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Trick Coin

Summary:

Steve’s holding Eddie’s hand—limp, the blood’s not even sticky anymore, his rings are caked, glued to his frigid skin; but Steve can’t help it.

He can’t not hold Eddie’s hand.

“Are you ready to accept the evidence in front of you?”

No. No he’s not because if he accepts it, then it’s true. If he accepts this then—

“You lost, Steven,” and Vecna comes to him as a flickering thing in his vision, half veined and vine-riddled, monstrous, and half a thin blond man: same monster in a different suit.

The shuddering image of him looks like bad reception on a television screen: that’s honestly maybe more terrifying than either on its own but.

Steve thinks he’s kind of beyond terror.

In which they lose the final standoff. Everyone’s gone. Vecna has Steve at his mercy. And it’s all Steve’s fault, he wasn’t enough, he failed them all

But being at Vecna’s mercy means maybe…nothing’s as it seems.

By default.

 

(Or: Steve gets Vecna'd. All bets are off.)

 


UPDATE: now with one of the kids having a say for themselves about the prospect of losing Steve.

Notes:

I didn’t quite think I’d make it, but: THIS IS THE FINAL BINGO SQUARE, JUST IN TIME FOR THE DEADLINE. THE LAST ROUND of my masochistic little game of ‘CAN you keep writing a fic a day 1) start to finish, and 2) overcome your perfectionism and genuine mental health fuckery to not obsess over the truly unbearable level of typos this will require as you type frantically on your breaks and commutes to write these all on iPhone Notes?’

Well. I don’t know how I did in the game but these are now TWO BLACKED-OUT BINGO CARDS. So THERE IS THAT.

All words/phrases between /// are things Steve’s hearing from his friends in the hospital, but Vecna’s hold on his consciousness is twisting viciously to persuade him to give up. He’s…REALLY close to succeeding.

But Eddie Munson is really in love and also? Steve’s Platonic Soulmate refuses to live without him. They’ve got their own superhero on their side, and also, generally? The Party is a family, and they love their babysitter something desperate.

So it’s not all a one-sided battle.

Meaning! A SPECIAL NOTE: this fic is complete as-is, not least to keep with the prompt itself. But it’s..hopeful as an ending. It was going to be ANGST because I wasn’t going to initially post the second half WITH this one.

But if you want the actual HAPPY ending? Let me know in the comments. It was mostly written. When my brain turns back on I could finish and post it if there was interest.

Anyway: thanks all for coming along for the insanity of this bingo ride, and tolerating my unbeta’d mess of daily posts.

Chapter 1: Tails

Summary:

“Join me,” Vecna tries to purr almost, Steve thinks, like it’s an enticing offer but it’s bile in Steve’s throat, sickening; “and your distress, your hurt will be a thing of the past.” Steve’s head starts to shake on its own, because fuck if Steve can choose to move, he’s leaden with grief, with pure failure. “You will become part of something so much bigger than yourself, your anguish will simply meld and fade into the larger vision.”

Steve just wants it to end.

“Or,” Vecna grabs his chin, his touch not merely rough but repulsive, but he makes Steve look at Eddie who his eyes are too drowned to truly see, and the bodies he can’t make out any better strewn beyond; “join them.”

Then. Always them.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Steve’s holding Eddie’s hand—limp, the blood’s not even sticky anymore, his rings stick caked, glued to his frigid skin; but Steve can’t help it.

He can’t not hold Eddie’s hand.

“Are you ready to accept the evidence in front of you?”

No. No he’s not because if he accepts it, then it’s true. If he accepts this then—

“You ///lost///, Steven,” and Vecna comes to him as a flickering thing in his vision, half veined and vine-riddled, monstrous and then half a thin blond man: same monster in a different suit.

The shuddering image of him looks like bad reception on a television screen: that’s honestly maybe more terrifying than either on its own but.

Steve thinks he’s kind of beyond terror.

Because if Steve accepts the vision before him—Vecna, and Eddie, and the sobs across the walkies that they’d lost another of their number, their family, all of them paired off for this final battle and every agonized casualty report followed by a scream could only mean more death, and if Eddie’s here and still and cold, eyes blind and unblinking then they’re gone, they’re all fucking gone and Steve, he—

“You ///failed/// them,” Vecna hisses, something between fact and mocking and both catch like the thorns on his vines and rips through Steve and if he fucking failed, if this is real and he accepts it and this is the world that’s left to meet him then—

Let it cut him to shreds. Let him bleed here next to the last thing left he cared for and couldn’t save, because again, because always: he wasn’t enough. Let him go cold next to the last of the people he loved with everything he never knew he had, and always knew he never deserved. Leave him to rot as proof of all of it.

Nothing could possibly hurt worse than accepting…this.

“///He/// is dead, because of you, Steven. They are all dead, because you ///failed/// them,” Steve bites blood into his own mouth in order to keep from gasping into a sob, giving this fucker the satisfaction but then: why? What, god, fuck:

What does he have left to lose?

“It can be difficult,” Vecna’s voice rumbles low, but haughty, mocking; “to accept that ///we lost/// something we care for, even more so when the loss is of our own making. When the blood is only on our own hands.”

Steve’s mouth is all metallic and red. He can’t. He can’t do this, he doesn’t know what he’s even trying to stand against. What he’s fighting for, what fight there’s even left to mount.

“Would it help to know that I felt their deaths, I knew their final thoughts?”

No, it fucking wouldn’t. How dare he touch them, how dare he feel them, violate them by his fucking presence even at the end, how dare

“///Don’t/// worry, Steven, their pain was brief, prolonging their suffering had no utility.” Vecna’s pity is a laughing one, and Steve thinks maybe that’s what is keeping him from wholly crumbling and giving in when that’s the only step forward, his only next move: maybe he’s delaying the inevitable because there’s a rage in him, there’s hate and violence and maybe revenge is how he wants to burn, how he’s planning to go out in his subconscious.

If there’s any reason, save a self-preservation coded deep inside his cells that his mind and his heart and his soul do not fucking want—if there’s any other reason for holding out against the end, here, in the wake of only loss, he thinks that could make sense.

“They were very clear, though, at the end,” Vecna sounds thoughtful, but dangerous. Derisive. “They were clear that they would ///never forgive/// you.”

Steve takes skin off the inside of his lip, his chest heaving so excruciatingly that he thinks he might break a bone, puncture a lung, maybe both, one for the other.

He can’t even rail against it; push back on the very idea. He can't deny it as untrue. He knows it. He fucking knows he’s unforgivable. He failed, he fucking failed all of them, he failed the whole goddamn world but he doesn’t think he ever gave much of a shit about the world—he cared about these people. The kids that were like his own blood. The friends that redefined family. The man he fell for in the worst possible time, but with the most possible feeling he’s ever known, while they licked their wounds and feared for one last battle, one more time and he, he’s lost, he’s failed because what the fuck else was Steve Harrington ever going to do with his idiot brain and his stupid nail bat, he was nothing and he was worth nothing, to them in their need or without them in their loss, the loss he caused

“More than once, I heard them,” Vecna muses aloud cruel; cruel and hell, but Steve deserves it: “///Did he even/// care? ///Useless, fucking useless///,” Vecna shakes his head with put-upon regret, doesn’t even try to hide the curl of his inhuman lips; “did he even try?”

He sees Dustin’s face, betrayed—worse than when they almost lost Eddie. He sees Lucas, before Max woke up—all questions Steve couldn’t answer save I wasn’t enough and I wasn’t there and even if I’d been there I’m never enough and I’m sorry

“It wasn’t only ///hate///,” Vecna’s voice filters back through, nails scraped over sandpaper, just for the effect to pick at the wound that is Steve’s entire being.

“There was hurt, a great deal, more than I expected, associated with you,” and Steve can’t see it, but the narrowing of eyes is audible; it’s not a compliment. Not that it should be.

End of the day, Steve Harrington only causes pain.

“///Did we ever even/// matter to him? Did he even ///love/// us at all?” Vecna’s a voice takes on an airy quality, almost a whine but wholly an accusation as he picks quotes from the last moments he watched without shame, without compassion.

“///How could we/// have trusted him, ///he couldn’t/// protect us, he was never strong enough, all he ever knew how to do was lose, ///he wasn’t/// ever going to do anything but lose,” and for that he sees Max, who’s got some vision back, with very thick lenses; who’s getting better on her crutches but, it doesn’t change the fact. It doesn’t turn back the clock.

He wasn’t there, he couldn’t save her, he—

“How would we have believed he’d be ///enough///?”

And something cracks fully down Steve’s sternum, peels his ribs open like cabinet doors and leaves the tatters of the whole of him undefended, on display and he doesn’t fucking care, he doesn’t care what comes for him to eat the dregs because he sees Robin, who doubted and then believed so hard in him, some part of him in his cracked-open chest where now he’s unprotected and still wholly insufficient one last time to fail her, oh god, and how could he possibly hurt more

“Distress, and hurt,” Vecna tuts at him; “you were admirably delusional, I grant you. You fooled yourself enough to fool them, in kind.”

And with that, Steve sees Eddie. Eddie…who told Steve he was lovable. Who told Steve, when Steve confessed he fell too fast and wanted too much too quick, told him that was good to hear, that Eddie wasn’t alone in the world in being like that.

Who Steve fooled, in fooling his own self, into telling Steve he loved him, like it was simple. Like it was natural. Like it was easy.

Oh god. Fuck. Just…he can’t. He can’t do this.

Eddie’s hand is still in his hand.

“I’m going to give you a choice, Steven,” Vecna’s voice has hardened. Steve is silent, but if he tried to focus his vision it’d be impossible, the tears are infinite, and unstoppable.

“Join me,” Vecna tries to purr almost, Steve thinks, like it’s an enticing offer but it’s bile in Steve’s throat, sickening; “and your distress, your hurt will be a thing of the past.” Steve’s head starts to shake on its own, because fuck if Steve can choose to move, he’s leaden with grief, with pure failure. “You will become part of something so much bigger than yourself, your anguish will simply meld and fade into the larger vision.”

Steve just wants it to end.

“Or,” Vecna grabs his chin, his touch not merely rough but repulsive, but he makes Steve look at Eddie who his eyes are too drowned to truly see, and the bodies he can’t make out any better strewn beyond; “join them.”

Then. Always them.

“But know this, Steven Harrington,” Vecna hisses in threat before Steve can even indicate the choice he knows in his flayed open heart, that maybe Vecna can already read from his thoughts but it doesn’t matter, he’s insignificant, he’s worthless, he’s a disappointment, he’s—

Know that death, for you, will not be brief. The pain will not be short lived. Your agony is strong enough to be useful,” Vecna’s lips curl up again, taunting, vicious, all judgment to find him wanting, one more time.

“You were broken as a rule from the beginning, but you were never enough,” Vecna proclaims, pure scorn in it; “ironic that here, shattered wholly,” he eyes Steve, rakes his gaze up and down in evaluation as he lets go of his chin and shoves him back down, this time straight into Eddie’s still chest; “your heartbreak will serve as fodder, and fuel,” and he laughs, he’s entertained by the prospect, possibly giddy; “and I will milk you dry for your suffering.”

He shoves Steve’s face further into Eddie’s bloody chest, still and cold and close now so Steve can’t even pretend there’s a heartbeat when Vecna leans in and breathes in his heat, wicked and vile: “Know this.”

But the thing is: Steve already knows.

He was never enough to earn or deserve anything better than this.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Eddie’s holding Steve’s hand—limp, clammy, overhot with a fever Eddie’s pretty sure is teetering on dangerous again; fucking again—and Eddie doesn’t have to even touch Steve’s skin to feel the thready rush of his blood, too hard and too fast and…

Eddie can’t breathe. Eddie’s…Eddie’s so scared and he doesn’t know what to do but what he does know?

He can’t not hold Steve’s hand.

“We ///lost///,” and fuck, Eddie loves Dustin, he does, but it’s been like this for days. He paces, he rages, he’s scared too, Eddie gets that but—

Eddie’s been with Steve since after Spring Break. Friends first, but the way Steve cared for him, in the aftermath? Falling from friends to more was fucking quick. Easy; natural like they were always on that path, not just recently stumbled on it. Like their gravities were always aligned versus years of missing each other’s orbit. Nah: this was simple, inevitable, and hard and deep and…

Eddie doesn’t have the patience. His fucking soul is in agony here and he’s petrified, and his hope is hanging by a thread and Dustin’s constantly reappearing commentary on how yeah, they fucking failed, they didn’t kill Vecna—again—but Eddie doesn’t even care about that save for however it connects to how Steve’s barely alive in the bed in front of him, because Eddie would let the whole goddamn world burn, he’d set the fire himself if Steve opened his eyes. If he could kiss Steve and be kissed back like he’s a marvel, like he’s worth something, and he’ll believe it in those arms, improbable as it is that someone with a heart of gold with as much shine as Steve Harrington’s could want, could love him—he, fucking Eddie Munson believes that in Steve’s arms and he needs it, he needs it for himself and he needs it because little by little over these past months he’s watched Steve start to believe the sentiment could possibly be returned in kind and Eddie vowed he would not rest until he convinced him without question, without wavering or any lingering shred of doubt for always—and vowed to him alongside that to stay for always, to build always with Eddie goddamn Munson because Steve was loved so fucking endlessly by this nerdy freak from the wrong side of town and Eddie wants forever with him and he’s gonna convince him and keep him and love him until he knows it deep inside the marrow of his bones—

So Eddie needs Dustin? To shut the fuck up with all the goddamn ways that are trying to cut his hope-thread for good.

“We didn’t even just lose, ///he///, we, he’s,” god, no, now they’re tag-teaming. Lucas in on the plot. Eddie’s heart fucking hurts; “we ///failed///,” and he pauses, eyes too bright when he glances at Steve’s frame on the bed and adds, words bleeding devastation, disbelief:

“We ///failed/// him.”

God. God.

“///We lost///,” Dustin moans again, woeful, like a goddamn broken record and he can’t; Eddie fucking can’t.

“///Don’t///,” he snaps, and he cannot even feel sorry for it; “don’t you dare talk like he’s a lost cause already. If you want to give up, fine,” Eddie hisses, and points unmistakably to the door: “but if that’s what you’re gonna do? Get the hell out.”

Everyone’s a little quiet, after that. They’ve been doing the stages of grief all willly-nilly, out of order but Eddie’s stayed firmly in denial. And now he’s the only one who’s made a pit stop at anger, so far.

“If we lose him,” Robin is the next to speak, bent at the waist so her chest is wholly splayed next to Steve on the bed—she sounds like someone else, something wholly hollow and scraped thin beyond the hollowing.

“If we can’t bring him back, I,” and her eyes never leave Steve’s face, not once; Eddie’s not sure they have at all, unless she’s fallen asleep by accident, and if he happens to notice when she wakes up she’s always panicked first, then infuriated with herself for having risked any moments spent with Steve outside her awareness.

“I swear I thought he was behind you. I swear to god,” she looks at Eddie then, eyes almost glowing for how bloodshot and red and tear-filled they are; Jonathan had been the one to notice as Robin helped Eddie through the gate, that Steve hadn’t just fallen behind but had fallen, eyes rolled back, telling and terrifying and he’d jumped like Nancy had the first time into the water, proof again—this is how they work, all of them; this is who they are—but Jon had grabbed Steve and Robin and Eddie together, had pulled them up as the gate sizzled shut, burned Steve’s bare arm and singed Jonathan’s jacket and they’d screamed lyrics as they tried to stop whatever was happening because Steve wasn’t floating, he was seizing and they didn’t know what to do

“If we lose him,” Robin whispers, trembling but so fucking resolute: “I will ///never forgive/// myself.”

Eddie’s heart’s in his throat as he tries to lean closer to her, some indication of comfort where there’s none to be found, save maybe being closer to Steve for them both, in the middle:

“Robs—“

“I will never,” she repeats, unblinking: “forgive myself.”

Eddie tries to swallow, tries to find his voice somewhere.

Fuck.

“You won’t be the only one,” he more mouths than anything but: it’s true.

He thinks she knows it, whether she hears it or not.

“///Did he even///,” and Eddie actually looks, because the voice sounds choked, like genuinely affected, and that voice usually only has emotions in it when it’s angry.

Mike Wheeler, sounding a little fucking devastated, over…Steve?

Eddie’s mouth drops a little as Mike licks his lips and clears his throat.

“Was he trying to get out, himself, did he try, or was he too focused on all of us?” Mike says what they’re all thinking, a little bit, and here Eddie was, thinking he couldn’t break further.

Fucking underestimated his rock bottom, Jesus Christ.

“He radioed so many times to double, fuckin’, triple check—“ Lucas says like it’s landing just as hard, respectively, around the room.

“///Useless, fucking useless///,” Dustin squeaks, half on his way to a sob; “we were so useless that he had to babysit us, while he fought for his fucking life,” he kicks something on the other side of the room; it sounds painful but…pain’s relative, here. In this. “And now here we are, goddamn fucking useless, all he’s ever done is save us and what the hell are we doing? What use are we?”

Dustin’s gasping for breath for the rant but fuck: his cheeks are soaked.

“I,” Mike’s eyes are big and he looks young and small and vulnerable in a way Eddie’s never seen him: “what if he still thinks I hate him? I don’t, I didn’t, I never, it wasn’t ///hate///, I,” his voice breaks and he stares at his hands for a long span before he murmurs:

“I love him, y’know. I don’t like him sometimes but I,” and honestly, Mike’s coming apart and no one here is in a position to hold him together, and Eddie’s just grateful he’s using the present tense, he loves still, because Steve’s still here; “and if I did—“

“///Did we ever even/// tell him? Like, with words, clear words, and enough times because you know he wouldn’t believe it, even if we,” Robin’s asking, and Eddie…

Robin looks around at all of them, and Eddie’s heart might actually fucking stop.

“Did we tell him how goddamn much we ///love/// him?”

“Did we tell him at all?”

Shit, Maxine. She’s parked in the corner and her eyes are as bloodshot as anyone. She and Steve had been close since the plate incident that Eddie still shudders to think about the stories of, but now?

She’s in the Dustin camp, though. She’s already fucking mourning and Eddie can’t abide that shit.

“///How could we///,” Dustin scoffs on autopilot before he stops; thinks.

“///He couldn’t/// not have known. There’s no way, even if we’re the shitty people we might very well be, even if we didn’t say it, ever, worst case scenario,” Lucas argues, but there’s kinda just...desperation in it. So much desperation; “he had to know.”

“Steve’s never believed he was worthy of love,” Eddie finds himself speaking, wrenched through his gut through bile, but also through his endlessly-cracking heart as it shrivels, the hope-string starting to fucking snap. Because, because—

“///He wasn’t/// treated right. By all the people who should have shown him what love was and it hurt him, and he still learned how to love anyway,” Eddie strokes Steve's hand, circles his knuckles delicately. “And he loves so fucking big,” Eddie’s eyes start to water; he doesn’t fight it; “he wouldn’t believe it on his own. He’d have trouble even if we all told him, three times every day, but,” and Eddie’s spiraling, he can’t keep in the way he moans for the hurt of it when he reaches and touches Steve’s face, cradles him so gentle and whispers:

“On his own,” and fuck, he’s too close to mourning now, too, just, fuck: “he’s always left on his own.”

“Why’d we do that?” Dustin asks, voice faint but, like, heartbroken. “How could we do that?”

“I don’t want him to die,” Mike says, kinda far away.

“It’s getting worse, look at the monitors,” Max snarls, but it’s a wounded animal sound, defensive and too vicious to be real, not from her.

“You’re not a goddamn doctor,” Dustin yells back, raising the temperature of the exchange and oh, shit, Max is strung tight enough to meet it, and she’ll fucking win. That’s never going to be a competition.

“I learned what they fucking meant, y’know, being stuck to them for months!”

“I love him,” Robin says, still hollow and scraped too thin: “I can’t live without him,” and then she leans toward Steve’s ear and speaks straight into it, crying with her whole body: “I love you,” she chokes; “I love you so much, Dingus, you’re half my soul, please,” she kisses his cheek gently, shaking all the while as she gasps; “please, Steve.”

“If he doesn’t think we,” Mike is kind of just talking, now, kinda fucking broken and his voice just rising in pitch as he goes: “if he doesn’t know, whatever it is, if it’s Vecna or the spores or the venom or the head injury or just, the trauma of it all, if he doesn’t know and believe that we—“

“I don’t want to live in world where he doesn’t,” Robin whispers, stroking his hair.

“Would he try, would he keep fighting, if he didn’t know and believe? Would he—“ Dustin starts but no, nope, Eddie’s hope thread is tearing, he can hear it on its last fucking legs and he refuses to let it go, he won’t, he fucking won’t, he—

///Enough///,” he tries to shout it, but it’s mostly a whine, a cry for help from something primal in the universe, a plea:

“Enough,” Eddie begs, fucking begs: “I am in love with him. And I can’t fucking lose him. So whatever you did or didn’t say, whatever he does or doesn’t know, he knows I love him. He knows that,” Eddie strokes Steve’s cheek, he’s warm, he’s too warm

“He,” Eddie focuses on the way Steve’s breath comes from his parted lips: real. These are real things. He’s still here

“He’s always fought for all of us. Regardless of what he knew or believed, before,” and yeah, Eddie is trying to convince all of them as much as himself: “we have to believe in him, we have to, okay, because—“

“It’s Henry.”

El, followed quickly by Will and Nancy, rush into the room, El’s expression sharp as she wipes the blood from her nose.

“Henry has Steve,” and she sounds furious, as well she should be: she loves Steve fiercely, and she takes the continued existence of Henry as a personal offense, even though she shouldn’t.

“He’s in Steve’s mind, I can feel them, and Steve’s fighting,” and Eddie sighs more like a sob because he knew, he knew

“But he’s slipping, he can hear you,” El frowns, and Eddie can’t tell, doesn’t know if it’s good that Steve can hear them—

“He can hear you, but everything you’re saying, when you say things about how much he means, and that you care, Henry is twisting it,” she’s breathless, spitting out the words with venom, enraged.

“We have to find a way to get him to hold on a little longer,” El searches each of their faces, looking for any hint of a way; “if you can keep Steve just as he is, just keep him, I will take care of Henry.”

And Eddie’s seen this girl resolute. Impassioned. Angry. Certain.

This is…something else. Something new.

“We need to find something Vecna can’t twist, can't make Steve think is anything but—“

“He is very skilled,” El cuts in, takes a short break from looking livid and looks devastated. “He takes love and makes it into hate. Blame.”

Oh, Eddie can only imagine. Fuck. Fuck; but his Stevie. He wracks his brain—what’s their in, what’s the way they can beat this motherfucker, how can he save his own heart in Steve’s goddamn chest—

Wait.

“I think I’ve got it.”

Everyone turns to Eddie, and…no, no it’s not wishful thinking. Or desperation. This could work.

This will work.

He smiles for the first time in ages, long enough that the motion feels like a stretch, and he leans in to kiss Steve hard before he gets to his feet and turns straight to El.

“I just need to get something, then I come back here, so he can hear it?”

“Yes,” she nods, decisive. “He is drawing energy from Steve, that is why his body is reacting like it has a virus, like it is sick. Because,” her eyes narrow; “because it does. Henry is a disease.”

“Time to wipe him out, Wonder Woman,” Eddie reaches to squeeze Steve’s hand once more before he follows her, and is so glad she understands him—because she runs, and listens to his plan on the way.

There’s no time to waste. Because this is gonna fucking work.

And Robin’s not gonna have to live in a world where her soulmate isn’t. And the kids won’t have to square with what Steve does and doesn’t know because they’ll have a lifetime to make sure Steve knows everything he is to them, to all of them, and—

And Eddie’s gonna hold the man he loves again, and feel himself held back.

For always.

Notes:

twitter // tumblr

-

 

(This fic fulfills my Steve Harrington Bingo square A1 prompt: Punishment.)

 

And like I said: if you want the more clear happy ending? Let me know. Sometimes hopeful endings are good on their own. But other times the clear happy resolution is best.

 

But now I may never write anything every again, though, because I think I did break my brain looool 🫠

 

I don’t know if I truly understood and internalized that emoji until just this moment rn actually

Chapter 2: Heads

Summary:

“So please,” Eddie’s voice cracks down to a whisper; “please, baby, fight him, fight like hell,” and he chokes on the sounds, the desperation thick in him and it’s undeniable that there are tears now, single ones rather than the flood that’s banked inside his chest, tight and pressing in and looking to crush and Eddie will let it, Eddie will goddamn welcome it if this doesn’t work but until then he’s gonna fight as hard as he can and then some, because the man beside him is better suited to the fight than Eddie is, but the man beside him’s kinda become the bulk of Eddie’s fucking heart, so.

Eddie’ll find a way to move fucking mountains.

“Fight him,” Eddie murmurs, pleads, more air than voice, and lingers his touch on the pulse in Steve’s neck; proof-proof-proof: “fight him and come back to me.”

Notes:

It seems that people really wanted this to be EXPLICITLY happy and I think this mostly does the trick? Hopefully it mostly does the trick.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Robin’s face is raw, as in she thinks she’ll split open the skin if she wipes the tears that don’t stop one more time but she can’t even care, she’s already sliced open and spilling out from the heart of her because, because…

Steve’s not waking up.

Steve’s not waking up, and it’s their fault.

Because whether they didn’t convince him he was loved, loved, so goddamn much it was almost unimaginable except there he was, Steve Harrington, real and tangible and kind and bitchy and soft and fierce and the perfect fit to her whole soul, like souls were puzzle pieces and she’d always just figured that was how they were unique but no, nope: sometimes you got to find a soul-piece floating out in the world in the most unexpected of places and that unexpected-piece snapped right into the odd little gives and grooves of your whole-self and made you something new for it—something better.

When was the last time she told Steve she loved him?

Her breath catches: they’d all decided speaking anything was too much of a risk once Eleven told them Vecna was twisting their words, and in the imposed-but-so-imposing silence since everyone else had lost the fight against sleep alongside Eddie’s vigil of constant song, that’s their best play, now to what they were asked, what they all want so badly: keep him.

They’d been told to keep hold of Steve, keep him safe while El dealt with Henry and Eddie’d scuffed his sneakers on the tile when he ran back in with a beat-up acoustic with a couple of little pock-marks visible if you looked really close—hard to keep her pristine when she lives next to a fuckin’ nail bat in the trunk he’d explained breathlessly before rounding his chair and strumming before he even hit the seat—but Robin wasn’t looking really close. All that Robin, in all honesty, really wants to do is curl up so close to Steve that she melts into him, that her puzzle piece ceases to have any little crease, any outline that differentiates her self from all of him, because she wants…she needs to stand and fall and live and die with him; thinks she will regardless, so. Might as well make it as much of a physical truth as it is in every other way.

Is that enough? Will that be enough?

Robin’s breath hitches again and she pushes her cheek harder into the too-thin hospital mattress—how can people even hope to heal, when they’re laid out on these mortarboards?—and she can hear the beeping of the monitor behind her, proof of life in the body, the person next to her, so why did she feel Ike her heart stopped in between every beep, because that heart was her heart too—so much.

So much.

She’s reciting to herself, silent but her lips move the words against the sheets—if his heart’s beating so is yours, if his heart is still beating so is yours —and she smashes her lips closed when thoughts start creeping up like what if it stops what if it stops what if it stops

No. No, none of that, smother that: no.

No.

She pinches herself hard enough to bruise and focuses on what she can know for sure. Steve’s heartbeat on the screen. Steve’s chest rising and falling, even if it seems kinda faint: there. Real.

And the music. Endless music, as Eddie plucks but never seems to look down, to watch his hands even to change the song, watches only Steve instead just as endless, and Robin knows a fraction of the songs because he was aiming for the unfamiliar, he said, and words that either couldn’t be skewed by demonic psychopaths in a nether-realm, or just flat out couldn’t be picked out easily at all.

But while he'd started off playing even the most metal of the metal tracks, and he’d played them soft by comparison to what Robin knows they’d originated as? The way he’s playing now is different. Almost…

Almost tender. And the song, she thinks she—

“What are you playing?”

“His songs,” Eddie answers immediately, but distracted; Robin picks up again that yeah, his eyes never leave some part of Steve—his face, his chest rising and falling, his hands full of tubes and wires, the line of his neck—as his fingers slide down the neck of the guitar, as his lips tick up at complete odds with the heartbreak in his eyes as he croaks: “our songs.”

She’s lucky this song’s got a decent intro, because otherwise he’d be singing already, he’s been singing now for hours, all the rest of the room’s fast asleep but they’re too tired for the acoustic to bother them anyway, every single one of the group having fought as long as they could before they passed out but Eddie paid them absolutely zero mind, focused on playing loud enough for Steve, close as he could press to the bed and still strum, freaking ceaseless with it.

“He hates the noise, right, music,” Eddie’s biting at his lip, and Robin can see the cracks he’s tearing open in the skin as he bites hard, like it hurts too much to speak of Vecna outright, what he’s done, what he’s doing right before their eyes to Steve, their Steve; “but like Supergirl said, he’ll twist the words. Double-edged sword, so how can we get the advantage,” his fingers glide across the frets and Robin knows this song, she knows it because—

“Good thing some of the songs I love the most,” Eddie’s expression is a study in contradictions again: eyes bleeding feeling but longing and hope too, but his body is tight with fear he wouldn’t speak to the world for anything as he whispers, full-hearted somehow in the barely-there sound:

Most of the songs I love most, anymore, are just songs I love, because they make him light up so bright.”

Robin feels her chest squeeze tight, because: yeah.

When Steve lights up—and she knows exactly what he’s talking about, this particular light and shine—but when Steve lights up, the sun can kinda just…take a breather. Vacation day, Steve’s got it covered.

“He sang this one, the first time he ever sang for me,” Eddie murmurs between the verses and Robin nods for an audience of no one, almost like she can’t help it:

“He loves Talking Heads,” Eddie comments on the side and Robin breathes in sharp, because Steve does. Steve loves the feel of them, loves to chew his bottom lip and toss his head around in absurd little twitches and bops when the instrumentation goes particularly wild, and he looks so young and free and—

“I know,” Robin squeaks a little at how sure they both are, when she’d known Steve was loved by everyone here, and loved in a special way by Eddie, like but then wholly unlike the way Robin loves him but something is starting to click that she didn’t know she was waiting on, or watching for, as she notes how Eddie sings:

”And you love me till my heart stops, love me till I'm dead, eyes that light up, eyes look through you, cover up the blank spots,” and it’s so heartfelt, it’s so much somehow that it hits Robin on the head, too, when he sings that part but like…like she knows it wouldn’t hit Steve on the head because Steve’s head gets enough hits and is precious and Eddie of all people knows it so the soft bend of his voice cradles kinda like a pillow, but only for the one person he’s really putting the show on for.

Jesus.

“Got any idea how hard it was to figure out a way to play this as a guitar piece, though?” Eddie hums idly, half to her and half to no one and all of it really just Steve. “Like, the mechanics are easy but,” he lets his fingers slip to make a high sliding sound that just screams…absurdity: “the feeling of it,” and yeah.

Yeah, Robin could see that.

It’s perfect though. And Eddie…made it perfect. Before now, long before now, it’s a flawless performance, he knows it by rote and…

For Steve. He made it for Steve.

He made all these for Steve.

And Robin doesn’t laugh with the overwhelming emotion of the revelation, so much as choke on her own sobs: endless. And Eddie doesn’t stop; Robin thinks part of it’s a matter of courtesy, but most of it’s just that she exists in his periphery, she’s a side character that’s so secondary to the way his focus is locked unwavering onto Steve’s frame stretched between them under the starchy hospital sheets. Robin’s not even sure that he’s wasting energy to blink, to risk even half-breaths without keeping watch and strumming, singing so unending that she thinks, like, songs yeah but also epic poems and timeless legends are built of the stuff that the thing she’s watching happen is balanced on and woven through, too.

“This one was easy, though,” Eddie breathes as he segues smooth from one song to the next: never pausing. Never leaving a silent space for the enemy to gain more ground.

Robin can’t quite breathe around the sudden surge of love she feels for Eddie, for the way he loves the person she she loves so fierce with…well. Here and now, like this?

It looks like Eddie loves Steve with…everything.

He’s strumming again, and Robin wants to come apart when she recognizes the song because oh, oh fuck, this, to her this one is purely Steve; and Eddie doesn’t know that story, she knows, because Steve’s never asked her if he could tell it and he would never say it without asking first but he can it, he will—he has to.

He has to. He has to come back so Eddie can know they all share this, this thing, their soulmate, their soulmate

Her face is wet again. Was it ever…not? Was it ever not wet, with the way her heart’s wringing itself out, every goddamn minute?

Shit.

She focuses back in; Eddie’s singing, seems so deliberate as he only sings the first half of every line, the repeated part—turn around bright eyes—then gives himself over to the chorus, editing one line, without you I’d be falling apart, and he sings it brighter himself, louder as he tweaks it to now I hold my love through the dark with resolve and devotion when he sets the guitar on his lap and leans to brush Steve’s hair behind his ear; it’s already there but it looks like Eddie needs the contact as he hums between the words keeping up constant, constant sound because Vecna hates noise, and Eddie is dead-set, whole-on-bound like his heart’s tied up in Steve’s too, like he’ll die trying if he doesn’t succeed because that’s the only other option.

“Plus, y’know, that one was from me,” Eddie coughs a little around tuning for the next song, humming between the words; “I sang to him from the deck.”

Robin blinks; if Eddie doesn’t know their story with this song, she sure as hell doesn’t know this story—how does she not know this story?

“Like,” she clears her throat hoping her voice will sound just a tiny bit less rough if she does but: no such luck; “like you serenaded him?”

“Mmm,” Eddie nods, distracted as he takes the guitar back in hand; “for our anniversary,” he chuckles, low and faint and a little dark, a lot desperate as he stares at Steve with that unblinking focus: “it’s about vampires, the song, it’s like actually about fucking vampires and since, y’know, the bats?”

“Romantic,” Robin says, half halfassed-deadpan because she’s skeptical that’s what that song’s about, but more-than-half-somehow, like, actually impressed.

“On so many levels,” Eddie almost smiles, but mostly it’s…it’s like just feeling coming out of his eyes as he watches Steve with such…such love, god, how’d she think it was a lesser love before right now? How’d she end up worrying Steve might get hurt, how’d she imagine they were still growing into what they had, into feeling like this?

“I think part of me was testing him, like one last time, just to be sure he knew what he was getting into,” Eddie almost whispers through the bridge, almost like he hears Robin’s thoughts, just for different reasons; “even if we’d already made it a whole year, best goddamn year of my life, but I think some little shred of me wanted to be sure,” then Eddie’s eyes soften, oh, oh no: they don’t just soften. They don’t just soften, they start to fill, they start to shimmer and his whisper gets more hoarse:

“He dueted it with me halfway through,” and Robin hiccups, choked wet and ugly around memories where Eddie’s voice scratches from the base of his throat, maybe somewhere deeper, and it sounds sacred almost, like it’s intimate and maybe Robin shouldn’t even hear it but she’s the only one awake to catch the words; “never stopped smiling and then I couldn’t either, because,” and there’s no other words to be said for it; Steve like that is infectious in the best way; “then he told me to meet him at the door because dinner was getting cold.”

Robin doesn’t get it until Eddie plays the notes through an extra time, just so he can explain it, breathless:

“He knew I’d be there,“ Eddie says like it’s everything; “he believed in me, like it was a matter of fact, and whatever shred of me thought he might need an out?” Eddie shakes his head with a little hint of a smile, so much longing Robin almost cried some more, like, new tears; “whatever was there that doubted any part of this, of us, it just like, shriveled up between packing up my guitar and kissing him once the door was closed,” Eddie gasps a little around his next breath, like his lungs are too tight, and hell if Robin doesn’t blow straight past ‘a little’ with her own gasping, just. Just.

Shit.

“He believed in me, where I was always believing in him but it didn’t,” Eddie hums but more in, like, a way to keep his lips from parting around something else, something primal; more to keep something vital from shattering and spilling forth; “it didn’t even occur to me? To be believed in, like that?”

And oh. Oh, yes; that. Robin knows that feeling, in her own way; they might love him different but she kind of thinks there’s something in it, most of what’s in it even, that’s exactly the same.

Steve’s Eddie’s everything. Steve’s Eddie’s different-flavor of soulmate.

All possible doubting she may have still held for that fact dissolves, just like that.

“But that’s what we are, y’know?” Eddie breathes, running the closing notes slow but strong, drawn out, defiant. “We believe in each other.”

Eddie nods to himself before slipping seamlessly into the next song, murmuring like it’s just them two and…yeah.

Robin sees it so freaking clear: it’s them two, here. Just them, Eddie’s heart splayed out and…and vulnerable and spilling everything its got, everything he’s got, to save the man he loves.

“Hmm, yeah,” Eddie breathes, a little forced lightness in his tone; “flip the script a little, whatd’ya say, baby?”

And oh, Robin know this song when Eddie starts if off, right away. Steve still plays this album like it’s brand new.

“None of these words are things Vecna can twist,” Eddie points it out again as he plays the beginning bit without words the first time through, like he’s drawing a line under the point, emphatic; “and he can’t know the lyrics we’ve changed, just for us,” and Eddie…Robin doesn’t know exactly what she’s always really believed deep down about love but where Eddie doesn’t lean down to kiss Steve he doesn’t have to: his eyes, his voice, it’s like…

Robin thinks she wouldn’t believe it, or stoop to such saccharine bullshit thoughts if she didn’t see it with her own eyes. If her heart wasn’t hurting so hard for Steve lying so still.

“Stevie knows, though, don’t you baby,” and Robin hiccoughs a little, wet and weak and broken because Eddie speaks to Steve like it’s a certainty he’ll hear; “and when he hears them he’ll know, so then he’ll have to—“

His voice cracks, and maybe it should undercut that certainty, except…somehow it doesn’t.

Somehow it fills it fuller, clearer: truer.

“He sold me on these guys with this song,” Eddie sidenotes between the bars he stretches out at will; “he sang it to me, but,” he shakes his head a little then catches his lip between his teeth, bites down hard enough that Robin almost winces for him:

“It always felt like it needed to be the other way around,” Eddie breathes out; “me to him.”

Robin doesn’t even pretend that the tears don’t find a way to fall faster.

I sense the pounding of his heart next to mine, he’s the sweetest love I could find, so hell yes I’ll be hunting high and low, there’s no end to the lengths I’ll go,” Eddie’s delivery is particularly breathless, heartfelt, or else, heartfull? Maybe all of it as he sings, asks:

Do you know what it means to love you?”

He plays the melody over and over, skips certain lines and revisits others, dwells in this song for a while: Robin doesn’t mind. It’s Steve. It’s all…

Her face is on fire for the tears that just won’t stop and it feels like she deserves it. Penance in case she’s part of the cause for, for, for—

“Gonna hit it a little on the nose, baby, just to be safe,” Eddie’s low voice jars her as he switches again: poppier; “cover the bases.”

He messes with the lyrics a lot on this one, but only a word here and there, to shore up uncertainties before he goes all in on the point: “If you're lost you can look and you will find me, time after time, if you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting, time after time,” and it’s so earnest, it’s so urgent, and Eddie…

Robin doesn’t notice, exactly, when sleep wins out, but she thinks the only reason it does, some time after she mouths—no sounds, nothing that can be misused or twisted up—but she’s soundless when she mouths I love you, Dingus, I love you so much, and it’s sometime after that where she drifts, but it’s only possible because, from one soulmate to the other?

Steve’s held as close and cherished as he can be.

Everything they can do, right now: that’s what they’re doing. She trusts that now, no shreds of doubt, with all her wrung-out-fearful heart.

She trusts it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eddie’s strumming through “Mad World” for the sound because fuck the lyrics, especially for here and now, but largely he’s just taking a little breather, playing and talking to Steve between running through random Tears for Fears and Duran Duran tracks back and forth and honestly, yeah, he adds in more a-ha on balance because it’s true: Steve’s kinda convinced him there’s merit in it. He throws the right lines into “Head Over Heels”, basically whenever the melody matches words to what’s humming strongest in the shivering cage of his ribs, but mostly he just talks about the inane, the everyday, the weirdly domestic way they’ve built a life together where they’re still saving for a place of their own but have made two places into home in the meantime, and so Eddie’s maybe running down the grocery list for next week, and asking if either of them bought a bigger thing of milk because the rugrats are staying over after they wrap a particularly lengthy campaign that weekend, or they were, they’d meant to, they’d been planning to before—

“Baby love, my baby love,” Eddie starts singing out of kind of nowhere but then also wholly expected, all at once; with a hitch in his voice, screechy and a little thin because his heart decided to twist with real fucking feeling just then, hard and Jesus fuck does it hurt, this all fucking hurts and he needs words that already exist to take the lead just now because he, he—

“I need you, oh how I need you,” Eddie more whispers than anything, and the rest of the lyrics don’t count, don’t fit, don’t matter because fuck, fuck: he doesn’t even know if any of this counts, if any of it’s working, if Steve can hear it and if he can, whether it matters—

“Come on baby,” Eddie breathes, guitar slipping to his lap for his thumb to just pluck at for the sake of noise, metronomic; “come on, fight him,” and Eddie’s pleading, he is, he can hear it as much as he can feel it in his chest and that’s how it should be because he’ll beg for this, he’ll give all that he is for this, he just doesn’t…

He’d just doesn’t know if that’ll be enough.

“I know you’re tired, I know too much has been left for you to carry for too long, sweetheart, I know too much has chipped at your armor and you just,” Eddie’s breath does its hitching thing again, unavoidable.

“You’ve always just kept going but I swear to you,” Eddie reaches with his free hand for Steve, folds over the robotic kind of hum that he’s playing off the E-string and cups Steve’s cheek.

“I swear to you I’ll die before you ever have to lift that goddamn bat again, I fucking promise, just hold on this one time, one last time and fight him because you’re so much stronger, you’re so much more,” Eddie thinks he feels a tear escape his lashes, maybe, but he’s a little over-sore, a little too-numb to anything and everything that isn’t the warmth of Steve under his touch because warmth means here, still here, still here

“Never thought this was in the cards for me, you know that,” Eddie barely breathes, running his fingertip down Steve’s jawline; “but you’re everything, sweetheart,” and it’s true, it’s more true than any other thing he’s ever seen or thought or known; “and I know in my bones I won’t remember how to breathe without you,” and that’s a truth, too—that’s a goddamn promise his heart and soul made to the rest of him: unyielding.

“So please,” Eddie’s voice cracks down to a whisper; “please, baby, fight him, fight like hell,” and he chokes on the sounds, the desperation thick in him and it’s undeniable that there are tears now, single ones rather than the flood that’s banked inside his chest, tight and pressing in and looking to crush and Eddie will let it, Eddie will goddamn welcome it if this doesn’t work but until then he’s gonna fight as hard as he can and then some, because the man beside him is better suited to the fight than Eddie is, but the man beside him’s kinda become the bulk of Eddie’s fucking heart, so.

Eddie’ll find a way to move goddamn mountains.

“Fight him,” Eddie murmurs, pleads, more air than voice, and lingers his touch on the pulse in Steve’s neck; proof-proof-proof: “fight him and come back to me.”

He stares a little longer, and leans to kiss Steve’s lips at the corner, before he sighs deep and straightens back up, humming while he positions his guitar, never once letting the silence spread, never letting so much as a crack split through the stretch of sound-sound-sound unbroken, held tight and close and sure until he can start the next song, one he sings to Steve because he loves it, they both do: one of the first songs to come out that they discovered together, Steve picking up the album on release day when Eddie’d been biting his hair waiting to hear it, to see if it lived up to the hype and honestly, in the end, it could have been the worst fucking thing in the universe save for that song that lit Steve up with the first note, the look of surprise so honest and golden as he leaned in a little, which really just meant leaning in to Eddie that little extra bit more but, yeah: the light it kindled in his Stevie, that would have been more than enough.

He needs that light back, so goddamn bad.

And Eddie thinks he probably should have already played it by now. Eddie’s pretty sure the dark, hateful, terrified part of his heart didn’t want to risk ruining this thing they shared should the worst take hold, win out. He thinks—

Eddie feels something settle in him as he starts playing without thinking, no intention of pausing or stopping or second-guessing his own instinct to run with this song, and to run with it now—he doesn’t question if Steve will wake up. Whether this is the key or it takes all goddamn night, then he’ll do it; if it takes Eddie’s whole fucking life he’ll give it: Steve is as good as his life anyway. All the worthwhile parts, at the least.

Steve is more than every single one of his nights. Any nights to come without him aren’t worth…anything.

So. Yeah.

He plays through the first verse and the chorus, then he sucks on the backs of his front teeth to hold the tears back because he has to keep going, he has to keep playing, he’s gotta sing

“He’s got eyes, of the deepest skies, as if they thought of rain, I—“

“Thought I told you already.”

And Eddie gasps, chokes—or else first his heart seems to gasp, take in too much and splutter for it, trip wild and choke on its own ruin in a way hearts shouldn’t do, Eddie’s sure of it before the goddamn thing lodges itself in Eddie’s throat like a loose vibration, frenetic and Eddie might be concerned if it weren’t the most terrifying-wonderful-beautiful thing because the only reason his heart would do that, the only way Eddie could feel something terrifying and wonderful and beautiful, here and now, lives in the first-and-only place he found that feeling: love so deep it cuts precise and somehow tender to make new space when it swells to grow; Eddie could only know any of this terrifying impossible miracle of a moment if that voice was, was—

“Sky looks like my eyes?” and Eddie’s gaze flicks up quick to Steve’s features scrunching, and he’s transfixed as Steve’s lids ease open, lashes fluttery before the sweep of them gives way to the full expanse of those depthless, endless eyes that Eddie can’t even want to drown in anymore: he’s been submerged for so long already, and all he wants is to never leave.

To never lose.

“Sky this color means a fuckin’ tornado, babe,” and those eyes now: they’re bright and sly and tired but grinning before his lips bother quirking and Jesus H. Christ

Steve,” Eddie breathes that name like it’s a goddamn prayer; closest thing he knows to one anyway, so.

And then Steve’s lips curve soft and maybe relieved and definitely sweet with a love that still sometimes steals Eddie’s breath, and Eddie’s heart’s got a rhythm back, isn’t trying to choke him but hell if it hasn’t dived lower just to find a quicker way to leap into Steve’s hands, his chest, by trying to pummel through Eddie’s ribs.

“Oh god, oh fuck, Stevie,” Eddie stumbles, babbles, nearly fucking sobs because everything that his heart had been a cork against the rise of, the escape of: now that his heart’s got its eyes fully and solely on beating out toward Steve-Steve-Steve where it belongs always?

There’s nothing left between the yawning expanse in Eddie’s chest where all the fear and sadness had been stopped-up, and so the terror and torment, the mourning and self-recrimination screaming no, no you won’t, no you can’t, no you haven’t lost him yet—all of that’s…rising. Ready to spill over now that keeping it in his chest isn’t necessary, because Steve’s…Steve is—

“There you are,” and Eddie doesn’t even really register that the guitar in his lap’s kinda balanced precarious as he reaches for Steve’s cheeks, frames his face and just holds: “there you are.”

He doesn’t even consider not half crushing the instrument as he bends forward and captures Steve’s lips, soft and reverent and careful but Steve’s of a very different mind, slipping his tongue in quick and sucking, mapping Eddie’s mouth not like he’s discovering it, or like he forgot it but more like a homecoming, like something joyful.

Fuck. Fuck, Eddie didn’t think there were new ways to feel like his heart was going to burst but; but.

“I was so fucking scared,” Eddie shakes—not just his voice but his limbs, his hands, the blood in his veins—with sheer feeling, all the things that had to be knocked down and gagged if he was ever going to put his whole heart into the one thing that mattered: the life-bright eyes watching him with so much compassion, so much of their own worry and concern, so much love in the face of Eddie fracturing even a little in front of him, no matter how belated now with proof of Steve in front of him, under his touch; proof this storm has passed.

“You got me out,” Steve breathes, a little wondering but mostly rooted in reassurance, reassuring Eddie because he’s Steve fucking Harrington and he can wake from a psychic-coma and still want to keep safe, still feel compelled to protect at all costs.

“I heard you,” Steve speaks low and soft, voice a little raspy still but it’s beautiful, it’s perfect, it’s the only music in the world; “knew it had to be real, or else,” Steve shakes his head a little and leans, all intent and relief, into the hold of Eddie’s palms cradling his cheeks. “I don’t believe in any of that shit, y’know, but if it wasn’t real?” He turns his head just the slightest bit to press his lips to Eddie’s hand and melt his heart for the sweet pressure of it, the simple miracle of here and now and them and this:

“If it wasn’t real, then it had to be some kind of heaven, y’know, because the words could only have been you,” and that was Eddie’s hope, that the lines they wrote for them, that they’d break through and now it’s Steve’s voice sinking into all the crevices of Eddie’s being, the cracks that almost losing him threatened to wrench wide but keeping him, keeping him had stayed that snapping so now they’re just places to let light in pure and real because that’s what Steve is, even as he’s breaking Eddie’s goddamn heart in new and different ways for the words themselves:

“And that’s heaven.”

Losing Steve is unfathomable; untenable. Forever and always with Steve, wherever and however it looks: that’s essential. The concept tries its damnedest to rip Eddie apart from either end and it’s a close thing, it nearly manages but Steve’s hand is cupping Eddie’s cheek through it, now, his thumb running back and forth like a metronome, a steady backbeat that lays the foundation for all other things across the line of bone beneath the skin and Eddie shivers, trembles: they’re here.

Steve is here, with him.

“He had me,” Steve murmurs, that tone marveling the slightest bit again; “you—“

“Tools, baby,” Eddie shakes his head, sniffles a little because fuck if he’s not still choked up as shit, because Steve’s here, Steve’s talking, Steve’s trying to shrug the credit, Steve is Steve and Eddie’s not losing him.

Eddie doesn’t have to lose him.

“Just a flashlight in the dark,” Eddie protests before he reaches down and folds Steve’s hand in his own to squeeze with purpose; “you fought your way out. You did.”

Steve’s eyes lock with his own meaningfully before they drop to their joined fingers

“I’d never leave you,” Steve tells him, and the way he says it tears at opposite ends of Eddie’s heart once more because Steve is firm, there’s no question in him for this, and Eddie feels the truth of it in his goddamn soul; but he says it, and it’s…it’s a prelude. It’s making certain to lay the rug out sure and clean so that it’s not pulled out from under them in the next breath because it could be, whatever’s waiting in the next breath would otherwise do it, it’s—

“I believed him.”

Eddie doesn’t bother trying to swallow the moan, the fucking sob that shakes out of him; Steve’s hand cradling his face doesn’t falter, and Eddie’s safe, he’s safe to fall apart a little now, and maybe it’s selfish, maybe he should be keeping it together a little longer, at least let Steve get out of his goddamn hospital bed but fucking hell.

Steve believed, and just, he, they—

“For a while I did, because he had me there, and I held you, again as you, and I,” oh, oh fuck, of course that’s what he used, that monster; of course that’s what he made Steve relive and how he found the weakest spots to sink in his claws—

“You were the last of us left and I, you,” and Eddie doesn’t know if Steve even realizes what he’s doing before it’s done and his fingertips have trailed to the full throb of Eddie’s pulse at his jaw, heavier and more desperate now because god, his Stevie, the last of everyone, and he had to feel it again? No, no, that’s—

“He made me hear,” Steve mouths more than speaks, more than breathes and he’s watching Eddie’s neck for the pulse there too, visible for the weight and he can trace the way Steve’s pupils chart how the touch and the sight match up, the desperation in it, like every pump pushes pieces in him back together and Eddie will give him every beat he’s got left, to the end of everything, he will hold Steve together and hold him close and keep him; “he told me,” and what’s barely there of Steve’s voice cracks and Eddie cracks for it all over again, all new and wretched, and Jesus fuck: the holes he can fill, the gaps he can imagine, what Steve was told to make him doubt, to drag him so-close to lost, the lies that had to hit just true enough and Eddie knows he’ll spend the foreseeable future not just throwing himself into healing those raw spots, those vicious wounds, but to working toward making sure there are no vulnerable spaces like that left to exploit in the first place. Anywhere. Even if that sick fuck Henry is gone: Eddie will not rest until Steve knows he’s loved and adored.

Knows it, so that any cheap cruelties ring as laughable, so unrealistic. So goddamn absurd.

“But you told me,” Eddie’s drawn back to the moment by Steve’s words, stronger if still soft, his touch back to cradling Eddie’s face in a warm palm, stroking at the cheekbone; tapping idly at his jaw; “you told me, that summer after,” and Eddie can’t even imagine what specifically it might have been, that first summer, their first summer when Eddie learned you didn’t have to lose your heart when you really fell in love, you could hold it out and wait for it to be found and feel right for it like never before—

“You said you knew I cared from the beginning, that you were scared but you knew you could trust me, that you knew I told you not to be a hero because I cared, not because I didn’t think you could be, and that you put your trust in me because you believed in me, and you knew it wasn’t without good reason because even if you didn’t know much of me yet, you knew the kids, and you saw how they believed in me and that meant you could make that leap, and you told me you didn’t blame me, and that you wouldn’t have if things had, if you hadn’t, if,” and Steve gasps a breath, the way the words tumble from him uncharacteristic but so fucking earnest, his eyes bright and now both his hands are on Eddie’s cheeks, framing his whole face and holding him dear, unblinking as if Eddie could look away, could pull away, could hear anything else but his beautiful boy, the flush in his cheeks and the part of his lips: unthinkable.

“I couldn’t believe it for me,” Steve confesses, and yeah it stings, but it’s honest and real and Eddie loves him so goddamn much:

“But I love you, and so I could believe it, from you.”

Jesus and again; just when Eddie didn’t think he could love more.
“That’s when I started to hear the music,” Steve smiles, then, the slow molasses curl of lips that warms Eddie to his toes, soft and sweet and so genuine, somehow so intimate, like it’s held safe between warm palms, the bright flame of it. “I think it distracted him, loosened his grip, made him sloppy,” Steve sucks his bottom lip, thinking, nodding: adorable. Exquisite.

“Because as soon as I heard it, heard you, it all added up right again,” and there’s the sparkle in his eyes again, and holy fuck, Eddie’d almost lost it; Eddie had almost had to breathe without it, he’d almost—

“And if I couldn’t trust what I was seeing and hearing from him, in there,” Steve frowns, then taps his head, half a question: “in here?” Then he shrugs it off, shakes his head and nails Eddie with the full force of his gaze again: real. It’s real. They’re real, and they’re here, and it’s real.

“If I couldn’t trust it, then how much of it was a lie?” Steve asks, his voice a little stronger, and Eddie melts for it, for all of it, for all of him; “what if all of it was a lie, what if you, everyone—“

And that: that catches Eddie and snags because shit, they’d been right to wonder, and to worry and just, just—

Everyone,” Eddie cuts him off, vehement, fucking incandescent with the need to be heard and understood here, for Steve to know and feel this to his core as best he can; he knows he won’t be the only one to drive it home but he spares his hands on Steve, soaking up his warmth, the life in him, to gesture to the room around him, all the sleeping bodies he doesn’t think Steve’s taken in yet and no, no he hadn’t because Steve follows the gesture and those brilliant-dazzle eyes grow at least a size bigger for what they find; “everyone loves you, so goddamn much, Steve,” Eddie soaks the words in as much feeling as they’ll hold: “and you fight and protect every last one of us and I wish you wouldn’t, wish you wouldn’t risk yourself like you do but then you wouldn’t be you, y’know, and I’d never wish you, weren’t you, because I love every piece of you, with every piece of me,” and Eddie takes both of Steve’s hands in his then, and holds them, squeezes his fingers until the knuckles dig into his skin, kisses the tips and watches Steve watch the motion through his lashes.

“But it hurts, how much you’re the first and last line of defense we have, because you’re the one everyone turns to, that every one trusts at the end of the day and you keep proving everyone right because you’re you,” Eddie’s voice cracks, splits down the center because god-fucking-damnit, he, he just…

“I won’t survive losing you, if the cost of that gets any higher,” Eddie rakes the words over hot coals, fraught and reeling and desperate. “Don’t change, but, just,” Eddie makes himself take a deep breath, lets himself kiss Steve’s fingertips one more time and linger, hold there and close his eyes and breathe as he whispers:

“Just remember that you’re loved better and bigger than breathing, okay?”

And Eddie doesn’t especially want to pull away, doesn’t want to not speak into Steve’s skin where he holds Steve’s touch to his mouth and tastes him with every syllable, but Steve stretches his reach and holds Eddie’s jaw tender but firm as he tilts his gaze so they’ll meet in the middle.

“You loving me saved my fucking life, Eddie,” Steve speaks it so simply, so wholehearted and unwavering: known to the core and if Eddie Munson has succeeded in anything, has anything in his life to be proud of, it might just be the way that Steve Harrington speaks of the love Eddie has for him, with the truth of how uncompromising, how unconditional it is. “I don’t have to remember,” Steve smiles small and soft and gorgeous; “you’re in my heart deep enough to pull me back from hell itself.”

And Eddie can’t stand it any longer, he leaps up and grabs Steve’s hands and moves to climb into the bed next to Steve, guitar forgotten where it’d rested on his lap until it slips to the floor with a hollow thud.

“Your baby—“ Steve protests, eyes wide again for lesser reasons because, shit:

“Fuck that,” Eddie almost snarls, and damn well means it too; “you’re my baby,” because the guitar, any guitar, can be replaced, and Eddie’s a live wire, he’s pulled taut still and it’s still so fresh to know his Stevie is still here, is with him, is safe and living and breathing and awake and talking and just, just:

“You’re my everything.”

And Eddie’s slotted next to Steve on the too-small mattress now, so it’s nothing when Steve grabs him and claims his mouth; it’s barely a motion, barely a tug of one body to the other, save that it’s everything, and means the goddamn world.

“He told me that they,” Steve pants a little between them when they break apart but holds their foreheads pressed flush: “that everyone, they blamed me, that they thought I was too useless, or didn’t care enough to save them,” and Eddie knows the words are spoken in no small part because they’re too close to see straight, Steve eyes screwed shut and just the two of them breathing, feeling in the dark: “I knew you didn’t think it, but when they,” and Steve inhales deep before breathing out shaky: “I’ve gotta make sure they—“

“They know, Stevie,” Eddie’s quick to assure, quick to state the obvious because sometimes the obvious is necessary, sometimes it’s the most important part to say at all: “shit, they know,” and then, sometimes, the obvious needs expanding. Needs fleshing out further to make sure it’s understood for all that it is.

“We’ve fought so fucking much, terrifying things I never could have imagined, and they’ve all faced more besides, and you’ve been with them every step but it’s been terrifying things, Steve,” Eddie says, and Steve nods, their heads still tight together as Eddie grips Steve’s neck and tries to pull them closer still:

“I have never seen them more scared, than when they thought they were gonna lose you.”

Steve’s breath catches, and he clings to Eddie, leans into him a little bit more and Eddie welcomes it, holds him and gives for him, always and forever, for anything, for all things at once.

“C’mere,” Steve finally says, sliding his hands down to Eddie’s wrists and leaning back, lying down fully again and pulling Eddie with him, easing him toward Steve’s chest.

“You’re not too sore?” because sure Steve had been lost largely in his mind but they’d all been in the battle, they’d all taken blows and as always, Steve had taken the first, and the hardest.

“I don’t fucking care if every bone in my body is broken and I’m somehow just not noticing,” Steve rolls his eyes and yanks Eddie’s not-exactly-resisting frame to settle on his ribs: “come here so I can fucking hold you.”

And Eddie’s just a man, a man in love at that, who thought he might have to face down losing it; like hell he’s going to fight this: the embrace, the closeness, the warmth, the incomparable song-and-sweet-tapping-dance of Steve’s heartbeat under his ear—

Like hell he’s going to do anything but lean in and hold.

Notes:

Let me know if it didn't do the trick, I guess?

Chapter 3: Edge

Summary:

The kids were terrified of losing Steve, or so Eddie told him.

The first-person-proof Steve encounters before any others isn’t…isn’t the one he would have expected.

At all.

Notes:

A very long time ago peachesandpears asked for this to have an encounter with one of the shitheads. I don’t know if this was the child envisioned but. Even if it takes a long time, I am a writer/friend of my word 🖤

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Steve is honestly thrown by waking up the way he does: stiff bed. Shit poked into his arm, something plastic in his nose—fuck all.

Hospital.

Usually he manages to dodge this part.

But the memories start to shape themselves into real images, real thoughts and feelings with weight and substance, and Eddie pressed against him and playing him back into this stiff fucking bed with a relentless kind of resolve, a command to keep hands off Steve laid down to every dimension; every universe that tried to claw for otherwise. Eddie had fought for him, unshakable.

Fuck, Steve was in love with him, but more than that—because that part was obvious; a given—more than that?

Eddie was just as in love with Steve and while they’d said it, and they’d known it?

Seeing it like this, even right now, where Eddie’s pressed as half the weight pinning down Steve’s body, heat through starchy sheets and a papery gown: like this, and all that came before it?

There’s just something different to the knowing, when it’s lived out this sure.

And where he either hadn’t noticed it before—seems both unlikely and entirely likely, because he’d been pretty singleminded, and singleminded about getting Eddie next to him in the tiny bed beside him and then to give back in to an unconsciousness that could mean rest this time, rather than agony; rather torture worse than he’d ever known before; not fighting like hell to get back to reality on the fool’s hope that there was a real world to find where his heart wasn’t crushed to a pulp for losing everything; but he’d been singularly focused, so missing everything else could track, but if the other half of his body had already been tethered? Kinda seems like it would have been something that the attempt to get Eddie up in the bed next to him would have tugged at him to see—

The other half of the weight holding him down: his Robbie. Warm and safe and clinging to him, fetal-position curled into Steve’s opposite side, and it hits Steve like a fucking freight train, in between heartbeats that he can hear trip on a monitor in the periphery, feels it honey-poured into his chest, heat and sweetness and golden, blinding as Steve’s eyes squeeze closed for the stretch of his grin because…they’re both warm, too. Both of them sleeping, lightly snoring, beautifully fucking breathing bodies, miracles the both of them, latched on to him and, fuck.

Steve feels like he’s been through a wringer—must have been, even beyond Vecna in his head, grinding his heart into dust over and over with every blow, every loss; it must have been rough here, too, for how hooked up he is to medical bullshit—but he also feels lighter than air. Just…he can barely move now for the actual physical fact that he’s surrounded by undeniable love, and he’d been so convinced they’d been lost

The fucking oxygen thingy in his nose is messing with his ability to not start crying, and wake up his twin blankets in the process, so he checks both sides as best he can turn—Rob’s smooshed closer into his hip, and he could try and bend that elbow, move the oxygen-tube-annoyance, maybe pinch the bridge between his brows to keep from giving in to the urge to goddamn sob—

There’s half-a-squeal that wails when he so much as starts to pull out the nose-oxygen and so he shoves it back, pulse beeping quicker for it on the monitor, but way more quiet than the alarm he’d unwitting triggered, apparently, and his eyes dart to Robin, to Eddie: hopefully being in a hospital means they’re used to the noises enough that Steve’s misstep went undetected—both tighten their holds a little but: still blissfully asleep.

Thank fuck.

His eyes darting let him pick up only the floor at the angle he gets but: he recognizes his kids just fine by their shoes. And they seem to be…lining his room. Like…like Eddie’d been right.

Maybe…maybe the only way Steve could have failed them was not coming back. To them.

Just because he was…Steve. And like maybe that…mattered. Was a thing that counted, all by itself.

Wild.

Steve sighs, a little bowled-over at the notion as he leans back, lets himself listen a little closer, catches Nancy’s delicate extra puffs of breath that her unconscious mind sneaks in to keep her curls out of her face; Dustin’s unmistakable mouth-breathing; Max’s almost-growly and very on-brand version of a snore; Erica’s little hums she does when she’s dreaming; Jon’s weird cartoon-esque sort of chewing on his own heavy exhales—and Steve just smiles as he settles again, heartbeat slowing steadily back to normal in the absence of squealing machinery, but soothed sweeter by the presence of everyone here. Breathing. Safe and sound.

His…his family.

Steve’s kind floating on that thought when the squeaking of shoe-soles drifts in from the hallway—hospital noises, and no one else so much as flinches, so he floats a little longer.

But the sound gets louder, closer. Faster.

Sharper.

And Steve feels like he recognizes not just the sounds of the rubber, but the fall of the weight.

Finds out he was right to, when a breathless Mike Wheeler catches himself on the frame of Steve’s door, panting, pale as fuck.

And maybe Steve can’t sit up, exactly, but Mike’s right in front of him. He can hold eye contact, read his face well enough.

“Mike?” Steve asks, grimaces at how rough his voice comes out so he tries to clear his throat, quiet as he can.

“What’s wrong, what happened?” he asks it warily because Mike’s come into the room, now, and makes a beeline to the corner where all of Steve’s tubes and lines lead to his collection of machine-thingys, and his breathing’s still heavy as he looks at…fuck knows what, and Steve’s ready to ask again, more pointed, more insistent this time, before Mike’s whirling around on his heel, the sloppiness of his hair smacking him in the face before he kinda gasps out:

“We love you!”

And Steve…was not expecting that. Gapes a little at Mike who still looks pale, looks like nothing’s getting better for him as his chest keeps heaving and his eyes stay way-too-wide.

Steve…doesn’t think it’s monsters. Thinks Mike wouldn’t have bothered toning the outburst to a whisper if it had been.

But that’s literally the only evidence Steve has for his theory. So it’s most likely that something is still wrong.

And Steve does not fail his kids, no matter what condition he’s in, so: time to figure it out.

“I’m sorry!”

Mike cuts him off at the pass, just as frantic, and Steve’s…just as confused.

“S’okay,” Steve reassures carefully, much like holding off a wild animal—the energy he’s getting hits about the same. “No sweat, won’t tell anyone you slipped up and said anything other than how stupid and uncool I am,” he adds, trying to diffuse it all with a laugh so he can get to the meat of the issue, whatever the problem actually is—

“No!”

Steve’s jaw snaps shut. He’s never seen Mike like this. And…he’s seen Mike a lot of ways. Mostly angry, or fucking rude, and trying to kill Steve with the mighty power of his glare.

Not…scared. Not like this.

“I heard the alarm,” Mike says on a gasp—poor kid’s still not catching his breath; “the monitor,” he throws a hand out toward the machinery corner; “and I was just coming back from the bathroom and I heard it and I knew it was your room, and I thought…”

“You thought?”

Because Mike Wheeler didn’t…of all people, he would care probably the least about Steve hypothetically, like, somehow crashing and finally being out of his hair forever down the hall.

Given away by noises that he…somehow knew were coming from Steve’s room. Like, specifically.

Like he’d…paid attention, or some shit.

“Steve,” Mike is taking a deep breath, still concerningly pale if Steve’s honest; his mouth opens a few times, even gets the start of some kind of coherent sound out once or twice but mostly he’s just fish-lipping around something stuck in his throat that looks…heavy. Hard to swallow around. Hard to breathe around, and like…

What the fuck?

“You know how,” Mike finally starts, looking halfway like he’s got a mouth full of Lemonheads, all pinched up, and the other halfway like he’s gonna fucking puke.

“I don’t have a real brother, y’know,” he starts, less like Steve actually doesn’t know, and a lot more like he does but Mike just needs a foothold. So Steve nods.

Because whether Mike likes him or not is irrelevant. He’s one of Steve’s, and it’s clear that something’s eating him. So: Steve is gonna be there. If by some strange twist of fate, some weird ass turn of events, Mike…wants him there.

“It’s, it’s just the Party and they’re better than brothers, but like,” and Mike swallows hard, lips sucked tight around the sour before he looks up, still pale enough Steve’s a little afraid he’s gonna have to use his call button, just not for himself. He catches it in his peripherals, so he knows where to reach just in case.

“But you’re the Party, too,” Mike says, like it holds so much more than even the words—and it does. Steve knows that. “The, the bigger Party. The monster fighting, life-saving party, not just us in the basement hiding El.”

Steve also knows it holds more than that explanation, too.

“You’re like a…a brother.”

And thank fuck Steve’s already lying down because those words from Mike’s mouth would have knocked him on his ass. Still do.

Very much still do.

“Because you fight with a brother, and you don’t always like your brother, if it’s anything like a sister,” Mike’s eyes roll like they’re programmed to at the very mention; “but a brother has your back, too, you fight with a brother, right, so you’re,” and he waves his hand like it means something, like it speaks for him when it definitely doesn’t, but he’s off again before Steve can try to better puzzle it out:

“But then you’re also like,” and he’s doing the hand waving, and then groaning in frustration before grabbing his hair and pulling—one-hundred-percent learned from Eddie, Steve’s more of a running-of-the-fingers guy, only Eddie is so violent to his own scalp.

“You care,” Mike finally whirls back to Steve, almost accusatory if he’s anything decipherable at all: “and you fucking shouldn’t.”

“Language,” Steve shoots back, an automatic impulse sort of thing; he’s still kinda trying to work out what the fuck is happening in front of him near the end of his bed, this wholesale anomaly that’s as likely another alternate dimension where Mike Wheeler says not only full sentences about his feelings but says them almost-kind-of positively about Steve.

“See?!”

“Shhh,” Steve quiets him—up to now they’ve only been mostly whispering but Steve has to shoot his eyes around the room to see if the uptick in Mike’s tone had roused anyone: no, not yet. They’re all out fuckin’ cold. Steve feels a pang of guilt for likely having been a main cause for that.

But at the very same time Steve can’t help but take notice that the color in Mike’s cheeks looks more healthy, more human—even if it’s red for his outburst of…noise.

(Yes, Steve recognizes he’s only proving the point that’d sparked the noise in the first place, fuck you, move along.)

“What’s goin’ on, man?” Steve decides to tackle the issue head on because, like; “Where’s all this coming from?”

Steve understands Eddie’s reaction. What he expects from Robin, already foreshadowed by the way she’s wrapped around him. He expects he’ll get it from Dustin, Max, probably both Sinclairs, just…

He’d have expected Holly to take Steve’s latest brush with mortality harder of all the possible Wheelers, rather than Mike.

Mike. Who’s quiet for a long stretch of seconds before clearing his throat, looking painfully hard at the sheets on Steve’s bed.

“Nancy,” he finally says, scratchier than even those very sheets; “she told me what really happened, between you two.”

Ah. Wow. Okay.

Another thing Steve did not see coming.

“I never liked you but that’s because you were my sister’s boyfriend, it felt like that was my job or something, that’s what everyone else with sisters did,” Mike rattles it all off, kinda quick but also kinda hollow; “but then I blamed you, when I should have—”

“We were both to blame,” Steve cuts him off because he can tell in the tone where that was headed; “or maybe no one was to blame,” which Steve doesn’t believe, exactly, but is beginning to think was probably closer to the truth than any other thing presenting as an absolute.

“Sometimes shit happens, man, and it’s nobody’s fault in the end. Not really.”

That, Steve absolutely does believe.

“I never really hated you, even then,” Mike says in the smallest fucking voice, and Steve hurts for it, because even before this very out of the fucking blue conversation: Mike is one of his kids, and Steve doesn’t give a flying fuck what the dipshit meant when he said Steve shouldn’t care: Steve does care, and he always will.

“And then after,” Mike shakes his head, huffs like he’s angry, and then he’s just running his hand over his mouth, and that hand’s fucking shaking.

“I don’t think I knew how to like, turn it around?“ he flails a little, looks to Steve almost for help; “how to make up for the lost time in between?”

“You’re a kid,” Steve shakes his head, smiles as reassuringly at him as he know because remembers how it had been wild, especially taking stock of it now: it was wild how little time was needed to realize your brain was different, your priorities were entirely different just months before even, once the switch gets flipped in you and you suddenly know what really matters, what’s actually important.

Part of what’s killed Steve the most in all of this is that these kids are all just kids.

“I’m not,” Mike protests but Steve scoffs strong enough to shut him up.

“You’ve seen some shit,” Steve leads with; “real shit,” because it’s true, and he’s never gonna deny his brats their trauma, in all this fucked up insanity:

“But you can’t vote, you’re only just almost gonna be able to drive,” and he’d be ticking them off on his fingers, if he had either hand free to use, in emphasis as he leans forward the little bit he can to enunciate clear:

“You are a kid.”

“And so were you,” Mike half-snarls; “when it all started so were you, but you never acted like,” and he swallows, hard, and Steve’s oddly touched by the attempt at defending him, almost, while Mike’s also trying to justify himself.

Ain’t that simple, though.

“I did my fair share of—” Steve starts to explain but he’s met with a sneer, but a…a knowing one.

Like Steve’s not gonna love where he’s about to land.

“What,” Mike asks like a challenge already: “King Steve?”

And it’s not like the kids haven’t brought up things they weren’t there to know for themselves regarding Steve’s history, Steve’s life in general. It’s not like no one throws that specific shit in Steve’s face sometimes, to this day.

But Mike says it weird. Mike says it mean, kind of, but like…like he’s not directing the mean part at Steve.

Which makes no fucking sense, but—

“I made Nancy tell me about you, like, how you were in high school,” Mike tells him, and god, Steve can only imagine how that shook out, but again: it doesn’t sound mean. It sounds…apologetic, if anything.

“Then I asked Robin, too.”

“Unreliable source,” Steve shakes his head, but wraps his arm around her a little tighter, just because: “too biased.”

“And then Eddie,” Mike barrels over him but Steve can only snort at that as an attempt at a better answer:

“Arguably less reliable,” and the fondness in his tone’s unavoidable, the way he leans into Eddie’s curls so his chin brushes where they spill across his chest: it’s all just his natural reaction to the fact of Eddie being me so much as mentioned, brought to the fore as he smiles down at his boyfriend, who looks almost peaceful, save for the dark circle under his eyes. “Probably even more biased,” Steve murmurs, and it’s true.

They’re both too in love to be wholly reasonable.

“You were never as bad as you made it out to be,” Mike pivots; that’s apparently his point because he looks riled again, angry; “as you made you out to be.”

Steve’s not…Steve’s not wholly sure who Mike’s angry with, or what he’s angry at, now.

“And I went off that and not what you showed us,” Mike huffs out, embittered so far beyond his years, Steve needs to pay more attention to this kid, he can’t go down the road Steve didn’t realize he was on until it was so close to too late; “I wanted to have a reason, so I grabbed the one I heard versus the one that was in my fucking face, that was saying something different.”

He ends on a growl and Steve’s mouth’s about to open but then Mike’s turning fiery eyes that are so genetic; he’s his sister up and down and he points a finger at Steve and hisses:

“You yell at me for language again—“

Steve would put his hands up if he could—widens his eyes to convey innocence as best he can.

(He is sonot innocent on this one, he was absolutely going to scold about the language.)

But he holds Mike’s gaze until he withdraws the venom, until he cools down. Until he deflates, and his eyes slide toward Steve’s side.

“He loves you so much,” Mike says, and for the first time ever, it’s a comment about him and Eddie that’s less than scathing. Still more…stunned or awed like it’s beyond comprehension how they could end up like this, but.

“I know it.” It’s not like Steve’s unaware of how lightning-in-a-bottle-level blessed he is in what he’s found with the man sprawled on his chest. “I love him so much.”

“And,” Mike’s brow furrows a little as his eyes move to Steve’s other side: “she loves you so much.”

“Know that too,” Steve nods, vows to let her pick movies every movie night for at least, like, three months; “love her just the same.”

“I don’t get how you guys work.”

Mike mostly just frowns when he says that; Steve figures that better than it could be.

“Don’t worry about it,” he grins kinda gentle; “I don’t think it’s something people generally find themselves trying to figure out all that often,” if ever, really; Steve’s still not convinced that what he has isn’t singular, and he says so—to a point, at least:

“I got really lucky with these two,” and his heart’s in the words enough that even Mike must pick up on it, because his frown just deepens. And Steve…Steve doesn’t know how to explain it, exactly, any better than they’ve all already tried.

But for one of his kids, he can try again. Just to see.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Steve asks, more coy and playful than maybe the moment deserves—and maybe that’s the point.

“Why?” Mike eyes him skeptically and yep: that was the point. Get him out of his head a little.

“Because I want to, dumbass,” Steve volleys back, his grin all the wider, and then all the more when Mike just rolls his eyes, but doesn’t move.

Agrees without any words to hear him out; to listen.

“At first I thought it was the universe pranking me, but like, in a nice way?” Steve knows it sounds dumb, but Mike is well acquainted with writing him off as that—nothing new there.

“I was always stupidly romantic in my head, wanted a fairytale, or a romcom, that kinda,” he begins sorta fanciful, tilts his head; “silver screen level of devotion that doesn’t exist in real life, because real life is messy and complicated and takes work.”

He waits a couple seconds, because he can see Mike working through that in his head; almost definitely adding it up to match what he remembers of Steve with his sister.

Steve ploughs on, though; he’s grown so much since then.

He’s had so much worse, since then. He’s gained so much more since then.

And Mike and Nancy Wheeler, as they are in his life now: they count in that, too. What he’s gained.

“You don’t get soulmates because soulmates aren’t real,” Steve muses, sounds flippant, dismissive, but smiles because he did think that.

Thinking that…that was the boy he’d been, before all the growth.

“Then, like, the second I stop believing it’s not just not in the cards, but doesn’t even exist in the deck?” Steve marvels at it, honest too, because he’s still in fucking awe: “I somehow get two,” and he shakes his head, laughs because the joy in him swells to make it so every time he so much as stops to think; “and what the hell did I do to deserve that?”

He glances down at the loves of his life—such different kinds but so much the same weight, and their weight against Steve’s frame, holding on, to him; and so it only makes sense for him to barely breathe, heart so fucking full as he watches them both just breathe:

“What’d I ever do so right to deserve you?”

He shakes back to the moment, to Mike staring him down.

“Still sometimes just seems like a cosmic slap in the face for doubting, but like I said,” Steve shrugs a little, doesn’t dim his own grin as he admits one of his most core truths:

“Best slap in the face I could ever have dreamed of.”

“Gross,” Mike scoffs, recoils a little but…it’s not mean where it has been for almost the entirety of the time Steve’s known the kid.

So he just nods, enthusiastic as fuck:

“Very.”

Mike can’t hide the surprised grin that pops up before he smothers it hard; Steve sees it, even if it’s just for a second.

And then he sees Mike square his shoulders; take a deep breath.

Steve…fuck it, Steve doesn’t even know what’s coming yet but he’s proud to see it.

“But they love you,” Mike says confidently, determined; “and we love you,” and Mike’s face crumbles a little before he goes back to determined, fiery again even:

“We all love you, Steve, you’re,” Mike swallows hard and his voice has the slightest little squeak when he says with, like, feeling:

“You’re our family.”

Steve…Steve doesn’t think he’s processed how much he knew that for himself, but hadn’t heard it nearly as much in return.

He hadn’t processed, or considered, what it would mean just to hear that said out loud, straight and plain.

“And I love you.”

Even more unprocessed by Steve Harrington of all people is Mike Wheeler, saying that.

And meaning it.

“And I don’t ever want you to, like,” Mike takes another breath, but this one’s shaky, like he’s pushed himself to his limits here: “ever, think we don’t. That I don’t.”

Steve’s jaw’s a little dropped open for that speech, and Mike kinda just, stands, looks wrung out and uncomfortable as fuck now that he’s said his piece.

And, well. That’s one of Steve’s kids. He’s not gonna leave him to flounder.

“You wanna join?”

Mike blinks.

What?”

Steve grins, chuckles a little helplessly, overwhelmed with the love in him:

“I find myself on a hospital bed in something of a dogpile,” Steve tilts his head to either side in indication. “I can’t give you a hug, but,” Steve eyes Mike critically before nodding, shrugging as much as he can:

“You’re a lanky asshole,” he says as fond as he knows, and he must manage because Mike looks offended but only a little, which for that kid is saying something: “you could probably squeeze in.”

Mike looks around the room, better able to try and find a place waiting for him, presumably the one he left from to use the bathroom in the first place. It’s not like anyone’s moved.

But Mike climbs over the foot of the bed, curls at the bottom right corner, along Steve’s leg, under where Eddie’s sprawled across.

Steve’s hand is pinned, he can’t reach, just like he said.

He can bump Mike with his shin though.

“I love you too,” Steve says, voice pitched low; “you know that, right?”

“Hard not to,” Mike barely whispers, Steve can’t even tease out the meaning in his tone—but that might be the most telling part. “You put your life on the line for us every couple months, man,” Mike snorts a little; “would be difficult to read that any other way.”

Steve bumps him again with his leg.

“Good.”

They’re quiet, and Steve smiles up at the ceiling, feeling so profoundly surrounded by family he doesn’t even know how to breathe, it’s so kinda-fucking-perfect.

“Please don’t keep putting your life on the line, though, okay?” Mike whispers into the still, the symphony of just-breathing.

And he’s a kid, but he’s grown so much—but he’s still Steve’s kid.

“I can’t promise I won’t, if it’s necessary,” because Steve won’t lie to him, even if he feels his curled-up form tense for it; “but I can promise that next time?” and he means this, he means this with his whole overfull heart:

“I’ll go in knowing I don’t have a choice but to come out of it alive,” Steve murmurs, deep and low and to everyone in the goddamn room:

“I’m too lucky to let this go without a fight.”

And Steve doesn’t float off himself, doesn’t join the rest of his family in some well-deserved sleep—until Mike gives up the tension and drifts off before him.

Once everyone’s safe: then Steve’s heart can lay calm around him.

Then Steve can rest.

Notes:

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This fulfills my Steddie Bingo Prompt: Mike Wheeler