#latbg

[mustlovesteve]

I loved the first commission so much, I couldn't resist ordering another one as a parallel of sorts! This lovely drawing is by @toktopus-art. It's based on a scene from Chapter 26 of my vamp!Eddie/Steve-gets-Vecna'd fic, laughing at the broken glass.

Scene excerpt is below, and the AO3 link to the fic is on my pinned post.

Steve wished they could just stay like this, but there were only two more songs left on this A-side. “Hey, can I see your bracelet?” Eddie asked. If not for his all-too-casual tone, Steve wouldn’t have suspected anything. “Pulling out all the stops, huh?” Steve asked wryly. Eddie flashed a shameless grin at him. Chuckling, Steve tugged his sleeve down before lifting up his wrist. To his pleasant surprise, the glow-in-the-dark effect was actually noticeable. Eddie took a moment to share in the admiration of the bracelet before grabbing Steve’s hand and tugging it down. “This is better, yeah?” Eddie asked. “Huh?” Steve turned to look at him again, but Eddie was staring straight up at the sky. “Than just sitting in your car in the freezing cold by yourself, I mean.” “I had Freddie Mercury with me.” “I’m serious.” Eddie finally turned his head to face Steve again. His expression certainly matched his words. Steve couldn’t help but tense up at the shift in tone, though he was swiftly eased by the way Eddie’s thumb brushed across his knuckles. “I...hate that you even have to ask.” Steve managed to smile, even though Eddie frowned at that. “Yeah, this is better.” One song left. It wasn’t fair.

[captn3]

@disabledknockout

Happy Valentine's Day!

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[mustlovesteve]

laughing at the broken glass

Summary:

“Steve,” Eddie hissed. “What. The. Hell?” “Hey?” Steve offered. He felt Eddie shudder against him. Having a vampire’s teeth so close to his neck should have been terrifying, but that wasn’t the emotion that Steve was experiencing right now. He wondered if he really had broken his brain. - In which Steve Harrington stumbles upon a vampiric Eddie Munson and makes some questionable decisions, including locking Eddie in his basement. Though Eddie isn't thrilled with this arrangement, he seems awfully excited to watch vampire movies with his captor. Steve is determined to not lose anyone this time, but with Vecna seeking out new prey, he might just lose himself.

Pairing: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Word Count: 150k, 40/40 Chapters Rating: Explicit (violence, dark themes, sexual tension) Major Tags: Steve Harrington-Centric, Vampire Eddie Munson, Steve Gets Vecna'd, Angst and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn Please see full tag list for all warnings!

Commissioned Art, drawn by @toktopus-art:

Author's Note: I've been working on this for over a year now and I am so proud to finally mark it as completed. For those who have been reading all along, thank you so much for your support! For anyone checking it out now, I hope you enjoy the rollercoaster!

[mustlovesteve]

omg thank you ; -; so glad you’re enjoying it this much!!

One of the best Steddie stories by @mustlovesteve 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌✨

[mustlovesteve]

LATBG sequel

I just uploaded the first chapter of the sequel to laughing at the broken glass—(don't) paper over the cracks! You can read it HERE.

Thanks to @stevehairingtit for betaing!

[mustlovesteve]

laughing at the broken glass

AO3 link

Summary:

In which Steve Harrington stumbles upon a vampiric Eddie Munson and makes some questionable decisions, including locking Eddie in his basement. Though Eddie isn't thrilled with this arrangement, he seems awfully excited to watch vampire movies with his captor. Steve is determined to not lose anyone this time, but with Vecna seeking out new prey, he might just lose himself.

my friend @spicy-cannoli drew some lovely fanart of my fic, laughing at the broken glass. i decided to share them alongside relevant scene excerpts (w/ her permission of course)! fyi, she doesn't draw steddie, so don't follow her for that.

these naturally include spoilers (for chapters 14-23 specifically), so i'm putting the rest of them behind the cut.

from Chapter 14 (15th uploaded chapter including the prologue):

“Heeeeey, Ste— What the fuck?” Eddie leapt back when the coywolf bounded towards him with a loud squeal. His efforts to dodge were futile. The nail-bat clattered against the pavement as the coywolf tackled him and sent him sprawling backwards. She licked at Eddie’s face, muffling the rest of his complaints. “Oh, so you’re going to pretend you don’t know who that is,” Steve said, letting the sarcasm drip from his voice. He leaned back against the door and took a bite of the garlic knot. “That’s real cute, Munson.” Eddie looked up at him, eyes wide and arms spread out like a starfish. “She sure knows who you are.” “Steve, what the hell is this thing?” Eddie questioned. He shoved the coywolf off him and scrambled to his feet. Nose wrinkled in disgust, he tried to wipe the slobber off his face. “Jesus. I’d ask if you spontaneously adopted a dog this morning, but this is not a dog!” “Good catch,” Steve said. He took another bite of the garlic knot and gestured with it as he spoke. “Hey, question for you. Remember what I told you to not even try to do? That power you might have?” Eddie’s eyes kept darting between Steve and the coywolf. His absolutely baffled expression would have been funny if Steve wasn’t so ticked off right now. “Did you happen to try using it last night? To, I dunno, find someone, maybe?” “I still don’t know what—” With another squeal, the coywolf trotted back to Steve. She looked over at Eddie, yip-howled, tried to tug Steve towards Eddie by the hem of his sweatpants, looked over at Eddie again, and yip-howled again. “Well, she found me,” Steve deadpanned. It shouldn’t have felt so satisfying to witness the slowly-dawning horrified realization spreading across Eddie’s face, but it did. Steve finished the garlic knot and crossed his arms. “Y’know what time she came by? Four-thirty.”

-

from Chapter 20 (21st uploaded chapter including the prologue):

Dustin kept mentioning that Eddie was being way too nice in explaining the rules and that it was freaking him out. Mike seemed to be pissed off as soon as he saw Steve and grew livid over the span of the first hour. Max, who had refused to explain why she’d chosen to show up today, was steadily amused throughout, while Lucas became increasingly confused. Erica went from curious to delighted. Will was acting the strangest among them, with flashes of sadness that seemed unfitting for someone who was finally playing DND with his friends again. That giant wizard hat that he was wearing made it all the more jarring. The kids didn’t act this strange the whole time. For the most part, they were all pretty absorbed in Will’s game, Steve included; Will was really good at drawing everyone in as he weaved his tale. The strangeness primarily happened whenever Eddie tried to explain something to him, or whenever the kids looked at Steve, even though—he could not emphasize this enough—he wasn’t doing anything. “Okay, why is everyone acting all weird?” Steve finally asked, when the game had wrapped up. Beside him, Eddie coughed. “Yeah, I’m here. Shocking, I know. Get over it. I was already here anyway.” Tilting his head and tipping ever so slightly towards Eddie, Steve added, “Eddie’s the only one acting normal, actually.” “He’s acting normal, huh?” Max asked, narrowing her eyes. “Interesting.” Rather than slip on one of her usual smug looks, she paused before biting her lip and looking away. “I mean, that’s—” “I don’t think he’s acting normal at all,” Dustin insisted, pouting. He leaned towards Eddie and pressed his palms against the table. “Eddie, why won’t you be that nice to me? Is it because I didn’t let you drink my blood? Because that’s really unfair. I would have, you know.”

-

from Chapter 23 (24th uploaded chapter):

Steve stared at Eddie, slack-jawed. That question was completely incomprehensible. He wasn’t even sure it was in English. “What the fuck is a doghouse?” Steve asked. “Oh fuck.” Eddie looked horrified, clutching the sides of his head. “Fuck. But I didn’t even…” “Wait, no.” Steve squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. “I know what a doghouse is.” “Oh. Okay. That’s...good.” Eddie lowered his hands, which were still shaking, to his sides. “I— Shit. Uh. Hang on.” Eddie was gone in a flash, leaving Steve alone in the bedroom.

-

BONUS:

once again, all of the art was created by @spicy-cannoli, and my fic can be found here!

[mustlovesteve]

god DAMMIT to make this spicy scene work i gotta add YET ANOTHER CHAPTER to this sequel miniseries because LOGISTICS and HEALTHY COMMUNICATION I GUESS

[mustlovesteve]

I would love to know what the major differences are between the LATBG that was intended to be published in its entirety in one month and the LATBG of today

So, it turns out I had horribly misremembered everything regarding my timeline for this fic. Whoops!

I found an old version of the document from 09/26/2022, 5 days before I uploaded the Prologue. In that draft, I had apparently written up until when Steve and Eddie meet up at Dustin's house, which is Chapter 20 in the published version. (For reference, until I skimmed that document, I was convinced that I'd conjured up Lucy sometime in early 2023 and that I had only written up until Chapter 13 by that point.)

Each chapter got a major overhaul before I uploaded it, so that Halloween deadline was always a pipe dream, but the events of those chapters remained largely the same.

However, that draft included an outline for the rest of the story. Those events are pretty different from what happened in the final version.

Some major differences between that outline and the final version include:

Vickie was going to be brought into the fold much earlier, for the sake of having a double-date before Steve and Eddie even got together. They were all going to watch the 1970's Carmilla movie, during which Steve was going to make some Interesting and Sad Observations about why that movie was "allowed" to be made. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to do this without Steve and/or Robin coming across as careless about Eddie's safety.

Steve was going to go back to work sooner, which would have provided many convenient timeskips once Steve was Cursed. Thus, events like dinner with Wayne, Steve and Robin getting matching friendship bracelets, Eddie and Lucy tracking down Steve near the train tracks, etc. weren't going to happen.

Lucy's back-alley vet adventure was going to be an entire chapter. This would have explored Eddie's feelings about not being able to talk to his other friends for the indefinite future.

Eddie was possibly going to continue living at Steve's house in the guest room after he reunited with his uncle. Theoretically, Eddie would have asked Steve if his "offer was still good" about letting Eddie stay there. This would be shortly after Steve had a panic attack about his parents potentially discovering Lucy. I was pretty conflicted about this.

Steve was going to wonder whether Eddie had accidentally "Charmed" him with vampire magic and discuss it with Robin at work. As hilarious as that could have been, I'm glad I decided to ditch the idea. I didn't want to deal with the implications of a gay man (in my headcanon for this fic anyway) being suspected of doing something like that, even if Steve was sure that it was just an accident.

The hand-licking was still going to happen, but it would have been in Steve's kitchen instead.

Steve wasn't going to realize that he was Cursed until he saw the clock, because the hallucinations were going to be more subtle.

Whether Eddie ended up living in Steve's guest room or not, he was going to be there the morning that Steve saw the clock. When Steve stopped answering him, Eddie was going to break his goddamn door down.

Eddie was going to be present for the "Steve is Cursed" meeting and it was going to be ugly. Steve was going to essentially throw Eddie under the bus when Eddie alluded to the whole "Steve thinks that Dustin wishes he'd died instead" thing because he really didn't want Dustin to know that.

The Final Battle was going to be totally different...

EDIT: Original Ending (SPOILERS for the finale):

Vecna, who had been saving up his energy all week, was going to actually (albeit very briefly) control Eddie and break him out of the lab. Before Vecna gained full control, Eddie was going to ask Lucy to chew his foot to slow him down. This would have allowed Lucy to beat Eddie to the Upside Down, and luckily save Dustin from a demodog.

Once puppet!Eddie got closer, Lucy was going to start convulsing as she tried to resist puppet!Eddie's commands to attack everyone. Puppet!Eddie would close in on Steve, slam him into a wall and dislocate his shoulder, and taunt him. Steve, in a stroke of brilliance, would decide that was the best time to kiss Eddie for the first time. (There is a specific piece of fanart that inspired this scene lol.) Vecna, seizing the opportunity to be especially cruel, would have chosen that moment to draw Steve into the Mindscape (basically mocking him like "oh u really thought that would work huh?").

El would kill Vecna quickly, but as a parting gift, Vecna would trap Steve in a warped version of the Mindscape. This Mindscape would rapidly erode Steve's sanity, until he would start to beg for someone to just kill him already. El would start to worry that Steve might end up like her mom if he was left there for much longer. Eddie, upon hearing that, would get the idea to bite Steve to buy them some time for El to find Steve and draw him back out.

I scrapped this around 02/12/2023 when I talked with someone on Discord and realized that this made no sense based on what we knew about how Vecna's powers worked. If Vecna died, there was no logical reason for the Mindscape to persist. I was willing to take a lot of liberties (ignoring the spiders and shit), but not to that extent. I came up with the published finale shortly after this!

Other noteworthy changes that I made along the way:

In the very early planning stages, many major plot changes were made because I stopped to consider the ethical implications of certain character choices. For example, the Basement Arc was originally going to be a lot longer, until I realized that Steve couldn't justify hiding Eddie away for much longer while Dustin and Wayne were so agonized over his death.

Lucy was originally going to be more attuned to Eddie's moods, but I decided it was funnier for them to essentially compete for Steve's attention.

Eddie wasn't going to confess his feelings until a bit later.

The night before they planned to fight Vecna, Steve was going to call his parents, only for that to turn into a horrible hallucination. After ending that call, Steve was going to call Hopper and propose the Contingency Plan.

Dustin and Robin's reconciliation-with-Steve chapters were going to happen after they beat Vecna. I wanted to focus more on Steve and Eddie at the very end, so I reworked that.

The final few hallucination concepts were pretty last-minute, so I'm surprised that I liked how they turned out.

This is...likely a much longer response than you were expecting...but uh...I hope it was interesting!

[mustlovesteve]

Between my fic and the show itself I think about rabies so often now

[mustlovesteve]

love how i get more comments when i update at night which only happens when i'm rly nervous about the chapter lol

[mustlovesteve]

1666 kudos ayyyy

[mustlovesteve]

It’s so useful when my brain decides to procrastinate on one thing by finally tackling some other things that I had been procrastinating on.

Anyway I’m finally putting some serious thought into a summary rewrite. Send all your thoughts and prayers because holy fuck longfic summaries are so difficult.

[mustlovesteve]

why do i always have great ideas at the 11th hour

[mustlovesteve]

laughing at the broken glass - masterpost

Main Story: AO3 Link | Promo Post

Sequel: AO3 Link

Fanart | Commissioned Art: Chapter 08 & Chapter 26

Chapter Summaries: 00-13 & 14-26 & 27-END

Original Draft vs. Final Version: Major Differences

Blood Drinking Logistics

Spotify Playlist

Lucy (image ref)

[mustlovesteve]

this sequel miniseries was supposed to be 5 chapters

how did it end up like this it was ONLY A KISS IT WAS ONLY A KISS NOW I'M--