Chapter Text
One Month Later:
“Henderson, you gotta cast dispel magic,” Steve whispered over the teens shoulder, unable to hide his grin as Dustin turned to fix him with a glare through a messy mouthful of pepperoni pizza.
“No, Steve! I’m not gonna waste a spell slot for your stupid hunch.”
“Cast dispel magic, man! Before you lose the chance.”
“You’re not even playing the game!”
“And I still know you need to cast dispel magic!”
They’d been going back and forth for the entire ten minute break that Will had convinced them to take mid-session before they could dip into the second big boss fight of the night, the others watching them with an array of amused or fondly annoyed expressions as they sipped at their assorted squeeze-its.
“Steve,” Dustin spoke in that very precise way he did when he was annoyed, placing his hands on the table like a disappointed teacher, the effect ruined by the smear of marinara sauce and grease on his chin.
“I greatly value you as a person and understand the necessity of having you around for a real world fight, but DnD is my dominion and I know for a fact that casting dispel magic is, in this case, COMPLETELY POINTLESS!”
”Completely pointless? I think you mean totally genius!”
”Oh sure, Steve, because you’re a well established genius. Oh WAIT-“
“Enough talk,” Eddie announced dramatically as he emerged from the kitchen with a single hand raised, the other clutching his large and mostly melted cherry slurpee.
Everyone hurried back to their places around the table at his beckoning; right back to business.
“You stand before the guardian of the vast treasure hoard, a vile Beholder that regards each of you with its all-seeing eyes. Its gaping maw twists into a close approximation of a grin, dagger sharp teeth gleaming in the low light of the cavern.”
Eddie hunched his shoulders, fixing the party with a dark and menacing smile that had Steve stifling a laugh behind his fist.
“Years it has been since any mortal has dared set foot in my lair. I was beginning to get,”
That grin widened, all shiny white teeth and crinkled eyes as his voice dropped even deeper, resonating in Steve’s lungs.
“Hungry.”
He straightened with a flick of his jacket collar, pointing across the table.
“Roll for initiative,” he continued right where they’d left off, presence commanding as he effortlessly slipped back into his DM persona.
The sound of several D20’s hitting the painted cardboard spanning across the table rang out in the empty room, silence stretching for a few seconds as everyone added their appropriate modifiers to the number they rolled.
Erica was up first with a solid twenty two, Will next, then the Beholder, Mike, Lucas, and finally Dustin, much to the bards annoyance.
The younger Sinclair leaned forward against the table consideringly, frowning with a look of deadly serious contemplation.
“I think Steve’s right,” she said as she pressed her finger to the tip of her nose to speak outside of her character.
“C’mon, what?” Lucas scoffed, mirroring her position as he motioned to Steve who smirked from his spot in the worn green recliner he’d sunken into.
“No, think about it,” she stressed, leaning down and motioning to the figure of the Beholder on the board before their characters.
“This feels too much like a setup! One we’ve definitely seen before, might I add! The manticore from our level 2 dungeon, the blue dragon from level 5, the Gargoyles from level 10; what did they all have in common?”
The group looked to Dustin as he flipped through his notes, nose buried as his eyes sped across the lines of his messy handwriting.
“They’ve all been slightly off!” Erica continued with an annoyed huff, clearly frustrated with the others inability to keep up with her rapidly working brain.
“The Manticore didn’t have dark vision! It couldn’t see anymore when Squire Lightman,” she pointed at Dustin, “crit failed and shot down the only torch in the hall with an arrow!”
“Woah,” Will gasped out from beside a wide eyed Mike.
“She’s right. The blue dragon we fought should have resisted damage when Madame Gusty used ‘call lightning’. They’re immune to lightning damage, but it took the full hit anyway!”
Dustin leaned forward on his elbows, steepling his fingers at his lips in the exact same way Eddie did when he was concentrating hard on something.
Steve fought not to smile at the detail no matter how endearing he may have found it.
“It’s been the same with every boss fight we’ve had,” Erica continued, apparently on a roll.
“Every fight except for the one in the Tower of Truth, after Hakiyah sent the image of Paulus’s dead shield-brother to warn us about whatever the hell somnium, or whatever, actually is!”
“Wait wait wait!” Will interjected, looking to Erica with huge eyes.
“Somnium! How could I have missed that? Erica, do it! Cast dispel magic!”
“Woah woah, what?” Dustin questioned dramatically, his voice rising in pitch with an undignified crack as he waved his hands to better illustrate his confusion.
“That wouldn’t even work if you tried! Since I apparently need to spell it out for you all, the central eye of a Beholder emits an anti magic field! While you waste a high level spell slot with that, it’s one turn closer to taking us out!”
“I agree with Dustin,” Mike spoke up finally, crossing his arms with a downturned brow.
“It’s way too risky. We need to attack this thing head on.”
“No no no. Cast it! I can’t explain until my turn,” Will reminded them with a shake of his head.
“But I have a good feeling about this!”
Erica scrunched her brow and frowned, looking to Eddie, who stared back at her from behind his DM screen with those dark all knowing eyes and an unreadable little smile.
“What’s your move, Madame Gusty?”
She squared her shoulders, mien shifting to Madame Gusty’s ever-stern and focused countenance.
“I use my level four spell slot to cast dispel magic.”
Dustin and Lucas groaned, dropping their heads to the table with tandem thunks that rattled their dice beside them.
Eddie’s expression, however, stayed carefully blank as he swiped up his own D20.
“Roll and make an ability check,” he instructed as he himself rolled behind cover.
Everyone in the room waited, holding their collective breath as the two went back and forth for a moment before Eddie straightened with an unmistakably excited grin.
“Madame Gusty,” he starts with a fond shake of his head, lips curling upward in a Cheshire grin as he draws out each syllable in the name.
“You wave your staff, the green and red of your arcane focus setting across the cavern in a bright and eerie glow. The moment your spell connects with its target, a direct hit, the enormous spherical body of the Beholder begins to shimmer and shake, rays of light erupting from all eleven eyes.”
“Holy shit holy shit holy shit,” Dustin muttered under his breath, grabbing the cap from his head and throwing it down on the table to scrunch up his curls in his hands as he watched Eddie rise slowly from his seat.
“With a rumbling roar, the noise deafening in the echoing cavern, the tyrant dissipates completely, leaving the chamber empty of all evidence of its presence. The illusion is no more.”
All eyes turned toward Steve in a mixture of shock and disbelief as he simply widened his smirk, leaning back with his arms behind his head as if to say:
‘Told ya so.’
“I will remind you,” Eddie spoke, calling their attention back to the matter at hand.
“You’re still in combat mode. Stick to the order of initiative.”
The younger teens glanced between each other with tangible concern.
Steve no longer needed to be told that that meant there was still an enemy present.
He’d call that progress.
Erica turned toward Will with a question clearly etched into her features.
“Jareth,” she spoke in character.
“How did you know it would work?”
Will rose to start his turn with a poorly concealed grin, spreading his arms out in front of him as he proudly addressed the party.
“I remembered what Paulus’s brother told us. He said that to defeat our true enemy, we must remain awake. I was confused by that at the time, since entering into that tower also threw us into a dream of some kind, but then I realised something!”
He flipped through his own notes quickly, stopping at his desired page and reading from it.
“Nothing is as it seems, but everything is the truth. That’s what it said over the arch before we entered the Tower of Truth and suddenly lost our abilities. I don’t think our true enemy is named Somnius, I think Hakiyah was trying to tell us that we’re in a state of somnium, only lifted once we entered her tower, but returning the moment we left it. We’re dreaming; we have been the whole time!”
A long silence stretched across the room as the players turned toward a manically grinning Eddie with jaws dropped to the floor in complete astonishment.
“Sir Paulus,” the DM said as he motioned toward a silent and still Mike, bowing his head and sliding back into his makeshift throne to give the younger teen the floor.
“Damn,” Mike hissed with a shake of his head as he placed his hands on the table and stood from his seat, turning to look at Will with a dark and far too knowing smirk.
“Really thought I’d have more time before you figured it out, but you’re just too observant, aren’t you, Mystic?” he enunciated each word with a biting edge to his voice, his smirk slipping into a sneer that Steve very nearly believed.
“My master will not be pleased.”
“I knew it!” Lucas declared as he too shot out of his seat, pointing an accusatory finger towards Mike.
“I visited the Order Archives in town. That so-called dragon attack you told us of, the tragedy that struck your order, was you all along!
“Your brother Jarrus realised this and went to confront you, only for you to stab and kill him, as shown by the flowing wound on the chest of his spirit in the Tower of Truth. Oh, I had my doubts for a while, but the truth is plain to see! You are the traitor he warned us of!”
At the end of Lucas’s speech, he turned to Eddie with a determined expression.
“I draw my greatsword and strike out at Paulus.”
Eddie motioned to his D20 with a gravely serious nod.
Lucas and Mike rolled in tandem, Lucas calling out a 17 with a triumphant grin, his face falling as Mike called out a 23.
Eddie glanced toward Mike briefly, the two sharing a brief secretive look that had Steve at the edge of his seat before he returned his gaze to Lucas.
“Deckard, you raise your mighty greatsword, your trusty companion against many foes, and swing what should be a deadly strike against Sir Paulus, but the moment before steel connects with steel, it vanishes from your hands, the figure of Paulus with it.”
He faces the rest of the party as they stare at him in some combination of confusion and wonder, listening to his narrative with rapt attention.
“Slowly, your surroundings grow hazy, your minds a blur as the world as you know it grows dark, the only sound easing you into the black a distant and menacing chuckle from a voice you swear you’ve heard.
“You’re not certain how much time has passed, but the four of you stir awake in a vast green clearing surrounded by a thick wall of trees, blinking the sleep from your eyes as you slowly, very slowly, come back to your own bodies.
“Madame Gusty, Sir Deckard, Squire Lightman, and Jareth the Mystic are naught but distant memories of a fading dream as you struggle to wakefulness, remembering truly who all of you really are.”
Eddie punctuated his speech with a devilish grin, snatching up his DM screen and snapping it shut.
“Welcome to the real campaign, adventurers. Your homework tonight is to roll all new character sheets and present them at the next session. You start at level fourteen.”
Eddie’s words were immediately followed by a chorus of frustrated shouts spanning across:
“Are you fucking serious!”
“You’ve got to be shitting me!”
“OH my God I can’t believe Steve was right!”
Steve sat back with a self-satisfied smirk as he watched them absolutely lose their shit, Dustin smacking his head on the table while Lucas threw his hands into the air and Erica paced and ranted like a lunatic.
Mike and Eddie seemed to bask in the chaos together, matching expressions of delight on their smug faces.
“Alright alright,” Steve called as he rose from the comforting embrace of his recliner.
“Time to wrap up! Everybody pack your shit! Nancy’s gonna be here any minute to drive you little cretins home.”
“Dammit, Eddie!” Dustin shouted as he shoved his copious binders into his bag with no little effort.
“Why do you always have to end on the most devastating cliff hangers?”
“Because,” Steve answered before the other man could, helping Dustin zip up his bulging backpack.
“It’s late and we still have a ton of unpacking to do.”
They’d only just finished moving all of their boxes in the night before, crashing afterwards for a grand total of twelve hours on top of a tangled heap of all of their combined blankets and sheets on the floor.
Not a single box had been unpacked save for Eddie’s copious tape collection and Steve’s toiletries when Eddie begged Steve to host that night's session of Hellfire at their brand new place.
Steve’s inner snob that he hadn’t quite been able to quash had been reluctant to allow guests over to their box filled mess of an apartment, but at a single look from Eddie’s pleading brown eyes he’d caved and grabbed his keys to make a snack run, because he’d be damned if he didn’t still have the place with the best snacks.
True to her word as per usual, Nancy arrived precisely at 10:00, the younger teens calling their goodbyes as they exited Steve and Eddie’s apartment, their excited chattering loudly echoing down the hall.
Steve winced. He hoped they wouldn’t be getting a noise complaint on their second night.
The moment the front door was closed and locked, Eddie’s hands were all over him, caressing along his hips and waist as he leaned in to press a kiss against the back of his neck, sending goosebumps across his flesh.
Steve’s breath hitched in surprise, but he quickly melted into the touch, his head tilting to the side as those lips travelled along his throat to his jaw, arms winding around him in a firm embrace.
“How’d you know?” Eddie whispered hotly against his ear, Steve breathing a sigh as he pressed a soft kiss to the spot just below his jaw.
“Know what?” Steve asked as he tried to twist in Eddie’s arms, gasping as Eddie instead grabbed him by the waist, spun him to face him, and slammed him back against the door.
He was pretty sure blood shouldn’t move down through a body as fast as his did in that moment.
“That the Beholder wasn’t real,” Eddie continued, his voice low and deliciously rough from hours of narration as he moved in closer, trailing his lips across his jaw toward Steve’s racing pulse point.
“Have you been in my notes? That’s called cheating, Princess, which is most unbecoming of royalty.”
Steve threw his head back with a hazy laugh, hands coming up to tangle in Eddie’s messy curls as if that was were they belonged.
He breathed in the now familiar smell of Eddie; the Irish Spring soap, the leather, the sweet smoke, the spicy but citrusy aftershave, the cherry slurpee he’d been sipping at for most of the session.
He never would’ve guessed such a conglomeration of scents could remind him of home, but here they were.
“Cheating?” Steve repeated, tugging solidly at Eddie’s hair, pulling a filthy sound from the other man as he guided his head back to look him in the eye.
“You left your Monster Manual at the store last week, babe. I’ve been reading it between rushes and I noticed the inconsistencies. Knowing you, they had to be purposeful, so an illusion wasn’t a hard jump to make,” he answered easily, half-lidded eyes sliding down to take in Eddie’s absolutely enamoured expression, as if Steve had just said the sexiest thing he could possibly think of.
“Fuck,” he whispered as a flush traveled across his pale cheeks, tinging the tips of his ears red.
Steve took full advantage of the distraction, gripping him by his belt loops and yanking his hips flush against his own, the chain on his jeans rattling loudly in the empty apartment as he swiftly switched their positions, pinning Eddie to the door.
“You and Henderson gotta start giving me more credit. I learn fast when I actually give a shit about the material,” he breathed against Eddie’s mouth, still hanging open with his gasp of surprise as he flicked his tongue out teasingly across his plush lower lip, taking it hungrily between his teeth.
Eddie moaned in earnest now as he fisted his hands in the soft material of Steve’s blue striped polo, just holding on as Steve finally slotted their lips together in a slow and languid kiss.
He was certain he could stay like that forever, locked in a warm embrace, safe and happy and so warm; Eddie was always warm.
He mourned the loss of those lips as the metalhead pulled back just enough to look at him with that wonder filled smile and those huge doe eyes.
“Steve Harrington,” he spoke softly through that smile, leaning up to press a soft peck against his cheek, the bridge of his nose, his brow, his hairline, his jaw, anywhere he could reach.
“You’re a genius.”
Warmth filled him to the brim and Steve allowed himself to bask in it; in the glow of finally being wanted and appreciated.
No more ‘idiot Steve’, no more bullshit, no more lies or struggles or crossed wires.
No more disappointed head shakes and wondering why he wasn’t good enough.
Just a long and happy life in their shitty little downtown apartment that they’d paid for with zero help from Steve’s parents; visits from the kids and Uncle Wayne, regular movie nights, holidays, Hellfire, fuck, anything he could get so long as it was with Eddie “The Freak” Munson.
That would do just fine.
………