Despite being terrible at self-promotion and forgetting for a week, I am VERY excited to announce my Steddie Big Bang project for @steddiebbang '26.
Team: 015
Artist: @miserablekingsteve
Rating: E
Beta: @lilac--sugar
Summary:
Words: 30,000~
When Eddie Munson wakes up, Hawkins is being dismantled, its people being scattered by a government desperate to bury the truth. Eddie is forced into a new life in a strange city far from everything he’s ever known. He tells himself it’s enough to survive. It has to be.
But Steve Harrington refuses to accept distance as an ending.
Haunted by guilt, grief, and a love he waited too long to name, Steve sets out across a fractured continent with Robin at his side, determined to find the people they’ve lost. A journey of reckoning. Of who they were, who they’ve become, and what it means to choose each other in a world designed to keep them apart. Love deferred, identity reclaimed, and the fragile, stubborn hope that even after everything, you can still find your way back to the people who matter most.
Tags and teaser below the cut :)
Tags:
Eddie is in a coma the first time Steve says, ‘I love you’. Unconscious and unable to reply. Over the next few years, the memory will grow cloudy and unreliable. The doctors will spend a lot of time explaining that, although it can happen, it’s probable that he is not remembering the specifics of conversations. It’s more likely that he remembers visits from familiar voices, can recall ambient sounds and comforting music. But Eddie knows for sure that isn’t what it is; he is positive that he heard the first time Steve told him that he was probably in love with him. That’s not something you just let slip out of your brain, even if your body remains asleep and incapable of responding. When the hottest man in Hawkins admits that he’s fallen for you, you hold onto that information, even if you can’t convince yourself to shake yourself awake and demand answers at the time.
Government Detention / Imprisonment (non-legal, temporary), Forced Relocation, Loss of Autonomy, Post-Final Battle Against Vecna, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a happy ending, Mutual Pining, Childhood Friends, Slow Burn, Trauma & Recovery, Road Trips, Platonic Soulmates, Eddie Munson Runs Away, The Party Sticks Together (Eventually), Does the author love Winnipeg or hate it? We will never know.
Excerpt:
Steve Harrington is a pendulum, always has been. He swings back and forth between being the boy who was not serious enough to handle much of anything, and the Harrington Heir who was way too serious about everything. Even before the Upside-Down, Eddie had known that. Over the seven years of not-quite-friendship, Eddie had learned not to predict which version he was going to get.
The secret of their association had never really bothered Eddie; being a freak in a small town prepared you well for the reality that friends you had in private didn’t always translate into the ones you had at school. He’d genuinely liked seventh-grade Steve, from that first moment he'd shown up like an apparition to Eddie's secret forest fort behind the park.
The first version of Harrington he’d met had whimsy and joy etched into his bones. He made dumb jokes and thought deeply about things that the other boys would never admit to caring about. But he was also the boy that Wayne had warned Eddie about when he’d moved to Hawkins. He was A Harrington, with a capital H, and Eddie understood very early on that that designation came with many more roadblocks than money could solve. Steve is so scared of his own softness, his own fanciful soul, that he shoves it down beneath hairspray, unkindness, basketball, and flirting with the girls he’s expected to flirt with.
The fear takes over as they hit high school, as the stakes of being Different become more painful. Eddie had understood it, even at the time. He knew the pain of isolation intimately. His understanding came at a cost, though. When Steve stops coming around at all in the middle of his junior year, Eddie’s understanding turns to bitterness. Then, Eddie doesn’t graduate. Then, Steve’s little cronies seem to realize he’s a great target for their low-brow bullying. The longer he gets trapped in Hawkins, the harder it is for Eddie to ignore them. Suddenly, it turns him into a villain in the story of far too many people at school. He isn’t scary, not even a little bit, but he leans into the safety net the Scary Persona affords him. Leans into the asshole behaviour and the loose morals that do more harm than D&D ever has.
Eddie knows the truth about Steve because he’d been right beside him for years. But how many times is he, Hawkins' own impish Puck, meant to put up with the swing? How many times are they all supposed to pretend Steve hasn't hurt them all? How many times is he going to stand in a proverbial boathouse, broken bottle in his hand, and pretend Steve is just a stranger, a jock, an asshole who intimidates Eddie for fun?
He can’t quantify the confession, can’t get past the fact that he’s seen Steve at both his best and his worst, and can’t decide which version is sitting beside his hospital bed.
Is it the one from the picnic table, twelve years old and afraid of the dark? Is it the one from the third-floor men’s room, demanding free cigarettes in exchange for not letting his friends steal his bag again? Is it the sixteen-year-old who’d push Eddie against a wall in the dark corner of his bedroom while a party raged downstairs? The one whispering that it was fine if Eddie tugged his hair a bit as his tongue found purchase along the column of his throat?
That memory always sparked heat in Eddie’s chest. It wasn’t the only time their hidden friendship had crossed boundaries into something else, but it was the clearest in his mind. Probably because Steve’s expensive cologne had filled his senses as nimble fingers gripped his jacket. The way Steve had whispered his name like a confession against his skin.
But Eddie’s body hadn’t obeyed as Steve spoke words that seemed essential for him to get out; he couldn’t ask when exactly this ‘love’ had developed. Was it during those childhood forest adventures? After the Upside Down turned everything on its head? Or somewhere in the murky middle, when they had pretended to be nothing more than reluctant acquaintances passing in school hallways.
So, though he hears it, though he even fully understands, the first time Steve Harrington tries to tell Eddie Munson he loves him, Eddie decides to stay in a coma rather than sort that all out.
It will be a while before Steve works out how to say it again.
“Promise?” Eddie pushes, checks, to be safe and it’s only then that he hears the tears in his own voice.
“Oh babe,” and Steve’s wiping them before they fall because he’s Steve, he’s Eddie’s Steve: “I promise.”
It's here! I had the wonderful opportunity to create a few pieces for @hitlikehammers beautiful fic Made of Light. Thank you for being a lovely person and inspiring these pieces! This fic is gorgeous and if you love soulmate au's then this is for you! 💛
Participated in my first art-exchange for the Steddie Big Bang.
Thank you for everything gay_as_a_duck ! It was so much fun getting to work on this with you!
I am so pleased to be able to announce my project for the @steddiebang2024 ! I'll be working with the talented @cxwzkeys , I'm so excited!
Project 037 | The Ghost in Our Story
Steve and Eddie are a little relieved to wake up at home in their beds completely unharmed after they take the fight to Vecna. That is, until they discover that Hawkins is completely empty except for the two of them, with no signs of their friends, the gates to the Upside Down, or anything that happened that week. Still, they’re safe and the town is intact; they’ll figure out why everyone evacuated tomorrow.
Steve and Eddie are a little relieved to wake up at home until they discover that Hawkins is completely empty except for the two of them. They try to leave the town. They can’t get out.
Steve and Eddie are a little relieved to wake up at home until they discover that Hawkins is completely empty except for the two of them. The phones don’t work. Nothing stays where they left it. Each morning is the same.
Steve and Eddie are a little relieved to wake up at home until they discover that Hawkins is completely empty except for the two of them. They try the lab. They try the backroads. They try swimming. They are trapped.
Steve and Eddie are a little relieved to wake up at home until they discover that Hawkins is not completely empty after all.
Something is in there with them.
Bb submissions next week and I have 70% of my fic written BUT I have also recently surpassed my original estimated word count so it’s still anyone’s guess how long this thing will actually be
