“Eddie, this was a mistake,” Steve whispered out the corner of his mouth, as they walked between the enclosures.
“No it wasn’t, my love. You’re just upset we can’t take them all,” Eddie replied in a whispered sing-song tone. He looked smug, and he had every right to, because he knew his boyfriend, and he knew he was correct.
Steve channelled his annoyance into a grumble as he avoided eye contact with the dogs they passed by.
“Imagine what a wonderful thing we’ll be doing, giving one of these sweet things a new home,” Eddie encouraged swooping into his side and linking their arms, “A new leash of life, if you will,” Eddie wiggled his eyebrows and stifled a laugh.
Steve rolled his eyes but the smile he was wrestling to hide became too obvious. He sighed, “We don’t have the space.”
Eddie made an incorrect buzzer noise, “Wrong! We had three whole humans in that apartment, a dog is smaller than a human.”
“Ok well are you gonna walk them every day?” Steve said, putting one hand on his hip.
Eddie pouted, “But baby, you go for a jog or run every morning, if you took the dog you’d have some sort of protection, when you’re out on your own.”
Steve was about to say no and stopped in his tracks, “Ok, alright,” he said throwing his hands up, “A few conditions. You join me on morning walks and you can walk the dog. The dog cannot be so big it takes up half the sofa. It must be a mixed breed, and no puppies! You got that?”
“Yessss!” Eddie hopped and punched the air making his wallet chain jangle. With a wild look in his eyes he grabbed Steve’s arm and yanked him along behind him at top speed.
“Eddie, what the hell, calm down! Where are you dragging me?” Steve complained as they nearly pushed past several families and couples until Eddie came to a sudden halt and Steve crashed into his side.
Eddie, completely unaffected by a half speed Steve crashing into him, points at the enclosure.
“This is the one, babe,” Eddie’s smile was huge as he rocked on his heels.
Steve sighed and wondered what kind of hell beast Eddie had picked out. He took the plunge and stepped forward to look at the dog.
Steve looked at the creature behind the cage door.
This wasn’t a dog. This was some kind of gremlin muppet from outer space.
Its ears stuck out like the little green funny guy from Star Wars. Its dark fur was patchy in places but generally short and wiry apart from on top of its head where it had an accidental mohawk. Its lower jaw jutted to the side giving it half an underbite and it was about the size of a Beagle. It had an eyepatch over one eye, a missing leg and a tail with an almost right angled kink in it.
“See, Daddy follows all your rules, aaaand,” Eddie pouted his lips and clasped his hands together, “He weally weally needs a home,” he said, with his own biggest puppy dog eyes.
Steve put up a finger, “What did you just call him?”
“Daddy,” Eddie repeated and the creature from the depths of hell replied with a yip. Eddie crouched down to the door at the response, “Who’s a good boy? It’s Daddy isn’t it? Daddy’s a good boy!”
Steve didn’t particularly want this walking nightmare fuel in his home, or to shout Daddy at something in the park, but when Eddie looked up at him with such joy, he rolled his eyes and sighed, and went to look at the information sheet.
Steve realised the huge mistake he’d made by reading this. This dog was a hero, a loyal pet, and was only in here because his owner passed away and no one would take him in. Not only that, but he was an old dog. He knew right then he couldn’t leave him here. He was coming home with them
Steve felt a hand on his shoulder, he turned to meet Eddie’s compassionate expression, “So is he gonna be a Munson or a Harrington?”
Tags | Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Lives, Eddie Munson Returns
——————————————————
He didn’t remember how he got here.
There was the warm light glowing in the bitter cold night outside Uncle Wayne’s trailer, with the police tape billowing in the wind.
The noise of the door creaking snatched his attention as the howling wind tried to fight the hinges for the right to claim the last door Chrissy Cunningham had ever passed through.
That he remembered.
He remembered being so afraid he got in his van and high-tailed it out of there.
To Rick’s, he thought, or to the lake at least, but he didn’t truly remember.
His stomach growled loudly. He was starving.
A crunch in his mouth, a crunch underfoot. The screaming of sirens and the screaming of someone else, or something else. He dove into water but he was on dry land. Yes, it must have been the lake. He should go to the lake.
But he couldn’t go. He knew he had to be here. It felt right, but why?
He clenched his fists in frustration or hunger or rage, and something snapped.
Eddie opened his ringed fist. In it was a blackened, slightly used birthday candle.
He looked around and couldn’t see anyone or anything, but occasionally he heard rustling from within the trailer.
Icy fear poured in rivulets through his nervous system as he stood at the bottom of the steps that should have been so familiar to him. They should have been welcoming, but the night made shadows of weird and terrifying things as the light from above began to be blocked out by the slight overhang of the roof.
He should turn back. But, back to where exactly?
The tightness in his stomach made itself known, and that was enough to try and take the first step.
Eddie instinctively threw himself backward onto the worn grass below as the door was flung open by the weather, as if to make his path clear.
“Welcome home, I guess?” he said to no one but himself, but the half-joke eased his fear somewhat, as he walked up the concrete steps he’d leapt down, stomped up, and slumped against hundreds of times.
There was no light in there, only what penetrated the rotting wooden boards and metal sheets that covered the windows. But here in the darkness, he suddenly realized he didn’t need the light. In fact, the absence of it only made his surroundings sharper.
Something else caught his attention: a strong scent. He couldn’t place it, but it made his mouth water, and the pain of hunger stabbed at his insides.
He snapped his head towards his old bedroom door. He could hear music, a beat at least.
Yes. Someone was here. Someone could help. They could explain.
He grabbed for the door handle and wrenched it open to be met with a muffled sound in the darkness.
A man was tied up there. Eddie rushed to help him.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, man. I’m gonna help you,” Eddie assured.
But the man’s wide eyes were absent of hope and slowly began to fill with tears as he tried to squirm out of Eddie’s reach. He was terrified and worse than that he was… what was that? Sadness? Anger? Regret? Eddie couldn’t pick it out. Not over the music, it was so loud, a pounding bass line and drums intertwined together.
“Look man, stop squirming around. I’m gonna help you, and then maybe you can help me, okay?” Eddie tried to reassure him again, but the man shook his head, the tears falling from his eyes skirted the moles on his cheeks.
He stepped back. Maybe this guy had something wrong with him, maybe he didn’t want Eddie to untie him, maybe he’d asked someone to keep him tied up, like in those old werewolf movies or something?
“Alright, easy big fella,” Eddie said and approached again carefully, “I’m just gonna remove the gag, alright?”
The man nodded, and Eddie breathed a sigh of relief and pulled apart the gag with a surprising amount of ease. So easy, he wasn’t sure how the man hadn’t bitten through it, but Eddie didn’t get to investigate that or the mystery sharp pain he felt, because the man started screaming at the top of his lungs.
“HELP ME! PLEASE GOD HELP ME! SOMEONE PLEASE! PLEASE HELP ME!” he yelled as he tried to wriggle away from Eddie.
“I am helping you, man. Shit. Calm the fuck down,” he tried to console him, but the man continued to scream and pray and call out names, and the music was so loud now. Obnoxiously so. Thrumming and crashing and the yelling and the hunger pains and his head hurt.
“SHUT UP!” Eddie yelled, clutching his head, and almost everything fell to silence, except for his stomach and that beat.
Eddie tore the room apart looking for where it was coming from while the now silent man cowered against the wall, but he found nothing.
“Look, I’m sorry. I just got overwhelmed with all the noise. I didn’t mean to scare you, okay. Come on, let’s get you out of here,” he said much more softly, approaching the man.
The whites around his handsome hazel eyes were on full display. The man looked horrified. His eyes looked like he was still screaming, but his mouth was firmly shut.
Eddie proceeded to try and help, trying to find the knot in his binds by following the weird sticky rope he had been tied up with.
As he leaned forward, the music started up again, and that scent was stronger than ever. It made him at odds with himself; he could tell the man was afraid the closer he got, but he couldn’t stop himself from getting closer. Until he was closely looming over him.
“It’s you,” Eddie snarled, “You’re making all the noise.” The man violently shook his head, eyes glistening with tears. “That aroma, what is that? Did you douse yourself in perfume? What is that?”
The man’s body shook, but no reply came.
“ANSWER ME!” Eddie roared in a voice that didn’t feel like his own, “SPEAK!”
The man’s plush, quivering lips began to part as Eddie’s chest heaved with anger.
“What are you? Why are you wearing his clothes?” The man’s trembling whisper fell from his lips.
Eddie would reply, but he didn’t know the answer. He couldn’t even concentrate on forming one because the scent, the pounding beat, and his hunger were back with a vengeance.
But as the man made a last-ditch attempt to get away, with a lightning speed reaction, Eddie stopped him and grabbed at the sign around the man’s neck that had flipped over.
**HAPPY RE-BIRTH DAY, EDDIE!**
**EAT UP! YOU WILL FEEL MUCH BETTER**
Eddie swallowed thickly, his eyes no longer fixed on the sign, were now fixed on the sun-kissed neck of the man below him. Two beauty marks sat on the man’s skin there, as if to show Eddie where to strike.
No, he couldn’t do that, eat someone. That was messed up. Eddie tried to turn away. He turned his eyes back to look at the man who was gasping for air and crying, it looked like, but he couldn’t hear it over the pounding beat. The beat coming from deep inside this man.
Eddie didn’t want the man to silence the music this time. He wanted to hunt it down, claim it for his own, and silence it himself.
But he couldn’t kill someone, he couldn’t eat someone. That was ridiculous. He even scoffed at his delusional thinking.
He scratched his head and reached for the bizarre ties that had the man bound again. He struggled to find any knots, just more gross ropes. The longer Eddie searched, the more his eyes flit back to the man’s neck, back to the loud rhythm that sang to his very soul.
The next thing Eddie knew, he had the man’s jaw firmly in his grip, twisting his head until a blood vessel began to raise in his neck.
He felt a haze descend upon himself as his tongue flicked out to lick the skin there, a slight hint of salt from sweat, but mostly the promise of something sweeter, richer than anything he had ever tasted in his life.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie whimpered, “I’m just so damn hungry.”
Eddie tasted and licked softly at the man’s neck. Before he knew what was what, his teeth began to graze over the skin, slowly increasing with pressure until he scratched the surface.
A taste hit Eddie’s tongue, unlike anything he’d ever tasted before, igniting his very being with a droplet of it, and soon Eddie found himself clamped down on the man’s neck, gorging himself on his essence, and all he could do was hold the man still and gulp down his spoils until the music stopped.
It had been years since the last one, and all of Steve’s colleagues at the school were amused by how excited he was about the eclipse. He’d made displays, gone class by class with a homemade model of how it all worked and helped the classes create their own.
But when the day came, the benches were lined up outside, and everyone had their special glasses or gadgets to watch and capture the event. Steve was nowhere to be seen.
Because Steve was where he’d been for every Eclipse since 1986.
A piece of land that he managed to snag before they turned the old trailer park into a parking lot. A small oasis of green he’d saved in a sea of tarmac, and all that was on it was a bench and a lamppost that didn’t work.
A lamppost that didn’t work except when there was an eclipse.
As the moon bullied into the Sun’s path, the smile of light left echoed on Steve’s face as the lamppost flickered and fizzed. It never fully lit up, but it didn't need to because the faces of the two reunited men, torn apart by time, are lit up enough.
They embrace, talk and kiss for as long as the moon can hold the sun back. Until the real world starts to fight its way back in, and Eddie fades away again.
Sunsets and Shadows
Prompt | "The sunset looks lovely, don't you think?"
WC | 700 -- Rating | T -- CW | references mcd, grief, angst
Tags | Steddie, Past Steddie, Future Fic
All that’s left of me, is just a memory
Prompt | "Amnesia" & “Candle”
WC | 1476 -- Rating | T -- CW | Someone is tied up, swearing, mcd
Tags | Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson Lives, Eddie Munson Returns
