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[thefreak]

The last thing Eddie remembers is an ungodly amount of pain. It isn’t the first time he’s felt such excruciating pain, but it is the first time he’s been privy to the source of it. The whole concept of soulmates had been one of the many things Eddie had scoffed at over the years. Just like school sports and parties, the idea of being bonded to someone felt like it was meant more for the Carol Perkins in the world than the Eddie Munsons.

It probably didn’t help that Eddie discovered from a young age that he was not like everyone else. Sure, girls were pretty, but he didn’t find himself wondering what it would be like to kiss them. So Eddie had accepted that he would wind up as one of the rare few without an eventual bond.

Then 1985 rolled around, as did his second unsuccessful attempt at senior year of high school, and suddenly it was starting to look like his assumptions were incorrect. It’s no secret that the soulmate bond rears its ugly head through a very literal empathy. For most people, they’ll feel the occasional scrape when their lover bangs their knee into the corner of a coffee table, or the unlucky few to experience a broken bone due to an accident that their lover was unfortunate to endure.

After July 4th, 1985, and the worst sympathetic pain he was certain that anyone had the displeasure of experiencing, Eddie had assumed whoever his soulmate was didn’t make it through some terrible accident. Hearing about the mall fire just compounded that assumption, although if he were being honest with himself, what he felt didn’t feel like being burned alive.

None of that could have prepared him for the worst Spring Break of his life. Eddie had thought he would just be spending the week shut in at the trailer, working on another song or maybe another campaign that he would run after he graduated. Instead, he was forced to go on the run after the whole town thought he was capable of killing Chrissy Cunningham. His only saving grace was an unlikely group of seasoned monster hunters – chief among them Steve fucking Harrington of all people. And hadn’t that been a surprise.

Almost as surprising as diving into a portal into another dimension, only to feel…well, he kept it to himself, the fact that he could feel the tiny little teeth ripping Steve’s flesh to shreds. It was almost certainly a one-sided thing, after all. And considering the writing was on the walls and Eddie could see no way out of this other than death or a jail cell, well…

Waking up in the hospital bed hadn’t been a part of that plan. Less so was waking up in a hospital bed with Steve sleeping apparently peacefully in the chair next to him, but when has any of Eddie’s plans panned out? With the shock of Steve’s presence out of the way, it brings light to the fact that all of Eddie’s body feels like it’s on fire. Whatever drugs that had been pumped into his system to keep the pain at a minimal level must be tapering off, and goddammit why is Steve asleep now when he could really use some help flagging down a nurse or something, but he can barely lift a finger right now, his whole body feeling like it’s made of lead.

“’arrington?” he manages to rasp out in a piss poor attempt to get Steve’s attention.