Our submission for the @strangerthingsreversebigbang :3
Guys everyone go read this fic it's so freaking good oh my god 🥺🥺🥺🥺 they did my art so much justice what the hell
Word Count: 6, 051
Archive Warnings: Creator chose not to use Archive warnings
Rating: Teen and up audiences
Pairing(s): Jonathan Byers & Joyce Byers & Will Byers, Jonathan Byers & Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington
Character(s): Jonathan Byers, Joyce Byers, Will Byers, Jim “Chief” Hopper, Steve Harrington
Tags: post-season/series 01, pre-season/series 02, fist fights, enemies to friends, pre-slash, blood and injury
Summary: Jonathan Byers is just trying to get back on his feet after fighting a monster in his own home and recovering his missing brother. Steve Harrington helping with home repairs was not on the agenda
Art: I’ve Never Seen You Fall So Hard by @justtoomuch on Tumblr
Fic: I’ve Never Seen You Fall So Hard by @salamandergoo on Ao3 (Beta’d by @turinspeachjam )
So excited to finally post my art for the @strangerthingsreversebigbang!
I had such a lovely time working with @sidekick-hero on this one! Thank you for being such a chill partner through this!
Be sure to read their amazing fic I just wanted to say (I can’t get enough of your face) and give them all the love!!
My @strangerthingsreversebigbang with the ever wonderful @hawkinsleather 's art work as the inspiration check it out Here
Rated T 🦇 17k 🦇 Steddie
Crack Treated Seriously Getting Together Dolls improper use of promotional materials Halloween knifes raccoons yes that's a tag pedophobia (fear of dolls) Gaslighting
Steve paused with his toast halfway to his mouth, not quite sure where on his list of weird shit he had seen since he had moved into Forest Hills this new development sat.
Listen, he knows it makes him sound like a spoiled little rich boy, alright? But he was starting to wonder if there was anything that the residents of the trailer park couldn't fix with duct tape, superglue, and sheer moxie. One of the highlights of his week was gossiping with Wayne Munson over a beer and whatever sports the rabbit ears over the man's old TV would tune into that week. And Steve lived for it.
Gossip in the trailer park was not like the gossip in Lake Nora. It wasn't about who was buying cakes rather than making them for the bake sale and trying to pass them off as home-baked. It was more about who was getting out of rehab, whose cars were being used to house the local drunks, and who got arrested for some convoluted reason this time. It was all about who was on the grift and who was getting a beating for sleeping with his best friend's wife. He was under no impression that he hadn't already been a valid source of entertainment for the curtain twitchers when he moved in. Even if the strange alien lawn figures that Murray had been working on at the edge of the woods were the current hot topic, nothing surprised him anymore when it came to Forest Hills.
And then there was this … whatever this was he was currently looking at.
It involved Eddie, in the blazing heat of an early August morning, dressed in his full leathers, battle vest, and for some reason- "Max, is that your Halloween mask?" Steve asked as she sauntered over to his new, to him, Chevy. Skateboard under her arm, her own pop tart hanging from her mouth as she busied herself shoving something into her bag. The poster child for unphased. She squinted over the top of the car as she shoved her things into the back seat.
"No, that's all him. Which reminds me, someone still owes me a new Michael Myers mask," She said, emphasizing with her tone that someone should be Steve. Like he had any spare money to be throwing around on his pitiful teacher's salary.
Hell, if he hadn't managed to rent the trailer next to Max's for an absolute steal, he would probably still be bunking down in Robin's old room at the Buckleys'. He definitely didn't have spare cash to buy her a replacement mask, and he definitely didn't have the inclination to either, especially when the thing creeped him out anyway.
"Should I ask why he's dressed like that?" Steve said as Eddie pulled the mask up, but just enough that he could sip on his coffee. It made it hard to see if Eddie was looking over at them or not. But Steve had a feeling he was being watched all the same.
Not that Steve was interested, or cared that Eddie was watching him. Absolutely not. He wasn't keeping track of the idiosyncrasies of his friend and neighbour Edward Munson, no, not him. That would be ridiculous. Whoever told you that was a liar. It would never stand in a court of law.
"He'll be going under the crawl space to get his Halloween things out," Max said with a shrug. "I think Chucky had kits in the spring, so he will be taking extra precautions so she doesn't rip his face off."
Steve watched as Eddie put down his mug and pulled on his mask. He launched himself at the crawl space with all the over-the-top dramatics that Steve had come to know and love.
No. Not love, who said anything about love? Who was using such ridiculous words to think about Eddie? Certainly not him.
"Chucky?" He asked rather than questioned why Eddie was digging out his Halloween supplies this early in the year.
"The raccoon that lives under his trailer. Keep up, Steve. I would have thought you, of all people, would know about Eddie's firstborn." She said, managing to keep her level of sarcasm down to a bare minimum.
"I didn't know he named it Chucky," Steve said as they drove out of the trailer park and towards the center of town.
All roads lead back to Family Video after all, and just because he and Robin were no longer being kind and rewinding, didn't mean that the sacred halls of the video nasty weren't being manned by someone from there motly group.
Max and Dustin were regulars behind the till, while Mike, Will, and Lucas could be found picking up shifts at the diner and the arcade, all under the watchful eye of Keith. A man who seemed as reluctant to leave Hawkins as Steve was. At least Steve got a staff discount still by way of the brats, and movie nights at Eddie's trailer were never boring. It was something. And right now, Steve was clinging onto something, anything, because he was missing Robin like a lost limb, and it had only been two weeks since she had gone back to college. He was going to compleatly lost when Dustin left next week, and Steve was no longer useful or needed.
"So Eddie thought, the actually quite cute raccoon that lives under the house, looks like that god-awful doll from Child's Play?" Steve asked, not putting it past Eddie for a second, but not really seeing how he got from one to another. He might be starting to get Eddie, but that didn't mean he always understood the man.
"He said that her little hands were made for stabbing, and her eyes follow you around the room, just like Chucky. He isn't wrong." Max reasoned.
"Has he done it to wind me up?"
"You mean after you nearly shit yourself when we went to see Child's Play at the drive-in?" Max asked, her shit-eating grin almost blinding.
"I did not."
"Steve, Eddie had to stop at yours for three nights afterwards, and you wouldn't sleep with the light off for like two weeks. Anyone would think you were a pussy. Yet, I know you stabbed a fucking eldritch monster in its balls, and you slept like a baby afterwards, so we know that's bullshit. Just admit it, the movie freaked you out."
Steve refused to answer. She was right, but somehow admitting that to Max was so much worse than admitting it to Dustin.
Ever since Rob had gone to college, Steve had inevitably gotten closer to the younger party members, especially Max. And Max had the same amazingly astute talent as Robin of seeing right through every last one of Steve's lies.
"I don't like dolls, alright? The eyes creep me out, like, why do they have to be so human-looking?" He answered, eventually buckling to Max's accusing glare. "If Vecna had decided to haunt some dolls, I would have been truly fucked."
Max laughed so hard she was almost crying by the time he dropped her off at work.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖🦇 ݁˖ ݁𖥔 .🦝🦝๋࣭ ⭑🕸🦇🕸๋࣭ ⭑
"So why are you putting up Halloween decorations in August?" Steve asked as he sipped his beer and watched Eddie hang tiny plastic bats along the edge of the trailer awning.
Eddie's new trailer sat two lots along from his old one, and Wayne's sat in the lot right next door. The lot that had once belonged to the shared Munson abode was never replotted, at least not by a home.
It now had a swing set and a small flower garden that Steve had seen both Wayne and Eddie tend to when they thought nobody was looking.
But Steve was watching; he saw more than he wanted to some days, saw the way Eddie would sit on the swings and talk to someone who wasn't there to listen.
He watched it all from his bedroom window. He wondered if it was Chrissy that Eddie was talking to late at night when the world should be asleep.
He never asked, and he knew Eddie would probably never tell him. Even if they did tell each other almost everything these days, a constant presence in each other's lives.
The kids didn't need them much anymore, so they tended to just hang out together more often than not. Like now, after a full day of coaching, Steve couldn't think of anywhere else he would rather be than on Eddie Munson's front porch drinking beer. Still didn't explain why Eddie was hanging bats in the middle of the summer break.
"I know, I'm late. I normally put them up just after the 4th of July," Eddie said without even looking at him, too fixated on making sure the bats were positioned just so. He was back to his regulation jeans and shirt, the leathers put away for at least another few weeks when the weather would turn, and they would actually be needed.
"You put them up-"
"July 5th or 6th normally."
"But why? Halloween is on October 31st."
"It's as if you have no whimsy, Steven. If people can celebrate Christmas all winter, why can't I enjoy Halloween just as long?" Eddie said, not even looking at him, too invested in his project, "Summerween is a thing, halfway to Halloween is in May, embrace the darkness, Stevie, make it ours." He said with his full DM flair.
Steve got to his feet and inspected the rubber bats that were hanging head height. He had only just moved into the trailer park last November, and he hadn't really encountered Eddie on his own turf much before that, at least not right side up. Their hangouts had always been at his parents' house. Before they sold up and finally made the move to the coast that they had been planning since Steve was old enough to be left on his own.
Consequently, he had never been subject to whatever form of madness this was, but it was on brand for Eddie, so he was willing to go with it.
"Bats seem a little on the nose," he said, subconsciously rubbing at the scar on his neck, long faded but still visible when he had been out in the sun coaching all day.
"Nah, these are cute, and like, don't have a belly full of my insides. So let's not tar all the critters with the same vengeful brush. Chucky likes them, though, and she's the boss."
"The Racoon? Why do I know you really did ask the raccoon's opinion, you weirdo."
"She lives here, too; she gets a say." He said as he duct-taped another bat to the roof. "She's got an army of little assholes under the trailer now; it's their home, too. I would ask the others, I value their input, but Chucky is the only one I'd trust with a knife."
"Eddie, please don't tell me you gave the raccoon a weapon?" Steve asked as he handed off another bat.
"She has a family to defend, a realm of her own to protect, you understand that, don't you? Or do you not still have at least one deadly weapon in the back of the truck?" Eddie asked, leaning into Steve's space.
Steve sucked on his teeth and huffed out in disagreement. "It's not the same."
"What Daddy can protect his little nuggets, but Mama Chucky can't? How very neanderthal of you, Harrington. Man, it's like you don't have a healthy fear of young Maiden Wheeler, and it's starting to show." Eddie said as he walked his hand up Steve's chest and bopped him on the nose. "Self-preservation of someone who's rolling a 1 for initiative and a Nat 20 for everything else."
Steve's heart rate rose to the bait. How couldn't it? Eddie's finger was so close he could bite it, and his brain was stuck on Eddie calling him Daddy. He didn't even think he liked that sort of thing, but apparently nobody had told his stupid crush that. Not that it was a crush, that would be ridiculous.
"You know I feel like I'm being insulted." Steve said, swatting at the finger rather than taking a bite, " But you wouldn't do something like that, would you, Eddie the Banished?"
"It's Eddie the resurrected now, the second coming of Munson was not foretold, but it's a personal best." Eddie said as he wiggled his eyebrows, "Keep it up, Stevie, baby. You talking nerdy does something for me." The blush creeping up Eddie's face made Steve think what he was saying wasn’t all for comedy value.
"Really? Eddie the resurrected, that's what does it for you? " Steve asked before his brain came back to its senses.
"I am but a simple man, a hot guy starts calling a bard by his true name, it's gonna stir something in a man's loins."
"Yeah, yeah, keep it in your pants, some of us are fine upstanding members of the community. " Steve muttered, clutching at straws to try and keep his mind out of the gutter, the friendly back-and-forth flirting always made his mind go a little offline.
"And some of us are cult leaders with nothing to lose," Eddie said, dropping his hands to his belt and fiddling with the stupid buckle. "What's a little dick between friends?"
"You saying you have a little dick?" Steve asked, aware his cheeks were starting to flush too, and hoping that the setting sun might cover his impossible predicament. Deflect deflect deflect. Talking about Eddie's dick only encouraged the bad thoughts.
"Ah, Stevie, I'm sure it's nowhere near as impressive as your prophesied package, but it's far from little," Eddie said, grinning. "But alas, some things are not for us lowly peasants. A king's sword is for the landed gentry and the ladies of his fair kingdom, not the commoners. And very much not his personal fool." Eddie stepped away, turning his attention back to the box of Halloween decorations that had taken over the old couch on the porch.
Steve didn't know how to feel about that; it felt like Eddie had scooped out the weird feeling in Steve's chest and thrown it against the asphalt for everyone and their uncle to stomp the life out of.
He watched Eddie for a moment, the way he moved constantly, even with his entire torso shoved in an old box, so full of life, and something else. something that kept drawing Steve back to him again and again. Something about Eddie saying he wasn’t good enough for Steve irritated him, and the bit of his brain that talked first and reasoned later took the wheel.
"What if it wasn't?" Steve asked, suddenly brave when Eddie was facing the other way.
"What if what wasn't?" Eddie asked, not looking up from the pile of tiny pumpkins he was stacking.
"What if it wasn't just for the ladies of my kingdom?" Steve asked, unsure how he had found even an ounce of courage to broach a subject he hadn't even spoken out loud to Robin.
Eddie didn't turn around. He slowly started pulling out bones, placing them in a pile next to the pumpkins; his shoulders tensed. Steve felt sick. Why had he said something? They were messing about, Eddie was just playing, he was the most playful guy Steve had ever met. Trust him to fuck up a perfectly good thing. Maybe he should just get up and leave? This was a stupid, stupid idea.
"Ed?" He asked instead.
"Give me a second." Eddie snapped back not unkindly.
"Okay," Steve replied, choking back the bile that had started to rise in his throat.
He watched as Eddie pulled out a skull, possibly part of the collection of bones that he had been piling up, and held it out in front of him, turning it around in his hands a few times before putting it carefully on the top of the bundle.
"Me too," Eddie said, fidgeting so much the pile of bones scattered across the deck, a small pair of furry hands grabbing a hipbone where it fell and pulling it under the trailer.
"What?" Steve asked, not sure he had heard correctly.
"I said me too." Eddie dropped to his knees, then to his front across the deck, and reached under to grab the hip bone back from the raccoon. "Not just the ladies… You know, since we're being honest and such." He still didn't look up, his entire head now hanging off the side of the porch, hair trailing the dust bowl that was the dry, crusty patch of lawn. "Figured since you were being all open and stuff, you should know, me too." Eddie tipped his head to the side, glancing through his curtain of hair, as if checking that Steve was still there.
"Oh." Was all Steve could manage. Everything he thought about Eddie was rewriting itself in his mind.
"Did the rumours about me not reach the Royal court ?" Eddie asked, turning his attention back to getting his prop back from the creature that lived under the porch.
Steve knew he should answer, but words were hard, alright? He wasn't exactly known for his grasp of the English language.
"Do you need to go call Robin?" Eddie asked, his voice muffled by the timber of the porch. "I don't mind if you need to go have a Harrington freak out, me and Chucky are going to be here some time with this hip."
"Yeah, I should…" Eddie was giving him an out, and Steve appreciated it.
"Rob knows about me," Eddie said, pulling his head back out of the crawl space. Cobweb hanging on his bangs, as he stared wide-eyed straight into Steve's soul," So, yeah, you aren't like breaking a friendship code or anything." He let out a little self-deprecating sigh, "I'll see you tomorrow for movie night?" He asked hopefully.
Steve nodded. Already halfway down the steps and heading towards his own trailer.
Written for the @strangerthingsreversebigbang
Art by @hellfireloserclub
Max
Michaels is truly a family store
Mike
That font combination is a choice
Will
Lol. Are you getting that for the baby’s room?
Dustin
How did that get approved?
Lucas
It could maybe be cute if daddy wasn’t so big
Mike
Phrasing
Max
Seriously? Lucas, we’re having a talk
Mike
Wait… Baby’s room?
Read it on AO3
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler, The Party (Stranger Things)
Pairings: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington, Pre-Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler
Word Count: 8,701
Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Married Steve Harrington/Jonathan Byers, Pre-Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler, Platonic Baby Mama Robin, Pregnancy, He/Him Genderfluid Jonathan Byers, Minor Feminist Themes
“He has no reason to be this flustered over a wink. Over a pair of stupidly pretty magazine cover eyes staring at him, specifically at him.
Nope. None at all.”
(Or: The Byers-Hopper family runs a coffee shop, and Jonathan is the one manning the counter when a storm rolls in— said storm being Steve bringing the Party over for some post-game pastries.)
Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley/Chrissy Cunningham/Nancy Wheeler (implied)
Characters: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley, Nancy Wheeler, Chrissy Cunningham, Tommy Hagan
Tags: Temporary Character Death, Getting Together, First Kiss, Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Tommy Hagan Being an Asshole, One-Sided Tommy Hagan/Steve Harrington, POV Multiple, Mostly Steve Harrington POV, Eddie Munson Has a Crush on Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Has a Crush on Eddie Munson, Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, idiots to lovers, Ghost Eddie Munson
Summary:
Steve’s eyes are flickering between the front door and the obnoxious demon cat clock that Robin demanded she be allowed to hang in the living room, teeth pulling at his bottom lip with every passing minute. It’s not very late yet, but it is late enough that he’s worried. Next to him, Robin is worried too.
They’re worried because Eddie’s late. Really late at this point. Was-supposed-to-be-home-when-the-sun-was-still-up late.
OR: the one where Eddie is a ghost and Stobin has to learn magic to fix him
