Part One Two Three

The Party

tags: major character death, angst, grief, healing, Eddie POV, stobin

word count: 692

The Party throws a party.

for @stobinmonth prompt: Steve and Robin die

They don't talk as much anymore. Ten years ago, things were different-- he would hear from the East Coast gang once a month and at least one of the Cali group was always hanging around the house, shoe rack overflowing in the front hall.

Eddie gets it. That's why he's so grateful when they can all get together like this, everyone under the same roof, just like Steve and Robin always wanted.

It's the anniversary of their death today. They were barely 50 when the two of them left the house for work and never came back. Time has healed the very worst of the loss for Eddie, but it stings him sometimes when he isn't expecting it. He can't imagine ever living through this day alone.

The shoes are piled up around the shoe rack, all different shapes and sizes and styles. The children are playing a video game in the living room. There's a loud ruckus going on in the kitchen over the margarita recipe. He already knows what he'll hear if he walks in. Steve's disciples will bray on about adding jalapeno in his honor. Robin's group will defend her lasting belief that jalapenos have no place in a beverage. They'll get nowhere until Lucas breaks and makes a second pitcher.

Eddie slips upstairs to collect the decorations. He should have done this before they all arrived, but he was busy. Okay. He was wallowing, but you would too sometimes if your best friends had been dead for ten years.

There's the string of letters that spells out their names. The giant blown up posters of the worst pictures of them he could find. A box of random shit he keeps firmly shut every day but this one.

When he comes back down, they're all in the living room cheering on the kids. And Mike, who has commandeered one of the tiny controller things. It seems like he's losing to his own son, who looks about as smug and shit-eating as Mike always had at his age.

They all help him hang the names and the posters, laughing as they do. The box takes its place of honor on the coffee table for anyone to open and sift through if they want to. It's always El who dives in first, somehow unafraid to face her grief.

They spend the day and half the night together. The older children go upstairs to watch a horror movie when it gets late while the youngest (a mop-headed Henderson) falls asleep half on top of his mother. There's a plush alligator wrapped in his lanky arms.

"He should keep that," Eddie says. The words come off his tongue more easily than he feels they should. He fights the urge to snatch them back.

Suzie and Dustin stare at him. "Are you sure?"

"It's just collecting dust in that box. Robin would want him to play with it instead." The fact that it's true makes the idea of it leaving the house a tiny bit more bearable.

Dustin sniffles, his eyes suddenly wet. "He never got to meet them, you know. It kills me sometimes."

Suzie pats his left hand, Max grabs his right. "He knows them, honey," his wife tells him. "Why do you think he knows every single story in that box? Why do you think he loves coming over here to be with everyone each year? That's Steve and Robin, babe. They're still here."

Eddie finds himself joining the waterworks that spring up after that, everyone grabbing a tissue from the table to wipe at their eyes or blow their nose.

She's right, he knows. Steve and Robin are here every year when the people they loved the most come together to talk about them. To complain about how annoying they were in life and in death. I mean, who lives through five separate otherworldly monster attacks and then dies in a ten car pile-up? It's absurd.

But he knows this party, these people all laughing together, is everything Steve and Robin would have wanted.

Eddie slowly collects the items from around the room and closes the box for another year.

So, tattoo shop AUs are really popping off lately and personally I love it. What’s more romantic than bleeding for art? Nothing!

But as someone married to a tattoo artist, I have been experiencing some mild She Wouldn’t Say That regarding tattoo culture. So here’s a few quick tips that may help inform your AU. With a grain of salt for my mostly-second-hand knowledge:

NO ONE REPUTABLE SHOP WILL TATTOO A DRUNK PERSON. EVER. or even a person they suspect of any kind of inebriation. This is not just for Regret reasons, but also because alcohol is a blood thinner. If someone is on an acute dose of blood thinners, you generally do not want to stab them dozens of times per second.

Maybe this is regional, but in my experience most tattoo places don’t call themselves parlors anymore. It has a kind of seedy vibe. I see shop or studio a lot but rarely parlor.

Most tattoo artists are hot, yes, but none are as hot at my wife

Tattooing janks up your hands. Sometimes in a RSI way but definitely in a changing-gloves-every-five-minutes-fucks-up-your-skin way.

Artists themselves are rarely if ever employees of the shop. They will be independent contractors who pay the shop either a cut of their sales or rent on their station like a hair dresser. They are also (usually) responsible for taking care of their own supplies, tools, etc. except for the stencil printer. What kind of dweeb would have their own stencil printer?

There is always a line for the stencil printer. Always.

Artists generally spend orders of magnitude more time working on art, replying to emails, doing consults, etc compared to time with their needles in skin.

A typical schedule for an artist might be: wake up at noon and guzzle half her body weight in coffee, one appointment from 1-4, and another from 6-9. Home to eat one (1) real meal at 10 pm. Drawing until 5 am. This is good for her actually and good for our marriage and she’s so healthy all the time.

An ideal shop receptionist needs to be friendly, knowledgeable, and encouraging. They also need to be willing to get out the baseball bat that is kept behind the counter.

If a shop has to choose between “good people skills” and “will promptly rebuff Nazis and the obviously inebriated” the later is often a more important consideration.

At any given moment in any given shop there’s going to be at least one apprentice or someone bumming around hoping to be taken on as an apprentice. They spawn on tic and this feature cannot be disabled.

Again I can not overstate how hot my wife is

Mmmmm

"Losing My Religion" by R.E.M.

A Steddie break-up fic where Steve, hopeless romantic Steve, is in a whirlwind romance with Eddie. And Eddie who finally gets his big break and plans to leave Hawkins in the rear view. It starts slowly, just little things Steve doesn't take to heart: Eddie getting distracted in the middle of a cuddle session or a kiss or even sex, Eddie pulling away quicker (but he's still loving on Steve so he doesn't really care), maybe cancelling more on their date nights or claiming that he's got plans already made with the Corroded Coffin boys.

And then the space between them just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and Steve is left behind in the dust. Abandoned again. He's always looking to Eddie, but Eddie's not looking back. They're arguing more. There's a knot, a strain weighing on their relationship.

When Steve begins to pull back, Eddie barely puts in the effort to keep him tethered. And Steve, gullible and hopeless romantic Steve, lets Eddie get away with it. Because any attention is better than none. Even if he's going to bed alone every night, waking up to a going cold space beside him. Even if he's biting his fist during an argument, saving the tears for a quick shower. Even if he has to choke back on his emotions, because any big outbursts he thinks will push Eddie further away. Will spiral them out farther.

But then Eddie just abruptly leaves. Leaves their life, their friends, Hawkins as a whole. And Steve has to get his number through Wayne, who thought the boys were still together.

And it's not until Eddie answers with a, "Hello? Oh—hold on, babe, somebody's on the phone," that Steve finally puts two and two together. They aren't even dating anymore. He hangs up before say anything.

Eddie's left with the distant sound of somebody breathing on the other side and the dial tone. Never to hear from Steve again.

...anyway!

No Obligation (part 1?)

wc: 1.3k || rating: T || tags: omegaverse steddie, post-s4 au, eddie lives, max lives, o!steve, a!eddie, rockstar!eddie, mpreg, oc!kid, friends-with-benefits, second chance love, secret pregnancy, pining || summary: after corroded coffin makes it big, eddie leaves hawkins and never looks back, while steve is unknowingly pregnant with their pup. which might have been fine, had they actually been together.

~

It had broken Steve’s heart when Eddie left.

Which was stupid because it wasn’t like they had even actually been together. They had fooled around a lot, kind of exclusively though they’d never said as such in words, but they weren’t together. They went on what were very obviously dates, though they didn’t acknowledge them as such, and there’d been no courtship. It was just for fun.

When Eddie broke things off, when he left Hawkins because he finally got that chance he had been waiting for and Corroded Coffin had actually landed a record deal, it was amicable. They hadn’t been a thing, they had just been…a placeholder. Just something to pass the time until something better came along.

Except, watching Eddie leave and never look back when his something better came along, Steve realized that he had kind of been hoping for a forever type of deal, been hoping that he could be the something better after all.

It was three and a half weeks after Eddie left that Steve discovered he was pregnant.

Steve knew he should find a doctor, take care of things quietly. He was an unbonded omega; a pregnancy would ruin any and all prospects he had. He’d even had Robin make the appointment for him.

He never went.

He didn’t go to the makeup appointment either.

No one had known about him and Eddie, not officially. Robin obviously knew, he could keep nothing from his soulmate, and he figured Eddie’s bandmates knew, but what had been between them had been a secret. Just two bros helping each other through their cycles, finding release when the stress or nightmares got too much, and that was that.

Eddie made that more than clear. And Steve had started the whole thing in complete agreement.

If only he hadn’t fallen in love with his best friend.

Eddie never visited, like he promised he would. He was too caught up in what was practically overnight success. Being the prime suspect of Satanic ritual serial killings made the metal community perk up in interest, nevermind that he was found to be completely innocent of the charges. It was good publicity. Even his scars enticed fans.

He called, once or twice, but he stopped calling Steve ‘sweetheart’ by then, and it became obvious that Eddie had no intention in ever returning to Hawkins. Not without an obligation.

Steve never wanted to be an obligation again. Didn’t want that for his pup either.

Didn’t want Eddie to feel trapped, didn’t want his pup to feel resented, because Steve knew that Eddie would drop everything to try to be a good father, even if it wasn’t what he wanted. Even if returning to Hawkins would slowly kill him on the inside.

So Steve said nothing.

The pup growing inside his belly wouldn’t be Eddie’s. It was his; just his. Steve wouldn’t ever be able to be the pup’s alpha parent, but he could be enough. He would be enough, because there was no other choice. He would sever all familial connection between the pup and Eddie. Sure, part of him wanted just a little bit of the man he wanted to be his alpha still, but the pup would never be a placeholder like Steve had been.

His pup was his. Not a replacement for the man he couldn’t have. It was his pup and no one else’s. Thus there would never be any obligation.

Especially after Eddie stopped calling. Stopped writing. Stopped…everything.

He still contacted Dustin and the others, he knew. Sent them out tickets for his shows when he played nearby. As his fame and fortune grew, he even flew them out for visits and shows farther away.

Steve had been invited, of course, but Steve was done with being an obligation too. The love was still there, it always would be for Steve, but the friendship mellowed out as they moved on with their lives. After all, what basis did their friendship even have without the trauma that tied them together? Trauma that Eddie obviously wanted to forget.

Seven months after Eddie left, Steve’s son was born.

Steve never resented Eddie for leaving, for never loving him, or for anything else. Though there was no denying the dark curls atop his son’s head, Steve never really thought of the pup as his and Eddie’s. It was his pup. There was no alpha listed on the birth certificate, no talk of the pup’s other parent being gone, no nothing. Steve would never let his pup believe for a second that he was missing anything.

He definitely would not let the pup believe that he had a father out there who didn’t want him. No, as far as everyone else was concerned, Steve wanted a pup so he set out to get one using a donor. Even as the pup grew older, Steve’s eye color in a shape that was not his own, Steve’s cheeks but not his chin, Steve’s moles but not his smile…

Steve never entertained whispers of the kid being anyone else’s but his and his alone.

And what did it matter since Eddie would never know the pup even existed to begin with? Would never know because he was never coming back?

Robin helped, and those closest to him did as well, even when Steve could see that they knew. Even if they didn’t know before, they had to know now. But the pup was his, never an obligation or reluctant duty for anyone else. Never feel even for a second like he was unwanted or unloved.

The first time Wayne saw the pup, a few months after he was born when Steve ran into him at the grocery store, the older alpha had dropped the eggs he was carrying.

Steve made it clear that the sleeping boy was his and his alone, something that Wayne seemed to understand. The alpha still asked to see the pup more, something Steve didn’t have the heart to deny. Not when he saw the way Wayne’s eyes glistened with tears.

Not when the man looked like he had found something he’d lost a long time ago.

And so the pup grew up. It was getting harder and harder to deny the other half of the kid’s genes, of course, not with his curls, or the piercing look in his eyes, or his intelligence he certainly didn’t get from Steve. And then there was the music.

The pup was drawn to music, taking to it like a fish to water.

Thankfully, for Steve’s sanity, the boy didn’t seem interested with the toy guitar Dustin (much to Steve’s consternation) got him, though he did enjoy the drum set Wayne got him for his birthday. Which…was fine, though Steve’s headaches didn’t thank Wayne any.

All in all, Steve was content with his life. As his honorary pups grew up and started their own lives, many going away for college, Steve settled into his life as a single parent, though it wasn’t always easy as an unbonded omega with a young pup.

His parents had, of course, disowned him as soon as he couldn’t hide it any longer. He’d been expecting it, of course, and withdrew as much of his savings as he could without causing them to demand it back.

He’d traded in his car as well for something cheaper and sturdier, moved into Forest Hills in a two bedroom double-wide, and found a job that would employ him in his circumstances. It wasn’t the life he had envisioned for himself as a cocky young man, but it was one he was happy with because it was his. His and his pup’s.

He worked hard to provide for his pup. Steve didn’t need an alpha. Nor did he want one. He had his pup, his friends, and that was all that mattered. He made it on his own and he’d be damned if anyone took that away from him.

Everything was going well. His little one just had his seventh birthday, he had gotten a small raise at work, and Lucas and Max were going to be visiting soon. Things were good.

And then he heard the news: Corroded Coffin was returning to Hawkins, Indiana.

Eddie was coming back.

~

oop, lil bit of a cliffhanger there, sorry. This was just an idea that would not leave me alone until I wrote it out. Which is hilarious because I’m actually not a fan of pregnancy/kid fics in normal circumstances lmao mpreg or otherwise

I may or may not continue this in the future, once I work on my other, currently languishing, WIPs. I do have some more ideas for this though, which bodes well for actually writing more of it lol

Hostage Hotties (open):

@derythcorvinus @katyawriteswhump @honeii-puff @scoops-aboy86 @dotdot-wierdlife @everywherenothere @bumblebeecuttlefishes @hiei-harringtonmunson

idk thinking about how sometimes you have to show up for people you aren't that close to, because sometimes you're just the person who's there. sometimes you invite a new friend to a party and end up having to sit with them through a panic attack. sometimes you run into an acquaintance on their worst day and they need to talk about what happened. sometimes someone is crying in a stairwell and you're the only one around to ask if they're okay. and none of this is "trauma dumping" or whatever the fuck it's just being there for people because you're the one in the room with them.

🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

I am a(n):

⚪ Male

⚪ Female

🔘 Writer

Looking for

⚪ Boyfriend

⚪ Girlfriend

🔘 An incredibly specific word that I can't remember

Eddie: *to Robin and Steve* Who are these people you're gossiping about again?!

Robin: Oh, we don't actually gossip about real people.

Steve: Yeah, we learned that lesson the hard way.

Robin: So, now we make up people and their backgrounds. We gossip about them.

Eddie: I have been invested for over an hour over people who are NOT real?!

Steve and Robin: Yeah.

Eddie: *throwing up his hands* Either write a fucking book or join Hellfire!

Steve and Robin: *looks at each other before looking back at Eddie* Nah.

Eddie: *screams*

fuck it homebrew boop button. reblog this post to boop the person you reblogged from.

vampire hunter eddie and vampire chrissy

Fuck it, the Steve is bisexual because he ran out of women joke. Flip it. Steve fucked his way through the male population before he ever made it to women.

It was disguised as ‘getting ready for girlfriends’ but Steve was a majority of the boy’s first kisses.

Eddie, who came to the party late, had no idea about Steve’s queer past and assumes he is straight.

Hilarity ensues where Steve does not realize that nobody knows he’s not straight.

He’s flirting with Eddie and Robin is giving him the stink eye because she thinks Steve is playing with Eddie’s feelings.

Tommy, being Steve’s childhood friend, clocks the pathetic pining after being in family video for five minutes. He gives Munson the shovel talk because Steve was his best friend. Eddie on the other hand is just puzzled.

“But Steve is straight?”

“He did not seem that way when my dick was in his mouth.”

Eddie just stares at Tommy, slack jawed.

“Look, I was just experimenting. I don’t actually like men like that, Steve does and he’s all yours. But, you better treat him well, or else.”

Eddie nods, and Tommy leaves.

Eddie enters the empty family video again and screeches like a fucking hyena before jumping onto Steve. They both fall to the ground and just start making out on the floor.

Robin is horrified.