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runraerun · 15 days ago

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Steddie Amnesia Ficlet

-> part two

cw: lots of head trauma/brain injury/recovery stuff.

Steve wakes up in the hospital with someone snoring loudly on his leg, mouth open, drool getting soaked up into the scratchy hospital blanket over him.

Steve just stares.

It’s… Freddie? No, that’s not right... Eddie! Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson, known delinquent and drug dealer… resting his head on Steve’s lap.

What the hell…?

Steve reaches up with a wobbly, IV-ridden hand to clumsily pat along his head, but instead of meeting messy hair, he meets a thick wad of bandages. He flinches when he hits an especially tender spot.

It’s not much but it’s enough to wake Eddie Munson up with a jolt, and a random jumble of words that sounded something like, “the dice have spoken!”, but Steve can’t be sure. Not with the sharp ringing still going off inside his skull.

“Steve? Steve! Oh thank fuck, Jesus H. Christ, you scared the ever loving shit out of me.” Eddie stood and grabbed at one of Steve’s shoulders, shaking him enough to elicit another wince.

“Oh, damn, sorry. I’m like a fucking bull in a china shop here, man. There’s way too much expensive, breakable shit here. I’m not used to it. I accidentally ripped your IV out the other day... Fuck. The nurses hate my guts.” Eddie chuckles, eyes wide and solely on Steve, talking like they were old friends or something.

But that can’t be right. Steve doesn’t remember saying more than two words to Eddie Munson during the entire time he knew he even existed, and even then it was just to discuss weed prices.

“For real though, talk to me Harrington, how you feelin’, hm? Loopy? Gonna yak again? Apparently they got you on the good stuff,” Eddie flicks a liquid filled bag hanging above Steve and shakes his head, “but they keep cutting you back. Dicks.”

Steve’s eyes try and follow Eddie’s erratic movements but his eyes ache the more he moves them. He blinks against the harsh fluorescents and tries to open his mouth. And thank God, Eddie Munson seems to take this as a sign and shut up.

“What happened?” Steve finally croaks.

One of Eddie’s brows jumps. “You don’t remember?”

Steve gives his head a small shake. Did Eddie hit him with his car or something? Is that why he’s sleeping at his bedside and talking to him like they’re buddies?

“You fell, Stevie.” Eddie makes a whistling noise and mimicks something falling with his hands, then makes a crashing sound when his hand lands on Steve’s bandaged head. “Like a coconut out of a tree. Landed right on that big ol’ melon of yours. There was blood everywhere. It scared the shit out of me and the kids. Especially when you wouldn’t wake up.”

Steve’s throat feels like sandpaper, but he manages to swallow, his throat clicking as he did, and gets out, “The kids?”

Eddie seems to notice, even before Steve can ask, and reaches for a water bottle with a straw already in it, and half chewed. Eddie’s own, no doubt. Against his better judgment, Steve accepts it when Eddie offers it to him. He was just so goddamn thirsty.

“Don’t worry, they’re all fine. They were just shaken up. I’ll radio the little gremlins and give ‘em the good news in a sec.” Eddie’s smile falters a little, seeming lost for words. Like he wants to say something, but can’t quite get it out.

Steve finishes swallowing his few, meager gulps of water before he asks, “What is it?”

“Don’t freak out—“ Eddie begins.

And, okay, that’s exactly the thing you tell someone before they freak the fuck out. Steve’s stomach is subject to a growing, sluggish panic. “What? Dude, tell me—“

“It’s your hair.” Eddie seems genuinely pained at having to deliver this crushing of a blow to Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

Steve can hear the beeping from the monitors he’s hooked up to begin to pick up speed as his heart begins racing. “My hair?”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, it’ll grow back! They just had to take a little bit off where the stitches went, you can hardest notice it—well, that’s a fucking lie, you could spot that landing strip from space—but I think if you part it to the other side it won’t look so… y’know.”

“No, dude, I don’t know.” Steve says, eyes wide, brows pinched.

“Like a drunk toddler took a pair of rusty kitchen shears to your mop.” Eddie says, huffing out a nervous sort of laugh.

Steve groans, half due to the bastardization that’s happened to his favorite feature, and half due to the migraine that’s looming on his horizon.

“You’re still pretty, Stevie, don’t worry.” Eddie grins, eyebrows raised, like he’s trying to be cute or something.

That weirdest part is, it’s kind of working.

Steve must have hit his head really, really hard.

The doctors eventually come in and perform all sorts of tests, and he tries his best to comply with them and jump through whatever hoops they make him jump through. He just wants to get the hell out of this hospital bed.

Unfortunately for him, Steve hadn’t exactly aced any of the tests.

In fact, he had failed most of them pretty fucking dismally. He couldn’t remember the date, who the president was, where he lived, couldn’t say the alphabet backwards… although, who the fuck can do that? He stands by that failing grade.

A couple of CAT scans later and it’s clear that Steve’s brain got smacked around a little more than they had originally thought.

Among a pile of other stuff, the thing that sticks out the most to Steve is his diagnosis of something called short term amnesia. They explain it like the past 2 to 3 years has just been wiped from his brain. The last clear thing he really remembers is getting the shit beat out of him by Billy, and then it all sort of gets jumbled. Fragmented. The doctors explain that this is pretty typical for head trauma patients.

He’s a head trauma patient, now.

It’s normal for memories of trauma to link, creating spiderwebs throughout your brain.

Which, that’s great. So when he gets beat up again, there’s always a chance his brain will try and erase his easy, happy years and revert back to a trauma default. Really helpful brain, thank you.

And the thing that sucks the most is that his years after the Billy beat down sound pretty great. Traumatizing, sure, but great. Once the Upside Down shit was locked up, with every scary nightmare fuel monster inside of it, life in Hawkins didn’t sound all that terrible.

He lived with Robin, who’s his best friend, (his ‘platonic soulmate’ even, as she explains it), he’s working a retail job, (also with Robin), and coaches the high school basketball team during the evenings. He’d even been talking with Hopper about joining the force.

Well, he was. Now he’s more or less useless, working full time at re-learning his life, along with a couple of fine motor skills that got glitchy after the fall.

And then there’s Eddie.

Eddie, who’s apparently also his best friend, only their soulmate link isn’t platonic at all.

The strange and weirdly exciting reality was that Steve Harrington had woken up from his 3-day medically induced coma with not only a full fledged relationship, but a boyfriend.

It’s a lot to digest, and part of him still doesn’t even know how to process it, but hearing the stories being told around him, seeing how Eddie is practically living in his and Robin’s two-bedroom apartment, and just… the way Eddie looks at him?

It’s with love—Steve can see it. Feel it. Eddie’s practically vibrating with it.

What’s even crazier is that when Steve looks at Eddie, he feels the exact same way.

It’s like looking at the stars. Steve’s heart skips a beat when those dark eyes of hit him, and Steve wants nothing more than to make Eddie smile—no, better than that, to make him laugh, just so he can watch Eddie’s adam’s apple bob up and down and hear that manic, unhinged cackle. It’s downright delightful. Steve loves being in relationships like this, where it’s all consuming.

Steve may not have the memories of falling in love with Eddie, but he has all the feelings.

No one talks about it with Steve, of course. Maybe they think it’s going to be too heavy for him to process that he’s into dudes now, but Steve isn’t a big dumb baby. Sure, he’s got a pretty severe brain injury, and yeah, alright, it takes him a minute to remember people’s names sometimes, and he has a harder time controlling his emotions, but he isn’t a complete invalid. Only a little bit of one. He’s working on it, dammit.

And Eddie is so painfully, frustratingly patient with him. He never pushes. He’s clearly letting Steve retrieve his memories before he makes a move, because despite his whole outward appearance, Eddie Munson is a goddamn gentleman. He never so much as reaches for Steve’s hands, but Steve can tell by the way their pinkies graze when they watch movies late at night that he wants to.

Steve can tell by the way Eddie teases him, the way he’s there with him through his recovery, that he doesn’t ever make Steve feel stupid when he asks the same questions over and over again, when he cries at the drop of a hat or when he gets sort of confused about the lay out of his apartment—he doesn’t care about that of that.

Because he’s in love with Steve. It’s so painfully romantic, it brings a painful lump to Steve’s throat every time he thinks too much about it.

The two of them are driving to one of Steve’s therapy sessions, Eddie in the driver's seat, Steve in the passengers, listening to a low racket of some kind of heavy metal music. Eddie always keeps the volume low now, for Steve.

He’s just been so intensely good about everything that Steve needs to try and do something good for Eddie in return. He needs Eddie to know that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel that they’re both currently lost in.

“I’m sorry about this, y’know.” Steve says when they finally pull up the building that has ‘Brain Injury Recover Center’ written on the front. So all the boys and girls with scrambled eggs for brains know where to converge.

“Don’t worry about it, man. I work the evening shifts, remember? My days are free.” Eddie explains, and Steve wonders if he’s had to be told this bit of information a couple of times now. Sometimes it takes a few times before something sticks to his brain now. His short term memory is still majorly flighty. But no, Steve remembers that Eddie bartends at a local bowling alley most evenings. He’s gone a few times. Not to bowl, of course—too much hand eye coordination involved—but just to hang out with Eddie. He’s pretty decent at Ms. Pac-Man though.

Steve shakes his head. He knows his mind must have wandered because there’s been a lull where no one’s spoken. Eddie never seems to care about that though. “I don’t mean about the drive. I was talking about… y’know.”

“Wha’dy’mean?” Eddie mumbles as he backs into his parking space, hand on the back of Steve’s headrest.

Steve sighs and decides to just come out and say it: “I mean having your boyfriend forget everything about you and your relationship. I just… that must be really tough.”

Everything in Eddie Munson comes to a jarring halt, hand frozen over where he’s turned to ignition off.

It’s sort of unnerving—Eddie is always moving, fidgeting. Damn near bouncing off the walls. But now it’s like someone hit the poor guy with a freeze ray gun.

Steve chuckles softly as he reaches out and touches Eddie’s arm, giving him a playful jostle, to loosen him up a little, “it’s okay, Eddie. I know. You don’t have to keep going easy on me. I’m gay! Or, bi-sexual. Whatever.” Steve shrugs, “see? Not falling apart. I can handle being in love with another dude. You don’t need to keep babying me.”

The side of Eddie’s mouth twitches into a downturned smile that he seems to be trying to hide.

“I know, I know. Not just any dude.” Steve rolls his eyes, a smile still firmly on his face. He takes Eddie’s hand from the steering wheel, and Eddie seems to watch it go in a detached sort of awe. Steve wonders if Eddie’s proud of him for being so cool with it all. “In love with you.”

“Steve, I don’t think—

“Wait, just let me finish.” Steve asks, and Eddie blinks and works on closing his mouth. Knows it’s important to let Steve get his thoughts out quickly, lest they be lost to the giant black hole inside of his beat-up brain now. “I know that I don’t remember any of the important stuff with us. Our first date, or our first kiss or, y’know, any of our other first firsts. So maybe it feels like you’re cheating on the old Steve with me? But… Eddie, I know it’s crazy but even though my brain forgot all of the specifics; my heart didn’t. I look at you, and it’s all there. I’m still so into you, dude. I can feel it, even though I don’t remember how I got here. I’m in l—“

“Steve! Stevestevesteve wait, holy shit—!” Eddie’s eyes snap up from his intense stare at the place where their hands are linked. “Steve—”

“Yeah?” Steve prompts when Eddie doesn’t seem to be able to find the words. He runs his thumb gently over Eddie’s knuckles. It feels so nice to finally be able to hold his hand again. They fit together so well, and Steve wonders briefly if it’s some kind of muscle memory.

Eddie opens his mouth a few more times before he remembers how to make the words come out.

“Steve. Buddy. We’re… we’re not dating.”

Steve’s face falls, and he can feel a lump form in his throat, but he keeps a firm hold of Eddie’s warm hand in his own. “Yeah, I know, I know. We haven’t had any time to be a couple. And it’s probably been torture for you, man. You’re so busy taking care of me and making sure I don’t freak out over everything that you’ve clearly been neglecting your own hierarchy of needs.”

Eddie raises a brow.

Steve chuckles, “Shut up. It’s a therapy term.”

Eddie laughs in his throat. “Steve, you gotta slow down and listen to me.”

He turns his shoulders so that he’s fully facing Steve while he reaches his free hand over and tugs at one of his earlobes. “Got your hearing ears on?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he nods just the same.

“We… we weren’t dating before your accident,” Eddie speaks slowly, his voice warm, gentle. “Hell, I didn’t even know you were, y’know, into dudes like that. Much less me.”

Something throbs dully behind Steve’s eyes. It’s the start of a migraine—the one that makes it hard to process much of anything. Steve squints, trying to make sense of what Eddie’s saying. “…you’re not my boyfriend?”

Eddie shakes his head very, very slowly. “No.”

Steve snatches his hand back like he’s only just now noticed how burning hot Eddie’s hand is.

He settles back in his seat, staring out the front window. The sounds from the outside world are muffled, and everything feels far away and sort of… Made up. Just like everything he’d imagined was going on between him and Eddie. Not real.

He feels painfully detached from reality. Unmoored. Maybe this was the disassociation thing the doctor mentioned might happen…

“Are you sure?” Steve asks, risking another glance over to Eddie, who hasn’t taken his eyes off him for a second.

“Pretty fuckin’ sure.” Eddie snorts.

“Oh, God. This is… I’m—sorry. I’m so stupid. Fuck, I gotta—“ Steve suddenly attacks the door handle with a clumsy fury that has his hand fumbling with the handle for way too long. Fucking busted up, bruised as fuck fucking brain-!

“Steve, it’s okay, dude,” Eddie says from behind Steve, but that’s easy for him to say; he didn’t just humiliate himself in front of his not-boyfriend, definitely-crush, possibly ex-friend—“Steve, wait!”

Steve flees the van on unsteady feet, not daring to look back.

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hyperdramas · 22 days ago

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call me by your name | lee seokmin

pairing: lee seokmin x reader

warnings: non-idol au, boyfriend!seokmin, crying!seokmin, some pouting, minor misunderstanding, mentions of feeling inadequate, mentions of jealousy, lots of kissing, fluff (and angst if you squint a bit), petnames ("sweetheart", "sweetpea")

now playing: futile devices, sufjan stevens

"Seokmin, can you come here for a minute?"

It had happened again.

Seokmin's deep brown eyes were pulled away from his phone as he shuffled his way into the kitchen, fluffy socks dragging against the ground as he approached you with wide, worried eyes. He wore a brown button-up, horn-rimmed glasses greeting you as he appeared behind you.

You hadn't called him his usual nicknames—Min, Minnie, and Seok—all day today, and you continued to refer to him as just Seokmin. You never did that unless you were angry, sad, or feeling another strong emotion, and you hadn't said anything to him about it yet.

He was waiting for you to say something to let him know what was wrong, but you said nothing. In fact, you were smiling and acting like your usual self, which meant you weren't sad or angry about anything.

Seokmin tried not to overthink, of course, but he couldn't help it: what if he had said something earlier that hurt you? What if he screwed something up without knowing? What if he had did something that made you feel unloved? Is that why you stopped calling him by his nicknames?

"Yes?" Seokmin's voice was pitched up a bit as he came and rested his head on your shoulder, to which you leaned your head on his.

He said nothing, but his heart broke a little more, confusion etching his features as his lips pursed together in a little pout (that you couldn't see).

"Which one would you like?" You offered a paper menu to him, phone open to Doordash as you were choosing your order from a Korean takeout place. He picked something absentmindedly, brain still flying a mile a minute trying to figure out why you were calling him by his whole name.

"Okay, Seokmin, thank you." You pecked his cheek quickly, closing the menu as you started to input your orders in. His eyes were watering now, and his nose was starting to run as he fell quiet, obviously not wanting to be loud or annoying to you.

Seokmin shuffled his way back to the couch, tears flowing freely now. He didn't know why he felt so strongly about the fact you weren't calling him Minnie or Seok, but it really did make him worry.

He felt inadequate at this moment, feeling as if he didn't offer you enough love to be called by his nicknames. Seokmin felt jealous, jealous that there could be other people out there—other males out there—making you feel better than he could.

After you finished placing the order, you went into the living room, stopping short at the sight of your boyfriend crying to himself.

You were confused beyond belief—why was your boyfriend crying? He didn't seem sad or bothered by anything, so why did he start sobbing out of the blue? Did you do something to him? Did you say something to him that hurt his feelings? Did you ignore him for too long?

"Oh my god, Seokmin? What's—what's wrong?" You asked, rushing to his side as you collapsed on the couch beside him. He fell silent, still sobbing as he pawed at his eyes like an agitated child.

You were confused as to why he was crying, hand on his thigh as you shushed him, pushing his hair away from his tear-streaked cheeks. He continued to cry into his hands until you finally got him to quiet down, and you then took your hands in his, still wiping at his wettened cheeks.

"Seokmin?" You asked again, and he removed his hands away from his eyes, gaze sharp and pressing as he muttered "It's that."

"What?" You pressed, confused, and Seokmin sighed, lips quivering as he continued. "You keep calling me Seokmin." He said his name with such venom you almost jumped at the sheer emotion you felt from his words, and you tried your hardest to understand, eyes falling to his hands that were laying limply in yours. He wasn't even holding them.

"Why do you keep calling me Seokmin? You always call me Minnie, Seok, Kyeom, or some other nickname you come up with for me, but today you've not said one. You've only called me Seokmin. Did I do something wrong? Did I say something that—that hurt you? I don't even know what I did—why aren't you calling me by my names? What did I even do?" Seokmin started to ramble, voice growing higher and his speed picking up as you watched him in surprise, taking his hands in yours once again.

"Hey, hey, Seok." You released a breath you didn't know you were holding, and your boyfriend looked back up at you from his shoes, tears falling again as his eyebrows furrowed. "What?"

"I'm not mad at you, and you didn't say or do anything wrong," You reassured him, scooting closer as you turned his face to yours softly as he looked at you with wide, lost brown eyes.

"I just got caught up in my day. I was so busy with finishing work and cleaning the house and ordering us dinner that I just—I just forgot about you. I forgot the most important thing." You sighed, hands trailing down Seokmin's face as your fingertips tickled his jaw.

"If anything, I thought you were mad at me. You were crying, and you never cry without telling me why." You say softly, and Seokmin shakes his head softly, barely moving as you pressed a kiss to his still-quivering lips.

"I love you, you know that? Whether I call you Seokmin, Minnie, Kyeom, or baby, know that I'll love you forever and always tell you if something's wrong. You never have to wonder about me, okay? Always ask me." You pleaded, and Seokmin nodded again, sighing as you took him in for another kiss.

"I'm sorry again, Minnie." You apologize, and Seokmin wipes the tears from his face, nodding as his cheeks stain a red color. "I forgive you. I'm sorry that I overreacted."

"You didn't overreact. I would react the same way if you stopped calling me sweetpea or sweetheart." You smiled, and Seokmin's hand slipped around your waist as he smiled, kissing your lips softly as his chapstick tickled your kiss-swollen ones.

"I won't ever stop." Seokmin promises, smiling again as you lean in and kiss him again, and again, and again—as if apologizing for every nickname you have that you hadn't called him in ages.

taglist: @oojiehae @kyeomssant @realmofclouds (please comment if you want to be added to the taglist!)

reblogs, comments, and likes are appreciated! thank you for reading <3

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