WHAT: Eddie has to live out his worst nightmare: playing Taylor Swift on guitar (Oh, and Steve almost gets murdered by a dark wizard from another dimension) WHERE: 300 Fox Way WHEN: Today WARNINGS: Trauma, marijuana use STATUS: Complete
Eddie had always dreamed of someday leaving Hawkins in his dust, but sometimes, Eddie missed home. He missed Gareth and Jeff and Rob, practicing in Gareth’s garage and performing as Corroded Coffin every Tuesday. He missed dinners with his uncle, and playing D&D with the Hellfire Club, and ripping around Hawkins in his van.
But other times, he couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be than in Vallo. Not just the mind-blowing things, like getting to fly around cradled in the palm of a massive dragon, or watching a unicorn order a rainbow bagel from a minotaur, but the simple things too.
Like right now, sitting on the livingroom floor in front of the coffee table, hair tied back and tongue sticking out from between his lips, while he painstakingly painted the details onto the miniature of Dustin’s D&D character – he planned on surprising all of them with customised miniatures – Steve doing his own thing, but sitting close enough that Eddie could reach out and touch him, if he wanted.
Not that he didn’t want to, just that he figured he probably shouldn’t. He wasn’t sure if Steve was straight – he didn’t think Steve was sure if Steve was straight – but he wasn’t going to push things.
He frowned a little as the television fell to static and the light flickered and then dimmed, too dim to paint with any kind of precision, and he glanced up. He tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach when he recognized the familiar, gloomy atmosphere, all dark blues and blacks, as if all the colour had been leached out of the world.
“Huh. That’s probably not good,” he observed. He waited a moment for a response before he tacked on, “Steve?” And then, a little more worried, he asked, “Steve?” again, turning toward him.
Steve had left the building.
Not physically. Physically, he was still right there, on the couch, leg propped up on his knee with a book open as he read quietly. A few minutes ago he’d been actively doing that, reading, enjoying the quiet familiarity of comfort and routine. It was nice to finally get this, given life had been hell for a few years now with some good transposed in the middle of it all.
Now he was in a familiar red hell. Vecna’s world, one he wished he wasn’t familiar with, one that looked like that fucking hell house had been thrown into some creepy oblivion, leaving Steve stranded.
“Steve.” The voice was a lot deeper than Eddie’s, the one that he heard from the distance, and in the void of everything, Steve started towards it. “You really didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, did you? Once the King of Hawkins, but look at you now. Weaponless.” It was true, his hands were empty. In the vision, he looked down at his hands, and it all felt so real.
In person, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
Eddie had seen this before, of course. Not just the twice he’d seen it in real life – the first time with Chrissy, the second with McKinny – but almost every time he’d fallen asleep since that first time, except the occasional times he managed to fall asleep watching movies with everyone.
That didn’t stop him, at first, from tapping forcefully on Steve’s shoulders, and then slapping him, and then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and Eddie tumbled backwards, over the coffee table, and landed hard on his back.
Maybe he could run and find help – Robin or Nancy or Hopper, or someone, anyone who could help. Or maybe he would have just run so he didn’t have to see this again, see this happening again with Steve. Out of everyone, he was pretty sure seeing Steve or Henderson turned into a pretzel would break him.
“Guys?!” Eddie yelled, crab-walking backwards. “Anyone?!”
There wasn’t any answer. The house, suddenly, was as silent as the grave. He couldn’t hear the boys arguing about whatever it had been they’d been arguing about in the other room, or Max’s music or –
Music.
He lunged forward, first for his phone, which was dead – how was that possible, he’d just had it charging – and then Steve’s phone, which was also dead, and then he twisted, looking around the room. Spotify and Youtube had seemed so great, but of course now it meant that there was no physical music anywhere around – just his and that record Hopper had bought to torture them all – and Steve’s favourite music definitely wasn’t metal or whatever old music Hopper was into.
His eyes fell on his guitars, still where he’d left them from his lesson with Max, and he scrambled, hand and foot, toward it and plugged it in.
How the hell did that song he always heard Steve listening to when he thought no one was around go? It was ridiculously simple. He could probably play it in his sleep, if he wanted to. He tried humming it while he plugged his guitar into his amp and turned up the volume, managed to get the rhythm of the thing while he was testing the tuning, and then attempted to play. The first couple attempts didn’t sound right – “Motherfucker” – but he managed to fall on it on his fourth try. Just six simple chords and a whole bunch of downstrums, and he had it.
“You belong to me now, King Steve.” The tone, the inflection, the deep voice. Coming from someone else and it might have been sexy, might have made Steve shudder in a good way, and not the way that left him feeling empty with his stomach knotting up. “Time to join in.”
Oh fuck no. Steve was always the fight part of fight-or-flight but for some reason now was an exception. For some reason, he couldn’t get himself to grab something nearby as a weapon. He wouldn’t walk forward. He turned and ran instead, against his better judgement.
Steve didn’t get far. A tentacle wrapped around his leg, and then another around his arm, and Steve was stopped mid-run and yanked back. He landed in the dirt and mud until he was lifted up and dangled mid-air as a harsh chuckle cut through the air. “A pitiful attempt. But now we can savor this, so your Eddie Munson can see.”
Munson? “Fucking shitfuc--” Steve’s words were garbled as another tentacle wrapped around his neck. Everything got still and quiet, save for the sounds of Steve gasping for air, until the darkness ahead of him broke and he heard something. Vecna?
No. A guitar. A fucking guitar. He couldn’t make it out clearly at first, and the tentacles wrapped a little tighter around his neck. Finally, the notes hit him. The familiar tune of a song he’d listened to a lot recently, in the shower or wherever he could get away with it when he didn’t think the kids were listening. The guitar was familiar, though, it had to be Munson, on the other side, just within reach.
Steve found the strength to pull a tentacle off of him. And another.
Eddie’s fingers stumbled when Steve started raising into the air, and he had to force himself to steady his breath, had to stop himself from speeding up or stopping completely and messing this whole thing up.
Was it working? How the hell was he supposed to know if it was working. Every time he’d seen someone start to float in the air, they’d died in the most gruesome way he could imagine, and he only had word-of-mouth telling him that saving them was possible.
Did he need to sing? Was that how this worked? Maybe just the guitar wasn’t enough.
“I don’t know the fucking words to this so-ong,” Eddie sang. He wasn’t a great singer, especially not right now when he was about five seconds from pissing himself, but at least he knew the general rhythm of the lyrics.
“This is bullshit, we’re not even home.
But if you leave me here, and get yourself killed I’ll fucking lose it, Steve,
So you’d better come back to me, you can’t leave.”
God, this was so fucking stupid. He should’ve paid more attention to the actual song.
What the fuck. The music drifted into the weird red dreamspace easily enough, but it took Steve a minute to figure out exactly what was being played. It gave him something to focus on, though, and it gave him a direction to go. He broke free, and he ran, his years of sports coming in clutch as Steve’s legs carried him towards the sound of music.
Increasingly familiar music.
It dawned on him just before he reached the opening exactly what song it was, and that, coupled with the knowledge that Eddie fucking Munson was the one strumming it on his guitar and singing along badly, is what pulled him across the finish line. He felt something graze across his leg as he lept through the barrier, breaking the hold so his physical body fell from the ground and onto Eddie.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He wasn’t complaining about landing on Eddie, because jesus fucking christ it was nice to feel someone that wasn’t about to rip out his innards. Steve gripped Eddie’s arms a little tighter as his head fell down and he gave himself a minute before moving.
He was breathing like he’d just finished a marathon despite his body not actually having moved physically. “Munson--” thank you didn’t come out, despite the words being there behind his tongue. “Did you fucking Taylor Swift me? Badly?”
Eddie could have sobbed. He managed to get his guitar away just before Steve fell on him – later, when he could think about something other than the fact that Steve was back, and not broken into pieces, he would apologise to her and pamper her a little, give her a nice coat of polish and then play something badass and technical on her, but right now that was one of the furthest things from his mind. Right now, all he could think of was the fact that Steve was here, breathing, his eyes still very much in his sockets, and his very alive ass on Eddie’s lap.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie breathed, and pulled Steve tight against him, gripping him hard enough that his hands wouldn’t shake. For a moment, that was all he could do, until he heard, somewhere in the distance, Hopper calling for something and realized that he could hear the sound of the boys debating something again, and Max’s music, and the lights were the right colour again.
He gripped Steve’s face between his hands and pulled away enough that he could see him clearly. “Excuse me, if anything, I improved on it, Harrington. And if you ever make me play Taylor Swift on my sweetheart again, you’re going to live to regret it.”
Later, when enough time had passed and he wasn’t half-shaking and his stomach wasn’t in knots, Steve would feel embarrassed about the Taylor Swift thing. He’d also feel embarrassed about the fact that he held onto Eddie like he was a motherfucking lifeline, but that part he was mumurming an apology for even as they both pulled away.
He obviously didn't go far, not with Eddie’s hands on his face. His brain was still full of red and screaming louder than Eddie’s dumb music. “Fuck you, that was your choice.” And even if he wanted to deny the favorite song thing, Steve was relieved as hell that Eddie made that choice. “Fuck.” He pulled away a little further, but kept a hand wrapped around Eddie’s shirt.
A lifeline.
“Fuck.” Steve closed his eyes and didn’t see Vecna, a good sign. “Do I have to listen to music constantly? Is he here? What the fuck is happening? Is it that dream shit we’ve been hearing about?”
Eddie didn't want to let Steve go, or let him pull any further away from him. If he had a choice in the matter, he'd have wrapped himself around him to make sure that nothing else was going to come trying to snatch him away.
That was probably a bad idea. Get it together, Munson.
He settled instead for closing his hand around the hand Steve had on his shirt, his other hand dropping to Steve's collar bone, still not fully believing Steve was okay.
At least until Steve reminded him that people's nightmares had been coming to life. Eddie obviously hasn't been think of right, because between Venca somehow followed them to Vallo and decided to target Steve with absolutely no forewarning, and also, both your phones died at the worst possible time, but look, they're working just fucking fine now and Everyone else's dreams are coming true and maybe yours are too, Munson it was obvious what the right answer was there.
"Shit, fuck," Eddie swore, pulling himself away from Steve. "That's… yeah, Harrington, I've had this nightmare before."
It wasn't always Steve. Sometimes it was Dustin. Most of the time, it was Chrissy.
"Did I do this? Should I… maybe I should go stay in a hotel or something. Until all of this blows over."
“Hey, hey.” Steve reached back out to grab Eddie’s neck, a mirrored move to the one still clutching him. He didn’t want to have to smack Eddie a little but he would if words alone didn’t help. “Shut the fuck up. You’re not going anywhere.”
At least not if he had anything to say about it. Every single person in this house was traumatized some way or another, they’d all been through so much shit. It was an extra worry that any of them could have nightmares like this one pop up. “Better together than apart,” it was something they’d typically subscribed to even before Eddie had joined the little merry band of Hawkins crew. “What if Dustin has one next? What if it happens to you alone? Nah, you’re not going anywhere.”
But they would, at the very least, have to loop everyone in so they were all on the same page. In a few minutes, after Steve caught his breath and he didn’t feel like he was going to throw up or fall asleep on Eddie’s shoulder. “Fuck.” He shouldn’t have, it was too close, but the urge was there and he needed to take a few deep breaths, so Steve just let his head sink down so his forehead was pressed against Eddie’s shoulder. “That felt way more real than just a fucking nightmare.”
Eddie thought he should argue more. He was pretty sure he should. He tried not to think about the fact that he was supposed to be dead too often, but it crept in now. Not like he could tell Steve that.
He should have though. What if Dustin was the next one who fell victim to one of Eddie’s nightmares? What if the house developed an unfortunate demobat infestation because of him? If something happened to someone else because of him…
But Eddie was a coward, and he didn’t actually want to leave everyone. So he kept quiet. Turned his face instead into Steve’s hair and wrapped his arms around him like he didn’t plan on letting him go anymore.
“I thought you were a goner, man,” Eddie said. “I didn’t know what to do, or if I was playing the song right, or if that was going to work at all.” He cleared his throat. “You want a drink? I could use a drink.”
Steve was too shaken to read into the hug, though it was natural instinct for him to want to pull away and punch Eddie in the shoulder, maybe have a masculine moment or something as his father would said. But he let go of it, since that sounded like too much damn work at this point and he was too tired.
“It’s gonna take a lot more than that piece of shit to get rid of me,” Steve was at least sure of that. “Seriously, of all the shit we’ve gone up against, a wrinkly bloody nutsack is like, low rung.” Or at least he’d say that until it was true, even if Vecna currently had a hand around his throat, Steve wasn’t the type to cower.
A drink sounded like the best idea Eddie’d ever had, though. “Yeah I- yeah. Shit.” Steve pulled away again and this time fully let go of Eddie so he could rub his hands over his face. “Do you have nightmares when you’re high? I usually just pass the fuck out and right now I’m thinking I need that too.” He was pretty sure Hopper wouldn’t approve, but at least it was legal here.
Eddie was less eager to let go of Steve, but he did it, even if it felt suddenly cold where Steve’s head had been resting. He shot a surreptitious glance towards his hands, opening and closing them, glad, at least, that it looked like they’d stopped shaking.
He didn’t share Steve’s sense of bravado. Maybe it was because he knew what Steve didn’t know – he wasn’t coming out of the Upside Down alive, and Max wasn’t going to come out of her confrontation with Venca in one piece. Maybe it was just because Steve was genuinely braver than him, or more of an idiot, or some mix of both. Or maybe Steve should have joined the drama club instead of the basketball team because he was a damn fine actor. Whatever it was, Eddie was glad enough to borrow some of it. This wasn’t even the real Venca, this was Eddie’s cheap knock-off brand version of Venca.
“I could definitely stand to get high,” Eddie said, ignoring Steve’s question: there wasn’t much that stopped Eddie from having nightmares these days, but at least his nightmares when he fell asleep high or drunk were incoherent: the kind of nightmares that only left a dull sense of dread when he woke up instead of afterimages.
He climbed to his feet, and offered Steve his hand. “I’ve been using the attic.” Mostly because he’d made it clear to the kids that it was Off Limits when there wasn’t an active campaign and he kept the door locked because of it, but also because smoke rises, and he liked to think that meant that the smell wouldn’t permeate to the rest of the house. Oh, and also because that was the last place Hopper was ever likely to go.
He hesitated and then asked: “You sure I shouldn’t find someplace else to stay though? It could be Henderson who gets sucked into my nightmares next. Or Max.” Provided they could save Hederson (what was his favourite song anyway? That Neverending Story song that Steve had mentioned?), he’d probably recover fine, emotionally. But Max would be bad. Very bad. “Or maybe I’ll just give this house a rank demobat infestation, and then we’d have to hire an exterminator and it would be a whole thing.”
Steve caught the hesitation with his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and shoved him lightly as he stood up. “Hey, bozo, newsflash but this house is just teeming with trauma. You’re not special.” It wasn’t as mean as it sounded, not when it was accompanied by Steve’s boyish grin and a ruffle of Eddie’s hair. It wasn’t meant to diminish so much as make a point where Steve got his way.
Which was probably a little unfair, but if it kept Eddie from running off and hiding, he didn’t care. “We’ll check in with everybody and talk about it, make the kids panic by calling a family meeting. But nobody’s running off by themselves.” His voice didn’t waver and left no room for more arguments, Steve was set. “If the demobat’s turn into an issue, Nance has got like thirteen guns squirreled away in her room. C’mon.”
Steve started towards the staircase with all the confidence of a person that hadn’t just been strangled by tentacles. “If I get up there first I’m smoking your entire stash.”
Eddie swatted away Steve’s hand, his exasperated glare undercut by the almost-relieved smile that was threatening to pull at his lips.
“Alright,” Eddie said. “We won’t split the party.” Really, it was a maxim that Eddie should have had down by heart now. Splitting the party hardly ever went well. It certainly hadn’t gone well for him or Max.
Eddie took a couple quick, jogging steps so he was nearly on Steve’s heels as they walked up the steps. “If you manage to smoke my entire stash, I’m going to be very impressed, Harrington. Annoyed, but impressed.”
He squeezed passed him, maybe a little too close in Steve’s personal bubble but entirely beyond caring, so he could unlock the door to the attic, already filled with plywood sheets with drawn set pieces, waiting to be cut-out and painted and the miniatures he’d been working on.
“Welcome to my domain,” Eddie said, with a dramatic wave of his arm. His liquor and weed stash were tucked away behind one of the sheets, and he brought them to the table.
Steve hadn’t really known what to expect when he entered behind Eddie, as this was the first he’d been up here since the original walkthrough of the house. Then, it’d been dusty and cloth covered. Now it was a little more lived in, and clearly coming together.
It felt less like a dungeon and more like a safe haven, which gave Steve pause. “So this is where you hide away when you disappear?” He tried to muster up his cool-guy act as he casually rounded a chair and plopped down. But plopping had turned out to be a bad idea, as what was under the threadbare cushion and cardboard was a plastic milk crate.
Steve bit his tongue to avoid a cry of pain as his thigh connected with a hard plastic corner. “Could use some work. A couch.”
Eddie wasn’t quite able to stifle the grin at Steve’s painful landing, but at least he tried. “Yeah, you’re going to want to be careful,” he warned, a little too late, laughter on the edge of his voice. “I haven’t been able to find proper seating yet.” Not within his price range, at least, but he thought he would soon.
He took a seat on one of the other milk crate chairs, and took to rolling a joint for the two of them. “But yeah, this is where I come. It needs a lot more work before I want the kids to see it, but I think it’ll be pretty fucking cool once I’m done with it. This is a great space for D&D.”
Steve flipped him the bird as soon as the grin started up. His own chair didn’t have a real back to speak of, but there was a wood column behind him he could prop himself on, still feeling the effects of Vecna. It was probably a good thing there wasn’t a proper couch here, because he’d be tempted to fall asleep right then and there.
And that wouldn’t do anyone good. Not when they still had to get the kids involved, when everything was a little more chill and dull. When Eddie was done rolling, he dug into his pocket and pulled out his zipper - not something he used a ton anymore, since smoking was more of a social event to him and pot didn’t happen as much when he was taking care of the kids. But it was a lifeline in a way, and he flipped it open for Eddie. “If I’m not baked in five minutes, I’m taking it personally, Munson.”