Eddie/Steve Sentinel AU
(My askbox is open for ST prompts!)(Previous Prompts)
For those that don't know what a Sentinel AU is, it's from a 90s TV show by the name "The Sentinel" and the wikipedia read is a lot of fun, but I'll explain it some here too, with liberties taken. Every fandom deserves a little Sentinel AU... as a treat. So when my best friend asked me... well! Enjoy!
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Steve wakes in a cold sweat, the overwhelming iron taste of blood in his mouth. He struggles away from the images of demobats grabbing at his flesh, of the feel of a serrated tail wrapped around his throat. He tries to shut out the memory of their shrieking, the acrid scent of them, and falls deeper into the taste of his own blood.
He’s choking on it. He’d dying.
All he can taste is the metallic tang of blood.
The thick, revolting flavor of it taking over everything else.
He cannot hear the screams, see the bats, feel them.
There’s only blood; red blood cells, softer in flavor than the white, the mild plasma that tastes almost eggy at this level.
He scrabbles for anything else, but there’s nothing.
He’d drowning. He’s dying.
He cannot get out.
He’s dying.
------
Robin knocks frantically on Steve’s front door while Eddie mills around in the garden behind her. “Steve!” she shouts, using the flat of her palm to slap faster at the door. Not as loud, so she switches back to the side of her fist. “STEVE!”
“Hey,” Eddie says, under her racket. “Key.”
She whirls and finds him holding a small stone statue of a- a snail, she thinks, and in his other hand is a small, brass key. She snatches it from his grasp and attacks the door.
“He’s gotta be home, his car’s here,” she says as she fails to get the key in the hole.
He’s gotta be here. He’s gotta be okay.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Eddie says mildly.
“Of course you would say that. You’ve skipped class and, like, jobs, and- and why can’t I open this fucking door,” she snarls, and then backs up and holds herself very still and tense for a second.
“I’m going to forgive you for that,” Eddie says with a snort, “because you’re worried.”
“Steve doesn’t skip work,” Robin tells him, and then calmly sticks out the key to the keyhole. It slides in and she twists the handle, following the door open like she’s a part of it.
She’s haring up the stairs to Steve’s room before Eddie can even cross the threshold. The door to his bedroom is open, so she bursts inside and freezes when she sees Steve in the bed. He’s lying there, eyes open and completely, utterly still. Her heart seizes up, strangling a broken sound from her before she sees him blink, and relief nearly crashes her entire system.
“You asshole!” she exclaims as she tries to relax, crossing the room to his bedside. “You scared the shit out of me!”
He doesn’t answer, or move, just continues to stare blankly up at the ceiling. She can hear Eddie climbing the stairs as she leans over Steve and touches his arm gently. He doesn’t respond at all. She pinches him, to the same effect. She pinches him harder just as Eddie peeks into the room.
“He’s- something’s wrong,” Robin says weakly.
Eddie steps in further and cranes his neck a little to peer at Steve without getting too close. “He’s breathing, right?”
“Y-… Yeah,” Robin says, after checking quickly. “It’s like he’s asleep.”
“With his eyes open.” Eddie shakes his head. “Maybe he had, like, a stroke or something? We should call an ambulance.”
“We can’t just call an ambulance,” Robin says, stricken. “If it’s… upside down shit, we can’t call a hospital. I don’t have the number for the lab, do you?”
Eddie shakes his head and then jumps, and reaches to pull a battered wallet out of his back pocket. “Actually, I might.” He extracts a tattered business card with a hand-written number on the back of it, and passes it to Robin.
She snatches it up. “Okay. I’ll call Owens. You need to call Nancy and the others, get them all over here.”
“Wait, what? Robin!” Eddie calls after her as she bolts for the nearest phone. “I don’t know Nancy’s number!”
“Then call Dustin!” she tosses over her shoulder, and heads down the stairs.
-----
“Well,” Owens says, after the latest head shake from his pet scientist, “we’re not finding any residue from the other dimension. His wounds have checked out as far as we can tell, and he’s not- he’s not braindead.”
“Well he’s clearly not okay, either!” Nancy spits venomously. Eddie’s glad he’s on this side of her ire.
“I know, I understand your frustration, but we’re going to have to do some more testing, see if we can figure out what’s wrong with him, and if any of you are at risk of something similar. Any of you felt… weird?”
“Weird!” Dustin exclaims in disbelief. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do we feel like we might be falling into a waking coma?”
“He’s not-”
“-in a coma,” the kids all chant together, and Owens nods like he should have expected that, one hand sweeping as if they’ve just proved his point for him.
“Can we see him, at least?” Dustin asks. It sounds like a demand, but Eddie’s pretty sure he’d stay in the hall if Owens told him to. At least for now.
“Sure, kid,” Owens says, stepping aside so the group can shuffle back into the room.
Eddie lets everyone in before him, catching Robin’s eye as she passes. She looks like she’s going to be sick, and he wishes he could tell her it’s going to be okay, but he has no idea. The Upside Down had nearly taken his life last year, and the thought of facing it again still makes him feel skittish. So much for bravery, but it was fucking scary and he’d done it then and he’d probably do it again if they have to, so he thinks he deserves a break for feeling terrified at the prospect.
“Did you check his mouth?” Dustin asks from beside the bed.
“His mouth?” Owens asks, looking at his scientist, who shrugs. “No, it seems we did not check his mouth, why?”
“There’s blood,” Dustin says, pointing. Eddie leans to see, and sure enough, there’s a minuscule smudge of blood at the seam of Steve’s lips.
“There’s blood,” Owens says at his scientist, aggressively, and then gestures toward the gear they’d carried in. They’d been afraid to move Steve out of the room, not sure what it would do to him if they couldn’t tell what was happening. He turns back to the group. “It’s possible he had a seizure, maybe he bit his lip or his tongue.”
Eddie barely hears, staring at the little smear of red, the open-eyes, the slack expression. The waking coma as Dustin had called it. He’s never seen it in person, but he knows it, the haunting familiarity of it, down to his bones, down to his soul.He swallows and leans over the bed, bracing himself with one hand, and touches Steve’s cheek. No reaction at all from Steve, but the touch echoes inside of Eddie.
“What are you doing?” hisses Nancy, and Owens grabs for him but Dustin knocks his hand away.
“Eddie,” Dustin says. “You’re not thinking…?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, absently. He uses a finger to pull Steve’s chin down a little, enough to part his lips and see teeth stained in fresh blood. He hasn’t even tried to swallow any of it, to clear his mouth. “Shit.”
“Boys,” Owens says, like a question.
“You know how to test it,” Dustin ventures.
“I know, just- shut up for a minute. Everyone.”
Eddie steels himself and maneuvers until he can just barely push past Steve’s lips, touch a fingertip against his tongue to introduce a fresh taste, something other than blood. Steve’s eyes close, a shudder twitching at his frame as he breathes out, the first reaction he’s had since Eddie and Robin had first found him. Eddie pulls back like he’s been shot at, hand tingling.
“Fuck.”
“What’s going on?” Robin asks, looking between the two of them like she’s going to climb over the bed and strangle them both if someone doesn’t start explaining what's wrong with her best friend.
“It’s not the Upside Down,” Dustin says, catching Eddie’s eye. He’s the only one Eddie had ever told. The only one that had stood a chance at recognizing the same symptoms Eddie just had. “Steve’s a Sentinel.”
“A what?” Robin says at the same time Mike says: “No way. No way, man. Steve?”
“Yes, Steve,” Dustin snaps, twisting to look at Mike.
“What’s a sentinel,” Max asks, exasperated, before they can begin to argue about Steve.
“It’s a person with vastly superior senses,, like practically a super power,” Nancy says, causing everyone to gawk at her. She shrugs one shoulder and adds: “I found out about it when we were trying to help Max. Sometimes one of a Sentinel’s senses gets so overpowering that they actually get lost in it, and it sends them into a- a sort of waking coma. If that’s what’s going on, then he needs a Guide.”
Eddie’s eyes close, lips pursing.
“Eddie,” Dustin says, wheedling.
“Eddie?” Robin prompts. She’s already caught on, then.
“Shit,” Eddie cusses under his breath, and then: “Shit, shit, SHIT. Fuck.” He balls up his fists near his head and then releases them. “Absolutely fucking not.”
“A party member needs you,” Dustin says firmly.
“He can’t- he-” Eddie stares down at Steve, lips now widely smudged with blood, breathing even and eyes still open, empty.
“Eddie?” Nancy says quietly, drawing his attention up. “Are you… a Guide?”
He nods, feeling sick. His mother had been one, when he was little. She’d taken off to Guide a Sentinel, had never come back. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t follow in those footsteps. Wayne had tried to teach him, but Wayne hadn’t know any better than Eddie had, hadn’t known more than Eddie’s mom had already taught him by then. Eddie had spent his life wanting nothing to do with this garbage, and it had somehow snuck right in the front door.
Everyone’s looking at him, though, so he sighs and closes his eyes to get away from them. “It’s not… exactly… casual,” he bites out. “Sentinels get… they don’t just change Guides, and I’ve never- I might mess it up, I’ve never done it before. I’m just supposed to make that decision for him? Possibly bind him to a fucked up Guide?”
“Well, it’s not like he can choose right now,” Dustin says, barbed. “So, are you going to do it or are you just going to let him die?”
“Die!” Robin exclaims.
“Hey, hey,” Owens says, holding his hands up, splayed, to tone down the volume. “No one is dying today. Young man, do you know of any other Guides nearby that we might call upon, if you don’t want to do it?”
The thought of someone else doing it only makes Eddie feel sicker. He’s not sure how much of what he feels is fear of messing up and how much is bone-deep rage at the thought of anyone else touching Steve. He’s not sure either feeling isn’t being caused by being this close to an active Sentinel in need of him.
“I’ll do it,” he snarls finally, because the thought of someone else doing it makes him angrier than the thought of messing up scares him. “Everyone else needs to get out, though.”
He’s sure he can wake Steve up from this, he just has no idea how Steve will come out of it- softly or violently or terrified… broken, because Eddie doesn’t do it well enough. He’s also just… he’s embarrassed, for himself on some level for his inexperience, but definitely for Steve, for them both to be as vulnerable as they’re about to be. He doesn’t want Steve waking up and being immediately subjected to the knowledge that everyone saw him like this.
Dustin stays until the last second, then gives his shoulder a squeeze and leaves as well. He peeks around the door the second before he closes it, and Eddie gives them all a minute to move away. They won’t all go- Robin and Dustin and probably Nancy will stay in the hall. It’s enough.
Gingerly, Eddie takes a deep breath and a seat on the edge of the bed, and reaches to brush his fingertips over Steve’s wrist. There’s no reaction, but he hadn’t really expected it to be that easy- he’d had his finger in the guy’s mouth a second ago and it didn’t wake him.
“Steve,” he says, quietly. “I’m uh… I’m really sorry about this.”
He wraps his fingers around Steve’s wrist more securely, and begins. “Steve, this is Eddie. I’m… I’m going to be your Guide, I’m going to help you out of your senses.” He keeps the words steady, measured, and pushes them forward. “Right now you’re focused on your sense of taste. You’re tasting blood, your own blood, and I’m guessing you got lost in it because of a nightmare. That’s going to happen again, but I’m going to be here for it, okay? From now on, I’m going to be here. But what I need from you now is to hear me.”
Steve’s wrist trembles in his at the words, hands shaking, and Eddie feels… something. It feels cheesy to call it a spiritual connection, the way his mother had, but maybe… primal. Animalistic, perhaps, but in a basic not a base way. Simple.
“Good,” he says, the corner of his lips curling when Steve’s eyes close at the single word. Alright, then. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposes. “You’re doing very well, Steve. I need you to keep being good, keep trying to get to me. Focus on my voice. Follow my words. Hear the pitch, the timbre, the cadence. Feel the vibration of it in the air. I’m calling to you, Steve. I’m calling you.”
Steve’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and Eddie feels a little thrill. It’s working. This is the terrifying part. A first fugue state like this is the most dangerous, shouldn’t even be attempted by a new Guide alone. Someone,anyone, should have been preparing Steve for this, he should have had a Guide picked out ages ago. They should have had an experienced Guide ready to help both him and his chosen Guide through it.
Not that it matters; this is what they have. Steve doesn’t know and Eddie isn’t prepared, butSteve can hear him now, he’s pretty sure, which means he stands a chance at getting him out of it. Unfortunately, this is the point that runs the risk of just shifting which sense he’s lost in, if he can only get Steve to hear him. A Sentinel lost in a new Guide’s voice is so, so much harder to pull out of it.
Split their focus, his mother had told him. He barely remembers. He hopes it’s enough.
Eddie loosens his grasp on Steve’s wrist, and slides his hand up Steve’s arm, applying pressure evenly until he reaches the shoulder.
“You’re doing so good, but I need you to split your senses again, Steve,” he says as he does it, giving Steve’s shoulder a hard squeeze. “I need you to feel my hands. I need you to listen to my voice, and feel my fingers, and my palm. Feel the pressure.”
He drags his hand down Steve’s chest, over the scars on his belly. Swipes his thumb gently over the edges of them, sure that the new skin is just as weirdly sensitive-not-sensitive as his own, produces the same weird gut-twinge as sticking a finger into his belly button too deep.
“Feel my thumb. Hear my words. Feel my skin, the fingerprint lines.”
He presses his fingertips just above Steve’s hip bone where there’s still skin, lightly at first, and then deeper. Steve makes a small, pained noise, his face scrunching up, and Eddie feels relief flood through him. He’s feeling it.
“Good, Steve, that’s good, you’re listening, you’re following. Come on, now,” he coaxes, adding his other hand to Steve’s arm as he moves the first past Steve’s hip, over his boxers and down his leg. “Hear me, feel me. Relax your senses, let go of the taste of blood, that’s not for you right now. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?” He winces, eyes closing. Stupid. “Steve.”
Steve licks at his lips, clearing the blood, eyes opening even though they are still far away, glassy and unfocused. He can feel Steve… reaching for him, trying to anchor himself in all the senses that contain him. Eddie breathes out and in. Almost over.
“That’s right, there you go, good boy.”
Steve’s eyes tick in his direction when he says it, and Eddie leverages himself up a little so he is leaning his hands on Steve, pressing heavy upon him, as well as being in his line of sight. His hair drops down, framing his face a little dramatically, but Steve’s eyes tick again to meet his.
“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” he greets. “You see me? You hear my voice still, feel my hands? You’re coming out of a sensory fugue. I need you to focus on me, on coming back out of your own head, out of your sense of taste.”
Steve blinks, and his brow furrows a little in confusion, and Eddie’s breath rushes out of him at the recognition.
“Eddie.” It sounds like relief.
“Yeah, buddy,” Eddie says, so gently, as he leans back, taking pressure off his hands on Steve. “How’re you feeling?”
“Bad,” Steve says, closing his eyes.
“Nuh-uh, keep them open,” Eddie says firmly, reaching up to tap at Steve’s cheek with flat fingers. “You need to use all your senses for a few minutes, until you’re actually evened out again.”
“What?” Steve asks, but he does open his eyes, turns his cheek into Eddie’s palm more fully, pressing.
Eddie blows out a breath and withdraws his hand to rub at his own face. This cannot be happening to them. Of course it would happen to them. “I have some uh… bad news?” he offers weakly. “Do you know what a Sentinel is?”
“No?” Steve says, looking at Eddie’s hand like he might perish if it keeps on Eddie instead if Steve. Eddie puts it back on him, resting over Steve’s hand instead of his cheek.
“They’re… Well, you know how people think humans survived all the dangers of prehistoria because of, like, thumbs?” Eddie asks carefully, and Steve nods but looks confused still. “Not to discount thumbs, but a lot of humans survived because some of them were born with way, way, way better senses. They could see or hear or smell or feel stuff that no one else could, and it let them sense when danger approached. They guarded settlements, and allowed them to prepare for bad things. I guess you uh… you must be from one of those bloodlines, and… your… interdimensional adventures may have triggered you to come into your senses.”
“Come to my senses?” Steve says, confused.
“Nope, no, that’s different,” Eddie says with a smile he only partially manages to hide. The confusion, the pliancy, will wear off in a little bit. “Not sure that’s ever going to happen. For any of us. No, you came into your senses. Or one sense, anyway. I’m guessing your major sense is taste. You got lost in it.”
“Blood,” Steve says faintly. “All I could think about was the blood, the taste of it in my mouth.”
Eddie nods. “Makes sense. Bit your tongue during a nightmare and it was too much.”
“I don’t- I don’t understand. What do you mean got lost?”
Eddie runs a hand through his hair and scratches at the back of his neck. “It’s like… well, you’ve had panic attacks before right?” When Steve nods, Eddie gestures. “It’s like one of your senses having a panic attack. Except you can’t get out of it by yourself. It doesn’t go away on its own. You need a Guide.”
Steve looks up at him and then struggles up into a sitting position. He absently touches his wrist where Eddie’s touch still lingers, and glances around the room. “… You? You’re the Guide? My Guide?”
“Unfortunately,” Eddie says, trying to sound sympathetic. He is pretty sure that Steve Harrington doesn’t want to be intimately linked with Eddie “the freak” Munson, even if they have been tentative friends for while now. “But, you’re still new, like you’re still… there’s time to switch. You should have had your Guide picked out years ago. I have a number at home, we can call. There are other guides out there, y’know, you can get someone else.”
“Someone else?” Steve echoes, brow knitting. “You… don’t want to?”
Eddie swallows. God, he wants to. It’s just- “You deserve to get to pick,” he says softly, looking away. “I’ve never done it, I don’t really know what I’m doing, and it’s kind of uh… a full time gig. Live in, you know? And that’s… that’s hard even when you like the other person.”
Steve’s brow knits further. “You don’t like me?”
“No, I do,” Eddie says. He’s messing this up. He sighs. “It’s just, you…”
“You think I don’t like you?” he asks, cottoning on.
“I think you don’t know me like you should, to pick me,” Eddie says, heart twisting up for Steve. This is going to suck so much for him. Eddie really is going to throttle his parents for not teaching him any of this if they knew. He hopes they didn’t. “I’m- I’m loud and weird and-”
“I’m best friends with Robin and Dustin,” Steve interrupts. “You think I don’t like loud and weird?”
Eddie’s belly does a little flip, shaking up all the butterflies and sending them into a riot. “Do you?”
“I do,” Steve says. “And if… if you… I don’t really want to go find some complete stranger to live with, if it can be you instead. If you’re okay with it, I’m good with it. I’m glad it’s you, in fact.”
“Oh,” Eddie says.
Maybe he’s the one that’s slipped into a fugue state now, because this cannot be happening. He never thought he’d actually be dragged into being a Guide in the first place, had avoided it as best as he could. Certainly he cannot lucky enough to be found by a Sentinel he actually, desperately, wants.
He can be normal about this.
“So…?” Steve prompts gently, because Eddie never answered.
Failed step one, he thinks, so he smiles and tries to be normal. “Uhm, yeah, I mean, yeah, man.” He shrugs a little, smile turning genuine when Steve relaxes. “I can be your Guide. I’d like to, in fact,” he echoes Steve.
“Good,” Steve says, leaning back against the headboard and letting his head thunk back against it.
He looks fucking exhausted, Eddie thinks, wondering how long he was in that state. Getting lost used to kill Sentinels, if they didn’t find Guides quickly enough. Eddie’s never been so grateful for Robin being stubborn, making him drive her over, insisting on checking. Calling in the cavalry immediately.
Robin seems to hear she’s being thought about, because her voice filters in from the other side of the door when they’ve been quiet too long. “Did it work??”
Eddie grins as Steve laughs, and something within Eddie relaxes. They’re gonna be okay. They’ll be okay as long as they can still laugh.
“It worked,” Steve calls. “I’ll be out in a minute, just let me get dressed.”
Cheeks pinking again, Eddie hops off the side of the bed and stands, finally breaking contact fully. “I’ll just- I’ll leave you to that then.”
“Hey,” Steve says, shifting like he’s going to try to grab for Eddie even though he doesn’t. “Um… thanks, man. You really did save my ass this time.”
Eddie searches his face for some kind of joke, but there’s nothing but that strange, quiet earnestness he’s come to associate with Steve. He smiles, nods once, and heads into the hall to report to the others that Steve’s going to be just fine.
