#and then they start swapping Steve stories and Steve is like: oh no | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ladykailitha · 2 months ago

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Around the World Part 7

I know I said that Nanny would be out this week, but I just finished this and am really wanting to get it out as soon as possible and that includes the epilogue.

But if I time it right, this series and Hellfire will end the same week and I'll be able to return to some kind of normal schedule instead of pumping these out on a fucking grinder.

That said, I probably won't do a Christmas story with the way things are right now. But we'll see the closer we get to the holiday.

In this we get the proper Jack the Ripper tour and the author has opinions, okay! Steve draws attention to himself at the Paris Opera house. Murray is a bit too knowing. And of course as @val-from-lawrence guessed, visited the Catacombs!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

They had done the Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral during the day and got ready for the Bauman Experience as Murray called it. They all had a flashlight and went to go meet him where they had the night before.

They caught him dealing with some obnoxious tourists.

“Oh thank god!” the Karen cried. “An American. Could you please explain to this woman that we only have dollars to pay with. She has to take it!”

Murray blinked at her for a moment. “Well that is quite the cock up, you absolute muppet. Are you dead from the neck up? British pound sterling is the brass here, you silly cow!”

The woman’s head reared back in shock, clutching her chest. “I beg your pardon!”

“To make it perfectly clear,” Murray said leaning forward into her space. “You fucked up, you moron. Are you really that stupid? Dollars aren’t the currency here, the British pound is. Just like you can’t use the pound anywhere but here, you can’t use the dollar anywhere but America so why don’t you go to an ATM or bank and get it exchanged. Or and here’s the really neat part about living in the age of technology, use or credit or debit card and your bank does the conversion for you.”

When she started sputtering angrily, Murray waved her off. “Now, shoo! I’ve got actual paying customers waiting for me.”

Murray turned to the four of them with a smiled. “Well, hello! Welcome. Now that things are dark and therefore sufficiently spooky, let’s take you on a proper tour of Jack’s slaying grounds.”

He went through the different murders until he got to the double murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.

“Now,” he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “Miss Stride is usually considered his third victim and that he was interrupted, moving on to Miss Eddowes. But I think Stride was a copycat. The person only knew the bodies were mutilated, but not how. So for me, I don’t count her in the confirmed kills.”

Robin nodded sagely. “I don’t either. There was far too little evidence to prove he had been frightened off, because otherwise Eddowes would have been more brutal than it was. He would have been angry he couldn’t finish with Stride. You would have expected her to look like what Mary Kelly’s body looked like, not cool and calm.”

Murray smiled up at her. He turned to Eddie. “I really like her. She’s clever.”

Robin blushed and ducked her head.

A short time later, just as they were wrapping up the Kelly murder, Murray stopped. He looked at a pair of older teenagers and then back at the group.

Chrissy picked up on it first. “You thinking what, I’m thinking, Mur?”

Murray turned to her and cocked his head to the side, considering. He nodded and Chrissy pursed her lips.

Steve caught on just as quick. “Eds, baby. I think those boys may have guessed who you are, love.”

Robin and Eddie shared a concerned glance.

“Fuck,” Eddie huffed. “I liked this jacket.”

Robin grabbed it from him and gave him her jacket. “Mine doesn’t look as fancy,” she explained pulling his jacket on. “Just like Boston, peeps!”

Murray tilted his head to the side and did a quick Google search. “Or... if you’d like, my car is literally around the corner.”

The four of them stopped swapping clothes and looked up at him.

“That’s easier,” Steve said. “Who’s all for easier?”

The other three raised their hands and they followed Murray to his car. Robin sat up front while Steve and Chrissy covered Eddie between them.

“Drop me off at the hotel,” Steve said, tapping on Murray’s shoulder. “I’ll check us out and then meet you at Shakespeare’s Head.”

Murray looked behind him and grinned. “Smart thinking.”

Eddie had changed into a trucker hat and a puffy hunting vest over sturdy blue jeans and thick work boots.

“Kids and their cameras these day,” Murray huffed, sliding a pint of beer over at Steve as he sat down between Robin and Chrissy. “So what’s the story with loverboy here?” he asked Eddie, cocking his head to indicate Steve.

“He’s not out,” Eddie said dryly. “His parents are complete assholes who could and would make things very difficult for him if he was.”

“Nothing says asshole parents,” Murray said with a nod, “quite like those that have the money to make you miserable.”

Steve snorted. “You’ve got that right. But I’m more than equipped to make it work.” He half shrugged. “I’ve been doing it for almost a year.”

Murray’s went wide and he gave an opened mouthed smile. “Have you really? I would have never guessed. Good job! ”

“How did you spot the kids, by the way?” Robin asked around her fruity cocktail.

“Oh,” Murray said, ducking his head a bit. “You’re walking around a small group of people at night in a bad area of London. Whitechapel isn’t as bad as it was in Jackie’s time, but it’s still not a good neighborhood. You have to keep an eye out for people, but especially older teens wishing to knock you over for a bit of loose change.”

Steve cleared his throat and ducked his head. “I am about to ask the most bougie question imaginable. And you can tell me to go to hell if I’m out of line here.”

Murray’s eyebrows went up and he leaned back in his chair. “Wha’cha got, kid?”

Steve licked his lower lip as he tried to word this in a way that wasn’t instantly offensive. “How entrenched are you in this job?”

“Not very,” he replied with a shrug. “I’m just moving through the world enjoying myself and taking jobs that would be fun. I’ve got more than enough money. Why?”

“We were talking in our group chat,” Chrissy explained taking over from a very embarrassed Steve, “and we thought we’d offer you a job as main look out and part time driver for when we’re in Europe. You really saved Eddie today and we could really use someone like you with us.”

Murray glared at her. “You sure I wouldn’t cramp your little foursome you’ve got going on here’s style?” He made a little circling motion with his hand to indicate all of them.

Robin shook her head. “It’ll make it harder for people to recognize a quartet if it suddenly became a quintet. Plus, we’d pay for your room and board. None of us are skint, believe you me.”

“We’ll be staying in haunted hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts,” Eddie added. “But we won’t force you to join us. We can put you up in a nice place nearby and we join back up whenever we go out.”

Murray eyed them suspiciously until Steve slid over an envelope. He picked it up and pulled out a check. His eyes went wide. “That’s quite the pretty penny.”

“That’s half,” Robin huffed, crossing her arms and throwing herself against the back of the chair. “You’ll get the other half once we leave Europe for Asia.”

“All that for a month’s worth of driving you four around and making sure fans and paparazzi don’t find Eddie here?” Murray asked. “Have you gone crazy?”

Eddie shook his head. “We just want a romantic tour of the spooky places of Europe. I hate the thought Steve getting caught up in something just because I’m recognized everywhere I go and he isn’t.”

Murray licked his lips slowly as his eyes narrowed. “That’s not how that’s usually said.”

Steve frowned and tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean? How is what said?”

Robin put her hand on his elbow as he bristled slightly at his tone.

“Usually people will say ‘famous and they’re not’,” Murray said thoughtfully, “he said ‘recognized’. Meaning Stevie here is famous too, but not in a way people would recognize him on the street. What is a famous painter or some shit?”

She cocked her to the side and said dryly, “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

Murray laughed. Just full on cackled. “Have I mentioned how much I like her? Because I really like her.”

Eddie leaned forward to put his elbows on the table. “So what do you say, Murray?” he asked tilting his head to the side. “You want to work for me again?”

Murray slipped the check into his coat pocket and stuck out his hand. “I think you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Their first stop on the Continent was Paris and the catacombs. Eddie was still trying to figure out how Robin did that one. It had been closed to the public for years.

Robin just smirked and said, “Well we aren’t the public.”

Steve was also sure they didn’t open it up to anyone who opened their wallet, either, but wisely stayed silent. Plus he was having fun watching Chrissy and Robin run circles around Murray in terms of sheer knowledge.

“Um...Stevie?” Eddie murmured so the trio couldn’t hear him. “Can I hold your hand? It’s getting a little creepy in here.”

Steve held out his hand, the one that had the little guitar on the inner wrist. Eddie looked down at the offered hand with a fond smile. He took the offered hand and their tattoos matched up. Eddie felt braver with every step knowing that Steve would always be there to hold his hand through the darkness.

Chrissy looked back at them and grinned at their clasped hands. She sped up her walk just a little, forcing Murray and Robin to speed up to match her pace, leaving the two love birds the privacy they so richly deserved.

Once they were out in the sunlight and among the city once again, Eddie refused to let go of Steve’s hand.

Steve looked at their joined hands and then back at Eddie. Eddie gave him his brightest smile and Steve was smitten. Even more so than before. He just loved him so much.

They toured the Paris Opera house and Eddie pulled out a cape and mask.

“Sing for me my angel of music!” he said to Chrissy.

She burst out laughing. “My name may be Christine, but I really don’t think they’d want me shattering the glass.”

Eddie turned to Robin who waved her arms in front of her. “No way! I sing like a frog in heat!”

“No.” Was all Murray said.

Steve raised an eyebrow and Eddie grinned.

“Sing!” Eddie crowed.

Steve took a deep breath and belted out that high note, held it perfectly and then took a bow.

Murray blinked and slow smile spread over his features. “You’re in one of those bands with the masks aren’t you? Like Sleep Token or The Fallen, huh? That’s Eddie here said recognized and not famous. Good on you.”

They all shared looks of concern.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Murray huffed, holding up his hands in surrender. “And I’m certainly not even going to try and guess which band it is.” He pulled out his phone and messed around on it for a while.

During which they all watched with ever increasing dread. The silence seemed to stretch out on and on.

Then Chrissy’s phone pinged. Everyone jumped as she scrambled for her phone. She opened it up and blinked a moment.

“You signed a blanket statement NDA?” she asked handing her phone to Robin. “Why?”

Murray licked his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. “Did it suck when Corroded Coffin pulled out of my management causing a shit ton of other people pulling out, too? Sure. But that’s the nature of the business. One that I had been in for over twenty years. I took it as a sign from the universe to retire and enjoy my life. Unlike the CC boys pulling out on Nancy Wheeler because she about to do some pretty shady shit. And I say that having been part of a business that used to be built on shady ass shit.”

Chrissy coughed and looked away to hide her smile.

“I’m guessing Steve’s band is why Corroded Coffin went nuclear on her in the first place?”

Steve looked over at Eddie and then nodded. “She was an ex-girlfriend and she tried to hold that over my head to get me to work with her.”

Murray let out a long and low whistle. “Shady doesn’t even begin to cover that shit. The void would be fucking closer. Shit.”

Robin handed back Chrissy her phone. “How did you get an NDA that fast anyway?”

“Oh that?” Murray asked with a huff of laughter. “I have a bunch of basic contracts and shit in my Google docs. Things can move fast in this business and it’s a good idea to keep a few on hand. Back in the old days we kept them in our briefcases that we carted around. This is sooo much easier.”

“Smart.”

Murray grinned back at her. He turned to Steve. “Come on, show us what that classical vocal training can really do.”

Steve blushed and began warming up his vocals as Robin grinned.

“You may think you’ve heard Steve sing,” she crowed, “but you’ve ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Then Steve really opened up and began to sing. There was a deepness to his voice that didn’t have anything to do with his range. He was clearly a tenor, but the rich quality to his voice just elevated it somehow.

“Rigoletto,” Murray said nodding appreciatively. “Well done.” He clapped slowly, but it wasn’t mocking. “Your parents must have been livid when you didn’t go into opera.”

Steve snorted. “About as angry as when they found out I was bisexual. They know what I am but if I go public with it...”

“They’ll make your life a nightmare?” he asked. Steve nodded. “I feel for you, kid.”

He looked around and grimaced. “I thick it’s time we make like Opera Ghost and scram. That performance of Steve’s here, is getting more attention than I thought it would.”

They looked around and sure enough there were people pointing at Steve.

“I’m not sure what the Venn diagram of opera and metal fans,” Chrissy said, “but I’m betting it’s not two separate circles.”

“Yeaahhh,” Eddie said with a wince.

He grabbed Steve’s hand and they ran for the doors. Murray and the girls hot on their heels.

Part 8 Part 9

Tag List: CLOSED

1- @mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog

2- @gregre369 @a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @messrs-weasley @val-from-lawrence

3- @goodolefashionedloverboi @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog @irregular-child @blondie1006

4- @yikes-a-bee @bookworm0690 @anne-bennett-cosplayer @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten

5- @genderless-spoon @y4r3luv @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt

6- @disrespectedgoatman @dawners @thespaceantwhowrites @tinyplanet95 @garden-of-gay

7- @iamthehybrid @croatoan-like-its-hot @papergrenade @cryptid-system @counting-dollars-counting-stars

8- @ravenfrog @w1ll0wtr33 @child-of-cthulhu @kultiras @dreamercec

9- @machete-inventory-manager @useless-nb-bisexual @stripey82 @dotdot-wierdlife @kal-ology

10- @sadisticaltarts @urkadop @chameleonhair @clockworkballerina

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #rockstar au #rockstar steve harrington #rockstar eddie munson

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madelynraemunson · 3 months ago

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HEY MADDY, WHAT’S ON TV? 📺

𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐭 (…𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬) part 1/2

🥡 steddie x freaky friday fanfiction • RATED: NC-17 🥡

SUMMARY: Dustin’s science experiment goes horribly wrong and his two ‘bickering besties’ have to suffer the consequences.

WORD COUNT: 11.4k words

CONTENTS CONTAIN: (EASTER) EGGS, WHEAT, METAL, PARALLELISMS, A PINCH OF COMEDY, ANGST, AND LOTS OF SWEARING

ALLERGENS: CHEESY, CORN(Y), SHELLFISH (sorry eddie)

author's note: might put this on ao3 idk this one's a big boi.... hey y'all! i’m a little late to the steddie body swap train, but have arrived nonetheless! also i’m so stoked that jamie lee curtis and lindsay lohan are currently working on a freaky friday 2!! one of my fave childhood movies and i can’t believe we’re getting a parte dos :,) also, jake alan = corroded coffin in this AU

🥠

“Jesus Chr— what did you do to my hair?!”

“What did you do to MINE?!”

Perhaps a rewind is necessary. Metaphorically, of course. Time travel’s not real! ;)

◄ ◄ ◄ R E W I N D 🎞️

The year is 1989. Camp Knowhere. And since it’s the last year before he ages out of summer camp, Dustin Henderson is determined to 'WOW' everyone with his newest invention.

“They’re kinda like boner pills.”

“Oh...! WOW...?”

It’s not the weirdest thing Steve's heard come out of Dustin's mouth. In fact, he's practically immune to insanity at this point, having been surrounded by hormone-driven teenagers for a month and a half straight.

“Look I know, it sounds crazy,” Dustin pleads. “But imagine being able to walk a mile in someone's shoes just by eating a cookie. They'd be like the Viagras of empathy!"

Again, not the weirdest thing Dustin has said.

And for as long as Curly keeps hanging out with Eddie Munson, his Other Older Male Friend (O.O.M.F.) constantly like he has been all summer, it certainly won’t be the last.

Being a volunteer camp counselor hasn’t panned out as expected for Steve Harrington.

For the past six weeks, Dustin has spent most of his time locked in his cabin trying to perfect his new creation. But he's been MIA for so long, Steve hasn’t been able to teach him how to start a fire, pitch a tent, or even pick Dustin's brain about being his guest for Show and Tell.

Making s’mores. Canoeing. Telling scary stories in the dark. Dustin and Steve are missing out on actual summer activities. The real reason he signed up to be counselor in the first place.

But you know who has been able to spend time with Dustin?

"Eddie and I spent almost every night trying to come up with good fortunes," Henderson boasts.

Not the counselor, but the Certified Loiterer.

Steve bitterly kisses his teeth. “That’s awesome, man! But hey, speaking of spending—"

"They are so clever too. You gotta hear 'em!"

"I'm sure they are! But now that you're practically finished, I was sorta hoping—"

“AND,” Dustin adds. “if you get a good one you can add ‘in bed’ after for some comic relief.”

Steve crosses his arms as he finds himself fading back into silence.

“You are destined for great adventures…in bed,” Curly smirks, waving a fortune in Steve’s face. “You will be met with great luck this week... in bed. You are a pleasure to have around…in bed.”

“Agh, please tell me one of Harrington’s lays said that,” comes a voice. “Otherwise this interaction is very concerning.”

Dustin gasps. “EDDIE!”

Speaking of The Devil.

Like nails on a chalkboard, in walks Eddie Munson with his fucked up voice, fucked up rep, fucked up hair, and a fucked up sense of humor to match.

“Hey, Henderson,” Eddie gives a curt nod. “Hey, Steve.”

“Munson.”

“I was just telling Steve about my fortune cookies,” says Dustin. “I can’t wait to win people’s hearts over at Show and Tell, along with my spotlight secret weapon.”

“What’s your spotlight secret weapon?” Steve inquires.

“You’re looking at him,” Eddie quips. “I’m Dustin’s music act for his Show and Tell.”

There’s a pang in Steve’s heart that he wishes wasn’t there. All summer, the Retired Cub Scout had been secretly hoping that Dustin would ask him to be his Show and Tell buddy. He had so many survival skills up his sleeve that he wanted the little twerps to know before they age out.

But the stars had other plans, he supposes.

“My friend’s friend’s dad is a music scout for Cardinal Records,” Dustin explains. “If he shows up and sees Eddie play, Corroded Coffin may have a chance!”

“Yup,” Eddie nods. “We’re performing our new song Take Me Away.”

He hands Steve a piece of crinkled paper from his back pocket, to which Steve reads after clearing the lump marinating in his throat.

“Don’t wanna grow up, I wanna get out. Hey, take me away,” Steve reads.

“Aren’t the lyrics so metal?!” Dustin beams in admiration.

“They’re uh, very edgy…” Steve shrugs.

“And incredibly fitting, when you consider the circumstances. Just wait ‘til you hear Eddie and his band perform it!”

“I think I’ll be busy with camp duties...” Steve grimaces, handing the sheet back over to Eddie. “Sorry.”

“No worries, they will just perform in your garage. They still gotta practice. Been needing another place to do so too."

Steve's eyes widen.

“What?!” he shakes his head. “Absolutely not. When did we agree on this?”

“Uh, beginning of summer?" Dustin points out. "You said you’d be willing to accommodate any of my needs. Especially since my mom’s gone to her spicy book retreat and basically threw away keys to the house.”

Steve now recalls telling Dustin that. But nowhere did it say babysitting his replacement would be in the cards.

"I'm sorry Harrington, I know I'm kinda butting in…" Eddie acknowledges.

Finally, something he and Steve can agree on.

"But we're kinda desperate at the moment, so it would mean the world. You won't even know we're there."

“It’s still no!” Harrington blubbers. “Okay? With the loud music and Eddie’s screaming, I’ll have the Loch Nora book club moms with pitchforks at my door. We have a reputation to uphold.”

“Who’s to say the Loch Nora moms don’t want in on all the angsty fun?” Eddie smirks. “Corroded Coffin’s an acquired taste, but I’m sure your… progressive… neighborhood wouldn’t mind.”

"It's not that," Steve shakes his head. "Even though we’re ‘progressive’, my neighborhood is still very much suburban-families-with-young-kids. They'd call the cops on us, for sure."

But Loch Nora was just a decoy for Steve’s true feelings. If everyone sees how cool Eddie is, they’re going to make him their Comfort Grown Up. Then where would Steve go?

Especially if they caught a glimpse of those big, brown eyes and the way they glisten in the amber sunset. And apparently Dustin’s caught wind of this Munson Magic as well; because not too long after, he’s imitating Eddie, the coercion-via-cuteness factor ramping higher on his part. And how could Steve say no to his lil face?

“Just this one time, Steve?” Dustin begs. “Please, please, pleaaase?”

“Dustin…” Steve shakes his head.

“Pleaaase,” a pouty Eddie chimes in, slyly gazing up at Steve through his long, batty lashes. “We’ll behave, Stevie. We promise.”

But Harrington is standing his ground. Eddie already stole his best friend away from him. His gig. His spot at the Cool Adults table. Did he want Harrington’s life too?

“NO!” Steve insists. "NO!"

“YEAAAH!” Eddie croaks into the microphone while he seductively strums at his guitar. “YEEEEAAAHHHH!”

Performing in Steve’s garage was a YES-go after all. Especially if free bud has anything to do with it.

"This dude and his band are pretty good," Argyle comments as he takes a long, savoring drag from his hefty blunt. "Corroded Coffin, man. They're gonna be big one day."

"Just wait til you hear his guitar solo," Jonathan adds. "Eddie's been working on it all summer for Dustin’s show.”

The walls of the Harrington household are forced to withstand a migraine-inducing bass while everyone — but Steve — jams out, losing themselves in a song about wanting to stay young forever.

“Don’t wanna grow up, I want to get out. Hey! Take me away…”

Jealousy festers within the host as he watches, taking in the sight of an awestruck Dustin playing his air guitar alongside Eddie, resonating with the lyrics the way he passionately yells,

“I wanna shout out, ‘take me away…away away away’…”

“Someone take me away,” Harrington’s inner monologue spews.

But it’s not that Steve hates the song, nor is he having a miserable time with everybody. It’s not that he hates Eddie or his stupid raspy voice, or the way he makes the guitar sing with every calculated twiddle of his fingers and every provocative buckling of his knees. In fact, it’s the opposite. Steve just didn’t want to admit that Dustin’s O.O.M.F. — and the other members of Corroded Coffin — were actually… pretty cool.

And judging by the fact that Eddie was most likely Dustin’s first choice for the talent show, there was a cornier, more ominous second thing that Steve isn’t willing to admit: it’s that the exclusion really hurts him.

“Same old SHIT,” Eddie sings. “Never ends.”

“WHOA!” Harrington exclaims, waving his disapproving hands in the air.

The band stops the song immediately, the negative feedback from the amp plaguing the air while they stare around in confusion.

“What?” Eddie demands.

Any chance there was for Steve to try to humble 'The Freak', he took. And clearly this time around, there was no hesitation.

“You’re not really gonna say the S word when you perform at Show and Tell, are you?”

“The S word?” Munson retorts. “What, is this preschool?”

Ba-dum-tss! goes the drummer.

"Gareth," Eddie scowls.

Gareth Emerson digresses with a sheepish shrug.

“No," Steve shakes his head. "But it’s still a summer camp for kids.”

Eddie chuckles at this. “Come on, Harrington. Don’t act like YOU weren’t cussing up a storm at their age. The kids are all in their rebellious phase anyways. They’re gonna love it.”

Eddie’s known Steve since elementary school. This is the same guy who held swear contests, who cussed because he thought it made him look ‘mature’. The same guy that used to call women “bitches”. The same guy who almost got suspended because he and Tommy H. were yelling out slurs during an assembly, but luckily his superintendent mom was there to pull some strings to simmer it down to one afternoon of detention.

Harrington couldn’t possibly choose now to care about profanities.

“I’d rather you not bend the rules of Camp Knowhere.”

Bend the rules?!

It doesn’t take too long for Eddie to figure out that the issue goes beyond Camp Knowhere. In fact, both of Dustin’s O.O.M.F.s know that.

“Why the sudden change of character, Harrington?” Eddie crosses his arms. “Huh? After all these years?”

"All these years, what do you mean all these years?"

"You know exactly what I mean."

Captivated, nosy eyes bounce back and forth between the two as they argue... on and on and on and on.

“This happens every time,” Jonathan hisses to Robin at a low whisper so that they don’t hear. “Do you think they ever get tired of it?”

"I actually don't know what you mean," Steve counters. "And quite frankly, I feel like you don't seem to really know me at all."

“Hey, I’m just following your lead,” Eddie shrugs. “You never took time to get to know ME when we were in school. Unless I had something you and your friends wanted of course.”

“So all of this is MY fault?”

“I never said it was.”

It’s almost ritualistic at this point, the arguing.

Just then, Gareth starts up again, issuing a theatrical drumroll to ease the tension. It only seems to make it worse, judging by how Eddie and Steve hiss at him immediately.

“GARETH!” “EMERSON!”

The drummer refrains once more.

Steve is quick to pick up where they left off. “I can read between the lines.”

“Crazy thing to say for someone who’s paid people to write his book reports.”

“I’m just…looking out for everyone, okay?” Steve snaps, reverting the conversation back to the kids. “The children might not care, but it may look bad on the counselors. And I like my summer gig, spending time with my best friend. I don’t wanna jeopardize it.”

A self-serving response. Eddie knew to not put it past Harrington.

Regardless, Eddie chooses to comply. Not to give Steve what he wants, but because Dustin's happiness is on the line. And if his best friend is happy and Corroded Coffin gets a record deal, then Eddie wouldn’t have to deal with Steve Harrington or Hawkins much longer.

The band starts up again and, this time, remains uninterrupted.

Meanwhile, Steve sulks back in his seat, unable to pinpoint why he felt like the issue wasn’t resolved. But he soon realizes that for as long as Eddie Munson is part of the equation, the problem will remain a constant.

“Same old stuff,” Eddie bitterly corrects himself. “Never ends.”

“Fortune cookie, anyone?”

Two hours feel like days when everyone is stoned. And given that everyone’s too tired (and high) to drive themselves home, a sleepover at Steve’s quickly becomes inevitable.

“Did we get the same fortune?” Jonathan asks Argyle.

“No, we didn’t,” he shakes his head. “Guess we’re not feeling sorry for each other tonight.”

Dustin chuckles.

“What are we feeling tonight? I’m thinking pizza.”

Leaving everyone else to decide on munchies, Steve and Eddie appoint themselves as the Designated Clean-Up Crew, searching for and rounding up any trash they see laying around.

“So, what are you up to nowadays?” Steve questions. “Since we graduated high school.”

“Oh, same old, same old,” Eddie offers a tense chuckle. “Still in The Biz, but the money’s good. Thankfully this time I’m doing it without my pops around.”

It strikes a nerve in Steve. He’d give anything to have his dad around.

He also wouldn’t be proud to be in the same position as he was in high school. Didn’t Eddie want to grow as a person?

“That’s amaziiing.” Steve lies.

Uncomfortable now, Eddie clears his throat, shifting his attention back to Steve so that he can eat his own words.

“What about you? What’s The Hair been up to?”

“I work at Family Video and then help out at camp right after.”

“Try bringing that to the career fair,” Eddie scoffs jokingly.

“Sorry?”

“I said great gig you got there,” Munson perjures.

Their gazes meet for a brief, charged moment before quickly averting.

Eddie watches Steve with both curiosity and disdain.

This is who his best buddy is seeing on the side? It’s hard for Eddie to think of anything Dustin and Steve could possibly have in common. What would they even talk about? Maybe the new Brook Shields movie, hair gel, and their favorite ice cream flavors, but that’s just about it. And Steve Harrington doesn’t seem like the best influence for Dustin anyways.

Steve’s eyes flicker towards Eddie, trying to hide his scrutiny behind a thinly veiled expression of disinterest.

He notes the way Eddie’s band tee has seen better days, the sleeves ripped and the print faded, and the way he absolutely reeks of Mary Jane and indistinct rubber from a Spirit Halloween store. If Dustin brought Eddie home to Mrs. Henderson, she’d probably stroke out.

Just then, a very intoxicated Robin chimes in.

“Duuude, Eddie. It’d be awesome if Coffin got this gig.”

“Oh, I know right?” Eddie lights up immediately. “We’d be out of this rugged town once and for all and living life in the big city.”

The distaste for Eddie only amplifies with that statement.

All of Steve’s life, he’s had nothing but good experiences in Hawkins. To have a “rough” upbringing, you had to be looking for trouble. Which is something Eddie and his father, Al seemed to have been doing since the beginning of time.

“What’s so rugged about Hawkins?” Steve challenges Eddie.

“Wouldn’t you like to know…” Eddie mutters.

“I would, actually,” Steve taps his feet impatiently. “Go on, tell the class, Eddie. What is so rough-and-tough about this part of town?”

Eddie knows Steve is trying to set him up. He thinks for a moment, carefully crafting his words before speaking.

“There’s just…” Eddie says with trepidation. “A lack of equal opportunity to succeed. Always has been. But in the city, opportunity is everywhere. For everyone. Indy would be a perfect, clean slate for us.”

It’s like a sock to the face.

Lack of opportunity? Eddie is most definitely looking for problems now. If he wouldn’t consider Steve being nice enough to lend him his garage — even when he didn’t like him — an ‘opportunity’ to succeed, then what would he consider?

“I mean, sure. Hawkins has issues like any other city, but I think there are equal opportunities for everyone,” Harrington protests.

“Very rich coming from you, Suburbia.”

“Uh oh,” Dustin mutters.

Now Steve is pissed.

Does Munson think that just because Steve lives in a nice house he’s never had problems in his life? With that logic, Eddie isn’t going to get himself very far. It’s very evident now, given where he currently is.

“Why can’t you accept the fact that life comes for others too?!” Steve spits. “Life is also hard for me, you know!”

“Guys…” Dustin starts.

A bitter laugh expels from the pit of Eddie’s stomach.

“Life is hard for you?!” Eddie exclaims. “It’s hard for you? How can life be that hard? Hey, I’m Steve Harrington. My life consists of Daddy’s money, wearing hair pomade to the ceiling and getting rejected by girls!”

“Hey, why don’t we play that one song again!” Jonathan suggests. “You know the take me away, away, away, away, away!”

But Steve and Eddie are way too locked in, committed to tearing each other to bits because the other one started it. Eddie wanted to play that game huh?

“Well all YOU know is complaining about the consequences of your own actions!” Steve spews in return. “Oh look, I’m Eddie Munson, I’m painfully self-unaware, I’m inconsiderate of everyone around me, and I commit petty crimes then wonder why the cops hate me. AND I still live with my uncle – AT MY BIG AGE.”

“YOU STILL LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS, HOW IS THAT ANY DIFFERENT?”

“AND! You’re as loud as your guitar. NEW-NEW-NEW-NEWWW. How about you evaluate your priorities if you want a good life, Munson? And make sure you at least have some ammo under your belt before coming for me.”

“Wow,” Eddie laughs. “I don’t know anyone more tone deaf. You think my walk of life was a choice?! Not everyone was handed everything on a silver platter, Steve. Not everyone’s lives are perfect like yours!”

“Sweethearts, anybody?!” Robin butts in, desperately waving the candies in the air. “You are what you eat, and everyone in this room is VERY, VERY SWEET!”

But the boys are only getting started. If this is Robin’s version of sweet, she was about to know what sour is real quick.

“You think my life is perfect?! At least you have a father figure.”

“I want you to assess the room we’re in, Harrington,” Eddie implores. “Family must love you a lot if they’re letting you throw parties and use drugs that a loser like me was nice enough to hook you up with.”

“Leave what I do outside of camp out of this! You know, as a counselor I’m not sure I like my kids hanging out with some loitering criminal all the damn time.”

“Not sure I like them hanging out with someone who acts like an overbearing, insufferable parent.”

“At least I have parents.”

Simultaneous gasps fill the room.

The color drains from Steve’s face when he realizes the damage he’s done. He watches as Eddie seemingly deflates, shrinking himself down at the shoulders, and then sulking in place. A blank stare overcasts his eyes, lips desperately trying not to quiver while in front of an involuntary audience.

“That was not cool,” Steve breathes. “I’m sorry.”

But Eddie is past the point of forgiveness. And caring. Steve’s already embarrassed the fuck out of him, so what’s Dignity at this point? Steve won. Whatever game he was playing.

“You’re right, Steve,” Eddie nods, bitterly. “You have everything I want. So why can’t you just give me this one thing?”

Steve really fucked up this time. He doesn’t even know why he even said that. It isn’t necessarily a brag that Steve has parents if they aren’t active in his life. Did he really want the last word so badly, he willingly let his anger steer the direction of the conversation? Sure, Eddie has backed off now, but the thick veil of suppressed tears did not make it worth it.

“Here,” Eddie quips as he chucks Dustin’s invention at Steve’s chest. “You win. You want a cookie for it?”

Before leaving the room, Eddie helps himself to one as well. Steve watches ashamed as Eddie storms away, not seeming to care who he bumps into on his way out. With the intention to make amends, Steve darts after Eddie, following him to the bathroom only to have the door slammed in his face.

“Eddie!” Steve knocks. “Listen, I’m sorry, okay? I thought I’d gotten over my anger issues and pettiness, so I don’t know why I said all that. It’s something I need to work on, for sure.”

No response. Steve tries again.

“You guys sound really good…” he musters. “I wish I had the courage to put myself out there like that.”

Steve gently taps the door with two fingers now.

“Eddie?”

On the other side of the wall, Eddie is angrily wiping away his tears, upset at himself for letting someone who wears women’s hairspray and Tiger Beat cologne get under his skin.

Giving up now, Steve sighs to himself and turns around to prop his back against the door. And in case Eddie decides to come back out, Steve decides to wait a while longer, reading the fortune from his fortune cookie in the meantime.

“A journey soon begins, its prize reflected in another’s eyes. When what you see is what you lack, then selfless love will change you back.”

“What could that possibly mean?” Steve thinks to himself as he takes a bite from the cookie.

And at the same time on the other side, Eddie also cracks open his cookie. A nice little dessert with some kind words are sure to make him feel better. He reads his fortune.

“A journey soon begins, its prize reflected in another’s eyes. When what you see is what you lack, then selfless love will change you back.”

“…in bed,” he adds with a chuckle.

Just then the ground begins to rumble.

The sudden JOLT causes Eddie to drop his cookie and latch onto the sink for stability. Meanwhile, Former Cub Scout Steve who knows everything about Stop-Drop-and-Roll dives for the nearest piece of furniture, crawling underneath to protect himself from any debris that may fall onto him.

“EVERYONE GET DOWN!”

“JESUS CHRIST!” Eddie yells.

Hawkins doesn’t get many earthquakes. But according to the news, Roane County was due for a big one. This could well be it.

But as fast as the earthquake happens, it fades away. And next thing Eddie knows, he’s taking deep breaths, gathering his composure before he swings open that door.

“Shit — Harrington, are you okay?”

Steve scans the room, looking around for any debris that may block his plight towards safety.

“Yeah I’m fine, thanks Munson,” Steve gulps. He allows Eddie’s firm hand to hoist him up. “Just a bit shaken up. Are you okay?”

Eddie nods his head rapidly. “I’m fine too,” he insists. “I’m just worried about everyone else.”

Running back over to the garage now, a frantic Steve and Eddie call out to their friends to make sure they’re okay. But when they arrive, they’re shocked to see everyone conversing, laughing, and ordering pizza, almost as if nothing had ever happened.

Steve coughs to make his presence known. “Did you guys feel that?”

Everyone turns to them.

“Feel what?” Dustin inquires.

“There was an earthquake.”

“No, there wasn’t?” Robin cocks an eyebrow.

“Yes there was!” Eddie insists in agreement with Steve.

“Are you sure?” “An earthquake?”

“There wasn’t an earthquake.”

“What earthquake?”

“A chicken bake?” Argyle questions, clearly high as shit.

“An earthquake,” Jonathan repeats for him.

“An Earth Cake?!”

“QUAKE!” Jonathan hollers. “EARTHQUAKE!”

“EARTHQUAKE?!” the startled stoner yelps.

“No no no!” everyone yells out, doing their best to contain Argyle’s panic. “No, no, no!”

———

“You’re an asshole, Steve Harrington. I wish I could hate you.”

Eddie winces as his neck partially kinks, due to the fact that Steve was too short-fused to get him a pillow for tonight.

At least the futon is comfortable. After flopping around like a fish out of water for a few minutes, Eddie finally feels completely relaxed. And as he flips through his mental catalog of Dream Scenarios, the aspiring rockstar begins to drift off to Dreamland, envisioning his guitar solo and jamming out with his favorite herd of sheep.

Meanwhile upstairs, Steve is too emotionally uncomfortable to hit the hay.

“Get a grip, Munson,” Steve grumbles, angry at the thought of the freeloader below him. “If you stopped thinking the world is out to get you, maybe you’d actually see some progress in your life.”

After one last fluffing of his pillow, Steve reaches into his drawer and pops a gummy into his mouth, bracing himself for more Camp Knowhere shenanigans that lie ahead and having to deal with the Freakazoid-With-a-Victim-Complex in the morning.

12:00 MIDNIGHT

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ [insert creepy, grandfather clock noises here]

8:00 AM

Obnoxious, fluffy duvet covers stir Eddie awake.

Maybe Steve did come with some goodies after all.

Munson begins to execute his morning routine: a gangly-limbed stretch followed by an exaggerated bellow and blissful smacking of his lips.

BONK.

A lamp on the nightstand interrupts his ritual. It is then that Eddie realizes.

He’s in a bedroom.

“What the—” Munson mutters.

Sitting up slowly now, Eddie takes a moment to assess the room around him.

Trophies and medals. Cologne and hair gel. A work desk with a basketball net over it, and a Tommy Hilfiger pop-up shop in the closet.

He’s in Steve’s room.

But where is Steve?

Curious about the time and day, Eddie instinctively goes to consult his watch that normally rests on his wrist.

It’s not there.

Eddie then looks at his hands…his palms… Not a single blister, callous or hangnail. Those are not his hands.

“Those aren’t mine…” he thinks to himself.

Eddie then runs some stressed fingers through his hair, only to discover that its length is half of what it was when he fell asleep last night.

“That’s not mine either.”

Eddie shoots up immediately. When he finds himself standing, Eddie notices his food belly is gone, and that six pack abs have taken its place. Eddie then stares down at his feet, which are now exponentially larger. And hairier. And his thighs, now they’re a lot bulkier.

Suddenly Eddie’s hands explore his thighs, grazing his quads shortly before going to grope the two plump mounds of tissue behind him, both cheeks comparably twice the surface area of his palms!

“That’s DEFINITELY not mine.”

Absolutely panicked now, Eddie releases his grip on the butt that isn’t his and dashes out the room.

It appears that he is somehow not in his body. And the only person in Loch Nora with a dump truck for an ass — that Eddie knows of — is Steve Harrington.

But if he's Steve, then where is Eddie’s body?

The couch.

Eddie bolts over to Steve’s living room in search of his corpse. And to his surprise, he does find himself there, the chest that was his – but not his – at the same time rising and depressing as he watches himself sleep.

“Christ if that’s not Steve in there, then I’m dead,” Eddie thinks to himself. “And quite frankly, I don’t know which one is worse.”

Eddie clears his throat.

"H-hello? Steve?”

Nothing.

“Steve?” Eddie attempts again. “Hey. Steve. It’s Eddie. Wake up!”

Nothing.

“This is an emergency, Steve. I need you to wake up now, please.”

He gets a good snore out of the entity. Completely frustrated now, Eddie does not hold back.

"This is alarming, Steve! WAKE UP!”

Eddie unearths the bottom half of Steve's…his… body by pushing the blanket aside. When he tugs at his legs, Presumably Steve retaliates, grabbing onto the arms of the sofa to keep him in place.

“EARTH. TO. KING. STEVE!” Eddie screams.

"Whaaat, dude?!" the host in Eddie’s body grumpily demands.

"Aha! So you are Steve!"

"Duh, who the fuck else?" It demands. "Are you still high?"

"If I was, then that would better explain this."

Steve must’ve really done too much last night. Because for a while there, the person who he assumed was Eddie sounded a heck of a lot like him.

"That’s fucking weird," Steve shakes his head, turning over to look at Eddie. "For a second there, you sounded a lot like m—AAAH OH MY GOD!"

Palms clasping his… (well, Eddie’s) mouth now, Steve can only gasp in horror.

"WHO are you?” he demands. “WHAT are you?"

"It's me! It's Eddie!" Eddie gulps. "I'm... I’M INSIDE OF YOU!”

There’s a pause.

“I don't like how I worded that,” he admits.

"Yeah, neither do I..." Steve agrees. Suddenly he squints. "Is that a zit on my forehead?"

He reaches to swat it but Eddie swats him away. Through Steve's gritted teeth, Eddie hisses,

"THAT'S what you're worried about right now? What in the sane hell is happening?!"

“This isn’t the first weird dream I’ve had after taking an edible,” Steve remarks.

“Harrington, this ISN’T a dream. Okay? This is real life.”

“Yeah, okay Munson,” Steve scoffs, finally hoisting himself off of the couch to pace around. “I know a dream when I’m in one. I just gotta… pinch myself or slap myself around and I’ll be awake.”

But Eddie wastes no time.

“OW!” Steve yelps. “You just pinched my nipple!”

“You mean my nipple?”

He does it again.

“OW! Quit it dude, that’s harassment.”

The two make their way over to a mirror in the living room. To test out the impossible, Steve raises his right hand. The mirror shows Eddie doing it. Eddie begins to touch his face. The mirror responds with Steve doing it.

It’s the confirmation they were too in denial to come to terms with. They somehow switched bodies.

“Oh god, I’m…” Steve stammers. “Wow…”

“Oh…GOD!” Eddie shrieks. He inches closer to the mirror. “I’m like an off-brand George Michael!”

“HURTFUL—”

“Harrington!” Eddie exclaims, turning back around to face himself. “What was the last thing you remember from last night?”

“Uhh,” Steve stammers. “A-all I remember was us arguing during dinner time and going separate ways after. And then there was a big earthquake that everyone insists that they didn’t feel. And then…we all went to bed, and I forgot to get you a pillow.”

“It’s okay, I’m over it,” Eddie pants. “Way bigger issues than a pillow right now.”

“And now we’re here.”

The two frantically pace around the living room. How can something like this possibly happen?

"Okay,” Eddie exhales. “Yesterday we were here with everybody. All of us were seemingly having a good time until we got pretty into it. Then the earthquake happened, we went to bed, and woke up sober… but in different bodies. Is this like…a rare phenomenon…some kind of medical emergency?”

“I don’t know, dude,” Steve shrugs. “This has never happened to me before. There has to be a scientific explanation for this."

Suddenly their two brain cells click.

"Henderson," they utter in unison.

“It was probably Dustin’s Empathy science experiment,” Steve infers. “Although I'm not sure how a fortune cookie would take walking-in-another-person's-shoes so damn LITERAL."

"God, we’re cooked!” Eddie groans. “And we can’t tell anyone but our friends about it or else we’re REALLY gonna end up as test subjects!”

Eddie starts biting his new nails and frantically pacing back and forth. Meanwhile, Steve centers in on his breathing before emotionally responding to the situation in front of him.

“Okay…” Steve exhales. “Let me just gather my thoughts… You’re in my body and I’m in your body.”

“...Right,” Eddie nods, annoyed since they’d already established that. “Does it seem less scary now that you’ve said it out loud?”

“No,” Steve shakes his head.

“Alright, cool,” Eddie shrugs. “Just checking.”

They look at each other, absolutely petrified of the reality that has now sunk in. And before they seek any other forms of help, there was one more final thought the two needed to share alone… one O.O.M.F. (Other Older Male Friend) to another, in the comfort of Steve’s living room.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

[cue panicked guitar rift here 🎸⚡️]

“This is so not cool, man, this is SO not cool!”

Argyle, Jonathan, and Robin are the first ones at the scene. Along with Dustin, of course, who is now evidently spiraling.

“I need some air,” Dustin sighs. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god.”

The scientist darts outside for a very reasonable and private mental breakdown. Meanwhile in his absence, everyone else attempts to get their Thinking Caps on.

“I mean…” Argyle pants. “It’s one thing to have a funky acid trip, it’s another to have an out-of-body experience…but this is…this is…”

“Freaky,” Jonathan finishes for him.

“It’s FREAKY!” Argyle agrees. “And it’s not like we can go to the cops, I mean, they'd never open their minds to something like this. They'd just ship us to the Kerley County KOOK HOUSE.”

“Or worse,” Eddie gulps. “The Lab.”

The room is drowned with frantic rambling once again as all the young adults talk over each other.

Will this be the new normal? A head-banging Steve and a preppy Eddie? It sounds like pure nightmare fuel. A disaster waiting to happen. And Dustin only programmed his fortune cookies for this… unintentionally. He didn’t program a way to undo it.

Everyone is running out of ideas. That is until…

“Wait!” Robin exclaims. “What if you guys just…combined?”

The idea is met with retaliation.

“I beg your finest pardon?” “WE WHAT?!”

“Wait!” Eddie exclaims. “No, no, yeah! I get it. What if we… what if we just… RAN… into each other and the force will be great enough to switch us back?”

“Right! Right!” Steve frantically agrees. “Right, the greater the force, the greater the impact, and we’ll be back in our bodies in no time.”

Steve and Eddie are on opposite sides of the room before anyone else can register it. Kicking his foot around like a bull, Eddie warms himself up while Harrington takes deep breaths, grounding himself before the ordeal.

“Are they really about to…” Argyle begins.

“Sh.. sh..” Jonathan stops him.

“I really wanna see how this goes,” Robin adds.

“Okay,” Eddie huffs before he lets out a battle cry. “EN GUARDE!”

“OH GOD!” Steve shrieks.

“AHHHHHH!”

SMACK! PLOP!

Luckily the floor breaks their fall. The commotion grabs the attention of Dustin, who had just finished his meltdown. But at the sight of seeing his two friends attempt to combine, he could feel himself being launched into yet another one.

“Okay,” Dustin sighs as he walks back in. “What the hell?!”

———

“Language, Dusty!”

The next brainiac to consult on the list is Suzie, Dustin’s girlfriend. Spawning from the Mormon Capital of the world (Salt Lake City, Utah), Little Miss Beauty and Brains is known to have a solution for just about anything. Until now, it seems.

“I’m sorry for the language, Suzie. I’m just freaking out,” Dustin blubbers. “It’s not every day my best friends switch bodies and I have no idea how to change them back.”

“So let me get this straight…” Suzie sighs. “Steve is inside of Eddie, and Eddie is inside of Steve.”

“Okay, can we please stop wording it like that?!” Eddie pleads.

“Sorry, Steve.”

“I’M EDDIE!”

“Jiminy Cricket, this is so confusing.”

And what a sight for confused eyes it also is. But as painful as it is to admit, it’s interesting watching “Steve Harrington” stomp at the ground muttering “Jesus H. Christ!” while “Eddie Munson” nitpicks everything about his hair in the mirror.

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” Suzie suggests. “How did this start? What did you use for your ingredients, Dusty Bun?”

“Passionfruit and cohosh,” Dustin answers firmly. “Well-known, NATURAL stimulants of oxytocin.”

“And you said they ate the cookies containing these ingredients?”

“Yes, and they got the same fortune which I programmed for them to feel empathy for each other when it happens. Their bodies should’ve released an immense amount of oxytocin. Instead, they uh well, they switched bodies.”

“Dusty Bun… there is no such thing as an oral oxytocin!”

“Why not?” Steve questions.

“Because it would just get destroyed in the GI tract,” Suzie explains. “Meaning there wouldn’t be any ‘stimulants’ to absorb into the bloodstream.”

“Meaning oxytocin would’ve never been released in the first place,” Eddie’s breath hitches.

“It’s also notorious for being unable to cross the blood-brain barrier,” Suzie adds. “Something always happens before it’s able to. This may as well be that something.”

“But… if it gets destroyed in the stomach…” Dustin wonders. “Then how the hell did Steve and Eddie still end up switching bodies?”

Suzie shoots Dustin a dirty look.

“How the heck…” he corrects himself.

Suzie softens up immediately. “I don’t know. Our Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways. This may have happened for a reason. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I’m sure it serves a Divine purpose.”

“Well, can it SERVE a little faster?” Eddie grumbles. “I’ve got a Show and Tell to practice for and Harrington’s got children to babysit. We obviously can’t do that for each other. People are going to think we’ve gone crazy.”

Suddenly a light bulb goes off in his head.

“Wait. Henderson! Give us a couple more cookies. Maybe if we get the same fortune again, we’ll switch back!”

“NO! No more cookies!” Steve butts in. “Who’s to say you won’t end up inside another person whose body you didn’t wanna be in?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Okay…” Dustin stops him, disgusted at the fact. “Enough.”

“Dustin is right,” Suzie nods. “Enough arguing for now, and no more fortune cookies with matching fortunes until we can find out what’s wrong!”

The boys watch as Suzie walks back towards her desk and returns with some papers and pencils.

“Here. My homework for you two is to write down every little detail there is to know about each other. This includes your day-to-day, your hobbies, and even habits. No one can know what is really going on behind the scenes.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait,” Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t like what you’re implying. We don’t have to… live life as each other… do we?!”

“In the meantime, yes. You do.” Suzie confirms. “And it will be uncomfortable, I’m not going to lie. But what else can we do?”

“Uh, go through all of Dustin’s fortune cookies until we find a pair so Steve and I can ingest THOSE!” Eddie points out.

“Yeah, and there goes BOTH my Show and Tell items!” Dustin hollers.

“Dusty, don’t worry,” Suzie speaks again. “You will get to showcase your friends and fortune cookies at Show and Tell. I’ll be doing my own research to ensure that this happens. This includes talking to some monks, priests, and rabbis. We WILL get to the bottom of this.”

The three leave Suzie’s cabin feeling absolutely defeated.

Of course this would happen the summer Steve finally got his hair under control. And of course this would happen the moment Eddie has a potential record deal at the palm of his hands. Any other circumstance would have been okay, despite the freakiness factor. This was just shit timing if they ever did see it.

And if Suzie can’t fix it, they’re screwed.

When they get far enough away from the girls' cabins, Steve excuses himself to the nearest water fountain. In contrast, Eddie shows himself to the closest Porta-Potty, the safest place for him to have a conversation he wouldn’t be caught dead having.

“Hey God,” Eddie grumbles. “Me again.”

———

Adapting to each other’s lives certainly wasn’t easy.

It started with switching cars.

Steve’s BMW has sensitive brakes. Eddie’s beloved van, Halen, on the other hand requires more force, more aggression, something Eddie believed Steve would bust his toe doing.

And Eddie can only hope that when Steve is running around town as him, he doesn’t embarrass him all too much. He’s already not off to a good start, with a stupid Thundercats t-shirt on and his hair up in a bun.

“And when you’re outside with the kiddos, make sure they wear sunscreen,” Steve advises him. “You're a camp counselor, after all.”

“Got it.”

“And that an epipen is with you at all times,” Steve adds. “Some of the kids have bee and nut allergies and those reactions can be lethal.”

Make sure this. Make sure that. It’s odd for Eddie to be hearing it all in his own voice. Has Steve always been this annoying?

Eventually Eddie gets tired of it and consults his Walkman, blasting “Take Me Away” through his headphones to drown out Steve’s rambling. Rambling on and on and on and on… on and on and on and on….

“Eddie!” Steve shouts. “Are you listening?”

“Don’t wanna grow up I wanna get out,” Eddie sings. “HEY! Take me away.”

Eddie was listening. In fact he listens and pays attention more than Steve knows. He just doesn’t want to give him that satisfaction.

“I’m gonna get you a real job,” Steve says to Eddie.

“A real job?” Eddie tuts. “My job is real. I sell real drugs and bring in real money to help my Uncle afford our really real rent.”

“But I’m not gonna be the one doing it.”

“Sure you are. You’re me.”

“Munson, no!”

“Harrington, yes.”

“I’M NOT SELLING KETAMINE TO MINORS, EDDIE.”

“Aw. But you fit the stereotype,” Eddie smirks, rather cheekily. “Now chop chop, Rick’s expecting royalties on said sales.”

“Maybe I can land you a hospitality job. Or maybe a front desk job. Something that comes with benefits. Something practical.”

“A Munson with a normal job in Hawkins?” Eddie can’t believe his ears. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

Perhaps there is a silver lining in all of this.

For the average Hawkins resident, getting a job is no issue. It was never a choice for Eddie. Given his father’s less-than-cookie-cutter reputation – and Eddie being an involuntary extension of him – he couldn’t believe Steve couldn’t grasp that getting a conventional job is hard. And Eddie always thought Harrington needed some humbling. This is the perfect scenario for it.

“Take your feet off your dash,” Steve grumbles. “Steve Harrington doesn’t do that.”

“AyAy, Captain.”

“And stop head-banging in my body, will ya?” Steve begs. “You’ll break a sweat and un-pomade my hair.”

“God, you’re so anal about everything, Steve!” Eddie scoffs. “I feel sorry for those kids, I really do.”

If Eddie’s going to be walking around in Steve’s body, he at least wanted to relax first. But even that was impossible, given that Steve is a talker and alleged goodie-two-shoes-who-discovered-empathy-on-drugs-and-that’s-all-he-preaches-now (with the rules of a mother whose son was allergic to everything but water).

The car ride is more tense and quiet as the two approach Knowhere. Eddie is quick to scurry out when Steve approaches the drop-off curb, a little speech already prepared from the first nerve Harrington managed to get on in the morning.

“Loosen up that manbun,” Eddie commands once he’s out of the car. “You look like the Buddha went thrifting in Chicago. You also need to unclench your asscheeks a bit more if you wanna be me. And to put more fiber in your diet. How’s that for advice?”

SLAM! goes the door. Steve normally would’ve been pissed, but since he’s driving Halen, he’s lenient about it. So he watches Eddie walk away, in a stride that looks like he's constantly got a wedgie, over to the camp and towards the kids he is to watch until Show and Tell Day.

“WEAR SUNSCREEN!” Steve hisses, one last time. “…I don’t play about my skin.”

———

“Hey, Steve!” a group of campers greet Eddie as he makes his way into Knowhere.

God, this is so weird.

“Hey…kiddos?” Eddie greets them in return.

“We’re gonna go diving in the lake, just letting you know.”

“Thanks for the invite,” Eddie tuts. “Sounds like a lot of fun. Just uh, wear sunscreen.”

“Well, we try to invite you but you never wanna come with us.”

“Says who?” Eddie demands. “It’s summer, everyone goes to the lake.”

“Everyone but you,” a kid points out. “You turn us down every time.”

“I do?”

“All the time,” another kid confirms. “You say it ruins your hair.”

"I was...joking," is all Eddie can come up with.

"Really? Because it doesn't sound like you were," another child counters. "You already don't like that the UV rays have the potential to damage your hair cuticles, which aids in your fear of dryness and breakage. Furthermore, swimming in a lake filled with miscellaneous, unidentified bacterium is another concern, apart from the warm water having the potential to dry your hair out even more. Also, at windy temperatures of about 80 degrees, typical for a Hawkins summer, your hair when damp will start to frizz. Which is where your pomade and Farrah Fawcett spray come in handy. And on summer days, you give your hair 32 hours before the next hair wash rotation, to which the cycle starts again. We know the drill, Steve. You've explained it multiple times. And we get it now that you don’t like the lake."

Even the kids think Harrington's insufferable. Eddie can only shake his head in disbelief.

"I'm not who I was a day ago," Eddie shrugs. "...literally."

"Huh?"

"You gonna let me join or what?"

Suddenly, the kids’ eyes begin to light up. Steve Harrington joining them at the lake? It was going to be the most fun day they’ve ever had!

"Sure!" the kids cheer excitedly. "Al-right! Steve is joining our party!"

Eddie smiles to himself, proud of the reaction he got from the eager children. Excited cheers? Smiling faces? Now THAT is how you Camp Counsel.

And now that Eddie thinks about it, he realizes something. He’s spent most of his youth in survival mode that he never got to let loose and have fun. And while he has Steve’s body and physical activity levels, he is certainly NOT about to let that go to waste. Pomade? Eddie thinks to himself. Meet Trash Can.

“Hey guys! Wait for me!” Eddie calls after the campers. “CANNONBALL!"

Meanwhile Steve sets off to find Eddie a job.

A real job.

He tries Hawkins Mart. The roller rink. The movie theater. The coffee shops. Something that involved social interaction and hard work.

"Hi there," Steve grins politely. "I'm Eddie Munson, and I'd like to apply for a job."

But Hawkins is anything but receptive to it.

"No."

"Nope."

"Sorry."

"Munson, eh? You related to Al Munson?"

"NO!"

Apparently misdemeanors and run-ins with the law make it impossible to land a good gig. It was no wonder now why Eddie stayed where he was comfortable.

Though, it's unconventional.

Steve is just about to lose hope when those looking for help didn't even want him.

But he wasn’t giving up. There has to be something Steve can do to increase Eddie's chances of landing a good job.

Just then, he realizes.

Maybe it’s not Eddie’s past, but his demeanor. The way he carries himself. If he didn’t dress like a vessel for Satan every single day, this conservative town would probably take him more seriously.

It's one of life's twisted games. Steve didn’t make the rules. And he sure as hell can't change it.

But there is one thing he can help Eddie do. He can help Eddie play the game. Master it.

And that’s when Steve sees the scissors.

———

So you can say sunscreen is the least of everyone’s worries.

“Jesus Chr— what did you do to my hair?!”

“What did you do to MINE?!”

“I had to let her breathe man,” Eddie explains. “God, Harrington. No wonder you’re always in a mood. Holding your hair up with so much gel, MY HEAD FELT HEAVIER THAN A BOWLING BALL.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve challenges him. “Well your hair was so greasy, I could’ve pat it down with a paper towel like it’s PIZZA.”

The two are at it again, reaching at each other’s hair and then swatting each other away like flies. Suddenly Robin butts into the quarrel, emerging from the kitchen with amusement spread all across her face.

“Oh…my…god…” she says.

Steve and Eddie simultaneously stop their bickering and pan their gazes over to her. Unable to contain her laughter, Robin releases a hearty chuckle in front of them.

“Holy shit, this is the greatest thing since disposable cameras,” Robin tsks. “On that note, let me go get mine.”

“NO!” both Steve and Eddie refuse.

“This is so humiliating!” Steve whines. “I look like someone literally mopped the floor with me!”

“You're embarrassed?!” Eddie exclaims as he points to his own, original body. “Whose Peepaw died?! Why am I wearing a grandpa sweater sourced from the crusty back bins of Goodwill?!”

"I thought it'd be fitting attire for your library job that I got you."

"You got me a job at the LIBRARY?!” Eddie shrieks. “Out of all places?"

"No other place would hire you!"

"Can’t say I didn’t warn ya."

“And why does my hair LOOK LIKE THAT?!” Steve demands. “You went into the lake with the kids, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?!”

Eddie shakes his head at him, baffled. “God forbid, I – the camp counselor — do camp counselor things! I did exactly what you told me to do.”

“WHERE DID I SAY YOU COULD MESS UP MY HAIR?”

Steve takes a moment to mourn his glorious mane. Meanwhile, Eddie starts brainstorming how he’s going to rob a high end salon for all their hair growth serums.

Just then, Robin reemerges from the shadows with her camera, panning it directly at the two of them, as if she were some eager journalist fighting for her spot on the front page of National Geographic.

“Say cheese, freaks!”

———

Eddie was having a hard time being Steve.

Being Hawkins’ most desirable male apart from Billy Hargrove was harder than he thought. Because while women worshiped the ground Steve walked on, it was hard for flight-risk teens to take the Pretty Boy seriously.

“Christopher!” Eddie hisses. “I told you to stop domesticating the raccoons, you little shit.”

Living in the trailer park, Eddie’s no stranger to those feral, yet adorable, beady-eyed beauties. And while they were cute, holding your hand, refurbishing your trash, and performing for crackers, there was an unspoken agreement when it came to those kinds of animals: you are to never take them in.

“But it’s for research!” Christopher pleads.

“I wouldn’t care if it was for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Eddie scolds him. He places his angry hands frustratedly on his hips. “Those things can be rabid, violent, and aggressive when you least expect it. Trust me on this. Raccoons are better left alone in the wild. They can’t live with people like us.”

A low, miserable groan furls at the base of the boy’s belly. He kicks at the dirt beneath him.

“Ugh, you ruin all the fun, Steve,” Christopher whines. “Eddie Munson would never treat us like this.”

That statement just about nipped Eddie in the soul. Was this what being a buzzkill is like? Little did Christopher know that it’s actually Eddie scolding him. And that the kids were not only hurting Steve’s feelings but his as well.

Meanwhile Steve wasn’t having a grand time being Eddie either.

“HEY! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING BOY?!”

He almost died. Quite literally. And if it hadn’t been for Wayne launching himself across the room to stop it from happening, the odds of he and Eddie ever switching back would’ve gone from unlikely to zero.

“What?!” Steve demands.

“What do you mean, what?!” Wayne demands. “You eat that thing you’re going to wound up in the hospital! Again!”

Steve’s eyes trail down to the delicious shrimp tacos he had bought for takeout from Estrella’s.

Eddie is deathly allergic to shellfish. And with just a single bite of that shrimp taco, he would be in the back of an ambulance with hives and a closed-up throat. And judging by the fact that Eddie and his uncle didn’t necessarily bring home the ‘big bucks’, an invoice from Hawkins Memorial Hospital wouldn’t be an ideal situation to put him through.

“We’re already two months behind on rent,” Wayne grumbles. “You eat those tacos, kick the bucket, and rack up them bills, I may as well join ya six feet under.”

No tacos, no time and a half at work, and no solution to the problem at hand. No wonder Eddie was always an angsty mess. It definitely showcases in those lyrics too.

———

“Take me away, away, away, AWAY”

A killer guitar solo rips through the Harrington garage as Eddie strums away at the chords.

In hindsight, it looks like Steve is the rockstar. But the feral energy is unmistakably Munson’s, to which Dustin can’t help but get lost in, dancing along as a one-man-mosh-pit to the brilliance of Corroded Coffin’s discography.

“Same old stuff, it never ends.”

“The song sounds so cool hearing it in Steve’s voice,” Dustin beams. “And I can’t believe you put him in a crop top.”

“It’s like dressing up a Barbie doll,” Eddie jokes as he puts his guitar away. He then turns his torso towards Henderson’s field of view. “Look… Harrington’s an innie.”

Dustin cackles at the sight.

“Hahaha, no way!” he cheers. “I’m an outie.”

“Me too.”

The garage lets out an insulated hum as Steve strides in with the tacos. He cocks an eyebrow, confused at the sight of Dustin and Corroded Coffin comparing navels with each other.

“What did I just walk into?”

Eddie’s eyes light up at the sight of Steve.

“Ooh, is that Estrella’s I smell?” he inquires.

“All yours,” Steve grumbles. “Found out today that I can’t have shellfish.”

Eddie smirks at the realization.

“But I can,” he sings. “Because I’m Steve Harrington.”

Eddie rushes over to Steve to acquire the food. Steve goes over to greet the rest of the boys and to issue Dustin a long-awaited high five.

“Mmm…” Eddie coos. “Take a good look at these washboard abs, Innie. They’ll be gone for as long as I can have these tacos.”

Steve makes a face. “I can’t believe you put me in a crop top.”

“I can’t believe you cut my hair,” Eddie shrugs.

But he seems to have gotten over the fact. Hair will grow back. There were larger issues at hand today. Like how exactly Eddie is going to perform with Corroded Coffin at Show and Tell.

“Listen,” Eddie wipes his mouth. “Harrington. I have a favor. If worse comes to worst and we can’t switch back on time, I need you to perform as me for Show and Tell.”

“And why exactly would I do that?”

“Because it’s our one shot to make it big.”

“Again, why would I do that?”

“Because you love me,” Eddie sneers.

But his face drops when Steve doesn’t return the energy.

Nowhere in the fine print did it say ‘Steve Owes Eddie’. So why would Steve bother? It’s a lot for Eddie to ask of someone he’s openly mocked for years. But now that he needs something, suddenly Steve is the coolest person in the world? It doesn’t work like that.

“Hey…” Eddie begins. “I know you don’t like me, okay? Whatever animosity you have towards me, I hope we can move on from it one day.”

Steve refuses to meet Eddie’s eyes.

“If you do this for me, I’ll be eternally grateful,” Munson adds. “And maybe just maybe — when Corroded Coffin makes it big and we start touring around the world — I’ll be out of your hair forever. Literally.”

“Seems transactional.”

It leaves a bad taste in Eddie’s mouth. It was always ‘Terms and Conditions’ with Harrington. Never has he ever considered the other person’s feelings. Never has he ever done anything out of the goodness of his heart. It was always, “What do I get out of it?”. Always some sort of fucked up business move. Just like his father.

“You view everything as a transaction, don’t you?” Eddie scoffs.

“Why would I do favors for someone who’s done nothing but disrespect me? I value my time and energy. I’m not wasting it on you.”

“But you can waste it on being a camp counselor, right? The kids aren’t so hot about you anyways, so I don’t know why you keep showing up.”

“Because Dustin is there. Because I’m a good friend. You wouldn’t know sacrifice and loyalty if it hit you in the face.”

“Ah, there it is. The performative activism in plain sight. We all know that this is about Dustin. AAAAlways been that way.”

“Of course my summer is about Dustin,” Steve argues. “You’ve had him all year. Spending every second with him and breathing down his neck.”

“I’M the one spending too much time with him?” Eddie scoffs. “Breathing down his neck?! You’re the one who got a gig to be closer to him.”

“Does it register with you that it’s because I DON’T SEE HIM MUCH AT ALL ANYMORE?” Steve shouts. “He’s always at your stupid D&D games and never wants to hang out with me! You’re taking the spotlight, like you always seem to do!”

“That’s IT!” Dustin barks. “I have HAD it with you two fighting all the time.”

Finally, it’s quiet. And normally the two would be stoked about it, but seeing Dustin on the brink of tears does not make the last word worthwhile at all.

“Not even a life-changing catastrophe will make you guys stop! You’re in each other’s bodies for Christ’s sake and still going at it like cats and dogs.”

Dustin starts back towards the house, kicking at the chords beneath his feet that are blocking his dramatic exit. All Dustin has ever wanted from those two – and quite literally every adult in his life – was co-existence. A notion so easy, yet no one has ever been able to give him that. Not even with his damn empathy cookies.

“It all makes me feel like a failure. Locking myself in my cabin for six weeks to have my fortune cookies yield THESE results? My last year at camp too.”

“Dustin–”

“And if you guys keep this up, then I don’t wanna spend the rest of my summer with either of you. How’s that for compromise?”

“Hey. Buddy…” Steve starts again.

“Henderson!” Eddie calls at the same time.

But it’s already too late. Off Dustin goes, Camp Nowhere notebook in his arms, walkie in his pocket, and car keys jingling furiously around his fingers. Nothing worth displaying at Show and Tell if the grown ups were going to act younger than the campers there. And if Dustin’s anger wasn’t already prominent, the way he backs out of Steve’s driveway is a dead giveaway, judging by the screeching tires and the pop of the engine as he steps on the gas.

“Damn,” Jeff comments. “Taco ‘bout a tough crowd…”

Ba-dum-tss! the drum sounds.

“GARETH!” Steve and Eddie growl.

"Scott Clarke."

Hearing that name nearly gives Eddie whiplash. Especially because it came out of Steve’s mouth.

"Huh?"

Steve repeats himself. "Scott Clarke? Our middle school science teacher?”

Steve is perched at the bottom of the stairs, wading aimlessly around in guilt. Eddie watches as he props himself against the rails of his fancy staircase, almost as if to serenade him with an apology song of sorts.

"When we were kids, he headed the Hawkins Middle AV Club,” Steve recalls. “Nancy was in it, and so was Mike and so was Sinclair, Baby Byers, and Dustin.”

“Go on…”

“Well…whenever they ran into trouble, Mr. Clarke was always there to help,” Harrington shrugs. “Always been very personable, non-judgmental, and most of all, he’s knowledgeable.”

“Okay…”

“And with his degree from MIT, he’d be the one most likely able to get us out of this mess,” Steve emphasizes. “Just in time for Show and Tell.”

“What makes you think he’d want to help former students like us?” Eddie demands. “We weren’t in the AV club or anything.”

“Because he cares, Eddie. Current students or not.”

There’s a pause.

“Remember that one time you came into homeroom with a black eye?” Steve reflects. “And Clarke made you stay after class so he could ask if everything was okay at home?”

Attempting to mask the mushy feelings underneath, Eddie simply shrugs. Steve persists.

“Other teachers would have assumed you got in a fight or something. Even if that was the case, none of them cared to look further into it. No one except Mr. Clarke.”

“Yeah,” Eddie admits, choked up now. “Yeah, I almost forgot about that.”

It actually was a fight that happened that day. Some random kid at school. But there were also times Eddie has gotten in scuffles with his father, typically when Al Munson stumbled home too drunk for his own good and tried laying a hand on either him or Uncle Wayne. And Mr. Clarke, having grown up with Al, knew what he was capable of. Meaning it was his unspoken civil duty to look out for (Munson) Junior.

“And,” Harrington sighs. “I’m kinda really desperate here. I want you to be able to perform at Dustin’s Show and Tell. You and the band have a shot at this. I wholeheartedly believe that. And I don’t have much faith in my ability to perform as you. Neither does Dustin, it seems.”

“Steve…” Eddie begins.

“And sure, I was upset about not being Henderson’s first choice for a while,” Steve rambles. “But I’ll be okay. The kids can learn survival skills another time. ”

Grateful tears start to form in Eddie’s eyes. He’s never seen this side of Steve before.

“My hopes and dreams don’t depend on Show and Tell,” Steve mumbles. “And if it means a producer from Cardinal Records is going to be there, then getting Wayne and yourself out of debt does.”

Their eyes meet again.

“I can’t take that away from you.”

Suddenly the rocker feels his knees buckle.

It feels as if Eddie’s soul is about to leave his body. Or Steve’s in this sense. Struggling to keep his composure, the ever-so-rugged Eddie Munson clears his throat.

“…I didn’t think you paid attention to any of that, Steve.”

“I pay attention more than you think,” Steve counters. “And if my observations are right, Mr. Clarke might have the answer.”

Steve shrugs, dangling the keys to Eddie’s van around his fingers. He hula hoops them around as Eddie remains floored, pondering above him.

“Well?” says Steve. “You just gonna stand there and gawk, ‘Harrington’? Come on.”

Perhaps walking and gawking would be more productive. Without further hesitation, Eddie races down the steps and follows closely behind Steve before shutting the door to the house.

“Wipe your feet,” Steve commands as he unlocks the doors to Halen.

“What do you mean wipe my feet?” Eddie snaps. “It’s MY van!”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who’s been driving it,” Steve counters with a glare. “And I’m saying wipe your feet.”

Nonetheless, Eddie sighs and does as he’s told. But he’s not happy about it.

Never in a million years did he think Steve Harrington would tell him how to run his own van. Nor did he think Harrington would actually end up being a good dude. Both were very humbling experiences. And while King Steve drives them off to Hawkins Middle, willingly blasting Metallica and doing his best to head-bang, Eddie crosses his arms and stares blankly out the passenger side window.

“I’m never eating anything Dustin makes me again.”

———

"So..." Eddie prompts. "Can you fix us?"’

“If it isn’t broken, then do not fix it,” Mr. Clarke advises.

There was only so much that could be disclosed to their former teacher. Being an educator also meant being a mandated reporter, and it’s without a doubt government officials would bust down the doors of Camp Knowhere and run a freak raid on Dustin’s science experiment had they known the truth. Steve and Eddie had to gloss over practically everything.

“I appreciate and am honored to know you two trust me with your dilemma,” Mr. Clarke nods. “That being said, it is normal for gentlemen your age to go through an identity crisis after experimenting with recreational drugs. It will subside, but only if you don’t fight it.”

A decade can certainly change things. Steve and Eddie never expected their most logic-driven teacher to embrace his heart, dressed in a brown linen robe, as he calmly kept them on standby with soothing, meditative “Ommm”s while they spiraled into desperation in his ‘BACK TO (S)C(H)OOL’ classroom.

“But what is the science behind this?” Steve demands. “Is something happening in the…the… what did Suzie call it? The blood-brain barrier? Why would… Harrington and I both feel like we are living the life of the other person?”

“To question everything is to not know peace,” Mr. Clarke soothes them.

He’s saying this while criss-cross-apple-sauce on his desk, by the way.

“Sometimes, it is best to simply let things be,” the educator warns. “By going against the grain of the water, you are blocking the potential you can reach if you had been in a flow state.”

“Good God, you choose NOW to go on a spiritual retreat?!” Eddie hisses. “When we need science and your genius mind the most?!”

“If not now, then when?” Mr. Clarke mumbles. “If not you, then who?”

For the first time in his life, Eddie feels plagued with academic regret. He wishes he paid attention in Clarke’s class. Meanwhile Steve is considering having a word with his superintendent mother, because no way in hell is some barefoot, most-likely-vegan lunatic about to indoctrinate the future kids of America.

“If not you… then who?” Clarke repeats. “If there's one thing I learned during my time in research… and mindful meditation… it's that sometimes the answer is right in front of you. Or within."

Steve and Eddie look at each other.

"The world is full of obvious things," Mr. Clarke says. "...which nobody, by any chance, ever observes. Sherlock Holmes."

Accepting the absolute bust, Steve and Eddie storm out of the door and back down the stairs of their prepubescent alma mater.

“Son of a bitch,” Eddie curses under his breath. “The damn hippies got to him before we did.”

As the two walk down the stairs, Steve sneaks a few quick glances Eddie’s way. Seeing him upset didn’t necessarily make him feel so hot. The answer is clear: they need to venture beyond a Mormon child and a middle school science teacher. They need to consult the big dogs.

“We can go to the Indianapolis Science Center,” Steve suggests. “And maybe ask some people there. There’s also the university. If we flag down a professor from the physics or chemistry department, maybe they can offer us some insight. Or…”

“Just give it a rest, Steve,” Eddie surrenders.

“What?” Steve questions. “No! We’ve got to figure this out before Show and Tell. It’s in a couple days.”

“What’s a couple days?” Eddie demands. “We’ve been like this for nearly a week. What makes you think it won’t last another week? Or indefinitely.”

Eddie kicks at an empty carton of orange juice at his feet while Steve watches with an overwhelming sense of guilt. He didn’t want Eddie to give up. Not yet, at least.

“Hey I’m not going to let you blow this shot, Munson,” Steve demands firmly. “I know how much this means to you. This could finally be your ticket out of Hawkins. You guys were meant for the Big City.”

“No,” Eddie disagrees, absentmindedly.

Eddie’s gaze veers off to the side, a sadness in his eyes so profound that Steve almost starts tearing up as well.

“All… the answers… point…to no,” Eddie continues. “Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone followed their dreams? We’d have no one doing the conventional jobs. It's not in my cards, I fear. Maybe I was always meant to stay in Hawkins, being everyone’s weed man and no one’s first choice.”

“Eddie…”

“But thanks for trying though, Harrington. Doesn’t go unnoticed.”

———

To be continued…

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fuctacles · 2 months ago

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The last chapter is here! With the 2nd art piece from @penny00dreadful I'm so glad I could work with her for the @steddiebang2024 <3 It was a wild ride but it's finally done!

Steve opens the bathroom door, releasing the steam from his shower so he doesn't slow cook himself while finishing his evening routine.

"Would you mind if I changed up the bathroom? The dark colors aren't doing this for me!" he calls out with half a smirk while fishing out his toothbrush.

"Yes, I would mind!" Eddie answers him loudly through the distorted voice from the walkie. Steve only smiles to himself and starts brushing his teeth.

He doesn't realize he has company until something appears in the fogged corner of his mirror. Eddie draws him a frowning face, making Steve raise his eyebrows.

"I'm not actually going to change your bathroom, calm down."

There is clearly not enough room for Eddie to express himself, so he only adds an exclamation mark. Steve walks over to the bathroom door.

"What is it?" he asks, mildly annoyed.

"I've finished my book," Eddie complains through the walkie placed on the bed.

On Steve's spare pillow lies another Pratchett book he managed to hunt down. It's indeed flipped to its last page.

"Already?! You just started it!"

"I started it two hours ago," Eddie corrects him.

"Still! If you keep reading this fast there won't be enough books in the store!"

"There are other stores. Will you please bring me another one?"

Steve crosses his arms.

"Or you could go to sleep." He points out, raising an eyebrow.

"Pleeease Steve. Only one chapter. I'll be good."

Steve sighs. He's heard these 'one chapter' lies for almost half of his life.

"Fine. But don't come complaining when you run out of things to read."

"I won't! Promise."

He acts grumpy but is more than happy to bring Eddie his books. Hearing his excitement when Steve brought them was reward enough. Now he grabs the rest of the books from the pile and brings them back to spread them on the bed.

"Pick your poison, Munson."

Eddie hums through the walkie-talkie.

"The Gaiman one looks good."

"Okay." Steve swaps his previous book with the new one. He can almost imagine a man lying next to him on his stomach, flipping it open.

"Thanks, man."

"Don't mention it." Steve gets up to switch off the light. "This okay?" he asks, trying to gauge if the bedside lamp's light is enough to read by.

"Yeah, it's alright."

He walks back to bed to tuck himself in for the night even though he knows he won't fall asleep anytime soon. It's too new, being able to hear Eddie by his side and see the evidence of his presence in the flipping pages.

"Is it fun?" he asks, unable to stop himself.

"It seems promising. I could read it for you?" Eddie offers.

"Oh. No, it's alright." He wants to but doesn't want to ruin Eddie's experience. He's been so excited to get his hands on the new books.

"It's no problem, really. I'd love to use my new voice privileges."

Steve chuckles at that.

"Well then, by all means."

Eddie doesn't hesitate and even through the radio static, manages to pull Steve into the story. It shouldn't be surprising that he likes storytelling and showmanship, adding unique voices to all the characters. It's a shame that Steve falls asleep before the end of the chapter.

Eddie's hair is splayed over the pillow like a dark cobweb. He's shaking, little tremors running through his body, and his mouth is open in a perfect o-shape. Steve feels the need to spit right into it and he doesn't hesitate long to indulge that thought. The loud moan he gets in response is all the reward he needs.

"Thank you, holy shit, thank you," Eddie mumbles after swallowing the spit given to him. The blissed-out look on his face fills Steve with pride. He did it. He reversed the local heartthrob into a babbling mess.

read full on Ao3

#haunted house au #steddie #ghost!eddie #ghost eddie munson #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #mine #cj x big bang #steddiebang24

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jamdoughnutmagician · 2 years ago

Text

Daring to be truthful (Eddie Munson x Reader fluff)

Thanks to this text post from @mcbeanzontoast I had to write a little something about it so here it is.

Word Count:1,584

Warnings:Badly written fluff, games of truth or dare, nosebleeds (but nothing graphic don’t worry), confessions of love, best friends to lovers, don’t think I’m missing anything? but let me know if I am so I can tag it

It was Steve’s idea to host a get-together for the group, shared trauma brought people together or something like that, you reasoned. The drinks had been steadily flowing as the group settled down in front of the huge tv that resided in the Harrington’s spacious living room. Steve had brought a few tapes home with him after his shift at family video and somewhere between Top Gun followed by Labyrinth, which was an odd route to go down for a movie night, but everyone seemed to go along with it nonetheless. Nancy and Jonathan had snuck away after she had climbed down from her space curled into him on his lap. It wasn’t long before he was hot on her heels, quietly tip-toeing out of the room with a blush rising to his cheeks.

With the happy couple now gone, it was only you, Robin, Steve and Eddie in the living room. The sounds of the movie now going largely ignored, fading into background noise.

Robin downs the last few sips of beer from her bottle as she speaks up

“Let’s play truth or dare” she suggests, her freckled features rosy with the buzz of alcohol.

“What are we, twelve years old or something?” Steve scoffs, taking a sip from his bottle.

“Scared of a little game, Stevie?” Robin teases.

“Alright then, I’m game if everyone else is. God knows I don’t have anything to hide.” Steve professed.

“Okay then, Steve..” you turn to look up at him from where you sat on the floor. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth”

“Is it true that you use Farrah Fawcett hairspray?” you snickered as you asked him the question.

“Jill? from Charlie’s Angels?” Robin squawked out between laughs.

Steve’s face burned bright red, how did you know about that?

“I bet Dustin told you, didn’t he. That kid couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it” Steve started.

“Actually, I told her.” Eddie speaks up. “Admittedly after Dustin told me. You know I can’t be keeping secrets from my best friend, right?” he chuckles, a cheeky grin spreading across his face.

“So it’s true?” Robin asked.

“Yeah..Yeah laugh it up, alright. It’s true” he confesses, ducking his head down with a small laugh of his own.

“Truth or dare?” Eddie asks you from where he’s lounging in one of the living room’s big sofa chairs.

“Truth.” Eddie practically knew everything about you anyway, this was going to be easy.

“What was the worst date you’ve ever been on?” he asks you, his grin stretching across his lips. Fucker. Eddie knew all too well of the story of the worst date of your life, remembering how you told him how your date had not only showed up 20 minutes late with no explanation or reason why, and that he then proceeded to talk all about his ex-girlfriend, and how he’s probably still be with her if she hadn’t found about the other girl he was secretly seeing behind her back. Needless to say there wasn’t a second date.

“Oh my god! That’s awful! Sounds like you dodged a bullet there, y/nl” Robin chuckled.

“Yeah it was all downhill from the moment he opened his mouth” you joined in, laughing at your own story.

____________________

The night went on like that, swapping stories, like how Robin was almost late for band practise because she had been making out with Vickie in the school’s auditorium, or the fact that Eddie on more than one occasion had been completely wasted whilst performing on stage at the hideout.

As well as challenging each other to do increasing stupid dares. Watching Steve try to swallow an entire spoonful of cinnamon had been a particularly amusing highlight of yours.

But Robin, who, at this point was not handling her drink very well, had dared Eddie to show-off his best metal head-banging, things had taken a turn.

The force with how much Eddie was showing off his best head-banging air guitar routine, had caused Eddie to have a nose bleed.

By now Robin was stumbling around and Steve had made the executive decision to wrangle her from where she was standing on wobbly legs on the couch cushions of the sofa.

"Are sure you guys are gonna be okay down here whilst I try to get this one to bed?" Steve asked as he held up Robin's swaying frame.

"I've got it from here Steve, you go look after Robin" You assured, watching as Steve carefully manoeuvred his friend up the stairs, before taking Eddie by the hand and leading him into the Harrington’s kitchen.

“Here..” you say, handing him a bunch of tissues. “Tip your head forward and pinch your nose. That should help stop the bleeding” you say.

“Thanks, you don’t have to help me, I’ll be alright.” he muffles from behind the tissues scrunched up under his nose.

“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help and look after you when you needed it, huh?” you smiled at him.

After a while, Eddie’s nosebleed seemed to have stopped. With a cool damp cloth you begin to clean away the dried blood from his face.

“Y’know I never got to ask you the truth question I wanted to ask you” you say whilst dabbing the cloth against his skin.

“I don’t think that’s quite how truth or dare works, sweetheart.” Eddie teases. “I think I’m supposed to choose?”

“Okay, I know but can I ask you my question anyway?” you ask hopefully, bright eyes looking up at him.

“You can ask me anything, no secrets between us, right?” That wasn't strictly true. He did have one secret, one that he kept very close to his heart. That secret was just how big of a crush that he had on you. You two had been friends for as long as he can remember. Wherever Eddie went you followed and vice versa. It wasn’t often one of you was seen without the other. He never wanted to ruin the friendship that you two had, that relationship was one of the most important things in his life, but he couldn’t help his heart ruling his head, and the thoughts of holding you close and kissing your lips came to mind more often than he’d care to admit to.

However, what Eddie wasn’t aware of was that despite all his pining over you, and trying to keep his affections for you hidden, you very much loved him in the same way.

Maybe it was childish to think of your best friend like that. Daydreaming about holding his hand, going on dates to the movies and kissing his lips whenever you wanted, but you couldn’t help it. Eddie Munson had been it for you ever since you’d first laid eyes on him all those years ago.

“What’s something you would do if you knew there would be no consequences?” you asked.

Maybe it was the buzz of the alcohol, or the comfort of being in such close proximity to you, but as usual, Eddie’s mouth was moving faster than his brain could keep up with. Without hesitation, he blurts out,

“Kiss you.”

The boldness of his answer shocks you for a moment. That’s all you’ve ever wanted to hear from him, your heart racing from the thrill of it all.

“I dare you.” you whisper, not quite yet trusting your own voice. “Kiss me.”

He leans down to you, cupping your cheek in his large hand, his clunky metal rings are a welcomed chill against the flush of your heated skin. His big brown eyes look deep in yours before he closes the gap between the two of you.

He tentatively presses his lips to yours in an delicate exploratory kiss, the tip of his nose slightly bumping against yours. His lips are surprisingly soft, with just the slightly bitter tang of beer. You can’t help but smile against his lips, having dreamed about kissing for so long and now it was actually happening, setting the butterflies in your stomach fluttering. You never wanted it to end.

He pulls away from you, his brown eyes are soft on you as his smile spreads across his lips.

“Y’know, since we’re being all truthful and shit..I’m gonna be honest here and say I’ve always wanted to do that.” Eddie confesses.

“Well I suppose I owe you the truth, too. I’ve always wanted to kiss you too...” you say looking down to your feet, shyly. “..But more than that, I’ve been in love with you for the longest time, Eddie.” you finish, looking up to him hopefully.

“Well you know I don’t just go around kissing girls without it meaning something to me, sweetheart..” he says with a smile. “I love you too, have been ever since I laid eyes on you.”

“So what does that make us now? Because I don’t think I can go back to being just friends.”

“Well how about we try being boyfriend and girlfriend?” Eddie offered. He’d wanted to call you his girlfriend for so long that the only title felt natural to him.

“Yeah I like the sound of that, Eds”

“Only if we can still be best friends too. Don’t think that because you’re my girlfriend now, that doesn’t mean you’re not still my best friend.” he assured.

“I’d like that Ed.” you perch up on your tip-toes to press one more quick kiss to his lips. “I’d like that a lot.”

@penguinsandpotterheads @i-me-mine @harringtons-cupid @seatnights

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x female reader fluff

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stevetonyweekly · 1 year ago

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SteveTony Weekly - July 16

Hello, friends! Short list this week because I spent several days re-reading a favorite of mine. Enjoy the list and be sure to leave your authors a comment/kudos!

What do you think of the new banner??

***Recent favorites

~*~

***Enchanted by iam93percentstardust

This night is sparklin', don't you let it go

I'm wonderstruck, blushin' all the way home

I'll spend forever wonderin' if you knew

I was enchanted to meet you

Steve starts making his way back towards the directions of the cars, wanting to greet her, only to stop dead when he realizes who her date is.

Natasha has brought Tony with her.

Tony of the pictures, of the stories, of Steve’s infatuated little heart even though he’s never met him in person.

***once in a lifetime by meidui

“You should be worried that I'll break into your apartment, steal your identity and flee the country with all your money,” Steve says, one arm slung lazily across Tony's chest, playing with the key to his safe. “You shouldn't go around handing out keys to people, you know.”

Tony makes a low, offended noise and grabs Steve’s chin, making him laugh. “Is that what you think I do?”

bake my breath away by earliebirb

Steve develops a crush on one of his bakery's regulars, charming businessman-slash-inventor Tony Stark. He is not stupid enough to think Tony would ever like him back, though.

Besides, Tony is already in a relationship.

As it turns out, Steve might have been wrong about a couple of things.

A Place In My Mind by KandiSheek

The Avengers all swap bodies, with Steve ending up in Ironman's. It's a nightmare for multiple reasons, mostly because Steve has no idea who Ironman actually is, and he'd rather die than be the one to expose his friend's well-kept secret.

What Ironman doesn't know is that Steve has a secret of his own. One of the mushy, romantic kind. And being this close to Ironman, after all these years of desperately wanting it?

It just might be a bigger temptation than he can resist.

Dark Matter by RurouniHime

A mission goes wrong with troubling consequences for Steve. (Based in the world of sabrecmc's Celestial Navigation and its sequel Orbital Mechanics)

an anger that you crush and fuel by starvels (dinosaur)

“I’m mad at you,” Natasha says, gripping Steve’s collar so tight the shirt seams strain.

Steve glances down at her hand, and his arm quivers beside her head. “I know,” he says, voice rough.

Symmetry Breaking by Annie D (scaramouche)

After the Battle of New York, Steve rode off on his motorbike. That's how it went the first time.

This time he rides back, all the way to Stark Tower, where he asks Tony for help.

The God of Solid Life Advice by kehinki

It's 2012. Steve is just informed by Loki that Bucky's alive.

Loki also tells him some other things.

The Hazards of Falling in Love (Rescue Me) by EmmaLostInWonderland

“So that’s your name?” Rogers hasn't looked away from him once. His eyes are a piercing blue, and Tony barely manages to keep from squirming under his gaze.

“Yeah. Or Telecommunications Operator Stark, if we’re getting technical about it.”

“Are we?”

Tony tilts his head slightly. “Depends. Can I call you Steve?”

The man grins. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Tony.”

// Tony Stark doesn't date firemen. But he'll make an exception for Battalion Chief Steve Rogers.

written for BladeoftheNebula as part of the Stony Loves Steve 2023 Gift Exchange

Trying not to lose my sensibility by Girl_Back_There

In the weeks leading up to his heat, Steve rethinks about his relationship with Brock. And his fading friendship with Tony.

i'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone by iam93percentstardust

The real reason Tony wanted to do this movie, the one that he'll never tell anyone about, was because when he’d asked his agent who would be playing Chris, she’d slyly smiled at him and told him that it was Steve Rogers.

“Oh,” he’d squeaked, cleared his throat, and tried again in a more normal octave, but by then it was too late. Natasha had laughed at him and made the call without even waiting for him to agree to the audition.

He’s not quite sure if he should thank her or fire her for that.

Chamber of Reflection by Thahire

A few years after retiring, Steve and Tony get a surprise visit from another Steve. Steve Rogers from Earth 1610 is lost, grappling with the new century he’s been unceremoniously dropped in, with confusing feelings for his new teammate, with himself.

Steve and Tony decide to get involved.

Soft Robotics by isozyme

“I promise this is all non-toxic. The silicone is medical-grade, even.”

Steve makes a choking noise. “I would hope so,” he says, going bright, tomato red as he says it.

Tony makes some cool robots. Steve makes an assumption.

***Celestial Navigation by sabrecmc

Celestial Navigation: 18 year old Omega!Tony finds himself Bonded to Captain Steve Rogers. He isn't happy about it until he is.

#stevetony #stevetony weekly #stony #stony weekly #stevetony fic #stony fic #stevetony fic recs #stony fic recs #steve rogers #tony stark #iron man #captain america #fic #fic recs #fanfiction

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heli0s-writes · 2 years ago

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hullo my favorite writer did you see the tumblr post about steve growing up with chronic pain and him registering pain as just a part of living and simply existing and did it FUCK you up as much as it fucked me up *wail*

i can just imagine him coming home with broken ribs and bruised up everywhere and reader's upset so he tries to comfort her like 'babe it will literally heal by tmr morning' but she's still upset and he doesn't quite understand why *wail pt. 2*

and the fact that he's constantly getting injured as cap so he still experiences chronic pain even with the serum i can't—

to quote one of your magnificent works...

"Steve’s shield symbolizes the kind of idolatry you want to destroy some nights.

Hijack the ivory points of your lover’s brilliant star and stab him to death with it.

Well, sort of. Maybe just within an inch of his life—a quick reminder that there’s more to him than being humanity’s moral paradigm and savior. That the immeasurable world he’s sworn to can exist in smaller spaces because sometimes he forgets."

You and Steve get bodyswapped (magic, I know, ridiculous) and you start clenching up, wincing, before looking at him (in your body, oh the mindfuckery) and grit out, "Is this your daily?"

He can't make eye contact because it is, but he grew up with it, you know? The human brain is so resilient, so crafty in how it convinces the body to regulate. He learned to live with it. He lives it still-- it's fine, seriously.

But no, Steve, chronic pain isn't fine. It's not normal at all. It shouldn't have been for you back then and it shouldn't be for you now.

Big emotional turmoil for everyone involved but it simmers down, Steve promises he'll get it checked out for real after this is sorted. He's so damn shifty about it, but you want to believe him.

And then a few days later, when you're still stuck, and you take his body out for a spin to kick some ass, you come back to the tower pissed because the serum made him strong, and it made him heal fast, but it didn't make Steve feel pain any less.

Getting shot is getting shot is getting shot. Landing from a 25 story fall into a pile of glass breaks bones.

Bucky walks next to you, pats you on the back and you can't even freakin' form any words because Steve isn't just reckless, he's categorically suicidal.

All you can get out is, "Is he gonna stop?"

Bucky's first instinct is to say no, because has Steve ever stopped for anything? Steve is all forward motion, all the time, but then Bucky remembers the way he softened the other day. The way you teared up when you yelled at him for never speaking up and even though you were swapped in each others' bodies, Steve's expression in your face was unlike anything Bucky had ever seen.

Bucky squeezes your shoulder.

"He might for you."

#steve rogers headcanon #steve rogers x reader #thank you for the serotonin #marvel #fanfiction #reader insert #hey! this was fun! thanks!#i love him he's a self suffering idiot!! :)#drabble

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hairstevington · 2 years ago

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Freaky Friday (Steddie's Version) - chapter 4!!

Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington

Summary: Eddie has a conversation with Robin that makes him realize there's a lot more to Steve's life than he originally thought. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Link to Ao3

Word Count: 3.2K, more chapters to come

Warnings: Enemies to lovers, slow burn, canon universe (more or less) set before season 4, body swap, they are idiots, ANGST, revenge (attempted, see: they are idiots), POV switching

A/N: Omg not updating has been agonizing for me but it's midterm season and I just spent the weekend in NYC where I saw MAYA HAWKE IN CONCERT (!!!) She is amazing we love her, this one's for you Maya <3

“Uhhhh…” Steve didn’t even know where to start with his explanation. He looked around at the students bustling through the halls. “Maybe we should -”

“Drama club room, let’s go.”

Dustin led Steve through the hallways of Hawkins High to the drama club room. Once inside, Steve noticed the way the Hellfire table was arranged, including Eddie’s throne at the end of it. Steve chuckled to himself, thinking it was absurd. He really loves this power trip, doesn’t he?

Curiosity tugged at him, though, and a few moments later he was sitting in said throne to test it out. You know, to see if it was as lush as it looked.

(It was)

“Damn, this thing is cozy,” Steve said, admiring the soft velvet on the arms.

“Watch it - if Eddie finds out you sat in his chair he’ll totally -”

“Technically I’m not sitting in the chair, he is,” Steve argued. “And he’s allowed to sit here whenever he wants, right? My actual ass is nowhere near this thing. It could be anywhere, actually. Maybe he got me arrested already or something -”

“Jesus, Steve - shut up about the chair and your ass and just tell me what happened already!” Dustin exclaimed, exasperated. “After I left. Then what?”

Steve recounted the story to the best of his ability. The bullies, the power plant, the lightning, the swap. He intentionally left out the shower thing, due to him and Eddie’s agreement. Thankfully, Steve had gotten pretty good at keeping secrets and pretending things never happened.

“So, yeah. I went to school and he’s been at work now for uhhh -” Steve looked at his watch to double check the time. “Two and a half hours, just about. If he even went to work, I mean. I don’t trust the guy.”

“So you’ve said. Multiple times,” Dustin deadpanned. Steve winced at how much his dislike for Eddie annoyed Dustin, but it’s just the way it was. Eddie was kind of an asshole to Steve.

“Sorry, I’m trying, man, but he just -”

“I know, it’s fine,” Dustin interrupted him. “Okay, so you swapped bodies. How do we get you to switch back?”

“If we knew that, we would have done it,” Steve said with a roll of his eyes.

“Okay, smartass,” Dustin replied. “So we look into when the next big storm is, and we get you guys back to the plant -”

“Woaaah, woah, woah,” Steve interjected. “You want us to get struck by lightning again? Dude, it like - it really sucked the first time.”

“So you just want to stay like this forever, then?”

“I’m just saying there’s gotta be other options,” Steve pleaded, desperate for Dustin to give him the real answer. The kid was smart. He’d figure something out. Preferably something immediate and painless.

“It’s just a theory,” Dustin replied. “Our first theory. It’s a start , Steve.”

“Fine,” he agreed. “So, we go track down a weatherman and ask him when we'll get lightning again or something?” Dustin sighed, squeezing his eyes tightly closed, then relaxed them.

“No, we don’t track down a weatherman. The weather is on the TV or in the paper, idiot.” Steve’s look of realization - raised eyebrows, mouth in an o-shape, slight nod - was one Dustin had seen several times on Steve’s face. It looked much different on Eddie’s. Foreign. Incorrect.

Weird.

“Oh, yeah that makes sense,” he replied.

“We’ll look up the weather later,” Dustin proposed. “But first, we’re going to the video store.”

Robin arrived at Family Video at 2:58pm - two minutes ahead of her shift. Eddie had been waiting patiently, adjusting to the boredom of it all, and finding joy in little things to pass the time. Keith had left around 2:30, but nobody had come in since then. He could have left too, but he didn’t. He considered it, but there was a nagging voice in the back of his head telling him to do the right thing. He hated that stupid voice. Eddie always felt like it didn’t matter whether he did the right or wrong thing, he’d always just get the short end of the stick either way. But, as much as he wanted to be the tough-as-nails asshole he presented himself as, and as much as he wanted to ruin Steve’s life, he knew deep down he wasn’t going to do anything. Eddie had ruined his own life. He knew what that felt like already, and he didn’t care to feel that downfall a second time.

So, a new tactic. He was going to be a good person. He was going to try to be a good person, anyway. ‘Kill them with kindness,’ right? He’d already proved that Steve sucked at his job, and that Eddie could do it better. What other ways could Eddie show Steve that he could be some preppy pretty-faced rich kid too, given the right resources? What if Eddie just…stole Steve’s life a little bit? Would that be so terrible?

“Hey,” Eddie said as Robin entered the store.

“Hey, Dingus.” She hardly looked at him as she sped past him to the back room. “You owe me for last night. That old guy we hate came in here and made me describe the plot of like ten different movies before settling on one again.” He followed her voice into the back room, where she dropped her backpack.

“Yikes,” he responded, even though Eddie would have probably been happy doing that, depending on the movies. Robin joined Eddie behind the counter a moment later.

“Okay, so - wait woah, ” she said once she looked at him for the first time. “Steve, your hair. What happened to it?”

“What do you mean?” Eddie knew exactly what she meant. It was frizzy and huge, with bits and pieces sticking up every which way. He looked like a mad scientist.

“You look like Doc Brown,” she said, echoing Eddie’s thoughts. He smirked. “And you’re smiling about it? Who are you and what have you done with Harrington?”

For a moment, Eddie thought the jig was up already regarding his identity. He’d barely said anything and she knew by the hair alone. Figures, he thought to himself.

He assumed she’d keep pestering him about it, but she dropped it immediately, to Eddie’s surprise. She started sorting the return bin, chattering away about her day at school.

“Oh, yeah. I heard Mrs. Lipton is a total hardass,” Eddie replied after she’d finished complaining about a class policy.

“Steve, you literally had her last year,” Robin countered. “Did you stay out all night again or something?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Eddie said. “Right, yeah. I remember now - Mrs. Lipton’s class. That was torture.”

“It’s probably worse than when we actually got tortured,” Robin remarked, so casually that Eddie thought it must have been a joke. He thought about how Steve and Robin had worked together at the mall, and guessed that was what she was referring to.

“Definitely.” He hoped a generic, non-committal response would suffice. Robin was cool, but sometimes he didn’t know how to talk to her because she was just as sarcastic as Eddie, with far less energy in the delivery. He had no idea when she was serious.

“Although, I just remembered the bonesaw,” she said as she continued to shuffle through tapes. “Actual torture was worse. But only by a little.” She smirked, so Eddie did the same, but holy fucking shit? What?

There wasn’t a single way Eddie could make sense of that, unless it was some weird long-running inside joke. It had to be that. Right?

Right?!

A customer came in, successfully distracting Eddie from his internal monologue for the time being.

“Hellooo, how can I help you?” he quickly asked, surprising himself at how well he’d adapted to the job. He finished handling the customer, intentionally asking Robin to ring them up so he could peer over her shoulder and double check how she used the system.

Yeah, he’d been doing it wrong. Ah well.

The customer left, and Robin sighed, searching for a new topic of conversation. She settled on -

“So, how’s Joanna?” She was leaning back on the counter, without a hint of jealousy on her face. Eddie wondered if she and Steve really were just friends, but he doubted it, for some reason. They seemed close, and kind of perfect for each other. They’d worked two jobs together, had weird inside jokes about torture, were brutally honest with each other…

It didn’t add up.

“She’s good. Really good,” Eddie answered, having no idea who Joanna was.

“Better than Maggie?” she asked. Eddie’s eyes widened. He knew Steve got around in high school, but he thought that after graduation he’d cooled things down. Especially after that Scoops Ahoy getup - Eddie hoped that Steve had lost his touch. He’d relished in the thought that Steve had peaked. But nope.

“I dunno,” Eddie answered, lost in thought. He kept looking at Robin’s reactions. She wasn’t fazed in the slightest talking about Steve’s sexcapades.

Robin was pretty. She was smart. Funny. Why wasn’t Steve going for her? Eddie couldn’t figure it out. At first he assumed Steve was leading her on, and that she had an unrequited crush on him that he held over her. But it didn’t seem that way, now that he was talking to her. Maybe they’d already had a history? Maybe they’d dated in the past and realized they were better as friends? But WHY -

“Steve, you’re so lucky,” Robin said with a sigh. “You’ve got all these beautiful girls at your fingertips, meanwhile I can’t even muster up the courage to look at Vicki for more than 5 seconds at a time or I feel like I’m gonna faint.” Eddie took in her words slowly, watching her as she hopped onto the counter and played around with the rings on her fingers. Eddie missed his own rings. He would have been fidgeting with them himself if he wasn’t occupying Steve’s ringless hands. “What?” she asked, after noticing him staring at her. Whoops.

“Uh, nothing,” Eddie replied. I wasn’t supposed to hear that. I’m not supposed to know this. He felt immediately guilty knowing Robin had come out to him basically without her consent. The ethics of it all were weird and complicated, but it still felt wrong. As she continued to talk about being put next to Vicki in the marching band and how excited she was for it, Eddie stared into the distance and tried not to let guilt eat away at him until he was hollow inside.

“You’re acting…weird. Is everything okay?” Her question snapped him out of his own thoughts once again, and he nodded, meekly. “Steve, I know something is wrong. Spill it.”

Eddie wasn’t sure why he directed the conversation where he did. He just figured that, if he was headed to hell anyway, he might as well commit to it. Time for some answers.

“Can we talk about the time we got…uh…tortured?” Robin’s face was curious at first, before it shifted into sincerity. She nodded.

“Yeah, we can. I just know we usually don’t mention it. Is that what’s going on today? Did you have another nightmare or something?”

God, their friendship was so precious it hurt. A half hour ago, Eddie would have been delighted to learn that Steve Harrington had run to his best friend about nightmares, but now it felt different.

“Mhm, yeah,” Eddie answered. “The, uh. The bonesaw.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Robin replied with guilt on her face. Oh, no. Now I’ve made her feel guilty when I’m the one at fault here. Shit. Balls. Abort!

“Not your fault,” Eddie said quickly. “I promise. Just. That’s a really crazy thing we went through, you know?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” she agreed. “I mean, we’ve been through a lot, you and me. Secret spy messages, evil Russians, giant monsters, girls with superpowers, -” Oh, she’s got to be kidding me. No. That’s not real. No way. “- Dustin calling his girlfriend ‘Suzypoo’,” she finished with a smile. He’d heard about ‘Suzypoo,’ and the name made him cringe every time. Eddie would have laughed, had his entire mind not just been blown.

Out of everyone at the school, Robin was one of the few who didn’t look down on Eddie. They didn’t talk much - only in passing, really - but she treated him like any other human being. And here, at Family Video, she was being incredibly kind to Steve. Eddie wasn’t sure if she would have treated Eddie the same, and now he desperately wanted to know.

Here’s the thing about Eddie - once he had a thought, it ached in him until he acted on it. It got him into plenty of trouble, but otherwise he just felt…itchy.

“Nah, you’re good,” he responded. I have to know. “Hey, so you know Eddie Munson?”

“Uhhh, yeah.” She was keeping up with his rapid switching of conversation topics with ease. “Why do you ask?”

“Just, uh. Just curious. Dustin talks about him all the time, you know.” She nodded in agreement. Eddie continued - he couldn’t seem to stop. “What do you think of the guy?” Robin was still unfazed by this line of questioning, somehow. Eddie felt a desperate urge to keep pressing until he felt resistance. The ache was insatiable.

“I think he’s - I guess I don’t really have an opinion?”

This shocked Eddie more than anything she’d said so far, including the torture thing somehow.

“You don’t have an opinion on him?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed with a shrug. “Like, he’s just a guy. We go to school together. I don’t really know him.”

Just a guy?! Eddie was offended for some reason. He’d never been referred to as just a guy before.

“You’re not, like, scared of him or - you don’t think he’s stupid, or a freak, or a druggie, or, like, a future serial killer? You don’t think he’s insane or brainwashing the youth into some kind of satanist cult? None of that?” Those were the kind of descriptors he’d heard his whole six years (and counting!) at Hawkins High. Just a guy? Fuck no.

“I never really bought into that,” Robin replied. “But it certainly sounds like you did.” She rolled her eyes. Oh my god, this is the coolest chick I’ve ever met. “Come on, Steve. I thought I knocked that bitchy judgmental shit out of you.” Please be my friend and not Harrington’s, I beg you.

“Old habits die hard,” Eddie responded. She still wasn’t fazed. One more question. “Okay, so like - hypothetically…” Robin huffed out a short laugh and turned to Eddie, waiting. “If we had never become friends, and we were all still in high school, who would you rather have been friends with? Me or Eddie?”

“This is about Dustin, isn’t it? Steve, for the last time, you don’t have to feel jealous or threatened by Eddie.” Wait, wait, wait. Hold the goddamn phone. Harrington is jealous of me??? He grinned, which probably made him look crazy, but he didn’t care. Steve, for whatever reason, was jealous of Eddie, and now he could die happy. “Dustin loves you, okay? You’ve saved his life - like, many times. Just because he has another older-brother figure at school doesn’t mean he forgot about you. I promise. ”

Well, that was a lot of information. He’d deal with it later, making a mental note to confront Steve about the torture and the monsters and the girl with superpowers and saving Dustin’s life the next time they saw each other. First, he had to get back to his initial point.

“Answer the question, Robin. Me or Eddie?” He could feel himself pushing his luck, going from annoying and quirky into rightfully suspicious territory. She groaned and rolled her eyes so hard she looked possessed.

“You are such a dumbass, Steve. A few years ago? Yeah, it probably would have been Eddie just because you were such a douchebag in Click’s class. But then you and I were brought together by the great powers of the universe, - or, Scoops Ahoy and the Russians, I guess - and I found out you’re actually my platonic soulmate, and I’m here with you, dingus. Not Eddie. Can we move on?”

Before Eddie could even process the irony of her comments (and how giddy her answer made him), the front door opened. The pair turned towards it, ready to handle whatever customers were coming in.

Eddie’s jaw dropped. He knew the people in front of him, and he had to say - he preferred the strangers. He was just getting a taste of this life, and he didn’t want it to end, yet.

“I honestly didn’t expect you actually to still be here,” Eddie watched himself say in the doorway.

“Okay, what is going on?” Robin asked. “Why wouldn’t Steve still be here? Am I being pranked or something? Steve, you know I hate -”

“That’s not Steve,” Dustin said, pointing at the man beside Robin. Her face contorted into confusion.

“What?!”

“You know?” Eddie asked Dustin, who nodded.

“He figured it out,” Steve added.

“Smart kid,” Eddie acknowledged.

“I mean, yeah,” Dustin replied. “But Steve is also a really bad actor.”

“Shocking,” Eddie said. Robin pressed her fingers to her temples.

“If someone doesn’t tell me what’s going on in the next ten seconds I swear to god I will -”

“Eddie and Steve swapped bodies,” Dustin explained, pointing at the two men.

There was a solid beat of heavy silence. Nobody knew what to say. Eddie finally settled on -

“Uh, yeah. That is in fact what happened.”

He looked at Robin’s astonished face. She didn’t even bother going through the denial phase of all this - if what she’d been saying was true, she probably had just learned to accept all batshit insanity. Then, Eddie realized that must have been why Steve had been so passive about the whole thing the night before. The bodyswap thing was weird and awful, but it wasn’t, you know, torture by Russians.

“So that’s why you were asking all those questions,” Robin deduced after a minute. “Wow. Wow, okay. But, like - oh my god.” Her expression twisted into pure fear. “Wait, but I told you -”

“I know,” Eddie said, his hands up in surrender. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna say anything, I promise.”

“What did she tell you?” Dustin asked, curiously. Eddie looked at Steve, who was also frozen. Eddie had to think fast.

“About, um. The monsters,” he said while flashing reassuring eyes at Robin. She relaxed ever so slightly.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said once she started breathing again. “I was telling Steve - I mean, I was telling him about - well, about what we went through over the summer, and I just -”

“That’s okay,” Dustin excused immediately. “Eddie isn’t going to tell anyone, right?”

“Cross my heart,” Eddie said, genuinely. Who the hell was he gonna tell, anyway? He briefly caught eyes with Robin once again, who stared at him tentatively. She was back to fidgeting with her rings, eyes darting from Eddie to Dustin to Steve and back again. “Promise.”

Her eyes found Eddie and stayed fixed on him long enough to accept his words as truth. Then, she nodded.

(next chapter)

___________________________

@thegoatscoat @ao3screenshots @stevessluttywaist @mightbeasleep @croatoan-like-its-hot @mightbeasleep @ofherscarlettwitchways @paintballkid711 @abraca-fxckyou @allbimyself26 @jellybabiesforall @allbymyselfexceptformycactus @justaloadofgarbage-blog @alliemunsonsstuff @undreamingscatworld @thefruityfours @hobbitnarwhal @calivanus @wreckmyplans-thatsmyman @antheia @goodolefashionedloverboi @lillemilly @missmagillicuddy @steviesbicrisis @gamerdano @menamesniall @eyeslikewildflowers111 @callmesirkay @stringischeese @eds-trashmouth @mnl-enuh @redfreckledwolf @itsanarrum @soulsofstarsliveinyourveins @gregre369 @stevesbipanic @momotonescreaming @aryakanojiaa @wrenisflying @comicmadlover @lilacrobin @itch-my-b0nez @anonymousbandgirl @disastardly @Dang_Dirty_Demons @daisyellsong @val-from-lawrence @starryeyedpoet17

#steddie #steddie fic #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #freaky friday steddie's version #eddie munson #steve harrington #eddie and steve #steve x eddie #eddie munson x steve harrington #writing

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themculibrary · 2 years ago

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Stars/Stargazing Masterlist

Breathing with the Universe (ao3) - K_Popsicle G, 758

Summary: Bucky watches the stars and Shuri visits.

Cause you’re a sky full of stars (ao3) - 365paperdolls lance/bobbi G, 271

Summary: “The stars are the only constant left in my life.”

Hours after the events of 3x13, Bobbi is reflecting whilst looking at the stars.

cold air and clear skies (ao3) - thedevilchicken bucky/m’baku M, 100

Summary: Bucky takes a trip. M'Baku shows him the sights.

Contemplating and Stargazing (ao3) - tmwillson3 jane/loki G, 2k

Summary: Jane goes back to Puente Antiguo post-blip to make sense of everything, where she meets someone unexpected, someone she thought dead.

Distress Greater Than Men Know (ao3) - Snickfic heimdall/loki T, 3k

Summary: He felt Loki’s searching gaze on him. Heimdall did not meet it. After a time, Loki said, “I was hoping to beg a favor of you.”

As if Loki would ever suffer himself to beg. “A favor,” Heimdall repeated.

“I’ve—lost sight of something. You seem the ideal person to help me find it.”

Everything Still Turns To Gold (ao3) - vyxythepixie loki/tony G, 1k

Summary: Extremely fluffy frostiron oneshot. Tony takes Loki to see the Northern Lights.

how i wonder what you are (ao3) - besidemethewholedamntime leo/jemma T, 3k

Summary: 'He materialises seemingly out of nowhere, silently replacing the stars in front of her, but she’s hardly surprised. They’ve become rather good at finding one another over the years. She waits for questions, for him to voice what’s been on his face all day, but instead he simply drops something on her stomach and says, “you’re old enough to know that you shouldn’t be out here without a jacket.”'

Jemma's first birthday back home. It's a little different but she still has her family, and she still has the stars.

Let Me Hold You for The Rest of My Life (ao3) - UmbrellaForTheRain mantis/nebula G, 624

Summary: Nebula (not really) stargazing alone, only to end up having a company.

like starlight (ao3) - ohjustpeachy sam/bucky G, 776

Summary: "You're an impossible person to surprise, you know that, right?" Bucky asks. "Wish me luck when I'm ready to propose."

That shuts Sam up.

"You—"

"Oh, no that's not what this is," Bucky says. Yet.

Or, Bucky surprises Sam with a stargazing trip upstate.

Looking at the stars, she felt at peace (ao3) - Laevateinn G, 100

Summary: When Darcy went back to school, whenever the pressure got too much, she would watch the stars.

one single thread of gold tied me to you (ao3) - vegetativestate druig/makkari G, 1k

Summary: The smile this dredges up in Druig is brighter and more radiant than anything a Celestial could conjure, and Makkari thinks, there it is. The sun.

So they lie there, on the duvet, under the stars, centuries worth of lost time stitched together as they breathe their own galaxy into existence.

somehow the future starts somewhere deep within our hearts (ao3) - Lilsciencequeen leo/jemma G, 1k

Summary: A night of stargazing leads to something more

Space (ao3) - elizathecat bruce/thor G, 906

Summary: Bruce has had a bad day so he and Thor swap stories about constellations

Stardust (ao3) - amidtheflowers, Sigridhr carol/darcy G, 837

Summary: Under the stars, Carol and Darcy work out where they're going.

Star(k) Gazing (ao3) - whatthepratt steve/tony T, 2k

Summary: In which Steve is blindfolded and dragged helplessly around the tower by Tony. Not as kinky as you’d think.

Star light, eternally bright, please be with me tonight (ao3) - cosmiceverafter druig/makkari T, 2k

Summary: Makkari makes a wish upon a star and hopes Druig will finally make it come true.

Star light Star Bright (ao3) - spottheem steve/bucky G, 1k

Summary: After a long week of saving people, it was finally time to give the captain some much needed down time.

Starry night (ao3) - what_a_dork_fish G, 586

Summary: A bit of time away.

#themculibrary #mcu #marvel #stars #stars masterlist #stargazing #stargazing masterlist #masterlists

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darsynia · 2 years ago

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This is so sweet of you to say, and yes, it did take long painstaking work on Ro's part, I'm still working through my stages of realization. I started out with denial (there's no way this is happening), then swapped for a LONG time to anger (how DARE you make me like him so much), then bargaining (I'll just write a few stories to get him out of my system), and I'm currently in depression (oh no, I'm converted, what do I do now? how did it come to this???? <- because that means SHE WON and I'm a sore loser).

I can see acceptance shining in the distance and every time it beams at me, I revert back to anger (NO. I WILL NOT YIELD! *writes a sex pollen Steve rogers fic*).

But srsly:

Walk It Off (1)

I Can’t Help (beginning of Fools Rush In series)

A Steve/Reader tale of tiptoeing around fate and the anxiety that comes with something new.

Warnings: honestly, not many, Reader has minor injuries and no gory details. Awkward conversations and therapy are involved, but mostly, they are just cute. See the whole thing on Ao3.

Keep reading

#ilu #bestie wars: the TREATY OF HER SIGH #you'll need a new goal now #especially since i just started watching red sea diving resort

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havecourage-darling · 2 years ago

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Right side up // 3

Princess Peach Series

<< Chapter 2: If I only could || AO3 || Masterlist || Chapter 4: Oh, come on, darling>>

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Henderson! Female Reader

WC: 13K

Warnings: cursing, mild smut

A/N: your comments/messages/reblogs have made me basically fall in love with all of you - thank you, so so much!

Chapter Three: Unaware, I’m tearing you asunder

It felt inherently wrong to be driving away from Eddie. It was like you’d ripped your heart into pieces and one of them was in your brother’s hands, driving in the BMW towards the police sirens while the other sat in that stupid cabin in the woods.

“It’s going to be fine. You’ll see him in a few hours,” you told yourself, glancing at the walkie in your bag.

Pulling into your driveway, you felt the paranoid urge to check your surroundings and all but ran into your house. Without preamble, you kept your lights off and quickly changed out of your dirty clothes. You dumped the contents of your smaller bag out and swapped it with your backpack.

Grabbing your sneakers, you hesitated at the box. Better safe than sorry you huffed, and grabbed the smaller pocket knife Jonathan had given you before leaving to California. It was small enough that Eddie could probably have some use for it.

As refreshed and ready as you could be, you sped into the kitchen and made two sandwiches and wrapped them carefully. Just as you were about to grab your keys and sweatshirt, the front door opened.

Your mother blinked at you, expression exhausted, and you frowned. “Mom?”

“Where have you been?” She asked.

Remembering Dustin’s lie you frowned, as if unsure. “I was at Robin’s house, we had a sleepover,” you said, as if you were confused as to why she’d be worried. God, you were going to hell for all the lies you’d told.

“Did you…did you hear?” She asked tentatively.

You shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “It’s not true mom, you’ve met Eddie – it has to be a mistake,” you said, tone a little too fierce to fully pull off your act.

Your mother nodded knowingly. “I believe you,” she said quietly, “and I never believed it but, this town…you know what’s coming next.”

“I know,” you sighed, exhaustion settling into your bones. “I’m going to the police station now to speak with the chief. I’ll tell him the truth and hopefully that’ll be enough.”

“Be careful,” she said quietly, kissing your cheek. “Please.”

“I will,” you said, hugging her tightly. “I might stay over Steve’s tonight, Robin’s coming over too – you know, with the stress from yesterday and today.”

“Okay but stay inside,” she said. “Are you alright?”

You crossed your fingers behind your back. “It’s hard, not knowing – but, I know he’s innocent. Eddie’s not…he’s not a monster.”

Before your mother could follow up with anything, you started towards the door. “I’ll call you,” you said, stopping when she called your name.

You turned back to see her wringing her hands. “Have you seen your brother?” She asked.

“I think he’s been staying at Lucas’,” you lied, again, “he’s planning some campaign or something. You know how he is.”

With a small wave, you stepped out the front door. You hopped into your car quickly and took a deep, steadying breath. Just one foot in front of the other, you told yourself, you got this.

The grip you had on your steering wheel was borderline painful. Yet still, you clutched it as you drove towards Rick’s house.

The cops had kept you waiting forever – a tactic you were sure was their way of making you nervous. It only served to annoy you and ramped up your impatience at delaying your return.

If you knew Eddie as well as you thought you did, he was probably climbing up the walls after being in the cabin all day.

The pseudo-interrogation echoed through your memory. You didn’t mind the new chief; he was always pretty levelheaded and not someone who was unreasonable. The new deputy however, was another story.

“I told you already,” you hissed, “I was supposed to have dinner with him but I fell asleep since I’ve had exams all week. We postponed, I stayed home, and when I woke up, I went to hang out with my friend Robin. That’s why you couldn’t find me. We’re not attached to the hip.”

Chief Powell stared at you, eyes scrutinizing and definitely realized you were lying and telling the truth simultaneously. It’d been Hopper who had taught you that – so, it wasn’t unlikely that they knew the same.

“If you see or hear from him, would you please let us know?” He asked.

You nodded. “Of course, Chief,” you said, as if you would ever do anything but help.

At that, Powell had finally smiled. Now he knew you were definitely lying – but you didn’t really care.

“Am I free to go now?” You asked, crossing your arms.

Powell and Callahan nodded. “Stay in town.”

“Where else am I going to go?” You snapped at Callahan, annoyed at his presence. Hopper never really liked him and the feelings stretched to you.

Before you opened the door, you turned to stare directly at Powell.

“Eddie couldn’t have killed anyone,” you said before leaving, “I know what this town thinks of him. How quickly they are to judge. He’s a good person. You’ve got it wrong.”

Powell rose a brow.

“He plays a fantasy game – they’re nerds, not murderers. I need to kill the spiders for him because he gets too scared to do it himself. If you pin this on him because you need a scapegoat, you’re a lesser man than I thought you were,” you said, nodding and stomping out the station.

Then, when you’d only just sat down in your car you heard the unmistakable sound of Dustin’s voice. Specifically, the terror in it.

“This is a code red, do you copy? A CODE RED.”

Your heart had dropped to your feet and it’d taken your fingers a few times to get to the right channel. You drove off to a nearby store parking lot and waited, trembling, as you waited for Dustin to speak.

It’d taken what felt like forever but Steve finally answered. Everyone was okay but Max was now Vecna’s next target. You had almost driven over to the Wheeler’s that moment but Steve reassured you they would be fine. He’d be by the next morning to get you – they had everything covered. Max just wanted to rest.

“Steve,” you said, voice shaky.

“I know,” he answered, his own voice betraying his anxiety. “I know but one step at a time, remember? Everyone’s fine. Dustin is fine. I’m fine.”

“You better be, or I’ll kick your ass Harrington,” you grumbled, finally smiling when he laughed and signed off.

Everything was starting to fall apart; the seams were practically bursting and none of you were any step closer to finding out what the hell was happening. You needed a plan – one that helped you all get the upper hand. But, most importantly, you needed to protect Max.

Your thoughts swirled in your head as you drove to the cabin, the sun almost fully gone, when a flash of lights caught your eyes. Squinting, you fought the urge to break loudly when you realized there were two cars parked at the road in front of Rick’s house.

Fuck!

Slowly, you stepped out your car and ducked down to peek into the idling one. A flash of green and white caught your eyes. A varsity jacket? Shit. Carver.

Without hesitating, you whirled around and left your car hidden under an oak tree down the road. If they drove by, they wouldn’t be able to see you but anyone on foot would be able to make out your car. You just hoped it wouldn’t come to that. You needed to get out to the shed, Jason and his posse had to have just arrived.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you muttered to yourself, fully cognizant that you’d probably been the one where Dustin learned it from. Almost tripping on a root, you caught yourself and heard the sound of splashing water. You weaved through the trees and found yourself a quarter of the way around the lake. A boat was in the water by the shed and your heart slammed against your ribcage. You recognized that mop of hair.

His foot came out to kick the silent motor. “Goddamn it!” He picked up an oar and started to frantically row. You cupped your hands around your mouth, about to whistle out to him but you caught yourself. Two figures appeared at the edge of the water, removing some of their clothing and dove into the lake.

Shit – it was Jason and Patrick. They were great swimmers, much to your and Steve’s displeasure. Panic rose in your chest and you looked around frantically as if something to help Eddie would just materialize. How the hell could you draw Eddie’s attention to you without gaining Jason’s? If they knew you were here – it’d get bad. You could outrun Jason but not both of them, and you refused to be something to be used against Eddie.

Adrenaline rushing, you were distracted in your panic by Eddie wildly swinging an oar when you realized one of the two had disappeared.

Suddenly, Patrick shot into the air. The air in your lungs disappeared. You watched, horrified, as he started to tremble suspended mid-air. You only barely managed not to fall on your ass in shock. Was this…what Eddie had described? What had happened to Chrissy? You gaped, unable to move. A loud splash pulled you out of your trance and you saw Eddie bob in the water.

Your stomach was heaving and you were absolutely sure that for as long as you live, you would never forget the sound of Patrick’s limbs snapping.

Shit, you had to get the fuck out of here. You pushed down your panic to deal with it after and got ankle deep into the water and used your hand to slap at the water when Eddie got closer to the shore. Not hearing you in his thrashing, you watched him swim almost across the entire lake.

Searching frantically for a small enough rock, you tossed a handful before the fourth hit his head. Startled, his head disappeared below the surface before he whirled around. You jumped up and down, waving your arms and only barely kept your panic at bay.

The stark relief on his face was obvious and you motioned for him to hurry up. Retreating into the trees, your heart was all but vibrating out your body as Eddie stumbled onto the shore. He leaned over his knees, spitting out lake water.

“Eddie!” You whispered loudly. “E-Eddie, is he – is he dead?”

Eddie nodded, faltering to his feet, finally reaching you under the cover of the trees. You slammed into him, arms coming around his heaving chest. He soaked you almost instantly but neither of you seemed to care. Eddie’s trembling hands came up to your back and he tucked his face into your neck.

“Holy shit Eddie, fuck, what was that?”

“You’ve never seen it before?” He asked. “When you were fighting before?”

You shook your head. “We could always see what we were fighting,” you trembled, the snapping echoing in your mind. “We gotta go, before Jason finds us. My car – it’s down that way. Can you run?”

“Doesn’t matter, we have to,” Eddie said, likely still running on adrenaline. You grabbed his hand and fought the panic rising in your chest. It’d have to wait.

“Come on,” you said, starting your quick pace.

Fumbling with the keys, you tried your best to be quiet and threw a spare blanket you had in the backseat over his hidden body. “Duck down in case the police pass us,” you tell him, running into the driver’s seat and all but gunning it towards the town line.

“Where are you going?” He asked, his breathing starting to even out.

“I don’t know,” you said, eyes darting to your review mirror. Holy shit, holy shit. “Call Steve, my walkie is in my bag by your feet.

“Harrington? Hello?” Eddie shouted into the walkie. There’s no answer and your stomach clenched. Shit.

“Do you still have the keys to the cabin by Lake Monroe?” You asked, desperate for anywhere you could go. “I have supplies and a change of clothes for you. I could get us there in a few hours.”

“The keys are in my duffel back home,” Eddie groaned.

Your grip on the wheel tightened and the snap echoed in your mind. How could anyone think Eddie was capable of that? God, this was getting out of hand. “I can pick the lock probably,” you said.

A warm hand came up to your elbow through the seats and startled you. “We can’t leave your brother and the rest of them.” Your shoulders dropped but you knew he was right. The urge to run and hide Eddie where no one and nothing could get to him was strong – and hard to resist.

“The police are going to be even more on guard,” you said, chewing your bottom lip. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

You glanced at him, his clothes creating a damp spot on the floor. “Angie’s new apartment is on the other side of the town line. She went a little far out since it was the cheapest one she could find that close to campus. It’s got a garage and I could hide my car.”

“Is it too much to ask? She…I know what everyone in town is saying about me – the cult leader,” he said, joke falling flat.

“It’s our only choice besides parking my car somewhere and hiding in the trunk,” you said, sighing and making a left turn towards your campus. “Besides, I think she left this morning for Chicago. She’s spending spring break with her sister.”

“Does that mean I get to see you pick a lock again?” Eddie asked, brows wiggling.

You shook your head and a small smile lifted the corner of your lips. Only Eddie could manage to chase away the tightening grip panic had on you. “No, you weirdo,” you said, less tense the further out you got. “She has a spare key hidden under her mat. We just need to be careful not to be seen by her neighbor.”

“Sneaky is my middle name,” Eddie sighed.

Thankfully, it seemed like Angela’s neighbor was down for the night by the time you’d hidden your car in her garage. “Small mercies,” you told him, closing your door as quietly as you could. “Come on.”

Eddie took your outstretched hand and followed you up the stairs towards the second-floor apartment. You quickly swiped the key from under her mat and walked into her small living room. Eddie looked around and smiled. “This is nice,” he said, “it looks like Sienna decorated though.”

You shot him a look. “She did, like Angela could say no to Sienna,” you said, smiling at the memory of the day. You’d teased Angie to no end when you’d found out. The pining your two friends had for each other was clear as day – to everyone but themselves. Eddie had made you swear you’d let them figure it out alone.

“I know the feeling,” Eddie said, eyes on you. “Have I said thanks yet?”

“For what?” You said, taking the risk and turning on her smallest lamp in the corner. Eddie pulled all the blinds shut and double checked the windows were locked.

“For sticking with me,” he said, looking suddenly exhausted.

Your heart ached at the sight of his defeated expression. “Munson, there was no other option,” you said, sitting on the couch. “Would you have left me behind?”

Eddie didn’t dignify that with a response but by his sharp look you knew the answer.

“Then enough of this. We don’t abandon people, not ever. Especially not you,” you said kissing his jaw. “I’m going to try and see if I can reach Angie and tell her we’re squatting for the night. Can you try Dustin again?”

Passing him the walkie, you padded over to Angie’s kitchen. If you knew your friend as well as you thought you did, you knew that she would – ah, there! You plucked the paper off the fridge and smiled.

Emergency contact info.

The phone rang a few times before a sleep-mussed voice answered. “I am so sorry to bother you this late,” you winced, not realizing what time it was, “it’s an emergency, can I please talk to Angela?”

There was a bit of shuffling before a bright voice came on.

“Angie?”

“Henderson?” She said, incredulous. “My sister said you told her you had an emergency.”

You chewed on your lip. Dr. Owens had once told you to always assume that someone was listening – that’s part of the reason why you never told Eddie everything. “I had a fight with my mom and needed my own space, you know, and needed somewhere to crash. Is it cool if I…use the key?”

Her breathing was soft and you felt her hesitation. Please understand what I’m trying to say, you begged. She had to know that if you’d been looking to get out of your house – you’d have gone to Eddie’s or Steve’s. Especially now that she wasn’t here.

“Of course, use whatever you need. Fresh towels in the closet,” she said after he pause. “We can talk when I’m back at the end of the week.”

“Thank you, Angie,” you whispered.

She hesitated again and you gripped the phone tightly. “I heard it’s getting a bit bumpy back there. Do what you have to do, okay? Be careful.”

“You too,” you said, “see you soon?”

“Yeah, bye.”

Placing the phone down you exhaled. Glancing at the cluttered kitchen, you grabbed two glasses and filled them with water. You could hear your brother’s voice coming through the walkie from where Eddie sat in the living room. He was giving the same summarized version to Eddie that he’d given you a few hours ago.

Walking back to Eddie’s side, you pushed the glass of water into his hand and he shot you a grateful look.

“I heard something over the radio,” Dustin said, “something about cops down by the lake.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, sighing, “Vecna strikes again.”

“Shit,” Dustin grumbled. There was a brief moment of silence before Steve’s voice came on. “Hey guys. It’s too late to do anything on our end, these shitheads are wiped and I don’t think any of us on the road right now is good idea. Wanna meet in the morning?”

“Yeah,” you said, taking the walkie from Eddie. “We’re too far from you guys anyway. First thing tomorrow?”

“Where?”

Eddie wrapped his hand around your wrist and brought the walkie close to his mouth. “Skull rock, in the woods? You know it?”

“Yeah, that’s good. Should be isolated enough that Eddie isn’t so easily spotted.”

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” you said, leaning into Eddie’s side. He yawned, his arm coming around your waist and his chin resting on your shoulder. “Take care of my brother, okay?”

“I can take care of myself!”

“Was I talking to you?”

Steve’s laugh came through and you could picture him easily. “I got him, Henderson. Don’t worry. Take care of Munson.”

Eddie grunted and you smiled. “Good night, over.”

“Over.”

“Food, shower, sleep?” You asked, hand covering the one on your hip.

“Yeah, sounds good,” he said. You leaned over and pulled your backpack to you. At the top, the squished pair of sandwiches from this morning looked more than appetizing.

“It’s something?” You said, shrugging as you handed him his. “I made these while trying to avoid my mom’s questioning. Sorry in advance.”

“Princess,” Eddie said, groaning as he peeled off his jacket and vest. “I haven’t eaten anything since the pasta this morning. An apple would look delicious right now.”

Laughing, you dug your hand into your bag and pulled out an apple. Eddie rose a brow and leaned over to glance at your bag. “A pardon and charges dropped from the police department would be nice too.”

“Sorry, all out of wishes,” you said, passing him the apple. Eating quickly, and in relative exhausted silence, you got up to putter around the apartment. “Angie said there were towels in one of her closets.”

“You want to go first?” Eddie asked, leaning on the doorframe. You looked up at him from where you were searching and your heart broke at the utter exhaustion on his expression.

“Why don’t you go start while I find the towels? I grabbed a change of clothes for you too,” you said. “Leave me your dirty ones outside the door and I’ll start a load.”

Eddie smiled, and despite the fact that it didn’t reach his eyes, he leaned over to kiss the top of your head. “Thanks, Peach.” He disappeared through the door at the end of the hall and you manage to find two large fluffy towels.

Undressing, you wrapped one of the towels around you and threw your clothes in the washing machine by the utility closet. Ducking to grab Eddie’s clothes, you threw them in with yours. The hum of the cycle starting helped dull the noise inside your head. The memory of Patrick shooting into the air, his head thrown back, and his limbs twisting haunted you. You shut your eyes, as if that would help stop the onslaught, and pressed your palms to them. Taking deep breaths to keep your anxiety at bay, you shoved off the machine and grabbed Eddie’s change of clothes. A pair of his boxers that you’d stolen to wear as shorts months ago, and a soft Judas Priest t-shirt.

You knocked on the bathroom door, poking your head in. “I’m leaving your clothes on top of the toilet, okay?”

When Eddie didn’t answer, you walked in and carefully shut the door behind you. “Eddie?”

“Sorry, what?” He asked, head coming out from behind the curtain. His eyes were red and he had a strange look on his face. You motioned to the clothes and the towel. He nodded, absently, and realization dawned on you.

You recognized that expression. It was the same one you’d seen reflected on your friends’ faces after you’d managed to defeat whatever you were fighting. Exhaustion, relief, panic, adrenaline, or a mix of all the above.

“Can you come in?” He asked quietly.

Without hesitating, you folded the towel around you and dropped it next to his. You stepped in carefully, not wanting to slip or hit him accidentally. You hesitated – the water warm and feeling amazing on your aching body – you’d never done this with Eddie before.

His bathroom barely fit one, let alone two. Your bathroom always ran the risk of having someone drop in unexpectedly.

It was…nice. Intimate in a way you hadn’t expected. Reaching out to cradle his face, you smiled when he leaned into your touch like a sunflower. Exhaustion was etched into the lines of his face; it was in your bones but you could tell Eddie had been rattled this time.

“Come on,” you said, turning him around. You bent down to squeeze some shampoo into your hand and slowly worked it into his hair. A satisfied moan fell from his lips and you smiled. You worked conditioner into it after, gently unknotting the tangles from his hair.

Hiding another laugh, you watch Eddie practically melt into a puddle at your feet. It took a while, enough for the water to cool a little, but neither of you minded. Eventually, he turned around, water falling onto his back, and he looked down on you.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, leaning his forehead onto yours. “I get it now.”

“What?” You asked, lathering up your hands with soap. You ran it over your own body, then his, and he kissed your wet nose.

“Why you didn’t tell me what your nightmares were about,” he said, his voice almost drowned out by the water, “why you always looked so terrified when you woke up.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” you said, watching his expression harden. “We’re doing the best we can, okay? One foot then the other, remember?”

He nodded, his hands coming up to your hair. “Your turn?” You turned obediently, letting his fingers card through your hair, cleaning it slowly. After he had washed out the last bit of conditioner from your hair, his arm snaked around your waist, pulling you back into his chest. You felt a familiar pressure at the small of your back and you glanced at him over your shoulder inquisitively.

“Shut up,” he grunted, the panic in his eyes slowly being replaced with their regular glint. “You’re naked and wet – I can’t – my body doesn’t shut off around you apparently.”

Wiggling your brows and Eddie huffed a laugh, the water cooling a little bit more. Wanting to tease the mischievous look back into his eye, you shifted your hips firmly against his and he inhaled sharply. “Princess…” His slippery hand dipped low on your stomach and you grinned. His fingers grazed your warm skin and you heard him laugh when you twitched.

“Come on,” he said, hooking his chin over your shoulder, “let’s get out of here before the water goes cold.”

Eddie held you steady as you stepped out the tub and reached for the towel. Wrapping it around you, you stepped out into the hallway. Goosebumps prickled your skin as you checked on your clothes. They’d be done in a few minutes and you’d be able to throw them into the dryer.

“Peach?”

“Hmm?” You padded back to the bathroom and found Eddie in his boxers.

“You bring a change of clothes?” He asked, the faded black t-shirt in his hand.

Shaking your head, you nodded towards the washing machine. “Should be done in a few minutes.”

“Here,” Eddie said, handing you the shirt, “I’m good until morning.”

“But I don’t have underwear,” you said, pulling the shirt over your head, it barely fell over your hips.

Eddie’s gaze turned heated as he padded over to the couch and you felt his eyes on your legs. “We’ve sleep naked together, princess. Besides, I’m too tired to try and debauch you tonight,” he said, head dropping onto the back of the sofa.

“Can I ask you something about today?” You asked him, your leg jiggling up and down. Bringing your thumb into your mouth, you started chewing on the edge of your nail.

“Yeah?”

Hesitating, you didn’t know if you wanted to bring it up. If you couldn’t stop thinking about it, you couldn’t imagine how Eddie felt.

“I can hear you thinking from here princess. You can ask me whatever you want, whenever you want.”

The hand closest to you reached blindly for your own and you laughed when he accidentally smacked your bare leg. “Is that…what happened to Chrissy?” You asked, gently intertwining his fingers with yours. “The way he shot up…his eyes.” A hitch in your breathing had Eddie lifting his head and looking to you.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s exactly how it happened.”

“What does he want from them? Why? They’re just – kids,” you breathed, feeling suddenly horrified for Max. She was just a little girl. Closing your eyes, you could see her clearly.

She was smaller, much more defensive, wandering around on her skateboard. Her red hair blowing behind her as she skated passed you and Dustin in the parking lot. The way she’d stared at you in awe the first time you told Billy to shove off. How she’d lean into your warmth, like a puppy, when you’d drape an arm over her shoulders. That bright, sunshine on a summer day smile she shot Lucas when she thought no one was looking.

Chest tightening, Eddie pulled you into his arms, your bare limbs knotting around each other. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this,” you whimpered, fighting the image of Eddie with unseeing eyes.

“You know, you keep saying that so I’m going to keep telling you that this wasn’t your fault,” Eddie said into your ear, his stubble scratching at your skin. “Sweetheart, we’re okay for now. Everyone’s okay right now.”

“But-”

“For our sanity, we have to take it moment by moment. Okay?”

Relenting, you nodded. “I know, I know,” and you did, “but I’m still – I want you safe.”

“If you think I’d want to be anywhere but by your side, you’re more insane than what I thought,” Eddie scoffed, his tone soft.

You pinched him in retaliation and his hands came up to your sides. Your shirt rode up and Eddie’s eyes darted down to your thighs, his quip lost as his gaze practically glazed over at your lack of clothes.

“Eddie,” you said, warning clear.

As usual, he ignored you, his hands dipping lower and lower until you clenched your thighs together. “What happened to I’m not trying to debauch you?”

Without a single shred of shame, Eddie shrugged. “You’re too hard to resist, siren,” he said simply.

The washing machine went silent and you hopped up, pushing everything into the dryer. It’d be done in another hour. “You just need to resist for another hour,” you joked. “Eddie – you look dead on your feet.”

“Take the shirt off and I bet I can find the energy,” Eddie said haughtily, eyes slipping closed. You rolled yours and shoved him into standing.

He whined, leaning his weight onto your side and you huffed. “The couch turns into a pull out, help me and grab that corner,” your muscles groaned as you pulled at the lever. “Considering your wandering hands, if anything does happen – we might as well not do it on her bed.”

Eddie shot you an insulted look but you grinned. Within minutes, the mattress sprung out and Eddie sat at the edge. You walked into his open legs and he buried his head into your stomach. His hair was still damp, the curls frizzing a bit, and it looked like he had a nasty bruise forming on the side of his chest.

“Take a picture,” Eddie teased, one eye barely opening and looking up at you.

You smiled, hands coming up to his shoulders and you kneaded at the knots you found there. Almost instantly, Eddie went boneless. Shifting your weight so you could withstand his on your torso, you grunted. “Eddie!”

“Eddie’s not here,” he said, voice muffled by your shirt, “his brain melted.”

“Yeah, a long time ago,” you snorted. He blew a raspberry into your skin and you laughed, startled. “Come on you, it’s bed time.”

“I’m not sleepy,” he said, flopping back onto the mattress.

Crawling up the bed, you pulled the thin blanket you’d found with the towels up with you. “I’ll be the big spoon.”

Without complaint and with the speed of a demogorgon, Eddie had settled in front of you. When you didn’t move, he shot you a look over his shoulder. “I’m coming!” You adjusted the blanket over both your legs before throwing your arm over his waist.

An eager hand tugged yours up as far as it could go, resting them on his chest. He pushed back into you as much as he could and you smiled sleepily. “If we get any closer, we’ll mold into one.”

“That’s the dream princess,” he said, sleep pulling him under, “your looks and my taste in music – we’d be the ultimate hot girl.”

“I hate you,” you said, “my taste in music is flawless.”

He snorted, eyes closing, “says the girl who likes ABBA.”

“Says the pretentious music gatekeeper,” you said around a yawn. Feeling his drowsy smile on your hand as he pressed a kiss to it, you let your eyes close.

You take a moment to ask the universe to give you a break. Please, you thought, no nightmares. Right as you were on the cusp of sleep and awake, Eddie’s warmth comforting, you felt his hand squeeze yours thrice.

“You know you could’ve changed shirts,” you said, eyeing his freshly washed Hellfire shirt.

Eddie’s eyes twinkled. “Why would I? It reminds me of only the best memories.”

“Of campaigns, I’m sure,” you teased back dryly.

He hummed, still hidden in the backseat of your car as you drove to Skull Rock. “Yeah,” he admitted, “also the best rack I’ve seen on a woman who groans when I kiss the spot right under her-”

“Eddie!” You felt your face warm. “I am driving.”

“You started it,” he said, not entirely wrong. “Sweetheart, have you ever been out to Skull Rock?”

Shaking your head, you took the left turn Eddie had warned you about. “My ex lived in a different state and anyone else before you just kissed me at the end of a date on my doorstep.”

“What idiots,” Eddie said, tone a little suggestive. Somehow, a good night of sleep in your arms and another sandwich for breakfast – a few stolen Oreos from Angie’s pantry – seemed to reignite all of Eddie’s energy back. Including his penchant for chasing after you even in the most inappropriate moments.

“Was this morning not enough for you?” You asked, faux indignant. Parking the car under the cover of a few dense trees.

Eddie raised a brow. “Was it for you?” His eyes met yours across the top of your car, glinting at what they saw, and before you could even answer, he grinned. “Don’t worry princess, once this is over and we’re all back to normal – I’ll keep you in bed for the week.”

“Promises, promises,” you said, snorting when he shot you a wounded look. “Come on pervert, let’s go find this make out rock you’re so familiar with.”

“Alright, I wouldn’t say familiar – I did a few deals down here,” he started. His low chatter kept your thoughts from spiraling too much as you got deeper and deeper into the woods.

Your shoulders were practically up by your ears and you had this horrible sense of being watched. It was unlikely, you knew that, but the paranoia was starting to creep up on you. What if Vecna struck out from his pattern? Did either of you have a favorite song? What if the police found you here? There was Jason to worry about now…

“Princess?”

Shaking your head, trying to clear your racing thoughts, you nodded at him. “Sorry, I’m getting a little nervous.”

“I get the feeling,” he motioned to the left and picked up his pace, “we should be there in a few minutes.”

Skull Rock was not what you’d been expecting. To be frank, you didn’t know what you had expected – certainly not a massive boulder leaning on its side with a sad look on its face.

“It looks sad,” you told Eddie as he herded you towards the shadowed side of the rock.

“Sweetheart, it’s a rock,” he said, looking around carefully. He kicked an old soda can that someone had left behind and rubbed his temple. “Come on, I don’t want to risk anyone seeing us.”

Agreeing, you settled next to him, the cool rock against your back. “When did they say they’d be here?” You asked. Eddie glanced at his watch but sighed when you both remembered it was broken. Offering up your own wrist, watch miraculously functioning.

“A few minutes,” he said, sighing. His hand came up to your thigh, his fingers pressing into your skin and you shot him a look.

“We are trying to clear your name for murder, can you fix your priorities, again,” you joked kissing his jaw to soften your tone.

His arm snaked around you like he was aware that your sanity was starting to fray.

“I can multitask,” he said in response to your earlier jab, hands trailing down your sides. “I’m sure we have enough time for me to get a hand under that awesome shirt. Judas Priest? Do you listen to them often?”

“Not really,” you said, knowing he was trying his best to distract you from another spiral. “It’s my boyfriend’s shirt. He insisted I sleep in it and we overslept so I didn’t have time to put mine back on.”

“Seems like he’d find you wearing his clothes a little bit of a turn on,” he said, fingers tightening their hold on you.

“Yeah?”

He nodded emphatically and you almost grinned. “Yeah.” His mouth came down to your neck and you were just about to reach for his –

“EDDIE?” Echoed through the woods. A hard, shushing sound followed but before you’d even had a chance to blink, Eddie had shoved you both into the darkness under the stone.

“Eddie, I think that was Dustin’s voice,” you said, skin prickling at the thought of finally seeing Max.

“Yeah, but let’s not risk it,” he said. Your heart both broke and softened at the protectiveness in his voice. “Jason thinks I killed his girlfriend. The whole town knows you’re mine – I’m sure he’d love a chance to repay what he thinks I did.”

“I can take him,” you grunted, mildly insulted. “I killed a Demogorgon you know.”

Eddie sighed, both amused and exasperated. “I know, warrior princess, I know. You’re the hottest demon slayer I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

You grumbled, shooting him a cutting look and biting back a smile when he laughed.

“Boom! Bada-bing bada-boom Henderson, there she is Skull Rock!” Steve’s voice carried through the air. You glanced at Eddie, who nodded but still pushed you behind him as he peeked around the rock.

“In your face man, in your stupid cocky face,” Steve said, smug.

“But that doesn’t make sense!”

“You just can’t admit that you’re wrong, butthead,” Steve continued.

Eddie jumped out from behind the rock, startling Dustin and Steve, with a flourish. “I concur. You, Dustin Henderson, are a total butthead.” You leaned across Eddie’s back and waved at your relieved looking friends.

“To be fair, Harrington, you’re also a total butthead,” you quipped.

Dustin smiled and hurried forward into Eddie’s arms. “Jesus, we thought you were a goner.” Steve tugged you into his arms and he pressed his nose into your temple.

“Don’t freak me out like that again, okay?”

“Didn’t mean to,” you huffed. “I’m too used to being a Harrington-Buckley-Henderson trio. Don’t know how to fight monsters without my sidekicks.”

“If anything, you’re my sidekick,” Steve grunted when you pinched his arm. “Ow! Ow! Okay!”

Not letting go of Steve’s waist, you turned your head to glare at Dustin. “Don’t think I didn’t realize that you pranced towards him first. I’m your flesh and blood and you go for him first?”

“Hey!” Eddie cried out, stepping out from Robin’s hug.

“He’s the one with the murder charge!” Dustin said defensively.

Narrowing your eyes, you finally stepped out from Steve’s arms and put your hands on your hips. “I carried you in my arms when you were a baby,” you hissed. “I fed you from my own two hands.”

Dustin rolled his eyes and you grunted when Robin’s arms threw themselves around you. “I can see that Eddie’s mannerisms are finally sticking.”

“She’s always been that dramatic,” Dustin grumbled.

The rest of the group quieted and you turned to glare at him. He froze, eyes wide, and immediately bolted as you ran after him. “Come back here you ungrateful punk!”

Steve sighed as you ran circles around them. “Every time.”

“Isn’t it great?” Eddie said, grinning as he watched you chase after Dustin.

You came to a stop by Max, catching your breath and then throwing your arms around her. “I’m glad you’re okay,” you tell her quietly, “no one – not even that stupid demon spellcaster is taking you away from us.”

At your vehemence, she smiles. It’s small and dim but you’ll take it. “Thanks,” she said, dropping her head onto your shoulder.

“You good Sinclair?” You called out, catching his attention. His serious expression softened at your grin and he nodded.

“I’m good now,” he said, eyes darting to Max’s. “I’m good.”

While everyone recounted their own sides to the story, you watched your brother pace by the trees. He glanced down at his compass a few times; brows furrowed.

“What’s he doing?” You asked.

Max lifted her head and followed your gaze. “He’s annoyed Steve was right.” Her eyes darted back to Nancy and Eddie.

“Well, now all we need to do is sneak into his lair in the upside down and drive a stake through his heart,” Max said, shrugging as she stepped towards them.

Robin snorted. “If he even has a heart.”

“A stake?” You asked.

“Is he - like a vampire?” Steve asked, eyes widening.

You whirled around to Max, your own panic bubbling. “There are vampires now?”

“It was a metaphor!” Max huffed.

“I see how you two became friends,” Robin chuckled and Nancy huffed a laugh. Both you and Steve turned to glare at them.

“Perfectly reasonable question,” Steve said, coming up next to you.

“Right? What, the Mind Flayer exists but oooh, vampires, too out of the range of believability?” You snorted, crossing your arms like Steve.

Nancy rolled her eyes and Eddie grinned. “A bullet should work on him though, right?”

“I say we chop his head off,” Lucas said, frowning.

“How about all the above?” Nancy said, with a sigh. “We just can’t do any of that until we find a way into the upside down.”

“We need El to get her powers back,” Max said.

“It was way easier with her,” Steve added.

Eddie’s eyes caught yours and you motioned towards Dustin.

“Hey, uh, Dustin’s not cursed right?” Eddie asked, watching as Dustin paced.

“No, he’s fine,” Steve said, “mental? Absolutely.”

“BOOM!” Dustin shouted suddenly, making you jump about three feet into the air.

“Christ, Dustin, you’re going to give me a heart attack,” you said, gripping Steve’s arm.

Eddie was by your side in a second, eyes looking wildly around. “What? What is it?”

“I was right!” He said, lifting a hand in the air. “Skull Rock was north!”

Oh. You were going to strangle him.

“Seriously? You’re serious? This is Skull Rock! You’re totally one hundred percent wrong, literally right now.”

“Yes, and no,” he said.

“Oh my God,” Steve muttered.

“This compass worked when we were at the Wheeler’s house, when we were in the car, but it started to slip the further east we went,” Dustin said, pointing to his compass. Now, it’s way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn’t wrong! The compass was.”

“So you’re using faulty equipment, you’re still wrong!”

“Except it isn’t faulty,” Dustin turned to Lucas. “Do you remember what can affect a compass?”

“An electromagnetic field,” he said, recognition drawing on his face.

“What’s happening?” Eddie whispered.

You sighed. “I don’t know, one of them will explain it in a second,” you said, leaning into him.

“In the presence of a stronger electromagnetic field, the needle deflects to that power,” Dustin explained.

“Still don’t get it,” Eddie said.

Straightening, you realized you did. “So either there’s some super big magnet around here or…”

“There’s a gate!” Lucas finished.

“But we’re no where near the lab,” you said, “but what if-”

“-there’s another gate,” Dustin said. “It’d have to be smaller, way less powerful.”

You groaned. Not again, not another one.

“Snack sized gate!” Robin said, hands on her hips.

“How, why?” Steve said, mimicking your distress.

“Doesn’t matter, the point is – there’s probably a gate. I hope it is too because then we have a shot at freeing Max and a shot at Vecna,” then, with all the confidence of a kid, he whirled around and walked off.

“Hey!” You shouted. “Where the hell are you going?”

“These two still have targets on their heads, we can’t just go walking through the woods,” Steve said, exasperated.

You turned to Eddie who looked pensive.

“What say you, Eddie the Banished?”

Without listening to their banter, you already knew that this was your strongest lead. You’d have to follow it. Everyone started to shift, following Dustin, and Eddie offered up his hand.

“Follow me into Mordor?” He asked, eyes twinkling. You looked at your boyfriend, one of your best friends really, and thought about all the bullshit you’d been through within the last two days. The fact that he still had the energy to tease you, to try and put you at ease, when your lives were at stake served to make you angry. Angry that this town couldn’t see how wonderful he really was.

His brows rose when you hesitated. “At this point? Why not?” You said, taking his hand and vowing to always try and make up for the criticism. It didn’t matter that everyone else couldn’t see it – you did, and you’d never let that go.

After the first hour had passed, you were ready to call time out. The shoes you were wearing were pinching your feet and you were so hungry you were ready to take a bite out of one of the leaves Robin kept ripping off bushes as you walked. Eddie was following after your brother closely, not being subtle about his protectiveness and Steve hovered close to you.

“You okay?”

Smiling up at Steve and his worried mother hen face, you nodded. “Just a little tired. Had a long shift at work before this, you know?”

He snorted. “Keith can be a handful. Nothing else going on in your life?”

Pretending to think you shook your head. “No, not really. You?”

“Nope, not anything I can think of.”

Laughing like idiots, you came to a sudden stop. “What happened?” You asked, trying to see past Lucas’ shoulder.

“I thought these woods looked familiar,” Robin said.

You pushed your way towards Eddie and he sighed. “Lover’s Lake.” Patrick’s levitating body flashed across your mind and you shivered. “Don’t think about it.”

“Easier said than done,” you huffed.

“There’s a gate in Lover’s Lake?” Max asked.

Nancy frowned and you knew what she was thinking of. “Whenever the demogorgon attacked, it always left an opening. Maybe Vecna’s the same way.”

“Well, only one way to find out,” Steve said and you all turned to look at the shore.

Eddie pointed to a few yards away. “The boat I was on, it floated to the edge there, look.”

You don’t feel good about this but as you get nearer, you let Eddie help you on after the others settled in. Dustin lifted his leg, like he was bracing himself to hop in, and a flash of concern hit you.

"Absolutely not," you snapped your fingers and pointed to the shore. "Off, off!"

Dustin frowned. "I'm not a dog,” he said, dropping himself back on the shore.

"You're not, but clearly you're insane if you think you're getting on this boat."

"It was my goddamn idea!"

"You are not getting anywhere near any type of gate," you hissed, anxiety climbing just at the thought of it. Channeling every ounce of authority, you pointed to the ground. "You're staying on the shore, safe. Okay? Give me the compass."

Grumbling, he handed it over to you and you sat in between Robin and Eddie.

"Who knew you were so bossy?" Robin said, wiggling her brows.

"I knew," Eddie said, squeezing your thigh reassuringly. "It's really hot, especially when she-"

“Edward!” You rolled your eyes, leaning into Eddie's teasing touch, and sighed. "Must you two always make my life difficult?"

Edie and Robin exchanged looks and nodded. "Yeah, it's fun."

You snorted. "If it helps, she's been bossy since she was a kid," Steve said, "she used to make me follow her around in recess and pretend to be her butler."

"I was not!"

Nancy huffed and Eddie shot you a knowing look. Whirling around to Nancy, you glared at her. "Et tu, Brute?" She hid a smile behind her hand. Robin and Eddie started rowing and not five minutes after Nancy stopped it.

“What’s going on?” Dustin’s voice echoed in the boat.

“The compass is acting weird,” you responded, all of you staring at the needle as it spun. Steve kicked off his shoes and you shot him a look. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Someone’s gotta go down there and check it out,” he pulled off his socks, “unless one of you can top being a certified lifeguard and co-captain of the swim team.”

“Absolutely not. I’m in charge and I’m just as good as swimmer as you.”

“No, I’m going,” Steve said again, glare cutting you.

“Why? We’re both good swimmers,” you exclaimed, anxiety clawing at your chest, “I was the anchor of the swim team!”

“Oh my God, this is going to go on forever,” Robin groaned.

Steve ignored her. “Because, I’m the better choice.”

You pulled out the big guns. “Why? Because you’re a boy?”

Steve sputtered, nervous and pointing at you. “You know that’s not why and you can’t use that to throw me off.”

“Flip a coin,” Nancy said, looking through her pockets.

“Or we can vote, I pick Harrington,” Eddie said making Robin snort and you turned to glared at him.

Steve glanced at you and you knew he saw you were serious. “Same as always?” He asked, holding out his fist.

“Fine,” you said, doing the same.

“Are they playing rock, paper, scissors?” Eddie asked. Nancy rolled her eyes.

“Whenever they fought about something they would do this to decide a tie breaker. They’ve done it for as long as I can remember,” Nancy said, glaring at the both of you.

Picking paper, you watched Steve hold two fingers and pump his fist. You cursed loudly, crossing your arms and sitting back down next to Eddie. Robin shot you a knowing look.

“She’s always been a sore loser,” Steve said to Eddie, “when we were fifteen, I won a co-ed swimming competition and she didn’t talk to me for a week.”

“Because you cheated!”

Steve huffed a laugh. “Did not.”

“Did too.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll be right back.”

“Steve!” You scrambled forward. “Be careful. Don’t touch anything and don’t be an idiot.”

“Your confidence in me is inspiring,” he said, swooping down to ruffle the top of your head before diving in.

You frowned. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Eddie’s stomach swooped as you stood, screaming out Steve’s name. He watched you immediately step up to the edge of the boat and he knew what you were going to do.

"Don't you dare," Eddie growled, his hand gripping your wrist desperately. You couldn’t be thinking about jumping. He couldn’t let you.

"He's my best friend," you said, desperately, expression decided. "Eddie, he's been my best friend since I was three. I can't - I can't let him drown. I'm the next best swimmer, I was the other co-captain. I'll be right back okay sweetheart?"

"Henderson," he exclaimed, his panic clawing at his throat, "don't do this to me."

“You’d jump if it was me,” you said, peeling off what he knew was your favorite jacket and tossing it to the bottom of the boat. You reached over, grabbed his hand, and squeezed three times. Eddie’s anxiety shot through the fucking metaphorical roof. There was no way he was letting you go. Who knew what the fuck was down there? “Eddie, you wouldn’t let me drown.”

Eddie heard his voice hitch a touch too hysterically. “Because I want to marry you some day! I can’t do that if you’re jumping blindly into God knows what!”

“I know, but it’ll be okay,” You kissed him and Eddie tried to tighten his grip on you but you slipped away and jumped into the water quickly. Eddie dove to the side of the boat desperately.

“You can’t just kiss me and leave! Don’t Han Solo me!” Eddie let out a frustrated shout. "I can't fucking believe this," he grunted, standing at the edge of the boat without hesitation.

"Are you jumping in?" Nancy asked, her tone surprised and gaze frantic as she searched the water for the two of you.

Eddie glared at her. "She's the love of my life, of course I'm jumping in," he huffed, "Harrington better be fucking alive or I’m going to kill him myself."

Did he just admit to Nancy Wheeler, of all fucking people, that he loved you? He wanted to slap himself. After almost a half a year, the first person he said it to -- wasn’t even his girlfriend. The panic in his chest didn’t let him dwell on it too long. You could be dead at the bottom of this stupid lake for all he knew. That thought sent him in a downward spiral. The memory of Chrissy’s body flashed across his mind, freezing his entire being. You couldn’t be dead, you couldn’t -- he wouldn’t survive it. Eddie Munson wasn’t a hero but he’d be damned if he stayed behind while you went headfirst into danger.

He felt a hand grab his and he turned to see Robin's determined face. "Let's go," she said, taking a deep breath. Eddie nodded, trying not to think about it too much, and jumped down the rabbit hole.

Eddie was pretty sure his heart was ripped from his chest when the first thing he heard after falling through that weird ass portal was your screaming. It was guttural, primal, and worst of all - painful.

He angrily swiped the water from his eyes and found you — and what a magnificent sight you were. You had a broken oar in your hands, using the splintered end to stab through a demented looking bat. Alive. You were alive.

Scared and turned on, again. Damn if this wasn’t a cycle with you.

Without wasting another second, he ran towards you, picking up the other end of the oar from the ground.

His heart almost stopped again when he saw one land on your back, its claws ripping at your sweater. “Get the fuck off her!” He screamed, grabbing it by the tail and flinging away.

You whirled around, oar cutting through the air, and smacked it into the ground. Without hesitating, you jumped up and slammed both feet onto its head. Eddie winced as the bone fragments – holy shit what was his life – splintered under your feet. You flipped your hair out of your face, sweat beads across your forehead, and beamed at him. “Thanks sweetheart,” you said, spinning around and hitting another like you were passing out homeruns for free.

Eddie had three seconds to realize two things. One, he definitely had a boner. Maybe he should see someone about that. Two, he was never going to love anyone else as much and as deeply as he loved you.

“Duck!” Nancy screamed and Eddie hit the floor, knees scraping against the ground. He watched her smack another creature with her flashlight and he joined the fight.

Within minutes, Steve ripped the last one apart, spitting out a worrying amount of blood. Eddie watched you steady him and Steve caught his eyes. Eddie was surprised to see a glint in them.

"If you say anything about being turned on right now, I'll kick you," he said dryly to Eddie.

"You found it hot too?" Eddie said, unable to keep the touch of hysteria out of his voice. "Don't sexualize my girlfriend like that man, not cool."

Steve chuckled, moaning immediately after and you pinched the bridge of your nose. "You're both idiots." Robin pointed to the portal but soon, more screeching came from the skies.

Nancy herded you all towards the trees. "We need to hide, come on!"

Eddie came up to Steve’s other side and helped him limp into the refuge of the woods. You all covered a fair amount of ground quickly, everyone stopping to duck under the same rock he’d hidden by a few hours ago as a group of the bats flew by.

You and Nancy had ripped a few pieces of your shirts to tie around Steve’s open wounds. Eddie swallowed around a lump in his throat and reached for you when you’d stepped back.

“Are you hurt?” He asked, hands running down your body.

You shook your head at him. “Just a few bumps and scrapes. This isn’t my first rodeo Munson. You should’ve seen me last time,” you said, reeking of exhaustion and terror but still joking. He was pretty sure you did it to put him at ease.

Eddie felt his entire world tilt off its axis as he stared at you. You were dirty, bloody, and were still clinging onto the broken piece of oar like it was a deadly weapon. He thought back to you a few minutes ago and smiled. He guessed it was deadly. Eddie reached out to you and you immediately turned to his touch. You sometimes reminded him of a sunflower, always turning towards him. You never left, never judged, and never expected more than he could give.

This one, his heart thumped. Eddie felt adrenaline rush through him once more, the world disappearing around you.

"I love you," Eddie blurted out, wincing at the way your lips parted in surprise, "I'm sorry I'm finally saying it when we're in this hellhole and you're bleeding but we might die."

"I sincerely hope not," a Robin-sounding whisper muttered behind you both.

"I had a plan, in the cabin this weekend, I was going to - that doesn't matter anymore," Eddie's felt a surge of determination. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you, as long as you'll have me, so I can't continue onward looking for Wheeler's guns - which, when the fuck did someone like Wheeler have guns? Although I wouldn’t have pegged you for being strapped either and then you stabbed those things like a goddamn warrior queen – which was hot by the way-”

"Eddie," you said with what looked like tears in your eyes, guiding him back to his original point.

"Right. I fucking love you princess. So don't be the hero, at least not without me," he said. "Wherever you go, I go, in this monster hunt, okay?"

Eddie watched as you said nothing, your eyes welling up and your grip on him tightened. After a few beats of silence, you spoke. "I love you too, Munson. So much."

"Yeah?" He said, tension bleeding out of his shoulders.

"Of course, how could you ever think otherwise?" You said, peppering his face with kisses. "I willingly listen to that awful band when you drop me off for work almost every week."

"Woman, do not insult Metallica in my presence," he grumbled, kissing you anyway. Eddie was pretty sure you could upend his entire life and he’d still follow you like a lost puppy. "Since we're airing things out, might as well go for gold - when we're out of this shithole, move in with me?"

You beamed. "Took you long enough to ask."

"I was going to ask this weekend!"

“It’s been six months,” Steve whispered and laughed when you turned to glare at him.

"Mhmm."

"I had a whole plan. Moving in was penciled in right after the second round, when you were all distracted, boneless, happy, and less likely to argue with me."

"I never argue with you," you huffed.

“What are you doing now?”

Eddie felt his entire body beam at you when you wrinkled your nose, huffing. “We’re discussing, Eddie.” God, he loved your haughty I-know-better-than-you voice.

"Princess, you're arguing with me about arguing with me."

"I'm not."

"Jesus, is this their foreplay?" Nancy muttered. You turned to glare at her too.

“Yeah, kind of,” Eddie answered, smirking when you whipped your glare to him. “Well, at least I’m turned on.”

At that, Steve snorted and while you fought your smile - shaking your head – he could see it slowly growing.

"This is cute and all and I’m happy for you," Robin called out, "but we really need to keep moving."

"We're right behind you," you yelled back, loosening your grip on Eddie. He watched you reach up and bring your mouth to his ear. “Let’s get the fuck out of here so we can finally get that weekend away.”

Eddie’s blood thrummed, like it always did when you teased, and he reached out for your hand. “After you, m’lady.”

You both lagged a few feet behind the trio, your grip on his waist tight.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?” Eddie turned to you, keeping an arm around your shoulders.

“I would’ve waited for you to be ready to say it,” you said quietly, “I never mind waiting for you.”

This one.

“I wanna be with you everywhere,” you sang softly, snorting when he shook his head at you. He really did love that damn song, not that he’d ever tell you that. Although, he’s sure you knew.

“I know,” Eddie said, and he did. “That’s why I love you.”

“I love you too, goof,” you said, grinning at him.

It was weird, feeling this happy in a place where you could be killed at any moment. You walked through the woods, avoiding the vines, hand in hand with Eddie.

“Guys are we any closer?” You called out, fully tired from the day.

“Just a bit more,” Nancy said, walking over a huge vine.

Steve fell into step with you both, he opened his mouth and suddenly the ground was shifting. You stumbled backwards, Eddie’s hands coming around your arms and you crumbled to the ground. Steve landed next to you with a whimper of pain and you latched onto his arm.

“Robin? Nancy?” You shouted over the rumbling.

“We’re okay!”

“Steve?” You turned to him, eyeing the fresh red stains on his makeshift bandages. Eddie squeezed your hand and hauled you up to your feet.

“What the fuck was that?” Eddie growled, eyes searching the trees like an animal was stalking you all. Shit, for all you knew you were prey.

“Let’s go,” you said, “I don’t want to wait around to find out.”

“Come on! I can see it!” Nancy said, turning to glance back at you three.

Steve groaned when he stretched experimentally. “Remind me to get a rabies shot when everything’s gone back to normal.”

“Literally it’s the first thing I’m doing when I’m out of here,” you said, glancing at your scraped palms. Eddie grabbed your dirtiest one and dusted off the dirt from it. “Thanks.”

He smiled, exhaustion bleeding into it, and you kissed his jaw. Following a bouncing Robin and determined looking Nancy, you couldn’t help but be awed by the state of the Wheeler house. Vines draped over most of the outside, making it look warped and hollow. You glanced around at the dark house – all echoes of safety and security, gone.

“Hey,” Eddie said, having climbed up a few steps. He pointed upstairs where Nancy and Robin had disappeared. You glanced at Steve, who was lying on the couch breathing a little heavily. Jogging over to the banister, you reached up onto your toes and Eddie leaned over. The kiss was quick but you tugged on a lock of his hair. “Be careful.”

Nodding, he glanced worriedly at Steve before following the girls. Stepping back towards the living room, you saw Steve shoot you a look.

“What?”

“Nothing, I’m just jealous. You’re in another dimension and you got a love proclamation and someone who looks at you like you hung the moon,” Steve sighed.

Tossing an arm over his shoulders, you pulled him to you. “I’ll marry you if we’re both forty and single. I promise to not bicker with you so much.”

Steve snorted. “Eddie would suffocate me in my sleep if he heard you,” he said, smiling up at you, “either way, deal.”

You laughed, resting your cheek over his forehead and sighing. “We really should get like medal or plaques or something. How many times have we saved this fucking town?”

“Counting this one? Five.”

“Isn’t it four?”

“Five. They’re lucky I’m not counting per Demogorgon.” You snorted, agreeing with him. Something buzzed to your left and you whirled your head towards it.

“What?” Steve said, sitting up, alert.

Squinting into the darkness, you stood up slowly. “I don’t know…”

“That brings us to the question you first raised-”

“I think,” you whispered, “I think I heard my brother.”

Steve blinked at you. “Dustin?”

“How and why is there a gate at Lover’s Lake?”

“I hear him,” Steve said, “I hear him! Dustin!”

“Dustin!” You screamed. “Dustin!”

Both of you scrambled around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to find where his voice was coming from. “Dustin, I swear to God if you’re ignoring me because I didn’t let you on the boat!”

Heavy footsteps down the stairs startled you and you whirled around to find yourself face to face with a panting Eddie. “What’s wrong? I heard you scream. Are you okay?”

“It’s Dustin!” You told him, glancing upwards. “I heard Dustin!”

“Maybe they do have rabies,” Robin whispered. You glared at her.

“Dustin!” Steve shouted.

“Let’s analyze, what do Eleven and Vecna have in common?”

“Wait,” Eddie said, tightening his hold on you, “I hear him too!”

“Okay, either he can’t hear us or he’s being a total douchebag,” Steve sighed.

You shrugged and leaned onto Eddie. Closing your eyes, you dropped your forehead onto his neck. “It’s a toss up honestly.”

“Will found a way,” Nancy said, and you were suddenly struck with the reality that this is where Will had been stuck for almost a week. You shivered and Eddie’s arms wrapped around you.

“You want my jacket?” He asked, pressing his lips to your temple.

Shaking your head, you wrapped your arms under his jacket and onto his waist. “I’m okay, I’m just tired.” You straightened, realizing, Will found a way to talk to Joyce. “The lights. Will found a way to talk to Joyce through the lights.”

“Yes!” Nancy said, running to the lamps on the wall. “Shit, they’re not working.”

“Uh guys, are you seeing this?” Steve said.

The air shimmered as Steve passed his flashlight through it. “What the fuck?”

“Don’t you know morse code?” Nancy asked you.

Nodding, you brought your hand up into the…shimmering dust particles…and started tapping out Dustin’s name.

“How do you know morse code?” Eddie asked, eyeing you.

Steve and Nancy laughed but Robin looked intrigued. “Their dad taught them,” Steve explained, “they liked being able to tap at the wall between their rooms to talk.”

“Really?” Eddie said, smiling fondly, “you’re such nerds.”

Rolling your eyes you glanced at them. “Trying to concentrate here!” You snapped.

“You’re stuck in watergate!?” Dustin’s voice echoed throughout the room. “Can’t you come back the way you came from?”

Eddie sighed and Steve rolled his eyes. “He’s so pretentious sometimes,” he said, leaning across to look at Eddie. “Don’t you think so?”

“It’s his tone,” Eddie said with a head shake, “I keep telling him but he doesn’t listen.”

“What are you saying?” Robin asked, ignoring the guys.

You concentrated, trying to remember the translation for R. “I’m telling him that it’s guarded.”

“We have a theory that can help with that!”

“Genius little child, I’m going to buy him that stupid computer set he was looking at if I get out of here alive,” Robin muttered.

“We think there’s a gate at every murder site!”

“What?” Steve said.

“I think he’s saying we need to try and find the other sites. Where did Fred die?”

“By Bleecker!”

Bleecker was a little further than Eddie’s trailer, which, was still kind of far. “Eddie’s trailer is closest,” you said to them.

“How far is your trailer?” Nancy asked.

Without hesitating, Eddie answered, “Seven miles.”

“How do you know that?” Steve muttered.

“Henderson lives half a mile up from me,” Nancy said and Eddie grinned. “I’ve seen his van pass by at least once a day.”

Steve sighed and smiling at him, you relayed the message to Dustin.

“We’ll meet you there! For the love of Christ, be careful!”

“I know your house is like creepily frozen in time and shit, but didn’t you always have bikes?” Robin asked.

Shit.

Nancy shot up, hand already reaching for the nearby door to the garage and Robin grinned, running after her. You looked over to Steve who was frowning.

“Just go without me, I’ll walk it,” you said, “I can jog a decent mile.”

“Absolutely not,” Steve said, ignoring you and walking out to the garage.

Robin was already seated on the nearest bike, her expression excited. “What are you guys waiting for?”

Eddie’s hand came up to your elbow and you winced. “I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

“What?” Robin frowned.

Nancy groaned. “I forgot, I’m sorry.”

“How does Dustin know how to ride a bike but you don’t?” Eddie asked, confused.

“Her dad was teaching them up the block,” Nancy said, everyone knew the story, “she fell off the bike, fractured her wrist and swore she’d never hop on one again.”

“Have you tried to get a Henderson to do something they don’t want to do?” Steve asked. “Impossible.”

“I am right here,” you grumbled. “Seriously, just-”

“No,” Steve said, crossing his arms.

“What?” Robin asked, hopping off the bike.

Glancing at your friends, you sighed. “You guys have to go without me. I’ll walk it.”

“It’d be faster to just teach you,” Eddie said, “it’s easy, I learned in like five minutes.”

Eyeing the bikes with distrust, Steve sighed. “I’m not leaving you here, I’ll walk with you. You guys go.”

“No,” you said, eyeing his bleeding wounds, the idea of him staying here ridiculous. “You can’t stay here.”

“So, you do see how stupid of an option that is,” Steve snarked. Son of a bitch.

“I can’t stand you sometimes,” you hissed back.

Eddie snorted. “Alright, Jesus, cut it out, I’ll grab that big bike and you can ride on the back spokes, okay?”

“Eddie…”

He turned to you and put his hands on your shoulders. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” you said instantly. Eddie smiled at your lack of hesitation and nodded towards the bike.

“I won’t let you fall. I promise princess, there’s no other way because I’m not leaving you behind,” he said. “Alright?”

A loud grumble echoed in the distance and you hurried towards the bike.

“Yeah, fuck it,” you said, hating every second of this, “I’d rather die on the bike than eaten alive by whatever is in here. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m never doing that again,” you said, heaving as everyone dropped the bikes to the ground.

Steve coughed, spitting something out behind a trash bin. “It was not that bad,” Eddie said, raising his arms over his head as he panted.

You glared at him and your stomach swooped. “It felt like a carnival ride! Oh God, I’m going to puke.”

“I had to avoid the vines, woman!” He said, slinging his arm around your waist and pulling you in for a messy, adrenaline filled, kiss.

“Oh my God, let’s just go,” Nancy said, grip on your wrist tight as she pulled you into the trailer. You glanced around, a little awed.

“I hate what you’ve done with the place,” you told him, pushing your hair away from your face.

Eddie looked towards the kitchen and frowned. “You don’t like my new backsplash? It’s popular in Europe right now.”

Robin laughed, pressing a hand to her mouth when Nancy glared at you all. “Wait,” Robin leaned forward, “I think there’s something in there.”

The red material pushed out towards you and Eddie immediately stepped in front of you. Rolling your eyes, you peeked over his shoulder and grabbed his hand. “What the hell is that?” Everyone shouted and stumbled back as something pierced through the barrier. Pieces of flesh dropped onto the floor and you gagged.

“Oh my God,” you said, pushing passed them. “Hello?” You glanced up and saw a familiar face grinning back down at you.

“Holy shit, this is trippy,” Robin breathed, watching as the kids jumped in excitement.

“Bada bada boom!” Dustin shouted.

You rolled your eyes in tandem with Steve and tried to think of what you could use to climb up there. “Dustin! I was going to change the sheets the morning before our date, I left a pile on the ground next to his dresser. Grab the sheets off of Wayne’s bed too.”

“Tie them together and throw it up?” Dustin asked, nodding. “Worth a try, come on!”

“I can’t wait to get the hell out of here,” Nancy said, leaning over her knees, still trying to catch her breath.

“Max, try to see if you can drag Eddie’s mattress off his bed,” you instructed, “if the gravity shifts as we climb, we’re going to be pulled up – or, well down. Lucas, help her!”

“What should I do?” Erica asked.

You smiled. “You’re in charge! Supervise them.” She saluted and you laughed when you heard Lucas immediately start to bicker.

Eddie hooked his chin over your shoulder and pulled you into his arms. “Bossy, I like it,” he whispered into your ear. Smiling at him, you placed your hands over his arms and listened as they scrambled to get everything together.

“How do we know it’s safe to climb through? What if we get sent somewhere else?” Robin asked.

“We don’t,” you admitted, “but, it’s our only option and we made it through watergate easily enough.”

With a loud grunt, Lucas and Max dropped the mattress directly under the gate. You winced when you saw the stains on the sheets you’d yet to remove.

“Those stains are uh,” he turned to look at you with his eyes widening, both of you knowing exactly how those got there, and Robin snickered.

“Don’t look at me my brother is literally right there,” you hissed.

At that, Max laughed and Dustin glared at Eddie. Robin side eyed you both and Steve snorted. “I told you they’re all over each other all the time.”

“Shut up Harrington,” you said, pinching his bicep.

He jumped, rubbing at the reddening skin. “I am the injured party here!”

“Right, uh, yeah, I don’t know what those are,” Eddie said, eyes staring straight up.

“Nice save,” you grumbled.

Erica handed Dustin the sheets and he sighed. “I’m not sure how the physics on this is going to work but, here goes nothing.” With a throw, the makeshift rope made it through and hung directly in front of you all.

“Pull on it! See if it holds!” Dustin shouted.

Robin stared wide eyed and stepped forward when no one else did. She tugged on the rope and nodded. “I’ll be the guinea pig,” she said, grunting as she climbed. You watched her climb and go tumbling onto the mattress. “That was fun!”

“Nancy,” you said, shoving her forward. She looked like she was about to disagree when Steve kneeled so she could have a jump start. “Fine,” she grumbled, giving you all a stern look. “Quickly, you guys. Quickly.”

“Alright, Henderson, you first,” Eddie said, eyes glancing around his trailer.

You knew Steve would insist on being last and Eddie would climb out after you. Eyeing his wounds, you shook your head. “Eddie, you go,” you said.

He opened his mouth to protest when you shot him a pleading look. “Please, sweetheart, just go.”

At the term of endearment, he sighed. “Harrington,” he said, turning to shoot Steve a pleading look.

“I’ll throw her up like a volleyball if I need to,” Steve said, eyes hardening when you turned to glare at him. Once Eddie had smacked into the mattress above you, he put his hands on his hips.

“Hurry up!” Eddie shouted, his voice a touch hysterical.

Turning to Steve, you crossed your arms. “You’ll need help. I saw you spit up blood and that makeshift bandage isn’t going to hold. So, what’s going to happen is I’m going to give you a jump start and you’ll try your hardest not to open any of the clotting wounds. Alright?”

“If you think I’m leaving you here alone, you really don’t know me so well,” Steve said, leaning towards you. “A decade of friendship and you think I’m climbing.”

You narrowed your eyes. Steve mimicked you. This dumb son of a bitch.

“What the hell are they talking about?” Nancy hissed.

Robin cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Argue when you’re both back in the real world, hurry up!”

“Harrington.”

“Henderson.”

You sighed. Stubborn idiot. “Steve, I didn’t dive into the upside down to come and save your ass to not finish the job.”

“I’ve saved you tons of times!”

“For the love of God,” Eddie’s muffled voice bled through, “find something we can throw at them.”

Indignation flamed your anger. “Name one time you’ve ever – we don’t have time for this!”

“Exactly, so start climbing!” He held out a fist. “Rock, paper, scissors?”

“Steve,” you said, fear bleeding into your voice. “You are my best friend and you’re bleeding because bats took out chunks of your body. Please. I love you and I’m not letting you suffer through whatever this act is. I saw you almost fall off your bike on the way here.”

Faltering, he sighed. “You need to be right behind me. I don’t care if I’m still on the rope – hands right under my legs and I’ll roll so you can fall next to me.”

“Fine, just fucking go,” you shoved him towards the rope. Kneeling, you let him use your leg to get as high as he could.

He turned his head, stupid Harrington smile on his face, and he froze. You blinked, turning to look behind you. When you saw nothing out of the ordinary, you turned back and stilled. His smile had turned malicious, his eyes darkening.

“You know you belong here, don’t you?” He said, dropping to his feet and taking a step towards you.

“What?”

“Barb asked you to go to that party with her. She didn’t want to go – but you knew Nancy would convince her. You left her to die alone, in pain, and scared.”

“Steve?” Your voice cracked with fear. A cold sense of dread shot through your body, your heart galloping. “Steve, no, you know that’s not true.”

“She was your friend. Did you even mourn her? Or were you secretly glad it was her and not you?”

Your stomach turned and the instinct to run was imminent. Taking a few steps back, you realized your mistake when you started falling. The world around you went dark and you flailed your arms to try and catch hold of anything. You came to a stop, slamming into the ground in front of the freshly painted Creel’s house. The stain glass window that Max had talked about – your feet moved without your consent and you were suddenly in the doorway, air stuck in your throat, behind a family you’d never seen before.

The small boy to the left turned to glance at you, his green eyes piercing. He knew you, how did he know you?

“Do you even remember what you did to her? Because I remember everyone. I have the decency to remember,” a new voice admonished.

Shame licked at your feet and the urge to run was squashed by the fury in the boy’s eyes. Where the fuck were you? Who was he? Panic threatened to choke you but the boy walked up the stairs at a slower pace than the girl. Halfway, he glanced back at you again, and you knew what he wanted.

Fine. He wanted to do a show and tell? You’d play along. With a deep breath, you followed.

#eddie munson x reader

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stuckysbike · 1 year ago

Text

Kiss Me Once In The Moonlight

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Warnings: Angst, unrequited?feelings. Fluff.

Summary: You’ve fallen in love, but he wants someone else.

It was a cold mid October Saturday night when you realised you were in love with Bucky Barnes.

Natasha had ushered you out of your solitude and over to her private apartment on the compound. Steve was already there, along with Sam, Joaquin, Yelana, a few from the medical team and a few mechanics.

The place was decorated for spooky season, with playful ghosts and fuzzy spiders hiding in the corners. Everyone got comfortable and music played in the background whilst you snacked on nuts and candied apples and sipped beer. Halloween meets Octoberfest was the theme.

Bucky had been telling a story, his face lit up and his big hands flying everywhere as he described his mom chasing him with a broom during his teenage years after a Halloween fright. Occasionally his eyes met yours and they sparkled, but you figured he was like that with everyone.

You’d been crushing on him since you arrived in January and he was first to greet you. He seemed fascinated by your job, research and data analyst, but it was ultimately boring to almost everyone but you.

You lunched together sometimes and you swapped books every few weeks. You even got him into podcasts and you were always swapping recommendations.

But tonight he looked happy, relaxed even, and when Natasha dropped her dainty feet into his lap you felt the world skip underneath you, you wanted to put your feet in his lap. You wanted his big hands dwarfing your feet.

He rubbed her toes without thinking, and she snuggled down as the mechanics started describing the prank they’d played on Tony this week, going so far as to rope Pepper in.

“Wanna stay here tonight?” You heard Natasha murmur to Bucky during a lull in conversation. Sam was changing the music and Joaquin was setting up tequila shots.

He smiled at her but shook his head. “Nah,” his voice was thick with tiredness.

“You finally made a move on that girl?” She teased wiggling in her spot.

Bucky’s cheeks tinged pink and you dropped your eyes when you realised you were staring. You didn’t want to be caught looking like some dumb kid.

It was foolish to think that Bucky with his wonderful abilities and handsome looks would be interested in you who spent most of your time at work or alone.

“Think I’m gonna’ take her out, yeah,” he nodded. You snuck a glance at him in time to catch him looking from you to Natasha.

Oh god, he must have noticed you staring. How embarrassing!

Tears that had no right to form stung your eyes and you stood suddenly distracting Steve who was kneeling at the coffee table next to you. Sam took the opportunity to defeat him in their thumb war game much to Steve’s annoyance.

“I’m going to head back, I’m just really tired,” you said to the room, avoiding Bucky. “Thank you for the invitation Natasha.”

There were a few comments asking you to stay but ultimately everyone wished you a good sleep. Your own room was a fifteen minute walk away in a shared block and you pulled your arms around yourself to fight the cold as you stepped outside.

“Hey Doll,” Bucky called startling you.

“Bucky, hi,” you frowned.

“Thought I’d walk you back,” he said falling into step with you. “And I wanted your advice.”

“Oh?”

“So there’s this girl I like. She’s not like the others, she’s not really - she’s different. And I really want to make a date special for her, you know?” He glanced as you, letting his arm bump yours as you walked.

“I do,” you sighed resigning yourself to your fate. You didn’t want to have this conversation but you didn’t want to not help him either. He was your friend after all.

“So I’ve had a few first date ideas, I’m thinking farmers market then making brunch together? I started this really great podcast and I was thinking we could listen together as we cook then talk about it while we eat? Then after we could go to a museum or something?” Bucky licked his lips and stopped looking at you.

You didn’t want him to share a podcast with her. That was your thing with him. You knew you were being unfair, childish even but right now you didn’t care.

“That sounds lovely,” you said. And it did, you wished you were that girl, you wished Bucky wanted to go to all that trouble for you but instead you’d have to sit home alone tomorrow whilst he woo’d someone else.

“Yeah?” He asked excitedly. “I really just wanna’ hold her hand, at the market, in the museum, I just crave that feeling you know, like this,” Bucky reached for your hand and laced your fingers together, holding your joined hands up to inspect. “It’s been a long time since I held a girls hand like this.”

“I-I’m sure it has Buck,” you swallowed. He resumed walking and you could do nothing but join him, he still had your hand in his. He described his outfit for his date and wondered if you had a cosy chunky sweater.

“I do, it’s so comfortable,” you said softly. You couldn’t hide the disappointment as you slowed in front of the doors. “It’s my favourite colour too.”

“Will you wear it tomorrow?” Bucky tilted his head to the side.

“Why does it matter what I wear?” You couldn’t help but giggle at his odd request. You couldn’t though, thinking of him with someone else whilst you wore what he asked you to.

“I want to know that you’re warm tomorrow. You know, on our date?” Bucky pressed his cool left hand on your cheek as he turned to face you. His kiss was soft, just a sweet brush of the lips and then he pulled away. “I’ll see you at nine thirty?”

“Uh huh,” you nodded dumbly. He kissed you again, and you caught the faint taste of whiskey on his lips. He was warm as he pressed into you and you let your hands slide up his chest to his shoulders.

“See you tomorrow baby girl,” he pressed one last kiss to your forehead then opened the building door for you.

You walked inside in a daze, waving goodbye and drifting up the stairs like you weighed nothing.

You couldn’t remember getting changed into your pj’s, all you knew was that you were snuggled under your duvet setting an alarm for your date with Bucky in the morning.

You smiled, and suddenly your legs kicked and you let out a little squeal. You were going out with Bucky Barnes and he kissed you three times.

You feel asleep to the memory of one hot hand and one cold hand cupping your cheeks as he kissed you in the moonlight.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x female reader

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elius-learns-to-write · 2 years ago

Text

The one with a plan:

Being friends with Nat goes sideways when you remember that she is a trained spy who is not against forming a plan to get her two favourite people together. @i-writes-things

I took this a little bit out of the request hope you still enjoy!

If someone would’ve told you 2 years ago that you were going to become an avenger then you would’ve probably believed them. I mean you had superhuman abilities so stranger things had happened. You had been scouted for ‘The Avengers Initiative’ by Fury himself after you had been put on their radar after a little accident including an old woman, a shopping trolley and some fire (in your defence that was an accident and if she would’ve had moved and not stolen out of your cart then it wouldn’t have happened). That was how you met your now best friend Natasha Romanoff.

Inseparable. With all the words the others could use to describe your friendship with Nat, that was the one that sprung to mind first. While you might have been younger that didn’t mean you were any less of a dynamic duo! After 2 years on the team doing missions that ranged from starting fires in the basement of a Hydra base to destroying information to making sure that some rich man had proper security for an event, you could safely say that your makeshift family was very very close. Way too close if they asked you. However no one did. That’s why you would continue to sit on Nats bed for at least an hour a night as you swapped stories about new recruits and how much you hated them.

That was how you had learnt about Peter Parker or Web Boy as Nat affectionately called him. You had been talking to Nat about the usual things; the one new agent who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, that one girl who constantly ‘got lost’ and wandered into the living quarters on nearly a weekly basis, and that one person who just didn’t know what they were doing. You aren’t too sure what they’re doing here if you’re being honest but that’s above your pay grade so that makes it someone else's problem.

That was until she decided to bring the new web slinger into the conversation. “Tony is obsessed with the kid, it’s endearing in a strange way” Nat sighed as she flopped herself onto the bed “Nat you think everything is strange about Tony, anyway I’m sure he’s sweet enough. At the very least he won't be totally clueless” you laughed. How have you become the level headed one in this friendship? “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she paused, taking an overly dramatic breath “you know he’s about your age, it’d be nice to finally have someone your age hanging around the compound” another pause “no pun intended”. You had to laugh at that, how could someone with a kill count larger than even the richest man's bank account be making puns without trying?! “Natasha, whatever you are thinking, I want you to stop. I have you guys! I don’t need any new friends” you spoke fiddling with the edge of the fluffy blanket you had stolen from Natasha the second you entered her room. “I wasn’t thinking about anything!” Oh you definitely didn’t like that look on her face.

Coincidentally you had met Peter a few days after your conversation with Nat. Well, more slammed into him as you turned a corner but first impressions aren’t everything. “Whoa hey I am so so so sorry” the boy stuttered, the tips of his ears turning a red that you were pretty sure matched the colour of Nat’s hair. “It’s nothing really, I should've been looking where I was going, it's not your fault”. It was his fault but when a stuttering cute boy slams into you, you don’t tell him that he is in the wrong. You had been on your way to a training session with Steve that you would’ve rather avoided anyway. “Are you the new arachnid on the team?” you questioned. You knew the answer, you just wanted to see how long you could put off turning into super soldier soup. “Uh yeah I am Spider Parker. I mean Peter man. I’m sorry Peter Parker nice to meet you” he chuckled, rubbing a hand nervously behind his neck, finding a very interesting stain on the cold tiles. “Y/n. I’ll see you around bug boy”.

From there your relationship with Peter flourished. You quickly found yourself seeking out his company whenever he came to visit (which did result in a semi permanent ban from Tony’s lab after a freak screw driver accident). The seeking out of company wasn’t just one way though, Peter found himself gravitating towards you whenever you were near. He also found himself thinking about you a whole lot more than he should’ve. There was no chance in hell that he was going to do something about it though, why would he? This was his first ‘super hero gig’, his first time joining the big guns. Why would he jeopardise that? He was also deathly afraid of Natasha which certainly didn’t help.

“Earth to Peter Parker” you shouted, throwing a pillow at his head, giggling a little as he jumped “sorry off in my own world” he replied, the same blush you saw on him when you met coating his cheeks once again. He had come to your room for your now weekly movie nights (which had all started after you confessed you hadn't watched any of the starwars movies) but honestly he had spent more time thinking about you than he had spent time watching the movies. It had become obvious when you let the credits roll and didn’t get his normal summary of the movie. “Right Parker, what are we doing now?” you asked more to yourself as you debated on whether to paint his nails or make him put a face mask on with you. “Do not think about putting a face mask on me, I don’t need Captain America hearing me cry” he warned, which would have seemed a little bit scarier if it weren't for the plethora of pillows piled around him. “Fine then nails it is”.

If only you would’ve seen the look on Nat’s face as she walked past the room to see you in a fit of giggles after peter spilt nail polish on his joggers. She couldn’t stand to watch you idiots dance around each other anymore. This called for a team intervention. Operation ‘Get the idiots together’ was officially in action.

People would’ve thought that being an avenger meant that you were on high alert every minute of every day. However, put someone's crush in front of them and they apparently forget every ounce of training they’ve learnt. That was how you ended up getting shoved into a utility closet from the red head you loved most. With the boy you had a crush on nonetheless! “Right you two are not allowed out until something happens because looking at the both of you makes me want to tear my hair out” her muffled voice came through the door. Groaning you both knew that unless one of you admitted your feelings (that you were entirely sure only went one way) you were not getting out of this. “Parker I swear I have no idea why she’s doing this' ' you pleaded with the boy, who when forced into a confined room with you didn't seem able to look you in the eye. “I- I might have some idea as to what she’s referring to” finally he looked up at you, you could see something in his eyes, an emotion that you didn’t recognise on him. “Parker if this is some prank I’d pay very close attention to your shampoo bottles for the next couple of months” you gritted out. Although there was no way that you thought he would do something like this to you it wouldn't be the first time hair remover ended up in the wrong bottle. Just ask Bucky. “No! It’s not I promise” he stopped “the other day Mr stark asked me to order some food to the compound, we were working on this new suit of his and we hadn’t eaten in a while and well we were kinda hungry” one thing you would say about Peter is when he went on ramble nothing would stop him. Well almost nothing. “Peter, your point?” you cut him off, listening to small spaces did nothing for your heart rate and you wanted out. “Right sorry, I went onto his phone and he hadn’t shut his messages, he was on a group chat started by Nat called ‘Operation get the idiots together’ and well yeah” oh. OH. Nat was so dead when you got out. “Look Peter I am so so sorry that you were forced into a cupboard, I swear I didn’t want you to find out like this and if you never want to talk to me again that’s completely fine by me, well it’s not fine but I’d respect it” it seemed the both of you were as bad as each other when it came to word vomit. “You feel the same way?” Now that is how you effectively shut someone up. “Yes- hang on, did you just say the same?!” your exclamation was soon cut off by F.R.I.D.A.Y’s voice “operation ‘get the idiots together’ complete. Lock-down lifted”

#avengers x you #avengers insert #avengers x reader #avengers imagine #avengers fluff #natasha romanoff x you #natasha x reader #natasha imagine #natahsa romanoff #natasha romanoff #peter x teen!reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader

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madelynraemunson · 3 months ago

Text

HEY MADDY, WHAT’S ON TV? 📺

𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐭 (…𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬)

part 2/2

🥡 steddie!body swap x freaky friday fanfic • RATED: NC-17 🥡

part one here.

SUMMARY: Dustin’s science experiment goes horribly wrong and his two ‘bickering besties’ have to suffer the consequences.

WORD COUNT: 6.9k words

CONTENTS CONTAIN: (EASTER) EGGS, WHEAT, METAL, PARALLELISMS, A PINCH OF COMEDY, ANGST, AND LOTS OF SWEARING

ALLERGENS: CHEESY, CORN(Y), SHELLFISH (sorry eddie)

🥠

Eddie makes himself dinner again tonight.

It's nothing new; it’s been this way since he was a kid. But the loneliness at Steve’s is almost suffocating, despite the vastness of the house, the extravagant amount of silverware in the drawers reserved for a grand party of three… and hell, even with Todd Harrington being in the same room…breathing the same air as him right now.

“Hello, Steven.”

“Hi, Dad,” Eddie replies.

It almost feels apocalyptic.

There wasn’t much in Harrington’s notes about his parents, other than they were hardly ever home and basically let Steve do whatever he wanted. And to an extent Eddie thought Steve was exaggerating, but given that this was the second time this week he’s seen Steve’s parents — after being in his body for nearly five days — he realizes Steve was telling nothing but the truth.

“How was work today?” Steve’s dad inquires.

Eddie does a double take, glancing at the fridge with Steve’s work schedule on it plastered in bright colors. It’s very hard to miss.

“…Today was my day off,” Eddie replies, baffled that Steve’s dad was too spatially unaware to look that way. “Did you uh…did you eat yet?”

“I did. Did you?”

“No, I was thinking about what to make actually,” Eddie mumbles. “I guess Spaghettios will do. Again.”

Eddie always thought Steve ate dinner with his parents, had conversations about his day, and shared laughs and stories. It’s jarring now to be in his shoes, where the silence is almost deafening.

“Yeah, we do need more groceries,” Steve’s dad agrees with an absent-minded yawn. “It’s a bummer you were off today. I was going to have you fetch your mom and I a tub of that Neapolitan. Didn’t realize we were out.”

Neapolitan? Eddie’s ears quirk at the mention. Isn’t that…?

“Ice cream? Why would I have ice cream at work, Dad?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Don’t you work at Scoops?”

“I work at Family Video.”

“Since when?”

“Since THREE YEARS AGO... You didn’t know that?”

“I’m not a psychic, Steven.”

Eddie’s eyes pan back to the fridge, again, the only thing on it being a sheet of paper that reads, FAMILY VIDEO SCHEDULE STEVE H. The stark reality of the situation hits him hard.

“Anyways, kinda odd you’re home tonight,” Todd continues. “You usually never are. Shouldn’t you be with Nancy?”

NANCY?!

“Nancy?! Nancy and S–” Eddie pauses. “Nancy and I broke up FIVE years ago, Dad. …Don’t you remember?”

“I may have remembered you saying something about that…”

Oh he’s being absolutely insufferable! Steve and Nancy’s breakup was the talk of the town, and probably even the hot topic at the Loch Nora Moms Book Club meeting. How could Todd Harrington not even notice that Nancy wasn’t around for five years?!

At his wit’s end now, Eddie starts towards the hall. “I’m out.”

“Where are you going?” Steve’s dad demands, his tone sharp enough to slice through the thick tension in the air.

Eddie feels a surge of defiance bubble up. “I need some fresh air,” he replies, trying to keep his voice steady. “Not that you’d notice if I disappeared for a while.”

Eddie doesn’t know where he’s going yet. He just needs to get the hell away from here. Meanwhile, Steve’s dad is trying to figure out what he’s done to make his son so upset. He can’t think of anything he could’ve possibly said to elicit this reaction.

“Hey! Tone, you heard of it?” his eyes flicker over to Eddie. “What’s going on, son? You’re not acting like yourself.”

Eddie tuts. “Yeah, like you’ve been around to know what that’s like?”

Maybe he could go to the arcade. Or Starcourt. Hell, maybe he’ll loiter around Camp Knowhere, or a convenience store that sells Farrah Fawcett spray (The humidity was making his hair so hard to deal with! Eddie just wanted it UP and OUT OF HIS WAY).

Eddie just wanted to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but the hellscape that is Steve’s house.

“WHERE are you going?” Steve’s dad demands again.

“Knowhere, I guess.”

“Nowhere? Well you’ve gotta be heading somewhere.”

Annoyed – and too exhausted to explain – Eddie sighs.

“You know what, fine. Stay ominous about it,” Todd mutters. “You know what, Steve, you are never home.”

“Oh yeah? Well if I was home, would that have made a difference?!”

Taken aback, Todd Harrington’s eyes widen, shocked by his son’s sudden outburst. This isn’t the calm, polished Steve he knows. If this is how his son really is, what else has he been up to? Quite possibly no good.

“You know,” Todd clears his throat. “You are never home anymore.”

Eddie whips back around, enraged at the audacity.

“What’s the point of staying home if I’m going to be ignored?!” he yells. “If I’m going to eat dinner alone? If the only time I’m home you guys want something from me?! If I’m going to be stuck wondering when my parents are going to walk through that door?”

It’s like Eddie was talking to his own father while yelling at Steve’s. He’s had an eerily identical encounter with Al before. It just wasn’t expected or heard of. A guy with rich parents who weren’t…present in his life? His mind couldn’t wrap around it. Until it had to.

“I see you all the time, kid.”

“But do you know me…DAD?” Eddie cries. “Do you really know me?”

“I was at the hospital when you were born, of course I know you, son.”

Does this dude even know who Dustin is?

“Oh yeah? What’s my best friend’s name?”

“Tommy.”

“What sport did I do in high school?”

“Volleyball.”

The third and final test.

“What am I allergic to?”

But Steve’s dad clicks his tongue in annoyance. “What do I look like, a doctor?”

Eddie swallows hard. Wayne would’ve answered all those questions—and correctly—in a heartbeat.

“I’m out,” Eddie says again.

Holding back the remainder of his tears, Eddie starts towards the door, any last bit of his appetite he had left completely down the drain now.

“It was a genuine question, Steven,” Todd Harrington calls after Eddie. “I said, do I look like a doctor to you?”

“You sure as hell don’t look like a father, I can tell you that much,” Eddie mutters.

Steve could argue that Nancy Wheeler was his biggest heartbreak, but as Eddie inhabits his life, he begs to differ.

The real heartbreak lies in being surrounded by everything a young man could ever want: parents, a big house, a large inheritance, hell, even a nice body—and still feeling profoundly lonely and unloved. In terms of a family and sense of belonging… Eddie’s richer than Steve. And had they not switched bodies, he would’ve never guessed.

Poor Harrington. Eddie had no idea.

“Master of puppets are pulling your strings… twisting your mind and smashing your dreams”

This is Steve’s last resort.

He figured if he listened to the same music Eddie did, acted like Eddie, and believed himself to be Eddie, the guitar solo for Take Me Away would just come to him naturally. After all, nothing is impossible. And delusion has gotten enough people pretty damn far.

Harrington reaches into his back pocket, acquiring the fortune that got them in this situation in the first place, hoping that maybe there were more messages in between the lines.

“A journey soon begins, its prize reflected in another’s eyes. When what you see is what you lack, then selfless love will change you back.”

“…in bed,” Steve jokes.

Look at him. This Eddie stuff’s easy.

Suddenly, an airy, delicate, seductive voice belonging to a young woman shifts Steve's attention.

“Eddie?”

Steve’s eyes nearly bulge out of his face.

Standing in front of him with her hair neatly kept in a high ponytail, body embraced by a nice blouse and an even nicer skirt, and frilly socks that poked out of her sneakers is a woman he didn’t expect to see.

The Queen of Hawkins herself. The woman of Steve’s dreams.

“NANCY!” he exclaims.

CRASH! Books fall out of the cart that rested besides Steve and onto the floor. He’s inherited Eddie’s clumsiness too it seems. Shocked, Nancy rushes to his aid, picking up books that fell more towards her side.

“Ugh, I’m so sorry,” Steve frowns. “Thanks…”

“I uh, like your haircut,” Nancy smiles. “Also, I didn't think you’d work at the library.”

“Well it’s the only place that would hire me,” Steve chuckles. “…literally. Uh, my haircut? Thanks. You really like it?”

“Yeah! It’s nice!" Nancy nods. "It’s new. I’m so used to your long hair.”

“Yeah back when I looked like an electrocuted ferret,” Steve grumbles.

“Huh?”

“Nothing!” Steve says. “A-are you looking for anything?”

“Just browsing for some poetry that’s all.”

"I see," Steve nods. "W-well if you need anything, let me know."

Nancy watches as Steve, or Eddie in her eyes rather, walks back to the counter, acquiring the newly returned books to stamp for the next round of check-outs. He then loads them into the book cart, getting ready to return them to their respective aisles. All with a sulking demeanor that he’s too aloof to notice on himself.

“Are you okay?” Nancy inquires. “You look kinda down.”

Steve hesitates.

“I…” he says. “I really let someone down recently. Multiple people, actually. And I have no idea what to do.”

"I know how that feels,” she empathizes with him.

Nancy heads towards him.

“I was given a solution on how to make it right I just…” he shakes his head. “...don’t know how.”

“Well, the fact that you want to make it right is already the first step.”

Nancy motions for Steve to follow her, to which he does so immediately. She leads him to the poetry section of the library, specifically towards the authors with the last name starting with ‘D’. Shuffling through volumes of books, Nancy finally settles on one and takes it out.

“There’s a poem about selflessness that I really love,” she explains. “And if I’m correct, it’s in this lil book right here.”

Steve watches as Nancy flips through the pages in concentration.

She is still so pretty. Despite living in the same hometown, Steve hasn’t seen Nancy in a couple years. But she is still quite beautiful, and the same in her mannerisms and quirks, but just now older and wiser. Nancy clears her throat before reading the poem out loud.

“If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.”

The two meet eyes.

“Emily Dickinson,” Nancy cites the poem. “Redemption is selfless. It's a sacrifice. But life becomes more worthwhile when you live to help others. If mending this brokenness is really what you seek, you have to see what matters most to the other person, and make sure there’s a way to meet in the middle. That’s the best way to help in any case.”

Nancy drifts off into a sorrowful, reflective trance.

“I should know.”

They were both wrong, Steve and Nancy. They broke up over dumb shit that teenagers broke up over, both too stubborn for their own good to see the other person’s perspective. Steve never got a chance to redeem himself. Jonathan stole Nancy’s heart back then before he could.

But Steve never stopped loving Nancy. And now that it’s being revisited when they’re much older, it’s discovered that Nancy never stopped loving Steve either.

“You’re beautiful, Nancy Wheeler,” Steve says, peering into her eyes.

Perplexed, Nancy looks at her friend with furrowed brows. Encouraging space between the two, she places her hands on Steve’s shoulders, before moving off to the side.

“Thanks, Eddie.”

2 DAYS LATER… 💀

SHOW AND TELL DAY

“I made a promise to keep you shitheads safe and that’s exactly what I’m doing!”

You’d think it’d stop at the raccoons. But to Eddie’s surprise, the shenanigans of Camp Nowhere are far from over.

Today’s activity is centered around “aerodynamics” – which quickly translates to “Rolling Down a Steep Hill in a Dismantled Tire Swing”.

“The chances of us getting concussions are unlikely,” someone protests.

“BUT. NEVER. ZERO!” Eddie points out. “Wear a damn helmet, for Christ’s sake!!!”

“Ugh!!!” another kid wails. “You’re being a buzzkill, AGAIN, Steve! We miss the Relaxed Steve who didn’t give a shit.”

“Well, that’s too bad!” Eddie’s quick to match the energy. “It’s when Steve STOPS giving a shit that you should be scared. STEVE has set rules for a reason. And the reason is that STEVE doesn’t want you guys getting hurt.”

An injured kid would likely mean a trip to the hospital. Which means calling home. Which then means mountains of bills and a potential lawsuit which could lead to the shutting down of Camp Knowhere forever. And if Eddie wanted to leave his mark on the world, he would want it to be because he shaped young minds. Not eviscerated them.

Eddie sighs before speaking again. He had no clue about what really goes into all of this.

“Why is Steve talking about himself in the third person?” a kid questions.

Eddie quickly realizes that he in fact was talking about ‘himself’ in third person, to which he quickly deflects by saying,

“Because you dingbats stress me out. Put a helmet on or it’s no tire swing.”

———

“You look absolutely ridiculous.”

“What do you mean? I’m just channeling my inner Eddie.”

It was like watching Eddie cosplay as himself. As a nervous Robin drives towards Discount Stereo in Eddie’s van, Family Video’s sister music shop, she can’t help but get annoyed with Harrington’s forced headbanging and unnecessary drumming-on-the-dash.

And making her drive without a license too? It was way too anarchic for Steve. It’s like she was actually with Eddie instead.

“What exactly are we looking for anyways?” Robin sighs.

“We need a voice changer of sorts,” Steve brainstorms. “Or at least something to isolate Eddie’s vocals from the original track so I can perform for him.”

The further and further they were away from camp, the more desperate Steve got.

But Steve isn’t giving up hope. And if he has to play What Would Eddie Do? to get Eddie the dream contract he had been wishing for, he’s going to do exactly that.

“Master of puppets are pulling your strings… twisting your mind and smashing your dreams…”

Just then an epiphany reaches him.

“Puppet…” Steve whispers to himself. “…strings.”

How could he have overlooked this? The answer was so clear, so evident, right there all along. And in that moment, Steve had reevaluated all his previous judgments of Mr. Clarke. The man is a modern-day genius.

Steve turns to Robin.

“Turn around,” he says.

“What? I literally just got on the highway and I thought we were going to—”

“TURN. AROUND!”

SKRRRTTTTTTTT!

———

“Okay, turn around,” Gareth cautions. “But don’t make it obvious.”

Eddie’s neck immediately snaps towards the respective direction. Gareth gets a good eye-roll in before backhanding him across the chest.

“Way to be subtle,” he spews. “But that’s him. That’s the guy from Cardinal Records.”

The "dad" sunglasses. The Old Money Laugh. Initially unassuming, Eddie has no doubt that the man behind him is the off-duty talent scout. Because while he didn’t stand out at first, his confident demeanor and unbranded athleisure reeked of ‘subtle wealth’, his attentiveness to the stage screaming, ‘I’ll have my people call your people’.

“We should introduce ourselves before going up there,” Gareth suggests. “That way we start off on the right foot.”

“Noooo sir,” Eddie sings, shying away from the idea completely. “Not when I’m not myself.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll scavenge a wig and sunnies for you!” Jeff brainstorms. “He won’t even notice you took the form of some temperamental, big-haired frat diva!”

“It’s hopeless, guys,” Eddie refuses. “I say we just appoint the next band. Give someone else a shot while it’s in their reach.”

“But Eddie, THAT’S US!” Grant frowns. “We’ve dreamt of this, man. This is our only shot. You said it yourself, you practiced your solo for nearly two months!”

“So let this be a lesson learned,” Munson mutters. “That just because you work hard, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed success. I’m sorry guys, but it’s not happening.”

But “Eddie!” he hears himself scream. “EDDIE, EDDIE, EDDIE!”

Steve dashes towards him, ignoring the people staring at him like he’s some lunatic yelling his own name. Harrington’s feet are thinking too fast for his brain, judging by the way Eddie has to extend his arms forward to protect the two from ramming right into each other… again.

“Eddie,” Steve pants one last time. “God…your cardio sucks. You haven’t… gone on yet…have you?”

“No, and I don’t intend to. Show’s off. We gotta find the next act.”

Steve stops him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harrington begins. “Well, listening to music, more like. You know that one song by Metallica? The puppet show one?”

“Master of Puppets?” Eddie corrects him, baffled. “It’s not about a puppet show you ignorant f–”

“I know that,” Steve stops him. “...now. Point is, the word ‘puppet’ kinda had me thinking. What if you played your guitar solo backstage and I just pretend that it’s me doing it? I know the lyrics of the song, I just don’t know how to play guitar.”

“You know the lyrics to our song?” Jeff’s eyes twinkle with joy. Not that it was too big of a deal. But a ‘normie’ knowing the lyrics to one of Corroded Coffin’s songs is flattering in a sense.

“Yeah, after hearing it for a week straight,” Steve shrugs. “So, what do you say, Munson? Let’s get you guys that record deal, huh?”

Eddie lets the idea marinate for a while. Harrington’s onto something.

“So you suggest that I – quite literally – pull the strings behind the curtain…” Eddie nods along. “While you go out there and perform as me since you’re in my body? Pulling a Singing in the Rain essentially?”

“A what?”

But the theater kids sighs. “Nevermind. I’m uh, yeah! I’m up for it. If you are.”

Steve extends a hand to Eddie. With his stomach doing somersaults now, Eddie extends his hand to Steve, shaking it firmly, the mutual agreement eliciting a smile amongst the two former rivals.

“It’s now or never, baby. Let’s break some legs.”

Eddie shoots him a sour look. Steve’s trying. He’ll give him that much.

“Sure. I’ll take it!” Eddie chuckles. He quickly turns around. “Hey! Henderson!”

Dustin gives him a single nod.

“How long does it take for you to make a sign?” Eddie inquires. “Multiple, actually?”

“Depends,” Dustin shrugs. “What do you want them to say?”

Eddie smirks.

———

“Sorry I’m late, sweetheart. ...Again.”

Eddie takes a quick moment to admire his guitar, the red and black Rich NJ Warlock that he had spent two-and-a-half of his paychecks on, glistening atop the wall, held upright by a matte black holster. His eyes then trail over to the standard Reverend beside it, the one he’s going to be using while Steve goes out there with his precious baby.

“Okay, so when you guys get on stage, Gareth will start the count,” Eddie instructs, looking at Steve now. “When he counts to four, that’s when you start the song.”

“Wait, four?” Steve’s only been used to three. “Do I start right when he says four or after the fact?”

“At four. Starting after four would make it a five count.”

“ButifIstartatfour, howcanIbesurehedidn’tmeanthree and I’m off a couple counts?! Usually the count is three, I wanna make sure the count is actually four.”

“The count is four and you start AT FOUR!” Eddie hisses. “I was in band and theater and I’m in a band, I should know.”

The two quickly stop their argument to don their respective guitars. After another firm handshake, Steve sets off with the band, nervous but determined to give the performance his all.

“Don’t fuck up, Harrington,” Eddie shakily mutters as Steve walks away. “I’m countin’ on you.”

“Uh, Steve?” Nancy questions. Eddie spins around. “What are you doing with Eddie’s guitar?”

How’d Nancy get backstage? And why is she here? Eddie’s brain is riddled with a ton of questions, but nonetheless, all he does is smile.

“Don’t worry about it, Wheeler.”

Wheeler? Now Nancy really thinks Steve hit his head.

“I’m gonna worry!” she insists.

“‘Scuse me, ‘scuse me, pardon me,” Dustin utters as he squeezes his way to the front of the Show and Tell audience. “Tour manager here! I need access to the barricade!”

And he’s the best damn tour manager Hawkins has ever seen. Tucked underneath Dustin’s trusty armpit are a stack of poster-sized notecards with lyrics for Steve to read. Steve spots him in the crowd almost immediately and his eyes light up in relief. The two exchange confident thumbs up before the audience is lowered to a hush by the bright yellow stage lights and the fading stereo music.

“Uh… hi everyone!” Steve mumbles. “I’m Eddie Munson, and this is my band Corroded Coffin.”

Aggressive ringing shrouds people’s ears. Wincing himself, Steve gulps as he gathers what is left of his courage.

“A-are you ready to be blown away?” Steve questions the crowd. “Taken away, I should say. Haha.”

Crickets. There’s a hesitancy with the enthusiasm, but the crowd still remains supportive.

“C’mon…” Eddie whispers, impatiently and nervously tapping his feet.

Clearing his throat out of habit, Steve starts to speak again.

“Uh, this song is about never wanting to grow up. Refusing to conform to society’s expectations. The harsh realities of young adulthood.”

“Okay, we’re off to a good start…” Eddie comments.

“You know, I’ve done a lot of reflecting this summer,” Steve admits, the spotlight theatrically closing in on him. “Before this summer, I used to be uptight and a little bitter about everything and the way things were headed. But in the mess of it all, I learned to have a little bit of fun. To let my hair down, literally and metaphorically. And the fact that it all—“

“JUST START THE SONG!” Eddie interrupts from backstage.

Negative feedback rings through the stadium once more as Steve turns his head. I deserved that, he thinks. Without further adieu, Gareth starts them off, clashing his drumsticks together to set the tempo.

“ONE. TWO. ONE.TWO.THREE.FOUR.”

So it was after four.

“YEAAAAAH!” Steve croaks mightily into the microphone. “YEAAAAAAH!”

The band is already off to a good start. Even Eddie is stunned. The guitarist watches in joy – and almost with pride – as Steve pretends to know what he’s doing, ‘strumming’ along with Eddie’s band and banging his head around like an untamed maniac. It almost looks natural when he does it. Almost as if he had rehearsed this over and over.

When he senses the cue, Dustin holds his poster up.

“Get up, get out. Move on, move on there’s no doubt. I’m all wrong. You’re right. It’s all the same to you.”

“Get up, get out. Move on, move on there’s no doubt. I’M ALL WRONG. YOU’RE RIGHT. IT’S ALL THE SAME TO YOU!”

‘Eddie’s stage presence seemingly grabs the attention of the producer from Cardinal Records. Off to the side, Dustin’s friend’s friend’s dad remains leaned against a railing, his sharp eyes fixed on the band with a mix of fascination and calculation.

“I’m too thin. Too fat. You ask why. So why? So why? So why? So why?”

The scout's fingers drum against his thigh, fascinated by the song and the enthusiastic, young audience it catered to. He watches ‘Eddie’ and his provocative thrusts, the band and their one-ness with each other and their respective instruments, and the different groups of respectful mosh pits that have started since the band started performing. It’s a refreshing sight to see. Angst. Challenging the status quo. Young adults coming together to enjoy the music while being unapologetically themselves. Sex appeal.

The 90s have arrived; and Corroded Coffin is just what Cardinal Records needs.

“On and on and on and on. On and on and on and on! Don’t wanna grow up, I wanna get out. Hey! Take me away.”

Nodding his head to the song now, the man reaches into his pocket to acquire his business Motorola.

“Curtis,” the man says after a few rings. “Clear my schedule for the next week and a half. I’ve got some meetings to set up immediately.”

“I wanna shout out, take me away, away, away, away, away!”

“Round and round here we go again,” Steve sings, causing the crowd to roar and chant Eddie’s name. “Same old start, same old ends.”

“I don’t care if it was set in stone, I need you to clear them immediately,” the scout hisses. His eyes remain fixated on Corroded Coffin, “I just found our golden ticket.”

“Turn my head, I turn back again. Same old stuff, never ends.”

“Turn my head, I turn back again. Same old SHIT, never ends.”

And the audience ERUPTS once more. Shocked and ecstatic about the lyric change, Dustin bangs his head in excitement, throwing up two rock-and-roll signs while his notecards fall to the ground.

“He said the S word!” Suzie shrieks. “In front of a bunch of kids? He’s insane.”

He’s awesome, Eddie thinks, grateful at the fact that Steve had a change of heart when it came to the lyrics.

“Take me away, away, away, AWAY!”

And as planned, Eddie’s guitar solo that he had rehearsed for six weeks sounds through the amphitheater of excited, inspired teenagers.

Steve’s head bangs rhythmically with the beat, his eyes closed in a moment of pure bliss. His long hair whips around his face, drenched with sweat that sparkles underneath the stage lights.

I feel so fucking metal, he thinks to himself.

Eddie mirrors Steve from behind the curtain, ravaging his guitar, allowing his heart to pour from his fingers with a fiery, trance-inducing passion. And with a final, triumphant chord, Eddie thrusts his guitar skywards from behind the stage, his tongue poking out of his mouth from excitement, and the crowd erupts in an ear-splitting ovation, hands clapping, feet stomping, and voices roaring in a collective, euphoric frenzy.

Nancy stares in bewilderment at the sight in front of her. Robin takes notice and finds a cover explanation immediately.

“He’s been hanging around Eddie a LOT,” she says.

———

“MOST. METAL. EVER!”

Steve, Eddie, Dustin, and the rest of Corroded Coffin congregate in a circle, over the moon by the fact that the plan had actually worked out. Like a colony of black rabbits in a carrot field, the group hops around in a state of impermeable bliss, soaking in all the emotions that came with the idea of the beginning of their dreams coming true.

“Most metal, indeed.”

An unfamiliar voice cuts through their celebration, causing them to pause. Steve feels a nudge at his ribcage, placed excitedly there by Eddie. A turn in that direction and everyone grows quiet, unsure whether or not to speak or bow to the mogul in front of them.

“So this is Corroded Coffin, huh? I’m Gary Feldman, a talent scout for Cardinal Records.”

Eddie shoves Steve forward.

“Th-that’s us!” Steve stammers. “It’s great to meet you, sir. I’m Eddie. Eddie Munson. These are my buddies… Gareth on drums, Jeff on bass, Grant on guitar and keyboard. And these are my other best friends, Dustin, and Steve.”

“Cardinal Records?” Eddie – as Steve – asks, feigning innocence with a hint of mischief. “What’s Cardinal Records?”

Steve catches on quickly, then channels his inner Eddie.

“Only the most METAL record label in the history of record labels! They’ve produced everyone who’s anyone—probably your favorite artist and your favorite artist’s favorite artist!”

Eddie smiles at Steve’s ability to be such an accurate historian, whether or not it was done on a whim. Meanwhile, Feldman chuckles, clearly flattered at the fact that Steve, or ‘Eddie’, was practically kissing his feet, saying all the right things to get him on his good side.

“The media training is strong with this one.”

Just then, Steve’s confidence wavers. Scared that he ruined their shot, he gulps.

“I wasn’t thinking that, I swear.”

But Feldman laughs heartily, easing the tension.

“I’m just messing with ya, kid,” the talent scout grins. “I like your band, I really do. You guys have a sound I haven’t heard before. And the energy you bring to the crowd is something I haven’t seen in a long time.”

“Y-you’re serious?!” Eddie can’t help but exclaim. “You… really think my friends are that talented?”

“I don’t just think, I know,” Feldman insists, looking back at ‘Steve’. “I believe you guys have the IT factor we’ve been looking for but have been unable to find. I would like to have Corroded Coffin on board, if you are willing.”

Eddie beams in awe as he watches the interaction take place. Never did he think he would get his foot through the door thanks to Steve Harrington’s rockstar skills. And it seems like all the other guys shared that very sentiment.

“Here is my card, perhaps we can set up a meeting.”

The card is sleek when Steve takes it in his hand. It’s a glossy jet black color, heavy, and feels very, VERY important. Struggling to find the correct words, the boys nod profusely, smiling ear to ear while taking turns shaking Gary Feldman’s star-and-jewelry-studded hand. And when the recruiter disappears from sight, Eddie is quick to snatch the card out of Steve’s grip.

“Holy shit, we got our foot in the door!” he cheers, high-fiving all of the boys in celebration.

Steve peers over at Eddie with a proud smile.

“Congratulations, man. I knew that this would be possible.”

Eddie offers him a grateful smile in return. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Harrington.”

Eddie and Steve share a hug. Dustin stares as they do so, palms clasped together like a relieved parent witnessing a rare bonding moment between her children. Although it was a messy process, the mission of his fortune cookie worked. Steve and Eddie finally get along.

Suddenly, Eddie feels the grasp of two gruff palms below his hips.

“Uh, Steve,” Eddie clears his throat. “Can you please get your hand off my butt?”

But Harrington only laughs. “You mean my butt?”

———

“This is so not cool, man,” Argyle grumbles. “SO NOT COOL!”

Wading through a sea of glass beakers and soggy clothes, the gang proceeds to help Dustin clean out his side of the cabin… one last time before saying goodbye to Knowhere forever.

“I agree, why did you have to pack so much?!” Will questions. “You were only gone for six weeks.”

“Hey, I didn’t know what I would need for my last year,” Dustin defends himself. “Also, with my mom gone on her spicy book retreat, I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back and get anything.”

“Spicy book retreat?” it piques Argyle’s interest. “Explain.”

“If it’s anything like my mom reads, then you don’t wanna know,” Mike makes a face.

“Says you, sore Paladin. We REAL MEN have a thirst for this type of knowledge. Gotta know how to cater to the ladies, you know what I mean?”

The room fills with disgusted groans. This may be a science camp, but no one had the stomachs to discuss human anatomy at the moment.

Just then, the ground beneath the party rumbles again.

“EARTHQUAKE!” Argyle shrieks, his tone reminiscent of that of a little girl. “FOR REAL THIS TIME!”

“Jesus Chr—” Steve yelps, taking cover underneath a table.

“Here we go again,” Eddie mutters through his gritted teeth.

Everyone takes a form of shelter while the cabin rocks around, Suzie’s influence heavily evident on Dustin as he prays repeatedly for this shit to be over.

“HOLY SHIT!” Max screams, holding onto some chair legs to stabilize her body.

“WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO?!” Lucas cries.

“EVERYBODY, COVER YOUR HEADS!” Dad Eddie yells. “BRACE FOR IMPACT!”

The earthquake makes itself known for a little longer, before fading into complete nothingness. Everyone looks around to see if that was the last of the shaking. When the coast is finally clear, Argyle is the first to stand up.

“Now that,” he huffs. “Is what you call a California quake. That had to have been a five-point-something.”

When Eddie looks up from his bracing position, he pans his gaze over to Steve. And he’s absolutely elated when the face staring back at him is exactly who it is… Steve.

“Oh my god…” Eddie’s breath hitches. “Harrington.”

“Holy,” Harrington breathes. “Eddie?”

“Did they change back?” Robin mumbles, hands still atop her head as a form of self-regulation.

Everybody’s eyes trail over to Steve and Eddie as they reemerge, watching them palm at each other’s chests in confirmation, laughing delusionally in one another’s faces as they hop around in celebration.

“I don’t…” Steve stammers. “But you… how did we…”

“When what you see is what you lack, then selfless love will change you back,” Eddie recalls in his story-telling voice.

The notion really was the key to empathy, it seems: you never know what someone goes through until you live life in their shoes. A bit too literal for both of their likings, but Steve and Eddie evidently got the picture. It just felt great, being back in their own bodies again.

“I’m really sorry for everything I said about you,” Eddie fesses up immediately. “You really are a pretty amazing guy, Harrington. The kids are lucky to have you.”

“And I’m sorry for always refusing to see your side,” Steve says. “My jealousy, bias? and bitterness wouldn’t allow me to do so. Until I lived through it.”

“Hopefully it’s not too late for us to actually be friends.”

“For sure, man,” Eddie grins. I’ll call ya after that record deal meeting.”

The rocker reaches into his pocket to acquire a gift for Steve. His guitar pick that he used during Show and Tell. Upon it being delicately placed in his palms, Steve looks down at it in admiration, encapsulating it with his fingers to ensure its safety.

“Something to remember me for when Coffin makes it big,” Eddie explains.

The two share a smile once again, ecstatic that this fiasco is all over – but also excited to be burying the hatchet they have been harboring for years. It felt like an end of an era, a catalyst for a new beginning.

“Hey!” Argyle exclaims, his mouth just inches away from the fortune cookie in his hand. “Jonathan and I finally got the same fortune.”

Suddenly, concerned energy fills the room.

“NOOO!” everyone yelps running towards Argyle to knock the pastry out from his hand.

———

“Steeeeve Haaaarrington?”

The bright smile on the young woman’s face catches Steve off guard as he turns around. A flutter of nerves wash over him, but he remains fixed, determined to keep his composure as he feeds into the flirtiness.

“It’s Camp Counselor Steve Harrington, actually,” the former jock winks.

“Heard you’re the absolute best.”

“I’m alright, I suppose.”

“Hey, Steve.”

“Hey, Nance.”

It’s been years since Steve and Nancy had a decent conversation. Let alone one where tears weren’t involved. But despite the passage of time, taking in Nancy and all of her beauty still feels brand new to Steve, the mere idea of her making him giddy and bashful, just like the very first time.

“Did you have a good summer?”

“I did,” Steve nods. “And it just got a whole lot better.”

He catches himself immediately.

“Because now Dustin is free, of course,” he babbles.

“Right, right, of course,” Nancy nods along, trying not to blush.

“And we get to hang out again, and he gets to hang out with your brother again…”

“Fun! So fun!” Nancy insists.

“.. and he gets to hang out with Eddie and his band before they go on tour and make it big…”

The two take a moment to sit with the fact. A Hawkins local going to Indy with his band. A retired delinquent, mind you. Yet still the most badass.

“You know…” Nancy speaks again. “I am still kinda curious as to why you’ve been walking around with Eddie Munson’s guitar all night.”

Steve hands her the guitar pick. Confused but intrigued, Nancy takes it from his hand, grazing it with her delicate fingers as Steve closes up the space between them.

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. Emily Dickinson.”

Suddenly, Nancy appears to realize. Steve’s charm not only transcended time, but now also bodies, it seems. And Nancy knew she recognized those eyes from somewhere.

“Something’s telling me that it wasn’t Eddie that I was talking to in the library…” she speculates.

Steve can only chuckle. “Crazy, right?”

“It’s Hawkins,” Nancy giggles. “Nothing’s crazy to me anymore.”

“Not even me?”

“No, you’re not crazy,” she blushes, biting delicately on her bottom lip. “You’re just an idiot…Steve Harrington.”

“And you’re beautiful, Nancy Wheeler.”

“Uh, gross,” Eddie remarks from a distance.

Eddie nudges Dustin as they watch the two walk off into the sunset. They’ve been eavesdropping and spying this whole time, but Steve and Nancy were too smitten to notice.

“Is it too late to grab a coffee?”

“With you? No never. I heard Newby’s Coffee Roasters is pretty good.”

“Let’s go.”

The two spies proceed to watch as Nancy and Steve walk away, arm in arm, setting towards Steve’s car to enjoy the rest of their night.

“How come YOU never take me out for coffee and pastries?” Eddie jokes.

Dustin shrugs, reaching into his pocket to give Eddie an offering. “Here, you want a fortune cookie?”

Having learned his lesson now, Eddie is quick to shut it down.

“Absolutely not.”

EPILOGUE

“I, Sir Eddie Munson, dub THEE,” Eddie announces. “Dustin Randall Henderson, KING of Camp Knowhere.”

The boys chant adorn praises while Steve and Eddie wrap a linen mantle around Dustin’s shoulders. They then issue him a trash grabber to serve as his scepter, along with a dented paper crown from Crispy King to top off the look. Dustin bows at them gracefully.

“Thank you, thank you, my loyal subjects. First order as King — is D&D — with no curfew!”

“D&D, I thought we were watching Alvin and the Chipmunks,” Steve interrupts with a pout.

“Those fruity rodents can wait, Big Boy,” Eddie refuses. “Rise of Kas is tonight. I’ll teach you how to play if you’re game.”

Steve is about to say something before he stops himself. Hey, why not? After all this time pretending to be Eddie, he never mastered playing a fantasy game.

“I’m in,” Steve humbly shrugs. “Let’s go!”

Everyone cheers before descending towards Mike’s basement, a proud King Dustin watching at the top of the stairs. All his friends are friends. Thanks to his invention.

“Well don’t you look just ADORABLE?!” Karen Wheeler beams as she makes her way into the living room. “What are you supposed to be?”

“Dustin Henderson,” he grins proudly, bowing once again. He politely takes Karen’s hand in his and plants playful kisses upon her knuckle. “King of Knowhere, to you, Lady Wheeler.”

“Why am I not surprised?” a cacophonous voice interrupts the beautiful moment.

Off in the corner sits a salty Ted Wheeler, reclined in his stupid LayZ Boy while playing Sudoku like he was last time. And the last time. And the last time.

Dustin shakes his head. In Ted’s defense, Dustin would hate his life too if every day was the same as the one before. It was just sad. The complete killjoy should have been the last to speak about what Dustin does for fun.

“King of a place called Nowhere,” Ted remarks. “That’s exactly where you’re headed if you don’t start acting your age soon.”

“Oh, you wish you had my child-like whimsy,” Dustin hisses. “Someone’s just upset that they never had a childhood.”

But Mike’s dad fires back. “Someone’s just upset that they can no longer act like a child.”

Curly never understood what Ted Wheeler’s deal was. He’s got a nice house. A smoking hot wife. And three kids who Dustin is blessed enough to call his friends. What more could he possibly ask for?

“You know what — Theodore?” Dustin demands. “I was going to banish you to my dungeon to embark on a journey towards eternal misery, but it seems like you’re already there, so I shall not issue you better. A true king does not internalize the opinions of common court jesters anyways.”

He chucks Ted a cookie. Hopefully it’ll rid him of his attitude. And replace it with empathy.

“Lucky for you, I don’t discriminate either.” He turns back to Karen and blows her a kiss. “Same time tomorrow?”

Karen rolls her eyes as Dustin starts towards the basement. And just before he joins his loyal subjects for Dungeons and Dragons, the little king stops to read his fortune.

"You are about to embark on a curiosity voyage."

Dustin chuckles to himself.

"...in bed," he adds.

The little king hums happily to himself after popping the cookie into his mouth. There was no way in hell he’s letting Mike’s dad ruin his night. Not anymore.

“Man, I make one mean cookie.”

Meanwhile, ‘Common Court Jester’ Ted Wheeler gives in and goes to eat his fortune cookie as well. A sweet treat every now and then wouldn’t hurt anyways. Oh, the small joys of adult life.

“You know,” Karen speaks up, attempting to lighten the mood. “One of these days you’re going to miss them being this young. Or that you were 17 again, at least.”

“Well it sure isn’t today, I can tell you that much, honey.”

Karen scoffs, evidently accustomed to her husband’s dry humor by now. She then holds up some jell-o that she had made not too long ago.

“Care for some dessert?”

Ted shakes his head, holding up the fortune that came with Dustin’s cookie.

“No, thank you sweetheart, I think I’m set for tonight.”

Ted wipes his mouth as he chews. And, because curiosity got the best of him, he flips the strip of paper over to read his fortune.

“You are about to embark on a curiosity voyage.”

Ted Wheeler shakes his head and tosses it to the side.

“I’ll say… If there’s one thing I CAN praise Dustin Henderson for, it’s that he makes a great fortune cookie!”

The End 👀🕰️

---

author's note (again): thank you my loves for tuning in and for all your support. want a cookie? 😇🥠

divider credits: @saradika-graphics @silkholland @dreamlandcreations

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