why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?

my requests are always open! & find fics for other fandoms on my old master list here <3 

current request list

eddie munson/reader:

when light is fading

sleeping beauty

made bright by you

get the darkness to dance

till we made what we are

you kissed me just to kiss me

brushing Eddie’s hair

the one the lighthouse left alone

sung between the flesh and hope

robin buckley/reader:

once in twenty lifetimes

alstroemeria & amaryllis

my heart softens

in your eyes

how it can hold me up

no one ever got my soul right like she could

when the hoping ends part 1 2 3

you light the spark

until she stepped in

all these memories

you were all on my mind

don’t blame me for falling / plant new seeds

love that lasts

this fabulous show

she’s the sunset

can’t tire of thinking ‘bout you

uptown, get around

took us back to times

best years

steve harrington/reader:

multi part fics:

time flies by / time’s gonna take me

darker than amber

stories tucked away

moments stolen

the summers we saw

all in doubt

with Rome below us

bring back one last time

a palace from ruin

oneshots:

the road not taken

he lives on a landslide

the season of the sticks

passed down like folk songs

I hope this pain’s just passing through

under gold street lights

give me hope in the darkness

can we go to august back in time

would we have turned a corner

all the singing came easy

darks becoming beautiful

didn't have it in myself to go with grace

a strange work of art

just polyester

give this boy a beautiful view

a song inside the halls in the dark

the loss we learned

my heart softens to your name

surely some revelation is at hand

you drew stars around my scars

some escape from my sin

this slope is treacherous

been on a journey they can't see

take me back to places I feel loved in

with grace

dreamt of you all summer long

one by one we made it up

you know im always coming back to this place

now these songs will hold & hide your name

we used to be giants

wisdom teeth

maybe I've lost count of the nighttime all ins*

ill always hold your hand in the car

is life only a lesson if it hurts

when the hurt would hide from me

you know you're beautiful

just say the word & ill be yours

we were the song in the silence

you smile in the winter

you're the only one that meant a thing to me

we gambled our souls to the summer

some summer night I hope I see you again

if only you could see yourself in my eyes

constant and cold, how do we live with this

cause you talk to me & it comes off the wall

oh its always you

asking strangers for answers

our veins are busy

holes in my false confidence

last fall you were with me

for island fires & family

how we knew love was here to stay

micro waves

we kissed as though nothing could fall

put your hand in mine*

and i let the rules bend

its cursed and its crazy to try

doves and ravens

bound to burn / tell the heroes / keep me afloat

Little Mermaid AU 

after hours

golden moments

for all those dreams

never been afraid of any deviation

ill always hold your hand in the car

kill the guards, open the gates

save me from hitting the floor

slide on in by my side

to ease this troubled mind

Happiness Tidal

days like today are the antidote

it’ll be okay, cuz I'll stay

dealing in darknesses / let me know when i’ve got room

confessions should be better planned

days with nothing but laughing loud

summer’s shown where we should go

i’ll crawl home to her

something always brings me back to you

without fear

first shootin’ star that you ever saw

coming round, falling down

people who carry me

damn permanent revery

demons / the hurt starts leaving

cool it off

are we destined to burn

honestly destined to fall

hurt me to hear you say it felt broken

maybe we’re the same star

from summer she is made

opening the car door for light

i’ve learned to lose you cant afford to

blood on the pieces

bring back / gather our ghosts

id wait all night

made his peace with letting go

in my heart

curse of us sinning and healing

love in the dark

i wanna be her run-to

Break Steve Harrington’s heart. It seems silly now. Silly and pointless and small and cruel.

Shame and regret only elevate the anxiety racing through your veins. You only want to talk to one person about it, but you can’t, because the one person is the reason you’re in this mess.

And you realize that the only thing scarier than not getting out of here is losing Steve on the way.

-

Robin, Dustin, and Erica are okay. They’re okay. They have to be okay. If they’re not okay, then you and Steve’s sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice at all. It was just fucking stupid.

If they’re not okay, it means they’re not coming to get you out. It means you and Steve and all of them are stuck down here with no way out.

God, let them be okay. And let you and Steve be okay, too, while you’re making wishes.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Steve asks. He’s been gearing up to the question for the last five minutes, sitting and stewing so loud it's like his thoughts are bouncing around the room like a ping pong ball.

“Don’t you dare,” you say. “You know that door wouldn’t have held.”

The door. Steve ran to hold it when the Russians started pushing on it, and without thinking, without even breathing, you went to help him. You were the first down the hatch that may have led to safety, and the only one who climbed out of it. You didn’t even consider the consequences. You just saw Steve, alone, struggling.

“You don’t know that—”

“Yeah, I do,” you snap. “If I hadn’t come back, all five of us would be sitting here right now.” You test your binds, pulling up until pain sparks along your wrists, and you give up with a sigh. “And you know it.”

Steve goes quiet.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You did have a choice—” he says.

“I wasn’t going to leave you alone, Steve, so, no, there actually wasn’t a choice.”

He goes quiet again.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why?” he repeats. “You could have saved yourself. Probably could have made it out. You were the first down that hole, y/n. But you came back. Why?”

That’s the real question, isn’t it? It’s also the one you don’t have an answer to.

“Because I—because—”

“What?”

You shake your head though he can’t see it.

“Look, we can talk about all the reasons my idiot self decided to come back for you, or, we can find a way out of here..”

Steve hesitates before asking, “Got any bright ideas?”

“No.”

“Cool.” Steve huffs. “Me neither.” He rolls his shoulders, shoulder blades grazing your back, and oddly, each brush of his skin is a wave of comfort.

At least you’re not alone. At least Steve is here to make crappy jokes. At least, at least.

-

Nothing scared you more than the Russian soldiers themselves, in their uniforms and with their clipped words you couldn’t understand.

Then they dragged a thrashing, yelling Steve out of his chair and through the door, and you realized there are scarier things than soldiers in this base. The most dangerous thing, it seems, is you. You and all the feelings you don’t understand.

Time drags and claws by, and you’re powerless to do anything but fight against your binds and listen. Every few seconds, a crack echoes through the vents, like a fist hitting bone.

Every few seconds, Steve screams. Every few seconds, another piece of your sanity breaks off.

You don’t think you’ll ever get that sound out of your head. His pain on loop until the end of time.

And when the door finally opens again, the Russians haul a limp, bloody boy in a sailors uniform inside, dropping him unceremoniously into the chair tied to yours. He slumps against your back, unconscious, as they rebind his wrists and ankles.

It takes everything in you not to cry or scream curses or thrash pointlessly in your own chair. None of that will help Steve.

Nothing you can do will help him. He’s passed out, bloody and bruised and definitely concussed, and all you can do is sit with your back to his and hope he wakes up. Hope you both don’t die down here.

Panic courses through your veins like a lit flame, building up like explosive gas. To keep from screaming your head off for help that isn’t coming, you settle for a decade old coping mechanism that never really did much in the first place. Pick a song, hum or sing the words, give your brain something to focus on apart from the

And by the time you’ve made it through three rounds of Total Eclipse of the Heart, you’re less inclined to jump out of your skin.

“The hell is this, karaoke night?” A rough, raw voice croaks at your back.

“Steve?” you ask. “Holy shit, Steve—“

“Are you singing… Bonnie Tyler right now?”

You let out a laugh that’s half sob, and say, “I was—it helps me calm down.” You crane your neck in a useless effort to catch a glimpse of him. You can feel the twitch of the muscles in his back as he winces with each breath, and you can smell sweat and that sharp rusty sting of blood wafting off him, but you can’t see him. “Are you… I mean, I know asking if you’re okay is a shitty question, but, are you okay?”

Steve lets out a rattling breath. “No, not really. But what’re ya gonna do?” He clears his throat, and ends up on a coughing fit that ends with him spitting something you hope isn’t blood onto the ground.  “What about you?”

“Better than you,” you say.

“Yeah, well, that’s pretty much a given,” Steve says.

You scoff, twisting to scan the room. It’s bare—only an operating table you pray remains unused, a pile of tools, and the chairs you’re strapped to.

“We gotta get the hell out of here,” you say.

“Yeah, that would be fantastic,” Steve says. “But unless you’ve come up with anything in the last half hour, we’re shit out of luck.”

“Don’t say that.”

He wheezes out a breath. Waits a beat, then says, “You know, for the record, this isn’t really the romantic evening I had planned for us.”

You can’t help but snort a laugh, though it dies out quickly. Shame coils and snaps like a whip at your insides, but you push past it to say, “Romantic evening, yeah?”

Steve goes to speak, but a wave of coughs rolls through him, and he shakes against your back. Your tied hands ache to yank free, to comfort him, though there’s nothing you can do except be there—be there, facing him, instead of close enough but too far to matter.

“C’mon,” you urge, suddenly terrified wondering just how hard he was hit, and whether his lethargy is more than just low morale. He could be hurt. Really, seriously hurt, and you can’t do a damn thing about it. But you can keep him awake. “Tell me what you had in mind.”

Steve wheezes another breath, and his voice is strained as he says, “Picnic. On top of the water shower. I figure, who cares how shitty the takeout is when you’ve got one of the best views of the fireworks in town.”

Your stomach churns. “You never know. We could still make it.”

“Yeah,” Steve huffs a dark laugh.

“And shitty takeout and the water tower will still be there tomorrow.”

He huffs again.

“It sounds nice,” you say. “Really nice.”

He remains quiet.

“Maybe tomorrow,” you say.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “maybe tomorrow,” and it’s so obvious he doesn’t believe it. He lapses into silence, and it bothers you more than anything how easily he gives up. How quickly he’s gone from the head of the escape pack to the back of it.

And something about his sudden apathy is a kickstart to your faltering motivation to find a way out of this horrible place.

Your gaze lands on the rolling table stacked with medical tools: scalpels, long syringes, and an assortment of other horrifying objects.

“Steve. Do you see that tray?”

Steve tries to hide a groan as he twists in his chair. “You mean, the one with the terrifying sharp tools on it?”

“Exactly. Maybe we can shimmy our way over—“

“Y/N—” Steve tries.

“And then we knock the tray over, and—”

“It won’t work.”

“It will work.”

He says your name again, and again, you urge, it’ll work. You don’t say the next part, the because it has to, but Steve must understand, because he just acquiesces with a, “Okay, okay. What do we do?”

You rake in a few breaths. “Okay, so, on the count of three, we both hop.”

“Okay, good, hop on three. Gotcha.” Steve nods his head a few times, and his hair tickles the back of your neck.

“Good.”

“Wait, on three, or after three?”

“After three, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Steve says, and you can hear the smile on his lips. It sends a flutter of warmth through your icy frame. “Just checking.”

“Alright.” You suck in a breath. “One, two, three.”

The chairs scrape a few inches across the floor, and though yours threatens to tip for a half second, it holds.

“Holy shit, that actually worked,” Steve exclaims.

You swallow a grin and say, “Don’t act so surprised, Harrington.”

“Let's go again.”

“Okay.” You steel yourself, fingers curling around the edges of your seat. “One, two, three.”

The two of you skid at least a foot across the floor with this leap. It’s more solid, too.

But the third jump does you in. One or both of you gets too confident, tries to move too far, and before you can let out the curse waiting on your tongue, you and Steve are crashing to the floor. You smash hard against one shoulder, and the angle of your bound limbs makes the impact rattle through your bones like a heavy bass.

Pain ignites every inch of you, but when you open your mouth, it isn’t a sob that comes out. It’s something between a cry and a giggle. And another giggle.

“Hey, hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Steve says, back bumping yours as he twists against you. “Don’t cry, we’re—”

The hysterical laughter bubbles up and out of you, like a blocked pipe breaking open. Steve stops, makes a noise that’s somewhere between shocked and horrified.

“Are you… laughing?” he asks.

“I’m sorry—It’s just—this really isn’t how I thought this day was going to go. This isn’t how I thought I was going to die. Strapped to Steve Harrington’s back, two hundred feet under the mall, tortured to death by literal Russian soldiers.”

“Hey,” Steve says forcefully. “We’re not gonna die.”

You ignore that, because Steve has no clue whether it’s true, and you don’t want to call his bluff.

“I just need a minute to think. To—to figure something out,” he says.

“There’s nothing to figure out, Steve,” you say. “Unless you can pull a miracle out of your ass. Which, you can’t even reach, by the way.”

“I’m not letting you die,” he says, and you can tell that this, at least, he believes.

“I don’t think you’ve got a say in that.” You don’t have the energy to try anymore; to be the perfect person you crafted this last month. There’s no room left to impress.

He just sighs, and his head bumps the back of yours before he lets it hit the concrete with a light tap.

And for some reason, that little action sends your resolve over the edge.

Stupid. This whole plan was so incredibly stupid, more than you ever could have imagined. Because apart from the circumstances you’re currently in—being held captive, interrogated, probably headed to your graves—you made an even larger mistake. You failed.

You fell for Steve Harrington, and now, you’re going to die with him, and it will all have been a lie. The realest thing you’ve ever had, and it’s a lie.

There’s one part of this whole thing you refused to touch with a ten foot pole. The after. What happens when Steve finds out what you’ve done.

It didn’t really matter in the beginning, when he was still just an asshole ex-jock with no more depth to him than a kiddie pool.

But that isn’t what he is. Not anymore, at least. And you may not know whether you’re going to survive the day, but you know one thing: he’s going to hate you when he finds out.

“Can I ask you a question?” you say softly.

“Shoot,” Steve says.

You inhale. “It’s not, like, a secret that you had a reputation back in school. For being…”

“An asshole?” he asks.

You’re grateful he can’t see your blush as you say, “I mean, yeah—but I… I meant…” You clear your throat. “Nevermind. Just forget I said anything.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Steve says.

A smile ghosts your lips, but quickly disappears.

“You were like Hawkins' very own casanova,” you say, “and then, all of a sudden, you just… weren’t. After you and…”

“That’s not a question,” he says. When he realizes you’re not planning on asking it, he sighs, and says, “You want to know about Nancy.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

You feel him roll his shoulders, shift his weight as best he can. He’s quiet for a long time, so long you’re sure he isn’t going to speak at all. Then, softly, he says, “It’s not like it was some big tragedy. It just…” He stops. “You know, it’s like…. We all grow up being told about this perfect person, and how when you find them, everything just makes sense. That, like, you’ll run into them, and everything will just work out. Nobody tells you that it doesn’t work like that. That sometimes, you think you found the right person, this perfect person that’s everything you want, and they just… don’t want you back. Or they do, and then they don’t. Or, they do, and it still goes to shit.” He exhales softly. “I spent my whole life looking. But after Nancy, I don’t know, I guess I figured, maybe not everyone gets a person.” He falls quiet. “And then I met you.”

The shame and guilt that have been growing inside you burst out of their cage, spreading through your limbs like poison. If you had anything in your stomach, you think you’d retch it onto the concrete floor.

How did you get it so wrong? How did you dig yourself so deep into this hole without realizing there was nothing at the bottom?

Tears well in your eyes, burning as they fall down your cheeks and hit the floor.

“Steve,” you say. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“What?” he asks, hesitant.

Your lips part, but before the words can breach, the loud buzzer over the door blares, and the door whines open. The Russian guards from before filter in, followed by Dr. Ozerov and a man in a white coat, carrying a briefcase.

Ozerov comes to stand before your overturned chairs, a smug grin playing on his lips.

“Where were you two going?” he asks. He jerks a chin at the younger guards. Three men haul you and Steve up, righting the chairs, as the white-coated man pops open his briefcase and pulls out a vial of bright blue liquid. Everything about it screams danger, and you squirm against your binds.

“Try telling the truth this time, yes?” Ozerov asks. “It will make your visit with Dr Zharkov less painful.” He bends toward Steve, and you can’t see much in your periphery, but Steve grunts in pain, and a fire ignites inside you.

“Don’t touch him,” you snarl.

The white-coated man, Dr Zharkov, walks past you and around to Steve, holding a massive syringe with the blue vial loaded into it.

“Wait a second. Wait. Hold on,” Steve exclaims, shifting against your back. “Wait, wait, wait! What is that thing?”

Nausea coils and snaps in your gut.

“It will help you talk,” Ozerov says.

Dr Zharkov plunges the needle into Steve’s neck, and his scream pierces your skin, your muscle, down to your very bones. You don’t think anything hurts more than that sound, than being so helpless while he’s in so much pain.

Then the doctor brings the syringe to your skin, and you realize you were very, very wrong.

-

Truth serum. It’s supposed to be a movie myth, reserved for spy films and cautionary tales. It isn’t supposed to actually exist.

So, when Zharkov injected you with whatever was in that vial, you didn’t think it could possibly be the real thing.

Twenty minutes later, and you’re a believer.

“Honestly, I don’t really feel anything,” Steve says.

You do. You really do. The last month of secrets are lined up behind your teeth, and everything in you wants to let them out.

“Yeah, me neither,” you say. “Just… kind of good.”

Steve snorts a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I kind of like it, too.”

A giggle spills out of you, and you’re lucky that’s all it is.

Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet.

“Hey, what was it you were going to tell me earlier?” Steve asks after a moment.

Shit. Shit, shit—

“Oh, it was nothing,” you force.

“No, c’mon. What was it?”

“Steve,” you say. “Please drop it.”

He stops. The next time he speaks, his tone is rigid, tense.

“Y/N,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“Steve—”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Granted, you hadn’t put thought into how it should go down, but a little part of you had been hoping, hopelessly, that somehow, this conversation never needed to happen. That somehow you could peel yourself out of his life like a fallen bandaid, forgotten on the concrete.

And maybe there is a way to tell him that is better than the rest—still shitty, because the thing itself is shitty, but slightly less shitty—but with the drugs swirling in your veins, you can’t find it. Your limbs are warm and heavy, but your mind whirs a hundred miles an hour, collecting truths on your tongue. Every breath they get closer to spilling out.

Steve says your name again, and it’s like you’re not in control anymore; the warm feeling snaking through you is. And it wants out.

“I’ve been pretending. This whole time, I’ve been pretending, and I’ve been lying to you,” you say, and once you start, you can’t stop. “I’m not—I’m not who you think I am. This girl you spent the last month with, she doesn’t exist.” You roll your head as far as you can, and stare up at the exposed pipes above you. “We made her up so that you’d fall for her—for me—and then…” You can’t twist the words into something less harsh. You stop trying. “We were going to break your heart, the way you’ve broken so many girls.”

A long, agonizing second passes before Steve asks, in a clipped tone, “We?”

“Me. Theresa Hart. Bethany Goldwater. Rebecca McMann.”

Steve doesn’t speak, and though you should take this as a cue to keep your own damn mouth shut, now that it’s open, you can’t clamp it closed.

“It was before I knew you. Before I realized that you’d changed. And I would take it back if I could. I’m so sorry, Steve.”

He huffs a soft breath, but he doesn't say anything else. Doesn't do anything else.

The silence wraps around you like vines, closing around your airpipe with each passing moment.

“Steve.”

He acts like he hasn’t heard you, which is an easy bluff to call considering you’re tied to his back.

“Steve.” Your stomach churns. “Please say something.”

“What the hell do you want me to say?” he asks, and you’ve never heard his voice so cruel, so hard. But it’s nowhere near as painful as the next words that come out of his mouth. Sad, hollow, and wavering.

“Congratulations,” he says. “You win.”

–

Five minutes, or maybe an eternity, later, the buzzer over the door lets out a shrill shriek. You and Steve tense, his back and arms pressed into yours, skin hot where it touches your own.

But instead of the Russian’s returning for more interrogation or intimidation, it’s Robin, Dustin, and Erica. Alive and breathing and uncuffed, there to rescue you like Steve said they would be. You hadn’t believed him.

Mark it down as another thing you were wrong about.

Most of you is just plain relieved to see them, even if you are a little concerned about a deadly weapon in the hands of a trigger-happy fourteen year old, but a small part of you is disappointed it isn’t the Russians that come through the door.

Because with an enemy to escape, you and Steve were reluctant teammates, even if he refused to speak a word to you after his cutting you win. Even if he hated you, you knew that he wouldn’t leave you behind. That he’d fight to get out alongside you.

But Robin, Dustin, and Erica’s entrance shatters whatever was left hanging between you, as rotted and gnarled as it was to begin with. A divide slides down between you as the others free you from your chairs.

It isn’t just Steve you’re losing—have already lost. It’s them, too. Robin, who always greeted you with a grin and exchanged genuine pleasantries at the Scoops counter. Dustin and Erica, who you got to know surprisingly well in your time plotting and executing this failed invasion.

It’s this life you’ve created. It was only a month, but it could have been so much more. You can see that now. That it could have been more, and now, it never will be.

There’s too much chaos to try and get a word in during the escape from the labyrinth that is the base, not that Steve would listen. He keeps as far from you as he can, even in the small elevator as it soars back up to the ground.

He won’t look at you. You’re starting to think he’ll never look at you again. And you should be happy you pulled this off—you shouldn’t want him to look at you the way he does, like you’re the only thing in the world that matters.

He would give anything to see you one last time. To make sure you’re alive. Because he can’t be sure—he doesn’t know if his sacrifice is amounting to anything, or if you’re dying, too, just out of sight. Panic clears some of the fog from his brain.

At first, he doesn’t realize he’s speaking, calling out the word, “Please,” until his raw throat protests. Even then, he doesn’t stop, forcing his voice louder, screaming into the twisted ether.

Please, don’t take me away.

He isn’t sure who he’s yelling to, exactly, because he’s never believed in God, and even if he did, God sure as shit can’t hear him down here.

“I don’t want to die,” he says. Tears have mixed with the blood on his face, and his vision blurs red.

What are you willing to give in order to live?

The voice asks, and Eddie isn’t entirely sure it isn’t just some figment of his dying brain.

He shakes his head, letting it thump back against the grass. Above him, the dark red sky doesn’t hold a single star.

What are you willing to give? The voice asks again.

Later, he’ll understand what he’s about to do. But not yet. Not yet.

“Anything,” Eddie croaks. “Anything.”

A tall, hulking silhouette moves through the shadows, but Eddie can’t see their face, or anything, really. All of his senses disappear, and he’s lost in an endless sea of darkness.

Eddie Munson dies. And then, he wakes up.  

-

Eddie Munson is dead.

Three months of telling yourself those words, and they still don’t sound real.

Two months since he was legally declared dead—there wasn’t a body, still isn’t, probably never will be, but in Hawkins, this is no longer a strange occurrence—and three months since you dragged Dustin away from his body, and it still doesn’t feel real.

You’re beginning to doubt it ever will. Maybe it will always be this way. You, looking out your front window every time you pass it and expecting to see his van idling at the curb. You, accidentally ordering his coffee alongside your own enough times that even the barista pities you.

You, still waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.

“But you’ll be there, right? 10 am?” Robin asks, her voice garbled through the phone.

Lounging on your bed, you push up, keeping the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder.

“10 am, on the field. I know. I’m not going to miss my own graduation,” you say.

“Our graduation,” Robin says. “And thank the heavens, because I swear to God, I don’t think I’d have survived another week with Mrs. Burton. If I had to read another sexist, poorly written poem by a long dead man, I was going to spontaneously combust.”  

You laugh, but something about the words our graduation sticks to the back of your throat like phlegm. You and Robin’s. It was supposed to be three of you, though.

It’s as if Robin can hear your spiraling thoughts, because she says, gently, “If you want company, I can force Harrington to buy us beer and drive me over.”

You smile. “I’ll live. Besides, there’ll be plenty of beer at all the after parties I’m dragging you to tomorrow night.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Robin quips. “For once, I don’t mind hanging out with these people, considering I’ll never have to see most of them again.”

“One can dream,” you say.

“One can,” Robin says. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow.”

You exchange goodbyes with Robin and walk the phone back to the receiver, untangling the twisted cord, and hang it up. Before going back to your bed, you bring two fingers to your lips, then press them to the red electric guitar hanging over your dresser, like you do every night.

It isn’t the guitar he used to draw the very bats that killed him. That guitar was lost with Eddie.

It, along with a few tee shirts, the rings he pulled off his fingers and jammed into your hands before you left him, and a few photos, are all that remain of Eddie Munson.

You’d made a thousand plans together, and even if 99% of them were impossible, the 1% that weren’t still clatter behind you everywhere you go.

I think it’s finally my year.

1986 should have been the beginning of the rest of his life; hopefully, a life alongside you. It should have made high school and the monsters you’d fought an old story.

This, an empty grave, shouldn’t be the end.

-

The lock on the window in your room has been whining as long as you’ve lived in the house. A few years back, your parents tried to get it replaced, but you’d refused. You couldn’t tell them why, but you weren’t about to get rid of a built-in alarm on that window.

The whining sound pulls you out of sleep and off the mattress in under two seconds. You pull out the sledgehammer you have hidden under the bed before your eyes find the silhouette slipping through the now-open window and into your room.

Of all the nights for someone to break in, it had to be one of the miraculous few you weren’t having a nightmare. At three in the morning, that alone feels worthy of at least a tap with the hammer.

The second the figure hits the middle of your room, you lunge.

The figure ducks the swing, and jerks to the side, face illuminated by moonlight streaming in the window.

A face that can’t possibly be standing in your bedroom.

Eddie Munson. Or his ghost. Or something—

“Jesus Christ, babe, where the hell did you get a sledgehammer? Were you going to hit me with that?” Eddie exclaims, except it can’t be Eddie, because Eddie died in your arms. Because you pried Dustin off Eddie’s body. Because you’ve seen his death in your dreams every night for months.

It can’t be. It isn’t. But someone, or something, is wearing his skin, masquerading as the boy you love, and it’s the last of many, many straws.

You swing the hammer, but faster than your eyes can track, Eddie’s hand moves—you blink, and he’s holding the metal edge in one fist.

The hammer’s head is too heavy to be caught without breaking a finger—but the speed with which he moved is more troubling.

“Who the hell are you?” You snap, wrenching the hammer out of his fist, swinging again. “Get the hell out of my house, now—“

“Hold on, hold on—“ Not-Eddie backs up, hands raised, and with each second that passes, your brain files away the subtle differences. The color of his eyes, that beautiful brown, almost has a red tint in the dark. “It’s me. I swear to God, it’s me.”

“Whatever this sick game is, I’m not playing.” You raise the sledgehammer parallel to the floor and point it at him, using it to push him back toward the window. “Out.”

“Okay, okay, just—just wait.” He jumps to the side just before hitting the window, skating along the wall and darting around you. You whip around, and Eddie is there in a blink, plucking the hammer out of your hands. He tosses it onto your bed and slides into place directly between you and your weapon.

“If I wasn’t me, how would I have known how to open the window?”

Your Eddie could pop the lock in seconds. It was why you always kept it locked, because the only person who might need to get in could.  

“Anybody—anything— can jimmy a lock,” you snap.

Maybe it’s your lack of a good night’s sleep in the recent past, or the darkness of the room, but you swear, he almost looks hurt.

“Harsh, but fair.” He takes a breath. “But it really is me.”

“Eddie Munson died three months ago,” you say. “I was there.”

“Yeah, I saw the gravestone. Bet my funeral had a hell of a turnout,” he says.

“Just stop. You’re not him. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not him.”

Eddie seems to chew on his words for a moment. “We met in gym class. You were a junior. I was a senior, the second time. You were hiding behind the long jump mats during the mile run, and I army-crawled my ass over to you so that ancient gym teacher didn’t bust us both. Naturally, he saw me, and the second he yelled, you shoved me out onto the track on my ass.” He grins. “I was pretty much done for, after that.”

You shake your head. “Twenty other people were on the track  that day—”

“Fine. Okay.” He huffs a breath. Folds his arms over his chest. “Right, okay, so a few weeks after we started hanging out, I took you to Lover’s Lake. We ate Cheetos and drank warm Coke on the dock, and you told me about that field trip, the one to the museum in middle school. You got lost, ended up in the art exhibit for two hours until a chaperone tracked you down. After that, you couldn’t get enough of all those old—what is it? Abstract paintings.”

Your heart beats like a kick drum, so loud you’re surprised it hasn’t woken the whole house.

Eddie’s gaze darts down—and you don’t remember much of the few anatomy lessons you had, but you’d swear he looks where your heart is.

“This isn’t possible,” you say softly.

Eddie’s lips pull thin. “You kissed me outside that gas station on main because you said you were tired of waiting for me to do it.” A smile softens his expression. “And the first time you told me you loved me, we were in this room, in that bed, but you had to whisper because your parents were downstairs.” He takes a step forward. “And I said it back. Didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t whisper either, but you weren’t even pissed. Y’know, I’d only said that to one other person before you, but I didn’t hesitate.“

“No. You can’t be here.” You swallow. Shake your head. Hope is banging its fists against your ribcage, desperate to break out of the prison you locked it in. Tears prick at the backs of your eyes, but you don’t dare let them fall.

Eddie shrugs. “But I am.”

He takes a step toward you, and when you don’t move away, he takes another. Only when there are no more steps to take does he stop, the rubber of his sneakers kissing the tips of your toes.

He doesn’t move any further, like he’s leaving the last inch up to you.

You hold his gaze. Reach a hand up and let it settle on his cheek.

“Eddie?” you ask, barely above a whisper.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning into your hand. “It’s me.”

Just like that, the sob that’s been sitting at the base of your throat for months dislodges, and you throw your arms around him, burying your face in his neck. He still feels like your Eddie, still smells like him beneath that overhanging scent of ash.

The moment he wraps his arms around you and squeezes you, you know it’s Eddie. You’ve been in these arms so many times, you fit like puzzle pieces.

“Eddie,” you say again, voice muffled by his hair, and he just holds you tighter, so tight you can barely breathe but you don’t care.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m here.”

And for the first time in months, you can breathe.

-

For ten minutes, everything is like it was. Eddie is all bravado and big smiles, like the last three months never happened, and you let the lie hang because you’ve missed him too badly to pull it back. But it’s more fog than curtain, and it evaporates fast.

Eddie pulls you onto the bed and into his arms, just holding you, and the way your bodies fold together may be the same, but nothing else is.

His skin is cooler, dryer. Covered in scars. His scent, one you can’t describe but know, isn’t totally different, but it’s not the same, either.

And his eyes. He clearly took efforts to keep them out of the light—asking you not to turn a lamp on, keeping his chin ducked—but up close, there’s no mistaking it.

The deep, dark brown is more like a deep red wine someone spilled on a carpet. It’s a beautiful, inhuman shade of red. And you may have seen enough weird shit to fill a museum over the last few years, it sets off every alarm bell inside you. Like an ancient voice is urging you to run while everything else tells you to stay.

Your first observation was right. He isn’t your Eddie. He’s something different. Evolved. And you’re not sure if it’s for better or worse. You’re also not sure if you give a shit.

There are so many questions to ask, but they’d all break the bubble you’re resting in, so you settle for the softest you can think of.

“Tell me what happened to you,” you say gently, keeping your forehead pressed to his chest so you don’t have to look him in the eye; that, and because you’re trying to find a heartbeat. You haven’t. “How you survived. I’m not an idiot, Eddie. And I can only pretend I haven’t noticed that your eyes are a different color or that you move faster than you should. That somehow, you’ve been in the Upside Down for three months, and you’re not a decayed corpse.”

Eddie’s hands, steady as they glide up and down your back, your arms, your sides, stall, and his fingers curl slightly into your hoodie.

“You were there,” he says. “You saw it all.”

“Clearly, not everything. You were dead when I left—”

“Almost dead.”

“What?” you stiffen.

“I wasn’t… I mean, I was mostly dead. Kissing Death, straight on the lips, tongue and all. And then…”

“And then?”

He inhales, and says, “And then, I made a deal with the devil. A deal I can’t take back.”

You lean back. You may not have all the pieces, but you have enough to get some understanding at the full picture.

The only devil in the Upside Down is Vecna. And if he brought Eddie back—whatever the definition of back is—he didn’t go it out of the goodness of his heart.

“Eddie, what did you do?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper.

“Look, I know you want answers, and I want to give them to you, but I…” He pauses. His hand comes up to your cheek, his cold fingers tracing a line down to your jaw. You shiver. “I’ve spent the last three months waiting for a single minute he wasn’t on my ass, watching me, and I don’t have a lot of time. So, I swear to God, I’ll answer all your questions, but right now, I just want to be here. With you.”

You frown. “You’re not staying.”

Eddie is silent for a long time before he says, “I can’t. Not yet.”

You shift back, sitting up so that only his outline is visible in your periphery. From this angle, blurry and out of focus, he still looks like the Eddie you lost. An Eddie whose biggest problem was whether he’d actually graduate this year.

Eddie sits up beside you, a hand on your arm. He exhales, dropping his chin onto your shoulder. It’s a familiar position, and without thinking, you tip your head against his, temple to temple.

“I’m still a puppet,” he says softly. “Just because he’s not holding my strings right now doesn’t mean he’s not coming back for them.”  

You scoff. “If you’re just… some puppet, how are you here now? I mean, am I even talking to the real you right now?”

Eddie stiffens.

“I’m me,” he says. “A lot of the time… I’m more him than me. But right now, right here, I’m me. I’m just Eddie.” He lifts his chin. You crane your head to meet his eyes.

“I spent months waiting for a chance. V—He’s been so weak after everything that went down, he’s been stuck down there. Healing. Even when I came topside to fee—” He stops abruptly. Changes course. “But now…” Eddie pauses. It’s like he’s battling two voices in his head, one telling him to speak, the other urging him silent. “Let’s just say, he’s on a business trip, and I’m supposed to be down there, keeping an eye on things. I only had a few hours.”

“I don’t want you to go,” you whisper, like if you keep your voice low enough, the world won’t hear and jinx you.

“I know, angel,” he says. He drops his chin and presses a long kiss to the side of your head. When he pulls back, his expression has shifted, freezing over like Lovers Lake every December. His voice isn’t entirely his own as he says, “But there’s something I need to take care of before I can stay.”

“Something?” you ask. “Or someone?”

Eddie lets out a long sigh. He rolls onto his back, hands coming up behind his head, and the posture, his presence beside you, the tickle of his hair against your shoulder, is somehow familiar and foreign at once.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“I want you to stay alive—” He lifts his brows, and you huff, pressing on. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. And you know that it wasn’t some… miracle that brought me back. It was—” He stops. “If he’s still around, I’m not really me. I’m just another one of his weapons.”

“You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper. No human should be able to hear it. But Eddie does.

“I’m gonna try,” he says.

“And if you can’t?”

Eddie shrugs. He pointedly averts his gaze as he says, “If I can’t, then I go out fighting. Maybe I can get a few decent shots in before he takes me out.”

“Eddie—”

Eddie twists, shifting so he’s half in front of you. He takes your face in his hands and forces your gaze. The angles of his face are sharper, his eyes are clearer. He isn’t the Eddie you lost, but he’s still your Eddie, under it all.

“I’m already on borrowed time, sweetheart. Might as well make it worth something.”

You shake your head. “No. That’s bullshit. We’ll just… we’ll get out of here. Tonight. We can get in my car and drive until we get to a city big enough to disappear in. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“You know, I’ve been running since I learned to walk.” His thumb traces a line up and down your jaw. “I never even thought about stopping. Never wanted to.” A sad smile ghosts his lips. “Then, one day, I met you. And I had a reason to stay. So, I’m gonna fight for it. And I’m gonna come back for you.”

Before, Eddie Munson could have won a contest for stubbornness. It appears dying or almost dying didn’t change that.

You take a breath. Close your eyes for a long moment. When you open them, you say, “You better. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. And I’ll make sure it takes this time.”

Eddie snorts a laugh and loops his arms around you, pulling you into his chest. For a long time, you stay that way, holding each other and pretending the seconds aren’t rolling by.

And then, much sooner than you’d like, Eddie peels himself out of your arms. He climbs off the bed, and you follow him back to the window. The latch whines in protest as he lifts the windowpane, like it too is dreading his departure.

He climbs out onto the roof and turns back to the window, his slender hands on the sill. His fingers look naked without their rings.

Your stomach clawing up your throat, you lift the thin chain out from under your shirt, the metal rings hanging from it clacking. You unlatch it and pull off a thick, black ring. Unlike the others, taken off him in the Upside Down, you’ve had this ring for ages. He gave it to you a long, long time ago.

You lift one of his hands, sliding it onto his middle finger. He curls his fingers around yours, squeezing hard.

“Come back to me,” you say.

“I’ll see you soon,” he says. “Promise.”

Eddie leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead. You close your eyes, and the cool touch of his lips disappears. When you open your eyes, he’s gone. Like he was never there at all.

Maybe he wasn’t.

-

Three weeks pass. By the fourteenth day, you’re halfway convinced you hallucinated Eddie. By the twentieth, you’re sure of it.

Call it your brain trying to process the mountain of grief inside you. Or the end of the slow spiral into madness you started three years ago, when a Demogorgon nearly dragged you through a portal in a tree.

Fantasizing a conversation with your dead boyfriend isn’t exactly the weirdest thing that’s happened. It’s better than the alternative: that Eddie is gone, for real.

And then, on the twenty second night, the latch on your window whines open.

In seconds, you’re up and out of bed, standing in the middle of your room just the way you were a few weeks ago. Staring at a silhouette near the window just the way you were a few weeks ago.

The figure half-covered by shadows is limping, and something dark drips off their hands—what you can see of them is covered in a dark substance that has to be blood.

“I know, I know, I’m an asshole. I don’t write, I don’t call…” A familiar, if not a little rough and raw, voice says, and the massive knot that’s been coiling in your gut for weeks untangles itself in an instant.

“Eddie,” you breathe, as he steps into the moonlight.

“Told you I'd be back,” he says, flashing you a smile between heavy breaths. His canines are wickedly sharp, longer than they should be, and shining with blood. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re really here? I’m not hallucinating?”

A smile twitches across his red lips.

“You’re not hallucinating. I’m here,” he says.

“For good?”

“For good,” he says. His mouth curves up, and his smile appears here to stay.

Like him.

And you don’t care how he got here. What he had to become just to be standing here right now. You don’t care what it might take to keep him here, either.

All that matters is that he’s here. Period.

So, you cross the room in three steps, and pull him into your arms. Blood and all.

-