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formosusiniquis · 8 months

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diana prince and stevie h.: variations on a theme

Inspired by this post by @secondconcussion cause I saw it earlier this week and couldn't stop turning it around in my mind

also on ao3 for easier reading

It's not Eddie's fault he got lost.

That's the first thing he wants to get out of the way. He'll take his lumps if he has to, Uncle Wayne can be a surly fucker when he's woken up before his alarm, "Not all those who wander are lost, Ed, isn't that what you said. Just wander your way back home." But Eddie's heart is gonna wait to be warmed that Wayne loves him enough to quote Lord of the Rings until after he's back in the part of Hawkins he recognizes.

"It's the ‘not all’ that I need you to wrap your head around old man, cause I, your dearest nephew, am very lost."

"Your my only nephew, and gettin' less dear by the second," Wayne lied like a liar.

He wasn't above begging, not when he'd already walked fuck knows how far to fuck knows where. "Please, Wayne!"

He hears a grumbled sigh and knows he's won, "Where are ya?"

"Um, woods?" He can hear the thunk of the phone being slammed against something hard, but at least Wayne doesn't hang up.

Hawkins is a small town, by Eddie's standards, but it expands in strange ways. Every summer he spent with Wayne it seemed to unfurl in different directions, a flower blooming a little different each year. It was not the gridded out cityscape he'd grown up in.

So when Eddie came down from Indy every summer to escape parents who managed to toe the line of awful just well enough that CPS kept their noses out of the Munson’s business, he would wander but never far. Just far enough to find the park and the playground that Wayne hadn't thought to mention. Far enough to find a corner store where he can pocket the extra candy bar he couldn't afford with the spare change he had -- and he wasn't going to put back the magazine he was buying, Wayne had nothing good to read and he couldn't make a library card yet. Far enough to find an abandoned picnic bench to smoke up at so his borrowed bedroom didn't smell like weed. Far enough to make some friends.

Only now that he's twenty, and some change. Now that he's graduated high school, third time lucky. Now that he’s decided to leave the trouble he could feel stirring in the city for someplace that always felt more like home. Now that he is an official Hawkins resident, he's wandered a little too far.

And it's not his fault, but he's not gonna tell Wayne that.

Cause the thing is, Eddie has always thought better when his feet were moving. After an hour of pacing around his trailer, still full with half unpacked boxes of things he hadn't realized he'd collected -- boxes that make him feel like a caged animal, that he'll be living out of for the next two months at least -- he has to leave. His first mistake, trusting that his feet will lead him around the parts of Hawkins he knows.

His mind twists plot hooks and campaign NPCs around his head, determined to get ready for when his friends come around later that afternoon with the pack of freshmen, now sophomores, that they'd adopted. He won't apologize for wanting to impress a new group of kids and wanting to convince Jeff he wouldn’t be sorry about passing off his DM mantle to a guy they used to only see two months out of the year. As he's thinking about a sect of female warriors -- a mix of barbarians and rangers, buff and leveled way above where the party will be -- and whether it'll just come across as horny the way the DILF-y elven mages he'd tried to include last year did, he sees her. Notices her, more like; a nymph, a dryad, a goddess sprung fully formed from his imaginings.

She crosses his path at a light jog. The shortest green athletic shorts he's ever seen clinging to the shape of an ass he could bounce a quarter off of. He can see the way her broad and muscled shoulders shift beneath the white sports bra she's wearing. It's the cool down portion of her workout, he guesses, from the way he can mostly maintain the small distance between them and the way sweat runs in rivulets down her back and trim waist. He wants to lick it off of her. She looks like she was built to fire a bow or break him in half, a Kinsey Five, it's the women who could kill him that always capture his attention.

He trails behind her, mind still turning over his session prep for the day and maybe thinking a little bit about whether she had a boyfriend. Hindsight will grant him that it's weird, the way he trailed behind her like a stray dog like this. But then, as he's sitting in the cab of Wayne's truck, he'll remember the way her thick, muscled thighs moved, how she bounced on the balls of her toes. He'll remember the way her ponytail swished over her shoulder as she glanced back at him, his first look at the lady's fair face, the way she'd smirked at him before bounding off of the roadside into the woods.

So totally not his fault he got lost. It probably happens all the time. The payphone on the opposite side of the road for sorry suckers like him who fall into her snare. Shit, maybe he should have stayed put, he hadn’t been thinking about why she might have a snare.

Wayne found him eventually, even if he spent the drive back to Forest Hills muttering about how Eddie had even found his way over to that side of town. How next time he aimed to get lost he should bring a map or a compass or a dog, and find his own way back. So he doesn’t ask his uncle about the mystery girl that could snap him over her knee like a dry twig, cause in the mood he’s in right now Wayne might go find her and embarrass the hell out of him.

Later, when Jeff and Gareth and Joey have piled onto the broken in couch that Wayne had given him. When the first teen that he doesn’t know knocks a little too quietly on his door, but grins wide enough to split his face that they’ve got a new campaign and a place to play over the summer. When they’re waiting for the last one to arrive, Eddie thinks about asking about her. She had to have overlapped with them in high school for at least a year or two.

Eddie knows already though that he won’t. Plus there’s a chance they’ll tell him anyway. He’s been on the receiving end of enough ‘Is that supposed to be Ronnie James Dio’s’ and ‘Wait are you describing Sigourney Weaver’s’ to hope that once he starts describing the Amazonian warrior who will hopefully be haunting his dreams he’ll get a ‘Doesn’t that sound just like…’

And yeah, maybe he’s starting to get a little impatient. But with the way he’s got the campaign laid out it will be at least two hours in before he gets a chance to describe her. At least, and he has to know who she is tonight.

“Dude,” Gareth starts, probably sick of the way Eddie’s bouncing his leg, “where’s Dustin?”

Will, the quietest so far of the new recruits looks almost too concerned, “He knows where it is right? Has anyone-”

Sinclair, he thinks the group arrived in mass and he’s not sure he’s partnered faces with the rush of names correctly just yet, pulls a walkie talkie with bells and whistles he didn’t even know you could attach from a backpack on the floor. “Dustin, come in, what’s your ETA?”

The tension in their corner of the room ratchets up enough to have Eddie’s palms start to sweat. Will brings his thumbnail up to his mouth, worrying it enough that it’s sure to start bleeding soon. “I’m sure it’s-” Sinclair starts to say, interrupted by a clattering outside then a bang to his door that yanks on the frayed edges of Eddie’s nerves.

He feels a little like a squirrel trying to cross a highway, the way the babies about to join the party are watching him with the knowing terror you watch something about to die.

Except the thing at his door is not Jason or Freddy, it’s a half-pint with a white hat pulled low over his head. The missing Dustin, who has no problem bullying his way through Eddie’s now open door.

“Ew, dude, why are you sweaty?”

"Because, Michael, I had to bike all the way across town." Eddie, and it looks like half the group, is about to ask some variation on why when Dustin holds up a hand shutting them all up masterfully "Because," he stresses each letter like they're what's wronged him, "five minutes before we were supposed to leave mom catches Stevie gossiping with Robin and she totally flips out about how she didn't take Stevie in just to watch her get herself killed. And then when I asked who was taking me here, Ma said she 'didn't buy me that bike just to have it sit in the garage!'"

The kid is incensed so it doesn't feel like the time to ask what the fuck is going on. Not when everyone else snorts and snickers at Dustin's expense. "Damn Stevie really fucked up if Dustybun got sent out on his own," Gareth jeers.

"Your mom does know what Stevie keeps in her trunk right? And she ruptured Preston's balls when he grabbed her ass last year," Lucas points out.

Hawkins, Eddie is learning, might just be full of girls to fall in love with.

"Stop saying that like it's hot, that's my sister you're talking about. I'll tell Max."

"Max still thinks Stevie's hot, dude."

"Are we gonna have to walk home just because Stevie's done something stupid again?" Mike complains.

"You didn't care about Stevie doing something dumb when she climbed that tree in heels to get you down after you got drunk at winter formal. Or when she took her bat to those… things." Lucas shares a sly grin with Will, who looks torn between feeling awkward at the inclusion and the teenage bloodlust for giving your friends a hard time. "You can just admit you feel weird about having the same taste as your-"

"Oh my god!" Dustin shouts cutting Lucas off and sending the room, Eddie included into a burst of snorting laughter. "Dustin Henderson," Eddie gets himself under control enough to accept the offered hand, "excited to have a DM who isn't a total asshole."

"Eddie, sorry about your hot sister. Not sorry for being a new kind of asshole Dungeon Master. Let’s see them character sheets, kiddies, this ain’t your mommy’s book club, we aren’t just here to gossip.”

Things go off pretty well, for a seven person table where he barely knows half the players. Lucas has an impressive tactical mind, Mike is a passionate role player, Will has a character built so well it’s basically an art form, and Dustin is a wild card who can’t decide whether he wants to win or to walk into the obvious trap just to see what will happen. It’s not hard to adjust, even if the way Jeff keeps looking at him when he describes new NPC's is throwing him off his game a little bit. He can duck behind his DM screen and recollect himself, but seriously what the fuck.

“She stands taller than the tallest of you, bronzed skin and hair, imperious, she looks at you, Sir Jeffrey, and offers you a deal, ‘Best our strongest warrior and you can take him back with you. Fail and his impunity will be punished by death.’” He lets the threat hang heavy in the air, all eyes on him and desperately hanging on to every word. Minus Jeff who was giving him that look again. “And that’s where we’ll end things this week, boys.” Cause he really, really hadn’t expected any of them to just straight up steal the enchanted bow of the Amazons that they needed to fell the dragon; and he really, really hadn’t planned for the botched stealth rolls.

Everyone grumbles as they pack up their things, it’s music to his ears. A four hour session -- if he didn’t count the hour they riffed about character builds and backstory once Eddie had his hands on their sheets -- and they’re still itching for more. It’s almost enough to have him just call a dinner break, so he can hole up in his room and churn something out. But someone is beating out shave and a haircut on his front door before he can change his mind.

“It’s probably Wayne getting revenge,” Eddie says, “woke him up early this afternoon.” He taps back his two bits, swinging open the door, expecting to see Wayne’s smug looking face grinning back at him. He’ll take his ‘Don’t feel too good getting interrupted in the middle a something, does it?’ with grace.

Only instead of an old man with two days of scruff, the door opens on his modern day Aphrodite. A worn, grey athletic shirt bragging about being a 1985 Hawkins Swim Team Region Champ has covered the white sports bra, cropped it shows off a distracting sliver of toned stomach above a short green tennis skirt, and her perky ponytail is down in loose waves around a mole kissed face.

And he’s gaping like a fucking idiot at her.

“Dust, wanna introduce me to your new friend?” she asks, voice bourbon smooth as molten eyes rake down his body from the doorway.

“Eddie, this is my sister.”

Like her brother before her, Stevie has no problem shouldering her way through the door. Where Dustin had slipped through on a size difference technicality like a halfling, she places a warm hand against his shoulder and gently pushes until his feet and brain get it together enough to move with her. Even then they’re still screaming, god he’s positive she could have just picked him up. He really wants her to pick him up, maybe push him against the wall a little.

“Hi Eddie,” she says. Still in the doorway they’re hedged in by boxes marked ‘Kitchen Shit’ and ‘Unpack this first asshole’ breathing the same air almost, all because Eddie in his genius had dropped the last load of stuff from the back of the van right by the door. “Are we going to be seeing more of you around?”

“Obviously,” Dustin cuts in, “we only just finished the start of a totally epic campaign.”

“Obviously,” Stevie repeats, with a mocking tilt to her gorgeous smile. One he recognizes from this morning.

Jeff is still watching him, a set of eyes boring hard into the side of his face. “Eddie just moved to Hawkins, just spent summers here before.”

Something about that softens her. Her expression, her posture, easing into something a little less coiled to pounce but no less flirtatious. “To Hawkins?”

Shit, and she’s looking at him like he’s an idiot; but like a cute idiot that she’ll maybe want to put down on his knees. “Well the best band I ever played with is still in high school here, and a success story always sounds better coming out of a small town.”

“You’re in a band, huh?”

Dustin wrestles himself in the middle again, and it says a lot about his tenacity that he’s managed to rock Stevie back against the cardboard. “Whatever this is, I don’t like it and it needs to stop.”

“Load your bike up in the trunk then, shithead, and you won’t have to see it,” she fires back. He does push past her out the door, trying to let it slam shut behind him when she catches it in lightning fast reflex, “Scratch the paint cause you’re being a dick and your ass is grass!”

The rest of the sophomores are slow to pack up their remaining things, valuing gossip more than trying to comfort their friend on losing another soldier in the war of ‘thinks his big sister is the babest babe to ever hit Hawkins.’

“You should come to practice some time, band practice, for the um band."

Somebody behind him snorts, hears a whispered, "For the um band," that's probably meant to be a mimicry of him.

"Eddie's lead guitar," Jeff says, from a place of true friendship or pity. It's hard to tell.

Her eyes light up with a mischief, hair swinging as she cocks her head, and he can hear the requisite, ‘wow you must be so good with your hands,’ as clearly as if she had said it. Instead she says, “Gremlins, go get in the car. Tell Dustin, Ma’s pissed he didn't take his helmet and he should know first hand the dangers of head trauma.” It’s an inside joke, an unfunny one, from the way she grins as they grumble and groan and tell her to fuck off. Trooping out the door between him and Stevie they each let her pat them on the back or ruffle their hair, a little attendance check on the way to the car.

The trailer door shuts behind them with a slam, maybe not an attitude issue then and something to add to his to do list, but Stevie hasn’t left with them. “If you’re interested in what Hawkins has to offer, I could show you around.” She says casually. Conversationally. A comment for the room at large before she leans into Eddie’s space, warm breath against the side of his face making him shiver as she whispers, “I take the same run through town every day, and I always wanted a puppy to follow me home.”

Eddie is lost. In visions of the girl who just twirled out of his place on her heel after completely rocking his world. Has lost. His mind, his heart, and hopefully his status as single. But there are worse things he can think of than being lost in Hawkins.

#steddie #transfem steve harrington #stevie harrington #steve henderson #hopefully this is kinda what you were looking for?#i was inspired #stevie and robin were of course gossiping about the cute guy that was following her #and claudia correctly lost her mind #ambiguous presence of the upside down #which has warped stevie's sense of danger #my fic

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