Steve rolled over to find Eddie sitting up.

"Eddie?" he asked as he realised that a, it was early morning, and b, Eddie had the most amazing bedhead.

However, any amusement flew out of his mind when Eddie looked at him. That wide-eyed worried stare he had seen too many times while they were in the Upside Down was engraved on Eddie's features.

"What's wrong," he asked, sitting up.

He was pretty sure Eddie was not panicking over simply waking up in his bed, no matter how mostly asleep both of them had been when he'd climbed in.

"I'm really thirsty," Eddie said quietly, "like really, really thirsty."

That being said, Eddie opened his mouth. Steve squinted because the curtains were half closed and the light wasn't very good, but then he saw what Eddie was trying to show him. Two neat little fangs were jutting from Eddie's upper jaw.

"Oh," Steve said. "Guess that part didn't completely go away then."

"That's all you have to say?" Eddie asked, sounding just a bit hysterical. "Didn't go away? Steve, I have fangs."

"Hey," Steve said, sitting up properly and reaching out to place a hand on Eddie's arm. "It's not like you're some bloodthirsty monster. We can deal with this."

"How do you know, Steve?" Eddie challenged. "How do you know?"

"Because I woke up to you freaking out, not chowing down on my helpless neck," he said, giving Eddie a look. "Now how about we deal with this before anyone else wakes up. I think it will be much easier to explain once we can prove the solution, don't you?"

He held out his wrist towards Eddie.

"Oh my god, you really are a self-sacrificial idiot, aren't you?" Eddie said as if he could not believe what Steve was saying.

"No, in this case I'm a practical one," he replied, "and your friend. It's not like we haven't done this before."

"That wasn't the same," Eddie protested. "That was like some other reality."

"What happens there still has real world consequences," he countered waving between both of them to illustrate his point.

"It doesn't feel like then," Eddie said, expression twisted with worry.

"That's because I think some of that was meta... metapsy... no that's not right ... meta something," he tried to explain.

"Metaphysical?" Eddie suggested.

"Yes, that," Steve agreed. "El and Will were talking about it while we were still staying at the labs and the way El explains it, it's not exactly a real place. It's not like going between here and the Upside Down, it's well..."

"More like astral projection?" Eddie asked.

"If that's where you leave your body, then yes," Steve agreed. "Things there can seem physical and have real world physical consequences, but it's not necessarily the same thing. You remember biting me, I remember you biting me, but I think it was to do with creating a connection between us so I could help you heal, not actual blood. But it doesn't make much different because it felt real to us anyway and you proved you can control your instincts."

"I could hurt you," Eddie insisted.

"I could heal it," he pointed out.

"I don't want to hurt anyone," Eddie all but whispered.

Steve shuffled a bit closer.

"Eds," he said, wondering after he'd said it where the nickname came from, "we've all come out of this a little different. Some of us like you, me, and Will a lot different, everyone else changed by everything we've all been through. We stick together, we deal with it. Please, let me help you. If it turns out not to be good for either of us, we'll stop, and we'll call our child geniuses and supergirl to figure out something else."

Eddie sat there looking at him in silence for a few seconds. It was only then he realised it wasn't a trick of the light, Eddie's eyes were black too. When the little red ring appeared, Steve knew Eddie had agreed.

"If I hurt you, you stop me," Eddie said perfectly seriously.

"I promise," he replied, lifting his wrist once more.

Eddie's fingers were cold as they wrapped round his bed warmed skin. His nerves tingled. When black, red-rimmed irises looked up at him, he nodded. It felt momentous, and yet not at the same time. It felt right and obvious.

"One second," he said, just before Eddie lowered his head.

Leaning over, he grabbed a couple of Kleenex from the pack on the bedside table.

"Sorry, just in case of spillage," he explained, taking up his previous position.

Eddie took a deep, shuddering breath, and focused on Steve's wrist.

Steve bit his lip. Eddie's fangs going in definitely hurt, but the feel of Eddie sucking on his wrist, that went straight to his cock. In a way, Eddie had been right, it was very different from when they had been in the Void, but it was in no way bad. Quite the opposite in fact. And Eddie only took a few swallows before drawing back.

Acting on instinct more than anything else, Steve clamped his other hand over the wounds, drawing his wrist back to him. The Kleenex went red as his blood soaked through, but he concentrated. Not really clear what he was doing, he closed his eyes and didn't exactly will the holes to close, more he pushed them to be right. It was the strangest sensation as, for a moment, everything around him became distant. His wrist throbbed, just once and the real world jumped back to the forefront of his mind.

Not sure he'd managed to do anything, he moved the Kleenex carefully. What he revealed were two, neat little pink patches on his skin, a mere echo of the holes that had been there.

"Now that is metal," Eddie said.

"Says the guy with fangs," was the best comeback Steve could manage.

He touched his nose, but his fingers came away clean. No nosebleed either, which felt like a significant victory.

"Oh, wow, I think I might be high," Eddie said, swaying slightly where he was sitting.

Definitely not the reaction Eddie had had in the Void either. Steve knelt up and gently took hold of Eddie's shoulders so he could get a good look at his friend's face. All the while doing his very best to pretend he wasn't half hard.

"Your pupils are blown," he said as Eddie looked at him with his pretty dark eyes that were once again brown, but mostly pupil.

"You taste really good," Eddie told him. "Wasn't like this before."

"Yeah, well I don't think anything is like before," Steve replied, doing his best to ignore the way Eddie was looking at him was stirring feelings he wasn't sure how to deal with.

"You have lovely eyes," Eddie said with a small smile. "Everyone always talks about the hair, but your eyes are amazing. You have a first-class ass too..."

"Okay," Steve said, feeling his face heat up, "how about you lie down and try to get some more sleep. It's still early and I don't think you know what you're saying."

"Yeah, maybe, sleep's good," Eddie said, moving as Steve gently urged him back towards the bed. "Meant what I said though," Eddie muttered, relaxing surprisingly quickly.

For a while Steve sat there processing. On the one hand Eddie had definitely been kind of high so anything he said couldn't be held against him, however, Steve also knew that sometimes that was when the real truths came out. Straight guys didn't usually tell other guys they had pretty eyes and a nice ass unless they were taking the piss. He was pretty sure Eddie had not been doing that.

Of course, the bigger thing he was trying to deal with was his own reaction. He wasn't horrified by Eddie's words, he wasn't even a little bit worried, quite the opposite in fact, he was pretty sure he was reacting in exactly the same way he would if a pretty girl had told him those things. Now that he looked back, it had started in the Void. Complicated feelings from before had now started to untangle themselves and were making a very obvious pattern.

Climbing out of bed carefully, so as not to wake Eddie, he walked out of his room and down the landing to the second guest bedroom. The door was partially open, and he stepped inside, padding over to the bed and sitting down beside a still sleeping Robin.

"Robin," he said, gently shaking her shoulder.

The only response was a noise of discontent.

"Robin," he persisted.

"What?" she asked, not opening her eyes. "You're still in the doghouse, y'know."

"Sorry, I kind of need to talk to you," he said quietly.

Something in his tone must have been enough, because Robin sat up, pushing her hair out of her face.

"Hey, Steve," she said in a much gentler voice, reaching out and taking his hand, a worried little frown clouding her features, "what's up? I'm not really mad at you, promise."

"You know you explained how some people like the opposite gender, some like the same, some like both, some don't like any and everything else?" he asked.

He could tell by the way Robin's eyes opened that she hadn't really expected where the conversation was going.

"Of course," she replied.

"I think," he said, going over everything in his head again just to make sure. "I think I might be one of the people who like both."

"And that's perfectly okay, right," Robin said, moving closer to him. "You get that, don't you?"

He nodded.

"Do you mind me asking how you figured it out?" she asked carefully.

"Eddie," he admitted.

"Hmmm," Robin said.

"You don't look surprised," he observed.

"Yep," Robin admitted, "I thought you might say that. You kinda get this look on your face when you're into someone," she told him. "I might be shit at telling if a girl is into me, but I'm kind of attuned to when you're into a girl, or in this case a guy."

"Oh," he said as he let that sink in. "But its's not just because he's back from the dead..."

"I know," Robin said, effectively shutting him up.

"How?" he asked, because that was definitely the first thing he had thought of.

"Because you didn't get that look after Eddie died," Robin told him, giving him that intense look of her. "That last time in the Upside Down, when we left behind Dustin and Eddie as decoys, you had it then."

He almost contradicted her, after all he'd barely known Eddie at that point, but he didn't, instead mulling it over.

"Oh," he said again as he replayed that time in his mind.

It had not had a happy conclusion and he usually tried to avoid the memories most of the time, but he let it play through his thoughts.

"You never said anything," he said eventually, not quite sure what to think.

"Didn't want to pressure you," Robin said, squeezing his hand. "Kind of something you have to figure out on your own, so I was waiting for you to come to me. Honestly, I was expecting a bit more of a crisis, you've always been so very straight."

He shrugged.

"Probably would have been," he admitted, "but with everything else, it doesn't feel quite as big as it might have."

"I suppose raising the dead could be considered a bit higher on the momentous events scale," Robin commented.

"He wasn't dead," Steve countered automatically and rolled his eyes at her, for which he earned a smile.

"That's called splitting hairs, Dingus," she said airily. "So, spill, what made you finally realise?"

The memory of Eddie's mouth on his wrist flashed into his head and he felt his cheeks heat up almost instantly.

"Steven Harrington, have you been kissing another boy?" Robin accused, teasing him mercilessly.

"Not exactly," he said, ducking his head.

"Okay, now you have to tell me," Robin said, "because I have never seen you blush this badly before."

"Fine," he replied, "but you have to promise not to yell at me."

Robin gave him that look as if she was peering over horn-rimmed spectacles or something.

"Eddie woke up with fangs, I let him bite me, bullied him into it really, and there was nothing platonic about it, at least on my end. He got high off my blood and told me I had pretty eyes and a nice ass," he confessed all in one go.

Robin's mouth fell into a little 'o'.

"Please say something," he begged.

"Eddie is a vampire?" Robin finally asked.

"Kind of, only not really," he did his best to explain. "I think it's a hangover from what Vecna did to him. He was dying of hunger when I first saw him in the Void and I told you I let him feed from me, only it wasn't remotely the same, and I think then it was mostly about creating a connection which let me heal him. He doesn't have fangs anymore most of the time, so I think it's an only-when-he's-really-hungry thing, and he didn't have them yesterday and he had no problem with sunlight. After all you found us outside and..."

Robin put her finger on his lips, so he shut up.

"Did he hurt you?" she asked.

"No, god no," he promised. "It was kind of erotic actually, and I healed the bite."

He held out his wrist where the two little pink patches were already fading.

"Oh my god," Robin said, running her hands through her hair, "not only have you had a bisexual awakening, but you have a biting kink too. Steve, you never do anything the easy way, do you?"

"What do I do?" he asked, because he felt way out of his depth.

"About Eddie being a vampire or Eddie floating your boat?" Robin asked.

"The second," he replied. "I think we've got the first one covered, although we're going to have to let everyone else know."

"I think other people might find the vampire thing a bigger deal than you do," Robin pointed out, "but let's skip that for now. What do you want to do about Eddie?"

"Kiss him within an inch of his life," Steve said perfectly honestly.

Robin blinked at him for a moment, opening her mouth and then closing it again.

"Actually," she said eventually, "that's a really cute picture in my head."

"Robin, focus," he prompted.

"Sorry," she said. "I think you need to talk to him," she went on. "He knows what he said, you know what he said, so be brave, have a conversation about it."

"What if he says he didn't mean it?" Steve asked.

"Then he's full of shit," Robin said without any hesitation. "Steve, I've seen the way he looks at you. You're not the only one who was giving off signals. I might not read Eddie as well as I read Dingus, but I'm also not blind."

She made more sense than he really wanted to admit. Not that it made everything any easier.

"But until then," she said, glancing at her watch, "it's ass o'clock in the morning. Sleep now, talk later."

She was already lying back down, dragging him along. He surrendered, letting her snuggle into him, but he didn't close his eyes. He had too much to think about.