#Eddie asked the guys once if they meet their soulmates and Dustin said yes and he was going to die in his 40s in a car accident (totally a

[twpsyn-who]

Soulmate AU in which you see the way you die when you touch your soulmate for the first time.

And yeah we have the classic "bottle to the neck" scene which is kiss chief 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼 BUT I present to you "Steve touched Eddie by mistake during high school" with a little bit of "Steve is an idiot and didn't notice" and "Eddie is suffering".

The fall of 1883. Steve has yet to make a move on Nancy, let alone touch her. Meanwhile Eddie is living his best life as of yet : his father finally got put in prison, new freshman has joinend his club and they finally found a drummer for their band. Yes, Will Byers got missing and Eddie felt a little bad for Jonathan, but that was life. Nothing could change Eddie's good vibes.

Until The King of Hawkins runs by him while trying to get to one Nancy Wheeler. The touch was barely there, a hand brushing by Eddie's leather jacket, but it was enough to trigger their apparent soulmate bound. That's when Eddie saw himself in front of his trailer (which looked more like a military base or a fortress with how heavily guarded it was), holding into a made up spear and a shield made with a bin's lid with nails pushed into it. There were huge bats (?) (Eddie wasn't sure what to name the things in the sky yet) getting out of the trailer and him from the vision began running towards one of the bikes outside, getting on one of them and pedalling away from the trailer.

He was yelling for them to follow him. It probably made sense, if uncle Wayne was in the trailer, for him to try get those monsters away. That didn't stop Eddie from being surprised at seeing himself trying to be the hero.

He was no hero. Eddie has always run away from conflicts, from fights and situations that put him in a bad spot. From help too, until his father finally lost it to the alcohol and Eddie has to accept uncle Wayne's offer to move with him if he wanted to stay alive. He was known for running away.

Yet he was trying to get the monsters away from the trailer, distract their attention. And he made a good job too, until his bike got stuck into a vine and made him hit the ground. Eddie felt sick while watching his vision self try fight the monsters only to get pinned down by them and eaten alive. He from the vision was yelling from pain and it took agonizingly long for the huge bats (looking closer they had no resemblance of bats, yet it felt right to call them as such for some reasons) to drop on the ground. By then it was more blood outside of Eddie than inside and he could see his vision's self organs from one of the bites.

There was more, Eddie knew there was more to watch, more to see before he was going to take his last breath, but the vision was too much and it took all of his willpower to get out of it. By then he was alone in the hallway, the classes going while he was watching his own death happen. He went straight for the bathroom and pushed his way into the first stall before getting on his knees and vomiting all he got to eat the other day.

He was crying. Eddie could tell that it was going to happen soon, with how young he looked in the vision. At that point it didn't even mattered anymore that his soulmate was the biggest jerk alive, not when the future was so dark and he wouldn't survive it.

Somehow Eddie spent the rest of the school classes in the bathroom, switching between vomiting and mourning over something that he was never going to have.

[laundrybiscuits]

(soulmates AU continued from Part 1)

Eddie has a blotchy, uneven blob on his wrist. 

His jacket sleeve had been covering it up every time Steve had seen him in that long, terrible week, so when they’re finally let into his hospital room, Steve can’t help the way his face twists in surprise. He’s never heard of anyone with that kind of soulmark before. 

Luckily, Eddie doesn’t seem to notice Steve gawking. He’s cuffed to the bed and he looks so breakable in his thin hospital gown, blinking blearily at them before his gaze slides away again. 

“Hi, Eddie,” says Nancy.

Eddie’s mouth twitches up into what could be a smile before he winces. Half of his face is wrapped in big white bandages. 

It’s strange to see everything around him in whites and greys and pale blues. He looks more out of place here than he had in the Upside Down. 

“Hey,” he rasps. “Y’here for Red?” 

“Yes, we are,” Nancy says, crossing to his side. “And we’re here for you too. How are you feeling?”

“Like…what’s his name. Prometheus.”

Nancy laughs, and Steve folds his arms defensively. He hates when people talk about all that fantasy shit like it’s a normal thing to know. 

“The hell does that mean?” he snaps, before he remembers he should probably be a little nicer to Eddie. Nancy’s already glaring at him. 

“Greek guy,” says Eddie. He doesn’t sound mad or anything. “Dared to steal fire from the gods. Got his liver eaten every day.”

“Wait, every day? How does that even work?”

Eddie grins with half his mouth. “That’s the bitch of it, Harrington. He regrows it every time, just to get it eaten again. Poor fucker never gets to die, just—just keeps hurting.”

“Well, we’re very glad you didn’t die either,” says Nancy, patting his cuffed arm. It’s the one with the weird blobby mark, but she doesn’t seem like she even notices. “It’s so ridiculous that they’ve got you in handcuffs like this. I’ll talk to someone, maybe—”

Eddie waves his free arm languidly. “Ah, don’t worry about it, Wheeler. Prometheus, right? He always…always grows it back again.” He’s starting to slur his words a little, drifting. 

“Hey, man,” says Steve. “We’ll let you get some rest, okay? But we’ll—we’ll be back.”

“Ten-four, good buddy,” says Eddie, and closes his eyes. 

———

Steve wants to bring up Eddie’s weird mark with Nancy, but he doesn’t know how to not make it seem like he’s trying to get her back. 

So the next time he gets a chance, he asks Dustin as casually as he can: “Hey, you ever see Eddie’s soulmark?”

“Hah!” says Dustin. “No way. He covered it up years ago, before we ever even met him.”

“Wait, covered it up? Like…”

“Like, he decided to reject the uncaring hand of fate in a super permanent way.” Dustin pauses, squinting at Steve’s confused face. “He got a cover-up tattoo. Obviously.”

“Oh, sure, obviously. Totally normal thing to do,” says Steve, rolling his eyes. “Jesus, I’ve never even heard of that before.” 

Later, the unwelcome thought that’s been prowling around the edges of his mind finally takes shape: what if Nancy wants to get a cover-up? 

She wouldn’t, would she? 

He doesn’t want to remember the way she always preferred long sleeves, even when they were dating; how she’d slide her fingers tight over her wrist compulsively, clutching, sometimes for no reason at all that he could see. 

———

Soulmarks aren’t even that common, so he’s always seen his mark as kind of like a prize. It had felt like winning the lottery, when he’d watched the tidy script appear on his skin a few weeks after his thirteenth birthday. 

He’d been a little surprised when he met Nancy Wheeler for the first time, a whole year and a half later; he’d never thought he’d go for someone like her. But then she turned out to be smart and passionate and surprisingly pretty after all, and the knowledge of a future together had sounded better and better all the time. 

And now…Robin said, once, that maybe there was another Nancy Wheeler out there just waiting to meet him. The thought fills him with syrupy dread. He’s pretty sure Robin was trying to be nice and comforting, he just really hates the idea that he’s been getting it wrong all this time; that he tried so hard and felt all those things for nothing. But it’s Nancy’s handwriting for sure, just like it’s his on her wrist, and it seems pretty impossible that there’s also another Steve Harrington out there for her too. 

So it has to work out, it all has to fit together in the end. It’s going to. He holds onto that for a very long time.

———

Steve doesn’t really get another chance to look at Eddie’s shitty cover-up for a while. At first, he thinks visiting Max and Eddie can be something he and Nancy could maybe do together, but she’s pretty busy handling the legal side of things. From what Jonathan says, it sounds like she’s actually managing to get a pretty good deal for both of them, like maybe there’ll be a duplex in a not-too-bad part of town with the Mayfield-Munson name on it. She’s good at that kind of thing, according to Jonathan. Steve wouldn’t really know.

It’s really obvious that Jonathan doesn’t know how to be around Steve. Like, how do you hang out with the guy who’s got your soulmate’s name etched on his skin by destiny? But somehow they make it work. 

In fact, Steve’s started to take some strange kind of comfort from it. Jonathan’s probably the only other guy who knows what it’s like, this off-kilter funhouse vertigo of Nancy’s choice. It connects the two of them even more than it connects either of them with Nancy, probably. 

Steve doesn’t blame Jonathan anymore, is the point. If—when Nancy comes back to him, they’ll both be better off because Jonathan’s been in their lives. He gets that now.

Anyway, Nancy’s busy with paperwork or yelling at men in suits or whatever it is she’s actually doing, but Steve still wants to see Max and Eddie. Mostly Max, to be honest, but it’s not like he doesn’t want to see Eddie too. He barely knows the guy, but he thinks it’s pretty normal that he feels some kind of connection or bond or whatever. It’s normal, after going through some shit with another guy his own age, to want to get to know him a little more. 

Of course, Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson isn’t exactly normal, so Steve tries not to feel hurt when he opens the door and Eddie’s whole body flinches back, arms coming up protectively, eyes big and scared. 

“Sorry,” says Steve, suddenly feeling like he should’ve knocked. “Didn’t mean to startle you, dude.”

Eddie bows from the waist, which looks fucking ridiculous when he’s sitting up on the bed hooked up to a bunch of monitors and stuff. He looks way better than the last time they’d been in the same room. 

“Not at all, good sir,” he drawls. “Welcome to my humble abode. Sorry I can’t offer you any refreshments; we’re shockingly low on pudding cups.”

“Right,” says Steve. He’d forgotten the way Eddie talks and how it makes him feel two steps behind sometimes. Like Dustin, kind of, but not as annoying for some reason. Maybe Eddie’s a little nicer about it, he guesses, though nice isn’t exactly a word he’s ever associated with Eddie Munson before. 

Without really meaning to, he glances at Eddie’s wrist. It’s tucked casually away against his stomach, half-hidden by the hospital sheets. 

“Yeah, uh,” says Eddie. “Henderson…said you asked about. You know.”

Steve feels betrayed, even though he knows he shouldn’t. He hadn’t told Dustin not to say anything, because it wasn’t—it wasn’t fucking relevant to anything, so why would Dustin even mention it? Goddamn asshole kid. 

Eddie holds out his arm, wrist up, fingers loosely curled. 

“Doesn’t bite,” he says, so Steve takes the invitation and comes closer. He almost reaches out to grab Eddie’s hand, but that would be a weird thing to do, so he doesn’t. 

After a moment, Steve says, “I just don’t get why you’d do that.”

Eddie cocks his head. “No? You don’t get why someone might not want to do exactly as they’re told, Ozzy?”

Steve doesn’t know what he expected. Just the typical Munson rebel bullshit after all. But he’s here, and Max is sleeping, so he might as well throw himself into the shiny plastic chair and say, “Whatever, man. How’re you doing?”

As Eddie launches into a convoluted story about some nurse feud he’s been eavesdropping on, Steve makes sure not to let his gaze drift to the obscene blob blotting out the fine tendons and blue veins on his wrist; doesn’t wonder at all about what else that ink might be covering up, and definitely doesn’t wonder why Eddie would want to throw away his one and only universe-approved shot at true love. 

What would be the point?