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runraerun · 1 month ago

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Steddie Amnesia Fic: 1/3

-> Part 2 | Part 3 | AO3

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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sp0o0kylights · 1 year ago

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Steve Harrington was wearing a Hellfire t-shirt.

It was far too tight on him, the name of the club stretched wide over his chest. The sleeves dug into his biceps, making them pop even more than they usually did, and that was before he crossed his arms.

Worse?

It was short.

Which meant the damn shirt was constantly riding up to give everyone a nice show of the smattering of hair that trailed down past the band of Harrington's jeans.

The same hair that Eddie was determinedly not looking at.

“Henderson, a moment?” He crooked a finger, a smile on his face that was more feral than welcoming.

Rather than cower or even acknowledge that Eddie was two seconds away from murder, Dustin just gave him a gummy grin, all too pleased with himself and his scheme.

“Sure Eddie. Steve, don't just stand there, go help set the booth up!” Dustin gestured to Hellfire’s sad little table, crammed all the way in the back of the gym.

Jeff and Gareth both reacted to the suggestion like a rabid squirrel had been set upon them, nervously inching towards the other side of the booth as Harrington sighed and--shockingly--did as he was told.

‘What,’ Eddie thought angrily, ‘in the everloving fuck.’

“Do you guys mind if I set this down on the table?” Eddie heard Harrington ask as he stormed away, Dustin on his heel.

They wandered just around the corner, out of sight and hopefully, out of the fallen king’s hearing range.

Eddie wasn't sure if Harrington would try and white knight the very much deserved dressing down he was about to give.

Didn’t want to chance it, considering the downright weird relationship he had with Hellfire's freshmen.

(While he’d heard many a tale at his table regarding King Steve since the newest recruits had joined Hellfire, most of them dissolved into arguments without ever really going anywhere.

Best anyone could figure out was that Dustin and Lucas had a bad case of hero worship, while Mike owned a begrudging amount of respect that hailed from a series of misadventures.

The very same misadventures that, despite all protests to the contrary, was clearly some sort of babysitting gig for Harrington.)

Either way, plenty of the King’s court would have loved to take this opportunity to fuck with Hellfire.

Given that Henderson was absolutely too old to require a babysitter at fourteen, Eddie would bet his lunch money that was what Steve was here to do.

Something the club couldn’t afford since they were forever and always two seconds away from being stripped of club status and banned from school grounds.

“I would love to know what went through that all A’s brain of yours when I said,” Eddie whirled on Dustin when they were firmly in the clear, voice low and furious. “no Henderson, do not invite King Steve to help, he is an invading force and would ruin our peaceful kingdom!?”

He clasped his hands behind his back before leaning into Dustin’s face. “Because clearly whatever you heard wasn’t that.”

To Eddie’s continued frustration and confusion, Dustin did not treat this like the threat it was.

None of the freshmen had ever truly treated Eddie like a threat--had somehow skipped that part of the usual onboarding ritual entirely.

Eddie, town freak and drug dealer, who had cultivated his looks and craziness to such a degree that most everyone steered clear, wasn’t used to it.

Everyone had been afraid of him at some point in this shitty school. Jeff, Gareth, hell even half the staff--and that the dorky trio of fourteen year old's clearly thought this all was play-acting made his eye twitch.

Even if it was--maybe, sometimes--welcome.

“I know what you said, but I’m telling you I’m right.” Dustin argued immediately, and oh God, he was using that tone again.

A hand went up into the space between them and Eddie groaned aloud, knowing what was coming.

“First,” Dustin ticked a finger up, “Hellfire really needs the money. Even thirty dollars would get us new figures, but more than that, if we don’t fundraise, we can’t go to Gen Con!”

Dustin's eyes bored into Eddie’s, full of fire and conviction

“Yes,” Eddie said through gritted teeth, “but--”

“Second!” Dustin cut him off, and God the little shit even threw him a look while he did it, like Eddie was the one being ridiculous here!

“We had to fight just to get our table! Principal Higgins was in algebra today practically begging the mathletes to show up, but then tried to tell us we couldn't be here? That’s messed up!”

As if denying them a spot to fundraise was the worst thing that asshole had ever done.

Eddie sighed, breath blasting out of his mouth like a dragon’s.

“Because people think we’re freaks and satanists, Henderson. You don’t typically invite freaks and satanists to the school’s annual Holiday Bazaar. Especially not when all the local moms are paying to hawk their bullshit crafts and tupperware!”

It was more than that of course. The Hawkins High Holiday Bazaar was a tradition spanning several years now. Starting in the gym and spilling clear into the parking lot, everyone from local artists to even some local shops came to host a small table for the day, thus growing the event from a small school fundraiser to a Hawkins' “must-do.”

Half the fucking town was here to sell, and the other half was here to shop, which meant Principle Higgins had wanted Hellfire banned from the fucking premise.

Eddie had been forced to pull out one of his trump cards he’d been saving--blackmail on Higgins that related to the man’s not--so--legal addiction to Percocet that he relied on Reefer Rick for.

(And bless Rick, that hadn’t been the only tidbit he’d shared with Eddie about Higgins. That information, however, Eddie needed just so the asshat wouldn’t give him the boot from school entirely.)

The only reason Eddie had pulled it out to secure their rightful spot, was because of Gen Con.

It was Hellfire's White Whale, their grand adventure, and this was going to be his year to take his friends on one last epic quest to make memories of a lifetime surrounded by people who understood them.

Come hell or high water, Eddie was going to Gen Con--but being able to fundraise by selling wares and baked goods at the stupid Holiday Bazaar would go a long way to help.

Even if he had to listen to the band repeatedly play ear-bleeding renditions of Christmas songs.

“All the clubs get to have a table, and we’re a club!” Dustin continued, like it was that simple. “But you know, I get it. We look scary.”

He gestured down to his own Hellfire shirt, before gesturing towards Eddie’s entire outfit.

Like Eddie didn't know what he looked like, let alone that he'd made this outfit specifically to scare people away from him.

(And maybe add some rockstar flair to this dinky little hick town.)

“You know who doesn’t look scary?”

Dustin held out his hands and swiveled his body like he was presenting a prize instead of gesturing in the vague direction of;

“Steve!”

Eddie’s left eye twitched.

‘You can't kill him, you need his character for the campaign.’ He told himself firmly, even if he envisioned strangling Dustin like a chicken.

Cartoon squawking and all.

“The King isn’t going to help us fundraise, Dustin.” Eddie said, in an effort to break down why Harrington couldn't be here. “He's just going to cause us problems that we can’t afford to have.”

So many problems, half of which Eddie couldn't think of because if he did, he'd start spiraling.

“Really? Because as you keep saying, Steve used to be the King. People love him, Eddie! Mom’s love him.”

Eddie had pulled himself back up to his proper height a while ago, and now rocked back on his heels while he ran a hand down his face.

There was no getting through to Henderson when he was like this.

Not unless Eddie really lost it, and it was practically club lore that he only lost it when someone missed an important game.

One cannot keep a herd of sheep if their flock is terrified of them, after all.

(“Perhaps you’re just a giant fucking softie.” Tiff, one of Hellfire’s graduating members, told him once. “Honestly dude, I bet you throw up stuffing.”

“Shut up Tiffany, your choker is on backwards again.” He'd spat back, completely offended and not at all trying to distract from how true that was.)

“We can’t be satanic if Steve’s the one selling cookies!” Dustin finished doggedly.

“We’re not even selling cookies--that’s not the point!”” Eddie shook his head, hair flying. He was not going to be sidetracked, he wasn’t!

“Harrington is going to end up siding with all the moms about how we’re all wasting time with D&D, if he even spends the whole time at the table. Is that what you want?”

He stuck out a ringed finger, poking at Dustin’s chest.

“Every single person who comes by our table has to be convinced D&D is a writing and math based game. Good for the mind and souls of growing, impressionable children. A game that got a bad rep because of a few silly images.”

A pitch he and Tiff had come up with during the third or fourth time they had to convince an adult that no, just because their shirts had a dragon on it, didn’t mean they were summoning demons in the drama room.

“Harrington can’t do that because Harrington doesn’t even know how to play!”

This Eddie punctuated by throwing his hands in the air.

Given the startled look of the mother-daughter duo passing him by, clearly was louder than he’d intended--but screw it!

He was right!

Hellfire was in a precarious position to both fundraise and do a little damage control among the slightly smarter members of this shithole small town, and Harrington rolling his eyes and gossiping about how stupid it was would hinder that.

“Okay, first of all, Steve’s played D&D with me and he didn’t even kill his character.” Dustin said it like he was unveiling a smoking gun and not lying through his ass--which Eddie would absolutely be calling him on the second he was done talking.

Because King Steve? Play D&D?

'Ha!'

“And he’s not gonna say shit because we--me, and Lucas and even Mike!--asked him to help, and he helps when its serious. I know you have some weird grudge with him, but I’m telling you Eddie he’s our golden ticket to Gen Con!”

“You’re killing me. You are standing here, acting as a friend, when you are bringing a-- a dark force into the midst our of mission--” Eddie hissed, because he was losing the fucking fight and he knew it.

Dustin Henderson was not a man easily swayed.

Had never been, even when the odds were stacked against him (and Grant and Gareth were howling in his ear.)

The set of his shoulders and the glint of the little shithead’s eye meant Eddie wouldn’t be able to use him to oust Harrington--if he even could get him out without the dick causing a massive scene anyway.

As always when outgunned, Eddie flipped to dramatics.

“Betrayed! By my own chosen heir no less!” He moaned, pressing the back of his hand over his eyes as Dustin scoffed.

"Don’t be so dramatic! Steve will help, I promise! Just don’t be a dick to him.”

Conversation apparently over, Dustin turned around to head back to the table

Snidely, he added over his shoulder: “Plus we’ve all caught on to the heir thing Eddie. You tell everyone that so they do what you want.”

The dick.

“You’re too fucking smart for your own good. I’m gonna start feeding you paint chips to bring that IQ down.” Eddie muttered angrily as Dustin went back to their little table.

He gave himself a moment to get his shit together and stomp a foot like a child when Dustin was around the corner and thus couldn’t witness it, before following his wayward sheep back.

Could only pray to any deity listening that Henderson’s meddling didn’t blow up in Hellfire’s face.

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