Colemontgomeryx·:

“Living after midnight, rockin’ to the dawn. Lovin’ ‘til the morning, then I’m gone. I’m gone.”

stevehharringtcns·:

something about returning to lover’s lake didn’t feel right to steve. the thought of the lake alone made steve almost panic, but he had to keep it up and act like the brave guy he was. he was brave. it was just a lake. the gate was closed. but people had been dragged. like he had been two years before. he wasn’t going in that water ever again, he thought to himself. everyone was just lucky that everyone was okay and not dragged back to the upside down. the gate was closed. he was standing by himself in the cabin, looking at himself in the nearest mirror.

he had been wearing eddie’s vest ever since they had returned from the shore. and it looked good on him. it still did. and it reminded him of eddie. well, of course it did, it was his. but steve thought it looked better on him, but of course eddie looked good on it too. he was lost in his thoughts when he heard eddie’s voice coming from behind, which made him quickly turn around from his reflection and see eddie.

“i’m here.” he said with a smile on his face, his smile only widening as eddie got closer. the last time they had been alone, well… they had ended up kissing in his bed. he wasn’t sure how this one was going to turn out, but there were people out there. and steve wasn’t sure if he wanted everyone to catch them making out inside the cabin.

“i wasn’t hiding from you… but i was definitely hiding. it doesn’t feel right being back here.” he said with a small sigh, shaking his head. “feels weird being back, right?” he asked, raising an eyebrow slightly at eddie’s comment about his vest. “i wouldn’t run off with it, but… you should know that it definitely looks great on me. better than it looks on you.” he chuckled at him. “are… are you okay?” he asked, as he reached out to place a hand on eddie’s arm in a comforting way.

+++

he couldn't help but bite his lip, grinning, hands clasped behind his back as he leaned against the wall next to steve, eyes raking over his frame. nope, definitely couldn't deny that the vest looked good on him - had looked even better when he'd worn nothing under it but that was a thought for another time.

a spark ran through him as steve got closer, remembering the last time they'd hung out. when eddie had shown up on his doorstep, terrified, and it had ended up with them sharing a bed, making out, waking up cuddling. they hadn't talked much since, the events of the day had pretty much prevented eddie from forming a single coherent thought aside from frantic, panicked over thinking.

he nodded, eyes darting down to the floor. "yeah. everytime i look at that like I think of -", he stopped himself, gave steve a sheepish smile, shrugged. steve knew what he thought of, he'd been through it too, after all, and eddie really didn't want to make any hurtful memories resurface.

aside from watergate, lovers lake also strongly reminded eddie of his time spent in hiding. the fear that had gripped him when he'd looked over his shoulder and seen jason carver, eddie thought he'd seen his life flash before his eyes. he shrugged again. "weird doesn't even begin to cover it, man."

steves hand on his arm made eddie shiver and he smiled again, leaned into the touch, his fingers idly toying with the hem of steve's shirt. fidgeting - nervous habit. "yeah, yeah, we all know you're crazy handsome and everything looks good on you, yada yada. you done now?" a teasing chuckle fell from his lips as he looked back up at steve. "doesn't mean you get to keep it. besides, I'm starting to get cold, man."

eddie's mood sobered a little at steves question and he gave another shrug. "i don't know if I've ever been, like, fully okay after... what happened. but being here.... it's weird. and not a good kinda weird. bad weird." a couple of beats passed before eddie broke the silence with a soft "I'm glad your here, steve."

rcbinbvckleys·:

⚢

slipping in the front door of eddie’s trailer, robin almost had the scare of her life when eddie called her name from such a short distance. “do you ever speak at a normal volume?” a rhetorical question, for she already knew the answer. eddie always had a lot of energy, it was almost admirable and very infectious. perhaps one of the reasons robin enjoyed his company so much. besides the fact that she didn’t ever feel the need to hide with eddie, which in itself was extremely freeing.

“i’ve been here before, dingus. i remember that mattress of yours, for example.” and how gross it was. flashing a mischievous grin in eddie’s direction, robin joined him on the couch, eyes fixed on watching his hands work at rolling the joint. he was much better at rolling than she was, probably because he’d had a lot more practice. sure she’d been to eddie’s trailer a number of times but nothing could really compare to the first few where they’d literally all been on the verge of death.

“it’s good. no, great!” a barefaced lie and they both knew it. maybe getting high with eddie munson was the release that robin needed right now, but would that really make everything just… go away? sure, for a little while but not completely. “actually, i’ve been kind of distracted recently.”

+++

“huh? what was that?”, he called out, even louder, a wide, toothy, teasing grin on his face. he’d turned up his stereo real loud, not loud enough to cause any of the neigbours to call the cops on him but loud enough so that the muffled sounds of the latest ‘ratt’ record were audible in the living room.

eddie grimaced as she mentioned the mattress, resisted the urge to pull his hair over his face to hide behind it, seeing as he wasn’t particularly keen on having it go up in flames. “oh my god, robin, just let it go. please. i give you plenty enough material for your mediocre jokes as is, let the fucking mattress go.”, he muttered around puffs, brows drawn together. 

but he loved it, their dynamic. hanging out with robin was always easy and comfortable, didn’t feel forced at all. their vibes just .. matched, it was hard to explain. after vecna, after everything had happened and they’d gotten closer, started to hang out more, eddie had often wondered why they hadn’t been friends in high school.

kicking his feet up on the coffee table, he passed the joint to her, eyed her with a frown. “bullshit.”, he said, crossed his arms over his chest. “what’s the matter, what’s going on?”

EDDIE MUNSON + HANDS Stranger Things 4 (2022)

found it in a better quality guys 😭😭 I wanna cry

zccming·:

.

max was comfortable with silence, silence was safe most of the time. she could live there for a while if needed. she knew full well that she wasn’t the best with words, and usually, if ever, people didn’t come to her for her motivational speeches. more often than not, it looked like this, max going to someone and offering herself up as a shoulder, someone to share the load of a burden with if only for a little while. at least, lately, that’s what it looked like. 

she watched eddie not speaking, setting her bowl down when he did, quietly indicated, nah, me either. it was the thought that counted or whatever, right? when eddie frantically verified that she was alright, max kept an expression of stone as she nodded. she was more or less in one piece, so was he, so was steve, so was everyone. now she wasn’t happy all of this had happened, but the relief that came with doing her rounds and seeing her friends alive and breathing was enough to propel her through a sleepless twenty four hours at the hospital, and a long ride on her board back home. 

their wordless processing ended though as eddie confessed, his voice uneasy. max hadn’t really seen him like this. not for a long time, not since they’d gotten closer. instantly, she jumped to all of the ways she could fix this, which started with calming eddie down and ended with something along the lines of throwing callahan in a deep deep pit he couldn’t crawl out of. “you’re not a monster.” she said swiftly and with such conviction she hoped it knocked into him like a punch, like he’d have no choice but to believe it. “you were innocent then and you’re innocent now.” max wouldn’t tell him it was okay because she knew he didn’t feel like it was. “they haven’t released names yet, i don’t think anyone other than…us saw it happen.” she used reason to talk him down.  

when none of that seemed to work and he shook his head and began a spiral, max yelled, hopping to snap him out of it “eddie!” she took his hands and offered the following words like a get out of jail free card, “steve will not let anything happen to you. i will not let anything happen to you.” she laughed a wryly, hoping to make everything feel less heavy, “you think robin, and nancy, and literally anyone else would let that slide? fuck no.” she shook her head, then offered her final comfort, “we’ve figured it out like four times before, we’ll do it again. you’re a vet this time, munson. you just gotta screw your head back onto your shoulders.” 

+++

eddie scoffed, slumping further back into the couch, wishing it would swallow him whole. “yeah, and just like ‘86 nobody’s gonna believe me. real fucking nice.” he didn’t mean to snap at her, neither of them had anything to do with the utter chaos that was currently playing out in hawkins. but the rational part of his brain had long since bid its farewell and he simply hoped that max knew this. what did it matter if he was innocent or not? when people already stared at him , mistrusted him without a solid reason. now they had one and eddie didn’t want to imagine what the scalding looks burning into the back of his head could soon turn into. because he knew it, he’d lived it, and he couldn’t again, never again.

he gave her hands a short, tight squeeze before he relased them, carding his fingers through his tangled hair. taking deep breaths, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. this was just max, just max. meaning only good. trying to calm him. there was no reaosn to get upset, not with her. his mouth felt awfully dry. when he opened his eyes again they were fixed to the ceiling, looking at nothing in particular. “yeah, yeah, well, you remember what happened last time, right? i’m a vet, sure, but ... i almost wasn’t. almost wasn’t anything anymore.” and his lip quivered slightly at the memory, it was still fresh as day. a swarm of demobats circling around him, knocking him to the ground. a sharp sting in his side soon followed by agony and a fade to black, a teary goodbye, a faint white light. a faint white light that, for some reason, perhaps divine intervention, had faded into a shrill green-ish one, the distinct hue of hospital fluorescents. 

but what good had it ever done, dwelling on the past? dwelling on what almost had been, eddie munson, only good for running, it seemed. ‘don’t try to be cute, don’t try to be a hero’. he should’ve just listened to steve, stayed a decoy. heroism clearly didn’t suit him. thinking of... he sat up a little straighter. “how’s - how’s steve? have you seen him?”

cassieconrads·:

WHO: cassie conrrad & @eddiemcnson· WHERE: skull rock

In the weekend of the Fourth of July, Cassie had learned a lot. Hawkins was under attack by some supernatural creature, no one could leave, the government may or may not have been covering the whole thing up, and the girl Cassie thought she’d seen in her head the night at the graveyard actually hadn’t been dead. Which meant that she had some sort of apology to give to the nice guy with the rockstar head of hair she’d seen on her way to the library when she’d been looking for more information: Eddie Munson. After describing the cheerleader in her head, Eddie had proceeded to practically run in the other direction, and Cassie couldn’t help but dig into why. 

As it turned out, Eddie had been some sort of town-declared freak, after all. They’d thought that he was responsible for the cult in the woods or something like that, all because of playing Dungeons and Dragons. But, after talking to Lucas and finding out that there was no way some teenager could have done this singlehandedly back then, Cassie had come to realize just how horrible Hawkins had been to the guy. 

Which was why, upon seeing him at the rock where another one of Mike’s friends had apparently gotten possessed, according to Nancy, Cassie didn’t turn in the other direction. She also didn’t want to scare him into thinking she was there to pick a fight, so she approached with her hands in the air, notebook full of DnD notes she’d taken in one, as this was supposed to be a research trip.  “Please don’t run away this time, I come in peace,” she pleaded, taking cautious steps forward. “I promise. I have a whole lot of explaining to do and a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, half of which could be yours,” Cassie offered, lowering her hands slowly with a grin. 

+++

this was stupid. stupid, stupid, stupid. eddie truly didn’t know what had posessed him when he’d stormed out the trailer, headphones clasped tightly on his head, blasting the sisters of mercy’s 1987 ‘floodland’. coincidentally the same album he’d listened to over and over again following the months of spring break ‘86. the tape was worn out, sounding mangled at times, he didn’t care. it still provided him an odd sort of comfort. 

perhaps it had been wayne’s concerned nagging, or the way eddie still felt the bruises callahan’s handcuffs had left on his wrist. or it had been the fact that, once again, he couldn’t show his face in town without being subjected to scrutiny. maybe it had been eddie’s own doing, in the end, his constant overthinking that had caused him to snap at his uncle - who only meant well, of course, and eddie knew this - and leave the trailer to go on a walk. clear his head. not that he could take any of his usual routes, not if he planned on coming back home unharmed, anyway. still, he wondered why his feet had carried him to skull rock. muscle memory, maybe. just like it had been muscle memory in ‘86 when he’d fled to the same place after a run in with jason carver that had very nearly cost him his life, hadn’t vecna claimed his next victim at a particularly convenient moment.

being back at that spot did nothing in terms of calming his jangled nerves, made him feel worse, if anything. the feeling of worse-ness heightened by the fact that he’d forgot his cigarettes at home. bullshit. a voice cut through his incessant thoughts and eddie jumped, ripped his headphones off his head, ready to make a run for it. wasn’t that - oh. right.

a frown settled on his features, he eyed her with suspicion, a couple of beats passed. finally, he nodded apprehensively. “hand ‘em over.” and he nodded for her to go on.

walkie talks || steddie

steve: eddie?

steve: it's me, steve!

steve: are we alone... here?

eddie: oh. hi.

eddie: what do you want, harrington?

eddie: i see, even on the walkie line he's afraid someone might hear ...

Still super jealous as hell, by the way.

stevehharringtcns·:

.

steve wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself if something had happened to eddie at the carnival. he had been arrested and steve felt his heart sink when he had been told that. the worst part was that he was unable to help, but he was glad to see that the other was okay. he had been unharmed in the explosion. he wouldn’t have been able to handle it if eddie had been in the bed right next to him, in a different room or worse, if he had died. steve didn’t like thinking about that. not after everything that had happened two years prior, where steve had been the one to visit at the hospital after he had been attacked by the demo-bats and almost died. of course, at that point he hadn’t been this close to eddie, but he was still concerned of course. especially since dustin had become so close to eddie and he didn’t know how the kid would handle that loss. now the roles had switched.

he let his eyes be closed for a little longer, opening them to look at eddie. he hadn’t noticed he had been cold this entire time until eddie pointed it out. “a blanket… would be nice.” he said as he tried to adjust himself on the bed, but he was far too weak and far too bruised to even attempt to move. he would have to try again later, he thought. “but… just stay here for now.” he said, squeezing eddie’s hand so that he wouldn’t get up just now. he wanted for the other to stay beside him. it’s all he asked for at that moment. he looked over at him, a small and weak smile forming on his lips as he felt eddie’s hand on his. he was glad he was there with him. they both had survived and they both would be okay. they had to be. steve couldn’t imagine a future where the two of them wouldn’t be okay anymore. he had pushed away the thought of everything going wrong between them.

he enjoyed the silence for a couple of moments, heavy breathing as he did. he looked over at eddie when the other started sobbing, but he didn’t say anything. he couldn’t stop the other from feeling that way. he lied there, as he started feeling his own tears streaming from his eyes down his cheeks. he didn’t sob, he knew that it would hurt if he did, but he was crying. he hated seeing eddie like this, breaking down in front of him and he just couldn’t wrap his arms around him and bring him close. he squeezed his hand once again. “eddie…” he said, his voice weak as he sniffed, hoping that the tears would stop eventually. for both of them. the two were alive, yet they found themselves crying like one of them had died. it didn’t make any sense, but the two had been through enough for this to be allowed. “i’m not going anywhere. i promise…” he said weakly, nodding his head slowly. he wanted to keep that promise. he couldn’t leave eddie, he didn’t want to leave him. he couldn’t hurt him again. and seeing him like this made him feel stupid that he hadn’t seen the signs sooner, when they were fighting vecna and eddie was flirting with him. steve was too busy chasing something that he didn’t want. he wanted to be with eddie, and he was sure of it. “and when… when i leave the hospital, we’re going to…” he said, stopping to cough a little more, wincing as he felt the pain of his broken ribs spreading through, stopping to take a breath. once he recovered, he continued. “we’re going to watch… dirty dancing. and we’ll learn that… lift move. i promise.” he said with a nod.

he let the two of them calm down for a bit before he asked what he wanted to ask. he had been thinking about it for quite some time now. he just didn’t know that he needed a near death experience to actually say it. “life’s too short.” he started by saying, taking a deep breath after that. “i could have died… and-and…” he said as he started rambling, trying to find the right words. “i want you… to be… my boyfriend, eddie.” he said. it felt weird to say that out loud, he wasn’t used to it, but he knew that it was right. he knew that eddie was right for him. “no more… pretending that we’re just seeing each other and going out. i want… to be your boyfriend.” he said, giving the other a small nod. “okay?” he asked. 

+++

eddie nodded so fast and eagerly that he nearly strained his neck. “yeah, of course, blanket, blanket....”, he trailed off, anxious, strained eyes darting around, briefly landing on the bed cole montgomery currently occupied. but - no, eddie frowned, shook his head to himself softly, no, he couldn’t steal cole’s blanket. the man needed it to himself, probably. despite steve’s wishes to simply stay put, eddie reluctantly let go of his hand for a moment to shrug off his signature leather jacket and denim vest, carefully draping it over steve’s chest. “to tide you over ‘till you’re letting me leave to get you that blanket, hot shot.”

words followed by a weak, disingenuous smile, he squeezed steve hand again, tight, until the tears came spilling out on their own accord, body rocked by heavy sobs. eddie hated it, how easy he began to cry. in front of others, too. ever since he’d been a little kid, once the tears came there was no stopping them, which had obviously made eddie the subject of ridicule. over the years he had learned to ‘suck it up’, develop thicker skin, bottle up his feelings. not let people in on what was truly going on inside him. but steve was ...  different. 

and steve was crying, too. eddie’s head snapped up as he heard him sniffle, his own sobs ceasing instantly. his chest heavy with the guilt that his display of emotion had caused the tears he was now softly wiping away with his thumb, caressing steve’s cheek as he did so. “hey, shh. i’m sorry, sorry, sweetheart. i didn’t mean - sorry.” he shook his head, shaking the last couple of tears out of the corners of his eyes as he did so. they’d have plenty of time to cry once steve got out of there. besides, crying was exhausting, and steve was here to get better, to rest and relax. and eddie could get up and finally get him that blanket once they had both calmed down. steve’s hands really were cold.

the cough made steve wince and eddie tear up again. he bit down on his lip, hard, winced and mirrored steve’s grimace, wishing he could mirror the pain, too. if he couldn’t take it from him then they could at least be together in their suffering . teeth moving over his bottom lip, he waited patiently as steve recovered enough to continue talking. an incredulous chuckle drawn from his lips, brows raised, eddie softly shook his head in disbelief, raised their joined hands to his lips again. “yeah. yeah, alright, we’ll learn the lift. whatever you want.”

life’s too short, i could’ve died. feeling the lump in his throat grow bigger, eddie blinked and averted his gaze to their hands, thumb softly tracing over his knuckles. his whispers of “no” and “don’t say that”, quickly ceased as steve finally popped the dreaded question. come to think of it - not dreaded at all, actually. eddie lifted his head very slowly until he met steve’s eyes, a puzzled look on his face as steve’s words kept repeating in his head. boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. i want to be your boyfriend. he blinked, confused, squeezed steve’s hand - yeah, no, this was real. this was definitely real.

“i - i’m sorry?” a couple of beats passed before the meaning of steve’s words had apparently sunk in, eddie’s bemused expression suddenly fading, making way for a wide, toothy grin. he nodded slowly, his grin spreading wider and wider before eddie surged forward, to connect their lips in a short and soft kiss, careful not to hurt steve in any way. “yeah. yeah, of course, dumbass. duh. “ and eddie laughed, genuinely and loudly, quickly pressed his lips together, giving steve a sheepish smile. “i mean - you’re, like, a hundred percent sure about this?  because .. cause i’d hate for you to wake up, like, tomorrow or whenever the painkillers have worn off and regret the whole thing.”