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missybee-writes · 1 month ago

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Shadow in the Dark - Chapter Six: Halloween

Genre: Sci-fi; Romance; Horror

Warnings: (eventual) sexual content; violence; gore; swearing; alcohol and drug use.

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Fem!OC

Sooo...how about a 20k word chapter? It may have slightly grown beyond my expectations. Hope you enjoy!

Summary

In July ‘85, an ambitious realtor sells the crumbling Creel house to a family looking for a new start.

Rose McAllister may be living in a grand and gothic murder house in a small Midwest town, but senior year in high school is the stuff of her nightmares: a last chance at a normal school year without being the odd one out, the sick girl, the weirdo from across the pond. Blend in, make it through the year, and make some friends. Stay unnoticed at all costs.

Hawkins, and one seriously loud-mouthed metalhead, is about to flip that carefully laid plan Upside Down.

Chapter one: Cursed

Chapter two: Munson Magic

Chapter three: Fearless

Chapter Four: Code Name, Farrah Fawcett

Chapter Five: Sleepover

Ao3 link

---

The nylon gown scratched at the bare skin of her chest, fluorescent lights burned her eyes and buzzed incessantly, and the dull symphony of bleeping monitors was close to driving her to madness. Eyes closed, she could easily be back in Great Ormond Street Hospital with the brightly painted walls, or the view of the British Museum’s roof from her window. Hawkins Memorial was small, the smells and sights were different. And when Rose looked to her left, instead of her friend Elaine in her oxygen mask smothered in colourful boy band stickers pulled from the pages of magazines, there was only her Mum, sitting in a narrow armchair, picking at her the red-raw beds of her nails and stewing in a tense misery. Perhaps hospitals wore on Mum even more than they did Rose. After all, she’d lost Rose’s dad in an accident and seen her only child seriously ill within a year. No wonder Mum looked peaky just being back in here, washed out and pale under the hostile lighting.

The bleeping and rhythmic line moving up and down on the screen was steady, like the slow beat of Lars Ulrich on the drums in one of the songs on Eddie’s mixtape, Fade to Black. It must have pleased Dr Bateman, for he scratched his moustache and nodded, scribbling down something in Rose’s file.

“Alrighty then,” he said, clicking his pen and putting it back in his white coat pocket. “Mr McAllister, your daughter’s heart seems to be functioning well.”

Jerry looked from Rose to her mum nervously. “Oh, I’m just her stepfather, no need to t-”

“So I see no cause for concern,” the doctor continued, not even giving Rose or her agitated mother a glance. “If there are any significant changes then have her come in, but otherwise we’ll repeat the ECG in three months and go from there. Make sure she keeps up with her meds in the meantime. Okay?”

Jerry was flustered. “Um..oh, I guess. Does that mean there’s no risk of anything going...you know...wrong?”

Her mum swallowed hard and looked away, and Rose could see she’d made fingers bleed from picking at them.

“Well,” Dr Bateman said slowly. “There’s always a chance that complications can occur down the line. But more than likely, she’ll be-”

“Eighty-twenty, isn't it doc.” Rose didn’t try to hide the disdain she felt at saying it out loud. “There is an eighty percent chance I’ll be just the same as anyone else and keep going as I am, but a twenty percent chance that I’ll develop heart failure at any time in the future.”

The doctor grunted. “Like I said, more than likely she’ll be normal.”

“Oh good, you can hear me,” Rose exaggerated her smile. “I was beginning to think I may be invisible. Tell me, if we played Russian roulette right now, and I held a gun to your head, would you be happy with a twenty percent chance of a bullet in the chamber? One in five?”

“No need to be smart now,” his lip stiffened, moustache trembling.

Of course. Smart mouths were somehow more acceptable when you didn’t have tits. God forbid a woman talk back. She took a deep breath and looked at the charts by his side. “Aside from regularity, were you able to hear any sluggish murmurs that might mean endocarditis? No? In that case, be a dear and fetch Dr Abrams from neurology, so he can carry out the electroencephalogram and I can get out of here as quickly as bloody possible.”

The doctor’s face was thunder, he gave Jerry a pissed-off look and turned on his heel and left the small room, shiny shoes tapping on the linoleum, at least a hundred beats per minute.

“What an unpleasant man,” her mum said. “But I do wish you wouldn’t antagonise the medical staff, Rose. If something should ever happen, it’s them who...who’ll...oh gosh, i’m feeling dizzy. I should sit down.”

Jerry held her mum’s shoulders gently. “Honey, you’re already sat down.”

Her brows drew together like she was startled. “Am I? How silly of me. It’s alright, I just haven’t been sleeping very well.”

Rose, now free of all the wires attached to her chest, swung her legs off the rickety hospital bed. “It’s not more nightmares, is it?”

“No...well, just a few.”

“Shirley,” Jerry said. “I think you should see someone about that. The Department of Energy has in-house doctors for all sorts of things, without even going through insurance. Maybe I can make an appointment with a therapist.”

That was it, her mother laughed, dropping her purse onto the floor. “Therapy, Jerry? Nonsense, I am not mentally ill. It must be all the wires and the pipes in the house, you can’t go five minutes in that house without being woken up by clanking and buzzing. I don’t need a therapist, I need a plumber!”

Another doctor burst in, an older, kooky-looking gentleman with bushy white hair and round glasses, like a smiling Einstein.

“Dr Abrams, at your service,” he nodded toward Rose. “My colleague is as wound up as a teakettle, steam coming right out his ears. Do I have you to thank for that, Miss McAllister?”

She nodded.

“You must tell me your secret. That man’s as grouchy as a possum eating scraps from a dumpster.”

Rose smiled, immediately put at ease. “I don’t believe I've seen a possum before, but I’ll take your word for it.”

Two nurses dragged another machine, this one with an intricate web of wires, each ending in a sensor. But unlike the little sensors that had been taped to her chest, these were attached together in the snape of a cap.

He looked over the rim of his glasses as the nurse held out the cap. “I would explain the EEG to you, but I don’t think this is your first rodeo, is it Miss McAllister?”

Rose tucked her hair out the way and flattened the waves alongside her head as much as possible. “No it’s not.”

The nurses attached the sensors all over her head, as close-fitting as a swimming cap and stretching from her forehead to the nape of her neck. The machine came to life, and she sat still for a long time as they fiddled with the monitor screen and dials and knobs beneath.

Dr Abrams read through her file as the machine did its thing, and Rose stayed still. “So two years since the surgery and your cardiac arrest. Dr Bateman’s tests look good, no issues identified with your heart right now. I see the hospital in England kept you in for a lot of neurological testing after the resuscitation. Are you having any memory issues?”

“Nope.”

“Any unusual changes in your temper, sudden mood swings?”

“Define unusual,” her mum snickered, and the doctor’s mouth turned up into a smile.

“From your mother’s reaction, I'll take that as nothing abnormal for a teenager. See, I find this a little odd. Three minutes is a long time for inactivity of the brain, permanent damage becomes very likely.”

Rose shrugged. “So they keep telling me. But I don’t feel any different than before, doctor. Except for this lovely scar.”

“Three minutes...” mum trailed off, her voice numb and distant. “They told me something was wrong, and the doctors had begun resuscitation. The nurses in the waiting room said anything beyond ten minutes meant no chance of recovery...I would have sworn that the cup of tea they shoved into my hand went cold whilst I waited, and I saw them look at their watches and shake their heads when they thought I wasn’t looking. But then the doctor came out to tell me you were actually alive after all. It might have been three minutes, but...it’s like Wordsworth’s poem, isn’t it...to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. God knows it felt like an eternity to me.”

Rose wasn’t supposed to move her head, in case she disturbed the sensors, but she couldn’t help looking at her mum’s haunted face. No wonder she had nightmares.

“Waiting is the worst, isn’t it. It’s so difficult to go out there to a patient’s family, when something hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped.” Dr Abrams cleared his throat and looked back at the monitor, humming and holding his chin. “Well, isn’t this curious? Your brain activity looks a little different to me, maybe the sensor isn’t picking up the signals properly.”

Rose sighed. “They said that in Great Ormond Street. You can try again, but it won’t work. They said it must be a unique neurological dysfunction. Just can’t see properly into my head.”

“That’s how we met, actually,” Jerry squeezed her mum’s shoulder fondly. “They needed an electrical engineer to test their power room and some of their equipment as they thought it was faulty. I’d just left the Department for Energy and moved over, you see. So they sent me to take a look at the machine and I found Shirley in the parent’s waiting room.”

“He lingered about in that room for so long I thought he was another parent,” her mum said td. “I was always so nervous in those places, I didn’t even notice he was in overalls and had a toolbelt on!”

They really were an odd couple. Her mother had the outward appearance of a modest woman, but underneath was tough and sharp as steel. Rose’s father had been more easy to laugh and outgoing, with the kind of magnetic personality people were often drawn to, life of the party, pint in hand, cigarette in the other, always surrounded by his friends. Her mum and dad had been opposites that attracted, sparks flying, but with Jerry it was more of a...fizzle. Rose wouldn’t want something that passionless, but then perhaps nice and placid were qualities her mother valued after years of stress.

“How odd,” the doctor said, looking at the monitor. “I might have to make a call to your old doctor in London. You know what, I have a colleague in Pennhurst who would jump at the chance to examine these results. Maybe even run your interesting brain through a test or two. If you don’t object, I could send him these results for investigation.”

“Pennhurst,” Jerry frowned. “Isn’t that the nuthouse in Kerley County?”

“Pennhurst is a mental hospital, yes,” Dr Abrams said evenly. “But it’s also an esteemed research facility, with a focus on all aspects of the human mind, from the behavioural to the biological. The warden Dr Hatch has a particular interest in neurological conditions, as well as psychology.”

“I don’t know,” her mother said. “Those places are for psychopaths, aren’t they? I don’t think that sounds like a good idea.”

Rose cleared her throat loudly, drawing their attention. “Well isn’t it a good job that i’m a legal adult, with full bodily autonomy. If I want to send my scans to a psychologist, then I’ll do it.”

Mum pouted. “I’m only looking out for you, Rosebud.”

In her eyes, Rose was still thirteen, sickly, and fragile. Not a legal adult who’d been through more than most people her age, perfectly capable of making decisions about her future. It felt like an oppressive kind of love to Rose, one that itched even more than the nylon hospital gown. But whilst she lived under her mum and step dad's roof, she felt almost...powerless. Toothless. Neutered. Okay, perhaps not neutered, goodness knows she was more and more aware of the raging desires burning through her, particularly since she met a certain someone who should not be named. But losing a year of school and living with your mother at soon-to-be nineteen was exhausting.

“Fine,” Rose said, the fight draining right out of her. “Not now. But perhaps next time.”

---

All the way home Rose stared out the window, wiping the fog from the glass with her sleeve, humming a tune that had been stuck in her head for weeks. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard it first, but it wouldn’t go away. Da da-da da-da daaa-dum, da-

“Boy, a whole Monday off school,” Jerry said from the driver’s seat. “I know hospital’s aren’t fun, but that’s a bonus, eh? Four day week sounds nice to me.”

“I guess so,” Rose leaned against the steamed-up window, October rolling slowly into chilly, foggy weather.

Mum caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “More time to sleep off that hangover too.”

“Oh god, not again.”

“I’m all for you bringing friends over to the house, but did you have to get quite so drunk? And on the old playground too? Robin might need a tetanus shot after your shenanigans on the rocket ship.”

Rose’s head throbbed at the memory of her, Robin and Steve climbing into the big climbing frame shaped like a rocket ship after a few too many fruity cocktails, singing Life on Mars at the top of their lungs. Robin had scratched herself on a loose screw, so they had to cut their excursion short and return home, clattering in the kitchen at 2am to find a band-aid and some rubbing alcohol.

Sunday morning had been hell, but hell was far more fun when you had company. The three of them had hunkered down under a mountain of blankets in her room, nibbling on crackers and sipping ginger ale, until they felt more human again, and Robin was able to return home without alerting her parents to the fact that she’d been drunk.

The very same playground whizzed by the window now, and they pulled into the driveway of 1050 Morehead, though no one in the town called it anything other than Creel House. As they got out of the car and her mother opened the door, she wondered for the first time who the Creel family truly were. What happened to them here? Why did the murder live on in the town’s memory almost thirty years later?

Mum stumbled as she entered the house, clutching her head. Rose leapt forward to help, but when her mother turned around, her face was pale as bone, a trickle of blood seeping from her nose.

“Shit,” Rose hissed.

“It’s nothing,” she said, unconvincingly.

Rose guided her into the kitchen, holding her arm. She’d surpassed her mother in height by the time she was twelve, and now she was startled at how fragile she felt. Mothers were supposed to be there, a constant, as large and warm as life. “Come on Mum, let’s get you cleaned up. I think you should go straight to the doctor, you’re not looking well.”

“It’s just my luck, isn’t it. I felt fine when we were in the hospital, surrounded by medical staff. But the moment I walk through this door...”

Rose ran a cloth under the tap and paused, staring at the swirling water. She had been fine. Tired, perhaps. But not ill. “Here you go,” she said, dabbing away the blood from her face. “Let me get you some painkillers.”

“I think we should take you to the family doctor,” Jerry intervened. “I know you don’t want a fuss, but we need to get you checked out. It’s either that, or we go right back to the hospital and into the ER.”

The threat of an emergency room perked her mother up. “Alright, family doctor it is.”

Jerry opened the front door and guided her out, looking back at Rose. “Are you okay to hold the fort, kiddo?”

Rose wanted to be there, to make sure her mother was well. But she knew deep down that having her child there would only lead to her mother putting on a brave face, and she needed to be Shirley for once, not just mum.

“Absolutely,” she forced herself to smile. “Won’t burn the place down. Cross my heart.”

The door closed and Rose was left in the grant house, alone. Once the car’s engine faded outside, the silence was a muffled, oppressive thing, making her ears ring. But after a while the tap dripped, boards somewhere creaked, and the place felt almost...alive.

Alone at home for the first time in...well, possibly ever, Rose looked at the high ceilings, walnut-panelled Victorian interior, and felt what everyone else felt when they looked at the place. Fear. She had no idea where the murders took place or of their nature. Was it here in the kitchen, or were people slaughtered as they slept in their beds upstairs? Did they go quickly, or...or were the walls of this place witness to unimaginable pain and terror? Had there been blood, did it seep into the floorboards? Was it there still, after all these years?

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and she overcome with the need to be outside. She grabbed a book from the living room table and went out onto the porch, taking refuge on the loveseat by the front door, the walls of the house a thin barrier between Rose and the imagined horrors that lay within.

The leather bindings of the old book bit into her skin. Wuthering Heights. Oh great. She was stuck in the chilly October air without a jacket or even a cardigan, with an eerie gothic novel about lost love, paranoia and a windswept, menacing mansion out on the Yorkshire moors. Why couldn’t it have been Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, something to make her laugh?

By the time they arrived home, Rose peeled herself front he loveseat with numb fingers and listened intently to the insightful diagnosis from the family doctor: migraines. Take a tylenol and come back if it keeps happening. It made Rose feel powerless, and frustrated.

Rather than face Jerry’s beige and very questionable attempts in the kitchen, she made their dinner, finding some peace in the repetitive task of chopping and cooking, layering lasagna sheets and sauce, watching the oven absentmindedly and waiting for an egg timer to go off.

“She’s asleep,” Jerry said, leaning against the doorframe. “But I’m sure your mom will love this when she wakes up.”

Rose could hold back no longer, she had to know. “I’ll heat some up whenever she needs it. I...I got to thinking when you were at the doctors. What happened in this house?”

“Oh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea, kiddo.”

“Maybe, but I’m not asking on a whim. I think I need to know.”

He was as placed and calm as ever, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a floor, four walls, and a roof, like any other house. Look at the hospital we were in today, people die there every day. But it doesn’t make you scared, does it?”

Rose’s eyes narrowed, feeling oddly threatened by his dismissal. Jerry was never like this, he was a goofy idiot, but he was harmless. “Not knowing is worse. I’ll always be wondering and thinking about it, guessing which room, how it happened, or who was killed.”

He folded his arms. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“If you must be like that, then go ahead,” Rose said confidently. “But don’t forget I’m not a child...and I’m not your child.”

Most of the town knew of the Creel House and its backstory; if he wouldn’t tell her, she would find someone else to do it.

“No, you’re not,” Jerry said, masking whatever he was feeling with an impassive face. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I should go check on your mother and get some rest. I need to be at the plant by 5am tomorrow, before the night shift crew finish their shift. The Department’s facilities are having power issues, and we need to tighten the ship before it affects their research.“

In the two years since he arrived in her mother’s life, Rose had never seen him so petty, or act so strange. As she ate alone in the vast dining room, sitting cross-legged in the chair and staring out the tall window to the playground opposite, she felt a rush of hate for this grand, lofty space.

It was her mother’s idea to move once Rose had the all clear and her health was back on track. With her and Jerry newly married, their little home was too small for the three of them. WIth Rose out of sync at school and her tentative friends all moved on to university or jobs, many of them moving from town, there was little left to cling onto.

Jerry was offered a promotion with the Department for Energy. When the house was sold, the exchange rate and expensive UK housing market compared to rural central Indiana somehow left them with way more than they’d expected. Enough for the real estate agent to sense her mother would fall in love with the Victorian gothic mansion that no one else would buy, at a dirt cheap price.

It was strange, to have space, and for them as a family to have spare money. Rose’s father had been a dashing, red-haired Yorkshire coal miner whose love for life and taste for drink never stopped, despite the miner’s strikes putting him out of work in the 70s. He’d taken odd jobs, but there hadn’t been anything stable for years. Rose knew he’d not made life easy for her mother, and it hurt...it hurt whenever she thought of him, despite all the things people had said. All she had ever known was a father who told her stories, and always played games with her even when he was exhausted, when others would have said no. They danced and danced around their little living room listening to his beloved sixties and seventies rock, twirling her around until she was breathless and dizzy, laughing so much she thought she might burst.

Yes, there had been shouting between her parents and more strife than she could really comprehend at a young age, but life without him was simply dull and colourless. She would rather live in her tiny, cramped two-bed terrace and have him back, than be here in this eerie mansion. But here she was. Eighteen and putting together the beginnings of a new life. Trying to find her tribe out in the world. And even if the house wasn’t home, she had a feeling the people who had become close to her over the last month might just be.

---

The week marchedon, despite missing school on Monday. A drumbeat of classes, American History more interesting than she’d anticipated, others like biology and math frighteningly dull and covering ground she’d already trodden before. The Hellfire guys waved her over at lunch as they always did, but something was...off. Eddie brooded at the head of the table, not engaging in conversation beyond his usual rants about the lack of creativity or personality in the curriculum.

But when Jeremy from the party kids clique turned up to school with a full-blown A Flock of Seagulls haircut - slicked down at the front with crispy, wing-like structures carefully constructed with a full can of hairspray - and Eddie didn’t even mention it? Jeremy who’d put him in detention for smoking in the boys bathroom only two weeks ago? Rose knew something was wrong. She put aside any weirdness she might feel after learning of his potted romantic history, more clear than ever that whilst there had been flirting in the beginning, nothing was truly going to happen between them, and tried to talk to him on Tuesday. But he was sullen and withdrawn, enough for Gareth, Gareth of all people, to tell him to snap out of it and apologise to Rose for being a dick.

On Thursday morning she was paired with Robin in Driver’s Ed, both of them horrifyingly clumsy and dangerous behind the wheel, creating an air of chaos and terror in the car that scared the instructor half to death. Rose couldn’t help it if she had difficulty remembering right from left, she’d always been that way, before the little brush with death.

She emerged on Friday in a great mood, her mum feeling better, the weather cool and crisp, and ready for another Hellfire session and pitting her fledgling necromancer against the Cult of Vecna, the very best part of her Friday’s. Yes, perhaps that was partly due to sitting by Eddie’s side for hours as he became the charismatic Dungeon Master, sweeping them up with his skillful narration, theatrical energy and passion for the game. Why shouldn’t it be? Friends enjoyed each other’s company, didn’t they?

Lunchtime rolled around, and with it came an air of anticipation. Maybe it was the impending session, or the cafeteria splurging out on pizza on a Friday, but there was a definite buzz in the air. Except for Rose, who yawned her way through it, half-listening to their banter.

“I’m telling you, man,” Eddie said confidently at the table’s head. “It’s happening. AD/DC are playing in Indy, Iron Maiden are coming to Evansville...I am going to find tickets if it kills me.”

“You have contacts, right?” Dustin lowered his head, and gave him a knowing look. “Like, people who get you things. Things that are...difficult to come by.”

Eddie scoffed. “Not the kind who sell concert tickets.”

Robin gasped in mock surprise and turned to Dustin. “Dusty bun, are you referring to...drugs? Or is this some kind of comic book thing that will go completely over my head?”

“Dusty bun?” Eddie paused with a slice of pizza inches from his mouth, surrounded by the older guys laughter. “Buckley, have you been holding out on me? Where’d that come from?”

“It’s so cute,” Robin began. “It comes from-”

“No,” Dustin threw his hands up. “Nope, I am not going through this again.”

Eddie’s pizza dropped on the tray, forgotten, and he leaned onto the table. “Oh come on, Dusty bun. No harm meant, man. Ignorant kids think up ignorant names. How else do you think I was dubbed Eddie the Freak?”

Lucas was too eager to spill. “Oh, this wasn’t thought up by a bully. That’s the cutesy nickname his girlfriend has for him. It’s barf-inducing at the best of times, especially when he calls her Suzie-poo. What is she, a poodle?”

Eddie was struck in the heart by cupid’s imaginary arrow, slumping back in his chair and holding his chest. Rose couldn’t stop her sleepy smile, completely charmed by the way he acted out his feelings, by the way he never reacted as people thought he would. She left less tired, and more energised as she watched.

“Love,” Eddie clutched the imaginary arrow in his chest. “Turns off all the rational thought in the brain. Enslaved by the sorcerer that is Cupid, made to do his bidding. Love makes you do the crazy, right?”

Rose’s smile died slowly as her mind kicked into gear. Which of his girlfriends was he thinking of when he monologued about love? Was it the record label girl from California? Was it Chrissy? As the table laughed over Eddie’s joke, she couldn’t help but feel fragile, and defensive on behalf of Dustin...or so she told herself.

“Not really,” she said out loud, without really thinking it through. Eddie looked to her straight away, big brown eyes so wide and deep she thought she’d drown in them, too difficult to look away from. She felt the whole table watching, though she couldn’t quite break away from his eyes, “I don’t think it’s crazy. I think it’s sweet.”

“See?” Dustin said. “This is why none of you have girlfriends, and I do. Girls like emotional vulnerability, and pet names are just one facet of that.”

“I have a girlfriend,” Mike added sullenly.

“And you’re always talking about her or writing her letters...didn’t you even give her the name El?”

Mike thought about it for a minute. “I suppose.”

Chris’ mouth was dropped open again. “Suzie-poo I get, but how do you go from Jane to El?”

“No reason,” Mike laughed nervously. “No reason at all, just thought it...suited her.”

Eddie snapped his fingers at his friend. “See, case-in-point. Who comes up with the nickname El for a girl named Jane? Chris is right, it’s weird. Hence, driven by the mushy, goo-brained beast that is love. Come on, Rose, back me up on this one. I bet your boyfriends have given you all kinds of mushy names.”

She sank lower in her chair, but there was no hope of disappearing. She thought of all the lovely things that came from Eddie’s mouth, the ‘Sweetheart’s’ and even the occasional ‘Princess’, or one memorable ‘baby’. She hoped it would feel like that, one day, if she ever found someone who actually liked her back. “I haven’t had any. Boyfriends, I mean, not pet names...aside from Mum calling me Rosebud. I can’t even blame it on being sick...I think I'm just too awkward. I put my foot in it with everyone I ever meet.”

Oh great. Eddie’s eyes widened even further. Stupid, charming doe-eyes, making her feel inadequate yet again.

“You’re kidding, right? How is that even possible? You’re so...” he trailed off, chin propped on his hand. Their eyes were locked, all the noise in the room faded away, and she suddenly didn’t care what the end of the sentence was, as long as she could look at him like this forever.

Jeff prodded Eddie's arm, which made him snap to attention. “Rose. I mean, you’re so Rose. There’s no one else like you. I mean, kind and nice, and uh, one could say you were objectively pretty. You know, to some people, who are into that kind of thing.”

He was stumbling now, and the whole table knew it. Something weird happened to Dustin, whose face transformed from passive listening, to a little confusion with his brow puckered and head tilted to the side, and then his entire face lit up and mouth dropped open. Lucas casually elbowed him in the ribs and he hissed in pain, distracting everyone for a moment and giving Eddie and Rose a second to recover.

Robin nudged her knee under the table, and gave her a little nod, like she was about to save the day. What was it with prodding and jabbing today? Did everyone just wake up and decide on minor violence?

Robin began to speak. “Oh, don’t let her fool you. There was this one guy, right? Good kisser, kind of crazy about you, but-”

Rose kicked Robin’s foot, stopping her mid sentence. Yes, she’d told Robin all about Simon the Skinhead from the pub back home, but that entire fling was only fleeting, and it wasn’t the kind of story she wanted coming out at the lunch table. Besides, they’d only snogged a few times behind the back of the Nag’s Head, until both of his front teeth were knocked out in a bare knuckle boxing match. Rose liked to think she hadn’t stopped it just for that reason - she wasn’t superficial, though his smile was much harder to look at afterward - it was more that he’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. A dangerous one. And that was months before she’d left for America.

Robin shrugged and mouthed sorry, taking a big crunch of her apple as a blatant distraction, chewing slowly and avoiding eye contact.

Great. Now the whole of Hellfire was awkward and silent. Or in Dustin, Mike and Lucas’ case, giving each other knowing looks and whispering, eyes still focused on Eddie and Rose.

Thankfully a hand emerged from nowhere, slapping down a pastel pink flyer on the empty space in the table’s centre, between Eddie’s Dr Pepper and Jeff’s lunch tray.

“It’s the end of the goddamn world,” Gareth announced loudly, stood behind the younger guys, his arm thrust between Dustin and Lucas’ heads. Rose flinched, Robin dropped the apple, and the younger guys squealed.

“What the hell?” Jeff asked, snatching the flyer. “A Streetcar named Desire. Are you joining drama club now Gareth? Who are you gonna audition for, the sister? I knew all those Hellfire sessions playing the princess or the tavern wench would pay off eventually.”

“Fuck off, man,” he said defensively, dropping into his usual seat by Eddie, a bundle of ripped plaid, black denim, combat boots and attitude. “Just keep reading.”

Jeff mumbled to himself, until his face fell. “Oh man, oh no...how did we miss this?”

“I don’t know,” Gareth sighed. “But I stopped off at Ms Click’s class just to be sure. It’s happening tonight, for the next three weeks.”

Eddie had been staring blankly at the table, and sat up suddenly, ripping the flyer from Jeff’s hand. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What is it?” Rose asked. “I can't take the suspense, what’s happening? Do we not like the works of Tennessee Williams? I have thoughts...he’s no Noël Coward, but his plays aren’t that bad.”

Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose. “The drama club needs the prop room until Thanksgiving, for rehearsals and the play itself. Goddamn it, all our stuff is there, the chair, my goblet...you know what I'm like without ambience, man. I can’t do Hellfire in Gareth’s garage again.”

Groans and curses echoed around the table, like it was indeed the end of the world. Rose and Robin exchanged a look of disbelief, but it was Mike who pointed his finger in the air and came to the rescue.

“My basement! We used to play D&D all day there in middle school. It’s dark and downstairs-”

“Duh,” Gareth mocked.

“Yeah, that might work,” Lucas added. “It’s kind of cosy. And Mrs Wheeler makes the best pizza rolls.”

Eddie gave him a scathing look. “I appreciate it, Wheeler, I really do. But didn’t you say your Mom is kind of uptight? Does she know you hang around with a bunch of scary, satan-worshipping seniors and Eddie the freak Munson?”

“She doesn’t exactly know,” Mike deflated, flopping onto the lunch table like he was suddenly removed of his spine. “And she wasn’t too happy about Nancy and I being involved in the whole mall fire thing; she grounded me until sophomore year, in theory at least.”

Eddie’s smile was bitter. “I don’t want to be the source of drama in suburbia, so we'll have to think again. I appreciate the offer though.”

Chris, silent thus far, closed his gaping mouth and added his own idea. “We could just steal the props we normally use and take Hellfire to another classroom for three weeks, couldn’t we?”

“They need the chair and table for the play,” Gareth said, crushing their hopes. “And I don’t think the classrooms will be up to our Dungeon Master’s exacting standards. Plus, they’re locked.”

The seed of an idea was blooming in Rose’s mind. She watched throw out a dozen different ideas and shoot them all down, and worked up the courage to add her own. “We could have Hellfire at my house.”

Eddie caught on first, attuned to her whenever she spoke, brows coming together in a frown. No one else had noticed.

Rose cleared her throat and tried again, louder. “I said, you could have Hellfire at my place. Everything inside is either crumbling apart, or properly restored to its former Victorian splendour. Lots of big fireplaces, candles, cobwebs...you know, the full haunted house experience.”

“It’s perfect,” Dustin said, beaming a great big smile. “Sounds even better than the drama room.”

Eddie hummed, toying with the ring on his right hand, the one with the black stone. “Won’t your parents be there?”

“I can ask them to go out for the day. Jerry’s been dying to visit this antique fair in Cartersville. It would be just us for most of the day. We could even do it on Halloween next Saturday, ” Rose gave him a meaningful stare, and did a dramatic gesture like she’d just remembered something. “Oh, that’s right, only if you actually can come inside. I know how selective you are about whose home you will come into...like a vampire without an invitation. Is it too scary for you, Munson?”

The tension crackled all the way across the table, everyone looking from left to right, waiting for him to respond. Eddie’s eyes were wickedly dark, even in the harsh cafeteria light. His smile was wicked too, teeth biting into his bottom lip, half way between a grimace and a grin. Touche, she thought.

“There is very little that scares me, sweetheart,” he said evenly. “But I gather the house in question gets a lot of traffic these days, doesn’t it? Lots of people coming to and fro. Are you sure there is room for us lowly freaks next Saturday? Can you fit us into your busy social calendar?”

What the hell? Rose had no clue what he was even talking about. Eddie had left last Friday night, and she’d not seen him again until three days ago.

“I won’t be coming, that’s for sure,” Robin interrupted, sensing the awkwardness. “Not that I am in Hellfire, or wanna play the dungeon game whatsoever. But I can’t look at your place without feeling sick, and the memory coming back from last week. I drove by with my parents on Tuesday and I had to fake car sickness just looking at the swings. And I’m never car sick.”

Rose was focused on Eddie alone, watching the twitch of his full lips, his narrowing eyes, knowing that something was going on, but clueless as to what. “So are we on, Dungeon Master? You’ll dare to come in?”

He let the tense silence drag on for a second, leaning forward on his forearm, the zip-chain on his jacket clanking on the table. “You bet we are, McAllister. Next Saturday. One PM. It’ll be the mid-point of the Cult of Vecna campaign, the one I've been planning for months. The adventure should be a long and agonising one, so prepare for it.”

Rose nodded, and the shrill school bell broke the tension around the table. Hellfire may be disrupted, but it looked like she had to play host, and Eddie might break that promise to enter her house after all. She wondered what had changed his mind, if anything had happened with Chrissy, or whoever else it might involve. Perhaps it wasn’t her place to know.

---

Three o’clock had her wandering the parking lot, working what to do with a few spare hours now that Hellfire was cancelled. Jerry was due to pick her up at seven, straight from a shift at work. Mum wasn’t home. She could get the bus home, but the thought of unlocking the door to that empty house, and spending several hours alone in it, wasn’t a pleasant one. Maybe she could go to the public library or Family Video, and pester Robin and Steve for a while.

Instead, her weary feet took her across the football field and on to the well-trodden path to the woods, crunching over leaves, stepping into the clearing. Empty. She sat at the picnic table and traced the little drawings of bats with her fingers, remembering the last time she was here, a couple of weeks ago. The near-kiss, the butterflies, the mixtape.

She pulled out her English notebook with the intention of studying, but her heart led her to the Charlotte Bronte novel hidden deep in her bag. Jane Eyre, her comfort blanket, which she’d read more times than she could count. Despite the allure of Jane and Mr Rochester’s fiery proposal scene, moments later found herself yawning and resting her cheek against the page. Just for a second, huddling in her scarf for warmth in the autumn air, lying gently on the book. Just a second.

“...no, Jeremy, I am not going to hook you up with my supplier. I told you, this is what’s on offer.”

Eddie’s voice drifted through the trees, stirring her awake. His voice was nice. So nice.

“Come on, Munson. If you have ket, don’t you have a little coke? Just this once?”

“No can do. If you don’t like it, you can go to Cartersville and find another dealer. I know a few guys that hang out at the biker bar on Sycamore Road, but they carry.”

“Guns?”

Eddie scoffed. “Did you think I meant candy or something? And they’re not particularly friendly to guys like yourself, who think they just stepped out or Risky Business. Come on, Jeremy, it’s October. You don’t need sunglasses. And that blazer looks freakin’ cold.”

The other, nasal voice must belong to this Jeremy. A name she recognised, one of the party kids who sat opposite Hellfire’s lunch table and gave them hell. Eddie in particular.

“Look, if you can’t do coke, then ket will do.”

“Not at school,” Eddie said firmly, with none of the gentleness she’d come to know from him. “Weed is one thing, but I can’t exactly hide ket in my lunch box, can I?”

“Wait...what the hell? Who's the random chick?” Jeremy called out.

She stirred fully from sleep, her brain whirring quickly to keep up. “Eddie?” Her voice was croaky.

He was running over to her, a hand pressed against her back, his concerned face hovering over her. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Shit. Shit. She’d not seen a drug deal before, but it wasn’t a good idea to get in the middle of one, was it? “Sorry. I don’t know what happened, I was just resting my eyes...and I've just taken over your spot, I'm sorry, I can get out of your way.”

Jeremy took off his oversized glasses and squinted at her. “That the new chick? I don’t want anyone else knowing about this conversation, Munson. If she talks-”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said to her, under his breath. “Just trust me.” Then he quickly reared back and crossed the clearing, full of intimidating energy, until he had Jeremy the party kid pinned up against a tree.

“No one is talking, Jeremy. Not me, the drug dealer, or you, the buyer. Who the hell are you going to talk to, the cops? The principal? And if we’re not talking, the completely unrelated bystander sat at a table in the woods, who just slept through our conversation, definitely isn’t. Understood?”

“Jesus,” the guy choked out. “Understood.”

“And if you so much as look in her direction, i’ll make sure no one in central Indiana sells to you again. I’m not so sure you’ll get through finals and into that fancy college without a serious quantity of uppers, or at least that’s what the gossips say about you at school. Are you a gossip, Jeremy?”

“Nope,” he shook his head, sunglasses dropped to the forest floor. “I’ll catch you another time, man.”

Eddie smiled a toothy grin and tapped him on the cheek. “Good. Now get out of here, shop’s closed for the day.”

Jeremy fled without his sunglasses, a blur of navy blazer and his bouncy Flock of Seagulls hair flapping in the wind, disappearing back in the direction of the school. Eddie took a deep breath, sagging just a little, like the adrenaline had worn off and he couldn’t keep up an intimidating posture.

“I’m sorry,” Rose tried to stand up, knocking her knee on the picnic table and hissing in pain. “This is your spot. It’s only fair that I go.”

“Wait,” he rushed over, black lunch pail dropped on the table. He grabbed the back of his neck, face scrunching up, like he was struggling for words. “I should be sorry. This is a public place, and I don’t want to get you involved in any of that shit. He’s chicken shit, by the way. There’s nothing he could do or say that could get you into trouble, not without admitting he’s been using a serious amount of class A drugs just to get through senior year.”

Rose scrubbed her face with her hand, feeling totally awake and alert. “Thank you. That was...you didn’t need to put yourself in any trouble for me. He won’t come after you, will he?”

Eddie pulled a face of disbelief, his smile returning in full force, brushing her concern away with his hands, flapping around like an awkward idiot. “Jeremy? No way. He might throw a few insults my way at lunch, but that’s the extent of his power. You, milady, are totally safe.”

“Good,” she sighed.

He cocked his head, looking over her books, her position at the table, her rumpled hair. “What are you doing out here in the cold, anyways? Couldn’t get a ride home with...um...anyone else? Not Robin and, uh, Steve?”

“They’re working. I did think about going to Family Video for a while, but I just wanted some space to just be. And Robin and Steve are kind of full on.”

He shifted from one foot to another, jean chain jangling. “Right. Do...do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I mean, I came to your spot, didn’t I?”

Eddie looked around for a minute, and dropped on the bench opposite her. “Yeah, you did. And why is that, exactly? Not that I mind at all, I just...after the cafeteria, I did think I might not be your favourite person right now.”

Rose frowned. “It’s not that, not at all. I came here to study English, actually, but was led astray by Charlotte Bronte.”

Eddie poked at the cover. “She any good?”

She cleared her throat and spoke aloud, voice tinged with the emotion those words always made her feel: “ Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong. I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart!”

Eddie was taken aback. “Damn, that was good. You didn’t even read that from the page!”

“Jane Eyre is kind of my hero,” she looked down at the table, tracing the outline of Eddie’s drawn bats with her fingertips yet again. “She’s invisible, but she pushes through it to find her strength, her courage.”

“Invisible, huh,” Eddie said, with sincere doubt. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

“It wasn’t,” Rose replied without thinking. “But I don’t think I am anymore.”

“Yeah, definitely not. Highly visible, in a good way, I mean...ugh, I should just stop now. But I’ve gotta say, sleeping outside in the woods isn’t a good idea, even if you were invisible. You don’t know what’s lurking out there,” he gestured to the trees, shrouded in gloom just before sunset.

“I’ve not been sleeping well. I must have become a bit too tired. ”

Eddie's concern was genuine, and he leaned toward her. “Everything okay? I heard you were at the hospital on Monday for tests. That’s gotta be tough, with the amount of time you’ve spent there over the years. Like being back in the war zone, you know? Shellshocked, or something? Or at least that’s what Uncle Wayne calls it, and he was in Vietnam.”

Rose could feel tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. She was touched that he’d remembered, that he’d thought about her during the week, and put himself in her shoes long enough to pinpoint exactly what she was feeling. “I’ve had better weeks.”

He could sense the stress behind her words, she just knew it. “And a free afternoon studying the works of Edgar Allen Poe in the woods was just the thing to top it off? ”

“Poe is very cathartic,” she defended quickly, coming alive again. “I thought you would like his work, it fits with the whole anti-establishment, metal vibe you have going on.”

His smile was blinding. “Oh really? Maybe I haven’t had the best teacher. O’Donnell isn’t exactly inspiring. Hence why I'm still here, seeking that Holy Grail of graduation, the D of destiny.”

“I could help you,” Rose picked at her sleeve. “If English is key to graduating, why not call in a high level spellcaster to help you make it through the adventure?”

“Wait,” he said slyly. “Offering to tutor me and using D&D language to do it? Am I asleep? Is it me that’s napping at the table, and this is all a dream?”

She couldn’t help but laugh, her heart light because they were getting on again. “I can get you more than a D, Munson. I think a B minus is achievable.”

“Woah, woah, don’t aim for the stars, sweetheart. Munson’s don’t get that far.”

The idea that his opinion of himself was so low, that he made jokes and projected his lack of confidence in such a way, was so uncomfortable it almost caused her physical pain.

“You’re the only Munson I know, and you are more than capable,” she said confidently. “This is the mind behind the Cult of Vecna, and all of our other campaigns. You have no idea how much Dustin and the guys love those campaigns. They worship you, and they are incredibly smart. Annoyingly so. If you don’t believe me, believe in their good judgement.”

Eddie blushed, cheeks darkening as he ducked his head and dimpling as he smiled. “Okay. Can’t argue with that logic.”

“Do you want to go to the school library some time, or...” Rose paused; she could see his unease at the very thought of the building behind them, and remembered his agitated state in English class last week, like he couldn’t function under the bright lights and with the drone of O’Donnell’s voice. “Or somewhere else. I’d offer my place but I know it might not be ideal. Maybe...maybe yours?”

His mouth popped open. “You want to come to my place?”

“Yes. If it’s okay. I don’t want to presume.”

“No,” Eddie looked smug. “I get it, the allure of the Forest Hills Trailer Park is too strong for you to resist. You can come over sometime, Ms McAllister. As long as you don’t have anyone that would be bothered by it.”

Rose scrunched up her nose. Did he still think her parents were uppity, high class kind of people, just because of the square footage of her house? It was big, yes, but it was dirt cheap. And there was nothing posh about her or her family, so no trailer park was beneath her, or whatever he seemed to be implying.

“First of all, never call me Ms McAllister again,” she pointed a finger near his face, causing him to laugh and hide behind his own curtain of hair. “Second, no one is going to be bothered. Except Dustin, who probably will be terribly jealous that anyone is spending time with you outside of school, because he loves you desperately.”

“Stop,” Eddie swatted her hand away playfully. “You make it sound so embarrassing.”

“No. It’s sweet. He adores you and wants to be you. Honestly, with those high powered walkie talkies he has going on, he may be bugging your house. Or at least biking over to the trailer park and looking longingly through the window with binoculars as you practice guitar or write up campaigns.”

“This is getting so weird.”

Laughter bubbled up from her chest, warm and sweet as honey. “He likes having you as a role model, that’s all. He sees the good in you. And I have to admit, Dustin is not often wrong about facts or people, as much as I would occasionally like him to be.”

Eddie moaned, slapping his forehead. “I forgot. After lunch he cornered me in the hall, asking if we could finish Hellfire early next Saturday so he can go Trick or Treating. He’s fifteen. Fifteen.”

“I think it’s sweet.”

“Mmm. It’s the way people suddenly get this licence to be interesting and act scary, that’s what irritates me. Like they’re different people for one night, just because normative society dictates it. Costumes, though...costumes I get.”

“So why don’t combine Hellfire and costumes, so he doesn’t miss out?” Rose asked. He raised a brow, looking sceptical, but she ploughed on. “No, wait. Not ghosts or witches. We could dress as our characters. What could be more atmospheric than that? Come on, you know it’s a good idea.”

He thought about it hard. “Fine, you’ve convinced me. I guess I can bring Eddie the Bard to life for a night. But for now, carriage duties. Let’s get you home.”

---

Rose had never seen so much paisley and tie-dye in her life. Boxes upon boxes of clothes in shades of orange-brown, acres upon acres of plaid shirts, and endless racks of capes and flared jackets, the kind that her grandmother would have worn. The thrift store was a huge, cavernous store behind Main Street, full of items donated by the people of Kerley County, sold on at cheap prices. There were stained and faded couches that were nonetheless comfortable, old fashioned sideboards, retro drinks cabinets, and crockery and homeware in great big stacks. Books, too, and Rose had a dog-eared romance paperback under one arm ready to pay at the counter once she was done, lured in by the shirtless hunk dressed in nothing but a kilt on the cover and the promise of a clandestine, bodice-ripping romance. But her target today was the great big section of the store dedicated to second hand clothes.

She spied a scrap of ivory beneath a pinstripe skirt and pulled out a peasant blouse, the crinkled sleeves and body gathered at the top, floaty and feminine. She held it up to her body. It had a certain Medieval air to it, one she enjoyed.

“What do necromancer’s wear, anyway?” Robin called, emerging from a coat rack. “Ooh, that’s pretty, you look like you just came from a rendezvous with a stable boy. Oh my gosh...is that...is that straw in your hair?” She teased, so convincing that Rose actually put her hand to her head tocheck.

Rose groaned. “Robin!”

Her friend’s laugh was throaty and contagious. “I can’t help it, you’re too gullible.”

“I don’t know” Rose toyed with the ruched neckline which dipped where it laced up at the front, working out where it might sit on her chest. “I think it might be too low. Waaay too low.”

Robin threw on a fur coat, striking a dramatic pose and putting on a Transatlantic accent like an old movie star. “If it’s the scar you’re worried about, don’t be, darling. I have stretch marks pretty much the same size, and I don’t give a damn.”

“Alright, Scarlett O-Hara. Wait, are you sure you’re not auditioning for Blanche Dubois right now? Are you secretly in the drama club?”

“Oh please. I can’t be contained and made to remember lines. I’m au naturel. You should get the shirt, but isn’t your character, like, on the cusp of being evil?”

“You’re right, it’s not evil enough” Rose said, folding the blouse up and turning back to the clothing racks with a huff. “She’s a sorceress with a dark and twisted power, hell bent on revenge for her family’s death and learning necromancy to bring them back to life. Oh, and she wears light armour.”

“Hmm. Not sure ‘light armour’ is a category in the thrift store. ‘Lightly stained’, maybe.”

lHey there, Ladies,” a deep voice announced right at their backs. “Shouldn’t you two broads be back in the saloon serving whiskey?”

A figure popped up behind them, cowboy hat lowered and covering his face, foot propped up on a box. He raised the rim of the hat and Rose’s heart rate slowed down.

“Steve?!” Robin brandished a coat hanger as a makeshift weapon, hyperventilating. “When did you get so stealthy?”

He put his hands on his hips and sighed. “God, sorry. I’ll make more noise next time. But look at this hat? What do you think, am I cowboy material?”

“I can see that, actually,” Rose added. “You’d make a good authority figure, protecting the town from rogue gunslingers. The hat looks perfect for the keg party on Saturday you keep going on about. You might be able to rope in some broads whilst you’re there. Or cows...or horses...what do they even catch with the rope-thing?”

Steve raised his brows, “Cattle. Come on, I thought you were smart. But wait...do you really think I should wear this to Kyle’s party? Bianca might be there, and I was this close to dating her last year, she was all over me after the Nancy thing ended. Maybe Bianca likes herself a rugged cowboy.”

“No, Steve!” Robin cried loudly. “That is not keg party material! I know you got invited to the ‘biggest party of senior year’ when you’ve already graduated and we, the actual seniors, are not even a lowly rung on the social hierarchy and have no invite whatsoever, but can you stop rubbing salt in that wound already?”

“Geez,” Steve whined. “I was going to invite you. Apparently Tammy Thompson is going. Tammy who, you know...” he dropped into a terribly un-subtle whisper. “Who you spent a significant amount of time crushing over in sophomore year.”

Robin shook her head vigorously, shaking off the fur coat. “Nope, nu-uh. I’m not fifteen any more, Stevie. I’ve grown past this particular crush.”

“Oh, well some of your band geeks are going to be there too.”

Robin shrugged. “Maybe. Can I ditch early if it sucks?”

“Fine,” Steve said, resigned. “I guess authority figures have to stay sober to protect the townsfolk, or whatever. Rose, the invite is open to you too.”

There were very few, or specifically no parties like this in her past. By the time she was well enough to attend one and back in school at home, everyone was old enough to drink legally, and the need for clandestine gatherings had shrivelled away. “I would like that,” she admitted. “I watched so many teen movies before I moved over, and every one of them ends in some kind of raging keg party where parents mysteriously go out of town for the night and kids trash the house. I always thought...if I was invited to something like that, everything would be okay. I’d have made friends. Gone through the whole quintessential high school experience.”

Steve was shocked. “That’s horrifyingly sad, you know that? I’m about to shed a tear here. Now you have to come so we can fulfil your childhood dreams. Tomorrow, eight o’clock?”

Rose slammed the table, tipping over a box of scarves. “Dammit, I have to stay home tomorrow. My mum’s not well, I need to look after her. Jerry’s working a night shift at the plant, again.”

“There will be other parties,” Robin promised. “It’s only October. Just wait until spring, Hawkins will be one series of keggers after the other, and we’ll go to them all if you like.”

Rose grinned. “Next time, count me in. Now, for the bigger challenge. I have to find clothes worthy of a necromancer for less than twenty bucks from a thrift store.”

“Well,” Steve picked up a heap of corduroy and held it far away from his body. “If it helps, I think someone may have died in these pants. Maybe they were resurrected in them too?”

Robin squealed and ducked down, bringing up a box from underneath the table, her new bangs just visible over the top and she held it aloft. “Oh my god, I may have just found the answer to all your problems. Look!”

The box was still taped up, but on the side, someone had written in loopy script: Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hawkins Amateur Dramatic Society, ‘82.

---

“Be sensible, Rosebud,” Mum said, about to step into the car. “I know you said your book club friends aren’t the partying type, but you’re teenagers alone in a big house. Things are bound to get a bit rowdy.”

“Mum!” Rose groaned. “It’s not a book club, it’s a fantasy game, played by a bunch of comic-book and fantasy-novel loving teenage nerds. That starts at one o’clock in the afternoon. Just how rowdy do you think it could get?”

“Hmm. There are plenty of sandwiches and crisps, and money for pizza if you want it. No alcohol this time, given Dustin and his friends are a bit too young for that. I also left lots of chocolate and sweets in the basket by the door. Try to save some for the trick-or-treaters, won’t you dear? Claudia said there will be lots of them, so I may have gone a bit overboard.”

Rose’s mum Shirley had befriended Claudia Henderson in the grocery store, last week, her first new friend in Hawkins, bonding over raising children with various health issues as single mothers. Claudia had filled her in on the town, the goings on at school, and just how good and sensible Dustin and his friends were. That worked wonders when Rose asked if Mum and Jerry could vacate the house for Halloween for a Hellfire gathering. When she learned that Dustin could perform CPR and had a first aid certificate from his science camp, the deal was sealed, the house freed up for a full day for Rose and her friends.

“We won’t trash the place, promise,” Rose waved and plastered a smile on her face, stifling a laugh as Mum and Jerry pulled out of the driveway and off to Cartersville. It was eleven o’clock, and by Rose’s reckoning she had twelve hours before they were back. Two full hours before the guys were due to arrive.

She’d been waiting for this moment for a full week, enduring school, planning the night in her head, hoping desperately that Eddie would actually arrive, worrying that he might disappear at the last minute.

Facing down her anxiety she put on her walkman, danced up and down the house to Michael Jackson and made the place fit for the Cult of Vecna. The cheap plastic cobweb packs from Melvald’s General Store were broken open, and she wove the fake stuff around the light fittings, stair bannisters, and on the mirrors and paintings on the walls. Every candle they’d ever owned was brought out, the more melted and twisted looking the better, littering every surface, wax dribbled onto surfaces she knew she would wipe clean.

The hallway with its impressive fireplace and sweeping stairs were decorative enough, but the dining room was the focus of her energy, the location of the campaign. Usually, the table felt ridiculous for the three of them, but now she loved that it could easily sit ten. A crimson-red tablecloth was draped over the top, candelabra in the centre, and so much fake cobweb around the room that you’d think Shelob was nesting in the corners above the ornate panelled bookcases. In comparison the kitchen table groaned with snacks, enough to sate the bellies of a dozen teenage adventurers on a quest to vanquish a dark necromancer.

The bloody terrifying mannequins that were in the cellar when they bought the place were placed strategically in windows to look like shadowy figures, draped in old hats and coats to give them a spooky, realistic outline. When she stepped outside into the yard by midday and looked over at her handiwork, she was delighted. It truly looked like a horror house.

The contents of her wardrobe played on her mind, and even a brisk, chilly shower couldn’t calm her down. She tiptoed around in a towel and emptied the outfit from its bag onto her bed, the leather gleaming and catching her eye.

The thrift store had yielded a fruitful haul. Next to the medieval-looking peasant blouse, lay a leather corset in deepest brown, a racy thing meant for a Rocky Horror Picture Show revival, with a scandalously low bustline, proper steel boning and eyehooks, and black silk ribbons laced up at the back. When paired with the leather wrist cuffs that went halfway to elbow, she reckoned it might just pass for leather armour. Yes, it was a bit too sexy for a real pair of bracers and a cuirass, but it fit the D&D vibe, at least in her eyes. Plus, wearing the peasant shirt beneath it would cover the sheer abundance of cleavage that she’d been embarrassed to see when she tried the thing on.

With the outfit laced up until she could just about breathe, knee high leather boots and a mid-length skirt, and her hair loosely braided with one or two curls escaping at the front, she truly felt like Lady Ceverra, the neutral-chaotic Cleric and fledgling necromancer.

It might only have been early afternoon, but Rose was busy setting a fire in the dining room hearth, until the soothing crackle of burning logs and the thick scent of woodsmoke filled the air. She was running around with a lit taper when the doorbell rang, and she took a deep breath, adjusting her hair and answering the door with a lit candle in one hand, and faint wisps of smoke around her.

“Who knocks at my castle door during this hour?” She said loudly, in a theatrical voice. “A pack of adventurers, I see. Come in, there is meat and mead at my table.”

All the guys were crowding around and she could see Eddie’s van parked on the drive, her heart racing instantly. But he must have been behind someone else, or getting out the vehicle.

Dustin’s open-mouthed grin was contagious. “Wow. You look freaking awesome. Wait, do you really have mead?”

“No, dummy. There’s Dr Pepper, root beer, or Mountain Dew.”

“Oh, nice,” he replied, holding up a big carved pumpkin. “We brought pumpkins, as requested. Your mom mentioned to my mom that she didn’t have any, so we all brought one. This place is freaking wild, man. It’s going to look amazing with so many pumpkins on the porch.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Don’t forget to introduce yourselves on the way in,” Rose said, stepping to one side.

Dustin came in first, with a rugged cloak, leather satchel instead of a backpack, and pan-pipes, slung around his shoulder. “Nog at your service,” he bowed. “Half dwarf bard, whose enchanted pipes play a tune as sweet as honeyed-wine.”

“Welcome, good bard.” Rose dipped into a curtsey.

Mike’s paladin knight came next, with a sword and shield that looked really convincing, but turned out to be plastic. “Lady Ceverra, this house kicks ass. I always wanted to come inside when it was a wreck, but now it looks like something from the movies.”

“Thank you, good sir.”

“Yeah,” Lucas added behind him. “Better than the prop room by a long shot.”

He drew back the string of a wooden bow, pretending to aim, though the quiver of arrows was still on his back. His outfit was the best yet, like something from a Renaissance fair, quartered red and green, with a shirt, jacket and a cap that looked almost real. When paired with the bow, the leather band around his forehead and the slingshot tucked into his pocket, he looked like he meant business.

“Nice pun, Sir ranger.”

“Sundar the Bold,” he replied. “Yeah, it’s supposed to be Robin Hood. Mom got it for me a couple of years back, but we went as Ghostbusters instead that year."

Chris was next, with something that looked like a sheepskin rug fastened around his shoulders and a sledge hammer at his side. “Thordus Boulderbash, whose hammer could cleave the very mountains in two.”

“Impressive,” Rose gave her verdict. “Like Gimli come to life.”

Chris blushed a little; he’d always had trouble talking to her one on one, his wariness of girls in general making it hard to speak to her without the context of a group conversation or something to focus on like the game of D&D itself. But she was pleased to note he went inside with a smile on his face, and not a nervous one.

The rest of the older guys had lingered at the back, and it took all of Rose’s energy to focus on Gareth as he came through the door, and not look back to seek out Eddie’s mop of hair in the background.

“Sup,” Gareth said casually, leaning against the doorframe in a hooded cloak. “Illian the Unvanquished", half-elf Paladin and Champion of the Lost Lands. But then you already knew that. Can I go and see the murder house now?”

“Don’t mind him,” Jeff clapped his buddy on the shoulder, stepping inside with a tall gnarled branch like a wizard’s staff, with a plastic-looking gem embedded in the top. “He’s not properly house trained.”

“The place is cool thanks for having us,” Gareth mumbled, shrugging Jeff off. “Just remember, we’re not children here for Halloween, this is a serious endeavour. Let’s get set up.”

Jeff shook his head. “My spellcaster Zaegor is gonna have to kick Ilian’s ass tonight. I think he’s just hungry. Maybe he’ll be better after some Halloween candy.”

“We have lots of that,” Rose reassured. “And enough food to feed the whole of Hawkins. Go ahead, the kitchen is straight past the fireplace and staircase, the second door on the right, after the dining room.”

Then she turned to the open door again, and was left face to face with a figure that may as well have been summoned from a romance or gothic horror story.

Eddie wore a flouncy, loose white shirt fathered at the wrist, and left unlaced at the top, showing off acres of his beautiful, muscular neck, and the beginnings of the tattoos at the top of his chest. On top of the shirt he wore a leather duster jacket, the kind that was almost floor-length. His Reeboks were replaced with leather boots, and his black jeans today didn’t have holes. He carried an old acoustic guitar, one that definitely wasn’t his precious Warlock. The whole ensemble was deceptively simple, but stunning in its effect on Rose.

“Milady,” he took her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. His soft, full lips, surprisingly warm...lips she could imagine in many, many other places, until her heartbeat morphed into an awful, beautiful kind of throbbing that settled low in her body, in places it really shouldn’t settle with a bunch of freshmen roaming the house.

“You’re here,” she said stupidly. “I mean, you made the decision to come inside. I hope you won’t regret breaking the promise.”

His eyes clouded over and he stood up, but still kept her hand in his. “Yeah, well Eddie Munson may not be able to enter, but Eddie the Bard is bound to no such promise.”

“A loophole. How ingenious of you.”

They stood there grinning and holding hands, until Rose realised the source of all the drama and dropped it like a stone; by being here, was he upsetting Chrissy, or whoever else he’d made this promise to? Despite feeling thrilled by his presence in her house, she felt bad for a mysterious person who might be hurt because of it.

Eddie swallowed hard, eyes flicking all over the place. “You look, uh...”

“Ridiculous?”

“Like you just stepped out of a fantasy novel. You should be on horseback, wielding a sword, or something.”

Her skin flushed, and she fidgeted with her hands. “I...I was just thinking the same of you. Very Anne Rice.”

He leaned against the doorframe languidly. “Oh, like a vampire? Does that mean I have to ask permission to enter the mansion?”

“Come in,” Rose said immediately. “It’s not as glamorous as you make it sound. On the left is the parlour and the living room, on the right the kitchen and dining room and pantry. The bathroom is down the hall. Yes, I know it’s ridiculous that it has a parlour. It’s not like I sit around all day drinking tea and...okay, yes I do sit around all day drinking tea, but mostly in my room.”

He explored the place with wide eyes and gangly legs, almost knocking over a row of lit candles, and Rose trailed after him, reminding herself where the fire extinguisher was just in case.

They walked through the kitchen where the boys were congregating around the snack table, and Eddie gasped upon seeing the open archway to the dining room.

“Motherfucker,” Eddie chanted in a sing-song voice. “This is fucking perfect. Creepy, fancy, but also kind of derelict, like the place could fall apart at any given moment. Yep, I feel the ambience, Rosie, I feel it. This is going to be a good night.”

She frowned. “It’s one o’clock.”

He made a beeline for the head of the table, and the chair she’d set up as his throne. On top of the crimson tablecloth, behind the candelabra, lay his goblet.

Eddie gasped. “What the hell! I thought this was locked away tighter than Principal Higgin’s integrity. How is it here?”

“I know someone who knows someone,” Rose said with a smug smile. “Quite literally. Robin is old friends with Beth in drama club, she retrieved the goblet on Wednesday. Give Robin a secret mission and she is all over it. Obsessed. She even gave it a code name.”

Eddie was amused. “What was the code name?”

“Project Elixir.”

“Oooh, I like it. Are you sure she doesn’t want to join Hellfire?”

Rose snorted with laughter, and covered her mouth in embarrassment. “She’s not really one for fantasy.”

“Oh my god, I just spotted a skull. A skull!” Eddie was like a kid at Christmas, examining the gruesome prop on the side table, with its jaw wide open, sat on top of the bowl of candies.

“Oh, that little old thing?” Rose tried to look cool by leaning back on the walnut panelling, and almost fell over, grasping to hold herself upright. “That’s Yorick. I stole him from a hospital when I was fourteen, on a dare.”

“That’s so fucking metal.”

He turned back to the table and shucked off his leather coat, draping it over the creepy mannequin in the corner. He leaned back in the chair with the nonchalance of an aristocrat, holding the goblet aloft and hooking one leg casually over the chair’s arm.

“I’m feeling it. I am so feeling it. Fetch the minions,” he told Rose with swagger. “The Cult of Vecna calls for their leader to return, and we heroes must answer with blood and steel.”

---

Six hours. For six long and intense hours they huddled around the grand dining table with their character sheets, cans of Dr Pepper, flickering candles, and battled against the forces of evil.

Eddie owned the room, he owned the whole house. He monologued like a Shakespearean actor, pacing the room, voice booming during the dramatic moments, whispering during the tense ones, until Gareth literally fell from a chair trying to lean in close to hear him.

“In the dank depths of the cavern, all you can hear is the heavy breathing of those around you. But in the dim, flickering torchlight, which of the hooded cultists are your fellow adventurers in disguise, and which are the true foes? That’s the mystery, there is no way to tell but the sound of their voices and the instinct in your gut.”

Eddie held a candle up to his face, the light casting shadows on his cheekbones and nose. “The acolytes carry the sack into the centre of the cavern, toward the stone altar. It wriggles, it writhes, it moans...and when they dump the contents onto the altar you see it at last...the telltale silver hair of Princess Volara, heir to the throne.”

“Oh shit,” Gareth rocked back and forth. “My betrothed has been captured by the Archmage himself. I won’t let you die, Volara. Not after Vecna slowly bled your soul of it strength.”

Lucas pulled out his slingshot and grabbed the D20, like the little weapon would give him luck. “My turn, guys. I take a stone from the cavern floor and load it into my slingshot-”

“Dude,” Mike interrupted. “You can’t attack, they’ll cut her throat before so much as take off your cloak!”

Lucas grimaced. “Trust me. I take my slingshot and fire the stone toward the sconce on the wall opposite. It knocks the wooden torch, just a little bit, making everyone turn toward the source of light.”

He rolled the D20, and they watched with bated breath, until it rolled onto sixteen.

Eddie pressed the tips of his fingers together, like a movie villain. “I see where you’re going with this. Crit hit, Sinclair. The cultists turn toward the source of light, and for the briefest of seconds, you see their eyes reflecting the firelight. Several of them are brown, several blue, but one is purple.”

“That’s me!” Jeff squealed. “All the potions turned my eyes purple, and-”

The ding-ding of the doorbell stopped them, and a collective groan rose around the table.

“Goddamn it,” Lucas shook his head. “Dustin, can you get the door?”

Dustin's face pulled into an expression of distaste. “Me?! I gave out candy only two times ago, it’s not my turn!”

“But what if it’s the pizza this time?”

Rose shuffled back in her chair, ready to go to the door, but Eddie stopped her, his hand brushing against her sleeve, making her breath catch.

Eddie seemed to pause too, his fingers stilling on her wrist. “Not your turn either. Just cause you’re the only girl, doesn’t mean it’s your job.” He grabbed his new favourite prop, Yorick the skull and played around, moving its lower jaw to mimic speech like a ventriloquist with a dummy. “Thordus, tis your turn to appease the cultists outside. Give them their pound of flesh - and by flesh I mean chocolate - and send them on their way. Go, good fellow! Before they tear down the defences!”

Chris groaned and picked up his sledgehammer, talking directly to the skull instead of Eddie. “Fine, but if I can scare them away, do I get to have the chocolate?”

“No!” Yorick’s jaw - and puppet master - said.

“Take some chocolate,” Rose called out, overruling the Dungeon Master. “Just don’t use the hammer anywhere near the children. We don’t need another murder to take place in this house, one was enough.”

“Where were we,” Eddie continued. “Ah, yes. Lucas, your character Sundar makes out Jeff’s wizard and Rose’s cleric in the crowd, hidden behind their own cultists masks and ready to save the Princess. They both stand to your left, by the cavern entrance. On your next turn, you can attack the Archmage and interrupt the ritual before it summons Vecna himself.”

Lucas passed the D20 over to Rose, who held out her shaky hand and clasped it, trying to determine a course of action.

“I can’t summon the dead body in the corner as a thrall, can I?” She asked, already knowing the answer.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Eddie said gently. “You’re still level eight. Might be level ten by the next session, at which point you unlock Animate Dead and kick some cultist ass.”

She slumped in her chair, aching at the tight lacing of the corset. “God, I can’t wait.”

A series of childish screams sounded outside, followed by Chris’ laugh. He came running back in with his sledgehammer and a pile of chocolate and candy, hoarding it like Smaug with gold in his corner of the table.

Jeff began to get antsy, fidgeting in his chair, checking his watch. “It’s seven o’clock, man. Where is this pizza?”

“It’s Saturday and Halloween,” Dustin rationalised, chugging back his Dr Pepper and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “They’re busy.”

“Wait,” Eddie stood up suddenly, drawing their attention. “You shiver and clutch the robes tighter around your shoulders, taken by a sudden chill in the air. It’s not just cold in the cavern, it’s icy, your breath fogging in front of you like an ice dragon.”

Jeff took in a sudden breath. “You know what that means...he’s here.”

Mike scrunched up his face. “Who?”

Jeff leaned in. “Vecna.”

The dining room felt chilly in reality, and Rose shivered as if someone walked over her grave, ignoring the fact that shuddering her chest probably did little to hide the effect of her tight corset and the poorly-concealed cleavage.

The faint buzz of electric lights dimming rose above the crackling flames of the fireplace, and the ceiling lights and lamps in the hallway upstairs flickered, the power outage travelling downstairs and affecting the bulbs one by one, like they occasionally did. But this time, with the whole party of eight fixed on the malfunctioning lights, it got quiet and tense very quickly.

“Uh...guys?” Lucas asked, his face a mask of horror. “You saw that too, right?”

“It’s only been three months, I can’t do this again,” Mike added, running his hands through his hair.

“Don’t worry,” Rose added quickly, trying to diffuse the weird tension amongst the younger boys. “I know it looks weird but it’s just an old house, the wiring is dodgy. It’s happened before, but the power hasn’t blown out or anything.”

The path of malfunctioning lamps drew toward them, until the kitchen light just a couple of metres away flickered into life, and then faded away slowly.

“That light wasn’t even on,” Dustin said, his face ghostly pale. “Guys, I think we have a code red. I repeat, code red.”

Eddie looked puzzled, waving a hand toward Dustin, the cuff of his shirt sleeve flapping about. “What’s a code red, Henderson?”

A second ding-dong interrupted them again, and Rose unfurled her aching legs and stood up with a groan. “My turn. I’ll get some money in case it’s pizza. If anyone dares to move my character, I will kill them. That includes you Gareth. Actually, that mostly refers to you.”

“Jeez,” Gareth scowled from beneath his hood. “What happened to innocent until found guilty?”

Rose wandered into the kitchen, where the sandwich crusts, empty crisp packets and wrappers littered over the kitchen table were the only remains of the feast, demolished by a hungry horde by three o’clock. She retrieved the small wad of cash from the tin of tea leaves and opened the front door.

“How much is it?” She asked, looking down at her hands and trying to remove a folded twenty dollar bill.

A wave of noise hit her, voices clamouring and cheering, and Rose dropped the money on the porch floor.

Steve Harrington tipped the cowboy hat from the thrift store at her, one spurred boot propped up on a giant, silver keg of beer. His jeans and tasselled waistcoat rounded out a fairly decent cowboy outfit.

“Howdy there,” he said. “Did someone call for a keg party?”

“Surprise!” Robin leapt out from the crowd of people - wait, who were all the people? - in a full-on French mime costume, complete with beret, stripey shirt, braces and white face paint. “If Rose cannot come to the keg party, the key party shall come to her! I see you kept your outfit on, damn, you could cause a traffic accident with those on display!”

Rose crossed her arms defensively as teens in all kinds of Halloween costumes pushed past them, flooding the hall before she even had a chance to stop. Jeremy - the party dude, with the coke habit, entered the hall and looked around at the decorated house, with an exclamation of: “Sweet, nice haunted house, man.”

“What the hell?” Rose said. “How did this happen?”

Some of Robin’s bandmates were next, and a girl with red hair she’d recognised from school. They carried in cases of beer, bottles of spirits, and - as if it was plucked from a movie - a boombox playing something electronic and very not suited to the whole D&D vibe.

“You were so sad last weekend,” Steve explained. “We wanted to make your keg party dream come true. I know people, all it took was a couple of calls. Not sure how, but the rest of the school sniffed the party out like ”

Robin spread her arms open. “Ta da!”

Panic began to flood Rose, particularly how one very particular DM might react to the chaos. “But we’re still in the middle of Dungeons and Dragons!”

Robin pulled a face. “Huh? You said it started at one.”

“Exactly. We’re not even half way through!”

Robin’s face fell, but Steve looked calm and collected, stepping aside to let in a string of witches - cheerleaders from school, Rose thought - his eyes fixed on them as they walked by. “So we have a little party on the margins. Best of both worlds, right? Come on, don’t say your parents won’t like it. Your mom literally plied me with alcohol last time I was here, no questions asked. She’s cool.”

“Plus,” Robin pointed for emphasis. “We’ll be on clean up duty, and help you get the place tidy before they come home.”

“In four hours?” Rose cried out.

“No, sixteen hours, dummy. Eleven AM.”

“No, Rob. Four hours. They’re not staying overnight.”

“Oooh,” Robin let out a whistling breath. “Steve, have we fucked up? Can we stop it now?”

The keg had already been carried in, music blared, and a loud smash inside caused them all to wince.

“I don’t think so,” Steve said through gritted teeth. “Maybe we let it burn out for a couple of hours, until the alcohol’s gone. You know, like a forest fire.”

“Is that a good analogy, Steve?” Robin asked sarcastically. “Aren’t forest fires destructive?”

He held up his hands, kind of dopey. “What? I saw a PBS documentary on forest management last week, they’re supposed to, like, regenerate the forest by providing nutrients and encouraging new growth.”

“Fire...” Rose murmured. “There are a hundred lit candles in there. Quick, we have to put them out before the whole place goes up in flames!”

“Come on dingus,” Robin shook her head. “The least we can do is avert a disaster. You take the left side, i’ll take the right.”

Rose left them to put out candles and ran inside, her heart sinking. A picture frame had been knocked over, wooden frame splintered, but thankfully the glass was still intact. “Off!” She shouted to a ghost in a low-effort bedsheet with holes in it. “Break anything, and you pay for it. Damn it all to hell, I haven’t even checked with the Hellfire, they might be disappointed. I don’t know if they like this kind of thing, they might be too shy-”

As she wandered through the house and into the dining room, the Hellfire guys and the party people seemed to meet, absorbed into one big crowd. Lucas hi-fived another member of the basketball team.

Dustin was clutching his own face and giggling. “A kegger?” He squealed. “I didn’t think I'd be invited to one of those until Junior year. I’m three full years ahead of schedule...at this rate, I'll be prom king. Look out, class of ‘90!”

“I’ve heard of those kinds of parties, but I dared not hope...” Chris said. “Please say this isn’t a dream.”

Gareth was leaning back on his chair, his hooded cloak falling off his head, almost drooling at the outfits of the witch-cheerleaders. The game pieces in front of him and all the other guys had been completely forgotten.

“Oh,” Rose said to herself. “Perhaps they don’t mind after all.”

The collective joy around the Hellfire table was contagious, the room filled with people and red cups of foamy beer, the electro-beat of Dead Man’s Party ringing out on the boombox...it wasn’t so bad. Like a John Hughes movie had leapt out from the screen and took place live in her home.

Rose began to relax just a fraction. Until she saw the uncertainty on Eddie’s face. No, it wasn’t uncertainty, he looked downright pissed. She bumped her way through the crowd, elbowing through a pair of ghosts and a Princess Leia with fake buns on a headband, and tried to get to his side.

“Eddie, I’m sorry,” she called over one of the revellers in a monster costume. “I didn’t know this was happening.”

He swept up the figurines and board pieces, snatching one from the curious green-painted hand of the monster dude, and packed them back in the box with an agitated, twitching face.

“S’cool,” he lied. “No worries, maaan. We’ll have a big party instead of the Cult of Vecna. Pick it up next week, I guess. That is, if we haven’t lost the guys to the popular social clique.”

Rose worked her bottom lip between her teeth, feeling terrible about the interruption, kind of angry at Robin and Steve, yet oddly touched they tried to put this together just for her.

She approached him gingerly, putting a hand on his arm, looking deeply into his big, doe-eyes. “Eddie, don't be ridiculous. They love Hellfire, there’s no way they’ll abandon it for a moment with the popular kids. You’re like their hero.”

At that very moment Dustin ran forward, stopping in his tracks, looking at the doorway to the hall, dumbfounded. “Steve? What the hell, are you behind this kegger?”

Steve opened his arms wide. “Henderson, you little menace. Come here!”

The two of them ran toward each other almost in slow-motion, colliding in a dramatic and meaningful hug, which they tried to make more masculine with a lot of back-slapping and clearing of throats.

Dustin looked up at him, like he hung the moon. “Crashing a Halloween party at a haunted house with a keg? Classic King Steve. Graduation can’t even contain your reputation at school, can it?”

“Oh no,” Rose muttered under her breath, watching Dustin and Steve greet each other like the oldest of friends. Shit. From the corner of her eye, she saw Eddie was wounded. Sure, he covered it by turning to grab his guitar from the eager-fingered green monster and pointedly ignoring Dustin. But she could see right through it. Jealousy. But it felt like there was more beneath the surface.

Eddie surveyed the crowd, and winced at a particularly shrill beat from the boombox. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“No,” she pleaded, grabbing his arm again. “Stay. Have a drink. I don’t want you to go.”

He looked down at her hand, wavering. “I guess I could have one.”

Rose sighed with relief. “Stay right here, I'll get us beer. If I'm going to be a reluctant party host, I might as well benefit from it by getting buzzed.”

The moment the crowd parted them, she lost sight of his long leather jacket and white frilly shirt, swallowed by dancing monsters and witches, moving to the beat. The kitchen was chaotic, all the Halloween candy eaten, and the pizza they ordered an hour ago had mysteriously arrived, been paid for, and completely devoured, leaving nothing but the greasy boxes.

“Robin!” She cried. “Where the hell is the beer?��

“In the parlour!” Her friend’s voice echoed back, a blur of face paint and a beret just visible in the hall.

By the time she filled two cups with foamy beer, avoided the groping hands of a Thriller-style zombie whose face was almost planted in her cleavage, and got back to the dining room, Eddie was nowhere to be found.

Okay, it wasn’t quite what she’d hoped for, but it was a party. A lively one, on Halloween, surrounded by teens who were high on hops and hormones, and...now that she came to think of it, what if they trashed upstairs? Used the bedrooms like a brothel, queueing up to fondle each other her mother’s quilted bedspread? It was enough to make her panic, until she saw a figure in a fur cloak, with his sledgehammer held high.

“Chris,” she waved at him, gaining his attention. “If you guard the stairs, i’ll owe you.”

“What?”

“I’ll owe you!”

His face was a picture of surprise. “You’ll blow me?”

“What the fuck, no!” She screamed, attracting attention, as When Doves Cry blasted across the room. “I will be in your debt. Owe you a favour. Anything except that!”

He nodded, finally getting it. “What do you want?”

“Guard the stairs, no one except me or Robin and Steve are allowed up. Okay?”

“A side quest,” he exclaimed. “No one will breach the stairs, milady. They can send an army, but I will guard it with my life!”

She sagged, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t let anyone through, though slightly worried that sledgehammer would be put to use at some point, even by accident.

“All the candles are out,” Robin sidled up to her. “I hid your mom’s ornaments in the pantry, and Dustin is literally about to combust from excitement. Time to actually enjoy the party, you know, dancing, music, a little joie de vivre...sound familiar?”

“What, we’re not supposed to scowl at the edges like old spinsters?” Rose said with mock confusion.

“Dance with me!” Robin commanded.

“I’m too clumsy!”

“Me too. If we do it together, maybe we’ll cancel each other out. Two left feet make a right, or whatever the saying is.”

She allowed herself to be dragged on the dance floor, and when Duran Duran came on the stereo, she couldn’t stop herself, laughing breathlessly as Steve did a little cowboy dance and completely failed to charm Bianca, the current object of his affections.

They were clumsy, they were awful, but Halloween costumes were forgiving, weren’t they? Freedom to be more than who you were, and try out a different side of yourself. The party burned on for longer than she realised, until the grandfather clock in the hallway struck eleven, the sonorous ring of it snapping her out of it.

Shit. Mum and Jerry would be home any minute, and the party was in full throes, nowhere near burning out like a forest fire, or whatever other hamfisted metaphor Steve had used earlier.

Her face was burning, lungs struggling for air, and the place was too crowded. Rose bolted for the front door, pushing past a couple shoving their tongues down each others throats and emerging onto the porch, where more kids hung out with cups of foamy beer. The hoppy smell made her feel queasy, feet stumbling until she was out on the driveway.

“Nice party, new girl,” someone shouted. She gave them a thumbs up, no clue who was beneath the costume, and kept going until she saw Eddie’s van. It was at the front of the drive, trapped by a layer of parked cars of those who arrived later, drawn by the buzz in the air and the gossip whipping around the town at lightspeed, of a party at the murder house.

She put her hands to the widow and peered through the glass: empty. But then a chord drifted on the night air, with the scent of pumpkin flesh and pine. Black Sabbath, the chorus of Lady Evil. Eddie sat on the swings over the street, the foggy evening lit by buzzing street lamps, illuminating the frizzy hair like a halo.

Rose ws drawn by the song, leaving behind the party and stepping willingly into the playground, watching his ringed fingers strum the acoustic guitar and produce a sound so natural and beautiful she held her breath. He was concentrating so hard his tongue poked out the corner of his mouth, and her heart did a little leap. The perils of having a heart condition and helplessly falling for someone...each time her heart raced, she felt weird, and worried herself needlessly. But she found it was a good weird.

“Ah,” Eddie said, sitting up as her shadow fell over him. “Here she is, the Queen of the Night herself. Mistress of the keg party. Lady reveller, entertaining the masses in her tavern.”

She snorted, and dropped onto the best swing, cold chains biting her fingers. “I’m hardly a party mistress. Haven’t even had a drink.”

He kept strumming the guitar, playing through the rest of the song, but smiling wide. “No way.”

“Yes way. Not even a drop of beer.”

His teasing side-eye was enough to warm her right up. “You running for sainthood or something?”

She pondered it for a while. “Sister Rose does have a good ring to it. What, why are you laughing?!”

“You’d be a terrible nun, sweetheart,” he said, voice low and throaty. “You’ve been converted to metal music, satan worship, and liquor. Yeah...you’re too good at sinning.”

His teeth shone pearly white and the loose ruffled shirt was still half-open, exposing the neck that would tempt Dracula himself. And when he saw her looking, his wicked grin only widened. Well bloody hell, he must be out to kill her. Do her in, set her on metaphorical fire, or at least banish all the nice, innocent thoughts she’d been thinking about how they could be friends. But there was a Chrissy-shaped elephant in this room, even though they were outside, one they were no closer to overcoming.

“My last hangover was one to remember. It might be a while before I can stomach alcohol without wanting to be sick.”

Eddie laughed and put down the guitar gently. “Just avoid the instrument, sweetheart. My uncle Wayne won’t forgive me if it comes home covered in vomit. It’s his baby, carried it all the way from Tennessee.”

“Your Uncle Wayne sounds great,” she ventured. He hardly ever talked about his family, only when they were alone. He didn’t have a mother and father and a picket fence, like most of his friends. Less stability, and more shame. “Did he teach you to play?”

His smile was bittersweet, eyes glazed over and lost in memories. “My old man taught me first. Uncle Wayne kept it up later, when he wasn’t around. Real country stuff. But the love of music? That came from my mom. We didn’t have much, but no matter how little money you have, you can’t take away music. I’d be strumming and banging on anything in sight, dancing along to her records. Hendrix and Fitzgerald and all sorts of blues.”

Rose swung back and forth gently, boots trailing on the grass. “How did she...”

“Cancer.”

“Shit.”

“She was thirty-three.”

“Oh god. That’s fucking awful Eddie, I didn’t know. How old were you?”

He twisted his swing’s chains to the side, so he was facing her. “Ten. She’s buried at the cemetery off Cornwallis. I go there sometimes. Never on the day she died, there is not a little bit of me that wants to remember that day. But I go there every now and then, and always on her birthday. I, uh, know it sounds stupid, but I bring the guitar and play some Hendrix sometimes.”

“Not stupid,” she said, swinging higher and higher, feeling the rush of being at the top of the world, and the drop in your stomach when you fall back to earth again. “You’re talented as fuck. Must have been that goblet of rock that’s inside. I’d better not let anyone drink from it, or you’ll be dethroned as Hawkins’ rock god.”

“Sweetheart, do not inflate my ego. I can hardly fit in the van as it is. If my head gets bigger, will I grow more hair, or will it go ratty and balding, spread like butter over too much toast?”

Rose laughed until she couldn’t breathe, and stuck out her heels, feet jarring in the grass as she made the swing come to a stop. “You’re trying to kill me, Munson. Oh god, my ribs. It hurts.”

Eddie half-rose from the swing seat, face etched with concern. “Are you...sick? Do we need a doctor?”

“It’s this corset,” she grimaced, twisting her hands to her back and trying to pull on the laces. “Flipping torture devices made by sadists, that’s what they are. I couldn’t cope with the Victorian era. No wonder the ladies fainted all the time and needed smelling salts.”

“Oh, right,” he crossed his arms, shoving his hands into his armpits, like he didn’t know what to do with himself. “So you didn’t...uh, you didn’t just have that little torture device hanging around then? Not your weekend outfit?”

“Bloody hell, no,” Rose continued to struggle, going pink in the face. “I think I need help, I can’t reach the back. Could you undo the knot for me?”

Eddie stepped back. “You sure?”

Rose went light headed, and she stepped around until her back faced him, drawing her loose braid over the front of her shoulder. “I’m not asking you to strip me naked, Eddie. Just loosen it up a little. Besides, you can see I have a shirt on underneath this thing.”

“Oh. Loose...laces...knots. I happen to be amazing with my fingers, lots of practice. Oh Jesus H Christ, I meant with guitar strings not...though come to think of it...god, shut up. Shut up, Eddie.”

“Guitars,” she said dumbly. “I get it.”

His breath fanned the back of her neck and she could feel the warmth of him at her back. Don’t think of his fingers...don’t think of his fingers...

In a few moments he’d picked open the knot, and a single touch of his calloused finger to the exposed skin between her shoulder blades had a shiver rippling up her spine.

“Sorry,” he laughed nervously. “Kinda cold out here. So what do I do now?”

“Just tug on the top thread until it moves an inch or two, then the next one, and keep going. It should loosen up quite easily.”

He cleared his throat. “Right. Gotcha.”

The top of the corset began to loosen and the pressure in her ribs and lungs slowly eased, and it was glorious, remembering how to breathe again, the blood flowing back to her skin and tingling all at once.

She groaned, loudly, just as Eddie’s fingers worked their way down; he jolted and tugged the lace too hard, and somehow within a single fluid move the lace unravelled and the whole thing dropped to the floor.

“Oh...ooh no, n-no.” Eddie stammered.

With agonising awareness, Rose felt her nipples hardening as the cool night air rushed beneath the loose, half-open peasant shirt. And in an instinctive, foolish move, she turned around to see what had happened, until he was inches away from her.

The sensation of boobs - and not small ones, not by any stretch - being freed after a long period of containment was a very personal, very private thing, and one she had not experienced in front of a man, let alone one she fancied the pants off of. Within a split second she’d covered them with her hands, with the flimsy shield of the peasant shirt. Unfortunately, she’d left the garment open to better fit beneath her corset, and it was a flimsy layer of clothing by itself, made translucent by the buzzing street lamp over their heads.

“I seem to be in a state of undress,” Rose said politely. “Oh lovely, I’ve fully embraced life as a Victorian lady, haven’t I. Someone will see my ankles in a minute, and denounce me as the town hussy. Oh fuck.”

Eddie's eyes were pools of coal-black, completely unreadable, somehow everywhere over her body all at once, until he jerked back like he’d been burned.

“Do you...” his voice was low and even, like he was putting great effort into controlling it. “Do you want me to lace it back on?”

“No! It would take too long, I'm one gust of wind away from being topless here.”

“Here,” he flung off his leather duster coat, like it had fleas. “Take it.”

“Won’t you be cold?”

“I run hot, like a furnace usually. Warm all the time. Never need a blanket, not even in winter.” he babbled.

Rose tugged the sleeves of the leather jacket on, and held the edges together at the front. Now that image was too much...Eddie naked, Eddie sleeping with no clothes, and no blanket. But now, he was in his own flowing white shirt.

“I like your shirt,” she said, humour coming back into her voice now she had some semblance of modesty. “We kind of match.”

Eddie looked down at himself and pretended to be shocked, playing the jester, jumping back. “Oh my gosh, how did that get there? Wait...if I put on your corset, i’d look very Rocky Horror, wouldn’t I. Shall I do it?”

She couldn't help but giggle. “Ah, but they would think we’ve been out here...you know...doing stuff.”

His eyebrows waggled and he paced around, giving her a very mischievous look. “Ah, stuff. I thought you were a virtuous woman, Sister Rose?”

“What, a nun can’t cross dress with her dungeon master? Whatever has the world come to?”

He strutted around like a peacock, like something from a romance novel, chest half-exposed, long hair curling around his shoulders. Rose noticed a silver necklace of some kind hung at his chest, a crucifix maybe? Yes, yes she would be re-reading Anne Rice tonight, she was sure of it.

“Stuff,” he repeated. “Naughty things. Things someone inside might not like. I get it. Maybe we should head back in, before the parentals come home and see the lady of the house dishevelled in the street, like a common whore.”

“Oh,” she raised her brows. “I’ve been upgraded to whore, have I?

“Promoted, sweetheart. I guess you have a thriving career ahead of you.”

“A nun and a whore. What will the priest say?”

Eddie winked. “It’s kinky, he’ll love it..”

Whilst some of the partygoers had begun to drift off, bound by curfews and the threat of permanent grounding, most of them remained. Dustin, Lucas and Mike were hanging out in the dining room window, and Robin and half their classmates would be inside.

“Do I have to go in?” She asked, looking back at the swings with longing.

“Eventually, yes.”

She looked up to the windows of the house, and a grin spread over her face. “Who said I have to go through the front door? Eddie, are you good at climbing trees?”

He looked to her, to the house, to her, back to the house, cogs whirring in his brain. “Oh my god.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“No.”

“It makes sense. My window isn’t locked.”

“Do you have a death wish, sweetheart? Are you high? Except I know you’re not, cause I control the supply at school.”

“I’m high on life!”

He laughed and shook his head. “Goddamn it, you are going to be the death of me.”

Rose couldn’t stop giggling, until she sounded like a bit of an idiot. “Already died once, haven’t I? I must have eight remaining. You have nine left, like a cat.”

Eddie was contemplative. She thought she’d lost him for a minute there, as he turned his back to her. But a second later he came back, holding the leather, ribbed corset in his hands and shoving it in the waistband of his jeans. “You’ll need this, to protect your innocent reputation. Come on, Sister Rose, let’s break you back into the convent.”

“Oh, this is exciting,” she clapped her hands. “I’m living out every high school fantasy in one night.”

“It’s a good job your house has a nice veranda, and a great big tree right next to it. Come to think of it, you should get better security. That’s a thief’s wet dream.”

She giggled even more, stopping to breathe hard and clutch at his sleeve, completely ruining their stealthy approach. After a long pause they made it to the cedar tree at the side of the house, and Eddie climbed ahead of her, working out footholds and helping her take each step up.

“Look,” she hissed. “They don’t even see us!”

The couple on the porch seat were sucking each other's faces off, too busy to notice the people climbing a tree only twenty feet away.

“Of course they don’t, they’re about to get to third base.”

“Yeah...I don’t understand baseball. No idea what that means.”

Eddie reached a horizontal branch and slithered onto it, testing its weight, and finding it sturdy. He hauled Rose up, until she straddled the branch and hugged the main trunk, watching how he dropped easily from the tree to the veranda below her mother’s bedroom.

“Come on,” he beckoned, hands outstretched. “I’ve got you.”

She dropped onto him with a thud, with a mental reminder to thank the contractor who’d repaired the roof last month, for doing such a sturdy job. There were some limbs pressed together, some awkward scrambling upright, until they stood holding each other's forearms, balancing together.

“So,” he said casually. “Which room’s yours?”

Rose looked up, gesturing with her chin to the big, round stained-glass window. “Up there.”

He threw his head back, exposing the column of his throat. “The attic? You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Hold me.”

Eddie blinked a few times. “What?”

“Boost me up. I can get in the side window, then pull you up afterward.”

“Sure,” he nodded. “We could do that.”

They crept to the side of the veranda, beneath a dormer window, and Rose limbered up, then wound her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. “I’m ready. How do you want to do this?”

Eddie held out his arms moving them up and down, like he was looking for somewhere to grab. “Maybe you should get on my shoulders? Jump up?”

The air seemed to crackle as she stepped toward him, looping her arms about his shoulders. She was so nervous she jumped straight away, until her legs locked about his waist and his head oh for god’s sake his head was at a level with her chest.

“Not that way,” He said, muffled by their clothes. “I meant jump on my back, not my front!”

“That would have made sense.”

“We’ll go with it,” he said, shifting her weight in his arms. “Can you reach the window from here?”

“Back up to the wall for me.”

He did as she asked. “Now?”

Her fingertips were so near, bark-scraped palms flush against the bottom of the window pane, almost able to push open the sash window. “Almost, let me get a bit higher.”

She wriggled up him, until somehow her knees were planted on his shoulders. “Yes, I've got it!”

“Hmm. Fuck. Oh god.”

“I’m sorry, I know I’m not light.”

“No, sweetheart,” Eddie’s voice was muffled again. “Just be careful where you move, or the couple on the porch won’t be the only ones out here getting to third base.”

She pushed open the window and the momentum carried her slightly forward, realising just at the wrong moment that his head was very much in between her legs. Panic and adrenaline made her pull herself into the window more than her arms could under normal circumstances, and before long she was crumpled on the floor of her attic bedroom, quivering in a heap.

“Uh, Rosie? You in there?”

She sat up so quick it made her lightheaded. “Yep, I'm coming.” She appeared over the window ledge and looked down into big, brown eyes and a dimpled smile.

He threw his arms up, dropping down on one knee like a knight in a fairy tale. “Rapunzel, let down your hair,”

“What?” She grabbed her braid, looking at it like a slack-jawed idiot. “Oh. Something to climb. I see.” She dived back into her room, switching on a lamp. Her scarf? Her hockey stick? Her eyes landed on the floral blue dressing gown on the wardrobe door, she pulled the terry cloth belt from it and threw it out the window.

Holding the rope with one hand, he climbed up the wall like a limber monkey, latching onto her arm as he neared the top and launching himself into the window, jean chain clanking on the sill. They collided again, proximity making her drunk and dizzy, lightheaded from being in the presence of all this Eddie. She was suddenly very aware Eddie Munson was just between her legs, whilst they broke into her attic room, with a raging party going on downstairs and music throbbing through the floorboards. There was no way she’d anticipated the night ending like this.

He rubbed his scratched palms together and became aware of his surroundings, peering into the corners, wandering around aimlessly, poking at her things. “So this is like your lair? Very creepy, very cool. Very Rose.”

“You think?”

“Hell yeah,” he gave her an enthusiastic nod. Oh god, he looked good in that shirt, it was sinful. He zeroed in on the bookshelves, fingers tracing on the spines. “That is a looot of books. If you didn’t have a wall of sexy guys plastered right next to it, I'd be kind of intimidated, y’know?”

“I’m a connoisseur of bands and movies,” she said, eyeing the posters of her old crushes, marvelling that the new one, the real one, was right there. “Purely a coincidence that they’re all very attractive men.”

“Harrison Ford,” Eddie appraised the poster of Indiana Jones. “Classic. I get it, it’s the whip, isn’t it.”

“Of course, every girl’s dream,” she replied. “Would you...would you mind waiting outside the door while I get changed? As much as I like this jacket, I-”

His mood shifted, becoming more guarded. “Oh, I get it. I don’t want a particular person to get the wrong impression, like I carry you into your bedroom window in a state of undress all the time. Especially when they might be downstairs, dancing to shitty music with the rest of the popular crowd.”

Chrissy was here? Rose supposed it made sense, she’d seen half the cheerleading squad in witchy outfits attacking the keg earlier. Come to think of it, she didn’t know who half the people in the house were, partly due to the costumes, but clearly a bigger crowd had been summoned by the invite from the former King of Hawkins High. “I didn’t realise there was someone...I mean I thought, but...”

“It’s okay,” Eddie flapped around nervously, inspecting her bookshelves again. “I kind of figured it out last week. Moving on swiftly, I can either sneak downstairs or go back out the window. I’m thinking the window; Chris might kneecap me with the sledgehammer on the way down the stairs, he looks like he was taking that responsibility very seriously.”

“I don’t want you to break your neck on the way down. I’ve never seen someone trip on their own feet so much, except Robin, maybe. If I didn’t know you were stone cold sober I’d think you were drunk.”

Eddie took the mortal blow badly, clutching his chest. “Me? Clumsy? I’m as graceful as a...okay, you got me there McAllister.”

Fuck. He was so clumsy, so charming, so infuriatingly on the same wavelength as Rose. It was typical, she supposed. She found someone she was crazy about, and he was crazy about someone else.

Eddie had given her more courage and more reason to break out from her carefully crafted shell of invisibility than anyone. And maybe, just maybe, she should do something very…stupid. Then he was walking away, back facing, his hand on the doorknob.

“Eddie, wait,” she caught his arm. His pretty brown eyes found hers, boring into her heart. “I need to say something.”

He swallowed. “Is this the part where you tell me you wanna leave Hellfire? I don't want…I guess it-”

“No, you idiot! I love Hellfire. It's something else, stupid really.”

He stood up straight, becoming more serious. “Yeah?”

She took a deep breath. “I really, really-”

Darkness covered them like a thick blanket, pitch black so dark she could only feel his arm, not see him at all. Jeering and shouting from a half a hundred teens all at once rose through the house; then the music died, and all she could feel was her racing heart.

“Party's over, dipshits,” Steve cried out downstairs, to a chorus of boos. “If you're still here in five minutes, congratulations, you volunteered for clean up duty.”

Eddie's warm breath fanned her face in the dark. “I'd, um, offer to stay, but I have six guys to get home in the van, three of them freshmen and possibly buzzed for the first time.”

“Of course, you should collect the hellspawn,” Rose managed a lame laugh. “It's dark, so you can sneak down the stairs without being seen.”

“Well, don't mean to brag, but this bard's stealth is pretty high.”

He began to pull away.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For being so kind.”

His hand squeezed hers. “Anytime, Rosie. Just say the word.”

In three heartbeats he was gone, stirring the air in his wake. And despite sneaking into her window with a boy, an out if control keg party, and the prospect of parents on the rampage for an impromptu rager, she'd trade every one of those high school cliche’s just to hold onto him a minute longer, or as long as he'd let her.

#stranger things #stranger things 4 #eddie stranger things #eddie munson #eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson/oc #eddie munson fan fic #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fic #fanfic #fan fic #fan fiction #fanfiction #fic #eddie munson fluff

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darklcy · 1 year ago

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𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧, 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧, 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧.

─── ･.☽ . .───

‣ the upside down is frightening. your journey back to the real world knocks you behind a step, but eddie's there to notice.

‣ eddie munson x reader | stranger things masterlist | 843 words | comfort, fluff, kind of established relationship, kind of not, takes place in season 4

‣ i wrote this based on a dream i had where i kept hugging someone when i was scared; i know the scene with steve isn't entirely accurate to the canon story but for fanfic's sake please bear with me-

Breathing wasn’t easy.

Like re-experiencing childhood again, learning how to take the first steps, forgetting the rhythm of inhale, hold, exhale. Fingertips quivering, eyes blown wide, greasy, slicked hair slacked against your moist forehead and neck. A rumble and tremor with each step you take. This world was terrifying. And it lived beneath you all this time.

This forest was a mirror of the real world, Hawkins’s corpse surrounding the sky with claps of thunder and venomous beasts waiting to attack.

At least Steve wasn’t bleeding anymore. From back here, he appeared to walk normally, his grip on the flashlight strong and steady. A twig snapped under your shoe with a tumble. The two boys pause to glance back.

“You okay?”

Steve, always the caring figure. You feel yourself nod.

“..Yeah.”

The trudge through the trees continues, but not before Eddie reaches out. Steve's already turned his back, but a gentle hand caresses your arm.

“Walk up here.”

He urges you in front of him, closing any space behind you with himself. The two boys reawaken their conversation without another word.

The surprises in this world continue to pile on, as a human sized portal above you showed the real Hawkins on the other side, the carpeted floor of the Munson trailer along with Dustin Henderson. He heaves a blanket through the ceiling to fall in front of you with a soft thud.

“This is trippy…”

Robin’s comment fades in. You let her take the reins first. Once contact to the real world was made, you all watch as she flies straight down to the mattress in a sideways flip, a nervous bundle of laughter escaping her.

Her smile was contagious, and awoke some courage as you too grabbed hold of the fabric.

“Steady..”

Eddie murmurs behind you. You keep your glance upwards, hesitantly climbing up and up until a swoop-

…and your spine roughly hits the mattress.

“Woahh..”

You gasp out a chuckle, watching Eddie’s eyes meet yours in a kind squint. Robin and Dustin help you back to your feet, and the rest of the group file in.

“That was fun..Shit.”

Eddie’s remark curves your lips upwards slightly, and he doesn’t miss it. The second it’s there, it’s gone. He’s grateful he got to see it.

Reentering the human world outside the trailer, the fresh air makes your knees tremble, the brutal force of all you went through hitting at once. The group depart their separate ways, ready to reconvene in the morning, when you turn to him.

Eddie finds your eyes immediately. You’d lingered behind again, opting to remain in the back, unnoticed and undetected. You don’t waste a beat to run to him, arms tight around his middle and cheek resting on the Hellfire demon, his red face embracing yours.

Safe. You feel safe.

He stumbles a bit, taken by surprise, but his arms move on their own accord to embrace you back. You feel his palm keeping you to him, gently rubbing up and down your hair and back. In his arms, it's just you and him to worry about. No monsters, no earthquakes, no Vecna. Just him. Eddie.

He knows you’re frightened. He’d kept an eye on you throughout the whole Upside Down excursion, and he felt guilty in the sense he couldn’t protect you from your own fear. But under his hands he felt you calm down, your breaths slowing into a steady beat.

If this is what he can do to help you, he’ll be damned to let you go.

Steve’s house was home for the night. The drive there was quiet, bumpy and dark, but no longer than fifteen minutes. Eddie wasn’t comfortable letting you go home alone tonight. Neither were you.

The heated water poured out of the shower head and washed away the grime. Any residue of Lover’s Lake and bats swept down, down, the drain, replacing the cold with warmth. There was no energy to really delve into proper shower regime. You just wanted this stuff off.

Wrapping yourself up in a robe, damp hair dripping to the floor, you open the door to find him waiting.

“Hey.”

You shyly meet his eye. “..Hi.”

He doesn’t approach you immediately, allowing you to be the one to initiate any contact. He’s always careful with you.

You miss him and he’s standing right in front of you. Your arms raise as you step forward, your cheek nuzzling against the red demon once more. Eddie hums with his eyes closed, his chin resting atop your wet hair and arms tight around the soft robe. He leans you both side to side gently, as if rocking you to a gentle sleep.

Neither one of you talk. You just take a deep breath and sigh into his shirt. You could stay here forever, and you know he’d let you.

His lips press themselves onto your forehead when you part. When you meet his eyes again, beautiful pools of brown, his hidden message warms your mouth into a grin.

I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #x reader #stranger things #stranger things x reader #stranger things 4 #stranger things 4 x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson comfort #eddie munson x reader comfort #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x reader fluff #x reader fluff

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carolperkinsexgirlfriend · 1 year ago

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WIP Wednesday Ask Game:

Tagged by @eriquin! 💖💖💖

The Rules:

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

The Files:

Steddie Upside-down AU

Stancy Aro4Aro Break-Up AU

Platonic Stobin Mind-Reading AU

There There

The Crash Bang Incident

Snippet under the cut:

From the Steddie Upside-Down AU

Some of Eddie’s hair rips out as Steve pulls his hand free. Eddie groans, closing his eyes as they water involuntarily with the pain. “Fuck, Steve, ow,” he whines, rubbing the sore spot on his head.

“Steve?” Jonathan calls. It’s the tone that gets Eddie’s attention. He sounds bewildered, even in his hazed-out state.

Eddie opens his eyes, sits up straight just in time to see Steve disappearing from the yard, blending in with the trees of the forest that seems to haunt every resident of Hawkin’s backyard.

Eddie’s up and stumbling off the porch in seconds. His breathing is already ragged with panic, and his feet feel like lead. What a fucking time to be blazed to all hell. “Steve!” he yells, voice cracking with the volume.

He’s stumbling after him doggedly heading for the trees until something wraps around his bicep, squeezing hard. He’s already snarling before he turns around and sees Jonathan’s bleached face and red eyes.

“He’s gone, man.”

Tagging: @finntheehumaneater @devondespresso @strangersteddierthings @steddierthings no pressure though! 💖💖💖

#wip wednesday

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roanofarcc · 2 years ago

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PROJECT SUNSHINE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO → DUSTIN’S NEW PET

summary: steve harrington x oc

when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory escaped a long-survived nightmare alongside her sister, she crashed into one unsuspecting teenage boy and dragged him deeper into the dark mysteries that made up their hometown.

word count. 4.7k || masterlist

warnings: cannon typical violence, child abuse, horror, gore, and depictions of mental illness. parts of this story were written pre-season 4 release. cannon divergence.

previous chapter ← → next chapter

Sunshine had not stepped foot inside Hawkins Middle School since their experiment with El and the bathtub almost a year earlier. The building made her skin crawl as she was forced to recall that dreadful night.

Keeping her head low, Sunshine tried to focus only on the reason she was there, which Dustin had not explained well to her. All she knew was that she needed to find any of the boys before someone asked her what she was doing roaming around a middle school.

A few students lingered in the hall, but none of them seemed to care that she was there.

It didn’t take long for her to spot one of the boys. A pair of kids came rushing down the hall, one with his instantly recognizable bull cut and the other with a messy head of black hair.

“Will! Mike!” Sunshine called out and waved them down. The boys stopped in their pursuit and stumbled to a quick stop in front of her with a shared surprised expression. “I’m looking for Dustin. He told me to meet you guys here after school because he had something to show me.”

Will’s eyes widened just slightly, and Mike blew air from his cheeks.

“We’ve gotta find, now.” That was all Mike said before he took off down the hall, giving Will and Sunshine no choice but to follow.

“What’s wrong? Are you guys okay?” she asked Will, who walked beside her.

He shrugged, “I don’t know.” His face was more pale than usual and there were dark circles that hung under his brown eyes.

Mike stopped in front of a classroom. Inside the room were Lucas, Dustin, another kid she didn’t recognize, and their teacher. They were looking at some sort of box that rested on the desk, but before they could examine it, Mike yelled, “Stop!” He snatched the box and held it close to his chest, earning odd looks from everyone. “Sorry, Mr. Clarke. It was just a stupid prank.”

“What are you doing?” Lucas asked.

“We need to, right now. Right now!” Again, Mike took off out of the classroom and back down the hall. The confused kids and Sunshine exchanged a look before following after Mike in hopes of figuring out what in the world was going on inside Hawkins Middle on that sunny afternoon.

Their footsteps echoed down the nearly empty halls until they reached another room one hallway over. The boys filed into the room and Will grabbed a hold of Sunshine’s wrist, pulling her inside too. The other kid that was with them faltered at the doorway as Mike stepped in front of it, blocking the kid’s way inside.

“Party members only,” he said.

The younger girl scoffed and shot a look at Sunshine. “Who’s she?”

“An honorary party member,” Dustin said. “Sorry.”

Mike slammed the door harshly in the girl’s face before he set down the box on the table and everyone else gathered around it.

With a huff, Sunshine placed her hands on her hips and asked, “What is going on?” She didn’t even know what she was doing there, let alone what could be inside the little box on the table that had them all bent out of shape.

Mike began to explain. “Dustin found a weird creature last night in his trash and he kept it-”

“Dart,” Dustin quickly interjected. “His name is Dart.”

With a roll of his eyes, Mike continued. “He thought it was some new species he discovered, but Will said he saw something that looked just like Dart when he was in the Upside Down.”

The mention of the Upside Down sent a shiver down Sunshine’s spine. The memories of her and Nancy's quick trip to the rotting world were forever burned in her brain and she couldn’t imagine what it was like for Will, who spent days trapped there.

Will shuttered too and glanced down at his hands resting on the table. “Kind of,” he muttered. “But the thing I saw had no tail.”

“But he heard it yesterday during one of his episodes. He heard the exact same sound that Dart made in the Upside Down.”

Furrowing her brows, Sunshine asked, “Episodes?”

“Will’s been having these…these memories of the Upside Down. Or we thought they were memories at first,” Mike explained, catching Sunshine up on what she’s missed.

“It feels like I’m back there,” Will started. “I’m no longer in Hawkins, but back in the Upside Down.” The kid’s appearance started to resemble how he looked the night he was rescued from the Upside Down, sickly and tired.

Sunshine was no stranger to nightmares. It made her heart ache to think that the party was suffering from them too. They were just kids who had been through something deeply traumatic and terrible, especially Will. She wished there was something she could do to ease their minds, but that was not within her ability’s wheelhouse. The best she could do was be there for them and fight off the monsters.

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Lucas asked Will, looking over his friend with concern.

Will sighed, keeping his eyes down. “I wasn’t sure at first.”

Defiance flared up on Dustin’s face and he crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s a coincidence.”

“Or not,” Mike said. “What if when Will was stuck in the Upside Down, he somehow acquired True Sight?”

“True sight?” Sunshine repeated, not understanding what they were talking about.

“It gives you the power to see into the ethereal plane.”

Both Sunshine and Lucas exchanged looks before the latter said, “Elaborate.”

“Maybe these episodes that Will keeps having aren’t flashbacks at all. Maybe they are real and maybe he can somehow see into the Upside Down in real time,” explained Mike, causing a tense silence to roll across the room.

Goosebumps rose on Sunshine’s arms, and she swallowed thickly. “So, they’re not nightmares?”

Will looked up from where he’d glued his gaze to the floor, and she noticed something unreadable flicker behind his eyes before he shook his head. All of their attention fell onto the box on the table that began to rattle as the creature, Dart, inside tried to escape.

“Dart’s from the Upside Down. He has to be,” Mike concluded.

“Then we have to take him to Hopper,” said Lucas, and almost everyone in the room agreed, except Dustin.

“No way!” he protested loudly. “If we take him to Hopper Dart’s as good as dead.”

“Maybe he should be!” Mike countered.

The true nature of the Upside Down was a mystery to all of them. The only person who had spent time there was Will, and by the look on his face alone it was clear that Dustin’s new pet was nothing but had news. The last thing any of them needed, especially Will, was to be thrown back into the hellish nightmare they all thought they left behind last year. An adult needed to handle it, not them. They’d pass Dart off to Hopper and he would take care of it, then they’d be off the hook for anything that happened with it after the fact.

“How can you say that?” Dustin cried.

Mike’s face flushed red, and he frustratingly gestured to the shaking box. “How can you not? He’s from the Upside Down!”

“Maybe, but even if he is, that doesn’t automatically mean he’s bad.” Dustin turned to Sunshine for support, but she couldn’t help his defense. “Right?”

She sighed and kept her voice level in hopes of not attracting any unwanted attention from any passerby in the hall, something the boys didn’t seem to care about. “Mike’s right. If it is from the Upside Down, we shouldn’t risk it.”

“Exactly! That’s like saying just because someone’s from the Death Star doesn’t make them bad.”

“We have a bond,” said Dustin.

“A bond? Just because he likes nougat?”

A small headache began to drum in Sunshine’s temples from Dustin and Mike’s bickering.

“No,” Dustin muttered. “We have a bond because he trusts me.”

Lucas joined in with a roll of his eyes and said, “He trusts you?”

“Yes! I promised I would take care of him and-” Dustin was cut off by a loud screech from inside the box. The whole contraction shook until it fell over on its side. The creature inside continued to yell.

On the other side of the door, the girl from the classroom banged her fist against the door. “Guys, what is going on in there? Come on!”

None of them answered her; they were too focused on the box and the creature. Mike grabbed the closest thing to him that could be used as a weapon, which was a handheld microphone, and Sunshine readied her hands. With her fingers flexed and palms facing outward, she moved closer to the table, putting herself between Will and the table.

The box slid as it moved and before any of them could come up with some kind of game plan to trap the creature and put it in another container to hold it, the creature flung itself and the box right off the table and the door broke on impact with the floor.

Sunshine caught a quick glimpse of the creature as it scurried across the floor. It was a slimy, slung-like creature, dark in color with little feet that carried it quickly between their feet.

With a war-like yell, Mike brought his makeshift weapon down against the floor in hopes of squashing Dart under it, but it was too fast and avoided Mike.

“Shit!” he yelled.

Dustin dove against the floor and tried to catch his pet with his hands, but his movements were too clumsy for the confined space and all he got was a hand full of dust and his chin scrapped against the floor.

When both of those attempts failed, Sunshine went to illuminate her hands and stop the creature for good, but before she could get a flicker to erupt in her palms, the door to the room was swung open. Dart made a beeline for the exit and the kids chased after him.

All four of them tried to get out of the room at once, which only slowed them down.

Dustin toppled over the redheaded girl who opened the door, and they both landed on the ground in a series of groans. Lucas barreled after them and tripped over their sprawled-out limbs, landing beside the two of them. Will rushed out behind Mike, who managed to stop before he tripped, but the force of Will sent him falling anyway.

Out of all of them, Sunshine was the only one who managed to stay upright. Her eyes searched up and down the hall in search of Dart, but it had disappeared in the commotion.

“Where’d he go?” Lucas rushed out, quickly standing to his feet and brushing off his jeans.

“What was that?” the redhead asked, shoving Dustin’s shoulder off of her arm with a small huff.

Will replied, “Dart!”

With a pointed glare at the redhead, Mike shouted, “You let him escape!”

Once Dustin was standing, he threw his hands up. “Why did you attack him?”

Before another fight broke out, Lucas grabbed a hold of Dustin's coat sleeve and started to drag him down the hall. “We’ll look for him by the art room,” Lucas said. “Split up and radio if you find him.”

Dustin added, “Don’t hurt him!” before they turned the corner.

Rolling his eyes at Dustin, Mike grabbed Will and they split off in the opposite direction, leaving behind Sunshine and the redhead in a slight daze around everything that had just happened.

If Will was right and Dart was a creature from the Upside, he could be dangerous. The only thing any of them had encountered from the other universe was the Demogorgon, and that monster was anything but friendly; it was bloodthirsty and had no issue hunting down people to satisfy its appetite.

Granted, Dart was much smaller than a Demogorgon, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t become that dangerous. It was loose in Hawkins Middle and if they didn’t find it soon, the creature could flee to anywhere in town.

Sunshine glanced at the clueless young girl standing beside her, with arms crossed over her chest and a pinched expression on her pale face.

“Do you want to help me look in the next hall over?” Sunshine asked her.

She did not want to drag another person, let alone a kid, into the mess that was the Upside Down, but she had a feeling the redhead wasn’t going to forever about the whole thing and go home. If she offered to look with the new girl, at least she could prevent anything bad from happening or from the kid discovering something she wasn’t supposed to.

“How do you know them?” the redhead asked. “Are you their babysitter or something?”

“Sort of,” Sunshine replied. Her relationship with the party was a little more complicated than that, but she supposed from the outside she did look like their babysitter. She did make a promise to look after them, but mostly in the wake of monsters or bad men.

The redhead said, “Cool,” before she started walking down the hall with Sunshine beside her. “I’m Max, by the way.”

Max looked like a typical middle schooler, with a glint of curiosity in her bright blue eyes and a tenseness in her shoulders.

“I’m Danielle, but everyone calls me Sunshine.”

“Sunshine?” Max repeated with a slight quirk of her lips upwards. “Cool nickname.”

As they continued down the hall on their search, looking closely at the floor and peeking into the few classrooms that had their doors cracked, Dart was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, Sunshine’s walkie crackled in her hand and the boys’ voices filled the quiet, after-school air.

“East is clear. No sigh of Dart,” reported Dustin.

“West is clear too,” Mike sighed. “Will?”

“South is clear. Lucas, anything?”

“Nothing here, man. What about you Sunshine?”

Pressed her lips into a thin line, and worry started to take hold at the disappearance of the possible mini-Upside Down monster. “Nothing yet,” she answered.

The two girls stood at the end of the hall for a moment. Sunshine tried to think of where a little slug-like monster would hide. She wasn’t familiar with the school, but Max knew the lay of the land a little bit better.

“What about the locker rooms?” she suggested.

“Good idea.”

They reached the locker rooms that were split on either side of the gym. “We can split up. I’ll take the boys and you take the girls,” said Max.

Sunshine hesitated. She didn’t like the idea of sending Max off on her own to look for Dart. However, the monster was little, and Sunshine liked to believe it was harmless for the time being. Besides, there was no guarantee that Max would even find it in the boys’ locker room.

“Here.” Sunshine handed off her walkie-talkie to Max just in case. “If you find Dart, radio the boys.”

Max kept her hands in her pockets and flickered her gaze between the walkie and Sunshine. “But that’s yours. I don’t want to break it or something.”

“It’s okay,” Sunshine reassured her, yet Max still looked unsure.

“But what if you find Dart?”

Shooting the younger girl a small smile, Sunshine said, “I can handle a little slug, don’t worry about me.” She all but shoved her walkie into Max’s hand before she took off toward the girls’ locker room.

Luckily, it was free of middle schoolers. All that was inside the locker room were uniforms shoved in lockers and the smell of B.O. mixed with overpowering perfume.

Sunshine looked up and down each row, under each bench, in each bathroom stall, and in the showers. There was no sign of Dart anywhere.

With a sigh, she held out her hands out in front of her and thought of another way to catch him. If Sunshine couldn’t chase the creature, maybe she could lure it to her.

When they hunted the Demogorgon, blood attracted it. If Dart was from the Upside Down, there was a chance blood would draw it to her in a similar fashion.

She closed her eyes, tucked back in the far corner of the locker room in case someone entered, and allowed light to flicker to life in her palms. Not long after she illuminated her hands, blood started to drip from her nose. She didn’t wipe the crimson liquid away like she normally did. Instead, she wandered around the locker room a little while longer in hopes that Dart would appear, but it didn’t.

The sound of footsteps outside the locker room caught her attention and she quickly extinguished her hands before she stepped back out into the hall. A figure slipped around the corner just as she spotted them, but they vanished before she could call out to them. Sunshine assumed it was one of the kids.

“Max?” She rose her voice and began to walk in the same direction the figure had run, but a crash from inside the gym pulled her attention away.

Pushing open the gym doors, Sunshine was met with Max on the ground, a skateboard rolling across the floor, and Mike offered his hand to the redhead to help her up.

“What happened?” Sunshine asked, crossing the expanse of the gym. She tried to ignore the memories that crept up her spine. Being back in the gym made her think of Eleven. It clouded her thoughts and her focus slipped away from Dart and the rest of the kids for just a moment until Max was back on her feet and rubbed her elbow.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was like a magnet, or something pulled my board.”

Mike’s head snapped to the gym doors, and before Sunshine would utter a word to him, he bolted out of the gym, leaving the two girls, once again, alone together and confused.

Max pointed a finger at Sunshine and said, “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Oh.” Sunshine reached up and wiped the blood away with the sleeve of her sweater, still focused on the door and Mike. Something tugged at her chest, an uncomfortable feeling that squeezed her heart enough to tell her they should leave and find where all of the boys were. The hair on her arms stood on end and she didn’t know if it was simply the memories of last year that the gym conjured up or if something was wrong.

Suddenly, Will’s voice came through on the walkie-talkie Max had sat on the ground beside her backpack. “Guys,” he whispered. “I found him.”

“Where?” Lucas asked.

“In the bathroom by Mr. Salerno’s.”

The whole group met back up at the spot Will was supposed to be with Dart. Sunshine and Max arrived last, but when they arrived and entered the restroom, ready to catch Dart and put an end to their chase, they were only met with Dustin searching the stalls frantically.

“Where’s Dart?” Mike asked, slightly out of breath from running.

Dustin adjusted his cap on top of his head and stepped out of the farthest stall with a shrug. “He’s not here.”

“He said by Salerno’s, right?” asked Max.

“Yeah,” Lucas nodded, scratching his head. “Maybe Will has him?”

Scanning the bathroom, the pit in Sunshine’s stomach worsened. Anxiety pricked her skin and caused her heart to beat faster. Only three boys were with her and Max in the bathroom. They were missing one.

“Where is Will?” Sunshine asked, keeping her voice level.

“Shit,” Mike muttered under his breath. “We've gotta find him. Now!”

He must have felt it too, the shift in the air into something wrong.

They were running, again, and searching through the hallways of Hawkins Middle School. Inside every opened classroom they called out Will’s name, but he wasn’t there.

Sunshine hadn’t known about Will’s episodes, and that news only added her to franticness in finding the boy.

“Dustin!” A new voice echoed down the hall, stopping the group that had split off together in their tracks. Sunshine, Max, and Dustin skidded to a stop in front of Joyce Byers, who had arrived at the school to pick up her son.

“What’s going on?” Joyce asked, looking at the group that lacked Will. “Where’s Will?”

Mike and Lucas had split up to search for Will, and they came barreling through the back doors of the school just down the hall from where the rest of the group stood, unsure of what to say to Joyce.

“The field! Will’s in the field!” Mike shouted, urging them to follow him and Lucas outside.

Will stood frozen in the middle of a grassy field behind the building. His eyelids were closed but under them, his eyes moved around frantically like he was dreaming.

His mother reached him first and grabbed his shoulders as she tried to shake him out of his daze. Will didn’t budge though; his body was still but Sunshine imagined, if the boys were right about his episodes, his mind was racing.

“We just found him like his,” Mike cried. “I think he’s having another episode.”

“Will! Sweetie, wake up,” pleaded Joyce. Pain drenched her voice. “It’s mom. Please wake up, Will!”

Sunshine held her breath as the scene unfolded. It was almost familiar to her. The eerie stillness and shifting eyes reminded her of Nine when he would have episodes of his own. On the outside, it looked like he was sleeping standing upright, but inside the little boy’s head was a blur of futures that bled together in a raging storm. The only thing they could do when Nine fell into an episode was wait it out, no matter how painful it was to do nothing.

They did the same for Will and waited as Joyce continued to shake his shoulders and wake him up. It took a couple of agonizing minutes but simply standing by, but Will eventually pulled himself out of it. His eyes opened and a strangled gasp tumbled off his lips. He looked around blankly for a moment before he was swept away by his mother who quickly ushered him into the front seat of her car, leaving the rest of the party on the grassy field in varying levels of distress over their friend.

“Okay,” Max said, breaking the tense silence. “That totally freaked me out. Did that not freak you guys out?”

The boys ignored her question.

“Two episodes in two days,” Lucas sighed and shook his head. He stared off in the direction Joyce and Will had walked away with his lips downturned.

“It’s getting worse,” said Mike.

Dustin adjusted his cap once more as he asked, “Do you think it’s True Sight?”

“What’s True Sight?” Max tried to wriggle herself into their conversation, but she had no real understanding of what was going on and Sunshine wanted to keep it that way.

A familiar feeling of dread wrapped around Sunshine like an uncomfortable embrace. They were coming up on a year since the events of last year, and that alone seemed to put everyone on edge. There was a chance that it was all simply just the anniversary effect and that nothing was happening, but the memories of what happened almost a year ago took on a life of their own inside their minds and made them think something bad was happening when in reality nothing was going on.

However, Will’s episodes looked like a lot more than the mind messing with him, and there was an unshakeable feeling that clawed at her bones and filled her with dread. It wasn’t easy for her to hide that feeling either; it was written in her pinched expression.

Beside her, Lucas bumped her arm and knocked her out of her thoughts. “What is it, Sunshine?”

She sighed and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “I don’t know,” she answered, truthfully.

With a face permanently flushed with confusion, Max huffed, probably annoyed at the cryptic group. “What is going on?”

“Uh,” Lucas cleared his throat. “M-Max. You should come with us. We’re gonna…We’ll try to explain it.”

Sunshine’s eyes widened and she was about to shut down that idea but as Lucas and Dustin began to leave with Max, Lucas glanced over his shoulder and met Sunshine’s gaze, assuring her he wasn’t going to completely violate their signed contracts.

She could only hope they could lie well enough to throw Max off their trail and make sure she stayed far away from whatever was happening, for her own sake and safety.

It was only Mike and Sunshine left in the field, and the younger boy let his tension-filled shoulders slump. “He’s going to be okay, right?” he asked in a quiet voice. His brash tone and pre-teen attitude had melted away the moment his friends were gone. The anger he clenched tightly in his fists and kept in his shoulders changed into something sadder and more childlike.

“We’ll figure it out.” That was the only sure thing she could offer him. She knew the same or possibly less than he did about what was going on with Will. “Whatever is happing, we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

A beat passed between them, and Mike tried to discreetly wipe his nose and cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket. “Back in the gym, I thought I…I saw something…”

“Dart?”

Mike shook his head and met her gaze. He sighed and said, “Nothing. Never mind. It’s stupid.”

As much as he tried to Mike his feelings behind a roll of his eyes or a snarky attitude, Mike Wheeler was easy to read. He was a pre-teen boy trapped in a situation beyond his control that he believed he could lead his friends through without a scratch on any of them. Or that was the Mike Sunshine had met a year ago. He wasn’t afforded the luxury of hanging onto that belief for very long, not after Eleven died. It was the harrowing experience of growing up and realizing you nor your friends were invincible.

“You miss her,” Sunshine said, knowing what his answer was.

Mike had taken El’s death the hardest, but all of the sadness he felt had turned into anger over the whole situation that none of them should have been placed in in the first place. It reminded Sunshine of the rage Ivy felt once the reality that Three was not coming back to them hit her. At first, Ivy refused to believe it, but once she let it sink in, she became so full of anger that she never resolved. She died angry. Three died terrified. And Eleven died fighting a monster to save her friends.

They had to deal with the aftermath; it was up to them to pick up the pieces without uttering a word to anyone who wasn’t involved.

“Yeah,” Mike managed to say. “And now with Will…” he trailed off, all of his feelings spiraling in real time under Sunshine’s watchful eye.

A sad glint reflected the sun that poked out from behind the cloud cover as she softly said his name.

“This is so stupid!” Mike yelled suddenly, startling Sunshine. “It’s supposed to be over! El killed that stupid monster and that’s it.” He held back his tears and clenched his jaw before he continued, “And Will, he came back but now he-he’s different! Something i-is wrong, and Dart is missing, and…and I can’t-” Mike cut himself off with a frustrated groan as a couple of tears slipped down his cheeks and his face flushed.

Taking one step at a time, she closed the distance between Mike and herself. Placing one hand carefully on his shoulder, she tried to think of something to say to him that would ease some of his worries, but before she could say anything, Mike threw his lanky arms around her torso and hid his crying face in the fabric of Sunshine’s coat.

The fight and anger left him completely and he was just a kid that was scared of what was going to happen next.

Resting her chin on top of Mike’s head, Sunshine sighed as the sun moved back behind the clouds and casted Hawkins in a gray glow once more, only adding to the somber mood.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, not only trying to convince Mike but herself as well. “We’ll be okay.”

Tag list. @leptitlu @sattlersquarry @lovefrom-theother-side

#stranger things #steve harrington #max mayfield #mike wheeler #will byers #dustin henderson #lucas sinclair #steve harrington x oc #steve harrington x original character #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #project sunshine

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the-case-book-of-fanfiction · 2 years ago

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my rewatch of broadchurch has reminded me of how much i love the idea of hopper taking on steve as an intern and showing him the ropes of policework. so, uh, here's a little thing i might make into an actual fic one of these days:

it's not steve's first choice of job. but it was offered to both him and robin, it pays well, it gets his dad off his back. or maybe worse. ("finally getting your life together, are you? finally got yourself an actual career.")

at first, it's simple, easy. reports, paperwork, sometimes some leg work. hopper oversees steve and robin's training personally. he says it's because they show potential; while that may be true, steve also suspects that hop's been told to keep an eye on the two of them by the shady government agents who have been lingering around hawkins—most of them pretending to be regular people, but the townspeople know better. everyone knows everyone in a small town like hawkins, and after the hellscape the town became, people have their own theories about what happened. most of them are pretty close, almost all of them including a government conspiracy.

for the few months, that's all they do. chase after the people who get too close to the truth, hush them up before the papers can snap up the story. they can't stop them all, but for the most part, people outside of hawkins write it off as lunacy. steve and hopper are thankful for that.

two years. two years of pure silence from any related to the upside down; no demodogs, no labs, no doctors, no psychic children. just eleven—jane, now—with the hopper-byers, and she hasn't used her powers for anything other than making max's life easier. the party's gone back to playing d&d together regularly, even though their parents tease them they're too old to be playing it in mike's basement.

and then, a couple months after the anniversary of will's disappearance, the world starts to crack again.

not really, not literally, not like it did when vecna split hawkins into four chunks of hell. but it's close, because steve can feel the world shift and begin to fall, just like it did then. it's worse this time, though, because he didn't really notice last time. he was too wrapped up in himself, in high school, in tommy and carol, in nancy. but this time? this time steve is fully aware of just how disastrous the world is.

it's a body. it's a young boy. all of hawkins stills because it's a little too similar.

when he's found, nobody knows who it is. the body's in the quarry, found by a group of young kids playing a little too close to the edge. (the town starts to get uneasy.)

the police retrieve the body. the family's contacted privately. the mother screams and wails that she was right, that she knew, that if they had just listened to her—

they realize, too late, that a missing persons report was filed about the boy two days ago. hopper hates how much the woman reminds him of joyce.

the autopsy is performed, and it confirms that the boy is really this woman's son. hopper insists on being present for the autopsy, just a little too worried it would be another fake.

for a while, steve is convinced it has to be related to what happened in the early 80s. hopper is, too, until that autopsy. after that, he tells steve it's a perfectly normal murder case.

it takes a while before steve believes him. only after that does he start to think that a regular murder case is even worse.

"i hate these small town murders," hopper says to him one day. "too many secrets about too many people get uncovered. things we never should know."

"but we're the police, shouldn't we know these things? if people are threatening and blackmailing and committing petty crimes, shouldn't we know?" steve asks, confused as to why hopper seems to be okay with these things—small compared to a murder, but big to a small town—happening all the time under their noses.

because that's what has been happening. backs are turning quickly. the town is becoming violent, accusing anyone and everyone who is slightly suspicious as the boy's killer.

"in a regular small town, it wouldn't be as big of a deal," hopper says. "even then, some things are just better left unsaid. but here? there's too many secrets we need to keep. secrets unrelated to this case. secrets that could get the soviets interested again."

and the idea of that makes steve shudder, his body remembering pain he had never really gotten rid of, always feeling it when it's too cold or raining.

robin shares similar ideas to hopper. "all these accusations," she says one night, when it's just them in the office because hop sent everybody else home and he's in the next room making coffee, "doesn't it scare you? like imagine if somebody turns on...i don't know, jonathan or...or nancy? i mean nancy owns guns and people know about it—"

"the boy wasn't shot, robs."

"—and jonathan, i mean, everybody who went to school with us heard about you breaking the camera and why you did it. they might..."

steve shakes his head. "i wish i hadn't, robs. especially now."

"i know that, that's not what i'm saying. my point is, we've all got dirt, every single one of us. eddie's been accused of murder before, who's to say they won't do it again? even if it doesn't make sense, neither do the people they target now. anyone who's done any wrong is in the risk of it being made public. and if that happened to us? if people find out about el, about vecna, about will? what happens then?"

she's worked herself up into a panic, steve can tell. but this time, he doesn't really know what to say. he doesn't know what will happen. the government agents who watched them for months before they disappeared all at once never made verbal threats, but the threat of their presence was enough to silence everyone.

the only thing he can think to say is "eddie's on tour with the guys right now, he's safe from all of this."

"until they get back, then everyone will become the next jason carver," robin says, and steve begs her not to bring him back up.

secrets get dug up as the case drags on, only getting further and further away from closure. affairs, bullying, threats, drugs, alcohol, robbery. whatever small, dirty secret the town could possibly have, it does have, and it gets dug up and aired out like dirty laundry.

steve watches the town pretend to be shocked at every new revelation. it doesn't hurt very much until he watches the entire town pretend that they—and he—didn't know his dad was cheating on his mom and has been for years; that still doesn't hurt as much as the pitying looks they give him when he shows up to ask questions or to take their statements; and that still doesn't compare to the looks everyone gives his mom.

he watches his mom lose her love of life. it was fine, or they could pretend it was fine, before everybody knew (officially) about his dad's infidelity. they could pretend it wasn't happening. they pretended it was some big business meeting or a dinner with a client or whatever it was, except what it actually was.

that's what hurts steve most about policework. watching people go under for things that have nothing to do with him. watching people lose family and livelihoods over mistakes made years ago. watching the life drain from a community, replaced by suspicion and anger and hatred.

because if he stops and thinks about it, steve doesn't really mind it otherwise. he likes the thrill, the facts fitting together, the possibility that they might actually be right.

and when they are right, even after countless wrong leads, steve feels the relief deep in his bones. he feels it in the town, too, feels people start to breathe again and start to go back to normal and live their lives again.

he knows it's not normal again, not really. how can it be? but he watches the case go to trial, he watches it go right, he watches the killer go to jail. he watches the family finally breathe again, hears the mother thank him and robin and hopper, sees them try to go back to their lives and do they best they can.

it's not normal, but it's better. it's better than it was, because the accusations are gone now, what's been dug up has either been forgotten or left alone or maybe it has changed lives, but people are moving on. sweeping it under the rug like it never even happened.

there are some divorces in the following weeks—the couples whose infidelity was discovered. the police chase a few domestic abuse reports. steve handles a few of them, because he's learned to handle the punches now. there'a crackdown on illicit substances. steve and robin are glad eddie's quit all of that now, that he had given it up years ago.

the world stops ending. steve knows it'll end again someday, more often if he ever ends up in a big city. but for now, it's over and he can go back to his boring old police routine.

steve likes "boring" these days. boring is a safety net, something to fall back into when things get exciting.

the other thing steve likes about policework—it is exciting. sometimes. sometimes, it makes him feel alive again.

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patchworkgargoyle · 2 years ago

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WIP Weekend!

Tagged by the owner of one of the best usernames on this webbed site, @steves-strapcollection, thanks for the writing nudge!!

RULES

Post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post.

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in or just post.

*Optional: Respond to the ask with the lines you wrote.

WIPS

Some might be recognizable, because I haven't worked on them since last time WHOOPS-

mouth of the wolf, eyes of the lamb (~new~)

i recognise you're a hideous thing inside

Nail Polish

Plagued by Piercings

Shark Bite Meet Cute

SNIPPET

From mouth of the wolf, eyes of the lamb, a ~new~ fic inspired by this post and this snippet, aided and encouraged and brainstormed with @steves-strapcollection and @scarcrossdlvrs!

It’s been a month.

Or more like six weeks and two days.

Six weeks, two days since they’d gone into the Upside Down, guns and molotovs blazing, the screeching of demobats and a lone guitar echoing in the distance before the Creel house swallowed them up and spat Vecna out, only for him to crawl off to god knows where to lick his wounds.

Since Steve, Robin, and Nancy raced back to the trailer, and ran faster when they heard Dustin’s agonised screaming. Pulled him back to their side of Hawkins while he thrashed, sobs like jagged shards of glass echoing louder than the eerie thunder, fighting them every step until they saw the gates were widening, not closing.

Since Max fell into a coma, her broken form so small in the hospital bed.

Since Eddie died.

Steve’s known failure, when it comes to the Upside Down. He can’t untangle it from the tragedy of Barb, the fallout of him and Nancy, his fall from the Hawkins High social ladder. Yeah, he’d wanted to shove it all under the rug that first year, but sue him, he didn’t know there was more to come, and when it did, again and again, and he’d think back to how he felt in ‘84–and those two years felt like two decades away, some days–he couldn’t blame himself for it. He just wanted to feel normal. Now that normal wouldn’t ever exist again, if Steve could talk to his past self he wouldn’t tell him to do anything different.

This failure, though, felt so much worse. More final. Barb was the beginning, and Eddie was the beginning of the end. He couldn’t stop wondering if there’d been some way to do it better, one more play that would turn the tide and win the day instead of… this. Maybe now he finally understood how Nancy felt.

And the non-obligatory tags! @ghost--enthusiast and @spicysix!

#wip weekend #tag game #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #character death mention #but i promise it gets better!!!#stranger things #snippet #niko's notes

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willel · 2 years ago

Note

I am confused here because I think the lab being involved in the Byers family situation pretty much explains things better than all of the stuff happening as a consequence. With the 'lab was involved, too' scenario you just have to explain things and expand on them. Because the other scenario too depending on several consequences; Vecna finding out Will's existence on that very same night and ending up lucky that he somehow found (luckily) a person who was similar to him with potential unlocked powers, El somehow recognizing Will as a consequence because that's ''what was expected from her powers'', Brenner onlu faking Will's death and not bothering with the other victim's deaths because the other victims did not matter so it was a consequence. Will somehow manipulating things in the UD because... consequence and random things, it just happened that way plotwise. Like, isn't that worse as a plot explanation?

(rambling incoming)

But you'd need to explain the Byers being completely and totally unaware of anything about the lab at all. That is key here. That is a LOT that they just "oopsie forgot to mention".

It's pretty clear the Byers had no idea about the lab or anything strange in season 1. It's clear Joyce didn't know Brenner or the lab in general while she was there. Lonnie is a deadbeat scumbag living in Indianapolis, too absentee to even sell off his kids.

How do you connect the dots of the Byers being totally oblivious to all this stuff in season 1? I can't wrap my head around this.

Hopper had a whole box of Hawkins lab files under his cabin about all the tests and experiments going on there with Terry and the kids, but he neglected to ever mention Joyce, Lonnie, Will, or Jonathan being wrapped up in all this stuff?

When I read those theories, it just reads as

Joyce/Lonnie got Will involved with the lab

Henry/El meet Will

???

Memory loss arc because none of the Byers have ever acknowledged any connections with the lab. Henry yes. The lab, no.

It might just be a difference in preference, but I find it much more believable that:

Vecna/the Demogorgon was chasing El that night

Either on purpose or accident, switched targets to Will and dragged him into the Upside Down

Upon his capture, discovers Will is a perfect kind of host/sympathizer and spends at least 1 season so far trying to keep Will chained down and will probably do so again

As for El's role in all this, I detailed it in my other post. I concluded the most likely scenario being El saw Will getting kidnapped either in person or through her mind's eye. All we can say for sure is that she recognized him. They can't have known each other or met more than once because we can't ignore the fact that Will did not know her prior and continues not to know her for another whole season.

This mixture of coincidence/accident turned into purposeful action on Henry's part makes a lot more sense to me.

Imagine this scenario.

It's in the middle of covid. You're confined to your house but you REALLY want this cool fancy cup you found online. You order the cup. They deliver the wrong cup. You're annoyed but you decide to use the cup anyway. Come to find out, this wrong cup is actually super awesome. Maybe it's not as expensive and cool as the cup you wanted, but it suits you just fine. Every now and then, the delivery driver tries to break into your house and take your cup back and eventually they succeed. It pisses you off because you actually liked that wrong cup and want it back. You still don't have the actual cup you originally ordered so you just sit in your house pissed off, trying to find ways to get back at the delivery driver for taking your wrong cup. Something like that.

That is how I think this situation happened.

Henry wanted El. He sent his delivery driver (the demogorgon) to get her. The Demogorgon delivered the wrong kid. Henry accepted it and just went with it and came to found out, this kid is also pretty good for what he wanted to do. He smacked a "MY PROPERTY" stamp on Will's forehead and got pissed when they took him back. Cue the rest of the series.

I think people who believe absolutely EVERYTHING that happened to Will was an accident are wrong. I also don't think the Byers have been involved in all this from the very start, it's too much missing information to fill in.

I don't remember the exact wording, but in the scripts it said something like, "Not siblings by blood, but by circumstances". That one line explains the entirety of WillEl and Will's involvement in this stuff.

You know how El is the fish out of water when it comes to normal every life? Well Will is the opposite. He's the fish out of water when it comes to the Upside Down mess and lab stuff. Living a normal life with friends and family was not El's reality. But it's her reality now. The lab/Henry was not Will's story, but it's becoming his story whether he likes it or not.

I know ST has plotholes and stuff they fill in after the fact, but it's usually to the benefit of a story they're trying to tell. They added onto El's backstory to explain the man behind the Mind Flayer. The backstory of the lab and them being trapped there together and him pushing her to her limits and getting banished to the Upside Down... that's crucial stuff that NEEDED the lab to be involved. (I'm of the firm belief subject 0 or 1 was always planned, though they could've executed it better)

Will being tied to the lab isn't necessary in comparison. You'd not only have to explain why he'd be there in the first place, but also his parents. To our knowledge, Hawkins publicly accepted adults for MKUltra.

I think in the books, it specifically states adults without dependents/children are eligible so Joyce would've been rejected and so would Lonnie (books are only half canon so eh). MKUltra was performed on adults. The child program was secret. Those kids weren't recruited off the street, they were taken under extraordinary circumstances and even reported missing.

You'd have to introduce an entirely new subplot like "So, actually when Will was younger they gave parents money to bring their kids in for some tests. And Joyce/Lonnie did this once. He met El and Henry. And then nothing happened and everyone forgot about the lab and the weird test they went to take."

Or "Joyce was a part of MKUltra or almost was but then returned to a normal life after" when we know good and well Brenner is not above kidnapping newborn infants from his previous test subjects. Will 100% would've been taken just like El.

Instead, just saying "Will quite literally got wrapped up in all of this due to mistaken identity -a common occurrence between him and El btw- and has never known peace since because the mistaken identity situation actually lead to actual similarities between the two." makes the most sense, connects all the dots, and doesn't need the writers to write a contrived reason why Will was already involved with the lab before.

It'd be like you met someone on the street and they look just like you. You joke around like "What if we were long lost siblings lol" and then it turns out you actually are. Not saying Will and El are blood related, just that concept of something so surface level ending up being deeper.

How I see it, Will and El's stories are almost exactly the same but in reverse. El's life started in the lab/supernatural and it's slowly becoming more normal. Will's life was completely normal and now it's been slowly seeping into the supernatural.

El was kidnapped by the lab/Brenner. Will was kidnapped by the Upside Down/Henry.

El's story has been about her building it up piece by piece, gaining everything in life she lacked. Will's life, while not great, was once whole and has been falling apart piece by piece in comparison.

When El was with the group, Will was missing. When Will was in the group, El was missing.

To me, if Will's backstory is tied into the lab, the very foundations that make Will and El mirror images of each other weakens.

#stranger things #will byers #theory

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thefourchimes · 2 years ago

Text

wip weekend because might as well kick my butt into gear

thanks @hellsfireclub and @lovefrom-theother-side for the tag on wip weekend—and for kat in particular, wip wednesday and yes this is very late but here it is LMAO

rules

Post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post.

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in or just post.

wips:

four chimes (four horsemen of the apocalypse au)

stranger weirder (stranger things and gravity falls fusion au)

even stranger down under (stranger things and undertale fusion au)

telepathic party (wow i have not touched this au in a while)

also here’s a list of the sub aus of four chimes because @lumaxramblings, @laurienotteddy, and i are insane

snippet (from four chimes au):

“In the Bible, there’s a concept known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There’s a lot of different interpretations and takes on it, but give or take some meanings, it usually boils down to four names.” He turned towards them all with a grimace. “Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death.”

Mike’s breath hitched, exchanging an alarmed glance with Will. “The names they had used to call themselves.”

Dustin nodded grimly. “Exactly.”

“And here I thought Vecna only had a creepy obsession with spiders, not horses,” Hopper grunted dryly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“But why use this horsemen concept?” Steve rubbed his face wearily. “It’s kind of out of nowhere, plus I didn’t really take Vecna to be a religious guy.”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with religion or the horses themselves…” Nancy pursed her lips, wincing slightly.

Dustin had a feeling her thoughts had drifted back to what Vecna had…shown her while she was cursed for a short time. He honestly couldn’t — didn’t want to — imagine it, but…

He glanced at the window and beyond it.

Seeing the gray ashes falling outside, maybe he didn’t have to.

The apocalypse was already looming over them, after all.

…wait.

Dustin’s eyes widened.

Oh.

Oh shit.

Nancy suddenly took a sharp intake of breath. “What’s Vecna’s main goal?”

Robin frowned worriedly, but answered nonetheless, “He basically wants to kill everyone and everything by making the Upside Down swallow up our…world…” She trailed off, the same, sudden realization in her eyes.

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Dustin felt his mouth drying up at the last word as he ran a hand through his hair. “Vecna’s plan involved four chimes. Four victims. Using them to open up four gates for the Upside Down to invade Hawkins.” He looked at everyone’s faces, seeing their quiet, horrified understanding of what this exactly meant. “Essentially the end of the world as we know it.”

Silence descended in the room.

“Judgement Day is here…” Lucas broke the silence, murmuring almost emptily as his eyes seemed to flash back to something. “...and the Horsemen are leading the charge.”

was very close to sending a ciquest snippet because that verse (and the two in general) has very much been in my brain for the past few days and i could not find stuff that was written recently besides that (and another sub verse of fc) lmao

uhhhh lets tag @willelfanpage @sunflowersand-bees @thornywords and if anyone else wants to go for it, go for it <33 no pressure tho! <333

#mic tagged #tag game #idk what im doing LMAO #but yes #i hope to be able to write these soon woooo #aaaaa #four chimes au #the four chimes au #stranger weirder au #even stranger down under au #telepathic party au

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morganbritton132 · 2 years ago

Note

You probably get this all the time, and I don't know why I only thought about this now, but I'm suddenly fascinated by the idea of a government employee who knows about the Upside Down that has been tasked with keeping an eye on Eddie's TikTok page and just constantly being so frustrated

I never get this but I have thought about it at length!!! Lol.

I just picture one overworked and underpaid agent being tasked with the whole *hand waving* Hawkins Situation.

There used to a time when the Hawkins Project was a coveted position given to the best agents with the highest clearance, but now… Now all the gates to the other world have been closed. There’s been no activity in three decades. Brenner’s dead. The Russians defuncted their projects. The girl – Eleven or Jane, or whatever – hasn’t blown anything up since the nineties.

The Hawkins job is a babysitting job with CIA-level clearance, and it’s just… it was supposed to be a cakewalk but. There’s just… there are so many of them.

And for a while, they were spread all over the country.

One of them is a US Senator now and she called the head of the FBI ‘a bitch’ and ‘a coward’ on a hot mic last week, and maybe.

Maybe for the sake of national security and their own sanity, maybe this agent pulled a few strings and dotted a few more I’s than they’re authorized to just to get Lucas Sinclair, Maxine Mayfield-Sinclair, Dustin Henderson, Nancy Wheeler, and Robin Buckley back in Chicago.

Maybe they did that. There’s no paper trail, but maybe they did.

It’s easier to keep track of a ‘party’ of people if most of them are in the same state.

This Party – as they fondly call themselves – barely qualified as a threat anymore. They are barely a concern at this point. Only a few of them are considered dangerous enough to require anything more than the occasional check-in. Those people being Jane Hopper, James ‘Jim’ Hopper, Nancy Wheeler, Murray Bauman, and – much to this agent’s annoyance – Edward Munson.

Eddie wouldn’t be a cause for concern if he wasn’t so goddamn loud. He is in no way a threat to national security but the CIA doesn’t love when people allude to a defuncted Cold War project that resulted in an inter-dimensional serial killer murdering a bunch of small town high school students.

This agent does not believe that Eddie Munson knows what an NDA is or that he signed one.

It is one thing to write songs about demon bats and hell spilling into small town Americana or to make your album cover resemble the charred remains of Henry Creel’s disfigured body (‘yeah’ the agent thinks, ‘you’re not that slick, Munson’) but it is something else to announce to your millions of TikTok followers that you got rabies in a hell dimension.

This agent does not have enough pull to persuade Congress to outright ban TikTok and actually thinks that a TikTok ban would be an overreach of government control, but damn if it would not have made their life easier. Though they fear that Munson would just go to YouTube and the idea of longer content makes them shiver.

And by the way, this agent expected better from Steven Harrington!

This agent liked Steve! He was one of their favorites!!

Steve didn’t make waves. He lived a quiet life, paid his taxes, and barely had a social media presence. He was an absolute dream to be monitoring until Eddie downloaded that cursed clock app.

Steve was never viewed on the same threat level as Jane Hopper or Murray Bauman, but he was a closely monitored subject due to his long-term injuries and his time spent in the alternate dimension and the Russian bunker under Starcourt Mall. Despite close monitoring, there is no note in his file of any digression until Eddie started shoving Tiktok in his face.

This agent sits in their office at the CIA’s Chicago location.

In the basement, at the end of a long dusty corridor, beneath a buzzing fluorescent light, they get a notification on their computer. It’s from Tiktok, and this agent breathes in slowly. They rub at the forming headache between their brows and names it Eddie Munson.

They click the notification, waits a second for the shitty wifi to bring them to the app, and watches as Steve Harrington says, “Technically we’re time travelers.”

And they sigh.

#Two things I love: (1) Steve being the only one that truly thinks they’re being spied on and #(2) some guy in a middle management-like job having to keep track of all the dumb shit they do #this agent is the reason Eddie gets stopped by the TSA every time he flies. It’s revenge #eddie munson tiktok saga #steve harrington #eddie munson

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h-i-raeth · 1 year ago

Text

Files For This Week:

The Sum Of Our Parts (AFTG, Andriel, Unwind AU, Ch 1 - 8 on AO3 here)

Time And Hearts Will Wear Us Thin (hanahaki deconstrucion fic) (Stranger things, queerplatonic Stobin with several side ships, Ch 1-5 6 on AO3 here)

The Shadow Of Dust(Disconnected Scenes) (Stranger Things, His Dark Materials AU, unpublished + looking destined to be Long. )

For There’s No Guarantee That We’ll Ever Come Home (Stranger Things, Barb survives the demogorgon but is stuck in the upside down until Steve, Eddie, and Robin find themselves trapped there at the end of season 4)

No Easy Peacetime Girl Here To Be Found (Stranger things, Ch 1 on AO3 here, Barb is assumed dead until El rejoins the Hawkins Crew in S2, heavy canon divergence spiraling from pre-S3)

Snippet (From Time and Hearts)

And Dustin goes, and he’s gone too long, and Max is dying, is going to die, and Steve can’t stand in front of the danger this time, and then Dustin’s back, spilling tapes onto the ground in front of them and demanding to know her favorite song, and Steve doesn’t--he doesn’t know. He knows the tapes she used to gravitate towards, the ones she’d push for when it was just them in the car, but ever since he got her the walkman, she hasn’t bothered to fight for control of the stereo. He knows what her favorite song might be, but can he take a chance when her life is on the line?

He doesn’t have to. Lucas knows, is certain of it, and the tape is in the walkman, the headphones are over her ears, and she’s lifting into the air anyway, it’s not going to work, she’s still going to die---

And then she falls. All at once, too fast for him to get under her and catch her, but she’s alive. She’s awake, she’s aware, she’s breathing.

It worked.

WIP Wednesday Game

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works:

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

Requested/Friend event mentions under the cut! If you'd like to be pinged next week, let me know!

Friends @fiore-della-valle @redbirdblogs @greenbergsays @idkfandomwhatever @luckyspike

@obaewankenope @mad-madam-m @anonymousdandelion @geometricfractal @prettybirdy979

@eriquin | Requests @aparticularbandit @madnessfromthemountains @makeroftherunes @MauveLilyWilliams

@1attheedge @whimsicalmeerkat @kidsomeday @lizhly-writes @skyderman

@adhdavinci @owlbearwrites @anachronismstellar @anyctibius @rilannon

@lazinesswrites @zyrafowe-sny @dreaminghour

#wip wednesday #Shadow's back! probably won't get to Shadow asks today because I still need to finish TAS but it's back #anyway wips with tags:#the sum of our parts #time and hearts will wear us thin #the shadow of dust #for there's no guarantee that we'll ever come home #no easy peacetime girl here to be found

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allonsysilvertongue · 5 years ago

Text

Vice

Hawkins; The Upside - Vice

This is the tragic story of Joyce Horowitz and James Hopper.

They could not have been more different. They grew up in different part of Hawkins that set apart their socioeconomic background, which influenced their social life.

Joyce lived with her father on the outskirts of town, devoid of nearby neighbours. They were almost isolated from everyone else, just the way her father liked it, and that was the same for her in school too.

Jim, as he liked to be called, lived in the middle of town, surrounded by neighbours in white picket fence with a mother who adored him and a father who when not too busy working was present enough to be there for his son.

(So far, only Joyce had dared to call him ‘Hop’ but that would be a story for later).

In high school, Jim was popular. Not that he played football or was an athlete but he carefree and hung around with the right crowd, and it helped that he had a dark, penetrating gaze that made other girls squirm in delight when he turned his eyes on them. He could be charming when he wanted to. He was sarcastic but never made fun of anyone. Not that he went out of his way to stop bullies either.

Jim also had a vice – smoking. That was probably the only thing that Joyce and Jim had in common.

Sometimes, he would join her to smoke under the bleachers. In silence – they didn’t exchange any words or have a conversation, at least not in the beginning.

It first started when Jim asked for a lighter after patting his pockets and coming up empty. She tossed it in his direction.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

Not quite a conversation but it was something.

Joyce ran out of money to get a pack one day but still, she headed to the bleachers during a free period regardless. Second hand smoking was better than not smoking, she figured.

Jim gave her a stick from his pack.

“Hey,” he started. “If you need some cash, you can do my biology homework. I’ll pay.”

She snorted. “What makes you think that I even do my own homework, Hopper?”

“Don’t know, maybe ‘cause you’re smart. You don’t get good grades skipping homework or not studying, Horowitz. You got a what? Some B+ for the last quiz or something?”

“Oh, you been observing?”

She didn’t get an answer.

She did get five dollars from him when she passed the said homework under the bleachers on the following Monday.

“You’re not stupid, you know,” Joyce made a passing comment one day as they stood next to each other, taking a drag of their cigarette. “You’re just lazy. How’d you explain passing the quiz without even studying?”

He shrugged.

“Guess I paid attention in class and retain some information up here,” he tapped his temple with a smirk. “You going for the dance?”

“Not my thing,” she answered.

Jim took a drag from his cigarette. “Okay.”

He went with a cheerleader. And had her at the back seat of his car that night which somehow became public knowledge the following school week, much to his displeasure. He was never one to kiss and tell but the girls… They tend to share everything.

That night after the dance, after he had dropped his date home, he drove past the diner to see Joyce there, sitting at the booth by the window and sipping on a vanilla milkshake by herself. He never would have pegged her for a vanilla kind of person. He thought she would have gone for the cookies & cream or the chocolate like he would have. Interesting, he thought.

“Could have gone for the dance,” he said, plopping down uninvited across from her at the booth.

“Not my thing,” she repeated. “What are you doing here?”

There were strands of hair framing her face, getting into her eyes. She could never keep her hair neat like the other girls and he wondered about it. Couldn’t she just take a comb to it?

But, he sort of liked it. The mess - it was very Joyce.

“Waffles,” he answered.

He ate in silence but he was aware of her watching him. He never felt the need to fill the space between them with words. He didn’t feel that the silence between them was ever awkward.

Could it have stemmed from the days they spent smoking quietly next to each other under the bleachers?

When she was done, she stood up and left with a simple, “good night, Hop.”

That was the first time he was ever called that and he found himself taking the nickname in his stride.

In their last term in senior year, he saw her with Lonnie Byers. Something in Jim snapped; something made him angry; something that he couldn’t explain.

Joyce wasn’t often at the bleachers anymore.

He never understood what she saw in that douchebag who wore leather jacket as if it suited him. Was it his motorcycle?

One day, during fifth period, Jim saw her sneaking through the back of the school from where he was standing at the third floor window. He knew where she was heading. He followed.

“Thought you would have lost your way trying to find this forgotten place,” he said snarkily.

She raised her head to look at him, hand poised mid-air before it resumed its trajectory and the cigarette stick found its way to her lips.

“Missed me?” she smirked.

She was infuriating. He scowled.

She married Lonnie Byers.

Jim heard that she was pregnant days before she was bound to leave for college. She cancelled college and married that douche. He hated Byers and he became angry at her.

She would have done so well in college. She could have had the world.

Then Vietnam happened. His grades were already not good enough for a decent college so he signed up. He let himself be drafted into the army. He left Hawkins.

He got married when he came back. Joined the police academy. Led a good life, he had Sara and everything felt into place.

Until he lost her.

When he returned to Hawkins, he tried looking for Joyce. She was the only connection to the old life that he knew. Some semblance of things that were good before it imploded in his face. He found her one late afternoon, hurrying to the supermarket, haggard and tired, looking ten years older than her age.

She wasn’t the Joyce he knew.

But he wasn’t the Jim that used to smoke with her under the bleachers either.

Because now he had a new vice – alcohol - and it wasn’t one that Joyce shared with him.

------

I know it says tragic story and i meant for it go all the way to the end of the latest season, but I got busy and posted this one first. Part 2 might come up later!

#jopper #jim hopper #joyce byers #stranger things #filed under: hawkins the upside

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chvoswxtch · 2 years ago

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i'm not above begging. (1/?)

pairing: eddie munson x fem!reader

summary: eddie munson desperately needs to graduate this year, and you're the only tutor that hasn't turned him down.

warnings: mentions of drugs, cursing

word count: 2k

a/n: this was initially going to be one post but then I got carried away and suddenly was at 2,081 words (oops) so i'm thinking this is going to be at least 3 parts? i've been day dreaming about eddie munson since may & re-watching one tree hill and this idea popped in my head and i had to write it down. this is my first time writing in awhile, so i'm a little rusty. all feedback is welcomed/appreciated!

The tutoring center at Hawkins High was relatively quiet for a Thursday afternoon. After the winter finals wrapped up, things had slowed down quite a bit apart from the regulars that came in for their weekly sessions. But with spring break and final projects coming up in a few weeks, it was only a matter of time before students began flocking in desperately seeking help to reach a passing grade. That’s where I came in.

I had been working in the tutoring center since my sophomore year. Everyone always told me I was good at it because I was a very patient person, but I honestly really enjoyed it. Every time I could see a student starting to really get it, I could see that little light bulb go off in their brain, it made my chest swell with pride.

I was organizing a few review tests when I felt something touch my shoulder. All the neatly stacked papers in my hands went flying, and a shrill scream ripped through my chest at the surprise intrusion. I clutched onto the open file cabinet that was beside me and whipped my head around, my wide eyes settling on the tall figure that stood in front of me.

Eddie Munson.

His large, ring-clad hands were immediately held up in surrender, a look of shock etched onto his own features. I was pretty sure his startled expression matched my own.

“Whoa..easy there. I didn’t mean to scare ya. I uh..come in peace.”

There was a timid smile stretched at the corner of his mouth, his dark brows lightly furrowed as he studied my face. A solid minute passed before I realized I hadn’t moved. I was still in shock, and well, possibly having a heart attack. It wasn’t that I was scared of Eddie Munson, not like a lot of the student body at Hawkins High, I was just shocked to see him in the tutoring center. In the two and a half years that I’d worked here, I had never seen him. Not even once.

I’d heard the rumors about his supposed “devil worshiping” club, and about how he was a “dangerous” known drug dealer. I never really bought into it though. Eddie and I had never really interacted before. We were in completely different classes, and social circles. He didn’t really hangout with anyone that wasn’t in his Hellfire club. But I had seen him a few times in passing, and saw the way he was when he interacted with his friends during lunch. Nothing about him screamed dangerous to me. I always thought he was just..different, and definitely had a flair for dramatics.

“Oh, no no, I’m sorry. You didn’t. I mean you did. But..only because I didn’t hear you come in.”

Once I could no longer hear my heart pounding in my ears, I tried my best to appear as casual as possible. Clearing my throat, I crossed my arms over my chest and peered up at him.

“Um what..can I help you with?”

Eddie shoved his large hands into his front pockets, cursing under his breath. He flashed me an apologetic smile and began to fish around in his back pocket before he retrieved a crumpled paper ball, raising it up into his fist victoriously with a grin.

“Aha! Found it.”

He unraveled the paper and did his best to smooth it out, flipping it upside down and clearing his throat dramatically.

“I am looking for…Y/L/N, Y/N.”

His head swiveled to survey the empty tutoring center before his large brown eyes met mine again with a kind smile.

“Any chance you know where I can find them? It’s uh..kind of important.”

“Oh um well..that’s me. Hi.”

Before I could stop myself, my hand raised up to do an awkward wave. My cheeks instantly heat up with embarrassment. Hi? Seriously? That’s what you went with?

Eddie’s eyes wandered over my figure quickly, his eyes meeting mine once again with a quirk of his brow.

“Oh..well, that was easy.”

I stood there silently for a moment, lightly clenching my fists at my sides. This was the closest I had ever been to Eddie Munson before. I had never gotten to look at him properly, not up close like this. Why did I never notice how attractive he was? I didn’t feel scared in his presence. I just felt..nervous. But I wasn’t exactly sure why that was.

“Um so..why are you here? I meant..um, why are you looking for me?”

My voice came out higher than usual, and I instantly wanted to bang my head against the nearest heavy object. Eddie eyed me silently for a moment, sighing as he shoved the paper back into his pocket and pursed his lips. He twisted one of the large rings he wore around his index finger, his eyes darting around the tutor center before finally landing back on me.

“Okay, here’s the thing. You’re my last resort.”

“Oh.”

“No no no, fuck. I didn’t-I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not that..you’re my last option or anything, you’re just my last choice. Hope! I meant hope. Fuck. This is all coming out wrong.”

Eddie closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a huff of exasperation. He quickly spun around on his heel and made a beeline for the door to the tutoring center and exited swiftly. I stood dumbfounded in place, staring at the spot he once occupied, trying to decipher what the hell had just happened. Suddenly the door to the tutoring center swung open and Eddie walked through with a playful grin on his lips, stopping directly in front of me.

“Let’s start over, shall we? You’re Y/N Y/L/N, tutor extraordinaire. I’m Eddie Munson, and I desperately need your services.”

Placing one of his large hands on his stomach, he did a quick bow, and I couldn’t help but let a quiet giggle escape my lips. This seemed to catch his attention, as he looked up at me with a full blown grin, seemingly proud of himself for getting a laugh out of me.

“Wow, Eddie. I didn’t expect you to be so..formal?”

Eddie stood up straight and placed his hands on his hips, tilting his head to the side as his tongue darted out to wet his lips. An action that my brain has permanently burned into my memory.

“Look, I’m gonna level with you sweetheart. I need to graduate. I can’t stay in this shithole for another year. And as long as I can pull a D with Mrs. O’Donnell, I’m on track to finally get the fuck out of here. But, here’s the problem. I fucking hate her class. It’s so boring! I mean..I would literally rather watch paint dry. So technically, it’s not my fault I keep failing because if the class were, ya’know, a little more exciting, I might actually be able to pay attention. See, I'm a victim here, okay? A victim of this oppressive and soul crushing system that is Hawkins High. Now look, I have tried everyone. And I mean everyone, okay? Mrs. O’Donnell has assigned me every tutor known to humankind and they either flat out say no or just give up so I’m really banking on you here. And look, I’ll even pay you! I’ll be on my best behavior, I swear. Scouts Honor. Just please..please help me. I’m not above begging here. I will literally get on my knees right now and-”

“Eddie!”

My hands darted out to grab onto his biceps as he began to lower his body. The worn leather of his jacket felt soft under my fingertips. My eyes lingered over the various pins and additions he had added to it. The denim overtop was worn and faded, there were light tears and a few loose ends. I was quite impressed by it though, knowing that he had taken the time to put it together himself. I could tell how much work he had put into it, how much it meant to him.

“I’ll do it.”

“What? Really? Holy shit, you..you are a literal angel!”

I felt myself suddenly being lifted off the ground as a strong pair of arms wrapped around my waist. It took a second to register that Eddie Munson was hugging me. Not one of those awkward, half-hearted hugs you feel like you have to give. But a real hug. The kind of hug you give an old friend you haven’t seen in years. My hands gripped onto the shoulders of his jacket and I giggled at his excitement.

“Eddie, put me down! Please, I’m afraid of heights.”

He swiftly set me on my feet with a chuckle, taking a step back and beginning to wave his hands around dramatically.

“Sorry, sorry. I got carried away. Look uh, name your price. Whatever you want, I’ll pay it.”

“Eddie, you’re not paying me. It’s my job, I’m happy to help. I do have a few ground rules though.”

“Alright, sure. Lay ‘em on me.”

“First things first, you have to take this seriously. If we’re going to do this, I need you totally focused. No distractions during our sessions. I know you have your club, and I’ll be respectful of your time dedicated to that, but if you start falling behind and we need extra sessions, I need you to put your school work first. Second, please always be transparent with me. If you need a break, tell me. I don’t want to push you past your limit. If you’re going to be late, or there’s an emergency and you can’t make it, please let me know as soon as you can. And lastly, please don’t ask me to do your work. I’m here to help you, not do everything for you. Don’t even try to bribe me. The answer will be no. Deal?”

You’d be surprised how much I had to emphasize that last part. Over the years, so many people have tried to get me to just do the work for them. They didn’t see me as a resource. They saw me as a transaction. Surely the girl with straight A’s wouldn’t mind doing the work they can't be bothered with. The popular crowd was the worst about it. They thought their parent’s money and social status could buy them anything. Sometimes it made me angry whenever their words would replay in my head. But that anger usually subsided into hurt. Most of them couldn’t even be bothered to remember my name. I was just “tutor girl” to them.

But you’re so smart, it’ll be easy for you! I’ll make it worth your while. If you do my homework, I’ll invite you to the party this weekend. You can sit with us at lunch if you write this paper for me. I’ll put in a good word for you with one of the guys on the team. C’mon tutor girl, everyone has a price.

I wasn’t necessarily “popular”, but I definitely knew a lot of the popular kids. I was practically the reason some of them were able to still do extracurriculars. I spent most of the time in the tutoring center, and when I wasn’t doing that I was helping out with ‘The Weekly Streak’ school newspaper with Nancy Wheeler. Nancy and I had met towards the end of my sophomore year. I had interviewed for a spot on the paper after my guidance counselor had told me tutoring wouldn’t count as a “club activity” on my college applications. After my prolonged sulking, I decided the school paper was the lesser of all high school club evils. Nancy and I had instantly clicked, and had only gotten closer over the years. She and Robin were the only real friends that I had.

I held my hand out and looked up at Eddie with a shy smile on my lips, awaiting his answer. He cocked his head to the side slightly, eyeing me as if he was contemplating my conditions. Always a dramatic. Suddenly, a huge grin took over his mouth and his large hand captured mine. The warmth from his skin spread like wildfire all over my body and eventually settled in the pit of my stomach. My grip tightened slightly on his hand in reaction to the sensation. What the hell was that?

“Deal.”

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x female reader #stranger things #stranger things fic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #nancy wheeler #robin buckley

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corgiplays · 2 years ago

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Thinking thoughts because I've seen so much Russian Robin content but I'm putting a switch on it

So short history lesson but Poland was under Russian rule soon after WW 2 and became a communist country and was freed after an election in 1990 so

- Polish Robin who was placed in a spy program after her parents caused issues for the government (more about this later)

- She was shipped off to Russia were she spend the rest of her teen years training

- She was there when Alexie was told he had a year to fix whatever went wrong with their attempt the first time

- Robin definitely tried escaping back to Poland a few times but ended up getting caught and faced serious repercussions (omg is that Enzo?)

- She is technically Steve's age but because when she came to America her english was like nonexistent she was held back a year

- She was in the states since 1983 in Alaska but after reports of the chemical leak in Hawkins she was sent there for the rest of 1984 till season 3 starts

- Buff Robin enough said

- She tries to convince Dustin that whatever he got on the recording wasn't Russian but after a long debate she gave in to help them because she thought they'll think it's from Russia but after Steve pointed out the Indiana Flyer ride Robin knew she was in deep shit

- Robin was forced to tell the commander what's happening and got the shit beat out of her for translating their code to Americans but she promised that she'll keep them away

- During the interrogation the commander makes a comment about Robin being Polish but Steve never noticed the comment, he also makes a remark how Alexie was a traitor and that she'll wish she could meet with him instead (aka she'll wish she was dead)

- Of course that doesn't happen as Steve and Robin are saved by Dustin and Erica but the Soviet Union isn't too happy with what happened, so they send a mission file to Robin stating that she has to stay and keep an eye out for anymore Upside Down activity

- No one knows what Robin's real motives are because she doesn't want to lose her only friends

- After season 4 when Hopper gets dropped off by Enzo, Robin is there and ends up cornering him with a gun pointed to his gut and forced to tell her everything he knows

- Vecna uses Robin's trauma against her and once she's saved she slips back into her survival mindset and starts to only speak Polish or Russian while lashing out if anyone got too close

- The gang does find out about Robin's affiliation with the Soviet Union and their horrified, some broken translation from when she went into her survival mindset and an attack by a Russian spy helped put the pieces together

- Everyone distances themselves from Robin because how can we trust her after this but El keeps in touch with her because she's still Robin

- Robin tries to sacrifice herself to save the party because they will never trust her again and see lost all of her friends because of this but thanks to El for being so nice Robin doesn't die

————

- Robin is littered with scars, her least favorite is the Soviet Union brand on her torso (on the left side under her ribs) along with multiple cuts, scrapes, bullet wounds and some scars done by herself (once everything is fixed Nancy kisses all of Robin's scars so she feels better about them)

- Robin loves the snow especially when it snows at night because she has her happiest memories then

- Absolutely amazing at making Polish foods and deserts and the whole party loves it too which makes Robin happy because she gets to share her culture with her favorite people

- Has awful nightmares and her and Hooper end up trading stories of their times in a Russian Prison because they know their not alone in their fear

- Dresses baggy and more masculine because of the scars and how much she hates her body for being exactly like the Russians wanted it for a spy

- Has a surprisingly difficult workout routine because of her spy training (Steve gave up after 5 sets of one exercise, Nancy sits on Robin's back while she does push ups)

- Has a surprisingly high alcohol tolerance

- Knife tricks

————

Completely forgot Poland was once communistic which is sad because I'm Polish but wooo

Honestly this came out of the blue but I like it

#robin buckley #slight #ronance #polish robin buckley #mmm the pain of robin being taken away from her family #Please Don't Leave Me AU

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lostaroace · 2 years ago

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Nancy’s Wedding | Steve Harrington x Reader (ch.7)

Series Masterlist

Chapter Six.

Pairings: Steve Harrington x Fem!Reader.

Word count: 5371

WARNING: disgusting descriptions of what happened to Y/N in the Upside Down.

Nancy's Wedding | Chapter Seven.

Denny knocked on the door for the third time to make sure, again, that she was still alive. She was alive, but she wasn't great. For the last three hours, Y/N had been locked in the bathroom.

The moment she arrived home, she slept until Denny came back from work in the afternoon, then, she spent hours reading and analyzing the information Steve had given her in the file. That unlocked something strong in her mind that rushed into her soul like a waterfall. She picked up paper and pencil and she drew and drew and drew and drew although her wrist hurt, and although her muscles were cramping, she drew. Monsters, places, people… She wasn't very skilled in human anatomy, so those drawings weren't as good as the monsters or the places, but they were still familiar.

She went inside the bathroom after a whole night of drawing and remembering. Her intention was to have a shower, clean the graphite, ink, and other marks off of her hands, wash her pain away and get some rest. Unfortunately, once naked, she stared at her reflection for so much time Denny started to get worried. Her scars were paler than her skin, and she had a bunch of them. Until this moment, she hadn't been able to remember how she got hurt and her mother once told her that she went into an accident, although she never gave her details. Now she was more aware of them. Some of them seemed to have been produced by claws, deep into her thigh and stomach; others looked like some kind of animal had torn her skin in their aim to eat her. She remembered the bats. Those scars on her body were left when she was only nine, with time they became part of her body, only noticeable because of the lighter tone and their rough edges.

Looking at her hands, covered with graphite and ink, all she could see was dried blood and wet dirt. She could feel them under her nails, deep down, unable to be washed completely. The memory of a chewing sound struck her mind; she remembered the bloody and raw meat she had to chew like gum, over and over, and over and over again, to have something to eat. Monster's meat.

She threw up.

"Y/N, dude, you're freaking me out!!" Denny wrestled with the door trying to open it.

Flushing the toilet, Y/N responded, "I'm fine!! I'm fine!! I'll shower now."

"If you're not out in ten minutes I'm breaking the fucking door."

"Fine!!"

Because she only had ten minutes (she strongly believed Denny was able to break the door), she took a quick and steamy shower treating her bandaged injuries carefully. Seven minutes later, she went out of the bathroom and Denny cleaned and covered the wound at the back of her head again. She had been very careful with the bandage on her sprained wrist.

Y/N waited until Denny went to work to pick up the phone and call Dustin Henderson.

"Dustin speaking, who is this?"

"Hi, I–"

"Y/N!!! You called!! I'm so glad you called. Are you alright? Did Steve apologize already? You kno–"

"Did he tell you?"

To her question, Dustin was silent for a few moments before sighing in sympathy. "He told me after the wedding. I scold him about what he had done at the party and then he– yeah, Steve told me about your time in the Upside Down."

"Is it real, then? All of it? All my nightmares, all the monsters… everything?"

"I'm sorry. I know it's shitty, but yeah, it's all true."

"Fuck the X-Files, man, they should do a documentary in Hawkins."

The man laughed. "I totally agree. So, how are you?"

"I don't really know."

"You can count on me. If you need someone to talk to, I'm available. We're friends now, remember?"

"Yeah," she smiled despite herself, "but I'm sure my three months were more intense than your adventures."

"I'm sure of it. By the way, do you remember how you survived for so long?"

"You don't want to know."

"Oh… that disgusting?"

"More."

"Ew!!"

"Yeah… Anyway I– I just needed to– I don't really know what I needed to, but you helped. Thank you, Dustin."

"Anytime. Take care."

"You too."

Although Steve had fulfilled his promise of visiting her to make sure she was alright, Denny had been the only one to answer the door, allowing both, Steve and Robin, to come into the living room and talk to her, but not with Y/N. Denny had become the guardian of her friend, who was still suffering the effects of her concussion, unlocked trauma, and nightmares that were so strongly violent that her screams woke the neighbors.

It was Friday night, nearly midnight when Denny came home with a strong reek of alcohol, not from her mouth but from her clothes. She was moody and was frowning and cursing under her breath. Y/N watched the whole display from the sofa slightly entertained.

"I'm such a loser," Denny claimed, throwing herself into the other side of the sofa, once she had changed into something clean.

"What happened?"

"I went to The Silver." With her grunt, Denny messed up her very short and colorful hair. "Do you remember I had a family dinner? Well, turns out that my dear mother was trying to set me up with a dude. A dude! Look, I get it, tradition is important for them, but I came out to them when I was in high school and they kicked me out! It's been a long way to be where I am and be comfortable with who I am. When my parents wanted to resume contact last winter I was thrilled. I thought they had finally accepted me, you know? I'm such a fool."

"You shouldn't blame yourself for keeping up the hope of being with your family."

"Yeah… Whatever. The point is that all this time they've been scheming. At least my mom had. She wants me to marry Robert Chen because his family is respectable and has money. I told her that we are in America, not in China. I am American. I was born and raised in Chicago, I don't play by her rules anymore. I'm not going to just lay down and accept to marry a man just because it's what she wants."

"What did you do when you saw it was a trap?"

"I introduce myself to Robert Chen saying 'Hi. I'm Denisse Wang, but please call me Denny. I'm twenty-eight. I work in a record store and I'm a lesbian. How are you?'. My mom went berserk, obviously."

"Did it make you feel better?"

"You had no idea. So much power in a few words. Anyway, so the dinner went down from there. Everything was very awkward. Once the torture was over a headed to The Silver."

"Why The Silver?" Y/N already knew the answer.

"I was expecting to see Robin," Denny mumbled. "She was in the kitchen, of course, so I just saw Spencer and Steve. I'm going to have to give points to Steve because every time he was free, he went to where I was and talked to me. And, more points, because he didn't talk about you the whole time, which I'm sure was a real effort seeing as you are his favorite topic."

"Shut up."

"He talked about Robin and it makes me think that she might be interested in me as much as I am in her. I mean, three years of you two working together and I have to meet the woman of my dreams when you fell down the stairs. That's destiny. Serendipity!"

"I didn't know you were that romantic. Is sickening."

"Hypocrite."

"How did you end up covered in liquor?"

"Some drunk asshole dropped his Silver Sin all over me!! That top was fucking new!"

After the conversation, they went to their rooms. While Denny was having a deserved rest on her bed, Y/N was looking at the extraordinary amount of new drawings that had pilled out on her desk. She stared at them for long hours.

"This is our only chance. Listen to me, honey, I want you to run as fast as you can to the door open in that tree."

Her dad pointed to the tree the flower-face monster had used to go out and drag inside a dying dear. The door, as they've been calling it since God knows when, was some sort of membrane that pulsed with colors from purple to magenta. The bark used to grow faster to cover the membrane. Because the flower-face monster was bigger than the ones they had found on the journey, the bark was growing slower.

She looked at her dad again. He was dirty, skinny, and covered in dry blood. His beard had never been this long, it made him look older. He had been limping since their last encounter with one of the monsters, and it seemed like the blood kept coming out from the wound in his stomach.

They had learned fast in that world that the monsters were drawn by the smell of blood, therefore they had been covering their clothes and wounds with dirt and blood from the monster they had killed while trying to survive. Monsters they tried to feed from.

He put his hand, big, calloused, and heavy, on her head. It was a goodbye.

"Run. As fast as you can and don't look back."

The girl nodded, eyes fierce and brave. He approached the monster as quietly as he could before stabbing him in the back with his hunting knife; a very big and sharp knife he always took with him on the woods excursions with his child and that on this occasion had helped him to protect and feed his daughter. The monster, being bigger than the ones they were used to, howled in pain before turning towards him with a very pissed growl.

Y/N ran. Ran as if her life depended on it because it was. She went through the mushy door, the bark making the door smaller and smaller. The warm air of the end of June was fresh in comparison to the one she was leaving behind. The light was so bright for her eyes that it took a few efforts to finally be able to open both of her eyes again. As she turned towards the door, which kept closing, waiting for her father to cross it too, she saw how the monster had wrapped his flower-face around her dad's head; his body convulsed like a fish out of water, and then he went limp. The monster inserted his claws into the human's body and tore it apart.

She didn't scream. Unable to find her voice, the girl gasped for air, eyes wide open with terror. The bark covered the door and there was no trace of the monster, of the other world, of nothing. She waited there. Her glassy eyes soon went dry.

Where was she?

What was she doing there?

Why was she soaked in so many disgusting things?

Looking around her, she found a house. The fence was tall, but she followed it until she found a door. She needed to ask for help, obviously. She was so tired and thirsty and hungry and cold… The door was open, so she went inside. A big pool occupied most of the house's backyard. When was the last time she had seen that amount of water? As she approached the edge of the pool, a flash clouded her mind. She remembered being there, right next to the pool, but in her memories, the pool was empty and covered in thick roots that moved and pulsed and…

"Hey! What the fuck are you doing here?"

The voice of a person made her jump out of that cloudy state. A teenager was looking wary at her but didn't come out of the house. Hearing something about calling the police, the girl sat on the edge of the pool. The light was so bright and the tiles on the bottom were so light that she was unable to see her reflection in the water. As thirsty as she was, she sank her hands into the water in cup form, pulled them up, and drank as much as she was able to handle. It tasted awful, not only because of the chemicals in the water, but the dirt in her hands also played an important role in it. Still, she was thirsty and she couldn't remember when was the last time she drank water, therefore she drank more and more before the police came.

Chief Norton took a look at her and disappeared inside the house again.

She was alone for a few more minutes, but she wasn't so thirsty anymore. She still was tired and the cold was soon being changed with the warmth of the first weeks of summer. Chief Norton made her go with him in his car. He asked her questions, but she wasn't able to find her voice. She wasn't even able to find the need to make her mind be understood, she just wanted to sleep.

And sleep.

It was eleven in the morning when she rang the doorbell. Her nightmares woke her up early on Saturday morning, so she called Dewey to find out if Steve and Robin worked that night as well and, as it turned out, they had the full weekend off. She was carrying a thick folder with the drawings of the last few days, next to her, Denny bounced impatiently from one foot to another.

Robin, who apparently had just woken up, opened the door with her hair turned into a bird's nest. The moment Robin saw them she went through mix-up emotions and tried to tame her hair the best she could with her fingers while doing her best not to die from embarrassment. Yup, Robin had a crush on Denny. Robin rushed them inside rambling about drinks, offering them something to eat, and being very polite in her role as host.

"Is Steve home?" Y/N asked her.

Robin seemed to deflate with fondness, finally hearing Y/N's voice and seeing by herself that she hadn't just broken due to the trauma or the concussion.

"He's still sleeping. I'll wake him up."

"Why don't you get dressed and I treat you to a very late brunch?" Denny took her opportunity. She wanted some time alone with Robin to get to know her better and, at the same time, to give Y/N the chance to talk with Steve alone.

Robin blushed harder but understood the implications of Denny's offer. "Sure, let me… I'll be quick."

"There's no rush."

"That was smooth," Y/N smirked once Robin wasn't in the living room anymore.

It took Robin twenty minutes to get ready, the guests didn't mind the wait and Steve was still sleeping. Robin took care of hugging Y/N before leaving. She didn't approach Steve's bedroom door, she wasn't a creep; she prepared a pot of coffee and put on some mixtape on the stereo at very low volume.

Noon was over when Steve finally emerged from his room. He went to the kitchen, bewitched by the smell of coffee, still half asleep with his eyes half closed.

"Robs, pass me the sugar," he demanded with a hoarse voice.

"Robin went out with Denny," she responded handling him for what he had asked for.

Steve stood there questioning if he was still asleep or not. She looked rough. She had clearly lost weight in the last few days probably due to stress, nightmares, and a terrible eating schedule; she seemed to have slept poorly or nothing in the last few days. When she gave him a small shy smile, awkward by his silence and tension, he took the sugar from her hand, put two full spoons on his coffee, and poured some milk in, but didn't drink it.

"How are you feeling?"

"Exhausted," she responded honestly.

He gulped his coffee too fast and excused himself to the bathroom. With the door closed behind him, Steve took a look at his reflection, fixing his hair, washing his face, and brushing his teeth with fervor. The last thing he wanted was for Y/N to smell his morning breath after drinking because that was the only thing that made him sleep when he got home at seven that morning after work, some heavy drinks and he was ready to sleep like a baby without worrying about nightmares anymore. As he went out, he found Y/N placed on the sofa and the music was a bit louder now.

He sat next to her and waited. She opened her thick folder and showed him the new drawings. She explained what she had been remembering.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"You wouldn't be suffering like this if I had never mentioned it."

"Don't get me wrong, these memories fucking suck, but I would really be pissed at you if you had known this and kept it to yourself. It still doesn't feel mine, you know? It's like I'm seeing a movie, not my life."

"I understand what you mean. I don't really get how eidetic memory works, but I went to the library and did some research; if you are able to remember everything with such detail as the book suggested, I guess it must feel more like a movie than anything else. I still have doubts about whether or not what I lived was true. I've– Well, I've been writing it down. Not only my experience, but I also collected memories from the kids and the others. I plan on writing a book about it."

"Do you think the government would allow you to publish it?"

"I don't write to publish, I write to have it all there and share it with them. Our story. What we did. What we became. What we lost. An homage of some sort."

"Would you tell me what happened to you and the others or should I wait until the book is finished?"

He laughed at that and started to tell her the most unbelievable story about a small kid who went missing on November 3rd, 1983, and his mother, who won't give up on the search. The friends of this boy found a girl in the woods, a girl who turned out to have powers. Then he told her about the government experiments in the Hawkins Lab, the Upside Down, and the demogorgon. He told him about Max showing up in 1984, how her stepbrother was a nightmare, how the Mind Flayer had gotten into the boy again, how Dustin found a baby demogorgon, and how they bonded in their hunt for the monster. Steve also told her about the summer of 1985 and how he met Robin at Scoops Ahoy, how they decoded a Russian secret transmission finding that the whole mall was a secret base for the Russians to open a gate. In the meantime, the Mind Flayer had gotten inside Billy, Max's stepbrother, and was using him to kill people with the only goal of forming a meaty host it could use. Finally, Steve told her about Vecna and Eddie and the demobats and the big earthquake that almost ends with all.

"Sound wild."

"Yeah… It's like a shadow for us, you know? It's something so big for us and we can't tell anybody about it. If you weren't already deep into this, would you have believed me?" She didn't hesitate in shaking her head. "When I found out that I liked you I was very conflicted because I knew there were a lot of things I must lie about and hide and pretend never happen and– It stopped me, in a way. Does that make sense? I'm glad that I don't have you lie to you anymore, but I still feel… I don't think the price you had you pay for my honesty is worthy."

"Steve, are you seriously blaming yourself for when I was attacked by a demogorgon because Henry Creel, or Vecna, or One opened the first gate in history just to have a laugh?"

Unable to respond, Steve just shrugged.

"Jesus, you're so dense."

And just like that, she cupped Steve's face with her hands, holding him in place as she dived in, closing the gap between them, kissing him with affection and care. A forgiving kiss Steve melted on.

"I cannot believe we're doing this."

"What?"

"Steve, you picked to go watch a kids' movie for a date!"

"Technically, it's a double date, as you and Denny had come on board with the plan. Plus, The Lion King it's been out for a week and it's the only thing people are talking about."

"Y/N wanted to watch it, didn't she?"

"Shut it."

"How the mighty had fallen. It took all the fire in Hell to make you go to see a movie with me or Dustin, and now you are going to watch The Lion King on your own free will. Outstanding!"

"Don't make it weird."

"It is weird. Can you really tell me that your sixteen-year-old you wouldn't have freaked out with this?"

"Leave that guy in the past where he belongs and let's enjoy the fucking double date, which was your idea all along."

"You know we can totally hear you, right?" Y/N spoke from behind them, a big pot of popcorn between her arm and body, holding two large sodas in her hands.

Steve and Robin felt ashamed of their conversation with the sudden appearance of their partners and blushed. Denny gave Robin the pot of popcorn and one of their sodas to have an arm free to wrap Robin's shoulders with it.

"Do you want me to wrap your shoulders too, pretty boy?"

"Shut up!" Steve pleaded, taking both of the sodas from her hands.

He had given her the tickets before she went to buy the snacks while he and Robin stayed in the queue. With her free hand, Y/N picked some popcorn and fed Steve, who took it like a show of affection louder than wrapping an arm around somebody.

The June weather in Chicago was thick and warm, and they were thankful that the theater had an air conditioner. Since their first kiss in May, Steve and Y/N had worked on their friendship and romantic relationship with steadiness. It was so much easier to have someone to talk to about your dreams, your nightmares, your flashes of guilt or trauma… Their banter and flirty mischief were still on point, although now she took more rides home than before, and there was way more kissing. There were also more longing stares and heart-shaped eyes between the two of them and they were getting into a very comfortable dynamic.

That's why she kept feeding Steve popcorn while they were waiting in the queue, and she didn't care about the gagging sounds and complaints from Robin and Denny as she pulled Steve from the collar of his shirt and kissed him, all smiles.

When the movie ended, they were as excited and obsessed as the children that had gone to see the movie with their parents. Denny was torn between how Scar was the bad guy, but at the same time, he was so relatable! Steve and Y/N were trying to sing 'Be Prepared' although they couldn't remember the lyrics properly. Robin was obsessed with how much Hamlet they had added to the plot and how Rafiki talked to Simba. And the jokes! Oh, the jokes! The four of them truly enjoyed a fucking children's movie with their hearts and souls.

As they walked, talking too loudly about the movie, on their way to grab something to eat, they crossed paths with a couple. The woman stumbled with her heels and Steve was fast as lightning to hold her and prevent her from falling face first into the floor. The woman laughed with awkwardness, thanking Steve. The man of the couple was more entertained than bothered by the interaction; he waited until Y/N looked at him to give her a smile.

"Carter!" She greeted him absolutely pleased to see him.

"It's good to see you without bleeding," he smiled, lowering his head. "Ross told me you were better."

"As good as new."

"Well, now that your boyfriend has saved my date, we'll be going now."

Before resuming their walk, Carter winked at them and shook Steve's hand. Denny and Robin were dumbfounded by the interaction, and Steve wrapped an arm around her shoulders with an insecurity strike. It wasn't jealousy; he wasn't afraid that Y/N left him for Carter, it was pure insecurity because he compared himself with Carter and the younger man was smarter than him, had more money, and had huge prospects for the future. Carter was just what Mr. Harrington expected his son to be, and Steve had strong insecurity issues. Y/N, with the great intuition that knowing one's partner provides, hugged Steve by the middle, walking just like that.

****

On October 31st, 1997, The Silver officially became a 24/7 diner. Y/N had been promoted to general manager of the day shift and did a pretty amazing job. She had been in touch with Steve's friends often and had used Owens' services as her therapist. It wasn't his job, of course, but he did it gladly; in the end, he felt some sort of pride in seeing her all grown up and sane after what Brenner wanted to do to her. Robin had been promoted from The Silver Diner to the chef, and she enjoyed her new position very much, especially since her shifts were always in the morning and she had all the afternoons and nights to be with her girlfriend, Denny. Steve, on the other hand–

"What are you doing still here? We're going to be so late!!" Robin burst into the locker room. She started changing her outfit in a rush.

With a soft smile on her face, Y/N changed her clothes too. Something classy and elegant, a cocktail white dress with the neckline off the shoulder, purely inspired by Audry Hepburn, with smart cute heels that just fitted the dress. Robin was wearing a three-piece suit with a giant flower on her lapel, no tie.

As they went out of the diner by the employees' entrance, they found Denny waiting for them in the alley. She was wearing something that fitter her usual fashion sense with tight jeans, military boots, a white crop top, and a black leather jacket, all her hair was gelled back. Whoever had seen them would say they were going to a Halloween party, of course, although four in the afternoon seemed a little too early for parties.

Denny drove them. Dustin was already waiting for them at the entrance next to Mike. Dustin threw his hands in the air while claiming "Fucking finally" in a bitchy tone.

"Wait, where's Steve?" Mike questioned them.

"Isn't he here already?" Robin freaked out.

"No. Oh my God, this is so stupid. I'm calling him on the cellphone again." Dustin walked away taking his own cell phone out. Those things were still too expensive, quite heavy and their connectivity was questionable.

"The dude who ran this shit said that if you didn't show up in the next five minutes, he was going to skip you and you would have to make another appointment," Mike explained.

A moment later a taxi stopped at the end of the stairs and Steve got out wearing a three-piece suit, still tying his tie. Robin ran downstairs and covered Steve's eyes.

"What the fuck are you doing, Robin?"

"You're late!! You can't see the bride before the wedding, it's bad luck!"

"How do you expect me to get up all those stairs with my eyes covered, smartass?"

"Let's not be ridiculous, come on!!" Y/N yelled while clapping her hands like a coach trying to focus their team. "To our places, come on!"

Dustin and Mike ran inside to tell the officiant that the groom and the bride were already there. Robin gave up on stopping Steve from looking at Y/N when Denny lift her up to her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Y/N waited at the top of the stairs for Steve to join her. He gave her an appreciative look.

"You look stunning, as always. It's so no fucking fair."

"You, on the other hand, look like shit."

"Harsh."

"Give me that," she tied his tie for him pretending not to notice the longing stare he was giving her. "What did the editors want?"

"They want to know if I can make a sequel of Stranger Things, they were very pleased with the cliffhanger at the end."

"I told you it would be better to separate the events in different books than in a big fat book. So?"

"They signed me for the three other parts of Stranger Things, and two other books with different topics. A great amount of money too."

"Steve Harrington, the next Stephen King, as The New York Times had called you."

"I think the best part of my books is your illustrations."

"Obviously."

"Guys, I know you are all flirty and all, but you were the ones that wanted to get married on fucking Halloween and the officiant wants to go home, so…" Dustin called them from the door.

Steve offered his arm to Y/N, who took it without hesitation.

They didn't do a big wedding. The ceremony at the courthouse was short and with only four people as witnesses. After that, they rented the wedding hall of a hotel to do a small costume party with their friends. Well, they were mostly Steve's friends and his parents, but Y/N liked it anyway.

Mr. Harrington went although he had claimed that being a writer was worse than being a bartender; mostly because he found out that Steve had done in the first month since the book was published the same amount he did in a fucking year. Maggie had forced him to go to his son's wedding and behave threatening him with divorce, which made Mr. Harrington finally understand that his whole world would collapse; there would be no more status quo.

Joyce and Hopper treated Y/N like one of their kids and Will had confirmed to her that there was no way out now, she was officially part of the family. Nancy and Jonathan came from New York too, they had finally moved there after Jonathan accepted the job at Time magazine and Nancy got a job at The New York Times with time.

The party was small and didn't look like a wedding party, but it was perfect for them. She danced with every one of their guests. She had invited Spencer and Dewey too, who were enjoying themselves like teenagers; she also invited Doctor Ross, Doctor Greene, Doctor Carter, and some of the nurses from County General as she had become close to them, but Halloween meant a busy shift in the ER, therefore they came to congratulate the new couple before going to cover their shift at the hospital.

Time After Time started to sound through the speakers. Steve was suddenly next to her with a big happy and pleased smile on his face offering his arms for the dance. They chose option number four of slow dancing, just like the first time they did so with this exact song, and it was magical. Y/N pressed her forehead against Steve's shoulder, next to her hand, enjoying the proximity of their bodies in that rocking movement that they called dancing. Steve pressed a kiss on her head, right behind her ear, and started whispering the lyrics to her.

"If you're lost you can look and you will find me. Time after time. If you fall, I will catch you. I'll be waiting time after time."

The End.

Thank you so much for following the adventures of Nancy’s Wedding. Sadly, there is no more plot to work with, so this is the end. I hope you had enjoyed this little story of mine. I’ll be working in something Eddie Munson x Reader soon, plus some John Carter (ER) x Reader.

Feel free to suggest things and fandoms and whatever you like; I’ll take it into consideration.

Again, thank you for reading, liking, and commenting on the story. I’ll keep working to improve my writing.

Taglist: @blackbirddaredevil23 @marisurmommy @lovesreality @noname10234 @p-rspective @heyyimmisunderstood @out--of-the-reality @lxdyred @i-always-come-back-xoxo @shireentapestry @popcrone818 @scoobiessnacks @mrsjaderogers @nightthou @selfdeprecatingnerd @junglecoxk @royal-sunflower @averagestudent03 @angelulls

#steve harrington x you #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington #steve harrington fic #steve harrington series #joe keery #fem reader #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #steve stranger things #stranger things fic #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #er crossover

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