‘87 was my year,baby! To be born, not graduate, I’m not THAT old. AuDHD. Very Tired™️ millennial and full of brain squirrels I’m not your mom. 🔞 MINORS DNI 🔞 seriously. I’m on the internet to get away from my kids.
Lets get the nitty gritty details out of the way, ok?
AAA threat (Ace, Autistic, ADHD). I am a salty salty bitch. Pretty sure it’s the ‘tism, but I will hold a grudge forever. I am a millennial. Yeah, I’m worried about me too.
I have, for some reason made the decision to start writing fanfiction. Results TBD.
writing tag: #cici writes
Stranger Things / Steddie
A Door, Closed - Complete, G
They'd done it. All of them had survived Vecna and closed the door on the terrible Spring Break of '86.
Yet, not all of them had made it through unscathed, and you know what they say about life closing doors...
P1 / P2 / P3 / P4 / P5 / P6 / P7-End / A03
Of Monsters & Men - WIP, T (currently)
There have always been monsters; some have just been more suited to handling them than others.
Steve was a Witcher. He'd suffered and bled for a world that spat upon him. Walking the Path he'd chosen, he soon finds himself with new company and challenges never before seen.
Ch1 / Ch2 / Ch3 / Ch4 / Ch5 / Ch6 / Ch7 / Ch8 /Ch9 / Ch10 / Ch11 / Ao3
In the Morning - Complete, T
Steve “serves” Kas!Eddie in lieu of being eaten/killed upon capture.
based off the Westly/Dread Pirate Roberts story in Princess Bride.
Prologue / P1 / P2 / P3 / P4 / P5 / P6 / P7 / P8 / P9/ P10 / P11 / Epilogue / Ao3
Life After You - Complete, T
Songfic. Or inspired by a songfic?
Eddie needs to get home and tell the man he left behind that there would never be anything better; fame would never match the joy he experienced at his side. He learned the hard way that there was no life without Steve.
P1 / P2 / P3 / P4 / Ao3
The Nanny AU
Successful. Handsome. Widowed. Steve Harrington has it all, except a nanny who lasts more than three days.
Enter Eddie Munson: recently dumped, extremely unemployed, and definitely not here for a childcare interview.
Look, he's got questionable style, a strange flair, and he's there.
That's how he becomes..
"Pilot Episode" - G, Complete P1 / P2 / AO3
"Episode Two" - G, Complete Here / AO3
"Episode Three" - G, Complete Here / AO3
The Bloom Cycle
Growth is never clean.
Before the greenhouse, there were matches. Before the roots, there was fire.
A collection of interwoven stories tracing the fractured paths of Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, and how they came to intersect.
Some things survived, and others grew anyway.
This series includes:
Bloom & Break - Complete, T
Hard to believe that when Eddie set a couch on fire (allegedly) and got dumped on the doorstep of the hottest antisocial plant man he's ever seen, it would grow into something he'd rather die without.
Steve never wanted a roommate (one that breathed, anyway), especially one who insists on giving him increasingly annoying nicknames and leaves a trail of glitter everywhere, like a snail at a rave.
He excelled with all kinds of things that grew, but love turned out to be a new kind of invasive species.
P1 / P2 / P3 / P3.5 / P4/ P5 / P6 / P7 / P8 / P9/ P10 / P11 / P12 / P13 / Epilogue / Ao3
The Couch Knew What It Did, T, Complete Here / AO3
Eddie wasn't trying to get evicted, he swears.
After The Fire, During The Burn - T, Complete --P1 / P2 / AO3
Steve didn’t ask her to stay.
Robin didn’t wait for permission.
In the aftermath of fire and silence, something began to grow.
There Goes the Neighborhood- G, Complete Here / A03
The greenhouse has rules. Boundaries. Bite reflexes.
Then the boy arrived, loud, chaotic, snack-laden, and completely unaware that every living thing in the greenhouse wanted him gone.
So naturally, he stayed.
And now the plants are having a crisis about it.
The Charmer and the Fool, T, Complete Here / AO3
Before the greenhouse. Before Steve. Before any of it.
Eddie meets Honey when he’s young, half-wild, and already burning too hot. What starts as praise curdles into control, and he's not the only one who likes to start fires.
Root Rot, T, Complete Here / AO3
Before the greenhouse, before the wild boy with too many opinions and nowhere else to be, there was a lab. A name. A man who said he was hollow and tried to fill him.
This is the part of the story no one talks about—the root system beneath the bloom.
The rot he had to burn through to survive it.
Background Noise, G, Complete Here / AO3
Before the vines and the headlines, there’s Robin: little-genius ears, a hardware-store oracle, a bench that gossips in silence, and a microwave that taps out. She doesn’t chase rumors—she hunts weird sounds
Brainworms
De-aged Party, Tunnels, Injured Steve
The Nanny AU- P1 /P2 / P3 No style, no class, a certain flair. How the heck did Eddie become the nanny?!
Poison Ivy / Harley Quinn Steddie - It just works too well,y’know?
headers, dividers, all by the amazing @saradika-graphics
tumblr header by /@eddywoww, isn’t it just soooo pretty?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Yeah, yeah. I know it's not a real thing, but it's funny when you get into the story.
Summary: Eddie just wants to cash his first check and go out celebrating with friends, but fate has other plans. A freshly released from Pennhurst Hospital Steve Harrington comes into the bank looking for answers into the deaths of his best friends Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins he accidentally triggers a series of events that leave Eddie as his hostage. Now it's a race to find out what happened that night because Steve is suddenly on borrowed time.
~
Eddie was having the best day of his life. He had gotten a job at Thacher’s Tires thanks to Brian and had worked enough to get his very first paycheck.
He had promised the guys to meet up with them at Benny’s Diner to celebrate his first check and to treat them all to milk shakes. He knew it was going to take him longer because he had to open an account in his name, so he told them meet him there in an hour.
His van roared to a stop in front of the bank and he slid out, locking the door behind him as he slammed it shut. He walked in and never felt so out place in his entire life. The floors were black marble and walls were stark white. Not off-white, not eggshell. Pure blindingly white. There were sofas and tables in the black and white theme. Hell even the little counter thingy where you filled out deposit and withdraw slips was white.
He was standing there in ripped black jeans and a Megadeath t-shirt that had seen better days. He was so grateful he had pulled on his clean white sneakers this morning otherwise he would look like one hell of a sight.
Eddie looked around. There were a couple of people in line for a cashier, an old man with a cane and half moon glass, and a mother with her toddler on her hip, there was a young couple getting their first mortgage, and young man speaking with another agent, probably about a cash box. Then he spotted the agent who could help him off to the side. He walked up to the employee’s desk.
“Hey, I would like to open up an account here,” he murmured. He wasn’t sure why, but speaking loud felt worse than shouting in a library.
The man at the desk brightened. “Of course! I’d be happy to help you with that. Please have a seat!”
Eddie sat down and filled out all the paper work and the guy even helped him cash his first check and determined how much Eddie should put away.
As he filled out the paper work, the woman with her kid and the old man had finished their business while the couple argued over whether or not her name should be on the house, and the young man was getting more and more agitated.
Just as Eddie was finishing up a business man in a suit and a young woman came in. He honestly couldn’t tell if she was his daughter or his girlfriend, but he kept one hand on her waist the whole time.
Then as he stood up to leave suddenly there was a loud crash as all the gates to the exits dropped and the alarm overhead started blaring.
There were screams from the wife and one of the tellers and shouts from the mortgage guy and the business man demanding what the hell was going on.
“Shut up!” the young man growled, rubbing his temple with what looked to Eddie like a small pistol. Thankfully the guy was at least keeping his finger off the trigger, but that did nothing lessen the tension in the room. “Shut up! Shut up!”
The room became so stone silent that you could hear the ragged breaths of the scared people around him.
Oh hell no, this was not happening. Not today. Eddie really had places to be and he wasn’t going to be stuck in a bank being held up by some yuppie jock, judging from his clothes and the very expensive swim watch on his wrist.
The sirens continued to wail and Eddie could see that the guy was starting to pace back and forth screaming obscenities at the teller who had obviously been the one to trigger the alarm.
“Everyone just stay where you are and don’t move!” the guy yelled, still rubbing his temple like it pained him.
Eddie just wished it wasn’t with the barrel of a gun.
The screaming from the bank patrons started up again and he was starting to get a headache.
The guy pressed the heels on his palms into his eyes and bellowed. “Everyone fucking shut the hell up!”
That’s when Eddie got it, whatever was going on here, the bank robber had no idea what he was doing and before rational thought entered his head, he was on his feet and loping over to where the guy was standing.
“Hey, darlin' is this your first robbery,” Eddie said cocking his head to his side, “because wow, you sure are riled up. Now, look this little hold up is cute and all but I really have places to be, so can we just call it a day and no one gets hurt?”
“Hold up?” the guy echoed and Eddie was suddenly more confused than before. “Unless you can do something about the fucking alarm get the fuck out of my face!”
Eddie blinked at him for a moment and then he was being pulled away. He was forced to sit down and he noticed his ‘rescuers’ were the mortgage guy and the safety deposit lady who started this whole mess.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “What do you think you are doing? Don’t you know who that is?”
“Well, no,” he said rearing his head back. “Is there a reason I should know this guy?”
The mortgage guy whose nametag read Riley looked around to make sure the bank robber wasn’t looking their direction.
“That’s Steve Harrington,” he hissed under his breath. “He went crazy and killed his best friend and the guy’s girlfriend.”
“His rich father got him off and sent into Pennhurst Asylum,” the manager whispered, frightened. Eddie could finally see that her nametag read Karen. “My daughter went to school with him.”
Eddie’s whole head snapped over to the bank robber who was shouting for the alarms to stop and the recognition hit.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. “I went to school with him too.”
But this creature before him was not the Steve Harrington, King of Hawkins High Eddie knew back in the day. That boy was athletic, tanned, fitted clothes and a confidence that could only be bought by swaths and swaths of his parents money.
This was not that. The clothes he wore were ill-fitting and stained. It was clear that someone had tried to get the blood stains out but couldn’t. His belt was doing a lot of heavy lifting to keep the man from indecency.
His once beautiful hair hung limp in front of his eyes and he did nothing to push it out of his way. He was pale and more than just a little frail.
It was clear that he had been released from the hospital and came straight here. For whatever reason he was holding up a bank.
Not even Eddie’s dad was stupid enough to go from jail to a bank robbery right out of the clank.
Fuck.
Eddie was lucky to be alive.
~
Chief Jim Hopper was having a bad day. He had stopped drinking, then his ex-wife called and told him she was getting remarried in the fall to a nice guy named Paul of all things, the new rookie on the force had already got in trouble for waving his gun around, and the coffee machine in the office was broken.
Then as he was trying to copy a report, the copy machine ate it. Ate the whole god damned report.
He was so fucking done.
Hopper was grabbing his coat and calling it a day when the call came in.
There was an active robbery at the bank.
His eyes slid shut and he opened them slowly.
“I can take it for ya,” Powell said cocking his head to the side, “if you need to cut out of here.” He jutted his chin at the coat in his hand.
“You got an experience in negotiation?” Hopper growled, almost hoping the guy would say yes and he could in fact go home.
“Sorry, Chief,” Powell replied with a grimace.
Hopper let out a slow breath. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Find out as much as you can and get at least three cars out there. Call Callahan in and tell him that the apartment building across the street has a clear line of sight to the front doors of the bank. Tell him to grab his rifle and head on up.”
Powell nodded and everyone rushed to do their jobs. Hopper let out a pained sigh and head not to his truck, but to his patrol car.
Once inside he started banging on the steering wheel and cussing and spitting. He threw the car in reverse and peeled out of the parking lot as if the devil himself was gunning for him.
It had taken less than twenty minutes to get everyone into place, but they still had no idea who the were dealing with.
They didn’t even know how many people were in there, let alone anything like demands.
“I want eyes in there!” Hopper growled. “I need to know what we are dealing with here! I need number of unsubs and hostages! I need the phone number of the bank, not the cute one they hand their customers, the real one, the one that gets me to someone in charge. And I need it yesterday!”
All around him people scrambled to do as they were told.
Powell came running up to him. “There is one perp with a what looks to be a pistol and about a half a dozen hostages.”
“God dammit,” Hopper swore. Six hostages was six hostages too many. “Is there a way we get ahold of whoever is in there?”
Powell nodded. “There’s a direct line to the manager’s office and from what the alarm company said, that’s where the distress call originated from.”
“Do you have the numb–?” Hopper began to ask when Powell shoved a boxy mobile phone at him and a piece of paper. “All right let’s do this, let’s see if this guy can be reasoned with.”
He dialed the number and immediately the line picked up, but before he could utter a word, someone screamed into the receiver, “Shut the alarms off! For god’s sake shut them off!”
“Well, hello to you to,” Hopper snarked. “I’ll turn the alarms off, but first you have to work with me. I’m Jim Hopper, chief of police. Who am I speaking to?”
“Oh well, fuck,” the robber hissed. “Yeah, I know who you are. I’m Steve and the alarms are really making my head hurt. I can’t think, I can’t breathe!”
Steve, Steve, Steve... why did that name ring a bell? “I’ll tell you what Steve, let go one of the hostages and you’ll have your peace.”
Then the phone disconnected and Hopper stared at the phone in his hand in horror. “Well shit.”
This is where we start to split off and see what Eddie and Steve are doing with their lives over the next few years.
Part 1 | Part 2 |
~
Eddie and his bandmates were gone by the end of the week and Steve was left deal with the fallout.
Which was next to zero. And not because his dad splashed around money and influence to hush it up, Prin. Higgins, the gutless wonder had announced to the school that the culprit had been caught and punished accordingly but because they were a minor, the school would not be naming names.
It was actually Steve’s dad that insisted that he help clean up the drama room as part of his restitution.
So there was a lot of speculation on who it could have been, most people deciding that it must have been some freshman or sophomore who didn’t get the role they wanted. But when Steve was brought up about cleaning up the mess, everyone just assumed that he had done it for his mom, not because of his mom.
Coaches Olsen and Myers, the basketball and swim coaches respectively, were told it was Steve, but given leeway on if they wanted to kick him off the team or not.
Coach Olsen decided to put Steve on the second string for the most part, except for one particular game. The one the scouts would be at. They were told Steve was put on the bench due to the death of his mother. Something the scouts ate up. They loved a good sob story.
Coach Myers on the other hand merely gave him a co-captain to help Steve balance his grief and captain duties.
Steve felt just such an outpouring of support from both of his coaches, he just wanted to cry. When he asked them why, Coach Myers just smiled and said that sometimes people get dealt a shit hand when it comes to their parents. They don’t get to decide that, so kicking Steve off the team for having shit mom didn’t feel right to him.
Coach Olsen on the other hand steered Steve into his office and sat him down.
“What I’m about to say is to remain between us, okay?” he told Steve once they sat down. Steve nodded. “Right, so my wife, Maria is the dance teacher here and her life long dream was to own her own dance studio. Well, because she would work on the musicals doing the choreography your mom left her $15k to do just that.”
Steve closed his eyes and slumped into his seat in despair. “Oh.”
“We were both there that day,” Coach Olsen continued. “We sat there throughout the whole thing and waited for you to be named for something. Even if it was just a picture of the two of you or some other memento, but it never happened. So we made the decision to help you anyway we could. I understand your dad will only pay for your schooling if you go into law?”
“Yeah,” Steve nodded. “I’m just not good at it. I took debate in middle school and I barely squeaked by with a D in that class.”
“So what do you want to do, Steve?” Coach Olsen asked. “What’s your dream?”
Steve rubbed his nose. “To be a teacher. Not–not like Miller or O’Donnell but someone who inspires. Maybe even coaching too, I just want to help kids, you know.”
“What would you teach?”
Steve straightened up as he realized that the coach was serious about wanting to know. “I was thinking history. Because I was in an AP class this year for it and I really love it. I would focus on American history because that’s what I know best, but I really like world religions too.”
He went on talking about what schools he would want to go to and who had the best programs.
Coach sat back. “Huh. Sounds like you’ve got a plan. All you need is the money and for that you need a scholarship. Let’s help you get that. What I want you to do is meet with me once week after school so we can polish up your applications and see if we can’t get you where you want to go.”
“Thank you, Coach,” he breathed. “This means a lot. Like I know my dad is just trying to look out for me because as a teacher I won’t make a lot, but I just want to make a difference not money.”
“You’ll do just fine, Steve,” Coach Olsen said with a smile. “Just fine indeed.”
~
Eddie’s knee wouldn’t stop bouncing the whole flight over.
“Doug is going to be pissed,” Jeff said with a chuckle. “We replace him and suddenly get a record deal? He must be fuming to hell.”
“I may or may not have called to gloat...” Brian said, batting his eyelashes innocently.
“Ronnie actually called and gave me her blessing to kill it for her,” Gareth said smugly.
“That’s so cool,” Jeff said, giving him a high five. “But not gonna lie, having a female drummer would have been kick ass.”
“Oh for sure,” Gareth said, nodding. “I’m just surprised that my parents are letting me do this.”
The four bandmates turned to where Mrs. Hughes was sitting with a Walkman and headphones, just knitting away.
She lifted her head and cocked it to the side. “Hmm?”
“Thanks, Mom,” Gareth said softly. “For letting me skip school to be a rockstar.”
She smiled at him, tucking the headphones around her neck. “Oh who said I was doing that? I am absolutely ‘home’ schooling you so that you can at least graduate.” She looked at all them. “That goes for the three of you as well. You’ll be grateful for it later, I promise.”
They all looked at her in shock and awe.
“Since you other three are technically adults,” she continued, “I can’t make you graduate, but I assure you, having that diploma will be worth it further down the line.”
“And the record label is just going to let you do that?” Jeff asked, tilting his head to the side.
“They actually fully endorsed it,” she said calmly. “They’ve even offered to hire a tutor while you’re in the studio. Especially since with child labor laws, Gare can only being the studio for six hours a day.”
“Oh!” Eddie cried, blinking at her in shock. “Oh shit! I hadn’t even thought about that. So since he’s got to do school during that time, we might as well join in, is that it?”
“Exactly!” Mrs. Hughes said brightly.
Jeff and Brian looked at each and then shrugged.
“I mean, what’s the harm?” Brian said with another shrug. “Like you said, we might want it for later in life and since Gare has to, it won’t hurt for us to finish high school.”
“I’m game,” Jeff agreed. “Like it might actually be kinda fun, having that one on one experience.”
Eddie on the other hand snorted. “I’ll try but I have burned out three of Hawkins greatest minds trying to teach me, so...” He half shrugged. “It’s going to be fucking pointless.”
Mrs. Hughes cocked her head to the side. “I bet I can you to get all your credits to graduate before Jeff and Brian.”
“Yeah, right,” Eddie sneered. “I bet you fail just like everyone else.”
She put down her knitting and took off her headphones and stood up. She walked over to him and said, “I’ll tell you what. If I win you have show up at whatever little graduation ceremony they have here, cap and gown and behave for once in your life.”
“And if you lose?” Eddie asked, looking up at her.
She laughed. It was a bright happy sound and it made Eddie blush. “If you make it but after Jeff and Brian, then you get to do your little stunt off flipping people off, grabbing the diploma and jumping off the stage. And if it takes until Gare graduates, then I won’t make you walk, I’ll have a small personal party with just us and your Uncle Wayne and hand you your diploma.”
He looked at her skeptically. “You promise that I’ll make it regardless?” His bottom lip quivered. He never had someone believe in him when it came to his schooling. Even Wayne had gotten to the point of despairing that Eddie would ever graduate.
“I promise,” Mrs. Hughes said sticking out her hand.
“Thanks Mrs. H.,” Eddie murmured, shaking her hand.
“Oh call me Rhiannon or Ray for short,” she said with a smile. “You all can call me that. Well all but Gare anyway.”
Gareth snorted and rolled his eyes. “Like I would call you anything but Mom.”
She patted his cheek and went to go sit back down. She put her head phones back on and rewound the tape. Then starting where she left off, went back to her knitting.
“I guess it was too much to hope for that we’d get out of school,” Brian sighed wistfully.
Rhiannon laughed, but wisely said nothing.
Eddie sat back in his seat and laid his head back on the headrest. He laced his fingers together and closed his eyes.
He thought back to the person who made this all possible. Because yeah, everyone in this plane (barring the pilots of course) got them there, but if it wasn’t for Steve he might have not had gotten this chance.
Sure an argument could be said for Steve having causing the problem in the first place. But Eddie knew Hawkins. They weren’t going to let him leave without a fight. But thanks to Steve doing the right thing, he got his chance to escape. He just hoped Steve got that same chance. He deserved it.
~
Steve couldn’t believe he was here. He looked up at the stands and could see his dad as well as a handful of college scouts.
He let out a deep shuddering breath. He could do this. He just had to make sure not to fuck up.
Coach Olsen patted him on the shoulder. “Just relax. This is just a game like any other. There is no one in those stands. Just keep your eye on the ball and we’ll get you through this alive.”
“Thanks, Coach.” He shook out his limbs. He could do this.
Then he went out there and played the best game of his life. He even sunk the game winning shot. The crowd was going wild. His fellow players were going wild. His coach was jumping up and down.
They were going to the championship game!
After he had showered and changed back into his street clothes his dad met him at the doors to the locker room with all the other parents.
He looked around but didn’t see any of the scouts. He frowned and shook his head. They were probably still going over the stats for the game. It was no big deal.
“You did great, Steve!” Charles said excitedly. “You were really on fire out there! I could see that the scouts were pretty impressed.”
Steve grinned from ear to ear. “It was really good of the coach to let me play tonight.”
“It really was,” Charles agreed. “I’ve already thanked him and sent him a nice bottle of Jack Daniels.”
“I thank him every time I see him,” Steve admitted. “He told me I can only thank him again after I get a scholarship.”
Charles laughed. “That sounds about right.” He threw his arm around Steve and started leading him to the car. “I’m taking us out to dinner to celebrate! Hell, I’m taking the whole team and their parents!”
A cheer went up and they all followed the Harringtons to Enzo’s where Charles absolutely foot the bill for everyone’s meal, including champagne for the parents and coaches.
They were laughing and celebrating into the night.
As they drove home, Steve taking the wheel because his dad had been celebrating a tad too much, Charles looked over at him.
“I’m really proud of you,” he said fondly. “I know losing your mother the way you did and finding out she didn’t love you was hard, but I really think you’re doing a good job making the best of it.” He paused for a moment. “Minor lapse in judgment aside.”
Steve snorted. “Just a little one.” He took his hands off the wheel for a brief second to put his finger and thumb really close together. “And thanks, Dad. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”
“The state swim meet is in two weeks,” Charles said. “I hope you do as well then as you did tonight.”
“Even if it means not following you in your footsteps?” Steve asked, his hands tightening on the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.
Charles let out a sigh. “I really think you would be a great lawyer, Steve. You’re thinking too narrowly. You could go into family law or even anything that wouldn’t require you to be in front of a courtroom and a judge.”
“I know, Dad,” Steve said softly. “I just really think teaching is where I would really shine.”
“We’ll talk about it after the state swim trials,” he said resigned.
The army was in disarray and Dr. Kay was about to rip her hair out. If it had just been that brat Jane Ives, she would have had the data she needed to continue where Dr. Brenner had left off. Not that Lt. Colonel Sullivan knew that.
He assumed that they were trying to stop all the madness with the NINA project. But no, Dr. Kay wanted to perfect it.
She knew that those with these abilities were powerful and they just needed to perfect the device they had used on Henry Creel.
Blocking his abilities worked, but they needed to be able to control them, as well. But as they had learned at Hawkins Lab, that even children raised to soldiers, could still break out of their programming. First with Creel, then with Kali Prasad, Olivia Martinez, and Titus Smith, and then again with Jane Ives.
But it appeared that Olivia Martinez was working with the rebels and literally destroying every military vehicle she could get within strike distance of. Tanks, armored cars and trucks. All gone up in literal smoke as she set them on fire.
Dr. Kay’s records on her stated that she could only control fire, but it seemed the record was severely outdated as Dr. Kay watched Olivia blow things up with her mind, fire streaming from her fingers as torched everything in sight.
She would be impressed if it was someone else’s army, but as it was Dr. Kay’s, she was livid.
She was about to order an air strike when the ground literally was ripped out from under. The earthquakes were getting worse and the sky? She had never seen a red sky before. She wasn’t even sure that a plane could fly over Hawkins anymore.
Fuck.
~
The Vecna strike group stood outside the crater that used to be the Munson’s trailer. The trailer and its contents had been hauled away, barely leaving Wayne a chance to grab what he needed. They had figured the easiest way to open a Gate would be to go to where one had been before and try there.
El felt the ground shudder underneath her feet and Max tightened her grip on her hand.
“Hey, you’ve got this,” Max murmured. “You are tougher than some spider-thing.”
El nodded. She reached out her hand and the earth began to churn. A sickening red blob began to bubble out of the ground, until a Gate formed in front of them.
“Oh!” Joyce gasped. “I don’t know. But I was expecting more of a.. struggle. A battle. But that was even smoother than her previous attempts.”
Hopper’s eyes went from El to the Gate and back. “Does that mean the Mind Flayer is dead?”
El cocked her head to the side. “No, I still feel its presence. But it’s different somehow. Colder. Distant.”
“Well,” Max huffed. “I don’t care why, all I care about is getting in there and kicking One’s stinky ass.” She turned to Kali. “El’s done her job. It’s time to do yours.”
Kali rolled her eyes. As they stepped through the Gate, their numbers tripled. Everyone but the Mind Flayer team, appeared beside them. Like a platoon of soldiers showing up on Vecna’s doorstep.
Just enough to catch his attention and how.
And sure enough, within moments he was standing in front of them. “You can’t stop me, Jane. Not even if you had the whole army on your side. I will win. You just have to choose if you want to live on the winning side, or die on the losing side.”
“I’m just as strong as you are, One,” El bit out. “You and me, asshole. FIGHT ME!!” She screamed the last line, a gauntlet thrown.
Then Henry disappeared.
~
Derek breathed a sigh of relief when Mr. Whatsit up and vanished. Now all he had to do was to convince the other kids to come with him.
He knew the best thing to do would to get close to Holly Wheeler, but as Mr. Wheeler pointed, they hadn’t exactly been friends.
He walked up to her with a big, fake smile. ‘Hey, Holls. Um... can we talk for a minute?’
She turned to him with a glare. ‘Why? So you can bully me about my pigtails again?’
Derek grimace. ‘Yeah, no... like Mr. Whatsit is a bad guy and he’s using us to destroy the world.’
‘Stop lying Derek Turnbow,’ she huffed, putting her hands on her hips and jutting her chin out.
‘Holy shit...’ he breathed. ‘That’s what Nancy did when she said she didn’t believe I had a map back to here.’
‘You’re lying again,’ Holly said with a pout. ‘There is no way you’ve met my sister!’
But before Derek could explain or even so her the necklace, Mr. Whatsit reappeared.
He took one look at Derek and narrowed his eyes.
“Oh shit,” he whispered and turned around to run away. He knew he wasn’t going to get far, but he just hoped it was far enough.
It was not. He had barely ran ten feet before he was tackled to the ground by Mr. Whatsit, to the horror of the other children.
Derek held on to the map, trying to shove it into his coat pocket, but before he could, Mr. Whatsit turned him over and ripped the map from his hands.
He looked at it with dawning horror. ‘Where did you get this map?’
Derek just shook his head.
Mr. Whatsit shook him until his vision blurred and his head swam. “Where. Did. You. Get. This. Map?’
‘From my mind!” Derek screamed. ‘I memorized it!’
‘You’re lying!’ Mr. Whatsit snarled, shaking him again. ‘This is my mind! You can’t map what isn’t yours!’
The other kids stopped, stock still. And then so did Mr. Whatsit when he realized what he had said out loud.
Derek gasped. Mr. Whatsit’s hair was no longer brown, but blond. The glasses had vanished and weird red veins pulsed on his skin.
Mr. Whatsit got to his feet and he began rolling up his sleeves. ‘I will have to deal with you first, then I will take out those meddling rebels next.’
‘Mr. Whatsit?’ Rosie asked, a tremor in her voice. ‘What’s going on?’
Mr. Whatsit smiled at her, every inch of his disguise back in place as if it had never gone.
Almost.
The red veins still continued to crawl up Mr. Whatsit’s arms.
‘I’m just removing the traitor among us,’ he said gently. ‘Derek has become the big bad wolf and we must root out evil wherever we can, mustn’t we, children?’
Holly looked down at Derek and then back at Mr. Whatsit. Derek waited on baited breath. Would she let him kill him or would she finally see Mr. Whatsit for what he was?
Her eyes narrowed when she saw the necklace in Derek’s hand and then she nodded.
Derek leaned back and closed his eyes. This was it. He was going to die here in the Nothing all because he had a crush a crush on a girl who probably didn’t even know his name or that she had been nice to him.
Just then the world shook. Not just the ground, but everything. A crack appeared in the actual sky.
The other children started screaming, but Derek and Holly locked eyes. She knew what was going on.
Music began to fill the air, and Mr. Whatsit changed.
Not to the blond man with the sinister smile, but the monster. The flesh covered, tentacle spouting, Upside Down controlling monster.
Derek scrambled to his feet and grabbed Rosiland’s hand and started running for the new opening in the Nothing.
The other children in their panic blindly followed him to the Gate. He pushed each one through until it was down to him and Holly Wheeler.
‘Come on!’ he snarled. ‘Your sister is waiting for you! Why aren’t you moving?!’
Holly looked over her shoulder. ‘Someone has to stay to make sure he doesn’t follow us!’
‘Well, it’s not going to be you!’ Derek snarled. ‘I think your sister would actually fucking kill me. I think I’d take my chances with Mr. Whatsit. At least with him I know I have a fighting chance!’
Holly blinked at him for a moment and then jumped through to the other side.
~
“Lady Liberty, this is Red Sonja, do you copy?” Nancy called into the walkie talkie.
“This is Lady Liberty, I copy, over,” Erica replied back. She looked over at Titus and shrugged. She wasn’t about explain their call signs to an outsider.
“I’m with Bald Eagle and we’re coming your way,” she said dryly, “and we’re coming in hot. We have all five kids from the Creel House and they’re going to need protection.”
“Roger that,” Erica said. “That should mean that Derek will be coming around any minute, right? Over.”
“He hasn’t yet?” Nancy hissed. “We picked up the kids ten minutes ago. Over.”
Erica looked over at Derek’s sleeping form. “Shit. Over and out!”
She looked over at Titus. “You have to send me to void, now!”
“I don’t know how to do that!” he shrieked. “That was only something that Eleven ever learned. And only because was too young to know limits.”
“Well you best learn,” Erica hissed.
“What’s going on?” Vickie asked, standing up between them. “Where are the kids?”
Erica rolled her eyes. “Nancy and them found them at the Creel house and are on their way here. Only Derek hasn’t woken up and I need asswipe here to send me in the voice so I can kick Vecna’s scaly red ass, for real this time!”
“And I’m telling her,” Titan said waving his arm at her, “that I don’t know how to that!”
“Erica,” Vickie said soothingly. “What does El do when she sends them into the Void?”
She blinked up at her for a moment. “It’s a mind thing. She goes into their mind and sends them to the Void. I think the Void is just the subconscious but for everybody.”
Vickie turned to Titus. “You can read minds, right?”
He let out a shuddering breath. “I mean, yeah. But I’ve never been to the Void before.”
“So read Derek’s mind,” Vickie suggested. “He’s already there, so you should be able to get an idea of what it’s like before sending Erica. Plus, maybe we can figure out what’s going on before Erica goes in guns blazing.”
Erica grinned at her.
Titus rubbed his temples in frustration. “All right. Fine.”
He came up to the side of the sofa by Derek’s head and put his hands on Derek’s temples. Then he let out a gasp.
“Oh shit!” he hissed. “That’s what the Void is?!”
But before either of the girls could answer he was back in Derek’s mind. There was nothing they could do but wait.
A couple minutes pass and Nancy arrived with all the kids in tow, Murray bringing up the rear.
“What’s going on?” she asked when she saw the tableau in front of her.
“Titus is trying to find out what’s going on with Derek not coming out of the Void,” Vickie explained.
Holly let out a cry. “It’s my fault!”
Nancy turned to her and knelt down. “What’s your fault, Hols?”
“What’s going on with Derek,” she said with a sniffle. “We fought over who should stay to make sure Mr. Whatsit didn’t come back and try to hurt us. But we fought for too long. Something drew Mr. Whatsit’s attention away from us, so he must have sent the monsters to bring us back. So when the monsters spotted us, Derek pushed me through portal and ran away.”
“Well, shit.” Erica put her hands on her hips. “This just got more complicated and with Titus still in the Void with Derek and El fighting Vecna, there is no way to get back into the Void and help them.”
“She said a bad word...” Rosie said. “My mom said that people who swear are going to hell.”
Erica leveled her with a glare. “Been there, done that. Got the fucking t-shirt.”
The girl let out a squeak and rushed to hide behind Nancy.
Titus let out a gasp as he came to. “Oh, I’m really going to kill One. That rat bastard. I’m going to shove my fist down his throat and rip out his heart with my bare hands.”
Kay raised his hand. “Who’s Vecna and One and why are we being mean to Mr. Whatsit, he was nice.”
Nancy and Vickie shared a glance over their heads.
Nancy stood up. “They are all the same person and he’s a bad, bad man. He was going to kill all of you to open this world to the evil place and destroy earth.”
The kids made skeptical noises, but really didn’t protest.
Titus took Erica’s hand. “I’m going to need one more person to help me find Derek. Who’s coming with?”
Vickie, Nancy, and Murray all looked at each other.
Then Murray stepped up. “I think it’s down to me. We’re gonna need Nancy and Vickie here in case the radio station gets attacked.”
They all nodded and then Murray took Titus’s other hand.
We are at the penultimate chapter just one more to go!!
More creepy Henry, a bad man comes looking for Ellie, and Dr. Bob is now Dr. Scott Clarke. Ooops!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 |
~
Robin and Steve were out getting groceries for week and with Henry leaving tomorrow, with Eddie being back to the only one at the Hope House, they weren’t going to be gone long.
So Eddie was hanging out in the reception area with Chrissy tossing M&Ms at each other to see if they could get it in each other’s mouths, when the bell rang out overhead and in walked the most distinguished looking gentleman Eddie had ever seen.
Eddie immediately straightened up and attempted to look busy while Chrissy greeted him brightly.
“Hello!” she said. “Welcome to Hope House! How can I help you?”
The man smiled at her and instantly turned on the charm. “Hello, I’m Dr. Brenner and I’m looking for my adopted daughter, Jane Ives. She ran away from home and I’ve been checking hospitals and halfway houses hoping against hope I can find her alive.”
Chrissy’s smile turned sympathetic. “That’s just awful! But there is no one here by that name.”
“I have a picture, if that would help?” he asked gently, but Eddie bristled as Dr. Brenner worked a photo out of his wallet. “It’s a little worn, but hopefully it will jog your memory.”
Every alarm bell was going off in Eddie’s head at this guy. Maybe it was growing up with a car thief dad, doing his own drug dealing as a teenager, or six years in the joint but every instinct he ever honed was clamoring that something was wrong.
Chrissy took the picture from him and Eddie’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. It was Ellie, soon to be Ellie Hopper.
This was the asshole who had tattooed the eleven on her wrist and took away her name.
“Sorry,” she was saying when Eddie’s brain came back on. “There is no one like that living here.”
Dr. Brenner nodded and then turned to Eddie. “But perhaps the young man has seen her?”
Eddie looked at him in wide-eyed confusion. “What? Who me? Nah! I was just struck my how much she looked like my cousin at that age. She’s graduating from high school next year, but damn if you hadn’t said that was a Jane Ives I would have for sure thought it was her.” He knocked on the counter. “I’ve got to get ready for work. I’ll catch you later, Christine.”
He turned on his heel and dashed up the stairs. He needed to call Hopper and now.
Dr. Brenner frowned at his retreating back before turning back to Chrissy, taking the picture back from her. “That really is a pity. Would it be all right if I leave you my card in case she does come through here?”
“Of course!” she said and took the card. “I’ll let you know if I have any information I can give you.”
His frown deepened but said nothing, as he turned and left the building.
Chrissy peered out the window and waited until the man had drove off before she dialed up to Eddie’s room, it rang once or twice before she saw Eddie thundering down the steps.
“What the fuck was that all about?” she hissed as he scampered up to her.
“I called Hopper!” he muttered. “I wanted to let him know someone had come sniffing around looking for Ellie.”
“Oh!” she said, her hand coming up to her mouth. “That’s great! I can give Hopper the card and he can track down this guy.”
“Arrest the asshole and throw away the key,” Eddie agreed.
A couple hours later, Hopper called in with the news that Dr. Brenner had been picked up and they were investigating him for child abuse. Hopper was sure they were going to throw the book at him, too.
It wasn’t until Eddie was eating dinner that night that it hit him. The Hope House’s policy of not giving out information to anyone who asked had really come in clutch. Because yeah, it might be a little annoying for people who weren’t trying to hurt their residents, but in this case it protected a little girl from falling back into the hands of her abuser.
And that was always a good thing.
~
That night Eddie got up to go to the bathroom but as he was getting back into bed he thought he heard someone outside of his room.
He paused and tilted his head toward the door, now actively listening.
There!
He tiptoed to the door and opened it up a crack, peering outside into the hall. At first there was nothing there and then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A flash of white.
That little fucker, Eddie swore to himself and slipped out into the hall. He saw Henry move down the stairs quickly as if he had practiced it a million times.
He paused by the room next to Henry’s and saw that Dr. Kay was out cold. She wouldn’t had woken even if a bomb went off near her head. He looked over his shoulder at Steve’s room. He knew he should wake him to deal with Henry. It was his job after all, but Eddie couldn’t shake the sense of urgency, so he hurried down the stairs after Henry.
He got the bottom of the stairs and listened again. There! A creak on the step leading up to the kids’ side of the House.
Eddie hurried up the stairs, carefully avoiding the stairs that squeaked. Robin had taught him how to do it, in case he needed Chrissy or her but didn’t want to wake any kids that might be napping during the day.
Traumatized kids tended to sleep a lot, who knew?
Robin’s room was on the far side of the hall and Chrissy’s was on the near side. As Henry was nowhere to be seen, Chrissy’s room was the first port of call.
He paused to open her door, when another door opened behind him. It was Dr. Scott. He had a syringe in his hand and placed a finger to his lips.
Eddie reared back his head in confusion but Scott pointed at the door and held up the syringe, mouthing ‘For Henry’.
Oh. Oh hell yeah, things just got a hell of a lot more interesting. He turned back to his mission and opened the door. There was Henry standing above Chrissy with a pillow in his hand.
“Henry...” Eddie warned low and deep. “You need to put that pillow down and go back to your room.”
“She deserves to die...” Henry said coldly. “Everything she’s done since she ran away from home was for her on self interest. She’s not here to help little kiddies, she’s only here to play house with the other bitch down the hall and after I’m done with this one, she’s next.”
“No, Henry,” Eddie reasoned. “Steve hired her because she had background in eating disorders and nutrition. She didn’t start dating Robin until she’d been here a year.”
Henry frowned. “You lie.”
Eddie took a step forward with his hand out stretched. “I really don’t. Everyone here is here because they want to help people so others don’t leave the life they led. I noticed that Dr. Kay just thinks of you as another psycho that she’s going to study like a bug pinned to a board. But you’re more than that, aren’t you Henry?”
“My father tore me away from everything I’ve ever known to come to this hell hole of a town,” Henry sneered. “And had the audacity to blame me when I acted out!”
Eddie looked over at Chrissy but she didn’t stir at all. Henry caught the movement and smiled, smug.
“I drugged the coffee,” he said with a shrug, “but you were gone all day and Dr. Scott likes his tea, so you two were missed. But I figured that I could get in and out without being seen, clearly I was mistaken.”
“Look, Henry,” Eddie said with a shuddering breath. “Your dad was an asshole. Punishing you for missing your friends and your old house, but these two women don’t deserve your ire.”
“What would you know?” Henry hissed.
“I have my own shit dad,” Eddie confessed, “currently doing time for arson, the piece of shit. So I get it, it’s enough to make you crazy. But those intrusive thoughts? You don’t have to give into them.”
Henry frowned for a moment. “He killed my mother and my sister and then gorged his eyes out.” He looked up at Eddie. “I don’t want to be like him.”
“So don’t, Henry,” Eddie said, and held out his hand. “Just give the pillow and it’ll be just between us, okay?”
Henry nodded and handed the pillow to him. Eddie let out a sigh of relief and took the pillow. He threw it behind him and then reached out to Henry again.
“You are not your father,” he murmured. “You don’t have to give into your impulses. Why don’t we have Dr. Scott give you a nice sedative so you sleep without nightmares, and get some real sleep for a change?”
Henry’s eyes looked down at the outstretched hand and then at the door where there was no doubt, Dr. Scott was waiting. He took Eddie’s hand. Eddie smiled at him and led him out to the hall and into the waiting arms of Dr. Scott who took Henry back to his room and put him to sleep.
Eddie was waiting outside the door when Dr. Scott came back out. “That was really impressive, what you did tonight. I don’t think any of the others would have done as good a job as you did.”
Eddie ducked his head. “He might be rotten to the core and only gave up because he didn’t think he could take me on, or maybe he just needed to hear that he wasn’t to blame for the sins of his father.”
Scott huffed out a laugh. “Sounds like your therapy has been good for something at least.”
“Something like that for sure.”
Come morning, Dr. Kay was sacked, Henry was on his way to Pennhurst with Dr. Scott instead (he’d be back, but he wanted to spend a couple of days making sure Henry got the right care), and everyone had been informed of the incident that happened in the night time.
Steve slapped a piece of paper in front of Eddie. “I know you don’t need a job, but were looking for something anyway, and this is it, Eds. This is what you need. You wanted to something good for ex-cons coming out the pen? Do it here, because Dr. Scott is right. You handled it better than anyone else could’ve.”
They were all gathered around the front desk, Steve, Chrissy, Robin, Wayne, and Eddie.
Eddie picked up the paper and saw that it was an application for the Hope House. “They won’t let you hire me. I’m ex-con. A proper felon.”
Steve shook his head. “Now that we’re 60/40 private/public, I can hire whoever I want. And I want you, sunshine.”
Eddie blushed all the way to the roots of his hair. “Aww, Stevie, I’m starting to think you like me.”
Steve jumped over the counter and slid down the space between Eddie and it. Eddie’s eyes went wide as he took in the heated look that Steve was giving him.
“And what I if I more than liked you?” Steve breathed. “What then?”
“Then, I’d have to do this,” Eddie murmured. He cupped Steve’s cheek and pressed their lips together.
The other three began cheering, causing them to break off the kiss sooner then they wanted.
“Yes, yes,” Chrissy huffed. “Very cute and I’m happy for you both, but we’re all serious about the job, Eddie. Like do you know how long we’ve been looking for someone who could handle this job? All the people with the credentials look down at people like Henry. Like me. Like Max. They would be absolutely terrible for Hope House.”
“She’s right,” Robin agreed, nodding. “Anyone with all the fancy training would have gone in there, tackled Henry to the ground and had Dr. Scott jab him. But not you. You talked him down and he was able to come to the decision by himself he didn’t want to be like his dad.”
“So how about it, Eds?” Steve murmured. “You’ll stay at Hope House? With me?”
Eddie smiled that sweet double dimpled smile and said softly, “Yeah, baby. I’ll stay here at Hope House with you.”
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Well, here it is. It's a bit short, but it's finally done. Next week I will start putting out "Stockholm Syndrome is a Bitch" the accidental robbery AU I've been working on.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 |
~
Three Years Later:
Eddie came into the trailer they were sharing on the set of their new movie, Hawkins’ Galaxy Hijinks, phone in hand.
“Hey, babe,” he said gently. “Did you remember to set our anniversary post as private?”
Steve looked up from his script. He was still costume as Capt. Smollett, completely dashing in his navy blues.
The movie they were doing was kinda a Muppets Treasure Island meets a live action “Treasure Planet” meets Pirates of the Caribbean in space. Basically it was a gay space pirate romp with Treasure Island as a backdrop. And it was directed by Robin and written by Dustin. Basically they had gotten the band back together.
“What do you mean?” Steve said cocking his head to the side.
Eddie turned his phone around and let him take it. Steve frowned for a moment as he read article after article about Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington being secretly married for a year and each on had picture of his Instragram post that said:
‘Happy One Year Anniversary, My Love’ and picture of Steve and Eddie cutting a large wedding cake together.
Steve was on his feet in an instant. “Oh no, oh no, oh shit.” He looked up at Eddie stricken. “Shit! Why didn’t Bob call me or Robin or or anyone! The post has been up for six hours!”
Eddie took the phone back from Steve and threw it on the bed. “Take a deep breath, darlin’. We’re okay. They called me first and when I told them it was fine that we came out that way, they let it go. But after awhile I started to wonder if it was intentional...”
Steve let out a shuddering breath. “It’s okay?”
Eddie held Steve’s head in his hands and kissed him on the lips deeply. “It’s more than okay. It’s sweet and kinda perfect actually.”
He blinked up at Eddie in confusion for a moment before he relaxed into Eddie’s embrace. “Okay. Thank god.”
“Chrissy and Bob are working together to put out a joint statement and we’ll probably have to do a couple of morning shows or podcasts, but it’ll be fine.”
Steve laid his head on Eddie’s shoulder. “Definitely the Veronica Stiles Podcast. Her first, even.”
“I think I can agree to that,” Eddie murmured into Steve’s hair.
Suddenly there was a loud, “Everyone on set!” and Steve and Eddie raised their heads.
“Our cruel mistress calls,” Eddie said with a grin.
“I’m going to tell her you said that!” Steve cried and made a dash for the door.
“Like hell you will!” Eddie replied chasing him out the door and then skidded to a stop. He turned around grabbed Steve’s wig (wig stand and all) and then ran after his husband. “Come back here, you forgot your wig!”
He held up the styrofoam head in the air.
Steve froze and laughingly said, “Oops!” He was forced to walk back to Eddie to get his wig back.
As he took the wig from Eddie he murmured, “I’m still gonna tell her.”
“Is there nothing that will spare me from my doom?” Eddie asked with a wink.
Steve looked up at him. “Maybe a kiss might spare you.”
“A kiss huh?” Eddie asked, pulling him in close. “Your wish is my command.”
A cheer went up as they kissed right out there in open for the first time.
“I love you, sunshine,” Steve murmured.
“I love you too, darlin’,” Eddie said softly.
Later they would go on Veronica Stiles’ podcast about becoming friends after such a rocky start and how they fell in love.
They would talk about dating for a year before they got engaged and then another year before they wed. They talked about how hard it was to keep it a secret but also how freeing it was to not have the press hounding their every move.
Steve brought up how them coming out as a couple was an accident.
“A very happy one,” Eddie assured him, bumping their shoulders together, causing Steve to smile back.
“There had been rumors for years,” Veronica said smugly. “How did you manage to fool everyone?”
Eddie grinned. “Because I was always teasing my male friends by doing the ‘Walk of Shame’ coming out of their hotel rooms for years before Steve and I met, so on the times it couldn’t be avoided that we would be seen together, I would do the ‘Walk of Shame’ boots in hand and the rumors would die out for awhile and then I’d do it again.”
“Well,” she said with a smile. “I’m happy for you both.”
I feel like we should be nearing the end but there is way too much plot to happen. And just a heads up, not all of your favorites will survive. I've a few deaths planned and that includes some of the main cast.
In this we have the Mind Flayer and I rescue another character from the Duffers' bad writing.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 |
~
So, yes Eddie did know where the Mind Flayer was, but there was an army of demogorgons between them and it.
Lucas patted the flame thrower they had and said, “That’s what this puppy is for. To mow through those motherfuckers and end this once and for all.”
Eddie nodded. “I think that getting to the Mind Flayer is the important part. I can’t tell you why I feel this way, but I think it can reasoned with.”
Everyone turned and looked at Will.
“Wait why is everyo–” he paused mid breath as his brain caught. “You want me to reason with a being that has tried to kill me on so many occasions, it’s practically a tradition?!”
Steve frowned. “How did you survive down here for seven days?”
“What?” Will asked, frowning in confusion. “I’ve told everyone that story. Multiple times in fact. They couldn’t find me.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t, Will,” Mike asked gently. “You even said yourself that the Upside Down needs balance. What if Vecna didn’t choose you, the Mind Flayer did?”
Will blinked at him for a moment. “Holy shit.”
“Uh, guys...” Eddie said looking past the Party. “I don’t want to put a damper on this knowledge fest but um... I think we’re surrounded.”
Sure enough they were four demogorgons and eight demodogs ringed around them.
“Well, shit,” Dustin growled. “We don’t have any Powered folk with us, one flame thrower, and a monster guy who looks like a former friend. I think we’re pretty much fucked.”
“Rude,” Eddie huffed. “I could be real. You don’t know!”
Everyone slowly pulled out their weapons as the monsters stared at them as though they were waiting for orders.
“Robin you take the flame thrower,” Steve said dully. “Dustin and I’ve got the spears and shields.” He dug into his backpack and tossed a package at Lucas. “They’re cherry bombs. Light ‘em and sling shot them directly into their maws. Mike, you protect Will. And Dustin you are so wrong about not having any Powered folk with us. Will tear them to shreds.”
Eddie cocked his head to the side and asked with a grin. “And where do you want me, darlin’?”
“I figured you already had your own plans,” Steve said with a shrug. Then he realized how that sounded. “Not that I thought you were going to run off or anything, just that I’ve never seen you in action!”
Eddie grinned and licked his lips. “I getcha, sweetheart. I didn’t doubt you for an instant.” Then he flew up and all the monsters shrieked at him, the others taking advantage of their inattention to attack.
The battle was short and bloody. There were a few injuries on their side, but nothing major. But as they were tending to the wounds, a demodog they thought had been put down by Steve’s spear, leapt straight for Dustin’s throat.
There was nothing anyone could do, the demodog was too fast. Then out of nowhere, something slammed into the demodog mid air, before it could reach Dustin.
The two creatures wrestled and fought, the Party staring on in shock as this small battle raged.
Then it over, and they could see what had saved Dustin. It was a demogorgon. But it was battle scarred, with burn marks down the left side of its...flower? Face? Whatever it was, that shit had to be painful.
Everyone stared in slack-jawed shock as they watched the thing crawl toward Dustin and pause just out of arms length from the teen.
“Holy shit,” Mike said breathlessly. “I think that’s the demogorgon from the hospital when we rescued Max. Those burns are from Jonathan throwing rubbing alcohol on it and then lighting it on fire.”
Then it did something no one in their right minds would have expected in a million years. The thing whined. Like a dog.
“D’art?” Dustin breathed. It couldn’t be. All the demodogs from the tunnels died. Right?
The demogorgon closed its flower and nudged the tip toward the teen. Dustin reached out carefully oh so carefully and put his hand on the tip of the closed flower and the demogorgon melted into Dustin’s touch.
“Uh...” Lucas said into the deafening silence. “I think Dustin has a pet demogorgon...”
Mike crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “He would.”
Robin laughed. “Yeah, of all the people involved in this only Dustin would find away to tame a demogorgon.”
“Well!” Eddie said clapping his hands. “I think it’s time we found the Mind Flayer, yes?” He looked around him nervously. “I really don’t like being out in the open like this.”
Everyone scrambled to their feet and hurried along, Eddie at the lead. But the demogorgon hadn’t moved.
Dustin whistled and waved. “Come on, boy. Come on, D’art.”
The demogorgon came bounding up to him like an overexcited puppy, happily trailing at Dustin’s feet.
Robin gave it a side eye and wisely gave the thing a wide berth. “Can we trust that thing?” she asked Steve in a whisper.
Steve looked over his shoulder and then back at her. “Eddie or D’art?”
Ahead of them Eddie snorted.
“Um...” Robin said, eyes wide. “Either? Both? Also what’s up with the name Dart?”
Steve laughed. “I’m pretty sure we can trust both and as for the name, it’s one of the Musketeers. The fourth one or whatever.”
“Steve!” Dustin cried. “He’s named after D’Artagnan from ‘The Three Musketeers’. He’s one of my literary heroes!”
“Yeah,” Steve huffed. “And he’s made the fourth Musketeer in the next book. Like there is a literal book called ‘The Four Musketeers’.”
Dustin rolled his eyes. “That’s a movie. The actual book is called ‘Twenty Years After’. So technically you’re correct, but still very, very wrong.”
Eddie chuckled up ahead. “Not true. You are both wrong. ‘The Four Musketeers’ is actually part two of ‘The Three Musketeers’.”
If you asked Mike later he would absolutely deny the squeak that came out of his mouth when Eddie spoke.
He had forgotten that the beast leading them to the Mind Flayer was in fact, Eddie.
“Still waiting for your voice to crack there, Wheeler?” Eddie cackled.
Mike ducked his head and blushed. “Shut up, man.”
His friends chuckled and even Robin and Steve shared an amused glance.
“Well, we’re here...” Eddie said, looking up.
They all followed his line of sight and sure enough, looming several stories above their heads was the Mind Flayer.
It shrieked at them so loudly that everyone was forced to cover their ears. Will sank to his knees as the beast continued its vocal barrage on their senses.
“Shut up!” Lucas yelled. “God! You can read minds, you fucker! Read ours!”
The shrieking abruptly stopped, the echo ringing in their ears.
Will stood up on shaky legs. He took a step forward and nearly stumbled, but Mike was there, holding him up.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you,” he murmured. “Not the first time, and not every time since. But I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
Will nodded and together they walked up to the Mind Flayer. “Eddie says that you can be reasoned with. We just want to be left alone. But you’re destroying our world and we will do whatever it takes to stop you.”
He paused a beat.
“Even if it means killing you,” he said coldly. “You have made my life a living hell for years. I want to be free of you. Of all of the Upside Down.”
The Mind Flayer shrieked and Eddie cleaned out one ear. “Like ow. You don’t have to shriek to be heard you know.”
The ground began to shake and everyone lurched from side to side. Eddie managed to catch Robin and Steve before they fell, but Lucas and Dustin fell to the ground.
“Well you don’t,” Eddie insisted. “I can understand you just fine. Will can too. There is no need for histrionics.”
Is this better, you insignificant insect?
“Hey!” Will shouted. “You leave him alone! You’re big and bad, I get it. But if I’m right about Eddie’s hunch, you want Vecna out of your dimension just as much as we do. But to do it we have to work together. And that means letting El open a gate.”
What would that serve? You are all but ants to his power, you can not stop him. If a being such as I cannot stop him, what hope do you have?
Well that was fair enough, he supposed, but they had something Henry didn’t. Each other. “We outnumber him. There are four of us with powers now. We can take him on, but only if you let us. Because if you’re against us, we have the power to take you out at least. And that would suck for you.”
The stories high creature was silent for a moment as it contemplated its odds. What else would you have me do? Now that I have let in the girl and her compatriots.
“That’s a good start,” Will acknowledged. “Do you control the creatures or does he?”
The creatures were not here before he arrived. I as you see me now was not here when he arrived. He created this form because he wanted something he could see, feel, touch.
The Mind Flayer shuddered and the ground shook.
“Holy shit,” Steve breathed. “Vecna is violating this place. You. It’s not supposed to look like this is it?”
The Mind Flayer turn to Steve. You see much. More than they give you credit for. But yes. This... Upside Down as you call it, did not always look like this. I will not insult you and say that it was bright, but it was not this red. This open wound.
“So why do you need Will?” Mike asked, still holding on to Will for dear life.
Because if this world is not returned to its balance it will tear apart and take your world with it.
“If Vecna were to, say be destroyed...” Robin asked with a grimace, “would that also return this world back to normal?”
The Mind Flayer turned its full attention to her and boy could she feel it. It was intense. If this was what Will felt all the time it was no wonder the kid was stressed all time.
I do not know. But I will let you try.
“Do you control the demogorgons and the like?” Dustin asked, his hand on D’art’s shoulder.
I do not. Nor do I know what would happen to the little one should things go back to the way they were.
The demogorgon wrapped his hand around Dustin’s ankle possessively.
“Well, he did survive the tunnels,” Steve said with a shrug. “Maybe he’ll survive...this...” he trailed off. He looked over at Eddie and cocked his head to the side. “Oh.”
Everyone else looked around at each other trying to figure out what Steve was talking about. It was Robin that got him first.
“Oh!” she breathed. “If D’art can survive outside of the tunnels when the others died, then maybe the same could be said for Eddie.”
“Uh...” Eddie said with a grimace. “That’s sweet and all, but I’ve changed too much. I’ve got wings and claws and wolfy feet. I’m more monster than man at this point.”
The Mind Flayer turn its attention to Eddie and it was so consuming that even Steve felt a shiver down his spine.
And there is something else that I can do for you. But not yet. Not when you need the power of your current form. Go! I am done with you for now.
And they all scrambled to get away from the creature. Then the ground began to shake.
Just two more chapters after this and then it's done! This has been one hell of a ride and I'm glad you've been able to come along with me.
We have good news and some bad... creep!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
~
Steve and Wayne sat on each side of Max as Max’s lawyer explained the benefits of her living with Wayne and watched in stony silence.
Judge Newby had heard testimony from all three of them already and with Susan having signed away her rights, would only be informed after the fact of Max’s placement.
Steve clutched Max’s hand and she leaned into his side.
Judge Newby nodded. “Thank you, Counselor. I have considered all the options and it seems to me that the best option for Max Mayfield is to be placed into the care of Wayne Munson.” They cheered, but the judge held up his hand. “However, there will be regular checks bi-weekly from Social Services to make sure she is safe and adjusted.”
“Those are acceptable terms,” Wayne said gruffly. “I already have a place I’m staying with two bedrooms, and hers is in the front of the house.”
Judge Newby nodded. “A social worker will be by this afternoon to make sure everything is on the up and up. But congratulations, Max. It looks like you have a home at last.”
Max nodded, too afraid to speak otherwise she’d start crying.
Steve and Wayne lead her out to where the remaining members of the house were waiting for her.
“We won!!” Max cried and everyone cheered.
They all piled on to give her hugs.
Chrissy kissed her cheek. “I’m going to miss you, sassy girl!”
“Just wait,” Max said brightly. “Six months and then Steve can adopt me for good. I’ll be back and to stay!”
Steve ruffled her hair. “It might be a little longer than that depending on how quickly things get approved, but yeah. Wayne is your temporary stable home, just until we can get you adopted.”
She hugged Steve tightly. “I’m gonna miss being at the Hope House.”
“Well,” Wayne said with a shrug, “since I work there, you stopping by after school is only proper, after all.”
Max’s face lit up, then she turned to Steve. “Oh god, can I?”
Steve huffed out a laugh. “Yeah of course. Dustin is going to be doing the same thing with Claudia so I see no reason you can’t stick around after school, too.”
She jumped up and down excitedly. Steve scooped her up into a big hug, twirling her around as she laughed.
“I’m free!” she crowed.
“And this calls for ice cream!” Robin shouted and everyone cheered.
~
Eddie was more nervous now. He pretty much had free range of Steve as he was the only person at the halfway house at the moment and being with alone with the guy had one of two reactions: sheer lancing heat that traveled down Eddie’s spine to pool in his gut or bright blushing embarrassment that had him hiding behind his hair every god damn time.
And it did not help that Steve seemed to pick up on the vibe and amplified it.
Then Eddie got hit with a case of double bad news. The diner had hit a rough patch and Benny was having to cut back on staff, which meant that Eddie would have to be let go. The second bit of bad news was that with Max living with Wayne, Eddie wasn’t allowed to move in with them after his parole was done.
All this on top of the fact that Max’s social worker did not like Wayne or Steve being the only adults in Max’s life. And if Eddie’s loved ones are stressed then so is Eddie.
Eddie still had the money from the farm, so he could find his own digs, but he didn’t want to. It felt wrong being by himself.
Then Henry Creel arrived.
He was to be transferred from lockup to a nearby mental hospital, Pennhurst Asylum, but by some mix up Henry was released from the prison three days before the hospital was ready for him, so he was spending the time at Hope House.
The second Eddie laid eyes on him he knew he was creepy little fucker, and vowed to give the guy as wide a berth as possible.
Dr. Kay was accompanying Henry to monitor him even the Hope House had Dr. Newby on staff for that sort of thing. And it was abundantly clear, she did not think much of him or his abilities. So Eddie gave her a wide berth too.
Dr. Bob as he asked people to call him was kind, jolly fellow who knew his stuff. He had trained as a therapist before switching to medicine, so he was a bit of a two-for-one type deal.
And Eddie was almost 100% percent sure he cheated at cards. Especially Uno.
Eddie was coming out of his room that first day with Henry in the house, having just gotten a shower and was drying his hair with towel when he ran smack into Henry.
He was dressed in the all white getup of the asylum. White pants, shoes, button up shirt. He had a smile that sent a thrill down Eddie’s spine.
Henry tilted his head and licked his bottom lip. “I wonder how red your blood will be once it taste oxygen for the first time.”
Before Eddie could open his mouth to say something, Dr. Kay was grabbing Henry by the arm and hauling him away.
Eddie took a deep breath and put his hand over his heart to try and get his heart to stop jack rabbiting. Jesus H. Christ.
He tossed the towel into his room and hurried down to the canteen for dinner. He absolutely salivated when he saw that it was Steve’s pot roast.
Even though Wayne ruled the roost in the kitchen, the old man had to admit that Steve’s pot roast was divine and would beg Steve to put on rotation at least once a month. An agreement Steve readily agreed to.
He was digging into the roasted red potatoes when Dr. Kay and Henry came down. Henry sat down at a nearby table as Dr. Kay got their dinner.
When she placed his plate in front of him, his nose wrinkled in distaste. He poked at the meat for a moment and then gagged, turning away.
Dr. Kay rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry it’s not up to your sensibilities, your majesty,” she huffed. “Just know that the food is going to be a lot worse at the asylum.”
Henry let out a pain sigh and daintily picked up his cutlery to cut into the food.
Steve snorted at the whole display. “I got the recipe from my mother, who learned it personally from the famous two star Michelin chef, René DuPont. So I’ll be sure to tell him the next we meet up, that some hoity-toity loony thought his recipe was trash.”
“You lie.”
Steve shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth just like you and you know what it got me? An alcoholic mother and a Lothario father. And now I use what I learned from them to keep others from making that mistake.”
Henry glared at him and Steve met him head. It was a battle of wills and everyone in the canteen was watching with great interest.
To Dr. Kay’s shock, but no one else’s surprise Henry broke off first.
“Now eat your damn dinner,” Steve bit out.
Henry chewed on his food, but Eddie was sure he wasn’t even tasting it. But it didn’t matter, Henry was eating and that was the thing that mattered. And the fact that Steve had managed it when Dr. Kay couldn’t made him smile.
Take that, Dr. Fancy-pants!
Eddie happily ate his food and went to go help Wayne clean up the kitchen.
“Thanks for helpin’,” Wayne said as he handed Eddie a towel to dry. They had a dish washer, but there were some things just too big for the beast.
“No problem,” he muttered back as he began drying the pots and pans. “I just needed a break from tall, blond, and creepy.”
“Normally I’d admonish you for that,” Wayne grumbled, “because he can’t help how he was made, but he gives even me the chills.”
“I’ve met guys like him in the slammer,” Eddie explained. “Dudes that absolutely sure have been in the nut house because they were crazy as fuck but didn’t have the money for the fancy-pants lawyer to tell the court that.”
Wayne nodded. “I’m glad he won’t be staying long and that there aren’t any kids with us right now.”
“I think that’s why he’s here and not anywhere else,” Eddie guessed, moving on to the next pan. “He might not have a history of violence, but there is no guarantee that that can’t change from one moment to the next and the last thing they want for collateral damage is a kid. So when Max and Ellie were finally placed elsewhere, they could have Henry here.”
“Sleep with a baseball bat near your bedside, kid,” Wayne growled. “I’d hate to lose ya when I just got you back.”
Eddie saluted with the towel and ended up hitting himself in the face, causing Wayne to burst out laughing. They finished the rest of the dishes in silence and then went their separate ways.
Eddie passed by Henry’s room on the way to his and noticed that the patient wasn’t in it, but the door was wide open. Something itched under Eddie’s skin, making him want to snoop, but he hated that shit when done to him, so he walked away.
But the prickling at the hairs on the back of his neck didn’t go away.
He tossed and turned all night and was grateful for the first time since Benny let him go that he didn’t have to go to work.
He was exhausted. But he got up and shambled down to the canteen for breakfast, lured by the scent of frying scones. He piled his plate with scones and grabbed both honey butter and a tasty looking cinnamon spread.
Eddie turned around and saw Chrissy having breakfast and that’s when he realized that he didn’t normally see her at meal times, so he wandered over to her table and sat himself next to her.
“Hey, stranger,” he muttered bumping into her shoulder. “How come I rarely see you at meal time?”
Chrissy blushed. “I think I look stupid when I eat.”
Eddie blinked at her for a moment. “You seeing a therapist about that? Because, darlin’, even I know that ain’t healthy.”
She ducked her head and nodded. “Going on four years now. I have a healthier relationship with food, but I still have hang ups.”
“If you need someone to talk to,” Eddie said, nodding, “just come talk to me. Sometimes it’s good to get an outside perspective.”
“Thanks,” Chrissy said and returned to eating.
Watching her, he could tell that she was still self-conscious about it, so he decided to distract her by doing what he did best, chatting.
“I have a question that’s been bothering me this whole time I’ve been here,” he said wrinkling his brow. “About something Steve said at the beginning. About how a teenager committed suicide by jumping out of the window. But Steve said there were no kids before him, so that really doesn’t add up.”
She smirked. “So what gives?”
“Yeah.”
“Steve calls her a teenager and she technically was,” Chrissy explained. “She was eighteen when came here to wait out the trial of her rapist. But he had been raping her since she was twelve. So to drive home how messed up the whole thing was, Steve talks about her like she was a kid. Because she was. She never got to have a childhood.”
“Well, shit,” Eddie said sitting back in his chair, his stomach turning. “And he got away with it?”
She snorted and stabbed her scone with a fork. “He was the preacher at her church and putting him away would do more damage to the community then good, according the jury that acquitted him.”
“Eww...” he crowed. “I hate religion for that reason. White picket fence, two point five kids, in church every Sunday but beating the hell out the kids, adultery, getting drunk all the time. It’s like a cult for fuck’s sake.”
She nodded. “My mom was like that. That need to have the perfect outside but the inside was rotten to the core. I was put in ballet, cheer, and color guard. Not allowed sugar or red meat. Every bit of food I ate was carefully monitored. So I ran away from home the second I turned eighteen.”
“Is that how you came here?” Eddie guessed. “Is that how you found Hope House and the love your life, running away from home at eighteen?”
Chrissy smiled. “Yeah. Spotted a brochure at the doctor’s office for eating disorders and while my mom was arguing with my doctor about my caloric intake I slipped into my bra and used it to make my escape.”
“Good for you,” Eddie said with a smile.
When he looked up, he saw Henry standing close by and that shiver rushed down his spine again. He shook it off. He’d have to tell Steve about what he was feeling though.
Welp! Since the only person who weighed in on whether the epilogue would be attached to this one or have its own post was @val-from-lawrence, the epilogue will be out next week.
But here we are at the end. And Eddie gets the surprise of his life.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 |
~
Eddie was doing a shoot in Milan, Italy for a movie he had coming up about the fashion industry during WWII. He loved acting, but he did not love acting like a performing monkey, modeling for some magazine.
He was in this fuzzy blue sweater and soft tan slacks and he was basically rolling around on the floor looking ‘cute’.
Finally he had enough of the texture of the sweater and began to just pull it off. He had assumed they would stop photographing him, but he was wrong.
“Get me something else,” he growled, more than a little annoyed.
An assistant hurried to do as he said, rushing forward with a dark pink silk shirt that had an attached scarf around the collar.
Eddie put it on, buttoning up the shirt as another assistant stood by with the matching dress pants. He stripped off the pants he was wearing and stepped into the new ones. Then he was handed white Chelsea boots and white suit jacket.
The same assistant who handed him the shirt, loosely tied the scarf and fluffed it so that it draped well across his collar bones.
“Right,” the photographer said, “now start walking toward me!”
Eddie suppressed every desire not to roll his eyes as he walked to the photographer.
Then in a burst of inspiration he winked into the camera.
The photographer laughed. "Yes, yes! That's good!"
So Eddie really leaned into the goofy aspect of his personality. Playing up the mischievousness that his Uncle Wayne called his gremlin side.
By the time Eddie was done he was exhausted and ready to crash in his hotel bed until the sun came up a second time.
As he was getting into a waiting cab, Chrissy called him.
“Hey, Chris,” he muttered wearily. “If this isn’t terribly important and can wait the thirty-six hours I am going to be taking to sleep, please call me then.”
“You just answered the question I had, actually,” she replied with a giggle. “I’ve got a surprise for you, but wanted to make sure you were well rested first.”
Eddie pulled his phone away from his face to frown at it. Then he held up back up to his ear. “What kind of surprise?”
“Only the best, darling,” Chrissy murmured soothingly. “You take that break, sleep as much as you can. I will take care of everything else.” Eddie made a disbelieving scoff and she laughed. “What’s the matter, babe? Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do...” he grumbled. “I’m just tired and grumpy.”
“I know, chér,” she said fondly. “You’ll like your surprise, I promise.”
“Fine...” Eddie whined. “I’m to grumble about it, though.”
Chrissy laughed. “I would be more surprised if you didn’t, love. Take care and I’ll be in town in two days with your surprise.”
“Love you,” he murmured as he opened the door to his hotel room.
“Love you, too asshole,” she murmured as Eddie’s face hit the pillow and he was out like a light.
~
It wasn’t quite thirty-six hours, but it certainly felt that way when Eddie crawled out of bed the next day sometime in the afternoon.
He was really eaten up with curiosity regarding the surprise. The way Chrissy sounded made it seem like it was something he really wanted, but he couldn’t even begin to think about what that could be.
He ordered in food and hopped into the shower to finally get all the sweat from working under the bright lights of the photo shoot.
By the time the food had arrived Eddie was fresh out of the shower and feeling more like himself with each passing moment, and once food was in him, he would be well on his way to being human again.
He then spent the day catching up on the news and relaxing around the hotel. There was a great big fashion do on Saturday that he was not looking forward to, but was expected to be at since he was in town. So he was going to take every opportunity to rest.
Eddie went to bed early because he had to pick up Chrissy from the airport. Not that he minded doing it, but it was definitely one of those cases where he wished she would have gotten a driver or a cab or even a fucking rental.
But Chrissy was as much a friend as she was his manager so he kept his mouth shut.
He waited patiently by her exit, hair shoved up under a cap and sunglasses on, hoping to minimize the chances of being spotted.
Chrissy made it through her gate and spotted him by a poster for Steve Harrington’s new body horror film, a remake of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” that was to start filming soon.
She shook her head. She didn’t understand marketing sometimes. It was fire on all cylinders from the moment anything was finalized or barely anything at all and the movie gets buried and everything in between.
She walked up to Eddie and smacked his arm. “Come on, you big baby. The fresh air will do you good.”
“So what’s my surprise?” he huffed, getting to his feet and grabbing her carry-on.
Chrissy slapped at him. “Greedy boy. It’s being delivered to your hotel room as we speak.”
“Is it big?”
She laughed. “So I’m told.”
Eddie frowned at her. That was such a weird way to word that. But Chrissy just grinned at him, completely unrepentant.
They got her luggage at the baggage claim and made their way to his rental car.
“Why are you being all smug and secretive right now?” he asked as they pulled away from the curb.
“Because I want you to be surprised,” she huffed. “I don’t want to give away the game because then it would render the all hard work into making this happen, moot.”
Eddie let out a pained sigh. “Fine.”
She patted him on the arm. “You’ll be fine, you big baby.” Then she winked at him. “It’s all on the down low.”
Again a phrase that made no sense out of context.
He pulled up to the hotel and carried her luggage in for her and then left her to go check in. He was told to just go up to his room and surprise would be waiting for him.
He stuck the card key into the card reader and opened the door.
~
Steve had been freaking out since his talk to Linus. How was suppose to just fly to wherever he was right now and declare his love for him? He knew he could just ask Eddie where he was but that didn’t feel right.
He didn’t know what to do. So he did the smart thing and called his best friend.
“Don’t worry, babe,” Robin said. “I’ve got this.”
He didn’t have long to wait before he was being told to pack up and get ready for a flight in two days.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Steve asked when Robin showed up at his doorstep with a list of things he needed to take with him.
“I called Chrissy,” she said with a grin. “And she got everything sorted. All you have to do is show up when she tells you to and look cute.”
He blinked at her for a moment. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do this.”
So two days later he got on a plane to Italy and was shown the VIP entrance in the back of the hotel.
He was able to get a shower and dressed with a bouquet of sunflowers in hand by the time Eddie had returned to the hotel.
Eddie opened the door and let out a gasp of surprise.
“Stevie?”
“Hey, Eddie...” he whispered.
Eddie strode across the room and took Steve’s head in hand, pressing their lips together.
Steve let out a sigh of relief. It was so good. He let the flowers drop to the floor as he wound his hands around Eddie’s waist.
When they were finally able to come up for air, Steve murmured with a grin, “You like your surprise, sunshine?”
Eddie let out a laugh. “The best surprise I’ve gotten since Wayne took me to see ‘Les Mis’ at the local theatre.”
Steve’s grin got better. “This is just the start, baby. I just wanted you to know how much I love you. How much you mean to me. How much better my life is for having you in it.”
“Back at you, sweetheart,” Eddie murmured. “God, just having you here makes this whole trip worth it.”
He paused for a moment. “Wait, does no one but Chrissy know you’re here?”
“I mean Robin does because she’s the one that planned everything with Chrissy,” Steve said with a shrug. “Maybe Bob. But no one else.”
Eddie let out a shuddering breath. “Okay, before things go any further. We to talk optics. And I hate that we have to.”
Steve grinned up at him. “No, I’m grateful that you want to have that discussion upfront.”
So they sat down and talked about all of it. What they wanted out of the relationship, what they were willing to do for each other.
It was ultimately decided that they would keep everything mum until they wanted to come out as a couple.
Not just for their careers but their sanity too. Fans could be absolutely rabid and they didn’t want to invite that into their lives if they could help it.
They notified their managers of this and then Eddie sent one last message to Chrissy.
GOING DND FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS. IF YOU NEED ME CALL THE ROOM!
And then promptly turned his phone.
Steve frowned at him for a moment. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Eddie wagged his finger at him. “Uh uh, I remember your rules, darlin’ no phones on the first three dates and I intend to follow that to the T.”
Steve let out a gasp and then kissed him soundly again. “God, I love you!”
“Back at you, beautiful.”
~
“Steve! Steve!” the reporters called out as he walked the carpet at the St. Lucian fashion advent.
He paused and smiled, taking off his glasses and tucking them in this jacket pocket.
“Why are you in Milan?” one reporter asked off to the side. “I thought you were in Vancouver about to start ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’?”
Steve just smiled and said nothing.
“Can you comment on the fact that you were seen with Eddie Munson last night on the riverbank?” another reported cried out.
“Eddie is a dear friend and we went out to dinner.”
“What do you say to the rumors that you two have been fucking since the Oscars?” yet another reported called out.
Steve burst out laughing. “My sex life is no one’s business but mine and the person I’m fucking. But to answer your question, fuck off.”
“So you are saying that you have been fucking since then,” the reporter pressed.
Steve looked over at her and sighed when he saw it was Nancy Wheeler.
“Eddie Munson and I are good friends and we spend a lot of time together,” he pointed out. “We have not been fucking since the Oscars. You’re only citing the Oscars as that’s when Eddie came out. But you were there that night, sitting right behind us. You would have seen something if that was case. So you know it wasn’t. You won’t tear my life to pieces again. If you come sniffing around my life again, I will sue you.”
He smirked at her and then put his glasses back on.
“Speaking of suing,” another reporter asked. “I understand that you settled with your parents over the incident where you were outed. Can you talk about that?”
Steve focused on her and smiled. God, if he was straight he would asked Veronica out. She was a god send in moments like this.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “But that was more for my peace of mind then because I didn’t think they weren’t culpable. They had continued to conspire with my then manager Keith Fontaine to keep me under their control. When I fired Keith last year, the whole scheme broke open and he is going to jail for fraud on top of bunch of other things I can’t talk about. But I’m grateful that at least two thirds of the perpetrators have been punished for their involvement.” He looked pointedly at Nancy who slunk back into the crowd of reporters.
Then he was being tapped on the shoulder to move on. So he nodded and walked away head held high.
That night as he laid in Eddie’s arms, Eddie murmured, “I saw the footage from the red carpet tonight.”
“I can’t believe that bitch keeps darkening my doorstep,” Steve sighed. “I know that I wasn’t originally going to be there tonight, but I hate how Nancy got to wheedle her way under my skin again.”
“I’m proud of how you handled it,” Eddie replied, nuzzling Steve’s pulse point. “It sent a message that you are not going to be walked all over anymore.”
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I was really hoping to get this finished before I started posting, but alas, it was not meant to be. That said, I'm 98% complete. Like 3-4k words left in the story close.
This is the story whose title I kept to myself. It was just sooo good, I wanted it to be a surprise for everyone.
Summary: Eddie and Steve are just two boys in their senior year of high school whose lives are about to be turned upside down. Eddie with a recording contract for his band Corroded Coffin, Steve with his mom dying. In a fit of rage Steve does the inexplicable. He destroys the drama room props and costume closet. When Principal Higgins wants to pin on Eddie. But Steve steps forward. Life moves on, but can they?
~
On opposite sides of the town, two boys are listening a lawyer that would change their lives forever.
Eddie Munson was sitting with friends; Brian Martin, Jeff Lawrence, and Gareth Hughes as the lawyer explained that the contract was very good and that for a first time band, they would make a lot of money. All they had to do was get on a plane headed for LA next Saturday and sign on the dotted line.
Steve Harrington on the other hand was at will reading for his mother, Sophia Harrington, who tragically passed away from a brain aneurysm. He was seated with his father. He listened stony-faced as everyone else in the room received something from her, even if it was a single piece of jewelry or a trust that could be used when x happened.
But there was nothing for him. Not even a mention. And if anyone had any notions that the will had simply not been updated after Steve’s birth was put to bed when Tammy Thompson was mentioned to get $5000 to pursue her dreams of Broadway, a girl in Steve’s year.
Her own husband got a mention, leaving the house to him and the rest of her material assets not mentioned in the will. But not her son.
Everyone was bursting with such joy to have been remembered by such a great lady that no one realized that one person had been deliberately left out of the will.
“Don’t worry about it, son,” Charles growled. “I’m sure it’s because she assumed I would die first and leave you all my money.”
Steve could only nod. He pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed the end, fighting back the tears that threatened to overflow.
He hadn’t even been mentioned and it burned all the way down from his throat to his stomach. It was clear. Sophia Harrington had no need to mention someone she cared so little for.
The biggest slap in the face was the fact that the Hawkins High drama department got $2.7 million to completely revamp everything from the stage to their costumes and set pieces. It would absolutely revitalize how they put on productions. It would even allow them to set up a trust for scholarships.
It was as Mr. Miller, the drama teacher, sobbed, incredibly generous.
Steve went home and curled up into a ball on his bed as sobs wracked his body. He felt so alone. Nancy convinced him to throw off his asshole friends at the start his junior year and then went and cheated on him the following year, leaving him friendless and alone.
Even in his dreams he was all alone in a void of nothing but blackness. He sat in the middle, his head buried in his knees. Then the laughter started. First it was his mother, then it was Tommy and Carol, and then the rest of his old friends joined in. Finally Nancy and her new boyfriend Jonathan began laughing too.
Steve woke with a start, panting for breath. He rubbed his face wearily and then got up to splash water on his face.
He then took the time to do his bed time routine for the sake of doing something that felt normal. Even though nothing in his life would ever be normal again.
He got into his pajamas and laid down on his bed again, hoping that sleep would allude him. He thought of all sorts of things to make himself stay awake.
He named all the teams in the NBA alphabetically by name and then by state. He listed all the names of the Men’s Olympic swim team for 1984. But instead of keeping him awake, it soothed his mind and fell into a dreamless and deep sleep.
~
His dad hadn’t made Steve go to school the following Monday, but he did ask him to try going to school on Tuesday.
So Steve got dressed all in black and drove in silence to the school. Charles had offered to take him, but Steve had declined, saying that he if he wanted to leave in the middle of school, he would want to do so quickly.
Charles nodded and let him go.
Once Steve was far enough away from his house he let out a shuddering sigh of relief. He knew his dad meant well, but he was starting to miss the days when his parents would go on business trips for days leaving him home alone.
The hovering was starting to make his skin crawl, because when the fog cleared and the respectable amount of time for grief to have passed, his father would go back to being the hard ass he always was.
He pulled into the parking lot and rested his head on the steering wheel. Maybe he should have had his dad take him. With a heavy sigh, he got out of his car and walked into the school.
Steve went through the motions and there was not a single teacher he had who dared call his name even for roll call.
He didn’t even sit with friends at lunch time, the librarian letting him have lunch on one of the studying tables. He wouldn’t say he ate, but she allowed him time to himself to push his food around his plate before he gave up and tossed it.
Steve decided that he was just going to go home. He went to the office to have them notify the rest of his teachers and then walked the full length of the school to where his car was located.
But as he passed the drama room, he saw the door swinging back and forth, as if someone had slammed the door, but instead of latching shut had bounced back.
He wasn’t sure what possessed him, but he was filled with a rage he couldn’t even begin to describe.
How dare they? How dare they leave the door open so callously like they didn’t care about the stuff anymore. And why would they? Everything was going to be replaced with better stuff anyway.
Steve stormed into the drama and began ripping all the clothes off their hangers, stomping on them and kicking them into a corner. He found a real baseball bat and went to work on the backdrops and props like lamps and shit.
He went through the closet like a tornado through town. He got to the last bit of furniture in the room. It was a large black throne with skulls on it.
Steve wasn’t even sure what play they would have even used it for, but that thought. That one moment of clarity gave him pause. Just enough.
He sunk to his knees and began sobbing. Just large hiccuping sobs of pain, anguish, and despair.
He picked up the bat and then turned on his heel and ran. He yanked open his car door and just gunned it out of the parking lot.
Not a single light or speed limit was respected in his rush to get home. Somehow, someway he made home without killing himself or someone else and avoided every cop in town.
Once he got to his house, he parked and just broke down again.
Steve finally picked up the pieces of his soul and got out of the car. He went through the motions of getting into the house, toeing off his shoes and walking up the stairs to his bedroom.
He stripped out of his clothes and crawled into bed with just his socks and underwear on. He pulled the blanket over his head and stayed there until his father got home.
Charles knocked on his door and let himself in when Steve mumbled something in reply.
“I’ve got dinner in the fridge,” he muttered, “just heat up something when you get hungry. Just make sure you do eat, do you understand me?”
Steve nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Charles nodded and then went back downstairs.
Steve laid in bed until almost midnight before venturing into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and took out the Tupperware and huffed out a laugh when he realized his dad had filled it with spaghetti. Something he would have not done under pain of death when Mom was alive. Because it would stain it orange.
He splashed a little bit of water on the noodles and stuck it in the microwave.
Then suddenly the microwave was going off and making noise, Steve rushed forward to turn it off, but it was too late, his dad had heard.
Charles came out of his office and leaned against the door frame. “Cutting it kinda fine, aren’t you?”
Steve looked over his shoulder and huffed a laugh at the smirk on his dad’s face. “It’s still today.”
“Yes it is,” Charles agreed, coming into the kitchen and pulled up a chair at the island, sitting down. “You want to talk about today? Because this isn’t you.”
Steve took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I don’t know how to feel, how to act, how to breathe knowing she didn’t even think of me at all.”
Charles let out a pained sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. He walked into the room as the microwave went off.
Steve got the food out and set down with it and fork to eat.
“I wish I could tell you I knew why. But I don’t know anymore than you do,” Charles huffed, leaning against the counter. “I knew that there was some discontentment with being a mother. I think that she only had you because that’s what was expected of her and you shouldn’t have to bear the burden of that. But you’ll have to anyway, because you are in this world even if you didn’t ask to be.”
Steve nodded and then took a bite of the food. “Did Mrs. Oldman make this?”
Charles straightened up and cocked his head to the side. “Yes, how did you know?”
Steve stabbed at the spaghetti with his fork. “She’s the only one I know who uses breakfast sausage instead of hamburger or Italian sausage in her spaghetti.”
Charles blinked his eyes for a moment. “I don’t think I realized.” He took the fork out of Steve’s hand scooped up some of the sausage. “You’re right, that is breakfast sausage. Well, regardless it tastes good.”
Steve nodded and took the fork back to actually eat. Charles stayed to make sure he ate enough to fuel a teenaged athlete body before letting Steve give up.
“Principal Higgins called me today,” Charles said dryly. “Apparently someone trashed the drama room closet and they think it was the Munson boy. He was the last one in the room during lunch.”
The spaghetti in Steve’s stomach turned to lead and sat heavily. He swallowed thickly. “It wasn’t him.”
Charles’s eyes cut to him with the sharp precision of the top notch lawyer he was. “And I’m declaring myself in this instance as not your father but your lawyer so anything you tell me from this moment on is protected.”
Steve let out a shuddering breath. In that moment he felt a surge of love and respect toward the man in front of him.
So he told him everything. From the bad dreams to the rage he felt in that moment seeing the drama room door swinging on its hinges.
Charles nodded. “All right. Here’s what we are going to do.” And he mapped out the next couple of days, leaving Steve stunned.
“I deserve to go to jail,” he whispered, pained.
“I’m not going to tell you what you should do,” Charles said with a heavy sigh. “I am only saying that you need to think about your future and what kind of man you want to be. Because you’re still a kid Steve. And while the law could go either way for a seventeen year old on whether or not to treat you as a juvenile or an adult, you are just a kid.”
Steve let out a shuddering breath and then another. He nodded.
“What I want you to do is think about it,” Charles said. “Then I will do whatever you want me to do, okay?”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Charles stepped around the counter and gave Steve a hug and kissed him fiercely on the forehead. “I may have made some mistakes in my life and far too often in my marriage, but I am proud of you, okay.”
Hey all! This story is also careening toward the end! But things are are starting to turn around for Steve and Hope House. And maybe all the answers to his problems.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 |
~
Sophie Kincaid sat across from her son at a swanky upscale diner and couldn’t have been more proud of the man he had become.
Yes, she wished it hadn’t come at the cost of her marriage and health and his stability as a child. But they had both come out of that situation better people.
“So that’s what we want to use the funds for,” Steve finished explaining.
“I like it,” she said with a soft smile. “But may I make one suggestion?”
He nodded. “Of course! It’s your money, Mom and I value your opinion.”
She took Steve’s hand in hers. “Use this money to free up your time so that you can have a life beyond work. I love the way you light up about the Hope House and how happy it makes you, but your only friends are there at the House with you. You don’t go out, you don’t socialize. And you need that, darling.”
Steve ducked his head to hide his blush. “I don’t want to bring someone into the mess that is Hope House. Like who want to be with someone who has to deal with traumatized kids and broken adults? It’s like being married to social worker or psychiatrist or some shit.”
Sophia squeezed his hand. “I didn’t say to start dating, you did that all on your own. But yes, you need someone there, too.” She cupped his cheek with her other hand. “The only way you’ll be truly happy is if you’re with someone who cares as much about that place as you do.”
He let out a shuddering breath and melted into her touch, closing his eyes.
“Oh, my little love,” she murmured. “You’re already in love aren’t you?” His eyes shot open and he stared at her in shock. “So tell me about him.”
“His name is Eddie and he’s currently living at the halfway house,” Steve muttered. “And god he is perfect...” He went on to talk about him for a long, long time.
“Steven,” she said gently, “he sounds lovely. And from everything you’ve told me it sounds like he’s staying in town after his time is up.”
He let out another shuddering sigh. “I know and it’s that little bit of hope that keeps me going some days.”
She smiled at him and then moved away, gently giving his hand a squeeze as she settled back in her chair. “You’ll do fine, my dearest. It’s not as dire as you make it out to be.”
Steve sat back and spread out his hands on the table. “So enough about me, how is Carl?”
Carl was Sophia’s English bulldog who was a beautiful fawn lilac color and had the sweetest face Steve had ever seen.
Sophia burst out laughing. “Besides you, the only man in my life that I will ever need. He’s active when I want to be active and he is lazy when I want a glass of wine and tub of ice cream in front of ‘The Golden Girls’ reruns.”
“Dad’s on his third marriage,” Steve scoffed. “Didn’t even get an invite to this one. I think she’s younger than I am. But he swears she’s his soulmate.” He clutched his hands to his chest and batted his eyelashes, before dropping the act and rolling his eyes.
Sophia’s face soured. “Oh I did. And sadly yes, she is only twenty-three.”
“Oh course he would send you an invitation and not an announcement,” he growled. “Wanted to throw it in your face how ‘happy’ he is.”
“Which considering the last one took him for half of everything,” Sophia smirked, “in about ten years he’ll be dirt poor.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Steve raising his glass of iced tea.
Sophia raised her glass of Bloody Mary and clinked their glasses together.
“To us!” she said and downed her drink.
Steve followed suit. He really needed to do this more often.
~
To say Steve was surprised to see Claudia Henderson standing there, application in hand for the cleaning job would be an understatement.
She had been cleared to return to work by her physical therapist only last week. She clutched her purse to her chest as she explained what she was doing there.
“Walter’s life insurance is all going to the medical bills for both of us,” she said her voice rough with emotion, “but I lost my job at the library and they already replaced me. So other bills are piling up with no end in sight.”
Steve let out a sigh. He had heard about that from Dustin, about how unfair that was. It wasn’t Claudia’s fault that drunk driver hit them. They could have hired someone as a temp until she could come back, but to outright replace her was a low blow.
“And of course,” she continued, “I want to give back to the place that looked after my Dusty. I think he’s come to terms what has happened more easily than I have because of the help he got here.”
He smiled at her pulled out a brochure. “Well, the best part about working here is free access to the resources we provide. And that includes therapy.”
Claudia picked up the brochure and it was about family therapy, with a list of good therapists they recommend. “Wait... does that mean I got the job?”
Steve stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the team, Claudia. I’ll introduce you to the rest, right after you fill out your information to start paying you.”
She gasped in shock. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” She gave him a big hug and Steve hugged her back.
Plus this way he’d still get to see the butthead now that his mom was able to take care of him.
He handed her a pen and she began filling out her information. While she did that, he went over her application and nodded appreciatively. Even she hadn’t been Dustin’s mom, he would have hired her anyway. She had a lot of good credentials and references that one would have to be a sadist not to hire her.
He wrote down on a sticky note to call for her background check, but there no doubt in his mind, she would pass.
When she was done, she handed it back to him. “Who’s left to hire? I know Dusty was saying you wanted to hire a bunch of staff.”
“So far we had a cook and a cleaner, you,” he said with a smile. “Which leaves an on-site doctor and another person for the adult side.”
“Is there anyone in particular you’re looking for?” Claudia asked, as Steve came around the counter.
“If you follow me, I’ll give you the tour,” he said waving her forward. “To answer your question, ideally another man. That way I can move over to the kids side and Chrissy can be the on-site adult woman.”
Claudia nodded. Dustin had told her everything he possibly could about the people who had made the passing of his father the best it could be and was more than familiar with the woes of the place.
“I’d guess that a doctor would be the hardest spot to fill,” she murmured as he pointed out the canteen, the kitchen, and area out back.
“You’d think,” Steve huffed with a shake of his head. “But I have a stack of doctors who want to really help somewhere they can do the most good. But the only people who want to be ‘guardians’ as it were are creeps and kooks looking to throw their weight around people less fortunate.”
He indicated to a nearby bench and they sat down.
“I really can’t thank you enough for giving me the job,” Claudia said as she sat as he bid. “Maybe the right person is out there waiting for the right moment. You’ll find someone.”
Steve huffed out a laugh. “If we weren’t just talking about a job, I would have said you sound like my mother about my love life.”
“It works well for both, yes,” she agreed with a grin. “So tell me about this place, about how you became its caretaker.”
Steve took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Like you I wanted to give back to the place that gave me hope. In fact, I’m the one who changed the name. It used to be Hawkins Halfway House. All the stationary and stuff all had the triple H logo, and I really didn’t want mess with that. It would cost too much money. So the Hawkins Hope House was born. Because that’s what I want to give other people. Hope.”
Claudia nodded. “I understand you’re trying to take it out of being government run to privately owned. Do you think that’s wise?”
“Oh it will never be fully private,” Steve said ruefully. “It can’t be, not if I want the pick of the future ex-cons and children in need of placement. But instead of being 60/40 government owned, now it’s going to 40/60. Just that small shift of more private money than public so we can have the people we need to keep this place up and running.”
They talked about what her duties would be and when she would be expected to work. Then he finally introduced her to his people. Chrissy, Robin, and now Wayne.
“You softy,” Robin said when Steve explained why he had hired her. “But I’m in agreement. Welcome to Hope House.”
Claudia shook everyone’s hands. “Well, I should be getting going, Dusty will being getting out of school soon and I promised that I would be there when he got home.”
They all bid her goodbye and Chrissy let out a sigh of relief.
“Well that was surprisingly easy,” she said wiping her brow. “But finding another guy to watch the adults is becoming insurmountable.”
Robin rubbed her temples and let out a shuddering sigh. “We’ll just have to be careful about how many adults we take until we find someone.”
“Which will absolutely suck,” Chrissy agreed. “But it’s better than someone hurting Steve.”
They all agreed.
Just then Wayne came out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. “All right, I’ve gone through everything and while your setup is pretty well stocked, I do have a couple of requests that will help make things easier on me.”
Steve smiled. “Absolutely! Write me up a list and I’ll get everything when I go shopping next.”
Wayne grimaced. “Would it be alright if I come with you? There are just somethings I would rather pick out myself.”
“Sure!” Steve said with a huff of laughter. “I get it. Just tell me when would be good for you and we’ll head out. I usually go out on Fridays in the afternoon. That’s when I have the best idea how many people we have to shop for. Because baring an emergency placement, we don’t get guests on the weekends.”
“You get many of those?” Wayne asked crossing his arms. “Emergency placements, I mean.”
He shook his head. “No, thank god. Max has been one a couple of times, but not most recently. I’d say we haven’t had one on the weekends in awhile. Because Ellie is of course our latest.”
Wayne nodded. He had met the girl with the thousand yard stare. He watched as she would flinch at the strangest of things but be completely unfazed by others.
“Any word on finding a suitable foster home for her or Max?”
“Ellie, yes,” Steve said with a fond smile. “Apparently she has glommed on to our lovely police chief, Jim Hopper and Chief Hopper has decided that she has set every star in the sky. Max, not so much. A lot places don’t want her because she’s prickly and those that do only want her for the money.”
Wayne frowned. “I would have to renew my license, but I’ve fostered before. I could take her on, if it would help.”
Steve blinked at him for a moment in confusion. “You’d want to? I mean, you’ve been here for two weeks, you saw how rough she was with Ellie at first, and how she throws up her defenses at the slightest provocation.”
Wayne laughed. “I thought you were supposed to be selling me on her, not trying to put me off.”
“Oh, I don’t care about what puts you off,” Steve said firmly. “I care about putting her with someone who thinks they can handle it and then having them give up and have her face abandonment again.”
“Trust me, kid,” Wayne said with wry grin, “she ain’t nothing compared to Ed when I first got him. She’s just prickly. Ed was openly hostile.”
There was a small chuckle behind them. Everyone turned to see Eddie at the front door. They were so deep into the conversation that they hadn’t heard the bell ring.
“Hostile is underselling it,” he muttered with a smirk. “I think I ran away three times in the first week alone.”
“I’m not sure he’s the poster child for your parenting,” Robin said cocking her head. “He is here after all.”
“Damn, Buckley!” Eddie said shaking his hand as if it had been burned. “I don’t know about your history and shit, but when you’re trailer trash poor and the son of the biggest felon in town, places aren’t exactly lining up to hire ya. So it’s either pimping or selling and really there was no choice. Especially since my dad ran with the local drug lord back in high school. He’d be a little more lenient about me not wanting to sell the harder stuff than anyone else would have been.”
Robin winced. “Sorry! Even growing up poor and working here, sometimes those old biases crop up when you least expect them.”
Eddie sniffed. “You’re forgiven.”
“I actually like the idea of Max being placed with Wayne,” Chrissy said gently. “He’s got the experience and better yet, she knows him and knows he knows Steve. It really is the best solution for everyone.”
Steve looked around at everyone and then let out a pained sigh. “Well there is only one person who has to agree.”
Wayne cocked his head to the side. “Who would that be? Max herself?”
“No,” Steve said burying his head in his hands. “That would a wonderful world to live in, wouldn’t it? No. We have to convince Judge Newby to let this happen, because a family placing of the same gender is one thing, this is whole other kettle of fish.”
“Oh,” he huffed. “Well damn. Fingers crossed then.”
Fingers crossed indeed.
~
Hey Stevie, maybe the answers to all your problems is a Munson. ;)
Well this is it. This is the end of this wonderful fic. It's been a wild ride and I've loved every comment, reblog and like.
Next week will be "Rockstar" And I will finally reveal the title that I've been keeping to myself for sooo long.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 |
~
Steve bumped his shoulder into Eddie’s. They were sitting in the bleachers listening to Jason Carver drone on and on about winning for the ‘dearly departed’. Steve was pretty sure he threw up in his mouth twice.
He knew what had happened to those people Carver was co-opting for a fucking basketball game and it made him sick.
Eddie looked up at him and smiled. “My first and last basketball game of my high school career. Go me.”
Steve snorted. “Well, with my help, you’re actually passing your classes, so yeah. No super, super, super senior for you.”
“Thank Satan,” Eddie breathed. “After the game I have to make a pit stop, one of the cheerleaders is willing to pay for some of the sleeping pills I have left over from when Wayne had trouble switching from the night shift to days.”
Steve nodded, but didn’t say anything. He knew how Eddie made his money and wasn’t about to bitch the guy out. “Just be safe, take someone like Jeff with you.”
Eddie saluted. “Roger that, beautiful. Can’t have it be a trap and miss out on the amazing finale we have planned.”
Steve blushed.
Finally Carver was done and Tammy Thompson took the stage.
And Robin and Steve shared their ‘Muppet’ joke with their partners. Robin with Vickie and Steve with Eddie.
Eddie burst out laughing. “She does! That’s hilarious.”
They watched the game and then with only a minute left of the game, the coach was forced to put out their third string players with the most of the team either injured or fouled out.
“Holy shit,” Gareth said on the other side of Steve. “Is Lucas actually fucking playing?”
And sure enough, Lucas was jogging out onto the court.
It was the final seconds of the game and Lucas made his final shot, the entire Hellfire Club, rising to their feet as the ball sailed through the air.
Then the buzzer sounded and the ball went through the hoop. Nothing but net!
They were all screaming and jumping up and down. Lucas had won the game for Hawkins High.
Steve shared a look with Robin and suddenly she was bright pink. She had no choice now, she had to ask Vickie out on a date.
As they were piling out of the auditorium, Mike pulled Gareth aside, and threw his arm around his shoulders.
“Will is my best friend,” he said with a grin that meant all business, “you break his heart, I break your knees.” Then he patted the older teen on the chest and walked off calling Will’s name.
Eddie caught the exchange and saddled up to Gareth’s side. “So... you and Will?”
Gareth managed to turn an even brighter shade of red then he already was. “Shut up.”
“You ask him out yet?” Eddie cackled.
“I was going to tonight after the finale, but then this happened,” he muttered morosely.
“So do it now,” Eddie said gently.
Gareth pushed him playfully. “Yeah, right. I’ll do it when you confess to Steve.”
Eddie cackled. “Steve and I have been together for a week. We were going to announce it at the finale.”
Gareth blinked at him for a moment. “God dammit.”
Eddie laughed and then grabbed Jeff to go make his deal.
~
Turned out that Chrissy wanted the sleeping pills because she wasn’t eating and that shit was affecting her sleep.
Eddie dug the heel of his palm into his eye as fought down the frustration that rose like bile in the back of his throat.
“You’ll get your drugs, I promise,” he huffed to Jeff’s barely concealed amusement. “I just have to make a call.”
Jeff and Chrissy sat on the sofa while Eddie whispered harshly into the phone.
“So, you have a club?” Chrissy asked, gripping her knees tightly.
“Yep,” Jeff said with a grin. “It’s game called D&D we pick characters and play them, fighting demons and shit.”
“That’s cool.”
Eddie hung up and he let out a long breath through his nose. “Right, Steve’s coming over because he’ll know how to handle an ED better than we can.”
Chrissy tilted her head to the side. “Steve? Steve Harrington?”
“Yep!” Jeff said draping his arm over the back the couch. “He’s a good dude.”
“Jason idealizes him,” she admitted. “Thought Billy was absolutely the wrong choice for captain last year.”
“Sorry, I don’t trust your boyfriend, sweetheart,” Eddie told her crossing his arms over his chest. “He gives me heavy Jim Jones vibes.”
She winced but didn’t refute it.
The phone rang and Jeff and Eddie shared a glance. Who the fuck would be calling this late at night?
Eddie went to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
“Eddie!” Lucas cried. “Thank fuck I caught you in time! I tried calling Steve but no one was answering!”
“Hey, hey,” Eddie soothed. “We decided he was coming over here tonight, what’s wrong?”
“I think one of the players drugged this girl,” Lucas explained, “she’s really loopy and dizzy and Andy keeps trying to say he’ll take her home...”
Eddie pinched the side of his nose. “I’ll come get you and the girl. Get her somewhere safe, maybe with another cheerleader.” He turned to Chrissy. “Hey, one of the cheerleaders is having a bad time and our friend is trying to get her away from some bad dudes.”
Chrissy chewed on her lip. “It’s probably Carla. I heard the name Andy and he’s been trying to get her to go out with him all year.”
Eddie turned back to Lucas. “Ask her if her name is Carla.”
Lucas did as he asked and came back with the affirmative.
“Right,” Eddie said. “I’m bringing Chrissy with me to get her somewhere safe.”
“K, thanks, Eddie.”
Eddie turned to Jeff. “Stay here and wait for Steve. I’ll call when we get to the girl’s house and let you guys know where to meet us.”
Jeff saluted. “Roger that.”
~
The rescue mission went off without a hitch and they all gathered at Carla’s house. Yes, that included Chrissy, Steve and Jeff.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” Lucas breathed as Chrissy was getting Carla into bed. “I went to Jason first. He’s the captain. But he just told me to leave it alone. It was her choice to drink so anything that happened to her was her fault. But I couldn’t just leave her there.”
Steve patted him on the shoulder. “You absolutely did the right thing. She’s home, she safe and that’s all because of you.”
Lucas nodded. And then he looked up at Steve through his eyelashes. “You won’t tell Max will you?”
Eddie and Steve shared a glance.
“Oh fuck no,” Steve muttered. “She would absolutely take it the wrong way. You can tell her you called us to help and we took everyone home.”
Lucas let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, man.”
Chrissy came out of Carla’s bedroom. “She’s resting and should be fine by tomorrow.”
Everyone nodded.
“Let’s all exchange numbers so we can figure everything else out at a less heightened time,” Jeff said with a heavy sigh. “Like on Sunday.”
“Works for me,” Lucas agreed.
Everyone got everyone else’s number, but as the boys were leaving, Chrissy reached out and touched Jeff’s sleeve.
“Hey, can I get your number too?”
Jeff smiled at her and rattled it off for her to write down next to Steve and Eddie’s numbers.
As they walked out Eddie couldn’t resist teasing his best friend about getting the head cheerleader’s phone number.
~
Steve was having an absolute blast watching Lady Applejack just chewing up the scenery and the boys getting schooled by an eleven year old little girl. Lucas was cackling along with them.
He was really glad that they had all gone to the basketball game last night. He would have understood if Eddie had chosen not to move it, especially trying to balance ten people schedules, but it worked out in the end.
Kas had died a glorious death taking Vecna’s hit points down to half. Sir Michaelis legitimately sobbed when Eddie told the Party of his fate.
But now it was down to just Dustin and Erica’s characters having enough hit points to attack and the initiative order was Dustin, Erica, Vecna. And they both failed to hit, it was curtains for the whole party. He would unleash his final devastation and it would be a TPK. A total party kill.
Dustin rolled.
“And a miss!” Eddie chuckled.
Then it was Erica’s turn.
“You could run away,” he told her. “There is no shame in it. In fact, I could build the next campaign around avenging the deaths of the characters here.”
Erica chew on her lip as people at the table shouted advice at her. She shook her head. “If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging.”
Eddie nodded solemnly. “Roll your attack.”
She picked up D20 and tossed it. It tumbled down the length of the table and they all rose to their feet like they had for Mike, like the had for Lucas the night before.
Twenty.
It landed on a twenty.
The table roared.
“Lady Applejack pulls out her final arrow out of her quiver and nocked it in her bow,” Eddie intoned. “She pulled back and let her arrow fly. It flew straight and true, piercing the right eye of Vecna, killing him instantly. Then the lich’s body explodes in a shattering ray of light, leaving behind the hand that Kas had chopped off and the eye Lady Applejack pierced.”
They all clapped and cheered.
“I box up the remains of Vecna in that magic box Sir Michaelis got four sessions back,” Mike said. “And he’ll take them back to the other paladins for safe keeping.”
Eddie nodded. “A wise decision. All right, everyone levels up, and I believe this all takes you to eighteen at least.”
Everyone was so excited. They got all their gold and experience with nearly everyone getting to level twenty. They were true heroes now. And the ones that didn’t get to level twenty, Eddie started handing out ‘style points’ to get them there.
Some of the members of the club had never gotten a character to level twenty before and were chatting excitedly about it.
Gareth and Will had their heads close together as everyone celebrated and Will whispered something in Gareth’s ear that made him blush.
Steve walked up to Mike and put his arm around his shoulders. “Well that’s certainly new.”
Mike looked over at the two other boys and smiled softly. “Yeah. Will was really cute about and asked me if I was okay with him dating Gareth.”
Steve looked him in the eye. “And are we? You’ve been known to be pretty territorial about your best friend in the past.”
“To be honest,” Mike huffed, “I’m not sure on that front. But Eddie told me that Will having a boyfriend isn’t the end of the world, it’s the start of something new. And yeah it’s gonna suck. But I have El and denying Will having the chance at something that special feels wrong.”
Steve smiled gently at him. “Yeah. It’s really special when you find you someone who just makes everything better.”
“Do you still wish that was my sister?” he asked shyly.
“No,” Steve said shaking his head. “I found someone else. Someone who matches me on every level.”
Eddie laughed out loud at something Jeff said and Steve couldn’t help but smile fondly.
Mike looked between Eddie and Steve and then said, “Ah. Yeah, he’s a much better fit for you. I love my sister. But I think she was always built for the battlefield and that’s no place to find love.”
Steve blushed. “Jonathan seems to handle her just fine.”
“Jonathan matches her through,” Mike insisted. “He’s the like the hilt to her blade.”
Steve nodded. “We’re going to announce to everyone that we’re dating tonight before everyone goes home and then I’m going to tell Max and El and everyone else tomorrow.”
“I’m happy that this really was our year,” Mike murmured. “No more Upside Down. Everyone got therapy, thank god, and we’ve made some really good friends that are outside the trauma of the last three years.”
“More than we could have hoped for, that’s for sure.” Steve patted him on the back and then went to go join Eddie.
They would come out to everyone later that night and there wasn’t a single person who was against it. They all saw how happy they were together and how happy they made each other.
El and Max would be thrilled too, Max immediately claiming Eddie as her person now. Eddie had never felt more chosen in his life since Jeff’s old cat who hated everyone but his mom came right up to him and fucking purred.
Eddie would go on to graduate with Jeff, Brian, Robin, Jonathan, and Nancy, Wayne and Steve in the crowd, cheering him on.
Steve laughing so hard that he fell out of his seat when Eddie gave Prin. Higgins the bird, grabbed the diploma and ran off the stage, cackling.
“Are you sure you want that for you the rest of your life?” Wayne asked Steve as a couple of teachers chased Eddie around the football field a couple of times before he settled back in his proper seat like he had been there whole time and had not in fact held up the rest of the ceremony.
“Yeah, I really think I do,” Steve murmured. “It was a year of roadblocks and revelations, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Hello! We are back for another fun filled adventure in this lovely story! Here we have the plan!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 |
~
Will was back in the Void and he wasn’t sure how he got there. He looked around but there was nothing. Literally nothing to see or hear or smell. Just darkness.
‘William Byers,’ the voice said echoing throughout the blackness. ‘The coddled son of a drunk and a whore. You brother is a creep and your friends barely tolerate you. You wanted so much for them to play that game with you but they had girlfriends and that was more important than you. Then the moment you were gone, they turned around and joined a club that played that game every week, proving it wasn’t the game or the girls it was you. They’ll never accept the real you. The one you whisper in your sleep about.’
Will looked around frantically but still the darkness persisted. ‘My mom isn’t a whore and my brother isn’t a creep!’
Laughter echoed around him. ‘Your own mother who had been dogging your step every day since you were brought to me abandons you the moment she found out that that drunkard policeman might still be alive. My, my she certainly has a type. Has he started hitting her yet? Or is he waiting until he puts a ring on it to start smacking her around? And as for your brother, caught taking pictures of a girl getting undressed. But at least she was into that.’
‘Stop it!’ Will yelled. ‘Show yourself you coward!’
‘Am I the coward?’ Henry asked finally appearing to Will. ‘Or is it you? You’re so afraid that once you tell your little friends about your little crush on your best friend, they’ll be disgusted. Revolted. You’d be reviled. Shunned.’
‘They accepted Robin,’ Will defended hotly.
‘Did they?’ Henry said tilting his head to the side. ‘They don’t respect her like they used to and they won’t respect you either.’
‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Will shouted. He rushed to attack Henry but was stopped, dead in his tracks.
‘No,’ Henry said with a smile. ‘You’re afraid you’re just like me. That you crave destruction, you want to see the world burn. After all what has the world given you that didn’t hurt? An abusive father, a mother who couldn’t hold it together, a brother that cares more about getting high or getting laid then he does you, a best friend who will never return your feelings, bullies left and right, but I gave you strength and purpose.’
‘No!’ Will cried, trying to get to him but he found he couldn’t move at all.
Henry walked up to him and caressed Will’s cheek. ‘Look at you, so fragile and pale. The sickly child. But you can destroy worlds and I gave you that.’
Will struggled, but he couldn’t move and there was nothing around them for him to grab to throw at Henry.
‘I don’t want the world to end,’ he insisted. ‘Even if I’m sad and lonely that doesn’t mean that everyone should be punished for that.’
‘Why not?’ Henry sneered. ‘Don’t you want to see your bullies’ bodies littered at your feet, your friends bowing down to you, and you king of them all?’
‘That’s your dream, Henry,’ Will growled. ‘Not mine!’
‘Submit to me, Will,’ Henry purred. ‘Together we could remake world into our perfect image.’
Will stopped struggling and looking into the pale blue eyes of this monster and realized that Henry was afraid.
‘Why do you need me?’ he asked for the first time. It wasn’t the first time he thought about it, but it was the first time he voiced it out loud.
‘Everything requires a balance,’ Henry explained. ‘And I need light to balance the dark. You are perfect.’
The earth shook under their feet–
Will woke up with a gasp, he looked up to see Jonathan bending over him in concern.
“Hey,” he murmured. “It sounded like you were having a nightmare.”
Will sat up and then scooted back so he was flush against the arm of the chair. “Something like that yeah. But I think I got a better idea about what Vecna wants and why.”
~
Will called the group together and explained what had happened in his dream.
“So you think Henry has to have a second person controlling the Upside Down and that’s what he was doing with the kids?” Hopper asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
Will nodded. “Something about balance. I think that whatever the Mind Flayer is, it needs order and chaos to thrive.”
“So why not one of us?” Titus asked. “We have the same abilities as he does, why not just take one of the Numbers?”
“Because you guys are made,” Lucas said bitterly. “He wants someone like him. I think he would have chosen Kali if she hadn’t ran away. But once she did she was dead to him.”
“Hence why the kidnapping of kids,” Murray said darkly. “He started with the two hunters but they were too dangerous, so he moved on to kids. But none of them worked. None of them until Will.”
“So the Upside Down didn’t give Will powers?” Joyce asked, her arms crossed over her chest.
Will shook his head. “I think I’ve always had powers but they didn’t manifest until a couple of days ago.” He started counting off on his fingers. “I can read minds, use telekinesis, but I think that unlike Ollie, Henry’s ability is to control ice. That’s why fire hurts them.”
Dustin nodded. “Makes sense. And I’m betting that because he picked you, that your element is similar if not exactly the same.”
Will nodded. “Yeah. I’ve always liked it cold. Even before the Upside Down but especially after.” He paused and looked down at feet. “There’s one more thing.”
“What’s up, Will?” Mike asked, tilting his head.
“It’s not guilt he feeds off of,” he muttered chewing on his lip. “Or rather, not just guilt. But fear too. Anything you’re afraid of he can latch onto because it gives him strength in the Upside Down.”
That sat ill among the Party. Everyone was afraid of something and to learn that Henry could control them that way.
“So in the spirit of that,” Will said, taking a deep breath, “I think if we shared our darkest fears, then they’ll be shared and he’ll less ammunition to control us.”
They all kind of looked around at each other, uneasily.
“And I’ll go first to make it easier on everyone,” he continued. “I’m gay. I’ve always been. I think even as a child there was always so much about me that was different from everyone else. But it took moving out to California and seeing myself in new light. It also made me realize I was in love with my best friend.”
Mike looked up at him and gave him a smile. “Terrible taste really.”
El smacked his chest, but she smiled up at Will too. “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell me about liking boys and liking Mike specifically.” Then she wagged her finger. “You can’t have him.”
Will gave a watery little chuckle. “It’s okay, I’ve made my peace with that. It’s still fresh, still raw. But I think he’ll always be my Tammy Thompson.”
Robin’s lip quivered and she gave him a thumbs up. “To all the first gay crushes who are terrible, may they live in infamy.”
Steve choked and looked away, folding his arms over his chest. “So, yeah. I’m pretty sure I like both at this point.”
“Ooh...” Lucas crowed. “Now you have to tell us your terrible first crush was!”
Steve’s eyes went wide and he shook his head. But it was no use, they wouldn’t move on until Steve told them.
“Jonathan,” he coughed, turning a bright shade of red.
Almost the entire group roar in disbelief, just the numbers and the adults either didn’t care or weren’t surprised respectively.
“What the fuck, man?” Jonathan asked pained.
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Steve insisted. “But for the record it wasn’t in high school. It was after.”
“I’m not sure that makes it better,” Nancy said, shaking her head.
“Oooh!” Dustin said with a grin. “You realized you were attracted to guys because of the yoga guy in the mall, and then after the mall burned down you got a crush on Jonathan because he was the closest in age to you in the Party!”
Steve buried his head in hands.
“Oh my god!” Max crowed. “He’s right, isn’t he!”
“Can we move on to everyone talking about their fears please...” Steve muttered. “I think that would be less embarrassing then this.”
That caused everyone to burst out laughing even the Numbers. Then they went around and talked about what they feared most.
Finally everyone had gone around and discussed their fears and wants for the future and while some of the awkwardness of Steve’s statement lingered in the air, it seemed everyone else had moved on.
Jonathan came up to him after, and Steve let out a pained sigh.
“Can we please forget this ever happened?” he pleaded.
Jonathan laughed. “No. Because I get it. I’m not like that, but Will is and I can see why you had a crush on me. But I have a feeling that the crush only lasted until...oh, I don’t know...March of last year perhaps?”
Steve turned an even brighter shade of red. “Don’t tell anyone. God. He–”
Jonathan put his hand on his shoulder. “Oh, I absolutely wasn’t gonna. I’m not sure who would attempt your murder first, Mike or Dustin.”
Steve let out a shuddering breath. “Oh Mike all the way. Dustin would think it was cute for all of five minutes and then he’d murder me.”
Jonathan laughed. “Yeah, that sounds about right. But if you need to talk about it, I’m willing to listen, okay?”
Steve let out a shuddering breath, but nodded. It was why he had a crush on the guy in the first place. He was lot nicer to him after Nancy had broken up with Steve than Nancy had been. And had stayed that way over the years.
They walked back together and when they arrived at the main group they saw Will talking to Derek.
“Are you sure she can send me to the other kids?” he asked about El.
“Yep,” Will said, handing him Nancy’s necklace. “You’ll be able to convince Holly you’re one of us.”
“But this is tangible,” he said, rearing his head back. “The Nothing is all in the mind.”
Will huffed a laugh at the kid’s name for the Void, but he nodded. “That’s true, but like your map as long as you hold onto it you’ll have it there, too.”
Derek nodded. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Erica, Vickie and Titus were going to be the ones to standby and watch him and then get the kids to safety.
Titus wasn’t needed for the final battle because they had El, but he would be useful in getting the kids to safety.
Robin and Vickie had already said their goodbyes.
“Let’s put this bastard in his grave,” Hopper growled, “like he should have been all those years ago.”
Woohoo!! We are back with the indomitable Wayne Munson and the answer to a lot of Steve's problems.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 |
~
Turned out that Wayne Munson was in town to more than just visit his nephew. He was preparing to move back to Hawkins after ten years away. He had moved back to take care of his family farm when his mother passed away and had been there ever since.
“I hope you’re not moving back here because of me,” Eddie said as they had lunch in the canteen.
“No,” Wayne said bluntly. “I can’t say it’s not a perk, but being out on the farm and working from sun up to sun down for ten hard years I realized it was a prison that I had built for myself, so I’m selling it. A third will go to Al and third will go to you as per your Grammy’s will.”
Eddie scoffed. “It’s not like it’s gonna be that much anyway. But good on you.”
“Ed,” Wayne said gravely, “that property was estimated at $1.7 million just two years ago. And with the improvements I’ve made since, I’m getting offers for at least twice that.”
Eddie’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit. I wouldn’t know what I would do with that much money.”
Wayne shrugged his shoulders. “Buy a nice house wherever you wanna go, kid. It’s real life changing money.”
He thought back to his band first, about getting them into a studio somewhere, chase fame and fortune.
Then there was a burst of laughter from the front of the house. Steve laughing at some ridiculous thing that Robin had said and he knew exactly what he wanted to spend the money on.
“What if I wanted to create a work program for just out ex-cons so that they could learn new skills and be able to rejoin the work force?”
Wayne smiled. “I think that’s a great idea, Ed. You got lucky landing here where they’ll help you with that stuff. But how many other ex-cons have that luxury?”
“Not many,” Eddie said. Then he explained to Wayne the problems the Hope House was having because they couldn’t people in power to give a shit.
Wayne rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well I do need a job, and I’m more than a dab hand in the kitchen. I could help out here and see you every day.”
Eddie’s eyes widen and started to well up. “Oh god, that would be amazing! I just don’t know the linguistics of even getting the ball rolling on that.”
“Well, let’s go talk to your boy, and see what he says,” Wayne said, wiping his mouth on a napkin and standing up.
“Uncle Wayne!” Eddie protested hotly. “He’s not my anything except landlord!”
He paused and then held up one finger. “Maybe friends, but definitely not anything more than that!”
Wayne laughed. “You keep telling yourself that, but I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
“God, I hope no else has noticed,” Eddie grumbled.
They walked out to the reception area where Joyce was standing there with a little girl who didn’t look more than eight or nine, but that could just have been how emaciated she was. It was clear that they had tried to scrub the dirt off of her but she was still filthy. Her head had been freshly shaved and wore an over-sized t-shirt that read ‘Benny’s Diner’. On her feet were unlaced combat boots that were too small for her feet.
“We don’t know what her name is or where she came from,” Joyce was explaining to Steve. “She doesn’t remember her name and what’s even more frightening is the number eleven tattoo on the inside of her wrist. We can’t even make an accurate guess on her age because of her severe malnutrition.”
Steve knelt in front of the little girl. “Is it all right if I call you Ellie?”
The girl looked at her wrist and then nodded. Steve rubbed the top of her head fondly. Chrissy came out of the supply closet with a bright red bag with an elephant shooting a rainbow from its truck on the front.
Ellie’s eyes went wide. “Is that for me?”
“Sure is, sweetie,” Chrissy murmured as she knelt down next to Steve. “I made my best guess for your sizes, but if anything doesn’t fit, just come knock on my door or Robin’s.” She pointed to Robin who had been at the reception desk this whole time and Eddie had just missed it.
Wayne and him shared a glance.
This is exactly what Eddie had looked like when he showed up at Wayne’s door, garbage bag in hand, tears in his eyes.
“Do you want to come with me to get a bath?” Robin asked Ellie, holding out her hand. “You can pick the shampoo and conditioner you want, bubble bath too!”
“What’s a bubble bath?” Ellie asked as she took Robin’s hand, allowing herself to be lead away.
“What’s a bubble bath?” Robin parroted back. “Why only the best thing to happen to baths since the Romans!”
Ellie giggled. “What’s a Roman?”
Everyone sputtered and gasped at that nugget of information. Just how long had she been out of the school system if she didn’t know who the Romans were?
“That’s gonna be a fun one,” Steve said with a grimace straightening up. “I’ll make sure she starts on simple foods with very little spices or seasoning to make sure we don’t upset her stomach.”
Joyce nodded. “It’s going to be a long road to be sure. I think what bothers me the most is how trusting she is. Judging from the state of literally anything else about her, I would have expected her to be more leery of everyone.”
“You’ll also wanna make sure you jot down everything she eats in case she’s allergic to something,” Wayne said.
Steve smacked his head. “Oh gosh! Yes! Absolutely! Especially since allergies can crop up at anytime. Thanks!”
Joyce blinked at him for a moment. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Wayne said rushing forward to put out his hand for her shake. “I’m Wayne Munson, Eddie’s uncle. I know a little bit about that sort of thing, when I had to take him in.”
“Oh!” she said, taking his hand and shaking it. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Joyce Byers, I’m the primary case worker for the kids here.”
“Now there’s a thankless job if ever there was one,” he remarked.
Joyce melted. “Well, I appreciate you saying that.” She turned to Steve. “Just call me if you need anything.”
Steve nodded.
Then he turned back to Eddie and Wayne. “You enjoying being back in Hawkins, Wayne? However briefly?”
Wayne looked at Eddie and then back at Steve. “Well, that’s actually the thing. I’m moving back to Hawkins to be closer to Ed. I’m getting too old to run a farm by myself and the only people who show up are so-called ‘cowboys’ who wear the uniform but have never met a cow in their life.”
Chrissy snorted. “I’ve met those people, yeah. I’m sorry you’re giving all that up. What’s going to happen to your farm?”
Wayne explained the plans he had just gotten through talking to Eddie about. “So, I’ll have a little money to keep me comfortable while I find a stable job and a place to stay.”
“That must be so nice,” Joyce said wistfully. “I’m just sorry that comfort comes at such a high cost.”
Wayne waved away her concerns. “Appreciate it, ma’am. But to be honest my mom was pretty sure the farm was going to be sold in my life time anyway. That’s why he gave it to me so that it would be given to the one brother how gave damn about legacy and not sell to the highest bidder.”
Joyce smiled and then turned to Steve. “I’ll be back in a couple of days to check on the girl.” She bid everyone goodbye and then left.
Chrissy just shook her head. “I really don’t know how she does it, but I’m grateful for her every day.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Steve said, picking up Robin’s coffee mug and taking a sip.
She wrinkled her nose. “I still don’t understand how you two can drink that stuff. It’s basically coffee flavored creamer at this point.”
Steve just grinned at her. Then he turned back to Wayne. “Benny, Eddie’s boss has a spare room if you want, until you can find some place of your own.”
“I’d be mighty grateful,” Wayne agreed. “I could stay in a hotel, but I won’t have much money until the sale goes through.”
Steve nodded. “Yep. I feel that. I’ll grab you his number and get it to you before you leave.”
Wayne chuckled. “‘bout that... I hear you’re looking for a cook to help around here.”
Steve and Chrissy shared a look of amazement.
“I’m sorry, come again?” Chrissy asked, cocking her head to the side.
“You need the help,” Eddie said with a grin, “and he needs a job. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.”
Steve blinked at him for a moment. “Uhh... yeah. Okay. Chrissy can you get him the paper work so he could fill it out.” He turned to Wayne. “I can’t make promises that you’ll get the job as it’s little more complicated as it does get government funding. But I’d be more than happy to have another hand around here. Especially with us just getting Ellie. This is the start of what we call around here, the sad season. When teachers and doctors who are mandatory reporters start seeing kids on a regular basis...”
“And reporting the abused and neglected kids?” Eddie finished with a grimace. “I didn’t even realize. But yeah, October-November was when I was put in Wayne’s care.”
“That’s also when we get the most people on wait lists for rehab,” Chrissy said as she walked around to the reception desk and opened a drawer.
“What’s the max you’ve had here at a time?” Wayne asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“Four adults and seven kids,” Steve said mirroring his pose. “But that’s us at half capacity. Mainly because there is only three of us doing everything.”
Wayne cocked his head to side. “What would be the dream staff situation?”
Steve starting counting off on his fingers. “A full time cook, a cleaner, two to three more people in charge of the guests. And barring that, at least one person to help me on the adult side. It can get pretty scary when it’s just me and four dudes that if they banded together would absolutely kick my ass and there would be no one felt to be able to stop them from harming Chris or Robin or any kids we had here at the time.”
Chrissy shook her head. “I’d tack on a trained on site psychologist and physician, too. Because there are times we just aren’t trained to handle the night terrors and other medical issues that crop up for the types of people who need emergency housing.”
“That makes sense,” Eddie said with a sigh. “But this place isn’t big enough to house all that.”
Chrissy and Steve shared a glance and Steve echoed his sigh. “That would be the thing. We would convert a third of the rooms for staff, limit the amount of adults to five and the amount of kids to eight, then we’d be fully staffed for everything that could come at us.”
“So why haven’t ya?” Wayne asked. “I know about the Harrington Trust so why not use it to remodel this place and get the staff you need?”
Steve leaned heavily on the counter. “Because I feel like I’m abusing my mom’s money.”
Eddie and Wayne’s jaws dropped to the floor.
“Holy shit...” Eddie whispered as he finally pieced together all the things that everyone had said about this place the handful of months he had been here. “You never directly said that the Harrington Trust was setup by your mom. I mean I should have made the connection. But, dude you have to spend that money. That’s what she wants it used for... unless...”
Steve frowned for a moment before he got Eddie’s implication. “No, she’s still around.”
“So talk to her,” he urged. “Find out what she wanted the money spent on and then talk about you want the money spent on and see if you can’t find a middle ground.”
Steve straightened up a little. “Yeah. Okay.”
Chrissy cheered and even Eddie and Wayne celebrated.
It was time to turn the Hawkins Hope House into the Harrington Hope House. Because it was needed.
Needed to help everyone it can. Not just the people the system threw at them.
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Hey, all! We are rushing to the end of this lovely story and in this one we have a whole chapter dedicated to the Oscars!
Enjoy!
Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 |
~
Eddie was preparing his speech to the media about what an honor it was just to be nominated for the Best Actor award, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to win and he knew Steve was doing the same. There were three genres shunned by the Oscars: fantasy, comedy, and horror.
They might get cinematographer or even editing, but they sure as hell wasn’t going to win any of the top awards. They were nominated for all but Best Actress. In addition to Steve’s Best Supporting Actor; Brenda Roberts was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Dustin was nominated for Best Adaption of a Screenplay, Robin for Best Director, and of course Best Feature Film.
But hell, winning one of the eight awards “Dancing in the Dark” was nominated for was asking for a miracle at this point. A lot, and Eddie did mean a lot of industry pundits were betting against them from winning anything.
So because he was absolutely going to lose, he decided to go avant-garde for his outfit tonight. A shimmering silver mesh peasant shirt unlaced, under a black motorcycle jacket and tucked into silk tuxedo pants. He wore matching silver shoes and lots and lots of bangles and baubles around his neck and wrists.
Eddie stepped out on to the red carpet and smiled prettily for the cameras. This really was his least favorite part of being an actor. Just looking pretty for the people. Most days he felt like a performing monkey made to do whatever.
He waved at the fans, squinting to avoid the hot Los Angeles sun and was grateful when he was finally inside and shown his seat. Their group was seated roughly together, with Robin, Steve, and their editor on one row, and Eddie, Brenda, and Dustin on another. And of course seated right behind Robin and Steve was Jonathan and his plus one: Nancy Wheeler.
Because they were able to get ahead of her story, her own editor killed before she even submitted the first draft. So she was currently trying to suck up to Jonathan to see where the leak came from. So Jonathan, who knew full well who it was, decided to bring her to the Oscars to show her that you didn’t have to be gay to play gay.
Eddie personally thought he was stupid and thinking with his dick instead of his brain, but he wisely said nothing as the comedian got up to do their spiel about gold statues and poor people.
The lesser awards were first. Best Editing and Best Cinematographer.
“Jonathan Byers, ‘Dancing in the Dark’!” cried the two middling, male actors into the microphone.
Everyone clapped him on the back as he squeezed past them, Robin standing to give him a hug.
He got up to the stage and let out a breath. “Oh god. This is an honor. I want to thank my mom, the ever indomitable Joyce Byers for believing in me. My brother Will for cheering me on, and of course Robin Buckley for giving me a chance to film this amazing movie and thanks to all the cast and crew who made this possible!” He raised the award and then shambled off the stage to waiting wings.
Then it happened again for Best Editing. Their editor went up there and gave a really sweet and impassioned speech about how privileged she was to have been apart of something so amazing, so great.
But then they had an hour wait until it was Steve’s turn for Best Supporting Actor. They listened to the pretty speeches, the bad jokes, and the music starting far too soon for a lot of people.
“...Billy Hargrove ‘Light of an Alaskan Dawn’ and Steve Harrington ‘Dancing in the Dark’,” the female presenter said into the microphone. She opened the envelope and grinned into the camera. “And the award goes to, Steve Harrington, ‘Dancing in the Dark’!”
Steve sat there in complete shock. There was no way. Robin had to push him to his feet and toward the stage. Their whole section was on their feet, clapping and cheering him on.
He stumbled up the stairs and took the statue from the pretty presenter on the side. He walked up to the microphone and the actress excitedly congratulated him on his win.
“When my best friend in the whole world told it was time to get back into acting in front of a camera I told her she was crazy,” Steve began. “But if you know Robin Buckley, crazy is her mantra for life. She handed me a script and said that I was the only one she had in mind for Sean. Her faith in me was absolute even if I had to prove myself over and over to everyone else. But I made it. This is for all the child actors that got chewed up and spat out by their parents, their agents, and the industry. This is for you!”
He held up the statue and was quietly lead away to the press corp for questions.
“Steve!” the first person yelled. “First congrats on winning for Sean! How does it feel right now?”
“I’m feeling like on the top of the world right now,” he replied a little breathless.
“And what do you say to all the haters who said you’d never make it here after being outed as gay as a teenager?” the second person asked.
Steve looked over and smirked. It was Veronica Stiles. “Absolutely nothing to say. They don’t deserve the breath it would take to say something that would probably be above their intelligence level.”
“Follow up question if I may,” she said sweetly. “Do you think your movie will sweep the Oscars tonight?”
“Only if there is any justice in this world,” he said solemnly and then he was being asked other questions about his next movies and what he thought about the streaming verse theater debate before he was finally allowed to go back to his seat.
Just in time to see Eddie win Best Actor. Eddie sat there for a moment in absolute shock, tears streaming down his face.
Steve pulled him to his feet and gave him a hug, whispering, “You deserve this.”
Eddie nodded and made his way up to the stage. He took the award and then stole the envelope from Barb Holland who had won Best Actress last year. He looked at it for a moment and then handed it back.
“Sorry, I just had to check,” Eddie huffed into the microphone. “People have read out the wrong name before and I wanted to make sure it was mine on there.”
The audience laughed.
“So the first thing I want to do is say,” he continued, “Christine Cunningham I am absolutely coming for you, you told me not to prepare an acceptance speech and now I have to BLEEP wing it.” He giggled. “Oops, sorry! I hope you were able to bleep that out in time. But I want to thank Robin Buckley for giving me this chance, Steve for putting up with my shit behavior. Sorry, darlin’! To my uncle Wayne who believed in me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
He paused and the music started to play. “And I’m gay.”
The music cut off abruptly and the audience went dead silent.
“I know that had I been out prior to winning this award,” he said holding up the trophy, “it would have gone to Billy Hargrove. Not because he was the better actor, but because he was the straight one. So I told myself that if I won tonight, I would make history. So this is for all those gay actors who never won because who they love and for all the gay actors still in the closet so they can continue to work and get accolades. I’m here, I’m queer and I am not going away.”
He nodded and then walked off the stage, brushing past everyone on stage.
Steve and Robin looked at each other stunned. Neither of them had known he was going to do that. Steve just hoped that at least Chrissy did, because otherwise she was going to kill Eddie and that would be a waste of a man, honestly.
~
Chrissy was waiting for him in the wings with a huge hug. “You did so well, darling!” She kissed his cheeks. “Now, I’ve already told the press that they would be getting your formal statement and you’ll do a proper press junket tomorrow, so no questions about your sexuality.”
Eddie nodded and went to the Variety couch and sat down.
He looked around but he found that they were all too stunned to speak. Then he caught the eye of one of the interviewers.
“Veronica,” he said with a grin. “I know you’ve got a question or two for little ole me.” He winked at her and suddenly the tension in the room vanished as the room burst out in laughter.
“Hell yeah I do,” she replied with an even bigger grin. “You are two awards away from taking the night for ‘Dancing in the Dark’, you didn’t think you winning was possible, so what do you think your movie’s chances are to sweep the rest of the awards?”
Eddie cackled in delight. “I’ve never been a betting man as my daddy always was a gambler, but to hell with it, I’ll take those odds. I say we’re going all the way. We’re nabbing Director and Picture tonight, so you doubters can suck it!”
“What’s next for you?” another reporter asked.
“I am taking some well deserved time off,” he murmured. “And then I’ve got a vampire romance coming up with the absolutely divine Samantha Stone. She’ll be the vampire and I’ll be her thrall. It’s a nice twist on the classic tale.”
They moved onto other topics, but even Eddie could see they were all chomping at the bit to ask about him coming out as gay like he did.
Because it wasn’t just about coming out, though that was a pretty big deal. It was how and when he came out that shocked everyone.
And whoo boy did he mean everyone. He saw the looks on Steve and Robin’s faces. They were happy for him, but they never expected that. And if he was being honest with himself, he liked that. The fact that no one knew.
As he was walking off the media couch he heard, “And the winner goes to...” it was announced over the comms in the back, “Robin Buckley, ‘Dancing in the Dark’!!”
Steve and everyone else was literally jumping out of their chairs. That was seven out of the eight. Never has a horror movie won Best Picture since ‘Silence of the Lambs’ in 1991. There had only been a half dozen horror movies even nominated for the award.
Robin walked up the stairs and nearly fell on her face but was rescued by heartthrob and genuine nice guy, Nick Stone, twin and long time collaborator to actress Samantha Stone, who caught her before she could face plant on live television.
She giggled when she finally made it to the microphone to give her speech. “Wow. First I want to thank Nick for not letting me bleed all over this dress. It’s rented.”
The audience chuckled.
“Of course, I want to thank my father, Rick Buckley, without whom this movie wouldn’t have been possible,” she breathed, trying not cry. “My best friend, Steve Harrington who brought Sean to life with such richness. Eddie Munson whose selfless act in giving up his salary to help get my film over that last hurdle and finally to my tireless crew, this is for you!”
She raised the award and saw Eddie waiting in the wings for her. She paused as she waited through the torture of them listing off TEN movies nominated for Best Picture.
The two of them held hands as the final film was listed.
“And the Oscar goes to...”
“Whatever happens,” Eddie said, “seven out eight is damn impressive.”
“Oh my god,” the presenter cried in the microphone. “‘Dancing in the Dark’ Robin Buckley, Dustin Henderson, and Rick Buckley!”
Robin’s head snapped up. “There’s no way!”
Eddie just cackled and pushed her out on the stage, following her close behind. They were met on stage by Rick, Steve, Dustin, Jonathan, Brenda, and their editor, Miranda Fonda all went up on stage.
“Well, damn it,” Robin huffed. “I only wrote the one speech!”
That earned a laugh from all those in attendance. “So I’ll just say thank you to the Academy for allowing our little love letter to the genre to sweep the awards tonight. I know that comedy and horror are tough movies to judge and to have it feature to gay men, made it even harder. So thank you.”
She stepped back and her dad stepped forward. “Thank you to all those who worked tirelessly on this film the ones that would never get nominated. All the crew, PAs, and craft services that help keep a production running. You are heroes in your own right.”
He then let a couple others give speeches before they were led off stage.
They all did the press circuit and the final question was again from Veronica. “Who gets to take home the statue for Best Picture?”
Rick leaned forward and said into Robin’s mic, “Me. They all got one of their own, and I don’t!”
The ‘Dancing in the Dark’ crew laughed and so did Veronica. “I think that’s fair trade.”
Robin rolled her eyes and pushed her dad out of the way. “Yeah, yeah, I guess.”
They all went out to celebrate their once in a life time achievement at the Variety after party. Everyone coming up to them and congratulating them about their wins.
Steve sidled up to Eddie sometime in the middle party. “I think it was brave, what you did tonight.”
Eddie blushed and ducked his head. “I wanted to come out on my terms and I hated that I had to hide who I was to keep getting roles because I was having tea with Mr. Tumnus.”
Steve burst out laughing. “Yeah, I just wish I had gotten the same opportunity.”
“Yeah,” Eddie huffed, turning around and leaning against the bar. “But look at all the roles you’ve gotten since you’ve come back, though? Yeah, you’ve had two gay films, but the rest?”
Steve let out a shuddering breath. “I’ve been really lucky, haven’t I?”
“Hell yeah you have,” Eddie murmured. “I hope I’m as lucky as you are, honestly.”
Steve bumped their shoulders together. “You’re super talented, Eds. They’ll be knocking down your door.”
“That is if I don’t get the Best Actor Oscar curse,” Eddie replied with a snort.
“That’s not a thing, Eds!” Steve laughed, shoving Eddie’s shoulder playfully. “Just trust me, you’ll do fine.”
“All righty, Stevie boy,” Eddie huffed. “I’m putting all my trust in you. Don’t let me down.”
Here we are at the penultimate chapter. Just one more chapter to go.
Now I'm not saying this is how it should have gone in the show regarding the championship game and the D&D finale, but this how it would go sans Upside Down bullshit.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 |
~
Steve woke up the next morning to a warm, sleepy boyfriend wrapped around his middle and couldn’t have been happier. He ran his fingers through Eddie’s hair until he woke up.
“Morning, sweetheart,” Eddie murmured, his voice rough with sleep and not misuse. “What are you doing awake so early on a Saturday morning?”
Steve laughed. “Eds, it’s almost eleven!”
Eddie snuggled closer. “It’s a sin to be up before noon on a Sunday, I’ll have you know.”
“According to whose religion?” Steve scoffed, but snuggled into Eddie.
“The Munson Doctrine,” Eddie replied sleepily, already back to half to sleep. “Best religion there ever was.”
Steve kissed the top of Eddie’s forehead. “Whatever you say, rockstar.”
Eddie lifted his chin and kissed Steve on the lips. “Shush, now. It’s sleepy time.”
Steve wanted to get up but Eddie was so warm and soft, he fell asleep too.
When they woke up again it was after noon and this time Eddie willingly let Steve get up to pee and brush his teeth. Eddie following after to do the same.
They practically joined at the hip when they wandered sleepy-eyed into the kitchen.
Which was probably why it took Steve a minute or two to recognize his best friend sitting on the counter with a cup of hot chocolate in her hand and smirking at them.
“Did someone forget they were going to take me to work today?” she asked innocently, batting her eyelashes over the rim of the mug.
Steve scoffed. “No, you don’t work until one, and it’s barely after noon. And before you get all smug or whatever, nothing happened between us other than getting together. We were both tired after last night and so he stayed over.”
“Mhmm,” she murmured. “Hello, Eddie. You break his heart, I break your knees.”
“‘Ello, Robin,” Eddie muttered back, finally dislodging himself from Steve side to start the coffee. “I can’t promise never, as I am but a mere mortal, but I will endeavor to minimalize such agony.”
Robin blinked at him for a moment. “You’re such a dork. I like you.”
Steve huffed out a laugh. “Thank you, your majesty.”
Robin attempted to bow but nearly fell off the counter. He just shook his head. After all he had known she was a dork from the beginning and she was still his best friend.
“I aim to please,” Eddie huffed rolling his eyes. “I am trying to teach Stevie here the ways of the perpetually lazy and sleeping in on Sundays.”
Robin snorted. “Good luck, he’s had years and years of having to get up at the ass crack of dawn to stay in shape for his numerous sports he was in.”
“Don’t worry, baby,” Eddie cooed. “I’ve got time.”
And Steve went bright red as Robin cackled.
After they had their ‘brunch’, as in lunch that was more like breakfast, Eddie kissed Steve on the lips and said goodbye.
Robin waited until she heard the front door click shut. “So Eddie Munson... is cute?”
“Fine,” Steve said with a pained sigh. “Yes, Eddie Munson is cute. And hot. And sexy. And most importantly, my boyfriend.”
Robin let out a squeal of sheer joy and set her mug down to give Steve a flying tackle of a hug. Steve caught her deftly and swung them around.
Once he finally put her down, she kissed his nose. “I’m happy for you dingus, but I really do need to get to work now.”
Steve laughed and went to go grab his keys and put on his shoes. He locked the door behind them and drove her to work.
“So...” she said, wagging her eyebrows. “How did you two get together?”
Steve told her about the campaign the night before and how he basically got to DM with a little bit of help from Eddie and how they talked afterwards, leading up to the kiss.
“Pair of dorks the both of you!” she cackled. “That is the sweetest, most romantic thing ever. I’m insanely jealous you got a boyfriend only months after figuring out like guys and I’m still girlfriend-less after literal years.”
“I kept telling you you were on borrowed time,” Steve said, sing-song. “That I was going to bag me that man.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Robin said pained. “At least I’ll get sit next to the pretty redhead for marching band.”
“Ask her out!” he crowed. “I’ve told you my ‘Fast Times’ theory and I’m saying I’m still right!”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, turning in her seat to face him. “If the basketball team wins the championship game, I’ll ask her out.”
Steve stuck out his hand and said, “Deal.”
Robin eyed his warily but shook his hand. She thought it had been a good bet, but Steve was too wildly chipper to think that anymore.
She sat there and brooded in silence until they got to Family Video.
Steve waved at her with a shit-eating grin as she walked into the store. What information did he have that she didn’t?
~
Lucas came running up to Dustin and Mike in a panic.
“The best most awful thing has happened!” he whined.
“Uh...” Mike said, sharing a glance with Dustin. “I don’t think I understood a word of that. Say it again.”
Max turned around from where she was at her locker. “What the idiot is trying to say is that the basketball team won last night so they get to play in the championship tonight. Which is at the same time as your nerd game.”
Mike and Dustin stared at Lucas in shock.
“Come on, man,” Dustin whined back, “you can’t possibly be thinking about going to the basketball game instead of the actual finale of the Cult of Vecna? What are the chances of you being allowed to play?”
“Oh next to none,” Max snarked.
“But not zero,” Lucas insisted. “Come on, it’s a once in a life time opportunity!”
“That you’ll get three more times,” Mike countered. “Yeah, you can’t control the team or what everyone else does but you’ll have three more years of being on the team. This is the last session for Hellfire this year. Steve only gets one more day to host before the club is forced to stop for the year. Plus with Eddie, Jeff, Brian, and Danny all graduating this is the last time we’ll be able to play with them as a club.”
Lucas looked at them, pained. “But Spring Break starts this weekend we can do it all tomorrow or even later in the week, this is one night only.”
Dustin and Mike shared another glance.
“And you’ve got to ask Eddie to move it for me, please!” Lucas asked, clutching his hands together.
“Oh hell no,” Dustin growled. “We aren’t doing your dirty work for you. If you want him to move the session last minute, you ask him yourself.”
“I know!” Lucas said, waving him off. “I’ll ask Will to do it for me!”
Will who was walking up to their lockers with Gareth, paused and blinked at them. “Ask me what?”
Mike looked over at how the two other boys were standing and frowned. He opened his mouth to interrogate his best friend about the interloper when Lucas blurted out, “I’M IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TONIGHT AND I NEED EDDIE TO MOVE IT!!”
Gareth and Will shared a glance and burst out laughing.
“Ah hell nah,” Gareth said, shaking his head. “You want something from Eddie. You do the asking. Stop trying to pawn the responsibility off on your friends.”
Lucas looked down at his shoes and scuff the floor with his heel. “It’s just that back in September that first session he said he would only accept emergencies and this isn’t that...”
“That’s true,” Will said sagely. “But you won’t know until you ask.”
Lucas nodded. “It’s just I didn’t want to see the disappointment on his face because I know him and Steve have been working so hard on this finale, but I also never thought we would make it to the championship game. Like when I joined the basketball team back at the start of the year, they were pretty much trash. But then Jason Carver came along and really turned the team around and now we’re here and I don’t want to miss it.”
“You might have to,” Mike warned him. “It’s pretty short notice and there are nine other people to take in consideration. And that includes your sister. She was really looking forward to playing with us tonight.”
“Oh,” he breathed. “Well shit.”
He had forgotten literally everything else in the rush of winning the game last night that there was more riding on the Cult of Vecna finale then just beating Vecna once and for all. There was the resolutions of all their character arcs, Mike’s in particular.
All year he had been working on getting Kas on to their side to betray Vecna and turn the tide of battle, defeating him once and for all, and to see that finally come to fruition was going to be monumental.
“Okay...” Lucas said and then the five minute bell rang scattering everyone to their first class.
~
At lunch Lucas sat at the table with the rest of Hellfire barely picking at the lunch his mom gave him. He didn’t even look up when Eddie went on his tirade about conformity killing the kids and how being forced to choose a sport or get good grades to fit in was a losing proposition for everyone.
When he sat back down and began munching happily on his pretzels he looked over at the kid and kicked the leg of Lucas’s chair and leaned down to look him in the eye. “Hey, who pissed in your Cheerio’s this morning?”
Mike and Dustin shared a glance and grimaced.
“The basketball team is playing the champion game tonight...” Will said solemnly. “He really wants to go and support the team, but with the finale at the same time...”
The older Hellfire Club members let out a roar of outrage saying that Lucas should want to do D&D and not basketball.
Eddie licked his lips slowly. If this had been before the freshmen and their babysitter arrived on the scene, he would have absolutely sided with the guys.
But this was after and he could see that it was utterly tearing Lucas apart.
The freshmen started arguing back, protecting their friend from the onslaught of the older teens.
“SHUT UP!” he yelled. “Everyone just shut up!”
The entire table went dead silent.
“Who is going out of town for Spring Break?” he asked coolly.
Everyone looked at each other as no one raised their hands.
“Does anyone have plans for tomorrow?” he pressed. “At anytime during the day?”
Again he was met with a lack of a show of hands.
“Then that settles it,” he declared hitting his hand on the table. “We will all go cheer Lucas on at the basketball game, then tomorrow we will have all day to play the finale and not worry about having to cut it short for the kiddies having to go home to bed.”
Lucas looked up from his sandwich, eyes wide and mouth open. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“All in favor?” Eddie asked, raising his hand.
All the hands went up.
“The motion has been carried unanimously,” he said solemnly. “When does the game start, Lucas?”
“Oh!” Lucas cried in shock. “At 7pm here at the high school.”
“Then we’ll meet here at 6:30 to make sure we can all get seats together,” Eddie said.
Everyone agreed and then Gareth asked Will a question about his wizard and the table moved on.
Lucas caught Eddie’s eye and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’
