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carolperkinsexgirlfriend · 11 months ago

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Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 113

Part 1 Part 112

Even perfect moments must end, and Steve’s ready to leave this one. He doesn’t regret his chosen locale, but the room’s dark now, and the shadows are starting to loom the way they would when he was a child.

His legs are stiff when he gets up off Eddie’s lap, hips creaking as they realign.

Steve doesn’t make it into the bedroom proper before Eddie calls out, “wait!” He snatches the hem of Steve’s jacket. It bunches awkwardly as Steve twists to look back at Eddie. “Shit, ow, ow, dead legs.”

Eddie’s stumbling upright, hanging onto Steve’s jacket for dear life as he tries to use it to pull himself to his feet. Steve grabs his forearm and hauls him up, almost buckling himself when Eddie throws his arms around his shoulders. “Hang on, hang on, let me—” he says, reaching around Steve, and suddenly there’s light.

Eddie’s curls are hanging in front of Steve’s face, tickling his nose as he retracts his hand from the light switch outside the closet that he’d flicked on.

It’s jarring after so long in the dull light, but Eddie’s beaming when he pulls back to look in Steve’s face, smile brighter than any light Steve’s ever seen.

Steve smiles back, helpless in the face of his stupid dimples. He reaches out to thumb one of them, and it deepens as Eddie laughs and nuzzles into the touch.

“Wait, stop distracting me!”

Steve twists his thumb around in the dimple before tweaking his cheek between pointer and thumb like a doting grandmother. Eddie smacks his hand.

“Stop it!”

“You love it,” Steve says, trailing his fingers down his cheek to settle at the join between neck and shoulder, fingers pushing beneath his t-shirt and resting there.

“Whatever, dude,” Eddie replies. He looks down at his own hands as he spins his rings the way he does when he’s nervous. “It was supposed to be romantic.” He says it with all the same inflections as Steve had, smiling like nothing makes him happier than mocking Steve.

Steve squeezes his shoulder until it drops for its tense position. “Well?” he asks. “Romance me, then.”

Eddie snorts, cheeks pinkening. Steve watches his fingers dance from ring to ring to ring before pulling one of his pinkie and holding it in his palm.

Steve squints down at it. Eddie’s mussed bangs partially block his view, but he sees enough to recognize it.

It’s the smallest and most delicate of all Eddie’s rings—a thin silver band with a tiny green gem inlaid in the center. Aside from showering and sleeping, it perpetually rests on Eddie’s left pinkie finger.

Eddie slips it on Steve’s own pinkie. It fits snuggly below his knuckle, already warm from Eddie’s body heat. Steve stares down at it, transfixed. Eddie’s hands look naked without his rings, but on Steve, it looks almost bizarre to have even the one finger adorned.

Steve wiggles his finger around, watching the metal catch the light pleasingly.

Eddie’s smirking when Steve looks up at him. “I don’t know if you remember, but that little bad boy’s the one that fell out of your pants.”

It takes a minute for the memory to click. “In the Upside-Down?” he asks, looking down at the ring with new eyes. “When your hand got stuck in my pants?”

Eddie sputters, muttering something that sounds like, “don’t’ say it like that,” before he raises his voice and continues, “just feels right to give it back.”

He reaches fingers out to twist the ring on Steve’s own finger. The glide’s not smooth—it catches on Steve’s clammy skin as he watches, transfixed.

“We’ve come full circle, you know?”

Once he’s finished speaking, he pulls his Steve’s hand up to his lips, placing such a soft kiss against the ring that Steve’s breath catches.

“Thanks,” Steve croaks out, choking in the moths fluttering away in his lungs. There’s an infestation in there. He puts a hand on his own chest after Eddie lowers their hands and swears he can feel them flapping. “Are you ready to get the hell out of here?”

He doesn’t wait for a response, just turns, pulling Eddie along by their still-joined hands. Eddie clicks the light switch by the closet off, and they stumble the rest of the way to the bedroom door in complete darkness.

“I don’t know, this might be my last chance to make a coming out of the closet joke.”

The hallway’s dark when Steve opens the door, so he clicks on the light, unwilling to stumble down the stairs in the dark.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, not turning around as he begins his descent.

“You know because we just made out in a closet?” Steve hums questioningly and Eddie starts up again. “Stevie, you know? Because I’m gay?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Eddie doesn’t respond until Steve’s at the bottom of the stairs. “Angel, are you serious?” He spins Steve around, latching onto his shoulders and peering into his eyes. “Are you fucking with me?”

Steve, who’s decidedly not fucking with him and is frankly entirely lost, just blinks up at him where he’s leaning forward on the last stair.

He shrugs, entirely lost.

They stare at each other in silence, maintaining intense eye contact the entire time.

Eddie cracks first. “Oh my god,” he says, leaning forward precariously on his perch to smoosh his face into Steve’s shoulder, groaning. “How did this happen?”

“I’m…sorry?” Steve says, patting Eddie’s shoulder in consolation of what appears to have been a mighty blow.

“I thought at least Carol would have told you.”

“Shit, Carol!” Steve turns quickly, striding toward the kitchen and more importantly, the phone. It’s only after he’s already moved that he remembers Eddie was leaning on him for balance. By then, Eddie’s already sputtering as he slips down the first step, slipping down to the ground floor, luckily staying upright. “I promised I’d call her right away.”

He lets his fingers do his thing, and Carol picks up so quickly that the phone barely rings. “Well?” she demands, voice crackling with impatience through the line.

“I told him,” Steve replies, knowing without asking what she wanted to hear. Eddie shuffles up behind him and hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder, pressing his ear to the back side of the phone. “And he kissed me.”

Carol squeals like they’re at sleepover, and Eddie wraps his arms around Steve’s waist.

“Did you follow our plan?”

Steve grimaces at the thought of standing here through Carol’s teasing with Eddie as a devout witness. “For the most part,” he hedges, cringing when that makes Eddie laugh.

“What does that mean?” she demands.

Eddie snatches the phone from him, holding it out in front of them both as he says, “our boy here went off script.” Eddie squeezes Steve’s waist, leaning forward when the tinny sound of Carol’s laugh filters through. “Had me half convinced he was ditching me for you and Hagan.”

Carol’s shrieking with laughter at this point. Steve stares, mortified at the phone as Carol yells, “I told you we should’ve written it down!”

Steve sinks into Eddie’s chest, mortified as Eddie buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and shakes with laughter.

Steve snatches the phone out of his hand and pushes it hard against his other ear, hoping that’ll muffle any horrible thing she says enough that Eddie won’t be able to hear it.

“Shut up,” Steve hisses, like staying quiet will somehow make Eddie unaware of how warm Steve’s cheek is where it’s pressed against his forehead.

“Are you going to talk to Loverboy with that mouth?” she asks. He can almost hear the way her eyes are twinkling as she says it.

Steve groans, letting his chin sink into his own chest. He closes his eyes, ready to be somewhere else for a while. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stopper his ears up, and Carol’s not done.

“You know, if things don’t work out with Munson—”

“They will!”

“Hagan might be out of the picture, but Barb and I could always leave a little room between us for a ménage à troi—"

Steve hangs up.

“Ready to go?” Steve asks brightly.

Eddie starts laughing again when the phone starts to ring, but dutifully follows when Steve keeps walking to the front door.

The click of the lock sounds final when he twists the key in.

There’s a missing spot on his keyring where it used to have its home. But it’s never belonged on the same ring as the Munson’s trailer key, so he puts it back in its hiding spot with no hesitation.

He does hesitate when he pulls out his keyring. There’s not much left on it—the Munson’s trailer key and his car keys. That’s all there is.

He hesitates, fingers hovering over his car keys. He’s been hesitating over this for weeks. Since he’d first gotten back from the Upside-Down and the beemer stuck out like a sore thumb in the driveway.

Since his Dad had held out his beckoning hand in the hospital room and demanded the keys back. He’d cleared out all his belongings that week, waiting for them to tow it away, take the last thing aside from his name that ties them together.

But, it’d been rotting in the Munson’s driveway ever since.

And Steve’s still hesitating—always, always, hesitating.

But then Eddie asks, “Stevie?” and he pulls them off the ring like it’s nothing.

He opens the driver’s side door and tucks the keys into the visor where he used to hang his sunglasses.

“Are you okay with walking home?” Steve asks, turning his back on the car, and the house, and this life for the last time.

Eddie’s brow is furrowed as he meets Steve’s eyes, but whatever he sees must appease him because soon enough he’s smiling, something dangerously close to pride shining in his eyes.

“Of course,” he says, skipping up to Steve’s side and matching him step for step as they walk down the Harrington’s long driveway. “But, if you were going to pull this, why didn’t I just follow you in my van?”

He bumps their shoulders together, good-natured and teasing even while facing a long walk home in the dark.

“I wasn’t sure I’d actually do it until I’d already done it,” Steve replies, stepping off the driveway and onto the smooth sidewalk that only the rich neighborhoods in Hawkins seem to have.

“Yeah,” Eddie replies, so softly in the quiet of the night. “It makes perfect sense.”

Hawkins is a small town, but here in the dark on an abandoned street, it feels safe enough to reach out and take Eddie’s hand.

Part 114

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie upsidedown au #my fic #huzzah!!!! Originally I WAS going to have the car towed. But I think it works better as Steve making the choice to let go of the ties #that come with it. Yes. He could've given it to his dad when he asked in the hospital. but that would've been an FU to steve and this #is more of an FU to them since it's very. Ok whatever. I don't need you and I don't even want to see you to TELL YOU THAT #anyway. this is the end of the getting together era. Everyone is on the same page. Carol knows. Boom

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