#JUST LEAVE HIS CORPSE LIKE THAT AND NO ONE BUT HIS UNCLE AND DUSTIN MOURN FOR HIM? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

acidicbarkbeast · 3 months

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prompt; discovery of secret relationship wordcount; 1.4k wordcount rule; >300 cw; depression, loss, grief, temporary character death

Ao3

The week’s past was remembered in fits and starts, a hazy chase of memories slipping through his shaking fingers. In his dreams, the molten earth would be bloated with the bodies of faces not forgotten, writhing of its own accord. Above him, the sky would kick and twist, snarling red. Lightning would be spat at his feet as he danced.

He would wake with a scream on cracked lips, tears like hot blood running down his sallow face. Hours would pass as he slept, dead in none of the ways that mattered, because what was Eddie Munson to do without the boy who shone like the sun? The golden boy who, now lost, cursed his world into one of eternal darkness?

Even as spring brought flowers and longer days, Eddie could only think of rain. The park was a cage he could never leave, not when down the dirt road was a grave known only to him, a dark spot, soot from an old fire, like a house long consumed by flames. He would choke on the smoke whenever he got close, and so he would go back to bed.

There was nothing left of him.

An irreversible tragedy. He’d been gone when the winged leeches had dropped, when Eddie and the girls returned to find Dustin, wailing for his missing brother. It seemed impossible, to have nothing left of a boy who gave everything, who was so full of light. To have hell steal him away, it left them broken.

After, when the girls had torn him from his heart’s hands, as he watched the flesh of the gate knit itself closed, Eddie would stop talking. There was no one left to listen, no one worth sharing with. He could feel himself decaying, eating its own as he wasted away. People would visit, asking for him, but the loud, smiling person from before was gone, Eddie had buried him the night he slept cold and alone for the first time in months.

If the first collapse was the loss of Steve Harrington, then the second was the festering corpse of his love, exposed to them all without freckled arms to hold it close like something precious, vulnerable without its leash of a lover’s ribs. The hungry maggots swarmed like the frothing of ocean waves, and much like the tide, the others bobbed and swayed toward his sinking island, seeing what was hidden within.

New grief was born of the cavern gouged from his soft parts. This wasn’t how they were meant to find out, another goodness stolen from him. Eddie mourned and turned away from everyone else, why should he not, when none other had loved Steve as he had? Robin would call for him the most after this revelation, carrying her own devastation, but Eddie didn’t have the space inside himself for them both to weep.

She stopped coming so often after he yelled at her.

He didn’t mean to push everyone away, Eddie thought, he never meant to lash out at those who cared. He couldn’t help it, caught in the storm without his anchor. He was airborne, moved only by turbulent winds and an anger planted deep in his chest.

The phone would end up in his hand sometimes, and he’d blink awake, silently placing it in its plastic cradle and returning to his room. He never called them back.

His uncle’s worry permeated the trailer like a perfume, but Eddie’s anguish doused the place like spilled gasoline, overpowering. He was avoided like one might eye a spider creeping in the corners of walls, afraid to get too close, and in his solitude, he began to wander. Although it started in his head, then moved quickly to the surviving books on his shelves, then to staring out of the kitchen’s small window, it eventually led him outside.

There was something in the air at dusk, slithering along the breeze like a crocodile might sweep across muddy waters. The cloud over his brain would drift, lifting from him for just a moment, a single moment of free and wistful hope. He would smell sandalwood, burnt pancakes, a lazy morning’s coffee, and he would fall into the dark of the woods.

Maybe, if Eddie had stopped to think about this rationally, he would have realized the danger, but then, would such a possibility have mattered? Would he have cared, when the memories of brown hair, pink lips, and starry eyes were right there, reminding him every waking second of his wretched failure?

The wisp of a voice called his name, his hands, his heart. Eddie followed, stumbling over leaf litter in a trance. As the full moon rose, and the trees were lost to a blur of black shadow, he went deeper, so far from civilization that he could no longer think of the people who would miss him, if he were to never leave these woods again.

As he got closer, and as the smell of char grew stronger, he could hear it clearly now, the chittering and muttering. It clicked and gargled, hissed under a heavy breath, and Eddie was wholly captivated.

Silver like the wax of the stars, he was watched from the looming silhouettes of reaching branches, pin-sharp eyes never leaving his shaking form. The night was freezing, but over the heat of a pounding in his ears, Eddie could barely feel it. He approached languidly, a blanket of calm enveloping him in the face of the stalking beast.

What now, when he’d found his forever, beckoning to him ever so sweetly? How could he possibly think of leaving, when that might break the illusion of the dream? The figure lurking before him was tall, completely still, melting with the shadows that surrounded it. Eddie couldn’t decipher the angular planes of its face, the comet streaks and pale scars that marked its lithe body.

He only saw the eyes, and the glint of teeth.

Daring, he stepped ever closer. He wanted his boy back, he wanted Steve.

And, meeting him in the white of moonlight, was the very man he was wishing for. Impossibly, the ghost of war was blinking and breathing, smiling something small and distinctly off, though Eddie would never notice, not as he folded helplessly around him. Familiar arms held him up, supporting his jelly-soft bones, and he cried. A crooked nose prodded at his throat, digging into the warm junction of his shoulder, and Eddie cried some more, harder than he ever had in his life, so hard he felt it in his empty stomach. It made him feel like throwing up. He was sick with love.

Chapped lips scraped across chilled skin, dragging the points of fangs over his quick-beating pulse. A shroud swept over them, and it was darker than night, darker than the color black. In the pitch, Eddie gasped as he was held tighter, just on the verge of pain.

"Steve?" He murmured through the pouring of tears, and the man suddenly withdrew from him, and he could see clearly again the conflict in the light of his boyfriend’s hazel eyes, all too human. He’d already forgotten what they’d been like before.

"Go." Steve's voice was deep and growling, but Eddie couldn’t find it in himself to be scared. He thought anyone else would be, in their right mind. He also knew that Steve would never hurt him. To his panic, the younger began stepping further away, retreating back into the thicket of the woods.

"What? No, no," He begged, reaching for the other, "I'm not leaving. I can't leave you again."

"I have to go." Eddie grabbed his wrist before he could, and he finally noticed how bony it all felt, how skinny Steve had become. And as he slunk out of the moon’s glow, the softness of the creature’s face drew sharp, muscles flexing in rippled waves as his new body seemed to adjust to the shade. Eddie could feel the tendons under his grip twitch and pull, “I shouldn’t have come back. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m supposed to be dead—”

“Please don’t say that,” Eddie sobbed, wrestling himself against Steve’s chest. The cavity didn’t move under him, unbreathing, “Don’t you fucking say that. You’re not dead, you’re right here.” Wetting Steve’s bare shoulder with his snot and tears, he promised, “You’re meant to be with me. Here. Not anywhere else.”

In one swift motion, Steve’s chest caved in, a single blow of air, a single gulp of it back in, and he gathered Eddie’s trembling form in his bite-ridden arms, “Okay.”

Under a cloudless sky, they would go home together. Steve would not once shiver in the cold, and once inside, he would squint under the low-lights of the trailer, needle-thin pupils glaring red, only for a moment. Eddie would never notice.

———

crossposting from ao3, also technically a repost but i've deleted the original and reformatted some things. there might be a part2 in the works but i've yet to figure a proper ending...

#stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #steddie fic #steve as kas #came back wrong #barkbeastwriting

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