idk what this is anymore

Pocket dimensions and keys and pictures.

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So happy I finished this thing before ep 8 oof

Anyway, the comic was born out of

my thoughts about Caine's model lacking many essential facial features (as if he was never intended to show any emotions) and yet him being literally the most expressive character in the circus despite everything.

me being low-key obsessed with the implications episode 7 left us with. Players questioning everything they've been told and Caine being in the center of it all.

Just to be clear, I do believe Caine is written as a sentient AI who is just struggling to understand humanity and everything that comes with it. And I think these thoughts about him faking his emotions are inherently wrong within a story. He's oblivious and desperate but not malicious. But couple it with the fact that he's been lying about many other things (so far I'm inclined to think it was for players' sake in his own eyes) and that humans have been suffering for a while dealing with a literal god that doesn't understand them... Well, I have a feeling that they will doubt his motives and literally everything they know, rightfully so.

The amount of attention this little comic received is a bit terrifying and overwhelming and seeing all the different interesting interpretations people come up with I just wanted to explain mine own a little better <3

I want them all to be healed and happy, little guy absolutely included, but man the situation is rough, and the odds are against us

(Also please ignore typos, I'm hyperaware of them and even messed up writing my on name, i was really, really tired :') )

No one does, especially not to Vecna, but Eddie in particular can't leave them now. 

Not like this. 

He’s too fucking loud to die. With his headlight bright personality and over the top everything, gaining attention wherever he goes like it’s payment he's owed.

Dustin fucking adores the guy, and yeah, it hasn’t been that long, relatively speaking, since Steve really met Eddie, but he gets it now. Understands why so many people either hate Munson or act like he hung the moon. 

“Steve.” Eddie's saying, choked out past another gush of blood, and it’s clear no amount of CPR is going to save him. “I don’t want to, I don’t--…I can’t--” 

“It's okay.” Steve soothes automatically, as something just. Gentle to say, right then but it's not okay. 

It's nowhere close to okay. 

Steve had told him not to be a hero. Had looked him dead in the eye while he said it and here they were, Eddie lying on the ground surrounded by dead bats and Henderson, who was sobbing so hard he could barely breath himself. 

“Sorry. ‘M sorry but, but--please, Steve.” Eddie's begging, Steve realizes. He knows what for--nothing short of a miracle here can save him but the funny thing is, Steve was already going through the motions before Eddie spoke. 

Before he realized Munson’s ringed, shaking hand was trying to tug down his shirt and display his unfulfilled soulmark. Doesn't even get to bare it all the way because Steve's hand is already there, bloody palm pressing down on it. 

“This is going to hurt.” Someone that might very well be him says from a million miles away and Steve doesn't actually know how to do this (not like there's an instruction manual floating around for his kind of unthinkable sin) but he sums up every crashing, conflicting feeling he has towards one Edward Munson. 

Wraps it up with two bold declarations, made first in the privacy of his own mind before he speaks them into existence, not willing fate to change but commanding it to. 

“You're mine, Munson.” He says, sending all that emotion down through his hand, out his palm. “You're not fucking dying today.” 

Eddie's head falls back with a hissed word--might have been ‘Yes’ might have been Steve’s name, but it doesn't matter for long because now there's something building between them.

Something physical. Tangible.

Steve leans into it. 

Snarls, “You belong to me.” and feels it when their soulmarks connect. When a bond is formed, crashing over the parts of them intended for someone else entirely. Erasing the people who should have been there, who the connection was originally meant for. 

It doesn't feel as awful as it should, Steve thinks, but then that might be because it's not a proper hijacked soulbond. 

Can't be, because they both want this. 

Eddie's breathing goes weird. Harsh and tight, long enough for Steve to think he failed, to worry he just chucked his true soulmate out the window for fucking nothing when Eddie convulses, and suddenly his wounds start to heal.

Immediately--and badly. Like special effects straight out of a cheap B tier horror movie. 

Dustin is yelling things next to them and Robin is yelling things behind him and neither matters because Eddie is taking a huge, gasping breath before coming alive under Steve's hands. 

The bond clicks fully into place, a heavy thing felt between them, right as the last of the injuries fade. 

Doe eyes blink twice, before Eddie manages to press a shaking, loose hand on the side of Steve's face. 

“Mine.” He announces, a response to a call Steve hadn't cognitively realized he'd made. 

Which makes this an equal hijacking. 

Steve nods once, gentle and slow, in acceptance. 

He is straight and prior to meeting Robin, queer was just an insult one hurled at someone when you really wanted to rile them up, but he has just bound himself, heart and soul, to one Edward Munson. 

A man. 

Steve decides to panic about all that later. 

~xxXxx~

Steve never actually panics. 

Robin does, but then Robin got the half of the brain cell that's good at languages and algebra so Steve feels the anxiety kinda evens things out. 

“That was insanely illegal, do you even comprehend how illegal that was!?” She’s saying, pacing back and forth in Steve’s room. He’d made the argument on the way back that his (empty, parentless) house was a way better hideout than the Wheeler’s armpit of a basement and the group at large had agreed. 

“I wasn't gonna let him die, Robs.” He says. It’s not the first time he’s said it. Likely won’t be the last, either. 

“You understand he has you over a barrel here, right!? If being a lesbian makes me the town pariah, hijacking a soulbond makes you like, Hawkins super villian!” 

“Yeah, until Vecna shows up.” 

“Steve!”

“He asked!” Steve throws his hands in the air,  because that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? 

Eddie had asked, and then completed the bond himself by hijacking Steve’s own soulmark. 

“What was it supposed to do, tell him no!? That his life wasn't more important than some--some random girl I don't even know!?” 

That the random girl in question was his future soulmate was something he was doing a great job of Not Thinking About, thanks. 

“You don’t know Eddie either!” 

Steve rolls his eyes. “It’s Munson. Everyone knows him.” 

“Not enough to soulbond to him!” Robin’s shrieks and judging by the way the downstairs goes suddenly silent she’d been loud enough for everyone to hear, but that’s okay. It’s not like they all hadn’t guessed what was happening when she dragged his ass up here. 

Steve gets it, too. She and Nancy hadn’t heard Eddie. The Upside Down had been too loud, Dustin’s scream-sobs covering any remaining noise that could have been heard. It was Steve’s word against Eddie’s, and until Eddie clarified things, Steve was slotted firmly into the role here of a person who had done the unthinkable. 

It wasn’t like Eddie had left him hanging either. He’d technically, sort of defended Steve to the group at large. 

It’s just that he’d collapsed right after, and the only thing he’d gotten out was a loud “Harrington's mine.” right before he did it. 

The guy hadn’t woken back up yet, but Nancy and Robin both had assured everyone that was perfectly normal, for someone who’d just been pulled rather dramatically back from death. Healing from those kinds of wounds took a lot of energy. 

It would all be fine when Eddie woke up. 

(Or it wouldn’t be, and Steve weirdly, was okay with that too. Eddie lived. Vecna hadn’t completely won.

Those were the only two things that really mattered, to him.) 

“Did he really ask?” Robin says quietly, after a long, long moment. 

“Yeah.” Steve says, softening his voice to match hers. “He did.” 

She comes to sit next to him on his bed, tucking herself into his side. Steve leans right back against her, resting his cheek atop her head. 

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” She mutters but it’s fond. 

“I might’ve been told that a few times.” He mutters back. “Possibly even by someone in this room.” 

“Yeah well.” She sniffs. “That person was right, and you’re a dingus.” 

“Your dingus.” He corrects.

They both smile at that. 

~xxXxx~

“I’m really confused on whose ass I'm supposed to kick here.” Lucas is saying, as Max perches next to him on Steve’s kitchen counter. 

“Neither.” Dustin says right over the top of Erica’s scoffed; “Both.” 

Which restarts the argument that’s been happening on and off for the entire day. 

“Can we maybe focus on something else other than Eddie and Steve, please?” Nancy interrupts, which would be a lot more effective if Jonathan wasn’t draped over her like some sort of sad, wet looking cape. 

The other group had shown up the morning before, acting as a nice little distraction to the ordeal for one entire day. The kids had been all over their missing party members, Jonathan had introduced them all to Argyle, and Eddie remained sleeping for a solid chunk of it; which made it all a lot easier for everyone to ignore the elephant in the room in favor of the demonic asshole that was currently making it rain ash outside. 

At least, Steve thought it was ash. Didn’t really care to think of what else it might be. 

Of course, now that all reunions had been had, and the adultier adults run off to go--wherever it was Joyce, Hopper and Murray had gone (Steve hadn’t been listening) things naturally circled back to other matters. 

Steve, who was somehow both a pariah and martyr in the moment, was two seconds away from purposefully starting a fight to get away from it when Eddie himself finally stumbled through the kitchen doors looking like he'd gotten into a fist fight with the bed.

“No one's kicking anyone's asses.” He announces, voice sounding wrecked, and he looked wrecked, too.

(Steve made a note to go raid his closet. He was pretty sure he had at least one black sweater.) 

“Now kindly buzz off, your babysitter and I need to have an important chat.” 

The kids of course were going to do no such fucking thing.

Which is how they ended back up in Steve’s room. 

(“Hey Robs, could you like, stand at the bottom of the stairs or something just so no one tries to listen through the door or some shit?” Steve asks, over multiple gasps of outrage. Like every single child in this room hadn’t tried to pull him into some sort of life threatening situation or another. 

“Yeah, Dingus. I can do that.” 

“Thanks.”) 

~xxXxx~

“Are you mad at me?” 

“What?” Eddie asks, startled. Like he hadn’t even considered that an option, despite not having said a word for the longest five minutes of Steve’s life. “No I’m not fucking mad at you.” 

“You're acting like you are.” Which he was. Kept clenching and unclenching his hands so tight his knuckles went white with it. 

 It was within his right to be mad, ask or no ask--Steve had been the one to initiate the soulbond. An argument could be made that Eddie was out of his mind when he'd requested it.

Mike had made that argument already in fact, and Steve hadn’t said a word back, figuring it wasn’t his place to do so. Dustin had, because Dustin was Dustin, but everything was going to be weird until Eddie himself said something. 

Steve just…wasn’t sure if Eddie would.  

“Well screw me for needing a minute to process here.” Eddie spit before visibly raining himself in. 

Took some measured breaths before saying; “Can I just. Can I ask you one thing?” 

Steve owes Munson that much. “Sure.” 

“Why’d you do it?” 

He doesn’t ask it the same way Nancy had, or Mike had, or honestly anyone else had. There wasn’t an accusation, threading through those words. Munson’s entire demeanor was more confused than anything. Almost like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now that it hadn’t was trying to trigger it to do so. 

Unfortunately, Steve can't honestly answer his question without first asking one himself. 

“Why did you ask me to do it?” 

“I asked you first, Harrington.”

“We're soulmates man.” It’s the first time he’s said it aloud, and Steve’s watching closely for the flinch. Is unsure of how to feel when he doesn’t see one. “You can call me Steve.”  

“Okay.” Eddie resumes his pacing, hands tangling and untangling in his hair in a way that makes Steve want to herd him towards the bathroom and his army of hair products. “Okay--I didn't want to die, Steve. I have so much left unfinished, I still haven’t fucking passed highschool and Wayne!? I  just, I.” The bond is too new for Steve to feel much, but Eddie’s so loud with his emotions he can sense some of it anyway, rolling like a riptide within him. 

“I couldn't die there.” A big intake of breath and then a fast quick admittance of; “And it was you.” 

Steve’s eyebrows dipped to a puzzled frown. 

“It was me?”

“Yeah.” Eddie looks at him like that means something. 

Like it means everything. 

Gives a harsh, snorting kind of laugh and adds; “there I was, dying at the end of the fucking world, and of all the people to come find me, it was you.” 

Steve wants to ask what it means. Wants to point out Dustin was there long before he was. 

(Doesn't though, because he thinks he understands. 

Dustin might call him stupid but the kid has the emotional range of a squash. Steve might not be able to do fast math or instantly recall the instruction manual to some stupid gizmo, but people, he got. 

Eddie Munson telegraphed his feelings so loud he might as well be carrying a neon sign about, announcing them.  

Pity Steve is straight and he's sort of still reconciling that with the fact that he bound himself to a man, and he needs to untangle his own head before untangling anything between him and Eddie.) 

“Yeah well.” He redirects. “Someone had to teach you a lesson about listening. Clearly it wasn’t going to be Henderson.”

Eddie doesn’t acknowledge that. Instead points and says; “Fairs fair, Harrington.” 

“It's Steve.” He reminds, trying to suss out if Eddie is purposefully creating distance here or is just defaulting to the norm in the face of everything that’s happened. 

Can’t blame him if the answer is a bit of both. 

Eddie ignores him. 

“I gave you my answer, so give me yours. Why did you do it?” 

Which is unfortunate because the thing is, Steve doesn't honestly know. 

Has some ideas, sure. Refused to lose the man to Vecna, absolutely. Those aren’t the right reasons though. Aren’t things big enough to explain why he changed the course of both their lives and gave the middle finger to fate itself. 

He isn’t ready, Steve decides, to answer that question. Not in the way it deserves to be answered.

Thankfully, Eddie Munson is one of those people who will accept the answer to another question in place of the truth--so long as it's distracting enough. 

“You always felt like you were right there. Like you saw me.” 

It makes absolutely no sense and he gets a nice little frown for it. Steve rushes to talk before he gets interrupted. 

“Your soulmate is supposed to be someone you’re drawn to, right? Someone who looks brighter than anyone else in the room. In a perfect match,” Because there were imperfect ones. Steve would know, his parents were the poster definition of one. “You can share emotions. Thoughts, even.” 

No one Steve knows ever has shared thoughts, of course. That part is widely considered to be a fairy tale, a children’s story. Sharing emotions though, that was real. Rare. But real. 

“I wasn’t your soulmate, Steve.” 

“I know that.” He says, because duh. But--

“But you feel it too, don’t you? How easy it was. Hijacking a bond is supposed to be hard to do. Ours was easy.” 

It’s not a lie. Steve’s been told his entire life how difficult it would be, to hijack a bond. How hard it is, even for two willing people to pull it off. That it often doesn’t take even if both parties truly want it. It’s a slog, a process, a horrible, awful thing. 

There’s had come into place like they had already been each others soulmates. No pain. No pushback.

Like both their prior soulmates had let them go.

Steve’s bond has settled to exist in the back of his mind, a presence that gets “bigger” the more he focuses on it.

He does so now, narrowing in until it feels like a rope in his hand. Grips it tight and ‘tugs.’ 

This early on, Eddie shouldn’t be able to feel it, but the reaction is immediate. 

“Eddie.” He says, moving to stand as the man’s eyes grow wide. “Come here.”

‘Tugs’ again when Eddie doesn’t move, and watches the way he can physically see Eddie feel it in their bond. 

His soulmate comes, cautiously slow, like a dog unsure if it’s about to get hit or be given a treat. 

(Time will fix that, Steve thinks, but laying down the groundwork is gonna suck. )

He waits until Eddie gets closer before stepping to close the gap between them, opening his arms. 

Get’s them mostly around Eddie before the taller man is sinking into him. 

“Why are you doing this? You don’t have to do this.” Eddie mutters into his neck, his own hands hovering awkwardly for a moment before he carefully sets them against Steve’s sides, well above his hips. “A soulbond can be platonic, you know.”

As if Steve didn’t already have one of those, mark or not. 

“I know.” He says instead of pointing that out. “You don’t want it to be platonic, though.” 

“You can tell that?” 

Not really--not in the way Eddie’s asking. Their bond is too new and he still has to focus pretty hard to even get into that space between them, but it’s still easier than it should be. 

Steve doesn’t really feel like telling the guy he’s insanely obvious about what he wants though, or the fact that both of them will never be truly happy with something platonic. 

"Sorta." He answers.

“You’re not gay, Steve.” Eddie says it quietly, like Steve somehow doesn't know. Forgot maybe, during all the crazy shit.

“I’m not.” Steve agrees, playing lazily with the ends of Eddie’s hair. It’s fried to shit, but Steve might be able to save some of it. “And I’m going to need you to give me time, but, “ He tugs on one of the strands. 

“I think I might be able to make an exception for you though.” 

Eddie lets out a shaky exhale, and doesn’t say anything else--but he doesn’t pull away either.