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In the beginning, there is only the hunger and the need. They are the two snakes that feed on him, gnawing at his bones from the inside. They are the devils on each shoulder. Pushing, pushing.
He’s caged for a long time, trapped by the walls that divide realities.
And then he isn’t.
Once he’s freed, his devils get louder and more insistent than ever. So he flies on their leathery wings, a shadow streaked across a bloody moon.
There are Christmas lights hanging from the eaves when he lifts the sash on a downstairs window and steps into a house that smells of gingerbread and warm butter.
He walks past a Christmas tree lit in rainbow, following the yellowy glow of a light spilling from the kitchen.
His prey is alone, back turned to the doorway, muscles rippling as he whisks something with vigor.
“Hiya Stevie,” Eddie (or what’s left of him) says, the sounds croaking out over underused vocal chords. Steve drops the mixing bowl and it shatters, white cream splattering the tile and the cabinets and the legs of Steve’s jeans.
“Eddie?” He’s surprised. Incredulous even. Then he must notice that Eddie isn’t quite Eddie anymore—not with eyes as red as blood and teeth like so many shards of broken glass. Not with veins of dark black poison showing through his skin like all the roads of Hell’s atlas.
Steve takes a healthy step back and then another, eyes glancing quickly at the knife block beside him. Assessing. Calculating.
Waiting.
Eddie tilts his head one way and then the other before letting his eyes travel the entire length of Steve’s body from crown to toe.
“I remember the first time he actually noticed you. I. We.” Another sweeping gaze—from the floor up this time. Delicious. “He was smoking under the bleachers, and you—Oh, Steve—you were running track in those pathetic little green shorts. All that pretty, pretty skin on display for just anyone to see. He wanted to fuck you right then. And believe you me, he thought about it, about pumping his cock between those creamy thighs. About putting his mouth on you and sucking you dry.”
Steve blows out a breath. “Jesus.”
“He jerked off in his van in the school parking lot after that and—oh, he was too scared to make noise, too afraid that someone might hear and know what he was, but he whispered your name when he finished and imagined moaning it into the gorgeous shell of your ear. Then he licked the come off his palm and his wrist and went to fifth period Technology, and he sat behind you while you flirted with some sophomore girl, and he thought about bending you over the desk and putting it in your—”
“What do you want?” Steve asks, jaw clenching.
Eddie smiles and then smiles harder when Steve visibly flinches at his mouth, leaving a taste in the air like petrichor.
“I want what he wants,” Eddie says, dragging a slithery, forked tongue across all those teeth. “I want you, Stevie.” Eddie takes a step forward, delighted when Steve doesn’t counter. “I want to taste you. I want to have you. Writhing beneath me while I make us both see other worlds that are, frankly, so much better than the two we’ve already seen.”
Steve swallows and then, oh, oh yes, his eyes flicker quickly down Eddie’s form before darting away. Petrichor turns to cinnamon, and Eddie’s hunger reacts viscerally, fluttering wildly in his belly, pooling slick-wet in his underwear.
“You were… He? Was dead.” Steve seems to realize he’s not focusing on the potential threat as much as he should be, and he trains his eyes back on Eddie. His cheeks have a slight tinge of pink to them when he does.
“We were.” Eddie nods. “And then the venom brought us back. Like this.”
“So you’re not him anymore.”
“I don’t know, Steve. I have his memories. I have his body.” Eddie takes another step forward. “I have his desires. But I can’t say I don’t feel like I’m something else too. There’s feelings and needs he never had.”
Steve licks his lips. “Like?”
“Like the need to taste the sweat on your neck. The spit in your mouth. The blood in your veins.”
Steve goes wide-eyed, but the cinnamon taste doesn’t fade. “My blood?”
“Don’t worry, Stevie. Killing you would be very counterproductive to all the things I want to do to your pretty face and pretty hands and, presumably, very pretty hole.”
“And if I say no?”
“That. Would be a huge bummer.”
“Would you, you know, die? Again? Or whatever.”
“Steve, Steven, gorgeous golden prince of my wet dreams.” Eddie closes the rest of the distance between them, then keeps going until Steve hits the kitchen counter, catching his balance with both hands and a ragged exhale. “I so badly want it to be you.” Eddie rakes his eyes down to the not-exactly-subtle mass in Steve’s jeans. “I think you want it to be you too. But you’re hardly the only fuckable piece of ass in this weird, wide little world. I’d make do. I’d probably even fall for someone else, you know, eventually.”
“Did he—did you…? God, I’m usually better at this.”
“I know you are. I remember Technology class.”
“In the RV, were you flirting with me?”
Eddie grins with all his teeth. “Well, well, well, what thoughts have been playing in your little mind for, what? Seven? Eight months.”
Eddie rests two fingers on Steve’s chin, dragging sharp nails along the curve of his jaw just beneath his ear. “Has it been bothering you that long?”
Steve doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I thought about it too, with you. I think some part of me always knew, you know, that I’m not just about girls. But I didn’t know I knew? Until a friend came out to me and got me thinking. And then I just kept telling myself I was faking it because I wanted to be special. But like, who fakes being gay or whatever? It’s not like people are lining up to give us cookies and a parade.”
“They are not.”
“So I thought about times when, you know, maybe. And then the shit happened with you. I didn’t have time to really, like, process it as it was happening because it was all chaos and as terrifying as it always is—worse even because Max is family now, and if we’d lost her, I…” Steve lets out a deep breath. “But after I had some time, I kept thinking about the RV and… I don’t know. I get butterflies sometimes when I remember you looking at me like that. I had a dream about it once, one of those kind where you know you’re dreaming, so I made it not about Vecna and that day anymore. I made it just me and you in an RV. I…” Steve’s blush deepens.
“You?” Eddie keeps his fingernails on Steve’s jaw, running them tenderly across Steve’s skin over and over and over, slowly painting it pink.
“I wanted to try it. Sucking you off. So I did. I don’t know—It was still a dream so. It didn’t feel…”
“And after you woke up?” Eddie brings up his other hand, sliding it around the back of Steve’s neck. Inside, his instincts are screaming, crying, begging.
Everything is cinnamon and chocolate and sweet cream.
“After I woke up, I touched myself.”
“And what did you think about?”
“You.”
Eddie hums in approval. “Tell me yes or no, Steve.”
Steve locks eyes on him and Eddie can see every single hue of brown and green and gold. He can make out each line of detail within Steve’s precious irises. And he can see—and feel—the way those eyes burn.
That gaze alone is enough to feed the hunger inside, and it purrs with pleasure deep in Eddie’s belly.
“Yes,” Steve says, succinct and sure.
And it’s like throwing back a shot of moonshine, that ‘yes,’ warm and perfect all the way down. Steve lurches forward before Eddie can even react, and they meet in a kiss so thick with want that Eddie feels like he could pluck it from the air and pocket it for later.
Even in their frenzy, Steve’s lips are soft and practiced. Eddie can’t help biting them. When he nips hard enough to draw blood, it goes straight to his dick. His dick that he then grinds against Steve’s hip. Steve moans before gently pushing him away.
“The blood thing. How…?”
Eddie licks his own lips, tasting iron and salt. “It’s the energy more than the blood itself. I…” Eddie’s lids flutter as he tries to breathe and think. “I don’t need much. I meant it, Steve. I won’t hurt you, not really.”
Steve nods and reaches for a knife in the block on the counter, a tiny paring knife, razor sharp. Slowly, he peels off his shirt, revealing creamy skin and so many moles and freckles that it makes Eddie dizzy. The blade is so honed that Steve doesn’t even flinch when he places a shallow cut on his own pectoral before throwing it aside.
“That enough?”
Eddie forces himself not to lunge, instead placing his hands gently on Steve’s waist, lowering his mouth to the wound that has already let out a few beads of blood, one big enough to spill slowly down Steve’s chest and curve over his nipple.
Eddie shudders at the taste, at the way he can discern laughter and sorrow, joy and pain, all bound up inside of platelets and cells. It’s like all the perfect and imperfect imprints of a single priceless human soul settle have settled sweetly on his tongue.
“Christ,” Eddie mutters reverently against Steve’s skin.
Steve gives a shudder of his own when Eddie chases the blood around his nipple, split tongue lathing over it in flicks and licks before Eddie finally covers it and sucks.
It goes on for several minutes, Eddie alternating between feeding and giving Steve’s chest ample attention. By the time the wound stops bleeding, Eddie feels like he’s gone ten rounds with a buffet, one part of his hunger so sated that he’s sure he’ll never need to eat again.
The other part though…
Eddie finds Steve’s lips with a renewed fervor, pressing the lines of their bodies together, laughing and moaning all at once when Steve ruts against him like an animal in heat.
“Eddie.”
“Anything you want, Steve. Tell me what’ll make it good for you.”
“I, you know, tried it. By myself.”
“Yeah? What did you try?”
“Fingers at first, but that just felt weird. Then… I don’t know. Something told me to try again.”
Eddie groans. “Please keep talking.”
“I had an ex who used to fuck herself with the handle of her hairbrush and let me watch. So…”
“Oh, Stevie.”
“It took a while for me to get it right. I honestly thought maybe it just wasn’t supposed to be good for the person getting fucked, but then…”
“Then you figured it out, huh?” Eddie touches him, rubbing his length through his jeans from root to tip and tip to root. When Steve moans, Eddie swallows the sound. Steve’s pleasure tastes like salted honey.
“I do it all the time now,” Steve says, words against Eddie’s lips. “I maybe did it a few minutes before you got here.”
“Are you telling me that…” Eddie loses the thread at the feeling of Steve touching him back, massaging his cock through his tattered jeans. With a sigh of pleasure and a soft laugh, Eddie ruts his face into the crook of Steve’s neck, letting his tongue slide across briny skin. “Are you telling me you’re probably still loose and open, Steve? Just waiting for someone to show you what it can feel like when you play with a friend?”
Steve pushes him away with shaking hands and reaches for a cabinet to Eddie’s right, opening it and pulling out a bottle of olive oil. Breathing heavily, the air tasting of so much desire-desire-desire, Eddie sheds his layers and starts undoing his belt. When he looks up, Steve’s standing nude before him in his kitchen.
“Should I…?” Steve starts to turn around.
“No,” Eddie says. “Hop up, facing me.”
Steve does it easily. Gracefully even.
“Now lean back and spread yourself open so I can see.”
Swallowing thickly, Steve pulls his heels up onto the counter before doing as he’s told. Sure enough, his hole’s still gaping, still slightly wet.
“That’s not the work of a hairbrush, Steven.” Eddie strokes his own cock to maintain some semblance of sanity.
“No. It isn’t.”
“Care to share with the class?” Eddie asks, leaning down for a closer look that turns into letting his tongue slide from between his lips, forks splitting to circle around each side of Steve’s rim and meet again at the center. When he pushes his tongue deep inside, he can taste the aftermath of arousal and pleasure still lingering from before. He savors them both like hors d’oeuvres, whetting his appetite for the full meal yet to come.
Steve releases a broken sigh. “Um.”
Eddie draws his mouth away and looks up at Steve from between his legs. “Use your words. Tell me what you used. Tell me how it felt.”
Steve’s shaking on the counter, whole body trembling in a way that suggests Eddie might need to move him before they actually fuck. Not yet though. Not until Steve regales him with a wonderful little story time.
“I’ve been unpacking the Christmas stuff and got to the candlesticks.”
A grin plays at the corners of Eddie’s mouth. “I like where this is going.”
“I had to. The candles were so… I’ve been wanting to go bigger, you know? I could do that with those. One at a time until I got a nice stretch.”
Eddie inhales, drinking in the smell-taste of Steve’s lust. He steps forward and grabs for the oil. His slick fingers slip inside so easily it feels illegal. “Fuck. How many did you have in here?”
Steve’s breathing like he keeps forgetting how, eyes continually darting between Eddie’s face and Eddie’s hand where he’s got three fingers deep inside, slicking Steve up, searching for—
Steve gasps and the air tastes like a roux being born, savory and deep in its flavor. “Five.”
Eddie cannot wait to fuck him, to chase the sounds and tastes until he takes Steve apart.
“Where are they?” Eddie pulls out his fingers despite the tiny mewl of protest that gets him, despite the tang of regret that hits bitterly on the back of his tongue. Nearly falling into him, Steve dismounts the countertop and walks Eddie into the living room where the tree and the lights around the fireplace have cast the room in a colorful glow.
Eddie glances at a box of half-unpacked Christmas decorations. There are lights in the top of one, still plugged into the wall where Steve was clearly testing them, only half of the strand lit up in white.
On the coffee table, the candlesticks sit empty. Next to them, five white tapered candles sit haphazardly on a kitchen towel. Eddie picks them all up and holds them together in his hand.
“Steve Harrington,” Eddie practically croons. Then he grins wide and meets the eyes of the prettiest boy in Hawkins, Indiana. The air immediately tastes of warm spices. “My nasty baby boy.”
Eddie doesn’t ask so much as point to the couch. Steve falls onto it willingly, laying on his back and parting his thighs. Without a second thought, Eddie grabs for the half-dead Christmas lights unfurling them along the way until he has a healthy amount of cordage with which to bind Steve’s wrists above his head. He wraps a few strands around Steve’s neck too, not tight enough to choke him, but tight enough to spark his imagination.
“I can’t wait anymore,” Eddie says.
“Didn’t ask you to.” Steve has hold of some of the Christmas lights, and he’s squeezing them over and over like a stress ball.
“You know what I’m about to do, right?” Eddie cocks his head sideways, staring yet again into the gaping hole that is Steve’s ass.
Steve nods. “You’re about to fuck me.”
“With?”
Steve looks at his cock and wets his lips. “With your dick.”
“Very good, Steve. And where am I putting it?”
“In my ass. I hope anyway.”
Eddie closes his eyes, a full-body shudder rippling down his back. It tastes so good, Steve’s want permeating the air like the smell of pastries baking in an oven. Warm and buttery-sweet. When Eddie opens his eyes, there’s a drip of pre-come on one of Steve’s hairy thighs, a thin web connecting that drip to the tip of Eddie’s cock.
Staring into Steve’s eyes, Eddie pushes one of Steve’s legs up, then grabs the other and hitches it around his waist. Steve’s breath is so ragged that it burns Eddie from the inside, hot and good like a coffee on a winter’s night.
It is so very goddamn easy to put it in him.
The cry that comes out of Eddie’s lungs when he does is punched-out and broken and so so good. For all that Eddie slips in without a fight, Steve’s body is tight and hot and slick with oil. It grips him with muscle and with feel-smell-taste. Every thrust makes Eddie feel like it was worth dying and waking up wrong if it means he gets to do this even once.
“Is it enough for you?” Eddie asks, nails digging into Steve’s thighs just short of breaking the skin. He’s got the angle right, knows he does because he’s feeding hard on the feelings he’s bringing out in Steve. A beautiful symbiosis that keeps intensifying with each drive of Eddie’s hips.
“I...” Steve looks briefly at the wall.
“Steve, I have other tricks up my monstery little sleeves. Don’t hide what you want, Steve, not from me.”
“It feels so fucking good, Eddie, but…”
“But?”
“It’s. It’s okay. Keep going.”
“Steven.” It’s painful to stop. But it’s even more painful to taste the fear of rejection and fear of saying the wrong thing, both lingering acridly in the air.
“Do you want more? Is that what you’re afraid to say? Did you get such a nice stretch with all those candles earlier, and now your body needs more than any normal cock could give you to get the same satisfaction?”
“I…” Steve keeps his gaze on the wall. “Maybe.”
“Look at me,” Eddie says, and Steve obeys. “I will never, ever, shame you for being such a wonderfully perfect slut, Steve. Also… there is this.” Eddie grins his widest grin of the night. He can feel the poison in his veins spreading as he lets it, filling his cells, changing them. Steve’s cock twitches with interest as he watches Eddie start shifting.
The wings come first, large and bat-like, draping around the two of them. They block out most of the other light in the room, encasing them in the warm glow of the lights wrapped around Steve’s wrists and neck.
Along with the wings, Eddie’s teeth grow longer and sharper. His fingertips give way to claws. And his body turns gray and then grows too. Larger, more muscular.
None of that matters though, not so long as Steve isn’t running or screaming.
What matters is that—still seated in Steve’s hole—Eddie’s cock swells in size.
The taste that bursts into the air is what Eddie imagines the ambrosia of the gods might have tasted like. He drinks it in, gulping it down like sweet summer wine.
“How’s that, Stevie?”
“I… feel like my sense of self-preservation has become super skewed, to be honest.”
Eddie rocks his hips just to watch Steve shudder, mouth hanging open in a silent moan.
“How,” Eddie repeats, “is that?”
Around handfuls of Christmas lights, Steve digs half moons into his palms. He nods repeatedly, speechless.
With a monstrous smile, Eddie draws back and plunges in deep.
There is no more talking after that, only noises. Feral, and primal and gut-deep.
Steve rocks into every thrust. At some point, he hooks his light-bound hands around the back of Eddie’s neck and draws their mouths together, groaning sweet honey down Eddie’s throat, tasting his sharp teeth.
When Steve accidentally nicks himself doing that, Eddie sucks on his tongue until the bleeding stops, fucking deep inside of him all the while.
“I…” Steve presses his forehead against Eddie’s and grits out a soft whine.
In another life, Eddie would chastise him for not asking permission to come. But given that neither of them can fucking talk, a single syllable seems pretty goddamn polite actually.
Eddie manages to hum something that sounds vaguely affirmative, the energy of Steve’s impending orgasm already enough to short-circuit his own brain. All he can manage is not stopping, hips snapping arrhythmically as his body protests just how good—so good, too fucking good—it all feels.
He fights it, wanting to see it through, wanting to sate himself and Steve.
When Steve lets out a sound that’s bone-deep and world-shattering, the monster in Eddie answers with something completely inhuman, something that rattles the windows outside of their winged cocoon.
Steve’s come feels so wonderfully warm when it paints Eddie’s chest and stomach. Steve twitches through every state of his completion, his breath hot and heavy between them. And the sounds—the desperate, wanton, pretty fucking sounds—Eddie wants to bottle and preserve them in a museum.
It’s impossible though, for Steve to release that much energy without sending Eddie over the edge too. It’s a mack truck of pleasure hitting him at highway speeds. All Eddie can do is bury his face in Steve’s neck and thrust in deep before it hits.
With another rattle of the windows, Eddie spills inside of him.
And keeps spilling.
In the middle of it all, he finds a single word again, a prayer on his pleasure-bitten lips. One that he repeats again and again.
“Steve. Steve. Steve.”
For a long while after it’s done, they don’t move. They can’t. They lay there, still joined, man and monster.
Steve shakes and shakes and shakes.
“Are you okay?” Eddie finally manages to ask, words slurring.
“I…” A long pause. “I just really fucking needed that,” Steve says, half-laughing, half-choking. Eddie licks tears from his cheeks and plants soft kisses on both eyelids.
“Me too, Steve.” Eddie shifts back to something nearer-to-human before pulling out. He already knew Steve was pretty full of come, but it becomes even more apparent when there’s nothing holding it in anymore. It drips out of him like so much thickened cream.
Kissing Steve repeatedly, Eddie unbinds him.
“Should we move?” Steve asks, cringing at the wet stickiness the couch has become.
They make it a whole foot away onto the floor, curling up together on the plush rug, the coffee table shoved aside so they can both fit.
“That was…” Steve laughs. “Fuck.”
“It was pretty ‘fuck,’ huh?” Eddie rakes his nails through Steve’s sweaty hair, delighting at the little flutter of Steve’s eyelids. “In fact, was it as ‘fuck’ for you as it was for me?”
“I hate you,” Steve says, but he’s smiling, reaching over and grabbing a tendril of Eddie’s hair, to twirl it between his fingers. “See though. That’s something Eddie would say. You’re still Eddie. Different maybe, but Eddie.”
“I do admittedly feel a bit more me after such a great dinner.”
Steve hums and then, after a brief pause, grins like the proverbial cat with the canary. “So what I’m hearing is that it was pretty ‘fuck’ for you actually.”
Eddie thumps his nipple in retaliation. Then he kisses him because he can’t fucking help himself. “Thing is I was gone on you before I even knew I was, Steve. I spent, like, seven months of my life falling for you by proxy after hearing how those kids talked about this super cool older guy friend they had. How he was just such a badass. Blah blah blah.” Eddie sighs.
“Then there was all the stuff they didn’t say that I got anyway. Always giving them rides. There for them at the drop of a hat. Helping them get ready for dances and dates. Just generally being the older brother they all really needed after—well, they all talked about ‘The Will Thing’ and Starcourt. I’m guessing that was the safest way they could discuss everything. But it worked because I definitely had at least some context for those things—who doesn’t? And, like, I was jealous of you and trying to reconcile their Steve with the Steve I knew of. It all clouded what was really going on until I actually saw you again.”
“Jesus, Eddie.”
“And let me tell you, realizing you’re sort of into a guy you’ve spent almost no time with and then having to deal with him shirtless, hairy as hell, and just super competent at fighting monsters? Criminal, actually.”
Steve huffs in amusement and then nods. “I think it kind of happened the same for me. Hearing about you all the time and being jealous. Afraid I’d lose my family because they liked you better. And then you kind of, you know, fucking died. Don’t do that again by the way.”
Eddie squeezes his hand and then lets out an overdramatic sigh. “Did those little bastards parent trap us by complete accident?”
“Ugh. We’re never telling them that.” Steve rolls his eyes. “Actually, are you…? They should know you’re okay. Kind of.”
“Look, if they can deal with the existence of bad monsters, they can deal with the existence of whatever the hell I am now.”
“Good.”
“Not tonight though. Not yet.”
“Agreed.” Steve shifts closer on the rug, then dips his head smoothly for one small kiss and then another. Eddie kisses back, briefly ignoring all his new senses to focus on Steve’s lips moving languidly against his, on Steve’s tongue licking softly into his mouth. He imagines it’s what it would’ve felt like if he hadn’t died and had been just another person on the receiving end of the famous Harrington Charm.
Then it shatters at the taste of something new in the air—crisp and perfect, like mint and freshly-fallen snow.
Affection, he realizes.
It’s affection.
Still kissing Steve, he grins against his mouth.