werewolf steve, werebat eddie (ch2)
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Eddie’s knee bounces in the stationary van parked outside the Harrington house; he stares down at the open Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual clutched between his arms, flipping between the werewolf and the dire wolf. A drawing of the former has it standing upright, muscled and snarling with outstretched claws; his eyes are drawn to chaotic evil.
He knows that Steve isn’t evil. He does. The man who had spent hours next to Eddie at his hospital bedside showed an honour and trustworthiness that had drawn Eddie in even before he’d recognised it.
No, the caring guy he’s come to know is about as far from an alignment that lacks compassion and kills for sport as someone could get. That Steve is capable of wielding a nail-bat against the monsters of the Upside Down only lends an appealingly chaotic feel to the man Eddie had begun to think of as a rogue knight.
Sighing, he flips to the other page held open by his spare hand: dire wolf. Unaligned and a beast advantaged by its pack, this seems like Steve’s speed. Resembling his transformed self more acutely with its simple, albeit large wolf appearance. His finger stops on the bloodied maw, but the idea of it is still terrifying.
Reluctantly, he turns to the page he’s now memorised by heart. Man-shaped, this monster growls with open fangs too; sharp tapered ears are fixed on a figure draped in an aristocratic overcoat and cape. Finger trembling, he traces undead and lawful evil before pausing over bat polymorph as one of the vampire’s characteristics.
A loud bang smacks against the side of the van and Eddie jumps high enough to hit his head on the Chevrolet’s roof. “Ow, Christ!” He hisses, rubbing the sore spot and glaring at Dustin grinning at him through the closed window.
“Come on,” he shouts, “Everyone’s here!”
Eddie scowls, leaving behind the manual to tumble out of the van. Dustin immediately starts pushing him from behind and Eddie whacks at him with his hands, “Lay off, man. I’m coming, okay.”
Dustin hums doubtfully, “Yeah, but I watched you sit in the van for the last ten minutes and that was only after I noticed you’d arrived. Who knows how long it was going to take you?”
He quickly opens the front door before Dustin pushes him right smack into it, but the younger boy continues shoving at Eddie until he stumbles into Steve’s living room. In a similar configuration to yesterday’s intervention, the party sits, lounges, or stands about the room, quietly talking.
On the couch, Robin sits cross-legged with Steve who’s flipping through a magazine. Eddie’s relieved to see that all four limbs are human-shaped, and mouth only curved into a soft pout as he contemplates the article in front of him.
Everyone pauses to look over at their loud entrance. Steve glances up and, meeting his calm expression, Eddie almost blushes at how uncoordinated he must have looked falling through the door. He averts his gaze to El who approaches him with an outstretched palm, “Are you ready?”
Eddie sighs but takes her hand; she leads him to the open floor and they sit across from each other, “Yeah, we might as well do this. So, you’re going to force the bat out or something?”
“There’s no guarantee that you can shift,” Lucas leans back against the wall next to Will with casually folded arms. “You could be a normal human with bat scars and that’s it.”
“Or I could be a vampire of the night,” Eddie counters darkly. “I’ve been craving meat lately.”
Max rolls her eyes, “You have not, you big liar. I saw you scoffing down Honey Crunch on your front porch only two days ago.”
“Yeah, well, I was high. Maybe weed mellows out the beast.”
Eddie’s gaze flies to Steve when he snorts, but Steve looks away, concentrating on the magazine that Eddie suddenly suspects he’s not actually reading.
The thought that he’s avoiding Eddie stirs a familiar sense of guilt, giving rise to the niggle that he’d tried to forget after the wolf left yesterday, further punctuated by Robin’s distinct stink-eye. Even amidst the fear that had gripped him, he’d been able to see a sad, dejected version of Steve in the down-turned tail and slow trudge away.
“I'm going to take you into the void,” El says, holding out both her hands over her knees and Eddie takes them at her urging. “When I visit Steve there, he is able to feel the wolf and communicate with him.”
“I sort of see him next to me, if it helps,” Steve finally pipes up, watching Eddie warily like he’s expecting him to reject the advice, but Eddie only nods grimly. He’s going to need all the tips he can get he suspects. “Do I let it possess me or something?”
Steve frowns, a hint of reproach about him, “My wolf doesn’t posses me, he is me. Just like I’m him.” He shakes his head at Eddie’s confusion, “If you have a bat or a vampire or, I don’t know, maybe you’ll have a wolf too, then just reach out to him. He wants to be a part of you and you’ll both figure it out from there.”
Eddie looks into the steady gaze of Steve’s hazel eyes and feels it like a hand over his own: Steve has done this before, and successfully. He just needs to trust in the rogue knight one more time. “Okay,” he says, closing his eyes and following El’s lead.
Steve throws his Fine Gardening magazine onto the coffee table and leans against Robin’s shoulder, she presses back. “Does it usually take this long with me,” he murmurs, trying to keep quiet for the two sitting silently in the middle of the room. Both El and Eddie have their eyes closed and hands clasped with the other. Max had turned the television to a snowy channel to help channel El’s concentration with the static sound.
She hums a negative, “But then, you two only did it to play around and see if there was more you could learn about yourself. This is Eddie trying to find out whether he even has another version to turn into.”
She grabs his arm suddenly, “Wait.” Steve blinks, unsure of what he’d seen other than to describe it as a pulse around Eddie. A long beat passes before the trick of the eye flickers again, so quickly that Steve can’t be sure of what he’s seeing.
In one rapid swoop, the air around Eddie contracts, pulling abruptly inwards until Eddie the human disappears to be replaced with a bat standing unsteadily in front of El. He blinks wide eyes, faltering on tiny feet before stumbling over to land on his back.
Eddie squawks in what Steve thinks is shock before frantically flapping his extended wings and tossing over to push up into the air, erratically darting around the suddenly panicking humans.
With one wing beating harder than the other, he drunkenly tilts and rolls into Mike’s long hair. Shrieking, Mike pulls Eddie out and flings him away even while crying out, “Shit! Sorry, Eddie! Sorry!”
Eddie cries out himself and flutters, gaining his momentum only to slam into the wall with a thump next to Dustin who leaps forward trying to catch him, but Eddie desperately twists before leaping higher, aiming for the peak of the ceiling.
“Catch him,” Will yells as Lucas runs out of the room.
“I’m trying,” Dustin shrieks in a tone that matches the high screeches of Eddie above them.
Robin shrugs off her boxy jacket, “Wait, I’ve got this.” She advances on Eddie as he zig zags against the wall again, but he must see her as a large threatening animal because he chitters wildly before smacking his wings at her face. Robin yelps and falls, only narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the ground by Max urgently jumping underneath to stop her rapid descent.
Lucas skids into the living room, triumphantly holding aloft the large pool skimmer usually stored in the garden shed. “Steve,” he yells before throwing it across the room.
Steve deftly catches the long handle in the air and, with a twist of his wrist, scoops Eddie mid-flight. Quickly flipping the pole, he entangles his small body in the net.
Panting or, in Mike’s case, holding down his hair, the group silently gather around the squirming bat version of Eddie as he shrieks and tries to bite his way out of the thin rope.
Steve thinks of his first fumbling and panicked steps: the distinct difference between having two legs extended to four, not even at the right height, let alone the terror of suddenly having a completely different way of looking and feeling the world had been indescribable. There are still scratches in the wooden floorboards from how hard he had dug his claws in to stop his legs from skidding in all directions.
“Back up, guys,” he says softly, keeping his tone low and soothing. “Hey, Eddie, hey,” he shushes, positioning the net against his torso so he can roll Eddie out of the mesh without letting him escape. Everyone steps back or sits in a chair, and Steve brings Eddie higher up to his chest so he can meet the eyes of the little guy.
Although his thinking or way of interpreting his surroundings may be a little different, Steve is always aware of the world as he would be as a human, and he can see that it’s the same for Eddie. The big wet eyes of his bat form aren’t that different from his human ones, Steve thinks, a little amused even while worried at how hard Eddie is panting.
“It’s okay,” Steve says, “You’re okay, you’re with friends, and this isn’t permanent. You’re just a bat for a little bit, Eddie, and you’ll be human in no time. Okay? You’re okay.” He keeps repeating reassuring nonsense, keeping his fingers firmly wrapped around squirming wings and resting Eddie against his heart.
As a wolf, Steve likes to lay his head over Robin’s heart, likes the proof that she is alive and well under him, and often finds himself calming under her steady thump, thump, thump.
Under his fingers, he can feel the frantic thrumming of Eddie’s heart start to calm too.
“That’s good,” he croons softly, stroking his thumb over the soft down of Eddie’s head. He takes stock of the little body in front of him: over Eddie’s nose the bridge is one long stripe of white, the rest of him covered in a deep brown while the ruff of his neck is almost golden, his ears are tapered as is the long tip of his pink tongue.
They all watch while Steve successfully calms Eddie as if he is a baby cradled to him. “Do you think that’s a were thing?” Asks Lucas, peering at Eddie as his breathing slows down, he blinks back up at him.
“I don’t know,” Will says thoughtfully, “Steve is pretty soothing to have around.” El nods while Mike shoots his friend a look of betrayal.
Steve rolls his eyes, “He was just scared. Look, now he’s had a moment to chill he’s with us again.” And, sure enough, little Eddie’s eyes are drooping as Steve continues to lightly pat him, clearly relaxing into the comforting gesture. He loosens his hold, still keeping a firm grip but not so tightly in fear of Eddie struggling again.
Max snorts as she peers down, “Oh yeah, there’s the big bad metalhead everyone fears.”
Eddie’s closing eyes snap open with a glare and he squeaks at her. Unfortunately, Steve thinks, the cuteness of it all only supports Max’s teasing. Robin meets his eyes over the kids’ heads and silently laughs in agreement.
“Okay,” Steve orders, “I think the lot of us in the same room may be too much for him right now. You guys skedaddle and we’ll let you know when he’s back to rights.”
Dustin looks doubtful, “What can you do that we can’t?”
Robin snorts, “Uh, Dusty-bun, Steve is literally the expert in this room when it comes to were-changes. You can’t research your way out of this one.”
Dustin grumps, “I could. If we didn’t have Steve, I could absolutely be the one to help him get back to normal.” He turns to the backpack shoved against the table. “Here,” he says, pulling out two books with photos of bats across the covers. Steve peers further into the bag and can see back-ups that apparently didn’t pass muster. “These are the books I brought on bats. If he starts craving blood, let me know — I have more on vampires when he needs them.”
Max takes them from his hands while Lucas steers Dustin towards the front door, where they’d left their bikes outside. Mike mutters a mocking noise that sounds like skedaddle and, with that, the room falls silent once more.
Robin and Steve look over at Max as she falls back onto the couch with El quickly following behind. She stares back belligerently, “What? Mom dropped me off and Eddie was our ride back.” El crosses her arms with a serene smile.
Steve sighs, “Okay, but we’re not doing anything exciting and you guys are making dinner.” The girls readily agree, heating leftovers from Steve’s fridge and serving the four of them as they sit in the living room, eating while watching a Bewitched marathon. At Steve’s instruction, Robin had brought down his blue hoodie with its tunnel-like pocket over his belly.
Little Eddie had curled up inside of it and Steve keeps one hand over him to provide what he hopes feels like shelter and comfort; under it, he can feel the heat of his small body and the steady rhythm of his breathing.
“You look like you’re pregnant,” Robin acerbically observes from the other end of the couch, feet crossed into her lap for the lotus position.
“Does that mean that I can finally eat butterscotch ice cream without you making that face?” He counters with a bitchy expression back.
“What face?” She protests even as she makes The Face. Max rises her brow to Steve, “Why does she look like that?”
“That summer at Scoops maybe put her off some flavours for life,” he shares. El ignores them all in favour of watching Samantha wiggling her nose to float Darrin out of a tree.
“If I have to smell USS Butterscotch one more time, I’m going to puke — lack of pregnancy be damned,” Robin warns.
The commercials blares once Samantha finishes rescuing her husband, and El moves to peek inside the hoodie, tentatively extending a finger and gasping when Eddie’s little bat foot comes out to grip it. “He feels so soft.”
Steve snickers at Robin and he thinks he feels what’s supposed to be a bat bite through the cotton in retaliation, but it’s hard to tell with the lack of sharp fangs behind it. He sobers for the younger members of the room, “Yeah, but he can’t stay this way forever. Can you sense anything from him, El?”
She closes her eyes while continuing to hold Eddie’s foot, “He is not upset like earlier, but I don’t think he is ready to come back to being human-Eddie yet either.”
Steve looks worriedly down at the bump over his stomach, “Is he okay? I ran around a lot at first too, but once I figured out what was happening I tried to turn human again as soon as possible.”
“Yeah, but you also didn’t know that it was possible to turn back to human,” Robin points out. “He could be chilling ‘cause he knows that everything is going to be okay.”
El hums, “No, I do not think that’s it.” She shrugs, gently untangling Eddie’s clawed toes to lean back into Max who shifts an arm and drapes it over El’s shoulders comfortingly. “But he is not willing to share either. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Robin reassures her as she peeks into the other end of the pocket, smirking as she waggles a playful finger at him. Steve can see the wide, wet eyes of Eddie peeking out at her in curiosity. “Maybe he knows that he’s cuter as a bat than as a stinky human boy.”
Eddie glares and snaps his small teeth in the air before sullenly turning, curling up and facing the other way. Once again, a small hidden lump in the hoodie. Steve sighs, “We’ll give him the night and, if he’s not back tomorrow, maybe you can look for him in the void, El? Ask him what’s going on or guide him back to being human again. Whatever it is that he needs since it’s not working for him right now.”
He glances at the stairs, “Do you guys want to stay over? You can sleep in one of the spare rooms?”
“I call third bedroom,” Robin calls, standing up decisively, “Second bedroom has a weird smell.” She points her finger at Steve’s opening mouth, “I don’t care if you can’t smell anything, which, weird. Since you’re the one with the super nose these days.”
She grimaces and says more quietly, “I don’t think I can bunk up tonight, all the screaming got me…” She waggles her hand around her ears and Steve nods, knowing that she needs some quiet time after a lot of stimulation.
Max smirks and takes El by the hand, “That’s cool, we can’t smell whatever weirdo smell your nose is picking up. Night guys.” The girls wave before heading upstairs and Steve shuts off the television.
Picking his way through the house he double checks that the windows and doors are locked before turning off the lights and heading to bed. Lying down, he snuggles little Eddie to him, the small body already curled on top of his chest and asleep.
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