Next time he’s in here, he will actually investigate. No more panicked phone calls to Gareth. But for now, he has to try to act normal around Harrington to assuage Robin’s suspicions. So once more unto the breach. He can do this.

(ch4 on ao3 or tumblr)

If you haven't read Do You Mind? (will you mind?) by GreenQueenofClubs (the fic where Steve is a telepath and Eddie's brain is too loud for him to tune it out), I'd highly recommend it!!