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daydreamingfuel · 8 months

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Freak Like Me

Chapter 6

Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

AO3 // previous // next

Y/N has just moved to Hawkins from England with her parents and is starting at the high school in the final term of her senior year. Eddie immediately takes a liking to her and they become fast friends, deciding to take her under his wing and falling to her charms. This is Hawkins however and things are never quite as they seem...

WHOLE FIC TAGS & WARNINGS: gratuitous use of Y/N (I'm not sorry), friends to lovers, slow burn, mutual pining, eventual smut, semi-fix-it-fic, angst, injury, canon dialogue and events used, canon graphic violence, no main character death :)

Chapter Tags & Warnings: Y/N's backstory - illusions to SA and drugging but no graphic detail, trauma flashbacks, Eddie and reader have a heart-to-heart-bonding moment, Patrick gets vecna'd in the lake, mass amounts of swearing and sexual innuendo and tension, two idiots in love in hiding, insecurity, anxiety, reader has baggage, Eddie is protective.

Chapter Word Count - 6.1k

A/N - I had writer's block for a while, so another 2-month gap in uploads, sorry. apologies in advance, this chapter is incredibly dark, and you may need tissues. I had my best friend proofread the trauma flashbacks to ensure that it wasn't too much to read emotionally but still, Heavy Trigger Warning for mentions of SA.

“Wait!” Eddie stopped her before she could launch into her story, “Let’s get you off the floor first.”

Slowly and shakily rising from the floor, Eddie managed to get a still out-of-it Y/N back to the boat, carefully sitting her down. Frantic eyes checked over her constantly, looking for any signs of another attack. Her red raw bottom lip was pulled between her teeth, hands fidgeting in her lap which was bouncing rhythmically. “Eddie, what I’m about to tell you…it’s really dark, I just…I don’t want you to think any less of me…”

“Sweetheart, there are very few things on this earth that could make me think less of you, I can handle it.” His voice had a slightly playful lilt to it, wrapping her hands in his ring-clad ones.

Y/N took a deep breath, eyes fluttering as she tried to keep her thoughts in check, “Before we moved to Hawkins - before my dad got this new job - there was an incident at my old school.” Eddie nodded as she paused, silently encouraging her to continue, letting her fiddle with his rings as she continued to speak, “I didn’t use to look or act like this…I was a preppie. I thought I had to be to survive, and I promised myself that when I started at Hawkins High, I would be myself, completely, and I’m so happy that I did because I found you and I’ve never felt more comfortable in my own skin but…what happened, it still haunts me.”

Y/N’s perfectly manicured nails tapped against the desk absentmindedly to the song in their head as the teacher at the front of the classroom talked the classroom through the imagery in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A note slid itself onto the wooden surface from beside her. She smirked to herself before even opening the note, knowing that it came from her boyfriend sitting beside her.

‘You still up for Saturday? Haven’t stopped thinking about what I’m gonna do to you, baby.’

Theo stifled a laugh as Y/N blanched at the words before quickly scribbling a response and passing the note back, readjusting her posture as he read the note.

‘Of course, I’m up for Saturday, but you can keep those thoughts in your head.’

‘Come on! It’ll be a laugh, I’ll be gentle.’

‘You know I want to, I really want to, but I do not want my first time to be at a party where anyone could overhear us or walk in.’

‘But that’s part of the fun baby, come on I wanna make you scream for the whole house to hear.’

‘Drop it or I’m not coming at all. You can have me all to yourself another night.’

‘Alright, jeez, loosen up a bit baby, I was just teasing.’

By Saturday night, 3 days later, unbeknownst to Y/N, Theo had told his friends all about his plans for the evening whilst not bringing it up again to her at all, acting the perfect gentleman. The party hosted by a member of the school’s popular boys, a friend of Theo’s, was in full swing by the time Y/N arrived, flouncy baby pink dress skirting her thighs sweetly. She mingled and danced and laughed, Theo’s arm slung around her shoulder, hand slowly getting closer and closer to her chest with every hour.

As the night went on, Y/N started to feel time moving slower and slower, despite having not drunk too much of anything and mostly sticking to non-alcoholic beverages. Most nights like this, she chose to be able to remember what had happened and hated the headaches that followed when she didn’t.

“Theo, can you take me somewhere to lie down? I feel dizzy…” Y/N slurred slightly, leaning on him, and feeling the rumble of his laugh in his chest. Not hearing his response, she let out a small yelp of surprise as she was suddenly guided to an upstairs bedroom, “Thank you…you’re so good to me…”

Y/N took a shaky breath before letting out a bitter laugh, “‘You’re so good to me’. What bullshit…”

Eddie was silently fuming in his seat, hating every word that spilt out of Y/N’s mouth with eyes like thunder, as she continued the story.

Waking up the next morning, Y/N blinked harshly and groaned as the sunlight hit her face. The more awake she becomes the more horrifically aware of her surroundings and exposed state of being she becomes. Memories of the previous night came flooding back to her in a daze of blurry images and incoherent phrases, making her sick to her stomach. Theo waltzed into the room wearing only sweats and a smug smirk, eyeing the powdery pastel pink of her dress discarded in a corner along with her underwear and shoes.

“Morning baby, sleep well?” The implication dripping from his voice twisted at her insides, despite the seemingly sweet words. All she could do was sit there, clutching the duvet to her exposed chest, staring at him in complete and utter betrayal and hatred.

Breathing growing heavier with rage, Y/N managed to control her emotions enough to speak somewhat calmly, “What happened last night, Theo?”

The boy in question sauntered over to the bed and perched next to Y/N on the bed, making her shuffle away in disgust. “Don’t be like that. You were practically begging me to get you in bed last night,” Everything about his being made her skin crawl, instantly feeling an intense need to scrub every trace of him off her.

“No…I wanted to sleep, I was dizzy…I don’t even know why, I barely drank,” Y/N urged, the door looking miles away from where he had caged her in on the bed.

His laugh, cocky and victorious rang in her ears, “Oh, baby…you were being so fucking uptight, I just wanted to help you relax a little,” The world around her blacked out. “God, you were so clingy, it was almost too easy. ‘Oh, Theo, you’re so good to me…make me feel so good…’”

“I- I didn’t- what did you- you didn’t, please tell me you didn’t.” Tears streamed down her face uncontrollably.

Theo groaned in frustration and rolled his eyes. “Are you really crying right now? I’ve been nothing but good to you. And I remember all those nights we talked and talked on the phone as you told me every single one of your dirty little fantasies, you’re a little freak. I know you wanted this. You asked for this.”

Y/N rocked herself back and forth slightly, her grip on Eddie’s hands vice-like; Eddie looked as though he was about to commit homicide. His mind raced with all the different ways he could hurt the person who hurt her without a single care. Breathing heavily, Eddie gulped down the growing lump in his throat, knowing that despite his rage, all his energy should be focused on the girl in front of him. He calmed his racing mind to take in her state, and almost crumbled. She was a wreck. Their eyes were frantic as she relived that memory in her mind, tears streaming freely down her face, still shaken from the panic attack and more so from the vicious words circling her head.

“I got out of there pretty fast after that.” Y/N sniffled, pushing away the painful memory, “On Monday, back at school, I tried to avoid him, but it was impossible, we shared so many classes and I ended up walking straight into him. I tried to walk away but he pulled me back, he- he told me that if I tried to tell anyone, nobody would believe me. He’d told his friends and they’d told basically the entire school, not that they needed to. Half the school had already seen me all over him at the party and jumped to their own conclusions about what happened when we disappeared. Everyone thought that I’d, like, begged him to-” She took a deep breath to calm herself, “It was torture, none of my friends would look at me the same after, and so many people talked about what they thought happened, I couldn’t escape it, so I became a recluse. Stopped talking to everyone, just went to school, did my work, tried to ignore what everyone was saying and got the hell out of there without saying goodbye when dad got offered his job here.”

“He should be in fucking jail for doing that to you. Actually, no, fuck that, he should be six feet under.” Eddie furrowed his brows, mystified by the sad tale, and wondering why or how anyone would be capable of hurting her in such a violent manner, “Why did you think that I would think any less of you?”

Y/N laughed in hysterical relief at his protectiveness and understanding, gazing at him with such adoration that he thought he might explode, before it faded into anxiety all over again, “Ever since that day, there’s been this voice in my head telling me that I deserved it. That I ruined everything, and that I’m going to keep ruining things, because I’m just some horny bitch who couldn’t keep her legs closed and made everyone hate me…” her voice came out as barely a whisper, “that I, fundamentally, don’t…deserve to be loved. That everyone is just going to use me and leave me.”

Eddie pulled her into the tightest, safest, embrace. She breathed in his scent, stronger from being in hiding but still very much Eddie, and allowed her eyes to fall shut as she nuzzled into the juncture of his neck. One of his ringed hands cradled her head as his other arm locked itself around the small of her back, his head resting on hers once more, the curtain of his hair falling over her face. Trembling hands held tightly onto him as he let her cry into his neck. Whilst his mind spun with the new information, his heart ached – wanting nothing more than to make sure that nothing like that ever happened to her again, and knowing that his own actions hadn’t made it any easier.

“After it all happened,” mumbling into Eddie’s neck, just loud enough for him to hear, she tried to further explain herself, “I didn’t report it, I was too scared, but my parents knew. They’d heard from other parents when it had circulated the school and sat me down to talk about it. Mum was pensive, but I could see on her face that she was in pain for me, despite not saying anything about it. My dad…well, our relationship has never quite been the same…I think he partially blames me for what happened, thinks I was too reckless, that I should’ve never got involved with him in the first place…he always hated Theo.”

“Anyone that could even somewhat blame you for that is just as much a douchebag as he is,” Eddie stated defensively, hands flexing as he barely stifled his temper, bumping her dad up his mental list of people he hated.

She pulled herself off his chest to look him in the eye, “You really believe that?”

Eddie stared down at her in disbelief, “Of course I do.” She smiled softly, leaning back into his touch.

Their surroundings started to phase back into reality, and quite quickly became all too aware of her own skin and the things touching it, snapping her out of her self-pity. With a sigh, she pulled herself up, and started rummaging through her backpack, stuffing a clean pair of underwear in a pocket, having packed them earlier in case a ‘you-never-know’ situation occurred, “Does Rick’s house have a shower we could use? I’d quite like to get this grime off me.”

“Uh- Y-yeah, follow me.”

Sneaking out of the shed, for fear of lurking townies, they made their way up to the house, Eddie pulling a key out of his jacket pocket. The house had a lingering herbal scent, as though it had seeped into the walls and taken up permanent residency, that made Y/N snicker slightly. Eddie strolled pretty casually through the house, knowing the floor plan with his eyes shut, and led her through to a back room where the den was, overlooking the lake, attached to a small bathroom. Opening the door for her, Eddie guided her into the small, tiled room. It wasn’t particularly new or fancy looking but it was clean enough, and towels were stacked in a tall wooden cabinet near the door that she could use.

“I’ll be quick…don’t want to be here long enough for anyone in the area to notice,” Y/N thought out loud and Eddie hummed in agreement, saying that he’d knock if they needed to make a quick escape back to the boathouse. Deciding that it’d be quicker to not wash their hair, Y/N scrubbed at her body with the generic-looking soap in the shower whilst keeping her hair as dry as possible. The warm water wasn’t quite hot enough, but got the job done and she was out of the shower in under 10 minutes, despite having spent the first few figuring out how the shower worked, trying to make it hotter and then having a little cry before actually washing.

Eddie paced the length of the den as she showered, keeping an ear out for any signs of movement around the house from potential townies. Despite the horrific things he’d seen happen to Chrissy and being in hiding for her presumed murder, the story Y/N had told him about her past was all he could think about. Why anyone, how anyone, could do that to another person? How he wished he could punch the asshole in the face, repeatedly, with iron knuckles. How utterly terrifying it must’ve been. His head couldn’t help but also go back through every one of their conversations and encounters, searching for any sign that he had made her feel uncomfortable in any way, for any sign that she didn’t want what he wanted. But when she appeared back in front of him, skin flushed from the steam, clothes clinging to her slightly differently from the precipitation, any thoughts of doubt fled his mind. She looked at him with utmost care and respect, her body pulling itself into his personal space like gravity.

“In different circumstances, we’d be sat on these sofas, probably high as kites, watching some stupid movie that Rick has in his collection, right now.” Y/N sighed wistfully at the thought of doing functionally nothing with him, curled up in peace and safety.

Eddie smiled, moving impossibly closer to wipe a stray water droplet from her hairline running down towards her temple, “Wouldn’t that just be perfect, considering our last movie night got ruined by this mess.”

Y/N laughed dryly. Everything she had planned for that night, flew out the window pretty fast and had been flying just out of reach ever since, feeling more and more like a pipe dream with every day that passed. “We technically have all the time in the world right now, to talk about everything but…God, it just-!” She cut herself off, frustrated with the world. “Every fibre of my being is still so confused and tired and angry about this whole fucked up situation, but all I can think about when I’m with you is you. It would be so much easier if you didn’t take up so much of my goddamn brain space.”

She collapsed face-first onto one of the old, blanket-draped, sofas and let out a muffled noise of frustration. He cautiously sat next to her, thigh by her head and arm hanging off the back of the sofa above her. “Do I really take up that much space in that pretty little head of yours?” His voice was slightly cocky and teasing but with that underlying sincerity and insecurity that had made her so infatuated so quickly, and eased her frustration somewhat.

“Yes.” She answered into the sofa, making him chuckle. She lifted her face up and out of the fabric, “Don’t laugh.”

Eddie grinned at her cheekily before it faltered, “Sweetheart, I’m honoured, truly. I don’t deserve it.”

“Shut up, yes you do Eds. If I didn’t think you deserved that time or energy I wouldn’t be here. Dumbass.” Annoyance dripped off every word, but he knew that it wasn’t malicious.

“Someone’s cranky,” She flipped him off, which he returned, a smile trying to force its way onto her face, but being stubbornly repressed. “How are you feeling, anyway?”

“Grim and still anxious, but better having showered,” she sighed pulled herself up to sit, legs touching his, right as her stomach grumbled loudly, “We should probably eat something. I brought all our favourite snacks but there’s also some leftovers from Mum in my backpack-”

Eddie’s face lit up, not saying a single word before pulling her up and dragging her back to the boathouse where her bag was. If there was one thing that Eddie had grown extremely fond of from having Y/N in his life, apart from Y/N themselves and everything they did together, it was her mum's cooking. No matter what she made, he was almost guaranteed to love it. Even the things he wasn’t so sure about he ended up loving. “I don’t know how she does it, she must have magic in some capacity to make vegetables taste good,” he had said one night after she made a veg-packed pasta dish that he knows he would’ve hated if anyone else had made it.

“Eds, ease up, you’re gonna pull my arm out the socket,” Y/N whined as she was pulled behind the man on a mission. They sat in the boathouse sharing the tub of leftovers, that were somehow still good even cold, in comfortable silence, too hungry to talk between mouthfuls. Once devoured, Y/N stuffed the empty box and cutlery back in her bag and collapsed against Eddie, trying to find a comfortable position to get some rest. Ultimately, they found themselves in an all too familiar position, her head on his chest, one of his arms curled around her back and the other behind his head, their legs tangled. Though intimate, the position was comforting and lulled them into a false sense of security. Any other time they had cuddled like this, it was in the safety of one of their rooms after a long night of studying, food, and D&D prep, whilst they listened to music and talked until it was time for the other to leave for the evening. Sometimes, they cuddled up like that under her smoking tree, stargazing deep into the night. But snuggled up in the boathouse in hiding, it meant something different to them both.

“Weirdly enough, the rocking of the boat in the water is oddly soothing…is this how babies feel in the crib?” Eddie broke their comfortable silence.

The question made her scoff into his shirt, shaking her head slightly. “You know, you come out with some right odd shit? But yeah, probably.”

He hums in acknowledgement, before asking another question, “Are you scared?”

“Terrified. You?”

He paused, deliberating how honest he should be. Of course, he was scared. The whole situation was mortifying, and what was scaring him just as much, was how much danger he had put her in. The thought of losing her, of what happened to Chrissy happening to her, made his blood run cold. She could be at home with her mother, peacefully unaware of any of this, safe and out of harm’s way. If only she had chosen another lunch table. If only she hadn’t joined Hellfire. If only she hadn’t taken over every waking thought he had. They wouldn’t be in this mess. But…

But then he would be alone in hiding, alone in his fear. With only Dustin to keep him in check and safe, from a distance. A long and very silent distance. Banished though he may be, at least he wasn’t banished alone. And there was no one he would rather be banished with than her. It was selfish of him but in that moment with her safe in his arms, being on the run wasn’t too bad.

“Not as scared as I could be right now.” His eyes closed, heartbeat picking up as the words fell from his mouth. With her head to his chest, she could feel the skip of his heart and smiled a little. Not another word was said as they drifted off to uneasy sleep.

Waking up every few hours, as noises from the woods made it hard to sleep, eventually, Y/N felt as though she had rested enough and woke up a final time to sunlight pouring in through the arch and windows. Eddie had been awake for a while, having been woken up by sounds of movement in the trees and, though nothing came of it, he couldn’t get back to sleep for much longer after that. His body ached from the wood of the boat, and the tarp hadn’t done much to help keep him warm in the early hours of the morning, but the warmth from Y/N’s body and the sound of her soft snores, as she dozed, helped to take the edge off. Pulling her closer as her eyes finally fluttered open, he gazed down at her, sunlight kissing her sleepily pouted face.

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” Eddie murmured huskily, what little sleep he had caught in his throat.

She closed her eyes again and buried her face into his chest, one hand gripping the fabric as the other played with a near curl of his hair, “Mornin’, honey.”

“Killing me here,” He groaned at the softness of her early morning state, “If this is what it’s like to wake up with you, I never want to wake up alone again.”

She laughed lightly before sitting up and feeling just how stiff she was, letting out long whines and groans as she stretched as much as she could without leaving the boat. As she stood to stretch out her legs and back properly, she thought out loud to herself “Need to pee…” before wandering to the door of the boathouse.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” Eddie questioned, tilting his head with a raised eyebrow. He had propped himself up with his arms behind him slightly, watching as she moved to the door.

She looked back at him in bewilderment, “The bathroom? Gotta go.”

“Be quick, okay? Then back here, it’s early but we can’t be too careful.”

The day was going to be long, and though they were in hiding, they still needed to be human. Luckily, she had food covered and Eddie had found a hiding spot with access to plumbing. She scampered up to the house and back as fast as she could, the adrenaline of potentially being caught had her moving inherently faster. Trying to find ways to pass the time, they spent the day slowly snacking on the supplies Y/N had brought, talking about ideas for the next campaign, discussing theories for what the others were doing – “Knowing Dustin, he’ll have gone full detective, you know, like how he is whilst trying to figure out the next move in D&D?” Y/N had suggested, causing Eddie to laugh with a strange fondness at the thought of the freshmen - and coming up with silly games to keep them occupied, deigning to go to the house only when absolutely necessary, and rarely alone. The conversation didn’t dare breach anything too heavy, already anxious enough and clinging on to any sense of normalcy between them, though the reality was creeping back in with every hour. Sleep that night was more uncomfortable from the lack of any real food, Eddie promised to check Rick's cupboards the next day before drifting off to sleep. Sounds of their stomachs grumbling pulled the pair from their slumber. Y/N reached for her nearly empty bottle of water and took a sip, savouring it before passing it to Eddie who finished it off.

“How many of these do we have left?” He asked, playing with the bottle as he watched Y/N rummage through the bags and rationing out what food was left.

She pulled out another large bottle of water from one of the bags and put it down on the workbench, “This is the last one. God, I hope the others are okay, I thought they’d at least check in to see if we’re still alive or needed more food.”

“They left a walkie for us.” The black device stood on the workbench, taunting them, “I’ll try to get a hold of them in a bit, right now I’m too hungry to care about trying.”

Digging into their breakfast of slightly stale toaster waffles, both of their minds raced, feeling as though their luck was running out. They spent most of the day like they had spent the last, only more on edge. It was past noon before they decided to venture back up to the house, needing some hot food no matter how gross it might be. Rick’s kitchen seemed to have been abandoned long before his arrest, with dust on the counters and shelves and a mostly empty fridge. Y/N jumped up to sit on the counter as Eddie rummaged through the cupboards. Watching him riffle through the abandoned kitchen made a warm domestic bubble settle in her stomach, knowing inherently that it was something she would never be tired of, holding dear all the mundane life moments she had with him, whilst she still could.

With each drawer and cupboard he opened, he muttered a small ‘nope’ to himself before finally opening the cupboard above the oven and inspecting a can, “Yeah,” he snorted, “You’ll do.”

“What are we having, chef?” Y/N watched as he pulled a saucepan from a cupboard and turned on the stove.

When the contents of the can were slowly heating, he turned to her, “A nutritious meal of spaghetti hoops. It was all I could find that wasn’t a potential biohazard.”

Once the hoops were sufficiently hot, they wandered into the living room passing the pan and spoon between them, neglecting to properly plate up the food in sheer hunger. Eddie’s agitation wasn’t fully squashed by the meal, however, “Throw me the walkie…I’ll try to get a hold of Henderson…” He fiddled with the knobs as Y/N collapsed onto the sofa with the hoops, wrapping themselves in a blanket thrown haphazardly onto the backrest. Eventually, he got it to the right channel, holding down a button to talk, “Hey, Dustin, this is Eddie the Banished. You there?”

Static. Silence.

“Dustin, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Dustin?” He tried again, getting more impatient, “Earth to Dustin.”

“Hey, it's Nancy.”

Y/N recognised the voice of Nancy Wheeler, Mike’s older sister. They had only briefly met a handful of times when it was her turn to pick up Mike from Hellfire, she never stayed for long. Only once had she actually gotten out of the car to greet Mike, and that was when he was stalling and talking to Eddie about the campaign for a little too long for her liking, practically dragging him back to the car with a silent nod at Eddie and Y/N as she went.

“Wheeler! Hey.” Eddie sighed in relief of finally getting a response, Y/N jumping up to stand with him by the door, saucepan in hand, “Um, we’re gonna need a food delivery, like, really soon, unless you want us going out into the world.”

“No.” an immediate response from Nancy, “No, no, no. Don't do that. Stay where you are, and we'll be there as soon as we can.”

“Thanks, Nancy, we were starting to get a little worried,” Y/N took the walkie, “How is everything?”

There was an almost palpable silence before they heard Nancy’s voice again, “We’ll tell you when we see you.”

The pair locked eyes, “Well that’s never a good sign.” Y/N mused, deciding not to hold down the walkie button so Nancy couldn't hear.

“Listen, um…” Eddie pinched back the radio, “Can you pick me up a six-pack?”

Y/N stared at him in exasperation for a few seconds before walking away and eating more of the now slightly cold spaghetti, flopping down on the sofa.

“I know, it's stupid as shit, drinking right now,” He said pointedly, not taking his eyes off Y/N as she stared back at him over a spoonful of hoops, “but a cold beer would really calm my jangled nerves.”

“Hey, I'm gonna have to call you back.” Nancy ignored the request, seemingly distracted by something, and they were once again met with silence.

Eddie panicked, “No, don't you da-- Wheeler? Wheeler?”

But she was gone. Eddie cursed to himself before collapsing into the space next to Y/N, and taking the saucepan from her to finish off the rest himself. “Was the beer request necessary, Eds?”

“Look, if we’re gonna be stuck here for longer than a week, I’d kinda like to spend at least some of it not sober,” Eddie grumbled into his pasta, knee bouncing. With a sigh, she slid her hand onto his restless leg to soothe him a little, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder lightly. “Although…”

“Fuck off, Munson.” She denied him, the smile ever present in her voice, making him snort a laugh.

Once back in the boat house, with the empty can of spaghetti Eddie had brought back with them, the pair resided themselves to setting up camp for the rest of the day, settling back into their hideaway routine. From the sound of things with the others, or lack thereof, Y/N slowly let it settle in her head that they might be stuck for longer than she first imagined. It had already been an exhausting couple of days, and they were both getting antsy, waiting for the shoe drop.

Sometime in the afternoon, Eddie started a little game for himself, throwing things he could find into the empty spaghetti can from increasing distances. At first, Y/N just ignored the rattling sound of the can before it became too much, and she resigned herself to join him instead. They took turns trying to beat each other at the shot, nudging the other to make them miss, bickering as they did and keeping score.

Eddie was beating her 4-2 when tires on the path to the house made them immediately stop and duck down from the window above the bench they were sitting on. Eddie, slowly peering over the edge, looked out to see if it was just Steve in the Beemer but immediately crouched back down, “I don’t think it’s Harrington.”

Shaking slightly, Y/N peeked out through the window just as a familiar unfriendly face came into view getting out of the car, and ducked back down to whisper to Eddie, “It’s Jason. And I think he brought friends.”

“Shit…shit.” As Y/N took a few deep breaths, Eddie checked on the group outside, “They’re going into the house, we might have to make a break for it.”

Y/N nodded quickly before scrambling to collect anything important as Eddie tried in a desperate attempt to contact the others, “Hey, Dustin. You there?” He took frantic glances out of the window as he spoke, “It's Eddie. You remember me, right?” His eyes locked with Y/N’s as she came to stand by him once more, essentials in pockets in case they needed to run. “Hey, if anyone's there, I really think we might be in a bit of trouble here. Okay? Wheeler?” He hit the radio hard against his hand, as he sunk back down to crouch beneath the window, “Anybody?!”

“Eds, we’ve gotta try to stay calm, too much noise and they’ll come down here,” Y/N implored and reached for his hands. He put the walkie down, brushing her hands away before pulling her into him. She whispered into his chest just loud enough for him to hear, “They might give up after searching the house and realise we’re not there…”

“Let’s hope so,” Eddie whispered back, closing his eyes, and trying to focus his panicked breathing, his arms wrapped tight around her.

The sun set as Jason and his friends searched the house, the night growing darker and colder as Eddie and Y/N huddled ever closer. Eventually, when the moon was high in the sky, his curiosity got the best of him again. Eddie peered back through the window for any more signs of movement, the glow from the lights in the house alerting him to the townies ever-persisting search. Gripping the walkie tightly, he tried the others again, the desperation and fear fuelling him, “Dustin? Please. Are… Are you there?” After being met with yet more silence, only the sounds of the water against the boat to listen to, he gave up, “Never mind.” Placing the walkie down on a bench in the wooden vessel they had been sleeping in, he rounded it and called Y/N over softly, helping her into it before clambering in himself.

Trusting him implicitly, and not wanting to leave his side, Y/N followed his lead and silently helped him unhook the boat from its mount and started to paddle out onto the lake. They barely got 30 feet into the water before they heard a call from the bank, “Hey, Freaks!” Jason had finally found them. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Fuck.” Y/N could feel her heartbeat pick up more, as Eddie scrambled to reach the engine, cursing to himself. Faintly, Y/N could hear bodies in the water, swimming over to them, as she tried to tune them out and focus on her feeble attempts to row the boat solo as Eddie argued with the boat engine, which had obviously been attached and installed by Rick himself.

No longer caring about being heard now they had been seen, Eddie tried emphatically to get it to work, emphasising each word with a pull of the starting cord, “Just come on, you piece of shit.” Weakly, the engine spluttered in response but did not roar to life the way they wanted it to, “Come on. Gotta help me out here, man. Come on. Come on, you piece of shit!” He tried harder to bring it to life, but nothing worked, “Come on! Goddamn it!” He hit the engine in defeat as Jason and his friends swam ever closer, “Nope? Okay. All right. Okay.”

Scrambling back over to the bench to help Y/N, and almost falling over in the process, he picked up an oar and joined her in rowing away from the two boys in the water, gaining on them. Together, they managed to keep distance between themselves and Jason in the water, but it didn’t stop Eddie from shouting at him to ‘stay back’ and threatening to hit him with the oar if he did start coming too close for comfort, standing up to get more leverage to swing at him.

“Come on. We almost have them,” Jason called out behind him but stopped swimming when there was no response, looking back over his shoulder, “Hey, Patrick. Patrick!”

Y/N stopped rowing and turned around to see what the kerfuffle was about, just in time to see Patrick be pulled under the dark water of the lake, seemingly by nothing. With only the moon's reflection on the lake to illuminate the water, the group could only just see each other without straining, let alone movement below the water. Gripping the oar in one hand and the leather of Eddie's jacket in the other, Y/N scanned the gentle waves of the water frantically for any sign of Patrick beneath the soft currant. But found nothing. “Eddie, it’s happening again,” Y/N curled into herself as a cold chill ran down her spine as the air grew thick with apprehension.

Jason continued to call out for his friend, getting increasingly more terrified, until suddenly Patrick's body lifted 10 feet into the air above the lake. Dropping the oar and staring up in horror at the boy’s body suspended in mid-air above them, illuminated in the moonlight, Y/N let out a terrified scream before she registered Eddie’s shouts and then a loud splash as he fell backwards into the water from the shock. “Eddie!” Y/N shouted and, in complete disregard for her safety, dove in after him. She managed to grab his arm and keep a hold of him as he flailed to try to keep afloat.

Kicking for the surface, Y/N gasped for breath, as Eddie coughed to dispel the water from his lungs nearby. As Patrick's bones started to snap, they lurched backwards in their fear and found themselves clinging to each other in the cold water. Jason cried out for his friend, as he watched in disbelief as his body contorted, suspended in mid-air above him. Patrick's body buckled and bent out of shape limb by limb as his eyes were gouged out from behind his skull, his jaw finally dislocating before her was dropped mercilessly back into the lake, with a loud splash. Dead.

previous // next

#eddie munson #eddie x reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #eddie munson smut #stranger things vol 2 #reader insert #freak like me #leaf writes

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eskawrites · 4 months

Note

11. (Reminding me of Vecna'd Robin au *cough*)

11. "Don't listen to them."

(this sort of accidentally became a sequel to this fic, but you really don't need to read it first)

Nancy wakes to movement beside her. She reaches out a little clumsily, her eyes still closed, her half-conscious mind still sorting through the broken gasps and whimpers coming from Robin's side of the bed.

"Robs," she mumbles. Her fingers find warm skin--Robin's midriff, her shirt riding up as she thrashes through the nightmare. She feels herself flush, but she ignores the heat in her cheeks and props herself up on an elbow. "Robin, wake up."

It's not that easy, though. It never is--not since Vecna. Not since Robin fought her way through a hellscape of all her darkest thoughts and memories. The dreams linger, sinking their claws into Robin's mind and wringing every drop of misery they can get from her.

It scared the hell out of Nancy the first time it happened and she couldn't wake Robin. It scares her, still, but El has searched Robin's and Max's minds time and time again and declared them clear of Vecna's influence.

He's gone for good this time, she'd told them all.

He's gone, but the wounds he made remain.

Nancy wraps her arm tighter around Robin, pulling herself closer, pressing them together until she can hold Robin tight enough to stop her flailing limbs.

"It's not real," she whispers, because it's the only thing she can do. "Don't listen to them, Robin. They're wrong, all of them."

Robin makes another choked, broken sound. It sounds a little like please. Nancy screws her eyes shut and digs her fingers into Robin's skin.

"You're so loved," she says. She looks up again and brushes Robin's hair back, leaning up to whisper it in her ear. "We love you so much, Robs, all of us, and we want you here with us."

She feels tears against her palm. She swallows hard and brushes them carefully away.

"I love you," she whispers. "I want you here with me, always."

"Nance--"

"I'm right here." She presses her lips to Robin's temple and squeezes her tighter as she stills, the darkness of the night and the lingering hold of her nightmare clashing together in her mind. "I've got you, Robs."

Robin's face crumples. She starts to pull away, but Nancy doesn't let her go, so she twists and hides against her neck instead.

"It happened again," she mumbles into Nancy's skin. It's not a question. It sounds a little bit like defeat.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Robin shakes her head, just like Nancy knew she would. They'll talk about it later, anyway. When it isn't so clear in her mind. When she doesn't feel like she'll speak it back into existence by describing it to Nancy.

"Do you want to get up?"

Sometimes it helps. Sometimes they'll go downstairs and make tea. Sometimes they'll watch a movie until Robin drifts off again. Sometimes they'll drive across town to Steve's, or they'll radio Dustin or Erica. Sometimes Robin will just sit with Nancy in the light, staring quietly down at their intertwined fingers like she can't quite believe what she's seeing.

Tonight, though, Robin shakes her head and whispers, "Can you just...stay?"

Because sometimes she does that, too, no matter how many times Nancy kisses her gently and tells her she never has to ask. But she does. And so Nancy makes sure her answer is the same every time.

"Of course." She shimmies a little, scooting down so she can hold Robin and look at her at the same time. "Do you need anything?"

"A new brain?" Robin jokes weakly. Nancy shakes her head, then ducks forward and kisses the corner of her mouth.

"I happen to like your brain."

"Even when it wakes you up late at night for no reason?"

Nancy frowns. "I don't like that it's making you miserable, but I'll gladly wake up with you at any time, for any reason."

"I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for." Nancy strokes her hair back again, watching Robin's eyes flutter. "Do you need anything?"

She shakes her head, then looks up at her. "Just you."

"Done."

#i wasn't exactly sure what you wanted but i do hope you like it!#robin gets vecna'd au #idek if that has a tag it's an old fic lol #ronance #asks #sweepy-stringbean

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ghoulsanderson · 1 year

Text

Furthering my Mike Wheeler gets vecna'd in s5 agenda

(also a corny will byers has powers entrance at the end) (also not so sneakily encouraging others to write more Vecna Possessing Mike Wheeler fics) (If you do pls tag me I'm addicted to them)

-----------------------

Vecna knew Michael Wheeler. Had known him since a fated night in 83' when he'd seen him through the lens of his Demogoron, fighting stubbornly for Will, for Eleven, for everyone.

He'd known him in the lab when terror shook him to his bones, but his feet stayed planted at Will's bedside like a stubborn weed. When he foiled his plans time and time again.

He'd known him in Starcourt when he threw himself in the line of fire for Eleven.

Vecna knew him as the wrench in his plans, the thorn in his side, the boy braver than most, which is why he thought this would be a lot harder. He expected Mike to fight, to yell, to escape, to writhe and struggle.

And he had, momentarily. Mike had run away, cursed him and spewed insults, but the instant the vines entrapped his arms and legs, he fell like a puppet with his strings cut in what looked like near-relief. Like the chase had been routine, robotic, and he'd never planned on surviving at all.

He'd been in the boy's head, so he thought he knew the ins and outs of Mike Wheeler. He knew the dark thoughts Mike had at night, the rare visits to the quarry, where he sat under the stars and weighed the pros and cons of jumping, the dreams he had that should be nightmares where El didn't save him at all.

He knew this.

And yet, in the end, he still expected more of a fight.

"Giving up so easily?" He taunted as his vines pulled Mike up to the pillar, wrapping around his neck, waist, and thighs, though he wasn't sure he needed that much security.

Mike scoffed, splattered with blood from his falls, covering his face like red freckles and spilt across his yellow hoodie, "You've got me. Fuck else can I do?"

Vecna chuckled, stroking a finger down Mike's cheek like he was endeared, "Not even a beg?"

"Like I'd beg to you." Mike rasped, the vine around his neck tightening until his eyes bulged, sure it was going to break him.

Vecna grinned, "You're letting me kill you?" He cocked his head and pinched Mike's chin, forcing the boy to face him, "You're going to make your friends and family watch you die?"

Mike convulsed with a raspy shout, "Fuck you!" He coughed, gasping for air, "I'm n-not doing s-shit!"

Vecna's beady eyes stared at him, dissecting him like a bug under a magnifying glass, "Did you hope for the hero way out?" He asked, sinister, mocking laughing bubbling in his throat, "Did you hope I'd kill you in some sad twist of fate and they'll mourn you and curse my name? Never knowing that you got what you wanted."

Mike tried to growl, to shout a refusal, but it broke into a litter of sobs, cracking out of his throat, his tears parting the blood on his face.

"I could." Vecna cooed, wiping away a tear, "I could kill you now and use your tragic willingness to kill William later."

"Fuck you!" Mike wailed, trying for the first time to tug his wrists free, "E-El w-will save me a-any... any min-minute now! Y-You won't tell t-them s-shit!"

He nearly gagged at the pressure on his adams apple, vision blurring as he failed to suck air into his lungs.

Vecna sighed, "But they already know, Mike." He leaned forward, watching pure horror start to mould its way onto Mike's face, "She's here... watching... she's been watching all this time... but she can't save you. I won't let her."

Mike's whimper broke, his struggling becoming weaker and weaker as his air ran thinner, "I-I'm sorry..." He sobbed, and Vecna knew he wasn't talking to him this time.

His caress on Mike's face morphed, becoming rough nails digging into his scalp, leaving crescent marks that bled, "It's time."

He leaned his head back, his power travelling like fire through Mike's body down to his ankles, his knees and his arms, where he started snapping them one by one.

Left leg, right arm, right leg-

"Get away from him!!"

Vecna roared as he was slammed through the wall of his decrepit house. He considered fighting back, but the force pinning him down was ignited such fury, pressing him down like he was being buried alive. He felt it on his fingertips, his legs, his body, and his face. He felt it crushing his neck and squeezing the air out of him.

In a spur of fear, he fled, disappearing to the safety of his demonic realm in a cloud of smoke.

Will panted, blood pouring from his nose and ears, but he found the strength to sprint, "Mike!" He wailed, catching the other boy's body as he fell like a ragdoll, bloodied, injured, and unconscious, "Mike! God, no, no, no, no, please! Please wake up-, please. I love you!"

El joined his side, sickened by her failure. Again. She'd failed again, "Mike!" She cried, collapsing onto his chest, hugging him where he lay in Will's lap, "Mike..."

***

The group was a wreck, everyone trying to comfort each other but falling apart themselves.

Lucas had thrown up into the grass, heaving with sobs. He felt useless, just standing by, but he couldn't- he couldn't do this again. And Dustin tried to comfort him, but he was crying so hard he couldn't even hug him.

Nancy couldn't cry. This didn't feel real, her brother hovering in the sky. She grasped her gun like it would help, standing frozen. No. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. In no universe could Mike die. He couldn't.

Her boyfriend was trying to comfort her, but he was a wreck himself. Mourning for Mike like he was his little brother. Nancy knew Mike was, to Jonathan, a brother in everything but blood. Mike knew Jonathan loved him, would do anything for him, would die for him.

Did he know Nancy would do that too?

El's eyes were rolling under her eyelids, Will had collapsed from the stress, and Mike was going to die-

Nancy screamed, falling into Robin's arms as Mike's leg snapped, and his arm, and his other leg, "No!" She wailed, on her knees, like she was praying to the deities, "No! No, please! Mike!"

"Mike!" Lucas screamed into the grass, the agony was driving him crazy, pulling at his mind like a knot, and Dustin wasn't fairing much better, anguished like he was staring into the face of his own death.

Not their paladin. Please.

But then Mike fell, spared by some miracle, into the arms of his family, "Mike!" Nancy shrieked, pulling her brother close and cradling him like a baby, "Mike- wake up, y-you're okay, you're okay, right? You're fine, wake up..." She whispered, pressing their heads together.

Mike's limbs bent at funny angles, and blood crusted in the creases of his eyebags, his complexion waxy grey, "Mike." She sobbed, "Mike, what am I supposed to tell Mom and Dad? Fuck... w-what a-am I supposed to tell H-Holly?"

Steve checked for a pulse with a hand that shook so hard his wrist ached, and slumped in relief to find one, "I-I'll call an ambulance!" He shouted and sprinted away.

As Dustin and Lucas cried over their friend, Will and El began to wake, their tears following into the unconscious.

Unfortunately, Mike woke too.

His eyelids lifted, and his usual midnight-brown eyes had paled to an unnatural copper, misted with white fog, "W-Will?" He rasped, blinking through his blurry haze, "O-Ouch- ouc- fuck!" He threw his head back, the pain hitting him like a truck, "W-Will?!"

Will wobbly crawled to him, "I-I'm here!" He wailed, "I'm here."

Sirens began to whisper in the distance, growing closer and closer, "Help is a-almost here." El stammered, taking Mike's hand, "You'll be okay!"

"I-It hurts..." Mike rasped, his chest heaving with rapid breaths, "I-It hurts."

Nancy sniffled, pressing a kiss to his forehead, "I-I know," She stroked his hair, "I know, but you just stay awake."

Mike whimpered, eyes searching for her desperately beyond the blur, "I-I do-don't think I-I want to g-go..." He whispered.

---------------------

and I have to end it there for now, I gtg.

Hope you enjoyed!

#byler #byler fics #byler week #fanfics #mike wheeler #mike wheeler angst #will byers #byler ao3 #byler is real #bylerfics #stranger things #stranger things fan ficiton #mike getting vecna'd #vecna possessing mike wheeler #stranger things fics #mike wheeler is depressed #mike wheeler is suicidal

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bizaar · 1 year

Text

Cruel Summer - Part 7

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 11k (you guys i'm sorry i tried)

warnings: swearing, mentions of violence/death (get Vecna'd), some angst, some fluff

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part seven! The shit has officially hit the fan ...

You silt bolt up in bed from a dead sleep, screaming and shattering the quiet calm of the morning.

“Eddie!” you cry out, but there is no one is there to hear you.

The sound of your own voice bounces off the walls of your apartment and echoes back to you, and you sit trembling with residual fear as you do all you can to come back to yourself … It was only a dream. A terrible, terrible dream.

You had only managed a few hours of sleep in the first place, caught in the quagmire of the dreaded closing shift made that much worse by the Hawkins Intramural Boys Basketball team — now apparent state champions — descending upon the diner to celebrate their victory.

They’d trashed the place, and it had taken you the better part of two hours to get the diner anywhere clean enough to call it a day. To his credit, Lucas Sinclair (ever the sweetheart) had begged you to let him stay and help you clean, but considering the fact that he could barely stand for how drunk he was, you’d sent him away with the rest of the Tigers and promised not to tell his mother.

It was well past midnight by the time you got home. You hadn’t managed to do more than get out of your shoes before you’d slipped into the vice of Morpheus’s grasp, and you were dreaming by the time your head hit the pillow.

And then your mind swam with visions of Eddie.

You still dream about him most nights in one way or another, and you imagine you will more than likely continue to do so for years to come if not for the rest of your life, but this had been a nightmare, and it had felt so real.

Something terrible had happened, not to him, but with enough proximity to put him in danger, and there was nothing you could do to save him.

I can’t save him.

Of course, as you eventually come back down, you try to rationalize the feeling by telling yourself that it’s not your job to save him, considering how he’d broken your heart, but it is an intrinsic instinct that has proven very hard to unlearn, putting yourself between Eddie and any sort of threat.

It’s only natural to want to protect the ones you love, and you do still love him, as much as you hate to admit.

It only sends you into a downward spiral of guilt and anger and all the other nasty little emotions you don’t have the presence of mind to dredge up on some random morning in April, running on maybe three hours of sleep and already late for your next shift.

Spring Break, your mind informs you rather unhelpfully. It’s Spring Break.

Adrenaline has made you dreadfully nauseous, and you breathe a shaky sigh as you press your hands into your eyes until you see colors.

You suddenly have to work very hard to ignore the terrible sensation it dredges up as your dream fights to make its way to the front of your mind again.

Lights winking on and off with enough gusto to be seizure-inducing, illuminating the scene of eyes wrenching back from their sockets and limbs twisting up unnaturally, snapping out of place…

You’re fine, it’s fine, everything is fine… just breathe.

Somehow you can’t quite convince yourself it’s true.

It is hard to feel anywhere even remotely in the realm of fine when you wake with the sudden and desperate screaming notion to run!

The feeling only persists as you rise from your bed and try to go about your morning, jumping at every slightest sound.

Run! Your brain tells you, and you have no idea where it is you ought to be running to, except maybe the Forest Hills trailer park, as your irrational mind tells you that you won’t be fine until you know Eddie is fine, and you’re not about to go banging down the door of the Munson trailer just because you had a bad dream.

That would be wildly embarrassing, even for you.

It takes you the better part of an hour to banish the residual fear of your dream, showering away the sweat that has dried tacky on your skin, wolfing down a quick breakfast, getting dressed and ready for the day in your scratchy grease-stained work uniform, all the while trying to deafen yourself to the ubiquitous echoes of cracking bones, silently willing yourself to calm down, calm down, calm down.

It isn’t working.

Even outside the realm of your dreams, you can’t stop thinking about Eddie. Though perhaps more importantly you can’t stop thinking about the fact that it’s spring break, which means it’s been nearly a year since you’d last seen him.

You’re having a very hard time trying to suppress the nagging feeling that wherever he is, Eddie needs you and you’re borderline obsessing over the thought that if you don’t find him, something very bad is going to happen.

Of course, that line of thinking puts you in a rather awkward position, because you’re still not quite sure you’re physically capable of handling the concept of seeing Eddie again. This is made all the more evident considering the way you’d thrown your telephone across the room like it had jumped up and tried to bite you after having inadvertently found yourself on the phone with him last month.

It leaves you feeling hopelessly stuck, so to try and distract yourself from the crushing sense of impending doom, you indulge yourself in a little self-harm, recalling how last year you had planned to spend Spring Break road-tripping...

It took the two of you weeks to plan the trip, mapping out the route, everywhere you would camp, all the roadside attractions you would hit, budgeting your pooled money down to the penny. You would be flat broke by the time you got home, but you had convinced yourselves it would be worth it.

It was never meant to be.

Beyond the fact that the heavens had decided to open up and dump what you assumed must have been all the rain for the rest of the entire year in one weeklong downpour, the van’s transmission went out the day before you were meant to leave, stranding Eddie and the band on the highway halfway between Hawkins and the next town over, as is always the way.

So you drove an hour and a half through the torrential downpour to go and rescue him at the random interstate pay phone he'd called you from. He slid into your passenger seat, soaking wet and positively fuming, ranting and raving about the piece of shit van and his stupid friends and the whole goddamn situation as you went and collected the rest of the band, left to sit huddled in the relative warm but most importantly dry van.

Then, with Gareth, Jeff, and Adam crammed like Sardines into the back of your little Toyota, the heater cranked up and the stereo turned down, you’d all sat shivering in relative silence as you followed the tow truck back to Hawkins, taking with it the van and all the money you’d saved for your trip.

The guys pooled their money to cover the tow, as they came to figure was only fair (with a little prompting from you). The repairs themselves came out to cost a whopping twelve hundred and sixty-seven dollars and thirty-nine cents, quite conveniently the exact amount of money you and Eddie had saved between the two of you, though that price only came to be after the mechanic overheard your hushed conversation about what you could afford — don’t you hate it when that happens?

So, road-tripping dreams dashed to oblivion, you’d spent Spring Break sitting on Eddie’s couch. You’d assigned yourself the role of his sick nurse, making sure the cold he’d caught while waiting for you in the rain didn’t develop into pneumonia, all the while tirelessly assuring him it was fine that you didn’t get to go, that there was nothing to be sorry about, the road and all its attractions would still be there next year, and no he absolutely was not allowed to pay you back.

“Consider it back-pay for all the gas money I owe you.” You’d told him, brushing his hair back from his clammy forehead as he lay pressed into your side, coughing and sneezing miserably.

All things considered, it hadn’t been too terrible a way to spend a week off from your last year of school, building a massive blanket fort in the living room in which to marathon movies, play board games, eat your weight in snacks, and fool around once Eddie felt a little better.

(Funny how he always seemed to be miraculously healed of whatever ailment held him in its clutches at death’s door when sex was on the table.)

It was one last hurrah of adolescent fun, stretching the Endless Summer just a little further before having to face graduation and the impending threshold of adulthood… well, at least for one of you.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since all that. One quick turn around the sun and suddenly it’s Spring Break, and Eddie needs rescuing again – or so insists your subconscious.

You should go see him, a tiny nagging voice inside of you presses, You should go check on him.

“No, thank you,” you tell the stupid little voice as you snatch up your keys and head out the door of your apartment.

You’ve got to go to work, and somehow getting verbally abused by the patrons of your shitty waitress job is so much more appealing than the thought of trying to make awkward small talk with Eddie after eight months of nothing.

You can’t imagine he’d be pleased to see you, considering it all.

You can only just picture yourself standing at the bottom of the steps, trying your best not to look at him while wringing your hands and struggling to explain that you’re standing on his doorstep because of a feeling.

Boy howdy, doesn’t that just sound like the best time a girl could possibly have?

Still, it feels a little too much like denial, deluding yourself into assuming he’s fine just because you don’t want to go see him. It does nothing to settle your nerves, and by the time you get to work, you’re just about ready to puke for how your insides have twisted themselves into a Gordian knot.

You bid an absent hello to your co-worker and skirt around the back of the counter to stash your things, ignoring the way she berates you for how she had to finish cleaning up what you had left undone the night before.

She doesn’t like you much anymore since you’d had to tell her you wouldn’t be watching her demonic children, and she is not shy about making it known.

Normally you would have said something to try and defend yourself, told her to blame the Hawkins Tigers, but you are understandably too preoccupied to consider doing so.

Maybe Wayne can check on Eddie for you…

“Stop it.” You hiss at no one in particular, biting the inside of your cheek and reminding yourself for the hundredth time in the last half hour that Eddie is still a jerk and that you and Wayne have made a silent agreement not to talk about him.

It was a very complicated way of simplifying the weird patchwork friendship you’d built up with the elder Munson in the ashes of your relationship with his nephew, but that is how you preferred it remains.

You are not going to ruin your streak of very successfully avoiding the topic of Eddie by asking Wayne about him just because you had a bad dream.

A really, really, really bad dream.

Of course, it’s a highly plausible scenario considering Wayne is due in today for your weekly session of catch-up. You could very easily get an indirect report on Eddie’s wellbeing if you really wanted to, but you banish the thought before it can fully form.

You know if you ask, Wayne is just going to tell you to go see him, and you are not going to go see him.

You tie your apron tight enough to dig uncomfortably into your sides and clock in and try every mental exercise you can think of to try to stop the constant loop of Eddie Eddie Eddie passing through your brain like a weather report scrolling along the bottom of the television screen during the morning news.

It is unbearably slow at the diner, just like it is every day, though today there is a patent strangeness to how particularly empty the dining room is. Benny’s has never gotten much traffic to begin with, not even when Benny himself was around, but even the morning regulars seem to be missing today.

It’s wholly bizarre and does nothing to quash your nervous feeling, particularly as the first hour of your shift comes and goes without a single customer.

“Kinda slow, huh?” You hum, hoping a little conversation might aid in distracting you.

Your coworker stands leaning against the counter, filing her lacquered nails. She gives you an uninterested look.

“There’s some kinda commotion going on at the trailer park.” She says flatly, “Folks probably all went down to see what’s what. They’ll be here soon enough, don't you worry your pretty little head.”

You ignore the biting sarcasm dripping from her tone and swallow hard to banish the spike of anxiety that grips your stomach and forces a knot up into your throat.

Trouble at the trailer park.

Oh no.

You struggle to keep your voice steady as you speak, almost too afraid to ask yet unable to keep your mouth shut.

“What kind of commotion?”

Your coworker shrugs, not bothering to look up from her filing as she answers you.

“Who knows.” She huffs, and before she can elaborate, the cook, who also happens to be your boss, pipes up from the kitchen.

“Some girl got killed or somethin’,” he calls, and you feel the blood drain from your face.

You dig your nails into your palms to try and ground yourself as you are struck with the hideous feeling of deja-vu.

Your coworker is apparently less affected by the information. She heaves an angry sigh and throws her hands down, chunky plastic bracelets clacking loudly and sounding much too similar to snapping bones for your liking as she does.

“Now, how in the hell could you possibly know that, Earl?”

“I got my sources, anyways, I seen them cop cars go roarin’ down the street. They only haul ass like that when there’s a body. Like when they found that Byers kid down in the quarry.”

You suppress a shudder as once again your dream rushes to the front of your mind. You retreat from it, electing instead to hide in the memory of the night they’d thought they found Will —

—you’d been with Eddie. It was one of the first times you’d really hung out together, not a date, just one on one time in the earliest stages of whatever it was going on between you. More than a friendship, not quite a relationship, back when all you knew was that he was so strangely different than all your friends had warned you, and you had a ridiculous crush on him that you’d hoped beyond hope was mutual.

You’d seen that exact procession of cop cars go whipping past you on the road, and Eddie – who had just been very glad he wasn’t being pulled over – made a flippant comment along the lines of “guess they found that missing kid,”

He hadn’t meant anything by it, and he’d been very chagrined when you called him up later that night after learning they had in fact found Will. You couldn’t have expressly explained why you called Eddie that night, except that your parents weren’t home, it didn’t feel appropriate to be at the Henderson’s right then, and in the mire of your reeling mind, your empty house was suddenly terribly frightening.

You suppose you called Eddie because he made you feel safe.

“Do you want me to come over?” He’d asked, quickly and quietly, and when you sheepishly asked if you could go over to his place instead, he’d agreed to come and get you without a moment's hesitation — you could hear his keys in hand before he even hung up, promising to be there in five minutes.

That was how you’d found yourself sitting on your front steps, shivering in your pajamas while you waited for him, making the excuse that it would be easier to lie about where you’d been rather than try to explain what a random boy was doing in your house if your parents happened to come home.

Of course, that line of thinking suggested that anyone could have stepped in to comfort you that night, and that was just patently untrue.

Even then, you only wanted Eddie, pulling up to your house and driving you back across town to spend the night glued to his side, lying in his bed, whispering back and forth conspiratorially like kids having a sleepover, like you’d known each other for years and were privy to the deepest secrets of each other’s hearts.

You were barely even friends, and yet somehow you knew, from flipping through the yellow pages to find his number to drifting off to the hushed sounds of his voice while he read aloud the first few chapters of some fantasy novel, you would never want anyone else but him.

You are vaguely aware of how you’ve been subtly pinching yourself to try not to think about how, if you were really honest with yourself, that had been the night you’d fallen in love with Eddie — it only makes your chest ache with anxiety as you remember the crushing sense of danger from your dream like suddenly the whole world is bearing down on him.

I have to find him…

It is an intrusive thought, new and terrifying as the notion of needing to find Eddie indicates that somehow he is missing. It is enough to move you to panic.

Behind you, your coworkers continue to bicker, but you don’t hear them. You’ve moved to stare out the window, at your car sitting lonely in the lot, watching for any kind of traffic, any sign of things to come … any sign of Eddie…

The trailer park is not far from here, maybe half a mile at the most, and you rationalize that you could feasibly make the distance in less than five minutes if you ran.

You aren’t sure why your brain decided to deliver that information to you, only that if you were the religious type, you would have been praying to whoever might be listening that whatever trouble is happening down at the trailer park has nothing to do with Eddie.

I have to find Eddie. Eddie, Eddie Eddie Eddie—

And then, like a part of your brain has clicked off, suddenly all you know is action.

Somewhere in the very far distance, you think you can hear your boss calling your name, but you don’t hear him, not really. You don’t hear anything but the skipping record of your mind moving you.

You don’t think, you just go.

Out the door and practically sprinting, the hoarse shouting voice of your boss falls on deaf ears as you skirt right past your car and disappear into the woods.

You don’t care about your pride or your hurt feelings, or whether or not Eddie will be happy to see you, all of that nonsense is the furthest thing from your mind as you run. You’ve got to see him, you’ve got to find him, no matter what.

If there are cops at the trailer park, they’re going to be blocking the road, so you convince yourself that you can avoid them by going through the woods, exiting the treeline and making a break for Eddie’s bedroom window.

Twigs snag the skirt of your dress as you move through the thicket at a pace, the crunching of leaves and detritus is thunderous under your sneakers as you go.

It is only a matter of minutes before you emerge from the first line of trees, flying across the backroad without a second thought for traffic and pushing through the last stretch of the woods until finally, the trailer park opens up before you.

You pause a moment to catch your breath, doubled over resting on your knees and listening for a hint at whatever lies ahead.

It’s eerily still, despite how beneath the gentle flapping of laundry on the line and the hum of generators, you can hear the buzz of movement, voices speaking, and crackling radios much closer than you’d accounted for.

You’d never been much for trouble before you met Eddie. Your experience with the Hawkins police begins and ends with distracting them so that he could slip away undetected, and it occurs to you perhaps too late that this could very easily end with you being arrested, which would be at best very inconvenient and at worst?

Your parents don't live in Hawkins anymore, so who would be there to bail you out if that happened? Claudia Henderson? Wayne? How would you make sure Eddie is okay if you’re sitting in a jail cell?

Still, you can’t let your wariness of trouble stop you now, not after you’ve already come most of the way.

You would always rather come running to Eddie’s rescue when he doesn’t need you than risk not being there when he does, and it is enough to refill the well of your courage.

You bite back the same urge to run you’d felt that morning when you woke up and stay low.

Despite having not set foot on these grounds for the better part of a year, you retrace the path through the park with patent expertise, like no time has passed at all. Then again, nothing ever changes down here, and you are sure you could find your way to the Munson trailer in the dark with your eyes closed if you had to, and suddenly there you are.

The police are there as well, much to your dismay, right on the other side of the trailer, milling about the circular drive at the center of the park, talking amongst themselves and into their radios.

You know you’ve only got a very brief window of opportunity to slip inside unnoticed, and your heart is hammering in your chest as you rap your knuckles on the glass as sharply as you dare.

The only person you need to hear you is Eddie, though of course that would only be possible if he happens to be in his room, which you’re willing to wager he isn’t, especially with a heavy police presence right on his front step.

If he isn’t the cause of the trouble, you can be damn sure he’s standing on the porch, watching the trouble unfold.

He’s nosy like that.

Disappointingly, your knocking garners no response.

You swallow hard and push up on your toes to grip the windowpane, tugging on it. It takes a few tries before it finally slides open with more than a little resistance.

You bite your lip against its harsh sound, metal scraping on metal, and quickly brace yourself on the pane to hoist yourself up and over before anyone can investigate and find you there.

Your world briefly goes topsy-turvy as you tumble forward into the room and land with a hard grunt and muffled utterance of “ow – fuck”, sending tapes and other knickknacks tumbling to the ground around you.

In days past when you’d done this exact thing, you would have had the benefit of the bed to break your fall, but of course, in those days you were just as likely to land on top of Eddie as an empty mattress.

As much as he liked it when you snuck over like that, he was not partial to being kicked in the head, and you’d both decided that it was better to knock over a side table and make a mess than it was to risk giving him a concussion, so you’d made the executive decision to move the bed into the position where it rests today, sans Eddie.

You have to sit for a moment to catch your breath, because beyond the sprinting and the acrobatics you’d just engaged in, it’s been eight months of nothing but memories, and suddenly you’re in his room.

You hadn’t accounted for how that was going to affect you — strangely it’s like no time has passed. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust against the relative dark, but it’s easy to see that the room remains unchanged since last you were here, all metal posters and discarded clothes and papers, the two guitars, the amps, the unmade bed.

It smells like weed and tobacco and dirty laundry and the pervasive undertone of something that is so wholly Eddie that you suddenly forget why you are here, sitting where you landed beneath the window.

You look around the room, surveying the familiar mess, and, unable to help yourself, you reach out and pull a t-shirt from the overstuffed dresser drawer, sitting ajar where it had been forced unsuccessfully back into place.

You hug it to your chest and repeat one of Eddie’s five stupid jokes to yourself.

“When is a drawer not a drawer?” He would have said, grinning ear to ear like he was about to blow your mind with the oldest joke in the book.

“When it’s ajar…”

You can’t help the disappointment that lances through your midsection not to have found him there, because as much as you try to convince yourself that it doesn’t expressly mean something terrible has happened to him, part of you had hoped it would be that easy.

You turn the shirt over in your hands and trace the faded script spelling out the name of the band you can barely make out – you think at one point in time it must have said “Misfits” – and without really thinking, you bury your face in the fabric, breathing deep and flooding your senses with him.

Once again, all you can think is Eddie Eddie Eddie, and before you know it you’re drunk on his smell, familiar as childhood and tugging at your heart. Like being wrapped in a security blanket, you feel a strange sense of calm wash over you, not daring to promise that anything will be okay so much as assuring you that you are on the right track.

You heave a sigh and slump back against the wall, kicking your leg out – your foot collides with something.

There is the corner of a box peeking out from beneath the bed.

Were you in your right mind, you might have thought twice about investigating, considering you know all too well what kinds of things teen boys keep stashed under their beds, what Eddie has had under his bed in days past, but you recognize your own handwriting scribbled across the side of the box and very suddenly you’ve surged forward to pull the box free before you even realize you’d moved.

It’s all pictures, posters, polaroids, band-tees, memories, and other things you don’t expressly remember packing into that box back in late August.

It’s everything that had been Eddie in your life with the addition of everything that had been you in his, carefully tucked away, miraculously still here — not trashed or burned or even remotely destroyed.

Preserved.

You marvel as you pluck at a long polaroid strip of photos with the Starcourt Mall logo splashed across the top and fail to stifle the water laugh that bubbles up from somewhere inside you.

You turn it over in your trembling hands and see the two ticket stubs for Teen Wolf stapled to the top.

You don’t remember a moment of the movie, but you vividly remember the day, sliding into the booth to take photos, laughing and playing, and pulling at each other while the camera flashed away.

It’s Eddie giving you bunny ears and you sticking your tongue out, followed by Eddie pretending to bite your face while you laughed, followed by Eddie kissing you, and you kissing Eddie, and Eddie kissing you…

It’s just a little bit too much, suddenly having photographic evidence of the things you had almost convinced yourself had never actually happened after almost a year of wallowing in self-pity and denial and anger and everything in between.

It makes you feel a little crazy.

You’re just about ready to come apart at the seams when you hear sounds coming from the front room, the screen door swinging open, heavy footsteps thumping across the floor.

And of course, because you aren’t in your right mind, you make a leap in logic and ignore your better judgment as you decide who you think it is that just walked through the door.

“Eddie—” you gasp.

You shove the box haphazardly back beneath the bed and scramble to your feet, absently stuffing the photo reel into your apron pocket as you crawl over the bed and throw open the door.

You fly into the living room without a second thought about who or what you are going to find there.

You are woefully unprepared.

Eddie is not there, only a handful of police officers who you have just given what might have perhaps been the worst scare of their lives had it not been for the mutilated, twisted body of what you think must have very recently been a girl, lying on the floor in front of the open door.

You stagger and stop and freeze, unable to tear your eyes away as you immediately come to recognize her, despite her ruined state.

Red blonde ponytail tied with a green scrunchie, half wrenched out of place, heavy blue eyeshadow stained and shadowed where her lids droop down into empty eye sockets, ever so slightly crooked front teeth on display where her mouth hangs open in a silent scream.

It's Chrissy Cunningham.

The police react to you with appropriate alarm, considering the way you’d come hurdling out of the back room and the blood-curdling scream that wrenches itself from the depths of your core, like you were some kind of banshee.

The sound tears itself from your lungs without your consent, but you don’t think you could have stopped yourself from screaming at that moment if your life depended on it.

Suddenly you can see it so clearly — the flashing lights illuminating Chrissy’s body as it rises from the ground, trancelike and trembling, her limbs twisting themselves unnaturally, snapping and cracking before her eyes wrenched themselves back into the depths of her skull.

This is what you’d dreamt — your nightmare.

Chrissy is dead and Eddie is missing.

+++

Dustin sits perched on the edge of his seat, eyes glued to the television. He barely hears what the reporter is saying for how loudly the blood is pounding in his ears.

There is a cold lump in his stomach.

Beside him, his mother sniffles as the anchorwoman drones on about another dead girl, and he knows what she’s going to say — it’s too much for her poor nerves, she can’t take it.

He can’t help the way his mind strays to the terrible possibilities of the moment, what could have happened, who it could be laying dead in the Forest Hills trailer park.

Dustin fights the urge to look out the front window, to the house across the street where you don’t live anymore. In days past he would have run across the street and pounded on your door, just to make sure you were home safe and not dead on the other end of town, but he tells himself that he’s just being paranoid.

He can almost hear you telling him not to worry about you, but how can he not worry about you when he’s made it his full-time job?

Dustin sits and silently works out the logistics of what going to check on you would look like and very quickly decides there is no cool or casual way to go about doing that.

He’d have to haul ass all the way into town to your apartment, and even if he did there was no guarantee he’d even find you there.

He tells himself there’s no way he’s going to go check on you just because he saw something on the news.

You're probably at work anyway — he glances reflexively at the clock on the wall — ten-thirty on a Saturday morning? Yeah, you're definitely at work.

Still, he can’t help but imagine the scenario in which he did, how touched you would be if he came riding in like a knight in shining armor.

He imagines you smiling big and broad, brows turned up with emotion, and clasping your hands together.

“Oh, Dustin,” you would say, “You came all this way for me? You didn't have to do that, you could have just called—”

He should just call you.

Dustin leaps up from his seat, thoroughly startling his mother as he runs for the phone.

“Dusty what on earth?!” She cries, twisting around to try and see what has put a fire under his ass, “Where are you going?”

He’s already punching in the last digits of your number as he answers.

“I gotta make a call!”

The phone rings and rings and rings. He stands and listens to the droning sound with mounting anxiety, holding his breath as he waits to see if you will answer.

He hopes beyond hope that you’re just at work, that nothing has gone terribly wrong – they said it was a high school student, but nobody ever accused the Hawkins local news of being accurate when it came to the facts.

Disappointingly, the phone clicks over to play the message on your answering machine. Your sweet voice rings through the receiver to vibrate against Dustin’s ear, telling him to leave a message after the tone, and he heaves a dejected sigh, when…

BANG BANG BANG

Dustin’s head snaps around as suddenly there is a thunderous pounding at his front door. He slams the phone into the box hard enough to make it chime and flies across the room.

“I’ll get it I'll get it I'll get it!” He says in a rush, fingers closing on the doorknob before his mother can even think to get up.

He wrenches the door open, half expecting to find you there, and can’t deny how summarily disappointed he is to see Max standing there, looking particularly out of breath.

Her face is flushed, eyes wide, chest and shoulders heaving as she openly pants like she’d just run a great distance.

Rode her bike was more likely the case, Dustin surmises as he glances over her shoulder to see where her bike lays on the lawn, wheels still spinning, clearly having just been thrown down.

He hardly has the opportunity to wonder what’s got her so excited before she's pushing past him to force herself inside

“I need to talk to you,” she says, stalking down the hall toward Dustin's bedroom at a pace.

He follows her, having to jog to keep up, then shuts the door, and listens as Max tells him everything — about Chrissy, about Eddie, about what she’d seen and heard last night and this morning.

It paints a terrible picture, and it horrifies Dustin to hear what Max is suggesting, but he can’t help the wave of relief that floods his body to hear the dead girl isn’t you.

He knows he ought to feel bad about it, but all he can think is Thank God it’s not you – that’s when the confusion sets in.

“Chrissy?”

“Yes.”

“Chrissy Cunningham...”

“Yes.”

He folds his arms over his chest and tries to make sense of it, because Chrissy and Eddie?

“...Are you sure?”

Max furrows her brow and gives him a much more intense version of the same look you would have given him when you thought he was condescending or being sexist or a male chauvinist or whatever you would have called it.

On you it would have been mere admonishment, on Max, it warns him that he is very close to getting punched, so Dustin backs off.

Still though, the arguable Princess of Hawkins High and the Freak? It doesn’t make sense outside of some kind of cliche Hollywood romance, not in real life though.

He can’t get his head around it. Dustin doesn’t think he’s ever even seen them in the same room – then he remembers.

He has seen them together. Thursday afternoon. Fifth period.

He’d been on his way back from the bathroom and stopped to get a drink at the water fountain to kill a little bit more time when hushed voices drew his attention.

That’s when Dustin saw them standing together at the far end of the hall.

Eddie and Chrissy.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see Chrissy smiling shyly, and he’d been very confused not to see Eddie’s typical manic energy – it’s like he was calm, for once in his life.

If he had to describe it, Dustin would almost say that he thought they were flirting, but that can't be right... because Chrissy Cunningham? And Eddie Munson? How does that math add up?

It had been one of the stranger things Dustin had witnessed in the past few weeks, and he’d fully meant to ask Eddie about it, but with how vicious he’d been over the potentiality of postponing the Cult of Vecna, Dustin had completely forgotten it.

And now Chrissy is dead.

And Eddie is missing.

His stomach is in knots at the thought. Like the weight of the world is suddenly bearing down on his shoulders, he sinks onto his bed.

He thinks back to the news report, to the trailer sitting in the distance behind the anchorwoman – was that Eddie’s place?

Dustin can’t remember, he’s only been there a handful of times, always in the dark, and he’d never thought to pay much attention to what the facade of the trailer looked like… it could have been Eddie’s place, but it could also have been any number of nearly identical trailers in the park.

Still, he can't shake the sick feeling that is settling in his abdomen.

Christ. Was it Eddie’s though?

Dustin shakes his head to stop that line of thinking before it can really get going. He can’t go there, he can’t afford to let that seed of doubt plant itself in his mind.

Everyone is going to blame him, because of course they are – there’s a dead girl in the trailer park and he’s Eddie Munson, the town Freak.

Dustin can suddenly hear Eddie’s words in his mind, see the persecuted look he’d had on his face that day at the campus phone – I guess that’s enough in this town, huh?

He has to do something, he has to try and help him.

“He didn’t do it,” Dustin says immediately.

Max scoffs.

“We don’t know that…”

It leaves him reeling and suddenly Dustin cannot believe the words coming out of his friend’s mouth. Sure, he supposes Max doesn’t know Eddie like he does, all she has to go on is the facade he puts up, that first day he’d approached them in the lunchroom way back in November.

Even so, he’d never in a million years think she’d just assume he was guilty along with everyone else.

Max should have known better than that.

"Don't say that!" Dustin gasps.

"Well — we don't."

He’s fully aware of how he is gawping at her, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. It makes her uncomfortable and suddenly Max is fidgeting.

She makes a show of throwing up her hands, shrugging her shoulders.

“Dustin… come on,” She says, “I saw him–”

It’s his turn to cut her off then.

“No, you come on. Come on! You don’t know what you saw!” Dustin surprises himself by snapping.

Max’s eyes widen and she recoils, and he immediately begins to backpedal

“...Look, I know you don’t think much of him, but Eddie is –” He sighs, “When we got to school? He was the only one who was nice to us. He’s the only one who gives a shit about losers like me and Mike. Now he’s in trouble and you want to just let that go because you think you saw something? No way. We can’t just sit back and let this happen. They’re gonna tear him apart, we have to do something.”

For a long moment, nobody says anything.

Max rolls her eyes, but to her credit, she is clearly chagrined enough to hang her head in a way that could almost be construed as sheepish.

Regardless of what she decides to do, Dustin knows he has to save Eddie, find a way to clear his name, he just doesn’t precisely know how to do that — and then something tiny in the back of his mind pipes up with your name.

Maybe you will know what to do.

It’s like a lightbulb clicking on, and Dustin leaps up from his bed.

“Holy shit.” He says.

"What?"

He's beaming at Max when he answers.

"Lady Midnight!"

The reference goes right over her head and she stares back at him, uncomprehending. She doesn't play D&D with them, she doesn't know, but Dustin does, and more importantly, you would know.

“What – hey!” Max has to jump out of the way to avoid being trampled as Dustin goes tearing down the hall to the phone.

“Holy shit holy shit!”

Of course, you'll know what to do, you're the purveyor of secrets and forbidden knowledge. You always had creative solutions to seemingly impossible problems.

You'll help them find Eddie, or at least help them approach the situation from a new angle with a fresh set of eyes.

"Dustin, where are you going?" Max calls, her voice lilting with annoyance as she follows him back down the hall.

He doesn’t answer. He’s already halfway through dialing your number again before he remembers that you aren’t home, and he hangs up with an aggravated growl.

More frustrating, he doesn’t know the number for Benny’s off the top of his head.

Adrenaline surges through his body.

“Mom, where are the yellow pages?” He shouts.

His mother, still glued to the television, twists around and gives him a funny look, then her face brightens as she regards Max, like she hadn’t even realized she was there.

“What– oh, hello Max.” She says wetly.

Max shuffles on her feet and gives an awkward wave, and Dustin makes a harsh sound of annoyance.

They don’t have time for this.

“Mom! The yellow pages!”

His mother furrows her brow and immediately gets huffy with him.

“Don’t shout, Dusty! They’re right there in the kitchen drawer, for goodness sake!”

Dustin rounds the corner of the kitchen island and rips the drawer open with enough force to tear it off its slide.

Pens, paperclips, rubber bands, and other pieces of clutter go scattering across the linoleum along with the yellow tome listing every registered number in Roane county.

Dustin drops to his knees and begins flipping through the pages like a man possessed while Max stands looking on in a mix of horror and confusion like she is witnessing him have a complete and total breakdown.

“Who could you possibly be calling?” She demands.

Dustin looks up at her and says your name incredulously like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It does nothing but deepen the confusion spread across Max’s face, so Dustin goes on to explain.

“She’s probably already at work, so I need to number for Benny’s–”

Max shakes her head.

“She's not there.”

“Well I already tried her at home, and she didn’t answer–”

“No, Dustin, you don’t understand.” Max insists, “I just saw her, she’s at Eddie’s.”

The gravity of her tone is jarring and Dustin immediately forgets the phonebook as he looks up at Max. Suddenly his mind is spinning at Mach-five trying to process all the information that has been fed into it in the last two minutes.

“...What?” He splutters.

First Eddie and Chrissy, somehow together, now you, apparently at the trailer park, at Eddie's place where by all accounts he should be and you should not? Where Chrissy is dead? He can't make heads or tails of it.

“What’s she doing there?”

Max hesitates and bites her lip like she’s not entirely sure she ought to say – Dustin has to prompt her to get her to finally spit it out, and when she does, he feels like he’s going to faint.

“Honestly? I’m pretty sure she was getting arrested.”

+++

You’re dragged out of the trailer by your elbow, like a naughty child who needs to be disciplined.

It’s then that you finally see Wayne, standing off to the side being interviewed by a number of officers.

You’re half frantic as you call out to him – for help or just relief that he’s there, you can’t quite be sure, but it does nothing to help the crazed energy of the moment.

“Wayne!”

His eyes widen in alarm to see you, and he makes like he means to move forward, do something to help you, but the officers stop him before he can start.

“Hey– hey leave her be!” He shouts.

It’s startling. In all the time you’ve known him, you’ve never once heard Wayne raise his voice.

Chief Powell follows you out, positively fuming as he crosses the small strip of grass that serves as the front lawn. He thrusts an accusatory finger at you as he addresses Wayne.

“Mr. Munson, I do believe you previously told us that nobody was in the house.”

Wayne nods.

“Yessir, that’s correct,”

“Explain to me, then, why this girl just came running out of the back bedroom like a bat out of hell?”

All eyes are on you then. You struggle against the hands that hold you and feel your heart palpitate – it’s a very good question, you hate to admit, one you don’t have a great answer for.

Somehow, it seemed like a good idea at the time, just doesn’t seem like it’s going to cut it.

The Chief is waiting for an answer, and Wayne finally has to just shake his head, because of course, he doesn’t know why you were in Eddie’s room either.

Powell reels on you then, and your stomach bottoms out. He gives the officers restraining you a harsh look and they release you.

You stagger, struggling to stay upright on your feet and tug on your dress to straighten it. You brush your knuckles across your nose and avert your eyes, shrinking under the Police Chief’s hard gaze.

After what feels like an excruciatingly long time, he finally speaks.

“How long have you been hiding in there?” He demands.

You shrug your shoulders in a way that is perhaps too flippant for the gravity of the situation you have found yourself in.

“Like two minutes.” You sniff, “And I wasn’t hiding, I just came in through the window.”

He gives you an incredulous look.

“Why?”

“I was looking for…” you trail off and glance over at Wayne, staring at you with his features screwed up in patent confusion.

You begin to fidget with your fingers, twisting at the cheap silver ring you’ve since started wearing to make up for the one you’d packed up with the box of everything else sitting under Eddie's bed.

You clear your throat to try and sound a little less like a whiney child.

“I was looking for Eddie…”

“Eddie Munson?”

You nod.

Powell stares at you a little longer before he sighs and shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as he rocks back on his heels.

“So you don’t know what happened in there?”

You shake your head and try not to glance at the crumpled figure of Chrissy you can still see lying in the doorway.

Powell sighs again, rests his hands on his hips, casting his gaze down to his feet before looking back up at you.

"And I don't suppose you would know where Eddie is?"

Again you shake your head.

The police chief levels you with another hard stare, like he’s working something over in his head, trying to decide or understand, you can’t be sure. For a long moment, it is all you can do but focus on trying to remember how to breathe as you wait to see if he’s going to put cuffs on you.

He doesn’t.

Instead he turns and stalks back across the grass towards Wayne.

“Do you know this girl?” Powell asks.

“Yessir,” Wayne says quickly, then proceeds to rattle off basic information about you, including but not limited to your name and an explanation about how you’re a friend of his nephew’s who he sort of looks after you since your folks moved away.

For some odd reason, your stomach goes tight and fluttery to hear Wayne refer to you as Eddie’s friend.

That’s how he’d addressed you when you’d first met.

“So, you’re a friend of Ed’s, huh?” He’d said.

You’re suddenly wracked with guilt – this is not how you imagined this scenario going at all.

You’d imagined you were going to be this big hero, swooping in to pull Eddie out of a trouble you’d only known about through some kind of bizarre clairvoyance.

Instead, turns out you’re a stupid fucking idiot who should have taken a moment to think before you went climbing in through windows.

You force yourself not to look away this time when Powell looks back at you – he stares, you fidget, and then he returns his attention to Wayne.

You don’t hear what he says, as he’s dropped his voice to a low tenor and you can’t see his face to try and read his lips.

You watch as Wayne puts up his hands defensively.

“Listen to me,” He says quietly, “She’s a good girl. I promise you she didn’t have nothin’ to do with this.” and the guilt you feel becomes all-encompassing.

Stupid girl, more like.

It’s another few excruciating minutes of back and forth before the tension finally breaks. You are, however, not turned loose, much like you'd expected to be.

After it’s established that you’re not an immediate threat, standing there in your torn up sneakers and waitress uniform, you’re set to lean against one of the various cop cars parked on the lawn.

You know Eddie, so they’ve got to interview you, much to your chagrin.

This is exactly what you’d been trying to avoid by climbing in through the window.

Great job.

It’s Officer Callahan, in all his insipid glory, who comes sauntering up to you shortly after, hands resting on his gun belt in a way you suppose is meant to be intimidating.

It doesn’t come across.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” He starts, fishing his pad of paper from his belt and making a point to loudly click his pen. He uses it to point at you, “You know, you’re in a lot of trouble, Missy.”

You stare back at him and hope he feels every bit of disdain you hold for him.

Callahan sucks his teeth. “So, what were you doing hiding in the bedroom like that?”

You heave a frustrated sigh.

“I already told you, I wasn’t hiding. I climbed in through the window to find Eddie.”

“Right, so you said.” He huffs, glancing up at you from his pad briefly before doing a halfway comical doubletake.

Something like recognition flashes across his face and you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes because of course this dingus wouldn't recognize you.

You'd always wondered how Clark Kent could get away with disguising himself with a change of clothes, turns out most people are just patently stupid, Officer Callahan included.

“Oh, wait a minute, I know you – you’re Munson’s little girlfriend.”

Bingo.

Bizarrely, it sets your teeth on edge and your mouth is moving before your brain can catch up.

“I’m not his girlfriend,” You say perhaps too quickly.

It draws the attention of everyone within earshot, Chief Powell and Wayne included.

You shrink under their gaze and kick yourself for how you realize too late that it sounded like a renouncement of Eddie. It was only a knee-jerk reaction, an intrusive thought built up to defend yourself from the random waves of grief that still hit you now and then. You hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Officer Callahan side-eyes you and snorts with humorless laughter.

“Coulda fooled me,” he scoffs.

You would argue, except suddenly you’re thinking about all the times you’ve been with Eddie when he’s been pulled over and hassled by the Hawkins police. By Officer Callahan and then still Officer Powell specifically.

He’s technically right – just not regarding the current state of affairs – because you had been Eddie’s girlfriend during all those previous incidents.

Still, you cross your arms over your chest and avert your gaze.

“Not that it’s any of your business…” You start, confident at first before you second guess yourself and a misplaced sheepishness creeps into your voice, “...but we broke up,”

Officer Callahan scoffs and the reaction leaves you indignant.

Rude.

“Okay, so I get it now. You break his heart, and he’s pissed but won’t take it out on you, so he takes it out on poor Chrissy in there, huh?”

Callahan gestures to the open trailer door with his pen, and you can’t help but get a little stuck staring at the body still laying there – you start to wonder why they haven’t covered her up yet, but then he snaps to draw your attention back.

“That sound about right?”

You furrow your brow.

“…It sounds like you’ve been watching a lot of true crime documentaries.”

He glares at you.

“It’s motive.”

“It’s bullshit.”

Officer Callahan’s eyebrows jump up from where they’d been previously hidden beneath the thick rim of his glasses.

The brusque nature of your answer seems to stagger him a bit. You’ve never had so much bite behind you in all the times you’ve interacted, electing instead to try and kill them with kindness so as not to get Eddie into any more trouble.

It leaves him stammering for a response.

“Hey now—” He begins, thrusting an accusatory finger at you like he means to lecture you.

“No.” You insist, and when he puts his hands on his hips and glares, you hug your arms tighter around your midsection and double down, “No – he broke up with me, okay? So no motive. Eddie didn’t do this,”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know him,”

Callahan rolls his eyes, missing the hateful look you throw his way as he does.

Somehow you know nothing you say is going to matter when it comes to Eddie. They’ve already decided his guilt.

“Oh, you know him?” Callahan huffs sarcastically, “Okay, fine … since you know him, when’s the last time you saw him?”

Shit.

You bite the inside of your lip and fidget under his condescending gaze, knowing well enough that your answer is going to do nothing to help your case.

“… August.” You mumble.

He chokes a little and shakes his head, blinking rapidly like you’d said something outrageous… and honestly, it was a little outrageous, but you didn’t appreciate the attitude he had about it.

“Aug- August?” He splutters, “August.”

You breathe out slowly and nod.

“Yeah…”

“You’re telling me you haven’t seen him in eight months and you’re trying to — you’ve been broken up … for eight. Months. And you just come running at the first sign of trouble? You expect me to believe that?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

You stick him to the spot with a dour look.

“You don’t know much about the human heart do you, Officer Callahan?”

Behind him, you see Chief Powell cough to try and cover the laughter threatening to burst out of him.

He clears his throat when Callahan twists around to glare at him, and you take the opportunity to steal a glance at Wayne.

He’s like a caged animal, fidgeting, pacing – you assume he must have been the one to put in the 911 call. You can’t even imagine what he must have thought coming home and finding Chrissy like that in his living room, and now he’s got to worry about vouching for you?

Your heart thumps in your chest when your eyes meet and for lack of anything better to do, you offer him a subtle wave.

He shakes his head – not the time.

“So, how do I know you’re not just covering for Munson again?” Callahan says, bringing you back to the annoying moment you have found yourself in.

Your eyebrows jump and you feign innocence, gesturing to yourself like you could never imagine doing that two years ago at a party after they’d busted Eddie for possession and you’d made a scene to draw their attention so he could run away. You would never.

Officer Callahan narrows his eyes and crosses his arms,

“How do I know you’re not involved?”

In spite of yourself, your heart leaps into your throat. It’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard, but suddenly your brain is screaming – this is it, this is how we get arrested.

Luckily, Wayne immediately jumps up from the porch and tries to come to your rescue.

“Hey, no. She’s not—” He begins, but Officer Callahan cuts him off with a wave of his hand and a roll of his eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Munson, if we have any further questions for you we will let you know.” He sighs when what he really means is “go away”.

You clench your fist and resist the urge to knock that smug look off his face when he turns back to face you, looking very much like he’s caught you red-handed and is so pleased to have figured it out.

“So, here’s what I think happened.” Callahan begins,

This should be good.

“You said that Munson kid broke up with you? Okay, fine. So maybe he does, and he gets a new little girlfriend. And you’re jealous. You come to confront him, find her here, things go a little too far, bada-bing-bada-boom, poor Chrissy ends up dead."

You're fully aware of how you're gawping at him.

"I'm sorry, what?"

He continues.

"And since you’re apparently such a good little girl you don’t want to ruin your reputation, so you take steps to make it look like he did it–”

You have to suppress the shudder that threatens to tear through your body at the concept of Officer Callahan referring to you as a “good girl”, even if it is done so under the guise of mocking Wayne.

Luckily your disgust is overwhelmed by the patent hilarity of what he is suggesting: you killed Chrissy and are trying to frame Eddie… yep… way too much true crime in Officer Callahan’s diet.

“Did you even see her?” You ask, “Look at me. How the hell do you suppose I did that?”

Callahan opens his mouth to respond and comes up short.

“...Forensics will get back to us on the cause of death after the autopsy…”

“Okay, fine. Riddle me this, Dick Tracy, if I was trying to frame Eddie, why would I be sitting here telling you he didn’t do it?”

Officer Callahan pulls a face.

“How do you know who Dick Tracy is?”

Then it’s your turn to pull a face. You’ve never missed Jim Hopper more than you do at this moment.

“Can you do me a favor and try to be a little less condescending while you’re accusing me of murder?”

Another cough from the chief of police to cover another laugh, it turns the tips of Officer Callahan’s pink.

“Alright, smart ass, you got an alibi? Because things aren’t looking so great for you right now. You’ve. Got. Motive,”

Each word is punctuated by his sharp prodding fingers poking you in the shoulder. You breathe out hard through your nose and swallow the rage boiling up from the pit of your stomach.

Trespassing is one thing, mouthing off is another, but you don’t need to be charged with assaulting an officer.

What follows is a rapid-fire back-and-forth volley of questions and answers, each one more charged than the last as you count the seconds ticking past, time wasted when you could be out there looking for Eddie.

“Where were you last night?”

“Benny’s.”

“Why?”

“I work there.” You huff, tugging at the skirt of your uniform.

Officer Callahan gives you a dismissive look, like he wants to argue but expressly cannot because you’re still wearing your nametag and your goddamn apron. He clears his throat and shifts on his feet.

“Can anyone confirm your presence there?”

It feels incredibly stupid to say, but only because of your crazy stupid luck – yes, there are in fact many people who can confirm your presence at the diner last night.

“The Hawkins Tigers.”

He gives you an incredulous look.

“The Basketball team?”

You nod, and very quickly you can feel him losing steam. Every single one of your answers thus far seems to have flummoxed Officer Callahan beyond his ability to comprehend.

He turns from you and crosses the grass to hold a hushed conference with Chief Powell. You watch them, struggling to try and read their lips as you stuff your hands in your apron pocket – you brush the sharp edge of the forgotten polaroid strip stashed there and curl your fingers around it.

You have to find Eddie.

They make you sit and wait another twenty minutes finally – finally – you hear the words that set you free.

“She’s just a dumb kid, send her home,”

You would protest the notion if you weren’t feeling so summarily stupid for this whole endeavor, but you’re just happy that the interrogation is finally ending.

With Powell’s prompting, another officer steps up to escort you out of the trailer park, much to Callahan’s chagrin. You can hear him begin to argue against it.

“Chief, I don’t think it’s such a good idea turning her loose.” He says, “I mean look at her. She probably knows exactly where Munson is hiding.”

“...No,” Powell says after considering it for a moment, “I don’t think so.”

Callahan shakes his head,

“I just think–”

Then the chief cuts him off.

“Maybe don’t think about it so much. She’s not going anywhere, right?” He says it loud enough for you to hear.

It’s not a question so much as an order, and he makes a point to stare at you, clearly waiting for your answer. You glance at Wayne, who at this point has moved to sit atop the nearby picnic table, chain-smoking to try and calm his nerves – he glances at you, then looks away.

You don't blame him.

Somehow, this suddenly feels like it’s all your fault, like it all traces back to that terrible night in August. You should have fought a little harder for Eddie, you shouldn’t have stayed away.

You turn your attention back to the officers, then finally you take one last parting glance at what you can see of poor Chrissy, still lying uncovered in the doorway.

There is a cold lump forming in the pit of your stomach, under the hard gaze of so many people, that same sense of impending doom slowly crushing down on you.

Somehow you manage to shrug.

“Of course not.” You say, “Where am I gonna go?“

To find Eddie, before anyone else can.

The officer escorts you off of the trailer park grounds and sends you on your way down the road and around the bend.

You scuff your feet in the dirt as you walk, the sounds from the trailer park steadily fading into the distance. You run your thumb over the sharp edge of the polaroid strip in your pocket until it hurts, using the unpleasant sensation to keep you grounded as your brain spins.

Where in the hell are you meant to start looking? Who might even know where he is? You don't know where Hellfire meets these days, or where the band practices, you don't know even who his friends are anymore. Adam and Gareth maybe? Jeff was always borderline with Eddie, you wouldn't be surprised to hear if they'd had a falling out. Maybe Dustin knows something, he's in Hellfire now, along with Mike and Lucas... but you can't imagine Lucas is even going to know his own name after last night so that rules him out...

It's an insurmountable task, finding Eddie, like trying to find a needle in a haystack that is gunning for said needle, but you don't have the option not to try.

Who else is going to do it if not you? You have to find him first.

A shrill whistle draws your attention and your head snaps up to the person jogging up the path to meet you.

Wayne.

You slow to a stop to let him catch up with you, half wondering how the cops ever let him follow you – surely that is a conflict of interest, letting witnesses speak to each other, but you barely have the time to give him a proper greeting.

“You haven't seen him, then?” Wayne asks quickly, his voice is hushed and tight. “You don't know where he is?”

The way he says it makes your chest hurt, like he'd spent a great deal of time and energy hanging all his hopes on the possibility that you might know where Eddie was, that he might even be with you.

Hadn't you been doing the same?

You shake your head, and it breaks your heart a little to have to disappoint him like that.

“No... but I’ll find him.” You say, your insides are knotted and squirming with anxiety — you don’t know how you’re going to find him, you just know that it’s going to be you who does.

It has to be you.

Relief passes over Wayne in a tangible wave as his shoulders drop and he stands a little taller.

You can’t imagine what he must be going through, what it must have been like to come home and discover that waiting for you in your doorway. You suddenly feel very stupid for how precious you’d been all day about having a nightmare while Wayne was living one.

You know perhaps better than anyone that Eddie is all he has – he can’t afford to lose him any more than you can.

Wayne sniffs and clears his throat, casting a wary look over his shoulder like he’s worried someone might be listening.

“Good — good.” He hums, like he’s trying to convince himself that it’s going to be alright, then he leans into you and drops his voice, “When you do, I want you two to go. Just… go. Take him and get out of town.”

It startles you. You don’t know what you’d expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. You know you must be frowning for the way he doubles down.

He fishes his wallet from his back pocket and flips it open, pulling a stack of bills from the fold and closing it in your hand. He squeezes your fingers tightly around the money.

“I don’t care where you go,” He says, shaking his head, “California, Timbuktu — it doesn’t matter, send me a postcard when you get there — you just find him and get him as far away from here as possible, you hear?”

It is too much to ask, you know he must know this – he’s asking you to leave your life behind, your apartment, your job, everyone you know.

For all the time you’ve known him, everything he’s ever done for you, Wayne has never asked you for anything, but he’s asking you now — that much you understand – he’s asking you to choose Eddie, in spite of everything.

It’s an easy decision to make.

You close your fingers over the money and nod, gritting your teeth to keep yourself steady as you watch Wayne’s eyes shine with tears.

“I will.”

He breathes a shaky sigh and blinks back the emotion, banishing it as quickly as it arrives.

You’ve never seen him like this — he is so afraid, and whether it is in response to the horror of what has already happened, in his home, to his family, or the uncertainty of what is going to happen, you cannot be sure.

The Munsons have already lost so much.

You have to find Eddie, if only so that you never have to see this look on Wayne’s face again.

His hand comes up to grip you by the shoulder then, and your spine stiffens under the directness of his gaze.

“Don’t leave him.” he says quietly. “Promise me you won’t leave him.”

You shake your head in defiance of the thought.

Never, you want to say, you would never leave him.

Why else would you still be here after everything that happened? But of course, he knows this, so you push forward and throw your arms around Wayne’s neck, startling him with the act of hugging him.

“I promise.” You say against his shoulder.

He hesitates, tensing ever so slightly. After a moment he pats you awkwardly on the back, and you take it as your signal to let the moment end.

Eddie always said the Munsons weren’t huggers.

Wayne sniffs and wipes his knuckles beneath his nose — he coughs.

“Okay,” he says gruffly, “Get going.”

Wayne nods towards the road and you follow his gaze. You know what he means; find Eddie, get out of town, don’t come back, and you can’t decide if the feeling welling up too big in your chest is fear or determination.

Your mind begins to work on its own, drawing a map of all the possible places you might find Eddie.

You can do this, you’re fine, it’s going to be fine.

When you turn, Wayne has already started back down the road, and you’re hit with the sudden and overwhelming urge to call out, to say something to somehow make things okay.

You wonder briefly if you're ever going to see him again.

“Wayne —” you call, he turns and glances back at you with big, watery eyes, “…I’m gonna find him.”

“I know, Sweetheart.” He huffs, “I'm counting on it.”

So, no pressure, right?

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtensionaltension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0binn @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonautagonaut @clilxlxx @alexandriaemily20 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war @munsonzzgf @chervbs @irisabrams

#cruel summer #cruel summer fic #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x female reader #hilarious how i said i was going to cut this down and only ended up cutting 6000 words #oh well #all this is doing is getting me really excited to get to the fluff #because i'm fully planning a second sister fic to this one that is all the sweetness

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just-my-latest-hyperfixation · 6 months

Text

WIP Wednesday

Technically Thursday for me already, but whatever! 🤣

I was tagged by the lovely @rainbow-nerdss to share a snippet from a WIP, so have a blurb from a "Steve gets vecna'd" idea that's been bouncing in my skull for a while. I'm currently writing a scene from it for the @steddieholidaydrabbles. I'm collaborating with the amazing @house-of-the-moving-image on some of these, so there'll even be art!!! 🤩

Steve's fingers twitch in the grass and Eddie's gaze flies to his face, half expecting to find his eyes wide open and sightless, half expecting him to start floating again and fuck, what will he do, he can't do shit, please, God, he can't-

But Steve’s eyes are closed, his face relaxed. Eddie sighs in relief. Then, following a sudden impulse, he reaches out and tucks the daisy into Steve's hair.

He's no hero and he can't do anything to protect him, but he can make sure he rests while he can, can make sure he has music and beauty and sunlight surrounding him. It's what he deserves.

He deserves so much more.

The harsh snap of the tape ending almost makes him jump out of his skin. Steve flinches awake with an adorable little snort, hand flying up to pull the headphones off. His eyes dart around wildly for a second or two before they land on Eddie and he sags back to the ground.

"Hey," he smiles, voice still sleep-slurred and hoarse. "Sorry, did I doze off?"

The flower is still in his hair.

Eddie snorts, pillows his arms on his knees so that he can hide behind them.

"Are you kiddin' me, dude? You can sleep all you want."

Steve hums vaguely and props himself up on one elbow, busies himself with opening the walkman and turning the tape.

"Feels wrong though," he mutters. "Y’know… just chilling here while the kids-"

"Stevie," Eddie says. Maybe it comes out a bit too harsh, because those pretty eyes blink up at him, confused and a bit hurt. He groans.

"The kids are old enough," he then continues, more softly. "They have Wheeler and Buckley with them. Not to mention Supergirl. You don't have to-"

"-babysit them anymore, I know." Steve flops back into the grass, worries his bottom lip between his teeth. "I still feel useless, though."

They stay silent for a while. The wind is getting chillier, now that the sun is dipping behind the trees, and Eddie is starting to shiver in his flannel.

"Thank you, though," Steve mumbles. "For staying around, I appreciate it."

He sounds so small and lost and scared. Eddie plucks another flower so he won't have to look at his face. Hopes that Supergirl will tear Vecna's shrivelled black heart out through his ass and squish it under her shoe like a bug.

Tagging @sailing-through-hawkins @vegasol @rozzieroos - zero pressure, all the love ❤️

#steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #steddie brainrot #steddie fanfic #fanfiction writer #fanfiction #fanfic #my writing #wip wednesday

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starlightsearches · 2 years

Note

In that case, could you do Fluff prompt 5, 25 and nr 4 from 'Other' with Steve? Reader thinking he's still caring a torch for Nancy but ever since Steve met reader he has never wanted anyone else

"You're everything to me." / "It's nice that your voice was the first thing I heard today." / "No, don't cry. I hate it when you cry."

Just Thinking of the Right Words to Say

WOWOWOW, thanks for the prompt friend! I know this one took pretty long, so I'm sorry for that wait.

Requests are open 💖

Steve x GN! reader

Warnings: language, ANGST OH MY GOD ANGST, reader is vecna'd instead of Max, reader has a dead dad and feels responsible, a kiss :')

Despite what Steve thinks, it's not Dustin's clumsiness that wakes you.

You fell out of sleep a little while ago—no way to know exactly how long—head resting against the coarse denim covering Steve's thighs. There's been a few times you've thought about faking a yawn, sitting up off the couch and pretending like you had no idea how you ended up in that position, but Steve's been keeping you in place—unintentionally—resting his hand low at your waist, thumb dipping to stroke absently over your hip.

And five more minutes of that couldn't hurt.

It's all coming to an end, you know, when you hear the thump of familiar footsteps coming down the Wheeler's basement stairs. Dustin pretty much sucks at being quiet, and it only gets worse the harder he's trying.

You can't even begin to guess what he's knocked in to based on the crash, but you know the sound it makes should be loud enough to wake you.

"Dude, seriously?" Steve half-whispers, muscles tightening beneath you—like he wants to stand until he remembers you’re in the way. Dustin responds with a few repeated I'm sorrys before snatching the walkie from the table and scrambling back up the steps.

It was nice while it lasted.

You let out a little sigh, rolling your head from Steve's lap. He's got shadows under his big, dark eyes, his hair a total mess from all the times he's stroked his fingers through it.

But he smiles at you, and he's never looked prettier.

"Hey." You duck your head to quiet those thoughts, rubbing a hand over the denim print pressed into your cheek.

"Hey," he chuckles softly, palms stroking over his thighs as he juts his head in the direction of the stairs, "I'm really sorry about that."

"Don't be. It's nice that your voice was the first thing I heard today and not—"

Your eyes catch on the table, spying Max's beat-up Walkman, the headphones dangling a few inches from the floor. You think about the way Steve's hands must have brushed against your cheeks, sliding the headphones over your ears in the middle of Hawkins cemetery. Anger boils in your stomach—you can't remember it, obviously.

"Yeah," Steve says, concerned when he notices the way your brow furrows, "you're not sick of the song, though, are you? 'Cause we can stop by your house and pick up some tapes, or go to a record store maybe—"

You shake your head, quieting him. "No, it's not that, it's just . . ."

The pause in your words lingers. Steve leans forward on his elbows, close enough your eyes catch on the little dotted moles across his cheeks.

"Tell me," he whispers.

You can't. Not like this. Your fingers tangle together, and as much as you want to tell him that it's not the Walkman's fault that you're still here, you can't. You can't tell Steve you came back for him because maybe you spent the night with your head pillowed in his lap, but you did it in Nancy Wheeler's basement.

Perfect Nancy—with her baby doll features and clever mind and a shared history with Steve you'd popped up in the middle of and could never begin to compete with.

"Did you—" he swallows like he's not sure how to get the question out, "Was it your dad?"

Fuck. That shouldn't be easier to talk about, but the words are ready at your lips.

"At first. It was him, and I knew it was a dream because he was—you know—alive, but it didn't feel like a dream. Not at all."

Steve listens. Watching you this closely, his eyes have you feeling the edge of a blade on your skin, ready to be dissected, and you can’t have that. You don’t know what he’d find.

"It was, I mean, at first I was just- I couldn't believe I was hearing his voice again. And I wanted to say I was sorry, and I wanted to tell him that I loved him."

Steve's hand brushes over your shoulder, tentative, but you can't appreciate it fully. Your eyes are stinging, throat growing tight like it always does when you're trying not to cry.

"He was saying, god, just the most awful things. Things he never would have said to me, but the words were in his voice and I really thought I would die just from hearing it. I had to get away."

Your nails dig little holes into your palms. It's all still here—the scent of dank grass in your pounding lungs, your stumbling footsteps over the pocked face of the cemetery in your mind. Fighting your way into that red-hell world, hoping for an escape, and all you had found was more agony.

Thick, fat tears roll down your cheeks, cutting the words off in your throat. Steve's hand is warm, up against your cheek, thumb brushing at a few tears.

"Hey, stop, please. Don't cry. You know I can't handle it when you cry."

He looks so fucking heartbroken. You push his hand away, keeping your fingers wrapped around his wrist.

"He told me nobody would miss me, Steve. And I— I believed him."

It's the center of it all, the cancerous root to your pain. You'd heard those words, locked in Vecna's grasp, and a part of you knew he was right. Nobody would miss you, not the way you had missed your father. There would be no sleepless nights and tear-soaked pillows for you.

You would have let go then, but there was Steve. Outside, in the real world, he had his arms wrapped so tight around you, hand cupped at the back of your head as your body started to lift from the ground, so tight you could almost feel it. There were tears in his eyes, and his voice reached through the gap, past the headphones and the music and the fear and all the rest.

He was the one you ran towards. It was him you followed back into the light.

"Hey," Steve takes you by both the shoulders, shaking you a little, "don't talk like that, okay? Ever."

His intensity surprises you. "What?"

It all goes quiet. Steve’s soft breaths meet your skin, and you’re not afraid like have been, not waiting waiting for the chime of a clock or the slick shadowy voice you’d been hearing in your dreams.

His fingers twitch against your shoulders, but he doesn't pull away, big eyes on yours as he fights to get the words out. "God, I just— I thought you were going to die, okay? I thought you were dying, and I thought I was going to have to watch, and I just couldn't. I couldn't take that."

He drops your gaze, and your body buzzes, trapped in his grip and by his words.

"Steve . . ." You're not even sure what you want to say to him. You're afraid to ask the question that's waiting on your lips.

He must feel it there, because his hands come up to cup your face, thumb just brushing the corner of your mouth.

"It would have killed me, too. Okay? Vecna was wrong. You're- you're everything to me."

You're fingertips brush across his knuckles, his skin warm beneath your hands, and this feels more like a dream than any dream you can remember, but you're not waking up, and no matter how long you wait, Steve's hand is still there.

"Really?"

Steve smiles. "Yes, really."

When his lips meet yours, you feel it.

#steve harrington x reader #steve x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington fanfic #my writing #requests

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eepy-sleepy-snoozer · 9 months

Note

byler!!!! bylerbylerbyler!!!!

do u have any silly predictions for s5 and do u think we will get byler getting together or nah?

I rly don't have any theories but I guess here are somethings that I rly want in season 5!

-byler. blyer kiss. byler tears. byler joy. byler. byler. byler.

-elaborating on that i want will to find out about eddie and hell fire and i want will to be sad and mike to notice and have a cute moment. and perhaps a confession as well..

-vickie and robin getting together. They're just so wholesome, and they have a nice and simple relationship setup. It would be a bit of a nice break from everything that's gonna happen next season (T▽T)

-platonic mileven. mike comes out to her. el figuring more out about herself. i want them to just be friends and finally explore their platonic relationship.

-let lumax go on their date. let max not make a full recovery and have permanent damage. make her blind. giver her a wheelchair. let her wake up to lucas by her side. let them have something. please.

-will powers perhaps?? will gets to have this season. let him be vecna'd and for mike to save him. let mike be the only one who knows his favorite song. also please let this poor boy have time with his family. let him come out to them in a nice way.

-bring back argyle pls he's so silly

honestly, I think I would just be bad writing at this point if they made byler one sided or not canon. there is no way that mike doesn't like him back at this point. it's a super big part of will's story that he's in love with mike and to just build it up and hype it up and then have him get rejected would be just awful (T△T)

sorry for taking so long to answer, i'm a very slow typer. i hope all this makes sense :,)

btw thanks for the ask!

#ask #eexhausted #stranger things #stranger things season 5 #st5 #st5 hopes #byler #lumax #rockie #platonic mileven #bro i am so sleepy #fr pacing around my room trying to word this correctly #silly

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rainbowmess823 · 1 year

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Yknow what I've been thinking recently. A Ronance AU where they were childhood friends but with Robin's inevitable clumsy nature hits her head and kinda just gets that amnesia right around the time she and Nancy start to drift apart.

So there's Nancy distracting herself with fitting in and ignoring Robin but also feeling that guilt that "they're probably mad at me for ignoring her." But here's Robin who literally has no idea who the hell she is anymore. Cut to Starcourt battle where Nancy sees her with Steve and as her instinctual response being "Sorry, who are you?" And Robin genuinely thinking this is their first meeting goes "I'm Robin. I work with Steve." And there's Nancy thinking that maybe Robin really does hate her bcos here she is being awkward and "acting" like they never met before but still trying to help all he same bcos this is Robin and Robin is always down to help. Cut to Vecna mess where they just legged-it away from the cops in the asylum and Nancy finally gets the courage to ask "Are we ok?" But Robin is vvvv confused bcos why wouldn't they be??? Before Nancy can even press on the subject, Max getting Vecna'd pulls them back into end-of-the-world mode. It's when they're walking to Lover's Lake (was it Lovers' or Lover's??? I forget) and Nancy asks if they were friends...officially that Nancy felt like they were going to be ok but never gets to ask more than that bcos the Buckley woman jogs ahead to tease Steve about his jealousy over his child custody.

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There's prolly more but this is all I have so far, in my head

#robin buckley #nancy wheeler #ronance #robin buckley x nancy wheeler #childhood friends au #just what if #my brain rot has evolved once more #amnesia au

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icarus-has-falllen · 2 years

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I’m here to send a request 😍🧚🏾‍♂️✨

A Steve X male reader where the gets caught by vecna .Vecna Guilt trip the m!reader by having him remember how bad his childhood was and been lying to Steve how he got into his dream college but he didn’t he just threw the letter away. The m!reader favorite song can be when they had their first date!! Plus the m!reader saw the clock in his kitchen late at night for some water ?

Hope this make sense 😭

From 🍄

I might start sending more request for this blog ☺️

Ahhh that you so much for this request 🍄 anon

Pronouns: he/him

Type: hurt/comfort

Trigger warning: mentions of abuse and alcohol

Get Vecna'd

Steve Harrington had been dating (M/N) for little over a year now and everything was fine. They had been through everything together like the Russians, mind flayer, you getting into your dream college, everything. Up until a few days ago everything was amazing. (M/N) had seen a clock in his kitchen when he went to get water late at night it looked like an antique and very old he thought maybe his parents had gotten a new clock and had forgotten to tell him about it so he let it be. Then Chrissy Cunningham died and the whole town seemed to be a madhouse. Steve was worried sick about you and everyone else and then it happened. Steve got Vecna'd while he was in the upside down with you, Eddie, Robin, and Nancy. You we're scared especially after what happened to max at the graveyard your heart felt like it was in your stomach and all of a sudden Robin pulled Steve's walkman out of your bag and dumped the cassette tapes on the ground, frantically looking for his favorite song and you picked "Should I stay or should i go" and smiled faintly as this was the song you both heard on your first date at the arcade where you beat him at Galaga. You quickly put the headphones on Steve's head and before you could click play you we're shown a memory of your dad drinking on the couch while watching a sports game when the TV all of a sudden shuts off. Your dad immediately went into a rage cursing up a storm when called you down "(M/N) GET YOUR LAZY ASS DOWN AND FIX THIS FUCKING TV!" he yelled. You can rushing down and tried to fix the TV but only made it worse you tried to turn around and tell your father but you felt something smash one the back of the skull and passed out. You woke up next to Steve as he smiled at you. Another memory you thought. You recognized it as the time you got your "letter" from your dream college accepting you. You felt yourself panicking but smiled to Steve as he hugged you saying "M/N I'm so proud of you for getting into your dream college" you smiled as you thought of earlier that week when you threw away the real letter of rejection. Then you blacked out again waking up next to Steve, Eddie, Robin, and Nancy with tears streaming down your face. Steve looked hurt and surprised as well as everyone else. After you all got out of the upside down Steve pulled you aside to talk to you about the memories. He hugged you and whispered in your ear "I'm sorry you couldn't tell me about all that I'm so so sorry (M/N)" you hugged him back as you started to tear up. The sweet moment was ruined when Dustin came into the room and said "guys come on we need to start planning about how to attack Vecna."

#steve harrington x male reader

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daydreamingfuel · 1 year

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Freak Like Me

Chapter 3

Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

AO3 // previous // next

Chapter Tags & Warnings: a hell of a lot of angst, Chrissy gets vecna'd, hurt some comfort, intense flirting with little payoff, daddy issues get worse??

Chapter Word Count: 7.8k

A/N - I apologise in advance, this hurt me to write too so don't yell at me

The days that passed were much the same, the days quickly turned to weeks, and over the month and weeks that they knew each other and grew closer, they had developed a smooth routine. Eddie picking her up for school; lunch with Hellfire; sneaking off to the table in the woods for a smoke and gratuitous but harmless flirting; studying, D&D prep and dinner at either the Y/L/N house or the trailer. On the days Eddie worked and Y/N had a shift at the bakery she managed to land a part-time job at, she would take a coffee and a pastry to him at the record shop so they could have lunch together, quickly learning he forgets to eat between customers and is grumpy the morning after. But Friday night, Hellfire night, was the best. It wasn’t at first, however. The older boys in the group had their grievances, of course, Y/N walking in on them voicing their distaste to Eddie before her first session with the group.

“C’mon, man! She’s gonna ruin it for the rest of us.” Jeff groaned in annoyance, sinking into his seat at the table and glaring at his Dungeon Master.

Gareth harumphed in agreement and spouted his own disapproval, “She’s never played before, this is gonna be shit! This is supposed to be your big final campaign before finals! Just because you’ve got a stupid crush on her doesn’t mean that we have to-”

Eddie's hands slam down on the table. “Enough!” The boys shrunk back in their seats at his sudden raised voice, before his furious gaze locked onto his best friends, “Unless either of you wants your perfectly crafted characters to suffer a fate worse than death in the most horrific ways I can possibly think of I will not have another bad word said about Y/N joining the party. Am I understood?”

“Understood.” They both said, in slight fear at Eddie's rage.

“Understood,” Y/N echoed from the doorway having overheard the whole thing, sparing the boys a glare of her own before sending Eddie a wink and taking her place at the table.

Y/N, despite having a truly horrible first attempt at playing, fell in love with the game, especially once she was the only one who could save them at the end of their first session and won the boys around. She quickly got into the swing of things, returning home from sessions buzzing with anticipation of the next session. Try as she might to get even a small clue about the progression of the story he was crafting, she couldn’t get a word out of Eddie. Not when she brought him freshly baked cookies and let him ramble for hours on end about future campaign ideas. Or when she would excitedly go over her notes in the van on the way back home after a session, hoping that he would let something slip but he never did.

He saw through her every time, “Sorry darlin’ you ain’t getting shit from me.”

“But Eds…” she would whine and close her notebook in a huff, making him laugh, “just something little, basically insignificant. Please, Eddie?”

She made him weak, but not weak enough, “Nice try sweetheart.”

The man took his role as Dungeon Master seriously, and it definitely paid off. Eddie truly came to life when he was DM’ing, and the sessions allowed for an escape Y/N had never had. Not to mention that it was amazing to watch the intense combination of pure joy Eddie clearly got from the game and the stern concentration on running the campaign. Playing ‘God’ for a few hours brought out a rarely seen confident aura. He was enigmatic, and Y/N could feel herself fall for him more and more with every week that passed.

Relationships blossomed in other areas of her life, outside of Eddie, as well. Chrissy had become a hesitant but fierce friend and confidant, and despite the conflicting emotions that came with it, they loved spending time together away from their respective boys. Mostly their conversations stemmed from their joined interest in classic romantic literature, but over time they started to tell each other anything and everything. It felt good to have a feminine best friend again. Someone to have mini spa sessions and self-care days with. To talk about makeup, and romcoms, and go shopping with. To gush about undying crushes and frustrations. Plus, the friendship came with the bonus that it thoroughly pissed off Jason. Of course, Eddie wasn’t sure at first, either. He didn’t trust that it wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass if Jason were to ever overhear their conversations, but as soon as he learned that Jason hated that the girls were fast friends, he was all for it. Even going as far as to pick them up from shopping trips in the van after work when he could.

Chrissy brought out a side of Y/N that she thought was abandoned in England with her old life. A strange part of her felt like she was leading a double life, and worse was that she kept getting horrific déjà vu from seemingly innocent moments with Chrissy. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own for not being honest about her past. But she had such a good thing going she didn’t want to ruin it. But the walls were starting to crack, for both of them. Chrissy could tell that Y/N was hiding something from her, but she couldn’t quite place what, mentally noting all the times that she would vaguely stare off into space then shake it off with a smile and go on as if nothing happened. And Y/N would notice all the skipped meals and times when Chrissy would disappear for a good few minutes after any meals they did have together and come back smelling strongly of perfume, brushing it off just as easily. All they needed was a little push for the walls to come crashing down around them.

Spring Break, something Y/N had never experienced, was coming up fast. Lucas was taking his basketball duties more seriously; the final session of Eddie’s most complex campaign for Hellfire was approaching and they had no idea how it was going to end; college application deadlines creeping up on them - it was all coming to an abrupt end, all too fast. Y/N never thought she would say it, but she wasn’t ready for school to end just yet. Before she had time to fully process anything happening in her life, which was starting to feel more like the beginning of a romcom than reality, the final week of term rolled around. And it flew by. Waking up on Friday, and donning her custom Hellfire shirt which was slightly tailored and re-hemmed to fit her waist and neck better, her mind was flooded with ideas of all the things that she could do during her time off. Most of them including Eddie, she had a big surprise planned for him and couldn’t wait to tell him that night. And Chrissy, they had so many dates planned Y/N had to start writing them down to keep track. And Dustin and Lucas, who had promised to introduce her to some of their other friends in Y/N’s year whilst Mike went to California to visit the Byers.

But her morning didn’t start the way she had wanted. As she mindlessly wandered into the kitchen, she slammed straight into her dad walking towards her room.

“Oop!” Y/N wobbled and he caught her slightly, “Sorry dad, I didn’t realise you were still here.”

“That’s actually why I was coming to wake you. Why are you awake so early?” The man straightened himself out as he talked.

“Pep rally before classes start.” He nodded sharply at Y/N’s answer before turning on his heel and leading Y/N to the kitchen table where Mrs Y/L/N was already sitting, tissue in hand.

“Mum?” Y/N immediately took a seat as close to her mother as she could and gripped her hand, staring at her father incredulously, “Dad, what’s going on?”

“I’m leaving for a few months. Work trip, completely unavoidable.” His eyes flick to the suitcases piled by the door, “I leave for Nevada at noon.”

“Excuse me?” Y/N blinked at the man in front of her, rage consuming her, her breathing becoming more laboured as she processed what her father had said. “You’re just leaving? With no other warning?”

“I received the call this morning, Y/N, there was no further warning.” Mr Y/L/N tried to explain as calmly as possible, but his frustration was evident. His whole body was tensed, hands flexing by his sides, and veins straining on his neck with every word.

“We knew this might happen dear,” Mrs Y/L/N sniffled from beside her, “if his work needs him-”

“Then that’s his main priority, I know.” Y/N finished, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice, making her father sigh and groan in annoyance.

“You’re not making this any easier, do you really believe I want to just leave you and your mother like this?” Mr Y/L/N finally breaks, storming towards and towering over Y/N.

“Well, I haven’t properly seen you in months anyway. So, what difference does it make?” Y/N sunk into her seat, fiddling with her hands in her lap, avoiding eye contact, voice flat.

Silence fell, the room tense. Only broken when Eddie honked from outside.

“I’ve got to go, don’t want to be late for school. I’ll be back late mum, but I’ll be home I promise.” She kisses her mum on the temple and she pats Y/N’s hands in understanding. “Dad…”

“If you get into any trouble, you call me.” Mr Y/L/N says sternly, but his eyes were red from holding back tears. “Don’t get into trouble.”

“I’ll try,” Y/N forced a small smile onto her face before suddenly she was engulfed by her dads' arms. Her heart ached, and she found herself tightening her fists around the fabric of his shirt. The once-familiar scent of his aftershave flooded her senses and soothed a small part of her soul. As she pulled away, she felt a small kiss land on her hairline and she shuddered, holding back her own tears. She wouldn’t let him see her cry. Not now, not ever.

Of course, Eddie immediately noticed something was wrong and a strange feeling of déjà vu washed over them. Her smile at him was forced and his grip on the steering wheel was tight, the bats flying on his forearm once again. He didn’t want to push, and she didn’t speak, slumped against the window, watching the trees and houses go by. Y/N didn’t realise her knee was bouncing until she felt his warm hand fall onto it and squeeze gently to tell her he was there. After a few more minutes of silence, he swallowed his nerves and finally spoke up.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” His voice was soft and worried, he hadn’t seen her this shut off before and it scared him. He heard her sniffle and clear her throat before sitting up straighter and threading her fingers through his hand on her knee.

“I know, Eds, just not right now.” He nodded and squeezed her hand once more, and she squeezed back composing herself a little as they came up to the school, “I need to go meet Chrissy before the pep rally, so quick detour? Then breakfast?”

He responded by pulling into the school car park at the last second and parking up near the gates. He jumped out of the car and rounded the front to open her door, before finally saying, “Yeah, you go have your little gossip session, I’ll be here waiting for you. Don’t be too long or I’ll go eat without you.”

She chuckled slightly and a smile pulled onto his face at the sound, holding onto it as he shut the door to the van and watched her walk away, shouting over her shoulder, “You wouldn’t dare, Munson. I’ll be quick!”

Chrissy all but ran to catch up with Y/N as they entered the building, her ponytail swaying as she looped her arm through Y/N’s. Her smile was as sweet as ever but Y/N saw straight through it. Late the previous night, Y/N had received a phone call from a panicking Chrissy who had just woken up from a horrible nightmare. Y/N had managed to calm her down enough to go back to sleep but the girl was restless. It was obvious to Y/N that her best friend had barely slept a wink after they hung up the phone. To anyone else, she was as bright and bubbly as normal. They walked the familiar path through the school towards the back of the gym, Chrissy gripping Y/N’s arm. Once they reached the door, the blonde turned towards Y/N and pulled her in for a tight hug.

“I can’t do this,” Chrissy whispered, voice small.

Y/N ran a soothing hand up and down her friend's back, “Yes, you can.”

“It just keeps getting worse, Y/N…but I feel paralysed, I just feel like I’m going insane.” Chrissy rambles into Y/N’s shoulder before pulling away and looking her in the eye. “I can’t keep doing this, I’m going to break.”

“Hey, you know I’m always here for you…you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to but I have noticed that you’re not well, Chris,” Y/N says gently, not wanting Chrissy to push her away but she just sighs and slumps back against the wall, swallowing a lump in her throat.

“These nightmares…they feel too real…like I’m actually living them again,” Chrissy admits to Y/N, who nods in understanding, being plagued by nightmares herself, and allowing her the space to talk. “They’re mostly of my mother, of the things she tells me about myself…my body.”

Y/N takes a deep breath, connecting the dots. Chrissy’s weird behaviour around food and the frequent bathroom visits all started to make sense, and made Y/N so angry at herself for not picking up the signs earlier. “How long have you been…?”

“A couple months,” Chrissy’s arms wrapped around her body, hiding, “but she started restricting my diet years ago when I first became a cheerleader, it got worse when I became captain…and that’s when I started to…”

“Yeah.” Y/N closed her eyes and flexed her hands a little before reaching out and placing a hand on top of Chrissy’s “I’m so sorry.”

Chrissy opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself when she saw the rest of the cheerleaders walking towards them, “We’ll continue this later, don’t think I haven’t noticed you either, no more secrets.” Chrissy’s eyes were wide, searching Y/N’s for any hesitance or doubt but she only found surrender and concern, “For either of us.”

Y/N nodded in agreement and pulled Chrissy back in for another hug, when a thought popped into her head, whispering the idea to her friend, “Feel free to shoot me down, I know it sounds insane but go meet Eddie by the table in the woods during free period, he might be able to give you something to help relax you enough to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Really? He’d do that?” Chrissy asked with a forced smile, being able to see her squad over Y/N’s shoulder and upon feeling Y/N nod, she thought for a second before replying, “I’ll think about it, I’ve got another session with Ms Kelly later, anyway…it might help.”

When Y/N left Chrissy to her other friends, Y/N headed straight back to the van, Eddie back in the driver’s seat, rocking out by himself to the Iron Maiden song blasting through his speakers. His predictability soothed her. They had planned to blow off the pep rally entirely, and go have breakfast at a little diner not too far away before school, and after Chrissy’s confession, Y/N wanted nothing more than a bit of comfort. Pulling open the door and sliding into the passenger seat, she greeted Eddie - “told you I’d be fast” – before settling into the drive to the familiar diner. Breakfast with Eddie was easy, calming despite his hyperactive nature, exactly what she needed after the hell of a morning she was already having. All they could talk about was the impending final session of the campaign that night, Y/N bugging him for any kind of reprieve. Which only made him laugh. The sound had become one of her favourite things and she made it her personal mission to hear it as much as possible.

The rest of her morning ran smoothly after breakfast. She didn’t bump into Chrissy again but the whole school was buzzing after the pep rally, so she assumed everything went well and she managed to perform without cracking. By the time lunch rolled around, Y/N had mostly managed to force the morning from her mind. And Eddie would only push it further away. He had found a copy of a magazine with a scathing article about his beloved game and was animatedly reading it aloud for the group to hear.

“‘The Devil has come to America.’” His voice was deep and lilting, mimicking that of an infomercial voiceover, right as Dustin and Mike take their seats at the table next to Y/N, “‘Dungeons and Dragons, at first regarded as a harmless game of make-believe, now has both parents and psychologists concerned.’” Y/N rolled her eyes, picking at her food as she listened to Eddie, his voice becoming more and more him with every sentence, “‘Studies have linked violent behaviour to the game, saying it promotes satanic worship, ritual sacrifice, sodomy, suicide, and even” He slams the magazine down onto the table “’…murder.’”

The table chuckled at the ridiculous article, and at Eddie, Y/N scoffing before commenting, “Society has to blame something. We're an easy target.”

“Exactly.” Eddie brushes Y/N’s chin with his thumb, lifting it slightly with his index finger, winking before starting to rant, “We're the freaks because we like to play a fantasy game. But-” he rises from his seat and gets up to stand on the table, walking down the middle, “as long as you're into band or science…” he addresses the cliques as he mentions them, voice getting louder, “…or parties,” he mocks the group dressed like they just got back from a rager, who flipped him off, before he directed his attention to his true targets, “or a game where you toss balls into laundry baskets!”

“Loser!” Someone shouts, but Eddie doesn’t care, as he stares down Jason Carver who is glaring right back.

“You want something, freak?” Jason calls him out, and Eddie being Eddie, only mocks further – placing his fingers to his head like devils’ horns as a feral sound falls from his lips, smirking afterwards at Jason's disgusted face, “Prick” Jason mutters to himself as Eddie turns away.

“It's forced conforming. That's what's…” He jumps off the table and scares an innocent bystander, making a further spectacle of himself “…killing the kids!” The group chuckles at his antics but he bows back and holds out a gentlemanly arm to allow two cheerleaders to pass without incident before settling back into his seat, “That's the real monster.” He finishes his rant, one hand picking at his food, the other falling onto Y/N’s knee, her hand immediately covering it with her own, his thumb rubbing a soothing circle into her skin through her jeans.

“So, uh, speaking of monsters,” Dustin pipes up, he’s grinning his usual adorable smile but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes, which are slightly scared, “uh, Lucas has to do his, uh, balls-in-laundry-baskets game. So…he's not gonna be able to make it to Hellfire tonight.” Dustin giggles as he speaks but Eddie just stares blankly back at him, “And I know there's no way we can beat your sadistic campaign without him. So, me and Mike, we were talking, shooting the shit, and we were thinking that maybe we might…” Dustin is stammering, trying to break the question to Eddie gently but Mike, who was growing increasingly more frustrated cuts in.

“Postpone.” Mike finally says, causing the boys at the table to erupt into complaints.

“Postpone? You can't just drop this on us!” Gareth and Jeff are outraged by the mere notion but not as much as Grant who states a firm “Over my dead body.”

Y/N shakes her head at the childish behaviour, sure she loved the game, but wasn’t supporting their friend just as important?

“Shut up!” Eddie finally snaps and silence falls across the table, “You saying Sinclair's been taken in by the dark side?”

“Uh, something like that.” Mike hesitantly agrees but only gets a bit of food thrown at him.

“Something like that?” Eddie echoes, pulling a small ‘Jesus Christ’ from Dustin in response. Eddie just continues, “And rather than find a sub for him, you want…” his eye twitches, “you want to postpone "The Cult of Vecna"?” Eddie finishes incredulously, burning a hole through Mike’s skull with his eyes.

“I…I don't want to postpone it. We don't want to postpone it.” Mike gestures to Dustin who nods emphatically, but Eddie isn’t hearing any of it, standing up from the table, Y/N’s hand gripping his to try and keep him calm, his knuckles turning pink with the force of his grip, “It's just that, you know, most of the subs will be at the championship game.”

“Oh, it's the championship game?” Eddie finally turns back to look at Mike.

Mike seems confused “Yeah?”

“Can I level with you?” He drops Y/N’s hand, and she sighs deeply muttering a small ‘here we go...’ under her breath, knowing that Eddie isn’t going to just let this go and there would be no reasoning with him. “Jeff graduates this year. Gareth's got, what? A year and a half? Me, I am army-crawling my way toward a D in Ms O'Donnell's. If I don't blow her final, and I know I won’t thanks to Y/N,” He smiles at her and she winks back, the tutoring had been working, his grades were up and it looked like was finally going to graduate, “I'm gonna walk that stage next month, I'm gonna look Principal Higgins dead in the eye, I'm gonna flip him the bird, I'm gonna snatch that diploma. I'm gonna run like hell outta here.”

The group once again laughs at Eddie's dramatics, Y/N unable to stop the grin on her face that he was so excited about graduating. But of course, his friends had to humble him a little.

“Didn't you say that last year?” Commented Gareth, smiling smugly but with affection, Jeff added in the same manner, “And the year before?”

“Yeah, yeah, and I was full of shit.” Eddie agrees but continues, his deep brown eyes were wide and hopeful, “This year's different. This year is my year. I can feel it. '86, baby.” He grins, eyes locking onto Y/N’s, a small blush creeping up onto his cheeks but he brushes it off and continues addressing the freshmen who look up at him with admiration, “You know what that means?” the boys shake their heads “It means you boys are the future of Hellfire.” Eddie rounds the table to crouch behind Dustin and Mike, arms draped across their shoulders “I knew it the moment I saw you. You sat on that table right over there, looking like…looking like two little lost sheep. You were wearing a Weird Al T-shirt, which I thought was brave.”

“Thank you.” Dustin nods but is unable to meet Eddie’s intense eye contact.

“Mike, you were wearing whatever shit your mommy bought you from goddamn Gap.” The table laughs once more but it is cut off when Eddie suddenly stands, pulling the freshmen up with him, “And we showed you that school didn't have to be the worst years of your lives, right?

“No.” Mike and Dustin agree, they had been taken in and appreciated for all their quirks and nerdiness by Eddie, they had a friend and inspiration in their Dungeon Master, despite of how much he scared them sometimes.

So, Eddie continued, “Okay, no, no. Well, I'm here to tell you, that there are other little lost sheepies out there who need help. Who need you. And all you guys gotta do is get your Bo-Peeps on and go and find one.” He pushed them away into the crowd, turning back to the table and taking his seat again as the boys scurried off.

“Don’t you think that was a bit much, Eds?” Y/N questions before taking a bite of her sandwich, shrugging it off when Eddie’s glare focuses on her. He was always ‘a bit much’, and they all knew it. His gaze softened when he saw that she was only teasing him. Her eyes sparkled and a smile tried to force its way onto her face behind the sandwich.

“You too, darlin’? You wound me.” His voice is low and warning, making a chill run down her spine but she ignores it and sighs, head tilting slightly.

“I’m just saying that it’s not completely unreasonable for them to want to support Lucas, he has been their best friend since they were kids.” Y/N gently explains, leaning back in her seat as though to challenge him a little. She wasn’t lying but she knew he wouldn’t budge, this was too important to him, but what was the harm in humbling him a little anyway?

Eddie licks his lips and quirks an eyebrow up at her, trying to figure out how best to respond, shocked at her lack of blind obedience to his word. “Do you want to die the most painful death at the hands of my, what was it that Henderson said…sadistic campaign?”

“I was never going to survive to the end anyway, I’m sure you’ve already made sure of that, Dungeon Master.” Y/N bit back with a smile, mischief glinting in her eyes, Eddie's eyes flaming back at her.

Gareth butt in before Eddie could say another word, “Will you two stop flirting at the table?” both of their heads turned to face him, seeing the older boys gagging at their behaviour made them chuckle, hands linking under the table, “I’m trying to eat and you two make me sick.”

“Too bad.” Eddie threw a crust at Gareth who swatted it away as distracted whilst Eddie leaned in to whisper to Y/N, “Valiant effort darlin’, but if you want me to break you’re going to have to try a little harder.”

He turned back to the other boys and chatted mindlessly as Y/N’s mind fogged up.

He knows.

Of course, he knows, idiot, you don’t exactly make it subtle. He probably thinks you’re pathetic, drooling over him.

Shut up.

Come on, you don’t really think you stand a chance? Have you seen yourself? You’re gonna be left alone again if you keep pushing.

First at your old school, now Daddy’s leaving you…how long before Eddie leaves too?

“I gotta go.” Y/N suddenly stood up from the table, grabbing her things and swallowing thickly to suppress the panic swarming her. Eddie's eyes were frantic, tracing her to find what was wrong. “I need to be alone for a bit but I’ll see you all later”

Y/N started walking away, leaving the boys immensely confused until she heard Eddie stumbling after her, “Hold up! Y/N wait!” Y/N kept walking, eventually coming to an empty corridor. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing I just-”

“Cut the bullshit, Y/N. Talk to me.” Eddie says running a hand through his hair in frustration. Y/N slumped back against the wall and slid down to the floor, where Eddie immediately joined her.

“My dad…he’s leaving for a few months, work thing,” Y/N said quietly, staring at her shoes, and fidgeting with the edges of her sleeves, “And I know we don’t have the best relationship, we haven’t been close in years, but still…”

��Is that why you were so sad this morning?” Eddie asked softly and Y/N nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Y/N’s eyes closed, and her head rested back against the wall, trying to find the right words, “I don’t know…I wanted to, I want to tell you everything, I’m just…I’m scared.”

“Scared of me?” Eddie had never sounded so small, the words hung in the air for a moment and Y/N shook her head, eyes springing open to see him chewing on his lip, hands trembling slightly.

“No. Never scared of you.” She reached out and took his hands into hers, “What I need to tell you isn’t easy, and I don’t want to push you away.”

“Whatever it is, I’m not going anywhere.” Eddie pulled her in for a tight hug right as the bell rang, “Except for class.”

Y/N chuckled lightly and pulled herself off the floor. “Free period. I’m gonna go to the library, meet you there after you’ve done whatever deals you have today?” He nods and picks up his bag, following her down the hall.

He walks her to the library and as she enters, he leans on the door frame and asks “Hey, do you think Dustin and Mike are out ‘Bo-Beeping’?”

As it turned out, Mike and Dustin had gotten their ‘Bo-Peep’ on and managed to recruit a sub for Lucas, none other than Lucas’ own little sister Erica Sinclair. She looked sweet enough, bright blue jumper, hair perfectly coifed, and an American flag wrapped around her shoulders like a cape. but her attitude is what immediately sold Y/N. She had no patience for Eddie, making her stifle a laugh from beside him as he reclined in his throne, interrogating the young girl to no mercy.

Erica stood her ground as Eddie towered over her, stating firmly who she was. “My name is Lady Applejack. And I'm a chaotic good half-elf rogue, level 14. I will sneak behind any monster you throw my way and stab them in the back with my poison-soaked kukri. And I'll smile as I watch them die a slow, agonizing death. So, we gonna do this, or we gonna keep chitchatting like this is your mommy's book club?”

Y/N smiled devilishly, strangely proud of the girl, and it was clear that Eddie liked her too, a wide grin spreading across his face before holding his hand out for her to shake, stating, “Welcome to Hellfire.”

The session was brutal. Everyone was struggling to make any hits with enough damage worth a damn, and they were losing their own health quickly. They were floundering. Eddie truly had been evil in his creation of the campaign, but the worst was yet to come for the party.

“The hooded cultists chant, ‘Hail Lord Vecna.’ ‘Hail Lord Vecna.’ They turn to you, remove their hoods. You recognize most of them from Makbar. But there is one you do not recognize,” The group is listening intently, laser-focused on Eddie as he talks, “his skin shrivelled, desiccated. And something else. He is not only missing his left arm,” he hides his arm behind his back, “but his left eye!”

“No! No!” the group erupted into a frustrated and confused chorus.

Y/N frantically looks back through her notes, “This is bullshit!”

“Vecna's dead,” Jeff states firmly, in disbelief

Mike agrees, “He was killed by Kas.”

“So it was thought, my friends. So, it was thought. But Vecna lives.”

Eddie placed the Vecna miniature back on the battle map and Y/N slumped back in her chair, “Fuck…”

“You are scared. You're tired. You are injured. Do you flee Vecna and his cultists?” Eddie questions, giving the party two paths, “Or stand your ground and fight?” They consider the options, “Come on…”

“I say we fight.” Dustin finally answers, “To the death.”

“To the death.” Mike agrees, immediately reiterated by Erica who looks at Y/N.

“Fuck it, to the death!” Y/N echoes and suddenly the whole party is chanting ‘to the death!’ over and over as Eddie falls back into his throne laughing.

With renewed vigour, they go round upon round of combat, winning some but mostly losing. One by one, miniatures were being taken off the map with curses in their wake. The energy in the room was palpable as they played, the heightened emotion in the small room almost electric as they rolled and rolled their dice, trying everything they could to take down Vecna. Their shouts and cries overlap as Eddie cackles at their misfortune, knocking another figurine off the map. When Y/N’s elf finally succumbed to their wounds and died, Y/N let out a scream of anguish having missed her death-saving roll by only 1 point. Grant, at this point, calls a ‘time-out’ and the group huddles up on the opposite end of the table to Eddie's throne.

“Guys, I hate to say this, but we've got to flee,” Gareth states to the group.

“I concur.” Grant immediately agrees and Jeff nods.

But Erica is having none of it. “Didn't we just agree "to the death"?

“That wasn't literal!” Gareth says in rebuttal.

“Oh really?!” Y/N argues back, having just died.

Gareth scratches the back of his neck, in defeat, before he pats Y/N on the back, in comradery, “You lived up to your namesake, you fought and died valiantly.”

“Thank you,” Y/N says in earnest.

Jeff continues despite this, “Still, Vecna just decimated us. We can't kill him with two players.”

“You too? He only has fifteen hit points left. Don't be pussies.” Dustin exclaims, aggravated.

“Pussies?” Gareth bites back, abhorred by the name calling “Really? 'Cause, we're not delusional?”

Erica argues, louder, “Delusional? How about not cowards?

“Hey!” They all turn to face Eddie, who was perched on the edge of the table behind his DM screen, “If I may interject, gentlemen, sweetheart,” Y/N hums with a fake saccharine sweet smile, “Lady Applejack. Whilst I respect the passion, you'd be wise to take Gareth the Great's concern to heart. There is no shame in running. Don't try to be heroes. Not today, 'kay?” He mimics Y/N’s smile and tilts his head.

Y/N can feel the rage burning back up inside her and it was evident that Dustin could feel it too as he holds up a finger and said, “One sec.” The huddle reforms. “What do you think Mike?”

“How many hit points do you and Applejack have left?” Mike asks, trying to think of the best strategy.

“Twelve.” They reply in unison.

Mike nods, before saying, “It's risky as hell. But you're the ones on the battlefield. So, it's your call.”

All eyes lock on Dustin and Erica, they didn’t need to answer for Y/N to know what they were thinking.

“What do you say, Lady Applejack?” Dustin asks.

“You really gotta ask?”

Dustin thinks hard but ultimately makes his decision.

“Screw it.” Dustin turns back to Eddie, “Let's kill the son of a bitch.”

Jeff refutes “The chances of success are 20-to-1!”

Dustin doesn’t waver, “Never tell me the odds. Gimme the D20.”

Eddie throws it to him with a grin, dimples popping out, clearly, they had made the choice he wanted them to. Dustin cups the di in his hands and shakes, eyes locked on the battle map as he released the di and it rolls across the table. They wait anxiously until it lands, ultimately on ‘11’.

“That’s! A! Miss!” Eddie takes great joy in their suffering, Dustin cursing loudly.

It was all up to Erica. The party circled her as she shook the di in her hands, and time seemed to slow down. It was just a game, but Y/N had never felt so nervous. Erica finally released the di with hopeful shouts of ‘Please!’ and ‘Come on!’ from Dustin and Gareth. It rolls fast across the table, and nobody was able to see what it could land on, so they held their breath in wait for it to stop. Eddie leans over to see the result. ‘20’.

“Crit hit!” Erica shouts with pride and the boys go wild in celebration, Y/N laughing in relief and surprise, jumping in a little circle from the intense burst of serotonin.

“And that’s why we play!” Eddie exclaims and presents the board to Erica who is standing proud, a wide grin on her face.

The party was still celebrating as they tumbled out of the doors of the drama room after collecting their things, practically bouncing off the walls as they went. As always Y/N stayed behind to help Eddie clean up, and she couldn’t stop grinning at him. Her heart still pounding in her chest from the adrenaline rush, Eddie could feel the contagious joy radiating off her.

“What’s with you?” Eddie asks as he folds up his DM screen and puts it in his bag, “You died, I’m surprised you didn’t throw another hissy fit like you did the first time you died.”

Y/N smiles fondly at the memory of their first game together all those weeks ago, collecting all the figurines and stray dice off the table. “Am I not allowed to be happy we won, just because I died?”

“I’m not saying that at all,” He drops his bag onto his throne and rounds the table to where she was perched on the edge and caged her in, hands on the table on either side of her hips, “I’m really happy that you’re so into this.”

Her breath caught in her throat at the proximity, but she didn’t waver, holding his intense eye contact. The high of winning boosted her confidence enough to bite the bullet, “Well,” her hands slid up his chest and circled his neck, hands locking behind his head, “I am, into this…in fact, I think you’ve got me addicted, I’m gonna be chasing this feeling forever.”

He chuckles under his breath and drops his forehead to hers, smirking as his hands slide up from the table to wrap around her waist, pulling her closer, “Then it’s a good thing I’m dealing.”

As her nose brushed his, he suddenly jumps back, and scampered to collect his bag from his throne, “Shit, sorry Y/N, I just remembered I’ve got a deal to do.”

Y/N’s face scrunched up in confusion as she collected her things and followed him out of the room, “I thought you did that in free period?”

“I did,” Eddie says then amends, “Well kinda, I didn’t sell her anything then.”

“So Chrissy actually went to you?” Eddie stops in his tracks.

Never, not even once, had Eddie ever mentioned the names of anyone he sold to. He didn’t want Y/N to be wrapped up in the business, she was, in his opinion, too good for that. The only thing she did know was that his supplier was Reefer Rick, and that was only because he had let it slip one night whilst tired and tipsy. “How the hell do you know it was Chrissy?”

“Because I sent her.” His eyes widened, so she prompted further, “That didn’t occur to you?”

He pauses and thinks it through as they kept walking, Y/N trailing after him. Chrissy, besides himself, was Y/N’s best friend. A little fact that had escaped him upon seeing the cheerleader waiting for him at his bench, shaken up and fidgety. “It slipped my mind…Y/N I told you not to get involved with the dealing!”

They had made it out of the school and as he pulled the large double doors open, he turned to face Y/N. She was wringing her hands out, nose twitching and shoulders tense. “I’m sorry! I just- I was worried about her, thought that you might give her something to-”

“Put her to sleep easy?” Eddie finished the sentence and Y/N nodded.

They wandered in silence up to the van and saw Chrissy waiting by it, before they got close enough for Chrissy to notice them, Y/N stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Look, Eddie, if it makes you more comfortable I’ll wait in the van whilst you finish the deal.”

He shakes his head, “No, no, you’re not staying in the van, you’re coming inside the trailer with us.”

“The trailer?” she was perplexed, he never did deals at home.

“Special occasion, what I’m gonna give her is there, can’t carry it around with me.” Eddie explains, as cryptic as ever but he softens, “Just wait in my room and then we can…finish that conversation we were having earlier?” His hand reaches up to cup her cheek and Y/N leans into it, her eyes fluttering closed briefly.

Y/N could feel her body getting hotter at the thought, mind reeling but answered anyway, “Definitely, there’s some things I need to tell you. Not all bad.”

“Oh?” Eddie’s curiosity was peaked but he doesn’t get an answer as Y/N winks and walks up to the van to greet Chrissy.

The drive from the school to the trailer was surprisingly unawkward, comfortable even, as Chrissy ran them through the championship game highlights – the biggest of which being that Lucas had scored the winning basket. A swell of pride, then regret filled Y/N as she thought about Lucas. It was a huge achievement for the freshman to win the game and he didn’t have his best friends there to support him. She couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible, that she hadn’t fought for the campaign to be postponed so that they could be there. He had made his choice, but they should have respected the boys’ friendships more.

As they pulled up to the trailer, Chrissy jumped out and straightened out her uniform a little as Y/N slid out of the van behind her and slammed the door shut. Eddie led them up to the front door and held it open for them, Y/N immediately made herself comfortable, slinging her bang on the old armchair in the corner and flouncing her way into Eddie's room and flopping down onto the bed. She could hear Eddie rummaging around for something and muffled talking between him and Chrissy.

She wasn’t alone for long though as Eddie waltzed into the room “Sorry I’m late sweetheart,” Y/N sat up and watched as he bypassed her on the bed and headed straight for his cherished guitar, a stunning red B.C Rich Warlock N.J Series. He kissed his fingers and strummed her gently, “You’re beautiful…”

Y/N cleared her throat, “Am I interrupting?”

Eddie snorted, as he rummaged through his messy desk drawers, “I’ll be back for you in a sec, darlin’, I just need to- gotcha.” He pulled out a tin and shut the drawer, standing up straight to go back to Chrissy, “Don’t move.”

As she sat on his bed, alone in his room again, she thought through how she was going to say what she needed to say. How do you tell someone that you like them as way more than a friend without feeling like you’re going to throw up? The mere thought of telling Eddie how she actually felt about him made her heart beat faster and her body tremble a little. Despite part of her knowing, subconsciously, that he might feel the same and she’s just been oblivious to his signs, Y/N wanted to run away, to forget it all and keep going as they have been. Why ruin a good thing right? He was so good to her, took her under his wing, and understood her in a way nobody else ever did. She knew that he took notice of all of her mood swings but didn’t pry, letting her go to him. Until today. But Y/N was terrified of it.

Her thoughts circling her head were suddenly cut off their flight path by the electricity crackling around her. The flickering lights was quickly followed by the sounds of Eddie shouting from the front of the trailer. She had heard him shout countless times that day alone, but not like this. He was terrified.

“Chrissy! Wake up!” His confused and worried shouts echoed through the small space and dragged her to him.

“Eddie, what’s going on?” He didn’t need to answer, “Oh my god...”

Y/N's heart sunk to her stomach at the sight in front of her. Chrissy was trapped in a trance-like state, eyes fully white as though they had rolled back into her head, eyelids fluttering every so often, her body stiff and unmoving in the middle of the room. “Chrissy?”

“She won’t wake up; I don’t know what happened.” Eddie was frantic, his eyes scanning Chrissy for any signs of consciousness. “I just walked in to give her the K and found her like this. C’mon, Chrissy, wake up!”

Tears streamed down Y/N’s face as she shook Chrissy’s shoulders gently, “Chrissy…please wake up…” she shook a little harder, “wake up..” harder, “wake up!”

Without any warning, Chrissy started to lift into the air, knocking Y/N’s hands off Chrissy and sending her stumbling back into Eddie’s chest. His arms wrapped around her protectively and held her close as Chrissy’s body hit the ceiling. A blood-curdling scream tore from Y/N’s throat, echoed by Eddie, as they watched in horror, as Chrissy’s bones started to bend and break inhumanely. Her legs and arms suddenly contorted mid-air, but she still didn’t wake. When her jaw unhinged and her eyes caved in, blood pouring down her face, Y/N had to turn away and bury into Eddie’s chest. The only indication Y/N had that it was over, was the thud of Chrissy’s lifeless body falling to the floor, Eddie’s arms still caging her to him.

“Y/N…we have to go.” His hoarse voice suddenly filled her ears, she shook her head against him, still sobbing. “Can’t stay here.”

“We can’t leave her,” Y/N looked up at him, his eyes wild with terror as he looked from Chrissy’s body on his floor to the girl in his shaking arms. “Eddie…if you run, you look guilty. And we’re not guilty.”

He shakes his head, mind reeling and every fibre of his being telling him to run, “Y/N, I can’t stay here…they already think I’m a freak, now I’m gonna be called a murderer, I can’t stay…” He pulls away from her, pacing, running his hands through his hair.

“Please don’t run.”

“Y/N I can’t-”

“Eddie,” her hands cup his face, and he finally makes eye contact, a shaking breath released from his trembling lips as she looks at him with so much fear it hurt his soul, “please baby, don’t run away.”

His heart stops for a second. Hands itching to hold her. “Sweetheart…”

“Please.” Her thumbs rub his cheeks. He swallows thickly and grabs her wrists, gently pulling her hands off his face.

He whispers so softly it was barely audible, but she caught it before he left her standing in the room alone, “I’m sorry.”

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