#kas!steve

This is inspired by a bunch of different Kas!Eddie AUs all mashed together

Steve is home alone for the first time in a while. It's too dangerous, really. Hawkins was cut off from the rest of the world, monsters roamed the streets, and as if that wasn't enough, a new creature from the Upside Down was out and about. Bodies were showing up, completely drained of blood.

(Quietly, in between moments, Dustin whispers to Steve that he's hoping it's Kas the Betrayer. He says that he hopes it's Eddie brought back from the dead, because then there's a chance they could save him. Quietly, only to himself, Steve hopes that Dustin's wrong, because he knows if it is Eddie, they won't be bringing him back).

Steve really didn't want to be home alone, but everyone had different tasks that they were busy with, so Steve was under strict instructions to stay indoors and keep a weapon and a walkie close by at all times. He really didn't expect anything to happen. Maybe that made him stupid, but it just didn't feel like a night for shit to hit the fan.

So of course shit hits the fan.

It starts with Robin calling. She was teamed up with El, Mike, and Hopper doing their strength check to see if they could find Vecna or sense him at all, so Robin calling was a bad, bad sign.

She's hysterical, but Steve could understand her when she was speaking another language and he got enough. She's insisting that he needs to run, that danger is on it's way and that they know it's not a fight he can win, so flight is his only option.

Something shatters behind him. A window? The backdoor? He's not sure, but he knows it means his luck has finally run out.

"Hey Robs?" he says, keeping his voice as steady as possible. "I love you. So much. Don't ever forget that." He hangs up as her panic reaches a crescendo and he turns to come face to face with Eddie Munson, back from the dead.

"Honey, I'm home." It's Eddie and he smiles like Eddie and he looks like him, but there's something wrong in his eyes. Steve thinks he gets why Dustin calls him Kas.

"Hey Eddie." He doesn't scream or fight. He lets Eddie crowd him against the wall, not that he thinks he could fight, not when he feels Eddie's strength as he's pinned against the wall.

In some sick, twisted form of intimacy, Eddie reaches up and wipes a tear out of Steve's eye, cooing.

"I don't want to die," he tells the creature wearing Eddie's face.

Kas smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "It's not so bad, when you get used to it."

With a firm, unyielding grip, Kas tilts Steve's head to the side and nuzzles into his neck.

"I don't want to die," Steve says again, like it matters, like Kas at all cares.

"It'll be okay," Kas murmurs into his shoulder-neck junction.

"I don't want-" and he cuts himself off with his own cries, tears spilling over. Kas places a kiss on his neck then he buries his fangs in, breaking skin. It doesn't hurt, and that's almost worse. A supernatural numbness pours into Steve, overtaking him quickly.

"I don't want-" he tries again, as darkness closes in on his vision.

"I don't-" he tries one more time, and then he's gone.

When they finally manage to get to his house, Kas is gone and Steve is tucked into bed. He's arranged with his arms crossed over his chest. He looks peaceful, almost.

They break. The theory of Kas the Bloodyhanded gets louder, but it's so much worse now. Dustin doesn't know if he'd be able to forgive Eddie from this, even knowing that he probably isn't in control of himself, because Steve is dead. Steve is dead and the chances of it being at Eddie's hand are so much bigger.

No one else got arranged like that. No one else got any kind treatment, instead left scattered. Bodies were found crumpled to the ground, in the woods in the bathroom in the kitchen, wherever they were found. The others were dumped, but Steve got carefully laid to rest and that spoke of a level of sympathy that no one else got.

That spoke to a personal attachment between Steve and his killer.

They've finally pulled themselves back together, ready to call in another body, when Steve jolts awake. He presses his hand against his chest and doesn't feel his heart beating. His heart isn't beating and he apparently doesn't need to breathe, and what Kas said rings through his head. It's not so bad when you get used to it.

Kas did something and now they're all left with the important question: What next?

Dustin has to watch his older brother die in his arms. Robin has to come back from a fight that she’s pretty sure they lost to find the other half of her soul is gone. Lucas finds out that not only has he lost Max, but he’s also lost his role model, one of his biggest supporters. Eddie is stuck in a town that’s falling apart, filled with people that hate him, and the only people who will understand are mourning someone Eddie barely knew. Someone whose shoes Eddie is never going to be able to fill, even when he feels like he has to try because that’s what he does; protect his people. And no matter how fucked the circumstances that got them here are, he’s decided these are his people now.

(They have to be, now that not even Uncle Wayne can calm him down when he has the nightmares, seeing Chrissy’s lifeless eyes staring down at him as he hears her bones crunch and twist-)

Eddie can’t breathe with how the gaping absence of Steve Harrington is threatening to swallow him whole. It’s always there, in the way Robin is isolating herself, sleeping over in Steve’s empty house whenever she can, and no one can get her to talk about it. It’s in the way Dustin, overcome with grief, keeps oscillating between blaming Eddie for agreeing to switch places and blaming himself for suggesting it in the first place. It’s in the way Eddie wonders sometimes, as he turns the events of Spring Break over in his mind, if maybe there was something there, or could have been something - and then he’s immediately overcome with guilt, because he’s lusting after a ghost. A ghost of someone he didn’t even know, really, as he’s learning more and more every day about the ways Steve has changed since high school.

So after a few weeks of this, especially with the added stress of Hawkins falling apart at the seams and being constantly invaded by hellbeasts from the gaping portals all over town, Eddie does what he does best.

He runs away.

Thank you for the tag dear!

For the WIP ask:

steve burns

oh I love the gif!

okay, the conceit of this one is that Henry/Vecna found Steve before the party did in Season 1. lonely Steve with absent parents and friends that don’t truly see him. and Vecna finds the core of Steve's sadness and anger and lures him to be by his side, to becoming his Kas.

and so the Stranger Things seasons proceed, but with Eddie and Robin joining despite Steve being out of the picture. and they’re the two that are killing him with silver and fire in the last section below.

the twist is supposed to be that Steve feels betrayed by Vecna as he dies and somehow ends up travelling back in time, and with all his knowledge and rage he destroys Vecna first. in the meantime, he finds redemption and the meaning of love and friendship with Robin, Eddie, and the rest of the kids.

SNIPPET:

Steve burns.

He burns with regret, with anger, with a deep, undeniable rage that wants to unfold into wrath. He lies pinned against his wings, low under the red skies and lightning, with a doe-eyed man standing over him, impaling him with a silver sword through his torso to stud the ashen ground.

His lover, his Henry, his beautiful and godlike master advances menacingly towards the high-schoolers in his periphery, and Steve cries out for his help. For his divine hand to reach out to Steve and save him like he did all those years ago.

The deep brown of the eyes above him flicker, almost shading over with sadness and Steve hisses at the mortal for daring to pity a supplicant of the heavenly like Steve.

Steve aches inside, more than the distraction of his wounds, but aches for Henry to look at him, to see his outstretched hand, but his master only has eyes for the small girl with the shaved head.

Steve burns.

He burns with flames thrown at him from glass and fire from the young woman next to the doe-eyed man, her blue eyes full of fear and disdain.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Steve Harrington & Dustin Henderson, Steve Harrington & Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson if you squint, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Characters: Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley, Lucas Sinclair, Hawkins OCs Additional Tags: kas!steve, AU: Steve dies on team distract, Post-Apocalypse, A Way to Say I Love You, What if you were a monster wearing a hot boy's body and I was your messenger, Steve Harrington as Kas the Betrayer, Survival Horror, Kas kills but he does love to betray Vecna, Very little flirting but like there's potential if I continue this one, The I Love You is a You Have One Chance Scenario, The Naming of Kas, Come Back Wrong Series: Part 6 of i love you you dope Summary:

Steve Harrington's death in The Upside Down changed everything and if you ask Dustin Henderson what the worst thing about it was, he'd say it's that he had to leave the body behind.

He'd say that, of course, before something nameless that looked an awful lot like Steve Harrington walked back into their lives.

Steve Harrington, when he was alive and hearing about a DnD campaign, always thought it was dumb that this Vecna guy couldn't throw much of a punch. Who'd respect that? Who'd follow that guy? The thing in his body, it turns out, agrees. And it has a message for the survivors of Hawkins.

(AKA an introduction to my Kas!Steve AKA King Steve Comes Home)

(Response to prompt 98 of p0ck3tf0x's "100 Ways to Say I Love You" List)

WC: 1,412

That night, Robin really, really hadn't wanted to go along with the plan. As far as she was concerned, it was stupid and half-assed and it was so below their usual quality of scheme that it was practically laughable. It was also the only thing that they had and things were just going from bad to worse.

After all of the effort the government went through to cover up the giant cracks in the earth with their giant metal band aid, they really should have expected that the Upside Down would find another way into their daily lives. It was a complete oversight on their part. It was also a complete oversight on the part of the Party. They tried not to beat themselves up over it too much.

It didn't really work.

Residents all over Hawkins were getting killed. It wasn't even a "mauled to death" sort of killed. It wasn't some democreature or other. It was something new. Something was draining the bodies entirely of their blood. Whatever it was, it was good. It was a predator, through and through. It only went while they were on the Crawls. It only went after those that were alone.

Which was why the plan was so stupid.

It was so fractured it barely made up a plan, but it was all they had. People were dying and they were desperate. Team A helped Hopper on his Crawl while Team B set a trap for the thing.

Even worse, they weren't even at their full numbers. Steve managed to get appendicitis at the single worst time and was on bed rest at home until he recovered from having an entire organ removed from his torso. They left him with the promise to check in as often as possible.

How fucking stupid were they, huh?

It was all going to plan. Until it wasn't. It was all going to plan until the thing they were hunting didn't step into their trap. Until Steve, weak Steve, bedridden Steve, alone Steve, hopped on the Walkie to tell them that he heard something break a window downstairs.

They rushed as fast as they could, but it wasn't fast enough. They weren't even half way to the Harrington house when they heard his voice over the Walkie again. "Hey Robin? I love you. So much. Don't ever forget that. If you could do me a favor and tell Dustin I'm sorry, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks."

And the Walkie went silent.

Robin screamed. There was no other way to describe the sound that tore it's way from her throat. She screamed, sobbing at the tearing agony that burned through her. He was dead. She knew it before they even got to the house. He was dead. They were too late.

He was still laid in bed when they found him. If it weren't for the sickly pallor to his skin, he'd look like he was sleeping. Whatever killed him had even crossed his arms over his chest. He was laid to rest, while all the others were dumped. In criminal psychology, that denoted a connection between murderer and victim. But that wasn't possible. It wasn't.

Robin refused to leave the room while Nancy got in contact with Team Crawl to let them know that things went wrong. Robin hated the way Nancy phrased it. Like there was just a minor accident. It wasn't unfair to be as angry as she was, but Robin didn't particularly care, in that moment. Steve was dead and Nancy had barely cried and to Robin that was a crime of maximum offense.

She let Nancy leave the room, gently guiding Will out with her.

She knelt down beside the bed and grabbed onto Steve's cold hand. A single bite mark to the throat, just like all the others. She didn't get it. What was different about Steve? What was so special about Steve that he was picked out and laid to rest like he was?

Dried tears streaked down Steve's face. That was something she never wanted to see. She had to live with that. She had to live with the knowledge that Steve died crying. His last words to her played on loop in her mind and she searched his tone for tears, for a waver of some kind, but she couldn't find it.

It must have been after. When the thing stalked up the stairs and chowed down on him when he was weak and healing. The thing was a predator and it went after Steve when he was alone and bedridden because Steve couldn't fight back and they just left him like that. They practically put him on a silver platter.

And apparently, the creature had sympathy for Steve when no one else got it. Elderly, sick, children, all sorts of people were plucked off the street, but Steve was the one with a proper send off. Only Steve was laid precisely, carefully. Why?

The question echoed in her mind. Why, why why?

It distracted her long enough that everyone else arrived. Dustin plowed into the room, despite the efforts of everyone else. The sob that tore through Dustin's throat sounded pretty similar to hers. He crumpled down and shook his head the sobs wormed their way out of them.

Quietly, almost completely inaudibly, Dustin whimpered to himself, "No, no, no, no."

Robin pulled him into a hug and he folded. "No, it wasn't— he wasn't—"

He didn't finish his sentences. Robin didn't need him to.

"I'm so sorry," she said. She didn't tell him what Steve told her. It wouldn't help. "I'm sorry, Dustin. I am so, so sorry."

"He thought I hated him, didn't he?"

"No," she said, immediately. "Not at all. He was just worried for you, you know that. He cares about you. You're his brother, man. He never forgot that."

Dustin sobbed harder, and people got closer, but they ignored them. Wrapped up in their own grief, they ignored the sounds of approaching footsteps and the presence of their shoulders. Well, until they spoke.

"I don't get it," Nancy said. "Why was he laid like that?" Ever the detective. Ever searching for more answers. Always trying to fix things.

"No one else was laid like this," she went on, almost in response to Robin's thoughts. "Why him?"

It flared something angry in Robin's chest, despite her thinking the same exact thing.

"It's Kas, isn't it?" Dustin asked. "Kas the Bloody-Handed."

It didn't make sense to Robin, but it clearly made sense to others in the room.

"God, I hope not," was Lucas' input.

Mike nodded his agreement, but he looked down at Steve with a haunted look, like he knew what they hoped didn't really matter.

"But it is," Dustin pushed. "I was right. I was fucking right," and he says it like a failure. Like he wished more than anything that he was wrong.

"Fuck!" Dustin screamed, and no one corrected his language. There was only one person who could get Dustin even close to feeling guilty for his language, and he was laying on the bed in front of them, arm crossed over his chest.

"We can plan for that, though," Mike said, aiming for hopeful.

"Like we planned for this?" Dustin shot back, venom lacing each word. "Do you really think you can come up with some genius plan to take down Kas when we couldn't the first time?"

"We'll have everyone this time, and we know more about what we're going up against!" Mike still pushed for hopeful, but his phrasing was wrong. It was clear to everyone who wasn't him the second it slipped out, but by then it was too late.

Dustin revved up for yelling. His face was turning red from anger, or maybe that was from the tears building in his eyes, and he his jaw dropped for a moment in the way it did when he was loading all his comebacks. He was pissed beyond belief. It was easier, Robin know, to be angry than it was to think about the dead body.

Robin watched Dustin get ready the way someone would watch an impending car crash, when she felt Steve's hand, which she hadn't let go, grip her back.