Power Scaling
comic based on a comment i got on tiktok
đ đ New Years Eve Steddie please!
You got it! Here are the boys finally meeting!
Eddie rubs a tired hand over his forehead. âMy shiftâs over in literally five minutes. Would youâŚwould you feel comfortable enough to go to the diner next door with me? Iâve got some Advil in my employee locker. And I could get you a cheeseburger.â The guy goes completely quiet and still. He goes to try and shimmy around with the door, maybe get it off its hinges or something, make sure heâs not choking orâ But then he sniffles softly. âThat sounds really nice,â he says, âyouâre really nice. WhatâsâŚwhatâs your name?â âEddie, and yours?â âSteve,â he breathes. âSorry Iâm such a sack of crap. Wasting your time.â
Thank you for the ask!
WIP Weekend Ask Game!
There should be a fanfiction with Eleven and Steve as seven. In this fanfiction should be a joke about the store âSeven Elevenâ.
Sometimes I think of a Steve Harrington that is absolutely exhausted by all the horror and bullshit and trying to keep the kids alive through said horror and bullshit, who watches Eddie rock up to him at the beginning of S4 with a dead eyed, flat stare.
"Steeeeve Harrington." Eddie taunts and peacocks and twirls around him, and all Steve wanted was for a couple months to process the trauma, maybe feel safe enough to start thinking about the future instead of stuck in a never ending anxiety loop of what might happen to Dumbass Near-Deatherson, should Steve go to college or move out of Hawkins (bc all the bad nicknames in the world won't erase the fact that Dustin's family, now. They're all family. And when they need help, they go to Steve.) and now he's suffering the unjust ordeal of being haunted by the high school drug dealer.
"His highness has come down from his castle!" Munson will crow, making a show out of Steve picking up the kids like this is a great battle of wits, a scoreboard between them and not like Steve is half dead on his feet, head aching, dreams full of too many teeth. "Quickly hide behind me, he'll try to cut off your heads!"
"Wouldn't he just cut yours off too?" Lucas asked, though the tone was slightly timid, Sinclair unsure if his joke would be well recieved.
(Steve doesn't care if the kid outright insults him. He still recalls the junkyard, the fight with Billy, the blood staining the kid's headband. Lucas lived, therefore, he can be a shit if wants.)
"Mine? Oh, the King wouldn't dare." Munson tosses his head, full of cartoon energy, too big for his body and grin both. "Many have tried you see, but no one had ever succeeded!"
Steve, equally, does not give a single shit that Eddie Munson has decided to play these games with him--until he realizes he's maybe been a little too exhausted and depressed and morose around the kids.
Watches them getting worried over him, whispering urgently and making dramatic gestures and talking to Robin and suddenly, playing a little tug of war over them the way Munson seems to want feels like a good idea. A way to hide all the rough edges, a way to be fine so they can be fine.
"How about you guys skip the dork brigade tonight," Steve taunts back the next time they're all together, standing like the man he used to be, wearing a dead personality. "And we go do something actually fun instead?"
Eddie laughs, lights up, is all too happy to match him tit for tat, and it's so easy to fake this kind of interaction, rolling his eyes and snapping his gum. Steve could match this energy in his sleep, and never once does Munson catch on that Steve's not doing this for him.
That he's not even looking at him half the time, eyes askew, locked on the kids. Seeing them relax as he banters, seeing Dustin glow as he returns to his favorite position, being the center of attention.
So long as they think he's okay, Steve will be okay. If that means putting up with Munson, then so be it.
Its not like he'll catch on.
Eddie doesnt.
(Or rather, he does--but Its months and several deaths later, when they're in the RV, chasing what feels like literal demons, does it dawn on Eddie what Steve is doing.
Has been doing, the whole time.
Steve, sassy, ridiculous, jock- brained Steve makes the mistake of doing it again, using the same trick he had on the kids to convince them he was fine on Eddie. To further convince Eddie that they were fine as a group.
That they'll survive, they'll figure it out, they'll make it.
Loudly bantering with dead eyes, smiling with a mouth robotically locked in. Jokes on jokes on jokes and all of them making the kids take their minds off VecnaHenryOne to screech ineffectively at their babysitter. Winks tossed to the girls, who both roll their eyed at him. A sly look given to Eddie, to include him.
Its then, that Eddie decides to cement his life with Steve's. Because this loyal bastard of a paladin is too good hearted to die, too protective to not try it anyway. The idiot is cutting himself to ribbons to tie them all together and Eddie can't undo the damage but he can grab all the pieces he can, loop them together.
He can make those dead eyes light up again.
And he does.
This time when things are over Steve finds himself unable to pull those little tricks of his. Every time he slides the mask over his face Eddie rips it right back off again.
They fight, a lot, until they start kissing instead and for a while that also, somehow, feels like fighting but Eddie's real good at this. The emotional part, not so much the kissing, but he knows how to draw Steve out. How to break down walls, and annoying his real personality out.
The kissing was just an odd little side benefit.
A thing they don't talk about.
There's a benefit to it, one he doesn't look very hard into, until strangely, one day, Eddie wakes with Steve's head pillowed on his shoulder and comes to the abrupt conclusion that he's screwed.
Or so he thinks--until bright, loving eyes blink awake, and turn on him, and Eddie realizes just how long it's been since they looked dead.
He wonders, vaguely, how long it'll take for Steve to catch on, that this just got serious.
Will laugh at himself when he learns that Steve already knew.
Guess that's what he gets for finally paying attention.)
steve having periods where he just zones out, and thinking that zoning out is an acceptable alternative to sleep because he can't sleep, what if something happens, what if someone needs him, and the nightmaresâ
This is probably not what the first Idea really was about, however this is what i thought about direktly after reading the post.
"Eddie, maybe we should stop." Cautiously, Gareth turned to his friend.
"We can always move on at another time." Jeff put his hand on Eddie's back and handed him a glass of water, which he tried to drink in one gulp.
He shook his head vehemently. With one hand he held the glass tightly and with the other he wiped the coming tears from his eyes.
"Eddie..." "No!" he interrupted Dustin directly. "Nâ His voice broke off.
"Edward Theodor Munson!" Wayne's voice filled the living room. Eddie wiped his eyes again with the back of his hand and stared at the glass. He could hear Wayne come to a stop beside him.
"We've talked about this! Your throat is still hurt." Wayne's voice was stern and he let out a deep sigh before kneeling beside his nephew. He just put a hand on the head full of brown curls and let the boy cry.
Eddie didn't even try to suppress his tears anymore and the looks from the Hellfire troop were no longer important.
"Boy, I know how important this is to you, but please think about your health. We're glad you're still here, that you're alive!" Eddie didn't dare look his uncle in the eye. "We want you to be well, and that includes you healing."
Eddie and Wayne had had this conversation a thousand times in the last two weeks. Eddie wanted to get back to normal and enjoy D&D with his friends. To have the game to himself again and not leave it to the near apocalypse. But Eddie's vocal chords were still damaged from the damage the demobats had done to his throat.
Wayne stroked Eddie's head gently.
"Kids, why don't you get me a chair from the kitchen, I'm too stiff to kneel or sit on the floor. And you boy show me what I have to narrate for you."
somebody write a fic where Eddie has to do something and Wayne needs to sub as dm last minute and knocks it outta the park because where did you think Eddie got his storytelling skills from?
Steve will drop lore on Eddie in this âeverybody knows this, catch upâ kinda way when it painfully clear that everybody absolutely did not know this.
Like, Eddie asks Steve to move his chair so he can slide passed him like three time in the middle of a party at the Byers and is being ignored. Finally, heâs like, âGround control to Major Asshole. Can you hear me?â
Steveâs only notices him because he kicks his chair in the process and is like, âOh, sorry, man. Gotta talk on my other side. I lost my hearing on this side.â
Which, great.
Eddie feels like an asshole but he can actually put that to the side because the whole table is just like, ââŚwhat? Since when?â
âUmâŚâ Steve says, like. Yeah. This is common knowledge. âTwo years ago?â
One time in the middle of the summer, Eddie is ogling the freckles across Steveâs shoulders at a pool party when Steve yawns. Eddie jokingly asks if teaching Robin to drive tired him out that much and Steveâs like, âNah, I had a seizure this morning. Those tire me out for days. Itâs so annoying.â
âWoah,â because Eddie didnât even know that was something on their radar. Neither did Nancy judging by the whole plate of hotdogs she just dropped on the ground.
Steve causally mentioned that he didnât have his appendix anymore a couple weeks after they closed the gate officially. Eddie asked when he had the surgery expecting an answer to be when he was a kid, but Steve gives him a weird look like, âUh, couple weeks ago.â
âA couple - what?â Jonathan sputtered from across the room. âA couple weeks ago, we killed Vecna.â
âYeahh???â Steve rolled his eyes. âAnd then I had my appendix taken out. Thatâs what happens when youâre stabbed.â
âYou were stabbed?!?â
âCâmon, man. You were there. Keep up.â
Eddie is shut up mid-sentence by lips against his and, wow. Whoa. Steve Harrington kissing him right now and Eddie should definitely kiss back but, âYou like guys? Iâve had a chance this whole time?â
âIâm literally bisexual.â
Uni.
Mmm think I'm gonna be evil tonight. Think I'm gonna write a fic of Steve and Robin slowly distancing themselves because their lives get so busy. Of Steve not knowing what to do because he wants this relationship to stay alive, it's the only real friendship he's had since high school. It's the only friendship that's ever mattered to him. And now it's just falling apart right in front of his eyes. So he keeps trying and trying and trying. And Robin's trying, too, but their schedules don't line up anymore.
Robin's in college.
Steve is working full-time minimum wage.
Robin's got a girlfriend and a whole group of foreign language friends.
Steve has Eddie, but Eddie works, too. He has Dustin, but Dustin's got school. And so does Max. And Nancy's in college with Jonathan.
So he writes letters. Postcards. Makes whole journal entries of his seemingly boring, stupid mundane life. Stuffs whole orange envelopes with his silly journal entries and polaroids he takes while hiking and a list of all the movies he's checked out from Family Video that months. He keeps Robin up to date with frequent customers they both hated. He just keeps trying.
Robin writes, too. About classes and final exams and when she's coming home for holidaysâhow she's only spending time with her parents because she can't stay for long. But it's too sporadic. Steve tries to respond, leave a message for her about getting her letters.
It's just not enough.
They both tried. They both called. They both wrote. They both gave it a shot.
But their conversations go dry. Their free time now dwindling.
It hits him, like a punch to the sternum, they're not going to last. After all this time, the trauma they shared, the conversations on bathroom floors...he can't save the friendship, she can't save the friendship. It's a matter of time until they stop talking.
And all they can do is hold on.
depressed thoughts about one's own existence a few month before your finals are so much FUN!