Chapter Text
Everyone knows Hawkins is cursed. Child after child, teenager after teenager, silently slipping into the night, never to be seen again. Tsunamis of grief crush families with alarming regularity. Houses gain deadbolts with every tragedy, yet they never seems to falter the persistent march of despair that haunts every crevice of this small Indiana town. There have been martyrs, there have been uproars. They all fizzle out now or later, pulverized beneath God’s heel as he snatches another daughter, snuffs out another son. Evidence gives out under the first real inspection. The police station is the most vandalized building in town.
And yet life moves on. Demons need people to torment, and so the families stay for one reason or the other. Lineage. Necessity. Remembrance. The community holds- fractured and distrusting, sure- but they hold. They grasp each others hands and pray in the crumbling Presbyterian church as the minister screams his barrage of verses in a desperate attempt to stave off the Devil’s white-knuckled grip on their town.
There is a battle in Hawkins, of good and evil. Of normalcy and the bizarre. Of death and tragedy: a fight that can never be won. And there are always people who suffer for it, who are trapped in the crossfire of a war being fought in all the wrong ways. They cling to each other as they weather out the storm, and try to find ways not only to survive, but to live.
Steve Harrington is laying face down in the back of Family Video. He has the Top 40s chart blaring in the background and is enjoying the feel of concrete in the break room on his red, sweat-soaked face. The sound of Duran Duran is currently drowning out the sound of the box fan he’s sprawled in front of, and the bliss of cold air has him lost in his own thoughts. Most of them are concerning the girl he went on a date with last week and particularly about what happened afterwards.
He’s jolted out of his extremely hot daydream about making out with Kathy Thompson in the back seat of his car by the dull thud of someone’s shoe grinding into the back of his spine. He wheedles out a startled Huh? before being rolled over by the same foot and finding himself looking straight up into Robin Buckley’s extremely pissed face. She looks even sweatier than he is, her bad bleach job plastered to the side of her head and a cherry blush mottling her face. She’s glaring daggers at Steve, who blinks away the darkness he’s been enjoying as she taps her foot on his ribcage.
“Oh, hey Robin.” He grins.
“Harrington, what the hell?” She grunts, kicking him in the side for good measure. He flails and curls up instinctively, a slow and high pitched whine escaping him as he feels the aftermath of her Chucks rattle through his ribcage.
“I just had to deal with two girls looking to rent a movie I’ve never heard of and yet they insisted exists,” She punctuates the word ‘insisted’ with a clench of her jaw and an audible grinding of her teeth. “Something about a monkey? I have no goddamn clue. But I figured you could use your straight white guy charm to get them out of my hair instead of laying here melting into the concrete, how about that?”
Steve lets out an excessively dramatic drawn out groan. “Are they at least hot?” He ventures lamely, squinting up at the white lighting of the break room. Robin forms a menacing silhouette, her hair a frizzy halo around her head as she bends over Steve.
“They are a hundred percent high out of their mind.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Robin’s lips are in a drawn out line. She’s glaring at Steve like she’s trying to melt holes in his skull and finally she lets out a breath like a deflating balloon. “…They’re pretty hot.”
“Fuck yeah.” He jumps up with impressive ease for someone who’s just been plastered on the concrete floor for the last half hour. “I’ll get ‘em the movie, just you watch.”
“Good luck. If you find it I owe you twenty minutes of my time and probably a few bucks.”
He did not, in fact, get them the movie. After an extremely long-winded explanation from two blonde and fried twenty-somethings about no less than twelve monkeys, a chess game at a public pool, and a nude scene with Tom Cruise, Steve managed to come up with absolutely nothing other than a headache from the smell of weed that was radiating off of them. Finally they meandered their way out of the store after Robin bashed them for attempted shoplifting, and Steve sank to the floor behind the counter, running his hands down his face with a groan.
“I hope I at least get high from the amount of secondhand weed I just inhaled.”
“God, I wish,” Robin moped, her forehead pressed on the counter by the cash register. “I also wish someone would fix the fucking AC.”
“Damned if I know,” Steve agrees, voice muffled from the shirt he’s pulled half off and has hooked over his head, exposing his stomach.
“Ew, put your shirt back on, I don’t want to look at man abs any longer than I already have to with fuckin’…” She gestures across the counter, head still down, at the cardboard cutout of Arnold Schwarzenegger propped by the sci-fi section. “Terminator over there.”
“I’m flattered that we’re in the same mental box.”
“Don’t be. The mental boxes for me are ‘tits’ and ‘no tits’.” She gestures like she’s divvying off two sections by tapping her hands on the counter, head still down. “Degrees of stomach muscles on men are not given brain space.”
“Good to know.”
Robin has slid further down the counter so that she’s now kneeling next to Steve, eyes barely peeking over the counter. “Quiet day.”
“Tell me about it.” His shirt is still half off. “Those two, a family of four, and Lucas’s sister are everyone that’s been in here today.”
“Damn. What’d Erica get? Strawberry shortcake or some shit?”
“Bladerunner.”
“Oh, damn.”
“Meh, wasn’t surprised. She’s hardcore, man.”
“Sick.”
“That’s what I said when she brought it to the counter. Technically not supposed to give R rated shit to under-sixteens but I gave her the family pass.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“Really?” He asks, feigning ignorance. “Didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to take her cash she gave me from her My Little Pony wallet and check it out under my account on the down-low.”
“Oh my god, you’re a horrible influence.”
Steve lets his shirt fall so he can glower at her. “Hey, it’s a good movie. If she’d picked, like, Grease or some shit I’d have just said no.”
Robin turns her head to make a face. “Grease? Is that really your standard for bad media?”
Steve shrugs. “Boring movie.”
“Meh. You make a fair point.”
The door jingles as it’s shoved open and someone makes their way inside. Robin grunts and stands up all the way, putting on a half-assed customer service smile.
“Hi, Family Video, can I help you find something?” She says with mildly convincing enthusiasm as she runs a hand through her hair and looks up at who just walked in. “Oh, hey.”
Eddie Munson turns his head to look at Robin as he makes a beeline to the sci-fi section. His eyes are wide like a caged animal caught off-guard. “Shit, I forgot you worked here. Hey.” He waves idly, disappearing behind the shelves as he glances back at the back racks of comics and pulp fiction. He has a noticeable hunch, like he’s on his way to some kind of clandestine nerd-fest in the back of the Family Video. Robin makes a face but shrugs and sits back down next to Steve behind the counter.
“Don’t disturb the Munson.” Steve’s head lolls to look at Robin with one eyebrow jokingly raised. “He comes in here sometimes and, I swear to God, wouldn’t notice if the whole store caught on fire. Dude’s so enthralled in browsing. He’s dedicated, man.”
“Does he always act like we’ve got six heads?” Robin deadpans, meeting Steve’s gaze with a lopsided grin.
“Usually. On bad days it’s more like seven.”
“Do you ever give him recs or anything?”
“Meh. I’ve thought about it but honestly, the dude’s so underground that anything I mention is like, Sesame Street to him.”
Robin scoffs. “I bet I could recommend something he’d like.”
“What, an audio recording of nine straight hours of some dude talking about math? Because that’s about the furthest thing I can think of from what I’m into, which coincidentally usually lines up with what Munson’s into.”
“Nah, you just have to be in the right spaces.” She picks herself up and wanders out from behind the counter before Steve can stop her.
“Wait, shit- Robin-“ He hisses, scrambling to his feet. She’s already found her way to where Eddie’s browsing, and Steve can just barely see their faces from where he sits hunkered by the register. Eddie’s on his knees flipping through comics, and Robin sidles up beside him, hands shoved in her pockets. Her gaze follows what he’s looking at.
“Finding everything okay?” She asks casually.
He jumps with a sharp inhale and whips to look behind him. Steve winces.
“Um, yeah- yeah,” He mutters with an edge that is definitely saying please go away. Unfortunately, Robin is impeccably bad at picking up on shit like that, so Steve just watches in mild horror as she eggs on.
“You into comics? Pulp fiction, shit like that?”
“Yep.” He pops the consonant with a plastered on smile that looks more like a grimace. One of his ring-covered hands grasps the display and Steve can see his knuckles whiten.
“B movies your type of thing?”
“…Occasionally,” He says cautiously, brows furrowing like he can’t figure out Robin’s motive for interacting with him.
“You seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
Now it’s Steve’s turn to frown. The hell is that?
Astoundingly, this makes Eddie crack a genuine smile. “Yeah, fucking course I have, look at me. It’s one of my favorites.”
Robin throws Steve a wink and grins back at Eddie. “Wait, no shit! I was just thinking you’d like it and, like, Steve warned me not to come over here because he knows you’re kind of a dick- no offense- to people recommending you shit but, like, either you’ve seen it and loved it or haven’t seen it and will love it, and it’s super cool that you have because it’s also one of my favorites and I’m so glad another person in this shithole of a town has-“
She fades off, her ramble growing quieter as she crouches down behind the shelf.
Now Steve’s pissed. He’s never been able to get Eddie so enthusiastic about a movie before and, believe him, he’s tried so many times to recommend him something he thought he’d like. And Robin got it first try? With something that obscure? Now that’s just not fair. It’s like that time he took three months to get the new record on the Mrs. Pac Man console at the arcade and then Dustin beat him first try. The little prick.
He rolls his eyes and sinks back down behind the counter, sulking.
Robin and Eddie talk for a remarkable amount of time in the corner of the store before Steve can hear her say “…Alright, I should go make sure Steve isn’t fucking up at his job again, catch you later.” and walk back over to him, beaming.
“What the hell?” Steve lets out a measly groan from the back of his throat as she fist pumps silently and sits back down next to him. “The fuck is Rocky Horror Photo Show?”
“Picture show. And you’re not ready for it, I promise.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, asshole?”
“It’s the most perfect expression of horny halloween monsters that this world has ever seen, and it’s got Tim Curry in a corset.”
Steve makes a face. “…The butler from Clue?”
“Yeah, him.”
“…In a-“ He pokes at his waist.
“Yep.”
“How’d you know-“
“It’s a quintessential B-rate g- uh,” Robin pauses, blinks at Steve, grimaces, and resumes. “-glam rock movie. Like, have you seen Eddie Munson? Rocker, nerd, pulp fiction fan. Of course he’s into that shit.”
“Huh. I still feel like I should know what you’re talking about.”
“Believe me, Harrington, if you did then I must’ve fundamentally misunderstood your character.”
“…Good to know,” Steve manages lamely, like he doesn’t know how to take that statement. Because he doesn’t. Oh well. Robin baffles him on the regular with shit like that, he’s learned to ignore it. Sometimes he remembers on what different planes of existence they operate on, and he has to take a moment. It’s so easy to just brush off Robin as someone you can take immediately at surface value, as a flaky, goofy, lesbian band kid, but sometimes she says shit so cryptic he remembers how much he doesn’t know about her life.
Thoughts like that only fly through his mind once in a while but when they do, it feels like time slows down for long enough for them to melt into his ears and leave little marks in the back of his skull, like tally marks of how many times he’s noticed things that normally Steve “dumbass” Harrington would let whiz by without a second thought. And he sometimes hates it, because it makes him realize his friends aren’t necessarily the people he knows, and that scares him. Maybe he’s just scarred by that first time with the Byers, and the Demogorgon fucking bashing his head in before he could even comprehend the fact that there was something underneath the town he’d grown up in. Maybe that fucked his trust up in a way he hasn’t quite recovered from.
He blinks himself out of his horrible brain spiral. Robin is picking at some peeling paint on the counter, long since dazed off from the heat and the mind-numbing boredom that comes with a minimum wage cashier job.
Eddie buys two DC comic books and a Metallica poster. Steve checks him out in near silence and watches him saunter out the door and down the sidewalk.
“I sometimes wish he’d say something to me other than just being nice, you know?” Steve comments idly, propping his head up on his hand.
“Why do you care?” Robin mumbles, half asleep on the floor. “He was Eddie the Freak to you for like, seventeen years of your life.”
“Dunno. Like, we almost both died together. Vecna and that whole shitshow. Usually when that happens- God, I can’t believe it’s happened enough to be a ‘usually’- we, like, end up… closer. Like I would never have cared about Henderson and his crew before the Demogorgon shit went down. Now I feel responsible for their lives. It’s wild. And, like, Nancy and Jonathan and you. I thought Eddie would kind of be next in line. And since Nancy’s busy with her journalism shit and Jonathan’s across the country getting high off his ass with that pizza dudebro, I thought maybe, you know… Maybe I could have, like, a guy friend. For once.” He finishes as nonchalantly as possible. Robin looks up at him, offended. “Hey, am I not macho enough for you? My feminine wiles cramping your style or something?”
“No, I didn’t mean-“
Robin laughs. “I’m fucking with you, Steve. I get it. God knows there’s shit it’d be nice to have a girl to talk about with sometimes, but I’m so terrible with women that you’ll have to do for now, fucko.” She claps him on the calf and he almost buckles, slamming his forearm on the counter to catch himself. “Have fun getting my weepy phone calls about bleeding out of my vagina every month until either I get a girlfriend or I hit menopause.”
“Great,” Steve grunts, instinctively wincing. “Always here to help.”
“Worse than getting kicked in the nuts,” She quips, like this is a conversation they’ve had before (and it is).
“Yeah, I remember,” He mutters, crossing his legs in sympathetic memory.
“You better.”
He switches the subject back. “I mean, I like hanging out with you but, I don’t know, it feels like he must, like, super not like me for him to still ignore me after literally going through hell together.”
Robin shrugs. “I think he’s just figuring shit out.”
“What?”
“Like, we all deal differently. Some of us make friends and trauma bond and shit, like we did. Some of us draw back and deal with it ourselves. He’s just, like, kind of a loner. I’m not super surprised.”
Steve hums, unconvinced. “Sure.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not. Fuck, I was a dick for like so much of high school. There’s definitely a time of my life where I probably kicked the shit out of him. Or if I didn’t, I would’ve. I’d ignore me too.”
Robin winces. “Mm, forgot about that.”
“Like, I don’t remember doing it, but it probably happened. Statistically.”
“I mean, you were also kind of an ass to me, but I came around.”
“Yeah, but I never beat you up.”
“Your friends did,” She points out with an eyebrow raise.
“Shit, really?” Steve hisses through his teeth, looking down at Robin.
She nods with a sympathetic grimace and Steve plunks his head down on the counter with a groan. “God damn it.”
“Mhm.”
“Fuck, Robin, I’m so fucking-“
“Don’t mention it,” She says shortly with a fake smile. “It was a long time ago. It wasn’t your fault. I- I barely think about it, if I’m being honest, it was barely even a fight they just kind of kicked me and pushed me into trash cans and-“
He cuts her off. “I get it, I get it- No, Robin, I was like, super complacenent.”
Robin opens her mouth but pauses, frowning. “Complacenent? Complacent. Too many syllables.”
“Really?” He mouths the word again, brow furrowing. “Complacent. Complacenent. Complacenenent. It doesn’t sound like a word anymore.”
Robin cackles. “Oh my god, it’s a wonder you passed Freshman English.”
“Oh my God, barely. C plus, baby!” He does a faux-confident fist pump.
“B minus!” Robin laughs, reaching up to high five him.
“Yeah, no wonder we’re friends.”
“Asshole,” Robin cackles, shoving him in the back of the knee.
“Oh, shit-“ Steve stumbles, sneakers squeaking as he catches himself on the wall and his leg flies out from under him, landing square on his ass on the concrete flooring. He’s spewing a stream of profanity the whole time, face screwed up as the pain rattles throughout his whole pelvis. He groans.
Robin is laughing her head off, slowly slipping down the side of the counter as Steve stews in his pain.
“Is this how bleeding out of your ass feels?” Steve wheezes.
“Fuckin- fucking nailed it,” Robin manages through her cackling.
“Fuck.”
Eddie’s still basically the Hawkins leper. Condemned to the trailer park on the fringes of town, destined to live out his shitty little life in the same building as his uncle until the day that he starts to rot, and probably beyond that if he’s being honest. Jason Carver himself will probably stick it out until Eddie kicks it just to throw his corpse into a wood chipper himself. Unless Eddie does it first, he reasons. It’s thinking like that that gets a smack on the back of his head (lovingly) from his uncle. Middle school was too rough for him to be throwing shit like that around.
He shakes himself out of his mental funk. It’s a process he goes through- he’s fine, then he spirals, then he mopes, then he drags himself out of it, then he’s fine again, and then again and again. It’s an alright system. Predictable, if kind of shitty to experience. Currently he’s laying face down on his bed, blaring AC/DC and wallowing. Well, until approximately fifteen seconds ago he was wallowing. Now he grunts and rolls over to stare at the popcorn ceiling and boob light above him. Trailer chic, truly. He leans over to his nightstand where his record player is hollering and flicks it off. It crackles to a stop and he revels in the silence, the light streaming through the window above his bed the only thing illuminating his room. He raises his hand and idly stares at his rings, sunlight bouncing off of them and making them glitter. He takes one off with his other hand and rolls it between his fingers, feeling the ridges underneath the pads of his fingers and running a fingernail around the lavender gemstone. He has no idea what it is, just that it’s from a gift shop in San Francisco that his uncle got him a few years back. It was too big for him for years, but he’s finally filled out enough that he can wear it. He slips it back on his middle finger and lets his arm drop with an idle exhale that he lets balloon his cheeks for a moment before releasing. Summer. What a fucking bummer, he thinks as he sweats profusely in a black t-shirt and skinny jeans. The things he does to look cool. It’s not like anyone thinks he’s cool anyway, but he’s cool to himself at least. And Henderson, but freshmen don’t count. Especially not when he’s twenty.
“Not as cool to him as Harrington,” he mutters to nobody in particular. “That schmuck.”
The insult holds no weight- it’s padding to make himself feel better. He gets a kick out of insulting the upper guys, regardless of whether they deserve it or not. Harrington doesn’t care about him.
Yeah, he saved his life more than once, but that was situational. Knight in shining armor type deal. He was in it for the chick, Eddie reminds himself. Nancy. Or Robin. Or both. Not because he cared about Eddie’s well-being or anything. Guy’s a mainstream jock. Probably likes Wham!, Eddie realizes with disgust, making a face to the ceiling as he fidgets. He probably forgot about Eddie as soon as the Vecna thing was over.
At least Robin’s cool. Eddie thinks back to when she asked him about Rocky Horror. He hopes she’s not caught in Harrington’s weird chick magnet he’s got going on. It’d be a shame, really. Eddie rolls over to look at the smattering of posters on his wall, one of them a beat-up pinup style poster of Frank-n-furter giving the camera bedroom eyes with his two female sidekicks looming over his shoulder in what Eddie presumes is some kind of weird seduction pose. He wouldn’t know. He’s never gotten laid in his life, partly his own fault but mostly because he gets no game in any aspect of his life other than D&D. It’s kind of sad, but he has his reasons for being a virgin at twenty; it doesn’t bother him as much as it probably should. He doesn’t tell people that, though. The facade he keeps up of being a sad sack of a man is both easier to uphold and, if he’s being honest, not that far off from the truth.
Knock on his door. “Ed?” His uncle.
“Yeah?” Eddie sits up on his forearms, looking at the door in a haze. He’s hair’s a mess but he doesn’t care enough to run his hand through it.
His uncle opens the door and sticks his head in with a lopsided smile that reveals his crumbling dentures. “I got your meds, son. On the kitchen counter whenever you want ‘em.”
A grin spreads across Eddie’s face and relief flutters in his chest. He falls back onto his bed, arms splayed, and whoops. “Thank God.”
“You forget about your old man?” His uncle deadpans. He jerks his head up as if gesturing to an unseen holy presence. “God knows he ain’t got nothin’ to do with it, kiddo.”
“Thanks, Wayne,” Eddie parrots, shooting his uncle finger guns from his spot on the bed. His uncle gives him a thumbs up and a soft smile and ducks out of the door, clicking it shut.
Eddie fucking giggles, kicking his bare feet while he’s spread on his twin sized mattress like a goth, sweaty crucifixion. He can feel his anxiety seeping out of him like a sliced artery as he grips his sheets. He barely noticed it had been building up over the last few months, an inverse curve as his meds ran low, but knowing he’s safe for another three months makes him want to melt into the floor. Getting his prescription refilled is always a spotty course of action, stumbling over the healthcare system’s hurdles in order to live like a normal fucking human being, but it usually happens some way or the other, just dicey enough to keep him on his toes. But now it sits, a three month supply of Eddie’s wellbeing on the laminate kitchen counter.
The fuzzy ecstasy of getting a refill is fading and he feels it throb in his temples, clearing like a morning fog. He lets an exhale croak out from his vocal cords as he massages his closed eyelids, feeling his sigh rattle his skull. The crushing weight of his responsibilities are slowly jabbing him in the back of his eyes every time he blinks, and it’s becoming harder to ignore. Some tiny voice in the back of his head is reminding him how objectively meaningless said responsibilities are (re: don’t flunk summer school, finish planning that campaign you promised you were gonna do, don’t fucking kill yourself), but Eddie reasons they’re still responsibilities either way. And hell, not killing yourself is the primo responsibility, isn’t it? Gotta be alive to do anything else, so it’s as good a plan as any.
Eddie’s mind drifts back to D&D. Hellfire hadn’t actually finished the Vecna’s Curse campaign, but there was a silent, collective agreement among Hellfire to drop it after… that. Eddie can still barely bring himself to think about Vecna in any capacity, even as a little plastic figurine on a game board that he’s in control of. His stomach twists like a wrung rag soaked with gasoline, and every muscle in his body clenches hard enough to make him dizzy. The spots in his eyelids at night have taken the form of crunched bones and hollow eye sockets, of blood and the hot smell of bile that permeates every breath in the Upside Down. Sometimes in the shower he can still feel acrid slime and tentacles reaching up the back of his neck and tangling in his hair, and for the briefest reckless moment it makes him want to take clippers and buzz it off like he did in seventh grade when his dad died. That knotted, age-old feeling of coals in the pit of his gut that he can’t shake or quench makes him feel like his brain is melting through his ears and spilling into the gutter, only alleviated by jostling his own sense of self so hard he can’t think.
Eddie screws his eyes shut and realizes he’s shaking. The roar of his window AC unit is taunting him, prickling the hairs on the back of his neck but failing to evaporate the sweat pouring down his brow and into his eyes. He feels like a Christmas ham strung up by his shoelaces, itching to break out of his skin. He grits his teeth and clenches his fists around his bedsheets like he’s going to be torn from his bed any moment and slammed into the ceiling like Chrissy Cunningham, sucked and twisted into some kind of horrific retribution, a crucifixion of Hawkins’ biggest devil.
The worst part, he realizes with a hollow pang in his lungs that threatens his consciousness, is that they would cheer. Not another tragedy, not tacked onto the line of Chrissy, of Fred, of Patrick. No, his death would be paraded. He’d be stripped and thrown in the gutter, his mutilated body called righteous and fitting and an act of God.
The kind of anger that courses through Eddie manages to sever his anxiety in favor of sheer rage. Earth’s gravity feels like it’s increased tenfold, drawing him into a black pit of wrath with its center in the cavern of his ribcage, dark and heavy and hot. Silent curses run through his brain, in one ear and out the other, parroting things said to him in the twenty arduous years of his life.
Freak. Lunatic. Psychopath. Wrong in the head. Queer. Satanist. Pedo. Rapist. Murderer.
And deeper, stewing in the darkest caves of his own psyche that he doesn’t dare engage with, come bubbling up his darkest fears and secrets. He can feel the fear crackle through his chest- his stupid fucking chest. He opens his eyes and feels his heart throbbing in his ears and blinks through the tears that threaten to roll down his face. The knowledge that if he does die, or even worse if he doesn’t and is found out…
Well, he might as well beg to be strung up by his neck by Jason Goddamned Carver & Co., naked and afraid, the pariah of Hawkins Indiana for the rest of linear time.
Steve Harrington is renting Rocky Horror. Well- he hasn’t logged it to his account yet, but he’s planning to. Eventually. As soon as he gets off his Saturday night shift. He has the VHS under the counter, ready to roll. He’s not actually supposed to hold titles behind the counter for employees, but who else is going to rent a campy B-movie in Hawkins? Nobody except Robin and Eddie, and they’ve already seen it. Nobody’s checking out right now, so he checks to make sure nobody’s watching him and slips the case out from under the counter and flips it over in his hands as covertly as possible, holding it low and leaning nonchalantly against the wall. The cover has the title in dripping red glitter lettering and a pair of large red lips floating on a black background, biting the bottom lip seductively. If he didn’t know better he’d assume it was a porno, but the summary on the back claims it’s got something to do with a mad scientist making the perfect man. On the back is a photo of what he presumes is Tim Curry’s character, fully decked out in a black strappy corset and heels, dramatic makeup, and a shitty wig. He’s posing with a hand on his exposed hip, seducing the cameraman. What the fuck is this movie?
As he’s pondering the back of the VHS, someone dings the bell on the counter with a clearing of their throat.
Steve’s head snaps up, throwing the VHS under the counter surreptitiously. It clatters to the floor instead and he fumbles to pick it up and shove it under the counter again, looking up to meet the eyes of… Eddie fucking Munson.
“Smooth, Harrington.” Eddie slides a VHS of Aliens across the counter. “I’m just checking out, not your boss or whoever the fuck you were worried about while ogling the back of a porno or whatever.”
“It wasn’t porn.” Steve pulls up Eddie’s account to charge him.
“Good to know,” Eddie says idly in the way that means he does not, in fact, think it is good to know. He taps his fingers on the counter, making a heavy thunking sound as his rings clink together.
“You have a lot of those,” Steve says dumbly, not quite thinking about what he’s saying as he glances down at Eddie’s rings while ringing him up. Look, he just wants to strike up a friendly conversation with the guy, or at least let him know he doesn’t hate him.
Eddie blinks. “What? Oh,” He looks down at his hands and holds them up to look at his rings. “Yeah, I do.”
“They’re cool,” Steve ventures against his better judgement.
“…Thanks, man,” Eddie mumbles, shoving his hands in his pockets and avoiding eye contact with Steve.
Steve silently exhales to try to break the weird tension he’s managed to create. “Total’s five bucks.”
Eddie wordlessly hands him a five dollar bill, crumpled from being in his pocket. Steve takes it, his hand carelessly brushing Eddie’s. His rings are cold, he notices idly as he rings him up.
“Have you not seen Alien before?” Steve asks as he slides the VHS back over the counter.
“This is the sequel. Aliens. Notice the plurality,” Eddie deadpans with a rare smile creeping at the corner of his mouth as he raps his index finger on the title. “But yes, I’ve seen Alien. I don’t live under a rock, Harrington. You?”
The one-two jab makes Steve hold back an eye-roll. “Of course I’ve seen it. It’s a classic.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You think?”
“I know.”
“Didn’t take you for a sci-fi buff, Harrington.” The comment is soaked in sarcasm that Steve decides to ignore.
Steve shrugs. I’m really not, he wants to say, to be truthful. But something tugs out an embellishment from somewhere in his brain. “Yeah, well. It’s a great genre.”
Eddie hums, his eyes twinkling with something like bitterness. “Good to know King Steve has some taste.”
The high school nickname hits Steve like a bat to the head, almost as hard as the tone that swung it. He winces. “You can just call me Steve. I don’t- I’m not really a king of anything.” The silent anymore doesn’t slip out of his lips, but it threatens to, and Eddie can tell.
“Got it,” Eddie replies tersely, tucking the film under his arm. “Well, I’m still holding up at being Freak Eddie if you were wondering.”
Steve’s stomach is hurtling towards the ground at supersonic speeds. “I wasn’t- I don’t- you’re not a freak.”
“Mm, aren’t I, though? The Hawkins Horror?” He waves jazz hands to embellish the title that got run in newspapers for weeks. Steve tries to swallow but his throat’s made of sandpaper.
“Your name got cleared,” He tries hotly. “You’re free.”
“Legally, yes, but socially I’m still a satanist homo who’s stealing your kids,” Eddie hisses, hands gripping the counter as his voice drips with disdain. “No thanks to your crew, back in good standing with the good Lord’s congregation.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve squeaks. “I- I didn’t want it to end up like this,” He whispers, desperate. “And I’m still being shunned, you know. I’ve got nobody but Robin here. All I wanted was to get to know you- We could’ve been friends, Eddie-“
Eddie’s face seems to soften at the sound of his first name, at the slowly disintegrating facade of Steve Harrington. “You know, Harrington, I thought you’d be less remorseful,” He says after a moment, tilting his head. “It doesn’t- I know I said you were, like, an okay guy back in the Upside Down, but-“ He swallows hard, eyes drifting down to look at the counter where he’s picking at the finish with his black-stained fingernails. “Honestly I thought you were just being nice out of necessity. Like, standing up as the hero. Not because you like, didn’t hate me. Or something.” He finishes lamely and laughs shortly, looking back up at Steve’s bemused and mildly terrified expression. “It’s kind of falling apart now that I’m saying it out lout but what I’m trying to say is I guess I thought you were still a dick, underneath that knight in shining armor deal you’ve got going on.”
Steve bites the inside of his cheek, his stomach in a weird free-fall. Eddie… doesn’t hate him? He thought Steve hated Eddie? Something in his gut twists and he bites back… he doesn’t want to think about what he’s biting back.
“I promise I’m not a dick,” He tries, giving Eddie what he hopes is the patented Harrington smile but what ends up being a watery grimace. “I really did like you and- I didn’t want to, like, drop you like you thought I did, but-“ He laughs, realizing the weird, convoluted situation they’re in. “Honestly I thought that you hated me, and I’m kind of scared of being hated so I kept my distance.”
Eddie stares at him. “No shit?”
Steve nods quickly. “No shit,” he echoes.
“Damn.” Eddie blinks, staring at the counter. He looks back up and cracks a smile. “I’ve really got to rework my personal Munson doctrine now.”
“Good luck with that,” Steve says, regaining some amount of his composure. “Glad we don’t want to kill each other after all.”
“Me too, Harrington.” Eddie adjusts his grip on the VHS of Alien and moves to turn away from the counter and leave.
Something brave and uncharacteristically honest reaches up from inside of Steve as the hunched, frayed figure of Eddie Munson starts to walk out.
“It was Rocky Horror,” Steve calls after him. Eddie stops in his tracks and turns on his heel, face blank with cluelessness.
“What?”
“It wasn’t porn,” Steve says, slightly too loud as an older woman gives him a stern look from across the store. He clears his throat and lowers his volume as Eddie turns fully around to look at Steve in wonderment. For some reason he’s getting super self-conscious, like Eddie’s gaze is drinking in every part of him, and he feels the need to babble, against his better judgement. “That I was looking at, I mean. It’s, uh, Rocky Horror. Robin, uh- I heard you two talking about it the other day and thought it seemed… cool,” He finishes lamely.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Eddie hoots, clapping his hands. “Could I possibly be around to witness the corruption of Steve “The Hair” Harrington?”
Steve flushes. “I-“
“Are you renting it, then?”
“I mean, I’m planning to.”
“You don’t have to, I have a copy at home. You can come over some time and watch if you want.”
Steve blinks. “Really?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
“Because I thought you didn’t like me?”
Eddie rolls his eyes like Steve’s being the biggest blockhead on Planet Earth. “Get with the program, Harrington- I thought you were a dickhead womanizer that was just helping me because you had to, but obviously you’re actually some semblance of nice to kids like me, even if you don’t need to be, so I’m chill with you.”
“Oh. Sick.”
“Are you doing anything after this shift?”
“Uh, I was planning on watching Rocky Horror, so…”
“That’s a no, then. Want to swing by? You know where I live.”
“Are you sure?” Steve asks again, dumbfounded.
“Oh my God, yes, I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited to force someone to watch a movie before in my life.” He grins and rubs his hands together.
“Got it,” Steve says faintly. “I get off at ten, so… ten thirty?”
“That’s a copy, Harrington.” Eddie shoots him finger guns and strolls out the door. Steve turns his back to the door and slowly drifts to the floor, dazed. Did that just happen? Did he actually befriend Eddie Munson in the span of less than ten minutes at 9 p.m in a Family Video?
Yes, he tells himself. Yes, you did do that.