Chapter Text
The first time it happens, Eddie doesn’t mean to do it. It’s been three months since he came back from the Upside Down feeling oddly different, two months since he accepted that he would never be the same again. It’s been six weeks since Steve first offered to let Eddie drink his blood and three weeks since Eddie, to his eternal shame, was weak enough to do it. Since then, he’s developed a near obsession with Steve – the smell of his skin, the warmth of his body, the way his heart rate kicks up when Eddie bites down on his neck and begins to suck, the rich fucking ambrosia of his blood.
Dustin had been the one to suggest it, but of course, of fucking course, Steve had been the one to volunteer. Eddie had been getting weaker and weaker, even with the animal blood Steve and Robin sourced for him from several local butchers. Headaches, stomach aches, sleep so deep he felt like he was dead, again. Waking up was more painful and more difficult each day. So when Dustin had said, as cheerful and cocksure as ever – “What if he needs human blood? Maybe animal blood isn’t enough for him” – Eddie’s canines had sprung out instantly at the thought, as obvious and embarrassing as a public boner. He’d put a hand up to cover his mouth, but they’d all seen. And Steve, oblivious, rush-headfirst-into-danger Steve, had said, as matter of fact as if they were discussing pizza toppings, “Neck or wrist, Munson?” and started to take his shirt off. Eddie had had to leave the room before anyone saw that it wasn’t just his teeth that were interested.
Steve had just kept on offering, is the thing. And Eddie had refused, again and again and again. Until one day he hadn’t. They were alone, sitting on Steve’s sofa, relaxed and boneless after a joint, and Steve had tilted his head back, casually pulled the collar of his polo to one side, bearing the strong, scarred expanse of his throat, and said, “Seriously, dude, come on. Just try it. I’m not worried. You’re not gonna hurt me.” And Eddie had been so infuriated, so horny, so hungry, that he’d just pounced, like an animal, and Steve had let him. Had barely even flinched.
It was only after Eddie had cracked, had given in to his worst, most inhuman instincts and allowed himself to drink from Steve, that they’d discovered the things he can do – the inhuman speed at which he can move, the way small injuries heal almost before he knows they’re there, the way he can compel people, even the people he cares about, the people he should never, ever want to subjugate, can hypnotize them into doing almost anything. Not that they’ve experimented much further than having Dustin walk up the stairs backwards, making Robin howl like a wolf, getting Steve to come downstairs with all the product washed out of his hair. That one had been worth it, had made Dustin laugh for a good fifteen minutes.
They’d experimented with his powers for weeks, the kids treating it all like a game, with the same glee and excitement they approached a twist in one of Eddie’s campaigns. Eddie hadn’t come up with any of the ideas himself. He felt weird about devising ways to mindwipe his own friends. The kids had been the ones to make most of the suggestions, which is why the experiments consisted of things like Eddie telling Lucas that old Coke tasted better than new Coke and watching him taste both and agree – which, that was just an objective fact, really, no freaky powers needed to make it true; even if Lucas did change his mind the next day, when Eddie’s influence had worn off.
To make his thrall – as Dustin insists on calling it – work, Eddie has to really concentrate. He has to really want to be obeyed, they’ve learned, or the person he’s trying to influence will just shrug him off like he’s still regular old human Eddie, who no one had ever been particularly inclined to listen to. The kids all think it’s really cool, but Eddie’s not sure he likes it that much, when it does work. There’s something weird about being obeyed without question. Maybe it just comes too close to the things that Eddie had liked before he died, the kinds of desires he had never even really had the chance to fully explore.
Sex hadn’t exactly been easy to come by, for a gay metalhead in rural Indiana, let alone the kind of sex where they had time to play games. But giving orders, watching someone follow them not because they had no choice in the matter but because they wanted to, because they liked pleasing Eddie, being good for him – that was a fucking rush, got him revved up every single time. So when, at Steve’s urging, Eddie tells Mike to give Lucas his slice of Robin’s birthday cake and the kid just does it, no bitching or moaning, no sign that he’s even really aware of what he’s doing, it feels wrong. Not just because he’s giving one of the kids an order – even in a totally non-sexual context it still feels sorta icky – but because when he uses his influence like that there’s no give and take, no real willingness on Mike’s part to do what Eddie wants. There’s just Eddie, with all the power, and the other person, with none of it, and it seems like Eddie’s the only one who’s remotely aware of just how fucked up that is.
Eddie doesn’t use his powers, much. He has no real need to. Everyone except the Party thinks Eddie’s a mass murderer, and they can’t exactly ask the government to clear his name, not unless he wants to be taken away to some secret lab and poked with needles for the rest of his indeterminately long life. So he has no choice but to stay legally dead. Steve, whose parents show no signs of ever coming back to Hawkins, has been sheltering him. Eddie is a little bit too afraid to ask what will happen when Steve inevitably gets sick of him.
Eddie spends his days wandering around Steve’s weird, sterile museum of a house, planning new campaigns for the kids and trying not to let his obsession with Steve grow any creepier than it already is. Steve had already been the subject of most of Eddie’s fantasies since their time in the Upside Down. Since Eddie has tasted his blood, it’s like Steve is all he can think about. He’s a constant thrum in the back of Eddie’s brain, as regular and inescapable as Eddie’s heartbeat had been, back when he still had one.
Drinking Steve’s blood makes Eddie almost euphoric. It’s the closest thing he’s ever found to a perfect high. And Eddie had been a drug dealer. He’s experimented a lot. But the problem is he doesn’t just want Steve’s blood. He wants Steve, all of him, wants to consume him until there’s nothing left. He feels like a thirteen-year-old again. A really fucked up one.
Sometimes, instead of a vicious nightmare, Eddie awakes from dreams of biting Steve while he fucks him, his cock so hard that a single stroke is enough to tip him into orgasm. Some nights, after he’s fed, the memory of Steve’s blood taunts him as he lies there in the dark, until he wonders if this will be the night he snaps, the night he gets out of the plush guest bed, stalks across the hall to Steve’s room and just take what he wants. Sometimes, he’s not even sure Steve would fight him. He thinks that maybe Steve is so cavalier about his own safety because he kind of wants to die. Eddie knows what that’s like.
He doesn’t realize there’s anything weird about the dreams until he wakes up screaming from another nightmare – one in which the demobat that had bitten his face as he lay dying had decided to eat his eyeballs – to hear the tail end of a yell from Steve’s room. Usually, Eddie lies shaking in the dark after his nightmares, waits until his legs are steady enough to go downstairs to the quiet, well-lit kitchen and watch the dawn break. This time, when he can stand, he knocks on Steve’s door. It takes a while for Steve to open it. When he does, he’s shirtless in low-slung pajama bottoms, his eyes suspiciously red.
“Okay?” Eddie asks and Steve looks away, scrubs a hand over his face.
“Yeah. Sorry if I woke you, man. Just a nightmare.”
“Me too,” Eddie says. He hesitates. “Wanna talk about it?”
They end up in the kitchen together and Steve makes coffee while Eddie curses the fact that it still smells so fucking good to him, even though he knows he can’t drink it.
“So what did you dream about?” he asks, when Steve’s settled across from him at the table.
“It was fucked up.” Steve looks a little awkward, almost nervous. “This is going to sound really weird, but I think I was… you? Or, like. I dreamed about what happened to you, in the Upside Down. There was this demobat…” He swallows, rubs a hand over his face again.
“Shit, man, I dream about it almost every night,” Eddie shrugs. It’s not like Steve’s muscling in on Eddie’s personal trauma. There’s plenty to go around. “Those fucking bats, man.”
“Yeah,” Steve whispers. His eyes are far away. “It was… so fucked. There was one on my face and it… It went for my eyes.”
Eddie feels a jolt of shock.
“What?”
Steve blinks like he’s just remembered that Eddie is there.
“Sorry,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. Just a dream, right?”
A dream he had at the same time as Eddie, about the same thing.
“Sure,” Eddie says, mind reeling. “Just a dream.”
He’s pretty sure it happens again, a few nights later, but he’s too freaked out to ask. And then one night he wakes up from a dream about fucking Steve in the shower, his cock aching for release, and just as he’s shoving his hand down the front of his sweatpants, he hears the soft click of Steve’s bedroom door. Bare feet pad down the hallway towards the bathroom and Eddie hears the shower start up. He thinks about how he could walk in there and surprise Steve, make his dream come true, as he fucks his own fist and comes messily into a cupped hand. He falls asleep before he hears Steve return to his room.
In the morning, Eddie asks Steve how he slept and Steve shrugs.
“Did you have any dreams?” Eddie asks, and Steve flushes deep red, coughs, says no, not that he remembers.
Eddie wonders. After that, he doesn’t ask, but he notices, sometimes, how Steve is a little skittish, the morning after one of Eddie’s sex dreams, how he meets Eddie’s eyes a little reluctantly, almost as though he’s shy. There’s a tension growing between them, Eddie’s almost sure of it – something strange and delicate, as brittle as an old bone. He wishes he could read Steve’s mind, share Steve’s dreams, just so he could own another small piece of him.
In the end, he can’t be sure. And, anyway, even if he is projecting his dreams, it’s just one more creepy, fucked up thing in a raft of creepy, fucked up things about the new Eddie Munson. Eddie’s come to terms with the fact that he really is a freak now, in the truest sense of the word. That whatever those bats had done to him – or possibly it was something Vecna had done to him, as he lay dead on the cold earth of the Upside Down – has turned him into a walking, talking nightmare, with no heartbeat and a thirst for human blood. But he still doesn’t mean to do it, that first time. He just can’t help himself.
They’re on Steve’s parents’ broad white sofa, as wide as Eddie’s old bed and twice as comfortable. A movie is playing in the background, some old comedy, but neither of them is really paying any attention to it. It’s just them tonight, no Robin, no Dustin, and Eddie’s been hyper aware of Steve for hours now, the smell of Steve’s blood steadily driving him up the wall, creating a strange uneasy ache in his canine teeth.
Steve’s just finished his dinner – four slices of pepperoni pizza and two cans of cheap beer – and he insists it’s Eddie’s turn. He tilts his head to the side with infuriating nonchalance, displaying the same unearned trust that he gives to Eddie every day, without question, as though Eddie’s not a monster. Eddie doesn’t even hesitate, not anymore. He moves closer, half-hovering above Steve, crouching, spiderlike, to face the back of the sofa, with one leg bent and splayed across the sturdy expanse of Steve’s thigh, warm and vital beneath the thin material of his sweatpants. Eddie presses his lips to Steve’s throat like he’s about to leave a hickey on that soft, golden skin, and, in a grotesque parody of everything he’s ever wanted, he bites down, lets warm blood flow into his mouth.
Eddie stifles the moan that tries to escape at the sheer pleasure of Steve’s taste, the smell of his hair brushing Eddie’s cheek, like cedar and citrus, the rhythmic rush of Steve’s blood in his veins as it makes its way around Steve’s body and into Eddie in exquisite little pulses. It’s rich and coppery and oddly sweet and Eddie’s never really got the point of wine – never really had the opportunity to try any that wasn’t the cheapest shit money could buy in the shittiest liquor store in Hawkins, when he was too broke to spring for something harder – but if this is what it tastes like he gets why people would pay hundreds of dollars a bottle.
Eddie always gets hard when they do this. He can’t help it. He’s learned to crouch in a way that he hopes hides it, learned to push away the thoughts of what he wants to do to Steve and focus solely on the pleasure he gets from the stolen intimacy of this strange, parasitic act. They’ve discovered through trial and error how much Eddie can take before Steve starts to get dizzy, lightheaded and spacey, almost like he’s high. Eddie listens to the beat of Steve’s heart as he drinks, the way it gradually quickens until it’s thrumming in his chest, the sound of his breathing as it speeds up in tandem, and then Steve lets out a tiny sound, a half-swallowed noise in the back of his throat that might almost be a moan, and Eddie loses his mind.
It's probably a groan of pain, because Eddie is an animal, Eddie is fucking eating him. But in the moment, lost in the feel and smell and taste of Steve, cock throbbing between his legs, Eddie interprets it as a sound of pleasure – a sound of arousal. Without conscious thought, he draws away from Steve’s neck, smearing blood across his skin, staining the collar of his stupid starched polo shirt, and mutters, “Kiss me.”
Steve surges forward like he’s been waiting for Eddie to ask – not that it really sounded much like a question – and then Eddie’s tongue is in Steve’s mouth and Eddie is swinging his leg over to straddle Steve’s lap, like he’s dreamt of doing almost every night since they started this fucked up feeding ritual. Steve’s blood tastes even better when it’s mixed with his saliva, when Eddie is licking traces of it off Steve’s lips and tongue.
When Eddie finally pulls back for a second, half-wild, more turned on than he’s ever been in his life, just from a kiss, Steve murmurs his name, almost a question, and Eddie gasps out, “I need… Fuck, Steve, I need you. God, I want to… Want to make you come. Fucking… Let me touch you.”
His cock is pressing painfully against his zipper. When Steve nods eagerly, Eddie lets out a sound of relief that’s almost a sob, reaches for the button of his own black jeans, mutters, “Touch me. God, please.” His mouth falls open in ecstasy at the first tentative touch of Steve’s hand, the warm grip of his fingers, slightly too gentle, like he’s not quite sure what to do.
“That’s it. Just stroke me, baby,” Eddie mutters, half out of his mind. When Steve starts to move his hand, Eddie lets his head fall forward into the familiar curve of Steve’s throat, licks messily at the puncture wounds in his neck. He savors the taste on his tongue as he shuffles back a little in Steve’s lap, reaches down to slide his hand under the band of Steve’s sweatpants. Steve is hard too, warm and alive under Eddie’s hands, and he moans into Eddie’s hair when Eddie rubs gently over the head of his cock, gasps when Eddie pulls back to meet Steve’s eyes and licks a smear of pre-come off the pad of his thumb. It’s almost as sweet and addictive as Steve’s blood.
“Fuck,” Steve mutters, and his voice is deeper than normal, raspy in a way Eddie’s never heard before. His pupils are huge, and his face is flushed pink. When Eddie looks down, Steve’s cock is protruding filthily from above the waistband of his pants, swollen with warm, sweet blood.
“Jesus, you’re so fucking hot,” Eddie mutters, suddenly worried that he’s going to come before they’ve even done anything. He doesn’t understand why this is happening, has no idea what miracle has occurred here to make the opening scene of all his most shameful late-night fantasies suddenly come to life. Just in case it never happens again, he’s not wasting this opportunity on a fully clothed hand job on the sofa.
“Bedroom,” Eddie mutters, reluctantly stilling Steve’s hand where he’s still tentatively jerking Eddie off, staring at Eddie’s hard cock like he’s never seen one before. He probably hasn’t, not one that isn’t his own, and isn’t that a crazy thought?
“Come on. Take me upstairs,” Eddie says, getting awkwardly to his feet, holding the waistband of his jeans up with one hand and offering the other to Steve, who lets Eddie pull him off the sofa. Steve yanks up his sweatpants and leads Eddie up the stairs, cock tenting the front of his pants obscenely. Eddie’s never actually been into Steve’s room before, vaguely registers hideous plaid wallpaper and a nice smell, the scent of hair products and a hint of something that’s just Steve, but he can’t really concentrate on anything except getting his hands on Steve again. He thinks he might die if he doesn’t touch him.
He pushes Steve down on the bed, climbs on top of him, kisses him long and deep, enjoying the little moans Steve lets out, the way he arches his back, pushes up against Eddie, seeking friction. Steve lets Eddie tug off his pink-and-gray striped polo, watches raptly as Eddie strips off his own faded Slayer T-shirt. He moans when Eddie runs reverent hands through the soft hair that covers Steve’s sculpted chest and yelps when Eddie tugs lightly at one pink nipple. Eddie laughs, giddy and gleeful.
It's only when Eddie starts to remove Steve’s pants that Steve momentarily breaks out of the daze of arousal he seems to have sunk into. He looks almost nervous when he says, “I’ve never done this before. With a guy.”
Eddie’s looking at Steve’s beautiful, swollen cock, wondering how it would feel to suck blood and come out of him at the same time, if Steve would let him bite his dick, just a tiny little nick near the tip. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll show you,” he says. “I’m going to make you feel so good.” Steve shivers like someone’s walking over his grave.
Eddie gets the rest of Steve’s clothes off, yanks his own jeans off in a kind of daze, and then Steve’s cock is in his mouth. Eddie moans at the warm weight on his tongue, resists the urge to bite. Instead, he breaks out every technique he’s ever picked up on his scattered, squalid little trips to Indy dive bars. He rubs his tongue in swirling figures of eight below the head, takes Steve’s cock right to the back of his mouth. He delights in Steve’s half-stifled moans and gasps of pleasure, the way he moves under Eddie, fighting the hands holding his hips down to the bed as he tries to thrust even deeper, to nudge himself down Eddie’s throat.
“Fuck, that feels amazing,” Steve says, when Eddie pulls off. Eddie smiles, a little smug, can’t help himself, and then he noses his way down past Steve’s balls, already pulled up tight, licks between Steve’s cheeks, where Eddie’s sure no girl has ever touched him before.
“Pull your legs up for me. That’s it. Good boy.”
Steve does it immediately, as fluid and unselfconscious as he was when he stripped his maddening little yellow sweater off on that fucking boat in Lover’s Lake. Eddie can’t help it, he ruts himself against the sheets as he shows Steve what he can do with his tongue, makes him writhe and wriggle and moan.
When Eddie finally stops for a moment, murmurs, “I want to fuck you. God, Steve, let me show you what it’s like,” he expects Steve to recoil, to refuse. Until tonight, Eddie had been almost as sure as it was possible to be that Steve was straight. Even now, when Steve’s proved himself surprisingly open to whatever the fuck this is, has kissed Eddie without hesitation, touched Eddie’s cock, let himself be rimmed until he’s panting and wild-eyed, it’s a huge leap to letting a man fuck him. There’s no way to walk that back to two guys just messing around, blowing off steam, the way Eddie suspects Steve will try to in the morning – if not 20 minutes from now, when the afterglow wears off.
But Steve surprises Eddie again. Almost before Eddie’s finished speaking, he’s gasping out, “Yes, please. Fuck me. I want it.” His voice is sex-addled, eager and breathy and fucking lovely, and Eddie feels like the luckiest man in the world. Steve is just – he’s a dream. So biddable, so pliant. Either his sex life to date has been a lot less vanilla than Eddie had assumed, or he’s a natural submissive.
Steve makes the most beautiful noises as Eddie opens him up. He swears so prettily when Eddie slides two fingers in at just the right angle to make Steve’s whole body jerk with pleasure that Eddie’s close to coming before they even get started. He’d know Steve had never done this before even without Steve’s body betraying him, because Steve sounds so adorably confused when he says, “What? What was that? Eddie, I –”
He cuts himself off with another moan when Eddie does it again. Then again, and again, until Steve’s cock is angry red and leaking where it’s jerking against the taut muscles of his abdomen and Steve is incoherent, swearing and muttering to himself.
Eddie waits until Steve starts pleading, chanting please, gasping Eddie’s name like he’s forgotten other words, and then he surges up to kiss Steve’s lax mouth.
“Be patient, baby boy,” he says, and watches as Steve flushes a beautiful dark red. He keeps Steve on the edge for as long as he can stand, watches his face carefully, the flicker of his eyelids, the way his soft pink lips part around his moans. When Eddie finally pushes the head of his cock carefully past the first tight ring of muscle, Steve’s eyes open wide with surprise under him.
Steve is so tight around him, clenched like a vice. He feels so incredibly good, better than any fantasy.
“I need you to relax, baby,” Eddie croons. “Can you do that for me? It’ll feel nice, I promise.”
It’s fucking torture but Eddie waits, half-inside Steve, plants gentle kisses on his cheek and forehead until he feels some of the tension leave Steve’s body. Then he pushes the rest of the way inside in a single smooth stroke, sets a slow rhythm that makes both of them groan in tandem each time he bottoms out.
He watches Steve greedily, suppressing a pleased smile at the way Steve moves his hand as though thinking of reaching for his own cock, then seems to think better of it. When Eddie begins to move faster, Steve pushes his head back into the pillows and arches his body for Eddie to fuck him deeper, elongating his neck in a way that might be deliberate and might not. Eddie takes what he’s offering anyway, sinks his teeth into the still-leaking puncture marks on the side of Steve’s throat and lets Steve’s sweet blood explode across his tongue.
He doesn’t mean to come, isn’t ready for it to be over, but the taste pushes him over the edge. When he comes inside the tight clench of Steve’s body, it feels right, somehow, like Eddie’s giving all that beautiful hot fluid back to him in some sort of unholy exchange. The orgasm goes on and on and on, for longer than Eddie thought possible, and he loses himself in it completely, barely aware of anything but the tight heat around his cock and the warm blood in his mouth. Steve is still tense and electric beneath him when the waves finally die away and he reluctantly unsheathes his teeth from Steve’s neck, hoping he hasn’t taken too much.
Steve is flushed red, his hair disheveled. He’s a gorgeous mess. Eddie grasps Steve’s cock, strokes it quickly, efficiently. He manages a few more thrusts, revelling in the way Steve is soaked and slippery with Eddie’s come, and when Eddie says, “Fuck, you’re beautiful. Come for me, baby,” Steve responds instantly, clenching tight around Eddie’s softening cock as he paints his own stomach and Eddie’s hand in fluid that’s almost as hot as his blood.
Afterwards, Eddie pads down the hallway naked, gets a cloth from the bathroom and returns to find Steve lying where he’d left him on the bed. Eddie gently wipes Steve’s stomach and chest, tenderly cleans the place where Eddie’s come is slowly seeping out of him. He licks softly at Steve’s neck until his skin is free of blood, winces at the brown and red stains on the formerly snowy white sheets. Steve falls asleep almost before Eddie’s finished, and Eddie watches him for a while, the swoop of his hair over the soft line of his brow, the rise and fall of his chest, the vulnerability of his soft pink cock, nestled in a thatch of surprisingly dark curls.
Eddie is happy. He might be the happiest he’s ever been, as he drifts off beside Steve in Steve’s horrible plaid bedroom. It’s only when he wakes, a few hours later, Steve still dead to the world beside him, that he realizes what he’s done. What a monster he truly is.
See, the thing about Eddie’s new power is it only works when he really wants something. And Eddie really, really wants Steve.