#wr fic

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The White Rabbit (Part 1/3)

Because Eddie does a headcount. 

And there are five people, not four, standing at the bottom of this dried up lake, and one of them is tearing the final bat in half with his bare hands. 

Robin chokes, hunches over and vomits straight onto the ground.

Fair enough, considering they’re looking at Steve Harrington. 

Fair enough, considering they’re looking at a dead man. 

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steddie - 17k words - rated M excerpt under the cut

“I’m,” Eddie clears his throat, which has Robin looking at him closely, “I’m. Cashing in on it.” 

Steve’s shoulders slump, unimpressed deadpan to his tone as he repeats, “cashing in on it.” 

“Yep,” Eddie grins as smarmy and smug as he can. “You, Steve Harrington, owe me a favor. In case you forgot.” 

“Since when?” Steve makes a face, all scrunched towards the center with befuddled disbelief like Eddie has just said something of personal offense to him. 

Eddie, for his part, can’t help but grin when Steve makes that face. 

“Since forever, probably,” he shrugs, “who cares, but you definitely owe me for something at some point since you’re, y’know, a fuckin’ bastard and a half, so I’m cashing in.” 

Steve stares him down, scowl only growing as Eddie stares at him right back with a closed-lipped smirk of a grin, Robin looking between the two of them like she’s watching a tennis match for all of three seconds of silent communication until she’s snorting, throwing her hands up, and walking in between the two of them with the declaration— 

“I’m taking my ten. Or, like, my however long this takes.” 

She waggles her fingers at Steve in a little wave and Steve, in return, rolls his eyes in a way that’s far too fond for the interaction, but which makes sense with the synced-up movement as Robin disappears into the back through the door and Steve hops through the window and take her place up front. 

A well-oiled machine, the two of them, but not the point of Eddie crashing their work day. 

“Do I actually owe you a favor or is this your way of telling me you got new stock in?” Steve leans forward onto his hands at the counter in the same moment when Eddie leans back with the cross of his arms over his chest, flannel tied around his waist swaying with the motion. 

“I mean, you definitely owe me a favor,” Eddie shrugs, “but both things can be true.” 

“You realize I pay you, right? With cash?” Steve snarks, and it’s such a thing with him, tone, that Eddie feels like he’s constantly relearning how to read the book of Harrington, the layers of distaste and amusement and genuine good guy syndrome hidden somewhere underneath. “Is that not favor enough any-fucking-more?” 

“Oh, dear Steve,” Eddie smirks, forces it out despite the roll of his gut that he’s chosen to ignore for now and also forever thank you very much, “the money is for the good shit, but you helping me fix the rail on my porch is for, y’know, the kid tax.” 

Steve makes a face. He’s kind of the king of making faces, and faces that work their way between Eddie’s ribs specifically, but this isn’t something Steve’s gonna win with a quirk of the brow and a frown to his lips. 

The kid tax is Eddie’s own personal self destruct mode after all– the kind designed to take anyone in the remote vicinity down with him– it’s all his fear wrapped up in a set of rules that no one but him knows in their entirety and it affects Steve Harrington’s drug habit pretty exclusively. 

Steve is all reluctant exasperation in a little hat as he all but actually rolls his eyes at Eddie. He looks away, looks everywhere except Eddie’s eye, and grumbles, “I get off at six.” 

The most telling part about that?

Eddie hasn’t really won either. 

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The White Rabbit (Part 3/3)

Because Eddie does a headcount. 

And there are five people, not four, standing at the bottom of this dried up lake, and one of them is tearing the final bat in half with his bare hands. 

Robin chokes, hunches over and vomits straight onto the ground.

Fair enough, considering they’re looking at Steve Harrington. 

Fair enough, considering they’re looking at a dead man. 

read on ao3 | playlist

steddie - 23k words - rated M excerpt under the cut

“I scared her,” Steve says, forty-five minutes later with his head having let the weight of the world place it on Eddie’s shoulder, tucked closer under his arm as they’ve relaxed into each other’s weight. Eddie hums a questioning sound in response, quiet and rumbling to match the croak of disuse in Steve’s throat. “She’s— scared. Of me.”

“Your mom?” Eddie clarifies softly, hearing the harsh sniff through Steve’s nose that is an eternal tell towards his attempts at keeping it together.

“I wake up and I’m— I’m not here sometimes,” Steve explains. “It’s dark. I don’t know that house. I wake up and I’m there and I have a routine there because everything— resets. Every night. I have a routine. I have to block the windows and— I have to— I get a knife…”

Eddie lets his hand rub down the length of Steve’s arm and back up, creating gentle friction, creating warmth.

“I wouldn’t hurt her,” Steve insists, although there’s a fire lacking from the claim, like he’s just tired of having to say it at all, tired of having to convince someone who Eddie thinks probably hasn’t been listening.

She was always a distant mother. She’s trying. That doesn’t mean she’s succeeding, not when caring for Steve became a triply involved task seemingly overnight, not when all of her regrets and her promises to do better had come during a time when she never would have had to.

It’s easy to say if I had a second chance when there’s no hope at a second chance.

It’s harder to follow through.

Eddie doesn’t want to blame her for that, but he’s got this guy curled up against him in the glow of the September sun and feels more and more with each chirping bird and roll of tires over gravel that he’ll never be on her side here.

“I know you wouldn’t,” Eddie says into the crown of Steve’s head, grateful that today isn’t a no-touching day, grateful every time Steve feels comfortable enough to allow this sort of closeness.

Grateful, and also buzzing with the same unnamable energy he’d felt when he’d seen Steve swimming in freezing water last year, though. Like Eddie knows without knowing it that this isn’t the first morning of its kind for Steve.

Like there’s more to the story than that to which he’s privy.

It’s kind of terrifying, Steve leaning against him and breathing deliberately as though he’s reacclimating to the consistency of it without the violent coughing that might usually accompany a night without his oxygen tank. It’s kind of terrifying, that Steve doesn’t really have anyone capable of talking him down at home before he’s wandering the streets of Hawkins half out of his mind in the middle of the night.

It’s kind of terrifying enough that Eddie’s grip on Steve tightens, that the filter between his brain and his mouth does no sort of slowing before he’s saying, “where else do you go when she gets scared, Steve? Where do you go that’s not here?”

He expects Steve to go tense, stiff, uncomfortable to the point where he might even run away, but Steve is different now and he shows none of the old armor against vulnerable questions that Eddie might have been able to prepare for.

No, instead he just stays there, tucked against Eddie’s side, and worst of all, he’s honest.

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The White Rabbit (Part 2/3)

Because Eddie does a headcount. 

And there are five people, not four, standing at the bottom of this dried up lake, and one of them is tearing the final bat in half with his bare hands. 

Robin chokes, hunches over and vomits straight onto the ground.

Fair enough, considering they’re looking at Steve Harrington. 

Fair enough, considering they’re looking at a dead man. 

read on ao3 | playlist

steddie - 22k words - rated M excerpt under the cut:

“I turned the key,” she says hoarsely, like she can’t quite believe either what she’s saying or that she’s saying it at all. 

“Okay, I don’t…”

“I turned the key,” she says again, eyebrows knitting together. “They were saying to do it, they were— everyone was screaming and— and I was waiting for them to get out, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t. And Joyce said…” 

Eddie feels numb, looking at her like this, and he reaches out to wrap a hand gently around her ankle just to try and get some sense of hereness. 

“I turned it,” she says. 

Certainty. 

Knowledge. 

These terrible, terrible things at the end of this terrible, terrible day. She still looks outside of herself, but the presence of her pain is right there on the surface of her skin, in the gloss of her eyes, in the way she finally looks at Eddie and she can’t quite meet his gaze but he feels the intention behind it all the same. 

“I don’t—” she swallows, wet and thick, “know what to do now.” 

Eddie glances over his shoulder, catches sight of Wayne having settled in on one of the nearby waiting room chairs, acting as sentry and acting with all the patience he’s always carried for his family. 

For the little brother who made one too many mistakes and got too big for his britches in court and ended up serving a longer sentence than he really should have been; for the kid who needed  home in the aftermath of all that, bringing all the anger and restless energy of perceived injustice that any thirteen-year-old could manage. 

Eddie sees him there, gets a small nod of do what you gotta do, and then squeezes Robin’s ankle. 

“Are your parents on their way?” 

“I think so,” she says after a beat in which she seems to actually think. “I think. Mrs. Henderson said.” 

She watched it happen. 

Eddie still doesn’t know what exactly killed them— Steve and Hopper— but he knows that Robin watched it happen. 

He knows they sent those adults down there with them so they wouldn’t have to do it themselves and he knows that no matter how much Eddie himself will always be haunted by the sight of them walking out of Starcourt two men short, he didn’t see it. 

Robin saw it. 

She breathes like she’s still seeing it. 

“I’ll wait with you,” Eddie tells her, because he doesn’t have any answers on what to do next and he doesn’t have any wisdom on how to deal with this because he feels like— he feels like all of his organs have been removed, like there’s a gaping space filling up with viscera and soot right where his gut is supposed to go. “Okay?” 

Robin swallows again. She looks green around the gills. She still has blood underneath her fingernails, and maybe that should be the next step, but if Eddie were to take her to wash up he would just— he just— any sort of gentleness right now? 

Anything other than his hand around her ankle and speaking in stilted logistical truths?

Too much. Too, too much. 

“Okay,” Robin’s voice cracks. 

She doesn’t move to touch him, doesn’t look him in the eye, barely holds her own hands in her own lap. 

Eddie wonders if she’ll ever tell him what it looked like. 

He wonders if knowing might kill him.

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I've gotten loads written tonight (and still have loads to write these chapters are Long don't get excited fjdskalfj) so succumbing to the urge to share a White Rabbit sneak peek-- chapter 2 opening scene coming your way if you're interested🖤

“You want me to bribe a cop?” 

“I mean,” Steve snorts, leaning back against the side of the van and stretching out his legs as far as they’ll go like he’s in this for the long haul, “don’t say it like that.” 

“How else do you want me to say it?” Eddie can’t help the blustering indignation in his voice, can’t help but lean towards Steve and all that getting-comfortable energy of his. 

He’s not even high right now, he’s just here. 

Here in Eddie’s van where he’d climbed in to make a quick exchange of product and payment and then just— didn’t leave. Here where he’d spotted three unpaid parking tickets tucked between an amp and the back of the front seat and decided to suggest— again, completely sober— that Eddie bribe his way out of them. 

“Listen, you hand off Hopper a little—” he makes a motion with his hands like he’s smoking a joint, “free of charge? You’re free as a bird.” 

“Again,” Eddie levels him with the force of all of his bewilderment. “You think the best option here is to bribe the Chief of Police with free weed?” 

Steve tilts his head back, skull resting at an angle as he looks down the bridge of his nose with an amused glint to his eyes, all that clarity making the underlying tiredness that resides there more obvious. 

“What, don’t you trust me, Eddie?” he asks, almost a smile, almost sincere about it, almost something that Eddie can’t quite put his finger on because— because he never calls him by his first name. 

He’s Munson the plug, not Eddie; they’re not friends, just a couple of guys whose lives overlap. 

And it’s a joke, this ask of trust, but trust is never really a funny thing to Eddie. Trust is a vulnerable thing, a terrifying thing, the kind of thing that predicts unhappy endings because anything so fragile as trust is destined to be broken. 

And it’s a joke. 

It’s just a joke. 

So, “between you and my common sense? I think you’re losin’ that one, buddy,” he laughs, feels something tight in his chest release when Steve shrugs it off, tells him he’s missing out on a good client but whatever, man. 

Steve doesn’t have to be here right now. 

That’s going to stick out for Eddie one day, when he realizes there’s meaning in all of it, every little tiny inconsequential moment. 

It’s an afternoon that doesn’t knock any dominoes down, doesn’t start a new adventure and doesn’t finish one either, but it will stick with Eddie, one of these days. 

It will stick that Steve didn’t need to be there, but stayed anyways. 

It will stick, because Steve won’t always stay.