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helloitisiafellowgay · 8 months

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another part of my Steve gets Vecna’d AU, where i provide very little context lmaoo sorry

i’ve been working on this for OVER A YEAR and still have a few scenes to finish 😭 my draft rn is almost 19k so I’ll hopefully get it out before like November at this rate :)

vague context: this is the night before The Big Fight TM and people like JUST found out that steves possessed and eddie is cleaning steve’s demobat wounds

other post

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“Do you—“ the drug dealer looks conflicted, debating whether to poke at a neglected bruise. “Why didn’t anyone notice?”

There’s a knot in his throat, a tightening of his larynx. “What do you mean?”

”That you were hallucinating? Having nightmares?” Before, Eddie wouldn’t meet his gaze. Now, he won’t let Steve look away, slowly regaining his certainty, his intensity. “Why was I the only one to even consider anything was wrong? You’re not that great of an actor— you aren’t, don’t look at me like that— and they’ve known you so much longer than I have.”

And isn’t that the question he’d been shoving out of his own mind since the beginning of this whole mess? That small seed of doubt, pushing forward and flourishing now that someone else had stopped to water it.

He knows, he knows— they don’t care about him as much as he cares about them. Sees it in the way the kids dismiss him as soon as they arrive at their destination, only call on him when they want something; the way he gives it every single time regardless.

Each girl in his bed, driving him like a crash-test car; the excuse to leave, the cold sheets in the morning. A freezing bathroom at a party, the echo of bullshit refracting off the cold tile.

The crack of ceramic against his skull, the fist in his sternum, the stifling ash in his lungs in a buried tunnel. Interrogation tactics, missing fingernails, drugged out of his mind; flesh monster, the loss of the one male adult he could actually depend on.

And before it all, the steel door, the silhouette, the—

No.

No, Steve knows that he is, at his core, what he has always been: unloveable.

After the reactivity, the intentional cruelty of his youth, he expects nothing other than a warning label.

Danger: do not interact. Prone to violence.

Steve is his father’s son, after all. They share the same ruthless ferocity, the same scarred knuckles.

He has spent so long convincing the world that anything can be turned into a weapon, and he started with his hands; if he squints long enough, blood pools itself into the crevices of his palms, fingernails curving into sharp edges and the remnants of whiskey bottles.

A product of his environment, no doubt; the weight of his family name, absent parents, superficial friends.

King Steve with a hollow crown, sat in his pristine castle with everything a teen could ask for except anyone to make him feel worth following. Like something other than a cheap toy, a pretty face, a chore to be put off until a more convenient time.

It’s fact of his life, something he felt no reason to doubt when people keep proving it to him, over and over and over.

He’s useful— for rides to the arcade, for a place to hangout when everywhere else has been vetoed, to wield a baseball bat studded with nails, the last line of defense, the one who can be counted on to take the hit— but not their friend. Not wanted, not valuable, and certainly not lovable.

So how can he possibly justify this unwavering loyalty, his propensity to follow them around like a stray dog waiting on table scraps? Why he keeps coming back, offering every part of himself when none of them would do the same for him?

Steve shrugs. “They all have their own shit going on, they can’t help it. I didn’t want to make things complicated.”

The drug dealer frowns, already shaking his head in disagreement. “That’s not— not good enough. They’re not too busy, they just don’t…”

Care.

They just don’t care.

Steve catches the moment that the other boy sees the bundle of scars peeking just over the hem of his boxers. Tears his own focus away from those small, circular burns; old enough to be suspicious, obvious enough that even a ten-year-old could come to the correct conclusion about their origin without much effort.

A kid with cigarette burns— not common, but definitely not rare.

A rich kid with cigarette burns? That just doesn’t happen.

“Doesn’t Vecna go after people with trauma? It’s not like Steve—”

His stomach roils, a distant nausea working its way up his esophagus. The younger teen holds his breath and waits, but Eddie doesn’t ask, just furrows his brow and grazes over the puckered skin with a single, calloused thumb.

Steve shivers, bites his lip, fights the urge to dislodge the soft touch and flee the room. He doesn’t.

Eddie goes back to taping the raw edges of his wounds closed.

A sick, twisted heat takes root in his stomach; invasive and insatiable, it chokes out his heart until it has nowhere left to go except up into his throat, and flourishes in the abandoned cavity left behind.

“Do you think when he chose me… do you think he knew?” Steve’s a conglomeration of dull apathy and the underlying static of panic; he feels like he’s back under the water, suspended in time and trying desperately not to drown. “That I wouldn’t say anything? Wouldn’t want to tell them, you, about… That… that they don’t…?”

The musician pulls out a roll of gauze, presses one end to his rib cage with more care than anyone has shown him in a long time.

“I think that you hide so much from everyone, more than anyone thinks that you do. And I think that, to someone like him, it’s easy to mistake that for shame.”

Oh.

“And what if I am?” Steve clenches his jaw, flattens his lips to disguise their infernal trembling. “Ashamed… of being known? Afraid that people will hate what they find, if I were to let people in— share those parts of myself?”

The last of the sunset dissipates from the sky, leaves the world outside of the window cast in a deep indigo.

A murmur, almost subconsciously, from his healer: “Isn’t everyone?”

He is some sort of wretched thing— must be, to warrant this raw, gnawing ache in his core. The withering, the erosion at the fringes of his being, exposing the live-wire at the heart of him.

Pressure, as the dressing is applied to his wounds. The light brush of skin against skin.

“You aren’t an inconvenience, you know.” Eddie wraps the last of the bandage around his abdomen, secures it in place. “You are allowed to ask for help. And other people want to help, if you let them.”

The babysitter hums, a non-answer, omitted confirmation. Can do little else, lest he wilt under the force of this personification of a star.

“I might not know why none of the kids said anything, but...“ Off to the side, the discarded towel is depositing water on the floor. When Eddie reaches for it, there’s a damp patch on his jeans that the babysitter stares at while his hands are taken, dabbed at with damp cotton. “Robin, Nancy, and I literally followed you into hell. You’re not taking anything from us that we wouldn’t freely give.”

The older boy’s gaze is wild, reverent. From where he is crouched in front of Steve, it must look like he’s kneeling before a monarch, a King.

What a resolute act of devotion: tending to the wounds of a martyr, washing the blood from each finger as if every millimeter of exposed skin is something worth defending.

Steve doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve such absolution; this exoneration from all of the sin coating his fingers and dripping from his teeth. He is nothing more than a child devouring overripe berries in another family’s garden, filling his vacant stomach with sweet crimson nectar that he will never be able to justify aching for.

He is no deity, no patron saint or messiah. He’s barely a king. ”I’m not worth—“

He has never been religious— or, at least definitely not after the monsters came into the picture. But he knew then, knows now— there is no heavenly father, no almighty God, that could give him back that purity, that holy golden ichor.

Whenever Steve had plead to this creator, prayed for help while pinned to the ground under the malicious intent of another— there was no response. Just the echo of his faith, his questions, being tossed back at him, neglected and unanswered.

”You’re worth everything, Steve Harrington.” Eddie’s intensity, his conviction, makes Steve’s heart lurch somewhere in his chest. “There is nothing you could ask from us that you haven’t deserved a hundred times over.”

The cloth, damp and abrasive against his palms, collects strawberry residue within its woven fibers.

His crown must be less hollow than he thought.

There is no god that can restore his virtue, slip the innocence back into his pockets, baptize him in the light of unconditional love— but Eddie… Eddie is just a man.

Just a man, who wiped each of his fingers clean; dressed his wounds with such gentle hands. Just a man, who kissed each bruise, each old scar, without the intent to hurt.

Just a man who held him, who pulled him back when his whole body was on the edge of a precipice.

Who answered his questions without judgement— without stripping him of his divinity, casting him down from the heavenly throne and into the sulphuric pits of eternal damnation.

Just this boy, who looks at him like he is worth more here, in this moment, than he ever would be nailed to a cross.

What god has ever done that for him?

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fic #eddie stranger things #steve stranger things #steve harrington has bad parents #steve gets vecna’d so that’s fun #got that religious trauma core #is it too obvious lmaoo #steve is very much In Love and making their relationship into more than what it is #which is a whole mood #like bro u just started hanging out like four days ago #chill tf out #don’t worry tho eddie also likes him but DAMN #fanfic #wip

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